WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1388 - James Gray

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Filmmaker James Gray had crisis of confidence after watching a rough cut of his first movie, Little Odessa. Now that he’s made his most personal film yet, Armageddon Time, James and Marc talk about what it took to rebuild his confidence over 25 years, survive fights with Harvey Weinstein, and brave a film shoot in the Amazon that almost killed him. They also talk about Ad Astra, The Beatles, The Stones, Jaws, Apocalypse Now, and Fred Trump. 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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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Lock the gates! all right 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 welcome to. Trying to keep it together as I move towards this special that I tape a week from today in New York City. I believe we moved most of the tickets. My shows at the Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina,

tomorrow night are sold out. There's definitely tickets for Nashville at the James K. Polk Center on Saturday. There's probably some good seats there. My HBO special taping, as I said, at Town Hall, New York City, on Thursday, December 8th. I think there might be two tickets left for the second show. I don't know.

You can go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all the dates and ticket info. Before I go on rambling, James Gray is on the show today. He's a writer and director who first got noticed with the movie Little Odessa back in the 90s. He made the films Ad Astra, The Lost City of Z, We Own the Night, among others. His latest movie is Armageddon Time. I talked to Jeremy Strong about it a few weeks ago, and we have a nice talk. I was nervous at first uh but we're two uh frequencies of the same type of jew so i don't know you guys i i just spent the day i i'm ready you know i got to get my house sitters set up i've got to uh you know i've got to change all my litter boxes i've got to uh start projecting

that one of my cats is sick i've got to start worrying that one of my cats is sick. I've got to start worrying about, I've got these fucking carpenter ants. They're not hurting anybody, but I'm tired of seeing them. I'm tired of watching the ant parade along the ceiling of my bathroom. I don't know why they can't be gotten rid of, but it's a bit of a nuisance, a bit of an annoying thing to just sort of realize I'm cohabitating with all kinds of bugs and things. Cats, bugs, fleas. Cats got fleas somehow. Had to deflee them. I imagine the fleas are in the house. Now I got the ants. It's because I leave... It doesn't matter, man. I leave... I don't have a floppy door for the cats to go in and out of to their catio. So I kind of leave it kind of open.

It got moths in my closet. They've eaten some fairly prime Pendletons. Hope they're happy. I hope that that's some quality wool feasting. But look, this is the way it goes. The bugs are going to get us all. That's just the way it goes. Maybe this is just a way of adapting to it. Got fleas, carpenter ants, moths in the closet. There was a swarm of bees the other day on my porch. I don't know what they wanted. I feel like it's all an indicator. I had a tree full of parrots three days ago.

Just the Glendale parrots,adena parrots whatever you want to call them these green parrots that fly around los angeles we're all just hanging out my tree is it a sign of something i got a lot of birds going on there's a lot of bird action a lot of squirrel action possum action i think there's a couple skunks around i do not know what happened to the rest of charlie beans's family all right right, so I mentioned to you that James Gray is here. And it's interesting, the hyper-awareness of Jewishness now as a Jew because of the heightened anti-Semitism. As a Jew, you become hyper-aware of the Jewness of you. you become hyper aware of the jewness of you and if you're like me you kind of want to uh kind of hit the bell a little bit what else are we supposed to do just uh uh diminish ourselves

try to pass look i'm sorry on some level but not really that for thousands of years, because of being marginalized and sort of pushed around, that the Jews have figured out a way to adapt and succeed in almost every situation, but not just succeed, excel to levels that people have a hard time wrapping their brain around. And it seems that most of the anti-semitism that i understand or that i see if you break it down it's just it's just jealousy yeah it's it's hard to accept that a small minority of people that have always been a minority in the global population have done so many fucking amazing things and made so many fucking amazing contributions to culture, science, art, business.

It's just, it's daunting. I know for regular people, for non-Jews to really take that in. So if you want to believe in big conspiracies, the Jews run the world, not really true. The Jews run show business, not true. Easy tropes. I mean, they work in these areas. They work in world running. Jews work in show business.

Hollywood was built by a handful of Jews who then manufactured the American dream and defined it for non-Jews everywhere so they could live in it. Yeah, another adaptation. So they could live in it. Yeah. Another adaptation. Most of the fictions that sort of were used to base the American dream on white picket fences and aw shucksness was put out there in early films and movies over and over again by the Jews of Hollywood. They were like, here's the world we invented for you. Can we live in it, please?

We've made it. Can we live in it? So, yeah, I get it. I understand that most anti-semitism comes from jealousy i do not know where the black community gets off on in terms of the type of anti-semitism they have there was a time where progressive socialist jews marched with the voting rights activists uh during the civil rights movement jew Jews died with African-Americans during the civil rights movement. They were aligned. They were fighting the same fight for human rights, for workers' rights, for civil rights. And at some point, the paradigm shifted.

At some point, people like Farrakhan introduced this Zionist-occupied government business, this old anti-Semitic Elders of Zion, all that other shit, and just sort of started to pollute the brains. I'm not saying that slumlords and certain people within the music business did us much good either. But look, man. Look, woman. You know, we're just trying to get by like everybody else.

What are we supposed to do? Apologize for our amazingness? The Jews? I'm not even talking about myself. I'm just a regular, average, working Jew. I'm not a genius. I didn't create any scientific breakthroughs or make any amazing paintings or produce any profound music. I'm just a guy. I'm just a Jew guy moving through a world that seems frighteningly anti-Jew right

now. But again, I understand your resentment. I understand your jealousy and it is hard to accept just how amazing Jews are. Especially in this time where everyone's looking to blame somebody for something. God forbid you just acknowledge that the fucking game is rigged and all this infighting amongst us is just a distraction. As the world ends and the people who are amassing all the money are amassing it. And I would say most of them at this point, not Jews. So James Gray is an interesting guy, smart guy, a great director. His new movie Armageddon Time, very Jewy, but good. I don't need to qualify that. It's about his life. It's playing in theaters and available to rent on video-on-demand platforms.

And we had a nice talk. For you people that are uncomfortable with Jewish content or Jews talking or Jews mentioning that they're Jewish, this might be triggering. So there's a trigger warning for anti-Semites. this might be triggering. So there's a trigger warning for anti-Semites. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations,

how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. 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. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance,

you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance, mind your business. I find what's happening with me in the Stones right now is kind of odd. Like, I've loved them my whole life, but, like, I keep finding more depth to it somehow. And I kind of recontextualize them all the time. Right.

It's a weird thing. Like, I've gotten deeper into listening to Keith as he gets older. And I saw them, it's funny, because I saw them in Florida in their last American show on this last tour, at the Hard Rock, small for them. Without Charlie. Yeah.

No, I saw them with Charlie many years ago in San Diego. But I just got free tickets. I was down there because I was visiting my mother. So I reached out to their publicist. I said, can I go? And I went got free tickets. I was down there because I was visiting my mother. Right. So I reached out to their publicist. I said, can I go? And I went with my brother and people were saying,

saying, you know, they'd ask me like, was it great? And I'm like, no, no, it's not great,

but it's them. Right. They're doing it. Right. You know, and even Keith, like if he can, he like launch it,

like he'll cock, you know, for a chord and you're happy he hits the chord it's not a matter of the song anymore of course yeah they're sort of all vibe in a way what's your favorite period of theirs well the what i listen to the most lately you know they just released the uh elma combo uh live record yeah did you get it no i haven't yet but i know about it yeah is. Is it fantastic?

Yeah. Well, it's like that one, the two sides on Love You Live. Yeah. It's that concert, those series of shows. Yeah. And that was pretty good.

I tend to listen to, I listen to Yaya's a lot. It's incredible. It is, man. It's incredible. And people don't really know that record anymore. I don't know why.

It's, in fact, I think that's the best version of sympathy for the devil they ever did pretty great yeah and uh midnight rambler too oh yeah of course i mean isn't that that's uh that's mick yeah mick taylor is playing on that yeah i had a revelation on that record where where i was like oh my god this whole endeavor would completely fall apart without uh without charlie and bill yeah completely fall like that record that rhythm section is so fucking tight yeah and in fact yeah he's sort of the drummer's drummer right i guess so yeah he's very strange drummer that's sort of lifting up of his

arm yeah yeah also drums with the traditional jazz not a match grip like we used to very weird great group you know all rhythm by the way you're quite. I can't believe we're talking about the Stones. It's the best. It's the best. I mean, they're one of the only bands that I listen to fairly regularly. And for some reason, I've been listening to Talking Heads again

pretty regularly. My son loves them. It's so weird you would say that I haven't listened to them in 30 years, I confess. I used to love them. I'm sorry. I'm talking way too much about this stuff to you.

What else are we going to talk about? Movies? You can talk about anything you want to talk about but i have i the stones for me are uh i put them solidly uh and you may be offended by this but i put them solidly at number three behind it's impossible for me to put anyone other than the beatles at number one yeah i get it it just the scope and the depth of the work is insane. Yeah, it's kind of wild. It's kind of, you know, do you watch that doc? Of course.

What, I mean, what is that? Well, the get back creation, which I'm sure you saw in the first two hours. I talked to Jackson about it. It's astonishing. What's astonishing about it is they're just guys and, you know, they're just kind of like guys you might even know. Yeah. But as soon as they all pick up their instruments without talking or,

or knowing anything, they may make, they make magic. Like it's insane. Almost involuntarily. You know, my son who is a bass player, he said to me,

he said, you know, he loves Paul, Paul's bass playing. And he said to me, he said, dad, uh,

you know, how did they sign their record control and stuff? He wanted me to tell him about the history. So, DECA Records had turned them down. And on YouTube, they're available. So, the DECA session. So, I said, well, let's listen to it. So, we start listening to it and they're not good.

