wellRED podcast - #31 - Farming, Doing Mushrooms, and Hanging w/ JIM BEAVER!!

Episode Date: September 6, 2017

This week we are insanely happy to have veteran character actor, playwright, and all around great guy, Jim Beaver on the podcast! You may know Jim from Deadwood, Supernatural, or one of the seemingly millions of films and television shows he's turned up in.. but trust us - there is so much more to Jim Beaver. Tune in to find out! Before the interview the boys talk about Farming while in the green room of Helium Comedy Club in St. Louis Missouri while just slightly under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms. They are all fun.. but this week was just a blast! Hope y'all enjoy!  wellREDcomedy.com for tickets to shows, our book The Liberal Redneck Manifesto, and to subscribe to our newsletter. Download. Subscribe. Tell your friends. Thank you in advance. Love ya like chicken. Skeeew!

And we thank them for sponsoring the show. Well, no, I'll just go ahead. I mean, look, I'm money dumb. Y'all know that. I've been money dumb ever, since ever, my whole life. And the modern world makes it even harder to not be money dumb, in my opinion, because used to you, you like had to write down everything you spent or you wouldn't know nothing. But now you got apps and stuff on your phone.

It's just like you can just, it makes it easier to lose count of, well, your count, the count every month, how much you're spending. A lot of people don't even know how much they spend on a per month basis. I'm not going to lie. I can be one of those people. Like, let me ask you right now. Skewers out, whatnot, sorry, well-read people. People across the skew universe, I should say. Do you even know how many subscriptions that you actively pay for every month or every year?

Do you even know? Do you know how much you spend on takeout or delivery? Getting a paid chauffeur for your chicken low main? Because that's a thing that we do in this society. Do you know how much you spend on that? It's probably more than you think. But now there's an app designed to help you manage your money better. And it's called Rocket.

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I used Rocket Money and realized that I had apparently been paying for two different language learning services that I just wasn't using. So I was like, I should know Spanish. I'll learn Spanish and I've just been paying to learn Spanish without practicing any Spanish for, you know, pertinent two years now or something like that. Also, a fun one, I'd said it before, but I got an app, lovely little app where you could, you know,

put your friends' faces onto funny reaction gifts and stuff like that. So obviously I got it so I could put Corey's face on those two, those two like twins from the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movies. You know, those weren't a little like the cue ball-looking twin fellas. Yeah, so that was money. What was that in response to? What was that a reply gift for?

Just when I did something stupid. Something fat, I think, and stupid. Something both fat and stupid. But anyway, that was money well spent at first, but then I quit using it and was still paying for it and forgotten. If it wasn't for Rocket Money, I never would have even figured it out. So shout out to them. They help.

If you're money dumb like me, Rocket Money can help. So cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney. dot com slash well read today that's rocket money.com slash well r e d rocketmoney.com slash well read and we thank them for sponsoring this episode of the podcast. They're the. Hello well redders, well reditions.

What's up everybody? Cho here. Just going to give you some tour updates. Ooh, I missed her butted. It stinks so bad. This is Drew. I'm just pretending to be Corey. I'm looking at Corey and he has farted and it makes.

me want to die. Corey, give us some tour dates while I choke into... I literally just did that. I don't know if it made its way up. It was instantaneous. You know what? It was as fast as to the internet. Read the internet and tell us what our tour dates are. I'm dying. By the time you're hearing this, you'll be hearing this the morning. I'll be dead. From that smell.

We'll be September 6, Albany, New York, September 7th, Hartford, Connecticut, September 8th, Boston, Massachusetts. All next weekend, 14th, 15th, that's 16th of September. We'll be in Lexington, Kentucky. That'll be fire. We'll be fire. September 21st, San Jose, California. You know what? You can go to well-readcom for all these. W-E-L-L-R-E-D Comedy.com. Spelled just like the podcast.

Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, Memphis, Knoxville, Knoxville, Iowa City, Lincoln, Springfield, Des Moines, Seattle, Eugene, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro, Denver, Denver, Chattanooga, Nashville, North Carolina, Birmingham, Portland, Asheville, North Carolina. That's where we're going to be, well-read comedy.com. Spelled just like the podcast. Grab the tickets. Grab our book. The Liberal Redneck Manifesto.

Dragon Dixie out of the dark and subscribe to our newsletter so you can just fast forward the fuck out of this and you won't have to know because you'll get updates as soon as we post them. Thank you guys. Love you so much. And skew. Skew. Well, well, well. I don't know what to say about farming.

God damn it. Cut it. What? No, that's a good... That hits. What don't hit about that? I don't know. What?

You always start the episode by going like, hey, we're here and tell everybody where we're at. And then you're just like, I don't know what to say about farming. Yeah, you just did it. That hits. This all hits. All right, we're in St. Louis. Hey, everybody. I hope you die from a farming accident.

Me and Trey, we're talking today about how much we'd like to be farmers. It would also be a colossal mystery. If I died on a farm. But like, we realized not really. Right. Like, yeah. Your idea of it hits. Well, because, dude.

Because you don't want to sleep till noon. Right. You don't want to be a farmer. I actually, I wouldn't mind like getting up in some of the work, but I would need my life. livelihood not to depend on it. In other words, I could do it for like three days and then I need a week off. Because, I mean, if you really... But if these beans don't come around, my baby ain't going to make it.

I know, I know you don't want to farm because you could just go farm. You just, you could farm. Right. I want to retire to a farm. Right. You could farm. Well, but I couldn't buy land. I don't know.

That ain't true. I don't have land. Where's he going farm at? I'm saying you could go by a little bit. He could buy land. I can buy land. You could. I still got to buy you a new pig.

See? That's why I can't be a farm. I already killed one pig. Okay, I'm just saying that like sooner rather than later you'll have the money to get some land. And I am saying, I will. Yeah. But I have a feeling that it'll be like, well, that was fun for a few years. For sure.

Let's break this up. That's a job. I mean, I ain't a job. That's a goddamn lifestyle. Well, that's what I'm into, though, and again, you're never off the clock. It's probably just the idea. But I'm into the idea of, yeah, you've got to get up early, but then you can just go to sleep at eight. I mean, yeah, but that don't hit.

I mean, it might. Then you got to like... Or you get drunk in the barn. Don't they be having sex in a barn? Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. But like, you could do... But again, man, you can just be doing that.

I didn't, I ain't, son, I ain't farm day one. I have fucked in so many bars. Y'all ain't never fucking a barn. I have gotten a blow job in a barn. You can just be doing that, well, yeah. I mean, you're right. That's the only time I can tell us something, Starl. You know, it's a blow job.

Wow, we talk about, like, I used to date a girl who's like a dancer now, and she's real fancy, and her parents were from somewhere else, they moved to some right. All that's true, but they were farmers. I mean, they were legit farmers. Man, I'm trying to think, like, there was people that, like, grew backer and shit around Salina. Yeah, that's hard. I have no fucking desire. You ever cut back?

Yeah, shit, don't hit at all. I didn't, but I saw people do it once, and it looked hard as shit. Don't hit. It's hot. But, like, no. You ever bailed hay? I didn't know any, like. I used to bail hay all the kind of.

God, trying to think, me, my boys, like, had farmlandering. I don't think nobody did, really, that I knew growing up, I'm saying. We have not a lot. People around there had some. We've had quite a few fans who are farmers. Right, yeah. We had a guy, last night, Kansas City. And then we had that couple.

I think we've talked about on the podcast who had a sign their butt and titties, respectively. His butt hurt titties. They were farmers, right? I mean, that's what you said, and I believe you. I just also believe them. Yeah. I should say, where did I get it? I think they told me.

I'm sure you're right. No, I know what it is. That girl hit me up on Facebook to ask for a copy of the picture of her titties. And when I clicked on her profile and she's a farmer like sitting on a fucking tractor. Right. You sure she wasn't just sitting on a tractor? No, she is. She likes studied.

Yeah, please. That's a very popular motif. Yes. Okay, but y'all remember her. She wasn't one of those fake. Oh, you're right. She wasn't like a fake glamour shot girl. No.

No. She was cool. She just was on a tractor and somebody took a picture of it. I think she studied farming or, I don't know. There was a reason when I, you know, clicked on her profile that I included. I mean, dude, I had a shit ton of buddies that went to ABAC right out of high school. What was that mean? Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in South Georgia.

Because, you know, we got a lot of good farmland around there. And there was so many people that decided that's what I want to do. I mean, not a lot of them stuck with it because it's a fucking whole thing. It's a whole thing, man. Thompson grows stuff. He ain't got a farm, but he grows stuff. Yes. Thompson's way more of a gardener.

Well, my wife's gardens. He's got a lot of shit, though. Yeah. Man's got a pretty big. Andy's a small, but she's got a wide variety of things. Me and my mom have fucked with garden and shit before, but like, yeah, I farming. Oh, dude, Thompson's not a farmer, but he does, uh, he's got a tractor, but he's got a tractor. But he's more of a farmer than anybody.

Brian just hits on a tractor. No, but he also has raised beef in the past. That's the thing about-and-raised crops. Yeah, we call Lloyd. We call Lloyd, you know, my brother-in-law. Thompson ain't never had no livestock, but I mean. Brian's a farmer, shit. He does other.

