Episode 1279 - George Clooney
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 obviously broadcasting from away i'm away and i'm doing radio voice why am i doing radio voice get out of me get out of me
Marc:Get, go away, radio voice.
Marc:Let Mark talk.
Marc:Why can't we just talk about things in this way?
Marc:Stop it.
Marc:Get out, radio voice.
Marc:Go.
Marc:Go.
Marc:George Clooney is on the show today.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:George Clooney is on the show today.
Marc:And it was it was great.
Marc:It was it was great.
Marc:He's George Clooney.
Marc:Clooney, I guess, kind of knows me, which is which is nice.
Marc:And we focused a lot of this conversation on his directing work.
Marc:And he's got this new movie he directed, The Tender Bar, which is the screening I saw him at.
Marc:That's coming out in December.
Marc:And I also just wanted to mention before, I don't know that I mentioned it enough.
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Marc:There are new holiday sweatshirts.
Marc:The Hawaiian cat shirt is very exciting.
Marc:And there's a bunch of Christmas sweater style sweatshirts there that are kind of funny.
Marc:As I said, if you're new to this show, there's 1,200 and some odd episodes of it.
Marc:And you can go get it at WTFPod.com and click on the premium tab to have access to all of that.
Marc:So I'm in New York City, and I've been here for days.
Marc:Came out a few days ago.
Marc:And it's the first time I've been here since before the pandemic.
Marc:I didn't really know what to expect, but because I've been outperforming so much and out in the world and at the comedy store, I'd gotten used to engaging with people, having masks on, mask off, whatever's necessary.
Marc:But I've been out in the world among people for months now.
Marc:So I thought I was sort of...
Marc:It wasn't a big deal.
Marc:I'd acclimated to masked audiences and to the sort of COVID realities of the world we live in.
Marc:But I had nothing to prepare myself, really, just for the excitement and feeling of being back in this fucking city again.
Marc:I mean...
Marc:It's great.
Marc:I mean, the city is alive.
Marc:People are out.
Marc:It's interesting to see how everything has been adjusted, all the in-street dining and whatnot.
Marc:But I guess people on some level, given that the vaccine rate is very high here and people are moving through the world with relative safety, but they are still taking precautions.
Marc:But it's just that people are out and about.
Marc:And I was sort of amazed by it for some reason.
Marc:I don't know why, but I started sort of posting about it, being amazed by it.
Marc:And of course, New Yorkers are like, what do you fucking think was happening?
Marc:Of course, we're fine.
Marc:We don't stop.
Marc:It's New York.
Marc:What the fuck's the matter with you?
Marc:What do you think?
Marc:Everything stopped?
Marc:I did.
Marc:I did think everything stopped.
Marc:What are you fucking crazy?
Marc:This is New York City.
Marc:That kind of aggravated, thick pride of the toughness of New York was just coming at me on the goddamn Instagram.
Marc:Like, what do you think was going on?
Marc:We've been good the whole time.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But it's just been kind of exciting.
Marc:I love this city.
Marc:And there's something about this city.
Marc:If you interface with this city, if you know how to interface with this city, that's always exciting about being here.
Marc:Always exciting.
Marc:We had to get a car to go up to Connecticut, rent a car in the city, drive up to Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Marc:This was last Thursday and do the show up there at the Ridgefield Playhouse.
Marc:And it's weird to rent a car in New York City.
Marc:You got to go to a garage where the Hertz is kind of embedded in some garage under a building.
Marc:And grabbed the car, ripped it up to Connecticut.
Marc:Beautiful little situation up there.
Marc:500 seat theater.
Marc:But they get all the people.
Marc:It was a weird night.
Marc:Only because, I don't know, we got up there very early and then, you know, I've got a sort of I wouldn't say I'm cynical, but I've got kind of a just from all the stand up I'm doing, I've got sort of an edge to me a little bit.
Marc:And I just pulled up the calendar.
Marc:They have the calendar book of everyone that they hand out who's coming to the Ridgefield Playhouse.
Marc:But I was just going through the roster of people that were coming to that venue.
Marc:Small venue.
Marc:500 seats.
Marc:People like Paul Anka, The Wallflowers, comedians like Tom Papa and Segura and Regan's going to do a few days there.
Marc:And then Joan Jett.
Marc:It's just not a big place, man.
Marc:500 seats.
Marc:But it's close enough to the city.
Marc:I guess it's in a routing sense.
Marc:It's on the way to other things.
Marc:Art Garfunkel was coming.
Marc:And I just couldn't let up.
Marc:I could not...
Marc:Let up on Art Garfunkel.
Marc:Not that Art Garfunkel deserves it, but I was just like, does Garfunkel need the bread?
Marc:The guy's 80.
Marc:He's 80.
Marc:And then I was told by somebody, I don't need to mention any names, that Art Garfunkel is not the most pleasant guy in the world to work with at 80.
Marc:Or at any time.
Marc:And it was just this ongoing callback.
Marc:And I just don't know what the fuck is wrong with me.
Marc:What do I got to rip on Art Garfunkel for?
Marc:Right?
Marc:Just like that audience of people who are 80 years old, 75 years old, just wondering, sitting there going, is he going to sing The Bridge Over Troubled Water?
Marc:Do you think he can still sing that?
Marc:It'd be nice to see if a man that age still sing...
Guest:That's all I can sing without being charged.
Marc:But I kind of was a little hard on art, and I don't know if it's going to get back to him or whether I should feel bad for it.
Marc:There must be something about touring, whether he needs to or not, knowing that Paul Simon could, if that theater was struggling, just he could probably buy that theater and pay everyone who performed there for five years without even really feeling the hit.
Marc:But that would be, I don't know.
Marc:It'd be a different theater then.
Marc:It'd be sort of like, no more art.
Marc:Art doesn't come.
Marc:No more art.
Marc:And Edie Burkell plays every two weeks.
Marc:Maybe Steve Martin will come with the banjo.
Marc:I mean, he's got to have a chip on his shoulder, right?
Marc:Am I projecting?
Marc:I got nothing against him.
Marc:Made some beautiful songs.
Guest:All right.
Marc:In all honesty, I enjoyed the Breakaway record a lot.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:But it was a great show up there.
Marc:Massive riffage.
Marc:Hour and 45 minutes.
Marc:Nice heading into the big show at Town Hall.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:Driving back from Connecticut in the nighttime, late at night, 11 at night, ripping down the FDR like the old days.
Marc:I used to own a car in this town back in the late 80s.
Marc:VW Golf.
Marc:A VW Golf because I'd rip around the city doing sets.
Marc:Then I have to go up to the New England area to do Thursday, Friday, Saturday runs.
Marc:But God damn it.
Marc:If like I said before, if you've got the interface for this city, if you've spent time here, if you've lived here and you have no, there's no distance between you.
Marc:It's like riding a bike.
Marc:It's like hooking up with an old buddy.
Marc:I haven't been here in a year and a half, two years.
Marc:You get here.
Marc:Boom.
Marc:You just plugged right the fuck back in.
Marc:I know how to get around this town.
Marc:I know where to eat in this town.
Marc:I know how to walk down the street in this fucking city.
Marc:Yeah, I do.
Marc:I know how to drive in this fucking city.
Marc:exciting, exciting, ripping down that FDR 1130 at night.
Marc:You get out of that car, you feel like you've been through something.
Marc:Feel like you should be taking a helmet off.
Marc:man exciting i have a lot of fans in this town because everybody's out on the street walking around on the train wearing the earbuds whatever so walking down the street and i noticed over to the right of me there's some black dude giving me side eye and i'm looking at him he's looking at me he says anyone ever tell you you look like mark maron i go i am him and he just cocked his head and go motherfucker and walked away that is a great moment that is the best moment of recognition i
Marc:Motherfucker.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes, it's me.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:My mother came out with her sister for the town hall show.
Marc:Now, the town hall show.
Marc:It was beautiful.
Marc:You know, it was a great show.
Marc:But the weird thing is, I feel like I've been working up to that show, this New York show, this Town Hall show.
Marc:But the truth of the matter is, I've been working almost every night that I can work in one way or the other for months and months now, putting together this hour.
Marc:And I've had some great shows over the past few months.
Marc:I mean, that show in Ridgefield.
Marc:I mean, look, Art Garfunkel took a hit, but it was a great show.
Marc:And Town Hall was a great show, but it was one of many great shows, one of many.
Marc:But it was great.
Marc:It was a good time, and it was the proper size for me.
Marc:That's really where I like it, to top out at 1,500.
Marc:It's just a perfect-sized theater, perfect-sized space.
Marc:Everybody at the venue was great.
Marc:No opener, straight out.
Marc:But I just wanted to thank everybody for coming out there.
Marc:It was...
Marc:It's different now.
Marc:The last couple of years, things have changed inside of me.
Marc:Certainly since the death of Lynn.
Marc:Certainly since the pandemic.
Marc:But I'm pretty grounded.
Marc:I don't give many fucks.
Marc:I've got really nothing to lose.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:It was great to work.
Marc:It's great to be back in New York.
Marc:Also, before we begin the Clooney experience here...
Marc:I wanted to thank everybody for the feedback on the cancel culture episode we did last week.
