Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Edward Norton

Episode Date: October 20, 2019

Edward Norton burst onto the scene in 1996 with his appearance in the movie "Primal Fear," for which he was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe. In this week's "Sunday Sitdown," Willie Geist talks to the actor about his incredible run of award-winning films since then, including "The People vs. Larry Flynt," "American History X" and "Fight Club." They also chat about his latest work, "Motherless Brooklyn," a film which Norton wrote, produced, directed and stars in.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks, as always, for clicking and listening along. My guest this week, another good one, Edward Norton. Yes, the Edward Norton, whose career in the movies began in 1996 with primal fear. It was the first movie he ever made. He was nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe for it. First movie he ever made, and he's been off to the races ever since. American History X.

The People versus Larry Flint Fight Club, just to name a few. And his latest project is called Motherless Brooklyn. He is the writer of that film, the producer of that film, the director of that film, and the star of that film. And it's got a lot of people talking. Joining me, as always, the producer of this fine podcast, Maggie Law. Hey, Maggie.

Hi, Willie. And the producer of this fine interview, Hannah Van Winkle. Hi, Hannah. Hello, Willie. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so we should let our listeners in on a little back, story here. Sure. So we've been wanting to talk to Edward Norton for a long time. Sometimes these things pop up rather quickly. Indeed. Usually we book them way out and you've got time to think and

prepare and find the perfect location and do all that. About when did you know as the producer of this story when we were interviewing Edward Norton? Well, I would say it got down to Wednesday about 10 a.m. that I found out we were going to talk to Edward that night at 6.30. That night. That night. What do you usually find out about anything? I would say at least a couple weeks before. A couple weeks, right. So what happens? This is a great insight into how these things work.

So at 10 a.m., we have Edward Norton. Right. We don't know exactly what time and we have no idea where. Exactly. Where do you go from there as a producer? Thankfully, I have obviously a great support team here at NBC. But so I call up the crew desk and make sure that I can get people to actually film you guys having this wonderful conversation. And this is all by the way happening on a Jewish holiday, which should just throw up.

another wrench into the whole situation. So we have to make sure that we've got people to roll camera. Then I have to find a location. Thankfully, I was able to also call in some people that are in our orbit to find a good location. And I think we found a pretty good one for this. It sort of is reminiscent of the film a little bit. It's kind of got that exposed brick. There's a bit of a firescape in the background.

It's sort of noir-esque like Motherless Brooklyn. It's what you're going for, right? Right. Thankfully, it worked out. And then I've got to obviously watch the film, get everything about Edward to you so you can adequately prepare for this interview as well. So it all came together really quickly, but I think in the end it was worth it. Yeah, I walked into the apartment basically is what it was where we were doing it downtown in New York. I said, where are we?

Is this like a person's apartment? You were like, don't worry about it. Just sit down. Just sit down and do it. And I did. I did that. But he was so basically, Maggie, he was in Miami that day. doing press.

And to his great credit, he was like, when I fly home, I will touch down and I will come and do that interview. Yeah. Hopped in a car, came right to our interview, sat down with you. And you guys had a great chat for like 90 minutes. Yeah. I was going to say. I think a record breaking Sunday sit down length. Really?

I mean, I have to go back to do the real math on all of them, but I'm pretty sure just listening to it. It was one of the longest. I believe Kevin Hart was the previous record. Over an hour. This was definitely over an hour as well. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of felt like you guys were just sitting in his living room. We were sitting in somebody's living room.

I don't know whose living room that was. Somewhere in Soho in someone's living room. But he was, you know, it's funny, like these people come in with reputations sometimes and that, you know, he's very serious about acting, obviously, in filmmaking, and he doesn't want to talk about a lot of other stuff. But I feel like when you sit with someone for 90 minutes, and it's, let's be honest, the end of both of our days, maybe we were just like ready to kick back. and chat.

I found him to be like super open and honest and willing to talk about whatever. I completely agree. And, you know, he talked about some things that I hadn't heard really from him. He talked a little bit about his mom and sort of the tough time of that right happening right as primal fear was coming out. So I thought that was really neat to hear from him. I also like to hear him talk about some of the other efforts that he's doing, some of his environmental work, some of his sort of betterment of the world work.

and the notion that he wants to do something with his life rather than just be an artist. And not to diminish the value and the lasting impact of an artist, but he wants to really make a difference in this world. And I thought that was really cool. There's an amazing, I thought, moment of telling bite where he sort of said, you want to answer the, what did you do during the war grandpa question? And he's like, I don't want the answer to be like, I dressed up and played make belief. Right.

So he's basically, he's very private. So we didn't want to talk about his private life. And I always respect that. But he did say, Maggie, like the reason to be famous, the reason to be a celebrity, if you want to be that word, is to use it for something else. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, no, that part really stuck out to me when he was like, my kids are going to say, well, what did you do? You know, like when they arrived and I was like, wow, what am I going to tell my kids?

Yeah. I got to do something. Yeah. And by the way, he started a bunch of companies, crowd rise, this platform, a charitable platform. And I didn't realize Hannah until I was reading your research that he was way, way early in on Uber. Yeah. He was the first ride in L.A. Is that right?

Yeah. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. To have that foresight, too, to be able to say like, this is a good thing and this is going to change the game. Right. And he was there right at the forefront, first ride in L.A. Yeah. Realizing that the cab systems are imperfect and that we need a better way.

And, you know, that has completely exploded. And I think given birth to a whole new sort of way of business, that's sort of on-demand business that we now have and sort of take for granted. And he was at the very forefront of it. Part of the reason I love our Sunday sit downs is most of the people, I'm going to say all the people we get are smart and interesting outside of whatever they're there to talk about the movie. And so when you get Edward Norton across from you, and it's the end of a long day, we're

going to rant, we're going to riff a little bit. He might get going on the New York City taxi madame. It's going on a couple different things, for sure. He might get going on climate change and some other things. So it's a fascinating conversation. This movie is so good. And as I said, a lot of people are talking about it. Edward bought the rights to this novel, Motherless Brooklyn, 20 years ago, saw the potential in it and wrote it.

