Episode 1227 - Eric Bana
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf still going strong what is it 12 years in a long time
Marc:I just know that I'm doing comedy at the comedy store and you have to have a proof of Vax to get in.
Marc:They're going to open up full tilt.
Marc:And I think that makes it a little better.
Marc:I'm sure some people are lying or showing bootleg counterfeit credentials, counterfeit Vax credentials.
Marc:And I know that there are some people out there that want to take this as an affront, as a vaccination passport or as a some sort of initiative to get people who don't want to be vaxxed, vaxxed.
Marc:It is not.
Marc:All it means is that if you're not vaxxed, you can't get in.
Marc:It's no judgment.
Marc:Do what you want.
Marc:But you can't go to this particular comedy show.
Marc:The world is your oyster on vaxxers.
Marc:unvaxxed but you can't go to a few things for now and you're gonna whine about it is there any end to the whining is there any end to the grievance but uh so yeah it's kind of an interesting new world but as i said to you before i don't it it feels fine to me it does not feel strange and
Marc:I'm excited.
Marc:I'm excited to be going out into the world.
Marc:The only thing I'm sad about is that Lynn's not here to go out in the world, that she didn't make it through this.
Marc:And yesterday was the anniversary of her passing, and it was difficult.
Marc:I chose to go through stuff, look at stuff, organize stuff.
Marc:There's still a lot of her things here that are out.
Marc:Some things I will leave out.
Marc:Some things I will enshrine them somewhere, personal, someplace private, someplace I know of, someplace in my house.
Marc:Doesn't all have to be out.
Marc:I think that room where she was sick in does not have to remain a shrine to her passing necessarily.
Marc:But again, it was a day of reflection and a day.
Marc:I am trying to take that saying.
Marc:I think it's a Jewish saying.
Marc:May her memory be a blessing.
Marc:I think that has been most helpful to me.
Marc:That and there's nothing unusual about tragedy or people dying in this life.
Marc:Nothing unusual about it.
Marc:That and I am not the victim of this.
Marc:She was.
Marc:Those three things over the last year in the support of people, friends, and people I don't know.
Marc:Those three things.
Marc:May her memory be a blessing.
Marc:Tragedy is not unusual.
Marc:And I am not the victim.
Marc:And then ultimately meditation, the crying, the feeling your way through it.
Marc:And also the realization that there are so many people that knew her so much better, so much longer, had deeper sort of relationships and reliances and experiences with her, family, friends.
Marc:I think the hardest thing about the situation that we were in was that we were really just starting out.
Marc:So it's about grieving possibilities, grieving a life that didn't happen.
Marc:That sort of amplifies the tragedy element.
Marc:But again, tragedy happens all the time, every day.
Marc:It's human.
Marc:It's heartbreaking.
Marc:But her memory is a blessing.
Marc:And I look at her shirts.
Marc:And I touch her jacket.
Marc:And I miss her.
Marc:And I'm trying to stay open and do the work.
Marc:I didn't mention, but today Eric Bana is on the show.
Marc:Eric Bana, the actor.
Marc:You know him from Munich, Black Hawk Down, Funny People, Ang Lee's Hulk.
Marc:But a lot of you might not know that he started out in stand-up and sketch comedy.
Marc:And we talk about all that and about his new movie, The Dry, which is already a big hit in Australia.
Marc:And it comes out here in the U.S.
Marc:this week.
Marc:It's a good movie.
Marc:Also, yesterday marked the day that Brendan and myself, Brendan McDonald and me, Mark Maron, received the Governor Award at the first annual, the first installment, the first actual Ambie Awards for podcasting.
Marc:This is a...
Marc:A real award with a real governing body.
Marc:It's not just some sort of radio consultants idea of how to grift people into buying podcast things and thinking it's some sort of entrepreneurial adventure.
Marc:This is a legitimate industry driven award.
Marc:The first.
Marc:And we were given the big one.
Marc:We were given the one that means that we were we had an impact.
Marc:We were there at the inception of modern podcasting.
Marc:I will not say we were the original podcasters.
Marc:I always am told that there were many before that some broadcasted just to the next room.
Marc:But nonetheless, in this sort of new wave and the creation of the industry around us, we were there.
Marc:And we were an impactful and influential force.
Marc:And I'll take it.
Marc:And the award has a little weight to it, man.
Marc:It's kind of a beautiful thing.
Marc:It took this for me to get a prize.
Marc:It took an award.
Marc:It had to be created in the medium that I excelled in over the last decade and change.
Marc:for me to get an award again.
Marc:I'll take it.
Marc:We'll take it.
Marc:It's a weighty thing.
Marc:It's a, it's looks like a, it's like a high end trophy with a gold statuette and the, uh, it's arms, their arms are raised up and they're holding up a microphone, almost like a torch.
Marc:And, uh, but you know, it's, it's all in, uh, it's muted.
Marc:It's soft.
Marc:It's not defined.
Marc:It's almost like an Oscar.
Marc:And there's, uh, some headphones.
Marc:It's wearing some cans.
Um,
Marc:But it's exciting.
Marc:And we received that yesterday.
Marc:Yesterday was a big day.
Marc:A lot of sadness and a lot of joy and a lot of gratitude.
Marc:But underneath all that, the empty propulsion of fucking existence.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:So, look, let's just get in this.
Marc:There's no reason to go on and on.
Marc:Eric Bana, it was a pleasure to talk to the guy.
Marc:The new mystery film is called The Dry.
Marc:It opens in U.S.
Marc:theaters and on video on demand this Friday, May 21st.
Marc:I spoke to him from Australia.
Marc:And...
Marc:He's got that accent, that lovely Australian accent.
Guest:This is me talking to Eric Benna.
Marc:is that your house are you are you in your house i'm at home i'm at home this morning yeah yeah it's morning there what time is it it's nine o'clock uh friday morning and i'm in in melbourne so you've been up and at it you're you're you're you're coffeed you're ready to go coffee coffee very nice breakfast very nice home cooked breakfast excellent home home brewed coffee ready to go wow so a lot of energy in the description of that breakfast i'm gonna have to need to know i kind of need to know what that means now what do you what is the breakfast
Guest:Really excellent quality sourdough, which you'll be pleased to know I didn't bake myself.
Marc:Oh, so you weren't one of those people during lockdown?
Marc:You didn't master the yeast breads?
Guest:I feel like for every yeast bread man out there posting, there had to be an Eric Banner doing absolutely sweet F all in regards to bacon bread.
Marc:I got to be honest with you.
Marc:Towards the end here, I did bake a couple of quick breads.
Marc:No yeast involved, just a couple of Irish soda breads, but I did it.
Marc:I couldn't get out of lockdown without baking a fucking bread, and I'm not ashamed of it.
Marc:The only reason I wouldn't do more of it is because I'll eat them, and then it doesn't stop.
Marc:Then it's like nine breads, and I say I'm just perfecting it.
Marc:I've got double chins.
Marc:I can't do it.
Guest:No, I'm more than happy to hand it over to the baker.
Guest:So it was a nice bit of sourdough toast.
Guest:It's going to sound like a real tosser here, but avocado, some eggs, and a really sensational strong latte that I knocked up.
Guest:So that's the start of my day here.
Marc:Good work.
Marc:I need to know more about the word tosser.
Marc:What does it mean?
Guest:Tosser, you know, tosser, wanker.
Guest:Yeah, I get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just the minute you throw avocado into a sentence in 2020, 2021, it puts you into a category.
Guest:And, you know, maybe I'm in that category.
Marc:You got a lot of dudes that are going to be like, oh, look at the fucking toster avocado.
Marc:What is that guy?
Marc:But no, that's not true.
Marc:Most of these guys, most of these sort of enlightened meatheads, these bros and jocks are now like completely keto diet.
Marc:They're like anorexic women, most of them.
