Episode 1043 - Greg Kinnear
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what the fuck a holics yes you what the fuck a holics what's happening how's it going i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf
Marc:Greg Kinnear is here.
Marc:Greg Kinnear, he's been around a while.
Marc:What do you know about him?
Marc:I always knew that he came up a different way than most people in the show biz.
Marc:Like, you know, like it wasn't the standard career.
Marc:I remember I auditioned for his job.
Marc:And later, when he was leaving, he's got a new movie out called Brian Banks.
Marc:It opens nationwide tomorrow, August 9th.
Marc:A lot of things happening tomorrow.
Marc:A lot of things happening August 9th.
Marc:For instance, season three of GLOW premieres tomorrow, August 9th, on Netflix.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Third season, 10 episodes.
Marc:I'm in it.
Marc:Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, and the rest of the gals, it's back tomorrow.
Marc:Hope you like it.
Marc:I thought I did good work and I thought the shows looked great and it's a new story.
Marc:We're in Vegas.
Marc:Anyways, it's back.
Marc:It's nice now.
Marc:You only have to wait about a year in between seasons.
Marc:So right when you're about to forget it existed at all, you can rewatch the first season today and the second season.
Marc:Yeah, rewatch both seasons today and then get geared up for tomorrow's premiere or the dropping or the delivery of
Marc:The third season of GLOW that happens tomorrow.
Marc:Sword of Trust, the movie I'm in that Lynn Shelton directed.
Marc:Me, Michaela Watkins, Toby Huss, Jillian Bell, John Bass.
Marc:Sword of Trust is opening in more theaters this weekend.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:That's that's I did not anticipate that.
Marc:You can go to sort of trust dot com to see where it's playing near you.
Marc:I believe it's playing in my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Guild Theater, which was the art theater that we went to sometimes to see the art movies.
Marc:Wasn't Don Poncho's.
Marc:Don Poncho's was the revival house.
Marc:Went there more.
Marc:Don Poncho's was a little theater right across from university from the University of New Mexico.
Marc:It had the double features like every day or every other day, different double feature, old movies.
Marc:That was the fucking best.
Marc:And then it went out of business.
Marc:I think they made it a fucking laundromat, a laundromat, not even a restaurant or a bar.
Marc:Just, you know, pull the plug on the history of cinema and put some washing machines in there.
Marc:Depressing.
Marc:But the Guild has been plugging along for a long time.
Marc:I don't even know if it closed and came back or whether it's always been there.
Marc:It's up on Central, up near Knob Hill.
Marc:And my movie is playing there in Albuquerque.
Marc:So hometown folks, go check it out.
Marc:I will be at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon this weekend, tomorrow and Saturday.
Marc:And then I'm going to be on Colbert on Monday.
Marc:And then I'll be in Dallas, Austin, and Houston, Texas, August 22nd through 24th.
Marc:If you want to get tickets for the big special taping, that's going to be at the Schubert Theater in Boston, Massachusetts, October 12th, two shows, 7 o'clock and 10 p.m.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for those dates and for links to those shows.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:I just shit my pants.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Haven't done that in a while.
Marc:See, some of you have been here a long time, man.
Marc:Some of you have been here a long time.
Marc:Almost 10 years we've been together, some of us.
Marc:Me and you and you and that guy over there.
Marc:Yeah, you didn't know he was into it.
Marc:That lady, she loves my show.
Marc:Look around.
Marc:Yep, her with the headset on.
Marc:Some of you have been here a long time and some of you know me pretty well.
Marc:But tomorrow's a big day.
Marc:It's just another day, but it's a big day.
Marc:In that, if I don't drink or use drugs today...
Marc:Tomorrow, I will have 20 years of sobriety.
Marc:Not saying I'm not nuts.
Marc:I'm not saying that, you know, I don't have my problems.
Marc:I'm not saying that I've been a saint, but I am saying I've been sober.
Marc:I have not drank any booze or taken any drugs unprescribed for 20 fucking years.
Marc:Isn't that crazy?
Marc:Maybe I should share a little bit about that story because I get a lot of email from people about sobriety.
Marc:So 20 years, 1988 was the first time I was in rehab.
Marc:I was in rehab in 1988 at the care unit in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:I left Los Angeles, California after being here about a year.
Marc:I'd driven here after college on a Coke bender.
Marc:from new mexico got to la moved to culver city ended up you know on a fluke i got into the uh comedy store worked there for i don't know seven eight months did a lot of cocaine
Marc:Coked myself into psychosis, ran away from L.A., being chased by things that only I understood and only I could see.
Marc:But I knew what was going on.
Marc:I got my passport renewed and I prepared.
Marc:Yeah, I was out of my fucking mind.
Marc:And when I got back to New Mexico, I checked in.
Marc:That was 1988.
Marc:28 day rehab, got clean.
Marc:That was the first time I got clean.
Marc:And I moved back to Boston where I went to school and I started my comedy career over again.
Marc:So 1988, I got sober.
Marc:I didn't stay sober.
Marc:I got 20 years.
Marc:So it took me about 30 years to get 20 in a row.
Marc:That's how it goes.
Marc:It just got ugly, folks.
Marc:You know, it gets ugly.
Marc:You go, I get a year here, 14 months there.
Marc:I gradually ease my way back.
Marc:I was in a marriage that I was not happy in, but I don't know if I would have been happy anywhere.
Marc:She wouldn't tolerate my drug use.
Marc:She had known I had a struggle with it, so I'd use on the road or I think I'd get away with it.
Marc:I would start on Monday.
Marc:That was when Luna Lounge was, maybe Sunday or Monday.
Marc:So I'd be the early bird at my Coke dealer's house, Hammerhead.
Marc:I'd go down a little over east side, down there at 7th and be upstairs to see Hammerhead.
Marc:I'd get there like 5.30 before he even got the ship ready.
Marc:Still light out, closing the blinds.
Marc:And I'd load up and I'd think that, man, I'll get a half a gram, I'll knock it out before 10, and no one will be the wiser.
Marc:I'll go do my show, I'll go to sleep.
Marc:What was I thinking?
Marc:I remember one time, did I ever tell this story?
Marc:I'm sure I have.
Marc:I went there to get the early bird special at my Coke dealer, Hammerhead's house.
Marc:And...
Marc:The guy who he got it from, this little Latino guy showed up, an old man who looked like he was about 70, just showed up and handed Hammerhead a wad of tinfoil.
Marc:He opened up and there was this beautiful, shiny, flaky snowball of blow.
Marc:And he's like, yeah, I said, that's it.
Marc:That's the stuff that you get.
Marc:Let's do some of that.
Marc:And I remember doing a line of that and just feeling my brain peel away, just like it just this tingly feeling went from the center of my head all the way back over my brain, down my spine.
Marc:And it made everything so clear and everything popped open and everything was perfect.
Marc:And I said, why don't you sell that?
Marc:and he said because no one would leave me alone and then he dumped that thing into a bag of shake and shit and cut from day before and crunched it up it was heartbreaking should have known i had a problem then huh how sad seeing that nice chunk of coke be grounded up with garbage but anyways let's not get too nostalgic
Marc:Point being, I was in a marriage I wasn't happy with.
Marc:I was fucking around.
Marc:I was doing drugs.
Marc:I would lay in bed.
Marc:There's nothing worse than laying in bed with somebody who loves you and who you're lying to and you're on blow and you're laying there and your heart is about to explode.
Marc:You can't stop it from beating so fast.
Marc:You know, what the fuck is going to happen?
Marc:You don't want to wake her up, but you kind of do because you're afraid that you're going to die.
Marc:So you might want to wake her up and say, like, I'm dying.
Marc:I fucked up.
Marc:That's a popular apology, kind of, from the alcoholic drug users.
Marc:Hey, I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm dying.
Marc:I fucked up again.
Marc:I fucked up.
Marc:But no, you just ride it out, laying there, sweating with your heart pounding next to a sleeping person who loves you, just pounding away your heart.
Marc:And the sad thing is, is that it would be easier.
Marc:It would be easier to have a heart attack and die than get clean or get out of the situation you're in that makes you unhappy.
Marc:Those are the thoughts.
Marc:Please, let's end this shit.
Marc:Enough already.
Marc:So how it happened for me
Marc:And this is not orthodox and it's not even correct.
Marc:But I was sweaty.
Marc:I was chubby.
Marc:I'd given up on my career.
Marc:I was doing local segments for a local TV show in Manhattan.
Marc:I do Conan every once in a while.
Marc:But I was bloated.
Marc:I was bitter.
Marc:I was resentful.
Marc:And I couldn't stop doing blow.
Marc:I was at the comedy cellar talking to, I believe, Brian Scalero, maybe.
Marc:Sweaty.
Marc:Bloated.
Marc:Drinking.
Marc:Probably some resentful diatribe or explaining the history of comedy to somebody.
Marc:I think it all started with Pryor.
Marc:Or fuck that guy.
Marc:He doesn't deserve to be on the TV.
Marc:Some woman, almost like a vision, walked up to me.
Marc:Beautiful, beautiful woman.
Marc:I'd never really seen her before.
Marc:Maybe I didn't notice.
Marc:She just walked up to me and she goes, you're Marc Maron, aren't you?
Marc:And I said, yes, I am.
Marc:She goes, what happened to you?
Marc:What happened to you?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:What?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:She was beautiful.
Marc:I said, what are you talking about?
Marc:She goes, you look all fucked up.
Marc:You're all bloated and fat and sweaty.
Marc:You look like you need help.
Marc:Do you need help?
Marc:I'm like, what?
Marc:What do you want?
Marc:She goes, I can help you get sober.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't know.
Marc:But she was beautiful, man.
Marc:So I'm like, yeah.
Marc:She's like, yeah.
Marc:You want to talk about it?
Marc:I'm like, yep.
Marc:And I said, you mean like meetings and shit?
Marc:She goes, yep.
Marc:You mean like God and shit?
Marc:She's like, yep.
Marc:And I'm like, eh.
Marc:But she was beautiful.
Marc:So I walked with her for like 30 blocks.
Marc:She laid it down.
Marc:How it works.
Marc:She was a sober person.
Marc:Three or four years at that point.
Marc:We got to her house and like a fucking jerk douchebag, I bought a fucking can of Foster's on the way.
Marc:I had a joint and I sat there in her goddamn apartment with this sober girl who's trying to lay it down for me.
Marc:And I drank that beer and I'm like, does this bother you?
Marc:Gotta smoke this weed like a fucking idiot.
Marc:But I fell in love with her, of course.
Marc:I was gonna follow her anywhere.
Marc:So we started going to the things.
Marc:Now I'm gonna break the tradition here because this is what it's about.
