Episode 1102 - Peter Berg
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck sticks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm fucking sick, man.
Marc:And I'll tell you, it's not a great time to be sick.
Marc:Or maybe it is.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't think it's a thing.
Marc:I'll let you know.
Marc:But I don't know what other people have.
Marc:Anyways, look.
Marc:Fucking hate it, man.
Marc:I'm sweating right now.
Marc:My fever is breaking right now on the mic, right in front of you.
Marc:I'm sweating.
Marc:I think the last time I was sick, you guys would know.
Marc:I talked to you about it.
Marc:I think it was in Ireland, right?
Marc:Had this exact same thing, kind of.
Marc:Basically, what's happening right now is I felt sick the other day, and then that night, my throat was kind of shitty.
Marc:My sinuses got fucked up.
Marc:I felt tired.
Marc:I went to sleep.
Marc:It felt like a devil had shit in my mouth down my throat, burning hot poop.
Marc:I woke up, and my mouth was all sticky and gross with fucking virus phlegm.
Marc:And it's the worst, man.
Marc:And I just kept getting, you know, just trying to clean my mouth with that shit.
Marc:But it's a little throaty, a little heady.
Marc:And then the next day I was just fucked.
Marc:It basically feels like my face is about to blow off of my head, like my head's about to explode and I'm tired.
Marc:So the other day, the next day, I just drank a shit ton of fluids, like at least two gallons of water with electrolytes in it.
Marc:And I took some Tylenol, took some Musinex at night, took some Sudafed during the day, got a little jacked.
Marc:I think, if I'm not mistaken, the Sudafed makes it hard to pee if you're a dude.
Marc:Is that correct?
Marc:it feels a little like you know some of you older guys will know do you remember back when you did blow and if you had to pee sometimes you just like stand there waiting to pee so long you'd have to sit down to wait to pee and you didn't know what it was but had something to do with blow am i making that up
Marc:But that's not a great part of it.
Marc:A little jangly, though.
Marc:That's nice.
Marc:A little freebie.
Marc:But yeah, so I got this fucking thing.
Marc:Temperature's been riding like 99 to 101.5 last couple of days.
Marc:Hasn't gone to my chest yet.
Marc:But I drank that first second night I had it.
Marc:I drank like two gallons of water.
Marc:And that night, probably more with the electrolytes in it.
Marc:And that second night took Musonex instead of NyQuil, which I can recommend.
Marc:I sweat it out.
Marc:I was swimming.
Marc:The entire bed was soaked.
Marc:And I felt so productive.
Marc:I thought, this is great.
Marc:Look at my body working, just trying to get that shit out of me.
Marc:And I felt better that morning, yesterday morning.
Marc:But now, like, not so great.
Marc:I'm not great right now.
Marc:I'm a little better.
Marc:I hope it doesn't go to my chest.
Marc:I don't think it's the coronavirus.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Apparently, about 70% of us are going to get one strain of it or another.
Marc:But the degree of which we get it is who knows.
Marc:I guess I could go get tested.
Marc:Can I wait, though?
Marc:I'm self-quarantining.
Marc:Right now, I'm self-quarantined.
Marc:Yesterday, I didn't go out.
Marc:Today, I'm not going out.
Marc:I canceled my spot at the Comedy Store.
Marc:And tomorrow, I'll fucking lay low, see what happens.
Marc:Oh, by the way, Pete Berg, the director, is on the show today.
Marc:Yeah, he's a big director.
Marc:Big director, producer, did the directed Very Bad Things, The Rundown, Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom, Hancock, Battleship, Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, Patriots Day, Mile 22.
Marc:Spencer Confidential is what he came in for.
Marc:That's the one I'm in with Mark Wahlberg and Eliza Schlesinger.
Marc:Schlesinger.
Marc:Eliza Schlesinger's in it.
Marc:And I couldn't even go to the premiere because I didn't feel well.
Marc:I didn't want to push it because I care about other people.
Marc:And I want to see, look, if I'm fucking, you know, just a viral goddamn sprinkler, dispenser.
Marc:I'll stay at home.
Marc:I'll wait it out.
Marc:I can right now.
Marc:It's a fucking travel, man.
Marc:It's the fucking travel.
Marc:But Berg...
Marc:Berg and I lived together way back in the day briefly.
Marc:I've told this story before.
Marc:I lived with my buddy Steve Brill.
Marc:We were close then.
Marc:We're okay now.
Marc:We don't hang out.
Marc:He's been on the show.
Marc:He's directed a lot of movies.
Marc:Adam Sandler stuff.
Marc:Adam Sandler's last special.
Marc:Good guy.
Marc:I think we should hang out.
Marc:So Berg kind of moved in to Steve's house, and Steve and Berg were friends, and they pushed me out onto the sofa, which is bad.
Marc:And it was a bit of a bullying situation.
Marc:I was a fragile, sensitive, lost guy who moved to L.A.
Marc:to pursue his dreams.
Marc:And these guys seemed to have an angle on what they were doing.
Marc:And it was a difficult situation.
Marc:So eventually I moved on to the comedy store and got fucked up on drugs.
Marc:I'm not blaming them, but that's where I graduated to.
Marc:And the rest is history.
Marc:But Brill showed up on the set of Spencer Confidential.
Marc:We were all going to do a scene together like old times.
Marc:Didn't make the cut, though.
Marc:Wahlberg was a nice guy.
Marc:So I did like two scenes or three scenes in that thing.
Marc:And I think I did okay.
Marc:I think I showed up for myself.
Marc:Also got my MRI results back.
Marc:So I'm sitting here.
Marc:I'm sweating with this fucking whatever it is, this hybrid of a flu and a cold.
Marc:I'm literally sweating right now.
Marc:But let's relax, folks.
Marc:Let's relax.
Marc:We're not all going to die yet.
Marc:Well, we are all going to die, but not today.
Marc:So I did go to a real doctor and I got my MRI done.
Marc:The doctor said, look, man, I'm not going to refer you to a surgeon, nor do I think you need spinal injections.
Marc:Let's try physical therapy.
Marc:The guy said it wasn't that bad.
Marc:Sounds bad.
Marc:Protrusions.
Marc:Sounds bad to me.
Marc:And you know what's fucked up about it?
Marc:Is that it's a vanity injury.
Marc:A fucking vanity injury.
Marc:What do I need to fucking squat the big weights for?
Marc:I'm 56 fucking years old.
Marc:I don't give a fuck.
Marc:What am I trying to prove?
Marc:I'm not competing.
Marc:I got nothing to prove.
Marc:But I was squatting the big weights, and I stupidly set it on one of my vertebraes, and it popped the fucking three down, man.
Marc:Fucking vanity injury that I'm going to be stuck with my entire fucking life.
Marc:I guess what I'm saying to you folks, you old guys, take it easy.
Marc:What do you got to prove, man?
Marc:I'm 56.
Marc:I got love in my life.
Marc:My health is pretty good if I don't die from whatever I have right now.
Marc:And I can stay in shape by hiking up the mountain, maybe doing some yoga and light workouts.
Marc:What am I fucking squatting?
Marc:You're better off having good core strength and balance and that kind of shit and walking and stuff.
Marc:Dumb vanity injury.
Marc:Very mad at myself because now I'm going to have this thing for the rest of my life, which, you know, depending what happens.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:Might not be that big a deal because I who knows how long we're all going to be here.
Marc:Oh, the David Bowie movie, Stardust, that I made a while back, I can give you an update on.
Marc:I actually got a link to a screener of it, and it came out pretty good.
Marc:And I'm fucking amazed, given the run and gun way we shot that thing, Gabriel Range.
Marc:You know, the way he shot it, how quick we were going, like the time we had.
Marc:This guy, Nick Noland, this dude, he must be 80 plus, the DP, British guy, running around with that fucking genius.
Marc:I can't even believe they got a movie out of this thing, let alone a good one.
Marc:But so we'll see what happens with that thing.
Marc:Just I was very surprised.
Marc:So that's that's for real.
Marc:I'm sweating fucking my balls off right now.
Marc:Now, I've got a couple of these texting stories, you know, the I'm shitty.
Yeah.
Marc:I'm a shitty person.
Marc:If you guys were listening, you know, I told the story about accidentally texting a text to saying that this guy and his wife were shitty to the guy.
Marc:Yeah, that happened.
Marc:So then I solicited, I asked for some stories and I got some stories and I've mixed it up here.
Marc:There's some good ones, some ones that are kind of human and nice.
Marc:My whoops, that was meant for someone else's story.
Marc:Hey, Mark, I love your story about sending a text to the wrong person.
Marc:Here's my story.
Marc:A while back, one of my coworkers was driving me a little insane.
Marc:He used to try way too hard and really wanted to be one of the cool kids in the office.
Marc:Instead, he came off as a needy attention whore, and I wasn't having it.
Marc:So this one day I was talking to one of my friends when he decided to butt into the conversation.
Marc:So like any rational adult, I got mad and stormed off.
Marc:When I got back to my desk, I emailed my friend to complain about this dude and how he drives me bananas when he interrupts and how I hate that he tries to force his way into our clique.
Marc:Well, you guessed it.
Marc:I sent that email to him with the subject line Big Red because he's over six foot tall and has red hair.
Marc:Definitely not my finest moment.
Marc:We emailed back and forth about it a bit and I apologized and he seemed to be cool with it.
Marc:It was then that I learned an important lesson about shit-talking people.
Marc:Never put it in writing.
Marc:Now, six years later, we're both managers and I share an office with the dude.
Marc:We sit 10 feet apart, 40 hours a week, and I can honestly say he's a good guy and I enjoy having him around.
Marc:I think we both just had some growing up to do.
Marc:Anyway, I hope things work out with your buddy.
Marc:Dude, you were probably projecting, man.
Marc:I bet you guys are good for, really get along.
Marc:Usually when you have that type of fucking feeling, it's because he, you know, he reminds you of you, right?
Marc:Email sent to unintended recipient.
Marc:Hi, Mark, with a K.
Marc:My wife and I own a small business, and about three years ago, one of our suppliers via an email to me raised prices to an unconscionable level.
Marc:Filled with rage, I forwarded the email to my wife accompanied by the sensible recommendation that we never do business again with the cocksucking supplier, who I suggested should be driven across the land like the vermin that they are.
Marc:As you can guess, my comments were sent as a reply to the supplier by mistake.
Marc:Long story short, the shocked vermin in question replied to me immediately, apologized profusely and lowered the prices we were charged to levels that were effective two to three years earlier.
Marc:We still do business with them today.
Marc:Never underestimate the weird righteous way the universe works.
Marc:And my guess is that your relationship with your friend will end up stronger in the end.
Marc:Best of luck.
Marc:Oddly, the weird thing is, like, I don't know those people that well.
Marc:We're sort of in the same circles.
Marc:Maybe I should try to reach out.
Marc:I'll try.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:These ones are pretty.
Marc:Yeah, this one makes your fucking heart drop a little.
Marc:Texting the wrong person.
Marc:Hi Mark, 11 years ago I slept with a friend in a moment of weakness and my wife found out about it.
Marc:She was livid of course and I was left in an absolute panic that she would end our marriage.
Marc:Despite my actions, I was crazy about her and didn't want her to leave.
Marc:After a few bleak months, she agreed to try and reconcile.
Marc:I was willing to do absolutely anything
Marc:And our therapist recommended that we renew our wedding vows, not in any kind of public way like a whole second wedding, but in some sort of personal way that would be meaningful.
Marc:She said it would help to rebuild the trust that I had betrayed.
Marc:I was absolutely on board, so my wife agreed to go away with me for a weekend on the coast, stay at our favorite B&B and do some kind of personal ceremony just between the two of us.
Marc:I spent days together.
Marc:Planning out what I was going to say editing and rewriting obsessively.
Marc:She was going to do her part as well But I was the one that had fucked everything up.
Marc:So I was definitely headlining the show We performed our little renewal went fine and we had a nice weekend I was left hopeful that it was a good start to getting back on track on the drive home I stopped to use a restroom and saw that a close friend of mine had texted to ask How did it go?
Marc:I texted to my wife who was waiting for me back in the car, no doubt contemplating her renewed but tenuous affection for me.
Marc:To be honest, the whole weekend felt contrived.
Marc:Oh, dude.
Marc:We navigated through three more years together before she was officially done with my shit.
Marc:We're still friends.
Marc:She's moved on to great success in life and love.
Marc:And I now triple check my texts before I send them.
Marc:Love the show.
Marc:Mike.
Marc:To be honest, the whole weekend felt contrived.
Marc:Mike.
Marc:Dude.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, everyone seems to be okay.
Marc:Last one.
Marc:Recipient of mistaken text.
Marc:I work with a married couple.
Marc:I've worked with the wife for 15 years.
Marc:The husband started working with us about seven years ago, and that's when they met.
Marc:Anyway, I'm reasonably close with the wife and always have been, and the husband is 100% comfortable with our close platonic relationship.
Marc:A while back, she had left work for the day, but her husband and I were still there.
Marc:Our shift's ending soon.
Marc:I sent her a text about something.
Marc:I don't even remember what I was asking her, and I was awaiting a response.
Marc:About 30 minutes later, I received a response.
Marc:It was a pic of her with a run-of-the-mill sex toy inserted into her vagina.
Marc:I like the description.
Marc:Run-of-the-mill.
Marc:I'd like a little more detail.
Marc:I immediately knew that it was not meant for me.
Marc:I'm cool and easygoing and could see myself sending something like this to the wrong person.
Marc:Really?
Marc:You could see sending someone a picture of you with a run of the mill sex toy in you.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I immediately text her back and said not to worry that I had already deleted it and her secret was safe with me.
Marc:She felt really stupid, as we discussed later.
Marc:She was relieved it went to me and not someone else.
Marc:And I was the ideal accidental recipient.
Marc:Up to this point, I still haven't said anything to anyone.
Marc:And I don't really think this counts.
Marc:What a great secret to have.
Marc:And, you know, it was an accident and it was so intimate and weird.
Marc:And you guys have to keep that weird little secret forever.
Marc:Forever.
Marc:Seriously, come on.
Marc:Mono y mono here.
Marc:Did you delete it?
Marc:Did you really delete it?
Marc:I believe you, pal.
Marc:I believe you.
Marc:So, Pete Berg is the director of Spencer Confidential.
