WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Peter Fonda from 2018

Episode Date: August 17, 2019

From Episode 930, Marc's conversation with actor Peter Fonda about childhood trauma, Easy Rider, and talking George Harrison down from a bad trip. Peter passed away on August 16, 2019. 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.

so nice to see you thanks for coming oh yeah it's my pleasure i uh i think this is my first podcast is it the first how about that all right does it doesn't feel that unusual does it i think i met you a little cooler yeah i little cooler. Yeah. I met you once. Oh, you know what? Yeah, I remember what it was. You'll never remember, but I remember. Back in San Francisco, I don't know what you were plugging, but it was a radio show, Alex Bennett Show, in the morning, a live radio show.

I wouldn't expect you to remember, but you had a nice leather jacket on. I remember you complimenting the leather jacket. I don't know when it would have been. It probably would have been in the early 90s. Yeah, it could have been like 96? Maybe. 97? I don't know.

I think 97 when I was promoting Ulysses Gold. Yeah, man. That was a big thing. Yeah. That was like, he's back. You know what? I'd never left. I know.

I know that. They love to say, he's back. Yeah, well, I did. You know, I was living on my own sailboat. It was an 82-foot, 20-foot beam for so many years sailing around the Pacific. Really? Oh, yeah. And, of course, don't you know, everybody said, oh, he's just stunned out of his head out there,

sailing around. No. And you don't pull over and park at night. That's right. So you can't be stunned out of your head. Right. You have to grab, now we have GPS systems. Yeah. You have right. So you can't be still under your head. Right. You have to grab, now we have GPS systems. You have to grab the section. I'm a celestial navigator. Oh, yeah.

You know, go ahead and make the shot on the moving deck of the boat. Yeah. You can't be still. You can't be still, yeah. Well, I mean, but I mean, we've seen that being out on the ocean is enough. I mean, why would you need to be high on top of that? Oh, yeah. That's the trip.

You bet. When did you start doing that? Well, I began sailing a little boat when I was 11. Oh, so it was in the family. It was something you always did? Yeah. My dad was in the Navy. Yeah. And so I had this little, it was called a cat boat. It had a Marconi rig, which is, you know, it doesn't have the gaff. Yeah. And it was like 14 feet long, 13 and a half feet long. Yeah.

And this was off the north shore of Long Island, a place called Lloyd Neck. And I'd sail out there. And you really learned how to get as close as you could on the wind with a very difficult boat. Right. With no jib. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that main miss is just way up forward. So you get a sense of it.

Yeah, you learn a lot about making way and not being able to get very close on the wind. Yeah. So that's how I started there. And you loved it. I loved it. I got a sailfish. Yeah.

And then we went over to the Mediterranean, and my father had it shipped over only problem was the french people wanted me to put a french flag on it uh-huh because it was an american hull uh-huh this is a bunny sailfish you know it's like a surfboard with a sail what do you mean i need a flag on this holy moly was that a problem was it an international incident no i mean i just didn't i ignored them did you live Did you live over there for a while with your family? Yeah, my father, my second stepmother, and my... How many were there?

My sister Jane, five. Five stepmothers? No, no. Four. Three stepmothers for me. Yeah. But he was married five times. Oh, yeah.

And you and Jane and the second stepmother were in the Mediterranean in France? The second stepmother, yeah. Yeah. It was in France, though? It was in France. It was Cap Ferrat, which, I mean, Picasso had a villa out the end. Oh, yeah? And there was a Swedish summer school there with all these Swedish kids, including Carl Gustaf, who is now king of Sweden.

Oh, he was there, huh? Oh, yeah, absolutely. He was the kid. And you were going to school now king of Sweden. Oh, he was there, huh? Oh, yeah, absolutely. He was the kid. And you were going to school there? I was. No, he was. I was just trying to figure out how to keep my head above water in this bad family. Yeah.

But we would invite all the kids down to the villa where we were staying because my dad would be gone with my second stepmothers, and that was very good. It was good when he was gone? We had these kids from the Swedish summer school. They were there, and a couple of good-looking gals, and Carl Gustav. Yeah.

He must have been 15. Yeah. I was 17. Yeah. And at one point, there's this image coming through the hedge. It's Greta Garbo. Now, Gustav does not know.

Yeah. Carl Gustav has no idea that this is Greta. Yeah. She's got a bathing cap on and a big terrycloth robe. Yeah. And she walked straight over, said, I'm going to go swimming now. I said, yes, it's perfectly fine. And she just took off the terrycloth totally naked.

No. Yeah, absolutely. By that time, when she talked to me, Carl Gustav realized it was Greta Garbo. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Jaw dropped, and she got in, did 50 laps, got out, put her back, and went back. She was coming from john gilbert's uh a villa oh no kidding oh there was some amazing stuff happened and that gives me

something that i could talk about in a good way yeah there was a lot of real bad shit that was going down in terms of your family oh yeah yeah but uh what was it the old man was this an abusive dude uh no not really his um i think he was extraordinarily shy and he had a difficult time expressing love oh yeah in the sense that uh you know he didn't he became uncomfortable when he felt that he had to put on some demand he had to respond yeah to some demand and that wasn't really what was happening. But regardless of how tough things were in different times, I'll tell you what. I grew up the first eight years of my life. Yeah.

I knew nothing about race or color. Yeah. I had no idea. Sure. First African-American I saw was Nat King Cole. So he's the first black man I seen. At your house? At my house. Sure. First African-American I saw was Nat King Cole. So he's the first black man I've seen. At your house? At my house.

