WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1371 - Tony Gilroy

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Writer-director Tony Gilroy is the man behind one of Marc’s favorite movies of all time, Michael Clayton. They get into everything it took to get that movie made and its surprising legacy. But the rest of Tony’s career and the curvy path his life took to get there are equally fascinating. Tony tells Marc about his dogged attempt to start a music career, how he transitioned into screenwriting, the joys of writing for the Devil, and how he came to embrace Star Wars with his new series Andor.  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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But he's also the writer and director of Michael Clayton. One of the greatest movies of all time. And I was way ahead of the curve on this. Way ahead. Granted, it was nominated for a couple Oscars. It wasn't like it was unrecognized. But I have been carrying the Michael Clayton banner long before Joe Mandy did his funny meme. People are fucking incomprehensible.

Yes. Yes, Sidney. Anyway, I've been talking about Michael Clayton for years on this show. Years. And now I'm going to talk to the guy who made it, who wrote it, who pushed it through the hole into our heads. Yeah. Good talk. the beginning because it's a good point i got to do this is at the beginning because some people like don't listen all the way through but i i just want to say that i will be in livermore california at the bankhead theater this thursday october 6th and carmel by the sea not caramel but that's nice thing to have caramel by the sea caramel anytime i'd be eating caramel all day long if i could if it wouldn't give me diabetes and make me fat carmel by the sea california at the sunset center this friday october 7th uh i have other dates boomsbury theater in london i'll be doing a live WTF with David Baddiel on Wednesday, October 19th.

Tickets are on sale for that now, WTFpod.com slash tour. So I was in Canada for the Toronto Just for Laughs Festival. Always a pleasure to be in Canada, and I meet it. There's just like whatever it is up there, relaxing, the people. I like the people. It's just there's a ceiling to the energy. I said that on stage. I didn't, I was trying to focus in, hone in on what it was. There's a ceiling to the energy, a cap. It's not bad. It sounds like it may be bad or maybe a problem, but you don't walk around

Canada going like, what the fuck is up with that guy? What do we, should we, what is up with that guy? Dude, let's just go another way it doesn't happen there again maybe i'm romanticizing it but look here's the deal so i get up there i'm doing two shows friday night saturday night and i'm working with the fucking the best i'm working with the best comedian in the country we're not working together we're on this we're we're not a double bill even we're just in the same venue. Yeah, I'm working with Maria Bamford, who I haven't seen in years, who I love. But Jesus Christ, you watch Maria Bamford do comedy.

And it's almost like, why? Why do it? She's doing it. So it's like she's it. She's above and beyond any stand up working. She is the best. And I don't understand why everyone just doesn't see that. You can't put her in a box.

You can't compartmentalize it. You can't say it's whatever. It doesn't matter. There was no one better on all levels than Maria Bamford. She's just the best stand-up we've got working. And I have felt that way for years. What a pleasure to watch her. Great laughs.

Deep. Moving. And just, I love hanging out with her. It just, you know, she's a rare, authentic, inspired artist in the field that I work in, who I love to watch. Doesn't happen too often. It is just great. And the shows up there that I had were a great time

trying to get the hour down to where it needs to be, trim it up. But a couple of interesting things happened with other celebrities while I was on the way to Canada, oddly. Now, pow, I just shit my pants. Just coffee.coop. Go get yourself a bag. We get a little back end on that.

They were one of our first sponsors. So I'm in the lounge heading to Canada on Thursday, in the Air Canada lounge at LAX. Not great. But you can get your own food now. So there's a buffet there, and I'm getting whatever because I'm like, I'm eating. I don't know what I'm doing. It's not good.

But I'm putting food on a plate, and I look over at the coffee machine. There's an old man there that I kind of recognize, and I'm like, could that be? And I'm like, who is that? And I'm like food on a plate and I look over at the coffee machine, there's an old man there that I kind of recognize. And I'm like, could that be? And I'm like, who is that? And I'm like, holy shit, it's Stuart Copeland from the police. Now, look, honestly, I'm not a huge police fan.

There's police songs that are unavoidable that are great. There's whole police albums that are great, but the sort of disposition of all of them is uniquely annoying. Yeah, that was always what I got off him. But nonetheless, great drummer. Like all the police stuff and Rumblefish, the soundtrack of Rumblefish. That's where I kind of stopped with his soundtracks and anything he's ever done.

I don't keep up. But that thing is great. And he's a great drummer. No doubt. Don't know anything about him. Didn't say hi. Didn't ask for a selfie no big fan no i really enjoyed the rumblefish soundtrack i thought that would sound dismissive so i just sat and looked at him and watched him drink coffee with his face and then in the lounge a woman comes over says something to him he gets up walks over to another guy who's kind of uh hidden by a pole-ish thing.

But it's a guy with a guitar case. But he's kind of short, wearing dark clothes. He's got a bucket hat on. He's wearing sunglasses and a mask. And he's got kind of a man bun coming out of the back of the bucket hat. And I don't know. I can't make out who it is. But Copeland hugs him.

They do selfies with masks on. And I'm like, who the fuck is that? He's got a guitar with him he's got and i'm thinking maybe just a studio guy i don't know so i get on the plane stuart left the lounge i think he was going somewhere else but i get i'm waiting to get on the plane with the other guy and i'm looking at him i'm right next to him and i'm like holy fuck it's getty lee from rush that's who it is. It's Geddy Lee. And Awkward, again, not a huge Rush fan. Know a lot of their work.

Seen them in concert. Have tremendous respect for them as artists and as people because of the documentary. I used to be a little dismissive, a little condescending about prog rock in general. But since I've been kind of getting into crimson lately uh and and rush is rush i don't own any rush records i own a lot of genesis records i don't need because i can't stand it i own some yes records i tried crimson i'm the blue crimson i'm kind of in but rush i know the shit so we get on the plane and i'm like holy shit that's getty lee because he they took him on first and i'm realizing it is him and he's sitting down.

And then when I walk on the plane, there are flight attendants trying to strap his base into a first class seat. And it's tricky and it's kind of holding up things. So he's up there in first class with the woman who he's traveling with. I don't know who that is. And his base is also traveling first class once they got it buckled in. he's traveling with. I don't know who that is. And his base is also traveling first class once they got it buckled in. Now, again, I'm getting off the plane and I'm right behind Geddy Lee. And I don't ask for a selfie. I don't say big fan because I'm not a huge fan. But look, I respect the guy and I know a lot of the songs. Today's Tom Sawyer. I feel like I've done this before.

But I didn't want to say anything. So I took a picture of the back of his head. I took a picture of the back of G head. I took a picture of the back of Gideon Lee's head and I wrestled with it for like days. Like, you know, should I post this? Is this intrusive? This wrong? How would I feel if someone did it to me? And I chose to do it. You know, it took a couple of days and I posted on Instagram and I wrote, I thought long and hard about posting this.

I wouldn't ask for a selfie because I don't do that and it would have been disingenuous. I was on a plane. I've known this man's work for most of my adult life. I'm not a huge fan, but I respect the guy. The face on the front of this head has looked out at hundreds of thousands of fans and performed his original music with his band for decades a true artist a rock star this is the

back of geddy lee's head his base had its own seat in first class hashtag canada hashtag rush 12 and Geddy Lee got back to me oh dude kind words I kind of wondered if that was you behind the mask as we scampered off the plane fan of your work so now I feel like kind of a dick right because I said not a huge fan but I'm not a huge fan but like it's Geddy all right okay I was snarky and now I got i got trumped by niceness i we were running off the plane together and he went the wrong way and i followed him till i realized it was the right way and he followed me but i don't know if he's gonna cop to that so i said hey man this is in response to him saying what he said i worked for the caterer at your show in albuquerque new mexico probably 1978 79 and drove all the way to my boss's house to get Alex a fan for his

dressing room. I was pissed, but great show. Sorry I didn't say hi, though I did follow you the wrong way for a minute. That's what I wrote. And that happened. Like, Alex needed a fan, and my boss, Eddie Waxman, rest in peace, asshole, yeah, made me drive a half hour to get the fan. asshole uh yeah made me drive a half hour to get the fan getty in response to that said seriously what a story on alex's behalf thanks hope we meet up again sometime oh i think so much of my resentment of that band was tied into that just as i just have this vision in my head of me kind of exasperated you know walking into this room where alex is sitting there with his foot on one of those classical guitar wooden uh uh things that you put your foot on like just raises your foot and he's got a classical guitar and he's just sitting there all affected like and i and i'm like i got your fan man and i just felt that they were i just felt yeah whatever

i was like what did i expect for him to be like oh my god you're amazing you're like a genius thank you for the fan i was in high school and i just copped an attitude. And me and Giddy just put it to rest. We put that shit to rest and I appreciate it. All right, so look, you guys, Tony Gilroy. The Star Wars series Andor is streaming now on Disney+. Tony is the creator and showrunner. And also he wrote and directed Michael Clayton. I'm going to talk to him right now.