Marc:He's directed a lot of great stuff.
Marc:He's a big personality.
Marc:He's a good director.
Marc:I actually think he definitely has a style and a point of view that's for real.
Marc:If you watch Friday Night Lights and Hancock, he's got a great way of shooting action.
Marc:And we go back.
Marc:And this is one of those kind of closure talk because he's such a big fucking, you know, alpha male guy.
Marc:And, you know, he they really the two of them, him and Brill, really fucking
Marc:Made me feel shitty.
Marc:I don't know if I totally got closure here, but it's good to see Pete.
Marc:He's sort of a charming monster, and he's still got a big personality, but he's on his best behavior, and he gave me a nice interview.
Marc:And I think I got a little bit of closure.
Marc:I think I got a little bit of closure with Big Bad Pete Berg.
Marc:So this is me talking to Pete Berg.
Marc:The movie is Spencer Confidential.
Marc:It premieres on Netflix this Friday, March 6th.
Marc:And I'm in it.
Marc:I just got a shingles vaccine.
Marc:How does that feel?
Marc:It hurts.
Marc:It hurts more than usual.
Marc:Did you ever get them?
Marc:No.
Marc:You get the flu vaccine?
Marc:I did.
Marc:You did get that?
Marc:Yeah, I didn't get shingles.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't have it.
Marc:Did you have chicken pox at one time?
Marc:I don't remember.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:People get shingles.
Marc:I get to the doctor.
Marc:They're like, you want the vaccine?
Marc:I'm like, all right.
Marc:Shingles sounds terrible to me.
Marc:Who's gotten shingles?
Marc:People get shingles.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:It's out there, Pete.
Marc:Okay, I believe you.
Marc:I have no proof.
Marc:I'm telling you, why would they all of a sudden have a vaccine?
Marc:Do you think that they'd get anything out of that?
Marc:Yes, money.
Marc:How much money?
Marc:How much?
Marc:Probably $50.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It didn't cost me anything.
Marc:It's on the coverage.
Marc:I went over to the Bob Hope Health Center.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Do you know the Bob Hope Health Center?
Marc:Bob Hope?
Marc:Come on.
Marc:I'm on Brea, SAG, Africa.
Marc:Yeah, I've been out there.
Marc:But you're a DGA guy now.
Marc:So what, they got a special hospital for your health care?
Marc:No, we just go to the doctor.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:Don't you have a doctor?
Guest:I have a doctor at the Bob Hope Health Center.
Guest:I see.
Guest:I see.
Guest:Can you choose your doctor?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would think you would be a pain in the ass for a doctor.
Guest:Not anymore.
Marc:Not anymore.
Marc:I'm good.
Guest:Really?
Marc:I don't go much unless I'm really hurting.
Marc:I kind of have a back thing right now.
Marc:That's why I went.
Marc:What's wrong with your back?
Marc:It was an exercise accident.
Marc:You're a boxer, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're a thing.
Marc:You do stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But exercise is meant to prevent you from injury.
Marc:Well, no.
Marc:What happened was I was setting the bar down on my shoulders for a squat, and I set it down wrong.
Marc:And I set it on a vertebrae or something, and something popped.
Marc:Oh, geez.
Marc:What do you do?
Marc:I don't squat.
Marc:No?
Marc:No.
Guest:Not anymore?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, occasionally I'll squat because, you know, as you get older, if you don't do some squat, your ass drops and it's like, you know, you can't let your ass drop.
Guest:That's like the goal.
Guest:Go as long as you can without having your ass drop.
Guest:You don't want anything to drop that much, do you?
Guest:Well, you don't want your ass to drop and you don't want your bowels to prolapse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's kind of my... Well, so, right.
Marc:So you got to be careful with the squatting.
Right.
Guest:If you don't squat, your ass can drop.
Guest:And if you do squat too much, your bowels can prolapse and all kinds of things.
Guest:Is that an injury you've seen before?
Guest:Prolapse bowel?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think I wrote it.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:When your asshole falls out?
Guest:Yeah, your asshole falls out of your body.
Guest:You can Google it.
Guest:There's pictures.
Guest:There's pictures.
Guest:I don't want to do that.
Guest:I mean, I think just being on sets for so long would sometimes get bored and look up like gross medical procedures and medical injuries and
Guest:And someone on some film pulled up, started talking about prolapsed bowels.
Guest:And they said you can get it from squatting?
Guest:Yeah, you can get it from squatting or anything that causes you to exert pressure on your rectum, I guess.
Marc:Yeah, sneezing hard.
Marc:You can sneeze your asshole out of your body.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I mean, it's a horrible thing.
Marc:So I watched the movie that we made together.
Marc:Spencer Confidential, it's caused now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We went through a few titles.
Marc:Well, is that because there are dozens of these books and it came out so good you think that you got a franchise on your hands?
Marc:Well, hopefully.
Marc:I mean, I'm really happy with the movie.
Marc:It moves quick.
Marc:You're very good at that.
Marc:The action.
Marc:It's a crowd pleaser.
Marc:It's a crowd pleaser.
Marc:Humor, violence, bad guys getting beat up.
Marc:Marc Maron.
Marc:A little bit of Marc Maron?
Marc:A fair amount.
Marc:Driving that narrative.
Marc:You were so fucking funny.
Guest:That was a lot of work.
Marc:But it was literally after I got done with dumping all that story, you were like, we didn't think it would work.
Marc:But you did it.
Guest:Yeah, you did it.
Guest:You pulled it off.
Guest:You made it.
Guest:I mean, the movie was, you know, based on the Spencer books.
Guest:I never heard of those books, but people love them.
Guest:Well, you heard of Spencer for Hire, though, right?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Remember when we were kids, it was a TV show.
Guest:That's the same guy?
Guest:Yeah, same guy, this guy, Ace Atkins, who wrote, like, he literally wrote 700 books.
Guest:700?
Guest:Think about that.
Guest:Give or take, give or take.
Marc:Of that one guy?
Marc:Of the Spencer character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, Ace Atkins was just an extremely prolific- Boston guy.
Guest:Boston crime writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I just think about, like, you know, we all think we're busy and accomplished and, you know, prolific.
Guest:This guy wrote 700 books.
Guest:How old did he live till?
Guest:100?
Guest:I don't... Probably like 30 or something.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:No, no, he was old.
Guest:I think in his 70s.
Guest:That's like two or three books a year knocking him out?
Guest:He was just in a flow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I have read one of the books.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The one that we made, Wonderland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But our editor, Mike Sale, has read pretty much all of them.
Guest:Is he a Boston guy?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Mike Sale is a Boston guy.
Guest:But, you know, just loved these books.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, could talk about them and would talk about them while we're cutting the picture, telling me about all these different stories and these plot lines and the history of Spencer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, if the movie plays well and everybody wants to do another one, we definitely will.
Guest:But,
Marc:Did you do a deal?
Marc:Was this always with Netflix?
Marc:I don't know if I knew that when I did that movie.
Marc:It was always a Netflix movie.
Marc:Yes, this was straight up Netflix.
Marc:And it's not going to do a theater run at all?
Marc:It might do a limited theater.
Marc:So you can get it into consideration.
Guest:Well, no, this I don't think will be in consideration.
Guest:It's not, it was certainly not, but you never know.
Guest:The one thing I've learned, Mark, is you never know, right?
Guest:I like that you acknowledge your limitations.
Guest:We know what this is.
Guest:I mean, but we do kind of know what it is.
Guest:I think one of the things that attracted me to doing it and Mark to doing it is we've been making some heavy movies.
Guest:You and Wahlberg.
Guest:Yeah, we make stories where real people die, generally.
Marc:What was the first movie you guys did together?
Guest:We did Lone Survivor.
Marc:That was the first one?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That was the one with the... Navy SEALs.
Marc:The Navy Seals, and they all get killed.
Marc:All but one, yeah.
Marc:And he ends up with those Arabic people.
Marc:Afghans.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, it's a good movie.
Guest:I saw it.
Guest:And then 19 Navy Seals were killed in that film.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so that was like, I had to go.
Marc:And he had Ben Foster in that, too.
Marc:Yep.
Guest:I like Ben Foster.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:He's directed a movie.
Guest:I just talked to him yesterday.
Guest:You did?
Guest:He's directing one?
Guest:He's directing one director's first movie.
Guest:Very talented young man.
Guest:And he produced his movie, too?
Guest:A Hell in High Water?
Guest:Oh, yes, yes, yes, I did.
Guest:I did.
Guest:With Taylor Sheridan.
Guest:I produced it for Taylor Sheridan, yeah.
Marc:All right, so, okay, so Lone Survivor is the first Wahlberg movie.
Guest:First was Lone Survivor, then it was the Deepwater Horizon, which was, you know, another true story about the oil rig that blew up in south of Louisiana.
Guest:I didn't see that movie.
Guest:Oh, it's a good movie.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:Pretty intense.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that, but like, that's like, how do you, well, we can get to that.
Marc:But so you and with, with that relationship, you guys got along, you knew each other before Lone Survivor, that how do you build, all of a sudden decide like, we're a team, we're going to do these movies.
Guest:Well, we
Guest:We knew each other, loosely used the word friends.
Guest:We were kind of like Hollywood friends.
Guest:We'd say hi to each other and occasionally run into each other.
Guest:It was a friendly, cordial relationship.
Guest:And we talked about working with each other.
Guest:And then finally, Lone Survivor was kind of the film that worked out.
Guest:And I think the movie did very well.
Guest:It was a success.
Guest:We just kind of both have a very similar outlook and perspective on the business, and we approach to working.
Guest:We don't like to waste time.
Guest:We take it seriously, but we don't take it maybe as seriously as some people do.
Guest:And that's not to say we don't take it seriously.
Guest:We do, and we want to do good work, and we want the films to work.
Guest:We don't like to waste time, and I think both of us related well to each other, and we quickly developed a shorthand, and that went right into Deepwater Horizon, and that movie did well.
Guest:So it was a good film.
Marc:You don't like to waste time, but it must have taken years to pull that movie together.
Marc:I mean, we've got to shoot in the water, build a thing, flaming things.
Guest:Yeah, but even... Yes, but there's economical ways of moving through a film like Deepwater Horizon where it could take eight months instead of three months.
Guest:And so much of the hard work with something like Deepwater is done for the year prior leading up.
Guest:Forget about the script.
Guest:Just tremendous amount of prep.
Guest:For Deepwater Horizon, we built the biggest set ever built in the history of filmmaking.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah, we built this 120-foot...
Guest:In the history of filmmaking.
Guest:History of filmmaking, the biggest set ever built.
Guest:Congratulations.
Marc:You did it.
Guest:It was completely unnecessary, and we wasted a fuckload of money.
Guest:It made shooting... It's a very long story, and there's some people that predated me that deserve a little bit of... The blame?
Guest:Well, I'm not going to use the word blame.
Guest:They own the responsibility of starting to build this massive... So you came into that...
Guest:I came into it later.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the ship had sailed on this giant set, but they were gonna make it even bigger.
Guest:It was in the water?
Guest:No, it was in the parking lot of an out-of-business Six Flags amusement park outside of Louisiana in a swampy, giant parking lot with alligators and wild pigs and water moccasins.
Guest:That's where he built the...
Guest:The thing, the drilling thing?
Guest:Well, they built this massive rig.
Guest:Yeah, the rig.
Guest:One of the thinking, the thought behind building 100 feet up in the air was that when you get up that high, you can shoot a shot of an actor's face and you won't see the ground.
Guest:You can feel like you're out in the water.
Guest:But the truth is, you do see the grounds, and you can put someone on the ground and just maybe get two inches below their face and shoot up.
Guest:So there were so many flaws, and I came in and actually stripped the set down, but it still turned into, I mean, Google pictures of it still was the biggest set ever built.
Guest:Is it still sitting there?
Guest:No, they ripped it all apart like a week after we built it, but we had like 500 welders from all over Louisiana and the states around Louisiana.
Guest:There was a working helicopter pad on it.
Guest:One of the mistakes of logic, I won't say blame, but the flawed thinking was that no one realized that if you're gonna build something this big,
Guest:A, if you want to land a helicopter on it, the Department of Engineering, they license it.
Guest:We were talking about your garage.
Guest:You just had some inspection issues.
Guest:Well, they come and inspect that, and you're subject to the same standard as if you were building a real building.
Guest:So every weld had to be signed off by two engineers.
Marc:Inspectors.
Guest:Yeah, inspectors had to be built to last.
Guest:And normally you build a Hollywood set, you can... Throw it away.
Marc:Yeah, cheap out.
Marc:But you had to land real helicopters.
Guest:But we didn't actually have to land the helicopter.
Guest:We could have cheated it.
Guest:And then the other thing I was like, I'm like, okay, so it's 110 odd feet up in the air, which there's an elevator to get you up there, or it's six stories of stairs, right?
Guest:And the elevator I knew didn't work all the time.
Guest:So I'm just thinking, well, okay, so we're going to be up 110 stories in the summer in Louisiana.
Guest:So it's going to be 105 degrees.
Guest:There's all kinds of issues with the weather.
Guest:And we'll be up there.
Guest:And if, say, Mark Wahlberg wants to go to the bathroom.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He's going to have to go down six flights of stairs, get in a golf cart, drive to his trailer.
Guest:He's going to get in his trailer.
Guest:He's going to be high.
Guest:He's going to take his shirt off and do it.
Guest:It's an hour or two.
Guest:He's going to get on the phone with his wife.
Guest:And it's going to be four hours.
Guest:Between his shot.
Marc:Because he went to the bathroom.
Guest:He went to go pee.
Guest:I'm like, this is crazy.
Guest:We can't do this.
Guest:So then we had to bring outhouses up to the top of the thing.
Guest:And then the outhouses started to reek.
Guest:So we had to build air conditioning tents.
Guest:around the outhouses.
Guest:It's like the set just kept growing like a tumor.
Guest:Yeah, it was... But the movie broke even?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, the movie broke even.
Guest:The movie did really well.
Guest:It was a very good movie.
Guest:I'm very proud of it.
Marc:But that's a lot of money that you handle now.
Marc:I mean, we're going to have to go back because... Deep back?
Marc:Pretty deep.
Marc:Lawler?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think we should.
Marc:Lawler Street...