Marc:A lot of feedback and, you know, a little bit of pushback for whatever that's worth.
Marc:I mean, we really weren't presenting an argument.
Marc:We were presenting a context.
Marc:And an empathetic point of view.
Marc:But so when people take things out of context or are unable to wrap their head around the context or make the connections without cramming things together, making accusations and then whining like fucking baby men that something I have said or something that was represented on the show infringed upon some element of their ability to whine effectively.
Marc:A little of that, but not much.
Marc:Mostly people were grateful for the historical contextualizing of can't say anything anymore.
Marc:I can't do anything.
Marc:No more.
Marc:You can't say anything anymore.
Marc:That hurts someone's feelings.
Marc:The historical context of that.
Marc:What's interesting is that I realized this the other day.
Marc:And I'm guilty of it myself.
Marc:Like when I was younger starting out, I really saw myself as part of the legacy of whatever, you know, boundary-pushing comics were, you know, the angry sort, the shock-driven ones, the ones who present the angry truth, man.
Marc:It was just the way I was, just angry.
Marc:But I do remember that I was able to hang my own victimness
Marc:on my anger uh that like you know i can't get club work man too edgy man too angry and the weird thing was it was i wasn't that funny it wasn't that funny uh yeah i was angry and sometimes i had something to say but mostly i was angry because i was afraid or whatever you know whatever anger comes from whatever is at the core of anger usually if it's personal it's sadness or fear
Marc:But as I grew older and as I grew better and as I grew funnier, I moved through it.
Marc:I'm still kind of cynical and dark and certainly capable of saying shit that rides the line.
Marc:But when I was younger, it was a way to blame or something to hang my laurels on and also to sort of claim that it was the reason that I wasn't getting work.
Marc:And I noticed a lot of these sort of second stringer free speech anti-woke comics, they can say like, yeah, that's why I'm not getting work, man.
Marc:It's these fucking woke club owners, these fucking triggered audiences.
Marc:That's why I'm not getting work.
Marc:Like now they don't even have to face up to the music that they might not be funny.
Marc:They know they can live in the delusion of victimhood because they're just too goddamn edgy, man.
Marc:They're just telling too much truth, man.
Marc:They're just laying it out how it is.
Marc:They're just saying the words they want to say with the freedom they have.
Marc:And hey, man, if I'm not getting work, that's why, man.
Marc:I'm being fucking shut out.
Marc:Because I'm too fucking truthful.
Marc:Not afraid.
Marc:Fuck the woke people.
Marc:Might be because you're not funny.
Marc:So I told you Clooney's here.
Marc:The Tender Barred, the movie that I mentioned earlier, his movie that he directed, opens in theaters December 17th, and it will be streaming on Prime Video in the new year.
Marc:Also, this was taped two and a half weeks ago.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So the fatal shooting accident on the set of the movie Rust had just happened like like a week before we talked.
Marc:So it was fresh on on both of our minds.
Marc:We talked about it.
Marc:And I also wanted to mention that, yes, we do talk about Michael Clayton.
Marc:Because, yes, Michael Clayton is one of my favorite movies.
Marc:I watch it, yes, several times a year.
Marc:Yep, I do.
Guest:Of course, New York City.
Guest:Wait, didn't we just stop because of the sickness?
Guest:It's fucking New York.
Marc:This is me talking to George Clooney.
Guest:Hey.
Guest:Hey, man.
Guest:How you doing?
Guest:What's up, buddy?
Guest:Well, you know, I'm in fabulous Australia.
Marc:Lucky you.
Guest:In quarantine.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You have to stay in one place for 14 days before you're allowed to go out and breathe.
Guest:That's okay.
Marc:It's nice to see you.
Marc:Good to see you.
Marc:I was very oddly moved when you said hi to me at the screening the other day.
Marc:Because I was just going to the bathroom.
Guest:Well, it's good to see you.
Guest:Yes, you were going to the bathroom.
Guest:It's better to do it outside the bathroom than in the bathroom, which seems a little odd at times.
Marc:Yeah, well, you didn't follow me in, and I appreciate that.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:But there was a moment where you're just like, hey, Mark, how you doing?
Marc:And I'm like, a couple of things happened in that moment.
Marc:I was like, how does George Clooney know who I am?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I've been a fan for a long time.
Guest:I remember – I mean, you must have done I don't know how many episodes of Conan.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I always loved your stand-up and thought it was really great.
Guest:And I've listened to your podcast for years.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And I just think – I actually – one of those people who really sort of lives and dies by podcasts.
Guest:I have –
Guest:about five or six that I listened to all the time.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Um, so, so I've listened to your podcast.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And, uh, and also, you know, I, you know, I sort of followed all of the difficulties you had, um, last year.
Guest:Um, and I felt, uh, um, you know, very keenly aware of, uh,
Marc:how difficult that situation was for you and and how hard that was and uh and so you know when i saw you i just you know felt like i i suppose i felt like i knew you better than i do well i you might but it did it did resonate there was a moment there i knew exactly what you were talking about and uh and i i was maybe seconds away of uh just you know tearing up and crying in front of you uh you know at the screening and
Marc:As you were walking in, I doubt that that would have been the greatest moment for you.
Marc:How are you doing, Mark?
Marc:Not that great, man.
Marc:Can you hang out a second?
Marc:That's so good.
Guest:Yeah, you know those people when you ask them how they're doing and they actually go into long explanations of how they're actually doing that you really don't want to know.
Marc:Yeah, just okay.
Marc:Just say okay.
Marc:Okay, and we'll move on.
Marc:Yeah, just say, I'm good, man.
Marc:And then walk.
Marc:I'm dealing.
Marc:I think that's what I said to you.
Marc:How are you doing?
Marc:Dealing.
Marc:And then I said, I'm looking forward to the movie.
Marc:You said it's light.
Marc:And I said, I could use light.
Marc:And you said, I bet you could.
Guest:yeah well because you know what you know how you doing well i've given up drugs and my parents are you know assholes and my i mean you know you're like i just really need something simple you have watched my act
Marc:But it's like when I saw the movie, I have other questions, but let's just start with this.
Marc:When you direct, you're making very specific choices about what you want to direct, and they're all very different.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you do this, after the one where you have a beard and you know the spoiler is right at the beginning, there's no avoiding the end of the world.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:So now we're just like some kid in the 60s or the 70s, whenever it was.
Marc:So how do you?
Marc:Why do you choose?
Marc:Like, let's start at the beginning.
Marc:So Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
Marc:What?
Marc:You just got a kick out of that book.
Marc:You like Sam.
Marc:You like Chuck.
Marc:What is it?
Guest:It was a script that had been kicking around for a long time.
Guest:It was at Warner Brothers.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And Warner Brothers was using his bait to bring in big directors to do other projects because they were never going to make the movie.
Guest:It was pretty dark.
Guest:The script was even darker than sort of what we did.
Guest:There was like dancing aborted fetuses and all kinds of crazy stuff.
Guest:Charlie Kaufman wrote the screenplay.
Guest:And –
Guest:I just finished doing Oceans at Warner Brothers.
Marc:The first one?
Guest:Yeah, the first one.
Guest:I knew they were trying to get that movie out.
Guest:They got it over to Miramax.
Guest:I called up Soderbergh, who was my partner, and I just said, if I was ever going to direct anything, this is a really good script.
Guest:Having grown up around live television and understanding it really well, my father had a variety show before he was a news anchor.
Guest:You know, we would see the sets change from the Nick Clooney show, which was a talk show like the Michael Douglas show.
Guest:And then suddenly you'd lift up the set and underneath there'd be a bowling alley and be the three 30 bowling show.
Marc:Wait, wait, wait.
Marc:So where, what town was that in?
Guest:That was in the mid seven, early seven.
Marc:But where, where was that?
Guest:Oh, then Cincinnati, Ohio.
Marc:Nick Clooney show in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Before he did the news.
Marc:I remember there was a... I saw when I was a kid, I saw Jay Leno on, I think, Mike Douglas.
Marc:And he was just doing his bit.
Marc:And he made a comment that reminded me of that.
Marc:Because after they were going to go to commercial and Jay said, does the chair fold up into the wall now or do I stay?
Guest:It's really true because, you know, you only have...
Guest:usually two sort of stages and they're not big like a soundstage, you know, and this is in Cincinnati.
Guest:So it's a fairly decent sized market, but they had, you know, the three 30 money movie bowling for dollars, the news and all of those things, like the bowling alley would go through two sets, you know, and underneath on top of it, you put the newsroom, right?
Marc:The weird thing about local television, there's always some sort of weird stories about the personalities.
Marc:I'm assuming he's not your father.
Marc:I remember when something horrible happened to the dialing for dollars guy in Albuquerque.
Marc:I can't remember what it was, but he did something bad.
Guest:Well, they always there's always a couple of them.
Guest:You know, we had a guy who did a morning show.
Guest:It was just when the miniskirts came in in the 60s, late 60s.
Guest:And he did a morning show where he took a pair of binoculars and he made all the girls in the miniskirts sit in the front row and would look sort of up their dresses.
Guest:And that was his whole act in the morning.
Guest:We had these things called knee ticklers that he would give his name on Paul Dixon.
Marc:He's doing it right in front of everybody.
