Episode 1263 - David Chase
Marc:lock the gate all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening hi you all right i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it we've had a great run of shows i hope you're enjoying yourself outside of the in memoriam shows which are also great but uh have sad intent
Marc:They're not intended to be sad.
Marc:That's maybe not the right word.
Marc:The reason that they're re-showcased is sad.
Marc:Loss is sad.
Marc:And it's part of life.
Marc:I don't want to be negative.
Marc:Look, man.
Marc:Today, David Chase is on the show.
Marc:And...
Marc:Obviously, many of you know him from The Sopranos.
Marc:He was the creator of The Sopranos, one of the greatest television shows ever.
Marc:And before that, he was a TV writer on many shows, including The Rockford Files, Northern Exposure.
Marc:But as you'll find in our conversation, in his heart, he always wanted to be a filmmaker.
Marc:And now is his time.
Marc:Well, he's made a movie or two.
Marc:But he wrote this script for the movie coming out now that he was supposed to direct, but he couldn't.
Marc:We chat about that.
Marc:We chat about that.
Marc:But he wrote the script for the new movie, The Many Saints of Newark, which deals with the characters from The Sopranos in the late 60s.
Marc:And it's great.
Marc:Especially if you love The Sopranos.
Marc:If you know the Sopranos and you know those characters, to see these actors doing them when they were younger men is really a treat.
Marc:And Gandolfini's kid plays Gandolfini, plays Tony, and he's tremendous.
Marc:I think you'll enjoy it.
Marc:So I talked to him in a bit.
Marc:Who didn't fucking love that show, though?
Marc:I think it was the second season of GLOW where I, when I wasn't shooting, which was a lot,
Marc:I watched the entire run, every episode of The Sopranos on my phone.
Marc:I couldn't stop.
Marc:Because I remember... I'm old enough to remember when The Sopranos aired on HBO.
Marc:And it was, in my recollection, it was the first time where you...
Marc:Like every Sunday, there was a few shows that HBO was doing before streaming where it actually gave your week some sort of meaning.
Marc:It gave you something to look forward to depending what you did with your life or maybe you were excited every day.
Marc:I think the ones that really got people doing that were probably Six Feet Under, Mad Men, and The Sopranos where Sunday night you're like, you got home to watch it.
Marc:It was something to look forward to.
Marc:I mean, I think that's sort of the downside of the streaming thing.
Marc:Everything all the time is not great because then you got to wait a year.
Marc:You know, when they kind of dolled it out once a week, had a natural sort of build to it, and you absorbed it differently.
Marc:And then you had to wait a year.
Marc:But at least every week you were occupied.
Marc:It wasn't just three days of staying up and watching all of something.
Marc:But whatever.
Marc:You know, it was great.
Marc:It's a great show, and I miss it, I think.
Marc:It was very exciting.
Marc:I mean, look, not every episode was amazing, but most of them were great.
Marc:Characters were great.
Marc:Goddamn, man.
Marc:Gandolfini was so fucking good.
Marc:Imperioli, all of them.
Marc:Edie Falco, fucking brilliant.
Marc:Man, I... We're all getting old.
Marc:But I'm going to talk to David Chase.
Marc:It's going to happen.
Marc:You're going to hear it right here.
Marc:If you are in Connecticut, Ridgefield, Connecticut, November 11th, the Ridgefield Playhouse, there are tickets available.
Marc:The New York Comedy Festival, Town Hall, November 13th, there are some tickets available.
Marc:There's a Largo show here in Los Angeles.
Marc:That's this month, September 28th, the day after my birthday.
Marc:I believe there are tickets available.
Marc:This Friday, the Aladdin Theater in Portland, Oregon, the 10 p.m.
Marc:show might have some tickets.
Marc:You can find them all at wtfpod.com slash tour.
Marc:So I'm back for a couple of days.
Marc:I was in St.
Marc:Louis, and I got to be honest with you, man.
Marc:After all the shit talking of Missouri,
Marc:I had an amazing bunch of shows there.
Marc:I freak out before I go anywhere, and I was paranoid.
Marc:But I'm also critical.
Marc:Missouri is still sort of a political and kind of religious crucible of dumb fuckery.
Marc:But St.
Marc:Louis, it's odd.
Marc:I've been there before, but I don't always remember the cities that I've been in.
Marc:and uh i noticed that when i was driving around realizing that like i remember like the record store i went to i but it wasn't like excitement it was like it was like being at the you know returning to the the place where the trauma happened like i just it was a sort of the tone where i'm in my rented car i'm like oh my god i've been here i've been here oh shit this is where i had the sandwich and
Marc:Weird tone, but I was not traumatized.
Marc:It turns out that St.
Marc:Louis is a pretty great city.
Marc:It was probably an amazing city, and now it's pretty great.
Marc:It's stunning.
Marc:There's a lot of great buildings, a lot of good parks.
Marc:Apparently, all the museums are free and outdoor concerts and stuff.
Marc:I'm not going to do a big commercial for St.
Marc:Louis.
Marc:I barely got into the city.
Marc:I was staying outside of the city in Clayton where the club is, which is sort of a suburb, I think.
Marc:But I got out.
Marc:I ate some things.
Marc:Great fucking record stores, man.
Marc:I went to vintage vinyl, which is good.
Marc:But then I went to Euclid Records.
Marc:Holy fuck.
Marc:And like, look, man, I know.
Marc:I don't know when this is going to end.
Marc:I don't know when it's going to stop.
Marc:I know that I'm not the only, you know,
Marc:57-year-old man scrambling around buying records.
Marc:And I know that every day that I buy more records, every day of my life, when I look at my records, I look at my guitars, or I look at my house, or I look at my shoes, or I look at my shirts, I realize what's going to happen to all this shit?
Marc:How much of this is going to be garbage?
Marc:Where does all this go?
Marc:And that goes to, seriously though, where is it going to go?
Marc:And then it goes to, fuck, I've got to redo my will, I think.
Marc:Who's in my will?
Marc:What's my estate planning situation?
Marc:I got to make sure somebody gets this stuff.
Marc:I got to make sure charity gets some things.
Marc:I should give my pants to charity and the boots, some money and stuff.
Marc:So that's where my brain goes.
Marc:But look, I'm just trying to change my diet to as bad as it can possibly be so I can die before everyone dies at the same time.
Marc:But back to St.
Marc:Louis.
Marc:So the reason, as you guys know, I go to do the extended runs is to work on the shit.
Marc:And it had been a few weeks since I did the hours.
Marc:And God damn it, I got out there, man.
Marc:Those second shows, there was one show Friday.
Marc:The first show Friday where I was like, that's it.
Marc:That's the structure.
Marc:You landed on it.
Marc:So tie it up.
Marc:Figure out how you want to end the thing.
Marc:Move some stuff around.
Marc:You got some guts around these death jokes.
Marc:So, you know, close with them.
Marc:Don't be a puss.
Marc:And then figure out the tag.
Marc:So this is inner dialogue stuff.
Marc:So I'm doing about hour 15, hour 20s, hour 25.
Marc:I'd say I do have a pretty solid hour 10 that's going to be good.
Marc:But then like second shows, Friday and Saturday, where you got to turn on the juice.
Marc:You got to tweak your fucking energy.
Marc:I just and also by Saturday, second show, I'm bored of my shit because I've done four in a row.
Marc:I've done one that before that.
Marc:And I got to make it interesting for me.
Marc:So it got real.
Marc:It got weird.
Marc:It was beautiful.
Marc:Second show Saturday, St.
Marc:Louis.
Marc:Fucking serious jazz set.
Marc:Serious.
Marc:And look, man, I don't need to be like some comics, just sort of like, Marc Maron's going to improvise an entire show.
Marc:It's like, if you're a good comic, of course you can do that.
Marc:You don't need to... Whatever.
Marc:But the riffing thing, to sort of riff with some intention and really explore something to figure out how you think about stuff...
Marc:It's a fucking thrilling, you know, it's thrilling because it doesn't always hinge on getting the laugh with me.
Marc:It's it's it's a sort of like creative discovery process, which is how I do it.
Marc:But when it really goes, when you're really feeling like you're in the cradle of it and the audience can handle it.
Marc:That second show Saturday was it's just one of those things where you're like, that's never going to happen again.
