WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 853 - Jeff Bridges / Beau Bridges
Episode Date: October 8, 2017It just so happens that Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges are both in new movies at the same time (Only the Brave and The Mountain Between Us, respectively). So it's as good a time as any to have the two ...brothers in the garage for separate chats. First, Beau tells Marc about being the big brother, taking a First Amendment stand, and staying busy in fickle Hollywood. Then Jeff talks about the music he makes, the path to enlightenment, and the transcendence of The Dude. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Lock the gates!
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 the fuckocrats?
What the fuck publicans?
The few of yous that are out there listening to me.
How's it going? I'm'm mark maron this is my podcast
wtf thank you for listening by the way i've got both bridges boys here today i've got
jeff bridges and beau bridges separate conversations that we pulled together we
figured it was appropriate to uh post them together it was great to talk to both the
bridges fellas i'm a fan of both Bridges boys.
It's hard to say that too many times.
Both Jeff and Bo, I enjoy their work.
So that's coming up.
What else is happening?
I know some of you relate to this.
The fact that many of us are terrified on a day-to-day basis is it's a reasonable response if you're checking in, if you are plugged in, if you are trying to wrap your brain around what's going on in the world now.
And don't misunderstand.
We have a president that enjoys terrifying us.
He's not unlike his nemesis in North Korea in that.
Those of us who are terrified of him, he enjoys terrifying us.
Those of us who are terrified of him, he enjoys terrifying us.
And he feels like that is a fine way to exhibit what he feels is power.
So given that, and given that it is somewhat successful, I do honestly feel terrified some days.
What's interesting that's happening is in light of this, I think many of us are not only realizing that we can do what we can do.
We can do all that we can do. However, you're getting involved, however, you're getting active, however, you're preparing or pushing for the upcoming elections anywhere you are or standing up for causes or whatever you're connected to.
You're doing that and we're doing that. And we're doing
that. And now also you have to deal with the terror. And this is where it gets weird for me.
Something happened a few months ago with me. The constant sort of foreboding and sense of
destabilization and terror has really forced me to prioritize my life a little bit in ways that
I haven't before. Like, let's do some things that are
proactive. Let's do some healthy things. Let's do some things that are fun, that make me feel good.
Let's do nice things for other people. All that stuff that maybe some of you do anyways,
you know, I'm trying to engage in more. But I guess what I'm saying is I'm just trying to
compartmentalize the terror function, you know proactive help people in my life not be a dick
if possible it's another problem i have i don't know if it's your problem when i feel good i i
i could tend to be a dick and there's part of me that's sort of like who cares man who cares
you know i you made it you you got this far and you know it's like just just fucking enjoy yourself
whatever that means anyway that's what i'm doing trying to manage my fear and hope for the best
so beau bridges he's done a lot of work that both of these bridges guys have worked, you know, they've done like just dozens of movies,
TV movies.
Bo's done a lot of TV work,
but,
but also big movies,
you know,
movie movies.
He's in this new,
he's got this,
he's got,
he's got very important pivotal part in the mountain between us.
You know,
he's not on screen long,
but,
but it, you know he's not on screen long but but it you know he's the catalyst to the romance in this plane crash movie but it was great talking
to him uh just about the arc of uh his career and you know where he's at now and he was great in the
descendants and you know he goes way back you know i'm just i'm just going off the top of my head
but you know we talked so you'll hear that uh The Mountain Between Us with Kate Winslet and Idris Elba.
It's out now.
The Plane Crash Romance.
And, yeah, so this is me talking to Bo.
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Bridges.
Oh, Bridges.
The man.
This is like, you know, it's kind of insane.
Like I did, I watched a screener of the new movie, The Mountain Between Us.
You know, I knew going in, and I think everybody does from watching the trailer,
that the plane's going to crash.
Something's got to happen, right?
Yeah, it's going to happen pretty quickly.
And then when you come out and you're like, there's the guy.
He's going to be flying the plane.
I'm like, all right, well, he's got about 10 minutes.
That's it.
And you got it right.
Yeah.
But, you know, what's wild is that, you know, you work the hell out of that 10.
You know?
Yeah.
You know that you're going down.
All right.
You're going into it.
I'm not spoiling anything for you.
Right, right, right.
But the way you played what happened, know was very it was very deliberate there was a moment there before what
happens happens where you do something with your you know your speech pattern and it's just a little
bit of a like a little i don't remember you screwed up a saying a little guffawful right yeah
and i was like uh-oh here we is he going to do? Here we go.
Something's not going right with that guy.
But when you do something like that, because it was very convincing,
is that something you came up with?
Was that like when you're playing a guy that's having that kind of situation,
how much of that was in the script?
Well, some of it was indicated.
Sure. well this some of it was indicated sure but uh the uh the director was very very hands-on
oh yeah yeah and he helped me a lot honey uh we talked about it a lot yeah and i did my research
about what happens to a guy with when he has a stroke yeah and then the the airplane crash itself
yeah he had a very strong vision of how he wanted to do that.
Oh, really?
Like in one take, that was.
Yeah.
And when I signed up for the movie, I had only two questions.
I said, number one, am I going to have to get up in a small plane and do all kinds of crazy shit up there?
Yeah.
For real, I mean, for real. I didn't want shit up there. Yeah. For real, I mean.
For real.
I didn't want to do that.
Yeah.
And I said, and I don't want you to drag my body all over the snow and the ice.
Those were your two requests.
Those were my two requests.
So they assured me that now we'd be doing the plane crash in a hangar.
Uh-huh.
You know, on a dummy airplane.
And that I would do a full body cast
and they'd be dragging uh you know a dummy a dummy of me around so that worked out good but but as it
turned out the airplane crash yeah was hairy i mean you know we were even in the hangar oh we
were about two or three hundred feet up in the air oh really yeah yeah and uh with my dog is my co-pilot of course the good dog
yeah and the director wanted to do it in one take so we all had to hit our marks i fortunately was
just in a seat so i could strap myself in well and i was fully padded with body armor and everything
and i told kate and idris and i said you guys better you know pad up because
i said this is going to be pretty crazy yeah and it was i mean when the tail you mean when it comes
out on uh when the plane comes apart yeah when it starts to bang around and stuff they really shook
the hell out of us oh man and uh idris and and kate had to run up and down the airplane, the camera was on a line
that went right down the whole length of the airplane
so that the camera would go past me,
turn around, see me,
then go back all the way to them.
So we had to not only say the lines
and deal with all that,
but we had to watch out for this flying camera
that was coming by.
And then the dog had to hit his marks.
And below me, the aircraft was just open.
So it was like a 100-foot death drop if we fell out.
I was okay because I was strapped in, but the dog wasn't because he had to go back and
forth.
So I had to kind of have a hold on him.
It was interesting.
And we did about 25 takes
but we finally got it you didn't get it in the one take oh no no no and no the dog everybody
got everyone was okay everybody was okay I think Idris banged himself up a bit but everyone else
was okay it's sort of an interesting movie because you know it's one of those movies where
it's clearly a plane crash but no you know they don't even eat the dog so you know it becomes yeah right exactly it becomes
or each other right it's sort of like what's going to happen then and then in about a half hour in
you're like oh it's a romance yeah romantic movie yeah it is yeah so like you've been acting for
your entire life absolutely well since i was six i did
my first job i mean when you look at your filmography it's sort of like oh my god there's
like a hundred movies here there's a hundred uh movie movies about a hundred tv movies and tv
shows yeah i never counted them but there's a lot of them my first first job was in a movie. Well, no, actually, I guess it was earlier.
You were right, my whole life,
because I think John Garfield carried me through a movie.
I can't remember the name of it.
Oh, really?
Yeah, he was a buddy of my dad's,
and he carried me through a scene.
John Garfield.
Postman always rings twice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The one I was in was one of his classics, and I can't think of the name of it.
But then the one where I had my first line was The Red Pony with Robert Mitchum.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Who's the famous author?
John Steinbeck.
Oh, Steinbeck.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
The Red Pony.
And I can still remember my line.
I had only one line.
It was a coming-of-age story, a buddy of the kid.
Uh-huh.
And he was brushing a horse, and I said,
you're going to brush the hide right off him.
That was the first line you uttered on screen.
That was it.
But like your dad, Lloyd Bridges, is another guy.
You look at his filmography, and that's 100 movies.
So you grew up in this town, right?
I mean, you were born and raised in Los Angeles.
Beverly Hills?
No, I went to Venice High School.
Oh, yeah?
You guys are all from Venice?
Near the corner of Sawtelle and Nashville.
Uh-huh.
And when I think about old Hollywood,
which you grew up in,
it seemed like,
and your dad was in the business,
was he a studio guy?
Did he have a deal?
Yeah, he got his first job at Columbia.
He kind of starved in New York
for a while in the theater.
My mom sold hats and gloves
and kept him alive.
Then he came out to California
to get a contract
with Columbia. So he was on
a lot. He was working. He was just
a go-to actor guy.
Right. And you grew up in that.
It's my belief that
it was a smaller town then, right?
And that I have to assume that
your dad's
friends were all these guys that we're all familiar with from movies and television.
Not really.
No?
No.
There were a few people like that.
But he really befriended, you know, people from all walks of life.
We lived in a small community where, you know, every four or five houses look the same.
What do you call that?
Development.
Yeah.
And right across the street, it was a new development,
and right across the street from our house was Beanfields,
as far as you could see.
This is right in the, you know, we're Sawtelle and National.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is in the 40s.
Right.
And so it was a real community feel lots of kids
so his best friends were really neighbors oh yeah and they came from all walks of life but there was
the occasional you know actor person that was around yeah occasionally he didn't have any good
friends that were active oh yeah sure he did yeah yeah larry parks and bid and Betty Garrett were good buddies. And then the guy that directed that show, The Red Pony,
Lewis Milestone, I called him Millie.
Yeah.
He's an iconic director.
He won an Academy Award or two.
Uh-huh.
And he was around a lot?
He was around because what happened was my dad
and a couple of his buddies bought a prefab shack.
And my dad bought like an acre of land near the Ventura County line on the beach in the sand dunes.
And they threw this shack over the cliff.
There was no access road down to it.
And they put it up amidst the sand dunes.
It had no electricity no water
anything you know yeah and we used to have one of those phones that goes like this to get across to
the highway to the post office a crank phone and there was only one other house and lewis milestone
lived in that house that's how i got that part right down the beach from the shack yeah exactly
that was the only other house in the area.
So now, when you start acting at that age,
I mean, how do you know how to,
and your brother's doing it too?
How soon after you started did he start?
Well, Jeff is eight years younger than me.
Oh, he's eight years,
how many, there's people between you?
Well, we had a brother, Gary,
who died at two years old, crib death.
That's awful.
It was tough.
It was tough for our family.
And then Jeff came along, and I acted when I was young, like we've been talking about.
And then I got really interested in athletics and played all through school and college and stuff.
And then when I got out of college,
right around toward the end of college.
But you're still doing bit parts, right?
It seems like you're still doing TV stuff.
Well, that's when I started,
when I got toward the end of college,
I started to do the guest shots on TV things.
But like My Three Sons, you were in college?
Yeah, oh yeah, Mr. Novak and Wagon Train.
See Hunt with your dad?
And all that.
Did See Hunt, so did my brother. Yeah, with your dad. And all that. Did See Hunt.
So did my brother.
Yeah, we all, the family did that.
We have a sister too, Cindy.
She acted.
Really?
Yeah.
And then I got heavy into acting probably in my early 20s.
And then my brother, his first job, I think he was like 17 or 18.
And I'm trying to think of the name.
Last Picture Show?
No.
No, he did one before that.
But yeah, that's the one.
The Last Picture Show, he was about 18.
And he got nominated for an Academy Award for that.
How did you handle that?
Well, I was disappointed because my brother, my dad traveled a lot.
He's a great dad to us, but because he was away a lot,
I took over a lot of the stuff that a father would do with my little brother.
Because he was out on movies?
Teach him how to throw a ball, how to do all the stuff.
So one of the things that I was impressed with with my little brother
was his musicianship.
I mean, he took my Dano electric guitar that I bought,
and I learned how to play EAB7 pretty quick.
That's all you need.
To play all the old rock and roll tunes and stuff.
But then I got into sports, and I put my guitar down,
and my little brother picked it up.
And I'm listening to him, and by the time he's 16 or 17,
he's a pretty decent guitar player,
and I said, wow, he's starting to write things,
and I thought he was going to become a rock and roll star.
That was my dream for him.
So he goes and gets an Academy Award nomination
on his first acting job,
and that was the end of his music stuff for a while,
and that was disappointing to me.
I remember. That was the letdown, that he almost won the Academy Award, music stuff for a while uh-huh and uh that was disappointing to me i remember
that was the letdown that he almost won the academy award and he had to give up his
his almost rock and roll career that's it but he was did you ever continue playing or no oh yeah
yeah no no we all play music we jam all the time you do yeah in fact we had a big jam recently uh
my niece jeff's daughter jesse who's a great performer, great musician,
she got married up on his ranch in Montana.