Yeah. I'm sitting here like, I'm. want to be a farmer i could just go hang out with brine ain't a farmer he definitely identifies as a god-dame farmer his uh well his dad i guess is more of a farmer he's definitely farm strong god damn son what's so funny about that and i think i've told you this before is how rail thin he was dude i just just mentioned lloyd and he got fat and then he lost weight and just was burly and strong as fuck so my brother and lloyd they have what we call a farm i mean they've just got a shit ton of acres and they just bail hay all over it and i think they've planted some beans

before but we used to bell hay down there all the time and lloyd went from fucking i mean he's like six two but rail thin he joined the fire department didn't like because oh well he joined the fire department so naturally he started working out he joined the fire department left for training came back and was an NFL linebacker like it's like his grown manness was just welled up inside of him and he just i think yeah brine you're saying it's you said left for training he but it like it's to went smoke diving train he wasn't gone for like well he wasn't going for like well It wasn't gone long enough to go from rail thin to, like, if I'm talking about 6-2-180 to 6-2-230, solid fucking muscle.

Like, he just became a man overnight, and it was the weirdest shit I've ever seen. Well, now that I think about it, similar to training, when we were in college, his face bigger. Brian went on spring break with our buddy Austin, and Austin had invited another couple. One of them happened to be Brian's ex, unbeknownst to Brian. He drank a bottle of Jack Daniels on the beach and called me and told me he might kill everybody. And when he came back, he was also a burly man. So maybe something happens around that time. I think it's just like, yeah, some people just hit that one gross part that one time, all your manhood's in you.

Oh, God, no. Oh, Mr. Butt. Oh, senior extremo. Don't do it. Senior extremo. Ah. Is it not good? It's bad.

I think I've been farming something. I've been farming something in my belly. It's because I drink beer yesterday. Oh, well. That's what it is. You need to sober up. I know, baby. Stop.

Put that mic close to your mouth, though, so people can hear what you're saying to me. My belly already kind of ain't hitting, and now I'm crying. What would you farm? I want to grow weed. I don't know. Hell, I never even really thought. I mean, like, I'm with you in that, like, oh, it seems cool to be one with the earth and live off the land or whatever. But I don't know what the fuck that means.

I never thought about actually growing no goddamn beans. I've bished it Katie for not growing shit before. Yeah. Just because she just, I've just bished at her for just whatever, you know. Yeah, that was the thing of the day. Right. Yeah. Exactly.

Won't you fucking grow from goddamn beans or something, shit? Do you think you can at least grow it if you're not going to cook it? God damn it. Could you do one of them? Yeah. That's pretty much how that goes. That's too close to home for my situation. Yeah.

Amber, don't be farming neither. Yeah. That's what we're messed to do. We're lazy bitch. I don't even farm. Hey, you know what? Why don't you farm? God.

How great would it be if we got on one of them men's rap? websites, websites, and infiltrated it, and made that a thing. And I'll tell you another thing that used to hit back today, women used to farm. They used to be farming. There are places in the fields. So what feminism has ruined is sexuality, the workplace, and there ain't no good farming women no more. I'm just saying that you have to farm. I'm saying if you're not going to cook, you're at farm.

That's all I'm saying. Holy shit. Why don't you pick up your socks, Corey? Why don't you grow some beats? Why don't you pick up a fucking rake every now and then, motherfucker? God damn. We're clearly just kidding. It reminds me that Foxworthy bit about how men brag when they do anything around the house.

That bit was a woman could be out repaving the driveway. A man has the temerity to come outside out of, hey, baby, don't worry about that ass tray in the den. I doesn't change that. It's hot out here. That was a great foxworthy. You might want to smooth that out right over there. It looks a little uneven. I'm going to go take a nap.

Oh, my God. I mean, I've never seen a woman's smooth in my life. I'm going to say, that's funny, but that ain't my house. My thoughts smell like if cauliflower got drunk and puked on itself. Come in? Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Dear podcast listeners, Ron from Twitter has had delivered to us.

gooey butter cakes tell ron if he's up there that we'll talk to him after the show and thank you thank you sir thanks he tweeted it the other day he said open it up he said show is it's it's cool is it cool if i bring y'all some of them paula dean ooey gooey butter cakes and we used to make them at the bakery and i think i've talked about it before and i said son fuck yes it's cool yeah exactly well i think he just didn't think it would be okay with the club i was like shit this is our show fuck that if you all that had them up we used to make them at our bakery oh my god God. Yeah.

I mean, it's basically, it's similar to a chess square. Actually, it is a chess square. Pretty much. Ain't that fire? I only have to eat it. You can't fuck it up. Lord. Yeah, buddy.

There are something else. Trey, have a bite of that. How hard is that about to fuck your butt down? I can't right now, about it. How hard is that about to fuck your butt up, Drew? I'm about to eat all this and have a terrible show. I don't care. Yeah, I hear you.

If anybody's listening to this, that went to the St. Louis shows, and you didn't like my performance. Blame Ron from Twitter. Yeah. Who was fucked up on both? butter cake. I got butter drunk. Buttered shit.

I've been there. Heard that. Well, to circle back real quick. I want to say that. I respect the shit out of farmers. Of course. I have a question. Do farmers in America, like...

That also has gotten corporatized and shit, by the way. They ain't very many, like, mom and pop farmers left. I mean, it's just like fucking everything else. Big farm has come in and... There's a big... big farm, big agriculture is what it's called. There is, man, and like the co-ops. It's absolutely a fuck.

I mean, what you think Monsanto is? Right. Yeah, I mean, and co-ops are not as great as they used to be. I mean, a lot of farmers, man, if you really read a lot of their stories and hear a lot about them. And it's a, it's a whole lot of borrowing just to pay off this, then just to borrow just to pay off this all the time. I mean, it's, it's, it's like, if you're a hitting ass farmer that makes a shit ton of money, you're, you're something else. It's like, you know, God. Who thought farmers would struggle?

My aunt Barb. Right. You know what I mean? Like, it just, if it ain't a hard enough life. You're right. Exactly. Who's saying that. But still, you know, people that work their ass off like that,

or to be okay. Sure. You know what I mean? Ork to not have to, what's the phrase, bar from Peter to PayPal or whatever? That is a phrase. That is right, bar from Peter to PayPal. They are not have to do that.

The holes in his... Knowledge. Knowledge is strange. Yeah, if we're not a hole. I nailed it. He weren't questioning, though. Now, his defensiveness about it is very much redneck and regular. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, my holes are insanely worse. His are just weird. Yeah, but yours makes sense to me. That weren't a hole. That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, weren't no hole. Ain't no hole. Don't know what we're talking about.

There's clearly a hole inside you. Just the fact that you had to be revealed right now. Yes, the fact that you had to question, was that a phrase or not, was kind of holy. And there's other stuff. The Bible. He don't know shit about the Bible. Yeah,

but there's, that totally makes, I mean, no, not because of where you come from. If you know me, it does. If you know your personal, yeah,

without a doubt. I still don't check out for me. I know people who have Trey's attitude, but they grew up where I did and so, you know, it's not picked up on a few things. Well,

who was, who was taking you to church? I didn't have it. I wasn't there. Screw taking to church. Did you go play football and you had to pray before every fucking game?

I know, I know who Job was. I know lots of life turned to salt. I know. Yeah, but dude, get me the start of it. Our father, who are in heaven, hollough be thy name, that kingdom come, that will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us to stay our daily bread. Let us forgive those who trespass against us as we eat something, something.

There's two versions. There's one that's forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. And the other one is, uh, forgive us, forgive us of our trespasses and we forgive those who trespass against us. Well, I mean, I was in the ballpark. Fuck yeah, you are. It's not a temptation. Delivered me to be able for thines of the king of the power and the glory forever, amen.

Okay, yeah. Sorry, my ADD took over and we had to finish it. Yeah. It's in case Jesus was listening. Remember when I used to open with a version of that? Just, I didn't know. Whatever that fucking shit was he was talking about the other night, them three fucking wild ass... Shadrack and the Billy Goz.

I ain't never heard of that. Everybody knows about it. That's... You know what that is? I figured it out the hole. It's vacation Bible school. You never went, did you? No.

You never went. Not a single songs. All it was. VPS, no one ever talked about Shadrach, Mishat and Billy Goh outside of a high school. We called him Billy Goh, too. Oh, everybody caught him. Yeah, that's what it is.

I thought our pastor, I thought Brother Daryl made that out now, I'm man. No. It was Abedigo. It sounds like a bandico. Shadrake and Meshack and Meshack. Shadrack, Mishak was in. I did. I mean, dude, if you read the rest of the Bible. It ain't biblical.

I know. That's what makes it even better. It's what makes it even better. It's like the idea of two dudes and a billy goat and that fire in a center around. That's what I thought. God protect us. They look over at the billy goat. There's a fire.

Yeah. They're in a fire. God's probably. And they looked over at that billy goat and the goats's like, meh. Yeah, God protected them. They put them in a... That's what I thought. They put them in a furnace that for heresy.

Well, that checks a lot. Right, but anyways, they wouldn't bow down to a golden lamb? Yes, that is correct. And so King Herod, I believe, was the one involved. I believe... With the details I get wishing. Whatever, anyways. They were going to put them in the furnace.