Guest:Yeah, I eat everything.
Guest:I eat everything.
Guest:I'm not that person at all.
Guest:I just like the ritual of breakfast.
Guest:It's my favorite meal of the day.
Guest:And it's what makes me really shitty when I'm working on a film that I usually don't have time to do my breakfast ritual and I have to face humans first thing in the morning.
Guest:It's my biggest struggle on a shoot.
Guest:So when I'm at home, that's my indulgence.
Guest:I like the slow start to the day with a really nice breakfast and coffee.
Marc:During lockdown, man, I watched, for some reason, I watched Munich for the third time.
Marc:And Jesus, man, you were fucking great in that movie.
Guest:Oh, thanks, man.
Guest:It was quite the experience to make.
Guest:You're not Jewish, right?
Guest:I'm not.
Guest:No, I'm half German, half Croatian, born here in Australia.
Guest:So you're really not Jewish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I'm really not.
Guest:But, you know, the funny thing is that when you're a kid and you don't really know a lot, you know, the sound of German relatives and friends, you know, doesn't sound very different to me to Jewish people.
Guest:So it took me a while to work out there was actually a difference between the two when I was growing up and that it wasn't all just one and the same.
Marc:Right.
Marc:A lot of German Jews, you know, a lot of German Jews, all German, Polish, Russian.
Marc:That's where all the Ashkenazis come from.
Marc:But when you did that movie, I mean, to be involved, like it's such a heavy.
Marc:I think it's one of Spielberg's best movies.
Guest:Yeah, I agree.
Guest:I mean, look, the subject matter was insanely appealing to me.
Guest:I'd read the book, luckily.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it just, I mean, it just like ticked every box of what I love in a film.
Guest:It was 70s.
Guest:It was a thriller.
Guest:It was an incredible subject matter.
Guest:It was a true story.
Guest:It was, you know, Spielberg at the top of his game in terms of visual styling and editing and score and everything.
Guest:And then suddenly you get asked to be a part of it.
Guest:I just, like every single day I would just pinch myself.
Guest:I would just turn up to work and look around and see all the extras, you know, dressed in their 70s gear with sideburns and nice little cars.
Guest:And it looked good.
Guest:I mean, I'm in heaven.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sometimes there's a, you know, the 70s, you know, you look good.
Marc:The 60s look terrible.
Marc:I mean, like no actor can transcend those pants.
Marc:It's just once you got the hair in the 60s, it gets hard.
Marc:But the 70s, they look good.
Guest:Well, you know, there's another thing that kind of works against you these days, which we didn't have.
Guest:I mean, on Munich, we were still shooting 35 millimeter film.
Guest:So there's another thing that works against you now is that, you know, the digital camera is so crisp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is so crisp.
Guest:And so it's kind of like our memory says that that image should be slightly crumpled and faded.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:We're not used to seeing images from the 60s that are pristine.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So there's always this kind of just a position that's going on in our mind.
Guest:Our visual reference is a bit confused.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's just too crisp.
Marc:All images of the 60s are done relative to the technology and film that they had, even still photographs.
Marc:All of it was that color was a little jacked up.
Marc:Yeah, it was a little hazy.
Marc:Everybody was high, so you kind of felt high looking at it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So then when someone does a film about the 60s in 2020 and it's shot, you know, with an almost IMAX sensor kind of camera and you don't try and degrade that image.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But no, but what did you do?
Marc:How did you get Jewish to do that?
Marc:Was that guy a real guy?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he was based on a real person who I may or may not have had a chance to meet with.
Guest:I had a really long time to prepare, Mark.
Guest:So even in the first instance, I had a really good amount of prep time.
Guest:But the film went into turnaround because Stephen was working on the script and our initial shooting window pushed to the following year.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So I went off and did another movie.
Guest:And I had Avner in the back of my head for like two years before we made the film.
Guest:And I love that.
Guest:I think the longer you have for a character to just kind of live and gestate in the back of your mind is really worthwhile.
Guest:It helps with accent preparation.
Guest:It helps with research.
Guest:And it was just a lot of time.
Marc:Well, what do you do with the guy when you got him in the back of your head like that as an actor?
Marc:You're like, all right now.
Marc:OK, I just I was just given another year to work on this.
Marc:So you kind of you're already going at it.
Marc:So do you take like an hour a day, a couple hours a week to kind of program yourself to be that guy or feel how that guy feels or look at things the way that guy looks at things?
Guest:No, I feel like it's automatic.
Guest:The minute I decide to take on a film or a character, it's like a percentage of my brain is immediately taken over by that person 24-7.
Guest:There's no switching on or off.
Guest:There's no like, today I will devote an hour to Avana.
Guest:I mean, you might do that in terms of accent preparation and reading materials and stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the rest of the world from that point forward until you finish the film is slightly skewered through the lens of that person for the whole time.
Guest:Okay, but what movie did you go shoot?
Guest:Troy?
Guest:So when that went into turn, no, I went and filmed a movie called Lucky You with Curtis Hanson and Drew Barrymore and Robert Duvall, which was a poker movie, which three people saw, including my mum and dad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:So in that case, I guess you've got two people and yourself in your brain.
Guest:But that's the thing I love about acting, though.
Guest:And sometimes it takes a long time to shake afterwards as well, and that's okay.
Guest:You're still kind of looking at the world through their lens.
Guest:But I enjoy siphoning off part of my brain to that.
Guest:There's not a lot of room up there.
Guest:So I need to give as much as I can to the character.
Marc:That's interesting that it takes a while to shake it.
Marc:Because I saw Al Pacino do American Buffalo in Boston.
Marc:And the sort of like probably the mid 80s.
Marc:And I'm pretty sure he was playing Tony Montana when I saw him do American Buffalo.
Marc:I'm pretty sure that he was he was Scarface.
Marc:But I felt there were hints of Cuban like it was still in it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:did you find yourself it's probably true no no for sure i get it you know like especially a guy like that when you're operating at a certain decibel level uh you know it was like that scent of a woman thing like you know i i think it took him years to you know but he can still do it i mean you you're very capable of it too but i could see how once you get into the groove of somebody especially a a powerful character you know how do you not how do you not get stuck with it for a while
Guest:Yeah, and I think also with, you know, your reference with Pacino, maybe what happens is the character ends up being a little bit closer to you than you realize.
Guest:And so therein lies the similarity that's hard to shake.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So whether it's with Avner, whether it's the kind of European-ness that I feel as a person that makes it easier for me to kind of like sink into his skin, I don't know.
Guest:Maybe that's something that's going on without me realising.
Guest:But I do think sometimes, you know, maybe our characters are a bit similar to us in ways that we're not really aware of and...
Guest:you know, that's probably what you're noticing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know, I could see that in your later work.
Marc:But I mean, where did that, when did you start noticing that you could, because if you're going to, if you think about these characters and they become part of you so quickly, I mean, that must've been something you did at a very young age where you were able to just sort of lose yourself in becoming something else.
Marc:It must be some strange kind of a habit you had early on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One of my favorite things to do as a kid was impersonate other family members.
Guest:And to me, the most thrilling part of an impersonation isn't the impersonation.
Guest:It's trying to work out the dialogue for the impersonation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I just always have had this thrilling sensation when I can come up with sentences on behalf of other people.
Guest:And I do it to my wife every single day.
Guest:Every single day.
Guest:I still do it.
Guest:I'll be watching the news and someone will go to talk and I will say what that prick's about to say.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure enough.
Guest:And it's this thing of like trying to put yourself in their shoes and –
Guest:If you know someone well enough, it's like anyone that impersonates their father or their mother.
Guest:It's like, you know exactly what they're going to say.
Guest:I can write the script for my parents before they walk in the door for a Sunday lunch, what's going to be discussed and what's going to be said.
Guest:I really love that puzzle.