And the night before the wedding, we had a jam.
A lot of musicians in the family and friends of his.
And it started off, my niece sang the first song.
And it's one of those guitar passing things you know yeah so
she says who wants to take it now you know and she looked at me because she knew i'd do it for her
yeah just to get it going uh-huh so i took it and i sang the first song after her and then i handed
the guitar to jackson brown who i've known for years. And Jackson said, wait a second, he's a real one.
Yeah, yeah.
But he got in there and sang, and it was fun.
But we loved to play music.
And of course, in the Baker Boys, we played music.
Down the piano.
Yeah.
Are you a piano player as well?
Not like, my brother's a pretty good piano player.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, he can still play all those Dave Grusin tunes
that he was playing in that movie. Oh, he can? I had to
kill myself to learn my stuff.
But I can still chord with my left,
play melody with my right. I'm okay
for sing-alongs and Christmas
time, stuff like that. Sure, sure. Right.
So, like, I guess my question then, like,
you know, when you're acting at that young of age,
how do you know how to act? Does anyone,
does your dad tell you? Do you learn?
Oh, yeah. No, no. My dad tell you do you learn oh yeah none of my
dad was my teacher oh yeah a great teacher he gave me all my tools and uh like what do you still
remember you use them to this day oh yeah i mean i can still hear him you know let's say you know
make it true you know even if it's just your own truth be simple uh-huh don't push and he was it
was basically the stanislavski method of acting
and he only gave me one book on the craft of acting which was called acting the first six
lessons yeah by Richard Boleslavski who was a student of Stanislavski's he was the first
guy uh to bring the method of Stanislavski method to the States. The book was written in 1939.
And then...
Was that like the group theater stuff?
Yeah, all those guys were from that.
And so I loved that book.
I gave it to all my children.
I have five kids.
Yeah.
Did you give it to your brother too?
Oh, yeah.
I'm sure he did, yeah.
And then my daughter and I, about five years ago, we wrote a play based on the novel.
Because it's not only a how-to about the craft of acting, but it's a relationship between the teacher and his student, who he calls the creature, this young girl that comes to him and learns these six lessons of acting.
That's the text?
It's sort of like Plato's dialogue.
Yeah, and it's published by Sam French, so anyone that wants to see it can just go go get it online but it
it's always interested me that you know that relationship between a teacher and his students
beautiful one you know mentorship yeah sure and uh so it explores all that because this this girl
she comes for the first lesson and she thinks she's God's gift to acting and the teacher reams her a new one and she leaves crying and then she
comes back all through her career.
She becomes a famous actress and she comes back for another lesson each time.
It's pretty cool.
And you did the play with your daughter?
Yeah, we performed it here in LA.
We just actually-
How'd it go over?
Great.
Yeah.
We performed it again recently in Minneapolis too. And how'd that go over there? Good? Great. Oh, You performed it again recently in Minneapolis, too.
And how'd that go over there?
Good?
Great.
Oh, yeah.
So what are some of the lessons?
That's what your dad told you.
Stay present.
Be real.
Be true, even if it's just to yourself.
Yeah, there's...
Slow down.
Memory of emotion.
Yeah.
Observation.
Uh-huh.
Observation.
Applied observation, like, you know, study people or...
Yeah, but just make sure that you
you know acting uh there's a there's a line in there's acting is the life of the human soul
receiving its birth through art wow so yeah so acting is basically uh kind of reporting on, you know, how we live.
Yeah.
On our lives.
So these acting lessons are life lessons as well.
Yeah.
And then there's one on rhythm.
Yeah.
So it's about, you know, making sure that you observe and take in the different rhythms
of your life experience and what it's like to be in the city, what it feels like to be
out in nature and how those different things
resonate differently for you
and how they're both necessary
and all this and observation
and memory of emotion.
So you can put yourself into those places
when necessary.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Because a lot of times you're on a set.
You're not out in nature.
You're not,
a lot of pretending needs to happen. set. You're not out in nature. You're not, you got a lot of pretending
needs to happen.
Yes.
Yeah.
But pretending in a way,
you act,
I think we act in our lives too.
Of course.
Yeah.
You can't walk around
just being real all the time.
Some of us act more than others.
We won't talk about that.
Yeah.
Well, you know,
you got to do what you can
to keep your shit together, Bo.
That's right. Right. Yeah. Well, you know, you got to do what you can to keep your shit together, Bo. That's right.
Right?
Yeah.
So, like, but it seems like in your career that, you know, I guess it becomes a question of,
because you did a lot of, like, in the 60s, you were doing, like, LA must have been nuts in the 60s.
Like, I just picture, like, you talk about knowing Jackson Brown.
I imagine, like, during that period in the late 60s to be part of this community the show business community must have been a blast oh it
was it was really fun and and i i kind of hit pretty early in my career what do you consider
what was your first hit well you were working a lot yeah but like the landlord yeah i mean um
you know not having a calendar of my work in front of me,
I'm not sure exactly what the different years were.
But yeah, the landlord and around that time I did the other side of the mountain,
which was kind of a surprise hit for Universal.
Yeah, and then I had one called Galey Galey
that came out that crapped out
and it was probably the most expensive movie of that time.
I was getting all the big stories
were coming my direction
when I was like in my early 20s.
I was quite fortunate.
And that was a Norman Jewison movie?
Yeah.
And Hal Ashby directed the
landlord that was his first one and so those those guys are well hal anyways went on to sort of define
that period of filmmaking oh yeah he was he was something else last detail what was he like i mean
how was he a hands-on guy he was a wonderful man yeah yeah what made him a great director
well you know for hal uh he loved making films so much.
And so his films were like major parties.
Yeah.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Like The Landlord opens up with his own wedding.
Yeah.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I was his best man.
In real life?
Yeah.
In the movie.
He tells the preacher to hit his marks.
Yeah.
It had nothing to do with the movie, really.
Uh-huh.
But all his work is so personal.
Uh-huh. Jeff did his last is so personal. Uh-huh.
Jeff did his last one.
So we bookended his career.
What was his last movie?
Eight Million Ways to Die.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But anyway, so I was very fortunate there.
And then I kind of nosedived.
You know, I mean, our business is such a up and down roller coaster ride for most of it.
I've always worked.
Right.
But you did sort of like you worked with it.
Seems like these are movies that I didn't see.
But when I'm looking through it, like Hammersmith is out.
Oh, that was wild.
I don't know if you ever saw that one.
I didn't see it, but it's like it's Burton and Taylor.
Oh, yeah.
And Peter Ustinov is directing.
Oh, it's crazy.
And those two must have been like huge at that point.
Oh, yeah yeah they were and and i was attracted to kind of weird crazy films yeah that i would pick some of my
friends or my parents would say why why are you going to do that but i always liked it yeah it's
kind of strange ones but then um what was that like what was that movie about oh that movie was
a road picture with the three of us yeah me elizabeth and richard
what what that must have been nuts yeah and it was kind of like uh you know uh i was a uh
a guy working in a uh in an insane asylum you know kind of cleaning up around the place uh-huh
and richard was one of the inmates and he breaks out and he you know it was sort of a faustus
uh-huh tale oh
okay and it seems like how does movie making change like because i was also looking at the
i remember the movie two minute warning i kind of remember it because a lot of this stuff happened
when i was a child uh but like charlton heston like you know i've done some acting myself so
i know that once you're on set you're just at work yeah but these are huge you know mythic guys
in the business i mean cassavetes is in that movie too well the guy that directed that is a good
buddy of mine by the way uh larry pierce i probably work with him more than any other director how has
it changed he's great he's very involved yeah and how you know in the characters oh yeah oh yeah and
what did you play you didn't play a bad guy in that one, did you?
No, I played a guy who, when the shooting breaks out in the football arena in the Coliseum,
I'm getting a hot dog or something, and then I try to make my way back into the stadium to get to my family.
Oh, okay.
When the shooting starts.
Right.
And they had like a casting call for about a thousand extras that came there like two o'clock in the morning.
And they just moved them around the stadium.
Yeah.
And so when we get to that scene, I asked my old friend Larry.
I said, Larry, how are you going to do this scene when I have to go through all those people pouring out?
I said, somebody's going to get hurt and it could be me.
I said, what are you going to do?
How are you going to do that?
He said, don't worry
he says i got a guy that's gonna run interference uh for you and he's one of the baddest dudes
oh yeah in the business stuntman i said okay so the guy comes around the corner and he it's an
old friend of mine that i was in the coast guard with we with. We were in boot camp together. Ronnie Stein.
He's built like a brick shithouse.
Great guy.
I still am in touch with him.
And yeah, he just knocked people down.
Went through these people.
It was pretty scary.
Did anyone get hurt?
No, not bad.
And what was it like working with Charlton Heston?
I didn't have any
scenes with him you didn't but charlton heston i'll tell you a great story on charlton heston
okay because i knew him you did uh yeah just from we played in charity tennis tournaments
together uh-huh and my parents knew him and stuff and uh i used to debate him in magazines and stuff
on the gun oh yeah control issue all the time.
Because he was the NRA president and all that stuff.
And just a wonderful guy.
But we would debate each other.
And I'll come back around to him in a second.
So in the last stages of the Vietnam War, there was a big protest happening where people were going to Washington, D.C.
And there were buses leaving from all the major cities.
This is like about 68.
Oh, yeah.
Okay, early.
So I decided to call all the talk show hosts, the guys that I, you know, Johnny and all the different ones that I'd been on and say guys can i come on your show
and i said i don't want to make a big political statement uh you know but i would like to just
give the addresses in the major cities where these buses are leaving from so if anyone wants to join
the protest yeah and it ended up being like millions of people going to watch
and to my surprise they all said said, yeah, come on.
And it was all last minute.
So there was a guy named Irv Kupcinet out of Chicago
that had a talk show.
And it was very relaxed.
And I did this last minute with all these guys.
And so I didn't know who was gonna be on.
With Johnny too?
Carson, you did Carson too? I think I did Carson. I'm not sure, but I think I did. I did a lot of them. these guys and so i didn't know who was going to be on with johnny too carson did carson i think i
did carson i'm not sure but i think i did i did a lot of them and so you went to chicago as well
to do this no no earl cups and it had happened to be in la okay okay shooting here but he was out of
chicago okay so i go there and my heart kind of sinks because I see the other two guys that are in there are Charlton, who is a very conservative guy.
And the other guy was Jack Warner.
Another.
Another guy.
The one who used to wear the uniform around the lot.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So these guys are there.
Yeah.
And I'm thinking, oh, man, this is going to be interesting.
So they talked first and they were talking about old Hollywood and how the Warner the warner brothers got their thing going it was fascinating i was kind of
listening to it you know the popcorn business and all the stuff they ran into then it comes time for
me and the guy had told me he says i'm going to put you on at the very end i said fine i'll make
a short and sweet believe me so i i and i was sitting out there with Charlton and Jack when they were doing their thing.
So, I had met them.
But you knew Charlton, right?
I knew Charlton.
And I had actually met Jack Warner because I'd worked with him on different things.
Yeah.
So, I do my thing.
Yeah.
And I'm making my little announcements.
And I had made my own little signs with the addresses on that I was holding up.
And I hear this low guttural sound coming out from the side.
Rawr, rawr, rawr.
And I turn around and it's Jack Warner.
And he's about to have a stroke.
I mean, his face is all red.
His veins are popping out.
He's pissed.
Just because you're announcing.
Oh, that I'm doing this.
And he says, when I could finally understand him,
I stopped and looked at him and he says, when I first met you, he says, I thought you were a nice young man.
But now that I think of it, the name Bridges has an all too familiar ring.
Now, my dad was, you know, he was called up in front of the witch hunt.
Oh, yeah.
House Un-American Activities Committee. Activities Committee. Yeah. And he was ex up in front of the witch hunt. Oh yeah, House Un-American Activities Committee.
Activities Committee, yeah.
And he was exonerated finally.
But he was blacklisted for a bit?
He was blacklisted for a while, yeah.
So he said that to me and my sweat popped out of my mouth.
Oh my gosh.
And I said, what the?
And then.
Did you know at the time that's what he was referring to?
Oh yeah, immediately when he said that.
Yeah.
And I didn't want to get into all that with him,
but I, you know, what am I gonna do?
And then before I had to do anything,
Charlton speaks up, and he says,
"'Jack, Jack,' he says, "'this is America,' he says,
"'Boe has every right to free speech
"'and to peaceful protest, "'so let's listen to what he and to peaceful protest.
So let's listen to what he has to say.
And I thought, whoa, that was amazing.
And I've never forgot that, you know.
So it was beautiful.
And I think I had a chance later on to express that to him,
my appreciation for him standing up for me there.
Isn't that something?
That was cool, yeah.
Especially what we're going through now.
Oh, yeah.
The right to protest.
Oh, peaceful protest.
It's an American tradition.
So at that time, you were actively against the war
and doing everything you could.
And as a veteran, too.
Yeah, in the Coast Guard.
Yeah.
