Episode 1307 - Andy Garcia

Episode 1307 • Released February 21, 2022 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:Lock the gates!

00:00:09Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:11Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?

00:00:12Marc:What the fuck, buddies?

00:00:13Marc:What the fuck, Nicks?

00:00:15Marc:What the fucksters?

00:00:16Marc:How's it going?

00:00:17Marc:What's happening?

00:00:17Marc:Are you all right?

00:00:19Marc:How are you?

00:00:19Marc:Good morning.

00:00:20Marc:How's breakfast?

00:00:21Marc:You all right?

00:00:21Marc:You at lunch?

00:00:22Marc:Are you jogging?

00:00:23Marc:Are you running?

00:00:24Marc:Well, you better get in pretty good shape to run from what you're going to have to run from.

00:00:28Marc:I don't think there's any getting away.

00:00:32Marc:Pow!

00:00:33Marc:I shit my pants.

00:00:34Marc:JustCoffee.coop.

00:00:36Marc:Classic plug.

00:00:38Marc:We're doing the classic plugs.

00:00:40Marc:Gonna do an Adam and Eve plug in a minute.

00:00:43Marc:So, I'm a little tired, man.

00:00:46Marc:I'm old and my shoulders hurt.

00:00:49Marc:My shoulders hurt because I did the duffel bag thing.

00:00:51Marc:I went to San Francisco for two days.

00:00:54Marc:Me and Kevin Christie doing the shows.

00:00:56Marc:Bay Area.

00:00:57Marc:I want to thank everybody.

00:00:59Marc:who came out to the shows in Napa at the Uptown Theater.

00:01:03Marc:What a great show.

00:01:04Marc:Had a great time.

00:01:05Marc:A lot of excited people.

00:01:07Marc:A lot of people just getting out for the first time.

00:01:09Marc:San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts.

00:01:11Marc:Great people working at both venues.

00:01:13Marc:But I was happy everybody came out.

00:01:16Marc:It was great.

00:01:17Marc:You can just definitely feel, obviously, we're still in the pandemic in a lot of ways.

00:01:21Marc:But people are kind of getting their legs back.

00:01:25Marc:And I appreciate everyone coming to the shows.

00:01:27Marc:All right?

00:01:28Marc:I want you to know that.

00:01:30Marc:I just wanted you to know that.

00:01:32Marc:Okay.

00:01:32Marc:Today, Andy Garcia is here.

00:01:36Marc:You know Andy Garcia.

00:01:37Marc:You know him from The Untouchables, from Godfather 3, the Oceans movie.

00:01:42Marc:He's got a very interesting background, which includes time at the Comedy Store.

00:01:45Marc:Did you fucking know that?

00:01:47Marc:I didn't know that.

00:01:48Marc:He's always great whenever he shows up in movies, isn't he?

00:01:51Marc:He's in this new movie, Big Gold Brick, and he's the best thing in it.

00:01:55Marc:He acts the fuck out of things, man.

00:01:57Marc:And I don't know why I never talked to him.

00:01:59Marc:I don't know.

00:02:00Marc:Does anyone talk to him that much publicly?

00:02:01Marc:I never see him around.

00:02:03Marc:I remember watching him in that movie Internal Affairs with Richard Gere.

00:02:06Marc:That was a nasty movie, man.

00:02:09Marc:Nasty movie.

00:02:10Marc:But I got to watch this 8 Million Ways to Die.

00:02:12Marc:I didn't realize it was a Hal Ashby film until he got pulled off it.

00:02:16Marc:I learned that from Andy Garcia.

00:02:19Marc:But yeah, so I've been in the Bay Area.

00:02:21Marc:I went to SFMOMA, Taube, Taube, Taube Auerbach.

00:02:30Marc:There's a huge retrospective of a full show, a full, what do you call it?

00:02:34Marc:Survey show of Taoba Auerbach.

00:02:37Marc:She works in all the mediums.

00:02:39Marc:She paints, she weaves, she makes sculptures.

00:02:43Marc:She made a giant like pipe organ instrument.

00:02:46Marc:She does graphics.

00:02:48Marc:She does writing, calligraphy, almost sign painting.

00:02:52Marc:She does all kinds of surfaces.

00:02:54Marc:It's a giant exhibition.

00:02:56Marc:You just, it's immersive.

00:02:58Marc:It's fucking genius.

00:02:59Marc:Totally fucking new.

00:03:01Marc:Totally well referenced in the history of things and of art.

00:03:05Marc:But just mind blowing.

00:03:06Marc:What an amazing thing to go see new art.

00:03:11Marc:And don't say I don't get it.

00:03:14Marc:There's nothing for you to get.

00:03:15Marc:Shut up.

00:03:17Marc:Take it.

00:03:18Marc:You don't have to get it.

00:03:20Marc:Just take it.

00:03:22Marc:Open up the mind though.

00:03:25Marc:Bozo.

00:03:26Bozo.

00:03:27Marc:Let those ghosts in.

00:03:28Marc:Yes.

00:03:31Marc:The art workers.

00:03:33Marc:But it was so great, man.

00:03:34Marc:So much stuff.

00:03:35Marc:I bought a poster even.

00:03:36Marc:I bought a book.

00:03:38Marc:Taube Auerbach.

00:03:41Marc:I can't even explain it to you.

00:03:44Marc:She does all things.

00:03:47Marc:A lot of colors, all abstract.

00:03:49Marc:There's no time for forms, for people.

00:03:54Marc:There's some letters.

00:03:56Marc:There's definitely some letters.

00:03:58Marc:But that's as identifiable as things get.

00:04:02Marc:There's a wood organ, there's a hanging thing.

00:04:04Marc:But just a lot of colors, textiles, things that look like computer things that aren't computer things.

00:04:11Marc:I can't even get my whole mind around it.

00:04:13Marc:Then there's a big photography show there, which is great.

00:04:16Marc:Kevin knows his shit about art, so we were riffing.

00:04:19Marc:Great.

00:04:21Marc:It was just a relief.

00:04:23Marc:But here's what happened.

00:04:24Marc:So I lived there a long time and haven't been back in a while.

00:04:26Marc:Saw my friend Jack Boulware.

00:04:27Marc:Haven't hung out with him in a while.

00:04:29Marc:But he's like, where do you want to eat?

00:04:30Marc:And I'm like, you know what, man?

00:04:31Marc:Let's do a burrito.

00:04:32Marc:Let's do it.

00:04:34Marc:Let's go do it.

00:04:35Marc:Let's go to the burrito place we always went to when we were younger.

00:04:38Marc:And we always go to when we hang out.

00:04:40Marc:It's been years.

00:04:42Marc:Let's go to Cancun down on Mission Street.

00:04:46Marc:So we go, I get the straight up burrito.

00:04:48Marc:I don't get the super, no avocado, no sour cream, no cheese, just straight up, you know, rice, beans, the meat pretty much.

00:04:55Marc:And I gotta be, I gotta be honest with you, you know, about halfway into my forearm sized burrito, I realized deep in my heart that that was going to be the last burrito I ever eat.

00:05:08Marc:That was it.

00:05:09Marc:It's over.

00:05:11Marc:No more burritos for me.

00:05:13Marc:It's not like you eat a lot of them, but I'm talking any kind.

00:05:16Marc:You got to get halfway into that last burrito that's the size of your arm, San Francisco style.

00:05:22Marc:If you're going to have that moment where you're like, this is it.

00:05:26Marc:This is over.

00:05:29Marc:It happened.

00:05:31Marc:So that's a pretty monumental moment.

00:05:35Marc:In Napa, I bought a few records at a thrift store, kind of an antique-y kind of, you know, upscale thrift store run by three ladies, it seems, like middle-aged ladies.

00:05:47Marc:They had a bunch of records, right?

00:05:49Marc:So I bought like five records, bring them up to the counter.

00:05:53Marc:One of them didn't have a price tag on it.

00:05:55Marc:I'm like, so what are we going to do?

00:05:56Marc:And they're like, well, and I'm like, are these someone else's records?

00:06:01Marc:Yes, she's not here.

00:06:03Marc:Maybe her name was Jenny.

00:06:04Marc:I don't know.

00:06:06Marc:And I'm like, okay, so what do you want to do?

00:06:08Marc:I kind of want to buy this Mary McCaslin record.

00:06:12Marc:And I looked it up on Discogs.

00:06:14Marc:It's a reissue of a 1969 record that came out in 1980 with a different title.

00:06:19Marc:I looked it up on Discogs and I knew what the price was.

00:06:22Marc:The highest price paid on Discogs was like 10 bucks.

00:06:25Marc:And this woman's like, well, maybe we should call Jenny.

00:06:28Marc:And I'm like, all right.

00:06:30Marc:So they try to call Jenny and they leave a message and I'm standing there.

00:06:34Marc:I don't have all day, but I have more time than I should because I'm there early.

00:06:38Marc:And then one of the other women says, I don't know if Jenny, we can get her that way.

00:06:42Marc:Did anyone text her?

00:06:44Marc:Because I don't think I think we have to text her from the iPads and this becoming a group effort.

00:06:49Marc:There's much technology involved to try to get hold of Jenny to figure out the price of a record.

00:06:53Marc:I know tops out at 10 bucks.

00:06:56Marc:I could have just given them 20, but I don't know if she would have believed me.

00:06:59Marc:Then she checks a master list.

00:07:01Marc:One of the ladies said, I think it's $16.

00:07:03Marc:And I'm like, there's no way there's $16.

00:07:05Marc:Again, could have just paid and got out.

00:07:08Marc:They're like, well, we're going to track down Jenny.

00:07:10Marc:And then some other woman from across the room goes, I just got hold of Tommy.

00:07:14Marc:Who's Tommy?

00:07:15Marc:Well, Tommy is sometimes their kind of boyfriend girlfriend, but he's like, he's sort of Jenny's boyfriend and maybe he can find her.

00:07:21Marc:And I'm like, this is really something.

00:07:23Marc:This is going to take some time.

00:07:24Marc:And the woman's like, are you going to be here tomorrow?

00:07:27Marc:And I'm like, no, I'm not going to be here tomorrow.

00:07:30Marc:I wasn't being a dick, but it was this kind of pace that I was not used to where this could have gone on a while.

00:07:38Marc:And I realized this is why people live in Napa.

00:07:41Marc:This is exactly it.

00:07:42Marc:Not only is this happening, but it's going to be talked about later.

00:07:45Marc:We couldn't find Jenny anywhere to price this record.

00:07:48Marc:We've got to maybe shift store policy around some of these records.

00:07:51Marc:We got to double check that all these records.

00:07:54Marc:And then finally, Tommy, I guess it gets old to Jenny and.

00:07:58Marc:And the woman who was talking to me initially about $16 says, well, it's $8.

00:08:03Marc:I guess you're right.

00:08:04Marc:I guess I was.

00:08:05Marc:I guess I was.

00:08:07Marc:What a day.

00:08:07Marc:I'm glad I didn't have to stay the extra day to wait on the price of the Mary McCaslin record.

00:08:15Marc:So Andy Garcia, I was a little intimidated, but he's not that intimidating.

00:08:19Marc:Maybe he is.

00:08:20Marc:He probably is, but I didn't feel it.

00:08:22Marc:He was ready to talk.

00:08:23Marc:He seemed to be into it.

00:08:26Marc:I think his daughter, sometimes this happens, that the offspring, the kids are a fan of the show and they talk the dads into it or the moms.

00:08:35Marc:So I think my understanding is his daughter, the actress, one of them, likes this podcast.

00:08:41Marc:So she got the old man to make an exception to his basically not doing much press life to do my podcast.

00:08:51Marc:So it was an honor.

00:08:52Marc:The film he's in that he's out promoting is called Big Gold Brick.

00:08:56Marc:It's in theaters and on demand this Friday, February 25th.

00:08:59Marc:This is me talking to Andy Garcia.

00:09:01Marc:Thanks for coming out.

00:09:13Marc:I watched that movie, The Big Gold Brick.

00:09:20Marc:It made me feel like I haven't watched movies in a while.

00:09:24Marc:Yeah.

00:09:26Marc:So when something like that comes along, how do you make a decision?

00:09:29Marc:Because you're great.

00:09:30Marc:The whole thing's kind of interesting, but it's an odd movie.

00:09:33Marc:It's a very odd movie.

00:09:34Marc:So how does that happen, though?

00:09:36Marc:It's a script that comes to you?

00:09:38Guest:Yeah.

00:09:39Guest:Well, Oscar Isaac, who's in the film, playing this sort of Dr. Strangelove character.

00:09:44Guest:Yeah, at the end.

00:09:45Guest:At the end, yeah.

00:09:46Guest:And he's very good friends with director Brian Petzos.

00:09:49Guest:They've done several shorts together that got a lot of attention and stuff.

00:09:52Guest:So he sent it over and he said, hey, I'm doing this thing that I'm also producing and Brian and I would love for you to take a look at it to play this character, Floyd.

00:10:01Guest:So I read it and because, you know, it was Oscar's a friend.

00:10:04Guest:I respect his taste and he's a great actor.

00:10:07Guest:I read it and I called him.

00:10:08Guest:I said...

00:10:09Guest:I have no idea what this is about.