Marc:What I did, it took me a few weeks, maybe a month or two to get straight.
Marc:I started going to meetings, started going to meetings with her.
Marc:I would go with her anywhere, anywhere.
Marc:I was fucking crazy about that person.
Marc:But she got me straight, man, and she got me focused, and she knew the program inside and out, and that's what I needed at that point in time.
Marc:You can get sober however you want, but this is how I did it.
Marc:I went to at least one meeting, one to three meetings a day for about a year and a half, two years.
Marc:And I met dudes in the program.
Marc:I met women in the program.
Marc:I became a regular meetings.
Marc:And I just went.
Marc:I was told that if you put your sobriety first, the rest of it will follow.
Marc:And also, once you start getting a day count going, you don't want to lose that fucking thing.
Marc:It becomes competitive.
Marc:I'm not giving this up.
Marc:And I was a miserable fuck.
Marc:I was angry when I shared in meetings.
Marc:I was like, fuck you guys.
Marc:Fuck this meeting.
Marc:Fuck this program.
Marc:But I don't want to fucking drink.
Marc:So fuck it.
Marc:I was that guy.
Marc:And people would come up to me after and say, you sound good, man.
Marc:You're in the right place.
Marc:Good for you, man.
Marc:You sound great.
Marc:Keep coming back.
Marc:And I'm like, you fuckers misunderstood.
Marc:Got a sponsor, picked a huge asshole because I figured, yeah, they tell you, you know, get somebody who has what you want.
Marc:And I'm like, well, that guy's an asshole.
Marc:So he kept his personality in the middle of this cult-like behavior.
Marc:I'll take him.
Marc:And he was an asshole, but he kind of had an interesting program, you know?
Marc:I went a little fuck crazy.
Marc:I went a little food crazy.
Marc:You know, you can go all kinds of crazy just as long as you don't go cocaine crazy or crack crazy or dope crazy or booze crazy.
Marc:He was like, go ahead, fuck your life away.
Marc:Do whatever you got to do.
Marc:If you don't drink, not orthodox, but it got me through.
Marc:and i just stayed with it when i moved out here with her 2002 on a deal from fox that didn't go anywhere wrote the script made a little money enough to move enough to get us set up out here i was nobody i was angry i was resentful i was bitter i was frustrated about comedy about my career everything else but i was sober
Marc:Obviously, because of the nature of that relationship, you know, we locked in.
Marc:I took a hostage.
Marc:I wasn't going to let her go.
Marc:We got out here.
Marc:I married her in 2004.
Marc:It was a volatile relationship.
Marc:I was a complete fucking asshole.
Marc:I was mean.
Marc:I didn't fuck around on her.
Marc:Who cares?
Marc:You know, I melted that thing down because I couldn't handle it.
Marc:So I lost that marriage.
Marc:She left me.
Marc:But because of that divorce and because of what happened afterwards and because of my panic and fear and darkness and sadness, I went into my garage and I started doing this show.
Marc:That story is pretty public.
Marc:All I know is I stayed sober through two divorces, through near bankruptcy, through all kinds of shit.
Marc:And a lot of people, the last 10 years of my 20, you've heard it here.
Marc:But by the time I started this podcast, I'd let go of any sort of hope that anything would happen for me in the career that I spent my life pursuing.
Marc:And because I was able to let it go, which I did, it was heartbreaking, but at some point, you have to realize what's delusional and what isn't, and I had surrendered that.
Marc:And I think because I let all that stuff go, and I wasn't good at humility, but life did it for me, and I don't drink, and I don't use drugs, and things have happened for me, and now I just have to remember to be fucking grateful.
Marc:and to you know talk like this to people that it is possible i don't know how you want to do it that's how i did it i still do it that way i'm still a relatively godless dude but you know the steps work in my life i understood it for my own
Marc:From my own point of view, I try to help other people.
Marc:And when I get letters from you people, I try to respond to them.
Marc:It's just possible.
Marc:I mean, it doesn't mean everything's going to work out.
Marc:I mean, life's fucking hard.
Marc:But, you know, it's not going to be any easier with drugs or fucking booze.
Marc:It just isn't.
Marc:And eventually you find your level.
Marc:It's crazy town for about five years, but who gives a fuck?
Marc:How horrible is it to be out there?
Marc:You know, but I just want to thank you people, you know, for being there for me because a lot of this is about sharing.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you that, you know, really the very nature of what I do here, the very nature of how I do this show is the core idea of recovery.
Marc:And a 12-step way, really.
Marc:The basic idea of staying sober in that program is that if you're an alcoholic or a drug addict, reach out to another alcoholic or drug addict.
Marc:And try to help them.
Marc:Talk to somebody.
Marc:Get out of yourself.
Marc:That was really the nature of how this podcast saved my life at the beginning.
Marc:It wasn't so much I was talking to drug addicts and alcoholics, but I was getting out of myself and listening to other people's stories.
Marc:The best I could.
Marc:I'm not saying I didn't interject.
Marc:But the process and the act of talking to other people gets me out of my own head and into theirs.
Marc:It teaches me empathy, moves me.
Marc:I'm able to take in someone else's life.
Marc:But the important lesson was like, I'm not thinking about me.
Marc:And I learned how to be empathetic because it wasn't second nature for me.
Marc:So really, the thing that changed my life was not only
Marc:AA, but the sort of one of the tools I learned there, I applied right here on these mics.
Marc:And that was how I evolved whatever the fuck it is I do in here.
Marc:And I couldn't have done it without you people.
Marc:And I'm happy to hear from you.
Marc:And thank you.
Marc:Thank you for my sobriety.
Marc:Thank you for my success.
Marc:And I hope you're okay.
Marc:So I talked to Greg Kinnear, and it was interesting to see him.
Marc:He took a different route, and I was curious about it, and I had some weird questions to ask him about something very specific.
Marc:You'll hear that.
Marc:His new movie, Brian Banks, opens nationwide tomorrow, August 9th.
Marc:And this is me talking to Greg Kinnear here in the... It's actually a bedroom.
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Marc:Whoa, look at this.
Marc:I know, dude.
Marc:I haven't listened to that yet.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:What?
Guest:I have, oh my gosh, just seeing a Maxwell C90.
Marc:Oh, I thought you were referring to what's on it.
Marc:Well, I'll get to that in a second.
Guest:But seeing a Maxwell C90 tape, I mean, this brings me back.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think we're about three months apart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, so.
Marc:yeah no me too and that was the top end that's when you really wanted to you know get the good tape that was the good one that's the gold that's right the gold where you're making that mixtape and you really want to be great yeah yeah i i found that i haven't listened to that i i kind of uh heisted it i i clipped it from uh i did a documentary for mike binder on the comedy store and that was in
Marc:mitzi's office and i just i took it who did the recording i don't fucking know was it just in some during a show no yeah it must have been at the comedy store yeah it's a it just says sam kenison uh trying to provoke tamayo now tamayo otsuki i lived in a house up on the hill that mitzi owned the owner of the store and she lived in the house and they used to go out so this has got to be pretty wow did she know you took it
Marc:No, she's dead.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:Whoever was there.
Guest:Well, they do now.
Marc:They're slowly learning that I've taken.
Guest:Right now in this broadcast.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:They're slowly learning that.
Marc:Because when Letterman was on, I showed him this.
Marc:I took this too.
Marc:This is Mitzi's driver's license, which is just on the floor.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:But it's like really, I don't know, it kind of gives me the willies in a good way.
Marc:So you steal shit.
Marc:No, I don't.
Marc:Yeah, you do.
Marc:A couple of things I stole.
Marc:I'm curating a collection.
Marc:No, I understand.
Marc:I'm not judging.
Marc:I'm just saying.
Marc:I'm not by nature a stealer.
Marc:But it was like, I don't know.
Marc:The history of that place in my mind, it's important that I have these things.
Marc:Someone's got to take them.
Guest:I did a radio show when I was a kid overseas, and I used to have some of my shows actually still on cassette, and at some point just in my life, I lost them.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:Yeah, I lost those.
Marc:Before they were digitized.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, never got it digitized.
Guest:And also, one of the great recordings of my life was my dad interviewing me.
Guest:He got me a little Sony recorder, you know, where you hit play and record at the same time.
Guest:And I was nine years old, and he's like, so, Greg, tell me about your day.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I was out by the lake and I saw a turtle.
Guest:And we had this great interview.
Guest:I mean, it was like a really unforgettable interview.
Guest:And I left the cassette with my dad.
Guest:And I always knew he had it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I came back one time.
Guest:I was talking to my mom.
Guest:Hey, where's the... I want to hear that.
Guest:I want to hear that.
Guest:And I put it on.
Guest:And it's Garrison Keillor Lake Wobegon Day's recording.
Guest:And I realized...
Guest:that I've been snuffed out.
Guest:Yeah, erased.
Guest:And I forgot to remove the little tabs that would have made it a permanent recording.
Guest:Right, you gotta do that.
Guest:You gotta.
Guest:Did you do that for that?
Marc:I don't know if this is done.
Marc:But I used to do it, and then like, you know, oh, no, they're there.
Guest:You gotta take those off.
Marc:Like, I also have to find a fucking cassette recorder to play it on.
Guest:Right.
Marc:There's a couple of things.
Guest:And there's that.
Marc:A couple of things that have to happen.
Marc:They're not really around anymore.
Marc:But yeah, you used to do that.
Marc:You used to pop them out, but then if you really put tape over it.
Marc:Yeah, that's true.
Marc:You just put tape over it and record right over it.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:So I have a funny memory of you that doesn't involve you directly.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And I need to validate it.
Marc:I need it to be confirmed.
Marc:When you left later, I guest hosted for two days.
Marc:I interviewed Roger Ebert, Robert Loja,
Marc:David O. Russell.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:You've got better guests than I did.
Marc:Walters.
Marc:What's her name?
Marc:Lisa Ann Walters?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But on the set- So essentially you did a week.
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:I did four shows, and I was not great at it.
Marc:I interviewed like this then.
Marc:There was no jokes.
Marc:I didn't carry that.
Marc:I was very involved with connecting with the person.
Marc:I don't know what happened.
Marc:Roger Ebert was snippy with me.
Guest:Oh, why?
Marc:Hurt my feelings.
Marc:Who the hell knows?
Marc:He was a cranky, but I was trying to connect.
Guest:Nobody seemed to like to go into that little stage.
Guest:I don't know what it was.
Guest:It wasn't you.
Guest:It was a cursed place.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think a lot of them would come off The Tonight Show, and then they'd be walked down that hallway at NBC, and they'd have to take a left and go to stage nine or whatever we were.
Guest:And by the time they got down there, it was like, all right, what do you want to ask me?
Marc:But here's what I wanted to know.
