WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1131 - Joe Pantoliano

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Joe Pantoliano is widely known for playing bad guys, lowlifes and disreputable characters. He even has his own pseudo-Mafioso nickname: Joey Pants. But Joe tells Marc the reason he got so good at playing bad guys is because he was always bullied when he was younger. Tapping into that helped him with his acting, but he had to wait until later in life to tap into the cause of his depression, which was tied up in his complicated parentage and inescapable genetics. They also talk about some of his best known roles from The Sopranos, The Fugitive, Midnight Run and more. This episode is sponsored by Tournament of Laughs on TBS, HBO Max, and Ben & Jerry's. 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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Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuck nicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. WTF, welcome to it. How's everybody doing? Things seem to be slowly and belligerently opening up here in California. I guess if you decide it's okay, it's okay. Magical thinking.

You decide it's okay, it's okay. Magical thinking. It's amazing that given the small window of opportunity to get a little back to normal, without any real information being dispersed in an appropriate kind of blanket way around this virus, that just a little crumb that we might be able to get back to some sort of at least phase one of something some business is opening it's amazing how quickly a large number of people just decide it's over it's over i i'm i i am grateful that my industry is continuing to be cautious because it's so not over. And just the belligerence of it. I get it.

We're tired of this. The inconvenience, the lack of work, the inability to get out and do things. But that doesn't mean you can decide it's gone and it is. It's amazing how quickly people surrender their intelligence, their memory, their common sense when they've had enough. Scary, really, how that can be applied. Today on the show, I talked to Joey Pants. Joey Pantoliano.

Great. It's great. Got a movie coming out called From the Vine. It will be on VOD next month. But you know him from everything. He's been in everything. And I know some of you may have heard

that he got into a little accident. Well, I tell you, you know, I'm feeling okay in this half hour, in this process of missing and mourning or grieving or just Lynn Shelton. I also want to tell you that there's a beautiful hour-long or so tribute that's up on YouTube that her friend Megan did called Her Effortless Brilliance, a celebration of Lynn

Shelton. You can watch that on YouTube. It's got a lot of the actors and all, you know, someone from most of her movies and then musicians from all the films that did the soundtrack work doing a song. It's a beautiful thing. Her Effortless Brilliance, a celebration of Lynn Shelton. You can find that on YouTube. So Joey Pants got into a bad accident. And days after I talked to him, I talked to Joey Pants before Lynn passed away. And after she passed, he wrote me an email. Dear Mark, and I'm talking like I'm from Jersey. Dear Mark, I'm deeply sorry to hear of your unthinkable loss. I only heard yesterday and was devastated for you.

We listened to you talk with Lynn Shelton yesterday, looking at pictures. She was so beautiful. She seemed to shine. I'm so glad you found each other and had that special time with each other. I don't know if this will help, but I want to tell you an antidote to our talk a couple of Thursdays ago. I recall at some point talking about the benefits that I've experienced from COVID-19, that I've been spending much more time with my wife and adult kids, taking long walks, discovering hikes close to our house. Well,

the following afternoon, we ventured out after a long rain Thursday night into Friday. It was still drizzling, but the fog was clearing and I love walking in the rain. We were walking to the corner of the main road when a cloud opened and this amazing rainbow just popped out, one of those double rainbows, so beautiful. I stopped and took my phone, did a little video and posted it on Instagram, less than a hundred yards from the corner where I was to cross. There was a woman about to make a left-hand turn onto our street, waiting for oncoming traffic. Because of the rainbow, Nancy and the kids had gotten 30 yards ahead of me. The kids had already crossed the street, and Nancy was on opposite corner from me.

This lady sees me and waves. I instinctively wave back. I don't know her, but I think she knows me from show business. Guess she's happy to spot me. She's so happy. She keeps her eyes on me while she decides to commit to that left-hand turn into an oncoming suburban SUV doing 50 miles an hour. The guy didn't even have time to hit his brakes.

T-bones her, slamming her with all that energy into me. I was hit up into the air and through a wooden three-post fence headfirst. EMT, concussion, and 10 stitches in my head. Torn meniscus, bad shoulder and back. I was a mess. I couldn't stand up. That should have killed me. No fucking rhyme or reason to why

it didn't life the love and pain and agony and the ecstasy of this journey so few of us are lucky enough to have a dream have the gumption to go after it and then be lucky enough to have them come true some of us get to realize those dreams and more. You two were kissed by a rainbow. I'm so happy you found each other and had each other, held each other, loved each other. God bless you, your families, and may she rest in peace. Our family mourns your loss. Deepest sympathy, Joey Pants. Sympathy, Joey Pants.

I read that because, look, I've been getting a lot of condolence emails and a lot of support from all of you, but I read that because I was going to tell you what happened to him, you know, a couple days after we talked, but I figured I'd put it into that context, and it came in the form of that condolence letter. I'm not giving any of you short shrift. You guys have all been great. Thank you so much for continuing to be checking in on me. So many people checking in on me. I guess you know in grief or I don't know everyone tells me there's

no right way to do it but I guess you know that you're getting a little better when you're grateful for all the support, you're crying, you're spending time meditating, processing, praying, remembering. And then one day you think like, why the fuck didn't that guy check in with me? I didn't get anything from him or her. Why wouldn't they send their condolence as soon as he's in the midst of thousands of well-wishing beautiful

people trying to you know show me that i'm supported in this one day the brain goes like i didn't hear from that guy i've've known him forever. And then you're like, all right, something's changing. But then I have to frame it. I got to frame it with the new wisdom, you know, the new wisdom. It's all right. Would I have reached out? You know, do you know what to say? Some people don't know what to say.

Some people don't want to say anything. Someday you run into them. They'll say, I didn't know what to say. And, you know, it's not, it's not vindictive. They don't, no one knows anybody knows anybody anything death is fucking weird and horrible but it happens to everybody i i am getting a little i'm not tired of it but i start to understand you know why grief or death makes people uncomfortable i mean i have neighbors who i don't even know that well and they're like how you doing

and i just start weeping and they're standing there and i'm like i'm all right i'm okay you know it just happens there's something i'm sort of happy that you know i'm just i'm i have time to deal with this you know cooking and eating monkeys okay busters okay i use my traeger grill a lot but you know when you use a traeger grill a lot when you use a wood pellet grill i don't know if if you guys experience this will you just tell me this is it just common like when you have a regular grill charcoal grill and grease or grizzle or whatever gets on the thing on the thing you just kind of scrape it off or it falls into the coals and it just burns up like grease but with this wood pellets this is what i want to ask anyone who has a wood pellet grill does it create this fucking like petroleum looking sludge that expands

you know when you try to clean it off of anything it's just like it's i think it's all the sediment in the smoke mixing with the grease from the cooking. It creates a kind of tar. But it's viscous. I wish it was more solid. It's like oil. And it spreads like oil. It's one downside.

Is that just micro or is that something that happens? That's the big question. That's what I'm worrying about right now. My brain locks on to shit. You know what else is beautiful? You know when I talked about the hawk's nest and all the bird shit on my cars in my driveway? Well, there's like two baby hawks. I think there's two baby hawks and a mother hawk up there.

And I just see them kind of hanging out. I guess they're learning how to baby hawks. I think there's two baby hawks and a mother hawk up there. And I just see them kind of hanging out. I guess they're learning how to be hawks. And it's pretty stunning. It's a pretty beautiful thing. I wish I had some binoculars. I used to have some. I don't know what happened to them. But I've been watching them.

