WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 664 - Eric Bogosian

Episode Date: December 17, 2015

Eric Bogosian leads several creative lives, as a stage performer, a film actor, a playwright, a screenwriter, a novelist, and now a non-fiction writer. Eric takes Marc on the journey from his breakout play Talk Radio through his absorbing new history book Operation Nemesis and explains the tricks to keeping all the balls in the air: Have fun, keep things interesting, and don’t plan to make money because those plans usually fail. 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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oh it's me mark maron this is wtf my podcast welcome i'm uh happier here as you can probably tell perhaps unless uh these mics are absolutely fucking amazing which they might be but you could probably sense the room is different you can probably sense that perhaps tonally things are a little different i am in probably i'm gonna go ahead and say the second greatest city in this country i i i i'm not even gonna go into why one is one or what one is that's that's what a coward i am but i'm in chicago for a couple of days doing thing. I don't even know if I can talk about the thing, but God damn it, I love Chicago. I shot my special in Chicago.

For those of you who haven't seen that special, I know it's hard to find. I know it's hard to get, but go to epicshd.com, and there's a way you could probably watch it. You might even have Epics, and they have it on the thing there at the demand place at epicshd.com. But don't worry.

In a couple of months, it will be on Hulu. And we can all watch it together on Hulu. A lot of people get the Hulu. Eventually, all will see it. More later with me, Mark Maron, taped right here in Chicago. That was the last time I was here. I'm here to do a Joe Swanberg thing that I'm not really supposed to talk about. But it's a pretty cool thing.

I'm acting. I'm doing some, you know, acting for me. I think I'm okay at acting the part of me. I can do it on camera for Marin. I can also do it in other places. And I can do it where you can change the name. So this is the trick of my acting technique, is that my technique is act exactly like yourself, give or take a little bit.

Turn this down, turn that up, if you can make those kinds of adjustments and then just have a different name for the character. And then if people say like, well, he's not really acting, maybe they don't understand the character. That's how I justify and rationalize my acting technique. If you'd like to learn how to act with the Mark Maron system here, here it is. Just try not to be too self-conscious, act like yourself, react to things honestly, and listen. And then take some direction,

like move over there, move over there. Can you do an accent? Probably not, I probably can't. But can you speak a little lower? Yeah, but you might have to remind me because I do a lot of mic work where you're not even supposed to speak loud, but it's an enunciation thing.

But anyway, so I'm doing some acting and I'm sitting here in my room. This is morning before my call time. And there are actors I'm acting with that I'm pretty excited about. There's people I haven't met, but I'm going to be acting with Jane Addams, who is very exciting to me because she's one of those actresses that I think I've met her, but I don't know. I'm just very familiar with her work,

and I feel like I know her. And that happens a lot. That's one of the reasons I think that the podcast functions the way it does, is I have a peculiar familiarity with people I've seen once. But I guess the point I was trying to make, I'm also working with some young actresses. I'm working with Emily Rodikowski and I'm working with Alexandra Marzella, who is a performance artist. Emily is an actress. They both seem like lovely young women, smart, talented people. But the thing is, like, I don't know, like, Alexandra, I don't know what, she's a performance artist.

And all I know is I'll tell you this right now. I'm in my room right now doing this. I'm talking on the mic. I'm being as honest as possible. I don't feel great. I feel a slight nag of a buggy kind of, but that's between me and you. I'm just trying to kind of suck it up and do the work.

And she's probably in a room doing a naked Snapchat. I don't know what Snapchat is. It was just shown to me recently. And I don't know what this whole world of art is. I don't know this immediacy. I can't get involved with it. Am I a dinosaur? Am I almost extinct?

Is my intellectual context almost diminished diminished is it culturally completely irrelevant artistically i mean the woman i'm seeing sarah kane she's a a painter i understand painting i understand a beautiful abstract canvas i understand the skill set that goes involved that gets involved with that but there's a whole world of technological expression art that uh i don't know man maybe i gotta get hip maybe i don't have time but uh it's it's interesting to see it i'm also working with david pesquise who's a chicago guy who i've known i have a couple of scenes with him why am i I telling you all this? Am I just gloating? No, I mean, I got to tell you what's going on and exactly what is going on. Joe Swanberg is directing and I love that guy.

Maybe you guys heard me interview him. I think he's a great director and he's very fun to work with. And today, you know, I have to act like I'm getting boozed up because it's Chicago. So today's show, speaking of art, speaking of performance art, Alexandra Marzella is the new incarnation of performance art. I was on the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the,

I would think is the tail end of what was the performance art scene of the 70s and 80s. I think it was sort of crashing down. My point is Eric Boghossian is on the show today. Eric Boghossian, the writer, actor, performance artist, playwright, one-man show inventor. I think it was Boghossian, you know, outside of theatrical presentations of maybe Hal Holbrook doing Mark Twain and some other stuff. I think that Boghossian can be credited for creating the modern one-man show and making us all feel that we could perhaps do a one-man show i've talked about goes in a couple of times and i've seen him several times and uh he was one

of those guys that you know when i was in new york you'd see his books at saint mark's bookstore and you'd be like that guy's the guy sex drugs and rock and roll man and uh drinking in america i think was one of the other ones. And he was just a dude. He was a force down there. I think I saw Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll two or three times, twice as a works in progress and once as a finished piece. And he was one of those guys where I was always sort of like, all right, this guy's really fucking good.

He's got a lot of momentum. He's got a lot of momentum he's got a lot of power up there he's good at the characters but why isn't he just doing stand-up comedy because he's going for the joke a lot of these characters are going for the joke and of course me as a younger man i was like that guy's just a comic that doesn't doesn't have the guts to go in the comedy club where us men are doing stand-up comedy. You know, that was my attitude. And obviously, whatever he did for himself provided him a very wide buffet of possibilities to grow as a creative person

to the point where, you know, it's not out of nowhere because he's been working on it a long time, but he's actually, he's been working on it a long time but he uh he's actually um he's written a book that that talks about a little known story uh in in relation to the armenian genocide called operation nemesis about a bunch of uh i think i believe armenians that lived in america America who arranged the assassination of many of the architects and executors of the Armenian genocide

and Boghossian just went down that rabbit hole and started doing that work. Man, I'll tell you. There was a time where I tried to do the one man show thing. I mean, some of you know that. But I remember when I did Jerusalem Syndrome. I got to be honest with you, man. I was like, I didn't know what the fuck to do.

There's been so many junctures in my career that were sort of fueled by a desperation, a need to do something that could put me somewhere. I worked really hard on putting that one-person show together, Jerusalem Syndrome, which became a book. I used to do these fucking two-and-a-half, three-hour shows at this little place called Notta 45. Me and Kirsten Ames, who was my director and dramaturge just editing and recording and putting things together and then we got a run at the West Beth Theater we had a set decorator and it was like a big deal that was like you know it was a big deal for me to not improvise to stay on

a script to to do actions when I was supposed to be act doing actions to to to make movements that were planned and written it was it was ridiculously difficult a couple of months i ran at westbeth i don't know what i was thinking but uh but i i got a i got a new york times review and the guy was like he seemed to like the show, I guess, but I think his note was, the character of Marin doesn't really transform. And I'd never gotten that out of my mind, that a theatrical performance,

something that's called a piece of theater, there should be some transformation. I don't know whose fucking rule is that, or if that's just a rule, that that's something that happens at act at the end of act two or whatever. If it's not just about story, it's some sort of transformation. But, you know, it was a fairly positive review. And at the end, he said, we'll see what happens with this Mark Maron character.

