Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - UNEXPECTED CONVERSATION: Marlon Brando

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

In this episode, Rick connects with Marlon Brando, known as one of the greatest actors in history. From Broadway to film, his performances are recognized for their raw intensity and emotional depth. 

Tetragrammaton. I think that the potential is certainly a universal characteristic of man. I don't mean to use it because I have broad philosophical terms, but within the realm of my own experience, I see potential in myself. I think that anyone who pauses for a moment and examines his motivations will find sometimes that they are not all what they seem, that our motivations are complex and they are not as simple as we would like them. And I think in a world where pretension exists so to such degree we can only conclude that that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts and that each of us in his own small way

contributes to the aggregate pretension, the national pretension perhaps, by his own pretensions. Do you think we keep these things to ourselves? We don't like it all to keep these things inside of us. We don't like to admit these things. We would much rather say we're right. And conversely, there are many people who would like to say, I'm always wrong. Who do you mean? Whores, pimps, criminals, alcoholics,

unfortunates, psychopaths, people suffering nervous breakdowns tend to deride themselves in the same way that people who are oriented to a superior point of view as a result of not of being so terrified of issues and conflicts that I think was so well stated in this in the poem by I can't remember his name it was Dover Beach, but anyhow he said, for we are hearers on a docking plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

where ignorant armies clash by night. I think that perhaps poetically and accurately and concisely describes a pervasive condition. Do you think it's all or nothing thinking and that we're not looking at people in a nuanced way? I think we tend to make heroes out of people as we tend to make enemies. And we like to think of ourselves as pure as Christian soldiers who are marching onward, or aesthetic philosophers who are braving the rigors of confusion and man's eternal despair and his sufferings at the hands of ignorance.

But it's not nearly as clean as that. Even the most high-bound intellectual people, the most esoteric thinkers, at least the ones I've met, I think I have experienced something with them that perhaps leads me to conclude that communication with oneself is a very, very difficult thing to achieve. And usually if you talk to someone long enough, and delicately enough, you eventually will find that there's an inconsistency with what they say and what they feel. Or on the other hand, there is a consistency with what they feel, perhaps they don't know, and what they say and what they feel, perhaps they don't know, and what they say, and what they do. But that interaction, that interrelationship

between what we think of or what we do and how we act and what we believe and what we feel is very often passes, and we don't see it. They're just ships that pass in the night. Yeah. In that respect, I feel that we must include ourselves. You sound interested in knowing yourself.

Do you think we all share that same quest to know who we are? I don't think it's the quest of all people, generally, no. I think it's the quest of a few people. There was a book by Gerald Sykes called The Hidden Remnant, and in this book he discusses issues that touch very pertinently on this theme. Since time immemorial, it has been the advice of those who are wise or pretend to be wise, or the disciples that have written down what they consider to be wise observations about life. And most of them, I think, can be summed up in the famous phrase that the unexamined life

is not worth living, and that the beginning of all wisdom is in self-knowledge and that the world is a reflection of oneself. Certainly today it behooves us more than ever to examine these things. Would you say there's a lack of self-knowledge or understanding? So often people say, well, don't tell me I know, you know, I don't know my own mind. I certainly do. The infinite delicacy, the gossamer, the ineffable smoke-like quality of the mind to rationalize, to justify its own feelings. If you hate someone, well let's examine for instance the hatred

of the Negro by the southerner or the hatred of the white by the black Muslims. If you examine, you talk to Elijah... Mohamed. Yeah, Mohamed Elijah. The honorable Elijah Mohamed is what he calls himself. You will find contained in his dialectic of hatred

the absence of hatred. You will find that there is no visible evidence or statement of hatred and yet the position certainly is one of that of a that there is no visible evidence or statement of hatred. And yet the position certainly is one of that of someone who is reacting to suffering. The reasons that he gives are perfectly true, 100% true. But the motivations are different. The motivations are completely different, and very often people can be 100% right for 100% wrong reasons. Can you think of an example?

I was talking to a woman the other day, an airline hostess, and she said she came from Georgia, in Southerner, and I said, do you believe in separate but equal facilities? And she said, no, I believe in integration. I think that they ought to be integrated, but I wouldn't want to, I don't think that the races ought to mix. I don't think that the races should be mongrelized. And I said, why not? And in the course of the argument, which I won't relate here, which was too extensive,

it really wasn't an argument. It was an exchange of views. Finally, when she came down to the last analysis of her assumptions, it was based on what she felt. It was not based on anything of what she thought, because as she reached out to find reasons and justifications, it wasn't the cleverness of my dialectic that defeated her. It was just a simple observation of a few obvious facts, such as the perfectly wonderful example of integrated living that has taken place in Hawaii, which is the mixture of three, perhaps three races, three or four races, and many, many different nationalities. And that is perhaps the most salient example of what can happen. And it's perfectly delightful to behold that society

because it's a complete living documented contradiction to this mongrelization point of view that is so often expressed. But nevertheless, getting between what we were talking about, it seems to me that the average Southerner has a very difficult time, as does the average Northerner, in inspecting his real motivations. Because we don't really like to admit that we are confused, or admit that we are frightened,

or admit that we are full of doubt, we don't like to. We like to just blot it out and say, no, that condition doesn't exist. I know my own mind. Don't tell me, don't give me any 25-cent psychoanalysis. Well, and perhaps that's absolutely right. You've talked about the commodification of the actor.

