Episode 1622 - Don Johnson
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck Knicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:WTF?
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:What is going on?
Marc:I got to be honest with you.
Marc:I'm just going to go straight into it.
Marc:We don't do this every year because it gets late for me to get this to Brendan before it's very late there.
Marc:I'm on the West Coast.
Marc:He's on the East Coast.
Marc:But I did just watch the Oscars.
Marc:I watched them because if you've been listening to this show for many years, you know that I love them.
Marc:I grew up excited about the Oscars.
Marc:I was kind of a film nerdy kid, and I just like seeing the movie stars.
Marc:I like seeing the movies that were nominated for Oscars.
Marc:When I was in high school, I liked talking about the movies with my buddy Devin, who him and I were kind of heady, or we thought we were anyways, for...
Marc:high school students and on through college.
Marc:But the Oscars have a big place in my heart.
Marc:And I've gone up and down with the Oscars over the years.
Marc:But let me tell you something.
Marc:This year's Oscars, my pal Conan O'Brien hosted this thing.
Marc:I didn't know how it was going to go.
Marc:I never know what to expect.
Marc:It doesn't seem to be a job that people really want to do anymore.
Marc:But God damn it, if he didn't just nail the fuck out of it.
Marc:He was so good.
Marc:He was so good.
Marc:I can't even explain it.
Marc:I'm excited.
Marc:I had watched him.
Marc:He came on my show at Largo last week to run some of the jokes.
Marc:I remember asking if he was going to do a musical number.
Marc:He's like, no, I'm just going to do the jokes and bring people up.
Marc:But he was underplaying it because that crew, that staff, his people, they really got him loaded up with good jokes.
Marc:He was...
Marc:confident and focused and just on fire and really kind of was warm.
Marc:And it was really one of the best Oscars I've seen in a long time.
Marc:And I'm a big Kimmel fan as the host of that show.
Marc:And I always liked the way he kind of underplayed things.
Marc:But Conan brought something back to it and he brought something fresh to it and he made it
Marc:He made it very present.
Marc:I'm not even sure how they did it, but some of it had to do with, it was a classy production.
Marc:I mean, the set was just stunning.
Marc:It just, it wasn't schmaltzy.
Marc:It wasn't chintzy.
Marc:There was not a lot of set pieces.
Marc:There was a lot of audio visual effects and they just nailed it.
Marc:It had this deco framework and,
Marc:And they had the orchestra up behind the stage where you could kind of see it at times in the middle of the screen.
Marc:It was a great night of entertainment and honors.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Listen to me.
Marc:I'm going crazy here.
Marc:Let me talk about today's show.
Marc:Today...
Marc:Don Johnson, Hollywood veteran, guy who's been around a long time, is on the show.
Marc:You know him from Miami Vice and movies like Tin Cup, Django Unchained, Knives Out, Rebel Ridge.
Marc:He's in the ABC series Doctor Odyssey, which is starting its second season this week.
Marc:So, yeah, I was excited to watch the Oscars last night.
Marc:I was in New Mexico, and I'd gone out to see my dad and hang out with him.
Marc:And then I went over to my friend Dave's house with his girlfriend, Sherilyn.
Marc:And we watched him on the big screen.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I get emotionally moved sometimes.
Marc:by the fucking oscars i don't know if i feel like it's part of my community now but i feel like i'm more emotional about it now because i do talk to a lot of people i wouldn't say i'm in rotation or anything i wasn't there but i'm always curious to see how people handle that job and uh he just fucking did a great job and some of my picks i i was thrilled
Marc:that Anora won the Best Picture Oscar.
Marc:That was what I wanted to win.
Marc:I wanted it to win because I think it does everything it's supposed to do.
Marc:It was a really great year for indie films this year, especially Anora, but The Brutalist too.
Marc:My picks were really...
Marc:What were they?
Marc:I wanted Inora to be Best Picture.
Marc:I wanted Brady Corbett to win Best Director.
Marc:I was kind of thinking that Adrian Brody was going to win, but I kind of wanted Ralph Fiennes to win.
Marc:I wanted Demi to win, but it's...
Marc:It's perfectly great that Mikey Madison won.
Marc:I mean, just how exciting.
Marc:You don't know what's going to happen, and the movies are all pretty fucking good, and there are surprises.
Marc:I know that I've got to see Amelia Perez.
Marc:I've got to see the Brazilian film that, what is it, I'm Still Here.
Marc:I think that I can accept that
Marc:That Best Cinematography went to The Brutalist.
Marc:I'm sorry Brady didn't win, but I think that it got some respect and the respect it deserved, actually, because Adrian won.
Marc:But the cinematography was pretty fucking amazing.
Marc:And Sean Baker won Best Director, Best Editor, Best Original Screenplay, and then Best Picture.
Marc:That's fucking outstanding.
Marc:Independent movie made for $6 million.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:And the comedy was good.
Marc:It wasn't overwrought.
Marc:There were only a couple of really wacky bits.
Marc:The opening bit was good.
Marc:Everybody was dressed nice.
Marc:But that set and that orchestra and Conan just keeping it going, I don't know.
Marc:And also just the vibe, you know, L.A.
Marc:coming out of the fires, you know,
Marc:Show business in general being culturally marginalized by monsters.
Marc:There was no attention paid to the president or to politics, except in a very specific way when a movie that was a documentary made by a group of Palestinians and Israelis about what's going on there.
Marc:And they said their piece, which was righteous.
Marc:And it's just a beautiful thing.
Marc:to have show business and the artists that revolve around film in all elements, not politicizing themselves by taking shots so they could have a night of their own and also kind of celebrate the community and what it means to put art in the world and the power of it.
Marc:Adrian Brody said some beautiful stuff about that and about marginalization and about anti-Semitism and pushing back on hate.
Marc:They had the firefighters come out, and they'd written a few jokes for them.
Marc:That was pretty funny.
Marc:So there was the kind of L.A.
Marc:community represented, and there was the sort of entertainment industry represented, and the idea of art having purpose and facilitating some sort of change or at least some sort of salve to hopelessness and bringing people together.
Marc:I thought it was great.
Marc:I thought it was great.
Marc:And I'm very proud of my buddy Conan.
Marc:We're not that close.
Marc:But, you know, I know him a long time.
Marc:But I didn't know how he would do, and he really did well.
Marc:I got choked up a lot during the thing just when –
Marc:People win and they don't expect to win.
Marc:God damn it, I love that movie, Anora, and I love that movie, The Brutalist, and they did all right.
Marc:They did all right.
Marc:I think Anora was one of the most surprising, entertaining, heartfelt things I'd seen in a long time.
Marc:Another thing I want to mention is that when Ben Stiller showed up,
Marc:All I was hoping was that he was going to do a comedy piece because despite whatever seriousness he aspires to and achieves, Ben Stiller doing physical comedy is one of the greatest things ever.
Marc:ever in terms of comedy.
Marc:Ben Stiller is one of the great physical comedians and he did a bit and it was great.
Marc:No one has better physical timing than that fucking guy.
Marc:So that was a treat.
Marc:I'll be in Oklahoma City at the Tower Theater this Thursday, folks.
Marc:That's March 6th.
Marc:I'll be in Dallas on Friday, March 7th at the Majestic Theater.
Marc:I'll be in Houston at the White Oak Music Hall Saturday, March 8th.
Marc:And San Antonio at the Empire Theater on Sunday, March 9th before I head to South by Southwest that week.
Marc:Durham, North Carolina.
Marc:I'm at the Carolina Theater of Durham on Friday, March 21st.
Marc:I'll be in Charlotte, North Carolina at the Knight Theater on Saturday, March 22nd.
Marc:And Charleston, South Carolina at the Charleston Music Hall on Sunday, March 23rd.
Marc:Then I'm coming to Illinois, Michigan, Toronto, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York City for my special taping.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all of the dates and links.
