WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 901 - Sean Penn / Lynn Shelton

Episode Date: March 25, 2018

Sean Penn wrote a novel to slow things down. He fell out of love with making movies, he is disillusioned by the culture, and he finds it hard to draw hope from current events. Sean explains to Marc how writing makes him feel like he's not part of the noise, how he finds strength from the Parkland students, and how an upcoming movie made him feel like he could actually rekindle his love of filmmaking. Also, Lynn Shelton returns to the garage to talk about directing her new movie, Outside In, and explain what it's like to direct Marc. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lock the gate! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fucksters? What the fucking nears? What's happening? Wow, I just almost belched. I just, you know, I couldn't get that out. I couldn't do that

before I started. I couldn't get that out. I couldn't do that before I started. I couldn't. Had to happen right then. How's it going? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it. I hope you're doing okay.

Today is, this being Sunday, you're probably listening to it on Monday or after because there'd be no way to hear it unless you were standing outside right now to hear it. Today is the first day of showing the house. They're showing the house today. People are going to come walk through. I got rid of all the stuff that people could take as what they might perceive as free souvenirs but today's the day i gotta i gotta leave here and get out of the way there's a for sale sign stuck in the front yard now um and the reflection continues you know like there's a lot of did i do the right thing am i you know but i love the new house man i gotta to tell you, I love it, but it's not tucked away into the little hills, you know,

where it almost feels a rustic up here. It's not that place, but this space is pretty amazing. And you know what? I'm going to shut up about it. It's just, I'm starting to feel it. And it's about time because they're showing the house today. to feel it and it's about time because they're showing the house today i have sean penn on the show to talk about his book because that's what uh he's talking about you know we talked about other stuff but uh we talked about the book the new book bob honey who just do stuff that comes

out tomorrow it was intense i don't know what i was expecting. I'm not sure I got it. But, you know, I watched him smoke a lot of cigarettes. And we engaged a bit. Before Sean, my old pal Lynn Shelton is here to talk about her new movie. Lynn Shelton just directed a very sweet, tight, touching movie called Outside In, which comes out this Friday, March 30th, in select cities. Maybe yours was selected. I don't know, but it's a great movie with Edie Falco and the Duplass, the Jay Duplass. But it's a very touching movie.

Unique story. Takes place up in Washington, so it's gray and rainy a lot in the movie, which I like. But Lynn and I go back, and it's nice to talk to her. But I wanted to read this email up front here, again, because I think what keeps sticking in my head lately about

actors and directors i talk to and about creative people in general who are putting out narrative product is that the right narrative content narrative art no product no content you hope it does that content no product no. Product, maybe. You got to make a living. But anyways, the idea of narrative art is really, you know, it's all about storytelling. And you talk to people who act. You talk to people that direct. You talk to people that write.

Obviously, it's storytelling. But actors, too, for some reason, it sort of sticks in my head that a lot of what they see their job as being is contributing to telling a story. And that means that we have to believe, as I do, that stories have a profound effect on people's lives, whether they're personal stories, life stories, fantastic stories stories that are completely uh pulled out of imagination fantasy whatever it is that storytelling is the continuity that that makes sense of life for people storytelling is the human means of communication, of moving through generations, of moving through mythologies, of defining what makes us human and also exploring all the emotions and journeys and possibilities of what is good and bad about humans comes through storytelling. And I don't always fully take in the impact of this show in terms of of

of narrative and in terms of people's personal narratives and i you know sometimes i get an email where i'm just sort of yeah blown away and and and you know grateful that i can you know provide something for people you know whatever it is this does a lot for me as well what it does for me and through me you know also has an effect on on others in in in a profound way and this email just you know i get choked up man i i get choked up uh sometimes at the reaction to this show and i'll read this the subject line is just how you saved my marriage hi mark spelled correctly i might add thank you carolyn i can't sleep so i'm typing this on my iphone next to my husband who is snoring one decibel under i should find a lawyer i've wanted to thank you for quite some time for saving my husband and my

marriage i guess i didn't know how or thought my email would get lost in a massive pile of fan slash troll mail. I also thought if you never read it, I'd take it personally because that's how my brain works. My husband and I have been married for 10 years, happily occasionally, madly in love always. He wasn't particularly funny when I married him since my childhood sucked and I'm hilarious. I just always assumed his picture perfect childhood fucked him in the long run. When we got married at 18, he joined the United States Marine Corps. I got pregnant. He went to Iraq.

He made it home for delivery. Then we had a fat, happy baby. Two months later, he's going to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, he came back from Afghanistan hilarious and broken. The first year, I thought he didn't love me anymore. The second year, I he didn't love me anymore. The second year I realized that was wrong. He was no longer the man I met in high school, but a broken human destroyed by human atrocities towards one another. The third year, every time I drive home, I'd hold

my breath because I thought I was going to find him dead. I'd play on rewind, replay, repeat in my brain like the most heart-wrenching film ever caught on camera i run in yell babe then johnny there's never an answer my mind would change what state he was in frequently the end of year three i started to see something different in him he'd been driving long distances for work i couldn't figure it out he wasn't healed of course but every once in a while his eyes would show life again just a glimmer one day he came home smiling a smile i hadn't seen in years he started telling almost yelling with a smile ear to ear about this comedian and his cats i was giggling and i asked him where i can hear this guy his

response was what the fuck podcast for the next few years to come, he walked in the door, and I knew every time, bang, bang, bada, lock the gates had been part of the day. Your show makes the pain of war fall away from him. Your kindness and honesty gave my husband a reason to smile through the pain of being locked in his own mind. We saw you at the comedy comedy store recently we sat front row you put your feet up right in front of my husband when i looked at you through his eyes that night i understood you make it okay he can be flawed and still a man damaged but still loved and worth so much i'll never be able to thank you enough for what you do for my family. Truly,

Carolyn. Oh, god damn. Well, you're certainly welcome. You know, I get, it's really moving to me and it's good. It's good. I don't connect like this, you know, a lot in life, you know, where I'm talking to somebody and I can have tears rolling down my face.

But Jesus, that email, that was really something. And, you know, I'm, that this show does that. Believe me, believe me. I mean, you know, sometimes you go through life wondering if, if what you're doing has any impact and, or, or, you know, I do and I'm, and I'm happy it does and I'm happy it's good. Okay. you know i do and i'm and i'm happy it does and i'm happy it's good okay so lynn shelton lynn shelton is a director i've had her on this show years ago we've been friends since she's directed a few episodes of my show she's directed a couple of episodes of glow i had her direct my my uh my

netflix special too real uh have a great deal of respect for her work, and we're pals. So if the tone seems a little ball-busty, as you know, there are people in my life and people that have been on this show that I have a certain dynamic with, and there are certain people I can just make laugh a fuck of a lot,

and sometimes it's in a ball-busting kind of tone, but just know that it is all in good fun. Lynn and I are definitely pals. Okay? All right. So this is me talking to Lynn Shelton about her new film, Outside In, which comes out this Friday, March 30th in select cities. And perhaps your city has been selected and you get the joy of watching this movie. This is me and lynn shelton okay so why don't you i'm gonna act like this is the beginning of a conversation and we haven't you didn't just say to me you don't know what you're talking about.