Marc:Fortunately, I recorded it on my phone.
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:Who am I going to leave my phone to?
Marc:I got to put that phone.
Marc:I got to put my phone code somewhere where people can get it in case something happens.
Marc:I have to give somebody my phone code.
Marc:I'm going to raffle my phone code off.
Marc:But yeah, so it was very productive.
Marc:All five shows.
Marc:And, you know, people were very nice.
Marc:Midwestern people.
Marc:The people at Clementine's ice cream, the publicist there, Julie, she's been like hooking me up with ice cream, which I don't really need.
Marc:But they make this amazing ice cream there, this place.
Marc:And it's like got like, you know, 90 percent butter fat or something.
Marc:It's fucking nuts.
Marc:And they've sent it to me here at the house, but I'd never been to the store.
Marc:And I got there and a bunch of them come from the ice cream place.
Marc:And the next day, Tamara, the woman who owns the five Clementine's ice cream places in St.
Marc:Louis is like, let me show you around.
Marc:Like, there seemed to be some sort of concerted effort on behalf of the city to make me assess it properly.
Marc:You know, it's like, hey, man, we get it.
Marc:Missouri sucks.
Marc:But this town, this city is okay, man.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:We got cool food.
Marc:We got ice cream.
Marc:And we got like free museums, man.
Marc:And good record stores.
Marc:And decent people.
Marc:And kind of wild old, you know, brick architecture.
Marc:Get on board.
Marc:I got off the plane when I got there.
Marc:I went right to Patty's, which is some old ass barbecue.
Marc:Just shoved a bunch of ribs in my face.
Marc:Definitely a celebration of food shame for me.
Marc:But anyways, I was taken around by somebody who lives there.
Marc:And she's a, you know, I guess what you call it, a carpetbagger.
Marc:She's a transplant who fell in love with the place.
Marc:But I forget that I like these places.
Marc:I like these Midwestern cities.
Marc:Until I get someplace, you know, I don't know what's up.
Marc:And my opinion has not changed anything.
Marc:of Missouri in large part.
Marc:But I do think St.
Marc:Louis is okay with me.
Marc:Had good food, nice people, great shows, and bought some cool records, and there were no problems.
Marc:I think I really have some sort of narcissism where this paranoia that thinks like,
Marc:I really have to tell myself, like, dude, you're not really a target.
Marc:You don't have that much traction.
Marc:You are not that... You're not at that level of public personhood to where they're looking for you.
Marc:Not yet.
Marc:When they start getting to the micro, when they actually start taking over...
Marc:You might be on a list.
Marc:You might be on the entertainers list for deportation to to the, you know, Walmart parking lot camps.
Marc:But we'll see.
Marc:We'll see.
Marc:In the meantime, I'm offering no apologies.
Marc:I don't feel contrite in any way about what I had said about Missouri leading up to Missouri, because all of my people, not only did they enjoy being at a vaxxed show, they felt safe and comfortable.
Marc:Many people wore masks and it was all OK.
Marc:But they knew exactly what I was talking about and they felt the same way.
Marc:Nobody knows better than the people that are fucking stuck in the middle of it.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:by choice or just by need to remain at a job or near their family.
Marc:As I've said before, people in blue cities, they're not necessarily celebrating.
Marc:They do live in a certain amount of fear.
Marc:Life in a blue city is sort of like, yeah, you know, we we don't talk about it at work.
Marc:You know, we just don't you don't ask questions.
Marc:You don't ask questions and it's OK.
Marc:I guess that's the way it used to be.
Marc:I guess the way that that's what it always was.
Marc:It didn't come into it.
Marc:But it's not really about politics anymore, is it?
Marc:It's something different.
Marc:It's something much worse, much, much worse than politics.
Marc:David Chase.
Marc:I was nervous about talking to David Chase because in my mind, he was like at the same level as a mob leader, as a mafia Don.
Marc:I don't know what I projected onto this guy.
Marc:You know, he's from New Jersey.
Marc:He's a writer.
Marc:He's a screenwriter.
Marc:He's a screenwriter.
Marc:He's not the mafia.
Marc:But I just thought he had some weight to him, man.
Marc:Heavy cat.
Marc:He is a heavy cat, but not in that way.
Marc:And it was really great talking to him.
Marc:And I enjoyed the movie.
Marc:This is me talking to David Chase.
Marc:The Many Saints of Newark opens in theaters Friday, October 1st.
Marc:And it will also be streaming on HBO Max.
Marc:He created The Sopranos.
Marc:And he's written on a lot of older shows.
Marc:But you'll get the hang of it.
Marc:There's never a shortage of cats, David.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's like if one goes, you cry for a little while, then you go pick another cat.
Guest:Yeah, well, I've lost three cats to coyotes.
Guest:And I never, I didn't blow it off that easy.
Guest:It was not what I thought.
Marc:No, of course not.
Guest:Yeah, terrible.
Guest:I think it was three, but it could have been two.
Guest:One of them, the third one might have just abandoned us and gone elsewhere.
Marc:Well, that's the hope.
Marc:It's like if you don't actually find pieces of it that they found a nicer place.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I had that happen to one.
Marc:I just hope that some nice Mexican lady down there, because it used to be an indoor cat, but it pissed all over everything, so I had to put it outside.
Marc:So I always thought it had a chip on its shoulder, and then it disappeared.
Marc:Really?
Marc:And my hope was that a nice lady took him in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because they don't give a shit after a couple days.
Marc:They're not dogs.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess they don't.
Marc:I know.
Marc:But I had to put two down that were old, and that's heavy.
Marc:But it's different than coyotes.
Marc:You kind of know what's happening.
Marc:You're there.
Marc:And you miss them, but you do realize they had a good life.
Guest:Well, I think it's the whole being torn apart thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't want to see that.
Guest:Terrible.
Guest:Or think about that.
Marc:The worst.
Marc:Yeah, you got to keep it in the house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I didn't realize he lived out here.
Marc:It's so funny.
Marc:Like, I talk to a lot of people all the time, but for some reason when, you know, you were coming over, I felt like I was talking to some sort of, you know, mafia Don.
Marc:I couldn't... Yeah, right.
Marc:I was like, this guy, this guy's heavy.
Yeah.
Guest:That's because people have said a lot of stupid things about it.
Guest:About you?
Guest:Well, Tony Sirico said to somebody, he's been quoted that he said, you know, I know a lot of wise guys.
Guest:I know a lot of really tough guys.
Guest:But David, I'm scared of.
Marc:well yeah i could have fired him but other than that oh yeah that's funny that like yeah you could fire him yeah i mean as far as an actor goes yeah right yeah right but uh i you know i it was very interesting in the new movie to see all the guys take on those characters that we knew from the sopranos as younger men right and i thought the detail of seeing uh little steven's uh character uh with before he got the piece before he got with the comb over right
Guest:That was all John Magaro's idea.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Who's that?
Guest:He's the guy who played him.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said first to comb over and then we put the piece on?
Guest:Yeah, that's what he told me.
Guest:So, you know, I'd like to play Stevie and we'll do the comb over and then I'll get the piece.
Marc:I mean, that was a great detail.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it's a big jump from comb over to piece.
Marc:But they worked so hard to get the gimmick, the sort of twitches right.
Marc:and if for some reason you know i saw it in a theater i uh i i i swore to god i left the theater this never happens to me and i don't know if i've got uh getting soft in the head but i thought vera farmiga i thought that was uh edie falco everybody says that really okay thank god everybody says because i like i left thinking like god edie falco was genius
Marc:And then my producer's like, yeah, she's not in it.
Marc:And I'm like, who the fuck was that?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But there was, why is that?
Marc:Does she look like her?
Guest:The nose.
Guest:I mean, she had a prosthetic nose.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And her profile was kind of like Edie's.
Guest:Okay, so I didn't realize she had a prosthetic nose.
Guest:I mean, I noticed that right away.
Guest:So then, of course, you can say, well, of course, he married his mother, you know.
Guest:Sure, well, I mean, I got that, but I thought that was her.
Marc:So I would have recognized her.
Marc:Okay, so there was a prosthetic, though.
Marc:And I thought that she did an amazing job, you know, getting, what's her name, Marchand.
Marc:Nancy.