We had 12 acres out on Tiger Tail, just out in Brentwood, but up in the hills. Yeah. And they had some parties that would come up there. Sure. And one of them was this guy. I'd never seen him before. I'd never seen a black man before. I thought, remarkable looking guy. And one of them was this guy. I'd never seen him before. I'd never seen a black man before. I thought, remarkable looking guy.

And then he smiled. And he was just around with everybody else. He was a guest. Yeah. But he sat down at the piano and began to play. And it was beautiful. I had to take piano lessons. I'm looking at, I'm so left-handed,

and I'm looking at 88 keys of right-handedness. But this guy, he's doing, he's smiling up at me. His smile is just an explosion of teeth and white. And I was staring at him, and he said, do you play? I said, well, they make me take lessons. And he got very serious. He said, you know, never look at playing an instrument like somebody's making you play it.

You've got to think you want to play it. I said, well, sir, I'm very left-handed. There's 88 keys of right-handedness. He looked at me. He said, watch this. He crossed his hand over and plays cow-cow boogie. And then he taught me how to play cow-cow, because boogie-woogie,

up here, it's going ching-ching-ching-ching-ching down, because boogie-woogie, up here it's going ching-ching-ching-ching-ching, down there it's the runners down in here. The important stuff's on the left hand. Yeah. Yeah, right. The whole thing is on the left hand. I felt like such a fool, and I only know it. It was boogie-woogie, and not, you know, Mary's Edotes and Old Edotes and Little Edotes.

Yeah, right. So that's a great lesson to learn. Well, I did tell him a little bit later that the first piano recital I had to do, the song I was playing was Ladybug, Ladybug. Yeah. And so as I was playing it, I wasn't singing. Yeah. But I was singing Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home.

Your house is on fire. Your children were burned. Whoa. That's terrible. And in a sheer terror, I ran from the stage. That's a little resounding. Five years older. Blew your mind?

Yeah. Fucking disturbing. That is like Rock-A-Bye Baby and the treetop. Yeah, yeah. When the wind blows. The train will rock. Yeah, the kid's going to fall. When the bell breaks.

The kid will fall. Whoa, you know what? I don't like this idea of falling breaking I have too heavy man yeah too heavy

oh man I'm glad to know that your dad was shy because I don't know the whole history of your family but like there's a what fucking movie

was that he did with Charles Bronson the one at the end where he sticks the harmonica in his mouth I can't remember but it was like he had this look in his eye.

He was the heavy. Your old man was. His name was Frank. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking just terrifying. And I'm like, oh, man, I hope that's not what they had to grow up with. No.

But you saw it sometimes. Well, yeah. I remember there were lots of famous people that were around all the time. Jimmy Stewart, his dear friend and had been for such a long time. John Wayne. Yeah. Ward Bond. Randolph Scott.

Some good people in Westerns and other times. Yeah, yeah. One morning, I remember coming down for breakfast, and there was Ward Bond and John Wayne. Yeah, hanging out. And we're having breakfast. We all get in. The Duke had a Cadillac, a four-door Cadillac convertible. Yeah.

It was a cream-colored car with red leather seats. Yeah. Years later, I reminded him of it. He said, my God, you remember that? I said, oh, yeah. And I remember this and remember that. And they were finishing a film called Ford Apache. Oh, yeah.

Which was a John Ford film. And it was Ford's version of Custer's last stand. Yeah, yeah. And my dad was Custer, but he was called Colonel Thursday. So when people say, what was it like growing up with your father? I said, did you ever see Ford Apache? Colonel Thursday? That's what it was like because he plays this ramrod terrible person he deserves to get killed

yeah man i can't like it's like you know what yeah that one lesson no bigotry no racism i didn't know yeah i had no idea. Sure. So you... Yeah, there was somebody very different in that King Cole. Right. But he was a person. Sure. Yeah. So you didn't learn it.

In other words... I learned nothing to hate. Right. So being sort of insulated in a kind of Hollywood world, you weren't given any hate. Never got it. Yeah, it's nice. You know, and we weren't that insulated in a way. We would see different people come in.

They were all people. Yeah. To me, Pedro the gardener. Sure. He spoke a different language. I tried to learn to talk with him, but he could speak English, too. I had no idea that he was Mexican. Right.

He just spoke differently. Yeah. We all look alike. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's good when you're a kid and you can hold on to that mind. You know what I mean? And we had a Japanese maid and we hid her during the war so she didn't have to go to

detention camp. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And, of course, I didn't know anything about that from I was one and a half when- Oh, really? When I went to war. Yeah. When my dad went to war, I was three years old.

And then he was in the Pacific as a sailor. Yeah. He was already an actor, right? Oh, yeah. He had been an actor and was very successful. We had 12 acres of land up in- In Brentwood. Yeah.

He'd been around a long time, right? Did those- We say at most times during the war, they were called victory gardens. Yeah. Everybody was encouraged to grow some food for themselves. Right. We had a truck farm. I mean, there was every vegetable you could imagine.

And my dad made all the dirt through composting. So I thought his job, I had no idea what he was doing. I thought his job was making the best dirt in the greater LA area. And it was really good dirt because we had great veggies. Right, right, yeah. So do you live here? Do you have a house here? Do you have a place?

