WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 693 - Ethan Hawke

Episode Date: March 28, 2016

Audiences have watched Ethan Hawke grow up on screen. But he’s also grown as a writer, a director, a stage actor, and more. Ethan talks to Marc about the challenge of playing drug-addled trumpet player Chet Baker and also tells some great stories about Boyhood, Training Day, Dead Poets Society, and that time he got put through a wall by Peter Berg. 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.

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. 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 talked 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. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters

what the fuck wads it's me mark maron what's going on this is my show wtf thank you for listening i'm glad you're here today on the show, Ethan Hawke joins me for a conversation. Ethan is in a nice little film that I watched and enjoyed called Born to be Blue. He actually plays the trumpet player Chet Baker, which is no easy task. Chet was at that point during the movie where the time it takes place, Chet was well into being pretty during the the movie where the time it takes place chet was well into being uh pretty beat up and pretty strung out and it is sort of a love story i would say it is a love story but it's a little dark and it's done uh in a very sort of creative way

moving in and out of a a film that chet baker was supposed to be in playing himself. He may have shot some of it and real time frame. And it was, he did a good job. And Ethan's a good actor. He's a great actor. And he's been, you know, he's been around since, like, I feel like he's one of, maybe a little, he's a little younger than me, but I feel like he's one of those guys

where you sort of see grow up, you know, and he's done some great work. And it was nice to have him in the garage and talk to him so look forward to that i mean literally it's minutes away could be quicker for those of you got no patience had enough of my shit let's get right to that ethan hawk chit chat let's go over these dates again i'm going to be at the mission creek festival at the ingler theater in iowa city on april 8th i'm going to be in lincoln nebraska april 9th at the Englert Theater in Iowa City on April 8th. I'm going to be in Lincoln, Nebraska, April 9th at the Rococo Theater. That might be sold out.

I'm not sure. On April 10th, I will be at the Arvest Bank Theater at the Midland in Kansas City, Missouri. That is not sold out. So if you didn't get tickets in Nebraska, maybe you want to drive down six hours, whatever it is. I know I'm going to be driving. If I can do it, you can do it. Was it four hours? But either way, you can go to wtfpod.com slash calendar.

You can get to the links. You can get the links for these shows. And, you know, I'm working on new stuff. You know, there's going to be a little mix and match of stuff. I'm not going to go way back, but I'll go recent and I'll go new and I'll be happy to be in the Midwest. I've not played any of these areas before. I appreciate all the feedback for the

reposting of the Gary Shandling conversation I had in 2011. It is a sad time here in show business. I'm glad that I had that to give back to you people. If you had not heard it or you wanted to hear it again, he was a lovely man. And I was actually at the comedy store last night.

Before I get to that, the Al Lubell episode. Many of you, you know, I posted the Gary Shandling thing because of the loss of Gary. The day after we dropped Al Lubell's episode of WTF. You should listen to that one because Al is a veteran comic. He's an interesting guy. He's introspective in a way that is not always great. And it's sort of a touching story. And I recommend that one if you missed it.

Now, getting back to the loss of Gary Shanley, last night I was at the comedy store, and Bob Saget showed up to do a few minutes. And I talked to Bob in the loss of gary shanley last night i was at the comedy store and um uh bob saget showed up to do a few minutes and i talked to bob in the parking lot and he and he and uh gary had gone back to you know 1978 and they met at the comedy store and and bob felt compelled to uh to say something he needed for his heart and for his friend, he needed to go up on stage to try to say something in that room where they met at the Comedy Store in 1978. And he just wanted to do a guest set. He seemed a bit beside himself with grief on some level and just with loss a little jarred and it's always it's always good

to see saget he's a great guy but he got up there and he did uh classic saget jokes and it was funny in a way and there's no reason for it not to be funny to see him try to transition on a saturday night you're on a 10 30 show no no less uh in the original room which you know that's a real show where you got to do real shit and he was doing well he was killing with his dirty jokes and his bits but he wanted to say something about gary that come from his heart and uh it was just interesting to see him for about 45 seconds struggling to make that transition and then making it paying his respects to gary shanley in in the room where they met and uh and then telling a couple of his favorite gary shanley jokes and then go back to his dirty jokes so it was like there was this reprieve in the middle of

the saget filth which is i you know i'm not being condescending at all i like his jokes but you know he he's notoriously a little dirty. You got your five, six minutes of solid, you know, saget patter, full-on filth. And then the sort of like heart-wrenching, short but honest eulogizing of his lost friend. And then right back into the dick jokes. It was good comedy. And it was a great and it was good it was a great expression of uh of comedic emotion that that it became more it really the idea the

difficulty of of feeling the need to say something to honor somebody in the in a context that the audience doesn't know but you know he obviously set it up well. But it's a comedy show. And then to watch him struggle and then fucking do it. And he got off and he felt good that he did it. And I was happy that he did it. And it was great to see him. It's, you know, it's hard. It's very hard, you know, as we get older

and we start to see our peers passing, some tragically too early, which I would say is true for gary you know it just becomes very a thing that happens man and i know it's easy to say it happens everybody but you know i mean i'm no old man but uh but you know most of it's behind me now you know what i'm saying so yeah thank god for comedy thank god for the comedy store it was fun time there on saturday night i get to go on stage more and there really is this time after i get done shooting the show and i think it's the same with anybody who does anything creative or just works in general is that when you want to find time to do the stuff that you you you know you you're used to doing or the things that that define you or make you feel

the best it's scary when you haven't done them as thoroughly in a while like i'm like how the hell am i gonna write new material i gotta do another hour when am i gonna what the fuck and then and then i just start to get back to my life and what my life looks like it's the it's not great in my head but that's just who i am man you know i got you know i get up and like i you know i it takes me a long time to to like i do a lot of organizing i do a lot of dishwashing and maybe some cooking before i get you know do anything creative or get out here but all i know is that i was worried about doing stand-up and i just you know having been doing it only once a week for months. And now I'm back in it and you just get your fucking legs back and you just start to push out the new shit.

There's, you know, I don't ever think it's going to happen, but it always happens. I mean, for fuck's sake, I've done, you know, five CDs, a few specials. I've got hours and hours of material out there. And it comes. But before it comes, there's that moment of like, is it ever going to come? And then you just get on, you just have that one fucking night, man. There's just that one night and Friday night, or maybe it was Thursday night. Was it Thursday night? I think it was Thursday night where these three pieces that I was sort of kind of thinking

about together, just all they, I actually, I wasn't thinking about them going together at all. And they just wove together naturally. And I realized,'s how that's how I do it you got to get present get engaged and and make it immediate like it has to be talked about and that's usually the way my brain works like right now that's what happens on stage and that's when the shit starts to happen and these three things just wove together together beautifully I talked about a couple of them here, but not with the beats and figuring out how they live on stage and how to kind of expand them. And it felt fucking great. Because despite whatever I'm known for, whatever you know me for, whatever you think of me or my work or whatever, you know, I've been a comic a long time. And that's how I identify myself.

I'm a comedian. And when it works and when there's that portal where you're like, oh, I can I can make things funny and do, you know, another hour. No problem, because you just get that freedom of mind. That's what comes back, is the freedom of mind, which for me is wrought with a sort of torment and compulsive need to sort of poetically understand things and get those down on paper and get them out of my mouth on stage to see if people see it that way or are excited to see it the way I see it. It's just been fun. It's been fun.