Marc:because i know you man i mean i knew you when you i took your first headshot and i don't know if people know that yeah why would they but i i i lived with steve brawl set this up for the audience i went to college with steve brawl they've heard of steve i've done a show with him and when i moved out here i moved to la i moved in with steve and on lawlor street in culver city in the apartment that steve's uncle owned but steve charged and kept rent for yeah i didn't really know that yeah and he raised my rent one day that was a
Guest:Well, the thing is, you kind of pushed me out, I remember.
Guest:Did I get the bedroom?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Because you were on the couch.
Guest:You think I chose the couch?
Guest:No, I don't.
Marc:I couldn't remember whether you were... I'll tell you exactly what happened.
Marc:I know what happened.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:I was paying rent.
Marc:No, I was paying...
Marc:So both of us were paying rent to Brill.
Marc:No, but Steve, I don't remember that well, but I know that we weren't getting along great.
Marc:You guys had your little crew.
Marc:I came out.
Marc:You didn't really know me.
Marc:No, we didn't.
Marc:But it was you and Brill and Mendelsohn and Andy, what's his name?
Marc:Miller.
Marc:Andy Miller.
Marc:Andy Miller, yeah.
Marc:Aubrey Rappaport was Steve from college.
Marc:Yeah, Aubrey Rappaport.
Marc:Harry Redlick.
Marc:Harry Redlick.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So all these people, and I'm just this fucking weird guy.
Marc:guy that wants to do comedy so i'm living with steve and uh you guys are living your young hollywood life right right you're across town i'd met you and you're living you're you're maybe your roommate is dating ari gross were you living with a girl yes yes yeah wow you have a good memory because i see ari at the whole foods yes i was living with an actress an actress named karen lee hopkins
Guest:And yes, and we were, I was asked to leave because I would always have like 10 guys in the apartment and Ari Gross would be trying to like hang out and be romantic and we would be like shotgunning beers and fighting.
Marc:He's an actor.
Marc:Well, that's right.
Marc:And he kind of like, he stood up to you guys.
Marc:He got you out.
Marc:The chick got you out.
Marc:He got her to stand up to us.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't recall Ari.
Guest:I respect him, but I don't think he stood up.
Guest:But Karen, she stood up and kicked me out.
Marc:But to me, you guys were starting to make it.
Marc:I remember Ari was in some movie, and you were like... Here's what I remember, the primary points about you.
Marc:Like, I don't know.
Marc:I know you had dated an old actress or something at some point.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And then, like, you were also working on a Prince documentary that you wanted to bring together.
Marc:Like, I don't know who you were, but you're like, this is, it's going to, it was called Something City.
Marc:Purple Erotic City.
Marc:Erotic City.
Marc:Good job, Erotic City.
Marc:And this was your thing, but I didn't know what you were doing.
Guest:What that involved was every night, me and Maria Dillon, Bob Dylan's daughter, who we were trying to produce as Doc, going to a restaurant that Prince's manager owned, trying to find Prince's manager, who we never found.
Guest:That was as close to- That sounds like a good movie.
Marc:Just that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was as close to making that movie as we ever came.
Marc:But you're like, what are you, 20 years old now?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:I just out of college, 23, 24 maybe.
Marc:Really?
Yeah.
Marc:23 probably so you're trying to do that I remember and then I remember like you know you wanted headshots and you saw I had a camera I went outside We took pictures and you used yours for years.
Guest:I know I remember I was wearing a checkered shirt Yeah, I think I sat in a bulldozer you put me in a but it was just your face You couldn't see no I know but I just remember you said walking around What do you call the bucket of a bulldozer the thing?
Marc:Yeah, you know is that true?
Guest:Yeah, you had me squat down and it was actually a good picture.
Guest:I squatted down and the light was, the shine of the metal was good.
Marc:Didn't you use that picture for me?
Guest:Yeah, it was my headshot.
Guest:I got work off of that.
Marc:I owe you.
Marc:I got all my first jobs off my headshot.
Marc:No, we evened up.
Marc:You put me in the movie.
Marc:But then like Steve and you were buddies and so you get kicked out and then I got to move out of the room onto the couch and then you do the same thing.
Marc:You bring 10 guys over.
Marc:I'm going to sleep on the couch.
Marc:Yeah, every morning.
Marc:With women coming over and you wake me up.
Marc:I would hit you.
Marc:Yeah, you'd wake me up.
Marc:Come on, we want to listen to music.
Marc:I remember you listening to Easy E. Yeah, I was the first one.
Guest:Before anybody, I was listening to Easy E. That's right.
Marc:And you also turned me on to the Richard and Linda Thompson, I think maybe.
Marc:Maybe I had that record.
Marc:Maybe, I don't know.
Marc:That sounds like your stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I taught you three chords on the guitar.
Marc:Yes, you did.
Marc:A, D, and E. Right, but you never let me sleep.
Marc:And then you fuckers, I can't, I'm just laying, I'm just laying some groundwork.
Marc:No, get it out.
Marc:Then I don't know what to do with myself and I gotta, you know, I gotta get another apartment.
Marc:So they set me up down the hall
Marc:with the woman who lives down the hall who lost her roommate, remember?
Marc:And I moved down the hall into that girl's apartment, and within a week or two, I drank her booze, I tried to have sex with her, and they ran an intervention on me.
Marc:But I just remember you and Brill coming down there laughing at me like, so this is your new place, huh?
Guest:Was this the girl that Brill would pound on the wall and she would come to the room and they would have sex?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:Because that was the other side of the building.
Guest:The girl, he would knock on the wall, and then she would come over.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That was his maiden call.
Marc:He was.
Marc:And eventually, I ended up at the comedy store.
Marc:But I taught you how to play guitar.
Marc:I took your head shot.
Marc:You talked about the Prince movie.
Marc:I lent you my Walkman, my Rockman.
Marc:So remember, you got a job on a fishing boat.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And you took that Tom Schultz Rockman through it.
Marc:And I could play the guitar on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Man, you've got a good memory, Mark.
Guest:Do you remember that?
Guest:Yes, I do.
Guest:I remember working on a fishing boat.
Guest:And bringing, you brought the guitar.
Guest:And I brought an electric guitar.
Guest:And I gave you that thing.
Guest:Yes, and I would sit on the, because it was such a boring job, we were floating off of 200 miles off the coast of Long Beach for five days and had nothing to do.
Guest:We were waiting for the nets to fill with fish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I would play that guitar.
Marc:Yeah, do that thing.
Marc:Wow, wow.
Marc:Yeah, I still have that thing.
Marc:But so that's my memory of it.
Marc:But where did you come from before?
Guest:But do people know what a great guitar player you are and singers?
Marc:Yeah, they do know.
Guest:It's common knowledge, right?
Guest:Because I remember you... I don't know if I'm great, but I'd work at it.
Marc:I'd play after each podcast.
Marc:I'd do a little noodling.
Guest:But you were very talented.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Guest:Yeah, and I remember when we were... I do remember...
Guest:tormenting you a bit, and I apologize for that.
Guest:But we would get up, and you were sleeping on a couch, and the couch was sort of your bedroom, but it was everybody's room.
Guest:It was a tight spot for everybody.
Guest:It was a tight spot for everybody.
Guest:But I mean, Brill was a bastard, and I've told him this.
Guest:He was getting that apartment for free from his uncle, who's some plastic surgeon, kind of weird dude in Bel Air.
Guest:Yeah, there's some old stories about that guy.
Guest:Yeah, kind of a creepy dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he gave Brill the apartment for free.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:So I was being charged rent.
Guest:You know, like I paid $600 or whatever a month rent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think this was after you left.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My rent went up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I remember like two months into me living there, he calls me into the kitchen and he has to have a meeting with me.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's like, Pete, I hate to hear this.
Guest:I got to raise your rent.
Guest:I'm like, bro, what do you mean you have to raise this?
Guest:You're just saying I have to give you personally more money.
Guest:We don't have any money and all your money is my money.
Guest:You're just taking my money.
Guest:But he had to raise my rent.
Guest:And I think I threw a bottle of Mount Gay rum in his head.
Guest:You did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Dismissed.
Marc:But did you guys have a real falling out at one point?
Marc:At some point?
Marc:Because I remember that.
Marc:See, I lost touch because I went to the comedy store and entered that hole for decades.
Marc:And I know that then Brill kind of became a Sandler guy, and then he got mad at me, and then I heard things about you.
Marc:But let's go.
Marc:Before we do that, I want to know where you grew up in Westchester, though, because I remember you grew up in the same town as my first girlfriend in Chappaqua.
Marc:Chappaqua, New York, yeah.
Marc:But you didn't know her, I don't think.
Marc:What's her name?
Marc:uh sarah rubin was her name sarah rubin yeah sarah rubin yeah no no no i mean i could have a guy named andy gilchrist who was a guitar player but i think they're like it may be a little it doesn't matter no uh but like so what was the story there you you come from regular jews
Guest:No, I come from a half-Jew, but I come from Jews in denial.
Guest:So my father was half-Jewish.
Guest:My father was Jewish.
Guest:My mother was Catholic.
Guest:But they were embarrassed of their Judaism.
Guest:So they pretended we were basically atheists who celebrated Christmas because it was sort of a fun vacation.
Guest:But there was no religion.
Guest:No, there was nothing.
Guest:And kind of an aggressive denial of our Jewish heritage.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Why is that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It was the culture that my family was in.
Guest:Your old man?
Guest:Your dad's family?
Guest:My dad and my mom's family in particular just were not kind of down with the Jewish culture.
Guest:Did you have grandparents?
Guest:Your dad's parents?
Guest:I did, but they were equally non-religious.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:No one practiced religion.
Guest:I was not bar mitzvahed.
Guest:What'd your dad do?
Guest:My dad was an advertising guy like Mad Men.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:For gray advertising.
Guest:That's a big one.
Guest:That's like a big one.
Guest:He was Jeff Peanutbutter.
Guest:Jeff Peanutbutter.
Marc:Oh, Jeff.
Marc:Remember Jeff?
Marc:That was his account?
Guest:That was his account.
Guest:He was the marketing guy.
Guest:I mean, the client relations guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he would...
Guest:I mean, it's crazy.
Guest:Like, Mad Men, he was a little bit after Mad Men, like a little bit sort of a couple years after that generation.
Guest:In the 70s.
Guest:Yeah, they would still have three martinis at lunch.
Guest:So they'd come in, they'd take the train into the city.
Guest:They'd have, from Westchester into Manhattan, they'd have three martinis at lunch.
Guest:They'd work all morning, sort of.
Guest:I don't know what they'd do.
Guest:Then they'd go to lunch, have, you know, steak, steak tartare.
Guest:Right.
Guest:a lobster and three martinis, come back to the office and just basically pass out on their desks until it was six.
Guest:Then they would all... Is that what they did?
Marc:They passed out?
Marc:They couldn't do any work.
Marc:Because in the TV shows, they always just go back to work.
Marc:But how the fuck is that possible?
Guest:They would pass out.
Guest:They also did smoke cigarettes.
Guest:They chain-smoked cigarettes and just, God knows, they were fucking hammered.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they would like march of the penguins, like the drunk penguins from the office to Grand Central where there was a bar car.
Guest:And so then the men would all start drinking, reloading right on the bar car.
Guest:The trains would inevitably break down.
Guest:So they'd have three more drinks on the train.
Marc:So we'd come home ship-faced every day?
Guest:Well, yeah, but I have these memories and as do a lot of my friends from Chappaqua, we would all go with our parent, my mom and my sister and I and other wives and their kids would go to pick up at the train station, the husbands.
Guest:And these trains, they were to get off, you had to take three steps, but the third step was a good two feet off the ground, right?
Guest:And I have memories of these men
Guest:falling off the train, and one in particular, a man's landing on his face and breaking his nose and knocking out some teeth, and us screaming, and everybody was drunk all the time.
Guest:And that was my, if you really ask me my memories of Chappaqua, it's like just alcohol.
Guest:The parents were just drinking.
Marc:That time, the 70s, I got pictures of my kids.
Marc:We're about the same age.
Marc:I remember, I see pictures, everyone was drinking.
Guest:Yeah, and on weekends, it would be like a drink called a stinger.
Marc:Do you know what a stinger is?
Marc:No, I don't remember.
Guest:I think it's like brandy and whiskey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like they would have brunch, like stinger brunches on Saturday.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there would just be like 30 adults.
Guest:Getting shit-faced.
Guest:Just fucking- Were they swingers?
Guest:Crazy drunk.
Guest:My parents weren't, but do you remember the movie Ice Storm?
Guest:Yeah, I know, I know.
Guest:So that was literally the time I grew up in.
Guest:Ice Storm was filmed in Bedford, which is a town right next to Chappaqua, a neighboring Chappaqua.
Guest:And the Ice Storm had the key parties, right, where the couples would... So I think...
Guest:i don't i'm sure some of my parents friends were swingers there was something you know they were all starting to experiment with drugs and you know my because the kids were yeah in the 60s wait 60s yeah but we yeah we we weren't doing it though but i mean that that generation once the 60s happened it kind of got into the grown-up that's right that's right that's right and so there was like a little bit of coke i think and there was a lot of weed i mean nothing much harder than that but
Marc:Was your old man in the military?
Guest:My dad was in the Marine Corps for two and a half years.
Marc:Really?
Guest:He was actually in the Korean War, but he never got off a boat.
Guest:He was a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps.
Marc:Because my dad did two years in the Air Force.
Marc:I guess they did that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did he go to Korea?
Marc:No.
Marc:He was more Vietnam era.
Marc:I think he was in the service like 69, 69 through 71.
Guest:Yeah, my dad was... Was he older?
Guest:My dad was... Yeah, he would have been... Is your dad still alive?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How old is he?
Guest:He's 80.
Guest:Yeah, so my dad died three years ago at 84.
Guest:So my dad's a little bit older.
Guest:And my dad, like, basically, as he got older, his loyalty and connection to the Marine Corps grew and grew and grew.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, deeply patriotic towards the Marine Corps, towards the military.
Marc:And did that influence you?
Marc:I think so.
Marc:And your way of looking at the movie?
Marc:Because you definitely do movies that are sort of honest depictions of current warfare.
Guest:Yeah, I think particularly with Lone Survivor,
Guest:I think when I read that book, I was hooked on the book.
Guest:But there was a wanting, a respect for the military that was instilled upon me at a young age.
