The Joe Rogan Experience - #1375 - Edward Norton

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

Edward Norton is an actor, writer, producer, director, and filmmaker. His new film "Motherless Brooklyn" opens in theaters on November 1.

we go. I always know the conversation is going to get off to a good start when I meet a fellow Lenny Bruce fan. Yes. Yeah. And I, you know, there's that line in Fight Club, the things you own end up owning you. And I generally am not a stuff guy. But when I came in here, I did find myself going, this is the right kind of place to

keep stuff. Yeah. And I was, I've been wandering around looking at things, and that was my favorite thing that I saw. You have a couple of great Lenny Bruce posters, one of which I've never seen. Which one? The one with his, where he, it's really wild.

He looks like an Indian guru or something, staring into the middle distance. That's amazing to photograph of him. Yeah, I kind of bought as much vintage Lenny Bruce stuff as I could find. This place has sort of evolved into a semi-gallery. I would like to have a house with nothing in it and then have this place just filled with shit.

No, I kind of agree with that. Also, I think that it's fun. When you have people come through a space so that you're actually like sharing the things. It's sort of like you're letting someone come in and wander. Some of the best museums in the world are people's individual curation. Some of the best art collections ever made are better than any museum because they're put together by someone and you're finding like the threads and things. Yes.

So I think when you can assemble like things that have meant something to you, but you can put them in a space where other people can bump into them, it's better than just letting them just collect dust in your own home where you stop looking at them. You have a very unusual perspective for someone who makes a living as an actor. Why do you think so? You're a very thoughtful person. Very thoughtful. I know a lot of thoughtful actors. I do too. why do you think so you're a very thoughtful person very thoughtful i know a lot i

know a lot of thoughtful actors i do too i do too yeah but it's not common you got to find them you got to curate those folks yeah i um it's a funny it's a funny it's a funny gig by like by definition it's like if you think about all the like the-yang in it, the paradoxes in it, it's like on the one hand with guys, actors, there will be a lot of – there's a certain kind of – not macho, but there's like men will look to play intense roles and these things. But what you're doing is like, it's, it's, you're playing dress up.

Like, you know, you're, you're, you're like, and I always liked, I always liked the Dorothy Parker, the famous New York, you know,

writer said, scratch an actor, you'll find an actress. I think it's the greatest line. It's not, and it's not how it sounds just to be a little, you know, like,

you know, like, that's not a knock on actresses. No, no, no. But that's the real truth of the whole thing is like we put on makeup, we put on clothes, we play dress up, and we pretend to be other people. when people are like, you know, sometimes my brother and sister will laugh because I've done these certain things that have a certain kind of iconic intensity or whatever, right? And they look at me and they're like, are you kidding?

Like, have you ever seen the size of his ankles? They're like, my brother's like, he's such a twerp. Like, he's such a, my brother's like two inches bigger than me and 30 pounds bigger and way stronger, you know, my little brother. And he's, and it's always like, he's a theater nerd. He's not like tough. They're like, don't buy the Hulk. Yeah, no.

Or American History X. I think there's – sometimes it's really funny the way there's a posture in it. Sometimes there's like a public-facing posture that some people who are in this trade, this weird thing, will adopt. And it's like, hey, man, I hate to tell you, but like you don't have to live into some – you don't have to live into it i sometimes feel like people are compensating for the fact that what they do in fact is play dress up right do you do you think it's also that they have to kind of uh project this image to ensure that they get more of these tough guy roles or maybe maybe i don't know i don't know i i think um or or maybe it's like that's who they wanted to be. Maybe in a weird way they're living into – some people I think they relish the opportunity to change the story of who they are. And they're getting to – through getting well-known, they're getting this chance to sort of like wipe the slate of whatever it is they were getting away from. And they're getting to – the chance to sort of create a persona that they're happier with than before.

Right, like what they wish they always were. Yeah. In their darkest times yeah or or um you know yeah there's there's uh i also think there's a funny thing which is there's this history of famous actors right so and it and it i do think it sort of begins with brando because brando had such an enormous effect on the psychology of men in in america he really he really like and if you look at what i would call like the great generation of american actors the the dustin hoffman robert nearer robert duvall gene hackman um al pacino morgan freeman meryl streep like this you know the whole post that's all like the post brando generation all of All of those people, literally all of them, wanted to become actors because of Marlon Brando.

And he so rewrote the idea of what it was, what it could be, that you got a whole – it was like what Bob Dylan did in the culture. It was like it rewrote – it just rewrote the game almost. Or like what Lenny did with comedy. Yeah, absolutely. Lenny Bruce. And there are these people who come and they have like a kind of a permanent, they're a permanent before and after in a certain kind of field. You know what I mean? Hendrix with the guitar.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, I would say so. I would say so. with the guitar and yeah yeah yes i would say so i would say so in rock guitar yeah uh although it is interesting when you go back and look at rock in that era there's that famous story of i think of i don't remember if it's like pete townsend making eric clapton come with him to hear hendrix and clapton crying yes you know about it yeah i heard that story but you can't but you also can't discount what Clapton in, you know, there's those famous photos of the wall Clapton is God. Like, there's, it's hard to like, you can't really underrate what Clapton did to guitar and guitar, you know, in that era too. Right.

No, he was phenomenal, but it was a different thing. It was a different thing. Yeah. Jimi Hendrix was a protean he seemed like he broke through to a new dimension yeah i agree through the membrane of existence into this new sound and there's guys that are like there's people that have a distinct set like do you are you a gary clark jr fan no i can't gary clark Jr. is a phenomenal blues guitarist. Okay.

And he has a sound that's almost instantaneously recognizable as Gary Clark Jr. You hear him and you go, oh, my God, there it is. Everyone who works with him is just like, they just walk away sweating, just going, Jesus Christ. Wow. It's phenomenal. I feel that way about Willie Nelson. I think Willie Nelson is legitimately in country music like there's before and after Willie

Nelson. And you can say that Hank Williams Jr. or whatever that he – but Willie Nelson to me is the hinge around which it goes from being something that had a Nashville kind of Grand Ole Opry kind of polish to it, and he basically took it. He reclaimed it as this American roots thing and put jazz in it. That's what's so crazy is anyone who plays music knows Willie Nelson is essentially a jazz guitar player. Nelson is essentially a jazz guitar player. Like, and he's, you know, Redheaded Stranger is,

to me, that's a before and after kind of a thing, too. Like, there's that whole outlaw thing. And I think there's a whole lot of, it's almost like after that, there's two camps. There's still going to be, like, the, you know, the Steve Earle in his Copperhead Road thing is more the posh thing but then there's like steve earl roots steve earl you know what i mean it's like he almost like straddled it but but my point about brando was just that like he he he changed the he changed the idea of the type of person that male actors wanted to be they want suddenly it was like they wanted to have like a patina or a reputation as a visceral they wanted to

be visceral not polished they wanted to be muscular they wanted to be masculine they wanted to be um you know uh intense like those were not the kind of words that people when you think back on like Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant that is not what movie stars were aspiring to they were aspiring to polish a kind of a polish

before Brando and after Brando. There was an authenticity right? There's something to his performances where you go oh well this is more like real life than a fit like on the waterfront like the i could have been a contender thing yeah like when he's doing that you're like well oh this is how someone would actually behave if they felt like their life had been a disaster and it could have been avoided well you just hit just hit on something, though, that drives me nuts because whenever people sort of talk about Brando, they're like, you know, they're sort of the Stanley Kowalski,

the brutal masculinity, et cetera. The thing about Brando is he is beautiful. He's kind of this enormous Roman-looking guy. He's kind of this enormous Roman-looking guy. But where he kills, where he really kills is this kind of broken sensitivity that he had. And I could have been a contender. It's not a tough guy speech. It's the opposite.