It's fun to have a new bit and it's like that's sort of working and it's new and it just makes everything okay. Do you understand? Am I making sense? I'm coming back to life after doing some, I mean, I was alive before, but we had work to do specifically

but now i guess i'm coming back to you know what makes my freedom of mind and my creativity exciting okay i went and saw joanna newsom the other night yes i did for those of you who listen to this show regularly or are nerds about it or compulsive about it have listened to everything her husband andy sandberg was on the show and and i didn't know who she was i felt bad and then people like how can you not know who she is certain people so then i got some of her records from drag city um they were nice enough to to to give me a couple and i listened and i'm like i don't know if i can handle this it's a little to definitely i gotta sit down and do this joanna newsome business you know because it's very unique it's very um of her own and uh it you know it requires some

multiple listening then i then i think it looks like i'm going to talk to her so i you know i went through i got her new record then i went through all the old records and then my my uh my girlfriend sarah kane the painter was buddies with joanna like a decade ago back in the day in the bay area and they they hadn't really they haven't talked at all really since then so she knew a little about her and she actually had one of her self-released cdrs that you can't get on itunes so i listened to that so i got all up to speed and she was here at the orphan last night a couple nights ago fr. And I went to see her and it was like, she's from another planet, man. Some magical shit. That woman is definitely touched. She had

a couple of cello players and a piano player and a keyboard player and her brother was on drums. And she had a guy that played guitar, banjo, bass, and an oud or something, some unique sounding, almost Renaissance-y instrument. And all of them kind of moved around and played different instruments. She had her giant harp. It was like, and all the, I was like, what kind of audience is here? It felt like some, it felt like a Nerd Hobbit movie. You know, when people are a little too sensitive to really live out in the world, but they can't really show that.

They all came and almost like worshiped Joanna Newsom. It was pretty stunning. So that was just an experience I had. Harp, though, doesn't look like a practical instrument to me. Doesn't look like something you could be just like, hey, can I come over and jam? I got to throw my harp in the car the thing was as big as a car but she was uh just magical and afterwards uh her and uh sarah were able to reunite for a few minutes and that was touching almost made me cry you know when you

haven't seen somebody in 10 years it was emotional for me anyways i'm rambling about joanna newsome eventually she will be on the show. We will do that. Okay? All right. Ethan Hawke. And again, his film, Born to be Blue, where he plays Chet Baker, is now playing in select theaters. This is me and Ethan. 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 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. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel.

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. So, I watched the Chet Baker movie. Good job, buddy. Thank you.

Yeah. That couldn't have been easy. No, it was not easy. It was not easy. It was not easy. It's funny. I don't remember the day that I agreed to do it. You know, like, I can't, like, how the hell did I ever agree to sing my funny Valentine on camera? Right. I don't know what possessed me.

And to do it like him. Anyway, it's just one of those strange things. Yeah. It slowly happened to me i feel like well i mean whose project was it because it's uh it's um you know he was a pretty like i think he was a glamorous character but by the time like in in terms of like you know he was smooth and sexy and handsome and all that but by the time you pick up your story of him he's pretty beat up all those days are gone yeah yeah it's like you know he's got no fucking teeth i mean did you watch that documentary of course yeah yeah yeah well that documentary bruce weber um made let's get lost the year i graduated high school and in a lot of ways that

movie was my first introduction not only to chet baker but i really didn't know anything about jazz at all right and and chet in a lot of ways, is a good entry point. He's very accessible. Right. And like Nina Simone or someone, it's easy to enjoy. You don't have to have a sophisticated ear like you do with Coltrane or Charlie Parker or Miles Davis. Right. And so, you know, my relationship is actually kind of strange because Richard Linkletter and I, I'll tell you the truth. The truth is I was here in LA one time and Brad Pitt apparently dropped out of some Chet Baker project.

This is about 15, 16 years ago. And, uh, and this producer calls me up and says, Hey, would you be in a Chet Baker biopic? And I was like, let me think about that. And I called up Linkletter and Linkletter. And I went down the rabbit hole about about that. And I called up link letter and link letter. And I went down the rabbit hole about, I mean, he was, his brain was so interesting thinking about Chet. Really?

Yeah. Cause Rick had this great immediate hit on Chet Baker. What was interesting about him? What was interesting about him is this detachment. And that that's like, what is cool? Chet Baker is cool. What is cool?

Cool is detachment and detachment has a positive manifestation and a negative manifestation yeah and like rick was like yeah let's make a movie about detachment let's make a movie about cool it'll be like pull my daisy and we'll set in the 50s and it was awesome we got we got all jacked up about this movie and we got a script together and we were trying to raise money and and it just slowly fell apart. It never happened, and we never got to make the movie. And it left me with this strange disappointment because I had really worked hard on it, and I thought worked hard on it.

What, on the research and thinking about Chet? Research makes it sound like I went to the library. But no, but just getting into it. In my imagination. You know, it was the kind of thing I thought about for a couple years all the time. You're driving on a, you're just thinking about it. I'm listening to it's the kind of thing i thought about for a couple years all the time you're driving on you're just thinking about i'm listening to music everything is an excuse to think about how i might want to inhabit that world and then it just went away

it was really funny the the script we'd come up with was an idea of that um uh a day in the life of chet baker the day before he tries heroin oh really that was the idea and finally one day i was at r Rick's house and I started asking him questions. Well, maybe we should go to New Line or maybe they'll give us some money. And Rick's like, how old are you, pal? I was like, oh no, you think I'm too old for this part.

He's like, too old? For the script we'd written, it'd taken us too long. I got too old. Right. Well, okay, so that's the point. Then 10, 15 years go by and uh i get another script and i open it up and it's you know it's called born to be blue and then here's chet baker again right only he's in his 40s yeah toothless and screwed up and lost and i i felt like this part was kind of chasing me down a little bit and i almost also felt like i was reading the sequel to a movie i didn't make right yeah you know right

we started this yeah and i felt kind of compelled to make it and i met this filmmaker robert boudreaux who who had written the script and he was it was clear to me that he was a little obsessed with this topic he'd made a short film about ch. He'd had several different versions of the script. And he started giving me different versions of the script. And I was able to read all these different ideas that he had. He wanted you to be part of the collaborative process? Yeah, which is... It's nice.

If you're going to go down the rabbit hole with the really scary part, you don't want to be dictated to about how it's supposed to go. You want somebody who's going to understand where you're coming from. him and i had you know philip seymour hoffman had just died and um we got close um he was a real hero of mine you know right there aren't that we worked together on before the devil knows you're dead yeah and we met when i first moved to new york he phil was a guy when you go audition for a movie, he was always the reader. He was so... What do you mean he was the reader? Oh, like my screen test for Scent of a Woman.

Right. Oh, really? So Pacino's not there for your audition. They hire some actor to read the lines. And here's Phil Seymour Hoffman. That was his job? That was his job, yeah. He'd work for the casting agent?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was so serious, this guy. Yeah, and he did it. He worked for the casting agent? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was so serious, this guy. Yeah, yeah. And he wanted, I had a little theater company, and he wanted me to do one of his plays, and I said no, because I had my hands full of Malapart. He said, I'll start my own theater company.

Right, what was that called? I think I remember that. Well, his theater company. Your theater company. It was called Malapart. Right, and that's, and then Phil started his own. But anyway, we were friends for a long time. Then we did Before the Devil Knows You're Dead together, theater company was called malaparte right and that's um and then phil started his own but anyway

we were friends for a long time then we did before the devil knows you're dead together and he was if you care about the new york theater scene yeah and you care about movies yeah there's actually only a handful of people i mean he's a real he was a real pillar of that community yeah and he had just passed and so sad the notion of what drives really talented and successful people to do such self-destructive pain management was really interesting to me. What would you come up with? I mean, I saw the performance, but intellectually, what do you think was the weight of it? Because I think some people who are either blessed or cursed with talent are more sensitive than others and can't handle life as well as others. But where do you fall into that spectrum? You don't seem like a guy that would lose himself like that necessarily.

