WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 973 - Tim Blake Nelson

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

Tim Blake Nelson might be a familiar face due to his indelible character roles in many films, but that didn’t stop him from defying just about all of Marc’s preconceptions about him. Marc had no idea, for example, about Tim’s Jewish upbringing in Tulsa, or that his family escaped the Holocaust and became oil drillers in America, or that Tim tried his hand at stand-up in the 80s, or that he studied the classics in hopes of becoming a professor or an archeologist. They talk about all of that stuff and a lot about the Coen Brothers, too, particularly their new movie with Tim, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. This episode is sponsored by The Shivering Truth on Adult Swim, Spotify, SimpliSafe, and Stamps.com. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too.

Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series,

FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life when i die here you'll never leave japan alive fx's shogun a new original series streaming february 27th exclusively on disney plus 18 plus subscription required t's and c's apply all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters

what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it. Before I forget, because it is the holiday season, we've got the new limited edition oversized Phoenix tour posters up on the merch page. They were done by the artist Gonzo, Jason Gonzalez. And when they're gone, they're gone. They're large posters. They're beautiful posters. They're hand screened and they were specially made for this gig, and he did a beautiful job with that. That's up there. Also, I'd like to let you know that I'm on the latest episode of Alan Alda's podcast, Clear and Vivid. Go check that out wherever you get your podcasts.

It's always nice talking to Alan. First time I talked to him was in a hotel room, and he gave me and Sarah a cold, but I didn't tell him about it. But it was a doozy. It was a doozy, Alan. Nice conversations both times, but the cold I could have done without. Tim Blake Nilsen is on the show today. Tim Blake Nilsen, that guy, that guy, that actor. Who's that guy? That guy. He's in that new Coen Brothers movie, Thead of buster scruggs which is streaming on netflix he's been another coen brothers movie he was on uh oh brother where art thou is that how is that you've seen him great actor and i couldn't have been more off about my assumptions about him

because he's an oklahoma guy and i'd see him in things and you just you make assumptions. But man, what a surprising and engaged and interesting and completely out of left field, a Jewy conversation. So you Jews tee up. Jewness is coming. Oklahoma style. Didn't think that was around, did you? Yep. I saw a beautiful boy last night. did you? Yep. I saw Beautiful Boy last night. And as somebody who is engaged in the recovery racket and part of it and attributes it to saving my life, it was hard. It was hard to watch. It's

going to be hard for anyone to watch. But if you are a recovery person, you've certainly heard the stories before. To see the story is another, a whole other ball of wax it's a it's a very emotional and relentless film and it really fucked me up last night and i just i hope that everybody knows out there and i get a lot of emails about this all the time there's help man there's help there's help get help get help if you can i mean i know if you're in the grips of it if you're if you're if you're being strangled from the inside by addiction and that that monster inside of you is not uh giving you any choices uh you know find a window find a window find a moment a reprieve where you can push back and get some help. Just call. Just call. Call the number.

Call the number. A-A-N-A. Whatever A. Call the number. Talk to somebody. God damn it. It just haunted me. It's so fucking heartbreaking and horrible.

Addiction is. Just fucking horrible. But so I've been checking back in. I'm not feeling squirrely, but I'm feeling a little dry. I don't know if you can hear that in my voice. Feeling a little dry. It rained here, man. It rained in LA, like torrential rain, fucking glorious.

I can't tell you, man, you live out here. Obviously the fires are awful, did a lot of damage and And you just feel the dryness, the dry everything. It's just I go on hikes a couple of times a week and I feel like I'm just walking through kindling that could go up at any second. It's just the land is so parched so deeply that nothing looks alive. It's like an alien landscape. It's fucking awful. So when it rains, especially like it did the other day just like rain so fucking hard it's like yes i can almost feel the earth kind of absorbing it like just the relief of the of the

ground i feel it and it also diminishes all that dryness in the air so i can touch my cats again there's so much fucking static electricity i'm afraid i'm gonna kill monkey or lafonda they're old they're old i don't want to shock them to death with my finger just saying hi but uh but the other thing that happens out here that i can't quite ever understand is as soon as it fucking rains in los angeles people become morons in their automobiles it's like instant stupid it's like as soon as the car gets wet it's like why what am i how do i i don't know oh no i don't understand it i mean maybe it's because i've lived in a lot of different weather a lot of different places on the east coast i've dug my car out of snow banks that

were put there by the fucking snow plows is that a conspiracy is it i know the roads need to be clear but it's part of that deal to keep the roads clear to completely put a wall of snow up next to yours if you park on the street when i lived in boston new york if it snows overnight you wake up there's a six foot wall next to your car of snow that just becomes ice is that the city's way of saying like yeah maybe wait till spring to pull out. But here it's the same with the, with the rain. I just don't understand it. You like cars are stalling in the middle of the highway.

I mean, what kind of neglect, what kind of service did you neglect to, to, to when it rains hard, your car just stops working. I mean, and, and people just, I look, I don't want anyone to hurt themselves. And I, I certainly, but, but come on, man, it's rain. Pace yourselves. Stay the proper distance behind people. Don't, don't go really fast and then slam on your brakes and wondering why you're sliding. Maybe the roads aren't good.

I don't know what it is, but every year it's the same thing. But you know, you ride a line, man. It's just, you ride a line in the sense of like who you are as a person i've talked about this before i used to do a fucking bit about it for god's sake but like i took off the other day we had you know we're shooting on location it's about 45 miles away and i'm up at 5 15 in the morning i'm on the road at 6 to head out to location. It's still dark out to shoot glow. And 10 minutes out on the highway, on the 134,

I hit just a wall of traffic, just a standstill. I'm just 10 minutes in. I got my tea. I'm jacked as fuck, and I'm not moving, and it's raining, and I'm not moving for a fucking hour,

and there's miles of traffic, and i i took my own mind into my own hands and i disregarded the google maps advice and when google maps gives it to you you know they mean it you know with ways you don't know where you're going it just it's a default with them it's sort of like who gives a fuck just get him off the highway and let's give him a tour of uh the industrial area that he doesn't know about near his home. If Google Maps tells you to change,

they're like, okay, we've processed this and we've decided it doesn't happen that often. But I'm like, no, fuck it. My baseless instincts

are to stay on the highway. And I did and I seethed and I bucked and I thrashed and then I eventually gave up and when I realized that fuck it, there's nothing I can do, I seethed and I bucked and I thrashed. And then I eventually gave up. And when I realized that, fuck it, there's nothing I can do. I'm going to be an hour and a half late to the shoot. I hope the whole day isn't fucked, but fuck it. I'm here. And then as it starts moving, you're like, I don't know, you know, you're relieved.

And then, you know, as it starts to reveal itself, what's happened, there's that moment of horror. And then there's that moment of satisfaction that something happened. And then the sort of gratitude, like, God damn, I'm glad I'm not that guy. And then the sort of concern and empathy, I hope everyone's okay. Concern and empathy. I hope everyone's okay. But what had happened was a semi, I guess, had jackknifed in the middle of the night and just laid itself down on its side across all four lanes of the highway. And they got one lane on the side, the shoulder open finally.

And there's just a truck on its side. Like it couldn't have been planned more perfect to fuck up traffic for two days and you see that truck and it didn't look like there was fire anybody was probably hurt but that was a rough phone call for that guy you know call to the boss maybe he's his own boss the call to the to whoever he was delivering to but you know the anger sort of dissipates the relief comes and then you got all that free highway after that and you're sort of like this is the way it should be why does it take a semi laying itself down to make la highways drivable but I hope that guy's all right. We made it.

