Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Jeff Bridges

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Jeff Bridges is an Academy Award-winning actor, musician, and photographer. Born into a family of performers, he began acting as a child and has built one of the most enduring careers in American film. His work includes acclaimed performances in The Last Picture Show, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Big Lebowski, and Crazy Heart, earning him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beyond filmmaking, Bridges is a lifelong musician, photographer, and songwriter who continues to perform with his band, The Abiders. Most recently, he co-founded the WideluxX project, an effort to revive the legendary Widelux panoramic film camera for contemporary photographers. Films: Halls of Anger Tron The Big Lebowski Fat City Winter Kills Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Crazy Heart White Squall  Music: Sleeping Tapes Emergent Behavior Photography: WideluxX  Photo Gallery   ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

tetragrammaton. Unlike a lot of entertainers, my dad encouraged all his kids to go into showbiz. And so when I was about eight years old, he'd say, hey, come on, you come to work with dad. You know, you get to get out of school, make some bucks, you know, buy some toys or whatever you want.

Come on, you know. I said, oh, okay. And so I looked at it as basically pretend. Remember being a kid in pretending? And so, you know, it's always, you know, nowadays, it's like advanced pretend, basically. You know, you get into play with all the cool kids. You get the cool gear. You know, that's basically what it is. And something else that hasn't changed is my anxiety about it all. You know, I'm always quite anxious, you know. What do you attribute that to? Just the unknown, you know, you don't know what's going to happen, you know. And,

But we never know. You never know, man. And, you know, but we have this imagination that we can jam, man. We can ruminate our asses off, man. And so, and that's what, you know, acting is all about that. A story just popped into my head. We go string of consciousness in this kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.

So I'm about 16 years old. And I go with a bunch of my dear friends. And we go to my parents' beach house down here, and now it's time to leave. I'm turning out the lights, right, to leave and lock up. And that little feeling of fear of the dark. Remember that feeling? The fear of the dark.

I said, what happens if I invite that in? And let it engulf me. And boom, it drove me to my knees. I went fetal, man. I just was shaking like that. When was this? It was 16, you know, so how many years? I don't know.

I'm 76 now, you know, so I don't know what year it was. And my friends came in and said, what's wrong, man, what's wrong? You all cats. Yeah, man, that's something amazing just happened. They said what? I said, I can be afraid of anything I wouldn't be afraid of. Yeah. It was really quite remarkable.

And so that, you carry that into the acting, too. But, you know, remember pretending, you know, when you were a kid, the better you can, you know, the more real you can take the shot or the more real you can do anything, the better. You know, there's a lot of different approaches to acting, but that's kind of my approach. Tell me about your dad. Oh. Well, like I said, my dad loved acting, man.

you know, his father didn't want him to be in acting at all. You know, wanted to study law or something like that, but my dad wanted to act. He became the head of the drama department in UCLA. This is, you know, I don't know, in the 20s or early 30s, that's where he met my mom. And he just, you know, loved acting and struggled his ass off, went to New York, you know.

Here's an interesting little tidbit. So this is like, I don't know what year, maybe 60, Meredith Wilson wanted my dad to be the music man because my dad sings. And one of my earliest memories is Meredith Wilson and Rie Wilson, his wife, coming over to our house and playing the whole score, the music. What a score.

Yeah, amazing. of my earliest memories is Meredith Wilson coming up to me as a kid and say, you got trouble right here in River City. You're doing that whole song to me as a kid. Wow. So cool. And then Teke DeCosta, the director, wanted Robert Preston, who just kicked ass in that role. I mean, he was remarkable. And my dad got Seahunt that same year. So it worked out well for him. And then my acting career kind of, you know, took off. I was doing stuff in high school, you know, different things. I had an agent and all of that.

But I resisted acting quite a bit because I had other things I wanted to do. Music, painting, art, I had a bunch of other stuff. And I didn't want to compete with my brother, who was all, Bo, who was also an actor and my dad. I didn't like that whole, what's the word? Nepotism. Nepotism. Thanks, man. You know, that whole thing. So I said, Dad, you know, I don't know.

He said, Jeff, don't be ridiculous. That's the wonderful thing about acting. It's that you're going to be called upon to do all of these things that you're interested in. You know, look at Crazy Heart. You know, when that award, that came out of listening to my dad and the music, you know, came around. Amazing. So that gives a hit of my dad. Then when I were doing C-Hun, he would teach me all the basics.

You know, I remember sitting on his bed and running lines. So he's got to, you know, learn your line so you're not thinking about it, thinking about what you're going to say. But also, listen to what the other guy is saying. You don't just say your line when that guy stops talking. You've got to let what he said inform what you're saying. So that kind of basic reason. Now go out of the room, come back in.

And I'll do it completely different. I don't care how you do. Just do it completely different. Great advice. Yeah, yeah. And do it different each time. Yeah. Just try new ways.

Yeah, new ways and mess around like that. So he taught me all the basics. That's amazing, though. As a little kid, though. As a little kid. That's great. But the main thing, doing sea hunt. Now I'm about eight years old.

And I remember at the time this kind of embarrassed me. But looking back, I say, oh, I'm so proud of my dad. That's another thing I love about making me. movies. It's all kinds of people, different points of view, philosophies, politics, all of that, you know, so you're working with all different kinds of people. And there's some directors, many different approaches that a lot of them work, a lot of different way. One way that my dad did not abide by was cruelty or meanness. And there was some director that was being sharp with a PA and embarrassing this young woman. And my dad, who was the star of the show

in Seahunt, he said, excuse me, I'm going to be in my trailer. And after you've apologized to the crew in front of, you know, what you did to this woman, you can come and get me. But until that time, I'm just going to be on my trailer. So let me know. You know, as a kid, I said, oh, you know, but looking back, you know, I said, yeah, that's, That's the kind of guy he was. That's great. And then another example of what he was like was probably the most important thing I ever learned from him, although it wasn't in the form of words.

It was just his behavior was the joy in which he approached the work. You know, they call it a play. You know, it's play. It's like, this is cool what we're doing. We're playing, man. And he would come in with this attitude, and that would go through the whole case. casting crew, this sense of joy. And of course, when you're joyful, you get relaxed, right? And out of that relaxation comes the good shit, right? Or that's what I find. No, for sure. And so as, as an adult,

I got to work with him twice. First time was in Tucker with Francis Coppola and talk about pretending and, you know, like he's got a great child quality to him as well as being a you know, incredible artist on many levels. And one of the things Francis would do is that he storyboarded quite heavily. And then he would shoot with the film camera, his storyboard. And then we had a two-week rehearsal. The first week was just hanging out getting to know each other. And the second week, he got the cast and crew together.

And he said, all right, guys, now this week, we are going to shoot the entire. entire movie, Vittorio Starraro here, he's going to use this little new fancy digital camera and that wheelchair, that's going to be his dolly. And you wardrobe people, look at these curtains. These would make good wedding dress. And you actors, get off book if you can because we're only going to do each scene one time. And we're going to do it in order. It was like little rascals, you know, come on, let's make a movie.

you know, we're having fun, you know. And he shot the entire thing, filmed it like this. And then what we didn't know was to and fro from work. He sat in the back of his black Citroen and edited this thing. At the end of that week, he gave each of us the movie. He said, look, here, maybe he's got to polish it up. Amazing. And then what he would do, he had that storyboard as he completed those scenes.

he replaced the storyboard with those scenes. And then as we shot the movie, he replaced it. He replaced that. So the movie was always in existence. That's unbelievable. Isn't that a wild technique? I've never heard of anything like that. No, no, it's so incredible.

And then for an actor, because you shoot out a sequence, to have the whole story there was really... Yeah, you can understand the emotional arc in a way that you never could. Yeah. And that brings to mind, Sidney, Lamed. who my dad worked with in a tragedy in a temporary town. I worked with him in a movie called The Morning After with James Fonda.

And Sidney, who was an actor. I didn't know he was an actor. Oh, yeah, yeah. He knew about rehearsing and what that's all about. And so we rehearsed our ass off in that movie. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, but we would run the whole movie twice. he taped out a gym like a play basically taped out a gymnasium all the right size of the sets that have been chosen

and his main direction is I don't want any indication here when we do this every time you do the scene I want full-blown performance level shit and get off the book as soon as you can but it's interesting all these different approaches you know some directors say no we don't want to rehearse you're going to leave it But acting, you're going to do take after take and this thing. I didn't read all the books that my dad read, so I got a lot of it from just him talking to me and my mom. You say, when you're working on a scene, work on it in three different ways. One way is how you would do it. It was happening to you.