One of the baby hawks ended up in one of my little trees out front. And I saw it there. And this is where I'm at. Like the hawk was there.'m like oh fuck is this hawk fucked up do I got a fucked up baby bird of prey in my little tree here why isn't he up there with the other ones with his family I just started looking at it I'm like are you fucked up because I can't handle a fucked up bird your size I don't know what I'll do the sadness of it'll just fucking kill me and i just sat there and looked at it and i was like well maybe he's just hanging out birds just hang out it's not like he's got somewhere to go really but if he's fucked up i'm not going to be

able to deal with it so i think i'm going to go in the house for a while come back out later to see if it's gone and just hope it's gone and not on my lawn with some sort of fucked up wing or head or foot or whatever i just couldn't deal with it i just taking the goddamn cat to the vet i don't know what i would do with a with a baby hawk with a broken wing you know i'm gonna put that in a box and bring it to the fucking vet. I just couldn't. Well, that's where my brain went. But I came out and he's gone. He's up there.

I saw him this morning, him and his sibling and the mother hanging out. Joey Pants, Joey Pantoliano, Ralphie from the Sopranos. He's in the Matrix movie. He's been in everything. All right. Joey Pantoliano, Ralphie from The Sopranos. He was in The Matrix movie. He's been in everything, all right? And, you know, as I said before, he's got From the Vine, a film that'll be on VOD next month. And, you know, I talked to Joey Pants, and I loved it. Jersey, that talk is coming right up.

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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. Straight up. It's nice to meet you, Joe. Thank you, Mark.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me. How are you holding up? Where are you, in Los Angeles? Are you here? No, I'm in Connecticut. We live in Connecticut. Oh, really? Perfect, yeah.

Are you going crazy? No, because we live, we have three acres. I got three of my four adult kids here. Yeah. Plus a wife and a boyfriend. And we're taking walks. You know, the first 14 days we were in isolation. And now it's just we're with each other.

Right. We take walks. Wait, so your wife has a boyfriend? Is that what you're telling me? No, no. My daughter's boyfriend. That sounds pretty exciting. You're a really open-minded guy.

Yeah, we're very, very liberal-minded here in Connecticut. You know, it's really bizarre. It's weird. It's fucking crazy. Normally, I pretty much live on the couch anyway. I mean, I've been isolated for the last 12 years. But this thing, this way of starting the pop at the scene, people are getting crazy.

My friends, some of my friends are going crazy. Yeah. You know, I got yelled at by a lady in the supermarket last week. They put these tapes on the floor so this goes straight and no two carts at the same time anymore and i didn't know and lady's screaming at me about i'm going the wrong way and i didn't see the line so i don't know what she's talking about yeah you know it's like it's like being a vampire you know yeah back back away it's crazy man but you'd stay in touch with friends and everything the thing that i've noticed is my friends i'm talking to my friends on the phone

again yeah you know for the last two or three years everybody's kind of texting each other there's no connection right my phone didn't ring right That's a good thing. And some of my friends have gotten, some of my friends died. I have three friends that died and seven of them are still in the hospital. But the thing- Of the coronavirus? Yeah. How many died? Well, five people I know died. Oh, my God. And three were good friends.

In New York? Well, one was in Florida. One was 81. He had what they would call pre-existing conditions. Right. He had what they would call pre-existing conditions. One friend got sick, and they thought it was stomach blockage. It turned out it was before they shut down. I was doing a play in New York, and it was before they shut down the theater, all the theaters. And so it was diagnosed as a stomach thing.

It turned out to probably have been the corona, but he didn't die. Everybody's frightened and nobody's saying that they're frightened. So they're arguing. There's arguments about things that have no relevancy because they're cooped up and concerned. Yeah, man, it's devastating. I'm sorry you lost your friend in that i have not you know that so many people on the east coast i guess all over are being personally affected i my mother's friend got it but she got she's got through it but i i don't know anybody personally out here yeah yet you know what i mean but uh but i can't believe that you spend a lot of time on the couch it looks like you're working every fucking minute.

It's the only reason why I work is to get off the goddamn couch. It's like, well, if I don't say yes, then I'll be on the couch. How many times can you watch Casablanca? Well, I mean, is that why a lot of times you, I mean, have you made movies you don't even remember doing? Yes. And I've been seeing them. I, you know, literally you see stuff and you go i don't

remember but you know recently my friend andy davis yeah who uh directed the fugitive and right we did three three movies together and right we did a movie with andy andy garcia and alan arkin called steel big steel little and and i always told him I didn't understand the movie. So he sent me the movie. It was like the Blu-ray. He says, this movie is so up to date. It's so relevant to today and what's going on. And it is. But I saw, there was scenes, there's a whole sequence where I'm in drag.

Literally, I'm in full drag. I don't remember shooting it. I don't remember shooting it. I don't remember shooting it. I don't remember anything about it. How is that possible, Joe? Well, I was a drug addict and an alcoholic, so that might have something to do with it. You were able to work drunk and work on drugs. What was the drugs?

What drugs did you like? Well, actually, no, I wasn't really drunk when I worked. Yeah, right. When I got home. Right. But, you know, my favorite drug was painkillers, oxycodone. Oh, yeah. You know, as it turned out that, you know, I talk about this in my second book, but I had seven deadly symptoms.

And my first drug of choice was food. So when I was 14, I wound up becoming a house. I put on 100 pounds. And I wanted the girls to like me. So I started starving myself. And that had a whole different effect. The idea that I could go to bed, you know, I could stop eating at seven and go to bed and wake up in the morning, having accomplished that goal of not eating. And, and the feeling that it gave me, uh, um,

I really loved that feeling. Um, and then, you know, success for a long time was a drug of choice. And all of this was to escape this feeling that was living in here, so that if I could become successful, this would go away. Or if I could sleep with the beautiful actress model, whatever, this would go away. What is that? The sadness inside, you mean? This would go away. What is that? The sadness inside, you mean?

Yeah. Well, intellectually, I didn't know that it was sadness, that it was overwhelming depression. Right. I didn't know that. I just knew that I didn't like the way it felt and that if I achieved this, that this would change and this never changed. I just felt it. if i achieved this that this would change and this never changed i just felt it i just felt because i'm sober myself but i just felt like when you talking about that you know i just felt the uh the that that weird rush of relief that you literally feel in your heart when you eat a piece of cake or do a fucking line of blow or fuck somebody i just felt it yeah and uh i don't i don't usually feel it but yeah there was

something about the way you were communicating it how how do you did now do you do uh like are you a sober guy you just you just done with that shit no i you know i i do i do a lot of things but you know it's like one thing i I realized is I'm far from sober. I mean, I'm a fucking lunatic, you know. So I don't do drugs and I don't drink alcohol. I don't alter my chemistry. But I'm absolutely out of my mind. Yeah.

I mean, you can get off on anything, right? You know, anger, food, whatever. So wait, how did you grow up? How did you come from it you come from a depression uh yeah yeah uh um there was a lot of trauma in my family it was um handed out to me my my mother uh you know my mother hated her father and and uh and she hated men, and even the men that she loved. That self-fulfilling prophecy where she would go after, get them to pop, and when we would pop,

she would start singing Who's Sorry Now in bad voice. She was a terrible singer. But as a challenge, smoke four packs of cigarettes a day. And she'd go, who's sorry now? Like I won, you know, I won. After she pushed you over the edge? Over the edge. And she did that with my father and her third cousin lover, who ultimately turned out to be my biological father.

Right, what? Yeah, until I was 60. I was 64 years old when I finally found out, I got absolute evidence with that 23andMe that I did it because my sister was giving me all kinds of shit that why did I say that cousin Flory might be daddy. And so I was staying with a friend. He said, you know, there's this thing 23andMe.