We made our day. Had a good time the other night, actually, shooting with Allison. I like it when it's just the two of us and we're just in it for a whole scene. And I feel like I'm doing something and I can integrate my new tools and focus on the job of acting. It was fun. It was fun. Okay. Is that all right all right to have a little

fun oh so oh yeah i remember it was my dad's 80th birthday on the 30th happy birthday daddy just i don't think he's ever listened to this podcast never seriously i don't think he, my father has never listened to one of my 900, almost 1000 podcasts, but I called him up on his aid. I did, you know, here's the fucking thing. It's like, I was going to call him, you know, 80 is a big deal. Then I wake up and he'd already called. Hey, just saying, hi, a lot of people are calling. he fucked that up so i called him like hey i was gonna call happy birthday but you kind of fucked up that you know me you know you preempted i don't know what you did there but you took it away from me old man i didn't say that i said happy birthday you made it good for you you feeling all right and then he started talking about politics and he thing is my father you know was a democrat and then he's like he's

uh he claims he switched but he didn't really know what any of it means and he still doesn't really he's got it's weird when you realize your your parents or whoever you talk to maybe people in your life have no real sense i'd be surprised if he knew all three branches of government but you know he just picks up these buttons you know know, he's like, you know, he said he became a Republican after the Kavanaugh thing. And it's just so clear that he he believes that Fox News is news and that the guy talking seems like he knows what he's talking about. So he's giving me the Fox talking points. I said, I'm not going to have this conversation with you because you have no intellectual clarity or any depth to what you're saying. You're just saying things with no, you don't have any idea what's happening.

Where'd you get your information? He's like, I watched things. I watched a few different, where'd you get it? I watched a couple of different shows. Where'd you get it? Well, on Fox, he's like, yeah, probably. I'm like, all right, I just can't, I don't think we need to do this. You know, I don't think we need to do it. You know, if you're just going to regurgitate what Hannity says, he said, he seems to know what he's talking about. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't think we need to do it. You know, if you're just going to regurgitate what Hannity says. He said he seems to know what he's talking about. Yeah, I mean, a lot of wrong-minded, horrible people seem to know what they're talking about. It's not hard to seem to know what you're talking about.

But, you know, we got through it. Anyway, let's get into this interview because I tell you, man, I thought it was great. Tim Blake Nilsen is a very impressive actor and a very interesting guy. One of the great character actors of our time right now. He's in the new Coen Brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. He is Buster Scruggs. He's in the first story. There are, I think, five or six stories.

Tom Waits is in one. Yes, I'm trying to get. Everyone you want me to get on the show, I'm trying to get on the show. I'm not magic. I don't know why Albert Brooks won't come on. I don't know. Look, whatever. Tim Blake Nelson is here.

And I had made assumptions about him. And they were all wrong. His story about his family's, how they ended up in Oklahoma. He's full on Oklahoma. And you know what? I'm not going to tip any of it. I'm just going to tell you that that movie is streaming on Netflix now. And this is me in conversation with Tim Blake Nelson.

Netflix now. And this is me in conversation with Tim Blake. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Death is in our air.

This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only disney plus we live and we die we control nothing beyond that an epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by james clavelle to show your true heart just to risk your life when i die here you'll never leave japan alive fx's shogun a new original series streaming february 27th exclusively on on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. I just had this straight up black cowboy boot that I remember eventually just disintegrating. Like I wore them a lot. It was a thing. I had a Western belt that I liked that I never took off, black jeans. I'm losing my sense of when these things happened in my life. How old are you?

I'm 54. Right. I'm 55. And I've been through a lot of shoes. Yeah, I guess that's true. There's that. But like I really committed to them. You? Yeah. And I was always, I always wore cowboy boots in college.

And then I continued to wear them when I went to grad school. Yeah. And I met, I met my wife in grad school. Yeah. And she's from San Antonio, Texas. Oh, yeah. And she said, you've got to stop with the pointy boots. No.

It's silly. And she said, you need to wear ropers, and they need to have a round toe. And I came around to that way of thinking, and that's what I wear now. Oh, so that's a round toe. That's a round toe and a roper heel. I have a rounded toe now and some Chelsea's. Well, you should try Lucchese's because it's the most comfortable boot

you'll ever put on your feet. Do you get them custom made? Well, no, I don't. Now, Lucchese's, by definition, are handmade. I get it. And this pair I got because I was doing the first costume fitting for Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Yeah. And Mary Zofres, the incredible costume designer of all the Coen Brothers movies, said, well, let's talk about the boots.

And I said, well, just get a pair of Lucchese ropers. That's the most accurate for this character. Is it? Yeah. So they've been around that long? Yeah. And she said, all right. And she got a pair.

Yeah. And Joel looked at them and said, no, those are all wrong. They need to be white boots with a brown tip, and they need to go with the white suit. And so Mary, uh, allowed these to fall off the truck and I picked them up and now I'm wearing them. I tell you, man, if things don't fall off the truck, I'm not sure I'd have a wardrobe. If I had not, I did a show, my show on IFC for four years. And I, I think I wore three or four shirts and maybe two pairs of pants that's all I wore and they got a sense of my style and wardrobe me and I took all of it and I'm

wearing this one this is one of the shirts I'm wearing now oh that's fantastic I would not have clothes had I not had a television show yeah that's um I I did a movie years ago called Siriana yeah I like that movie. Yeah. Steve Gagan wrote and directed it. You were a congressman. I was a lobbyist. A lobbyist.

That's right. Yeah. And Jeffrey Wright was a congressman. Was he not? He was a lobbyist as well. Okay. Right. And we were, and well, he was a DA.

Okay. That's it. Or a federal prosecutor. Uh-huh. And so, and I was the fall guy and he had a scene where he dressed me down. And I gave a speech about capitalism to him. That's right. But then he just sort of took me out.

And I was given four suits in that movie, and they were tailored by the guy who tailors the suits for the Senate. Uh-huh. Senators. Yeah. So I walked off with more value in the suits than I was paid to do the movie. I was allowed to. Yeah.

It's so nice when they let you do it, isn't it? Yeah. Like, I had suits for my show for years. I don't really know how to shop for my, I know how to shop for myself, but I get exhausted very quickly when I go shopping. Yeah, I do too. Yeah. But eventually my wife just said, it's got to end, the being dressed.

You're not your characters. You're you, and it has to stop. Was that a challenge for you to identify what exactly that meant? Like, do you trust your taste? You know, I trust my wife's taste. And so I just, you know, a lot of being a husband is, and trying to sustain that is about being the best version. That she wants you to yes yes uh you know without it with always being true to yourself sure uh and so um it has worked out just fine uh-huh and let's talk about that i just i watched buster scruggs a few days ago so it's fresh in my

head as are a few of your roles but that that one, that movie is stunning and relentless in the way that, like, you know, it is, what are there, five chapters or six? Six. Six chapters, basically existential meditations and lessons that are not bleak, but they don't end happily. They don't. You definitely know that Ethan Cohen studied philosophy

and that he read a lot of Schopenhauer. Yeah. And also that Joel and Ethan are steeped in the Old Testament. That's right. Now, what is Schopenhauer known for? The shorthand of it is that life is nasty, brutish, brutish and short. And also he had the thesis in The Will to Live that even the what what live, uh, that even, um, the, what, what most recommends life, uh, stuff like happiness and particularly love is all just a dupe, uh, to try to get us to, um, perpetuate, uh, the species, uh, because why else, um, without love, why would we want to perpetuate misery?

And so even love is a dupe. I never know which philosophers to read. I was trying to plow through Spinoza, but maybe Schopenhauer is more up my alley. Yeah. Well, yeah. Spinoza is a lawnsman, though. Yeah, that's right. Absolutely.

That's one of the reasons you gravitate towards him. He's part of the tribe, and he's got a sort of elaborate dialogue with God. Yes. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, the stories are definitely bleak. But I think there's a tenderness. No, no, they're beautiful. I mean, everything is poetry with those guys, you know, and I don't know how they work.

But, you know, you open the movie. You're the namesake of the film. And what I liked about your story was that you're very affable, likable, sympathetic. You sing, you dress nice. And then out of nowhere, you're like, holy fuck, that guy can do that? Yeah, exactly. And that's the Coen.

