WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1126 - Jeffrey Wright

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

Film and television production is on hold, but Jeffrey Wright is using the time to focus on his community. Jeffrey tells Marc how his attempt to help out a friend led him to a Brooklyn-wide effort to keep neighborhood restaurants afloat while feeding frontline workers. They also talk about ancestry, working in prison, Angels in America, Basquiat, Batman, Muddy Waters, and the great acting lesson Jeffrey learned from Christopher Walken. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace, Capterra, and HBO Max. 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.

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The world is kind of pressing, pressing on all of us, right? Like a fucking knee to the back of the neck. I mean, it's hard enough, right? It's hard enough dealing with what we're all dealing with pandemic-wise. And now this horrendous act of murderous violence which demands a response and a protest

and a reaction and justice. it's hard for me to fucking wrap my brain around all of it because i am consumed with my personal grief so i have to stay in the present man i have to stay so in the present because if i get any even 10 minutes ahead of where i'm at right now you know the darkness can envelop me so i've been doing what i can and i'm not trying to diminish anything that's going on in the world can't can you it seems correct to me there can be power there this reaction in the streets was coming a long time and that is the power of people up against what keeps looking more and more like a fascistic government evolving but like i said it's very hard for me

to sort of see past my selfish pain. And even as somebody who doesn't believe in God, I have been known to hit my knees occasionally, something I learned early on in my sobriety. Doesn't matter if you believe or not. Humble yourself before the universe. Surrender. Engage your humanity.

Ask for help. Ask for guidance. Ask for strength. Keep walking forward, keep breathing. Not beyond me to do that. I've done it. But God damn it feels like things are breaking down.

And that's why I have to be careful in some degree for myself in this state of grief. My perception is not clear. There's part of me that wants to just kind of veer off into the hopelessness. Veer off into the nihilism. Veer off into the depression, the darkness, the self-pity. and the darkness, the self-pity. But instead, I think about Lynn.

I think about people fighting back. I think about love. And I think about cake. Cake has been helpful. Somebody sent me some boxes from Katz's Deli in New York with some babka in there, chicken soup, matzo ball soup, and babka has been very helpful. Someone sent me biscottis. Great. Homemade jam.

I'll take it. Trying to stay out of the darkness, stay in the strength, stay in the cake. My heart goes out to people in the fight. It does. I'm sorry I'm not out there. I'm fighting for my own mind right now. On the show today, I talked to Jeffrey Wright. This is obviously a talk that happened before the shit went down with George Floyd and the protest.

But Jeffrey's been very active on Twitter. He's a fighter. We talk a lot about his relief organization, Brooklyn for Life, which was established to provide food for frontline workers during the pandemic. You can check that out at brooklynforlife.org. He's on Twitter now, fighting the good fight.

You might know Jeffrey from Westworld or the James Bond movies or on Broadway. He's currently in the movie All Day and a Night, which is now streaming on Netflix. I'm a huge fan of his. He's always good. He's always good. And Lin actually made me watch, because I i never heard of it this ride with the

devil movie it's an ang lee movie a civil war movie and it's a complicated movie and she loved it and she we watched it before i talked to jeffrey and i thought it was great. It's a tricky movie because it's really about the rebels, the bushwhackers, I think they were called. It's sort of a pro-Confederacy bunch. And Jeffrey plays a black man among a Confederate sympathizing group of guerrillas, really. Fighters, guerrrillas, really. Fighters. Guerrilla fighters, basically.

But Lynn loved the movie. It's an Ang Lee movie, and she made me watch it. And I thought it was great, and I thought he was great. So it was interesting to see that, because I talked to him a little bit about it. So this is me talking to Jeffrey Wright.

You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. This is me talking to Jeffrey Wright. See you at Pretty Tales. 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. 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.

this is the way we do it my fear is that uh is that people will get too comfortable with this i think that's valid yeah and and not want to do anything in person again right right you know it's like a friend of mine said man i've been practicing social distance for decades now. You know, this is cool with me, you know. Yeah, there is something comfortable about it. I mean, I, you know, I started my career as a comic just wandering around doing nothing. And I like doing nothing, to be honest with you. I always thought that I was working towards doing nothing. So this is sort of a dry run of doing nothing. Yeah, that was the original plan for me, too.

And it was cool. It was cool for about a week and a half. And, you know, I think it was a couple of things. Well, primarily the constant, like, grinding drone of those daily press briefings out of the White House. Well, those are terrible. Yeah, yeah. You know, that just drove me. I realized I had to do something else for the sake of my health.

Well, yeah, no. And I think that doing something, you know, active. I mean, I just meant in a sense that if there weren't a plague, I would be fine. Like, there's something very comforting about the fact outside of the plague that i'm not doing anything and i know for a fact no one else is fucking doing anything either so the race is over we can all relax day 100 then there's the plague then there's the plague and then and then there's also you know the, the economic pressures on communities and others. But you're absolutely right, man.

Terrible. I mean, it is an opportunity to, you know, for reset, like on a personal level, but also on a collective level. You know, the way I look at it. I hope so. This COVID is a fucked up dinner guest, but it makes some interesting points you know as we look around yeah for sure and and see the ways in which nature is shifting you know you've got dolphins in the bosphorus fate uh straits now you know instead of oil tankers you know it's like you know you see you you know you were looking at were looking at the lockdown in the Hubei province in China and all of a sudden the skies were clear, you know, and the CO2 emissions were like, OK.

Yeah. I mean, I really hope that I wonder how many people collectively will take to that. I mean, you know, until it seems that until the bulk of the people everywhere realize that their leaders are trying to kill them, that they, you know, won't be able to see this clearly. But it really is sort of astounding and beautiful that nature, how quickly it kind of bounces back. In Yosemite, the bears are back. And, you know, as soon as people leave, the animals are like, holy shit, this is fucking great. Yeah, the animals are like, oh, the virus is gone.

You know, their pandemic is, you know, they've come through the other side. They're done with their social distancing now. You know, they're locked down. And they're like, okay, all right, back to normal. You know, I mean. Exactly. Thank God. About time. It only, I mean. Exactly, thank God. About time.

It only took a couple hundred thousand years. Right, but we got rid of those motherfuckers, you know. But then the question, though, becomes, you know, will this be an opportunity for us to rethink on a number of different levels, you know, individually and collectively when we come out of this? I hope so. Or will, you know, will the machine take over, you know, individually and collectively when we come out of this? I hope so. Or will, you know, will the machine take over, you know, and like drive us back to the same,

you know, narrowly focused, narrowly interested policies and measures that, you know, in some ways got us here in the first place. You mean the death march? Well, yeah, yeah. I suppose so. I suppose so. You know, well, what is your I mean, how are you engaging with, you know, obviously, I'm trying to do good things, but I don't you know, I don't know. It's hard to know where to start. But, you know, you said you just got off a call with with Congressman Jeffrey. You know, how are you engaging with the apparatus there? Well, yeah, we just got off a call with Congressman Jeffrey. How are you engaging with the apparatus there?

