The Rich Roll Podcast - Edward Norton: Thoughts On Ego, Taking Big Swings & Speaking Truth To Power

Episode Date: November 11, 2019

One of the most acclaimed actors of his generation, today Edward Norton graces the podcast to discuss his fascinating life and perspective on filmmaking, culture, politics and the nature of power. Over the course of his extraordinary career, Edward has reaped 3 Academy Award nominations starring in some of the greatest films of our era — Primal Fear, American History X, Fight Club, Birdman, and 25th Hour among them. The occasion for this conversation is Motherless Brooklyn — a long-gestating passion project Edward wrote, directed, produced and headlines. A period crime noir that confronts the shadowy malevolence of power in 1950's New York City, Edward stars as a twitchy tourettic detective determined to find his boss' killer. Evocative of Chinatown, it’s a towering achievement and terrific watch I implore all of you to immediately see in the theatre. Unfamiliar to most are Edward’s many off-screen interests and achievements as an entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist and environmentalist. In 2010, he co-founded CrowdRise, a crowdfunding platform which has raised over $500M for non-profits which later sold to GoFundMe. He is the co-founder of an advanced data science company called EDO which provides audience analytics to media companies. In addition, Edward is an avid pilot and founding board president of the Masai Wilderness Conservation Trust, a Kenyan conservation and community development organization. To raise awareness for the organization, in 2009 he ran the New York Marathon alongside a group of Masai, completing the race in 3:28. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this hyper-intelligent polymath. A famously private person, Edward has been uncharacteristically public as of late — making the mainstream media and podcast rounds to promote Motherless Brooklyn. If you caught his appearance on Marc Maron, Ezra Klein, Preet Bharara, Joe Rogan, Dax Shepard or Alec Baldwin’s respective podcasts (all great in their own right) — this conversation is a bit different. Today we dive into the role of ego in his profession. We dissect disenfranchisement and the implications of weaponized social media in our politically divided culture. And we talk about the state of environmental activism. On the subject of creativity, we explore the importance of gestation — distancing yourself from the noise to reboot artistic originality. We discuss balancing art against other life priorities. And how his deep interest in the nature of power underscores his latest work. Motherless Brooklyn is now playing in theaters nationwide. If you enjoy this conversation, desire to support Edward — and dig smart, mature, entertaining cinema — please make a priority of seeing this movie in the cinema pronto. They say never meet your heroes. I disagree. A pinch me moment, it was an absolute pleasure and honor to talk with a man I respect and admire tremendously. You can watch it all go down on YouTube.  I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

Part of the fun of really good noir films is that you get hypnotized. They force you to experience the inability to understand what's happening. And yet, they don't alienate you because they're sexy. You get into actually like an aesthetic pleasure of listening to language and watching people and seeing clothes. of listening to language and watching people and seeing clothes. But then slowly what they do is remind you, you don't know what's going on. And in this country, no matter what anybody tells you,

there's dark shit going on. And not knowing that it's going on puts you in danger. The manipulation that's taking place that's really dangerous is not a manipulation to get us to buy anything. It's the manipulation literally of how we feel about each other. This concerted effort to foment antagonism within our society to cause chaos and social unrest here, like this is like out of a James Bond movie, like the only agenda is not to sell us anything. It's literally to just destabilize us into rage, into like this fit of such like anger with each other that we can't function and it's working.

That's Edward Norton, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show, Edward Norton. Edward Norton, people. You heard me right, Edward Norton. Arguably one of the great all-time actors on the podcast today. Are you kidding me? I don't really have to introduce this guy, do I? Three Academy Award nominations, Primal Fear, American History X, Birdman. How about Fight Club? A slew of Wes Anderson movies. The list is long and incredibly impressive. As you may know, Edward has a new movie out. It's really a terrific 50s crime noir about a teretic gumshoe. It's called Motherless

Brooklyn. It's a long gestating project that Edward wrote, directed, and stars in that took decades to make. It's an incredible achievement and all of you guys should go out and see it immediately in the theater. What people might not know about Edward, however, in part, I think because he's somebody who works hard to protect his privacy and doesn't generally do a ton of press, are the many impressive and impactful things that he does and has done outside of Hollywood as an entrepreneur, an investor, a philanthropist, and an environmentalist. Along with his wife, he co-founded CrowdRise, a crowdfunding platform which has raised over $500 million for nonprofits, which he later sold to GoFundMe.

He is also the co-founder of an advanced data science company called EDO, which provides audience analytics to media companies. And you might recall that Edward ran the New York City Marathon in 2009 in something like 328, if I'm not mistaken, which is very good, alongside a group of Maasai. Well, he did that in conjunction with his role as the founding board president of the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, a Kenyan conservation and community development organization. And honestly, all of that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this amazing and hyper-intelligent human. And it's all coming up in a couple few, but before we dig in, let's do a little housekeeping by supporting the great organizations that make the show possible. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices.

It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple.

Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care.

Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple.

Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life and recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So, I met Edward through some mutual friends about a year ago.

It was very brief. It was a party. And we had a nice exchange, but that was it. And although Edward is somebody that I definitely would put at the very top of the list of people I would love to have on the show, at that time, it honestly never occurred to me to even ask if he would do it. First, because it would just be awkward, I just met him. And also predominantly because I know the guy

rarely does press and is so intentional about protecting his private life. But with this new movie, Motherless Brooklyn, suddenly I noticed that he was popping up on a ton of podcasts. First on Marc Maron, which was really great, by the way. Then Rogan, Ezra Klein, Tim Ferriss, Preet Bharara, Dax Shepard, Alec Baldwin's show. They're all great. I listened to all of them. And if you're a fan of Edward, I suggest you do the same, particularly because

this conversation is fairly qualitatively a little bit different from those. And basically, secondarily, just because listening to Edward talk about all manner of subjects is a fascinating exercise. Anyway, and this is very LA, I realize, so apologies. But my wife and I were out trick-or-treating with our kids the other night, and I ran into Edward with our mutual friend, and this friend suggested that Edward do the show. And to my absolute delight, Edward was into it, which was amazing. And the next day, it happened, and here we are.

I would say that this one goes in a whole bunch of different directions, our social media and marketing-driven culture. We discuss the current political climate, the state of environmental activism. We talk about the role of ego in Edward's life and work, distancing himself from the noise, the importance of gestation and living a creative life, and trying to find balance in all of it and how his deep interest in the nature and seat of power underscores this latest work. Motherless Brooklyn is now in theater, so if you enjoy this conversation, if you want to support Edward, So if you enjoy this conversation, if you want to support Edward and you dig smart, mature, grown-up, and entertaining cinema, please make a point of checking out the movie in the theater. This is definitely a pinch-me moment. It was a real honor to talk to somebody I've deeply admired and respected from afar for many years.

So let's do it. This is good. This is an excellent book for me today. You should read that. I've not read that one. Ego is the enemy. I think you've got it in check. It is. Yeah, we can talk about that. My sense is that your ego is pretty well in check with all this kind of nonsense. And we were just talking a minute ago about trying to mute out the extrinsic noise that accompanies you know doing what you do yeah i think it's i think ego's probably like like the deepest addiction there is though you know know what I mean? I mean, I think like the fact that even the Dalai Lama is like still vying with it. Right.

I'm not even joking. There's aspects of it that are necessary to being an actualized human, I think. It's about harnessing, you know, the power that it has and keeping, you know, its ill effects, you know, in check. Yeah, I mean, also it's a word with a lot of lateral definition in it. So it depends on what part of it, which version of ego you're talking about in some ways.

Because I guess even altruism, even the impulse to do good. Well, you have to believe that you have capabilities and capacity. I mean, for yourself, you can't, I mean, look, this movie that we're going to talk about, you wrote it, you directed it, you star in it. It takes a certain audaciousness to say, I can handle this. And with that comes an aspect of ego that is necessary and crucial to getting the job done.

You have to make everyone else believe that you have that capability as well. Right. What you're saying, I agree that if you don't have belief in your own agency, if you don't have belief that you have capacity, you know, you... By the way, this is a dig digression but i think it's an interesting one i think a lot of people at their lowest like depression the the depression and

anxiety that a lot of people feel in the modern world and a lot of what flows from it even in terms of like the socio-political expressions things that go on like brexit right now which you could say is like let's even forget america i think brexit right now is one of the most fascinating examples of an enormous collective unforced error right self-harm that there was no reason to have inflicted. And I think you could argue that sometimes these things happen when people reach a lack of faith that they have any agency, that they matter, that they, when they feel marginalized to the degree that even the act of self harm, they know it on an intuitive level,

they know they're doing themselves damage, but the ability to do anything that causes anything to happen is eluding them in so many other areas of their life that they do something sort of openly self-destructive because at least they did it. Yeah, the level of disenfranchisement has to rise to a certain threshold level. And once it tips over that, there's a vibration,

a collective, there's a collective ability to like tap into a certain vibration to take an action, even with the understanding that it's not in their own interest. And you see that played out time and time again. I mean, we're seeing it here. Yeah. And the funny thing is someone was equating it to like nihilism.