I mean, I think that they, if you look across their whole filmography, I think that they are always pointing out that as soon as an audience, in particular and most interestingly and intriguingly, a character feels like he or she has it all figured out, there's going to be calamity. That's right. They've been doing that since the beginning. They have. Right. Where you're just sort of like, now what happens? Yeah. And I think that that's part of their

Old Testament ethos, because one of the reasons that the Jewish religion is so centered on law and ritual and tradition and the interpretation of text is that life is chaotic. It's completely unpredictable. It's tragic. It's futile to try and control it, but you do your best. I used to do a joke in my act about in Christianity, the saying is, what is it? The wages of sin is death. And in Judaism, the wages of sin are negotiable. You know, you just have to have an active conversation

with the Almighty. It seems like there's a constant conversation going in the Old Testament. Yeah. But with not necessarily explanation explanation but there's a conversation yes exactly um but uh he's a pretty vengeful uh patriarch yeah vengeful uh and also uh just uh you know uh impulsive i i don't you know you know when he when i was just talking about job the other day because i have a friend who is job like it's just sort of like that came out of nowhere for that guy yeah if my understanding of it is correct it's just sort of like what did i do nothing you know just i'm bored you know like god just decided yeah and um and and you kind of in the end get the impression uh just like with the pharaoh it's, yeah, all right, sure, you want to give in, but now I'm going to harden your heart. So you're not going to give in.

And so there are going to be more plagues. And I think with Job, it's as much so that he can be an example and be written about. Yeah, yeah. He was using him as a protagonist. He's like, I need a story. You're going to take the hit. Yes. Did you, did you study religion or is it a prerequisite when you do a Coen brothers movie that, uh, you get, you get up to snuff on the old Testament philosophy? Well, uh, growing up, I was, um, uh, I was bar mitzvahed at a very conservative, uh, temple in Tulsa.

Okay, so for me, this is all new information. I did a little bit of research. I don't do a lot, and I had no idea that you were a Jew. I had no idea that I was a Jew in Albuquerque, but I certainly thought, well, I didn't place a Jewish community in Tulsa in my mind. I thought that I know that we've spread out, but I had no idea. I knew the Jews in El Paso. I knew the Jews in Houston. We used to do USY together, but I didn't know the Jews in Oklahoma. We were there. How many really? The community in Tulsa when I was growing up was about 10,000. Now let's go back now. So how do Jews get

to Tulsa? Interestingly enough, if you've been, as I know you are, because you're who you are, and do what you do, you read the news. And so you know what HIAS is, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Oh yeah, of course. And they've been in the news lately because they've been under siege by the far right. And part of the horrible massacre in Pittsburgh was aimed at them. Yes, that's exactly right. And so what HIAS used to be, and there's something very different now, which is also quite intriguing. And there's something very different now, which is also quite intriguing. But they used to help Jewish immigrants, exclusively Jewish immigrants, pretty much exclusively Jewish immigrants coming into this country, help them settle.

And one of the things that they did was when there were unaffiliated families coming in to New York City. What's unaffiliated mean? They had no affiliation. Oh, in the country. Yeah, in the country. Okay. So they were just coming to the US with no antecedent relatives. And they would spread them out into the country. They would say, look, you're going to go to Cincinnati. You're going to go to Tulsa. You're going to go to El Paso. And the reason for this was so that they would be less vulnerable to roundups because they figured if they didn't do that, the Jews would congregate in the cities. So the idea was, look, it's going to happen again.

Yes. It always happens. So this is the diaspora. Is that what you would call it? Yes. The American diaspora is that we're going to be logical about this if we're going to survive. Exactly. And so when my mother and her parents emigrated out of Europe, immigrated into the U.S., their sponsors had been placed in Tulsa by HIAS. Interesting. So were they running from where they were from, or did they just decide to come here?

My mother and her parents, Holocaust refugees. Refugees. Not survivors, but refugees but refugees yeah running from this place because so they got out yeah for right before kristallnacht and then they they got to london and now were you old enough to know these your grandparents very well yeah my my maternal grandmother and grandfather have had tremendous uh uh, influence over, over me. And, and did you talk to them about leaving Germany? Uh, or wherever they were?

Endlessly. Where, where were they? A lot of them. Uh, well, uh, in the end they were in, uh, Rostock. Uh, but my, my, um, my grandfather, uh, his name was Herman Kaiser. Uh, he. Kaiser Permanente? No, no.

Another Kaiser? No, another Kaiser. Uh, he, um, and not from the Kaiser Family Foundation either. But another, what business was he in? Oil business eventually. Oil in Oklahoma. That was a good business. Yes.

I'd imagine when he got into that business. He did very well. But he was a lawyer in Germany. And actually, at the time of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, he was allowed to continue practicing, even though the Nuremberg laws did disbar all Jewish lawyers. And it just so happened that he was representing the German government in a that case was over, he was disbarred. And so they moved. He and his wife, my grandmother, moved to Rostock where her father had he made orthopedic shoes and brushes in a factory called Emsa Works in Rostock. Yeah. Which is part of the former East Germany. called Emsa works in Rostock, which is a part of the former East Germany. And then they got out right before, uh, Kristallnacht and went to England. And then from England during the war,

they came to the U S when you talk to them, like, you know, sadly, uh, as a Jew, um, myself, I'm not sad to be a Jew, but, uh, but, you know, you, you ask these questions and I asked them very quickly upon, uh, the incoming administration a couple of years ago. It's like, will we know when to go? Did you ever talk to them about that? from you. You have no idea. And it's not going to happen in this country. It doesn't happen in this country. We're fine. And that was that. And I have to say that growing up in Tulsa, and I don't know what your experience was- In New Mexico. In New Mexico. But I never encountered anti-Smitism in tulsa except very infrequently if there was somebody who came in from uh the either chicago there was a kid from chicago who moved to uh to tulsa um or a kid from new york uh but it was always somebody coming into Tulsa who moved there,

and I'd hear this and that, but nothing really that serious. Nothing attacking. There was no sort of, you know, you never felt a movement. Not at all. In Oklahoma, in fact, there was not only benign curiosity about what our community was up to, but I would say we were treated almost as uh exotic yeah in in a lovely way why i i experienced i guess it would be more slightly

it was a little worse than benign i and it was oddly i think the first time that i ever experienced it was a camp and i think it might have been a kid from oklahoma or someplace uh more cowboy ish but he had never seen a jew before so there was there were questions right like literally those horrible sort of like you don't have horns type of questions oh well that's not good so yeah so like he was brought up with something and i think he was pleasantly surprised that i was just an annoying kid. There is a friend of mine who was overheard this at a wedding in Texas. There were some Jews at the end of the table at a wedding. Yeah.

And he overheard a woman saying, well, who are they? And then the other person said, oh, they're some of them that killed our Lord. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, if he doesn't die, they don't have much of a story. See, there you go. Back full circle. Yeah.

But so how many siblings you got? I have a sister and two brothers. Older? All older, yes. Oh, you're the youngest. Yeah. So now, okay, so your grandfather was in the oil business. That's a pretty rough business.

So now when, like the guy, what are they called, wildcatters? Yeah. Yeah. So was your old man in the oil business as well? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What was his role? And he got into it. So was your old man in the oil business as well? Yes. Yeah. What was his role? And he got into it.

Well, he worked for my grandfather for a while. And because my grandfather's son, blood son, my uncle was also in the company. My father thought, well, I'm never going to be able to take this company over because, of course, it's going to be passed on to his son. And that's that's as it should be. And so he learned the business from his father in law and then eventually split off and formed a company of his own oil company. Yeah. See, this is one of those things where, like, I remember when I was like, like, there's some. It's not romanticization, but like I worked in a deli when I was younger. I grew up in New Mexico, right?

But I was, my family's from Jersey, so I had a very, a weird kind of desire to be an old Jewish man all my life. in Boston. And I was always fascinated that I met this whole generation of older Jews who were plumbers, cops, firemen. And I was like, oh my God, Jews do these jobs? Because there's so many stereotypes. Jews don't know tools. Of course they know tools. We had to learn how to do everything just to get by. Yes, exactly. So it was always fascinating, but I've never heard of oil juice, and this is the first, so I'm excited. You come from oil juice. Yeah, oil and gas, I would say.

Oil and gas juice. Natural gas. Yeah. And so did any of your siblings end up in the racket? My brother, Randy, took over my father's company. Oh, really? Yeah. And are your folks still around?

