WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 783 - Bill Paxton / Dylan Brody

Episode Date: February 5, 2017

If Bill Paxton hadn't suffered from rheumatic fever when he was growing up in Texas, he might not be in show business. Bill tells Marc some great stories about some of his most memorable work in things like Weird Science, Aliens, Big Love, and his new TV show Training Day. Plus, Marc's friend Dylan Brody returns with an all new ornate wardrobe. 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.

lock the gate all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck nicks what's happening this is mark maron this is my podcast wtf i'm broadcasting now from an undisclosed location. Still out. Still out in the world. Far away. Surrounded by water. Can you hear that?

That's not static. That's the ocean outside of my window. A double header today. I got a shorty with Dylan Brody. He's a comedian, friend of mine. He's got a special coming out. Dylan Brody's Driving Hollywood, premiering on the streaming service next up on february 14th go to nextupcomedy.com and also uh the amazing bill paxton who uh you all know

from uh aliens from weird science from uh oh from big love he was in apollo 13 true lies tombstone great Bill Paxton's gonna be here so yeah so that there you go I've set up the show I um I also want to take a moment to uh to say uh um that a friend of mine a guy who's been on this show, a great rock journalist, Mark Spitz, has passed away at the age of 47. I have no details. I just found out myself, and I didn't find out in a personal way. I don't know what happened, but it does seem to be true. He was a very intense guy.

He was very engaged. He led a very chaotic and crazy life. He's a very wild spirit, man, up and down. And he's passed away, and it's a sad thing. And I just wanted to say rest in peace, Mark Spitz. I also want to direct people, as we usually do in these somber situations, to the repost of the episode I did with Mark. A WTF episode will now be again in the feed if you want to introduce yourself to Mark now that he's gone. Or if you missed that. It's out of respect that I do it.

that he's gone. Or if you miss that, it's out of respect that I do it. So, so what? I don't know if you've ever been in a relationship with a bully before, but I have. I've been in many relationships with a bully because I'm a bully. I understand it. I've had to do a lot of work on myself to tone it down. It insecurity comes from narcissism it comes from a need to be loved and an inability to love there's a million things that that that cause bulliness but they they're never satisfied and uh and i'm speaking from my own heart here as somebody who has struggled with this type of stuff but But I'm just saying that many of us are in a fairly involuntary relationship with a pretty intense bully, and they just keep coming. They just keep coming.

They just keep trying to knock you off your grounding. They try to knock you off your sense of self. They try to destroy your sense of reality to get you to a place where you don't know what's up or down. And then they can feel superior. They can feel like they have power. They can feel like they can get something over on you. But usually, if they're not narcissistic, once they get you to that place, they apologize shortly thereafter and try to take care of you. I'm not sure that's in the situation we're all in but uh but i'm just saying that the only way out of that is to uh to somehow get away from it to find some space to get out to pull your sense of self together

to re-engage with life but remain vigilant and and do what needs to be done for yourself and others so i've been out here on the island and it's been very up and up and down it's been up and down it is very relative to uh my engagement with um information coming in through my phone and also the phone thing why don't if these phones are so fucking smart, why aren't they more intuitive? Where's the intuitive phone that you get on and you pop open your browser and it just says, hey, maybe give it an hour. How would that be?

Or you're looking at it and it's like, yeah, you know what, you've had enough for now. I think you've had enough. Or maybe it just says, we're all worried about you. Take a break. You're in over your head here. We all worried about you. Take a break. You're in over your head here. We all have to allow ourselves to have lives. You got to make time to connect and appreciate and spend time with others and talk to others and stay engaged.

Right? I mean, Jesus, I'm hiking today and I saw a sign in front of this pond there were four ponds we're on this hike and there's a sign that just says no fishing do not introduce foreign fish and i'm thinking like well this thing has really gone too far this band this i mean this is crazy i mean it was already crazy do not introduce foreign fish my friend dylan brody uh stopped by to talk a bit about what he's got going on he's got his special dylan brody's driving hollywood premieres on the streaming service next up but okay so this is my conversation with uh with my uh my friend Dylan Brody. Dylan Brody.

I haven't seen you in a long time. I think it's been three years, four years. You seem to be putting a lot of time into your attire. I always put a great deal of time into my attire. I know. The last time we were here, I think we talked about you once carrying a sword. I did. I carried a sword in college as a fashion accessory.

So you like to make a bold statement. To say the most. Now it's a three-piece suit, but not a dandy. We're not a dandy. We're sort of a mixture of Old West and professor. British gentleman professor, the lapel jacket and notice that the phone has a watch is on the watch chain uh-huh um so you got a plan i i have to always have some affectation going huh uh so that if i'm at a party or at a meeting yeah and feel awkward

you want to be make sure you feel the most awkward possible? No, it allows me to feel as though I have chosen who I am in this circumstance. And now if I feel awkward, that's their problem. Interesting. So you say like, I'm going to trump your awkward with overdoing it. That might be all it is. Yeah. That might be all it is. Also, I like clothes.

Of course you feel uncomfortable because look how I'm dressed. Yeah, that's exactly right. Isn't it amazing? Yeah. I like to have everybody, regardless of where they're working, feel as though I walked in in class to join up. Okay. For years, I was a stoned, angry, political stand-up comic.

And then I quit smoking pot and took 10 years off. Right. And reinvented myself as a humorist and storyteller and had started out when i was doing that doing it in a you know a studio alone without an audience and was starting to take it out into the world again and as i took it out into the world again i found the narcissism rising in me and began to explore that in a lot of the stories and talk about it and acknowledge it. You felt a great deal of the rush of self-importance.

The rush of self-importance, the desire to have other people acknowledge the quality of my work. How good you are. Yeah. I had been on the East Coast and had had a conversation with my father. At that time, he was stepping down as associate provost for the arts at MIT, and he was going to go back to teaching theater at MIT until last year when he finally retired. And they hired me to host the party at which he was stepping down. So I was going to be the emcee. I was going to bring up a lot of people who were going to speak. I did physics jokes. I did a bunch of stuff. Then at the end, I closed with an improvisational thing where I take first line, last line from the audience and then I do different playwright styles. So I did a monologue in the style of David Mamet and I did a monologue in the style of

William Shakespeare. And then I did a monologue in the style of my father. And I don't usually do my father because no one's ever heard of him outside of a certain small community. But for this occasion, it was right. Yeah. And the thing went stunningly well. Yeah.

His friends appreciated it. Yeah. Yeah. As did he. Yeah. He said he didn't know that he had a voice as a playwright until he heard me do the style. Now he's writing a show. So the narcissism runs back.

He is a playwright. Runs down the line. Yeah. He's always writing a show. So the next day, I'm in the car with him and there's a long silence and he said, what are you thinking about? And I said, well, the show went well last night. And he said, yes. And I said, I'm trying to figure out why I keep trying to fish for compliments.

And he said, oh, that's because as a performer, you're always experiencing the world as the object of someone else's experience, not as the subject of your own experience. And that set my brain on fire and I started to think about that. And there have been a lot of thoughts and stories that have come out of that one sentence that came out of his mouth for me. You wait your whole life for your dad to say something relevant. Oh, no, he is irritatingly relevant far too often oh it's so frustrating it's very hard to get ahead of him but it started to crack the the narcissism for me and shift the way I looked at the world and how I approached my work and how I approached other guys three a real bone at this juncture in

your life yes but it meant that I needed to re-examine the stories i was writing because now i couldn't keep playing up narcissism which had become part of my shtick right and the last time i gave up my shtick which was i'm a liberal angry pot smoker yeah it had taken me 10 years to get a hold of myself you don't have that kind of time and i was exactly i feel the the crushing presence of my own mortality at every moment it's hard to figure out once you get some resolution around your your sense of self to uh you know how do you move forward from that or why would you why don't you just now that i know who i am who the hell am i well there's that but there's also sort of like with the political climate changing like it is i i feel that there's work to be done

again i feel like there's work to be done of course there is but there's also sort of like well you know i just started feeling okay right now i can't right now like i can but it's it's going to be relative to a reality that's not okay with me and and you know yeah there's a struggle there but there was there's part of me that's sort of like, I didn't want to fight this one again. Yeah. My dad, actually, I will tell you a short story because it's what I do for a living. When I was in high school, Reagan was elected. And I called my dad in a panic because I was at prep school and everyone else really loved Reagan. And I was like, yeah, no, not so much.

And I felt all alone. I called my dad and he said, there's a pendulic swing. It'll be conservative for a while. It's fine. It goes back and forth. And then when Bush II was elected, I called my dad and I said, we're back to this. And he said, it's okay.

It's a pendulum. We had eight years. And I said, yeah, but it was still all the capitalist stuff going on. It wasn't like we had a huge change. It it moved slowly don't worry it's okay uh relax breathe and then uh in november yeah uh because you know i had been ready to celebrate what sure hillary was going to win i was going to celebrate like aids had been cured and i owned the patent you know it was like i was unprecedented third term democratic leadership. Exactly.

And instead I wound up spending the night disguising my attic door as a bookcase. So I- Called your dad. I called my dad the next day and I said, dad, I need your wisdom and your calm and your insight into this. And he said, we're fucked. Oh, good. And he called me a week later and he said

you know what i was sort of joking around last week but uh i thought i was done with my day's marching but i just went out and bought new sneakers oh yeah he's 80 years old and he's going to be out yeah uh as will i yeah um on different coasts right uh and yeah i feel like there's work to be done but do you i i feel as though and my wife agrees with me on this which might be why we're such a good pair i feel as though what is not normal is if you don't uh indulge in suicidal ideation as you go to sleep in in terms of what's happening or no just in general no i don't have that doesn't happen to you okay i don, I don't have that. That doesn't happen to you? Okay. I don't have suicidal ideation anymore. Oh, congratulations.