Guest:By him?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he wasn't a great Santini guy.
Guest:No, no, he wasn't a great Santini.
Guest:But he was like the kind of guy who like after...
Guest:11 drinks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and not to say he was a heavy drinker because that wasn't heavy drinking back then.
Guest:That was normal.
Guest:After lunch.
Guest:After lunch.
Guest:You know, he might on any given Sunday be sitting there and like during halftime of a Giants game or watching on TV, he would turn and apropos of nothing say, you know, if they instill the draft, you're going.
Guest:You're going.
Marc:It was the resentment that your life was too good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if I even said anything other than, of course I'm going, yes, of course I'm going.
Guest:I hope they do reinstate the draft.
Guest:And if I even paused, he would attack.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, you think you're not going to go?
Guest:You think you're not going to go?
Guest:Oh, you're going to go.
Guest:God damn it, Pete!
Guest:It would get crazy.
Guest:And so I think...
Guest:Yeah, he was a war historian.
Guest:My dad could have walked at any given time in any college in the country and taught a course in Civil War history, Revolutionary War history.
Guest:He knew it cold.
Guest:I mean, I remember we lived in Chicago for a year, and we went to the museum.
Guest:He got transferred.
Guest:GIF business?
Guest:Yeah, well, Tide.
Guest:He got put on the Tide account.
Guest:But Gray has a big office in Chicago.
Guest:So we lived there, and I remember I was like in third grade maybe, third or fourth grade, and we went to the Museum of Science and Technology in Chicago.
Guest:Have you ever been there?
Marc:No.
Guest:It's a good science museum.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they have a captured German U-boat submarine.
Guest:And you can tour it.
Guest:And I remember you wait and you go on with our family.
Guest:And there's like eight other people or families.
Guest:So there's like 30 people.
Guest:We don't know each other.
Guest:We're all going on this tour.
Guest:And there's some nice 23-year-old girl from Northwestern who's giving the tour.
Guest:And she's like, and this is where the radio room was.
Guest:And they would communicate through a series of signals.
Guest:And my dad would be like, that's not accurate.
Guest:That is not accurate.
Guest:And she'd be like, sir, no, that's not accurate.
Guest:What you're saying about the communication technique, it's completely inaccurate, actually.
Guest:And he would take over the tour.
Guest:And we would be really embarrassed.
Guest:But he knew his shit from a military standpoint.
Guest:And your mom, what'd she do?
Guest:So my mom, when I was growing up, she was always volunteering.
Guest:She started like 15 different charities, some of which are still going today.
Guest:But when I was young, at that time, when my dad was at Gray, she was a volunteer at a psychiatric hospital in White Plains.
Guest:and she would come home with these wild stories of like alice cooper like had a breakdown of some kind the rock band guy alex cooper the musician alice cooper yeah the musician he was he was a patient there for a while and he took a liking to her and he was having this whole you know friendship and yeah but she would come home like uh she came home once and her ears were all bloody yeah and she had been wearing hoop earrings and a patient just reached up and pulled the earrings
Marc:out of her ears.
Guest:She would have all these crazy stories.
Guest:She was a, and still is, just like an active... She's doing around, huh?
Guest:Yeah, she's doing well.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:She started like five different charities and very... Busy with service work.
Guest:Busy, yeah, but it wasn't really the service.
Guest:She would just make, she would come back, like my mom started a group, my mom had breast cancer, and she started a group called Share, which is a, she started the first self-help group for women that had breast cancer, because at the time there were no support groups, so then women went to this,
Guest:horrible trauma of having a cancer and having a breast removed and having two breasts removed and having a surgery.
Guest:And it obviously is a very complicated thing for anyone and for a woman.
Guest:There was no support groups.
Guest:So she started this support group and she was on 60 Minutes.
Guest:They profiled her.
Guest:But she was big on cancer and helping women with breast cancer.
Guest:But she would come home and she'd be like, I'm so sick of these
Guest:Fucking AIDS people.
Guest:They're getting all the money.
Guest:These fucking AIDS people.
Guest:Fuck leukemia.
Guest:Fuck leukemia.
Guest:This is bullshit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and so she would turn it all into like this game.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Where she really did care.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But she would get so caught up in.
Marc:Politics.
Guest:The politics and having fun with.
Guest:You know, if you think about it, there's a certain amount of money and AIDS research was going to get so much money.
Guest:leukemia um and breast cancer and so and so and and my mom was way out before the nfl was wearing pink yeah you know and breast cancer was something that was so uh commonly fought for my mom was was really fighting now it's like it's like so prevalent it's crazy and your sister's not in show business is she
Guest:No, no.
Guest:My sister's a CASA.
Guest:My sister has one of the most intense jobs.
Guest:Do you know what a CASA is?
Guest:A CASA?
Guest:CASA.
Guest:It's an abbreviation, and I can't remember what it's for, but basically she works in child service protection.
Guest:So if a kid is being horribly, you know, has a cracked out father and no mother and is being sexually abused or, you know, some...
Guest:These are unbelievably horrible stories.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:She has to come in once the child's been separated from the parents and do deep investigation to determine whether the child should be reunited with the parent or should go into foster homes.
Guest:It's like, I mean, not to get heavy on, but it really is like the stories about...
Guest:you know she's in newark new jersey and that's around the area it's heavy when you hear the stories of what these people are these children are going through and how these children are born at you know so far away from home plate it's ridiculous you know it's like they don't have a fighting chance and what did she try to find them healthier situations or i mean basically the the dream job is to get a child adopted by a good family so like that's the big win yeah but it's
Guest:really hard you know and and you see these these um children and she works with when they're 12 and they're in foster homes and then 14 and there's and by 16 they can't no one's going to adopt them and they've been you know but then when they're 18 they age out of the system so it's bye-bye
Guest:Does she keep in touch with them?
Guest:She tries, but it's like, you know, you've got to draw some line.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:So is she a social worker then?
Guest:Yeah, it's a form of social work, but it's called CASA, and for anyone that listens and knows anyone in the world of CASA, these people are like true angels, and they're doing the work that nobody wants to look at.
Guest:And I mean, the stories of abuse and neglect that I hear are like mind-blowing.
Marc:And so you come out, you went to college.
Marc:Did you study acting and shit?
Marc:I studied theater, yeah.
Guest:Where at?
Guest:Well, so I didn't get into my backup college.
Guest:I applied to like five colleges.
Guest:Were you bad in high school?
Guest:Yeah, it was horrible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I was maybe...
Guest:underdeveloped uh and mentally because i was really stupid in college like i just couldn't like i could were you partying and beating people yeah yeah i was like fighting and drinking and like chasing girls but like i was just refused to study you know and like but i could coast by with like c's and an occasional c minus and like maybe every once in a while a b minus you got a lot of charisma charm them out of it yeah i don't know i guess i did have some but i my backup sports no sports
Guest:Not really, no.
Guest:I tried to play football, but I wasn't... I wanted to be... I thought I could be a great quarterback.
Guest:I had no skill for it.
Guest:And finally, my senior year, they put me as a defensive end, and I really like... And I should have done that the whole time.
Guest:But...
Guest:I didn't get in to any of the schools I applied to, and my fallback was Tulane.
Guest:And I didn't get into Tulane, and my college guidance counselor came up to me and was panicked.
Guest:He was like, dude, you didn't get in anywhere.
Guest:This is very unusual.
Guest:And he goes, there's a school in Minnesota called Macalester College.
Guest:It's not much of a school, but they'll take you.
Guest:And I called my parents.
Guest:I'm like, there's a school called Macalester.
Guest:They're like, take it.
Guest:And I took it and I went there and I'd never been to Minnesota.
Guest:All I knew was the Minnesota Vikings were the purple people eaters.
Guest:And I thought they were cool when I was a kid, but I knew nothing other than it was fucking cold.
Marc:I like Minnesota.
Guest:I do too.
Guest:I love Minnesota, but I didn't know anything about it.
Guest:And when I got there, I was very confused.
Guest:I'd never seen the school.
Guest:I had no idea what I was doing.
Guest:And like the second day I- Went blind?
Guest:Yeah, totally went blind.
Guest:And I had to meet with my faculty advisor, right?
Guest:So, you know, right?
Guest:Did you have a faculty advisor at BU, right?
Guest:Yeah, I did actually.
Marc:BU, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:so my faculty advisor's name was dan kaiser and it happened that he was like in the theater department which was just an awful theater department tiny little yeah st paul minnesota liberal arts college theater department uh and they're like uh he said you know i might use a nice guy and yeah he was in charge of building all the sets and doing all that right and he's like so you got to take a history course and okay i'm gonna take american yeah
Guest:You take a math course.
Guest:And he's like, do you have any idea what you want to do?
Guest:I said, no.
Guest:He said, well, you got to take an arts course.
Guest:And I said, OK.
Guest:He's like, listen, have you ever done any acting?
Guest:I said, nope.
Guest:He said, well, would you be interested in taking acting one?
Guest:I'm like, I don't think so.
Guest:He's like, here's the deal.
Guest:Our department, we have nobody in it.
Guest:We're about to be closed down.
Guest:Would you take acting one?
Guest:Just we need bodies.
Guest:We need bodies.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went in for my first acting class, and it's a good story, I think.
Guest:There was like me, eight girls, and a guy of non-clear gender, unspecified gender.
Guest:But a group that had never been around, right?
Guest:And I'm sitting there, and this teacher comes in, Dr. Hatfield was his name, and he starts talking about, you know, we're going to learn about acting principles.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:And the door opens and this older guy, like 75-year-old dude comes in and he's like, you guys are in the wrong classroom.
Guest:And Dr. Halford's like, no, this is acting 1A.
Guest:And the older teacher, no, I'm Professor Wilson and I've got a debate class and you're in the wrong room.
Guest:And they start arguing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it gets bigger and they start screaming at each other.
Guest:And we're all sitting there like, what's happening here?
Guest:And this old man's getting right in the head and he's screaming and like spits flying.
Guest:And they're just screaming at each other about whose class it is.
Guest:And we're just like mesmerized watching these two guys scream.
Guest:All of a sudden the old guy stops and he reaches up and he grabs his forehead and he pulls his face off.
Guest:What?
Guest:He was a senior theater actor and it was a mask.
Guest:And he was, oh, his name was Conrad something.
Guest:He was the best actor in the school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this was part of his senior project.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was like, oh my God, that is so...
Guest:cool that he did this.
Guest:And then it was like, that's what acting can be.
Guest:And I got the chills, you know?
Guest:And I'm like, I kind of think this is awesome.
Guest:And that hooked me.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:That was then it just- That's a pretty dramatic way to get hooked.
Guest:I mean, it was wild.
Guest:And then to my parents' horror, I just kept, I declared myself a theater major.
Guest:And the great thing was, it was St.
Guest:Paul, Minnesota.
Guest:We had this shitty little theater, a
Marc:It's a good theater town, though.
Guest:Well, Minneapolis, that's the truth.
Guest:Minneapolis had the most theaters per capita.
Guest:It was a great theater town.
Guest:Had the Guthrie Theater.
Guest:But there was no pressure in my college.
Guest:Nobody thought about Hollywood.
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:I couldn't name an agent, an agency.
Guest:Of course, no one knew.
Guest:But we were just in Minnesota having fun, writing plays, directing plays, making little movies.
Guest:You stayed there the whole four years?
Guest:All four years, yeah.
Guest:And my roommate in college was Ari Emanuel, who's become a successful agent slash tycoon.
Guest:Yeah, he's big.
Guest:And his brother, Rahm, Ari went to that little college?
Marc:Yeah, he was one year ahead of me.
Marc:At that little shitty college?
Guest:He didn't get into any of his... It was a school full of Midwestern kids from Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Guest:Is that how you met the Dillon kid?
Guest:Yeah, Maria Dillon went there too.
Guest:Yeah, we all went to the same college.
Marc:Get the fuck out of here.
Guest:Yeah, we all went there, but none of us got into any of the schools.
Guest:So this is like upper middle class fuck-ups?
Guest:It was upper middle class.
Guest:Yeah, I would say I was like lower upper middle.
Guest:We weren't upper middle.
Guest:We were just above middle class.
Marc:But you guys had money, but you couldn't get into the good school.
Guest:So you end up at this shit school.
Guest:We end up there.
Guest:Why Maria Diller?
Guest:She's from there though, right?
Guest:But yeah, Bob Dylan had some Minnesota blood, and so she had some connection, but still, it was never clear exactly what Maria was doing there.
Guest:But Walter Mondale went to Macalester, Hubert Humphrey went to Macalester.
Marc:Really?
Guest:So it's not a bad school.
Guest:No, but it was on a downward tick, I guess you would say, when we were there.
Guest:Right, okay.
Marc:But in terms of meeting a few people just by coincidence in college.
Guest:We had no idea.
Guest:What I would say is my son is a freshman at University of Texas now, and I see the agonizing that people go through with college.
Guest:You see the trouble that Felicity Huffman is in or Lori Loughlin's crazy lanes that people are going to because they're just so...
Guest:focused and they think the college decision is so critical.
Guest:I mean, for me, my college was, it was an accident.
Guest:I had no idea what was going to happen.
Guest:And I just truly fell into something that I really loved doing.
Guest:So when did you come out to Hollywood?
Guest:Right after college.
Guest:On whose suggestion?
Guest:I mean, why would you think to do that?
Guest:Well, I was thinking about going to film school.
Guest:I just had this vague idea.
Marc:Were you making some little films in college?
Marc:Little.
Marc:Like 16, 8?
Marc:What, eight millimeter videos?
Guest:Less than eight, like three.
Guest:There weren't even eight millimeter films.
Guest:But no, we would make eight millimeter films or shoot videos.
Guest:But no hands-on, no lessons about filmmaking.
Guest:No, no, nine.
Guest:But there was a college in Minneapolis called Minneapolis College of Art and Design that actually had a decent film program.
Guest:And I was just always interested.
Guest:I would go down there, and I would volunteer to work on little shoots.
Guest:And I had this feeling.
Guest:I just was like in deep.
Guest:I can't explain it.
Guest:It was a calling of some sort.
Marc:Was that where you got interested in Prince in Minnesota?
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:We used to see Prince.
Guest:We'd get the call that Prince was going on at 2 in the morning at First Ave.
Guest:And we'd all go down there, and it would be like Prince, Keith Richards, and Mick Jagger.