That time must have been pretty crazy.
I mean, you saw the whole shift.
That's what's interesting about your career, obviously, and your brother's as well, and
even your dad's, is that the entire movie business changed in the late 60s, right?
Because none of the old guys knew what to do anymore.
Yeah, and I went up for a movie that John Huston directed.
Oh, yeah?
I'm trying to think of it.
It was a boxing movie.
Oh, the one that-
That Jeff, my brother, did.
Yeah, Fat City.
Fat City.
And I went up for that to meet John Huston.
Yeah.
And he said, geez, and he had several meetings with him.
He says, guy, you're so great.
You know, I really love you in this role.
He says, but you're just probably you know five or six
years too old for it so I said well guess what I said meet my little brother and Jeff came in and
got that role now now you go speed ahead maybe 15 years later my career is kind of tanking a little
bit uh-huh and Jeff gets the the script for fabulous baker boys and they
wanted some big timers guys that were really popular at that time big stars to play his brother
and he told young steve clovis who wrote it at the age of 23 and he was 26 when he was directing
it first time yeah director and jeff said no i'd like my brother to play my brother. So I went in and I said, Jeff, don't blow this over me.
And he says, no, no, this will be good.
He says, you just go have lunch with Steve.
And so I went in and I took a little Polaroid picture that I had taken of my brother when he was 16 and me on the back of a flatbed truck.
Yeah. And I used to do a lot of what they call street theater in those days. that I had taken of my brother when he was 16, and me on the back of a flatbed truck.
I used to do a lot of what they call street theater in those days.
We'd just go and set up and do scenes and poetry.
When was that, in the 60s?
Yeah, and I used to take my little brother along with me
on a lot of these things.
And what we'd usually do is we'd go in
and then we'd stage a fight.
We'd fight each other to draw a crowd. And then when the crowd came around, we'd jump up on the track and do, you know, scenes from Come Blow Your Horn.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Just acting scenes?
Yeah.
And so I showed that picture to Steve, and I think that's what...
That's what did it?
Did it.
That's what sealed the deal?
Yeah.
When you say your career was tanking or that it kind of took a nosedive, like how long was that for in your mind?
I mean, like in what was-
Well, I was never really out of work.
Yeah, right.
That's what it doesn't look like.
But like I said to you, I got such a fast, big start.
Sure.
And it didn't last real long.
Yeah, yeah.
But I've always, you know, it's been up and down, but I've always worked.
And I remember my dad, toward the end of his life,
you know, his career, he was like saying,
geez, you know, there's so many things I wanted to do,
and my career, you know, is not what I'd hoped to be.
And I said, Dad, come on, man, you're an iconic actor.
I said, you've been in in you know yeah probably one of the
greatest westerns ever made high noon you had a huge television series i said what do you what
do you want man i said come on yeah so maybe you know maybe that's the way it is people you know
you always want a little bit more i i don't though i feel blessed i i feel so happy to be working in
this business i love and to make a living at it.
Well, it seems like even when you did some maybe not high-quality movies,
then you do Norma Rae, right?
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
And I was looking at some of these credits.
There are certain ones that are sort of kind of mind-blowing.
Oh, you worked with Richard Pryor.
Yeah, oh yeah.
On Greased Lightning.
Yeah, what a great guy he was.
I remember that movie.
What was that?
Was it about like stock car drivers or stunt drivers?
True story, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How was working with him?
Oh, great.
Yeah?
Wonderful guy, real quiet, soft-spoken,
which really surprised me.
And at that time, that was, let's see, what year was that?
So he was a huge comic then, right?
Yeah.
But he could do serious acting very well.
Oh, very well.
Yeah.
I thought that was a good movie.
Pam Greer.
Yeah, yeah.
I think it was a good movie.
Oh, Honky Tonk Freeway.
That's what I wanted to ask you.
I didn't think that was a very good movie.
No, no, of course not. But a lot of big time actors and John Schlesinger. That's what I wanted to ask you. I didn't think that was a very good movie. No, no, of course not.
But a lot of big time actors and John Schlesinger.
That's right.
Schlesinger directed it.
Great guy.
You know, really fun.
British guy, right?
Yeah.
Did some great movies.
Did Marathon Man.
Took us all to the Magic Castle for our seance thing for our wrap party.
But like that was, I guess, based on it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world or something,
or just one of those huge casted comedy kind of things.
Yeah, something like that.
A bunch of people stuck on a freeway.
Yeah.
But when you take a movie like that, are you thinking like,
well, yeah, I'm just going to take the job?
Are you looking at the director?
What do you do?
Yeah, I thought it had a chance to be kind of an interesting story i mean
for me the story is the most important element uh-huh but then it depends on kind of where you
are in your career i can't remember exactly where i was there maybe i needed a paycheck i don't know
but that plays into it right yeah but i'm sort of like it's sort of amazing when i start looking
through the credits like some of these directors like, like Stanley Kramer you worked with.
Yeah, another great one.
I don't even know what movie that was.
Do you?
Yeah, that was with Dick Van Dyke.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
What was it called?
Was it the Runner Stumbles?
Yeah, that's it.
And Dick Van Dyke's another funny guy who could do great serious acting.
Yeah, I thought he was very good in that.
Yeah, that movie didn't do business, but I thought it, yeah. And Dick Van Dyke's another funny guy who could do great serious acting. Yeah, and I thought he was very good at that. Yeah, that movie didn't do business,
but I thought it was decent.
But somebody like Stanley Kramer,
who's a big old-style director.
Yeah, you know, he told me,
Stanley, I was the first character
on screen in that movie.
And he said, you know,
it's important to me that it's silent you're you're a young lawyer
you're on your way to see your client who's in jail dick van dyke yeah and you're walking through
this small town and he says and i'm going to run the credits over it and i want it to be important
but there's no dialogue so i want you to conceive of something interesting you know to do so i had
this idea of stepping in dog shit in front of these kids
that are in this small town
and they see me
and I try to scrape it off
the side of the curb
he's oh yeah yeah
that's good
so we get in there
it's about five o'clock
in the morning
the sun is coming up
and he has to have
the crew guys go out and try to find dog shit at 5 o'clock in the morning.
They were not happy with me for the idea.
And in the end, they couldn't find any because it was too cold.
I guess the dogs.
They weren't shitting?
No, they weren't shitting out where anyone could see it.
So they had to get like Mars bars and melt them and put them down.
Which is a better way for them.
I think that part was cut out of the movie.
It didn't make the cut?
Fortunately.
Oh, come on.
Maybe not.
Maybe I have to go back and look at it.
You're just one of those ever-present guys in TV and in film.
You're always working. But there was never a point where you're like oh it's over you're like you're like oh god i'm never
gonna work again no no i always well you know i'd worry about you know where i was where i was
going and stuff but um no and i've always been fortunate to have a good story come along that I can get
attached with.
Another wonderful experience for me was, without warning, doing the James Brady story, you
know, the press secretary.
Oh, that's right.
That was a TV movie?
It was a great one.
I really enjoyed doing it.
Because you got to spend time with him?
Yes, and become lifelong friends.
He and Sarah are both gone now, but their family, the whole family,
was really important to me.
So when you do something like that,
he was the press secretary, right?
Yeah, but when I met him,
he was already in a wheelchair.
Sure, sure.
He'd been shot.
Yeah.
And what are the challenges of playing a real person,
especially someone who's still alive?
Well, it's a hand up because you got the person sitting there.
So you can see them and get a sense of who they are.
Mimic him, get the vibe.
Well, I had his family read the whole script for me,
including Jim and his wife.
So you stayed friends throughout his life.
And you played Nixon too, didn't you?
Yeah, that was interesting because he's not one of my favorite presidents of my lifetime.
I would imagine in the 60s it would be, yeah.
Yeah, and I remember I was doing research on him,
and my parents and my wife and I were down in San Diego for some other event or something.
We were all in the same car.
We're heading back up north.
And I said, do you guys mind if I drop off at the Nixton Library?
Yeah.
Because I want to get some research material.
And they have life-size things of all the big honchos from the different countries
at that time and I wanted to see those and everything.
The arc of his life.
Yeah, and I said, it's not gonna take me long,
so you guys don't even have to come in.
And my dad says, no, no, I'd like to come in.
I said, well, if you do come in, I said,
I don't want you to say a word to people in there.
Your dad.
I said this to my dad about why I'm there and then of course the minute we
get in there, oh my son is playing Richard Nixon.
So then you got the special tour probably.
Yeah.
And my concept on playing Nixon was called Kissinger and Nixon.
It was a small piece of time during the Vietnam War between those two guys.
Ron Silver played Kissinger.
But when I did it, my decision was to look as much like Nixon as I possibly could.
Because I'd seen the other guys that had played Nixon, and none of them went for that.
Right.
Full makeup.
Yeah.
So it was almost like Kabuki.
I mean, all I had was my eyes.
Oh, you did the nose and everything? And Ron was
the same way with Kissinger.
Full makeup. Oh, yeah.
Everything. It would take me two or three hours.
I'd fall asleep in a chair and wake up
like Richard Nixon. I thought they
did a great job. But unfortunately,
my first scene was
Nixon dives into a swimming pool with
all that makeup on. I was so afraid it was just going to hang off my face like a horror
movie.
Scary Nixon. Well, he was scary, but in another way, yeah.
Yeah, but it didn't. It hung in there.
Do you feel good about the performance, all in all?
Yeah, I like that movie. That's another director that I
worked a few times with and it was a really great
director, Dan Petrie. There's not a big difference
in terms of how you
approach a TV movie
and a regular movie, right?
No, not really, no. No?
No, I mean, maybe a
little bit because you realize on
a big screen, you know, the subtleties
come through a little better.
Sure.
Stage is a lot different.
How much stage work did you do?
I've done quite a bit.
Yeah.
Recently, I went back to Broadway and did How to Succeed.
Oh, yeah?
That was quite a jump doing dancing and singing.
Was it great?
I had to train my ass off.
Oh, yeah, it was great.
I did it with Nick Jonas jonas one time and uh and uh darren chris i thought
you were great too in the uh the descendants i love that one yeah with george what a wonderful
man he is is he oh yeah he seems like it i want him to be a wonderful man he is i mean i couldn't
say i've never heard anybody really say a bad word about him, which is not surprising.
I've worked with him twice now.
Yeah.
And he's just great.
Yeah.
He seems like, he's one of those guys where, and I imagine you've seen some of them growing up where, like, he's a real movie star, that guy.
Well, yeah, but that's not the effect you get.
Right.
But he seems like a decent.
Yeah. But he seems like a decent... Yeah, and he's one of those...
He's so friendly and down to earth
that you work with him for a couple of days
and he's like a good bud.
Right, that seems like it.
Yeah, he's real nice.
And he's always looking out for who he's working with.
Oh, yeah?
He's great.
So now, what's your relationship with your brother like now?
Is this good?
Oh, yeah. I mean, he's my best friend oh yeah oh yeah it's I love him I love hearing that yeah it's it's so nice and you're happy for
each other's success and yeah and I don't torture him anymore like I used to
when he was little all I had to do was was yeah I'd point my finger at him just like this and kind of wiggle it at his face.
And he'd go ape shit.
He'd just go crazy and cry and everything else.
And then when my parents told me to stop it, when they realized what I was doing, then I'd move my hand down underneath the table.
And like I'm doing it to you now.
I'm wiggling my finger, but I'm looking at you,
but you can see,
tell him by the way
I'm looking with my eyes at you
that I'm doing it.
Yeah.
And he'd go,
ah!
Why?
Because it was threatening to him?
You thought you were going to hit him
or it was just creepy?
No, it was just creepy,
I guess, annoying.
And then he,
but he paid me back.
He did?
When he was about 18,
he jumped on top of me
and tickled me until I peed in my pants.
Oh, that was it?
Yeah, then I had to stop all my torturing.
And you both have kids, right?
Older kids now.
I have five.
He has three.
The cousins love each other.
They all hang out.
That's sweet.
And is your sister still around?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, she has boys.
And all the cousins really hang with each other and have a great time.
It's a beautiful thing.
I like that you guys are friends.
I'm going to talk to him, you know.
Oh, when are you going to talk to him?
I think I'm going to talk to him next week or something.
Oh, good.
You know what you should do?
What?
Is don't say anything about it.
But when he sits down in the chair, just go like this.
Wiggle the finger at him like that?
Yeah, just like this.
And don't pull it down
until he understands what you're doing.
I wonder if he will.
Oh, are you kidding?
He'll know exactly what you're doing.
Are you guys,
you think you're ever going to do another movie together?
Oh, we'd like to, yeah.
How does this happen?
Let me ask you a question about, because I just, I mean, I did look at, I had to look
at the whole filmography.
How, it says that you were in Jerry Maguire uncredited.
That was stupid.
What does that mean?
How did that happen?
Well, it was dumb.
It was dumb.
I wanted to, I wanted to work with Tom Cruise.
Yeah.
Because he was young and hot. Yeah. And I just wanted to see what he brought to the table Tom Cruise. Yeah. Because he was young and hot.