You know, there are times where, as I get older, that I feel hopeless or that I feel, you know, like there's this element of me where I'm like, I was just starting to figure things out and things were leveling off and in a good way. And now like, you know, I'm scared. So like, you know, things like this, when you have a brain that is, you know, wired to be, I'm fucked. Yeah. You know, I overcame a lot of that in a lot of ways. And then when there's a real reason for us to feel that,

then it pollutes everything else. Did I tell you about when I first got medicated for my depression no did i oh man i had been depressed my whole life and didn't know it yeah uh and i had self-medicated for years with pot and didn't know that's what i was doing yeah and then uh i got on uh paxil i'm thinking 10 years ago now, eight years ago, they put me on Paxil and I felt the depression lift. And it was like I was... The weight on your heart. I was feeling very different

about the world. Yeah. And that was odd. And after eight months, the doctor said, so do you want to wean off of it? And I said, oh, okay, sure.

Is that what we do now? And he said, yeah. And he said, so cut back by a quarter of a pill for a week and a half so it just you can get you over the hump and reconfigure things yeah so I cut back by a quarter of a pill and three days later I'm on my way to a meeting and as I'm driving to the meeting I'm deciding figuring out all the things I can be pissed off about when I get there I'm in traffic and i can be pissed off because it took me so goddamn

long to get here and there's not the traffic's not that bad it's i leave every i get everywhere early it doesn't matter that i could get and i think they make me pay for parking i'm gonna be sad i don't even have a job yet and i'm gonna go to a meet on here make me pay for part they better and i get there and there's a parking spot right out front and i pull into the parking spot and i call my shrink and I go, okay, I cut back by a quarter of a pill for three days and I can feel all the darkness on the planet crawling up my spine and infesting the dark crevices of my brain. Is that normal?

And he said, and this was your first depression ever that we were treating for? And I said, no, I've been depressed my whole life. He said, oh, stay on it. Apparently you are supremely attuned to this drug. We found the right one for you. Stay on it. And I went back on and I have been virtually fine since. In terms of chemical depression.

In terms of chemical depression. Reason of depression you have. Yeah, I still have sadness. I still have anger. I still have rage. And I often say that I'm medicated by a strict orwellian therapist who likes to keep me sedated against political uh outrage but that's not true i still get politically outraged i know but uh but it doesn't all feel like it's my fault and my responsibility

and everyone is against me right it just feels like i got work to do right well that's a good that's a better way to frame it isn't and i would have had no way of doing that without the chemical change so well i'm happy for you well thank you you'll look happy so so now you seem to do uh some sort of uh special or uh cd or something like you know know, relatively like monthly. I am, I am ridiculously prolific. Yeah. You're making a living? Intermittently.

Yeah. I make an intermittent living. When I'm not making a big living, my wife supports us. Oh, married the right person. She's wonderful. She's incredibly supportive of me and what I do. And one of the things that happened when I quit smoking pot is that I realized I had been using it to make myself stupider. Sure. Well, the difference between thought and action, the distance becomes very vast.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so much easier just to have more chips. Yeah. And I was writing then. i was writing a lot and and performing all the time but i was slowing myself down and slowing down my thought process and my creative process and once i was off suddenly i wanted to get all these ideas into the world and it matters to me more that i get the ideas into the world than it does that i make a fortune right i like making a living i i'm not driven to make a killing right yeah i'm the same way um

so you know um and at the same time there's part of me that really wants the the widespread recognition that would come through you know npr or ifc um there's there's the desire to be more accepted by the people who seem to have money to put into projects that i don't always have to well you'd be surprised at the how how much that isn't there as much as you might assume i i i figure that to be the case because what i am learning at every step of this career is that there is far more illusion in show business than there is business or show well there's a lot of people taking meetings yeah and there's a lot you know things get made but you know the the landscape has become you know cluttered and fragmented to the point where you know know, you can earn an honest living.

You can't make a fortune. Yeah. You know, you can figure out, you know, some people make fortunes. I don't seem to be destined for that. But, you know, I make a good living. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of platforms, a lot of places to put things.

And the money keeps going away as the audience becomes more fragmented. What are you going to do? That's exactly right. So how many CDs have you put out? I put out five CDs with stand-up records and then one over-length audio digital download with rooftop comedy. Sure.

That one is called Dylan Goes Electric. And those are all audio? Those are all audio. And now last year, I shot three new specials in one night. We had a full house, three shows, I catered it. You cooked? No, no, I had someone else do it, but I did all the performing and all the writing, so that counts for something.

Three shows, hour long? The first one ran exactly an hour, 61 minutes. That's the one that's coming out next month. The second one ran about 48 minutes and the third one i think ran 36 i may be getting that wrong so you had these people sit through three yeah with breaks in between they get catering and i change my clothes yeah huh um and you're gonna release all of them as video as a visual they're all shot yeah multi-camera uh with a jib and a balcony and the full thing. Okay. Because they're theatrical and spoken word storytelling as opposed to what I used to do as, you know, shotgun stand-up comedy.

Sure. It took me a little while to find the right home for any of them. So now, next up comedy out of London is putting out the first one, Dylan Brody's Driving Hollywood. Yeah. And at the same time,

Blue Panther Productions out of San Francisco is putting me together with a director. And we're doing it as a fully staged solo show with a set and lighting cues. When's that? That's going to be going on tour in the spring. And this is not the one you recorded, is it? It is. It's the same material.

It's largely the same material in Dylan Paredes Driving Hollywood, but it's reimagined as a fully staged production. And this is probably the most Spalding Gray I've gotten in my work this show. It's a little bit dark and funny and revealing and self-loathing i so enjoy uh now that i've learned how to do it yeah right having a silent audience waiting for the next thing yeah is the most beautiful respectful audience is the best you can ask for oh it makes me so happy and money yeah just just enough to keep the mortgage paid okay i'm i'm with you there well it's great talking to you buddy good seeing you the pleasure is mine thank you so much for having me on i am honored and delighted to be in your garage

again dylan brody's driving hollywood premieres on the streaming service next up on February 14th. Go to nextupcomedy.com. Dylan Brody. That was good hanging out with Dylan. But I'll tell you, man, when I got an opportunity to talk to Bill Paxton, I was pretty excited. He's an intense, engaged, lively dude dude that was good to talk to him who doesn't love bill paxton seriously who among us does not love bill paxton he's uh he's on this new cbs show training day which airs thursday nights but uh you know him from any number of things aliens

of course i gotta get him to say that well let's find out this is me and uh the amazing bill paxton pull the mic in a little oh there you go that's good that's right my visa yeah i know man it's so funny to talk to you because like back in the day when I did a radio show, you know, you got those machines, those 360 machines with sound bites on them. And I had that one where you're like, it's over, man. Game over, man. It's game over.

God, I get requested that line a lot. A lot. Didn't you say we're fucked, too? No, I get requested that line a lot. A lot. Didn't you say we're fucked too? No, I said fucking A. It's a great scene where, you know. An alien. We've had the big shot where we've just been hosed our first battle with the aliens within the ABC. And Michael Biehn is talking to Sigourney about getting off-site and nuking it from outer space.

And Paul Reiser's trying to defend it for the corporation. And I say something like, you know, and Sigourney says something like, we'll get into orbit, we'll nuke the site from outer space, and it's the only way to be sure. And I'm like, fucking A, man! I hadn't seen that in a long time. And we had a 30-year reunion, which is unbelievable.

Really? At Comic-Con. For just Aliens 2 or all of them? For Aliens 2. Uh-huh. Yeah, it kind of stands alone in a lot of ways. I was a huge fan of Ridley's original Alien. Oh, yeah, it's great.

But, yeah, the second one kind of built the franchise, didn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah jim was smart you know he knew you know the first one is kind of like a ride in a spook house yeah you don't know where the thing's gonna jump a thriller and then he thought you can't do that twice right this time i'm gonna have him literally coming out of the woodwork just as many aliens as possible yeah yeah yeah and they did what they do for god i don't even know. Keep tapping that thing. What's funny about sequels, because you were just telling me in the kitchen that the reason that they made Mighty Joe Young was because they had such a great success with King Kong.

Huge success. Right. And then they realized, oh no. He's dead. We killed the goose. We butchered it. We barbecued it. So they thought, wait a minute what did we come up

with a a monkey who's not so big but but still could yeah throw some shit around yeah but you've had quite a fucking career a bizarre career dude you've been in some of the best movies zigzag things up down all around but where'd you grow up i I was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. Really? Yeah. I don't know why I say really, like you'd be lying to me. Well, I might as well be. The reason I was born there was because of my grandfather, who I never knew, from Kansas City. He read an article about a flamboyant wheeler-dealer,

a guy who was kind of a William Randolph Hearst character, a forward named Eamon Carter, and he was sitting in kansas city reading the the saturday evening post in 1935 and had this he had a he had a hardwood lumber district distribution your grandfather yeah he started this hardwood lumber thing with yeah you know so he was going to put a yard he wanted to expand and put a yard in dallas but he read this article about this guy in Fort Worth. So he went down there and he went, ah, that's where the, and that's why I'm from there. My dad, after he died, my grandfather died in 1950. Bless you. He took on the lumber business? Well, he joined the lumber business, but he had to kind of answer to his brother and his mother. Yeah. And so he moved down to Fort Worth. And so he was kind of in the lumber business?

He was. This was his. He started selling hardwood flooring for his dad when he was 16. So you'd go down. My dad's the reason I'm out here. Really? He's the reason we're talking right now. He is?

Oh, yeah. Why? I think he always wanted to be an actor, but he was the kind of guy who he was very flamboyant very colorful yeah big storyteller raconteur what kind of true raconteur and uh you know he started selling flooring for his dad when he was 16 he was he was in the war he was stationed on the on the rockefeller state outside of new york city he ended up in chicago after that because there was a yard down there working there then he met my mom uh outside of a church

and uh which he never went to he said he was a pagan and uh not religious folks yeah and then my brother bob my older brother was uh born in uh in uh skokie and then they moved to fort worth but he from an early age my dad for like ever since i can remember he was taking me to movies and plays and yeah we'd come out and he'd want to talk about these. He'd deconstruct them. He'd say, hey, I thought the music was great in that movie, didn't you? And I'm like, the music? Right.

Oh, yeah, there's music. Oh, so you learned how to kind of. Art direction. Oh, really? Writing, and so. He was a real fan. He was a real fan. But he was sort of a film nerd, a theater nerd.