Guest:The Stones would have done his show.
Marc:Come on.
Guest:Yep, I saw prints with Ike and Tina Turner.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I saw prints with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.
Guest:So that was his bar?
Guest:It wasn't his bar.
Guest:I don't think he owned it, but that was the bar, First Avenue.
Guest:That's where they shot Purple Rain in the movie, Purple Rain.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But Prince was just beginning.
Guest:The music in Minneapolis at that time was Husker Du, if you remember Husker Du.
Guest:The replacements were just started.
Guest:I did all the band bookings at my school, and I booked the replacements like three times.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, one time, Paul Westerberg, I went backstage with his check after the show, which was like for $3,200.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I walked back and they were just hammered in this classroom that they were using.
Guest:And he was taking his guitar and smashing it through the drywall.
Guest:And I just stood there and I watched him hit like five times.
Guest:I'm like, hey.
Guest:And I just ripped the check up.
Guest:No, you didn't.
Guest:I go, you just keep going, dude.
Guest:You just bought the wall.
Guest:And he was like, you didn't care.
Guest:But there was like a band called The Suburbs.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who's your dude to?
Guest:Did you book them?
Guest:Bob Mould went to my college for two years.
Guest:He went to McAllister.
Guest:Bob Mould went to McAllister.
Guest:He was a scary dude.
Guest:He was- Not so scary now.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:Sweet man.
Guest:But he would wear combat pants and military boots and black.
Guest:He looked like a white supremacist or something.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I didn't know that he was just like very sweet, sensitive gay man.
Guest:And you would never know that for me.
Marc:They were the- He was a little tortured then, I think.
Guest:Yeah, but they were loud.
Guest:Like Tusker Du was a loud, loud band.
Marc:It was amazing.
Marc:It was really quite a music city.
Marc:And same with Boston when I was in college.
Marc:There was a lot of shit going on there too.
Marc:But that's interesting.
Marc:So you knew the replacements a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, I knew Paul Westerberg a bit and the Stinson Brothers and Prince.
Guest:And then there was Prince.
Guest:You knew Prince?
Guest:Well, no, I didn't know him.
Guest:But then it was Prince.
Guest:And then there was Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who ended up producing all of Janet Jackson's music.
Guest:Morris Day, too?
Guest:Morris Day.
Guest:So we'd go and watch The Time.
Guest:And Steve Brill and I thought we were...
Guest:Well, that came later when we thought we were Morris Day and we wore Paisley sports jackets out to clubs in Hollywood like fucking morons and like trying to pick up girls.
Guest:It never worked.
Guest:It worked a few times, actually, but it rarely worked.
Marc:It never went the way we wanted it to.
Marc:So you just come out here on like, but no one tells you to come to LA.
Marc:You got no friends here or your friends with Maria or what?
Guest:So the only guy I really know, because everyone else moved to New York and Maria wasn't here, but that wasn't,
Guest:She was going to law school, actually, I remember.
Guest:I knew a guy named Sam Galletti, who works for a family called the Galletti Brothers down in San Pedro, which is a very connected family, Italian family, was at the time.
Guest:And I met him when I was in college.
Guest:they controlled Terminal Island, they controlled the port, and they were a powerful Italian family, like connected, like legit.
Guest:So you knew that guy?
Guest:And he invited me to stay with him.
Guest:You went to college with that guy?
Guest:I met him at college, we had an interim, the month of January was so cold, they would encourage you to do some sort of program.
Guest:So I went to Miami, no, I'm sorry, Orlando, to this college, Eckerd College,
Guest:And there was a one-month business seminar.
Guest:I just wanted to go somewhere warm.
Guest:And I met Sam Galletti, who's the son of the Tony Soprano guy that ran the Galletti Brothers.
Guest:And he was like, Pete, if you ever come, you should come live in Long Beach, San Pedro.
Guest:Come to LA.
Guest:We'll show you some of the clubs in Long Beach.
Guest:And I called Sam and go, hey, I'm moving to LA.
Guest:He's like, great.
Guest:I moved to LA.
Guest:They took care of me.
Guest:I stayed at their house for a month.
Guest:That's where I ended up working on a fishing boat where you gave me the guitar because I needed to make money.
Guest:And Sam's like, what do you do for money?
Guest:And I'm like, I don't know.
Guest:I guess I'll wait tables.
Guest:He's like, work on a fishing boat.
Guest:You make $5,000 cash.
Guest:I'm like, really?
Guest:He's like, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Pete Dillett.
Guest:Well, how'd you meet Brill?
Guest:I met Brill at... I spent the summer before my... This was a crazy summer.
Guest:The summer before I went to college, I worked at the Concord Hotel in upstate New York.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Which I don't think is there, but that was like... In the Catskills.
Guest:Yeah, the Jewish Poconos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Jewish Alps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this was a huge hotel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dining room had thousands of people and working there was just wild.
Guest:All Jews all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll be the busboy and you'd have the same family for a week.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the father would be like, son, come here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he'd pull out a $100 bill.
Guest:He'd rip it in half and go, here, you get the other half at the end of the week if we're happy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we had all these taped hundred dollar bills.
Guest:Really?
Guest:But we had the shit job.
Guest:Brill got to work in the bar at the comedy club, at the Concord.
Guest:He had this like, Brill just always knew how to work it.
Guest:Like I had the shittiest job there.
Guest:Brill had the best job there.
Guest:So we knew each other from that summer and we became good friends.
Guest:And then like two years into L.A., I'm at the Coconut Teaser.
Guest:Do you remember that?
Marc:Up on Sunset.
Guest:Sunset where Hyde is, the club Hyde now.
Guest:Which the Coconut Teaser was a great wild club.
Guest:They had like eight different bars.
Guest:Right at Crescent Heights.
Marc:Crescent Heights and Sunset.
Guest:But you could get like lobsters and tequila shots at four in the morning.
Guest:It was this crazy club.
Guest:And I was waiting in line to get a lobster and a tequila shot at four in the morning.
Guest:And I hear like...
Guest:And it's Brill.
Guest:And I'm like, I really loved him.
Guest:And I still do.
Guest:I always will love him.
Guest:I will always love you.
Guest:But we just immediately reconnected.
Marc:So after the fishing boat, when do you start doing show business?
Marc:Because Brill seemed to know what he was going to do the whole time.
Guest:So the first job I ever got was working on a Eurythmics video called Missionary Man.
Guest:And Brill knew somebody who knew somebody.
Guest:Brill was the bottom line, bottom barrel PA.
Guest:He got me in to be right under me.
Guest:So all he did was order me around.
Guest:And I had to go get ice at four in the morning at Vons.
Guest:And some guy pulled up in a car as I was loading the ice in my car.
Guest:And he was like, do you know where the 134 freeway is?
Guest:And I'm like, I think you go up.
Guest:And he's just staring at me with this kind of odd look.
Guest:And I'm like, you go up to Vine.
Guest:And then he's like,
Guest:I'll give you $25 if I can blow you right now.
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:He's like, I'll give you $25.
Guest:I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:Come on, you did it.
Guest:I got $40.
Guest:I did not do it.
Guest:But I come back, I'm like, bro, this is horrible.
Guest:This isn't show business.
Guest:I'm being propositioned in the parking lot of Vons with ice.
Guest:It is show business.
Guest:It kind of is.
Guest:And that was my first shoot that I ever worked on.
Guest:Missionary Man?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This was when Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were huge.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then he just kind of, that started just spiraling and just hundreds of production jobs.
Guest:I worked in almost every job.
Guest:As a PA?
Guest:As a PA, as a prop guy, as a grip, as a go do whatever it is.
Guest:What assistant does?
Guest:be a grip without being a grip no like a PA grip but back then in independent films that were non-union you could actually be a grip and like they bring you in as a PA but you're Holland Dolly so that's sort of how you learned what everything was yeah it was like film school for me and I learned quite a bit so
Guest:So then I started missing acting because in college I did act a lot.
Guest:But you were friends with Jacob too.
Guest:I talked to Jacob here.
Guest:Jacob Dillon?
Guest:Yeah, years ago.
Guest:Yeah, because I would hang out in the Dillon house, Sarah Dillon.
Guest:And I can remember like- You told me one of the funniest stories.
Guest:Dillon with the noses?
Guest:Yeah, that's the best.
Guest:So that was the first time I ever went into that house in Beverly Hills.
Guest:I went up and I'm standing, it's this big house, and I've never been in this kind of house.
Guest:I'm standing by the door and I'm knocking and no one's, and I kind of turn it and the door opens a little bit.
Guest:And it's this big entryway and I can hear screaming.
Guest:But it's coming from way down this hallway.
Guest:And I'm kind of like, Maria?
Guest:Maria, and I kind of am, you know that you sort of slowly walking into a house, but you don't want to.
Guest:And I'm standing there and I'm looking down this hall.
Guest:All of a sudden, the door opens, and at the end of the hall, it's Bob Dylan, and he slams the door, and he's coming at me charging like pissed, right?
Guest:And I'm frozen, I'm locked eyes with Dylan, and he stops, and he turns back around, he goes back to the door, and he opens the door, and he goes, and I ain't paying for no more noses!
Guest:And one of the Dylan daughters had, I guess, had a series of nose reconstructive enhancement surgeries.
Guest:She wasn't happy.
Guest:She wanted another one, and Dylan was having none of it.
Guest:It's a nose job.
Guest:And he screamed, I ain't paying for no more noses.
Guest:And then he just stormed right by me, didn't acknowledge me, and stormed out of the house.
Guest:And that was it?
Guest:Did you ever meet him again?
Guest:Oh yeah, I met him a bunch of times.
Guest:I used to go to his boxing gym.
Guest:Dylan has a boxing gym in Santa Monica, where we used to go, kind of a private gym, and I spent a lot of time with him.
Guest:And then I left and started my own boxing gym.
Marc:Oh, so you have a boxing gym?
Guest:Yeah, I own a boxing gym in Santa Monica, Churchill Boxing.
Guest:And you and Jacob still friends?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:I haven't seen him a long time, but we're not.
Guest:Because you were there at the beginning of The Wallflowers.
Guest:You guys were playing.
Guest:So I remember sitting with Jacob waiting for Maria at that same house, and we're watching MTV, and that Prince video to Kiss came on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're watching, and Jacob was just like, had a guitar, was just like, you know, picking at it.
Guest:And within 40 seconds, he was playing the song.
Guest:Like he had it down.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was like, damn.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, is that normal that you could just pick up?
Guest:He was like, I don't know.
Guest:But he was, and he was probably maybe 15 at the time.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Maybe not even.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But he was, I was a very talented fan.
Marc:A lot of guitars around.
Marc:But so you started acting, because I remember the weird one with, who's it, Linda Fiorentino?
Guest:Oh yeah, Last Seduction.
Marc:The Last Seduction, you were in that, and then I remember, didn't you and Brill both do 21 Jump Street?
Guest:Yeah, 21 Jump Street was my first job, and I got cast
Guest:For me, I was playing in a softball game.
Guest:I was playing catcher with no face mask on in North Hollywood.
Guest:And some dude came up and ripped it hard, foul-tipped it right into my mouth and blew up my mouth and ripped my whole face open.
Guest:And Steve Brill's uncle, the one that plastic surgeon, he put like 200 stitches in my mouth for free because I had no health insurance and sort of fixed me up, so I own that.
Guest:That's why your lips fucked up?
Guest:Is it fucked up?
Guest:No, I'm just wondering.
Guest:If my life's fucked up- It's a little scar, right?
Guest:Yeah, it was like all the way down the middle.
Guest:It was like just two pieces of meat hanging off my face.
Guest:From a softball?
Guest:Yeah, but I wish it was a better story.
Guest:No, it's good.
Guest:First of all, it was a hard softball.
Guest:To this day, if you ever see someone playing catcher in a softball game, even if it's a soft softball, this was a hard softball.
Guest:And he's like, I see it all the time.
Guest:Some guy's just casual.
Guest:Some girl's dead.
Guest:Thinks it's a safe position.
Guest:They don't understand what can happen.
Guest:A hard swing and a foul tip.
Guest:Say a pitch is coming in it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:20 miles an hour or 10 miles an hour.
Guest:A hard foul tip can jettison that ball to 30, 40 miles an hour and it hits you in the face.
Guest:You gotta wear a mask.
Guest:It's like getting, you've got to wear it.
Guest:I for a long time would stop if I was driving by a softball game with strangers and be like, you gotta wear a mask.
Guest:Or, like, they'll put a little kid behind there who's just, ugh, a little kid.
Guest:Like, that's crazy.
Guest:You could kill them.
Guest:Wear a mask, Pete Berg says.
Guest:So I have, like, I've got, like, three Vicodin in me, 200 stitches, and Ari and I are doing what we always do on Saturday nights because we have no money, and no, we're not, we're just driving around.
Guest:You know, gross?
Guest:No, Ari Emanuel.
Guest:Oh, Ari Emanuel.
Guest:We're driving up and down Laurel Canyon.
Guest:We just had nothing to do.
Guest:Is he your agent?
Guest:No, we're just friends.
Guest:He was an assistant at CAA at the time.
Guest:And we see this giant party, right?
Guest:All these cars and valets, and we're like, let's go.
Guest:And so we park and somehow sneak in this party.
Guest:It was the woman that produced One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Guest:I can't remember her name, but it was her house.
Guest:I thought Mike Douglas produced it.
Guest:He was one of them, but there's a woman also, if you look it up, who was like the main producer, who produced it with Michael Douglas.
Guest:And we go in, it's a big party, there's security, but somehow we get in.
Guest:My face looks like a deformed baseball is attached to it.
Guest:I look like the elephant man, like some version of the elephant man.
Guest:And we get in and we get this big buffet of food and we're sitting down and I go sit, because we're hungry, because we have no money, it's all this food.
Guest:I just want to eat, and I'm eating, but I can't really get the food in my mouth because it's falling on my... I'm sitting by the fireplace on the stone.
Guest:And all of a sudden, I'm looking down, and I'm staring, trying to get the food in my mouth.
Guest:And I hear... I sense someone standing over me, and I hear, what are you doing?
Guest:I look up.
Guest:And there's this woman standing that kind of looks like Cher.
Guest:I think it is Cher.
Guest:She's like, what are you doing?
Guest:I'm like, I'm sorry, and we're gonna leave.