Yes. My father lives in Connecticut, and my mother is still in Tul company. Oh, really? Yeah. So, and are your folks still around? Yes. My father lives in Connecticut and my mother is still in Tulsa. Oh, really? Yeah. She stayed there? Yes. Yeah. She went to school in the East and then eventually went back to Tulsa. So, she grew, like, she's full Oklahoman. They both are, right? Well, my mother was born in England, raised for the first four years of her life before they came over here yeah okay so she was born in england then she and um my uh grandmother went and and grandfather went back to germany because they they had her in england to help them get out my grandfather was very very schooled was very, very schooled in history and very schooled in politics.

The lawyer. Yeah, and he understood that this was not going to be a good place for Jews. Germany. Yeah. After 32, 33, he knew. So he wasn't part of the crew of Jews that were like, we can work with this Hitler.

No, he wasn't. Yeah. There were some. Yes, I know. So they had her. And then, so they had her in England and went back. Yeah. And then my grandfather left first and my grandmother tried to stay with my mother and he eventually wrote a telegram that said either

send the kid or both of you come yeah he knew yeah it's time to go yeah and so then they finally got out and then they were in england for a couple of years and then crossed the atlantic so did you marry a jew i married a a Mexican-American Catholic. My dad ended up with a Mexican-American Catholic. That's interesting. Yeah, it's great. But she converted. Really?

She converted, and it's interesting. And she's now, as often can be the case. More Jewish than you are. Yeah, she's zealous about it in a great way. And I made this movie called The Gray Zone years ago, which really shook my faith to a pretty profound degree. Really? Yeah. How so? Well, it's a Holocaust film, and it's about the Zonderkommandos, who were Jews in the camps, who were forced or coerced into, depending on how you want to look at the particular situation, into aiding in the extermination process in exchange for privileges and, most importantly, extended life in the camp.

So a light, fun film. Yeah. And my research into that, which was thousands and thousands of pages, and particularly reading Prima Levy. Oh, the Surviving in Auschwitz? Yeah. That's a hell of a book.

Yeah, and The Drowned and the Saved also. And there's a chapter in there from which the movie borrows its title, The Gray Zone. It really shook my faith. What about it? Were your faith in the sense that, you know, in in what being Jewish meant or your your personal faith in God or or just in humanity? In God, there's the classic Levy line. If there is a God, there could be no Auschwitz. And the converse of that is is the answer furnished by one's faith, which is Auschwitz is why there's a God.

By way of finding some meaning for our suffering. But I tend toward the former. Yeah. Still. The latter. Yeah. Although I went from being an atheist to the wimpier position of being an agnostic. Right. You're hedging your bets.

Yeah. There was a thinker. Why draw lines when we can stay in a wiggle room of maybe? I think, though, yes, that's probably really it. But I think the more I learn, the more I learn what's possible. And so how could I say that it's impossible that there be a God? I think more the question no what would constitute god right yeah i think that's the better question it's certainly not in he did not make man in his own image that i don't think happened he could yeah he could done much better so you were not uh brought up in tulsa uh orthodox but just you know conservative and yeah pretty serious um religious education in a sense but just, you know, conservative. Yeah, pretty serious religious education in a sense. But I don't know what your experience was, but mostly it involved learning to read Hebrew. Yeah, right.

You go to Hebrew school, I think, like, you know, Wednesdays and Sundays. And then when it came to, you know, prep time, you met with the cantor. You learned the alphabet. You learned how to read Hebrew. You didn't know necessarily how to translate Hebrew. You knew some key words. It depends, I guess, what kind of student you were. But when it came to crunch time, you sat with the cantor.

You learned your Haftorah. You learned the songs. You did the show. And then you go to confirmation, but I bailed. Oh, you did? I didn't get confirmed. I did the bar mitz to confirmation, but I bailed. Oh, you did. I didn't get confirmed. I did the bar mitzvah and I was out. We didn't have confirmation because that was construed as being too conspicuously Catholic in the terminology.

Oh. But in the couple of years before being bar mitzvahed, we were at the synagogue six days a week. Really? Yeah. After school? After school, four days a week. And then we would go to Shabbos services on Saturday with our mother. And then we went to Sunday school. So that was for real. I mean, you were doing it. You were locked in. But I didn't understand Hebrew. I just could read it. And so subsequently, actually after college, I thought, well, this is ludicrous. I've never read the Bible.

And so I read it. In Hebrew. So you still don't know what it meant. Exactly, which is the way to read the Bible. And then I've read a lot of the New Testament as well now. So ipso post facto, or post facto, I started really to learn about the faith. Your siblings religious? Do they get more. Your siblings religious?

Did they get more religious or less religious? Or does anybody go full bore? No, not really. My sister would be the closest, but I think she had her kids bought and bar mitzvahed. What were some of the, now this is like, we should get into arts in a minute, but like what, like in Tulsa, because like Tulsa, you know, that's rodeo country. It's seriously, serious cowboy country, really, Oklahoma. Yes.

And indigenous people country. Yes. In a big way. So what were some of the, I'd like to know some Oklahoman Jewish dishes. Well, my wife likes to say, yeah, Tim, you come from Tulsa, Oklahoma. You come from the Upper West Side of Tulsa. Well, look, I have to say people think about Oklahoma as ranching and cattle country and you can get a good steak in Oklahoma. And that's absolutely true. But the best steakhouses in Oklahoma are Lebanese steakhouses.

Now or always? They were when I was growing up. But what about like Jewish food in the house? Was there any hybrids of like sort of something unique? Because like everyone has their own take on that stuff. Like on holidays, was it the standard stuff? Kugel, brisket, that kind of stuff? No, I mean, I, and yeah, that's funny.

We never had, I think it was funny. We never had turkey on Thanksgiving because my grandmother and my mother, they would serve either, uh, goose or, uh, or duck. So that's like aristocratic German stuff. It was aristocratic German stuff. That's exactly right. And it, and it, and it felt again, I'll use the word, um, again, I'll use the word, wonderfully exotic. That is exotic. It was great to feel different in Oklahoma.

I bet, and also different as Jews, because I had to learn, there's a whole, aristocratic German Jews are a whole other ball of wax, dude, from this sort of run-of-the-mill Ashkenazi, Russian-Polish peasant Jewish stock, that there was a whole class of Jews that were primarily German, aristocratic German Jews, who looked at those other Jews, you know, as sort of ghetto people. That is completely accurate, and I am, I come from that, half from that stock.

But my mother married a Russian Jewish. There you go. But the German Jews were all from the pale of settlement as well. They're all Ashkenazi. No, I get that. I get that. But something happened in Germany that elevated many of them in business and everything else. Yeah, the assimilation.

That's why they were such a threat, I to hitler is that they they ran everything well yeah manufacturing the legal profession like right like there was a they they had a stronghold because i guess this is the other thing and this is getting not abstract but you know relevant in that this idea of you know in in anti-semitic american language now that there's some sort of entitlement that jews get it's just that jews out of necessity had to put a premium on education and figuring out how to fit into structures that were inherently against them in order to succeed. So, you know, this idea that Jews have somehow gotten an easy ride, it drives me nuts. Yeah, or I mean, I see Philip Roth on the shelf in back of you.

Great. And one of my favorite writers as well. my favorite writers as well. And there's a beautiful monologue, it's a searing monologue in one of his books about how Jews got into the business of money. Yeah. Oh, right, because in the Middle Ages, or the Middle Ages, Renaissance or Middle Ages.

Yeah, the Christians weren't allowed to handle money, and so it was something that the Jews could do. Yeah, their religion wouldn't let them, and yeah, it was a way to wedge their way into having a life. Well, okay. So this is a guy, are you nervous? Am I nervous as a Jew right now? Uh, no, I, I, I, no, I'm, I, well, actually that's not true. Uh, I think if I were to go to Shul, I would be nervous. Oh, just because of security. Yeah. So I think places where Jews congregate, and I also happen to live in New York City, which until very recently had more Jews than Israel.

Yeah. There are more Jews than Israel. Yeah. So in that respect, I'm nervous because I do know that fanatics want to kill Jews. Right. But fanatics want to kill Christians too. Yeah, and some fanatics just want to kill anybody. Yes.