That'll shut her up. Yeah. So I sent the kit to her and we both spit in the tubes. And he came back, said I was, you know, she was my half sister. Oh, my God. So that's just a few years ago? Yeah, that was a few years ago. Oh my God. So wait, you grew up in New Jersey? Yeah, I grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey. Small town. Yeah, yeah. It was a small town then. Now it's a hipster town. Back then it was what? Was it

mostly Italian? It was multi-ethnic, very diverse, but diverse. But, I mean, it's like it's only a mile square and there's something like 45, 50,000 people live there. Now it's a very wealthy community now. Yeah, it got all redone and everything. So what was the family business? Well, you know, my father, Monk Dominic Panigliano, he was a foreman, but he was a degenerate gambler. And so was my mother uh so was everybody you know everybody's always always paying playing the numbers oh you know it's the daily double and uh and flory cousin flory i remember your real dad yes yes uh like aunt lizzie

his mother who my mom would take me to the city every, you know, on the weekends to see Aunt Lizzie. Right. Then I found out that Aunt Lizzie was my grandmother. You know, at 62. I had to do the math then. How are they related? How is Flory a cousin?

Flory was a callow. My mother's, so on my mother's mother's side yeah yeah so uh so and then aunt lizzie was my mother's second cousin my grandmother was my you know so and point of fact my grandmother was also my fourth cousin but everyone's a degenerate gambler so that's a that's that's one of the bugs. Right. Right? Absolutely. You didn't get that one?

No, no. Because we'd have to sneak out in the dark of night to beat the landlord that was putting liens on us. My mom would... I was born in 51, so if they shut off our telephone, which was a constant every 80 days, they'd shut it off. And then she'd get the daily news and go through the obituary and see who died and say, okay, yeah, hello, this is Mrs. Sullivan.

I just moved to 701 Adams Street. i need to get my phone turned on and that's she just she'd use the dead person's name or the wife that she would she would get five dollars a vote when we would go to all of the polls because she said listen dead people have as much a right to vote as people that are alive. And she would go and find people. You ever see the movie The Great McGinty? No.

Preston Sturgis? No. Oh, my God. You've got to see this movie. It's fantastic. But that's what we would do. Because the whole thing, that saying, all politics is local politics, has a way bigger meaning for me. Oh, because she'd get paid by a candidate to vote for dead people.

Yeah, and you get your guy in on the third war to be an alderman, and now they had some power, so Uncle Popeye became the dog catcher. Uncle Popeye was also the town drunk, so he would forget that he had dead dogs in the trunk. Is that serious? And then when we'd go down to Jersey Shore, we, you know, the kids, none of us wanted to be in Uncle Popeye's car because it smelled of, of those terrible Tampico cigars and,

and dead rotted dogs in the trunk. You couldn't get the smell out. So you didn't want to go to the beach with him, huh? Didn't want to go down to Jersey Shore with Uncle Popeye? Yeah. Long Branch. You know, he didn't want to go to the beach with him huh didn't want to go down to jersey shore with uncle papa yeah long branch yeah he didn't want to do that so when do you get like in your father they're both gambling god you're so fucking lucky i i tell you man as a guy who did drugs and drank and sex and whatever the gambling one i'm so glad i never got that yeah because it's because it's like it's crazy i don crazy. I don't even understand where the fun in it is. You know what I mean? Well, that's the thing. There is no fun in it.

There's no fun. I mean, the thing is, what I had to learn was that it was the aggravation, that rage, that fear, the confusion, that was visceral. That I could feel.

That reminded me of home. But this whole idea of serenity, that I couldn't pick serenity out in a lineup. It has no feeling. Yeah, who needs that? Anger and rage is a much more visceral feeling than love. Yeah, oh, for sure yeah oh yeah and so so you do you have a constant you have to constantly kind of uh because i find as i get

older because i have an anger problem too but like yeah you start to realize you hurt people right yeah well you know it's like what are the does it have to be, does it have to be said? Does it have to be said now? Does it have to be said by me? I talk a lot less now. Okay. Now I have nothing to add. And that way everybody stays around. Yeah.

You don't end up alone yelling at nothing. Yeah. So Wendy, you just have the one sister? I have my sister, Marianne. Yeah, Marianne. And then I got, I got four kids that are all adults and four grandboys in Las Vegas. My daughter's in the restaurant business there. Oh, in Vegas.

You go out there a lot? To see the kids. I hate Vegas. I've always hated it. I hate it too. You mean you hated it when it was nice? Before it got shitty? I hated it. Yeah. I hated it when it was nice before it got shitty i i hated it yeah i hated it when you know what the old vegas uh yeah because i i think maybe because of the gambling

yeah you know um it just uh and i just don't like the desert i don't know it's like too bleak yeah everything looks alike you go by them all and they got a dentist there they got a nice place they got the pizza hut it's all the same yeah yeah yeah yeah so you've been living on the east coast your whole life well i lived in la uh for 20 years when i went to california in 77 somehow wound up in ven and lived around there. And then, you know, when my daughter was like 16, her grades weren't so hot. And I said, look, I don't want to live here anymore.

I don't have to. I never work here. You know, they hired me. I could get on an airplane. I could do that back east. And I hear the schools in Connecticut are good. So either you get your act together or we're moving. So we wound up moving.

And then after the first semester, she wound up becoming an honor student again. And I said, what changed? And she said, well, I guess it's cool to be smart here. Thank God. That's a good call on your behalf. Yeah. So how do you start the business how do you start acting did you did you go to new york where'd you go yeah my flory had a friend that knew an actor not your father not your mother's husband the uncle

yeah the second story you call him your father now well Well, yeah, I called him my father. I called them both my father after a while. Okay. When he got out of prison, he lived with us. And then mommy threw daddy out of the house and Flory stayed. Oh, so he was actually there when you were a kid. He was there until I was like, you know, he'd come and visit. And then I remember him. I was like, you know, he'd come and visit.

And then I remember him. I have memories of him coming to the house and playing with me. And then I remember my mom taking me to the federal holding facility. He'd been convicted of what I didn't know at the time. And saying goodbye and touching the glass and talking on the telephone. You know, I was seven years old. I thought it was really cool. Yeah. What was he in prison for?

The last thing was, you know, drug trafficking. He was a solid, he was a wise guy. Yeah. You know, like I wanted to be an actor. He wanted to be a wise guy. That's what he wanted to be. And he was. And he wanted to be a wise guy that's what he wanted to be and he was and he was okay so how did that how did he inspire your acting uh he said every every move i ever made

in my life was the wrong move so don't fuck up your life like i fucked up my life the energy that i put into doing this shit you could take that energy in a positive way. And if you put your mind to it, if this is what you want to do, because he saw me in the high school play, he said, if this is what you want to do and there's nothing that can stop you, he said, remember those fucking movie stars, they wipe their ass twice a day if they're lucky. Yeah.

And so it was what I wanted to do. And I met a guy who said, go down to HB Studios. And that's how I've been incredibly lucky in my life to meet mentors, people that had something that I wanted, like they say in the 12-step program, that saw something in me that I didn't you know, like they say in the 12-step program, that saw something in me that I didn't know existed and guided me. It was HB Studios? HB Studios. There was a guy named Al Sinkes. He wasn't even a teacher. Really talented guy, you know, and I got to stage manage on shows that he directed. And that was in New York? Yeah, down on Bank Street.