Marc:You know, he's not like that was the gimmick.
Marc:That was the bit.
Marc:And he's like, he's getting away with it.
Guest:And there are all those characters that you never, you always were suspicious of who were like ran the kid show, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Where you knew hated kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was there a clown?
Guest:No, we had Uncle Al, who was a nice guy.
Guest:Uncle Al, the kiddie's pal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we had Skipper Ryle, who was also, you know, he's like the budget version of Captain Kangaroo.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I knew Skipper Rock.
Guest:Glenn Riley was a funny guy and he was a, you know, an old Marine and he kind of hated kids, but he got a gig being, you know, the kid show guy, which always makes me, it's a little like a thousand clowns.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And this is your dad's world.
Marc:Oh, yeah, sure.
Marc:And he did variety shows.
Marc:He did talk shows.
Guest:Yeah, he did all of that.
Guest:He would sing on the show.
Guest:And it's funny because he started out in news and pretty quickly after the show was canceled, after about five or six years, and he had a band, Jerry Conrad's Rhythm and Brass.
Guest:So you grew up around all these guys?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, I grew up around, you know, I got to see some really –
Guest:You know, Rosemary was a big singer.
Guest:I didn't get to see her all that often, but my Aunt Rosemary was a big singer.
Guest:Yeah, huge, yeah.
Guest:I mean, by the time I was, you know, 21, I was on the road with them, driving her.
Guest:I was driving Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting and Kay Ballard and Kay Star.
Guest:I mean, some crazy, you know, Martha Ray.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Martha Ray.
Guest:Literally, I'm driving her from a show.
Guest:Rosemary was doing this show called Four Girls Four, which was usually four big famous...
Guest:female singers from the 50s usually you're doing what are you doing prescription uh subscription theaters or what well it was no it's big huge oh yeah venues you know it was like uh um you know it'd be harris and reno okay okay yeah yeah yeah and so she would be playing it'd be like billy may's orchestra huge orchestra yeah yeah and big bands and you know and i'd stand backstage with helen o'connell with a tall glass of vodka and helen is maybe five foot
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not five, but like four foot nine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Probably weighs 80 pounds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a tall glass of warm Smirnoff.
Guest:And they'd be playing the Overture.
Guest:Ladies and gentlemen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, from Tahoe in, you know, Harrison Tahoe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Miss Helen O'Connor.
Guest:And just before they play the Overture.
Guest:And she'd point at me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'd hand her this tall glass and she'd down it.
Guest:And then she'd walk on stage going, Tangerine does a lady proud.
Guest:And it was fantastic.
Guest:The best.
Guest:And then I would have to drive them home to the hotel.
Guest:And Martha wouldn't change out of her dress.
Guest:She'd be wearing that sequins dress you wear on stage, you know.
Guest:And she's in the back with my Aunt Rosemary.
Guest:They're drinking pretty good.
Guest:And Martha's like, pull over.
Guest:I got to take a piss.
Guest:I'm 21.
Guest:And she literally hikes up her dress and puts one leg out of the backseat of the car.
Guest:There's peeing on the side of the freeway.
Guest:And my Aunt Rosemary goes, Georgie, don't turn around.
Guest:You learned too much about the aging process.
Guest:But they were fun, man.
Guest:I had a really interesting introduction into a very different world than I'd grown up.
Guest:I'd grown up living across a river in Kentucky, cutting tobacco for a living and shit.
Guest:So suddenly I got to see...
Marc:you know a very interesting fun exciting world that's the uh but that part of show business is really the greatest like the because like what you're saying in in relation to the movie and in relation to the way you grew up is like i notice that all the time when i'm about to go on stage when you got to walk through the kitchen to get to the state like that moment where it's all about backstage i mean that is that's like show business you get out there oh my god
Marc:You'd get out there and do your bit.
Marc:That's your bit.
Marc:But like, it's really, it's kind of fascinating that moment between offstage and onstage.
Marc:It's amazing.
Guest:Well, I remember, I remember seeing, um, God, this is a long time ago.
Guest:There's a, there was a director directed South Pacific and films like that named Josh Logan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really talented guy.
Guest:And he's best friends with Henry Fonda and, um, Jimmy Stewart.
Guest:They were absolutely best friends from school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they took pictures together every year and in, in, uh, straw hats and,
Guest:Really funny guys.
Guest:And Josh, my cousin Miguel was married to his daughter, Harrigan at the time.
Guest:And I was at a thing at the Beverly Hills Hotel and Jimmy Stewart's going to introduce Josh Logan.
Guest:And Josh is backstage and I'm backstage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Josh is, and I'm, you know, I'm like,
Guest:I don't know, 25 years old and trying to get a job.
Guest:But I was there with my family because Miguel had just married into this family.
Guest:And Josh is back there and he's very old and in a wheelchair.
Guest:And he's completely checked out.
Guest:He's sitting slumped in a wheelchair back behind the curtain, waiting for the curtain to open.
Guest:And it's just like you're watching a dead man in a chair.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And Jimmy comes out and goes, oh, yo, here's my buddy, the greatest director, the greatest writer, the most talented guy, who's Josh Logan.
Guest:And boom, he pops up out of the chair.
Guest:He comes out on stage.
Guest:He does like a five-minute great funny routine.
Guest:Thank you and good night.
Guest:He goes back and sits down, boom, back to just dead.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:I actually have a theory that –
Marc:with the exception of like dick sean you know that you can't really die if you're on stage right right because you can live forever yeah yeah yeah well it is an eternal moment but you didn't do well like so go back going back to that script so you got this charlie kaufman script of a very odd movie yeah now did you yeah i mean what do you make of that man did you talk to chuck sure yeah i spent a lot of time now was this a lot of time with chuck barris
Guest:I know what Chuck thought, which is, you know, he woke up one morning.
Guest:You know, he was like just this entertainer guy who was doing like the dating game and shit like that.
Guest:And he was getting along fine, making a lot of money, having a good time, getting laid.
Guest:You know, everything for him was like about that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he did the gong show and he starred in it, which he hadn't done in the other ones.
Guest:And suddenly...
Guest:People recognized him and they put him alongside the words, you know, the downfall of civilization.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The gong show.
Guest:And he woke up one day and realized he was suddenly a joke.
Guest:He was the joke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he would go around to parties and everything saying, well, if you knew what I really did, which is all bullshit.
Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, you can never verify anybody who's actually in the CIA.
Guest:So he just goes, check it out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he wrote a book about it called The Unauthorized Autobiography, which cracks me up.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:And, you know, we wanted to deal with it as if it were true because I think that's funnier.
Guest:And, you know, he was a really wonderfully sweet man.
Guest:And I really enjoyed my time with him.
Guest:He was fun.
Yeah.
Marc:So that was the so the intent was sort of a dip back into your past in this curious story.
Marc:And Charlie Kaufman's a genius.
Guest:Well, I mean, think about it this way.
Guest:And I could ask this of you as well.
Guest:You know, your career has been many things, you know, right.
Guest:You've done a lot of different things.
Marc:And I have not been George Clooney.
Marc:I have not.
Marc:No.
Guest:It might not be as fun as you think.
Guest:But here's the interesting thing about it is, you know, you get to a point in your career where you're looking down and you think, well, I don't know what the long game is here.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Do I want to worry about when I'm 60 years old what some casting director thinks about me as an actor?
Guest:I wanted other options.
Guest:And so I knew I'd been writing for a long time, so I wanted to continue writing.
Guest:I produced a few things, but I wanted to do it on a –
Guest:more realistic scale, which meant getting in and actually being involved in producing.
Guest:And I wanted to direct because I just wanted to have some control over my life besides just, oh, he looks a lot older now up close.
Marc:Oh, so that was a concern.
Marc:Like, it's not like in 2002, you were like, yeah, I'm really scrambling for the roles.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It wasn't that.
Guest:It was like, this is the moment.
Guest:Like in 2002, shit's going pretty good for me.
Guest:You know, Oceans had just come out.
Guest:Life was going pretty well.
Guest:And we were able to force the studio, Warner Brothers, to do films they didn't want to do.
Guest:Three Kings and Siriana and films that don't fit into a studio, you know, kind of thing.
Guest:So we were really I was in a really good spot.
Guest:Stoderbergh and I were.
Guest:And I knew that this was a time for me to try to make a move.
Marc:Right.
Marc:He was your production partner at the time.
Guest:Yeah, he and I were, after we did Out of Sight together in 98, we decided that we'd try a partnership for five years.
Marc:And it worked good?
Guest:And we sucked to it.
Guest:Yeah, it was fun.
Guest:I mean, you know, we did Oceans, and we did some really interesting films together.
Marc:Well, Three Kings, like, I believe, for me, you're involved in, like, a few masterpieces for me.
Guest:Yeah, I've gotten lucky.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Well, I mean, like, Three Kings to me is, like, one of the best movies of all time.
Guest:It's a really good, smart movie.
Guest:It's really smart.
Guest:Holds up.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You had a part in pushing that through?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, that was a hard film because the studio didn't want to make it.
Marc:Really?
Guest:You know, yeah.
Guest:If you look at what the studio was making at the time, what Warner Brothers was making at the time.
Guest:And, you know, it wasn't a hit, by the way.