This is where one person show ends up. character this is where one person show ends up this was the painful thing in in a way where you know because it was jerusalem syndrome is roughly about a trip to israel but more about framing all of my weird obsessions and compulsions and some sort of spiritual context or religious context that uh you know i i couldn't get a regular agent uh you know and and i got a personal appearance agent that that dealt with uh random people who did one person shows janine frank god bless her does a great job but uh i started booking jew Jewish community centers. Oh, man. I'm doing so much better. I don't know if you really know, you know, you really feel in your guts who you are and what you're doing and what it means and, you know, what you need to do to perhaps change your life when you're you're doing your off-broadway show at

a jewish community center you know in newton massachusetts or i uh you know for like a half a house of people that were expecting something fundamentally jewish and uh you know where you're cussing and you're doing your little bits to A lot of senior citizens, a few younger people. But needless to say, my friends, I've hit a few bottoms in this life. But now I'm in Chicago working with Joe Swanberg and some interesting people.

And I'm excited. I talk to Bogosian about, I always bring it up. And we actually have a, I like Eric. We are, I believe we are friends. The times we spent together have been engaging and exciting. He's a very excited and manic and thoughtful and bright guy. And he's a creative guy and he likes to talk. So it's great for me.

So enjoy this conversation that I had with Eric Boghossian. Again, I'm not in the garage right now. So there will be no guitar playing at the end. I don't even know why I'm telling you that now. I don't want you to get your expectations up. Eric's new book is called Operation Nemesis. It's available wherever you get books. All right. So this is me. Go. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats, but iced tea and ice cream. Yes, we can deliver that. Uber

Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, 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. of. So did you rent that Mercedes? Yes, of course. I have to. I'm in Los Angeles. Is that what your feeling was? Yes. Do you own a car?

Because in L.A., if you show up and you don't have a nice car, suddenly you're like a second-class citizen. They know all about you. I was driving a 2006 Camry for years, and I finally had that moment where I had to go to an event, and I pulled up to the valet, and I was, like, embarrassed. I never thought about it before. I was sort of like, cluck it. You have to clean it. I just got a new one. I can't clean it. I'm no good with it, and I already fucked it up. I was sort of like, cluck it. You have to clean it. I just got a new one. I can't clean it. I'm no good with it.

And I already fucked it up. I have a car in New York. You do? But it's totally covered with dust. What kind of car is that? Just a Toyota Highlander. That you drive in the city? With 150,000 miles.

Right. So what are you doing? Why did you come out here? What are you doing? Why did you come out here? I have been coming back and forth here for about a few months because I wrote this book about an Armenian revenge conspiracy. Operation Nemesis. So you're out here on- Which is a true book, not a fictional book.

This is real history. So at some point, you sort of locked into this story, and you're like, you're going to be a scholar. You're going to learn it. You're going to get to the bottom of it. But that's a new thing, right, for you, really. Yeah. And also something I didn't really plan on because this was going to be a screenplay like seven years ago. Armenians were always saying, why don't you write something about the Armenian genocide?

I'm like, what am I going to write? And then I heard about this young guy who had killed the leader of the Turks in Berlin in 1921 as a revenge against the genocide. And I thought, oh, this will make a movie. It should take me a couple of months to write it. I started, um,

it all made sense that he got acquitted because they felt that since he'd seen his whole family massacred, he had a right. This is what he had said in court an eye for 10 eyes yeah yeah and once i started doing research on it uh you can get the court transcript on online the man's name was sogamon tetlarion yeah good luck with yeah yeah yeah doing that why don't you the first hour your research is spelling that so have a good. And learning how to say it. And then I found out that, in fact, he was a member of a hit squad operating out of Massachusetts. There was this obscure book that came out of France that I found in translation.

And it wasn't just him. There were a couple of dozen guys. And they targeted all these Turkish leaders. And they knocked off six of dozen guys, and that they targeted six, they targeted all these Turkish leaders, and they knocked off six of these guys. Pretty much all the guys who committed the genocide were killed by Armenians five years after the genocide. From Massachusetts? Well, they were people all over New England, Massachusetts, were the organizers. They were these small businessmen, and they recruited these gunmen, men who were like ex-militarians and other guys who were familiar with how to but this was uh this

was uh solely uh this was not uh sanctioned by the government of armenia uh this is historically a little vague but no they couldn't sanction it because the government army it was a very small but was it like munich was it like the israeli revenge for munich was there some sort of covert operation within the government that said like you guys we're not saying do this but go ahead if you have it was more of something that a political group had decided that they they there had been devastation and different people were like what should we do should we save the orphans should we raise money to get women out of muslim bondage this is post-genocide now okay before we go too deep into it because i live you know right here at glendale and the armenians are part of my day-to-day life actually and you

know i i hear about the armenian genocide but be i'm ignorant of it so is this something you grew up knowing about oh absolutely now what so what happened what happened? When I was a little kid, my grandfather used to sit and tell me stories. When I was five years old, he'd say, if you ever meet a Turk, kill him. Right. I mean, these were the kind of things that I grew up on. But give me the numbers and the events in a short way. What happened? World War I, under the fog of war, the leaders of what was then the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish government,

figured they can get rid of all the Armenians when nobody's looking. And take over that turf. Yeah, they could take their property. They could take their position, their mines, their factories, and also get rid of them because they were Christians in a Muslim country. It's a horrible echo of what's actually happening right now over there. And so in 1915 and 1916 were the big killing

years, and the estimates are that over a million people were, and we're talking about civilians here, we're talking about women, children, Just going through the streets, shooting them, or actually camps? Well, they send out soldiers.

If it's a small village, you just bring everybody. You just kill everybody. Right. Or you kill all the men. Cut their throats or whatever. And then send the women on a deportation caravan with their children, which goes into the desert, which you can't survive. This is classic. It's disgusting. And so if they can possibly get to the place in Syria, which was where they were aiming them, which is this desert, and they might go in circles for weeks and then finally, you know, just wear them all out.

Anybody who got there, they were concentration camps. And then they died there as well. And Deir Zor, which is what which is in the news all the time. Now, as like as a Jewish guy, you know, you grow up with these stories, you know, the never forget the Holocaust, you know, generationally. Even if I didn't have a family that died in died in the holocaust it was something that you were brought aware of culturally as a jew so now as an armenian kid you're full armenian yeah so your grandfather would tell you this these stories he saw his family get killed maybe well he saw things that he would tell me about like they would get round up everybody into the church lock the doors

and burn the church down with the people in it and that was something that he would tell me about. Like, they would round up everybody into the church, lock the doors, and burn the church down with the people in it. And that was something that he told me about. Terrifying as a kid. I don't know what I made of it. It all seemed like it had happened very far away. First of all, I had no idea. What is Armenia?

Where is Armenia? Were we Middle Eastern? Did they ride camels there? I didn't know any about that. But you grew up with these rituals and habits and foods and culture. Yeah. And I loved it.

I love being Armenian. In fact, you know, just trying to embrace my roots, which to be honest, coming into this Hollywood thing in the 80s. And I have an agent saying, if you fix your nose and straighten your hair and change your last name, you have a future in this. Did they really say that? Yes. He took me to the grill when I got signed at William Morris in 1983. He looked at me, he said, you have a lot of talent, just do these things. But then right after you said no, did he say, well, we'll cast you as a Jew?

That's been my job pretty much. I am the archetypical Jewish guy on everything I do. Right, you did that Woody Allen movie. I've done, well, all of it. Which one was that? Where you played the brother-in-law? Deconstructing Harry. That was great. Right, you did that Woody Allen movie. I've done, well... Which one was that? Where you played the brother-in-law? Deconstructing Harry. That was great.

Yeah, thank you. I learned a lot about acting doing that particular bit. Really? From him? Because he's pretty hands-off. No, I just, I was, I only had a few lines. I mean, I had a few pages with Carol and Aaron. And then I was like, today I'm not not gonna go to craft services and hang out all day

and complain about my age and I'm gonna stay in my trailer and I'm gonna just keep doing these 12 lines over and over again right and uh and he goes fairly slowly lighting and everything and I was in there like six hours I already knew it when I got to set going deep Jew and then I went yeah but I really thought about what what are you really saying here what's happening and i had never really done that deep work before and that and it was a choice now i bring it now i bring it to everything i do i say wait a minute you think you know this you think you know your lines you think you know what the scene's about but stick with it you'll there's more here you just haven't found it yet and so that's been sort of a new part of my my mo right so it's my assumption like you new part of my MO. Right.