That's what nihilism is. It's the belief that destruction has its own end or whatever, right? I don't think that. I think that's different. I agree. That's what I mean. I'm saying, and I was kind of wincing. I i was like that's not really what i see going on i i like i think um i i saw a movie recently that i thought was actually nihilistic that actually was like um

a celebration of the idea that there's a, a righteous heroic, uh, there's a, there's a heroic value to, to blowing away your oppressors, you know, or, or to,

to destroying, you know, um, what movie was that? I'm not, I don't want to say, I don't want to say, but it disturbed me. It, it, it, it, it scared me um but uh but but i but i don't think what people are doing in america or in

in um england is is nihilism i think is is a it's deep like desperation and like you said sense of loss of control loss of um you know marginalization etc and i think that that's when like that's when you see the downside of of ego not having a healthy empowerment right like i think to your point like um like there is a part of ego that people need a healthy baseline of it to be able to act in healthy ways. Yeah, but I think it's so, it's never been easy. Well, first of all, to your first point, I think that whole thing is exacerbated

when we have vested interests who benefit from fomenting this sense of chaos that we're seeing. And media gets weaponized to people who are ill-suited to find the signal in the noise and act accordingly. And I think we're seeing that in ways that are unprecedented in human history, and it's deeply, gravely concerning. Yeah, the amplification, intensification of noise is the speed with which it's happened. I mean, because, you know know we're about the same age um

i think i kind of think gen x is the is the vanguard generation in terms of like we're the first cradle we're the first television informed generation, right? And you could argue that even though it's at, it's at 1, 100th of the speed of what's happening today, we still, we had the inbound global information as a part of our total experience, right? We've never not had a sense of the world. Even when I was a kid, I could see the helicopters taking people off the roof in Vietnam, right? Like I remember that. My dad was a vet. And so I remember his intensity

about it, but I remember the image. I actually remember seeing dislocation, disruption, being scared of like the son of Sam murders, even though like, you know, there was a whole lot of stresses coming in on us. Remember that movie The Day After? Yeah. Oh, I was just talking about this with someone the other day. It's like, how old, you know, we were like 12. I was terrified by that movie. Terrified, absolutely terrified.

Like, you know, and here, and point being, whatever it was that we, you know, had to deal with the, you know, had to deal with the, it's almost unmeasurable, the turbocharging of the stresses from information overload and distortion through that information now. And it's wild, it's really wild. And we're also the last generation to be raised without the internet. So we have the TV.

We have that sort of filtering ability that came with growing up with television. But also we know what it's like to be educated without the level of information, the influx of noise that young people see today. And I can't even wrap my head around what that must be like and the downstream impact of that on the next generation and the generation after that 10, 20 years from now. Yeah, it does. It's really weird too because like I think for all the flack he gets

over this single moment that he played a negative role in some people's mind in the 2000 election. I think that Ralph Nader, for me, really articulated almost as a philosopher better than anybody, earlier than anybody, that we have a core conundrum of corporate interest versus human interest, that this is basal to like everything now. It's basal to our healthcare problems. It's basal to our environmental problems. That if we don't, if we can't separate those two things and prioritize human interest over corporate interest, we have some really, really serious problems metastasizing out of that. But what's weird to me is in what you just observed, so I used to think to myself like, wow, man, you can really see the degree to which we're being turned into corporate copper tops, corporate consumers, like we're being fed entertainment

that's really just sort of a burger and a Xanax blended together and all they're really doing is priming us to buy shit. And there's art leaking through and this and that, but that matrix of corporate, corporate matrix of ultimately getting you to be a consumer, it was intense but now what's really wild is yes notionally notionally it's it's still about selling us stuff right facebook instagram their whole business model is as an ad platform so it's indisputable that they're

but this weird thing has happened which is because they're in the business of selling ads, what it's now turned into is something that does not have, it is not being driven. The manipulation that's taking place that's really dangerous is not a manipulation to get us to buy anything. It's the manipulation literally of how we feel about each other. You know what I mean? And the Russian GRU and this concerted effort to foment antagonism within our society to cause chaos and social unrest here. Like this is out of a James Bond movie, like Spectre. Like the only agenda is not to sell us anything. The only agenda is not to sell us anything.

It's literally to just destabilize us into rage, into this fit of such anger with each other that we can't function and it's working. And then we become malleable and controllable. Yeah, or at least unable to organize against it. And you think about these things this week, this kind of outrageously horrific showing by, you know, Mark Zuckerberg as people say to him, do you care at all about the dissemination of untruth in this thing you've built? And he cannot summon himself to say no it is it is like you literally like I just look at like like in college when you study like Nietzsche and will to power and you'd like content yourself as a 20 year old that you get what it means but literally you get to our age and suddenly you see these moments and you go,

no, that's actually it right there. That is just pure will to power, exactly as he expressed it. It is like the drive that has no end that says the ultimate objective is my maximization, period. What's so interesting about that, the ultimate objective is my maximization, period. What's so interesting about that, I mean, we have Jack Dorsey basically coming out and saying we're no longer gonna do political ads and he's kind of being championed for that right now,

which tees up Zuckerberg to follow suit, which he refuses to do. And when you look at the spreadsheet here, the revenue coming from political ads is so de minimis compared to the rest of the ad revenue that Facebook reaps in annually. So what is this battleground that he's staking his claim on here? It's will to power. It's crazy. It's like, how much is enough? And then you say, well, for us or a normal, kind of grounded person, we wouldn't be in that position

because we don't have that same will to power. Or is it that in the making of that person, that's being created as you ascend? Like, does that happen to somebody or is it that kind of person that ascends in that way? Hard to know. Yeah. That's an interesting chicken and the egg question.

I think what's, yeah, it's wild, especially, you know, I call it sometimes like, it's like the Hosni Mubarak moment right in the sense that when you look at like if you just take Mubarak right mm-hmm it's a really interesting moment in contemporary history of of the way history can, you know, self-correct or roll and how you move within it. I'm saying that badly. To me, Mubarak is this fascinating contemporary example of the inability to perceive the opportunity of the moment

because of the habit ingrained in him of seeing himself a certain way, right? This is a guy who like most credible assessments are that he and his family took something like 30 to 50 billion out of that country over time and and he had the support of the us the us intelligence community as a bulk work against originally you know communism and then against you know Islam is some Islamic fundamentalism but you get to this to hear square moment right and he has his George Washington opportunity he has the moment that George Washington is now rightly legendary for, which is he said, at the right moment, George Washington said, no, I am not.

If it works, it has to work without me, right? He let the Republic be more important than him. And so he's forevermore, essentially a humanist political saint, right? Mubarak had this moment where if he had looked around him and looked at his children and looked at his grandchildren, he could have said, we can live like kings for the next 10 generations in comfort in Switzerland and lionized by our own people if I simply go out on that balcony and say, read the tea leaves and go, in this moment, you know, what we've done in Egypt in the modern era to build a strong secular state,

it involved things that many people think were suppressive, that were tough. It was a tough time. We did what we thought we had to do. But now the clarion call of people saying it's time for the next phase is loud and it's clear. And I am not going to be the person who stands in the way of it. Everything I did was to set us up for this moment. And I celebrate the call of the people to say, we need to express ourselves in this way. There would be statues of him in Egypt for all eternity, no matter who, literally. He just couldn't do it. And you can see it so clearly.

He could have put the Muslim Brotherhood on tilt, literally on tilt, on their heels, unable to say, what can we say about that? Nothing, it's unassailable. And they'd have to essentially say, go off into the sunset, enjoy your life. And instead, he's in the docket. You know what I mean?