Yeah, and they're not really focused in their fanaticism. It's just a mental illness. Yes. So you're growing up there in the Upper West Side of Tulsa. Did you have experience with, I don't know why, you know, just because you're in a Western right now, but because the sort of struggle for indigenous people in Oklahoma must have been something on the radar for you growing up. Yes, that's manifest, yeah. It was, I think, more manifest when i was growing up um i see less uh native americans yeah around tulsa for some reason i don't quite know why

but when i visit than i used to right uh but yeah certainly um uh one saw that yeah But I think what I've experienced when I've been in New Mexico is actually more integration than I have experienced in Oklahoma. With Native Americans? Where the architecture, the cuisine, and the look of the people is so inflected with that combination of Mesoamerica and Spain. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Than it is in Tulsa. Sure. Because Tulsa was a place, or Oklahoma was a place where Native Americans were relocated. Right.

They were not indigenous to the place. Oh, right. So that was where they put them. Yes. As opposed to New Mexico and to a certain extent, Arizona. Sure. Navajo Nation. Yeah.

Yeah. And now my children have Native American blood because my wife is Mexican American. And that's, again, that exact mix of Spain and native Indian. So how does it, like, you know, this is all, I think, fascinating for me because, like, I had no idea anything about you. And now we have this interesting Jewish story going. But how does it start that you become involved with acting? Well, I enjoyed doing it in high school. Yeah.

And particularly also in junior high. Yeah. And then I went off to college. Where'd you go to college? Brown University. Oh, Brown. Hmm. and I was a classics major in college and I figured I was going to do like Paul said

to the Corinthians and put away childish things. Were you going to be a professor? Yeah, be a professor. Brown's a good school. I just know a lot of people. It's sort of like of the Ivy Leagues, it's the arty one that's that's that's the way to describe it my buddy sam lipsight went there great great writer

oh the writer yeah yeah yeah i just saw him in new york and uh you know i think he's younger than us but uh yeah he went there and he was there with a whole crew of uh you know uh rock and roll children and you know you know like celebrity. There's a big celebrity children presence when he was there. Yeah. When I was there, Amy Carter was just coming in. Sure. There you go. And Walter Mondale's kid was there and John F. Kennedy's son.

May he rest in peace. So it was a lot of political left-wing politicians. And you're doing the classic things. So are you reading Latin and stuff? Latin, yeah. Oh, no kidding. No Greek, just Latin. So how's your Latin?

Good? It's rusty. Better than Hebrew? Yeah, it's much better than the Hebrew. Yeah. And then a lot of Greek philosophy also. There was a teacher I had there named Martha Nussbaum. And she was a great influence over me. I took a bunch of courses with her and then a lot of Latin courses, Roman history. My mother came to visit me during my freshman year in the spring, and she said, what are you going to do this summer?

And I said, I'm going to come back to Tulsa and get a job and hang out. And she said, well, okay, that's great. I'd love to have you home. And she had been divorced a few years before, and so she, I think, really liked the idea. And everyone's older than you. Yeah. You're the youngest. Yeah.

Yeah. And so she said, but what do you want to do with your life? No. And I said, I think I want to be a professor or maybe an archaeologist. And she said, that would be great. Nothing would make me happier than to have a son who's a professor or an archaeologist and devotes his life to letters. Archaeologist. Yeah. Like an ancient, ancient civilization. So you were compelled to dig up the past. Yeah. And and she said, well, you know, I'd love for you to come home and I'd love to see you become a classicist, but you don't even have a girlfriend right now. So you're you're totally unaffiliated and you have no responsibilities.

Yeah. You liked acting in high school. Yeah. Now is the time when you can just try anything. Oh, that was nice. when you can just try anything. Oh, that was nice. So why don't you go get on with the summer theater this summer and see if that doesn't still interest you, or do something.

But why play it safe and come home? It's so funny that playing it safe, be a classicist or an archaeologist, those are good secure positions. But it was interesting. Now, looking back on that conversation, do you think that she was just being nice about those things and she saw that your passion was elsewhere? I think she was being wise

and giving me an incredible gift, one of many incredible gifts that she gave to my siblings and me. So I went and was involved with the summer theater that that in Oklahoma. No. In Pennsylvania. Which one? How that was. It was a it was a summer theater shared between Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr. And my mother had gone to Bryn Mawr, so she knew of this theater. Okay. And so I had a great time.

What were you doing? I did Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard. We did Hay Fever by Noel Coward. And we did a Lanford Wilson play called Fifth of July. And I was acting. Small parts? No, nice parts. And it was a sort of a collective that it was a student run theater. So it was all young people. All young people. We lived together in a house. I got a girlfriend that summer. And just everything about it was great. And everybody's doing the painting and the building. Yes, that's exactly right.

The theater community. Hanging the lights, all of it. Right. That's how it works. People who seem to have that experience in theater or start acting that way get a real appreciation for. Did you do it? No. But I've talked to many people or a few certainly that their first experience was either in a Shakespearean company or or or some situation where you were part of it was learning the community of theater.

That's exactly right. Yeah. And funnily enough, though, and I was listening earlier to your podcast with Will Ferrell. Yeah. I was also starting to do stand-up comedy at the time. No.

Yeah. I could see that. I wasn't good. Where'd you do it? Well, I did it in Providence. At Periwinkle's? That's exactly right. Yeah. At Periwinkles. And one performance I remember that was just incredible was I saw Ricky. No, not Ricky Jay. Is that right? Not the magician. No, no. I know who you're talking about. Billy Jay. Billy Jay. Sure. I was wondering what happened to that guy. God, he was funny. Short guy. Yeah. And screamed a lot. Yeah.

And he had a bit about, what? He had a bit, why do we wear these metal bowls on our head? It's because of the piddler. The piddler on the roof. it's because of the piddler the piddler on the roof anyway but I was terrible I was just wondering about him the other day because there was a period in time there where he was

he got very bitter and most people don't know who Billy Jay is but he was around New York but he got cast the thing that stuck in his craw that kind of did him in a bit I think was he got cast the thing that that stuck in his craw that that kind of did him in a bit i think was he was cast in that dustin hoffman movie called billy bathgate about the gangster movie and he was almost entirely cut out of it and uh and he had very little in the movie and i think

it just killed him because he used it as a credit for years but But you'd go see the movie, and he was just a passing presence. And he got very, you know, he got very, yeah, he was an angry little man. But it's so funny. That's the guy. I love that that's the memorable. But the anger was funny. Oh, yeah. No, he was.

And I think, you know, so, but I, and then I came out here. But wait, let's talk about stand-up. So you're doing open mics at Periwinkle's. No, and then I came out here and did stand- let's talk about stand-up. So you're doing open mics at Periwinkle's. No, and then I came out here and did stand-up in LA for the summer. Oh, really? Where? Laugh Factory. Open mics?

Open mics. And then I got on at the Laugh Factory. I was at the, I was basically, they put me on. I could come any night and then I was just the bottom rung. When it was just a hallway next to the old Chinese restaurant? Yeah Jamie Masada ran it well he still owns it but back then it was just like you walk in and you were in the room

right? That's right he would sit there on the right and then there would be this long room that was like the size of a hallway in my recollection and if you had to go to the bathroom you had to walk all the way down the side and there was a door on the side of the stage. It was a tiny place before he built it out.

And that old Chinese restaurant was still there, like right next door. And Greenblatt's down the street. So he owned it. Yeah. And the guy who, the ombudsman was Falstaff. It's this big. Yeah, the comic. yeah the comic yeah comic yeah i vaguely remember him and he um he would let me on but but my god jamie hated it when i would go on was fraser smith hosting yeah and falstaff yeah right and uh and they would put me on. Usually I'd get there at around, I had a day job out in, this was the summer after my,

this was the summer after my sophomore year at college. So you were going for it. You wanted, you thought it might be the thing. Yes. And I just was derivative and not very good. Of who? Woody Allen? No, Robin Williams.

Oh, I see. Just doing characters. yeah but but but uh and i at the end of that summer even though i again i i i would get there at around nine i had a day job i um out in i was worked at the boulangerie in uh this restaurant called the boulangerie in ven, making sandwiches during the day. And then I would get to the Laugh Factory at about 9, and I would keep getting bumped because I wasn't very good. Go on at about 1?

