Episode 147 - Stephen Tobolowsky
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fucksikins?
Marc:What the fuck Canadians?
Marc:How are y'all?
Marc:It's Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Welcome aboard.
Marc:I'd like to welcome all the new listeners that came in over the last few weeks.
Marc:Hi, how are you?
Marc:I want to get this out of the way right up front because I seem to be... I don't know if I'm doing my part in this relationship, so I do have a big cup here, so...
Marc:wait for it pow i think i shit my pants yep what can i tell you just coffee.coop available at wtfpod.com they are our sponsors it is good coffee if you go there and get the wtf blend i get a little bit of that i got a back end deal with that i don't know if i've talked about this enough i don't want to push it i don't want to be a plug fest
Marc:But it's good coffee.
Marc:And one of the reasons I'm bringing it up is because I am out.
Marc:I'm out of just coffee here at the house.
Marc:I don't know if I'm being punished or not, but I need it.
Marc:I'm running.
Marc:I'm running low.
Marc:And when I'm in there and I got no coffee, what am I going to buy coffee?
Marc:I got a very specific system.
Marc:OK, my buddy, Chase.
Marc:up there in Portland gave me this specific arrow, ah, what the hell is it called?
Marc:Some sort of coffee maker.
Marc:It looks like a giant syringe.
Marc:So now I've got this thing going where I've got the nicotine patches, which I'm on the lower patch now, but I cut them in half, and I put a whole one on one arm and a half on the other arm, and then I wait it out, and then I keep the second half of the second patch right here.
Marc:I got it right here for when I want that extra kick.
Marc:I got a plan, people.
Marc:I feel all right.
Marc:Today on the show, I'm very excited.
Marc:Steven Tobolowsky, he's one of the greatest character actors this country has right now.
Marc:And, you know, character actors, I was just watching True Grit, and the Coen brothers have a tremendous respect for character actors.
Marc:Character actors are very important.
Marc:They're the unsung heroes of cinema and television.
Marc:But you know him as Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day.
Marc:He was in Mississippi Burning.
Marc:He played the Ku Klux Klan leader.
Marc:He's appeared on Deadwood.
Marc:You've seen him in everything.
Marc:And I met him years ago at an audition.
Marc:We were both auditioning for the same thing.
Marc:And I knew who he was.
Marc:He was that guy.
Marc:You're that guy from The Thing.
Marc:You're in all the movies.
Marc:You're that guy.
Marc:And he said, I'm a big fan of your work.
Marc:And at that point, I'm like, how do you even know my work?
Marc:But I was very flattered by it.
Marc:And he's quite a raccantor.
Marc:And he contacted me and we contacted each other.
Marc:I said, come on, tell some stories.
Marc:So we're going to be talking to him.
Marc:My buddy Ryan Singer is in town.
Marc:You know, Ryan, he's been on the show a few times.
Marc:Funny as fuck.
Marc:Sweetest guy in the world.
Marc:Almost too sweet for me to even deal with.
Marc:I don't know if you have people like that in your life where, you know, the dude is just, you know, wide eyed and, you know, optimistic and and just, you know, open minded in some.
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:He's just happy.
Marc:He wakes up.
Marc:He's fucking happy.
Marc:He goes to bed.
Marc:He says tomorrow is going to be the best day ever.
Marc:Do you have people like that in your life?
Marc:I don't I've never been that guy.
Marc:If I'm saying that it's it's a default.
Marc:It's because I'm sitting there going, oh, fuck tomorrow.
Marc:Every day, you know, he's been staying at the house, you know.
Marc:I'm crashing.
Marc:He's going in the other room to crash.
Marc:Says tomorrow's going to be the best day ever.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Two days ago, we go to the post office.
Marc:I got to run errands.
Marc:Nothing better than having a friend in town to run errands with because I got to mail you guys your stuff.
Marc:I still mail out the subscription stuff, the premium stuff, my CDs.
Marc:I mail all that stuff out.
Marc:And if you want that stuff for a $250 one-time donation, and I'm not plugging here.
Marc:I am a little bit.
Marc:You can get one of each kind of T-shirt, three CDs, all my CDs, a special premium WTF best of volume one CD, some stickers and a postcard.
Marc:If you do the $10 a month thing, I'll send you a T-shirt, some stickers, a postcard.
Marc:I do that right here at the house.
Marc:So we'll have cat hair on it.
Marc:So I got a big box of shit.
Marc:A lot of it's going international.
Marc:We go to the post office.
Marc:And we get to the Los Feliz branch post office, and we got there right in time for some reason.
Marc:Now, a couple of things happened that I didn't notice.
Marc:Post office, they can be a nightmare.
Marc:And you know that.
Marc:I've talked about this.
Marc:And I'm everyone's fucking horror.
Marc:The guy with the box of shit to mail.
Marc:Yeah, because people behind you are like, really?
Marc:You have to do that much mailing things?
Marc:I mean, is there isn't there another time?
Marc:Isn't there a special post office for you fuckers that have too much shit when we've only got a letter or one small package?
Marc:Well, the machine was taken, so I'm online and I get in under the wire because I got to fill out some custom forms.
Marc:And then a couple of things happen.
Marc:All of a sudden, there's several tellers there at the post office, several people working at the registers, which is rare.
Marc:And then the cops come in and I'm like, what the hell is going on?
Marc:Then I noticed there is an ancient Asian man sitting in a regular chair in front of one of the tellers in front of the counter, locked in some sort of what looks to be a meditative state.
Marc:He's he's locked in.
Marc:His hands are clenched.
Marc:He's seated.
Marc:His head is bowed.
Marc:And and I immediately thought of Falun Gong protest.
Marc:I didn't know what it was, but he was dressed just like, you know, like he didn't have any special outfit on.
Marc:So I didn't see any religious affiliation, but he was locked in and he was not waking up.
Marc:And so the cops came.
Marc:And I would think there was some sort of protocol for this.
Marc:You know, first they feel his pulse.
Marc:And of course, all of a sudden now there's more people counting the post office.
Marc:The line's starting to get a little bigger.
Marc:So this drama with the cops, the guy, the ancient Asian man locked in a fisted meditative position is all starting to build a little bit.
Marc:So then the cops feel his neck to see if he's alive.
Marc:Then people are online like, oh, no.
Marc:You know, and the woman who's working at the post office, I can't deal with this.
Marc:I cannot.
Marc:He better not be dead.
Marc:she said and then they just sort of drag them they drag the chair over to to the right a little out of the way so people who are now aggravated about me and my box and that there might be a dead guy in a chair and more people are coming in uh they they sit there and they they start checking this guy they start shaking him wake up wake up because he was still alive i who knows i don't know what he could have been a stroke who the hell knows
Marc:But then one of the women at the post office says, yeah, he does this.
Marc:And I'm like, so this guy comes in with his own chair, sits down, locks in, falls asleep.
Marc:It happens before.
Marc:She said, it's happened once before.
Marc:And I'm like, okay, so now the line's getting bigger.
Marc:The cops are working on him, and I get to my post office person, this woman, and I say, why don't they call the ambulance?
Marc:And she's like, well, you know, that costs money.
Marc:Some people don't want it, so they're going to wake him up and ask him if he wants an ambulance.
Marc:I'm like, wow, is that where we're at?
Marc:God willing, you're conscious enough in the bad situation that might render you in need of an ambulance that you have the wherewithal to say, you know what, just cut my leg off here because I don't want to pay for an ambulance.
Marc:That's where we live.
Marc:So they're working on him.
Marc:The line is now huge.
Marc:I got my box of stuff.
Marc:I mean, it's one of those lines at the post office where you look at it and it's just nothing but aggravation.
Marc:Every face is a mask of human aggravation.
Marc:You could have taken a picture of each one and made a gallery of aggravation.
Marc:And I'm sitting there doing my thing and the people who work in the post office are all sitting there like, what happened?
Marc:I mean, there's literally 50 people in line like out of nowhere.
Marc:So then Ryan says, you know, I got to go to the bathroom.
Marc:They got to have a bathroom at a post office.
Marc:I'm like, do you live on another planet?
Marc:They don't have bathrooms that people can use anywhere.
Marc:You're going to have to go.
Marc:You might have to go to another city or we're in Los Feliz.
Marc:I said, go next door, go to the House of Pies.
Marc:And he's like, OK, you know, I'm going to go to the House of Pies and I'm going to get a banana cream pie for everyone here online.
Marc:And I'm like, all right, that's really funny.
Marc:He's like, no, I think I'm going to get a banana cream pie.
Marc:I mean, who wouldn't want to have some banana cream pie while they're online at the post office?
Marc:I'm like, I don't know, Ryan.
Marc:I'm trying to mail things to New Zealand.
Marc:He's like, I think I'm going to do that.
Marc:I'm going to go to the bathroom and I'm going to get a banana cream pie.
Marc:I'm like, OK, whatever you got to do.
Marc:And I thought he was joking.
Marc:So there I am mailing my shit.
Marc:The guy who the ancient Asian man is now coming to.
Marc:So he's sort of up and he seems surprised that he woke up.
Marc:But we're all relieved because I was sort of amazed at how many people didn't panic.
Marc:It's interesting in those situations where someone goes down in public and
Marc:That even if you can't leave the situation, if you can't walk by, if you don't know what to do, then you just stand there.
Marc:But if someone knows what to do, there were cops there.
Marc:So everyone was like, well, this is under control.
Marc:We just hope he's not dead because that would probably ruin my day, I would imagine, is what most people are thinking.
Marc:But he was coming to and the line was huge.
Marc:And the people who worked at the post office were frustrated because it was getting near closing time.
Marc:And now, you know, there's a line out the door.
Marc:And then in comes Ryan after the bathroom with a box of pie going, I got banana cream pie.
Marc:Who wants some banana cream pie?
Marc:Did not bring plates, brought three forks, some napkins and this huge banana cream pie.
Marc:Now, I got I got issues with being embarrassed in public by people who are close to me because of my mother.
Marc:But I sort of wrote it out.
Marc:I'm like, OK, that's Ryan.
Marc:This is funny.
Marc:And he puts his pie on the counter that's in the middle, an island counter with all the paperwork needed to mail shit.
Marc:And he pops it open.
Marc:He's got three forks.
Marc:And he's just basically saying, who wants to dig in?
