Episode 215 - Jon Hamm
Guest:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Marc:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what-the-fuckers?
Marc:What-the-fuck buddies?
Marc:What-the-fuckineers?
Marc:What-the-fuck nicks?
Marc:What-the-fuckstables?
Marc:What-the-fuck-a-Mollens?
Marc:What-the-fuck-a-Lumbians?
Marc:What-the-fuck-a-Ricans?
Marc:What-the-fuck-a-Nucks?
Marc:What-the-fucksters?
Marc:What-the-fuck-sticks?
Marc:All right, that's it.
Marc:That's as far as I'm going to go.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:It's a pretty exciting week in my mind because I'm like, look, I don't know if you know this about me, but I have a propensity towards being a fucking fanboy sometimes.
Marc:I'm not ashamed of it.
Marc:It's just sometimes I can't always...
Marc:It's very hard when I have to talk to actors who are playing roles that I dig because I can't really separate them from the role that I dig.
Marc:And I expect on some level in my mind to talk to the guy that they're playing.
Marc:I'm talking to Jon Hamm today and there's only a couple of shows that I watch regularly that I can't not watch.
Marc:And one of them is Mad Men and one of them is Breaking Bad.
Marc:So today I'm talking to Jon Hamm on Thursday.
Marc:I'm talking to Brian Cranston.
Marc:Now, in my mind, you know, I'm talking to Don Draper and I'm talking to Mr. White, Walter White.
Marc:That's in my mind that, you know, that's that's it's very hard for me to separate them from their from their roles.
Marc:Because I've built a relationship with those characters.
Marc:Obviously, they don't know me.
Marc:And in my mind, I know their characters.
Marc:And in my mind, I know these guys are actors.
Marc:But there's something.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'm 47.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Marc:Just turned 48.
Marc:Fuck me.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:48.
Marc:Last week.
Marc:It'll be.
Marc:It's going to be all right.
Marc:It'll be all right.
Marc:You know, it just keeps going.
Marc:I should be.
Marc:I'm excited to be alive.
Marc:I don't feel old.
Marc:I do feel a little fat, but I, you know, again, we're not going to do that.
Marc:I'm a man.
Marc:It's time for me to fucking man up and to act like a goddamn man.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That's something that Don Draper does for the most part.
Marc:Something Walter White does in his own fucked up way.
Marc:I just can't.
Marc:When am I just going to be comfortable?
Marc:You know, I'm not going to.
Marc:I'm not going to let me let me plug a couple of things for us, because I think I neglect to plug myself.
Marc:I end up doing some promos for other things.
Marc:I am going to be at the Punchline in San Francisco, November 2nd through 5th.
Marc:Please come out.
Marc:Love that club.
Marc:Love that city.
Marc:We had a great time there the last time.
Marc:I'm going to be at the Neptune Theater in Seattle on November 25th.
Marc:I know those dates are sparse, but I'm taking a few months off to get to get to work on the book.
Marc:To continue working on the book, I'm sitting here looking at this mountain of writing.
Marc:I've got notebooks.
Marc:I've got these diaries that I kept when my wife left me.
Marc:A week after my wife left me, I was just going out onto the deck, sitting there and writing this painful shit every day.
Marc:I'm looking through that stuff.
Marc:And I got to tell you, man, I'm annoying myself reading that.
Marc:how fucked up i was in the head but i think it's going to be good shit so the dates are a little sparse so those are those are those regional dates pacific northwest punchline san francisco november 2nd through 5th neptune theater seattle november 25th i'll be around town here in la doing some stuff i don't really plug that
Marc:Oh, and I forgot I have a CD out that I'm very proud of.
Marc:This has to be funny.
Marc:That's still on sale.
Marc:That's been on sale for about a month.
Marc:It did pretty well.
Marc:It's doing pretty well.
Marc:But if you didn't get it, I think you'd like it.
Marc:This has to be funny available on iTunes and at Amazon.
Marc:Or you can go to my website and order it.
Marc:And I'll send you a signed copy of it.
Marc:Maybe a couple stickers.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:A couple stickers.
Marc:Hmm?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm going to be talking to Jon Hamm here in a second.
Marc:And I got to get over this shit.
Marc:All right, I'm over it.
Marc:Let's move on.
Marc:Why do I keep judging myself again?
Marc:You know what?
Marc:Let me read an email because I think there's something to be gleaned here.
Marc:This just says the subject line comments and suggestions.
Marc:Hey, Mark, I've been listening for a while.
Marc:Love the podcast.
Marc:It is amazing that somehow your podcast, Mark, has become a character that I've heard change.
Marc:When I first started listening, I listened because I loved comedy, and yours was a serious podcast about the art of comedy.
Marc:The tone used to be so sharp and searching.
Marc:Now it is mellowed and is more comfortable, so settled in itself, and I really enjoy listening to that voice.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:I hope that was not too personal.
Marc:Uh, that's from Clark.
Marc:Look, I'm glad you hear that.
Marc:I mean, some days are better than others, but I just got off the road and I'm carrying about like 10 extra pounds of biscuits and gravy and ice cream and cupcakes and baked goods.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I, you know, I thought that there was a point as a man where I would just say, fuck it.
Marc:I'm all right.
Marc:Who gives a shit?
Marc:You know, why, why do I have to work so hard or think about my goddamn body image?
Marc:Am I a 15 year old woman?
Marc:And I know I've talked about this before.
Marc:But Jesus Christ, I mean, now I'm like, I'm trying to do that ridiculous four-hour body diet.
Marc:I can't read that book.
Marc:Someone gave me the book.
Marc:Are you fucking kidding me?
Marc:It's filled with science and math and balancing things.
Marc:And then in the end, it's just about, it's like a whole chapter or two about how to fuck for a long time.
Marc:It's a crazy book.
Marc:I just want to know what I can and can't eat and how am I going to lose this fucking weight.
Marc:So I feel more comfortable with myself.
Marc:Here's the test I do.
Marc:I don't know if you ever do this as a man.
Marc:Stand in front of your mirror in the bathroom and sort of jump up and down and just see how much jiggle you get.
Marc:Like how much of your body or what your skin has become this weird, thin or not so thin layer of just like a fat suit.
Marc:Like I just want to see how the fat suit is hanging on me.
Marc:And I thought I was cool with this, man.
Marc:I was ready to change pant sizes.
Marc:I was ready to grow the fuck up and man up to just being comfortable, enjoying my fucking food, and living my life.
Marc:No, no, that's not going to happen.
Marc:It's apparently not going to happen.
Marc:So I don't mean to disappoint you, Clark.
Marc:But that whole comfortable, settled-in-self thing...
Marc:Right now, I'm a self settled in a slightly fat suit for me.
Marc:And I know like, you know, I don't want to offend people that perhaps have genuine weight issues.
Marc:You know, I have genuine mind issues about weight.
Marc:So now I'm on this website and I'm looking up foods I can eat.
Marc:And it's basically you can't eat any sort of sugar or white flour or anything white you can't eat.
Marc:It's basically just meat and vegetables.
Marc:And then I get to this point yesterday where I go over to a party over at my buddy Jonah Ray's house and I couldn't find anything to eat anywhere.
Marc:I didn't, I hadn't gone shopping and I was like famished and all I wanted to eat was fucking meat.
Marc:And I get to this barbecue and there's just a, there's a few chicken breast cooks, some sausages.
Marc:And then he throws a steak on the grill for me.
Marc:And I sat there like an animal eating chicken, sausage and steak with my hands.
Marc:And I'd never felt so good in my life.
Marc:I'd never connected so deeply in that moment to just the taste of blood and
Marc:awesome i guess that's all part of it it's part of this uh you know man thing fucking blood baby animal shit fuck it i just i didn't want to talk about this i didn't want to talk about jumping and jiggling that that was not the the theme for today jumping and jiggling i mean i've got john ham arguably one of the most handsome men in the fucking world coming in here and i'm you know and i'm like you know thinking about jumping and jiggling
Marc:unbelievable so whatever i hear other dudes there's plenty of dudes that talk about this shit you know this is how this you know you just got to find your dudes you got to find your your uh your slightly uh you know i don't know what you call it uh you know your dudes that are sort of have an inner 15 16 year old girl who you know sit around talk about that shit it's not sports it's not like you know man kick some guy's ass it's like yeah damn it
Marc:I feel fat.
Marc:You feel fat?
Marc:Okay, I don't think I can sell that as a show.