Yes. Well, in regards to that, I think that in order to profit, I think that it is one thing to blame and to criticize. But as we do perhaps, we do that, we must realize that these observations we have always apply to ourselves initially, because the tendency, you know, for most people seems to me, and most nations, oddly enough, is to say, well, the enemy is out there, the evil is out there, the negative factors are

outside myself. Explain what you mean. For instance, most of the Negroes in this country are rightfully and justifiably concerned with the outrages that have been perpetrated against them ever since they came here as slaves. And they have a perfectly decent, justifiable, ethical ground to stand on and to support their claims and their desires. And I don't mean to qualify that for at all, but if we examine, for instance, the history

of the oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, it is the Republic of Haiti, which was formed many, many, many years ago, I think it was in the 15th century. Men like Henri Christophe and Toussaint Louverture and Descelein and all those great Negro ex-slaves who threw off this colonial yoke and established their own democracy, patterned after the French. It doesn't seem like that's the solution either. Well, today, if you, any cursory examination of Haitian history

will show that it doesn't matter whether you're black or white or whether you're oppressed or whether you're free or no matter what you are. The fact is that they haven't had yet to be able to establish a kind of government and a kind of a pattern of life that is wholesome, because there is starvation, there is terrible social inequities,

and the most distressing maldistribution of profits and wealth and advantages. And in all those years, they have never been able to do it. So we can't assume that just because these things are lifted, that everything is going to be all right. What about here in America? Here in America, we have all the advantages that we could have everywhere in the world, anywhere in the world. We are a living dream. We are just a perfect example of what can be achieved and what the benefits are of an integrated industrial society

that has all its wants satisfied. Why is there so much dissatisfaction then? The interest that you have, you were concerned about these issues and the truth and what is going on with people? What are people really saying? And you are awash with doubts and concerns, and you are not at rest, you are not at peace, your personality does not

remind me that of some of the Tahitians who I've seen, who are peaceful people, the Eskimos. I am not either, and I think that we are representative in many respects of all Americans who have all these advantages, but do not have the essential ingredient which is a sense of well-being and a sense of peace. We don't have it.

We certainly aren't raging neurotics. We certainly aren't psychotic. We're not extreme despite what publicity might say of us. But nevertheless, we still are missing something. And it's that ineffable, indescribable, X-quality that we really must have and is certainly is not in money. It certainly is not in the attainment of material goods and manufactured things, although we certainly pursue it through whiskey, sex, notoriety, success, money, television sets, boating, Kiwanis activities, good doing, Playboy Club, perfect example, status, images. We'll try to find it anywhere in the world that we can because we think it's outside,

but of course it never is. Would you say you're more in tune with indigenous cultures than our materialist society? I don't think that we realize what the goal is. I think that the goal that all of us want is, just would, it's dangerous to generalize in this term because it's such a subtle issue. And it's like protoplasm or rather ectoplasm in its nature. But certainly we do not want strife.

We do not want it. But that seems inconsistent with what we do because we seem to want strife. We seem to chase after it. Do you think we chase after strife or conflict because of fear? I think that it is much easier to find an external enemy to fight than it is an internal enemy. Hitler is a perfectly wonderful, salient, eternal example of a man who was a paranoid. He was a man who felt attacked inwardly by his feelings.

He was a man who had a crushing sense of inadequacy and purposelessness. He was a man who felt that it was necessary to conquer the world. And of course, what he really wanted to do was to conquer his own emotions, his own dreadful, his own feelings of dread and fear, and his own feelings that one part of him was attacking another part of him. So he attacked the Jews. Now, as among all bigots, they will find a reason to attack the Jews or the Chinese or whoever it is, but he felt that it was necessary to attack these people. And then after he saw that the Jews were going to be killed and exterminated, which he did,

six million of them, then it was the Ukrainians, the Slavs rather, and he felt that they should open up. So they were being exterminated. There were some millions of them, I don't know how many. Then the Poles. But he had to exterminate all these people, get them out, because they were the enemies. Well, where would it end? If he had conquered the world, if he had gotten the heavy hydrogen from Norway, had he perfected the atomic bomb and the buzz

bomb, assuming that he did conquer the world, you can be assured that he would have killed the Negro, he would have killed the Japanese, he would have killed everybody except the pure Aryans, or done something, done the most he could to destroy. And then finally when he was left with the pure Aryans, then he would qualify what was purely Aryan, and eventually he would have been perhaps left with himself. Or he would have attacked the left-handed people of the world because their minds were diseased, that they were badly formed or something. But this man had to attack externally. Now, many Germans will tell you that he made important contributions to Germany because he came at a time when Germany was

certainly economically oppressed and suffering. And it's certainly true. He did build roads, hospitals. Well, Mussolini famously made the trains run on time. We always like to have things neat, and of course they're never neat. Do you think there's some unconscious motive going on within us? I noticed something interesting. In the Freedom Riders, there was one man who went down there and was beaten up very badly. And he put a sign on himself when he came back that said, I am a victim of racial prejudice. And he was a white man. And he put the sign on himself and stood there

with his head just listing slightly to the left with these great bulges and bruises and things. But he put himself on display as a martyr. Now, had there been no justifiable and reasonable issue to devote himself to, he might have found something else. It's likely that he would have found some other cause so that he could have had himself beaten into a pulp so that he could hang a different sign on him and say, I'm a martyr. You're talking about labeling.

We like to think that the trouble that we have is going to be solved by one thing or another. It's either getting all the blacks out of our way, getting all the whites out of our way and allowing us to have a decent life, getting all the rich people out of our way, getting all the disease out of our way, whatever it is. Imperfection is a natural thing, but often gets scapegoated. Does that sound right? I think that perhaps the key word in your remarks is scapegoat.