That's a big question. Sure. Because I know that I've had a lot of people in my family who've dealt with real issues of depression. Right. Um, and you know, from bipolar to schizophrenia to real serious issues. And I, I have often felt, I remember thinking that sometimes the most beautiful and sensitive people that I've ever met.

thinking that sometimes the most beautiful and sensitive people that I've ever met, my stepfather was really touched with grace in a lot of ways. He is a very, he's one of those people I almost, when I was a kid, I felt this way that maybe nature puts magical people every thousand people or something, but they're a little too sensitive for daily life right right they're they're they're put there for special occasions yeah when when there's real need because he's a poet yeah you know and phil was a poet and i think chet baker in a way in his own his horn he was a poet this is really really sensitive soul yeah um and they can't navigate the waters you know they don't have the right sense of humor about certain things they're very earnest usually yeah and uh i think my end up my

hit on ched is his is that i think what he really really wanted was a jazz life and he had an ethos that was a little bit different i don't think he really wanted to a jazz life and he had an ethos that was a little bit different I don't think he really wanted to fit into society the way everybody else wants sure to and and what he really really coveted was a life playing music and that was getting lost in the music there's that great scene in the dressing room with you and the the manager you know where you're you're making that decision. You know, and it's kind of a,

what I love about the film is it hits, it drives to a central point, which is where you can have a professional triumph and at the same time as immense personal failure. Yeah. People often think that somehow people they see are successful, whatever, that somehow they're succeeding as a person.

And I made this documentary about Seymour, and it's about this 88-year-old pianist. It's called Seymour and Introduction. And one of the things that Seymour talks about in Life in the Arts is that if your art isn't integrated into your development as a person, then it's actually going to throw your whole life out of balance. And whether you succeed or not, you may succeed.

Glenn Gould being an example, Jackson Pollock, Marlon Brand, all these different people where they're letting their art and their neuroses drive their life. Because what's most important to them is their art, but they don't realize that if you succeed at it and lose yourself that is you know is it really success and and that to me is an interesting question yeah well that but in that uh in that equation is losing yourself actually becoming a transcendent artist and is it worth that risk is that what you're saying or is it well i don't know the answer to it but i know right i know what you're saying is it worth the risk like if you sat like if you look at someone like

chet baker like because that's a question you have at the end of that movie it's like all right well he did some of his best work after that and you know he committed to a life of jazz and drugs but in retrospect uh is he a sympathetic figure or do we look at him as like uh you know just a sort of tormented genius who gave us this great gift it's weird we look at him as like, you know, just a sort of tormented genius who gave us this great gift? It's weird. You look at it as a person and as an appreciator, it's a different thing. It's a different thing.

If you look at it as a jazz fan, it's one thing. If you look at it as his son. Right. You know, his daughter. What happened to that kid? Did you? Well, he has several children and a couple ex-wives. Yeah.

And I imagine that there's some hurt there. Of course. And then, like, in that great thing in the movie, see, that's the other thing about sensitive people. And I think that you actually possess some of this, not in a destructive way that I can tell in watching your work, but, you know, that relationship with his father, you know, where, you know, it's sort of the key into why he's like that. You know, why the love deficiency can never be met. Like, psychologically, it's sort of answered there, right? into why he's like that you know why the love deficiency can never be met like psychologically it's sort of answered there right but uh but it doesn't it doesn't necessarily because there's

two ways to look at that shit if you're not an artist you go to therapy and you try to figure out you know you go go to tony robbins or whatever to try to get your shit together but if you're fortunate enough to have talent you can drag everyone else through your struggle right yeah you yeah absolutely come through my pathos with exactly no but like i noticed that drag everyone else through your struggle. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Come through my pathos with me. Exactly. But like I noticed that about you,

that was the one thing that was, you know, when I watched, what I watched, well, I watched Boyhood recently and I watched, I always watch Training Day when it's on because I love that fucking movie. Is that somehow or another, whatever you've had your entire career,

which is an access to vulnerability that you can bring to even the roughest roles, is sort of an amazing thing. Do you feel that? I mean, like, because that role in boyhood, you know, we can come back to Chet Baker that, you know, that was a very human and very, you know, sort of, you know, a painful guy to play and how that, you know, he had to mature, you know, later than he should. And that, you know, when it comes full circle and you're sort of a stand up guy at the end, that you know he had to mature you know later than he should and that you know when it comes full circle and you're sort of a stand-up guy at the end that was pretty sweet stuff it's very heartbreaking well everybody likes to think this idea that we're like born done you know that we're somehow that or that we even ever really arrive anywhere you know i mean what

was interesting to me about boyhood is i felt like I was being offered a job that no actor had been offered before is to get to create a character. Right. There was really no script. Rick was asking me to create a portrait of fatherhood and use time as clay. Right. You're going to get to use. You won't have to act all this. Yeah.

And I had this vision when he was talking to me about it in my brain. Initially. Initially. I'm talking about 15 years ago. We're in a cafe my son was just born he's telling me about this idea that he wants to make this movie yeah and take 12 years to do it and i was like well i really pictured my father in my first memories you know like around the time the movie starts six years old first grade what does your father look like in those memories to you and for me i have a very specific image of him and what that is very different than the image i have of the man who

was at my high school graduation and when i try to look at those two i realized that he was growing up as much as i was right and that became kind of recognized journey with my character as part of that movie and what what what we were doing with this and this point that we're not finished. Well, your parents were young, weren't they? My mom was 17. My father was 19. That's crazy. Can you imagine having kids at that age?

I got a 17-year-old daughter right now. And I hope she wouldn't mind me saying this, but she really wanted a puppy this year. And I knew it was a bad idea, but my mother said this funny thing. She said she said oh ethan let her get that puppy you know it's it's it's it'll it's the big if i just had a puppy i don't think i would have had you yeah i just i needed something to take care of and so i was like i was like i had the idea. Sold. Yeah. I got that puppy, man. So, but where did you grow up?

Well, let's see. I was born in Austin, Texas. Really? Yeah. So you're Texan. Well, yes. My father still lives there. But I really grew up in high school traveling around with my mom.

And my mom, we moved to Atlanta. We moved to Brooklyn. We moved to Connecticut. Was she looking for work? Yeah. Well, she was obviously clearly a young woman right i mean when i was when they get divorced when how old were you uh i was around three so oh so she's like 21 yeah exactly she's just a kid yeah exactly she's still in college oh my god and um so but yeah i grew up with her she was as she kind of was finding herself trying on different jobs. Yeah.

We went, she was a waitress at Stratton Mountain Valley Lodge for a year. And for a year, I was like the greatest third grade skier you ever met. And then we left there and went to Atlanta. And then Atlanta, I was, you know. And it was just you and her? Yep. Wow. So you were a buddy.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's weird, those relationships where you sort of got to stand in. You know what I mean? Because my mom was, what, 22 when she had me, and my dad was never around. So you get this weird, I imagine, extra emotional pressure to deal with the mom. You really do. Many a novel has been written about it.

I guess so. So how'd you end up in New York? Many a novel has been written about it. I guess so. So how'd you end up in New York? Well, let's see. How I ended up in New York was that when I was graduating high school, I really was pretty sure I wanted to be an actor, or sometimes I wanted to be Jack London.

I really wanted to be. Out in the writing about the wild? Yeah, I wanted to be a merchant marine and have adventures and write about them. And so I went to Carnegie Mellon for a hot minute to study acting. And that didn't go very well. I was pretty unhappy there. And I heard about this. Why?

What happened? Just didn't, you didn't like the system? You know what happened is, for me, is college is too much like high school. I had this feeling when I finished high school that I was ready to be an adult and I wanted to have adult experiences. And I was just a freshman again. And I felt like I was just signed up on a dotted line. I was supposed to be here then and there.

