Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Jeff Bridges

Episode Date: October 14, 2018

Jeff Bridges’ character in “The Big Lebowski” has become a folk hero since the movie was released 20 years ago, partly because “The Dude’s” laid-back vibe fits so well with the man who plays him. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist talks with the legendary actor about his childhood in a Hollywood family, his sixty-year, Oscar-winning career, and his personal “dude”-like zen. 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. Thank you so much for clicking once again this week. And boy, do we have a good one, a Hollywood legend. The dude himself, Jeff Bridges. He and I got together here in New York, the Oscar-winning actor, talking about his latest film Bad Times at the El Royale. Very, very cool movie, if you haven't seen it already. We also went through some of his most iconic roles,

including, of course, the dude in the cult classic, the Big Lobowski. despite all he's done in his career, that role may end up defining him. I ask him if he's okay with that. I was also surprised to learn Jeff doesn't necessarily share the dude's level of chill. It's there. There are a lot of aspects, as you'll hear, of the dude in Jeff Bridges, especially a young Jeff Bridges, he says. But he still gets nervous, he says, for interviews, he gets nervous on the set, even after nearly 60 years in the business. Seven Oscar nominations, a win, and being revered across. Hollywood and being the guy on almost every project he's in. In fact, as we talk about in the interview, John Hamm and some of the other actors in El Royale signed on when they heard that Jeff

Bridges was in it. That's the power of the dude. We also talk about his childhood growing up in show business in his first movie at like 10 months old, something like that, working alongside his brother Bo, his father, of course, the great Lloyd Bridges. Also, the secret to a 41-year marriage with his wife, Sue, and the crazy way the two of them met on the set of a film in 1975. Spoiler, she didn't work in the film business. She happened to be in the area. You'll hear all about that. A great conversation with an honest to goodness legend. Jeff Bridge is right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thank you for doing this, Jeff. My pleasure. Really appreciate it. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. All right, so bad times at the L. Royale. What a cool movie. It looks good. The cast is great.

I'm digging this one, man. Every once in a while, you know, everything kind of comes together. You know, the style, the substance, wonderful cast, you know, and the sets, cinematography. Seamus McGarby was our cinematographer. And, wow, what he came up with is beautiful. And our director, our screenwriter, Drew Goddard. You know, the whole team was wonderful to work with. So what about it hit you when you first got the script, or was it the people?

No, no. When I first got the script, I read that thing about page 15. I was saying, wow, what is going on, man? I would go back a couple of pages and say, yeah, yeah. And it just kept doing that all the way to the end, giving me surprises, you know, and I love going through the movies myself, and those are the kind of movies that I love to see when the filmmaker is a little bit ahead of you, you know? Yeah. And this is certainly one of those. Okay, I'm glad I wasn't the only one who said,

now wait a minute, what just happened? I was going back and rewinding the movie the way you were going back through the script. What kind of, I'm so interested in the roles you take. And is that a conscious thing? I want to do this kind of movie next or just a good script land like this one and you say, let's go do it? I do my best not to work.

Okay, you know, that's my MO. because I know what it implies. You're working, you're away from your family, you're away from all the other stuff that you like to do. And one of the main things is that you're kind of off the market. You know, you don't know if something else is going to come by that you're going to enjoy even more. So I do my best to not engage, you know.

But when you get a script like this, you're on board, you know. Words to live by, I do my best not to work. Yeah. We should all live that way. There you go. How do you describe Father Flynn, your character? In this context, there may be some things we can't say about Father Flynn without giving the movie away. But who is he?

Well, he's a priest who's not a priest. You know, the trailer kind of gives that secret away. Normally, you know, I don't like trailers that kind of truncate the whole movie and give you all the movie and give you all the good parts, you know. But in this movie, there are so many surprises that leak in that one that I'm not really a priest. That's okay. Nobody is what they see in this one.