I'm going to pretend that that didn't happen. And I'm going to just start from there and say, well, why don't you tell me, Lynn, how do you make a small independent film like your most recent film, Outside In, with Edie Falco and Jay Duplass? How does it work? And I liked the movie i liked it i got choked up it was a nice moving story you shot uh you know that rainy damp moss covered washington well i went to a screening pay your attention pay attention don't play with the toys what are you jennifer warrens fucking touching everything in my desk come on you put this in front and you're not supposed to do that I think it's very

not many people go for the top the top sort of commitment really yeah they'll do and some people have rolled the dice but most people yeah they've looked

at the hammer it's broken but most people go with the the squeeze the exercise I'm not I have very weak hands

this is I can't believe nobody does the top but you gotta sit and watch the top. Usually people It's very quiet. They fidget. They don't try to entertain themselves while I'm talking to them. They fidget

with things. They don't sit there and go like, wow, gotta be something to do here other than listen to this guy pester me. Alright. Okay. Pull it together. So I went to a screening because you insisted that I see it like a film.

Yes. And I thought that was both annoying and... I knew you would. I didn't want you to watch it on your iPhone or whatever. I don't watch it on my phone. I don't watch things on my phone. I watch... From you talking about last year when I was on set and I was watching The Sopranos

on my phone because I had my computer. I would have watched it on my MacBook with the fancy screen. But no, I appreciated the fact that you wanted me to see this movie and I did. Thank you. I thought it was a good movie. You have some questions, but let's talk about it first. So this movie is about a guy who gets out of prison with the help of his high school teacher. Yeah.

Because you find that he went into prison. He was young and got caught up in something and was not guilty of the murder himself. Right. But it doesn't start there. You don't even go back there except with sound effects. So he gets out and ed falco's a teacher and she's in a marriage it's that guy who plays her husband could you could you have picked like a more like you wanted him to die to to help himself out it's like it wasn't

just about the marriage it's like this guy should just be put out of his own misery. He's just dying to sleep already, this sad motherfucker. Am I wrong? He wasn't that pathetic. He's really into cars. Right. Pretty sad, though. It was pretty brutal, the marriage. For unknown reasons, really.

But my question is, so the story is basically this guy gets out, and the only friend he's got in the world is basically this guy gets out and the only friend he's got in the world is this woman who is married and in an unhappy marriage and uh and he confuses all kinds of love with friendship and this and that and you know so why do you think of this where does this come from um i like to explore relationships between people who aren't supposed to you know i mean we sort of have this list of people that we're supposed to be friends with or fall in love with or and and they should be in the same age range and they should be in the same sort of cultural social milieu right and and so i like it when that doesn't always happen as planned that when people have a

connection to each other a genuine intimate soul connection with each other across those boundaries i think it's inspiring and liberating and um not that this relationship is anything like that but like one of my favorite movies growing up was harold and maude and that was just so incredibly gorgeous to me right because they were just you know crossing every boundary to to have that genuine relationship like i believed in the relationship even the, even though the movie is, you know, it's a little bit drenched in morbidity, well,

drenched in morbidity, but it's also kind of, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's broad. It's not like super,

right. You know, but, and yet I completely believed in this, in this relationship. And I just was carried away by it. Yeah. And I'm not saying that Edie Falcone,

Jay Duplass are like Harold and Mod. You know, they have a little bit of an age difference. It's not. But the main thing is the fact that they're just from completely different circles and different places in their lives. And they're not supposed to. You're not supposed to have a connection. I mean, I did it with my last movie, too. I was drawn to the script of Laggies because a 16-year-old and a and a 28 year old, you know, these people are not supposed to be friends and they become genuine friends.

And I think there's something really beautiful about that and and liberating about just like doing something outside of the little box that you've been prescribed, you know. So, you know, that relationship and also I loved the idea of a sort of a very deep intimate relationship developing over the course of 20 years. He was in jail for 20 years, prison for 20 years. Yeah. And they can't ever, I mean, they really fall in love with each other, but they can't ever touch. There's no physicality, you know. It's all through letters. It's all through. No's no physicality. You know, it's all through letters. It's all through... No risk, in a way.

Right. Like she couldn't have known what would happen. And I think that, you know, in her heart of hearts, she probably wanted it to just go away. Well, I don't think she allowed herself to believe that. I mean, just out of self-protection, I think she just assumed he'd get out of prison and immediately just be carried away by all the young women around him his age and shitty little town they're in well you know he had offers right away yeah that was quick

that was very quick there's a scene where like clearly he hasn't had sex with anybody or had anybody but himself touch him in that place. Yes. And I was impressed how quick it took. But I mean, it's pretty believable though, I think. Well, yeah. You made the movie. I mean, I would hope that you signed off on it you didn't go like yeah leave it in one

of my favorite parts of that was that i had um a uh the first ac is the the um assistant camera is responsible for focus right and my first ac was meticulous june zendona and she really really hated when anything was ever out of focus and i had to be explicit with her that i need i need him to go out of focus he's going to lean towards the camera and i want him to go out of focus it was really hard i think for her to let him like, but, you know, I needed that moment. But I think this movie from the ones I've seen is I think it's the most kind of emotionally mature one. Well, it's also I have to say I got on set and I felt like, oh, my God, I'm I feel like I actually know what I'm doing. I mean, not that I didn't know what I was doing for six years for those six films but i've been on set almost constantly because of all the television i've

done in those four years in between those two films and i learned i've learned so much right and i didn't really realize it until how much until i gotten on until i finally got on the set of this film because um yeah i just i felt like i was bringing so much more um somehow to the and you've gotten older i've got i have that is true and thank you for pointing that out there's been like you know you've gotten wiser wiser yes i would hope so and you know there's new things in your mind yeah it's my first drama too which was really fun because I never thought I would make a drama. Yeah. It's not funny.

I just, it's really not. Sorry about that. I'm not sure. I'm trying to think if there's one funny beat in it. There is. Hold on. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Yeah. There's a couple. There's a few. So now this movie's done. It's in the can. Is it all done? Yeah. It had its world premiere way back in September

at the Toronto International Film Festival. It's going to be at the South by Southwest Festival, and then it'll be in theaters. Really? Yeah. In movie theaters? Mm-hmm. It'll be in New York and L.A. and a few other places.

So festivals, no festivals. You've got a distribution deal. You don't need festivals. Well, we're going to South by Southwest. Right. But that sounds like just a, it's not a jury thing or anything. You don't need a deal. You don't need to be picked up.

Right. It's been sold. It has. You're just showing the people. We're showing the people. It got sold because of the Duplass machine. Yeah. Duplass has sold it.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Because they do that kind of stuff. That's what they do. They sell. the people it got sold because of the duplass machine yeah duplass has sold it yep yeah because they do that kind of stuff they act they sell they produce they direct a little ridiculous yeah they have children somewhere in there yeah got kids it's it's it's the duplass empire a lot of control yeah yeah that's right they're unstoppable a duplass right outside right now just standing there looking all cute and unassuming ruffled hair yeah yeah but behind that just looking to take over the entire show business industry i'm just concerned about a cultural duplassing that not unlike you know how we were Mumforded many years ago That

And look what happened to the Mumfords We're going to be Duplossed What did happen to the Mumfords? Exactly I've not heard about the Mumfords In a while and I don't want that to happen To the Duplosses That's very caring of you Yeah we have to take Duplossing

Down to 70% 70% Duplassing down to the 70 percent 70 percent just for their own good yeah drop it down 27 percent less duplass in in culture that's all for some reason my computer just went down are you serious no i was just talking about the power that they're listening i knew they were bigger than we thought oh my god you hear that i think it's a paddy wagon the duplex the duplex police are here so all right so it's going to open in theaters and like you did a lot of tv you directed some glow i did you directed me do you remember me yeah i like working with you you're a good actor's director um i like how you you know instead of publicly giving notes you you come up and you say

do you um maybe do it this way and then i have that moment where I'm like, okay. My first reaction is always like, what? Like, I know that I'm perfectly, I'm good at working with other people now, and I know it's a good note. You're really different this season than you were ever before. Really? Oh, yeah.

