Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Sean Penn

Episode Date: August 22, 2021

In the 39 years since audiences fell in love with Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the two-time Academy Award winner has become one of the best and most respected actors in Hollywood. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” Willie Geist gets together with Penn to talk about his impressive career, including his new movie Flag Day and his humanitarian work off-screen with his foundation, CORE.  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. I've got a great conversation for you today with the Hollywood icon, Academy Award winner, Sean Penn. He's won two of those trophies, once for Mystic River, the other playing Harvey Milk in the acclaimed film Milk. So where do you begin with Sean Penn, a guy who grew up in a Hollywood family who was making home movies with his neighbors, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez in Malibu. California as a kid, a guy who starred as Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I just looked down as I was speaking and realized I am wearing currently the black and white checked Spacoli vans as we speak. Purely coincidental, but I've got the Spacoli vans on right now. Get that image in your mind.

So, Sean now has a new film out called Flag Day. He directs it, he stars in it, and importantly, he co-stars with his real-life daughter, Dylan, with his ex-wife, Robin Wright. She is extraordinary. She's 30 years old. Has not had a major role in a film before, but he said, Sean knew that his daughter was the one

to lead this movie, and she's really, really good in it. So we talk about the challenge of starring and directing in a movie to begin with. That's something he's never done before. He'll tell us why he says he'll never do it again. And also the challenge of wanting his daughter to succeed,

wanting this big debut to be a success for her. And I think if you go check out Flag Day, you'll agree. She's really, really good in it. So a ton to talk about with Sean Penn. Also his work with Core, the organization he started around the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. He's on his way back to Haiti this week after another terrible and devastating massive earthquake in that country. Core also has done a lot of work during the pandemic to get people tested and then vaccinated. a lot of the focus of his life and his work now is on that activism and going in and helping people.

So a ton to talk about a couple of notes for you. First of all, we are at Gallagher's Steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan, if you can picture it, a beautiful sort of oak and leather room. Why are we there? It's a significant place for him when he was a very young actor, 19 or 20 years old, said he had no money doing shows on Broadway, but people with money sometimes would take him to Gallagher's and was a great memory for him. I think it was a sliced steak with mustard that he liked.

Also important to point out, as you'll hear at the top of our interview, the last time I interviewed Sean Penn was on my other show, Morning Joe on MSNBC. He was on late last year to talk about the work core is doing during the pandemic. And I guess he had just rolled out of bed, baby, on the West Coast, and his hair was all over the place, full bedhead during a Zoom interview. So I passed him a picture at the top of this new interview

to remind him what he looked like and why he went viral because of it. I will stop speaking so Sean Penn can start speaking right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Sean, thanks so much for doing this. I appreciate it. Great to do it with you. Thanks. I don't know if you recall, but the last time you and I spoke, you looked a little different than you do now. Remember this guy?

Yes. Yes, this was the viral hair episode. I think you blame the Russians for hacking your hair that morning. You know, it's a funny thing that during the whole COVID period, and for me, because I'm such a Luddite, getting used to going on Zoom and imagining that you're on TV when you're on Zoom, I never really bridged that. So I just figured, you know, nobody's really going to see me. Yeah, that thing took off for sure. I want to talk more about Core, which you were on that morning to discuss in just a minute. But first Flag Day, extraordinary film.

You direct it, you star in it, and you direct your own children, including your daughter Dylan, who stars across from you. When the idea came across your desk, direct this film based on a true story, but also direct your daughter, what was your first reaction? Well, it was an inverse of that, really, because what happened was that I had been sent the script with the offer to act, direct, or both. And I got to about page 30, and that's when my daughter's face got imprinted on that character in a way that I'd occasionally had happened with other actors, but not to the point

where it could now only be that face for me. And she was quite young at the time, and when I first approached her with it and reluctant and wanted more time to live her life, more time to spend on sets. And so it took 10 years before we ended up, and that the opportunity was still there, was great. But originally I was just going to direct it, direct her in it with another actor.