And also teachers, teachers like my speech therapy teacher there and other teachers that followed after him and just, you know, other people, you know, like the Wallachs, Eli Wallach and Ann Jackson, because I was in school with their daughter, Roberta. And they they they took me and introduced me to my first first agent and working my just little teeny breaks, a series of of those little thousand little breaks that you get. So what was it? So in high school, you did some acting, but what was the first stuff you did in New York? See, when I decided to be an actor, I was my last year in high school. And I was, I don't know, four months shy of being 19 years old, because I was undiagnosed dyslexic. You know, they didn't have dyslexia. Then it was either you're stupid, lazy, or crazy. So I didn't know how to read. I didn't learn how to read because I was embarrassed. It was so difficult, and I just took an attitude.

One of the reasons why I wanted to be in show business is I thought you didn't need how to read. You need to learn how to read. What do you need to read for? That looks easy. I've been lying my whole life. And so my teacher said, if you want to do this, you have an aptitude for this, you're going to need to learn how to read. So I started, I was diagnosed. I found a teacher, an elementary school teacher that evaluated me and said I had a third grade reading level.

said I had a third grade reading level. So those first two or three years at HB Studios, I used to find off-off-Broadway, and I would audition for little plays that had no repercussions, that I could fall on my nose and nobody would give a shit. They weren't going anywhere, and I wasn't going anywhere. And so I did a lot of these little basement plays as I started to learn how to read. It's a crazy time, right? It was basement plays. It must've been pretty wild though. It was the sixties, right? Or what? Early seventies?

Early seventies. Yeah. But listen, my rent was $106 a month. I was weighing tables three times a week and living like a king. I was making $140 a week. I had a lot of money. I don't know how these kids do it today. Yeah. So you're doing the little plays in the basement. You're learning how to read. You're weighing tables.

Weighing tables. And you get lucky. And I got to play a national tour of one floor of the cuckoo's nest who'd you play i played billy bibbit oh wow and then i i got another production of that and with robert forrester a summer tour who did he play mcmurphy oh no, no kidding. Huh? Yeah. He, you know, and he, he is another one that just, you know, saw something in me and, and, and introduced me to people. I got to hang out with them and get to know him and he was great. It was absolutely great. And, uh, and I just, uh,

then I got my SAG card for what I did. Uh, I did a Joseph Strick movie. Barry Bostrick was in it, Regina Baff, Robert Dreyfuss. I was sub number two. And I did that. And I would see guys that were in my acting class on television. There was this whole exodus of people that were going to New York from New York to Los Angeles.

And they were on like, you know, police story and I shied and Kojak. And I'm thinking if those guys can get jobs, I can get a job. Yeah. So I saved up enough money with my then girlfriend, $1,500 each. And, and we got on an airplane.

So you go out and then you start doing TV in LA? Is that what happens? Yeah, I got really lucky really quick. I was there a couple of months. And back in those days, you had to audition. There was a casting director named Eddie Foy III, who was, I guess, the grandkid of Eddie Foy, the famous comedian. Yeah. And he worked at ABC. He was a casting guy, had a casting, I guess. And my girlfriend got an audition. We did a scene from a play.

And he thought I was right for something and recommended me for this this pilot with john beiner this tv show that we're doing at abc john beiner yeah another comedian yeah and i and i wound up getting that job yeah uh and that was at columbia tv what was that called that was called mcnamara's band okay at that uh Bernie Kukoff and Jeff Harris and Harry Columbia uh yeah they wrote that uh I think it wound up becoming turning into Johnny Dangerously the the Michael Keaton movie years later oh yeah and and then uh somebody you know Columbia TV I got hired by Rob Reiner for a TV series that he did a half hour show after All in the Family called Free Country. And it took place.

It was a turn of the century sitcom. Yeah. We did five of those. And then and from that, Columbia TV was doing the remake of From Here to Eternity, a six-hour miniseries, and I got that. Did you play the trumpet player? No, Pruitt. No, I played Angelo Maggio, the part. Of course, right.

Frank Sinatra. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which was funny because he was from Hoboken, too. Yeah, yeah. Did you ever meet that guy? You ever meet that guy? I, you know, I, I met Sinatra from afar, but he had sent, he had sent his guy, uh, Mickey Rudin was his attorney. And at the, at the party, the premier party, Rudin introduced himself to me and I was such

an idiot. He said, you know, I've represented your predecessor for the last 30 years. And I didn't know what a predecessor was. Yeah. And I said, what's the predecessor? He what a predecessor was yeah and I said what's the predecessor he said Frank Sinatra I said no kidding I said you know his his father and my grandfather were firemen together because I know all about it I said he said I said what are you going to tell Sinatra he says I'm going to tell him you did all right. You did all right. But I was too nervous to meet him.

You're too nervous to meet Frank? Yeah. He held a big place in Hoboken. Oh, yeah. I mean, he was another reason. Like my friends in the acting class, if Sinatra could get out, so could I. It was a way to get out. Yeah.

You know, they made on the waterfront in Hoboken. It was a way to get out. A lot of the guys were extras that were in the movie you know so it was like shit yeah i'll be an actor that'll be a way to get out so right so you're doing you're doing television in the 70s there and then like the movie thing when does that take off like i remember i didn't realize you were in that idol maker movie i kind of remember that movie well that's the's the, see, what happens is, is you meet people, like, in that case, Rita Riggs was the costume designer

on All in the Family, and she did the thing with Rob, Free Country. And so Taylor Hackford was his first film, and he was staying at at her place. She had this beautiful warehouse apartment on Third Street. So she said, hey, there's a guy I just worked with, Joey. You should bring him in. And so that's how I got that job. And you sort of establish yourself as a certain frequency because you're,

you know, you're a singular guy, singular talent. And it just seems like, you know, at any role that I've ever seen you in, in my entire life, it's just like,

which frequency of, of, of me do you need? Do you want me, how high do you want me to turn this up? It's not true. It's sad, but's sad but true like you want a little bit or you want the full thing you want but but no it's great because you know no one can be you but that was the first movie the first big movie was the idol maker i think so when do you like outside of just doing the work i mean when

do you realize i guess it must have been risky business, where you're like, I'm a guy now. People know me. I'm on the street. They recognize me. Well, I thought that was the case when I did From Here to Eternity. Yeah. And then I didn't work for 18 months, and I was weighing tables again. Oh, no.

Really? Yeah. Oh, shit. That's the worst. In New York, you can get away with it. Yeah. I was always just trying to pay the rent. You know, I was just like, the drive, I was motivated by fear.

It's always the last job. I'm never going to work again. Right. And I never wanted to get too attached. It was like, I don't want to have to say goodbye. I hate saying goodbye. Right. And I never wanted to get too attached. It was like, I don't want to have to say goodbye. I hate saying goodbye. So when movies were over, it was horrible.

You know, it was a hard, those last days are always horrible because it's just, you got to say goodbye. And you, you know, and it's. You get attached? Well, it's also, it's like this kind of concentrate. You get there, you show up and this one's your wife and that one's your lover and this is your brother. And so it's also, it's like this kind of concentrate. You get there, you show up, and this one's your wife, and that one's your lover, and this is your brother. And so it's like instant. It's instantaneous.

Right. I have a family. And then you never see her again. Yeah, you're like, I have a family, and then they're gone. Yeah, and they're gone. But I just love the noise of it, the distraction, the moment of clarity in between action and cut, you know, it's like, I always kind of thought, I never knew who I was. And I liked the idea that I could invent somebody that I wanted to be like. You know, I think one of the reasons why I'm so

convincing of playing bad guys is because I was such, I was so bullied as a kid because I was fat. I was always getting my ass kicked because I was an easy target. These bastards would see me and they just start smacking me around. And so I never, I could never stand up for myself. could never stand up for myself so seeing those guys in my mind's eye when i was playing these scenes i've a lot of times i was getting even with these bastards 30 years later no kidding my doctor said i was sublimating unresolved feelings so so by playing the bad guys you were able to beat the bad guy yeah or the bad guy that you know kicked your ass when you were humiliated me humiliated me you know that that's a terrible

feeling to be humiliated like that to be embarrassed shamed yeah and you think you're weak you think it's you so you knew all these guys you're very familiar with bullies from the other side of it oh yeah yeah you know and and that's why trump bugs me so much oh he's a real real deal nasty lying you know a guy that got had to have been bullied his whole fucking life i don't know was he though mean, he seems to just, I think he's just kind of a sociopathic narcissist. I don't think he ever got, I think he always just sat there and, you know,

waited for his moment to. No, I think, I think you gotta be creative. You gotta be hurt that bad to, to, to, to be that isolated.