It's not dissimilar from being confounded as to why certain Republican leaders won't break ranks with Trump. It's sort of like, if you could just summon the gumption to stand against what is happening right now, you would be celebrated and lionized for that. But, you know, look, I don't- Also to your point about it being a rounding error, political ads, it's like, can you not see,

can you not look at this in a wide lens and project even into the medium term future and see what a negative this is for you to take a stand around something that is literally atomizing the very fabric of the democratic capitalist society that allowed you to build this company in this way and just like see how much of an opportunity is here for you to do what Dorsey did and essentially say,

and by the way, like, you know, I think Jack's pretty conscious guy, i actually do and i think it's but it's also just tactically wise it's wise it's like you don't want to be on the wrong side of of the tension between humanist progressivism and what the historical record is going to show about this i mean yeah you know jack's's an interesting case because I too think he's a very conscious guy. And he did the podcast. I went to his house. I spent like the better part of a whole afternoon with him. And, you know, I just got the impression that this is somebody who is grappling with very difficult issues with, you know, impossible solutions. He's got the world

chomping at his feet to solve them. And in order to do the best that he possibly can, he has to erect these boundaries over his quietude, essentially his serenity, so that he can problem solve like with his highest consciousness. And I just thought like, that's the kind of person that I want in that role. And then you see the dialogue around him because he is just the target for everybody's, you know, issues and angst over, you know, the, the disease that is endemic in Twitter. But who would you rather have in that position? is endemic in Twitter. But who would you rather have in that position? Yeah. Yeah. As long, you know, look, I mean,

I know because I was involved in starting a crowdfunding company for charity, I got to know people in that space and the pioneers that space were the guys in Kickstarter, right? Perry Chen, who I never knew, but Yancey Strickler, I got to know a little bit. uh-huh Perry Chen who I never knew but Yancey Strickler I got to know a little bit Yancey's just put a book out called this could be our future I think and he talks about the decision they made really early on to turn that into a benefit court Republic benefit corporation and I think but the book at large it's really excellent it posits this idea that basically the idea of financial maximization being our only value on personal levels, on corporate levels, is a pernicious underlying component on all this bad decision making and social ill and all of it and that and that it's a variation on what mark benyo said recently about stakeholder values versus shareholder values he yancey sort of says it's like a japanese bento box there needs to be there needs to be apportionment

of the values you're pursuing yeah not just financial maximization and i think when you see not just financial maximization. And I think when you see, you know, it is going to take people saying, is what I'm all about the biggest version of the thing I've built? Or is it that I want the legacy of the thing I've built to be positive, big enough that it doesn't have to be driven by like, is it growing,

devouring? Is it like Shiva, the devourer of worlds? Or is it like, you know, something that's going to actually give back? It's a difficult puzzle, you know, especially in a capitalistic system that lives and dies on quarterly profits and, you know, shareholders say and what's happening. It creates a system that foments, you know, growth as the only metric until, you know, we're eating our own and we're at cross-purposes with what the vision was to begin with. And when I take a 10,000-foot look on what's happening culturally, it's difficult to not cast a dystopian view or be pessimistic about the future. And I

talk to lots of interesting people who provide me with a tremendous amount of optimism, but I find myself lapsing into kind of a dark place with the whole thing. Yeah, the thing that kind of buffers me about that, which I agree when I look at, I spend a lot of, I've spent years and years and years working on environmental issues conservation issues and sustainable development issues and things like that and um i'm certainly not like a global expert but i don't know nothing about you know i've spent enough time on it and something and sometimes i I I think you know my dad's a

career environmental conservation litigator and organization builder and you go there's not one single signal that's not moving radically in the wrong direction like not one you know every issue of like ecological health on this planet is moving significantly in the wrong direction if for for stability in terms of like the biosphere that literally supported our evolution and our ascendance um not that the planet won't survive and it's not that we won't survive in some measure but we're going to be like going through cataclysmic shifts and you kind of go wow man it's just inevitable like if not our kids are our grandkids our great-grandkids it's like what is the condition of the world they're

going to live in going to be it seems really bleak on in some way but but on the other hand the other thing that's true is that within two generations, there are evolutions, technological and ideas, all these things that are so profound that the notion that our grandparents, our grandparents could no more have imagined information technology. It has gone beyond any of the science fiction i mean some of the most most most prescient thinking in science fiction has sort of imagined aspects of what we're going through but what that means is we have to have the humility to know that we also just cannot possibly the dystopian vision that we imagine well it's based on our current understanding of what's exactly so we just don't know we just we just don't know, it's based on our current understanding of what's possible. Exactly, so we just don't know.

We just don't know. But it's within the not knowing that I look at, it's sort of what some people say about, I heard like a priest one time say like, Christianity is the bet you can't lose. Like if faith is the bet you can't lose, because if you act on the basis of it and it turns out to be true that there's a heaven and a hell then you

want if you didn't then all you then you were nicer in life to people and and I kind of think the same about the environment it's like it's like you we could be we could be wrong and and there could be a turn here where we realize that we know how to plant two trillion trees a year and that we're able to actually reverse these effects much faster than we thought we were, et cetera, or we'll be wrong,

but at least we won't have to say to our grandkids, what did you do during the war? I drove a frigging Hummer, you know what I mean? Yeah, essentially the argument is, let's presume that all climate science is wrong. But if we go ahead and stop overfishing the oceans and we remove the plastic out of it and we get better at everything,

we start farming with regenerative principles. All these things that we can do, these are all to our benefit, irrespective. Let's say they don't impact greenhouse gases emissions at all. There's still solid practices that we should be doing. Yeah. And also actually, not to flip it on its head, but there's incredible economies. If we care about growth, if we're interested in enterprise, there's unbelievably exciting future enterprises that will crush extractive carbon intensive technologies in the marketplace. I mean, that's the thing. It's kind of happening despite all the embedded subsidies around carbon energy and everything.

It's still actually crushing it on a price point basis. Renewables are going to destroy carbon. It's already done it to coal. But renewables are going to utterly destroy uh carbon-based energy in the marketplace i just wish we could get there a little faster yeah you know well your interest in in environmentalism comes from your dad who by all accounts sounds like you know he's quite an amazing guy. He is, he's a badass. Yeah, and you grew up in Columbia, Maryland.

I'm from Bethesda. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Grew up not too far away. And it's interesting because I think people listening probably don't know, but Columbia was this planned community and it was developed by your grandfather, right? So this interest in urban

planning, which spills into the movie, which we're going to talk about in a little bit here, is kind of this beautiful way for you to express, you know, kind of these ideas that you grew up with. Yeah. And sometimes Columbia gets called the first planned city, which arguably it is because it's now a city of, I think, like 120, 130,000. It's not... I mean, I remember hearing about it as a kid. Yeah. And it was like this, oh, it's planned.

And it's like, you know, this like light dusting of utopia around it. It was a significant dusting of utopia. I mean, we were... It wasn't, you know, it wasn't like Margaret Atwood level cultish, but it was, but it was, it was a, it wasgrowth of things he had become convinced of. But also, you know, he was hugely inspired by Martin Luther King and John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. And Columbia was founded in 67. very much a part of his conviction that the spiritual life of America was going to get corroded by the dissolution of the vitality of cities, which to him meant the dissolution of community.

Yeah. And that highways, he was a very early, And that highways, he was a very early, he articulated and predicted as early as the mid-50s when he was on Eisenhower's housing commission. He discussed the idea that the American highway system was going to promote low density development and that that was going to create sprawl. I believe he was a very early, like he was one of the early people to start using the phrase sprawl and predicting suburban sprawl in quotes, you know, and he talked about the ways that cities, that city centers were going to become, were going to get denuded, you know, if people left them for these suburbs and that these suburbs were not going to become, we're going to get denuded, you know, if people left them for these suburbs, and that these suburbs were not going to be communities that they were seeing this by the 50s. Already, even with Levittown, and things like that, they were seeing that the highway was promoting a kind of development that had no center, right? It was like, it was it was this

thing. And he, he was very concerned about that he thought thought that if middle class and upper middle class life left the cities, you'd be left with essentially what we got, which was like the hyper rich and the hyper poor. It's incredibly pressured. I mean, that's exactly what's played out. And here we are living in the greatest example of that. And I don't know what your experience is like living here, but I find it to be very alienating and it can be extremely lonely. Like when I moved here, it took me years

to like cultivate friendships and some kind of web of community. Whereas I'd always lived in cities, I lived in New York and it's like, you're just in the flow of life and there's a connectivity there that doesn't exist here without an extreme amount of effort. No, and I've lived in New York, and it's like you're just in the flow of life, and there's a connectivity there that doesn't exist here without an extreme amount of effort. No, and I've lived in New York since the week I moved out of college. I've been there 28 years.

I'm an occasional émigré to L.A., but I love New York. You still consider your main place of residence. Yeah, I've been a Nework resident since the summer of 91 but um but you know my grandfather i grew up around my grandfather talking about these things and uh yeah it had a bit and i worked for him my first job out of college i worked for right his amazing organization called enterprise now called Enterprise Community Partners, which was pioneering ways of developing affordable housing, getting investment equity into affordable housing development by really smartly doing it in a nonprofit matrix, by training community-based advocacy group to be nonprofit housing developers and managers, and then getting some equity from the city, but then leveraging some through the low-income housing tax credit, which he was one of the intellectual fathers of this amazing program,

which in our world now, with all the talk about impact investing, right, I always say like one of the earliest and biggest and most successful impact investment products in the history of America was the low-income housing tax credit. Because it gave an incentive to invest in affordable housing development that paid off very handsomely. And so enterprise alone is raised and invested something like 16 billion now through the syndication of the tax credits and through its programs. Something like 10,000 community-based organization partners all over America, you know, like a million units of housing. It's truly an astonishing thing. That is built. I read an analysis by the Ford Foundation once that one in every 120 families in America has lived in a unit of housing created by that organization. That's quite a legacy. Yeah.