Guest:And that was something that was there as a kid.
Guest:It wasn't something that I had to work on, something I really enjoyed.
Guest:I enjoyed making people laugh.
Marc:It's interesting, though, with parents, because I just noticed that with my parents.
Marc:It's like, you're right.
Marc:You do know exactly what they're going to say.
Marc:And I don't know if that means that they're shallow or predictable or we just know them so well.
Marc:But there is something I guess when you look at it that way, there is something actually empathetic in the act of doing an impression that you're sort of generating the dialogue for.
Guest:Yeah, I guess it must be complimentary because it means you've paid attention to that person.
Guest:And it was tricky for me back when I was doing sketch comedy because people would be like, oh, you know, are you going to – do you feel really mean when you're taking down a figure from television?
Guest:I'm like, well, no, because it's like –
Guest:I'm not trying to ridicule them.
Guest:I'm just trying to be them in a funny way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think that is complimentary.
Guest:I mean, I guess it depends on how you use the weapon.
Marc:Well, isn't that an old saying?
Marc:Imitation is the highest form of flattery or something like that.
Marc:But how many brothers and sisters do you have?
Guest:I have one older brother who's three years older.
Marc:Does he do anything in show business?
Marc:He's an accountant.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He deals in finance, so nothing at all to do with the business.
Guest:The opposite.
Guest:He's a numbers man.
Yeah.
Guest:He's a six foot seven numbers man.
Guest:You guys are huge.
Guest:How tall are you?
Guest:I'm 6'2", but I grew up thinking I was short.
Guest:Because of him.
Guest:Because of him.
Marc:But actually, 6'2", that's tall for a movie star.
Marc:Usually, they're about 5'4".
Marc:I think most of them are 5'4", 5'3", big heads.
Marc:Good for you.
Guest:Yeah, the female co-stars love it when you're 6'2".
Marc:They do or they don't?
Guest:They love it.
Guest:They do?
Guest:They do.
Guest:I think they do.
Guest:Because they all want to look tinny-tiny.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:And they don't have to look at Tom Cruise in platform shoes.
Guest:So when did you start doing real entertainment?
Guest:You didn't study it.
Guest:No.
Guest:So I started in stand-up when I was 22.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So you were an actual stand-up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did stand-up for over 10 years.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:I don't know if I've ever seen any of the stand-up.
Guest:Is there a lot of it available?
Guest:No, it's pre-digital and pre-film.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Oh, no, there's very little.
Guest:I mean, there's stuff from my sketch comedy show, but not much.
Guest:There's not much that exists out there.
Guest:And you did stand-up for 10 years?
Guest:Yeah, even after Chopper, I was still touring as a stand-up.
Marc:Because I heard you were a stand-up.
Marc:You know, I got sent home from Australia.
Marc:Why?
Marc:What'd you do?
Marc:I just tanked.
Marc:I bombed so bad, they sent me home.
Marc:I just had a bad time.
Marc:It was like 19...
Marc:maybe 91 or 92.
Marc:I think the club was called The Last Laugh.
Guest:That's one of the places where I started.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In Carlton.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What was the name of that brother and sister that ran the place?
Marc:McKenna?
Marc:Dave McKenna.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Oh, gosh, you've got a good memory.
Guest:Yeah, so that was one of the venues that I started out in.
Guest:So I started around that time.
Guest:I started around – well, I'll tell you when I started because I remember –
Guest:The Gulf War breaking out when I was in America.
Guest:And then I came back from America and I started doing stand-up.
Guest:So I think I started in 91.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:91, 92.
Marc:Yeah, I just took the gig.
Marc:You know, I just moved to San Francisco and I was maybe a strong middle act, strong feature.
Marc:But this guy saw me in New York.
Marc:He's like, you know, why don't you come headline?
Marc:And I'm like, and I knew when I said yes, it was a mistake.
Marc:Because it was like, there'll be a week of previews, then three weeks, then we'll extend to fifth week.
Marc:And I'd never traveled internationally for that long.
Marc:And it just fucked my head up.
Marc:And I just got there.
Marc:And like, after the first week, it was such a struggle.
Marc:And I went into that main room, the big room.
Marc:And you know who it was?
Marc:Big room.
Marc:It was Greg Fleet was hosting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then there was like this...
Marc:These two women who did like a musical thing, a burlesque thing with an accordion.
Marc:One of them had an accordion.
Marc:And then there was an intermission.
Marc:Or no, then a guy came out and escaped from a straitjacket on a unicycle.
Marc:And then an intermission.
Marc:And then me.
Marc:And I was like, by the time I watched all that shit, I'm like, I'm fucked.
Marc:There's no fucking way.
Marc:And man, I tank so hard.
Marc:The guy came up to me and the next day, he's like, maybe you ought to go home.
Guest:No.
Guest:That was a hard room because it was a big room and it had a really high ceiling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was like a circus in there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if it makes you feel any better, I supported the amazing Jonathan there.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:And, and that, and that room really suited the amazing Jonathan.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:His energy and his, his act.
Guest:But yeah, I, I, I know what you mean.
Guest:I know that room very well and it was really broad and it had a super high ceiling, which we don't want as a standup.
Marc:And isn't there a little room upstairs that you could play too?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a place called Le Joke.
Guest:That was good.
Guest:Le Joke upstairs.
Guest:That was better because it was a lot more intimate.
Guest:Downstairs felt like a cabaret room.
Marc:Yeah, it was the fucking worst, dude.
Marc:That was a long flight home, man.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I know that room.
Marc:I did the Steve Visard show the night before, but he was out of town.
Marc:And Russell Crowe was on the show when he had just done like Romper Stomper.
Marc:He was promoting Romper Stomper.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, wow.
Marc:No one knew who that guy was.
Marc:I didn't.
Marc:And I'm freaking out because it looks like the Letterman show.
Marc:Only the desk is on the wrong side of the studio.
Guest:It looked a lot like the Letterman show and it sounded like the Letterman show.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I get out there.
Guest:We didn't realize because we weren't getting the Letterman show.
Guest:It took us a while to put two and two together.
Marc:But that didn't go well, and they took me there right after I landed.
Marc:It was just the whole thing is like, hey, man, not your fault, but I'm glad we can connect on the fact that that room was not easy.
Guest:It was not easy for a regular kind of act.
Marc:Well, who were you guys in terms of what drove you to stand up?
Marc:Who were your friends over there?
Marc:Did you know Fleet?
Guest:I didn't know Fleet well.
Guest:I mean, I got to know Fleet and then we did a little bit of TV stuff together.
Guest:Fleet was already well established when I started.
Guest:So he was part of the old guard.
Guest:He was part of the established old guard when I got started.
Guest:I was more inspired by Americans because I wasn't, you know,
Guest:We weren't being presented with Australian comedians in Australia.
Guest:Stand-up wasn't something that was overly respected.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So Richard Pryor was my hero.
Guest:Richard Pryor was my absolute hero because I loved his acting.
Guest:I loved his storytelling.
Guest:I loved his incorporating characters into his stand-up.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That to me was like the ultimate, you know.
Guest:He didn't tell jokes.
Guest:A lot of heart.
Guest:A lot of heart.
Guest:So he was my hero.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So were you doing impressions?
Guest:Yeah, I was doing impressions.
Guest:I was using impressions in storytelling.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I was not a joke teller.
Guest:I didn't encourage hecklers.
Guest:I didn't try and get into banter.
Guest:It was like five or 10 minute stories, five minute story, five or 10 minute story structure.
Marc:That's harder because if you're not doing well with the five minutes and you're two and a half in, that's a long two and a half minutes coming.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's where the impressions are handy because anytime you break into a voice that sounds different to your own, people are kind of paying attention.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even if they're not laughing, they're paying attention.
Guest:They're excited.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Were they celebrity impressions within these stories or just people you made up?