And they did, and they live on fire and they go in there. And, you know, they are just standing there. No, it's not burning. But they're fine. They lived. They were fine. On account of Jesus. I mean, no, they very didn't because this didn't happen.

Like in the story. Not on account of Jesus. On account of God. It was God. This was three Jesus. Yeah, but that is Jesus. And the Holy Ghost. Yeah.

Right. This is Old Testament. That's the one of the Jesus talking about. He was the Holy Ghost. Since when he gave a fuck about it. Like, people died in horrible torment. He would save people to make him. figured the ultimate point.

I was up there just jacking off watching that shit. No, it's because it was right. It was shortly after the Ten Commandments and they had the golden calf or whatever. And so. Yeah, he pulled them out and said, hey, kill your kids. No, he killed everybody. Like, he doesn't hit. The kids were already dead.

No, he don't. He don't hit. But I'm saying he saved them to spite these other people and then killed them. Oh, God. Oh, okay. But, dude, for the most part, if you liked him and did what he said, yeah. He'd be cool to you.

He's like Donald Trump. You know what? Yeah, right. No, God's more like Kanye West. There's like old Kanye and new Kanye. Yeah. But it's flipped in reverse. Right, yeah.

Because nobody missed the old God. Yeah, the Old Testament is New Kanye. Right. He don't know. What am I even saying? No, that's true. I just couldn't go anywhere else with that analogy. No, no.

You hit. This guy's making a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah. Let's start a religion, Corey. I've always wanted to do that, but I'm, any piece of decency inside me won't let me. But I'd make a hit and fucking cult. leader. Dude, I watched Going Clear the other day, and let me tell you something.

You, dude, in order, first off, you'd have to be a brilliant person. Right. You have to be a brilliant person. But on top of that, being brilliant, being brilliant and coming up with it is one, is going clear, which one is that? Scientology movies. I know, but there's like four Scientology movies. It's the one with fucking.

What, Leah Romani? No, it's the other one. What'd you say, you said, they've taken better men than me? That's why I said, we were like, we were joking about, like, you know, Corey, Drew was like, Corey, you need to just go to the Scientology Center one day, just see what's up. And I said, I was like, nope. That's a bad idea. They're taking way better men than me before.

Like, I'll go in there and thinking this. Going down and eating chew it on a corn, I'll like, I don't do what now? What did y'all say about Theton levels? Repeat that. But anyways, dude, like, you order to come up with it and orchestrate it and get enough followers, that's one thing. That's a brilliant person. In order to just keep that going, that level of lies and manipulation for fucking decades, that ain't a human being.

I agree, and I'll never do that I'm about saying. Well, it's a whole lot of human beings. That's not like that was all El Ron Hubbard. I mean, it was initially, but then it was other mother's afterhand. I understand that. It's unreal, though. It took all the life of its own. But that's like me saying, I think basketball would be fun, and you'd be like, do you know how good Jordan was?

I just want to play pickup in the park with my boys. For sure. I mean, I don't want 100 million followers for three decades. I'm saying that these dudes who get like 10 for like, you know, five years, and they all live in a house. and eight of the ten are girls. You know what I'm saying? The point I was trying to make is that you just ain't that dude. No, not at all.

Like, it's never be. No, like, dude. You ever see that movie, Barsha Martha May Marlene or something like that? No. That sounds like a Woody Allen movie. Yeah, that sounds like Shadrack, Michak, Nabidigo's sisters. It's a cult.

It's a movie about exactly what y'all are talking about. Is that the one where they have a threesome? You know John Hawks from Deadwood and from Winterstall? He's bound and he's bounding down. I mean, he hits like a motherfucker. So hard. He plays a cult leader in this movie. I bet he crushes.

That would be way more fun to me to play a cult leader. In fact, my, well, I can't get in that on the podcast. Lord. Why is there dead air? What are you doing, Trey? You're looking up the name of that movie? Yeah, I don't know about Martha Marcy Mae Marlene. That's what it's called.

Well, hell, I'll watch that. Elizabeth Olson plays the chick who, like, is in the cult. Come back to us, Barbara Lewis. Eric, Krishna, Beauregard. What would you do if you had somebody you cared about in a cult? Because, like, that's the thing. It's like, you can't, quote, unquote, save them until they're ready to be saved. Well, and they leave you.

They call them a... In Scientology, specifically. Well, yeah. But I'm just saying, in general, any kind of cult. Like, what's the protocol there? I bet there's people who make their money trying to help families get their people back. I mean, what do you mean, what do you mean, what do you mean? What do you mean, what do you mean?

What if Amber joined a cult? What would I do? Well... I'd be like, is it on a farm? Right. Because if so, she'll be back Yeah, I teach her something. You'll teach her something, shave her head, send her back this way.

It'll be fine. Well, I guess I was more thinking of, like, if it was Kirby, what would your parents do? Oh, what would my parents say if Kirby joined a call? I don't know. She wouldn't have access to Dad's Amazon Prime anymore. I'd probably hit for him. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I wasn't trying to throw that up, like, make a hit show. like, that's fucking freaky, man. I mean, they would, they'd try to talk to her first, obviously, and then if they, if she was super far gone, I could almost see, I mean, depending on like what all they knew about the cult and if it was super like, hey, this is Manson family type shit. We really, I mean, I mean, dad would, dad would physically do something. I mean, right. It would all depend on what they knew about the cult. What I'm saying is like, if it was a, if it was just like a fucking like, okay, this is wonderlust and we get it, it really is a much like cult.

I know, I know. That's just a hippie commune. I know that. I know that. Like, if she and eight young people were all fucking each other while they live together. I know that. What I'm saying is my dad's not a fucking idiot. And like, he wouldn't, he wouldn't just go like, it's immediately a cult because if he, but if he found out, hey, this cult has been responsible.

It was some heaven's gay type of shit. Right. Like, I know, I've read about it. There's been kidnapping and shit like that. He would absolutely, him and my uncle Robbie would fucking go in there. But not me. Hell, I bet. Well, I'm, yes.

A be a hidden movie. I'd be on... That is a hidden movie out of there. I'd be on the road. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, we're already in a course. I'd have to go there and shoot some of my fans.

That would suck. Yeah. So, anyway, that... No, but yeah, we'd go and dad be like, fuck it. I mean, I know she's a grown woman, she's supposed to... But I don't give a fuck. You know, I'm her daddy. I'm on protector.

We're going to hear and shoot these goddamn hippies. It is a hidden movie I'd do. Yeah. Yeah, we weren't talking about it on the podcast, let someone steal it. Wait, where we save somebody from a commune? Yeah. Well, I think that's at least a plot point in Kimmy Schmidt. That movie I fucking read the other thing.

And I mean, Kimmy Schmidt, though, it's up in New England. Kimmy Schmidt about that, kind of. Yeah. No. She don't get rescued. It's not about. She goes back and rescues her friend. If she goes back.

Is that late in the game? She goes back to the call. I only watch the first three episodes. I've seen Kimmy Schmidt could not be further from what I have in my mind. I mean, I hear you're like talking about thinking like dark. Yeah, but fuck. I mean. You said butt fucking.

Yeah, well, sorry. Well, no, shit. You said it on the last podcast, but we just recorded it. I'm an idiot. I'm saying, like, that what you're doing right now is saying, like, if I had a... What he's doing right now is chugging a bud life? If I had a movie idea that was set in space, you're just like, nah, but Star Wars, though. I mean, yeah, you're right.

But to be fair, it is hard to do a space movie because of Star Wars. Whatever. Quares. Which brings me to my next point. Don't give Trey mushrooms. I don't know about this right now. What? Like, well, no, it's like, I've told you all million times before about my past experiences of mushrooms and how it's like, I ain't never got much out.

I actually had never gotten anything out of them to the last time I did them, which was years ago. And you saw a giant Hawaiian man that you didn't know he was real. I hallucinated a Samoan Maori tribesman. Yeah. Mayori. I thought you said Hawaiian, but I'm not. A Maori tribesman, but one who was filled with Onwee, you know, who'd had it up in here. No.

Hey? No. Boredom just like. You did mushrooms and you imagined a bored guy? Oh, Lord, you're such a berm. A Maori tribesman, no. It was actually, no, what it really says is I'm a fucking comedic genius because it was the funniest fucking thing you could have possibly seen in that moment. Because there's a huge bonfire burning.

Watching you defend it right now is hilarious. Well, dude, I mean, I'm still not entirely sure I hallucinated him or not. There just might have been a bored Hawaiian guy there, and Trey's like, look that Maori guy over there. That was the story for months after the party. I was telling my buddies that I'd be like, y'all remember that fucking dude? And he was just like, oh, same shit, different day, whatever. I know the Hawaiian. And they were all just like, no, man, we ain't what?

And then I finally realized, like, I think I may have hallucinated that guy. Anyway, I'm sitting over here right now, and I do feel weird, but I also keep yawning. Like, I know. That means it's coming. Yeah, right before the other night, when I did mushrooms, I was like, I was fucked up, but I was like, man, I could also go to sleep. And as soon as I thought that, here it comes. And I start tweeting at James Gunn.

I start watching that OJ documentary. I was tweeting at Marsha Clark trying to get her on a podcast. You guys know the theory that mushrooms are responsible for religion? Yeah, they were, they're Mount Sinai. Three tiny little mushroom. Well, we took mushrooms and all we've talked about in this podcast was religion. We're trying to talk about farmers. And we tried to start a fucking call.

