WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1024 - John Turturro

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

When you talk with John Turturro, it’s quickly apparent that he’s a student of history. But John says that type of education really only happened for him once he left school and engaged with the world. His breadth of knowledge has certainly helped him as an actor and director throughout his versatile career. John and Marc talk about his fascinations, as well as what John was able to build for himself after living in a fairly volatile household. He also looks back at his experiences with longtime collaborators the Coen Brothers and Spike Lee. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace and SimpliSafe. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category.

legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gate!

Alright, let's do this. How are you what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? What's happening? How's it going? I'm Mark Marin. This is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it. I imagine some of you are new to this show after last week's David Letterman interview. Welcome. Welcome to the show. This is the part where I talk a bit about myself and ask how you're doing. Sometimes it gets you caught up on my life. That can happen. Sometimes they tell you what's going on in my mind. Sometimes I get aggravated about the cultural and political situation in our country and world right now. Yeah, so that's what's up. Mark, how are you? Thanks for coming by. I'm glad you liked that interview last week. A lot of people

did. First off, John Turturro is on the show today, and I'd like to give you a little background on that because I had one of the rare near meltdowns during that interview. I almost lost my shit in front of an amazing actor, and I wasn't acting. A sweat broke. Things came unglued. I'll, I'll tell you about it in a minute, but let's, let's stay with what I'm, what I'm dealing with right now. What's going on, which is a couple of things I need to address here at the outset.

Is this the outset? It was a little misunderstood, but it was also on me in referring to aa alcoholics anonymous which is the program that i got sober in i kind of i don't think it was glibly but i said it's the only thing you know it's you know i said to dave in reference to his experience with his father that you know it's really the only option and i and it's just old school thinking you know i know it's not the only option and i just to, and some people push back on this. I got some emails and I think that it might be discouraging to people who are trying to get sober if they think that's it, if they didn't have a good experience in those rooms or it's not for them or whatever.

And I think they were right in telling me that by saying it's the only option, it doesn't help. It might make people hopeless. And here's what I got to say on that. That's true. There are other options. You should investigate whatever option you want and whatever fucking works, fucking do it. your life from addiction from alcoholism for whatever compulsion that is destroying it you know do it if it's if it's safe and it's not going to cause more trouble i i don't judge anybody

there's many people who've gotten sober with nothing uh who have gotten you know just white knuckled it or whatever however you whatever your perception is of any process of recovery, great. For me, it was just easy. I go. They're all over the place. You show up on any given day. There's usually many. No one asks you any questions.

You walk in. You sit down. Nothing. But it's old school stuff, and sometimes whatever, you know, whatever that has to offer, it may not be for you, but I do want to make it clear that, uh, there are other ways. And, uh,

and honestly, whatever you have to fucking do, you know, just to get through a day. I, I, there's no judgment here. And,

uh, you know, I, I can only say what worked for me. But again, there are other ways and investigate whatever you need to investigate, do whatever you got to do to get that day sober and hopefully a string of days. That's my statement on that. Thank you for the input, people who were aggravated. The other thing, less pressing is that uh on the letterman interview i i talked about my first appearance in my shiny suit turns out that was the second appearance i i went back

and looked at him some kid had posted uh some kid who i don't know who he is someone had put up four of the appearances i believe there were five in total there were four stand-ups and one panel but the shiny suit was definitely the second one because i watched the first one and i'm like oh yeah that horrible thing that that that terrible moment in the black suit in the i was a little shake i remember that i'd gotten myself sick before because I was so nervous, which I used to do a lot. Anything that I had to do that was a big deal, I would stress out to the point where I would make myself ill. And I remember I was getting a cold and I was worried about my voice and I was backstage and Biff was about to pull the curtain aside. And I was like, I don't feel well.

Is there a Kleenex? And that was the first one. And it was okay, but I had put it out of my mind. It's interesting how the mind works. I don't know. I honestly, I don't know how old you are or whether this is because of age, but I don't know how I got through almost anything back in the day. I really don't.

My memories as they get further away, like there's some parts of my life where I'm like, I don't even know who that guy was. When I watch him, I'm like, oh, that's me. But it's like, I have to sort of engage in some sort of attempt at empathy for my younger self. Cause like I was like in constant anxiety, in constant aggravation and anger and self-loathing and just volatile and self-involved. OK, some of those things I still have. They're just they're tempered. But but I really I don't know, man. I I know how I got here, but I'm amazed.

I think that know, man. I, I, I, I know how I got here, but I'm amazed. I think that I'm here and, uh, I, I can't really believe it's happening. And I try to engage in some gratitude and, uh, show up the best I can for, for, uh, for other people that I try to, I, I try to live a good life um and it's not easy when your brain is a fucking ball of snakes also you know i tried to have a private life and i i know that the relationship i have with many of you is visceral and it's um connected and it's emotional which it is and i do share a lot of my life but i do try to have a a private life and, you know, I'm trying to separate, you know, there was a period, a long period of time where, you know, anything that went on in my life and in my mind, I would dump onto these mics without really taking into consideration, you know, what it would mean to me or what it would mean to other people that, you know, may be involved in my life. So, you know, I try to, you know, maintain a private life. It's something I had to learn to do. And,

and I hope you respect that. That being said, I, you know, I do, I, I D I think I should tell you that, uh, Sarah and I, uh, split up a while ago and, uh, I've been sort of going through that period in that process and that sadness. Again, I do want to have a private life, and it is my business, but a lot of you are part of my narrative in the way that I allow you into my life. I thought I would tell you that. difficult few months and it's made me it's gotten me into a state of like really thinking about my life my relationships you know throughout my life with everybody and uh it's it's some i don't think it's a midlife thing but it's something and they're just something about me trying to land in my life and decide how i want to live the rest of it. That's been sort of, you know, pressing on me. And because of that, I've been doing a lot of reading.

I've been doing a lot of, you know, reflecting. I've been doing a few meetings and I've been, you know, talking to people. And, you know, just really trying to keep my heart above water and try to sort of change some patterns in my life, you know, around my ability to enjoy it okay all right i'm okay and you know we move on this is this is this is humans this is humans humans do things it's an amazing thing these conversations that i have with people and i don't i to be honest with you i don't always know how they're going to be received i know my experience of them

and i get very immersed in them and while i'm doing it i you know sadly maybe not sadly maybe for i don't i'm not thinking about you guys uh i'm i'm thinking i'm not thinking i'm i'm in it i'm having a conversation and i'm following how that goes and you know i'm just kind of rolling with the conversation and that's the thing about when i do these things on the road the john taturo talk which you're about to hear, he's in a show, The Name of the Rose. It's airing on Sundance, and you can watch episodes on their streaming service, Sundance Now or at SundanceTV.com. But he's a great actor. I love the guy. And sometimes people don't come out to LA and I I take it to

them I have a rig that I work with I bring it on the road to do intros and sometimes when I'm in New York I'll do interviews and sometimes if they're on location uh Brendan my producer will meet me and we'll set up a mini studio but other times it's like yeah I'm all right let's just we can just hang out in the room in the hotel room. And it's fine. It's a little odd, you know, because I'm not staying usually a giant suites or anything. So we're just sitting there in the hotel room. But, you know, Turturro, John came over and we met in the lobby. And, you know, he's an excitable guy and he's an intense guy and he likes to talk.