It's a broken tough guy. It's a guy practically crying, saying, like, you were my brother, and you should have looked out for me. I needed you looking out for me, and my life's gone down the toilet because of that, in that moment. You didn't look out for me. It's like tearful. And even the best moment of Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar is really, it's like when he falls on his knees in front of his wife and cries. You know what I mean? is really it's like when he falls on his knees in front of his wife and cries. You know what I mean?

It's like that's what he was way better in a lot of ways to me. It's the fact that he was actually kind of in touch with his emotional life. It's not that he was like so macho at all. It's that he looked that way, but he actually had this like poetic sensitivity yes and it was it it resonated real like it felt real yeah and if you watch actors before him there was a certain undeniable theatric element to what they were doing that was like, oh, this guy's acting. Yeah. Whereas he was, he seemed like a guy who was really living the scene. Yeah. Yeah. And some of it, sometimes I think it sounds silly to say the instrument of a person, but

he has this crazy, he looks the way he looks, but he's got this marble mouthed, he's not articulate. horrible mouthed. He's not articulate. He doesn't come off as like, there's a mushiness to the way he speaks and a kind of a, yeah, it doesn't have a style. You know, the guys before that, it was, you felt that they were working on their style. And he seemed to be sort of like scratching his ribs and mumbling and you know in a t-shirt and he just was

he was kind of present in the moment I think it was all accentuated by the way he ended his life like the end of his life he was enormous gigantic fat guy and he just given in to all of his vices and he was just this guy he was a beautiful man yeah he just didn't seem to give a fuck about that at all

yeah i think he said something to me one time about how um how much he was enjoying his life when he was like 23 and and he's like i you know even when he was doing the play street car that made him famous he was telling me like he would get with his pal Diego and go up to Harlem, go to clubs and hit on girls and all these things. And, and I said, you weren't aware of what was going on, you know, and he goes, well, there was, I was aware of a certain amount of noise rising. And then one day I woke up and I was sitting on a pile of candy. and then one day I woke up and I was sitting on a pile of candy. That's what he – and I thought, what a really wild way to say it. And I do think – I'm not even joking to me. It's like what you said. It was like after that, they were just – it was like there was no boundaries. He was like – he was getting every – everything was – he wasn't going to be able to resist.

He wasn't disciplined. He wasn't a super disciplined able to resist. He wasn't disciplined. He wasn't a super disciplined person. He was a very poetic person. And I don't think he was disciplined. And I think that a lot of what happened – you know, he had something like 17 children. And he got – you know, he had appetites and he had these things, and I think that – I do think that he, you know, struggled to deal with all the things that came with being that famous. Yeah. And being that famous when there wasn't really a lot of examples of how to do it right or wrong before you. Yeah.

It's sort of the Elvis thing, right? Yeah, it's the Elvis thing. The flip is like Dylan, who I still find myself, like when you watch the new Scorsese, have you seen that thing, Rolling Thunder? It's really worth watching that. Or the original Scorsese doc about him, No Direction Home. or the original Scorsese doc about him, One No Direction Home.

Here's this guy, he's in his early 20s, and they're coming at him with all this voice regeneration, all this stuff, and he's like, that's nothing I can relate to, man. And he's going, I can't help wondering if Lenny Bruce loved Dylan. I don't know that, but I would think that Lenny Bruce was tuned in to Dylan, because Dylan's thing was like, don't ask me what it means, man.

I wrote it. I don't know what it means. What do you think it means? He was just constantly going, buzz off, man. I'm not picking it apart for you. I'm not going to pick it apart for you. I'm not going to buy into this stuff you're putting at me. And how did he – he was 20 20 21 years old like who resists who resists people falling all over them to call them great

when they're that age nobody right nobody has that kind of like sensibility sensibility to go everything you're bringing at me is going to be bad for me and i it's it's like watch the if you watch those interviews with him when he's that age, it's pretty astonishing. Because to your point, you're like, oh, thoughtful, I look at him and I'm like, nobody has that discipline at that age. Yeah, it's amazing how uniquely qualified he was for that position at that point in time, and that very strange, tumultuous time in history as well. And not only that, right at the moment that like Joni Baez brings him out on the stage at the Newport Folk Festival and basically goes, this is the prince.

This is, I anoint you. He's the one. He's Neo. He's the, he is the one. And the next year, he doesn't even take one year to go, let me just lean into your love. The next year, he comes with an electric guitar and plugs it in at the Newport Folk Festival. And people start screaming in agony, like going, what are you doing? Like, you're Bob Dylan.

You're the king of folk. You can't plug in a guitar. And people are like running to try to cut his cords with an axe in this thing. That's how much of a betrayal. And he's like, there's people yelling traitor at him. And he's going, I don't believe you. I think you're a liar. And he's turning around to Robbie Robertson and going, play it loud.

I mean, the guy is so punk rock. He's so totally punk rock. He was as punk rock as anybody ever. I think he probably had to be just to resist what they were trying to box him into yeah and by but there's never been anybody who was more like oh you like what i'm doing i'm gone i'm over here like enjoy you're gonna not like it because you like what i just did now where i'm going you're gonna be discombobulated and upset and eventually you're gonna catch up and then when you catch up, I'm going to move on to something else.

Like it's, it's really, it really is amazing, is amazing. Because how many people do you know in any of the things we all do who get a taste of a thing and don't like lean into it for a while, right? Like who don't kind of go, well, this feels good. You know, maybe I'll just hang out right here. And well, it's always weird when you see somebody lean into something and it's not really them and they become what people want of them. A great example in comedy was Kinison.

Kinison, when he made it, everybody wanted to lay these gigantic lines of coke for him apparently they're like oh it's him it's him he's here they just laid some giant line of coke and he would joke around about it like i had to do it oh and you know he would do you know a giant line yeah i almost have a fucking heart attack right i can't not live in right the thing because then then yes they'll stop trusting it right but you become a caricature. You become this thing. Like Dice Clay is another example. Like Dice Clay used to be one part of his act.

His name is Andrew Silverstein. So he would do his act, and then the Dice Man was a character that he would do. But people loved it so much when he would do that character that the character became his whole act, and then he became the character. Where you see him in real life, he's wearing weightlifting gloves and is walking around in a Gold's Gym t-shirt. He became that guy.

He's hilarious still, but he's that guy now. But now he's kind of out the backside of that, wouldn't you say? In what way? Well, now he's acting in things. He does do that and act well. Yeah. But he still does the same kind of stand-up really if you go see him it's still hilarious irreverent just complete like not of this era

well let me ask you a question because i um i think it's interesting i think uh in that vein like if you look at howard stern, who I've met only a couple times, but I had – I found him to be like an extremely, extremely thoughtful guy. And I don't mean that – he just was very – He's very intelligent. Really smart. Yes. But he's also like – I don't know, the conversation – we have mutual friends, and I really enjoyed talking to him. Like I thought, oh, there's nothing tricky about him at all.

He's really like down in his shoes. He's interested. He actually asks questions. I mean, there's some people you meet, and you're just like, oh, my God. They're talking in a mirror. You're a mirror, and they're just looking at themselves while they speak to you. They're waiting for you to get done talking so they can talk. Yeah.

