Episode 430 - Laura Dern
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck sticks what the fucking ears hi folks i am mark marin this is wtf how are you i do want to say some things right up right up front here before i forget them or bury them or put them whatever
Marc:I have a special premiering on Netflix tonight.
Marc:My special Thinkie Pain premieres tonight on Netflix.
Marc:All English-speaking Netflix.
Marc:I believe that's UK Netflix, Canada Netflix, American Netflix.
Marc:Tonight, October 7th.
Marc:The rest of the Netflix will follow on the 21st.
Marc:I'm proud of this special.
Marc:I went out of my way to do certain things on this special to honor who I am at this point in my career.
Marc:We did it at a small venue.
Marc:We did it at a venue that had some significance to me.
Marc:You will see some brief cameos by Tom Sharpling.
Marc:My dear friend Tom Sharpling, my dear friend Sam Lipsight also shows up.
Marc:And it was like just another night.
Marc:I went out of my way to make sure that we kept it sort of about the performance.
Marc:You will notice there's not a lot of audience cutaways.
Marc:You only see a couple rows of the audience.
Marc:I did it in front of a small group of people, about 240 people.
Marc:The entire special, I believe, is pulled from one performance out of the two.
Marc:And I did have a stomach virus.
Marc:So I was doing a team thing on my special.
Marc:It was me and an unseen stomach bug that was pestering me.
Marc:That's not an excuse for anything.
Marc:I'm proud of the special.
Marc:I chose to keep it long.
Marc:It's about an hour and a half, I believe, or so.
Marc:Old school movie length special.
Marc:And I hope you enjoy it.
Marc:Thinky Payne tonight on American, Canadian, UK, Netflix.
Marc:That's the 7th and the 21st everywhere else.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Next Sunday on the 13th, I will be doing one of my one-night shows at the Ice House.
Marc:That's like a 7.30 show.
Marc:Dean Del Rey will be with me.
Marc:He's very excited about that.
Marc:Some of you remember you met Dean here on the podcast.
Marc:Rock and roll Dean Del Rey.
Marc:at the Ice House on October 13th.
Marc:I believe there'll be other people on the show.
Marc:So those are the two plugs up front.
Marc:Oh my God, Laura Dern is on the show.
Marc:How much do you love her?
Marc:How much do you fucking love Laura Dern?
Marc:I tell you, man, this interview was recorded a little while back, so we did have a pretty long discussion about Enlightened.
Marc:It was a great show.
Marc:It was a character I could relate to.
Marc:It was a self-involved character full of idealism and anger and narcissism.
Marc:It was a beautiful show.
Marc:She was great in it.
Marc:She's great in everything she does.
Marc:She is inspirational just by being her.
Marc:Not that she pays any lip service to being inspirational, but there's something about Laura Dern's
Marc:earnestness and passion that is very unique and she's a fucking great actress and i was uh thrilled to talk to her uh nervous even but i think we had a good chat so you can enjoy that momentarily
Marc:I want to thank Dave Anthony and the crew at PodFest.
Marc:We had a good time.
Marc:It was a great event.
Marc:There was just a second year for LA PodFest, and a lot of people came out.
Marc:There's a lot of podcast fans out there, and God damn it, we appreciate you, and it was fun to see everybody.
Marc:I like these festival things.
Marc:They're kind of interesting, just people hanging out for an entire weekend, fans of a thing, and there were dozens of podcasts there, and it was great to see all my pals.
Marc:I did, uh, I'm going to do, I did Greg, Greg Fitzsimmons show.
Marc:I did the new death squad show, the Tony Heathcliff show.
Marc:I did a couple of smaller podcasts.
Marc:It was just, it's a real community now.
Marc:And I feel like, uh, you know, I'm definitely part of it and I definitely had something to do with it.
Marc:And, uh, it's pretty exciting.
Marc:Benson was there.
Marc:Jimmy Pardo was there.
Marc:Rich Voss and Bonnie McFarlane were there.
Marc:Jake Johansson was there.
Marc:Um, Dana Gould was there.
Marc:Uh,
Marc:Man, there were a lot of podcasters there.
Marc:And those are only the ones that I ran into.
Marc:It's very interesting that once you start doing something, look, folks, never forget the fact that we are all just potential content, that anything you put out there, even just you, your content.
Marc:At some point, things have got to level off.