And it was really out of a kind of very surprising situation where he had an actor fall out for his own personal reasons about a month before shooting, that I had to jump in or let the movie fall apart. So Dylan was not obviously an experienced actor at that point, what was it that told you she can do this and she should do this? Yeah. There was something I was so confident in, blindly confident in, about just observing her over

the years growing up, the way she would tell the story and inhabit characters that she would tell the stories about. And I was always just so sure. but it wasn't until the first day of shooting, the first scene we shot together, when she just nailed a long scene, where I realized I had no right to that confidence, and I have all the relief in the world that I was right because what if I hadn't been, for her sake? and I remember immediately being thrilled, admiring, moved, but mostly relieved. And I looked off camera to one of my trusted crew members, and they had just seen what she did. And, you know, what the, was like, where does that come from in that young woman? And so, yeah, we were off to the races at that point.

Well, it's not an easy first big film for an actor to start. I mean, I was joking early. She didn't sort of slide into a rom-com as the friend. This is heavy. This is real acting. And there are some very intense scenes. How did you prepare her for what was coming in this film? Well, she walked in the door with an awful lot of courage.

And she's always had that. She's a very determined person. How I prepared her for it, gosh, that's a better question for her to answer. Because with most actors, once I believe in them for a role, I think it's much more encouraging than preparing. You know, I just, I guess I offered her my confidence and my trust, and she did the rest. How do you walk that line of being her real-life dad and directing her?

Are you encouraging her like a dad during the shooting, or does she need to find her own process? Or how do you balance those two things? Well, what was also interesting is that part of Dylan's reluctance to do the movie was because she never saw herself in front of the camera growing up, though her parents both did it. She did see herself behind the camera. And what was fantastic about the partnership

that it became of it with my daughter, was that she has great directorial perspective. You know, even in the way that one would color a scene, you know, the different colors between the characters and so on, she had such a, and I think we immediately found we had a shorthand in that. So there were so many times where I might have to explain why I was putting the camera in a certain place with a certain lens at a certain time to certain actors.

She already has a kind of grounded concept of that and ending with a similar bent to my own. So what happened, Sean, in that decade from the time she was, I don't know, 20 years old until now, that convinced her, do you think, that she was ready for this? Because I was saying before, what maturity for a young woman that age to say, no, I don't want to be in a movie with you. I mean, I think a lot of people would jump at that opportunity.

But for her to know that she wasn't ready, When did she make that leap? I think that when I brought it back to her at the age of, I guess she was about 27 at the time, right before we made it, right before we went off to see if we could make it once we had her go ahead. I think that, one, she was bringing more life of her own to the interpretation while reading the script again and recognizing what a great opportunity it was and a challenge that she wanted. And then to hear her tell it,

she got great encouragement to do it from her mother, and in particular one of our producers, John Killick. And I think that both of those were really important. And then she had a second moment of great reluctance, which is when the other actor fell out. out and I took go because she felt it this is a big enough risk to work with my dad

let him pick one job but we didn't have a choice and it ended up working in our view both Dylan and I think feel very lucky that it ended up happening that way. Yeah you guys are phenomenal together I mean I was saying you before that

there was this real life dad energy that comes through all the time with a guy who's trying to do his best but he can't stay on the right track and she's trying to pull him back in and he's lying to her and there's deceit and all these things that we we all experience in our life. So I think we should take a step back and just explain who John Vogel is, real life person. Jennifer is his daughter, played by Dylan. Who is this guy and how did you see him as an actor? What appealed to you? Yeah, so John Vogel, who at the time of his death was the second largest counterfeiter in U.S.

history. He had robbed banks. He had been an insurance arsonist. He was also revered Chopin. He was also a very talented sketch artist. He took that talent later into his counterfeiting activities. He was, by all accounts, and particularly Jennifer's account, you know, in many ways a larger than life, big personality, very charming, so on. I met this character initially, not through Jennifer Vogel's book, but through Jess Butterworth's interpretation of it, his adaptation of the book as a screenplay. And as I said about Dylan's face being imprinted, I got an impression of who this character was initially from the fiction. And, With Jennifer's permission, as I went back and read her beautifully written book,

with all the complexities of character borne out as well as anybody can speculate on the mind of another as she did with her fathers and so on, there were a lot of clues. And I'm sure I carried some of those into it, but I feel that because Jennifer was willing, both for me as a director and as an actor, to encourage a lot of poetic license, that I didn't approach it specifically to achieve the real John Vogel because I was really going to be making this, not mine as Sean Penn, but mine is the director, a slight expression of what that kind of relationship is,