Marc:Now people are starting to smile.
Marc:They're starting to laugh.
Marc:And it was pretty funny, but I was literally, in my mind, having this weird little codependent streak in me.
Marc:I'm like, you didn't bring plates?
Marc:They didn't have plates?
Marc:He's like, I asked him to put several forks, and I'm like, what do you think people are just going to eat out of your pie?
Marc:And...
Marc:And sure enough, you know, a few people started digging into this banana cream pie while they were waiting online at the post office.
Marc:And I think the people in the direct radius of the pie were sort of charmed by the whole thing.
Marc:And I think it did bring some relief to their day.
Marc:And one woman walked in, an elderly woman.
Marc:uh very old walks in she had an agenda she walked right past the line and was walking somewhere you know right behind uh towards uh towards ryan and ryan turns around and goes would you like a bite of pie and this this old woman she must have been in her in her late 70s maybe 80s and without missing a beat she goes yes i would and uh and and ryan gave her a fork she took a a bite she goes that is delicious and
Marc:and asked a question and walked out and it was all very joyous but the big problem is is as wonderful as uh that gesture was uh literally there was three quarters of a pie left if not more after the people several people ate from the pie so that means the pie is going home now given the way i was raised i'm like well that was fun now how much could that pie have cost throw it away don't want it in the house
Marc:And Ryan says, no, Mark, we got to do right by the pie.
Marc:And I'm like, what do you mean?
Marc:We got to get rid of the pie in the right way.
Marc:And I'm like, what is fucking wrong with you?
Marc:And he's like, well, is there anywhere we could take it?
Marc:Should I give it to a homeless person?
Marc:Yeah, a homeless person wants three quarters of a banana cream pie.
Marc:That's healthy.
Marc:That's good for a homeless person.
Marc:He goes, well, we got to do something with it.
Marc:And I'm like, it's not coming in the house.
Marc:Cut to it's in the house.
Marc:And it's a constant discussion for two days.
Marc:Maybe we should take it to the UCB theater tonight.
Marc:Someone will eat it.
Marc:Maybe we should take it somewhere.
Marc:But you're walking.
Marc:What are you going to present?
Marc:Like three quarters of a beat up banana cream pie.
Marc:So needless to say, we plow through about half of that pie.
Marc:And now I got to deal with the repercussions, the crashing of the wave of a good gesture.
Marc:I can't eat that much pie.
Marc:I can't eat it.
Marc:And then finally, you know, got to the point yesterday where Ryan couldn't eat it either.
Marc:And we ended up throwing out one piece of that pie.
Marc:And, you know, sometimes it's just sometimes selflessness and doing a kind gesture can lead to some self-hatred.
Marc:Stephen Tabouloski.
Marc:Tabouloski?
Marc:This is so close.
Marc:Hold on.
Guest:You're on the border of it.
Guest:Tabouloski.
Guest:Tabouloski?
Guest:Tabouloski.
Guest:Well, actually, there's kind of a story about that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Stephen Tabouloski.
Guest:Are you going to tell me how to say it?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Maybe let's blunder.
Marc:All right, so I'm going to go with Stephen Tabulaski.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That's very close.
Marc:He's in the garage here at the Cat Ranch.
Marc:What do you mean you have a story already about your name?
Marc:The way you got your name?
Marc:That's not a fake name.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Well, it's that...
Guest:You know, in my family, in the family, we don't pronounce the name the same.
Guest:I mean, I always say Tobolowsky, but other people in my family, my media family will say Tobolowsky, Tobolowsky, Tobolowsky.
Guest:There's no there's no consensus.
Guest:So I went to my uncle Nathan, who was the historian.
Guest:When he was like 80, he's passed on now.
Guest:And I said, Uncle Nathan, I need to ask a very embarrassing question in that I'm in my 50s and I don't know how the fuck do I say my name?
Guest:And he says, well, you can pronounce it any way you want because it's not your name.
Guest:What?
Guest:Whoa!
Guest:No!
Guest:Help me.
Guest:And so I go, what?
Guest:What?
Guest:He said, well, actually, what happened is when grandfather came from the old country and he came the way of some of those Jews did through Galveston, Texas, and they asked...
Guest:who are you?
Guest:He didn't speak of the English very well.
Guest:And so he thought the who was like vo, which means where.
Guest:And so he goes like, they thought they were asking, where are you from?
Guest:So he said, Abraham from Tobolowsk, which is the city.
Guest:So the guy wrote down, okay, you're Abraham Tobolowsky.
Guest:So I got my name the same way Don Corleone did in The Godfather.
Marc:But you went in a different direction.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:I kept clean.
Marc:You can play a heavy, but you're not a heavy.
Marc:So you're a Jew from Texas?
Marc:I'm a Jew from Dallas, Texas.
Marc:100% Jew?
Guest:100%.
Guest:I had no idea.
Marc:I was sitting there looking at your name, thinking like he's Polish, Ukrainian.
Marc:Where does this come from?
Marc:A Jew from Texas.
Marc:It comforts me somehow.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:We weren't incredibly religious.
Guest:We lived, you know, back in the time when I grew up in Dallas, there were three synagogues in the north part.
Marc:Three Jewish families in there.
Guest:There are three Jewish families where I live.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we drove 22 miles in the snow.
Guest:In the snow?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But Friday, I remember- Through hate.
Guest:Through hate.
Guest:We went through hate.
Guest:Oh, you know, that's another story.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:No, but I remember-
Guest:It was the first time I really kind of got involved with show business.
Guest:I think I was a young child, and we actually went to a Friday night service.
Guest:And the rabbi was speaking on what we are all grateful for.
Guest:And there were like 300, 400 people in the audience.
Guest:And like all those kids who are like five years old, I like raised my hand.
Guest:No, me, me, me, me.
Guest:And, you know, I didn't know it was like preschool where everybody got to talk.
Guest:It was the rabbi's turn.
Guest:And so he ignored me.
Guest:And I kept going, me, me, me.
Guest:And finally, he thought I had to go to the bathroom.
Guest:And he said, yes.
Guest:And I said, thank you.
Guest:And I went up.
Guest:I walked to the front of the synagogue and said, I would like to tell you some things I am grateful for.
Guest:My parents were just in a terrible car accident.
Guest:My mother broke her back.
Guest:My father's in a coma.
Guest:My parents.
Guest:my brother got glass in his eye and he's blind now they're all sitting in the synagogue crawling under the seats they were horrified and i told this tale of woe and the entire synagogue was like it was like the jerry lewis telethon they went like this is this poor child needs help on the way back out to the car my parents and brother kind of walked about 10 feet away from me like they didn't want to get near me and then my father walloped me
Guest:and said, why did you say those things?
Guest:Why did you say those things?
Guest:I said, well, they're kind of true, aren't they, Dad?
Guest:Well, not now, not now, not during the year.
Guest:Yes, we were in an accident at one point in time, yes.
Guest:But I think that was the first time I kind of jumped into show business.
Guest:Did you make any money that day?
Guest:I mean, was there?
Marc:Oh, no, it was negative money, negative money.
Marc:I owed on that one.
Marc:It's interesting to me because I know that, like, for instance, I ran into you several years ago.
Marc:I can't even remember what the audition was.
Marc:But but but the interesting thing about you, because I don't go on many auditions, I seem to this is where I ended up.
Marc:This is what I do.
Marc:And I saw you.
Marc:And of course, I recognized you, but I did not know your name, which I'm sure is a common thing with you.
Marc:And when you said you were a fan of mine, I'm like, holy shit, that guy is that guy's a fan.
Marc:It was like one of those moments where I'm like, wow, other people in show business noticed me.
Marc:And then I had to go like, you know, who is that guy?
Marc:I've seen him in every fucking movie.
Marc:I mean, I was looking at your credits, and it's ridiculous.
Marc:I think you've been in every movie in the last 30 years.
Guest:Almost.
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:But I tell you what really hurts when you've been in a lot of things is that nobody really knows who you are or what you've done.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so they're always saying, wait a minute.
Guest:Don't tell me.
Guest:Don't tell me.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:know you right i know you wait wait don't tell me don't tell me and i go well okay tell me one thing you've been in i said groundhog's day they go never heard of it yeah right yeah were you in sister act two and and i go like no no i wasn't in sister act two and then i had to go back and watch sister act two to see how they thought i could have unless i was a nun
Guest:I thought you were going to say, yes, I was in it.
Guest:I had no idea.
Guest:I had no idea.
Guest:No, I have credits on my IMDb that I'm not even aware of those movies.
Guest:But sometimes they change the name of things.
Marc:But I imagine that some people recognize you from specific things.
Marc:I know that Groundhog Day is a big one.
Marc:But for me, I will watch Mississippi Burning just to see you be put in jail.
Marc:Just for the end where you walk by and the guy who works for you, the black guy shoots you that look.
Marc:I will watch it just for you.
Guest:Yeah, Mississippi Burning was a really rare experience.
Guest:You know, that was like my first kind of big movie.
Guest:And I just thought it was kind of normal to be on the set.
Guest:And Alan Parker knew that I was kind of interested in directing.
Guest:He had heard, and I was supposed to do the big scene, the Ku Klux Klan scene, and they put my scene off like 10 weeks because of- Where you spoke to the gathering without the hood?
Guest:Yes, right.
Guest:The political meeting?
Guest:The political meeting.
Guest:They had like 2,500 extras, so they could only do that scene when it was-
Guest:Ignorant Southern looking extras.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:That took some casting.
Guest:In fact, in fact, the word on the set was that one third of the extras actually used their Ku Klux Klan cards as ID to get into the movie.
Guest:Truth.
Guest:That's the absolute truth.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:That's the truth.
Guest:So you used real Klansmen?
Guest:Real Clansmen.
Guest:And they were like, this is our time.
Guest:This is our time.
Guest:There's no reason not to be, there's no reason to be ashamed.
Guest:They thought, they thought that that particular scene, they thought that the movie was going to be trashing the Klan.
Guest:And so Alan Parker got up and I started speech.
Guest:He goes, Stephen, Stephen.
Guest:Let's not insult these people right here in front of them.
Guest:We'll just do the first half of the speech, and then I'll call cut, and we'll go back, and we'll do it from different angles, and we'll send everybody home, and then we'll do the last half of the speech, which was a lot more racist and a lot more vitriolic alone, just with you there.