And when I worked with you on Marin, the first two episodes of season four. This is going to be the best part of the interview. Yeah. You, every time I gave you a note, you would get very defensive and immediately push back every single time. Really? Oh, yeah.

And. That doesn't sound like me. And then you would take it and you would be, and you'd take the adjustment and it'd be better. And every time. That taught me how to adjust. I stopped. What?

That's what taught me how to adjust. Yeah. I have to first do things under duress. And then, you know, realize that, oh, it's not a bad thing. Like, this is going to be terrible. Oh, it worked better. Oh, that worked better. Yeah.

And then, yeah. So you sort of could see the trust building. And then at the end of that process you said you told me that i knew funny and i think you trusted me more and then and then we got in glow the first season you still were doing it a little bit but a little bit less and in the second season you you were like sometimes you would actually just say okay yeah which was what what did you say to to me? Well, I was enjoying acting. I was like, oh, yeah, I can do that because I'm an actor.

I can adjust that. Yeah. Just tweak that a little bit. Sure. What do you want me to do with that? Yeah, let's do that. Sometimes you'd argue, but. I don't always know because.

That was okay. My choices are based on memorization and reacting to the other character, right? So, like, I got the lines and I'm reacting. to the other character, right? So I got the lines and I'm reacting. So sometimes I make clear choices, but other times there's not a lot of emotional, like it's all one.

Sort of a mammity thing or something? Yeah, kind of. But like, you know, just tell me what to do and I'll just open up the gasket. Well, that's why I really like to direct you because you are open. You're adjustable. Like, I feel like my direction is useful. Yeah. You know?

Sure. I've grown to believe that you want the best for the thing you're directing. You're not just trying to fuck with me personally. best for the thing you're directing. You're not just trying to fuck with me personally. Let's see if I can make him do this. This would be good. We don't have to use it. Let's just see if we can make

him do this. Just out of sadism. Just because I have control. Yeah, I think the second season of Glow. It's really good. What do you know about it? Because I've seen a bunch of them you did of course i did i directed the first one yeah i directed the sixth one yeah and and i've seen some of the other cuts it's it's it's great i read all the scripts it's a fantastic season it's so

good i mean i loved the first season this one's even better because they really you know they're writing for the characters everybody and they really took the arcs places that are oh my god what about me how am i how am i you're fantastic am i in a lot of them you are i know you have this weird feeling like you weren't actually in the but you you yes all right we're very much hard to know because you know you you just it's so spread out i know and they seem to be doing a lot of things without me. Well, it seems like a lot of the scenes that you're not in, it's either 14 women or then you're in there. No, it's a lot. I was happy with it. It was like I couldn't tell if I had just gotten good at the character or I wasn't doing it anymore.

I couldn't tell if I was getting good at it or I became it. See, I've told you this before, but if you can't tell, it's getting good at it or i became it see i've told you this i've told you this before but if you can't tell it's usually a good sign i think because as an actor well someone would have said something if they were like dude probably probably or you would have just been fired yeah are you still doing the character or what are we doing what the hell's going on here he seems who is this guy seemed to just be like the same guy I just had lunch with. Let me lean into it a little bit again. What, aren't the pants enough?

I got the pants. All right, so good. Good job. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, good job on the movie. Good job on the TV you've been directing. I know you did a commercial. Is that something you can do more of?

How'd that feel for you, Lynn? That was an interesting experience, Mark. But did you learn something? What did you learn from directing a commercial that you can apply to your toolbox, Lynn? For the people who are out there who are working on being a director, and they're like, you know, commercials, but I want to make art movies. So you directed a commercial. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that.

No shame in it. But did you do something on the commercial? Like, I remember you directed some show where you had to direct a car chase. That was a first. Right. So now you know how to direct a car chase if necessary. Yes. And a car accident. Yes.

So what'd you earn on the commercial? The interesting thing about this commercial is it was six spots for eBay, and there were two, you know, there were different pairs of people. So there were 12 people in these six spots. There was like two or three lines. I think it was three lines in most of these. And it was just a little back and forth. It was, I shot it was three lines and it was just a little back and forth it was I shot it very simply most I was I saw the whole thing playing out in a two shot but we also had you know singles

on each person and then uh you know we shot three of these it we shot three of these each day so there are two days three each day yeah and we once you set the cameras up that wasn't it just wasn't very complicated camera wise so once we had the camera and lighting we just sort of set the frame and then did 60 variations on these three lines you know we just tried absolutely every single variation on these little there's just subtle funny little lines and just every color every under the rainbow i mean i'm usually somebody on a set of a television or a movie don't got that kind of time it's like three or four takes right that's what i got unless somebody

is just really falling down on the job or i can't figure it out and then it might be 10 takes because you can't you know the actor isn't like you're just not getting what you need but very rare it's usually two three four takes so this was so weird to just be doing these three lines like again and again and again and again in the most tiny little different nuances and some i'd you know i do my own but then i'd run back to video villager there'd be 25 people there and they'd be like we just wonder if maybe she should smile after that you know whatever There's 25 of them? That's what it felt like. Yeah.

They gave me a standing ovation afterwards. From the ad agency and from eBay. There was the ad agency and there was eBay. And I think that was mostly it. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. That's a lot of people.

I'm sure it wasn't really 25. That's how it felt. They gave you a standing ovation because they were like like she's still chipper and doing her job i don't know why we didn't i've never experienced anything like it they just kept clapping and i was like we didn't break her so sweet but i've never is this surreal as well i have to imagine most editors or most directors go into those situations you know barely hiding their shame oh to be doing unless they're commercial directors and commercial directors like some of them are great some of them i imagine like i don't have a soul i'm here to make money i got a good eye let's make some money sure i'll do it a hundred times whatever you want somebody was just telling me about a commercial that they were on where the guy just yelled the entire time.

The director? Everybody, yeah. Just everybody. All he should have been yelling is, you think I wanted this? You think this is my dream? You want to see some of my feature scripts? That was the subtext. How about you want to sit around and read my feature script?

Smug little fuckers. Yeah, that's what's going on. Yeah, you don't do that. You don't yell. I haven't seen that yet. Yet. Not yet. We'll see.

It's coming. Yeah, when you direct me in your movie. See how that goes. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. Congratulations on the film. It's nice to see you, as always. No, thank you, Mark. All right. Well, thank you. Congratulations on the film. It's nice to see you, as always.

No, thank you, Mark. All right, Lynn. Okay, that was me, Lynn Shelton, her movie, Outside In, out this Friday, March 30th in Select Cities. So, okay. So now we're talking to sean penn now sean penn obviously is sean penn there's a lot there i was a little intimidated to to do the interview when it happened

i didn't know you know where he was at or how you really cover it and what you can cover but it seemed pretty clear that you know he's making a transition in his life and uh and he wanted to talk about this book which i read i i literally read almost all of it except for the last 10 pages but i did read the very end i i you know it was dense man it's a dense not a it's not a huge novel but uh language wise it's um you know it you've got to go slow with it. But I was able to talk to him about that and about a few other things. And I think he was very happy that I didn't have a problem with him smoking seven cigarettes inside an hour. I actually liked it.