And in direct contraposition to the Alec Baldwin character in the movie, right? Who's basically the complete opposite of this. Yeah, so in my film, which takes place in the 50s, Alec Baldwin plays a character who, he's not based on Robert Moses. That would be incorrect because this is a fiction and there's lots of things that happen in it

from murders to all kinds of dark psychosexual secrets that have nothing to do with robert moses they're completely my invention but but moses is indisputably one of the great dark figures in american life and and he is to me um yeah he if my granddad is obi-wan was obi-obi, the Jedi, you know, who held with the force, Robert Moses is like the Jedi who went dark. Yeah, because he started out as a progressive. considered by many to in that to be like the greatest the the bright light of the modern urban progressive reform civil service reform movement and he went so dark he he what was his vader moment i'm not i'm not some crazy um star wars fan i i love it but really in an archetypal sense to say that robert moses was the Moses was the Darth Vader of New York in the 20th century is a completely accurate analogy.

Because he really was a Jedi Knight who went dark and was so powerful, so had controlled the force. For decades. For decades. Arguably, he ran New York City and state. he ran New York City and state you couldn't do anything without his say-so from the mid-30s to at least 1968 um so for half of a century really he he you know for the better for the better part of the middle of the the century he controlled New York like an autocratic um emperor and and yet and yet he was masked. He had like the Death Star.

He had literally a cloaking. His genius allowed him to cloak. Everyone thought he was the parks commissioner. And he, in fact, literally was an uncontested imperial autocrat who made every significant decision about how new york was evolving from being a 19th century city to being a 20th century city and he baked his racism really into the infrastructure of new york in ways that we're still contending with it's uh it's hard to fathom that level of power from this shadow figure who was able to maintain it for so long with such a heavy hand.

There is that great, I need to read this book, I haven't read it, but Robert Caro wrote a whole book about this, right? Yeah. Ken Burns did a whole chapter in his New York. The New York documentary. Yeah, the New York documentary. The New York documentary was, it's Rick Burns, I think, directed that one. rick burns i think um directed that one that uh but that that was my first encounter with it with with him with this idea that there was a person who was that powerful who was never elected um and who did so much damage um a lot of good too he was a real visionary but but an enormous

amount of very dark damage and the thing thing is, like, you know, it makes my film sound like a documentary, which it's absolutely not, in the sense that it's first and foremost, you know, an old-fashioned movie. It's a detective movie. It has a guy with Tourette's syndrome, an obsessive-compulsive disorder at the center of it.

And it's got like jazz clubs and, you know, it's this drift. It's a drift in that period in much the same way that L.A. Confidential or something like that is an atmospheric kind of experience. experience but i've always thought that i've always thought that that noir films when they're serious they do something really positive which is they they don't just acknowledge the shadow in american life they they dig into it they basically say there's there's things going on under the surface of what we call the American narrative that if we're not paying attention to them, they're doing us real harm, like really serious harm. Yeah, and there's a disorientation with that trope, like with that narrative arc in that the movie is always kind of ahead of the audience

in terms of what the audience knows. Way ahead. So you're never sure, like I've heard you talk about this, but like Chinatown is obviously the most incredible example of this where you literally don't know what's happening. At all. The movie until the very end. But you don't care because you're just in for it.

Yeah. So they have to, to work, they have to be really good. I mean, it's a weird thing to say because like a good movie has to be a good movie. Of course it does. But it does have to, it's very particular because in some ways the point of noir, Maureen Dowd in the New York Times wrote a really great thing about this recently. thing about this recently uh is that is that it you have to have the humility to know that the unknowability of the moment you're living in you you do not know you think you know what's going on and you don't actually know what's going on it's why that oj simpson documentary was pretty amazing because to me we were young but we lived through it and we had opinions right and to me what watching that

documentary did to me talk about ego i could see my own ego i could hear my own ego from when i was 20 something years old having all kinds of opinions about those events and the certainty that he was going to get convicted and all this stuff and when you watch the film you're like what and what a moron i was to think that i even understood two out of the six levels of what was going on here um like the social tectonic plates that were shifting that led to the inevitability of something like that happening exactly like like and the the episode in that that was dedicated to the history of the relationship between the LAPD and the African American community alone was so humbling because you're like, if you didn't know this, if you didn't

know the depth of this, if you knew this, you'd have understood that there was no way he was getting convicted. But if you don't know this, you sat there with your opinions, thinking that you had any idea, any real basis for understanding what was going on. And that unknowability, that idea, that's very difficult when you think about it. When you open the paper and you see what's going on and you think you know what's going on,

you have an opinion. You just can't help it. But pausing and going, at what point do you say, well, we know enough to act, but we can't really know everything that's going on. It's a very profound thing. And I think that these films, part of the fun of really good noir films is that you get hypnotized. They force you to experience that inability to understand what's happening right and and yet they don't alienate you because they're sexy

and i really mean that word like they're sexy like like la confidential is sexy chinatown is sexy the big sleep is sexy yeah and what they do is they that that they flick you go through some portal and you just go oh wow this is wild like I'm through I'm through the screen I'm into the world it's compelling the music's great there's things about it they work this kind of you get into actually like an aesthetic pleasure of listening to language and watching people and seeing clothes. But then slowly what they do is remind you, you don't know what's going on. And in this country, no matter what anybody tells you, there's dark shit going on.

And not knowing that it's going on puts you in danger, like in big danger. And I think that's pretty healthy actually. Yeah, and also clearly has its parallels as to what's going on culturally and politically right now. But I think, I feel a little bit naked right now because I haven't seen the movie. And this whole thing came together last night. You'll come tomorrow night.

And as like a perfectionist who prides himself on his preparation and who's somebody who's very detail oriented. Yeah. I feel like I'm gonna have like a teretic tick here because I don't quite know what I'm talking about, but I do know enough about the noir genre in general. And I certainly read up on this movie.

It's one of the reasons why we love this genre is that it's treating us like adults. It's asking a lot of us, but we're welcoming that. And it's refreshing, especially in our high fructose corn syrup, you know, kind of entertainment where we're being spoon fed all of this stuff. It's so nice to sit in a theater and be challenged in that way. And I think that there's a real demand for that. Like, it's almost like we're starving for it, at least in the movie theater. I mean, we're getting a lot of it in the streaming services right now. Like, there's tons of amazing projects that are getting made.

Yeah. But I think it speaks to a larger kind of cultural thing. Like, I've noticed that, you know, you're someone who, you know, feels strongly about who, who, who, you know, feel strongly about your, your private life and you're not one to go out and do all the talk shows and all that kind of stuff. But, but you've really embraced in the, in the kind of press junket with this movie, you've embraced the podcast for me. You've done a lot of the big shows and I think it's well suited to you because it provides space to have a nuanced, mature adult conversation about the things that you care about. And I think that that is, you know, part and parcel is reflected in the kind of movies that you like to make and certainly this movie.

Well, thanks. I mean, here's an interesting thing, though. I don't think it's a bad thing that you haven't seen the film and maybe it'll come with our friends tomorrow night. Um, and then we can talk about it more, but I actually think it's kind of, it's nice in a funny way today because we're recording this the day that they're putting the film out.

Today's opening day. And, and only because just knowing what I know about your own work and story, um, I think it's interesting to talk about it a little bit like this, but not worry about what the film's about per se, or even the process in making it,

because I've been talking about that a fair amount, right? What's more interesting today is a walk in and you've got like David Lynch catching the big fish, which I love, and Ego is the Enemy, which I haven't read. What I think is really fascinating is literally what I'm going through today that is different from any of these other conversations and that I think connects more back to things that I'm really interested in

about your own, let's call it like tipping point moment of feeling like I need to prior i mean i need to shift my priorities let's like if i go real basal not i need to get fit or but just really like i gotta shift my priorities is that the funny thing is is i probably have not ever i haven't i've threw myself into this as much as anything i've done on a creative level by simple virtue of the fact that i wrote i wrote i wrote it produced it directed it raised all the fun money for it um it's 20 years in the making yeah it's a long long gestation on this one right and i really and i really couldn't get it out of my head. It was not, it was really not at a certain point about like the ego of I want to play this role.