How does it make you feel, Jeff, when you hear people like John Hamm and other members of your cast say, when I heard Jeff was involved, I was in? What does that mean to you? That means a lot. That's wonderful, you know. that that's the most fun part of the biz is the people that you get to work with. And this film is just chalk filled with wonderful actors. That's the joy of it, playing with the guys.

The movie, as we said, has a look to it. It has a feel. I would say from the opening scene, when the car pulls in the lot and the sign of the place, and it's, how do you describe the atmosphere in that movie? Well, you know, every once in a while, I'll see a movie that just kind of shakes my whole idea of what a movie is, you know, like 2001. Do you remember seeing that for the first time? Yeah, of course. Still don't know what it's exactly about, but it was just wonderful experience being there, you know.

And I think of like Blue Velvet was another movie like that. Some of Tarantino's early movies, you know. And this one is kind of like that. The director and the writer Drew Goddard, he has a certain kind of a style and a rhythm that the audience, the sooner you get hip to what he's doing and get with his rhythm, I think, the more enjoyable the film is. But as an actor, it was wonderful. One of the things that's unusual about the film and the shooting of it is that we had long scenes,

would go on for, you know, 10 minutes sometimes, you know, almost like a play. And that was wonderful as an actor. And then, you know, to get all that coordinated with the, with Seamus, our DP, our cinematographer, and, you know, hitting all the spots. And it's like pulling off a magic trick and make it look like, oh, it's nothing. Right. We were talking a minute ago about Cynthia Irvino. Oh, yeah.

Who's extraordinary in the film, Arrivo, excuse me, and who I believe is the first. first character that Father Flynn interacts with in the movie. Yeah. Tell people about her as a performer. Well, she's really going to just explode this year. I think she's got two or three movies coming out right alongside ours. And what an instrument. What a voice.

I mean, one of the other great aspects of this movie that I love so much is the music. And we're talking all of my favorite stuff, Motown, 1969. That's when the movie takes place. of wonderful music around that time. And Cynthia sings it all, all through the movie. And we were lucky enough just to be around for take one, take two. You know, we hear her say. And then she was gracious enough to sort of be a living jukebox.

We could say, hey, what about this one? Oh, she took requests? Oh, yeah. Because she loves singing. Wow. You know. Well, you're a music guy. You've got your own band.

So I bet music is important to you. Oh, yeah, yeah. I love that. We didn't get to, you know, jam enough between the two of us, but we're hoping to do that in the future. But what a voice. And the cast, you put it all together with John Hamm and Dakota Johnson and the list goes, and some new people who will be introduced, I think,

and become stars off of it. Lewis Pullman, what a Bill Pullman's kid. Wow, he does a wonderful job. Do you feel... Chris Hemsworth, of course. Yes, of course. Do you feel on a movie set like that, where there's clearly reverence from the other actors for you.

Do you feel like the leader of that cast? I mean, they say it out loud. We did the movie because of Jeff. I don't know my leader. Kind of the senior Thespos. It's fine. It's been an amazing journey for you as a movie star. And I was thinking about your career

and looking at how young you got into the movies. I think you were two months old when you were first in a movie. Was there ever a chance, Jeff, that you were not going to be in show? business? Well, it was up to my dad, no. And I think it was up to my dad because he just kept edging me that way. Unlike a lot of people in showbiz, he and my mom wanted all their kids to go into showbiz. My dad loved it so much. And my dad had a series in the 60s called Sea Hunt. Right. And I remember him coming up to me and said, hey, you want to come play with dad, you know, get out of school and so he got me he lured me in and you know I got bit by it and I'm kind of hooked you know

that's so I'm a I'm a you know a product of nepotism you know really get down to it well you've made the most of it let's say that it's funny because I think a lot of showbiz parents would say their kids I don't want you in showbiz go become a doctor or a lawyer yeah Lou's dad didn't do that you know, Bill Pullman, he encourages his son to get into it too. And how did your mom feel about you being show business? She loved it, man. She was probably the best actress of the bunch, you know, actor of the bunch. Yeah.