So really look into yourself and use how you would be a viewer of the character. and then do it from the character's point of view and work on a scene in that way. In other words, if the guy's got a limp or an accent or a Twitch or whatever, start to work on it that way. And then the third way, and I remember him saying probably the most important way,

is architecturally in a way. Like, think of each scene as a building box, you're building a building, you know, this story that you're telling. And each scene has a purpose in this story, you know, and you can do it in very many ways. You can hold back here. How does that story look? How does that brick in that building look?

That's why it was so helpful to bathe in the story that way, you know, get familiar with what do we tell it? What are we saying here, you know? Some of the actors that I admire, I was just watching Philip Seymour Hoffman and a Sydney Lament movie. Wow. What is it? Before the devil knows you're dead.

Have you seen that? Oh God. Do you get the Criterion channel? Yeah. Yeah, it's on that. Ethan Hawk, who's, you know, another, and those guys cooked, man. Tommy Lee Jones is another guy like,

so there's an apakness. He's not showing you. He's just, it's not indicating. Yeah. And it also lets you get more involved as a viewer because it's like this more, to discover. That's right.

They're not telling you what to think. It's like musically it'd be violins, you know, that's like... It's open to interpretation. Yes, right, right. And all the best stuff is open to interpretation. Yeah, and think of radio. What radio is like my dad, I remember he did radio before TV. Really? I didn't know that. Oh, and I think that might be coming back.

T-bone and I are doing a, I guess they're called podcast. Yeah, great. We're doing something, you know, a movie like that. Like a recorded story. Because then the audience supplies all of the special effects, all of the sets, everything. And there's a technique on how you draw that out, just the right amount, you know. Both my mom and my dad, my mom is probably the best actor of the whole family. And I could tell you stories about her.

You know, she would have this thing that she did with all her kids called Time. and that was every day each kid would get an hour with mom doing whatever that kid wanted to do. Could be, I want to go and look into your makeup, I want to make you up like a clown and I want to, you know, make me up like a clown.

Yeah. You know, okay, now this is the spaceship. You get under there. You're the astronaut and I'm going to be a Martian coming after you. Like that, the phone would ring. No, I'm having my time with Jeff. I'll call Betty back.

Amazing. You know, an hour a day, and there was no sense of duty. It was, she was getting off. I mean, she was playing with her kid that she just loved. So now we cut 30 years later. I'd call her up and say, Mom, need some time. What are you doing for dinner, you know? It would be great, you know.

Now, she's about, you know, 90 years old or something. Do you ever eat at a restaurant called the Palomino in Westwood? So we had a nice restaurant and we'd finish our dinner and now we'd be walking back to get our car and the valet would be there

and my mom would say be mean to me be mean to me and I said and I knew and I didn't have to ask her what are you doing I just knew exactly what she's doing and I say

you get to the car and I say get in the fucking car and she goes she looks at me she goes Why are you so? I said, don't talk back to me, bitch. Get in the car. This is, you know, forth of that way.

And we never, you know, and we just never broke character. And we just enjoyed the guy's face, you know. Unbelievable. And that was her sense of humor. And she would just love to do that kind of thing, yeah. So funny. Yeah. I just thought of another, something my mother, talk about my mother.

And this is such a deep mom. really, that she gave me. As a young kid, you know, acting, you'd be in high school going off to a gig, and my mom could tell me, oh, yeah, he's anxious, you know. And she would say, Jeff, Jeff, here, dear, remember, have fun, and don't take it too serious. Yeah.

Fuck. Great advice. And now my wife, because I, you would think you would learn that lesson. No, I never learned it, man. My wife... How did your mom know it? Well, she's married to my dad, man. I mean, the actor, and she, you know, she knows it herself.

She was an actress, isn't an actor? She knows the anxiety, performance anxiety, man. And that's a tough thing, you know. So a few years ago, three years ago now, it goes fast, but I was at death's door. I had terrible health problems. Really? I had cancer, had a tumor in my body.

Wow. Nine by 12 inches in my stomach. I had no idea it was there. And, you know, I was doing some sit-ups, and I talked to Sue, my wife. I said, something feels funny there. It just feels like it's a bone where a bone shouldn't be. I say, feel it. Yeah, you ought to see a doctor.

I said, no, no, it doesn't hurt. We're going to Montana, you know. So I went to Montana for two or three months, and I had a great time. My shins itched. And I had night sweats, but I had summer, you know, those were all symptoms of lymphoma, man. Wow. So I had this giant thing in my stomach. And I was just about to go back to do the second season of the old man, this TV show.

And I said, I'd better get it checked out. So I go there and, yeah, you have lymphoma. That's a giant lymphoma there. So they put me in the hospital and they did all these tests and stuff. And it was an unusual form of lymphoma. They finally found the right cocktail for it. Now I'm in chemo doing the chemo sessions. And it seemed to be working.

I said, oh, that's great. And then I get a letter from the chemo place. You may have been exposed to COVID. And that proved to be true. And the COVID made the cancer look like nothing. man, because I had no immune system. Oh, my God. The chemo stripped my immune system, and the COVID just kicked my ass, man.

So I was on death door. Yeah. And what I found sitting at the doorstep there, where you pull out all your tricks, man, all your spiritual, philosophic, you know, tools that you can't. And the one that gave me the most sukker was, remember, have fun, and don't take it too seriously. Amazing. I just thought, that's right.

Everybody's dying. This is me doing that. Feel all the love that's coming from all those nurses, from your family, all your friends, how much love you feel coursing through your body. Yeah. That attitude probably had as much to do with you being well now as anything of the doctors did. Maybe so. That sounds like healing medicine.

Oh, God. Isn't that wild? So my mom, I mean, I could go on and on about both my parents. They were quite remarkable. Did going through that health trauma change anything in your life after it? When you go through something like that, it's a big hit, like I hit, you know, some kind of drug. It takes you to a certain place. Yeah.

And that lasts for a while. And then it starts to dissipate and you kind of get back. to so-called normal. And you feel like yourself now? Now you say that. Of course not. You know, it's like, yeah, it's like, you know, I'm developing this camera with my wife now

and I take these wide-lux pictures and, you know, photography was a big thing for me growing up. That's the thing about photography, you know, this miracle, taking pictures, capturing light and shadows. Like a magic trick. Yeah, like a magic trick. It's funny making movies. I always thought there's magic tricks,

and then there's real magic, or I guess you could call them miracles. Then when you look around, miracle, that's kind of a normal thing, man. I mean, this is all miraculous. Every day. Every day. And photography, whether it's through the lens

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What was once a futuristic concept? Daily nutritional support in a glass is now the result of applied science. Learn more at drinkag1.com slash tetra. Do it today. Tell me how the camera came to be. Well, I first came in contact with the Wildlocks. Maybe you had this experience too in high school. There was a rumor going around that the guy was going to take the class picture, had this camera that panned, and if you ran around real quick,

you could be in the picture twice. Do you remember anything? I don't remember this at all. And that rumor proved to be true. It's a still camera. It's a still camera that pans. That pans. So it's like...

Inside. Yeah. It doesn't move. The shutter is a slit that pans across and exposes the film. I see. And then when I got married in 77, this guy, Mark Hanauer, came to our wedding. You hear just in the Malibu. Blue Hills up here of Los Flores and Ramble Pacifica, you know.

And he took these pictures with this wide-legged's camera. I saw those pictures. I said, oh, my God, what is this? This is remarkable. And then my wife gave me one. And that's the only camera I've used from that on. Wow. And, you know, back in high school, I had a dark room, you know,

turned my bathroom, you know, put tinfoil and got the red light and, The tunes, you know, you'd listen, you know, all the Beatles and Dylan and all, and Bach and all the Miles, all the great jet. You know, music was a big part of the dark room experience. You'd be in there what you thought was an hour, but it turned out to be six hours because you're so deep, so focused. My wife became a professional photographer, and we had built a dark room up in Malapol, really into it. And then I started making these little books for the cast and crew, Karen Allen, who was her idea when we were doing Starman. And she said, let's make it book. So Charlie Martin Smith and Karen and I made this book for the cast and crew with my photographs and also Sid Baldwin, who was the still photographer on the show.

And everybody seemed to like it. And I loved it because I was talking about that miracle. I look at these pictures and I'm transported right back to those times, you know. So as much as it was a gift to them, it was a gift to myself. And I started making these books. I think I made about 30 of these books now. Wow. I just did an exhibit of my photographs up in Santa Barbara, the Tamsang Gallery, and my daughter, Jesse, was the host.