Yeah, and he loved art. He said he had a fifth grade teacher, which would have probably been about 1930 for him. He was born in 20. That turned him on to Rubens, Peter Paul Rubens, the Renaissance painter. Sure, yeah. He had a great affinity and a great love of art, but he wasn't an intellectual. He read everything. I've been going through a lot of his stuff.

My mom passed last June at 90. Oh, sorry. Oh, 90. Yeah, no. She was ready to go. Yeah. So I've been kind of closing down the house they had a beautiful library of books and just they just read everything they stayed in fort worth stayed in fort worth till about 1980 and then my dad decided it was just too hot down there and even though my mom and them had friends he moved

out to solana beach california how far is that from here that's right next to del mar so they were close to the surf me to surf, yeah. So you saw him a lot. Yeah, I saw him a lot. It was great. We were real pals. Anybody that knew me at all knew my dad. We were a package.

Yeah, you palled around a lot? And he lived to 91. He passed in 2011. I was in Romania doing Hatfield and McCoy's when he passed. That's a great show. That was a great movie, dude. I can't remember if it was a miniseries or movie it was a mini series i watched the whole thing because that thing had been sort of dealt with before but you guys kind of killed it yeah kind of a

western yeah yeah it's fucking great i wasn't sure i wanted to do it i just come out of big love and i thought you know i'd kind of played a pretty religious guy and the way randall mccoy was written in this that he was almost kind of a zealot in some ways. And I called Costner up. They set me up so I could. I'd met him in passing over the years. I've kind of met everybody. Right, sure.

Been around so damn long. And he said, oh, man, we're going to be wearing beards and stuff. It's not going to be like that show. Like what show? Like Big Love? It was completely different, but I just felt like, wow. it's not going to be like that show and and uh like what show like like big love i was you know it was it was completely different but i just felt like wow you know i played a pretty religious guy in that and i loved that show i did too we got to talk about that but i uh i thought you know

maybe this is going to be you know you want to mix it up a little bit oh you're you're afraid that you'd be typecast as a zealot yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So he said, oh, man, we're going to be wearing beards, and we're going to Romania. And I went, what? We're going where? Romania. He goes, yeah, I know. You haven't heard about that?

He goes, yeah, we're going to shoot the whole thing in Romania. We're going to use all the old sets from this movie Cold Mountain, and we're going to be in Bucharest. And it was a great experience, except, you know, that my pop died while I was on it. But he had done his thing he got out clean i like to say he was 91 yeah that's got out clean and you know he lived a good life lived a good life and it faltered a little bit at the end but really didn't have a you know a

tough exit puts i guess it puts stuff into perspective huh i mean i you know both of my folks are still alive and like but like when they lived when you when you live to 90 yeah and i was god i was in my 50s when right they passed so i mean that's great especially if you've had a good relationship with your parents oh that's great i don't hear that too often well yeah my dad used to say i wasn't weird i told him i wanted to be an actor at one point yeah he said you're not weird enough to be an actor. You haven't had enough neurotic, weird stuff happen to you. And I said, oh, Dad, I had plenty. Someday I'll tell you. Yeah.

But it's weird that Hatfield McCoy is, because it was one of those things that was on the History Network, right? The History Channel. It kind of legitimized that network overnight because they had such phenomenal ratings. Yeah, because i was flipping around and i don't know how i heard of it but like i started watching i'm like holy shit this is great yeah these guys are really doing it you know you and cosner were really fucking it was crazy over there too yeah you know the wranglers didn't speak english and you put us on all these romanian stallions God, we're trying to ride through these hardwood forests.

And I realized very early on that with a wide brim hat and a huge beard, I probably just needed to be in the medium and the close-up shots. So I let this guy, and he was a nice guy, but God, he'd gotten hurt doing some medieval times thing over there. And he'd gotten hit with a lance, and it had gone through his left eye socket and out the top of his head. Oh, my God. So he had the gnarliest scar you've ever seen. And he was a stunt guy? He was my guy.

So he was the guy in the beard on the horse. Yeah. I paid him extra, I tell you. Take care of me, will you? You're not much of a horse guy? Well, kind of yes and no. I got to go to a horseback riding camp when I was a kid, and I did a lot of rodeo back in those days.

That was up in Wyoming. Real rodeo? You rode the bucking? No, they didn't let you do that. A little roping? Yeah, a little roping, a little horse race at a quarter-mile track, and that was fun. I guess maybe it's not quite like riding a bike because every horse is different.

You know, I tell you, there's nothing more exciting than being in a horse race. Yeah. But you want to be out front because if you're not, it's amazing how many dirt clods are hitting you in the face. It's just you can't hardly see. It's like being in a maelstrom of dirt. But it's cool. can't hardly see it it's it's like being in a mail storm of dirt and uh it but it's cool nowadays because of insurance and all they'd never let the you know your kids out there riding horses full gallop on a horse track yeah like to do it well i mean unless you're growing up in that

kind of life yeah right yeah yeah but so you spent your whole childhood i was a suburban kid from texas yeah i could have been from anywhere. I was listening to Jimi Hendrix and riding motorcycles. He came through there. He played Texas. I talked to Billy Gibbons about that from ZZ Top. But you were a kid. You've met who?

I met Billy. And God, I remember Billy's... I remember with ZZ Top when they were kind of a regional band. Their first hit was a regional hit called Shakin' Your Tree. Yeah, yeah. And they used to play down at Panther Hall in Fort Worth.

Oh, really? They used to call Fort Worth Panther City because, I guess, legendary. They were Panthers living there at some point. Did you go see him?

I went to see him. I remember they opened for Edgar and Johnny Winter. Oh, my God. They were amazing. They both did their own songs? Oh, man, they played together. It's so weird, because they're so different, man.

Like, you know, Johnny's straight-up blues, hard rock, and Edgar's like, you know, this keyboard, almost prog rock shit. They were great. Yeah, well, they're Texan, too. They were Texan. They grew up playing on a local Dallas TV show where they were playing country music. So it was ZZ Top and the Winter Brothers.

Yeah, and Blood Rock opened too. I don't know who Blood Rock was. They had one hit. It was called DOA. We were flying low and hit something in the air. And I remember. That was them. Yeah.

There were a lot of car accidents growing up in Texas. I remember. That was that. Yeah. There were a lot of car accidents growing up in Texas. Even though you have complete wide open spaces. Sure. There were the most horrendous fatalistic car accidents growing up. I remember going to funerals of friends and stuff. Because it's like everybody had those big fast cars. And when you have the open highway, you just want to drive fast gtx yeah yeah so you're just growing up in texas older brother got an older brother and i got a younger sister younger brother it's

for you yeah everybody's all right everybody's hanging in there yeah you know and when you when did the interest in acting come? Were you like athletic guy? I wasn't really. You know, one thing I like about films and television is I dig being a part of a concerted group that are trying to make something. We're all so alienated and so isolated in modern society in so many ways, even though we have all this technology to supposedly connect connect us we're as isolated as we've ever been oh no it's hard you know i kind of dreamed of the renaissance for you you know you're born and you become an apprentice in a guild and you know it takes all these different disciplines to build a cathedral and sure that's kind of what it takes to make a film it's true it's one of the last of the great guild crafts yeah there's guilds

and there's unions now but yeah that's true but you have the different departments yeah to come together in a concert and it's fun it's i really so i wasn't an athlete and but i always envied that team thing you know the team and this the camaraderie because you know when i was you know i went to catholic school and then uh then my dad got a wild hair up his ass when we were when i was in seventh grade next thing i knew we'd moved out to the country from forrest so i went from being basically a suburban kid from anywhere usa yeah to this god i was living in the last picture show this this baptist community about how old 30 miles i was I was 13.

But it was kind of wild because those country girls were a lot wilder than the suburban girls. Yeah, and you were like new meat, fresh meat. But I wasn't a football player, and it was all about playing football and stuff. And so I felt a little isolated. Also, when I was that age, I got a weird ailment. Woke up one night. I'd been to a hockey game. And I woke up in the middle of the night.

I had a lot of pain in my left wrist. And I went downstairs and knocked on my mom and dad's door. Yeah. And I said, Dad. And he said, What is it, son? I said, I'm in a lot of pain. What's wrong with this? He goes, Oh, you probably slept on it.

Yeah. And he said, You'll be okay. Just go back to bed. By morning, it was worse and my dad was a sunday morning my dad realized he took me to a friend of his who was a ortho guy bone guy yeah he kind of said it kind of enwrapped it couldn't really figure out what it was and so the next day i had some tests done by the pediatrician and then by tuesday night i was in the cook's children's hospital and and And they still couldn't figure it out.

Finally, they thought I had something called osteomyelitis, or it could be this thing, rheumatic fever. Yeah. Rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever. And that's what it was. Really? So I spent a good part of the seventh grade, and this was before we moved to the country,

in bed. Now, what is rheumatic fever? What does it affect? Rheumatic fever comes from a streptococcus infection from a strep throat that's not that kind of goes untreated i'd had kind of a bad sore throat at christmas time yeah don't don't get sick during the holidays or during the weekend if you're going to help it a lot of guys buy the ranch because of the the illness hits at the wrong time. Truly. Really? Yeah, yeah. So I had this thing,

and what it does is it's supposedly an infection, and somehow it kind of got into my wrist, but it usually damages your heart valves. Did it? Well, yeah, yeah. A little bit? Yeah, yeah. Rheumatic fever.

It sounds a little. But it kind of isolated me at an interesting age. It suddenly made me... Because I grew up in Texas, and that sounds like something out in the country. But again, it was suburban. We lived near a golf course. I spent all my time on the golf course hunting golf balls. Yeah, yeah.

Listening to the Beach Boys and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and, getting to go to camp in the summer and all that stuff. And, you know, I was a real outgoing kid. I wasn't a jock, but I did a lot of stuff. But suddenly I was in this kind of voyeuristic kind of world where I had a TV, but there wasn't much TV in those days. And I read a lot. And I just kind of looked out the window at the golf course. And that was it? For about six months, yeah.