And it was just one of these like like these situations where, and you're not going to hear this most likely, but I do, I do want to share the experience with you is that, you know, I was recording and, you know, I was getting obsessed with him, you know, moving the mic around. Cause you know, I, I take it for granted that people are used to, to using a mic, holding a mic. And then I looked down at my recorder and I noticed that it was not recording. It had stopped recording. And I didn't know how long it had stopped for. We'd been going for a while.

And it was just like that moment. And I don't experience too many moments like this in my life anymore where you're like, oh, my God. So, you know, it's like you could experience these moments all you want. It's something, you know, seemingly in my control, just did something. And now I have no control over what's happened. And I don't know how much I've missed or what's going on. So in that moment, I started to spin and John sitting there and I'm like, fuck. And then I got to take the card out and I got to stick the card in the, in the computer to see what I have and pull that up. And then I got to, you know, figure out it was my fault. I, you know, the fucking card filled up

and I, you know, fortunately I had another card, but like I had to figure out, you know, what the gap was and he's watching me through all this. And I'm like, oh my God, this never happened. This never happened before. And it hasn't, I've lost an episode or two by accident years ago, but this never happened. And I'm kind of freaking out. And I'm like, and there's that moment in life where you're like, ah, fuck it. You know what? Let's forget it. Just, I can't do it. I can't just, you know, I'm sorry. Just go home. I appreciate it. And it's my fault. And I'm an asshole and I fucked up and I don't know how we can do it again. I don't know if we're going to get through it or whatever. And it's an odd sort of situation to have a guest going like, it's okay.

Just take it easy. I'm like, no, man. It's like, I can't. And then I realized, dude, dude, you've been doing this, you know, you know, like a long time now. Just, you know, pull it together, you know, lock back in, get started again. Don't, you know, you don't need to sit here in front of John Turturro and beat the shit out of yourself. And, you know, that's what happened.

I was like, okay, all right, we're good. Let's just start from this place and, you know, kind of get back into it. And we did, but it was, it hadn't happened in a long time. There's a couple of things that have happened in the last year that haven't happened in a long time. That one and the flop sweat at the comedy cellar flop sweat at the comedy cellar you never when things get get away from you and you know there's uh and i was talking about this with a friend of mine where where you have those moments where like your body and your brain probably rightfully so is like just get out of here just just get

walk away from it you know when you when you know something has gotten you know like you made a horrible mistake that fucks your job up there's part of you that's just sort of like i'm just gonna go okay i'm an asshole i'm gonna leave okay good luck with everything or when you're on stage and you're not you're not doing well it's sort, and you feel that sweat on the back of your neck. There's definitely party that wants to just be like, all right, I'm going to go ahead and leave now. You don't like me. I'm I'm out. Okay. I'm not, I'm never going to do this again. And, you know, as time goes on, you get older, you realize like, you know, ride it out, man. Just got to ride.

But I'm like that with brushing my teeth where really I've had to figure out. I think there were years in my life where I'm just sort of like, I can't, I'm not going to brush my teeth. I'm going to go to bed without brushing my teeth. Yeah, I'm not going to get up at a reasonable hour. And I just had to train myself to just do it. Just stay in it. just do the thing you know don't because a lot of times you're just not doing things so you have something to beat yourself up about what's easier than brushing your fucking teeth when you go to bed now i'm compulsive about i'm like a floss freak the point is like you know make yourself do things that you should be doing because you should and just make a habit of it.

So you don't you can take that off the list out of reasons why you're an idiot. That's my self-help tip today. And also the Totoro thing worked out. But yeah, it was like, you know, I freaked out a little, it was like, you know, I, I freaked out a little folks. I, I, I'll be honest with you. I freaked out a little. So now I will share with you the conversation I had that, uh, I freaked out in the middle of with, uh, with the amazing actor, John Totoro, who's a great guy, intense, smart, engaged man. And his show, The Name of the Rose, you can stream now on Sundance Now. It's on Sundance. You can also

see it at SundanceTV.com and it's airing on Sundance. So this is me in a New York City hotel room with John Turturro. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? hotel room with John Turturro. your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need. And policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance, mind your business. Death is in our air.

This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series,

streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18-plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. You remember that place? Amato's Opera? Friends of my parents performed there. What was that place? It was a little opera house.

Yeah. And a lot of really good singers came out of there and then they went you know further on and some people just you know they didn't get paid to do the operas but there was something uh kind of old world yeah intimate because yeah this this neighborhoods these neighborhoods around here had all these little ethnic theaters right you see the history of it, like on Grand Street, I don't know between where and the center, I guess east of center, there was the Grand Street Theater. That was the Broadway Theater. Before there was any Broadway.

And so like in the- Was it Yiddish? No, they would do, say, would do King Lear like in Yiddish. Yeah. Then they'd leave the set and then they would do it in Italian. Really? Yeah. The same actors?

No, different actors, same set. Okay. So they had a lot of these. They had like Sicilian theaters, Neapolitan theaters, Yiddish theaters, German theaters, poopy theaters, puppet theaters. The movie theaters up there were all Yiddish theaters. That was Yiddish, the Yiddish theater. Second Avenue, that was the Yiddish theater over there, yeah.

And like 11th Street, it's the Intermedia. It was the Intermedia and now it's the movie theater. Right, that sounds like an amazing movie idea to have the two troops doing Lear in Yiddish and in Italian. Yeah, because everyone, that was their entertainment in their own language. And this was the Lower East Side. Yeah, I have a book because I used to have an office on in on center street yeah and uh of all these little tiny theaters that they had and uh now they're stores or apartment buildings and stuff

but they're all gone yeah but i mean some of the buildings are still there but they were transformed into tenement buildings or uh so i'm was interested you know in that and uh you don't and i used to go to a lot of theater when it was cheap in like the 70s and yeah the ridiculous theater company and circle rap and you know where you could see things for a couple bucks and And I would see all these great, Charles Ludlam, he was a fantastic, brilliant, he used to do everything in drag.

He would like Irma Vep. Yeah. And his lover. Yeah, but it was just, you'd walk into the theater and you'd start laughing. Right. Before the show.

Yeah. But it was an older greenwich village affordable experience yeah you know and if you didn't like it you only spent a couple bucks yeah and that was and that was nothing to lose nothing and and even if you didn't like it it was probably going to be kind of mind-blowing anyways yeah i i kind of think know, people have gotten priced out a little bit. In theater. Well, in theater especially because that was the thing of seeing something live, seeing somebody, you know, in a cafe or something.

Right. And I, you know, had no money and I could afford to scrape up a couple bucks and see whatever I wanted to see. So your fascination with this stuff comes from, you know, just growing up here. Well, I love anything that has to do with the history of things yeah in the past i think it's i i was a substitute teacher before i went to grad school yeah and uh i taught american history not that i knew that much about it but uh i think that you know people think they invented things. And there's all these instruments like the banjo.

The banjo came from Africa. Right, sure. And then it was recreated here. Right, yeah. And there's all these instruments that are Mediterranean and Arabic. There's instruments, I don't even know what they are. You don't know what they are. And there's a whole tradition of that.