Marc:But, you know, I'm just saying it happens.
Marc:But there are other things that happen where I'm like, why can't I man up to this shit?
Marc:I got home from the road.
Marc:There's a stink in my house.
Marc:And I knew the stink.
Marc:I've had this stink before, once, you know, since I've lived here.
Marc:There was a rotting carcass of something under the house, and I knew it had to be dealt with.
Marc:Something had crawled under my house and died.
Marc:I didn't know what it was.
Marc:I assumed it was a possum.
Marc:And quite honestly, the last time that happened, I was ready to go under there.
Marc:Look, in my mind, I was ready to go under there.
Marc:I was going to deal with that thing.
Marc:I was going to get a bag, put on a mask, maybe a hazmat suit, try to meditate on the fact that there's nothing scary about an animal corpse.
Marc:But come on, let's be honest.
Marc:There's something scary about any kind of corpse.
Marc:It's rotting, dead flesh of organic, something that was once prancing around.
Marc:It could come back to life.
Marc:There's zombies all over the place now.
Marc:Fucking zombie land out there.
Marc:I have not seen a possum zombie.
Marc:oh man i just pictured it awful i mean they're pretty fucking awful i'm not gonna you know what i've talked enough about possum so here i was in this predicament and i had the same thoughts i had last time well how long could it take to rot yeah i can wait that out but no if there's one rotting thing under a small house the entire house becomes just this shrine of death smell
Marc:And you're basically living in the spirit of the dead animal.
Marc:That's what I was.
Marc:My house had become some sort of shrine to dead rodent.
Marc:And I'm like, all right, this is it, dude.
Marc:This is the test.
Marc:This is what you're going to do.
Marc:You're going to get under there.
Marc:You just put on some shitty pants.
Marc:And you're going to fucking do it.
Marc:You'll go under there with a bag, man up to this shit.
Marc:It's just a dead animal.
Marc:This is your fucking house.
Marc:How long could it take?
Marc:How long of your life could it take to just get this done?
Marc:You'd be in and out in a half an hour and you would feel great about yourself because you dealt with it.
Marc:You dealt with the dead thing and you threw it away.
Marc:So I meditated on that for a while.
Marc:And I called my friend Didi, who called her friend Jose, who came over to do this possum.
Marc:This little guy doesn't speak English, suited up, took him like 20 minutes, went under there.
Marc:I felt guilty about it.
Marc:It was some sort of white man's burden, bullshit guilt.
Marc:Like, you know, I should be doing this.
Marc:But then there's the other side of it.
Marc:It's like, dude, you know, this is, it's easy for him.
Marc:You give him 50 bucks.
Marc:He wants 50 bucks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:why not just you know you don't have to live through this in your life but then i got to live with the guilt of not doing so he goes under there he pulls it out and he says it's a rat so now i got to deal with that it's not even a possum it's a fucking rat rats are horrendous i never see rats around here now the knowledge i knew that rats were kind of everywhere but i didn't know they were in my house or under my house and these rats out here i think that these south american rats are like huge he pulls this thing out he goes rat and i'm like no possum he goes no
Marc:rat and i'm like oh fuck rat god damn it so i gave him 60 bucks that was worth 10 extra a rat because i certainly if i was under the house and dealt with a dead rat i mean that would have been touch and go i might have just freaked out jumped up smacked my head on the baseboards and it might have been a tragedy under the house might have been two dead things under there a rat he goes you want to look at it he wanted to open the bag i'm like
Marc:No, man.
Marc:I don't want to look at it.
Marc:I believe you.
Marc:So now I got rats somewhere.
Marc:They're out there.
Marc:They're everywhere.
Marc:We're surrounded.
Marc:And my house has become a place where they come to die.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Fucking rats.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm over it.
Marc:Let's talk to Jon Hamm.
Marc:Got to get the rat out of my head.
Marc:Decomposing rat out.
Marc:Next time, though, you guys.
Marc:Next time, when this happens next year or the year after or even six months, here's my goal.
Marc:I'm going to be fat and I'm not going to give a shit and I'm going to go under my house and pull a dead rat out without even flinching.
Marc:This is my journey as a man.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Mark my words.
Marc:Fat and rats.
Marc:I'm going to overcome both of them.
Marc:I thought about putting central air, but it seems to be an issue.
Marc:If the crawl space isn't right.
Guest:In your house house?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Isn't there a way they can put it under?
Marc:Do you know about this kind of stuff?
Marc:Can you install my ceiling fan after the interview?
Marc:No.
Marc:You can't put in a ceiling fan?
Marc:No.
Marc:Do you have any... You know what?
Guest:Honestly, I can.
Guest:You can?
Guest:I literally can.
Guest:I've done it before many times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was my first...
Guest:One of my first jobs when I came to L.A.
Guest:Was putting in electrician stuff?
Guest:Like... Handyman?
Guest:Yeah, like switches and painting and ceiling fans and all that shit.
Guest:You were a handyman?
Guest:Essentially.
Marc:And so you had a bunch of middle-aged women?
Guest:No, it was actually a bunch of gay dudes.
Marc:Oh, so you had gay dudes that sat around going, Oh, could you just... I just need... Can you make sure it's working?
Guest:Do you do tile...
Marc:And I was like, yeah, sure.
Marc:Would they just sit there watching you grout?
Marc:In the Cat Ranch garage, Jon Hamm is here with a beard.
Marc:Why do I feel like I just saw you a week ago and you did not have a beard?
Marc:You did see me a week ago, but I'm sure I had a version of this.
Marc:Yeah, you got the thick hair face.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Now mine takes forever.
Marc:So is that for something?
Marc:No, it's just lazy.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't like to shave.
Marc:I don't either.
Marc:So, it's, yeah, and I always cut my face up and it makes it feel weird.
Marc:Do you ever get professional shaves?
Marc:I've done it once.
Marc:That's good though, right?
Marc:It's better than doing it yourself.
Marc:It's kind of nice.
Marc:You lay down, you get the hot thing.
Guest:No, it's a lovely, it's a lovely, it's a, it, it,
Guest:It seems like it should be luxurious.
Guest:And then you realize that's what ladies do with their business all the time.
Guest:Every fucking day.
Guest:And that's not luxurious at all.
Guest:No.
Guest:That's like a procedure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know when that happens.
Guest:God bless them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mazel Tov.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Holy cow.
Guest:That seems like a brutal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And none of them describe it as anything but a horror show.
Marc:Yeah, but there was a time that I remember in my life, I'm a little older than you, where that didn't happen.
Marc:You just took what was there.
Marc:It was fine.
Guest:Good to go.
Guest:Yeah, full hair.
Guest:I'm not concerned with it.
Guest:I honestly think that's the lesson to be learned.
Guest:From?
Guest:From all of that.
Guest:Like, you're...
Guest:We're good.
Guest:We're kind of good.
Marc:Whatever you got is good.
Marc:Yeah, we'll get past it.
Marc:We will adapt.
Marc:We will work with that.
Marc:Well, I think I've had the conversation before.
Marc:Sometimes if there's too much attention paid to the grooming, it's a little off-putting.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:It's a little more information than I needed.
Guest:Yeah, and it feels like there's an expectation.
Guest:Of what?
Guest:Of some kind of performance.
Yeah.
Guest:Or something that maybe I'm not prepared to put in.
Marc:So you think that there's an expectation on their part or you're waiting for it to do something different?
Guest:Something.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's like if you look at a car that's clearly been souped up, you're like, oh, well, that's probably... I hope I can drive that.
Guest:I don't know, man.
Guest:This probably takes a lot of skill.
Marc:Yeah, it looks a little out of my hands.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:Now, I have to overcome a bit of...
Marc:I'm actually a big fan of the show.
Marc:Of the podcast?
Marc:Of Mad Men.
Marc:Yeah, my podcast.
Marc:No.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:There's very few shows that resonate with me completely, but somehow or another, that one has burrowed its way into the culture in a big way and into my mind, you as a character.
Marc:So I have to overcome some of that as we converse.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:uh because i know that you've been around comedy for a long time but i've never met you before but you were around before you did mad men used to hang out at largo and stuff right go m bar in fact i saw you at m bar i'm gonna go with 2001 2002 around that really yeah um i was going to show i was it was it was a cheap way of of entertain it was a cheap form of entertainment i had no money right
Guest:And I knew guys in that world, so I didn't have to stand in line.
Guest:I could call and say, like, hey, can you put me on the list?