Yeah. they speak to you they're waiting for you to get done talking so they can talk yeah yeah but he um but i think what i think is really interesting is like so howard imagine imagine the pressure because i and i grew up in the baltimore area he was on dc radio he was on dc 101 um i remember i remember that the shock of him literally and um imagine you know the pull to deliver on what you've built which was obviously you know a huge audience that wanted this thing to me it's really interesting and impressive that Howard's kind of and I'm saying it like I know him, I don't know him, but watching it, to me this idea that he's kind of said, hey, look, I'm going to be honest about where I'm at, and in some measure I'm going to say there's things I've done I regret,

there's ways I've treated certain people in the interest of the show that I'm kind of done with that, I don't really want to be that guy. And in some measure, you know, he's kind of saying to his audience, like, you got to deal with me where I am now. You know what I mean? Now, it's not like there's like a huge risk in that because his audience is gigantic, right? Well, it's also he's so successful and so universally praised as being the most important figure in the history of radio. Like there's no one who does like what I do, podcasts. There's no gigantic debt of gratitude to Howard Stern.

The fact that, you know, he was getting fined by the FCC. I mean, they were hundreds of thousands of dollars. He kept getting fired from radio stations. He kept doing the way he did it. And it changed the way people do talk radio. Honestly, the fact that we've talked as long as we've talked up to now is a function of him proving that there was a tolerance for long form, basically. You know what I mean? I mean, it's like people are reproving or reconnecting with the fact that for all of what goes on on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all this bullshit, the truth is people like and have the appetite for and their brains enjoy longer form conversations and longer form stories more than it was assumed they did.

You know what I mean? And like popular culture feeds us a lot of like fast food and Xanax in like a speedball of you can't handle anything. You don't want anything more than literally like a little bit of junk food with a little bit of Xanax because you just want to lie on your couch and watch someone else save the world. I know that's all you want, but that is not true. And I think like, you know, you look at things like from Peaky Blinders to Chernobyl to like the Ken Burns Civil War series, like we're going through this thing where people are realizing like, no, that's not actually true.

People actually like you, my pal Dax, you know, Shepard, who's got a great radio show. People like to listen to people have actual conversations. Well, they're also listening. It's a new way of ingesting entertainment. Like you're getting it in your car. You're getting it in your ears when you're at the gym, when you're on the subway or a bus or a plane. And you're getting these stimulating long-form conversations that maybe people didn't even know they wanted. Yeah, I agree.

I agree. Everybody loves a great conversation with someone. So it's like you get to have that conversation without participating. Right, right. And Stern definitely was like, we were talking about before and after, like there was talk radio. But it kind of starts there, I think. I think you started to be like, I can listen to this guy for a long time. Yeah, he broke through the membrane.

Like we were talking about Hendrix entering into a new dimension of sounds. He broke through the membrane. Like we were talking about Hendrix entering into a new dimension of sounds. He broke through the membrane of talk radio. And what he's doing now is, well, now he's a man in his 60s who's extremely wealthy. And he has some, I'm sure, some regrets as you were talking about the things that he's done in the past and said in the past. And he's also like, this is who he is now. He's not going to pretend that he just wants to bring strippers in and have them ride the city in every day and when people get upset that he's changed well i hope you change too man yeah i hope everybody changes no that's what i mean i admire i mean true it's true it's it's not quite dylan when he's 24 and being anointed

plugging in a guitar but i do think it's when people sort of go, hey, I'm going to be where I am. Yes. And you got to deal with it. Right. That's positive, I think. Well, it's definitely better than leaning into it and being what people want you to be and be struggling with that and tortured by that. I actually think most of people who – I think that mostly ends up badly. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I think whenever you don't go with whoever you actually are and whenever you

don't acknowledge that whoever you actually are has changed, you know, if you're growing and learning and having these epiphanies and these realizations about yourself and where you fit into your own life and how you've interacted with people in your life, you're not making adjustments and you're only doing it that way because you think that's what people expect of you well you're you're a prisoner to your own first incarnation yeah you know the first thing that people saw and that was kinison and he's a kind of a prisoner to that forever yeah and acknowledged it yeah it's why it's why anybody who um Yeah.

And acknowledged it. Yeah, it's why anybody who – it's not even act two. Anybody who keeps doing interesting things through phases is even more impressive. Yeah. Is it hard as an actor, too, if you get an iconic role and then you are sort of always remembered for being that guy in that thing like how how much of a is is it a hard transition to go from an iconic role to going into your next role would people still want to talk about the the big movie that you were in just a year or two ago? It's never, that hasn't been a big thing for me. I think I take, I tend to take a bit of time between things. And also, I don't know when I, you know, like the first thing I did,

I don't know when I, you know, like the first thing I did, what kind of popped off pretty hot. And then, and then everyone's like sending me like, you know, psychotic, psychotic,

psychotic, interesting characters. And I was like, well, I think I'll do a musical with Woody Allen. You know what I mean? And wear a plaid jacket and do a dance number. And Harry Winston's like,

like, yeah. Or, or, dance number and Harry Winston's like like switch it up yeah or or and um and then what's really weird is I did that first I did I played this lawyer I played a young lawyer in the Larry Flint film right which um and off of that I got I got this distinct vibe of like hey the next John Grisham movie is like the way you were talking in court in that movie, you would kill in this John Grisham thing as the young lawyer or whatever. And I remember I met Francis Coppola was going to direct The Rainmaker, this Grisham thing, and I was up for it. I didn't get it. Matt Damon got it. And I didn't do some ballsy thing and like say, that's not for me i was

like i was like francis coppola i was like i want this you know yeah i think but when i was talking to him about it um and thinking to myself a little bit like this seems a little square but it's like francis coppola you know what i mean and it's like uh and and he when i was talking to him about it he was like well what you know what what are you, what are you working on? What are you interested in? And I was telling him about my friend David who had written this American History X and that we were working on. I was kind of telling him what we were trying to do with it and how we wanted to make it as this kind of like guerrilla, you know, thing. And he was like, you should do that.

You should do that immediately. And I was like, well, I want to, I was like, don't, don't, I was like, don't cancel, don't, don't, you know, I still want to do this with you. He's like, no, no, I think you should do, like, the way you're talking about that. And he said, if you do that now, they'll never, they'll never know what to do with you. Like, they'll never, they'll never be able to put you in a box. Right. Kind of.

Because that's just, you know, if you pull that off. And I kind of was like, you know, I did have an agent at the time. He was really old school, really funny. And he was kind of like, he didn't understand that. He was like, find something big. Let's find something big. Big director, big film, big franchise, whatever. And I remember thinking like, nah, I think I'm going to do this.

And we knocked that off. And the funny thing is you say, well, does that become a trap? That wasn't a trap. That was like a liberation. It's almost like doing that part. It was like a permanent hand grenade on. like doing that part it was like a permanent hand grenade on it was like now it was like well we never know what to expect now right so it's it becomes like liberation on us at a certain point because like i weigh 150 you know like i'm not big so like once you

do something like that it's sort of like hmm when this guy's this guy's this guy's kinky. What the hell are we going to do with him? You know what I mean? Right. And then it's just sort of like you get to decide for yourself in a way. That's brilliant. Like Robert Downey Jr., as amazing as he is, is always going to be Iron Man. Sometimes you get one of those roles, like Thor, Chris Helmsworth.

He's fucking Thor. Dude, you're, like Thor, Chris Helmsworth. He's fucking Thor, dude. You're Thor forever. You know, you flirted with that. It depends on, and I think it depends on how many of them you do. But when you did the Hulk, were you worried about that? A little bit. Was there any hesitation? Because I was surprised when you did that.

I was like, this is an interesting choice. As is evident, I got more worried about it. I was like, this is an interesting choice. As is evident, I got more worried about it. You know, I was very interested because I loved it. I'm not, like, snobby about – I loved those, like, comics. And I subscribed to them. I subscribed to Hulk.