Okay, so Sean Penn's debut novel, Bob Honey, Who Just Do Stuff, comes out tomorrow. And this is me talking so Sean Penn's debut novel Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff comes out tomorrow and this is me talking to Sean Penn how you doing man very well I'm happy to see you I feel like we grew up together but we didn't and you know just always part of my life and there you are here i am sitting right there so i you know the book is is kind of uh it's a it's a pretty dense and astounding thing you did there oh i'm gonna appreciate that no you should i mean because you know it's not a light read it's not an easy read but it's's funny and it's dark and it's referenced in all the right places in my mind. But when I started reading it, I immediately realized I got to pay attention.

Yes. That was to a degree by design. Well, yeah. I mean, it reads like a very long prose poem, like a satirical prose poem interspersed with occasional phil oaks lyrics and uh lennon lyrics and then a massive epic poem of your own at the end but it's all a poem it seems yeah i think that i was thinking my thoughts more melodically than than lyrically yeah and this is the first time you ever wrote this long form like this yeah yeah it had been on my mind for a very long time and uh um to well to write a book and

and the character of the book certainly evolved over the years and uh you know it had not initially been um let's say uh a funny tale and then it seemed the only thing that I could put out there today might have to at least have my sense of humor available. Right. And then see, roll the dice with how that would appeal or not appeal to others. Well, the sense of humor is, you know, this is a character that is kind of nebulous, but seemingly familiar. is kind of nebulous but but seemingly familiar and it's violence and uh and and it's sort of uh the way it moves through the world where the world is just happening to him and then you know the way he engages in the world through uh you know military means and violent means and murderous means and occasional charitable means and then somewhat uh sexually ambiguous at times uh it's

one of those characters it's like um the confederacy of dunces or some william burroughs stuff where you know you realize that there's a lot more moving through this guy than you know knowing the guy right right does that make sense yeah very much you know and uh and the humor of it for me is uh is the humor of American violence in some weird way. So where did you start the process of doing this? Because it does seem like there's bits and pieces of your life, events of your life, that you move through this character. Yeah. You know, I think that the first books I was offered to write, starting at about age 30, were memoirs,

which was always a kind of embarrassing notion to me and became at the height of an embarrassing notion when a colleague of about my age, and I'm no longer a young man, but I still somehow find if a memoir is appealing, that it comes a little closer to the anticipated end yeah um as a smoker perhaps i should have written the memo but you might have time man i mean but what did occur to me after i read this book by by a colleague of mine my own age was was how funny it could be to you know in so many ways we rewrite the stories of our life anyway. And I am going back through and thinking out a memoir. I think suddenly I'd get things out of order.

I'd get things wrong. It wouldn't make any sense to the year if this person were in this story or this dream. And so I thought, well, this is another part of a toolkit for a novel where I of course I'll use things but I'll exaggerate them freely I'll you know remember it just in the spirit of them or the people that they the real people that some of these characters represent. Yeah. I can figure out the words that have come to it as if I wanted to write a letter to them. Yeah. And so I had that personal anchor going through it,

but only as an anchor, and only as it related to, and also because I had some knowledge of the areas where in the style of this everything that's real um becomes the the punch line of of everything that's surreal around it right well yeah and there was just the the you know because now the character of bob honey i mean in your because there there's bits of cultural criticism in here. That's why, you know, as a novel, you know, you have to pay attention because you're not giving necessarily a lot of detail to,

you're not spending a lot of time on the trees. Do you know what I mean? You know, you're spending a lot of time on the thoughts, on the moments, on, you know, what's being attacked and what's wrong and what is, you know, these like sort of in-depth, you know, descriptions of military

procedures and stuff like that. So there's all these layers going on. And but in it is a very severe and very relevant critique of what what is happening now in America. I mean, that's, you know, it's very current. Yeah. I mean, as much as anything, it was a reaction to the 2016 campaign.

Yeah, and I'm assuming by this, by the chaos of this protagonist and what surrounds him, that your hope has been somewhat shattered. Well, yeah, you know, it's funny. The timing of the book coming out is interesting in the sense of I pay a lot of attention to the media coverage of the surviving kids of the Parkland shooting. Yeah. And it occurs to me that if those kids, you know, I'm quite certain that when CNN did their town hall, when they when they'd cnn did their town hall yeah one of the things i most noticed was that this crucial issue at this incredibly sensitive moment where kids were on of their own volition

wanting to stand and take it on within days of the horror that they'd experienced it might have served cnn and the world better not to interrupt it with a BMW commercial and maybe make an exception here. And clearly, the march is going to get coverage. After that, I would assume that there are many people, and one in particular, who will find ways to create bigger stories for the media to tell and that are more attractive at that point to the BMWs of the world to sponsor. Yeah.

So where I find, because the question circles around from your original question about hope, the hope that I had going into this book was a fairly lonely one. Yeah. was a fairly lonely one. Now, if these kids, and I do see that there's some activity, for example, the founders of the Women's March have come in support of their march. Well, if that begins a kind of amalgamation of movements so that by the time of the election, the 2018 election, you have a real coalition that isn't single issue focused, that is really going to be out there to get a reasonable men and women in those positions of making laws.

That there starts to be a little bit of hope. That there starts to be a little bit of hope. But the idea of what we're going to do to recalibrate after the damage of this administration, after what it's done. Already. Already. It does start, you know, I had had an idea, which I expressed to the Clinton campaign at the time, that they might consider somebody like John Kasich as a running mate. Right. And I think that the possibility, I mean, I could easily see someone like Kamala Harris running with somebody like Jeff Flake,

where it isn't about agreement on policy. It's agreement on being dignified human beings and to bring to understand the political import of that dignity because we've fallen so clearly fall far yeah and i in in you feel that in the book you feel like a you know you you're you're emotional weariness and and sort of um patriotic heartbreak of of you know just the the distracting and entertaining chaos that culture has become and the inability to focus on really anything see it's one of those books where you know the through line is this character who who who acts in a subversive world of uh you know god knows what whether it's septic tanks or mallet murdering or or whatever that the undercurrent of american culture the

hypocrisy of it has always been these movements in these dark worlds and then the rest is just you know glitter and garbage right so you know in in light of that and in light of the the the large poem at the end you know i felt uh i i felt like because i can't help but not separate the writer from the book. I thought like, well, I hope Sean is not defeated here. Well, it was an exercise in avoiding defeat in the sense that when I was reading newspapers, when I was in barroom conversations, when I was watching television, I saw that my whole engagement was in the struggle and and and it the struggle to not be defeated yeah well personally in the in the offense that that the media reporting

and what it was having to report had was doing on a daily basis to my mind body body, and spirit. Right, yeah, yeah. So in going to the other room and writing and making a kind of play world of it where let's say it's kind of operating room humor. Right. Because I felt like a surgeon whose patient was inevitably going to die every day. And I thought, well, let me go practice this in an alternate reality form, which got me away from the news for a while.