Well, yeah, we just got off a really informative and also at times pretty emotional call with about 200 small business owners here in Brooklyn that the congressman put together. We had a conversation a couple of days ago. I'll tell you why that was, but it was a productive call in which a lot of these small business owners were expressing their frustration at not having access to the PPP funds

and the various resources that are allegedly being made available to um to uh you know businesses of that scale um and they're you know they're folk you know one woman in particular in the call i think she had a guard a garden center uh uh here in in brooklyn and you know she's saying hey you know my my uh my uh internet just got cut off. You know, I applied twice. I got rejected. You know, phones about to get, you know, people are in, you know, in dire straits and reaching out, obviously, to the congressman for for assistance. But the way it came about was that, you know, I is pretty simply, really, I was trying to help a friend over here who's a restaurant owner. My friend Michael Thompson, he owns a spot called the Brooklyn Moon here in Fort Greene

that has been in the neighborhood for 25 years, kind of a local institution. And we used to, when I first moved here, I first, well, I first moved here in 1989. Then I moved back to Manhattan when my son was born. I moved back here because it was a little leafier, a little less stressful than Manhattan. So I've been here for about 20 years now. And we used to play chess at Mike's place. There used to be a group of us who would play chess and drink whiskey. And so we've been friends for, you know, since then. So he's not a delivery-oriented business.

He's more of a social gathering space. So I said, Mike, you know, we're about to go on lockdown, bro, because I've been kind of tracking this thing, you know, for a while. And I said, you need to start thinking about how you're going to convert to delivery, you know, full delivery mode. And I'll help you, you know, boost awareness of that via social media. So he did. You know, we went on lockdown next day. I was like, how'd you do today? You know, he's like, yeah, man, I had five orders. You know, that ain't going to do it, you know, unless you're selling like, you know, meals at ten thousand dollars a plate and it's costing you like five hundred. That ain't going to work, you know. So someone notified me on Twitter that that ever so useful machine that it is cesspool, rotten, but sometimes useful thing. So someone notified me that another friend who owns a restaurant called Graziella's here, a guy named Vito Rondazzo, was asking people to call in, customers to call in

and order pizzas on behalf of Brooklyn Hospital over here, which I can see, you know, out my window through the trees. And so I reached out to Vito and asked him what was up and, you know, asked him if he would connect me to the hospital because I had assumed that the hospital didn't need food because they had a cafeteria. But he connected me with a guy over there, senior vice president for external affairs, a guy named Lenny Singletary. He's just been amazing. And the three of us met the next day. And he said, listen, we got people working 15, 16 hour days. Many of them are not going home, staying in hotels nearby. Restaurants are closed. So if you if you can augment our cafeteria with 200 meals per day, it would be most welcome. So that's how it started, really. It was like, OK, how do I help my dudes? You know, and, you know, so I'll boost it on social media. I'll put a GoFundMe page together. You know, maybe we can raise some money for these two restaurants to provide a couple of hundred meals to one hospital.

Okay. So then, like, well, we got some other friends in the neighborhood. You know, there's other food I like. You know, that fried chicken, that peaches. You know, I want to make sure that that's there when this thing is over. You know, that hot Nashville chicken, Brooklyn style. I want to make sure that that's there when this thing is over, that hot Nashville chicken, Brooklyn style. I want that. So let me reach out to them. You guys need any help? They reached out to other friends and it just kind of blossomed from there. Brooklyn Borough

President Eric Adams reached out when he caught wind of what we were doing and said, hey, this is great. We'll help you take it borough wide like oh okay all right so now you know we're up to uh we're up to a circle of about uh of over 40 restaurants we are providing 2,500 meals per day on average to um wow all 11 FDNY EMS stations in Brooklyn. And as of yesterday, I think now 11 medical facilities here in Brooklyn. One actually of those actually is in lower Manhattan. And, you know, we passed the 75,000 meal mark just yesterday. And that's all since March 27. It's so amazing that, you know, because food is so important. It's so connected.

You know, it connects people. It makes you feel better. And people who prepare beautiful food of any kind, you know, put so much heart into it. And there's that human connection and just basic sustenance. It's a beautiful thing, really. Yeah, it's, you know, basic sustenance. And, you know, you can't make a good dish without a little love in it, you know, no matter how many you make. And, uh, and so how is it all funded? It's all funded through donation. Yeah. So we set up the GoFundMe page, I think March 25th. And, you know, so, um, we've raised about 275,000 on that, which has been incredible. It has been largely donations of less than $100.

I'm sounding like Bernie now. But it's been folks throwing in $5, $10, $50, $100, a couple of bigger ones. Then we set up a 501c3 not-for-profit. Red got that up and going on the fly. And so we've had direct donations now to that, some larger donations. So Daniel Craig, for example, was one of the first folks that I reached out to that said, Daniel, hey, we're doing this thing. You know, we've got some good traction here.

Will you help us out? So he's thrown in a good chunk. You know, Spike Lee, who grew up in this neighborhood and whose headquarters for 40 Acres and a Mule is in Fort Greene. He threw in some money. Jay-Z gave us a little money, a good, you know, good, good amount of money. And and some other folks, you know, I'm doing, you know, throwing in a nickel or two here. So we've got, we've raised about $450,000 in total, evenly split between those big donors and the smaller donors. So it's pretty cool, pretty democratic in that regard. Yeah, that's what it is. But, you know, it's really just been a grassroots thing, man. And it's like these restaurant owners taking, you know, just jazzed to be vital at this time, even more so than usual.

Obviously, you know, they're supporting the front line and at the same time they're supporting themselves. But they really feel that they're on a mission, you know. And it's kind of cool because it's a bit in some ways a kind of circular altruism uh you know uh circularly altruistic kind of model because you know we the community that are supporting them with our donations are as well looking after our own interests too because we want those hospital workers to be uh as empowered as they possibly can on our behalf, you know, and we want our economy to, uh, to be as stable as it, you know, can be given the circumstances. So whatever we can do to support them supports us too. So, you know, it's been pretty, it's been pretty cool the way that things played out.

And also like, you know, here I am talking about doing nothing and having a reset or whatever, but you're, you know, you're in it and you're a community, uh, activist and you're, you know, you're in it and you're a community activist and you're, you know, you're, you're facilitating an amazing thing. You're busy. You're, you're adapting and, and, and putting yourself out there and helping out. Yeah. I'm busier than I had planned. Yeah. It's, you know, but it's been, it's, it's definitely, you know, definitely true, but it's been, it's been cool. The organization, by the way, is called Brooklyn for Life. So if you're interested, you can go check us out at brooklynforlife.org or you can go to our GoFundMe page, you know, GoFundMe Brooklyn for Life.