Marc:I remember waiting to go on stage, and there was this huge glob of gum.
Marc:Did you used to take the gum out of your mouth and stick it on the wall?
Marc:That sounds right.
Marc:It was one of those things that just became a thing, and it was just this huge mound of gum that no one fucked with.
Guest:I don't know if that was— I now wrap them in tissue, if you might have noticed when I sat down here.
Marc:I don't know if it was policy with you, like, don't touch the mound.
Guest:No, I guess they just left it up there, but it does sound right, but I don't know.
Guest:It's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't think you have to be embarrassed about that.
Guest:I'm not.
Guest:I'm honestly not embarrassed.
Guest:And this is going to be a horrible, horrible job for you, because honestly, I have I don't know when it happened exactly, but I have like little bits and pieces that are very clear to me, extremely clear, like talking about Maxwell tapes.
Guest:Kid stuff.
Guest:But then there's other parts that are unclear and a little dark for me.
Guest:So I don't remember the gum.
Guest:Well, I just mean like I don't remember.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:And that would be an example where I'm like, I'm not joking.
Guest:That sounds right.
Guest:But I don't actually remember before every show at later taking a big glob of gum and sticking it on the wall.
Marc:The glob on the wall was big.
Marc:It was probably just a regular piece in your mouth.
Guest:It turned in.
Marc:No, I understand.
Yeah.
Marc:I guess when you get into a show like that, and I've noticed this, it's just even talking to Letterman, you don't remember.
Marc:I mean, it's just like every day.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You don't know conversations you had.
Marc:You're just showing up for work and there's another person sitting there and you've got the cards and you go.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:I mean, I did that show, I think, for about a year and a half.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't do it for longer than that.
Guest:It was about a year, less than a year and a half, actually.
Guest:And I had gotten, actually, I got as good as it gets, which was the time when I went in to Don Ohlmeyer, who was running the show, who was the big dog.
Guest:And I literally went to his office.
Guest:You know, once again, I had the nine-year-old voice, hi, Don.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And had to sort of ask him if maybe I could move out because I'd been doing movies and trying to do a talk show and it was just madness.
Marc:Well, this weird thing is like I remember...
Marc:Well, I mean, we can go back, but I remember when you were on TalkSoup and I found you immediately irritating.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Take a number.
Marc:Wiser people, people who I respected comedically, took a liking to you.
Marc:I didn't understand what you were doing initially.
Marc:And then people were like, you should really watch it.
Marc:He's an odd, funny guy.
Marc:And then I grew to like you very much.
Marc:But I don't know where you came from.
Marc:You just appeared on the show business landscape, almost fully formed.
Marc:Where did you come from?
Marc:Where did you grow up?
Guest:I'm from Indiana originally.
Guest:That makes sense.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I'm from a little town called Logan Sport, which is up near Fort Wayne, a couple hours north of Indianapolis.
Guest:Lived there until I was about nine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I was in D.C.
Guest:for a few years, like three years.
Guest:My dad ended up working at the State Department.
Guest:We were overseas for a lot of years.
Guest:Was he a lifer over there?
Guest:He wasn't a lifer.
Guest:He started working for the State Department in the 70s, and he had had a business in the Midwest for many years with his father, and
Guest:What was that?
Guest:Well, they had a clothing store and they had a vending business.
Guest:Vending machines?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, so did you have to go service the vending machines?
Guest:He didn't really bring me with him to that.
Guest:No.
Guest:I remember a couple of times where we got a call late at night and he had to grab a
Guest:like a shotgun and say i'll be home later come on yeah because they had a few they would the main uh place where they kept and all the storage would get robbed once in a while and so he would of the vending machines yeah of what went into the vending what was it mostly candy
Guest:It was candy and like little gooey, heart-stopping, you know, sort of spongy things and rolls and stuff like that.
Guest:Sandwiches, coffee, the whole mix.
Marc:He had a bunch of different machines.
Marc:He had a lot.
Marc:And then he just had them in places.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A couple of guys go out, get quarters.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:And you'd have to, they'd go collect, you know, you'd have to go collect.
Guest:I think every 48 hours they'd go collect and they had them.
Guest:It was all about location, sort of like a Starbucks today.
Guest:Where are you?
Guest:Well, if you're down at the GM plant where they're, you know, putting on building hubcaps, that was a great spot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because you had a big crowd.
Guest:And if you were, you know, otherwise you got, oh, by the way, I'm missing the big one.
Guest:What?
Guest:And you'll appreciate this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tobacco.
Marc:Oh, he had cigarette machines.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's a good business.
Marc:I don't know if it exists that much anymore if I think about it.
Marc:They're around.
Marc:They have very complex ones at the airport where you can buy like a car.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:Those ones where you can get like an iPhone 10.
Guest:exactly yeah it is always strange and and there are uh aside from the airport though i mean a bowling alley like i guess if you go to like a bowling alley you'll maybe see but even though around i don't know did he have the sandwich ones he had sandwiches too and he said that was a real pain in the refrigerated ones yeah so he had to go make that at a separate place and then they go drop the sandwiches off and have to get a minute it was a lot of different moving parts but he had a whole warehouse of machines
Marc:uh well the machines were actually out right service but he had a warehouse where every kind of a fulfillment center yeah everything had to kind of go from be distributed to all these places that's such a niche business yeah my neighbor when i was growing up his dad had a couple vending machines not a lot but enough for us to go into the garage where he lived and steal candy bars yeah plenty of candy bars yeah yeah
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know what's funny is I don't remember having the opportunity.
Guest:I do like a good salty snack as much as the next guy today.
Guest:But I mean, I don't remember being like, you know, covered in Kit Kats and Snickers or anything.
Guest:Chips.
Guest:I don't remember that.
Guest:But I'm sure that it was around me.
Marc:Lay's sour cream and onion chips.
Marc:I remember those from when I was a kid.
Guest:That's a good chip.
Marc:Yeah, it's a good chip.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're there.
Marc:You're in Indiana.
Marc:Your dad's got a clothing store.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:Good clothing?
Guest:Mediocre?
Guest:I think they did okay.
Guest:Kind of mid-level sports and leisure stuff.
Marc:How did he get sucked into the State Department?
Guest:Well, his brother actually was working in Washington, and he had an opportunity to go there, and he took it.
Guest:This was in 1975.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't exactly know how that came about, but I know he went there and started in one part of the State Department, moved to a couple of different areas, but basically was there for about three or four years until he got a diplomatic assignment overseas.
Guest:Who was the president?
Guest:President in 19... We're in Jimmy Carter years, aren't we?
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We're in Jimmy Carter years, and we are... They are actually Ford, I guess, when we were first there, and then Jimmy Carter once we went overseas.
Marc:You know, those guys who work in the State Department, I had a buddy who was in it for a while.
Marc:They're there for many presidents.
Marc:They're there to serve the diplomatic mission in the United States.
Marc:So your dad, what was his position?
Guest:Trying to think the whole time he was there, you know, I think it was about...
Guest:It was probably ultimately about 11 years and then he retired.
Guest:But he was the when we went to Beirut, Lebanon.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He was working in the regional trade and development office, which was this office to help set up imports and exports from U.S.
Guest:and Middle Eastern countries.
Guest:So he traveled a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Qatar, Saudi Arabia, all through the Middle East.
Guest:You lived in all those places?
Guest:No, we were in Lebanon, but he would travel to have to hit those spots and meetings and trying to just grease the wheel for US business.
Guest:I don't remember...
Guest:how much he was away but i remember him being away a lot i remember i talked to another guy whose dad i think was a military guy but was he lived in beirut and in saudi arabia yeah it's like it must it must be bizarre i mean do you have memories of it i do i remember getting there and uh you know the the prayer in the morning begins you know the the sound of that the call yeah i
Guest:Um, and yeah, it is just upside down immediately.
Guest:I, I felt, and originally from a few years prior to that being from Indiana, it won't surprise you to hear that I was on Mars and felt completely, uh, um, you know, uh, kind of out of body.
Guest:But I, I guess at some point it, you know, the reality becomes the reality of where you are.
Guest:I was only 12 became kind of cool.
Guest:And there was a,
Guest:There was a school, the American Community School there and had a lot, you know, made a few friends.
Marc:And your folks were together and your brother, you have sisters and brothers?
Guest:Yeah, I have two brothers.
Guest:One was in college.
Guest:The other one was there with me.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But did you get out much?
Marc:Did you go into the streets?
Guest:Yeah, we did.
Guest:To eat the foods, meet the people?
Guest:We did.
Guest:There was no way not to meet the people and eat the foods.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the only option.
Guest:But I do remember like as we were there in a fairly short period of time, the Civil War started.
Guest:So at night you started to hear a little bit of spotty gunfire.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There was a little bakery downstairs on the place we were temporarily living when we first got there that literally got blown up.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:Which is a weird hit, right?
Guest:On a bakery?
Guest:Why do you go after a bakery?
Marc:Well, it hits people right where they live.
Marc:Breakfast.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, maybe you're right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's scary.
Guest:There was, you know, and there were a couple of really scary situations where it just kind of started to feel like, wow, this is you know, I was a kid.
Guest:So you're not really thinking about your own mortality.
Guest:But I was like this.
Guest:This feels real.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So after Beirut, did you go to another exotic place?
Marc:We went to Greece.
Marc:That's nice.
Marc:Yeah, that was nice.
Marc:Wow, that's an exciting childhood.
Marc:Now, did you feel disjointed?
Marc:Were you one of those people that you made friends in a place and then you're sort of like, gotta go.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, there is a little bit of that.
Guest:Whenever I hear that they're actors, I meet actors and they're like, you know, you read so many stories of actors who've moved around a lot and kind of had to redefine themselves.
Guest:I don't know how much to where that fits into my own makeup, but I definitely felt like
Guest:things were unstable.
Guest:When I had a footing, don't count on it for long, because we're moving on.
Guest:Listen, we were in Greece for six years, so I should be grateful for, that was a pretty long run, and I still have a lot of good friends from there.
Guest:Really, from Greece?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like Greek guys?
Guest:uh mostly uh have moved back to the states they were greek americans i have a few friends that are still in greece and uh you know obviously it's been a really rough time there for the last few years but i i have a few you know a few friends that are still there married families you go back there i took my kids there uh two two years ago good food there oh yeah so after after greece you come back here
Guest:Went to college.
Marc:So you don't seem like a guy that was like, you know, like when you say that I hear about other actors who you had to readjust, redefine themselves.
Marc:You seem like a fairly consistent, solid guy.
Guest:I do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Am I misreading that?
Guest:Well, you dropped the word insecure.
Marc:Well, I got to tell you, I'm thrilled to hear that.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Am I in good company?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Come on, buddy.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Give it up.