And just sitting in bed? Yeah. Thinking about things? Yeah. No revelations? Eh, you know. So your dad was Catholic, but you're not a religious guy. No, my dad wasn't Catholic.

My mother was Catholic. My dad was no religion. Right. He called himself a pagan. He called himself a pagan. But in order to marry my mother, he met her. He met my mom in Chicago. It's kind of a good story.

He had an apartment. He had a great bachelor pad on Lakeshore Drive, LSD, the 1400 LSD. And one of his buddies, this guy named Charlie Dent, he was a young pilot for United. And they were out one night. And my dad, they were at some place. I think it was called Dante's. It was kind of a famous old kind of bar, restaurant near the Loop. And he saw this gal with these other gals, and he had this buddy, Andy Muldoon.

He said, who is that? He said, that's Mary Lou Gray. He said, oh, God, you've got to introduce me to her. And he said, well, come on over. He said, no, no, no, no, no, not here, not here. So he called him the next day and said, hey, you know, she goes to my church and and she'll be there sunday why don't you go to church with me i think it's the only time my dad ever went into a church beside when he married her right yeah because my dad was kind of guy goes why do you got to go to a church can't you look at this beautiful tree yeah you know why don't

you just worship under the tree in the nude and just give praise to to whatever it is right he's one of those guys while we were at church he'd be naked on a chaise lounge in the backyard reading the latest Ian Fleming paperback. Is that true? Yeah, that's very true. Very true. So God, he went to the church and he met my mom. He was with her for two weeks. And this is kind of weird.

Don't think this is weird. But again, I told you I've been going through a lot of my folks' stuff. I found a picture i'd never seen and i made a card of it to sign a send out in my mom's memoriam that's my mom and dad that's in chicago that's 1950 50 oh wow and uh she's 25 my dad's 30 there oh he dated her for two weeks and proposed marriage to her oh that's beautiful and uh so in order getting back to the catholic thing in order to get married in the catholic church i don't know if it's still that way now but if you if it was a you know someone who wasn't a catholic and

non-catholic you had to get whoever you had to get married to get married in the church you had to sign a piece of paper that said any children born of this marriage will be raised in the catholic church and my dad said he would have signed anything he said even your mother worshiped sign a piece of paper that said any children born of this marriage will be raised in the Catholic Church. And my dad said he would have signed anything. He said, even your mother worshiped pagan idolatry. I didn't care. Yeah. So he signed. He signed, and we were raised Catholic. And I, you know, I went to Catholic school from the time I was in kindergarten till I was through the seventh grade. And you'd have a lay teacher one year, and then you'd have a nun, a sister. And it was kind of a bizarre experience.

I also was an altar boy. Me and my brother would do the Friday night Vesper service. I love that. But it's interesting that you're growing up in a household where your dad is a character, and your mother is a Catholic who's crossed a bear. Oh, John. Not in front of the children.

He was all that all the time. All the time. My dad was the kind of guy, we'd be getting into the car. He had a lot of stock kind of lines and stuff. One of his stock lines was whatever he was putting the keys in the ignition of the car, he'd say, oh, hell, I couldn't find this thing if it had hair around it. Oh, John, the children. And we were cutting up in the back seat or something

goes come on be he goes pipe down or i'll kick a lung out of you these were these were terms of of of endearment right but your mom was just like here we go yeah she was kind of a faux thing she did that faux shockness you know because she had to do something she had her wild side too yeah they love to throw parties god they just threw parties all the time. Like those classic 50s and 60s parties. But sometimes, all of a sudden, we'd be taken to a motel for the night. By who? I was raised by a woman named Clemence Jones.

I couldn't say Clemence as a kid. I called her Monsey. I knew Monsey her whole life. And Monsey said, Bill bill i knew you before you knew yourself and if i was cutting up she'd say something like if you're going to be a clown be a first class clown and get paid for it and i want to say thank you moncey i took that advice to heart you became a first class our parents would send us to the motel for that but then i remember other nights when we were at the house especially this house on indian creek drive that

was near the golf course. That was my parents' dream house. My dad built it with all these great hardwoods, the flooring. Yeah, connections for the woods. My dad was into art, so there was great art on the walls. And we had an upstairs section, and they could kind of close off the other side of the house. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the parties would just be going on.

And I remember one of the best memories, you know, it's that sense memory, that smell that really takes you back to a place. But I remember my mother coming up in that rustle of those crinoline dresses, long skirts and just that rustle. And coming to kind of kiss me goodnight while the party's going on. And there was this mixture of gin, perfume, and and cigarettes and it was just an ambrosial smell you know a wonderful wonderful smell that to this day that's my mother wow it's hard to find that smell it really is these days it really is you gotta go to europe to catch sure yeah gin's not that popular no one smokes anymore yeah yeah you gotta go to europe to get that that's hilarious so i was like so was your mother how far back you're a little older than me she was

a catholic i mean i was reading up on you a little bit was she a big kennedy person yeah yeah oh yeah but uh but really it was my older brother bob, because I was 11 and he was 8 when Kennedy came through Fort Worth on that fateful trip. And we could see down from where we could see past the golf course and we could see down to Carswell Air Force Base. And my brother had gotten a telescope. Yeah. And we looked down and we saw Air Force One with the presidential seal on it. And my dad came up. We were just about to go to bed. bed yeah and it was later in the night and we'd gotten to

kind of stay up and my dad said get to get you know you guys want to we'll go watch the motorcade drive by so we so i literally had my pajamas on i put a robe on i had my slippers on my brother and i we got my dad's jet star osmobile we drove down to roaring springs road and parked and there the whole motorcade went by and it was probably it was late it was like 11 o'clock at night it was really late yeah yeah at eight years old right after they landed kind of thing so right after they had a long day i know a lot about this story uh i became obsessed with it like many many americans many well many people in the world with the jfk assassination yeah really yeah i developed a huge project for tom hanks company a few years

ago about it but uh the next morning my brother got my dad up and said uh knocked on the door and said you uh you know you promised you'd take us to see the president yeah and my dad looked out the window and it was kind of a rainy morning and uh and then my dad said and he thought you know i liked kennedy but i thought the idea of taking these kids into a crowd in the rain was going to be a complete pain in the ass right and then my brother used the two words that kills kills it you know every deal with a parent you promised uh-huh so he said get your brother dressed and 10 minutes later we're driving down to uh dallas no downtown fort worth they spent their last night in fort worth the hotel texas yeah and uh a crowd of about 4 000 people gathered in the parking lot in front of the hotel texas and

there was a i found out later it was just a flatbed truck they put bunting on they put the a lectern with the presidential seal and And we were probably there for about 20, 30 minutes. And here comes the president. Here comes, and there's, there's Johnson, there's Connolly,

there's Yarborough. This is, and this is four hours before it's all the, you know, it's all going to go down. And Kennedy was really up that morning and it was something about seeing him in color. Yeah. You know,

he's in a blue suit and his hair was red and, and, and dad, he looked great. And, uh, he's in a blue suit his hair was red and and and dad he looked great and uh he was in he was very jocular he kind of kidded the crowd he said i'm sorry jackie's not down here to greet you people good people she takes a little longer to get ready in the morning of course she looks a hell of a lot better right it was like an electricity in the crowd sure and my dad was taking turns putting me and my brother up on his shoulders. And even though I wasn't too far, we weren't too far away.

There was a little kind of an orchestra pit where they'd put the police block, saw horses around for the Secret Service, the police, and the newsreels guys. And we were not far behind the crowd. And there were two black guys standing next to my dad and me and not far behind the crowd and there were two there were two black guys standing next to to my dad and me my brother in the crowd and they saw my dad's dilemma he was kind of trying to put my brother up yeah my bob and me and he said we'll take those boys so for most of the speech i was on a stranger's shoulders yeah it was kind of a great moment yeah i just remembered it and they found me in a newsreel oh really yeah uh a few years ago it's kind of a crazy picture and you because i'm up up above the crowd and you know

i got this you know my dad had us just get you know we had crew cuts and stuff back in those days it was easy didn't get as much head lice at school if you had the crew cut right those deals so you went home after that and then you i went back to school but we got to go go to the Tottle House, which was the highlight of our existence at the time. It was one of these great waffle pancake houses. Yeah, yeah. It was kind of like a diner, Rockefeller's Diner. I guess in New York they used to have the ones called Schraff's. Yeah, sure.

Or a gag like that. Yeah. And we got to eat there, and so we got to go to school late. And I remember coming out, going to recess, and I was really excited. I'd seen the president. And, you know, Kennedy was the man. Yeah. I was like seeing the biggest movie star in the world.

Yeah. And we came in off the recess playground. And the radio was on. And we were in one of those single story with the central hallway, center block schoolhouses with the fluorescent lights. And we went in. I was in the third grade, sister Annette, I remember. And all the lights were off. We were told to put our heads down on the desk.

And the radio was on, and it was announced that Kennedy had succumbed to this assassin's bullet. And the nuns were all crying. And it was just unbelievable. And I couldn't believe it. I was 8 1⁄2, and it was just unbelievable. I couldn't believe it. I was eight and a half, and I was just like, I just saw him. That's not right.

That can't be, and all this stuff. And I remember that night, my brother was so distraught, my 11-year-old brother. He's my oldest brother and always was a sensitive guy. Yeah. And I remember he came and got in my bed with me that night. We had our own rooms. We had shared rooms up to that point, but we were living in this dream house of my parents.

And I kind of experienced the grief of it through him. He was leveled, huh? Yeah. Just shattered. I don't think he ever got over it. It's one of those things you know you know that was if if kennedy was your it was your man who he was to a whole generation of you know the youth looked up to him well yeah and also it was nothing had ever happened like that in modern america no you know out in the open i mean the implications of it like

you said like not unlike many other people became obsessed with you know the the spectacle and the tragedy of it it's like something out of a greek tragedy you could no no doubt and then also the conspiracy growing around it so well yeah that's kind of what my project was about we were going to do a 10-hour miniseries for hbo because i went to tom hanks who i knew from apollo 13 are you guys friends yeah we're friends we don't we don't see much we try I gave him a People's Choice Award last week oh you did yeah yeah but uh and uh and we did I did a film with him recently called The Circle but uh yeah but you guys are great Apollo 13 is great yeah it was a great experience I talked to Ron

oh he should have won all the marbles on that one. I'll tell you, man. I watched it again recently. It's really the best of the genre. It holds up. Oh, totally. Totally. I'm so proud to have been a part of that movie.