But if you go to brooklynforlife.org, you can see the GoFundMe page there. Also, there's a video that we put together. It's kind of a celebration of brooklyn and kind of a you know rallying cry at the same time so you can check that out too you know everybody from everybody from james bond to big daddy cane came through but also representatives of the restaurants and the ems stations and doctors and nurses made sure that their voices were uh were uh were as prominent as as ours so that you can check that it's pretty cool.

Yeah, but yeah, man. So I've been busy, but it's been good because I've kept the television off because I was about to throw wine bottles at that fucking thing if I kept it on too much longer. So it's been healthy for me.

Yeah, I can't. Yeah, I didn't watch any of them. Yeah. I did not watch one of those briefings because after a certain point you know what's up and it's then you have to ask yourself why am i doing this to myself every day yeah we do it is is this hate buzz helping anything yeah is this anger buzz helping anything exactly and you know so what i what i've what i've hopefully been able to do is channel that

rage yeah it is rage you know through this thing yeah in a constructive creative way because you know at the end of the day it's like hey it's very clear early on and particularly after this call to you know uh that i just got off with off with these 200 business owners, you know, OK, the government is supposed to, you know, have our best interests. We understand what government is ideally for. But in this case, with this leadership, you know, you can't rely on on that necessarily. And damn it, we'd take it up and do it on it, do it, you know, do it ourselves and get it done. Because, you know, this thing is is just a, you know, a clown show, you know, doused in kerosene. You know, it's, you know, the the the the one that I watched that was useful to me was I think it was March 13th.

to me was I think it was March 13th the Rose Garden thing the I guess was the first the Rose Garden press conferences when all there was that parade of CEOs from Walgreen Walmart CBS and all these people who were like you know like ushered out as somehow health care saviors know, the guy from Walmart. Okay, cool. You know, so I was in London, right? We were filming Batman over there. And I had been coming back and forth. We started filming January 5th. I'd made about four trips back and I was kind of worn out of coming back and forth to check in on my kids and my aunt. My 90-year lives with with me here now anyway i uh saw that press conference i think it was march 13th after work got off work came home watched that thing and i was like what the what i and i immediately when it was over booked my own flight home from london i was like, we got to get out of here.

And I started sending notes to producers. I'm like, bro, we have to get out of here because either we're going to get stuck over here. You know, the UK wasn't included in the travel restrictions at that time, but the rest of Europe was, which made no sense whatsoever. So it's whatsoever completely arbitrary. So I was like, man, we got to get out of here. We're either going to get stuck, we're going to get forced into quarantine or something like that, but we need to go

now and get back because, you know, it's, you know, the lunatics have taken over the asylum and it's not going to be pretty. So anyway, that was useful to me and you got back yeah the two days later you got it you got ahead of the curve so i i noticed that

like you know you're switching uh topics like i noticed that both of us did that uh finding your root show like i was just on it as well yeah and uh in my experience was i didn't know what to expect really and you know i didn't know you know like uh you know you think you know about your family or at least you know as as a you know basic uh you know jew i kind of know where the jews come from but okay right you know it's like it's gonna to be Russia or Poland or Germany. Where are we at? But, you know, the nuance of it, weren't you sort of amazed at the research that those guys could do? Yeah, it was pretty incredible.

It was pretty incredible. What did you learn, man? Well, I learned a lot. I learned a tremendous amount. It was an incredible gift. But there were a couple of specific things that were, that I found, that I found interesting, obviously for me personally. One was, so he centered on my grandfather to some extent. And my grandfather was, he was an incredible dude, man. He was a waterman, as were, I found out, you know, generations of my family down in Virginia

were watermen, oystermen, crabbers on the Chesapeake, the lower Chesapeake Bay. Right. He was that. He was also a farmer and he was a he was a liquor guy. So, you know, back when I was in the 70s, you could you know, there were no bars in this very rural section of York County, Virginia. and you had to get liquor from the ABC store, the state-run store. I used to go on runs with my grandfather. And along this road, it was essentially one road community, essentially. There were houses that you could stop at on the way to your house for a shot, for a 50-cent shot. So my grandfather's house was one of those houses you know there was morris combs up on the corner next one was my uncle ivy he always had a little bit

of something and then you know uh my grandfather and so people would come out of the water you know off the water or out of their fields or from the shipyard or wherever they were working they would gather and it was just a incredible scene know, just like story and drink and madness, but in the best way. So I learned that my grandfather, prior to my being born, had been a moonshiner, which I knew, right? He had a still back up in the woods, you know. And he put his daughters through college and his sons

you know one of his sons vocational school and you know he was you know he was doing okay but but what they what i learned was that was how he learned to make whiskey and this was and this actually relates to today in some ways. I knew that my grandfather had stopped going to school when he was 14 to work. He was born in 1904. Stopped going to school at 14. What year is that?

1918. World War I. Well, yes, and the flu pandemic. Oh, the flu epidemic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So his father, I i found out died of influenza his mother um my great-grandmother took up whiskey making to augment her income and he learned to make whiskey from his mom after her after her. And I was like, whoa. Wow.

Yeah, you know. Wow. Yeah, I thought that was, I had never known that. I just knew he was skilled at it, but now I know why, you know. Yeah, I found out that some of my great-great-grandparent Jews actually worked in oil fields in Belarus in the Ukraine at one of the first major Soviet oil rigs so there were Jewish wildcatters in my past that's the way I'm gonna frame it there you go so you come you grew up in Virginia I grew up in Washington DC

but I spent a lot of time down in York County, Virginia. My mom would, you know, the school would end. She'd drive me down there and then she'd turn around and go back to D.C. and I would stay there for, you know, the entire summers. That was like, you know, that was my routine. And it was, you know, it was amazing down there. It was like heaven for a kid, you know. It was just like woods and creeks it's all now been you know overrun with uh you know developments and you know the cookie cutter things and the you know the oh yeah it's yeah it's really kind of fascinating because all of those fields that i remember being corn fields and the like are now um these you know subdivisions and so the food that was

being provided there is no longer there those subdivisions are now you know they're buying their food the people from those places are buying their food at the the the you know the apple bees and the whatever else and all these other places you know it's kind of like cancer on multiple levels you know like you you fly over and you see how you know this the these subdivisions have taken over this beautiful part of the uh you know part of the world and uh they look kind of cancerous to me on the rivers and then you know just the ways in which all that organic produce and stuff that was being consumed down there, all that stuff is gone in exchange for the big kind of chains and all that stuff. Agribusiness. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, it's definitely – yeah, now it takes a bunch of hipsters and sort of post-hippie young people to kind of get back to the organic nature of things. And then it's sort of a boutique sort of business where theoretically, if everything was won properly, we'd all be living like that. But that is not the corporate way. And we were. We were living like that, you know? And it wasn't a thing. But you asked me about the research down there that they did, that Skip H. people did. I'll tell you a quick thing that I'd like to kind of explore more. So he told me about a... My grandfather's surname was Whiting. And he told me about this, I think my great-great-grandfather, whose name was Beverly Whiting. And he told me about this. I think my great, great grandfather, whose name was Beverly Whiting, who had been a free a free man.