Guest:I guess that's it.
Guest:I guess that's it.
Guest:You're not insecure.
Guest:You've got a knife on your desk.
Marc:Yeah, I have that there.
Marc:So people, I don't know what, it's just things I collected over time and people pick them up.
Marc:But no, I think that's probably why I connected immediately with you when you were on TalkSoup.
Marc:You said I irritated you.
Marc:That's right, because we probably had something in common.
Marc:I'm like, you had this attitude.
Marc:You were seeing yourself in me.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Sure, that guy's overcompensating and being defensively funny.
Marc:I'm familiar with that.
Marc:Let's be friends forever.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm game.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Do you live far away from here?
Guest:I'll come over after this, hang out.
Guest:Yeah, you're more than welcome, man.
Guest:I'm a bachelor this week.
Guest:Come on over.
Guest:Family's gone.
Guest:They are.
Guest:You've got a big family now, huh?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I have three daughters.
Marc:Did you keep trying for the boy?
Guest:I promise you I didn't.
Guest:It's a great question.
Guest:It's a fair question, and I'm not answering it to sound like, oh, no, no, I'm fine.
Guest:I'm totally fine.
Guest:i don't know i didn't want a boy i would have uh been perfectly happy with the boy i will tell you that i come from i have two brothers so we were three of a kind right and i kind of like that so uh the fact that we have three girls it's good they all hang out together they get each other i don't have to add the whole other composite of dealing with the the guy thing in the midst of it i only have to know how to deal with with girls which is is not easy
Marc:Really?
Marc:I bet.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you go to college.
Marc:Where'd you go to college?
Marc:I went to college at Arizona.
Marc:My brother did too.
Marc:Oh, did he?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:University of Arizona, Tucson.
Marc:Is he older or younger?
Marc:He's two years younger than me.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He was a tennis guy.
Guest:He was probably there around the time I was there.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:He still lives in Arizona.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:I like Arizona.
Marc:I like Tucson.
Guest:I like Tucson a lot, too.
Guest:It's my favorite part of Arizona, but not this time of year.
Marc:It's like 200 degrees there now.
Guest:Everything's changing.
Guest:I didn't do anything show business related at Arizona other than start as a drama major for a minute and feel like I can't do this.
Marc:We're worried the radio show happened.
Marc:Greece.
Guest:Really?
Guest:They had an armed forces radio station there.
Guest:And, you know, they Casey Kasem, American, you know, they had all that.
Guest:You know, they do the news on the hour and they had a little one hour show called called School Days.
Guest:And the guy who was doing it was graduating.
Guest:was graduating yeah so he said hey do you want to do this so i was like in 10th grade so i went and became a you know i played some music and talked about what was going on at school and that was my thing every saturday where did you have like uh any sort of mentors or heroes around that did you learn how to broadcast without saying uh and that and i mean were you focused on it was it a thing that you're like i'm good at this i got fired um so no
Guest:I did get fired by a Marine Admiral who I guess I wasn't great with being on time.
Guest:But in terms of doing it, I just tried to kind of figure it out on the job.
Guest:I didn't really have a mentor.
Guest:Casey Kasem was at the crime.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:American Top 40.
Guest:Hello and welcome back to American Top 40.
Guest:I'm Casey Kasem in Hollywood.
Guest:You know, so I don't know.
Guest:I mean, like him, my other other guys on the Wolfman Jack.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You heard these guys.
Guest:I basically spun records and tried to just keep the show on for 60 minutes.
Guest:But do you remember like liking it?
Guest:I remember liking it, and I remember thinking I liked the platform for it.
Guest:I had done some acting in school as a kid in high school, and I think that stuck with me.
Guest:I had some really great drama teachers over there.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Miss Penopolis and Miss Gibbs.
Marc:Like, what'd you learn?
Guest:I was pretty good at just kind of being in the moment.
Guest:I felt like I was pretty good at listening.
Guest:I felt like I had teachers who were really intent on letting you try stuff and, you know, all the same shit that happens now.
Guest:I felt like I was in an environment that was safe and you could explore.
Guest:And they did surprisingly good stuff.
Guest:Listen, a drama teacher, when I got to college, I didn't feel like I had somebody that I could really connect with.
Guest:But I certainly in high school, I felt that I felt like there were more than a few people there that made a big impression on me.
Marc:So when you got to college, that was sort of the plan.
Marc:You were going to do drama.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what happened?
Guest:I just had a drama teacher come out very early on and say, you know, less than two percent of you are ever going to make a living doing this.
Guest:And that was the first day of class.
Guest:It was something like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:May have been day two.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was heavy whiskey with the water.
Marc:And that sunk in.
Marc:You're like, what am I doing this for?
Marc:Maybe I'm not good enough or what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I just felt like I don't I didn't know anybody really in the I didn't know the one connection to the entertainment business, but very few.
Guest:I know people out here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had been here one time and the idea of coming out here and trying to make some sort of living at it just seemed kind of crazy.
Guest:Does that make sense?
Marc:I mean, you know.
Marc:It is totally crazy.
Marc:It's a totally crazy ambition.
Marc:It's a totally crazy thing to commit your life to.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No doubt.
Marc:I mean, I don't know.
Marc:But I mean, some people don't think that way.
Marc:No, you can't.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But I'm saying I can.
Guest:I can and I did, but I'm saying some people have the chip where they are literally able to just say, oh, no, I'll put that aside and I'm going to go do it.
Marc:Yeah, it's called active delusion, committed, nurtured delusion.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I mean, I think about it all the time.
Marc:Like, after you get to a certain point, like, I wanted to be a comedian.
Marc:That's all I thought about doing.
Marc:And that's what I came out to do.
Marc:And then once I got started doing it, there was no turning back and there was no other option.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, when everything fell apart a decade ago, I was like, I got the I was like, well, I could always.
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:There's nothing there anymore.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's no I can't do.
Guest:I was scared of getting to that point.
Guest:I think when I got to college, I just saw it.
Guest:I was like, I was like, this is what's going to happen.
Guest:And I felt like I just didn't know what it took.
Guest:I didn't know what I needed.
Guest:And I was afraid maybe of getting to that place and it just all falling away.
Guest:And and, you know, I just didn't know what I would do at that point.
Marc:Well, that's good that you had that because people come out here with no clue.
Marc:I mean, there's like, there's still this idea, I think, about show business where you just go to Hollywood.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then what?
Marc:Right.
Marc:I don't know what to, like, it's so heartbreaking sometimes when you see people where you just like, there's no advice you can give to anybody.
Guest:But the great thing is with like the internet, all I'd say is stay home with the internet and with the ability to kind of do these things, whatever it is you want to do.
Guest:You could do it yourself.
Guest:You can do it wherever you want.
Guest:You don't have to dive all the way in.
Marc:Not not anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you can sort of find your own way and maybe make a living.
Marc:But I mean, it's like there is no there's no three networks anymore.
Marc:Movies, you don't even know where they come out anymore.
Marc:So it's weird.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You know, it's I'm just happy to be making a living in show business.
Marc:That's all.
Marc:Period.
Guest:I'm with you, man.
Guest:And I honestly, you know, so I got spooked and I switched to broadcast journalism and thought maybe I'd go into the news.
Marc:Oh, so yeah, that makes sense.
Guest:You know, I thought I'd go into the news.
Guest:Tom Brokaw seemed like he was this far away from being an actor.
Marc:I think you could do the news.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what was that curriculum like?
Marc:Did you do like on camera stuff?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:we did i i had uh i'm trying to think so that's interesting because that's close right so you're not going to go do you know odette's plays or or uh you know whatever you know you're not going to go do the drama school thing yeah but you're going to get in front of the camera so i'm warming up to something right i'm at least cozying up to something there without you were going to i'm going to be on camera and something that seems more practical
Guest:It was a great cheat for myself.
Guest:It really was.
Guest:I tricked myself.
Guest:And, you know, there were guys like Dan, if you watch golf on NBC, you'll see Dan Hicks there at the U.S.
Guest:Open like this weekend.
Guest:Dan was at the same year I was there.
Guest:And there were a few people that came out of Arizona that...
Guest:He's a golf commentator?
Guest:Yes, he is.
Guest:But we had the same broadcasting glasses.
Guest:We would do weird stuff.
Guest:The teachers would have you get in front of a camera, read some copy, try something.
Guest:It was all very strange.
Marc:But no actual reporting.
Marc:No actual reporting.
Guest:Nothing of any substance, no.
Guest:We didn't cover that.
Guest:That was more of a graduate program that I didn't get to, Mark.
Marc:So it was literally an on-camera major.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And radio, too, or no?
Guest:No radio.
Guest:No.
Guest:It was just broadcast journalism.
Guest:I think we did tool around.
Guest:I think there were some radio classes that were also part of that.
Guest:But, you know, all these were electives.
Guest:I mean, you still had to get through the basic just stuff.
Marc:You're very good.
Marc:You're very good at reading prompter.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's not.
Marc:And not everyone can do that.
Guest:I'm so good at reading prompter.
Guest:It's insane how good I am.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, how do I not have a job reading a teleprompter right now?
Guest:You could.
Guest:I know.
Guest:But I like doing what?
Guest:What am I going to do?
Guest:You know, just.
Guest:I'd be better.
Guest:I'd be a better actor.
Marc:if they put it on a teleprompter quite frankly i i really had that skill uh you know it's an innate thing you know it's not like it's i don't think you can learn it really i did i did a teleprompter show at comedy central and i was pretty good at it were you yeah yeah but you know it is kind of you know there's those moments right go back yeah okay
Guest:Well, it's two things.
Guest:One, you've got to have the right roller.
Guest:You've got to have the right teleprompter roller.
Guest:On TalkSoup, we had a great guy, Perrin Spicoli.
Guest:That wasn't really his name.
Guest:That's what I'd call him on the show.
Marc:We did a couple of bits around you.
Marc:I remember because I wanted to do some original comedy bits, and I had...
Marc:David Cross in the audience as a Greg Kinnear super fan who, you know, he stood up and he took his shirt off and he had pictures of your face on each of his boobs.
Marc:Is that true?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:How, where's the nipple fit into the Greg Kinnear face?
Guest:It doesn't.
Marc:It was just, it was a weird idea.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:And then, you know, I said, well, Greg's not here, but I'm not a bad guy.
Marc:And we did one of those sort of weird montages of him and I having fun in the studio riding bikes and stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was the bit I did on your show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Did you like the crew and the group there?
Marc:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:I was nervous, but in my mind at that time, I was doing comedy, and I was obviously given the opportunity to do that, and I thought that I could do it, but I didn't really... It's weird, because that was a little longer form than a Letterman.
Guest:It was.