Guest:But what they were making, they weren't making films.
Guest:Nobody was taking movies about the, you know, the rise of the Republican Guard taking on, you know, the Shia.
Marc:But it was a satire.
Marc:I mean, really, in some ways.
Marc:It was a comedy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And they probably misunderstood that.
Guest:Well, I think – I remember at the premiere, there was a lot of hemming and hawing by the studio of how violent it was if it was supposed to be a satire and how – I mean, now you look at the Squid Game and you think, oh, well, none of that matters anymore.
Guest:But it was a big deal at the time.
Marc:I got to watch that Squid Game, huh?
Guest:You know, I just finished it last night, watching all of it.
Guest:It's interesting.
Guest:It's actually very disturbing in a lot of ways, really disturbing.
Guest:It's truly the most violent thing I've ever seen.
Marc:They're really selling this.
Guest:I get it.
Marc:I really get it.
Guest:I mean, it's really good filmmaking, and it's really good storytelling.
Guest:I'm not sure it's for everyone.
Guest:There's a lot of headshots.
Guest:There must be, you know, there must be 200 headshots and that's hard to watch, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Especially after all this shit we've been seeing with the Alec Baldwin stuff.
Guest:It's, you know.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:What a terrible situation.
Marc:Did you talk to him?
Guest:No, I don't know Alec that well.
Guest:I have to say, you know, I'm watching the news this morning and they're, you know, they're, they've got the bad guy, which is going to be the first AD, which I'm, you know, look, he may be a dick.
Guest:I don't know the guy at all, but, um, but, um,
Guest:I've been on sets for 40 years and the person that hands you the gun, the person that is responsible for the gun is either the prop person or the armor, period.
Guest:And this is one of those things.
Guest:I was friends with an actor named John Eric Hexham who accidentally pulled a gun up a
Guest:with blank and put it to his head and died from the concussion.
Guest:And then I was good friends, really good friends with Brandon Lee.
Guest:And that was a series of stupid things that we like to say stupid.
Guest:I mean, you know, low budget film.
Guest:I think they were in North Carolina.
Guest:My cousin Miguel was going to be his best man the next week at their wedding.
Marc:Miguel Farrar?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And Brandon and I played ball and hung out at the Hollywood Y three days a week.
Guest:We were buddies.
Guest:And this was his big break.
Guest:And the first unit
Guest:Low budget, probably.
Guest:I don't remember if the guy was even a union prop guy.
Guest:Sent it down to a second unit, a different group of shooting, and they wanted to use the same gun, so they sent the gun down there.
Guest:It was the guy's girlfriend that was the prop assistant.
Guest:They didn't have dummy bullets, so they made them by taking the gunpowder out and putting the bullet back in.
Guest:They did a close-up of the cylinder turning with the bullets going around.
Guest:She takes out the bullets out of the cylinder, and one of the shells, one of the bullets had lodged in the barrel of the gun.
Guest:And then they send it back up to the first unit.
Guest:No one checks the barrel.
Guest:No one notices that of the six shells, one of them is missing the bullet.
Guest:And hands it to the first unit.
Guest:They put a full load in it.
Guest:The actor, which you never do with a full load, points it directly at Brandon and pulls the trigger.
Guest:And it's like getting shot with a normal bullet.
Guest:and killed him you know and this one you look at you say now we're seeing so it was dummy bullets this is the problem right now every single time I'm handed a gun on a set every time Martin they hand me a gun I look at I open it I show it to the person I'm pointing it to we show it to the crew every single take you hand it back to the armor when you're done you do it again and part of it is because of what happened to Brandon
Guest:Everyone does it.
Guest:Everybody knows.
Guest:And maybe Alec did that.
Guest:Hopefully, he did do that.
Guest:But the problem is dummies are tricky because they look like real bullets.
Guest:They've got a little tiny hole in the back that somebody has taken all the gunpowder out.
Guest:And why for the life of me, this low budget film with producers who haven't produced anything wouldn't have hired for the armor someone with experience.
Guest:With that many guns.
Guest:With that many guns.
Guest:And maybe they weren't even using that gun to do target practice, but they had live ammo with dummies in her pack.
Guest:And that is insane.
Guest:It's insane.
Guest:It's infuriating.
Guest:And so it comes down to, you know, we need to be better at making sure that the heads of our department are still like we've just gone through with IATSE.
Guest:We have to make sure that they're
Guest:experience and know what they're doing um because this is i i've just never you know it's just infuriating i mean every time i get handed a six gun you point it at the ground you fire six you squeeze it six times you know oh you do it's just insane yeah always i know it's it was it was just devastating and horrendous i've been on sets like you know obviously not as much but every time a gun comes it's sort of like everybody stop everybody gather round everything
Marc:This is the gun.
Guest:And the first AD says, OK, they're going to be a half load and you never need a full load in a revolver.
Guest:The only reason you need a full load is in a gun that has to recoil.
Guest:But again, you know, why are you even all of this?
Guest:First of all, I've never heard the term cold gun.
Guest:They said, oh, the second, the first AD said cold gun.
Guest:I've never heard that term.
Guest:Literally, that's they're just talking about stuff I've never heard of.
Marc:And you would know.
Guest:It's just infuriating.
Guest:It's infuriating that you get to this place where the places that you're skimping on.
Guest:Now, listen, again, I want to say I don't believe there's any intent by anybody to do anything wrong.
Guest:It's a terrible accident.
Guest:But a 24-year-old person shouldn't probably, with that little experience, shouldn't be heading up a department with the guns and bullets on it.
Marc:And also they had the issue where there was a walkout.
Marc:The conditions were bad.
Marc:They had scabs or non-union people there.
Marc:I mean, you know, at the very least, it's going to change some union rules in New Mexico.
Guest:Well, it should change a lot.
Guest:But it should also, you know, after Brandon died, it really became a very clear thing of.
Guest:Open the gun.
Guest:Look down the barrel.
Guest:Look, look in the cylinder.
Guest:Make sure it's harder with dummy bullets, I have to say, because you can if you stuck six dummy bullets in your hand, you would think they're real bullets.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You know, and guns are, you know, their guns are creepy.
Marc:I mean, you got a gun around.
Marc:It's going to be a gun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you don't need that anymore with a revolver.
Guest:You really don't need it.
Guest:It's hard because when you're shooting a gun that has to recoil, you need it to not get locked open.
Guest:But it just really is –
Guest:You know, it's a series of tragedies, but also... A lot of mistakes.
Guest:A lot of, you know, a lot of stupid mistakes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you a gun person?
Guest:I'm not, actually.
Marc:I'm not a gun person.
Marc:Did you have to do it at some point to learn how to be a gun?
Marc:Sure.
Guest:When we did Three Kings, we had to go out and learn how to, you know, shoot AK-47s.
Guest:And, you know, we did all of that stuff.
Guest:And listen, as a kid...
Guest:I mean, we would go to the Westerns and sit in the – we'd wear the six guns with caps in it.
Guest:And during the day, you know, my mom would drop us off at the theater.
Guest:We'd sit there and we'd watch Cowboy and Indian movies and pull out the guns and shoot them at the screen.
Guest:But then Bobby Kennedy was shot.
Guest:I think 24 days after Martin Luther King was shot.
Guest:Not long after, you know, all the other tragedies that had happened in that moment.
Guest:And my dad was doing this variety show.
Guest:And I went in and got all my toy guns.
Guest:I was eight.
Guest:Gave them to my dad and said, I don't want to play with them anymore.
Guest:And he went on the show and he...
Guest:I sort of meant I didn't want to play with him right now.
Guest:He said, my son will never play with toy guns again.
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:But the truth was that became sort of the, you know, the go to for me.
Guest:It seems like a pretty dangerous world, a handgun, you know.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's funny that he decided to make a message out of it.
Marc:That was his moment.
Guest:Well, you know, it was a good time to do it.
Marc:With good night and good luck.
Marc:Did you have your father in mind with that as well?
Guest:Yeah, I was, you know, I'd been...
Guest:I'd been getting beaten up pretty good because I was against the war.
Guest:Now, of course, it's the popular thing to say, oh yeah, we were against the war.
Guest:But at the time, they protested a movie premiere that I had and Bill O'Reilly did a half an hour show on why my career was over because I was against America because it was framed as you're either with us or with the enemy.
Guest:It wasn't even with us or against us.
Guest:And so there were only a few of us at that moment that were very vocal.
Guest:I remember going to a premiere and this acolyte of Bill O'Reilly was on the red carpet.
Guest:And they said, we saw a picture of your house that has a peace flag hanging over it.
Guest:What are you trying to say?
Guest:And I said, peace.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's so controversial, you know.
Guest:So I was mad about the job that the press was doing.
Guest:They had all been embedded, which is a really bad idea, embedded with the – you're supposed to be a neutral observer.
Guest:I was concerned with the lead-up of the war that no one asked any tough questions in journalism and they all talk about it now and they look back at it as –
Guest:their issues as well.
Guest:There was very few tough questions asked.
Guest:It was, you know, they didn't want to be on the wrong side of history.
Guest:And so I wrote Good Night and Good Luck because I was looking for another time in history where we needed the fourth estate when the other three estates, when the executive branch, you know, when everyone else fails, the judicial branch and the legislative branch, when they all fail, you need the fourth estate to pick it up.