Right. Prior to the Civil War, because he found him in the census, didn't it? But then as you go further back in the census, he disappears. So he was, you know, he became free at some point and then he disappears into the bondage, you know, prior. Don't know what happened. But this name Beverly Whiting, you know, Beverly, I thought it was an interesting name. So I started kind of digging around. No, actually, again, back to Twitter. Somebody saw the show and DM'd me and said, Hey, did you know that your ancestor, Beverly Whiting, fought in the Civil War with the first colored cavalry of Virginia? And I was like, oh, wow. So I dug in and I looked around and was like, huh. So I dug in and I looked around and was like, huh, it was a different Beverly Whiting who lived in the neighboring county, Gloucester County.

My grandfather was born like on the border, like across the river from Gloucester in York County, but right on the edge there. But there was another Beverly Whiting. Then I dug around again. I found a third Beverly Whiting, who was a young boy who was taken on a ship to New Orleans, a slave ship. He's listed among the inventory, right? Because even though the international slave trade had been abolished, there was still domestic slave trade allowed trade uh allowed in this country i forget exactly when but it but it it was allowed uh even after the abolishment of the international slave trade then i found a fourth beverly whiting and i was like where's this name yeah and the fourth beverly whiting was white guy right born i think it was in 1707, if I'm not mistaken. I think it was 1707.

This Beverly Whiting, right, I think might have been the namesake for these others. Because, and I need to understand, you know, because obviously the name Whiting comes from some migrating Brit. So if you – and this guy was a slave owner. Slave owner, the name – doubtless these Beverly's were related somehow, perhaps somehow. Or at least on the same piece of property. Exactly, exactly. And do you know who this Beverly, this white Beverly, white Virginian Beverly Whiting was? No. Was the godfather of George Washington.

What? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow, man. So that's something I need to, like, dig down in a bit more. But they, you know, Skip Gates and those folks led me on that journey. But they, you know, Skip Gates and those folks led me on that journey. It's so wild, you know, that that's so much, I guess, of the African-American stories.

You know, you can't get back to Africa that easily. So you're going to end up in these colonies. You know, there's only there's only a handful of places you're going to end up that where the beginning of that story in America happens. Recording of it, you know, is these things just disappear back, you know, the farther you go back very often and we become mysteries to ourselves. You know, it was another interesting thing. He showed me on my father's side who they were from the Carolinas, South Carolina, North Carolina, that there was a guy named Workman, Workman McDowell, which is a hell of a name, you know, antebellum name for a black man in this country, Workman,

you know, but he too had been free at some point prior and, you know, and then disappears as you go back. And in trying to track him, they found a McDowell family that was a slave-owning family that happened to live, according to these records, right, you know, five miles or a few miles up from where Workman lived, right? So the assumption was that, you know, might have been on that estate or whatever. that might have been on that estate or whatever. And he showed me a census record from that plantation or whatever it was, state farm, whatever the hell you want to call it. Right.

And it has the names of the McDowell family and then it has 54 essentially blank spaces with young man uh black male 26 girl black 13 you know but no names just 54 blank spaces one of those blank spaces it seems by age might have been workman my great great grandfather but you know that's to your point you go back and what do you see there you find the you know the attempt to render people invisible and they kind of yeah you know just vanish in the back into the mists of history it's pretty fucking crazy yeah yeah yeah it is but like work is. But like Workman, that's like a title. It was probably a title before it was a name, obviously. It certainly was. You know, like that's what the guy did.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It certainly was a directive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But these are the similarities. So how did your folks get to D.C.?

D.C.? get to a dc i mean see my my mom came up to dc in 1957 to go to uh to go to law school she graduated what was then hampton institute uh down in hampton virginia and then she came up and uh she went to howard law school uh graduated in 61, and then from there went to work for the U.S. Customs Service. She was the, I think, third woman customs law specialist, first black woman customs law specialist then. who came up maybe a few months later, was a nurse at D.C. General Hospital for 35 years. My mom was at customs for 32, 34 years, whatever it was, you know, forever. And so, yeah, that's so I was raised by my mom and my aunt. They, you know, they came up and they lived together in D.C. from 57 until my mom passed last fall.

Oh, sorry to hear that. Yeah, thanks, man. So where was your old man? Where was he at? My dad died in 67. He and my mom were actually separated pretty early. When I started acting, one of his best friends who grew up with him in Greensboro, North Carolina, I told him, I said, you know, OT, I think I'm going to start acting. I really dig this thing. He said, well, he said, your old man was a bit of a song and dance man. He just never made it to the stage.

So it kind of, as far as he describes, came naturally. But when he died, he was actually, he was here in New York, and he actually oversaw sales for Rheingold Beer here in Brooklyn. That was his gig. Yeah, he was a sales exec for that Rheingold. He did some other things, too. He used to run a bar down in the village, a place called Romero's. That's kind of a storied place.

He was a man about town. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The man about town you know he was one of those yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the man about town guy in in fact this picture here is if you i don't know if you can see it in the background that picture there i've kind of pushed stuff aside aside you know these interviews and stuff that i've been doing but uh that picture is to my dad that's one of the few things that i have from it and that's miles davis playing guitar shirtless oh yeah it says to jimmy from miles yeah take all the money all all that's what that's so he and me and my dad were apparently

pretty tight and uh when my uncle who is his brother, passed away about 20 years ago or so now, I went down to his funeral down in Greensboro. And there was a guy there named Buddy Gist, who was very good friends with my dad and with my uncle, and had traveled, was tight with Miles. Buddy was a bit of a yeah song and dance man himself from what i understand you know and uh but he was you know he one of those guys you know and uh and i told him that i had this picture he said you got that i said yeah he said he said man i

traveled with my he said you got something he said because man i traveled with miles for 35 years i saw him sign three autographs so he said yeah you got something there man but uh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so so your dad was running with a pretty uh pretty fun and fast crew there yeah he was a he was um you know as as i understand it he was uh he was a pretty you know pretty well well well liked you know well loved well-liked, you know, well-loved guy. Probably a little bit too much, which, you know, might not have been good for him at the end of the day. Well, it's interesting that you took it upon yourself to do all this research. Because, I mean, some people don't do it, you know.