Guest:Yeah, sometimes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sometimes, or they'd be just a random idiot, and everyone recognizes an idiot, right?
Guest:Everyone recognizes that character, even if they don't actually know who it is.
Marc:Everybody loves an idiot character.
Marc:You're not going to lose with the dum-dum.
Marc:But you never took any acting or clowning lessons or anything?
No.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:So I started out in stand up and then I and then I auditioned for a sketch comedy program, which was very similar to Saturday Night Live called Full Frontal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And and and that was my big break.
Guest:And then so it was through sketch comedy, many years of sketch comedy that I kind of like during that process figured, well, what's the difference between this and
Guest:And straight acting.
Guest:I didn't see like there was like a four year university course to decode it.
Guest:I was like, there's not a lot of difference.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's going to have a go at this.
Marc:No, I think I think that's true.
Marc:I think that like the hands on, you know, why fuck your head up with people who think they know things that are probably bitter anyways.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:when you're actually doing the hands-on experience work.
Marc:So were you doing a lot of improv or was it all written sketch?
Guest:A lot of it was written.
Guest:I mean, we'd improv when we were working in the writer's room and I had a couple of guys that I loved working with and I loved writing myself for my own characters.
Guest:But I just loved it.
Guest:And it was just it was a time of my life.
Guest:It was the most fun.
Guest:It was the most exhilarating.
Guest:We'd work Monday to Friday.
Guest:We'd record live in front of an audience on a Friday night.
Guest:And that would go to air the following Thursday.
Guest:So the turnaround was pretty quick.
Guest:You know, you were able to do stuff that was really current.
Guest:It was thrilling.
Guest:It was absolutely thrilling.
Guest:And I was done, man.
Guest:I was like, this is the end of the road.
Guest:Like this is as far as I thought, further than I thought I'd ever get.
Guest:I was happy.
Guest:How many seasons did you do?
Guest:I did four seasons of Full Frontal and then I did another year of my own sketch comedy show.
Guest:So I did five years of sketch.
Marc:So you actually had your own sketch comedy show on Australian television for a year?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you're sort of like a national star.
Guest:By the time I left the show, yeah, I was pretty well known in Australia.
Guest:The show was a really high rating.
Guest:Sketch comedy was what we did really well.
Guest:We did sketch comedy very well, and we did not do sitcoms well.
Guest:So sketch comedy was kind of like a very comfortable place for Australian audience and for Australian production.
Guest:And it was at a really high level for a lot of years.
Guest:And in fact, the end of our show was like the beginning of the end of TV sketch comedy here.
Guest:Reality TV started and a lot of those production dollars stopped being funneled into sketch comedy programs and guys like myself no longer got a break in that space.
Guest:oh my god pushed out by the horrible reality shows no intentional funny just tragic people being funny not on purpose yeah and i think they figured that live tv was just cheaper so you had you know live sporting programs more live variety and it was just it was just way cheaper than this sketch comedy stuff was expensive for them you know we had a great art department we went to a lot of trouble our sets were fantastic if we were if we were ripping off a movie that the set on a tuesday would be
Guest:would be fantastic it would be to a really high standard so the show had really great production production standards and is that like is that like the is it the same structure as like the bbc that the you know the state pays for some of it is it like that or is it independent uh no so the this the network that i was working for at the time was was a fully commercial network yeah so well it wasn't state funded at that at that stage yeah
Marc:And the people that you were working with, did a lot of them, any of them make the break to movies?
Guest:Not many.
Guest:A lot of them were straight actors.
Guest:A lot of them had come from the theater.
Guest:So there weren't many of us that were stand-ups in that space.
Guest:There were a few of us, but it was –
Guest:I think when I started, I was one of only two or three on the show that came from a stand-up background.
Guest:And so a lot of them were serious actors who did a lot of live theatre and stayed in television comedy, but not many sort of made the jump over to films.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But do you like being funny?
Marc:I mean, when was the last time you were funny on purpose?
Guest:So funny people, a little bit special correspondence.
Guest:I was more kind of foil for Ricky.
Guest:I really enjoy it.
Guest:I just don't get a lot of opportunity.
Guest:That's interesting, huh?
Guest:And it doesn't really bother me for some reason.
Guest:I've always had a lot of people say, how is it you've never done Saturday Night Live and why don't you do stand-up and why don't you do more comedies in America?
Guest:And I think because I did so much of it back in the day, it's kind of like I'm okay with it.
Guest:Like I don't feel like I have to prove it to anybody.
Marc:Well, I think those first two movies, I mean, The Castle is sort of a mythic,
Marc:you know, great movie, which that I unfortunately haven't seen, but I've heard people talk about it and I didn't really realize it until this morning that, that, that you were in it and I would have watched it cause I know it's on my list to watch, but I hear so many people talk about that thing.
Marc:That's a comedy, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's, it's a, it's a really beautiful, gentle comedy.
Guest:It's, it's a really great script.
Guest:Very original.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I highly recommend it.
Marc:And that was your first film.
Guest:That was my first film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tiny role, but yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:But like Chopper, I mean, that guy, as menacing and as bizarre as he was, he's sort of a funny character.
Marc:I mean, like that character is broad and weird and hilarious and scary and almost like a clown sometimes.
Marc:It's a very unique combination of stuff that guy is.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:He was hilarious.
Guest:He had the ability to understand a person quicker than anyone I've met to this day.
Guest:What was the name of that guy?
Guest:He had the most...
Guest:Mark Brandon Reed.
Guest:And he was he's alive still or no?
Guest:No, he passed away a few years ago.
Guest:But no, he was hilarious.
Marc:Was he a criminal that later became just sort of this, you know, infamous person about town?
Marc:What was his whole story?
Marc:The arc of that whole thing?
Guest:Yeah, so he was quite a violent criminal who then wrote a series of letters from jail to a journalist, which then formed a book.
Guest:And he just had a natural turn of phrase.
Guest:He had a very funny way of expressing himself.
Guest:And it was just enigmatic, whether you liked him or not, whether you loved him or hate him.
Guest:You couldn't stop listening to the guy.
Guest:Yeah, he just had the ability that if he was in a room, that's where the attention was going, was going to him.
Guest:He was sucking all the energy.
Guest:There was no one else in that room but him.
Guest:That was the power that he had.
Marc:Yeah, a charming sociopath.
Guest:Absolutely, yeah.
Marc:But when he got out of jail, he was sort of this strange man about town, right?
Marc:Or what?
Guest:Well, what was interesting was that after the film came out, obviously I don't want to speak for him.
Guest:It seemed to kind of legitimize him to a degree.
Guest:He remained straight.
Guest:He remained on the straight and narrow all the way through his last sort of 10 or 15 or 20 years.
Guest:So he had rehabilitated to a large extent.
Marc:Did you remain friends?
Guest:No, I'm not one of these actors that feels like it's kind of my duty or kind of,
Marc:the thing to do to i don't know i almost feel like it's more respectful to not pretend that that that we're we're of the same same world i think mark and i had this understanding it's better off i mean you know there's a you know i mean because how is that not going to be the the most codependent relationship you're like you don't want to be you know that you might not want those guys calling you every week hey what's up do me
Guest:Where are you filming next?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm coming down.
Guest:Can I get a job?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:No, I got to know him a bit before we started filming and then it just felt better to have some distance.
Marc:So what's the difference in your mind between doing an impression and portraying somebody?
Marc:Is there a different drive for you or is it kind of the same thing?
Marc:I mean, you spent time with him in order to understand him.
Marc:And then you sort of take ownership and interface your emotions with your sense of that guy.
Marc:Is there a difference between...
Guest:acting and doing an impression i think i think there is i mean obviously it's it's it's kind of like a difference between a pencil sketch and a painting right really like i could do a quick sketch and a pencil and go who's that and you'd know who it was and then i could go into a big painting and that would be a different thing so um i think the time that you're afforded in long form storytelling obviously means that you're you're going to a different level at the very core though yeah there's not a there's not a
Guest:There's not a ton of difference.