I have. I'm out, I call it in the wilderness. I'm on the west side. I look down and see the back of the Getty Villa. Oh, yeah. And then out and see the ocean and the Palisades. Oh, that's beautiful. It's called Castle and Mary.

Oh, that's nice. So you don't have the place in Montana anymore? No. No? No, I decided, you know, what I yeah is i don't want to see the mountains anymore right i don't want to see snow i don't want to try to blow snow out of a quarter mile long drift that's 10 feet high in the center no more than i don't want to see the wind bringing dust to the logs of my house yeah i don't i don't want to wet a fly on the yellowstone river

i don't want to however yeah if there's film in the camera and money in the bank, what time do you want me there? Right. I'll fly. Very practical about that part. So when you grew up here, though, like at what point, because I've talked to guys, because you talk about your dad's friends, but you had a whole crew, too, from the late 60s and 70s that were equally as kind of important in the big spectrum of show business and movies and counterculture. And a lot of those guys, they're going away, too, now. Oh, yeah.

Well, that's the thing about getting older. You lose more friends. I know. It's so sad, right? But in a way, I know it's coming. Right. We all know it's coming. People say to me, oh, how are you today?

I'm alive. And they think I'm being cynical. Right, right. No, the alternative sucks. Yeah, I'm on the right side of the grass. But, although it's inevitable, at this moment, unacceptable. Right. So we keep trucking.

That's right. That's true. So if the drive-by hits me and I'm out, it's been a hell of a ride, man. Right. It has been, right? You bet. man right it has been right you bet but but uh like i i try to get a sense of what what what's interesting about hollywood and about show business is that you know when your dad was around it was it was just a it was like what three four studios and then when you like started coming up it wasn't

much bigger just a new generation of people but it was still a small town kind of thing wasn't it yeah it was and it must have been like a like everyone i feel like there was a real community and everyone kind of knew each other everyone knew it was up and in the 60s in the late 60s like you must have felt that um like when things started to shift because you did a couple of straight up what were your first movies uh tammy and the doctor yeah and then the pictures uh yeah war is hell movie yeah but it was like those are straight up studio movies um yeah universal and columbia right and then like i mean so you were just at that pivotal point where shit started to break apart right you felt it well shit actually started

breaking apart when i was six years old but we don't want to get into it. Sure, we can get into it. I know, you don't want to. I promise you. In 2004, I found out the name of what was fucking me up. Yeah? What? Post-traumatic stress disorder. Really? I had no name to why I was so fucked up.

Really? Yeah. And what's that track to? Like, from what? Well, it starts. Yeah. And what's that track to? Like, from what? Well, it starts. Yeah. Oh, man. It starts when I was thrown out of a barn window and fell 18 feet to the ground, a hard

packed ground on my chin and broke my neck. I didn't know I'd broken it until 85 when I broke it the second time. Really? Yep. Who threw you out of it? The older boys who were jealous because i was henry fonda's son i mean that's how i was described yeah i had no idea who he was so that was hard identity to live up to whatever you didn't have a sense of how how big he was or

what you know he did really yeah i knew that he made movies and uh i just didn't know how that worked. He never talked about it. He never talked about his job. We knew that he had friends and they were all making movies, but we weren't sure what movies were. You have to remember, until 1940, basically I was born then, and those first years of my life, there was war. Yeah, right.

And rationing and all that. So we had only a couple of friends that we could visit with. Leland Hayward's three children. He married Margaret Sullivan, who was my dad's first wife. This gets really weird. And they had three kids, so they were like our best friends. We were either at their house or they were at our house. He stayed friends with her all that time.

Yeah, and Leland had been his agent. Leland sold his agent's list to Lou Wasserman and Jill Stein. At MCA? When they came out from Chicago. And that was a bunch of incredible actors. So, Watchman was an agent before he was the head of... He was in music, but it was all about music and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And they decided where they wanted to be. He was in Los Angeles and they wanted to make movies. You know, I'm glad they did. Yeah. So, those were your peers. Those were the people that were hanging around. And then they threw you out of a barn.

Well, I was sent away to school. I was almost 10 pounds when I was born. A big boy. And I was in New York for eight and a half weeks. There was nothing wrong with me. I was a 10-pound baby boy. But my father, when he heard about it, was hooping and hollering around the set of whatever movie he was making. And I probably would know, but I just prefer not to know.

Yeah. I don't know what to say. Saying, oh, boy, I've got a fullback for a son. Right. Well, I was 10 years old. I was almost 10 pounds still. So I flunked that one right out the gate. No fullback.

No, they wanted me to become more of a man. I mean, shit, I was six. Can't you let me be six? No, they packed me off to this boarding school up in Topanga Canyon in 1946. Not too far from home. For me, it was like the other side of the world. Well, you were living in New York then? No, I was living here. But it was like the other side of the world. Well, you were living in New York then? No, I was living here.

But it was still... And we lived in this beautiful low top, a lot of sun, big fields, orchards and stuff, veggies, as I've told you, and just great. To this little school up in Topanga, which was really weird to me. I was wondering, why are we living like this? Yeah. To the floors. Was it like an outward bound kind of thing?

Was it supposed to toughen you up? Was that kind of school? Well, that's where they sent it to toughen me up, but it was just a school where people in the industry or famous people dropped their kids. Oh, yeah. And that's where you got hurt? Yeah. And that's where you tracked the post and uh and that's where you track

the post-traumatic stress too that's the beginning yeah uh it was compounded yeah uh later that very year in 46 was a hell of a bad year for this boy yeah um at any rate let me just say that uh i was i flew back east with my mother. And I thought, oh, I'm going to go to a hotel. I've never been in a hotel at school. And I'm looking at this taxi cab, far out. I don't know. Yeah, right.