Basically reset it. It was set in the 90s. It was written in 1999. And he reset it in the 50s as a noir. Yeah. It's such a cool movie. It's such a great premise because I think it really, you can understand how things in a city have been affected by their past. And this really explains that in a little bit more detail than I sort of had ever thought about before.

And it really almost gives a face, even though it's a fictionalized version of New York and how New York has was sort of built. There are so many parallels and so many things that were really taken from the history of New York. And that was something that I learned a lot from and learned a lot about. through watching this movie. And we have to say, Alec Baldwin is amazing. He's the villain in the movie. He's the big sort of New York City bureaucrat

who's moving buildings around and making parks and building bridges at the expense of a lot of poor people. So it's an amazing film, a great conversation. Here now, Edward Norton and me sitting in someone else's living room in New York City. Edward in a T-shirt and jeans fresh off a plane talking about his film,

Motherless Brooklyn, on the Sunday Sit-Down podcast. cast. Edward, thanks for doing this. Pleasure. Appreciate it. It's fun. Fresh off a plane and everything. No, it's good. I'm back home. We're settled. I'm settled. We're in your neighborhood. We're waiting. We're waiting on fire engines. What could be more relaxing? There'll be one around the next corner, I promise. So I was just telling you, I just saw the film today. It's incredible. Thank you. And I think most people don't realize it's sort of the end of a 20-year journey from the day you finished reading that novel. What was it about the novel, first of all, that captivated and grabbed you and made you willing to invest this much time in it?

I should give a very high-minded answer about how I saw deep themes with social resonance, but it was entirely the greedy actor. I read this character of a Touretic detective, this guy with Tourette's syndrome, an obsessive-compulsive disorder who has to solve the murder of his only friend. and he was so, such a hot mess of, of hilarity and real pain and poignancy. He was, his condition creates these unbelievable trip-ups for him, and yet inside he's, he's smart and intelligent and deeply felt. And Jonathan Leatham, who wrote the novel, had, on page one, he achieved this fantastic trick, which is, you're inside the guy's head, hearing him speak to you. the kind of the true self, but then you're outside watching his condition.

And it's everything you want to try to achieve in a movie he did on page one, which is you just go, I am with this guy. And wherever he goes, I'm going with him. And I can't, you know, it's just, and that's, as an actor, it was like, my God, that's just a seven-course meal. That's hard. It's like kind of, you go, could I even do that? Could I, could you even get that right?

You know, and it's, so it started. It started with character, and honestly, it wasn't a noir detective movie in my mind. It was as much Forrest Gump or Rain Man. It was the underdog, those films where you root for an underdog, and you feel uplifted because they remind you it's good to be on the side of that guy, you know. And that's where it started. Do you have in your mind right away, not only do you want to play Lionel, but I want to direct this film as well? No, that definitely came later.

I, I, the thing, the moment it started to go deeper was that I, Jonathan's novel is brilliant. It takes place in 1999, and I read it in 99. It's, it's modern Brooklyn, but the characters in it have a very, it's a little bit surreal. It's as if they exist in a bubble where the fifth. 50s has never ended. They talk and act and and dress like 50s gum shoe guys. And film is, I said to Jonathan that film, it's very literal, you know, it's more presentational than the mind can do things that in film, I thought it might risk

looking wink, wink, you know, like, like, like gum shoe ironing. Yeah. And, you know, and that can be fun, but you don't want it to be, I didn't want to do the Blues brothers, you know. Right. Hip retro in the modern world. And Jonathan is a real cinephile, a real lover of noir, and he got that. And I said, the first suggestion was, I said, I think maybe it would be interesting

if we just set this in the time that it feels like because also no one knew what Tourette's syndrome was really. And people are mean to him. They call him freak show. And there's something about it that feels hard-boiled. It feels like another time with less sensitivity. And so, and since Jonathan loves that era and those films, he was just great. He was like, I wrote my book.

Let's, let's, he loved the idea of sort of vaulting off with the character. So once we went there, this thing started to tickle in my head that now we were going to have to leave the contemporary plot behind. And I've been interested for a long time in the things that. that went on in New York in the 50s. And the very dark things that are very antagonistic to our idea of how things are supposed to get done in America. And I think having lived in New York 30 years,

we deal with things here that we look at as almost intrinsic problems, but they're not. They were created with intention by some very dark people with very dark agendas. And I'm. And I started floating to Jonathan, what if we sent Lionel into that shadow narrative and started to probe? Because then, and then it started to open up for us into this idea of like, well, what if Lionel's our vehicle into something that's a little more like LA Confidential or Chinatown or one of those films that you go for the drift of that of a period and find things out about America that are, that actually still speak to what's going on right now? That's when it got more ambitious and that's when I decided to write it.

Well, what I like about it is if you had said it in 1999, those problems already exist. They've been set in place for 40 years. Right. But you're at the point where these problems are being created effectively and reflection of what really happened in the city of New York, as you know, because your great-grandfather sort of worked in the space. Your grandfather, excuse me, worked in the space. Yeah, so that was the other thing is that one, again, so these things happen by stages,

your ambition starts to maybe evolve or change. It was a greedy actor, right? And then it was sort of like, well, wait a minute, maybe this great character is a vehicle to carry us through the discovery of certain things that have a second level of resonance to them, not just plot, but real, like actual assessment of deeper things. And the thing is, and then it started to get at things that are deep from me. My grandfather was, you know, he was one of the great urban planners and almost philosophers about,

about how cities play a role in people's development. And he was in many ways the antithesis of Alec Baldwin's character. He was the ultimate sort of progressive, human-focused development. and he had very, very prescient ideas about what would happen to cities if people prioritized development over the human characteristics of cities that make them livable for people. And I worked for him. When I got out of college, I worked in New York doing affordable housing development work. And my first job in the city was literally, it was going to the Bronx, going to Bed-Stuy, going to Queens,

going to Washington Heights and interviewing people who had had displaced lives and gotten stable by coming into the affordable housing that my granddad's organization we were building. And it was this, it was like an incredible way to move to New York. You know, it was like, I got this acceleration. And I used to go and hear him give these speeches, some of which things he said are literally lines in Willem Defoe's mouth in this movie about if you want to serve people, you have to love people. You have to actually care about people to do work that's really meaningful. And he decried the idea that we made heroes out of people who amassed power and amassed money.