Where Moses found, they say where Moses saw the burning bush is one of the most populated areas of psilocybin in the entire world. Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, it totally makes sense. Mushrooms hit. Universe makes sense. You think there's like shitty European and American kids going there just to try and find wild hitting mushrooms? Probably, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't go there.

Me too. I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah. Come in. Hello. Yeah, we're doing good. Yeah. You want to say hello to the podcast?

Thank you. Hello. What's your name? McCallum. Hi. Yeah. I said like the last name. I was like too much information.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll post it. Don't worry about it. We'll post your self-security number all that good shit. See, well, that actually is as a good time as any to point out that we have a show to do. It's about to start. And we got to go. So we got to go.

Yeah. But enjoy this week's interview, which Corey will tell you about right now. Yes, the second part. I mean in like a segment to be recorded later, Corey. Oh, okay. Well, we'll do that too. Forget I said this. Mushrooms hit.

Scoo! Yeah, so as Trey was just mentioning, we fucked up during the podcast and didn't exactly know who we were introducing. But I'm here. It is my great joy to say that this interview will be with the one, the only, character actor extraordinaire, Jim Beaver. You may know Jim from Deadwood. We've had Earl Brown on before. Deadwood, Supernatural. Supernatural.

Bobby Singer, very popular character. Yeah, he's insanely popular from that. I've never fucked with it, but that's a... He talks a lot about it on this podcast. It's very interesting. Vietnam War Vett, playwright, and just an all-around great guy. So stay tuned for that, and we love you very much. And we'll see you next week.

Skiy, bye. Love you. All right, here we are. Hey, Jim. Hey. We're here with Jim Beaver. Thank you for coming over. appreciate it.

That is my pleasure. What do you think? This is a high-tech studio. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, here at the old Burbank guest house. Trey will you for a few of these? What? Beer me that beer.

Yeah, absolutely. Here you go. Yeah, this is actually where I live whenever Drew's not in town. My wife keeps me out here most of the time, so I don't mess the house up too much. Your wife got me this lovely foam pad to go on my futon, and it's awesome. I slept like a baby last night. Good. I'm glad to hear that because normally you.

sleep like a tortured, yeah, a toddler possessed by the devil. Anyway, thanks for coming. You bet. How's it going? It's going good. You surviving in this crazy time? Well, I'm doing my best. I'm old enough.

I don't worry too much about stuff because I figure even if it all goes good, I ain't going to be here that long. But, you know, my kid's a little worried about stuff, you know. She's like, what's it like to get newt? Right. Well, actually, I'm not quite old enough to know. How old are your daughter, right? Yeah, my daughter, she's 15.

It's going to be 16 next week. So she's, uh, what does a teenager think about all this stuff? Well, she's terrified. I mean, she's like, so like the rest of us. Seriously terrified. Because, you know, as we speak, we're watching, um, our, um, national leader marches toward Armageddon. Still hard to say president, isn't it?

Oh, I try to avoid it when I can. But, yeah. I'm old enough. I remember, you know, the whole duck and cover stuff from the 50s and 60s. Right. We just knew that any minute Russian bombers were coming over. Yeah. And I remember a certain amount of,

of, oh, what's the point we're all going to be blown up anyway attitude. But I didn't really remember being terrified, but my kid is, you know? And that's just one more thing on my list of things I don't like this man about. Yeah, no, yeah, no doubt. That makes my kid cry. Dude, I don't know. Don't work. Is that bothering?

You think the fan is? I went to turn a fan down because it was clicking and the light just went off and I now can't fix it. Oh, I don't know. um, Drew's sitting the mood in here. He just turned the lights off in this room. We're just sitting completely in the dark right now, dear listeners.

Now that's not true. He just dimmed them. So that's interesting what you just said. I mean, really honestly, like you feel like, uh, this right now,

this is like scarier than that was like the, you know, the cold, the height of the cold war, the missile, process all that stuff. The height of the Cold War, we had Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House. Right.

A calm and thoughtful and non-impulsive man who had been through a couple of wars and knew just what the hell war is. And I was, you know, I was awful young to be cognizant of it at the time. but but you know i i pay attention to history and i know that it's a different time now there's uh there's a there's a a wild hair loose and uh um and that's not anything we've ever had to deal with in quite the same way well and again i obvious you know i don't i wasn't around for all that i don't know what it was like like on a day-to-day basis for people but uh obviously what you said about Eisenhower versus Trump, that's very, very true. But my thing with all this has been, look, Trump aside, and I don't trust him a bit not to do something insanely stupid.

But whereas Eisenhower was squaring off against, you know, the Great Red, you know, the dread, commie force of Mother Russia over there. who, you know, who knew who knew what they were going to do or how, and I mean, obviously, North Korea is a loose cannon, but I just don't, like, I don't buy that they are any kind of real threat. Oh, I don't think they're a huge threat. But that's not the point, right? If he, like, you're saying, like, it ain't about them. It's about him getting, him overreacting or whatever. Say Kim Jong-un gets freaky and launches a missile toward Guam. Okay, worst-case scenario, he hits Guam and blows up 130,000 people.

What's going to happen next is probably all hell breaking loose on North Korea. And then you're talking not only about millions of people there, but you're talking about the collapse of the Asian economy because of fears of what's, you can see a little taste of it right now. The markets are down the last few days because, you know, the people in the American markets are saying, we don't know what's going on. And we're a little nervous.

And when they're nervous, economies suffer. And I think loosing the first nuclear. attack in, what, 72 years, whichever side does it is going to shake the foundations of the earth and not just in a nuclear way, but in a political and economic and sociological way. Yeah. Because that's a whole new world. For sure. So here's one thing that I think, so I should say neither Drew nor me or Cori.

when he gets here. None of us served, which you did, we should point out, since we're talking about this whole thing right now, feels relevant. You were in Vietnam, correct? Yeah. And as you recall, we lost that war. Right. And I take full responsibility. I didn't mean to lose it, but I did. So, point being, you obviously have a much better perspective. on this whole type of thing than we do. But sometimes I wonder, first of all, I, obviously I'm not,

I'm not a hawkish guy, and I'm not, you know, Team America, World Police. I love the movie. I hate the philosophy. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm on that side of things when it comes to war. Another side of me, though, can't help but think sometimes.

And Donald Trump ain't the man to do it. But, like, eventually somebody's going to have to deal with this motherfucker and with this country, this situation, North Korea. And I think the rest of the Western world and the developed world eventually will look back in shame at the fact that we allowed that to go on for as long as we did. Because it's like, you know, it ain't the Holocaust, but I mean, it's a, you know, it's at, you talk about crimes against humanity. You know what I mean? Like, it's really, really bad. And if something, it's going to come to a head eventually, something is going to happen. And yeah, that is scary because obviously I don't know what the answer was.

If there was an easy answer, it would already been taken care of. Well, and also the last time we tried to intervene over there, we set up that situation. Which we have a habit of doing that kind of thing. Right. And so it's like, once you do that, once you have the career. in war, there's at least going to be 20 years that have to go by before anyone else would even begin to suggest, maybe we should go back over there. Yeah, yeah.

It's a, it's a horrible regime. He treats his people awfully. Right. There are millions suffering there. Those millions don't deserve to be blown to pieces. Right. because we have because they've got a family of nut jobs in the seat of power but I think you're right at some point somebody's got to call a halt to the progressive course of of of

inhumanity over there as well as you can't live forever under a nuclear threat. People shouldn't have to. Right. And, but my fear right now is that we've got absolutely the wrong guy in charge of doing that. Definitely. So. Well, let me ask you this question.

This is something I've been wondering about. And you may or may not know the exact answer. But, uh, and it's probably easy enough to find. I just, that's how I do. I wonder about things, you know, and then I just wonder until someone tells me something. about it i don't you know seek out answers or nothing why would i go about you'd have to get up off the chair or something i'm not really i just reach into my pocket yeah yeah yeah yeah phone out but i don't even do that's strenuous bill bill bill said recently on the jim jeffrey

show he said where do you get your news bill and he goes i just say stuff on twitter and went for people to send me articles about why i'm wrong yeah well that's right my question is or something i've been thinking about related to all this um okay trump let's say trump reaches a point where Because, again, I wouldn't put nothing past him up to it, including nuclear Armageddon. But let's say he reaches a point where, you know, the whole Russia thing's just getting a little too hot and heavy on him. And so he, you know, he decides to start a nuclear war to, you know, distract from that. Which I suppose it would. And let's say he gets to that point and he says, okay, let them fly, right?

isn't is that all it takes like i mean isn't like somebody like mad dog maddust or somebody couldn't be like we're not doing that you know what i mean because they've already done that kind of thing with him trying to ban trans people you know what i mean i feel like ending the world other people up there might be like all right this is enough's enough fuck this guy and i mean now we got a military coup and you know that ain't the best scenario but i'm saying you know that's the thing But I mean, isn't that within the realm of possible? Can he himself personally just push a button? Technically, yeah.

Presuming that every single person below him in the chain of command follows orders. Right. If any of them either stop him long enough to try and talk him out of it and say, here's why this is a really bad idea. Yeah. and succeed at convincing him or just by refusing to do it and having enough support to be able to refuse to do it. Right. Yeah, then you could interrupt the circuit.