That's beautiful. That's perfect. Because there are lines in here where there's a precision to your personal, what I'm assuming is your personal experience of what you're describing when you say less a political or cultural crisis than a cataclysmic crisis of the country's mental health yeah yeah right so you got to isolate yourself to see that clearly well yes and also to include myself in the problem right and how in so like in what way do you see that what way do you feel that in terms of complicity through through apathy because you're not particularly apathetic or just the the fact that you don't feel like you're doing enough

or that you've made movies you don't like i think the the uh the poet laureate of india had had a there was a line i learned about from a wall a graffiti wall in omaha nebraska about 30 years yeah and it said every new child born is proof that God is not yet discouraged of man. Uh-huh. And I think that in this book and in this character, the idea is that he is trying to rediscover the innocence that is necessary to carry on as an adult. In other words, to go outside and notice the leaf that falls from the tree.

And when we get too involved in the culture of complaint, we start living only the complaint. So the culture of complaint is the sort of the flag of the culture of entitlement. Yes, and we are certainly suffering from our entitlement because whether those are in that minority but strong core that support the policies and the person, or this person, this celebrity of a president, be it that part of the illness or ours as we fight against it, when our entire lives are occupied with the struggle, we forget about the lives.

Right. And we certainly forget about the lives that aren't white and American. And so when we see some of these movements, and I certainly do not include this recent bold, brave, articulate reaction from these kids in Parkland. They're coming into a – dealing with assault weapons in American streets is one of those things that, yes, I can see fighting that fight every day. is one of those things that, yes, I can see fighting that fight every day. But so many of these other movements and proportionality to other things and other places strike such a chord of hypocrisy because they are movements that will ultimately have been considered a fashion. And we've seen that happen before. And I was always wary of movements as a child of the 60s.

I saw, you know, I loved from afar, you know, the kind of anti-war movement and the hippies and everything. Well, we were young. Yeah. to calling soldiers baby killers, I thought, wow, I'm glad I was never, I wasn't old enough to be, but I'm glad I wasn't old enough to have done what I would have done, which is aligned with that movement. And so it's really me kind of crying out for people

to find a social we and a personal I, because the identification, the I now, seems only to exist either through advertising or movements and packs. And courage is a pack mentality and redefined. And in many cases, we talk about victims synonymously with heroes, which just doesn't make sense in the English language. Yeah, well, the idea that courage, the fine line in courage and movements and actual mob mentality, it's a thin line. Well, again, it really depends on how you get up,

not how you fall down or who pushed you down. Yeah. And that's one of the things that's unique to this kids' movement out of Florida is that they are not looking for a fight. They seem to be so respectful of all sides, understanding of all sides, understanding of all sides, and approaching this with a kind of insight that only someone who is a teenager coming under that kind of extraordinarily

loud, harsh, violent fire, seeing the devastating injuries, mortal and not, around them, fatal and not around them, of their friends, that they have come out not dominated by anger, but dominated by reason. Yeah, like they're killing us. And a real understanding of what America was born to be in its ideal, in its constitutional ideal, in its Declaration of Independence ideal, the founding fathers ideal. They are a movement of a democratic society, not a movement of personal identity. a movement of personal identity uh-huh and then you so in terms of the hippies that we you know once it it got to that point where they were criticizing uh the military and then you know once it it got to the point where you know they were being shot in the streets and then sort of

were easily appropriated by commercialization and and and sort of uh you moved on to other things there was not enough structure to the movement. God knows they had an accomplishment. I think they did. They played a large role in ending the war. But it may, Phil Oakes, who I quote a lot in the book. A lot of Phil Oakes in the book. He always kept his hair short and wore a suit.

And he said why. He would tell his colleagues in the anti-war movement with their long hair and beards, you know, if this country has a choice between a bunch of long hairs taking drugs and Richard Nixon, they're going to choose Richard Nixon. But he was a voice in the wilderness to a large degree. So you like that practical approach. I think that if we say we care about our kids yeah results matter right and maybe say you know how can we do that and it's going to be compromised

and your lot of your ideals are going to be offended and you know when it gets down to the real conversation there are people who in their hearts disagree with us. Yeah. And that's what having a democratic system is all about. Right, and bridging that gap between those hearts, it's no small task. Right. Now, in the final poem, and I assume what you're kind of referring to right now in terms of, because you seem to be supportive

of an active and real coalition between the women's movement and these kids around guns. But there are obviously factions within the women's movement that are causing you some stress. Most definitely there are. And I think more importantly, I think they're causing themselves some harm in terms of the long term, the sustainability of the rational movement, the rational cultural change that has to happen. And frankly, to my mind, while I will be accused of metabolizing on behalf of women or whatever the various attacks are because entering the conversation with nuance is to agree to be social media to death.

Quick-baited to death. Yeah, I think history tells us that in these things because of how much of this is human nature that has to less be judged than contained, because it will continue to exist as a nature, artifacts of what we have been at less evolved times and if they want an evolution that then the revolution is going to have to understand that there's a thing called baby steps that they're the only ways that these things move forward a conversation it's got to be a conversation and you can't fall into the trap movements whether it's the women's movement me too Me Too movement, all of this, I worry that they fall into the trap at large, that they fall into the trap of becoming the enemy, which is Trump. They're using the social media in a similar way.

Many of them are. And there is an increasing divide where there is less and less any we available. And like we were talking before, if we don't balance our lives between the I and the we, we don't move forward. We continue to move back. Well, I mean, you actually, when you say normalization of commercial compromise had left this medium as one of the dominantly irrelevant fantasies, adding nothing to the world and instead providing a perfect storm of merchanteering thespians and image builders now less identifiable as creators of valued products than of products built for significant sales. Masses of fans as happy as hustled, bustled, and rustled sheep.

A country without culture. Nothing more than a shopping mall with a flag. Still business is branding buoyantly, leaving Bob to yet another bout of that old society's sinking sensation. Now, speaking of what the divide and conquer of commercialization has done, is that I don't know that people can see the difference between a we and a me. And that me is we. And that if you don't sort of get on board with it, you have moments of agreement, but it's still fundamentally selfish because we've all been deemed unique, individual, entitled people that can brand ourselves as we are able to do through whatever identifying products.

So, and you're talking about show business and you're talking about the death of art and you're talking about uh the death of anything sort of relevant that uh that this industry uh you know puts out right but you like you know now that you're writing a book you know with it is it more difficult sale and more difficult market than films? I mean, how do you feel in terms of your ability to express, you know, what you want to put out into the world as an artist with the book as opposed to, let's not start with acting, but your own films? I got, the way I always describe this, my relationship with films is sort of like, in the 1970s, the girl I fell in love with was a movie theater with strangers in it in the dark. Where often the biggest films of the day were also the best films of the day. And where you often had an experience, we often had an experience as an audience, where after 10 minutes of a film, you knew that 40 years later,

if you ran into one of those strangers somewhere, and it came up that you'd both seen that movie, you'd both remember everything about that movie and how it affected your life and what you were doing at the time. It was, in a simple word, a special experience and a special offering from the filmmakers. Even a great movie today is almost in an impossible position to represent that in our culture. There's so much content. There's so much noise. Yeah. There's so much competition for being part of the conversation.

Everybody is being told what to talk about. And if it's a film, that conversation might, on a good day, last two weeks. And that's mostly going to be about the Cirque du Soleil event of whatever the big bang genre film was. And most content going to television or people watching it live streaming or breaking it into episodes. No longer do you have a church of storytelling,

but you have everybody's cubicle. Right. With a lot of choices. With a lot of choices and a lot of separation between us on this stuff. That's right. Yeah. So while I can't claim being from that generation that I would assume that there's not something special to be found within it. It's not just like transactional romances.