Marc:Nancy Marchand's twitches and quirks.
Marc:Oh, yeah, she did.
Marc:You know, the weird little habits of these characters that you got used to later.
Guest:But Magaro did this, the thing where Magaro walks to the door, I don't remember that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He says, tell him about their unloading the truck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he...
Guest:Tony's knocking on the door.
Guest:He walks across and he had that walk down.
Marc:The same thing.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:The same thing as Van Zandt did.
Marc:Yeah, no, it was great.
Marc:I guess my question, though, is that this movie didn't have to be a Sopranos prequel.
Marc:Did it?
Marc:Really?
Marc:I mean, like the movie was setting up Tony to a degree, but the movie was about another character and it was about race, really, in Newark.
Marc:I mean, it seems like it would have stood on its own had it not, you know, had it been detached.
Marc:Yeah, but...
Marc:you know no but did you ever think of that i mean did you like the story didn't happen it wasn't a story existing in your head it was something that came out of the sopranos no it was uh it came because new line approached me about doing quote unquote a sopranos movie right okay so so that's what happened and so you sat down and put your mind to it and that's what you came up with we came up with that yeah
Marc:So you sit down with that idea and you realize, well, Tony's too young to base a movie on at this point, to run a whole movie through as the lead, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how did you connect the mythology?
Marc:Why did you choose Montessanti?
Guest:Yeah, Montessanti.
Guest:Because, well...
Guest:I mean, everybody loves... I love Christopher.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:Christopher is great.
Guest:And, you know, the way the Christopher story had been left, there was some room there for some afterlife stuff, but that came later.
Guest:Well...
Guest:Lawrence Connor and I, we wrote it together.
Guest:He quizzed me.
Guest:Do you want to do a really good Sopranos episode?
Guest:Do you want to do something different?
Guest:And what we wanted to do was make a really good gangster movie.
Guest:And we figured we'd need a really good gangster.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Couldn't have couldn't have Jim Gandolfini anymore.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:And I, you know, remember this guy, Dickey Moltisanti had been a lot of talk about him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought and I was interested.
Guest:I thought that would be interesting.
Guest:Who is that guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so.
Guest:So that was that's how that was it.
Guest:That's how that's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then how did the riots come out?
Marc:Well, I mean, did you grow up in that?
Marc:You're from Jersey, right?
Marc:Do you remember that?
Marc:Yeah, I do.
Marc:Because, I mean, it seems like you would have been right at the age where you were taking all that in.
Guest:Yeah, I do remember.
Guest:My girlfriend, who's now my wife, worked at the Prudential Insurance Company in downtown Newark.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I drove her to work every day or to the subway station every day.
Guest:So at that time, I was thinking,
Guest:This is great, man.
Guest:I hope they burn that fucking place down.
Guest:Fuck them.
Guest:I couldn't believe it.
Guest:And then I thought, wait a minute.
Guest:Denise is down there.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Shut up.
Marc:You all right?
Marc:You called up?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What part of Jersey did you grow up in?
Marc:Essex County.
Marc:My grandfather owned a hardware store and an appliance store in Haskell.
Marc:Haskell.
Marc:My father owned a hardware store.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Jersey hardware store.
Guest:Yeah, Verona, New Jersey.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hardware stores were great.
Marc:Did you go there when you were a kid?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Well, he owned one in a shopping center first.
Guest:And I used to go, he had a partner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So his partner's name was Tony and the kid's name was Bobby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we used to go down there all the time.
Guest:And there was a toy store in that place.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:There was a lot of stuff for us.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And a Chinese restaurant next door.
Guest:So you could look in there and see the Chinese guys plucking chickens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then... That's a big kid memory.
Guest:Chinese guys plucking chickens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sitting down on like a overturned bucket.
Guest:Pulling the feathers out.
Guest:Meanwhile, my father and Tony would complain about the smell of the Chinese food.
Guest:And then he went deeper into suburbia.
Guest:And that was...
Guest:He was always struggling because he had been a draftsman, and he picked this time of life to open a hardware store.
Guest:How old was he?
Guest:40?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was just when highway stores were starting to open up.
Guest:Oh, the big ones.
Guest:Big ones.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he was always trying to come up from behind that.
Guest:Bad timing.
Guest:Bad timing.
Guest:And then when I left...
Guest:They sold it to a guy who fucked it all up.
Guest:And then my mother went down for a sheriff's sale, I guess.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:His whole life.
Guest:$1,340.
Guest:It was after he passed?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was like, you know, Arthur Miller time.
Marc:Really.
Marc:But the hardware store, the reason I used to like to go is there's all these old guys hanging around.
Marc:Telling stories.
Marc:They'd just hang around the hardware store because it was this tiny town.
Marc:Oh, I see.
Marc:Nobody hung around.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And my grandpa Jack, he'd let him in there and just they'd all sit around.
Marc:There was like a luncheonette across the street and the guy who owned it got busted for running numbers or something.
Marc:The nice guy Archie used to give us candy.
Marc:Yeah, it turns out he was running a racket.
Marc:So you're from there.
Marc:You're from Pompton Lake.
Marc:No, I was born in Jersey City.
Marc:I lived in Jersey only until I was like six or seven.
Marc:Wayne.
Marc:But both my parents are from Jersey.
Marc:I'm genetically Jersey.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you grew up in that area.
Marc:I love New Jersey.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:Because as I get older, I remember we used to drive on, I don't know if it was 46 or whatever, into the city.
Marc:You drive through Secaucus, and my grandmother would say, can you smell the pigs?
Marc:There used to be pig farms.
Guest:Pig farms, yeah.
Marc:Do you remember pig farms?
Guest:I never saw a fucking pig.
Guest:Me neither.
Guest:But they used to talk about it in the car on the way to New York.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:The pig farms.
Guest:Of course, it didn't smell good there, but it was industry.
Guest:It wasn't pigs.
Guest:No, it didn't smell like pigs.
Guest:Oh, I loved the Meadowlands.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:I loved that whole thing.
Guest:And that's where The Sopranos was kind of originally set.
Guest:In that area?
Guest:Well...
Guest:I mean, Sopranos was set in Newark, and Newark touches the Meadowlands at some point.
Guest:All those rivers, the Raritan.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:When I was a little kid, we used to go see my grandmother in Westchester.
Guest:New York?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mount Vernon, the others.
Guest:Every other Sunday, and we lived in Clifton at that time.
Guest:So we would take the Washington Bridge,
Guest:And I would beg my father to take us home through the Lincoln Tunnel because I got to go to Manhattan and see it.
Guest:And at that time, there were ships there with the prow of the boat like was over the West Side Highway.
Guest:And then going into the Meadowlands, it was like a whole fantasy land.
Guest:That was like a grown-up land.
Guest:I remember there was a bar with an anchor on it.
Guest:It was like a movie.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And it made a big impression.
Marc:Oh, huge.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Huge.
Marc:I mean, my grandfather comes from Elizabeth, so that's right there.
Marc:And then my grandparents lived in Bayonne for a while.
Marc:And I remember we used to just squeeze into the bathroom to look out the window because you could see the Statue of Liberty barely from Bayonne.
Marc:Yeah, but there was definitely that sense.
Marc:I remember driving into this city when I was a kid with my grandfather to get tongue at Katz's.
Marc:And it was like...
Marc:You just felt the electricity of it, of being in a huge world.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So that was a... Well, I thought it was my father's world.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's what I thought.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:He owned it?
Guest:Well... He lived in it?
Guest:He built it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Him and his friends.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:In a way, that's true, I guess.
Guest:Of course.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:But you... Growing up in Jersey, your father was always, what, disgruntled?
Guest:Upset, yes?
Guest:Yeah, I'd say more than disgruntled.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:He was very angry, I think.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:And how many kids in the family?
Marc:Me.
Marc:Just you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, a lot of pressure, huh?
Guest:Yeah, a lot of pressure.
Marc:So a lot of anger in the house?
Marc:A whole lot, yeah.
Marc:They were fighting?
Guest:They were fighting.
Guest:My mother was very difficult for him, I'm sure.
Guest:For me, too, but for him.
Guest:I never really understood that relationship.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Who the hell understands their parents' relationship?
Marc:I mean, did they last the whole time?
Marc:They did.
Marc:Well, I guess it was a different generation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what drove you out?