Marc:There's just hundreds of content providers, people rolling their dice, throwing their hat into the content providing ring, hoping somebody will come and feed on their content.
Marc:just remember you will not be judged by your work you will not be judged but your legacy will be the amount of content that you leave the world not whether or not it's good not whether or not it means anything but that is your legacy how much content did he provide the great content machine content
Marc:is eternal.
Marc:Digitized content will never go away.
Marc:You will be judged by your content forever.
Marc:An eternity.
Marc:Nothing you can do about it.
Marc:Nothing you can do.
Marc:Once you dump it, once it becomes ones and zeros, that's it.
Marc:It's eternal.
Marc:Hey, I don't want that out there.
Marc:Sorry, there's no track in that thing now.
Marc:It is swimming through the content ocean.
Marc:Being picked up by this and that.
Marc:Fishes, processed, digested, spit out.
Marc:Oh, there's a piece of it and some other thing.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know how that happened.
Marc:Some little content catalyst, some little aggravated man at the keyboard.
Marc:I'm just going to take part of that content and mash it into this other thing and then put it out as a whole thing.
Marc:And I'm going to frame it the way I want it.
Marc:I'm going to take that guy's content, that guy's legacy, and just mash it up into some other bullshit and recontextualize it and put it out as my content, my statement on his content.
Marc:It's like fucking cancer.
Marc:The malignancy of content legacy.
Marc:You got no control over it, man.
Marc:You will be mashed up, framed, dissected, cut up, repackaged for someone else's needs.
Marc:That is the destiny of content.
Marc:That is the destiny of your legacy.
Marc:just to be part of something else.
Marc:Cut up, reframed, annihilated, and diminished.
Marc:Happy Monday!
Marc:Man.
Marc:But you're enjoying my content, and I'm thankful for that.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Content will be provided.
Marc:Let's talk to Laura Dern.
Marc:I have this fascination with the people that grew up in this city, but also in show business when you did.
Marc:I can't imagine what it was like to be a kid around these people.
Guest:Dude, it was crazy.
Marc:I mean, your dad's fucking Bruce Dern.
Marc:Seriously, do you know that?
Guest:I'm just starting to realize it and get over it.
Yeah.
Marc:He's one of the great kind of like, you know, hippie oddballs in a way, right?
Guest:Yeah, he's so awesome.
Marc:Did you spend time with him when you were a kid though?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I mean, I definitely was raised by my mom and my grandma, but I spent a lot of time with him as I got older.
Guest:I think he kind of, as you could imagine, probably didn't really know what to do with a small person.
Guest:Is that true?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't see how any of those guys did.
Marc:Like all those, those stars of that time.
Marc:I mean, I couldn't imagine any of them as parents.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:But when you were a kid, I don't mean, I don't know what your mom, Diane Ladd was.
Marc:Did she like say like enough with these men?
Marc:I'm taking the kid.
Guest:I mean, basically, I think she realized that she might just be better off kind of trying to figure out how to do it with her mom and, you know, getting our own pad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And letting him, you know, have his life as he needed it at the time.
Guest:You know, it's so weird because they divorced when I was two.
Guest:So I don't even know what their life looked like.
Marc:But you don't feel like it wasn't like, you know, you said that in a very sort of giving way.
Marc:Like, she just let him have his wife.
Marc:There was no like, get the fuck out of my house.
Marc:You and your friends.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:My mom is Diane Ladd.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So anyone who knows her knows get the fuck out was definitely part of the conversation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because even if the conversation of child support came up 10 years later, I heard the F word a lot in my house.
Guest:So she was definitely vocal, I'm sure, about what she wasn't getting then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But what's amazing now that, you know, I'm a mom and a grown up and going through divorce is I hear her sort of in retrospect.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Considering that, you know, when you think about it, he was a kid.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's a very narcissistic environment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Expecting something from someone who doesn't really need to give it at that time in their life is...
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know, as program would say, it's it's, you know, trying to buy a loaf of bread at the liquor store.
Guest:And I think that was sort of what she got at some point for herself.
Guest:And now she's settled in and they're dear friends.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And hang out all the time with my kids when we have, you know, so their grandparents, their grandparents and Diane.
