Episode 1583 - Al Pacino
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it how are you everything all right today's an exciting day because today i talked to al pacino
Marc:I read his whole book.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:I don't usually do that because sometimes when you read the whole book, and I've talked about this before, then you just lead them down whatever is in the book.
Marc:You have to struggle for some organic exchange.
Marc:But me and Al did all right.
Marc:He hung out like well over an hour.
Marc:He was surprised when he left, it was dark out.
Marc:It's very interesting to have Al Pacino in your house.
Marc:These are the moments that I cherish.
Marc:I have Al Pacino in my house.
Marc:I'm just having a day.
Marc:And then Al Pacino comes wearing his long black coat with his black matching things.
Marc:And it's just a little Al Pacino right on my porch saying things like, you know, how you doing, baby?
Marc:So he said, he said, hey, hey, kitty.
Marc:Said that to my cat.
Marc:He said, how you doing, baby?
Marc:When Kit showed up, because we went late and we got out there.
Marc:He had an assistant with him.
Marc:And when we went in, it was light and the assistant was just hanging out on the porch.
Marc:And when we got out, it was dark.
Marc:So this guy's just sitting in the dark.
Marc:Kit's wandering around with her little miniature bull terrier in the dark.
Marc:And me and I walk out into this weird dark landscape.
Marc:And I'm like, hold on, let me get my phone light on now.
Marc:But it was kind of an amazing thing to talk to a guy that's sort of been in your brain for your entire life.
Marc:For your entire life, Al Pacino's been in my brain.
Marc:So that's happening.
Marc:I got a couple of dates.
Marc:I'll be a dynasty typewriter in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 26th.
Marc:And then, you know, I pick up the big tour scheduled for next year.
Marc:You can go to WTF pod dot com slash tour to see all of them, all the dates.
Marc:I'll probably come in kind of close to you.
Marc:And then who knows what kind of world we'll be living in.
Marc:I still I cannot fathom on a day to day basis just the intensity of.
Marc:the divisiveness and the kind of close race that is at hand.
Marc:I can't fathom it because I don't understand.
Marc:I think I'm relatively empathetic.
Marc:There was a time where I really thought the best of everybody, that people were innately at least human.
Marc:But I really can't fathom in my brain at this point how people can fully support
Marc:or deny the reality in light of their own beliefs of what another Trump presidency would mean to this country.
Marc:I just I just can't really fathom it.
Marc:So a lot of things have been adjusted.
Marc:I don't believe that people are innately good.
Marc:I lack empathy for people who have, you know, either voluntarily or involuntarily surrendered their brains to bullshit.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I get that there's a lot of information out there and somehow or another it's all become untethered from any barometer of truth or at least journalistic truth.
Marc:So everyone's just kind of kind of just lost in their phones, being held hostage by their algorithms and allowing their brains to be completely turned into fucking reactive garbage.
Marc:I don't know if there's any getting around that.
Marc:But not unlike when you have a family member with incurable alcoholism or mental illness, no matter how hard you try to help out or no matter how hard you believe, at some point you've got to cut them loose.
Marc:And there is a sort of vibe or a feeling within me that, you know, we've got to cut about half the country loose.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:I don't really know why.
Marc:It can't be about principles.
Marc:It can't be about policy.
Marc:It can't be about the true belief that this will be a better place.
Marc:I just think some switch has gone off in the minds of much of humanity.
Marc:To just fuck it.
Marc:Just, you know, a nihilistic kind of like burn it all down kind of switch to what?
Marc:Vindicate their own fucking feelings of PTSD related anger or entitlement or just the fury of fear.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I can't figure it out anymore.
Marc:Maybe I'm in the wrong position to judge.
Marc:Maybe I've never really been in the fray in terms of the real world.
Marc:But I guess I'm scared, but I'm certainly nervous.
Marc:But the energy it takes to kind of like push that back and kind of live in the day and be like, I've got no control over what happens.
Marc:So I might as well stay in the day.
Marc:And I guess I can do that.
Marc:I do do it.
Marc:But there's still all the input that's going on in my brain.
Marc:But I guess that's part of like not being in the day.
Marc:Got to be in the present.
Marc:Yeah, but the present is fucked up.
Marc:So what happens in that situation?
Marc:Oh, my God, I'm deep in it.
Marc:Getting up, working 12, 13 hour days, shooting this movie.
Marc:I cannot believe it's only been two days.
Marc:I've been on set for two days, and it feels like months.
Marc:Maybe it's just because I went from the Vancouver thing to this.
Marc:But, you know, I'm trying to keep a good zone here because I'm the lead of the movie.
Marc:I'm trying not to beat the shit out of myself and be too judgmental, trust the director, enjoy working with the other actors.
Marc:I will share with you some of the other actors that are going to be
Marc:in the movie as soon as the announcement is ready to go, and I'm already wiped out in a way.
Marc:As you know, I've been engaging in small tasks, but now that I'm doing the movie, it's like, oof, I've got no time.
Marc:Just, you know, you get up, you go, you come home, you cram the lines, you get up, cram lines, go, and
Marc:No fitness.
Marc:I'm going to lose it.
Marc:I'm going to fucking lose it.
Marc:When am I going to find time?
Marc:How am I going to get my dopamine adjusted?
Marc:But here's something I did.
Marc:I'll share my minor heroics with you.
Marc:I can't share any sort of like, yeah, like I...
Marc:Ran this many miles.
Marc:I met the personal challenge.
Marc:I did it.
Marc:I'm not one of those guys, I guess, that talks about, like, I'm running a 10K.
Marc:I'm running a 20K.
Marc:I'm doing a thing.
Marc:I'm doing the mountains.
Marc:I've put up my, you know, let's all do this together.
Marc:Let's all work out together.
Marc:Let me be an inspiration for your workout routine and your diet.
Marc:Maybe I should shift the show to that.
Marc:Let me be an inspiration to you as spiritually, physically, and psychologically with my incredible regimen of food and exercise.
Marc:nope here's what i did kit's got this old car you know she keeps it in pretty good shape but both sun visors were trashed i don't even know how that happens all right it's a it's an older car but i mean they were both trashed one of them was dangling and she's just adjusting to it moving it to the side and i'm like jesus fuck
Marc:Got to get that fixed.
Marc:And then I'm like, hey, this is the new world, dude.
Marc:Anyone can fix anything.
Marc:All you got to do is look it up online, order the part, watch how you put it in, and do it.
Marc:So...
Marc:Pretty excited to tell you, I ordered her a couple new sun visors, and I got myself a Torx wrench, a little star wrench.
Marc:Went out and bought one of those, figured it out, installed them, and just looked at them.
Marc:Look at that.
Marc:They work fine.
Marc:They work good.
Marc:I'm amazing.
Marc:Look at the Jew doing the man things.
Marc:Look at the man-man putting in the visor.
Marc:Look, I can't take apart an engine.
Marc:I might be able to put in a taillight, but there are some things where you start to realize as you get older, why don't we just bring it in, have that taken care of.
Marc:I'm not going to be replacing any taillights or putting on a muffler.
Marc:I don't care how many videos I watch.
Marc:You want to get under the car with your goddamn laptop and...
Marc:and wondering why the guy who's been doing it his whole life is just popping this thing into place, and you're covered in fucking filth, and the thing's still hanging off, and you're bloody because you're fucking so angry you can't just do what seems to be a simple thing for a guy who's been doing it his whole life.
Marc:And that just ruins your day.
Marc:Yeah, enough of those kind of things.
Marc:You'll enter a fury that will seek to attach itself to your particular trauma in your brain.
Marc:And then you'll fucking break your brain and then just go down rabbit holes to your one of them.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Finding that anger.
Marc:If you got it in you and you're not aware of it and something pops it open.
Marc:Be careful what you hook into it.
Marc:Be careful.
Marc:Don't justify that shit.
Marc:Go to the source.
Marc:Rewire.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:So, look, Al Pacino is truly one of the greats.
Marc:And what I can tell you about this interview is,
Marc:is that I told you I read the book, but also this idea, for me anyways, when I have a relationship with a performer, an artist for my whole life, I don't know that person.
Marc:I know their work, and you kind of speculate about who they are.
Marc:And you make decisions, and I've said this before, I'm almost always 100% wrong in terms of who I think a person is.
Marc:And after reading Al's book, which is a sweet book,
Marc:I realized I really didn't have any idea how this guy thought or where he lives in his brain, how he goes through life.
Marc:And it was all very humanizing and very surprising in a way, in a good way.
Marc:He's a bit of an oddball, an authentic cat.
Marc:And he comes into acting in a very genuine way.
Marc:He wants to be an artist.
Marc:He is an artist.
Marc:And you can see that.
Marc:You know, you can make light of this or just sort of like be like, yeah, he's a method guy.
Marc:Yeah, he's this.
Marc:Yeah, he's that.
Marc:Some people are just, you know, on a sort of feverish journey for a type of artistic truth that that that makes a difference.
Marc:That means something to them and to the people that that take in their art.
Marc:And Pacino from the beginning was always that guy.
Marc:And it was very interesting to me, his beginnings in New York and what was around when he was around and his intentions in terms of when it comes to acting.
Marc:And I know many you can tell that because I'm acting and because I was nervous about this movie, I'm kind of poking around and trying to glean some useful information.
Marc:Which I did from Al.
Marc:I actually did.
Marc:We didn't talk about acting a ton, but there's one little line in the book and I couldn't find it when I was talking to him.
Marc:I was looking for it because I wanted him to tell me.
Marc:And I put it on a post-it that I put on the notebook that I bring with my script in it.
Marc:And and it's really just a few beats.
Marc:It's like five things and it's helping me.
Marc:And it's just from one sentence in the Al Pacino book.
Marc:And it just says, go to the character.
Marc:What is going on in the scene?
Marc:Where are you going?
Marc:Where did you come from?
Marc:Why are you here?
Marc:I put that I put that on a post it.
Marc:And, you know, in a moment of like, oh, my God, what am I?
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:Am I doing this?
Marc:And just lock into that.
Marc:And I think it's a it's sort of a life changing thing for me in terms of approaching acting, which I don't know if I'll ever do again after this movie.
Marc:But nonetheless, to talk to Pacino was an honor for me, and it was very fun because he's a fun guy.
Marc:And I'm happy to share this conversation with you.
Marc:So the book is called Sunny Boy, and it's available now wherever you get your books.
Marc:And this is my conversation with Al Pacino.
Guest:So the first time you got hit.
Guest:The first time I got hit, it was a super son.
Guest:He was 18.
Guest:I was like 13 or something.
Guest:And I thought I was through it.
Guest:And then he hit me.
Guest:And the world really came right there.
Guest:I said, this is life.
Guest:This is what's real.
Guest:I'll never forget it.
Marc:How old were you?
Marc:I was about 13.
Marc:And it was just a fight in the school?
Guest:No, he was bad with my mother.
Guest:And so he was there.
Guest:I don't know what brought it on, but I know she was having a fight with his father about something.
Guest:And he was like...
Guest:He came at me, and I said something back, so he came to me, and he punched me once.
Guest:This is a guy that was dating your mother?
Guest:He wasn't dating my mother.
Guest:She was arguing with his father.
Guest:Now, my mother might have been dating his father.
Guest:That I don't know.
Guest:But I do know that his punch was so much just life.
Guest:I thought, this is reality.
Guest:I'm not in reality.
Guest:This is reality.
Guest:Getting hit like that.
Guest:It just went through every fiber of my body, and I just felt it.
Guest:Right into the present.
Guest:To the present, and it's like never again.
Guest:That's what that needle was in my shoulder.
Guest:Anyone bigger than me?
Guest:No way.
Marc:So you managed to not get hit for your entire life?
Guest:No, I did.
Guest:Unfortunately, I did.
Guest:I got... Yeah?
Guest:Had some fights?
Guest:I had some, but then, like, I hated to fight.
Guest:I hated fighting.
Guest:Fighting's ridiculous.
Guest:I hate it.
Guest:Till this day...