Guest:And so for five bucks or whatever the cover was, you could go and hang out and have fun.
Guest:People be funny.
Guest:And it was right at the beginning of the wave of the Patton Oswalt's.
Guest:Of Death Ray.
Guest:Of all those guys.
Guest:And so it was super funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It happened to jive with my...
Guest:particular sense of humor yeah and it was people that were relatively around my age so it was kind of like all right like it was it was something to do yeah and it wasn't going to a club and spending a hundred dollars and not getting laid yeah whatever it was just like were you ever a club guy I could never I could never do it I was kind of like I don't know what I'm doing here I feel like I'm wearing the wrong shirt and you know it's never right
Guest:I'm always five years too old.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And have the wrong look.
Marc:Yeah, I could never do it.
Marc:But I never met you during that time, so I never knew you as just an actor dude was hanging around comedy.
Guest:I mean, honestly, half the people in that world just assumed I was Schrader's friend.
Guest:They didn't know I was an actor at all.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I remember I was playing cards with Sarah Silverman at one point.
Guest:She was like, oh, my God, I saw you on TV.
Guest:I didn't know you were an actor.
Guest:I was like, whatever.
Marc:Yeah, so I come to it, though, not knowing that, but knowing in retrospect and then getting familiar with you through your work completely and not knowing you as just this dude that was hanging around.
Marc:So I've got to overcome this sort of idea that, like, holy fuck, I've watched every episode of this show.
Marc:Like, I'm still not Hollywood enough to completely behave...
Marc:Like a guy who's just sort of, we're just kind of hanging out.
Marc:We're in the same business.
Marc:This character had a profound effect on me and a profound effect on culture.
Marc:And do you ever, I mean, as a guy who's playing that character, I know that it's got to come with a lot of baggage, but do you ever think about why it has such a profound impact as a masculine type?
Marc:Sure.
Guest:I mean, I think about it a lot.
Guest:I think about a lot of aspects of the show.
Guest:Why did it hit the way it hit?
Guest:I mean, if you look at it in a vacuum, there's no way that show should have been successful.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was on a network that no one had heard of for scripted television.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They went there to watch reruns of Die Hard and whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's a very...
Guest:thinky show which also not necessarily high up in our current cultural needs yeah and and and but it is pretty it's pretty yeah that's that's that's the kind of the one thing it had going for it and it had a guy uh that created it that came off the sopranos right so it it had enough to to tease people into watching it right but the fact that it
Guest:has done what it's done, as you say in the culture, is mystifying.
Guest:But I think there is some kind of reason for it.
Guest:But what it is, I really don't know.
Guest:I have theories that, yeah, maybe we've swung so far to one...
Guest:One side with the kind of Apatow version of the sort of man-child Adam Sandler characters that finally there needed to be this response or the pendulum had to swing the other way for this kind of classically...
Guest:masculine dad figure who has grown up, even though he's got his own set of issues.
Marc:Well, I mean, but it's a complicated male character.
Marc:I mean, it's not like, even if it's not the Apatow model or the man-child model, which you see a lot in comedies, but even in dramas, you know, those are fairly uncomplicated characters.
Marc:And this Draper character is...
Guest:pretty deep and pretty like mysterious and weird in a lot of ways yeah i mean it's and and and it was you know it's it's it's 100 of matt's creation i mean he he could have he could have made this a story about advertising in the 60s and blah blah blah and not had any of that yeah um but it's it's it's a it's a credit to his storytelling i think
Guest:Um, and, and it's given the, the, the series legs, I think as well to, to layer in this, this mystery and what, how did this guy get here?
Guest:And it's about America and what you can do in America in the post-war era of redefining yourself and what you were doesn't matter.
Guest:And that's a very American thing.
Marc:And also inventing modern advertising and inventing the American conception of what a modern man is.
Guest:Yeah, that's the kind of parallel story is while this guy is reinventing himself, he's also explaining to the other.
Guest:His job is to tell the public what they want, what will make them happy.
Marc:And when you have discussions with him, his Wiener, right?
Marc:That's his last name?
Marc:Wiener, yeah.
Marc:When he's directing you or when he's helping you conceive of where this guy's coming from outside of the script, how much baggage does he put into your brain about what this is propelling?
Guest:Um, not a lot.
Guest:And I think that's I think a big part of that is just I have no problem trusting him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't demand, hey, where's this going?
Guest:Like, I don't I don't you know, I don't need it.
Guest:You're not that guy.
Guest:I'm not that guy.
Guest:And but but I but I.
Guest:I feel like the trust has been well-founded.
Guest:I mean, it's not like I'm flying blind here.
Guest:I'm like, okay, I get that you're going to land this plane, and I'm going to go along for the ride, and I'll do as good a job as I can episode to episode.
Guest:And we don't see the episodes ahead of time.
Guest:We don't go into the writer's room and look at the board or anything like that.
Guest:Because I'd rather not.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's an old sort of thing, but playing the ending is no fun for anybody.
Guest:And spoiling it is like, you don't really want to know where it's going.
Guest:And do you keep any of the suits?
Guest:Honestly, no.
Guest:It's a super weird couple days at the beginning of every year because we go to this place up in Burbank that's this enormous warehouse.
Guest:called Western Costume.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And it's, I'm not kidding.
Guest:It's like a huge valley-sized block of clothes from everywhere, every era, every anything.
Guest:And they just pull out this like big giant three racks of 1960 whatever.
Guest:And go, all right, start trying them on.
Guest:And it's like me trying on suits for three hours.
Guest:A day.
Guest:And they pull.
Guest:And they're actually old suits.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And they've kept them in that good a shape.
Marc:They're in amazing shape.
Marc:That's unbelievable.
Guest:And, you know, I think it was Slattery or maybe it was Bobby Morris.
Guest:One of them had, like, one of Burt Lancaster's old suits had a thing in the middle of it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:That it was made for him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's trippy.
Guest:So, yeah, that's the... So they all go back.
Guest:Obviously, they're rented.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they look great.
Guest:They're hot as hell, though.
Guest:My God, they're, like, thick wool, old-timey suits.
Marc:How do you not sweat?
Marc:i do yeah that's so you gotta wear the do you have the dress shields in there come on be honest is john ham wearing dress shields i'm wearing dress shields no i'm wearing an undershirt okay and we do have air conditioning yeah i do well i i just have like i'm a sweaty guy so i i've had to deal with that embarrassment of i had to when i hosted a show
Marc:in a fairly compromised environment, they had to put dress shields in.
Marc:I'm admitting that in front of America and John Hamm, that I wore dress shields on short attention span theater in 1992.
Marc:Now, how do you get from where you started?
Marc:I mean, I don't know a lot about you.
Marc:Then again, I might be projecting Don Draper onto you, that I want you to have that backstory.
Marc:Like, you know, I want to know more about your mom, the hooker, but I'm not, you know...
Marc:But that's not real, Mark.
Marc:Did I say that out loud?
Marc:Is that too meta?
Marc:What was your journey here like?
Marc:I mean, what was the, how'd you start, where'd you start?
Guest:I came from, I was born and raised in St.
Marc:Louis, Missouri.
Marc:Oh my God, does anything happen there?
Guest:It's a good place to be from.
Guest:Have you seen the arch?
Guest:Did you go up in the arch?
Guest:Yeah, all right.
Guest:Arch is good.
Guest:Cardinals, baseball.
Guest:It's a good place to be from, and it's a good place to be a kid.
Guest:You get to be a kid for a pretty long time there, which is nice.
Guest:William Burroughs was from St.
Guest:Louis.
Guest:I went to John Burroughs High School.
Guest:I wonder if it's his relation.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:John Burroughs was like a Walt Whitman-style poet from upstate New York.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Um, but it was a good place to be from, you know, I have a lot of good friends that are still there, but it's very much a place where you, when you grow up, you either work for your dad or you leave town.
Guest:Like, it's just kind of like you either kind of do the same thing everybody's been doing.
Guest:There's not a lot of innovation happening in St.
Guest:Louis, which is a drag.
Guest:Um, but it is what it is.
Guest:It's a very conservative place.
Guest:And, and, and for, for whatever reason I had, uh,
Guest:always kind of wanted to get out of that place.
Guest:But I also had the – it sounds weird, but like the benefit of not having any kind of parents or anything.
Guest:Both my parents passed away before I was 20.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So I was sort of very much a vagabond by the time I got out of college.