And, you know, there was just the culture of everybody just drinking and um not that i don't like drinking but it just was just this haze of stupidity yeah uh and i wasn't that interested and i heard about these auditions for dead poet society this movie your mom was living in new york at the time no my mom was living in princeton new jersey well actually she was teaching school in trenton at the time in trenton yeah my mom is a real kind of radical eleanor was roosevelt type she lives in bucharest romania now working for gypsy rights and really yeah she's really a bizarre person did she remit she did remarry because you said your stepdad she's gay with that guy no oh yeah yeah she she's been she's split from him and has a new i have have a new stepdad. Oh, good. Okay. She has, she has her, she has her eccentricities.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rotating stepdad. Yeah. But that sec, that sec, that first stepdad, he was the poety kind of sensitive guy? Yeah, yeah. Yeah? Do you still have a relationship with that guy? I sure do.

Yeah. Yeah, because I, I don't, my parents stayed together until I was like 35 and then they bailed. But, so I don't have these relationships with stepdads. This is interesting to me. Because, and you have a relationship with your real dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you only have one father, right?

Right, yeah. You know, there's only one that brings you into the universe, so to speak. Right, right, yeah. But you have a lot of guardian angels. Absolutely. You have a lot of mentors. And for me, you know, often, you know,

like people will either say it as a positive or they'll say it as a negative that I have tried a lot of different things in my life. You know, I've written books and I've, you know, acted in plays and directed movies and done a documentary and tried journalism. And part of that comes from my stepfather who had, he just didn't see any difference in the arts. He really saw the whole thing like a big fist. Right. You know, like acting is one finger and music is another finger and painting is one and sculpture is another. And they're all about this need to communicate with each other.

With a fist. I like the fist metaphor. Yeah, it is. There's a certain fuck you to it. Yeah, it's like the Hunter S. Thompson six-finger fist, you know, right to your solar plexus. But, you know, my stepfather had that exactly what you're talking about. And, um, which is what I mean is a certain fuck you factor to it, which is that, you

know, society, there's a lot wrong. There's a lot of games people play and there's a lot of lies and there's an obsession with money and there's, uh, and he kind of very beautifully would see through that but when i talk about sensitive i'm not kidding like i was it was the late 80s right when i'm graduating high school and he's the type of person that um you know that we use you'd see all the starving children in ethiopia yeah right on tv and then people feel bad or turn off the tv or they'd send in 30 or something well he flew to addis ababa yeah right that what he did. He's like, I can't turn off this TV anymore. I can't be this person. I'm just going to go there. And this is the guy that I was

growing up with in the house. And he was a really eccentric person, which is, I mean, by that, he taught me to play football and he taught me sports, but he also taught me a real love of the arts. That's an amazing thing. But that's the thing, there's no difference. Music, acting, writing, poetry. I remember I was writing this girl, I had this crush on this girl senior year, I was graduating, and I wrote her this little kind of love postcard thing that I'd left out on the thing. And he said to me once, this poem stinks. I'd left out on the thing. And he said to me once, this poem stinks. I said, you've only got a few moments in your life to be 18.

Right. And you got to write a better poem than this. He's like, give her something good. Write about her. Don't write about yourself. Yeah. You know, talk about her. Why is this poem to her and no one else? Right.

You know, I was like, that's a good idea. Did you do it? Oh, and it worked like gangbusters, man. But that's sweet. You're right about that. Especially when I think that if your parents separate when you're younger, there's almost a craving. Like my dad was fairly absent, but there's a craving for that guidance. And you're fortunate, you know, that you had another guy that, you know, came into your life.

I mean, because that sounds like it changed your whole way of thinking. It did. And then you get to be. And I'm raising two kids. My two oldest, I'm split from their mother. And so I'm looking at this from both angles. And I really feel like I was able. My real father is a very different man and has a lot to offer too.

What's his trip? He's a mathematician. Really? Yeah, he spent his life as an actuary. And just really deeply kind, deeply humble person. Organized? Incredibly. It's the opposite emotionally from your stepdad.

And so he's had to deal with this artist son, which I'm sure has been challenging for him, but he would never let on that it was. He's just very a person of a deep and substantive faith and that guides his life. And he's really fun to be around because of it. Oh, yeah? He's grounded.

Yeah, very deeply grounded in that way. And what is interesting for me is I've been able to pull from these different role models. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's what I hope that my kids can do, too. How are they doing? I don't know. When you're a certain age, it's a time to judge your parents by what they're not.

Yeah. I'm at the nonjudgmental phase of parenting because I'm being judged. Right, right. By the older ones? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got one graduating high school, and I've got one who's about to be a freshman in high school. So you're taking the hit? Taking the hit, man.

Dad is a phony. It'll pass. He'll come back around. Do you get along with her, your ex-wife? Yeah. Please, please move on. Yes, I do. Oh, good.

But also, I imagine that given that you started acting, because now we can come back around. So you leave Carnegie Mellon. You find out there's an advertising, they're casting for Dead Poets. You hadn't done anything before Dead Poets, really? I had. I'd done some child acting. I did this movie called The Explorers when I was 13. Yeah?

And your mom was into it. She was cool with the acting. She was not into it. She was really busy. Uh-huh. And she just appreciated me being busy. Who took you into the city for auditions? Myself.

You took the bus? I took the train. Oh, yeah? Yeah. When you were 13, 14? Uh-huh. Remember, you could do that. I know.

It's a little crazy. My mother told me as long as it didn't cost her any money, she wasn't going to pay for headshots or pay an agent or anything like that. But if I wanted to go on some open calls, I could. And I had this friend of mine who lived down the street who had an agent. And so I'd hop the train and hear about, you know, I'd hop the train with him and go on these casting calls. And one of them was for The Explorers.

And, you know, we were kind of touching on Phil, but, you know, that's where I worked with River Phoenix. In The Explorers? In The the explorers and got to know him and this i think when this script arrived on my desk where i'm right after phil died it was hard for me to think about phil without also thinking about river and right river was my first relationship to acting we were learning about acting together and you're both about the same age huh yeah we were 14 when we made that movie wow and um and uh but so that had been a little glimpse of my life like a tiny chapter that i'd almost forgotten about when i graduated high school and it would just been this weird you know strange like summer camp experience yeah that was different than the rest of my life. And then when I went and auditioned for Dead Poets Society

and I got the part, and that just kind of led me on the path where I find you today. Yeah. Well, that's the other interesting thing is that having these different role models as men in your life and your mother who you had, you were sort of,

I imagine the relationship with your mother is like, you had to be aware pretty early that, you know, she was busy dealing with her own shit. And, you know, at least she gave you the opinion to, the option to do what you wanted as long as you didn't get in trouble, I imagine. My mother placed a great value on independence. Yeah. It was really like, she had a lot of respect for me if i just took care of myself right she appreciated that yeah and you know if i just i mean my mother's good kid be a good kid she'd give me a kid shit you not uh for christmas you know she she loved to give me i would the tree would be lined with presents yeah yeah and and you get under there they're

all library books oh really stay home? Stay home and read, kid. Yeah. And I had to return them. Really? That was your big task? She would always, she'd get me, she'd go to the library and get like 15 books and wrap them and put them under and, you know, I'd have a month. Yeah.

And did you read them or did you just take them back? Some of them. So after Dead Poets, I guess that was was the question is that now you're in this position to be having an experience with different types of role models like uh who you're acting with so i imagine when did you start realizing like that you know you could learn from the people you were working with or did you do you know what i mean because you're working with robin you're working with that whole cast of kids that you know are your age in that movie was it more of a feeling of like, I'm just doing my job? Or did you have moments where you're like, holy shit, that's Robin Williams and he's doing this thing?