Guest:It's just what are you eliciting from that?
Guest:So are you inhabiting that person to get a laugh or are you inhabiting that person to try and tell a story and make you feel something?
Marc:So it's like you play it straight either way, but you know the context when you're doing comedy.
Marc:And when you're doing it for real, you know, I can see how it feels very different when you interact with other actors or performers in those two different scenarios.
Guest:Most definitely.
Guest:Yeah, and I enjoy the storytelling side of it, you know, because I really respect it, you know, coming from stand-up.
Guest:It's like, well, you write your material and you've got a beginning and an end and you're trying to move from here to there.
Guest:And it takes discipline.
Guest:And if it's not working, you've got to be honest with yourself about it and try and pick it apart and make it better or dump it.
Guest:And it feels that way when you're doing film as well.
Guest:You don't have as much control over the material, but you're still relying on your instinct to either make something better or express if it's not working.
Marc:And you have directors for that.
Guest:Yeah, and you hope that the relationship is such that you can have a good dialogue about it.
Marc:Did you have that with Ridley Scott on Black Hawk Down?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you're one of sort of 32 actors, but I had a really, really good relationship with Ridley.
Guest:I really loved him as a director.
Guest:It was so much fun.
Guest:It was hectic and insane and like nothing I've ever been a part of again, but the whole thing was immense.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I thought that that that redefined and contemporary modernized the depiction of war in movies.
Marc:I think that was the first truly modern war movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Visually, it was it was a bit of an assault.
Guest:I guess Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down is similar in the way that they really just try to make you feel like you were.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But just the nature of warfare was so much different in those two movies.
Marc:Like Saving Private Ryan is, you know, that's a World War Two movie like the the way that warfare works now and that the idea that you guys were there on a mission that couldn't even be publicized or acknowledged.
Marc:You know, that's insane.
Marc:The operation itself was something, you know, that you just never saw before on screen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And as a result, I think it's what made it both unsettling and really thrilling at the same time, you know, and it was kind of kind of beautiful as well.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:It's an incredible movie visually.
Marc:Now, do you when you work, because I talk to people that do, you know, you learned on your feet and you got cast in these first few movies.
Marc:I mean, were you sort of like wide open in terms of influence and, you know, what were you were learning on set and in terms of kind of expanding your own, you know, tools to do the thing?
Marc:Like when you're on Black Hawk Down, are you picking up a lot of stuff from other actors or are you self-contained?
Guest:A little bit self-contained, but I guess, you know, you're really, really open.
Guest:I mean, I'm really paying attention to the director and I love the camera.
Guest:So I'm paying a lot of attention to what they're doing and how I can help.
Guest:and where do I sit within the frame and that sort of thing.
Guest:And I love the play of working with other actors.
Guest:I try not to pay too much attention to their process because I'm sort of worrying about my own thing.
Guest:But when I'm acting with someone from...
Guest:The generation that I love, I probably pay more attention.
Guest:So if I'm working with a Robert Duvall or a Peter O'Toole or a Nick Nolte or a Sam Elliott or, you know, some of these legendary people.
Guest:Have you worked with all of them?
Guest:Yeah, I have.
Guest:Where'd you work with Nick?
Guest:Nick Nolte was in the original Hulk.
Guest:He played my father in the Hulk and it was just insane.
Guest:And he had the oxygen tank and, you know, take a hit of oxygen.
Guest:Okay, I'm ready to go, you know.
Guest:He said to me one day, he took a hit of the oxygen and he said to me, I don't really need this.
Guest:It just makes them think you're fucking crazy and they pay attention.
Guest:Ha ha!
Guest:I'm like, is this all an act?
Guest:Is this all an act?
Guest:He's something else, man.
Guest:Right on.
Guest:Let's go.
Guest:Come on.
Marc:He's something else, man.
Marc:And Duvall, that must have been crazy because you can't,
Guest:that guy so like is so subtle man he's my favorite so he's he growing up he was my favorite actor and so to get a chance he played my father in in lucky you which is the movie that you know hardly anyone saw um and he was just beautiful his work was incredible and i just loved loved watching him work um
Guest:And just picking his brain.
Guest:I just love the man.
Guest:He was just so, so interesting.
Guest:And yeah, so when I'm working with that generation of actor, it's like it does feel different.
Guest:It definitely does.
Guest:I mean, I have a lot of respect for people in my generation, but I'm not in awe of anyone my age.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's a different thing when I'm working with actors from that generation.
Marc:And you got the opportunity to do that.
Marc:What do you think it's – because those are three very different actors, right?
Marc:Nolte, Duvall, and O'Toole.
Marc:What did you work with Peter O'Toole in?
Guest:So Peter O'Toole was in Troy.
Guest:Oh, he was.
Guest:Played my father in Troy.
Guest:Actually, they all played my dad.
Guest:I just realized that now.
Guest:Duvall played my dad, Nolte played my dad, and O'Toole played my dad.
Marc:which is pretty cool.
Marc:Because they're so different.
Marc:You just did that impression of Nolte, but it would be hard to do an impression of Duvall.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's definitely doable.
Marc:You know who does one?
Marc:James Caan.
Marc:I talked to James Caan.
Marc:James Caan can do Duvall.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Because they still talk to each other all the time.
Guest:I loved how just in the moment he was.
Guest:And there were just a couple of things that he that he that he did on set, which made me go, OK, it's OK.
Guest:It's a little thing like we were doing a scene one day and there was someone standing behind in his eyeline.
Guest:And the way that he just immediately dealt with that person and had them move.
Guest:And it's easy to just keep acting in that situation.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Like the set is not always a perfect thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was just a reminder that it's just like, hey, if you need something to make your performance better, it's okay to tell someone to fucking move.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:It's not the end of the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't have to yell.
Guest:You don't have to yell.
Guest:Yeah, it was done.
Guest:It was almost like just still in the middle of the scene.
Guest:I was like, yeah, yeah, that's okay.
Guest:It's okay to do that.
Guest:Peter O'Toole was amazing.
Guest:He was so invested.
Guest:He just had...
Guest:So much energy poured into his performance at that age.
Guest:And he was he was quite old at that stage.
Guest:And it was difficult, man.
Guest:It was like 100 degrees every day.
Guest:And he's in the robe and the jewels.
Guest:And, you know, I mean, I just I was just in awe.
Marc:And he's a veteran of the epic film film.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, you know, it's Peter O'Toole.
Marc:It's Lawrence of Arabia, for God's sake.
Guest:It's Lawrence of Arabia, you know.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, you do... Yeah, there's really special days.
Guest:They really are.
Marc:And on Hulk, you know, I mean, I've talked to... Like, I'm not a big, you know, cartoon guy.
Marc:But I've been in... I did a small part in the last Joker movie, which ruined my credibility as a guy who judges cartoon movies harshly.
Marc:But...
Marc:That Hulk, the original Hulk, it's weird.
Marc:It's a divisive movie among the Hulk fans.
Marc:And it's not really, it was pre-Marvel Universe.
Marc:So it sort of stands alone as this art film that was approached in a different way.
Marc:And I imagine that must have been one of the reasons you were like, yeah, I'm going to do this one.
Guest:Yeah, it wasn't a quick yes, that's for sure.
Guest:It took me a while to get my head around it.
Guest:And you're right.
Guest:In the end, it was like it was Ang Lee.
Guest:It was going to be completely different.
Guest:I wasn't privy to the script prior to signing the films.
Guest:One of the only films I've done where that was the case.
Marc:Why did it take you a long time to decide?
Marc:I mean, what was the negotiation within you?