So it's my assumption, like, you know, in looking over, you know, what I'm interested in about your life, that this project, this Operation Nemesis, for whatever reason, you went down this rabbit hole at a time in your life where I think it was probably important to you to connect with your heritage and also like enlarge my sense of who i am which includes like who my grandparents are what it means to be armenian and all this kind of stuff but this is instead of sort of keeping it at arm's length like i'm a little or literally running away from it because i imagine not unlike me you you know when you're you're young and creative and you want to make your mark, there's a liability to, you know, getting hung up on tradition or your past or you just want to be who you are and do your thing. Yeah, and I also, I was that. I mean, I was one of the first mall rats in the United States. They built a mall near my home.

Where'd you grow up? In Massachusetts, in Woburn. So they built the Burlington Mall. Yeah. And I used to just, me and my friend, we got busted there for smoking pot. I'm 62. So I'm 50. All right.

So 10 years before, that was the first mall. That was when it started happening. So they didn't know when they built the malls that it would attract teenagers who would just go there and hang around. Yeah. And we were in the parking lot smoking weed. Yeah. We'd actually just dropped acid as well.

And the cops busted out. Next thing I know, I'm in handcuffs. Yeah, on acid. I'm tripping on acid in a jail cell in Burlington. I'm actually trying to get my, what's the picture they do with the little number underneath? The mug shot. The mug shot. You can't get it?

Can't find it? I might ask somebody to look it up for me. So what year was that? So that was like 69? That's 71, 71. I'd just gone to college college i'd come back to hang out with my with my homies and so you're going you're going to college that first year the the entire culture is blown open by the 60s and it's sort of just settling into just pure drugs and

rock and roll the i was like a junior version of that because that was all happening when i was still in high school well that's what i mean. Right. So the actual revolution was already subsiding and just now infiltrating pop culture in the form of music. But I was already doing all that stuff. I mean, I started doing bad stuff when I was in high school. Yeah?

What was the bad stuff then? You know, acid. Acid? A lot of acid? Acid. And I worked in a drugstore, which wasn't helpful. But that was like the real acid, right?

Yeah. That was the mythical kind of like, that was the real shit. Well, we had, Woburn had bikers. Woburn! Yeah, so we would, I would grab a bottle of something and I'd take it up to these guys. Yeah. Can I say this now? Yeah.

I'm like, am I going to get busted for doing it? No, I think there's a statute of limitations. Fucking 50 years ago. White Cross, you know, I'd find get busted for doing it? No, I think there's a statute of limitations fucking 50 years ago. White Cross. You know, I'd find a bottle of White Cross. Yeah, yeah. And I'd find these bikers and they'd say, here, here's a bag of weed for that. Yeah.

And that's because that's all I wanted was just some weed. So those are like Benny's almost. There's like the little white speeds. Yeah. You got to take like five of them. And I loved it. And I loved hanging around those guys because they kind of protected me. I grew up in a town that, I mean, it wasn't, there were a lot of tough guys in my town.

I remember Woburn. And I wasn't tough. Right. So I needed the big guy. And you were Armenian. And I was Armenian. So you're surrounded by these New England townies, which are some of the hardest, most interesting people.

I know guys that come from Woburn. I started doing comedy in all those towns. Oh, yeah. The satellite towns of Boston, all over new England. And it's intimidating. There's some intimidating cats out there. Well,

I made sure I had one of them right now. Cause you'd be sitting there, you know, smoking weed at some party and having a drink. And there'd be some guy just watching you glowering. Like, who's this guy? Yeah.

Yeah. Who are you? Who the fuck are you? Yeah. And then Mikey would stand up and go, he's okay. He's okay. And then I then i wouldn't now years later mikey took a bite out of me when we were in the middle of a fight like a bite like a bite yeah i had i had teeth marks for about six years after that

where's mikey now eric he's six feet under sadly yeah yeah he was a great guy so growing up in new england now okay so was there an armenian community because you talk there wasn't in watertown where i was a little kid yes and there was the saint james church and that's where i was an altar boy and i did i was an altar boy and catholic uh no armenians are armenian armenians are armenian apostolic uh they have slightly different groupings like especially down here in southern california you, you have the more political Armenians. They're one group. And then there's the guys that I came up with, which are like, but they're all Armenian.

Armenian is the oldest Christian religion pretty much in the world. In 301 AD, the Armenians decided to become christian uh-huh maybe at the time it seemed like a good idea yeah it's very so there's still a few people that remember jesus or had a grandfather that my grandfather used to run with jesus oh yeah the first apostles went to armenia yeah yeah that's where they went right bartholomew we're out of work we got to spread the word unfortunately a few hundred years later you have uh the first giant Muslim empire, the Arabs. They don't really like Christians. And they're followed by the Turkish Muslim empires, the Mongols.

None of these guys are happy about Christians. And it's still going on. It's insane. Yes, sadly. On my way here today, I was thinking thinking we're going to talk about whatever it is we're going to talk about and such bad shit is happening over there right now i wish we you know i wonder to what degree just if we can take one second to be a little political sure um to what degree there's a kind of a racism against middle eastern people that people don't care

about what's happening to all these syrian refugees it's just some statistic and especially for us as americans who started all this crap in the first place and why everybody's running all over the place over there what are we doing to help them you know these i mean it's going to start getting cold out there yeah in a month or so and these are just families just stuck all over the place. In fact, it was this kind of thing that, that kicked in my feelings about what were my roots back when Serbia and

Bosnia was happening in the nineties. I would watch these refugees coming out of these towns and I'd say, that must've been what it was like for my family and my people, because this is what happens. They come in. These people are just living their life, not bothering anybody. They're not even political. They're not thinking about it.

No, they're just waiting. They're in the street. An army shows up. They take all the men off, and they put a bullet in their head, and then they take all the women, and they do stuff with the women, and then who knows? I mean, 100 years ago, the children were valuable, too. And who knows? I mean, in the hundred years ago, the children were valuable, too. You could keep that child to be like a slave for you or it could be your child. You could adopt the child.

So at any rate, I just think that we got to think about this is a major humanitarian screw up. And I wonder to what degree, because these people are middle eastern yeah nobody seems to care that much i mean people care i don't know like it might be that but it's also just about american culture in general that that you know the level of distraction and immediacy to people's lives you know and their concerns are selfish but also complicated i don't know that necessarily you know americans are bad people are judging it as middle eastern it's just not here i think but we started it that's the thing i know but you know they get people to take well no i'm not arguing with you but i don't know if that if that if that occurs on a personal level

i don't know that if the average american if they really knew what was going on i think they'd be like well i'd like to help but i think the leap for an average personal you know one-on-one american to go like this is my fault that that's a different political issue but a humanitarian movement you know certainly should should people should be aware but what I think is interesting about you is that you early on in your career have always been you know a voice of of brutal satire of this country so your your awareness of of what America is on on not necessarily political level on a cultural level was intact, you know, from the beginning. And as you get older, now you get wiser and you get more empathetic and your heart gets bigger. You're able to sort of broaden that, the understanding

of what America is responsible for on a global level, you know, into this awareness now in this work with Armenia. But like when I look at, think about you think about you, or whatever I project as who you were on the Lower East Side in 1980 or whenever the fuck that started, that you were an angry, sweaty, manic voice attacking America from the inside. Classic angry young man who knows everything, knows better. And with great indignation, I'm telling everybody off. and I know what's right, and you don't know, and I'm going to tell you. Although I did it all, as you say, in satire, sarcastic, ass backwards. You know, the whole idea was to create a, you know, street people.