And the more I worked on this, I started feeling like, in a way, it was my own way of getting at a lot of what really mattered to him. I mean, you talk about the humanity. You have Alec Baldwin's character says at one point near the end of the movie, when you go and meet him in his office, and he's showing you this makes it, you know, they should thank Olmsted every day. I thank God every day for Olmstead. And that's sort of like baked into the way we think about New York City. But what this movie shows us is there were some consequences to all that. There were consequences to development.

People were moved out. Yeah. And that in fact it still is happening today. Well, I think that, you know, it's funny because there's gentrification. Yeah. Right. That's sort of a, you could argue that that is a phenomenon. But then there's the ways that the infrastructure of a city gets discrimination baked into it.

And it's not a, gentrification is not what went on in the 50s. What went on was wholesale fraud and intentional racism expressed in infrastructure. They really did do things like take federal slum clearance money, tag some of the most stable middle-class minority neighborhoods of Brooklyn, tag them as slums. rip them down, displaced people, failed to do any of the things they were supposed to do

to relocate those people and then built the worst slums in the world, the projects. And they really did things like when they built Jones Beach and the big parks and they built new parkways out to these huge,

new natural public, you know, paradises in a way, they purposely put the bridges a foot too low for public buses to clear so that, blacks and Latinos couldn't go or would be forwarded from going to the beaches. And as Gugu and Batha Raw's character says, when, you know, she criticizes my character,

she says, like, you think we're making this up? You think this is all like Negro propaganda conspiracy theory. But these things happened. You know what I mean? It's like, and I think that, you know, it's funny because, like, in American life, like the detective novel, there's the dime store sort of B-Movie version of it. But there's the, there's noir, the serious version of noir. Like noir as like literature and our best noir movies,

I really do think they rise out of an impulse in America that's very unique to America. You can't do this in China and you can't do this in Russia. You really can't. You know, it's an impulse to say, hey, we're, you know, we trust our system. And we go along with it. And we appreciate that people can do well. But at a certain point, if we start to feel that there's things going on under the skin that

are not the way things are supposed to happen here, we're going to start sticking a fork in it. And there's a limit to what we'll tolerate. And the detective in really good noir, Bogart or Jake gets in Chinatown, there are people who peel the cornerback and they take us into the shadow narrative that's underneath, you know, the narrative of sunny California, the place where you can go into it. remake yourself the American dream. And what Chinatown does is it says, yeah, but this whole city was built on theft, an enormous rip-off that ruined a lot of people and the people who did it rape their daughters,

too, by the way. You know what I mean? It's a really dark story. And it really, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, and I think that when we, when, sometimes we need that, we need, you know, and people, it depends on what you think is patriotic. Like, I think one of the things that's amazing. about America is we have the impulse to cry foul when we're feeling that disconnect between who we say we are and what is actually going on. And I think that the best of those films come

at those moments when we're starting to feel that disconnect more. Well, that's what I was going to ask you about. Is this, so how do you apply that to this moment? Because there is that feeling, right, in the country. People are feeling uneasy and there's inequality and all those things. Was this, although it was 20 years in the making, was this the right moment for this movie? It's funny to say that, because I did, I finished writing it in 2012. And I had,

I had a moment where I thought, you know, Barack Obama was being inaugurated for his second term, and I thought like, wow, I mean, I still think it's a great character and a great story, and I think it holds up as just one of those kinds of movies like LA Confidential that we love to go to, you know, that we had, I was like, I wasn't worried that people wouldn't enjoy,

the character and the idea, but I did start to feel like, wow, maybe we're in the post-racial age and we're headed and this is losing its teeth. And then for reasons of my own distraction and just whatever, it always takes a long time to get a good movie together, get a good cast together. It wasn't until like after 2016 that I was really actually able to get it together and the head of Warner Brothers at the time called me and said, now we have to make this movie. Now there's an urgent value to making this movie right now. And he really championed it and we got it done.

I think that we went and underlined things. But this is, look, this is the movie deals with things that are resonant, not just because of what's happening now, but certainly I think what's going on right now, where again, let me put it this way. I think that what the movie sort of digs into ultimately is do we want to define heroism as the acquisition of power, of money? Are we going to romance the bully, the person who says,

who gets to the point where they say people are inconvenient to what I intend to do? or are we going to define heroes as people who, even within their own struggles, whether it's Tourette syndrome or being a black woman in the 50s who's a lawyer and is unseen by other people? She's a secretary. People who, despite their daily battles, they find the bandwidth to stand up against that power and prioritize caring for other people. I think that argument is white hot right now. And I think that's the path in a way that this character who has been very defined by his own problems is forced to kind of grow up, I think, in some ways, by moving in this shadow world and suddenly understanding that there are things going on that irritate him.

Alec Baldwin, too, is the perfect representation of that power. he plays that character so well. He really does. Was he a guy you had in mind for that part? Very much so. I think there was a moment, Alec, you know, Alec happens to be, in the old days they have called him a triple threat, you know. I mean, he, Alex happens to be a great comedian, like one of the great comedic actors.

He's a great rock contour. He has his own talk shows, he has these things. But Alec is first and foremost, if you came up when I came up, he's a great dramatic actor. I'm not just a great dramatic actor, a great theater actor. Like, I saw him in Streetcar Name Desire when I was just out of college, and he melted my mind. I was like, this guy has that old world heft of a brand, a Lee J. Cobb. You know, he had that kind of weight of, and a command of language that's very, very rare.

And, you know, for us, it was like coffee is for closers only, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. And I've never, I've never lost my view that Alex, Alex, I think, greatest potency is the combination of his kind of, it's a lethal combination of charm and incredible capacity to intimidate, you know. And I never really could imagine. I mean, he was just the guy. I really, really wanted him to play this part. And he, and I, objectively, I think it's like one of the better performances he's given. For sure. If you're worried that you'll be distracted by like this thing he does every weekend.