His old man. It must've been his old man. Had to be his old man. Yeah. Had to be. But you, your, your family,'ve been his old man had to be his own man. Yeah. It had to be, but you, you're your family. You didn't get it from your family. Did you?

No. I mean, my mother was, my mother was, uh, you know, the shit that she would, she'd say the stuff that she would say to us,

you know, and then, but she was damaged. You know, she, she, she had a terrible childhood and, and she was the victim of incest by the hands of her father. She was terribly, terribly damaged, terribly damaged.

And as a result, we were victimized by that. She loved us. You just never knew who you were going to get. Right, right, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, though, because you're a guy, and I'm the same way. she loved us it was you just never knew who you were gonna get you know right right sure yeah yeah yeah it's interesting though because you know you're a guy and i i'm the same way like i feel like i don't know who like for most of my life i didn't know who the fuck i was but like when you watch like an old piece of work you did can't you see yourself i mean like after a certain point like

i started to realize like how am i the only one that doesn't know who i am because i'm the same guy like i can see it in there. There's parts of me that never change, which means to me that I was somebody, that I had a self, but for some reason living in it, I couldn't quite identify it. No, I don't think so. I never liked watching myself. part of, you know, there's a lot, I never liked watching myself, you know, and now that I'm an old man to see my new, you know, the more recent stuff that the way my body is and I'm leaning over and I'm rotting away, you know, it's like, I can't stomach it. I, you know,

it's Billy Wilder was quoted as saying, it's some of my work I load less than others. Yeah. Oh, I totally feel that way oh i totally feel that way so when did you like like when you're at working like when you did risky business well you know tom cruise a big star yet or he wasn't was he no no so like you didn't know what was going to happen with that movie you're just taking a job that's right taking a job and i've you know and at that time they were doing all these kid movies. And it was for me, it was just two weeks work. And that was a big deal. That kind of broke you, didn't it?

Well, yeah. It's like, what the hell? I couldn't believe it. You know, that it was that successful. Like, what the hell happened? And that's that became my kind of connection with Warner Brothers for years. I went from one Warner Brothers picture with success, The Fugitive, and Matrix. I did a lot of Goonies.

It was risky business to the Goonies, and the Goonies to the Fugitive, and the Fugitive to the Matrix. Those are the ones that made money. I'm not mentioning the Shitbox ones. Right, but you were in La Bamba that did all right i saw it that was a huge that was it yeah and that was taylor hackford he introduced it so you know it's like you make the the one thing that i've

been very lucky about is that these guys like me enough to hire me again. Yeah. That's the one fucking thing. Because it's certainly not talent. No, you bring the juice, man. You're fucking Joe Pantoliano. My daughter, she says, she just made me change my Instagram. Yeah. And I say, I'm no actor, and I got over 100 movies to prove it. uh and it's i say i'm no actor and i got over 100 movies to prove it when you were doing uh uh empire of the sun could you ever have imagined that christian

bale would be who he is now oh no i i could never imagine him being 20 we actually just saw that movie for the first time you know last week we did a goonie reunion uh everybody uh uh josh gad he put together so it was like spielberg and donner and chris columbus and all the goonie kids and me and robert dobby the fratelli family and you know one of those skype things everybody's yeah yeah yeah yeah and uh and so after after doing that it was really cool to do it. It felt really good. And so my family and I watched The Goonies. Yeah. And they said, this is really great.

This is a really fun movie. And I said, you know, we got to watch. So the next night we watched Empire of the Sun. I haven't seen Empire of the Sun in 30 years. Yeah. And my kids were like, who's that kid holy shit yeah it's like it's the experience that i remember not the acting yeah yeah you're talking about oh yeah i was in china and i had to get i went to china we shot four weeks in china and I had to drive a truck. It was a double clutch truck.

Right. So the Chinese, this is 1987. The Chinese made me get a driver's license. They wouldn't let me drive the truck unless I had a driver's license. I was the first American to have a driver's license in China and I left it there. Idiot that i am um you don't have your chinese driver's license anymore no how cool is that well now you can drive a double clutch truck too yeah yeah if i could find that thing but you remember him as a kid though christian bale oh yeah yeah yeah the whole family they're adorable they came to they came to our wedding, Nancy and I. We got married 26 years ago. That was Christian in his awkward stage, you know, 16 years old. Right.

He's 63. That's fun. Are you still in touch with him now? I saw him a while ago. We were at a shopping mall, and this guy comes up. He goes, Jerry, it's Christian. And he says, I want you to introduce you to my wife. You know, he's adorable.

He's a good kid. He's a good man. He's a good man. Yeah, good actor, huh? Yeah, he's an amazing actor. And I didn't know. I mean, all I remember, I told this to my kids, all I remember from that experience is how Steven Spielberg would

have him running around before he said action. He'd get him on a bicycle. So the kid was always out of breath. And that's one of the few things that I remember about that whole entire experience. I remember we couldn't eat either because we're supposed we're in a concentration camp so i was like living in spain for two weeks two months and i was living in in uh in london and and china and we couldn't eat we had we were on these strict diets because we couldn't put on weight and and you must and that must have been terrible all the good food around right all around you i mean spain those spanish people are crazy they don't go out to dinner until three in the morning i know it's food and everything's like a small play to everything but there's hundreds of them yeah so and then like uh and then another memory i have is that the that midnight run character is hilarious and they really that was one of those characters where

you could go completely crazy right that was an interesting thing because marty you know marty press was somebody i knew from the nyu days when they were students right yeah right so he calls me up and says hey listen i'm doing this movie that take a look at these two characters you could play either one of them pick what you like so i didn't like i said i don't want to do that marty i want to do something different i've done that before well what do you want to do i said i want to play the account and he started laughing. He said, that ain't going to happen. I said, well, the only other part then is the bail bondsman. He goes, no, no, no. The bail bondsman, I got this other thing in mind. I want the guy to be really,

really fat. He says, if you want that part, you got to win it. You got to come in and audition. I said, sure. So they said, you're reading with Robert De Niro and you know I worked on it and because of my dyslexia for years I had always memorized the part but then pretended I was reading because I didn't want them to think that I was giving

my best this is my best A game so you had to act on top of acting yes and I'm reading with deniro and at one point he's asking for money he says where's my money eddie give me my money and he and he puts out his hand like you know give me the money yeah and i took his hand and i shake his hand i put his hand up to my chest. I started petting his hand. I said, what's in my

line was, what's the matter with you? You don't trust me. And I'm like, like, I'm making love to him. What's the matter with me? You don't trust me. Come over here. You're gonna get you. You know, instead of like another actor would say, what's the matter? You don't trust me. So I saw De Niro's eyes go like this. Yeah. Like, like, he was like, Whoa like whoa who's this guy and I felt really good it was one of the only times I remember like feeling like I got the job in the room and and uh was that the first time you met De Niro I think officially I had a small part in Godfather II. And I, we were on 6th Street between Avenue A and B. They took that whole street and turned it into 1920 New York Street. And we were in a tenement building. And those apartments were turned into dressing rooms.