00:10:15Guest:And I said, I couldn't get a handle on the character as I was reading him.

00:10:20Guest:Sometimes you get hooked in and you're kind of in it and you have that first experience in the read.

00:10:25Guest:You kind of see yourself or understand it somehow or at least be touched.

00:10:30Guest:Something touches you that you say, I don't know...

00:10:33Guest:But in this case, it was like, I have no clue.

00:10:36Guest:So we talked a little bit.

00:10:37Guest:I'm going, I think it's like, and I think it's this.

00:10:40Guest:And Oscar said, Oscar would go like, yeah, man, that's it, that's it.

00:10:43Guest:And I go, are you sure?

00:10:44Guest:I go, yeah.

00:10:45Guest:Anyway, then I started talking to the director and it was the same thing.

00:10:48Guest:I'm not sure.

00:10:49Guest:And then finally I said, well...

00:10:51Guest:You know, maybe the thing is that you have to do it in order to understand who he is and kind of throw yourself into it.

00:10:57Guest:And that's basically what I did.

00:10:58Marc:Well, yeah, but what were the things that you think this is it?

00:11:01Marc:Like when you first got a handle on that guy who was sort of, you know, I don't know if you'd call him a con man or... Yeah, you can.

00:11:08Marc:Yeah.

00:11:09Marc:So, what was the handle to the guy that you just started to realize?

00:11:14Guest:Well, you know, it seems, as I reflect back on it, because it's been a while since I did it, you kind of, as Sanford Meisner used to say, live truthfully within imaginary circumstances.

00:11:27Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:27Guest:So, first of all, you got to accept yourself as the guy.

00:11:30Guest:Right.

00:11:30Guest:And you got to step into the situation.

00:11:32Guest:Right.

00:11:32Guest:As you have to accept, I am this dude and I have to deal with what's going down.

00:11:37Guest:So everything that comes your way, you're dealing with it, you know?

00:11:41Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:11:42Guest:And so that's an important thing in any character.

00:11:44Guest:You have to really accept yourself.

00:11:45Marc:But it's sort of funny, the confidence of the guy, but also the strange sort of vulnerability to the guy and that he cares about this kid.

00:11:51Marc:Yeah.

00:11:52Marc:That he hit with the car.

00:11:53Marc:Yeah.

00:11:53Marc:But there's boundaries.

00:11:56Marc:It was kind of endearing, the whole thing.

00:11:59Guest:Yeah, well, at the end of the day, I guess the overall sort of metaphor or underlying current of the movie is that this chance encounter by me hitting this kid with a car, and I take him into my home.

00:12:11Guest:He happens to be a writer, so I figure as my character says...

00:12:16Guest:Well, why don't you write my biography that I'm going to make up?

00:12:20Guest:Right.

00:12:20Guest:I'm going to make up my life and you're going to write about it.

00:12:22Guest:Maybe we'll make some money.

00:12:23Marc:Yeah.

00:12:25Marc:But the trappings of your life become very interesting.

00:12:28Guest:Right.

00:12:29Marc:Like right out of the gate, it's like, what the hell is this guy?

00:12:31Marc:Yeah.

00:12:32Marc:So, you know, I thought it was good.

00:12:33Marc:Meisner, did you study with that guy?

00:12:35Marc:Not with...

00:12:37Marc:I wouldn't call Meisner that guy.

00:12:39Marc:No, no.

00:12:40Marc:I mean, I know.

00:12:41Marc:I got to talk to a lot of people that study with him directly, but it seems like- I never studied with him directly.

00:12:45Guest:He was a generation a little older than you.

00:12:47Guest:Yeah.

00:12:47Guest:I studied with people who were students of his that then also taught afterwards.

00:12:52Marc:But that was your primary kind of thing?

00:12:55Guest:That was one of mine.

00:12:56Guest:I tried to expose myself to the method and-

00:13:00Guest:I sat in some classes with Stella Adler, never actually put work up in front of her, but I audited.

00:13:07Guest:Here in Los Angeles, yeah.

00:13:09Guest:So I observed there a lot, a lot a couple times.

00:13:13Guest:I studied with Jose Quintero.

00:13:16Guest:I studied with a lot of guys.

00:13:17Guest:When I first got here, one of the things I did was, talking about Los Angeles in the late 70s, I started...

00:13:24Guest:I got involved and became a member of a house improv group at the comedy store.

00:13:29Guest:What year was that?

00:13:30Guest:78, 79.

00:13:31Marc:So how did you come to the comedy store?

00:13:34Marc:You never did comedy, did you?

00:13:35Marc:Did you do stand-up?

00:13:36Marc:No, just improv, no.

00:13:38Marc:So how does that happen?

00:13:39Guest:Yeah, I was just trying to find places where I can exercise my shit.

00:13:44Guest:But how does it happen there?

00:13:46Guest:Because it's a weird place.

00:13:47Guest:I spent a lot of time there.

00:13:48Guest:There was a doorman there.

00:13:49Guest:I think that someone told me that they had these improv groups.

00:13:53Guest:Oh, okay.

00:13:54Guest:And we started studying with some of the guys that came from Second City in workshops.

00:13:58Guest:Over there, huh?

00:13:59Guest:Over there in their houses.

00:14:01Guest:Did you meet Mitzi and all those people?

00:14:03Guest:Sure.

00:14:04Guest:I worked for her for a while.

00:14:06Guest:You did?

00:14:06Guest:Yeah, I was on the phones.

00:14:08Guest:Me too.

00:14:09Guest:Yeah, and she fired me right away.

00:14:10Guest:Right.

00:14:11Guest:She said, who's that guy with the accent?

00:14:15Marc:Look at this.

00:14:16Marc:I got hold of her driver's license.

00:14:18Marc:Oh, fantastic.

00:14:18Marc:That's from 1973.

00:14:19Marc:Oh, my God.

00:14:20Marc:Isn't that crazy?

00:14:21Marc:Yeah.

00:14:22Marc:Because they did a documentary on her, and I'm kind of mildly obsessed with the place, because I was a doorman there for a while, way back.

00:14:28Marc:But I still worked there every night.

00:14:29Guest:Were you there during that time, 78, 79?

00:14:32Guest:No.

00:14:32Marc:Oh, no, I didn't get out here that first time until the 80s.

00:14:37Marc:And I was only here for about a year and got all screwed up on cocaine and left.

00:14:41Marc:But it's a good place to get screwed up on cocaine, the comedy store.

00:14:44Marc:So it's the only place.

00:14:48Marc:But I did the phones.

00:14:49Marc:I did the door.

00:14:50Marc:I did all that shit.

00:14:50Marc:But that's interesting.

00:14:51Marc:So you were there for a while.

00:14:53Guest:Yeah.

00:14:53Guest:And, you know, in that time we were there.

00:14:56Guest:In the main room.

00:14:57Guest:Yeah, we performed in the main room in the original room after we perform You know, we had a lot of guys like Marty short and Robin knew it used to come by every all the time He was at the Comedy Store players we opened for them.

00:15:10Guest:Okay called the invited guests Oh, okay, and then sometimes it was that crossover and people wouldn't show up and then you would kind of do you know, it's crazy but

00:15:19Guest:Marty Shore was there, Betty Thomas.

00:15:22Guest:A lot of cats would come through, but after we do our set, I would always go to the original room and sit in and watch the comics.

00:15:29Guest:Yeah.

00:15:30Guest:And when I had nothing to do, you know, on another night, I would swing by because I always had friends already that were there and they were performing.

00:15:37Guest:But, you know, you can, on any given night in those days, you had, and I'll leave a lot of people out, but...

00:15:42Guest:Bob Saget got, rest his soul, just passed away.

00:15:45Guest:Jerry Seinfeld.

00:15:46Guest:Yeah.

00:15:46Guest:You know, David Letterman.

00:15:47Guest:Sure.

00:15:48Guest:Jay Leno.

00:15:49Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:15:50Guest:Larry David.

00:15:51Guest:Were they there?

00:15:52Guest:Michael Keaton.

00:15:52Guest:Michael Keaton was definitely there.

00:15:54Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:15:54Guest:This guy named Barry Diamond that was very funny.

00:15:56Marc:Barry Diamond.

00:15:56Guest:Yeah, he sings at the end.

00:15:58Guest:Charles Fleischer.

00:15:58Guest:Fleischer, sure, yeah.

00:16:00Guest:Jeff Altman.

00:16:01Guest:Jeff Altman.

00:16:01Guest:Yeah.

00:16:02Guest:Sam Kennison.

00:16:03Guest:Sam, yeah.

00:16:04Guest:My partner that I did a lot of sketch work and writing with, his name was Fred Asparagus.

00:16:08Guest:Freddy Asparagus.

00:16:09Guest:Yeah.

00:16:09Guest:I knew Freddy.

00:16:10Guest:He was around.

00:16:10Guest:Oh, really?

00:16:11Marc:Yeah.

00:16:11Marc:He was around a bit.

00:16:12Marc:You know, yeah, me and Freddy- Very talented guy.

00:16:14Marc:Extremely talented.

00:16:15Marc:Passed away.

00:16:16Marc:Him and I, yeah, we sat up there in the Crest Hill, you know, the house de Mitzi owned the comics with?

00:16:21Marc:I've been up there.

00:16:22Marc:Yeah.

00:16:22Marc:Yeah, you know what you do up there.

00:16:24Marc:So me and Freddy were- No, no, I was just, I used to walk by.

00:16:27Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, who was living there then?

00:16:29Marc:Dice?

00:16:30Marc:Dice was around there.

00:16:32Marc:That's crazy.

00:16:33Marc:So you have this old- Lou Deck was a guy that lived there for a long time.

00:16:36Guest:Argus Hamilton.

00:16:37Guest:Argus was there.

00:16:38Marc:Argus is still there.

00:16:39Guest:So I'm last night.

00:16:40Guest:Oh, my God.

00:16:42Marc:Yeah, you should.

00:16:43Guest:Yeah, I never made the wall.

00:16:44Guest:I didn't stick around long enough to make the wall.

00:16:46Marc:Oh, you gotta make the wall.

00:16:47Marc:It took a long time for me to get on that wall.

00:16:49Marc:Oh, my God.

00:16:49Marc:It was very important at a different time.

00:16:51Marc:I can imagine.

00:16:52Marc:But you were there for a while then.

00:16:54Marc:A couple of years.

00:16:55Marc:So is that the first thing you did?

00:16:57Marc:Where'd you come from?

00:16:58Marc:What was the right before here?

00:17:00Guest:I was in Florida and college in Florida and Florida International.

00:17:04Guest:So you grew up all in Florida.

00:17:06Guest:Yeah.

00:17:06Guest:And your folks were from Cuba.

00:17:08Guest:Yes.

00:17:09Guest:We came in 61.

00:17:10Guest:So after the debacle.

00:17:12Yeah.

00:17:12Guest:We were under Castro for two and a half years, and we got lucky we got out.

00:17:16Guest:So how old were you there?

00:17:18Guest:Five and a half.

00:17:19Marc:So this must be like a story in your family of what happened, like the history of you is involved with being pushed out of Cuba.

00:17:27Right.

00:17:27Marc:I wouldn't be here talking to you today if I didn't get out.

00:17:30Marc:Yeah.

00:17:31Marc:Well, what was your father's disposition around it?

00:17:34Guest:Around Cuba?

00:17:35Guest:Yeah.

00:17:35Guest:Well, we wanted to get out.

00:17:37Guest:You know, nobody wants to leave the country they love, you know?

00:17:39Guest:Yeah.

00:17:40Guest:But when the promise of the revolution was betrayed, you know, it was like a three-card Monty kind of thing.

00:17:48Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:17:48Guest:We're going to give you a new democracy, respect the Constitution and all this stuff.

00:17:53Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:17:53Guest:And then it turns in too quickly into...

00:17:55Guest:Marxist, Leninist, you know, indoctrination.

00:17:59Guest:Religion goes away.

00:18:00Guest:They confiscate all your property.

00:18:01Guest:And then finally, around that time, they passed a law where the rights to your children went to the state.

00:18:08Guest:Wow.

00:18:09Guest:So once your children were of school age, like at five, the age I was, you would go into the state, run schools.

00:18:15Guest:There was no alternative.

00:18:16Guest:Did you have siblings?

00:18:17Guest:Yeah, older.

00:18:18Guest:So they were in them.

00:18:19Guest:They began, yeah.

00:18:21Guest:And, you know, the state-run school is not really education.

00:18:24Guest:It's indoctrination.

00:18:25Guest:Right, yeah.

00:18:26Guest:There was no God, so you praised Fidel and you praised Che Guevara on the wall.

00:18:30Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:18:31Guest:That kind of stuff.

00:18:31Guest:So my father and mother said, we're out of here.

00:18:34Guest:Obviously, by then, since they had...

00:18:37Guest:nationalized everything in the country.

00:18:39Guest:You really had nothing there other than the house you lived in if you chose to stay.

00:18:43Guest:Wow.

00:18:43Guest:And so we got on a plane and went to Miami where my uncle was already there.

00:18:49Guest:We borrowed a dime.

00:18:49Guest:My father and mother borrowed a dime after they got through customs.

00:18:53Guest:Yeah.