I can't get a grip on it. I can't understand how to find or feel that I'm sharing. You can see something special and still not know that I've got a we around me on that feeling like i used to well yeah because it's a like the the landscape has become you know completely uh you know fragmented and all these different portals like i sometimes i think like you know back when there was three networks and one public tv station uh we weren't getting all the information but we were on the same page, give or take, culturally. Yeah. And now, pick your favorite news station to watch. And mostly, I'm wondering why anchors, some of whom I have great respect for, rather than reporting the news, it seems they should be pulling a fire alarm.

Right. That we are at the Paddy Chayefsky moment. Yeah. And beyond it. actually beyond it. And so I'm writing a book. Which one? I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore? Yeah. Yeah.

And in writing a book, I think, you know, A, I have the blissful ignorance of the book publishing world. I don't know as we sit, what a lot of books is. Somebody tells me, hey, it sold this many. I don't know what that means relative to the world of that. I'm going to keep myself a little blind to that. But what I do know is that if you pick up a book and hold it in your hand and read it, however many people do, there's a sort of guaranteed special in that.

It's a specialness. Like to that person, I got to write not an email but a letter. And they read the letter. They'll remember that letter if they read it cover to cover. So it slows things down somehow. It's not part of the noise. they'll remember that letter mm-hmm if they read it cover to cover so it's it slows things down somehow it's not part of the noise yeah and you know I wondered what it would be like talking about it and and and the irony of selling something in essence which is really for for me, genuinely wanting to participate in the conversation

with anybody who's willing to hear it. When I put the book out the first time, I did an audible version of a short version of it. And I didn't like that because I didn't like it read to people. I wanted people to find the voice themselves. And I didn't like my performance of it either. So when I went and novelized it, it felt so good just knowing that I was going to put that in an envelope. And, you know, like a message in a bottle. Yeah, yeah.

Put it out in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's exciting. But do you find, you know a it's a lonesome task and you know it takes a lot of time and a lot of refining and i imagine you had uh uh you know good friends helping you and editors helping you in terms of you know refining things well the way that i would that it worked is that i that while i say that i didn't want people to have it

read to them yeah i would abuse the hell out of my very good friends who I would say after I wrote another 10 pages, sit down. And it would be helpful to read it aloud to continue writing. Oh, that's great. And so that was one of the processes. Then what happened is when Atria Simon & Schuster took it. Peter Borland was my editor, and I had never worked, of course, with an editor on that way. I had as a journalist, but I hadn't worked with an editor in fiction. And what I had done is I had written screenplays

and had too many opinions around that didn't understand the screenplay. What I found very quickly in this instance, and it may be the book world, and it may be that I just found a really good editor, was suddenly somebody was only ever speaking to the book as I'd written it and understood it and would say things like, give me more geology.

Or this part, I don't understand this. I'd like to, if you're okay with letting me understand it, I'd like you to write it, work on it, and help me understand it. I think it'll tell your story better. And it was so encouraging and productive an experience. And we would only talk every couple of weeks. And a new creative

relationship for you really yeah they really kind of carried it um you know to a place where i felt that i had as much as you ever would with anything creative that i'd completed it i think i i don't know if i would have known how to complete the task without the trust that he had in the material that I needed to know someone other than I had, that I didn't, it wasn't me that told him what this meant and he knew what it meant. And then with that, I became very trusting of him. And so it was, that was just a great uh uh compliment to the whole experience that this was for me doing that new creative experience is great and you know it's interesting

we talk about like i i don't know how old are you how old are you 57 so i'm 54 you know and i remember you know most of your movies you know because you know we're around the same age so it in in hearing you talk about you know the fragmentation of media and getting people on the same page the conversation the we and all that i mean you finding yourself nostalgic you know because you were the you were the you bridged the gap between the 70s that you you know remember and we romanticize to some degree and the actors of that generation and directors of that generation to wherever we are now.

I mean, you were the next guy. And it seems like you had a real relationship with a lot of those guys whose movies you revered. I had Nolte in here. Oh, yeah. And I got him on a good day, I think. He found it? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And I got him on a good day, I think. He found it? Yeah. But he just, you know, there are guys like him, and I've also talked to Elliot Gould, oddly, where you start a conversation in the middle of one they're already having. Right. You know, and, you know, he was talking about, you know,

some time where you invited him to brando's house and and uh but you know there was like i have to assume in your your journey of creativity that having been able to spend time with those guys in some of the directors you work with had to have a profound effect on how you approach almost everything no question yeah yeah and and when you use nicholson in your own films for a couple of times and then david morris too who you seem to like a lot yeah wonderful great actor but that you know you're sort of honoring a legacy and and are you is there a heartbreak involved in what you i would think would see as the passing of some sort of time, you're on. You know, my answer is yes, and I guess it's part of living into one's 50s, in my case,

when it happened, where, yeah, I was part of the, you know, pseudo-intellectual argument that this was coming, that it was happening, that we were falling down as an industry industry that we had too many of our colleagues who were more interested in selling movies than making them that things were contrived that there was a kind of self-censorship and a brainwash the value system of my colleagues changed into one of what i talk about in the book which was kind of self-branding and yeah and and google alerting oneself which is like mainlining this disease of celebrity and what we finally came to what i came to in my experience of it was yes a final heartbreak but in that heartbreak i'm not with that girl anymore and And you suddenly, after any heartbreak, that girl being movies and what the nostalgia was, once, you know, one morning you get up and it's a new day. And then there's a new girl to fall in love with.

And for me, that was writing this book. Right. No, I get that. But like, you know, having having you know sort of talked to more actors lately about acting right you know and knowing you know bits and pieces of you know the life you've lived off screen which is you know a ballsy sort of you know risk-taking life of different things you know whether it's you know political or showing up to help people in in dire circumstances or pushing the envelope you know with your

own creativity in your own life you know trouble and crisis and everything else that somehow or another when you were coming over here you know I thought that was you know I was intimidated at first because I don't know you and you know I know your movies right so the question my point is you know when i talk to somebody like nolte or if i talk to you know i talked to jennifer lawrence recently i talked to sharon stone last week is that the the the actors like yourself who you know can somehow you find you know the humanity and empathy uh uh that's available in the characters you play the vulnerability there that you know whether or and empathy uh uh that's available in the characters you play the

vulnerability there that you know whether or not a million people or 10 million people are watching movie or whatever once you enter that level of storytelling where where the human story is being told through your feelings like you know in milk or in any of them you know uh in mystic river even that guy had a humanity right so do you really want to walk away from that or are you just kind of waiting for the next thing i think it's possible that you know it's a word that's used probably too often when we think of others labeling us yeah but in the way we label ourselves i think i've i've productively from it from my sense of it blurred the lines so that in my experience of what i've been doing and trying

to do that at one time would have been called acting in movies i am still doing it. Yeah. It's just adapting the form in which I do it. So I'm made of paper. Yeah. The character I want to play is made of paper, and it has words on it. And so I don't, so no longer, I remember loving that girl that was making movies, but I no longer have any interest in making movies. I have no interest in seeing movies. It's just not, I can't, and there are, I do it sometimes because I have a friend who's very talented.

I just saw what should be a disaster. I saw a remake, the third remake of A Star is Born. Yeah. I saw a remake, the third remake of A Star is Born. Written by Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper, I believe, who directed it and starred in it himself. And if I could do that today, what he did with that story, I'd be staying in the game. But I don't have the perspective and maybe not the skill sets. This is one of the most beautiful, fantastic. It's the best, the most important commercial film I've seen in so many years.