Guest:It just wasn't the type of film that I saw myself doing.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because essentially I just always felt like I was a character actor and that's what I was looking for.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Not a big green guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It wasn't an immediate yes.
Guest:And then I just kind of like –
Guest:I guess maybe the Ang factor and the fact that I knew it was going to be different, I decided to have a go.
Guest:But it's, you know, it's why I haven't redabbled in that area.
Guest:We probably have similar feelings towards the genre and the kind of picture I'm imagining.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um they're not the kind of movie that i i race out and see myself so that conversation is something i'm having with myself if i want to be a part of it because it's yeah it's not it's not it's it's not something i'm queuing up for you and ed norton right hulk has been a troubling character for people
Marc:But but I mean, I imagine working with Ang Lee.
Marc:How was he approaching it?
Marc:I mean, like if you're going in knowing like there's a superhero movie, but it wasn't though, given the timing of it, it wasn't as much of a spectacle as it is now.
Marc:You did not.
Marc:You weren't up against this entire sort of it's not even a subculture.
Marc:It's most of the culture.
Guest:Yeah, no, you're right.
Guest:The universe as we know it now didn't exist back then.
Guest:And you certainly didn't go into a film like that thinking you were going to do more than one.
Guest:No.
Guest:Like this notion of actors, you know, were going to go on a run and do two or three movies.
Guest:That wasn't in play.
Guest:I mean, I think the first Spider-Man had only just come out.
Guest:I think we were the next one after the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man.
Guest:So the expectations were not the way they are now.
Guest:So I guess I just approached it as a kind of one-off and just kind of, you know.
Marc:Were you approached to do another Hulk?
Marc:No, I wasn't.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:Did you feel like, well, do you feel attached to your Hulk as opposed to maybe Mark Ruffalo's Hulk or Ed Norton's?
Marc:Did you go judge other people's Hulks?
Guest:I haven't seen them all, so I can't say.
Marc:You haven't seen them do one Hulk?
Marc:Have you seen one other Hulk?
Guest:I saw Ed's.
Guest:I haven't seen Mark's.
Guest:Have you talked to Ed about your Hulks?
Guest:I've never met Ed.
Guest:Yeah, there's not a lot of Hulk intertwining here.
Marc:You would think that maybe when you guys are old, you'll do a panel show together, the three Hulks.
Yeah.
Marc:And Mark will, you'll both, you'll all be in your seventies and Mark will still be doing the Hulk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He, he, he, he's the one that worked it out.
Guest:He found his stride.
Marc:He's, he's in for life.
Marc:So how many movies like, cause some of these movies, like to be honest with you, I, it seems like they're Australian movies.
Marc:You don't, you, you stay there.
Marc:You're there most of the time, right?
Marc:I live here.
Guest:Yeah, I never moved.
Guest:So I haven't done a ton of the – I mean, I've done quite a few, but I haven't done a ton.
Guest:I don't sort of feel this kind of major urge that it's like something I have to do every two or three years.
Guest:It's just like, you know, what the pile is the pile and I just choose the best thing on the pile and sometimes it's Australian and sometimes it's not.
Guest:So, you know, recently with a movie like The Dry, which was, you know, some sort of film that I'd been looking for for many, many years –
Guest:came along and I was thrilled to be able to do that.
Guest:But I don't have a hugely strong sense of Australian-ness within my body of work.
Guest:I'm happy to be very, very open.
Guest:I love working here when I can do it, but it has to fight it out with everything else.
Marc:Well, I mean, you're born and raised there, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your folks, they're not, they were immigrants?
Marc:They were immigrants, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But did your dad have a Croatian accent?
Guest:Here's a funny thing.
Guest:I didn't realize my dad had an accent until I moved out of home.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:My girlfriend at the time said, no, your dad has an accent.
Guest:I said, my dad doesn't have an accent at all.
Guest:And then I moved out of home and suddenly I was able to do an impression of him that I couldn't do when I was living at home.
Guest:I didn't hear it.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Until I moved out.
Guest:So he has a slight accent.
Guest:Mum, not much.
Guest:Just very, very slight.
Guest:But they're very Australian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're very Australian.
Marc:And, like, do you have Croatian relatives, German relatives?
Guest:Back in those countries?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but not – yeah, we do.
Guest:I've actually got a lot of the German side –
Guest:is actually in america so so my grandmother's sister migrated to new york and my grandmother came to australia so so i do have second cousins and extended family in the states wild man yeah it's it's so it's cool it's interesting to to to actually have a sort of global internet i mean everyone has that but not not one generation away you know
Guest:Yeah, no, it does feel cool.
Guest:The Croatian side is much smaller because dad was an only child and so forth.
Marc:What did your folks do when you were growing up?
Marc:Were they happy about the acting?
Guest:They were.
Guest:My mom was a hairdresser, so I grew up in a hairdressing salon.
Guest:And my dad was a logistics manager for Caterpillar.
Guest:He worked for Caterpillar for 47 years.
Guest:Tractors?
Guest:One of the longest serving, yeah, Australian employees ever.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I think to this day, when he retired, he worked for Caterpillar longer than anyone.
Guest:So, yeah, I grew up with dad working for the tractor company, and mum is a hairdresser.
Guest:Did he get a prize?
Guest:I think he got a model D10.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I think I've got it in the garage, you know, like a die-cast D10.
Guest:They were pretty sexy when they came out, the D10.
Guest:I remember that as a kid.
Guest:That was pretty exciting stuff, seeing that triangular shape.
Marc:Did you get to go ride on the new tractors when you were a kid?
Guest:No, he was an office guy.
Guest:So the factory was down the end of the street where I grew up, and it was a warehouse.
Guest:You didn't see much actual tractor action.
Guest:They were just being shipped off to the mines around Australia and so forth.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was this had this kind of affinity with America when I was a kid as a result of, you know, dad working for an American company.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, you do.
Marc:You're definitely your your filmography is varied.
Marc:And I like that the new movie, The Dry.
Marc:I found it very powerful.
Marc:I mean, I I like I've seen quite a few Australian movies lately.
Marc:I saw that new Sam Neill movie with the sheep.
Marc:um oh yeah yeah that thing was kind of moving too i like these small kind of because there's something about the landscape of australia in certain areas where it's just like this sparse you know in these and the and all the people that live in these towns are almost like you know strange barnacles of some kind that you know you're like how do they even exist there and i think the dry really captures that really well there's there's a certain quiet menace to the whole thing you know
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Well, Jane Harper, who wrote the book, she captured that really well.
Guest:The landscape is a major character in the film and that little country town.
Guest:It's what excited me so much about the film was that a lot of Australian films depict the outback of
Guest:But they don't depict the real country towns that we from the city identify with.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:In the same way that I guess as an American, like, do you identify with America as the desert or do you identify with America as a series of a thousand towns you've been through through the course of your life?
Guest:It's the thousand little towns that you've been to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's your middle America.
Guest:That's the country, I'm assuming.
Guest:That's the country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's the same for us.
Guest:So the dry depicts that really, really accurately.
Guest:But where is that town?
Marc:Is that an outback town?
Marc:I don't know what would be called the outback.
Guest:Well, no, it's not the outback.
Guest:So it's in the wheat belt.
Guest:It's about four and a half hours away from where I am now.
Guest:So it's about four hours in towards the middle of nowhere.
Guest:And it's a wheat belt and it's very flat and it's quite harsh and very, very dry.
Guest:And we filmed the film beginning of 2019 at the peak of the drought to help depict the way it was in the book.
Guest:But I guess the characters in the town, they feel very real.
Guest:We went to a lot of trouble with the casting of the film to make sure that everyone was really believable because we didn't want it to be full of caricatures.
Marc:Oh, did you have a part in that?
Marc:Were you a producer?
Guest:I was a producer as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:My director, Rob Connolly, his wife is our casting agent, Jane Norris, and casts all his films.