But if everybody does nothing except follow orders straight down the line, he's got to say. I don't think Mattis would, I really don't think. Not for that kind of reason. You know what I mean? If it truly was a truly Trumpian. reason, I really don't think that he would go through with it. But I mean, what about, do we have to be at war in that scenario already? Isn't that an act of war that you need Congressional approval for? You need Congress to declare war, right? But I mean,

we've had plenty of engagements and shit where, when you're defending yourself, you definitely don't have to do it. And then that's Bush got real creative with that, as I recall. Yeah, yeah. It's, uh, it got so creative. We attacked a country. It didn't have anything to do with the attack on us but he's an artist yeah you know he's painting now right yeah yeah anyway go ahead um you know i i'm i'm certainly not uh wildly well informed about this sort of thing but my sense of things is that a sneak attack could draw and would draw instant retaliation right uh because uh the presumption of a state of war would just be there. Now, granted, back in 41, when the Japanese attacked, we didn't have the capability of instant retaliation.

And Roosevelt went to Congress the next day and asked for a declaration of war. And there still wasn't, we didn't retaliate for months because we couldn't. Right. But the whole history of nuclear armaments, my understanding has always been that the moment somebody fires a nuke at us, we're going to fire back with everything we got. Right. Mutually assured destruction. Yeah.

Right. Which has a good acronym. Yeah. Right. Well, okay. Right. That's how I've always understood it too. But that kind of goes back to what I was saying about North Korea being, you know, not Russia.

You know what I mean? Not Iron Curtain Air Russia. It's, uh, yeah, they have nuclear capability, but like their rockets are sorry. And like, do they, you know, like what kind of capability they really have? And I'm saying, not that you want to roll the dice on that type of thing, but I guess, let's say they do. They launch an attack, but it's thwarted in one way or, you know, shoot the rocket down or whatever. Or they attack, they bomb Seoul, South Korea, which is a real option. They could do some huge amounts of destruction there.

but like would that necessarily set off the dominoes of all the nukes going up or whatever in the same way I think it might with Trump himself right but that's a case where I suspect they'd try to talk him out and I just feel like with the amount of firepower we got like that wouldn't be necessary in the same way as like in the Cold War when it was one nuke of theirs goes up and then you know and then it's because we all we both had countless nukes and the capability where that's a not the case anymore. I feel like we could, for all intents and purposes, wipe North Korea off the face of the earth without ever firing a nuke.

You know what I mean? It would be like going to war with Knoxville. Right. Yeah. So, but, uh, I don't know. You'd regret the shit out of that by God. Yeah. I don't know.

I try to remain hopeful about all this stuff. I get where's where a lot of this is coming from. Yeah, it's been a real hopeful 15 minutes. I'll tell you that. I can tell how hopeful you've been. Well, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm trying to be. We're 15 minutes into this interview. And we've only talked about the apocalypse.

And we're literally just talking about the end of the world. We're pretty much blown up the world and other things. Okay. Well, now that, yeah, Drew's correct. We've got you here. I'd like to talk about you, some. If that's all right. I know, I know it's not your favorite subject, but I wouldn't.

That's your idea of a good time. You had to see this coming. Trey What? That. What? Put the mic in front of your face. Is this not in front of my face?

Yes, but you do this. You'll be talking like this and you go, you know what I'm thinking like this? Right there. And you don't move the mic with you and it makes it. We'll cut that out later. No, we won't. We never do. Jim.

Yeah. I know a little bit of this, but you know, the people listening don't because you and I had dinner recently and we talked about a lot of this stuff because I. You can't prove anything. I couldn't help but pick your. brain about things um but again for all the listeners so you're an actor you've been an actor for while been a lot of awesome stuff you know deadwood justified uh was a crimson peak um supernatural um but you actually started as a writer yeah well that's where i had my first success i mean i was an actor before i ever wrote anything but i was

wasn't a paid actor. And so I've, yeah, my, my career including income began as a writer. So how, um, go out, well, tell us how that all transpired. You know, you can give the short version if you don't think or whatever, but yeah, I, uh, how did that happen? Um, I had written a play that was done here in Los Angeles and, uh, rather successfully. And, uh, I got, I got a big agent out of it. Wasn't it dealt with the military or?

No, no, this play was based on things that happened to me when I was in college in Oklahoma. Oh, okay. That's right. And, and, uh, but you were acting at a time. Were you also in it? No, I wasn't in that. Okay. I wasn't in that one.

But, uh, like I say, I got a, I got a big agent out of this, out of, who came to see this play and signed me. And, uh, he started, uh, getting me work writing for television. And I wrote a lot of Vietnam stuff because they were looking for guys who had been there to, because there were a lot of Vietnam shows at the time. Right. And so, see, this is something when we were talking about this, I didn't even, I'd never even realized that this was the way that it used to work. But like, you were like a, like a freelancer for a lot of this different, like, you wrote for a, it's not like you wrote for this Vietnam show for a few seasons and went to this one. You wrote for all of them, like, at the same time.

There was one period in 86, I think it was. I was writing for four or five shows at the same time. Yeah, see, that's wild. That's not really how it works anymore. So when people back then, when people would be like, oh, all those crime shows, they're all the same. It's because the same writer was writing them all. Well, not exactly. But there was a real vital freelance market in television in those days.

but that's that's all gone away right now it's all staff writers yeah staff writers there's a writer's room and everything and i mean honestly like for my perspective again not ever knowing that it was any other way than that like from my perspective that always made sense because it seemed to me like you'd want a group of writers who are on the same show for it so they all get to know the characters in the show and the atmosphere well there was that then too it was just that they at the time, I think a lot of the shows felt like it was too much work for the staff writers to write everything. So they would write half the shows and freelance out the other half or something like that. So why don't you tell us how that process worked as a freelancer?

How did you get those jobs? Well, they would read, my agent would send them this play of mine mainly because it was the only thing I'd written really. And he would send that out. and people would read it and they would call me in the interview and sometimes they would say, we want you to write an episode of the show or they'd ask me to pitch ideas for episodes, and I would do that. And then they would or wouldn't buy one. And if they bought one, they'd say, go home and write it and come back in six weeks.

And that was basically how it worked. I'd go, I'd go home, sit by myself, not talk to anybody on the show. Right. unless I needed to ask a question or something. Did they give you like, I don't know, packets or something of like information, like for the show? Some of them did. They give you a, you know, most shows then and now have a Bible. That tells you, you know, this character is the son of this character.

Right. And so that you don't end up writing, spending a lot of time writing something that can't be used because it doesn't match the, the territory of the show. Right. And so I would, yeah, I'd just go home and sit there. And I'd sit there about five and a half weeks thinking, and then I would type like a madman for the last three or four days and get the script out. And my late wife, Cecil, used to go nuts because she thought, we're going to starve to

death because you're not writing. And I never turned in a script late. But she always thought, any second now, you're going to be two days late with that script. But most of the time I'd come back in after six weeks, I'd hand in the script and they'd say, oh, you're back already. And so I don't know, I doubt, I imagine it's changed an awful lot in the writing process on shows. Now, I haven't, I've never been on staff on a show. when the freelance market dried up, I was lucky and my acting career took off at right the same time. Didn't you, wasn't there like kind of a sort of pretty clear turning point with that whole freelance thing?

Like something happened that basically killed that? Yeah. And there was a writer's guild strike in 1988. Okay. And the strike lasted, I think, about five months, something like that. And by the time it was over, and this is all my estimation, nobody's ever told me this per se, but it's just my sense of how things work. By the time it was over, shows were already overdue to be on the air for the fall season. Right.

And the producers thought, we don't have time to walk a bunch of freelancers through getting the show. We're just going to write like crazy and do it ourselves. and my sense of things is, may be wrong, that they suddenly realized they could do it. They could do it. They were like,

listen, we're just going to burn the mid-night oil. And then a few months later, they were like, holy shit, why haven't we just been doing that? Yeah. And not splitting half the money with the people who don't work here.

Right. So, uh, the, uh, you know, I, I was making,

uh, what for me at the time was an amazing living, uh, writing television. up until the spring of 88, and then I never made another nickel at it. I mean, it stopped like a boulder slammed down in front of me. Well, but like you said, your acting career, then you, yeah, you, it picked up. The timing of that couldn't have been better for you, but then your acting career picked up.

And so, you know, if that hadn't have happened, you know, you could be one of the most celebrated writers in Hollywood right now. Who knows? Probably not. But I'm saying that, that was for a reason. but it still is wild that you were making a killing and then after night and then bam just totally stopped it totally stopped but my acting career picked up the slack and I made the same amount of money the next year that I made the previous year right and that is crazy it is crazy before real quick before we move on to the acting um the the play right I have one

question to backtrack a little bit so you wrote this play but you weren't in it like how did you what was the process of getting a play made like because all I think about is what it's like trying to get a show made or trying to get a movie made or something and that they I mean you know how did that work like okay so you wrote it how'd you get it done and on a stage and seen by people and it was uh uh what what actually happened was a uh a friend had uh had some acquaintance who asked if he knew any who had some play scripts because this person was a producer and was looking for something new to do in a new voice. And he said, well, yeah, my buddy Jim's got some plays. And so I was asked to send them over, send them over this woman, her name's Karen Kandazian. She read this play, Vertigris and got back to me a little later and said, I want to produce this. She took it over to a really brilliant theater man named Clyde Ventura at Theater West here in Hollywood. And he said, I want to produce it.