It was great. I can't tell you. And Tom was great, too. A great Jim Lovell and a great leader of the cast. He's solid. It's like both you guys are just such grounded, natural actors. It's kind of a fascinating thing that you have this versatility. It's really a survival skill, Mark.

It ain't anything. You're just trying to stay employed and try to work on cool things. Well, what was the show you pitched, miniseries what were you guys it was going to basically be uh it was going to you know it seemed to me that all over the years the conspiracists have it all had their say and you know if you really and there was a book that came out that i i got to see the galleys of and it was um vincent bugliliosi who wrote Helter Skelter. He wrote a book called— He was a DA here, wasn't he?

He was a DA here. And really, it's kind of amazing that he was able to put Manson behind bars for life when Manson really wasn't at the murder scenes. Right. It's kind of a unique situation in that case. It's an unbelievable story. So he wrote a book on Kennedy? Called Reclaiming History.

It's too bad Kennedy didn't have this book behind his head. To protect his head. Because it would have stopped at any round. I just watched Jackie. Yeah, I haven't been able to bring myself to watch that. Because I know that story so well. Yeah, it's really a kind of interesting poetic meditation on grief and the isolation of grief. And also the weird weird horrible coldness of

politics sometimes tragedy well then her shrine to kind of try to solidify his legacy and of camelot and all of that a bit of that but i mean also i thought i got a lot of kennedy stories that nobody's ever heard because of my research oh yeah yeah i uh but basically i just i'll tell i'll tell i'll tell you a couple anecdotes but uh we were going to do 10 hours it was going to be kind of like concentric circles on a bullseye uh-huh one hour is going to follow the you know what kennedy was doing that weekend and each one we're going to do one on ruby one on oswald and and finally and by kind of deconstructing it and laying it all out, it really isn't such a mystical thing that happened.

When you stand in the book depository in the window next to the one where Oswald fired from, you think, God, I could have hit him with a BB gun. It's not some kind of like, oh, it was a real magical shot or magic bullet. And the one bullet that just didn't fall apart like bullets do. It still kind of looked pristine. But if you look at the end of it you can tell it has been fired and that was the one that supposedly was thrown on the gurney right it just went through two men and by the time it got through connelly it just kind of plopped out yeah it just kind of plopped out but uh i got to know a guy named milton evans

yeah he was a william morris agent and then he and then he but he but at the time of the kennedy thing he was running peter lawford's company he helped produce the rat pack movies and he was a kennedy and and well yeah lawford was married to eunice kennedy i think it was eunice kennedy and uh and he told me uh some crazy stories he told me about going to the White House during the whole height of the Kennedy administration with Peter Lawford. And yeah, Kennedy really liked to listen to the Camelot soundtrack.

Richard Harris singing Camelot. He had it on the thing. And God, he said one day, I don't know, this is kind of a crazy story. He said he went down to take a swim and there were two Secret Service guys standing by the pool. And I don't even know where that pool is. I don't know where it is in the White House. And he said, oh, maybe it's a bad time.

He said, oh, no, it's okay, Mr. Evans. And he kind of thought, God, they know my name. They probably got a dossier. You know, go on in. And he went into the pool, and there was Kennedy in the pool with these two gals. They were all naked. And he said, he called Milt, Miltie, baby. He goes, Miltie, baby, come on, join us.

And Milton was kind of a teetotaler, and had been married for many years. And he just said, gee, I'll see you at dinner, Mr. President, and kind of left. And, you know, it's kind Mr. President, and kind of left. There's that side of Kennedy. Yeah. But then he remembered going to the White House with Lawford and Eunice on the day of the assassination. And the body was held up in Dallas, and then they were able to get it out of there. Then they got to Andrews Air Force Base,

where the body was immediately taken to Bethesda Naval, where they did the famous autopsy. And the body didn't actually get back to the White House until early, pre-dawn, Saturday morning. And that's an amazing story, that drive from that hospital with jackie in the car and uh but but um milt got there in the early evening with the lawfords and there was a famous um well they made this movie called the butler or something i'm trying to think of his name his

name was eugene something and he he was Kennedy's valet. Yeah. And he had been with Kennedy that morning. And he was running around the White House trying to accommodate all the houseguests, the Kennedy family, and Peter Lawford and Milt and all these people. And Milt said to him, he said, Eugene, I'd like to have something of the president's. And he said, oh, I'll get you. I mean, he brought him back a Cartier watch. And Milt said, I can like to have something of the President's. And he said, oh, I'll get you something. He brought him back a Cartier watch. And Milt said, I can't take that.

He said, can I have a couple of his neckties? Milt, I held these neckties. It's kind of amazing. But he told me this story that's never really been documented about the Kennedys having a wake in the dining room of the White House. The family. The family on the saturday night that milt was uh present at yeah and there there they are uh and it was almost like he said it was almost

like a cocktail party was going on an irish wake an irish wig everybody was getting completely hammered yeah except rose kennedy who sat there very stoic, the mother with a drink in her hand. But she said at one point somebody took off Ethel Kennedy's wig and put it on Milt. Milt was bald and gone, you know. And everybody said, look at Milt. And everybody started laughing. And Milt just said it was the most surreal thing he had ever witnessed. There's another guy named Siegenthal.

He was a Secret Service guy. He guy yeah substantiated the story and um he said it was as if it was as if jack and jack he had retired early from the party oh my god weirdest damn thing that sounds pretty weird now was that part of your show were you gonna we had all we had a lot of that stuff in there now why doesn't why doesn't a show like that go what did tom well you? Well, you know, Tom was all in. Uh-huh. But, you know, 2008 happened. We started working on this in about 2006, and 2008 happened. And we were trying to get it ready for the 50th anniversary.

2011 would mark the 50th anniversary of the great inaugural speech. Uh-huh. You know, when inaugural speeches were really something to to be inspired by and uh and then and then then it was going to be uh 2013 was going to be the 50th yeah these are that's a significant anniversary of a historical event we thought let's have something ready to go and tom's company had built a reputation doing these long formform dramatizations of American history, Earth to the Moon. But the budget, it was at a time after 2008 where everybody pulled back, and I think HBO was kind of getting out of the miniseries business.

Little did they know that they had started something that was about to grow with Netflix and all these 10-hour series. And it's too bad we didn't get to do it. We didn't get to do it. Well, when did you come to Los angeles and when did you like when did you actually start acting i came to los angeles when i was 18 years old yeah uh what year was that that was night that was the january of 1974 and uh i oh my god that's like the heyday i went to my dad and i said who do you know in hollywood and he said jesus do you know in Hollywood?

And he said, Jesus, I should have taken you to more business meetings. But he had taken me to movies and plays and art. And so I gravitated. And my dad wanted to be an actor. And what's funny is he became an actor after he retired. He was in six movies. Sam Raimi put him in six of his films. Really? Yeah.

Actually, more than that. Walter Hill put him in Last Man Standing films. Really? Yeah. Actually, more than that, Walter Hill put him in Last Man Standing. He's the old undertaker in that. Bruce Willis keeps giving him business because he keeps killing people. And he had a great kind of renaissance. I think it kind of kept him alive to 91 because he had something to do.

How did he get those? Most people just die off because they get retired. They got nothing to do. So he did this because they all knew him from you. Yeah, kind of. But he kind of had to get in there and take classes and stuff he did yeah oh yeah what age at 70 and all these young kids they wanted to do scenes with him where they needed a patriarchal figure or something so he's at the beverly hills playhouse uh-huh that's hilarious he calls me up one day he says you know i'm getting out of the lumber business i've been lumber business 50 years and shit i can't sit around and and says, you know, I'm getting out of the lumber business. I've been in the lumber business 50 years.

And shit, I can't sit around and play golf or watch the hair grow out of my nose. So he goes, why don't I think about getting into your game? Getting into my game? What the hell are you talking about? He goes, yeah, I'm thinking about doing that acting thing. I'm like, Dad, God, you're going into the golden years. Don't do this to yourself. It's a tough life. What had you done by that point? I don't years. Don't do this to yourself. It's a tough life. What had you done by that point?

I don't care if you're successful or not. It's still a tough life. You made some movies, though. You were a guy, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is about 25 years ago. I had a pretty good career going at that time.

I don't know what happened since then. Oh, come on. Oh, come on. And so I said, if you're going to really do this, you've got to take classes. He signed up at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and took classes. But I came out there. He had a friend. He knew two guys in Hollywood.

He knew Hal Wallace. He played golf with him. Yeah. Hal Wallace. He writes Hal Wallace. Hal Wallace writes back, says, I can't even get my own son a job. He's not in the unions. Unions run everything.

So thanks. But no thanks. He writes a guy named Milan Herzog who made these educational films for Encyclopedia Britannica. This is to help get you in. Just to get me in. And the guy writes back and says, tell your son to go back to school. We get too many young people out here.

They think they've got something to say, but they need to go to school. Yeah. And my dad wrote him a second time, said, has he got anything for him? He's got to come out there. God help me out, will you? And so he gave me two weeks' work as a PA

on a thing called Gateways to Human i met a young guy a guy there another director who introduced me to an art director who was getting ready to um to art direct his first roger corman movie which was called big bad mama uh-huh angie dickinson and william shatner and so i worked on that and that's where i really kind of got my cherry popped in many ways. I was driving a 20-foot van full of set dressing all over Los Angeles, and it kind of blew my mind. Were you in the movie? No. No, I wasn't in the movie.

But you were working for Corman for a minute. Working for Corman on a few films, yeah. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. So what was the first movie then? Was it a Corman movie? Yeah, the first thing I was working on the art department on a film, it was a thing called Crazy Mama, directed by Jonathan Demme.