Guest:She's like, no, I'm just gonna ask her, what are you doing?
Guest:And what the fuck is wrong with your face?
Guest:So I start trying to tell her my story.
Guest:She's like, are you an actor?
Guest:I'm like, whoa.
Guest:Kinda, you know, I sort of wanna be.
Guest:And she's like, call me.
Guest:And that was a woman named Lori Rodkin, who at the time was like the star manager.
Guest:She did Brad Pitt, she did Robert Downey Jr., she did Judd Nelson, Virginia Maxon, Sarah Jessica Parker, and others.
Guest:She was like, if Lori Rodkin blessed you, and Lori Rodkin, for some reason, took an interest in me,
Guest:And it was literally, you know, so people ask like, well, how do you get in a business?
Guest:I'm going to classes.
Guest:I had 200 stitches, three Vicodin, and I'd snuck into a party.
Guest:It was opening my mouth to get like beef in there.
Guest:And this woman thought that was...
Guest:I caught her attention.
Guest:And she immediately got an agent to sign me just because she said so.
Guest:And that led to my first audition ever, which was for an episode of 21 Jump Street, where I played a bully that extorted money giving wedgies to students.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, at the end of the movie, Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise gave me a wedgie at the end of the episode of 21 Jump Street.
Marc:But then you acted for a bunch of shit.
Marc:Yeah, I did.
Marc:But that was sort of your main bag.
Marc:You did a little bit in Brill's movie, you were in Aspen Extreme.
Marc:I remember though I ran into you and you were like, shocker.
Marc:You were shocker.
Marc:Shocker boy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Every time you go to the airport, it's shocker.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Shocker.
Guest:That brought me up with the African-American community greatly.
Marc:Yeah, and the Midnight Clear, that got you good reviews.
Marc:Ari Gross was in that too, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he was in that one.
Marc:And then like the weird movie with Linda Fiorentino, remember?
Guest:Yeah, that was the first one that actually kind of hit
Guest:It didn't make money, but it was The Last Seduction.
Guest:And that was the one that was like the first film that was like, you know, John Dahl directed it.
Guest:Aspen Extreme.
Guest:Which was a cult classic, by the way.
Guest:Okay, fine.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've had people, my character's name was Dexter Riteki.
Guest:I've met a lot of kids named Dexter Riteki.
Guest:So it would be like, not just Dexter Marin, it's Dexter Riteki Marin.
Guest:I get it.
Marc:They named them the full name.
Marc:But you did Copland.
Marc:So you're saying that The Last Seduction is the one that got you some attention and you were sort of in it?
Guest:Yeah, you did a lot of fucking movies, dude.
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I was acting my ass off and it was James Mangold when I did Copland.
Guest:I had a small role in Copland.
Guest:At the time, Copland was... Should have been a great movie.
Guest:Well, it was the movie.
Guest:This was Harvey Weinstein in his glory days, right?
Guest:All the power in the world.
Guest:He had Robert De Niro in it.
Guest:He had Stallone, who had gained all this weight, who was going back to trying to win an Oscar.
Guest:De Niro, Ray Liotta, Harvey Keitel.
Guest:This was the movie.
Guest:And I had a small part in it.
Guest:And...
Guest:I would sit there on the set.
Guest:I would be waiting for a bunch of people, and I would wait for my line.
Guest:And I was watching this young director, James Mangold, who's had a tremendous career.
Guest:He just did Ford vs. Ferrari and has done many great films.
Marc:Did he do that remake of Yuma?
Guest:Yeah, 310 to Yuma.
Guest:Yeah, he did that.
Guest:He's had a great career.
Guest:He had done some little art film, and Harvey Weinstein saw him, and he got this...
Guest:Copland.
Guest:Copland.
Guest:But I would sit there, and I'm like, I would be watching, I was bored out of my mind, and I was watching this young kid, I was my age, and he's in the middle of arguing with De Niro and negotiating with Stallone, and here's Harvey Weinstein, and I'm like, whoa, that looks like that's where the action is.
Guest:What's that job?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I knew what a director was, but I'm like, wait, he's my age.
Guest:I'm like, James, can I talk to him?
Guest:How do you do this?
Guest:He's like, you gotta write.
Guest:You gotta write a movie.
Guest:If you write a movie, you have a shot.
Guest:You can hold your own.
Guest:You can fight back.
Guest:And I'm like, wow, okay, how do you write a movie?
Guest:He's like, would you have an idea?
Guest:And I kind of did have an idea.
Guest:He's like, what I do is I take note cards and I write like first scene, second scene.
Guest:And when that's all done, I start writing it.
Guest:But I don't write until I kind of have a good idea.
Guest:So I'm like, okay, I'm down with that.
Guest:And at the time I was staying at the Essex House Hotel on Central Park South.
Guest:Do you know the hotel?
Guest:So it's like this beautiful hotel.
Guest:What were you doing there?
Guest:That's where they put me.
Guest:For the movie.
Guest:Yeah, for the movie.
Guest:I was living at this hotel, and most of the rooms look out over Central Park.
Marc:It used to be on SNL.
Marc:They used to be like, oh, guests of SNL at the Essex back in the day.
Guest:Yeah, because of these beautiful views.
Guest:But I wasn't in one of those rooms.
Guest:I was on the backside.
Guest:I was in the cheap side.
Guest:Looking at a jersey?
Guest:Well, not even.
Guest:Just looking at a wall.
Guest:I had this tiny little room, like maybe 300 square feet with a bed.
Guest:And I immediately went and bought note cards and pens and did what James Mangold, his system, which is that you color-coded according to characters.
Guest:And I would come home, and so all the actors would be going out partying, going, I'd be like, no, I'm going back to my room.
Guest:And I would start writing out like scene one, this character and this character are getting their wedding license, scene two, scene three.
Guest:And I would lay the cards out.
Guest:I would come back every night and lay the cards out.
Guest:and I had to push all the furniture aside, because the room was so small, and I had this whole floor of my room, and so it was all, right, my script.
Guest:And I came back one day, and the cleaning lady had put all the cards away, right?
Guest:And I had numbered them, so I'm like, oh, fuck that.
Guest:And I had talked to her, I'm like, please don't do that.
Guest:I'm writing a script.
Guest:And she's like, what is a script?
Guest:I go, it's a movie.
Guest:And I'm like, what's the movie about?
Guest:And I tell her, right?
Guest:And she steals her idea, and her name is Jennifer Lopez.
Guest:Her name was Elena.
Guest:And I start telling Elena about this movie.
Guest:It's gonna be about four guys that go to Vegas and accidentally kill a hooker and the barrier in the woods and all.
Guest:And she's like, my writing mute.
Guest:I'm telling you.
Guest:And she's like, what's gonna happen next?
Guest:I'm like, well, then they're gonna come back and one of them's gonna be about to rat and they're gonna kill him.
Guest:She's like, oh, I like it, right?
Guest:And so I've got the room.
Guest:My whole room is the script.
Guest:It's all over the walls.
Guest:I'm like,
Guest:I'm like crazy, right?
Guest:Like I'm living in my script and I'm deep into it and I'm going to work and I just wanna come back and write and I come back and I try to put my key in the door and the door won't open, right?
Guest:What's happening?
Guest:You know, it was like magnetic, so we go down the lobby, I'm like, my key and they're like, oh, manager comes up, Mr. Berg, we had a problem, we had to change rooms.
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:It's like I have this system that's like, I can barely, I'm like, what?
Guest:I'm sorry, but there's a problem, come with me.
Guest:So we go, I was on like the third floor in the back, right?
Guest:So we go down, we're on like the 34th floor, we're going up high and we get off and I go to go left to where the cheap rooms are, and she's going over this way.
Guest:And we start going to the right to where the good rooms are.
Guest:And we start walking down the hall and we're going by the rooms.
Guest:And there's like how they have suites at the end.
Guest:And we're getting this suite, like the double door.
Guest:And it's like the park suite or something.
Guest:And it's getting closer.
Guest:And I'm looking to turn.
Guest:And she walks right up to the park suite.
Guest:And she opens the door.
Guest:And it's this big ass suite, right?
Guest:And living room and dining area.
Guest:And they pulled out all the furniture.
Guest:And they laid out my whole script for me.
Guest:And she goes, Elena's been telling us about what you're doing.
Guest:We at the Essex House want you to know we support you.
Guest:We want you to be successful and do it.
Guest:And I still get choked up.
Guest:And she finished your script.
Guest:And that was my first movie, Very Bad Things.
Guest:That's where that movie came from.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And that became the beginning of me wanting to not, you know, I started, I love acting, but then I got bit.
Guest:And for anyone that hasn't seen very bad things, what we like to say is very bad things walked so the hangover could run.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I've told Todd that before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like we were a little bit ahead of ourselves and maybe not quite as organized as the hangover was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But we were a dark story set, you know, four or five guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party and some very bad things happened.
Marc:After you do Very Bad Things, does that automatically put you in the running as a director that can do things?
Marc:I mean, how do you get jobs after that?
Guest:So Very Bad Things was pretty unanimously just devastated, ravished by the critics, right?
Guest:No one liked it.
Guest:Well, there were a couple.
Guest:So the thing about Very Bad Things that was interesting was for every 10 were negative reviews and there were some real bad reviews.
Guest:Anyone that thinks they've gotten a bad review in their career, read my review of Kenneth Turan, LA Times review of Very Bad Things.
Guest:And I've done this with friends of mine, directors, I've got freaking out about a review.
Guest:I'm like, dude, you have no idea what a bad review feels.
Guest:Read Kenneth Turan's review of Very Bad Things if you have a free moment.
Guest:If you're sitting on the toilet.
Guest:But for every 10, there would be one great review.
Guest:So I'm going through this disaster of the film didn't make any money, and I'm getting these bad reviews, and I literally threw up at one point, and I was devastated.
Guest:And I get a call, and it's from a guy named Ron Meyer, who ran Universal Studios, very powerful guy.
Guest:He's calling me.
Guest:It's an international call.
Guest:And he's with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg on vacation on a boat.
Guest:And they had just watched very bad things.
Guest:And Steven gets on.
Guest:He's like, I love this movie.
Guest:David Geffen gets on, Pete, you made me laugh.
Guest:I needed to laugh.
Guest:That's David Geffen and Steven Spielberg.
Guest:And I'm like, I'm getting ravished by the critics.
Guest:And then Ron Meyer's like, Pete, you got to make a movie for us at Universal.
Guest:You got to.
Guest:And that went, it was that moment got me the rundown, this movie I did with Dwayne Johnson.
Guest:That was a big movie.
Guest:Which, yeah, that was my, but it went from, like, I was done.
Guest:I was done.
Marc:But you managed to, but we didn't even talk about that.
Marc:So you finished your script for Very Bad Things, and then how'd you set up the movie?
Guest:I got Christian Slater to be in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Had a little juice then?
Guest:Was a huge star then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Had a lot of juice.
Guest:And I got Cameron Diaz, who had just done The Mask.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got Jon Favreau, who no one knew.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I got Jeremy Piven, who no one knew.
Guest:And Daniel Stern.
Guest:But it was Christian Slater that was the trigger for the money.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And you did it independently or set up a studio?
Guest:So we did it independently with this company, Graham King, who has gone on to make a fortune, who did...
Guest:Oh, he produced the Queen movie and others.
Guest:But the whole movie was hinging on Christian Slater.
Guest:And it took us months to close his deal.
Guest:We didn't have that much money to pay him.
Guest:And finally we closed the deal.
Guest:And like three days before I was supposed to start shooting, Christian calls me, he's like, we're in, we're doing it.
Guest:And I'm like, great.
Guest:And he goes, let's celebrate.
Guest:And we go out.
Guest:And I didn't know Christian that well.
Guest:And we, Christian at the time,
Guest:could really go.
Guest:And we were really going.
Guest:And at a certain point, I'm like, I gotta go home.
Guest:Start shooting in three days.
Guest:And I go home, and at five in the morning the next day, I get a call from the lawyer of the company that's putting up the money.
Guest:He's like, are you watching this?
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:Turn your fucking TV on now.
Guest:And it was actor Christian Slater arrested for attempted murder of an LA police officer.
Guest:That night?
Guest:That night, after I left.
Guest:And I'm like, we've spent three months trying to get the movement.
Guest:You can Google it.
Guest:It's all in there.
Guest:Christian went a little hard and went to another couple of parties after I went home.
Guest:And the cops came to one of them and suggested that he leave.
Guest:And he got into a little tussle with the cop and somehow got the cop's gun.
Guest:And they don't like that.
Guest:But so he miraculously was able to stay in the movie and go to jail after the movie wrapped.
Guest:And then he cleaned up?
Guest:Yeah, he cleaned up, and he's doing great.
Guest:But Christian was the one who... It was him.
Guest:He was a huge star back then.
Marc:The attachment.
Marc:You attached him.
Marc:His attachment got the phone.
Marc:And then you get this amazing call, and so you do the rundown, right?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:But then, so now you're going...
Marc:Now, how are you figuring out the style that you sort of get known for?
Marc:Because Friday Night Lights and then on into Hancock, you have a certain way of lighting and a certain pace or a crackling to it.
Marc:Was that from working with a specific DP?
Marc:No.
Guest:So it came from... You know what I'm talking about?
Guest:Yeah, well, so I shoot a lot of handheld cameras and I do a lot of improvisation and I like things to feel very real, right?
Guest:So that's like the method behind my madness for when you're coming on the set and being like, Mark, just go over there and start doing this.
Guest:I don't want you thinking too much.
Guest:I'm watching you very closely.
Guest:You actually had a really hard job in Spencer Confidential.
Guest:He's got a huge amount of information, you know, backstory that had to get out that was, you know,
Guest:Actually, if you're paying attention, it's interesting, but it's very hard to do.
Guest:One of the reasons I thought you could do it is you're a great orator and you've got stand-up experience and you know how to deliver lines and understand the power of the spoken word.
Guest:And I felt it required that, but my approach is like, all right, I'm just going to watch Mark and see what he's doing.
Guest:And rather than trying to control Mark, I'm going to be there to help or to guide or to encourage you.
Guest:if things really go sideways, okay, but you were able to deliver.
Guest:And that came from, I really learned how to direct when I was an actor on Chicago Hope, where we would do, but nowadays people do TV series, they do eight episodes, right?