Some people who have, you know, parents that are absent, they're just like, fuck them. But, like, it's nice that you kind of got a full kind of sense of who he is or who he was yeah maybe some of it is mythologized too but he kind of had a bit of a mythic thing about him you know people like you know people have you know still they when i mentioned that he was my dad if i've never met him they like they brighten like eyes brighten and they have some kind of crazy story like i met this guy uh another funeral because this is how you meet me to become uh recently who um he said that he knew my dad and he's you know and he said man he said i had just gotten out of the army he said this is i guess it was the korean war maybe he said just gotten out of the army. He said, I guess it was the Korean War maybe.

He said, just gotten out of the army. And I had saved up some money. I think he said he had saved up like $4,000 or $5,000 or something like this. I don't know, maybe whatever the number was. But it was a significant amount of money. He said, yeah, I saved up this money, man. He said, and your uncle and me, we went up to meet your dad up in New York. He said that money was gone by the end of the weekend. They were just living.

Who knows what they were doing, but he was that kind of guy. But again, he was laughing and came to life when he thought about him. But at the same time, to your point, I kind of missed him in some ways, but at the same time to your point you know i'm you know i i you know i i kind of missed him in some ways but at the same time i never knew him and and i think maybe the influence of my mother and my aunt was probably a healthier one on for me so uh you know it it's all good it's all good it's sort of fun it's sort of amazing though because like there is um like oddly one of the performances that I can never get out of my head that you did was, you know, around a father son relationship was it was that moment. Those moments in Syriana with with, you know, which is a side story to your character, is this alcoholic father.

But that thing was so loaded up. There was so much sort of horrific anger, but yet at the same time, the need to take care of this guy. Almost out of a lack of, you had a choice, but you still did. And it was causing that character to eat himself alive a bit

yeah you know do you do you remember you know reaching into yourself to find that dude well you know sure i mean that's part of the gig right you know you kind of take yeah you take from those um at least those rooms that you have that are filled up with those, you know, thoughts and emotions and things and experiences and try to pluck whatever would fit into whatever story you're trying to tell. So, yeah, that was, yeah. But, you know, and that's not an unusual story for, you know, a lot of folks in our country, a lot of, you know, black men, particularly in our country in lot of you know black men particularly in our country in terms of complicated relationships with with with with their fathers complicated relationships with you know um males in the family who kind of lose track you know and uh and kind of go off the rails a little bit yeah the new

movie is about that too it's heavy man that all day and night is like holy fuck man that's a that's that's hardcore movie dude oh did you see it yeah i saw it oh yeah it was great oh cool man that was an amazing uh performance on your part but also that kid what's his name oh ashton ashton's yeah he's he's super bad man yeah he's a great you know he was in moonlight and uh yeah i thought his performance in Moonlight was just, like, so stellar, and I was like, whoa, this, you know, I was surprised that he didn't get more, you know, not that it matters, because it's, you know, it's ridiculous, but if they're giving those things out, if they're giving out the accolades, you know, give them out to, you know, give them out right, you know, and I thought he was, you know, you know, but that's, you know give them out to yeah you know give them all right you know and uh i thought he was uh you know you know he's yeah but that's you know it's funny i was just watching uh they asked me to do this thing and i was just watching uh uh sid and nancy you know gary oldman gary oldman that chloe webb and that that movie made 50% of the budget, right? And no one got recognized for their

performances or direction. I was like, are you? I mean, you know, I remember talking to Gary one time, I think it was when we were doing Basquiat, and he was like, you know, talking about awards or something, I don't know how it came up, he said,

you know, every performance I've ever given should have been awarded, you know. But I really, you know, yeah, Ashton is really a wonderful young actor. And there is a slew of those young actors out here now, black actors particularly, who are doing some interesting stuff. Like, I don't know anything about that life so anytime that i get something and i look at it and i can see there's an authenticity to it uh you know it really kind of affects me in an eye-opening way well this movie for me was really in some ways a kind of companion piece uh to another, actually two other films, one hasn't come out yet, but the film that really piqued my interest even more in this side of this kind of incarceration, you know, cycle of criminality and violence story was OG, which was a film that we shot in a working maximum security prison in Indiana, and largely with co-stars who were incarcerated men. There were only three of us who played

incarcerated men who were, you know, had the freedom to walk outside the gate every day. Everybody else was in. My co-star was serving a sentence of 65 years for attempted murder. I think his sentence has been extended now. That's another story. But all of these guys were, you know, serving long sentences. And I went to the prison over the course of a year prior to prior to filming to meet with them and talk with them and understand their stories a bit and, you know, with them and talk with them and understand their stories a bit and you know figure out if i could find a way into it and uh and in talking with them and then of course we filmed for you know 13 hours a day six weeks on the inside and talking to them they were almost consistently

they would almost consistently describe um the influence of their fathers um as being problematic, you know, parental abuse, parental drug, you know, neglect, you know, drug abuse, all of these things. And so this story in All Day and a Night is, you know, I was playing an incarcerated man in OG, but a father in this who ultimately is up incarcerated with his son, which is another story that I saw in the flesh inside that prison. But yeah, this story was just kind of looking at it from a different angle, and it was really in some ways driven by my experiences with those guys at Pendleton out in Indiana.

I performed once in a prison, and the shift in the way the culture of prison works in terms of energy when you enter that building, the sort of electricity of it is completely, was overwhelming and disturbing to me. Yeah. I know there are a lot of people, it's like it's its own organism yeah you know in terms of how life works yeah and the air is

super super heavy and charged i mean like you can physically feel like that energy you talk about yeah it's super it's super hardcore and uh but you know what the weird thing was the thing that was really startling to me um was that you know we would film on an active cell block for example you know the scenes that took place inside the cell there was you know a guy next door to me who was serving time you know on either side right and i'm walking around in the onesie and stuff and they're like hey bro you know and this is evenly split white and black because in indiana the demographics were interesting you know you rural poor urban poor you know and there's a guy he's this guy uh white guy who's like hey hey hey brother you uh you you

you got any books i read all my books you got anybody he saw me come by he thought you know because we're i'm like uh actually, yeah, bro. Well, yeah, man, actually, I do. So I went back and I found some, what did I found? There were some Westerns that I had in there and I had Moby Dick and I had something else as set pieces, as props. So I wasn't supposed to do it, but I kind of backed up to him in the camera and slid on the books. He's like, thanks. Thank you, brother. And the guy next door, he goes, he thinks you won a bus, bro. I'm like, you know, yeah.