We all must find a scapegoat. It's too uncomfortable. It gives us a feeling of hopelessness to accuse ourselves of our iniquities or inadequacies or whatever it is. So we must find the face of that evil outwardly. Do you think these are common thoughts? As we were talking about yesterday, Joseph Campbell articulated that theme so well

in The Hero with a Thousand Faces because he traces the history of man's eternal search for the face of evil, for the face of good, for the face of virtue and for the face of virtue, and for the face of badness. The

idolatrous and relentless search for God and the devil. And we have our own personal gods and our own personal devils, and we have our system of archangels, and we have our system of archdevils, I'd say. And we worship them. And if you ask everybody in the world, what must we do to have a decent world. Some of them will say, you have to take women's rights away

because the women are really running the country and they're really out to get you. They own 89% of the economy and the laws are all in favor of the women. And that's what I think we ought to do. Somebody else will say, well, we ought to segregate all the peoples of the world and have no kind of mixture at all and put the mulattoes and all the racial mixtures

into one group. You're talking about apartheid. Yes. Everybody has a different idea as to how to solve the world. What is useful and what is not useful? What is good and what is not good? And the pursuit, not only the pursuit, but the implementation of trying to achieve

that leads us in the eternal circle. So what can we do? It seems so painfully clear that if the world were all a shining democracy, at least shining in the concept that most Americans think that America is a shining example of democracy, at least shining in the concept that most Americans think that America is a shining example of democracy, which I think it is not, then it would be swell. The communists think, well, if everybody was communized, it would be a wonderful world. Well, the minute that that happened, the day that the sun rose on those circumstances would be the day that you would have people saying, fighting one another for some other reason. Because the world has never been without conflict.

And I think it behooves us now, well, it's absolutely imperative that we do it because it is one world whether we like it or not. It might not be one world, but it's one planet. And it behooves us now to scientifically apply all our technology and investigative capacities to the nature of hatred, to the nature of man himself that produces the chaos in South Vietnam or the murder of the American Indian in the Sand Creek Massacre or the communist blood purge in Hungary. We have to do that because we cannot, I think we can no longer go along with a luxurious and comforting concept that there is an intrinsic difference between the Russian and the American, or the Chinese and the Indonesian.

This was the theme of your film One-Eyed Jacks, wasn't it? It wasn't fortunately articulated in the way I'd wanted it, because I wanted to show that the spectrum of good and bad exists in all people and that we cannot dispense with it. We have a duty to Carol Chessman as we have a duty to Dr. Schweitzer. We have to respect the nature of hatred, but we have to understand it in order to dissolve it. We cannot dissolve it by attacking it with hatred. And the age old writ that says that we should return the love for hatred doesn't mean that

we should stand there and allow ourselves to be pounded into a pulp by somebody who was... It simply means, at least to me... You mean an eye for an eye? We should deal with it with intelligence and with perception and not return in kind what it is. Certainly we're not going to let Carol Chesman run loose and commit those crimes and be socially destructive, as he was.

But he is a part of us. Society did something to him. One thing that's pleasing and encouraging is the fact that the old concepts of sin and badness are being revised in the courts, because unbeknownst to themselves, the judiciary, the people who pass judgment on criminals and things, are coming to understand that there must be some reason that fifteen or five young teenage people will stomp a crippled boy to death, stomp him to death, kick him, bash him into the ground, and expunge his life. It's a mystery why we did that. There's no rationalization. There's no reason for that. We can't say that they're insane

because we test them and they're not. We can't say that they are, they're evil because they're not. They're just, we don't know what to call them. Eventually, we start hovering around the possibility that something is not right with these people. And maybe something's not right with our society. So the question is, is the problem with the people and maybe something's not right with our society.

So the question is, is the problem with the people or the society? Now that is a good question because instead of being broken on the wheel as they did in England and punished and flailed, which of course produced nothing. Yeah. We are now trying to apply some of our knowledge gained in recent years to these extraordinary acts. But whatever we've done, it has resulted now in a swinging change, a slowly growing arc that is aiming towards an understanding of the dynamics of human feeling and behavior. You sound optimistic. You see, of all the wonders that science has yet produced, and not produced, but of all

the wonders in this age of scientific investigation, the greatest wonder of all is that science itself has not until very recently focused itself on the nature of man and what comprises him, what are the component parts of him, what makes him do this. So we're studying these things. We do it most amazingly in our motivational research laboratories in order to sell people cigarettes that give them cancer or underarm deodorants and we will do anything to exploit him. We will do everything that we can to study his discomforts and his hopes, his fears, his foibles, his wants, his needs, move up the quality.

We must sell him quality. We must sell him stature because he feels so inferior. This whole Playboy phenomena is interesting because it satisfies that urge of people feeling totally inadequate and totally without stature and individual reward. So we give them a kind of an airsats. A replacement or a bait and switch. Uh, mail order sophistication and meaning. Because it is, it has the word private.

It happened to have probably several million members. It's hardly private. But at least it's clever enough to sustain the illusion. A sense of belonging? Yes. But I think that wholesale attacks on things are now being, in many, many areas and congregations is now being examined so that the quality of wholesale and frontal assault on any issue, even on this issue that we're talking about, is undergoing examination. Do you think your performances are singled out because you bring this understanding into

your roles. I don't think that it's related to that, if I may disagree. I think that those are just superficial manifestations of what I have come to find as a result of the examination of myself, I think that it's always in poor taste and certainly questionable to use oneself as a reference point in that regard. In fact, I don't choose to use myself as a personal example, but I think that perhaps on the other hand, that's the only frame of reference, it's the only index, and it's the only lexicon that we can refer to.