All the darker – like, Dark Knight, Frank Miller, the whole, all of it was really, you know, it was something I really latched on to. And I love the Bill Bixby Hulk. Like he's it for me. He's always, for anyone our age, like he's, you know, him walking away at the end of the show. That's it. And I, so yeah, no, I thought, I tend to get, just the way I felt about American History X, I actually thought American History X was sort of like Othello or Macbeth. I thought it was, that's what I said to David. He had written this kind of edgy thing with a drug plot in it.

And I was like, I think you strip all that away and you literally just make this about rage, destroying a person who's got a lot in him. It's like a Shakespearean tragedy, but it's just, it's skinheads. And that really lit David up, and that's where we went with that. But Hulk is like, it's Prometheus, right? The guy who steals fire from the gods for people, but he gets burned doing it and is cursed, right? He's trying to take like the power of nature back out to people from the gods and he gets burned.

And that's how I thought about it. I was like, if we could do something like that, that leans into this guy who thinks he's going for something good, that's going to help humanity, and he cracks open like the backside of God and take something out that is not meant to be taken out. And now he's cursed. Like, cursed. You know, that's what was amazing. Even as silly as the show was on some levels, Bill Bixby was cursed. Like, that's what – and the end of every show you were like, oh, my God, he's still cursed. Like, alone in the world and cursed, right? And there's something pretty heavy in that, like, pretty cool in that like pretty cool in that and uh and so so it was it wasn't um

it you know i i thought it was like really worth a crack i fucking loved it how did that scene come to play where you were with hicks and gracie oh in college. I was studying Aikido. And then when I was studying Aikido, Hoist Gracie won the, you know, that was when? The fighting championship. That was like the late 80s, right? 1993. 93, okay.

Close, five years later. Right. So, but he, I became aware, oh, no, that's it. You're right, you're right, because I was in New York. I was studying Aikido in New York, and Hoyce Gracie won that first UFC. And like I said, I'm six feet tall, but I literally, if I'm in shape, I weigh like 155, right? And Hoyce, when he won that 176 like six feet and under 180 right yep and i remember it melted everybody's mind yeah i mean it melted everybody's mind and i um

so i i became interested in them and and what they were doing honestly do you do you know that um you know in the story in there and that family's whole crazy story about being, you know, they were Scottish. The grandfather was Scottish, right? And he was like a consular. He was a customs. He was a customs official in Brazil. And because he had a good relationship with the Japanese consul and helped, was very generous in helping Japanese people get their papers to come through and in, the Japanese consul, I think the story is, who knew Aikido and Jiu-Jitsu, offered to, like, teach his sons. Yeah, it was Count Maeda. Right.

Yeah, who came to, came to brazil and taught carlos and horian and and ilio well mostly the fathers of the hoy six and generation and then ilio's oldest son i think i think uh horian was the oldest son he's the one who created the ultimate fighting championship but hickson the reason why it was so significant that you had him is that was the champion of the family like right undeniably undisputed everyone everyone throughout jujitsu this it's very very rare that one figure is universally recognized as being the superior product of jujitsu and that was hickson. Yeah. You always, I, if you followed that stuff at all, you kind of heard that breakdown of it. And I thought, I thought a part of the story, I think Hickson told me when we were in Rio,

I think what he said to me was that the reason Gracie Jiu-Jitsu became its particular derivation and its particular kind of things that allowed Hoyce to do so well was because their father was smaller than his brothers. That's Elio. Right. And they were all bigger. And because he was smaller, he adapted, you know, he adapted the style to work for a smaller person against a bigger person,

obviously. He adapted the style to work for a smaller person against a bigger person, obviously. And then that kind of reached its pinnacle with Hoyce winning that tournament. Which, this gets down in the weeds for people who aren't into this stuff. But it was, I mean, that was, you talk about these things, the cracking through moment, right? That was a cracking through moment, right? Yes. That was a cracking through moment. It was like, wait a minute, a guy his size just literally won an all-form, all-size tournament? Like, how is that possible? You know what I mean?

And it was like jaw hits floor. And to me, what was really interesting was I was really little all the way until literally the end of high school. I was very small. I grew a lot when I was like 17. But I was really interested in Japan, and I was interested in martial arts, and, you know, James Clavel's Shogun. And I would take – I took like a karate class, and it scared me. People, if they were bigger and faster, it was just scary. If you were little, it was like, I can't.

It doesn't matter if I can do these combos or whatever. In truth, I'm terrified of anybody bigger than me, and I don't feel that this is teaching me anything that I would have the confidence to use to defend myself, right? That's how I felt as a kid. And when I bumped into Aikido, it completely changed my mind. The guy, there was an incredible teacher in New Haven when I was in college, and he was small. He was like, you know, maybe smaller than Hoyes Gracie or whatever. And the guy was unbelievably like potent, like just one of the most potent teachers in anything I ever had.

I was riveted by this guy. And it kind of started to make me believe that with grappling and locking, which there's a lot of jiu-jitsu and aikido, and I was sort of like, I was fascinated. I started feeling like this makes me feel like i it's not like kicking someone's ass at all it's just more like i feel more empowered i feel i feel able able to handle an authentic situation yes um which is mentally empowering more than like i want to get into scraps right and it was just kind of amazing it's like having a secret in a

way like whoa there's a secret in a way. Like, whoa, there's a secret to a much smaller person being able to lever a much bigger person. And then that thing happened with the Gracies, and it was sort of like the whole thing cracked open. It was like proof in a way. And if you were interested in that stuff, it was an incredible moment. But because of my interest in that for years,

when we went to Rio, and I had been working on the script of that movie and stuff, and I was like, I was really interested in this idea that Banner is desperate for control, right? That he desperately, desperately needs to control his heart rate, his breathing, that it's a massive liability in his mind if he can't control his emotions and his adrenaline and i was like well who in the world and i i'd seen the videos of hicks i'd never met him or any of them but i'd seen the videos of him doing the um amazing stuff with his stomach yeah the yoga yeah and the breathing fire and i was like and i i just was like we have to and everyone was like who's that to, and everyone was like, who's that? I was like, Philistines.

You're all Philistines. I was like, find me Hicks and Gracie and ask him if he'll do a scene with me in the movie being the guy who's training Banner to calm himself. And he was there, and he did it with us. And it was like, I was like. Yeah, there it is right here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I saw this in the movie, I was like, oh, fuck, yeah.

Like, what a smart move. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, see, I forgot this. Holy crap. I haven't looked at this in a long time. Look how charismatic he is, too. He's amazing. I mean, the guy could have been like Charles Bronsonson 100 like a movie star did you ever see choke

the documentary yeah one of the greatest documentaries in in in history and like pumping absolutely yeah absolutely for martial arts and it uh it details hickson's journeys to japan to fight in japan valley tudor was around 94, which is right after his brother had won the Ultimate Fighting Championship. And the story was that if his brother lost, Hickson was going in. Like the idea was, well, we'll bring in Hoyce because it's more impressive. He's a smaller man. He's not physically imposing. Whereas Hickson in that video there, he was older.

When he was young, he was, you know, very fit. And he was big into yoga and physical fitness. And he had the strongest body of all the greats. He looked very formidable, whereas Hoyce looked unassuming. And it was more of an advertisement of jiu-jitsu. If Hoyce could beat everybody and Hoyce wound up doing. But if at any reason they needed to bring in the big gun, it was going to be Hickson. And Hoyce always talked about it, like Hickson could tap him left and right and everybody was like that doesn't even make sense right hoist is the ultimate fighting champion yeah he's the guy but his brother would just run right through

him he run right he would run right through everybody he would they would have a line of black belts and they would all wait for their turn to get tapped and they would roll with hickson and he would just dismantle everybody people that thought thought they understood jiu-jitsu. There's so many levels and layers to jiu-jitsu that even though it looks like, what is the difference? This guy's doing an arm bar, you're doing an arm bar. There's specifics in the intricate aspects of the positions that Hickson understood that they just didn't understand. And then on top of that, he had much greater control of his body because of his yoga background. I mean, he became obsessed with yoga.