what the theme of deception and truth, which has only become more poignant you know in this era and so I think it was a very intuitive kind of process I think it was for Dylan and I know it was for myself

directing and acting at the same time something you've never done before and correct me if I'm wrong I don't think you've ever done you've directed of course and done all your movies but you've never done both at the same time how do you begin to manage that yeah so there are people who are wired for that. I've got great friends, you know, Bradley Cooper, Ben Stiller,

people who have done this, Robert De Niro, who have done it brilliantly. For me, I have noticed in my life that I am over-drawn to multitask. It is not my nature to do it, but I often feel that I have to, and it puts an incredible stress on me. So all the other aspects of my life that I do that with, I've tried to preserve film where this sort of monomind doesn't have to be in stereo. So I never would have, you know, just voluntarily chosen to do it. I always loved directing films and just working with the actors other than myself. What I, directing it is a 17 and a half hour a day job anyway. The idea of going home to learn lines each night with everything else going on was too much.

But then I found out something that I had not given enough attention to, which was that so much of the stress of directing that can be, or the energy demand of directing is negotiating two egos in a scene. and as soon as I come in knowing what the frame of the house is, which is all I need to do to make Jennifer's story work, then I can save all of the time on the set by coming in, you know, doing my bit, okay, and I know the frame is there, good enough, and now let's let's, let Jennifer be the house around that frame

and spend the time with that. So I didn't have to, you know, it's that thing. You'll give one actor a bunch of takes, and then the other one says, I only get, didn't have to deal with that. I knew why I only got a couple. But do you feel like sometimes one takes away from the other? Was it harder to, I guess the question is, would you do it again?

No. Really? No, I don't think so. I mean, I suppose if I found something that I identified as strongly with my son as this that I give him, My daughter, I would, my instinct would be the same as it was on this, which would be I might want to, I would certainly direct my kids again. I would love to do that. Dylan's side of that story is that the next time we're on a set together, she's directing. But to act and direct is not, is, I think, I just turned 61 and everybody's got their own chronology for that in terms of their fatigue.

I'm not going to be directing and acting again. I don't think. And I have to imagine there's added pressure knowing that a lot of eyeballs are going to be on this. This is a big moment for Dylan and for your son as well. You want to make it good. You want it to work for her. I really just, you know, people have responded so strongly to her in it. And that's been really gratifying.

You know, it remains to be seen in this time of, you know, here I am basically selling a movie now. And yet, I, you know, I, you know, I. I want as many people to see it theatrically as possible, but I don't want anyone to come see it if they haven't been vaccinated. And we just don't even know, you know, what tomorrow brings in terms of all of that. So we're not on a predictable cycle in terms of what one hopes for or anticipates. You know, the interest in going to see a film is, and it's gambling. We're gambling and we're hoping the best. best for it, but we're really, feel really lucky we got to make it and make it the way we did.

Yeah, I mean, you shot this before COVID, right? All of it. So you didn't have to deal with those other concerns as you went through the process. Have you talked to Dylan about what happens next here as someone who has lived this? She's going to get a lot of attention for this. She's getting a lot of acclaim for this. She's in the spotlight now. What have you said to her about that? Yeah, it's interesting. Eddie Vedder, who's a great collaborator and a great friend. And he called me after seeing the cut for the first time, first cut that I showed him. And his first words were, well, she's on the map. And that's for sure.

Look, she grew up around a lot of this. I think that, you know, the celebrity of it repels her. But she's also a very, she has a side of her that's very glamorous. And so she's, so there's some excitement related to that part. But most of all, I think that she hopes it will create the opportunities that she wants in film, whether it be in front of or behind the camera. And I think most of her focus is still behind the camera career. But I'm really glad that she stepped out and did this thing because it's just such a,

phenomenal and uncontrived talent and beauty that she has. So going forward, look, this is a dreamer's world, and you can't, I don't think I would ever discourage a dreamer, and so she'll go as far or as short as she wants to go in this game, and I hope that audiences will be as kind as she deserves. And she's on the map on the strength of her acting. That's right. It's based on her performance. This is a heavy, serious role.