And I heard over the walkies, and everybody's got a walkie-talkie, I heard over the walkie, he said, hey, so-and-so, some guy, some day players, the deputy part didn't show up. And I heard there was kind of a pause. I heard Jonathan Demme on the walkie-talkie say, hey, get that kid off the art department truck, cut his hair, take him to wardrobe,

and bring him to the set. And I had really long hair. My hair was like down to here. Yeah, yeah. We were all hippies back then. Yeah. And so I cut my hair, they put me in this thing,

and I had one line, you know, and I had this thing. But I was too stupid to, I could have probably joined the Screen Actors Guild, and I didn't. And after that, I decided I really wanted to try and, I wanted to go to film school. Yeah. That was, my heart was set on going to film school. Yeah.

I really, my heroes were guys, my dad had turned me on to all kinds of, I mean, he showed me foreign films. He got me into, like, Chaplin and Keaton. Keaton particularly spoke to me i was i've just been a huge devotee of keaton ever since i first laid eyes on him and uh and so but i i was into this idea and then then i you know we came i came up with guys like you know going to see movies but guys like clint eastwood and warren baity sure he made bonnie and clyde and uh robert redford was making his own movies paul new. When you got here, that was happening, right?

Steve McQueen. These guys, well, it had been happening. Right. Been happening. So you came out in 74. Yeah, but it had been happening from the late 60s. Right. And these guys, all these big stars had kind of empowered themselves by starting their

own companies, starting to make films, the stories they wanted to tell. And I thought, you know, it's hard trying to fit into somebody else's thing. And I thought, you know, it's hard trying to fit into somebody else's thing. You know, you kind of know what you probably are good at. Right. Or the stories you feel passionate about or you want to tell. But, you know, you have to go through this nightmare audition process trying to be other, you know, build a career and stuff. But I thought that's what I wanted to be.

And it wasn't an ego thing. It was more I thought, you know, I'd like to tell, these are the stories I tell. Bonnie and Clyde is one of my all-time favorite films. Great movie, yeah. And that was a movie nobody wanted to make, but Warren Beatty was able to get that. So you wanted to be one of those people. You wanted to be an auteur,

a guy that produces his own movies and got his own shit done. Yeah, and if I have to be in them, fine. That's okay, but if I don't, that's okay too. So that was the model. And I wanted to be a part of this business. Yeah. And that was the model.

That was it. Did you go to film school? I couldn't get in. I tried to go to... I'd worked out here for two years behind the scenes. I was making short films with different disparate groups of people. I had a great buddy named Tom Huckabee I made a lot of films with. Another guy named Rocky Shank I made a lot of films with.

I go to I try to go to SC uh and UCLA I have these crappy SAT scores that you know that are haunting me from some test I had to take at eight o'clock in the morning on a Saturday when in high school I was completely hung over yeah and there and it's like guys I I've studied I've worked in film and I want to come and learn from you. Couldn't get into those. And found out about a program through NYU where you could study at a professional acting school and take academic credits at Washington Square. And of the four disciplines, there was Circle in the Square, famous repertory comedy.

There was Experimental Wing Theater. famous repertory there was experimental wing theater there was Lee Strasberg which the method thing seemed a little too much psychoanalysis a little too neurotic for me but the one discipline

that stood out to all those was Stella Adler. Did you go to New York? So I got into this program I went to NYU at 21 and I lived in the village and you couldn't be in a play till your junior year and that sounded like bullshit. So I ended up producing two plays my freshman year on the side and I got a scholarship my second year. But after two years of that, I thought I didn't see what I would do with a degree right and i felt like i i as much

as i loved theater and i loved you know being in new york i i kind of longed to get back into the movie game well what did you what did you learn you know from her you know that that enabled you to think like all right i i can you know i've done a little acting now i've got the tools i need i didn't feel that way i I was not a star pupil. You know, I was listening to your podcast with Jason Segel recently. It was a great, great interview. And you guys seem like a great soul. You guys got on well.

But he talked about putting on this production, his own production at 16 of The Zoo Story. Yeah, right. Well, I tried to do a scene from The Zoo Story in front of Stella. I didn't even get a line out i was so eviscerated i didn't get out of bed for like three days before you even got a line out i mean she came in at me and she had how did you even get in this class and she said you're not ready for realism and she was a tough task master and we were students at nyu but we were thrown into the to these professional classes i remember seeing harvey kytel at this class and jeff goldblum and and working actors so and they

and and there was no fucking around and it was so fucking serious and god i just it just it crushed me it really crushed your last day uh no i i got through i got through two years of it but that wasn't why i dropped out nyu i just felt i could feel like i got the meat and potatoes you know you know stella was saying you're either going to learn it here or you're going to learn it out there and it's going to take you 25 years right but you went that route uh yeah no i took the 50 i took the 50 year plan yeah actually i still on it. I haven't quite paid off my student loan yet. Oh, come on. No, seriously.

It's a game. You're trying to, you know, you just keep trying to do better. No, of course. But, like, I think that you must have learned something there. I did. I did. I got a foundation there. But I remember between my freshman and sophomore year, I needed to make some money.

I had found a loft down in Tribeca. Nobody lived down there. Now it's all dormant and $100 million buildings. But I found a raw space. It was $350. I was going to share it with these other two gals who were students at NYU. And we were going to kind of do plays and stuff down there and use it as a rehearsal space. But I needed to make about $10,000 fast.

And I called my dad. I said said where can i make some money quick he said well he is the hardwood lumber business had branched into selling surveying instruments and there was a big mineral boom up in uh near casper wyoming he said go up there you probably make some money so i fly out to casper wyoming i get a paper and i I interviewed by the Sweetwater Drilling Company. We ended up calling it Sweatwater. Yeah. And I got a job working on drilling portable uranium drilling rigs. Yeah. And we'd do these test holes, and they'd come up and drop these Geiger counter things down

to see if there was plutonium down there, or uranium. Yeah. And it was a crazy job. You lived in these trailers out in this thing called the Red Desert. And we had our own cook and there was about 12 of us. It's kind of preparing you for being on set. It was something else. Yeah, it was something else.

And the food was great, but we worked our asses off on that thing. How long were you out there? I was out there for about 12 weeks. In the weekend, they'd drop us off in town, and I'd stay in this old run-down hotel in downtown Casper. This is the summer Star Wars comes out. So I'm kind of bored now. I brought this book with me that I'd bought in New York at the theater bookshop.

It was a biography of Buster Keaton. And it was called Keaton by Rudy Blesch. It's a great great biography yeah and i started reading this thing out there on the prairie and i was just mesmerized by keaton and his story and how he'd started out in the medicine shows with his dad and yeah how harry houdini saw him fall down a flight of stairs when he was two and said that's some buster your son just took and and they started calling him Buster, Keaton. And so that weekend, I was so bored, I went to the public library and said, and looked, and they had these Super 8 Blackhawk films. You remember those?

Yeah, sure. And they had a bunch of Keaton shorts. And I said, is there a way I can see these? And they said, well, I have a projector. You can go up in the conference room. And I went up in the conference room and watched these films, and I thought, I'm going to make a film while I'm on the weekends. Yeah.

So I started making my own Buster Keaton film. In Casper, Wyoming. On the weekends. And I recruited, I got the local drunks and the guy in the pool hall and a gal that I met. Oh, I was even so bored, I even had a job as a waiter at the Ramada Inn. Yeah. And I met a gal there named Rebecca Schmidt, and I got her to be my heroine.

Uh-huh. And the guy in the shoe repair place. Black and white? No, I shot it in color, Super 8, and called it Heart Luck. Uh-huh. Because there was a lost Keaton film called Hard Luck. Uh-huh. So really, I guess that was it, you know?

So I went back to NYU for a year, but then I thought- What happened to that film It's around somewhere. I don't know it's in a closet somewhere from you know, but I sent it back to all the people I wasn't able to go myself But I had a copied and they had a big It was in the middle of winter and cast Wyoming and they had to get together and all these disparate people that I'd kind of pulled together in the town really They went to the screening they had a little screening there and i thought that was really cool i i that's what i love about

filmmaking i i again it goes back to that you know you said something too on one of your interviews about you know we're all kind of in this you you got to stay out of that weird mind trap that place where you're isolated and you're in you're in that it's just that it's like a i describe it as this this void yeah this abyss yeah and you sometimes you that, it's just that, it's like a, I describe it as this void, this abyss. And sometimes you kind of circle it, but you don't want to get in there. And you said it, it was a beautiful line, I wrote it down about you got to stay engaged with people.

Yeah. That's what saves us, being engaged with other people. I know, believe me. I think that's a beautiful thing, Mark. Yeah. And I want to say, you bring that to these interviews. Yeah. And when I heard that, I go, God, that's really it.

Oh, yeah, because especially now. Now more than ever. Toppling into the pit of self is easy. It is. I've done enough excavating. Yeah, me too. Too much. The tough thing about this business, people always see the success. Yeah, me too. Too much.

The tough thing about this business, you know, people always see the success. You had this and you had that and you had an interesting career. Right. But I have so many stories that didn't work out. And all the times I've been left fallow where I've had to be out there trying to hustle a project where I know I've got a good project. I shouldn't be out there hustling. I should be working. Right. But it's just not that way. Yeah. It's not because I i'm special it's just these are my skill set and yeah don't waste

it i want to give something but you've been you've been pretty fortunate you know in the last years anyways you've done some great work last year i got to a point where i was so i don't know confused dismayed really uh just Just wondering, kind of laughing. I've been trying to get a movie called The Bottoms Off the Ground, a great script by Joe Lansdale. Yeah. Great author, southern gothic thriller. I got Brent Hanley to adapt it.