Yeah.
And I just wanted to see what he brought to the table.
Uh-huh.
And there wasn't much money involved.
And then they got into a big dispute about how they were going to bill me.
Uh-huh.
And I thought, you know, this is not why I'm in this movie.
Yeah.
I don't care, really.
So I just told my agent.
I said, just tell them not to bill me.
I don't care, you know.
Uh-huh.
And now it's a movie because I had such a small part,
but it was a very pivotal part of that movie.
So I have people coming up saying,
my word is stronger than oak and all the shit I said in the movie.
And then loads of people say, why didn't you take credit?
And I feel like such a jerk.
I should have.
people say why didn't you take credit you know and i feel like such a jerk i i should have you just and what was it what did you find when you worked with tom cruise what was your curiosity
was your curiosity how did that pan out oh oh he was he was excellent i i thought he his uh
work ethic was very strong yeah very. Very impressive. Charismatic guy.
Yes.
Yeah.
Just great.
And my son in that movie, Jerry O'Connell.
Uh-huh.
Oh, yeah.
I was doing a movie up in this weird little, I mean, town way out of the boonies in North
Ontario recently, just about a week or two ago.
Oh, really?
Called North Bay, Ontario.
Yeah.
Doing a Hallmark Christmas movie.
Yeah.
And who should come up about one o'clock in the morning
to our thing with Jerry O'Connell.
And he says, Dad!
There's a lot of movies shooting in that little town.
He's got a series now.
I forget what it's called.
Yeah, a lot of stuff shoots up there.
That's hilarious.
And you hadn't seen him in years.
No, no.
It was good to see him.
And there's some other interesting credits here for you.
There's these Japanese animation things.
Yeah, that was fun.
I did two of those with my daughter, Emily.
And how did they come to you?
I don't know.
Someone just called.
Oh, yeah?
Asked if I would do it.
Yeah.
I've done a few animated things.
Yeah, it's fun, right?
Yeah, it's great.
Because you can lean into it
and no one's looking at you
get the voice right
was your mother an actress too?
yeah
she was
she
she was in college
yeah
and then
when my dad
like I said
was a struggling actor
in New York
she had to go out
and get the paycheck
yeah
to do any job she could
right
so that
she kind of gave it up.
Yeah.
But I put her to work in a movie I did, a couple of movies, actually.
And I directed my dad, too, in a few movies.
And she would play his wife one time.
In fact, he threw her down some stairs in a movie.
That you directed?
Yeah.
That's crazy.
She dies at the bottom of the stairs.
She had a death scene.
Oh, my God. Was that a TV movie? Yeah. That's crazy. She dies at the bottom of the stairs. She had a death scene. Oh, my God.
Was that a TV movie?
Yeah.
What movie was that?
Oh, shit.
What was it called?
Secret Sins of the Father.
Oh.
Yeah.
It turned out okay, actually.
And you casted your parents?
And I had two of my sons in it.
And then I did a Disney movie, which became their Thanksgiving special for many years,
called The Thanksgiving Promise.
It was a coming-of-age story that my son Jordan, who's now a very successful actor,
he played Frankie Rizzoli in Rizzoli and Isles.
It went for seven, eight years.
Oh, yeah?
And he was 12 then, and he played the lead character my brother was in it
my entire family was in that movie and the thanksgiving movie the thanksgiving promise
and that's a disney movie yeah and they ran it for every year yeah tv movie uh-huh yeah and it
became sort of a mainstay yeah for them for thanksgiving that's nice it still pops up everyone
so residual trek yeah yeah so how many uh how many of the cousins and the sibling,
or the kid that generation of Bridges are acting now?
Well, I run down my kids.
Yeah.
Because they're all involved one way or another.
My oldest, Casey, is a documentary filmmaker.
He also runs an organization called Tools for Peace.
If anyone wants to Google that, it's a great organization.
They have schools. They have programs in schools teaching kids that, it's a great organization. Wow. They have schools.
They have programs in schools teaching kids compassion,
you know, and stuff like that.
It's great.
That's nice.
But he also makes documentary films.
Then my son Jordan, I told you about him.
He's an actor.
And then my son Dylan is a director of marketing at Universal for all their social media.
So he's on a roll, that dude.
Oh, yeah?
They're just killing it.
Yeah, yeah.
You know?
Yeah, yeah.
With the big movies.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
And he's a young guy.
Are they doing all the superhero movies?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Well, they have Fast and Furious.
Oh, right.
That one.
Straight Outta Compton.
I mean, you know, they're just...
Oh, yeah.
That was a great movie. Yeah, right, that one. Straight Outta Compton. I mean, you know, they're just... That was a great movie.
Yeah, one giant hit after another.
And then my daughter, Emily, I told you about her.
She's a playwright with me and an actress
and just got her master's in arts and cultural leadership,
which is providing the arts to underserved communities.
So she does that as well as being an actor.
And then my son, Zeke, who's the youngest, is just beginning his thing as an actor.
And we did recently, we did a reading of Johnny Got His Gun.
Do you know that piece?
Dalton Trumbo?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
About the young soldier with no arms and legs.
Right, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Straight shot off.
Yeah.
My son was great in it.
Yeah.
And we did it as a two-hander.
I was kind of the narrator.
Oh, wow.
Mm-hmm.
So it's a family business.
Yeah.
That's amazing.
Well, it was great talking to you.
It's a real honor to talk to you.
And I'll say hi to your brother for you.
Wiggle the finger at him, man.
I'm going to wiggle the finger.
I'm just happy that there's no bitterness or jealousy.
And that never happened. No, because
you know, as I say,
sometimes I'll get mistaken
for my brother. I'll say,
Hi, Jeff. I said, No, no, no.
I'm the pretty one.
Good.
Great talking to you.
Good talking to you. All right, good talking to you, Mark.
Genuine guy, that Bo Bridges.
Nice guy, professional, and still going.
Just doing the work.
So, Jeff Bridges.
We all know Jeff Bridges. We've all grown up with Jeff Bridges Jeff Bridges
was always just over there in a movie through our entire lives me anyways but you know he's been at
it since he was a kid last picture he's always been there and he's done some of the great characters
that we love many of you Lebowski fans love the dude i'm a big fan of cutter's way and the new one
the new one the big fire movie uh only the brave with josh brolin and miles teller opens uh friday
october 20th and i saw it and it's compelling and it's exciting it's got some stellar fucking acting in it and the fire
does an amazing job as well there's great fire in it this is me talking to jeff bridges
so your brother was here.
Yeah, oh, cool.
And he told me to do this.
Oh, yeah, I'll tell you all about that.
To do the finger.
Oh, very good.
Yeah, but you're too active.
His was more subtle.
He was just as simple like this.
Yeah.
But then he'd get very subtle, like he could be just kind of resting on a table,
and it's about his expression,
you know, he would have an expression.
Then at dinner table, he could have his hands on his lap.
Yeah.
And he could just look at me, and I know that he was pointing at me under the table, and
it would drive me absolutely crazy.
And I go, stop it!
They say, what's wrong?
My parents would say, what do you mean?
He said, he's pointing at me under the table.
Bo, stop pointing at Jack.
I'm not pointing at him.
And I would know he was because of the way he looked at me.
Right.
So it was just some sort of annoying.
Yeah.
It wasn't frightening.
It wasn't intimidating.
It was just mind.
He was mind fucking you.
Mind fucking, yeah.
Or he would hover.
He would take his hand and get very close to my face, but not touch me.
Yeah, yeah.
Stuff like that.
Yeah, and he was older.
How much older?
Eight years.
So it was intimidating.
He was intimidating, but wonderful.
I mean, I see all the guitars you got around here.
So you can imagine being a young kid, and out of your older brother's room pours all this chuck berry little rich he was the
guy oh man he had all that you know yeah i mean i you know i i feel um fortunate for uh you know
having the beatles and dylan but yeah bob man he grew up with a whole oh man what an era right he
grew up with the whole other thing oh yeah eight yeah. Eight years apart. So you're like, you know, so he grew up with Buddy Holly and all that.
And then you, like, come and you're coming to, like, when you're blossoming, it's just
a completely different scene.
Oh, yeah.
I turned him on to the Beatles and Dylan.
No, you turned him on?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wait, he stuck in the old groove?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like I do.
No shit.
Like, you know, are you stuck in the groove? I mean, do, yeah, like I do. No shit.
Are you stuck in the groove?
I mean, what music do you like?
I'm 54.
I like all kinds of music, you know, but I grew up in the crashing wave of your generation, so that was what defined me.
But when I was in high school, it was Zeppelin and, you know, Skinner, ZZ Top.
So we got here a little bit early to the show and I was turning Gene on who's younger than
you and I said, do you know who the Fleetwoods are?
Do you know who the Fleetwoods are?
Do you know who they are?
Not Fleetwood Mac, but the Fleetwoods.
I know the name.
What song?
Give me the hit.
Give me the hit.
Give me the hit.
And I'm Mr. Blue.
You know that song?
Yeah.
So that was pouring out of Bo's room, too, those kind of songs.
Oh, that's great.
Oh, great, great.
Do you remember the one that struck you the hardest?
Was it Chuck Berry?
Was it?
Chuck, it's hard to beat Chuck Berry.
Right, yeah.
I mean, it really is.
Gene, you know, represents Brian Wilson, you know, on the whole Beach Boys.
This is your, the woman who came with me you know on the whole beach yeah yeah yeah so we
were just talking about chuck berry and all their early influences were you know chuck berry and
sure yeah chuck berry little richard man oh yeah great james brown you don't get you know james i
remember seeing james when i was a kid but it's funny i listen to some of your music it seems
like it's sort of country driven almost a almost a little petty-ish in places.
It's pretty eclectic.
You know, when you said petty, we just got to say, oh, man.
Just devastating.
What a...
God.
You know, yeah.
It's great music.
Did you go see him the last...
No, I missed him.
I just saw him second to the last night.
Oh, man.
And like I said to my audience,
it looked like he was having a
great time yeah that's what i hear you know it was sad so sad oh man so like but you you play
pretty seriously oh oh so i was saying you know um i got this big break with um crazy heart you
know this movie yeah the great movie and uh it's funny i um i turned that down for a couple of years you know it was kicking
around that long yeah he came to me you know and um i said well there's there were no music
attached to it you know so i thought well there's no music you know that no matter how good the
script is yeah it's going to be you know no no good the music's not good so i kept turning it
down and also uh there's a kind of another
secret reason that i was turning it down even to myself i think what i realized later and that was
you know when things are in the dream zone you're kind of safe right which means like like well like
you know you can't fail you can't succeed you can't fail but you know you're cool because it's
in your mind you can you know taste it and sure but, but you're cool because it's in your mind. You can taste it. Sure.
But I've always wanted to make a movie about music.
Yeah.
It was great.
Yeah.
But to have it really come into focus, and we did when my buddy T-Bone Burnett, we go
back 30 years.
You've known him that long?
We met on Heaven's Gate.
Yeah.
He did the music arranging for Heaven's Gate?
No.
That was David Mansfield.
Right.
Another buddy of T-Bone's.
What was T-Bone doing on that?
T-Bone, I like to tease him about this.
He played my maid in the movie.
Oh, my God.
He did an apron and he kind of sweeping up the barn and stuff.
But Christofferson, who's the star of that movie, invited all these great musicians from T-Bone, Ronnie Hawkins.
Sure.
You know.
Yeah.
All kinds of.
Any of the band guys?
Well, Steve Bruton, you know, I don't know if you know him.
He was, you know, Steve Bruton, an incredible guitar player, dear, dear friend of T-Bone's.
Uh-huh.
And was so instrumental in uh making crazy heart
you know the movie crazy art was dedicated to him he died right after the movie came out he was on
your record though wasn't he yeah uh he's on my record he you know he wrote a lot of the record
you know a lot of songs and crazy heart too yeah he had rosanne cash on a song and uh sam uh what's her name uh sam phillips yeah t-bones x mark rebo oh yeah mark rebo are you
a fan man oh gosh man his some of his solo stuff have you done his solo stuff isn't it great oh
all that the standards that that's one of standards that he does oh yeah you have that but he can
travel with that guitar oh he does what i really. So anyway, you know, Bone, I run into Bone and he says, what do you think about this
script, Crazy Heart?
And I said, why do you ask when there's no music?
He goes, oh, that's the easy part.
I said, are you interested?
He says, well, I'll do it if you'll do it.
I said, you're kidding me.
He says, no.
So there goes the dream and now it's becoming reality.
Right.
And it's that, you know, that fear.
and now it's becoming reality.
And it's that, you know, that fear.
The image that comes to mind is a wide receiver going out for that perfectly thrown pass
and you just pray that your hands are going to catch that thing
and you're going to do justice to the throw.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
You do justice to what you've been given.
Right.
And it was, you know, so frightening.
With T-Bone from the beginning,
the concept was you were going to do it.
You were going to do the music.
You were going to do the singing.