I suppose the only one we have a possibility of knowing is ourselves. Certainly I can't refer to your experiences about what the world is about. I can't refer to C.P. Snow. I'm not going to investigate either Sitwell. I must view the world from what the world is and what the world is from the point of view of myself because I see the world through not only my retina but through my psychological retina. That's a good point. And I have to understand how I see the world,

because no matter where I look, my psychological flaws, whatever they are, and we all have them, each and every one of us, we have very definite concepts of what is good, what is bad, what is usable, what is not, what is interesting, what is boring, what is peaceful, what is usable, what is not, what is interesting, what is boring, what is peaceful, what is threatening. And I have to learn my special language about myself in order to be able to begin to communicate

with somebody else. Because if I don't know, if I don't know where those areas are, I won't know when the information is fed back into me from somebody else, that it is automatically being deflected and bouncing off the hard core of ignorance. How can you gauge that? I must make constant adjustments for what the other person is saying in relation to the perceptors that I must have knowledge of my own perceptors and how I receive language. For instance, you can tell me something that will irritate

me and you can express a point of view that might be unsettling to me. But then I have to ask myself, well, why is that point of view unsettling? And the first thing that I'm going to do is say, I'm going to reach into the bag full of rationalizations and I'm going to hurl a few generalizations, which might be very smart, might be very adroit, might be very clever, you know, and insidious in their use. They might not be accurate, though. They might be completely wrong when the real reason lies in some other area that I just can't bear to look at.

And most practically seen, you see this phenomenon in the South. And these poor, desperate people are so filled with a terror of what's going to happen if the Negroes come into power. They grab any reason under the sun, under the sun, and they completely ignore, in their fear and in their distress, they completely ignore the possibility that as a result of suppressing these people for so long, they feel enormously guilty, feel they unconsciously anticipate a great wave of hostility, part of which is real, certainly because the Black Muslim movement

is an indication that all is not rosy with the Negro, and that what at one time passed for a happy-go-lucky stereotype, the lurking antagonism in that creature who had undergone humiliation and hopelessness and degradation to its, you know, to its fullest measure has now come to life. But it seems that they now, the people in the South, are undergoing very important challenges and they're asking themselves all kinds of strange questions and eventually as

a result of this pressure, the arrest of Martin Luther King, these people going down and forcing these issues, an answer is going to be forthcoming. And sooner than we expect, people are going to be living together in peace, perhaps not entirely peace, but they're going to be living together and enjoying some measure of reasonable social intercourse and all these dreams of what was going to happen isn't going to happen. When we find a scapegoat, we can avoid our own role in the problem. I'd like to use that as an illustration. It's reminiscent of the old parable that the three blind men were walking along and they saw an elephant and one felt the side of it and says, oh, here's a wall. We run into a wall.

Someone else, someone, the other grabbed the tail and says, by no means, this is a snake, a snake with hair on the end of it. And the other one felt the leg and said, you're both wrong, it's a trunk. Well, returning to what we were saying before, you saw what Kenneth Tynan saw, you saw what perhaps Harold Clermont saw. Now someone else saw something different. It all depends on our particular disposition. Well, how does something connect in a timeless way? That's always been a mystery to me, because Shakespeare has lived through the ages because he has communicated something eternal. He has communicated something in a major way. He has said something that has affected all of us, so he has lived. But there are others who, in their day, were considered great, but who died off because

they didn't have this universal touch, these universal tentacles that just spread into the future because they lacked the universality of communication. If you were to play Hamlet, considering how often it's been done, do you think your interpretation would be different than ones that have come before? Yes, I suppose. Well, anybody that would do Hamlet would alter in some degree, in some poetic flavor, the nature of the man, his relationships and his aspirations, his fears. Some would accentuate the confusion, some would accentuate the poignancy, some would very clearly delineate the philosophical stalemate that Hamlet finds

himself in. And according to the man, they would bring to life some part or illuminate some part of the mosaic that is Hamlet today. How do you mean mosaic? I use the word mosaic because I think that accurately describes what Hamlet is, because it is a mosaic of many, many things, many, many points of view, any and all of which can be successfully illuminated and accentuated, and still without disturbing the main theme of the piece that holds itself intact Do you think Shakespeare's particular in some way or would this go for? for most playwrights, I think that that if a playwright

has Great great power Well, I'll give you an example. I don't think that John Well, I'll give you an example. I don't think that John, what's his name, he wrote Tea House of the August Moon. John Patrick. John Patrick is a great playwright. I think that he is a fine craftsman and that he wrote a wonderful play, delightful play, an extraordinary technical virtuosity in many respects.

For instance, I feel that I did not play that role well at all. ordinary technical virtuosity in many respects. And for instance, I feel that I did not play that role well at all. I felt that I was miscast for it and that I didn't do very well in it, as well as Davey Wayne or Eli Wallach. But nevertheless, that play had such strength and construction that it carried. It carried the bad performance of myself and I think a performance less valuable than some others by Glenn Ford. I don't think the Danny Mann directed it very well either.

The story was still delivered. Whatever it was, the strength of the play, the framework carried us through because it was successful. That is almost an actor-proof, director-proof vehicle. It had the fiber to support the most incredible errors of interpretation and rendition. Wow. And such is the play of Tennessee Williams, Streetcarning Desire. Do you think of yourself as a craftsman or an artist?