It's going to happen now. 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,

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You're in luck, because I haven't... I didn't see it for, I don't know, man, a dozen years, and then about a month ago, Warner Brothers is doing some glad hand, you know, corporate centary thing and they want to honor it. So I had to go do an interview about it. Yeah. I went back.

My wife, I went back and watched it. So I just, I've just seen it recently for the first time in a long time. Well, today is like this month, 15 years ago, this month it was released. Wow. Isn't that wild? Yeah. I mean, I watch it constantly. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm obsessed, but I've been talking about Michael Clayton for about a decade.

I've heard you talk about him. And people have, that's kind of my entree to the show. People say, oh my God, go on, you know, minute nine of Nicole Kidman. Check that out. But just like, I refer to it to everybody. Now what's folded into it now with my recommendations is The Verdict. I do Michael Clayton and The Verdict as movies people should see. Man, to be married to The Verdict.

The Verdict is just so perfect. Right? There's movies like that and it's just like there's not. Every time you watch it, you're just, how did they get this? How did it happen? It's just perfect. Right? It's just, there's movies like that, and it's just like, there's not, every time you watch it, you're just, how did they get this? How did it happen? It's so perfect. That long shot where Jack Warden clearly tells him that Charlotte Rampling was doing him wrong, and you just see Newman just slump. It's just- Oh, my God.

No, it's beyond elegant. lump it's just oh my god no it's um it's beyond elegant yeah because like it seems like you know with michael clayton i mean my argument or my my excitement is always around like you know where are these movies now and and the fact is you know just grown up sort of you know with depth you know it's not even a thriller but just a uh you know a movie that deals with real characters in a dark way, like a grown-up movie. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I think it's out there. I think people are doing all this.

But do they make it to the movies? Well, no. I mean, that's not going to be happening. Right? That won't be happening, no. I mean, it'll be diminishing. I don't know. I mean, even absent COVID,

I'm not sure that was going to continue. Really? I mean, the audience, the economics of releasing movies and the economics of the way it works and the ease of watching it and the size of the screen at home. I mean, it's such a cliche. You have a big screen at home, but that's a real thing. Why go out? I guess so. Why go out unless there's a reason?

Well, there's always that defense of like, don't you want to be part of a bunch of people and the excitement and and some people like nah yeah i think i don't think that's a question you want to ask twice yeah but but that seemed to be their defense for a while yeah and so people as people got shittier yeah right yeah yeah yeah people are getting shittier go out with as the as the trend for shittiness in people increases do you want to go out more? You want to hang out more with them. Yeah. Probably not.

So that movie, though, and The Verdict, I mean, it seems, that movie seems to come from that kind of, that legacy of thought around films, around that type of main character, a kind of 70s sensibility to it. that type of main character, a kind of 70s sensibility to it. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm always fascinated by the hero that goes by the exit. I mean, what's better than that? Nothing. No, I mean, at one point, what was the, I remember when we screened at Warner Brothers, because they didn't really, they didn't love us.

The movie wasn't, it wasn't. How did the opportunity come about? Oh, the opportunity on Clayton came about, I was, I worked for Castle Rock. Yeah. I was sort of house boy for a bunch of different companies. At one point I started at Interscope, and I was the, you know, I was the kid writer there,

and then I went to Castle Rock. What was your primary job, though? Was it actually? Writer, writer. I was a screenwriter. No, I know, but were you mostly writing original scripts, or were you fixing things? No, mostly at that point, mostly writing. I mean, my first film was made at Interscope, a skating movie.

The hockey movie? The cutting edge, yeah. Yeah, people liked that movie. Oh, my God, they still do. Anyway, so I moved along, and at Castle Rock, I did Dolores Claiborne there, and did this movie, Extreme Measures, for them them and worked on some other things and and uh I my stock was really high there and and I went in and and uh they were very brave it was a very it was the last sort of it was a very benevolent brave company and I went in one day and I said look I said I want to do a movie yeah about a fixer in a law firm. Somebody will die.

It'll have a movie star part. I want to direct it. That's all I got. And they paid me handsomely to do that. Martin Schaefer there. They really bet on me and believed in me. And I started working. I also got really busy then.

Born came along. A whole bunch of things came along. And it got stalled. And by the time things came along and yeah and uh and it got stalled and by the time i came back and started to work on it their their fortunes were not they weren't in the position to swing to gamble as much and they were so generous and amazing when i did finally put it together they were like go with god yeah keep our names on it help us out we're not going to hold you up we're not going to put a turn around Fiona. Everybody was, I had a lot of benevolence on that. Yeah. From Castle Rock and then I had Steven Soderbergh at one point and I had Sidney Pollack at the other time.

It was sort of a relay race of producers trying to help me and they didn't get along. Yeah. They didn't like each other very much. How great is Pollack? See, that's the kind of movie it reminded me of. The ones that he did later. Yeah. The type of movies he made.

Like, what was it? Forbidden Hearts? What was the one where the couple dies in the plane crash? Oh, yeah. That was crazy, with Harrison Ford and the Englishwoman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, it's in that vein. Absolutely. Of film. But anyway, I had a bunch of people and no money. Yeah. You know? And then, so a lot of people helped me get it made. So by the time it got made, you know, it was, once I got George,

there's a long story of how I get George. I ran around for six years trying to get that movie made. Really? Nobody wanted to make it. I wanted to make it, I mean, I had an $11 million version of it with Alec Baldwin and Ben Kingsley that I wanted to do. Oh, my gosh. And I couldn't get $11 million to do that.

Instead of Clooney and Wilkinson? Yeah, this was long before that. Yeah, no, it would have been, yeah. It would have been a terrible movie. Oh, dude, no, no, no, no. Alec was, Alec at that point was like nowhere. And like I ran around for a year going like, man, this guy's a check waiting to be cashed.

Yeah. And what a great thing but i always think like if you when some people mention that like how because my relationship with michael clayton is george clooney so now i got to think of you know of baldwin right very because cluny plays it so vulnerable somehow well alec really was alec was really down on his luck at that point he was yeah man Yeah, man. He was really bad after The Cooler. People forget. His renaissance was after.

I was right about him. Yeah. But anyway, I ran around all kinds of things. Denzel Washington. We tried to, I mean, all kinds of people I ran around with. In the Clayton part? Yeah. Yeah.

I couldn't get the movie made for six years. And then I finally changed agencies and had a meeting with George. But you were committed to it. Obviously. I wanted to do it. Yeah, I needed to do it. So, so many things happened in the interim. So, you're writing all these Bourne movies, right?

Yeah. But what drives you to do like this? Why that guy? Why Clayton? Why was that the guy? Your first movie you're going to direct and this story. Why that story? first movie you're going to direct and this story why that story uh it was it was very very clean it was super doable yeah and yet it had enough uh it had enough elements of visual spectacularity

that i could see myself yeah you know i knew i knew there were things i could bring to it visually but i knew it was manageable. I was 50 years old by the time I directed. I'd never directed. By that point, I had gone to school on 20 directors I'd worked with. I'd been on all kinds of movies. And a lot of directors never work with other directors. They never see anybody else work, so they don't know their thing.

Right. Writers and actors and sometimes editors, you've worked with a lot of directors. I got to catalog shop from directors my whole life. Oh, don't ever do that. That's a great idea. Who had the most impact? I mean, I don't want to, I mean, oh, well, I learned the most from Taylor. I did three movies shoulder to shoulder with Taylor Hackett.

So I learned all about how to, I mean, what I didn't learn from him. But there's things that Taylor does that I don't like, that are not my way, and other things. You sort of cherry, the one thing I knew is I could not make a first movie. You can't make a first movie at 50. You gotta make your sixth movie at 50. Right, right, pressure's on.

Yeah, so I was pretty serious about it. But that character, so he's like this perfectly flawed guy. It was just right character, so he's like this perfectly flawed guy. It was just right from the beginning. I look like I'm perfectly flawed. Yeah. That's the balance, right? To keep a flawed character human enough

to have empathy for him, right? I mean, it seemed like all of them. I have empathy for all. I don't. I can't. I think that's the universal truth, is empathy for all the characters. There isn't one of them I don't. I can't. I think that's the universal truth is empathy for all the characters. There isn't one of them I don't. Yeah.

I mean, I got 200 characters in this thing now. I mean, every single one of them and their point of view makes sense to me. You got to write that way. You have to write that way. In the Star Wars thing? Yeah, but you have to write that way. So, you know, and George's character was very, when we screened the movie at Warner Brothers, Dan Feldman, I think, was the guy who was really champion at that point. He was a distribution guy because a lot of people there didn't really get it.