Yeah, go on at about 1. For 9 people? Yeah, exactly. And just wait and wait and wait. Welcome to it. Welcome to comedy. And I never got past that rung. At the end of the summer, I said, acting.

So I did stand-up for a summer, and I did theater for a summer, and I'm not going to do anything to help. I'm not doing anything new as a comedian. I would get to watch for three hours a night. Oh, yeah. And it just chip away your confidence. And you just like you just sit there. You watch the audience leave.

You watch all these big acts come on. Yeah, but they were really good. And I thought it chipped away at my confidence. But but at least for me, that wasn't the worst thing in the world. Certainly not for the art of comedy. I wasn't going to end up developing, you know, like a Lou Black persona or something. How do you know? I guess I don't know, but I'm pretty confident.

Well, it's good that you understand the limitations of your talent. But like, you know, most of us who get into comedy, like, you know, we just plow on. I mean, it's like in my mind, you chose the more difficult path in a way. I think stand-up comedy is the more difficult path. I actually do. I really, I, because I think that to stick with it, you see, I mean, there was such,

there was such a grim side of life that I saw during many of those hours and hanging out. You know, one night. Those are my people. But I think that's a good thing, actually. I'm not taking it as an insult. We're all very proud of our grim side of life. I was, one night I was there, and I don't remember this comic's name, but he was really, really dry and funny and cynical. And he was a regular at the Laugh Factory.

This would have been in 1984, 84, 85, around there. Jewish guy. Really? In comedy? And it's the end of the night and i don't know why he had shown up really late maybe he'd been at a couple other clubs and stopped by the laugh factory at the end and for whatever reason i'm not quite sure why um he was kind of still around after i did the very last five minutes and uh and so i'm walking out of the club and I am walking up Laurel to my car where I parked it.

And there's this Asian woman who's just, she is just incapacitated by alcohol. I mean, she's just stumbling, stumbling drunk. Shit-faced. Yeah, really bad. Yeah. And she's trying to negotiate the key into the car door. Yeah. And I think, well, this is not good. And I said, ma'am, may I help you? And she sort of mumbles back at me and, again, clearly not a good situation. And I thought, well, I can't let this woman drive. I've got to wait here and just I don't know what I'm going to do.

And this is before cell phones. So then this comic comes out and he stops and he's studying the situation. He's not saying anything. And I turn to him and I say, we can't let and we can't let her drive. And he says, well, well, what do you want to do? You want to roll her or you want to fuck her? And I said, neither, neither. I want to call the police, you know, and he.

You want to help her. Yeah, I want to help her. Yeah. And he wasn't serious. Right. But it was such grim. It was such exquisitely grim, just the darkest of the dark humor in the context of 1.30 in the morning and this woman, and she was actually kind of pretty, which made it even worse. And I thought, I'm really grateful to be exposed to these people and this world.

That's what did it. That's what simultaneously made you grateful and get out yeah and i thought i've gotta i've got i'm i'm not gonna um this is not gonna be good for me you're not gonna do that to yourself you're not gonna become a dark cynical fucking monster you you had too much heart kiddo you realize at that moment i'm like oh my god God, these people. There's no bottom to this. I don't want to hurt my heart that much. And I think that's probably true. And that's why you guys are so damn funny.

Yeah. Yeah. And also, but, you know, there comedy and with, you know, and certainly back then, you know, there was a kind of ethic to it that, you know, you kind of really push the envelope of what funny that to the point where as a comic you get jaded and cynical enough that you know only the the most dark things are funny and uh and i do think that if you do not if you're not compelled to callous your heart like that i mean i think all comics are sensitive but they're certainly in a very complex way very you know deeply well guarded i think that's absolutely true and then and certainly true of the best of them yeah um and and uh they can be vulnerable but uh probably you know you know on

stage just from my own personal experience, I can be vulnerable. But in real life, the price you pay for being vulnerable to an audience in that way, your personal life doesn't necessarily reflect that all the time. Yeah. You seem like a sweet guy. Yeah, I hope I am. And I think that comic like a sweet guy. Yeah, I hope I am. And I think that comic was a sweet guy. Sure. I think a really, really sweet guy and also smart as all get out.

And I think it's very difficult to be smart and sweet at the same time. And funny. Yeah. That's what I admire. I mean, I don't want to switch subjects because I love what we're talking about. But that's the key to Joel and Ethan. When people say that Joel and Ethan are cold as filmmakers, I want to set myself ablaze, I'm so upset, because they're anything but.

There's such generosity and warmth in their generous, in their exposure of their take on the world. Sure, I think that, like, when I've talked to people about them, And they're generous in their exposure of their take on the world. Sure. I think that when I've talked to people about them, it sounds, my interpretation was not so much that they were cold, but they know exactly what they want. And I think maybe to an actor, that might come off as confining somehow. to some as confining somehow. Well, except that they know so clearly what they want

that they've prepared to an extent and they have such control that on the day when you're shooting, you actually never have more freedom as an actor than when you're on their set because there's no castigation you can fail and they have the time for that and they have the patience for that and they've given you a role and this is whatever role you're playing in one of their movies even if you have but a day

they've given you a role um that is such an invitation for what I like to call front footed acting, making a bold choice that you just gravitate toward that kind of risk taking. set like theirs where everything is so under control and meticulously planned and so carefully written, can you have the space to be able to take those chances? Because nobody is fretting over whether they're going to run out of time or what the next shot is going to be. Right. It's great. And in terms of front-footed acting and also in terms of this new movie, which is Six Stories, you know, their love of people

who are able to do what you're calling front-footed acting, these sort of bold character actors that are very specific, I find, they seem to have a true passion for. Yeah. I mean, you know, I've so many of us, so many of the great character actors, so I'll leave myself out. But if you think about John Goodman and Turturro and Fran, Francis McDormand, Holly Hunter, Steve Buscemi, Michael Stuhlbarg, Stephen Root, who've not so much Stephen Root, who had his own career before he met them. Yeah. But the others I'm describing.

Started with them. Really did. Yeah. And I can say for myself, who was going to put me in a lead role? I mean, I was doing fine as an actor, working a lot off-Broadway and doing what I like to call a hallway part in a movie every year, where you accompany the lead down a hallway and deliver a bit of information that he needs while he's getting from point A to point B. I just did one of those. Oh, good. Good for you. I just did one of those. Oh, good.

Good for you. I literally did a hallway scene with Robert De Niro two weeks ago. Oh, fantastic. Oh, in the- In the Joker movie. Oh, wow. Oh, great. But it was literally a walk and talk down backstage in a hallway situation.

Did you like it? Yeah. Well, I mean- That's fantastic. It was my first experience on a real big movie. You'll be in a Coen Brothers movie in no time. I would love to. Yeah. That's fantastic. It was my first experience on a real big movie. You'll be in a Coen Brothers movie in no time. I would love to. Yeah.

I don't know that I know how to do that type of character work. Well, that's interesting. Who knows? I don't know enough about you. But I do know that they do gravitate toward actors who've had classical training. Because to do their language, I think there's the need for a facility with that. But then there are others who fit gorgeously into their world who don't. But in the really talkative characters.

But it's interesting that, you know, in what you're talking about, front-footed and character acting, is that in the one story where James Franco plays the lead, and he's not essentially, I mean, I think he can do anything. I think he's a fine actor. But he's not innately the type of actor

that Stephen Root is, or maybe even that you are in terms of your training or in terms of having a broad spectrum of character potential. Yeah, I mean, James is more of an autodidact. He's an actor. Right, right. But he's been serious about that pursuit. No, no, no.

I like him, but it was interesting. You can see the difference, not just between him and Stephen Root, the primary other character, but even the guys that ride up on horses are so chiseled and defined you know just in their presence of character you know against him it's very it's an interesting I notice this a lot uh you know in doing glow too that you know Betty Gilpin comes from the New York School of Theater Actresses and Alison Brie is very much a product of Los Angeles.