He had written Frailty for me. You directed that one? Yeah, Frailty. I wanted to do it. And, God, I spent a whole year trying to get this thing off the ground and trying to get it to actors. You know, if you don't have an offer with it, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

God, it's a chance to play a blue collar Atticus Finch. It's a movie that's, if it's made well for a good price with good cast, it'll be a classic forever. I don't know about a lot of things. Yeah. But I know about some things. Yeah. In the movie business and a movie script

yeah that has a has a pedigree and i got so i but i had to get out of the house and i was driving louise crazy yeah my wife and uh so i saw i went by a habitat for the humanity in ventura and they were building some houses out in santa paula and they said yeah just show up and they'll give you a tool belt so I started doing that and uh building houses you know this guy's kind of looking at me as we're kind of putting in this these shingles and stuff with you know with this air gun thing you know I'm actually taking my hand off you know what the hell am I doing yeah but it was it felt good to be doing just doing something yeah and helping out yeah yeah that's true because when you get you know you get stuck in a project that's kind of going nowhere, or you're hitting your head against the wall for something that is so big in your mind,

but you can't get it out of your mind into reality, that's when you have those moments where it's sort of like, I've got to get my hands dirty somehow. But I don't know anything else. No, I know. What I do for a living takes 100 people to make the machine go round and to make the film, you know, so it's, you know. Well, so, I mean, that happened during, like, downtime from acting?

Downtime from acting, I guess. To tell you the truth, I really wanted to just be directing at this point. I had two great outings. I've had three times in my career where i've gotten to work in my own shop and they were the happiest times most productive times and weirdly enough the most giving times because i was empowering other people yeah i produced a film that mark walberg and i and juliana margulies starred in called traveler yeah ago that was after twister i was able to get that off the ground.

I produced it. And I was very involved with it. A guy named Jack Green, Clint Eastwood's cinematographer, directed it. But I was very involved. I didn't see it. It's a nice little picker-esque kind of film about Irish-American gypsies, travelers, flim-flam guys. And then I got to direct Frailty, which was a great experience. And then I got to do a Disney film.

My agent, Brian Swarstrom, who I've been with forever, who's really thrown stuff at me, like the series Training Day. I thought, I can't do that. Yeah, you should try it. Weirdly enough, it's been a fun experience. Because, again, I'm engaged. God, just keep me engaged. God, keep me engaged.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I did the greatest. Yeah. I did the greatest game ever played for walt disney and it's a sports film but frailty and and uh greatest gamer kind of considered classics of their genre i'm very proud of those films but i got to not just empower myself right i got to give other people a leg oh yeah and give this actor a shot and give this guy a chance to do this. Set deck, set design, all that. Yeah, the composers from everybody on down.

Set deck always kills me because you walk into these things like, this is crazy how perfect this is. I love art. I love the, I'm true to the art department. I like to say I made the ultimate sacrifice. I became part of the set as the actor. But no, I love art direction.

My dad loved art direction. That was one of the first things he called my attention. I remember coming out of Dr. No with my dad, and he was like, yeah, the art direction, Dr. No's hideout and stuff. And he was like, yeah, it was cool. And that girl, she was great too, Dad. Oh, yeah, Ursula Andress, she's all right.

Yeah, yeah. You know, that kind of stuff. It's great that he gave you that. You know, we talked about Stella Adler. Stella Adler doesn't get the credit as far as anything good that I've done, but a guy named Vincent Chase. He was one of the last of the studio coaches. I met him after Lords of Discipline, which was my first gig,

and there were two actors who had completely different styles. One was very gregarious, the other one was very cerebral michael dean and a guy named rick rossovich and they found out their only formal training had been with this guy vincent chase he had a studio on sunset next to the rock and roll ralphs i started working with him that's how i started getting hired because i would go and work on the script with him he would get my subtext and give me ideas and ways to to spin it in a different way or come in with a different take on it and that's like a coach and he's a coach and he's been my coach to this day he's still around 87 years old and you go to him with a project you get the you get the project then you hash it out

absolutely and i never one time i never not even once did i ever leave after seeing him and talking about a project that I didn't go, God, I'm glad I took that time because I gleaned an insight. I should do that if I go back to this show next year. Look, acting is kind of like boxing. Yeah. You know, and you're going into the ring, and you don't know. And if you've got a guy in your corner going, okay, this guy is a body puncher.

Yeah. You want to tire him out. You want to just dance around him. You want to just stick and jab or whatever that is. I'm not a boxer. Well, that was a funny thing. I talked to Ethan Hawke, and he said before he did Training Day, he watched a bunch of Denzel Washington movies like you watch game films.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I could see doing that. Yeah, like it's like this guy, he's big. Well, let me tell you, that's like getting thrown into the polar bear cage,

you know, and they put raw hamburger all over you, you know, because there's certain actors that can do, they'll just play with you like a cat and a mouse.

I mean, you know, and just maul you just constantly. Did that happen to you? I went toe-to-toe with Denzel. You did? My biggest scene

in the movie, I had two guns. I have to shoot on my first day. Yeah. So damn, I'm chugging a bottle of red wine in my trailer

before I'm going in there. Yeah. But it worked out okay. I was ready. Yeah. I was ready. So what was your, what was the big,

because it looks like I'm looking at your filmography. You did a lot of little bits here and there. I know you got to ask me about one film. Which one? The one that I, to this day, if I do a thousand movies, it'll be at the top of my obituary. What is it?

Weird Science. It's weird because you're one of these guys where you look at the film the at the filmography like oh yeah oh shit right oh fuck that's right oh god it's a story of my life no but it's not bad your character it's not bad i never had stone was like i thought that sounds great it's a great movie i got to be with uh sam elliott kurt russell and val yeah val kilmer's uh doc Doc Holliday was great. He killed it. He's a great actor and a great guy. When you got here in the 70s, was it a party? What was it like just going down Sunset Strip?

That's the thing about the mid-70s that always kills me. It was such a more intimate business. All the big stars were hanging out at Dantanas or somewhere. Yeah, but I was on the outside looking in. I came out here. But it must have been a party. Not for me. Oh, shit.

Not for me. All right. I'm going down to Hollywood Boulevard on a bus down to Wilcox and Fountain, where I had this job on this Encyclopedia Britannica thing for two weeks. Yeah. And I'm sitting next to a transvestite, which is kind of blowing my mind. Because, you know, I'm from Texas. And God, maybe, you know, watching Deliverance completely traumatized me.

Me too. You know, squeal like a pig indeed. Good Lord. I didn't remember how graphic it was because my grandparents brought me by accident to that movie. That's a real accident. Yeah. And, you know, and then like when I saw it recently, I recently i'm like holy shit it's a lot more graphic than i thought it's it's still it's so disturbing oh no shit betty talk about a brave performance oh no kidding the way

he's so shamed after that happens and he can't even look at the rest of them and they're all kind of saying it's okay yeah no it's it's it's never gonna be okay again but i'm so i'm going i'm coming down i'm going down hollywood boulevard on this bus and and i'm looking around and at those days god uh hollywood was so run down and you know they've been trying to gentrify it for years but 74 going down this thing and i'm thinking god i missed this place by 50 years. Yeah. Because I was really into the old Hollywood.

Sure, sure. Last night, I'm watching Turner Classic movies. I'm watching Miracle in the Rain, and I'm just sobbing watching John Wyman. Right, right. And I guess I've always been more into the history of the town and the golden age and things like that. And I always felt like I missed it. So Weird Science, you consider that your big break? Yeah. and the golden age and things like that and i always felt like i missed it but so weird science that was your uh you consider that your big break yeah there is a there was a couple anecdotes i

wanted to yeah i was thinking i'm on the way over here that i think you would appreciate what well you know that that was a big supporting role and i had to audition my ass off mike fenton was the head of casting at universal at the time and john hughes was the man yeah i remember he had his i think he had hitchcock's old bungalow on the lot and and they were having the auditions initially not there but then as i got the callbacks i got to go in and read for and he sat in on the readings and i started throwing in stuff again my dad being the the the old salesman road guy that he had been. Yeah. My dad, he would come back with all kinds of expressions and things. And so I thought I had learned enough from the audition process that, you know, look, yeah, if you're doing a Tennessee Williams play, you're not going to change the wording.

Or Shakespeare or Arthur Miller. But in a screenplay, it really is a blueprint thing. Yeah, yeah. And it's malleable. In the audition. And you try, yeah. or Arthur Miller. But in a screenplay, it really is a blueprint thing. Yeah, yeah. And it's malleable. In the audition. And you try, yeah. You just want to get through.

Everybody's going to say the same lines. Right, right. Why not say it a different way? Right. Do something. Make them look up. Yeah. I built a time bomb one time. A briefcase bomb

and took it into an audition. For what? Just to get their attention. For what? Some crappy pilot I did. What was the angle? Like, I'm going to blow us up? Well, the what? Just to get their attention. For what? Some crappy pilot I did. What was the angle? Like, I'm going to blow us up? Well, the guy's supposed to be a terrorist.

He didn't have any lines, but he was always kind of making stuff. Yeah, yeah. And I did the one line. They said, thank you very much. I said, I'm not finished yet. Then I opened up the briefcase, and they just started saying, oh, you know, the military taught me everything I know about explosives. And then I get the call from this, I had a horrible agent at the time,

you know, just real B-grade agent. He says, don't ever pull a stunt like that again. And there was a pause and he went, you start work on Tuesday. You know, you got it. But I had all these auditions for Weird Science and I just threw all these crazy things in there. Like some of my most famous lines from that movie

are lines my dad would tell me like you know i have this line where i see michael hall and and elon mitchell smith they've they're all drunk and i and i go up to him and i say to him i said hey how about a nice greasy pork sandwich served in a dirty ashtray you know and and uh and people love that that was something my dad would say to me and my brother on Saturday morning, if he thought, or Sunday morning, we were hungover from being in high school, from being at a beer bust, you know, out near a campfire in the middle of nowhere in Aledo, Texas. He'd like to go, God, hey, Bill, hey, man, Billy, you look like you're not feeling too good.

You're kind of green. Hey, I got just the thing. And he had this, I guess there was a sardonic nature to my father. He loved real kind of gallows humor. Yeah, yeah. He had a Dickensian kind of, I don't know, weirdness. Yeah. And so I threw that stuff in the audition.

I get the job. And then I started developing the character. But a lot of this stuff came from these really weird camps that I went to with my dad. And my dad would send my brother, Bob, and I to these camps. We went to two camps. One was in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Started going there. It was an eight-week camp.