And the minute he opens his mouth in this, it atomizes like all of that. He's really, really. And that final soliloquy of dark power that he gives, like I, New York Cruz, New York Cruise, New York crews have seen everything. They sort of like, they look at what you're doing and they're going, okay, Artiste, we're going to go over here and have a coffee while you do all that.

And the day I, like, did that monologue at the end, the entire crew was standing in the shadows with, like, riveted. I haven't seen a crew in really watching an actor like that in a long time. It was really something. I would argue it's before he even opens his mouth. When you have that first shot from behind his head

and it's clear, it's Baldwin's head. If you don't know, he's in the movie, then he goes up and he doesn't shake the hand. And like his presence has felt immediately. Yeah. And I think, uh, there, you know, I, there's many things about this is very special to me. Like I, I, this cast is extraordinary. But it's also like everybody's from Bruce Willis, Willem Defoe, Alec, and everybody else, Bobby Cannavali, everybody did this film for me for scale, essentially.

They, they, they, we, we didn't have, um, we didn't have 200 million from Netflix. I hope I earned that someday. But we had to do this big epic period thing in New York. We had to do it in a smart and efficient way. And I could not have gotten it done if the entirety of this cast didn't basically say, we're in this for the love of the piece. And it was one of the great compliments of my career that people sort of, they all stepped in on this for me and for the piece.

I was going to ask you how you pulled that off as a director because I saw the budget and it's not the $200 million should Netflix. Yeah, about that a tenth, right. And so the scale explains it, but also, like, you have some, like, grand setups. You know, you've got the old Penn Station. You've got, so how did you pull that off as a director, all those beautiful shots and those period piece moments? The thing, the funny thing, directing is like this, it's sort of this act of willful madness. You say something like, we're going to make one of those old-fashioned big period films that we all love, like LA Confidential or The Godfather or chat.

And we're going to do it in New York. And we're going to do it big scale, not like a diorama. We're going to do a car chase through 15 blocks of Harlem, across the bridge, down into Queens, French Connection style. And we're going to do this on a price to everybody. And, you know, a lot of people just head for the exits. They're like, that guy is heading for a bloody waterline. of a film.

But the people who say, who go, no, I know how to do that. Like, you know, a genius production designer, Beth Mickle and one of the great cinematographers of the modern era, Dick Pope, who I had gotten to know on The Illusionist, which is a beautifully shot film that he was nominated for and was shot in 40 days.

So you find the people who are hungry and who know how to get it done and you figure it out. But, you know, it's recreating Penn Station. It's amazing. And some people were like, can't he find the final clue in a bus station? Like, does it need to be Penn Station? But the point is, it's more, it's what we were talking about.

Like, the movie is about the tension between, like, pushing ourselves forward kind of through muscular power. Yeah. And versus caring about the actual value, the human value of communities. And if people in Penn Station, I mean, people in New York, rather, Penn Station is not just anything. It's the symbol of what gets lost to the wrecking ball when no one's looking out for the things that matter, you know. And that's, to me, motherless Brooklyn, it's not just about my character who's an orphan and the idea of people needing someone in their life who's looking out for them. It's also about us looking out for each other and for the things that matter, even as we try to be this like muscular society that advances, you know.

And Penn Station is a loss. We'll never get it back. That was our Victoria Station. That was our Gardinerd. And I always liked, remember Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the great New York senator. He said that when losing Penn Station, you used to descend into New York like a titan, and now you scuttle in like a rat. Yes, that's right.

And it's true. We've lost a, we've lost a, we've lost a relationship. relationship that, like the way you enter and leave the city is denigrated. And those are losses. So I wanted to, I wanted the ghost of that loss to be in the film. You know what I mean? I felt that. I felt that because I've read about that.

And I've never read a good explanation for why they took a wrecking ball to that to build the thing we have now, which is like one of the worst train stations on earth. Yeah, with a not so great stadium on top of it. No, that's not made either. Right. And it's true. And I think looking at, you know, by the way, also brought up in the film in a line that nobody like Alec Baldwin can deliver, nobody but Alec Baldwin could deliver. He, you know, you learn that it was not, it was not an accident. It was the will, you know, the owner of the Dodgers gets blamed. But the truth is, the person who was really behind that was someone who essentially said, if I don't get my. way, the way I want it, the Dodgers can take it on the arches to the coast. Right. And that's how it happened.

Yeah. It was a Darth Vader-like figure in New York who just dismissed like one of the cultural icons of the city and said, they're out of here. Right. And I think to, when we don't understand where power is actually held, we're in trouble in this country. You know what I mean? If things, we have a system by which power is supposed to.

to be held where we put it. And when you start realizing that power has been accrued in incredibly huge ways outside in the shadow outside the system, then this is dangerous. And if people don't see where it is, if they don't understand where it is, then things happen that we regret, you know, that make us fall off the narrative that we're proud of. And it seems so obvious in how You have this beautiful train station, which you took down for this. Yeah. I knew it's crazy. Yeah.

And I think it's funny. A lot of people don't know that L.A. is built on stolen water, you know, but I think a lot of people in New York don't realize the degree to which this town. And many of its contemporary problems were created by a single person who, to this day, people don't understand the amount of authoritarian, dictatorial sway he had over this town. So a practical filmmaking question for you, a great filmmaker. So you're writing the film, which you've adapted from a novel, you're producing the film, you're directing the film, and you're starring in the film. How does that even work?

Like, how do you pull off that day? I'm going to be in recovery for years. I'm going to say, what do you do next? I'm like, sleep. Sleep, for God's sake. But those, I can't like, direct, I mean, I've talked to people who've directed and starred in, but you did that all of it. A lot of it is your collaborators. You rely on people.