Marc:And again...
Marc:Get the links from there so you're not going to a scalper site.
Marc:And I don't mean to say this over and over again like people are stupid, and I'm not saying they're stupid, but you can't just Google Marc Maron tickets and get to the right place.
Marc:So go to wtfpod.com slash tour to get the stuff that you need.
Marc:Speaking of movies, I don't know if I mentioned this, but I went back.
Marc:And I watched Brady Corbet's first film called Childhood of a Leader.
Marc:And it might be better than The Brutalist.
Marc:You should see it.
Marc:I feel like I already told you to do this.
Marc:But he's a real fucking poet.
Marc:And he's got a real interesting sensibility.
Marc:Outside of that, I just want to say that my maternal lineage goes all the way back into the Ukraine, into Galicia, which apparently when my great-great-great-grandfather was there, it was an oil boom town.
Marc:And I'd like to think that my great-great-great-grandfather, maybe even one more great, was working those wells, a Jewish roughneck.
Marc:And I say this because I stand with Ukraine politically and genetically.
Marc:Genetically Ukrainian, at least a quarter.
Marc:And then the other part was close.
Marc:It was Poland.
Marc:And then there's some other stuff, Russia.
Marc:But, you know, the full Ashkenaz spectrum.
Marc:So...
Marc:Like I said, I've been out here in New Mexico, and I was visiting my dad for a few days, or just a day.
Marc:I spent a day with him, and he's still hanging in there.
Marc:He had a good day with me.
Marc:We spent a couple hours together, a few hours.
Marc:He was present and talking.
Marc:Can't remember what he had for breakfast, but he knows about me.
Marc:He knows about my life.
Marc:He knows about his life.
Marc:And his wife, Rosie, was there.
Marc:And it's interesting because she has a huge family, huge family.
Marc:And it strikes me that as a person who doesn't have kids and is relatively disconnected from my extended family, when that's the situation, like I just have a lot less unfolding and seemingly never-ending drama in my life.
Marc:And that seems to be the excitement of some part of the excitement of family and connection.
Marc:There's always someone to talk about who you love or who you kind of have to accept or not accept, but they're part of your family for better or for worse.
Marc:And it's just when I'm around Rosie, she's always talking about this family.
Marc:And I don't know if I miss it.
Marc:But I don't have that, that big connection of constantly being able to, you know, who's dying, who's not dying, who's in trouble, who's out of favor, who's got sick, who won an award, whose kid is dancing.
Marc:It's just like, I don't have that.
Marc:And in the absence of that, it's just really the daily garbage churn of the manifestations of my own insecurity, shame, panic.
Marc:and despair the four horsemen of my personal apocalypse and then i just throw in that other trash that comes into my brain just throw that into the hopper and see what i come up with look don't i know i'm listen i'm tired of me too believe me all right believe me but i'm okay today because well i
Marc:Lately, I've been taking like every opportunity that I can to just be among other people, just be in real life, just being like I went out and I mentioned this before, me and Jerry went out to Cantor's the other night just to be around people in a crowded restaurant who were just, you know, just eating.
Marc:Some of them alone, some of them not alone, just being around humanity.
Marc:I was just online at a coffee shop here in Albuquerque, and some guy complimented my sunglasses, and the next thing I know, we're just standing there in line talking about his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, his family, his trips to Venice that he had taken, his Italian roots, his New York roots.
Marc:We talked about my boots for a while, and that happened in five minutes.
Marc:People like to talk to people.
Marc:And even if it's just small talk in a way, it's actually better when it's casual and loose and not driven by ideology and politics because that's when you're listening to a self-editing recording device and the person's humanity fades into the machine or disappears.
Marc:But there's some craving I have.
Marc:And I think it's worth continuing to talk about to get out in the fucking world.
Marc:You know?
Marc:I mean, just be out in the world among people.
Marc:It feels important, and I know it seems small, but it just feels important.
Marc:Okay, look.
Marc:Don Johnson.
Marc:Don Johnson is an interesting character because everybody knows who Don Johnson is, and he's been in L.A.
Marc:He's been around this business for a long time, for a lot of generations.
Marc:He's got a lot of stories.
Marc:The season two premiere of Dr. Odyssey is this Thursday, March 6th at 9 p.m., 8 central on ABC.
Marc:You can also stream episodes on Hulu.
Marc:But when I got the opportunity to talk to Don Johnson, how am I not going to talk to Don Johnson, right?
Marc:Here's me and Don Johnson.
Marc:Look, dude, so you like plants?
Marc:I like everything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But you were looking up plants.
Guest:When I don't recognize something that I... My father knew every tree in the forest.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Every tree in the forest, yeah.
Guest:That was his thing?
Guest:One of them?
Guest:Well, one of them.
Guest:One of the many things.
Guest:But I kind of feel like that I'm...
Guest:Getting to know the place where I live.
Guest:Finally?
Guest:Yeah, finally.
Guest:You have a little time?
Guest:Not much time, but... Where do you live, here?
Marc:I have up near Santa Barbara.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:I'm heading up there on Thursday.
Marc:Santa Barbara, Lovero Theater.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I'm going to do a little show.
Marc:Are you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're going to play some music?
Marc:No, I'm a comic.
Marc:Oh, you're a comic too?
Marc:I'm going to speak to my frightened fans and try to make them feel better about the state of the world in my dark way.
Marc:So you're just now kind of like, is something settling down in your mind that enables you to...
Marc:start to enjoy life or look at where you live?
Guest:Yeah, I practice meditation.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm a long-time practitioner.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Of the original, like TM kind of deal?
Guest:No, well, that's not the original, but...
Guest:But we'll forgive you.
Marc:Let me rephrase it.
Marc:The original New Age Hollywood one?
Marc:No.
Marc:No?
Guest:Old school?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Me and Buddha, we're just like that.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, I like the whole Buddhist idea.
Marc:It seems to make sense to me.
Marc:Philosophy.
Marc:Yeah, just accept the big nothing.
Guest:It's a way of living to eliminate suffering.
Guest:Now, how long have you been practicing that?
Guest:I don't know, 30, 40 years.
Guest:I just sit and meditate.
Guest:20 minutes?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Sometimes longer.
Guest:Can you get there?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And is it great?
Marc:Because I try, and then at some point I go like, ah, fuck.
Marc:Try it again.
Marc:That's all it takes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just invest the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you can do that.
Guest:You can invest the time in that, or you can just go ahead and manage distraction and suffering.
Yeah.
Marc:Which is what we all do anyway.
Marc:Well, that seems to be my creative outlet.
Marc:Managing distress and suffering is my job.
Guest:Yeah, but it doesn't have to be you.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:The whole idea is to not particularly identify with thought.
Marc:I feel like I can do it.
Marc:I tried during the pandemic.
Marc:I feel like I can turn it off.
Marc:Anybody can.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I feel like I'm good at that.
Guest:All it takes is a little practice.
Guest:And before you know it, before you know it, you start seeing things that used to be an irritation or an annoyance to you fall away.
Guest:And you go, hmm, that's weird.
Guest:I didn't do anything other than not doing anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you learn things about yourself.
Guest:It's meditation.
Guest:And then we're going to get off this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is an observation of the mind, the nature of the mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And ultimately, it's the study of what was the mind like before we became identified with thought.
Yeah.
Guest:And then started internalizing that.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:As being real.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's what kind of built us.
Guest:And that's not real.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's a construct.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you get past the construct, get a little peace of mind, and then you're able to.
Marc:Freedom.
Marc:Freedom.
Marc:Real freedom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it lasts all day.
Guest:And it lasts all day and through any administration.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just rise above.
Marc:Get rid of the ego.
Guest:Yeah, they're all just asleep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're all just in a narrative playing out this stupid-ass drama.