So we jammed on that. And one of her questions, she says, yeah, Dad, and there's a guy who shows up in every book. I said, it's not me. I would take some selfies with it. He's a great camera for selfies because, you know, I like to take selfies where I'm not looking at the camera. So, you know, I mean, if we took one here,

it'd be positioned it so you can't even see my arm, you know, like that. This is before selfies kind of became a thing. She says, it's not you, Dad. Who is it? And, of course, I know who it is. It's Lloyd Catlett. Who's that? Lloyd Catlet is this.

guy who we've made over 70 films together. I met him in 1969. He was this young 16-year-old kid who was in the last picture show. And he was hired as an actor, a good part in the movie, but also to teach us California kids how to be Texas, you know, how to be Texans. And he fell in love with the circus. You know, when we left town, he was right on our heels. else.

Yeah. And then he became my stand-in and acting in movies with me and standing. But I have this thread through all of the movies. Can you imagine, man? So cool. And, you know, like we were talking about our memory, how shitty our memory is. He's got a much better memory than I am. So he can say, what's that guy's name?

Boom, he's got it. You know, I say, remember that? Yeah, we laugh, you know, together. So that has been just a real gift. Do you photograph out in the world? as well? I've got quite a few photographs that aren't on movie sets, but that's kind of my specialty.

One of the things I think is valuable about my photographs that I'm in a unique position right in the center of making movies, the latter part of the 20th century, early part of the 21st century, with this weird camera, this unique camera. So that kind of makes the, and there's a historical aspect to it, because everything is changing so fast, man, with all this AI. Walk me through from the beginning to now, all of the changes that you saw happen in making films. Oh, man.

Well, so my first movie is a movie called Hals of Anger. I might have been Rob Reiner's first movie, too. He was in it after a... How old were you at the time? Maybe 19. and it was all about busing white kids into a black school, which was a pretty interesting subject. So white people could kind of feel what prejudice feels like.

That was the idea. And I played the white kid who was trying to integrate and the black kids kept beating the shit out of me. And there was a scene where I've been trying to do it and the kids keep beating me up and then the boys vice principal who was played by Calvin Lockhart. He says, you've got to go back.

You know, you've got to keep going on this. And it was a very emotional scene, you know, for me. I had just ended a love affair. Do you remember your first, what that feels like, your heart breaking? It was a terrible feeling. It lasted for years. And I was able to do some Thespian judo with that feeling. Yeah.

And take it for this thing. And I kicked ass on the sea. I remember they shot everyone else's play for them. They got to my thing. And it made me a thing. I told you about talking to my dad saying, I'm not sure if I'm cut out for them. And I said, funny.

I said, shit. I think I could do this, man. This is pretty wild. And I got very emotional and cried and all this stuff. Get an applaud from the crew. You know, that's always hot. And now we're the premiere of the show in Watts, I think. my dad's on my right,

bow's on my left, and it was sitting back, I said, okay, now, wait till you see this, not seeing. And here it comes, and the way they cut it, they cut to my face,

and I'm like, you know, some, and audience burst. There was no, the audience burst out laughing. I think I muddafshed a little bit. You know,

I just, you know, It laid a little, I was so, you know, it was just so terrible. Yeah. And that was a interesting lesson, man. That was like, so what do you do about that? What do you do? Do you protect yourself?

Do you give it up? You know, what do you do? And my choice was, you got to give it up, man. You can't be worried about it. That's one of the elements of making movies. It's a collage, and the collage ain't up to you. It's up to who's ever cut in the film. Hopefully it's the director, and every once in a while,

you had high expectations going in, and now it's even better what they do, you know? That happens, and sometimes it don't, man. And so you can't, but you can't protect yourself. You know, you can't control it in certain ways, but it's self-defeating because it dampens the whole energy of creativity, you know. So that was a big thing for me. that really about editing.

Now I'm getting off track a little bit more, but I'm going to go with the editing aspect. Bow's first movie was with Hal Ashby. Wow. Hal's last movie was my movie. Incredible. Eight million ways to die. Hal was an editor.

Think of his films, being there, coming home, last detail, man, these masterpieces. And he worked through improvisation. It's interesting where the director's come from. You know, some are actors like Sidney Lamett. Some are, you know, writers, some are editors? So Hal said, just bring it up, you know, give me all your shit, you know, and... And then he'd figure out how to make it into something. He would make it into something.

That's great. I remember asking him, I said, are we going to have to do much looping, you know, much ADR stuff? And he goes, no. I said, what do you mean? I said, what do you mean? He says, Man, I get in there with a little razor blade, and this is on the, old school shit, yeah. And he, you know, he was a master at this stuff. Remember him saying the key to editing is just bathing in the film. He would sleep in the editing room, you know, and just look at it over and over and over again.

But you think of like that monologue that John Voigt gives in coming home, you know, that's improv, man. And I think I have a feeling that you might work the same way. T-Bone does as well. Creating the space, it's hard for people to understand what that is. But that's my favorite kind of directors. And you guys are directors, too. We have no idea when we're going in what it's going to be, no clue.

And there's a lot of different versions of good, you know? Oh, yeah. And you don't know until you're discovering it. It's a funny talent when you have a visitor coming in and watch you, work. They say, well, he's not doing anything. What does he do? It's space creation. You know, it's just safety, vibe, playfulness, joy, humor, love, and let it do us. Yeah, watch it unfold. Yeah. It's a great feeling. The miracle, man. It is. I mean, is, you know, my task as a creative person is getting out of the way, right? How do you practice doing that? How do you get in

that spot? You know, that's an interesting, you know, practice to to mess with the Hal. So Bo did his first movie Landlord. I did his second, eight-nine ways to die. I think it was Andy Garcia's first film. We had a ball working together. There was a guy, Mark Damon, was the producer.

And Hal had a bad rep right around that time, you know, doing Coke. And it was, you know, I think he'd done that stone documentary or something. It was, he just, you know, had a bad reputation. And so the script was just a basic outline. We would never shoot the script. We would just jam on the essence of the scene. And this guy had no faith in Hal's process.

I mean, look at the pudding that's coming out of Hal's oven. You know, these are masterpieces. So he bitched and bitched. I can understand how it would frustrate the financiers to say, you know, that's not the script, man, you know. Where are you going to go with this thing, you know? So he comes in. We've got about two weeks to go.

Shoot, he comes in and he says, we're pulling the plug today. This is your last day. Howell said, what are you talking about? We've got major stuff. Hell went into his trailer, burned a dupe, I think, came out and said, all right, he's that we're going to do a phone call.

Andy, you're going to have this big, long phone call. You know, he didn't let it crush him. You know, I mean, you know, he didn't say, oh, you know. He solved the problem. He just, yeah, because that's basically what movies it's all about, these little, you know, trying to figure out how we navigate these challenges, you know. So there is a challenge. So he came up with this long monologue.

And he created the kind of space of such safety and inclusion that I saw Andy doing the scene and I had an idea about what would make it better for Andy. And that went up to, I said, hell, when if Andy, you know, did this instead of that? And he goes, that's a really good. good idea. But let Andy cross the bridge. Let him find that out. My idea came from the idea.

We got a time crunch here. We got a lot of stuff. And he said, we got all the time in the world. You know, God, the vibe he created. So we actually shot the movie with all that hindrance. We shot the movie, Hell and Mine. Then the guy fired Hell, didn't let him

edit the film, man. And just cut it Against the grain. Unbelievable. And then hell died. I mean, it broke his heart, man. God. Crazy story.

I remember your question was how is it changed over the years. That kind of has remained the same, these stories that, you know, it's a communal art form. You know, you're working with other guys that can shut you down. So it's up for grabs, you know, how it's going to turn out. I love this thing. This is what keeps me coming back. is that when it transcends your high expectations, and it does that every once in a while.

Isn't it a great feeling? I was going with, and God, look what happened. That is so amazing. So that kind of stuff, those first editing stories, that still happens, the good and the bad of that. But when you ask me what's changed, a great example of that is strong. I've had great luck with first-time directors,

It's just wonderful. You know, some of my best movies have been first-time guys. But this was Stephen Lissberger, who came up with this idea of Tron, you know. We shot it in black and white, 70-millimeter black and white, all hand-titted by these Korean women. All our costumes were in black and white. We would go into this black-and-white box, you know, this soundstage. The special effect, everything was black-douvet team with white adhesion.

of tape. That was our special effects, you know. Then they did it all in post, you know, colors that would make it glow and shit. And then you'd go outside after being that black and white. And color, oh my god, color would be hit you like a ton of bricks. So now we're down the second one. I'm scanned. You know, they do a scan so they can jack with me, you know, digitally. And they did that.