And they were like, what are we doing with this thing, this George movie? What is it? And Dan Feldman was really overwhelmed. And I go, Dan, who's the movie for? And he goes, it's for men that know they're going to die. That's a place to start. Yeah. That's also, that's a pretty big demographic.

Yeah. But when you say that, I don't think of old men till later. It seemed to be a sensitivity to it. Yeah. Dark dudes. You have to know you're going to die. Right. And structurally, that movie, because I was just talking about this with my producer,

like, did you always think to backload it? Like, did you always think, like, when you wrote the movie, in the sense that you open sort of in the middle, right? And then you fill in the story after. What do you mean by always? I mean, I worked on the script. Not always. I'm just saying that.

You mean when I worked on it? Right. No, it was written that way. You never thought of starting it at the beginning of the problem? I tortured myself with that script for several years. I probably wrote 700, 800 pages of script for that thing. There were whole other films.

There was a film about the sun and the fantasy fiction. There was a version of the film where the Clayton character was trying to extricate a huge corporate client from a mistress that wouldn't move out of an apartment. I had more shit than I could possibly deal with. I had more shit than I could possibly deal with. And it really, it was terrifying. It was literally terrifying. I'd be afraid to go to work. And I literally had like an epic,

almost writer breakdown one day. It was like a Monday. And I was like, I can't get out of bed. I can't go to work. I can't think about this anymore. I'm too afraid. I can't write anymore. And I go, you have been on this thing on and off for like three years and you don't know

how many, you don't know the timeframe. Like I didn't like, does it take place over three months? I like the fact that I had worked on it that long and answer that. And I said, if you do not know by Wednesday how many days this thing is or how long it is, then you have to throw it away and start over again. And like by Wednesday I was like, oh my God, it's only over four days. I don't know how many days. It's like five days.

And, like, holy shit. And, like, I think two weeks later I wrote the script was done because I just had everything there already. But because. It was such a game. Yeah. So stupid. With yourself. Yeah, you know, the games you play with yourself.

Yeah. But because you did all that tangential work, you definitely knew these people, right? Oh, I had all kinds of, there's a, you know, it's very akin to painting in a way, where you're painting layers and layers and layers and scraping stuff off and what's underneath, and things take on an impasto,

and they take on a, you know, a richness that you can't get there from the beginning. It's not the, I've worked that way a couple times. They take on a richness that you can't get there from the beginning. I've worked that way a couple times. The mistake you make is when you try to dictate the next project with the process that worked on the one before. Every single one of them has its own way it wants to be birthed and its own way it wants to be massaged and the own its own tempo of coming about and when you try to enforce your previous or some previous creative method on it yeah fuck up disastrously well yeah well i mean i mean the well you wrote that other law movie which was the devil movie you know there you go well i like that movie i do too because i like devil stuff

oh man that's that movie isn't that's just devil's advocate is great it's just an opera it's fucking great i love that movie is that how you approached it you're like i'm writing an opera well it was just i mean dad taylor wanted to do that movie and he sent me that script i said man i'm absolutely not doing it was a terrible script i'd been bouncing around warner brothers forever a lot of people worked on it yeah and you could see how it would be, you know. You could see all the reasons how and why it would be bad. How even good writers would... Sure. Yeah, because

it's easy to make it silly. Yeah. And I was just like, Taylor, man, go look at Rosemary's Baby and pick another project. Yeah. We're never going to do anything as good as that. We're never going to get there. And he just kept at me and I... What did I do? I finally i said look here's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna come to la for one week yeah i'm gonna and put me in a hotel and

we'll work for a week but at the end of the week if i don't have it and i don't want to do it then i can leave and we can still be friends right that's no yeah i'll work my ass off for a week and in that week um I came with the idea the idea that that there was oh my god it was

I said how do I make it real for me cause I made it biological I said oh my god the mother right no but he's the father it's in you

and it's like I thought wow and I really like in a Nietzschean way there's all these things I wanna do yeah I wanna do all these things

that I'm not allowed to do because every society and morality but I want to do. I want to do all these things that I'm not allowed to do because every society and morality, but I have them in me. I want to fuck that and I want to eat that and I want to do this. And they're in there. Yeah, sure.

Well, that's kind of, that's in me. So the moment I could make it biological, I could connect to it. And that was kind of the key. And we said, what if he's the father? And like that. So you created the character of that poor mother, the mother who was there? Yeah, I made it genetic.

On a field trip? Yeah, I made it genetic. I did all that stuff. And then after that, then it was just a gas to write all those arias. Everybody thinks that those, oh, the long monologues. Those are the easiest things to write.

It was a little bit scary. You can write for Satan by the yard. It was very easy for me to write those. Yeah. You know. Well, yeah, but it's fun. It's a release. Yeah.

You can really, yeah. And you know, you know, he's an absentee landlord. Yeah. And shit. Yeah. And also the, like that, like that mother, the woman who played the mother in Devil's Ivy. Judith Ivy.

Judith Ivy. Right. like that like that mother the woman who played the mother Judith Ivey Judith Ivey right I mean that that grounded it so heavy and it kind of like she played that so fucking well yeah you know where

that scene in the elevator where it's just like oh my god oh yeah when he's going up with the girls yeah no it's um man what a dizzy film

I mean the last 18 minutes of that uh I mean I could go on and on there's so many stories from that show because it was such a dizzy film. I mean, the last 18 minutes of that, I mean, I could go on and on. There's so many stories from that show because it was such a dizzy show. But we ended up shooting in LA.

We moved out to LA and we had this big soundstage out in some weird industrial Vernon. Yeah. Out in Vernon. Right. And I'm out in Vernon with Al, Taylor, Charlize, and Keanu and a gigantic thing. And it's all of a sudden like we're doing a play.

It's the closest thing I've ever had to the experience of what it must be like to be in the theater. So then we have a theater, and we're going to create this whole end thing. And Taylor's a maximalist, and Al is a, you know, just he'll eat anything that comes his way. He just wants more and more and more. And sitting there watching that last insane 20 minutes, you he sings it happened in monterey and we're like it's just yeah i can't

believe that like it's a big budget warner brothers movie and that happened yeah so it's it's it's it feels very um and oh my god and the trump shit yeah was he in there fuck man it's his apartment really the killer real estate dude the killer real estate molester, we shot in his apartment, in Trump's apartment. We needed the ugliest, most garish, horrifying real estate developer apartment you could possibly have, and Trump threw his apartment at us. That's right. And so we didn't have to do... If you look at the movie, that's his fucking shit bag

apartment with all the Versailles guilt and then the high-rise windows. It's just so perfect. And he came by set every day because he was living there. He'd come by the set and poke around. Oh, yeah. Poke around. What was your impression of him at that time? I mean, obviously, the apartment's the apartment.

He was just, look, he was a clown. He was a clown in New York. I grew up. I've been in New York since 1979 1979 i mean i'm with him i've i sat at a table in the china club with he and bo deedle yeah i mean yeah i've been around him yeah he's just a fucking clown just a you know just that clown grifter grifter clown yeah yeah kind of loser outsider yeah a pretend rich guy because you know if you live in new york and you know i've been there all this time and your kids go to school and you're really around titans sure you know yeah yeah yeah there's some really big yeah yeah there's some

really big arterial serious power and money yeah he was not any part of that. And they just looked at him like, look at this guy. Oh my God, he was lint. Yeah. So you had to deal with him on Devil's Advocate. He would come by. He would come by on the way down to the office or whatever, you know, peek by and try to see Charlize

or whatever the thing he was trying to do. But we were just, everybody's laughing at him. Laughing at his apartment. Yeah. It's so funny that he was part of the Devil movie. Of course he was. Al D'Amato wanted, we had a party. Yeah.

We had a party in that movie where Satan throws a party. Yeah. And so I said, Taylor, we're going to get all these people, we're going to get all these people, we're going to get all these New York people. I go, they're not going to show up at the thing. They're going to see it's the script. It's Satan's party. He goes, no, no, no, no.

They all fucking show up. Al D'Amato is there i go really they're they the power of the power of attention was greater than the yeah but now you know they were they're all fucking craven and there was no integrity to any of it and if they didn't have you know it was a documentary yeah if they didn't have somebody advising them they'll fucking do anything these guys for a nickel yeah they'll go to a shopping center opening in hell give a fuck yeah i well that's a that's fucking amazing that that was trump's apartment craig nelson is such an intense fucker guy i mean really good i can and he was so good in the

part man he's so good in the part and he also plays a part like that and do you remember him in silkwood oh my god holy shit doctoring the x-rays yeah and he started out as a comic really yeah stand up yeah he was like to see that he was like in a team he was way back in the day well i guess i could see him as a smothers brother almost yeah i mean i just remember there being a picture of him in mitzi shore's office at the comedy store and i'm like he was a comic I don't think it was for very long but he was definitely there he's very he's very he's very uh he's very funny yeah is he very music yeah and a dry that really dry yeah so you grew up in New York the whole time no I uh I was born in New York and uh my father was did exactly what I do my father uh was a writer and then he he went to LA with live tv and then he went to LA and he became a Hollywood writer.