Well, I didn't say that I was a craftsman. I really don't. Well, I think that I don't know what an artist is. I don't know really how to apply that. There are some people who will say that Yehudi Menuhin is not an artist. He is an interpretive creator, and that an artist is someone who does, makes an original contribution, who performs the service of creating wholly something that is separate from the work of other people, and that William Cappell, who unfortunately died in this airplane crash, was not an artist.

And that Leonard Bernstein is not an artist, he's an interpreter. In that respect, I don't know how to answer it. Do you think of yourself as an artist? I live in a world that deals with dollars and cents in a very crass fashion, that movie production is thought of as product. It's the law of supply and demand. Now contained within that, I think, as within the world of journalism.

The Manchester Guardian certainly lives in a world that is controlled by the law of supply and demand, they have to supply the demand that is made on them for a certain quality of news, certain quality of information and interpretation that will not be tolerated by, let's say the likes of Time Magazine brand of journalism. So it's, with many respects, I don't feel that it's entirely appropriate that I should say, call myself an artist.

Well, I feel comfortable calling you an artist. When I have those associations, I think that there's great potential about artistry. And perhaps it's out of my respect for what it means to be an artist that I don't choose to call myself on because I think it's not something that's easily come by. How about in theater? In the theater, just because, you know, you see the same kind of very practical,

monetary considerations governing theatrical enterprise here. Of course. I don't know, I've seen artistry on television, to my way of thinking. I've seen the spirit of what I think is artistry, dedication and beauty. You use the word interpreter. Are you a fan of jazz? Yeah, I really don't have a good enough ear to know what is there.

It's very difficult for me to communicate with jazz in a really fine way. I, of course, appreciate it. But jazz is improvisational. Do you see acting as improvisational as well? Yes, I suppose so. I don't mean to mince words about it, and certainly the actor is obliged to make a creative contribution. I think that the actor has to borrow the form of the writer to bring his contributions to life. I think that the technique that I use is primarily an intuitive one and can be seen many, many places in the world in many,

many different circumstances. For instance, Eleanor Duzo is a woman who contrasted with Sarah Bernhardt, used a technique of feeling and the participation of her emotions and her intuitions in her acting. A man by the name of Alfonso Bedoya who played in the Treasure of Sierra Madre, he played the bandit, gave a spectacular intuitive performance. The one with the big hat? The gold hat, yes, that was his wonderful performance. Never been, he doesn't know Stanislavski from from Hamburger or Hot Tamale. But he gave a marvelous performance.

This fellow that played him Bicycle Thief, certainly not an actor. So it's, I think, readily discernible that people, it's an ordinary technique and it's not limited to, well, I suppose it is, if what Duzer did is jazz, then I suppose what I did is jazz too, and perhaps it's an accurate phrase. I wanted to ask you a question, though. You sit and you ask many questions, and it's so often, it's so often as the case, we get no impression of you as a person. We don't know what goes on in your mind, and you are of enormous influence and of vital concern to many people and many listeners.

And I think that it perhaps is not inappropriate that I ask you a few questions about yourself. And this might startle you, but I think that you, in the spirit of communication, you have also an obligation to describe some of your feelings and your points of view. I was wondering, what is it about this particular kind of work that interests you? Why are you preoccupied with these questions? What is the nature of your search and your furrowing out this information from people of all kinds and all manner.

What kind of contribution does it make to you as a person? I'm just curious. I like to learn. I'm naturally curious. I'd like to point out something. You see, when I ask you a simple question such as, please describe what it is that you feel about and what the reasons are that you do it. You find yourself, I've noticed, tense and concerned and perhaps a little confused and a little unsettled by the question.

And I mean to point out, I think this bears very, very importantly on what we were talking about before of how difficult it is really to ascertain the nature of what we do. It's very difficult. When you ask me a question about something, I really have to, you know, I can give you a glib answer and I can just suddenly start talking and feeling. But if I want to answer the question honestly, I have to really search in my mind. And the questions that I... You could ask me a question... Most of the questions you've asked me, I have asked myself before. The subjects I have approached, I've asked myself before, so I've come up with an answer.

And whether it's right or wrong, history will bear out, or further inspection will corroborate. In this illustration, we find that when someone that you're interviewing suddenly turns around and asks you a question, you have to do a great deal of communication with yourself. Suddenly, a whole system of finding and inspection and search begins. And I think that it's useful perhaps to observe that it is not easy for any of us when we are asked the simplest question to give a simple answer. I love that you ponder the questions and answer them seriously.

What thoughts are you occupied with these days? I've noticed that the members of the military forces who are directly instrumental in the setting off of atomic warheads have to be people who have to pass very strong and stringent and exhaustive psychological tests to realize and to make absolutely sure that it will not fall, or the decision will not fall to a man who is emotionally unstable. What do you think that means? Yes, what does it mean emotionally unstable? By their own standards, by the standards of the army, not by the standards of anyone else.

What they employ, psychiatrists and psychologists, to investigate these people. Now I think with that, we begin to see the encroachment of scientific investigation as it is properly applied, and perhaps should be properly applied to our governmental figures. Now we examine the life of Bobby Kennedy, and let us say he is out to get Mr. Hoffa. Now let us say that he is not out to get Mr. Hoffa, or he is out to get the, what do you call it, the... The syndicate. He wants to get the syndicate.

Now how much of a personal challenge, how much of his personal feelings is involved in that and how much is just a reasonable, cold heart, intellectual task that confronts him? It's something that only he can ask, but we can ask a taint to a certain extent. There must be something personal about it. Jimmy Hoffa's defense of himself certainly is not completely the defense of his union. It's not his defense of Dave Beck or the principles of labor. Certainly there are, he's defending other issues, lateral issues, hidden issues that we don't see.