And sometimes I hear certain kinds of music i'm going like why do i why does this music like just pulsate you know within me yeah i realize you know after i did all my dna and everything like to have all these different things you know uh strands of different cultures coursing through my bloodstream and why don't you do that yeah i did it a couple years ago and then dr henry lewis gates asked me to be on discovering your roots and and then i did that show so they really have an army of people i'm doing that it's i can not recommend it more highly it wasn't what was left for the tv because we you're in there for three hours and if there's three people there's only 20 minutes of you yeah but the experience of being with him and seeing everything you were surprised i was yeah i was surprised and then he gave me more stuff afterwards

because i said give me everything i don't care i don't care what it is they asked me to do it like four years ago and now it's like finally happening it's it's a it's a it's fast what'd you find out well i found out i was a lot of different things right i found out that one i'm related at the end of they show you who you related to yeah and it's funny because i was on his show and interviewed i think he must know this because he was on the show i'm a lot i'm related to brian gumbel you were yeah i am we're like you know cousins from uh i don't know if it's on the black side or the white side but i am i'm related to him so he's like a cousin of mine he had no idea yeah did you talk to him about it no i want to i would

say like you know we have to have like a cousin meal you know and his brother yeah but i mean i wasn't surprised yeah of all these things right you. You know, that I have, because I'm half Sicilian, so I could be, I mean, I could be, you know, Arabic, I could be Norman, I could be Jewish, I could be Greek, I could be Spanish, I could be French. It's all those things. And I'm, I have a lot of Iberian in me. Yeah. Middle Eastern.

That's wild. Some, some, some Sub-Saharan, northern african uh you know and there's a lot predominantly of italian whatever the hell that means but when you grew up you were just italian i knew that wasn't true because my mother was sicilian and my father was from pulia and when they had arguments uh that's in the south too but it's on the asriatic it was two it's two different languages first of all and my mother had red hair and it was very fair and uh you know and she was good with knives so so uh but uh you know he my father would say these things to her like you you're really you're a dirty sicilian he would say these yeah the rock you know he had a foul mouth and uh sounds like they got along great they did they

had a very hot relationship i mean no sometimes they didn't get along but sometimes but uh if you're from southern italy it's really the kingdom of the two sicilies when naples was the the capital but uh sicily is completely, I've worked there. It's like you're in Africa and you're in Europe. Right. It's its own language. Is it beautiful? Yeah, it's beautiful.

It's beautiful. I mean, it's very mountainous. And it's, people can be very reserved and then very warm yeah but you'll see people with like blonde hair and curly blonde hair and blue eyes like when my nose and then you see people who look like you know uh one of the cast of hamilton you know what i mean you're right well yeah and it's like this is all the Sicilian thing. And you're very close to Tunisia. Yeah. I mean, there's a small waterway.

And the Arabs ruled there for a long time. When you went there, did you feel connected? Yes. Yeah. And in some ways, yes. In some ways, it was foreign. I mean, I went there in the 1980s. For the Sicilian? Yeah. But i learned to ride a horse there so there was a lot of things that i and then

eventually i felt very comfortable just being in the mountains on a horse i was a kid who never rode a horse my whole life did you do you ride now do you find i still can ride yeah yeah and i'm gonna ride on this yeah i moved i kept it up for a while yeah but these were great horses they were spanish yeah they were trained right my one of my horses his name was madruga yeah and that was a fantastic horse so but they were really brilliantly trained horses they scare me man you're scared at first and then you have to make fun you know make friends with it and you have to feed it and wash it and eventually the horse will say oh get your smell and uh you know and then you'll uh you're in you well i was in my horse uh yeah my horse didn't want anyone around him after a while so but it was terrifying for a big animal yeah i know man and then you're like you

know and uh but it's beautiful. Yeah. And I got to experience things that I never did. And you rode recently? I'm going to ride tomorrow because I have to ride in this other thing I'm doing right now. What? I'm doing The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Oh, my God. That's a great book.

Yeah. They're making a movie or a series? No kidding. Six parts. David Simon is the, David Simon. David Simon's? Really? Yeah.

Oh, that's amazing. So they're just going to play it real. They're going to do the whole thing. Well, they're using a lot of footage of Lindbergh and certain people. That's very smart. When did that project start to happen? I guess there was a few. He wasn't that interested in doing it when Obama was president.

He wrote it when Bush was president. Philip or, yeah. I know, I read it right when it came out. Yeah, when it came out. And it's, I mean, the whole American firsters, I mean, he took a lot of things that are very truthful. And, you know, obviously history is really revisionist because everyone thinks everyone wanted to be patriotic

and fight in the war, but 80% of our country did not want to be involved in the Second World War after World War I. And the level of, you know, there was a big Nazi party here, a level of anti-Semitism, you know there was a big nazi party here level of anti-semitism you know and uh you know and american firsters were really uh that was uh lindbergh's you know he was one of those people and a lot of famous people were american firsters gore vidal was an american firster

gore vidal or his father his gore vidal really it started at yale of course uh-huh but everyone i mean i went to yale as a as a uh uh especially you know as a drama student you know uh i was gonna as a handicapped admission uh but uh but a lot of things start at those ivy league institutions of saying you know let's keep let's keep it pure yeah it starts at the intellectual level and then it becomes real yeah you know this is i mean the drama school used to be right next to skull and bones so i had a few encounters with those people over the years but they were like a frat though really weren't you would never see them uh-huh you could never see who was in skull and bones oh it was it was like a cia blacked out site yeah you couldn't see they could throw things over

the fence at you but you would never see them but did you feel like it was threatening or just a bunch of kids well it's weird if you were like a dishwasher late at night and then guys are thrown debris over the fence were you a dishwasher yeah i was a dishwasher with me and charles dutton we were both dishwashers at the cabaret, and they bothered us one night, but we responded. Yeah, what'd you do? How'd you fight back the secret society? We threw things back over the fence at them.

I was thinking, you know, but it was odd. Like, someone wanted to throw debris on us. Yeah. I mean, there was a black guy and another dark-skian jew i could be a lot of things yeah and you have been a lot of yeah and these they like they dumped all this stuff over the fence on us as if it was funny yeah it wasn't very funny no and uh you think

we didn't think it was very funny we were working you know putting out the garbage yeah i remember that and that left a mark on that i was like wow so this is yale this is the future of our country the world these are the world leaders things things don't change i mean things change and but that's what i'm saying we're going back you understand yeah what when you read certain things you know if you read about 1924 they just wrote a big article about the immigration laws. My father came here in 25, but his father had established residency. But they closed the doors to mass immigration, especially Italy, I think, had the most immigrants for one country. There was a lot of Jewish immigrants, but they were in different countries.

And my father took him six years to get here because they couldn't get in. one country there was a lot of jewish immigrants but they were in different countries and uh my father took him six years to get here because they couldn't get in you know uh that was in 1925 so he was born in 25 but he got here in 31 but but his father had established a residency he had been here a bunch of times and uh what kind of business he he was a naval officer but then he went into you know he was like a builder. Your father. My grandfather. Grandfather, yeah.