Yeah. But I realized it's John, Paul, George, and Pete. Oh, really? And the rhythm section is poor. Is that true? Oh, yeah. And so, you needed Ringo. Right.

There's some weird, to your point, there's some kind of alchemic thing that happens with those four people playing together. And it's like you can't even believe it. The Jackson thing with them playing, with Paul just sitting down and going, trying to do Get Back. Yeah. Instantly coming up with that song is nuts yeah well i thought there's a moment in uh above us only sky yeah where i really saw that more before

the get back thing there's a moment where you know john has george come over to play guitar and something right on imagine you know yeah the album yeah on the album right that's what they're recording and in the session you know there's all these musicians in the room, and George is sitting there, and John's at the piano, and, you know, George is holding his guitar, and John just, like, hits a couple things at the piano, and George looks at him, and there's this moment, and then George just hits a riff, and there's that. You know, nothing is said, and it was like, oh my god. That's the whole thing yeah and in fact when

apparently uh john doing his solo records particularly starting over toward the end yeah he kept saying to uh andy newmark was a very good drummer and drum yeah sly and the family so he kept saying don't no no no do it like this like ringo you know 10 years after they broke up, I still ask them to let go. It's so sad, isn't it? It's sad. I mean, that is very disturbing. Your life sort of peaks at 23, 24. It's crazy. I think age happened differently then.

Well, certainly, I mean, Orson Welles, right? 26 years old. I can't even imagine it. I mean, I can't imagine a 26-year-old now doing that. Well, he had a huge support system. But even then, I mean, when you look at 20 people, you know, people in their 20s, it's sort of like, you know, or even me in my 20s, I thought I was something, but I don't think I was anything. Yeah, I actually made my first film at 23, and I was a moron. I did not know anything.

What, Little Odessa? Yeah, I was very young, and if I knew how little I knew, I would never have hired me. Really? Yeah. But, I mean, were you just out of film school, or what did you do? Well, I was out of film school. I'd made a short film, which I'm sure is wretched. Yeah.

And for some reason, well, I made a- You've never seen it? I have. I've made the mistake of watching. In fact, I had a very awful moment where they showed that film along with David Lynch's short film in his time at AFI. And Robert Zemeckis's and mine was by far the worst, which was sobering. But I made a very smart decision in the midst of awfulness, which was that I used Bo Diddley and Billie Holiday songs in the movie instead of getting Friends you know, friends on a Casio tone to do the score. Sure, sure.

So the movie all of a sudden seemed like it was professional. Oh, good. Yeah, yeah. And so I got an agent and they hired me to do a movie and that was all madness. Thanks to Bo Diddly. Thanks to Bo Diddly and Billie Holiday. Which Bo Diddly song? I used Bo Diddly and also 500% More Man.

Yeah, that's good. It's spectacular. Yeah. Made me seem like a pro. That's the best beat. Yeah. Who turned you on to Bo Diddley? I have a strange one.

You ever see the movie Fritz the Cat, the animated film? Yeah, maybe a million years ago. Yeah, Ralph Bakshi uses the entire song in the movie. Really? I must have been 11 or 12. I saw it quite by accident. How did you end up at Fritz the Cat? How old are you? Well, you're a little younger than me. So by accident. How did you end up at Fritz the Cat? How old are you?

Well, you're a little younger than me. So, like, how did you end up at Fritz the Cat? You know, you may know about this, but in the early 80s, there was a huge network of revival houses all around New York City. Right. Which was fantastic. They had a theater called the Thalia, which was uptown. It was a terrible, I mean, it was a dump. Yeah.

But it showed amazing films. And downtown, there was the bleaker street cinema yeah exactly the theater 80 these yeah and there was a double feature of ralph baxi movies fritz the cat in heavy traffic oh and heavy traffic and i went yeah and i was maybe 12 i didn't know what i was going to watch but you were coming in from the island i was coming from queens where i where i grew up so where yeah i saw i saw the new movie i new movie. I always wondered that about people in Queens and stuff, because I do comedy. I've been on the road a lot. You get a little out on the island, not Queens, but a little further out, and people don't go to the city. I mean, there's a type of person that's going to go, and then there's a type of person that's just like, why?

You're completely right in fact my uncle who had the fantastically poetic name of seymour yeah he used to say i said well uh you're going to uh you're going to new york he would say to me so you're going to manhattan i'd say yeah he'd say i have problems with the city and i never knew what that meant i have problems with the city and finally a few years ago i asked my cousin i said well what did your dad mean by that he said i think he meant he had problems with the parking yeah but i as i loved it i'm to me it was like eden you know i would take the train in and the e or the f and 15 minutes later i'd be in the center of manhattan and they let us do that like i'm like i said i'm like i'm five or six years older than you, but I'd go.

My family's from Jersey. But I lived there most of my life. I lived in Albuquerque. My family. But I'd go back there, visit my grandmother in Jersey. And she put us, 14 years old, put us on the bus and just go to Port Authority and wander around Times Square. Yeah, it's actual madness because I have three children now, 17, 15, and 13, and I would never let them do that. I mean, the 17-year-old, yes, but not the 13-year-old.

I was 10 riding the New York subways by myself. 1981? No, this would have been 79 I started. Right. Not a great time. Horrendous. The thing is, also, people forget what the trains physically looked like right it was filthy the trains were covered with graffiti yeah it was like a dungeon you know right and so you would go down in there it felt dim and dark there's actually an excellent book by a photographer named bruce dav Bruce Davidson chronicling that period of the New York subways. It's called Subway. Yeah. Who would have thunk it? And his pictures are great. And

it's that time period exactly. And I loved it. It felt dangerous and exciting. Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. Well, why wouldn't it? Yeah. But the odd thing is, is that you felt safe enough because there was people all around. Yes, that's true. I never, the funny thing is is that you felt safe enough because there was people all around yes that's true i never uh the funny thing is one time i remember this was maybe a couple years later i might have been 12 and i took the train home at around one third in the morning yeah oh yeah packed at 12 packed yeah yeah and people like the weird thing i i noticed about new york and and i think it's true and i think that if you've lived in new y, you've spent time in New York, it actually gives you hope in people. Because despite all the rough types, if some shit goes down in the subway or on the street, people will be there to help quickly.

I completely agree. There's a very funny and very famous cartoon or comic from the new yorker magazine and has an uh california an la person and a new york person yeah walking their dogs towards each other yeah and the thought balloon of the new the new yorker is saying go fuck yourself and the thought balloon is have a nice day and the californian is saying have a nice day and his thought balloon is go fuck yourself. That's New York for me. I love them. I love New Yorkers.

Do you live there now? No, I live here. I've lived here permanently. I often on, and I've now lived here permanently since 2012. I came back here after I made a film called the immigrant, which was a particularly difficult experience in the release of the film, uh,

dealing with a certain person named Harvey Weinstein. And we, we had, my wife and I had just had enough. Yeah, of New York? Yeah, because it conjured bad memories, you know, of like meetings with the guy going, I hate your work and I'm going to destroy you and all this crap. He said that to you?

He said, yeah, that and versions of that over and over again. But what was that based on? He hated the work. It was pretty simple. Harvey was a very mercenary person. Where was he from? Is he like a-

Queens, I'm sorry to say, very close by. Well, see, that's what it feels like to me. It's like you represented something. Yeah, I was kind of like, maybe if I actually ever touched him, we both might burst into flames or something. Right. He was a... He was. I mean, he's still with us. But he was a very...

He was like the untamed id or something, you know? And in a way, if you put him in a movie and you cast him as the heavy, it would be like, no, no, you can't do that because that's typecasting. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You look like the kingpin out of the Spider-Man comics. Well, what were you dealing with? He didn't do any of your movies you just met with him too he did two of my films the first one i got into myself the second one the yards he did he did the yards he financed that

and that was a pretty nightmarish experience and then i why well because you know he takes the film he he he says well here's what you gotta do got to have a happy ending and you have to have this. Oh, yeah. He was a frustrated director, by the way. He had made a film, believe it or not, called Playing for Keeps. Yeah. There was one that came later in like the 2000s, but his is in the mid 80s. You cannot see it.

Basically, he got all the copies of it eradicated. Yeah. We tried to do that with a lot of things. Yeah, that's certainly true. I mean, I have filmmakers to this day calling me up in tears saying, how did you get your film out from him? Because he shelved so many movies.

It's crazy. But you got the art through? I got the arts through, and then I went off and made some other pictures, and then when I did The Immigrant, he bought it. Yeah. And I didn't know he bought it. Right.

And I got deeply upset because my reaction was well that guy is going to put it on a shelf somewhere in lower manhattan and he tried to do it and i got into huge fights and he was crazy he called me up one day he said i remember he said i i have been working on your movie since two o'clock in the morning i said what he was mad that some woman left well he said he scared away exactly that he raped your movie since two o'clock in the morning. I said, what? He was mad that some woman left. Well, he said. That he scared away.

Exactly. That he raped. I can't, what are you, don't make me laugh at this. This is a horrible story. Yeah. But he said, he said, he said, my, my daughter was born today. I said, oh, congratulations. Don't congratulate me. I've been in here working on your movie, getting your movie into better shape.

I said, well, I think you should go home and be with your wife. He goes, well, I'm doing this for you. I said, you're not doing this for me. You're doing it so that you can recut my movie. I didn't ask you to. I had final cut. He couldn't do anything about it. It sat on a shelf for a year.