And I accidentally walked into his dressing room one day. I thought I was going into mine. And there he was. He was sitting there reading his script. So I'd seen him around. I used to see him downtown at the bookstore. But that was the first time I officially met him as an actor. Did you guys hit it off pretty good?

I liked him. Yeah, Yeah. He, you know, he was, uh, incredibly interesting to work with then. I mean, he was, you know, that young De Niro had a mystique and allure that he was incredibly, uh, concentrated and, and, um, but he, he, he, he was incredibly giving actor and, uh, and, uh, would, you and would knock on my door and say, you want to run lines and stuff like that. It was always about doing a good job in the work and totally accessible. So I adored him.

After you do Midnight Run and you start to do – I don't remember when you did the uh the bad boy movies but i mean you just you just never stopped oh the fugitive was probably before that yeah you know and it and it's not it has nothing to do with talent it has to do with movies making money right back back then it was like it you know this movie is a hit okay he's in it, boom. Like, you know, now I'm in the biggest hit movie in the world, Bad Boys for Life has been the number one movie. It's broken all records because of the coronavirus. It's the last movie that's in the theaters.

So nothing has come out. And because of that, I am in the number one movie in the history of the world. And I can't get hired. We're all out of work. Who were you in Godfather 2? My part was cut out. Remember the guy, Fenucci, the guy in the white? Yeah.

Well, you know, there's a scene where he is attacked when coppola years later put together the godfather saga where he took all three movies and yeah and so i'm in that but i was one of three guys that that jumped jumped him and and cut his throat no kidding yeah it was really cool scene because he's all in white and and they cut his throat. We cut his throat. Oh, yeah. They refer to that. Yes. Yes. By the way, I tell you a funny story. I was working at O'Neill's Balloon, Patrick, Patrick O'Neill's restaurant across from American Ballet Theatre Center. Yeah, I was a waiter there. And one day these guys show up and they got 16 millimeter cameras and uh I go what are you guys doing they go well we're we're shooting we're shooting some uh

b-roll I said oh oh you're filmmakers I'm an actor and they go no we're doing a movie we're looking uh we're scouting locations for a movie that's coming in from Hollywood I said well you got anything in there for me and he said well not well, not really. You know, it's all old people. But you're an actor. Maybe you know we're looking for a good casting director. So I only knew one casting director, Vic Ramos, who I'd done extra work for. I said, Vic Ramos, the best casting director in the whole world. So a couple of weeks later, he calls me up. He goes, I'll be a son of a bitch.

I've never gotten an extra. Got me a job. But I just got this thing called Harry and Tonto with Art Carney. There's nothing in it. It's all old people, but I owe you one. So now he calls me up six, seven months later. He goes, look, I'm doing this movie for Pete's sake with Barbara Streisand. Peter Yates is directing it.

You know, the guy that did Bullet? Yeah, yeah. He says, well, you're going to work for me. I'm going to give you a voucher a day, and you'll take care. You're going to wrangle the extras. And if there's a small part of something, you know, maybe we get you. So one day Peter Yates goes, yeah, who's playing the undercover cop? And I said, me. He says, all right, come on. I was in my street clothes. So I get the job. I arrest Barbra Streisand.

The year goes by. I need to get my W-4. I call Vic. He says, come over. And all of these guys are looking. There's all these guys dressed like Marlon Brando, right? Their hair slicked back. It's 1974.

And he goes, Joey, I got it over here. I go, wait a minute. Joey, Joey, Joey, wait, wait. He goes, do i got it over here he go wait a minute joey joey joey wait wait he goes do you do stunts i go yeah sure why not uh and he goes all right come and meet fred roose fred roose goes you do stunts yeah you you're an actor yeah when you study to tell him i get hired now i've got it it's my job apparently that i'm going to come from nowhere and jump on the back of this guy Benucci and we're on 6th street in the back alley and it's all

this broken glass and condoms and you know IV needles and Coppola says where's the stunt guy and I guess I was a little green because I saw that Fred Roos the producer immediately knew that I was a little green because I saw that Fred Roos, the producer, immediately knew that I was a lying sack of shit. And he pointed at me like, that's the stunt guy. So I must have

been shaking because Coppola takes me, he goes, I want you to jump off of the first floor fire escape onto this guy's back. And I said, okay. And he looked at me and he said, that's pretty high, huh? I said, yeah. And he said, all right, just come from around the building. So he knew, and you know, somebody else would have said, get this fucking guy out of here and get me a stunt man. You know what I mean? But he didn didn't do that and that's what i'm talking about those kind of happy good luck moments in your life yeah that you know enabled me to meet robert de niro and all of these people and holy shit well he was like uh coppola was a pretty manic guy before he got you know his diagnosis for his medicine it wasn't he was he wild to watch on set? No, no, no. You know,

very calm, very, very commanding, you know, very calm. I guess maybe it, maybe it was apocalypse now that put them over. Oh yeah. Right. You worked, did you work with, I don't know. Did you ever work with Dennis Hopper? I did. I worked with Dennis Hopper on a movie in Las Vegas. And he was wonderful to work with. Peter Weller, Dennis, me, I think Tia Carrera, Howard Fuhrer directed it. What movie? Do you remember? I forget the name of it.

Yeah, yeah. The cool thing that I remember is we were shooting nights. And it happened to be the night we went on the roof to see them implode the Sands Hotel, which was maybe 300 yards away, 400. Yeah, yeah. We saw the Sands Hotel come down. That was amazing. You hate Vegas. It must have been a good night for you.

But your parents weren't the kind of people that went to Vegas, right? No, no. My mom, my mom was a bookie. She, this summer, the way we were able to go down the Jersey shore, she'd worked for these bookies. And so she had a territory that would play the numbers. Uh, you know, the boarding house, uh, uh, the Newark boarding house, the East orange boarding house, the Jersey city boarding house and the Hoboken Boarding House. What about Tommy Lee Jones? He's a good guy? I love him.

I love him. I think I learned more about acting from that guy because he's so good, and he's so smart, but his intellect, he's able to separate his intellect from his spontaneity, his ability to be so spontaneous. And, you know, I just adored working with him. I've worked with him three times. I've done three movies with him. Yeah, it's the same character, right?

It was all the fugitive. No, I don't know. The fugitive twice. No, I did the fugitive twice. And then we did a movie with Ron Shelton movie a couple of years ago. Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee. It was good. George Wallace. George Wallace, the comedian?

Yes. What the hell movie was that? I think they changed the name of it. The Feast of the Seven Fishes? No. The Brawler? No. Oh, the name of it. The Feast of the Seven Fishes? No. The Brawler? No. Oh, maybe this is it.

Just Getting Started. That's it. Okay. I never saw it. I've never seen any of those movies you just mentioned. With Rene Russo? Rene Russo was in it too? Yeah, I never saw it.

Wait, wait. Did you have a lot of, were you a big scenes in it? You a big big part i was there for a while yeah i just you know it's like you're not gonna watch it but you do like so you're a guy like you like me though like i don't you you like doing it and that's enough what do you got it's enough and you're only going to be disappointed. Yeah, right. It's like, oh, they did this. They took that out. Right. I suck.

Pretty much, I lead with I suck. But what about the fucking Sopranos? You got to be proud of that. I didn't see that either. Come on. What are you, crazy? I don't have HBO to this day. Oh, come on.