It really was, it started to become for me about things that I wanted to get across. That I started feeling actually the very best feeling that you get about a thing, which like it's and this i have talked about but it's the joseph campbell transparency effect it's like this people will be able to see themselves in this they will be able to see us in this they'll be reminded they'll be able to see echoes of the now but also like truths about the past and how we got where we are and and even just on a personal level about the past and how we got where we are and and even just on a personal level reconnect with empathy which is i think really really important right now um but mostly i just it mostly i just wanted to i get stubborn about not completing the thing and i really wanted to complete it and so i did and so i've thrown myself out there to talk about it like way more than i

generally know do or want to because i really do um think it's better for people to figure stuff out on their own however here's the really interesting thing today which is i kind of was intimating this to you in the kitchen but the funny thing is is for all the every form of cultivation we didn't have there's it's not a ton of financial support behind putting it out they've done a good job but it's just not the kind of film that you if you throw 100 million dollars in marketing in a film like this, you're gonna lose 50 million bucks. You know, that's just the way it is. So I don't expect that.

So I've tried to lean into it. But what's really interesting is, I know for sure already today that it's not gonna blow the doors off. It's not gonna be some, not only not gonna be some record weekend, it's not those kinds of things. It'll be soft.

Like it'll be less than than people hoped it would do in an opening weekend right so this is what we're talking about is it's to me in almost every framework it's not only not relevant to what i was trying to do when I did it. But I actually know now from experience on film specifically that the very best things I've done, and I mean literally the stuff I've been nominated for Oscars for, the stuff that I haven't, but that people will almost ubiquitously call cultural touchstones like Fight Club or American History X or the 25th Hour or none of

which got any awards or anything like that, but are generally the first things named if people say these things, right? Every single one of those. You've been down this road many times. When I say down this road, what I mean is considered a financial failure in the initial assessment of the matrix of like measuring things by the amount of initial box office they do, right? But not by the main metric or the most important metric, which is, did we do what we set out to do? Did we say what we wanted to say? Are we, the team that created this thing, satisfied that we accomplished what we, you know, set out to do? Absolutely absolutely but what i'm saying is what's fascinating to walk in and see this book is i i have been through it like i've been through

it i've i've actually experienced the very rare satisfaction of going through the feeling of disappointment like when fight club came out we all thought we made a right a ass kicker of a film which did right but it came out and everybody felt stung everybody felt stung by that it's so hard to to believe that that was the case but i know it was like booed in venice but also it just it just you know the budget the film was like 68 million bucks, and I think its total box office in the U.S. was under 40, which means the studio took home 20. So you're into like deep in the red, not like partially in the red, like deep in the red, right?

That was the era when, not to get business wonky, but the studios still owned the DVDs, and the DVDs on Fight club actually made in my understanding ended up making it sort of a profitable enterprise but it's still it was still like wow yeah wow like we felt the kind of heat we felt from the people who loved it was like a once in a career kind of it was like that feeling of like people get it, they love it, they feel so connected to it, the level of passion. I mean that movie, if you're Gen X,

if you're a Gen X male, I mean that movie was transcendent. It's one of- There are few movies I go back and watch every single year. And it's one of the most impactful movies I've ever seen in terms of like what I connect with emotionally. And in my opinion, it takes you to a positive place. It takes you through the sexiness of nihilism,

but back out to where he rejects that, he grabs the girl's hand and he says, let's try this a healthier way. Right. You know what I mean? But there's definitely an embrace of chaos and anarchy. Sure, sure. On the way, I think, to saving a lane from the church and running, you know, it's the same as the end

of The Graduate, I really believe that. Yeah. But my point is, we went through that, we felt stung, we came out the backside of it. And you knew that was gonna happen going, you didn't. No, we didn't. No, we didn't, we felt, we felt.

But didn't Brad say to you, like, people aren't gonna like this? He did, but you can't, this is what I mean about ego. You still go like, God, we thought we made a hit movie. You know what I mean? We thought we made a hit movie and it's sort of like in some matrix that's not even the matrix that we care about,

that matrix tagging it as a disappointment reverberates out, it hits you in the head and you go, God, like. You question yourself. Yeah, we didn't we didn't yeah that sucks like you feel bad about something that in your heart you feel good about right and i think um but my point is that even having been through it when we talk about like the ego being one of the most pernicious addictions. It's like, I've been through it multiple times, like multiple times, you know what I mean?

And this film that I've made, it's as good as anything I've done, like just full stop, I know it is. And I also, you know, I've had people, Michael Eric Dyson, he's a sociologist at Georgetown. He just wrote a fucking essay on it that hit me out of the blue. I was crying when I read it.

That was the Esquire piece, right? It's an incredible article. And it's partially about the film, but it's also partially about what it inspired in him to think about race in America. And Ken Burns wrote this essay about it that had me, I was on the floor. He's a hero of mine. And I'm like, there's this whole side of me right now that's like, I did what I said. He couldn't have praised the movie more highly no

he did in that medium article and i and i and what and and there's a big part of me that's like it's literally like chinatown it's like the the psychic part of the jake gets in my house is that in my head is saying is saying how much is enough like how much more do you need like what more could you want and the answer the best part of me is for sure, nothing. Like, that's it. That's what you're going for. You're going for activation, pleasure and activation. And is that happening? It's happening. I can feel it. I can see it. And this will find its level and people will get to it and all these things. But on a day when the distribution head at Warner Brothers is calling you up and saying,'s gonna be a little

softer than we want despite our best efforts and your brain just slams you and i don't mean like goes yeah okay but you know hanging you know we gotta hang in there you're saying all these things like it literally becomes like a theoretic conversation right you can you're saying these things and you the there's a voice that goes, but yeah, well, we're playing, this plays out on a longer horizon. This is like Daniel Kahneman thinking slow. There's a residue from that, right?

But this is what's interesting to me. This is what's totally fascinating to me is it's not a residue. It's a big fucking loud frustrated side of your head that is the ego and goes, shit, I wanted everyone else's version of what we want to be fulfilled too. to be fulfilled too. I mean, there's something refreshingly human about that because the narrative that circles around you is somebody who's kept the press at arm's length, who's had their brush ups with kind of sketchy narratives swirling around things that may or may not have happened and who's really carved out a private life. And with that comes

the inference or the assumption like, well, this guy just doesn't give a fuck about what anybody says about him. He's just doing his thing. And like, that's cool. And that's like a superpower that I wish that I could have. And so when I'm scrolling or whatever, looking for feedback, like I feel weak, you know what I mean? I feel like my ego has the better of me. And I think that speaks to the whole kind of Tourette thing, right? Because Tourette's, what is Tourette's, but a very severe example of what we all kind of harbor, which is this war inside of ourselves between our better instincts and the behavior that we actually manifest in the world.

Yeah, and what I'm kind of fascinated about is, it'll, you know, I'm a big believer in that sort of this too shall pass thing. You can let, that's like Dharma, right? You can watch your base impulses and desires just go, like someone hit a guitar string really hard and it's just going, but it's going gonna settle down. It's gonna settle down. And then the work you're doing, your life,

like all these things go. And actually the long-term steadiness of the thing you've made itself and its quality and all these things, it'll be out there. Yeah, we'll find its level. Yeah, well, everything will find its level. And in many cases, you can have faith that like, yeah, it's gonna get to that place

that is ultimately the best thing also, which is just the quality of the thing will hold itself up and it will be all good. But what's kind of fascinating is at one point today i was kind of floating along looking at the light looking at the hills and i was sort of thinking well this was an interesting experiment in i cared a lot right i put like more of myself into this that you know on multiple levels i wasn't just an actor working for a great director or whatever I did it so then I went out and said well I have to do the last full measure of trying to engage in the wide net of the very people who I

know like substance who like long-form, who like rich meals. And by the way, a lot of the cheap ones too. And the thing is, you come to this thing, you go, well, I didn't really do anything. You go, you know, you go, wow. So like, it's not moving the needle at all. Yeah, it doesn't move the needle at all. And this, we were kind of talking about this too, in the kitchen is in the world we're in, it's like, you know, Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was like one of the rising rock stars of history and academia when I was in college, and he's like one of our elders, you know, one of our great, he wrote a beautiful thing about it today, right?

And I saw like, you know, people, Warren Press, did you see this thing? And retweet this and do this and these things. And you just go, it's not doing anything. It's not doing anything, man. It feels good. But it's like, talk about pissing in the wind. I think some of this stuff is doing something. You know, you did Rogan yesterday.

Yeah. Millions of people watched that. Like, it's, I mean, you're doing everything that you can, and that's a demonstration of how much you care. And I think that, and I'm finding you to be like, I had this thing like, is he gonna be all like walled off and like not wanting to talk? And it's like, that's not the experience

that I'm having at all. And that's not the experience I'm getting when I tuned into those other shows as well. Mostly, I've said this many, many times. It was not an insincere statement statement i'm not like i don't think most people who know me think that um aloofness is my is my natural state right i i'm pretty engaged but i but my reticence around like public discourse is actually, I just really honestly think it screws with the quality of the experience that people have when they go in to see the kind of work I do. It's like, I don't think, like, I know Daniel Day-Lewis a little bit.