Who's the female lead? Lady Gaga. Uh-huh. And I'm telling you, the two of them are miracles in it. And so it isn't dead. I believe, you know, I will be heartbroken if the world, including people who would loathe me, because it's one of those films I feel like you don't have to be, if you're a very, if someone's very intelligent, they're going to love this film. If somebody is not very intelligent, they're going to love, there's a big we-maker in this thing.

Oh, yeah. And I'll be heartbroken for that film if it doesn't go through. Even if I ever have any small version of feeling like I could create something like that in this climate, I really believe it's going to be on paper. Huh.

Yeah, I mean, is it because, you know, making movies involves too many other people? For me, it is. Yeah, I mean, I think if I have a next volume of this book, it will be probably titled, Mr. Honey Does Not Play Well With Others. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess I feel what you're saying, and I hear what you you're saying and I don't want to stop talking about it quite yet.

But, you know, in looking at some of the work you've done and the people you've worked with, I mean, don't you still find that, you know, you were a great facilitator of the we conversation? I do think it was my best strength in terms of as a collaborator with actors and directors and so on it's come not to be and i don't think that that's uh i think it's a it's the evolution of of my experience some of which was based on great disappointments some of which was based on you know a fatigue but when I came out of the disappointments and out of the fatigue, I remembered in the book, Coetzee's book, I think, Disgrace, the opening has something to do with the greatest sin a man can commit is to deny his own nature.

As it turns out, my nature now wants to be creatively alone, nature now wants to be creatively alone socially together but creatively alone in the in the creation of something um i i i'm working on a a thing now that i which i don't think i'll do again with great people i've been working on a thing in new orleans great people and of course because i'm being paid well because uh I'm honored to be part of something with smart people who care a lot, I don't let myself hurry the day and give up on the discovery necessary, whether for my own performance

or what the director's trying to do or noticing where one can be helpful to another actor. But it's work. It didn't used to be. It used to be fun. It's work to not want to just get the hell home to my dog and i don't feel responsible staying in that when i'm writing yeah it ain't work huh it's i you know i don't dance some people go out and dance and get their spirit filled um nobody would want to see me dance most least of all myself but it feels like dancing with the

writing and so I just find this is where I you know there was no there was no law saying that because this is what I have been a quote-unquote actor for all these years that you know and a director and director that film has to be well, I left out director because I have one film that I think I'd like to make if I make another film as a director. As an actor, I realize on the job that I'm doing that when I get to the last day of this shoot, I can let myself functionally not give a shit. Right now I can't because I've got to finish working hard and kind of keep my head in the wind. But I'm a couple of weeks away from that and

the idea of being free to just live a writer's life with my golden retriever sitting there would be a dream come true. And there's no sadness in that? Not anymore. No. come true. And there's no sadness in that? Not anymore. No, not anymore.

And I accept that I may be blind to a lot of the values of where the business is going. It was never a decommercialized business. Of course. We told ourselves it was. We didn't, as a young actor, I wouldn't have thought that the two-hour film format was designed by the theater owners, you know, or whatever it is. And God knows I understand that when people, you know, we always consider reading of books as a pure form of absorbing culture.

But actually, when they do these binge watches of shows and maybe one night they read a chapter and maybe decide to put it back down go live a little life with their friends then maybe the smiths and the joneses come over the next day and book club and you read together yeah and and so in some ways the experience this conversation i'd had with warren baity and i may well be stealing some of his words as i do from his conversation about this subject uh but it really articulated it as I had been feeling it. You know, I am not able to find the joy in it, but I'm sure it's there for many people. In acting and directing.

In film. It's hurting me, Sean. Sorry. I'm sorry. Nobody said this was going to be easy. But you're convinced this isn't a phase. Well, I want to be clear that I can, you know, as an audience, if someone corners me in a room and something like A Star is Born happens, I can weep in joy. I mean, I'm still available to the magic of this thing.

Right. But to just admire a film alone, and, you know, I was also very grateful some years ago at the reception to The Revenant, which I was worried about because I thought it a masterpiece, and I also thought it too hard for the contemporary audience. And yet it came through because of the stellar work of the filmmaker and the actors. This one, though, is a really, because it's about the essential, which is love. I mean,

and because it's, you know, it's an acknowledgement of something. If it has one thing going against it, it's the question of whether people are going to be honest enough these days. And this is kind of over-structured, politically correct, you know, common wisdom. Are they ready to see love be a mess? Yeah. Because I, you know, not only speaking for myself, but the best relationships I've ever seen were a mess. And there's something beautiful about the flaws and things that's never going to go away.

We're going to focus so much attention on our hand, forgetting that our elbow could be the thing that gets broken. It's always going to come in a way we don't expect, and that's kind of the beauty don't expect and that's kind of the beauty of it and that's the beauty of this film so because we've spent so much time talking about the things that i you know mourn the loss of it's really more of a personal conversation about where i feel i can be productive where i where i feel excited about sharing things because even if it's a very unique situation where an A Star is Born

can be made I think it I'm like promoting it it comes out in October because I I saw it three times and I just you know kind of wept all the way through the damn thing and you laugh your ass off also and and the exciting music of it and and uh it's really quite the exception to the rule so I'm I'll be continuing as a searcher for the exception. But I just, there was too much of a full joyfulness riding for me to think that I'm going to go find that again in being around too many people. And in movies.

But like, you know, in your relationships with people in your life but like you know in your relationships with with people in your life that like you talk about warren baity or you know whatever your relationship was you had a relationship with cassavetes as well right yeah and dennis hopper and these cats who uh you know terence malick you know the you know terence malick who does you know you know two movies a decade right that you you know when you talk to them this older generation of people that have dealt with what you're dealing with which is you know a crisis of you know not necessarily a midwife crisis but what do i do with my creativity if i'm burnt out with this other thing you know what did you learn from those guys i mean a lot it would probably be a very very long conversation

to go back through the those things that i would you know point to is but i but i i'm sure that in in a lot of ways i searched out those relationships as as in as much as for the you know the social connections that happen where friendships were made um as initially to to to get a sense and get to own a little bit of the anchor of where that thing that they did that made me want to be in movies came from. And yes, with some of them, I think that there's a version or another of the disappointment that I have

of where things are, and in others there aren't. But it's a very hard thing to sustain. We watch a lot of great filmmakers who do continue uh and they may still be enjoying it but they're not making good movies anymore and that can come simply because you stop being willing to put the blood on the tracks and what it takes to get a movie made in the first place to get the money and who are you talking to once upon a time the heads of studios were movie lovers. They may have been a Thalberg or something like that, was essentially a movie lover. Now you've got some business

student from Columbia University at 22 years old running the studio and the numbers, and they go to their marketing department before they ever read the script the marketing department tells them hey you can do this up to this much money uh that's what it's going to be worth to you they come back to the director and they say here's the money back into it yeah so there's not a lot of time for filmmakers to dream and then to fulfill that dream and most of the films today represent a story rather than make it but you got you got one movie in you that you're thinking about i do got one movie in you that you're thinking about. I do have one movie in me that I'm thinking about. It's something that, you know, the affection started before the divorce between myself

and the industry. And so I might have to honor it for myself and for the other people involved. Oh, that's, well, that's good. So it's sort of happening, kind of. I think so. I think so i think and what about like you now the way you talk about love and the way i assume you live your life you know given this there was a funny thing that nulty said about you when they did that prank on you i

guess you were on the set of the malik movie where the the jail prank where there was a fight and and uh and you know he had brought that up that that you know they they knew this about you that if you're going to do that if you're going to do that, if you're going to bring him to a jailhouse and there's going to be a fight in the next room, you know, Sean's going to go in. Like, there's not going to be a second thought. He's going to go in there and deal with it.