What are your thoughts on the people in charge? Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. De Gaulle, Mr. Macmillan, President Kennedy, are all people who are very human, perhaps all too human, in face of the most incredible responsibilities and the most awesome decisions that they have to make in this world. And it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility or usefulness that a man like Senator Talmadge or Senator Ellender, who are people notable for their, well, yes, their beliefs and their politics tempered by their political locations in this country, or people like Senator McCarthy. It would be valuable to examine them. It would be valuable to see what an examination of Senator McCarthy might produce, or Mr. or uh... may put a good chambers or uh... paul robeson

or uh... uh... elijah muhammad what is in the nature of these people that makes them leaders and that's a naive in american now is to believe we intuitively not but we are not so naive as to believe richard nixon is devoid of feeling.

When he went before the press, he made an enormous political error. And he showed himself a weakness that perhaps might have been dangerous had he been the president of the United States and been faced with the challenge of Cuba. He showed that he was a man of emotional viewance and kind of an emotional quality that he adhered to for tonight. How did you see it? We saw it in his face. Some people are more controlled than others. We don't know to what extent Mr. Kennedy makes an emotional decision. We

don't know if he ever says, for God's sake, what's the matter with you out there? Why can't you do it? We don't know what he said to the governor of Mississippi over the telephone. We don't know what emotions went surging and coursing through him. But what we do know is that the world is filled with atomic bombs today, and that the unexamined life of a politician is a dangerous life, and that irresponsible and people who are unprepared to handle situations cannot afford, we cannot afford the luxury of their indulgence in positions that they do not rightfully belong in. Do you suppose we all could use a bit of self-examination?

Well, I don't suppose it's any more important for us now than it ever was. Or I don't suppose proportionately more people are examining their lives now than they ever were before. There are some people who stand head and shoulders above the others and above the rest of us because they, for one reason or another, are obliged to find these insights at whatever cost it is to themselves and the world around them. But I certainly think it behooves everyone to do that, but not all of us are disposed that way. But certainly we will have to examine our politicians, they will have to examine themselves,

and we will have to examine them much more closely, because the responsibility of the politician is much greater today than ever was. And I think that these influences slowly will make their concentric influences felt all over the world. And I think that they eventually will come when men like Khrushchev, Mao Tse-tung, Tsar Karno, Tsigun-ri, Chiang Kai-shek, De Gaal, all of these men. And whatever time we find them will be men of, men chosen more carefully through examination of themselves and examination of the peoples because the enormous responsibility that they hold. Do you think it would be of value for each of us to do deep

self-examination? Well, yes, but I think that that kind of knowledge and depth is reserved only for a few special people who are willing to go through to make the journey through the night sea, as someone once said it, to find one's centers. And whether it is found through investigations of the applications of the mystique of Zen Buddhism or psychoanalysis or some other active, vital, inspecting technique or philosophy, they will find it. But I think it's too optimistic to suppose. I don't think that history ever indicates that people en masse

are willing to make that enormous sacrifice. How important is having a life of meaning? Well, life is always given meaning by people, whether it's having a lot of money or being sexually virile, or having power or status symbol, or a lot of property or influence, or whatever it is that symbolizes

success and meaning for people. People go on pursuing it. What are some ways that people can live beyond that surface level? I think that it is now clear there are certain techniques that have been developed and are being developed, applied to the human being, perhaps offers a fair explanation and a more useful one as to what he is and how he works and why he works. We constantly are reminded that criminals and people of misfortune of that kind are being examined from the point of view of being ill, not from the point of view of being sick. And gradually those experiments and their findings come down to the everyday level, of course, which is always dangerous too.

Were you moved by the Kurosawa film Akiru? I was moved by the display of character that this man had, by his bravery and his refinements as a person. How little it was for him to want to make a municipal recreation area for children. But that was, in his last moments of life, his glory. And there was something very touching about that. The man was purified, and he became whole and dedicated.

And I think wherever we see that kind of dedication, it's moving to us. It gave his life meaning, didn't it? Let us not say it gave his life meaning, but it gave his life more meaning. All our lives have meaning. Your life as an interviewer, as someone who was curious about the common point of view, the esoteric point of view. The secretary who sits across the room talking on the telephone has a meaning to our life.

I have a meaning to my life, diversified as it might be. But how much that meaning is valuable to us, I think, varies from person to person. How real our meanings are to ourselves, I think, varies from person to person. How real our meanings are to ourselves, I think varies from person to person. And there's no way to judge that. I can't judge the realness or the usefulness that your meaning has for you. And it's difficult for you to judge that for me.

It's something that, because we're different organisms, it's something we must judge for ourselves. How did you choose to do the film The Ugly American? Well, I felt that it was, there were many comments that, many things that I felt convinced about that I would like to articulate, many sentiments and observations that I felt a kinship with that were contained in this, and not all, many of them I disagree with, and some I wish had been

more and some I wish had been less. But nevertheless the total impression of the film does share to a great extent my personal feelings, as well as George's and Mel Tucker's and Stuart Stern. This was a picture made in concert. Who were Mel and Stuart? Stuart Stern was the writer, Mel Tucker was the producer. I see. And that was why I chose this film. Actually, it wasn't the part so much as it was the film itself.