So we lived out here until I was about five or six. And then there was a strike and he was a playwright, wanted to be a playwright. He was a playwright. Yeah, and he had a big play and he moved back to New York and was a hit. And all of a sudden he was doing what he wanted to do and so we moved back east.

And I grew up about an hour and a half north of New York City in a kind of unusual place at that time. What place? It's Washingtonville, New York. It's where Michael Clayton, it's- Up there. When Michael Clayton goes back to his brother, the cop's house,

that house is 200 yards from the bedroom that I grew up in. Those houses were all the, my whole neighborhood was the sons and daughters of cops and firemen. I just got that wave of Chris Bear, you know, the fall up in that area. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's so fucking nice.

They were all cops and firemen, you said? Yeah, it was a very unusual community. It was a little sleepy town. Could have shot it as a southern town. You could have shot it. Yeah. And, you know, Civil War monument, Moffat Library, the whole thing. Little tiny little town.

It had then these two extremely eccentric things happened. Stuart Air Force Base was there, which is Stuart Airport. Yeah. That was a strategic air command base. Yeah. So those kids were all the, you know, the sons and daughters of, you know, a pilot or an engineer. And the mother was the cutest girl in the southern town who could get out. So those kids were all the sons and daughters of a pilot or an engineer. And the mother was the cutest girl in the Southern town who could get out. So they were very glamorous. Germany, Okinawa, whatever they called for a thing, the base. And then you had Washingtonville,

which was this little farm town that was 30% black from before the civil War, like conservative black, like Baptist churches and really, really conservative. And then they passed a law for Robert Moses, New York City cops and firemen could live 60 miles outside of those city limits. Used to have to live in the boroughs. But didn't they do Staten Island mostly? No, but they used to be that they always had to live in the boroughs.

Then they opened up, said 60 miles from Columbus Circle. This place was like 58 miles within and a guy named Tex Worley got a cop and a fireman and made them real estate agents and built around my father's big frickin' house that he had bought to hide out this gigantic community and it's all New York City cops and firemen. So you have New York City cops and firemen. So you have New York City cops and firemen

in this massive new thing. You have Stewart Air Force Base over here and you have this little sleepy southern town and you have drugs, Vietnam, race. You have everything collided and absolutely no control. It was utter, those years are are absolute chaos how old were you well i mean i was by the uh i mean i'm a last year lottery ticket i'm 66 so i graduated yeah so this was the late

this was the late 60s and 70s it was absolutely out of control heroin comes to newberg and that devastates everything and wow you know the older brothers and sisters of the kids in my neighborhood in that area, they're all going to Vietnam. The other kids are riding around with BB guns and bicycles. It was mad. It was mad. Totally out of control. So your dad... They didn't know what was going on.

Parents didn't really know what kids were doing then. But your dad, he didn't start as a playwright. He started as a TV writer? He started as a TV writer? He started as a nobody. He's one of those people that he's like the best argument for the draft. He's the last 17-year-old to go to Europe for World War II. And World War II saves his life. How so?

He was on his way to being a degenerate gambler junkie god knows what never read a book lived up in the bronx oh yeah complete failure and he goes out and he sees the world and he comes out of world war ii rich from gambling oh really and money changing and you know my father said he goes nothing like a bunch of hillbillies with money in their pocket who think dice are magic. So he was a real street guy, huh? Totally. And then he lied his way into Dartmouth College

and became a rock star and became a playwright. Did like six plays while he was there, ran the newspaper and just totally blew up and just became, like invented himself.

That's crazy. Where's that movie? Oh man, he's done a lot of writing about that yeah it's a great story from your point of view yeah no he actually wrote a play called getting in yeah it was done at est it was really uh when they used to do all the one-on-one plays it's it's it's published it's a great play it's about how he lies his way into dartmouth and cheats his way in and then uh and then he went from there to live TV and then live TV to Hollywood. So he had the whole – That's a great story.

Oh, my God. But he literally covered the entire breadth of post-war dramatist writing because he does live TV. Then he comes out to the studio system and he literally worked out here and did movies and you know didn't even ask us gonna fastest gun alive he rode and he worked in the bungalows you know where your agent would come around and give what we do yeah oh everywhere oh really he worked for he he worked up the street here for Walt yeah and Walt Disney wanted him to stay for life and my father broke his heart and said he wouldn't leave my father wrote oh god well now you're working for Disney so full circle I know I know, I know. They got their hooks back.

But he, and then he became a playwright and then an independent movie maker and a director and just a, he was a super vivid, independent, and a great writer

and a great dramatist. Well, didn't he win a Pulitzer? He did win a Pulitzer. The Subway of the Roses, yeah. That's a big deal. Oh man, he was a, oh my God, when I was growing up, my That's a big deal. Oh, man, he was a, oh, my God. When I was growing up, my dad was a, at that point in time, he was the president of the Dramatist Guild, and he was, oh, my God.

And he started out just a street kid. Like, he could have gone either way. Oh, he wasn't going either way. He was going one way. He was definitely, seriously, man, World War II, really, his draft notice is the thing that saved his ass. Huh, because he was always in trouble

and just he just he loved to gamble he loved to gamble you know those guys that love to gamble I never understood it

I fucking hate it I can't stand it I mean I think unless you you gotta win big to really get the bug you gotta be willing to risk

that's not my theory no? no because like if I lose 800 hours over a course of 4 hours I'm like fuck this I'm done

I'm not gonna sit there all night I don't know you'd have to I know you met my brother one time he said he had a long conversation

in New Mexico yeah my brother actually he wrote a movie about gambling that Al Pacino's in it's not a great movie but it is a great script

what's it called? it's called Two for the Money okay and there's a there's a couple scenes in there there's a there Two for the Money. Okay. And there's a couple scenes in there. There's a Gambler's Anonymous scene. There's a couple scenes in there. But I think Danny's theory really is the one I...

I think Gambler's... There's a reliability that Gambler's like. It's like Drunks as well. There's a reliability about it. What, that you're going to lose? Yeah. Right. Yeah, I've heard that one.

Yeah. I kind of... Like, it's consistent. It's something you can count on. Yeah, I guess heard that one. Yeah. I kind of. Like, it's consistent. It's something you can count on. Yeah, I guess that's true. But, you know, I don't know that they admit to that. But, you know, from an outsider's point of view, I can see it. And as somebody who's in recovery, I understand that.

That, you know, you go with what you know. And if what you know is beating the shit out of yourself one way or the other, and that's what you call home, then that's where you're going to live. And if what you know is beating the shit out of yourself one way or the other, and that's what you call home, then that's where you're going to live. My father always said that he made more money writing about gambling than he ever lost. So he was ahead. That was his theory. Because he made a lot of money. He was the gambling guy in Hollywood for years.

I mean, Dick Powell gambling movie. My father wrote a play called The Only Game in Town that was a huge plan. It was a massive movie, the disastrous movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty was completely fucked up. But he, the last thing I'll say about it, my father would, two things, when he got, I would come home and he'd be watching TV, he'd be watching Harness Racing from the Finger Lakes when he didn't even have a bed on it, right?

And the other thing was behind his bed, he had a book. Somebody made it, rolled dice. Somebody took dice and they rolled them like, you know, 40 hundred thousand times. And they recorded every roll. And then they just put it on a list. So it's a book of a list of dice rolls. So my father, when he couldn't sleep,

pulled out the book, opened it at random, and just started shooting craps. In his bed, trying to go back to bed. So I don't know what, I don't have that. Good for you. I don't have that. But you did, like, it's funny,

because it is sort of a deep part of the Clayton character, is that he's a compulsive gambler. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got to be in there. And the other brother's- I understand it. Yeah, and the other brother's a drug addict. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I understand that better. And the other brother's a drug addict. Yeah. I understand that better.

That's more easy for me to understand. Are you a sober guy? No, I'm not. I'm just a continual vice guy. Oh, yeah? You just balance it out? I've been the lucky guy. Right, right.

I never completely... I lost my privileges in certain areas, but not... Right, right. But I was always down on... No, I'm very, very certain areas, but not. Right, right. But I was always, no, I was always down. No, I'm very, very, very lucky that way. I've been able to. Manage? Chip since I was 13.

Well, that's good. That's good. Well, I mean, you know, when you have, sometimes when you have a parent that's out of control, you know, you are more control. You get a little more control. I don't know. I wonder how related they really are.