Guest:No, my God, we had one guest.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I still have a... I have a... What's it called?
Guest:A paperweight from my producer...
Guest:with the words, what else?
Guest:Question mark on it, which he gave to me as a joke because I was always like my horror moment.
Guest:I was like, what do we get to?
Guest:What are we going to do when we get to what else?
Guest:Talking to Tori Spelling or whoever.
Guest:And I have no disrespect to Tori.
Marc:I know what you mean.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, because you want it to be a real conversation, but you do, you know, you have stuff to cover.
Marc:Like I remember David O. Russell was the guest and he was an hour and a half late because he was in a meeting with Steven Spielberg.
Marc:So, you know, he comes in from that.
Marc:The audience has been sitting there.
Marc:the warm-up guy he's really good working him now yeah but uh but it turned out to be interesting i guess i i didn't i remember robert logia being i was excited i'd never done it before so it was all i wasn't jaded at all but you're so good at this i would have thought uh i would have thought 12 years old well i would have thought uh
Guest:Easier, probably easier for you than many of the other guest hosts.
Guest:And two, you also had experience in front of a live audience.
Guest:I came off of Talk Soup to go to Later.
Guest:I had never, I really had no, I had no live audience at all.
Guest:I don't know how the hell I ended up, I thought I was going to do like Bob's show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bob Costas is who I took later over from, and it was just two guys talking.
Guest:And I'm not saying that would have been good television, but suddenly I was walking out and doing a live thing, and it was a real adjustment for me.
Guest:And I wasn't particularly great at it.
Guest:I never felt like I got into a comfort zone with it.
Marc:Oh, with the jokes?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, getting the laughs.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But that later wasn't Tom Snyder's show, right?
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was.
Guest:Before Costas added, it was Tom Snyder.
Marc:I kind of remember Tom Snyder smoking, interviewing Manson.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that was crazy.
Guest:Smoking his ass off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He always had that great quote, you know,
Guest:Well, at 1230, you get your smokers and your tokers.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:That's not a Tom Snyder.
Guest:It's a Carson.
Guest:That is not a Tom Snyder.
Guest:It's a good Carson, though.
Guest:That is not Tom.
Marc:Where the fuck is Tom?
Marc:You can do an impression or two.
Marc:So how did you get the gig on Talk Soup?
Marc:It was like a new network or something, right?
Marc:Wasn't it crazy?
Guest:It's funny because it was kind of humiliating.
Guest:Before E was E, it was called Movie Time.
Guest:It was my first job.
Guest:It was a new channel that was going to start up, and they were going to be the MTV of movies, and we shot it over in Santa Monica.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:basically we would run uh epks and trailers and movies and just try to fill time and i got a job there i'm sorry building the show at eclipse because that's all it was that's what i did that i did short attention span theater there you go yeah so we would literally have to fill i would do what's called the core hour and i'd go in and have to fill three hours of time with uh you know with trailers with trailers yeah and and just whatever interview happened to be on that tail end of a trailer right
Guest:And it turns out that that's not very entertaining.
Guest:But you came right out of college and just came out here?
Guest:No, I worked for a while for a low-budget film company called Empire Pictures, and I got a job doing marketing there for about a year.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Out here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yeah, they were located on, it's where, I'm not sure if Gold's Gym is still there, but it was off of La Brea on the west side between Hollywood and Sunset.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And that building was Empire Pictures and a guy named Charlie Band actually.
Marc:What were the movies?
Marc:I mean, what did they do?
Marc:Was it a distribution place or was it a production house or?
Guest:It was a production house.
Guest:We made feature length motion pictures.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Yeah, they made, like a lot of stuff, they made Re-Animator and I think Space Sluts and the Slammer and- Classics.
Guest:The Imp.
Guest:No, they were kind of like, it was very kind of B-level stuff, but it was cool.
Guest:I actually- You learned the business.
Guest:I learned a little bit of business.
Guest:And then I got an opportunity to go audition for this movie time thing, which I took and ended up getting a job-
Guest:basically filling hours of time with clips and trailers.
Guest:And E!
Guest:came in and fired, you know, one day the channel came, instead of being called Movie Time, it was called E!
Guest:And they changed the look and they changed the feel and they changed all of the hosts that got fired.
Guest:And I went away for about a year and then came back to do, which my tail between my legs, this start, you know, talk soon.
Marc:What'd you do for that year?
Marc:Back to Empire?
Guest:No, I went and I sold with a friend a show at Fox called Best of the Worst.
Guest:So we were looking at the worst jobs.
Guest:It was kind of a reality show, kind of look at the worst jobs of all time, the worst inventions and the worst shows.
Marc:So somehow you got representation when you got out here?
Guest:You know, off of the movie time thing, I got an agent.
Marc:Oh, I get it.
Marc:It seems like you took to it pretty well.
Marc:There was a lot of different approaches.
Marc:You created a show.
Marc:You got the sense of how the business worked at Empire.
Marc:You hosted a thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you kind of knew, like, all right, this is how this works.
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:I mean, I never felt like I had a strong handle on anything because I was kind of flopping all over the place.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, I was out here and I was kind of, you know, in the orbit of something that was really interesting to me.
Marc:So when TalkSoup starts, I mean, what was the premise?
Marc:Is that you were just going to take clips from talk shows and riff?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were going to basically, uh, look at, uh, look at daytime moments.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um, you know, Geraldo, Sally, Jesse, Raphael, the today show, whatever we could get, whatever we could get for free.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we would, uh, and we were going to just show the clip and it wasn't, it was not intended to be a comedy show.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No, no, there was no expectation, no talk of that whatsoever.
Marc:Just like a recap thing?
Guest:Completely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was nothing more than a billboard to tell you what was... The reason we got the clip free was because we would tell you what was coming on tomorrow on Jerry Springer.
Guest:So it was promotional.
Guest:We got the clip free.
Guest:And very quickly after we started the show, my producer, Eileen Graham, and I were kind of looking at these clips and we were going, wow, this is... You know, this is...
Guest:I honestly I don't even know when the moment happened it was unavoidable that that show became kind of this making fun of the yeah a little bit of a you had to look at it with an arched eyebrow because there was no other way to fucking do it yeah it's just crazy and it got more and more absurd not by the year by the month right yeah
Marc:And so that's what defined the show ultimately, is like once you guys decided we got to take the piss out of this stuff.
Marc:Oh, then we just went for the rafters, man.
Marc:And it became like a big show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we had like, I remember I met Phil Hartman, who I was like, I was just like, I honestly, I was like.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:He's such a nice guy.
Guest:He's like, well, hi, Greg.
Guest:And he's super cool.
Guest:I met him at a restaurant.
Guest:And he said, yeah, I like your show.
Guest:And I was like, oh, well, if you, yeah.
Guest:I think the voice came in.
Guest:If you ever want to come on, Mr. Hartman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, yeah, yeah, I'd do that.
Guest:That'd be great.
Guest:And next thing you know, Phil Hartman showed up.
Guest:He was our first one, first kind of celebrity to come and kind of join in the fun.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we did this bit with him that was, honestly, I was just trying to keep a straight face.
Guest:He hit it out of the park.
Guest:He was so engaged.
Guest:He was so great.
Guest:And yeah, that was cool.
Marc:Because I remember now, it really became this weird kind of cult thing.
Marc:Talk Soup was, because that's what happened.
Marc:It's like, guys I knew were funny guys were watching you and saying, you got to check that show.
Marc:And I'm like, what is this?
Marc:What is that show?
Marc:And then all of a sudden it became this phenomenon.
Guest:You know, it's funny because certainly nobody at E!
Guest:knew that it was a hit.
Guest:I mean, they didn't even know we were on the air.
Marc:But it was, wasn't it?
Guest:It was.
Guest:We started to get numbers and somebody would be like, hey, we got a one this weekend.
Guest:Which, by the way, today that is actually a hit today.
Guest:But at the time...
Guest:For basic cable.
Guest:It was a joke, but it really wasn't a joke for basic cable.
Guest:It meant something because it wasn't a point one.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And so suddenly it was clear that people were watching the show and suddenly we were, I never really felt it.
Guest:I mean, I would show up, park the car, go into this building, go up, we'd record the show.
Guest:And then I'd go to Ralph's.
Guest:and get a sandwich you know I mean and I didn't really feel I didn't there wasn't like a lot of recognition of it I didn't like people weren't like hey you do that show so it was kind of a quiet thing but I think we went down to Florida and did a special down there that's where you do it right yeah we went down to Florida we did a special down there and I was down in Florida I was like wow people really they really see the show yeah
Marc:Well, that's where everybody's watching TV all day.
Marc:All day, baby.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So you're becoming this like weird kind of host talk show star guy.
Marc:And then you get the later shot.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:The guy who took your place, John Henson, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I went to college with that guy.
Marc:A couple of years behind me.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Where did you go to college?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Boston University.
Guest:Yeah, Boston University.
Guest:A lot of smart people out of there.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:But I kind of knew him, and then he was a comic as well.
Marc:I knew he went that way.
Guest:I don't think I've ever met him.
Marc:Really?
Guest:No, the only one, I met Aisha.
Marc:Aisha Tyler.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's funny because I did it for three years.
Guest:I started on January 1st of, I don't know, 92 or 93.
Guest:And then I did it exactly after the third year.
Guest:My contract was up on December 31st.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like December 15th.
Guest:And I was like in to shoot the weekend edition of Talk Soup, which was kind of going to be our year-end show.
Guest:And nobody had said anything.
Guest:And I was like, I kind of went in there knowing...
Guest:This is it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I wasn't going to go back at that point.
Marc:Did you already get the offer from later?
Guest:I was doing later.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So I was doing later.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Kind of in the last year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was doing talk soup.
Guest:So I was doing both and I was just like- Wow, that's a crazy schedule.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you'd strip talk.
Marc:No, you couldn't.
Marc:You had to do each of them day to day.
Marc:Had to do it day to day.
Marc:That's the weird thing about how you established yourself-
Marc:in the minds of people and in the business, and then, you know, you go on to get an Oscar nomination, that's like, that doesn't happen much.
Marc:I mean, it's rare when TV actors at that time could make the jump to features and really succeed at it.
Marc:And it's like, how did that, I don't want to skip over later, I mean, how you were later a year and a half?
Guest:Well, yeah, so I'm doing I was doing later and I'm finishing up my contract at TalkSoup.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I have had a couple of meetings with Sidney Pollack on a movie called Sabrina.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:I love Pollack.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:And so he had brought me in to his office.
Guest:How did he find I got a call from my agent saying Sidney Pollack wants he would like to you to come in and meet him about this movie Sabrina.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And I was probably like November or something.