Guest:And I go, okay, fine, fine.
Guest:So we did about 150 takes of the first half of the speech, and then one time Alan didn't say cut.
Guest:So I went into the last part of the racist part of the speech, and that crowd came alive.
Guest:I mean, they started screaming, they started yelling, and they started going, Whoa!
Guest:You know, you should be our governor, man!
Guest:Say it like it is!
Guest:Yes, man!
Guest:Really?
Guest:Alan ran up on stage and said, Well, never expected this.
Guest:Shall we keep going?
Guest:I go, yeah.
Guest:He says it'll be much better.
Guest:They really seem to love it.
Guest:Is he British?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I can't do a British accent.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:So he had no idea that he was dealing with a sympathetic crowd?
Marc:No.
Marc:To the actual agenda of the person that he was seeing as the evil in his movie?
Guest:Yeah, what was fantastic about that was, you know, they had put my scene off so long and Alan came and knocked on my door of the trailer and he says, Stephen, you know, you're going to be here for a while.
Guest:Do you want to follow me around and see what I do?
Guest:And I thought like everybody kind of does this kind of thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All directors just like take someone around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for the next several weeks, I followed Alan around and he was showing me how he was going to block a scene.
Guest:He took me over.
Guest:Now, this is interesting.
Guest:If you like that movie, Alan took me over to the set dressing area of the movie and he said, this is where we make OMD.
Guest:And everything in the movie is covered with OMD.
Guest:Every prop is painted with OMD.
Guest:Every costume, a dye, is made of OMD.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:Yeah, that's what I said.
Guest:I said, what is it?
Guest:And he said, it stands for old man's dick.
Guest:And it is a mixture of purple, light brown, and kind of an ochre color.
Guest:And he says, you will see what this does to our movie.
Guest:And so I went to the dailies that night to see what OMD was doing to our movie.
Guest:And I'm watching the set and the screen, and I'm watching the dailies, and I'm trying to say, where's the OMD?
Guest:I don't see the OMD.
Guest:And afterwards, Alan started quizzing me.
Guest:And he started saying, so...
Guest:What did you see?
Guest:And I said, I can't say what I saw.
Guest:I can kind of say what I didn't see because I didn't quite see the OMD.
Guest:He said, that wasn't the question.
Guest:I asked you what you saw.
Guest:And I said, Alan, all I saw was flesh.
Guest:All I saw was skin.
Guest:It goes, right!
Guest:What the OMD does, it fools your brain.
Guest:When the brain perceives a sameness in color or something, it negates it.
Guest:The only thing in the movie that did not have OMD was the color of men's skin.
Guest:And so when you watch that movie on the big screen, the flesh tones jump off of the screen because of OMD.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I knew that there was something unique about it, but I thought it was just an attention to detail at the time.
Marc:Like, there was definitely a different feel to the movie, but do you know what this is?
Marc:Can you buy this?
Marc:I mean, would it make me more vibrant in real life?
Marc:I mean...
Guest:I think John Willett was the art director, and I think he's used it on other movies, too.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It's like these artists make it up, and it is a color that the mind just makes invisible, and they put it on everything.
Guest:Do they spray it or paint it or brush it or what?
Guest:These guys were painting it like on salt shakers, like in the diner.
Guest:Get the fuck out of here.
Guest:Yeah, on the tables, on the glasses that people held.
Guest:You have no idea what it is.
Guest:It's just a dye, a color, a paint, and you could water it down.
Guest:You make it as thin as you want.
Guest:But it covered everything in the movie except us.
Guest:It was all on my clothes.
Guest:Every white shirt was dipped into a fine color of OMD to where you couldn't even tell that it wasn't white anymore.
Guest:But it totally changed the way you view the movie.
Guest:That's kind of brilliant.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:An amazing attention to is a compulsive attention to detail.
Marc:Now, I watch that movie because I know it's a little heavy handed in some ways.
Marc:But but I could watch Gene Hackman eating at a diner.
Marc:I don't know what it is about that dude.
Marc:But, you know, he like he I think he said once to somebody in acting like he knows how to just fill himself up.
Yeah.
Marc:I don't remember what the context was.
Marc:I have a theory.
Guest:I have a theory, and it's open for discussion, but he's pissed off.
Guest:In there?
Guest:In a movie.
Guest:I've never seen somebody.
Guest:Gene Hackman and Michael Caine.
Guest:I remember Michael Caine once had a piece of advice.
Guest:He said, the way to be a good actor on screen is you have to find a way to put your rage into the role.
Guest:And Gene Hackman, I don't care if that guy's laughing.
Guest:I don't care if he's the hero or the villain.
Guest:Gene Hackman is the embodiment of rage in film.
Guest:And I cannot watch this guy without cringing a little bit because I remember the first day I met him on the set.
Guest:And I didn't know it was him.
Guest:And I was standing in my trailer and I see this man walking across the parking lot in Alabama where we were shooting.
Guest:And he had like this floppy white hat that broad brim had kind of covered his eyes, white shirt, kind of neutral pants.
Guest:And I go, hey, Gramps, how are you?
Guest:And he lifted the brim of his hat up and I saw those eyes and I went, oh, fuck.
Fuck.
Guest:Sorry, Mr. Hackney.
Guest:Sorry, sir.
Guest:I'm sorry, sir.
Marc:And does that end with you saying, and that was the beginning of a tremendous friendship?
Marc:No, it didn't happen.
Guest:No, it didn't happen.
Guest:I didn't even have the opportunity.
Marc:Well, let's talk about that for a minute, because I don't want to do short shrift to what you do.
Marc:I mean, character acting is a very specific skill.
Marc:It's a noble job.
Marc:And certainly you work more than any other type of actor if you get into the rotation which you have.
Marc:But like coming up, were you like, you know, I really want to be Ned Beatty.
Marc:I really want to be the guy that's just third one down, but in every fucking movie.
Marc:I mean, how does that evolve and how do you see your place in show business?
Guest:No, well, it was the other way around.
Guest:I mean, you're looking at it now from the top down of knowing how absolutely screwed up this business is and how horrible and how it could twist you.
Guest:On the other side, looking up, I mean, the reason I wanted to get into show business because I thought it would give me...
Guest:Close proximity to monsters.
Guest:I loved monsters.
Guest:I loved like Godzilla, Wolfman, Frankenstein.
Guest:I thought they were all real.
Guest:And I thought that if I was an actor, I would be able to hang out with Godzilla and he would teach me how to breathe fire.
Guest:How old were you when you were 12?
Guest:That was when I was 22.
Guest:I think, you know, I was five, six, that kind of thing.
Guest:That's when the bug got me is that I thought if I was an actor, I was going to have great adventures and do something as opposed to the opposite, which is true, which is you sit in a trailer and do absolutely nothing.
Guest:And then someone else does it in front of a green screen.
Marc:Don't even get to see the monsters.
Guest:No.
Guest:I think, you know, ooh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just triggered a memory.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:This was the memory.
Guest:The memory was I was in graduate school.
Guest:And you know how it is.
Guest:It's like on Little League teams, they always had the good players play pitcher.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and then the good hitters were pitchers.
Guest:And then you get older and suddenly the pitchers can't hit at all.
Guest:So when you're in college, like some of the more versatile actors, like I was versatile, always played the old men.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I was playing like an 80-year-old man in this play.
Guest:And I was spraying my hair with streaks and tips perfectly.
Guest:You know, as opposed to wearing gray wigs so I wouldn't look like a huge transvestite.
Guest:And the last day of the show, I went back to my little apartment and I washed my hair.
Guest:And as I'm washing my hair, huge clumps of hair started coming out of my hand.
Guest:And I mean...
Guest:gigantic clumps like I was around radiation or something.
Guest:And I don't remember if I cried, but I felt like I cried for a month.
Guest:I felt like it was the end of all my dreams.
Guest:This is the end of me being a star in show business.
Guest:This is it.
Guest:From that moment on, in the shower that afternoon, I could look and I could see I was going to be one of those guys that looked like I was balding.
Guest:And I was devastated.
Guest:And devastated, I didn't know what I would do.
Guest:And I think I was in a kind of denial really for months.
Guest:And I didn't see a woman after that that didn't did that little look up to the hairline and go, oh, okay, bad DNA.
Guest:Okay, we'll move on.
Guest:And I didn't go to a casting director where they smiled at me and then the little eyes going up saying, okay, maybe a professor or teacher down the line.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And it just happened that I didn't quit.
Guest:I guess I didn't quit.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:I just took what came my way.
Guest:And as you said, ended up kind of in the rotation where people like me for what I was doing anyway.
Marc:But isn't that an important moment to like?
Marc:I think that lesser people could have buckled under that.
Marc:And that I would assume at that moment, because of your commitment to the craft, there's there's a there's an like you have to accept your limitations in that moment.
Marc:I mean, you could get plugs, you could get a wig, you could get whatever, but you loved acting.
Marc:So you have to say, well, there's plenty of roles, right?
Marc:I mean, how long did it take you to realize that?
Guest:Oh, it was pretty quick.
Guest:It was pretty quick that once I started working, I realized, oh.
Guest:This is great because also when you lose your hair, for all you actors out there who are losing your hair, don't despair because the thing is you tend to age less.
Guest:I mean, when you lose your hair early, you tend to look the same for a long period of time.
Guest:So it worked out really well for me.
Guest:But boy, boy, that was a rough day in the University of Illinois when I lost that hair.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a dark day for everyone.
Marc:Dark day.
Guest:Dark day.
Marc:So you like outside of the appearance at the synagogue that there was something inside of you that was compelled to being on stage.
Marc:So when did that how did that start to manifest itself?
Guest:I think I started by doing little plays in the park when I was a kid.
Guest:You know, those little dopey plays.
Guest:And then in one play when I was 13, the first first place.
Guest:the finalists got to perform at the Dallas Theater Center for real critics.
Guest:And so I did The Ghost of Hoot and Holler.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:I didn't see that on the NDB page.
Guest:No, no, yeah.
Guest:Our director was a devout Baptist artist.
Guest:Miss Babb and she felt the ghost of hoot and holler was too much of a hooligan kind of a title.
Guest:So she changed the name of the work to the ghost of pumpkin holler, which she felt was far more acceptable.