You're not doing this by yourself. You, you, the airbags around the car crash that that could be are brilliant collaborators. Like, in every artistic department and a cast, in my case, I didn't want anyone who wasn't a theater-trained actor, a theater-experienced actor, who I knew. would come ready with the totality of what they needed to do and probably blow me away and not need very much from me. And I got that. I got that from a cast of people I have deep relationship with and who are real New York theater actors or Gougu,

who's a rotter-trained actor and a brilliant, you know, up-and-coming talent. But that's a big part of it is you hedge off the disruptions caused, to both jobs by having great people surrounding you. But there's also, you know, there's a moment where you kind of hit, where you go, like, I've done this a while. And I know what I need, you know, as an actor, I can do that work. I can do that preparatory work in advance,

get myself into a good place where I feel, you know, ready to play the violin, and I know the notes. And I can set things up. You couldn't make, we made this movie in like 46 days, which is really short. That was our original schedule. Maybe we went over a pinch. But you have to be, you know the scene in The Dirty Dozen

where they're going, Donald Duck goes here. They're making the plan to attack the castle. And they go, Donald Duck goes here. When you do this kind of a film, it's like that. There's no improvisation. Right. You have to move this like a machine to, get through it with because you can't see modern cars and you can't see modern people you've got to

really control right things and so it's a controlled process on a film like this but i i you know i look at films like like reds right which you know warren baidy wrote produced directed and started it and it's a three-hour film about american socialists with documentary footage from the people who really participated in it and and warren told me that that that everybody said to him, you're going to flush your career with this movie. Like, nobody wants to see this movie. And he said, he was like, well, I want to see this movie. You know, I actually want to see this movie.

And so I'm going to make this movie. You know what I mean? And it's like from him, from all the way back to Orson Wells, he was inspired by Orson Wells and Kevin Costner. You know, he and Clint Eastwood did that. And Kevin Costor's inspired by them and me and Ben Affleck and anyone else who's said, you know what, like, I'm going to, you see other people do it and you go, this can be done. This can be done.

And a lot of times I think the work that comes out of those passion projects because you can't call them anything else is really fine. It's really definitive work. I think, you know, I don't think Clint East would ever made a better film than Unforgiven. Like, I think it's like the, it's a really great American film. And I think same for Kevin Costner. And by the way, like my friend Liz Banks, You know, she's doing it too.

Like, she's directing films and acting in them. I mean, I think that comes with reaching a point where you go, you go at, you know, it's like Malcolm Gladwell. It's like, I don't have 10,000 hours. I got 30,000 hours and I'm ready to do this, you know. Yeah. And you, I mean, as an actor, you're always so dialed in. Is that a hard thing to do to dial into the character, but also say, I've got to know where everybody's got to be and call cut and everything? Yes.

Yes. Yeah. My biggest anxiety, honestly, was just that the actors do a great thing. They do the same thing we're doing right here. There's lights and there's people and there's distractions, but you stay together in the zone of concentration, right? And if one of you is breaking that, that's not ideal. And that was going to be me.

Right. So I, again, I engaged everyone in this. movie I had a short hand with, like a confidence that they could handle that without me having to be insecure. And in fact, they would help me get back into the headspace quickly, you know. But it's, but I, you know, if there's one place that you can, if there's one place that you can be running around on the streets of New York and, and keep up the habit of shouting, you know, and, uh, twitching.

and have very almost nobody look at you. Totally. Like for 30 years, I've walked down the street muttering to myself. And nobody looks twice. And now at this point, they go, oh, there's Norden. He must be rehearsing in his head.

You know, like, it's unremarkable here. You're in the right town, for sure. Yeah, I'm in the right town for my particular. So now then, given all that you've put into this project over all these years, your time, your passion, your energy, what does it feel like to be on the eve of the world seeing it? Like just as a filmmaker and as an actor, like this is about to go out there.

How do you feel right now? I feel great. It's nerve-racking. There's a really happy moment, I think, that is already in my rearview mirror, unfortunately, where you accept like sort of Francis Coppola's maxim that you never finish a film, you abandon it, you know? And there's this point at which you have to be done.

You just have to be done. And I am very perfectionist, very compulsive about some things. And I got done in the spring, and I showed it to some people I really respect. And they were very, very warm about it. It gave me very, and I just felt good. I felt content. In a way I don't often feel content. I felt like I felt like I had made the film I went, I set out to make, which is saying a lot.

A lot of times you just fall away from, it becomes something else, but not necessarily bad, but maybe it's just very different. I made the film that I wanted to make and it and it says the things I wanted it to say. And, you know, and I think, I don't know where. where we are in where, you know, where film is going is hard to say. Will we all, will we be able to make these old fashioned adult dramas for theatrical forever? I don't know. I don't know. But I really wanted to do one.

And I wanted to do one that I felt like had that, when I say romance, I don't mean a romantic film, but the romance that I always felt for a film that just works a hypnosis on you with its music and the music in this movie is spectacular. It's really, really great. And I think I just wanted to do one of those because those are the kinds of films I loved. And I was happy with it. And then I wouldn't wait for the summer. And then you come back and you start confronting the fact that you have to try to get a lot of people to see them.

Not just you and your friends. Right, not your focus group. No. Your personal focus group. My personal focus group. And that's, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's nerve-wracking. The, you, you, you, you, um, the people who backed me on this film and Warner Brothers putting it out, it, I love, this will sound like inside baseball, but I love watching the Warner Brothers logo come up on this film because, because this is kind of film they made. Like, they, they, they made LA Confidential and they made, you know, they made Clint Eastwood's movies.

And I think it's cool to be part of that tradition of making a movie that doesn't talk down to audiences because I think audiences get, you know, we get a lot of fast food, you know, a lot of it. Almost all fast food. Yeah. And I think people are, I think people are hungry for that experience that those grown-up movies, you can name a million of them, but whether it's out of Africa, or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or anything that we all kind of came up on where you remember even as a teenager, I remember the experience of seeing Amadeus, you know, which is a very dense and sophisticated film. But I remember feeling as a teenager like I'm electrified by how many ideas are in this,

and it's so beautiful, and it kind of carries you into an era and you feel like you're really there. Those are great. And I think people do want them. And I do think they still want to go to the movie theater to see them. For sure. You know. Clearly, just listening to you talk, you were such a student of film. Like, you know your stuff and you know your history.

When did that start for you? You grew up watching movies with your dad. And, like, were you right away a movie kid? Well, yeah, my parents are the kind of people who keep us all in business. They weren't artists, but they were real aficionados, you know? Yeah. My mother taught English, taught Shakespeare. and took me to the theater all the time.