What do I know? Yeah. And later I would find out there are people in hotels who come out and get your bags and help you. Sure, yeah. But my mother had her little case, and I had my little small case and a teddy bear. Yeah. And I'm wondering, wow, all this brick is this far out. Right. Walked up these stairs,

and then flattened up more stairs into this. Is this the lobby? Right. I know nothing. Yeah. It was just all these incredible floors. And my mother said, and as I'm telling this story,

I can actually see her in a black dress, black hat, and a wide mesh veil. It was just kind of the thing then. And she said, you stay right here. Someone will come and get you. And I watched her go click, click, click her heels.

I could hear them hitting the floor as she walked away. And I didn't know. I said, somebody's going to find me here. Well, I have my bag and my teddy bear. What the hell. And I didn't know. I said, somebody's going to find me here. Yeah. Well, I was waiting in my teddy bear. What the hell? And somebody finally came along.

Right this way, I got an elevator. I've been in elevators before. Sure. They took me into my hotel room, which was a funny green paint on it. It had a bed with this metal table that swung over the bed. I don't remember the table when I lost my tonsils. I was three years old when they took my tonsils.

So far out. You didn't know you were in a hospital? No. I remember this kind of bed. Why were you there? Because I was so skinny they thought that I had a tapeworm. So all you have to do is to put two and two here together and figure out

how are they going to figure out if I have a two? Sure. Where are they going to go looking? They're going to go digging around. Where? Yeah, in your ass. There you go. And so I was mechanically raped when I was six years old in John Hopkins Hospital.

Fortunately, those guys are all dead now. Otherwise, I would be a known murderer. I would go and shoot those bitches. I tell you. That was strike two, huh? Well, yeah. They didn't give me a shot of anything. I tell you. That was strike two, huh? Well, yeah. They didn't give me a shot of anything. I'd remember.

See, I'm into the details, which really drives my family nuts. You hold on to it. I don't hold on to it. It's just there. Yeah. I mean, I wish I weren't holding on to it. Yeah. So it was 2004.

I figured out, oh. No, it was actually a psychiatrist who said, well, don't you know what's going on? And I said, no, I really don't know what's going on i said no i really don't know what's going on i'm really fucked up and i she said here's what it is you had all these things happen your mother died when you were 10 you probably went on and on and oh she did when you're 10 that's big yeah um she died of a suicide but i didn't know it then. I wouldn't find out about that until I was 15 the first time, then 20 where she died, and then 25 how she died.

So every bit, every time I was being slammed. Again. Yeah, because there was no word. She died, and her name was never mentioned again in the house. Right, because your old man just shut it out? Yep. Yeah. And, you know, so that messed up a lot of shit in my life.

None of the things, you know. Sure. Hey, I'm very fortunate to be here. I've dodged so many bullets. Yeah. When I was a month shy of my 11th birthday on January 9th, 1951. It was a Sunday.

Yeah. And I was going trap shooting with two other young boys my age, Tony Avery and Reed Armstrong. And it was on the Kresge Estate in New York. Mm-hmm. So we went from Greenwich, Connecticut over to the Kresge Estate. And Reed Armstrong had brought this little pistol with him, a little.25 caliber, you know, single shot, break open. And so we wanted to shoot it. And I didn't understand the pistol thing.

I understand rifles and shotguns. So I put the shell in. And you're supposed to, the opening to eject the last, the spent cartridge. Yeah. And then you put the new one. That's cocking the gun. So instead of doing it smoothly, keeping a hand on the barrel and a hand on the handle, the pistol grip, I just slapped the barrel to go up. It did spun in my hands and blew off right into, it blew off the tip of my liver to the top of my stomach and center punched my left kidney.

Jesus, man. So basically, I died three times on that operating table, lost too much blood, my heart stopped. Ah, fuck. And it's a wonder, timing? Yeah. I went and met the doctor later. When I was 21, I went up and drove up to see him. Uh-huh.

And his name was Charles Clark Sweet. Yeah. And Dr. Sweet had told me that they saw this blood and they didn't understand about the tip of my liver being blown off. And they just thought maybe my aorta, my abdominal aorta was hit or my heart. Because when they were looking through to try to trace the bullet, the bullet was stuck on the end of my skin, on my back. It had to be cut out. It was just lying flat on it. And as they were trying to trace the shot, the heart, it was the heart and the abdominal aorta kept coming in.

Because the heart's a muscle that pumps. Yeah. It contracts. Yeah. Contracts. Yeah. So the bullet hit my ribcage. This is told to me, I mean, I didn't know, right? Yeah. Contracts? Yeah. Contracts? Yeah. So the bullet hit my ribcage. This is told to me, I mean, I didn't know, right?

Yeah. Charles Clark Sweet told me. It hit my ribcage and started tumbling. So the heart was just that part of the ventricle that was contracting, bringing everything, lifting the aorta up. Yeah. The bullet went flipping by. That's called timing. Yeah.

Now, when does that really play? Yeah, that played pretty heavy. Yeah, right. But here's how I get out. Yeah, right. In 1965, David Crosby called me. I was just, come on over. We're going to oversee the Beatles.