Marc:You weren't like – so when your father passed away when you were 20?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your mom passed away when you were younger?
Guest:When I was 10, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:But –
Guest:So I lived in a lot of basements.
Guest:Of what?
Guest:Of other people's homes?
Guest:Other people's homes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I lived in, I was surfing couches for quite a bit.
Guest:In the 70s?
Guest:No, in the 90s.
Guest:In the 90s?
Guest:So it was, thank God grunge was in because I was, I did not, there were not a lot of showers.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Really?
Guest:But so, you know, I was like always kind of hustling and working jobs and waiting tables and bartending.
Guest:I taught school for a little bit.
Guest:What did you teach?
Guest:I taught acting, actually.
Guest:I went back to my old high school and talked to my old theater teacher who had, by that point, had gone, who had been crazy overwhelmed with the students that wanted to take acting class and improv and like fun kind of, you know.
Yeah.
Guest:Stuff that would make their college application look a lot broader.
Guest:And he was a really good teacher and a really kind of charismatic guy.
Guest:And so I came up to him and I said, hey, why don't I take half your course load off you and I'm cheap.
Guest:You'll pay me half of what a regular teacher would cost and I'll be like an intern guy.
Marc:And did you think that that was it for you, though?
Marc:I mean, at that moment when you decided to go back to... No, it was a means to an end.
Marc:I needed a job.
Marc:And you were just trying to figure out what the hell to do?
Guest:Yeah, and it was a job that didn't... You know, it was getting up at like 8 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:7 o'clock in the morning was a drag.
Guest:And what grade were they?
Guest:8th?
Guest:9th through 11th.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:So it was 8th through 11th.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:And it was a trip.
Guest:I mean, it was a real kind of thing.
Guest:But it was a thing to do every day.
Guest:And I had responsibility.
Guest:And when you're 23, 24, whatever, you need that kind of thing.
Marc:And shaping young minds.
Marc:Shaping young minds.
Marc:Have you heard from any of your past students that are like, dude.
Marc:One of my students is on the office right now.
Guest:What are the odds of that?
Marc:And was in Bridesmaids.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which one?
Marc:Ellie Kemper, the redhead girl.
Marc:She's funny.
Marc:She's very funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you know when she was in ninth grade that she had- She was very talented when she was young.
Guest:She and her sister, actually, they're both- Her sister writes on The Office.
Guest:They're both incredibly talented kids.
Guest:And they were back when they were 15, 14 years old.
Guest:It was hilarious.
Guest:That's unbelievable.
Guest:All right, so you're teaching.
Guest:Then do you hit a wall?
Guest:You got to get out?
Guest:They actually asked me to come back for a second year, and I was at that point going to turn 24, 25, whatever it was.
Guest:And I was like, well, I'd love to, but if I don't go to L.A.
Guest:now, I'll never go.
Guest:I know St.
Guest:Louis will just keep me here.
Marc:So what did you study in college, though, to have this dream in place already?
Guest:I had a scholarship for theater.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:But I was an English major.
Marc:Oh, yeah, me too.
Guest:Which is useless.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:I mean, it's useful, but it's useless.
Guest:You read some good books, right?
Guest:Yeah, you read books.
Marc:Maybe a few Cliff Notes.
Marc:Didn't finish that one.
Marc:How's it end?
Guest:How's it end?
Guest:which one's bail wolf why did i take this class again he's a monster right but he's a good guy is he a good guy or a bad guy just give me broad strokes yeah yeah but uh so yeah so i figured if i don't go now i'll never go i had a buddy paul rudd who was out here and kind of making it big how'd you know him he went to ku
Guest:with my high school girlfriend's older brother.
Guest:So they would kind of come back as the cool older kids on weekends.
Guest:Saying, like, you got to come out, man.
Guest:Yeah, come hang out.
Guest:It'll be really fun.
Guest:He did all right for himself.
Guest:He's doing just fine.
Marc:Didn't he start with Neil LaButte and that crew?
Guest:Well, you know, Rudd started in Clueless.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was his big breakout thing.
Guest:How old was he then?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's so young.
Guest:25.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But so I figured like, all right, I know at least one person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'll make one phone call and we'll see what happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I've never been shy about asking.
Guest:Part of the benefit of living on people's couches and in their basements is you don't get shy about asking for help.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for the most part, people are...
Guest:If you're a good guy and if you're a relatively responsible human being, they'll help you.
Guest:If they're not walking around the house going like, why is this broken?
Guest:Why is he still here?
Guest:He eats everything.
Guest:Never flushed the toilet.
Guest:Stop shitting on the carpet.
Marc:We got to get rid of this ham guy.
Marc:Just murder him.
Marc:It's fucking horrendous.
Marc:I think he's still sleeping now.
Marc:It's noon.
Guest:oh that was definitely the case yeah but um but no so so it's um that and then i came out here and it's like all right good time to find a job yeah and i was an extra on the pilot of the practice oh yeah yeah i actually was cleaning out my uh office two days ago and i found my pay stub from like sessions or central casting or whatever yeah yeah yeah from that thing i made 200 bucks and what'd you do just did you ham it up as an extra
Guest:Honestly, I think I was asleep.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Almost the entire time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was extra in like the, you know, it's a big law show, so I was like in the jury, not in the jury, but in the like observer thing.
Guest:The gallery.
Guest:Yeah, and so I'm like, I honestly think it was my choice to fall asleep.
Guest:I was like, I'm making a choice.
Guest:I'm going to be asleep.
Marc:Somebody's got to be.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I've been up all night too, but you didn't say that.
Marc:Do you mind if I just snooze?
Marc:I will not snore.
Guest:What was the first real job?
Guest:First real job was... Like doing talking part.
Guest:...was on a show called Providence.
Marc:Yeah, I remember that kind of.
Guest:NBC.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a guest star, one episode guest star, and I was...
Guest:One day of shooting, but it was like an 18-hour day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like a crazy long day.
Guest:Was it in that moment that you realized, like, fuck, this is a real job?
Guest:I was like, holy shit, yeah.
Guest:And I was like, I'd never done anything where I had to, like, hit marks.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there was this long, crazy, steady cam tracking shot that they were doing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I kept missing my mark, and I was, like, sweating and just, like, wow.
Guest:how am I not doing this right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Melanie Mayeron directed it, who remember from 30-something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she couldn't have been nicer and sweeter, and the camera crew was really nice, but I was terrified.
Marc:I just don't know, like, in my experience with going out on roles, because I'm not really an actor, I'm just myself, and just that waiting to go in, and just how many years of that did you do for television?
Marc:I mean, sitting in a hallway with 10 guys that look kind of like you.
Guest:It took me three years.
Guest:That's not bad.
Guest:Where I went on a lot of auditions, but got absolutely nothing.
Guest:It's heartbreaking, isn't it?
Guest:Well, it's depressing.
Guest:I was listening to Polar on this, and there's like...
Guest:she was saying something about like, there's that thing where you go and you underprepare because you're like, man, I don't even care.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:And then you realize like, that's not a great, that's really, that's a really terrible idea.
Guest:Um, but, but there is, there is like such a thing of like kind of wanting it too much.
Guest:And you, where you're just, if you're so invested, cause there's so many things to where you're like, are you really going to like beat yourself up because you didn't get like cop number two on LA med?
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, you're like,
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like, all right, on to the next one.
Guest:So you do develop a very thick skin in a sense of like, all right, there's something else is going to... You have to.
Guest:And part of that is being young.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, 25, 26, 27 years old, you're like, I got plenty of time.
Marc:But in your mind, did you think, were you gunning for stardom or were you just wanting to work?
Marc:Did you see yourself as a serious actor or...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I did because that's what I'd done in college.
Guest:I was like, all right, I've done this stuff.
Guest:I can deliver important sounding words in order.
Guest:So, yeah.
Marc:That's Jon Hamm's description of acting.
Marc:Serious acting delivering important sounding words in order.
Marc:And improv is wearing hats and dancing.
Marc:Yes, I know that.
Guest:And beards.
Guest:Occasionally you got to throw a beard on.
Guest:But so, yeah.
Guest:I mean, was I...
Guest:sort of gunning for being tom cruise absolutely not no um you know my the guy i always wanted to be most like was a guy like jeff bridges oh he's it was just kind of always been awesome yeah always and and and then like lives in montecito
Marc:Yeah, but you think about that guy's career and how long he's fucking been around.
Marc:It's baffling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I just saw his brother in some TV show last night.