00:18:54Guest:And called and said, we're here.

00:18:56Guest:Wow.

00:18:56Marc:So does that mean they arrive as refugees?

00:19:00Marc:How does that work?

00:19:01Guest:Yeah, Cuban refugees, exiles, political exiles in this case.

00:19:05Guest:Sometimes people come in for immigration, permanent immigration.

00:19:09Guest:I think the early wave of Cubans were considered that we're going back.

00:19:13Guest:Oh, they thought they would go back.

00:19:14Guest:Yeah, we're going back.

00:19:15Marc:We're going to wait until this gets resolved.

00:19:17Guest:America will not let this guy continue in this manner.

00:19:20Guest:It's going to resolve itself.

00:19:22Guest:Yeah.

00:19:22Guest:And obviously there were things like the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis.

00:19:26Guest:And then before you know it, he had this relationship with Russia and it became a whole Cold War.

00:19:32Marc:Yeah.

00:19:33Marc:And was your father wanting to go back?

00:19:36Guest:Yeah.

00:19:37Guest:All Cubans always want to go back.

00:19:39Guest:It's like the Italians with the old country.

00:19:41Guest:I want to be buried in Palermo.

00:19:44Guest:Have you been back?

00:19:45Guest:Huh?

00:19:45Guest:To Cuba?

00:19:46Guest:I went once after the, about around 93.

00:19:49Guest:Yeah.

00:19:51Guest:They had changed the wet foot, dry foot, this new law where now the only way, if you came on a raft, you had to touch dry land or else they'd send you back.

00:20:01Guest:Right.

00:20:01Guest:You could be 20 feet offshore, it doesn't matter.

00:20:04Guest:Really?

00:20:04Guest:So there was a lot of rafters.

00:20:06Guest:To this day, people are still coming in rafts.

00:20:08Guest:Now they're coming even in through Mexico in the Rio Grande, you know?

00:20:11Guest:Yeah.

00:20:11Guest:When I went, there was about 16,000 refugees that were caught at sea.

00:20:17Guest:And they couldn't send them back to Cuba because they would be in prison and God knows what would happen.

00:20:22Guest:So they had them at Guantanamo, the naval base, trying to figure out where do we put these people.

00:20:26Guest:And if you had relatives in the U.S., then you kind of got them through or you went to Spain.

00:20:32Guest:And we went to do a concert for them there.

00:20:34Guest:I went with...

00:20:35Guest:Gloria and Emilio Stefan and a gentleman I worked with for many years, a hero of my name, Israel Lopez, known as Cachao.

00:20:42Guest:He's a Cuban bass player, composer, father of the Mambo kind of guy.

00:20:46Guest:Yeah.

00:20:47Guest:Actually, father of the Mambo with his brother.

00:20:49Guest:Yeah.

00:20:50Guest:And so we went and did it because the only time I had been gone, but I was on the naval base.

00:20:53Guest:Obviously, I was on the island and saw the island as we approached it from the south side and

00:20:59Guest:went for a swim, you know, because there was a coast there.

00:21:04Guest:That was the only time I've been back.

00:21:06Marc:Wow, because, I mean, in the last few years, people go.

00:21:09Marc:There was a window there where people were going.

00:21:12Guest:Yes, yes, but, you know, I've been very critical of that regime.

00:21:15Guest:They might let me in, but they might not let me out.

00:21:18Guest:And also what happens is, you know, you go and if you and this happens all the time, any kind of person that some sort of has any kind of public profile.

00:21:26Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:27Guest:Or what you might call a celebrity profile.

00:21:29Guest:Yeah.

00:21:30Guest:When they go to Cuba, they exploit that because they're going there just to get to know Cuba, even though it's a mess or but the people are great.

00:21:37Guest:Yeah.

00:21:37Guest:And they get, you know, they use that as propaganda.

00:21:41Guest:You see how these people, they approve of us.

00:21:43Guest:Yeah.

00:21:43Guest:They think we're great.

00:21:45Guest:They think what we're doing is great.

00:21:47Guest:Right.

00:21:47Guest:And they use you that way.

00:21:48Guest:Right, yeah.

00:21:48Guest:So I would never... Who is it?

00:21:49Guest:Fidel's brother still?

00:21:51Guest:He's still alive, but there's an appointee, a president that he... He's still the head of the party and stuff, but he's not...

00:21:59Guest:public, really.

00:22:00Guest:It's this guy, Diaz Canal.

00:22:02Guest:A loyalist, another loyalist to the Castro regime.

00:22:06Guest:So you don't have relatives there anymore?

00:22:08Guest:No.

00:22:09Guest:Although there's a lot of Cubans there that say they're my cousin.

00:22:12Guest:A lot of Garcias?

00:22:14Guest:You know, it's a typical thing, you know, when you say, you know, Mark?

00:22:18Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, he's my cousin.

00:22:20Marc:Yeah.

00:22:21Marc:So how did your family make do, like, when they got here?

00:22:25Marc:How did they rebuild their lives?

00:22:27Guest:Well, my father was a lawyer and a notary, which is different in Cuba.

00:22:32Guest:Notary is, you know, not everybody.

00:22:33Guest:Here, you can be a notary, I can be a notary.

00:22:35Guest:You had to be a lawyer.

00:22:36Guest:You had to, you know, have that degree.

00:22:38Guest:And also, it was a way of keeping track of what goes down in your region, you know.

00:22:43Guest:So I guess it was a selected...

00:22:44Guest:or selective title.

00:22:47Guest:Right, right.

00:22:49Guest:And also a farmer.

00:22:51Marc:Okay.

00:22:51Guest:What did he farm?

00:22:52Guest:Potatoes, cucumbers.

00:22:54Guest:Really?

00:22:54Guest:A small dairy farm for the small town we lived outside.

00:22:58Guest:So he had some property.

00:22:59Guest:He had properties, yeah, that were confiscated.

00:23:02Guest:Oh, my God.

00:23:03Guest:And so our house there at the entrance of the town of Bejucal is, once we left, they turned it into like a preschool.

00:23:11Guest:It's still there as a preschool.

00:23:13Guest:So what did they do when they got here?

00:23:15Guest:We hit the ground.

00:23:16Guest:You know, we...

00:23:18Guest:Literally, I remember them borrowing a dime to make a phone call.

00:23:21Guest:We called my uncle and then my godfather, who was here, who I'm named after, Andy.

00:23:27Guest:Yeah.

00:23:28Guest:And we said, we're here.

00:23:29Guest:And he said, okay, you know, come.

00:23:31Guest:This is where we're living.

00:23:32Guest:And we went to 84th and Harding in Miami Beach.

00:23:36Guest:Harding is a street that parallels Collins Avenue, which is, you know, on the beach.

00:23:40Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:23:41Guest:And that area is filled with these weekend joints that people from the north will come down.

00:23:46Guest:Yeah.

00:23:47Guest:And you have...

00:23:47Guest:what you call an efficiency kind of thing.

00:23:49Guest:So you have, it's like a suite.

00:23:51Guest:You have a living room.

00:23:52Guest:With a kitchenette.

00:23:53Guest:Yeah.

00:23:53Guest:And one bedroom and one bath.

00:23:55Guest:And we got into, and you pay by the week, you know.

00:23:58Guest:Right.

00:23:58Guest:And we got into that.

00:24:00Guest:There's six of us.

00:24:01Guest:Six.

00:24:02Guest:Yeah.

00:24:02Guest:Including a grandmother.

00:24:04Marc:So grandma, two siblings, were they brothers?

00:24:07Guest:My older brother, Renee, is older than me.

00:24:09Guest:Yeah.

00:24:10Guest:And my older sister, Tessie, is also older.

00:24:12Guest:Okay.

00:24:13Guest:By six years and seven years.

00:24:14Guest:I was younger.

00:24:15Guest:Oh.

00:24:16Guest:Accident?

00:24:16Guest:No.

00:24:17Guest:Okay.

00:24:18Guest:And my mother was an English teacher in Cuba.

00:24:21Guest:So she was able to also help my father who did not speak English at all.

00:24:25Guest:Neither did we.

00:24:26Guest:We had to learn.

00:24:27Guest:So you had the whole family there where your grandma too.

00:24:29Guest:Yeah.

00:24:29Guest:My grandma slept on the couch and the kids slept on the floor and my parents slept in the bedroom.

00:24:33Guest:And was there a whole community of people there?

00:24:35Guest:Yeah, there was a small community of exiles that had come already.

00:24:39Guest:Yeah.

00:24:40Guest:A lot of Cuban Jews that were there.

00:24:42Guest:Right.

00:24:42Guest:A lot of the Cuban Jewish community split for the same reasons, not only Liberty, but also they shut down the synagogues too.

00:24:50Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:24:51Guest:So I grew up in an extraordinarily beautiful city.

00:24:55Guest:environment, with the embrace of the American, especially the Jewish American community, because that's who lived around me.

00:25:04Guest:And I was blessed.

00:25:05Guest:To me, Miami Beach was a paradise.

00:25:07Guest:I was a block away from the beach.

00:25:10Guest:My brother and I used to go at that age, very young.

00:25:13Guest:He was 11 and I was six, let's say.

00:25:16Guest:We used to go and collect empty Coke bottles and Pepsi bottles, the glass.

00:25:22Guest:Yeah, the glass, yeah.

00:25:23Guest:On the beaches, and we'd put it in a food fair cart, you know?

00:25:27Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:25:28Guest:Like a Vons cart, we called the food fairs.

00:25:29Guest:Yeah.

00:25:30Guest:And then we'd roll it down, filled with bottles, and we'd get money in exchange for them, you know, a nickel for the tall ones, and then we'd go get a burger at Royal Castle, you know.

00:25:39Guest:That was the day.

00:25:40Guest:My brother, to this day, was a great entrepreneur, you know, and to that, you know, he hit the ground...

00:25:45Guest:That was the beginning.

00:25:47Guest:Yeah.

00:25:48Guest:And my father, like all exiles, he just got, he took the first job available, which was at the Fountain Blue Hotel in the janitorial.

00:25:54Guest:Fountain Blue, yeah.

00:25:56Marc:Yeah.

00:25:56Marc:Did they redo that one?

00:25:57Marc:Is it still there?

00:25:58Guest:It's still there, yeah.

00:25:59Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:25:59Guest:You know, you basically land and you have other exiles that are there and they go, I need a job.

00:26:04Guest:Yeah.

00:26:04Guest:And they go, oh, come with me tomorrow.

00:26:06Guest:They need help at the Fountain Blue.

00:26:07Guest:And that's the way it worked.

00:26:08Guest:And he started there as a janitor.

00:26:10Marc:A lawyer with property goes to being a janitor.

00:26:12Marc:That's the hit.

00:26:13Marc:You know what I mean?

00:26:14Guest:Yeah, and a lot of the other janitors were also Cubans that were already there.

00:26:19Guest:They were doctors, and they had to get their degrees again and start all over.

00:26:23Marc:Yeah, because you can't degree.

00:26:24Marc:Yeah, and the guy who owned the building I lived in in Queens was a Dominican dentist, and he couldn't do anything.

00:26:30Marc:But it was funny, because if you had a problem with your stove, you tell him to come fix it, and you look at it and go, if it was a mouth, I could fix it.

00:26:38Yeah.

00:26:38Marc:I can't fix a stove.

00:26:40Marc:Exactly.

00:26:41Marc:So what was the family business?

00:26:43Marc:What evolved?

00:26:44Guest:My father began to do many things that dealt with sort of distribution.

00:26:50Guest:He went from working, he got a job at a caterer.

00:26:57Guest:Yeah.

00:26:57Guest:And it was a caterer that dedicated himself, that they dedicated itself to the Cuban community.

00:27:05Guest:And you get these like army tins, you know, that are stacked one on top of the other.

00:27:09Guest:Yeah.

00:27:10Guest:Little tins.

00:27:10Guest:And you have the soup at the bottom and then rice and then bananas.

00:27:14Guest:Like a lunchbox thing.

00:27:15Guest:Yeah.

00:27:15Guest:They are stacked on a rail.

00:27:17Guest:Yeah.

00:27:17Guest:And it was called a cantina, basically.

00:27:19Guest:Yeah.

00:27:20Guest:And he went to work for a guy who had that business, and he managed it for him for a while.

00:27:24Guest:This is after several jobs.

00:27:27Guest:Anyway, he ended up buying the business from him because the guy wanted to get out.

00:27:30Marc:Cantina, lunchbox business.

00:27:32Guest:Yeah.

00:27:33Guest:My father really couldn't fry an egg, but he could manage the business.

00:27:36Guest:Yeah.

00:27:37Guest:And my mom, he was not the cook of the family, for sure.

00:27:40Guest:But we did that for a while, and we ate well.

00:27:43Guest:We weren't getting rich, but everybody ate well.

00:27:45Guest:You're right.

00:27:46Guest:A lot of leftovers.

00:27:47Guest:Yeah, we bring home to Miami Beach, and people who couldn't afford it would come and get it at the house.

00:27:52Guest:Oh, yeah, that's nice.

00:27:52Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:27:53Guest:And then from there, he got a job.

00:27:59Guest:putting very cheap sneakers from a company called Leeds.