We're up on Bennett Canyon. Right. I said, cool. Yeah, man. Do you want me to bring anything? He said, no, no, I'm bringing it. No, David had the best of everything, right? So I drove up.

I had an EJAG. I thought, well, it'll come in that British racing grain. Is it your car? Yeah. I pulled in. I knew the password. I mean, the hills were alive with the kids. I bet.

It was pretty frightening. But we took acid. So you go to Crosby's house and you take acid? No, we go to the house the Beatles had rented. Oh, wow. How long were they here? Not long. I'm only tracking that day or two.

Yeah. Yeah. So you go there. So we go there and then it's announced that we're going to take acid. Yeah. I said, oh. The good shit. The good shit.

The owsley shit. No, that was much better than that. really absolutely straight out of sandals where sandals oh yeah really the good oh the pharmaceutical absolutely and that and that was crosby's he had that um yeah but he'd gotten it from me you were the source i just i got there you knew the guy yeah and you know it's the old dropper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Syracuse. Yeah, yeah.

You could actually put it in the palm of your hand and wait 45 minutes. And you'd blast off. Yeah. At any rate, we've all done this deed, and I'm looking at everybody sitting at this big lunch thing, and they shouldn't be doing that. Yeah, yeah. But that's kind of a judgment I'm not going to call. Yeah. And finally, Crosby came and found me.

Yeah. For some reason, he said, Fonda, you got to go talk to George. Oh, no, is he throwing booze in it? Well, he thinks he's dying. I said, well, Cros, that's what this drug is all about, you know. And your brain's trying to stop the effect. Right. But actually, you're cutting loose.

Yeah, man. You're going to go on a freewheeling little tour of your brain. Handle it. Handle it. So I went down to talk to George. George was sitting with John at his table in an outside area. We were disregarding the screaming kids. I said, we've got to prove that we're here and they're not.

Right. So I went down. I think because I was the oldest guy there right that's why i'm sent on this right journey of demands and are with george you know go take care of george he's flipping out he's flipping yeah and i went down i said george you know when you take this drug what happens is it's all cutting loose and your brain doesn't want that so your brain's hanging on and telling you i'm dying to make you stop yeah but don't do that just take breaths just relax look george i know what it's like to be dead yeah believe me yeah

i've i've died my heart has stopped yeah three times so lost too much blood yeah and and i'll tell you it's just really cool there's nothing i know there's no light there's no tunnel there's no people right it's just nothing. And it's really nice. And I'm here to tell you about it. So just let it go because I know what it's like to be dead. All right. You know, I mean, when I was a boy, in my life, things were basically all right.

But, you know, everything was right. But this was a mistake. It was an accident. Yeah. Although my family thought I tried to commit suicide, George, I hadn't. Yeah. It was a stupid, stupid accident for a little boy. I mean, everything was, I was just a little boy, and everything was all right.

And Leonard looked at me. He said, what the fuck do you mean? Who put all that shit in your head? You know, I know what it's like to be dead. You're making me feel like I've never been born. I looked at him. I was far out. And I let it go.

And the next year out comes Revolver with She Said, I Know What It's Like to Be Dead. Oh, there you go. I Know What It's Like to Be Sad. And you're making me feel like I never. When I was a boy, everything was right. So to be part of a Beatles song. Man, man. You landed, right?

I mean, yeah, that's pretty amazing. But, you know, you also directed Easy Rider, so. Well, no. I hired Hopper to direct it. And that part that I hired him is what really pissed him off. He thought he should have hired me. But you wrote it, right? Yeah.

I mean, Dennis did some very clever stuff in there. He did all the stuff with Jack talking about Venusians. Sure, man. And all that. Yeah. Basically, the rest of it was ad lib. But if you're doing 65, 65, you're doing the Sandoz acid.

So, you know, that's before the ship blows open down here. It's before the, what, 68, 69, where everybody's doing it, right? You're ahead of the curve oh yeah were you doing were you dealing with leary or kisi or any of those guys i i knew kisi and i knew leary but i really wasn't on the same wavelength i was closer to kisi than i was to leary yeah in terms of sort of like get out in it not don't hole up yeah get out and be out and do it yeah right yeah you know Don't cause it anything. Yeah, yeah.

And I was all for that. And when I had learned that I want to do this as a job, that means acting. I thought you meant acid. No, no. As a job, acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a trip for me to get there. It wasn't just because my dad was in it at all. Right, sure.

He never said one word to me about that or anything else. Right, yeah. It was my discovery that, oh, I really like this. Yeah. In terms of wrangling what was going on in the culture and sort of like, I have to assume that you didn't realize that Easy Rider was going to blow up like it did, right? No, I just knew that I was going to make money with it because it wouldn't cost me a lot to make. And I thought that the tale was really commercial, visually commercial.

Oh, yeah, sure, man. It's a road story. Well, yeah, I mean, I was in Toronto, Ontario. Yeah. And I was up promoting a film that Nicholson had written called The Trip that Corman directed. It was about taking LSD. Yeah. Dealing with press.

So I have a custom-made double-breasted suit. Yeah. Custom shirt. Yeah. Airmaid's tie. Really looking fine. No shoes and no socks. So I sit in a room in a chair.

There's lights. Yeah. And people come into the room they either talk to me yeah or take me for a radio whatever it is right the first thing they come in the room i'm just decked out to the nines yeah and she said whoa they see the bare feet and that stops it and they lose their interview it becomes my interview yeah i can say what the fuck i want promote the film blah blah, and then next. And I knew that was the trick because they couldn't handle that image.