Marc:It's interesting in the book, you know, that after the whole arc of the book, which I loved.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Marc:You know, you've been in my consciousness my whole fucking life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:You know, I'm 60.
Marc:Wow, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, so like, you know, this guy.
Marc:You were right there.
Marc:As soon as I became aware of the world, you know, Al Pacino was on screen.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you build a relationship with whatever you're putting out in the world.
Marc:You make assumptions about things.
Marc:And then now, like, you know, 40 years later, I read the book.
Marc:I'm like, he's nothing like I thought, this guy.
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:Yeah, that's good.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:It's a success to me.
Marc:Oh, totally.
Marc:Because, you know, you choose characters in somebody's work where you're like, I think that's him.
Marc:I think that one, that's him.
Marc:But it's not.
Marc:And what got me onto thinking about the end of the book is that, you know, after the near-death experience and everything else and the whole career, what you look back on is around the time when you got punched.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, what I also look back on is I was caught up in that early childhood stuff, which was such a part of my life.
Guest:And I was surprised myself because I never wrote a book.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the discovery, the sense of the feeling of discovery was happening.
Guest:You're writing it and you're like, oh, my God.
Guest:I'm seeing all these images and they're all there right in front of me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It all happened and it's there.
Guest:It's coming out of me.
Guest:All the guys that you ran with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Especially those three that I talked about.
Guest:Cliffy and— Bruce and Petey.
Marc:Yeah, because, like, you know, after everything you've accomplished, there's a sort of melancholy for how alive you felt when you were running around the streets in the South Bronx.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And also when I was pursuing whatever I was pursuing in Greenwich Village at age 17—
Marc:I'll tell you, man, you know, you had a very rare experience that, you know, people don't think about anymore.
Marc:And because I'm 60, I was sort of fascinated with the beatniks and whatever was going on down there.
Marc:But I am curious about, you know, after having had a sort of revelation that you could act in high school.
Marc:a bit, that you end up down there with Julian Beck at the Living Theater.
Marc:Judith Molina.
Marc:And Judith Molina.
Guest:And you're, what, 17?
Guest:With Marty Sheen.
Guest:He and I work in there cleaning the toilets.
Guest:And it was an interesting thing because I remember with Marty, who I thought was an insanely great actor.
Guest:And you guys are, what, 17?
Guest:He's, what, a little older than you?
Guest:No, we're the same age.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you're kids.
Guest:We're kids.
Guest:How'd you meet him?
Guest:In Charlie's class, Charlie Lawton's class.
Guest:I talk a lot about Charlie Lawton.
Guest:Charlie's through the whole book.
Guest:Yeah, I loved him.
Guest:The best friend, right?
Guest:He was my mentor and best friend.
Guest:So he's a little older than you?
Guest:Oh, he was 11 years older than me.
Guest:Okay, so you met him in Charlie's class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Marty came to Charlie's class, and he did something from the Iceman Comet, Eugene O'Neill.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was...
Guest:I mean, it was like, you know, because that was the thing, too, at the time.
Guest:Well, I must have been about 18 at the time he was there.
Guest:And that's when Jose Quintero was doing Iceman Cometh and Jason Robards Jr.
Guest:plays this role.
Guest:I don't know if you've ever seen him play it.
Guest:Jason Robards?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's in the movie, right?
Marc:Sidney Lumet made a movie of it in 1960.
Marc:Yeah, I got to watch it because after I read the book, I'm like, how can I not have seen that?
Guest:You have to see this.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It simply is the greatest performance I've ever seen.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, God, where he goes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was an inspiration to all of us.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And Marty did it.
Guest:He truncated it, and he did it as a piece for the acting class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was amazing.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So you were like, that's the guy.
Guest:So we were friends, and then we lived together.
Guest:He came to live with me in my apartment, and...
Guest:We were really good.
Guest:We were both starving together.
Guest:The image I have of him is I think in Rockaway Beach.
Guest:We used to go to Rockaway Beach from New York City.
Guest:Take about seven different trains.
Guest:And then we'd get there, and Charlie would be there with this little baby and his wife.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:a few of the others and we were like a little group from the class and we went on to do plays together and stuff and Marty and I would do that in the surf fish for clams you know with our hams bring them home we're gonna eat them because we didn't eat all day and there's all the sand in them you know and I'm by my sink the visual on it is great and I got the clams trying to get the sand out Marty's just sitting there in the kitchen and we're starving and
Guest:So eating it with the sand and everything, it was great.
Guest:Those are the good old days.
Guest:Oh, I loved them.
Guest:Yeah, clams.
Guest:When you think back on these things, that's the thing.
Guest:You think back on them and you just have this place.
Guest:I mean, it's like you're looking at a mini movie.
Marc:Yeah, and it starts running more and more, I guess, as you get older.
Marc:Because when you're going, you're going, you're going.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then like, you know, if you lose your way, you got to figure out what the, where'd I start?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's where you started.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, see, but I think what, what, what spoke to me a bit, this, this book was very, I don't know if the word is fortuitous for me.
Marc:Because, you know, I'm about to embark on a role, you know, and I'm reading a lot of this stuff and I'm pulling out what I can about your process.
Marc:But also the guy I got to play is an old actor, you know, of my age.
Marc:And it's a funny conceit.
Marc:But like, you know, in looking at how you chose roles and what you could and couldn't do, which at some points it seems like you didn't think you could do anything for
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It is true.
Guest:You'd see a role and you'd be like, not for me.
Guest:I'm not going to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, Marty and I were in the back of the theater.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know you might have heard of this play.
Guest:It was called The Connection, Jack Gelber.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's called The Connection.
Guest:They made a film of it.
Guest:But it doesn't really breathe.
Guest:Do it justice?
Guest:It doesn't.
Guest:But it was great.
Guest:And they had a little jazz group on the stage.
Guest:And we used to lay the stage rugs down.
Guest:We would do the set, me and Marty, and then go back, clean the toilets, and then come out and look at the play over and over again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's one part in the play that is absolutely, you know, it's an audition piece.
Guest:And Marty said to me, he said, I'm going to do that.
Guest:I'm going to be on that stage doing that part.
Guest:And I looked at him and I thought, yeah, look at him.
Guest:I could tell him.
Guest:It's not for me.
Guest:I wasn't there yet.
Guest:I just was from the South Bronx coming in.
Guest:And it was something, and he did it.
Guest:He did it.
Guest:He did it.
Guest:And he nailed it?
Guest:He nailed it through the roof.
Guest:And then he started getting work.
Guest:You know, and then I had that whole section.
Guest:So he was like a working actor.
Guest:He was in the play and he saw me on the subway.
Guest:He was on the platform and I had none.
Guest:And he said, come, come, be my understudy.
Guest:He said, you'd honor me.
Guest:For what show?
Guest:He did a show called The Wicked Cooks at the Orpheum on Second Avenue.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And he had this part in it.
Guest:I couldn't even understand the play.
Guest:It was way over my head.
Guest:And so – but he said understudy himself.
Guest:But I didn't realize understudying is you understudy the part.
Guest:You got to know the part.
Guest:Of course I didn't do that.
Guest:I didn't learn.
Guest:I just was wandering in the theater.
Guest:And then this guy – I have to say his name.
Guest:I have to.
Guest:It's kind of a –
Guest:His name was, I think, Visek.
Guest:Visek Chimik, a guy from, I guess, the Czech area.
Guest:Czechoslovakia.
Guest:And there was great Poland, great theaters they had there.
Guest:And so he came from, and he had a name.
Guest:And he was this kind of, he didn't.
Guest:This was his show.
Guest:He directed it?
Guest:He directed it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And there was a cast in there, and he did not like me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He just saw me as a loser, and that was it.
Guest:This guy's not going to bring flowers to rehearsals.
Guest:He's just not in this room.
Guest:And then he started—so he put two and two together and thought—
Guest:You know, I was a method actor.
Guest:That's why I was always so quiet.
Guest:I was sort of very introverted when I hung around the theater people who I didn't know.
Guest:I was very shy.
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:But I always had this look on my face of, you know, an anarchic look.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People don't like that.
Guest:Sometimes it comes to me now.
Guest:I'll be at some party and that look comes on.
Guest:I said, Al, you can't look like that.
Guest:Now you've got to change the look.
Guest:You've done things.
Guest:Your personality people know who you are.
Guest:Be a little more, you know, social.
Guest:Come on now.
Guest:This happens now?
Guest:Yes, to this day it happens.
Guest:I go to a place sometimes.
Guest:So he comes to me with all things, of all things.
Guest:He comes to me, Marty Sheen, with laryngitis.
Guest:He just comes, ow, ow, ow.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:He's joking.
Guest:I thought he's kidding.
Guest:This was a fucking act.
Guest:So I'm thinking, what are you saying?
Guest:I said, Marty, what are you doing?
Guest:He says, I can't go on.
Guest:Can you imagine?
Guest:I'm 18 years old.
Guest:You don't know the play.
Guest:Of course I don't know the play.
Guest:I don't know anything.
Guest:They march around.
Guest:They wanted me to play a soldier that has no lines but just marches around.
Guest:I couldn't do it.
Guest:I couldn't follow the marches where it was going.
Guest:My mind was somewhere, you know.
Guest:Anyway, I'm saying, I just can't go on.
Guest:So he starts trying to help me with the part.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Al, here's the way you move.
Guest:And I'm really saying, Monty, this is a lost cause, please.
Guest:I can't do this thing.
Guest:And Vishen, the director, he says, come here.
Guest:I'll make you do a part.
Guest:He says, here, say this.
Guest:Look, what are you looking at over there?
Guest:Then he starts to criticize me.
Guest:Like, you method actors.
Guest:He didn't method actors.
Guest:I wasn't a method actor.
Guest:You were a kid.
Guest:I was a kid.
Yeah.
Marc:But somehow that look on my face that sort of... You kind of talk about this throughout the book, these moments where you're like people, they didn't like you.
Guest:They just didn't like me because I didn't participate in something.
Guest:But as it was, I have pretty, you know, I have a jovial sort of side.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I grew up with that.
Guest:That's how I'm still alive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you just, you were nervous.
Yeah.
Guest:I wasn't even nervous.
Guest:I was observing.
Guest:I felt out of place in this literary world.
Marc:Yeah, but it seems like everywhere, like eventually, whether it was L.A.
Guest:or a party.
Guest:I wouldn't even think about L.A.
Marc:Well, that was the interesting thing about the beginnings is that there was this sense that you seem to keep where you were like, this is an art.
Marc:We're doing something.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:We are artists.
Marc:We're not entertainers first.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So there was a moment where you must have realized that.
Marc:I mean, the earnestness of the living theater, right?
Marc:It was like life or death.
Marc:It made off Broadway.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:But when you saw that kind of work, you were like, this is the thing.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Did you ever hear a play called the, oh.
Marc:Probably not.
Guest:Don't kill yourself.
Guest:No, this play was written by Kenneth's The Brig.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It's called The Brig.
Guest:The play was One Day a Night in the Brig.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had to go.
Guest:I had a little room in the village that just stayed in it for a couple of days after seeing that play.
Marc:So you're sensitive, and it devastated you.
Marc:Yeah, it devastated me.
Marc:But when was the moment where you were like, you know, I'm doing it?
Marc:It took time.
Marc:On stage, where you felt, not I'm going to be an actor, but you're on stage, and you're like, it's happening.
Marc:Well, it's in the book, too.
Guest:I know.
Guest:When I was doing Strittenberg's credits.
Guest:That's the problem with reading the book.
Guest:I already know.
Guest:You know already, yeah.
Guest:Well, it was that time.
Guest:I had Charlie, of course, Charlie.
Guest:I was in his class, and I was doing it.
Guest:Strindberg.
Guest:Strindberg.
Guest:And I did Hello Out There, which is a Sororan play, which is a beautiful play.
Guest:And I was doing a Caffe Cino.
Guest:I wasn't very good at it, whatever that means.
Guest:But I was doing something there.