For me, it felt like Peter Weir was the director of Dead Poets. Brilliant guy. Brilliant guy. So he's made Year of Living Dangerously, which was one of my favorite films. Picnic Hanging Rock, which is incredible. He made Witness. Oh, what a great movie that is. He made The Last Wave, right?

Yeah, yeah. This is a major. And when I was in the room with him, it was my first experience with what it was like to be with somebody who is an adult artist. Yeah. And he was living his life in service of something larger than artist. Yeah. And he was living his life in service of something larger than himself. Yeah. He was dedicated to telling stories

and making movies and bringing out the best in others. This is a major heavyweight human being. Yeah. And I felt like I was meeting, you know, I'd studied Sam Shepard and I'd studied, you know, I'd read Tolstoy.

At that age, right. Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I was reading, right? Right. And I'd read Tolstoy. At that age, right. Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I was reading, right? And I felt like I was meeting an artist. Right, right. Like I'd heard about them in books and I'd read about them in the newspaper. Right. And this was a damn artist.

Here he was. Yeah, yeah, real deal. And we were staying at the Ramada Inn in Wilmington, Delaware. And he gave all of us kids, I mean, this is the start of my artistic life is is that he gave us a challenge where you had to write your character's biography which i've later come to find out that this is a very common acting exercise but i'd never been in that acting

class proper sure and he said you know write your character biography you know so i had to write like okay well i was born in this town and this is my favorite color and this is what and you start collecting a subconscious that is a little bit different than your own that's the idea yeah yeah and he would say things like to Robert Sean Leonard who was playing my roommate he's like okay I need to believe that you two are friends he'd say to us so I want to put a scene in the script that is going to be about your friendship and he showed us the schedule and on Wednesday the October 17th we're going to shoot this scene we're going to shoot it for four hours here and you're going to write it yeah said you you two are going to take I need three two-page scenes about friendship yeah about you two becoming friends and I will

film it on this day I'm going to pick one of them and you guys write it and so Bob we're 17 18 years old right and like this is a the heavyweight human being saying he's going to film a scene we're writing. So we stay up all night. We're working on what could it be? What could it be? Overthinking it. Oh, overthinking.

We hand him in these, you know, three different two page scenes and he looks at them and he goes, okay, I like this one best. We'll shoot that one. And it goes on the schedule and there it is, scene 52, part B or whatever the hell it is.

And he films this scene. And here's the funny thing it's not in the movie he completely cut it out right right but we became friends right it was and what i learned was a process that was going to become invaluable to me working with richard linkletter richard let people think um when you get on a linkletter movie that oh rehearsal is like play practice like it is in seventh grade or something do you know and play practice with richard is something deeper and more mysterious than that which is kind of joining imaginative forces that the most important thing that really

happens in rehearsal yeah it's not that i plan to say this line when i put the coffee down on there it's that we're actually making the same movie and that we have this, we start a collective consciousness. Yeah. So that the same symbols mean the same things to me that we're on the same as they do to you. Yeah, yeah. When I make a joke, you laugh because we know what each other are talking about. Right, right. And then everything becomes easy.

It's classic teamwork stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you learn this in baseball and football and you know teams that achieve in a high level you have to have a serious non-verbal communication right and what peter weir was teaching me first of all he's teaching me how to write by giving me these biography lessons and uh and he was teaching me how to what a what a cinema experience can be because people love this idea that there's improvisation yeah i've never improvised well when the cameras were rolling right but i can

improvise really well in rehearsal yeah and then i can rewrite it and restructure it so that the movie has the feel of spontaneity sure you know that when you know the bits that come out of improvisation like i'm gonna hold on to that exactly right you know which ones to get rid of well before i forget quick question yeah like there were some weird things in the little moments in the new movie in uh born to be blue that that i thought were great details like uh was you walking off with the plant was that in the script no no but you know i read this thing what i loved i was what i was doing staying up all what i was so fun about studying a really interesting person like chet is like i could stay up all night reading weird books and weird and one of his friends was talking about one he was um you know

like a lot of junkies he was just always on the prowl hustle man he's just hustling he tried to leave every exchange with a positive. Right. So I thought this guy in the scene, I'm asking a guy for a favor and he turns me down. So I steal his plant. And then the line after that is genius. Where like, because like some parts of the movie with the romance, it gets a little kind of like romantic, you know, but the stuff like, you know, with the junkie stuff and that's not a negative thing. But like, I felt that some of the details around what you did with the character was kind of interesting.

Because then the manager guy goes, is she really pregnant? And you go, no. And he goes, well, that's a start. Like, it's honesty on some level. I like those. And see, that's interesting. That moment you just picked, that was an improvisation that then we scripted and shot. Because we were joking around doing the scene, and I would like, in the rehearsals, I was stealing the plant.

Yeah. And then he ran and chased it. This guy, Callum, is a great actor, this Canadian guy, Callum Keith-Renny. He's great. And he started busting my balls. Right. And we found a real moment. Right, right.

And that's what you're always hunting for, is a real moment where it doesn't feel scripted. That's weird. I felt that. Yeah, and what you're talking about is, I know what you mean. When the movie gets into the more straight up romance, in a lot of ways, they could be anybody. Sure. Because men and women fall in love or men and women fall in love.

Yeah. And the one guy asking a girl to marry him is, you know, there's certain. Right. Losing, it's, what I love about Linklater's boyhood is he doesn't do any of those moments. Right. No. No. You know, he just avoids any.

Yeah. First kiss, gone. First losing Virginia, gone. It's all's all the same folks we all know what that is yeah yeah well yeah well but those still the the the commitment to the character like you know once when chet loses his shit and you realize how fucking painfully insecure he is and that you know the whole struggle to get to figure out how to learn the horn again you know after he got his teeth knocked out that just the the depth of his insecurity and his own self-annihilation and how they were sort of hand in hand was good. And see, I've spent my life around people like that, you know?

I mean- Actors? Actors, musicians, people who are so passionate and then quickly turn, you know, they turn on you. And I've just just i've seen that over and over yeah because we are looking for love and you know whether or not you can accept it or not that's you know your whole other yeah you know what i mean but but most most performers they want it yeah whether they can handle it when they get it that's right they do want it that's my

life but let's like the the relationship with link letter why do you think because like not unlike uh you know scorsese and denaro and stuff you seem to be his guy in a lot of movies. He likes working with you. Yeah, we made eight films together. I mean, that's a lot of movies. Yeah. So how did that begin and why do you think you have this symbiosis with him? It's a little bit like any friendship or something.

If you ask too many questions about it, it kind of dissolves in your hands. You think there's a little bit like any friendship or something. If you ask too many questions about it, it kind of dissolves in your hands. You think there's a Texan connection? Do you think that there is? Yes, I do. I think that, but for whatever reason, there was a like-minded sensibility. I mean, we're very different people.

I think that, you know, I really don't know. I ask myself the same question. I know that I'm know, I really don't know. I ask myself the same question. I know that I'm extremely, I feel fortunate because it's a cool thing when you're young. I mean, there's nothing I could wish for my kids more than to meet people of their generation that turn their brain on fire. And I remember Rick, I had this theater company with this playwright, Jonathan Mark Sherman, we were doing one of his plays and Anthony Rapp was this guy

who was in Dazed and Confused. Now, Slacker had come out but Dazed and Confused hadn't come out and Rick came to our theater company to see this play, to see Anthony Rapp in it and we were all really young,

you know, it's right around the day Slacker came out and then Reality Bites came out and then reality bites came out and so it was kind of interesting for us to meet because he was like the gen x director i was like the poster boy of gen x right so when we shook hands it was like god i guess we're supposed to meet yeah yeah yeah and is gen x mean anything to you absolutely not does it mean anything to you i don't even know what it means you know i didn't even read that book and i didn't even know what it means. I didn't even read that book. And I didn't even know it was based on a book. What do you mean?