Marc:What drove you to show business?
Marc:What was the intention originally?
Marc:To get rich and famous, I think.
Guest:But do you knew in high school?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, no, I'm saying that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Get rich and famous.
Guest:But what drove me out was my love of rock and roll music.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wanted to be, I mean, after the Beatles and the Stones, that's all I could think about.
Guest:That's all I could think about.
Guest:And we were, you know, some friends of mine and I, two guys who really...
Guest:really good guitar players yeah they still play one of them died yeah and he used to play he was he used to tour with a guy named Paul Siebold he died and the other one is still around yeah but I don't think I don't know how much he's playing he played in a band
Guest:We had more like a jam band.
Guest:And we had this idea that we were going to make it big.
Guest:I made a movie about it, actually.
Marc:Oh, yeah, with Glenn Duffini about the kid, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just wanted that so much.
Guest:And then I got interested.
Guest:I mean, I'd always loved movies, but it never occurred to me
Marc:that you could make one so but you saw like you saw the full arc of rock and roll as a conscious person right i mean you saw the beginning of it all the way through because you must have been like what 14 or 15 in the 50s right so you saw no well close 12 12 but you saw like elvis and then you saw it turn into the beatles and then you saw it turn into the the rest of it in the 60s so you were there at the beginning and you loved it so you like you grew up with it
Guest:I grew up with it.
Guest:And I started playing the drums probably at 13 or 14.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it wasn't specifically to be in a rock and roll band.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I took drum lessons from a guy who had played with big bands, a guy named Jimmy Jerome.
Guest:And so I learned to read music only on...
Guest:one line but um the drum line the drum line yeah and i i was learning independence i don't know if you know what that means um what does it mean well it means that each of your four limbs is doing something different oh okay yeah uh you know it's very difficult yeah but i loved it it was it's a jazz thing yeah so at that point in high school for what that's when that's when like pop music whatever you want to call it yeah just downhill um nothing good yeah
Guest:So my friends and I all got into jazz for a while.
Guest:And yeah, I just loved that.
Guest:I just loved it.
Guest:Then the Beatles came along.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:End of jazz.
Guest:And goodbye jazz.
Guest:But by that time, we'd also put... Everybody had put their instruments away because we got driver's licenses.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was the end of... Driver's licenses and girls, and that was the end of... Driver's licenses and you could drink.
Marc:Alcohol, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that was it.
Marc:Greenwood Lake.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Manhattan, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So then, when does it become possible for you to sort of start thinking about writing?
Marc:I mean, what spurned... Because I've heard that you're still very into music.
Marc:You have a huge brain for music.
Marc:I do, but nothing new, frankly.
Marc:No?
Marc:No.
Marc:But where does it end?
Marc:What year do you go up to?
Marc:75?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:A little later than that.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Maybe the first decade of 2000.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And you do records?
Guest:You have records?
Guest:I do have.
Guest:I just uncovered them because we moved.
Guest:I have a pretty big record collection.
Guest:I thought it was bigger, but I do have that.
Guest:You thought it was bigger?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought it was going to be like, oh, yeah, David's record collection.
Guest:Not enough for that?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I still haven't played one of them yet.
Guest:So when do you start writing?
Guest:I started writing in film school because my analysis was that to make a movie, you'd need millions of dollars.
Guest:But to write a script, you'd need some paper and a pencil.
Guest:And that was the way to get in, so I started writing that.
Marc:And what movies were you drawn towards?
Marc:At that time?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like what was making you want to do it?
Guest:Well, the...
Guest:when i first got the idea like you know what maybe this is something you could do yeah was seeing um cul-de-sac the polanski movie yeah i thought maybe you could do that yeah because there was like only four people right in a house yeah and i sort of could understand not that i was thinking production-wise right
Guest:It seemed like something maybe I could manage a story like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's all.
Guest:And what was the first movie you wrote?
Guest:The first movie I wrote, I forget the name of it.
Guest:I wrote it with a friend of mine from film school.
Guest:Did you make it?
Guest:No.
Guest:Our writing teacher sent it down to Hollywood to a guy named Roy Huggins, who was a television writer producer.
Yeah.
Guest:and I got a job out of it, my first writing job.
Marc:Really?
Marc:So out of NYU?
Marc:No, out of Stanford.
Marc:Oh, you were in Stanford.
Marc:So you went to undergrad in New York?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you went to Stanford?
Marc:And then I went to Stanford, yeah.
Marc:Wow, I didn't even know they had a program.
Guest:Nobody knows.
Guest:It was mostly then documentary, which was not what I was into.
Guest:And now it's only documentary.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Because why that's, is it within the journalism school?
Guest:It was, no, Department of Communications.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Which was, I guess journalism was in there too.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I think now it's in the drama department, but I don't know.
Marc:So you were already in California.
Marc:You didn't have to move from Jersey or New York.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:I was in L.A., yeah.
Marc:So what was the job?
Guest:I wrote a screenplay of a TV series called...
Guest:The Bold Ones, The Lawyers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With Joe Campanella and Burl Ives.
Guest:Burl Ives.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I forget the third guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:That was the beginning.
Guest:That was the beginning.
Guest:And then I didn't work again for probably three or four years.
Guest:What'd you do to work?
Guest:Well, I guess I worked with a friend of mine.
Guest:We wrote a couple of screenplays for Gene Corman, Roger Corman's brother.
Guest:Nice.
Marc:So if Roger makes B-movies, did Gene make C-movies?
Guest:Something like that, yeah.
Guest:But I remember I worked an entire year, I think, on a screenplay for $600.
Guest:I don't remember that.
Marc:What was that one about?
Guest:What the hell was it?
Guest:Something ridiculous?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was about...
Guest:Probably not cool anymore.
Guest:It was about a gay guy.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Not cool about a gay guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that's where that goes.
Marc:But you're in Hollywood in the 70s.
Marc:It must have been pretty fucking exciting.
Marc:It was tremendously exciting.
Marc:Like, what were you guys doing?
Marc:Music, you must have seen everybody.
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:I don't know why, but I've never really been a concert guy that much.
Marc:I'm the same dude.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, because I'm only good for about 45 minutes.
Marc:It's not even before I got old.
Marc:It was sort of like, you know, I go, and if it's uncomfortable, if I can't see, what's the fucking point?
Guest:Yeah, that's the way... I can tell you the best concerts I've seen were...
Guest:Los Lobos, New Year's Eve, 1986 or something.
Guest:And my wife and I used to just listen to records all the time.
Guest:And all my friends and I did.
Guest:You'd come over and they'd listen?
Guest:We'd get high and listen to records.
Guest:And sometimes my friends picked them apart and tried to figure out the parts and then tried to play them or whatever.
Marc:So in the 70s, were all your friends in show business at that time?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I mean, friends from film school were trying to be in show business.
Guest:I do remember that we lived...
Guest:We lived in an apartment in Brentwood, and when friends came from back east, we'd get high, we'd get in the car, and go down to 20th Century Fox on Pico Boulevard, and drive into the lot, and the guy at the gate just didn't care, and it's nighttime, and you drive in, and pretty soon you're underneath the 3rd Avenue L, and you're in New York.
Guest:It was from a Barbra Streisand movie, big movie.
Marc:funny girl yeah yeah and we used to do i just i love that shit just loved it you had a buddy like when i first came out in the 80s who knew somebody who had a family friend who worked at paramount and just let got us on the lot yeah walking around those streets right that lot it's great well it is great yeah it is because you know if you love show business it's like you know it's like the secret tour you know yeah well
Guest:I don't know if it was loving show business or loving movies.
Marc:Well, yeah, of course.
Marc:I didn't know what show business was, but it's the movie business.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:I'm still not clear what show business is.
Guest:I had a seven-year contract at Universal.
Guest:For TV writing?
Guest:For TV writing, yeah.
Marc:That wasn't a good sigh.
Guest:Actually, yeah.
Guest:Well, it was what it was.
Guest:It kept me in television.
Guest:I want to be a movie director, and then when I got here, and I got a few jobs, I got scared of directing.
Guest:I thought, oh, I could never do that.
Guest:Why?