How were you different than your 20-year-old self or the 20-year-olds of today? How they differ is something I don't know, and that's the result of the ineffable distance between one age and another. If it were easy to communicate with another age, then we'd never have any trouble with learning. Because all that was ever written, all that was ever useful has been written, rather, and is accessible in literature and art, philosophy, but we read it. We might as well be reading hieroglyphics

because you can't learn how to live except through living. And you can't communicate things that you've learned in any way, everybody has to learn it for themselves. And it's just hopeless to try and cram down the, or cram into the brains of others. First of all, we don't have any right to do that, I don't think, to invade the minds of others. I think everyone has certainly a right and a duty to come to their own conclusions. How do you think you've been perceived earlier in your life versus now?

I was impressed by the fact that at one time I was, in some respect, the hero of the young, and now I am not. Someone else has taken my place because I've gone beyond. I'm no longer a teenage symbol, and someone else has done it. But there again, they have their own gods, their own worshipers, their own heroes. I've come to realize that the hero with a thousand faces is the hero of a thousand different people,

and that... Do you miss being the hero? I've outworn my usefulness as a hero to the teenager. They want someone else from the spirit of rebellion stated in a different way. And I was impressed with that and also with the strangeness, the strangeness of looking down the funnel of the years into a time when I was 18, 19, and 20. And that it might as well be 100 years away. It's not just whatever it is.

Do you think kids today are as cool as you were when you were young? Yes, I think they tend to be more cynical, more questioning. They're assaulted by so many lies every day. The false lies on television, the attitude of the announcers, the way the products are pushed, the sort of heisting and psychological second story men that haunt and push around. Everybody knows it's a lie and it's so much that we live as a lie. And it's taken for granted that we live in terms of lies. But the question isn't so much whether it's true or not, but how much of a lie there is in it. And I think that they are so loaded with false values on every hand that they've become

a little cynical. Hmm. What do you think about that? I think it's a healthy reaction. It's something done in self-defense, and they don't believe it. The kind of world, the kind of Christian world that has taught them in the churches and the kind of Christian world that they meet on Madison Avenue is a vastly difference. And there's a large schism in our society as a result of this endless, relentless push

for the mother money. I know that you're a father. What do you tell your children? Tell them about what? About the world today. I don't tell them anything. I tell them something when they ask me. I say, what is this?

Or why is this? And I try to explain it to them as simply as I can. For instance, people have come up to me, watched to my discomfort while my son was there and gone through this rather embarrassing ritual of asking for my autograph and the magical touch, rubbing the touchstone, the lucky stone of the hero, and looking adoringly and worshipfully at this symbol, strange, peculiar manifestation of our funny life here

in America. So I was signing this autograph. I couldn't do otherwise. I always sign for children because they really don't know any better. But it's so distressing when you see adults indulging in this sad, talisman-seeking kind of thing. Yeah. But sometimes you just have to do it because you don't want to be offensive. Anyhow, he was there. I happened to be with my older boy. What was your son's reaction? Daddy, why does he want your name?

Well, I had to scrape the inside of my brain to give him a decent answer. I said, well, I don't know why they want my name. Some people do that. Some people just think it's lucky if they have things. They have rabbit's feet and they have little charms. And some people like me and they want a memento from having been near me.

And so they want me to scribble something. It was quite difficult to answer. Wow, it must be difficult for them. I think that the task set out for them is enormous. I think to be the sons of a famous man is an awful burden. And it's awfully tough because I'll have to live up and be constantly known as my sons. I will not be known as their father.

I will be known as my sons. And that's an ugly, ugly burden. And I hope to find some way to protect them, if I can, to bring them up in some place where they are protected from this thing. Where do you mean? In other places in the world, it doesn't matter who I am, and I'm just another two-legged person walking around.

But when they go to school, then they very quickly become aware of the fact that their father is somebody who was somehow an important commodity in everyone's home and everyone's life. And I think he's seen, you can't keep the kids away from the television. You can't be there all the time. They see it. It's an enormous problem and I wish I could spare them that. But they'll just have to work through as best they can

and with all the help I can give them. You use the word important commodity. Do you see it that way? Yes, I think that we're all bought and sold in one way or another. A few of us aren't, but there's a price tag on all of us. If you see ideas on television sold, you see political ideas that are bought.

I mean, the mere expression of the word, I don't buy that, comes from a kind of mercantile invasion of the American mind, the values of buying and selling. And you can even buy stature, as we discussed before, by being in the Playboy Club, or move up to quality by drinking a certain beer. And it's perfectly absurd and sad, but nevertheless, that's the world we live in. Do you think cynicism is the answer? I don't know if you can answer that question.

I can answer it. I've done the best I can with my age and my life. I don't think that I'm a raging success in my life. I don't think that I've achieved certain things that I would rather like to have achieved within the realm of my own soul. But then we do what we can. We can't do any better than we can. And we use the techniques and the reserve fuel tanks that are afforded us. And maybe his life will be less pressured in some way.

Maybe it's so hard to tell when nations and empires rise and fall within a period of 25 years, and there are fantastic revelations by science. It'll be difficult to predict how difficult the world will be. It's impossible to know. Let's see what's revealed. As I get older, I have become more convinced that a simple way of life, a life that is directly related to living, the getting of food and the making of it, the preparing of it, work that is directly related to living, such is the kind of work that you find in almost any primitive community.

It's funny we think of primitive as backwards. I think it's fundamentally more wholesome. I think that richness and success just so poorly distorts life. It hasn't really meant anything. I think that it tends to mean something because people think, well, they'll have security, but they don't. We don't have economic security here. We're little islands separated one from another. If you starve, you have to go to the state, but you're a social reject if you're poor and you're not successful. There's something sick about you, something malignant and unusable.