I know Sean Penn a little bit. But Daniel's a better example because he's like the warrior monk. In our tribe of thespians, he's the true warrior monk. And by that, I mean, he's like in, you have no idea, no one knows where he is.

He's off in the cave. He's doing anything. He could be doing anything right now. For such a long time. And he's a really terrific person. He's a fascinating person person he's fascinating person he's all these things but he descends off the mountain and delivers these lightning bolts to me i am in i am just flattened by his performances they are so visceral and so vital and deep just deep as shit and but that is enhanced by the fact that i don't

see him and hear him and he goes away for a long long time and when he brings it back down it's got like the level of excitement it it's just incredible but also anything i held from before is atomized it's gone gone. It's long gone. And there's just the shock of the reincarnation. It literally like dead and gone. And then it's reincarnation into yet another like powerful thing. And that's amazing. It's becoming increasingly more and more rare.

The level of discipline that you have to have with the kind of exposure that's available to everybody now requires, you know, a sense of self that is increasingly more and more difficult, I think. Like, you know, I know you've talked about like, you know, Dylan and Bowie and even like Radiohead, you know, is probably a decent example of that. Like they, you know, like they're not, when you're purposely removing yourself from the public eye and you go out and you do your thing and you come back, like that's a fucking cool thing. Yeah. Yeah.

What's interesting, that what I'm interested in really specifically is to me this whole the process of trying to to and some of it I'm being totally candid I didn't feel I had any choice in this case I'd love to let it fly and let it be I'd be more okay in a way it would sting less to me if I hadn't made such an effort. You know what I mean? Like the stingy part of the brain that's like, God damn, I did all this stuff and is it really even doing anything? The drive for me was not even the care of the thing itself

because the thing itself is like a child. You think you're, once you've put it out it's on its own path but it's more that i didn't i engaged people wonderful people who backed me in taking some risk and putting some shekels they put their money alongside warner in this and i like really appreciate it right like i don't have any right to that from anybody there's no nothing about my work that to me automatically validates that someone should should put you know like a lot of money into backing me doing this thing so my view is sort of like I owe these allies of mine literally everything I've got everything I've got to try to make them make it so they can at least get a hold on it

ironically these are the type of people who were like you did because the thing is like beyond what we could have hoped honestly that's the response I've gotten it doesn't and I feel good about that but at the same time I want to try to do right by them on in the business of it all and and I don't by them on in the business of it all and and i don't um the thing the funny thing is is it it it burns you down it just does there's no two ways about it and this is where i get which part the the all this talking about it or the yeah no not just talking about it just the track that it's a lot of travel it's a lot of um it's just a lot, it's not emotional stress, but it's just when you do anything, and this is, I am really interested in asking you a question, which is you get to this point where you're sort of like, wow, I'm not doing any of the things that I know are healthy for me. healthy for me. I am not an uninformed person about diet. I am not, I surf.

I have lots and lots. I rode competitively in college. I've been an athlete. I've trained, I've gotten in really great shape. I've starved myself. I've gotten back down to like 137 to do the Painted Veil. Ran the New York Marathon with the Psy. Yeah, yeah, I've done a lot of stuff.

So I actually have in me a certain measure of what I'd call the muscle memory of health and discipline, right? And when you get into this mode where you're grinding up in here, like tapping my forehead, you know, it's amazing. I am so amazed at how fast the inertia effect, the mind just takes you away in the face of, let's call it stress, I don't mean emotional stress,

but just the clinical stress of doing, pursuing something in a high gear, right? And number one, you talk about the argument with the head, the amount of self-chastising I do on a daily basis would be so much more easily resolved by just waking up and doing yoga for 40 minutes or grabbing my board and going out and paddling for 30 minutes and going into the exact day that I'm going to have anyway. day that i'm going to have anyway it would be so much more easily resolved by fasting or doing a green juice cleanse while i'm doing this instead of drinking three fucking coffees a day to get myself through it and i'm super curious in your because i've been hypnotized out of eating sugar

had that work for like a year year and a a half, fallen off of it, you know, gotten. But to me, the beta, the swings, the volatility on it is getting, I'm 50 now. Yeah. My level of frustration with the volatility is maxing out. Yeah. Like I really really coming out the backside of this Especially feeling like I'm feeling today, which is like deep satisfaction short-term frustration I'm like, I do not want to tip right now particularly. I do not want to tip over into sort of a

Sigh and more indulgence of negative pattern ill health. Yeah, I really really Right now want to go out the back of this into like a new level of resolve. And I'm super curious, like I'm sure you've talked about it, but I'm super curious for you what the tricks are of like sustained discipline through phases like when you're like a race is like a movie for me it's super easy to if you've got goal-oriented things that's the best you can always like set yourself like i gotta get ready for this film or i gotta get ready for this goal but i'm at the point in my life where i don't want to do that many films. I don't want to do a film a year that I have to get in shape for, right? I want to like, I want to have a steady state discipline. I'm super curious. Do you go through still?

Oh yeah, without a doubt. I mean, the first thing I would say to you is stop chastising yourself and be a little bit more gentle on yourself because you're in this short-term window where you're exerting a tremendous amount of will on the world for something that you care deeply about. Your values, like I look at it like you have different values that are competing with each other right now for your attention and resources.

And your priority at the moment is getting the word out about this movie that you worked so hard on, that you care so deeply about and trying to foment interest and getting other people to care about it in the way that you do. There's an expiration date

on this phase that you're going through. And I think just to begin with, just recognizing that you're in a heightened period at the moment and being okay with the fact that you're not going to be in this super balanced state while you go through this. In the same way that you would think about pushing other things aside or marginalizing other values because you're training for a marathon or you're in production on a movie. Like those are where you have to choose which value is gonna take precedence in this equation. But I think, and I would say to you that there's this illusion that we're all striving for this perfect balance in our life.

And I think it's setting people up, myself included, to feel like we're falling short or disappointing ourselves and others because we can't meet that. Like, what's your morning routine and what time are you waking up? And like, are you doing these 20 things in the morning so that you can be your best self

when you navigate the world and all the other obligations that you have to meet throughout the day? And I've just found for myself that I can't necessarily meet that on a day-to-day basis. And it's been a journey to just being okay with that and looking at a couple of the things that I can't necessarily meet that on a day-to-day basis. And it's been a journey to just being okay with that and looking at a couple of the things that I can do or what is completely unnegotiable, non-negotiable

that you're gonna do no matter what is happening. Like, what is it that you feel so strongly about that actually is really crucial to your self-care that you're gonna create that protective boundary around. Like maybe it's getting out on the water and surfing for, you know, it doesn't have to be 30 minutes. What if it's 15 minutes or something that's actually doable?

And for you was going vegan, one of those threshold things where you said, this has gotta be essentially part of the fundamental. Yeah, I mean, I come, you know, I came into that first. You know, I have a long story of, of like addiction and recovery and went to rehab and all that kind of stuff. So I, I, I kind of, I've, I've learned how to see certain things through the lens of like 12 step. And there's a rubric with that, that creates kind of a binary system that removes decision fatigue. Like you're either drinking or doing drugs or you're sober, but you can't like drink it. You know, it's like,

there is a iron curtain between those two things. And when 10 years later I had this, you know, brush with ill health and realized that I was once again facing another, you know, kind of threshold moment for myself, I approached diet and lifestyle with the same kind of rigor and binary perspective that 12-step offered, which I played around with a lot of diets and wasn't getting anywhere. But there's something about plant-based that not only when I tried it, like I just felt amazing, but in order to sustain it, I kind of leveraged the tools of 12

step to create a foundation. As I started to learn how to do it, it's like, oh, well, you know, meat and dairy are just off the table, just like drugs and alcohol. Like that made it very easy for me. And that was imperfect at first, but allowed me to kind of move forward with it as I learned how to like perfect it and make it sustainable. And that's something I've held, you know, I've held that line for 12 years, but my relationship with like fitness and training and exercise, like I stay connected to it, but you know, there's a big difference between how I'm living now versus when I was training for these races. And it's like a job, you know, it's like being in production, you're just like 25 hours a week on, out of my bike or whatever. It's not a sustainable lifestyle. It's like being in production. You're just like 25 hours a week out of my bike or whatever. It's not a sustainable lifestyle.

It's something that I can do for a period of time to achieve a certain goal, and then you have to rebound back. So that pendulum – in my life, my pendulum is always swinging. And that idea, that fantasy of balance is that that pendulum is always kind of right in the middle there. And it's not my life. That's not the life of almost any high performer that I know. It's more about getting comfortable with those swings and understanding that in the short term, your life is out of balance.