And so that's basically what the first movie was all about, getting scanned into a computer. Now it's happening in real time. And so I could play a younger version of myself. But it was kind of primitive. I thought I looked more like Bill Maher than I did myself. You know, it was just, it didn't matter that much. Now the whole AI stuff is so much more advanced.

In the sequel to Toronto, we had all these dots on our faces. Now they don't do any of that. Now it's scary. So just that is leaps and bounds, you know, what that AI does. And it's amazing now, just the whole AI idea because in movies, you know, I remember seeing Jurassic Park for the first time. You see, look what they can do or seeing the Hobbit movies. Look at all the people. And then finally, it loses its part.

Manity, yeah. Yeah, because it's just, you know, and you say, oh, still, it's. interesting tool that, you know, you can use, but it loses something. You know, I mean, pretty soon, I'll be out of a gig, man. I mean, you know what? I'll probably lease my image. You know, so we want to combo De Niro bridges and let's put some Andy Garcia in there, see what happens, you know, a little more Garcia, a little more, you know, you know, I mean, that's, you know, not too far off. I mean, they can do it already, you know. Electrolites. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun?

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Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmn.t.com slash tetra. And stay salty with element electrolyte, LMNT. How did you meet Bernie Glassman? I'm at Ram Dass's birthday party. I make these little ceramic heads, you know. And I do this thing where, you know, I'll make a pod or a,

a vase or something, and then I'll have a hunk of clay left over it, and I'll let my hands make a head out of it. And they're like aspects of myself. This is something I do, and I've got, you know, hundreds of these fuckers. So I went up to Ram Dass, and I said, I've always wanted to give you a little head. Happy birthday. You know, I give it a little bit.

And there we sit down there, And there's this kind of tubby Jewish guy where on the left. He doesn't look like, I said, what is he doing here in this spirit? And he turns out to be the real thing. This guy's a Zen master big time. Yeah. And he says, hey, I really dig Lobowski man. And the Lobowski is just chalk full of all these modern-day co-ons.

I said, what are you talking about? He says, well, look who wrote and directed Lobowski, the Co-on brothers. He said, okay, good, very good, okay. He says, the dude abides. That's very buddistic right there. I say, yeah. He says, my favorite koan in Big Lebowski is, well, that's just like your opinion, man. I say, oh, I'm getting it now, you know.

Well, you know what a koan. What's the sound of one hand clapping? These questions that really don't have traditional answers to them. I said, give me another. He says, well, shut the fuck up, Donnie. There's another call on. So he starts to list these things, and he says, hey, let's write a book. They say, what do you mean?

He says, yeah, let's write a book about Lobowski and how it, you know, might have some of these ideas, these Buddhist ideas. And I'm, you know, kind of Buddhistly bent myself, you know, I'm a big fan of Alan Watts. You know, you must be. Yeah, he is probably the best. Isn't he so great? I mean, God. Yeah, he's my wife's favorite, too, because he's got a sense of humor about the whole thing. He says, yeah, let's do this.

I said, well, I've got a ranch up in Montana. Let's go up there for a couple of weeks and just hang, you know. You know how you hit it off with somebody very quickly and you say, wow. And so I hit it off with him just immediately. So we went up there and we just had two weeks of conversation. And then his wife, Eve Marco, edited it. And Bernie was, you know, my dear friend and teacher. God, what a guy, man.

I mean. Do you remember when you first read the script for Lobowski? Tell me what you remember. Yeah, I remember bumping into the Cohn brothers. Maybe it was at a party or something. I can't remember. And the CEO of who's written something for you? I said, oh, you're kidding.

Great. No, I was a big fan. for you. Yeah, I was a big fan of Blood Simple. Yeah. And then I read the script and I said, wow, this is not like anything I've ever done before. Why didn't you think me, you know, it's like something from my past

kind of weird vibe. Did you laugh out loud when you read the script? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I thought it was, I was amazed that when it first came out, it didn't do anything. You know, it was not successful when it came out. It had to get, you know, came back from Europe and it was successful over there and then splash back here. How much of what you read in the script is what the movie is

and how much did it evolve through making it? Well, they write so well that it feels like improvisation, but it's not. And Walter John Goodman and we were very precise, you know, about where each fuck was, each man was, I love pot. I'm a, you know, was a pot hit. I'm not doing it these days.

But I didn't smoke any pot on that movie. I really wanted to be as clear and not, you know, you know, what's the acting term, sense memory? I had done a lot of pot. I knew what that, you know, I could get there without, you know, having to smoke it. Now, we would do improvisation. John and I remember doing this to feel the vibe of the,

the scene, and then we would always go back and the script. It was almost like music. You know, like music. You know, you want the right melody. You want the notes. And each man was there for... But you would jam to better get into the script.

Yes, right, right. And, oh, man, it was... Oh, man. I was talking about my photography, and I made a book for Lobowski, you know, and I look through that book, and I get, boom, I get right back to each of those... and, you know, the day Tuturo comes, you know, he's going to do this one little scene, kissing the ball, you know.

Oh, God, he was just so incredible. When you were young, in addition to working with your dad, you got to work with a lot of the great actors. Do you remember any things that they directly told you that were helpful going forward? Well, don't you love it when you've got these heroes of yours, you know, and you put them on a pedestal? And when you meet him, then let you know, I'm just one of you guys. Don't you love that? I just love that, man. So my second film was a movie called The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go, written by Burgess Meredith.

Had he ever directed or written before? Oh, he, you know, people are most familiar with him playing the Penguin in the original Batman TV series. Yeah. But he was a classical, you know. I just watched And then in Rocky as well And Rocky, that's another, yeah. But yeah, he was a

wonderful actor and James Mason was also in that film and he was, you know, so down to earth and I, you know, Lolita, you know, I just remember, you know,

all his great movie. And another story with James just popped into my mind working with John Eusta and I worked with him as an actor and as a director. I was in a movie that he directed called Fat City.

My big brother, Bo, did some agenting for me. He went up for the part, and he was a little too old. He's eight years older than me. He says, well, you don't check out my brother. So I went in and did, you know, see the casting guy, and they liked me. And then they got a call from my agent that John Houston wanted to meet me. Oh, great. Where?

Madrid. Madrid, yeah, so I get on a plane and where he wants to, where the meeting needs to be, is at the Prado. So I get there and I'm, again, I'm about, you know, early 20s and I'm checking into the hotel. And there's this beautiful girl there and start to talk. He says, take you out to dinner. Let's go out of beautiful food, fish. So I said, well, I got to get home fairly early because I got this interview. So I go out with this beautiful girl and have a wonderful meal.

I get home, get into bed, and I wake up with food poisoning. Man, it's just puking and shitting and just the worst. And I've got to meet John Houston at the Prado. So there I were looking at the goyas and all of these great painters, Palazquez and so forth. trying my best not to puke on the paintings, man. I mean, I'm literally puking in my mouth and swallowing my... Yeah, it's the worst feeling.

And John doesn't talk about the movie at all. He's just pointing out art to me. And I'm saying, well, I've lost that part. Oh, God, help me. I hope I don't die. I was just feeling just terrible. And I'm in bed, and I don't speak Spanish, and I can't talk.

the phone to the desk and everything. I said, what am I going to do? And I get a knock on the door. And I crawl on my hands and knees at the door and open the door. And who's standing there, James Mason? What are you doing on the floor? And he saved my life. He got me, you know, a doctor, got the right shot and stuff.

He still cast you for the movie. Oh, yeah. I got the part. Yeah. I got the part, yeah. and it was with Stacey Keats, a wonderful actor. Yeah, great. Susan Terrell and Candy Clark, who I fell in love with,

and we became a, you know, we lived together for many years. And John, you know, he was kind of, you know, not feeling well. Actually, he was, you know, would have these, you know, on oxygen all the time. There was a scene, it was my favorite scene in the movie where I'm having a dream, and I wake up in the middle of the dream, having dream that my wife, Candy, was holding the hand of my best friend. And so I said, don't touch me.

You know, I'm pissed off. I'm still in the dream, but I'm awake. And there was a certain comedic element to this whole thing, and my approach was the more serious I could play it, the funnier it would be. And John had some other ideas, and I was trying to do it with him. and you saw Dailies the next day,

and Ray Stark, who the producers, in there, and after the Dailies, he was walking with me. He said, what did you think? I said, no, I didn't really like it. He goes, yeah, I know. He says, but don't worry when we're shooting, I'm going to have you and Candy take acting lessons, and then we'll come back and reshoot this thing.