I guess it is the same chemicals, but it seems that there is difference. How many, you got the, what do you got? I have two brothers. Two wonder how related they really are. I guess it is the same chemicals, but it seems that there is difference. How many, you got the, what do you got? I have two brothers. Two brothers. Two brothers, yeah. Are they all kind of okay? Oh my God, they're fantastic. Yeah, it's annoyingly idyllic, our relationship. We all work together. We love each other. We take care of each other.

You're all writers, right? My brother Dan is a writer-director. My brother John is the editor who's just done, he's just, you know, he's one of the greatest editors on the planet. He's edited everything for us. He's on this show with me now. He's done Danny's movie, he did Nightcrawler, he did everything. So we, my father was, we were very lucky.

What'd your mom do? My mom really was kind of a, she kept my father, she was kind of my father's creative partner in many ways. Yeah. And just, you know, she's a great sculptor, you know, a 19, a post-war woman who could have done anything who ended up, you know, helping him get his career.

Keep his shit together. But, you know, they say we grew up in this house upstate and our lives were, my brothers and I, our lives were very, we kind of had a secret life. I didn't really realize this until a couple years ago. We really had a secret life because we grew up in this sort of big stone house surrounded by all this shit, man.

Yeah. Our man. Yeah. Our neighborhood. Yeah. You know, you had, and fortunately we were all big and strong and ready for it. It would have been, but so we would go out in public and our lives at school and whatever else and our whole thing. And we would, we were in it, man, all the way. Yeah.

What do you mean? We were in it. Yeah, man. Whatever it was. Yeah. Whatever it was. Dirt bikes, drugs, girls, whatever it was, games, football, whatever it was. Kicking ass? Yeah, whatever it was. Dirt bikes, drugs, girls, whatever it was. Games, football, whatever it was.

We were in the woods with everybody else. But in summer, you know, we'd go to Europe. And on the weekends, we'd go see Broadway. And we would go to restaurants. And we were like hanging out here and going to Bill Goldman's Christmas party and doing these different things. So we had this, but we never talked about it you never to know there's a town was literally I until until a few years ago I really didn't realize how bizarre that

was but I was talking to my brother Johnny yeah we really realized that we just really had like it was like a secret identity that we all three grew up with him we you know we which one? What do you mean? Which one was the secret identity? Oh, God, there's a... I don't know. I don't... But we... Oh, God.

And we really were plugged in up there. I mean, we all had jobs and Mason's assistant or Palmer's apprentice in landscaping or everything. You get jobs and put... Sure. You're always working.

And that whole... I imagine everybody that you were surrounded with would have really, even if you told them what your dad did. They didn't understand. Nobody, man. No, nobody. They'd be like, what?

It's a different. No, it was a really, there were a couple of one or two, three, four people that, you know, but it was a very bifurcated. Like who were your dad's peers? Like who were you hanging around with? Who was he?

Oh my God. I mean, you know, we were just talking the other day. I mean, I mean all the Patty Chayefsky and Bob Fosse and Bill Goldman and John Gay. You know, I mean, Rod Serling and I mean his whole, all that whole generation. He's a player in all that stuff. And then all the playwrights because he was the president of the Dramatists Guild for a long time. So all the playwrights of the time. So you would come into New York

and just be in that world. The highest media elite of the late 60s. I mean I saw, when I was a kid, I saw Carol Channing do Hello Dolly. I saw Zero Mostel do- Fiddler? Yeah man, I saw Dick Kiley do Man Dolly. I saw Zero Mostel do- Fiddler? Yeah, man. I saw Dick Kiley do Man of La Mancha. I went to opening nights.

I was like 10, 11, 12 years old. And then I'd go back and, you know, the next day I'd be back and, you know. In it. In it. Guarding your territory. And we weren't faking anything. We just didn't talk about what the other thing was.

I think that's amazing so it made you like a fully well-rounded person i mean to take that experience into your craft ultimately it's got to be the it's i think what we were trying to look for what was the unifying reason other than good health and good luck yeah that my brothers and i have managed to uh to be able to stick around and keep going and and work so hard because you do really work hard and kind of get the thing. And, and I think, and I think also be,

I think we're all three really good bosses. I think we're very, we're, I think we're, we're not so good from above. We don't do so well with, with bosses, but,

but we're very good, we're very good bosses. And I don't know. It's, I think some of it comes from, we had a very omnivorous gathering of what people are like and what it's like. Yeah.

And economics as well. You saw it all, the full arc. Yeah, and the economics in our household were, you know, my father was, because he was a gambler, there were times where we were really super flush and really hitting it. And there were times where he would, you know, my father would be gone and he'd check in in the Beverly Hills Hotel and he couldn't pay his bill. And the concierge would put him on the arm for a month until he got a gig.

You know, it was that kind of shit. So it was that. You really dealt with the inconsistency. We called it luxurious insecurity, yes. So was it always going to be writing for you? No, I was a rock and roller, man. Oh, really? Totally.

What did you play? I was a guitar player. Yeah? Yeah. Still? I play. I don't play out with anybody. I don't do what you do.

I don't go out and play with anybody. I just started doing that in my 50s. I was going to do it, and then I saw that Viagra commercial of the guy doing it, and I'm like, fuck that. I don't want to be that guy. No, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. it I'm gonna go back in the um my fantasy is my son's friends have a he's got some friends who's some really good musicians and one of them has a studio yeah I when when I get this thing under control I've been there I was doing some writing last year and coming up when you get Star Wars under control yeah next next year when I get

when I get this monkey off my, yeah, when it gets under control, I want to go back to the studio more than play out live. No, I like building songs in the studio more than jamming. I don't really like jamming. I did so much jamming when I was, you know, in the first 20 years of my life. Well, what was the intent?

What kind of band was it? Were you doing originals? Were you doing like, what was it? I mean, I did everything. I started playing out, I started playing out gigs at 13. Oh yeah? Yeah.

At Stewart Air Force Base at the NCO Club. Like doing dances and shit? Man, that was, I played in a band, the first gig I ever played was at the NCO Club.

Yeah. And when it was Stewart Air Force Base. Yeah. The band was called Shades of Soul. Yeah. I was the only white guy

in the band. Yeah. I was the only white guy on the band. Yeah. I was the bass player. I was 13. And I think we did, I think we knew two songs. I think we did Slippin' Into Darkness for one set. And then we'd come back and do Feelin' Alright for the second set. It was that kind of a band.

Right. But it was really- But I mean, I played everything after that. Then I, you know, and I did it really seriously. I wanted to be a studio player and I thought I was going to played everything after that. Then I, you know, and I did it really seriously. I wanted to be a studio player and I thought I was going to be a studio musician. I really thought that. I did it really seriously, pursued it.

You had real chops, huh? I could really play. I could really play, but I could really play. But I was like kind of a, you know, a presence in Boston, young. What years? 75, 76, 77. Who was around?

I mean, that's a big music town. I went to college in Boston. I went to BU. I went to BU for two years. I dropped out of BU to play in the clubs up there. So I played that whole circuit. It was a great place to be at that time because you were allowed to play in town

once or twice a month. Yeah. And then the rest of the time, you'd play all the colleges or ski resorts or whatever. But you could come in and play. That was the rule. You could play Jack's and Oxford Alehouse or Brandy's or Bunratty's.

Was the channel around you? That's after me. Oh, yeah. The channel's after me. Bunratty's was around? Bunratty's. I played Bunratty's many times. Wow.

I think it's still around. Someone told me it might, Brandy's, Brandy's 1, Brandy's 2, all the clubs. But you could come into town like once or twice a month and you could make a living and uh you could play original music you could you know you'd have three or four sets of covers and stuff but you'd have a couple sets of and and everyone was trying a couple sets of original music and everyone was trying to get a deal it was all about trying to get a deal who was around the bands you remember at the time

i mean like well oh we broke out of there because the cars were we were we you know was at one point it was kind of like us and the cars and it was like what was your band called that band was called the night visitors yeah and uh and uh we came very very good really good band came very very close and and screwed it up royally and you know a great great you did we did we had a? We did. We had a, we had a, we had a, we had,

we put together a band. Yeah. This buddy of mine and I came back to my mother's house, spent the summer, worked on all the material, went back to Boston and we stole the rhythm section from another band,

from the Road Apples. Uh-huh. Sure. Good band. We stole a great rhythm section. Yeah. And, and we, and we had a house

a studio in Arlington this really sort of little famous house that had this great little four track studio in it and we rehearsed down there we rehearsed up three songs

and we got this real estate lawyer to come down to hear us and the guy just flipped out and we were really good and they put us in the studio and recorded these three songs

and they were really strong yeah and we had every record company in New York desperate to come so we were like wow we've all played out we've all been playing out three songs and they were really strong yeah and we had every record company in new york desperate to go so we were like wow we've all played out we've all been playing out all over the place yeah and we know what we're doing and we're so good and we can stretch out a set sure but we had never played live we did not take that band on the road and play live and we went to paradise

there's a paradise club that just opened up up on commonwealth yeah just opened it we uh we booked a very expensive showcase for all these record companies and they all came and we had them spread around the room i know that room well we had them spread around the tables it was a whole thing they all ended up sitting at one table in the middle because they want to hang out with each other and we were just we were we were just not ready to play live. We were all really good musicians, and the songs were good. Oh, my God. And we lost the whole thing in one night,

and we kind of never, we didn't rally back from that. But the music from that band is... Did you record it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, you did the three songs. A lot of recording. No, we recorded a lot of stuff, and then we recorded a lot.