Then finally it got released. That's crazy. Yeah. But that's how you dealt with him. But did you know any of the other shit that was going on none i mean i and in fact you know i know that quentin tarantino's spoken publicly about it a lot yeah he may have had more of a hint of it than i did because he was with mera servino yeah i never had any exposure to that sort of thing now when on on the yards, you work with James Caan, another New York guy. That's right. How great was that?

Well, I got along fantastically well with him. Why wouldn't you? Except you're just from a different borough. Yeah. Well, no, actually, he was from Queens as well. He was from Sunnyside, Queens. His father's a butcher. His father was a butcher.

That's right. Yeah. I mean, I talked to him, and it's like, you know, he's a real, you know, he's a piece of work, man. He's relentless. Jimmy was, he had a kind of obsession with his own machismo in a way. No kidding. Yeah.

But he was the one who really gravitated towards, you know, how should we put this, the less savory characters that were around on The Godfather. And he befriended a lot of them. I absolutely adored him. And I thought he was an underrated actor. Was he underrated? Absolutely. less savory characters that were around on the godfather and he befriended a lot of them i absolutely adored him and i thought he was an underrated actor was he underrated absolutely i think like you know when i talked to him i went into it i did a deep dive on him you know and i interviewed his son years ago scott a fantastic guy yeah great guy but like you know it wasn't just gangsters he like he was hanging out with the musad that's right yes yeah he had a thing i'm telling you he was like but wasn't he that thing he seemed to me that like you know he see i have this theory

about you know you have you have uh you know you have peasant jews you know who were built to to lift things and move things and then you have like you know uh uh mathematic jews you know like symphony jews right like oppenheimer yeah yeah yeah right yeah so you know, like symphony Jews. Right, like Oppenheimer or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So, you know, you got these two camps. And I always thought that he was like one of the alpha Jews. He was definitely, you know, there's a book on it. It's called Tough Jews. Yeah, I've seen that. He was a tough Jew.

Yeah. And he liked that. What's that guy's name, Al Sander? What's the guy who wrote that? Oh, I don't remember. Yeah, yeah. You read it, though? No, I have not read it.

It's a good cover. A couple of guys in a paddy wagon well i didn't i didn't read it because it's like in some ways sort of partly my life story my my family was sort of split between the tough jews and the you know edward teller jews the math yeah we had both sides my father was the tough jew side was he oh absolutely because like in the movie he's you know jeremy plays. He's definitely emotionally erratic. I would say that that is incredibly accurate to who my father was, what Jeremy Strong is doing. But my father's father was a tough, tough plumber who came over from Russia, actually Ukraine, 1923, and he was not going to take any shit.

Right. I mean, he was a brutal and bruising guy. Didn't speak any English. Yeah. Would sit on the couch, would come over. He would sit on the take any shit. Right. I mean, he was a brutal and bruising guy. Didn't speak any English. Yeah. Would sit on the couch, come over. He would sit on the couch and cry. Yeah. About what?

I'd say, well, why are you crying, Grandpa? Yeah. Your grandfather is saying he's crying because he misses the old country. Yeah. I'd say, what the hell are you missing? They wanted to chop your head off. Yeah, right. Weird, right?

Yeah, but he was also famously very physically strong. He'd carry bathtubs by himself up four flights of a walk-up. That's why my grandfather had a hardware store and then an appliance store. Yeah. My grandfather had a plumbing place in Bed-Stuy. Yeah. Yeah, but Ukraine, too. I'm part Ukraine.

Do you know where? Galicia. Oh, Galicia. Yeah, that's my family as well. No shit. Yeah. I got Galicia on one side, and I got Belarus and Pella Settlement on the other side. This sounds extremely familiar, I will tell you.

Of course. We're all, yeah. And then there's some weird, there was my father's maternal grandfather, or great-grandfather was down in the Carolinas. They all landed in Jersey on the shore, But then after the Civil War, you know, they wanted white men to come down there to start businesses so the entire state wouldn't become a black state. I think, I don't know if this is North, I think it was South Carolina. So he was down there opening grocery stores and he was, I think, bipolar, which is, explain

my father. How do you know that? Was your father bipolar? Because of finding your roots but the bipolar part they know no but he well he was erratic there was newspaper articles he fought with his son about property he he ended up you know going to court so and my dad's like got the thing the manic thing well i don't my father was never diagnosed with anything like that although he was certainly a strange guy i mean he he had you know

love and violence in equal measure can you but you were able to identify that as love you know as a kid if it's your only reality of course right i mean you don't have another alternate like like mike brady dad to compare it well it's interesting though you know like that i get that i get that i mean you have to believe that they love you of course but then when you grow up you're like why am I a twisted emotional freak right well that's the but that's isn't that everybody I mean I don't know you know like I read this book that it's called a fantasy by my bond by this guy Firestone is a psychologist and the and it kind of blew my mind it was one of these puzzle

pieces where he said when you're a kid, despite whatever your parents are, however crazy or however abusive or whatever is going on, it doesn't matter. The spectrum of it is that, you know, if you feel awkward, uncomfortable or strange, you know, it's not them. Like no matter how they are to you you they're your parents and they're gods right so if you feel fucked up you're gonna blame yourself install a parent in your head that says you stink and listen to that guy for the rest of your life wow that is so that's completely true i know oh my god i you just like unlocked more stuff i've been you know seeing a shrink for 30 years that's better that's better than anything i ever heard. You're welcome. Yeah. I mean, I should have paid for you, but I always feel like with my parents, um, that was, you know, sort of my normal.

Right. But now when I look back at it, you know, what's the old joke that, uh, you just want to raise children that are good enough to pay for their own analysis. I just felt that that was normal. And now I look back on it, and I'm kind of horrified. Well, I mean, you look back on it, you made a movie of it. I had to. I mean, it's interesting, because I said to my producer, I was like, I think he made his first movie last. Well, that I can't speak to.

I will tell you that if I had made the movie 25 years ago, it would have been a very different picture. You know, you really, I think people are, people change a lot more than they think they do. I think change is underrated. I think I'm very different than I was when I was 23 or 24. Yeah. Aren't you? Yeah, of course. 23 or 24 yeah aren't you yeah of course uh i think that you know you're going with what you know until you realize like you know maybe you've been misled yeah and i also i i have been over the past

three or four years particularly thunderstruck by just how little i actually know and in general in general and it's very depressing. I've tried to read everything I can. I've never, of course, read Tough Jews as we just established. Well, yeah, I'm the same way. I've got a room full of books. Yeah, I have a ton of books. I like looking at them. I like looking at them, too.

But at some point, you actually have to read them. I mean, I don't know a goddamn thing. You can get the gist. The gist? No, I can't. No, you have to read the whole book, especially if it's dense. You can get the gist. The gist? No, I can't. No, you have to read the whole book, especially if it's dense. You know what I mean? But I tried cheating my way through Moby Dick many years ago.

That's a novel, yeah. But I mean, like, you know, the stuff that, you know, like, I can't understand philosophy at all. It's like reading math to me. I can't fucking. And sometimes I feel like, well, when I get older, I'll understand it. I don't. I don't understand it. But when you say philosophy, what do you mean? Like, I can't read can't fucking and i i think sometimes i feel like well when i get older i'll understand it i don't i don't understand but when you say philosophy what do you mean like i can't read cunt i can't read spinoza no that's difficult i want to i want to know spinoza i talked to jeremy about spinoza because he played spinoza in a play and uh did he know what he was talking about a

little bit but you know you get the gist unless you're gonna go back to school and i tried that once it didn't work. See, I've had dreams. I'm never going to do it. It's this chicken shit thing where I say I'm going to. I had dreams of going back to school because I did go to college, but I didn't cheat my way through, but I didn't do- Where'd you go? I went to USC, which was great because- Undergrad?

Yes, I got scholarship money for there, and I really wanted to go to NYU or UCLA. What was your major? Oh, I'm a complete nerd. I'm a cinema major, but my major was actually a double major because I went there as a production major. I got a scholarship. Like I said, my dream was NYU or UCLA. Right, right. Francis Coppola went to UCLA.

Martin Scorsese went to NYU. Those are your guys? Those were my guys. Still are, in a way. And I got into NYU. UCLA, I didn't. And I thought, well, do I want to stay in New York? And then I got all this free scholarship stuff to go to USC.

Went there. Got there. And all of production was technical stuff. It's almost like a trade school. Yeah. So they'd say to you, here's how you load a Bolex camera, 16 millimeter, basically stuff now that is worthless. Yeah.

And then there was this other thing called critical studies, and that I thought was great. That was seeing movies, analyzing them. So I became a double major, and critical studies thing became much more interesting. You got in your mind you're going to be a a filmmaker and you got Scorsese and Coppola on the brain. Which was the only, I was very weird for the rest of my classmates. The rest of my, well, I was also a jerk, which is probably abundantly clear to you. What kind of jerk? I was pompous and pretentious. And, uh, you know, I was the only New Yorker in the class. Yeah. And I did, I will say I had seen a

lot more movies than anybody else in my class so as a kid you're going to the city you're doing like I mean when do you realize you're a film guy I can tell you exactly what it was I saw a double feature at the Carnegie Hall cinema which was this really strange art house where you would take an escalator down and they would serve literally cappuccino in the lobby. And I saw a double feature of Apocalypse Now and Dr. Strangelove. Yeah. And before that, I had seen Star Wars, the King Kong remakes, Superman. Stuff that was mainstream when you were a kid. You like those?