Guest:And so I performed the role of like Otis or I forget the name of the guy.
Guest:But I remember reading my first review in the Dallas Morning News.
Guest:It was the role of Otis performed by Stephen Toblosky.
Guest:This was full of pork.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:And I know I went to my mom and I said, I know this has to be something good because I was really great as Otis.
Guest:And she says, honey, that means you're a ham.
Guest:It means it means that you overact.
Guest:Oh, no.
Marc:Did you swoon?
Marc:Did you put your head on?
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:First bad review.
Guest:Oh, gosh.
Guest:I think at the beginning, the desire to act, it changes.
Guest:You know, it mutates through life.
Guest:I think at the beginning, it was a real desire to be heard, to have my voice.
Guest:And seen.
Guest:And be seen and be heard and then maybe to be famous.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And when I lost my hair, that was gone.
Guest:And then there was the desire to act.
Guest:And at that point.
Guest:Have hair.
Guest:Have hair.
Guest:And, you know, I did a lot of plays at that point.
Guest:I thought, OK, yes.
Guest:And I guess at that point in my life, what you were saying, the craft of acting was really important because it was great to really work on huge, difficult plays.
Guest:Great plays.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Wild Duck by Ibsen.
Guest:So you did the real shit.
Marc:I mean, I did the real, real stage acting.
Guest:Real stage.
Marc:And a lot of people that act in movies now don't have those chops at all.
Guest:Not at all.
Marc:And I think that as a character actor to have those chops in place and to not be fueled by, you know, that same vanity that you feel initially, which is I mean, I want to be seen.
Marc:And where's my mommy that, you know, you can walk into any role and apply a certain skill set as opposed to just be yourself and have that be enough.
Guest:I think a thing that helped me a lot, and it's a weird thing to say, was sports, in that I love sports a lot.
Guest:And the thing that helped me as a character actor is that I was a very poor basketball player and a very poor football player, but I knew from sports what it meant to be on a team.
Guest:That sometimes you score, sometimes you play defense, sometimes...
Guest:You know, you throw the ball out of bounds, but but you you have different roles to do.
Marc:And also, I think the most important lesson, and this is something I've been thinking about in sports, is that sometimes you lose.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And that that is part of it.
Marc:Like my biggest regret in life is that I was not taught some sort of reasonable sense of competition.
Marc:Like for me, losing or being rejected, it's life threatening.
Marc:But if you like sports or you played sports, even if you weren't good at it, I think the most important lesson is that losing is not the end.
Guest:I think it was, and I hope I'm not getting this wrong, I believe it was Eugene O'Neill who said, I hope always to have the courage to push on to greater failures.
Guest:And I think it is important to understand that failure is not part of the bad stuff.
Guest:Failure is actually a building block of the good stuff.
Guest:If you have the courage to keep going, but it can break you.
Guest:It can break your heart.
Marc:Do you have moments where you felt that?
Marc:I mean, like outside of the hair loss.
Marc:I mean, were there moments like where you're like, I'm fucked.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like early on, early on, I had one of the worst.
Guest:I mean, even to this day, I shudder when it was a terrible experience.
Guest:I was in college and.
Guest:I was a sophomore in college, and I had auditioned.
Guest:My advisor said there were new professors in the school, and it would be good to have an audition just to show them what you did.
Guest:So I decided I would do Orlando from As You Like, but I would do it specially.
Guest:I would do it as a striptease.
Guest:And I wrote High Hob, who was the head of the thing on my butt, and end up mooning the faculty with High Hob on my butt.
Guest:I thought this would be really clever.
Marc:Memorable.
Guest:Memorable.
Guest:Well, the...
Guest:Everyone was in the aisle.
Guest:I mean, the faculty loved it.
Guest:But one teacher, one teacher who was there who was going to be my acting teacher apparently took offense.
Guest:And I didn't know this.
Guest:And when I started taking her class, I did a scene and I got my first F on a paper.
Guest:And I know this all sounds kind of little and trivial and school stuff, but it began to grow.
Guest:And later in the school year, she came back to me and told me, like, you know, I really, really love the work you've been doing in class.
Guest:I'd like you to do a special scene as a major production.
Guest:I'm going to do all the best scenes for my class as a major production for the public.
Guest:Could you be in it?
Guest:I go, absolutely, absolutely.
Guest:And she said to do, I really want to rehearse with you on Thursday.
Guest:And I said, well, I can't do it on Thursday because that's when I have to do scene shop.
Guest:And she says, I'll get you a note.
Guest:I'll get you out of scene shop.
Guest:No problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I showed up for rehearsal.
Guest:Everything went great.
Guest:The next day I hear from the school, why weren't you at scene shot, man?
Guest:I said, well, I didn't have to because my teacher, Joan, she wrote a note.
Guest:He says, there was no fucking note.
Guest:There was no nothing.
Guest:You got an unsatisfactory critique.
Guest:One more and you're out of school.
Guest:You're out of school.
Guest:You're done.
Guest:You're finished.
Guest:And and.
Guest:The next stage of terror came at the end of that school year where they put up the list of students that were unable to continue in acting at SMU in the acting program.
Guest:My name was not on the list.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I went and I asked my faculty advisor what happened.
Guest:He said, I'm sorry, man, you were blackballed.
Guest:You're not allowed to take any more acting classes.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:He says, you could change your major.
Guest:You could go into business.
Guest:You could still audition for the shows.
Guest:And I thought at that point, I was kind of done.
Guest:And I went back and went and signed up for all of the acting classes for the next year.
Guest:Anyway, no one would teach me.
Guest:They wouldn't give me scenes.
Guest:How the fuck did that happen?
Guest:They wouldn't give me tests.
Guest:They wouldn't grade my papers.
Guest:I would raise my hand.
Guest:No one would pay attention to me.
Guest:And...
Guest:This went on for a while, and I felt like now I was near the end of my rope.
Guest:I talked to one of the professors there in theater history.
Guest:Everybody hated theater history anyway, so I knew I could count on him.
Guest:And I said, could you do me a favor?
Guest:I said, I'm never going to get out of this school.
Guest:Could I take the graduate exam now?
Guest:Just don't tell anybody.
Guest:Don't because I was a good student.
Guest:I said, don't tell anybody to get into the graduate school.
Guest:Just know to graduate from college.
Marc:Oh, God.
Guest:Because they're going to screw with me.
Guest:So I took the test secretly and I said, just keep it in an envelope in your room, in your desk.
Guest:Don't let anybody know about this.
Guest:I did it one Saturday afternoon.
Guest:Nobody knew about it.
Guest:Then I found out this woman came back and gave me a second unsatisfactory critique.
Guest:And my my advisor told me, I'm sorry, man, you're not going to be able to graduate.
Guest:You can't get out of this school.
Guest:And I said, but I have enough hours to graduate.
Guest:He says, but you can't take the graduate exam.
Guest:I said, I took it last year.
Guest:He said, that's impossible.
Guest:And I called in the theater history professor, and that saved my ass.
Guest:And this woman, this woman who was my teacher the first time I was on Broadway, she came backstage and stuck her head in the dressing room and said, Stephen,
Guest:You're still no good.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Couldn't believe it.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was when I was 19, 20 years of age and I thought like I was screwed and I felt like I had to keep going to keep going.
Guest:And then, you know, you always have to depend on the kindness of strangers.
Guest:At that one point in time, there was one teacher who was head of the acting program.
Guest:And after no one was teaching me for weeks and weeks and weeks,
Guest:He said, Stephen, get up and do your assignment.
Guest:And of course, at that point, I'd blown everything off.
Guest:And he said, you're unprepared?
Guest:He said, you will never come to this class unprepared again.
Guest:You know, I want you to do two assignments next week, then three, then four.
Guest:And this guy, his name is Jack Clay.
Guest:I will.
Guest:Everybody thought he was punishing me by giving me extra work.
Guest:But Jack Clay was actually performing an amazing act of kindness.
Marc:Jesus.
Marc:Now, did you ever like in now that you've had time to think about it?
Marc:Could you ever isolate what the hell that woman's problem was?
Guest:Last year, I went back to Dallas.
Guest:In a drugstore, I ran into another guy who was a new professor that year.
Guest:And I said, what was it?
Guest:What did I do that made her turned on me?
Guest:And he said, Tobo, think it was the striptease.
Guest:I think that was it, man.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:The striptease, he said, she felt you were disrespecting everything she held sacred.
Guest:She held Stanislavski up on an altar of high art and you pissed all over it and you were out, man.
Marc:So can anyone that teaches arts of any kind be that close minded and that punishing and that personal be allowed to work?
Guest:I don't know, man.
Guest:I find that the universities can be cauldrons.
Guest:Haven't you done anything to get back at her outside of be a success?
Guest:Have you not done anything?
Guest:I told this story today.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You don't want to give her name?
Guest:No, it's okay.
Guest:But, you know, there are times where you fail.
Guest:There are times where you get fired.
Guest:There are times where you're replaced on a show.
Guest:I...
Guest:It's heartbreaking, but you have to keep going.
Marc:But it's now when you like you become I don't think you've become like, you know, you play you seem to be sought after to do a certain thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're aware of that thing.
Marc:What would you describe that thing as?
Guest:In a big sense, on television, they call me in to do parts on TV where they can't quite make it funny.
Guest:And they say, Stephen, can you make this funny?
Guest:Like that's what they did on Seinfeld.
Guest:They said, we have a part of this Tor Eklund faith healer.
Guest:We don't know what to do with it.
Guest:Can you make it funny?
Marc:And when you approach something to be funny, what are your tools in making that happen?
Marc:You play it straight.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Guest:Well, everyone is in a straight world.
Guest:You know, everybody is kind of a hero of their own movie.
Guest:But at that particular time, I was in a movie where I was learning sign language for the deaf.
Guest:So I thought, what if in everything Tor said, he had a symbol that he did with his hands?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So there was this whole hand thing going on.
Guest:But absolutely, you know, I played it absolutely straight.
Guest:I mean, you don't wink at the camera and say, like, ain't this funny?
Guest:It was a choice with the hands that did it.
Guest:That it was.
Guest:I was in a plane.
Guest:I was playing a faith healer.
Guest:So I was on a spiritual plane that was so high.
Guest:I had to communicate to George and Jerry and Kramer with, like, another form of communication.