Why doesn't he have any shoes or socks? It overtakes their minds. It's like, whoa. And so the first day I was there, there was a lunch with 1,200 people, maybe a bit more. And they were all distributors and exhibitors in Canada. And I was there at the AIP table, which was what it was. And up there was a big honor table with all the VIPs on it and then a dais. And they'd been talking, and I'm kind of checking everything out.

People were looking at my feet, of course. and then a dais and they've been talking and i'm kind of checking everything out people look into my feet of course yeah and uh this little short guy comes up and gets on the mic yeah and he's he's um lbj's um guy in the motion picture he was the head of the motion picture. He was the head of the Motion Picture Association of America. Right. Jack Valenti. Oh, he was back then? He just began. Oh, okay.

He was introducing himself. Oh, yeah, okay. He says, you know... I'm the guy. Yeah, I'm the guy. Yeah. And looking down at me on the floor, he says,

it's time we stop making movies about... This is sounding like evangelical shit, right? It's time we stop making movies about motorcycles and this is sounding like evangelical shit, right? At the time, we stopped making movies about motorcycles, sex, and drugs. And more movies like Dr. Dolittle, which cost $27 million. And he started this little launch by saying, my friends, and you are my friends.

He said it twice. Why? I don't know, but I'm there. Second time, oh,'t he didn't think we heard him and so that's my my tour i go back to my motel which was called the lakeshore motel at that time a real seedy joint and i said so no more sex drugs and motorcycles far out fuck that guy yeah that's my now i have job, which is signing these black and white 8x10s. And we didn't have Post-its, so everything had a little piece of paper. This guy owns 16 theaters.

He's got two daughters. And now I would say, you know, whoever, to whoever, and best wishes or love or peace, Peter Fonda. And then it came, one of these 8x10s comes up, and I'm looking at it, and I know what the picture is. In that 8x10 format, in the middle, there's maybe two inches of fully silhouetted motorcycle with two guys on it. You can't see who they are because the sun's bouncing off. What we're doing is riding. It's me packing Bruce Dern and riding along the cement trail in Venice Beach. It's a trick because it looks like we're riding on sand. Right.

But, you know, I looked at that and I thought, who in marketing pulled this as something for me to sign? What was it from? You know, Dear Betty, Best Wishes, Peter Fonny. She's going, where the hell is he? What movie was it from? It was from Wild Angels. Oh, wow. Yeah.

I looked at it and bingo. That's it. It's not a movie about a hundred Hells Angels on a Hells Angels funeral. It's two guys riding across John Ford's West. Yeah. Oh, and they're going east. Yeah. They're going east.

Where are they going east? Oh, yeah. Journey to the East. That's a little Herman Hesse nod. That's cool. Going east. They're going to Florida to retire. And okay, so what happens?

They get there, and I've got these guys on motorcycles, of course. Yeah. And they get there, and they get whacked. Right. Because they don't look right. Yeah. They've got long hair. Right.

Oh, yeah. Okay, that's beautiful. Now I have to back it up to make it work. Right. And then I got it back to the beginning where we're bringing from Mexico, we're bringing a white powder. We don't say what it is. Right.

I want the moralist to have the roughest time deciding about that. But you didn't name it in your mind either. No. White powder. It was white powder. Right. Dennis probably promised me it would be real coke, but it was powdered sugar. Man, that shit burns.

Yeah, and your nose no good. And the camera's on me going, whoa. Pin my eyeballs. Yeah. And at any rate, that was the point. And after I got it all together with the beginning, the middle, and an end, and the journey, and what we do and what we can't do, we can't go and eat in restaurants. We can't.

We're not allowed to be in motels. Yeah. All this shit. All this. It's like racial profiling. Sure. And we're going to see what's happening in America. Yeah.

And I knew what that last bit. I knew from the beginning what I was going to do at the end. That guy in that truck, man. Yeah. I knew from the beginning what I was going to do at the end. That guy in that truck, man. Yeah, but, you know, the idea. I knew that this was a big hit. I'd thrown sevens. Yeah. And then I threw them between my legs.

Yeah, I was still seven. Over my back, in the tub. It didn't matter. Blew up. I called up Hopper. It was 4.30 in the morning in Toronto. Yeah. And I called him up and I said, listen to this.

I had wakened him i know that oh yeah but that's surprising he wasn't up well at that point i can't yeah i don't know this is a call it seemed like a guy didn't sweep much so i yeah i um i told the story yeah he's that's really great man what are you gonna do with it i said well i figure you direct it i'll produce it. We'll both write it and star in it. We can save some money that way. You want me to direct it?

Sure, man. I mean, you have the passion. You know framing better than I do. You understand camera better than I do. Absolutely. You're set for this. We can do this. Oh, man.

I'm so glad you called me because I was never going to talk to you again. We don't want to necessarily go back and explain that. That's something I'll be writing about. What happened? He stormed out. He wanted to direct this album that I was going to make. Hugh Masekela was my guy. A record?

Yeah, a record. And he wanted to direct the album. Direct an album? You mean produce it? You don't know. This is what he says. Comes to my house. I want to direct it.

I said, Dennis, you don't direct albums. You produce them. You arrange them. That's what you're doing. You play on them, but you don't direct them. No, no. I mean, then he started blowing off. Everybody steals my ideas.