Guest:And then we used to do 16 shows a week.
Guest:Oh, wow, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so we used to pass the hat.
Guest:That's how we ate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was fun, and it was the village.
Guest:And it was, what a time to be there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I tell you, Mom.
Marc:Well, it was because art was important.
Marc:Yeah, that's all it was.
Marc:You know, it wasn't, like, it wasn't careerism.
Marc:It wasn't even, like, acting school.
Marc:It was like, this stuff is, and everything was changing, right?
Marc:It's the 60s or late 50s.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It was the 60s.
Guest:And it was – I never thought of business.
Guest:Business had nothing to do with it.
Guest:Money had nothing to do with it.
Marc:That went right into your 70s, the business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Well, that's the funny thing about being an artist because I started – like after I read the horrible thing with the accountant later in your life that –
Marc:Yeah, well, but the fact is that that whole side of the business knows.
Marc:Half of the time they're like, these fucking guys, these clowns, they don't know anything.
Marc:They're good, so we'll make money off of them.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And we don't know.
Marc:We don't know from money.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:All you know is when you have enough to eat places you want to eat.
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:I mean, you have to learn.
Guest:I still, to this day, I just refuse to learn it.
Guest:I learned that I need to have some people around me.
Guest:That you trust.
Guest:You've got to find those guys.
Marc:I think that's the interesting thing, too, about the end of the book and reflecting on those first friends is I think there's a longing for a trust that cannot be replicated like the one you had with those guys.
Marc:No, it can't.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No.
Marc:And there's nobody you're going to get in your orbit is like, you know, this guy seems like a nice guy.
Marc:But back then it was implicit.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It was the way it was.
Marc:And then so as you move into this profession, into this art, it's funny because, you know, I don't know.
Marc:You say at times that, you know, you were seen as difficult, but it seems that every instance of that, it was really to service the story.
Right.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And that started very early on, right?
Marc:Yeah, it did.
Marc:And when did you really start to put together a craft for yourself of acting?
Guest:Well, I had this idea.
Guest:I didn't like acting class.
Guest:And, of course, Charlie was a teacher.
Marc:But you liked him for some reason.
Marc:I loved him.
Marc:Because he was a friend.
Guest:He saw me as—he sort of came from the kind of area I came from.
Guest:There was a connection to him.
Guest:He was just way ahead.
Guest:He found that I had gifts.
Guest:He saw certain gifts in me.
Marc:Well, so did that teacher of yours, right?
Guest:Oh, Rothstein.
Guest:Blanche Rothstein.
Guest:Oh, my God, yes.
Marc:I mean, you didn't even know what you were doing, but she went to your grandmother and said, he's got to do this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said that to her, something like that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:My mother got a little nervous about it because Mom thought I was, you know, kind of, you know, poor people don't do this kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I do know that what I really did when I worked with her...
Guest:With Rothstein when you were a kid.
Guest:I did plays with her.
Guest:And she would put me – I'd read the Bible in assembly.
Guest:You know, how old I was.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Anywhere from 10 to 12.
Guest:I'd read the Bible to the class.
Guest:And I loved reading the words.
Guest:I didn't know what the words meant.
Guest:I didn't even know what I was talking about.
Guest:But they filled me up with stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I only recognized that recently.
Guest:That's what's part of my thing.
Guest:I love words.
Guest:And she had these feelings for me, put me in a play, that play that got me, my mother and father came to.
Guest:My father and mother, I never saw them together, except that time when I was three or four years old.
Guest:Because he left.
Guest:He left because he was in the Army.
Guest:He was in the war.
Guest:And then he came back and...
Guest:He was never there again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this little thing in the theater watching the Ray Molans last weekend.
Guest:Last weekend, yeah.
Guest:And I see my dad down there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'm with my mom.
Guest:Up in the balcony.
Guest:Up in the balcony.
Guest:I see him, and I see some big front gun on his side.
Guest:He's an MP or something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I said, Dada.
Guest:So I must have been that young.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm saying, Dada.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she kept saying, shh, shh.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:She wanted him to see you.
Guest:She didn't want him to see her.
Guest:He was out hiding.
Guest:I got used to that in my older age.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the way it is now, it's a question of a young kid who all of a sudden liked this stuff.
Guest:Because of the words.
Guest:You'll hear a lot of actors say they liked the attention you get.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And the fact that you're with your other kid, your other family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like a bit of a family.
Yeah.
Marc:And I loved words.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And she put you in the play, and they came.
Marc:Did it go well?
Guest:I knew they were there, so it didn't go well that night.
Guest:I wasn't as good.
Guest:I even said it at the time.
Guest:That's the play.
Guest:I came off stage, and some adult came up to me to say, kid.
Guest:And I was 13, 12.
Guest:And the kid said to me, hey, he's an adult.
Guest:He said, you're going to be the next Marlon Brando.
Guest:I said, who's Marlon Brando?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I didn't know who he was.
Marc:How would I know?
Marc:But when did you realize you didn't like acting class?
Marc:Was that with the Bergdorf experience?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I never sort of liked it.
Guest:I always felt shy and stuff.
Guest:And I tried out for the Actor's Studio, which I failed.
Guest:The first time?
Guest:First time.
Marc:And Cliffy tried out when he was 16.
Marc:The other kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It didn't end well for Cliffy.
Marc:It didn't end well for him.
Marc:But he was going to do the acting too.
Marc:Yeah, he was.
Marc:Bruce was.
Marc:Yeah, everybody.
Guest:He was in performing arts when he did that with the teacher there.
Marc:Oh, that was a performing arts high school.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you didn't make the actor's studio.
Marc:You didn't like the, was it Howard Bergdorf?
Marc:Is that his name?
Guest:Bergdorf.
Guest:I didn't know quite what I was doing yet.
Guest:It took me time to this day.
Guest:Are you doing plays and stuff?
Guest:Yeah, I was doing acting in the classes.
Guest:In the classroom, I'd get in a scene and I'd do the scene.
Guest:As I gradually started to learn what that's about, the juxtaposition of it, what you have to do, doing a scene in front of people with a partner is the best way to learn.
Guest:It's just the best way because
Guest:Because you're there and you're doing it and it takes time.
Guest:It takes years.
Marc:There's a point in the book where you said, this is where, because I don't usually do this for you, mark up the book.
Marc:But I get nervous and I'm like, well, I should mark up the book a little bit because Al's going to be here.
Marc:But there was something about what you kind of rendered it down to.
Marc:Where am I?
Marc:What do I do?
Marc:Yeah, where am I going?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Those are your go-tos.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Why am I here?
Marc:Yeah, here's the character.
Marc:Where am I going?
Marc:Why am I here?
Guest:What do I, you know, what do I...
Guest:I do it to this day.
Guest:I was doing it in Lear.
Guest:We all got together.
Guest:We're talking about a scene.
Guest:This is Shakespeare.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:Let's just talk about it.
Marc:But it's funny.
Marc:At a certain age, a guy like you who loves Shakespeare so much, it's sort of like, well, I guess it's time.
Marc:Time to do Lear.
Marc:For Mr. Lear.
Guest:Oh, my God, yes.
Guest:Finally.
Guest:They kept pushing me to do that old guy.
Guest:We all stay away from him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I thought I'd be gone before I had to do it, but I'm still here, so I did them.
Marc:And now it's time?
Marc:Now it's time.
Marc:So the Strindberg experience was really kind of locked you in.
Guest:That was the big one.
Guest:It was so interesting because I was in this play that Charlie—I was a messenger, and I worked for this place, and I met this dispatcher.
Guest:His name was—
Guest:Frank Biancomando.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he had his own theater in the village, naturally, like where Soho House is now.
Guest:There was nothing there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was just factories then.
Guest:And he had this place, you go up to flight, and we would do plays there.
Guest:I did, you know, Tiger at the Gates.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're in your 20s now?
Guest:I'm just touching 20.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah, okay, yeah.
Guest:So I'm in this play with Charlie Love, too, if I recommend it.
Guest:And I'm doing it.
Guest:I'm working with two pros in the other parts.
Guest:I mean, they're really good.
Guest:Then Bianca Manu was directing.
Guest:He had a little problem with the lead guy, Henry Calvin, a great actor.
Guest:And he was doing a wonderful job.
Guest:He was down in this little theater.
Guest:And I didn't know what the problem was, but Frank took over the role and fired him.
Guest:We didn't make money.
Guest:You're not losing a paycheck.
Guest:But this other woman was there.
Guest:I forget her name.
Guest:Herma something.
Guest:And Charlie came in to direct it.
Guest:And Charlie started.
Guest:He saw it.
Guest:Then he started directing it with Frank and Hermione and me.
Guest:It's a beautiful play.
Guest:It's creditors.
Guest:So I'm on stage at one point, and it just happened.
Guest:I just started to speak the words of Strindberg, but so connected to me.
Guest:That something happened to me right while I was doing it.
Guest:I thought, this is it.
Guest:It's like you're on the cello or something, and you're playing Bach, and all of a sudden, it's in you, and it's coming out.
Guest:And you're just lifted, and you want to do this.
Guest:I want to do this again and again.
Guest:Chase it.
Guest:Chase it.
Guest:And I said, it doesn't matter if I become successful, if I'm famous, I'm not famous, if I eat, I don't eat, I have money, I don't have money.
Guest:That...
Guest:This is what matters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:This is the only thing that matters now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:And then I was devoted.
Guest:It's sort of a— What a great moment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I have a photo of it because at the time—
Guest:There was, you know, the great Richard Avedon.
Guest:He had a nephew.
Guest:His name was Michael Avedon.
Guest:He's gone.
Guest:Poor guy.
Guest:But there he was.
Guest:And his sister sort of and I were having just a flirtation.
Guest:It wasn't anything.
Guest:And we were young, and she was at the theater because she did something else at this theater called the Actors Gallery.
Guest:And he took a picture.
Guest:He took a photo.
Guest:Yeah, of your moment?
Guest:Performance.
Guest:And there's the moment.
Guest:I have the photo.
Guest:It's in the book of when I think it's in the book.
Marc:The one I ended up with was the one before they printed, the galley copy.
Marc:Oh, the galley copy.
Marc:I'll tell you, man, when they sent this to us, we had to sign an NDA.
Marc:I was in Canada working on something, and they're like, this is top secret.
Marc:And then the fucked up thing is it goes to – I get to the apartment.
Marc:I'm staying in Vancouver.
Marc:They're like, we never got it.
Marc:I'm like, you don't understand.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This is like nuclear secrets.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:This is Pacino's memoir.
Marc:Should we call the police?
Marc:You made us crazy.
Marc:We had to fill out paperwork to get the fucking book.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:But from that point on, then you really start.
Marc:Do you feel like you had control of it?
Marc:Do you feel like you could make it happen again?
Marc:Was there something in place?
Guest:But I sort of understood why I'm doing it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I understood that this is something that I actually want to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't want to go to auditions and see agents.
Guest:I just want to do this.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so that became my sort of mantra.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But when you looked at pieces, okay, so you have that revelation, and you've done some acting classes, but you're doing anything you can to act.
Marc:After that moment, do you look at a piece of writing and say, like, I can make this happen?
Yeah.
Guest:Yes, that's all I do now, is if I relate to a piece, I can't do anything I don't relate to.
Guest:I try to sometimes, and if I fall on my face, I really feel a connection to something, then I could—
Guest:I could go somewhere.
Guest:You can find it.
Guest:I can find it.
Marc:Because you can connect it to yourself.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it was interesting after years and years of watching you, you know, and then, you know, going through the movies and stuff.
Marc:And then there was a period there where we saw you occasionally.
Marc:And there's an interesting thing with actors your age is that sometimes they lean on the tricks that they've learned.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you can see it.
Marc:They don't have to work as hard because they've got a series of ticks that gets them through a thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, after.
Marc:And they're brilliant.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:I'm not denying that.
Marc:But there was a point where you had done a few brash characters.
Marc:I think you'd done Scent of a Woman and stuff.