Well, you know, Bones said,
oh, yeah, man, the music's the easy part.
I said, what are you talking about?
He says, oh, yeah.
He said, you know, that's what I do.
I can, you know, music will come up with stuff.
We'll get Bruton and his author to come.
I said, oh, man, this could be just too much fun to not do.
Who cares if it fails?
This is too, you know.
Yeah.
So we got together.
I brought my ancient friend.
We go back to the fourth grade, a guy named John Goodwin.
Yeah.
Sure.
Who wrote kind of the title song in a way to Crazy Heart, Hold On You.
That's based on a, Bone put some words in there too,
but it's basically a Johnny Goodwin tune.
But we got together
and we just started jamming on tunes
and hanging out.
It was so great.
And you've been playing a long time.
Yeah, since I was a kid, 12 or so.
Right, because your brother,
it's funny because he's like,
yeah, I had the guitar around
and then he just took off. Was it your dad's guitar? Your brother, it's funny because he's like, yeah, I had the guitar around and I never,
and then he just took off.
Was it your dad's guitar or was it your guitar?
Well, my dad had a Goya.
Oh, yeah.
And he had some kind of a finger infection or something, couldn't play.
So I played on that.
And then Bo had this white Dan Electro.
Right.
An original Dan Electro.
Yeah.
The weird cutaway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Groovy guitar groovy vinyl on the side sure yeah yeah
and so they're making those again yeah yeah they reissued that stuff yeah and so you took to it
oh yeah i and i you know i started just you know you learn if you know you know the cool thing
about guitars it's got those you know the graph you know it tells you point little points where
you put your fingers oh the chords yeah in the songbook yeah in the songbook yeah and then like you know i learned
you know a few couple of three chords and then i started to write right away and that's kind of
where i started to just make up stuff before we stop talking about crazy art you won an oscar
yeah yeah that was a long time coming jeff right oh well thank you but uh you know you don't think about it like
that no i mean it you know god that was pretty wild it's great oh yeah it's better you got that
than the lifetime achievement oh yes right yeah that's true too like you know you don't want to
be one of those guys he's 90 like we never gave him one that's right give him the big one yeah
exactly no that was very it was very cool. Yeah.
It was great, man.
You've been doing great work for so many years.
I can't.
Thank you.
Well, there's just so many moments in my life.
Like that American Heart movie, that's one of those movies that I love you in.
You got ripped, got in good shape for that one.
Oh, yeah.
I'll say, yeah.
And like Cutter's Way, I've seen many times.
Oh, yeah.
Wasn't John great?
John Hurt.
Oh, my God.
We lost him recently, but he should have got some award.
He's so good.
So many guys that are just so good that you don't see it.
Right.
Another guy that reminds me that I worked with early on was Timothy Bottoms in Last Picture Show.
Way back.
Yeah.
And then he did that.
Was he in the paper chase?
He was in the paper chase.
And then he kind of disappeared.
Yeah, yeah, he kind of, you know,
dropped out of the movie biz.
Yeah, he was very sweet,
very natural in Last Picture Show.
Yeah, Johnny got his gun.
He was in that as well.
But yeah, picture,
and he was,
if you say natural,
it was like he's not an actor.
He's just there doing it.
Well, how did that,
how did you guys work with Bogdanovich?
How did that all come together?
Because that was your first big movie, right?
Yeah, that was my, that was my second movie.
But you did some shit as a kid, both you and your brother, because your dad's Lloyd Bridges.
You did Sea Hunt.
We did Sea Hunt.
Oh, I was, you know.
What else did you do?
Some weird TV shows?
Oh, I did a bunch of TV shows.
My parents, especially my father, was so gung-ho about showbiz.
Right.
He loved it.
Oh, he loved it.
All aspects of it.
You know, what we're doing here,
signing autographs, doing the movies.
And, you know, my first part,
officially, was when I was six months old.
Yeah.
And my parents were visiting a friend of theirs,
John Cromwell was shooting a movie called
The Company She Keeps with Jane Greer,
one of the incredible actors.
And they needed a baby.
And they needed a baby,
and they gave Jane me,
and I was kind of a happy baby.
They wanted a crying baby.
My mom said, oh, just pinch him.
He'll cry. Pinch me, and I cried. They wanted a crying baby. My mom said, oh, just pinch him. He'll cry.
Pinch me.
I cried.
Oh, see that method.
And now we cut like 30 years later,
and I'm doing a movie with Jane Greer,
the redo of a wonderful movie that she did with Mitchum
called Out of the Past.
Ours was called Against All Odds.
Who was the female lead in that?
In mine, Rachel Ward.
I remember that. Oh, man. I love that female lead in that? In mine, Rachel Ward. I remember that.
Oh, man.
That was, I love that original,
and the remake's good, too,
but did you watch the original to study?
I didn't, I watched it.
I didn't study it, you know,
but that is a real masterpiece.
Kirk Douglas.
Kirk Douglas, Mitchum, and Jane Greer.
Jane Greer.
And Jane Greer, man, that's who it was.
So intense, dude.
And so stylus. You know, there's no, like, now, you know. Scary. Just like Jane Greer, man. That's who it was. So intense, dude. And so stylus.
Yeah.
Scary.
Just like back in those days, some of the acting seems kind of stylish.
Uh-huh.
Some kind of style or something.
So did you say to her, did she remember you as a child?
Oh, yeah.
So of course we teased about it and I'd say to her, we're doing against all odds.
She's playing her character in the originals, her mother,
and she's playing Rachel Ward's mother.
And I said to Jane, I said, you know, Jane,
I'm having some trouble emoting in this scene.
How about a little pinch?
You know, it was fun to harken back.
Did she get it?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's so wild that you were,
that just not only with your brother
with the music but generationally your experience personal experience in show business like your
dad's generation there must have been a lot of characters around i tried to kind of get it out
of your brother but he said your dad didn't hang out exclusively you know there wasn't too many
showbiz guys around my my my dad didn't do that too much.
But as I was just coming over here, I was talking to my publicist, Gene, and I'm going
to, tomorrow night, I'm going to my 50th high school reunion.
Wow.
And you went to high school here?
I went to uni.
Yeah.
You know, uni, high school, they're on Barrington and, you know, in Westwood.
Where is it?
In Westwood? It's in Westwood, yeah. It's there on Barrington and, you know. It's in, where is it, in Westwood?
It's in Westwood, yeah.
It's nice to go when you've achieved some things.
Well, we'll see.
It's going to be pretty wild.
But I was telling Jean, I said, guess who was in my class, you know.
And I said, do you know who John Raitt is?
And she said, no.
I say, you know who Bonnie Raitt is?
And I said, yeah, John Raitt is Bonnie's father.
John established all of the great musicals, you know, Carousel, Oklahoma, on Broadway.
Oh, really?
You didn't know that.
No, I didn't know that.
Yeah, John Raitt.
Yeah.
That's where Bonnie gets those pipes.
Yeah, yeah.
So she was in my class.
Bonnie was in my class.
Bonnie was in your class.
And my girlfriend, Kaya Keel, her father is Howard Keel, who did all of those
parts
that a lot of the parts that John
did in the movies. Howard did it in the movies.
In the musicals?
Yeah, they were in my class.
Jan and Dean went to
my high school. A little older?
They were a little older. They were about Bo's age.
But they had all those hits, man.
In high school. You know, a hits, man, in high school.
You know, a lot of those hits in high school.
Can you imagine having that stuff going on when you're in high school?
That's the time for it to go on.
You keep in touch with many people from high school?
Yeah, yeah.
A lot of my dear friends are still high school guys.
Really?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's great.
Isn't that wonderful?
Yeah, you seem to have survived show business pretty well.
Yeah.
I mean, you don't live here anymore at all?
I live in Santa Barbara now.
Oh, you do?
Yeah, I got shook out with that earthquake, you know, 20-some years ago.
Oh, really?
You've been down there that long?
Or up there?
Which is it, up or down?
It's up, yeah.
It's pretty up there, though, right?
Oh, gorgeous.
Yeah, we love it up there.
So, now, tell me about like how because i tried
to get it out of your brother because he told me that well you did last picture show you were both
sort of doing tv and doing stuff and you were both acting right but he's a little older you're a
little younger he's he seems jealous of your guitar playing ability and then uh you start acting and
you get this break in uh last picture show and he said that he had gone out for fat city oh yeah
did he did he he says he got me the part right right yeah yeah i like you know he no you know
we're you know people often ask do we compete and stuff not really we're on the same team you know
we root for each other you know he always mentions me i always mention him try to get each other you
know one of our teammates a gig.
It could have gone another way.
You could have Cain enabled it.
But you guys, you love each other.
But you mentioned Fat City.
Yeah.
So I think he did his agent work and got me to see John Houston. And my agent calls me and says, John Houston to to see uh john houston john houston yeah and my agent calls me said john
houston wants to see you yeah i say really oh gosh okay um all right where and what time and
stuff and he says well it's in madrid spain yeah and um i understand he wants to meet you at the
prado there and it's uh tomorrow or something really like this.
And I'm like, you know, a young kid, you know, in my early 20s.
I said, okay, you know, adventure's on.
So off I go and I'm laying, I'm checking into the hotel.
They flew you out to Spain.
They pulled me out to Spain.
And I meet this beautiful girl in the lobby while I'm checking in.
Yeah.
And we start talking and she says, have you been to Spain? I said, no. And she says, well, I'll take you out. Yeah, yeah. So I'm checking in. Yeah. And we start talking and she says, have you been to Spain?
I said, no.
And she says, well, I'll take you out.
Yeah, yeah.
So I say, great.
So I go out that night.
I wake up the next morning just, you know, I got to be at the Prado at 11 or something.
I wake up at, you know, 10 or something and I just puke my guts out.
I've got a terrible case of food poisoning.
Oh, yeah. And here I have to go to the Prado, you know. Yeah. puke my guts out. I've got a terrible case of food poisoning.
And here I've got to go to the Prado.
So I'm going to the Prado.
John is,
you know, not talking about the movie,
the last quiz. This is, you know,
and I'm going,
you know, puking
in my mouth and swallowing my puke.
I don't want to puke on the Velazquez, man.
Or Johnny Houston.
Or Joe, well, that would be, yeah,
I would rather go there, you know, one of his pockets.
But no, I'm doing my best to hold it.
We don't talk about the movie at all.
I think, well, I didn't get the part.
I go home and I'm dying, man.
I can't speak Spanish.
And the door knocks in my hotel room.
I crawl on my hands and knees, open the door.
And who's there but James Mason.
What?
And we had done a movie just prior to this.
Oh, we did that.
Called The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go.
What happened to that movie?
Anyway, James saves my life.
I mean, he gets me a shot.
But that movie was...
Wait, so I didn't mean to interrupt.
So he takes you to the doc?
No, he just, you know, I was paralyzed on the floor.
And he says, oh, but what's wrong with you, Jeff?
And he got, you know, the doc came, gave me a shot.
And he basically saved my life.
I wouldn't have won.
I would have died.
Oh, yeah, you got all dehydrated.
But, you know, a few, maybe a year before that,
I did a movie, I think it might have been
a right-after-picture show,
called The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go.
It sounds like one of those crazy 60s, 70s movies.
It was a totally crazy, weird movie.
Written, directed, produced,
and also starring Burgess Meredith.
Burgess, young Burgess Meredith.
Yes, pretty young.
He was pretty old at the time, or I thought he was anyway.
And what was that groovy movie?
That was about this guy, James Mason, who played this Chinese-Mexican.
A Chinese-Mexican?
Yeah, he played a Chinese-Mexican.
Burgess played a Chinese guy, too.
And it was about this weapons dealer who just changes, like, boom, overnight.
He's struck and says, I want to make good things.
And I play a Vietnam vet.
And it was such a wild scene because, well, a couple of things.
First of all, Burgess was, you know, such an incredible cat.
Yeah.
He said, you know, you play guitar.
Let's make your character a guy who writes rock opera.
Write some songs.
So he had me writing songs for the movie and stuff.
Yeah. rock opera. Write some songs. So he had me writing songs for the movie and stuff. Then after the movie
was over,
a few years, quite a few years later,
we kept up our relationship. He
also turned me on to John Lilly. Do you know
who John Lilly is? The dolphin guy?
The dolphin. He also invented the
isolation tank. Oh, sure. Okay.
So this is some hippie shit.
Yeah, big time. So Sue and I
were guinea pigs for him.
John would put us in there and then take notes.
You met John.
Oh, yeah.
Part of the study?
Through Burgess.
Part of the study, man.
Part of the study.
The late 60s, early 70s?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you're floating in the tanks.
You got wires on you?
No, we're just floating in the tanks.
The first thing you do, John instructed you get out three times you just lie down and you get out you know
what the tank is it's like you know it's yeah but like about a thousand pounds of salt in this yeah
kind of coffin box right and it's just one person per tank one person per tank but you float and
yeah you know the the water is 98.6, your ears are underwater.
The idea is what happens to consciousness when you have no input, you know?
Oh, dig it, yes.