And breathing. Yes, and breathing and something called gymnastica natural, which was like a style of movement that was like sort of like vinyasa yoga with all these like flowing postures, but also with a bunch of like almost like animal movements to it too. And it was a very physically demanding thing. And he became outstanding at that as well all right but it's people don't from the outside when you start talking about things like jujitsu and ultimate fighting you think of like as brutal violent but it's an intellectual pursuit and it's a spiritual pursuit because to be the person that can overcome all the obstacles you have to have incredible control of your emotions and your thought processes and your understanding of who you are.

And that, I think, is one of the things that separated Hickson from everybody. I do, too. I also think that people don't realize that a lot of stress, a lot of aggression, it's like aggression actually is like paired with stress usually. You know what I mean? It's hard to be aggressive, super aggressive without a little bit of like adrenaline pumping and stress and all these things. And the truth is like there's so much of the training.

If you're actually training stuff, what you're training yourself to do is be calm. And that's like totally counterintuitive because people think no you got to go in there like Rocky and you know want to win

and it's like well in a fighting in a competition sure on some level but really really really great people kind of in any sport

but it's even more counterintuitive in fighting is is you need to cultivate calm. Yes. And the ability to be clinical and think calmly, control your breathing because like you get exhausted if you can't control your breathing.

And the truth is, is that those are life skills that are actually very – they cultivate a very calm. It helps you cultivate calm in life. And the thing I always really liked about Aikido is that there aren't attacks in it. It was developed by a guy, Morihei Ueshiba, who was an all-around Bujutsu master. He was in Jujutsu, Kendo, Karate, all these things. And he developed Aikido because he had joined the global pacifist movement.

He was one of the most respected cross-form Japanese martial artists. And he joined the same movement for pacifism that gandhi was a part of in like the 20s and he he believed that martial arts could contribute to uh pacifism if they refined and he and aikido was a refinement of kendo jujitsu judo um and and he basically said i'm going to develop a non-aggressive martial art that has all it has no attacks and there's an uke in it like for the thing but it's only a defensive and it's like that that phrase we all hear redirection of energy yeah the conversion of negative energy into into neutral that's like the that that's his, that is really his contribution. He was like, you can take, you can take the most aggressive energy and you can neutralize it and you can

neutralize it very peacefully, or you can neutralize it with a little more teeth in it, depending on how aggressive the person's being. But I loved that. I thought that was amazing because it was like, I wasn't like looking to be in fight, but I loved the idea that you could have control and you could like neutralize. And I think there's something kind of amazing in that. I think it's like actually aligns with like yoga, with meditation, with all things, surfing. I mean that's what surfing is.

It's like there's all this energy coming at you and it's going to like put you into the rocks or rock you or flip you over and you but you you don't you don't let that happen you kind of you look at it you look at a million waves you figure out how to move yourself you get in there and you get the exact opposite of getting torched you get like the best thing ever right and i i think things like that that are where you have to those are like zen you know what i mean and i think like jujitsu what real what you're saying is really ultimately like why he was great is he had he had he had like the deepest zen of anybody in the whole thing because he was the calmest and he had like the micro micro micro micro understanding of forms but really like

it's something deeper it's like he it's like neo in the matrix he's like seeing it with more granularity yeah he had everything he had the full package of it did you ever see any of steven zagal when he was very young when he was teaching in Japan. I was totally fascinated. I mean, it's like, and it's really. It's weird, right? Like me, right? Like serious actor, thoughtful actor. I'm like, what did you, you know, but I, like Above the Law, because I was into all that stuff when Above the Law came out

and there was the scene in Above the Law and he's in an Aikido, you know, gi with the black thing and he's doing these things. And I was like, oh, my God, like this is so cool. Like when have you ever seen this in a movie? Yeah. And he was a big guy. And he made it violent. Yeah, big.

It was a very unusual sort of contribution to martial arts because in martial arts movies. Yeah. He made it realistic. Yeah. Like it was one of the most realistic martial arts movies ever. Yeah, it was. And, you know, when you look back on it,

there's things about it that don't date super well. Of course, but he was undeniably skillful. Literally what you just showed, the thing of the guy coming, it's that simple thing, that thrust and the break and the thing. Yes. He also, in the film, when the guys come at him, I see, this shows you how it burns your brain. There's a scene where there's like a bodega

and the guy, I think he smashes a bottle and he comes at him and he does like a move. In Aikido, it's called like kotegaeshi. It's like the wrist, you know, it's like the wrist break flip over. And it was just like oh my god like he's doing he's doing like you know nuanced aikido moves in a big action movie it was kind of cool well he was one of the first i think the first westerner to run a dojo in japan i mean he was a legitimate

aikido master yeah and i think but what's interesting is when i studied over there he was it was it was slightly controversial because i don't think he was – he had broken away from like Ueshiba Aikido. He was doing like the way that Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is not pure Japanese Jiu-Jitsu. He was doing something with – somehow it was associated more with Osaka than Tokyo where the the Hombu Dojo and Aikido is. Some controversy. Yeah, there was just the way things are with schools of thought. But yeah, he had a certain legit kind of thing. And it's really wild because people like Mike Ovitz, who was the power agent of all of Hollywood in the 80s.

Mike got a black belt training with Seagal. Like, he was really serious Aikidoist. I didn't know that. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, it does. He's a cautionary tale, too, though.

I mean, not even Ovis. I mean, Seagal, you know. Yeah. What did he become? What did he become? I guess, honestly, I don't know anything about him past a certain point. Like, I don't know what went on there. Yeah.

You can leave it at that. Yeah, I don't. Tell me about your new movie. Let's leave it at that. It's called Motherless Brooklyn it's it was you know it was kind of a big swing because I wrote it and I produced it

is this the first time you've done that? directed it I produced and directed the first movie I directed is Keeping the Faith it's me and Ben Stiller play a rabbi and a priest who are best friends, and they both fall for the same girl. Did you ever see that one? No, I didn't.

It's funny. Yeah, you'd like it. Ben is hilarious in it. That was obviously lighter. That was a lighter kind of movie. But I've lived in New York almost 30 years and I like making movies in New York a lot. That was a pretty light one. This one is more, this takes place in the 50s in New York and it's kind of,

it's got a Chinatown, LA Confidential kind of a noir bent to it. It's a mystery, a murder mystery of kind of, that leads into some of the stuff that

happened in New York in the 50s that is hard to believe. Because New York was run by basically a Darth Vader-like figure who was never elected to public office. And people thought he was the parks commissioner of New York, but he was from 1930 to 1968, he had uncontested authoritarian power over New York City and New York State. And he made every significant decision about the way that the modern infrastructure of New York was built, where the roads went, where the bridges were built, what was torn down, where the projects were built. And he was very racist. And he baked like really discriminatory things that almost sound like conspiracy theory. They're so wild and intense into the decisions he made. He was responsible for the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn and going to LA. And nobody knows this.

Like you think of New York is the great, that's like the great egalitarian melting pot city where democracy works, except that it was run by a total autocrat. For 38 years? Yeah, for, he's largely, it's broadly accepted that no mayor or governor of New York could do a single thing without his say-so from basically about 1930 to about 1968. How is that even possible? And how come no one knows about this?