Guest:It's a very aggravated, angry sleep that they're in.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But, you know, I don't know who said it, but somebody said Americans get the democracy that they deserve.
Guest:Okay, so this too shall pass, as we said.
Marc:This too shall pass.
Marc:So am I wrong in assuming that acting saved your life?
Guest:Well, if you mean did it give me something to do because I wasn't qualified for anything else.
Guest:Well, I mean you were pretty young, right?
Guest:I started very young.
Guest:I started in middle school and realized that I had a gift.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't really pay much attention to it.
Guest:And then I met these two ladies when I was – my last year in high school, I'd left home.
Guest:I went to the –
Guest:Wichita High School South in Kansas.
Guest:And I wanted to play football.
Guest:That was not in the cards because I kept falling asleep in my business class.
Guest:And so she threw me out and I went to the counselor.
Guest:Fabulous woman, flaming red hair.
Guest:Her name was Lorena Stone.
Guest:Changed your life.
Guest:Changed my life.
Guest:Isn't it weird it's one person?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She sent me to a drama and speech class so I could graduate.
Guest:And I went, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:There's got to be something else.
Guest:Woodworking, you know, Dunderhead 101.
Guest:That's what I'm qualified for.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And she sent me to this speech and drama class, and I went to the, she says, if you can get in.
Guest:So I went, I said, if I can get in, speech and drama, I mean, isn't that for dunderheads, real dunderheads?
Guest:I mean, so I went to the door, I knocked on the door, and this dame came to the door.
Guest:And her name was Dr. Karen Pyle.
Guest:And she had her arm on the door and she was firm and there was no way I was getting through that door.
Guest:She, I said, you know, I was sent down and she said, yeah, I know.
Guest:I never got another word in.
Guest:She says, can you sing?
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:She says.
Guest:Can you dance?
Guest:I said, well, yeah, sure.
Guest:I'll dance right now.
Guest:Let me into the class.
Guest:What do you want the monkey to do?
Guest:I can do it.
Guest:Just let me in.
Guest:I got to get out of this school.
Guest:Yeah, so she accepted.
Guest:Oh, she said, come back for the auditions at 4 o'clock.
Guest:for West Side Story, which I did, and I got the lead role in West Side Story, where I sang and danced.
Guest:And she saw something in me that I didn't know that I really had legit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she started, she took me into the class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She started making me read Moliere and Shakespeare.
Guest:Nobody else in the class.
Guest:Moliere, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Tennessee Williams, Jean Genet.
Guest:The canon, the classics.
Guest:The classics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she just, and I kept going out.
Guest:I don't know what this means.
Guest:I'm from the South.
Guest:I got a fucking accent.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:She'd throw those books at me and throw at me diction exercises.
Guest:So she got rid of your accent?
Guest:In a year.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And by the spring, she took me to the University of Kansas to audition for the summer repertory program, which I did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was one of eight students chosen out of the entire Midwest area to participate.
Guest:I mean, talking about Minnesota, Wisconsin, Chicago, everywhere.
Marc:Big people.
Marc:I mean, I go out of town out there.
Yeah.
Marc:Chicago.
Marc:That's a trip.
Marc:That's a road trip, man.
Marc:I'm getting out.
Marc:But you were never at a point where, because it feels like, I don't know why I associate growing up in Kansas as, and I don't know what your particular family situation was, but for some reason I sense like it's either going to be shit jobs in prison or fucking acting.
Guest:Fucking and acting.
Marc:Yeah, fucking and acting.
Guest:That seemed like the right choice.
Guest:Prison or fucking and acting.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:I mean, I hear you do the same sort of thing in prison.
Guest:You don't have much choice.
Guest:You don't have a lot of choice in the matter.
Guest:I kind of like choices.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So did you, outside of your dad liking birds, what was growing up in Kansas like?
Guest:I grew up in Missouri and Kansas.
Guest:I graduated from Wichita High School South in Kansas.
Guest:But your folks?
Guest:My folks separated when I was young, and my father lived in Missouri and my mother lived in Kansas.
Guest:So you ended up with your dad?
Guest:I ended up with my dad by order of the court.
Guest:See?
Marc:What'd you do?
Guest:They knew what was up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What'd you do?
Guest:It doesn't matter?
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:Kid stuff?
Guest:I probably lied about what the reason was anyway in the first place.
Guest:I probably made it up.
Guest:But they weren't together.
Guest:No, and in my mom's defense, there was no way that she was going to handle me.
Guest:And my father had a rough time handling me.
Guest:I was a wild child.
Guest:What can I tell you?
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Just like a fuck you guy?
Guest:Well, I left home when I was 16.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:Engineered my graduation from high school and then got a scholarship at the University of Kansas.
Marc:Are your parents around?
Marc:No.
Marc:No, they both passed.
Marc:And were they around long enough to see your success?
Guest:My mother was for a brief stint, but she got the idea.
Guest:She was the one that knew that I was going to do this.
Guest:She knew it way back when I was 12 or maybe younger than that.
Guest:And my father got to see the full boat.
Guest:And he was so proud.
Guest:We had a rough beginning, my father and I, in my childhood.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Well, he was, you know, you learn how to parent by looking at your parents.
Guest:And he grew up in a Depression-era baby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was no time to read self-help books, even if you had them.
Guest:In Missouri.
Guest:In anywhere.
Guest:But that's where he grew up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so his parents raised him like their parents raised them, which is, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And religious.
Guest:Both of my grandfathers were preachers.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And.
Guest:Did you know him?
Guest:Oh, very well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I used to.
Guest:I knew my great grandfather.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, it was my job when I was little to go with him in the woods and make sure he didn't get lost.
Guest:Shit, he wasn't going to get lost.
Guest:I might have gotten lost, but he knew where every living thing was in the entire property.
Guest:And he taught me where everything was.
Guest:Now, did you see him preach?
Guest:I saw both my grandfathers preach.
Guest:Were they like Baptist or what was it?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So full-on performance.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, that must have been.
Guest:Yeah, people crying and coming up and testifying.
Guest:Tents or church?
Guest:Well, my aunt, my mother's sister, was a revival tent person.
Guest:She was big.
Guest:She came out here.
Guest:Her name was Climena Bowling.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's quite a racket, that religious racket.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I can't figure out how I missed it.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:You're right there.
Guest:I went for the short money.
Yeah.
Guest:You had a shot.
Guest:I had a shot.
Guest:I had it right there in front of me to kind of audit.
Guest:You had mentors.
Marc:It was all built in.
Marc:It was all right there in front of me.
Marc:It's not too late.
Marc:No, you can always preach.
Marc:It's not too late.
Guest:And I got shit to say now.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It'd be an interesting sermon.
Marc:Probably different than what your grandparents did.
Marc:Way different.
Guest:So you used to go see them?
Guest:I'll tell you what mine wouldn't be.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It wouldn't be based in fear.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, exploiting people's fears.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, it'd be some sort of hybrid.
Guest:So it's not much difference between newscasters and preachers.
Guest:They're both in the fear business.
Marc:Yeah, instill the panic and provide a guiding hand right to hell.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you do the conservatory thing.
Marc:Now, was that challenging?
Guest:American Conservatory Theater?
Marc:Well, no, when you went after high school and she got you into that program.
Guest:Oh, in the University of Kansas.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know, I got...
Guest:I got shown the ropes by a junior girl.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And she took good care of me.
Guest:Listen, let's just.
Guest:A lot of girls in your life.
Guest:Let's just declare this.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Right away.
Guest:Right away.
Guest:Anything I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everything I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've learned from women.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not a single fucking useful thing from men.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Except how not to behave like a meathead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's not true, but I'm just putting an exclamation on the point of how much –
Guest:focused and how much aware more aware women are than men yeah in every they start out that way and they stay that way i've got two daughters yeah and i got four sons and i love them all deeply but my daughters are man i want if there's a if there's something serious going down i want them on my side yeah
Guest:Anything serious?