And I see there's different approaches. And they fit great together sometimes, but there's a difference. Yeah, you're completely right. So where did you train? I went to Juilliard. Oh, wow, really? The whole thing? Yeah, four years. I went to four years of college

and then four years of acting school so i did not get out of school till i was 26 julia it's hard man yeah it's a pretty pretty uh i mean they're they're they're they're heartless and they're cutting well uh not so much anymore but when we were there um uh my wife and i and i was in class with them i was in the same year as Laura Linney, wonderful actress. She's great. Uh, and, um, Jeannie Triplehorn. Oh yeah. New York theater actor named David Aaron Baker.

Um, uh, another actor named Jake Weber. Um, so, you know, I was in a, uh, an interesting, it was a good time to be there, but it was brutal. So you did all of it. You did, uh, you did, You did sword fighting, Alexander technique, singing, dancing. Yeah. Yeah. Good speech. We even had comedy class. Who taught that? A guy named Harold Stone. A miserable man? No. He was great. But you know, an incredible thing happened. So Robin Williams went to- Did you do mask work?

Yes. I loved mask work. That was one of my favorite classes. You know everything, man. Yeah. Mask work was great. Animal work? Yes, we did a bit of that.

Yeah. First year. But Robin Williams went to Juilliard. Yeah. And so the guy who taught- They wanted him out. Well, it was a money issue. Um, and, uh, and so then he formed a scholarship. Robin did. Robin gave a scholarship to Juilliard for anybody who couldn't afford to come back to if, and, and, uh, and my

wife got that scholarship. Oh, yeah. Robin. We did a movie together, Robin and I. And my wife came to visit, and she was able to say thank you, which was a great moment. He must have loved it. He is a sweet guy, man. He is a sweet guy. What movie did you do with him?

It was called The Big White. It was called The Big White. It was with Robin and Holly Hunter and Giovanni Ribisi, Alison Lohman. And we were all up in Alaska together. What were you going to say about them? of the comedy course uh in a in in an admirably self-deprecating speech at the beginning of the course said look i'm teaching this course but i'm not going to claim to be funny um i've taught a lot of people in this course and some of them have have didn't end up uh being particularly funny um but i did teach robin teach Robin Williams in this course. But I'm not going to claim that he wasn't funny beforehand. All right, so then Robin Williams comes

to speak to us. And this student named Peter Jacobson in my wife's class raises a hand and he wants to throw a softball to Robin so that Robin can praise this comedy teacher. And he said, how did you like the comedy class? We hear you took the comedy class. And Robin, as only Robin could do, just went on this monologue about how ridiculous it would be to try to teach comedy and how he had never been in a comedy class and he just went on and on and on.

And it was so was stone in the room. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but it was a good class. It was a great class. I loved the class. He talks,

it's cough in his Robin biography. Uh, he talked a lot about his time at, uh, Juilliard is interesting how difficult, you know, cause he was there with uh chris reeves and yeah i think maybe bill patty lupone i don't know it was bill hurt

there yeah yeah and just how you know strict it was it became progressively less strict when my wife and i were there it was still pretty strict they cut a third of the class, um, uh, or no, about a fourth of the class. They warned a third of the class. Uh, so in your middle of the second year, you were warned, we may cut you at the end of the year. So when you get out of there, you know, what do you, you, you're, you're fully prepped, you're loaded up, you got all the tools and, and what was your dream to do? What, what? What were you wanting to do? Be a stage actor. Yeah.

And you don't have all the tools, but you have as many of the tools as a school can give you. Right. So I loved the school. I would not have wanted to have gone anywhere else. It was the perfect place for me. It was difficult. It was at times quite demeaning. And at times it was also quite nurturing and fortifying. But I think what happens after any drama school, and this is not unique to Juilliard in the least,

is there's much you need to unlearn while you're internalizing it. So it just, a lot of what you've learned just has to become part of your intuition as an actor, as opposed to a conscious application of technique. It's interesting that the idea of internalizing what you learned is also unlearning it because, I mean, ultimately, you know, when you're in a real life work situation, you're only going to use what works for you. And that may or may not look like what you learned or didn't learn, but you assume that it's in there. That's exactly right. We all tailor make our strategies. Of course. I mean, like, you know, I talk to people about acting when I started acting more because I need to know things, you know, but, you know, so much of it, you know,

depending on which level you're operating at. And there's a lot of them. You know, some people are just good at pretending. Some people just have a knack for being on screen or on stage. And then there are those people that have much more facility because of an education but but anybody's craft is is is sort of up to them how they're going to get into what they do that is i i that's it's it's it's your own approach it's like learning how to go to school but when you say front-footed when you say bold choices when you because like you know in the coen movies you've done what have you done? Three?

Two. Two. I was supposed to do another one and then I had to back out because of a scheduling conflict. Which one? No country. Oh, what were you going to play in that? I'll just say I had a role in it.

Um, and it was not Anton Chigurh, but it was another role. Uh, and it wasn't Josh Brolin's role, but it was a nice role. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I had to, I couldn't do it. but it was another role. And it wasn't Josh Brolin's role, but it was a nice role. And yeah, I couldn't do it. And thankfully, they didn't take that. It was a legitimate conflict. But when you say these things, when you say these choices,

like when I think about, you know, Oh Brother and the new one. So when you talk about being in a situation where you have this room because of the control they have on the set to really take these chances, with the character in the ballad of the new film, what were they? Well, I'm going to just generalize a little bit. So in American acting,

we took what Stanislavski was saying in an actor prepares and also in the training of the russian theater actors yeah and we brought it over here and we depending on your attitude toward this we either contorted it um or we evolved it into something that they call the method. Sure. Which is the actor's studio, among other places. Group theater, actor's studio. And. Meisner. And that coupled with film acting and needing to do less for just lack of a more interesting way of putting it.

Yeah. Because the camera is so close, began to elevate the notion of behaving over actively pursuing objectives as an actor. So if the camera could catch you being real and behaving in a certain way, showing emotion in a natural way. That was suddenly venerated as great acting. And so showing emotion, being real, not seeming to be deploying any sort of training in terms of how to do a line or how to play a line rhetorically. Right. So you get that generation after Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marlon Brando up through De Niro, Pacino and some other cats.

Dog Day Afternoon is a great example of what you're talking about. Yeah. And the ones who do it incredibly well. I mean i mean it's fantastic you feel like you're witnessing human behavior but there's also a tendency as a result of that uh to lose sight of what a character actually actively wants in a scene yeah because we do as human beings. I'm doing it right now. I'm trying to get through to you and we're engaged in a back and forth here. It's working, Tim. It's active.

Yeah. And so what I mean by front-footed acting is that there are techniques you can use. And I learned these actually after Juilliard from this wonderful director I had named Mark Wing Davey, who now runs the graduate actor training program at NYU, where my wife now teaches, is to find an action. This is just one example. Find an action for every line you have. And when you apply that action, it has to be in the form of a transitive verb.

So, I'm... Can you give me some examples of a transitive verb? Okay, so if I wanted to piss you off, I would pierce you. So I'm going to say this line and I'm going to use it. And so I would literally write that into my text, pierce him with this

line. And so you do that yeah you do that literally for every single phrase that you have in your text i'm actually making notes for because i'm about to start you know shooting again and i need and this is the missing piece keep going uh and so you have all that And then what you do is you forget it. Yeah. So you just, you don't take that to the, you do that while you're working on a role. Okay. So you get this with every line, the transitive verb in the form of action that you sublimate

under the line. Yeah. But is there an arcing, do you think about the arc of the character's needs you know i when i think of the arc of a character's needs um i think there's something you know like if i'm in a scene i'm playing with a woman and again and the character wants to have sex with her yeah all right so yeah that's what i. But it all evolves and changes. It's in constant flux. But you know that's in place when you read the scene

and you're like, okay, so this guy wants to do this to this. And then you go line for line. Yeah. And then you've got to forget it. Yeah. Because, of course, the next and really most exciting part is that you've made all those decisions ahead of time and you've worked on that but then

you're going to play the scene with a partner and it's all going to change sure uh and then it gets really really it gets terrifically exciting because then it's living thought and then right when you're completely in it you're cut yeah um! Yeah. And so that's just an example. And if you don't have that with Coen acting, because there's such an active precision to what they've written, it's not going to work because they're not interested

and you're just coming on and behaving. They write characters who have really, really strong needs and objectives. And usually they're deploying some pretty colorful language in pursuit. Their sort of love of the type of actor that you're talking about is so beautiful to see. Yeah. Like that right away.