Marc:well tell those actors what to do you know tell them what to do and i just thought it's not for you um i didn't say it's not for you but i just didn't do it so the writing though i mean that did you get a feel how did that work so you were just contracted at the lot and they throw you on shows at that time basically basically yeah you could refuse it no yeah you weren't really supposed to refuse it
Marc:So it kind of worked like the studio system did with movies.
Marc:Like you were a contract player and they would say like this show needs a guy.
Marc:Go over and talk to so and so and see.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:That's exactly how it was.
Guest:And what shows did you do?
Guest:Well, the first one I did was that one episode of- The bold ones?
Guest:The bold ones.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then three years go by and the writer's guild goes on strike.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I had to go on picket duty.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I was extremely pissed off because the guild had never gotten me any work.
Guest:And I thought it was like the plumber's union or something.
Guest:Like you'd go to a union hall and they'd say, you know, anybody here work with brass?
Guest:But that never happened, no.
Guest:So you didn't have an agent, or you did?
Guest:I finally got an agent when I went to pick a duty at Paramount Studios in front of the big gates.
Guest:I met a guy who introduced me to his agent.
Guest:And he was a couple years older than me.
Guest:He was about to take over the back nine of The Magician with Bill Bixby.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we did that.
Guest:And then he got hired to be the producer of...
Guest:The Night Stalker.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I remember that, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he took me with him to there.
Guest:He got fired after three episodes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Or left.
Guest:And I stayed there for seven years at Universal.
Marc:So now, when you... Was this... Did you find it gratifying?
Marc:I mean, were you engaged with it?
Marc:I mean, because it's hard to tell how you're talking about it.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I mean, you obviously learned something.
Guest:Oh, I learned a fuck of a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:How did I... All the time I was thinking, here's what it was.
Guest:All the time I was thinking, you asshole, you took this seven-year contract for money.
Guest:Money.
Guest:Money.
Guest:So you're not going to be in the movies anymore.
Guest:I was trying to get into the movies.
Guest:I was trying to shift over, but it didn't work.
Guest:And so I always blamed myself.
Guest:You sold out.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:At the same time, I was enjoying...
Guest:I worked on really good stuff, I have to say.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was lucky.
Guest:What was your favorite?
Guest:Back then, the Rockford Files was really good.
Marc:That was such a, it seemed like a fun show.
Marc:It was fun.
Marc:It was fun.
Marc:And Gardner seemed like he was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like a great guy.
Marc:He was a good guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody, it was a lot of fun.
Guest:You really felt like you were part of a family.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did Michael Lerner do some Rockford Files?
Guest:The actor?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's a character.
Marc:Is he still around?
Marc:He is, man.
Marc:I did a show on IFC for four seasons, and he played my mother's boyfriend in one episode.
Marc:What a fucking piece of work that guy is.
Marc:How so?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, he was great.
Marc:He was great.
Marc:You know, he really, I think, believes he should have won the Oscar for Barton Fink.
Marc:And maybe he should have.
Marc:But now, like, he's just one of these guys where, like, we're all sitting around.
Marc:Here's what he did.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So it's a small production.
Marc:First of all, he's always doing is going like, can I have this robe?
Marc:Can I have these shoes?
Marc:Can I take?
Marc:Like, so everything on the set, he's like, can I take this home?
Marc:He said, no.
Marc:No.
Marc:And then what the amazing thing is, though, this guy, you know, he's sitting out in front of his trailer.
Marc:He's got his balls hanging out.
Marc:He's sitting in a robe.
Marc:And so we're shooting in a house in a condo.
Marc:And the video village is the bathroom.
Marc:It's just a little bathroom.
Marc:So everyone's crammed in there, right?
Marc:And we're shooting the scene in there.
Marc:It's a low-budget show.
Marc:And somehow at lunch, everyone's gone.
Marc:And for whatever reason, Michael Lerner went in there and took a dump in that bathroom.
Marc:No.
Guest:For some reason.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:He had a trailer.
Marc:He could have gotten it.
Marc:So that was his set.
Marc:So that's how that worked.
Marc:And he also, like, doing zigs with him, he'll fuck with your head, man.
Marc:I mean, he's an interesting guy, and he's a great actor, and I love him, but he's a piece of work.
Marc:Like, you know, we'll be shooting.
Marc:We're shooting with Sally Kellerman and him and me.
Marc:Sally Kellerman's playing my mother.
Marc:And he's just up in my head before every scene.
Marc:He's like, do you know what you're doing?
Marc:Do you make any choices?
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:So by the time he goes, by the time action happens, he owns the scene because he's fucked you.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And I think they know that.
Guest:I think he knows.
Guest:I think he did more than one.
Guest:He probably did one a season.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I get a kick out of it.
Guest:As a scumbag villain.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:There were so many of those actors then, right?
Marc:In the 70s, these guys that were all around.
Yeah.
Marc:But Gardner was great and great to work with.
Guest:Yeah, it was great to work with.
Guest:Also, I respected the writing.
Guest:I respected the show.
Guest:I had been on another show prior to that, and the Rockford people screened an episode of Rockford for me.
Guest:And I thought, well...
Guest:I thought, wow, this really seems like it's really about Los Angeles.
Guest:This show takes place not just in its time slot, but in the real Los Angeles.
Guest:I felt it had some depth and character or something.
Marc:So you sensed the city as a character.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that kind of stood out to you.
Guest:And I was encouraged to write kind of satirically.
Guest:I was encouraged to make fun of the bad guys.
Guest:They would be like pompous assholes, a little bit like Columbo, I suppose.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you had clownish villains.
Marc:Self-deceiving.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:They didn't see the part of themselves that was ridiculous.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what was the big piece of your education on that show was seeing that it was rooted or grounded in a reality that seemed to have some integrity?
Marc:Yes, yeah.
Marc:So what was this stint on Northern Exposure?
Marc:It doesn't match.
Guest:It doesn't add up to me.
Guest:I know.
Guest:That was the... I'm proud to say, I think, that was the only job I took for money, except for the whole career, which I did for money.
Guest:But, I mean, I'm sort of shitting all over myself, but...
Guest:I was just so happy to be part of it and to drive to a studio and see actors that were famous and write and create stuff.
Guest:Just the creative process.
Marc:Well, it seems like you did, you know, like, I don't know what the, I'm just looking at some of the stuff, but I don't know what the Palms precinct was.
Marc:Oh, Jesus Christ.
Marc:It seems like it was a pilot.
Marc:You did it.
Guest:It's a pilot.
Guest:I did it.
Guest:What was that?
Guest:It was Sharon Gless and some Italian guy.
Guest:James Marino or something.
Guest:And it ended up with a gunfight.
Guest:A couple of Hell's Angels in a gunfight.
Guest:And the chief villain had to give up because he had to take a shit and he shit in his pants and ran into the house.
Guest:So, despite all this...
Marc:the people the executives at universal kept having faith in me yeah so that was part of the universal view yeah but okay so you're beating yourself up on all this but you're sort of obviously you know how to do the work you know how to get a script done you know how to you know how to produce a show at this point right yeah so by the time you do the sopranos
Marc:When you started to work on The Sopranos, did you finally at least say to yourself, I'm doing something now that I'm proud of and it's not for the bread?
Marc:Well, I'm trying to explain this.
Guest:I didn't do it for the bread.
Guest:Yeah, I understand.
Yeah.
Guest:I was married, and then I had a kid, and so, you know.
Guest:What was your question?
Marc:The question is, by the time you created The Sopranos, did you feel like you had control and you were happy about it?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:I wasn't happy.
Guest:When they said they were buying it, I mean, we made the pilot, and it took about a year before they made a decision on it.
Guest:They tested it, and everybody was waiting around.
Guest:When they said they were going to buy it, I thought, ugh, this is the end of my life.
Guest:Well, seriously.
Guest:I mean, look at your age.
Guest:You're finished.
Guest:There's another TV show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And... So, wait.
Marc:So, was the thing that was hanging over you was that, you know, you still hadn't done movies yet?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I was going to the movies and I was, you know, watching all kinds of movies.
Guest:And so, when I sold Sopranos, I decided...
Guest:Okay, well, that's gonna be like the movies that I go to see.
Guest:But I thought, I was hoping for that whole year when they didn't buy it, when they hadn't decided, that they would pass on it and that I could get another half a million dollars out of them and put, it was about 70 minutes long, put another 20 or so minutes in it, make a movie out of it, and take it to the Cannes Festival.