And so anyway, we went out and hung out all night, one night, during that whole play. And I did have the feeling that I've had with certain women in my life and certain friends. You know when you meet somebody, you're like, oh, I'm going to know this person for a long time. Right. You kind of- You just click. There's an understanding. You know this person for a long time. Right. You kind of. You just click. There's an understanding. You just click and you just feel it.

Unspoken, yeah. And I remember the wrap party for Before Sunrise, the first film we did together. We were in Vienna and World Cup had been on. It was summer. It was gorgeous. And I remember knowing when I left that wrap party that I wasn't done working with that person. Sure. You know, that we were just starting.

Yeah. And I don't know why that is. And I don't know, you know, there might be a time when, you know, he and I don't work together for a while. Yeah. And I don't know what that'll be like. But I know that the friendship has been mutually beneficial. Well, I think, yeah. Well, no, but I think he gets you clearly.

And it struck me, you know, after I talked he, uh, I think he gets you clearly and he's a, it's, it struck me, you know, after I talked to him for like an hour and a half or so, they, he's a pretty, you know, straight shooter guy and a very earnest guy. And in, you know, and he has a certain courage around how he wants to do things. And he, he doesn't seem, he's a very no bullshit person. And it just seems like he's sort of tapped into your, you know, outside of your friendship, your capacity to, to be open and vulnerable as a man, you know outside of your friendship to your capacity to to be open and vulnerable as a man you know on screen because a lot of those roles require that

and i think he's he's sort of like that and it's not really uh the the standard way of approaching you know a masculinity on screen like there's an honesty to it that you don't see a lot and i think you can play it and i think he you know he likes to you know really you know be honest about that stuff does that make sense it does and it's that honesty yeah that feels like oxygen doesn't it right yeah yeah and um he doesn't try to be cool right he doesn't try to be tough right he just tries to tell the truth yeah whether it's about a woman or while being a parent or whatever He's just trying to hunt for it. And one of the things I really like about him, and I think that other actors would love this too, because he's allergic to plot.

Well, that's good, though. And I hate plot. Remember, I got to do a play with Tom Stoppard, right? Yeah. And Stoppard wants to do this amazing thing that plot is this contract you have with the audience that the audience thinks they want it. Like when you think about your favorite movies or plays or things like that, a lot of times you can't even remember what happened at the end. Sure. Like did Lawrence of Arabia win a big battle or didn't he?

I don't know. But I love that movie. What did you love about it? His eyes. Remember when he's standing on top of the train and his thing? I just, we remember moments in that plot is this fake thing that we create that's like the illusion that dinner's coming. Yeah.

Or that there's closure. That there's going to be closure. Because life never gives you any closure. It does at the end. Well, unfortunately. I know. I know. I hate that.

But the point being is that what we like is the experiences. Yeah. And it doesn't really matter what happens. Yeah, yeah. Whether it's boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy loses girl, boy meets, you know, however at all, it's not what happens, it's how it happens. Yeah, it's the process. And Rick is just completely into how.

Yeah. Well, yeah, and that's a tremendous risk. And that's what's amazing that, you know that outside of the device of boyhood that it got the attention it got because it was all about those feelings and about the process and about life and about the moments that have no bearing on plot or anything else. It was almost like a meditation. I mean, when you watch a movie, it's kind of mind fucking. What was your experience watching the full film after 10 years of 12 years? It's bizarre to know that these characters are moving through this time in real time. It's it's it's mind blowing to watch yourself age. Well, it just there's this lie. We all tell each other all day, which is that time isn't happening. It's happening.

We're all dying this second and the next second. And I'm already nostalgic for when we started this interview. Well that's nice. And it's, yeah, but here's the thing, you know, when I was going down the rabbit hole thinking about Chet Baker, right, and listening to Miles Davis, and listening to all this other stuff,

I thought a lot about what they were going for with the whole idea of the discipline of jazz and the freedom of jazz. Right. Of what they're going for. And that's what watching Boyhood was like to me, is that there's this immense discipline in the architecture of what Rick's doing. I'm going to take the grid, the actual grid of high school, first grade, second grade, and I'm going to make a movie about this grid. But inside this grid is going to make a movie about this grid but inside this grid is going to be this life just popping and popping yeah in the i read it was a great i found one you know at 3 a.m online searching i found some interview with chet in

norway like in 1983 when i had a cold and you know you you can find this stuff and it was a radio interview and he was talking about How sad he is when he watches jazz musicians pretend to improvise, right? That they they do. Oh, here's my solo. We're all improvise, but it's the same It's like they've written it and he says what he really loves to do is go throw himself out Throw himself out and then find his way back into the melody. Right. And that it's this continual process of hurling yourself against the universe and trying to find some order. Yeah.

You know? Right. And I felt, I really moved by that because I feel like that's what we're all doing every day. Right. Like, okay, I'm going to like go get coffee today and see what happens yeah you know and um but not everybody looks at that at it that way a lot of people are just sort of like this is what i do every day and i hope the fuck that didn't that nothing weird happens but then there are those of us who are like i hope something weird happens yeah i know is it getting a little

tired yeah yeah he has this thing that I think is what, he's not the greatest singer in the world. He's not the greatest trumpet player. But when he plays, if you watch Almost Blue, or you listen to his last performance live at Tokyo, he plays Elvis Costello's Almost Blue. It's magnificent. But you're not sure if he's going to live through the performance.

Right. And you're not, and a lot of times when you listen to him sing, you think, is this good? Yeah. Or is this bad? Yeah. But whatever the answer is, you're moved.

It's real. It's authentic. It's real and it's moved in. I put a line in, in the movie that was a line of his when somebody was saying, in the movie,

Dizzy says, hey, you got to stop this singing stuff because people always said that to him. Yeah. But he says, it's true. It may not be good,

but there's no lies in it. not be good but there's no lies in it yeah right there's no lies and and she had a lot of problems and a lot of you know and but when he was performing it was without it was void of lies yeah and that's i think just the fragility of it all yeah it's almost like he doesn't pretend to even care yeah you know it's just here it. Make of it what you will. Yeah, there's some moments in that movie around drugs and around his decisions and around, you know, his stubborn commitment to just being the way he was.

Like, you know, it's going to be sort of jarring for some people to see you laying on the floor with a needle hanging out of your arm for a minute, not knowing whether you're dead or alive. But the weird thing about that scene is that once you come out of it and you get the thing out of your arm, she don't leave. See, a lot of people don't understand that dynamic of sick relationships, that she was going to stay there and pull you out of that thing.