Marc:That must be a tough relationship.
Marc:The Bridges boys.
Marc:I think they both have their.
Marc:They do all right.
Guest:They both have their slots to fill, as it were.
Marc:So, all right, so you do some TV work, and then, like, leading up to... Because, like, I can't imagine... I've never been given the gift of blowing up or even having heat.
Marc:I've always sort of simmered along with periods of having a broken burner.
Marc:But...
Marc:But I can't imagine what it must feel like to have the type of attention you're having.
Marc:But before we get to that, though, I mean, leading up to that, I mean, what was the auditioning process for Mad Men?
Marc:I know you've probably talked about this, but maybe we can figure out some other way to go.
Guest:Well, it was...
Guest:One of the things about it was I was kind of coming off the worst year I had had professionally since I had worked.
Guest:Were you making a living?
Guest:I was making a lot of money because I was on a TV show for three years.
Guest:So they bought a house.
Guest:Which show?
Guest:It was called The Division.
Guest:It was on Lifetime, television for women.
Marc:Right, so it was like off the radar in a lot of ways.
Guest:Yeah, but it was still a job.
Guest:Money, sure, right.
Guest:I did almost 70 episodes of it.
Guest:So it was like, I was on it for three years.
Guest:It was a good gig.
Guest:So you had a reel anyways.
Guest:I mean, people could see you work.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I got to chase bad guys and...
Guest:hit them with guns and do all that fun.
Guest:We could never shoot our guns because that would cost money, but you could hit them.
Marc:Really, it's a budgetary concern?
Marc:Totally.
Marc:So you just had to know it.
Guest:You have to bring an effects guy in.
Guest:You have to do a whole thing.
Guest:I'm not kidding.
Marc:They had to add the gun afterwards or you literally couldn't shoot?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:There has to be like a whole other crew person involved whenever firearms are.
Marc:So did you just cut?
Marc:I never shot people.
Marc:We never shot our guns.
Guest:You're dead.
Guest:Bang.
Guest:Just believe me.
Guest:Trust me.
Guest:I got you.
Guest:That'd be a good show, actually.
Guest:But anyway, it was a great job, and it was really fun.
Guest:But that had ended, and then I had auditioned for another pilot, which I got, and then got fired off of.
Guest:And then the following season was the season where...
Guest:I had gone up for literally seven pilots and had not gotten any of them.
Guest:So you go through this whole process of audition, audition, audition, test.
Guest:No.
Guest:Audition, audition, audition, test.
Guest:No.
Guest:Seven times.
Marc:Test means you go in for the suits.
Guest:You go in for all the network guys, and they go like, meh.
Guest:And so Mad Men came around.
Guest:And I got the script and the little cover sheet was like, it's for AMC.
Guest:It's this, like, it was the last one of the bunch.
Guest:It was way late in pilot season.
Guest:I had to go in on a pre-read because the casting directors were out of New York and they didn't know me.
Guest:They weren't familiar with me.
Guest:So you mean on tape?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, yeah, but, but meet the casting director basically and read it.
Guest:So that was the first one.
Guest:And I was like, oh man, like what, what is this?
Guest:Like, what is this thing?
Guest:And I started, started, I started reading it and I was like, oh wow, this is really good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I read the whole, and I read the whole thing like in 10 minutes and I was just like, I walked into my girlfriend.
Guest:I was like, this is the best script I've ever read.
Marc:And I threw it on the thing.
Marc:What was it exactly?
Marc:Like, at what page did you say, like, why is that guy?
Guest:You know, it was somewhere in the first probably five pages of just, like, and then realizing, I don't think I'm spoiling this for anybody at this point, but, like, when you realize at the end when he goes and he sees this, you see the guy's married.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is good.
Marc:So the big twist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I kind of did a little digging.
Guest:I was like, all right, this guy's from the Sopranos.
Guest:It's a real deal.
Guest:I don't know what AMC's deal is.
Guest:No one does.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But here's an opportunity.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I started literally on the very, very bottom.
Guest:I couldn't have been had to talk about heat.
Guest:Couldn't have had less heat on me.
Guest:Nobody knew who I was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The casting directors didn't know who I was.
Guest:I wasn't on anybody's list.
Guest:And they had lists.
Guest:They wanted whoever, fill in the blank of TV star, movie stars.
Marc:Do you know who they were?
Guest:Now, has it been... The funny thing was, I think they went to Thomas Jane for it, and they were told that Thomas Jane does not do television.
Guest:Now starring in Hung, by the way.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it was...
Guest:You guys friends?
Guest:I don't think I've ever met him, but he's a wonderful actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I love that show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the process goes where I come back, I come back, I come back.
Guest:I came back probably seven times.
Guest:By the time I got the part, I had performed every line of dialogue in the pilot script.
Marc:You knew it.
Marc:Okay, so just as an actor, I don't know what your process is, because I know that when you go into auditions, you're supposed to make choices.
Marc:Now, in your mind, when you read that guy, at least the first couple of times, what were some of the things that you thought?
Guest:Well, honestly, the thing that struck me the most was that this guy reminded me of my dad.
Guest:Um, and what'd your dad do?
Guest:My dad was, uh, our family was in the trucking business, like heavy hauling semis and stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In St.
Guest:Louis.
Guest:St.
Guest:Louis used to be a big, uh, trucking hub because it was right on two rivers and it was right in the middle of the country.
Guest:So anything that came on barges from North or South, uh,
Guest:came to the middle and then they'd disperse it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Did he own trucks?
Guest:Yeah, we had a fleet of trucks.
Guest:So you spent a lot of childhood time in a semi?
Guest:I spent a lot of time in a garage, that's for sure, which was great for a kid, like forklifts and like giant benches and stuff.
Guest:Right, else was your senior dad bent over an engine?
Guest:He was not quite that hands-on.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:He was the owner of the company.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Guest:We had mechanics for that.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Guest:But he was still very, he was a very, like, capable guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, that classic, he was born in 1933, served in Korea, like, classic kind of dad.
Guest:Like, let me take a look at it, see if I can fix it.
Guest:Figured hanging out of his mouth, bald.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, it was, uh...
Guest:It very much reminded me of this guy who... And my dad had a lot of sadness in him, too.
Guest:And he was... His first wife passed away suddenly.
Guest:My mother, his second wife, passed away at a very young age.
Guest:They were divorced at that point, but still, that's a bummer.
Marc:Do you remember that pretty well?
Guest:your mom passing away yeah vividly yeah no fun was it a uh uh she had cancer she had cancer and yeah it was it was no it was no good was she married to someone else at the time no no she was single i was living with her she got custody and my i'd go every other weekend to my dad's yeah and uh yeah she had just massive rapid abdominal cancer that back in the day
Guest:You know, this is 1980.
Guest:There was really... In St.
Guest:Louis, obviously, it's not like we were living in the Mayo Clinic or anything, or, you know, Manhattan, where there's up-to-date, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:But there was just no treatment.
Guest:It was kind of like, well, cut it out.
Guest:We'll see what we can do.
Guest:And they took out a bunch of her colon, and they didn't get it all, and it was in her liver and her stomach, and that's a wrap.
Guest:And you were there the whole time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was not fun.
Guest:It was not a good time.
Guest:And you're 10, so you have no... The fear of that, like, you know, what happens now...
Guest:But you have no mechanism to deal with it either.
Guest:There's just nothing.
Guest:So you have family and you have friends, but your friends are 10.
Guest:What are they going to be?
Guest:Hey, man.
Marc:I've been through this.
Guest:Yeah, you're not going to get a beer and commiserate.
Guest:It's going to be like, you want to play kickball?
Guest:Yeah, that's the best we can do.
Guest:That's all we got.
Guest:But it is...
Guest:It's the lamest expression in the world, but it is what it is, and you can't do anything but get through it.
Guest:So anyway, that's kind of literally what I thought of when I thought of this character, was this guy who is...
Guest:living what seems to be a wonderful life and yet is, is somehow, um, deeply, deeply, uh, dissatisfied.
Guest:And, uh, and, and how much we as kind of America, and then I go into my little theorizing thing about how much that represents America at that time.
Guest:And what was shifting after we just won this kicked ass in this world war and we were riding high and everything was going great.
Guest:And then all of a sudden it's like, wait, is it,
Guest:Is it great?
Guest:Kids seem to be bummed out.
Guest:Why are the kids freaking out?