Well, I like Jaws a lot. I still love it. Jaws is crazy. Why do you say that? It's like it always delivers, no matter how many times you've seen it. It's a masterpiece. Well, you know, that was Fidel Castro's favorite movie. Sure.

Because he said the mayor, he'll leave the beach open, doesn't matter how many people get eaten. That was a role model for him? Yeah. Well, I think he saw it as the evil of capitalism, you know, put in a movie. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So he loved it for that. I still love Jaws, but that was a big one for me.

You read the cultural criticism of Fidel Castro's film work. He did the film analysis. No, I'm trying to remember how I knew this about Fidel Castro and Jaws. I can't remember. Well, Jaws was a big thing for you because it was so effective and so terrified it was brilliantly effective and you're by the beach when was how long did you take for you to go back in the water um i'm sorry i still don't do that my children are freaked out i showed them you know during lockdown i showed them jaws they freaked out yeah no you can't go i we were visiting i can't remember where the fuck, we were down the shore. I have family in Monmouth County, and I couldn't go on the water.

I remember, like, having seen it. I understand. But, you know, it's based on a sort of a real series of events. I want to say 1916, I think, off New Jersey, off of Atlantic City. There was a prowling shark that kept eating people. And Benchley had come across that story and put it into that, fashioned it into a kind of a, what he saw as a sort of poor man's Moby Dick. But it's all Spielberg. I mean, he basically channeled it into something ferocious. And it's still an incredibly effective movie.

But then I saw, I'll never forget, I saw Apocalypse Now. Yeah. And, you know, the black screen and you know and i was i remember thinking what is that and my world changed you did some stuff in uh uh city of z yeah these decisions you know with the liquor going into the train well i ripped that off from david lean okay um where in peter o'toole uh blows out the match and then he cuts to the sunrise in the desert. I had wanted some of these transitions to echo David Lean's...

Because that was the scope of the movie. I was trying to go for that. I mean, who knows? You aim for the stars and sometimes you might hit Dresden, they say. But I noticed there was another one too. There was the booze one. Yeah one too there was the the booze one yeah and there's also there was also the the the spear on his wall which cuts to the bayonet

world war one oh yeah yeah i did it a couple of times you see that's that's that's the magic of of genius you see but you see what but you do the reading wait how the hell did you decide on that book well i'm trying to remember now i was sent the book in very early stages it had not been published yet and one of the things i found was very powerful about it was the idea that this guy had had a father who was a drunk and a gambler yeah blown not one but two family fortunes i'm not sure quite how to do that and wound up he was like equerry to the to to edward the seventh anyway and he had to make up for his disgraced family name and i found that very powerful and i had wanted to try something outside of what you might call the comfort zone

yeah and i really did right well at that jungle was you're making small movies i had made small movies and then wound up finding myself in amazonia, which was, you know, this like wimpy Jewish guy in the middle of Amazonia. It didn't work out for me physically. I looked like Moses with a beekeeper's outfit. It was really rough. I had like, so I remember one point I looked down and had multiple scorpions all over my legs. That's what I said. What am I doing here?

You know, what is this and i i remember the cinematographer was one of the great people ever this guy dais kanji this delightful and urbane frenchman and was standing in the middle of this tributary of the amazon the don diego river yeah and he's got this thing on his eye and he's looking at the sky and i said darius don't you think we should shoot we're all knee deep in the river yeah and he says no the cloud is coming, the cloud. And I said, Darius, I think I see a caiman, and I think it's in the water. No, but here you go. Don't worry about it yet. I said, no, Darius, there's a caiman, and it's coming towards me. Can we please shoot?

I mean, it was this kind of shoot. So it took me a while to recover physically from it. It almost killed me, the picture. You think so? Oh, there's no doubt. I mean, I came back. But didn't you know that going in? No. You were just sort of like, we're going to the Amazon? Well, here's no doubt. I mean, I came back. But didn't you know that going in? No.

You were just sort of like, we're going to the Amazon? Well, here's what happened. I had looked at, of course, Apocalypse Now and Werner Herzog and these pictures. And I thought, pretty stupidly, I thought the way this works is if you plan it completely. Yeah. And you don't go to shoot during monsoon season. And you're not insane enough to think you can do x y and z you know if you just keep your ambitions no yeah because you're not

supposed to be there yeah you're not supposed to bring a hundred people into the middle of nowhere you know with like yeah snakes and sure bats shitting on you with monkeys throwing their fecal matter at you i'm it's insanity yeah well. Yeah. Well, you needed that. You needed your Herzog, Coppola- I guess I did. Right of passage. Well, at one point, I remember we were shooting. Charlie Hunnam, who was very prompt every day, didn't show up to the set one day.

And we were on the river and waiting for the sun to rise. And I hear this little Zodiac comes towards us. And it's his assistant. Charlie cannot come to set. He is in a helicopter. They're taking him to Barranquilla, which was the closest major city. He has a bug and it has crawled in his ear canal and it is now eating his eardrum. So he has to get it removed.

What the fuck am I doing here? How'd you feel about the movie? Well, I was proud that I had done it, if that's a nauseating word. I remember feeling some measure of accomplishment about it, and I like the film. I mean, when you ask me,

it's like I don't, I have no distance. It's like I don't know if the movie's any good, but I like having done it. But you made interesting decisions. Like at some point, you know, in dealing with that kid, his kid, that, you know, he kind of, you know, what struck me about that film was that, you know, that kid decides at some point to respect his father. Yeah, that's from the book.

And it's an act of such complete madness but it's all in the context although uh it's it's worth sort of thinking about this world war one yeah what world war one did to the world right which was it devastated europe so badly that all of these young people felt well if we don't do crazy things we might just die in a war anyway right because as you know i'm sure before world war one they said, they said, oh, it's going to be two weeks. Yeah. We're going to go and we'll fight for the country for two weeks and then it's fine.

Yeah. And then it turned into this like trench thing for four years. Oh, so it was when he was in the hospital that it changed. Yeah. All of that changed for the family. I think that it was a kind of existential crisis all through Europe around 1918, you know. Yeah.

It was a kind of existential crisis all through Europe around 1918, you know. Yeah, I thought you handled that, you know, that this reunification of these two, you know, are out there in the jungle. And then, you know, the turn at the end. But, you know, that, you know, we're going to deliver them to the spirits, which sounds nice. Oh, it sounds lovely. It probably means they ate them. There is some evidence that they were eaten. I mean, because there were these two guys, father and son team, weirdly echoing Fawcett, that went down to try and find Fawcett's history. This was in the late 1990s. Right. went off to the middle of the jungle and were caught by uh indigenous peoples and they almost had that happen to them until a brazilian seaplane came and saved them at the last second

but i like that they drugged them up first that that was apparently part of the ceremony almost a kind of ayahuasca i don't know what they're doing it was sort of an act of kindness yeah i suppose so you make the transition easier yeah that's right you don't just you know take out the knife and fork immediately cut cut up the calf muscle. Well, I mean, so when you're a kid and you're having this realization that helicopters over a black screen has an effect, so that was basically the moment where you realize like, oh, there's a lot you can do with this. I just thought it was the greatest art form because it was a combination.

You had photography, dance, and how you moved actors. Of course, you have music. Story. Of course, narrative. It's like theater is involved. Did you grow up with the, like I saw some representation of your home, but I mean, was there support of,

well, I guess your grandfather was supportive. Well, he was, and my grandmother was quite pretentious, you know, and she would say, I'm looking at the Benigni statues, you know, this kind of thing. But not really. I mean, my parents were terrified at the prospect that I might try to become a filmmaker or any kind of creative person. I remember my father was, he would say, you have to have a backup, a backup. Sure, of course.

By the way, the funny thing is, what he advocated was ridiculously correct. He said, from a financial point of view, he said, you should go off and you should work. There's a company and it's in Seattle and it's called Microsoft. And if you go to work for them and you're a computer programmer and, you know, and I, of course, was like, what are you talking about? And I'd probably be worth like $8 billion today. Well, that's interesting. my grandfather says you get a job at the post office the post office because you had a pension i see well my father my father's barometer for me was health insurance so i understand completely the post office oh that's grim yeah i mean dignity to all work of course course. But it's interesting about the sort of disposition of the grandmother and that first generation of Jewish middle class.

They were strivers for sure. And there was a certain quality of pretentiousness about them. It was sort of like socialists, but the you know, the second that you, you know, got some money, that was the end of that. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, and then they, you know, they immediately, I don't even know if they were trying to pass. They were building their version of a middle class.

I don't think, there was some attempt to mingle. I remember my parents saying to my grandparents, it was a lengthy conversation about, there's a very nice pool club, and it's in Great Neck. Right. And we can go out there and join the pool club, if we can.

Right. Yeah. And there's also tennis, but we don't play tennis. We're going to go swimming. And we joined it. Yeah. And for like a month.

Was it not a Jewish club? Let's just say this. Yeah. We like hid in the corner under the trees you know we were like a different species entirely yeah why'd you call this movie armageddon time well i was a huge fan and still am of the clash yeah and um i had remembered this song armageddon time which actually they didn't even write. It was a reggae song originally. And I remember Joe Stromer was singing, a lot of people don't get no supper tonight.