That's crazy. And then he used the device of meeting on the set of a movie about chet baker well that's actually it is a device but that really happened right you know like what was dino de laurentis approached chet after he'd done this jail stint in italy would he play himself in a movie and i think that that's what got me on the hook of playing this part the idea that i could actually play chet baker playing himself yeah that yeah that seemed very bizarre. Well, there was another line, like there's these weird moments in the movie that sort of struck me as sort of strangely genuine where you're in the movie, within a movie,

and you do dope for the first time, and then there's a cut, and you go, wouldn't I be throwing up? I think I'd be throwing up. This is so fake, man. There should be puke everywhere right wait was that the script no i love it because what it does is it lets you the audience know hey look biopics are fake right okay what we're trying to get is that some truth that's beyond like if you want to study miles

davis dizzy gillespie you can it's beyond, like, if you want to study Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, you can. It's called Wikipedia. You can find out exactly what happened. We're trying to tell you a story that might be relevant. I mean, the dream is that it will be relevant larger than just the facts of an individual's life. You know, I mean, Chet Baker is not, he didn't change music. He's not Miles Davis. He's an interesting human being right who happened

to be extremely talented but you know is did he create bebop no way you know nowhere near he kind of got labeled with the california sound it was yeah he got you know he he got that thing and he sold a lot of records because he was doing playing at a high level and he was white and gorgeous and it's accessible yeah he was accessible because he didn't play as fast he was really interested in melody and if you listen to art pepper he was a horrible rat he'd throw anybody under the bus to stay out of jail that's what art said about yeah well have you read straight time yeah uh is it straight time or straight life straight uh straight time it's right there it's straight life oh god such a good fucking insane

that guy and that guy can write i know there's passages in that book that are like blistering yeah i wonder how much of it was laurie because laurie's still alive his wife and they wrote it together and it's what's funny about that book is it's by a sax player a great sax player but it's 350 pages about jail and dope and about 50 pages about sex you know the pages on sex are so good yeah i used to read them on on set yeah because you know hampton halls has another uh raise up off me i always get the titles i've written this is when you get old you forget titles but raise up off me hampton halls it's like straight time um so good is it straight life or straight time i keep saying it's straight life straight i see it okay okay it's on the second shelf down right on the left next shelf over right there second shelf down in the middle

oh yeah no straight life you guys this is a great library you have here yeah a lot of those are aspirations yeah i know that's like my library so let's let's move up a little bit and you know one thing is interesting is that you worked uh on midnight clear you work with pete berg who i actually was my roommate briefly in culver city before he started acting and now he's like yeah it's bizarre you know if i had to say okay i did a midnight and i hope pete berg listens to this because i think you'll find it funny but um is i did a midnight clear wonderful was really cool movie interesting movie interesting movie about world war ii and it's with gary sinise one of the founders of stephan wolf theater company one of my my heroes as an actor um kevin dillon great ari gross um

myself frank whaley and pete berg of all those guys yeah who i we had a great time i loved those guys we had fun if the one i would pick at least likely to become a Hollywood big shot director, it would definitely be Pete Berg. I've picked him to be like a knucklehead. Yeah. You know, he's such a jock. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

He's a big personality. Real bully. He is a bully. And Pete Berg once threw me so hard across the room. I mean, I literally thought I was dead. I thought he broke my head. He picked me up. We were, you know, it was one of those things where you're like play fighting.

Yeah. And then he kind of hit me across the jaw and I got pissed and then I punched him. Yeah. And then he picked me up and threw me. Holy shit. Across the room. My head threw a wall. I had to pay some hotel $15,000 because Pete Berg threw me through a wall.

But you know, it's fascinating. But he does, that guy has life in him. Full of life, dude. He has life. And I'm so proud of him. And he's a good director. Yeah, he's a good director. And he's out there doing, swinging his own, playing by his own beat.

Yeah, like he's, it's interesting that as a director, he definitely has has a style you know i don't know what his relationship but i just would have never thought would you have thought that why didn't i knew him briefly like i was living with steve brill you know brill oh yeah yeah so it was me and brill went to college together and we'd done some writing together in college and i moved out here the first time in like uh i don't know late 80s and uh and i stayed with brill in an apartment in culver city and then pete was brill's friend and then you know pete needed a place to live so i got moved to the couch and eventually left And I stayed with Brill in an apartment in Culver City. And then Pete was Brill's friend. And then Pete needed a place to live. So I got moved to the couch and eventually left.

But at that time, Pete was working on a doc. Believe it. He was doing some acting. But he wanted to make a documentary about Prince. He had this big vision. So he had a lot of things going on in his mind. He did. He always did. He always did.

Let's talk about Training Day a bit. like that movie is a pretty astounding movie and the experience of working with denzel and having to play off that yeah what what how did you prepare for that thing man denzel to my mind yeah is you know one of the greatest actors of our era um and that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that he's had to overcome issues of race and deal with it i mean just by i can speak to how hard it is to be a dramatic actor yeah all right and i i don't have any obstacles i mean the studios don't want to make dramas and this guy is a world-class movie star and a world-class actor right right i mean it's really only the brits that do that yeah you know where you can be a star and also like a very serious actor artist i would say and denzel is

you know it's a it's a hurricane it's a thunderstorm i mean it's it's uh trying to keep your composure um and create with him yeah you know is is hard because his real powerful force i i studied his movies before i did training day because i i just love his act yeah i just and but i really noticed that he kind of blew everybody off the screen that he worked with, except Gene Hackman. Well, Gene's amazing. So I watched he and Gene Hackman. And I was like, okay, the trick is it's clear that Gene is not playing Denzel's game and Denzel's not playing Gene's game. And I just challenged myself.

You're watching game footage. That's how I felt like. I watched that movie and I thought to myself, all right, here's the trick, man. I have got to not care if this guy likes me. You got a Gene Hackman. Yeah. I don't want to go to the Laker game with him. I don't want to go out to dinner.

I don't want to be best friends. I'm sure he's got a best friend. I got a best friend. It's fine. I'm just going to do my job. This guy, and he worked hard to get me that part. Yeah. So I knew that, and I just put that in my hat, and I just tried to do, I just come on

and not care if he liked what i was doing or not right um because that's the trick with the trap with other actors often is it if you're doing what they want you to do what you're doing is making it easy for them yeah and if you're making it easy for them what you're doing is decreasing sparks yeah okay yeah you know you're actually it's like um people say this idea about like run lines with your scene partner i hate doing that because i don't want them i don't want to get in some like some habitual uh reheated performance you know like where i want to have an actual creative act that you're witnessing right and and that's going to be interesting to watch so this idea that if you're making your scene partner happy that you're doing a good job i don't think so i think that you you want to have conflict yeah and you you have to stand up for

the integrity of your person and they have to do that and if the thing is written well sparks will fly so that was my work on that movie wow simply to try to hold your own yeah and i tried to take the you know i'd done this movie tape with link letter and I'd done Hamlet with Michael Amaretto these two weird indie movies that year That I had a lot because there was no stress. There was no budget. They were low-level movies I felt my confidence rising me Yeah, and I cuz I didn't feel people judging me and I felt right and I chant I try to play a trick on myself I just try to imagine that I was on set in one of those movies and and Denzel has an amazing quality.

You remember your senior year of high school like after, you know, like the last month of you walking through the halls

and you don't give a shit what anybody thinks about you. Yeah, yeah. It's a great feeling, right? Yeah, yeah. That's how Denzel walks through life. Right, right.

And I just tried to emulate it in my own way. Right, right. You know, and I feel like, okay, well, on the set of Tape I didn't care what anybody thought about me.

Yeah. You know, on the set, I was in charge. So I'll be in charge here. Yeah. I'll let it go and see how it goes. Now, obviously, I'm not in charge, but at least I'll trick myself into having the confidence that I am. It was good, right? Yeah.

You had a good time? I'm really proud of the film. Yeah, it's great. You know, it's hard to do. It's hard to make a mainstream Hollywood movie that also is a good movie. Yeah, yeah. No, I can't not watch it. I'll tell you that.

And I loved it. I loved it. There's that scene where he just tells you that you've got alcohol in your system. You've got angel dust. You're just fucked. You think this is checkers? This is chess. And, you know, I just worked with Denzel and Antoine again.

We just did a remake of The Magnificent Seven. Oh, I saw that on the IMDb. That sounds fucking amazing. Yeah, it should be fun. It's all in the can. It's done? Well, they're cutting it now, yeah. And how was the experience?

Well, it was a real swashbuckling Western. I mean, we were sweating. A lot of you. It was a lot of us. It was a lot of horses. D'Onofrio, too, right? D'Onofrio, Chris Pratt. He's a great actor, right?