We all went to the theater all the time. We went to movies all the time. They would take us to sophisticated films. You know, like, and my mother loved Woody Allen, so I got introduced to his stuff very early. And, yeah, my dad was more, you know, dirty dozen and the Great Escape and the, you know, stuff of a different bent. But we, we, yeah, I love me. I used to make movies with when you, I would do cuts by using the pause button on the camcorder.

You know what I mean? It's like, no editing later. Edit it as you shoot. That's the film. Yeah. And I, and I, we would make kung fu movies and like do, we would move our mouths funny and then record the dialogue later. I still do that with my son. You know, Bruce Lee move.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, um, I'm still a. fan, you know, I still get knocked out by, I get knocked out by films that friends of mine make, that, that, you know, you get, I get, I get just as hooked on, there's this French filmmaker, Jacques O'Diard, who I think is, like, one of the living masters today. And, like, most people don't know about him, you know, and I, I'm, like, I, I feel like a

film student, like, waiting for the next one of his, I think his films are so, so great. And I dig it. I think, but, you know, like, maybe if anything's different for me, it's just that I don't, I, I, once you've flexed your muscles in certain ways, maybe the idea of doing film, working on a film just because it's like a certain kind of a genre, maybe that would have drawn me in the past because I was like, well, I've never done a thriller. I've never done a poker movie, a poker movie. You know, we did that because it was like, what was the last poker movie? You know what I mean? We did rounders that. But at a certain point, I think it's, you get older, other things come into your life

that deserve attention. And it's sort of a privilege, but I feel like maybe I only want to work on things when I've got a pretty deep sensation about them that they, that they're speaking to something substantial about the times we're living in or, you know. That's a nice position to be in, though, right? If you can make those decisions and those choices and you don't have to sort of compromise that. No, it's like the kid gets the Willy Wonka ticket.

It's the, it's not, it's, it can't be overstated. It's like to be an actor and, you know, there's a, there's two dozen actors in my film that I've known since I was 24 doing theater in New York. York and I know many, many extremely talented people and who don't have the privilege that I've got to not work, to take my time and be extremely selective about what I do. So I don't take that for granted in the slightest. It's like I'm the luckiest person in the world. But I think in some ways it's like,

it's not like with great power comes a great responsibility because it's not power but with great like with this I feel probably more than ever that like that I want them to the ones I do to stick

you know or I want them to have the kind of impact or I want them to have a value that the best that the films when I that had the biggest impact on me had you know what I mean? I don't really want to do disposable ones as much. And to me, as a fan or someone who goes and watches movies,

there's something about scarcity of an actor, where if I don't see you two or three times a year in a movie, when you do come out every two or three years with one, I go, okay, he's chosen something that means something to it. I know it's going to be good. No, we could all name those people who you realize that their absence brings this heightened potency when they come back. And also, I also do think there's different types of actors.

And this is an, it's not a qualitative judgment. There are some people who are extremely iconic, right? Some of our very best actors, I think, have, they have qualities that we return to them for those qualities, almost like the way that, like, you know, Apollo was the God who represented X. You know what I mean? And we have actors who represent a certain set of characteristics that we go to. And then we have, there are actors who are shape-shifters or channel things. And I think that's always been my bent or my more organic to like my gifts or whatever it is.

I think if you're if you're that kind of an actor it helps to not it's it's it's hard you know if people see you too much the suspension of disbelief right is very difficult right it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like I've seen him do that before you know that one again yeah go that one again yeah oh that one again And that can be a little thing. But, you know, it takes all kinds. Stick around to hear more from Edward Norton on the Sunday Sit Down podcast, including what it was like to earn an Oscar nomination for the first film he ever made and how he's managed to stay mostly out of Hollywood's spotlight.

Welcome back to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Now more of my conversation with Edward Norton. You had a crazy start, right? I mean, primal fear was your first film. You win a Golden Globe for it. You get nominated for an Oscar. What was it like to be thrust out of that Hollywood canon right out of the gate? Well, it's a long time ago.

Like, I have certain memories of it. I mean, one thing I learned in that stretch, I had very difficult things going on in that exact same moment. My mother was ill and passed away. And that was like, you know, we had highs and lows that were kind of, like, you know, balancing. each other out in that particular moment. But, you know, what I actually really recall about it was that I was, excuse me, I was making Larry Flint with Milo Shorman, who was one of my, like, heroes. He was, like, one of the all-time great directors, and I just, I wanted to be on set every

day with him, even when I wasn't working. And so when Primal Fear came out, we were in the middle of doing that. And I was so, I was so, like, hovering over his shoulder watching him make that film that I sort of remember going like, did it do well? And they were like, yeah, it did really well. I was like, great. You know what I mean? And it was kind of a lesson to me because eventually that did, it started to get a little noisy, you know? Like the, um, um, and, uh, but it, it, it did give me this early lesson that the best thing to do is just,

is be working. Yeah. You know, and there's nothing, there's nothing that cancels out the, what I would call the, the hype, the froth or the, the sugar coating of, of all this other stuff that comes with it. because the work itself is always kind of, it's always humbling because it's, it's always elusive, you know, and it's like every time,

I never start a new one without feeling like mildly fraudulent. Like the first week of shooting any film, I'm like, I'm like someone is going to go, wow, it's time to take away his license. You still feel that way? Come on, really? Absolutely, absolutely.

Absolutely, absolutely. Isn't that healthy, though, maybe a little bit? Gives you an edge. Absolutely. But I think that, I mean, on the day one, and I went into doing this, I had been rehearsing it and I had been doing it. But, you know, there's always a part of you that's self-conscious, and you're going to start, you're going to start on day one. We shot day one, the first scene of the movie, in the car, two guys on a stakeout, waiting on the boss. Bruce Willis comes around the corner.

Whoa, there's the detective. Who are these slumps in the car? You know, and it turns out one of them is, you know, twitching spasmodically and shouting all kinds of cryptic things. And it's like, you know, you can feel the crew going, okay, let's see what you got. You know what I mean? And it's sort of like, it's sort of like, oh boy, is this supposed to be at two or four or eleven? I don't, I'm not really sure. Plus you're running the show.