Guest:That was my dream.
Guest:And that didn't happen.
Guest:This other thing happened, this other destiny.
Guest:It was a destiny.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It was a huge destiny.
Marc:But in doing that, you were able to change the filmic language of television into something.
Marc:I mean, you are sort of almost personally responsible for making a five- or six-year movie.
Yeah.
Guest:Like there was a sense of, you know, I never thought of it.
Guest:No, I never did.
Guest:A five year movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, because I mean, the conversation was nobody had seen TV like that.
Marc:And, you know, all the filmic elements were not in any way traditional television.
Marc:And every episode, some of them more than others, felt like movies.
Marc:That was my goal.
Guest:That was my goal, was to do a little movie every week.
Marc:Yeah, and so not only did you do a movie, you did the longest movie ever made.
Guest:Okay, but it wasn't in the movie theater.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And you know the difference.
Marc:Yes, I know the difference.
Guest:Yeah, obviously.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:You know, you fall under a spell or you don't.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Well, I mean, I sat and watched, when I was shooting GLOW,
Marc:I watched the entire, all of the Sopranos episodes sitting there on set, like as if it were like a movie, like every day.
Marc:Like I binge watched it.
Marc:But I mean, again, I wasn't in a movie theater.
Marc:But, you know, what was interesting to me was in watching it is that there were definitely some episodes that were, you know, almost like surrealistic adventures.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Because when I watched them the first time, we all kind of looked forward to Sunday.
Marc:It was different.
Marc:But watching them all together, I really saw that, like, Jesus, some episodes really, they all stand on their own, but some of them were sort of like, you know, art.
Marc:They were art movies.
Marc:I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It was the best, obviously, the best creative experience of my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I really felt wonderful doing it.
Marc:And when you got into it, though, like, you know, how much of this sort of like... Because it seems like, you know, whatever it is, whatever reason, you know, you're so hard on yourself or, you know, you judge yourself against this idea of yourself that didn't happen the way you want it to happen.
Marc:I mean, how much of, like, the compulsion at the beginning of The Sopranos was to resolve some of your own shit?
Guest:To resolve some of my own shit.
Guest:I don't... Not consciously.
Guest:But certainly was to...
Guest:I would call it resolve the network shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was certainly to deal with network shit and show that it was shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was.
Marc:Show television.
Marc:They showed the networks that television was shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At that time, there was Elvis Costello on Radio Radio.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Guest:And I used to think about this all the time.
Guest:He used to, you know, I want to bite the hand that feeds me.
Guest:I want to bite that hand so badly.
Guest:I want to make them wish they never seen me.
Guest:And that happened.
Guest:That all came true.
Yeah.
Marc:you showed them i showed them yeah um no it felt really good yeah but in terms of like your your family stuff did you find that like when you were writing that you know you were bringing a lot of your personal yeah issues to yeah well that his mother was based on my mother yeah he had a lot he had some things like
Guest:Like my father.
Marc:Tony did?
Guest:Tony, yeah.
Guest:And all the Italian-Americanism came from my past.
Guest:And I still think it's...
Guest:like maybe the most Italian-American show that's ever been on TV, and maybe even more Italian-American than certain gangster movies.
Marc:Oh, for sure.
Marc:It's just inside the house, that old, all that.
Marc:And also inside the two different kinds of houses, the Italian-Americans that were still sort of in the mindset of trying to pass.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, you know, middle class, upper middle class Italian Americans who want to distance themselves from the Italians who work at the pork store, whether they're gangsters or not.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you've got this sort of two different styles of, you know, the you know, the the people pushing back on the stereotype by making themselves seem less Italian.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That was like the therapist family.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The therapist family.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the other the doctor next door.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I think that I think that came about it because of that was my parents attitude.
They.
Guest:My mother could get really defensive about it.
Guest:That's the way we make chicken.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at the same time, I think there was a shame.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think a feeling at the bottom of the barrel or close to the bottom of the barrel.
Guest:About what?
Guest:I think they were conflicted about their Italianism.
Guest:Oh, so that there was this idea that you don't want to act like you're off the boat.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:My father, when I first started with long hair and beetle boots, he used to say, you look like you just got off at Ellis Island.
Guest:I mean, I knew what Ellis Island was, but I don't remember people wearing beetle boots and long hair at Ellis Island.
Guest:But anyway.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:But that was the lowest of the low for him, I guess.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So there was something like you had a lot to resolve in terms of Italianism in the show.
Marc:But I remember immediately thinking like, well, he's humanized the gangster.
Marc:And I don't know that's ever been done.
Marc:And any time that it's ever been done, even in a glimpse of it, people say, well, this is a different kind of mobster in the movie of this or that.
Marc:But you realize after you watch
Marc:the Sopranos, I saw people doing jobs, and I saw gangsters acting like people.
Marc:Whereas I love Raging Bull, I watch it once a year.
Marc:It's the best.
Marc:But there was still this sort of, I guess because it was limited,
Marc:to the mob's engagement with this one fighter that you didn't see the full spectrum.
Marc:But it was the club, you go to the social club, you get to throw the fight.
Marc:It was not- Mistake, it defeats its own purpose, yeah.
Marc:Well, that stuff, the language was what it was, but the narrative itself.
Marc:you know, get in the box of the throw of the fight.
Marc:It was based on truth, but it was not a story I hadn't seen before.
Marc:Whereas because you had the time with the series to explore the lives and just the day-to-day kind of piccadillos and nuances of people doing this job, it spread it out.
Marc:You saw real people.
Marc:You didn't see caricatures in The Sopranos?
Marc:No, not really.
Marc:I saw, sometimes I had a hard time understanding Steve Van Zandt's approach to the character, but oddly, by the end of it, I bought it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's funny because I've seen him this week.
Guest:I've seen a whole bunch of scenes because of doing press and stuff from the show.
Guest:Yeah, from The Sopranos.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I thought, the whole time, he was really good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it was very specific, and at the beginning, I thought, like, is he doing a good job?
Marc:And by the end of it, you realize, like, well, that's that guy, I guess.
Marc:That's that guy.
Guest:That's that guy, but I think he also had acted a lot more and felt more sure of himself.
Marc:Oh, yeah, especially when he had to.
Marc:And smart.
Marc:Yeah, like when he finally had to kill somebody, you know, when you had to see it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When he had to kill her, what's her name?
Marc:Yeah, Adriana.
Marc:Ooh.
Guest:like that was such a turn for that character it was a turn you know so maybe it's like real life that was a turn for him yeah yeah he said he was saying i was reading the other day that he oh i was reading his autobiography um he really didn't want to do it he found it really hard to pull her out of that car and throw her on the ground yeah yeah
Marc:It's interesting that you mentioned with the Rockford Files that you were given some leeway to give these villains a kind of almost satirical Achilles heel because some of those guys at the beginning played like that a little bit, like Paulie Walnuts and stuff.
Marc:But as time goes on, you got the depth of who they were and where they came from.
Marc:It wasn't like that.
Marc:They were like that.
Marc:That was who they were.
Guest:Well, Paulie Walnuts really...
Guest:was is Tony Sirico that yeah we Gandolfini used to call the writers vampires because we stole the actors lives yeah and put them on the screen now we never did that with him so yeah it was true with Tony that was true that was really his life his mother no no not the whole thing about his mother wasn't his real mother but yeah yeah yeah yeah
Guest:Yeah, his fixation on his mother.
Guest:Right.
Guest:His fixation on his hair, on his mother, on his germophobia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was all real.
Guest:That was him.
Guest:And it turned out he had so much fucking range, really, within that character.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When he saw the humanity of that guy...
Marc:When he saw it?
Marc:When I saw it.
Marc:I don't know when he saw it, but when he got to that place where he was sort of childlike, you know, it was kind of amazing.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Right?
Marc:I know, yeah.
Marc:So with every episode, when you're going through this stuff, was there a constant sense of discovery for you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Terry went there, I just have to say.
Guest:He brought so much to that show, a tremendous amount.
Marc:You didn't lay out all the seasons at the beginning?
Marc:No, no, no, no, no, no.
Marc:So you had a room full of writers and you guys were working through.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I know that people get... I never got hung up on the ending.