Marc:So you were always sort of like on this beat, you were always sort of an activist and outspoken about, I mean, there's many things now.
Guest:How old are you, Mark?
Guest:58.
Guest:I just turned 58.
Guest:I just turned 60.
Guest:So we're about the same age.
Guest:Same.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, here's the thing.
Guest:If you grew up as a child of the 60s and early 70s and aren't part of some movements that
Guest:I mean, it was everything.
Guest:It was, you know, there was a women's rights.
Guest:It was the civil rights.
Guest:It was the anti-Vietnam.
Guest:There was so many versions of things to actually actively be involved in as my parents were.
Guest:I was raised on that.
Guest:I'd be so embarrassed if my kids in 20 years or four now look back at this moment in time and said, you were okay with this and you didn't stand up and say something.
Guest:I'd be humiliated by that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Where were you when that happened?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Did you just take a paycheck?
Guest:What did you do?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, no, I mean, but you've never done that.
Marc:So like, you know, there's plenty of evidence that you annoyed all the right people.
Guest:Well, honestly, if you can't, you know, again, my father's one mantra, you know, everybody has their thing, be, you know, treat people like you, treat yourself, all that stuff.
Guest:My dad only had one thing when we were growing up, which was to always challenge anyone in power and always defend anyone without power.
Guest:And if you do that in life, you win.
Guest:And it was unfortunate at times because there were plenty of times where you're doing it when it's no fun.
Guest:And you never win those.
Guest:You just get dumped.
Marc:But but it must be great that you're at, you know, in a in a position now where, you know, you you are who you are.
Marc:You have what you have.
Marc:No one's going to take it away from you.
Marc:And you have your beliefs and you have the ability to support and actively speak out about things.
Marc:And and it's not going to be a tremendous threat to you other than annoyance.
Guest:No, but here's the other part of it, because, you know, somewhere along the way, even though I'm an actor, you do have to take yourself out of it and realize that the things that you're working towards.
Guest:On this long arc of history bending towards justice, you know, all the things you're working towards, like the violence in Sudan, which I was very much, you know, have continued to be deeply involved in.
Guest:For the most part, we fail.
Guest:You know, we're failing and we fail and we fail and we fail until we don't.
Guest:And so the truth of the matter is I've had to look at the idea of failure very differently as not an end, but as a part of the process to getting to success.
Marc:Was that a hard thing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it is because you fail in everything you do.
Guest:And if you don't fail, you're not doing it right.
Marc:And also with the things that you're active in, you know, failure could mean lives are lost.
Marc:It can mean that, you know, entire, you know, histories are changed.
Guest:But the option is to do nothing and not be involved and not try to fight for those things.
Guest:And every once in a while, like, for instance, you know, been fighting for a long time in the, you know, for all the stuff that went on in Darfur and still fighting in South Sudan.
Guest:And now Sudan is again, you know,
Guest:you know, caught fire in the last few days.
Guest:But there's some hope, you know, my wife has actually got one of the, one of the perpetrators of the genocide, you know, in the docket and she's going to be, you know, doing her best to, you know, to bring him to justice.
Guest:Nail him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think that's,
Marc:you know so um where i've been pushing and failing you know i can see at the other end there's there's that tiny bend towards justice well her perspective must be amazing that you know like i mean you've been with her for a bit now but i mean you know now you can really see the possibility of prosecution and and and how actual justice can be meted out uh without it being some sort of vague idea
Guest:That's right because I can't freeze people's assets.
Guest:I have to lobby the Treasury Department to do that against these sort of war criminals who are hiding their money in American and British banks.
Guest:There's a lot of stuff I can't do, but there's a lot of stuff my wife in the legal department can actually get done.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:So the advocacy can only go so far and then suddenly it has to be picked up by real people.
Guest:You know, the people who do the real work and, you know, and my wife is one of them.
Marc:So, like, you went a long time without kids.
Marc:Like, I'm still doing it.
Marc:I got no kids.
Guest:You got no kids?
Marc:No, I got no kids.
Marc:Come on, man.
Marc:Jump in the water.
Marc:It's fine.
Marc:You're going to say that?
Marc:You're going to say that?
Guest:Listen, I didn't want to get married.
Guest:I didn't want to have kids.
Guest:And then this extraordinary human being walked into my life.
Guest:And I just – I fell madly in love.
Guest:And I knew from the minute I met her that everything was going to be different.
Guest:I didn't know I'd have twins.
Guest:There was that moment where you go to the doctor and they pull out this piece of paper, which is a –
Guest:Sonar or something.
Guest:It's not sonar, whatever the hell it is.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Sonogram.
Guest:Sonogram.
Guest:And they go, here.
Guest:And you go, it's a baby boy.
Guest:And I'm like, baby boy, fantastic.
Guest:And then they said, and the other one is a girl.
Guest:And I was like, oh, shit.
Guest:Wow, yeah.
Guest:Her sister has twins.
Guest:And I was gobsmacked because I was kind of up for one.
Guest:Oh, come on.
Guest:You love it.
Guest:You love it now.
Guest:Oh, I love it now.
Guest:And thank God they have each other during the pandemic.
Guest:They were together.
Marc:Yeah, it's like kittens.
Marc:You want to have two.
Marc:Well, you got a lot of cats, right?
Marc:Two.
Marc:I got two.
Marc:I got two.
Marc:A couple of them went.
Marc:So wait.
Marc:So you had a pretty good run in life in terms of relationships and fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So this was some undeniable feeling.
Marc:It was nothing you'd ever experienced before.
Guest:Nothing I've ever experienced before, by far.
Guest:I mean, you know, yes, there was literally the first moment I met her, I thought, well, this is the most extraordinary, you know, smart, brilliant, beautiful woman I'd ever met.
Guest:And, you know, and then I thought, why can't I find somebody like that?
Guest:And then...
Guest:And we just met as friends.
Guest:And then a few months later, I was in London doing the score for a movie.
Guest:And I brought her over to Abbey Road.
Guest:She came from a meeting at the Muslim Brotherhood.
Guest:She was trying to solve a problem there.
Guest:And I brought her to Abbey Road, where there's a huge 150-piece orchestra.
Guest:I thought, if you can't impress anybody here, then you can't impress anybody.
Marc:The idea of George Clooney going, why can't I meet a nice.
Guest:Listen, I went out with a lot of really nice, smart, talented people.
Guest:It's just, you know, every once in a while, there's somebody that's specifically for you.
Guest:And, you know, and I feel like I'm all and I feel that way.
Marc:And the kid thing, you know, was it a discussion or did you just come in?
Guest:Oh, no, it was a discussion because we never discussed it.
Guest:We didn't discuss getting married.
Guest:I just dropped it on her and it was like a surprise.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we've been married for about a year and we were at a friend's house.
Guest:And they had a kid there, which was, you know, loud and obnoxious.
Guest:And I was like, oh, shit.
Guest:And we went outside for a walk.
Guest:And Omar said, so, and she'd never thought about it, really.
Guest:And then she said, so, we're awfully lucky in life.
Guest:And I said, yeah, we are.
Guest:We're lucky we found each other.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And she said, seems like that luck should be shared with some other, you know, folks.
Guest:And I thought about it for, I don't know, maybe a minute of silence.
Guest:The two of us sat there.
Guest:I don't think either of us had made a decision.
Guest:And then I just said, well, I'm in if you're in.
Guest:And she said, I think we should try.
Guest:And so it was a, you know, it was, I have to say it was very emotional because I really was convinced that that wasn't my lot in life and was comfortable with that.
Marc:Yeah, I'm comfortable with it.
Guest:Yeah, you should be.
Guest:And by the way, that's how the world works, right?
Guest:You got to be.
Guest:But I have to say, you know, Alexander every morning, eight in the morning, bangs on my bedroom door, our bedroom door.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go, who is it?
Guest:And he goes, it is I, Alexander Clooney.
Guest:And then I open up the door and he jumps running in.
Guest:And I laugh out loud, you know, and they make me laugh.
Guest:Yeah, I laugh every day.
Guest:That's sweet.
Guest:And they really are funny kids.
Marc:And actually, you know, you know, despite whatever anyone thinks or maybe what you even think is a good time in your life to do it.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, look, I'm again, the hard part is being 60 and just the the the sheer like running around of it.
Guest:But, you know, my mom.
Guest:You know, my mom had two kids by the time she was 19 and they had no money.
Guest:You know, my folks were poor.
Guest:So, you know, it was her alone with two kids and my dad going to work every day.
Guest:And, you know, I didn't have any of that.
Guest:I had a much easier run.
Marc:Yeah, and also, it seems like you're making different decisions career-wise.
Marc:It doesn't seem like you're acting as much.
Marc:I don't know what you're doing down there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, not as much.
Guest:You know, what's interesting, too, is I'm really aware of a couple of things, which is I'm aware of the danger of celebrity with kids, and I'm aware of the danger of having means with kids, you know, because we didn't.
Guest:My mom made my clothes for me, you know, and we were...
Guest:you know, we moved, like my dad said, we moved when the rent was due and we moved a lot.
Guest:And, uh, and so I was, but I learned to be scrappy because of that.