Guest:And now I get to see why they would have fallen in love and were a couple because they're
Guest:hysterical together right and they adore each other's talent and they love talking about movies really and they worked with the same tribe of people right so there's a real common language that you know i'm sad they didn't get to explore more in that it's super cool but for for the way they do it it's kind of great too that they're still family
Marc:Well, isn't it amazing how time just pounds things out?
Marc:It does.
Marc:Yeah, that eventually, unless you're really committed to spite, eventually things just fade and you get soft and it's a good thing.
Guest:You know, if I could turn our interview into a PSA and say right now for people who are going through the challenge of divorce, I would say, guys, you know what?
Guest:Just chill out and know...
Guest:that there is a silver lining here.
Guest:And in like 35 years, you guys will really get along and everybody will have fun together.
Guest:Why are you stressing out when your children have children and have already spent thousands of dollars in therapy going through their multiple damaged marriages and raging at you for what you did to them?
Guest:You're going to have a really good time with your ex at a birthday party somewhere.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just wait it out.
Marc:Wait it out.
Guest:30 years.
Guest:Big deal.
Guest:Give yourself a break.
Guest:I know.
Guest:There's love.
Guest:It always circles back to love.
Marc:But I think it's interesting to me that you can see that whatever the love they had initially was genuine because of the way they interact now.
Marc:I mean, that's kind of beautiful.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It really is.
Marc:Why don't you make that movie?
Guest:I want them to make that movie.
Guest:That would be really good.
Marc:It would be beautiful, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know how you would do the... I mean, you wouldn't have to do the younger part.
Marc:You just have to do now.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Make a documentary.
Guest:I do love that.
Guest:I did a little short about them working together.
Guest:They worked together some years ago.
Guest:And my godmother, who was Shelley Winters, was in it, too.
Guest:So the three of them worked together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um on a movie for showtime and it was super funny and fun and a group of friends and i made a little like behind the scenes which was radical but they but it was it was still new because that was 15 years ago maybe now yeah i mean she's been dead for a while yeah so now it would be very different yeah i think there's a real closeness yeah
Marc:But let's talk about when you started acting, because you're phenomenal, and you've burned yourself into my brain in a peculiar way.
Guest:That was my goal, really.
Marc:To burn yourself into everyone's brain.
Guest:Well, yours, at least.
Guest:You've burned yourself into mine.
Guest:By the way, do people talk about the garage?
Marc:At times, they do, yeah.
Guest:It's insane.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'm hanging on to a lot of dreams in terms of reading a lot of these books.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:But I like it.
Marc:It's my whole life in here.
Guest:The images, the posters.
Guest:This is the spot.
Marc:This is new.
Marc:Look at this.
Marc:Signed to Iggy Pop record.
Marc:He was sitting right there, shirtless, where you were.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I'm going to follow suit in the next 10 minutes.
Marc:Wait a minute.
Marc:I'm not prepared.
Marc:I could barely keep it together with his boobs out.
Guest:I guess that's what people do in the garage.
Marc:I should try this out.
Marc:You know, Iggy took a shirt off.
Marc:I don't know what you're going to do.
Guest:Hey, if you want to be a cool artist.
Marc:But you started acting when you were like, what, 10?
Guest:11 was my first professional movie, meaning not an extra on my parents' film or something.
Guest:And I started studying at 9, but I would say when I was 11 and got that first job, I became a serious actor.
Guest:I was very committed.
Guest:I was very committed to studying.
Guest:That was a huge influence, I think, because of my parents' commitment to studying.
Marc:Who did they both study with?
Guest:Predominantly at the Actors Studio.
Marc:And who was there at that time?
Guest:Lee Strasberg was their teacher.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and they...
Guest:You know, and Lee taught Shelley and Lee taught Robert De Niro and a lot of people who I was around as a kid.
Marc:Pacino, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, my God, such amazing actors.
Marc:Were you around De Niro as a kid?
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:They did.
Guest:I mean, Dad did a movie with him.
Guest:Shelley did a couple movies with him.
Guest:Mom did.
Guest:And he starred in a movie that Shelley directed on Off-Broadway.
Guest:So, you know, I was around this tribe of brilliant actors who were very committed to continuing to study while being...
Guest:very revered for their work.
Guest:You never stopped.
Guest:And so that was, I think, something that was very ingrained in me.
Marc:I don't understand that.
Marc:I don't know that I'm an okay actor, but I never really studied acting.
Marc:What is the continuation of that process?