00:28:02Guest:Yeah.

00:28:02Guest:Very cheap sneakers he could buy for a buck or two, you know?

00:28:05Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:05Guest:On consignment in grocery stores in different places all around Miami.

00:28:09Guest:So he'd go around to the- In a 40-foot truck full of sneakers.

00:28:12Guest:Yeah.

00:28:13Guest:And he'd go into a grocery store in all neighborhoods, you know, but, you know, Overtown, you know, Little Havana, Liberty City, everywhere, you know, so culturally different neighborhoods.

00:28:25Yeah.

00:28:26Guest:And he'd pull up and he'd say, how many sneakers did you sell?

00:28:29Guest:You sold four.

00:28:30Guest:You owe me five bucks.

00:28:31Guest:You keep the other three.

00:28:33Guest:It's a consignment thing.

00:28:34Guest:And then he'd fill it up, the sizes that were sold out, and then we'd move on to another.

00:28:38Guest:And I would go every Saturday with him to help him.

00:28:41Guest:To refill?

00:28:41Guest:To help him.

00:28:42Guest:So that was the sneaker racket.

00:28:44Guest:Yeah, that was the sneaker racket.

00:28:45Guest:And then because he had that down, someone would approach him and say,

00:28:49Guest:you can come, you want to be the distributor of these socks that were popular in Cuba, called 1111 in Casino.

00:28:57Guest:They're like, you've seen them, they're like nylon, they're kind of transparent, very decorative.

00:29:04Guest:And she dumped the sneakers and used that same idea

00:29:07Guest:The sock guy.

00:29:09Guest:Yeah, the sock guy.

00:29:10Guest:And then the sock guy became socks and pantyhose, socks and undershirts, socks, and then became the business continued to grow and grow and grow, and then we got into the fragrance business, and that took off.

00:29:21Guest:Yeah, and that was it, huh?

00:29:23Guest:And then my brother became the fragrance tycoon.

00:29:28Guest:Yeah.

00:29:28Guest:Because we all worked in the family business.

00:29:32Guest:So was it like an import business with the fragrance?

00:29:34Marc:Like they bring them in from France and stuff like that?

00:29:36Marc:Yes, it was gray market, yeah.

00:29:37Marc:Oh, okay.

00:29:38Guest:Yeah.

00:29:38Guest:So that was it.

00:29:39Guest:That's how he built his business.

00:29:40Guest:Yeah.

00:29:41Guest:And then it grew into other parts.

00:29:42Guest:He was the head of Halston and it became- The head of what?

00:29:46Guest:Halston?

00:29:46Guest:He was a main distributor for people like Halston.

00:29:49Marc:Sure, yeah.

00:29:50Guest:Not gray market.

00:29:51Guest:Normal people came to him because he was doing very well.

00:29:53Marc:He knew the thing.

00:29:54Marc:Yeah.

00:29:54Marc:That's great.

00:29:55Marc:So you end up, your brother's a business guy.

00:29:59Marc:Yeah.

00:29:59Marc:And what's your sister do?

00:30:01Marc:She's an interior designer.

00:30:02Marc:She's retired now, but she's an award-winning interior designer.

00:30:05Marc:See, I've got a new appreciation for that recently, interior design.

00:30:09Marc:I was just at a hotel in New York, and I thought, like, geez, I got to... This is beautiful.

00:30:14Marc:Yeah.

00:30:15Marc:It makes a big difference.

00:30:16Marc:Oh, sure.

00:30:16Marc:To live in a place where you like looking at it, even if you don't go in the room.

00:30:19Marc:It's nice to just look in the room and go, like, it's a pretty room.

00:30:21Guest:Yeah.

00:30:22Marc:Right?

00:30:22Marc:Absolutely.

00:30:23Marc:I can't afford it, but it's beautiful.

00:30:24Guest:How much to sleep on the towels?

00:30:28Marc:So how do you end up deciding to do acting?

00:30:32Guest:I was already acting in college.

00:30:33Guest:That was a bug I had.

00:30:34Marc:But in high school, you're working all the time.

00:30:36Marc:All through high school and stuff, you're working for your father, doing this and that.

00:30:39Guest:I was working for my dad and playing basketball.

00:30:41Guest:I played basketball in high school.

00:30:42Guest:Good.

00:30:42Guest:Point guard.

00:30:44Guest:Okay.

00:30:44Guest:From Miami Beach.

00:30:45Guest:Yeah.

00:30:45Guest:Senior high.

00:30:46Guest:Yeah.

00:30:46Guest:And then my senior year.

00:30:49Guest:Yeah.

00:30:50Guest:Which is kind of the year that you go, okay, this is my year.

00:30:53Marc:Make some decisions.

00:30:54Guest:Yeah, and also like maybe I can play in a little small college.

00:30:56Guest:I'm going to say, hey.

00:30:57Guest:Oh, you mean high school.

00:30:58Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:59Guest:And maybe I can keep playing, you know, in school.

00:31:01Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.

00:31:02Guest:I got a very bad case of mononucleosis and hepatitis.

00:31:07Guest:Almost died?

00:31:09Guest:No, no.

00:31:09Guest:But I was out for a while.

00:31:11Guest:And it was right at the beginning of basketball season, so I didn't play a lick of basketball at all.

00:31:15Guest:And then I took an acting class in high school.

00:31:17Guest:During that time.

00:31:18Guest:When he couldn't play.

00:31:20Guest:Right.

00:31:20Guest:And you were tired.

00:31:20Guest:It was an elective.

00:31:23Guest:Weak and tired.

00:31:24Guest:Yeah.

00:31:25Guest:Which is the best place to start as an actor.

00:31:28Guest:Because you're vulnerable.

00:31:28Guest:You're open.

00:31:29Guest:Leave yourself alone.

00:31:30Guest:Yeah.

00:31:31Guest:And so I took a class and I had a lot of fun with it.

00:31:34Guest:And the teacher, Jay Jensen, encouraged me a lot.

00:31:37Guest:He was very encouraging.

00:31:39Guest:No one in school had ever been encouraging before to me.

00:31:41Guest:About anything...

00:31:42Guest:No, in basketball I was good, but I'm talking about studies.

00:31:47Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.

00:31:49Guest:And he said, you know, you should take this more seriously.

00:31:54Guest:And obviously it's like, you know how it is, it awakens this thing inside you like a virus, it taps into it, and then it kind of, if you don't deal with it, or the desire to learn...

00:32:05Guest:was very intense for me to learn how to do this and the dream of maybe trying to do this for a living.

00:32:12Marc:Right.

00:32:12Marc:Well, I mean, you have that drive because the way you came up was the way you came up with your dad going through all that and having to make yourself.

00:32:19Marc:But it's interesting with acting because it's a tricky thing to...

00:32:23Marc:To learn.

00:32:24Marc:I mean, you got, right?

00:32:25Marc:It's hard.

00:32:26Marc:Yeah, I mean, you got to have, there's a lot of natural talent, obviously, but when you want to apply yourself with the same ambition and focus that you would business, it's a little vague, right?

00:32:36Marc:Completely vague.

00:32:38Guest:Completely vague.

00:32:39Guest:And even though you have, you might have,

00:32:42Guest:You know, like if you're in sports, it's like he's coordinated.

00:32:46Marc:Right, sure.

00:32:47Guest:You can make the shot.

00:32:48Guest:He's coordinated, but he's, you know.

00:32:50Guest:Yeah.

00:32:51Guest:In acting, you got to learn the craft, you know.

00:32:53Guest:Yeah.

00:32:53Guest:It's a very, you know, it's a thing you got to go through.

00:32:56Marc:It's a personal choice, too, like how you do it.

00:32:59Marc:Yes.

00:32:59Marc:Right?

00:33:00Marc:Yes.

00:33:00Marc:I mean, there's no one craft.

00:33:01Marc:With basketball, you run around, you do the drills, you take the shots.

00:33:05Guest:Yeah, but learning the craft of that sense of truth and the sense of being able to be centered and grounded and comfortable and create a character and know where to go with it and all those things, it is an art form.

00:33:18Marc:Well, yeah, but I mean, but my point is, is like after I talk to a lot of guys and women too, is that, you know, you take, you build your own craft from the stuff that you- Absolutely.

00:33:27Marc:Right?

00:33:28Marc:There's no like, you know, here's the template.

00:33:30Guest:No, no, no.

00:33:30Guest:You expose yourself to all the templates.

00:33:32Guest:Yeah.

00:33:33Guest:And you started getting hopefully a deeper understanding of them and of yourself, you know.

00:33:38Marc:But I guess that's the truth of it.

00:33:39Marc:That's finding the truth, you know, being honest with yourself.

00:33:42Marc:So in high school, you got the bug and you were doing like, you know, I wouldn't imagine the big work.

00:33:48Yeah.

00:33:48Guest:No, no, I didn't.

00:33:49Guest:I just had- The one class.

00:33:52Guest:When I went to college from there, I kept studying.

00:33:55Guest:How did that go?

00:33:57Guest:Not good.

00:34:00Guest:But I was very enthusiastic.

00:34:01Guest:I wanted to learn.

00:34:02Guest:About acting.

00:34:03Guest:Yeah.

00:34:03Guest:So you go to university which college?

00:34:05Guest:Miami-Dade South.

00:34:07Guest:Okay.

00:34:07Guest:Community college and then a two-year university.

00:34:10Guest:FIU at that time was only a two-year school.

00:34:12Guest:Okay.

00:34:12Guest:Last two years.

00:34:13Marc:And they had an acting program?

00:34:15Guest:They had acting classes at the community college, and at the FIU, they had an acting program.

00:34:19Marc:I bet you they don't even have those anymore at the community college.

00:34:22Marc:Yeah, I'm sure they do.

00:34:23Marc:You think so?

00:34:23Marc:Yeah, I think so, yeah.

00:34:24Marc:Oh, that's good.

00:34:25Marc:Yeah, it's electives.

00:34:26Guest:Sure.

00:34:27Marc:But was the teacher any good?

00:34:29Marc:Better than me.

00:34:34Guest:You had to take the advice then from them.

00:34:37Guest:Yeah, I was trying to.

00:34:38Guest:And then, of course, you have things in your life that change your life.

00:34:42Guest:And films had done that for me since I was a kid.

00:34:48Guest:I didn't know how into it I was, and that was inside of me saying, that's what I want to do.

00:34:55Guest:And when I was awakened, then I realized, oh...

00:34:58Guest:It's possible.

00:34:59Guest:I don't know if it's possible, but that's what's calling me, you know.

00:35:02Guest:Yeah.

00:35:02Guest:Like, what film has had the most impact on it?

00:35:04Guest:Well, it started early on, you know.

00:35:06Guest:Obviously, what I was even knowing, you know.

00:35:07Guest:It started with, you know, Sean Connery and James Bond and The Great Escape.

00:35:13Marc:Then you get to work with him.

00:35:14Guest:All of them.

00:35:15Guest:I got to work with him.

00:35:16Guest:I got to work with...

00:35:17Guest:with James Coburn, who was a big hero of mine too.

00:35:20Guest:You remember Armand Flint, The Magnificent Seven and all that.

00:35:24Guest:And of course, later on, The Godfather was so influential in everybody's life.

00:35:28Guest:And I got a chance to work with Francis and with Al.

00:35:31Guest:I've got to work with Bobby Duvall and all these people.

00:35:36Guest:It's absolutely a ridiculous notion that

00:35:42Guest:That I'm sitting here with you recalling this stuff because it was just a dream of a somewhat shy kid, I guess.

00:35:52Guest:Yeah.

00:35:53Guest:To say that's what I want to do.

00:35:56Guest:So when did you first do your first play?

00:35:58Guest:Unless I'm living some altered reality.

00:36:00Marc:You might be after that movie.

00:36:01Marc:You might have entered some altered reality.

00:36:02Guest:Yeah, I know.

00:36:03Guest:No, that I'm just imagining all my entire life, you know.

00:36:06Marc:Well, some people think that's it, but I'm pretty sure you're living it because I've witnessed some of it.

00:36:11Guest:Yes, but if you're also part of that reality, someone who verifies my own dementia.

00:36:19Guest:I'm part of your dream.

00:36:21Guest:I wrote a character that is catchy.

00:36:27Guest:One of the things he says is kind of a noir character.

00:36:29Guest:And he says, your dreams are a way of escaping reality unless your dreams are your reality.

00:36:36Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:36:36Guest:Great.

00:36:37Guest:That's your guy?

00:36:38Guest:That's my guy.

00:36:39Marc:That's the guy I wrote.

00:36:41Marc:So when did you do your first show?

00:36:44Marc:Like a play?

00:36:44Marc:Did you do a play?

00:36:45Guest:In college.

00:36:46Guest:Yeah, in college.

00:36:47Guest:I was doing plays in college.

00:36:48Guest:Yeah?

00:36:49Guest:Yeah.

00:36:49Guest:Did you love it?

00:36:50Guest:Yeah, it was incredible.

00:36:52Guest:Have you done much theater lately?

00:36:53Guest:I did.

00:36:54Guest:Right before the pandemic hit, we closed the show at the Geffen.

00:36:59Guest:Based on an idea I had for a long time on doing an adaptation of the movie Key Largo for the stage.

00:37:05Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:37:05Yeah.

00:37:05Guest:And I was having lunch with the guys there, the artistic directors.

00:37:09Marc:At the Geffen?

00:37:10Guest:Yeah.

00:37:11Guest:And he said, I'd like to do something here.

00:37:13Guest:And he goes, well, what do you want to do?

00:37:14Guest:And I said, you know, I always had this idea about, you know, Key Largo because it takes place in one place.

00:37:20Guest:Is that with G. Robinson?

00:37:21Guest:Yeah.

00:37:21Guest:And Humphrey Bogart.

00:37:22Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:37:23Guest:And it was based on a play initially.

00:37:26Yeah.

00:37:26Guest:Did you find it?

00:37:27Guest:The play?

00:37:28Guest:Yeah.

00:37:28Guest:And so it was a play and then there was a screenplay and we used both those things and then also some new ideas that are not in the screenplay and they're not in the play or the movie.

00:37:39Guest:You play the heavy?

00:37:40Guest:I play the Edward G. Robinson role.

00:37:42Guest:So I mentioned to him, they said, that's a great idea.

00:37:44Guest:We'll get a dramaturg.

00:37:45Guest:You can work with him.

00:37:46Guest:What can you do?

00:37:46Guest:I went, oh, shit.

00:37:48Guest:Me and my big mouth.

00:37:50Guest:Me and my big mouth.

00:37:51Guest:So we did it.

00:37:51Guest:It was great.

00:37:52Guest:It was great to get back on stage.

00:37:53Guest:I hadn't been on stage for a while.

00:37:55Guest:It must have been amazing.

00:37:56Guest:It was so much fun, yeah.

00:37:58Guest:So immediate, right?

00:37:59Guest:It's the best.

00:38:00Guest:You forget.

00:38:01Guest:I bet.

00:38:01Marc:A lot of guys don't do it at all anymore.

00:38:04Marc:No, yeah.

00:38:05Marc:They did it back in the day in New York, and then it's done.

00:38:09Marc:It's done, yeah.

00:38:09Marc:So you were a noir guy, I guess.

00:38:12Marc:I love noir, yeah.

00:38:14Marc:Raymond Chandler, yeah.

00:38:15Marc:Sure.

00:38:15Marc:Did you go see Del Toro's?

00:38:18Marc:Yes, of course.

00:38:19Marc:It's great, right?

00:38:20Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:38:20Marc:He's amazing.

00:38:21Marc:He's got a black and white print, too.

00:38:24Marc:Oh, really?

00:38:24Marc:Yeah, he's been taking it around.

00:38:26Guest:Oh, I'd like to see that.

00:38:27Marc:Yeah, they added grain.

00:38:30Marc:Yeah, I'd like to see it, too, but I got, you know...

00:38:32Marc:I didn't get out there to see it.

00:38:33Marc:He's a genius, that guy.

00:38:34Guest:Yeah, lovely guy.

00:38:35Guest:I met him when he first came to LA a long time ago, Tom Bloody, who worked for Francis and runs the Telluride Film Festival, said, I have a young director from Mexico that you should meet.

00:38:50Guest:He just came into town.

00:38:51Guest:I said, okay, sure.

00:38:52Guest:He came over to my little office, which is my old house.

00:38:55Guest:And he had a book.

00:38:57Guest:Yeah.

00:38:58Guest:And first of all, he's the sweetest guy in the world.

00:39:00Guest:Sweet guy.

00:39:00Guest:He had this big book, and he started opening up, and it was all his drawings and storyboards of all the movies he's made.

00:39:07Guest:Yeah.

00:39:08Guest:And I saw them there for the first time.

00:39:10Guest:The Hellboy and all these characters.

00:39:11Guest:Yeah.

00:39:12Guest:He already had imagined them.

00:39:13Guest:Yeah.

00:39:14Guest:And he said, I want to make... I said...

00:39:16Guest:I'm around.

00:39:17Guest:Call me.

00:39:17Guest:Let's do it.

00:39:19Guest:I can't finance it.

00:39:20Guest:You have to call me now.

00:39:21Guest:I can't call you.

00:39:22Guest:And we still haven't worked together.

00:39:24Guest:Not yet.

00:39:25Guest:It'll happen.

00:39:26Guest:I mean, I think I did a voice on one of his cartoons.

00:39:28Guest:He does like has cartoons.

00:39:30Marc:Yeah, on Netflix.

00:39:30Marc:Yeah.

00:39:31Marc:So when was the first, so did you get booked out of New York initially?

00:39:35Marc:Where'd you, after college, where'd you go?

00:39:37Marc:I came here.

00:39:37Marc:Right away?

00:39:38Marc:Yeah, right away.

00:39:39Marc:Yeah, just alone?

00:39:40Guest:No, not right away.

00:39:41Guest:I started, yeah, alone.

00:39:44Guest:I started, my brother had just opened up a discotheque in Miami with a bunch of friends.

00:39:49Marc:Your brother, the entrepreneur?

00:39:51Guest:Yes, called Alexander's.

00:39:53Guest:Yeah.

00:39:53Guest:And it became the hottest thing in town.

00:39:56Guest:Really?

00:39:56Guest:It had a dance floor that they built.

00:39:58Guest:They built it, it was in the bottom floor of the Omni Hotel.

00:40:01Guest:Uh-huh.

00:40:01Guest:and they had a dance floor with hydraulics, like in a gas station, like at a garage.

00:40:07Guest:You can get on the dance floor on the first floor.

00:40:09Guest:It was all plexiglass, and it would take you up to the second floor as you're dancing.

00:40:14Guest:So this is the disco time, like 70s?

00:40:16Guest:This is the 75, 6, 7.

00:40:18Guest:Oh, that's it.

00:40:19Guest:No, yes, 6, 7.

00:40:22Guest:Yeah, disco time.

00:40:23Guest:Yeah.

00:40:24Guest:And I worked there the summer.

00:40:28Guest:of 78.

00:40:29Guest:That must have been crazy.

00:40:30Guest:For like four months, you know.

00:40:32Guest:Was it crazy?

00:40:33Guest:Yeah, it was pretty crazy.

00:40:35Guest:And I made very good money, you know, tip-wise in those days.

00:40:39Guest:I had one client that would come in with an entourage every night, which was, and he was, at the time, the largest

00:40:45Guest:marijuana importer.

00:40:48Guest:At least in the southern states, maybe in America.

00:40:52Guest:There must have been some real characters.

00:40:54Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:40:55Guest:And he took a liking to me right away because I tended to him.

00:40:58Guest:I was like a maitre d' sommelier, you know?

00:41:00Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:41:01Guest:And he told my brother's partner, Alex Cachaldor, who had been in the restaurant business all their life since Cuba.

00:41:10Guest:Yeah.

00:41:11Guest:Very close friend of ours.

00:41:12Guest:And he said, I'm coming back to when I come.

00:41:15Guest:I want Andy to take care of me.

00:41:17Guest:So he'd give me $100 when I'd wait for him at the door and he'd shake my hand.

00:41:21Guest:I said, Andy, how are you?

00:41:22Guest:I said, how are you?

00:41:23Guest:Good to see you.

00:41:24Guest:He'd already have a $100 bill in my palm.

00:41:26Guest:And when he left, he'd give me another $100.

00:41:29Guest:And he was there basically every night.

00:41:30Guest:So with that money that I made in those three months before, I got on a plane and came to Los Angeles.

00:41:38Marc:Did you have friends here?

00:41:40Guest:I knew Steven Bauer.

00:41:41Guest:Yeah, who's locally from Miami, and we were friends.

00:41:44Guest:The actor?

00:41:45Guest:The actor, yeah.

00:41:45Guest:From Scarface?

00:41:46Guest:Yeah.

00:41:46Guest:Oh, he's great.

00:41:47Guest:He was there already here.

00:41:48Guest:He had come out maybe like six months before.

00:41:53Guest:He's a Miami guy?

00:41:54Guest:Yeah.

00:41:54Guest:Jewish guy?

00:41:55Guest:No.

00:41:55Guest:Cuban.

00:41:56Guest:Cuban guy.

00:41:56Guest:Huh.

00:41:57Guest:Echevarrias is...

00:41:59Guest:His father, his real name, Bowers, his grandmother's name.

00:42:02Guest:Oh, okay.

00:42:03Guest:So you knew him.

00:42:04Guest:I knew him, and he said, hey, man, come out here.

00:42:06Guest:There's a lot of work.

00:42:07Guest:As soon as he got here, he had a contact with a manager that knew him.

00:42:10Guest:He was on a show in Miami on PBS called Que Pasa USA.

00:42:14Guest:It was a bilingual- He played Manolo.

00:42:16Guest:In Scarface, yeah.

00:42:18Guest:And he said, hey, man, come out.

00:42:19Guest:Here's a lot of work.

00:42:20Guest:I got already.

00:42:21Guest:I got a contract.

00:42:22Guest:He landed.

00:42:22Guest:He got a contract with Columbia Pictures Television.

00:42:25Guest:And I said, I'm out of here.

00:42:27Guest:I'm going.

00:42:27Guest:And I got here, and I didn't work for seven years.

00:42:31Guest:Seven years!

00:42:32Guest:Well, you know, I got a little taste here and there, but it was really hard.

00:42:34Guest:Hanging out at the comedy store.

00:42:36Guest:It was hard.

00:42:37Guest:I got one of my first gigs because of showcasing there.

00:42:42Guest:Yeah.

00:42:43Guest:We did the pilot of Hill Street Blues, I was on that.

00:42:46Marc:You're on the pilot?

00:42:47Guest:Yeah.

00:42:47Marc:Did you have a big part?

00:42:49Marc:No.

00:42:49Marc:But that was your first, did you have an agent?

00:42:51Marc:What'd you do for seven years?

00:42:52Guest:I tried to get work and it was very difficult.

00:42:55Guest:What were your jobs were you doing?

00:42:57Guest:Oh.

00:42:59Guest:I loaded trucks and, you know, roadway, those trucks that say roadway at the city of commerce over there on the other side from seven o'clock at night to seven o'clock in the morning, either load or strip a truck.

00:43:12Guest:How the hell did you do that job and still go on additions?

00:43:15Guest:I didn't have any auditions.

00:43:17Guest:I don't know.

00:43:17Guest:Yeah.

00:43:18Guest:But Bryan Cranston worked with me on that.

00:43:20Guest:Really?

00:43:20Guest:Yeah.

00:43:21Guest:At the truck place?

00:43:21Guest:Yeah.

00:43:22Guest:And then I worked for Starving Students, The Movers.

00:43:25Guest:Sure.

00:43:25Guest:I laid shingles.

00:43:28Guest:I worked for a long time as a waiter at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, a backward waiter.

00:43:32Guest:Yeah.

00:43:32Guest:I would go in.

00:43:33Guest:I wasn't permanent.

00:43:34Guest:I'd go in.

00:43:34Guest:I'd call in.

00:43:35Guest:You need someone?

00:43:35Guest:They always needed somebody.

00:43:37Marc:Well, that's determination.

00:43:39Marc:Acting, I'm a comic.

00:43:41Marc:That's always what I've been.

00:43:42Marc:I don't know how actors have the resilience to not only not get the job or get the opportunity, but even when you're in it, going out on those auditions.

00:43:51Guest:Well, the opportunities were like today, certainly, because...

00:43:54Guest:There was five studios.

00:43:56Guest:There was no HBO.

00:43:57Guest:There was no cable.

00:43:58Guest:And three networks and PBS.

00:44:00Guest:And that was it.

00:44:01Guest:Right.

00:44:02Guest:And for an actor with a Spanish surname, you know, Garcia, they would bring you in only for parts.

00:44:09Guest:First of all, I didn't have a good agent, you know, so it was hard to even get, you know.

00:44:13Marc:What was your first agent like?

00:44:15Guest:No, they were very sweet.

00:44:16Guest:I had a couple of them.

00:44:17Marc:Yeah.

00:44:18Guest:They were so boutique and so small that I had more than one.

00:44:22Guest:Yeah.

00:44:22Yeah.

00:44:22Guest:And they didn't care.

00:44:24Guest:They didn't care.

00:44:25Guest:They didn't even know.

00:44:26Guest:So you get an audition, and you know, those days, the only auditions for Hispanics were basically gang members.

00:44:33Guest:Right.

00:44:33Guest:So even if they, by mistake, did not look at my picture, but saw Garcia, and they said, call that Garcia dude in, and they'd see me when I'd walk in, they'd go, what are you doing here?

00:44:45Right.

00:44:45Why?

00:44:47Guest:Because in the hallway, there was real gang members outside.

00:44:51Guest:You couldn't sell it?

00:44:52Guest:No, no, I couldn't sell it.

00:44:54Guest:And I go, I'm an actor.

00:44:55Guest:He goes, yes, yes, we understand.

00:44:57Guest:You're an actor.

00:44:57Guest:Thank you.

00:44:58Guest:We'll call it maybe something else.

00:44:59Guest:There was never something else.

00:45:01Guest:So the first role was the Hill Street Blues?

00:45:05Guest:that was a little bit at the beginning i'm getting in a fight with some kid and you know and the camera goes by and i'm screaming yeah sure but i did i think i ended up doing like maybe one or two or three more of those over the hit the tv pieces the tv bits yeah the bits yeah and uh the ladies there casting people molly lapata and those guys they really they liked me you know i see me on stage so you know they'd have me

00:45:29Guest:in for certain things.

00:45:30Guest:They saw you at the store?

00:45:31Guest:At the comedy store?

00:45:32Guest:Yeah.

00:45:33Guest:The Mary Tyler Moore Group, all those guys.

00:45:35Guest:So, you know, I started getting little bits here and there and, you know, just kind of staying in the game as much until I got a real, an agent finally, a manager.

00:45:42Guest:How'd that happen?

00:45:44Guest:She was, her name was Phyllis Carlisle and she was Stephen's manager and I got to know her just through Stephen, just casually.

00:45:51Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:45:52Guest:And she just said, you know,

00:45:53Guest:And Melanie Griffith, who was also with her, and John Malkovich.

00:45:57Guest:Yeah.

00:45:57Guest:Willem Dafoe.

00:45:58Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:45:58Guest:She had a very strong group of people.

00:46:00Guest:Good stable.

00:46:01Guest:Yeah.

00:46:02Guest:And Melanie and Steven would always say to Phyllis, you got to see, because we were studying together at Meisner with David Provel.

00:46:09Guest:And they would see my work on stage, you know.

00:46:11Guest:And Melanie was very supportive.

00:46:13Guest:And we're in her ear.

00:46:15Guest:You got to check out Andy.

00:46:19Guest:And finally she said, I want to help you.

00:46:21Guest:And she was very helpful because she obviously could get me in to have a general meeting with somebody.

00:46:27Guest:She had a lot of contacts.

00:46:28Guest:She had great staff.

00:46:29Guest:And once we started working, I was able to

00:46:33Guest:the casting world started to get to know me.

00:46:36Guest:Even if it's just casually for a general meeting.

00:46:38Guest:Putting yourself in their head.

00:46:40Guest:Yeah, and it began to build off of that.

00:46:43Marc:So you studied acting right when you got out here?

00:46:45Marc:Yes, yes.

00:46:46Marc:Just sort of stuck with it, went to a lot of different places?

00:46:48Marc:Yeah, yeah, for sure, always.

00:46:50Marc:Okay, so now you got this good manager, you got all these peers, people know you.

00:46:54Marc:And you start doing bigger parts?

00:46:57Marc:No.

00:46:59Guest:No, no, what happened was unique.

00:47:01Guest:It was kind of like, you know, you just stay in the game.

00:47:03Guest:You know what I was doing a lot?

00:47:04Guest:I was doing, I was a member of a Walla group.

00:47:08Guest:Walla, what's that?

00:47:09Guest:Walla is all the background voices you put on the movie.

00:47:11Guest:Oh, Walla, Walla, Walla, Walla.

00:47:12Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:13Guest:All the groups and, you know, every scene, you gotta fill in all the groups.

00:47:16Guest:Right.

00:47:17Guest:So that kept, I had a baby girl, so my wife.

00:47:20Marc:Where'd you meet your wife?

00:47:21Guest:In Miami.

00:47:22Guest:Oh, she's from there.

00:47:23Guest:Yeah.

00:47:24Guest:She came out here.

00:47:25Guest:She came out after we got married.

00:47:27Guest:She came out.

00:47:28Guest:Okay.

00:47:29Guest:So I was paying the rent and making some money doing wallet two or three times a week with another great lady who gave me that opportunity, Barbara Harris.

00:47:36Marc:So you're in a room full of people?

00:47:37Guest:No, you're actually saying, hey, how you doing, man?

00:47:41Guest:Come over here.

00:47:42Guest:And that gets dialed down, but you have to fill all this stuff.

00:47:45Guest:The background, yeah.

00:47:46Guest:Yeah.

00:47:46Guest:But you get, you know, you get SAG after scale.

00:47:50Guest:Yeah.

00:47:50Guest:And then when it reruns, you know, we were doing all the TV shows.

00:47:53Guest:You get a couple bucks.

00:47:54Guest:You do it, get another full hit.

00:47:56Guest:Oh, yeah, right, right.

00:47:57Guest:So like $3.50 and $3.50 for an afternoon's work.

00:47:59Guest:And you got the insurance.

00:48:01Guest:Plus the insurance.

00:48:01Guest:So we did that for a while.

00:48:03Guest:And then, okay, what happened?

00:48:06Guest:Oh, my wife saw on TV, it was Entertainment Tonight.

00:48:11Guest:Yeah.

00:48:12Guest:First year of entertainment.

00:48:14Guest:And they were in the kitchen.

00:48:16Guest:She goes, hey, Andy, come over here.

00:48:18Guest:They're doing a movie in Miami.

00:48:21Guest:Kurt Russell and Marielle Hemingway call the mean season.

00:48:24Guest:You should look into that because maybe there's a part in there for you.

00:48:28Guest:There's no gang members in Miami, but there's Cubans.

00:48:31Guest:So I said, I'll look into it.

00:48:33Guest:So I called Phyllis, and she said...

00:48:37Guest:Let me check into it.

00:48:38Guest:He goes, you're right.

00:48:38Guest:There is a part there for a young detective.

00:48:41Guest:The two detectives that are on this case.

00:48:43Guest:Yeah.

00:48:44Guest:There's a serial killer.

00:48:45Guest:There's a journalist that has a relationship with the serial killer.

00:48:48Guest:Uh-huh.

00:48:48Guest:And that was Kurt Russell.

00:48:49Guest:Yeah.

00:48:50Guest:Marielle was the love interest of his.

00:48:51Guest:Yeah.

00:48:52Guest:There was Richard Jordan played the serial killer.

00:48:54Guest:Me and Richard Bradford.

00:48:55Guest:I ended up going in to meet Jane Jenkins, and in this case, I was the guy that was right for it.

00:49:00Guest:Right.

00:49:01Guest:And that was it.

00:49:02Guest:That was it.

00:49:02Guest:It was the simplest job to get in the world.

00:49:04Guest:Did you feel like you just had a break?

00:49:07Guest:Yeah, that was a break.

00:49:08Guest:Yeah.

00:49:08Guest:That was the break.

00:49:09Guest:It was an actual part where people saw your work.

00:49:12Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:49:13Guest:From there, I was able to get in.

00:49:14Guest:to audition for a Jeff Bridges movie that Hal Ashby was doing.

00:49:17Guest:Hal was one of my heroes called Eight Million Ways to Die, and I got that part, and that was... That must have been like how long... Was that his last movie, Hal's?

00:49:27Guest:Yeah, it was his last movie.

00:49:28Guest:They took the movie away from him.

00:49:30Guest:It was a bit of a mess.

00:49:32Marc:But you got to meet him and spend time with him?

00:49:34Guest:I got to jam with him.

00:49:35Guest:He was amazing.

00:49:36Marc:Yeah.

00:49:36Guest:Yeah, we improvised.

00:49:37Guest:All our scenes are improvised.

00:49:39Guest:Really?

00:49:39Marc:Yeah.

00:49:39Marc:You like doing that?

00:49:40Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:49:41Marc:So what was Hal Bash be like?

00:49:42Marc:He just, he encouraged that?

00:49:44Guest:Oh, yeah, completely.

00:49:45Guest:Yeah.

00:49:45Marc:God, he must have been great.

00:49:46Guest:He's made some great movies.

00:49:48Guest:Oh, amazing.

00:49:49Guest:A lot of human, great human behavior, a lot of resonance.

00:49:51Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:49:52Guest:And it's because of that approach, you know?

00:49:54Guest:His thing was that you have an objective to the scene.

00:49:56Guest:And from take to take, you can go at it from different, as long as you achieve the objective and your story continues to be told.

00:50:03Guest:Okay, so he didn't care how you got there.

00:50:05Guest:Didn't care how you got there.

00:50:07Guest:And never pass judgment on anything you did.

00:50:10Guest:First of all, you're flying by the seat of your pants once there to judge.

00:50:13Guest:Yeah.

00:50:13Guest:So he would never say like, that didn't, that's not, you know, no.

00:50:18Guest:Yeah.

00:50:18Guest:And he never, he'd just go in and go like, that was interesting.

00:50:21Guest:Yeah.

00:50:22Guest:We got that.

00:50:23Guest:Try something else and walk away.

00:50:25Guest:And if he was really enthused if something happened, he would go like, oh, okay, yeah.

00:50:30Guest:Let's go again.

00:50:32Guest:But he never put the judgment in your head.

00:50:35Guest:So you were always free.

00:50:37Guest:And you felt like someone was going to catch you and protect you.

00:50:40Guest:That's great.

00:50:41Guest:I wonder if he always worked like that.

00:50:43Guest:I did a little research with other people who had worked with him and John Voight and Richard Bradford.

00:50:48Guest:You see the performances all the way back from like The Last Detail.

00:50:51Marc:The Last Detail's the best.

00:50:52Guest:And you see Jack so free in that movie.

00:50:54Guest:Right.

00:50:55Guest:Yeah.

00:50:56Guest:Being there.

00:50:56Guest:Yeah, being there's the greatest.

00:50:58Marc:Those outtakes at the end of being there.

00:51:00Guest:He told me that, you know, he told me the story that

00:51:04Guest:Because I picked his brain, being there to me was a masterpiece, one of my favorite films.

00:51:09Guest:And Peter Sellers was another one of those guys I grew up with in the 60s all the way through.

00:51:13Guest:And he said, I said, that script felt like Shakespeare.

00:51:16Guest:It was real precise.

00:51:17Guest:And he says, oh, no, no.

00:51:18Guest:And Peter would come up with stuff.

00:51:21Guest:He says, you know, people, all the cast would just, you'd improvise something, just a thought or whatever.

00:51:26Guest:Yeah.

00:51:27Guest:And they just took whatever he said, they would take it as the profound truth.

00:51:30Guest:Right.

00:51:31Guest:Just say, you know, don't never deny, right, improvisation.

00:51:34Guest:Yeah.

00:51:34Guest:You can, you yes and.

00:51:35Guest:Never say no, yes and, yeah.

00:51:36Guest:Yes and.

00:51:37Guest:Oh, that's great to know.

00:51:38Guest:So he could say, you know, I feel the walls are moist.

00:51:43Guest:Yeah.

00:51:43Guest:And they go, that's so interesting, Chauncey.

00:51:46Guest:Yes.

00:51:48Yes.

00:51:48Guest:You know, moist, moist walls.

00:51:50Guest:That's all improvised.

00:51:52Guest:So, yes.

00:51:54Marc:Jack Gordon was so good.

00:51:55Guest:Oh, my God.

00:51:55Guest:Incredible.

00:51:56Guest:Incredible film.

00:51:57Guest:I encourage everybody who's never seen that movie to go there.

00:52:00Guest:And the ending was a new ending.

00:52:02Guest:The thing about, you know, walking on the water.

00:52:04Guest:That's a tag he put on.

00:52:06Guest:Yeah.

00:52:07Guest:Based on that story, he told me with Bobby Jones, the writer.

00:52:11Guest:He goes, he could do anything.

00:52:12Guest:He could have walked on water and they would have bought it.

00:52:14Guest:Right.

00:52:14Guest:and he thought hey that's what i'm gonna do and they went back and shot that why not good tag oh my god it's amazing great so when so then after that the untouchables happens and that's like that's i think that's when i first remember like who's that guy yeah i gotta have a lot of attention with this crazy character in that movie because he was like a in eight million ways to die yeah i gotta watch it now he's a cokehead you know drug dealer yeah you know powerful young thug kind of guy and

00:52:39Guest:antagonist and it got a lot of attention and but what was he saying about how losing the movie he didn't get to finish the movie no he they took it away from him because he he wanted to finish later he had delayed the movie it was one of those split rights yeah like the foreign rights were sold in Colombia was and they needed to deliver the movie and Hal said I'm like I can't deliver it on date anymore because I started late and they basically took the movie finished it

00:53:03Guest:They hired an editor to finish it.

00:53:05Marc:Oh, so it was already shot.

00:53:06Guest:It was already shot.

00:53:07Guest:Oh, okay.

00:53:07Guest:But they pulled the plug, so we had to get like 10 days working and four days.

00:53:11Guest:Do you like the movie?

00:53:13Guest:I do.

00:53:14Guest:I got to watch it.

00:53:14Guest:I do, and working with Jeff in all those scenes where me and Jeff- He's the best.

00:53:20Guest:And Roseanne Arquette.

00:53:21Marc:Oh, Jeff Bridges is so good.

00:53:23Guest:And improvising with Jeff.

00:53:24Guest:We'd improvise at night in his trailer.

00:53:25Guest:We would record it.

00:53:26Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:53:26Guest:And then we'd give it to Hal, and the next morning he said, I really like that thing you guys were talking about.

00:53:32Guest:Yeah.

00:53:32Marc:So that must have been a blast to have that freedom.

00:53:34Marc:Are you in touch with him?

00:53:35Marc:How's he doing?

00:53:36Guest:Jeff?

00:53:36Guest:Yeah.

00:53:37Guest:He's doing much better.

00:53:38Guest:He went through a physical, but he's coming out the other side of it.

00:53:42Marc:Oh, good, good, good, good, good.

00:53:44Marc:So now you've got to go to De Palma.

00:53:46Marc:That's a whole different trip, right?

00:53:48Guest:I got word that they're interested me in playing Frank Nitti, the killer in the movie.

00:53:56Uh-huh.

00:53:56Guest:And I read the material and I said to my agent, no, no, I want to play that other guy over there, you know.

00:54:01Guest:The young Italian kid.

00:54:02Guest:You're the sharpshooter, right?

00:54:03Guest:Yeah, the young Italian kid.

00:54:05Guest:First of all, that's the part that attracted me, to play the killer.

00:54:08Marc:But you don't want to play the killer?

00:54:09Guest:I wanted to play that guy who was one of the untouchables.

00:54:12Guest:That was the James Coburn part.

00:54:14Guest:If you think about the original Magnificent Seven, James Coburn is up against a fence, and someone challenges him to a duel, and he has a knife, the other guy has a gun, and he outdoes him with a knife, right?

00:54:27Guest:So that character of George Stone had that same scene in the thing, in the sharpshooter scene.

00:54:34Guest:It's the recruiting scene.

00:54:36Guest:Yeah.

00:54:36Guest:Because that movie is like The Magnificent Seven or The Seven Samurai.

00:54:40Guest:Yeah.

00:54:40Guest:One guy to right the wrong recruits a bunch of people to go fight.

00:54:44Marc:Right.

00:54:44Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:54:45Guest:And so I went to meet Brian, and I told him my desires.

00:54:49Guest:I auditioned for the part, and I got the part.

00:54:52Guest:And that movie obviously was very successful, so that helps you out a lot.

00:54:56Marc:That scene where De Niro hits that guy with the bat is very memorable.

00:55:01Guest:That's all those times when people get cracked open with a bat.

00:55:05Guest:But that whole, all of them sitting there.

00:55:07Marc:Yeah, with the mammoth dialogue.

00:55:08Marc:Yeah, you didn't have any scenes with him, though.

00:55:11Marc:Only his trial.

00:55:12Marc:Yeah.

00:55:12Marc:Yeah, and his trial.

00:55:13Marc:He's a nice guy, right?

00:55:14Marc:Yes, yes, very much.

00:55:15Marc:But with De Palma, was that whole different ball of wax in terms of how he worked?

00:55:19Guest:Yes, yes.

00:55:20Guest:Yeah, he was, you know, that movie was storyboarded when I got there.

00:55:23Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:55:23Guest:He had a story about it himself, a little index card, like stick figures.

00:55:28Guest:He knew what it was.

00:55:29Guest:It's just like four round faces.

00:55:31Guest:Here you're sitting in a pew, or here you're on horseback.

00:55:35Guest:He says, here you're going to be on horseback before we attack the... And I said, oh, horseback.

00:55:41Guest:That wasn't in the script.

00:55:42Guest:And I said, you know, my character, he's from the south side of Chicago, Italian kid.

00:55:47Guest:He's never been on a horse.

00:55:49Guest:And he looked at me and said, no...

00:55:50Guest:he's an expert horseman.

00:55:55Guest:And I said, oh, okay.

00:55:57Guest:When are we doing this scene?

00:55:59Guest:And he said, oh, I didn't buy four weeks.

00:56:01Guest:So now I had to, you know, get on a horse in Chicago and figure out how am I an expert horseman?

00:56:08Guest:You know, it's actor stuff.

00:56:09Guest:So I went to the customer and she said, can you find me a tie pin with a horse's head on it so I can put it right there?

00:56:15Guest:And then I figured out, I realized, what can I get...

00:56:18Guest:Equestrian lessons.

00:56:21Guest:You wore that through the whole movie?

00:56:22Guest:Yeah.

00:56:23Guest:So I said, when can I get equestrian lessons?

00:56:26Guest:Then I found out that in the Chicago Central Park, there's horses there.

00:56:30Guest:So I said, perfect.

00:56:31Guest:My grandfather, when he came from Italy, he came from a rural background.

00:56:35Guest:He went to took care of the horses at the park, and he would take me there on the weekends, and I would help him, and he got me on a horse, and I became an expert horseman.

00:56:44Guest:There you go.

00:56:45Guest:So I had the back story, but now I needed to learn how to ride a horse.

00:56:48Guest:And did you?

00:56:49Guest:I started going there whenever I could and, you know, ride around and, you know.

00:56:54Guest:You got it?

00:56:55Guest:Well, I stayed on the horse.

00:56:57Guest:Watch the movie.

00:56:59Guest:I got to watch it again.

00:57:00Guest:Yeah, watch the movie.

00:57:01Guest:Was that the last time you went on the horse?

00:57:03Guest:No, no, I've ridden a lot since then.

00:57:04Guest:I love riding, but...

00:57:06Guest:The funny thing was that when we got to the top of the hill, there was four horses there, and Brian says, all right, Sean, pick your horse.

00:57:15Guest:It was like a pecking order.

00:57:16Guest:Sean Connery, yeah.

00:57:18Guest:And then the wrangler said, excuse me, Mr. De Palma, I brought this largest horse for Sean, because Sean is like over six feet, six-two or something like that, six-one.

00:57:30Guest:He's a tall guy.

00:57:31Guest:And then he said, okay, Sean, you take the black horse, and then...

00:57:34Guest:And he said, all right, Kevin, you pick a horse.

00:57:37Guest:Kevin's a rider.

00:57:38Guest:So he started looking at the horses like, which is my horse?

00:57:41Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:42Guest:And he picks a horse.

00:57:43Guest:Yeah.

00:57:44Guest:And then he says, all right, Charlie, Charlie Martin Smith.

00:57:48Guest:I was like the fourth pick.

00:57:49Guest:I was going to be the leftover guy.

00:57:50Guest:Right, right.

00:57:51Guest:And then the wrangler says, oh, Mr. De Palma, if I may say, I brought this Pinto horse, smaller kind of pony for Charlie because he's the smallest of the group, you know?

00:58:00Guest:Yeah.

00:58:00Guest:He says, all right, so I guess, and Andy will take this horse here.

00:58:04Guest:Yeah.

00:58:05Guest:This chestnut colored horse.

00:58:07Yeah.

00:58:07Guest:and it turns out that the chestnut colored horse that i got was the wrangler's horse and that thing was like the michael jordan of horses he can go sideways backwards stand up do a flip i mean this horse was amazing it's great yeah and when we did our first run across the thing kevin very graciously came over to me said hey man tie your reins so if you let go of them they don't fall down they'll just hang on the neck and you can grab them again

00:58:36Guest:Now, I had a Tommy gun.

00:58:39Guest:Yeah.

00:58:39Guest:Like, weighed like 20 pounds.

00:58:41Guest:Yeah.

00:58:41Guest:A real Tommy gun.

00:58:42Guest:Yeah.

00:58:43Guest:So, I could not hold on to the neck of the saddle with my other hand.

00:58:47Guest:I had a gun in my hand and the reins.

00:58:50Guest:Yeah.

00:58:51Guest:And Michael Jordan between my...

00:58:53Guest:Between my legs.

00:58:54Guest:And he's going.

00:58:56Guest:And the guns went off and the horses went crazy.

00:58:59Guest:And we started going across this grassy area that you couldn't see the ground because the grass is like three feet high.

00:59:06Guest:So you could be in a hole and you felt the horse negotiating the holes at full speed, full gallop.

00:59:13Guest:And I'm going, I'm going to die.

00:59:15Guest:I'm going to die here.

00:59:16Guest:Kevin also said, put a matchstick in the brim of your hat inside so it's tight on your head and it won't blow off.

00:59:24Guest:So I had all the tricks down.

00:59:26Guest:We get to the end.

00:59:27Guest:Of course, I got there before everybody.

00:59:29Guest:Because of the horse.

00:59:30Guest:And then Kevin came up to me and goes, what's up?

00:59:32Guest:And I'm like going, I made it across.

00:59:35Guest:And you have to try to look cool, like Richard Breyer used to say.

00:59:39Guest:I ran away all the time from the fights, but I ran cool.

00:59:43Guest:Yeah.

00:59:44Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:59:45Guest:And so I got to the thing and Kevin said, hey, man, hold your horse back.

00:59:50Guest:You know, we got to get there at the same time.

00:59:52Guest:I said, hold my horse back.

00:59:55Guest:You think he even knows I'm sitting on top of him?

01:00:00Guest:So how many takes did you have to do?

01:00:02Guest:I guess we did several.

01:00:05Guest:It was a...

01:00:06Guest:You know, it was an ordeal.

01:00:07Guest:Fast learning curve.

01:00:08Guest:Oh, my God.

01:00:09Guest:That horse was amazing.

01:00:10Marc:That's exciting, man.

01:00:12Marc:Like a Ferrari.

01:00:12Marc:That's so exciting.

01:00:14Marc:I remember you like there's another movie that I remember.

01:00:16Marc:I brought it up to my producer, that Internal Affairs movie.

01:00:19Marc:Yeah.

01:00:19Marc:There's some dirty shit in that movie.

01:00:21Guest:That's crazy.

01:00:22Guest:They developed that for me at Paramount.

01:00:25Marc:Is it like you and Gere?

01:00:26Marc:Gere plays the bad guy?

01:00:28Guest:The bad cop and you're the good cop?

01:00:29Guest:Yeah, Gere was incredible in the film.

01:00:31Marc:He really was.

01:00:32Guest:It was nasty, man.

01:00:33Guest:He was nasty.

01:00:34Guest:Narcissistic, like malignant narcissism.

01:00:37Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:00:38Marc:They developed that for you?

01:00:40Guest:Yeah, I had done The Untouchables with Mr. Frank Mancuso over at...

01:00:45Guest:At Paramount.

01:00:46Guest:Yeah.

01:00:47Guest:And Gary Lucchese was the head of production at the time.

01:00:50Guest:Then I had done Black Rain with them.

01:00:51Guest:And Michael Douglas?

01:00:52Guest:Dead Again with Ken Branagh.

01:00:55Guest:Michael Douglas, good actor.

01:00:56Guest:Yeah, great.

01:00:57Guest:He was a great joy.

01:00:58Guest:And Ridley Scott was in that movie.

01:00:59Guest:So they had me, you know, I was kind of, they were grooming, you know, they wanted me to stay there.

01:01:03Guest:So they developed this...

01:01:04Guest:this lead in this protagonist.

01:01:07Marc:In Internal Affair?

01:01:08Guest:Yeah.

01:01:09Guest:And I turned him on to Mike Figgis, the director, which I had met and liked his first movie.

01:01:15Guest:And then they cast Richard after that.

01:01:17Guest:And then we went off.

01:01:18Guest:Frank Mancuso, Jr., produced the film, who was great, became very close friends and were like brothers.

01:01:25Marc:So all this time you're building a family, career's going good.

01:01:28Marc:How many kids you got?

01:01:29Guest:Four.

01:01:29Guest:That's a lot.

01:01:30Guest:Yeah, I had one during the Untouchables, and then internal affairs I had two, two girls, and then later the third girl, and then my son was 11 years younger than my youngest daughter.

01:01:42Marc:She started again.

01:01:43Marc:Yeah, there were a couple of them in show business, right?

01:01:47Guest:My two oldest are actors.

01:01:48Guest:Yeah.

01:01:49Guest:And my youngest daughter, my two oldest girls are actors.

01:01:52Guest:And my youngest daughter is a model.

01:01:55Guest:Uh-huh.

01:01:55Guest:And my son is a professional DJ.

01:01:58Guest:He's in New Orleans right now, yeah.

01:02:00Marc:Wow.

01:02:00Marc:All show business in a way.

01:02:02Marc:I guess, yeah.

01:02:02Marc:Yeah.

01:02:03Marc:Did you ever, I guess you're in no position as an actor to say, like, are you sure you want to go?

01:02:08Guest:Yeah.

01:02:08Guest:I've always, no, I never, I wanted to follow their passions, you know.

01:02:11Guest:Yeah.

01:02:12Guest:I tell them to prepare for the career.

01:02:14Guest:Like, if you're a doctor, you got to,

01:02:16Guest:You got to know your shit or else you're not going to get hired.

01:02:19Guest:I can't help you.

01:02:20Guest:I mean, I could call and say, hey, Mark, my daughter sent you a tape.

01:02:24Guest:Check it out.

01:02:24Guest:That's all I can do.

01:02:25Guest:I can open a door like I open doors for many actors that I admire that I can go, hey, you need to hire this guy.

01:02:34Guest:But once you walk inside the room, you're on your own.

01:02:38Guest:So you got to prepare for that.

01:02:39Marc:But did you also prepare them for, you know, like how show business comes out?

01:02:43Marc:It seems like you've been very protective of your private life, you know, and your public personality.

01:02:50Marc:You know, there doesn't seem to be any, like, you know, it just seems like you have a separation.

01:02:57Guest:I guess so, yeah.

01:02:59Guest:People notice, so it's probably true.

01:03:01Guest:No, but I do.

01:03:02Guest:I don't really... I have many friends in the industry.

01:03:06Guest:I've been doing it for over 30 years, I guess.

01:03:08Guest:And I love the industry, and I respect it, and I have a lot of friends that you make along the way.

01:03:14Guest:But usually in movies, you have this intense relationship, and then...

01:03:19Guest:You kind of go on your own way, and you got your family, and occasionally you might cross paths.

01:03:25Guest:If you're not living in the close vicinity of one another, it's hard to keep sort of connected physically, you know?

01:03:32Guest:Emotionally always.

01:03:33Marc:Yeah, that's interesting, right?

01:03:35Marc:Because I always find that.

01:03:36Marc:The friendships are deep, even though you don't see each other.

01:03:37Marc:Yeah, because you're on a movie for a year.

01:03:39Guest:Yeah.

01:03:40Guest:And then, you know, what are you going to do?

01:03:41Guest:You're in the foxhole, and you know...

01:03:43Guest:If you've shared that experience in the foxhole, watching each other's back and giving to one another and looking out for one another within the work and in life at that time, that never goes away, that experience.

01:03:56Marc:And what about directing?

01:03:57Marc:You did the one film.

01:03:58Marc:You want to do more?

01:03:59Guest:Yeah, I did a movie, The Lost City, which I directed and started.

01:04:02Marc:And that was a personal movie.

01:04:03Guest:Yeah, about Cuba, about a family, you know, about the cusp of the revolution.

01:04:07Marc:Yeah, because I hear you talking about the sort of the way people direct.

01:04:11Marc:Sounds like you want to do it more.

01:04:12Guest:I do.

01:04:12Guest:I've written.

01:04:13Guest:I enjoy directing.

01:04:14Guest:I've done, you know, people sometimes have called in TV shows and say, actor's friend of mine, will you do a show?

01:04:19Guest:And I go, yeah.

01:04:20Guest:I don't really pursue it like so much in other people's material.

01:04:25Guest:The Lost City took me 16 years of my life to do it, so...

01:04:28Guest:I have a couple of projects I've written, three actually, that I also want to direct and act in.

01:04:35Guest:And I'm in process of that.

01:04:36Guest:So I try to concentrate on my own things to see if I can get them done.

01:04:40Guest:Well, that's great.

01:04:41Marc:And the Oceans movies were fun, right?

01:04:43Marc:Yeah, of course.

01:04:44Marc:Yeah.

01:04:45Marc:I talked to Clooney.

01:04:47Guest:He seems like the best guy in the world.

01:04:49Guest:Oh, he's a mensch, you know.

01:04:51Guest:Yeah, he really is.

01:04:53Guest:We've become good friends over the years.

01:04:54Guest:Yeah.

01:04:55Guest:I don't see him often, but, you know, it's like that kind of thing where the mutual respect and warmth, you know, and love.

01:05:03Guest:Yeah.

01:05:03Guest:I play, actually, I play a lot of golf with Grant Haslov, his partner.

01:05:07Guest:I see Grant a lot because we're- You like the golf?

01:05:11Guest:Yeah.

01:05:12Marc:But like, all right, before we wrap it up though, let's talk about this, the Coppola thing.

01:05:15Marc:Because I mean, you were nominated for Oscar and that was like a big movie and it was an interesting movie and you're part of a franchise that changed all of our lives.

01:05:25Marc:Yes.

01:05:26Marc:So coming into that.

01:05:27Marc:Definitely changed my life, yeah.

01:05:28Marc:I mean, you know, the Godfather movies, you can still watch them.

01:05:31Marc:I still watch them.

01:05:31Marc:Oh, that's incredible.

01:05:32Guest:Godfather 2, I think I watch more than anything.

01:05:33Guest:They're having a celebration on Tuesday of next week at Paramount.

01:05:37Guest:They're screening Godfather 1, I guess maybe it's restored, and they're naming a street after Francis.

01:05:41Marc:So it's a party at Powermount?

01:05:44Marc:Yeah.

01:05:44Marc:So how did that role come about?

01:05:46Marc:I mean, you know, that must have been like the thrill of a lifetime.

01:05:49Guest:It was amazing.

01:05:50Guest:Yeah.

01:05:51Guest:Because the reason I decided to make the leap to become an actor was when I saw the culminating moment was Godfather, the first Godfather.

01:05:59Guest:Yeah.

01:05:59Guest:I had all this built up.

01:06:01Guest:interest and angst in it.

01:06:02Guest:And then I saw the golfer, I said, I want, you know, like many actors or many people.

01:06:06Guest:But I privately said, I want to be, I want to do, that's what I want to do with my life.

01:06:10Guest:And that was the template.

01:06:14Guest:I want to try to aspire to do that kind of work and to be in that kind of film.

01:06:19Guest:I don't know how I'm going to do it, but that's my aspiration.

01:06:22Marc:So how did it come about?

01:06:24Guest:Well, I had been working with Paramount for a while, and I was doing internal affairs at the time.

01:06:30Guest:We were like halfway through shooting the movie, so I guess they were watching dailies too.

01:06:34Guest:Yeah.

01:06:35Guest:But Frank Mancuso Sr., who's like a second father to me, to this day he's coming over for dinner and his wife tonight.

01:06:43Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:06:44Guest:He is my second father.

01:06:46Guest:He's not even like my second father.

01:06:47Guest:And what was he?

01:06:48Guest:He was the president of the studio.

01:06:49Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:06:50Guest:So Frank Mancuso Jr., his son, who was like my brother, and he produced The Lost City.

01:06:57Guest:He says, hey, the chief wants to come have lunch with you today.

01:07:01Guest:I said, great, you know.

01:07:02Guest:Yeah.

01:07:03Guest:Come over, you know, because we already had a friendship.

01:07:05Guest:Yeah.

01:07:06Guest:So we're sitting down at the catering table like that, eating.

01:07:09Guest:And he said, what are you doing in September?

01:07:11Guest:This was like May.

01:07:12Guest:Uh-huh.

01:07:13Guest:I go, what are you doing this September?

01:07:15Guest:You got anything going on?

01:07:17Guest:And because he didn't stop because I want to talk to Francis.

01:07:21Guest:Because I want you to play Vincent in the new Godfather trilogy.

01:07:26Guest:Now, there was already a rumor who that Vincent character was.

01:07:31Guest:Oh, you mean Sonny's son?

01:07:33Guest:Yeah.

01:07:33Guest:Illegitimate son?

01:07:34Guest:Yeah.

01:07:35Guest:That takes over the family.

01:07:36Guest:They gave the family.

01:07:37Guest:Yeah.

01:07:38Guest:So there was kind of like already a rumbling.

01:07:40Guest:And he said, I'd like to talk to Francis about you playing Vincent.

01:07:44Guest:So I was like his choice.

01:07:46Guest:And I said, let me check my schedule.

01:07:48Guest:I'll call you back.

01:07:49Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:07:51Guest:I don't know.

01:07:52Guest:September, let me check.

01:07:53Guest:We'll see.

01:07:54Guest:So then it became a process of...

01:07:57Guest:getting the part.

01:07:59Guest:It took from May to Labor Day weekend.

01:08:03Guest:I got the part on Saturday.

01:08:05Guest:I think I was the last person to screen test.

01:08:08Guest:I was trying to screen test.

01:08:09Guest:I met Francis once in that period of months.

01:08:12Guest:What was that like?

01:08:13Guest:Great.

01:08:14Guest:We talked, and he says, oh, I saw you in the Untouchables.

01:08:17Guest:And he had a little laptop, like one of the first IBM laptops.

01:08:22Guest:And he would talk to me for a little bit, and then he'd kind of go to the laptop, and he'd type some stuff up, and then he'd keep talking.

01:08:28Guest:Very sweet.

01:08:29Guest:Francis is like, if you had your ultimate mentor, you know, and...

01:08:37Guest:teacher, philosopher, he would be the mold.

01:08:41Guest:That person is created in your mind and becomes real.

01:08:43Guest:That's who that person is.

01:08:44Guest:No kidding.

01:08:45Guest:He's conceptual how he approaches the art form and the knowledge that he spills out of him.

01:08:52Guest:Not in an arrogant way.

01:08:54Guest:He loves young people.

01:08:55Guest:He loves teaching.

01:08:57Guest:He's like a...

01:09:00Guest:There's a lot of great directors in Mount Olympus of directors, but if I had to pick a Zeus, that would be my Zeus.

01:09:07Marc:No kidding.

01:09:08Marc:Yeah.

01:09:10Marc:That collaborative vibe is what happens on set?

01:09:15Guest:First of all, I finally got the screen test.

01:09:20Guest:I was the last guy in.

01:09:21Guest:Yeah.

01:09:22Guest:And I did the screen test with Madeline Stowe, who was great.

01:09:26Guest:She tested for the young girl, for Sophie Coppola's part.

01:09:31Guest:Well, it wasn't her part.

01:09:32Guest:It was Winona Ryder, but that bowed out later.

01:09:35Guest:And I had a great partner.

01:09:37Guest:We had a great screen test.

01:09:39Guest:And Fred Roos, who knew my work, was also encouraging Francis and...

01:09:46Guest:He said, Francis was likely to stay for dinner.

01:09:50Guest:He was up at Napa in his house.

01:09:53Guest:And so I was taking my wardrobe off.

01:09:55Guest:By the time I got my clothes back on, Fred opened the door and said, there's been a change of plans.

01:10:00Guest:You can go home.

01:10:01Marc:And what, because he got the part?

01:10:03Marc:No, he said, you can go home.

01:10:04Marc:That was it?

01:10:05Guest:Yeah, like in a four-minute span, I got invited to dinner, to stay for dinner, and disinvited.

01:10:10Guest:Huh.

01:10:11Guest:What was that about?

01:10:11Guest:I don't know.

01:10:13Guest:Yeah.

01:10:14Guest:And then the next morning, I said, you know,

01:10:16Guest:I knew I felt good about the work I did.

01:10:19Guest:I said I gave it.

01:10:20Guest:I couldn't have done the audition any better than I personally could.

01:10:23Guest:And the next morning I got a phone call saying, you got the part and you need to fly back up because they start rehearsing Monday.

01:10:35Guest:They changed their mind again.

01:10:36Guest:They want to have dinner.

01:10:36Guest:Whatever it was but but the point being is that it took a long time from the point where the head of the studio said you're my pick for Francis to Say to make that decision, you know and people were screen testing And you know everybody wanted that part who wouldn't want that part wouldn't want it for and and so you're the guy and then like being on set with Francis It was great.

01:10:58Guest:Yeah, and how all of a sudden

01:11:00Guest:It's kind of a bizarre thing.

01:11:01Guest:That's why you have to give it up to a higher order.

01:11:04Guest:Yeah.

01:11:04Guest:That gives you the innocence of dreaming dreams that are not practical.

01:11:12Guest:Sure.

01:11:12Guest:And it gives you the stamina and the stubbornness, I guess.

01:11:16Guest:Yeah.

01:11:16Guest:To keep going.

01:11:17Guest:To keep going.

01:11:18Guest:And for me also, my father always used to say, never take a step backward, not even to gain momentum.

01:11:27Yeah.

01:11:27Guest:So that's been my philosophy in life.

01:11:30Guest:I've fallen down many times, but I always try to fall forward.

01:11:34Marc:Yeah, I mean, I think that's true.

01:11:35Marc:And I don't know if I've ever really thought about that because I don't necessarily give it up to a higher order because I'm not really a spiritual guy.

01:11:42Marc:But I don't know.

01:11:43Marc:I don't know what drives me.

01:11:46Marc:Yeah.

01:11:46Marc:there's one thing that some part of me thinks like, well, there's no plan B once you get into it.

01:11:51Marc:You know, you're going, you know, but you had a family.

01:11:54Guest:So I don't, I imagine that was, no, I definitely had a plan B. I had a business.

01:11:57Guest:I could have gone into business and done very well.

01:12:00Marc:Yeah.

01:12:00Guest:Yeah.

01:12:01Guest:Uh, but it wasn't my, it wasn't my calling, I guess.

01:12:04Guest:I, you know, who knows?

01:12:05Guest:It's like a virus.

01:12:06Guest:It picks you.

01:12:06Guest:You don't pick it.

01:12:07Marc:I know.

01:12:07Marc:And, and, and hopefully it's a, you know, a good virus.

01:12:10Guest:Yeah, exactly.

01:12:12Guest:Yeah.

01:12:12Guest:And if you're going to wear a mask, let it be Zorro's mask.

01:12:15Marc:There you go.

01:12:16Guest:Well, it was great talking to you, man.

01:12:17Guest:Likewise, Mark.

01:12:18Guest:Pleasure.

01:12:24Marc:That's it.

01:12:25Marc:That was nice.

01:12:26Marc:He's a focused guy, man.

01:12:28Marc:He does the work.

01:12:30Marc:The new movie, Big Gold Brick, is in theaters and on demand this Friday.

01:12:34Marc:Here, guitar, here.

01:12:35Marc:Here, guitar.

01:12:36Marc:Come here, guitar.

01:12:37Marc:Come here.

01:12:41Come here.

01:12:53guitar solo

01:13:34guitar solo

01:14:03.

01:14:17.

01:14:27Guest:Boomer lives.

01:14:36Guest:Monkey and La Fonda and Cat Angels are everywhere, man.