Guest:I mean, you can put me in any situation, I can survive, you know, and, uh, I could, you know, change a fan belt on the car or fix a motorcycle.
Guest:I can, I can survive anything, you know?
Guest:And I have to make sure that that's something that our kids get, you know, that's important to me.
Marc:Well, yeah, when they get old enough, you leave them out in the desert and you say, good luck.
Guest:Yeah, just drop them off.
Guest:Yeah, give them like two sticks.
Guest:A broken car.
Marc:Leave them a broken car.
Guest:There was some wood shavings and a flint.
Marc:But that's it.
Marc:I mean, I get it.
Marc:You know, I mean, but are you one of those people now that honestly believes like, oh, I had no idea what an amazing thing that changed my...
Guest:Yeah, I am.
Guest:I'm every bit.
Guest:I literally I'm so ashamed to admit that I'm the guy that you're just about to make fun of.
Guest:I literally am this guy who like they come in the room and they have opinions and they're funny and they pull pranks on me.
Guest:And I just look at him thinking, you know, I couldn't be happier and I couldn't be, you know, more surprised at how happy I am.
Guest:So, yeah, it's a it's a very odd thing, I will say.
Marc:Well, let's talk about, like, I talk about you more than I should probably.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, on the show.
Marc:Because I'm a big supporter of the Clooney thing in the sense that, like, I believe, and I'm sure you're aware of it to a degree, that, you know, you are an old school movie star in a world where that doesn't really exist anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:that, you know, you kind of have a sort of global presence and a sort of celebrity presence that is, you know, it's almost, you know, you've been compared to other people before, but I don't, like, I try to figure it out as an actor because, like, lately, just whatever your celebrity is, like, I watch the movies and I'm like, there's, you're a great actor, but you're essentially Clooney.
Marc:Like, you don't lose the Clooney-ism.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I mean, maybe you do a little bit, but you know what I'm saying.
Guest:I do, I know what you're saying, too.
Marc:Some element of being a movie star is that, you know, you are consistently yourself.
Marc:So, you know, there's part of you that's always out there.
Marc:And, you know, obviously you have a tremendous amount of range, serious, killing people, making people laugh, all that.
Marc:And you're a great actor.
Marc:But I mean, was this is it a design?
Marc:Do you?
Marc:Do you manage your movie star-ness?
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:It's an interesting thing.
Guest:When I was a kid and you watched movies, there were kind of two ways of going as an actor.
Guest:There was a Spencer Tracy part where Spencer Tracy is always Spencer Tracy.
Guest:And he's loved.
Guest:I love Spencer Tracy and everything he does.
Guest:And then there was this sort of Laurence Olivier who sort of fell into, became these roles and you never really attached to him, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think probably where I am in my career is by, from my lack of ability in some things, you know, my inability to, to, to fully, uh,
Guest:meld into other things you know there are you hard on yourself about that do you i mean do you think i mean as an actor do you have moments where you're like why can i just learn the accent you know well no but i do you know i i try to tend to go where i feel i listen i'm always trying to push i'm always trying to do stuff that i'm uncomfortable with
Marc:Like what?
Marc:Well, give me an example of something you were uncomfortable with.
Guest:Well, everything I direct is a complete departure from the last thing I did specifically.
Marc:Yeah, that's what we were talking about because you wanted to take the chances.
Guest:And, you know, I'm very lucky because there aren't many actors that are allowed to do drama and comedy.
Guest:And I've been lucky enough to be allowed to do that.
Guest:Were you good at it?
Guest:Well, possibly because of my lack of massive success at either one of them.
Guest:It's always been kind of in a good sort of singles and doubles, you know.
Marc:No, that's not, that's not true though.
Marc:That, I mean, you're, you're, no, you're being, you're being humble.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you're very good at comedy and you're good at, at comedy in, in a way where you don't have to, where you play it straight.
Marc:I mean, all those, all the Coen brothers, I mean, Hail Caesar is a fucking masterpiece and you're hilarious.
Guest:That, that movie cracked me up.
Guest:You know, the funny one was, Oh Brother, the first day of shooting Oh Brother, which is my first film with the Coens.
Guest:I was nervous because those guys are maestros, you know, and I'd never done anything like that.
Guest:And,
Guest:You know, and so the first day of shooting is a scene with John Goodman and Tim Blake Nelson where I get hit in the head with a branch, you know.
Guest:And I'm playing, you know, I'm the dumbest guy on earth, you know, and I'm just Everett McGill and I'm playing him like, you know, and I do one take and I don't know how big it should be.
Guest:I don't know where I'm fitting the Coen world, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Joel comes over and he goes, oh, yeah, that's great.
Guest:Let's do one more take.
Guest:Just remember that you're the smartest guy in every room you walk into.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:That's the only direction basically he gave me.
Guest:And I was like, oh, fuck.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And then everything you do is like, well, apparently you folks don't understand what you do.
Guest:Everything becomes simple.
Guest:That's called a really good director helping you.
Guest:So they have very simple, clean ways of explaining characters so that it makes it
Guest:more fun to do you know easy to do so when you look back at the decisions you make well i mean well as a as a director i mean you know leatherheads i mean where'd that come from well that was interesting i really liked the project it was a project that soderberg wanted to do a long time earlier and we sort of tried to figure out a way to to to make it work that was a big swing on my part i wanted it to be um
Guest:you know, old-fashioned slapstick kind of way out there comedy.
Guest:Some of it worked, some of it didn't.
Guest:That's my fault.
Guest:You know, when I go back to the idea of failing or not, that's the one, you know, there are other ones that people that haven't been critically as well received as other ones I've done, but I don't care about that.
Guest:I did what I wanted and I'm happy.
Guest:I missed on a few things in Leatherheads and I'm not –
Guest:I couldn't, I can explain some of the camera work that I did wrong, but I think I also, I was aiming for something that I think I wasn't, I think I didn't do a very good job of achieving on that.
Guest:There's a lot of stuff I like about John Krasinski's fantastic and Renee's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just that I think I sort of dropped the ball on someone.
Marc:So now do you troubleshoot that in your brain and go like, this is what happened and this is why?
Guest:I mean, you can't go backwards that way.
Guest:No, of course, but I mean moving forward.
Guest:You do have to –
Guest:Look at things realistically.
Guest:I mean, you know, you have to look at things that are successful and things that aren't and go, okay, why isn't that successful?
Guest:Sometimes it isn't you, right?
Guest:There is some, you know, you are able to pass some blame off going out.
Guest:This is a time or...
Guest:Because Out of Sight wasn't a hit.
Guest:Three Kings wasn't a hit.
Guest:Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou wasn't a hit at first.
Guest:So there is something about – I remember I saw a review for Oh, Brother in Entertainment Weekly where they gave it an F and said it's the worst film of the century.
Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And you just go, OK, well, then that's just what it's going to be.
Guest:I saw a review for Midnight Sky where it said tequila salesman still wants to direct.
Guest:And you go, well, it's got nothing to do with the work.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So sometimes you just take it and you just go, all right.
Guest:But you do have to learn from things you're not doing well.
Marc:So as you move through these, like I thought the Ides of March was a good movie.
Marc:I enjoyed it.
Guest:I was really proud of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was really proud of that.
Guest:Listen, that's where you got like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti just swinging for the fences.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:And it was a screenplay I was really proud of because I worked really hard on it and, and, you know, put together one scene in particular in a, with Ryan Gosling and myself in a kitchen that I'll, I will forever be very proud of because it was a,
Guest:It's a really dark, dark, dark scene.
Guest:And, you know, I also like the idea that I was going to be able to write speeches that politically I believed in.
Guest:And the only way I was going to get away with it was by making myself the bad guy.
Marc:You know, right.
Marc:You know, but it's but it's like because it's one of those grown up movies.
Marc:You don't see like smart political dramas anymore.
Marc:You don't see grown up movies in general anymore.
Marc:And, you know, I think that.
Marc:Well, I guess we'll have to talk about it.
Marc:So, you know, Michael Clayton is a movie I watch obsessively.
Marc:It's a good movie.
Marc:I don't shut up about it.
Marc:And I watch it probably five, six times a year.
Marc:It's a good film.
Marc:It's a great movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Now, let's talk about going back to this idea of the type of of, you know, Spencer Tracy versus Lawrence Olivier.
Marc:Now, as a guy who knows who you are and what you do, do you ever get on a set and and are intimidated by other actors?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'm always intimidated by other actors.
Guest:But I find that to be exciting.
Guest:I'm in Australia right now.
Guest:I'm about to work with Julia Roberts, who I've done countless things with.
Guest:And I'm always excited to see what she's going to do and how she's going to do it and what her thoughts are on it.
Guest:And a lot of young actors, Billy Lord is in it and she's really exciting and fun to watch.
Guest:And I'm excited by that.
Guest:But, you know, I've worked with shit, man.
Guest:I've worked with the actors where I've gone on the scene and I think I'm doing a good job and watch them wipe the floor with me.
Guest:And I'm like, you know,
Guest:Like when?
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Oh, Michael Clayton working with Tilda, who's one of my favorite actors in the world.
Guest:She always plays these ice queens, right?
Guest:She's the warmest, funniest, greatest woman you'll ever meet.