Guest:I was like, oh, my God.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, I didn't you don't even have the Internet for me to like research Sidney Pollack and know that he's from Lafayette, Indiana, which was about, you know, 15 minutes from the town I grew up in.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in fact, I'm convinced that's why he brought me in because he couldn't believe somebody was from Logan Sport, Indiana.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I went in to meet him, and he was, you know, I still remember the moment.
Guest:He kind of called me down.
Guest:I was walking the wrong way, and he goes, Greg!
Guest:Greg!
Guest:Gave me a wave down to his office, and I was sweaty palms and all.
Guest:We had a conversation, and he said...
Guest:And we talked for an hour or so, and then he just picked up a piece of paper.
Guest:He said, here, read this.
Guest:Read this.
Guest:We're just going to do this.
Guest:He's a great actor.
Guest:He's Sabrina.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:He was able to be Sabrina, and that's how good he was.
Guest:And I played the David Larabee lines, and we kind of went back and forth.
Guest:He said, okay, try it again, but don't act.
Guest:Stop acting.
Guest:And I was like, oh, I see.
Guest:Natural.
Guest:I see what he's looking for.
Marc:He's looking for that insecurity, the vulnerability.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I think I did it again, and it was kind of a long pause, and he was like,
Guest:Yeah, all right.
Guest:Well, listen, I don't think anything's going to come out of this, but listen, thank you for coming.
Guest:But really nice.
Guest:He wasn't being a jerk.
Guest:He just was like, I think that was kind of the test.
Guest:And then a few months later, my contract, as I say, the show came up at the end of Talk Soup, and they made a play for me to stay, but I was just like, you know what?
Guest:I felt like I had done three years of that, and I just felt like the time was...
Marc:A lot of gum on the wall back there.
Guest:I had a lot of gum on the wall.
Guest:It was just time to move on, man.
Guest:And so I basically left.
Guest:And then a couple months later, Sidney called again, went back in, auditioned, and ended up getting that role.
Guest:Wild, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And by the way, if I had kept doing Talk Soup, if I had taken that, I don't think I could have done that.
Marc:But you were doing later, but you could get out of there.
Guest:I could do later.
Guest:Don Ohlmeyer let me go do the movie.
Guest:He said, ah, yeah, go.
Guest:We'll get you a guest host or whatever, and we'll figure it out.
Guest:It's late at night.
Guest:It's late at night.
Guest:You're on a 1.30 in the morning.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:No one's going to freak out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody's seen you anyway.
Guest:And you're nervous in that seat, man.
Guest:Go have some fun.
Marc:See if acting's your thing.
Marc:And it was.
Marc:So you shot for what, a couple months?
Guest:We shot for about, it seemed like, yeah, it was probably about three or four months.
Guest:I mean, it was a big Harrison Ford, you know, was at the prime.
Guest:And we shot in the North Shore of Long Island in Glen Cove.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were shooting in this monstrous house.
Guest:And I was living in New York and just kind of would,
Guest:Go out there and you were in the city then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I would come back periodically to L.A.
Guest:to shoot various episodes of later where we would bank them.
Guest:So instead of now doing them day and date, we would suddenly do a week's worth of shows in one.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You just line up the promotional whatever they're lined up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So and so speaking to sitting down and talking to somebody for a half hour on that kind of format.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then trying to do four of them and trying to have the warm up guy keep the show, you know, I mean, it was it was crazy.
Guest:So that's where we went.
Marc:I mean, I do that too.
Marc:I can't get people a lot of times, I wouldn't have gotten you if you weren't out promoting something.
Marc:That's not true.
Marc:Well, I mean, okay.
Marc:But I'm just saying that I know what it's like to bank interviews.
Marc:Right, of course.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:No, it's necessary.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But when you got on set, were you like, I can't fucking believe this is happening.
Marc:I mean, this is Harrison Ford.
Marc:Were you nervous and terrified?
Marc:I mean, I can't imagine what it would be like to come out of the gig that you were in and then be put in that position.
Guest:Yeah, I wasn't as nervous on the first day as I should have been out of sheer stupidity and just, you know- Cockiness.
Guest:Cockiness, I guess.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, it really wasn't like I felt like, I got this, but I did feel like-
Guest:uh you know we had rehearsed it a lot i'd spent some time with harrison by that point who was you know um you know intimidating but but you know it's okay i don't know sydney made me feel like i felt like he was there i felt like i had sydney there and he was like you're okay you're we're doing good you know he kind of gave me a bat pat on the back i love that guy yeah i love him as an actor
Guest:yeah my gosh great director but also a great actor like never not one bad performance and maybe the greatest performance in tootsie i i always thought great the firm i think he took a did he play a role in the firm i don't think i don't feel like he directed it but maybe he didn't put himself in it but i thought he might i love that movie yeah me too that's great have you seen the new trailer for uh top gun maverick
Marc:I just saw him trolling around the plane.
Marc:Tom Cruise, he's very good when he has something to focus on.
Marc:If he's got to climb something or operate a thing, it's the best.
Marc:There's a lot of operating in that.
Marc:Yeah, like when they go upside down.
Marc:I always remember how they look over their shoulders in the planes because I do that in my car.
Marc:And every time I do it in my car, I'm like Top Gun.
Marc:I'm Top Gunning it in my car.
Marc:Got to look on top of you.
Marc:It's got to be somewhere.
Marc:Yeah, that thing where it's almost like a panic.
Marc:Where is it?
Marc:but uh so did you when you re-enter this acting thing after like doing it basically in high school did you feel because i'm at this point with it myself where i'm like i've done a few movies and i want to get better at it because i'm sort of like you know if the script is tight i can you know get out of myself but i feel like i should get some some lessons or something a coach did you do that
Guest:No.
Marc:All right.
Guest:You just, we just went, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't ever have, I didn't have an acting coach.
Guest:I mean, I, I, I, unless you consider directors acting coaches, which I do.
Marc:You like, you like directors who are hands on.
Marc:Cause I've talked to some directors.
Marc:They're like, I hired the guy to do the thing.
Guest:No, not for me.
Guest:I like I like counsel and conversation.
Guest:And and I've and I had some really good guys like that to work with.
Guest:And and also I feel like, you know, you know, acting, particularly screen acting is is not.
Guest:And it's acting, of course, but there's also a technical aspect to it.
Guest:So having somebody who knows cameras and knows what's happening in that scene technically is also valuable.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And Jeff Daniels told me recently, he's like, you got to know your face.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's all in your face.
Guest:By the way, I went to Hollywood Cemetery Saturday night to watch Dumb and Dumber.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And speaking of Jeff, and I don't know if he likes the movie or not.
Guest:How can he not like the movie?
Guest:I mean, he is so committed in that thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:think of his more recent work and then you think this guy is is sitting there taking a squat taking a dump on the toilet you know i mean it's unbelievable it's such a a great performance from him and i uh shout out to jim carrey too i know it's an old movie but man seeing it again 20 years later is incredible well you just work with the guy who directed a lot of those movies right not dumb and dumber did a lot of jim carrey movies right yeah uh uh tom shady yeah yeah yeah i did not funny anymore
Guest:What I did with him was he actually is.
Guest:He's charming.
Guest:He's funny.
Guest:He was very loose on this set.
Guest:But Brian Banks is not a... Dumb and Dumber and Brian Banks do not live on the same orbit.
Guest:Did he direct Dumb and Dumber?
Guest:No, he didn't.
Marc:That was the Farrelly brothers.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But he directed a couple of Jim Carrey movies.
Marc:I can't remember.
Marc:Well, he did Liar, Liar.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He did Liar, Liar.
Guest:And he did.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:He did one other.
Guest:Maybe Pet Detective.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But so, OK, so you do Sabrina and then it just starts from there.
Marc:You get out of later and now you're a movie actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I, I got a, you know, I got a shot pretty early to work with, uh, to work with Jim, uh, Brooks and as good as it gets.
Guest:So yeah, I guess at that point I was, that's what I was doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's what I was doing.
Marc:You had this great, uh, you know, like I've interviewed Brooks.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:I love him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I know you have.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, uh, sorry.
Marc:Hey Jim, love you, baby.
Marc:But but that like then you're dealing with another like Nicholson.
Marc:I mean, you've got this thing going.
Marc:You guys have a thing, you know, in the movie, like a dynamic that has to be.
Marc:I mean, I can't imagine what it would be like to work with that guy.
Guest:Yeah, he was that that one scared me a bit getting into it.
Guest:But, you know, I I just we had such a good script.
Guest:That was a beautiful script.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I felt like everybody had their place.
Guest:I felt like Jim was, you know, really had a handle on the on on obviously what we were doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's Jack.
Guest:And so I don't know.
Guest:I just felt like this, you know, he's running the show.
Guest:I'm I'm the I needed to just try to keep up.
Guest:And he was he was brilliant.
Guest:I felt like I had a front row seat to one of the great performances I'll ever see.
Marc:I bet.
Marc:And when you get a script like that where you have to play a gay character, is there some party that's sort of like, can I do that?
Guest:I felt really connected to that character.
Guest:You know, first time I read it, I just I love Simon Bishop.
Guest:I felt like this was a I felt for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I felt for his dilemma and what his search.
Guest:And I and and and and yet I.
Guest:Got the comedy of him being faced with having to deal with this monster in Melvin.
Guest:And I just love the dynamic of that friendship that grew.
Guest:And I just thought, man, if this ever were to happen, god damn, is this going to be fun.
Guest:There's a scene like when Jack's dressing me down at the door and saying, don't knock, not on this door, not ever.
Guest:I'm standing there.
Guest:You can see my shoulder slightly vibrating because I was kind of losing it.
Guest:I had like tears coming down my eyes.
Guest:I was kind of laughing.
Guest:And I went to Jack afterwards and I said, listen, Jack, I'm really sorry.
Guest:I was kind of laughing on that shot when they were shooting you.
Guest:I just thought it just made me laugh.
Guest:And he goes, that's fine.
Guest:I used it, kid.
Yeah.
Guest:He used it.
Guest:I didn't know there was any other way because this was an early movie for me.
Guest:And I was like, good Lord, because I felt like he was completely.
Guest:Well, the cameras didn't care where the hell the camera was all in all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he loves it.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So in the middle of all this, you get married.
Guest:Yeah, no, gosh, I got married.
Guest:Actually, we just had our 20th wedding.
Guest:We just had our anniversary, so it's been 20 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's been a long time.
Marc:Yeah, and did you meet her on a movie?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:I met my wife.
Guest:She was a bit of a cradle robber, young gal over here with friends and
Guest:She's from England.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's over on holiday.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and and I met her at a friend's house.
Guest:He was having the Stanley.
Guest:The Kings were in the Stanley Cup the first time.