Marc:And you were operating at this level of intensity.
Marc:And I'm thinking, what's his range like now?
Marc:And then you do that Kevorkian movie.
Marc:And I'm like, he's back.
Marc:Look at that.
Marc:I was so impressed.
Marc:I'm like, he's doing the work.
Marc:This guy's a sensitive guy, a vulnerable guy.
Marc:He completely transformed himself.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:I got a question for you.
Marc:It's a personal question in that I believe, like I saw you do American Buffalo in Boston when I was in college.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:At the Shubert, I think.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, after I saw it, because I was a big fan, I left going like, I think there's still a little Cuban in there.
Marc:Is that possible?
Marc:Is there still a little Cuban?
Guest:It's totally possible.
Guest:You know why?
Guest:Why?
Guest:I've just been doing Scarface.
Guest:Scarface, right.
Marc:It's carried over, I'm sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was kind of interesting, you know, because I'd watch Scarface.
Marc:I'm like, he's a little Tony.
Guest:I think he's a little Tony.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It probably is.
Guest:That's very observing because I was just doing, in San Francisco, I was doing, no, in L.A., we were doing Scarface.
Guest:I had nine months of that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But it must have been out already for me to know that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It must have just come out because I probably saw it immediately.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So now you got the gift and you know what you want to do and you're doing it.
Marc:So how does it transpire that, you know, how does the film career start?
Guest:The film career is, you know, the big thing that happened to me.
Guest:I should say this because it's probably the – it was like I did a play called The Indian Wants the Bronx.
Guest:Ezra Horowitz.
Guest:I did that play in college.
Guest:There it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Were you the guy who wrote me a letter many years later?
Guest:No, I don't think so.
Guest:Well, some young actor wrote me a letter and said—
Guest:There's a part in the play.
Guest:I know you did it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, what?
Guest:How did you get?
Guest:Why did you beat up the phone booth?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, no, no, don't don't.
Guest:That's stage direction.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't look at that because that was not in the play for a while.
Guest:But I had been doing the play for almost a year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and something happened one night that.
Guest:You know, transitions come out of nowhere, but they come out of repetition.
Guest:See, repetition keeps me green.
Guest:That's one of the—it's a saying.
Guest:Because the more you do something, the more fresh it gets.
Guest:That's the strangest thing.
Marc:Because you don't have to, the act of memorizing goes away.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Your mind is not in it.
Guest:Everything else is.
Guest:You don't have to remember something.
Guest:So you can hear and see everything that's going on.
Guest:And so I found myself one night, I had been doing the play a year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All around and stuff.
Guest:And then I just went.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was because I felt it.
Marc:When you beat up the phone.
Marc:Yeah, beat up the phone.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was weird.
Guest:I was doing it.
Guest:I don't understand what the fuck.
Guest:You were Murph?
Guest:I was Murph.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so then Israel added that into the stage.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That'd be good for me in the play.
Guest:I said, but Israel, you know, this is my thing.
Guest:I've been doing it for a year and a half.
Guest:You know, I understand certain things about it.
Guest:The play, you know.
Guest:So I told the guy, you know, it's better maybe you don't need to do it.
Guest:That came out of a transition that developed over a year of playing every night, you know.
Marc:I saw a guy do it in college, and he peed in the garbage can on the set during the play.
Marc:But then when they were roughhousing, the bottle that he used to pee with fell out onto the stage.
Marc:And I'm like, that kind of ruined it.
Yeah.
Guest:I knew that ahead of time.
Guest:As soon as you started, that pea's going to go somewhere.
Guest:Yeah, there's the bottle.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:That's grotesque, if you don't mind my saying it.
Marc:You know what happens in theater.
Marc:You talk about a moment where a woman in England—
Marc:Oh, God, yes.
Marc:You ask if you got a cigarette.
Marc:And you're doing—what are you doing, Indian?
Guest:I'm doing buffalo.
Guest:No, you're doing buffalo.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And we're talking, and she comes up, you know, wandering, and she gets right to the foot of the proscenium and looks up at us and me and says, got a light.
Guest:Got a light.
Guest:Got a light.
Guest:I thought—
Guest:And the guy I'm playing with says, we're working here, man.
Guest:We're walking here.
Guest:We're working here.
Marc:But you didn't break character.
Marc:No, no, we didn't.
Marc:And it is a testament to the naturalism of the show that she thought maybe whatever alcohol or brain glitch she had, I'm just going to go ask those guys.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:I even join them if I have to.
Marc:Come on up.
Marc:So, okay, so Indian gets you to Panic!
Marc:and Needle Park?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Indian gets me to Marty Brickman.
Guest:Marty Brinkman.
Guest:Your manager.
Guest:The manager.
Guest:And he's another reason I'm here today.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That guy.
Guest:So Faye Dunaway was a real hot star.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great actress.
Guest:She did Bunny and Climb.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she comes to the theater and she sees me in it.
Guest:I didn't know her.
Guest:I never.
Guest:She went and told Marty Brinkman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got to get this guy?
Guest:Go see this kid.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he goes down with a guy named David Biedelman.
Guest:I don't know if you heard of him.
Guest:He was the guy who shot himself at the end of his life.
Guest:He was the biggest agent around.
Guest:They both come in.
Guest:And that's the story of Marty Bregman.
Guest:Marty Bregman says, I want to handle you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he had Streisand.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He had some of these people like Judy Garland.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So he had them.
Guest:But he had Alan Alder.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had Alan Alda.
Guest:That was the actor he had.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a couple of other people.
Guest:And I remember, you know, him talking to him.
Guest:And I remember one point he stretched out on his chair and I saw his gun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was unusual.
Guest:Someone with a gun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In those days.
Guest:And so I thought, wow, it's got a white handle, too.
Guest:Reminded me of my father's .45 when he picked us up at the movie house.
Guest:He was an MP.
Guest:But I used it in heat.
Guest:Oh, did you?
Guest:Yeah, I used that gun.
Guest:I remember that gun, and I said, I'll have my guy.
Guest:Yeah, find the gun.
Guest:Find the gun with a white handle, yeah.
Guest:So anyway, he was something powerful.
Guest:And I went back and I told Charlie, I said, you know, I just don't trust this guy.
Guest:But I trust him because I think he understands something out there that I'll never, never understand.
Guest:That's his job.
Guest:And Charlie said, he's like a bulwark for you to keep going.
Guest:I said, that's what I feel.
Guest:And I stuck with him.
Marc:And I really grew to love him, of course.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because you also, like, you know, you talk about how when you saw The Graduate, you realized that everything was changing.
Marc:Everything was changing.
Marc:The possibilities of actors.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Changing.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:There was a big shift in the 70s with everything that was going on.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That was the cutting edge of it, and you realize.
Marc:Well, it was Easy Rider, I think, is what started.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You know.
Marc:But the place for the humanizing of the anti-hero.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:And that, you know, you didn't need a happy ending.
Marc:No.
Marc:And you didn't need tragedy necessarily.
Marc:But you could be sort of like, well, I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And it was there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I saw it.
Guest:Because I had heard a lot about Dustin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:First of all, he was great in The Journey of the Fifth Horse.
Guest:I don't know if you ever heard that.
Guest:No.
Guest:He was amazing.
Guest:A play?
Guest:Yeah, a play.
Guest:And he was also, but they televised it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was at the theater company in Boston where he was doing art.
Guest:Then he did a play called Eh.
Guest:You were a fan.
Guest:I was a fan.
Guest:Oh, I thought this guy's great.
Marc:Was he at the actor's studio?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He was at the actor's studio.
Guest:Earlier than you.
Guest:Around the same time, I think we all got in together, Bob De Niro, Dustin, and me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what year was that?
Marc:Oh, God, let me see.
Marc:Late 60s?
Marc:Probably the late 67s.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you guys were the big three.
Marc:He's a little older?
Marc:No.
Marc:He's older than me.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Dustin's a few years older than me.
Marc:It's interesting because my assumption was, just because I mythologized based on very little information, that when I saw Strasburg in Godfather 2, that the reason why you pulled him in was because this was your mentor.
Guest:But Charlie was my mentor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Charlie actually told me.
Guest:go look at Lee for Maya Lansky.
Guest:He told me also, look at John Gazelle, who's a dear friend of mine, before four, Dog Day Afternoon.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, so these guys were around, and Charlie was the guy.
Marc:Because my assumption was, like, this is the teacher, this is the student, but it really wasn't like that.
Marc:No.
Marc:I mean, because you say, like, yeah, Lee was around.
Guest:He was around.
Guest:I loved Lee as a person.
Guest:I loved him as a theorist, too.
Guest:I've seen a couple of his shows he put on about the great actresses, from Tusa to Madame Fisk to all these, you know, Sarah Bernhardt.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:And so he'd have Sundays, Lee, where he would, you know, you'll hear Toscanini at a rehearsal, and he starts screaming, and this is great stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You heard Sarah Bernhardt doing Ferdra in French.
Guest:He had these copies.
Guest:He had Caruso's first record.
Guest:Oh, so he's opening... 1907.
Guest:He's opening minds.
Yeah.
Guest:So he had that kind of a place to it.
Guest:It was... I guess a salon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A salon.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That feeling.
Guest:But it was fun, too.
Marc:So Panicking Needle Park...
Marc:gets you out there.
Marc:I watched that recently.
Marc:It's a great movie.
Marc:It is.
Guest:Jerry Schatzberg.
Marc:Schatzberg.
Marc:The drug use in that movie was disturbing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He didn't hold back.
Marc:He got right up in there.
Marc:You saw the needle.
Marc:You saw everything.
Marc:It's a love story.
Guest:It's a love story, too.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:A love story with addicts, which is because the true love is...
Marc:And it's a true story.
Marc:Joan Didion wrote it, you know, and Dominic Dunn.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And that gets you to Coppola.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the big one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because then I went to Broadway with Tyker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I won the Tony.
Guest:I won an Obie for India Wants the Brunch, too.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So you're like a stage actor.
Guest:All of a sudden, you know, I've got some sort of, you know, these things are happening.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Charlie's right with it.
Guest:And that's the time when Charlie first saw Indian Wants the Bronx in a loft.
Guest:And him and Penny are there.
Guest:They see the play.
Marc:His wife, yeah.
Guest:His wife.
Guest:And we go to, this is before anything.
Guest:This is before I got hired to do it off-Broadway.
Guest:He sees it and he comes and he says, you're here, Al.
Guest:You're here.
Guest:This is it.
This is it.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And we went out to celebrate at Canal Street.
Guest:We didn't have a part to business, but we were celebrating about something that's never going to happen, of course, but it did happen, which is so weird.
Marc:But so, your relation with Charlie throughout your entire life... Yeah.
Marc:Right to the end of his...
Marc:So did you go outside of friendship and whatever?
Marc:Would you go to him when you had questions about characters?
Guest:Yeah, I would go to him all the time.
Guest:He would read scripts for me.
Guest:He read Star Wars because I read Star Wars.
Guest:They offered me Star Wars when I came back to Broadway, I think.
Guest:After I did Godfather and stuff, and naturally I was getting all these offers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I read this thing because, you know, who directed that again?
Guest:George Lucas.
Guest:George Lucas, who I actually met in San Francisco.
Guest:And I said, I don't understand this play.
Yeah.
Guest:So I said, Charlie, read this thing.
Guest:They're offering me a fortune here for this, and I don't understand it.
Guest:And he read it, and he said, well, I don't get it, Al.
Guest:I don't get it either.
Guest:I said, well, I can't do it then, right?
Guest:So I turned it down.
Guest:That's all right.
Guest:What was the part?
Guest:Han Solo?
Guest:It must have been me giving, what's his name, Harrison Ford.
Guest:I gave him his career.
Guest:That's the way I like to look at it.
Guest:I certainly didn't.
Guest:It's great, by the way.
Guest:Yeah, he is something, huh?
Marc:He is something I love.
Marc:The thing about The Godfather, because I've watched it several times recently, because I was stuck in a trailer in Vancouver doing an Apple show, and I figured out how to use the television and hook it up to the Netflix, and I was like, great.