Guest:But she's so good in that movie.
Guest:And we have that really fun scene at the end where I'm like, where should we meet in my car?
Guest:And just watching her react.
Guest:And because I'm driving that scene as an actor.
Guest:So I'm doing all the pedaling on this one, right?
Guest:I'm riding the bike.
Guest:I'm doing it.
Guest:You know, I have the long speech.
Guest:And then when I see the film, I'm like, it doesn't matter what I do.
Guest:Tilda's taking care of everything for us.
Guest:Because I'm only as dangerous in that situation as she makes me, right?
Guest:Because if she was like, oh, fuck you, then everything I say doesn't matter.
Guest:So Tilda makes that scene work.
Marc:And when she drops to her knees, dude.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, she's just great.
Guest:That movie, you know, was a was tricky to get made again.
Guest:And we made it on a really low budget.
Guest:And again, it wasn't massively successful.
Guest:I think it made about 50 million dollars over.
Guest:But but it lasts.
Guest:It holds up.
Marc:Pollock, man.
Marc:Pollock.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, boy.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:He finished shooting and then we went to Venice with it.
Guest:You know, so we finished it, let's say December or something.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:And by Venice Film Festival in September, we were headed there.
Guest:And Pollock was sick suddenly.
Guest:And I called him and he's, you know, he's a pilot too.
Guest:And he started describing, he was very sick.
Guest:None of us knew how sick he was.
Guest:And he says, I'm flying over the Lido looking down on, you know, on, you know, St.
Guest:Mark's.
Guest:And he's going through all of the ideas of soaring through Venice, you know.
Guest:And he was dead a few days later, you know.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was very sick and surprisingly so.
Guest:And it was so, I mean, he was really an interesting guy.
Guest:And by the way, funnily enough, he was originally the director on Out of Sight.
Guest:And when they hired me to do the part, he quit because he said, you're not a movie star.
Yeah.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Now, listen, we were great friends and we got along great later and it was very funny.
Guest:But yeah, he quit.
Guest:He goes, no, that guy's a TV star.
Guest:I'm not doing a movie today.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You had to do that whole transition.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:How long did it take for that to land?
Guest:Well, it took the five years of ER because, you know, people don't really fully remember or understand the size of ER itself.
Guest:You know, an hour show at 10 o'clock at night doing 40 million people.
Guest:I mean, when there was 150 channels.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There'll never be anything like that.
Guest:I mean, Friends was a huge hit.
Guest:They were on an hour earlier at nine.
Guest:And we were for the first couple of years, we were doing five, 10 million more people than them.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And at 10 o'clock, it was just a massive.
Guest:So people were going to pay to see me in a film if they could turn on Thursday nights.
Guest:So it took and there was a lot of articles written about how this wasn't going to ever happen for me and stuff.
Guest:But I just kept working.
Guest:So every summer I do a film and I was doing films while I was shooting the show.
Guest:And then the last year of ER, O Brother and Perfect Storm came out.
Guest:And O Brother for Critical...
Guest:And Perfect Storm, because it was a big commercial hit, sort of planted the flag that he's going to make it and he's going to be allowed to play in this sandbox, which was luck again.
Marc:I recently watched Burn After Reading again.
Marc:I have to make myself watch it because I like the Coen brothers generally, but I found that movie annoying.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, I can see the choices you make in a good way.
Marc:Like, you know, these are comic characters.
Marc:And Pitt loves to eat and drink.
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:It is.
Guest:He loves to eat.
Guest:For a guy that's built like something Michelangelo carved out of marble, he eats a lot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he's always drinking on that straw.
Marc:But, like, where do you – what kind of – where do you learn what you do in terms of how you build these guys?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Is it just – It's just good scripts.
Guest:You know, I mean, when I read that script –
Guest:I actually wanted to play Brad's part because I thought Brad's part was just the funniest part I'd ever read.
Guest:And I think Brad just I think it's one of the funniest things he's ever done.
Guest:You know, I absolutely absolutely really funny.
Guest:And I get to shoot him in the face.
Guest:So it's worth it, you know, all along the way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, honestly, a good script saves you from so many flaws as an actor, as a director.
Guest:Good script saves you.
Guest:And then they kind of, you know, Joel and Ethan were the kind of guys who just cut you loose.
Guest:You know, they don't rehearse.
Guest:You just start shooting.
Guest:It's one or two takes, you know, and then you're in.
Marc:But they have high expectations, right?
Marc:They do.
Guest:But they cast well.
Guest:You know, they cast the right people in roles and then they, you know, they leave you alone.
Guest:I mean, if you watch Hail Caesar.
Guest:That's some really good casting in there, you know?
Marc:Oh, God, it's the greatest movie ever.
Marc:When people start shitting, like, I go to the mat for Hail Caesar.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:That movie's like, a double feature of Barton Fink and Hail Caesar would be the shit, man.
Marc:Oh, those are two great films.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:The history of Hollywood, man.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Josh Brolin.
Guest:How great is Josh?
Guest:He's always good.
Guest:He's a really good friend of mine.
Guest:And we send stuff to each other over text messages that no human being should see, like the dirtiest, filthiest stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he just absolutely makes me –
Guest:You know, he and like Sasha Baron Cohen are the two funniest individuals in like real life that I know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He just kills me.
Guest:And it was so much fun to do a scene where he's slapping me in my face.
Guest:He just kills me.
Marc:The sort of act, the indulgence of that guy, the actor, you know, of him trying to figure out communism was hilarious, man.
Guest:Well, have you – I mean, you've been around some of the old movie stars, have never had to face anything, never had to face any of the real world.
Guest:So the ability – the narcissism that just sort of emanates from this is just like, oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, so the communists are –
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I loved every bit of that.
Marc:So I guess we should talk about the new movie a little bit, The Tender Bar.
Marc:Now, this is not like any of the other movies you directed.
Marc:No.
Marc:But this is like really a coming of age rite of passage.
Marc:It's about a kid.
Marc:It's a sweet movie.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm telling you, first of all, it was a good script.
Guest:Bill Moynihan wrote the screenplay.
Guest:And I read it and I liked it.
Guest:And they'd send it to me to direct.
Guest:And I liked it.
Guest:And I had just come out and finished doing Midnight Sky, which is the end of the earth.
Guest:And I kind of felt that way at that period of time.
Guest:And, you know, I started – when I read the script, I was like, I need something.
Guest:I need to do something that's – there's some joy in it.
Guest:That there's some gentleness and some –
Guest:You know, it's not so dark.
Guest:And there was a really good feeling to this.
Guest:And then I sent it to Ben, who's got a good ear.
Guest:You know, Ben, we've talked about films over the years.
Guest:How's he doing?
Guest:He's doing great.
Guest:I mean, you know, he's in such a great place in his life.
Guest:Good.
Guest:And was on the set.
Guest:He was the first guy on the set.
Guest:He knew everybody's lines.
Guest:But, you know, when I sent it to him, he really got it and said,
Guest:I know what this is and I know who this guy is.
Guest:And he really was excited about it.
Guest:And I thought, well, you know, who better to play this part?
Guest:And he really showed up in a way that I was very I was very happy for him, too, because, you know, it's.
Guest:You get to a place in your career and sometimes you can overthink your roles and you can go, unless I'm the lead lead of the movie, then I'm not going to do it as opposed to being the best part in the movie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And he got it.
Marc:There was a line in the movie that like that that sparked something, you know, in my brain, but I can't remember what it was.
Marc:It was about the it was about the girlfriend when he realized like he didn't.
Marc:I can't remember what it was, why he didn't understood why she she didn't like she liked him.
Guest:There's also a line in the movie that I love, which is Ben says at the end when Ty says to him, you know, Ben says, you got to get a job because I don't know what that that is yet.
Guest:And he goes, it's America.
Guest:Pick something.
Guest:And I always like that because that's a real American, you know, that is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Point of view.
Marc:I like the whole kind of philosophy.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:Uncle guy.
Marc:It was he said she gives me hope.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that and that really sparked me into this whole it kind of like it reconfigured.
Marc:Like dealing with grief.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you're constantly it doesn't really go away, but it shifts and you start, you know, you kind of deconstruct it.
Marc:You know, it happens.
Marc:You don't even realize it's happening.
Marc:And that was one of those interesting kind of sad moments where that line had nothing to do with grief.
Marc:But but it was like, oh, my God.
Guest:Let me ask you this then.
Guest:So.
Marc:um because you had to deal with it is does it eased does it get is there a is it lighten up or is it just there's moments yeah you know it it sure it does you know and the saddest part about it was you know we we had just really sort of begun whatever it was we were going to be yeah and you know and she made some big changes in her life and you know then the pandemic hit and uh what i don't think i've dealt with is the anger because there's nothing you can do with it yeah
Marc:You know, when you're going through it, all you can really be is like, you know, I'm not the victim.
Marc:You know, she was.
Marc:And, you know, this happens and it's horrible.
Marc:And, you know, hopefully it'll get easier and her memory will be a blessing.
Marc:But last night I was like sort of like, you know what?
Marc:I'm furious.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, and what do you do with that?
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's nowhere to aim that.
Guest:No, you really can't.
Guest:There's no lesson to be learned, right?