And so they invited me to join the company there, and they put the play up the next year. And that's how it worked out. some of that was fluke some of it was it's a good play some of it i mean there are a million good plays floating around out there that nobody's doing right and and uh and it was 29 years for anybody did that one again uh but uh you know right place at the right time if if i ever give anybody advice about how to succeed in acting or writing it's be in the right place at the right time because that's the only thing i can look back on tell them they it worked tell them your advice for people drew i don't remember it i'm sorry i feel like i failed you put me

on the spot well me saying i well this is funny oh oh i always tell them uh you just need a friend to get real famous on the internet yeah yeah your career will take off oh hey that's what i'm doing here that's relatively new yeah you said you always said it and i was like quit and kill yourself I ain't said that in a long time, Trey. Well, that was part of my problem. I had, I sat around for 30 years waiting on the internet. Yeah, I recommend it. So, okay, so I was just curious, because I'm always curious about how anything gets made,

like actually gets made and produced and done. So I wanted to ask that question. But so anyway, you're writing for a while. Then the boulder drops, but right when the boulder drops. something else happened and tell us that story. Well, in the middle of that strike, I was in my literary agent's office, just shooting the breeze because that's all we could do. Nobody could write.

Nobody could sell anything. And we walked out of the office, and a woman was walking by from the theatrical talent side of the agency. And he said, oh, here, let me introduce you. He introduced me to this agent, Eileen Feldman, and he said, this is Jim. He's one of our writer clients. And she said, oh, hi. And then she stopped for a second and said, are you an actor?

And I said, yeah. She said, do you have an agent? I said, no. She said, well, Norman Jewison is casting this big movie and you really might be right for a part in it. Would you mind if I submitted you for it? and I said, no, I wouldn't mind, not one bit. And three days later, I had the movie. And there I was.

I was, I had done, you know, three lines in this show, two lines on that show, and that was about it. And all of a sudden I'm playing Bruce Willis's best friend in a Norman Jewison picture. I was trying to give my telephone version of this story to Drew earlier today, and I couldn't remember who the Bruce Willis, that's who it was. He missed a lot of things up. You weren't even in the story, actually. Yeah. No.

Yeah. I thought I was telling him W.R. Brown's story. No, that part ain't true. But I did screw up a lot of the details, though. Actually, now that you're back in, now that you're retelling it, I'd forgotten that, I'd forgotten that you, you know, had been an actor first. Like, I, I, you know, we made a living as a writer first initially, in my mind that had gotten

turned into. you were a professional writer and then this light the story you just told right right um i'd been acting in theater for years right and uh when did you start that i started that in college where we got out of the morgue college in oklahoma is that right it's what is it now the university of central oklahoma uh they changed the name three or four times after i left trying to disassociate from me i think what city in oklahoma it's in edmond which is north of oklahoma city okay We were just in Tulsa not long ago in Oklahoma City a few months before that. They love us in Oklahoma, man.

I bet they do. They do. So we love the good people of Oklahoma back. But actually, what was the name of that? Raising Keynes. That was called? Canes Ballroom. Raising Keynes is a chicken chain.

Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. You ever heard of that or been there? Weird Warner Brothers series. I've been to Tulsa. This place, Kane's Ballroom, they've actually, they've been there for years and years and like all the old country greats have all played there. Wayland and Willie and all those dudes. And nowadays, like Jason Isbell and Sturgle Simpson and those guys play there.

And we were the first, uh, the first comedy show that they'd ever had. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're ever going to have any more? No. No, I don't think so. They saw all they needed to see. Yeah.

But, uh, anyway, yeah. So, uh, Oklahoma's all right in my book. Yeah. But you got started. Well, all right, since we're in that arena. now. Why did you have an interest in it before that? Did somebody, no. Was there like a girl that was in a play that was like, hey, come hang out? Well, that's how I ended up in Oklahoma. There was a girl. There was a girl in Dallas who

went to Oklahoma. And I said, I think I'm going there too. And, uh, because you're from Texas. Yeah. You're up in Texas. Yeah. Born in Wyoming, but I grew up in Texas. Right. And I was always following girls someplace right before they got engaged to somebody else. I had a few of those experiences myself. And so I ended up at this school in Oklahoma, and I wanted to be a film historian because I'm big, big into old film history. And I wanted to write biographies of actors and directors and stuff like that. But they didn't have anything like that, at least back in the 70s when I was going to college.

And so I signed up for theater. I thought, eh, it's close, you know, it's something. And my roommate asked me to help him with an audition. And I helped him and they asked me to join a company too. So I started doing, you know, a little bit, parts and plays. And it was so much fun. Yeah. I thought, this has got to be working.

And so, so that's, I just set out to do that, you know. Was there any element of, I was having this conversation with my writing partner a couple days ago about the difference in where he grew up the theater crowd and where I grew up. And now I'm talking about in my tiny little hometown, there actually wouldn't even have been a theater program if it wasn't for my buddy's brother who is in L.A. now, you know, still trying to do the whole acting thing. Shout out to James. But he basically is the reason we even had a theater program. He was like five years older than me. When he was in high school, he went to the English teacher. And it was like, why don't we do plays or something? She was like,

Okay, I guess we can try that. And then that continued through my high school career. And when I was in high school, the people that did theater were like me and my buddy Thompson, who was like the running back of the football team and like all the stage people were like our buddies on the team with us. And it wasn't, it was not at all stereotypical like theater kids is what I'm saying. And you know what I mean by the, you know, this the theater, you know, whatever, like that whole thing. Yeah. And in college in Oklahoma, what was it like?

Were those people even around in that place in that time? Like, who were the people doing theater with you? It was, it was the people you'd expect to find doing theater. It was, it was people who were really interested in it as an art. Yeah. Who were, uh, uh, both. I'm not, I don't mean 100%. There were some people there just for the fun of it.

Because it was, it was a blast. But for the most part, everybody that I remember in the theater department was there because theater really meant something to them. And they wanted to be part of it. And a lot of them wanted to, a number of them wanted to do it for a living. But most of them, I think, wanted to teach theater. You know, they get their teacher's degree and go off to some little high school somewhere and teach theater. it was it was fairly sensitive people people who were you know who at if they weren't artists they they were very tuned in to artists did the other students at uCO or whatever was called

at the time was it queer to them i don't think so okay i think it was that's what i was wondering my sense of it was that uh i mean you know I was there, I had just a year before I'd been in Vietnam. Right. Yeah. And it was, it was fairly well known that I was older than my classmates. Were there any theater nerds in Vietnam? Sure.

I just love how the way Trey posed that question. He was like, in the 70s now, were there any theater kids? In a small college in Oklahoma? Yeah. Did y'all have atheists back in a day? Oh, dude. I mean, I'm saying at my high school, there weren't like what you think. That was not my point at all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, there were people there who like theater. Yeah. I'm wondering how they, because I, excuse me for thinking that in a place like that, it might be difficult to be the type of person that is a cliche of a theater kid. But I feel like it's difficult to be that type of person everywhere unless, you know, you just own it or you just got back from me. Well, so. I mean, even, that's what I'm saying.

I don't remember, I don't remember any kind of, uh, uh, uh, sense of, of disdain from anybody. Well, good. I just remember, you know, glad to hear that. You know, they, they, they, they, they, people, the people, the students at school would attend the plays. We'd have packed houses and, and, and they'd all, you know, the next, for the next week, they'd tell you how good you were and everything. I don't remember everybody, anybody ever saying, uh, uh, uh, oh, uh, well, you bunch of faggots over there in the theater. Okay.

I never heard anything like that. Well, good. So. Good. That's encouraging to hear. That's why I asked the question. I'm not sure I, by my nature, invited that sort of comment. I'm sure you did not.

But, um, so anyway, all right. So you did that for what? It's how you got into the whole thing. Mm-hmm. And what you graduate and I graduated and went back to Dallas and did local theater there for, uh, three or four years, did several seasons at the Dallas Shakespeare Festival. And I met a bunch of people, actors and directors from New York, and established some friendships and relationships that way. And then finally in 79, I moved to New York and decided

to, you know, take a real crack at it. New York in 79. Yeah. Where'd you stay? Drew lives in New York now, by the way, is in Queens. I was, well, I stayed with a buddy for a while on the Upper West Side and then got a place down on 24th between second and third, close enough to Bellevue for it to be convenient. And it was, you know, wasn't bad. I was there about three years. I worked fairly constantly, but never in New York. I'd get jobs out of town. You know, I had to go to New York to get jobs in Memphis.