A lot of people don't get no justice tonight. They were very involved in social justice. They were my introduction to the idea of social justice, actually. And in a very unpretentious, kind of brutal, dangerous way, the clash. And I remember Ronald Reagan was talking about armageddon all the time yeah you know because the threat from the soviet union this very kind of um binary battle yeah good versus evil you know the evil empire and that threat you remember the threat that hung over our heads yeah the world could end at any second right so i felt that it was armageddon

uh he would propose armageddon for the world but it was also armageddon time for these two boys you know and what would happen to them and how their lives would go in very different directions i mean it's all pretentious nonsense maybe but that's what i was trying to do well it's well it's interesting that what you were able to encapsulate just through a family story you know it was kind of you know you you were able to to to get you know the senior trump in there well that's a hundred percent true yeah i i know yeah one of the weirdest encounters of all time i regarded him as a kind of evil clown figure he came to your school he was the he was on the board of trustees is that what was his name wasn't don fred? Fred. Fred Trump. And he would parade the halls, and he would look very serious and stern.

And it was my first day. I was carrying an attaché case, which, of course, is ridiculous. Who told you that? Your grandfather? Your father did. Right. That's an A1 attaché case. You'll need that for school. You'll come to work.

I'm a serious student, and I have this for my books. You know, that was his attitude so i was walking around with an attache case yeah it's ridiculous my hair was like cemented down you know with dippity-doo hair gel hey what are you doing what's your name yeah uh james gray james gray that's your parents name or your name or what's the name you know like this and he was sending the message and i immediately knew what was interesting to me even at age uh i was actually 11 yeah it was very clear to me that i had thought of myself as the king of the hill in public school immediately knew i was at the bottom

in this new place and that was a very powerful thing of the sense of humiliation. Yeah. And if I feel that humiliation, I can't imagine what it means for others who are less lucky than I was. Your friend in the film. Yeah. I mean. The African-American kid. What's his name? Devastating. Well, in the movie, it's Johnny.

I'm not going to tell you in real life. But in the movie, yeah, it was devastating for him in a different way. Yeah. The system didn't care about him one bit. And that was the whole idea of the picture. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's at a lot of levels. That's right.

That you can, this idea, you know, it's very easy for us today to point fingers. I don't know. Something's happened in the culture. I mean, there are many more erudite people on this subject than I am. But something around 2013, 2014, something something like that where people started to really maybe it's a social media thing but like to moralize and my attitude is everybody plays a role in the system yeah and you can be the oppressor and the oppressed at the same time some people are above you some people are below you you know and almost part of you likes that to have people below you. Of course.

But there's a jockeying for the most oppressed and who has the right to talk. That's right. So I imagine even coming into depicting your personal experience around this racism that, you know, you had to be curious about how it would be received. know you had to be curious about how it'd be received i knew that there would be some and by the way i'm i've become very good at avoiding reading anything because it's not productive and usually you need to wait about 10 years before you get an honest assessment of what the work even means but i did know that the second that you include issues like anti-semitism racism and so forth and particularly class in the united states that it's gonna some people are gonna like it some people are gonna think it's

the worst thing they've ever said you just know it yeah i guess the if they're talking about it it's good that's right well it's the third rail of american life racism you know it's like it's like there's something about it the risk the reaction to the film and i knew this would happen in europe yeah is completely different because i you go and you talk to journalists oh yeah i just came back from a trip well how is it different they don't see the same level of how do i put this this like their whole vision of what we call identity politics is completely different they see class much more than than we don't talk about class. No,

we don't. And also the, you know, it's, uh, the experience of blacks is different historically in Europe, completely different. So it's a,

it's a, it's a discussion of colonialism. That's right. That's right. What I, I, but I am one of those people that thinks that class is a major aspect to our identity and that you can't really isolate. It's not possible to say this is an issue of racism divided away from capitalism itself. obviously and my attitude is you know that the same striving that drove my parents you know who were clearly driven to get to that place in american life which was better you know we're

they used to talk about our boat will come in our boat they used to say it all the time i think that's the same thing in some way that was connected to having their foot metaphorically on johnny's neck that they're not separate and uh And I find that in the United States, there's a lot of discussion about how we can get people to be richer and not enough understanding of the systems that are in play that keep things the way they are on purpose. Well, yeah, I mean, it's there. Yeah, I mean, but there's actual sort of fascistic elements that are trying to erase the history of systemic racism. Yeah, I've been deeply disturbed.

But I feel like an old curmudgeon. You know, I'm very much a, maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm very much a kind of lefty. Yeah. But in the tradition of like late 60s, early 70s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the world has moved to a very strange place now. I never thought, ever, including my relationship or connection to the Trumps, I never thought in a million years that I would be having a discussion with anybody about the possibility

of fascism in the United States. Right. And here we are. Oh, for sure. It's insane. Yeah. Well, there's that. But also, it seems like in this movie, before we move away from what we were talking about

before, fascism and capitalism, and also what's enabling this stuff cinematically, which I think you probably have some concept of. But I mean, it seemed like you were exercising with an O, your own demons around your guilt in terms of the experience that you were put through. That's an interesting and excellent question. I don't know how much guilt I have. I was very young. You remembered it? Well, that's certainly true.

I would say it haunts me, but I don't, what else could I have done? I mean, I was- I get what you're saying. You know what I mean? Haunting's different than feeling shame. I, you know, it's, I'm too close to really, I'm too close to it. Obviously, it's my own situation, so I don't blame myself. Right.

I view it as like a kind of depiction of a world which is completely hostile to to children and their what we call agency you know you can have because here's the thing you can have all the agency in the world and it's in some way the kids have agency in the picture they decide they're going to go off to florida to ep Center, which I know sounds ridiculous as 11 and 12 year olds it is, but that is a form of agency. Take action, run away from home. But the system overwhelms that agency, which is different from having no agency. Do you understand what I mean? So in the picture, I was trying to say that there is a measure of action that we try to

take, but the system is very powerful and too powerful for us to act sometimes. Yeah, I didn't grow up with that. I don't know why. I think my parents were a little more hands-off and I was sort of on my own. But that's not a bad thing. No, no, because I was driven towards creative things

and I was aspiring toward it. But I had no, there was no real sort of, I felt my sense of self was nebulous. I bet you have a lot of grit though. I don't know. I may have gone through some shit. Right. You build grit later.

Later? No. You have it in your DNA. Do you? I think so. Well, maybe from your parents letting you go off on your own. I don't know. Maybe I don't know what grit is.

I mean, I find that, you know, mostly, you know, I've led a terrified, anxious life where, you know, pretending was essential. And at some point, something relaxes. Right. When did that happen for you? It comes and goes, you know, because my brain will always find something to create dread and anxiety. It comes and goes, you know, because my brain will always find something to create dread and anxiety. But as a creative person or as somebody who knows they can do a thing, I mean, it was probably about 10, 15 years ago. I don't know. Wow.

That's sort of wisdom. Around comedy in my 40s. That's wisdom. Yeah. I guess. But like, you know, what good is it? I got no kids. I'm on stage talking to people, like-minded people who just want to feel better for an hour.

Yeah, but that's not bad. No. Where does your movies land? How do you find it affects people in general? Well, before I say that, like, I would feel remiss. Like, in The Lost City of Z, there was a racial component as well. Of course. And that must have been something compelling to you

given this probably same memory. I had never thought about that. You're right, it's in there. It's in a couple of other films I've made. I just see it as a major thread in not just American life, but Western civilization. But also your immediate life. I mean, now that you're saying it, yeah, you're right.

I never thought about that. It's so weird. But you're right. It's a major thread. What I'm saying to you is that- It haunts the hell out of me. It's a wound. Yeah.

Well, you're probably right. I got plenty of wounds. I have no shortage of wounds. Emotional wounds. Physical wounds too. Do you? Yeah. I'm a mess.

But Ad Astra, that was a good movie. I enjoyed that movie. I'm glad you liked that. But you go from this sort of David Lean thing to Kubrick. What was that? That was Brad Pitt on wires

for 58 days and... You just wanted to string the movie star up? Yeah, I just wanted to give him some anguish. Living in a harness for three months. You wanted to string the movie star up yeah i just wanted to i just wanted to give him some anguish you know living in a harness for three months dangle brad pitt uh i i had thought that that was uh sort of what i i was trying to answer all these things where it's like well what what's out there what if we set up a life on mars well you know by the way elon musk still talks about he's gonna want to die on mars right Right. And I thought, well, the Earth is-

He should go now. I was going to say, it'd be great. It was an invitation to Mars, stay there forever. But I thought, what's wrong with the Earth? It's interesting, William Shatner, believe it or not, just came back. He went through Jeff Bezos' thing. Poor guy, he got all upset. Yeah, but he said exactly what I was trying to do with the movie, which is that the Earth

is fantastic, and he felt a terrible sense of depression looking at the earth from far away yeah so that's what i was trying to do with that movie i guess i was trying to embrace the the world in a way do the anti and also uh you know like you know try to you know connect with dad well of course that's in there but that was the all that was my attempt to do a kind of joseph campbell like atonement with the father hero oh that's interesting so so the intention the intention started out very pretentiously mythic you know this idea but the you know the cuba follow the campbell instruction well i didn't quite do that the hero's journey right the hero's journey like point a point b but but the the the kubrick thing which and and also the Spielberg thing, which is kind of a belief in aliens.

In Kubrick, it's, of course, a black monolith. So you can kind of project anything on that, right? Oddly, same with Rothko towards the end. Exactly. He'd go to the Rothko Chapel. It could have been a Rothko in 2001. There's no doubt that Kubrick looked a ton at modern works of art for the inspiration about that black monolith. And he was public about it.

And in fact- Oh, really? Oh, yeah. And it's an amazing- Yeah. It's like a work of modernist sculpture or something, right? Sure. That black monolith.