She's on the map because she's your daughter. Yeah. She could have gone in and been like, okay, she's Sean Penn's daughter, but... I like seeing faces that I know anticipated it, like, skeptically, and then their jaws drop at what she brings. You can't help but have your jaw drop when you watch her. So you went through a lot as a young actor. Have you talked to her about that side? of it that you're going to be in magazines. People want to take a picture and there are pieces

of this that, hey, I learned a few things along the way. Here's what I can tell you about it. You know, she's a very self-aware, very brilliant observer. She knows everything that I know. I mean, it's a funny thing because I remember when she was three, she was in the child's seat the back of my car. And we were having a conversation where she said something that was just so astute. And I thought I was complimenting her. And I said, you know, and I'm looking at her in the rearview mirror. And I say, you know, Dylan, I can't teach you anything.

Why not? And I thought, oh, no, I just made the trauma. But it has also always been true that she kind of got born. with a sort of wisdom of soul. And I think that she'll handle this well. And I'll be there for her in any way. Her mother will be there for her in any way that we can. But she's got good friends, and she's strong.

She's strong. So I'm pretty confident she's going to have a good run. And not totally unlike your own experience growing up in a family of actors, right, where you had some sense of what it meant to be an actor, what that life was going to be like. Were your parents initially as encouraging of you as you are of your children? I know there was one scene at the repertory theater

where you came off stage, very excited. And what did your mother say to you? So yeah, they had been very encouraging. Being an actor was a proud thing to be in our family growing up. And I went off to become an actor. And I invited my parents to my first play. And she came back to stay. They came backstage afterwards.

And she said, you were terrible. You have to go to university and have something to fall back on. She's liked other performances better than that one since that time. I hope so. It got better from there. Dylan and I, I mean, I think shared that there was something growing up. I think we were both of that thought that the idea of adults dressing up and playing strangers seemed silly. And I think that was part of her early reluctance, too, because even though her parents did, she kind of didn't get the gig.

She got the gig as an audience and someone who'd want to create the stories, but not in terms of being an actor. And I think it took her, as it did me, sort of stepping into the shoes of it. Yeah. To become respectful of it and passionate about it. When did your mom finally give you a rave? What was the first performance? Oh, you're pretty good at this. She's been extremely encouraging, with the exception of that particular moment.

And I remember when she said, you've got to have something to fall back on. In a very cocky way, I borrowed a line from the Buddy Holly story where he's told, you know, you've got to have something to fall back on it. He said, I'm not going to fall back. So I was determined not to fall back. You had that swagger from an early age. What about fast times at Ridgemont High? Was she into that one?

Oh, yeah, she laughed a lot about that. Yeah, she just, she has trouble when she feels that I'm doing things for a character that make me less appealing. That's when my mother, because she's a mother. Right. So, you know, why do you always want to play the ugliest side of yourself and things like that? Yeah. Well, Spacoli didn't have that side, luckily.

No, that was a different kind of thing. Yeah, that was something else altogether. Well, there's been a lot of that then in your career because of the kind of characters you play. So in Flag Day, obviously, very flawed man, and you look at your roles over the years, there's always something in those guys that there's some internal conflict. We're rooting for him on some level, but we see the flaws. Are those the kind of characters you look for as you look over the course of your career? I mean, one could say, as it turns out, yes.

But I also, you know, there's a, while I've had an incredible amount of freedom, you know, relatively speaking to choose things to do, even to develop things, you know, as an actor with a director early on, I haven't from without been offered every kind of. I haven't been, for example, I haven't been offered a lot of comedies. Right. And so on. So when I am developing or choosing things from my own, I tend to go into what is it that's interesting to me in human nature right now?

Like what am I asking myself questions about now? And that can be difficult when you're just waiting on scripts to come from somebody else to time that to the moment that that's what's, and I think that's part of what pushed me into directing. is because I really wanted to pick the subject that interested me at the time I'd be making it. It's hard to even see you in a big comedy. Would you wish somebody would ask you to be in one? I would love to be, I mean, you know,

I love going to see a good comedy. So, yeah, if I, if somebody thought I could, you know, be productive in it, I would be interested. I mean, I have, it's half. I've been offered things. But not. Not a lot and not a lot I would want to do. We need to make that happen.