Guest:But I had to do it absolutely straight.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:But that was what they would call a choice in the in the racket that you made this very definitive choice to use your hands in a specific way.
Guest:I mentioned it to Jerry.
Guest:I said, you know, I'm going to try to do you.
Guest:You tell me what you think this is.
Guest:And I did it.
Guest:And I did a scene with him with any guys.
Guest:OK, yeah, that kind of works.
Guest:OK, that's fine.
Guest:And.
Guest:In any comedic part, I'll tell you, here's something you will appreciate.
Guest:This is right up your alley because I know you're scholarly bent.
Guest:Sigmund Freud did a series of lectures on comedy in 1905.
Guest:And it was one of the most brilliant pieces of writing on comedy I've ever seen.
Guest:And he put it so simply.
Guest:He said, the essence of comedy is making the meaningful meaningless.
Guest:Or vice versa, making the meaningless meaningful.
Guest:So I'm thinking, meaningless, meaningful.
Guest:That's like Monty Python in the Ministry of Silly Walks.
Guest:And I think of making the meaningful meaningless, that's like of the parts I play.
Guest:Like a lot of times bureaucrats who are spouting a bunch of shit.
Guest:They are making the meaningful meaningless.
Guest:So if you do that for real, you can find some comedy in there somewhere.
Guest:When I listen to you, you get down to essential things.
Guest:And I try to say, like you just said to me, what's the one sentence you could say that describes this?
Guest:If I could describe my part in one sentence, then I feel like I know what I'm doing.
Guest:And that's what I'm about.
Guest:Ned Ryerson in Groundhog's Day was a man who wanted to be liked.
Guest:And he wanted to be liked and he would go to any extent to be liked.
Guest:And if you know that that's what it is and you play that line straight, you know, you will have a direction and you'll be able to go and you'll be able to find what you want.
Guest:So whenever I work on a part, I just try to ask myself, what is...
Guest:What am I about in one sentence without getting talky about it?
Guest:What's one sentence?
Guest:And then from there, you know, you could say, OK, now where's the meaning and where is where's the joke in terms of making it meaningless?
Guest:Yeah, that happens.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:And you do this because like a lot of times you play comedy, but you can be pretty fucking evil, too.
Guest:Yeah, well, yeah, that's a matter of priorities.
Guest:You know, people who are evil are just a matter of people who have different priorities.
Guest:And again, that has to be played straight, too.
Guest:I hate it when the people kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Guest:At their evilness?
Guest:Yeah, at their evilness, which is absolutely horrific.
Guest:I remember, oh, God.
Guest:I just did a story on the Tobolowsky Files, the podcast kind of thing I do.
Guest:I just did a story of when I was playing a bad guy in Bird on a Wire with Mel Gibson.
Guest:And we were kind of doing a scene where Mel was in another room on the telephone.
Guest:We were having a phone conversation.
Guest:And I had one of those little earwigs in my ear or so.
Guest:This was so I could hear his end of the conversation through the microphone.
Guest:And John Battam, who was our director, wanted me.
Guest:He said, Stephen, you know, it would be nice if you kind of twirled your mustache a little bit in this phone call with Mel.
Guest:Now, I was playing Mel's best friend on the FBI.
Guest:I was here on the FBI.
Guest:I was there to save him, and I turned out to be a snake and betray him.
Guest:He says, you know, if you kind of just wink a little bit, a little nudge, twirl the mustache, I'm thinking like...
Guest:In my head, I'm thinking like, this is bad.
Guest:This is like this.
Marc:He didn't mean it literally, but he meant it in attitude.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and kind of like.
Marc:And that would make it a comedic role.
Guest:Kind of arch and evil.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I said, but John, you know, when people are are evil and arch, they don't do that.
Guest:What they do is they really try to get your trust.
Guest:I'm trying to be Mel's friend.
Guest:And so we did several takes and John tried several methods to get me to.
Guest:He tried.
Guest:getting angry with me he tried joking with me he tried appealing to my enormous ego saying oh come on you could be a ham you could be a pork yeah go ahead twirl the mustard come on just give me one take you know about that first review yeah no the pork has haunted you and and he came back and he looked in in in my little room where we were filming and he said you know the last take looked pretty good
Guest:you know i just want to try one more but i got to go give mel some notes he's messing some stuff up just hang in there tight but he forgot one thing he forgot that my microphone was on in my ear and so i'm sitting there getting ready to do the scene feeling like that's good he got a good take i'm so happy i pleased him i'm so happy he heard my point of view and i heard footsteps coming into mel's room yeah and then on the mel's mic
Guest:Mel's going like, hey, John, what's up?
Guest:And John goes like, oh, it's shit.
Guest:This is the worst actor I've ever worked with.
Guest:This guy's like a black woman.
Guest:I'm going to have to fire his ass after this.
Guest:You know, I don't know, man.
Guest:It's like pulling teeth up there.
Guest:This guy's horrible.
Guest:Worst actor I've ever worked with.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:You know, look, I'm going to try one more take before we fire his ass.
Guest:But, you know, we haven't wasted a lot of time on him.
Guest:We'll just bring somebody else in.
Guest:So listen, if you could just ad lib, if you could just do something to kind of spruce things up a little bit, because I got nothing on this guy.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:And what Mel say?
Guest:He goes, sure, John, whatever, whatever.
Guest:So I hear the footsteps coming back down the hall.
Guest:Now, at this point, I am trying to not vomit in my chair.
Guest:I am about to pass out.
Guest:I am feeling like I'm going to drop dead right here.
Guest:And John sticks his head into the room, goes, great.
Guest:And gives me a big smile, thumbs up.
Guest:He goes like, man, one more try.
Guest:Okay, one more.
Guest:Let's have fun this time.
Guest:And I'm going like, my stomach is turning.
Guest:I go like, just give in.
Guest:Just give in.
Guest:Just give in.
Guest:Man, just give them what you want.
Guest:Twirl the fucking mustache.
Guest:Don't worry about it.
Guest:Just twirl the mustache.
Guest:And then my other part of my brain said, it doesn't matter, Stephen, if you twirl your fucking mustache because they can fire your ass anyway.
Guest:And you will know that you gave in and you will know that you always did a terrible job and you folded like a deck chair.
Guest:It ain't going to matter anyway.
Guest:So I hear them say, action.
Guest:And I go, action.
Guest:then mel on the other end of the phone starts improvising i mean with the capital i as in insane and he starts sounding like you a cunt he did i mean he is going he is sounding like on those tapes he is going like absolutely and in fact mel is the one who saved me because he was so crazy on the phone call i had to be even more calm
Guest:I had to be even more his friend.
Guest:I had to be even sweeter to him and even more impassioned.
Guest:Trust me, I'm you.
Guest:I'm you.
Guest:I'm here for you, Mel.
Guest:I'm here.
Guest:Settle down.
Guest:I'm here.
Guest:And I calmed him down, and I hung up the phone, and then I'm supposed to turn to the bad guys and say, he's at this location.
Guest:And it dawned on me, it's interesting, that in real life, John used the very...
Guest:technique, ideology, philosophy that I was saying guys do.
Guest:He wanted to engage my trust.
Guest:He wanted me to be my friend.
Guest:He didn't want to look in that room and give me a thumbs up and twirl the mustache, you know, of what he had said to Mel.
Guest:He wanted to be straight.
Guest:So I think it was kind of interesting
Guest:also you know i think it did kind of work in the film but uh so he was playing exactly the part that you played and he didn't even and he didn't even with the thumbs up yes you can trust me and he you were happy with that take oh yeah very happy because it all happened naturally you didn't have to toy your mustache because of the situation because mel mel was so over the top did you thank him for that
Guest:Or was there any interaction?
Guest:Oh, there was.
Guest:But it was also a very incredible period of time with me because Annie, my wife, was pregnant with our first child.
Guest:And so Mel and I had many conversations about the birth of children and children and the preciousness of children.
Guest:He's got like 12, doesn't he?
Guest:Like tons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was always saying, Stephen.
Guest:You know, birth of my last child, I played the piano when he was born and waltzed with him across the floor.
Guest:You know, that's what you want to do.
Guest:I wanted to show him that I was bringing him into a world that was beautiful.
Guest:A beautiful place.
Guest:A place filled with music and love.
Marc:Hold on, I've got to take a phone call.
Marc:You fucking cunt!
Marc:I'm not going to fucking put up with you!
Marc:You ruined my life!
Marc:You cunt!
Marc:Anyway, Stephen.
Marc:Yeah!
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, but it's interesting because when somebody goes through what he went through and when you have a personal experience with him, I mean, there's obviously two sides to people.
Marc:There's a heart to people and then there's their insanity.
Guest:And who knows?
Guest:Right.
Marc:And who knows what goes on in people?
Marc:But you found him to be encouraging and decent?
Guest:It's, oh, incredibly...
Guest:decent, incredibly giving as an actor, incredibly sweet, which is something also that Jodie Foster said about him just working, which is also something his ex-wife said about him.
Guest:But people are so complex, you know, I don't even go there.
Guest:Alcohol and anger doesn't help anybody.
Marc:No.
Marc:No!
Marc:And, you know, the combination of the two is just a bad mix all around.
Guest:Very bad.
Guest:Very bad.
Ugh.
Marc:I want to talk a little bit about, because I don't usually do a lot of research, but I did do some research because I know you have your podcast, which is called The Tabalowski Files.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I know that you are quite the raconteur, obviously.
Marc:We've had some great stories here.
Marc:But I didn't realize that you have an interesting bit of, it's not bad luck, but it seems like you've been in more than one life-threatening situation.
Marc:Right.
Marc:For a guy who's just a character actor, it seems like you have sort of like a magnetism towards almost tragedy or tragedy that has changed your life a bit.
Guest:But I look at it kind of a different way, too, is that I've also had a propensity for getting close to the miracles.
Marc:I love that word, by the way.
Marc:Not enough people use that.
Marc:Propensity is my favorite word.
Guest:Propensity is a good word.
Guest:In fact, let me move my... Okay, I've readjusted my propensity now.
Guest:Close to the miracle of what?
Guest:Yeah, it's like on the other side of on the other side of death is miracle, too.
Guest:It's there was a period of time for a couple of years I was doing the TV show Heroes.