But you can say, okay, aliens are good, aliens are bad. You don't know what it is. Black monolith, we don't know what it is. Right. And then Spielberg has the sort of the classic uh cliched uh uh his films are not cliche i'm saying the the cliched idea of like the furry alien as they call it but he gets around it because the films work as fables they're they're sort of like almost like metaphors like et is like it's like a metaphor about sure like i mean i think even with the

kasdan i think was pretty much doing the campbell trip you know what universe it no luke i am your father is one of the most genius narrative ideas ever and when i showed my kids that movie the first time they saw it to look on their face to see the ogre of all time darth vader tell him yeah i am your dad yeah it was like someone had just like literally devastated their whole worldview forever amazingly powerful so that i might have been kaz and i think it was also lee bracket wrote it with him i don't know but yeah because spielberg does you know he does a different thing it's it's some more it's the alien thing yeah yeah but which but he he did find you know spielberg found beauty in it as a kind of metaphor but my uh attempt was to do the opposite of the kubrick and spielberg

thing which was to say there are what if there are no aliens this belief in false gods you know what does it mean if there's nothing out there yeah yeah yeah what kind of crisis is that what if what if dad doesn't find what he's looking that's right he goes out there and there's nothing that's nice and optimistic isn't it i actually think it is optimistic it means people matter more it happened in City of Z. That's true. He goes out there and finds nothing. Great.

That's great. He drags his son into the pit with him. That's great. I'm glad I'm focusing on the lack of transcendence in life. It's a good thing. Jesus. No, I'm with you. I mean-

Yeah, because what's the alternative? You believe in pixie dust in a way. By the way, those movies are Coppola i mean the kubrick and uh spielberg pictures the science figures are brilliant but you can't just keep doing it you know you have to find another language in the science fiction genre that's what i was really going for no i liked it i'm glad you did i mean you thought it through i definitely did that i had ridiculous dinners with all these astronauts and stuff you get like great details from them i wish i'd used some of them i tried to fit in as many as i

could but like we were i remember i would obsess over the sharpies you know yeah what what pen would you use oh well it would definitely be the sharpie yeah you can write with that in space it doesn't matter about gravity but i remember one astronaut said to me, he said, the interesting thing is that when you come out of the craft for about a two week period, you do smell astonishingly like hamburger meat. I was like, I'm sorry, what does that mean? Nobody really knows the reason you smell like hamburger. I'm like, okay.

So I tried to put that in the movie and I couldn't. Of course, no place to talk about that. There were weird details. You don't want tried to put that in the movie and I couldn't. Of course, no place to talk about that. Sure. There were weird details. You don't want to put one joke in the movie. You don't want to ruin your movie with one hamburger joke. No, but there were jokes I attempted. By the way, nobody laughed. I was like, good to the space shuttle thing, which she says, would you like a pillow and

blanket, which of course is meaningless and no gravity and nobody laughs. I mean, yeah, I think- The tone. It was the tone. You're up against the tone. It didn't work out yeah i think the tone it was the tone you're up against the tone it didn't it didn't work out for me you know in the heavy space you know the void you know it doesn't it doesn't lend a lot of opportunities for hilarity yeah yeah you like spielberg oh i think he's brilliant did you see the fableman i have not me neither when was the

last time you saw munich i saw it when it came out. Holy shit. You know, that film, I remember watching it thinking, it felt almost like he was conjuring some kind of 1970s William Friedkin movie. Yeah, he definitely was. Yeah, and he really- He probably made it safer than Friedkin. I talked to Friedkin. You did? Yeah, he's like, we just drove the cars.

We didn't have any security. He's like, fuck it. I know. He's a madman man he told me that he said for the french connection oh you talked to him yeah i love billy friedkin he's amazing and he said he put the camera on the front of the camera on the front of the car on the bumper yeah and the stuntman was a guy named bill hickman yeah just drove 90 miles an hour through Stillwell Avenue. And I thought, what? Yeah. You can't.

That's like, that's calamitous. Yeah. We did this drive and he drove and it was the scariest fucking thing. And I just was like, wow. Okay. Well, guess what? I'm glad you're not in prison. Yeah, exactly.

I'm sure he is too. The greatest collection, by the way, talk about clusters of talent. You had Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. They all knew each other. They all would room. I mean, like Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman were roommates. Yeah. It's nuts.

Yeah. Duvall. Yeah, Duvall. I mean, Duvall is incredible. I worked with Duvall as well. On what? On a movie called We Own the Night. Oh, yeah.

And I would say to him, I'd say, all right, we're going to do another take. And he'd go like this, Jimmy, take no prisoners. And I'd think, what does that mean? All right, let's do another one. But he was great. I remember I would do like two or three takes and I'd love them. And then I'd say, do you want to play? Yeah.

So, yeah, let's play. Let's play. We're going to play. We're going to play. Let's play. And he would go kind of berserk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's play. Let's play. We're going to play. We're going to play. Let's play. And he would go kind of berserk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was fantastic. Did he play?

Oh, of course. He would go, he was a great listener. Yeah. The actor threw something at him, and Joaquin Phoenix would throw all kinds of weird stuff at him. Yeah. And he would always play off Joaquin in the most brilliant fashion. You like Joaquin.

You used him a few. Four times. Yeah, and Wahlberg too. I love him. Not twice. I love those guys. And Joaquin. You used him a few. Four times. Yeah, in Wahlberg too. I love him. Not twice. I love those guys. And Joaquin is incredibly inventive. You're shooting a film with him.

It feels like live theater or something. Yeah, I watched him work a lot because I had one scene in The Joker. Yes, I know. Yeah. But I was on set for a week watching him toil in that role. And what was your impression of joaquin he only acknowledged me as marin once like when i got there it like it was like mark marin and then it was like no then no talking to him he wouldn't talk to anybody except for todd

who i felt was just sort of like like almost like a boxing trainer you know like because he was dug into this thing. He was emaciated. He was in the Joker thing or what he decided to be in that reality. And Todd Phillips would, in between takes, it really looked like, you know, you got this one, Rock. It was just keeping him isolated and wherever he needed to be. So there was no interaction.

Yeah, that sounds like Markeen. I mean, I have an incredible relationship with him. We have a lot of trust in each other. Yeah. He would do insane things in the best sense. Yeah. He's totally willing to break it open. Yeah.

And take risks. That's great. Now, does anyone offer you like a big movie? Yeah. They do. Yeah. Like what? What have you turned down james what have i turned

down in my life um well here's one uh it's weird i'm uncomfortable talking about this because then some directors do it and they make a big success out of it but yeah okay well the first well okay the first time i turned down a movie called devil's own with brad pitt and harrison ford which alan picoula wound up doing and I is that like his last movie yeah and there was no script

to it and I was just worried that I would screw it up which I'm sure I would have Pakula actually made something out of it I thought yeah

you like that guy Pakula great I think he's made at least three tremendous movies President's Men Parallax View

and Clute I think is a pretty brilliant movie oh man that movie it's a brilliant movie that Jane think is a pretty brilliant movie oh man that movie it's a brilliant movie that Jane Fonda incredible

what towards the end of that movie when she's dissembling it's one of the greatest things ever it's just like just like Donald Sutherland

lumbering at the table just amazing and that the love story the unlikely love story between Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda is an incredible film

it really is very moving actually yeah I watched it recently it's amazing did it hold up for you oh yeah yeah I find it very moving film yeah unlikely love story between Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda. It's an incredible film. It really is. Very moving, actually. Yeah, I watched it recently. It's amazing. Did it hold up for you? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I find it a very moving film.

Yeah. Yeah, so there you go. There's one. I love Roy Scheider as the pimp. Yeah, yeah. Roy Scheider is sleazy. It's like Roy Scheider

in Marathon Man. I love him. He's always good. Yeah. Even in that Grisham movie, The Firm, with the Coppola. Yeah, you're talking

about Rainmaker. The Rainmaker, yeah. Where he plays the corporate executive. It's great. He's like a lizard. That's right, The Firm, with the Coppola. Yeah, you're talking about Rainmaker. The Rainmaker, yeah. Where he plays the corporate executive. That's great. He's like a lizard. That's right, The Rainmaker. Which is really, like, those weird later Coppola movies where, I don't know, he was like, you know, a gun for hire, heavily medicated. Well, as he says, to pay back Chase Bank.

Yeah. But, I mean, it's a Coppola movie. Of course. That one is. Of course it is. I don't know if the Rain, what was the one with James Caan? Oh, the Rain People? No, no, no.

The Cemetery. Oh, you're talking about, oh, Gardens of Stone. Gardens of Stone. Yeah. How was that? I can't remember. Well, I remember liking it, but I haven't seen it in 35 years, I've got to confess. Right.

So you were offered Devil's Own. Yeah. You want to hear all these things, don't you? Well, I want to- Good Will Hunting was one. Oh, good call on that. I thought he did a- What do you i mean that was a huge hit what do you mean i'm kidding yeah exactly you turn that down of course i'm an idiot and i didn't because well i'd never even heard of matt damer ben aftlick and i don't know what the hell i was doing what year was that where were you working on jesus what was that 1997 or something oh so right after a little odessa

that was yeah and i you were getting pitched yeah i was getting pitched stuff and then um recently there's been some stuff but i don't know it's like i'm not sure it's not because i'm like you know pompous about it or i think i'm too good for the material quite the opposite usually i think it's because i won't do a good job doing what they want me to do with it. You know, I like doing action sequences, but there's a panache and a quicksilver skill that they want. But then you hire a guy. What do you mean I hire a guy? What do you mean?