And, but, no, hold on. He, his wife's an actress, I don't really, would, like, theater jobs? Yeah, theater jobs. How did that, because it was like theater companies that would do productions in Memphis, but like they're based in New York, so that's where they cast out of? How does that work? A lot of times, a lot of times the stock companies, for example, will go to New York and hold auditions. And, and then my first job while I lived in New York was up in Manchester, New Hampshire.

but I auditioned in New York. Andy's first job out of New York. It wasn't her first professional gig out of college. I don't think. I think it was her third. But the first one she booked out of New York was in New Hampshire. It was a traveling theater company. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I got a couple of jobs doing dinner theater in Tulsa and Oklahoma City and Memphis. And those came from people, recommendations from people who I knew back from college. What is, is dinner theater, you just do a show and people happen to be having dinner, or is that one of those like live action type things? No, no, no, no. It's, it's, people come in, they sit down, they have dinner, and about the time dinner is wrapping up for everybody, we come out on stage and do a show. But it's just on stage and it's okay. Yeah, it's just regular plays. The other thing, are you thinking of like,

Gallenberg and Dixie Stampeed or the, you know what he's talking about? Yeah, well, I'm not sure about. medieval times yeah no it wasn't like that okay what like that okay I'm glad you didn't have to do that but I was very excited to hear the story yeah Jim was a hell of a jowster something not a lot of people know yeah I was I'm real happy I never did that I there aren't a lot of jobs I'm happy I didn't have but that one yeah so uh now we do these we do these sometimes good plays some most of them were stupid dinner theater plays like Natalie needs a nightie and stuff like that, you know, and

things that nobody, nobody sits around 40 years later going, I remember that night, the night I saw Natalie needs a night. No, it was, you know, farces and stuff like that. But every once in a while, we do a really good play. But it's a little weird because, you know, well, one night we had this old man get up from his table and come up on stage and start heading across. the set while we're doing the play. Was he looking for the bathroom?

He was looking for the bathroom. There was a bathroom in the play. And he, and he wanted to go in there. And I was like, sir, sir, we're in the middle of play.

He said, I'm going to go to the bathroom there. And I said, it's not a real bathroom. It's just, there's nothing back there. He said, well,

that girl over there took a shower in there. It must be a bathroom back there. Lord. Finally somebody came up and said, Dad, dad, there's a better bathroom in the lobby. There's crazy times, man. Yeah, I'm trying to think of something. We're not talking Anthony Hopkins stuff.

I have, it's not. I'm thinking of like heckler story or whatever, like comedy stories. I don't, I can't. Were you there that night? I was hosting for Kevin Mani and Kendra Corey was the feature. I came one night of that weekend and did a couple guest spots. I don't remember. Was it when the dude shit all over the, I was there the next night.

You all told me about it. He fell out of his chair and started to crap himself as he fell down the wall all the way out. And he fell all the way out the door. I don't know how to describe it. He was leaning against the wall. Everyone was looking at him because he left from the front row. And Kevin had to address it because he fell into this other lady. So then most of the crowd.

He left from the front row? Yeah. So most of this crowd watched him leave while leaning up against the wall falling on his way out. And then you could start to smell it as he started out the door. And then he just left his underwear in the floor. and poor Troy had to throw him away. And Kevin's up there. I mean, I don't know if you remember.

Rest in peace, Kevin Meaney's ad. But he was like in the middle of that long act out with his family. And then he was about to break out in the song. Remember he ended on a singing number. Ooh, it was hilarious. I don't remember anything quite that egregious. Y'all remember Robert Rodriguez's Desperado with Antonio Banderas and the guitar cases, all that? Remember the scene where the.

little boy on the street like helps him out whatever and he gets up and follows him to uh he follows him into this bar to get help and he's leaning against the wall and it shows the shot and as he's walking down the wall he's leaving this big trail of blood behind him yeah yeah it's like that but we poop that's what happened to droop yeah and then i had to go back up on stage after kevin who hardly knew exactly what had happened how could he have a lord that's not something you just assume or you know like you somebody's got to explain that shit to you yeah on stage while it happens Like another quick story. This will hit for our fans, I think, and I think you might enjoy this.

You said you had filed a woman to Oklahoma, and that did not work out, but, you know, you stayed for the theater. I did a play my freshman year. I liked it all right. It was Shakespeare. It was Midsummer Night's Dream, and I was one of the guys, the play inside the play. Yeah, yeah. I had like a few, and I got to be funny. That's why I wanted to do it, and it was fun.

Didn't, wasn't going to ever go back probably. And then my senior year, a friend of mine was like, someone dropped out of my point. play for my senior thesis. It's a small part, and I need somebody now. Please come do it. And I went over there, and my wife, who I'd have my eye on, it was a very small campus for a little while, was in it. And I was like, yeah, I could do this play. It turned out to be a translation of some Brazilian absurd surrealist. It was the weirdest play that I've ever been in my life. I still have no idea what was going on. This cripple man who walked in the end, that was the big reveal, was having sex with literally everyone in the house, including me, and my, I mean, not on stage,

but that was like the thing. He was having an affair with everybody. And my wife and I had the two smallest parts, so we had to be at rehearsals, but we weren't on stage, so we got to flirt backstage and make out. And that's our love, that's our theater love story. That's not bad. I love the theater. Either one of you two guys know what, I think it's called like interactive theater or something

like that is thing they're doing now. I think technically speaking, some of those, like, what were we just don't, about nights what's that called medieval times are kind of like that but are you talking about like that midsummer night's dream that's in new york where it's five floors it's immersive theater i think immersive theater that's what my buddy james out here just did one of those recently yeah i we were on the road i was gonna go see it but we were on the road and i didn't have a night off that i could but it sounded wild as hell to me you know what i'm talking about yeah there was uh there was a play called tamara that uh uh played at the uh the old um of vf d uh

Hall or whatever it is just down the hill from the Hollywood Bowl. And they turned this place into an Italian villa in the 20s. And, uh, Oh, I know that VFW you're talking about right down from it. They turn that whole thing into this, you know, massive, rich Italian villa. And the play would take place in various rooms at various times. And you would pick an actor to follow. Yeah.

You would follow them through the house. And you, boy, the minute that person walked into another. room, a new scene started. And you could diverge and follow somebody else after that. And the play was happening simultaneously all over the building. It ran for years. Yeah, well, I mean, it seems like that kind of thing. Because you could never see it same play twice.

I'd say you'd have to go, like you could go to the same play over there. So that kind of, that's cool is. There's one in New York that's been running for years. That's Shakespeare. I think it is mid-Summer Night's Dream. It's four floors. And you can follow the actors and actresses up and down the floors. and apparently everyone who goes says it's incredible.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds pretty cool. Andy got, I remember our first or second year in Boston, this was when we were very young. She was probably 22. She had a callback. She ended up getting it. There was a roller derby.

It was at a roller skate rink and the actors were on roller skates, but it was like that. It was an immersive theater thing. Wow. That would have been wild. Yeah. I wasn't allowed to go see it because she didn't get the part. Any of the plays you wrote,

did you get absurdist and surrealist and experimental like that? I wrote a place. I got commissioned by somebody wants to write a plate. This is years ago. There was a big thing. It's not, it's fairly common stuff nowadays, but there was a thing where some cops in Houston had taken this kid, they arrested this kid for speeding or broken tail light or something in a predominantly white neighborhood. And he was Mexican. And they, uh, they beat him up and threw his body in the bayou. And I got asked to write a piece addressing that. Do you remember his name? No, I don't. It wasn't Raymond Casinos, was it? I don't know.

Might have been. I don't think that was in Houston. Because it wasn't, it wasn't, I wasn't asked to write the specific story. Right. Yeah. Take it as a starting point. And I ended up writing an absurdist piece about, about this Mexican, kid on trial in a in a courtroom but uh but the judge and jury and prosecutor are all rodeo

clowns and and uh yeah it was you know it was pretty weird but it it uh it was all about you know how it was basically a kangaroo court oh absolutely no yeah hell yeah but uh that shit sounds right up my alley yeah but um um for the most part i tend uh when i write plays or or film scripts or whatever i tend toward fairly real stuff. Were you, uh, at what point did you start writing your own plays,

uh, early on or you been doing it for, okay. So you, yeah, you kind of always were writing your own stuff while you were acting another thing. A guy in college had,

he was in, uh, directing class and he needed to direct a play and he wanted to direct a play based on this O. Henry short story and he, he thought there was a play version of it, but he couldn't find it anywhere. asked me to take the story and would I be interested in changing it into a play?

So I did that and I thought, well, that was kind of fun. And then I just started getting ideas for plays and I wrote a few. You know, it wasn't, I'm not very prolific, but every once in a while I get an idea that seems like I can make something of it. And so, you know, I've written, I guess, 10 or 12. but most of them are short plays, but, uh, was that like one act plays or, okay. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, some of them are real short. Some of them are, you know, full two or three act long, uh, pieces. It depends on the idea. But, you know, it's a lot more work than acting. And, uh, and then you get done. Uh, and then the work starts over trying to get somebody to do it. Yeah. And if I hadn't been successful as an actor, I probably would have written a lot more.

But given a choice between the two, it's just I love acting more than anything. And so far, they let me do it. Right. Which even if I write something I really, really like, they don't always let you do it. Right, absolutely. And I mean, I've had a fair amount of fortune with. with plays being done. I had a bunch done in Kentucky.

I was commissioned for three plays from Actress Theater of Louisville. And it's great to see somebody do your play. But on the other hand, unless somebody's doing it every week of the year, year in and year out, you're not going to make money off of it. And for some reason, they keep paying me to act. So I figure it's a good deal. Well, this has been a non-linear interview, so let's just go ahead and skip back up to that and paying you to act. So you show up on the – what was the name of the movie with Bruce Willis?