Guest:Why is everybody taking acid and smoking pot?
Guest:Why is that Bob Dylan character so dissatisfied?
Guest:And it's like, isn't it great?
Guest:It's great.
Guest:We all got cars and there's malls and air conditioning and refrigerators.
Guest:It's better than it's ever been.
Guest:And everyone's kind of like, I'm bummed out.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The truth started to percolate underneath the character.
Marc:So that's sort of the metaphor.
Marc:Because your character has this darkness and sort of hangs out in beatnik places and does that business.
Guest:Or just looking for something.
Guest:right what is what are you looking for whether it's banging some random lady that's not his wife or he's looking for something right and always has been his whole life did you identify with that in any way or did you just sort of transpose sure a little bit I mean I think I think that's
Guest:I don't think that's necessarily uniquely male.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I do think it's... Human.
Guest:Human.
Guest:Meaning.
Guest:Certainly.
Guest:But also, there's something American about that.
Guest:We are kind of raised as Americans.
Guest:Arrogantly insecure.
Guest:Arrogantly insecure.
Guest:Sort of like, I deserve something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:I live here.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I'm entitled.
Guest:I mean, and it's honestly like it's getting to the point now where it's crazy.
Guest:The, the, the, the arrogant, the arrogance, entitlement of people who it's kind of like, why are you, what do you do?
Guest:Why are you famous?
Guest:Why are you, why are we giving you anything?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You know, when the, when the dude, there's no shortage of that in this town.
Guest:Well, yeah, because, and, and the honest reason is, is because somebody's watching somewhere.
Marc:Right, but I think also it's not unlike the show that we have a very... Capitalism in this country has a great history of hucksterism.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And I think that advertising is sort of elevated, romanticized hucksterism.
Guest:Well, and it all gets back to the freak show.
Guest:Let's look at the freak show.
Guest:Want to go see the freaks?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Carnival's in town.
Guest:Let's go look at it.
Marc:But it's the most powerful...
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, how different is Jersey Shore from a freak show?
Guest:I mean, just stick them in a cage and watch them all beat each other up, and isn't that hilarious?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Most of it is freaks now.
Marc:All of it.
Guest:Whatever it is.
Marc:Kardashians.
Marc:Hoarders.
Marc:Hoarders.
Marc:Yeah, intervention on some level.
Marc:Anything.
Marc:We should have some human engagement with that stuff.
Marc:I mean, like, especially that whole type of show with hoarders and the obsessive shows and those kind of shows.
Marc:Like, it's just a way for people to judge themselves against something they're not.
Guest:Sure, I feel better about me because I'm not that.
Marc:And I think that's horrendous.
Marc:The Jersey Shore people seem to be proud to be freaks.
Marc:But I was actually a fan of freaks as a kid.
Marc:Did you ever go to a real freak show?
Guest:Um, no, but I did see that movie Freaks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was 30s weird movie.
Marc:I was so obsessed with that shit.
Marc:And I went to the New Mexico State Fair to see real freaks.
Marc:And I went to see the guy with the with the elephant feet.
Marc:And I walk into this room.
Marc:There's this little dude sitting in like a Tarzan outfit.
Marc:But he's got these horrendously deformed feet with toes sticking out in the weird place.
Marc:And you just go in there and he's like, you want to touch it?
Marc:And I'm like, no, no, I got it.
Marc:I want to go.
Guest:I want to go home.
Guest:I want to take a shower.
Guest:Well, there became this thing, too, at like, what was it, in like 93 or 94, 92 maybe, where there was the, it was like a run around when Lollapalooza was a big deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there became this kind of nouveau freak show.
Marc:Yeah, the sort of burlesque slash Mexican wrestling slash freak show.
Guest:And that became kind of cool again.
Guest:Yeah, Jim Rowe's circus.
Guest:Jim Rowe's circus side show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was a dude who'd bang a nail through his dick or whatever it was, and you'd be like, wow, what are we watching?
Marc:Yeah, aren't you supposed to do that at home?
Marc:This is fun, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, no, there's some weirdness.
Marc:But I mean, with Mad Men, though, I guess I'm sort of fascinated with...
Marc:Well, how you align the emotions with, you know, so you just had a good script and you were able to sort of, you know, internalize what you thought this character was.
Marc:And like in terms of physical choices or anything else, you don't have any recollection of how you played that?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:In fact, and they were and they were very conscious on my decision, especially once I had known early on that Don Draper was not who he who who he says he was.
Guest:I knew he was a different.
Guest:They told you that once you got the job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I knew the backstory before you got the part when I got the part.
Guest:Right.
Guest:OK.
Guest:Did you have to sign some oath?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I had dinner with Matt, and he was like, you want to know the backstory?
Guest:I was kind of like, yeah.
Guest:It would help.
Guest:I'm playing the game.
Guest:Let me know.
Guest:I basically said, if it's something I need to know, then yeah.
Guest:And he goes, you probably should.
Guest:And so he launches on this whole thing.
Guest:I'm like, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, okay, good to know.
Guest:But I do make very conscious decisions, especially when Don Draper is being Don Draper in the office.
Guest:He has a very sort of almost arrogant carriage about him.
Guest:You talk about physicality.
Guest:I'm 6'2", and I'm relatively broad, and I think his carriage is a very kind of confident character
Guest:Whenever you meet anybody that's a real salesman, you're kind of thrown by how forward they are because that's their entire thing is just like... Yeah, they penetrate every cell of your body.
Guest:Whatever you're like overwhelmed.
Guest:And I very much took that...
Guest:to kind of in, in my physicality of, of being Don Draper is this guy who's on it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He is in charge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's like standing up straight and being sort of, you know, kind of shoulders back and like, let's go and let leader of men kind of.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, and it's very different when, when it's either in California or he's, he's, he's, he's Dick.
Guest:He's, he's who he really is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Is this kind of,
Guest:shy uh um different guy yeah because he can be himself he can be himself he can like he can like relax and with betty there's this other thing that you know that there's betty there's like he's kind of playing a role there too like but it's it's closer to to don obviously it's this kind of like masculine ideal that that he knows she wants
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then the two start to break apart when you realize you don't have control over her.
Marc:Yeah, totally.
Guest:I mean, it all comes, you know, the chickens come home to roost, obviously, when she finds all of the information.
Guest:That's a gnarly scene.
Guest:Yeah, it was really hard to shoot, too.
Guest:And it was one of those things where it was...
Guest:It was a scene that kept getting moved because we... Just couldn't deal with it yet.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It wasn't that.
Guest:It was like we ran out of time or we were going over time and we couldn't... Our show is produced on a shoestring, basically.
Guest:So we could never really do overtime.
Guest:So we hit 12 hours and be like, sorry, we got to pull a plug.
Guest:And you're like, fuck.
Guest:I've been preparing the scene.
Guest:I really want to get it done.
Guest:And it's like, I'm thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it.
Guest:And finally, it was stuck in the middle of a day.
Guest:where we had a bunch of stuff to do, and I was just, it was a weird thing to be like, oh, we're doing that now?
Guest:The most pivotal scene of the series.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Can I get a minute?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like, oh, man.
Guest:Let me put together my breakdown.
Guest:But it was great.
Guest:I mean, and part of it was, you know, having worked January for so long, and a lot of the people on the crew as well, like, there was a very, it's a very comfortable set.
Guest:People are very comfortable with each other, so that really helps.
Marc:And I guess people, I have to assume that you must have some set design fetishists on there that just respect the period so fucking deeply.
Marc:I don't know where they come up with all that stuff.
Guest:A lot of it's built.
Guest:A lot of it's just, you know, they make it.
Guest:But a lot of it is, you know, that's what these guys do for a living.
Marc:Yeah, but sometimes it's not done well.
Marc:Some people are bad at their jobs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've never seen it done that well.
Marc:I mean, I think that's sort of some of the power of it is that you actually enter that world.
Marc:It helps.
Guest:It certainly helps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, especially the old Sterling Cooper set, which was basically an entire stage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was just one floor of this building.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was just awesome.
Guest:We'd walk on that thing.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:Silver Cup?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:You did it here?
Guest:We shot the pilot in Silver Cup.
Guest:We shoot the show here downtown.
Guest:But people would walk on that set and kind of lose their mind.
Guest:They'd be like, oh my God.
Guest:We're in it.
Guest:This is amazing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, uh, because there's not, there's not like fake, I have the same thing.
Guest:Like when I walked on the 30 rock set, I was like, this looks exactly like 30 rock.