Guest:There's no like, oh, I shouldn't love.
Guest:I shouldn't sacrifice.
Guest:I do go to that one.
Guest:I do go to that one.
Guest:You can't.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:Don't challenge me, George.
Guest:Well, but it's not the lesson to learn because the real lesson to learn is that, you know, all of these journeys that we're on are really short, right?
Guest:They're really short.
Guest:And whether it's super short and cut short or not, my dad is 87 and my mom's 83.
Guest:And they're still getting around and sparking.
Guest:But he's pissed off at being 87.
Guest:He's mad because it's like...
Guest:Because as William Holden said in Network, the end is closer than the beginning with definable features.
Guest:You know, it's frustrating for him and he's mad about it.
Guest:And, you know, not in the way that harms you, but he's funny.
Guest:But this journey is short, man.
Guest:And so it's all about making sure that we, you know, I had this conversation with Amal the other day because I turned 60 and I said, look, we have to,
Guest:We have to rethink how we're doing our lives because we're working a lot, both of us.
Guest:She's working a tremendous amount as well.
Guest:And I just said, it doesn't mean we don't do our job because you got to do a job.
Guest:If you don't have a job, you're dead.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:We also have to make sure that we're spending less time behind a computer or doing stuff.
Guest:You know, going on locations so that we can know that I said 60 is a number.
Guest:But I said, I've done all the physicals, knock on wood, you know, I'm in good shape.
Guest:I feel healthy.
Guest:But 60, you can kind of beat the devil a little bit.
Guest:80, you can't.
Guest:And that's 20 years from now.
Guest:And 20 years happens in a flash and faster as you get older.
Marc:So you have like that that conversation.
Marc:And I imagine that informs all the choices you're making in your life.
Marc:It does.
Guest:It does.
Guest:And, you know, and so what you do is you look at it going, OK, well, I've sort of committed to a certain amount of work that I'm going to do.
Guest:Making sure that I'm going to do that because it's a commitment and it's the right thing to do.
Guest:And she in the exact same place.
Guest:And then it's going to take about a year, we figure.
Guest:And then it doesn't mean she's going to stop taking the cases that she wants.
Guest:It just means she's not going to take six.
Guest:And I'm not going to do four jobs a year.
Guest:I'm going to do one.
Guest:And we're going to spend time with our kids and we're going to travel again.
Guest:And we're going to do, you know, because I really do believe we're, you know, we have a house with a lake with a rope swing, you know.
Guest:I could still do the rope swing at 60.
Guest:I'm not sure about 80.
Guest:I might shit myself when I grab the rope.
Guest:You never know.
Guest:So I do feel like we have to really attack this.
Guest:And I think this is where some of your anger might be placed is in a good way, which is to go, well, then I'm going to make sure that if you've been given the gift of a longer version of this, that you're going to
Guest:attack it, you know?
Marc:Yeah, I think that's good advice, you know, and I appreciate it.
Marc:I think that's correct.
Marc:And I have been doing more, George.
Marc:I've been doing things that I always wanted to do that I never did before.
Marc:And I'm trying to spend time with people that I like and not mentally ill people that drain me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's helpful.
Guest:It's also been a very draining time because of the pandemic.
Guest:We're sort of.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I can't imagine to go through all that grief and also to be isolated is just.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean.
Marc:Well, I mean, the benefit of it was, you know, I'm doing material on it, actually, and maybe you'll see it eventually if I do a special where you come out.
Marc:But but it was it was interesting because I didn't have to function.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, and I, you know, my brother was around and people, I was talking to people every day and I made decisions to live a certain life with, with among certain people, even if it was dangerous, so I wouldn't lose my mind.
Marc:But, but the fact that I didn't have to show up for anything, you know, really did help, help me process it.
Guest:And do you have, I have a question for you too, because, you know, I used to play basketball, the Hollywood Y, and we played in this league that was all comedians.
Guest:It was the darkest.
Guest:I remember those guys, the darkest group of people I've ever seen in my life.
Guest:I mean, literally, it was just hate all day, sleep all night.
Guest:It was just hate.
Guest:I love them.
Guest:They were funny.
Guest:They made me laugh.
Guest:But is that is that that darkness?
Guest:Is that still as for you?
Guest:Is that something that you still deal with?
Marc:Is that a. Well, you know, what's interesting is, like, you know, the darkness.
Marc:I mean, those guys, I remember I used to go to the Hollywood wise.
Marc:You do those pickup games at noon or whatever.
Marc:Well, you know, like, you know, there is an element to us that that that has that darkness.
Marc:But I don't know, man, I'm telling you one thing that's happening with me is that when you deal with when you deal with what I dealt with, your sense of life becomes different.
Marc:And also the darkness, you start to realize, like, this is life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, I'm not saying that life is dark, but there's a way to approach the things that people think are dark and horrible in a way that, you know, is is relatable.
Marc:And so there's something about that darkness is if you handle it correctly, it's dark because no one talks about.
Guest:Well, that's right.
Guest:And also, for instance, every great movie, every great love story ends in tragedy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Somebody dies.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:I was great friends with, with Gregory Peck and his wife, Veronique.
Guest:I loved them.
Guest:I loved going to their house.
Guest:They had these beautiful parties.
Guest:They were a loving, incredible couple.
Guest:And then Greg died.
Guest:And I went to Veronique's house and she was a shell of herself.
Guest:You know, she wasn't the same person, you know, and she died not long after that, but I think out from a lonely heart more than anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you go, this love story that was so amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they all do.
Guest:So sure.
Guest:I think what you're saying is so rather than shy away from it, admit it and then say, well, let's live our lives to make sure we get everything out of it.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Because she was like that.
Marc:And, you know, and, you know, it's what's the most important thing.
Marc:And I think maybe you can relate to it.
Marc:But, yeah, I don't think it doesn't strike me that there's anyone out in the world saying, you know, fuck Clooney.
Marc:He's an asshole.
Guest:Oh, there is a lot.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:There's a lot.
Guest:You wouldn't be succeeding if you didn't get death threats and shit.
Guest:I mean, come on.
Marc:But I'm not talking about right-wing weirdos.
Marc:I'm talking about your peers.
Marc:You're a respected, nice guy.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:But my point is, I just don't want to... Whatever I was given with...
Marc:With her, whatever, whatever she gave me in the time I spent with her, I want to hold on to that because that was growth.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It wasn't it wasn't about like her being here or there, like something opened up in me and that was growth.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So I don't want to slip back into pre landmark.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And not acknowledge whatever she gave me, you know, in terms of moving through the rest of my life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Honestly, that's the gift.
Guest:That's the part of life.
Guest:The only way it doesn't work is if you deny it and force it out.
Marc:Or feel sorry for yourself or whatever.
Marc:I'm pushing, man.
Marc:I'm out doing comedy every night.
Marc:I'm now the angry, broken-hearted guy who actually needs love and is doing comedy that way.
Guest:It's just not a bad place to be.
Guest:Angry is always funny.
Marc:Yeah, if you're not taking it out on people.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You know, my anger is like, I don't know, it's a little different.
Marc:You're better off with a – sad anger is better.
Guest:It is better.
Marc:Anger anger, I don't know.
Marc:But you have a lot of great friends, it seems like, you know, that you've kept up with for years.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, the same guys.
Marc:Friends are important.
Guest:Same guys for 40 years.
Guest:I met them all almost at the same time.
Guest:Grant, who's – you know, we're quarantining together.
Guest:We were co-producers on – I don't know how many things –
Guest:You loaned me 100 bucks to get headshots in 1982.
Guest:And his brother and all my other buddies, we've been friends since the day we met.
Guest:And it's helpful, I'll tell you.
Guest:It's helpful to have these people that you love and also know when things are going good, everybody tells you how great you are.
Guest:And your friends will tell you how not great you are, which is always good.
Guest:And then when things are going bad and everybody tells you how bad you are, your friends are also there to tell you you're not that bad.
Guest:And that's and that's what you need.
Marc:You do.
Guest:You need people that if you have to call them every day, you call them every day and that they don't rely on you for their their substance.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, it's great talking to you, man.
Guest:It's really good to talk to you.
Guest:And and good luck with this.
Guest:This journey.
Guest:Thank you, sir.
Guest:And I hope you I hope you do this comedy special soon because I'd like to see it.
Marc:Well, I'm working on it.
Marc:I'm going to premiere it.
Marc:I'm going to be a town hall in New York City for the festival in November.
Marc:And then, you know, we'll find you'll figure out if there's somebody who wants to do it.
Marc:I'll probably land it somewhere.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Good luck with the movie.
Marc:Thanks, brother.
Marc:All right.
Talk to you soon.
Marc:George Clooney.
Marc:What a charming, nice fella.
Marc:Am I right?
Marc:Doesn't take much to charm me, does it?
Marc:Yes, it does, actually.
Marc:But I think he was genuine and authentic and a nice guy.
Marc:Maybe we'll have dinner someday.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:Come on, he knows me.
Marc:He knew me from the thing.
Marc:He listens to my thing.
Marc:Why can't I have dinner with George Clooney?
Marc:Are you going to stop me from having dinner with George Clooney?
Guest:Hey!
Guest:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey.
Marc:La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.