Oh, you mean second unit guy? Second unit guy, a DP, and then you just need the confidence to go like, let's get the cars going. Okay, well, you know what? I don't know. I feel like cinema is different than that. You just need the confidence to go like, let's get the cars going. Okay. Well, you know what? I don't know. I feel like cinema is different than that. But that's a good method to get the whole team around you and then you just sit there and you have like a night.

When's lunch? I don't know. No, but no. You say like, I've never done this before. Right. Have you? Right. So you're higher.

I see. I see. All right. Well, I'll have to learn from that. By the way, Batman is cool, right? Batman is like a real person, at least. I don't know. He doesn't fly around.

I haven't seen one in a while. You haven't seen one? It's been a while since you've seen one. I like Tim Burton's second Batman. I think it's a really good one. I think Michelle Pfeiffer's incredible in it. She's always incredible. Yes, she is.

She's a great actress. But I'm saying in that movie, she's great. What was that one? Was that the one with Danny DeVito? Yeah. That's the best Penguin. That's what I'm talking about. It's like an opera character.

That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Right an opera character. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. Right. So you can do something great. And he did it. Are you pitching for, you want to do a comic book movie? No.

Well, do I want to? No, I was saying if they offered me one, would I contemplate? That's the one I probably would do. Because he's a person. He's a real person. He's not like a talking fox

or something or whatever. I get it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, or a superpower. Yeah, or a superpower. He doesn't like turn into a wrench, you know? Yeah, who is that? Michael Keaton in the second one? Yeah.

It's Michael Keaton in the first two. He's the best. Yeah, because he has the anguish. You feel him. But the eyes, man. Yeah. He really kind of like physicalized it like nobody else. By the way, he's sort of a genius.

Totally. Yeah. So you would do a big movie if you... Yeah, I mean, why not? I don't know. It's a great tapestry to work in. I mean, my movie costs five cents. Right.

Which is good, by the way, because you limit the risk and nobody gets mad at you when it makes $4. Okay, so you're... One of the incentives for your particular oeuvre, which are the James Gray movies, is... Wait, just wait. Okay. Is that, you know, like, can I make it cheaply and maybe, you know, I won't fuck it up? Yeah. Well, that's absolutely true.

Look, it's a very risky proposition making a film, you know, and you're always exposing yourself and you're going to look ridiculous. But you feel confident now? No. Confident? Ever? Well, you got to, I mean. Well,? Ever? Well, you gotta, I mean. Well, I had huge confidence, yes, in 1993.

Yeah. And then March 5th, 1994 happened. Which is when I went to see the assembly of Little Odessa and it was the worst thing I ever saw in my life. I remember I was shooting that movie and I was like, I am the greatest director in the English language. Yes. And I was like throwing crumbs on the water and back was sprouting beautiful lilies i had vanessa redgrave and i had maximilian shell

and oh my god how good can i get yeah i am so good yeah and then you realize that it's not the movie that context is a bitch yeah and all of a sudden the movie didn't work and i thought oh my god what do i do and i found myself having to save the film and my i'm not kidding you my confidence has never fully returned hmm 1994 but you may but i mean i would have to assume that with lost city of z and ad astra you know you you definitely that required confidence both of them i think it required a kind of insanity. I don't, I think. That can double as confidence. Yeah, I suppose so.

If you hold on to it. But yeah, but I, well, to your point, I remember thinking I have a team behind me that can help. I think Z was more insane because the aspect of like, I'm going to go down to the jungle and I'm going to do great. That's moron insane like it's a friedkin move like with his uh remake of what oh sorcerer yeah i love sorcerer by the way i think source is amazing movie that's great that's scheider too yeah that's roy scheider and and casting like you know real gangsters in the movie madness It was madness back then. By the way, two major studios, $23 million in 1977. Yeah.

That's like spending like $250 million today. It just did. I think it was in you. I think you were like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do Sorcerer. I'm going to go in there.

I'm going to wear a bee suit and I'm going to deal with bugs. But he had a hard time too. I mean, he was, but he was very competitive with Coppola, you know?

Yeah. And that's why he went off to do Sorcerer. Coppola went off to do apocalypse now. Yeah, and did the jungle thing It's a lot of swing and dick fights back then. Yeah, it was like there was only four or five of them That's right. So I guess what I was getting at is that you know, I see Like we were talking about questions of fascism. We're talking about you'll make a movie you make you make the films you want to make Yes, and there's there's a tremendous range and difference in all of them you know who your heroes are you know it seems like you know it tonally and you know you what

you want to achieve and where you want to go what you're exploring it's taken you however long it's taken you like 25 years yeah to to to do a an honest movie about your family. Yes. And your upbringing. Yeah, but that was because I went to the jungle and I went to space and I just about had it. No, I get it. I get it.

But also you also said that there was no way to make that movie younger because you didn't have any hindsight. No, that's all true too. But I think a lot of it was driven also, frankly frankly by seeing a country that was in deep trouble i mean there's here yeah i think there's a lot of real we have some real problems dude it's it's fucking i i i've applied for permanent residency in canada no i understand that i believe me i i i think that um there are some things you know it's like i know we say original sin, slavery, and it even goes back further.

You know, Adolf Hitler thought we were an excellent role model. You know, he loved what we did with the indigenous peoples. You're watching that Ken Bernstein? It is absolutely fantastic. I can only get through one. I'm not ready to go on with it. It is so disturbing. You know, by the way, if you were talking about Long Island earlier, do you know that the center of the nazi party in the united states was in yapank long island in the 30s yeah and you see photos of

this stuff and it's like these rallies that look like something right out of berlin 1934 it's disgusting yeah yeah we we had it in us yeah well they had eugenics in us of course and they you know and and what became the republican party has been pushing back on New Deal socialism and Jews for a long time. Absolutely. Absolutely. There was a concerted effort. I guess Lewis Powell and the Supreme Court was a major person. Powell Manifesto.

But that was a capitalism thing. This whole idea to create this. Chamber of Commerce. Exactly. And to try and undo that New Deal stuff. And now they're doing it. And they're going to do it. Yeah.

It's taken a long time. But they're also shifting the culture entirely away from what I would say New York Jewish intellectual influence and also diversity now. They're just trying to shift the culture away from it by legislating, not teaching the history of black Americans. Oh, it's absolute outrage. And also by belittling marginalized communities of all kinds legislating you know not teaching uh the history of black americans absolute outrage and also like

by belittling you know uh marginalized communities of all kinds to do this kind of um uh you know to take over the culture and simplify it now here's my point is that you know in telling the kind of stories you tell that are provocative and and uh uh intimate that i believe on some level that, you know, what's become mainstream entertainment with, now I'm talking like you, in terms of the accent, like with the Marvel Universe and whatnot, that it feeds a certain simplicity. Now, I'm not going to say that they're aiding fascism. I completely agree with you 100%. If you give somebody a McDonald's hamburger to eat every day and you say, here's another Big Mac and here's another Big Mac and here's another.

And then I give you halibut sushi. Your reaction is not, oh, the halibut sushi is great. Your reaction is, what the hell is this? The whole system has been primed to make sure that you accept only a superhero movie. So the audience doesn't know what the fuck to make of another kind of movie. For example, if you said to a college student today, dude, you're a sellout, would they even know what the hell you were trying to say? They'd say, well, that means there are no tickets left.

I don't think they even know what a sellout means. But the language around that has shifted, even with my peers, and I'm sure with your peers as well, is that the language of branding that the language of branding yeah and and the the the language of content and then you know once you start saying things like authenticity yeah that the it's all become the language of capitalism totally so there is no sellout anymore if you can live with it absolutely look there there is no question but that when you tell 58 year olds you know i i it's okay to think Chewbacca is amazing. Now, I have nothing against Star Wars.

It's fantastic, as we talked about. I think Empire Strikes Back is a masterpiece. But that's like for 12-year-olds and 11-year-olds. 50-year-olds, we should be watching Hal Ashby. We shouldn't be watching, you know, Chewbacca, really. But do you, okay, and I agree with you, but you're saying that we should be watching the legacy of Hal Ashby.

I mean, we can't be completely... The equivalent of Hal Ashby. Right, right. We can't be complete nostalgists. No, no. What I mean is if they were an equivalent of Hal Ashby, but the system doesn't provide it anymore. It does, but not in a mainstream way.

Not in a mainstream way. Right. Like the studios, they used to say, here is... I mean, many filmmakers have talked about this lately, but it's like you had the B pictures. You had Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, by the studios, they used to say, here is, I mean, many filmmakers have talked about this lately. Sure. But it's like, you had the B pictures. You had Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, by the way. You had that.

You had that for kids. There were hundreds of them. Hundreds of B pictures. Yeah, they churned them out. You would go to a Saturday morning, you'd see them both. But then they also had, you know, William Wyler would make The Letter or something. You know, and you had a large array of pictures. And then particularly in the 90s, you had all these independent movies that some of which I have to say were made by Harvey Weinstein.

And you came out of that. Which were very different. Yeah, I did. And guess what? That is over. That is gone. The taste for it is gone. Now, can it come back?

Maybe. But part of that is the capitalist power. The power that they have to limit the marketplace where only like a certain kind of movie gets made. To see in movie theaters. That's right. It seems to me that me that like you know like there's a lot of shit made dude and and a lot of it like i would i couldn't be a director because i can't put you know three years of my fucking life into something and have it maybe stream somewhere no that is that's very very hard that is you're uh 100 right on that it's because you have to give yourself to it. It's an anguish thing. It's like it takes years and hundreds of people, and then all of a sudden, boom, it's on content, right?