By the way, I just want to tell you that those old monologues that i used to do yeah i have all my friends doing them now and we have them online 100monologues.com i just want to tell you that we've been spending a couple of years we've now got 50 of them because it turned out over those 20 years i had done 100 different bits yeah and characters a lot yeah and somebody was saying one day i don't know who it was one of my friends said you know i could do one of those and then we started shooting them and collecting how do they hold up they're good yeah funny some are some are better than others i mean there's people on there like i mean jen tilly does one of the one of the bits uh michael shannon does one stoolbar does i like that they're funny

that guy so give me a sense of this because this is like a piece of the New York puzzle that I've not talked to anybody that you know that that era of performance when I think performance art really started to have don't say performance art to me but okay no just define itself that that's what it's called so you know it's not called stand-up comedy you know you can call it theater we call performance let's call performance that's fine okay I'm just trying to you know the same people you want to take responsibility for Syria as Americans, we need to sort of broaden out, you know, performance art is what it is to them, but now they know it's performance. All right.

But what was the scene? Because you come out, what did you go to, theater school and then go to New York? I mean, you were in Woburn. How the fuck did you decide? I was a theater guy. I had never been to theater when I was a kid, when was a teenager we did theater one day in English class right and I was like a fish to water I was like this is this is great what is this we're doing what was it it was Shakespeare we were doing Romeo and Juliet I played Capulet I yell at Juliet for getting home

late all the time or whatever and you're like I can yell i can yell that was that was that was woovern acting right and um they turned it was like a little drama club and i started doing that and it was just you know i i really liken it to sports like everybody can play sports everybody can do theater right there's always some one guy who for whatever reason he can stand up there and he can hit six home runs in six games. And I just had an ability to do this. I think it was probably because I spent so much time when I was a kid locked in my bedroom talking to myself in the mirror. But at any rate, I lived in this fantasy world. And when I was given the opportunity, so there I am an actor.

Somebody says, you're an actor. You should be an actor. You should follow this. But I come from a very working class background where like, you don go in the arts what did your dad do he was a bookkeeper right and my mom was a hairdresser or is it you got brothers and sisters i got a younger sister yeah she's great she's a school teacher uh-huh and um so i didn't think it was a practical idea right and i went off to college i didn't do it and i ended up doing theater again in college and then eventually not studying it just a theater group?

Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. And then I finally said, okay, look, I dropped out because I was doing too much acid and stuff. And then I went back to fall. I like that it was acid. That was your drug of choice, acid. Perfect.

That's a lot of work. Don't worry. I worked my way into the more relaxing drugs after that. And note, and I have to say this because I know that the youngins are out there listening. worry i worked my way into the other the more relaxing drugs after that yeah and and note and i have to say this because i know that the youngins are out there listening stopped everything 31 years ago so wow and i totally attribute junk half my life yeah but i for me for this guy for this junkie yeah i have to be i have to be clean and sober or i can't do anything i'm it's a i'm disabled yeah it's a disability i know but you give me a beer and i'm not gonna be i'm not

gonna show up for work i get that but like a lot of like what year did you get sober uh 84 all right so this is like you know i've done my kids say to me how come you do so much stuff about being high and on drugs and everything when you don't do any of that stuff yeah but you did some fairly you know uh some of the very powerful work that you know life defining work you know career changing work when you were fucked up but i subverted everything no no i'm not saying it's a good dressing rooms i did all those i get it i you know i'm sober too and you know we talk about that here but it's it's sort of interesting that a lot of times people i'm not romanticizing it but uh but you had to hit the wall pretty hard and pretty publicly and and you certainly explored um

the uh you know the negative sides and positive sides of drug use and drinking in your work before you cleaned up yeah and i mean i don't regret it i mean i think you know that's everybody says that who's been down that route the only only problem, you want to survive it. You don't want to come out the other end and be in a box. No, no. That's no good. On the right side of the grass, I think. Is that what it's called?

That's the wrong side of the grass. Under the roots. Yeah. Well, so I came, so I gave up. I gave up the whole, when I came to New York, I was so intimidated as an actor. I graduated college. And I just gave up. And when I came to New York, I was so intimidated as an actor. I graduated college. And you just moved to New York? I had come as a student and then I decided I wanted to live here because it was just amazing.

You're talking 1975. The city was insane. It was like broken, wasn't it? Yeah, I was living in Times Square and I just thought this was the craziest, best thing I'd ever, I wanted to be here. It was just chaos, pirates, criminals everywhere. Absolutely. The cops would just leave at night. thing I'd ever I wanted to be here it was just chaos pirates criminals everywhere absolutely the cops would just leave at night like 11 o'clock at night they were gone and everything just went into total chaos and the and the trains and everything and I was young so I didn't care

yeah I thought this was really romanticized did I imagine yeah and I also was getting deeper into the adventure of drugs and everything so you go as a student and you check it out and you're like holy shit this is where it's happening but I can't I can't compete as an actor, I feel. I really, I give up. And I end up in Soho around all these visual artists. So I come up- This is when you moved there. Yeah. In 76, 77, I worked at a place called The Kitchen. And all my friends were either composers, choreographers, or visual artists. There weren't't i didn't have any theater guys but this was sort of the beginning of that that that artistic renaissance of of sort of a whole new type of expression there was an art scene in new york that you know wasn't like the painters of the you know 50s and 60s that sort of evolved out of the the you know whatever the new york art scene

was and now was going into all these different areas and taking real chances though right well it was i'd go out and very minimal and it had gotten very esoteric like who are the people when you got just prior to that you basically phil glass is the king of music or he's becoming just starting right and there's everything yeah donald judd and you know really clean high-minded shit yeah yeah my crowd is you know robert longo and cindyo and Cindy Sherman and Keith Haring was over in another neighborhood. But that's all. Everybody's making pictures of things, stuff that anybody can look at and go, oh, I get what this is. And we were having fun.

We were also in the clubs like all the time. And this was just, what had happened. What were the clubs? Like CB's or the other ones? Yeah, Mud Club. Mud Club and Tier 3. just it was what had happened what were the clubs like cbs or or the other ones like mud club mud club and um tier three so at that time you know you're seeing a zillion young people showing up in new york just thinking what crazy shit can i use all the music that's going on that's that's the height of cbgbs right and that's like the whole new york punk thing you know music is being

redefined i showed up my thing i was not hip to the punk thing until somebody said we're gonna go and i'm like i don't want to do that punk thing the punk thing until somebody said, we're going to go and I'm like, I don't want to do that punk thing. After Hendrix died, I didn't want to go hear any more rock and roll and they said, no, no,

come hear this thing and I don't know, I think it was like, who was it, the Heartbreakers or something, not Tom Petty, Heartbreakers. No, no,

Johnny Thunders. Johnny Thunders and this stuff was like real down and dirty rock and roll in Kansas City, Maxis, Kansas City and that was what And this stuff was like real down and dirty rock and roll. Kansas City. Maxis, Kansas City. And that was what I, I was like, I love this.

And then I was just clubbing for the next three, four years. Right, but what was the creative process? When did it become apparent that you could, that there was a new theater happening, that performance was viable? Well, it was all about a community. So there's all these lofts and people are just doing the craziest stuff some of it's like real theater some of it's like not real theater like willem dafoe's down the street doing worcester group stuff with worcester group yeah and they're and they're doing and spalding was around in those days was he of course that was the beginning of spalding oh i saw spalding when i first got to new york he was already doing tooth

of crime by sam shepherd he's a hell of a play. He was a great guy, too. What a big play. What did he play in that? He was Hoss. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I went backstage. I was like, this kid?

Yeah. Hi, I just want to tell you, I thought that was great. He goes, I said, will you have a cup of coffee with me? Which people ask me all the time. And he goes, no, but you can buy me a drink. Right. And we went to Magoo's and he was incredibly,

I never forgot the fact that this man was kind to me and we were friends, sadly. What did he tell you? He didn't tell me anything. I mean, what can you tell anybody?

That's pretty much the smartest thing anybody could tell you is like, hey kid, just go for it. Only you know. Just do it, right.

That's what everybody has always said to me. That's what Oliver Stone said to me when I was writing Talk Radio, the movie of it. Only you know. Just do it. Right. That's what everybody has always said to me. That's what Oliver Stone said to me when I was writing Talk Radio, the movie of it. It was like, I don't know what to tell you. Just keep writing. All right. So you see the Worcester group. It's no good now, but keep writing.