How did you find out? Well, people do. There's huge, like in one of the big Burns Brothers documentaries about New York, there's a whole, literally almost a whole episode on him. There's a great book about him that won the Pulitzer Prize. And there's, his name was Robert Moses. And he, you know, there's Robert Moses State Beach in New York. And, but literally, people think he was the parks commissioner, but he was. And he was like Anakin Skywalker. He was like a Jedi Knight. He was a big liberal, progressive believer in progressive change and government reform.

And in his early years, he got crushed by Tammany Hall and the power brokers. And he went dark, went completely. Yeah. That's not the most imposing picture of him that you've got up there. No, that's an imposing picture. Find one of the ones of him standing in front of his models. There's famous ones of him. That looks like a man of will. Yeah, actually, to the left of that. Keep going to the ones of him find one of the ones of him standing in front of his models there's famous ones of him that looks like a man yeah actually to the left of that and keep going to

the left of that um because there's a scene in our movie where alec baldwin is literally like that yeah that alec baldwin essentially plays a character who's based on him inspired by him i should say it's not at all in my film it's not the true story. But yeah, there you go. And, but I think this idea, I was really interested in this idea. You know, what's great about Chinatown as a film is, it's mostly sexy. You don't know what the hell is going on in that movie. Like, until 20 minutes before the end you have absolutely no idea really what's going on in that movie but it's just sexy it's like the music is amazing the photography's incredible the actors are like adult and real and he's he's Nicholson right you know the hook is like Nicholson is so cool you really will kind of follow. You'll watch the way he deals with anything and just,

you're just laughing and enjoying it, right? But underneath it all, when you're done, you go, did that, is that true? Did LA, is LA basically built on stolen water? Is that like the, like LA's original sin is that people made fortunes. The Valley was just farms and they stole the water from up north and, you know, rigged the game and made these gigantic fortunes by irrigating San Fernando Valley. And you come away with like, you come away with an awareness that like, the California story is not exactly what it's cracked up to be, right? It's – there's some big crimes underneath it. And the people who – and in that movie, it's like, yeah, people ripped everybody off. They faked droughts.

They created fortune. And the type of people who did that also raped their daughters. Literally, that's like what that movie is about. And it's pretty bleak it's like you can't make a difference you cannot change anything like and if you try the person you're trying to help is going to end up with a bullet through her eye

dead on the steering wheel like it's a really dark movie and people forget that because you just go oh Nicholson fade down away it's like no that's a really really bleak movie but I love the idea that you can do things where, like, the pleasure of it is like the pleasure of movies. It's grown up. It's kind of what we've been talking about.

It's like if you said to most people, if you showed Chinatown to most critics today, they'd go long, boring, whatever. It's like, you want to say, fuck off. Like, fuck off. Like, what is it that you, why are you assuming people can't handle grownup? You know what I mean? And I think that I really dig those things where you go through, the movie starts,

you look at it and you go, this looks really good. This looks really grown up. This is big. The actors are like, like adult and authoritative. The dialogue's great. The music is great. It's hypnotic. And your brain just goes, I don't know what's going on. I don't care. I'm bought in. And then, and if there's a character in it that you can hook into, you float through those movies. You just kind of go, where's this going? What's going on? Oh, man, that guy, she's great. He's great.

Wow. Like this is just all juicy and great. And by the end, you get somewhere and you kind of go, I'll be damned. That actually was about big things. Did those things really happen? You know, I really dig those movies. I dig Chinatown, LA Confidential.

I think The Godfather works that way. The Godfather's about immigrants, you know. It's about immigrants normalizing in America. It's like, that's a long movie. You just settle in for that movie. Your brain settles in and just goes, this just couldn't be better.

I couldn't be happier to be watching this scene after scene after scene. And I wanted to make, I wanted to try, I wanted to try to make one of those, you know, myself. Like I wanted to try to make one of those because I don't, it's cliche to say like they don't make those anymore but it but i think you know they were always hard it's not like they were easy once and now they're hard they're all they're always hard but i i would look at people like warren baity he made reds you know which is one of the great movies from that era even like spike lee doing do the right thing i don't know if you remember when that movie hit sure it was massive it was a huge deal to me i was like 18 or 19 yeah i saw that movie and i was like

he just rewrote the game like this kid who the hell is that he wrote it he directed it he acted in it he got public anime to do the music yeah it's about his neighborhood in New York, but it's about like race in America. It's like, oh my God, that guy just took like a huge swing and connected on like every level. And it didn't even give you some BS kind of like, don't worry, it's going to be okay in the end. Right. It was like, Martin Luther King says violence is not the way. Malcolm X says sometimes it's the only rational response. What do you think?

You know what I mean? It was so ballsy. It was so ballsy, that movie. And I think, like, after a while, it's sort of like I just started feeling like, well, you know, I don't really need to gig. I might as well. I've worked with a lot of great people. I've worked with some pretty great directors, including Spike. And I was kind of like i've been in new york a long time and i just thought it was

really weird no one knew that story and i was like i'm gonna try to make one about this you know as someone who doesn't make movies i always wonder like what happened between like say steve mcqueen's lamans you did you ever see that movie. Remember how there's no dialogue at all for like the longest time? And I remember I watched it recently over the last couple of years and one of the thoughts was, I don't even know if they could do this today.

If anybody would allow them to make a movie where no one talks for a long time, they're just sort of setting the stage of what it means to be a race car driver and what's the atmosphere of the races. It's just the idea that you were saying earlier about having this short attention span theater, these movies that are designed for what they believe is a populace of people that don't have the interest in something that's more unique or something that requires thought, something that drags you in.

And that was much more common in the past. Like, why was it more common in that era of McQueen and all those other movies that they did like that? And what has happened? And like these rare examples, like when a guy does break through with something like Do the Right Thing or a few other examples, why doesn't that stimulate the appetite for more? Well – Is it that hard to do?

On one level, yeah. It's easy to recognize when they're great, but it's still not easy to make them great. It's still – we're talking about people who are some of our greatest artists or directors, you know what I mean? And lots of people, they try on some level. They try on some level, but they just – not everybody is Spike Lee. Right. You know what I mean?

Not everybody is Francis Lee. Right. You know what I mean? Not everybody is Francis Coppola. Or, you know, it's like people, sometimes people make things and they actually are slow. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? You're like, it's like in Spinal Tap when they're like, it's a fine line between stupid and clever. No, it's a fine line between stupid and clever. You know, no, it's a fine line between clever and stupid.

You know what I mean? It's like, it's, I think people try. But I think that there are some people who really do think Jaws had a big effect on movies because it was like the first true blockbuster, right? And I don't know. You know what? Actually, though, I'm wrong. I think that what happens more often than not

is adult people get the jobs at the big companies that make the decisions about what to make, right? And at a certain point, they sort of age out. They start to age out, and they don't actually have any idea what the vibe is. They don't know what to make for the coming wave of younger people. And so these little windows open up now and then where in that era they needed new people. They needed like George Lucas making American graffiti. Nobody thought that movie was going to be a hit.

Nobody. They open up. They say, we don't know what to do. Do something different. And a couple of new voices come in and they make things that are really different. But the idea that that was only then, like there's a whole book right now about 1999. You know, there's this book that came out about how 1999 was one of those years where because the studios had kind of lost their sense of exactly what to do and Miramax was making a shit ton of money on on auteur driven movies made for low cost. And the studios all went and set up little mini Miramaxes. Right.

all went and set up little mini Miramaxes, right? And the result was that, like, in that year, you had, like, you know, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne, Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Fincher, the Wachowskis, like, an unbelievable array of directors made really, really memorable films in that year. And I think it was because it was like another one of those moments, like we don't know what to do.