So anyway, but to your point about the intensity in there, the thing that I found shocking was that when I was inside the cell, shocking was that when I was inside the cell and if we had a little bit of downtime in between shots setting it up I would stay in there because we didn't have any you know there's no green room or anything there were no trailers so I would hang in the cell they would close the gate you know we were still crew and we had one guard who was you know there and i would just chill there rest read you know whatever you know i had music there was a tv i watched the uh i think the democratic convention you know watch that and i realized in that space you know had you know a little some snacks i realized you could actually get used to it you know and you could kind of settle in and that was really that kind of jacked me up a little bit to see how easily you might adapt to being confined in that way that's why those guys

sometimes have a hard time coming out too because all of those decision making processes have atrophied for them and you know they come out they never had them right right and they certainly weren't exercised in there and they come out and it's like you know it leads to you know it's at times to recidivism if they haven't uh been able to you know to to adapt they adapted in there but adapting on the outside is even more more tricky yeah so when you started acting like what did you when did you decide to do it like you, you just, were you in high school? What happened? No, I was in college.

I was a junior in college. Yeah, I was a political science major in college and then freaked out one day and started acting, you know. You freaked out? What do you mean freaked out? Yeah, no. Well, you know, I'm still trying to figure out how I got here. No, it was, you know, it was something that had been in the back of my head that I was kind of, I don't know, I was kind of afraid to jump into it, really. I always went to plays with my mom as a kid.

She would take me to all the shows that came through D.C., all the big musicals like The Wiz and Bubbling Brown Sugar. But also, I remember seeing Give Him Hell, Harry James Whitmore, you know, about Harry Truman in 1776. And there was, I think, Avery Brooks did a one-man Paul Robeson show. There was, you know, I mean, just a variety of stuff. Ntozake Shange, she took me, she just took me to, you know, to everything that came to town. And I always, those experiences were always deeply deeply like meaningful for me and i was always enthralled by it in a way probably that was over a little over you know my it just you know my you know even after the curtain dropped

you know i was always yeah i was sure i was sure that that world had been that that had been created on stage was carrying on you know even after the so i was i was well well into it you know but i never did anything in high school man i never did it i was always like you know i couldn't i you know a little bit you know yeah until my junior year college and uh one day um a friend of mine took this acting class and in the i think it was in the, if I remember, in the fall semester. What school? At the end of the, I went to Amherst, up in Amherst College. Oh, yeah.

Oh, really? You're up there? Yeah. Yeah. And so at the end of the semester, they put on a production. So he asked me to come see him. I said, yeah, man, I'll come. So I went to see him.

I said, damn, I can do that at least. You know? Yeah, man. So I went to see I say, damn, I can do that at least, you know. So the next semester I took that class and I also did a play that was directed by a student, a guy named Kevin Frazier, who actually passed away of AIDS a few years after I graduated. I graduated, but a beautiful young guy. And he adapted a Wallace Terry novel called Bloods that was recollections of black Vietnam veterans about their experiences in the war. He kind of wove together a night of monologues. That was the first thing I did. That was my junior year.

And then, you know, I was like, yeah, this kind of makes sense to me. And so I've been doing it ever since did you did you train at all after well yeah i went uh i left uh graduated um i went back to dc uh and i my first gig down in dc was children's theater actually i was on you know i was touring here i'm you know b with his ba in political science running around doing children's theater for like you know preschoolers and teen you know up there you know elementary kids american history you know uh through folk tales and uh and i was waiting tables at night and then i got a like a bit part at an All's Well That Ends Well at the Shakespeare Theater at the Folger when it was there.

And then I got a gig in Lorraine Hansberry's last play, a play that she wrote as she died called Les Blancs. And that was my first kind of significant role. That was at Arena Stage, which is kind of a storied theater, regional theater in D.C. Stage, which is kind of a storied theater, regional theater in D.C. And because of that, Zelda Fitchhandler, who found that founded that theater and at the time ran the drama department at Tisch at NYU, the grad school, invited me to come up to to go to go to school. So that's how I came to New York. She gave me a full ride. I came up to, you know, I think it was July 4th weekend of 1988 to New York and then, you know, was enrolled in school that September of 88. And I quit after two months and I left to do that play, Le Blanc, up in Boston because I just thought I, better working than I did acting in a classroom.

And so I came back to New York, here to Fort Greene, like January, February of 89. And I kept working in the theater. I would go back to Arena Stage. I would go up to Yale Rep like every year for three years. to an arena stage. I would go up to Yale Rep like every year for three years. Lloyd Richards, who was the artistic director at the time at the Rep and head of the drama school, they'd give me a job every year. So my training took place in that way. And the people, the directors that were hiring me were very often teachers themselves, you know, like, you know, guys who taught up at Yale or, you know, a guy who took me under his wing was a, kind of mentored me, a guy named Joe

Dowling, who was Irish. He had run the Abbey Theater in Dublin and then later came over here to run the Guthrie Theater for many years out in Minnesota, but he took me under his wing, you know, he gave me my first piece of Shakespeare, and, you know, they were, I had a number of, you know, early directors who really, you know, like, took an interest in me, and, and, you know, and shared a little, little knowledge with me, so that's, that was how I trained. Well, that's interesting, yeah, so you had, so it was almost like you had the, obviously the basic raw talent to do it and you were effective at it, but every time you were able to work with a director of a certain ilk, uh, you were kind of molded a bit and given new tools. Yeah, 100%. And so I did theater as pretty much essentially for seven about seven years i did a little bit of film here a

little film there but from the time i was like 21 to like you know it was like boom it was until bosquiat i was 28 i think 28 or 29 when i did bosquiat and so it was like pretty much all theater regional theater and then finally you know broadway with angels in america was like at the end of that seven year period. But and that was like, you know, that was that was that was that was a university in and of itself. That experience, you know. Like doing like with Shakespeare and stuff, what do you do? So it's interesting because I'll ask actors about process and, you know, how ultimately everyone's going to put together their own, you know, set of tools or however they're going to do it. You know what I mean?

There's no way to say like, well, you do this, you do this, you do this because everyone's going to do it their way. But, you know, from taking from all these different people, you know, and adding it to, you know, your natural ability. I mean, what do you remember every time that you go into a role? You know, how do you start and, you know, where did you get that information? Like, do you look back at the people that guided you early on? Is there any bit of information that, you know, really stands out as like that, that was, that was it?

Well, I mean, I think you, you, you put it all in the, in the, in your pocket, you know what I mean? And you pull out as needed and it all kind of merges together, you know? So many great influences and also other actors that you work with i mean for example you talk about shakes shakespeare one guy who taught me perhaps more than any other one individual about performing shakespeare is somehow is someone you probably wouldn't expect and that's ch Walken. Really? Yeah? Yeah. Again, this guy, Joe Dowling, gave me a gig, you know, bit part Shakespeare in the Park.