In country. In country. So – and didn't you tell me when we talked about this, weren't you like – like you're on the – or name was on the – like, you were a relatively high-billed in this thing. Yeah, yeah. I had – you know, they don't bill anybody much at the beginning of movies anymore. Right. But the main titles, I was one of those names in the main titles, which was astounding to me. Yeah. But it was a good part, you know.

It wasn't a great part, but it was a good part, memorable one. And going from being a bit player in a few television episodes here and there to being, you know, treated like a major part of a major studio picture was a, you know, huge, huge shift in my experience. And I hear, I listen to Kevin Pollock's podcast, and I hear him say all the time when he's talking to fellow actors that, uh,

for a long time and he says every now and then he'll still get like a, a twinge of it, but for a long time, um, he would show, because he had kind of a similar experience except he, it wasn't a writer, he was a stand-up comedian,

but then he kind of did a similar sort of thing as you did. And, uh, he's, say like when he first he would show up or whatever and he'd spend the whole production and just sitting there looking around like okay when are they gonna when are they gonna come grab me and be like listen we've someone made a terrible mistake i don't know why the hell you are here or what we were thinking or whatever um and you know i'm not i'm a comedian and whatever else i haven't really done any acting outside of high school so i don't know did you have that

45 years and i still feel like that okay all right Okay. That's what I was wondering. You know, there's a little part of me that thinks, when are they going to catch on? Yeah, right. That I'm not supposed to be here. Does it go away on a specific project for that project? Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's gone away. Okay. It has gone away. But, you know, I got a buddy who says none of us got into this business because we were healthy. there's that sick little part in the back that says you don't belong here you don't have any right to be here you're an imposter right and it still niggles at you but it's not you know i don't i don't really sit down in my trailer on the set of a movie and go they're going to find out i'm no good right you know i trust the fact that i've i've worked my way up to whatever it is i've worked my way up to

and that people, I'm coming to terms with the fact that people seem to like the fact that I'm there on their set. Right. Absolutely. I don't know about on the set because I haven't been on the set with you, but I, you know, I could say just, I like you on the screen. Yeah. And I've always enjoyed your parts and everything. You're always one of the better parts of whatever. Ellsworth, man, and Deadwood.

Oh, my gosh. Ellsworth. Love that guy. That's, that's, I think that's the best part I've ever had on camera. The best project I've ever been involved with. You and Earl, you, you're the second alumnus of Debwood we've had on the show. Earl's been on here. And you guys are the only two I've talked to about it, but you both just speak so glowingly.

Oh, you can't, you cannot imagine what an experience that was. It was, it was like having Einstein for your physics teacher. it was it was it was being on a show that critics argued about is it or is it not the best show in television history

right yeah it doesn't matter who wins that argument you're in it right yeah yeah and and and the roles the work was so rich and and I mean I had the greatest arc in television history

nobody would have seen where I ended up from where I started. I know what's what I'm saying. It's awesome. It was, did you know that in the beginning? No, I didn't know anything.

I didn't know anything. I thought, you know, I did a couple episodes and thought, okay, I'm going to be comic relief here in the back. Right, right.

Otis or something. You're the Otis of Deadwood. I'm going to be Gabby Hayes. Right. Every once in a while, I'm going to get my head stuck in a bucket. Right. Yeah.

And then by, you know, by the end of it, Gabby Hayes has married day 11th. Absolutely. And, and, it was,

but it wasn't, It wasn't just that cool stuff happened. It was so beautifully written. Oh, my God. And so rich. And you had to think about it. Yeah. You had to think about it as an actor.

It was like ultra-prone Shakespeare. Yeah. In the old West. I mean, God, damn, who don't love that? I mean, it was, I'm watching it again. My girlfriend's, I'm introducing her to it. And I, you know, I can watch this show over and oh. It would have been my favorite show ever, even if I hadn't been in it.

it. Right. All right. That's something else. And, uh, and to get to be in your favorite show ever. Wow. That's just, it was magic. It was absolutely magic.

And, uh, and I miss it. I would have, I would have happily done that part in that show for the rest of my life. But. So that's the way Earl talks about it. Yeah. It's the same kind of attitude about the thing. Like it's just, it seems like it was some sincerely magical shit. And it had to be for the product, the, you know,

the end result, you know, speaks to that. Yeah. Obviously. But you also had this weird combination of people involved in the show. And this isn't always true. We all both liked each other and liked the material. It wasn't anybody there going, oh, man, I can't believe I have to do this stupid scene. Nobody ever said anything like that.

Was that a little luck or was that absolutely someone involved? That's David Milch. Okay. David Mills, the creator of the show, as far as I know every word spoken on that show, whether he wrote it or not, it was filtered through him. I'll tell you what Earl says about that, because Earl was in, like, the writer's room for a little while, and Earl, the episode that Earl is credited with writing of the show is my single favorite episode of the show. It's season three, either episode eight or nine. I can't remember the number. But anyway, it's my favorite episode of the whole thing.

and I told Earl that. And Earl, of course, he's just this type of guy. But he also told me, he was like, well, look, you know, I can't take that much credit for it, really. He was like, I mean, I wrote, I wrote a script, but they all go through David. Yeah. And, you know, and then David, he was like, I mean, he changed a lot of it. He put his thing on it.

And he's like, in every script for every episode of that show was done the same way. Yeah. Yeah. And he told me he was the guy. Oh, yeah. Without him, it would have been a very different project. Right. But that explains to a certain extent why everyone loved the material.

Yeah. But everyone getting along, do you think that David and or the casting directors and everyone else involved perhaps were seeking a certain type of actor, not just in terms of talent, but also, you know, wanting to work with? Or do you think that was luck? I know that I did David's next show after Deadwood, John from Cincinnati. And it was the same casting people. It was David. It was the same directors. It was a lot of the same writers.

And it was a lot of the same, a lot, but not all, of the same actors. There were more actors who hadn't been on Deadwood than there were who had. And it was a very different experience insofar as people getting along, being a tight unit, being comfortable with the material. It was a different. those of us who had worked with David before and knew his working methods, I think were still just as comfortable as ever with the, I mean, the hard part for an actor working for him in a show like Deadwood or John from Cincinnati is that so much is written, gosh, just the day

before, the night before, the morning of, and you don't get much time to prepare it. and some people, like most of us on Deadwood, just trusted David and threw ourselves into it and said, we're going to jump off the cliff and we know he's going to catch us. On John from Cincinnati, there were certain people who couldn't jump off the cliff. They said, I can't do this. I've got to have a couple of weeks with this script. Well, you don't get a couple of weeks on David's show. Sometimes I've finished shooting one day in San Diego.

They let me go. I got my car. I was halfway back to Los Angeles when I got a phone call, it said, come back. David's written a monologue for you. And I had to turn around and go back, and I had 10 minutes to learn a page and a half of speech and shoot it. So if you can't jump off that cliff, then you're not going to be very comfortable working on a Milt Show. But we had a huge cast on Deadwood. Oh, I know.

And everybody seemed to feel exactly the same way. we're lucky to be here we're lucky to be learning how to work this way we're lucky to be working under this man that's while such an unspeakable travesty that that show didn't get to finish yeah just i mean again this is the way people talk about it fans and people that have been on it whatever and like you said that was the conversation yeah is it the greatest show of all time or just one of the top five or whatever. And yet it got canceled. And I know there's a lot behind the scenes, reasons for whatever, how that happened.

It was money. It was money. It was a really expensive show. Right. And of course it was. If you look at it, you can tell it's an expensive show. Right. And if you add to that the fact that we took pretty much as long as we needed to shoot things, uh, an average drama on CBS, for example, they'll shoot from July to April.

to get 22 episodes. Well, we shot July to March to get 12. Right. And, you know, I saw a call sheet one day that said day 19 out of 10. So, you know, things cost more. It was just the, it was worth it. Yeah. I mean, it ain't my money.

I wasn't spending the money. But I'm saying, God damn, man. You see now that that they're working real hard on putting together. a movie to wrap up the story. Yeah, you know, I've heard a lot about that and everything. I definitely as a fan.

I really hope that comes to fruition. I won't have much to do with it, I imagine, but it's, it's, it's, uh, I'll be first in line to see it. Absolutely.

Well, we will too. And I'll tell you what we tell you the same thing we told Earl when he was on here. You're going to have to come back for a round two. Will you do that? Yeah, of course. Will you seriously?

Yeah. Because we got so much left that. I didn't, we didn't say a single word about justified, which is also one of my favorite shows of all time. But, you know, we're running out of time here, and we've kept you long enough. And also, Corey just walked in, so we have to quit. Hey, Jim. Hey, how you doing, Gordon? Can't have Corey be a part of this.

But, Jim, thank you so much. And, you know, sorry I talked about the world, and then for the first 15 minutes you were here. It just seemed pertinent at the time. I don't know. Yeah. With a little luck by the time people hear this, it won't be pertinent anymore. Right, absolutely. It will all be dead.

And yes, please, please. And he's negative? Please come back. I want to do it. We got more to talk about. You know, Marlon Brando said an actor is a fellow who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening. So I'm happy to come back.

Absolutely. Thank you very much. Jim Beaver, everybody. See us next time. See you. Thank you all for listening to The Well Red Show. We'd love to stick around longer, but we got to go. Tune in next week if you got nothing to do.

Thank you, God bless you. Good night, and skill.