You're running around. There's all this vitality and weird shit going on. I'm sure you saw some stuff where you're like, oh, what is that shit? Oh, all the time. But the main thing was we were entertaining each other. We were like, who can make up some crazy shit that's going to make the other guys laugh as opposed to I'm going to make something that's going to go to Broadway or I'm going to make something that's going to be like commercially. And there's no commercially anything. You've got some nights, eight people in the audience.

Oh, I know. Yeah. And yeah, I had one place one time. It was like six people and none of them spoke English. And I'm like playing to the guy who's taking the money and the coin by. Tough crowd.

And so I would be, when I was writing, I started creating these characters, these monologue things. And of course it was like when I first started it, this was very intimidating. I mean, now people are so used

to seeing this stuff, but to do an old bum or something, a really crazy yelling at you kind of bum. Yeah. Who had done that? You know, the only person who had, you know, they always forget that Robert Klein was the guy who first started doing street people.

When he did that bit, please. Do you remember? Please. Yeah. He's this guy in the street. He did junkies. Comedians. So.

And then Pryor did it too. Well, in Pryor, these guys are a big influence on me. The energy, the like come out and yeah, the first Pryor Live movie knocked me out. And I said, I want to do that kind of energy in a theater because I am so bored with what's happening in the theater. So I started doing this stuff and it was very aggressive. Never thought comedy though. I think we've talked about this before.

Because there wasn't really a comedy club scene there so i'll i'll i'll i'll give you a pass on that but was there ever a thought to that there was sure because at a certain point they started lumping me together with the new comic scene which it was breaking star yeah well you know gilbert was doing his stuff yeah yeah and so they would say you're a part of this. Like Esquire wrote a piece about it or something. So I go, okay, I'm going to go do that. So I went to Catch.

I stand up there. And, you know, they have a green light and a red light. As soon as I started talking, they started blinking the red light. And I'm feeling like I'm being run over and mugged at the same time. I could not do it. There's two things I will always have tremendous respect for.

One, stand-up comics, which I can't do it. Yeah. things i will always have tremendous respect for one stand-up comics which i can't do it yeah and two radio talking you know i did the guy in the movie right but to do it for real yeah it's fucking hard it's hard they've they've i've been guessed i've guessed it for people they say hey why don't you take the show for a night vince skelso would have me do right right and i'm trying to think of what to say i can't think of anything because if i have a month to write a line for a character yeah yeah yeah then i'll play the guy yeah just to fill that dead air yeah keep going yeah oh it's and also i don't think people realize that everything you say you've got to be ready to stand behind yeah and if i have time to think about it i can do that but to be a guy who says this is my view of life yeah and and i'm gonna it's gonna

be consistent and all and yeah but a lot of times it becomes a character you know it's all a character everything you do is a character you're a character right now i'm a character right now i'm nothing like this in real life yeah i know i know you're quiet you rarely talk well i was thinking about you with your cats and i was thinking if people could only see what i how i actually spend my day i have plants yeah i water my plants and my big moment of the day is checking the mail to see if i got a residual check four dollars from talk radio it's running on some cable channel yeah yeah i'm gonna get a coffee yeah all right so okay so you you're you're doing this and you're like i'm gonna bring this intensity this energy these characters to theater and and i imagine

like a loft scene i was in like all kinds of clubs what was that other one that was a yeah the other loft where that lasted a long time not the it wasn't the kitchen it was somebody's it seemed like someone lived there it wasn't quite in soho was upstairs and they had a lot of performance arlene had her place what was it called i don't know arlene's or something well yeah right places right but that's where it took place so when you're saying performing side right when you're performing for your friends that was also a community of people that were interested in seeing this stuff so it wasn't just you and spalding or you and cindy or whoever yeah people would know that was something was happening and you'd all go see that thing eventually the neighborhood got so big that you know you could have a hundred

people or whatever and eventually built and built and built and built. I think Laurie Anderson was the first one to start doing set shows repeatedly. Uh-huh. In a locked situation? Usually you did one night and that was it. And then you never did that bit again. But she would make a particular show. And then I did the same. I started thinking, yeah, this is like do a set show.

With several characters. Yeah, I would do a dozen characters. I did Franklin Furnace, all these places, The Kitchen. Was the first show Drinking in America? No, no, no. This is, the first show was called Men Inside, then Fun House, and then Drinking in America was the first one I did sober, which was like a hit show.

And by then I was in real, by then Joe Papp had scouted me, brought me to the public theater. I'd done a couple of shows there. Then I did that at American Place because Joe said I couldn't come back and do any more solos at the public because we don't do solos anymore. Then I do Drinking in America. It's a huge hit. And Joe Papp comes to the show and goes, why did you leave us? I said, well, you kicked me out.

That's why. He said, well, you come back and you can do whatever you want to do. You are in the slot now. January, whatever it is you want to do will open in January 1986. And I said, well, I have an idea for a thing about a talk radio guy. He goes, great. You got anything written? I had 20 pages.

Yeah. I was already in their calendar for the next year. And that was based on the Berg thing. No, no. That came in later. Oh, really? Well, the guy that I created was- What was his name? Daniel Berg? Alan Berg. calendar for the next year that was based on the the berg thing no no that came in later oh really well the guy that i created was daniel berg annual alan berg it's very similar to the character i'd created for the play right and when we were going to make the movie i said to ed pressman this is

very complicated but anyway i said that for ed pressman there's a book about this guy who got gunned down in colorado and he wasn't it was in color yeah yeah um and we better buy this book because my play sounds so much like and believe me i did not base the play on this guy right but when we did the movie i seg i i merged the two stories and you had you adoption the book so you're able to do yeah we had the book as was part of our package um and you had creepy rockets red glare come in at the end rockets poor old rockets yeah You had to have him adoption the book. So you were able to do it. Yeah, we had the book as was part of our package. And you had creepy rockets, red glare come in at the end. Rockets, poor old rockets.

He was so great. Did you know rockets? I saw him towards the end, you know, like he would around because I was living on a second between A and B and 89, 90, 89 to 91, 92. And I don't remember where I saw him but I was excited and I didn't even know what his place in the whole scheme of things was but I knew he was in that year movie and I knew he was sort of a guy

a low-resize guy. Rockets was a famous character of the scene famous junkie, big junkie and kind of a doorman at various places. The secret to Rockets which I only knew from working with him, was that his brother had been one of the people who like established Microsoft or something, and had cut off a chunk of stock for him that cost two cents, had given it to him,

and become worth all this money. And then he was able to keep up his junky life based on Microsoft stock or something like that. That's a great thing about New York that you don't see a lot in the same way is that there are actual characters within the scene that don't necessarily do anything, but they're an organic part of the scene that add to the whole sort of energy of the environment. And that happens a lot in New York. It's like, that's that guy. Well, we had such a huge community of amazing people

and when AIDS came it just was level oh my god it was horrible the people we lost so many beautiful people yeah Ethel Eichelberger and Herring Klaus Nomi Herring so many and and then dope did its job too on a few people and so yeah it was but I don't know if that always happens or doesn't happen to community. And it was truly horrible. I think it's a singular event, the Lower East Side. I think that, you know, what happened there. And because it's never recovered from it and it sent generations searching for it, you know, for decades after what you guys started you know like long after when i was there in the 90s there was still this sort of like the residual idea of living a performance life on the lower east side but

it didn't have the vitality or the originality necessarily that you guys had because you were at the epicenter of it and it was cheap we had cheap housing i mean it comes down to like if you don't have to pay that much in rent if you can live there right you're 23 years old of course you're going to live a rock and roll existence. But between you and Spalding, and I guess, I think in some weird way, you know, Karen Finley brought a lot of attention to what was going on down there. But also, but in a way that people were able to mock it. Because I don't, you know, performance art became this like,