Yeah, she was wonderful. So you got into it at a pretty early age. And then in your first, I would think, not your first movie, but your first big role, the last picture show, you get nominated for an Oscar at 22 years old. What was it like to be thrust into the spotlight that way? It was so wild. I can remember getting that call, about three or four in the morning. You've been nominated for an academy.

What? In those days, there was no campaign or anything. It was just kind of out of the blue. I was just blown away. Wonderful. Did it make you nervous that all of a sudden I'm going to be in the spotlight? I'm going to be this kind of star that people look at all the time? I didn't, my nerves didn't go that far into the future.

They just kind of went and, you know, I'm basically a nervous guy. I'm kind of nervous now, man. I'm nervous. No. Oh, yeah. Are you a little nervous? You have no nerves? You perfectly calm out?

Well, you make me calm because you have the Zen that sort of emanates from you. I'm an Academy Award-winning actor that can do that to people. But I'm nervous. So it's all an act. It's all an act. Yeah. Interesting, you know. our movie is a lot about that, you know, people aren't what they seem, but none of us are really what we seem, are we?

I mean, there's an undercurrent, you know. No question about it. Yeah. So when you act, is that hiding something that you have underneath it personally? Do you have those nerves on a movie set, for example? I usually have them just before it happens, you know, just before they say, you know, before we, you know, it's like you want to, you want to do justice to the material. You know, you want to catch the ball that's that perfect pass. You want to catch it.

As I was going down your list of credits, it struck me that perhaps the most significant of your movies, although not your best known, was Rancho Deluxe, for a very important reason. That's the one I met my sweet wife, Sue. So paint the picture for me. You're sitting in a hot tub somewhere in Montana. What happens next? See, I'm doing a scene with Sam Waterston and Harry Dean Stanton, I think was on the other side, and we're planning a robbery or something.

And I cannot take my eyes off this gorgeous. I didn't know what she was, a maid, a waitress. I couldn't take my eyes off a gorgeous girl with two black eyes and a broken nose. That checks the position of that, you know, disfigurement and the beauty. It had me. And I finally, you know, got my courage to ask her out. and she said no. I said, really, she says, no.

I'm a small town, maybe I'll see you around, and her prophecy proved true. And the rest is history. You asked her to dance, right? Well, she came down to the rap party. Right. And we danced and fell in love, and boom, that was it. 41 years of marriage later.

41 years of marriage. We have a ranch in the same valley where we met. Oh, that's so cool. And we often go by that little bar where we, you know, where I asked her out and she said no and we always redo that scene. Oh, that's so cool. Used to drive our girls crazy, but now they love us. They say, come on, reenact the thing. So the place is still there? Yeah. And we actually even have, this is my prize possession. I don't have my wallet. I'm going to show you, but I have a photograph of that moment. When you met? When we met and my wife saying no and somebody just took a

picture of that and I have that. So whenever I doubt whether we really met for each other, you know, I think about things like that. I liked the photos of the moment she said no, not the moment she said yes. You had to work for it a little bit. So people look at a relationship like yours in Hollywood and they say, how do they do that? 41 years, the same woman he met when he was so young, three beautiful daughters seemed well adjusted. Yeah. How do you keep that sense of normalcy in your life, Jeff, and still be a Hollywood A list? No, I wouldn't say normalcy. relative normalcy but you know the easy answer about how do you keep a marriage going is you don't get a divorce you know that's the easy the easy answer and

then unpacking that a little bit it's when those big challenges those upsets come up in your relationship those are real opportunities to get to know each other you know more and to become more intimate with each other try to you know see what makes each other tick we you know you know it'll be It gets down to an argument or arguments, whatever you want to call it. The basic one is, you don't get it. You don't get what it's like to be me

having to put up with your BS, you know. And that's hard to say no to. You know, I mean, you're absolutely right. Nobody really gets, we don't really, can't really know. It's like we were talking about that, you know, the flip side of people, you know, we show people what we want to see.