I think I was, I don't know, 23 years old, whatever it was, and Chris Walken played Iago to Raul Julia's Othello. And I talk about this with, like, if I talk to, you know, young, you know, actors now, you know, sometimes I'll go and, you know, talk to a class. And I'll talk about Walken, particularly relative to Shakespeare, because, you know, Walken's from Queens, right? You know? Yeah, yeah. And Chris... A song and dance man. It's Chris. Yeah, badass, yeah. But when he does Shakespeare,

he's not interested in any affectation, you know? It's Chris Walken. Zblads, but you're not hear me. I mean, it's, you know, it's... And he personalizes that language and just kind of destroys any unnecessary reverence for it, which is particularly important, I think, for an American actor to claim it in his own voice and in his own rhythms and his own tones and i mean he's he's one of if not the smartest actor i've ever uh had the the the privilege of working with and uh yeah you know because you know there's nothing more annoying than seeing an american actor do some kind of faux fake ass british weird half british accent when doing shakespeare sure i mean it was just so unnatural and weird, you know, it can go either way.

You know, I'm not a big Shakespeare guy, but the few times I've seen Americans do Shakespeare, like I think I saw William Hurt do one of them. I don't Richard the second or something. I was a huge William Hurt fan. I was back in when I was in high school, probably. And it was almost impossible to decipher what the fuck he was doing up there. But that might have been because it was Shakespeare, but I knew he was personalizing it, you know, but I've always had a problem with Shakespeare until Ian McKellen sat across from

me and did it in my face. Like I told him, I said, I have a hard time following the language, and he did this monologue right to my face, and I'm like, okay, I get it. I get it. Yeah. If it's done right it's clear yeah and so like with the angels in America I believe I probably saw you in that because when did that when what year was that man that was like that was 1993 and that was the first you were original cast guy I was original Broadway cast yeah I didn't do it out in la i didn't do it up in the san francisco but when it came to broadway and yeah i was in the original broadway cast yeah for a year and a half yeah seven hours play a year and a half so you were there so you were there

were you part of him sort of workshopping it as well kushner well when we when when they came to broadway they've been another actor who was playing my, the Belize, who, you know, beautiful actor, but they decided to make a change, you know, and so I got the role, and as George Wolfe said, he says in the casting process, he said, I saw 8,000 Negroes. I chose you. You know? So, yeah, so we were, so Tony was still working through the script. There were still script changes, but, you know,

it was largely as, you know, as you see it now. However, when we did Perestroika, the second half, you see it now. However, when we did Perestroika, the second half, there's one particular scene that he kind of, I guess, says he wrote for me, which was pretty incredible, pretty gratifying.

Beautiful piece of writing. It's a description of heaven that believes the character, who's a nurse, to dying Roy Cohn, who's dying of AIDS. And Roy, in his hallucinatory state, kind of comes to him and, you know, Belize just describes to him his idea of heaven, which is not what Roy Cohn's, doesn't quite match his expectations. It's a beautiful piece of poetry, dramatic poetry.

And, uh, yeah, so that was, that was new, you know, Tony wrote that and said, Hey, I wrote, I wrote this here, read it. And I'm like, wow. You know, cause we were, cause we, cause what we, what we did was we did the first, if I recall, we did the first part for about, we rehearsed for three months, then we performed for three months. Then we kind of backtracked a little bit and we performed half the time and we were we performed during the day sorry we report we performed the first part at night and we rehearsed the second part during the day for another three months and then until we had both parts up and running so it was pretty crazy uh crazy but super fun process and Kushner was just coming into like you know his whole trip

do you are you like do you are you guys friends oh yeah of course yeah yeah yeah you know I you know we reach out from time to time I see him here and there but yeah yeah I mean those guys I mean Kushner George Wolfe as well who directed George is the godfather to my kids now but yeah I mean those guys those guys changed my changed my changed my life and like changed my whole you know molecular structure in profound ways you know with uh with what they with what they gave me well i mean like molecular structure in the sense not just career-wise but in terms of what you're capable of as an artist yeah sure that and just as a as a human being as a citizen yeah i citizen. I mean, that play is very much about citizenship. And it was also, it kind of afforded me this gift or curse, I don't know how every way you look at it, of expectation that you can merge politics with, you know, creativity. These might, you know, two interests of mine that they can be

merged, or in fact, they should be merged, you know, particularly, you know, in urgent times. And so that was a real, you know, license from, you know, that I got from them, from, you know, from Tony's, you know, writing, particularly that, you know, this was right, this was the this was right, you know, and it was necessary, you know. How often does that happen? It happens, you know, at the same time, I'm someone who tends to see politics and everything anyway, you know. Right. I mean, you know, you know, there's political elements to Westworld, you know, you know, you know there's political elements to Westworld you know um you know this the the film uh all day and the night you know there's obviously there there's a political undercurrent to that you know um so I watched uh I watched uh Ride with the Devil recently oh yeah yeah yeah that's that's

a kind of a unique interesting movie politically politically and racially and American history wise. Yeah. I mean, I love that movie. I think I have a particular place in my heart for it because it was undermined by the studio because of some of the kind of peculiarities of it that they didn't know quite how to deal with, you know? You know, that you had this black character who was fighting on the side of the Confederacy, just kind of blew their fucking minds, you know? Yeah. You know, this kind of, you know, quasi-liberal, you know, just all of, like, the constructs that they, you know, understood history to be,

and also understood in terms of the alliance, you know, understood history to be and also understood in terms of the alliance, you know. You don't make a movie where the heroes are Confederate rebels. Yeah. But, you know, and but in fact, you know, for me, what the story was about, particularly relative to this black character who was actually based on a scout, a historical figure who rode with Quantrill in raiding Kansas. God damn, his name escapes me, this guy. But was that he was a guy who wasn't waiting to be emancipated, you know, by the great white savior, but had to go through, you know,

do the hard work of emancipating himself, you know, of winning his own freedom. And for me, that was so much more powerful. But for them, them they couldn't quite uh you know they couldn't quite pallid it and in fact uh uh you know they took me like you know the weird shit happened they you know they took me off the poster it was like me toby mcguire skeet all rich jewel myself you know and they yeah just kind of took me off the poster because, I don't know, I guess it was for their, like, kind of market sensibilities. They couldn't figure out how to market that to that, you know, young white kid out in Kansas or Minnesota or whomever. It was like some weird, really weird, stupid, fucked up, racist bullshit, you know.

And then they decided not to release the movie fully. But it's a beautiful film. Ang Lee, you know, kind of an outsider looking in at American history in a really nuanced way. And it's the last American film about the Civil War of the 20th century. But it's a beautiful film. Now, can we just talk about

the Muddy Waters role for a second? Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Were you a Mud waters fan oh yeah man yeah yeah i mean who isn't who isn't we all are yeah i know i know even if we don't even if we don't know it you know i mean what did you learn about him going into that that you didn't know already well um a hell of a lot i mean he i you know i didn't realize at the time, I don't think that he was illiterate. Couldn't read or write. His dude could not read or write and ends up essentially rewriting the direction of modern American music.