And it's pretty wild what happens because what you find out is how much you're projecting.
Right.
How much you are supplying everything.
To what you think is reality.
What you think is reality. What you think is reality and like so many things, you know, our brain, you know,
you get paranoid, you know, paranoia is really, I mean, it's right there, man, all the fucking
time.
Sure, man.
So, the first thing I do, I'm in there, I get out three times and I'm lying in this
thing and this thing is there and I say, okay, here I am, I just fucking relax.
John Lilly, he looks so weird he was in that weird
blue jumpsuit and did he have breasts it looked like he had breasts what's in this water am I
gonna have breasts is it am I am I turning into what's he wait a minute that's just my you know
that's my mind you know turning into a dolphin yeah so that's the kind, you know, that's my mind. Turning into a dolphin. Yeah. So that's the kind of, you know, thing.
And then when you come out, of course, all the reality kind of rushes in.
And it's harder to see how much projection you're supplying because the screen is all, you know, complex with everything.
But we're constantly doing that.
So that was a mind blower that successfully altered your consciousness.
A big mind blower.
Yeah, that was a big mind blower.
Were you a drug guy in the 60s?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Did your share of acid?
Yeah.
Did all of that stuff.
What'd you get out of it?
What'd I get out of acid specifically?
Well, I overdosed, which was problematic,
which kind of makes me want to not do it ever again.
But it's that old thing about it's open.
Now, you must open.
You've done it.
So open, open.
And so I went to this party, and it was a birthday party, and we had some acid in the punch, and we had a good time.
And then my friend, his birthday it was, he comes over the next morning, and he's giggling.
I said, what are you giggling?
What's in that jar?
I said, what is it?
He says, it's the dregs of the punch, man.
So he says, let's do it.
I said, okay.
So we split this. chug a lug this thing
and it was just too strong man it was like you know and it's during the day now oh and i fell
back it was it happened too fast and open open open i can't open oh and it was just terrible man
and i just you know fell on the floor just a quivering
fetal thing and then you have to do that for 10 hours oh yeah and i just said oh no you know but
but um you know of course it's uh you know opens up um opens up things yeah sure and uh
you know encourages you um to maybe see things that things aren't exactly as you yeah it sounds
like both of those things are like that but the paranoia thing i mean like that came in handy in
that arlington road movie right well that's you know it all everything finally comes in handy you
know that i love that movie because i like that stuff that was a good one and uh um tim robbins
tim robbins we got down to the end you You know the end. You saw the ending.
Yeah.
And we're getting about ready to shoot the ending.
Yeah.
And the studio says, we want you to shoot a happier ending.
I said, what the fuck are you talking about?
That's the whole point of the thing.
What's the point of the movie? Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And they say, so they wanted to do it.
They got the, they're funding the thing you know so um our director um
mark pellington huh yeah so mark pellington said we're going to shoot the happy ending yeah but
we're going to shoot it really bad which was a bold thing to do because that could have been yeah
because that could have been our thing but we shot it you know there's no it poorly enough that they went with the other ending.
So after Last Picture Show and doing all this stuff, it just seems that, did you learn on the job?
Did you study acting at some point?
Because you have a lot of range.
Yeah, my father, he taught me all the basics.
When we were doing Sea Hunt, he'd have, sitting on his bed, going over the lines.
And he would say, now, you know, make it sound real.
You know, make it sound like it's happening for the first time.
And don't just wait till I stop talking to say your line.
You can listen to what I'm saying and let that inform what you're saying.
And now go out of the room.
And when you come back, I want you to do
a completely different.
Yeah.
And I do that.
So he, you know,
worked me as a, you know.
He did it with Bo, too.
And Bo was, you know,
right after my dad,
Bo was my next acting coach.
You know, he would,
you know, we'd work on scenes
and stuff, you know,
for agents
and this kind of thing.
And one of the challenges
for an actor
is getting your audience.
You know, where are you going to perform when you're just starting?
So Bo came up with this brilliant idea.
He would rent a flatbed truck.
Yeah.
And we would work up some scenes.
Yeah.
And we would pull into a supermarket.
Uh-huh.
And then our father taught us how to stage fight, how to fake fight.
So we would put on a fight.
Yeah.
And people would gather around. It looked very real. Yeah. People gather around when they're how to fake fight. So we would put on a fight, and people would gather around.
It looked very real.
People gather around when they're starting to break up,
and we'd go, no, it's a show!
And we'd jump up on the flatbed, and we would do our scenes
until the cops would come.
And then we'd try to incorporate the cops in some sort of improv.
They didn't like that too much.
They'd get pissed.
We'd go, no, we're out of here, officer! and we'd go off to the next supermarket do our fight you know we get up and we played the
supermarket gorilla theater yeah that's right yeah that's trippy man but that was what was the point
of that just for fun well no for for training oh really well like yeah work on your scenes man you
know and you have an audience and, you know, we would do.
What scenes were they?
We were working on particularly Bo and I were working on a scene from Catcher in the Rye.
Oh, were they going to do it?
Did they do a movie?
No, I don't think he's ever allowed the movie to do it, but that was a movie.
We were working on it for my agent.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. And so Bo and I, we'd go into the agent
and we'd go into the agent's office
and we would talk for a second
and then Bo would say,
I gotta go take a leak.
He would go out to the bathroom
and the idea that we had planned
was that when he would come back in,
that's when the scene would start.
Oh, I get it, yeah.
We wouldn't say,
okay, now we're gonna do our scene.
No, we was just gonna be a blend
of real thing.
And then they would realize.
So he came in and he was playing loose.
Do you remember the book?
He was like this.
I can't remember.
I can't remember the scene, but it had to do with fencing foils.
And I can't quite remember.
But it was a scene from the book.
But did it work?
Yeah, man.
It got me the agent.
And, you know. First agent agent your first one uh yeah my very first one how long did you stay with that guy uh i stayed with him for a while for quite a
while i can't remember you know a long time 15 20 years now was your dad thrilled that you guys
were both in the game oh yeah he loved it you know i fought with my dad you know because i
who you know what young teenage kid wants to do what their parents want them to do you know i said no i want to i'm into the music
you know yeah painting art and stuff he goes jeff don't be ridiculous you know that's what's so
wonderful about acting is you get to use all of your talents and you know things that excite you
so he's really into it oh he was deep into deep into it. He loved it and just supported it.
And I got to work with, whenever I got to work with Bo or my dad was really special.
How often did you work with your dad in movies?
I worked with him twice.
Yeah.
In Tucker and Blown Away.
Oh, that's right.
Did he play your dad in Tucker?
No, no.
Oh, he played the congressman?
Yeah, he played a bad guy.
Right, right, right. Yeah, a guy who was trying to shut my character down, no. Oh, he played the congressman? Yeah, he played a bad guy. Right, right, right.
Yeah, a guy who was trying to shut my character down or something.
Oh, my God.
And then what was the other one?
And the other one was Blown Away, where he played my uncle in that.
He was a great actor.
Oh, man, he was so good.
And then he did comedy, did the airplane movie.
I remember when I was doing Blown Away,
talking to the producer and we're casting the movie.
I said, you know who would really be good is my uncle, wonderful actor, Lloyd Bridges.
Are you familiar with him?
And he laughed.
He says, oh, yeah, your dad is a, you know, he's very talented, but he's really more of a comic.
I say, what the fuck are you talking about?
I said, well, you know, airplane.
I said, yeah, but, you you know that's just a you know
one of the tool in his kit bag man you know uh so i say you want him to come in and read for you
i mean he said yeah would he do that i said oh god so of course he came in you know knocked it
out of the park you know you got you bridges guys getting each other jobs here but my dad he was uh
i think of all the things i learned from him i learned like i said
all the basics was just the joy yeah in which he he um you know had when he worked when i i got to
work with him as a as a kid in seahunt and that was you know that was a little that was different
i mean now as i'm even telling that i'm imagining a weird story that kind of embarrassed me but now as i look back i was kind of pleased where
he was working with a director on that show and i was i played a small little part and the director
was giving a lot of shit to some pa you know just a kind of a guy who was doing errands
and he was you know the director was really taking out.
And my dad said,
uh,
could I have your attention please to the crew?
And he said,
um,
when our director,
uh,
apologizes to this young kid,
um,
I'll be in my trailer and,
you can come and get me,
you know, but I want him to apologize in front of everyone too.
But,
you know,
I,
you know, but that's the kind of guy my, my dad was. And, uh, and then as a, when I worked
with him later, like in Tucker, oh man, for Francis Copeland, you know, who's like a big
kid in a way, you know, and, uh, Francis made this, uh, this, you know, called all the crew and the cast in.
We had two weeks rehearsal.
The first week was kind of getting to know each other.
The second week, Francis says,
we're going to spend this second week
shooting the entire movie on this little video camera.
Vittorio Storaro, the famous, you know, our DP,
he will use the little wheelchair as a dolly, and he'll be shooting.
And you actors, now, when you're doing the car scene, when the car stops, I want you
to go, you know, give a little jerk, you know.
And you wardrobe people, you know, the wedding scene, look at these curtains, could be good
wedding.
So, it was kind of like our guy in comedy or the little rascals.
Sure.
Let's make a movie.
Yeah.
We shot the whole movie in one week.
In place of storyboarding?
Well, no.
Here's the thing.
What he did, I found this out later.
He storyboarded very extensively.
Right.
He took photographs and then replaced those pictures, the drawings with photographs. Then he shot this movie and replaced the storyboard with this.
The film.
The video film.
Right.
Which he gave to us at that week.
We didn't know it, but he was editing that film going to and from work.
So he gave, at the end of that second week of rehearsal, he said, here's our film.
We're just going to polish it up.
Isn't that wild?
So the film was always there.
And we only did one take for that whole thing.
For the video thing.
For the video thing.
But it was such a spirit of play.
And that was such, it really was kind of my dad's style.
Because this joy that he had and the sense of play was really contagious when he showed up to work.
So he loved it.
People realized, hey, yeah, this is kind of fun,
what we're doing.
As opposed to be like, what do you mean?
We're shooting a whole movie.
Or just something, you know, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, and all through the movie,
you know, during the movie,
we had this sense of joy and play.
And, of course, that when you're, you know,
when you're kind of playful, you tend to relax.
And when you relax, your best stuff can leak out, man.
And also that character was very buoyant and resilient and always sort of optimistic.
Your character.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, very much.
And there was sort of a kind of a lighthearted comedic element to that movie, to the pace of that movie.
Yeah, yeah.
That he kept just trying and trying and taking the hits and taking the hits,
but he never got sunk.
As we talk about it,
Marty Landau, my dear friend from that movie,
he just passed away.
Great.
Yeah, he was an incredible guy.
Great guy.
What a great guy.
That's right.
He was your financer in that movie, right?
Yeah.
He's a fascinating guy.
It's sad, but he lived a good long life.
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, yeah.
What other actors do you look up to that changed your game?
Well, all the guys.
I'm a fan now of Bloodline.
You've been watching that?
Bo's in that show?
Oh, man, do yourself a favor
all the actors and i can't even think of all their names but the all the it's wonderful when
things come together you know you got great directing great dp yeah you got a great story
and the actors that all comes together and that's the case with bloodline but later on like you know
you work with eastwood you know know, George Kennedy in that movie,
in the Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,
and then like all these,
there's a Farrah Fawcett movie.
Do you like,
you've worked with everybody.
You've worked with everybody.
Yeah, yeah.
I've worked with a lot
of great people.
That's my,
that's my favorite thing
about the gig is,
you know,
all the artists
that you get to work with.
Not only the actors,
but, you know,
costume designers.
Tron.
You did Tron.
Yeah. Cutting edge future. Well, you know, the guy now Tron. You did Tron. Yeah.
Cutting edge future.
Well, you know, they got now Tron.
It came back, right?
Yeah.
We did another one, like Picture Show.
We did another Picture Show 20 years later with the same cast.
What was that called, though?
Which one?
The second Picture Show.
Texasville.
Texasville, right.
Yeah.
But with Tron, Joe Kaczynski directed the second Tron.
I can't remember the name of the second one, the sequel.
But that was his first movie.
Can you imagine directing something like that for your first movie?
The original Tron, it was shot in 70 millimeter black and white and then all hand tinted.
And it was a real kind of a primitive thing.
The second one, I got scanned into the computer.
I mean, literally.
I mean, as an actor.
Yeah.
So I could play myself as a young guy.
And so that's, I think, the future of my profession will be, you know, they'll just have us all in there.
And they say, let's try a little Mitchum.
Let's put a little De Niro.
Just a splash of bridges.
And let's see what happens.
Is that a good thing?
It's a thing.
It's what's going to happen, man.
I don't know if it's good or not.
I don't think it's good.
But now Joe, because this is you, the guy who directed the second one, just directed me in this movie that's coming out called Only the Brave.
Right.
The story of the Grand Mountain Hot Shots.
I watched it.
And he directed that one.
Isn't that wild?
So that's the cool thing about movies also
is that you have these little lifetimes kind of,
and then you'll have reincarnations of those people
in your another lifetime.