And it's somewhere on a website or an app or something. Streaming somewhere, yeah. Streaming somewhere. But the thing is, I think the content or the movies, the pictures that we're talking about are being made. It's just hard to find them. There's no behind them you know they don't they they they fall through the cracks a hundred percent it's not well this is the shift i'm talking about is that the culture used to be intellectual artistic culture you was driven by this stuff yeah i completely agree that's gone you have all of that stuff all the conversations around that stuff you know even the people who

used to be on talk shows it's it's all changed you're so right i'm i i have this weird obsession with youtube where i'll go down a wormhole and i watch a bunch of it norman mailer and gorvy doll having like a debate on a nighttime a very highly rated talk show right and you're like wait what the level of discourse is through the roof james baldwin Baldwin and William F. Buckley having a debate at Oxford, and that's like on TV. What are you doing? That's gone. The intellectual value is good. But the weird thing is, sadly, it's like I believe that it's gone as a marker of culture,

but I don't think it's gone. I just think that the priorities have shifted, which is even worse. Is that like, you know, no, it's all still here. No, I agree with you on that, of course. What I mean gone is we don't, it's not in the same. We don't put a premium on it. It's not the premium. It's not a kind of mainstream.

It's been a bit marginalized is really what I mean. Yeah, well, mainstream, right. You know, what is mainstream is like, I don't even understand. I don't know. I've never watched a Kardashian do anything. No, I haven't. You know, and occasionally, like, I see a clickbait, you know, all of a sudden, like, look, I like Kanye's first few records, But now he's like trying to lead some sort of strange, you know, African-American anti-Semitic leadership conference.

I don't understand that. Do you? Yes. The anti-Semitism? Yes. What is that about? I don't get it. It was unleashed in, I think, in that community through churches, through Farrakhan, through, you know, feeling that somehow, you know somehow Jews were in control of things.

It's a popular conspiracy in that culture. It has been for a long time. Something went bad after the 60s. It has something to do with the music business and slumlords. I don't know how it all happened, but they've locked on to that particular the Jews run everything conspiracy. it's the most upsetting thing ever i'm what you're saying to me i mean goodman schwarner and cheney right two out of the three were jews yeah well i mean we can hang on to that it's but it's it's i think it's

a mythology now to some people and that that whatever you know that there is no alliance anymore no i i completely understand that shifted into i think it shifted into the music business And out of the Conversation about civil rights And that But this is when I said to you I said I was a lefty but from the 60s 70s, this is exactly what I was talking about

Right, but it's dated Yeah it is, I am And there's an evolving progressiveness That we have to educate ourselves about around gender and race. That's true. That's become more sophisticated and more specific in, you know, and we're old. That's true. But I will tell you this.

I look at my children who are very well educated in these matters better than I am. Sure. i am sure at the same time they seem to have no awareness of understanding of have not really been educated about the influence of capitalism and the market on a lot of these factors in other words there has been a kind of separation and i have to seek that out how the fuck did you get educated on it's like you know i don't know yeah i mean but that you got because someone goes you ever read that book yeah and you're like holy shit yeah is this true yeah and you're like holy shit it. Yeah. Is this true? Yeah. And you're like, holy shit, it is true. You've got to have those brain, those mind-blowing books that lay that shit out. Yeah.

And then you have to integrate that train of thought or that type of perception into the way you see the world. Usually it takes one person, a usually who sure with whom you really connect i'm trying to think of the book that kind of blew my mind open about the nefariousness of of of how capitalism works i wasn't a kid no i mean either i was probably mid-20s it was it was i can tell you for me it was this writer louis altouser, who went crazy, actually, and I think stabbed his wife or strangled her. I can't remember which. But he wrote this thing about what he called the ISA, the ideological state apparatus. And that, I remember reading that and kind of going, huh, that's amazing.

Now, I can't really talk about this because if I do, you know, it's like people think, you know, you're a pompous ass. You say Althusser at a dinner party and they were bludgeoning you to death yeah but it definitely opened my mind into a new way of viewing capitalism sure the uh the power of that the ideological power of that yeah you ever watch those adam curtis movies oh yeah of course fantastic why are you laughing he's amazing no because i, because I love him. No, I'm excited. Yeah, like I have OCD quality. I laugh because I'm excited. Yeah, it's like I can't get enough of that shit. Oh, it's crazy, man.

I know, but this is bad because, you know, this is not going to cheer you up in life. What do you mean? I need some kind of- What, are you looking to be cheered up? A little bit. Well, what do you do? I don't really do anything. I listen to music.

That cheers me up a little bit. I listen to music. Sometimes, you know, I'll cook. You know, I fucking talk to my cats. Cooking is good, by the way. I'm in comedy clubs every fucking night of my life. I've been doing comedy all my life. Does that work?

Sometimes. You know, I used to see a particular comedian who's very famous, whose name I won't mention on this. And he would be sitting at the Chateau Marmont every day, and I would go there to write. And he'd always be there. And he always looked much more miserable than anyone else in the room. Uh-huh. He looked like the most miserable guy in the world, and then you would see his persona

would be Mr. Happy Guy. Sure. Yeah. So I always think that comedians in private are extremely anguished. Isn't that not true? Well, I think that's a stereotype. But I mean, sure, I mean, sad, angry, but you can't generalize. There's been an infusion into younger stand-ups

next generation of people they don't take it as seriously well a lot of them come out of sketch now they know how to work with other people those of us who got into it because we were complete social morons and you know completely uncomfortable and you know but uh it's a different different generation you know yeah but i go watch some rodney dangerfield they'll help you out oh yeah he's he's he's he seems like he would have been a very cheerful fellow in life miserable oh my god yes you can see you can see it but i feel like he's it's like you know the more i sort of like as keith richards continues living and i i my love for him grows and i go back to it like you know rodney is one of these unsung heroes. Really, truly

unique guy. He was like one of the greats. I don't know that he gets the props he gets. He gets it from certain people. I think in the big picture, he actually does not get the respect he deserves. Rodney, I feel like you mentioned

his name. No respect at all. He's like a god of course yeah but maybe it's because I'm old and I just sometimes you watch him on Carson

when he's bombing it's just so you got the right mic on right yeah I know he's brilliant he's brilliant of course but I also love

the sort of borscht belt thing sure yeah I mean well of course we do I mean how I mean that's how I got into it

you know Buddy Hackett still like Buddy Jackie Vernon I would it. You know, Buddy Hackett. Still like Buddy. Jackie Vernon I would watch. By the way, Buddy Hackett, that's like, I was watching The Music Man with my kids, and Buddy Hackett is like actually a song and dance man in that. Yeah, with his little weird. That's a little weird. Goofy mush mouth face.

Shapoopy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The love buggy's in the love buggy. Yes. Well, he is Buddy Hackett after all. Yeah. Yeah, but I used to think he was funny.

Anyway, yeah, Rickles and all those guys. We grew up with that shit. Rickles, whom I met, by the way, I'm happy to say, immediately took a liking to me, which meant he was, of course, instantly insulting over and over and over again. Yeah. And my wife thought that was the greatest thing she'd ever heard. Of course. Why wouldn't it?

Yeah. I got a great book. Have you seen that book of photographs of the hotels now? Oh, in the Catskills, you mean? Yeah, yeah. It's the most haunting things in the world, like Grossingers and the Congress. Oh, my God. You've seen that book?

Yeah, they're like modern ruins. Yeah, it's crazy. It's amazing. I want to go see it. No one's going to, there's still lounge chairs and shit. Isn't that amazing? There's a bowling ball. I want to go there.

I don't know if it's still like that. You can go there. Maybe that'll bring you joy. Yeah. I like modern ruins. Yeah. Good talking to you, man. Great talking to you.

Thanks for doing it. I hope your wife enjoys it. I'm sure she will. Armageddon Time is now playing in theaters and available to rent on video on demand. That was James Gray. Enjoy that guy. We've been texting. We've been texting each other pictures of food we cook.

So, okay, hang out a minute, you guys. Just hang out. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly

regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton.

The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Okay, folks, my recommendation from our archives today is episode 581 with mick foley mick foley

is a hall of fame professional wrestler as well as an author and actor and he's also someone i got to know while doing my old radio show morning sedition well i'm just i you know it's great to see you i i mean despite whatever i may not know about wrestling we always seem to have a fairly rich conversation. We do. I think because when I met you, it was on the Air America show. And at that time, I knew quite a bit. Didn't we do a bit?

We did a lot of bits, yeah. Didn't we do that one where we had Brendan play the conservative? Right? And he won this. He was going to fight, wrestle me or something, and then we brought you in. And we did that whole script on the air. And then we cut the mics for years.

People thought it was real. Yeah, we would get this mail sort of like, hey, look, you know, they have a right to talk too. I don't agree with them, but I think what you did to that guy. That's right. And I remember just how talented the writers were on that show. When I came in and co-hosted for a week with you, I was like, 5 a.m. and here's the production meeting. These are just great. You can listen to that episode for free on all podcast platforms.

It's episode 581 with Mick Foley. And you'll want to check it out if you have a full Marin subscription because next week we're going to post some bonus content that involved Mick with a wrestling angle on the radio. That was some back-in-the-day shit there. Yeah, we did a wrestling piece. Radio wrestling piece. Sold out shows tomorrow in Asheville, North Carolina.

Still some seats left for my shows on Saturday at the James K. Polk Center in Nashville, Tennessee. And very few seats left for my HBO special taping at Town Hall in New York City on Thursday, December 8th. Maybe a couple. Guitar time. Thank you. Thank you. so Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey, La Fonda, cat angels everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.