Guest:Talk about not knowing what the fuck you're doing for an entire year.
Guest:I mean, I had no idea what I was even saying, what those lines were, what the plot was.
Guest:No one would tell me.
Guest:But.
Guest:I was slowly losing my voice.
Guest:And I didn't know how or why it was scaring me because I'm an actor.
Guest:I didn't know what it was.
Guest:Eventually, it got to the point where I couldn't talk.
Marc:And it wasn't like a viral thing?
Guest:No.
Guest:It was... I went to the...
Guest:head of cedar sinai like head and neck and everything and he said well you have a growth on your vocal cord and that was enough to make me piss my pants and i was terrified i went to see my brother in dallas who's a doctor he sent me to a friend of his and said you need surgery yesterday why have you not had surgery so he sent me to a friend of his from john hopkins and i i had surgery i couldn't speak for like two months
Guest:I couldn't speak.
Guest:I couldn't sneeze.
Guest:I couldn't whisper.
Guest:I had to write.
Guest:And when I was pissed off, I had to write in like red ink.
Guest:I had like no options but to just write.
Guest:And when I was recovering from this, I remember I was getting these dull headaches at the same time.
Guest:So with the fact that I couldn't speak, I couldn't work, I had dull headaches.
Guest:I naturally thought I had a brain tumor.
Marc:Sure, it was all going to hell.
Guest:Yeah, so the doctor sent me to a head and neck specialist.
Guest:And the head and neck specialist did x-rays of me, a whole CAT scan of me, and told me, well, you have advanced arthritis of the neck so bad that your spine of your neck is 180 degrees curved the absolutely wrong way.
Guest:Jesus.
Guest:You have ossification of the vertebra.
Guest:And I'm going home thinking, not only can I not talk...
Guest:But now I'm like, I'm crippled.
Guest:I've always been a healthy guy.
Guest:Why do I have this ossification of the neck?
Guest:Well, to recover from the throat surgery, I was told to go to two places, to go places where I could be quiet.
Guest:So I thought I would go fishing, which is quite, but that's a bad idea.
Guest:Because when you catch a fish, you kind of go, oh, shit!
Guest:You scream.
Guest:And the other place was to go horseback riding in Iceland.
Marc:which I've been to before.
Marc:Sure, that's a common thing that people do when they're stressed out.
Marc:I've heard that horseback riding in Iceland is at the top of everyone's list.
Guest:You know, the flight to Iceland is cheaper than the flight to Dallas, Texas.
Guest:That's because no one wants to go there, Stephen.
Guest:Oh, it's beautiful.
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:I'd love to go there.
Guest:It's like Middle Earth, and everybody speaks English, and everybody's beautiful, and there are no fences, and you get on that horse and ride.
Guest:And my wife and I, we were riding to an active volcano very close to the one that exploded
Marc:Also, another non-stressful thing to do to ride a horse directly into an active volcano in Iceland.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's all making sense, Stephen.
Guest:So the last day of the trek, I get up on the ridge of the volcano and a wind comes and lifts me and the horse off the ground.
Guest:You were in Middle Earth.
Guest:Yeah, and threw us.
Guest:And I landed on a lava flow.
Guest:A hot one?
Guest:No, a hard one.
Guest:And the head of the riding group ran over, and I was getting back on my horse, and he said, are you okay after the fall?
Guest:And I said, what fall?
Guest:And he said, get off the horse.
Guest:And so they drove me over to a little town, Hitler.
Guest:in iceland and the woman said you know i'm putting you in a neck brace we're sending you to reykjavik to be cat scanned the cat scammed me there had a broken neck the guy said yeah you've you fractured a vertebra it's an annie my wife said well does that mean we go home now or does that mean we have to stay here for another three months and he said well if you just are cool about it
Guest:Don't do anything.
Guest:It shouldn't be a problem.
Guest:So they put me in one of those soft collars like people get when they have whiplash.
Marc:And they want to make money off a doctor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In court.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So I'm getting on the plane going back from Iceland to New York.
Guest:And there's a guy there who happened to be.
Guest:a surgeon from Sinai Hospital, New York.
Guest:And he loved me from Deadwood.
Guest:And he said, man, have you found out a way to get onto the plane without waiting with the collar?
Guest:And I said, well, actually, I just broke my neck here.
Guest:And this guy turned pale.
Guest:And he said...
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:And I said, no, sir.
Guest:He said, well, you are in the wrong collar.
Guest:You could die on this flight.
Guest:You have to be in a hard collar.
Guest:This ain't going to keep your neck stable.
Guest:You have to hold your neck the entire time you're on the flight.
Guest:Don't pick up a bag.
Guest:Don't move.
Guest:Don't do anything.
Guest:He said, do you have a head and neck specialist?
Guest:Voila.
Guest:I happen to have a head and neck specialist.
Guest:The other side of miracle with my throat was, who in the world has a head and neck specialist?
Guest:I had one who just did a whole series of x-rays of me like three weeks ago.
Guest:I said, yes, I have a head and neck specialist in Los Angeles.
Guest:He says, you go to that head and neck specialist immediately.
Guest:I went back to New York holding my neck the entire way.
Guest:I went from New York to L.A.
Guest:holding my neck the entire way.
Guest:I go to my head and neck specialist and he does a whole nother series of x-rays.
Guest:He turns pale.
Guest:And he said they misdiagnosed you in Iceland.
Guest:He said you didn't have a broken vertebra.
Guest:You have broken five vertebrae.
Guest:From C2 to C7.
Guest:Were you in extreme pain?
Guest:Well, no, I couldn't do it.
Guest:Oh, I'll tell you about the broken neck in a second.
Guest:I'll tell you what that world is like.
Guest:He said, let me do what you have a fatal injury.
Guest:Your C4 vertebra is crushed.
Guest:The same as Superman.
Guest:He says, you have a fatal injury.
Guest:I want to show you why you're alive.
Guest:And he took me over to his little thing where his computer where he had the picture of the x-rays.
Guest:And there on the x-rays, he said, do you see your neck?
Guest:Because of the arthritis in your neck, because the curve of your neck was 180 degrees different than it should have been, it made the force of the blow go into your shoulders instead of into your spinal cord.
Guest:Because your vertebrae were ossified, it protected your spinal column.
Guest:You are alive because of your malady.
Guest:And I saw the other side of miracle in this.
Guest:Now, when you have a broken neck,
Guest:Now, a lot of people out there don't know this.
Guest:You have to remain vertical for three months.
Guest:I mean vertical.
Guest:You cannot lie down.
Guest:You have to lie.
Guest:When you go to bed, you have to sleep vertically.
Guest:You have to lean up against the wall like you're in a bus stop.
Guest:With the neck brace on.
Guest:Oh, the neck brace can never come off.
Guest:I made the mistake once of taking the brace off, thinking like, well, I can lie down.
Guest:And the world went away.
Guest:My vision went dark.
Guest:I suddenly couldn't breathe.
Guest:I couldn't move.
Guest:Fortunately, I screamed and I put the brace back on and sat up again.
Guest:But I realized that that was the last time I was ever going to be horizontal for the next three and a half months.
Guest:It was a nightmare.
Guest:But I did get to see the other side of miracle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the good thing.
Guest:It isn't just pain.
Guest:It stops your central organs from functioning.
Guest:It's like your heart stops.
Guest:Your breath stops.
Guest:And if one of those vertebrae, as they're healing, slips, yeah, you're in like blinding pain.
Guest:But more than anything, you lose your vision.
Guest:You lose your hearing.
Guest:You lose your ability to breathe.
Guest:You feel your heart stopping.
Guest:So it's...
Guest:Jesus Christ.
Guest:It's making me uncomfortable.
Guest:It's a nightmare of darkness.
Guest:It is a nightmare of darkness.
Marc:And you healed well.
Marc:I healed well, yeah.
Marc:And the other side of miracle for you is, did this make you believe in God?
Marc:Did you have God in your life?
Marc:I mean, or is it something different?
Guest:Well, God is a lot like being a character actor.
Guest:It means different things at different times in your life.
Marc:You know, when I was a kid.
Marc:I think God is a character actor.
Yeah.
Marc:Sometimes he's the evil guy.
Marc:Sometimes he's hilarious.
Marc:Other times he just helps other people.
Guest:After this, I remember I went to services twice a day for a couple of years because I lost my mother, not because of my neck, but it was during this period of time.
Guest:And there is one of the Psalms you read in the morning service that God counts the number of stars in the sky.
Guest:He heals the brokenhearted.
Guest:He knows the secrets of the ocean.
Guest:Oh,
Guest:I asked my doctor, I said, how does this neck brace thing work?
Guest:How do I heal?
Guest:How does this happen?
Guest:And he said, well, the brace holds the broken ends together.
Guest:And after a month, the ends get kind of sticky.
Guest:And then after two months, the stickiness becomes a soft bond.
Guest:And after three months, it becomes a hard bond.
Guest:And then it's solid.
Guest:And I said, no, that ain't my question.
Guest:I get that.
Guest:How does that happen?
Guest:And he said, oh, we don't know.
Guest:And I realized God heals the brokenhearted.
Guest:And that's when I go, oh, I get it.
Guest:The astronomers say they don't know the number of stars in the sky.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:You can't talk about God because.
Guest:Who knows what it is?
Guest:Who knows what the concept is?
Guest:But, you know, I felt it when I had my broken neck and I said, I got it.
Guest:I got it now.
Guest:It's that life force that connects me and you and all of us together that you want the other guy to do better.
Guest:You want the other guy to heal.
Guest:It's that thing, the force of positiveness that moves us forward in the universe.
Guest:I mean, that's the only thing I could say it is.
Guest:But, yeah, the broken neck made me see.
Guest:see the wonders of it all made me see things I never saw before.
Guest:And, you know, so I know people who have cancer and people who have heart disease and people with broken necks, they say it's a blessing.
Guest:But I'll join that long list of people with the same boring kind of thing and say, yeah, it was a blessing.
Guest:The broken neck was a blessing.
Marc:Now, on another note, I mean, what was it like to play guitar with Stevie Ray Vaughan?
Guest:Oh, man, I was.
Guest:Oh, Lord, I was in a very bad.
Guest:I don't know if it's a bad rock group.
Guest:I don't even think there was rock and roll then.
Guest:It was kind of like folk rock.