Guest:Like it looks, they have the little NBC logos on the, on the carpet and the elevators are the same.
Guest:And it's, you're, you're like, Oh my God, talk about somebody that's good at their job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:But theirs is way more broken up than ours.
Guest:Ours was literally one whole floor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you really feel like you're walking into an office.
Marc:So is the next series all done?
Guest:Are you psyched?
Guest:I'm very psyched.
Guest:I'm going to direct the first episode.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Have you ever directed?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:Theater or anything?
Guest:Theater, yeah, like in college.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember...
Guest:It being the most terrifying experience because it was completely out of my, out of my hands and going when I had to put up my directing scene or whatever for class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thinking like, I'm going to shit my pants.
Guest:This is like, I'm terrified.
Guest:Like I, I, I, please do, please do a good job guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the rest of it is, and then it went great.
Guest:And I was like, Oh God,
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:I know that when you direct theater, if you're directing a movie script, that there's a lot of choices to be made that you might not have to make in a set piece, right?
Guest:No, TV shows, it's directing for dummies.
Guest:I'm not taking it away from a lot.
Guest:There are a lot of fantastic television directors, but you don't have to do what you do when you direct a play or a film.
Guest:You don't have to establish the world.
Guest:You don't have to make every decision.
Guest:A lot of that stuff is made for you.
Guest:And so you're looking at it that way as a way to get your feet wet.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I mean, I think it's going to be a lesson in, you know, managing people and communicating and trying to get what you want and also doing it economically.
Guest:I mean, we shoot a lot.
Guest:of pages in a very short amount of time and your girlfriend's a director right or she's a she's a writer and actress and just directed her first film so i kind of watched that i watched her do that she was in the film that she directed too so it was like back and forth i did a movie with ben affleck the town that that he saw that he uh also directed and was in so i'm like watching these people do that and i'm like all right
Guest:It's possible.
Guest:It's not impossible.
Marc:On a film set, it's just fucking mind-blowing, though.
Marc:Yeah, especially with, like, you know, guns and blow-em-ups and all that other stuff.
Marc:Now, when you do... I mean, I think that must be a big... Like, how do you approach the expectations of Jon Hamm, the products, now?
Marc:Like, I mean, I have to assume that on some level, you're being offered a lot of stuff, people see you a certain way.
Marc:I mean, I've seen you do comedy, and it's interesting that, like, sometimes in comedy...
Marc:Are you expected just to play against type?
Marc:Is that what you prefer?
Guest:You know, I don't know.
Guest:It's a hard question to answer because I don't think there really is an answer.
Guest:I mean, I like to work with people who I like.
Guest:So when I get offered things, it's kind of like, all right, do I like that guy's work?
Guest:Have I seen anything he's done?
Marc:But do you get the feeling that because of who you are as Draper and the impact that had on the culture that everyone's going to see you that way, so you get a sort of built-in funny thing if you just act different?
Marc:Maybe.
Guest:Maybe that's it.
Guest:I mean, honestly, I got super lucky in that, for whatever reason, Lorne Michaels decided he wanted me to host SNL.
Guest:Yeah, and you were funny.
Guest:And I was like, oh, yes.
Guest:Honestly, the first time I was offered it, I turned it down because Jen and I had a vacation plan, and they wanted me to do it right in the middle of the vacation.
Guest:I was like, I'm sorry, we're going to Greece.
Guest:We've never been.
Guest:And I was kind of like, well.
Guest:That ship sailed.
Marc:But that is a sign of, on some level, that you feel fairly confident in your success.
Marc:I mean, honestly, no.
Guest:I was kind of like, I would love to have done it.
Guest:I wish I could say yes.
Marc:Not at another point in your career you wouldn't have said, like, Jen, we can't go to Greece.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I mean, you've got to pick your battles.
Guest:That would have been a real tough ask.
Guest:But they came back and said, we'd love to have you this week instead.
Guest:And I said, oh, my God, yeah, definitely.
Marc:As a fan of comedy, are you nervous about doing comedy?
Guest:Very much so, because I don't feel like I'm... A, I don't feel like I'm funny in the way that professional funny people are funny and that they think about structure and here's how you build it and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:I don't have that.
Guest:And I don't have that thing that Hater can do or Daryl Hammond or Forte, these people that can pull these characters out of their mind and make them fully realized in four seconds.
Guest:Haters fucking baffling.
Guest:He's a genius.
Marc:I mean, the guy, I've never seen anybody.
Marc:It's unbelievable.
Marc:I had him on a live show, dude, and he was sitting right there, and I asked him, and I didn't want to, but too many people asked me to have him do his Alan Alda.
Marc:But anything he does, like, this is giving me this whole weird appreciation of people in our business, is that when I talk to them, or I'm sitting right next to them, it's really the best seat in the fucking house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And when they turn on the juice for an audience and you're just sitting like this close, you're like, holy fuck.
Marc:He's like a wizard.
Marc:It really is.
Guest:It's unbelievable.
Guest:I mean, Polar's the same way, honestly.
Guest:Like, she did stuff on that show.
Guest:She's an all-star.
Guest:These are people that spend their lives in front of audiences, too.
Guest:All-stars.
Guest:And just like, so I'm happy to be in the room.
Marc:Well, you did the bridesmaid thing, and you made some very definitive choices, and you trusted the script, and you were that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, and again, it's like, listen, the fact that I get asked to do that kind of stuff is great.
Marc:And I'm telling you, as a man, ask nudity for a joke, that's a big choice.
Marc:Did you have to struggle with that at all?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:If you're asking, it's always that thing where the girls lay in there half naked anyway, so you're kind of like, well, here we are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Here we go.
Guest:I got to meet you halfway.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's only fair.
Guest:It's only fair.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And again, wig is another one, another person who you just- Hilarious.
Guest:You're like, I don't understand what you do.
Guest:So that's been my kind of thing.
Guest:I don't find myself particularly funny in that way, but I'm happy to be-
Marc:you know most comedy needs a straight man too so i'm happy i'm happy to be to be that guy yeah when you talk to your uh representation or whatever because i mean you know i'm not trying to pry or anything else but i mean i have to assume i saw you in the town and i saw you in the the bug movie um with the raining bugs the metal bugs yeah the earth stood still
Marc:Yeah, I mean, when you chose those rules, I mean, they were, what would you call them, second lead or supporting?
Marc:Supporting, sure.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, I have to assume that you've had some lead.
Marc:You probably have something coming out or something's going to happen.
Guest:I've had a lot of lead things thrown at me, but most of it's been stuff that I haven't really liked.
Guest:Why?
Guest:So why didn't I like it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:several reasons um what's the biggest reason that recurs mostly it's like i want to be in i don't want to be the guy that is carrying a movie really yet yet i mean at some point yeah but not yet what is what what's your sense around that i mean what why
Guest:Because I feel like you get one shot at that.
Guest:The first shot, you mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:To determine whether or not you get to do that.
Guest:And it's the world we live in now.
Guest:It's kind of the landscape that exists where if something hits great, then you're that guy for you get five more swings.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But if it doesn't, you get a stink that is hard to wash off.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:But it's interesting that you have to be that aware that in light of the fact that because you look at that, that can be kind of a curse.
Guest:Well, I think I mean, maybe I overthink it, but I just feel like I've I've been very judicious in the things that I've chosen to do.
Guest:And.
Guest:If it's something that's a popcorn movie, whether it's Day of the Earth Stood Still or something, where it's kind of like, yeah, I'll do it.
Guest:It's fun.
Guest:It'll be a great experience.
Guest:I get to work with Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly on a big, big, crazy studio movie.
Guest:But also you didn't feel like it was on your back.
Guest:It ain't on me.
Guest:I'm the guy that dies at the end.
Guest:I'm not saving the world.
Guest:So it's kind of like when it's that time to play that guy,
Guest:I would rather share the burden with Matt Damon or fill in the blank.
Guest:Because honestly, like...
Guest:The new paradigm seems to be, you know, unless you're Will Smith or Twilight or whatever, or a superhero, no one makes adult movies anymore.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:They make movies for 14-year-olds.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And 14-year-olds are attracted to, like, you know, the shredded 28-year-old hunky guy.
Marc:Yeah, but you've got plenty of, I would think, maybe 25 to 75-year-old women.
Yeah.
Marc:So, I mean, that's still a pretty big... The problem is they don't go to movies.
Marc:You can get them to a movie, John.