I can't believe it. Everybody steals my ideas. I can't believe it. Everybody steals my ideas. I'm thinking, what? Everybody says, I can't. But on and on until I finally, I have to stop this shit. So on the floor, I had this little, it was a reel-to-reel Sony that looked like it was an Ampex. It was a higher grade. And I just picked that sucker up and said,, hey, hey, I threw it on the

parking floor, it broke. I said, when you can fix that, you can direct an album. That was it. I can't believe you, did you see what you just did?

I mean, you're a fucking child, man, I mean, dig it, man, dig it, man,

man, you dig it, I can't talk to you, you're a fucking child, I'm never going to talk to you again, I'm out of here. He walked out, and I'm, no, I don't want to talk to you, you're a fucking child, I can't talk to you. You're a fucking child. I'm never going to talk to you again. I'm out of here. He walked out. No, I don't want to talk to you.

You're a fucking child. I can't handle this. I'm walking away. I never want to talk to you again. I'm so glad you called me because I was never going to talk to you again. That's hilarious. Did you guys stay friends? Things became a tad stretched.

Yeah. He was out of control during the filming. Yeah. He was out of control during the filming. Yeah. He stayed out of control for a while, but when he leveled off, did you ever reunite? I tried many times. Oh, really? I thought I was successful from time to time. Yeah.

But- I guess when you have a- He claimed that I cheated him. Oh. Oh, on that. And I have tape of him being interviewed. He said some event, he was in a Cadillac with his then wife, and he said, yeah, finally cheating me out of millions and millions and millions of dollars.

You have a microphone, you couldn't see that I held up three fingers. At any rate, I thought, oh, great, if he helps me find it, I'll get a million and a half out of that. Go look for it. Are you fucking kidding me? And he believed it. And he said that he and he alone wrote Easy Rider. So it just became a business problem. A megalomania played heavy on it.

It was too bad. And the blow, too, I imagine, for a while. Oh, yeah. I mean, we tried to get him to stop drinking. Yeah. So he was going to AA meetings. Sure. But he had a bag of coke in his pocket

solving one problem right then he he got rid of that problem too but the adventure man i mean the fact that you kind of you know blew out this you did easy rider you changed the face of uh of filmmaking and culture and everything else and then you're the guy you're that guy so then you're sort of like you're the biker guy yeah well the next film I did, I bought the script and I didn't know, I was going to produce it and act in it. And it was called The Hired Hand. And as I began reading it more and more, I saw more and more of the stuff that I'd want to see and then I'll have them do this and I'll have them do that.

That'll really look great and we'll shoot over here and that'll be good because I know it's there. And suddenly I stopped and I'll have them do that. That'll really look great. We'll shoot over here and that'll be good because I know it's there. And suddenly I stopped and I said, wait a second. I'm the producer. I can't tell the director how to direct. Right. Oh, my God, I'm going to have to direct this thing because I could visually see it. Right.

And at first reading, it was a visual imprint on me that it was as strong as a visual imprint of the story I made up in Toronto called later Easy Rider. Yeah. We didn't know what to call it at first. Right. So it's interesting, though, that the Western was still around. And Warren Oates, you did a lot of movies with Warren Oates, huh? I loved him.

He was a great guy. Was he? Really fine actor. Yeah. Great. Very easygoing, funny guy. We got along so well. And he didn't have to die.

No. Like, what about Nicholson are you guys still friends we are i don't see him enough i in fact have to call him and just check on him see how he's doing yeah um because like i imagine like you know harry dean's gone i know man well as we said earlier well as we get older we start losing more friends but i like to know like i always ask guys like you know but there are guys that you stayed friends with, you know, throughout the time, huh? You know, like, through the whole ride? Yeah.

That's nice. Yeah, you know, I still know McGuinn and Crosby. Oh, yeah. I talked to Crosby at my old house. Yeah. Yeah, for a couple hours. I think he would have stayed for the whole day if I would have let him. Great guy.

Yeah, he is. Yeah, he's a real sweetheart. And McGuinn is, too. And, you know. McGuinn, yeah. How about Tom McGuinn? You talk to him anymore? I haven't seen him in quite a few years.

That was a pretty big movie, wasn't it? 1992? Well, it was artistic. Yeah. And that has its own story that I don't want to get into. Nothing's for the PTS part of it, but just in this book that I'm writing. You're writing a book now? Yeah. Second memoir?

Yeah, because a lot's happened since 98. Sure. What's the angle? Well, just what I'm talking about in PTS starts off with the title Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.

It's all about your past. And the motto for PTS people who are really fucked up by it is, the only good day was today. Yeah. Did you try the EMDR? I tried everything. Yeah. How does it affect you?

What are the manifestations of it for you on a day-to-day basis? What PTSD? I never know. I can see a commercial that does a certain thing, and I just break down crying. Full on. Full on. And I've been after this for quite a while. I just didn't understand what I had.

I thought I was nuts, and I better keep it to myself because they're liable to put the net on me. But it's also a sensitivity, right? I mean, it's like an oversensitivity almost, right? Or is it more of like you don't know, like just a trigger thing? Something triggers it. Ah, yeah. And as I said, it could be a commercial. It could be something I see on the street.

It could be a phone call I get. Anything I hear. If it deals in a certain thing that I get caught on, it's not a barbless hook. Yeah. So you're going to discuss, so once you found out that's what you had, you kind of ran that through. You backloaded into your whole sort of past and and saw well i already i already was dealing with my past yeah uh every day without understanding why right now i understood understand why why you were hung up on the things you were hung up on

no how i got hung up i mean i didn't look at those things as hanging me up. I wondered what was going wrong with my mother. Later, when I was trying to resolve certain crises in my life about the mechanical rape, I talked to people who knew my mother during that particular time.