Marc:I should be studying my lines and doing other things, but I go crazy in trailers.
Marc:I go crazy.
Marc:I couldn't do it either.
Guest:It was when I got a TV installed on every trailer.
Guest:I made films.
Guest:Other than that, I'm not making films.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because it's hard, right?
Marc:Sitting around and waiting?
Marc:Yeah, because at some point, no matter how many things you do, you get to a point like, what could they be doing?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:What could they be doing?
Guest:How long does it take the light to take?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's just omnipresent.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I'm watching The Godfather.
Marc:What struck me about it was that last scene where you make a choice.
Marc:You're Michael in the last scene, the flashback of the party.
Marc:So you had already experienced the full arc of Michael.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But you chose to go.
Marc:You're almost droopy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like the entire physicality of Michael in that moment.
Marc:I mean, it was a hell of a choice.
Marc:And then it adds so much.
Marc:You see back through that moment, whatever he became.
Guest:He was sort of...
Guest:Encased in stone.
Guest:And what he's trying, what I thought was going to happen is how am I going to go on doing this?
Guest:It was beyond belief.
Guest:It was a tough ride for two for me.
Guest:I had a hard time with it.
Marc:But in one it was tough too because you get this job, Francis is bouncing off the walls, and you don't even know if you're going to keep the job.
Marc:Francis.
Guest:called me when I was doing that Broadway play, right?
Guest:And he had seen it, and he called me.
Guest:And that was earlier than Godfather.
Guest:It was before Godfather.
Guest:And I went out to San Francisco because he had written a great script.
Guest:about a college professor falls in love with a student and it was mythical the way he did it and his whole life falls apart and it was done so well but they didn't want me and they didn't want Francis so a year later he calls me
Guest:A year later.
Guest:And I got to know him.
Guest:It was four or five days with him.
Guest:Did they make that movie?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And then he calls me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He says, I said, Francis, you know, the voice out of the past.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I liked him a lot.
Guest:I thought he was really intelligent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He says, yeah, I just want you to know I'm directing The Godfather.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Then I thought for that brief second when somebody talks to you, I thought, I think maybe he's in trouble, you know, with his mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can't imagine, you know, Hollywood and Godfather is like so far away.
Guest:It's not in the normal actors who are just trying to get through it, you know, see what's going on to connect to those kind of movies because we don't live in that domain and we're not there.
Guest:And then he says, I want you to play Michael.
Guest:I thought, no, he's gone too far.
Guest:He's gone too far.
Guest:And I just, I was humoring him.
Guest:And I did start thinking, this guy is brilliant, though.
Guest:And I think I had seen one of the movies made with Rip Torn.
Guest:And it was great.
Guest:Elizabeth Hart.
Guest:It was a wonderful film.
Guest:You're a good boy now.
Guest:So anyway, I just was stunned by it.
Guest:And I said, Paramount's smart because they're picking this guy.
Guest:He's an Italian-American, too.
Guest:And you knew the book.
Guest:I knew the book.
Guest:I read the book, of course.
Guest:I did at the time.
Guest:Everybody read it.
Guest:And I didn't see myself as Michael at all.
Guest:It was the last thing.
Guest:And I called my grandmother, who was the only part of my relatives left.
Guest:And she was living up in the Bronx.
Guest:And I said, Gran, you know, I'm in, they want me to play the guy in The Godfather.
Guest:And, you know, she doesn't know from this.
Guest:So I said, oh, that's good, sonny, good.
Guest:And I said, yeah, I just want you to know, yeah.
Guest:She calls me back.
Guest:in about an hour.
Guest:And she says, Godfather, Sonny, that's where your granddad was born, in Corleone.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Crazy.
Guest:I didn't know where my grandfather came from.
Guest:I knew my grandfather.
Guest:I loved him.
Guest:He's another reason I'm here.
Guest:But I didn't know he was from, I knew he was from Sicily, but Corleone, I didn't know.
Marc:They brought you up, right, your grandfather?
Guest:Yeah, they did.
Guest:Him and my grandmother and mother.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, well, I didn't even know it was a real place.
Guest:Me neither.
Guest:And this guy's Corleone, and my grandfather comes.
Guest:A certain right came to me.
Guest:Maybe I have the right to do it.
Guest:This is not—this is— What do they call it?
Guest:A kismet.
Marc:Kismet.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But, you know, it seemed like moving through The Godfather and a few of the other movies with— and this, I don't think you can—something you can—you know, that happens anymore, but your conception of Michael—
Marc:You know, was not working for the studio.
Marc:No.
Marc:Or for Francis.
Marc:And you knew, you know, you had a sensibility about yourself.
Marc:What was the issue?
Guest:I think they weren't seeing something that they wanted to see.
Guest:A certain kind of film charisma, I would imagine.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Because I didn't know the area.
Guest:I did Panic and Needle Park, but I was into that part.
Guest:I understood that.
Guest:And what I was trying to do is keep a low profile early on in the film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I used to think, oh, I'd walk from 91st Street and Broadway to The Village and back thinking about how am I going to make this transition to go from.
Guest:So I made a kind of more mild mannered.
Guest:not intrusive kind of character.
Guest:A character who's there, sees things, but knows not to go any further because he understands his family is, you know.
Marc:He's not his family.
Guest:He's not his family.
Guest:And he slowly is there, but there's nothing set up to show that in the film.
Guest:It's just my inner world.
Guest:And, of course, they didn't like it.
Guest:They didn't like what they saw.
Guest:He calls me into the ginger ambience.
Guest:It was a great place.
Guest:Francis does.
Guest:Francis is there with his wife and family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In a city.
Guest:There's a bar.
Guest:It's a great place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of people from Lincoln Center would go.
Guest:The musicians.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I saw the great Bernstein.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Leonard, yeah.
Guest:Leonard Bernstein.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, I'm there.
Guest:He calls me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm standing by the table.
Marc:With his family sitting there.
Guest:Yeah, but he doesn't invite me to sit down.
Guest:So I'm saying, he says, I want to talk to you.
Guest:And I said, yeah, I sort of, well, maybe.
Guest:He says, you know, I put a lot into you here.
Guest:Because he did.
Guest:He put everything.
Guest:They were going to fire him.
Guest:He was risking everything.
Guest:And he did.
Guest:And he saw me as this character.
Guest:And you're an actor.
Guest:You
Guest:know if a director really sees only you for a thing, you go with it.
Guest:You may not even feel comfortable, but you go with it.
Guest:I don't trust it, but okay.
Guest:Yeah, well, I sort of felt that he's so smart.
Guest:Yeah, he's got enough.
Guest:And if he wants me, he's got enough, you know.
Guest:So, naturally, I look at the family, he says, Al, go see the Rushes, go see the film we've shot so far.
Guest:You'll get an idea of what I'm talking about, he said, because, you know, you're on...
Guest:Tenderhook's here with his buddy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Guest:But I noticed he never asked me to sit down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And everybody was eating.
Guest:So you were dismissed.
Guest:I sort of, I was sort of dismissed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, well, go see it.
Guest:He wasn't rude or anything, but it was just uncomfortable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I went, and I went to the Paramount.
Guest:At that time, I had that in the circle, you know, the circle, Columbus or something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I went up to the floor.
Guest:They turned on the projection.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I start looking at myself.
Guest:And I thought it wasn't very interesting or anything I was doing.
Guest:But these things cut together.
Guest:But I thought, I think that's the right track.
Guest:I thought, I want to surprise an audience.
Guest:I want to come and turn into something.
Guest:They like that stuff.
Guest:It's good.
Guest:That transitional thing.
Guest:I always felt it instinctively.
Guest:I couldn't articulate it.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:So I went to Francis and I said, oh yeah, I know what you mean.
Guest:I said, totally.
Guest:You've done that with directors.
Guest:They come give you a direction, and you say, oh, yeah, that's cool.
Guest:That's cool.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I'll do that.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I'm with you on it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:In the early days, I couldn't tolerate it if they came up to me.
Guest:There'd be a fight.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But now.
Guest:You wanted that gig, right?
Guest:You wanted the gig.
Guest:So did you change anything?
Guest:Didn't change a word.
Guest:Didn't do a thing differently.
Yeah.
Guest:Except Francis did.
Guest:He was wise enough.
Guest:He moves the Sollozzo and Sterling Hayden murder up front so they'll shoot it.
Guest:Early.
Guest:Earlier.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He denies it.
Guest:He denies that he did that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I think, oh, well, somebody did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was there and I did that scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they kept me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Good.
Marc:The killer.
Marc:Well, that's the change.
Marc:That's the transition from Michael, who didn't want to be part of it, to Michael, who's up over his head almost.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:So they're like, oh, he's a killer.
Marc:But no, but the executive see it.
Marc:It's like, look at that.
Guest:He can do it.
Guest:Yeah, he just blew those guys away.
Guest:I mean, all of a sudden, I was sitting there, and all of a sudden, my eyes started to go.
Guest:Like, I thought...
Guest:When you come out of the bathroom?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I had no control.
Guest:It was so frightening that I had to do that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so then I come up and do it.
Guest:And that got me the part.
Guest:When I ran out, there was a cab there, and I jumped on a cab.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I fell.
Guest:I fell off the camp.
Guest:I missed it.
Guest:There wasn't a stuntman.
Guest:I didn't have a camper.
Guest:I stayed in that smoke-filled 15-hour room.
Guest:In the restaurant?
Guest:In the restaurant with Sterling Hayden and Al Leterri, little Al Leterri.
Guest:The two of them were so—I loved those guys so much.
Guest:But Sterling Hayden was huge.
Guest:I mean, huge star, too.
Guest:It was everything.
Guest:And they were just talking to me, and they so understood what was going on.
Guest:They understood that they wanted to get rid of me, and there was just so—
Guest:nice, you know, actors.
Guest:They're good.
Guest:They're good people.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It worked.
Guest:And so it worked.
Guest:And then when I fell, when I jumped in and I fell on the floor and landed, I looked up at the sky and I thought,
Guest:God, thank you.
Yeah.
Guest:Thank you because I'm out of here now.
Guest:Oh, you think you broke your foot?
Guest:I thought I broke my ankle.
Guest:And I thought I'm freed.
Guest:I'm freed from this because nobody wants me around when they're not wanted.
Guest:You don't want to be there.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But no, they shot you up with cortisone and got you working and walking.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But what was interesting to me is that, you know, the collaborative nature of it, that once you were in the part that, you know, that moment.
Marc:And he did it again in Scarface because he talked about it where, you know, you're going to, you know, if you don't see something as serving the story or you can't act through something because it's not correct, you're going to make an issue of it.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And because of that, you claim that you had a reputation, but it was not because you're nuts.
Guest:No.
Marc:It was because— Well, I'm nuts.
Marc:You have to stay with that, please.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is true, too, but yeah.
Marc:But that moment with Frank Tantangeli, you know, they'd already shot him coming to the table in Tahoe drunk.
Marc:A few times, right?
Guest:Oh, God, yes.
Marc:But he doesn't say anything.
Marc:And then one time he says, you know, and they're wrapping the scene.
Marc:And he spills the wine.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they're wrapping the scene.
Marc:You're like, Michael's got to answer.
Marc:He's got to respond to that.
Guest:Yes, of course he does.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But they were moving on.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Well, they were finished for the night.
Yeah.
Guest:We had ice.
Guest:We put the ice in our mouths because it was so cold.
Guest:Oh, you wanted no steam.
Guest:Steam was coming out of the mouth.
Guest:It was supposed to be summer.
Guest:So everybody was exhausted.
Guest:And I just said to Francis, we've got to turn the camera around because Michael has to react to that.
Guest:And he just stared at me.
Guest:And he said, oh, okay.
Guest:He knew you were right, though.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:He knew I was right.
Guest:So you got to get everyone.
Guest:Come back in.
Guest:Everybody's got to come back in a while because he wants his close-up redone.