But when you telescope out, like over an extended period of time, you're making sure that the important things in your life are being attended to. Right. Do you, in the matrix of just actual training and the value of the on on top of like plant-based eating within because training and exercise and all of it are so good not only for your your heart

health and you know everything else but but for your well-being the meditative quality the mind clearing quality of exercise in the state you know everything else but but for your well-being the meditative quality the mind clearing quality of exercise in the state you know the mood stay with the serotonin that comes from it all the yeah all the good you know kind of keeping you even components of it do you have you found that let's say training for a race for you or an event is like, like doing a film and you might say, I don't actually want to do as much of this as I've done it in the past. So the spreads between those goal driven, you know, phases get wider, right? Yeah, yeah. Have you experienced though, that within, within the wider spreads, between the highly motivated, you know, job like

the wider spreads between the highly motivated you know job like things have you seen have you ever gotten to a place where the baseline of what you're doing to sustain not for not for job related reasons or for but almost just like for your mental well-, your health has dipped like, you know, not to zero, but almost to like where you're like, God, I'm almost back to. Yeah, 100%. Yes. And then I'll beat myself up relentlessly. Yeah, there's this idea, like I go out and they're,

oh, how much did you run today? 50 miles. I'm like, you would laugh if you knew, like, you know, like I've only worked out like twice this week, I think. Like it's, you know, it's at a pretty low boil at the moment. And, you know, if I had my druthers, I would be, you know, hitting it every single day.

And that's not the reality of my situation because I'm making a conscious choice to invest my time elsewhere. You know what I mean? Like I wanted to spend several hours immersing myself in your world today before you came over here so I could at least have some semblance of an intelligent conversation.

And so ordinarily I would have done something different this morning, but I'm like totally 100% okay with that. Yeah. And I think that comes a little bit, I think maturity has helped that. Whereas maybe several years ago, I would be holding myself to a standard that I couldn't sustain. Like I would just wake up at a ridiculous hour to get it in and I, and I would burn myself out. And now it's like, it's okay, man, you know, you're not going to get to do everything you want to do every single day.

But what can I do? And what are the small little habits that I can cultivate to make sure that I'm not really losing touch with or contact with those important aspects of lifestyle? Yeah, even as I'm listening to it and spinning on the patterns of things it just is it's always wild the the dance between the the struck the the way that structured approach to time in life can bring um actual richness you know what i mean it's not even just discipline and effectiveness.

I think effectiveness is like in a way bullshit. It's like, it actually is like, if you just focus on quality of life, like some structure can mean that you actually are learning music and you actually are staying a little healthier and you're, you're learning new things because you're, you're making time like

through teachers you know what i mean like through by booking it literally or you know and and the structure can seem like anal and not like um relaxed yeah but the truth is is that struck more structure in the time can make can help you kind of wrangle yourself into doing the things that you're actually really happy that you're learning and you're feeling good yeah at the end of the day and your life feels good but that's at odds with it's just at odds with like pure presence right or like the value of like kind of just being allowing yourself to be you know what i mean and it's like yeah it's true it's like you can overthink balance and stuff but the but the the uh i find myself really admiring people who who somehow achieve kind of like um they they're minimizing the vol you know what i mean because i because i i think

um i think having sort of crossed a certain threshold where i've lost you know my mother died when she was 54 and my really good friend and partner who i built a theater company with he died at 56 you know um and you just kind of go like like you know the consequence of negative behavior starts to speed up a little bit or you start to go you know you don't want to be eating you don't want to be like 50 years old and eating now a bunch of dairy you can't get away with it anymore you don't want you don't mean dairy you don't mean sugar you don't want to be eating like like casein protein and and sugar that's just like rocket fuel for cancer you know what i mean and it's like um and every and that's like a clinical fact and and but so like people i feel

like people who somehow tighten bring the the you know you can't be in the hyper gear all the time but you don't want to go like like down into um letting hyper gear on something else rationalize like your health falling through the floor. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a big kind of part of the sober journey too, because you come in as this alcoholic drug addict and those are people who are,

they have really high highs and really low lows. And that's part of the addiction. Like that's part of the craving. Can I get that high, that high? And like, what happens when I go that low? And there's like a, there's like an affinity for the drama that comes with that as well. And what you have to learn over time is, is, is what it feels like to be in that middle place or when that valence, you know, is, is, is shrunk so that you're in a more um compact range and that's uncomfortable too because you're like if you if you you know if you if you want that high high then you have to have that low low you can't have one without the other yeah and what

does it feel like to navigate life where you're just keeping it a little bit more in check. And that's hard. Yeah, it's funny. I have multiple friends. I have friends who are in recovery, who I think it's really funny. Like, I think, in some ways, I, there are friends of mine who are in recovery, who I think, are in many ways heading into middle life in a better place than, than some of us who haven't gone through recovery because it's almost like the, the experience of bonding them out younger got them to like understand that middle band better. And there's ways in which I,

I don't envy it because a lot of people die too. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's like, you can't like, and I know a lot of people die too. You know what I mean? That's like, you can't like, and I know a lot of people who died, like who didn't get through that, which is brutal. Like it's like, you just like. You were, you were, you were friends with Phil, right?

Phil Hoffman. Yeah. I was, I was, I was friends with Phil, but I was more like colleagues of Phil. I mean, we were like, he, I was not like, he wasn't one of like my best and closest pals, but we came up in the same period together. And we had a year where we did like two films back to back. The second one was the one we did with Spike Lee, who was a big figure for both of us, just in terms of an inspiration,

someone we both really looked up to. And I think like I kind of bonded with him more on that. He was always to me someone, and especially he was someone who was like you wanted like everybody admired him so much. All of us who came up in New York in that era, like Mark Ruffalo and Bobby Cannavale and even many of us, you know, Phil was. He was the guy. us you know phil was he was the guy yeah it was like he really was he was like one of those people you admired so much that he was like it's so ironic but he was like the guy in it's like in high school it's like the jock or whatever but and phil was the furthest thing from that but he was like the guy you wanted his approval you know you wanted his like he you wanted to be in the

club of what phil and would he give it out uh grudgingly grudgingly and i and i think that no but i think which made it all the more special yeah when i got done a little i think i realized like you realize that sometimes like what you're feeling off a person doesn't have anything to do with you it has to do with what what they're going through or maybe but he didn't suffer fools like he really and some of my really good friends were super super good friends with him and um and he definitely didn't suffer fools which is part of why you wanted the affirmation from him special but we did we did these two films and when we did the Spike Lee film together I we it was kind of the dream we rehearsed it

like a play and I felt I felt it was one of those things it was meaningful to both of us and we bonded a little bit over the specialness of that and then we were both doing plays kind of next door to each other for the rest of that year so it was it was um that was kind of like wow the no but it's you know it's unfathomable to me that that it not even about being friends it's just unfathomable to me that that like we lost him he's not here yeah it's it's um it it it kills me and uh uh and that said from the point of view of him not having been one of my best friends i just i can't believe that you know you that like the the scale of the loss is really bad and i and i i know many others also who right like you know we all do i mean so it's not like you can't like roam obviously romancing romancingcing addiction is, that's its own cult.

You know what I mean? I mean, that's its own like, like there's too much of that. And I think the truth of it is it's really, there's a lot of, there's a lot of people totally lost to it that um but i do think that i know a lot of people in in a weird way i admire the uh i admire where they got to through it you know and in some ways i i i probably they would say don't because i'm still an addict yeah and the danger that's there is lurks or whatever yeah but sometimes i i look at him like wow that there's a discipline there that i feel like i'm it's it's like it's not heroin but i but i feel like your mind when you feel like you're not mastering your your balances there's a saying um in 12step like grateful alcoholic or grateful addict.

And for a long time, I couldn't understand what that meant. But I've learned to really get that. And basically what it means is like, listen, you have this affliction. And the problem is so manifest that you're forced to confront it. And as a result of that, you're given these tools and a community of people who want to support you. And you learn how to basically be vulnerable to develop this capacity for compassion and self-inquiry and all of these things that ultimately, if you lean into them and actually make use of them and avail yourself of their power, have this incredible potential to improve your lives, improve lives and help other people improve lives.