You didn't watch yourself play that guy? That guy was a horrible person. You know, incredibly fun. Incredibly fun. But, you know, very complicated guy. Very, very nasty guy. Yeah, he was fucking horrendous. Fucking horrendous. Yep, yep yep but he got it

none of my kids are allowed to watch it none of them traumatic it would be traumatic they can't separate you know that's a nice that's what's beautiful about movies is you know you know it's a fucking movie because it's not happening it's happening on your tv yeah you know you know it you absolutely know but you get involved you believe these people yeah uh you know good ones yeah so so it's like no like you said it's the joy that in the moments of moments that there's those little moments that were in between action and cut where you go what would you know they somebody says cut and and you go the fuck was that you know like what happened what just happened you know and then you get these directors that that was

perfect do it again just like that i don't know what the fuck i just did what's he talking about but that they kept you on usually you know they kind of churned through guys in one season the bad guys but you were on for two seasons because they got a lot out of you. Well, David, you know, David called, you know, he called me up. He says, it's two years work. You come in, you go up against Tony, you know, this is all he said to me. I remember exactly. He says, he's a scumbag, but they're all scumbags. And then in the end, you're going to lose out to Tony. and you know it's two seasons that's it that's all he said uh i did that thing i was on it for two months yeah and i got a script and it says that i'm a coke addict i'm a drug addict nobody ever said i was a coke addict i never played

that yeah you know i didn't know this guy had an issue with drugs until I read about it. And I said, oh, I just did four episodes. I could have used that. He goes, ah. Did you end up playing it later? You know, there's one scene where I'm doing coke and yelling at Kirk Douglas. Right, right. Oh, yeah, that's right.

That's right. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. But like, what was it like in terms of these guys that you like, you know, Tommy Lee Jones, you know, you could sort of learn stuff from him as an actor. What was it like working with Gandolfini? He seems pretty good. Jimmy was incredibly sensitive and also the most generous guy I'd ever known in my life. And, you know, and this is this is a projection or, you know, on my part. you know, becoming that kind of iconic TV star was, I think, somewhat confusing to him. And how, you know, how people changed around him was somewhat confusing to him. Like, you know, because he would always say, I don't know what the fucking noise is about. I'm just some fat guy from Jersey. Right. But so much fun and challenge because he kept you on your toes theatrically. You never knew who you were going to get.

It was always fresh and always new. And then you have these smart editors that take all these bits and pieces and turn it into great stuff so when after you do that guy ralph in the sopranos like i you know i i imagine that more than any of any other thing you did you know because you were on you got so much screen time that people who watch the Sopranos, which was everybody except for you, um, you know, I had a,

I had a, I had a, there's still room for a fan out there then. Yeah. One hold out here. I come, but I imagine that people recognize you from that more than anything. What was the reaction to that people had to that guy

i can't imagine that there's some probably some guys like you grew up with who are like there he is but like no you know what well by the time i got the sopranos i'd already done memento i'd already done bound i'd already done the matrix um all right so yeah so it was, you know, a cluster, depending on the demographic and the cultural backgrounds of these, you know, the fans, you know, the college kids loved Memento. Um, and, uh, and, uh, you know, you, you, you had the African-Americans love the Matrix and the bad boys movies. And a lot of the college kids love that. And then you got the Tri-Staters. You know, I usually get the Soprano stuff more in the New York area. Philly, Jersey, New York.

East Coast. Yeah, East Coast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what is the reaction usually to him? Well, it's like they call you by the character name. Yeah. You know, like they'll say,

Hey, I'm really sorry about Tony. Yeah. And I used to piss me off when they would call me by the character name. What's my name? I would say, what's my name? Well,

who am I? What's my name? And they go, Oh, relax, relax. Really? You think you're going to kill him? you know and um and and jimmy and stevie van sant michael imperioli would say joey you know

these are your fans they're you know they're paying the fucking rent the customer is always right yeah yeah yeah and i get like i imagine that women probably gave you a dirty look no on the contrary women i i remember after that that scene where you killed this you killed a stripper no i killed this i killed a underage stripper pregnant stripper, pregnant stripper, my child. Yeah. Yeah. My child. And, uh, and I was, I was looking at a store on fifth Avenue. A couple of days later, I was looking in the window and somebody taps me on the shoulder and it startled me. I turned around and it was this nice blue haired old lady. She said, well, I wanted to say hello, because I love your work, but I guess you're not as tough as the guy you play on television.

You know, after I did Sopranos, I wanted to do, I wanted to change up that you didn't want to be that adversity so i did i produced and acted in the movie uh um marcia gay harden was then uh called canvas about an italian american family who's uh who's introduced a mental illness and how mental illness is affects the whole family not just the diagnoses is there something there something you wrote? No, no. A guy named Joe Greco wrote and directed it, but it was something that I wanted to marshal in because I had been getting slapped around. We were all getting slapped around

by these Italian-American anti-deformation leagues. And I was like, hey, they didn't want you to take the job like what are you guys nuts and so what do you mean by italians yeah there was a there was a whole period where these italian american defamation leagues were going after uh the sopranos and david and and the actors uh for even being a part of something that was that good. But they thought it defamed Italian-Americans. And I always thought that what I loved about The Sopranos was that if The Godfather was about the birth of family, the American family, and honor, The Sopranos is about the deconstruction of the family, the falling apart.

Yeah, yeah. And I really like that. So any opportunity, that's why the movie that I got coming out, From the Vine, which was an opportunity to play this Italian-American which was an opportunity to play this Italian-American character who's a lawyer who winds up working in a factory and then has an awakening with what he's doing for a living and goes back to his home country in Italy. So I got to work in Italy with Italian actors,

and it was a bilingual movie, and it was a lot of fun for me to get an opportunity like that because the movies that kind of really gave me most value were these little independent movies like La Bamba and Bound and Memento. In those days, you know, these two, three, four million dollar movies, they couldn't get movie stars to play those parts. So a guy like me was able to get those parts. And the same thing with technology as it is today. This movie that we made in Italy, you know, for like a million bucks,

but the technology is such that you can do it and it's less financial risk for the producers. And a guy like me, they don't need some movie star, $2 million movie star. So I can come in and get to play these good parts. So what was the thing about Canvas that was so revelatory to you? It was the idea that when someone's mind breaks and someone that you love has changed in a way that she no longer can, can be reached. And, and then you have a 10 year old boy and you're stuck in the middle of,

of how do you get somebody help that doesn't think they need it? Yeah. You know, crazy people. We don't think we're crazy. Right. Right. Right.

And, and actually that was the conduit that when Marcia Gay started working, I remember the first thought was like, who does she remind me of? And then I realized it was my mother because I never thought my mother was nuts. I just thought she was Italian. Yeah. So I just thought it was an ethnic thing. I didn't think it was mental. And so I was like,

wait a minute. If that's the case, then it's not her fault. It wasn't my mother's fault. And then maybe this is not my fault. That's interesting so it was through the uh through the work on that film that was sort of the portal into you forgiving your mother and yourself and and sort of reframing your entire uh uh life in in in a kind of a more empathetic uh through a more empathetic lens yeah it it it became the thing where i asked for help. It was like something, I'm hurting, it hurts. I was sucking down 20 Vicodin a day and didn't, I couldn't understand why I was so depressed. you know, and I'm in, you know, in the, in my dream house, I'm, I'm making money. I just won an Emmy award. I, all of the things that I thought were going to, you know, make this feeling go away. Right. And I was like, and I had this, like, I want to die. Why do I want to die? It was like, fascinating. Why you got everything you want and now you want to kill yourself. What's up? What's wrong with you? Yeah. And, and now, so what, what'd you start to kill yourself what's up what's wrong with you yeah and wait and now

so what what'd you start to do you went to therapy or you worked it through you i had to you know i i had a history uh heart disease in my family before i found out my father was my father so it turns out the good news is i don't have heart disease good news you don't have heart disease the bad news is you're gonna live to 80 so so i you know i went there and the doc said how you doing uh ekg's okay how you feeling i said you know i feel like i'm like underwater i feel like i'm walking through quicksand and yeah yeah and he said oh yeah well you know well, you know, wrong department. Here's three or four guys you can call.