And that kind of hit me weird because I had already been nominated for an Academy Award. But I said, okay. So that's what happened. And Jeff Corey was an acting teacher, pretty tough acting teacher, you know, having to, you know, really get the emotion out of you. I was living with Candy at the time. And we would go like twice a week to this acting teacher. And Candy would say, you know, she had to. to cry and you see, I don't want to go, Joe. I don't want to cry. I said, come on, Ken.

You know, this is what acting's all about. You've got to do the hard. So we'd go and he'd make her cry every time, you know. And now we're kind of come back to reshoot the thing. We were instructed by Ray. Don't tell anything to John about taking any lessons or anything. And Candy goes to John and says, I'm not supposed to say this, but we've been taking these That needs lessons. And I don't know how to play the part. I don't know how to do it. John said, just do it the way you did it before.

Just do it the way you did it before. Great. Knowing full well that it would never be in the movie anyway. Yeah. And we shot the scene and it was never in the movie. But now years later, I'm doing a movie called Winter Kills. And John Houston's playing my father. directed. Again, I mentioned having great luck with first-time directors. This was Bill Richard.

The cast of this movie, John Euston, Elizabeth Taylor, to Cheryl Maffuni, Sterling Hayden, Richard Boone. It's amazing. And he just, he got this cast together just through his sheer charisma. He was a wonderful guy. John Houston was playing my father. And John, when we were doing Fat City, you know, I was always jealous of Stacey because John and Stacy were playing backgammon and so forth. And I kind of felt left out. I think, you know, that was the way he wanted to direct me, keep me on my heels. And then doing this winter kills, he not only was very open and gregarious with me, but he was also, through this first time director, he was like showing. how an actor should behave to a director,

he would say, how was it, Bill? How was it for you? Should I, any ideas? What do you like me to do differently? Yeah. You know? Amazing. Yeah.

So that was, you know, great experience. Wasn't Winter Kills band or something? Something happened with Winter Kills. Oh, God. Oh, another actor that was in it was who played in Psycho, you know, Anthony Perkin. Yeah. He was in it.

He played the bad guy in it. And this is such a weird, weird story. So, Bo had done a movie with Anthony Perkins, a Larry McMurtry story called Love and Molly, directed by Sidney Lumette. Tony did acid every day. Yeah. And one of his acting techniques was,

what drug would be appropriate for this thing? So we're doing this scene. But the climax of the movie where he kidnapped my girlfriend, and I've got to take his arm and I have a blackjack in my head, and I break his arm. He'd tell me where she is. I'm going to break your other arm. Tell me where she is.

So he says, for this scene, I think Amel Nitrate. So the director goes out and gets a box of Amies. And, you know. rolling first time, you know. Are you ready? Okay, action. Yeah. And he's got this long, two-page malloc, and he hits it, and he does it beautifully.

Wow. It just does the whole thing. Now it gets to my side. And I said, I think I'll do an Amy. And I hit that poor guy so fucking hard with that fake blackjack that, you know, shut down the day's work, you know. That's creepy. It was terrible. And I don't know if it was the same day or maybe it was the re-shot of that thing.

The stage doors, these big doors opened to the sound stage and in come the union guys and shut us down because all the cast and crew wasn't being paid their union dues. And they were all just there because of the love of this guy, Bill Richard had. Yeah. And so they shut us down. Wow. And we had major scenes to shoot. And, you know, kind of, again, broke all our hearts. And a few weeks later, I did a call from Bill.

So I got this idea, man. I said, what? He says, what we're going to do? I've written this script. It's a great script. And you'll be just so perfect in it. We're going to shoot it in Germany. I've got the money.

And then we're going to, that's going to come out. And then we'll get the money to finish winner kill. And it's a great scene with Sterling Hayden that you're going to... And I said, okay. And off we go to Germany, shoot this other movie. And his prophecy proved true. We came in, finished winter kills. Amazing.

I mean, just all these adventures, you know, crazy. So when Ethony Perkins does the Amyl Nitrate, you didn't think, this is crazy. You think, good idea, I'll do it too. Oh, well, this is back in the day, man. You know, we're much younger, and the things like that, you know, I thought of another, I thought of another drug story. I'm not going to tell you. Doing Thunderbolt and Lightfoot with Clint Eastwood.

This is, again, another great example of first-time directors. This was Mike Tremino's first-time directing. This is the guy who directed the Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate and so far. And Clint is famous for only one or one. two takes. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah.

And I was the young punk kid who said, you know, I'd go up to Mike. I'd say, I got a 19-in line. And he said, well, you got to ask the boss, you know. He would go over there and talk to Clint and Clint would say, yeah, give the cat a shot. So I really appreciate that, what Clint did. And then we're doing the scene. You ever see that movie? Not in a long time.

But you've seen at some point at the end of the movie. I get kicked in the head by George Kennedy and I having a stroke and I die, basically. It's a death see. I had this idea. I said, get a dentist, get some novocaine, unshoot novocaine in my mouth and just, you know, go like that. And I'll be a great, you know. And he said, okay. So we did it.

Worked great. Lost the film. We had to do it all over again and did the same thing again. The film? Physically lost the film? You know, like, I can't remember. He was either lost or it was no good. We just had to reshoot it again.

Now, years later, we're doing Heaven's Gate. He had just won the Academy Award for Deer Hunter. He was the darling of Hollywood. They said, do whatever you want, Mike. He said, well, I've got this epic Western. I don't do. But he said, but I don't want any of the suits or any press to come because it's going to be a challenging thing.

to do it. And everybody who was in it, I can't remember, I think it was maybe six months shooting. That's where I met T-Bone on here. T-Bone played my maid in the thing. And Willem-Defo was his first movie. He played in my two. Those were my housekeeping guys. Willam, I think, got fired for laughing inappropriately in a scene. You're just hanging out when Mike was direction. And it was a very interesting experience because unlike what it was with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was on one or two takes, Mike would do 60 takes. Wow. I mean, it was like, let's show up.

We'll be in costume. If we get it, we get it. If we don't want to just come back and we'll do it again. So they never knew when it counted. And I guess from his point of view, he's looking for that happy accident, you know, that one little thing. But from the acting thing, it was kind of tough because you don't. no, when does it count?

And it's hard to make it count 60 times. Yeah, yeah. And are everybody going to do it together? And, you know, it was, you know, challenging that way. Now we're doing this battle scene. Oh, and I'm supposed to get shot. And then I give a big speech. And I go up to Mike and I say, Mike, you know, I'm being shot here.

And there's a medic there, you know. What if a medic shoots me up with some morphine? And then I give my speech. And he goes, yeah, yeah. And I said, but I know he's got some morphine. But before we do it on film, I want to see if I can do that. So how do you feel about him shooting me up with the morphine? And then I'll try to do the scene.

And he said, you just want to get high on the morphine. I say, yeah, but I think, no, I really think it might be effective, you know, for the movie as well. And so I get the real doctor there, and he shoots me up with morphine, and I do this thing, and I say, oh, this is great, you know. I can do this, and it's a good effect. Now we're going to shoot it on a film, and now we're doing it with the actor,

and he's got the, you know, he's talked to the medic, and he's going to do it. And we practiced it and shit, and he does it. And it's just terrible, man. not morphine. It's some other shit. You're some, like, methadone. I don't know what he was shooting. These were back in the days

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Visit Squarespace.com slash Tetra and get started today. I remember reading a story you told about if it's in church, you're not in the service. Oh, yeah. Tell me about that. Uh-huh. 19 years old, you're really ripe for Vietnam, and I followed my brother's footsteps. He enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve. and in the Coast Guard Reserve,

you go to regular old boot camp. Boot camp is 10 weeks. Wow. I can remember going there, your civilian clothes on a bus, arriving there. They all get lined up, and the guy who is in charge of us,

he's walking up and down the lines questioning us. You know, what's your name? He goes up to one kid saying, What's your name? My name is Joe Samuel, sir. Quit moving your fucking head. Why are you moving your head like that? I don't know, sir.

Don't fucking move your head. Yes, sir. Now, there's a guy in the line behind him who starts to laugh, you know, like this. The drill guy goes over to that guy and says, You like laughing, asshole? I want you to continue to laugh. until I tell you to stop.

You understand. Asshole. Yes, sir. Start laughing. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Now we're, this is now hours later and we're up in our racks, you know. Two o'clock in the morning. Ah, ha, ha.