what are you going to put yams in your pussy? You know, so it sort of got minimized by mainstream culture because of characterization. I live did that amazing bit that time where they were like making fun of it. World World Federated Performance Art or something. And Adam Sandler's pretending to be me. And he has like a curly wig on and he's doing something like my bits and I think that anytime something happens you know culturally that that can be seen as show business whether you want it to or not and and it isn't show business then show business is eventually going to gut it yeah they're either going to steal it or they're going to gut

it well what was weird is it became very successful I By the time I did Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll in 90 or 91 or something, I mean, we rolled up the biggest advance on an off-Broadway show ever. I saw that show four times. Oh, my God. It was weird because I always had a little bit of a problem with you. I was like, you know, is he a comedian? What the fuck does that guy do? You know, because I was like, you know, diehard comic. comic and i'm like he just wants to be a comic you know and then i went to see uh

because i'd read about you and i'd see i don't i'd seen probably seen talk radio by that point and i i'd never seen you live before but then for some reason i went to see it and you were still workshopping it it was at the place where stomp was right yes that became where the orpheum right yeah so i saw it in some version and then i you know in a smaller place i don't know where that's 122 i used to do all my stuff right um right we're gonna do a benefit over there in a couple so like and then i saw all these different characters and i'm like holy shit this guy's great and then like you know i watched some of the characters then i went to see it again and some of the characters were gone

and i was thinking they're like why did you take that guy out you know what what happened to that guy and then uh and then there and then when i saw it finally at the orpheum i'm like so this is the final show but i still was sort of like well i missed that one guy where's that guy the one guy i still remember which guy i've missed was the doctor with the no it was the guy with the bong like i'm a rebel you know the the guy who was like the the outlaw but he was just sitting on his couch smoking oh my god i don't even remember you don't and then there was the guy with the coke can yeah i have a huge cock oh yeah that guy stayed in though that guy right it was great i've got a long thick well-shaped prick the kind girls die for yeah you're laughing so what yeah

fuck you yeah yeah and he's just sort of like this isn't that everybody's fear is that like there's some guy you know he was a moron kind of yeah he's still good at work he has no money but he can get any woman yeah yeah those guys massive schlong but after that i was sort of like wow this guy's you know really something and you know i'm not you don't need this validation, but that was my. All right. So so it all builds up to sex, drugs and rock and roll. That was but was that was that before talk radio was after right after.

Yeah, that was sort of like the pith of everything going really right for me right then. I did that. And then a couple of years later, I did Pounding Nails on the floor of my forehead, which I even like better. I saw that show to suburbia at Lincoln Center. Right. And and then I did the Se And Suburbia at Lincoln Center. Right. And then I did the Seagal movie around the same. That 1994, I was hitting all the cylinders, full blast. And when did you meet your wife? Your wife's a theater director, right?

We've been married 35 years. So she met you drunk. Joe Bonney. Yeah. Yeah, drunk, more than drunk. And I said to her, this is my lifestyle. This is who I am. Take it or leave it.

And she would, like, cry and stuff. I was sad. And then four years later, I mean, she's getting is who I am. Take it or leave it. And she would like cry and I was sad. And then four years later, I mean, she's getting up every morning at eight o'clock to go to work. I'm still like out of it. And I'm like, hey, some people need 10 hours of sleep a night. You know, it's medically necessary. Horrible man. Terrible. And then it just, I don't even know what happened.

I mean, somebody just said, you know, how are you doing? And I said, everything's great. Yeah, right. Like no income. With your dad's 7,000. it just i don't even know what happened i mean somebody just said you know how you doing and i said everything's great yeah right like no income with you i'm waking up with in the sweats every morning and uh they said well come with me to you know to the thing to the thing yeah the secret society i talk about it but it's um and that was the, what a mitzvah, right? Yeah. So, and then things- Said the Armenian guy. Yeah. And it's honorary.

I'm going to, you can come to my bar mitzvah. Okay, good. Let me know when it is. I'll write you a check. I'll give you a Jewish, an Israeli bond. I'll give you a $25 Israeli savings bond. A tree. You'll buy, give me a tree in Israel.

Yeah, yeah. I'll get you a tree. So, but you collaborate with her too, right? A lot? Well, she directed all those early shows and then she sort of peeled off and was direct, not sort of, she peeled off, did her own shows.

And now she's one of the premier directors in New York. She does stuff with, you know, Neil LaBute and Susan Laurie Parks and Lynn Nottage, all the big, very, very smart Pulitzer Prize winning writers. Now from that era, how many friendships do you maintain? Are you friends with Cindy Sherman? Are you still close to the core group?

I mean, we don't see each other all the time. I mean, you get older and you have slightly, but yeah, we do see each other. We all love each other very much. So there's still that sense of community. My circle of friends has sort of enlarged into another world of right theater and yeah and even movie and tv people who are just kind of my pals i basically play poker now so that's what i that's who my circle of friends are do you play cards once a week almost once a week but like actor guy liev got me started in

this thing when we were doing talk radio on broad. And he said, I'm having a poker game. And it's like, I don't gamble. I don't play poker. I don't do anything. I don't like the numbers, nothing. And that was seven years ago. And I'm like sick into it. Right.

Well, he must have been like, well, yeah, we really want you to come. And then you lost hundreds of dollars. Yeah. Until you figured it out. No, the problem was I won that night. And that was since then I've lost nonstop. They always love the guy especially an established game if you go like i don't really know how to play oh you really

gotta come yeah and then they all know each other's tells but you don't even know what a tell is and you're playing you leave broke so you lucked out the first night yeah and i've played everybody and every it's it's it's a lot of fun but uh so how do you get from like you know we do you do sex drugs and rock when you're starting to do movies, you're writing books. I mean, you write novels, too. Yeah, that was after the play thing kind of stopped in the late 90s. I had kept writing plays. I still write plays, but they just weren't getting produced.

And so I was fascinated by I mean, there's all kinds of things that the Internet have changed things. Yeah. And the fact that you could buy a book anywhere, it changed the way. Or watch people fucking on your phone. It's an amazing world we live in. Well, yeah.

So you can get a book to somebody in Nebraska that they couldn't get at their local bookstore. And that changed everything. I mean, David Foster Wallace and all the kind of great stuff that was coming in that period, Dave Eggers. I'm like, I don't know. I like books. So I started writing books.

And I wrote three novels. And I don't think I ever found that audience. But the thing about a book is it's still there. And I had been doing so much ephemeral stuff. If you look around us, there's so many of these books here. And you know what? I haven't read most of them. Don't tell anybody.

Any of them. A few of them I've read. Read the book that I gave you. I will. That Perforated Heart is so like navel-gazing existential. What are you saying, Eric? Look, I got through it.

Maybe it'll help you. Don't kill my voice, man. Also, I think you can do things when you're young that you can't do when you're old and there's things when you can do when you're older so i can do long form now and have the the presence of mind to stick with it until i have 300 pages done whereas when i was writing those short things i had a million ideas but i couldn't i could never complete so that's about all i could do is about a three minute monologue and I could write that and work on that. And now I'm in this other zone where maybe my ideas aren't so great, but I can write

something very long. You have discipline. You have a different type of patience. You have creative confidence in a way. And I had been writing all through this period. Once I did talk radio, I was working for the man here in Hollywood. Like I did, you know, new version. i did you know right or one of them no i was i was an actor and ci for law and order that was more recent but just i worked as a screenwriter for you know oh yeah like a doctor like you give

it to bogosian or you get a book or something and you adapt it i mean none of them got made into movies but i got paid i got paid got paid. I got paid in WGA. So like you got health benefits and stuff. So that was like my invisible job. Right. Nobody knew I was doing. Right. And I did that for about 15, 20 years and it was good.

Yeah. You have kids, right? I have two boys, yeah. How old are they? 28 and 24. Holy shit. Yeah. Holy shit is right.