Guest:But it's a real moment.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:You go through that in films.
Guest:Things get done after your stuff is done, and they're totally different.
Guest:I felt that recently in Lear.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, boy, I have to go back and do a couple of things because this person did that and that person did that.
Guest:They didn't do that on my take.
Guest:And it was big stuff.
Guest:It really was changing the very, you know—
Marc:The nature of the... The core of the scene.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because that thing you did in Scarface, I mean, it's crazy with the scene in the restaurant.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:For budgetary reasons, where you're like, yeah, take a good look at the bad guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:For budgetary reasons, they're going to do it at the club when you're wearing a Hawaiian shirt?
Marc:Doesn't make sense.
Marc:It makes no sense.
Marc:No.
Marc:So you got to go to the mat with that and say, if he's down in a tuxedo, what's the fucking point of the scene?
Marc:That's right.
Yeah.
Guest:But that was a big hit, right?
Guest:Yeah, that went really down badly.
Guest:But Marty and Brian DePalma.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They got it.
Guest:They got it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They must have had it before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just trying to feel me out seeing what I was going to say.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I said, no way.
Guest:And you weren't going to work or what?
Guest:What was the line you drew?
Guest:I was saying, listen, let me talk to you guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you still feel the same way after I talked to you.
Guest:I sat there and talked for 45 minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because we blew the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:$200,000 that cost.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The heads of Universal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were like, fuck this guy.
Guest:This kid, oh my God.
Marc:Pacino's nothing but trouble.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:And that string of movies, it's so funny in the book because after you did Bobby Deerfield with Pollock, you thought it was over.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that happened many times.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Many times still happens.
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:Well, I mean, but it was, I think, a little different with the level of starness that was happening that, you know, that the idea that you do one flop and it's fucking over.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Do you remember the scene where I went to the forest lawn to those people that were there the Oscar night and started calling them and saying, I didn't go to the Oscars not because I thought I was cheated out of being the lead over Marlon Brando.
Guest:No.
Guest:I went because I had other feelings.
Guest:And sometimes I was going through things.
Guest:And I was doing a play in Boston at the same time.
Guest:And I was afraid.
Guest:I felt so out of place at the Oscars.
Guest:But I was young still, and still those kind of things.
Guest:I didn't realize you go to a thing like that.
Guest:Suck it up.
Guest:Suck it up, because this is what's happening.
Guest:And I ran from it.
Guest:But then I wouldn't go because I didn't get the lead with Brando.
Guest:I mean, it's just—and that's what was in the air.
Guest:for years that you were this that i was a snob yeah stuck up and you were really just nervous and shy that's right when i would go nuts for whatever reason yeah and i saw some i would go to the oscars and they were shocked yeah when i went for serpico yeah they were shocked to see me there but what you had to medicate yourself to the point where you were nuts oh my god i was nuts yeah
Guest:I was drugging and drinking, and I was in a state of absolute— And you didn't like to fly?
Guest:There was all these other issues.
Guest:And it goes on and on and on.
Guest:I was with Diane, and I ran out of jokes to tell her, because she'd be laughing for the first hour.
Guest:But then there was two more hours to follow.
Guest:I couldn't tolerate— What was that?
Guest:What did you say to Jeff Bridges?
Guest:I said to him,
Guest:I turned to him.
Guest:I didn't know him at the time.
Guest:And, you know, he's a great actor and he was there.
Guest:And also he's a Hollywood guy too.
Guest:So I said to him, I don't know why I'm saying to him.
Guest:And he looks at me and I said, I just was wondering.
Guest:What's going to happen?
Guest:An hour is up.
Guest:And they're not getting to the best role.
Guest:And he looked at me.
Guest:I mean, he looked at me as though I was in some, who is this person?
Guest:And he looked at me.
Guest:He said, it's three hours.
Yeah.
Marc:That's the gig.
Guest:That was all he said.
Guest:I said, oh, thank you.
Guest:Three hours.
Guest:I thought, I got to sit here for two more hours.
Guest:And I know for sure I'm going to lose.
Guest:And then I keep going and popping those Valium pills.
Guest:And with Diane back and forth in the days.
Guest:And Elizabeth Taylor comes out.
Guest:We all are standing up.
Guest:And I'm sitting down.
Guest:And then it dawns on me.
Yeah.
Guest:What if I win?
Guest:What if I win?
Guest:I don't have a speech.
Guest:I don't have anything except I'm ossified.
Guest:How do I get to the stage?
Guest:How do I go up the stairs?
Guest:I'll fall down.
Guest:It's all these things are going in my mind.
Guest:I just said, you know how it happens, Al?
Guest:When you're in these situations, they always go fucking wrong.
Guest:You know that.
Guest:And you're going to win tonight.
Guest:I have these two sides of my brain going at it.
Marc:And that was for Serpico?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And when they called, they didn't call your name, right?
Guest:Well, when they didn't, I was sitting there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought it was so utterly, my body was painting.
Guest:I was in a panic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't know what was going to happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I hear the name, Jack Lemmon.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:It was paradise.
Guest:I saw paradise.
Guest:I breathed.
Guest:Imagine the phony I must have looked like.
Guest:Getting all so happy about Jack Lemmon.
Guest:You're just happy it wasn't you.
Guest:I was just happy it wasn't me.
Marc:The assumption is he's just pretending because he wanted to win, but you're like, thank God.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Now, you tell that story, and people think, what the hell's wrong with you?
Guest:Oscars, everything.
Guest:Of course it is.
Guest:But I didn't— You know how it is.
Guest:You get to a point in life, and I was at that point, because if you're not rolling around in the business, as you know—
Guest:You're not thinking about things like that.
Guest:And you can come off kind of snobby.
Guest:But I just didn't know that world that much.
Guest:Oscar was fine.
Guest:But I got nominated.
Guest:That's a big deal.
Guest:And people are coming to see me.
Guest:I said, well, I didn't have one.
Marc:When did you get one?
Guest:I got it when I got it.
Guest:I was going to say, I got it when I didn't deserve it, as most of us do.
Guest:You know, if you're around enough and you think, I was eating Oscar nominations.
Guest:I didn't get it.
Guest:Then I got it.
Guest:For what?
Guest:For Ascent of a Woman.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And I really thought that that was – I thought there's a chance.
Guest:And I think I got up a little bit more into the world a little bit.
Guest:I was – You're playing the game a bit.
Guest:I was in the game a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, it's so interesting to me because I did a screening of Dog Day.
Marc:I screened it at the Arrow because one of the podcasters, American Cinematheque, reached out to some of us and said, you want to host tonight?
Marc:You want to host tonight?
Marc:What are the movies?
Marc:I put Dog Day first, McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
Marc:Oh, I love that too.
Marc:Right?
Marc:In Paris, Texas, I think.
Marc:And they're like, we got Dog Day.
Marc:I'm like, holy shit.
Guest:And to see that in a fucking movie theater?
Guest:Yeah, it's amazing.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:See what Sidney Lumet does in that film on the outside.
Guest:It's all dialogue, too.
Guest:And Johnny Casato.
Marc:Oh, my God, you guys.
Marc:But, you know, it's funny.
Marc:I get a message on Instagram from a woman.
Marc:who was an assistant editor on that movie.
Marc:And she said, I got a story.
Marc:Do you know this story?
Marc:Tell me.
Marc:Her name, I make sure I get it.
Marc:Nancy Cantor.
Marc:Does that ring a bell?
Marc:She's the assistant.
Marc:Diddy Allen.
Marc:Diddy Allen was the editor.
Marc:This is her assistant, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was her job to get the first cut of the film to the screening room at the Gulf and Western Building.
Marc:And you hadn't seen it and Lumet hadn't seen it.
Marc:She's got the only cut.
Marc:And she's taking it up there.
Marc:And she's got the canisters.
Marc:And she's hailing a cabin to get run over by a bus.
Marc:So she thinks she's out.
Marc:It's over.
Marc:She wants to get on a plane and leave the country.
Marc:And she brings these crushed canisters up to the theater.
Marc:And the projectionist and her re-spool it.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So you guys could see it.
Marc:And you had no idea.
Marc:You're like, all right, we're going to watch the movie.
Marc:And this woman's like, my life is on the line here.
Marc:Isn't that crazy?
Marc:So I had to come up and tell that story.
Marc:It was terrific.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:But when you look back at that movie, because I feel when you look at all the stuff, that was the rawest, most vulnerable thing that I'd ever seen in the context of all the roles you've had.
Marc:Do you feel that way about it?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes, I did.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Because you're all out.
Marc:You're all out there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:In that moment, John, he's like, you remember when you said you're going to shoot him?
Guest:Oh, my God, yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So the thing we picked, Johnny and I, was we just said, hey, look, we don't know each other that well.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That was a key.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're not friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Me and Johnny were very close.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, as the two characters, the two characters, we said, how about they don't know each other that well?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Marc:They're finding out as it's going along.
Marc:You know what's interesting about that movie is how funny it is.
Guest:Yeah, it's funny, yeah.
Marc:You know, I'm sure Lumet knew that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right from the beginning, the guy was like, I can't do this.
Marc:What do you want me to do with the gun?
Marc:Right away, the guy's like, I got to go.
Marc:And you're like, what are you?
Marc:It's a comedic character.
Guest:See, when Sidney Lumet directs him, he directs him.
Guest:He tells you where to go.
Guest:So if you do what he says and you're doing what he said, told you to do, you're robbing a bank.
Guest:You don't know how you got there, but you're in a robbery because he orchestrates it.
Guest:That's the genius of him.
Guest:And
Guest:We had no scene for the end.
Guest:It was a phone call because they wanted—the play started with—when we read it, it was dressing as Marilyn Monroe and— Oh, right.
Marc:Well, you're the— And I said that's not— Sarandon's part.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He's going to make a scene.
Marc:That's not the way it happened.
Marc:In the dress, yeah.
Guest:So Sidney said to both of us, we had been in it long enough that we knew our characters and we were talking in a way.
Guest:You and Sarandon.
Guest:Me and Sarandon.
Guest:He turns on a tape recorder and he says, go.
Guest:We do three takes of that scene.
Guest:But this scene where you're like, how are you doing?
Guest:On the phone.
Guest:We do three takes of it.
Guest:He takes all three takes.
Guest:He cuts him up and puts it into that scene, which was 14 minutes long.
Guest:Yeah, that phone call.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like a beautiful thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:He's doing it on the floor of the bank while we're shooting.
Marc:Yeah, editing it.
Marc:Editing it, putting it together.
Marc:So originally it was scripted that Sarandon's character would come out and make a scene and a dress, and you thought that was inappropriate to the character.
Marc:It didn't really happen.
Guest:It didn't happen that way.
Marc:And it was a spectacle.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It would have diminished the integrity of the thing.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:And you said that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Again, you're like, you can't do this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can't get over it.
Guest:I'm learning to just keep my mouth shut.
Guest:But I've seen more things that when I see the film that I regret I didn't speak up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not that it would have been any better or not.
Guest:I don't know that.
Marc:But I know it didn't feel right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Sometimes it would be better.
Marc:And I watched Cruising recently.
Marc:I watched Injustice for All recently.
Marc:I talked to Friedkin before he passed.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Great director.
Marc:It was something, huh?
Marc:That movie was something.
Marc:Like I watched it and it held up.
Marc:You know, it was an interesting thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I know there was pushback from the gay community about the characterization of that community.
Marc:But what was interesting with Friedkin's, whatever his understanding of it was, there was a moment in that movie.
Marc:And I liked the movie because I liked the ending and I liked that you're carrying.
Marc:That must have been something for you to work with, like, you know, at the end of it.
Guest:Well, I felt a little funny about it when I saw it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, no, there is something a little much because you walk into that one bar and it's like, wow, what isn't going on in here?
Yeah.
Marc:There's a guy in a harness.
Marc:There's a guy doing this.
Marc:There's a guy doing that.
Marc:Like, it's all here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was a little much.