Guest:That's like a TV series succession is eight episodes, 10 maybe.
Guest:Well, we were doing 28 episodes a season, 28 episodes of TV.
Guest:that would make people understand eight hours a day, eight days a week, we would shoot 16 hours a day.
Guest:And so I would have 28 different directors that I could learn from.
Guest:And you did like 100 episodes of that.
Guest:I did a lot, yeah.
Guest:Until I did very bad things and then asked to leave the show and I got written off the show.
Guest:because all the other actors wanted more, and I wanted to start directing.
Guest:But I learned, you know, we would have all these directors.
Marc:You must have gotten checks for that for years, Chicago Hoax.
Guest:I did okay.
Guest:You know, back then, there were only three networks, and we would be on Thursday nights opposite ER at 10 o'clock, and we would come in second.
Guest:We would lose to ER every Thursday, and ER would have 39 million viewers, and we'd have 34 million viewers, and everybody would be furious.
Guest:He'd be like,
Guest:God damn ER, they're killing us.
Guest:34 million viewers every Thursday.
Guest:It was crazy.
Guest:I was famous.
Guest:But I would look at all these directors and we would have two types of directors.
Guest:We'd have these older guys that wanted to be feature directors who wanted to prove they still had it, right?
Guest:And they'd be setting up marks and talking to you about your character and taking hours to light shit, right?
Guest:And they would be bad, and the worst ones would be the young graduates from the film schools, right?
Guest:I just graduated USC film school, blah, blah, blah, I'm gonna show you what if... And we would waste so much time.
Guest:And it was so tedious and slow, so the second I started directing and having real control, which was Friday Night Lights, I'm like, we're shooting handheld, we're improvising, we're winging it, I wanna destroy the preciousness of filmmaking.
Guest:That's just never been my style.
Guest:Chris Nolan is obviously a wonderfully talented filmmaker, and I love his movies.
Guest:That's not the way I work.
Marc:Well, who are your guys then?
Marc:Who do you look to?
Marc:Who are either your mentors or your contemporaries that you can sit and compare notes with?
Marc:Todd kind of shoots, Phillips shoots kind of like that.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, directors are sort of islands.
Guest:It's rare that we all get together and talk, but I do have quite a bit of respect for Todd.
Guest:I like Alfonso Cuaron quite a bit.
Guest:Michael Mann has always been a bit of a mentor to me.
Guest:He's produced a couple of my films and someone who I've looked up to.
Guest:We have different styles of work.
Guest:Jon Favreau is someone who I've remained close with.
Guest:I know how hard it is to do the job consistently.
Guest:It's like someone comes out and makes a great movie, their first movie, and everyone's talking, and I'm kind of like, okay, good, let's do it again.
Marc:Well, yeah, and now you do, like, when you do these really big movies, it's like, what is it about, what is the disposition necessary?
Marc:I guess because I've noticed it from working with directors.
Marc:I mean, you've got to be pretty focused and not overwhelmed with, you know, what's resting on your shoulders necessarily.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, I direct all kinds of things.
Guest:I just directed a documentary on Rihanna.
Guest:I followed her for three years.
Guest:It comes out later this year.
Guest:I just directed two Super Bowl commercials.
Guest:I'm getting ready to direct a TV series for Netflix, a limited series.
Guest:I've directed little things, big things, medium things.
Guest:For me, I treat it all equally the same.
Guest:I really don't think about the money.
Guest:I just try to focus on the moment and capture, make every moment as real and as good as it can.
Guest:But do you have a DP that you use regularly?
Guest:Yeah, Tobias Schleser, a German DP.
Guest:And I have a team of guys that I've worked with, like my core group, my editor, my DP, my first AD, my visual effects guys, my special effects guys.
Guest:It's like, because I work a lot, so I'm almost always on a film set.
Guest:It's very helpful to have a shorthand with those people.
Guest:And we've all had horrible breakdown fight, knock down, drag out fights, and also been there for each other and too thick and thin.
Guest:So as a result, I've kind of reached a point where I'm like, when I first started directing, Mark, when I was doing very bad things, I didn't know what I was doing, right?
Guest:If you walked up to me and said good morning, I'd be like, fuck you, Mark, what do you mean good morning?
Guest:What fuck does that mean?
Guest:You'd be like, Pete, I'm just saying good morning.
Guest:Really, that's all it means, can I get you breakfast?
Guest:I was so insecure and I didn't know what I was doing that I was tense.
Guest:Now, I've done a few of them.
Guest:I don't have that insecurity.
Guest:I'm much more relaxed.
Guest:I'm much more willing to let things flow.
Guest:If an actor looks at me and goes, I don't understand what we're doing, I might easily say, I don't either.
Guest:What are we doing?
Marc:I really don't know.
Marc:I haven't figured it out yet.
Marc:You work with big guys now.
Marc:You work with big actors.
Marc:What are some of the challenges that you're dealing with John Malkovich on two movies?
Guest:I mean, most actors love this style.
Guest:Like when I did Hancock with Will Smith, I had Will Smith, Jason Bateman.
Guest:That's a good movie, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I had Will Smith, Jason Bateman, and Charlize Theron, right?
Guest:Three pretty heavy hitters.
Guest:And Will had heard, I had worked with Jason Bateman, and Will had heard about how I shoot, which is very loose.
Guest:I won't cut, I'll keep talking, I'll talk to you during the shot.
Guest:You talk over the intercom.
Guest:Yeah, I say, try saying this, try saying this.
Guest:You always use that, the intercom?
Guest:A lot.
Guest:Bullhorn?
Guest:Because I can stare.
Guest:Stay on the monitor.
Guest:I can stare at the monitor and I feel like I'm in your brain.
Guest:Mark, try doing this.
Guest:Say this, Mark.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Just tell him that.
Guest:Yeah, it's just like speakers.
Guest:Ask him why there's two steering wheels, Mark.
Marc:Whatever it is, right?
Guest:And if I sense that you're cool with it, which most actors are, it's like I'm just like in your head.
Guest:And because I've acted, I'm not afraid of... Some of the directors are terrified of actors because they think there's some magic thing around them if they touch the wrong...
Guest:but an actor's gonna explode.
Guest:I sometimes like to be touched and pushed around and told what to do.
Guest:So when we were doing Hancock, Bateman, who I'd worked with, told Will, and so Will was interested, and he asked me a lot of questions, and I told him, I showed him how I do it, and said, yeah, let's do that.
Guest:And he hired me, and then we brought Charlize on.
Guest:And the first day of rehearsal,
Guest:Charlize was like, can I talk to you?
Guest:I'm like, yep.
Guest:And she's like, I've heard about that thing that you do and Will likes it.
Guest:I don't do that.
Guest:I don't want that.
Guest:I need to cut and I need to regroup.
Guest:I'm like, okay, no problem, we'll do it.
Guest:And she's like, okay, cool.
Guest:So the first day of shooting, we're shooting and I'm getting into coverage and I'm talking to Will and I'm talking to Jason and then we get to Charlize stuff, I do take, I cut.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm sitting there going, okay.
Guest:And she's looking at me and I'm looking at her and the hair and the makeup people coming off.
Guest:I'm like, should we do it again?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Do it again.
Guest:Cut.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then halfway through at lunch, she comes up to me.
Guest:She goes, that thing you're doing with Will and... Do that with me.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:And it was like...
Guest:I've never had an actor not love it.
Guest:The only negative reaction sometimes is like, wow, we get it quickly.
Guest:Actors are used to working on something for four or five hours.
Marc:The way you shot this one that I was in, I'm like, how's he going to make a movie out of that?
Marc:I couldn't even do the last part.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so sometimes actors are like, are you sure?
Guest:It just went by so fast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that came from me hating the preciousness that was kind of pounded on me when I was acting in television at Chicago Hope.
Guest:And you'd see that you'd shoot 18-hour days, and 90% of the footage never made it into the final product, so it's all a waste of time anyway.
Marc:And I think also that kind of wears down actors, too, in the sense of it feels like, what am I, garbage?
Marc:What am I just... Unless you're a huge actor, it's like, do they even respect
Guest:what you're doing it takes all the joy out of the process it does that's why i was so hell-bent on getting out of television acting at the time it was really kind of a treadmill to oblivion yeah you know someone described it to me once it's like you just it's it's no fun i mean it's but now everyone's going back to television because television is where it is but yeah but it's much different this was back at the time three networks
Guest:You were doing 28 episodes a season.
Guest:And you're in the same three sound stages or the same two sound stages.
Guest:We're in the same blue scrubs.
Guest:I was a bowel doctor, so I was always doing the bowel surgeries.
Guest:Maybe that's where I learned about the prolapsed bowels.
Guest:But I'd be cutting animal intestines and sewing them up all day.
Guest:I'm like, this is crazy.
Guest:This is not what people think it is.
Guest:But then there were guys like David Kelly, who people don't necessarily know who David Kelly is, but the most prolific television writer I know of.
Guest:And producer.
Guest:And producer.
Guest:He's doing Pretty Little Liars now, the show on HBO with Nicole Kerman, which I like.
Guest:But he at the time... What was the big one with Coleisa Flockhart?
Guest:Oh, Ali McBeal.
Guest:And he did the one with William Shatner and James Spader.
Guest:But at the time, he was doing a show called Picket Fences.
Guest:which was a very popular show, and he was doing Chicago Hope.
Guest:Both were Emmy Award, not consistently Emmy.
Guest:He was writing, what's 28 by 28?
Guest:He was writing 56 episodes of television every season, two episodes a week by himself of two different shows.
Guest:He'd write all of it, and that was where the action was.
Guest:And David Kelly was so prolific, and nobody's ever put up statistics like that.
Marc:So when Friday Night Lights got popular and you sold it to television somehow, how did you get that story?
Guest:Why did you choose Friday Night Lights?
Guest:So my cousin is Buzz Bissinger.
Guest:I just made a documentary on him or was involved in it.
Guest:The guy who wrote it?
Guest:Yeah, who wrote it.
Guest:You should watch a documentary.
Guest:It's called Buzz.
Guest:It's on HBO.
Guest:He's a genius.
Guest:You would like him.
Guest:You should have him on your show at some time.
Guest:You've never heard of him?
Guest:No, not until now.
Guest:So he's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
Guest:He's written, used to write for Philadelphia Inquirer.
Guest:And he's your cousin?
Guest:My cousin.
Guest:And he wrote the book Friday Night Lights.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he went and lived in Texas and, you know, is this like short Jew who's now like cross-dressing and trisexual and is deeply into S&M and all kinds of crazy stuff.
Guest:But this Harvard educated, very, very intelligent, wonderful guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who's just had an incredible plot twist in the second half of his life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wanted to try something new.
Guest:He did.
Guest:He tried a lot of new things.
Guest:Watch the doc buzz.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He wrote the book, and I loved the book, and I was starting my career, and before Rundown, he's like, you should make this, and they couldn't get a director to make it, but after Rundown, I had a little bit of clout, and I'm like, I'm going to make Fire Night Lights.
Guest:And that was really the beginning of my directing career taking off.
Guest:You know, I went...
Guest:And I lived with the football team in Texas for a year and kind of walked in the shoes that Buzz Bissinger had walked in and fell in love with that culture, you know, and realized that football, you know, was more than a game to those people.
Guest:And it was a way that cultures, that neighborhoods and towns and communities were organizing themselves.
Guest:And it was a big deal.
Guest:And while we were filming the movie,
Guest:We would film some real playoff games, high school football playoff games, so we could cut those into the film.
Guest:And I was at a high school game in Austin, Texas.
Guest:We had two cameras there, and I'm watching the game.
Guest:And in the fourth quarter, it's a close game, and the home team's coming back.
Guest:There's 55,000 people at a high school football game.
Guest:The place is going crazy.
Guest:I mean, it's wild.
Guest:And in the fourth quarter, the...
Guest:Home team throws a pass, and the receiver goes up for it, and this defender hits the guy with his head and tackles him hard, and the defender, who's a 15-year-old boy named David Edwards, broke his neck and was an instant quadriplegic, and I was there, and it was chilling, and the place went dead quiet.
Guest:The guy tackled him.
Guest:yeah because he lowered his head and that's how you break your neck if you hit someone with the top of your head yeah your neck can go any way but down right and so it's called an explosion fracture yeah and the explosion fractured his vertebrate and um it was the really the first truly horrible thing i think i ever witnessed and
Guest:The stadium went dead quiet, and the only sound you could hear was his mother screaming, but you couldn't figure out where she was screaming and screaming, and she came on the field, and you could just tell this was a horrible accident.
Guest:And he became a quadriplegic, and I got to know him well, and he ended up dying three years later.
Guest:But I felt after the movie like...
Guest:I still had so much connection to that culture.
Guest:And then I wanted to do a TV series.
Guest:So I wrote the pilot and in the pilot, the first episode, the quarterback, the star breaks his neck.
Guest:And I really did it just because I think I had, I wanted to get something.
Guest:I wanted to do something about David Edwards.
Guest:And then it just turned into this kind of popular TV show.
Guest:Yeah, but you produced it.
Guest:How many did you write?
Guest:I wrote like the first two.
Marc:Oh, so you didn't do a David Kelly thing.
Guest:No, hell no.
Guest:Jason Kadams deserves like, you know, I directed a bunch of them and came in and did the casting for the reloading for the second season when we brought like Michael B. Jordan and some of the other actors.
Guest:But I couldn't, I ran one show called Wonderland before that.
Marc:I know you brought me in on that one.
Guest:On a psychiatric hospital.
Guest:No, the psychiatric hospital?
Marc:Yeah, don't you remember?
Marc:I was in New York.
Marc:And I think you gave the part that I read for to Esposito.
Marc:Or no, he heard Piven.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:Yeah, Piven had a part in it.
Guest:Like it was almost like a stand-up part.
Marc:Stand-up comedian.
Guest:Yeah, I'm sure I did.
Guest:Stand-up comedian who went insane, yeah.
Guest:And then, but was there another one?
Guest:Was Giancarlo in one of them?
Guest:Yeah, Giancarlo was in, that was a really good one.
Guest:He played, he was in a, so Wonderland was about, was a little ahead of its time.
Marc:Right, no, because I think, like, you know, you were thinking of me for the stand-up, but then I read for the Esposito part, because he was on the floor.
Marc:I was on the floor.
Marc:Yeah, that was a multiple personality character.