Marc:I was like, this is the way he wants to end it.
Marc:What do I give a shit?
Right.
Marc:But did you get annoyed at that after a certain point?
Guest:After a certain point, yeah.
Guest:What do people want?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I mean, Stevie told me that the next day, where was he?
Guest:He was in Florida.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I guess the entire cast...
Guest:went to Florida to some place to watch the last episode.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they didn't know how it was going to end.
Guest:Oh, they didn't?
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because we shot some fake endings because people were trying to find out, you know, we shot an ending that wasn't really the ending.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was on the radio the next day, a sports show, I think.
Guest:Van Zandt was?
Guest:Yeah, and he was defending it all.
Guest:He said, and people were fucking cursing and, you know, just downplay it.
Guest:And it wasn't, he didn't do anything.
Guest:And finally he said...
Guest:All right, well, okay, what would you do?
Guest:Okay, it's your show, now end it.
Guest:And they didn't know what to say.
Marc:Did you struggle with it?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, you knew all the time.
Guest:I mean, Chris Albrecht, the head of HBO at the time, said to me two years out, said...
Guest:you better think about ending the show and how you want it to end.
Guest:Because television, there was never an ending to a TV series.
Marc:Yeah, most of the time it was canceled and you just had to throw one together.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or you never got to do anything.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:It was just gone.
Right.
Marc:I mean, Rockford never had an ending.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:And so here you were in this position.
Marc:You'd created this amazing thing that changed the face of television, and you actually had control over the ending two years ahead of the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're like, you know, eventually we can't have this go on forever because it's not a sitcom.
Guest:They were not... Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I had...
Guest:I wanted to get out and do movies.
Guest:Now I'm hot.
Guest:Now I can do movies.
Guest:That didn't work out that well.
Guest:And it's amazing.
Guest:Because I will say this.
Guest:That show made that network.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It did.
Guest:And it made them a huge amount of money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they wanted, I think Chris wanted it, this is enough of that.
Guest:I need to keep this money, we're costing a lot of money.
Guest:I need to keep some money for research and development for what's going to come after.
Guest:And I think on some level he was probably always thinking to himself or dreaming at night or waking up, what's going to come after that?
Guest:What are we going to do after that?
Guest:And on some level, he probably wanted to get to that.
Marc:Let me face that demon.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What are we going to do post-Sopranos?
Marc:What are we going to do with the whole the mob left?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you had two years to think about it.
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I had two years to think of it.
Guest:Probably shouldn't have taken two years to think that up, but I'm kidding him.
Guest:You just knew Journey was the answer.
Guest:No, I didn't know Journey was the answer.
Guest:Oh, you didn't?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:Journey was in pre-production...
Guest:there was going to be a song at the end.
Guest:He was going to play with the jukebox.
Guest:And I was in the scout van with all the department heads.
Guest:Production design, we're looking for locations.
Guest:And I never had done this before.
Guest:I said, listen, I'm going to talk about three songs that I want thinking about for ending the show.
Guest:And they were like, he's asking us.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:One of them was Al Green.
Guest:What the hell's the name of that song?
Guest:Love and Happiness.
Guest:Love and Happiness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:The second one I don't remember and the Journey song.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Don't Stop Believing.
Guest:They went, oh, Jesus Christ.
Guest:No, don't do that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, fuck.
Guest:And I said, well, I guess that's it.
Guest:That's the one.
Guest:But I wasn't saying that because...
Guest:just to throw it in their face, I just thought that was kind of my favorite.
Guest:And I just thought it got a reaction of some kind.
Guest:So I can make this song lovable.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Which it was.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It had been.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Anyway.
Marc:Did you direct that last episode?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you were aware of...
Marc:You created a tension there, knowing that the end was just going to be them eating.
Guest:Yeah, the parking the car.
Guest:It must have been just so fucking thrilling.
Marc:Doing it and knowing where you were going.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I say it was fun, I don't know what I have an aversion.
Guest:I think a lot of people do in the movie and TV business to saying it was really fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It has to seem deeper than that.
Guest:But it was really fun.
Guest:The whole thing or that episode?
Guest:The whole thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's some bad times, but the whole thing and that episode particularly.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like in the course of it, when you look back on it and having not known where it was all going to go, really, you know, what are you proudest of about in that in terms of creatively?
Guest:Hmm.
Marc:Is it the way that, what's that guy's name, Frank Vincent?
Marc:Is it Frank Vincent?
Marc:Was it the way he died?
Guest:You've got to be pretty proud of that.
Guest:I was pretty proud of that.
Guest:Now that you mention it, yeah, I was pretty proud of that.
Guest:So seriously, is that my whole thing?
Guest:It's just creating shit where people are going to go, oh my God, is that my whole impulse?
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, but I do think like... I did like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the little kids bounced up and down when I remember they were saying, I must say, now you're making me brag about it and relive it.
Guest:It was... Fucking great.
Marc:People couldn't believe it.
Marc:It was fucking great.
Marc:No, I don't think it was.
Marc:I don't think that's your whole thing to shock people.
Marc:I think that, you know, it isn't.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:Of course not.
Marc:I mean, I would never assume that because you never thought like, you know, this guy's just doing this to, you know, to blow our minds with shock bullshit.
Marc:It was just like you you humanize these guys who did horrible things.
Marc:Well, and that's that.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, you know, there were four or five other writers in the room with me who would not have let that be just a shock.
Guest:No.
Guest:In fact, some of them I had to talk out of that.
Guest:I remember Chris Albrecht said to me when we started, when we did the pilot, and we had the Bada Bing and, you know, Topless Dancers, which are against the law in New Jersey.
Guest:And he said, let's not do something just because we can.
Guest:And I thought, that's pretty smart.
Guest:I mean, I never heard a network guy be that intelligent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I mean, he was, you know, it was HBO, right?
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, that was, I always had, that's a really good way to go about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and it worked out beautifully.
Marc:Now, so you still seem a little mad that you didn't do more movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:And this movie, now, you were supposed to direct it?
Guest:I was, yeah.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:Illnesses in the family.
Guest:Oh, sorry.
Guest:But you were there the whole time, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:90%.
Marc:When you really thought about making race an element, was that some sort of reaction to the times we're living in now, or was that always part of the story for you?
Yeah.
Guest:That was always part of the story.
Guest:The times we're living in now, this is easy for a white person to say, I guess, started after we were finished principal photography.
Guest:George Floyd, that happened after we were done.
Guest:And we were fighting with this movie, which wasn't really working for me.
Guest:Why?
Why?
Guest:It just could have been better.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It was... When you were shooting it?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:We were finished shooting.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Finished shooting during the editing process.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And a lot of people found it confusing.
Guest:I mean, you know we had test audiences.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And they didn't know whether they were supposed to be picking out people.
Guest:Oh, that's Silvio.
Guest:Or...
Guest:So that was confusing and they couldn't follow the story because of that.
Guest:And anyway, so we did another 15 pages after George Floyd and we didn't change any of that.
Guest:None of the racial stuff was changed.
Guest:Now, there was a thing with The Sopranos where it seemed like for a long time, maybe the whole time.
Guest:Now, I know there were some bad episodes and some good episodes.
Guest:But even the bad ones, I feel, are pretty good.
Guest:But we couldn't put a foot wrong for some reason.
Guest:I don't know what that means.
Guest:And it's not about my talent or anybody's talent.
Guest:Something, I know this sounds weird, something was guiding something.
Guest:And it became so successful.
Guest:At the same time, we would put things in the show.
Guest:And then it would happen two weeks later in the real world.
Guest:That happened again with the movie.
Guest:We made a movie.
Guest:We'd made a movie about racial tension and anti-black feelings.
Guest:And we shut down.
Guest:And lo and behold, everybody says, how did you know this was, did you rewrote this after George Floyd?
Guest:And we said, no.
Guest:So that happened all the time with the show.
Guest:And I'm not taking any credit for it.
Guest:I never understood it, but it did happen.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, that whole narrative, that whole part of it, like historically and just also the kind of standoff
Marc:between those communities and also the way they work together.
Marc:I mean, it's stuff I didn't really know about.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:And Ray Liotta was great.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, Jesus.
Marc:Now, what about, can we talk about that device?