So they're like. they doing great good yeah they're not in college anymore so now i can start to do my own life again run around do you hang out with them oh absolutely i mean that's i'm not gonna say i mean my relationship with my parents was fine but it was typical of that time which is they're the parents and i'm the but i had that completely i love you but fuck you i gotta go and i'm angry at them and i'm not around and i go away for a long period of time but my my guys i mean i spent a lot first of all i'm the generation of dads who spent a lot of time changing diapers and doing all that stuff with and always around them my wife was working a lot so i'm with and so now they're these men that i have i have a relationship with i don't have

with anybody else and you know what they make me laugh that's all right that's all i care about in relationships and they don't know drunk eric make me laugh right no never that's great yeah they didn't never see me drunk they heard the story tell me rageaholic though i was early on when i was first getting sober and they were a little daddy could get a little they call me crazy daddy and everybody would like leave the room because i'm going nuts how'd you deal with that dad getting sober and they were a little, daddy could get a little, they call me crazy daddy. And everybody would like leave the room because I'm going nuts. How'd you deal with that? Because I, you know, like I'm just reckoning with that now

in the last few years, you know, at 16 years sober, the rage problem finally exhausted itself. It literally exhausted it. That's about when it burns out. Well, more and more, there's less and less to like, what am I being so freak? What am I so crazy about? What am I so afraid?

Yeah. What am I afraid of? Yeah. For me, it came to a sudden end because a friend of mine's son died from a drug overdose when he was like 18 years old, one of my best friends. It was mind blowing. Heartbreaking. Just, and it changed my whole notion of what's important what is it

important in my life and what am i losing my shit over this because he didn't do the spanish homework right who cares right and so i just stopped i just said this i don't care because it was all about fear like they're not going to get into college or something and it's like really right you never cared about this shit in the first place why is this something that you're losing you're going nuts and so i just stopped i said if this kid ends up on the couch for the rest of his life smoking weed which they never did any of that stuff but it's interesting what kicks in you know despite whatever you grew up with there is that idea that you want your kids to have a opportunity to you know to to find their way in the world to do the responsible thing even if they're you know they think that they don't want it now there's that

i imagine with a kid where it's sort of like you may think that you want to be this way now but you're going to regret it yeah and in you there must have been some shame you were carrying well we had more frank conversations than i ever had with my parents. I mean, I would say to them, like Harry, when he was 12 or something, I said, look, look, I just want to tell you this. This is my first time being a dad. Okay. So you've got to cut me some slack here. Just go with it a little bit. Right. And I would say stuff like, you know, you know how you kind of feel weird around girls and you're shy smoke weed. It'll be like multiplied multiplied by 10 so if you want it to be a lot worse start smoking a lot of grass and then you'll never talk to a girl again and it's great because he was um well he had a girlfriend and he got laid a lot more than i did when i was and that's a

whole other problem yeah that's called statutory rape harry you can't do that so so you've had all these different sort of lives creatively you know as a you know performer and actor screenwriter novelist and and collaborator with with other people and stuff and and so i i imagine like this brings us to this point where you know you want to own your heritage and then this book book, like, I just have to assume that, and I'm projecting, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, that, you know,

when this thing started to blossom and, and sort of, you know, reveal all these things to you, not only about the Armenian genocide or about the history that your, your sense of family and everything else must have just kind of converged as well on this. Yeah. In the sense.

Well, I mean, you respect what it, look, when you're a kid, old guys are just old guys you love them they're not that right but they don't seem to have and then you go oh oh i get it he went through all this stuff this is what being this guy is i mean for me it was it was a reversal of i had rejected myself as a sort of ethnic i was not going to be this sure yeah yeah exactly and more recently i've And more recently, I'm like, no, you are. You know, own it, love it, the music, the food.

You know, when I was in the 60s, if I ate yogurt or something, which is an Armenian food, madzun, we call it, the little kids in the neighborhood, they'd watch me eating it. Like, how do you eat, how can you eat that stuff? Right, right.

Disgusting. And now everybody eats yogurt, shish kebab, all the things that were things I grew up with that were so weird you eat that stuff that's disgusting and now everybody eats yogurt shish kebab all the things that were things i grew up with that were so weird and foreign but that's me you know now we are a pretty anti i mean i said this earlier but i mean middle eastern people are kind of like endlessly put down in our society and that's what i look like i look like a guy who's an arab or a jew or whatever yeah and um i. And I have to kind of get past that. You know, it's weird. We live in a society, I actually said this to Spike Lee one time, where black people

can be like heroes and white people are heroes, but brown people aren't, you know? And I think that's changing. That's changed lately. But pretty much the United States, we in our our society every country we have ripped off we claim that they're the ones that are doing like the arabs are the sneaky people because we've been stealing their oil for like right 75 years the mexicans are lazy because we're we're right all these people are they're somehow bad or less than us black Black people are violent. I mean, come on. There's like, black culture is not, black culture is actually more warm and embracing

than other cultures that I know of. So now we put down all these people and I accept this idea of who I am in some way kind of less than, that's crazy. It's just, it is a little hard for me. One of the things about having kids is that I look at my boys and they are beautiful and wonderful. And I remember when I was their age, I was so

self-conscious about my hair, this curly hair, people come up like touching it or my skin is a little darker than other kids. And I look at my kids, I go, how could I have ever thought that about myself? What a horrible thing. So the act of operation nemesis the act of creating this book not only it's an act of integration yourself into your heritage and also the the history of what you're talking about into the fabric of our culture that you know you're raising awareness and also now you're a celebrated armenian i would imagine i mean you're here to oh the community particularly the um the people who are are, the Armenian community has a very political side and a very non-political side. And the political side, I was never part of that world. The Armenian National Committee, who are actually having this big banquet this weekend and are honoring me with giving me an award, they have been so supportive.

They are also the people who made sure everyone was aware of the Armenian genocide, the centennial of it last April, which just happens. I don't know if this is some kind of mark or something, but I was born on April 24th, which is the day that they commemorate the beginning of all the killings. At any rate, yeah, I've gotten to know these communities that are super tight Armenian communities here in Southern California, all over the place. I was in Vegas the other day there. I was like visiting the church there. Do they think you got it right? You know, I was very wary of that as I was working on the book because I'm talking about some stuff that they were involved in a hundred years ago. And finally I gave it to them. And in March, some of the big guys in the community took me aside at this event.

And they said, we're with you. We like the book. And supported it and have told all their people to read it and buy it and so forth. And this is a new story to a lot of Armenians. Absolutely. Yeah. The old story, the original Tetlerian story of the kid, the engineering student who shot Talat Pasha in Berlin is a story that a lot of Armenians know. The story of Operation Nemesis, that there was this huge conspiracy operating out of New England that knocked off six major Turks who, by the way, like I say, if you're going to talk about the Armenian genocide, you've got to mention that five years later they did this.

That's news to a lot, a lot, a lot of people. And I think it's interesting not just as an Armenian, but in terms of world history. I don't know of any story. I mean, Munich is kind of related to it, but they basically knocked off a whole government. It would be like if a Jew had found Hitler and Goering and Goebbels and all these guys and killed them.

Wiesenthal, he tried. Yeah. Yeah, he got a few. Yeah. Yeah. And it has the same kind of, like with Eichmann going into another country and doing this thing. This is not legal. Right.

So you're stuck with this thing of like, it's kind of illegal. It's not kind of, it is illegal what they're doing. War criminals. They're kind of murder incorporated, going after these guys. Oh, you mean them. Yeah. And then there's this sort of sense of like, what is God? What is justice?

And then justice. And then you basically say, what's right? And if these guys are really, and they are, responsible for murdering a million people, then some people felt it was their job to go and hunt them down. Not let them get away with it. Or maybe come back to power later and keep killing more Armenians, which was another part of it. By the way, I have to say,

they had already been condemned to death by trials after the war. There were war crimes trials, and all these men had been. It was already established in court in Turkey. But at any rate, this story blew me away. I didn't know it. honestly working on it I thought I was going to get it done a lot faster than I'm good friends with Sarah Vowell and she was sort of like rabbi'd me through this thing a little bit and and so I thought oh I can write a popular history I'll just learn all the facts and then I'll kind of put it in my own voice but it turned

out to be a much more serious and hard thing. So about halfway through it, I realized I was really in deep with a complicated story. But what are you going to do? You got to finish it. So I kept going. It's good you had that discipline. And you wrote something that could- I really had nowhere else to go. I mean, I had to finish it.