Marc:But I thought the character at the end was interesting where, you know, you don't know who you are.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, yeah, we talk a little bit about Scarface.
Marc:But then, like, and we won't stay here forever, but, like, I'm glad you're patient with me.
Guest:I am very patient.
Guest:It's great talking to you.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:You know, and Justice for All, in the book, your sense of it was not, you know, what it became.
Marc:It's quite a great movie.
Yeah.
Guest:It is a—it seems to work.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But you were surprised with people walking around the streets going, you're out of—I'm out of— Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:They picked that up.
Marc:Like with Attica, the same thing.
Marc:You get these little— You know how Attica came out?
Guest:You read the book.
Guest:You know how I say Attica.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm about to go on—
Guest:We're in the bank, and they're calling outside.
Guest:I've got to go on and talk to the cops with the big crowds.
Guest:And as I'm going out, this great AD named Burt Harris comes up to me.
Guest:And he graduates.
Guest:I'm going, he says, Al, I made him.
Guest:I made Serpico with him.
Guest:I know him.
Guest:And he just says, Al.
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:He said, say Attica.
Guest:Say Attica.
Guest:Because Attica was a big deal at that time.
Guest:They invaded the prison.
Guest:They killed prisoners.
Guest:And I said, say Attica.
Guest:He says, yes, Attica, go.
Guest:Push with me.
Guest:So I go out there.
Guest:I'm out there a little while.
Guest:All of a sudden, I pick up the idea that something's going on.
Guest:And I just say, Attica, what about Attica?
Guest:Remember Attica?
Guest:And all of the audience, all the extras, hundreds of them start screaming, yes, Attica.
Guest:And the whole thing starts going crazy.
Guest:That's the thing with film.
Guest:These are kinds of things you can do.
Marc:And I'll tell you, you got the most I've ever seen anybody get out of Charles Durning.
Marc:You know, when you're out there and you're doing that dance with him, you know, it's almost like a dance.
Marc:No, no, no, no.
Marc:Come here.
Guest:Come here.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And you have to understand, Sidney Lumet rehearses.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Three weeks.
Marc:Big difference.
Marc:We were a cast.
Marc:And that thing happened to you again with the hoo-ha.
Marc:You said in the book that you're preparing for the scent of a woman.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And where that came from, which is another one of those things where people are going around saying hoo-ha.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But you got it because the Marine who was showing you how to...
Marc:Assemble and disassemble the gun.
Guest:Assemble and disassemble a .45 blind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I would do it relatively right, he would say, I like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, what is that?
Guest:That's wonderful.
Guest:He says, yeah, you know, we say it on the line sometimes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:When the rifles go to the shoulder and everybody stands.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, wow.
Guest:That's going in.
Guest:Going in a lot.
Guest:Yeah, going in a lot.
Yeah.
Guest:I threw it at any time.
Guest:I was in trouble.
Guest:I get right out of it.
Marc:But it was interesting, too, to me that, you know, after Revolution tanked, that you, again, you felt like you were out of the game.
Guest:I just didn't want to do this anymore because I was—my reaction to what happened at Scarface was—
Guest:I was surprised that it had that reaction.
Marc:The audiences liked it.
Marc:It took a while, though.
Marc:It took a while.
Marc:And Warren Beatty told you, like, yeah, you know, it could take a while.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And it was interesting because it wasn't until the black community locked in.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Hip-hop just got—they understood it.
Guest:They embraced it.
Guest:The rappers.
Guest:And then the next thing you know, VHS is going out.
Guest:And more people are seeing it.
Guest:Plus, they were on the records.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:These rappers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it just—and then it just carried.
Guest:And it kept going and going.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They had a showing of it at the Arrow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was it good?
Yeah.
Guest:Man, I couldn't believe it.
Guest:I tell you, Bernard Rose, who's directing Lear, Keith Lear for me, he is there to interview me.
Guest:He's a real... It's a good outfit, that outfit.
Guest:And so I was shook up seeing it on a big screen.
Guest:And the reaction.
Guest:And what I was doing in that part, I don't know what the hell was the matter with me.
Guest:What happened to me?
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:I was so...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I've never been that committed to a role.
Guest:I mean, I was there.
Guest:I said, I am this guy.
Guest:And I was living—I was in love then.
Guest:I was with Kathleen Quinlan.
Guest:She and I were really—it was a lifesaver for me.
Guest:Every time coming home, you know, it's tough to be in a room with a lot of smoke and being—
Guest:and a lot of blood on you all day for 12, 14 hours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You come home and she would tell me about her day, which was so great.
Guest:I just saved my life.
Guest:Saved my life.
Guest:I just listened to her about her day.
Guest:I just.
Guest:Yeah, thank God.
Guest:What happened to you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was in a, you know,
Guest:I started coming home like that doing Lear, I must say.
Guest:Maybe it's a good sign.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I would finish a day's work in the way we were doing.
Guest:Because we did Lear now for 400 BC, it's supposed to be.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'd come home and I could not move.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But those scenes where you're just like at the end where you're just like putting your nose right into the blow there.
Marc:And you're like, yeah, yo.
Marc:And you're out of your mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:To play it that jacked up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was Coke ever your thing?
Guest:Never.
Guest:I have to say it.
Guest:Nobody believes me, so I'll say it anyway.
Guest:It is the truth.
Guest:I never had coke in my life.
Marc:Oh, it's so good that you figured it out.
Guest:I was all about something that was going to depress this energy of mine.
Marc:The nervous energy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I needed the...
Marc:It's interesting the women in your life, though, because it seems like after you decided you were out that Diane Keaton was like, you got to do something.
Guest:What a great person.
Guest:What a great person.
Guest:And that thing she did when I lost all my money twice the first time.
Guest:was when I was with her and I decided I was quitting.
Guest:And then I realized after four years, after a few years, I realized I had to get back because I didn't have money.
Guest:And then that's that scene with the lawyer in the office when she's talking to the lawyer and she says, you know who he is?
Guest:He says, you know who he is, meaning me.
Guest:And he says, yeah, I know who he is.
Guest:You know who he is?
Guest:Who do you think he is?
Guest:Oh, you're going to tell me he's an actor, he's an artist, whatever.
Guest:No, no, he's an idiot.
Guest:I'm just an idiot.
Guest:And he's looking at me.
Guest:I'm looking at him.
Guest:She's got him up against the wall when she's saying this.
Guest:And she says, you're here to help him.
Guest:He doesn't know this stuff.
Guest:It was beautiful.
Marc:And that's when you got the accountant and the crooked accountant?
Guest:That was the first one.
Guest:Somebody put me into something, whatever happens.
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:I had no idea about that.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:But when I had the kids and everything and the family and all that stuff starts and then I'm making a fortune.
Guest:They was making a, you know, that scene where the accountant comes over.
Marc:He says, you're good.
Marc:How can I have this much money?
Guest:I said, how can I have the same amount of money I had when I just spent 500 grand traveling around?
Guest:I was out of my mind in the airplane.
Guest:I said, what's going on?
Guest:And then his right eyebrow just went...
Guest:Just flick it.
Guest:And I said, yeah.
Guest:I said, I'm fucked.
Guest:I knew it.
Guest:Next day I went to a lawyer.
Guest:I said, I think something's going on.
Guest:And the lawyer was great.
Guest:And he set me up with some guy in New York who was an accountant for the Rockefellers.
Guest:And we met and talked.
Guest:And then he met the guy.
Guest:Your guy.
Guest:The next thing you know, yeah.
Guest:I quit, and the FBI comes and gets him.
Marc:And they put him away for a Ponzi scheme.
Marc:Seven years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Didn't help you.
Marc:No, not much.
Guest:Because he wasn't insured.
Marc:But what's interesting in the turn in terms of how you looked at your job, like once you needed to support the family and you realized you were fucked, you had to shift your perspective on what acting is.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And you had to say, like, all right, well, you know, I know how to do this.
Marc:And now, unfortunately, I got to do it for money.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And you did.
Marc:And I did.
Marc:But, you know, there's good stuff, right?
Marc:Dick Tracy had a good time.
Marc:See a love.
Marc:I didn't know that yet with Dick Tracy.
Guest:I still thought I had money.
Guest:Oh, it wasn't.
Guest:You know, there was Warren's film, which, you know, Warren is the...
Guest:Greatest.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's the greatest person.
Guest:Yeah, and I liked that.
Marc:And director.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then, what, The Godfather 3?
Marc:So this happened, like what, after Scent of a Woman?
Guest:When I got back, after Sea of Love.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Sea of Love came out.
Guest:It was a huge hit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the first thing I had done in four years.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And they didn't pay me at all for it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They paid me...
Guest:A couple, but I didn't get a back end.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Made a fortune.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I got into Godfather.
Guest:Three.
Guest:Part of the reason, too, was I needed some money.
Guest:I didn't have it.
Guest:You got young kids?
Guest:And so Francis, too, I think he needed it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I had one kid.
Marc:I didn't have my young kids.
Marc:I had one kid I was taking care of.
Marc:What did you think of three?
Guest:I don't think it got there.
Guest:I think this new thing that Francis did with it where he, it starts, it's called The Death of Michael Corleone.
Guest:It's a little different.
Guest:When it first came, Bob DeVal was in it.
Guest:And he had some sort of problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he left.
Guest:And when he left, had to change the whole story.
Guest:Because Michael goes to the Vatican.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because his brother, Bobby Duval, has been killed in the Vatican.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's sussing it out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's why he's there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he starts making deals with the church.
Yeah.
Guest:Entirely different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then what happened?
Guest:What happens is he goes to church on a Sunday, Michael and his family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He comes out and he's shot right outside the church.
Guest:That's how it ends?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He rolls down the stairs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Diane comes up to him, Keaton, and grabs him and pulls him.
Guest:And he says, Michael, Michael.
Guest:Michael, are you dead?
Guest:And Michael looks at her and says, no, and dies.
Guest:Yeah, but that didn't make the cut.
Marc:That didn't make the cut.
Marc:But there was another thing from that movie that people started repeating.
Marc:They keep pulling me back in.
Marc:Oh, yeah, that's true.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:Obviously, we can't get into everything, but Heat must have been monumental.
Marc:I watched that again because I interviewed Michael Mann, and I watched Heat a couple of times.
Marc:What a great fucking movie.
Marc:But I wouldn't have known about the cocaine thing.
Marc:I know.
Marc:And he cut that out, and you built a whole character around cocaine.
Guest:I did.
Guest:A lot of people didn't know that, but I knew it took me 20 years before I could say anything about it.
Guest:But I think there was a reason he had to do it.
Guest:This is a wired character I'm playing anyway, but he did chip cocaine.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not the real guy.
Guest:That I don't know.
Guest:Yeah, but your character.
Guest:The character I composed.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there's a scene in the film when I'm going into the club where you actually see me do it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he took it out.
Marc:Took it out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he had his reasons, I'm sure.
Guest:I wouldn't have noticed it.
Marc:I mean, like, you know, I wouldn't have put it together until I read it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there's so many great movies.
Marc:Like, you know, dude, you know, there's always the great movies.
Marc:Like, I love Devil's Advocate.
Marc:yeah i love it a friend of mine did some of the did some of the writing in it for me yeah but they're seeing the elevator with the woman with the mother oh my god yeah i mean to play the devil that's a way i love that yeah i love that yeah and but i think brasco was another one where you really kind of like you had to do the work well you know in a way because some
Guest:Sometimes I got accused of doing it on gangster films.
Guest:I said, well, look, I try to do, you can't compare Scarface to Michael Corleone.
Guest:No.
Guest:Nor can you make that guy lefty who Jared compared to Colito's Way.
Guest:And Donnie Brasco?
Guest:And Donnie Brasco.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're different people.
Guest:They're all different people.
Guest:I said, I would only do gangster if it was a different people.
Marc:But Brasco was such a beautiful character.
Marc:I mean, really, just something else.
Guest:The director, Michael, he was really such a sweetheart.
Marc:But just the humanity of that guy, Michael Newell.
Guest:Michael Newell said...