You got it? I have all that stuff. I have all that stuff. I have all that stuff. Have you listened to it lately? I do. The leader of that, the main songwriter of that, just passed away a few months ago,

and that reignited a whole long re-listening to a lot of stuff. That's wild, man. A lot of stuff, yeah. Did you ever see The Modern Lovers around? Oh, yeah. No, I love Jonathan Richman, yeah. I talked to Jerry Harrison A few weeks ago I saw that on the queue

But I didn't I didn't put it up He was in the band Yeah no I know It was great And like Because Jonathan Apparently he's a stonemason now

He's up in Davis Making pizza ovens Oh that's good to hear He's happy It seems like And Jerry has put out A couple records with him He's married to a woman

Who's gotten him into I think Spanish music He plays fl him. He's married to a woman who's gotten him into, I think, Spanish music. He plays flamenco. He's a very interesting guy. That's very pleasing. I never met him. I mean, I met him, but I never, we weren't friends or anything, but I saw him play many times and he's- Pretty sweet, right?

What a strong flavor too, man. Yeah, yeah. Back then when he was first happening, you know, now it has context. It didn't have any context back then. You watch it the first time and you're like now it has context. It didn't have any context back then. You watch it the first time and you're like, what the fuck is this guy doing? What the fuck is this?

You want to have people say that. Sure. So when do you go all in on the writing? How's that happen? Was your dad supportive? Oh yeah, because I was making a living. I was making a living, I know, I was making a living. I didn't really...

I called him up and said, hey, man, look, I got my college schedule down to like Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so I'm gigging all the time, but it's crazy, and I don't want to do this. And he goes, well, if you're making a living, do it. So I did it up there. I had my...

I sort of had... My fantasies were kind of dashed. I came out to L. to LA when I was 19. Yeah. There was a guy who cherry picked me from a band that his buddy was in in Boston, saw me playing, said, hey man, I'm making a record in LA. Yeah. And if you come out, I won't put you on the record, but you can be in my road band.

I'm going to go on the road. He's making this big record with Richard Perry, this half a million dollar fucking record back in 19, this huge record. Who's this guy? Well, that's a fucking tragic story. His name was Bill Schwartz. His name was Bill Black, but he called...

Bill Schwartz, but his name was Bill Black. It was for Playboy Records, Rocket Records. Yeah. And Richard Perry's producing his album. I come out to LA and I go to these sessions

and I think I'm a real hot shit player. Yeah. And I go out and there's Richie Zito and there's a band from Little Feet. There's Richie Hayward and Paul Barrera. And then one night I go and it's Nigel Olsen and there's a band from Little Feet. There's Richie Hayward and Paul Barrera. And then one night I go and it's Nigel Olsen and Dean Murray

and Davy Johnson back in my bed. I'm sitting in the studio. Elton's band? Yeah, I'm going like, oh my God. I didn't even, it wasn't like they put me in the game and I realized how far behind. It was just watching. I was like, that is not me.

I'm not. And so I was waiting to be in his road band and I was gonna do that and it was gonna be fun. I was learning the songs. Finishes his album, the day they mastered his album, he went up to the riot house and killed himself. Jesus Christ, up to the hi-hat? Yeah.

Jumped off? No, he OD'd on purpose. Wow. Yeah, and it was, I mean, I was 19. I was out here selling toner, you know, doing that. I couldn't even go out and drink. I was a bartender when I was like 15 in New York. I was like, I've been in clubs.

In LA, I couldn't even go to a bar at that point. I'm 19 and I was like really, it was very disorienting. I had this whole master plan and I ended up going back to Boston, put that other band together. We came very disorienting. I had this whole master plan, and I ended up going back to Boston, put that other band together. We came very, very close. I started writing songs. I got into writing lyrics. Yeah.

And I was doing too many drugs and didn't like that, and I had a house that burned down, and I ended up moving back to my parents' house. In Washington. In Washingtonville, yeah. Yeah. And I started writing short stories and i kind of started doing that and then for about four or five years i kind of or three or four years i did both i tried to do both things and then i really made a very brave decision and

uh i had a band of my own in new york i got to new york and i had a band of my own it was a bad time for music. I was starting to see the limitations of what was gonna happen for me. And I was like, I can see how I'm like, I'm not gonna be as good as I wanna be. And maybe I'm better at this other thing. That's tough.

It was very, it's one of the bravest things I ever did. So I stopped playing and I wouldn't pick up the phone. I used to do singing dates. I wouldn't do singing anymore or anything. And I attended bar for five years. Five, six years. It's like managed heartbreak. It only was when I would go to clubs.

If I would go see friends play, then it would hurt. But you had to commit to it in order to, you know, just to what? To honor yourself? You know, just to, what, to honor yourself? You know, Costello killed me, really. You know, Elvis, I was such a huge Elvis fan at that point, and I like, I was like, man, I'm not going to be that good.

Yeah. I can't do that. And I'm going to be like, I'll be like the great road guitar player who can sing high. The guy who people know? Yeah, but, you know, I'd be that guy. Yeah, just other bands.

That guy. Or maybe I might be the kind of record producer who's not a musician, like the smart guy. Right, right. I was like, man, I don't know. And so I just ended up attending bar for five years. So it's that moment of realizing your limitations. Yeah, but who, I mean, I look back now and I go like,

I don't know if I'm capable of making that kind of mature decision now, so I don't know how I did it then. Well, I mean, because I think sometimes the fear of what you're, if you can really see that your life as it unfolds honestly is going to be a fucking travesty or painful, I mean, it's a rare gift. I mean, I saw it happen to me with this podcast. Oh, I know. I was going to say, there's great parallels here. You did it a little later than I

did. Right. But it's a gift, but it's a hard one to accept, to be able to have that foresight. Yeah. And I don't think I thought I was going to be tending bar for that long. I think I thought I would get over rather quickly, but it took a lot longer to figure out how to be a screenwriter than I thought. And was your dad helpful? In what way? Any way. Well, yeah.

He was always, I mean, he just- Did you show him shit? Yeah, but it was more, his attitude was the annoying attitude. You know, this is the best. Tending bar is the great the greatest thing that's ever going to happen to you and everything you're doing now you're learning everything you're learning now is gonna you know and when you're in year five and you just you're so disgusted with people after you've been serving 9 000 you know you just when you're dealing with the public that hard that long i was a by the end of it i could only work at the service

bar it was like a machine yeah you know and when someone's telling you man this is the greatest years of your life and you're learning everything you my father was such an optimist and you're learning everything you need to know and all this stuff you're getting all this material you don't even realize what you're absorbing it's fantastic and how to be and you're going like fuck you dude i just want to get out of here he was right but um it didn't it didn't it didn't go down well it's not great to hear that when you fucking had enough of it. Nothing made him happier. At one point, my brother John was attending bar at Cafe On Dutoit, and I was at O'Neill's 43rd Street, and he could literally go have a drink with him.

He could go visit Manny Eisenberg, do some shit. He could go have a drink with Johnny, walk through the parking lot, and come have a drink with me. And he was in heaven. My boys. I know. We're like, there's nothing glamorous about this. Yeah. That's so my boys I know we're like there's nothing glamorous about this

yeah that's so funny I know so when was the big break with the for screenwriting the big break was a friend of a friend

I wrote a bunch of scripts and you know and people would read them and I did have you know I had access to have people read stuff but it doesn't really, it didn't really,

you gotta do it badly for a while. Yeah. And like everything. Yeah. And what happened, a friend of a friend knew somebody who worked at New Line. And New Line was like nine people

above the Port Authority at that point. Yeah. And this guy read this script, and he's like, man, I like this script, but I'm trying to do this other thing and help me out, and I really liked him, and I liked his idea, and he's like, man, I like this script but I'm trying to do this other thing and help me out and I really liked him and I liked his idea

and he's been a friend forever and he was Sam Cohn's son and through him, we ended up writing, I don't remember, Canon Pictures? Yeah, oh sure.