Marc:Well, your daughter, Dakota, is a brilliant actress.
Marc:Yeah, she is.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Marc:Yeah, she's pretty good.
Marc:I mean, you must watch her and just be like, oh, my God.
Guest:She can really do it, dude.
Guest:Well, I had that feeling the first time, and then I got more in the mode of, well, that's a choice I wouldn't have made, but she pulled it up.
Marc:Proud dad to just another actor watching.
Guest:Yeah, just another actor.
Guest:You know how comics watch other comics?
Marc:Of course you do.
Marc:It's never good.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:Yeah, that's funny.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, that's funny.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Not so good.
Marc:I do a bit like that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:She got that from me.
Marc:But so, okay, so you do that program, and you come out to L.A.
Marc:Did you feel confident?
Marc:I mean, you'd done a bunch of theater.
Marc:What did you do up there?
Guest:At the American Conservatory Theater?
Guest:No, in Kansas.
Guest:Yeah, I did theater and repertory, and then I studied regular—
Guest:Regular school and stuff like that.
Marc:But you feel like you got a craft in place?
Marc:You feel like that, you know, whatever your natural.
Guest:No, that happened at the American Conservatory Theater.
Guest:Where was that, here?
Guest:In San Francisco.
Guest:So you go from there.
Guest:I got hired out of there to join the professional company.
Guest:Okay, in San Francisco.
Marc:In San Francisco.
Guest:And what year was that?
Guest:68.
Guest:So that must have been crazy.
Guest:It was fantastic.
Guest:I was 18 years old on the heels of the summer of love in San Francisco, and I'm the only fucking straight guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They were waiting for you.
Guest:It's like they sent out an invitation for one.
Marc:So that was before the 60s got weird and bad.
Marc:So it was just hippies and fun, huh?
Guest:Well, it was on the cusp of getting bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By 69, it was pretty boarded up.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I should have gotten the hint then because—
Guest:You know, that's my generation right there.
Guest:And then I went on to see my generation completely screw up the whole fucking world.
Marc:Still doing it.
Guest:Yeah, still doing it.
Guest:They can't let go.
Guest:I can't tell you how disappointed and how all those conversations about freedom and peace and—
Guest:And, you know, became the same people became the people that are denying your insurance claims and the people that are coming up with culture wars.
Guest:The people that wanted freedom the most.
Guest:And I put my faith in them.
Guest:And I can't tell you how hurt and disappointed I am in the folks in my generation.
Marc:Well, I guess it was, you know, at the end of the day, it was all pretty selfish.
Marc:Not all of them.
Marc:No, I get it.
Marc:Yeah, sure, sure.
Guest:You know, there's some very wise people, and thank God that there are, and they keep us down the road.
Guest:But, you know, clearly we're going through an identity crisis time.
Guest:And I think this will pass, and we'll be—
Guest:You know, America is an interesting place.
Guest:It wants to experiment, even at its own detriment.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:But that's okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's a loophole in democracy is that you can freely elect a fascist.
Guest:Well, and also...
Guest:You know, it kind of mimics who we are as people.
Guest:Honest to God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, making these decisions and stuff like that, I mean, we as people, we put ourselves into positions where we are the Antichrist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, for a moment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When we're yelling at our beloved or when we're making an irrational decision about something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we're all capable of it.
Guest:It's an outward manifestation of what we're all capable of constructing.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So when you were in San Francisco, were you hanging out with heady people?
Marc:I mean, what was it?
Guest:I used to walk by Jerry Garcia's place over in the Haight.
Guest:On the Haight, yeah.
Guest:And he'd be sitting on the stoop playing and picking and stuff.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it was very much like that at that time during the 60s because everybody was hanging with everybody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It wasn't, you know, it hadn't become our generation's, you know, backstage passes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and stuff like that.
Guest:It was, man, we're all going to play music.
Guest:Come on in.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You were at the origin of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Light up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Guest:Hang out.
Guest:Hang out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Drop some acid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How was it?
Guest:Let's get to know something other.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The original acid.
Marc:Purple Osley, baby.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How was that?
Marc:Good shit.
Marc:How long did it last?
Guest:Well, that was a pretty interesting thing because the first time—
Guest:a woman, said, hey, I've got two tabs of purple Osley acid.
Guest:Do you want to try it?
Guest:I went, what?
Guest:She said, do you want to try it?
Guest:I went, no, I don't think so, man.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:And she took one right in front of me.
Guest:While she's looking me in the eye, asking me, and I went, give me that.
Guest:I'm going with you.
Guest:She was pretty.
Guest:I was going with her, for sure.
Guest:So I took it.
Guest:And we ended up, this is a trip.
Guest:We ended up, like all my stories, we were up all night.
Guest:And we ended up in Grace Cathedral.
Guest:Now, P.S.,
Guest:42 years later, my daughter would be baptized.
Guest:My youngest daughter would be baptized in Grace Cathedral.
Guest:Oh, the end of the trip.
Guest:That's a long trip.
Guest:That was a hell of a trip.
Guest:And I was standing around.
Guest:I was looking at the cathedral, and I was going,
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're doing this again in a different way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The parallel universe will catch up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, so and you're learning.
Marc:You got a good teacher there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Acting.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, well, at the American Conservatory Theater, I was with...
Guest:hardcore pros that were theater veterans.
Guest:They weren't these fucking actors, you know, Hollywood actors who walk around with sides in their hand.
Guest:They were actors that were off book within a week.
Guest:And they started working on nuances and little bits and pieces.
Guest:None of that shit's going on today except, you know, when I...
Guest:On this show I'm doing right now, Dr. Odyssey, which, by the way, we should spend a little time talking about.
Guest:Yeah, I watched a couple.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, you're good.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:You think I should keep it up?
Marc:Well, yeah, it's a good job.
Marc:Seems like a good job.
Marc:What, acting?
Marc:Yeah, as a means of— Well, I like that movie you just—that one where you played the sheriff.
Marc:Oh, Rebel Range.
Marc:Yeah, that was good, dude.
Marc:Yeah, I like when you're a menacing fuck.
Marc:You can really run the range.
Guest:Well, I can be a menacing funny fuck, too, like in Quentin Tarantino.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That was great.
Marc:Yeah, the plantation owner.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, like the Doctor Odyssey, you know, I feel like it was weird because I watched it, and I don't watch a lot of, you know, network television anymore because it's hard to know if it exists, but it—
Marc:But it is a show like those old network shows where, you know, you're just moving the story around.
Marc:It's a clip and, you know, you're in people's lives quick and it's got buttons and it's romantic and it's a little dirty.
Marc:It's a little dirty.
Guest:It's like a dream.
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:Dr. Odyssey is like a dream.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you pop into this fantasy world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that people don't know that much about, but always want, you know, they want to know about cruises.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They want to know about what happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at first, I wasn't sure I wanted to do legacy TV, but Ryan Murphy, true to his word, made it so that it was okay.
Marc:It's odd you mention that about cruises.
Guest:And he's also a sweetheart of a person.
Guest:It matters to me who I work with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, speaking of cruises, it did.
Marc:There was a moment where you're explaining who comes on the cruise because, like, I'm not a cruise guy.
Marc:I wouldn't think to go on a cruise.
Marc:I don't understand the appeal of it.
Marc:But there's this monologue you have about why people come and that they've saved up and it's important to them.
Marc:And this is their fantasy.
Marc:And I'm like, that's it.
Marc:That's you know, people believe that for me.
Marc:It's like I'm going to be sick on a boat with food around the corner every fucking hour.
Marc:But for most people, you know, it's like a big deal.
Marc:They don't mind being sick.
Guest:They want their dream, man.
Marc:But a lot of people get sick on this boat.
Marc:I will say that.
Marc:There's a lot of action on the boat.