We're just going to have to close our eyes and go, you kids figure it out. You know what I mean? The thing about films, it seems to me, it's such a collaborative effort. And when you have so many moving pieces and so many people involved that have a say in the decision-making process, it's got to be insanely difficult to get something out that's pure. Yes, that's true. That's true. Francis Coppola said that the best thing about making films is that they're collaborative, and the worst thing about making films is that they're collaborative

and the worst thing about making films is that they're collaborative. He also said it's the last moral totalitarian job in the world, like being a director or something. I can't remember. But it's true. It's a very – because, like, I made this movie. I had, like – I had a fraction of, like of the budget of The Irishman, which I'm naming only because it was a period piece. Mine's in the 50s, that one's across these things.

And I had less days to do it than I had on my first movie that I directed. How many days did you have to do it? Like 46, which for perspective, Fight Club was a 130-day shoot. And 46 days is less than most movies I've made. And this was a big 1950s period film with a huge French Connection-style car chase in the opening, running through Harlem, across the bridge, down into Queens. You know, we weren't like making a little kitchen sink drama.

And to figure that out, that is like, you can be like, I've got the vision, we're going to do this. But there's a kind of madness in saying, this is what I want to do. I want to recreate the old Penn Station that doesn't exist anymore, right? Which we have in the film, like my character goes into the old Penn Station that was torn down in 1963 or whatever. And you only pull that off with the most kick-ass Justice League of collaborators imaginable, like they make you look like you're a visionary or know what you're doing because you get these people with crazy talents of their own and i don't mean just cast although i had that too in this i mean like some of the very very very best people bring their their talent to like making that work and um and so that's like when when you say like, your job is, is more to say,

I have really talented people, I've got to get their frequency wave in line with mine. If I can get their frequency wave in line with mine, then it can be my, my idea, my vision, my weird ideas can be in there. But it's with, it's executed with the help of people who believe in it and buy into it. You know, that's the key is like you're marshalling people to get to it in sync with you. And, you know, I have a sick cat. It's like Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Bobby Cannavale, Michael K. Williams, who's like Omar on the wire. Wow. This great actress, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Leslie Mann, and on and on and on.

And all these people did this as a favor to me because I didn't have any money to do it. Wow. So starting with Bruce, Bruce was like, you know, he said to me a long time ago, if you have something good, I want to be in it. I really want to do the kind of stuff you're doing, and I really mean it. I'll do anything you want to do and help you get it done. I was like, he's not going to remember that.

He's going to be like, sure, sure, but I'm doing diehard for the rest of the year. And he didn't. He was like, where do you need me? I told you I'm in. Wow for the rest of the year. And he didn't. He was like, where do you need me? I told you I'm in. Wow. Let's get it done. And basically Bruce, Alec, Willem, people like that,

I practically call them co-financiers on my film because I only got it done because they deferred everything. And I think that's really cool. That's amazing. Yeah. When you write something like this car chase scene through Harlem, I mean, I would imagine the logistics of pulling something like that off. It's got to be insane.

Yeah, it's nuts. When you wrote it and you brought it to the people that are the stunt people, the people that coordinate these chase scenes, were they like, oh, fuck? People, yes, you know, doing the things is not hard. Getting permission to do them in Manhattan is tricky. And there are people who look at you like you're dreaming, man. Like you're not. And what you do is you go out and scout and you start, you say, look, this is – we can do this here and this here and this isn't hard. This isn't hard. We only need this one block cleared.

Then you like find that place where you're like, I want him to do a huge screeching turn onto Frederick Douglass Boulevard because it has a nine-block stretch where there's very few buildings that don't look like they're in the 50s, right? Leading up to a bridge that you want to go over the bridge. And then you get with like the guys at the NYPD and you beg. Like you just beg. You go, look, we're going to be like the Dirty Dozen. We're going to have the, we're going to, everything is going to be so well planned and ready to go. We'll be able to, we'll say, just shut it down and then 20 minutes, we'll be done.

You know what I mean? Like you, you start. 20 minutes. Well, no, just for a shot. You know what I mean? Like you start. 20 minutes. Well, no, just for a shot. You know, it's like we just need to do this once or twice to get this turn of the car around the corner and headed up the avenue with 80 cars from the 50s. And you're using legitimate 1950s cars as well.

Yeah. So those things handle like. They're horrible. They're boats with wheels on them. So any car that's actually got to be doing anything, like going fast or making a big turn, you have to have four of the same model that you've painted identically because they're going to break. Like they will break. You'll push one hard, it will break.

And then you have to like bring the other one in. Wow. You know what I mean? So you, and you basically can't make them go fast. You know, they don't have pickup. So you're figuring out like what are the moves we can make that make it feel like this thing is really bombing. And how do we cross cut around the fact that it takes three blocks for it to accelerate? How do we cross cut around the fact that it takes three blocks for it to accelerate?

I mean, like literally to go from, you know, 10 miles an hour to 40, you need like literally like three or four blocks. So you have to like get it up to speed for the section that you want it going fast. And it's, it's, it's, I'm not doing another period movie. I'm doing the next movie I'm doing is going to have Tesla P100Ds that go like 0 to 60 in 2.4. Now, when you write this out, how much time is involved in preparation of writing this and then doing all the scouting and then trying to implement this whole – It took me a couple years to write it because I haven't even said – I think you have to know yourself. I'm not Bogart. I'm not like Jack Nicholson. The magic they bring is the magic they bring.

And the character I put at the middle of this is the detective that I play has Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder. So he can't – like when he meets a blonde at the bar, he's like the opposite of Bogart. He tries to light her match and can't stop blowing it out because it doesn't sound right to him. So he's kind of a train wreck. Like he's the opposite of a cool detective. And in fact, Bruce Willis plays the cool detective who he works for. So like Bruce Willis is Nicholson. But when something bad happens to him and my guy has to like step out of the assistant role, you know, he's like his operative because he has a great memory.

He has like a photographic memory and some really weird ability to like because his brain is is chaotic and crazy um he has certain little gifts that bruce willis like relies on him for and believes in him but when but when he has to sort of figure out what happened to his boss and solve this mystery like he kind of has to come out on his own out of his comfort zone and kind of become a detective and And it's like, you know, he's ticking and twitching and shouting and doing things that make it very difficult for him to move in the world. So that's kind of like, I had that part of it. And I was grafting it into this story of what happened in New York in the 50s. And it took me a long time to write it and get it right. But once I had it right,

we probably prepped the movie for like nine months. We were actively like scouting New York and imagining like where can we do this and how can we do this? But I live in New York, so I loved it. I'd like get on my motorcycle and go up to Harlem and Washington Heights and literally like cruise around, just cruise around. I know the area really well anyway. But sometimes you just have to like just – and that's where a bike in New York is really great.

Like because you can just sort of float around, float around, float around, mentally mapping where you can do a thing. And it was pretty fun. That's such a bold move, riding a bike in New York City. No, it's not. It's not? LA is way, way, way more dangerous. Because New York, no one's going that fast, right? You can be – I can't explain it.

In New York, there's a rationality to the way people are moving, but I'll tell you the number one main thing. New York driving, it's so stop and start, and it's the things, nobody has time to be on their phone. And in LA, if i'm on a bike i would say i regularly look to my right and i look to my left and both people on either side of me are texting do you ever see i mean yes all the time all the time when i'm in my truck especially because i can look down yeah and, and you realize that in this town,

60% of people at any given moment are texting on their phone, and it's just appalling, and it's so dangerous. Yeah. And I'll be on, if I'm on a motorcycle in LA, I'll look at people, they're texting for so long, and finally I'll have to hit the horn or something and look at them. I've gotten past anger and literally just looked at people, flipped my thing up and gone like, please, like please get off your phone. Like you're going to kill somebody and kill yourself.