They keep popping up.
Yeah, because it's a relatively small biz.
Yeah, it was smaller when he started,
but it's still pretty small i guess
all right let's talk about uh lebowski for a minute okay like i had to watch it like i love
the coen brothers you know and i have my favorite coen brothers movies but their people are are just
it's got a cult the lebowski yeah the lebowski has a following of people that decode it. They love it.
They watch it many times every year.
And you know this exists, right?
Oh, yeah, man.
Totally.
I mean, I had my Beatle moment when I played Lebowski Festival.
Oh, man, with my band?
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the dude.
Dan?
Yeah.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the dude.
Oh, playing to a sea of dudes and bowling pins and mods, you know, the Viking helmets, you know.
Really?
So they do full-on cosplay, full-on costume stuff.
Oh, and it goes on for a couple of days.
I mean, it's pretty wild, man. Because I had to keep going back and back to the movie to because i want to understand why people are
obsessed with it yeah do you understand well my for my two cents uh a couple a couple i mean i
it's so deep to me uh for number one yeah the coen brothers are masters right they know how
to make a really good movie and And that is what that is.
That is a good movie.
When you watch it, it's like eating pop.
You can't stop.
I don't watch my movies when they're on TV normally.
But if Lebowski comes on, I'll say, well, I'll just watch the tutorial.
We'll lick the ball, and then I'll go to something else.
And I'll say, oh, I'm just going to now watch this
and then I get hooked. Because each scene
you remember
something new about it, you kind of
get a deeper thing about
it and it's got a sweetness
to it too. Oh yeah.
Again, that bridges buoyancy.
Well, you know,
I remember the thing
when John hugs me after throwing well you know so like it well it's i i remember you know the thing you know when when john uh
hugs me you know yeah you know after throwing the ashes all over me i get pissed at him he goes you
know come on dude there's just some touching you know dear stuff about well i you know someone had
to point out to me this how dumb i am really that that it's really a play on a nor movie it's really
a play yeah yeah yeah yeah right and for some reason i just
didn't put that oh yeah definitely and then once i put that together i'm like okay like the big
sleep yeah yeah like i didn't realize because i'm an idiot yeah that's the model of it and then it's
just um it's just so good my i'm sitting having dinner at this uh guy house. On one side is Ram Dass,
you know, the be here now guy.
And on the other side...
Did you know him in the 60s?
No, I didn't.
This was the first time I had met him.
And on my other side
is this guy named Bernie Glassman,
who is a Zen master.
And we're eating and he says,
I saw Lebowski.
I go, oh yeah.
I said, what do you think?
He says, well, you realize in many Buddhist circles, the dude is considered a Zen master.
I say, what are you talking about?
He says, oh, yeah.
I say, no, we never talked about anything spiritual or anything like that on the show.
He goes, oh, yeah.
I say, well, what do you mean?
He says, well, who wrote and directed the thing?
I say, the Coen brothers.
He goes, the Coen brothers.
You know what a Coen is, right?
And he says, the film is riddled with modern day Coens.
I say, come on.
He says, yeah, I'm all about bringing Buddhism into the current times.
He says, let's write a book.
I say, what are you talking about?
He says, let's write a book about Leb what are you talking about he says let's write a
book about uh lebowski about all the koans in there i said what do you mean give me an example
he goes like well shut the fuck up donnie there's a koan right there the dude abides yeah yeah or um
that's just like your opinion man yeah you know so we write this book called the dude and the zen master yeah
and uh it's i'd love the book but it's you know it's that kind of depth that people you know
did you see stuff in this you know did the coen brothers see the book i uh they got a copy i don't
know if they looked at it or not but i wonder copy yeah they never got back i can't remember
i don't think so the koan brothers yeah exactly
that is some hippie shit oh yeah but bernie uh he's got a great organization called zen the zen
peacemakers and he's you know an amazing are you do you practice buddhism though as a person i
practice yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't i wouldn't uh officially say i'm a buddhist uh but i i do
practice i'm buddhistly bent yeah. I'm Buddhistly bent. Yeah.
Buddhistly bent.
I like that.
Yeah.
Like, what do you do?
You meditate?
I meditate.
Yeah.
I like to do, you know, I read a lot of stuff, you know.
Bernie's written some great books.
Can you meditate successfully?
Are you good at it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It doesn't take much.
I don't know why I fight it.
Yeah.
I resist it, and then I don't try to do it.
And all you got to do is sit there, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, yeah, it's an interesting thing. I mean,. And all you got to do is sit there, right? Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, it's an interesting thing.
I mean, you studied, you practiced, you read any of the stuff.
Not really.
Not really.
But like I've sat and breathed.
Yeah, yeah.
That's basically, and you count those suckers.
Yeah, you know.
Count which suckers?
The breaths.
Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
Yeah, the breath count.
And all of those thoughts, you know, one of the main things I think gets in people's ways,
they think they're not supposed to think or have thoughts.
You got to let them go by, right? That's just that our mind secretes that shit.
Just like, you know, like our saliva or something.
That's just what the mind does.
It secretes thoughts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you just got to, you know, that thing about, you know, that's just like your opinion,
man.
Yeah.
You know, that not only goes for other people, but that goes for ourselves, our own opinions.
You know, we have these thoughts that are kind of mean, you know, they don't mean shit, man.
They're just thoughts.
And it's what we hang our sense of reality on.
Yeah, yeah.
It goes back to the isolation.
That's exactly right.
We don't, yeah, we project all of this stuff.
And also our brains are like recording devices.
It's just they regurgitate.
Yeah, right.
What's your thought?
What's a thought that you heard?
How'd you get the information?
What's really happening, man?
There's so many cool, you know, books.
Like one of the most accessible people, I think, is Pema Chodron.
Do you know her?
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love listening to her stuff.
I should listen. I should get into it. I think there's some part of me that wants to hold on to the aggravation yeah well yeah for
your work right yeah something like that yeah or just because like who am i without that that's
right well who am i that's the big question you know that's the thing to meditate on who am i who
is this thing have you figured it out man i just it's like you know it
keeps you know these two mirrors facing each other so i haven't figured it out no i don't yeah like
you say i don't know if i want to figure it out you know it's like um you've been to a psychiatrist
sure so you know it's just like peeling i gotta go today you're going today to shrink yeah cool
yeah i don't go that often but like i a different
importance in my life i've got when i need a little i need a second opinion yeah like hey
dude am i fucked up yeah exactly but i remember i went to a guy for about a uh a year maybe a
little longer and that was heavy you know it was like three three um two hour sessions a week. Oh, shit, yeah. And I didn't have any necessarily problem.
I just wanted to experience psychiatry and dig with the guy and find out.
And it just kept peeling onions and peeling, peeling.
And there's nothing down there.
It's just a bunch of onion skins.
And finally, I say, well, I'm paying this guy
as a friend.
Yeah.
Oh,
it just felt weird
after a while.
No,
I understand that.
But it's a great,
you know,
especially if you get a guy
who,
you know,
who,
who you're getting
something from.
I mean,
I think if you have
a trauma
or if you have,
if you have a,
if you have some
like character flaws,
you can trace, yeah, you can trace.
Yeah, right.
Trace that.
I'm working with a really interesting thing now.
For a movie?
No, a friend turned me on to this book.
Actually, I told my daughter about this book.
She says, I turned you on to that book.
I go, oh, okay.
But she's into this kind of stuff.
It's called Feeding Your Demons.
Oh.
And it's this Chod, C-H-O-D practice.
And basically what it is,
you know, we have this,
it's very common to have this kind of,
you know, the George fighting the dragon,
defeating our demons.
Right, right.
You know, I can do this.
Yeah, yeah.
And this exercise is completely different.
It's, you feel your demon or this, you know, this thing that you have anxiety about or
fear or guilt or whatever.
You feel it.
You try to conjure up its shape and its size, its color, texture.
And then you create it and you imagine it out in front of you.
Uh-huh.
And you ask the demon,
what do you want?
You know?
And then you become the demon.
Sure, they just want to hang out.
And you answer what the demon wants.
Sure, yeah.
And he'll say that.
And then you become yourself again
and you create this nectar made out of your body.
Basically, you feed the demon as opposed to trying to kill it.
You feed it what it wants.
Yeah, but they're always hungry and then they're going to want other people.
Well, that's what you know.
But yeah, that's a heavy, that's a heavy, you know, that's an aspect of the demon.
You know, you roll with that.
It seems like
your openness to this kind of thing just informs your ability to act and have range yeah yeah yeah
well it goes in with the acting for sure yeah there's so many uh you know actors are kind of
into this this thing uh an actor who who i really you know you talked about actors you admire one of
my favorite guys is Kevin Bacon.
Sure, I've talked to him.
He's a wonderful cat.
He's a great guy. Isn't he a good guy?
Hell yeah.
And he gave me a little,
I don't know if he meant it in a spiritual way,
but I kind of took it.
Yeah, what did he do?
Well, when you're acting,
you have, or I do anyway,
there's kind of an anxiety comes up.
When? Flop sweat, huh's kind of a, you know, anxiety comes up, you know, you know. When?
Flop sweat,
huh?
Before?
Just before a thing,
you're anxious to,
like it's basically
what I was telling you
about Crazy Heart,
you know,
are you going to be able
to catch the ball?
Are you going to be able
to do what you're
supposed to do?
Yeah.
Do justice to the material?
Yeah, yeah.
So we got a big scene
and it's, you know,
quite involved
and there's quite a few actors.
This is in a movie called R.I.P.D.
He gathers us together.
Kevin.
And he gets us all together and then he looks at us all very seriously.
He says, remember, everything depends on this.
And it, boom, it put it in perspective,
you know.
You know,
of course it doesn't,
but then on another side,
it does.
You know,
this moment
is the whole thing,
you know.
Yeah, yeah.
This is how we're receiving him.
Anyway,
I enjoyed working with him.
Yeah.
And also another thing,
you know,
I see all these guitars around
and maybe we can pick
after this interview
just a little Scotia unless you you've got to go somewhere.
But there's so many actors play music.
Oh, really?
And music is another wonderful way to connect with people.
Man, I mean, you know, it saves so much time.
When we were doing Against All Odds, Taylor Hackford, the director of that movie, the
first thing we did, we split a bottle of tequila down in Mexico and worked our way
through the whole Beatle catalog.
He's got a beautiful voice and we just sang.
And then, you know, because that's what it's all about is, you know, harmonizing, making
it sound good.
And also like having a good time.
And having a good time.
You seem to be very able to have a good time.
Well, I like to have a good time.
I enjoy it it i can go
the other way too you know i get depressed and yeah tight and all that stuff do you oh yeah for
long periods of time uh well uh not uh no i wouldn't say chronically you know um uh you know
i go i go back and forth but i go get down there too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Full range.
Yeah, the full range of humanity.
Yeah.
Real quick, though.
Heaven's Gate, did that feel like a disaster when you were doing it?
Oh, God, what a shame that was.
That was a wild, that was a wild ride.
I can tell you, all those musicians, you know, we talked about all those musicians,
and it was in the cocaine days, man.
I mean, you can imagine.
Everyone at Jack.
Except, I know Chris was on the wagon the whole, he didn't party with us.
He was, he really wanted to catch that ball.
Yeah.
He was really.
Big part for him.
Big part for him.
And, you know, Chimino, I did his first movie, by the way, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
Sure.
The one with Clint.
Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy.
That was his first movie.
Yeah. I his first movie.
I like that movie.
And on that movie,
Clint was,
you know,
holding all the power of the thing,
you know?
Yeah.
And he's famous
for doing one or two takes.
Yeah.
That's all he likes to do.
And I was the young punk
who'd say,
oh,
Mike,
I got an idea.
Can I go one more time?
He says,
well,
I'll have to ask the boss,
you know?
And Clint would say,
I'll give the kid
another shot,
you know?
And then, and he would, and that the boss you know and clint would say i'll give the kid another shot you know and then uh and he would and that would you know that was wonderful and then he did mike chimino did deer hunter which is this huge success and it was executed so
beautifully you know just watched it again recently oh it's so great you know and then so
the the you know the movie maker said oh whatever, whatever you want, you're our darling.
Sure.
And he says, well, I've got a great epic Western I want to do.
And when you think about the story of the tale that Heaven's Gate tells, you know.
I never saw it.
You've never seen it.
I got to watch it.
Oh, man, yeah.
It's amazing.
It's about cynicism, you know, and what cynicism costs us.
I mean, that's especially for these times. Yeah, it's kind of an interesting thing about it.
You know, when all these Europeans were splashing onto our shores, you know, this is in the 1860s,
they'd get out into Montana and Wyoming, they'd see all these walking hamburgers, all this beef, you know.
And they would have to eat, you know,
or they starve.
So they would get these cows.
And in those days, the cattlemen, the cattlemen's association was like the big oil companies
today.
And maybe a handful of guys owned all the property from Texas to Canada.
to Canada, and they hired 100 gunmen, Texas gunmen, to come up and kill these immigrants that were on a list.