It'd be a nice unexpected turn, I think. You take that movie in your career. So you've kind of indicated in the last couple. It's the hard one, by the way. The comedy is. Yeah, I mean, you look at some of these. I remember, like, when Eddie Murphy did Professor. Nutty Professor.

Nutty Professor. That wasn't, for example, an Academy Award-winning performance, I just think is ludicrous. What some of these actors, Jim Carrey, I mean, you know, there's several of them that do things that are just magic tricks as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. Well, they always say it's harder to make people laugh than the alternative, right? Yeah.

There's no lying about whether or not it's funny. You're laughing or you're not. So where are you now? You just mentioned your 61st birthday, directing, acting in this film Flag Day. how are you looking at where you are right now in Hollywood and the kind of work you want to do? You've sort of indicated in the last couple of years that, you know, I'll do things as they come up if I like them, but I'm not going to be cranking out films anymore. Is that a fair assessment of where you are? I think it's a fair assessment, but I also am looking as everyone is at what the landscape of the movie business is going to be,

especially as now that we're dealing with, still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. But even certainly preceding that where so few thoughtful movies were what were occupying big screens. And I fell in love with this whole form as an audience going into the dark room with the strangers and seeing things that were special, not transactional. One of the issues that I struggle with is I think, while it's so great the amount of sort of the democratization of access to the process with the amount of content that comes is great. The diversification is great. The multiculturalism of what we have access to is great. But if it is a de facto town square, it's an awfully crowded one to hear what anybody's saying.

And when I fell in love with this, you know, if you went to see Lenny, that was the special movie that everyone in the country was watching it the same. So when you were in that theater, you were having a shared experience beyond that theater. And as a generationally, you knew, you know, when I run into someone my age and mention a movie like that, immediate connection to that. Today, it's just, there's too many books in the library to have that kind of commonality. And so I, you know, I don't know if I'm just tied to my, you know, old ways or whether, but it was those, that special theatrical experience that was the girl I fell in love with. And I have a really tough time letting go of that. So with Flag Day, MGM has been great and willing to give it the opportunity to have an exclusive,

a period of exclusive theatrical run. I don't know if that opportunity is going to come to filmmakers like me for much longer. I guess the other side of that, as you say, is there's more space for filmmakers to have their work paid for and produced and exhibited. Is that not a good thing, even though it is very cluttered and you're right there, there are these shows that people tell me about that I haven't even heard of. You've got to dig through and find where it is. And so I do think we miss a lot.

But isn't it a good thing that there is this space for filmmakers to tell their stories? Yeah, it's an interesting thing. Again, this goes to something I have not resolved. And it's nothing extremely important for me to resolve. Because as an audience, I so much of this, I mean, there's always going to be crap. But there's so much of what is being done for streaming and television. that's extraordinary. I mean, I saw this thing, Tehran recently.

I just thought, wow, there are filmmakers and actors doing writers, doing amazing things on television. I have not found any hunger beyond being an audience to that. As a director, I don't have any motivation to make things for the small screen, even though I recognize their value. I don't know why. I think I'm just hanging on to that crush I got as a 14-year-old, 1974, and whatever movie, watching Scarecrow or something.

Yeah. And, you know, I'll take that to my death. So Lenny gets made today, but people may not be able to find it. We're certainly not talking about it as a country, right? We have a tough time getting made today. Lenny would shine a light on so many hypocrisies going on right now. You know, this is a guy who is in part responsible for our freedom of speech. And yet, I think he'd have been canceled 420 times.

For speaking the truth. For speaking the truth and also for irony that is sadly not understood very well in this country. I've heard you talk about this before, which is people are afraid to say anything. There's a chilling effect of there's no content. text, there's no good faith awarded to anyone that it's immediate. You stick your head out and somebody chops it off. Do you see a world where we step back from that? Is there a backlash to that where you don't say ugly, racist things, but you speak your mind and you don't get quote canceled for it? I hope so. I do think that at some point, I know, I think, I think,

you know, people who know the game of social media far better than I do, have spoken about the need for a kind of international constitutional convention of practices. I think because of social media that if that's going to be, have to be a big element of this is some kind of a change and some kind of a civilizing process of that. But most of all, it's about what we do, culturally to get to a point where we see, for example, with, you know, this constitution of ours that we always tout is so extraordinary, and it is. But it turns out that it was so fragile to so many things, and if there are unspoken, unwritten commitments to dignity for it to succeed. And I think it's in building those unwritten, unlegislated commitments to dignity for it to succeed.