People don't like to be around failure, at least failure in the common sense. And they can't understand. People can't understand other people turning their back on material goods and not taking full advantage of it when you can. You're speaking of an old way of living, in tune with nature, outside of modern society, no consumer culture. Well, they have no sense of what it is to have or have not. They have bananas, they have coconuts, they have breadfruit, they have fish in the lagoon, they want a house, they stick some palm fronds together and a few hunks of wood.

And for a few pennies, they can get a parejo. And they live perfectly happy. Sounds like paradise. The Tahitians don't work, except when they want something specific. But that will, of course, change when the marketing psychologists invade that area when the world communication system is complete. Then if the Japanese flood the South Pacific with a lot of television sets, then the marketeers will invade the realm of the Tahitian also and force a market, force them

to want things, tease them into it, cajole them, shame them into it, humiliate them into it, saying you're poor, you're backward, you're no good, you're not civilized. The advances in technology and mechanization isn't negative per se, but the way that it's happening seems to be having a profoundly negative effect. Yes, I think that America has not finished with its pioneering in this world, oddly enough. We are pioneering a great many things. Certainly we're pioneering through an age of the inundation of our lives with material

things, the inundation of our minds with material considerations. And so often we're criticized as a tinker toy society and a gadget-oriented civilization, and with a butt of so many jokes as a result of that. Isn't that the basis of the American system? I think when you go to Paris or Germany or go to Italy, you find the same kind of merchandising psychology, the same kind of mercantile thinking. The forced markets, it so often reminds of a forced feeding geese when they stuff a metal pipe down a goose's throat and pour corn in it to swell his liver.

That's what they've done to us. They've swollen our liver. We've done that to ourselves and it'll take time for us to understand what we're doing to ourselves. It really doesn't mean anything. It's a race to nowhere. The rat race, the conniving and racing lust that we have for success finds us counterfeit. Why did you make the decision to become an actor? I don't know. The reasons, for the reason that we do things that are lost I think in the very subtle

nature of our being. I suppose I once thought that if you took a handful of sand and threw it up into the air in the wind, you could predict if you knew all the factors, the weight of each grain of sand, its location in the mass, its shape, its specific density, the application of the pressure, the force of the wind. Theoretically, you could predict what would happen if you knew all the factors and where each sand grain was located, exactly what was happening in its relation, its weight, its collision force in relation to the mass. But I don't think that that's possible. And in the same way, it's not possible to understand what we do.

And I can make guesses at it and probes at it. But I don't suppose I could really tell you why. It's lost in the tangle of all the things that make up what I am as a person, which is infinitely complex and intricate, and perhaps beyond our perception, at least beyond mine. I hope it's been enjoyable for you to ponder today's thoughts. I think that something very useful has come out of this discussion, and many of the discussions I've had recently.

I think that exchanges of this kind with people, there is a growth in communication and a hunger for it. On television you see so many shows going, discussion shows, and you wonder, when they first came out, what the hell are they doing? They're just sitting there talking, and gradually you came to realize that there was a hunger for conversation, for exchange of ideas. I think this is a really remarkable thing because whereas it took 1,500 years for Buddhism, I think that come from India to Japan, it takes the twist 37 hours to get to Australia.

Wow. Maybe less. Whatever it is, weak. And so when new worthwhile dynamic ideas, conceptions come, there can be a very quick exchange of them and application of that knowledge. And I think that's wonderful. It's also dangerous too, because with the television and the radio and whatnot, it's so easy to train, poison and discipline people's minds as they do in Red China. They have loudspeakers that blast from morning till night, make announcements from morning

till night, rubbing and scrubbing this propaganda into the souls and the bones and the minds of these children. And don't forget social media. The Nazis did that and it was very difficult. There was an article that I read which dealt with the denazification of emotionally disturbed children in Germany after the war, because these children were brought up as Nazis. They were told to tell on their parents, and they became very neurotic and full of problems about that.

And it's very hard to eradicate that. Even now, there are people walking around who still are diseased from that malignant influence. Is there anything else you want to talk about? No. Except that I might point out that I've had so many microphones stuck in my face in the past three weeks since I've been on this 35,000 mile tour.

I've often asked myself the question, I find myself talking, what are you talking about? Why is the microphone stuck in your face? I know that if I was a dentist from Duluth, that it might not be my face that the microphone was stuck in. And I find myself giving my opinions, but always at the same time wondering why? Why are my opinions asked? And I wonder sometimes if not this very moment is not a manifestation of the kind of thing we were talking about.

Why me and not you? Why me and not my secretary sitting across from them with a waiter? But I suppose you do. You do interview all kinds of people, don't you? I think anyone who's examining themselves probably have something interesting to share. In Grey's eulogy in the country church chart, he says, full many a flower is left to blush unseen. I recommend that book again, that Gerald Seichler called The Hidden Remnant, which deals with this because we never know where we'll find that person. We won't find them categorically.

I don't believe, as you do, that the artist is a man who necessarily is the articulator of wisdom or knowledge. I think you'll find it in the mason or the shoemaker or the farmer or maybe a Tahitian who can't even articulate it. You know, it would be interesting, I would think, sometime to get criminal. I think it would be really interesting to interview someone who's in prison. That's wonderful. Listen, at that point, I think that's a fitting close.

I do want to say that a lot of strife and storm and harm come my way because I am a saleable commodity and I get bought and sold all the time and it's rare that I can really sit down and give my point of view unedited, not invented and to be judged for what I said as a result of saying it completely. And anyhow, I am very grateful to you for that opportunity because so often it is unpleasant to see yourself so rudely misrepresented and I thanks very much. Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton?

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