D'Onofrio's a great actor. Jesus, man. So I had all these guys on set. Those are two of my favorite all-time actors, D'Onofrio and Denzel. Oh, yeah. And Antoine trying to manage all of our personalities. I mean, you can be sure. It's 104, and we're all dressed in wool and with loaded shotguns where

are you shooting we're at louisiana and santa fe god santa fe's nice santa fe's nice yeah i grew up in new mexico so uh now working with lou may on the last that movie on the before the the what is before the devil knows you're dead what what'd you take from that experience of dealing with that guy because he's a real he's an actor's director, isn't he? Sidney, he was, it was, words fail. Yeah. I was in his last film. He's 83 years old.

That film is the work of a young man. That film is blisters with rage. It's angry. It's weird. He is such a great storyteller. He's always in service of the emotion not himself

you know a lot of directors they just want you to notice them he disappears and I have to say if I could leave this interview with any one thing is that everybody needs to watch Network again

again it's with the election that we're under right now you cannot believe how prescient and relevant that film is. You have meddled with the primal forces of nature.

It's an incredible film. Oh, yeah. And Sidney was a great artist. And getting to work with Phil and Marissa on a real New York movie with Sidney Lumet in the last days of his life was so exciting. And I'll tell you one great story about phil and i went to him because we found out that he were in rehearsal we found out that he was going to shoot it on digital video

right we were so upset we're like he's a film guy he's like when we went to sydney and we said hey man you know let's shoot this on film man like all like your other films you know like uh don't you want it to look like dog day afternoon you know and in incidents what about dog day afternoon did you like the way it looked oh you know so raw and real uh-huh you and you like that yeah you know and he goes what you're saying is you want it to look kind of vintage cool right and we're like yeah wait 20 years it will i made Dog Day as cheaply and frugally as possible, just like I'm going to make this film. And you trust me, live a little while, wait 20 years, it's going to look great.

It's going to be so retro, you won't even believe it. That's hilarious. And you know, of course, he's right. Link Letter just screened Before the Devil Knows You're Dead as kind of a 10-year anniversary for the Austin Film Society, and we watched it again. And sure enough, it looks badass and old school. It looks like a vintage LP, you know?

Right, right. That's hilarious. So what are you doing stage-wise? Are you doing any of that? I'm trying to work together a production of Night of the Iguana, to be honest with you. Oh, really? Tennessee's, you know, it's a great, great play,

and it hasn't been done in New York in about 25 years, so I'm trying big cast right yeah pretty big yeah so when you when you start to put together i've been i've recently been uh seeing plays because um uh you know scott rudin has been sort of championing plays and he's he's sort of got me to interview annie baker oh cool and he's going to have me interview what's the guy's name steven carom is that the guy's name who did the humans so i'm like sort of re-engaged a bit or maybe for the first time in my life engaged with your current new york theater have you seen hamilton no i gotta see you gotta see that it's really been great to go back to the theater and and see

quality stuff it's it's i for any time i go i'm i'm amazed like the visceral you get beyond technology yeah yeah it's so exciting you know i mean I mean? It's like for five minutes, people aren't on their phones. They're not like, you actually have to be in a room and breathe the same air with another person. Right. And be together and laugh together. When somebody comes up to me and they, it happened to me just the other day. Somebody said, I saw you in, oh yeah, they saw me in Coast of Utopia, they said.

And it was, and they remembered that there was a glitch with one of my props that this prop was this thing was broken and then and I remember I remember that day I remember that that actual specific performance whereas if you come up to say like training day it's meaningful to me but I wasn't in the room when you watched it right right you see me in a play means we were there together yeah you know somebody said that moment we shared that moment you remember the emotion of it i remember it's somebody i was doing um uh henry the fourth with kevin klein right and his amazing moment which is that i had to be dead and kevin klein was giving this beautiful soliloquy above me yeah and and somebody's cell phone went off

right and you know and he jumped a couple acts and said is that the chimes of midnight we've heard the sounds of chimes. And everybody laughed. The problem is, I laughed too. But I was supposed to be dead. And so my armor is just shaking as I'm laughing. And this person came up to me on the subway. And they were like, I was there.

And we both started laughing about that moment. Great. And that's theater. And look, when you go see a great play, a real, look, there's bad stuff too, but when you see a visceral, alive work of art and it's happening right in front of you and it's only going to happen those few times, you're one of only a handful of people that'll see it. That's right. It's like seeing Neil Young at a tiny hundred seat house when he was not even supposed to

go on. Right, right. He was just having a beer and he came up and I saw it. Yeah. You know, a great theater show is like that. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

when I saw previews of Lin-Manuel doing this Hamilton, I saw it and I literally didn't want to go. It was when it was first in previews

and my wife was like, you got to go, we're going with this couple and I'm like, oh, jeez. It's a musical. I hate musicals. I said,

this thing starts and you felt like something was wrong. Like, it's not supposed to be this interesting. Yeah, yeah. Like,

you can't, like, they must not really be saying the lines. Right. You know, like kind of the feeling you had where you've noted like two moments in the Chet Baker movie that really were based out of improv.

Like you feel that reverberation of like something, this is illegal shit I'm smoking here. Yeah, yeah. And theater can do that. Theater can do it like nothing else. Oh yeah, it's amazing. Like even,

like I had this conversation with somebody the other night. I don't go to opera, and I don't go to a lot of musicals, but every time I go to a musical, if there's more than three people singing anywhere, I'm going to cry. I don't even know why. But, like, with opera, like, I was talking to someone about opera. I've been to maybe two in my life. And what people don't realize about opera is that it's just people.

It's not amplified. You get this idea that it's a spectacle, but when you get there, it's like you can hear the wood in the instruments. You can hear them step onto the stage. Crazy. And then you hear their voice. I know. And I saw Gary Sinise's production of True West. Was it True West he did?

Yeah. Right? On Broadway? It was off Broadway. And that's the production that made me want to be an actor. Really? Yeah, both. That production changed my life.

Because the night I saw it, you know that weird scene? it wasn't true west no that was the cherry lane where he was yeah yeah yeah with uh was it daniel stern or maybe with john malkovich oh he played with malkovich right no the one he directed uh with barry child oh yeah okay so i saw senisa directed he directed barry child there's that scene where the guy comes in at the end with the corn and the night i was there one ear of corn just started rolling down the stage towards the audience and there was no stopping it and i was like this is amazing he's being upstaged by the corn i know but it appealed surprise just for naught the corn is rolling exactly i was in that production you were yeah why don't i remember that because i probably wasn't in it when you saw it i did the original production in chicago no i saw it in new york yeah on broadway they

moved it to broadway and i couldn't come with it but that was one of that that production i loved it oh it's phenomenal gary's one of the great theater directors of our time what's that guy that played the that character that he's terry kinney wow what an actor yeah how's he doing he's amazing i haven't seen him lately oh he's around all the time he directs a lot of great theater he's a he's an incredible guy like i doing? I haven't seen him lately. Oh, he's around all the time. He directs a lot of great theater. He's an incredible guy. I remember really realizing that he was an actor in that. That movie was okay, but The Firm, remember The Firm with Tom Cruise?

Yeah, he's good in it. Yeah, where he's just sitting out there in the sprinklers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. His leg? Yeah. You're like, holy shit. You remember that image your whole life, don't you? Right, you do.

I know. There's a lot of movies like that. All right, well, I got to let you go because- All right, man. That was great. Thank you for coming. I had a great time. Thanks, buddy. Well, that was good. I love that. He lit up about theater

at the end. Lit up. Good guy. It was nice to talk to him. Decent fellow. Good stories. Hope you enjoyed that. Go to WTFpod.com

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