Guest:Well, don't say a lot of people get sick on the boat.
Guest:I mean, it's half the show, Don.
Guest:I mean, I have to have you on the show and give you something terminal.
Guest:No, I mean, it's like half love boat, half emergency.
Guest:Well, call it what you will.
Guest:I like to call it a dream.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:With an edge to it.
Marc:I mean, thank God the doctors are there to maintain the dream.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's just kind of, I like the idea of being able to drop in and have...
Guest:You know, it's kind of interesting seeing ships deal with disasters.
Guest:And what I'm watching right before my very eyes is humans.
Guest:deal with climate change.
Guest:And they haven't, it seems to me, they haven't awakened to the fact that basically it's just going around the globe hopscotching.
Guest:There's a fire in California.
Guest:There are floods in Nashville.
Guest:There's this over here.
Guest:And now the floods are moving to Spain.
Guest:And now it's Botswana.
Guest:And now the fire is back in Rome.
Guest:Now the fire is in Australia.
Guest:Now, you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just climate change, just hips hopscotching around.
Guest:And something interesting that I noticed with this recent fire is that we had a similar thing happen up to us where I live.
Marc:By Santa Barbara?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nine days to the day after the fire, this huge rainstorm came in and dumped a million gallons of water.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And floods and debris flowed and people died.
Marc:I remember that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And nine days or thereabouts to the day this rain came in.
Guest:And I have to believe that there's a correlation.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, I mean, there's probably people that could speak to that.
Marc:I can't, but I'll go with it.
Marc:Yeah, I'm with it.
Marc:Well, how does that relate to dealing with disasters on a boat?
Marc:I have no idea.
Guest:But it seemed like a good seg.
Guest:Well, no, I just was seeing that disasters on a boat are, you know, like the storms are getting stronger and stuff like that.
Guest:So the protocols that they have to use on ships is much different than they once did.
Guest:More serious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that's the only thing I was thinking.
Marc:So at 68, you're in, what, San Francisco for two years?
Marc:One.
Marc:One.
Marc:And then you just come down here.
Guest:No, I get hired to do a show down here.
Guest:Oh, which one?
Guest:It was a play called Fortunate Men's Eyes.
Guest:It was a prison drama.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was pretty racy, avant-garde for the time.
Marc:And you did a lot of that stuff.
Marc:I mean, you did those kind of plays.
Marc:I mean, if you're in San Francisco in 68, a lot of experimental theater.
Yeah.
Guest:I was doing a lot of plays in repertory.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:And then I was doing a regular show at night at the Marines Theater called Your Own Thing, which is a musical.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And it was kind of like during the—it was the blue-haired old lady's version of hair.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:They wouldn't go see hair, but they would go and see Your Own Thing because we looked nicer.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Long hair, but we just looked nicer.
Marc:It was more fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Something they could handle.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you're doing that.
Marc:But you come down here for this play.
Marc:I did come out here for this play.
Marc:A prison play.
Guest:A prison play.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And it was very controversial.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because there was a rape scene in the prison.
Guest:And, you know, that was also during the time where—
Guest:You know, it was a race to who could be more outrageous.
Guest:And so a prison drama with a rape scene was pretty outrageous.
Guest:And it seemed to work because I got hired right out of it for my very first film, the lead in my very first film.
Guest:Which one was that?
Guest:MGM called, I'm not going to tell you the title because it was a terrible movie.
Guest:You can look it up.
Marc:What was the experience like being on a set?
Guest:I was in New York City for the very first time in my whole life, and I was in every shot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I learned—one of the first few days I was there, I was talking to the script supervisor, and she told me that she had been the script supervisor on the waterfront with Marlon Brando and Ely Kazan.
Guest:And I said, what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she said, yeah.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you're going to tell me everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, detail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're going to tell me every detail on both of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On Brando and Gazan down to what they do.
Guest:Did she do it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were stranded one day waiting for the company to find a place to shoot, and we were stranded at Fordham University, and we were sitting on the steps there, and she proceeded to tell me everything she remembered about Marlon.
Guest:It was fantastic.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It was like one of those things where she said, well, he went around, and he learned everyone's job on the set.
Guest:And I went...
Guest:Well, that makes perfect sense.
Guest:So I spent the rest of that movie learning everybody's job, you know, because I didn't know where else to start.
Guest:I said, let's just learn everybody's job.
Guest:And believe it or not, it helped me do my job.
Guest:Isn't that great?
Guest:It was an amazing gift.
Marc:Another time a woman taught you how to live.
Marc:So outside of the movie being bad, you learned what everyone's job was.
Guest:Yeah, I learned what everyone's job was.
Guest:I met Andy Warhol.
Guest:He was in the movie.
Guest:Joe D'Alessandro was in the movie.
Guest:Candy Darling was in the movie.
Guest:Did you go down to the factory and hang out?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:The first time I went down there, Patty, the mother of my oldest son, Jesse, was standing naked on Andy's table down there.
Guest:Is that where you met?
Guest:Well, that's where we said hello.
Guest:We didn't actually hook up until years later.
Guest:Was it Patty Darbinville?
Guest:Patty Darbinville, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Darbinville, yeah.
Guest:She was a factory regular, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:She was hanging out down there.
Marc:Well, it must have been kind of interesting to deal with the difference between the San Francisco idea of the 60s.
Guest:Let's get this straight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:San Francisco, L.A., New York, The Factory, Andy Warhol, all in the space of about a year and a half.
Guest:Different approaches to freedom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had an incredible time there.
Guest:Did you see Velvet Underground?
Guest:Were they there?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They were all in my movie.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:This is crazy.
Guest:Jimi Hendrix.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Everybody, yeah.
Guest:Now, were you hanging—could you talk to him?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, I was in this club called Hippopotamus.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:It was on 54th Street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a friend of mine handed me a little vial of cocaine.
Guest:Was that the first time?
Guest:Well, it wasn't the first.
Guest:I'd be lying if I said it was the first time.
Guest:But he didn't have anything to do it with.
Guest:I said, you got a spoon?
Guest:You got a straw?
Guest:What do you got?
Guest:Because I certainly didn't have any money to pull up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was a bum.
Marc:A key is always the way to go.
Guest:You got a key.
Guest:Keys are nothing.
Guest:And so I went downstairs.
Guest:The men's room was downstairs.
Guest:And I went in and I dumped it on my hand.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Started up and I...
Guest:Walk out the door, and as I open the toilet door, I walk right into Hendrix.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right into his chest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I look up at him, and he sees me, and I'm like in awe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he gets a big smile on his face, and he takes his thumb, and he wipes the blow off my nose.
Guest:And he says, hey, man, you can't go around looking like that shit.
Yeah.
Marc:He took care of you.
Marc:Yeah, he took care of me.
Marc:That's funny, man.
Marc:And then you come back to L.A., and then after that, with a little experience under your belt doing— A little experience under my belt, came back to L.A.
Guest:and starved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, because nobody wants you to make a— If you make a bad movie on your first movie, they want you to suffer.
Guest:But was it even on the radar?
Marc:I mean, did the movie come out?
Marc:I mean, it sounds like— It came out, but— One of those late 60s— Excuse me.
Marc:Excuse me.
Marc:So how long were you starving?
Guest:On and off for 15 years.
Guest:And were you involved with Patty?
Guest:No, not until I was in my 30s.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:So where's the boozing and the drugging come in?
Guest:Well, I did a lot of it during my 20s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then I got sober in my 30s, 32.
Guest:And I didn't fall off the wagon until I was 42.
Guest:And then I was out for a couple of years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I...
Guest:Yeah, I got, what do I got?
Marc:I'm in my 25th year.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:I got about 30.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's better, right?
Guest:I mean, please.
Guest:If you just want a memory of what it was like, just go out and lay down on the freeway and sleep overnight.
Marc:But, like, I guess what I'm getting at is that, like, so you come back to L.A.