Guest:This is a love story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It reminded him of something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The two of them.
Guest:And you feel the connection between Johnny and I. Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But that scene where you know you're going to be killed and you're putting your watch away?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How deep into it were you?
Guest:I just go there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What would happen to me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What would I do?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And always, it may not happen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what if it did?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, that's interesting.
Marc:I know I'm saying that a lot, but at the end of the book, you grew to be able to accept that.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Sometimes you get there and sometimes you don't, but you're good enough to know that maybe you're the only one that knows.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yes, exactly right.
Marc:You know, so if you're not happy with it, you just keep your mouth shut.
Marc:Maybe people think it's a different one.
Guest:But I was happy with that one.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was.
Guest:But what I was saying really is the character himself doesn't know, thinks it's going to happen, isn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:but it's going to happen.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:But it didn't happen that way in life.
Guest:And this is a true story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they added this.
Marc:It's the movies.
Marc:And then again, like, you know, as we move towards the end, you know, where you start doing these, you know, the Paterno, the Phil Spector, you know, the Kevorkian.
Marc:I mean, you know, you got into those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Were those money gigs or did you like Levinson?
Guest:No, those were gigs.
Guest:David Mamet did that Spectre, which I liked.
Guest:I liked that movie.
Marc:And Mamet did Glengarry Glen Ross, which you did a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:A lot of different characters.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you talk about getting older and being Levine as opposed to the other guy.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And you're just like out of your mind.
Guest:I just said, wait a minute, because Jack Lemmon is great at Glengarry.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:It's a great performance.
Guest:And I remember, well, it's Mamet, so I'll do it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I went there, and I'm not a short—how do you short rehearse Glengarry?
Guest:You can't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The words, before the words even—so I had a hard time with that learning and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Time went on.
Guest:I love the guys I work with.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then I did something that you'll understand.
Guest:At one point, I said...
Guest:Don't feel right about this speech when I went to the kids.
Guest:And I've been doing it and trying it.
Guest:And I said, I'm just going to say it in my own words.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I start saying.
Guest:This is with Mamet.
Guest:I start saying in my own words what happened.
Guest:Maybe some of his words were in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm doing it.
Guest:And he comes with his wife.
Guest:And they come to the dressing room after.
Yeah.
Guest:And there he is, and his wife, and they're just excited about this character I've just played.
Guest:The improviser.
Guest:I don't think he knew that I was improviser.
Guest:Isn't it such a strange world?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, with plays and theater and words.
Marc:And what about these movies that you directed?
Marc:There was this string of stuff that came out in a box set.
Marc:Yeah, there's Chinese coffee.
Guest:I got to a point where I wanted to...
Guest:preserve some of the films the stories I did on stage I wanted to put them in a little box to keep them in a legacy chart somewhere because they're things I liked I was saying some of the writers I liked I liked Ira Lewis and what he was talking about the 80s and the bygone era of the 60s where friendship and what show was that?
Guest:it was called Chinese Coffee yeah yeah
Guest:It was, I don't know, beautiful.
Guest:Yeah, and the stigmatic.
Guest:And then there's local stigmatic, which my friend Hethcote Williams, who's gone now, had written, who was Pinter's protege.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Pinter saw the film twice.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Brought it to London.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He was a big fan of it.
Guest:And I keep it under cover a little bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I showed it to Elaine May at one point.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I said, what do you think?
Guest:And she said, wow.
Guest:I think it's good, Al.
Guest:It's good, but don't open it.
Guest:Don't put it out there.
Guest:Really?
Guest:She says, you don't know who you are.
Guest:You don't know how famous you are.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I thought, oh, okay.
Guest:But things change.
Guest:That was about 10, 15 years ago.
Marc:Yeah, and then the other one was the Oscar Wilde.
Marc:Then the Oscar Wilde.
Marc:Salome's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jessica Chastain.
Marc:Yeah, amazing.
Marc:Who's in Lear with me.
Marc:Oh, she's back.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And she did.
Guest:No, Jessica's a big star now.
Marc:I know.
Marc:You have interviewed her.
Marc:She's amazing.
Guest:Amazing.
Marc:She's amazing.
Marc:You used her.
Marc:You were in when she was very young.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I sort of discovered her.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:She always tells the world I did.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But she'd be discovered by anyone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When you take a look at this girl.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My God.
Marc:And then the Richard II and your mission to get people to understand shit.
Guest:Richard III.
Marc:Richard III, yeah.
Marc:I did Looking for Richard.
Marc:Looking for Richard, yeah.
Marc:I won the Director's Award.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:The Guild Award.
Guest:I like to say that because there's a whole section in my book where I go to this party.
Guest:And here, we're in Los Angeles.
Guest:I still think we're in New York.
Guest:We go to a big party.
Guest:Remember it?
Guest:And I'm talking and none of the people have even heard of Looking for Richie.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And that's also where you learn that why parties end at 10 in Hollywood.
Marc:Yeah, oh, God, that's something.
Marc:Yeah, because people, they're afraid they're going to get drunk and say something to the wrong person.
Guest:And there I was at one of those parties.
Guest:I went to another one of them, and some very well-known actress is there, and she's kind of toddling her.
Guest:She's weaving a little.
Guest:I'm leaving, and there I see her.
Guest:I say, hello, how are you doing?
Guest:She says, I think I said the wrong thing.
Marc:And she was upset.
Marc:To the wrong person.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Devastated.
Guest:Devastated.
Guest:You know, I mean, she said it out of drunkenness.
Guest:Did she end up all right?
Guest:Yeah, she ended up fine.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I think.
Guest:No, no, she did.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:When I think of it, yeah, she was okay.
Guest:but the thought so right what happens is suddenly superficiality just starts creeping in a little bit you start saying things you you know and you don't really mean politeness takes over real talk yeah but this run that you've had with the Irishman and with House of Gucci with the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that's fun right yeah well a lot of that is these people I know like Leo and they're so great and
Guest:And I did it with Tarantino.
Guest:It was great because I knew him in life.
Guest:And then working with him was, you know.
Marc:I interviewed him.
Marc:Wasn't there something weird with your dad's?
Marc:Both our dads?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:If there was, I don't know about it.
Guest:It might have been because my dad moved out here.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think he teamed up with Tarantino's dad.
Guest:No, that was another thing.
Guest:All of a sudden, I don't know what they called themselves.
Guest:They had a video of exercising.
Marc:Picino and Tarantino.
Guest:No, not Tarantino.
Guest:Stallone?
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman, and Pacino.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those three were on some exercise video.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It didn't really get it.
Marc:It didn't make it into your world, though.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You don't know.
Guest:This is this world.
Guest:Anything happens.
Guest:You just take it.
Guest:You just say.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So now you're doing Lear and it's exciting and you're working.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm just going to, you know, this thing.
Guest:I'm working.
Guest:Am I?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I am.
Guest:I just, I'm doing.
Guest:You know, I've gotten almost six films.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've done.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They haven't been out yet.
Marc:That's exciting.
Marc:You got Baby.
Guest:I do.
Guest:On top of everything.
Guest:No, but these films have been hanging around a while, so I'm hoping that they'll get out.
Guest:Because a couple of them are, you know, I think, okay.
Guest:And others, you can't tell.
Guest:But I've been taking smaller roles.
Guest:Except for this thing I did in Vegas with Vince Vaughn.
Guest:It was absolutely great in a performance that...
Guest:He's quite capable.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He really is.
Guest:Sharp guy.
Guest:I haven't seen it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I loved working with him.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the director, the director wrote the script.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:He did the first True Detective, the first.
Marc:Oh, that was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:I love that show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then I know you talked about this a bit out in the world, but this experience you had with COVID and dying for a minute.
Guest:How about that one?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's a very – Well, you know, I thought I died and I believed I died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:How could I have?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was talking to the guy who was giving me – feeding me intravenous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I had – he didn't want me to dehydrate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he had me on that thing.
Guest:Fluids.
Guest:Fluids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm getting the fluids, and I liked him.
Guest:This guy was really nice, and I forgot his name.
Guest:You know, that happens sometimes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm trying to think of his name.
Guest:I wish I could call him by his name.
Guest:He was a paramedic?
Guest:No.
Guest:He was a nurse.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And he's from the Czech country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wanted to talk to him, and I was thinking about what his name was, and I was gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the last thought I had.
Guest:Whacked out.
Guest:I was gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the woman that was the nurse there said, he has no pulse.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Michael, who you met, who's outside, Mike Quinn, my guy, and he just called the ambulance.
Guest:He called the police and everything.
Guest:And I'm probably there.
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:When I opened my eyes, there were five paramedics in my living room and two doctors.
Guest:With the whole, everything all over, they looked like spacemen, like spacesuits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not that, you know, I was, you know, contaminated.
Guest:Yeah, COVID, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'm looking at this, and I look around, and there's an ambulance outside the door.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, from the time the nurse told...
Guest:Mike, that I had no pulse.
Guest:By the time all of them got together and got dressed up, had to be what?
Guest:Five minutes?
Guest:I couldn't be out for five minutes.
Marc:Yeah, you would have been brain damaged.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:Two minutes.
Guest:One minute, I think, I have a problem.
Guest:I might have been out.
Guest:But every time I was out, I probably had a very light pulse.
Marc:Yeah, but ultimately... They got me thinking.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know the thing where he says, in Hamlet's to me or not to me, he says, no more.
Guest:No more.
Guest:This life, no more.
Guest:Now they got me all on the internet saying that.
Guest:I think I'm telling you if the world is no afterlife, as if I've been there.
Guest:You know, I mean, my God, you can't say anything you say.
Guest:I never talk, see.
Guest:It's so funny.
Guest:I think so.
Marc:Yeah, because you didn't see any white light.
Marc:You didn't see nothing.
Marc:I didn't see anything.
Marc:It was so funny because my buddy Bob Odenkirk, who had a heart attack and actually died on the table for a minute, you know, I texted with him and he says, you know, there's no white light.
Marc:There's no nothing.
Marc:Follow the money.
Guest:There's no white light.
Guest:I can't verify that.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:As far as I'm concerned, when you faint sometimes, there's no light.
Marc:I blacked out and I thought, well, if that's it, you don't wake up, you're not going to know the difference.
Marc:There it is.
Guest:It's the candle.
Marc:Well, I guess we've slightly corrected the public discourse with this show.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:I think I was okay.
Guest:Good.
Guest:I like to dream.
Guest:I dream every night.
Guest:So far, when I stop dreaming, I'll let you know.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Thanks, Al.
Marc:Great talking to you.
Guest:Oh, great talking to you.
Guest:Thanks, babe.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:I turned the mics off.
Marc:He said, that's it?
Marc:I felt like you had to go somewhere.
Marc:I'm like, no, we've done an hour and a half.
Marc:You might have to go somewhere.
Marc:That book, Sonny Boy, the memoir, is available now.
Marc:Hang out for a minute.
Marc:Folks, this week's bonus episode on the full Marin is a very rare recording of a trip I took to the United Record Pressing Factory in Nashville back in 2013.
Guest:The Super Chunk Florestan Orange record coming off a press.
Guest:I love that it feels like real manufacturing being done by real people.
Guest:Because it is.
Guest:In America.
Guest:It's rare American manufacturing.
Guest:Great.
Guest:That's unbelievable.
Guest:I feel like it's a bakery.
Guest:I feel like I'm witnessing the baking of something.
Guest:something amazing.
Guest:They're the records.
Guest:They're beautiful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You could go right to turntable.
Guest:I get to listen to them in my office when they're fresh.
Guest:Still hot.
Marc:You can listen to that episode and all our bonus material by signing up for the full Marin.
Marc:To subscribe, go to the link in the episode description or go to WTF.
Marc:pod.com and click on WTF plus next week.
Marc:We have director Robert Zemeckis on Monday and country star Keith urban on Thursday.
Marc:And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by a cast.
Marc:I got to give you some guitar from the vault because it's just too early here to, to kick out the jams.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey.
Marc:La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.