dignity, that we get a start to get something like that back. But I worry about it. I mean, I'm a parent, so I have to be optimistic, but I'm a pragmatist, so I think the sky is falling. It's an uplifting note. I mean, the wild thing to me, too, is somebody who lives in a little bit is the glee people take in piling on, the glee people take in being the one who got the person canceled or took their words out of context and it's some scout to carry around. It's a, I think that psychologists would talk about it based on it being a reward system. Yeah. Because you are, if you go with what's trending, and especially if you have a, you know,

a microphone to do it from, everyone does today with this, you know, you can time out very currently popular self-righteous positions. And then it becomes, it ultimately becomes, you know, kind of cannibalistic and the Schaude of it all. Yeah, everybody's struggling in the world today and the weakest parts of us wants to see others struggle more than us. Yeah, that's sadly, that's true. Speaking about what's going on in the world, your organization core, which you

co-founded after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, sadly has become essential during COVID. You guys doing testing, you guys doing vaccinations. And now again, another earthquake just a few days ago in Haiti. I know you said you'll be heading down there soon. What does it look like from what you're hearing on the ground? It's grim. It's really grim. It's a, I saw, you know, I think that this thing that we,

as foreign workers in Haiti have always talked about, which is the resilience of the Haitians. I'm wondering now to what degree we give ourselves too much comfort with that. It's so relentless what the Haitian people have gone through for so much of their history. And this particular one kind of happened. happening in the aftermath of the assassination, the brutal assassination of the president,

I think and happening in an area that just to get resources to it from the capital, from Port of Prince, is very difficult. The gangs own the territory between the affected area and Port of Prince. So most of both human resources and supply are coming in by rotary or a fixed wing and the roads are washed out from this current storm. There's something biblical about it. And my job psychologically and practically is to do what the Haitians are doing, which is put one foot in front of the other. And then when I say my, I really mean our organization's job. And that's what they're doing. They got in on day one with heavy equipment to aid in the search and rescue and the rubble removal and medical personnel. But, you know, I'm getting the daily reports and it's a real struggle. The death toll is still rising.

And so many of the churches were wiped out in the area where, while I am not a religious person myself, what I'm in traveling, working in places like Haiti, the essential aspect of faith is so important. And to have those houses of worship collapse for them, I think, is going to be, it should make things that much tougher. What do you say when you get down there? What can you say to people who've been through so much, as you say, so relentlessly, whether there's natural disasters or police, political crisis of the assassination of their president not long ago.

What do you say when you get there? You say, I'm with you. How can I help? You know, and you look for ways to be proactive. That's all you can do. Is it frustrating in some ways? Does it feel futile sometimes to go to a place that it's so hard to recover and you know you'll be back? Yeah, it does.

Yeah, it does. this last few weeks since the assassination. And with this earthquake, it feels futile, but that's not an operating principle, you know, for any of us. And when I think about a joke about the sky falling, you know, I feel like this guy, poor little me feels like the sky is falling here all the time. But imagining it through Afghani eyes or Haitian eyes, the lead you take is you can say all day, I don't know how they do it.

But as long as they're doing it, we've got to, you know, find our way to do it with them. You've been down there, you've been on the ground. What should Americans know about the Haitian people that they may be only seen passing as it flies across TV screen during the news? What have you learned about them in your time there? You know, what I love telling is a data point. When you make approximately, as most Haitians do, the equivalent of $1.45 a day, to feed your whole family. And on average, people who make that money, the Haitian people give 45% of that every year to their children's education. What else they need to now?

and the warmth of the Haitian people, the incredible capacity of their, I don't know if there's another country that when given opportunities graduates more doctors. I don't think there is. These are extraordinary people who, you know, the gods and the devils have just been against them. gods I say by a terrible natural disaster and the devils by the terrible corruption within,

you know, the human face of that which, you know, makes life for Haitians so difficult. What changes the trajectory down there, Sean? What can be done? People have tried, maybe not hard enough in many ways, but how do we change the story of Haiti from what it seems to be perpetually? I think the Haitians are going to do that. And I think the way that they're going to do that is because of this resiliency that they do have this incredible strength, because they have absolutely no addiction to comfort that in this world where my state's on fire right now, right? With all of the things that are going on in the world, they're going to be the population most tested for the difficult days ahead, the climate issues, it's everything. And they're going to be the human spirit that we look to to find strength.