Guest:You know, we sang like Jesus met the woman.
Marc:The bomb brothers.
Marc:Like I'm like, honestly, when I read this about you, like I'm a huge fan of Jimmy.
Guest:you know stevie you know i can respect but jimmy i i understand and you knew both those guys growing up or well uh the vaughns lived around in the in our neighborhood in our neighborhood and uh they went to you know we went to the same junior high and high school uh when i was in this group called a cast of thousands there are only three of us in this group and we weren't very good but we got picked through the connections of bobby foreman
Guest:who was really musically talented, ended up playing in the New Christy Minstrels, to be one of the five garage bands in Dallas who got an album cut.
Guest:Each group would do two songs.
Guest:So we went into Tempo II Studios, and Bobby said, well, I got this kid, Stevie Vaughan.
Guest:to play lead guitar on our two songs.
Guest:And how old are you now?
Guest:I was 19 and Stevie was 14.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So Stevie comes in and he sits on a metal folding chair.
Guest:Then I think he had a Gibson with the twin humbucking pickups.
Guest:And he said like, so you want to just run through the songs?
Guest:Let me hear it and I'll just lay a lead down.
Guest:And so we ran through the song, and Stevie stopped halfway through.
Guest:He says, oh, I got it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And do you want it to sound like Clapton or Jimi Hendrix?
Guest:And I said to Bobby, who's Jimi Hendrix?
Guest:And he said, shut up.
Guest:So we sang.
Guest:We put down two songs, two ridiculous songs.
Guest:But Stevie is brilliant on both those songs.
Guest:And I remember afterwards...
Guest:We all got one take.
Guest:And then the guys in the booth, they called in their friends and they said, watch this kid.
Guest:And I left the recording area and I went back in the booth and they said in the booth, they said to Stevie, could you just try another one?
Marc:Just because they wanted to watch him.
Guest:And he started to play, and you could see the light in their eyes, and they knew that this was the time in their life when they saw the real thing.
Guest:It could have been the only time in their life when they saw the real thing.
Guest:Now, that was the only time I played with Stevie.
Guest:That was the first recording ever of Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Guest:We did two songs on that album.
Guest:We sold about 12 copies.
Guest:It's on sale now at eBay, or you could write me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Topoloskyfiles.com.
Guest:You have it?
Guest:I do have it.
Guest:The original with the poster even.
Guest:But anyway, later, many years later, what was it?
Guest:Almost 20 years later, I did Great Balls of Fire with Jimmy Vaughn.
Guest:Jimmy played the guitarist in Dennis Quay, Jerry Lee Lewis's band.
Guest:What part did you play in that movie?
Guest:I played Judd Phillips, their manager.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And...
Guest:Trey Wilson, the great Trey Wilson from the Coen Brothers films.
Guest:He played Sam Phillips.
Guest:So I was their manager.
Guest:He was their recordist.
Guest:And Dennis, John Doe was and Mojo Nixon played the drummer.
Marc:What happened to Mojo?
Marc:I love those.
Guest:Well, yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Skid rubber.
Marc:I'm going to dig up Alan.
Guest:And so anyway, that was when Jimmy Vaughn was doing fabulous Thunderbirds.
Guest:So every night, every night after we would shoot, I would go out with Jimmy and we would get loaded and we would go to fabulous Thunderbirds rehearsal.
Guest:And I hung out with the Thunderbirds listening to Jimmy.
Marc:Kim Wilson playing harp.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I don't know the other two guys.
Guest:It was right after they did the Tough Enough album.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're working on the next album.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So anyway, we go over to Kiva Recording Studios.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is where Eric Clapton did Layla.
Guest:And Jimmy and I continue to get loaded all night.
Guest:And we start laying all these tracks down.
Guest:And it's dawn.
Guest:So it's dawn in, what is it, like 89...
Guest:88, 89, something like that.
Guest:And Jimmy and I go out to get a bite to eat at 6 in the morning.
Guest:And we go to this little diner in Memphis, Tennessee.
Guest:And there, sitting in the diner, Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Guest:His brother...
Guest:I run up, I go, Stevie!
Guest:Stevie!
Guest:Hey, Stephen Topoloski, cast of thousands, Kimball High School!
Guest:And Stevie, like, gives me the skunk eye and says, man, we don't do that.
Guest:I said, sorry.
Guest:Anyway, Jimmy and Stevie had had a falling out.
Guest:And they gave each other kind of... They hadn't talked to each other in, like, years.
Guest:And they gave each other, like, a big hug.
Guest:And we sat down, and the three of us had breakfast together.
Guest:And it was at that breakfast.
Guest:That breakfast that Jimmy said to Stevie...
Guest:why too much time man too much time what we got to do an album together can we please do an album together and stevie said you're right too much time let's do an album jimmy said that and stevie they both agreed to do what would become brothers yeah yeah brother and family family affair family what it was called yeah and brothers was one of their big songs on that and
Guest:So from then on, after we would shoot, Jimmy and Stevie would go over to Kiva and would lay down tracks for that album.
Guest:And finally, there was a reuniting of the brothers.
Guest:And afterwards, just as soon as we finished shooting Great Balls of Fire, Stevie got the call from his hero, the guy who he said, what do you want me to play like, Jimi Hendrix or...
Guest:Eric Clapton said Stevie do you want to come play with me at this rock concert up in Minnesota and Stevie said to Jimmy Jimmy will you come play with me with Eric Clapton the two brothers went up played with Eric Clapton coming home
Guest:Stevie Ray jumps on the helicopter.
Guest:Jimmy Vaughn jumps on the helicopter.
Guest:And Jimmy's wife, Connie, Connie Crouch, who lived around the corner from me in Oak Cliff, Dallas, Texas, she jumps on and the helicopter pilot says, "'Ma'am, you can't get on.
Guest:We've got too much weight.
Guest:You'll have to wait for the next copter.'"
Guest:So Connie stepped off of the helicopter and Jimmy Vaughn said, "'Where my wife goes, I will go.'"
Guest:And he jumped off of the helicopter and said,
Guest:And that helicopter never made height.
Guest:It never made it more than like 500 feet before it crashed.
Guest:And that was the end of Stevie.
Guest:And I remember I saw Jimmy not long after that, and he was destroyed.
Guest:And he said that...
Guest:Putting that album together was his act of mourning, and he finished putting those tracks together, and when you listen to that album of Jimmy and Stevie together, you will know that that was Jimmy's act of mourning for his brother, putting that album together.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Do you still talk to him?
Guest:Boy, I haven't seen him in a long time.
Guest:You know, Jimmy, I've worried about him a lot because, you know, he had he lived in like Acapulco.
Guest:He like had a home in Mexico and he said, like, it's really cool.
Guest:And that's where all the murders are happening now.
Guest:It always scared me to death.
Guest:But I would love to see Jimmy again.
Guest:I mean.
Guest:You know, one of the great things about being in a movie where there are a lot of musicians is there were nights where we would sit in the Radisson Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, and Jimmy Vaughn and John Doe would pull out guitars and start playing and singing.
Guest:And I would sit on the bed and just almost with tears in my eyes thinking like...
Guest:Does it get any better than this?
Guest:While they played King of Names or he had Long Chain on.
Guest:It was like awesome being on that show.
Guest:When you're working on a movie where everybody does something, whether it's an occult movie, everybody's going to buy a crystal ball.
Guest:You know, on a rock and roll movie, everybody was getting into music.
Guest:And one of them was the guy who played my brother, Trey Wilson.
Guest:And Trey Wilson was in Raising, Arizona.
Guest:He played the guy whose kid was kidnapped.
Guest:He played the head of the furniture store.
Guest:Is he still alive?
Guest:No.
Guest:Trey always was a songwriter.
Guest:And because Dennis was playing with groups, John Doe was playing, Jimmy was playing, Trey was playing too.
Guest:And in the evenings, Trey was going over to Kiva Recording Studio too, laying down his songs.
Guest:He wrote like over 40 songs in his life.
Guest:And I remember the last scene I had to do in that movie was a phone call with Trey.
Guest:Uh...
Guest:He was on and we shot his end of the phone call in Memphis.
Guest:And then I was going to go with the whole cast and crew to London.
Guest:Hello.
Guest:Nice perk of doing a movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hell yeah.
Guest:To London and shoot my end of the phone call in London at the London airport where I'm talking to.
Marc:This was just to get a phone call.
Guest:Well, no, we had like months of shooting in London, but I was the road manager, so I went with Dennis and everybody went.
Marc:Did Heathrow shoot at Heathrow or what?
Guest:No, some little skanky airport, you know, so we could make it look like period.
Guest:And so anyway, we finished the shoot.
Guest:I did my part of the conversation.
Guest:Trey did his part.
Guest:And then everybody was leaving.
Guest:The movie was done in Memphis.
Guest:I still had...
Guest:a few more days before i went back to la one more load of wash i'm coming down the back stairway and trey is going out the back doorway and he's carrying a big old box and he said well tobo i want to say goodbye uh i said man what's in the box he said these are my songs these are the master tapes man all 40 songs
Guest:You know, I'm doing the Cone Brothers movie next, Miller's Crossing in New Orleans.
Guest:So I'm leaving all these over at Kiva Recording Studio.
Guest:I'm going to drive down.
Guest:I'm going to do a week down in New Orleans.
Guest:Then I'm going to fly up, see my wife for a couple weeks, then come down.
Guest:And then I'm going to mix these on my days off for my wife as a present for her.
Guest:So Trey leaves.
Guest:I go down, do my laundry, finish my shooting in Memphis, go back to L.A.
Guest:Around the beginning of January, I get a phone call from the production office.
Guest:Trey died.
Guest:He had an aneurysm.
Guest:He went down to New Orleans.
Guest:He started shooting the Cone Brothers film.
Guest:And I guess Gabriel Byrne took over that role.
Guest:Yeah, they reshot it.
Guest:And Trey went back to New York.
Guest:He told his wife he had a headache.
Guest:He went and lay down in bed and he never got up again.
Guest:Of course, the people were that were telling me were in tears.
Guest:But we had to go to London.
Guest:We had to go shoot in London.
Guest:And the first thing I had to do up was my scene with Trey.
Guest:So the director, Jim McBride, said, is it going to be too hurtful for you to see the video of Trey?