But then they finally got here. But when you read what they wrote about, you know, Italians and Jews, I mean, they were, you know, wow. You just read their description of it about, you know, the interbreeding and the lowering of the i mean it was the junk science yeah it was called uh what's the word for eugenics eugenics yeah it's the junk sign and they had all these guys and you know that's some scientists who were behind it yeah too then it was eugenics yeah i can't you know it's like every day i can't it's like getting harder and harder for me to function yeah well but i go back the only reason I go back is I think, okay, this is what people thought. And then you see people get accepted here and then forget that.

Yeah. And you're thinking like, you know, you can't forget that, you know, because. This is what America looks like. This is what it was. Yeah. This is. That one of the books I really, not to go off on a tangent, but one of the books I really loved about was Nancy Eisenberg's book, White Trash.

It's not the most maybe fun book, but I, she delineates certain things about the whole group of supposedly white people, the waste people. Yeah. They were called waste people, the people who came here. They were just supposed to, you know, work the land and die right they were discardable and they come from you know from from england you know and uh you know places of whereabout but these people they're eventually ones they became squatters and they were not landowners they had no money and they were lower than slaves so of course they had to have someone to look down upon too but she breaks it down about this and then

this myth of whiteness that was kind of laid on you know this is a book called when the irish became white i mean i wasn't considered white until the 1950s. Yeah. You mean on the census? No, on the census. You were, my father was other. Yeah. He wasn't black.

Right. Even though he looked, you know, he could have been black, but he was, you had to check other. And then all of a sudden, miraculously, he became white. Huh. So I'm just, it just, you know, it fascinates me the mixture that we all are and i think everyone you know they they cling to these myths of things that has nothing to do with who you got that's what that's right that's what this whole book's about yeah a lot of it have you always had this thing this fascination with history?

No. I've learned a lot more after I got out of school because I worked there. Yeah. And people gave me... Where in Sicily? I worked in... I did a Primo Levi film with Francesco Rosi,

a great director, The Truce, his second book. So for five years, he introduced me to Primo Levi and all these things. And I started reading Italian Jewish literature and Italian literature. And I was kind of shocked because a lot of it, it's not, except for a few writers, aren't really translated here.

Probably because a lot of the Italians who came here weren't that educated and they weren't didn't have a big readership yeah you know what i mean yeah i mean there's so many great great jewish writers but you have a bigger readership right you know people read do you speak italian i i've learned to speak present tense italian i can't read a book right so i need it i can read an article but i need a i need a trans a really good translation but i've devoured voraciously all these italian i mean all those elena ferrante books i devoured all of them you know one two three when they came out because it's interesting you know for me and i've discovered so many great writers. I just did this miniseries on Umberto Eco. Name of the Rose.

He's from the Piedmontese area, but there are a lot of great, Cesare Pavese, Natalia Ginzburg, Calvino, Primo Levi. But Primo Levi, I know every book he's ever written. I've got to read some. He's the greatest. He's one of the,

I've never given one of his books, people wouldn't say to me, oh my God, I never. Because he's not, he doesn't, he writes as a guy who was a chemist. Yeah. So he writes everything down in a way that you, even when his his worst his famous book is

sequestro a womo if this is a man not aptly retitled or maybe not brilliantly retitled survival in auschwitz here uh but he writes it as i read survival in auschwitz well that's primo levy oh that was. That changed my whole perception. That's it. Because he makes you imagine, like, well, what would I have done? It's not about what happened to him. Exactly. And also, I think he introduced the idea of transcending victimhood from within the camp.

That this idea we had, they obviously were victims but there was things going on within the camp on different levels on all different levels yeah yeah he's a great all different levels i don't know i forgot that he wrote that changed my whole brain that book yeah i mean me too i i think if you are a prejudiced person i'm just saying and you were able to read 10 pages of that slim book yeah so pal like a day you come out of that it actually confronts your in a very i don't understand how he does it but subtle way because it's not about him yeah and you you feel implicated somehow or you could be yeah because he humanizes everybody. Everybody.

And there's a whole spectrum of emotions and things that people had to do out of necessity. That's right. That were fundamentally human just to survive in an almost unsurvivable situation. Well, he explains it as a laboratory of human behavior. Right.

And he said that part of his life was really in color, and everything else has been like it was in black and white said that part of his life was really in color and everything else has been like it was in black and white after that but he's just you know once you have an experience with that it opens something in your brain and it confronts you saying

okay we all have some prejudices we have weaknesses we have fears and that guy at times when I'm upset about things whatever you know 9-11 election this and i'll take one of his essays out and i'll read it yeah say okay what is what does primo say about this you know what i mean and it's like uh it's almost like the talmud or something the bible yeah for me yeah for me it's it is because he's not really religious and yeah but

he's a humanist right so so what like with this brain that you have that keeps growing and in your interest keep what compelled you to act initially i i guess i was in a family with a lot of uh performers my mother's brothers were musicians my mother sang with them and then didn't want to and she wanted to be a designer but she had to quit school and my father's brothers were all very like larger than like you know people you would watch in the movies you would see well like someone like edward g robinson or lee j cobb for example george c i would like say well that guy's like my father. He's just like my...

And my father loved movies. I mean, I never knew anybody. That's a pretty powerful father. Lee J. Cobb, and were you going to say George C. Scott? Yeah, yeah. My father was... He was right up. That's a combination.

Oh, man. Exactly. He even looks like him. And just a ferocious temper. But you were around it. Yeah it yeah it was like an acting class even my parents they how they would go moment to moment like not let anything pass yeah like what is that you know no you're laughing ah oh you think that's funny right you're dirty you know and you know and you know it was like when i went to acting class, I was thinking, I've already been in this. I mean, I have my parents.

Yeah. You know, and so, I mean, a lot of people, I think I'm one of probably many, I don't want to say millions, but when there was a show like The Honeymooners. Yeah. That show had an honesty to it that you, if you were a little kid and your parents had that kind of dynamic and you were not well off you know my older brother Ralph used to call the show mommy and daddy yeah he's a mommy and daddy's on and somehow my father didn't really look like Jackie Gleason yeah had the same kind of you know slow burns right but that show really there was something about it that

had that honesty you know above it and the dreams of you know doing something more so those things affect you and i think affected a lot of i know comedians but also a lot of actors also a lot of actors and so there were things you know there are people that i love like edward g robinson you know i mean or james cagney or betty davis i'm just like but you were already like i mean those i used to watch them with my parents channel 11 channel 11 channel 5 so those movies i grew up with one of brother's movies then discovered you know brando and all and then the movies came of the 70s sure so you know like i just showed my son shampoo the other day how do you take how old is he son uh my youngest son diego is 18 he liked

it he liked it it's a pretty great movie it's a pretty great movie and i i was i i said that i i saw that movie with my dad he was so turned on to julie christie he was i think you know you could smoke in the movie theaters. But I remember I kept looking at him thinking like smoke was coming out of his ears and stuff, you know. So those were the inspirations. Well, those things. And then, you know, I started seeing theater and I thought, well, maybe I could do this. And then I went to college.

So where did you go to undergrad? I went to SUNY New Paltz. And that's where you started acting? Yeah. college so you went where'd you go to i went to suny new pulse and and that's where you started acting yeah and i had a lot of great great great teachers there because it was close to new york yeah and i had uh a couple teachers richard bell and this guy joe paparon and this woman who went to yale beverly brum from wisconsin yeah and she uh and they really kind of, let me see, civilized me or educated me because I was just so raw. But passionate.