It's your film. Well, but by the way, that's the only reason I felt mildly okay is I was like, at least no one else is going to cut my performance. they're going to get security. It's like what's supposed to be on the cutting room floor will be in my hands. Like, thank you very much, you know. But you mentioned like the, the sugar coating of celebrity, basically. And to me, you have done an incredible job over 23 years. Like, I was researching you and I was like, I don't really know that much about him, you know? Like your personal life. Still too much probably, but I don't. But I mean, relative to other actors, and I totally respect that. Is that been a.

conscious thing for you so that you can preserve that I'm a person you see on the screen and a character and you don't know much about my life off the screen? Yes, and no, and maybe in a diminishing sense. Yes, I think that, but to me, that can be achieved somewhat with the thing we were talking out of, like, a little bit of time to forget. I think that when I was really first starting off, I felt more intense about that. I felt very intense about partly because I was going through some pretty bad things, and I really didn't want incursion into any of that, the things that are deeply private.

And I also was, you know, an aspirational younger actor who's sort of like, I don't want to get boxed. I don't want to get, I don't want, I want to try to knock people out. You know what I mean? and the more that they know about me, the less that's going to happen. And, you know, it's like you, it's like when, you know, it's like the, it's what I call like the, like the,

you want it, you want a little, you want some Bob Dylan in you. You want to be the guy with the shades going like, I'm not telling you, I'm not telling you anything, man. Like, you know what I mean? Like, like, and, um. Well, there's nothing to distract from your work. Yeah. Right.

And some of it. is a little bit of an artistic pretension. You're like, I'm not letting you in. I felt that way more intense. The bottom line is over time, it's absurd in some ways, but being well known for something can bring around opportunities to participate in other things that are important. I've been the UN ambassador for biodiversity for 10 years. I've definitely been able to leverage.

We built a charitable fundraising platform called CrowdRise. You know, we raised over half a billion dollars in four years. And the chance to do these things is part of having a life being a citizen participating and not just being an artist. Many people that I admire greatly have – have maintained, I think, a really healthy respect for the work they do and some of the preservation of what you're trying to deliver to the audience, which is like escape, you know, or belief that, you know, being transported, right?

I mean, into something. And I think if you connect with acting and storytelling as something that does have value to people because of all the old ancient ideas about like feeling a cathart, you know, learning, having a cathartic experience, seeing themselves in a thing and therefore feeling a certain kind of like that kind of weird feeling that when you're not. known or when your own experience is being reflected, you feel like the, you know, like C.S. Lewis said we read to know we're not alone. I think that stories are, I think that movies do that too. They make people feel seen, you know.

For sure. But I think you can achieve all that, maybe more than I did when I was younger. I think you can achieve that and you can still also find ways to leverage the strange collateral you've been given to be a good citizen. you know what I mean, to be engaged, which is sort of what the end of my film is about. You know what I mean? It's like my character has been wrapped in his own problems so much,

but he ends up inspired by this woman enough to kind of realize, like, I don't get to, you don't get to sit with a quality person who's fighting, who's on the barricades, stepping up and, you know, trying to help other people if you don't do that too. You don't get to be apathetic and be with quality. I think that's true. I think you don't, you know, I don't even think quality art is worth, rationalizes being

apathetic as a person or retreating into like the comfort of your life and going, I don't, you know, especially now, I think. You've done the opposite of that. Yeah. I mean, as an activist, as an entrepreneur, you've jumped out into the world. I think our political moment is a really, really dicey political moment. I think people got to really take a, people got to get very determined to, to participate very actively in the decisions around what kind of country this is going to be. And whether we're going to have rule of law, whether we're going to have accountability that's intrinsic in that, whether we're going to, you know,

be a nation of principles in action as opposed to name. But also, we're just in this moment, we're in an apoccal challenge that is no geopolitical stresses in the history of humanity are more significant than the stress that we're putting on the planet right now. Like, we're facing like an existential challenge. I think even in the atomic age, you could barely argue that we were like under an existential threat the way that we are now. And like nobody in any walk of life, not actors, not anybody should, you know, not be engaged in that conversation.

Like we have to be engaged in that conversation. And it's like these people coming along and trying to shine off this girl, you know, who came here to Greta to think. Like, these people are approaching to me the, the, they're approaching being in a club with Holocaust deniers. You know, these are people who are trying to shine off a child who's saying, what happens to our future matters and it is you, and it is your responsibility to stop talking and do things, you know what I mean? When children are saying this, you don't shine that off.

You don't like, you don't poo-poo it. Like, it's like, you know, the idea that the idea that anybody wouldn't be engaged at some cost to whatever it is there involved in in their lives, you know, is wrong. And I think some of my very good friends in this trade, Matt Damon and Leonardo de Caprio and Mark Ruffalo and a lot of people, I think, are saying, hey, like, yeah, like, yeah, like, I can sacrifice some measure of, you know, whatever it is that is easy to stay focused on for using the platform I've got to be an add my voice into this at the very least. But aren't you and all those guys you mentioned an example and proof that there's not that much sacrifice, actually, if you put yourself out there, that your careers have gone forward and you've done fine? Sacrifices, you have to be careful.

But I know what you meant. No, there are people who are sacrificing their lives. Of course. There are people who are safety. There are people who every day. But it didn't cost you career. Yeah. No, not at all.

I meant literally even just a, you know, some notion of artistic, there are anonymity and artistic thing. But I think that it's, by the way, it's not even that, it's not even like, beyond sacrifice. It's like, it enriches it. It's a privilege to be able to. participate in it. It's like you don't want your kids sort of asking you the like,

what did you do in the war granddad question when it comes to like 30 years from now when our kids are dealing with this and they're going like, you know, I'm Googling you, looking back, you didn't say anything. Like you didn't do anything. Like, you know, you don't want to be that person.

And I also think it's one of those things too where, you know, you have to wade through the sort of, what I'd call just sort of like the, it's a kind of a clickbait, ludite kind of thing to say, oh, shut up actors. Like, you're an actor. I don't want to listen to you about this. It's like, I am, but I'm a citizen. I'm not any less a citizen than anybody else. and I don't not know anything about these things.