And in that, I think eventually, and I don't know, I'm not predicting anything in terms of time, what needs to happen, how governments do their work or anything else. But it's my hope that Haiti will become a magnet. And I wouldn't use just a simple word like tourism glibly, but a magnet of kind of like a spiritual pilgrimage. I want to go down there and get some of their strengths and take it home. I can see it in your voice. I can hear it in your voice.

I can see it on your face that you are incredibly passionate about this. Is this the work you're most proud of in your life? It's definitely. the people that I'm most proud of, the people that work with Corps. My children who have both worked with Corps and all of the volunteers in Haiti in the United States, you know, one of the things that happened by getting involved with testing and vaccination in the United States was that we were organizing local people. And to watch them take ownership of the programs, young people, the amount of will to service.

And this is probably if I had a magic wand and got one free day to create something in legislation, it would be mandatory service. And that, you know, after you do your time, we will pay for your college education. But instilling that, and there's so much hunger for it, you know, I don't know if we need to mandate it. We just need to help navigate it and then also incentivize it in ways that people can, you know, take that early experience of service. I think when young people get involved in service, it never goes away.

And they understand that they can matter, that they can make a difference to somebody, which is the same thing as understanding that your vote matters. You know, it's just being part of the team. Being engaged, yeah, yeah. And understanding that with independence, there's also interdependence. Yeah, yeah.

Something lost on a lot of the anti-vaxxers, I think. So we've lost, you mentioned the sky falling, but what gives you hope? You're somebody who goes out and takes action, whether you're waiting through the streets of New Orleans during Katrina or down in Haiti or doing something about the COVID crisis right now. What gives you hope for our country right now? You know, I don't want to claim a false hope. And at the same time, you know, there was a phrase by the Indian poet, Laureate Tagore. that I saw, I'm not expressing a great literary knowledge of Indian poetry, but I had discovered it many years ago on an alley, graffiti, on an alley wall.

And it was, every new child born is proof that God is not yet discouraged of man. And whether you believe in a conventional notion of God or not, which I have questions about. Just what that phrase describes, I think I use it as a bit of a mantra. Words to live by. Yeah, yeah. Hey guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

Stick around to hear more from Sean Penn right after the break. Welcome back to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Now more of my conversation with Sean Penn, you'd been nominated before, but you won your first Academy Award for Mystic River. He won again for Milk. What did it mean to have that trophy to your life and to your career? You know, I don't know if I have had the conversation with other people who have won that award or any of the Academy Awards. But I would suspect that I'm not alone in that the biggest part of the feeling of that,

is, as I talked about on another subject, is relief. Because you've, to, you know, anybody who's been involved in a film that got campaigned for, you know, where a studio supported or publicists supported its movement, where people worked endless hours to get, you know, people to see the film and, you know, all of that stuff, to be around all of that, you're seeing all of that. And to some degree, it's on you. And, you know, you would love, I'd love to say that, you know, you hear your name and you're just like, oh, wow. No, you just say, God, it reminds me of Stephen Wright had a thing who talked about, you said, I'm five years old watching TV.

And Smokey the Bear comes on and says, only you. and profound forest fires. It's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure. So, yeah, I find winning in Academy Awards a great relief. Well, it's probably, too, as someone who was respected and nominated before it, just to sort of clear the decks of that, okay, we got that done. Now I have, but we don't have to talk about it anymore.

Yeah. Sean, thanks so much for the time. Congratulations on Flag Day. Happy birthday. Thank you very much. We've got to get to one of those sliced steaks with mustard for old times. Excellent. Great to see you, man. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. My big thanks again to Sean for a great conversation. You can catch his new movie Flag Day in theaters now.

And my thanks to all of you for tuning in again this week. As always, if you want to hear more of my conversations with all of our 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. I'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday, Sit Down Podcast.