And this letter that announced these gunmen was signed by the President of the United
States to go up there and kill these people.
That's what the-
For killing cows.
For killing cows.
And there were 100 guys on this list.
And I'm not going to ruin it for you, but it's worth seeing.
But the movie, when it came out, it came out during a time when MTV was very popular.
And it was all this fast cutting.
Yeah, yeah.
And Heaven's Gate is very slow.
It's almost like this, what's that Russian guy, Tarkovsky?
It's very slow. It's almost like this, what's that Russian guy, Tarkovsky? It's very slow.
But if you get with the filmmaker, you know, Cimino's rhythm, it's quite beautiful.
It really sets you back in those times.
Anyway, that was part of the reason, I think, because it didn't suit the times as far as editorially.
Part of the reason, I think, because it didn't suit the times as far as editorially.
And then also, Cimino didn't want any of these suits to come to the set.
Yeah.
And he didn't want to talk to press.
Yeah.
And all of that.
Yeah.
And that created some animosity.
Sure. From the critics and from the thing.
And they let him have it.
Right.
Before it even.
Oh, yeah. So, they before right before it even oh right
so they hated him before it even came yeah and so when it came out the i remember going to um the um
the big premiere in new york everybody's in tuxes you know and the end of the movie and you hear
that terrible sound you know it sounds like popcorn starting to go off you know and then
you say in your mind you're thinking maybe they're just so blown away, you know, but it was just, you know, nobody kind of got it.
And the word had leaked out that he had spent all this money and, you know, there's drugs and everything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then excess.
Oh, yeah.
Excess.
Yeah.
And then control.
And then the next day we're driving to the airport to go to Toronto.
Yeah.
Pick up this review.
And then the next day we're driving to the airport to go to Toronto.
Yeah.
We pick up this review.
Ah.
And it said, if they shaved Cimino's head, they would find three sixes.
Oh, my God. Can you imagine?
For a movie?
Yeah, for a movie.
You know, and they just attacked him.
And that was the end of the 70s, man.
And that, you know, we thought that was it.
But now it's considered a classic.
I know.
I got to watch it. I don't. It's just one of those. Chris Walken is so great. Mickey R we thought that was it. But now it's considered a classic. I know. I've got to watch it.
I don't, it's just one of those.
Chris Walken is so great.
Mickey Rourke is in it.
No shit.
I didn't know that.
But your last movie, you like playing these Western type of dudes?
I remember, you know, Westerns, you know, my dad, who's in a lot of great Westerns, you know, High Noon.
Yeah, yeah.
Whenever he'd come home from work
dressed up like a cowboy you know i put on his boots and his hat and you know cowboys sure man
what a what a time and you did that thing that what bad company was sort of a western company
that was yeah bob benton's first movie yeah is that a deep movie yeah i so. It's a good movie, yeah. You know who's in that movie? Who? Who plays
Big Joe?
David Huddleston. David Huddleston.
You know who David Huddleston is? I gotta look.
David Huddleston is the Big Lebowski.
Oh, yeah! Yeah, man.
So David Huddleston was in Bad
Company, and he was the Big
Lebowski, man. He was the Big Lebowski.
Yeah, exactly. It's a small
world after all. Did the Coen brothers know that? I don't know. Maybe. I always wonder, man. He was the Big Lebowski. Yeah, exactly. It's a small world after all.
Did the Coen brothers know that?
I don't know.
Maybe.
I always wonder, man.
Oh, yeah.
Put that in the Coen.
Yeah, the Coen.
The Coen.
So you can make all the connections.
Make all the connections.
But yeah, and also Fearless, great movie.
Vanishing, interesting remake.
Now, this is where I just read off the movies and tell you how good you are.
The Baker Boys with your brother. Oh, we should talk a little since you're oh yeah
we're gonna talk a little bit about i mean i don't that was just a dream come true because
playing with bow to that on that level we would have lunch every day you know
split a bottle of wine just pinch each other can you believe what we're doing
and he told me like how did we come together why? He was a young kid, right, who had the...
This guy, Steve Clovis, who was, like, in his 20s
when he wrote and directed that play.
And he, you know, he just...
We jammed on it, you know, for about a month.
We had rehearsals and improvs and stuff.
And we had this one improv that really gave me faith in him as a director.
We would, you know, each of us would take turns setting up situations.
And then we would do a long improv.
And Steve said, okay, here's the situation.
Jeff, you left home.
You snuck out at night.
It's about 3 in the morning.
Yeah.
You just went to see your hero, Bill Evans,
at this club.
Played piano.
Playing piano.
Yeah.
And everybody's kind of leaving now,
and Bill Evans comes out of the bathroom,
and he's just shot up in the bathroom,
and he bums a cigarette off you
and you and he says and i'm gonna play bill evans the director this young director steve says i'll
play bill evans and beau when i put my hands through my hair big brother is gonna come and
try to get his you know kid out kid out of there yeah And so we did that improv, and that gave me such faith in Steve as a director,
the number one that he would play with us, you know.
And then I saw that, oh, he's got the chops.
He knows what it's about, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that was, and then Michelle, man.
Oh, she's great.
God, you know, it was like a dream.
Every once in a while, something like that comes down,
and that's, you know.
It's just amazing, right?
Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful. And you's, you know. It's just amazing, right? Yeah, yeah.
That's wonderful.
And you get to work with your bro.
Oh, man.
But, like, also, though, like, it seems like the last two, like, the ensemble in this new one, the fire movie, Only the Brave, right?
That's a big bunch of good actors in that.
Yeah, yeah.
And also, the Hell or High Water.
That was tight.
That was a tight little movie.
Yeah, yeah. Did you like. That was a tight little movie. Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you like playing with those guys?
Very much.
That director, David McKenzie, is wonderful.
Yeah.
Oh, God.
Yeah, that was a great, great movie.
Oh, and also that Coen's redid True Grit.
I thought that was good, too.
Yeah, it was good.
Brolin, Josh Brolin was in that movie.
We didn't have any scenes together, but we hung out a little bit.
He's so good in this,
Only the Brave. He's a fucking good actor.
Isn't he a good actor, man? It's a trip, right?
Very good. You can feel
that, right? And again, another second generation.
You know, his dad. James Brolin.
But he's one of those guys where
you just watched him grow, and now he's just
solid, man.
Yeah.
Grounded in it.
Yeah, yeah.
You guys had some good scenes in this fire movie.
Yeah, yeah.
What was the big challenge of this?
It's a true story, right?
Yeah, true story.
A heartbreaking story.
It's a heartbreaking story, but it really, rather than concentrating on the heartbreak,
it's really focusing on who these guys are.
Oh, yeah.
By the time the shit goes down, you feel bad.
You saw it.
Have you seen it?
I did.
Yeah.
You feel bad.
It's heartbreaking.
But there is something transcendent about their journey.
Yeah.
But that moment where they all pull those things over their heads.
Oh, boy.
Oh, man.
These guys, you know, these guys, hot shots.
Hot shots, yeah.
Talk about brave, you know.
Yeah.
Going right where most of us would, you know, run away from.
They're going into it, you know.
And they practice.
You know, we're talking about, you know, meditation and, you know, practice.
You play guitar, you know.
I kick myself in the ass for not practicing enough.
Yeah.
You know, practice, because that's the whole deal, man.
You want it to be fun but but but the more you practice the more fun it's gonna be right man come on you know that right yeah when you learn a lick you're like oh
shit and then you yeah now i can do that yeah and uh but these guys practice bravery you know
practice fighting did all these all those actors have to learn how to be firefighters?
They probably did.
Oh, yeah, they did.
And, you know, the only living survivor, Brendan McDonough, was with us on the set the whole time.
Was that heavy?
And it was very heavy.
It was...
The guy, that's who Miles Teller plays.
Yeah, he plays, miles teller plays and
it was wonderful to have his support and his um his stamp of approval you know that was yeah most
important to us and how the families of the survivors felt about the film and they are they're
all supportive of the film and and um i was really happy to see that there is a Granite Mountain Fund for people who want to contribute to the firefighters.
Oh, yeah?
If they go to onlythebrave-movie.com, you can feel about this Granite Mountain Hot Shots, that fund.
I've been, you know know we've got this climate change
going on fires oh i was in montana uh at my daughter giving to my daughter this beautiful
wedding fires were just all over us you know yeah uh i've lost a house to a fire where malibu oh
really i lost 400 acres of our ranch in montana. Oh, it just fires all over the place.
You still got a place up there?
Yeah.
You spend a lot of time up there?
I live in the whorehouse from Heaven's Gate.
It's true.
We were shooting that movie.
It's the hog ranch.
This is where I'm killed out in front of this place.
Oh, my God.
And Chimino says, now the hog ranch is on this people's property.
They don't want it there anymore.
We're going to burn it down.
Does anybody want it?
And I shot my hand up, and he gave me the place, numbered, and also the barn, which
were this-
It was built for the movie?
It was built for the movie, just how they built it in those days, where, you know, no
matching logs, just whatever, you know, to beat the winter, you know, whatever trees
are in the-
Did you fix it up?
No matching logs, just whatever, you know, to beat the winter.
You know, whatever trees are in the... Did you fix it up?
Over the years, you know, we have fixed it up.
But now, you know, that's 40 years ago.
That's a trip.
Everything's in full circle.
But some of those, the bullets, you know, they didn't go off.
They're still in the wall.
Oh, really?
That's hilarious.
Oh, man.
So, you want to knock a song out?
I was thinking...
We can do it. Maybe we can pick a little bit.
Because there's a couple of songs.
I wouldn't mind playing a song, but I'd like to brush up on it a little bit.
Oh, yeah?
What do you think?
You got time to do it?
Sure, man.
Let me go get the acoustic.
Did you pick with Neil?
No.
No, man?
I couldn't.
He didn't play here.
Who has played here?
Nick Lowe has played in here.
Lucinda Williams has played in here.
Did you pick with them at all?
No, I picked.
Jimmy Vaughn let me play with them.
Dave Alvin let me play with them.
Yeah, I feel all right playing with you because, you know.
Because I know I could.
But no, not because of that.
No. Because I can feel like we're not pros
we're guys that like to do it you know who i got to play with who bob dylan man come on come on
man look on your list there i did a movie with him masked and anonymous do you ever see that movie
i have not seen that that's a weird movie man movie, man. It was about him, right?
He wrote it with Larry Charles, who was the guy who created Seinfeld and everything.
And it was Larry's first movie.
Yeah.
So he says to me, so you're kind of the senior thespian here.
Why don't you and Bob work on some acting, man?
So I got to play, pretend with bob for like a
half a day you're doing improvs and stuff that was a you know he he's such a great presence and i
think a wonderful actor yeah he's great he did some stuff with peckinpah back in the day oh yeah
yeah and then what then i'm in my trailer and i hear i open the trailer and there he is. He says, hey, you want to pick? You know, he comes in and I'm, oh, man.
Oh, wow.
What'd you play?
I had been working on that great song that he sings in Natural Born Killers.
You know that?
He just sings it with just him playing the guitar.
And he's such a great guitar player.
He is, yeah.
You know, see the pyramids
across the night.
Yeah.
You belong to me.
So we played that.
And then we played,
I played him
one of my buddies,
John's,
one of his songs.
Here,
let me see if I can.
Well,
let's just try it once
and I'll probably
need to do it a couple of times.
She's going to go nuts.
She said you guys got to go.
She's going to go nuts.
So I'm going to, what I'll do is I'm going to play, I'll just play a couple, and then we can work out.
I think the, I don't know about the publishing thing, but here, this one should be no problem.
Whose is this?
This is John Goodwin's.
no problem.
Who's this? This is John Goodwins. Just one more hurricane, just one more time machine and I'll be free.
And I'll never leave you again.
I'll never leave you again.
I'll burn my suitcase to ashes and then I'll never leave you
I'll never leave you again
Just one more rocket ship
To shoot me to the stars
Just one more parachute To drop me safely where you are
Just one more time machine, just one more telephone
And I'll be home
And I'll never leave you again
I'll never leave you again. I'll never leave you again.
I'll burn my suitcase to ashes again.
I'll never leave you.
I'll never leave.
Just one more hill to climb.
Just one more road to take.
Just one more war to win, just one more road to take, just one more war to win, before I kiss your face.
I'll never leave you again, I'll never leave you again.
I'll burn my suitcase to ashes again.
I'll bring my suitcase to ashes again.
I'll never be you again.
I'll never be you again. Yeah, man, we did it.
John Goodwin.
Beautiful.
Thanks, buddy.
Cool, man.
That was it.
That was Jeff Bridges.
Isn't it amazing to hear him get excited and sound exactly like Jeff Bridges in the movies?
That was so Jeff Bridges in the movies? That was so Jeff
Bridges. That was fun.
Thank you for listening.
I love you all.
Godspeed into the next
hour of your life.
Go hour to hour if you have to.
Minute to minute.
Day by
day sometimes is a chore.
Boomer lives!
Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence.
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