Guest:So he calls it the competitive advantage.
Guest:And she did an amazing job.
Marc:Yeah, because I thought the casting was amazing.
Marc:I mean, it's one of those kind of movies where I don't see them often.
Marc:It is sort of a it's obviously a whodunit kind of movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, it's one of those movies like when those are done well, you're like, oh, could have been that.
Marc:Oh, no, I think it's that.
Marc:Wait, but what about this?
Marc:You know, which is good.
Marc:But it was so menacing and it keeps getting darker and darker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and that was our challenge.
Guest:We wanted to make the most emotional version possible of that kind of story.
Guest:And that's where we felt there was some room between the book and the adaptation to just kind of make it as emotional as it could be, which was what we tried to achieve.
Guest:And as you say, every single person is a suspect.
Marc:In a small town.
Guest:Every single person.
Yeah.
Guest:In a small town.
Guest:And I just have to make mention here of Genevieve O'Reilly, who plays Gretchen opposite me, who's just phenomenal.
Guest:I mean, just, yeah, she was just incredible to work with.
Marc:Yeah, it looked great.
Marc:Same with that old horrible man.
Marc:Is that guy even an actor?
Yeah.
Guest:They're all actors.
Guest:We did have some locals play extras and so forth, like in some of the pub scenes.
Guest:But no, it was a beautiful cast.
Marc:Now, are people going to the movies in Australia?
Marc:Is that happening?
Guest:They are, yeah.
Guest:So we luckily opened on the 1st of January, right when cinemas were starting to get back into swing, which is one of the reasons why we were able to be such a huge hit.
Guest:But yeah, we're back at the cinemas as of about the 1st of January.
Guest:People started to go back in limited numbers, but we ended up at about 75%.
Guest:Yeah, some big craps.
Marc:Are we anticipating?
Marc:What do you think?
Marc:You think the rest of the world is going to follow?
Marc:You think movies are going to bounce back?
Marc:What's your gut on this?
Guest:I think they're going to bounce back huge.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Huge, yeah.
Marc:Because people are just going to be so fucking excited.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It feels amazing to be back in the cinema, you know.
Guest:And it's a different thing.
Guest:And I do think there's a different quality to movies that have been made to be seen on the big screen.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Versus movies that have been made to go on a streaming service.
Guest:I don't care what anyone says.
Guest:I'll have that fight.
Guest:There's a difference.
Marc:No, absolutely.
Marc:I'd like to go back to the movies.
Marc:I'm going to do my first stand-up set in over a year tomorrow, and I'm fucking freaking out.
Guest:Wow, first stand-up in a year.
Guest:Can I ask you, so when you're doing something like that, I'm assuming you just...
Marc:write all new material for that well i got nothing i've got i've i've got nothing you know there's no where you know we've all had the same experience roughly for the last year you know it's like you know just taking a year off to be terrified so i don't like i'm not sure where it's going to go but that's usually how i start i'll improvise through some ideas i've got a little outline i'm only going to do a 15 minute set so we'll uh
Marc:We'll see how it feels.
Marc:You know, I mean, sadly, the one thing I realized over the last year is like, you know, I don't miss it that much.
Marc:I don't miss anything.
Marc:I might be ready to stop everything.
Marc:So.
Marc:But I did a couple movies during or at least one movie during lockdown with the protocols and.
Marc:I'd like to do more of that.
Marc:But I'm curious to see because my last special, I really think I did everything I set out to do stand up wise.
Marc:And I don't feel compelled to entertain people that way.
Marc:But I I do feel like I have something to say.
Marc:So we'll see if that reveals itself, you know.
Guest:So how do you how do you balance the expectation of what you're supposed to be doing versus what you what you want to do?
Marc:Well, I mean, so much of, I don't know what drives you, but the one thing I noticed about not doing anything in lockdown was it was, there was something okay about it because no one else was.
Marc:So in terms of expectations, as soon as the world starts coming back and you start seeing other people working, you're like, oh, what were they doing?
Marc:Like, I knew I didn't want to do outdoor shows, but now like people are starting to tour.
Marc:I'm like, fuck, I got to get out there.
Marc:Like, I don't even...
Marc:So the FOMO is kicking in again.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it's like a weird competitive thing.
Marc:But like what I really want to do on stage, I have to see what that feels like, you know, because a lot of things have gone down over the last year.
Marc:And again, I felt pretty satisfied with the work I did in my last hour special.
Marc:And I'd like to take it someplace new.
Marc:So I got to see if I have it in me or I have the courage to explore things in a different way.
Marc:I certainly don't give as much of a fuck as I used to.
Marc:So so we'll see where, you know, whether I have the courage to do that stuff.
Marc:You know, that makes sense.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:Yeah, it does.
Guest:I know what you're saying about the like.
Guest:During the lockdown, one of the things that I loved was not having to answer a question about, you know, where you're going to next or, you know, got any movies?
Guest:Got any movies?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no one's got any movies.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:No one.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:No one does.
Guest:So I don't feel guilty.
Marc:And then you hear the one set that's working.
Marc:There's one movie in production.
Marc:You're like, what the fuck is happening?
Marc:Are we doing it again?
Marc:I mean, I did one.
Marc:I wasn't going to do any.
Marc:And this guy just kept wanting me to do it.
Marc:And it was the middle of peak COVID.
Marc:And I was like, what are you fucking nuts?
Marc:But he was like, you're the guy.
Marc:And it was a big part.
Marc:It was the biggest part I could ever do.
Marc:And I'm like, somehow or another, I was convinced by other people that it would be safer to be on a movie set than it would to go to the grocery store.
Marc:And I believe that I'm like, because there's all these protocols in place.
Marc:Did you get shut down at all?
Marc:Or did you get, did you get through the whole thing?
Marc:No, we made it through dude.
Marc:This guy shot a feature on film in 19 days.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:On film, 19 days.
Marc:Crazy.
Marc:You better make those takes count.
Marc:You get, you don't get, it was crazy, but, but I was happy I did that, but yeah, I mean, but now I can feel it all coming back and I don't know, man.
Um,
Marc:I mean, I'm old.
Marc:How old are you?
Marc:I'm not old.
Marc:I'm 57.
Marc:How long are we supposed to work, Eric?
Marc:I mean, I do.
Guest:I'm 52.
Guest:I'm 52.
Guest:I don't know how many more films I got in me.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You got a lot.
Guest:Some days.
Guest:Yes, sometimes I feel like it'll be a real – look, I always – one of the reasons I looked up to Duval was his longevity.
Guest:I love the trajectory of his career and the fact that it wasn't – it's just like boom.
Guest:It's just like this fighter jet at a high altitude just maintaining, you know.
Guest:It's not a rocket ship.
Guest:It's just like –
Marc:Also, character actor.
Marc:I mean, like, it's an interesting choice for you because you're a good looking guy.
Marc:You're a big dude.
Marc:You can carry a movie.
Marc:But, you know, you choose to focus more on being a character actor as opposed to having the weight, I would imagine, or the expectation of being a movie star.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I've never felt like the movie style thing is a thing that I want to dabble with.
Guest:I mean, it'll find you at times.
Guest:It'll move through you because of the kind of role you're playing or whatever.
Guest:But I think it's really dangerous territory.
Guest:And I think it's really boring territory as well.
Guest:It's really limiting.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Because you're expected to stay in your wheelhouse.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think those actors end up in a wheelhouse.
Guest:They can't move around as much.
Guest:They can't do different things.
Guest:The minute you stop doing different things, you stop being offered different things.
Marc:Yeah, McConaughey, he had to quit.
Marc:He literally had to decide not to take the movies that were making him millions of dollars.
Marc:He had to consciously say, I'm not doing any more romantic comedies.
Marc:And he didn't work for a while.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Good on him.
Guest:Yeah, I understand that.