Yeah, so Canon, we wrote, Globulus and Globus? Yeah, we wrote a movie that never got made for Chuck Norris

called Cupid O'Malley. We wrote it together and I quit tending bar off that half of Writer's Guild check. Yeah. That was my big break. Canon Pictures. I knew a friend. Jim Taylor, the guy who used to write with, you know Jim?

He used to write with Alexander Payne. He worked at Canon. And I had another friend I grew up with who was over there, too. I remember going over there and just being like, what are they doing over here? Cupid O'Malley, as dead as they get. Well, they used to take those things in variety where they'd put all those ads. Yeah. It'd be like a thousand ads of movies that don't exist.

Right, right. It was a real racket. Yeah. So that was it. And then I eked in from there. And I just, you know, and I got a couple things. And then finally, you know, finally I got a movie made, The Cutting Edge. I got the skating movie made.

Yeah. And then it's just- Then you just keep going. You just keep going. So what- But I guess in terms of who you are now in this world, it was sort of built on the Bourne thing, right? Man, I don't know. I don't think of it that way.

No, but I mean in terms of like, you know, people wanting you. Like, I don't know. I don't think of it that way. No, but I mean, in terms of like, you know, people wanting you, like you don't get to Star Wars, do you necessarily? I mean, I was like, you know,

I became, I got legit off a movie called Dolores Claiborne. Right. That made me legit. And I was a woman's writer then for a couple years. That's what everybody wanted me to do.

But I was pretty, I became a pretty, you know, a pretty reliable, you know, provider of shootable scenes and fixable stories in this town

for a long time before that. But so you would, they would send you scripts. Man, we were making, Taylor and I were making Proof of Life with, that's a huge movie, with Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan.

We were making, I mean, I only, I did I think six weeks on Born in the middle before I was on the road with, I wrote Born in a small gap I had on a break in making Proof of Life. So I was a player at that point. At least in terms of being a screenwriter on demand demand you know well i mean none of this influence because it's funny to me that on some level you were kind of a fixer like clayton but it didn't you were you didn't

and not really at that point i mean i had done some rewrites at that point but um i bought a house yeah we bought a house in uh off off devil's advocate and then we couldn't we got we we bought a house off Devil's Advocate and then we couldn't we bought it and then we realized we couldn't afford to fix it up so I spent one whole year I went to work for Jerry Bruckheimer for one year and that's where I became a fixer so I went to work on Armageddon

and Enemy of the State and Bad Boys and Coyote Ugly and Gone in 60's I mean there wasn't anything there we call it the house that Jerry built because I just worked for Jerry all year. And do you, when you, as that guy, what is, is there a general problem that always exists with screenplays that need help?

Or is it just one story to story? No, it's pretty, it's usually pretty, I don't know if there's a universal truth. If there's a universal truth, it's that people ignore the purity of things. You know, they don't know if there's a universal truth if there's a universal truth it's that it's that um people ignore the purity of things you know they don't get into the purity of what the story really is about they haven't found out what the movie really is about and then you know there's a whole bunch of tells and scripts you know if you see characters and their iqs go up and down scene to scene and you see you know people there's it's a lack of reality right

it's always a lack of reality it's a lack of reality, really. It's always a lack of reality. It's a lack of rigor. Of honesty and character? Yeah, just make it, it doesn't matter if it's trolls or talking trees or if it's Ken Loach. It doesn't matter. It always wants to be real. And that's the thing you try to bring.

Yeah. Credibility. Right. Credibility in all things. Yeah. Do you have any movie regrets of yours? What do you mean? Like movies that you wrote and you're like, oof.

Yeah. I've seen some. And movies I didn't have. That's why I became a director. At least once I was like, well, at least once I want to, I either want to go down in flames or I want to see one that looks exactly

like I want it to look. Yeah, right. Exactly. Full control. Just one. At least one. So this, like, so now,

the Rogue One story, which I, you know, I had to sort of research and like, I'm not a Star Wars guy particularly. Right. But it seems like

an amazing, it feels like you somehow saved the franchise. They were gambling, right? They couldn't fail, right? What, on Rogue? Yeah. Yeah, it's a subject that doesn't really benefit me to do that much talking about.

Right, sure. I could say, well, I sort of say what I said before, and also just because it's just, it's just, the Star Wars community and the people that now chew up making of stuff,

it's become its own industry. It was, it was, it was for me, it was an absolutely extraordinary experience. Yeah. It was something that was in trouble and the scope of work

got larger and larger as it went along. And it took everybody that it took to get it done. And it shouldn't be good. It shouldn't have worked. It was such an enormous gamble on the part of the studio and everybody else. And it was a miraculous win. And all the right things that needed to happen, happened.

And so it's kind of, it's really was super exciting to be on it I learned a ton on it what'd you learn specifically how to manage is something that huge yeah and also oh there's some things I mean you know I look I learned how you can I learned how you can how boy I gotta be really careful you can learn how you can, I learned how you can, oh boy, I got to be really careful. You can learn how you can make things without prep. You know,

you can, it was a different kind of a seat of the pants, making things. I was very, I'm very prep oriented and like to be very organized. Right. This was very much, this was,

this was a 10 month, you know, sprint to the top of Everest. Really? Yeah. It was very exciting. Huh. But then when it was done, everybody's very excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, it the top of everest really yeah it was very exciting huh but then when it was done

everybody's very excited yeah yeah and it's you know it's great to win yeah winning is good but did you when you finished rogue one did you think that was going to be it yeah i didn't think i would do anymore that i didn't yeah no but you so like in terms of that skill set i mean are you going i mean well i guess you've got this yeah i mean this thing's a big deal the thing you're doing now this and or i mean that i mean that's going to take up a lot of space five years of my life three years tonight tonight we're going to show it for the first time and it'd be three years i've been on this so when they brought it to you i mean how did they turn you around on doing it? What was the original pitch?

She, Kathy Kennedy, they wanted to do a prequel of the, I don't know if you've ever seen Rogue One. Everybody dies. But Diego Luna is not just a great guy, he's a great actor. Yeah. And writing that part, there was some really interesting things about him, but you don't really know that much about him's not a story about backstory right um he said we want to do a prequel of him taking up to the taking about some of his well you know okay and when they first came some of my job some

of my relationships are friend in court people call you up and they ask you for advice right what do you think about this yeah so it was kind of in that bit of a wardrobe. And they tried a couple things, and she sent me these. Also, there was no economics for streaming at that point. There was no, no one was spending hundreds of millions of dollars on television shows at that point. And you were like, how are you going to do that? And they had a couple things that they tried. And along the way, one of them she sent me, and I, I don't know, in some manic morning at the computer, because I said, okay, here's what doesn't work

and here's what you should do. And it was this crazy frigging manifesto and stuff. And they're like, well, that's a little bit much for us. We're going to try the other thing. And fine, that's fantastic. It wasn't a job application at all. It was really like- So you just copied up and focused.

Yeah, you know, I do that for people. I do that. Because I really love, I you just copied up and focused. Yeah, I do that for people, I do that. Because I really love, I mean the way that, I just really love stories and breaking them apart. So, the other one flamed out and then they came back and they were like, we found the memo and we read the memo and now we want to do that and now we have the money and then even still,

it was still a long tiptoe forward into it. But it was originally conceived as a film, right? No, no, no. It was always gonna be this thing. But now there was, all of a sudden they come back and now there's money for streaming and now it's not so unfeasible that you could make something on a scale.

And I love Diego and I love this idea. And all of a sudden, and I had a bunch of movies shot out from under me. Yeah. You know, I had a couple of, you know, because, I mean, most of what I've ever written has not been made. That's crazy. I mean, it's the truth. It's a successful screenwriter's life is most of it's not made. And that's something you accept.

You don't have like, are you, do you, you have to, I guess. Let's define accept. How many things are you accepting right now i mean really right well you know i mean it's humbling it's humbling we should be like eskimos we should have like nine words for acceptance that's true or german yeah yeah but but i accept no accept yes but but it's it's sort of that that same moment of of realizing you're not going to be a musician anymore there's a different variation of that in accepting that okay but yes but i i had a couple i had a couple very important projects for me that got shot down i was feeling a little bit bitter about that yeah and um i wasn't getting any younger yeah and uh all of a sudden they're putting this thing down and i have a very hot idea for it. I have a really, and, you know, for me, it's like I sketch.

I'm a big sketcher, and I go, and if something's soft and accepting, it's just every time you touch it, it gives way. It does something that you want to do. And you come back at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, you work for an hour, oh, fuck, there's another good idea. And it's like, sometimes you even try to push things away, and you come back two days later, and it's like, oh, wow, look at this. things away and you come back two days later and it's like, oh wow, look at this and they just, they give. And this thing just kept giving.