Wrong department. So I found a guy, a doctor, and that started the journey. And so as I started, you know, I didn't know I had a drug problem. I didn't know I was alcoholic. I didn't know I was crazy. I didn't know any of those things. You know, I just knew that just, you know, I don't have energy. I got't know I was alcoholic. I didn't know I was crazy. I didn't know any of those things. I just knew that I don't have energy. I got to get my energy back.

Doesn't everybody want to kill themselves? I thought anybody who's smart wants to kill themselves, right? And the thing that the doctor, one day the doctor, I'm talking. He's nodding his head. Dr. Kelly, his name was. And he was half Jewish and half Irish. And he had the map of Ireland on his face. But he talked like this.

Yeah, yeah. That Jewish New Jersey thing. Uh-huh. And he said, you know, you're not going to like hearing this. But your first waking conscious thought in the morning is, fuck, I'm still here. Yeah. And I'm still here. Yeah. And I started sobbing. I just,

I just, I just, you know, and for the next six months, that's all pretty much, that's all I did. And all this pain, I didn't know where it was coming from to this day.

I really don't know where it was coming from, you know, putting it all together. And I think also nine 11, when nine11 happened, something, it was like a fault line, something got shook. And all of that emotional dust and unresolved traumatic events that happened in the course of my lifetime, all came crashing at me. And that's when i started doing the drugs in a serious way they got hold of me um and and and at that point you know i was about

like you know like the uh country western song about to lose everything yeah but then i you know i surrendered kind of thing but you were able to do that grieving, right? You were able to keep crying. I mean, that's the trick, right? Shit, man. Like, you know, once it started coming up, like you let it keep coming, huh? Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, you know, and luckily I had people and, you know, mentors again. You know, I had a good doctor and I had an AA sponsor that would just say nothing. They're just like non-judgmental. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great, man. I mean, because I feel like I need to somehow figure out how to let all that go. Cause I, I stopped myself from the crying, you know, I toughen up around it,

but I don't, you know, cause I know it needs to happen. I don't, again, like you said, I don't know what for, but I,

I know it needs to happen someplace and not just during, you know, movies or sad commercial. So I got to figure out, you know, like the tears squeak out, you know, like I got to put my cat down.

That's going to fucking send me over the edge. But I know there's an abundance of it down there. But the thing is, is like I talk about this a lot with my family. It's like if I tell you a joke and I make you laugh, that's an emotion. Yeah. Why are we discriminating against pain? Why is pain devalued or shamed? against pain? Why is pain devalued or shamed? If I'm making you cry or making you laugh or making you angry, why is it okay to have those feelings and not have the pain? Well, I think that laughing

and maybe a little bit of discomfort is probably a little more acceptable socially. You don't want to go to a party and try to upset everybody, make cry i mean i think it's it's a context thing you know what i mean i mean it's it's not a great defense to be standing there in front of a you know in a room full of your family all of them crying and you're yelling going like this is what we need to be doing you know so well you know that's what wakes and weddings are for. No, I see what you're saying, though, that there is a discomfort. I've talked about it before. I think that at some point, you know, we lost the ability to realize that, you know, it's fairly easy to be there for people because a lot of times all you have to do is listen. But for some reason people think that people other

people's problems are a burden so people become ashamed of their problems right so they don't want to talk about them because they don't want to burden people and it's just this weird thing about the pace of life or people's priorities because a lot of times you know all you got to do is stand there you know that you know and listen to a guy and then that's it, you know, feel what you're going to feel. But if they need to talk or they need to cry or whatever, you stand there and you go, OK, you better. OK, well, let me know. Call me again if you need to. And but for some reason that people don't do that. Well, that's I mean, yeah, this this wasn't happening during dinner parties. You know, we'd like right and safe environments in 12 step rooms. Right.

always like right and safe environments in 12-step rooms right and in fact in the 12 you know in the a.a rooms because you know that my guy would say hey look you know just call it alcoholism yeah yeah right right you know you know it's you're crazy but you know call it alcoholism so so people would grab him later and say hey look, look, this guy's fucking nuts. Get him out of here. And my, and my guy was, you know, a ex cop Irish six, five.

So they were going to fuck with him. Yeah. He said, you know, don't worry about him. I got him. Don't worry about him. He'll level off.

And you did, huh? Yeah. Thank God. Yeah. Hey buddy, it's great talking talking to you i'm looking forward to seeing the new movie i watched a little uh a trailer of it it looks nice looks sweet are you gonna watch it i've actually seen that one oh really that one i haven't i've actually seen that one and uh and it's pretty good i like it a lot it's just what the country needs it's about life and love and uh and not about making money where this guy was making a lot of money and he realized uh you know we he's got a daughter that hates him and a wife that you know that doesn't

love him anymore and he didn't even know it so it's a great it's it's great it's fun and there's a lot of great actors did you did you feel like uh that was those are themes that you could understand oh yeah i told the director i said look i don't they hired me right you know right quick i said look this is going to be a documentary i i don't have time to put together a character does it take time for you to put together characters? Well, sometimes when they're really complicated, but this guy was in a lot of ways closest to who I really am. And how do you, but how do you do that? How do you put the, like, you know, what, what determines what, what, how do you go about putting together a complicated character?

Well, you know, when you investigate, um, uh, you know, based on the given circumstances, you know, like the little clues, what are the characters are saying about you. Right. You know, when I was doing The Sopranos, I remember I noticed I'd done three or four scenes and I noticed that every time that I hit somebody or hurt somebody, that somehow they it was a reaction to them starting it them they they all came at me first right and i said to david chase i said hey david i noticed this about the guy what do you think and he said uh well sounds you know you. Yeah, run with it. But with the girl, with, you know, with the girlfriend, you know, she becomes very vulnerable in that scene. And she says, I'm going to name the baby something. And I go, oh, great. And if it's a girl, we can name the baby after you. So she could grow up to be a cocksucking slut just like her mother right and she and she

hits me i got her to hit me and then that gave me permission to retaliate right and i and that was a big clue for this guy um you know and that's the and you can make stuff up you can create you can create a set idea and say okay this is this is why this is why he's that way or this right right right right yeah that's so funny because that's sort of like it's it's that thing about you know like uh the permission like you know it's like your mother pushing your buttons until she got to be able to sing yeah yeah you just keep poking at people until they snap. Then you go, oh, you're going to do that. Fuck you. Yeah. I tell you, I feel better. I think we got a lot accomplished. I feel like, you know, I got a meeting in. That's good.

Well, thank you. I really enjoy listening to you. And I think you're a terrific actor. I loved you on your show. Oh, thanks, man. I thought that was a very complicated, interesting character and I was very jealous, so that means you were very good. Well, thank you very much. You know, the more I talk to guys like you and the more I sort of think about the job of acting since I'm relatively new to it in the sense I've been a comic my whole life,

like I'm starting to appreciate it more, you know, after having conversations like even this conversation like I I think I can bring more to that guy I was we I was set to start uh shooting the day that we they closed it down for the last season so I was looking forward to getting involved with that but uh but thank you for saying that and thank you for some of the acting tips thank you Thank you. jerking what's up i guess i shouldn't wish ill on anybody but god damn it something's got to give okay sad guitar still still sad guitar Thank you. Thank you. Omer lives Homer lives. It's a night for the whole family.

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