Marc:in, what is it, 1970?
Marc:It's 71?
Marc:What?
Marc:Somewhere in there.
Marc:That was, like, that was fucking crazy here, man.
Marc:It was fantastic.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it was, like, still a small town.
Guest:But you could see it changing, too.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You could see, you know, all of my generation, you could see them all, you know, like hustling up and opening these vegetarian fresh fruit places.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, they were getting into commerce and stuff like that.
Guest:And making a deal with them was not all that great.
Guest:And, of course, the...
Guest:The drug dealer rules were basically what everyone went by.
Guest:Yeah, which was?
Guest:Yeah, I'll give you this one.
Guest:Try that pair there.
Guest:Isn't that good?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Buy six of these.
Yeah.
Marc:When I talk to people, I think you're maybe a little younger than the generation.
Marc:You're younger than Ed Begley and Jack Nicholson and that crew.
Guest:I'm younger than Jack.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ed and I are about the same.
Guest:About the same?
Guest:We might be a little older than you.
Marc:But it just seemed like, you know, that Hollywood at that time, especially because it was coming off the 60s and now it wasn't an ideological drug party.
Marc:It was just a free for all fuck fest that in the 70s.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In the early 70s that it just must have been.
Marc:I'm surprised that you have a specific time for it.
Marc:Well, I'm just talking about culturally, once the hippie thing got integrated into just everyday people and drugs became totally recreational.
Guest:Well, it became marketing, didn't it?
Marc:Yeah, kind of.
Marc:But I'm just thinking that because of the nature of being an actor and being in a small neighborhood, the parties and stuff must have been crazy.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, they were.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:And then you did the movie with LQ Jones.
Marc:A Boy and His Dog.
Marc:And that guy is—I've always been fascinated with that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, he seems like an honest-to-God weirdo.
Guest:Well, LQ is a very—an eccentric guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he's an attorney.
Guest:Okay.
Okay.
Guest:And his real name is Justice McQueen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was his real name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's passed on by now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he changed it and took on the name of the very first character he ever played, L.Q.
Guest:Jones.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And he was Peckinpah's guy, right?
Guest:He did a lot of Peckinpah movies, you know, and he kind of made the rounds with all those guys like—
Guest:Alvy Moore was his buddy who was also in A Boy and His Dog.
Guest:And, you know, and he was smart.
Guest:He learned how to make a really good living in the business.
Guest:And he wrote – he found that short story and that novella by Harlan Ellison.
Guest:He adapted the screenplay.
Guest:Somehow I got a hold of it.
Guest:I went and I read for him.
Guest:He loved what I did.
Guest:You know who the publicist was on it?
Guest:Don Simpson.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And before, when we were talking before about Jack, when I was 19 years old, I had a house right at the mouth of Laurel Canyon going up.
Guest:And Jack and Cass Elliott and...
Guest:John Phillips, and Harry Dean Stanton, and a whole bunch of others.
Guest:Zappa?
Guest:No, Zappa.
Guest:No, he didn't hang out with us.
Guest:But I hung out with Zappa.
Marc:He lived up there, didn't he?
Guest:He lived up on Woodrow Wilson.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But they would come over to my house to wait rush hour out.
Guest:And I would learn from all the guys, and everybody was carrying something.
Guest:Except for me, I couldn't afford it.
Guest:I was a good user.
Marc:Sitting out rush hour could go on for two days.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're able to just pick their brains and hang out?
Guest:Yeah, you know, and we just became pals.
Guest:All of us became pals.
Marc:Stay friends?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Very close friends.
Guest:You know...
Guest:Jack and I used to golf together all the time.
Guest:You still golf?
Guest:I haven't been able to play in the last couple of years because I've been dealing with a disc issue, but I'm past it, so I'll probably tee it back up.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:You love it?
Guest:I don't love it, but I like to get out and be with my sons play, and I love my sons.
Guest:I love my kids.
Guest:I'd rather be with my kids than anybody.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So wait, was Don Simpson involved with Miami with the TV show?
Guest:No, he was just a publicist.
Guest:He was just a hustler.
Guest:But later, I mean, he was a big producer.
Guest:He was just a hustler from Alaska.
Guest:Yeah, like a— Don Simpson was from Alaska, and he was funny, and he was just a character.
Guest:And became a huge producer.
Guest:Huge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hit it big with a couple of things, and— I remember reading about his death.
Guest:It was brutal in terms of, like, the drug scene.
Guest:Yeah, well, Don stayed a little too long at the fair.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what is this?
Marc:I read that when you were here early on that your roommate was Sal Mineo.
Marc:Is that real?
Guest:That is not real.
Guest:That is urban legend.
Guest:But, you know, I think Sal was a fantastic person.
Guest:Great actor, yeah.
Guest:Great actor and got nominated for an Oscar.
Guest:So it's not real.
Guest:Urban legend.
Guest:Urban legend.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:People make up shit all the time.
Guest:When I was doing Miami Vice, I was a womanizing pig one week and incredibly gay the next week.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People just took it.
Marc:Whoever wanted you took it.
Guest:I just learned to accept and surrender that people are just going to make up narratives and they're going to believe in those narratives.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And take them to their death.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Whether they're true or not.
Marc:Keep spreading them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know something?
Guest:Here's how much I don't care.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't read any of that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I pay no attention to it.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:That's very brutal.
Guest:I don't read any good reviews and I don't read any bad ones.
Marc:So after A Boy and His Dog, did that launch you a bit?
Guest:No, I still struggled.
Guest:I mean, I had, you know, something of a name, but I wasn't getting paid and you couldn't live on this.
Guest:It's a weird movie.
Guest:It's a good movie.
Marc:It's a good movie.
Marc:Is it years before you get hooked up?
Marc:Well, I mean, you were a kid then.
Marc:So how do you get to Michael Mann from Boy and His Dog?
Guest:Well, Michael Mann didn't really come on the show until after...
Guest:I had already met with Tony Yurkovich.
Guest:Michael came on as a producer because Brandon Tartikoff and Universal wanted somebody to hold their hand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because basically Thomas Carter, the director, and the rest of us who all came out of independent films, we made that movie.
Guest:We went in and we made it.
Guest:And Michael, bless his heart –
Guest:He had brought in a couple of nice additions like a feature production designer named Mel Bourne.
Guest:And Michael set it up for success, but he didn't write a script and he never directed an episode.
Marc:That's interesting because there is a vibe that feels like man.
Guest:Yeah, but that's because he created it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what I mean.
Guest:He says he created the marketing around the show that it was Michael Mann's.
Guest:Miami Vice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he wanted Philip and I to be shot in two shots.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I caught on to that right away.
Guest:And I said, you know, Philip, I let him in on what was up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That we were going to do the work, but Michael was going to take the credit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, when we walk into a scene, you take one side of the room and I'll take the other.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So he has to cover you separately.
Guest:He has to cover us.
Marc:But so he didn't have a lot of input creatively.
Yeah.
Guest:You can't say that about Michael because, you know, he thinks he's the smartest man and most creative man in the room.
Guest:Talk to him.
Guest:He made some good movies, dude.
Guest:Made some okay movies.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I mean, I'm being serious.
Guest:Collateral is a pretty good movie.
Guest:Last of the Mohicans is a pretty good movie.
Guest:Heat is a pretty good movie.
Guest:Heat is a pretty good movie.
Guest:Thief is a fucking masterpiece.
Guest:All right.
Guest:That was when he was still hungry.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And wasn't drinking his own Kool-Aid.
Guest:Did you know James Caan?
Guest:Very well.
Guest:Good guy.
Guest:Yeah, he was very—I knew him since I was 18.
Guest:Where'd you meet him?
Guest:At the pool hall.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:He was a tough guy.
Marc:Or so he thought.
Marc:Not a Kansas tough guy.