Marc:It's not something you can learn and go like, all right, I've got my craft in place.
Marc:Is there an insecurity to it where you think you have to keep going back to Daddy Strasburg or how does that work?
Guest:I am sure for everybody it's different.
Guest:I know I've worked with actors who say they've never studied and they're brilliant at their work.
Marc:Does that bother you?
Guest:And I hate them for it.
Guest:But, you know, and I've worked with English actors who...
Guest:Classically trained.
Guest:Did a level of training that I've never done.
Guest:But I was interested in it.
Guest:I liked it.
Guest:I think that's the area of my life where being a perpetual student is interesting to me because I'm not a college grad.
Guest:And so...
Guest:I put it into the craft of acting and movies and studying film.
Guest:And I went to RADA for two summers because I wanted to be classically trained, even though it was two summers at the Royal Academy.
Guest:But I was interested in Shakespeare.
Guest:I was interested in everything as a teenager.
Marc:I mean, as a 10-year-old, were you studying the method?
Marc:I mean, how much sense memory do you really have?
Marc:No.
Guest:yeah exactly i mean i remember being on a plane flying to reno with my dad yeah when i was 16 17 and i was 16 i was going to do a movie called smooth talk and i was describing the film to my dad and i was like you know this is my first lead and it's a very emotional role yeah i said well you can't i mean you can't be a great actor until you have
Guest:have some fucking memories.
Guest:I mean, you can't even like, what do you, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like, you can't, how do you know what to do?
Guest:And, and sort of befuddled, like he didn't even know what I was going to do or how I was going to have sort of sense memory or emotional recall or whatever.
Guest:And I was devastated.
Guest:Thank God I was savvy enough, far savvier than I am now to go, are you kidding?
Guest:With a dad like you, I could have been doing this at nine.
Marc:But also you're playing a 16 year old.
Marc:It's not like you were playing a 50 year old.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Make up for some weird space in your memory that wasn't there.
Guest:And I would just say that for me, continually studying is about understanding each character differently.
Guest:It's not trying to capture necessarily what the craft is.
Marc:You go in when you have a challenge and you have a teacher that you're like, all right, I got to do this.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Where do I start?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it's the same teacher since I was 18 named Sandra Seacat, who's amazing and totally my mentor.
Marc:Is she like one of these people that has a small cult of people?
Guest:Yeah, she definitely has a cult.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We're a cult.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How many strong are you?
Guest:We're pretty, it's and growing.
Guest:I think there are a number of us and great actors that she's worked with for many years.
Guest:Jessica Lange, she's worked with for many, many years.
Guest:Have you worked with her?
Guest:I've never worked with Jessica, no.
Guest:She's amazing.
Guest:She's worked with so many people.
Marc:And what is her... I'm sort of fascinated because I'm going to be an actor now.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:You are an actor.
Guest:I am.
Guest:You're going to continue acting even more.
Marc:Yeah, I'm just trying to perfect the role of me and move that around.
Guest:I mean, hello.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:That's all you got to do, right?
Guest:Well, and that's kind of what's awesome about working with her because it is sort of perfecting the role of us so that we can have... In my case, I love playing people that are hard to find empathy for.
Guest:That's really interesting to me.
Marc:That's an intentional choice?
Marc:That's something you look for?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think it's what turns me on kind of when I read it.
Guest:I mean, if I struggle with understanding the person or having real compassion for their choices,
Guest:It makes me want to get in there and figure it out.
Guest:And so then I feel like I have to go to the deepest places in myself to just sort of figure out, even if it's intuitive, what is it and what are the boundaries and how far do you push it?
Guest:And I like...
Guest:I mean, I love documentary film and I love, as I'm sure we share, particularly in the 70s, films and filmmakers that really push the envelope by having very complicated protagonists that are deeply flawed being the stars of film.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No happy endings.
Guest:And that was a huge influence on why I wanted to be in movies.
Guest:And so I feel like if film can be a service in any way to any of us, it certainly is for me.
Guest:It's when I'm sitting there, as you expressed in your Noah Baumbach interview about Greenberg, and something's uncomfortable because it feels a little too close.
Guest:And maybe we ask a question or two.
Guest:And that's awesome.
Marc:And also the idea that, you know, empathy is a broad and open hearted thing that that in order to to to connect with some a character who's horrible to find the humanity in the horrible is the best because, you know, monsters are lovable.