Marc:He had like eight characters.
Marc:Yeah, I couldn't, it was out of my ballpark.
Marc:I remember sitting there with you.
Guest:That was an acting, he was a beast in that, Giancarlo.
Marc:I think I read for both of them.
Guest:I'm glad we've been able to work together.
Marc:But what happened with that show, though?
Guest:Well, so it was a show, you know, it was on ABC, right?
Guest:Owned by Disney.
Guest:And it followed Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Guest:And it was a very, very dark show about a psychiatric hospital, about mentally ill.
Guest:And in the pilot, in the opening episode, a doctor, a guy goes and shoots up a bunch of people in New York.
Guest:And they bring him in.
Guest:And the doctor, this pregnant female psychiatrist, recognizes him because he had come in two days earlier.
Guest:And she thought he was lying.
Guest:And she kicked him out.
Guest:And so she's feeling all this guilt.
Guest:And she's trying to talk to him.
Guest:And the character grabs a syringe, a big needle, and starts trying to kill himself.
Guest:He's poking himself in the neck with it.
Guest:And this pregnant doctor grabs the syringe and they're fighting and the gurney flips over.
Guest:And when Elder clears, the needle is sticking into the belly of the pregnant psychiatrist.
Marc:And that was the end of the series.
Guest:So I was young, and everyone I knew told me to just not have the shot of the needle, but I knew better.
Guest:And I'm like, you know what, this is my show, and everyone's like, okay.
Guest:And they aired it.
Guest:And they gave me every break opportunity.
Guest:And it was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a huge hit.
Guest:We went right into that to show.
Guest:And back then you had the Nielsen ratings.
Guest:So you could track exactly how many people were watching.
Guest:When it stopped.
Guest:And the second that needle, right?
Guest:90% of the TV's turned off.
Guest:Just boom, off, right?
Guest:For a week.
Guest:Right, so I'm at my house, and I knew we had a problem with the ratings, right?
Guest:And I get a call.
Guest:It's like 11.30 at night, I get a call.
Guest:And it's late.
Guest:I was in New York.
Guest:So it's 1130 in New York and I get a call and it's from LA.
Guest:And so I'm calling from, this is Michael, is Peter Berg there?
Guest:Yes, Peter Berg.
Guest:This is Michael Eisner's assistant.
Guest:Can you hold for Michael Eisner?
Guest:So Michael Eisner, for people that don't know, was the chairman of Disney, was the most powerful guy in Hollywood at the time, was the big boss.
Guest:Like he was the shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure this is Michael Eisner.
Guest:I don't believe it, right?
Guest:So I hear this voice, hello.
Guest:I go, go fuck yourself, Joe, because I think it's my friend Joe playing a prank on me.
Marc:You hear these kind of prank mistakes so often.
Guest:So I hang up on Joe, right?
Guest:The phone rings back again, and it's Michael Eisner.
Guest:This is Michael Eisner.
Guest:I don't know who Joe is.
Guest:This is Michael Eisner.
Guest:Oh, Mr. Eisner, I'm sorry.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I'm sorry, sir.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I thought you were somebody else.
Guest:He's like, yeah, I got that.
Guest:He's like, I'm calling about your show.
Guest:Yeah, I got that.
Guest:I'm calling about your show, Wonderland.
Guest:And now they basically just told me they're going to cancel it.
Guest:Ari is now kind of working as an agent.
Guest:He's like, they're canceling your show.
Guest:And we've done nine of them.
Guest:No, no, we hadn't done nine of them.
Guest:We were scheduled to do nine.
Guest:We had nine scripts.
Guest:I'm like, I am deeply passionate.
Guest:This is before the rundown, right?
Guest:This is like my big move before the rundown.
Guest:And he says, you know, I've seen this show about mental illness.
Guest:And let me just tell you one thing.
Guest:It's diarrhea.
Guest:I'm like, thank you.
Guest:He goes, you can tell me it's creative and I'm going to tell you it's creative diarrhea.
Guest:You can tell me it's stimulating and it's original and I'll tell you it's stimulating original diarrhea.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You can tell me it's important.
Guest:I'll tell you it's important diarrhea.
Guest:And there's no important diarrhea, Peter.
Guest:I'm like, okay, I got it.
Guest:I got it.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:He's like, yeah, okay.
Guest:So we have a problem.
Guest:And I said, what?
Guest:He's just killing me, right?
Guest:I go, what?
Guest:He goes, my wife loves this show.
Guest:She says, it's the best thing we've got.
Guest:We've got to put it on the air.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, your wife has very good taste, sir.
Guest:I admire that.
Guest:And he's like, I want to show to be 70% medical and 30% of your little psychiatric diarrhea.
Guest:And I'm like, 60-40.
Guest:He's like...
Guest:70, 70, 30.
Guest:30 diarrhea, 70 medical.
Guest:He wants me to turn it into ER.
Guest:I'm like, 60, 40.
Guest:He goes, 50, 50, and you got to pick up.
Guest:I go, deal.
Guest:And so I made that deal with him.
Guest:We had to recast and turn it into kind of half doctors saving lives and half... But there's still some really good episodes there.
Guest:How many did you make the air?
Guest:We ended up doing... I think we made eight...
Guest:Two made the air and then he killed it.
Guest:But then you can get them.
Guest:They were on Netflix for a while.
Guest:They were wild shows.
Marc:Yeah, I remember it seemed really wild.
Marc:So a couple things.
Marc:I forgot.
Marc:I just remember I had this other memory.
Marc:I remember there was another time I saw you where we went to Brill's first wedding.
Marc:In Kentucky.
Marc:Yeah, when the dude fainted.
Marc:Do you remember that?
Marc:I just remember being at a table, not knowing anything about Hollywood.
Marc:It must have been 94 or 95.
Marc:I don't remember when it was.
Marc:And I'm sitting there with you and your wife, your first wife.
Marc:Elizabeth, yeah.
Marc:And I'm sitting next to Elizabeth Shue.
Marc:And everybody knows Hollywood.
Marc:And I don't know anything.
Marc:Elizabeth Shue is telling me about being and leaving Las Vegas, which hasn't been out yet.
Marc:Yeah, she was famous.
Marc:Almost, but I guess all bets were on it.
Marc:And I was sort of like, well, good luck with the movie.
Marc:I knew nothing.
Marc:And I just remember her being so cold and so horrible to me.
Marc:And your wife was rough, too.
Marc:She was tough.
Marc:Yeah, she could be rough.
Marc:I was just a little intimidated.
Guest:You were also like the easy guy to be rough, too, because you were sort of like...
Guest:supremely you were always just dangerous like no one knew what the fuck was going to come out of your mouth they still don't yeah you were you were you cared but you didn't yeah and and you were kind of on your own path so these women nobody really knew what to expect from you they couldn't just write you off is this like weird dude from Boston right because you had too much yeah swagger for that and I think you know
Guest:Yeah, just sort of like, well, maybe that guy will land.
Guest:Well, yeah, but like for a woman like my ex-wife or Lisa Shue, you're going to be like, they don't know what to make of you, so they're going to like clam up and not give you a lot because you're kind of like a human weapon system.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:You are.
Guest:You Mr. Swagger.
Guest:Well, but like when I was dating Whitney Cummings, and she would talk about you like you were this god, and I'm like, Mark Barron?
Guest:I might go do his podcast.
Guest:He's like, you be careful of Mark.
Guest:You don't know what he's capable of.
Guest:I'm like, Whitney, what are you talking about?
Guest:No, you don't know what he can do to a person.
Guest:I'm like, come on.
Guest:But, you know, so Whitney was a slight, a little bit younger than us.
Marc:She says hi, by the way.
Guest:She says hi to you, too.
Guest:I told her.
Guest:No, I saw her last night.
Guest:I went to the store, and I said I was going to interview her.
Guest:Was she going out?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:She's always there.
Guest:I mean, that was...
Marc:I can't imagine it.
Guest:She's quite a woman.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You guys still okay?
Guest:Yeah, we're good.
Guest:I mean, I love her.
Guest:It's just as I said to her after several months of dating her, you are a lot.
Guest:You are a lot.
Guest:She'd be the first to admit that, I would think.
Guest:Yeah, she is.
Guest:But as generous, loving, intelligent, the work ethic is unlike anything I've ever seen.
Guest:She's...
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:You will always have love in my heart.
Guest:And your kids are good?
Guest:My kid is good.
Guest:I don't know if there's kids.
Guest:If there are, I don't know.
Guest:You only have one kid?
Guest:Yeah, just one son.
Guest:He's a freshman at University of Texas.
Marc:And you get along with the ex, too?
Guest:Very well.
Guest:The ex that was mean to you.
Guest:We get along very well.
Marc:She was mean.
Marc:They're just intense.
Guest:Well, she was intense and mean to me.
Guest:So, dude, join the party.
Guest:Is she still in the business?
Guest:She actually works for my company.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, she's great.
Guest:She's someone I trust.
Guest:Do you find that it's hard to find people that you trust the longer you go in this business?
Marc:Well, you know, the weird thing about my business is very small, is that I've got my business partner, my producer of this show, who I've worked with for a decade, and I don't spread out.
Marc:I don't know how to delegate.
Marc:Delegate stuff, yeah.
Marc:So that's why I have a small world.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:You have a big fucking production company.
Guest:Yeah, I got a whole company and like 100 people working there now.
Guest:And it's interesting how it's just hard as you get older to find people that you trust and that you can count on.
Guest:And then suddenly you wake up and you're the oldest guy in the room.
Guest:You're the boss.
Guest:And you look like, all right, we've got to get someone to solve this problem.
Guest:And you realize you're the guy.
Guest:At the end of the day, I'm happiest writing and directing movies and TV shows.
Guest:And learning how to manage a company and have a business.
Marc:So each department, each one of these departments have heads.
Guest:Yeah, they all have a head.
Guest:And then I have a great CEO, this guy, Matt Goldberg, who's a really great businessman.
Guest:But still, I have to assume some responsibility for understanding how much costs.
Guest:I mean, we have two human resources people.
Guest:and three accountants.
Guest:And I'm like, what's going on?
Guest:It's turned into a real company.
Marc:But you definitely have to trust people.
Guest:Yeah, you have to delegate in trust, and you realize that there are just not a lot of people out there that you can trust.
Guest:Not that they're untrustworthy, but if you're looking for people to kind of grow a business, or you've got the aspiration of opening up a larger operation, and that requires other people doing their jobs.
Guest:And as I say, it's like...
Guest:I don't know, tacky as it may sound.
Guest:As I get older, I realize, you know, in business, the most important job by far is the person that can divorce the other person from their money, right?
Guest:So I've got to be, if I'm going to direct a movie, I have to be able to go and look at my bosses at Universal or Netflix or wherever it is, look them in the eye and say, you know, I need a ridiculously large amount of money.
Guest:You need to give it to me.
Guest:I am going to take it.
Guest:I'm going to...
Guest:make up this story and I'm gonna make a movie and I'm gonna give it back to you and people are gonna love it and you're gonna make a lot of money and you're gonna say thank you to me.
Guest:That's the hardest job.
Guest:At the end of the day, in business, that's what we do.
Guest:We're sellers, we're a production company and finding people that can actually go out and close deals and bring the work in, it's a very hard skill set to find.
Marc:No kidding.
Marc:Is there some sort of thing that you want to do that you haven't accomplished yet with the movies?
Marc:Like make your Oscar movie?
Guest:I want to make a love story.
Guest:I'm writing it now.
Guest:I always joke.
Guest:I'm always telling people, where you're working, I'm making a love story.
Guest:My movies are very violent generally.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:But they actually are kind of love stories.
Guest:They just generally tend to be about kind of male brotherhood and male camaraderie.
Guest:But I've joked for a long time that I want to make a love story and people ask me what I want to do.
Guest:And I would always be in the middle of some giant action sequence and I'm like, I just want to be on a beach.
Guest:With a boy and a girl and a bottle of wine in south of France on a camera.
Guest:And they're kissing and they're crying.
Guest:I don't want this shit.
Guest:And I joke, but the truth is I do want to make a love story.
Guest:So I have the idea and I'm writing it now.
Marc:This is going to be a big departure for Pete Brown.
Guest:Well, it's still pretty twisted and there's a military component to it, but it's a love story.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:It's a love story.
Marc:You won't disappoint your fans.
Marc:It is a love story.
Marc:Good talking to you, pal.
Marc:I love you.
Marc:We did it.
Marc:I love you too, man.
Marc:I thought it was going to be, I thought you were going to just, I don't know what I thought.
Marc:It worked out good.
Marc:You seem relaxed and nicer when you're older, but I don't work for you.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I am relaxed and nice, and you seem relaxed and nice too, and you didn't attack like Whitney Cummings said to you.
Guest:Why would I do that?
Guest:I don't know what the fuck she's talking about.
Guest:Ask her.
Guest:You scare people.
Guest:How am I going to attack Pete Berg?
Marc:How does that end well?
Guest:You never know, but especially when there's a hammer on your desk.
Marc:No, it wouldn't have been a hammer, and you weren't going to say anything you didn't want to say.
Marc:What am I going to do?
Marc:But why are people scared of you?
Marc:Because I'm intense.
Marc:I don't think you're that intense.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:If you know me, you don't.
Guest:See, people make assumptions about me.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:People think I'm intense or I'm mean.
Marc:I heard that you are prone to sometimes physically guiding your camera people around the set.
Guest:No, like throwing them around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can fucking go.
Guest:Move.
Guest:Move.
Guest:Because I'm trying to get the shot and they're not getting it.
Guest:I got to help them.
Guest:But not hurting.
Marc:I never hurt anyone.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I forgot to bring that up.
Guest:I have probably done that.
Marc:Well, good luck and thanks for putting me in the movie and I'm looking forward to the military component in the new love story.
Guest:Thanks, buddy.
Marc:All right, that was Pete Berg.
Marc:As I said, that movie, Spencer Confidential, premieres this Friday, March 6th, on Netflix.
Marc:My special, End Times Fun, premieres March 10th.
Marc:That's Tuesday.
Marc:Very exciting.
Marc:Now I will play my new guitar badly.
Marc:Can't get the hang of it.
Marc:My hands were stiff.
Marc:I'm sick.
Marc:I'm sick.
Marc:Hopefully I'll talk to you on Thursday.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.