Marc:No, I don't want to.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I don't want to talk about that.
Marc:But when you enlisted him to do the job,
Marc:You hadn't worked with him before, had you?
Guest:No.
Guest:We tried to work.
Guest:I went to see him on location in Virginia to get him to play the part of, to ask him to play the part of Ralphie, which is what Joe Planteleano ultimately played.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I can't see anyone else doing that.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I mean, I could see how Ray could have done it.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Joey Pants was, ooh, shit.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Wow.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Just talking to that guy is unbelievable.
Marc:I interviewed him on Zoom during the pandemic.
Marc:He's like, what's going on?
Marc:You know, he's like, he's just Joey Pants, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And he's such a lit up guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's amazing.
Guest:And the best part of it for me was the last episode he was in, I guess.
Guest:After his movie son got shot with the arrow and was in the hospital.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was, you know, it was never going to be...
Guest:the same anymore, there was a whole different Ralphie.
Guest:You just saw Ralphie really be destroyed.
Guest:And he did that.
Marc:And you felt really bad for him, this asshole.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Do you love working with these actors?
Marc:I mean, that was your fear initially about directing.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:And then you got this amazing opportunity to work with such a big variety of actors.
Marc:Yes, I really enjoyed it, yeah.
Marc:I really enjoyed it.
Marc:It must have been just sort of astounding, like every episode.
Guest:Well, I had lost my fear of that a while before that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, I worked with Sam Waterston, and it was incredible.
Guest:But anyway, yeah, I lost it after a while.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:What'd you work with Waterston on?
Guest:It was a show called I'll Fly Away.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:It was a show about race.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:About a white lawyer.
Guest:It was based on, or cribbed from, I don't know how you want to put it, from Atticus Finch.
Guest:What was it?
Marc:Yeah, To Kill a Mockingbird?
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Yeah, okay.
Marc:I get it, yeah.
Marc:So, now, are you happy with the movie?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I am.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:I am.
Guest:It's a relief, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:Well, who knows?
Guest:I mean, there's so much excitement about it that I just can't believe it.
Marc:I was excited to see it, and I loved it.
Marc:You saw it in a theater.
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:I saw it over on the lot.
Marc:A small theater, but it was definitely a theater.
Marc:It was actually not so small.
Marc:It was a big screening room.
Marc:What's the studio?
Marc:Warner Brothers.
Marc:Warner Brothers.
Marc:Yeah, I went over to Warner Brothers, and it was in their big room.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:So they have smaller ones that are like, you know, but this was a full theater.
Marc:No one was in it.
Marc:It was me and Elvis Mitchell and somebody else.
Guest:Yeah, I know the one you mean.
Guest:Yeah, it's nice.
Guest:I saw Enter the Dragon there in 1971.
Guest:My agent got me in to see that at night.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, at that screening room.
Guest:I think I was the only person in there.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Was that exciting to see?
Guest:Oh, of course it was.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Yeah.
Marc:Enter the Dragon.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So now, do you got a few movies in the pipe now, or what?
Guest:Well, I have a screenplay.
Guest:That's what I got.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And we also have a pilot.
Guest:I mean, the last three or four months have been just... I never went through this at the other movie I made.
Guest:It's just been crazy.
Guest:Oh, people love The Sopranas.
Marc:Press, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How's the reaction to it?
Marc:I guess has anyone written about it yet?
Marc:When's it open?
Guest:Well, they have these things called toe-dip screenings in which they have people like yourself and journalists come and see it in a movie theater or at home.
Guest:And I just said, no, we're not going to show it to people at their house.
Guest:They have to go see it.
Guest:And it's been pretty good.
Guest:I mean, really overwhelming.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:But those aren't Joe's six-pack of the people he used to say at Universal.
Marc:I love the kid.
Marc:I mean, Gandolfini's kid did a great job.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, Jesus.
Marc:He really did.
Marc:Really looks like him.
Marc:I know.
Guest:Is he all right?
Guest:Oh, he's great.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Well, I'm glad we talked.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And I'm glad you're finally making movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to, you know, what have I got?
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:Maybe one more, two more.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you're relatively happy?
Guest:Um...
Guest:I had ketamine yesterday.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:A small dose?
Marc:A nasal dose.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That was good.
Marc:It was the first time?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So will you still fight depression?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My wife isn't well, so it really makes it hard.
Guest:And we've been married for, we met in high school.
Guest:Oh, that's terrible.
Guest:I'm sorry, buddy.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:But the ketamine worked a little bit?
Yeah.
Guest:And well, I mean, I have to go for more before I know that it actually worked.
Guest:It worked while it was in my blood system, for sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I think so.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think it's working.
Marc:Has this been a lifelong struggle?
Marc:No.
Marc:Depression?
Marc:No.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Well, maybe adulthood.
Guest:Maybe from my 20s on.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I don't remember being depressed anymore.
Marc:Well, I would say at your age, that's a lifelong struggle from 20s.
Guest:Yeah, I guess it has been, yeah.
Marc:But just like medication sometimes or usually something?
Guest:I never went on anything until I guess the 80s.
Guest:I went on some old-fashioned antidepressant.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I've talked too much about this depression shit.
Guest:I really have.
Guest:It's just part of my life.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's not the whole story.
Marc:No.
Marc:You don't get depressed?
Marc:I used to think it was depression, but I think I suffer more from dread and anxiety.
Marc:There's this combination of dread and anxiety that becomes overwhelming, and it kind of feels like depression, but it's really anxiety.
Marc:Like, I don't think I have, like, clinical depression.
Marc:My father did, but I don't think.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he did.
Marc:What were some of his symptoms?
Marc:He would just be paralyzed with sadness and couldn't get out of bed for periods of time.
Marc:I haven't got, no.
Marc:And he would suicidal ideation.
Marc:And he was slightly bipolar.
Marc:So he'd then go into manias.
Marc:And he'd try all different ways to manage it.
Marc:But it seemed to level off at some point.
Marc:I don't know what happened.
Marc:He got old.
Marc:But...
Marc:you know but it was a lot of uh you know uh you can see it in their eyes you know when they're depressed but then all of a sudden he's like hey i bought a porsche you know and then oh here we go good good for him well they love the mania but you know they drag everyone through the mania and they never think they're gonna get depressed again right so they don't stay on their medication yeah that's amazing yeah there's very little i know about that disease yeah yeah
Guest:Anyway, I saw, I listened to, on the way up here, I listened to your podcast with Quentin Tarantino.
Guest:It was really good.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:Yeah, we stayed focused, you know.
Marc:I mean, with him, you want to have a conversation and not just have a thing where he just goes.
Marc:And, you know, I think we had a nice little arc, too, a nice engagement.
Guest:Well, it was interesting hearing about his stepfather.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That was good stories.
Marc:And what is the name of that book?
Marc:Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Marc:I gotta get that.
Marc:Well, did you see the movie?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you love it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, the book's great.
Marc:I mean... It's a good time.
Guest:My wife and I, you know, in our very early 20s, got to Hollywood...
Guest:a year after the mass and murders uh-huh so and then i then i was working on the rockford files so that whole thing about tv show and uh those actors and those stuntmen yeah oh my god i loved it you knew those guys i did yeah and he did especially you know garner that he was cowboy yeah you know what was it maverick maverick yeah and but you like they did quentin get it right
Marc:yeah yeah yeah they really did yeah oh it was phenomenal I really really liked it yeah oh god DiCaprio is too much man yeah it's just like he's something else man that guy yeah everyone was good yeah the book is fun and you weren't you know he goes more in depth with the with all the characters and you already got the characters in your head so it just gives this whole other world to what you already saw yeah I mean I really liked the end I thought the ending was great oh it's beautiful yeah beautiful yeah great talking all right
Marc:He is heavy, right?
Marc:He's heavy.
Marc:He's got the heaviness, as Dangerfield used to call it.
Marc:The heaviness.
Marc:The Many Saints of Newark opens in theaters Friday, October 1st, and it will also be streaming on HBO Max.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com slash tour for the remaining dates.
Marc:Also, go to WTFPod.com slash merch for stuff.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Here's some heavy guitar.
Marc:I'm doing the heaviness.
Marc:The heaviness.
.
.
.
.
.
Guest:guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey.
Marc:LaFonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.