You come from the craziness. I was shy. Yeah. But once you let me do it, only when I was comfortable. Right. Well, I mean, do you find that like growing up in the volatile house that you grew up in the volatile uh house that you

grew up in that you you were always second banana or third banana i was watching it all right i was studying it but could you speak up i mean sometimes i did yeah sometimes i spoke up for my mother right i mean against my father oh yeah he's got out of hand yeah so but was he boozy or it wasn't boozy but he could be temper he had his he had his rages oh yeah you know and men in that generation yeah it's a different world yeah it was a much more you know women were you felt the oppression of a household you know i mean especially in the culture that i was in yeah you know what i mean yeah it was you know i italian american i used to go my friends as we were jewish and they were like i said well your mother is the your mother you know you know she's the one who's the force in here yeah our house it was like dad's home yeah you know how many kids

were there there were three of us yeah you have an older brother i have an older brother ralph and yeah this is my younger brother i saw nick somewhere recently at the airport or something but we but you know everybody's everybody's house is not like normal we when we grew up in tv reflection of family except for the honeymoon is was all like my three sons right yeah so we all somehow got this thing of like well we want to be like american normal people and none of that existed you know what i mean i remember my father saying that to me i said why we want to be like american normal people and none of that existed you know what i mean i remember my father saying that to me i said why can't we be like those people on television was like well that's not real it's not real i said yeah but people don't go flying out

of windows and you know what i mean and all kinds of stuff because that's you know i remember like a funny story was telling someone that we moved yeah we lived in hollis queens yeah and it was basically mostly black neighborhood right my friends were all black how old were you uh but we moved i was around six yeah but those are those years are really formative years uh uh and uh so you know it was a very close we lived in garden apartments so everybody was outside we all played on the street it was you know everybody played with each other yeah you know the hula hoop chubby checker you know the crystals you know and then when we moved, we moved to Rosedale, and that was mostly an Italian-Irish, little Jewish neighborhood. And I was dark, and all the kids thought I was Puerto Rican.

And obviously, there weren't many Puerto Ricans in that neighborhood. That was kind of a term. If you were Puerto Rican, you got picked on by the Italians and the Irish. Because it was like the Irish were Italians and the Irish. Yeah. Because it was like the Irish were here and the Italians, and there was someone else to pick on. Keep moving down.

Yeah. And, you know, I was, a lot of the kids would invite me over and then kind of beat me up, gang up on me. And I don't know, I was around seven years old or something.

And my father was home watching Edward G. Robinson, who's one of our favorite actors in The Seawolf by Wolf Larson, where he plays the terrible captain who's a sadistic guy. He throws Barry Fitzgerald to the sharks. John Garfield is in it, Ivo Lupino. And anyway, I came in and I was seven years old. I was in tears. These kids had thrown water balloons at me and were hitting me

and saying my mother was all kinds of things and i didn't know exactly how to respond to them and my father came in and my father told me to be be quiet he said he was watching the movie and i said dad can i talk to you and and he said you know i'm watching edward g robinson and he was fighting the entire crew right anyway i told my father i said listen these guys beating me up both of them and and he said well how many are there so well there's two of them and they're older than me they're beating me up and and they invited me over and and then he said you know look look at it which you're up you know he fights the entire crew with it whatever he has yeah I see bites and pulls hair kicks right anything so he said he said well

he said if there's more than one guy then then even it out get a stick and uh and i did you got a stick i did and i had a pretty brutal fight with both of them they were pretty tough kids yeah uh one kid i bit really badly on what where'd you put on his arm yeah he had to get butterflies i remember no kidding they stitched him up i really another kid i smacked him with this stick really head and i just i i just pounded both i mean i i don't know because i was so emotional because they were they were like torturing yeah and uh you know, of course, the parents came. My mother had to go out. My father was still watching the movie.

It didn't bother him. It didn't bother him at all. But it was so strange moving to this neighborhood where I was supposed to be with people who were supposed to be like me. And they're the ones who picked me out. But they didn't fuck with you again? No. After that, they knew like, but, you know, leave me alone.

But was that out of character for you on some level? I wasn't that kind of kid. I was like, I wasn't a kid. So did it hurt your heart? Yeah, yeah. And I've been in some fights, you know, over the years when I was a kid and it always took a lot out of me emotionally.

Were you able to make an amends? Not to them, I wasn't. No. Because I saw how brutal they were. So they had it coming. They were just brutal. They were bad kids. They would try to rip your hair out of your head.

Yeah. So I was like, all right, well, no. Then if you're going to, it's not, you're not giving me a fair chance. Right. But not only that, I was trying to make friends. Yeah. And they were like, just trying to. Yeah.

You know, kids are very. Brutal. Harsh. They're really cruel. Yeah. They know how to, you know. I was saying to someone the other day when I was a substitute teacher at two different schools, Rice High School and then this school, Our Lady Queen of Martyr. I was fifth and sixth graders.

And there was a girl who was a great student. Her name was Maria. And there was a boy who had problems. I won't say his name. But he liked Maria. But this girl was, she was in fifth grade. She was really ironic. She was a great student and so graceful.

And the last day of school, he liked her. And he was emotional because I was kind of, had gotten to like me. And he reached out to her and he grabbed her pigtails. Like he yanked her on the ground. Like pulling her hair

as if to say like, you know, I like you, but like a caveman. And she was in pain and I went and I had to break them up and she never let out a sound. She just looked at him like, you know, like she felt empathy for him. Yeah. And I couldn't believe that she was, she had like tears in her eyes and stuff and she didn't like discharge on him at all. It was such a informative moment to see

some kid who had problems and this girl who was so graceful and didn't make him even feel worse even though he hurt her, you know. And I just thought wow, that's something I have to remember you know, because i just thought wow that's something i have to remember you know and because sometimes you do these scenes and you go like it was such a psychological gesture and her response was so exceptional because she was empathetic she just i'll never forget how she looked at him i'll never forget it i was i i thought highly of her but after that i was like

wow this person is really special so that's like let's uh that's it's got me upset or in a good way yeah uh but i mean you had this like you had it seems like a very full life to enter the the acting world in and in yeah and at uh and when you went when you were at new policy you did some stuff in high school i did so i did stuff that uh some plays in high school did like pippin and stuff like that in high school. And you loved it? Yeah, I really liked it. But the first play I did in New Paltz was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

And I had little experience with being around people who were suffering from mental problems. My own family, down the block. Yeah. Who in your family? My older brotheralph uh he's still around yeah he's i'm his guardian and uh we're we're close and yeah uh and he's very talented guy and uh but he's had i guess diagnosed he's been diagnosed with everything basically right schizophrenia obsessive compulsive and he's been in and out of institutions and you know the mental health system is hard for anyone even someone like myself who has some money to navigate you'll try to help him and after my parents died it was quite

quite hard but I you know I had to go to court and everything to be as becomes a guardian and a lot of times the state becomes the guardian because the siblings just can't you know you get worn out yeah it's not like these movies when there's someone overcomes it right of this is a lifelong endless baseball season yeah that never ends and right I never spoke about this until i did this speech katherine burns at the moth yeah uh and uh i'm very happy i have and i've been involved with this community access which has helped my brother a lot uh uh they they they supply housing and programs and it's a great organization and we're trying to raise money to build more buildings now and we're doing that uh so it feels good how often do you see him pretty often when i'm in town yeah pretty

often i take him out you know and we walk around and and he's literally showers and stuff like that uh but uh he's uh you know i've i've come a long way yeah he's He's in a more peaceful part of his life. Yeah. Which I'm very, very happy about. Oh, really? I've been through, you know, the police.

Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah, I've been, oh yeah, the whole, the whole. Oh my God. I mean,

people don't realize the families, you know, who, you have a family member, what you go through as a family member, it scars you.

And this is your whole life? Since I'm 12 years old. Different phases of it? All different phases of it, yeah. Oh, it's so hard. It's such a hard, and that's why people run for the hills. And so maybe it made me more empathetic

or whatever, you know. Must have been, like to see that much raw emotion and that type of, of human behavior. It's got to be, uh, somewhat,

uh, like a powerful study of something. I mean, I think we learned the dynamics, whether you're an actor or comedian writer, you know, within your, between your parents and your siblings.

And my parents, I saw that they were, you know, my father was like a very expressive, unconscious, like childlike man in some ways. But he could be scary. And my mother was very quick. But you seem to have it pretty well integrated. I mean, you're not saying he was abusive

or anything like that. He had his moments, he had his moments, but he wasn't consistent. abusive or anything like that. Well, he had his moments. He had his moments. But he wasn't consistent. I was forgiving of that. I mean, you know, you have to kind of make a list or do a mathematical equation. How much of it is it? Right.

You know, is it 50-50? Is it 75? You know, he was in World War II. Suffered post, you know, suffered from his nerves. Yeah. Post-traumatic stress. He was in D war ii he suffered post you know suffered from his nerves yeah post traumatic stress he was in d-day all that stuff but you know i in my parents and their interplay yeah i saw the you know it was like going to a sandy meisner repeat exercise class you know they they didn't let anything pass you know they were like you know and my mother knew how to try to diffuse things and you know she was just very uh you know she was a period she had a hard life but she had a really optimistic spirit and i think that that really affected me full balance yeah because i really felt like she

was so talented of a person and i feel like i wish i was as talented as she was but i whatever i opportunity i have i really feel like my mother could have done so many things, but because she didn't get certain opportunities or whatever, and I, we had a very close friendship. Very close friendship. That's nice. And I was really, it took me, when she passed away, it was a huge, I had to really kind of recalibrate my. How old were you?

I was 2000, I don't know, maybe I was late 40s. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, but, I mean, but we were just, you know, we had a, you know, she went through a lot of things. Yeah. But, you know, she was a really fun person. Like a person who, I'm glad I was able to get to share.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you are. And she got to see some of your success? Yeah, yeah. And she was, you know, she was,

and she would be honest with me too sometimes. Right. Like, oh, you had no chemistry. Like, that was a fake kiss. I saw that when you kissed. And if I had chemistry with someone, she would say, oh, you know,

don't let your wife see that. You know what I mean? She knew right away. I was like, how do you know these things? She goes, I know you. You know, she was like, yeah. Yeah. One time I said, I mean, I used it in a movie

that I did romance and cigarettes. Like, I was like, well, you know, it's hard to be married and you look around, you know, and it's like, you know, you go through these, like, ups and downs. And my mother was in the car with me. She goes all right so you so you're gonna go you want to go do something else she goes yeah well what do you think you're gonna find there it's not like a you know machine where you put in like you get m&ms and chips he said it's the peanuts are gonna come out it's the

same peanut bag that comes out i said I can't believe you said that. I said, so, you know, I said, yeah, but there's different color hair. She was like,

it's the same thing. Yeah. You're not going to find anything new. What do you think you're going to find? Something new? You know? And she was just like, she spoke from experience.

She saved your marriage. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, you know, so, that's a good lesson to learn yeah i was like wow so in the in the training like with a in undergrad well i mean like what you had good teachers i had

great teachers i had beverly brum joe pepperone i had richard bell and uh beverly brum was was very helpful she went to yale and uh you know, I was really, really close with her. And, you know, it's funny. People, when they talk about all these different, I was thinking about it because Paul's was so relaxed. I mean, people used to go skinny dipping. And then, you know, you'd meet people and you'd be naked. You know, so, you know.

But Beverly was from the Midwest. She was gay. Yeah. And she, and here I was this kind of big, you know, muscular kind of Italian guy. And she really educated me

and I would do anything for her. She just, and you know, she gave me parts that were hard for me and helped me in my writing., helped me what to read. What was the biggest challenge? I loved her so much. And she always came to all my plays up until she passed.

What was the biggest challenge for you initially? I think being confident, not feeling that I was sophisticated, not being well-read enough right I just felt I was like sensitive yeah and I could feel when I was not up to snuff or being you know well I would get nervous yeah stuff and not want to embarrass myself right and then but once I got in there then I didn't feel the same I've always been better with one-on-one with teachers, not in a classroom. Yeah. Unless they gave me a text or something.

And then I studied after college with a man, Robert Modica, who worked with Sandy Meisner. And he made a huge impression on me. So when I went back to Yale, I was pretty well trained. I was better trained than most of the people in that class, I would say. And you did a lot of theater here with the West Beth and everything else. Yeah, I did a lot of theater. But I had good training. So then I could take, you know, vocal things and the movement things there.

And I got to work a lot at Yale with a lot of very talented people. And who was in your class again? I said Charles Dutton, Angela Bassett, Sabrina Leboeuf. And that's where you met Francis too? Francis was a year ahead of me. And I met Joel and Joel would see me in plays. Had they made movies yet? Well, when she did Blood Simple, I went to see that.

And that's how I met Joel and Ethan. And then i had done this play at the eugene o'neill center right after yale that lloyd richards who was the dean of the drama school was the head of that and i met john patrick shanley and i did danny in a deep blue sea and did a bunch of things with john including five corners which a lot of people saw me and this kind of explosive king kong kind of character and yeah uh and uh that's what spike saw me you know he was like man i saw you throw your mother out the window you know like i said listen shanley wrote that i said i just did it so uh but joel

and ethan knew my work through that and also through theater and but spike and those guys they i mean you've you're you're their guy in a lot of movies. Well, I've been on, you know, I consider them a lot of Spike movies. I've worked with Joel and Ethan four times, but in the theater with Ethan, and they executive produced Romance and Cigarettes. Oh, okay.

With James Gandolfini and Kate Winslet. Oh, God, it's so sad that he's gone. I know. I was saying to someone the other day, Steve Zalig, and I said, you know, James is one of those people that I still can't get my head around. Yeah. That he's not here.