But we can't. We can't break the addiction. People cannot break the addiction. And it's not a more – you realize it isn't a character flaw. It's not like, what an asshole. It's everybody. It's your mom. It's your sister.

It's your friend. Everybody is doing it because we're addicted, like a device addicted. But when you're on a bike and you realize, like, I am floating in a sea of people who are going to mess up. Someone is going to mess up. And they've got airbags and, you know, new modern stuff. And you're on the bike. You don't have anything. Yeah, I think this is way more dangerous riding than New York.

That makes sense when you talk about things like the 405 or the 101 where people are flying by and passing and changing lanes and the texting too. Yeah, and also the big avenues. People get up, Wilshire Boulevard, whatever. They're looking at a thing and they blow that red light. All the time. And half the times you hear about or see bad accidents here, especially if they involve motorcycles,

it's not like the person on the bike didn't screw up. Someone went through a red light and just broadsided them or they T-boned them. It's like do you really want to make the bet, the huge bet on yourself where what you're riding on is other people's concentration. Were you riding when you were living out here? I've never – I've always lived in New York. So when you've been here, it's only for a few months at a time?

Yeah, no. I've spent winters out here. I like to surf. Spent winters out here. I like to surf. And I'm, by the way, I'm not like a pro-experienced veteran motorcycle rider at all. I just enjoy it. And out here, it's fun.

You know, like go up the Angeles Crest Road or something like that. I love driving up there. Yeah, it's really cool. There's California. L.A. is hard. No one cool. There's California, L.A. L.A. is hard. No one likes being on a motorcycle in L.A. It sucks. It's like just hot and everybody's in your face. But California is incredible.

There's so many amazing places to go in California, and I kind of got hooked on it out here. And so then when you were in New York, you just said, fuck it. This is actually a good place to ride a bike. No, I thought it's not even that I read bicycles too in New York.

I like it, but it's more just that the thing that pulls you in, I mean, I have lots of, I, you know, I like to surf. I fly planes.

I like, there's a lot of stuff that I think is much, much, much that's thrilling. It's much safer than riding motorcycles. It's not like my jam, but once you have that skillset, once you can do it, if you have a bike, there are those times in LA and in New York too, where you take a look at like the gridlock and you're just like, I'm going to be, I'm going to be in this for at forever and on a bike you can lane split and just get you know you can get where you need to go and in new york too you can

you can zip around um in ways that is uh efficient so how long did this i mean how long did you sit on this story how long did you know about this story? How long did you know about this? And what was the process of having this sort of build in your mind to the point where you wanted to write it, direct it, produce it, cast it? Honestly, I read the book exactly 20 years ago. I read it in the fall of 99 when I was – when Fight Club came out. That was right around the time I read this novel, Motherless Brooklyn. But the novel's about the Tourette's detective who's trying to solve the murder of his only friend, basically. But it takes place in the 90s. It's not about any of that stuff about New York in the 50s or anything.

It's just, the character character is just amazing though, like amazing. So when I read it, the hook was the character, I was like, I was like, what a great character. It's so,

it's such a wild, he's like just this hot mess of, of he's smart, but he's totally messed up. He's, he's funny, but also really, it's pretty painful and lonely. And it was just

everything. And I was like, that's, I could get so into trying to figure that out. For reasons that are a little hard to explain, the tone of the book feels like a 50s detective novel, but it's set in the modern world. And I was afraid in a movie that would feel a little bit like the Blues Brothers, like guys in fedoras, but a Prius is floating by. And so you're sort of like, maybe this would just be cooler if we set it in the 50s. And I talked to the author about that and he was super into those movies. And so he said, okay. Wow. So then, but then the middle period was the period of mashing that up with these sort of stories, the New York Chinatown kind of of it, the deep, dark history of what really went on in New York. And that took a long time. And then I had it ready in 2012. I was really ready

to go. And I just couldn't get it to, I couldn't get, Bruce said he was in, and that was kind of angry, but I couldn't get everyone I wanted together at the same time, and I couldn't get the amount of money I needed or that I thought I wanted, and I couldn't get a studio to back it. Because honestly, you know, number one, like, I'm not like, you know, I'm not like a green light anything he does kind of an actor. That's, it's just, you know, I think that's a different sort of thing.

But also, I was out there saying, it's sort of like Rain Man meets L.A. Confidential, and people's eyes just kind of cross. They're like, bring us the next one. They're like, we don't get it. We don't get it. We don't get it. Yeah, it's like – and also I got like – I had like this idea of getting – I love Radiohead, and I like jazz. And I wanted to like – I got Tom York to write a song for the film, but I got Wynton Marsalis to do all the jazz and stuff.

And people were also like, these things are not going to go well together. And then they went. A lot of people have said to me, which is not me, a lot of people have said to me it's the best music in a film that they've heard in many many years flea flea played trumpet and um and bass on tom york's track in the film and and flea you know flea's like a really

good trumpet player and his dad was a jazz musician and i didn't know that flea came out of the movie like crying he was like that's honestly my favorite music that i've ever heard in a film. And I think, but you can't tell people that. I thought that would work. I thought this mashup would work because I knew Tom and I knew he loves Charles Mingus and I knew Wynton was capable of doing, he's really interested in dissonant, weird, edgier kind of modernist music as well. And I was like,

this is going to work. And it did. It's really, the music's amazing in the film. It's like its own, like the record's out now and people are flipping out about just the music and the movie hasn't even come out yet. With such a crazy combination of factors and details that you smashed all together. Yeah. And it's got to feel, first of all, it's got to be a tremendous relief and also feel amazing that you did it.

I do feel that. I feel like it would have haunted me. It was rattling around in my head such a long time, I felt very discouraged about it at times. Because I was kind of like, you know, I've done a few okay things. Like I've done some stuff that was weird and that people didn't understand. And it's come together pretty great. You know what I mean?

And you sort of go, God, I never expect anybody to give me money to make something. Like, that's just risky. Like, I would never put money into making movies, never. Like, it's too risky, you know, and I get it. So I'm not like, I deserve this. But it was more like, sometimes I was just like, am I going to be able to figure this out or not? Am I going to get this done? Sometimes I was just like, am I going to be able to figure this out or not?

Am I going to get this done? And I think getting it done and not having quit on it and in some ways feeling, not actually knowing that it's better that I made it now. I know more. I was more, if I'd tried to do it 20 years ago, I didn't have the chops to do some of the – like working with Spike Lee and Alejandro and Yuridu and people like that really like it upped my sense of how to do – I learned a lot about how to do a big thing without all the money in the world. Now, this is released nationwide, worldwide, like when – it's released on this friday right yeah this friday it's everywhere after tomorrow all over america yeah um yeah it's a it's a wide release here um i hope yeah and i think honestly like the day it comes out like you can either see Terminator, like, 9.11, or ours.

There's, like, not, and I, like, certify on the Joe Rogan experience, like, there's not a grown-up human being who will not be stoked about this film. Like, I can say that people who are seeing it are very, very, very into it and very bought in because it is one of those like it's a big meal, but it's a really rich, good meal. And it has amazing, amazing performances. I don't think Alec Baldwin has ever been better in a movie, honestly. And I think Willem Dafoe is amazing. Michael K. Williams is amazing. And the music is great.

And it's a cool story. And I think it's kind of one of those things that it's worth going to the theater to see. But I guarantee you it's more worth your time than another Terminator movie. Well, it sounds like it to me. I'm really excited about it, and I will see it for sure. Thank you. And it was a pleasure talking to you, man. I really appreciate it.

Thank you very much for coming in here, man. Absolutely. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Are you still trained? Yeah. You do? Like serious?

Yeah. You do? Like serious?