Still. Still, you know. Wow. I mean, it was torture, basically. They strip you of your, they give you a number, strip you from your identity, you know. I guess that's effective for fighting battles and shit, you know, working for the team, you know, get rid of your individuality.

And now where it's about the second week and we're all, you know, stripped down, we're kind of been bashed around. And the guy says to us, all right, assholes, today's Sunday, you have a choice to make. You can go to church or you can high poet rifles on the grounder. How many people want to go to church? So we often go to church. and the guy in there, Don Harris was the chaplain.

And he said, I want to start today by telling you guys that when you're in here, you're not in the military. You're in the house of the Lord. Praise God. How, uh, fucking lou. You know, all his sermons were all about dealing with tough times and, you know, and, in love and all these things. He had me play my guitar and sing to the troops, and he would have discussions with all the guys and everything.

The remarkable guy turned me on to an incredible book. Are you into Kazan Zakis at all? Do you know who he is? His most famous book is Zorba the Greek. But he also wrote The Last Temptation of Christ. He would rewrite like the New Testament. Your his version, you know, why not? Why can't I be tapped in like that?

remarkable stories, The Last Temptation of Christ, it's a big, thick book. The last half of it is a dream that Jesus has on the cross. Wow. Of being a normal person, have two wives, all these kids,

and then he wakes up. Yeah, I mean, it's a great book. Marty Scorsese made a movie about. And he turned me onto a wonderful book that I can't recommend high enough called The Saviors of God. that if anybody's going to save anybody, we've got to save God.

And it's quite an amazing book. And during that time, I got into a Christian phase in my spiritual journey. And so I really appreciated all of that. Yeah. Especially, you know, when you're in tough times, you pull out all your trick. What's going to help me, man? Yeah. And that's, you know, what helped me, that kind of stuff.

So I really appreciated that. Then we got Honor Company about in the ninth week we were there. All the companies get it at some point. We got Honor Company, and that means we could go on leave, and we could go into San Francisco. And he said, I'm going to break the rules, Jeff. I said, what? He says, I want to take you somewhere.

I say, where? He says, I'm going to break the rules. I'm going to give you some civvies so you won't pop out. and he gave me these civilian clothes, and he took me into the carousel ballroom to see Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother. Wow.

Amazing. And I just, you know, that was all fresh. That was all fresh music at the time. I just went, holy shit. And then he ended up, you know, many, many years later, ended up marrying me and Sue. So Don Harris, wonderful, wonderful guy. My wife, you know, I've been, I'm going on 50 years, man.

And the love thing just gets stronger and stronger. And we've been doing these movies together for so long. So she knows what it takes and how to direct me. We met on a movie. We met on a movie called Rancho Deluxe up in Montana. I'm doing a scene in this dude ranch called Chico Hot Springs. I'm in this big hot tub. natural hot spring.

Sam Waters stood on one side, Harry Dean Stanton on the other, and we're doing a scene. And I look over and I see this girl, I cannot take my eyes off her. She is so gorgeous. And she's got two black eyes and a broken nose.

So this beauty juxtaposed to this disfigurement, man. It was just so amazing. And I finally get the nerve to add. ask her out. And I don't know about you, but asking girls out, man. That was always tough. Terrified. Yeah, you know, it's, yeah. So I was so attracted. I couldn't help it. And I said, you know, after we were shooting, I said, would you like to go out with me? She says, no.

It's a small town. Maybe I'll see you around. I say, okay. And then her prophecy proved true. And we had the rap party, and she was there. And we danced and felt, boom, that was it. got married and had a bunch of kids. Now we cut 30 years later, and I'm going through my mail, and I get a letter from the makeup man on that show. And he says, I was going through my files, and I found a picture of you asking a local girl out. It's two pictures, a close-up and a two-shot of the first words we ever spoke.

Unbelievable. And me asking her out and her saying no, click. Unbelievable. Isn't that wild, man? That's great. And so that's my prize position. After this thing, I can show you that picture. Maybe I remember.

Have you ever done theater? Yeah. What's that like? With my dad. Oh, really? He did Summer Stock. He did guys and dolls. That was one of the thing he would do in round.

They'd do a lot. Remember, I was on stage with this other one. And my dad's entering the stage, and I see him walking down the aisle, and he's fucking with his zipper, you know. He comes on, and I see his zipper is just totally off the track, and it's just open like this, you know. And the people start laughing and shit. And my dad, you know, breaks the fourth wall, says, okay, okay, I'm going to go up and change my pants. Jeff entertain the people. And so I'm up there, you know, all alone.

And I said, well, I took some tap lessons. I'm going to do a little tap routine for you now, you know. You know, I mean, it was just, it gets, you know, just so bizarre sometimes. It's an unbelievable story. Yeah. Do you think your dad felt like you can handle this? Yeah. I mean, I don't, yeah, I mean, I just had to, you know.

Is it like the show must go on? Yeah, that's exactly the show must go on. Yeah. working with him on these two movies as an adult, with blown away, I got to work with him. It was quite a big part. We had so much fun pretending with your dad on that level. Did it tap into things from childhood?

Did you feel like you were reliving your childhood doing that with him? Huh. It's sort of like an extension. It's not, because it wasn't even reliving. It was just like an extension because I'm thinking of a couple of things. You know, coming from a show biz family, you know, we were encouraged as kids to perform to, you know, shows and plays and stuff. I remember I just saw this recently. It's a while.

I did a movie called The Giver based on this book, and I tried to get it made for, oh, easy 20 years. And I just saw this a whole movie where I cast my dad as the Giver. I ended up playing the part 20 years later, but I just saw it. cast my dad as the giver. Bo's kid was playing the lead in it, and it was shot in our house. Bud Court was narrating, reading

the book, the whole book, and we did the whole book, and Casey, Bo's son, you know, shot it. Then another example is my folks had a place in Bear Valley up in central northern California

ski place, and we were up there, and my dad was pretty old, you know, in his 80s. He didn't like getting old, man. He pissed him off. He was such a vital guy and having his body breaking down like that really annoying.

And he's locked himself in his room and we're saying, Dad, come on, you okay? He says, leave me alone. I'm in here. I'm working. What are you working on? Leave me alone.

Now, hours passed, he finally comes out. And he says, Bo's son, Dylan, gathered us all around a table. And I have wide-luck shots of this whole story I'm going to tell you. He says, Dylan has asked me to write a script based on Robin Hood. I've called the story The Robin of Bear, says we're in Bear Valley. I want you all to participate in it. I've cast it in certain ways. I'm going to direct this

and I want you to do this in a very professional way he's very serious about Casey I want you to shoot it and show we have this document with special effects of this Robin Hood he was like pulled behind a snow machine

just you know I mean it's fake fights very elaborate and funny and oh we had such a great time my wife Sue got so pissed off at my dad because he had my daughters, they were playing peasants out in the snow, you know, and they didn't have proper clothes on.

And so it would say, can't you put jacket? No, this is a period piece, you know. No, no. And she, so real fights, you know, happened, real family fights. I'm trying to do something, you know. Yeah. And then Bo and I, you know, would come in there and have ideas and, you know, try to direct it.

So it was just hysterical, the combination of, you know, humor and seriousness. I love the fact that your dad took it serious. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah, but he was also, I mean, this is the guy who did airplane. You've seen the movie Airplane.

You know, so he's an incredible. I mentioned that movie blown away, talking to the producers about the casting. And I said, you know who can play my uncle in this thing? He's a great actor, and he looks a bit like me, you know, in a way, is Lloyd Bridges. Do you know Lloyd Bridges? And the guy says, oh, your dad, that's funny.

But he's really more of a comedic actor. See, what the fuck are you talking about? He saw airplanes. Yeah, it was, then this was coming out. Yeah. I say, my dad is an actor, man. That was an act. Yeah.

That's really. And so I said, do you want him to come in read? Oh, would he do that? Oh, shit. Okay. So my dad came in, of course. Blue Boy. them away. That's something

I learned from my dad, too, is these personas that you can develop. You know, like he had, he did C-Han. He was so good in C-Han playing this. You think that's him. You think that's him. And he got hypecasting. Hype-casting. And he

got those kinds of parts over and over. And so I thought when I started my acting career, I said, I'm going to really go about trying to shake up my characters and not duplicate. Because you didn't want to just do one thing. Yeah, yeah.