You know, right when you see the face. You know, they just, they got a hell of a casting capacity. They get it right. They just get it right. Every frame is a treat. Yeah. They're like cartoon cells. Yeah.

Did you love working with Clooney? Yeah. He's just really, I mean, John and George were so unbelievably kind uh George George John Turturro and John Turturro uh on Oh Brother Where Art Thou uh so so kind isn't that fascinating though about him so this is me being the the observer is that he's a fucking movie star, right? And he's a great movie star. And there's a couple of them that can do this. Like, you know,

Turturro's like, you know, he'll transform. He's like you a bit in that, you know, he can take on, be front-footed, you know, really do a Coen role. But George is interesting because, you know, with movie stars who just for, you know,

some God-given reason just are movie stars, they fit up there. Who knows what that is? Yeah. But he can act and, you know, and he can make adjustments to his movie stardess. You always see Clooney in there, but he can make these adjustments. He can turn a dial and it's very effective and sort of amazing. I couldn't agree with you more. And you've not only just defined what a movie star is because the movie star always has to have that aspect of them in the role.

Right. And they've got to be responsible. By nature. And they've got to be responsible to that, which often inhibits movie stars from making the choices that they should be making as an actor. George is never guilty of that. Right. The Descendants. Oh, yeah.

Up in the Air. Burn After Reading. Yeah. His performance in Burn After Reading is sort of astounding. All these weird quirks that he decided on and the running. And Brad Pitt's another one who can do it. Yeah. Uh,

that hair, uh, and the gum chewing, all those choices. Yeah. Yeah. They were listening to the earphone. Yeah.

I mean, those choices, those are the choices. My, my, I was talking with Joel about this the other day, the, um,

Clooney's, uh, performance in Hail Caesar when he's encountering Jesus at the cross, the outtakes. Oh my God. So funny, so funny. When he's sitting with the communists and he's finally getting it,

where he's sort of like, no, wait. So, yeah, oh God. That movie. See, I think that's a fucking masterpiece. No one thinks it's a bad movie, but I think it's one of their best movies. And I seem to be in the minority.

But I think that if somebody, if they had a double bill that was Barton Fink and Hail Caesar, that's it. Those are their Hollywood movies. Yeah, well, both of them are set at Capitol Pictures. Yeah, I know. Where Ryder is king.

Yeah. Both of them are set at Capitol Pictures. Yeah, I know. Where Ryder is king. Yeah. I worked with Lerner. Charles Lerner? That's his name.

Michael Lerner. He was on my show. He played my mother's husband. Oh, right. He's a piece of work, dude. He is something else. How about him in A Serious Man? Great. I auditioned for that movie.

Oh, you did? Yeah, but but i wasn't there was no way did you go into the room and meet them no i didn't i never met them i've sat be i've met francis i like i was nominated for a uh sag award for glow and like i'm a big fan of hers and them and you know and and i'm standing there you know you know i've wanted i want to interview her and stuff but and obviously i wasn't going to win a sagward but it's very like i had you know it's all gravy to me i'm like oh great i mean i you know i'm very flattered it was a big star-studded night that i skulked away from i didn't i didn't say anything i always feel weird doing that hi yeah how are you not you on a plane. I did, you don't remember,

but I was like, I'm gonna, that's, you know, that's how I like it. Well, I am so glad you did follow up on the invitation. As I said to you, I'm, my son, Henry, who's at Oberlin College. He's at Oberlin? Yeah,

in the conservatory. He's doing classical composition and jazz composition over five years. He's doing Oberlin? Yeah, in the conservatory. He's doing classical composition and jazz composition over five years. He's doing two degrees. Wow. Yeah. And so it's been great for my wife and me because we went to conservatory to have him in conservatory getting what we consider is a great education. What's his instrument?

His instrument is jazz guitar. Oh, wow. Yeah, and he's been playing since he was seven. One of my great joys is on this movie, I had to learn the guitar from scratch to be able to play this, to accompany myself. And ride a horse. And ride a horse at the same time, yeah.

And so my son was my teacher oh good story yeah and he was so um generous and kind and thoughtful yet exacting oh yeah and and and patient he wanted you to get it right yeah uh and he would just you know uh making sure that i uh uh she kind of really pressed the strings, Dad. All that stuff. But you had about three chords to learn, right? Just three chords. That's it.

Yeah. Was it like G, A, and D or something? Yeah. G, D, and yeah, I think it is A. Yeah. And if I got that wrong, man, am I going to hear about it from him? God damn it, Dad. One thing. Except now that I've been on your show, there's going to be nothing I can that wrong, man, am I going to hear about it from him? God damn it, Dad. One thing.

Except now that I've been on your show, there's going to be nothing I can do wrong in his eyes. He's such a huge fan of yours. Oh, it's great. Maybe you can show me some licks. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll just go up to Ohio, knock on the door and say, like, yeah, I talked to your dad. He said he'd show me some licks.

Now, do you travel and do comedy? Sure. I do. I do. I was just in New said, show me some licks. Now, do you travel and do comedy? Sure. These days? I do. I do. I was just in New York at the Beacon on Saturday. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was something.

Did you like playing there? Yeah. Yeah. I make myself a little crazy before the big ones, but it was beautiful. What a great theater that is. Yeah. Oh, my God.

I've seen Waits there. Oh, yeah. They do a lot of music there. And ZZ Top. I got Fran and Joel to go with me to see ZZ Top at the Beacon. Recently? No, this was about 10 years ago. Okay.

And we're watching them, and I'm really, really into it. And I think I maybe even wore my Open Road hat, the LBJ cowboy hat. And Ethan and Trish went too, Ethan and his wife Trish. And Fran and Joel didn't last the whole time. And at a certain point, they were having a good time, but I think they could just take so much. Fran just looked over at me and she just said, Tim, you are such a cracker. And I said, I, uh, maybe I, it's great.

No, man, we grew up with it. I mean, like I, I grew up in New Mexico and then when Tejas came out, I grew up in the Southwest. I don't know what you call Oklahoma. Southwest. Yeah. So like, you know, you had a, I mean, I love ACDC. I love Leonard Skinner. I'm not necessarily talking about any sort of, like, local bands here. I mean, it was mainstream rock radio, but it was rock radio. But then there was also back then you had the FM station where, you know, where you'd kind of get hip to some stuff you didn't know about. All right. Well, I think we could do this for a while, but I think we're good.

Okay. Excellent. You feel good? Yeah. Thank you so much. Are you going to direct any movies soon? Writing, directing? I have, well, I have a play.

I wrote a play about Socrates, and that's going to be done at the Public Theater next year. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah, Michael Stuhlbarg is playing the lead role. Oh, he can do anything. Yeah. And then I have a new script I've written and I've got to cast it. And if I can get somebody to play the couple of leads, I'll be making that next year.

I'm doing this show Watchmen right now, um, as an actor and that'll go right into Socrates rehearsals. And then when I'm done with that, I might direct another movie. I noticed you did two, uh, Franco's Faulkner movies.

I've done eight movies with James. Yeah. Yeah. I love him. He's great. Yeah. Yeah. I love him. He's great. Yeah, yeah. I talked to him. He's great.

Yeah. He's a movie star. Movie star. He's a movie star. He is. Yeah. He can really, you know,

he's got a way about him. Well, it's great talking to you, man. All right. And I hope this makes your son happy. Thank you. Thank you. That was a doozy, right? Huh?

Oklahoma oil juice. Wow. I loved it. Good guy. And after the interview, he FaceTimed his son, who's a guitar player and a fan of the show. And he introduced me to his son on FaceTime. And his son played some guitar for me. And we talked a little bit. It was his son on facetime and we his son played some guitar for me and we talked a little bit it was a nice little moment between the three of us

technology folks so let's play some guitar Thank you. Boomer lives! So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing.

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