I've educated myself about them for decades. And that's not the point anyway. The point is a lot of what we need is we need affirmation across all strata and of our society that everybody is saying we care about this, we prioritize it. And to me, like, you know, having someone like Leonardo DiCaprio, who has, you know, something like 50 million social media followers barely ever post anything ever on his feeds that's not about the value of nature and everything.

Tell me that doesn't have impact, you know? And tell me it doesn't have impact that Jim Cameron made the single, most widely seen piece of popular entertainment ever made in any form and the central tragic event of it is a tree falls. You know, he built an entire, entire mythology that's going to have four more films around the value of an integrated relationship with natural systems in which the villains are rampant extraction, you know, corporate interests.

And you're telling me that hasn't had an impact on why people Greta's age view this as like, you know, like their intrinsic value system. It does. You have to communicate about these things and you have to like, you have to help the next generation, like, tip it in terms of where it sits as a priority to them. Are you encouraged in some ways when you look, because I cover politics, even 10 years ago, if you're running a political campaign, they'd say climate change is a loser. It polls at 1 or 2%. That's totally, that's different now. Yeah, it is very different. That's 10 years later. The younger

generation obviously leads the way, but that conversation has changed pretty quickly, not quickly enough, maybe, but relatively quickly. No, I think so too. And I also think it's interesting, at least in what I've seen, you would know better, but it actually is starting to cross, it's becoming a bipartisan youth issue. Yeah, it is. It's not a, you know, with all the coke-funded climate science denial, what they have not actually been very effective at doing is getting young people full stop to believe that this isn't a science, you know, a long resolved issue, matter of science.

authentic authenticity, right? And that's, you know, that's a good thing that the, that the partisan attempt to suppress this is not particularly succeeding down at a certain age range, one hopes. But I think that it's hard to say, you know, is it, are we at a point where people are willing to vote it as issue number one, like literally? You know, I think if young people could vote, I think a lot of young people would vote that issue, literally, and they should. Because I think all of our geopolitical and cultural squabbles are going to look like people arguing at a dinner table while the house burned and fell on their head. You know, it's not to say that these things are irrelevant, they matter, but they matter relatively less, I think.

I could talk you about this all day, but we've both had long days. So just one last thing before I let you go. As you know, this week, I think, is the 20th anniversary of Fight Club. Yes. 20 years of Fight Club. Why do you think that film has had such legs and stayed around and been so special to so many people as you look back on it? I think for the reasons that we were talking about before, I think that when films express some. something that lots and lots and lots of people feel reflects their existential condition,

their anxieties, and makes them feel seen, makes the dynamics of the world that they're living in feel seen. Honestly, not to get too academic, but Joseph Campbell, who was right about everything, he said stories have to be transparent to be really effective. I think Fight Club was, it was technically brilliant. It was, it was a wild, surreal story. It was funny. And, but mostly what it was, was it was transparent.

Like, people saw themselves in it. They saw their unique generational experience in it. And they were allowed to laugh along with the joke. And that's why I think it stuck, you know, it, it, um, It questions the value system. It's not a noir film. It's not a detective film. But it does kind of some things we were talking about it.

It sort of sticks a fork in like the matrix of what we're getting sold is supposed to be our priorities. And I also personally think that I personally think that the reason people have real affection for it is that it's not actually dark. It's about someone who goes through a dark exploration, but at the end he comes out the other side and rejects nihilism. I mean, he rejects the idea that you ought to blow up the world. And he kind of looks at the girl and says, I'm sorry about that. I'm through it now.

I think we're going to be okay. You know what I mean? And I think that alone, that kiss of us, optimism in the end of it makes people love it. It makes me, you know, I think I would have, I think I would have cringed if it had been a truly, truly dark statement. I don't think it was. I think the reason they relate is because ultimately Fight Club's a relatable journey of

going through dark thoughts and coming out the other side and getting sort of back to okay if that makes any sense. Yeah, and as you're talking about, I'm thinking about there's maybe a thread of sort of frustrated, marginalized characters that you play. I mean, you can even say that about Motherless Brooklyn, but obviously American History X has that and Fight Club. Yeah, but evolution, I think I value films that, that have evolution of characters, you know, where they rise or, or at the very least.

least they pose questions as opposed to like delivering answers. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think it did that. You also have to remember, though, it's a good lesson that because that movie got booed at the Venice Film Festival. It didn't do well at the box office. It's crazy.

People forget that. Yeah. It got some very, it got some very like, it got beat up in a lot of ways. But when something's got an authentic, I think, voice in it, it has the capacity to end-run all those kind of short-term metrics and, like, get to a direct conversation with people. And it had effect on me because it made me learn that the weekend box office report is not the measure of a great film at all. And I think since it's one of the ones I did that did the least well in that metric, but without a doubt, you know, and it wasn't up for any awards, it's none of that. But I don't think you could point to a film that I've been involved in that had a longer tale of cultural affirmation, you know.

So you got to sometimes adjust or get more mature about what's the target you're actually shooting for, you know. Right. Well, I think you're on to another one. Congratulations. Thanks a million. Yeah, thanks for the time. I really appreciate it. My thanks again to Edward for a great conversation.

His new movie, Motherless Brooklyn, is in theaters on November the first, and I was so psych to talk about Fight Club. Right. 20 years? That's incredible to me. In a blank, right? But that movie was so like, you talk about it, as we just heard, that it wasn't a big hit when it first came out.

And it's impossible to sort of remember that and recall that, because now it's so. so prevalent. It's so like one of those. It's like the sixth sense. That twist that you find out at the end, and I'm not going to give it away in case people have seen it. It's 20 years spoiler alerts. No, that's on you if you haven't seen Fight Club. But also, I forgot, Maggie, he said that the film was booed the first time it was presented at a film festival. I did not watch Fight Club when Fight Club came out, but I didn't realize because it has such a cultural state to it. That, you know, he was like, it didn't win any award. It didn't do well at the box office. But look at it now. And that's all about, you know, the art of the film.

And I thought that was interesting. 20 years later. Maggie, thank you, Hannah. Thank you as well for putting that together so quickly. And thanks to all of you for tuning in again this week. If you want to hear more of the full-length conversations with my guests every week, be sure to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC.

I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sitdown podcast.