And then, man, you know, it's just this chance of a life, this canvas. I mean, what I'm getting to do right now, I'm not slumming, man. I am not slumming. I don't know if you'll ever watch my show because I know the title of, you know, the rest of it. I'm gonna, I'm getting to do right now, I'm not slumming, man. Yeah. I am not slumming. I don't know if you'll ever watch my show because I know the title of the rest of it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

You're gonna be proud of me. I think so. I'm writing as hard and as high and as hot and as complicated as anything I've ever done, but I get to use this odd organism, this host organism, this body. You mean the Star Wars universe. Yeah, the frame. And I have a canonical framework that I stick in,

this five-year period that I can both use and I can pervert in a really interesting way. But I also, it's literally like, I'm not saying I'm writing War and Peace, but I have the chance to have something of that scale. I have, I get to write about the five year period where this major revolution is going to coalesce and this fascist imperial power

is doing everything it can to crush it. And I have carte blanche in that I have we did 12 hours I have a hundred and ninety speaking parts in the 12 hours oh my god I'm writing for the we're writing for the greatest actors on the planet and every scene that we write every scene that I write gets shot. It's amazing. So I'm in great, you get in great shape. You get used to it. I mean, it's just, it's been, there's been many, many times,

if you dropped the needle along the last three years, at the wrong time, it would have been, you know, get me the fuck out of here. What have I done? I ruined my life. But in the end, like tonight,'re going to show the first three episodes on a big screen and i'm proud to show them that's great yeah and so what this five-year idea that you this is a finite you they wanted to do the original idea was to do five years and then

we had no idea what we were doing by the time we finished the 12 episodes it's just i think when people see the full 12 it'll go on through Thanksgiving. I think when people see the scale and the abundance of what we've done, they'll be like, I mean, we were just, our heads were exploding a year and a half ago. Diego and I were up in Scotland. It was like, we sat down over a drink and it's like, man, we can't do five years. Your face won't go that long. It'll take 60 years to do it. We'll be dead. Yeah. What do we do?

So there was a very elegant solution. So we're going to do 12 more. We start shooting in November. So the first 12 episodes take place over one year, which is sort of his taking him from being, taking this character from being a complete loser and nowhere, just an absolute nobody. Yeah.

And turning him into a revolutionary over 12 hours and then the second 12 episodes will be over the next four years walking him into the movie of the rebellion and as the as the revolution coalesces and all the i mean i get to use everything i ever studied about every revolution i ever read about it's very it's the the breadth of the material that we can deal with and the amount of stories I can tell and the intricacy Intricacy that I can build I haven't I mean It's very exciting to work on a canvas this but it's almost like I've been a short story like a symphony Well, yeah, it's almost like you've been a short story writer your whole life. Yeah, now you're writing a novel It's really what it's like but it's it's also like this is stuff this is what this is the the struggle of of humanity oh yeah

and i don't know and plus you're not pinned down by the politics of the day right i don't no one's ever you mean you know wait you know fascism is timeless oh yeah yeah right yeah and fear is timeless and anxieties and betrayal is timeless and and anxiety is timeless, and betrayal is timeless. It's also not about the royal family. We don't have any Jedi. We don't have any lightsabers. It has nothing to do with any of that stuff. It's literally a bunch of people who are what's happening.

It could be called the winds of war if you wanted to. If the title hadn't been taken, you could call it the winds of war. It's a bunch of people as what happens when revolution comes to your town yeah what happens when your neighbor does this what happens when they come and ruin everything how do you what are the what are the various ways that you become uh politicized or beaten right now it's a very uh so this has been like this is like this uh it's almost like you've worked towards this your whole life this exploration of humanity on so many different levels and so many different characters. I use everything I know almost every day. Yeah.

And that's this whole show running job and the whole thing is like, I- First time, right? Show running? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As they say, first time right show yeah yeah yeah yeah as i say first time last time caller one and done now i got no but but uh job it's yeah man oh my god on something like this yeah but it's that's the it's great man yeah it sounds great like you sold me like no you're gonna no i you know it's um i i really wondered honest God, if it was worth it for a long time. I don't feel that way anymore at all.

I really feel like it's really been worth it. And are you able to think about anything else or future projects? No, no, no, I don't do that. No. I mean, I know that I have excitement to think about other things. Like I sort of look at like next spring. I haven't had a, man, it's like working on a dairy farm. Yeah.

Because it just never ends. And we're selling now, but my bigger anxiety is not even the screening tonight or how we're going to be received. My bigger anxiety is like I start shooting in November and I don't have all my scripts ready.

Right. That's my bigger anxiety. Now, in some other kind of future, are there projects that you've got on the shelf that you really want to see through in the back of your head? You know, some of them die because they,

the timing is wrong or that they're not past the moment or I don't know. I always like, I don't know what I'll do. I like the, I'm excited about the idea that like, oh, next April while they're finishing shooting, I'll have done that and I'll just be doing post. Yeah. And then I can start to fall in love with some new thing.

Yeah, music. It's music time. Maybe so, man. Maybe so. It's time, dude. You got to get the band together. Oh, God. Oh, God.

Oh, God. My wife would love to hear that. Oh, my God. That's where she came in. Full circle, baby. Baby, I'm back in the band here. We're done. That's it. Good talking to you, that. Oh, my God. That's where she came in. Full circle, baby. Baby, I'm back in the band here. We're done. That's it.

Good talking to you, man. Thanks for being here. Yeah, what a pleasure. There you have it. Man, that was a lively chat. Again, his Star Wars series Andor is streaming now on Disney+. And if you want some more Michael Clayton talk, we've got some for you.

All right? So hang out a minute and I will tell you about it. I'll tell you about it. More Michael Clayton. Seriously, hang out. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snow need with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything.

So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. 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, 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. Okay, so Brendan and myself, me and Brendan, we just got into it. We got in, you know, we got got into the mic we went almost scene for scene

for in the michael clayton movie we did a total deep dive had a big conversation and uh this is what that sounds like this is another thing this is the other thing that michael can't control like the the fixer can't fix this he He's had experience fixing it before. They've clearly have a history with this. He knows this guy. He loves this guy. It's about, you know, why aren't you taking your pills? You know, people who have those people in their life know that thing. You know, he's basically, this is like another sort of like, he feels that he can fix this.

He should be able to fix this. He should be able to talk reason to his friend. Well, and it's because it's a person with agency, right? That's what everything that, and Clayton realizes this by the end of the movie, that every act of him intervening and fixing something is because people have surrendered to him, right? That's what he has to get that guy to do in his kitchen

in the middle of the night, right? Surrender your your bullshit stop trying to figure out what the fog lights were like and everything just surrender and listen to what i'm doing yeah tom wilkinson will not surrender arthur edens is like the last thing you want to do is make this so that we wind up in court you do not want to see me in court that's. Do you think you've got the horses for that? Oh, that's a great sequence, yeah. First of all, he encounters him on the street. Arthur has like 20 loaves of bread. It's so good.

You want a piece? It's such a great detail. It's like something your dad would have done. Oh, I've got to get 20 of these. He's going back to a loft with no one else. He's just going to have 20 loaves of bread. He's just so excited about the fresh bread. It's amazing.

It's amazing. And yeah, he tells him, you know, in no uncertain terms, you're working for the bad guys, basically. You know, like Michael Clayton says, I'm not your enemy. And he says, well, who are you then? That's a fucking great line. So there you go. That's me and Brendan jamming mental.

We had the the revelation mental jam on Michael Clayton. That's available for all full Marin subscribers tomorrow. Go to the link in the episode description if you're not already subscribed or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. On Thursday, I talked to Jan Wenner. He's the guy who created, published Rolling Stone magazine. And as I said earlier, I'm in Livermore, California at the Bankhead Theater on Thursday, October 6th

and Carmel by the Sea, California at Sunset Center on Thursday, October 6th, and Carmel by the Sea, California at Sunset Center on Friday, October 7th. In London, I'll be doing a live WTF at the Bloomsbury Theater on Wednesday, October 19th with comedian and writer David Baddiel. Tickets for that are on sale now. I've got stand-up shows at the Bloomsbury on Saturday and Sunday, October 22nd and 23rd. I don't know what availability is for those. Dublin, Ireland. I'm at Vicar Street on Wednesday, October 26th. Then in November, I'm in Oklahoma City, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston. Go try to get San Antonio tickets. It's a small place and I added a show. So do that now. Long Beach, California available. Eugene, Oregon. Bend, Oregon. In December, I'm in Asheville,

North Carolina. Second show added there at the Orange Peel, I believe. Get those if you want to go. In Nashville, Tennessee. And finally, my HBO special taping is at Town Hall in New York City on Thursday, December 8th. Go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info. I'll play us out. Thank you. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey in La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere.