Episode 1410 - Tim Blake Nelson
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening how's it going where are we at where is everybody at how what what's going on with you is everything all right
Marc:I know you're probably wondering, now that I've established that I'll be brining, that I'll be doing some fermenting here at the house.
Marc:I've gotten some input.
Marc:I've gotten some emails, some references, some books to look at.
Marc:But I've got to be honest with you.
Marc:I'm not going down a pickling rabbit hole.
Marc:That is not the agenda here.
Marc:I'm just going to try to make some kraut and eat it.
Marc:It's...
Marc:You know, when I bring it up to people, I got to be.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:We'll be right back.
Marc:Hey, I'm back.
Marc:So look, I just my point of view on this is that I was eating a lot of cabbage anyways.
Marc:Why not make it probiotically exciting?
Marc:So I did it.
Marc:I followed the recipe, which is very easy.
Marc:As I told you before, I got my ceramic crock.
Marc:I got my weights.
Marc:I got my ceramic lid.
Marc:And it's basically just five pounds of shredded cabbage, three tablespoons of salt.
Marc:And you pound it into the crock.
Marc:You put the weights in and you wait for the water to rise.
Marc:And it didn't look like it was going to, but it has.
Marc:The waters, it has happened.
Marc:So now I guess I leave it for seven to 10 days, depending on how I want the crowd.
Marc:But when I told people I was doing it, they're like, aren't you afraid?
Marc:And I said, you know, of what?
Marc:And they're like, botulism.
Marc:I'm like, what is that a thing?
Marc:Botulism?
Marc:I mean, this has been going on for centuries.
Marc:Then other people are like, are you going to make kimchi next?
Marc:I'm like, look.
Marc:This is what I do with my life.
Marc:This is the creativity I'm engaging.
Marc:I talk to you.
Marc:I talk to people.
Marc:And now I'm making kraut.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And I'm washing dishes.
Marc:This is a problem when you cook for yourself.
Marc:Dishes.
Marc:But the crock is happening.
Marc:I'll let you know.
Marc:I don't know that I'm going to be able to report to you on it.
Marc:For a little while now, because we're going to have to wait it out.
Marc:We're going to have to see what happens.
Marc:I'm very excited about it, though.
Marc:Is that odd to be excited about the unfolding, the slow fermentation of the crowd?
Marc:I guess I could leave it fermenting for, like, you know, weeks.
Marc:if I want to get it almost translucent and soft.
Marc:I mean, God knows I've been fermenting for about 59 years now.
Marc:And I'm about ready to be eaten.
Marc:I'm about ripe.
Marc:I'm about ready to go.
Marc:Today on the show, I should tell you, Tim Blake Nielsen is back.
Marc:That seems to be happening a bit now.
Marc:You know him from the Coen Brothers movies like Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Marc:and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Marc:He was on the show, I guess it's 2018, episode 973 he was on.
Marc:Since then, he's been in Nightmare Alley, Old Henry, The Watchman series, and now he has a novel out, City of Blows.
Marc:And that's why I had him back.
Marc:City of Blows, a novel.
Marc:This guy writes plays, he directs movies, he acts in movies.
Marc:So now, as me, I'm going to take it with a grain of salt, right, when an actor writes a book.
Marc:We saw it happen with Sean Penn.
Marc:That was hard.
Marc:But I start reading Tim Blake Nielsen's book.
Marc:It's about Hollywood.
Marc:And he's writing the fuck out of it.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's layered.
Marc:It's deep.
Marc:It goes deep into these characters.
Marc:And when I talk to him...
Marc:I'd only gotten through like the first third, but I got to be honest with you, I'm locked in and the darkness is starting to unfold.
Marc:I like Hollywood novels, specifically dark.
Marc:I don't think they're satires, but you know, Day of the Locust, What Makes Sammy Run, The Player, Force Majeure, and the other Bruce Wagner books.
Marc:You know what I'm talking about.
Marc:Just sort of like...
Marc:The morally, spiritually, psychologically corrupt nature of the illusion factory, the city of dreams, man.
Marc:So the last guy I talked to about this stuff was Wagner about Marvel Universe.
Marc:But so I'm reading this book.
Marc:I'm reading Tim's book, and it's really locked me in.
Marc:He can really write.
Marc:I'm so relieved about this.
Marc:I'm so relieved.
Marc:Look, I don't care what business you're in.
Marc:And I know this happens to everybody, especially in the creative work or maybe not even creative work where a peer comes up and goes, hey, man, I did this thing.
Marc:I want you to have a look at it.
Marc:It's hard.
Marc:It's hard to do that, right?
Marc:Because you can't say no.
Marc:And then, oddly, 80% of the time, you really can't be honest, can you?
Marc:You have to figure out a way to be diplomatic.
Marc:Hey, man, I liked the font.
Marc:I thought you made a good choice of fonts in your book.
Marc:It's very nice the way you used a, you know, what kind of paintbrush did you use on that part of the painting?
Marc:Yeah, that was great.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it was interesting that you you made this movie.
Marc:And what was it like to to shoot in in Nova Scotia?
Marc:There's a lot of ways to say I didn't really love it and I'm not sure it's that great.
Marc:Yet the way you do that is how I'm telling you.
Marc:You focus on other things.
Marc:How long did it take you to do this?
Marc:Wow.
Marc:You really did it.
Marc:You really took the time.
Marc:Oh, you want me to taste that?
Marc:Okay, sure.
Marc:Oh, well, that's interesting.
Marc:There's a lot of depth to those flavors.
Marc:What is that?
Marc:Is that cumin that I'm tasting?
Marc:What is that?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:I'm good.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:No, thank you for the taste.
Marc:I'm good.
Marc:No, no, no, no.
Marc:No, I enjoyed it.
Marc:No.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:No, please.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Just I'll eat some more or else you say, look, this is not quite right.
Marc:You know, nice try.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't understand it.
Marc:That's that's also a diplomatic way.
Marc:You know, maybe it's a maybe it's too just maybe over my head.
Marc:Maybe I don't have what it takes to get it.
Marc:A lot of ways.
Marc:But none of that comes into play here because he wrote a great book.
Marc:And it's dense and it's deep and it's well-written.
Marc:And I'm not just blowing smoke because Tim Blake Nielsen is the nicest fucking guy in the world.
Marc:Not only one of the great actors, but what a decent chap.
Marc:What a decent fella.
Marc:Happy to talk to him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He brought his own espresso cup.
Marc:He showed up with, I got to get that over to his brother.
Marc:I guess he was staying at his brother's and he showed up with this kind of like antique espresso cup and he's sipping from his espresso as he walks up to my house.
Marc:I'm like, well, that's interesting.
Marc:Do you have a, do you have a whole demitasse?
Marc:In your car?
Marc:Do you have a whole... Do you have an espresso machine in your car?
Marc:Did you not want to steam milk in the backseat?
Marc:But now I have that cup.
Marc:I got to get it back to him.
Marc:I told him I would.
Marc:So I have to honor that.
Marc:But anyways, I'm going to talk to him about it.
Marc:And obviously, we got into other stuff.
Marc:But...
Marc:What a swell guy and a good writer and a good actor.
Marc:And can't say enough about that movie, Old Henry, which I'll bring up again.
Marc:If you don't know what Old Henry is, don't research it too much and just go watch it.
Marc:Because for some reason, I didn't see it coming.
Marc:I didn't see it coming.
Marc:What a nice take on a Western that is.
Marc:And fucking Dorf's in it.
Marc:Nothing better than Old Dorf.
Marc:Old Dorf is the best.
Marc:Yeah, I'm a big fan of Old Dorf.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I'm going to be doing another Ask Mark Anything next week for full Marin subscribers.
Marc:If you have a question you want me to answer, click on the link in the episode description.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:Bring it.
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:I'm open.
Marc:God knows with the amount of press I've been doing for my HBO special from bleak to dark.
Marc:Uh, I've been talking a lot and I get punchy and I'll start saying stuff.
Marc:I'll ramble on a bit.
Marc:So let's do it.
Marc:Bring it.
Marc:Bring the questions.
Marc:I'm ready to go.
Marc:That being said, I had an interesting week.
Marc:I'll tell you exactly why.
Marc:Terry Gross wanted me to do fresh air again around this special.
Marc:Now, I've talked to Terry a couple of times.
Marc:And obviously, Terry's in the interview game, as I am.
Marc:Obviously, I have great respect for Terry.
Marc:And she has respect for me as well.
Marc:She requested that I interview her in one of the first big career-spanning interviews she did.
Marc:We did it live at...
Marc:at BAM in Brooklyn in front of a very big audience.
Marc:You can go find that.
Marc:It's a WTF episode with Terry Gross.
Marc:And it was a very exciting moment for me.
Marc:I felt it was validation.
Marc:I felt like I'd arrived somehow.
Marc:because Terry Gross requested me to interview her.
Marc:And it was a big day.
Marc:It was a life-changing experience.
Marc:So when she asked me to be on the show again, of course.
Marc:And what was interesting now, years later...
Marc:is she's doing an interview with me.
Marc:And now because I'm sort of dug in to my own way of approaching interviews, I was listening to her style in a different way when she was interviewing me.
Marc:And there, you know, there was a, it was conversational.
Marc:I was answering questions and, and I'm thinking like, okay, good followup.
Marc:Oh, I see what you did there.
Marc:You know, like I'm, I'm kind of like respecting her style in a different way as somebody who's been interviewing as long as I have now, which is a long time.
Marc:And then on Wednesday, Howard Stern.
Marc:I got invited back to Howard Stern.
Marc:It's been a decade since I've done Howard Stern.
Marc:And look, you know, again, I know Howard Stern as Howard Stern.
Marc:I didn't grow up in New Jersey or Philadelphia or anywhere where I could listen to Howard Stern every day.
Marc:I guess I could try, but I think you have to lock in.
Marc:If you're gonna spend your life with Howard, you gotta lock in when you're young.
Marc:And I just wasn't in proximity to him until he became nationally syndicated.
Marc:And by then, I was old and set my ways and listening to primarily music.
Marc:But nonetheless, Howard Stern is one of the great interviewers, right?
Marc:So I go Terry Gross, which is, I think you would put her in the highbrow category.
Marc:She is the definitive NPR personality.
Marc:She defines the tone of some of what NPR represents.
Marc:And she's great.
Marc:Great interviewer.
Marc:And then there's Howard.
Marc:This is not... I wouldn't say lowbrow, but I do know that even this time on Wednesday, the other day, yesterday, when I went on, I was following a pretty long segment where they kind of re-engaged with the vomit guy.
Marc:So that, on some level, that's not going to happen on Terry.
Marc:I'm not... You know, she's not going to tease like, hi, this is Terry Gross.
Marc:This is Fresh Air.
Marc:We're talking to vomit guy.
Marc:But...
Marc:But so it was the full arc.
Marc:It represents my two worlds.
Marc:The two parts of my being were signified or represented by me talking to Terry on Monday and Howard on Wednesday.
Marc:I thought it was exciting.
Marc:And these are the two great interviewers.
Marc:And I'm talking to them as a guy who interviews people.
Marc:Sometimes...
Marc:The life you're living is kind of like, wow, is this really happening?
Marc:And I had a great time with Howard.
Marc:Great.
Marc:I mean, I talked to him for like an hour and a half and I got some good laughs.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I guess it just it made me feel among peers and that I somehow arrived somehow again, even though I was just being interviewed by a couple of other interviewers.
Marc:But how many of them are there of us?
Marc:Really?
Yeah.
Marc:that really interview in a, in a way for a living.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So let's get on with it.
Marc:I've expressed how I feel about sauerkraut and about my peers, Howard and Terry.
Marc:I'm going to say that we are peers and,
Marc:in the game, in the biz, in the racket, in the form we've chosen.
Marc:And right now, I am going to share my conversation with Tim Blake Nelson with you.
Marc:This is a second one that we've done.
Marc:And today, we're talking a lot about his book.
Marc:If you're just joining us, I'm setting up Tim Blake Nelson, who has written a novel.
Marc:City of Blows is now available wherever you get books.
Marc:And I'm more than halfway done with it.
Marc:And I'm gonna finish it.
Marc:But by the time I finish it, this will be behind us.
Marc:But it's very good.
Marc:This is me talking to Tim Blake Nelson.
Marc:So, I mean, I forget, though, you live in New York.
Marc:How do you have an espresso mug?
Marc:Do you take that from the hotel?
Guest:No, my brother, I'm staying with my brother, Mike.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:He lives in L.A.
Marc:Okay, so... So I stay with him.
Marc:It's rare that a guest walks out of a car with an actual fancy mug.
Guest:Yeah, and this is a really fancy one.
Marc:It is.
Marc:This is like specifically an espresso mug.
Guest:Yeah, and it's a tall espresso mug from the 60s.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Vintage espresso mug.
Marc:I don't think I've seen anybody walk out of a car with their own glass since Rodney Dangerfield used to do it back in the day.
Guest:Now, that is funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He used to just climb out of a limo in his robe with a glass.
Marc:Of booze?
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:Yeah, so it has been a while since I talked to you.
Marc:How's the kid doing?
Marc:How's the guitar player?
Guest:Henry's great.
Guest:We made a movie together a year ago.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's called Asleep in My Palm.
Guest:And...
Guest:And hopefully it'll be premiering at a festival near you soon.
Guest:So wait, did you direct it?
Guest:He directed it and wrote it.
Guest:I kind of stood by his side while he directed it, but he directed it.
Guest:Will you do that for me when I direct a movie?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But I also play the lead, so I don't know if you want that.
Guest:But...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was there every day with him and I produced it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we kind of did everything together, although he very much wrote the script and took the lead in directing it and very much deserves the writer director title.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And he it was financed by the guys who made this movie I did called Old Henry.
Marc:Dude, I got to tell you, man, I recommend that movie to everybody.
Marc:Oh, fantastic.
Marc:Oh, man, I'm riding my producer to get on it.
Marc:I've told people about it.
Marc:I can't believe, like, if you don't know anything about that movie going in and no one's ruined it, it was great.
Marc:The twist is great because I didn't know it.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:And I love Dorf.
Guest:Yeah, Dorf does a great job.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Dorf is the old heavy.
Marc:I don't know what he's doing lately, but when he did the detective thing, what is it?
Guest:True Detective.
Marc:True Detective.
Marc:I didn't even know who the fuck it was for the first episode.
Marc:I'm like, who is that?
Guest:He's just gotten more interesting as he's gotten older.
Guest:Which is what happens to leading men who are really good actors.
Guest:They become character actors.
Guest:Yeah, but I love that movie.
Guest:I've watched it twice.
Guest:It's fantastic.
Guest:Directed by this guy named Patsy Ponsaroli.
Guest:And when I got it, I said to my wife, well, before reading it, now I'm playing characters who are called old.
Guest:And then I read it and I thought, my God, they want me to play this?
Guest:I don't want to spoil it, but...
Marc:And- It's funny what movies that are small movies that people don't know about, you can spoil it eternally.
Marc:You cannot spoil it for decades.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:Because people are just coming to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They trickle out.
Guest:But old Henry had a very robust life initially.
Guest:Did he?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it-
Guest:It's this little movie and suddenly it was on the top five on Apple TV and their movie section.
Guest:And the studios were calling Apple and saying, what is this little movie?
Guest:Where did it come from and why is it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Besting our big studio titles.
Guest:Thank God.
Marc:That's what's happening with Andrea.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But by virtue of a different approach.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Controversy that was unintended.
Guest:Well, I think there are two great aspects to that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:the performance of Lisa Risborough, right?
Marc:Andrea Risborough.
Guest:Andrea Risborough.
Guest:And also people get to see you do an incredibly wonderful role like you did in Sword of Trust.
Marc:I worked.
Marc:I had to work on that one, man.
Marc:Like it was one of those situations where after talking to people like you and other actors about acting where I thought like, well, if I'm going to do this,
Marc:I got to do it.
Marc:So I'm going to I'm going to get an accent and I'm going to turn off a lot of me to be available for this guy.
Guest:Well, what I liked about what you did, though, is there was still a lot of you in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was empathy and and.
Guest:sensitivity, but also a hardness of somebody who's gone through stuff in life.
Guest:And that's you.
Guest:And that was all present in the performance.
Guest:And it was great.
Guest:You just believed you.
Guest:You believed Andre was amazing.
Guest:All of you.
Guest:There was such history in every performance.
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:But is there now, just let's talk acting for a minute.
Marc:Because, I mean, you do, I mean, I guess, like I've seen you be pretty awful, not as an actor, but as a character.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I've been pretty awful as an actor too.
Marc:You've played awful men, but do you, is there ever a point where you either voluntarily or involuntarily surrender all aspects of yourself?
Guest:You know, like you're not you at all.
Guest:I don't think that's possible.
Guest:And I'm not sure an actor would want to, or it would be that interesting.
Guest:I think there has to be some of you and, and,
Guest:And presumably we're all flawed and have meanness and venality in us if we're provoked.
Guest:And so you want to access that and share yourself.
Guest:Otherwise, what are you reflecting back for people?
Guest:So I kind of...
Marc:welcome that intersection yeah there's always a venn diagram yeah i guess it is unavoidable but you know i mean even if somebody is like totally immersive in their weird work you know there's some people that uh you know are transformative to the point where it seems like they're trying to uh not be themselves but i guess you can't escape it you're in your body
Guest:Yeah, and I think you want... I think when you see somebody trying to cause themselves to disappear, suddenly the performance is a bit less interesting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The best actor with whom I've ever worked by far is Daniel Day-Lewis.
Guest:And maybe last time I talked with you about working with him, I'm not sure.
Guest:But his transformation is...
Guest:his transformations are molecular you really don't see him anymore but you also somehow don't see any effort in it right he just becomes the the character yeah and getting to know him a little bit during the publicity on lincoln yeah which is the only way i ever got to know him because he was always in character when we were shooting yeah um
Guest:getting to know him a little bit in the publicity on Lincoln, suddenly I could see aspects of him in the character of Lincoln.
Guest:But then you can't believe that that same individual, who is Daniel Day-Lewis,
Guest:can be Lincoln and Daniel Plainview and Bill the Butcher.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's absolutely staggering.
Guest:But the common denominator actually is him.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:The more you know him.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And is that something... Do you aspire to molecular transformation?
Guest:I guess I do, but I don't think...
Guest:I'll ever, I guess that puts me in his school in a sense, although I don't, I've found that when I've tried to be on set and never break character,
Guest:it actually takes away from the performance because I need breaks so that when I'm back in character, I can concentrate more.
Guest:He somehow is able not to break character and sustain a level of concentration that if it's interrupted...
Guest:it's inhibitive for him somehow.
Guest:I've tried it, and it just didn't work.
Guest:And if something's not working, you really don't want to annoy the crew by being in character all the time.
Marc:That's what I was thinking.
Marc:It was part of not being able to do it, just people going like, oh, you're doing, okay, so you're the guy?
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, yeah, we'll address you as the guy and all that stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, with him,
Guest:On Lincoln, all the rules that we had to follow, to me, really helped focus the production so that no one was allowed to wear shirts with logos on the crew.
Marc:They all had to have... So they wouldn't upset Lincoln?
Guest:Yeah, no logos.
Guest:Everything had to be monochromatic.
Guest:No sneakers.
Marc:No shorts.
Marc:Was he engaging in conversation as Lincoln?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Oh, so that would be problematic and sort of like, what are these things on your feet?
Guest:Yeah, and he did say that.
Guest:You know, David Strathairn showed up one day to a rehearsal with sneakers.
Guest:And they were observed by the president.
Guest:And he said, oh, I've never seen...
Guest:footwear such as what you're wearing.
Guest:And David thought, oh, all right, I got to go change these as soon as the rehearsal's over.
Guest:And then the funniest thing that happened on that was that I wasn't there for this.
Guest:This is another story Strathairn told me.
Guest:They were in a cabinet meeting, and Hal Holbrook, who was a friend of mine, a great actor, is now no longer with us.
Guest:But he showed up for his first day in this cabinet meeting.
Guest:He was playing Preston Blair.
Guest:And he saw Daniel.
Guest:And he said, oh, Daniel, it's great to be on this picture with you.
Guest:And Spielberg, Stephen, comes over quickly.
Guest:Mr. Blair, a word with you, please.
Guest:Pulls him aside, but still within earshot.
Guest:of the president, Daniel Day-Lewis.
Guest:And he says, the president, as we pursue passage of the amendment, really would like for us to address him as the president.
Guest:And he would love for you to address me as either Mr. Spielberg or Skipper,
Guest:and for you to speak with the other cabinet members and address them by their names as you would, of course, in such a scenario as the one that we're endeavoring to depict here.
Guest:You know, he's really laying it on and speaking in code.
Guest:And Hal Holbrook says, I got it.
Guest:And then he turns to...
Guest:And he says, but you were great in that fucking wheelchair picture.
Marc:God bless Hal Holbrook.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I mean, you played.
Marc:I watched that.
Marc:I got through a few of those cabinet of curiosities.
Marc:And you're in that first one.
Marc:You play kind of a familiar monster.
Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Kind of like a right wing, angry, heartless or, you know, I would say troubled man.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because he approached him with a certain amount of empathy somehow.
Guest:Well, I think you have to do that as an actor.
Guest:You have to advocate for your character and what your character's point of view is.
Guest:And that story I did in Cabinet of Curiosities was the one story based on...
Guest:Guillermo's own experiences because he had so the the story is about a guy who buys out the contents of storage lockers in receivership.
Guest:And so he he he he gets the belongings and they're his because the owner of the unit hasn't paid his or her bills.
Guest:And that happened to Guillermo.
Guest:He was in Europe shooting something, and his credit card expired, and he didn't know it, or he knew it, but he forgot to update the storage locker bill.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The credit card on the storage locker bill, and so they foreclosed on him, and a guy bought...
Guest:All his stuff.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:All his weird mannequins and curios.
Marc:Del Toro is a big collector.
Guest:I know.
Marc:I know, dude.
Marc:I've been to his house.
Marc:Oh, fantastic.
Marc:Once.
Marc:Anyway, so someone buys all the storage.
Guest:Got his stuff.
Guest:And he and Guillermo called him and said, look, there was a mistake.
Guest:And look, I'll pay you money.
Guest:Whatever it is you bought this stuff for.
Guest:And, of course, the guy said, no way.
Guest:And he just gouged him.
Guest:And so the episode in which I appear is Guillermo's fantasy, revenge fantasy against this guy.
Marc:Was the guy like you?
Guest:I think he imagined him to be like that.
Marc:Oh, he never really interacted with him personally?
Marc:I think probably they did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I think over the phone.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And he inferred that he was some.
Marc:But yeah.
Marc:And I like all the black magic mystical element stuff.
Guest:Yeah, it's really good.
Guest:And that's, you know, Guillermo is, I think he does that better than anyone because there's a frankness to his approach to fantasy and horror.
Marc:Well, he loves it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's like, it's taken me a very long time to understand the appeal of it.
Marc:I'm not, you know, I'm seeing a woman who's a real fantasy horror person.
Marc:So I'll go to the horror movie occasionally and I get it, but I just, I get impatient.
Yeah.
Marc:I'm sort of like, all right, let's get on with this, whatever.
Guest:But when you were growing up in the Southwest, weren't you kind of into going to movies like this when you were in high school?
Marc:No, when I was in high school, I was always sort of like Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver.
Marc:There was a revival house.
Marc:I only saw the gritty good shit.
Marc:I was never attracted to fantasy.
Guest:We did a little bit of both in Tulsa.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:I was in Tulsa, dude, since I've talked to you.
Guest:Oh, what'd you do?
Guest:Did you shoot there?
Marc:Yeah, I shot with Sterling.
Marc:Sterling put me in an episode of Reservation Dogs.
Guest:Oh, fantastic.
Marc:Oh, it was great to be on an all-native set.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Just the thrill of it.
Marc:The story was good.
Marc:The kids were great.
Marc:But Tulsa, it was one of those places where, you know, I'm there for a few days, and you get that thing like, I could live here.
Marc:And then you realize, like, it's four blocks.
Marc:But I get it, you know.
Guest:A little more than four blocks.
Guest:Oh, I'm sorry.
Guest:Yeah, no, I...
Guest:So my wife has this fantasy of moving there.
Guest:I'm not sure we could do it.
Marc:Well, I mean, it's charming.
Marc:And, you know, I was there.
Marc:I just happened to be there the weekend that the Bob Dylan Center was opening.
Marc:So I got in contact with them.
Marc:I did an interview with the guy who runs the place.
Marc:And I got to see—I saw Mavis Staples and Patti Smith and Elvis Costello at the Kane Ballroom on three consecutive nights.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I spent some time at the center and I got around a little bit.
Marc:There's some good food and stuff.
Marc:And it's a it's a great little city.
Marc:But like it's not.
Marc:You know, like there's cities where there's some vitality coming back to like Pittsburgh.
Marc:I was in Pittsburgh recently.
Marc:I'm like, I could live in Pittsburgh.
Marc:I'm not sure I could live in Tulsa.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Kansas City's like that.
Guest:Seriously?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's an incredible revival in Kansas City, also Oklahoma City, and I would argue Tulsa.
Guest:I was in Oklahoma City.
Marc:Oklahoma City's all right.
Marc:I performed there.
Marc:I did comedy in Oklahoma City.
Marc:Not a surprise, and they loved it, I bet.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Well, they're grateful to have people come by of my ilk.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:As should anybody be.
Marc:Well, thank you.
Marc:But, you know, I'm taking the Uber to the Whole Foods, the good Whole Foods in Tulsa, you know, and I got an earful from the driver about, you know, vaccines and whatnot.
Marc:But but like I don't I'm not going to judge.
Marc:What did I expect?
Marc:I'm in Tulsa.
Marc:But it is one of those things that you realize, like there is sort of a progressive community there, because when I was there, they were pulling abortion away and there were protests in front of the Capitol, which is right down the street from where I was staying.
Marc:So there is movement around progressive things.
Guest:Yeah, but, you know, Tulsa and Oklahoma City have a really good mix of the conservative and the progressives.
Guest:My mother, who just died, actually, a little over a week ago.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I'm sorry, dude.
Guest:I just feel grateful to have been raised by her.
Guest:But she was a leading progressive in Tulsa.
Guest:She ran the housing authority there.
Guest:Back in the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she was president of Planned Parenthood when places were being bombed.
Guest:And she found a great community there.
Guest:And her brother, George Kaiser, who brought in the Dillon Center.
Guest:Yeah, the Dillon Center.
Guest:That's her brother?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I was wondering if it had something to do with your family.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's my uncle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they've made a huge difference there.
Guest:They and a lot of other people.
Guest:You know, it's it's and it's an extraordinary city.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I'm not trying to be condescending or dismissive.
Guest:You wouldn't be.
Guest:You come from the same type of place.
Marc:I know.
Marc:But like, you know, like my sense of Albuquerque and it's probably not unlike Tulsa.
Marc:I mean, I was literally just downtown.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And we drove out into some neighborhood.
Marc:And even then I thought it was was great.
Marc:But there's probably you know, I don't know what the population is, but it's probably spread out.
Marc:A lot of times when you just spend time in a downtown of one of these type of cities, you're only seeing something that's usually an experiment because it's died and it's trying to come back.
Guest:And Tulsa is doing it successfully.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think what my wife observed when she first came to Tulsa, which I think is a bit less true, both for better and worse, was that... And I think this obtains with a lot of cities across the country that aren't on the coasts.
Guest:Tulsa...
Guest:Like Albuquerque, I imagine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was never a tourist destination.
Guest:Like Santa Fe.
Marc:Well, yeah, but you did.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:But you had to go through Albuquerque to go to Santa Fe, kind of.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and there were some things.
Marc:They had the balloon festival.
Guest:Well, Tulsa was on Route 66, so people would go through there.
Guest:But other than that, there was no compelling reason back when I was growing up to visit Tulsa.
Guest:And that allowed it to be preserved in a way that was true to itself.
Guest:And not a manufactured catering to visitors from out of town.
Guest:So it didn't play up a cowboy image.
Guest:It didn't play up an oil man image.
Guest:It was authentic.
Guest:It just was authentic to itself without the distraction of needing to please outsiders.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But also, if there were outsiders, they were coming for the rodeo.
Marc:Right?
Marc:There was like a rodeo culture and there was cowboy culture, but that's not nothing.
Marc:People are going to travel for competitions and stuff.
Guest:Yes, but they were traveling for something that was endemic to Tulsa and had real roots there and was only going to fortify its image of itself in an authentic way rather than in a manufactured or falsified way.
Guest:And she felt that it's held on to that.
Guest:She felt when she first visited that it had held on to that and that gave it its charm.
Guest:Now you go to Tulsa for the Dillon Center or Leon Russell's studio or the Guthrie Center or the Gathering Place, which is this amazing park by the Arkansas River.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I saw some...
Marc:Little band there.
Marc:There's stuff going on all weekend.
Marc:Yeah, I saw some cover band there.
Marc:It was pretty good.
Marc:But I thought Kane's Ballroom was amazing.
Marc:Kane's Ballroom, which is where Bob Wills played.
Marc:It's amazing.
Marc:It sounded great.
Marc:Patty sounded great.
Marc:And Mavis sounded great.
Marc:I don't know who was mixing Elvis Costello, but it didn't land as well.
Guest:I used to see, I saw Little Feet there.
Guest:Really?
Guest:When you were a kid?
Marc:Yeah, when I was a kid, yeah.
Marc:Wow, they played that place?
Marc:What does that place see?
Marc:Maybe 2,000 maybe?
Marc:Maybe?
Marc:No, I'd say more like 1,000.
Marc:1,000 probably.
Guest:Yeah, and there are no seats.
Guest:You just stand there.
Marc:Like Little Feet, the old Little Feet?
Marc:No, Lord George was dead.
Marc:He was already dead?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So is Little Feet regrouping?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Here's what's going on with me in relation to your book.
Marc:I guess you're on, are you on a book tour?
No.
Guest:Well, it starts tomorrow night.
Guest:Where at?
Guest:At BookSoup.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:It's a BookSoup event, but it's at Zipper Hall, wherever that is.
Guest:Are you going to read?
Guest:Yeah, I'm sitting up.
Guest:I'm going to talk with Guillermo del Toro.
Guest:We're going to do a conversation, and then I'll just sort of read casually from the book.
Guest:Well—
Guest:Are you writing something?
Guest:Is that what you're about to say?
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:Well, that's one of the things.
Marc:Like, I can never write fiction, dude.
Marc:And I mean, it seems like my best friends are both fiction writers, Sam Lipsight and Jerry Stahl.
Marc:You know, these are my guys, you know, and I have a tremendous respect for fiction writers.
Marc:You know, what's happening with me right now, and it's not in relation specifically to what becomes the story of your book, and I haven't finished it.
Marc:Don't be mad at me.
Guest:That's all right.
Marc:I'm getting there.
Guest:Are you enjoying it so far?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:All right.
Marc:But what I'm saying is like right now I'm in the backstory of the two primary characters, not the old guy, but the producer and the director.
Marc:So I just got through, you know, Juilliard and the experience of, is it Jacob or no?
Marc:It's David.
Marc:David.
Marc:So now I'm almost done with Brad.
Marc:This is all set up for what's going to become a horrible moral decay exploration, correct?
Yes.
Guest:I'd say that's fairly accurate, yes.
Marc:So, well, I love these kind of books.
Marc:I'm a big fan of Bruce Wagner, and I like Day of the Locust and What Makes Sammy Run.
Marc:I love Hollywood satire.
Marc:I don't know if you would call this satire, or would you call it... What would you call it?
Guest:You know, there are satirical elements, but...
Guest:Although it's a fictional work, and every character is fictional, it's all based on true experiences I've had and real people I've met.
Guest:Out here.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's all fictionalized, so you can't point to anyone and say, oh, that's...
Marc:Yeah, I guess they're not—like, those books aren't really satire.
Marc:What they are is they're of a genre of—it's just the Hollywood novel is not going to be an uplifting thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, through Hollywood, you see this sort of moral corruption and power dynamics that are corrosive and greed and most of the Seven Sins, you know, on display fully.
Marc:Right.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:I would say, though, that most of the novels, if not all of them, I would be hard-pressed to find a novel I've really loved that I would call uplifting.
Guest:And that doesn't mean that I only like downer books.
Guest:But I think that it's very difficult to to write an uplifting novel that is true to what human beings are.
Marc:No, I guess that's true.
Marc:I guess like, you know, I was just trying to frame what these Hollywood stories are.
Marc:And I guess it's just the nature of the backdrop, because when you think about I think when it's your life.
Marc:And you read What Makes Sammy Run, or you read Day of the Locust, or you read Force Majeure or The Player.
Marc:So because it's our life, you realize it's true, but because it's so focused, it cuts deeper than the real truth in a way.
Guest:Yeah, and I think you're 100% right.
Guest:But again, I would say that that has to be true about any novel.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:Because you're distilling something down to what's perhaps...
Guest:for lack of a better way of putting it, even more true than truth itself.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I guess what I'm trying to land on is that because of the nature of what Hollywood produces, right?
Marc:So the idea is, you know, people are in the business of happy endings, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:In movies.
Marc:And these are the people that create the illusion to entertain the world.
Marc:You know, once you pull that aside, and that dictates a lot of what we think about everything.
Marc:I mean, you read, like, Empire of Their Own.
Marc:When you read about the original Jews who made the thing, you know, created an America that people adapted to, and then they could sort of exist in, the Jews that started Hollywood, is that there is this nature, the idea of, like, this is what entertainment is, and this is what's behind it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now I'm getting you.
Guest:And so there's a counterpoint that is more, which is more available to the reader of a Hollywood novel than something about people owning land in Mississippi or an oil man in Dallas or an intellectual in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You seem to get a few of those in there.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:But it is specific.
Guest:Like there's a novel by Matthew Spector called American Dream Machine, which is really interesting in that regard.
Guest:Someone sent that to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, but that is at the core of it is that, you know, this industry has reconfigured reality.
Marc:And there are people at the controls of it.
Marc:And the excesses and extremes of their dubious moral characters is profound and wild.
Guest:It's also an industry, and this is not... My friend Joel Cohen was pointing this out to me recently, that really there has been no other industry...
Guest:Like the movie making industry in terms of what it accomplished between around 1929 and 1945.
Guest:And the advancements that were made and the technological advancements coupled with aesthetic advancements.
Guest:And then putting that through this industry that became this global phenomenon in that short amount of time was kind of unprecedented.
Guest:And you can look at it.
Guest:all inside of a few decades in the preceding century.
Marc:Now, was this conversation something that compelled you to write this?
Marc:Or did you have this during the writing?
Guest:No, this was after, well after it.
Guest:This was just a few months ago.
Marc:But also, like, you know, it's manufacturing something that had never been seen before.
Marc:I mean, you know, you can look at, I guess, at the Industrial Revolution and see where everything shifted and everything got bigger and production became, you know, of machinery and equipment and all that.
Guest:Creation of the factory.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:But, like, you know, movies, it was like, it's like a goddamn magic factory.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like, they're just creating these things.
Marc:Like, the idea...
Marc:I don't remember which of the studio had said it that, but the racket was we're getting them to pay for memories.
Marc:They're not taking anything home.
Marc:That was the racket.
Marc:Like they will drop money and not take anything with them.
Marc:And we still own the thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I would say they're also paying filmmakers or the industry to forget the present.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Because you completely get lost for two hours.
Marc:I'm in it right now.
Marc:I just spent the last week watching every Kelly Reichardt movie.
Marc:So I feel elevated and like I want to kill myself.
Marc:But not really.
Marc:Are you about to interview her?
Marc:No.
Guest:Oh, she's fantastic.
Guest:I want to.
Guest:I'm sure she'd be glad to sit and talk with you.
Guest:There's nothing more pleasant.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:I hope so.
Marc:But I just got it like I'd seen them before one or two before, but I didn't identify.
Marc:And the thing that drove me was the trailer for her new one.
Marc:She had hit something so specifically, this new one with Michelle Williams.
Marc:I forget what it's called.
Guest:And Michelle goes back to her.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's about artists.
Marc:And she had hit some nuance about visual artists at a certain level that I thought was so specific and so genius.
Marc:I'm like, how do I not know all her movies?
Marc:And I knew a couple, but I had to go watch all of them.
Marc:But the escape thing and how it connects with what I was going to say about your book.
Marc:I feel like in reading about the experiences of David in college, I mean, you're drawing obviously from a lot of your own experience.
Guest:Yes, certainly classes I took and people I met.
Marc:But, you know, there was something captured in there that I think I'm going to see corrupted as I read this book more.
Marc:That and I think I've lost it, which is sad.
Marc:Is this is this real sort of like, you know, passion about about, you know, poetry, about words, about about the craft and about, you know, art in general.
Marc:You know, and I started reading a little bit about Kelly Reichardt and about and the way she approaches things where she doesn't give a fuck about a happy ending.
Marc:And she's doing movies that, you know, that she wants to do from her heart.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yes, she does.
Marc:And they're just poetry.
Marc:And it's just like I feel like I personally have – when you read about those guys in college or just after college, having those conversations, doing that stuff and really working out these big questions and discussions about art and literature and everything else, it's sort of like –
Marc:Is that just a young person's thing, you know?
Guest:I think yes and no.
Guest:I feel like I'm more committed to each performance and more committed to acting and writing and directing.
Guest:and in a deeper way than I ever have been.
Guest:That said, a lot of it comes from raising my kids.
Guest:And so there's this ability to do more than live through them vicariously, because that, of course, is a really problematic, dangerous road.
Guest:But if you can find a way to...
Guest:have their passion reinvigorate you.
Guest:And in the case of my oldest son, we're now working together on projects.
Guest:A more shallow... Is he still playing guitar?
Guest:Yeah, he is still playing guitar and writing.
Guest:But a more shallow way of looking at it is just the way they've reinvigorated my taste for music.
Guest:I mean, I was listening to mainly just the stuff I listened to in high school and college.
Guest:But of course...
Guest:By listening to what they're listening to now, I feel this appreciation and also exposure, just the exposure alone to present music.
Guest:People like Coco Rosie and...
Guest:Bright Eyes, although even they are passe, or Death Grips, or Danny Brown, this amazing rapper, or Odd Future, you know, this Brockhampton, these people making music today to whom I never would have been exposed.
Guest:I got to get on it.
Guest:I'm going to have to write down those names.
Guest:Well, the last time I was here, we listened to Giant Steps on vinyl.
Guest:Yeah, that 180 gram.
Guest:That's a great box, man.
Guest:And that can also bring you back to and restore a vitality.
Marc:Well, I think I think what happens with me and I and I think it's something you must have reconciled with is judging yourself against, you know, what the culture machine deems as as winning or good.
Guest:Well, in the United States, that's what earns money.
Guest:But what and and sadly,
Guest:And sometimes for the good.
Guest:I mean, I love going to watch Dune and being swept up in the way that Denis creates this incredible world.
Guest:And that's all great.
Guest:Are you doing with Dune?
Guest:Did I see that on you?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I do a cameo in Dune 2.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But I would have said this regardless of whether I was in Dune.
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:But the movies like what Kelly Reichardt makes or the one, you know, Sword of Trust that you did and to Leslie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:These smaller canvas movies, which now can be made because there are these platforms.
Guest:If you make them for a price, they're going to get out there.
Guest:But it'll be for a much smaller audience, sadly.
Yes.
Guest:A, at least they get made.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:B, they're really auteur-driven movies.
Guest:And so Kelly Reichardt or Lynn Shelton or, you know, the movie like To Leslie or Old Henry, the filmmakers are in control of them.
Guest:And that's great.
Guest:So they're not corporate.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I'm going to try to do that with my friend Sam's book.
Marc:And so you're going to make a movie.
Marc:I am.
Marc:I think I am.
Marc:I don't want to talk about too much, but I'm trying to option his book so I can produce it and possibly direct it.
Guest:Well, you should direct it.
Marc:You've got enough friends who are directors.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:They'll give you advice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like I just realized, like, I got to do something that isn't like based on immediate reaction once in my fucking life.
Marc:Well, these podcasts aren't based on... Yeah, they are.
Marc:I mean, this is the conversation we're having.
Marc:After it's done, I don't listen to it again.
Marc:That's my producer's job.
Marc:So this is the experience.
Marc:When I do stand-up, it's like me in the audience.
Marc:That's the experience.
Marc:If I do a special, fine.
Marc:Acting is a different thing.
Marc:But with writing, that's the thing about this.
Marc:You're a great writer.
Marc:You kind of dig stuff out, and it's all... The Brad...
Marc:This Brad section I'm in, did you have cousins on Long Island?
Marc:No.
Marc:So how'd you know all that shit?
Guest:I researched it, researched it, researched it.
Guest:Because I have cousins on Long Island.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, they're from fucking Woodmere, five town people.
Guest:It's a very specific world out there.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I just researched it, but I'd also met a lot of people from there when I was in college, and I live in New York now, and so I meet people out there.
Guest:And then I did a deep dive into it and got all the streets and... So what was the choice?
Guest:Peculiarities of each neighborhood and town, et cetera.
Marc:What was the choice to spend this much time establishing... Because there is a specifically deep amount of attention on building these characters before the actual story is unfolding.
Marc:We're talking like 150 pages, right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Of backstory.
Marc:Now, that's something you did intentionally.
Marc:Is it to create a depth to these characters so you can see how they compromise themselves?
Guest:I think it's part of the novelness...
Guest:I guess, capital N, of the novel capital N. Yeah.
Guest:Because you can only do that in a novel.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In scripted narrative, you're really, going back to Aristotle, just doing what... You're privileging what characters do.
Guest:That's how they define themselves, by what they do.
Guest:In a novel...
Guest:you really can explore the why.
Guest:You can really get deeply into the psychology.
Guest:And a novel, the reader of a novel, not only has a tolerance for that, but they expect it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so you get to spend a hundred pages delving into origin stories, if you will.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:But the psychology of the origin story, really getting into the characters' heads.
Guest:The novel...
Guest:that does this the best of any novel I've ever read.
Guest:And I had already started my book when I read it, so I wasn't cribbing from him, but it really did, I don't know, to a degree vindicate my approach, is The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Guest:He spends a good half of that novel just on the stories of the individual characters who are then going to
Guest:come together later in the book.
Marc:Yeah, it happens in scripted stuff all the time, but it's quick.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I love it, and I'm mad that... Well, there's two... I'm going to spin this in a way that it's good that I haven't finished a book, so there's no risk of spoilers.
Marc:Good.
Marc:So, you know, I will finish it, but there's no risk of me spoiling it, and now you can practice talking about it without spoiling it.
Marc:So, what was the first...
Marc:In your experience of being an actor, and I assume that some of the stuff in David's story in terms of the struggle of not being a leading man type of actor is probably fairly emotionally true.
Guest:Yes, that's absolutely what I went through.
Guest:And like the character in the novel, it was to a degree a sort of stroke of luck that I ended up...
Guest:getting a role at the right time that was right for me with extraordinary filmmakers.
Guest:Which role was it?
Guest:It was O Brother Where Art Thou.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Delmar and O Brother Where Art Thou.
Guest:That changed everything.
Guest:Just changed everything.
Guest:Fuck you, Juilliard.
Guest:Well, very much to Juilliard's credit, and I go into this in the novel, that it...
Guest:It was like the character of David.
Guest:A lot of the experience of Juilliard was one of denigration and pain for me.
Guest:And that's true for a lot of people who go through Juilliard.
Guest:From Laura Linney to Jeannie Triplehorn, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Mackie.
Guest:We all have our...
Guest:axes to grind but i think none of us would look back on it and say we didn't want to have gone there right so i i benefited tremendously from uh the the training i got at juilliard and and not just the training in terms of being an actor but training me how to deal with the
Guest:rejection, disrespect.
Guest:And Juilliard is where I started really taking playwriting seriously because I needed to write plays for myself because I wasn't getting cast.
Marc:But they didn't give a class on rejection.
Marc:They just beat you guys up.
Guest:They did, but I think there was intentionality behind that as well.
Guest:I really do.
Guest:And it's less so now.
Guest:The three programs, now four, because Columbia has a really good training program as well.
Guest:So I'd say Columbia, NYU, Juilliard, Yale.
Guest:They're far gentler now as actor training programs than Juilliard, Yale, NYU.
Guest:Because they don't want to get in trouble.
Guest:It's a different culture.
Guest:That's a very fair point.
Guest:I think you're 100 percent right about that.
Marc:But but so when does in the novel, you know, when you know, after when does your understanding of show business match up with the worst things you ever heard about show business?
Guest:In the novel or real life?
Guest:In real life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In real life.
Guest:Auditioning in New York during the early days.
Guest:It was so pretty much right after I got out of school and would go on auditions and wait in the rooms and, you know, sometimes for hours at a time to get a meeting with somebody or go on tape.
Guest:And the way that...
Guest:working man what i'd call lunchbox lunchbox actors yeah um were treated by the system and that we were choosing to to be humiliated in that way and i have you know many many stories that my cohort and i went through and that were just utterly demeaning and we put ourselves through it
Guest:Uh, because a system was in place that took us for granted and that's fine.
Guest:I mean, you know, I get it there.
Guest:It was a, uh, what is it?
Guest:A, um, a buyer's market.
Guest:No, a seller's market.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I used to say you have to learn that Hollywood isn't your parents.
Yeah.
Marc:that's a great way of putting it yeah not everybody's getting a trophy there's not unconditional love right and you don't get awarded because i'm here you know like so it took me a long time to wear that but i mean i don't know i've never really been in the game but in terms of the power play that that is going to be at the core of this and the politics of it i mean as an actor did you have direct experience of that stuff
Guest:Less so.
Guest:I learned a lot more about the business when I started directing and raising money for my own projects or raising money in partnership with others for my own projects because I quickly learned that –
Guest:That it was going to be important for me.
Guest:And I would urge you to do this as well.
Guest:But I think you already said you're going to do it, which is to be your own producer, to be on that.
Marc:After working with Lynn on S.W.O.R.D.
Marc:and seeing her work on Outside In and just, you know, realizing that you gather your people and you make the movie.
Marc:You get your money, you know, because like there's no there's no reason unless you're looking to be in business with an outlet on a miniseries or if Netflix is going to throw you a bunch of cash to actually make a movie.
Marc:And but then you're sort of beholden on some level.
Marc:There's no reason to do it that way.
Marc:If you can find the money and get people attached, make the fucking movie.
Guest:Yes, that is what you should do.
Guest:But you can only do that.
Guest:I found that I can only do that because I have this other side job.
Guest:Which is being an actor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because the more money your project costs, the more you're going to need others.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the more you're going to have to listen to what they have to say.
Guest:And that could possibly corrupt your vision.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But if it's not, you know, a large studio and it's just a guy...
Marc:that you kind of know, you've got better odds, right?
Guest:You have to know that person pretty well to make sure they're going to support your vision.
Guest:That they're willing to lose money.
Guest:Or that they're going to say, all right, you know, you're doing this Sam Lipsight novel and you have a vision for it and I've read your script.
Guest:Now go do your thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the more it's purely yours, I believe the better it's going to be.
Guest:But that kind of person is difficult.
Guest:Usually a person is going to put money in the movies because they want to be a part of the process, not because it's an investment, because it's frankly not the greatest investment.
Guest:Of course, but it's fun.
Marc:Yes, it is fun.
Marc:Now in this book, if I'm not misunderstanding where it's going, the old guy, Jacob, this movie is his big last attempt at getting a big Hollywood erection, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Sure, that's a way of putting it.
Marc:And the guys he's brought in are David, and then he's got another producer who's going to be making the film, but Brad, who has worked with David before, feels jilted, and the thrust of the story is Brad sabotaging what is existing as the structure that's in place.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And so, walk me through...
Marc:What you're going to say when people ask you, what's this book about in terms of that?
Guest:Well, in terms of that...
Guest:I would say what motivates a great deal of what goes on in the movie business is rather than a desire to tell extraordinary stories in an interesting way and to reflect life back on the viewers in a way that
Guest:helps them understand what it is to be human.
Guest:All the stuff that we say is why we want to go sit in the dark and experience a film.
Guest:Storytelling is a big word.
Guest:Storytelling, yeah.
Guest:That a lot of what goes on in the movie business really has nothing to do with that, but it's an ego-afflicted process, a greed-afflicted process,
Guest:Um, none of this will sound new to people listening to you and me talk about this, but hopefully I do it in a way that is, um, not only a deep dive into these characters, but weirdly sympathetic in a way.
Marc:And Jacob, I like, I don't know if you do more setup, but like that, that backstory is kind of that great, you know, uh, the, the sort of post immigrant Jewish experience.
Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And then there's another section later in the book where Jacob has experiences down south with racism.
Guest:Racism against blacks.
Guest:While he's producing a movie?
Guest:Not anti-Semitism.
Guest:No, before he becomes a movie producer.
Guest:After he graduates from law school.
Guest:He goes to law school and decides that he wants effectively to do pro bono work in the south for a while.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Oh, so you really set these guys up to become just like, you know, like all of them sort of are earnest in each of their character types, except for, well, not Brad, but I mean, but certainly, you know, David and Jacob.
Guest:I think Brad, you're going to see, is afflicted by something pretty tragic in his teenage years that sets him up for his turn.
Guest:Well, for his, the way he looks at life.
Guest:Okay, that's exciting.
Guest:And so I think hopefully what will distinguish this book, and I take a lot of this from Day of the Locust, is that you have sympathy for every character, even at their most corrupt and flawed.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, you would hope that...
Guest:I would say the book is about a moment in Hollywood which is right before, right as COVID is hitting our shores.
Guest:And just looking at that moment,
Guest:And what motivated people and particularly men who came to Hollywood and how they act in some pretty beautiful ways, but mostly in some pretty ugly and aggressive ways.
Marc:And do you see this in your research or in the book as something that's always been?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I'm reading this oral history of Hollywood right now, which is extraordinary.
Guest:By who?
Guest:A woman named Basinger.
Guest:It's a couple.
Guest:It's two writers.
Guest:Basinger and I forget the guy's name.
Guest:It's called Hollywood and Oral History.
Guest:And it's...
Guest:I'm learning so much about... I'm right now just at the advent of sound, and I'm learning so much about the early days in Hollywood, and it does strike me how little stuff has changed.
Guest:So these characters, the producer...
Marc:Do you have, do you have templates that you've worked with for these guys?
Marc:I mean, cause like Jacob, there's no, there's no more Jacobs around anymore.
Guest:That's why I wanted to write that character.
Guest:And yes, I have met people like Jacob and, and put a lot of experiences I've had, uh, with others.
Guest:Well, I, you know, it's a lot of different people, but I don't want to, you know, this is, this is not a Romana Clef.
Guest:And so I don't want to get it.
Marc:But like, you know, in your life, I mean, who were the old timers that you came in contact with for better, for worse?
Guest:Well, there's one character you're going to encounter who from whom, you know, I drew a lot of Harvey Weinstein.
Guest:OK, sure.
Guest:But even that character is not specifically Harvey Weinstein.
Guest:He comes in the book later.
Guest:You haven't encountered him yet.
Marc:And Jacob would be older than Harvey.
Marc:No.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, yeah, I've certainly the experiences with characters like Jacob Rosenthal have really motivated that.
Guest:And it made me want to write these characters.
Guest:There's another one you're going to encounter in the book who is inspired by a good friend of mine who's a real character in the business named Avi Lerner.
Guest:But again, the character I write is not Avi Lerner.
Guest:He's a fictional guy.
Marc:It's just, you know, but you do this—it's like a stew.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But, like, for years when I talked to Sam on the mics or even privately, when I read his books and I'm talking to him about the books and I say, well, I like it when you go to the art gallery.
Marc:He's like, dude, it's not me.
Marc:I'm like, oh, okay, right, right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And certainly the character of David is not me, although there are.
Guest:And he does some stuff in the book that I would never do.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But some of those stories are your stories.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sounds like it was pretty fun.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, there's a, you know, there's a character.
Guest:So a big moment in the character David's life is the death in a terrorist accident or terrorist attack, not accident, in Israel.
Guest:And one of my best friends in college and after college was on flight 103.
Guest:And so...
Guest:There's there's there's a lot of truth to the emotions of the character and how when the character of David and how one of his best friends is just suddenly killed and no longer there.
Guest:And he never got to say goodbye.
Guest:And the rest of his life.
Guest:becoming kind of an homage to that character.
Guest:I mean, this guy, David Dornstein, who died just a few years after I graduated from college, and we were really close after college as well.
Guest:Spent a lot of time in New York during my time at Juilliard when he was in New York starting to try to become a writer.
Guest:Seldom does a day go by without my thinking, oh,
Guest:I wonder what David would think of this or I need to do this because I have the opportunity that David didn't.
Guest:And part of that is writing a novel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That I get to be here at age 58 and.
Guest:When I started this novel, which was when I was 55, I thought, I'm going to try this.
Guest:I'm going to try this.
Guest:If David were alive, he would have written 10 of these.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It's a power of grief and love.
Marc:Yeah, because, like, I think about, like, I wouldn't have done too Leslie or even think about involving myself in making a movie if it weren't for Lynn.
Guest:Well, I would imagine she's going to be at your elbow when you direct.
Marc:I hope so.
Marc:You know, I just have this HBO special coming out, you know, next week.
Marc:I saw the ad for that.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I really try to address grief and loss.
Marc:And, you know, it's just one of those things where...
Marc:Well, you know how it is, man.
Marc:When you write about people or you talk about people that can't have their say in what you're talking about.
Marc:I've learned a lesson on the mics where if I'm going to talk about my life, I have to realize that this is my point of view.
Marc:And a lot of times the people I'm talking about, they don't have a platform to respond.
Marc:And, you know, when I'm doing this material, there is some weight to it, you know, that Lynn certainly doesn't have a platform other than, you know, my feelings about her, right, or what we –
Marc:So it's like it's a little heavy.
Marc:It's like one of the heavier parts of the thing.
Marc:But I know the feeling of doing something, you know, in the shadow of somebody that you love to inspire you to be an artist.
Guest:Well, and you have you guys have this.
Guest:Beautiful archive in Sword of Trust.
Guest:I know, yeah.
Guest:Where you're led by her.
Guest:Led by her.
Guest:And she wrote it, too, right?
Guest:And so you're saying her words.
Guest:It's just there couldn't be anything more tender than that.
Guest:And the performance...
Guest:has all the sensitivity that the writing demands.
Guest:Well, it was improvised.
Guest:That's your collaboration.
Marc:It's an improvised movie, actually.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Yeah, she wrote the story with Michael O'Brien because we were working on a script that we never finished.
Marc:It really was more about... It turned out...
Marc:The reason it was never finished is because we wanted to spend time together.
Marc:And we weren't able to do that for years because we were both involved with people.
Marc:So we would, you know, we were friends and we would write this script.
Marc:And that's how we got to know each other.
Marc:And it never got finished.
Marc:You know, so that stands.
Marc:So that sort of trust was Lynn's wanted to make a movie with me.
Marc:And because we weren't finishing the other one, she's like, well, we're going to do this one.
Marc:And she wrote that with Michael O'Brien.
Marc:But the way that she was working with that film was the story was created and most of the acting was improvised.
Guest:And so you would go in and she would say, all right, here's the situation and here's where we need to get.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And was it two cameras or one?
Guest:Two.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, there were two cameras, but acting with her and having, you know, sort of unrequited feelings for each other.
Marc:You know, I don't know if that's the right word.
Guest:No, that's actually perfect, and it's really interesting in that use because you're both having unrequited feelings from your perception.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you know, I mean, I guess I'm just talking about how— Even though they were requited.
Marc:Eventually.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the—
Marc:But it is weird to wonder about what somebody who was important in your life, who you looked up to, who believed in you,
Marc:what they would think or how do you frame that when you have that in your heart worrying about what they would think, you know, or wanting them to approve, you know.
Guest:And the memory of someone you loved who's no longer around, and this is already working, is valent in terms of my mother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It acts like a guardrail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How so?
Guest:Well, you just think she wouldn't have approved of that.
Guest:And she's no longer around.
Guest:And therefore, I almost need to honor her more by behaving in a certain way because she doesn't have the luxury of advising me and making sure.
Guest:And so I have to do that.
Guest:I have to speak for her.
Yeah.
Guest:And raising our children, my wife and I raising our children, I mean, it manifests and ramifies in so many different ways.
Marc:It's so good that they had such a long relationship with their grandmother.
Guest:Yes, they did.
Guest:And she worked, she pushed that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now I'll do that hopefully with my grandchildren if I'm so lucky.
Guest:I just played my first grandfather.
Guest:That was pretty strange.
Guest:In what movie?
Guest:It's called Bang Bang.
Guest:And it's a boxing movie that's just being edited right now.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:I loved training.
Guest:I loved the training.
Guest:I trained with this guy named Martin Snow in New York, who's this monumental character.
Guest:I wouldn't be able to do him justice.
Guest:I could try and imitate him, but you'd want to go on.
Guest:Just look him up on...
Guest:Look him up on the internet and this is kind of how he talks.
Guest:But he's fucking brilliant.
Guest:Yeah, Martin Snow.
Marc:So he did a little boxing?
Guest:Yes, did some boxing.
Guest:And boxing training two hours a day for six weeks.
Guest:At the end, I was one ripped little Jew.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Wow.
Marc:Yeah, that must feel good.
Marc:First time?
Guest:Yes, yes, yeah.
Guest:Were you juicing?
Guest:No, didn't juice.
Guest:Never even given the opportunity.
Guest:Were you just eating lean?
Guest:What were you doing outside of the box?
Guest:Well, I kind of eat lean anyway because I drink wine every night, you know, a little couple of glasses of wine every night.
Guest:So I...
Guest:That's my my sole vice.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And and so I I. But no, I just exercise the exercise every day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was in the part of the training.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I think we should talk.
Marc:We should say that like this, the the core at the center of this film or not this film, the center of this book.
Marc:That makes it even more elevated in terms of tension is it's a movie by a black writer.
Marc:And it deals with, you know, heavy black issues.
Marc:And it's been sort of hasn't been made in over a decade.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, the writer in my book is a guy named Rex Patterson.
Guest:And he's more in the lines of John McWhorter or Glenn Lowry or Thomas Sowell.
Guest:He's...
Guest:he's a black conservative although he's more of a libertarian or a realist he just i guess maybe a better way of putting it is is that he doesn't he feels he's not beholden to the political orthodoxy of the um black left in america yeah like a glenn lowry um
Guest:Would be.
Guest:And he's a provocateur.
Guest:And his book is provocative.
Guest:And it's provocative both to blacks and whites.
Guest:But it was a bestseller.
Guest:Because of its provocative nature, however, nobody has been able to figure out how to make it into a movie.
Guest:And so he becomes a sort of tragic figure in the book because the culture in the BLM movement kind of eats him up.
Marc:So you really later – you layer this thing up.
Marc:You go to the – all the way back to old Hollywood –
Marc:Through these, you know, through Juilliard, through the birth of a guy who, you know, hustles his friends at the basis of his coin collection.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know, and, you know, onward into, you know, a power struggle, but also some, you know, very kind of current racially layered stuff.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and gender issues, too, because, again, it's right as COVID is about to hit.
Guest:And I was out here at that time promoting this movie called Just Mercy that I was in or helping to promote it.
Guest:I mean, really, it was Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx.
Guest:Oh, wait, I saw that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was kind of on the bench, you know, helping out the varsity.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Doing some promotion out here.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And there were four extraordinary forces at work.
Guest:One was COVID.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was about to, was on its way.
Guest:And everything was going to close down imminently.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was clear.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Two, there were wildfires.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the other two forces were Black Lives Matter.
Guest:And this was before George Floyd.
Guest:But people forget that was justifiably a big issue before George Floyd.
Guest:And then the Me Too movement.
Guest:And so the book ends up
Guest:dealing with all that, hopefully in a responsible and sensitive way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, well, and also in a, you know, when you start, when you, well, that must be the great thing about a book is that you have control of the intersection of all this stuff.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And you can kind of deliberate and make choices and think about them on how this stuff is going to all come together.
Marc:I mean, that must be the excitement of writing it.
Marc:And this is your first novel?
Guest:Yes, this is my first novel.
Guest:But I feel like I've spent 48 years gearing up to it because since I was about 10, I'm sure you're the same way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was always reading a novel.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, I, you know, it's weird.
Marc:Like it, you know, as time has gone on, I really have to be, you know, I've never read novels for fun.
Marc:Really.
Marc:I read them because they're amazing, but it's not like reading for me is not like a pastime.
Marc:I'm too fidgety.
Marc:But when I dig into a book, if the book is great and it's referred to me and it's baby, I'll do it.
Marc:But like I wasn't as big a reader as I would have liked to have been.
Guest:That surprises me.
Guest:Came later.
Guest:Oh, OK.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you are now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:OK.
Guest:And I'm sure reading informs your comedy.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think so.
Marc:I take from a lot of different places.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I don't know what always informs my comedy, but it's being out in the world and then seeing other people do great work and, yeah, some reading, sure.
Guest:I just say that because you're not a set-up punch kind of comic.
Guest:You're a storyteller.
Marc:I'm a storyteller, but within the stories, there's my version of set-up punch.
Marc:It's in there.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But so in writing this, you've written plays before.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But this seems like, so it takes, you know, the research must have been daunting.
Marc:I mean, how long did it take you to write it?
Guest:It took a few years and I'd started it before COVID.
Guest:And when COVID happened, I said, well, I've got to bring this in, this, the imminence of
Guest:Of this plague or virus hitting our shores feels like it'll make it all cohere in an interesting way.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:And I say plague, which it wasn't.
Guest:It was, I guess, pandemic is the word.
Guest:But I say plague because...
Guest:There's there's a an overtly I want to be careful about how I use this word that the forces in the book are biblical and they're intentionally big.
Guest:And so I like the notion of plague.
Guest:And the novel was originally called Herbs Plagorum, which is the Latin for city of blows.
Guest:And I liked that word Plagorum because it could also be translated as city of plague.
Guest:And the editor's like, dude, no one's going to know what that is.
Guest:How about we?
Guest:I was encouraged to change it to the English.
Guest:Let's just put it that way.
Marc:And ultimately, I agreed.
Marc:I wanted to call my not this special, but the last one that I did with Lynn.
Marc:I wanted to call it Jeremiah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's a great double entendre.
Marc:And well, it's just it is what it is.
Marc:But like the Robbie over Netflix is like, no one knows what that is.
Marc:I don't know what that is.
Marc:You're going to put that on the menu.
Marc:People are going to be like, what is that?
Marc:And they're not going to watch it.
Marc:And that's when we got to end times fun from Jeremiah.
Marc:That works well.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I like Jeremiah.
Marc:I love the word.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a great word.
Guest:Great talking to you, man.
Guest:That's always I'm so grateful that I got to come back.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's great seeing you.
Marc:And I'm glad everything's OK.
Marc:Glad the kids you're working with your kid.
Marc:Got a book out.
Marc:You're like you're never not making a movie.
Guest:I feel very, very lucky and lucky to be able to be on your podcast.
Guest:I'm going to give you another mug.
Marc:Awesome.
Marc:What a great guy.
Marc:Love talking to that guy.
Marc:Genuinely decent person.
Marc:And if he's listening, I'm going to get the espresso cup back to your brother as soon as I figure out how.
Marc:Maybe I'll drive it over there myself.
Marc:The novel is City of Blows, and it's available wherever you get the books.
Marc:So please hang out for a second, people.
Marc:Okay, for full Marin subscribers, we posted a new batch of producer cuts this week.
Marc:These are things that Brendan had to cut out of the episodes, and he explains why he cut them, like this clip of me and Elvis Mitchell talking about the Coen brothers.
Guest:And then Frank goes, you know, these guys really like you.
Guest:I went, okay.
Guest:No, they lie to people.
Guest:I saw them once tell somebody that their editor came from the Arsenio Hall show.
Guest:I went, but they're their editor.
Guest:I went, yeah, this poor British guy didn't know.
Guest:So I was like, oh, okay.
Guest:And I had this thing happen, too, where...
Guest:When I first met them, it was Ethan who talked all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Joel wouldn't say anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was on a plane with him once.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Ethan got on his knees to talk over the seat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Flying from New York to Salt Lake City.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the entire flight, Joel just went, uh.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then suddenly it's like, I don't know, it was for No Country for Old Men.
Guest:Joel got to the studio, 45 minutes, Joel.
Guest:And I thought...
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Just to sit here?
Guest:I have no... Because he rode his bike instead of taking the subway.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh God, this is... He took the subway and Joel was taking the car.
Guest:That's what it was.
Guest:Did he talk?
Guest:His four or five grunts are going to be completely used up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then they sit down and suddenly it's Joel who's doing all the talking.
Guest:And Ethan is like, they went, okay, we did this for long enough.
Guest:Let's switch off.
Guest:I don't know what...
Marc:We've got four separate producer cut episodes in the full Marin right now.
Marc:33 bonus episodes total with new ones every week.
Marc:So if you're interested in that, to get all the bonus content plus every single episode of WTF ad-free, sign up by going to the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF+.
Marc:And a reminder, if you want to submit a question for the next Ask Mark Anything, there's also a link for that in the episode description.
Marc:Here is some slide guitar, which I'll try to get better at.
Marc:It's a little sloppy, but I think my heart's in it.
Okay.
Guest:.
.
.
.
guitar solo
guitar solo
guitar solo
Guest:guitar solo
Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey and La Fonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.
Guest:Jesus told me so.