And that served me well. That's great. Yeah. There's a long tradition of reading sacred text slowly, allowing each word to settle, echo and reveal meaning over time. Rather than rushing to conclusions, this practice invites reflection,

listening, and attention. For centuries, this repetition has been used to stay close to wisdom, not by studying words as information, but by receiving them as something lived and experienced over and over again. This tradition is known as Lectio Divina. Emerging in early monastic life,

it engages scripture through four gentle movements, reading, reflection, repetition, and rest. A short passage is read, a single phrase is held. Silence becomes part of the practice, creating space for insight to surface naturally. Lectio 365 brings that ancient rhythm into the present moment. Designed for modern life, it offers brief, guide. scriptural reflections throughout the day, to begin with intention, pause at midday, and wind down at night.

The readings are less about information gathering and more for returning to wisdom again and again, letting familiar words meet new moments. A modern way to keep biblical wisdom close, quietly present, steady, and alive, within everyday life. Lectio 365 is a free resource. Find inspiration there, now and always. Learn more at lectio-365.com. So tell me about your relationship to music

from your earliest memory of music. So Bo, he's eight years older than I am, coming out of his bedroom, was Chuck Barry, little Richard, buddy Holly, the platters, you know, all the bird groups. I mean, that's what I was hearing, the Everly Brothers. And that was probably the first record that I ever remember was, you know, wake up, little Susie, wake. God, they were so great, weren't they?

Incredible. Harmony. And the guitar sounds like Claudette, that guitar. God, so good. And then he had a Dan Electra, a white Dan Electra, that I kind of adopted and started to write tunes on. And then in high school, I was never in a band, but I had these friends that were in bands and were all good musicians. And the senior year of high school, my friend Steve Bame, was a drummer, started to have these jams over at his house. No songs allowed.

But singing was encouraged and writing on the... the spot was encouraged. So all improv. It was a jam, all improv. Right. And he recorded every session. And that's the only music he listened to. And we did that for maybe 20 years,

meeting over at his house with these jam sessions. And they were, you know, parties and they were turned, you know, each one had its own flavor. But he recorded everything. You know, talking about my dad and acting and the son. Sometimes I thought, I'm not sure if I wanted to do this acting thing, maybe the music thing, you know, that kind of thing. Then I thought, oh, you know, as I started, the acting started to take up, I said, oh, well, maybe I can combine the two. Wouldn't it be wonderful to play a musician and to play music?

Yeah, that would be great. I'd think about it. And sure enough, the universe supplied this script by this young guy, Scott Cooper, first time director. first time screenwriter called Crazy Heart. And I read the script. It was good. I said, oh, that's good.

But there's no music in it. If there's music is loud. It's about a musician, but there's no music in it. There's no music. And I said, oh, I said, well, that, you know, so I turned it down and he would keep coming at me.

Years, I'm talking, two or three years. Bob DeVall was his champion. So I'm walking down the street one day, And I bump into my old buddy, Teabone, who's walking down the street. He says, what do you think about this script? Crazyheart? I say, well, there's no music to it, man. And he says, oh, that's the easy part.

Don't worry about that. I say, easy part. What are you talking? He said, oh, yeah, we can figure that out. And then he made a beautiful direction. He said, you know, it's like, you know, you're one of the outlaws, you know, like what, Johnny Cash, Willie, and Chris, and, what, Waylon, you know.

But you don't have to copy those guys. We're making a movie about an ulterior universe. Isn't that a beautiful thought? You know, it's like, it's not this planet. It's like, looks like here, but it's somewhere else. I said, oh, that's interesting. And then my heart started to beat. I said, oh, shit.

This could actually happen. And then I got in touch with the safety dreams have. and when you bring your dream into real life, you can fail. Dreams, you can't fail, it's dream. I said, how can I pull this off? I was panicky. But the universe dealt me cards. I say, here's my dear friend who's going to, you know, who's so talented.

He says, it's easy. How can I turn this down? And you say, yeah, but you're afraid, yeah, but fuck. What else is there to do? How can I live with myself? So I went in with that spirit. And I got my dear friend John Goodwin, who is, we go back to the fourth grade, making music and painting and doing all kinds of art together. And I said, can I bring John on?

And Tebowin said, yeah, sure. So he came on. He ended up writing Hold on You, which was the opening song for that movie. and then T-Bone brought Stephen Bruton. Did you ever meet Stephen or know about him at all? Who was T-Bone's best friend. They go back as teenagers. And Stephen was my guide through the whole thing.

Every day he went to work with us the whole time. T-Bone wasn't on the set so much, but Stephen was there teaching me more advanced. guitar, what it was like being a traveling musician, you know, that opening scene where I pull into the bowling lane to play a gig. Steven said, now when I'm traveling around like this, I don't pull off the side of the road to piss. I carry a sparkless bottle, and I'd just be in the sparkless bottle. So why don't you do that? And then, you know, so he was kept the authenticity. He was our touch base. Yeah. We rewrite scenes, all kinds of things to get.

Get it? Yeah, real. Real as possible. You know, it's interesting. There are many different kinds of directors, but two major schools are hot directors and cool directors. Both are very effective. Scott is a hot director in that he's very passionate and excited and enthusiastic. Great, man.

Oh, you know, you nailed it, man. You want one more? You want to do it again? Okay, let's see what you can do. Come on. Come on, you know, it's like that. Example of the cooler directions would be the Cohen Brothers, which is, no big deal, you know.

Oh, yeah, that would make me laugh. Yeah, that's good. Okay, now let me go over here and, you know, no big deal, which is another powerful statement, you know. Takes all the pressure off. Yeah, there's just no big deal. And both of them are very, very effective. So Crazy Heart was great,

and it was one of those examples where, you have high expectations going in, and then they get transcendent. And Scott just did such an incredible job putting that film together. Yeah. And Bobby Duval, you know, being that young guy's champion, you know. Yeah. That's so important. You know, you think about, you know, people say, what do executive producers really do?

You know, what are they, and there's all different kinds, you know. but to have a real producer behind you, creating the space and the support, you know, Mark Rosenberg, who championed Steve Clovis in the fabulous Baker Boys, Steve wrote that script, I think, you know, when he was 24, 25. You know, it's a very, very good script. A lot of the major directors at the time wanted to direct that. And Mark Rosenberg said, no, this is the kids, you know. And he was there just doing that, you know.

And I said to Steve, I said, you know, let's jam a bit. So you can get your directing chops and I'll get my acting chops. So we met at my house for about a month where we would meet with my brother, Bose, you know, playing my brother, which was so, you know, what a dream. If it was another actor, you'd figure out, how do we create this illusion? No, that's handled, man. You didn't have to do any of that, you know. So to jam with my brother, oh, God, what a blessing it wasn't so much fun.

So we'd meet over at my house and Steve would get to, you know, direct us, you know, and he would come up with different improvs. And I remember one improv that was, said, oh, this guy, he's good. He said, okay, here's the deal. Here's our improv. Jeff, it's three o'clock in the morning. You've climbed down to your bedroom window. You've gone to see Bill Evans, who's playing at this club.

I'll play Bill Evans. I'll come out of the bathroom here. I'll just shut up in the bathroom. I'm going to come to the bar, and I'm going to bum a cigarette off you. And Bo, when I put my hand through my hair like this, you're the big brother, you're going to come and get Jeff out. And we did that improv for long, you know, 15, 20 minutes. And Steve was so good, you know, committing to what the assignment was, you know.

I said, oh, he gets the whole thing, you know, what this advanced pretend is all about. And he did such a great job, man. And Michelle, you know, I was disappointed that my favorite song of Michelle's, which was more than you know, do you know that song? It wasn't on the soundtrack album, I don't know why, but she sang her ass off in that movie. So great. So just finishing the music saga, you know, okay. So then after Crazy Heart, I was fired up on the music thing, and I called up. T-Bah said, hey man, I got some tunes.

You don't want to go in and make an album? And he said, sure, man, come on, you know. So we went into a studio, into the village there. And we made an album with a lot of John Goodwin's song, some of my songs, had a great time. And then a few years later, I got a call from Squarespace, website design company, and they wanted me to do a commercial for a Super Bowl. And they didn't want high Jeff Bridges for Squarespace.

They wanted me to come up with a bizarre product with the idea that no product was too weird to not make a website out. They gave me a list of things. And one of the things on that list was sleeping tapes. He said, what are sleeping tapes? You know, there's tapes. That's such an archaic word. And they said, we don't know. It can be whatever you want.

Whatever I want. Yeah. Huh. And then also we're going to make this product. We're going to release it. And all the proceeds can go to share our strength in their No Kid Hungry campaign, which is something I've been very involved with for, you know, 30 years. So that was the clinch. I said, okay, I'm mad.