And could not read or write. I mean, these guys, what I came to appreciate about those guys muddy waters howlin wolf those guys though though i saw them as almost as like uh it's just like you know as heroic as artist as hero i mean what they did coming from where they came from nothing and creating the soundtrack out of that to American freedom. This idea, at least, that we aspire toward, you know, so cut to the Berlin Wall and they're playing, you know, rock and roll. They're playing Muddy Waters music because that idea of freedom that they were able to articulate musically. Right. Was based on the history, personal history and a collective history in this country born out of slavery. I mean, those guys were bad ass as bad as it gets. guys were badass as bad as it gets i mean just you know come on man and and yeah and change the whole world you know change the way we hear music you know uh uh you know uh globally badasses i

mean just incredible it's so it's always so bizarre to me that the kind of strange, sometimes tense, but seemingly symbiotic relationship between Jews and African-Americans and modern music. Yeah. You know, like the chess guys. Yeah. Because at some point, like, I don't know if you read about that, like, you know, like Muddy used to paint the fucking walls of chess records. Yeah. that like you know like muddy used to paint the fucking walls of chess records right you know before like before he made it big you know he was just sort of a guy who would sit in with the band and work around the office and shit but it's just sort of this weird kind of a relationship that is sometimes exploitive but seemingly you know mutually beneficial yeah you know it wasn't

always in all circumstances the coolest really you know the coolest alliance you know but it was you know kind of a necessary symbiotic one you know it was definitely that but then of course then there are other instances in which you know you look at uh you know uh uh you know records look yeah but you also look at the like the freedom riders down in the south you know goodman schwerner and cheney and you see yeah you know that was an alliance of a different type you know so they're yeah complicated like everything you know that relationship but yeah with the chess guys yeah they took they took they took them guys they took some of the guys for for a ride you know pretty much you know you know pretty much all of them no No doubt. But likewise, you know, you look at Led Zeppelin, look at the Stones.

All of this, all of it is derived from muddy waters, you know. But you know what's weird about the Stones is that, you know, they brought a lot of people to – the Stones were always really kind of like they would, you know, they would, you know, name their sources, bring them on the road with them, celebrate them, make sure people knew what was up yeah it's complicated it's complicated but they made a whole hell of a lot more money than those guys did you know to have the capacity to be able to to give them that gift you know what i mean and i think there were some loss there were some there were some lawsuits i don't know if it was with the stones but i think muddy and

i think maybe led Zeppelin. You know, like all these riffs that I grew up thinking, you know, Squeeze My Lemon. You know, Led Zeppelin was like, wait a minute. Yeah, there was definitely, they ripped off that whole riff. I think it's a Willie Dixon song. Is that right? But like, you know, Whole Lotta Love. You know, that's Muddy Waters.

Yeah, yeah. You know, the Rolling Stones. Right, right, right. The name derives from a tune called Catfish Blues. That name, that's Muddy Waters. I mean, it's incredible. Like a Rolling Stone. Yep, yep, yep.

I mean, it's just incredible, incredible. And from absolutely nothing, digging it out of the Mississippi dirt, man. Yeah, it's fucking beautiful, man. It's a beautiful story. So did you guys finish shooting Batman or what? No. story so you did you guys finish shooting batman or what no we uh we were in uh i think our oh i don't know oh third month you know i guess we've been going about two and a half months and uh we you know hit the brakes you know uh so we'll go back and we've got about like three we got

about another four months to go you know uh, once we get back. And you're playing Commissioner Gordon? I am, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Having a ball. We were having a ball. Yeah? Yeah. When was the last time you watched Basquiat?

Actually, it was within the last year, right? And you know why? Yeah. Because I hadn't seen it in a while. And I was actually out to dinner with uh wes anderson and another filmmaker friend of his and and they were talking about this talking about and somehow uh julian schnaubel came up in the conversation and i was like yeah julian you know because we had you know a tricky relationship during the process of making that film.

And we've kind of since gotten past that. And one of them said, well, yeah, you made a beautiful film together, though. And I was like, huh? He's like, oh, really? I was like, wow. It was a lovely thing to hear. And so I said, well. And I went back and said, let me watch that thing.

And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty good. You and Schnabel had problems? Yeah, well, I mean, it wasn't, yeah. That was a complicated situation there on a number of levels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Because he was a painter?

yeah yeah but like because he was a painter well you know julian is a better you know he's a you know he's a certain personality and uh yeah and you know in some ways that was obviously a personal you know film for him to make but it was very personal for me too because i you know i felt yeah a certain kinship with uh withMichel Basquiat and his story. And I felt there were aspects of it that I knew that maybe he did not appreciate. Oh, interesting. And it's his first film. I'd finished Angel in America about a year before that, I think, and I'm feeling my oats and stuff too.

about a year before that, I think. And, you know, I'm feeling my oats and stuff too. And anyway, at the same time, he's incredibly generous, you know, in terms of allowing me space to kind of research and paint, you know, and all, you know, just prepare for that thing. And, you know, at the end of the day, yeah, it was complicated. But, you know, I think their relationship, his relationship with Jean-Michel was complicated too.

So it kind of made sense in a way. Yeah, I got to watch. I'm going to try to watch that again. Oh, yeah. Well, look, I'll let you get to your dogs and get to your life. That was great talking to you. I hope you enjoyed it. Well, I did, man. And, you know, I appreciate your interest and appreciate the time amidst all the stuff that's going on around us, you know.

So thanks, man. Yeah, man. Yeah, I think. When do I meet you? I met you at a Netflix party or somewhere and I came up. That's right. Maybe it was. It was.

I think it might have been at the Emmys. I can't remember. Yeah. I went out of my way. Yes, you did. I'm glad you did because there was a lot of weird stuff there and you were not you. You were not among that weirdness. I appreciate it.

Yeah. I always feel like a tourist at all those things. I don't even know why I'm there, but I was happy to meet you. Get me back to Brooklyn, baby. Get me back to Brooklyn. You know? Yeah. Great talking to you, man.

Thanks, man. All right. Keep well. Take care. Okay. Okay. okay that was jeffrey right and i chatting as i said before the protests but uh you can follow him on twitter he's a very engaged active smart man he's also uh in the movie all day and a night which is now streaming on Netflix and also as I said earlier he's behind the relief organization Brooklyn for life which was

established to provide food for frontline workers during the pandemic you can check that out at Brooklyn for life dot org and again thank you everyone for reaching out and keeping me afloat during this time and I hope you guys are taking care of yourselves and doing the big work and fighting the good fight in however you find you are capable of doing it. Now I'm going to play a little guitar and I'll talk to you in a couple of days.

I miss you, Lynn. guitar solo Thank you. Boomer lives. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday,

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