Guest:I do.
Guest:And I think it's really smart to be cognizant of that.
Guest:And I think it's too easy, especially for American actors.
Guest:I think it's easier to be lured into that pattern because you live there and it's just easy.
Marc:And also like Billy Crudup.
Marc:I talked to that guy too.
Marc:He could have been a movie star, but he was like, I don't want to do that.
Marc:The real work is doing these different guys, these different characters.
Marc:And that's why, I mean, you do that too.
Guest:Yeah, the biggest danger with the movie star thing is that does that now mean that you're going to knock back a more interesting role that's not the lead?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it's not the lead?
Guest:Right.
Guest:That seems ridiculous to me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:that just seems like crazy talk.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like this, this movie, the dry, I mean, you're the lead, but that guy's a deep character.
Marc:You don't know what's up and you've got that interesting, you know, backstory where, you know, he's a, he's, he seems initially a compromised guy.
Guest:Yeah, you're right.
Guest:So he's a, he's a character that finds himself at the, at the head of the story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and in that, in that instance, I, I, that's something I can always get my head around, but just being a kind of folly, just being a kind of vehicle, uh,
Guest:for a story.
Guest:My first thing is when I read a script, if I can picture 30 other actors playing the role, I pass.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Now, there's always 30 other people that can do it.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:But that's not what's relevant.
Guest:My ego has to believe that I'm one of the only people that can do it or that should do it.
Marc:Or what's worse is you've got to ask your agent, like, who turned this down?
Right.
Marc:Where am I in line on this one?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who are they going to if I say no?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is always interesting when you say no and you wait for the film to come out to see who ended up playing that part.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do you ever like a lot of times you're sort of like, well, that makes sense.
Marc:Because when you can see 30 other guys doing it, there's also that party.
Marc:It's like, you don't need me.
Marc:Like I do a thing.
Marc:But this doesn't require that.
Guest:Go give it to one of those guys.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:And quite often what you're saying no to is something that you know is going to work.
Guest:It's not like I'm only saying yes to something that I think is going to be amazing and work.
Guest:It's like I'll say yes to stuff that I know is going to be a struggle commercially.
Guest:It doesn't bother me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'll say no to stuff that I know is going to be huge.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, like you have to do that.
Guest:It doesn't, you're not, I'm not an accountant.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's your brother.
Guest:You know,
Guest:That's my brother.
Guest:He's the numbers guy.
Guest:It's not my job.
Guest:So you just have to feel free.
Guest:It's easier said than done, but it's really important.
Marc:Right, but it's also great to be excited about the thing, to rise to the occasion, to take the challenge.
Marc:You've always seemed to be open to doing accents, to really immersing yourself in characters, whether they're real people or not.
Marc:I found that when I did this last movie, I was required –
Marc:to do an accent or what the character called for, but I wasn't sure I could and the director didn't care.
Marc:But I actually, given that I'm just starting out as an actor in a lot of ways, I'm like, well, if I'm not going to challenge myself, the fuck am I doing?
Marc:And then I watched some old James Caan movie.
Marc:You know, where he like a real old one where he had an accent, but he kind of half held it and half didn't.
Marc:And then after I talked to him, I realized, like, it's not about that.
Marc:If you pay that close attention to people doing accents, especially movie stars, they're always going to go in and out.
Marc:It's about, you know, whether you're in it or not.
Marc:Are you in the character?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, so that kind of gave me weird confidence.
Marc:It gave me confidence.
Marc:It's like, if I'm doing as good a job as I should, people aren't going to care about the accent.
Marc:If they're coming out going like that accent sucked, then I fucked up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a good attitude.
Marc:I think it's a good approach, but you, but you, yeah, it seems to me that you're going to get, you're going to nail that accent no matter what.
Guest:Well, we don't have a choice, right?
Guest:Name, name the last Australian character you saw in international cinema.
Guest:It's fucking ridiculous, right?
Guest:It's like we're everywhere, but we just don't appear in cinema.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Get the Australian off the set, have them play someone else, but let's not hear that accent anywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's so weird.
Guest:It's so weird.
Guest:The British get away with it.
Guest:British get to play British.
Guest:Australians never get to play Australian.
Marc:It sounds like you're upset about it.
Marc:Maybe you ought to find yourself in Australia.
Guest:I'm a bit pissed about it.
Guest:Make no mistake.
Guest:I've tried to raise this as much as possible because it's like there has to be
Guest:Australians in stories.
Guest:Was the last Australian you played Chopper?
Guest:No, well, the dry, obviously.
Guest:But in funny people, I convinced Judd to allow me to be Australian.
Guest:It's the only time I got to get away with it.
Guest:And my argument was he will be funnier for being Australian.
Guest:I will make him more interesting, I promise you, if you let me play him as Australian.
Marc:Yeah, I remember.
Guest:That was my pitch.
Guest:And it was.
Guest:He was definitely better for being Australian.
Guest:He was more of a maniac because he was Australian.
Guest:You should have asked if you could do the Hulk as Australian.
Guest:And it was funny because the last time I did an Australian film was a film called Romulus, My Father, and I was playing a Hungarian migrant.
Guest:So I had an accent.
Guest:They won't let you do it.
Guest:Can I just be Australian?
Guest:It's a conspiracy.
Guest:You got to do the Australian stories to do the Australians.
Guest:And people ask me why I live in Australia.
Guest:So I can be Australian.
Yeah.
Guest:You love it.
Guest:You love being Australian?
Guest:I love being Australian.
Guest:I love it here.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I really do.
Marc:How old are your kids?
Marc:My kids are 21 and 19.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:They're old kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Are they still there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're still living at home.
Guest:They're both studying.
Guest:So, yeah, they're still here.
Guest:They are both big fans of overseas.
Guest:They've spent a lot of time overseas.
Guest:I hope to God they don't end up moving overseas, but I can see that in my future.
Marc:Oh, that's going to be rough, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They love it overseas.
Marc:Well, you'll work it out.
Marc:You'll see.
Marc:It's great talking to you, man.
Marc:Good work on this new film, too.
Marc:I hope it does well over here.
Guest:Thanks so much, Mark.
Guest:It was really wonderful to meet you.
Guest:And I'm sorry about the last laugh.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And please let me know if you come down here again, please.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I will make amends.
Marc:Oh, great.
Marc:Yeah, I'll definitely tell you when I'm coming out.
Marc:I have gone there for shows since then.
Marc:I've done Sydney and Melbourne and Brisbane, which was not great, but I did it.
Marc:But Sydney and Melbourne.
Marc:In Melbourne, I did some weird theater.
Marc:I think it was by water, and it seemed to stand alone, and it was very old and damp.
Marc:Oh, the Palais.
Guest:Maybe, yeah.
Guest:Down at St.
Guest:Kilda, next to Luna Park, next to the theme park.
Guest:I think so, yeah.
Guest:The Palais.
Guest:Palais Theater.
Guest:That sounds right.
Marc:Does it feel haunted and damp?
Guest:I think it's been redone since then.
Guest:Oh, good.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But yeah, it was quite decrepit for a while, but it's had a bit of love recently.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:But yeah, maybe the Palais Theater.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, I'll let you know when I'm down there, man.
Guest:Please do.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Take it easy.
Guest:Cheers, Mark.
Guest:Thanks, mate.
Marc:That's it, people.
Marc:The Dry opens in U.S.
Marc:theaters and on video on demand this Friday, May 21st.
Marc:It's a good film.
Marc:He's great in it.
Marc:It's dark.
Marc:And it's one of those mystery, small-town mystery murders with a little added layer of darkness.
Marc:Okay, now I will riff on a little bit of Molina for the memory of Lynn Shelton.
Guest:.
.
Guest:.
Guest:Thank you.
Thank you.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.
Marc:I miss you, Lynn.
Thank you.