What, are you going to climb a mountain and go halfway? It's like, it's going to be a text. It is a text. It's a, it's a, and there's an audio book too. So it's me reading and I don't know how to pronounce any of these armenian names so it's just insane trying to say all this stuff i can i don't even know how to pronounce my own last name you know it's like it's bogosian

bogosian what is it well the correct pronunciation is bogosian yeah that's not gonna yeah yeah who well i used to do when i did like talk shows and stuff when i first started my career they'd be like today we have eric how do you say that name i mean i'm like come on really yeah yeah you're gonna have me on as a guest are you gonna do this it's hard i get it all the time moran moron moron fucking horrible mine i think is simple it's a lot less complicated than yours yeah yeah yeah so what part of new england did these guys work from uh boston uh then there was a guy in albany there was a cpa in albany there was an insurance agent in hartford connecticut oh my god and they were all part of the same political party and they basically said this has to happen it reminds me

of the cubans too that with the plot to kill Castro. Like there are these expats who want to do what's right. So they knew that this kid, Salman Tetlerian, had shot and killed somebody in Constantinople who was seen as sort of a traitor. And they recruited him. They brought him to Boston. They looked him over because they knew they wanted him to get caught so that then in the trial, he could talk about

the Armenian genocide. They wanted people to hear about it. So they needed a guy who would be presentable. And he was a very sympathetic character with this. Did he know he was going to get caught? Yeah. The plan was to get caught and to go and then get as many witnesses into the trial as possible to talk about the Armenian genocide, which is what they did. So this was a very famous trial in 1921. New York Times covered it. It was covered all around the world. And this guy was so sympathetic because everybody thought that he had been the survivor of these massacres. He had seen his mother beheaded right in front of him. And he was just this engineering student, happened to see this guy in the street and went and got a gun. Of course, none of that was true.

He knew exactly what he was doing. In fact, I even referred to a CIA manual on how to kill people and the way he killed the guy, which was to shoot him in the back of the neck right at the top of the spine. That is the most effective way to make sure that you're one shot. He killed all six of them? No, no. He killed him and then there were other assassins who were operating all around Europe. There were all kinds of people. There were Armenians who spoke Turkish who pretended to be Turks.

And there was one guy who actually got circumcised so that when he was in like the hammam, that Turks, if they saw him, they would think that he was Muslim because Muslims get circumcised like Jews do. Right, oh, right. So he – anyway, all these different guys were all over the place. In Rome, they knocked a guy – they got the Grand Vizier. They went back to Berlin. They killed two more guys there. They got somebody in Constantinople. They got Jamal Pasha in Tbilisi. And they basically, one other guy got caught. He also got cut loose based on some idea

of temporary insanity. And they basically grew up, most of them are old men here in California by the 1960s. There's pictures of them hanging around each other. I can show you in the picture, this guy killed two people, this guy killed three people, this guy killed killed out here like in glendale uh san francisco oh yeah angeles so they kept in touch yeah oh yeah they know who each other although they never they didn't talk about it one of the interesting things about this whole thing was it sort of came out of nowhere these were all nobodies they were all like nobody ever knew these people and then once they shut the operation down they basically put all the stuff away and didn't talk about it ever again. So when I heard this story, it was like, what? And where's the book on this? Where's something about this? And

I couldn't, there was this one obscure book coming out of France by Jacques de Rogy and I used that for some source. And then I did my own research, found out that British intelligence probably helped these guys out. British intelligence wanted these Turks killed as well. And they thought, well, we could kill them or we could just tell the Armenians where they live. And so I think they slipped the address to the Armenians. It's fascinating because you did this great service

for the community and for history and for everything else. And the impetus was like,'m gonna write a movie and then you then all of a sudden it became a bigger responsibility it became a humanitarian responsibility i don't know well obviously whatever the compulsion was you were like how is this story not been told properly yeah i mean it wasn't an i didn't see how the up, there was no upside for ego. There was no money upside. I mean, Little Brown paid me in advance, but it wasn't that that was like in it for that. How did that feel for you? Doing something relatively selfless?

I don't know why I do anything. I just do stuff. I mean, I really- Come on. You're too sober to say that. No, listen, I did, I met Mike, when I was working with Richard Linkletter, I met Mike Judge down in Austin. I said, I love Beavis and Butthead to America. Beavis and Butthead.

And if you ever want anything, he goes, well, we're going to do this movie. Beavis and Butthead to America. And so I said, well, anything. So he had me do three voiceovers in that movie, you know, scale 500 bucks or something. And I forgot about it. And, you know, whatever it was, $50,000 later, uh, with all the royalties and everything, because the movie was a huge effect. It's probably the biggest hit I've ever been involved with, but I'm, I try to lead with,

well, let me put it this way. I try to lead with, have fun, keep, you know, keep things interesting. And every time I try to do something for money or I'm I got this big plan yeah I wrote an action movie one time because I thought I would sell it and get millions of dollars it never works out yeah all those plans right don't work out right good I'm no good with the plan I started a production company I was gonna make a live video which exists spent $60,000 in this thing yeah nothing couldn't get anyone nobody wanted no it doesn't exist yeah i mean you can go on the hundred monologues.com site and see that so you're you're doomed to uh to operate from your passion i'm doing the having

being clueless i just don't know you get possessed the the first thing i write your compulsive person i mean nobody writes an armenian history book just because, you know, like, yeah, I think I'm going to- It just makes sense to me. You know, when I'm working on anything writing, and I know you've had this experience, it can, it quickly becomes a dead end or it like opens up like a flower. Right, right. Oh, I found this thing.

This works. That's what you're looking for. Yeah. That's the moment. You can hope for that, but you can't plan. That's what you're looking for. Yeah. That's the moment. You can hope for that, but you can't plan it, is basically what you're saying. No, you don't know what. And I don't know where it's coming from,

and I've kind of given in to let's see what happens. It makes life a little more exciting because since I'm not planning everything, who knows what's going to be next year? I mean, you take the law and order thing. I mean, my friend Warren Light calls me up one day and says, come over to the offices today and say hi to everybody. I go, I'm really busy today. I can't come over.

He goes, well, Dick's here. Come over and say Dick Wolf. I said, I really, Warren, I'm just, he goes, I really think you should come over and say hi to Dick. So I come over. Dick Wolf says hi to me and says, do you want to be the captain on Law and Order? And 60 episodes later, I've just, I mean, I've had the time of my life and it was a blast doing that thing.

Did not see that coming. And you made a living doing what you do. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Drinking. I was having cups of coffee. I walk in the room, say four lines, drink a cup of coffee and get to be in that beginning,

the header of the show. What do they do? And you wrote this amazing book about this untold obedience. Yes, that paid for it. That paid for the book. It's an exciting life you lead, and Operation Nemesis just came out a few months ago, right? Yeah.

And you are an active part of a community that you, through youthful condescension, detached from. And now you have done this amazing gift for them. Now I realize how lucky I am to be one of these amazing people called Armenians. So that's what I am. All right. Well, it was great talking to you, Eric. Thanks, Mark.

That's it. That's the show. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. Did I tell you? I mean, Eric goes, man. That was it. That's the show. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. Did I tell you? I mean, Eric goes, man. That was great. It's always good to see him.

It's exciting. Talking to Eric Boghossian is like being on an amusement park ride. Good times. What else do I got to tell you? WTFpod.com. Get your stuff. Do the thing. If you want posters for Christmas, it's getting tight.

It's getting tight now. We might be able to make it under the wire. Don't know. But enjoy yourselves and I'll talk to you Monday. Got some big shows coming up. What else? I got to brush my teeth and get dressed and

go be an actor. Do a character that's vaguely like me. It's a little muted jazz trumpet for the end. Yep. Boomer lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations,

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