Yeah. He just had this, I don't know. Did you know him a long time? I knew him, because I knew him through Aida. She's your cousin, right? My cousin, and they did Streetcar Named Desire when Alec Baldwin was Stanley, and then, you know from the sopranos and stuff

i gotta be honest like uh barton fink is one of my favorite movies ever i think it's one of the best movies ever well it's a good movie i can say that now you can say that now i mean it took me a while to you know understand like what everyone really liked about it really yeah i mean i i love doing it i love i mean i i love doing it i love i mean i love where i've i've never not had a good experience working but there's a guy who loved those movies yeah when you were a kid i mean there must have been some connection i mean yeah i mean oh yeah that was i mean i love the script and everything yeah you know when you you're not used to seeing yourself in those things right it's uh but i i remember lines like from the other characters

right like you know ben geisler you know you fucked him fink he had a heart as big as all of the out he had a heart as big as the all outdoors and you fucked him fink you know why did it take you a long time because you're just weird seeing yourself in in these things or whatever. I recently saw some of it. I was like, well, this is really. I mean, I knew it was brilliantly made and designed. What's it like working with them in terms of like, what's the relationship like?

What are they? We have a great relationship. We have always had a good relationship. Because a lot of these characters, they're all different. And, you know, and I mean. They wrote Barton Fink for me and they wrote Miller's Crossing for me. Okay and they wrote well that scene where you're about to where you get killed in miller's crossing right in the woods right so they wrote those things with me but i you know when they do that then i try to do a lot more work and surprise them a little bit because you know they're doing something for you and uh they're just great guys they're very very meticulous, right? Really meticulous.

Yeah. I remember when I did Miller's Crossing, I showed him a picture of Leopold and Loeb. I think it was Loeb, and I said, that's how I want to look, just like that guy. And they were like,

all right. You want to? What about the character in Oh Brother? That guy was volatile. Yeah, that was just based on Curly. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where i pulled that i mean i worked on the accents i don't know where i but they you know they give you a lot they say well could you shave your head what about your teeth can we get really bad teeth made yeah once i put the teeth in my mouth i had

the accent and then i realized like i'm just gonna be you know he's like a guy who's always suspicious he's the suspicious guy Tim was the innocent guy George is the the brains of the operation so to speak you know so it was like

a three headed monster and uh but uh you were thinking you were thinking about the Stooges yeah it was you know

it was like this way back you know like I would do these like outrageous things just to make Ethan like you know yeah because they like that kind of stuff, too.

Yeah, they like broad. Not broad, but like big characters. Yeah, but you got to kind of get, that's a little more stylized, but still you got to get into the spirit of each individual thing. It's different. Each one of their movies is a little different. And Lebowski was crazy. That's a crazy character.

You know. I mean, it's beautiful. But that's the character I kind kind of had they saw me do something like that on stage oh they did yeah and uh they they were fascinated by that so i thought it was going to be a much bigger character originally when you know and then when i did it i was like well i better make something out of it so uh but listen that's i i don't know i didn't get that movie when it first came out but i have to say like the wabowski it took me a while to really understand the humor yeah i'm still trying to get it yeah because people love it it's like got a cult following because i keep watching it and i keep going like how come i can't i think it's like you want it you have to want to be a child like kids like it because if you never want to grow up right you want to stay in

your pajamas right jeff is the the guy like he's like you know it's a whole it's a whole generation he represents he represents the underachiever right you know the classic underachiever right they when they wrote it they said well it's like a cheech and chong film they were telling me you know and i was like but je, I think is just great in it and he's just like, I always, you know, got him,

but now I get the movie a lot. And what about like, the, like, what's the relationship with Spike? How's that different? My relationship is very, very good with Spike.

How's he work? We grew up very, not that dissimilar. He grew up in Italian neighborhood, I grew up in black neighborhood, you know. I got bussed out to an all-black school you know he was so by the time we met it was weird it was almost as if we were like you know i i i have my own relationship with him and i've played the racist guy the anti-racist guy the cop you know I've been accused of all kinds of things but we didn't know better

so I've I've seen you know the the white establishment response to Spike from the beginning and

I know him as a friend yeah and I know what kind of person he is yeah he knew knew my mom he knew my brother and

and so you know he had a big he's feisty but he had a big knapsack on his back yeah and i don't think a lot of people knew that that what the kind of he was trying to say i can make a black film and people will go see it yeah and it was at that time you know it was after the black police station yeah films and you know he he opened up a big door and he opened up a lot of opportunities for a lot of people but uh he's someone i i'm i consider a close friend

yeah you know and i'm gonna maybe do another movie hopefully and he would be like the executive producer on it because i want to i've been working on a movie about basically something I want to make, but it's about like ignorance. Uh-huh. Yeah. And openness. Uh-huh. Like both, you know. Because I think sometimes you see these movies

and it's like too clear between the good and the bad. Right. There's not this gray area. Yeah. The complexity of a guy. Well, how can a guy in the same family vote for this person or be a complete anti-whatever he is? And the other person is not that way at all.

And you come from the same parents. And I think therein lies the debate. Not this hardening. Divided. Right, right. There's nothing that's going to happen that way. Only it's going to be people screaming at you want is it a family thing you got it's but it's if you get you have to do

it through yeah yeah through a family right the all the most horrible deed arthur miller because he you know loved the greeks the tragic deed yeah the most ridiculous deed is done within the family right always yeah that is you know that's that's the that's the world that's your world right view yeah when you come out of it and so it's something i you know hopefully i'll get a chance to make are you writing it yeah it's all done it's all done and i hope to do it. Oh, that's exciting. But I think this blindness that we see right now, I think a lot of what's going on in the world has to do with our culture. I really do.

With America. Yeah, I think it has to do with our culture. Oh, yeah, that's what that book's about. Fantasyland. It's our culture. Yeah, and now it's so weird because when you deal with the political climate we live in, in this particular president, there's something, you know, sadly, painfully honest about that guy being the president. Yeah.

Yeah. It's shockingly, I mean. He represents all the worst of us. Yeah. I mean, he, listen, he, reality television helped him hone his persona, which he always had. Did you know him? No, my father worked for his father. Oh, really?

Yeah. And, uh, you know, I didn't know him that well. Doing construction? Yeah. Cause my father was a builder. Yeah. My brother worked for Trump as a doorman. Which one, Nick? Nick, as a St. Moritz.

Yeah. So he has his own, you know. But, you know, his father basically enabled him. Yeah. You know, he's enabled him. But I think when being on TV all those years, people's idea of him, in new york city yeah because i don't think he could even win borough president right i don't know maybe he could win

in stanley but he wouldn't win it in queens yeah and he wouldn't win it in brooklyn he wouldn't win it in the bronx and he wouldn't win it in manhattan yeah you know so that says a lot and he's from this is his hometown uh but people bought it yeah for 12 years don't forget it was over 10 years he was the mastermind yeah so that just goes to show you now of course the guy who created that show is not from our country he was english yeah the guy who created that show so maybe the revolutionary war is still i don't know but i was thinking like wow not an american didn't do that but i yeah murdoch's not american either i know that i know that and i i don't think i think there's something in that also sure i do you see because we i watched a lot

of those republican debates with my son because we thought they were entertaining yeah but uh he he's you know he's a real he's a bully he's always been a bully yeah and that's what he is he's a bully yeah that's why some people like you know i look at him i say like wow i just i can only think of like mud wrestling as an answer to everything like you know but like samurai wrestling it's like that but that's what happens when someone's been enabled sure to a certain point but what what fear what i fear about is like everything is anti like it's anti-knowledge yeah anti-nuance yeah it's anti-science anti-rationality, reason. The book I just made, The Name of the Rose, that's what the book is about. It's about the guy's a man of faith, but a man of science.