And none of us really know what the other person's experience is. And that's what we have in common, you know. And then so to kind of cash in on that commonality rather than that difference of you. But that's where love comes in, you know, trying to understand this so-called other side of thing. Does it help to be Zen the way you are? Zen? Or is that something separate from the marriage? No, no, it'll help.

you know, all this stuff helps. It's basically, you know, it's love, love, you know, that's the deal. Love. As you may know, this is the 20th anniversary of the Big Lobowski this year. One of our audio guys came in with the Lobowski sweater on today. I mean, you never could have imagined when you're shooting this film what it would be and continue to grow years. year after year into this cult heroic status you achieved.

When it first came out, I was surprised that it wasn't a hit. It was really kind of nothing, you know, when it came first from that. And then they've kind of hit bigger in Europe and then splash back on this side of the pond and kind of took off, you know. But now they got the Lebowski Fests and all these kinds of things. It's just wonderful that it kind of continues on like that and people love it so much. I certainly do. How do you account for the way people love people love the dude?

Yeah, well, it's that whole story. You know, the Cohn brothers, they're masters. They really are. And they know how to write a movie and how to direct it and make it look easy, you know. So I think it's the whole package, that whole story and how the dude kind of fits in there. He's very much himself, you know, the dude. A lot of people, they say to me, oh, the dude always, you know, he goes through life. But when you look at the movie, he's always upset.

He's never at peace. He's never a dude-like. He's always very undue, you know. The people who know you have said previously that there is a little bit of Jeff in the dude. Sure, and all my characters. That's why I start, yeah. And you've said maybe the Coen brothers were watching you or had put a tail on you and you were a young man to inform the dude? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you have a love of my youth in there, yeah. So what part of the dude belongs to you? Well, you know, smoke and refurb. and that kind of stuff, you know. And, you know, all the, most of the clothes that, well, not most, but I'd say 50% of the clothes the dude wears came out of my closet. Oh, is that true?

Sure. The sweater? No, that was what, but the jellies, the shoes, those are mine, you know, a couple of shirts, you know, stuff like that. Directors like an actor who costumes himself. Saves him a couple of bucks, right? Yeah, well, Mary Zofreys, the costume designer of that show, she came over to my house and, you know,

invited who said, let's go up in my closet and just see if there's anything in this. She'd work kind of crazy with all that stuff. That's a wonderful time when you're making a movie when you get to work with a costume designer. And they're bringing all their expertise and slowly, but surely the character comes into focus. So how often in your life over the last 20 years has someone offered to buy you a white Russian at a bar? There was one last night. Was there really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you accept the free white Russian? Well, this was a room service thing. It kind of came into room service. I didn't drink it, you know. But I like my Russians clear, really. Clear on the rocks. Yeah, the milk sort of muddies it up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, and the sweet things, you know, the Kalu.

If you feel like drinking a dessert, maybe, you know, it's nice. It's sweet. If you are defined in your life and your career, not your life, if you were defined in your career by the dude, will you be good with that? Sure. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. What a wonderful movie. I'm so proud to be a part of it. It's really great. If you had to be defined by somebody, the dude's a pretty good one.

It's not bad. Another one you might be defined by is Crazy Heart, for which you won the Oscar. We talked about you being nominated at 22, nominated several times after, and then at 60, you win for Best Actor, and you get a standing ovation in the room. What did that feel like? Oh, that was wonderful. I wish my folks would have been there, you know, because I could consider myself sort of an extension of them. Not sort of, I am an extension of them, yeah. And I wish they could have been there, but I felt them in the room. It was a wonderful moment to be acknowledged by your peers,

the guys who do what you do, that's wonderful. Do you get to the point where you say, well, at this point, I'm probably not gonna win the Oscar, were you surprised when you won? Yeah, always surprised, you know. And sort of happy when you don't win, because then you don't have to get up there. Getting this nerve thing.