And you did. And then I guess, you know, in retrospect, you know, maybe you appreciated the prank, but you were like, basically said, well, you're lucky I wasn't armed because then there would have been real fucking trouble. No, I didn't say that. But I did come to think about that particular prank. Cause I, I, I enjoy doing pranks myself is that they, they did it very, very well. They rehearsed it. They also played on a sympathy because Nick was announcing to me privately for days that

he needed to talk to me because he had cancer. Oh which was not true yeah and so when I found that this my sick friend who had months to live I mean he'd really sold that to me privately three days earlier in a setup for this thing well had been arrested for drunk driving I was down at this police station that was you know out in the middle of nowhere in Port Douglas, Australia. And then I walked down about seven blocks from where my kids were. And I walk into a situation where now the bad guy has taken the gun away from a police officer. And it's a big bad guy. And they played it beautifully. And the thought was, whatever I'm going to do here to try to survive, I may never see my children's faces again. And I decided that I didn't appreciate the prank.

I think pranks are great to attack an ego, mine or my victim's. to attack an ego, mine or my victim's. But when it starts scratching at your soul, I somehow don't have a resentment anymore about it, and I certainly got to give them credit. They went all the way. But that was a notable moment. It seemed like in the sort of chaotic storm that is Nick Nolte's memory, that still features prominently.

He felt bad about it, it seemed. I don't think he felt that bad about it. But Nick is a guy, he's one of the significant actors to me. When I was in high school and I saw Rich Man, Poor Man. Yeah. And Nick Nolte, who was playing a high school kid at one point, I think he was already in his late 30s, 40 or something like that. He was, that was kind of our generation's James Dean. You know, this guy was just something.

I then started going to every Nick Nolte movie. Then ultimately got to work with Nick three or four times. We played Brothers in the theater together on the Sam Shepard play. He's a unique character and a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful actor. But boy, he knows how to beat the shit out of them. Yeah, if you're saying that, have you pulled back from that a bit?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, there's only so, the body will only let you do so much at a certain point. And when you talk about, you know, I think it's interesting the idea that a prank that scratches at the soul, where, you know, it should be fun. You should be embarrassed.

It should be like kind of give your ego a shot. But if you have to confront the dark pain of nonexistence, it's not, you know. Yeah, knowing that your kids are a couple of blocks away and how they're going to feel about it and so on. Having those thoughts and dreams for a few days didn't make me happy with anybody involved. Yeah. How old are your kids now? 24 and 26. How's that going?

That's going great. They're amazing people. They're both acting and modeling an industry that I'm not very interested in, but they seem to have fun with it. Are you able to be supportive even though it's part of the problem in your eyes? This is one of the hypocrisies that i understand you know i i'm supportive of whatever my kids do that that keeps them happy and healthy period uh-huh and in terms of uh this the the challenge of love you know in retrospect you know what's your wisdom on that i don't know i mean i saw you at the i was backstage briefly at the U2 concert and I saw you, but Robin was there.

Do you guys get along? We don't have a lot of conversation. Right. We don't not get along. Right. We don't have a very, we have very separate relationships with our kids at this point. And it seems to work out better.

Oh, because they're grown. Right. Better that way. And yeah, because they are making their own decisions. And as it turned out, she and I did not share the same ethical views on parenting, including the continuing parenting of adult children, where it was better for her to be entirely whatever she is

and available to them, and they love their mother, and they have that relationship, and for me to be entirely available, but also for us not to depend on what was always going to be conflicting ethics. Yeah? Like around what? It would be getting too much into my kids' personal life. Oh, okay, okay. too much into my kids' personal life. Oh, okay, okay. And where do you stand with the possibility of, you know,

that love in your life, given that the type of love you appreciate is so chaotic and insane and dangerous? Or have you mellowed in that way? I'm still, you know, I'm never going to take a position that I've closed off to love. I think, you know, people feeling in going to take a position that I've closed off to love. I think, you know, people feeling in love with each other is a great, great thing. More and more, I do find that the relationships become pretty transactional, and it's not easy to run into somebody that, you know,

makes life better the next day for you to be involved with. But if I did, I'd grab it. So, okay. So you're a bit jaded. Your word, not mine. What would you say? Protective? Cynical? cynical it reminds me of a woman named aaron dignum wrote a line in a movie one time where

the man says to the woman who's in some emotional trouble he's trying to pepper up and he says uh you know what you want to do i mean you want to go to the beach she says i've been to the beach he says talk about jaded so uh well then was there a period there like because i do you know you do spend some time He says, talk about jaded. So, well, then was there a period there? Like, because I do, you know, you do spend some time talking or, you know, at least reacting as you did earlier in our conversation. But to the Me Too movement in terms of due process and in terms of victimhood. But was there, you know, when this started happening, were you scared? No, no, no. personally, was I scared?

No, you know, there are differences between, you know, I find I have a difference between myself and some of my fellow men in the sense that it never occurred to me, for example, upon being rejected to claim anger over it or to mistreat the person as a result of it. And yet you want this thing to teach us something. And as a man, I'm here to tell people in the women's movement, we need help. It's got to go slow. You know, this is a lot to unpack overnight and and i think that what gets missed is things that you don't have to unpack overnight like equal pay yesterday get it done yeah and no dicks in the workplace if possible

and don't rape people you know yeah yeah we've always known that. Right. The question is, how do you get victims to be able to report that when it happens? Right. And those who do are heroes. Yeah. Yeah. And that does take, I mean, that woman that Oprah Winfrey was referring to in her Golden Globes speech, at her life's risk, immediately went. And that put, while they didn't get convicted, it put people on notice.

It put people on notice in Mississippi when Emmett Till's mother said, we're going to go with an open casket and let them see how my son was brutalized at 14 years old and though that heroism I would like to see that word saved for that somebody's been victimized for something and they can help whether it's even too late you know legally or something by sharing their story i'm all for that but when it comes to the pride of the pack i get very skeptical all right man well i'm excited about the book did a good job it's compelling it's engaging gotta take it you know it's a there's a lot

in there and and i enjoyed reading it uh i'm excited about bradley's new movie yeah and what is it what what's the one you got to percolate i know we've got a you got an hour here what's it what what's the angle what's the world of the new movie that you're thinking about? Oh, it's from a memoir written by a woman whose father was one of the biggest counterfeiters in American history. And so it's a father-daughter relationship. Wow. That's beautifully written by the playwright, Jez Butterworth. Uh-huh. That's exciting.

And you've been sort of looking at this thing for years? Yeah. All right, Sean, you feel good? I feel great. Thanks for talking. Thank you. All right, so if you can just picture the smoke. Picture the smoke in the garage here.

And that was Sean Penn, his new book, Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff out tomorrow did I mention I watched the entire first season and one of the second season of Stranger Things inside 36 hours did I mention that so my mind is kind of blown open a little bit

the fucked up thing about my mind is for about six or seven of the episodes I'm like this could happen this could definitely happen. I don't want to play guitar today because I got some things to do and it takes me a long time to ease into it, okay? So, Boomer Lives! Thank you.