Guest:So this is like way back, like 25 years ago.
Guest:Gretzky's on the team.
Guest:And I just was never that into hockey.
Guest:So we kind of struck up a conversation at this party.
Guest:And that was it?
Guest:That was it, yeah.
Guest:I went back to England and kind of we volleyed back and forth.
Guest:But, yeah, we just... I was talk soup days.
Guest:I was doing talk soup.
Marc:And you were struck.
Marc:You were in love.
Guest:I was struck and I was in love.
Marc:What's the age difference?
Guest:27 years.
Marc:Really?
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Marc:Six.
Guest:That's not bad.
Guest:Six is nothing.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:Six is the new- It's fine.
Guest:It's fine.
Marc:I think it means she's older than me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's not even- You're not cradle rubbing.
Marc:No.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:Well, at the time, though, because I was like, I guess she was 23.
Guest:I was 29.
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Take it easy.
Marc:Take it easy.
Marc:Go easy on yourself.
Marc:Now, we got to talk about- This is where the interview really takes form here.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Autofocus is one of the greatest, most fucked up movies ever made.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:And I mean fucked up in a good way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, Schrader, I'm kind of fascinated with.
Marc:That guy is like, I can't imagine what's going on in there.
Marc:I've seen some of it.
Marc:You met him?
Marc:Never.
Marc:But his movies.
Marc:I'm fascinated with him because he means business.
Marc:These are independent art movies from a very particular point of view.
Marc:And that movie is just such a bizarre, how did that thing take shape?
Marc:I mean, it's his script, right?
Guest:You want me to check?
Guest:No, it was a guy named Michael Gerbosi wrote the script and brought it to Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who are great writers themselves and producers.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And he was actually, I believe the story is he delivered Jerry's Deli to them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was their Jerry's Deli deliverer, and he one time dropped a script off with the Jerry's Deli sandwiches.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they read it, and they were like, oh.
Guest:A little story about Bob Crane.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's kind of how the property started.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then Paul got a hold of it, and he sparked to it, and obviously was the right man for that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he worked on it, of course, and then I read it, and I thought...
Guest:You know, first of all, I read it and I thought it was really there was a humor in it that I that jumped out at.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I I really enjoyed the I remember hearing about Bob Crane when I was a kid living overseas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he was killed.
Guest:I was like, what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a star.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hogan's Heroes.
Guest:And Hogan's Heroes star.
Guest:And it was just so bizarre.
Guest:And he had such an all-American thing.
Guest:So I remember hearing something.
Marc:He was a funny, charming guy.
Marc:And that was one of those shows that was just in, it was always on.
Guest:Right.
Marc:It was in syndication everywhere.
Guest:I grew up with it.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:And I just remember being really, really thrown by that.
Guest:And then all of a sudden reading the script and then meeting with Paul and talking about it.
Guest:And then I read this book.
Guest:Paul had already got tons of notes and books and archives of Bob's sex picture collection.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, he took me into this world very quickly.
Guest:And I was like, wow, this is this is crazy.
Guest:And but I like the script.
Guest:We had a good script.
Guest:And and then I remember Paul calling me and saying, yeah, I'm trying to get Willem Dafoe to play Carpey.
Guest:And I was like.
Guest:Oh, please, if there is a God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And turns out there is because, yeah, Willem was so great in that.
Guest:And we had a great time making it.
Guest:And, yeah, it is a bizarre fucked up movie.
Guest:It's so dark, too.
Marc:Because the humor, it's weird because I don't remember the humor so much.
Marc:But if I think that scene where the two of you are just looking at old tapes, jerking off on both sides of the couch and just talking.
Marc:Remember that one?
Marc:I was like, oh.
Guest:man, that is dark.
Guest:I mean, I guess, I guess, listen, it's a fine line and you, I get it.
Guest:I get it that you can watch it.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:But you can say like, I don't know.
Guest:I don't know what you're talking about, man.
Guest:I didn't see any comedy.
Guest:I've had plenty of people say that.
Guest:I'm just telling you from my standpoint, it struck me.
Guest:Many of those scenes had a through line that made, I don't know.
Guest:It made me laugh.
Marc:Recounting it is hilarious.
Marc:Like if you say like you guys are just having a casual conversation while you're jerking off on opposite ends of the couch.
Marc:It's so funny.
Marc:I can see how it's funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And but I guess because of the compulsive sexual addiction and the weird relationship you two guys had or he had with you and this weird focus on equipment, it was just whatever Paul brought to it.
Marc:It was definitely the comedy was there.
Marc:It was deep, dark comedy.
Guest:Well, and I don't think that that's not why Paul was in it.
Guest:That may have been what I saw.
Guest:And then suddenly I'm at like a swingers party and I'm being asked to take my clothes off.
Guest:And I'm like, holy shit, maybe this isn't so funny.
Guest:I mean, it definitely was like, I think there were a couple of different currents working while we were making it, both a deeply troubling dramatic current and also maybe some sort of comedy thread.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But subsequently, I think the end result is is unusual.
Guest:And and it it does have a tone to it that is its own.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think it sort of dealt with the nature of like sex addiction before there was a thing.
Marc:Totally.
Guest:You know, before the Internet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I mean, good God.
Guest:I mean, I don't know what would have happened.
Marc:i mean bob or you know would have been today would have been yeah just a guy right exactly but but yeah because it's so accessible but but what they had to go through to get what they needed right was and then you know not really address whatever the hell defoe's problem was right it was just like and what did you notice what because i imagine by that point you've worked with a lot of directors i mean what was paul schrader like how did he strike you did he and how did he handle you
Guest:I thought he handled it very well.
Guest:He basically had every scene, you know, we'd show up.
Guest:He had the thing set up the way you'd expect it to be.
Guest:He was very straightforward.
Guest:I don't, I mean, there wasn't, you know, he'd say, try this, try that.
Guest:I don't remember anything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:particular about it I think most of the work for that had been done before we got there and I mean work I mean like there were weird problems like there's a swimming pool party and all of the girls he said many of the girls were showing up that they were using and they were shaved
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so we had a Merkin box that was the first time a movie needed that.
Guest:And then there was a swingers party where Paul had actually gone on to, I think, like the back of...
Guest:What was the LA?
Guest:Is it LA?
Guest:No, not that.
Guest:What was the LA Magazine here?
Guest:LA Weekly?
Guest:Yeah, LA Weekly.
Guest:And he had recruited a number of swingers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So when Willem and I walk into the swinger party, it's a real swingers party.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the work had been done to give it an authenticity before we ever got there.
Marc:Swingers parties are not glamorous.
Guest:No, I learned that very quickly.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It's really not.
Marc:How did Little Miss Sunshine happen?
Guest:That was a script that was floating around for like a year, and I was given it by a friend.
Guest:David Friendly had handed it to me and said, hey, listen.
Guest:Listen, this is something you you should you should do.
Guest:And and I I read it and I thought it was pretty funny.
Guest:And John and Val were were in the direction.
Guest:Yeah, they were into me doing it.
Guest:And I met with them and I had a great meeting with them.
Guest:And then it just wasn't happening.
Guest:They didn't have the money for it.
Guest:So it kind of went away and they were so bummed because they had this girl, Abigail, who kept getting older.
Guest:She was going to age out of the role.
Guest:And so it floated around for like a year, year and a half.
Guest:And then I got the call that, you know, it was back on and they got the money.
Guest:The producer, actually one of the other producers, just literally, who's a wealthy guy, just wrote a check for $7 million and said, we're going to make this and took a big risk.
Guest:And, and, uh,
Guest:So we started, you know, rehearsals a couple months later.
Guest:They had a great rehearsal process.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:How so?
Marc:How was it different?
Guest:Well, they just brought all of us down to like this big warehouse.
Guest:And I remember playing dodgeball with, you know, we had, you know, Steve and Alan and Abigail, Tony, the whole gang.
Guest:And all six of us just were in this thing.
Guest:And first we read through a script.
Guest:Then they were like, okay, let's play dodgeball.
Guest:I don't know why, but it stuck with me.
Marc:But it got everyone together, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and then we did a few lunches, and then they had the van, so they would be like, why don't you guys go bowling?
Guest:Greg, you know, you drive, and everybody goes bowling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bowling, and took the van.
Guest:I've heard other people on your show talk about, I think it was maybe Steve and Dorff or somebody was talking about like a rehearsal for...
Guest:Something.
Guest:And it was like, you know, I don't know.
Guest:You don't.
Guest:This rehearsal thing just doesn't happen as much anymore.
Guest:And it really was a great gift for that movie.
Guest:And I and I tell you, it wouldn't have been the same movie without having a good week or two of doing what it is we were doing.
Guest:So I it's a shame that it doesn't happen more often.
Marc:Because you get to know everybody and you get your characters kind of in reaction with the other people as opposed to just showing up on set.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I remember I talked to Shalhoub and he did a movie with Denzel and something happened where he got there on the first day of shooting and had to step into the biggest part of his, the biggest, you know, the most lines he had in the whole script was day one.
Marc:He'd gotten there that morning.
Marc:It was with Denzel and you just got to go.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it's a lot better if you've got some time.
Guest:It's infinitely better.
Guest:And I guess you're right.
Guest:And it's a stupid observation to make.
Guest:Hey, rehearsal's good, actors.
Guest:But I swear I find it amazing that this is not the norm.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I guess money and budgets and stuff.
Marc:And with a movie like that, you didn't know what was going to happen with that movie.
Marc:No.
Guest:No, we didn't.
Guest:The truth is, the script, I liked the script.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought it was funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It wasn't until I got into that rehearsal until I sat there and we started reading this with these actors.
Guest:And I was like, oh, there's this.
Guest:This is something special.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And and then we, you know, I mean, certainly once we got shooting, I was like, OK, something's good.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Alan Arkin.
Guest:Yeah, Alan was so wonderful.
Guest:He's so good.
Guest:Goddamn.
Guest:And just the scene, I remember us all sitting around, actually after Alan dies, where we have to take his body and get it out of that hospital room and get it out to the car.
Guest:All of us sitting around the monitor and just like loving that moment and just, because it was all very real and normal.
Guest:It was just like, it was no, we didn't do like a, it wasn't like any tricks to it.
Guest:It was just, it was a really heavy body.
Guest:It wasn't actually a body, but-
Guest:I mean, it weighed 100.
Guest:They made sure that that thing weighed 160 pounds.
Guest:And it was just me and I think Paul Dano sliding it out the window to Tony and Steve.
Guest:And the things, I mean, it's just priceless.
Marc:Man.
Marc:So it seemed to work constantly.
Marc:How do you judge what you're going to take?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I always feel like it's a lot of different factors.