Sure. Anxiety. Oh, you know. So you got one out of the way and that's good. Oh, no. That's more than good. That's wonderful. I love hearing the way you talk about your parents, though.

I mean, there's always just clear that your family was full of love and support. Really? And my mom, she was really the, we called her the general. And she ran the show brilliantly. She was wonderful. And how about with your brother, Bo, growing up? There's some stories about the two of you. You tell me if they're true or false.

Rolling into grocery store parking lots on a flat bed and just putting on shows for strangers. Well, my dad, you know, like me, was gone, you know, making movies, you know, and making a living for the family. And a beau, you know, who's eight years older than I am, you know, kind of, you know, raised me in a way. You know, taught me how sports and, you know, all kinds of advice. and also was, you know, along with my father, my acting teacher. And one of the challenges for actors is, you know, where are we going to perform? Where's our audience? So I was about 15 years old, and we're working on some scenes.

And Bo had this brilliant idea. He decided to rent a flatbed truck, and we would pull into a supermarket, and then our father had taught us how to, you know, fake fight, stage fight, We would put on a tussle there in front of everybody, and people thought it was real. You know, they'd go around and going to break us up, and we'd say, no, it's a show. And we'd jump up on the flatbed truck, and we would do our scenes that we had done until the cops came. And then we would try to incorporate the cops into some kind of improv, like they were part of the show. They weren't digging that too much.

And we said, no, we're out of here, officer. And we jumped in our truck and went to the next supermarket. Oh, so it was a traveling show. Well, we played the supermarket circuit. We just, you know, that was pretty good. The underrated little-known supermarket circuit of Southern California. Launched an Oscar-winning career. That's it.

So when you look over the horizon now at what else you'd like to do, you've done the big budget stuff, you did Iron Man, you're an icon from the big Lobowski, this movie's going to do well. Is there other stuff out there you haven't done that you'd like to try? Sure. There's a couple of things. Bo and I have been trying to work together for about 30 years now. We have such a great time on the Big Labout.

I'm not Big Labo. Baker Boys. Baker Boys. Yeah. But we've got something in the kit back here. We might be able to pull off pretty soon. I've been trying to get this going for about 20 years. But we might get that going.

And you really can't see over that horizon. You know, he's a wonder what's coming, man. You know, you don't know. You don't strike me as a kind of guy who has seen. set and planned out his career. At this point, I want to be here, this point of you sort of take it as it comes? Pretty much, pretty much a kind of, you know,

what do you counterpuncher, you know, get things coming to me and, you know, try to, as I was saying, try to, you know, pass by as many as I can, and then every once in a while, I want to just get me. That's what I end up doing. The movie is awesome.

People are going to love it. Thank you so much. So, so wonderful. Appreciate it. And you know what I would love to talk about a little bit. Yes, of course. Is I've got another film coming out. Yes.

Called Living in the Future's Past. Okay. And that's all about climate change. Sure. And the title of that movie, Living in the Future's Past, is really a metaphor for tuning into what's already here. We are living in the Future's Past right now. And it's a film about, well,

about all of us and about our rapidly changing world. And we face big challenges as a species here on our planet. But we also have keys on how to address these challenges in a wise fashion. And that's really what the movie's about is taking a look at how do we move with these keys that we already know and move into the future wisely doing that. really takes kind of the long view, which is both forward and back.

So our movie explores evolution. Why are we responding to these challenges the way we are? And I'm really glad. I'm really proud of that film. I think it's really a good one. With all the scientific consensus about climate change that it's happening and the data shows that the temperature rising, why do you think it's so hard for that issue, despite the best efforts of so many people, including big stars who advocate, to

punch through in the American consciousness and say, this is an emergency. Yeah, well, it's kind of how we're wired. You know, we don't have that far-sighted thing, you know. And it's tough, we love immediate gratification. We really, I know I am addicted to comfort, you know. And so anything that's a little bit different, we resist that, you know.