And these two women, Eulalia Chapin and Marion Parker, and they explained a lot of stuff that went on and what happened. About your mother's darkness? About my mother's darkness and my father's short-sightedness. Apparently, he used to cuff me on the head or slap me when I didn't finish my meal. Hence my going to Johns Hopkins to look for a tapeworm. Right. Brilliant people, man.

Yeah, man. Of course, it was 1946, so I guess I cut a little last slack there, but not a lot because it fucked me up. But do you think how much of the psychological trauma do you think sort of compelled you to sort of push the envelope with drugs and doing all the other shit? Well, I figured I was bent already, so what could I lose? Were you looking for solutions, you think, in retrospect? No, but on my third trip, I really expanded my brain a lot and got in there. But I still didn't see the causal effect of what was causing it. I just, I mean, it took me until I was 15 or 16 to realize what this terrible nightmare that I have every night was.

Yeah. Night terrors every night. And that was the tapeworm experience. Mm-hmm. Tapeworm. And gunshot and mother's death and so forth. I remember on my 50th birthday, my sister Jane wrote me a fax. I was making a movie in Switzerland.

And I came back, great hotel, the Barlock. I came back to the hotel and there was sitting in the fax machine this fax from my sister. And it was a poem. And she does the glass half half full the class half empty uh-huh it was kind of a cool little poem yeah but my response to that was my my my sister didn't get it my class was overflowing with this myriad of colors just all over the fucking place. And I was going, yeah, yes. And I never thought of this halfway out.

I was all the way in. Well, why is this doing this to me? Pretty far out colors. So, yeah, it was overflowing. And it wasn't half full or half empty. And maybe I was half empty, but I felt I was full. Yeah, man. Do you get along with her still?

Yeah. That's good. Yeah. She's so into what she does. Yeah. Busy. She's busy a lot. Yeah.

She's got her children and she's got grandchildren now. But no tension with you. You're cool yeah that's good we have to be yeah yeah yeah i have to think that way i thought you were great in this in this little movie even though you had a couple scenes it's always nice to see you and you always pop up places you know what's interesting about that fact that moment when I meet Christopher, because I've known him in real life since I was 18. I was able to throw my hands into that situation. And he just instinctually, he's this great Shakespearean actor.

Sure, man. You know, the best in the Americas on film or stage. Yeah. And he raps into words. So I'm using this history I have of knowing him for so stage. Yeah. And he raps into words. So I'm using this history I have of knowing him for so long. Yeah. Not that I hung out with him a lot.

But your old man did? Not really. Oh, no. No, my first stepmother knew him. Oh, okay. And he was a wonderful young guy, a lunatic. I loved it.

Yeah. And so here I am. I'm seeing this fellow that I knew. And I just wrap my arms around him. It's just, you can see it on film. There's something about the way we hold on, we just greet each other, that makes you go, huh. Yeah. You relax.

I know. Everything's fine. You know, I've been waiting for this bottle of wine. Now's a good time to open up. And then we're down there vaping up. Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking, this is so far out. Yeah, man.

I mean, I can feel that. Like, there's a looseness to it, you know? The finest Shakespearean actor in the Americas on stage or screen is selling pot to Easy Rider. There you go. Whoa. That's the hook of the scene right there. How about that? Yeah, man.

And your health is good, everything else? Yeah, my health is great. Yeah, man. But my mental health is questionable. But I don't find as much darkness. Sure. I'm getting used to it in a sense, so it's easier for me to stop myself from getting caught. There's still barbed hooks. We're not not catching release and we should be catching release but i do have a great deal of

empathy for our soldiers our fighting men and women yeah um you know i didn't see a friend next to me get his head blown off yeah i didn't lose an arm like i. I almost lost my life, but I dodged many bullets. And so maybe I don't have the right to have a tough time. I mean, I never had to worry about where I was going to eat or sleep. But still, you got a problem? You're dealing with it? Yeah. I now know about the tapeworm thing.

And I found out the reason my mother was there, she was getting a hysterectomy because she was a bleeder. She had heavy, heavy periods. And she was, I now know, in postpartum. Those are phrases you don't know. And I took psychology in college. I figured I better find out some more about me because something's missing. So that was what they attract the suicide to, the postpartum?

I think that that's part of it. Wow. And part of my dad wanting to divorce her. Oh, he wanted out? Wanted to marry a younger woman, my first stepmother, whom I adore. Yeah, yeah. And I could look at that whole thing and see, she's the reason my mother killed herself. But it's not that.

And I could go spit on my father's ashes, but that's not it either. It's trying to understand that and forgive that. But before you can get to forgiving that, you have to forgive yourself. Yeah. How are you doing with that? That's the hardest part. Yeah, man. Well, you know, you seem pretty good.

Hey, I'm an actor. I act like I seem pretty good. No, you know, you heard it. You know, how are you doing? I'm alive. The alternative really sucks. Although inevitable at this particular moment unacceptable well yeah exactly well i'm glad you're alive it was great seeing you i don't want to hold you up

because i know you got to go get pictures or whatever yeah i was told hard out and then it's only a matter of time before coming someone comes to the door yeah hold on i'll get that it might be my lawyers thanks for talking p Peter. My pleasure. Thank you.