How do we do it? He says, however you wanted to. You know, it's like this. Yeah, oh, so I said, okay, I'm going to go into a studio with Keithis, and we're just going to jam, see what happens. So we go in there for a week, I think it was more than a week, and we just start to come up with ideas. And we have no idea with this album, but I figure sleep, that implies being awake, that implies dreams. so it's very broad to the subject. And during that time, Kifah says,

why don't you bring all of your, you know, any other old songs that we might work with? So Kivas and I did this album called Sleeping Tapes. It went to number two in the ambient music charts, raised a quarter of a million bucks. Love it. And it was just so wonderful. Then Kifis and I,

going to the studio from, time to time and just jam and do things. Yeah. And then during the COVID thing, I thought, God, I've got all of these half done songs, songs that aren't polished. I'm 76 years old, man. I don't know if I got the poop to go into a studio and polish all these things. I'm just going to put these things out now.

This is what I got, you know. And I'm going to put a visual thing to him. So I, you know, shot some. on my iPhone and looked at the internet and just built that. And I started to release these, I called it emergent behavior, these volumes. I think I made five volumes with about, you know, three or four songs on each, I enjoyed the shit out of that, you know. It's so much fun to make stuff and share it.

It's the best feeling. Yeah, well, exactly. You know, and rather than be tight about it. And then also after a crazy heart, I've always tried to have a lot. some kind of little studio, wherever house I met. So when I moved up to Santa Barbara, you know, 35 years ago, whatever, I wanted to build a studio and I looked around for a guy who could help me with that. And this guy, Chris Polonis, he's an acoustician, you know, Bill's studios and stuff.

And I broke out my tunes and we played a little bit. And he said, oh, this is good. You've got some good tunes here, man. do you know Michael McDonald? I said, are you kidding me? Sure. He says, well, I'm friends with Michael. I'd like to play him some of your songs. So Michael listens to him, starts to dig these songs.

And the next thing I go, we're in the studio making an album. And I've got a band called The Abiders, you know, based on the basketball. And we start to tour. The music dream, you know, the Beatle music dream is being realized that, you know, 65 years old or something. You know, play the Lubowski Fest. You know, have my Beatle moment. You know, you can imagine, ah,

you can play into a sea of dudes, man. Come on. It's so funny. You know, it was really wild. You said something earlier about dreams are safe. Yeah. It makes me question, do you tend towards projects

that are not dream projects because whatever happens is okay, whereas the dream projects are too dangerous to try because they could fail. Yeah, but they've got the most juice, man. It's wild. I just bowed out of a movie that I went quite far down in development of it. And I just said, God, I don't have the acting juice to do it. I mean, I'm having other desires are being built into me that I want to do.

Yeah, you're listening. to what's going on in you. I started to listen to that, and it's so different than my persona, how I'm conceived, not only from the outside, but how I conceived myself, but it was like, it made me think of, you know, Richard Dreyfuss with, what is the movie where he's building the big, close encounters, where he's building that thing.

I don't know why. It kind of has me like that. You're driven towards something. And I don't know what it is. And so I'm following that and I'm getting off. That's great. I mean, it's wild. In acting when you're playing against another character,

does the other character's performance influence what you do? Oh, of course, yeah, big time. Is it like a dance? Yeah, that's a very good way to put it. I'll give you an example. I just popped into my head. Every once in a while, you'll get a real guy on the set. either a guy who has actually lived the story you're telling

or a person who knows what that story is about. So I made this movie called White Squaw with Ridley Scott and it was about this wonderful floating university that this guy had in this ship, you know, a sailing ship where he would take a bunch of students out. Sounds amazing. Yeah, did you see that? No, the idea's amazing.

Yeah. True story? True story. Amazing story. And in the middle of this, a white squall happened. And I got to talk to the real guy who I was playing, the skipper of this ship. And he said, it's not like the movies. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, it wasn't a storm.

It wasn't like that. I said, well, what was it like? He says, it was calm. And it was like God's hand came down, took the main mat and just put it. it underwater. You know what I mean? You know, like a bunch of kids died, his wife died. You know, it was a terrible tragedy.

He went around and spent time with each of the families after the incident. But no one connected with each other after that. They didn't want to relive that terrible incident. So they just avoided each other for many, many years, 25, 30 years. I can't remember exactly what. Now we're making the movie, and in the end of our movie, there's a courtroom drama kind of because it's like, you know, they're going to take my license away kind of thing. But in real life, that didn't happen. It was an international waters.

There was no threat of that. But we're shooting this scene, and we had two real guys who were on that ship. One of them was actually at the helm. The ship wasn't moving, but he had wheeled duty there. We're doing the courtroom scene, and this fella, he comes up to me when we're shooting the courtroom scene, weeping. And he says, chap, I got something careful to ask you. I say what? He says, I want to do something.

I said, what do you want to do? I want to hug myself. You want to hug yourself. What do you mean? Yeah, he says, I'm playing my friend. father and my father always blamed me for the ship going down. He says, no wonder the ship went down. You were at the wheel. He says, can I hug myself? I said, well, go ask Ridley, you know? Yes, Ridley. He said, sure, yeah. So you're at the effect of not someone you're playing

with, but just in the space, in the vibe, in the room, to have that going on. The reality. The reality of that. Another one comes to mind a movie called Fearless, Peter Weir directed. This story was loosely based on, I think it was in Iowa, playing crashing in the cornfield. And Ridley invited a couple who actually went through. The guy was on the plane and his wife was down, you know, and Ridley invited them to talk to us about it. They came and they talked, and it was as if it happened. It was so fresh in their mind, but they were having 10 years before.

And they were up there for 45 minutes knowing they were going to crash. You know, can you imagine? And he said, you would think there was panic. He says, not at all. He said, love just was in that fuselage. Everybody was together. We're in this, we're a one here. That's wild.

He says, I looked across the aisle and there was a woman. an old woman there who was frightened, and I think this is what the guy said. He said, I looked over at her. He said, that woman, that could be my mother, you know. And then he said, no, that is my mother. Held her hand. Wow, beautiful. They crashed, and you'd think everybody panicking, no panic.

It was all just everyone working as one body, what they had to do to get out of their alive. Isn't that wow? Love. Love having its way with us. God, you know, we all affect each other. And then with that acting you're working with, wow, of course. You ever are so in a scene that you forget it's a movie? I'm thinking of a shot. This is a movie about the race cars and playing a guy named Junior Jackson's, based on Junior Johnson, who's a famous stock car racer. We're doing this scene on the racetrack, and we rehearsed it, you know, going, you know, five miles an hour

and we were finally going about 90 miles an hour or something like that, just under a hundred. And the scene was me in the back of the pack. I work my way up to the pack, and I get up to the lead guy, and I actually get, you know, metal to metal with it, and I come and go ahead like that. And we rehearsed it for a long time, you know, weeks.

And towards the end of the rehearsal period, I realized that there's going to be a camera right fucking in my life, right there, right in my line of side of life. So I've got to not only do this thing, but I'm going to act like there's not a camera there, that I'm not going, you know, look around something. So off we go, action, I'm going again, I'm going to do things.

Now I'm up against the car like this, and I get off the gas just a little bit. And the thing goes crazy, you know, and the 360 after 360, you know, all these cars are going to come in behind it, you know, just crazy. All the wives are coming down, you know, a giant crash. The director comes up to me at the end of the he says, you okay? Yeah. Can we do just one more? We're losing the light. Can you do another one?

I say, yo, yeah, okay, okay. You do it again. And now I'm wanting to see what that close up looked like, you know, because that was a moment when I was totally, like you said, I wasn't acting, I was just in this thing there, you know, beyond there. I didn't know where the fuck where I was. And, you know, if you were to act, that, you know, you would go, oh, you know, what you would, I don't know what you would do.

But here's what I did was just, you know, crash. There's nothing. Everything just, just my eyes going all like this in the background. Wow. That's wild. So you got to experience a lot of things through making movies. Oh, God, all the time. Oh, it's so wild.

And these books, these photographed, I can relive those times, each one by just, Have you had to learn any particular things like sword fighting or horseback riding or anything like that? Oh, yeah. I had cockfighting camp. I learned how to cockfight, how to speak Yugoslavian, how to roller skate, how to ride horses, how to shoot. Yeah. All of those things. Fight, you know, but this is all, it gets back to, you know, I keep thinking of being a kid.

You know, this is great stuff. Play. Play. Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a way. website. Tetrogrammatin is a whole world of knowledge. obscure film, tetragamatin, beach culture, tetragrammatim, esoteric lectures, tetragamatin, off-the-grid living, tetragratine, alt, spirituality, tetragrammatin, the canon of fine objects,

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