Marc:Well.
Marc:A Brooklyn Butcher's kid's tough guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he seemed fun.
Guest:Yeah, he was okay.
Guest:Who are your good friends here?
Guest:Hunter Thompson was my best buddy for a long time.
Guest:That guy's the best.
Guest:Man, God rest his soul.
Guest:Fucking best.
Marc:I'm mad at myself because I was up in San Francisco on a little bit of a tear with my buddy Jack.
Marc:I don't know, it must have been the mid to late 90s.
Marc:And Hunter, we ended up at Tosca after this long night of drinking.
Marc:And he was there.
Marc:And he was on the other side of it.
Marc:He seemed pretty loopy.
Marc:But I didn't say hi.
Marc:I don't know what it would have amounted to, but I regret it.
Guest:would have messed with you something horrible.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Especially if you found out you had a podcast or something like that.
Marc:Well, I didn't then.
Marc:I was just a guy that was like, holy shit, that's Hunter Thompson.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Did you know him when he managed the Mitchell brothers?
Guest:We went over to the Mitchell brothers together one time when they were still in prison.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because some guy I know has a business card that Hunter made up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Night manager.
Marc:Night manager.
Yeah.
Guest:At the Mitchell Brothers Theater.
Guest:The Feral Theaters.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Night manager at the Feral Theaters.
Guest:When did you meet him?
Guest:I met him first time in the early 70s with Jan Winner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I met Jan when he was still in San Francisco.
Yeah.
Marc:With the original Rolling Stone?
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we met then, and we kind of got to know each other.
Guest:And then when Miami Vice made it big, you know, Hunter was down in Miami every three weeks wanting to hang out.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Go shoot guns and shit like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we became—and he lived a quarter of a mile away from me in Aspen.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I had a ranch up in Little Woody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was on Woody Creek Road.
Guest:I mean, literally just out of mortar range.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So you had a lot of all-nighters hanging out, talking?
Guest:Well, we didn't really look at it that way.
Marc:How'd you look at it?
Guest:We looked at it as just time together.
Guest:We didn't happen to notice whether it was day or night.
Guest:He must have been a riot.
Guest:He was a fucking blast.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:If I had a sick animal, he would go and sleep in the stall with it while I was away.
Guest:When Kelly and I got married, if there was a storm or anything going through, he'd call Kelly and say, what can I do?
Guest:I mean, he was just...
Guest:Salt of the earth.
Guest:Genius.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:Funny.
Guest:Funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, I mean, we had some times.
Guest:I bet.
Guest:We laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Guest:I bet.
Guest:Until it hurt and cried and everything else.
Marc:That's fucking beautiful.
Marc:So when you became, when Miami Vice blew up, how'd you handle that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The fame of it.
Guest:That's a trick because you get white hot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, the thing I realized early on was that, okay, fuck, I've got to separate myself from this character.
Guest:I've got to separate Don Johnson from Sonny Crockett ASAP.
Guest:Did that require a full change of clothing?
Yeah.
Guest:A full change of clothing, a full change of everything.
Guest:I mean, it was really sort of about –
Guest:Picking projects that were diametrically opposed to what I'd just done so that I didn't get typecast in just this one thing.
Guest:And the fact of the matter, I don't know if I've ever told anyone this, but Brian De Palma wanted me to do Untouchables while we were making Miami Vice.
Guest:And I got the script and I read it.
Guest:And...
Guest:I knew it was going to get better because it's Brian De Palma, but I didn't really like the part at the time.
Marc:The Cosner part?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought, you know, it's just more dress-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's more dress-up, clothes-centric and stuff like that.
Guest:And I want to—
Guest:By the way, I didn't know that De Niro was going to play the heavy in it at the time.
Guest:Otherwise, I wouldn't have turned it down, but I did.
Guest:And I picked a forgettable film to play after that.
Guest:But it served the purpose.
Guest:It served the purpose of, oh, he can act and then something else besides this.
Guest:It didn't do very well.
Guest:But it was just to make a statement.
Marc:And De Niro only had like two scenes in it.
Marc:It was more of a little ensemble piece for Garcia and Sean Connery and Costner.
Guest:He got the movie made because Costner didn't have the name to get it made.
Marc:Didn't have the juice?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You friends with that guy?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He seemed to be like kind of a kindred spirit somehow.
Marc:Who?
Marc:Kevin and I?
Marc:Costner, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we made a movie together called Tin Cup.
Guest:Oh, yeah, the golf movie.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Is that where you met Cheech?
Guest:Wasn't Cheech in that movie?
Guest:No, I knew Cheech from before.
Guest:From the 70s?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I knew Cheech from before.
Marc:He's a funny guy, man.
Guest:Yeah, when Cheech and I got together and we were up there in San Francisco, we would be in that car for...
Guest:Hours.
Guest:In the 70s?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:In San Francisco in Nash Bridges.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And we'd be in the yellow Cuda.
Guest:And we'd tell stories about places where we had been.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And each of us had half of the story, but not the other half.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, well, let me tell you what happened.
Guest:So that girl who you were, she hit the other guy over the head with a beer bottle and, you know.
Marc:So it was the same event, but two sides.
Guest:Same event, but two sides of the story.
Guest:Oh, that's funny.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I had the two of them in the old studio, Cheech and Chong, and they hadn't been together in a long time.
Marc:And I grew up on their shit.
Guest:They must have fell right back into it.
Marc:Well, it was weird because I'm sitting here listening to it and they sound like Cheech and Chong because they are Cheech and Chong.
Marc:So I'm just giggling through the whole thing, even when they're not being funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because it's just this dynamic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was fucking crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So is that what brought on the relapse though when you did Miami Vice?
Yeah.
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:No, no, I was sober.
Guest:I could never have made that schedule.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you handled the fame just practically?
Marc:You just knew?
Guest:Well, just a day at a time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, a day at a time.
Guest:Some things you handle poorly.
Guest:Some things you handle better.
Guest:Eventually, you—well, you know, ultimately what I did was I said, you know—
Guest:I remember where I was when Elvis died, and I remember how he died.
Guest:And I am not going to isolate and die on the toilet, but I'm going to have a lot of friends around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm just not going to be isolated.
Guest:I'm going to learn how to do this fame thing out in public, and I'm just not going to be isolated.
Marc:And was that just about – were you practicing then?
Guest:Were you able to kind of – Well, yeah.
Guest:And also I heard something that kind of tipped me off.
Guest:Marilyn Monroe was in New York with one of her friends, like, I don't know, it was Babe Paley or, you know, one of the dames, you know.
Guest:And she said, hey, let's go.
Guest:Marilyn said, hey, let's go down Madison Avenue and do some shopping.
Guest:Babe goes, are you crazy?
Guest:I'm not going anywhere with you.
Guest:She says, oh, don't worry.
Guest:I just won't be Marilyn.
Yeah.
Guest:And she said she went out with her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she wasn't Marilyn.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was, you know, just regular.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And nobody looked at her.
Guest:And I thought about that.
Guest:And I went, I can do that.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:I can do that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I could just not be me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll just not be Don Johnson.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I won't wear the clothes.
Guest:I won't wear the thing.
Guest:I won't, you know.
Guest:And you can get into a persona where you can blend.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I've become somewhat of an expert at it.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Unfortunately, I've learned how to do it in the business, too.
Damn.
Marc:Well, at least you're not.
Marc:I know some guys have different, they put on noses and masks.
Marc:Oh, yeah, that, no.
Marc:I'm not going to do that.
Marc:No, but what are you talking about?
Marc:You seem to work all the fucking time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you look good.
Marc:Hey, thanks, Mark.
Marc:Well, how do you view that whole—how do you kind of— Hey, you know what?
Guest:I'm still on the menu after 50-some-odd years.
Guest:That's pretty good.