Guest:And I said, no, I would love to see the video of Trey to do my end of it.
Guest:So they put up Trey on the screen.
Guest:I do my end of it.
Guest:And then after we shot that scene, we went upstairs and had a memorial service for Trey.
Guest:Dennis Quaid, all of a sudden, a big circle in the hotel.
Guest:And we gave our memories of Trey.
Guest:And then
Guest:they made a long-distance phone call to New York, put it on speakerphone to include Trey's wife.
Guest:And so we all, she was in tears on the other end of the phone, and we told her how much we loved her, how much we miss Trey, how we shot the scene with Trey today, and it was so good to see him again.
Guest:And she was on the other phone, she was choking back sobs, and she was saying, the thing I will always regret is that
Guest:We will never have Trey songs.
Guest:You know, Trey was a great songwriter, and he never did a tape of a song.
Guest:And I'm sitting in the circle thinking, mofo!
Guest:She doesn't know.
Guest:She doesn't know.
Guest:And I stand up in the circle and I say, you don't know.
Guest:You don't know.
Guest:I ran into Trey on the way out of the building.
Guest:I was going down to do my laundry in a big box.
Guest:And in the box, he had tapes of every song he ever did.
Guest:They're a Kiva recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee.
Guest:You should go there.
Guest:They will be there.
Guest:I promise they will be there.
Guest:She went to Memphis from New York, and there they were.
Guest:She found all of Trey's songs waiting for Trey to come back and finish them.
Guest:And she called me back in Los Angeles and said, Ah, wait a minute.
Guest:There it was again.
Guest:The little slash between life-threatening and the miracle.
Guest:The other side of miracle was running into Trey before we lost him.
Guest:And she got his songs...
Guest:It was a bit of that miracle.
Guest:That was the other side of the miracle of that story.
Marc:Yeah, that's amazing.
Guest:Yeah, she got him and she said it was the greatest gift she ever got.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:It's interesting that you're able to now frame these moments.
Marc:Because something that could be tragic and full of grief, which it obviously was, has these little addendums.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The addendum.
Guest:The addendum is the whole thing.
Guest:I used to tell these kind of stories all the time, like in my kitchen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's when like Robert Brinkman, this friend of mine who's a director and cinematographer said, we ought to film this.
Guest:And I thought, well, that'll be as interesting as watching paint dry.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Grass grow.
Marc:But you did do a film, right?
Guest:Eventually.
Marc:What was it called?
Guest:The birthday party?
Guest:Stephen Tobolowsky's birthday party.
Guest:And that was the movie that David Chin saw when he asked me.
Guest:to interview for Slash Film.
Guest:And he said, like, in one of the breaks, he said, would you like to continue birthday party and do more true stories from your life that weren't in the movie?
Guest:Which is kind of what I'm telling you now, like these stories.
Guest:And it was stories like the addendum.
Guest:Here's the addendum.
Guest:Example, the addendum.
Guest:You were talking about, you know, if you live long enough, you see the other side of miracle.
Guest:uh when i was in memphis doing great balls of fire is when i found out that annie my wife out there uh was pregnant and i had to tell somebody i had to find somebody to tell and the first person to come in was the maid you know she's knocking on the door and it was like dawn and i said you know it's a big day for me i just found out my girlfriend is pregnant and the old color lady said i pray for you honey
Guest:You know, that didn't cut it.
Guest:I called my mother and father.
Guest:You know, that was going to be the mom, dad.
Guest:Guess what?
Guest:I'm going to make you a grandparent again.
Guest:And mom said, oh, no, Stephen, no.
Guest:Maybe you could get an abortion.
Guest:No, she did not.
Guest:She did.
Guest:So it wasn't exactly the vote of.
Guest:Why would they say that?
Guest:She just thought it was bad news.
Guest:The second child?
Guest:No, it was.
Guest:But I wasn't married to Anne.
Guest:It was like an accident, you know, that we weren't married.
Guest:You know, it was all, you know, oh, no.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So that wasn't it.
Guest:I said, no, no, we are having this child.
Guest:You know, I had been through an abortion before with my first girlfriend.
Guest:I think it was responsible for the end of our relationship.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not going to do this anymore.
Guest:No way, man.
Guest:So I went down and there in the cafeteria was the stuntman of the movie, Dick.
Guest:And I went in and Dick was like eating his eggs and grits.
Guest:And I said, Dick, I got big news, big news today.
Guest:I just talked to my girlfriend.
Guest:She's pregnant.
Guest:I'm going to be a father.
Guest:And Dick just stopped.
Guest:And he looked at me and he said, well, Stephen, you're in it now.
Guest:Let me tell you, pal, when you have a child, your life will never be the same again.
Guest:Ever again.
Guest:And, like, my heart kind of stopped.
Guest:And I said, oh, okay, okay.
Guest:So for years...
Guest:My story was the story of Dick and me telling the maid and calling mom and dad and saying, and we're going to get married.
Guest:We're going to have a child.
Guest:And Dick telling me about once you have a child, you know, and Dick's solemn blessing to me or curse or whatever it was unclear of the tone.
Guest:OK, the addendum.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:14 years later, Ann and I now had two children.
Guest:We're eating sushi in Studio City, California.
Guest:Suddenly, I feel a pat on my shoulder and I turn around.
Guest:It's Dick.
Guest:Yeah, it's Dick.
Guest:And I stand up and he says, hey, buddy.
Guest:And he starts punching me in the stomach.
Guest:And I hate it when guys do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hey, how are you doing?
Guest:I hate it.
Guest:I hate it.
Guest:I hate it.
Guest:And he says, you know, we ought to play golf sometime.
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:And then I look up at him and he has these huge tears coming down his face.
Guest:And I said, Dick, are you all right?
Guest:And he said, I just lost my firstborn.
Guest:She died of an asthma attack.
Guest:She couldn't get to the doctor in time.
Guest:I had to tell someone.
Guest:And I'm walking down the sidewalk, and I'm looking in this restaurant, and I see you and your wife sitting in here eating.
Guest:And I knew you would understand.
Guest:Let me tell you, Stephen, when you have lost a child, your life will never be the same again.
Guest:Ever.
Guest:Again.
Guest:And the addendum never would have happened.
Guest:You know, a story isn't an event.
Guest:You know, an event is something that happens, but a story has a beginning, middle, and an end.
Guest:And you don't know what's going to happen until something else happens.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And that was the addendum, you know.
Guest:I will never forget Dick.
Guest:Great.
Guest:And that totally changed his life.
Guest:I mean, Dick was, you know, like all those stuntmen, a complete hell raiser.
Guest:When he lost his child, you know, Dick, Dick, like completely straightened up.
Guest:You know, his life became dedicated to kids with asthma.
Guest:I mean, I mean, this guy became like, you know, St.
Guest:Augustine.
Marc:You know, it was amazing.
Marc:So that would be the other side of the miracle on that one.
Guest:Other side of the miracle.
Marc:Wow, Steven.
Marc:The story continues.
Marc:But you've really given me a different framework.
Marc:Because I've always been that kind of person, even when I do material, that something is never finished.
Marc:And there's never any reason to close any doors because you really don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:And if you can open your heart enough...
Marc:to allow things to happen as opposed to fight them.
Marc:You know, that's, I think, what makes life interesting, exciting, and, you know, also part of that community bond that you talked about that could be spiritual.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I agree.
Guest:It ain't over, man.
Marc:Yeah, I really—well, this interview is.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:For now.
Marc:I do.
Marc:I guess one other thing is that what do you what do you do?
Marc:Because you seem to have some sort of several new leases on life.
Marc:I mean, how do you spend your time that you sort of embrace that as hobbies and whatnot?
Guest:Well, I keep writing for the podcast, you know, Tobolowsky Files.
Guest:I'm like writing nonstop and Simon and Schuster.
Guest:You know, they said, like, can you do a book of this?
Guest:So I said, yeah.
Guest:So I'm writing that book.
Guest:I'm trying to work my way out of acting.
Guest:You know, I still am playing parts without a name.
Guest:I just finished playing judge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm the defenders.
Guest:But hey, I love it.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, I did a season of Californication where I actually got to play a romantic kind of part and I have some simulated sex scenes.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:That starts January 9th.
Marc:Simulated sex is tremendous.
Marc:Everyone in America is having simulated sex.
Guest:Some way or another.
Guest:But, you know, I do that and I don't know, you know, I find that my life is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.
Guest:You know, I spend, instead of like branching out and meeting, meeting more people.
Guest:I mean, I love meeting you because...
Guest:You know, I've enjoyed you for years and years and years.
Guest:And again, if you're around long enough, you get to meet the people that you've enjoyed.
Guest:And so I just love acting.
Guest:I love writing.
Guest:I love my wife and kids.
Guest:And I spent too many years away from them working out of town, which is why Annie is here today.
Guest:You know, just I spent too much time away from them.
Marc:I hope she's not going crazy in my living room.
Guest:Oh, she's probably eating a little bit of that taco.
Yeah.
Marc:Well thanks for coming Steven.
Marc:Thank you man.
Marc:Great talking to you.
Yeah.
Marc:What an interesting guy.
Marc:I really like talking to him.
Marc:Sweet guy.
Marc:Great storyteller.
Marc:Very compelling.
Marc:Great actor.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:Look, before I go here, I just want to send you all to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get yourself on the mailing list.
Marc:Kick in a few shekels if you want.
Marc:Get one of the packages.
Marc:I'll send you some shit.
Marc:Go to JustCoffee.coop or get that at WTFPod.com.
Marc:You can go to the WTFPodShop.com and get those premium episodes.
Marc:Oh, yeah, the apps.
Marc:Apps are fun.
Marc:WTF app for iPod, iPad.
Marc:iPhone, Droid.
Marc:And we'll be getting you those older episodes for people that don't have those things very shortly.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Is that it?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Another thing Ryan Singer said to me when I took a break before I did the interview there.
Marc:To finish his theme, as he says every day before he goes to bed, he says, tomorrow's going to be the best day ever.
Marc:And I just saw him and I said, how's today going?
Marc:He goes, best day ever.
Marc:And then I said, why?
Marc:He goes, because it's the one we're living.
Marc:And I believe that.
Marc:I'll let him have that and I'll let you guys have that.
Marc:Thanks for listening.
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