And I think, you know, when you see those people out in the world, like, you know, there's a lot of people who are just living their lives reactively, who don't spend a lot of time on self-inquiry or self-improvement and and so you know yeah i would consider myself one of those grateful people for for you know short of that i don't know that i would you know first of all be alive but secondly be interested in these things that have helped me and so many other people yeah yeah it's um and it and it's also like um it's a it it's like this the ebb and the flow of like the desire to like contribute or let's just call it put out versus like to take the time to just be quiet and inboard, you know,

I kind of feel, I don't know if you feel this way, but I feel like one of the downsides that's less discussed of, of all this high speed thing is that a lot, in a lot of ways, what that's really pernicious about this, about these platforms, about social media, all of it is in a lot of ways, what it does is it,

it goes like this constantly on the ego. But what it really says is, it says, there's a way for you to make your life matter. All you have to do is tell people about it all the time. You know what I mean? Like, and by telling, when you tell people about it and they give you this little hit of affirmation, you go, ooh, that was that, you know,

like my life matters, right? But, but- Until that one day that you say the thing that isn't quite right and everyone decides to cancel you. But the, but the, but what's fascinating to me or horrifying is sort of that, that it creates like, it turns everybody into a fast food purveyor right it's like yes there's

people writing pretty profound things on some of these things but ultimately i think it's part of an addiction to to the idea that if I'm not putting out, if I'm not putting out, like if I'm not telling- You don't exist and you don't matter. Yeah, if I'm not telling my story, I'm not here. And it's like, I can't help wondering, is it like eradicating the room people are making in their lives to just like be quiet, like just be quiet.

I think it is without a doubt. I've noticed it in my own life. And not actually just scroll the the bite-sized things but like actually read

like one of these many things you know the amount of friggin books that are in my house that I I really want to read

that I'd be so much happier to have read than anything in a friggin scroll but it's so much easier to scroll and you have to I mean back to discipline like you really have to than anything in a frigging scroll. But it's so much easier to scroll. And you have to, I mean, back to discipline,

like you really have to erect these boundaries and exert a level of discipline just to be bored, just to be able to like give yourself a little bit of a refractory period, you know, in between thoughts. And I don't know where that's going because it's getting harder and harder. Yeah, it is. And I think that's gonna denigrate the quality of creative output ultimately.

How could it not? Yeah, I find myself, it's sort of like Jack White's song. You're sitting in your little room, you're trying to do something good. But if you do something good, you're gonna need a bigger room. You know what you're sitting in your little room, you're trying to do something good. But if you do something good, you're going to need a bigger room. You know what I mean? And then you'll have a bigger room and you might not know what to do.

And you'll sit around, I can't remember the line, you'll sit around wondering how you got started back in your little room. And it's like, that could be why younger people produce like vital stuff. I don't know. You know what I mean? Well, there's always a reaction. Yeah. You know. But I think there's actually Václav Havel, the Czech president.

It's like a hidden little thing in his essays. basically kind of about how difficult it is to to stop and and in you know take things on again and risk risk not a another phase of doing of creating or whatever that does not replicate what you've been doing yeah and that it's that it's like the biggest dare, but that everything else is essentially like, you're just churning the same. Yeah, you're- Theory you've already made. Exactly, you're perpetuating what you already know works.

And I've heard you talk about this. I mean, this is the classic Dylan example, Bowie again. These people who have the courage and the tenacity to basically when the stakes are super high just pivot completely and it's something your dad did in his career right he did yeah yeah he's he was a he's got a great tapestry you know like i think or i don't even know what the right analogy is but i definitely like the idea of looking the idea of being older and looking back and going, you know, I I for all intents and purposes, like, you know, church myself off doing the same thing because it because people told me I was good at it. and looking back and going, do I want like affirmation over and over and over and over and over again

for one or two things that I figured out? Or would I like to look back and go, yeah, I have a rich, you know, landscape of experiences that are more, you know, which one would you envy more? If you were sitting at 50 and you said, which one would you envy more? If you were sitting at 50 and you said, I can live to 100, this is what I'd like to look back on. Nobody would choose that, I mean.

Yeah. Maybe some people would. When I look at your career though, I mean, even if you didn't act at all and make movies, like you have like more on your plate than most people that I meet. I mean, you're involved in all these philanthropic efforts, these environmental concerns.

You've got tech companies that you're working with. I mean, you have your hands in like a lot of shit. Yeah. What's interesting though is that, to the point though is, yes, but that's not the same as, that's like the opposite of quiet. You know what I mean?

Like, and at a certain point, one of the things I think is really wild is recognizing that once you set certain things in motion, unwinding them takes way longer than you tell yourself it's going to when you start. And the obligation to other people and sense of responsibility, the long tail on that is really long. of responsibility the long tail on that is is really long um it's like it it's it's it's a lot harder to it's a lot harder to to give yourself any kind of real contemplative pause when you've stacked a lot of things because you can wind one thing down yeah because you can wind i can finish

this movie i can put it out i can say i'm with it, I don't want to talk about it anymore, go enjoy it and, you know, God bless. But that it doesn't, you know, that wouldn't mean I'm like automatically like surfing and, you know, fasting. Right, that there's nothing else going on. Yeah, there's a lot. So it's like it takes a little bit to unwind things. So how do you make, I mean, you're getting, I'm projecting,

but I imagine you're on the receiving end of like a shitload of opportunities and things that you could say yes to. What is your rubric for what you decide to get involved with? Like, how do you make those kinds of decisions? Right now, it's so much like nothing new i mean right now really like like my determination is is so strong not to take on anything um it's just to see through the things that have been like this was a

determination to see it through though yeah like i mean i really believed in it but i also just was like i i need i want to see this through um there's other things i'm engaged with i'd rather see them through than add anything new you know um because also i think when when when kids come into the mix, it's just sort of like the last thing you want to be doing is stacking some new thing that's pulling you even more away. And so I'm like not going to spin any new plates. So when people say what's next,

you just bristle. No, no. You think about like what that, what is that pivot or that, that reinvention? Yeah. I, I,

it's why I'm, I think what we should wrap on is you'll come see the film and I'm going to read your book. No, because I, I am like way more. All your free time. No,

no, no. I, cause I am like way more- In all your free time. No, no, no. Because I am completely, the pivot is exactly the pivot that I am like most interested in right now. I am really interested in a recovery of optimal health. I can help you with that.

Yeah. Cool. Thanks for talking to me, man. Totally. That was super fun. Motherless Brooklyn. Chris Blair has a few good ideas now and then. Does he?

Oh, I know, right? He's got a lot of energy, that guy. I know, sipping from a fire hose. God bless him. Yeah. Motherless Brooklyn, theaters everywhere. Definitely go check it out, as will I. And Edward's pretty easy to find

if you want to hit him up on the internet at Edward Norton on Twitter. Is that the best place? Yeah. Wherever you want, right? Until I turn it off. Just see the movie. Yeah.

Cool, man. How do you feel? Good, thanks a lot. Good, all right. Thanks, man. Peace. How about that? Edward Norton people.

That was Edward Norton. Pretty incredible. And I should mention that I did take Edward up on his invitation to attend a screening of the movie with a small group of his friends, which was another pretty amazing and pinch me type moment. And the movie lives up to the hype. His performance is absolutely riveting, stunning. The cast is incredible. The execution is beautifully done. And it's just so smart and fun. I think we mentioned in the podcast that Ken Burns called it a modern masterpiece.

And I may be biased, a biased fanboy, but I would second that description. So please check it out while it's still in theaters to support Edward, of course, but also to support this kind of grown-up cinema, which is a very welcome salve to our steady diet of superhero popcorn fare. For even more on Edward, check out the show notes on the episode page at richworld.com and let him know how this one landed for you by sharing your thoughts with him directly on Twitter at Edward Norton or on Instagram at Edward Norton Official.

If you'd like to support our work here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts. That really helps new people discover this program. Tell your friends about your favorite episodes, share the show on social media, hit that subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Google. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped

put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for videoing and editing the show. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Allie Rogers for portraits. DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships, and as always, theme music by Annalama. Appreciate the love, you guys. I will see you back here next week with plant-powered ultra runner, Robbie Ballinger, who this year ran across the United States in 75 days.

Here's a clip. Until then, be well. Peace. Plants. Namaste. I think it all came down to, like, I desperately wanted this. I wanted it for a lot of reasons. I wanted it, one, for the outreach, for the advocacy.

It meant a lot to me to start being a force for positive change. And two, I was lost. I'd come out of 15 years more in the restaurant industry, and it didn't feel like I wanted to do that anymore. I knew whatever I did next, I wanted it to be something that fed my soul. And moving my body does, and pushing the limits of what I can do physically. So I just kept doubling down that this is what I had to do. I had to get this together. And a lot of it was just faith that it would come together. And again, going back to that mantra that my mom instilled in me, you can do anything you set your mind to. And I think that's something important for people to understand is just because something's hard in the beginning doesn't mean it's always going to

be. It's amazing what we're capable of. And I think a lot of what you have to do is not get overwhelmed by the larger task at hand, whatever it is, and just start chopping away little by little at whatever you're trying to achieve. Nobody gets to something huge overnight. It's going to take time. Thank you.