I went there when I was eight years old. Wow. It was the summer of 63. It's a long time to be away. But I had my brother there. And I loved it. I had the best time there. But these camps all had these weird rites of passage and they're all kind of cruel.

Yeah. The upper class, you know, the upper campers would kind of hazing. Yeah. Kind of hazing thing. We had this thing at this other camp was called the rough ride and you had to go on the rough ride and your first, it was for the younger campers. But if it was your first year at the camp, even if you were coming in as an upper camper, or even if it was your first year at the camp even if you were coming in as an upper camper or even if you were a first year counselor you had to go on the rough ride yeah and i'd heard legendary stories about the rough ride uh-huh and it was a ride that started at the at midday and then it went to dawn to the night yeah and and it had a legend because these guys would ride through at the camp completely covered mud yelling it just looked like they'd

been on a hell ride at the end of the day they'd ring a bell we'd all come up to the main lodge and they'd ride by so we go out on this this camp you know these guys uh these guys would come these counselors everybody was really nice you know camp the counselors are nice but when the rough ride they'd read these lists at the lunch hour there were about five rough rides you didn't know which one you're going to be on and all of a sudden these counselors nice guys they come in with kind of war paint on and just kind of like just kind of a pissed off expression on their face i think we're going to read that we're going to read the candidates for today's rough ride when you hear your name you stand up and you say ready to ride sir so they call out your name mark maron or bill pax you

jump up you ready to ride sir you know and they kind of be like yeah uh-huh yeah we're gonna see how ready you are you know it's a cycle i and i were yeah and we did all this stuff another one we had was which i used in weird science there's a funny moment where i uh go downstairs the next morning and there's just and there's elon mitchell smith and he's and he's got he's got kelly lebrock's panties on but at first i don't see that and i see that he's got a nice omelet there and i go hey that looks pretty good let me see that and then i throw these eggs up against the bottom of the cabinet and i put the pan out and they just drip down and go now make yourself one

dickweed yeah and then and so that came from a gag on the rough ride. You ride everybody up to this mountain river, just rushing river. And there's this huge bluff across the river going straight up about 200 feet. And at the top are this Indian paintbrush. It's wildflower. It's a state flower, Wyoming. So you ride up against this. It's on the rough ride where I got to be the initiator. I went crazy.

I find one of the counselors had to say, cool text they used to call me text little text right so like the guy gets across so we tell them that they have to go across the river go up the hill bring the indian paintbrush back to their horse and put it in their bridle so the guy go you see these guys go across here they're getting washed down the river they're climbing up the damn hill they get the thing they come back down the hill they try to come across the river get washed down the river they're climbing up the damn hill they get the thing they come back down the hill they try to come across the river get washed down the river then the guy comes up and you go hey let me see that hey that's pretty good you know that's really good now go get yourself one dickweed and then the guy had to go back across the river and it was that kind of stuff so i told john hughes these stories and he went oh yeah oh yeah we gotta we gotta figure out how to do that. And I had a great, it was the first time I was really empowered in a role

where the guy on the other side, the director, was just egging me on and giving me so much confidence. And I love John for that. And what about, what happened to Big Love? Big Love, we went for five seasons. I think we kind of told our story. Yeah? Yeah.

There was not planned to be more. Mark Olson and Will Sheffer, the guys who, they made the show. Now, when you got into that. They kind of felt like they told their story. I mean, it had gone kind of, it's distance. How much research, how obsessed did you get with Mormonism? Yeah, you know, it's great when you get a task, a specific task as an actor to learn a profession or to learn a culture or to learn history because it's fun. The book that kind of really was the primer for me was the book by John Krakauer called Under the Banner of Heaven. gruesome contemporary story but what i do remember being completely absorbed and and and captivated

and and fascinated with was this was the history of joseph smith how this whole thing started how he dug up the golden tablets and how he started this religion and and then how brigham young continued it after uh john joseph smith was assassinated and And these people wanted to do their own thing so badly, they went as far into the wilderness as they could to where nobody would bother them. And polygamy was legal in their religion until I believe 1893. I used to know all this stuff,

but it goes in and out. And then there were the fundamental sex that continued practicing right a true mormonism which was a was about the principle and and that's still going on plural marriage yeah still going on uh yeah still going on you bet so because i thought that was the interesting part about your your character is that you came from that yeah yeah no it was a great character but the first season we were kind of trying to really kind of define the genesis and and the the you know the origin stories of these characters and what was interesting was by season two uh mark and willie come up with the idea that i had been you know this whole idea of these lost boys yeah these kids get to be you know they go into

puberty they start looking at the girls and the fundamentalist compound sex whatever you want to call them and uh and all of a sudden the older men are like you know we got to get them out of here they're getting a little frisky and that was a real thing yeah it's a real thing and if you you get into an infraction i think that's really how john cracker got involved in it through the lost boys yeah sad these kids are thrown thrown out of their homes threat to uh they're a threat to pussy supply. They're a damn straight. They're all damn straight. But they also,

if any infraction, they get drummed out. Yeah. And so my character, they kind of built this story that, and this was something that kind of evolved through the first season,

through my talks with Mark and Will and how we were finding a real root to this guy to give him really a just this real weird foundation where he had his kind of foot in both camps yeah and uh and so they they had this story that i tell this story i think it was season three or four uh where i try to run for office yeah and the guy tries to smear me because there's a there's a there's a mug shot of me at 17. And he's put it all over the hall. And I come out and there's a hush and I bring the photo out and I say, yeah, I guess you guys have all seen this. He said, and I have one of the greatest speeches I had as the

character where I talk about, yeah, when I was 15 years old, my dad told me to get in the truck and we drove into Salt Lake. And all of a sudden he said, hey, get out of the car. I said, what do you mean? He said, just get out. And I got out of the car. I said, what do you mean? He said, just get out. I got out of the car, and he left me there. That first night, I slept in a ditch. I was scared. I was cold.

I didn't know what to do. And then I met these other kids. And yeah, I did things for cash that haunt me to this day. And I love that. And I'm just like, whoa, that's a good spin. Yeah, that's a good background for a character. That's dark. We didn't explore some of that good background for a character. That's dark, you know. We didn't explore some of that darkness,

but it was there as the underpinning. But as a political candidate, taking responsibility for it. Yeah, really taking it to him. Sure, but I get what you're saying. I did things for cash that haunt me. Sure, we all get it. You know, I can say that as Bill, Mark. Can Mark say that?

No, I hosted a game show. show that was about in terms of business that was about as dark as it got oh god yeah yeah yeah how did the mormon church respond to it you know i do you ever get mormons coming up to you going like you kind of hit it uh or you didn't get it right or no, mostly you got it right. Yeah. But, you know, the thing of it is, it's like, look, all of us in our family trees, you know, have strange relatives, strange things that happen, good and bad. There's histories of families, histories of cultures that you want to not talk about you want to make them go away but it's your history it's not you sure sure yeah i know so it's a weird

thing so i i i thought here was a i thought with that we we kind of through the show put a very human face on a religion that a lot of people who aren't part of that religion always thought of as a cult. And to me, I thought they would have maybe embraced it a little more. I think it was a guilty pleasure, more of a secret thing. I'm sure they watched it. And again, Mark and Will were very responsible and did a lot of research to get it right. But really what they were trying to do

was more use this idea of polygamy in a modern world as taboo social thing. To make a fun family show. To make a fun family, exactly. And use it as a prism to refract age-old ideas and society's taboos about religion, marriage, all these different sects, all these things. That's great. So what have you found in the stacks of your dad's papers that have blown you away, other than that picture you showed me?

I found a letter from Ben Crosby. Oh, really? I found a letter from President Johnson. Oh, I'm always better from hearing from you, John. Oh, really? I'm a total politician. Ben Hogan. John, I'm going to have my annual invitation.

I'd like you to join, but try to have some fun. Different things. My dad was a great correspondent, but he didn't write long letters to people. He didn't want to bore them, but if he'd of, you know, if he'd had a nice dinner, like say he'd had this interview, you'd get a letter from him. It'd just be, Mark, I really enjoyed meeting you. It's a great, great show. I wish you continued success.

Nice social etiquette. Very good. Very good. So you're actually getting to know him even more through this stack of stuff. Yeah. Was he a perfect man? Was he a virtuous man? Absolutely not. i think my parents

kind of dropped the ball by the time we all became teenagers what do you mean but uh oh they just seemed like this they kind of checked out i felt like i'm seeing things that i feel could have been handled a little better you know but again like if you know your parents are kind of gods to you as a child i know i know and when they live a long time, eventually you get to that point where the statute of limitations on telling your kids things somehow runs out in their head, either because of age or other things. And they tell you shit and you're like, I need to know that. Really?

I didn't need to hear that. I really didn't need to know that. I didn't want to know that part about you. Exactly. Yeah. Hey, got to give a shout out to two guys that worked with you. Yes, sir. One's an actor.

Yeah. MC Ganey. Oh, great. He said he loved working on the show. Oh, he's great. You work with him? Yeah, we worked on a few things together. He's a great guy.

We did Club Dread together. We had a great time. He was so happy to be here. He said something funny. He's a big, big admirer of yours. Yeah, yeah. Like when he had to hold a baby he said like this is the first time in a movie i think where i've held a baby and i wasn't like

gonna kill it for some reason or eat it yeah barbecue yeah yeah and i think uh ron perlman was with him and they ran a bookstore or something yeah it was kind of the climatic episode yeah yeah and uh and a stand-up dean delray oh yeah dean Rey. Oh, yeah. Dean. Dino. Yeah. Dean Del Rey. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he loves you, man. Oh, great.

And I had a great time talking to you. Was it okay for you? Oh, buddy, it was great. Worked out? Really fun. Thanks, man. Thanks so much. Cheers. All right.

That was fun. Go to WTFpod.com for all your wtf pod needs i'll be in uh durham north carolina on uh the 17th friday i'll be in charlotte on the 18th and uh a lot more dates coming up if you go to wtfpod.com slash tour you can find them and come see me. We'll hang out for a little while. Hopefully we'll have a nice time. All right. Oh, I don't have any,

I don't have a guitar with me. Boomer lives. Thank you.