Marc:And come on, we've dated them.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And, you know, there's nothing more satisfying than somebody coming up and saying, oh, my God, when I saw you, I just hated her.
Guest:And then by the end, or, you know, particularly on the show I do, you know, people really having a hard time with a character that they grow to love or in the course of a two-hour movie.
Marc:Being enlightened?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I love that thing, and I'm mad.
Marc:And, like, you better find a home for it so I can figure out what the fuck happened.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I would, you know, because I'm engaged in the story.
Marc:But I think that character, for any of us who are insecure or searching or self-involved or confused about, you know, don't know the difference between, you know, narcissism and selflessness.
Marc:Literally don't.
Marc:I cannot figure out why they're doing something and what it serves.
Marc:I mean, I identify with the character immediately because I'm a broken person.
Marc:So it wasn't hard for me to empathize, but I did get to that point where it's like, oh my God, she's fucking irritating.
Guest:Yes, I'm so happy.
Marc:But I loved her.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:I love her so much.
Guest:I mean, I love her beyond compare.
Marc:And your mother was genius.
Marc:Wasn't she incredible?
Marc:I mean, like, I have never seen her act like that.
Marc:I know.
Marc:It was like the best.
Marc:It was the best.
Guest:She was incredible.
Guest:And I have to say, I mean, you know, regardless of how great an actor she is, to be a mother and to be a very effusive mother.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And to be that restrained with your own daughter in the performance is also incredible.
Guest:Because it's just not a moment that you feel her giving back until really the very end.
Guest:And I don't see it.
Guest:It's only for the audience.
Guest:You know, she has like one private moment of pride of her daughter and Amy's not anywhere around.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's perfect.
Marc:And in working like that, how deep does she go?
Marc:I mean, when you guys are off or when they call cut, do you relax or does she stay in character?
Marc:I mean, what mode of acting does she come from?
Marc:Beautiful.
Guest:It's so funny, this thing, too, about method acting.
Guest:Like, you know, my dad just did a film that's incredible that I can't wait for you to see called Nebraska, which will come out this fall.
Guest:That's written, directed by Alexander Payne.
Guest:And my dad is so amazing in this movie.
Guest:I'm so excited for him.
Marc:Well, he's the guy that sort of builds characters that you like to play in a way.
Guest:Yeah, oh, completely.
Guest:And so watching him work, having worked the last couple of years with my mom, working with friends who are, you know, labeled very method like Sean Penn and others, Philip Seymour Hoffman, anybody, you know, they call cut and we're just like, anyway, yeah, what did you eat last?
Guest:God, oh my God, that Indian food was so hot.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, so, you know, if I can only speak to my own experience, but if I'm doing something...
Guest:that's deeply emotional, you know, just for my own focus, I may have to stay very concentrated in the emotion of that, you know, of that storytelling or whatever it is.
Guest:And that means within those hours that we're filming.
Guest:But I don't think it's sustainable to be a character through the course of a movie.
Guest:It would burn me out.
Guest:I mean, I need a break even from the character to kind of come back and be inside her.
Guest:But at the same time,
Guest:You know, if you're on an emotional roller coaster, which I've been on a couple of times with characters, I think it is hard to separate yourself, even if you think you're doing it.
Guest:Yeah, that's the other thing.
Guest:So I think there's unconscious method.
Marc:Yeah, I think that sometimes, yeah, I think that the role that Pacino played in Scarface, he couldn't shake for years.
Marc:Because I saw him on stage doing Mammoth's American Buffalo, like a couple years later, and I swear I detected a Cuban accent.
Marc:Like, I still don't know.
Marc:I don't think he had purged it completely.
Marc:That when he yelled, it was Tony Montana, even though he had not... I don't know how you erase that after a certain point.
Marc:But what do you think that... I read something about... Who was it?
Marc:I think it was Vim Vendor saying it about actors saying that when you talk to them, a lot of times they seem flat only because their vulnerability... They need to protect...
Marc:their emotions because that is the heart of their craft.
Marc:So they're not going to give that out necessarily just in conversation.
Guest:All I can say is I'm hopeful that's true.
Guest:It sounds like it is for his experience.
Guest:But if you interviewed anyone I've ever dated, they probably wouldn't describe me as flat.
Marc:No, I'm not describing you as that.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I mean, that's a put down to me.