Marc:So, like, what do they usually throw your way?
Marc:Do they cast you as a romantic comedy lead?
Marc:Or do they want you as an action guy?
Guest:I get... Fortunately, I get all kinds.
Guest:And I just really... I haven't found anything that I've liked.
Guest:But you feel that if you found that the alignment was right?
Guest:Yeah, and I have no, like... I have no...
Guest:sort of uh attitude of superiority toward any genre i think romantic comedy done right is great it's great and uh it's funny because it's human it's like people but but done wrong it's awful yeah and and and we seem to be trending toward these kind of super saccharine weird uh
Guest:badly made romantic comedies, and it's kind of ruined the genre for a lot of people because they kind of go like, what is this thing?
Guest:And if you look at something like Knocked Up or Bridesmaids, those are basically romantic comedies.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And they're just done great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're really funny.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, it's...
Guest:It's kind of a lost art at this point.
Guest:But I think that, you know, the action genre too, like that's what I really dug about the town.
Guest:The town at a certain point was going to be directed by Adrian Lyne and it was $140 million movie and Brad Pitt was going to be in it.
Guest:And all this, you know, this is Hollywood thing.
Guest:Everybody wants to do it and they want you for this.
Guest:And I was like, well, these people are going to do it.
Guest:That sounds great.
Guest:And then I read the script.
Guest:I was like, wow, this is a really weird movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it went away like those things do.
Guest:And then all of a sudden it came back.
Guest:And Warner's was really excited about making it.
Guest:And I was like, okay, what happened?
Guest:They're like, well, Ben Affleck's going to direct it.
Guest:He's going to be in it.
Guest:I was like, okay, I saw Gone Baby Gone.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought he was very, very capable director, not just some schmuck like he wanted to make a movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he completely rewrote the script and basically tore it in half.
Guest:It became this bare bones, kind of lo-fi cops and robbers movie.
Guest:I was like, I love it.
Guest:I'm on board.
Marc:I liked all of that movie up to the point where it's one of those movies where I thought, couldn't he have just been dead at the end?
Guest:It would have been a different movie, and I'm not saying I don't agree with you, but, you know, he's Ben Affleck.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You've got to have him with a beard at the end.
Marc:He's got to win.
Marc:He's got to win.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But now, are you adverse to doing a lead in a smaller film?
Marc:I mean, have those kind of opportunities come on?
Guest:Those have certainly come, too, but...
Guest:those things become difficult because if they're not attached to a studio, then attaching yourself becomes like a longer commitment.
Guest:And with the TV show, it's like, I don't know if I'm available and when are we going to shoot it?
Guest:And, um, so it becomes a trickier negotiation.
Guest:That's all it is.
Guest:But there's a lot of amazing, I did a little movie called Howl,
Guest:It was about Allen Ginsberg.
Guest:I love Allen Ginsberg.
Guest:And it was a cool, weird, should never have been made.
Guest:You played the lawyer.
Guest:I played the lawyer, and Franco played Ginsberg and was really great.
Guest:And I was like, it was a movie about a poem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, how does this movie get made?
Guest:But a couple of guys in San Francisco, and they found some money, and they made it, and it was really cool, and it's a total art film.
Marc:Yeah, right there.
Marc:There's a poster for the anniversary of it.
Marc:Yeah, well, it's also, they were able to build it around the cultural relevance of that moment.
Guest:There's a million ways to skin a cat.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:No offense to your cats.
Guest:And so there's a million stories to be told, too.
Guest:I'm like, why not?
Marc:So you're just waiting for a good time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're waiting for the thing that goes, this is fucking it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, okay, so now let's get around to the final area of questioning.
Marc:How the hell...
Marc:do you manage, first of all, whatever type of attention is coming at you from the opposite sex, and I imagine the same sex, and how do you maintain a relationship?
Marc:Um, well... I mean, I can't even imagine what... Because, like, I was talking to my buddy today about it.
Marc:It's like, you know, you've made this impact when, you know, all the women want to have sex with you and all the guys want to be you.
Marc:But I think, honestly, you've done something new in that all the women want to have sex with you and all the guys want to be you, but they'd have sex with you, too, if you...
Guest:If you gave him 10 minutes.
Guest:First of all, thank you.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You know, I think all of that stuff is as ephemeral as as anything ever is.
Guest:The idea of being a, you know, it's it's it sounds even stupid to say it out loud, but a sex symbol is such a is such a movable feast.
Guest:And and it only it's only given as much power as you give it.
Guest:So if you're the guy that's kind of like walking around like, yep, this is what this is where it's at.
Guest:Bring it.
Guest:That's I got it in spades.
Guest:Then you're then you're that guy.
Guest:And no one wants to be that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Except the people that do, and there are a lot of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I don't know.
Guest:I mean, as I said, I was never a club guy because I've always been in the wrong shirt.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Are we wearing glasses today?
Guest:Shit, I'm not wearing my glasses.
Guest:Glasses are cool now?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I have really good friends that I've known a long time.
Guest:I've been with my girlfriend now going on 15 years.
Guest:It's just a thing.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's just a way of being in the world.
Guest:I like...
Guest:I like my life.
Guest:I like going to UCB.
Guest:I like going to New York.
Guest:I like staying home.
Guest:I mean, I've been the same person that I've always been.
Guest:It's just now there's a brighter light shown on me.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So your ego is not a monster.
Guest:No, that's good.
Guest:No, it's and I don't think it ever will be.
Guest:I mean, again, part of being raised in the Midwest is having this incredible sense of not only politeness, but also kind of I know my place, you know, and I had to get over that in a big way coming out to L.A.
Guest:because a big part of doing anything in L.A.
Guest:is having a little bit of a sense of like self-promotion and and like, yeah, why not me?
Guest:Give me that job.
Guest:I deserve it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Arrogant insecurity.
Guest:The American thing.
Guest:The American, the American idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my thing was always like, oh, there's probably somebody better that's at it.
Guest:Don't worry about it.
Guest:Like, I'm fine.
Guest:And they're like, no, we want you.
Guest:I'm like, well, don't overthink it.
Guest:There's probably a better guy out there.
Guest:Call me after you called everybody else.
Guest:So you have to get over that a little bit.
Guest:But part of it is also just like, come on.
Guest:What are we going to do?
Guest:I'm 40, man.
Guest:I'm not, you know.
Guest:It's all downhill from here.
Marc:And you're not a boozer.
Marc:You've got all that shit.
Marc:Well.
Marc:But you're not out of control.
Marc:I'm not that guy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's fucking great.
Marc:Well, congratulations on all your success.
Marc:Thank you, sir.
Marc:And thanks for coming by.
Marc:It's my pleasure.
Marc:Well, that's it.
Marc:The lovely Jon Hamm in the garage, not Don Draper.
Marc:I'm glad I was able to get past that, to have a nice conversation with Jon.
Marc:That is our show, Thursday show, Bryan Cranston.
Marc:Now I'm going to have to spend a couple days knowing that it's not Walter White, but I'll work that out.
Marc:Please buy my CD if you'd like.
Marc:I'm proud of it.
Marc:It's called This Has to be Funny.
Marc:That's at iTunes.
Marc:What else is going on?
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get on that mailing list.
Marc:I'm going to send out an email every week.
Marc:Please, if you'd like to donate to the show, I'd love to have you donate to the show.
Marc:We do have advertisers.
Marc:We are doing okay with that, but we are pretty self-supporting here.
Marc:It's a small camp.
Marc:at WTF Pod.
Marc:The premium package is always available.
Marc:$250 one-time donation will get you a few t-shirts, three CDs, a special Best of WTF Volume 1 CD, some stickers, you know, My Love.
Marc:Isn't that worth something?
Marc:JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Whoa.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Look out!
Marc:Ah, yeah, just shit my pants.
Marc:That one took a while.
Marc:I think I'm getting used to the coffee.
Marc:But that's available also at WTFPod.com.
Marc:We're putting a few videos up there.
Marc:There's some blogging going on.
Marc:Always interesting to see who shows up to leave comments.
Marc:It's a certain type of person.
Marc:You know who you are, and you know what side you're on.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:I'm going to go eat some meat.
Marc:And not think it's a dead animal.
Marc:Like I just took out from under my house.
Marc:Different.
Marc:It's different.
Marc:Butchered.
Marc:It's treated nicely.
Marc:That's not even true, is it?
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:I'm eating death.
Thank you.