The guy's a philosopher, but he's a man of action. The guy understands the value of women, even though he's with all these men, all these monks who fear and demonize women. And he understands more than anything that the only power against absolutism, this is in 1327, and Umberto Eco is a pretty smart guy, is knowledge. That's the only thing you have.

So if you burn those books, or if you suppress those books, and really it was the Arabs who saved all this Greek literature. They translated it into Arabic and then was re-translated back into Latin. That's the only thing you have against, they call it the Antichrist, but against any form of absolute power. And now they don't have to burn the books. You just offer a lot of alternative information that seems to make sense.

That seems to make sense that seems to make sense so i think that is the big issue that if you're against you know the power of knowledge i mean why do people when you go to a doctor you want the doctor have to have gone to medical school yeah so why would i ever listen to a politician when it comes to, you know, the atmosphere? Yeah. No, I'm going to listen to a scientist. Sure. You know what I mean? So, I mean, they're the biggest actors imaginable.

I mean, when I look at politicians, I go, wow. Have you ever played one? Well, I'm playing kind of a politician now in this. In the plot against America? Yeah. He's the rabbi who's the, you he's the he collaborates with uh with uh lindbergh so he's like a politician right but like a lot of people they believed in america should be isolationist but when i watch politicians you know i think about what is the believability

yeah like i can tell you anything i could do all these things yeah but could i can i do any of those things right i mean and you see how hard it is even with the brightest people when they reach out and other people say well no we just we're not doing anything i mean look what happened with obama it's like as soon as he reached out they were like no you're not getting anything it's just it's it's sort of amazing to see how desperately people want to believe and how easily they do believe if it matches up with their particular emotions well and they just allow themselves they allow themselves to just be tenderized i think yeah you're tender and then you're going to be put right on the flame yeah yeah you're going to be put you're going to be cooked and you're going to and he's going to be cooked. And he's going to eat you. I just hope that it doesn't turn out that people start attacking each other,

people who are almost on the same side. I fear for that to say you got to get united for the overall, the best possible outcome and good yeah and that's like a like a like when you do like this sounds like these are like even that the the night of was a fairly provocative well i try to do stories when i can that have that has humanity and has complexity because all these issues are complex there's no you know black and white good and evil no it's it's so simplistic and i think once again our culture loves to you know they always say well the character has to change you know nobody changes nobody changes they can grow they can enlarge right but your basic nature is is kind of set

yeah you can make different choices that's right you know and i i feel like sometimes pop culture could help that in a way by just getting people to reflect a little bit here and i mean you can do your little thing you know yeah i mean i don't like when people tell me who to vote for and stuff i i i try to study you know read about people and say who actually could get something done right you know yeah maybe they will maybe they won't maybe they will so it's uh what's it like being a father of like kids well i have two you know two boys one's 28 and one's 18 and uh yeah i you know like to leave the world a better place. Now they turn it out. They're all right.

One of my, my older boy works for DC Comics and my younger son is going to go to, to college next year. Oh yeah. What's he interested in? He's really good in math. He's really good in history.

He doesn't know yet. You know, my other son's the artist and so he doesn't know, but he's a, he's a smart guy. When you do all these characters i mean does it like obviously they're coming from you but you're such a thoughtful guy

that i mean how how how much of an impact has you know getting into the heads of these characters like evolved you well you make a list sometimes what you have in common what you don't have in common you know and was that something you do to prepare? Sometimes I do that. Yeah, sometimes I do. I say, well, this is what I need to work on. Oh, interesting, yeah. These things I understand, this I don't. And once in a while, you just connect with everybody.

Like if you're the director, like on the night of, with Richard Price and Steve Zalian, we had no question about the sensibility of it, the world of it. And I interviewed so many lawyers and some really successful lawyers. Just as research? Research.

One guy, Kenny Montgomery, he looks like a dearest Elba. He's a star defense attorney. He was a prosecutor. He helped delineate what he goes through in a trial for me. And I saw him interview people. So little by little, you Frankenstein it. And then sometimes something occurs and you're like, wow.

The great thing about that character, he's like an everyman because he's a guy with all the potential in the world, but he doesn't have the stomach to be successful. And that's a lot of very talented people. They don't have the stomach to be successful. And that's a lot of very talented people. They don't have the stomach. In that sense, they don't have the stomach. Some people just can't maybe hold someone's life in their hands

or they can't take the punishment of rejection. Right, it's a sensitivity. Yeah, and I mean, in my business, you have to be really sensitive when you work and at the same time you you have to have a thick skin yeah people are going to say you know no i don't like you i don't like this i don't like and they're like and it's it is kind of personal you know it is you you know you're like well they said i'm you know i mean i've had critics write about my face over the years i mean not lately but when i but when I was younger, I was like, God, really?

And I was like, I have a lot of girlfriends. I said, you know, girls like me, but these guys are writing about me. Like, then I realized that's like, you know, that's their frigging problem. It is their problem. It's their problem, not my problem. Have you ever had problems with directors? I mean, listen, there are a lot of directors I would work with anytime. And I only got to work with maybe once. But yeah, sure, I've had problems with directors? I mean, listen, there are a lot of directors I would work with any time, and I only got to work with maybe once.

But yeah, sure, I've had problems with, you know. Now I know how to, you know. I mean, I worked with Michael Cimino and Billy Friedkin when I was a young actor, so I was... I've been to Billy Friedkin. I know him. He's something. He's pretty wild.

So those movies were a different kind of, you know. Yeah. It was a lot of cocaine-driven general type of idea. You know, I have an army, and I was shocked doing those movies. I was like, wow. That was To Live and Die in L.A.? To Live and Die in L.A. was the Sicilian. Oh, the Sicilian.

I much rather work with people who are passionate but who are gentle. How's Redford? Loved working with him. Loved working with him. Loved working with him. We were in love with each other. I loved working with him. I mean, he was great. I was on that movie, I was the only actor for a long time.

Yeah. And so I spent a lot of time with him. Yeah. So now I never got to work with him again, but we got along really well and you do like and you do like smaller movies too like with people i saw that movie landline i thought it was great yeah i like that movie i mean you want to give different people i work with young filmmakers you know and you never know you know do you like directing i do when i'm with

if i have enough time yeah and when i great, you know, but some of the movies I've made, they're very much, they're very dear to me. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I'm, you know,

I'm proud of the films I made. Well, I hope you get to make this new one. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for talking to me. Okay.

Thanks for having me. So that worked out okay. That was me and John Turturro. The Name of the Rose is currently airing on Sundance, and you can watch episodes on their streaming service, Sundance Now, or at SundanceTV.com. I will play a little guitar for you. Oh, to answer a question for people asking,

the tone that I'm getting out of this thing is really just the amp. It's an old, I think it's a 57 or 58 Thunder Deluxe with one big 10-inch speaker in there. I'm using an Echoplex pedal and a Les Paul Deluxe, a gold top with P90s. So, you know, you crank that amp and it breaks up pretty nicely. There's no tone pedal involved here. Just the Echoplex. I'm talking like I'm a professional guitar player.

It's the only pedal. I don't really know how to use a lot of them. Anyways, enjoy this meditation. © transcript Emily Beynon guitar solo Boomer lives. host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company

markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Thank you.