Guest:I mean, I'd like to keep it all in is what I'm saying.
Marc:Well, that's your particular genius is that it's all out all the time and I'm uncomfortable.
Guest:I mean, it's probably all out.
Marc:As soon as you get on screen, I'm like, oh man, now what's going to happen?
Guest:There's a lot going on.
Guest:But I do think in my life I like to...
Guest:try to live the opposite.
Guest:I don't, but I mean, I'm certainly attempting it far more than what I like to play on screen.
Marc:Well, so do you think that these characters that you're attracted to are some reflection of your own feelings about yourself or your own insecurity about being accepted or being empathized for and...
Guest:Oh, there's all of it, for sure.
Guest:Although I am not, by nature, and I think having been raised by big personalities, I really liked to keep the peace.
Guest:I really liked to find peace.
Guest:I was scared by big emotion growing up, which is odd.
Guest:And yet it's comfortable to me to be around big personalities.
Guest:So in a way, sometimes I think I play characters that I'm trying to understand better.
Guest:because I've loved them, even if they're not a reflection of me.
Guest:So parts of them are myself and parts of them are people I've loved in family and that I've acquired in life because I want to have less judgment and better understanding because we are all in this mess together and we do have a lot of anger.
Guest:And that was a big thing for me in terms of Enlightened was really trying to understand...
Guest:Rage.
Guest:Can rage become a gift?
Guest:How can you, if harnessed for a cause, can it achieve something?
Guest:Or is it just toxic?
Marc:Well, if you were to ask my ex-wife...
Marc:She would say, no, rage is not a gift of any kind.
Marc:And I left depleted for a reason.
Marc:But if you were to ask the people that listen to me on lefty political talk radio, they would say, well, rage is, you know, it was important.
Marc:But I've talked about that a lot in the sense that.
Marc:to differentiate, to decide who you want to be as a person.
Marc:Okay, so you're angry about things and you think they're righteous things, but yet you don't address the existential anger that you're experiencing or the familial sort of family of origin stuff that has been toxic in your life.
Marc:You just keep going on raging about things thinking it's righteous.
Marc:At some point, you have to deal with the core stuff to find the sadness or the loss or whatever the hell is there, right?
Marc:Totally.
Marc:And did you have to do that with that character or in your own life?
Guest:Certainly with the character and and and therefore to try to understand it for myself.
Guest:I mean, that's the complicated thing about Amy is she, you know, she does things.
Guest:She takes horrible routes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:to achieve her goals, and yet she affects change.
Guest:By the end of these two seasons, her mother is a different person.
Guest:Her ex-husband is a different person.
Guest:They're also the same, but they've been inspired by her in their own way.
Guest:And this massive corporation may never change, so it may be gone.
Guest:And that's also partly her impact.
Guest:So it's pretty fascinating to see how... But does she change?
Marc:Because is somebody that is sort of narcissistic going to... Is it just going to feed that...
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, that's why I think Mike and I both dreamt of one more season, because I think in a way we saw the the trilogy from the beginning of he beautifully saw.
Guest:How does someone fall apart and then come back together?
Guest:That was really interesting to him.
Marc:It's a little vague why she was in treatment in the first place, other than she got angry.
Guest:Yeah, she has a rage issue.
Guest:Do you have that?
Guest:No.
Marc:You've never felt the warmth of hate in your heart?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I've lost it, sure, but I'm not someone who is a rager or can't control my anger or road rage.
Guest:But you grew up with a little there?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I've grown up around a lot of it and I've experienced a lot of it in the people I've loved.
Marc:And it's horrible.
Marc:It's horrible.
Guest:And we all get I mean, in love, we all get super triggered.
Guest:And it's, you know, if somebody else is reactive, it's hard not to get reactive back and to really detach.
Guest:And oh, my God, that's when you're a kid.
Marc:And you go through that.
Marc:Once you stop crying and once you get past the horrendous boundary list, you know, assault of someone else's emotional shrapnel flying around all the time, you sort of shut down and you kind of realize like, well, I guess I'm going to have to take care of me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you kind of get insulated.
Marc:And then like, I don't know, that was my experience.
Marc:I mean, you try to control your immediate environment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the thing.