Oddly enough, after we made the film, I experienced some climate change. change myself as you probably know California has been particularly crispy this year wildfires all over and in Santa Barbara we had a huge wildfire and we had a huge wildfire and we had just perfected this home that we had been working on for three years we moved in there for a couple of months the fire didn't get us but the fire burned all the growth on the mountains and here comes a big rain and here comes the mountain and with terrible debris flow wiped our house out killed over 20 people we got rescued by helicopter did you really yeah

oh I didn't know that kind of brings the whole climate change thing really oh yeah I guess so so I was originally inspired you know but my dad with sea hunt he was very you know very much about the health of the sea and the ocean and the planet as well so that's kind of where it started for me so what do you hope people will do when they watch that film. What's the action item? Or do you just want people to be aware of it? Well, to engage, you know, one of my heroes, you know who Bucky Fuller is, Buckminster Fuller, have you ever heard of him? I know the name. Yeah, he's an inventor, a philosopher, one of his most famous inventions is the geodesic dome. Okay. You see those over the point.

And he made a great observation. He said those ocean-going tankers that we see out there when they were being built, the engineers found that this huge rudder that would turn the vessel, it took too much energy to turn that big rudder, so they came up with a very simple, brilliant idea of putting a little runner on the big rudder. And that little rudder is called a trim tab, and so the trim tab turns the big rudder and the big rudder turns the ship. And Bucky says this is how the individual affects the society. In fact, that we are all trim tabs.

what Bucky has on his gravestone. Call me trim tabs. Oh, is that right? So I think people can think of themselves as trim tabs and you know you think what can just one person do? Well, you can align with other individuals who are thinking the same way and you can turn the ship. Put a bunch of people together. The ship turns. That's right. That's right. Cool. I can't wait to check it out. Thank you. Thank you, really. Good happy. Really appreciate it. Great. So after we popped up from that conversation, he and I got up and did a little candlepin bowling, not the real thing. We were in this bar that had candlepin bowling. You know, the dude was a big bowler.

So I figured, let's roll a few frames and see what happens. All right, here we go. Okay. I can tell you a big story about how the dude prepares to bowl. How does it prepare? Well, that's kind of a long story. I don't know. I have the tie.

I do. You have the tie? You have course. So, you know, the Colman Brothers is going to be a lot of bowling. So we had a bowling expert, two bowling experts, come and teach all of us how to bowl. And I thought, well, you know, I asked the expert, I said, how do you think the dude would prepare to bowl? You know, was it kind of, you know, who Art Carney is? Yeah, yeah.

You know, would he kind of, you know, do a lot of, you know, a lot of special things before he gets in the right mood? And one of the bowling experts who was really the assistant to the main guy, he started to laugh. I said, what's going on? He goes, oh, not big, nothing like that. And he's looking at the other bowler. And the guy says, come on tell him. And I said, okay.

He says, well, I used to, you know, bowling is like, you know, Zin in the Art of Archer, you know, the pins are either are down. you even pull your arm back here. It's all about the mindset. Sure. So to get into that mindset, he would go, you know, five, six minutes, you know, on a big tournament, you know. And all the guys on the bench would say, probable, you know, and finally, I said, well, what happened? You said, oh, I had to go to a shrink, you know, and it was terrible, you know. And I said, so, so what happened? How How do you do it now?

He says, I just throw the . Oh, oh. Oh, let me get that spare. Pick that up, Jeff. He's going to drop that one down? It'll just put the one down, I think. Oh, cool. Okay, I'll get another shot.

Let me try it this time. Oh, oh, they all went fire. They left town. Good deal. Great hunting. My thanks again to Jeff Bridges for a great conversation. His new movie Bad Times at the El Royale is in theaters now. And thanks, as always, to all of you for tuning in to our podcast every week.

Make sure you click subscribe if you haven't already for more of the extended conversations with my guests every week. And don't forget to tune into Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. I'll see you next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.