Guest:Who would I get to work with and what is it and how does it fit into my life to some degree?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, mostly it's I, you know, I mean, obviously you have to be connected to something and then that's that script or or somebody who's going to be making the thing is telling you, you know, something where you're like, oh, oh, I see.
Guest:I see what this can be.
Guest:And it's never entirely clear to me.
Guest:So I always find that a bit of a learning process.
Marc:So what's going to happen with this Brian Banks movie?
Marc:Is it released in the theaters or is it on Netflix?
Marc:What is it?
Guest:It's in theaters.
Guest:It's in theaters now?
Guest:No, it'll be in theaters August 9th.
Guest:I know it's a few 1,500 or 2,000 screens, which is, you know, listen, it's risky.
Guest:It's Bleecker Street who's doing it.
Guest:But I think it's a really cool film.
Guest:And I think it's, you know, I guess I always feel like, hey, it's got a chance.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I am a little optimistic that way, but who knows?
Guest:I mean, I feel like the movie business in the last couple of years, as I know you'll be surprised to hear this, Mark, is changing.
Guest:No, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:The movie business is changing.
Guest:And by the way, I want to- I had no idea.
Guest:Yeah, I'll fill you in on the details later.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:Um, but I, I, so I don't really know what to expect from it other than it's a, it's a hell of a story.
Guest:I think it's well told.
Guest:Aldous Hodge is, is fantastic in it.
Guest:Um, and, uh, and, and, you know, I play Justin Brooks, who's a real life guy who's an incredible, incredible actor.
Marc:It's called the, what is his foundation?
Guest:The California Innocence Project, CIP, which he operates from his tenured classroom down at Western California School of Law in San Diego, along with his law students.
Guest:And they've exonerated, and I'm not talking about people who are in jail for some sort of bullshit technicality.
Guest:They have flat out exonerated innocent people.
Guest:I think 35 people who have been in prison for as long as 30 years to as short as just 15.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I guess the advent of DNA stuff has really helped that.
Guest:That's been a game changer.
Guest:And it's not just California.
Guest:The Innocence Project does exist around the country, but his organization, I do have to cite it as one that I find...
Guest:uh, to be the real deal.
Guest:Justin is, uh, never taken a dime.
Guest:He's never taken a dime for his work for this thing.
Guest:It's all just, you know, pro bono.
Guest:He goes and, and these events that he does where, you know, they'll bring a few people from, from that they've exonerated and try and raise some money.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:And Brian Banks was a football player, had been wrongly accused of an incident and of a crime.
Guest:And basically, Justin ended up along with his students of taking the case and trying to help him out.
Marc:They resisted at first because it wasn't the type of case that they would generally take.
Guest:Well, Brian was an incredible football player who had an incredible football career ahead of him.
Guest:He had been ID'd by Pete Carroll, who was now at Seahawks.
Guest:But he was in high school.
Guest:And when he went away for six years, seven years, accused of rape.
Guest:He comes out and after, you know, just a shell shocking amount of time, I mean, he took a plea bargain.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Where was the bargain?
Guest:He got seven years.
Guest:He comes out and now he's got an ankle bracelet and he's on parole.
Guest:He can't go near a field.
Guest:He can't pick up his football career again because he's a registered sex offender.
Guest:And so he makes the plea.
Guest:Listen, I still am in jail.
Guest:And he makes a convincing case first to the law students.
Guest:And then Justin, you know, who's not doing it to be a prick, but he's just, you know, that you didn't see the case.
Guest:You don't I don't have a case here.
Guest:And you have to have something remarkable to kind of.
Guest:And much to Brian's credit, and he's a remarkable guy, you know, listen, he fought.
Guest:And, you know, it was so nice to have both Brian and Justin on the set for the making of his movie.
Guest:And those guys, you know, watched us like a hawk.
Guest:And that, you know, you could...
Guest:You had a never-ending surplus of facts and details that you could sequence at any given moment.
Marc:Now, when you have to play a real guy, in this case he's still alive, how much time do you spend with him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I first went down to San Diego and just kind of sat in the back of his law class and just kind of watched him doing his thing down there for for a few days.
Guest:And he was he was very accessible, very generous.
Guest:You know, he's become a friend and and.
Guest:Um, and then, so I guess that was incredibly valuable just to have the access to him.
Guest:And you're right.
Guest:I mean, he's, he's alive.
Guest:So, you know, the internet's great.
Guest:You can watch clips of anybody.
Marc:But did you feel yourself, did you feel like, you know, like I got to do an impression of this guy or just pick up the vibe?
Guest:No, no, I didn't.
Guest:And I, I wouldn't know how, I mean, there, there is a, there's a funny kind of, kind of a California, uh,
Guest:He's not from California.
Guest:But there is kind of a Californian vibe to him that I thought I was trying to kind of wedge in on.
Guest:But ultimately, I felt like, look, this is all a distraction.
Guest:I want to tell this story, this guy.
Guest:And I didn't want to.
Guest:I didn't feel like there was anything.
Guest:Try to copy and nobody knows who.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I do, Justin, and I love you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But no one's going to be like, he didn't get him.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I just did an independent movie where I had to play this music publicist who spends a lot of time with a young David Bowie.
Marc:And this is a real guy.
Marc:But apparently he's not healthy enough.
Marc:I couldn't meet him or anything.
Marc:But ultimately, no one's going to call me.
Marc:You're not really like Ron Oberman.
Guest:Right.
Marc:The two guys that know Ron or his handful of friends are
Guest:So did you just throw your hands up or did you feel an obligation?
Guest:Do you feel like as you were doing it, is this okay that I'm not following?
Marc:Well, we wanted to get the look right.
Marc:So when I showed up on set, it was in the 70s.
Marc:It's a very weird little movie that takes place over about...
Marc:Four weeks of David Bowie's life in 1971 before he's really David Bowie.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And I play this guy who works for the label, doesn't have a lot of money, has to get him into radio shows and stuff.
Marc:He doesn't have the right papers to do performances.
Marc:So it becomes this weird, odd couple buddy movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I got there and we wanted to get the look right.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And he had these very specific glasses from the 70s, like these horn rims.
Marc:And he's got long hair.
Marc:I had their wig and everything.
Marc:And I'd shave my face.
Marc:And they show up and there's like, well, these Warby Parker glasses are pretty close.
Marc:I'm like, you can't do that.
Marc:It's the one thing.
Marc:That's the one thing you cannot do.
Marc:I got to have the, it really was like, it fucked with me.
Marc:I'm like, I'm not going to be able to believe this.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:If these are on my face.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And somehow another director went out that day in Canada.
Marc:And found some vintage 70s glasses.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And he had to wear the contact lens to make his eye like Bowie's.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So we had an optometrist on set doing that who had her own shop and she was able to get my lenses into the 70s glasses in a day.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because they weren't going to be able to do that.
Marc:No, of course not.
Marc:And it just fucking worked out.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it was like that.
Marc:Like I didn't like I couldn't really honor who the guy was exactly.
Marc:But at least I could do is look the period and have the glasses, you know, close.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I guess with Justin, I felt like just the the amount of time we hung and just kind of getting to know him.
Guest:I felt like, you know, I felt like that was it.
Guest:I felt like that.
Guest:That's.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:And there's no, by the way, there's no particular, he has a thicker hairline than mine, which we did.
Guest:But I, but I mean, I don't, there wasn't any particularly distinguishing thing that I had to follow.
Guest:So it's all, you know, it's all job by job.
Marc:But it comes down to the page, right?
Marc:Like, that's one thing I'm learning.
Marc:I just like, in terms of acting advice or like, what is that?
Marc:You know, if you have a character, whether it's real or not, it's in the script.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, like it's weird because you always sort of like, what am I going to what's this guy think?
Marc:It's like it's like it's there.
Marc:It better be.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, like I like I'm just learning about that stuff.
Marc:But the answers are usually there.
Marc:Right.
Guest:i agree and like uh and the the screenwriters that are able the to really craft that and really make it come alive and jump out at you yeah oh we need more of those guys yeah because it's uh and gals and gals oh my gosh yeah i use the term i use guys all the time um but i mean it really we need that because that that is um you know that's what pulls you in man
Marc:Yeah, it's the trick of it.
Marc:I mean, that's the art of it.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I just, the reason I threw gals in, I just talked to Geena Davis about this horrendous imbalance of equal representation on all, you know, and it just completely, like, with data, and I'm like, holy fuck.
Marc:Right.
Marc:We gotta fix this.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:I mean, it sounds like Greg needs to spend a little time with Geena Davis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to the Gina Davis room for a while.
Guest:No, I definitely, as a father of three daughters, I believe me.
Marc:That must be wild.
Marc:I mean, that must be something to deal with three daughters growing up.
Marc:What are their ages?
Guest:They're 15, 12, and 9.
Wow.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:What are your big fears for them, like in general?
Guest:Well, you know, I literally was talking to a friend yesterday who his daughter is engaged, or they're talking about getting engaged.
Guest:His first daughter's married and happily, and the wife and him, they just don't like him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that one jumped.
Guest:That stuck with me a little bit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But my fears are that, you know, like any other father, you know, you just feel like I'm not doing something right or I'm short or I'm not teaching some lesson or I'm, you know, not being as present as I need to be.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's just all my own personal failures.
Marc:And it's kind of become their own people, though.
Marc:Like, that's one thing I've learned.
Marc:I'm not unhappy I don't have kids.
Marc:It's probably better off for everybody.
Marc:But, you know, it's like it really seems that after a certain point, they just become people.
Marc:They're their own people.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And all of a sudden the terms change.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, in a way.
Guest:Yeah, but you don't feel that way.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:I think that is true.
Guest:Intellectually, I'm down with you on that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I also know emotionally, I'm kind of like, no, you're my people.
Guest:You're all three of my people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's good, though.
Marc:You know, that instinct stays there.
Marc:You can't just be like, all right, you're good.
Marc:Take care.
Marc:Hey, you're nine.
Marc:You're nine, dude.
Marc:You're your own person.
Marc:You're all set.
Marc:Let me know if you need it.
Marc:I gave you everything you need.
Marc:I'm down the hall.
Marc:It was great talking to you, man.
Marc:Thanks for doing it.
Guest:Yeah, thanks, Mark.
Guest:It's a pleasure.
Marc:That was Greg Kinnear, and the movie is Brian Banks.
Marc:It opens nationwide tomorrow, August 9th.
Marc:Now, whether you believe in God or not, think about the logic of this.
Marc:God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Marc:the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Marc:If you're out there suffering, there's help available, there's help on the way, if you're willing to get it.
Marc:Thank you for my 20 years.
Marc:I'll play guitar for you now.
.
.
.
Thank you.
Guest:Boomer Lives!