Marc:But how do you compartmentalize or sort of look at the arc of fame in a rational way in terms of accepting where you are now?
Guest:Fame is like a long—
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And eventually you get over it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it just kind of has to wear out.
Guest:Some people never get over it.
Guest:It's an ego thing, though.
Guest:Some people get addicted to it.
Marc:Well, I mean, the Buddhism has to help.
Marc:A lot.
Marc:Getting rid of that ego.
Guest:Well, getting rid of everybody's ego.
Marc:But some people do get addicted to it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, but some people can't escape it either.
Yeah.
Marc:They can.
Guest:That's bullshit.
Guest:But it is very isolating.
Guest:I mean, you get to a point.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:If you stop running and just turn around and face, the people just think they're never going to see you again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's all you got to do is turn around and say, hey, I'm right here.
Guest:You're going to see me again?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:How are you doing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just talk to them like a regular person.
Guest:You'll find out they're a regular person, and so are you, idiot.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So have you lost a lot of friends to fame?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know what that means.
Marc:Well, I mean people who you were once close with and then they became something different once they became.
Guest:I don't think that that's particularly isolated to fame.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think throughout life you change and different things become more.
Guest:meaningful to you and less so with other things.
Guest:You know, your things that were thrilling and exciting and fun in your 20s, not so in your 40s.
Marc:Of course not.
Guest:And not so in your 60s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And by the time you're in your 70s, like I am, you...
Guest:are in this amazing place where you have, I mean, somewhere along the way, I lost self-doubt.
Guest:Somewhere along the way, I became accessible.
Guest:And somewhere along the way, I learned about how to love and how to be loved.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:So that's a trick.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, let me ask you about that from a personal point of view.
Marc:Now, before you learned how to love and be loved, what was the obstacle?
Marc:What were you understanding as love and being loved before that?
Guest:Well...
Guest:This is just me speculating here.
Guest:But it feels like to me that when you're born into the world, you have a support system.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That ostensibly is supposed to love you.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Ostensibly.
Guest:Parents.
Guest:Parents.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But when your support system turns on you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're fearful.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You get the idea that maybe you're not worthy.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You put that voice in your head.
Guest:Well, that voice is created in your head.
Guest:To parent you.
Guest:To parent you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:once that voice goes in your head, it starts creating all of this behavior.
Guest:You start generating narratives of how can I be on their good side because I need them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so you shapeshift in order to survive.
Yeah.
Guest:Your parents.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And your childhood.
Marc:And you put up with their manipulation or abuse or whatever.
Guest:Let's contain this a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:Because they're just like you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're just kids that are trying to recover from their parents.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so what we are, pretty much, is DNA, conditions, and environment.
Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And blaming your parents is about as worthless as tits on a boar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the sooner you can get past all that and get in to the value of learning about this life on your own.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And learning what serves you and what doesn't.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:the better off, the sooner you're going to escape suffering.
Marc:So ultimately, you have to make the shift from anger and resentment to empathy.
Marc:Accept and surrender.
Marc:Acceptance, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Accept and surrender.
Marc:Now, how old were you when this all came together?
Guest:It's been a project.
Guest:I had – Eckhart Tolle asked me one time.
Guest:He said, hey, man.
Guest:He said, when did you get enlightened?
Guest:And I said –
Guest:what are you saying?
Guest:What are you blaspheming over there about?
Guest:I said, this is the first I'm hearing of it.
Guest:And he said, you have some awareness, you know.
Guest:I said, well, I said, if it's anything, I said, I'm reminded by that statement by Buddha that, you know, sometimes enlightenment can come to you just snap of the finger just like that.
Guest:And then other times you have to
Guest:Break your fingernails and scrape your knuckles and be bleeding from the knuckles, opening up the oysters one after another, 10,000 oysters.
Guest:And then finally, you find the pearl of enlightenment.
Guest:That was my path.
Marc:Not the easy one.
Marc:How did you know Tole?
Marc:Was that guy... I just happened to... Was he on the level?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He's legit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not a huckster.
Guest:No, he's legit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a lot of people who...
Guest:make a living off of the way, off of the Dow, but the legit ones you can tell.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Now, what's been your experience with having all these kids?
Marc:I mean, in terms of... Greatest, greatest thing in my life.
Guest:Did you learn a lot of lessons around... Everything.
Guest:You know, your kids are just DNA, conditions, and environment.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they're going to mirror back to you
Guest:Exactly that.
Guest:And how'd you do?
Guest:You know, you hit and miss.
Guest:Some are good.
Guest:Some are struggling a little bit.
Guest:Some are fucking movie stars of all goddamn things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my younger daughter is a model about to become a movie star.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:She's beautiful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the other one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my youngest son will rule the world.
Guest:He's a brainiac.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:In a good way?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my second youngest son is basically my father.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, we gave birth to my father.
Marc:So he's the rough one.
Guest:No, he's – no, no, he's just – my father was just rough when I was being born.
Guest:He didn't know how he was going to feed me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was afraid.
Guest:He was scared to death.
Guest:But my youngest boy – or my second youngest boy, his name is Jasper.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he is the spitting image of my father.
Marc:Really?
Guest:It's incredible.
Marc:Wild.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do you still get along with Melanie or – Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I get along with Melanie and her mother, and, you know, we have them up for Thanksgiving and stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody comes up.
Marc:So, like, I have to imagine that reckoning with the past has been a project, too, in terms of the relationships.
Marc:Not too bad?
Guest:You know, one of the side...
Guest:Unexpected pleasures that you learn from being a student of Buddhism is that you can let all that shit go.
Guest:It doesn't mean anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It doesn't mean anything.
Marc:You're just carrying it.
Guest:You're just carrying the narrative.
Guest:They haven't thought of you one second.
Guest:That's the tough one to accept.
Guest:The small me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wants to think that everybody's thinking about you all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they're just surprised that you're still alive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're still here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Crazy.
Guest:Well, man, it was great talking to you.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:I enjoyed it.
Marc:Good guy, Don Johnson.
Marc:Dr. Odyssey airs Thursdays on ABC and is streaming on Hulu.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, folks.
Marc:Hey, four years ago this week, one of the greatest moments in the history of this show happened.
Marc:Eddie Murphy was my guest.
Marc:And the best part for me was when I cracked him up like real good.
Marc:Isn't that petty of me?
Marc:I'm like, hey, you know, I saw you on Fallon and the candles were lit.
Marc:What the fuck is that about?
Marc:What am I?
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:I don't even get a candle.
Marc:Where's my fucking candle?
Guest:What's with the dry candles?
Guest:What's with the dry candles back there?
Guest:So we're going to make it last for you, Mark.
Marc:It's beautiful.
Marc:It's beautiful.
Marc:Two more?
Guest:Two more.
Marc:Do you have a, what kind of, where are you sitting?
Marc:Do you have a steakhouse at your place?
Guest:You know, he just asked me, he said, where are you sitting?
Guest:Do you have a steakhouse at your place?
Guest:No, this is the lounge.
Guest:There's a bowling alley here.
Marc:Really?
Guest:And this is the lounge right by the bowling alley.
Guest:So booths and stuff.
Marc:How many lanes you got?
Guest:Two lanes.
Marc:Open to the public or just private or?
Guest:No, it's all private.
Marc:Do you have to rent shoes over there?
Marc:What do you got going on?
Guest:The shoes come complimentary with your steak.
Marc:That whole episode is one for the ages.
Marc:It's episode 1207, and you can listen to it for free in whatever podcast app you're using right now.
Marc:If you want every episode of WTF ad-free, sign up for WTF+.
Marc:You can go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF+.
Marc:And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.
Marc:Here's some guitar from the vault because I'm away from the house.
Thank you.
guitar solo
Guest:Boomer lives.
Guest:Monkey and La Fonda.
Guest:Cat angels everywhere.
Guest:Buster and Sammy are friends.
Oh.