Guest:If nobody's there letting you know that it's not your job.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That stuff's going to come up at some point.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So it's like a parent has to sort of take that bag from you or you're holding the bag till you become a grown up and it all starts all over.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's such a mess.
Marc:And you run around collecting, you know, furious people.
Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which is interesting.
Marc:And you watch them spin around and go, I'm trying to help you.
Guest:I mean, listen, we do it as a country.
Guest:So as Americans, since we're doing it in our in our citizen life, why wouldn't we do it in our personal life?
Guest:If we go, I know we'll get a guy.
Guest:who bases everything on fear and is going to build a machine so nobody's going to ever get to us.
Guest:We'll just bomb them first.
Guest:And we're going to protect ourselves with our machine.
Guest:I mean, you know, we're either going to live by fear in every area or we're going to somehow completely change it to our core.
Guest:And in answer to the question about Amy, I mean, I think she's someone who...
Guest:Wants to change it to the core.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, only grows incrementally.
Guest:But she, you know, at the end, she definitely makes false moves, but contains herself in such elegant ways comparatively to the person we started with.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And.
Guest:You know, the very last image of our second season, you know, she sees herself on the cover of the L.A.
Guest:Times.
Guest:And I like she doesn't even pick up the paper.
Guest:She's achieved her goal, which is using her voice.
Guest:And so you start to wonder, like, was she a narcissist?
Guest:Was she an egomaniac?
Guest:Or was she...
Guest:egocentric enough to believe she could change the world and actually tried to do it but didn't try to do it to become a star which is unusual in the world so it's she's complicated right she's all things but there's also that dynamic of the you know like her her mother was you know emotionally detached so that there's a rage that just needs to be satisfied and
Guest:Totally.
Marc:So like there's also that feeling of like, it's out.
Marc:I'm good.
Marc:Are you OK?
Marc:Why are you crying?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:So like that feeling of like not picking up the paper was whatever she was doing might have been sated before that.
Marc:Like it was done.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:So let's go back and talk about when you really realized that this was where you were going to go with how you were going to run your career or who you were going to seek out to play when you started making actual choices as opposed to just taking movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's funny, like for if I may be so brazen and arrogant as to assume I'm part of your tribe.
Guest:Me being such a huge fan of yours, but I, you know, admire your taste.
Guest:And so, yeah, the people you want to interview, the movies you comment on that you love.
Guest:I mean, we are the same generation and we happen to love the same things and what I've heard and learned about you.
Marc:We're the last generation of the crashing 60s.
Guest:That's us.
Guest:So exactly.
Guest:So for us and those of us who belong to that tribe, I mean, it wasn't really a choice.
Guest:It was what I knew.
Guest:Like I grew up and my parents when I was at, you know, for me becoming an actor formative years and that I was making a decision to become an actor between probably seven and 12.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In those five years, the directors, my parents were with the people I was around were, you know, um,
Marc:Raffleson?
Guest:Hal Ashby, Bob Raffleson, Altman, Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese.
Marc:Hopper?
Guest:And Hopper was there, and Harry Dean was there, and Jack Nicholson was there.
Guest:And you were how old?
Guest:You were just hanging around?
Guest:Seven to 12, yeah.
Guest:That's crazy!
Guest:And Roger Corman, of course.
Marc:So...
Marc:You know, in a way... But wait, set the stage.
Marc:What was it like?
Marc:Were we in Laurel Canyon?
Marc:Was it a party?
Marc:Were there couches, beanbags?
Guest:Yeah, we were in Idyllwild.
Guest:We were in Santa Monica.
Guest:We were in Malibu.
Guest:We were in Valencia.
Marc:Wherever the money came from?
Guest:Yeah, we were wherever the location was or we were hanging out.
Guest:And, you know, and I was watching major collaboration with...
Guest:Big hearts, no raging, lots of kindness on set, real what do you think, whether you're a grip, a gaffer, an actor, craft service, my DP, the director formula that I grew up around was what?
Guest:We're all making this thing and whoa, this is so awesome and we're here and nobody's really making money, but we're having a blast and this is the vision.
Guest:And what do you think and what do you think?
Marc:What was that?
Marc:Well, now I'm spacing the movie where your dad played the vet that comes back.
Marc:Coming home.
Marc:Coming home.
Marc:Hal Ashby.
Marc:So yeah, right.
Marc:So that was the Hal Ashby movie.
Marc:So you were on that set.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Marc:I mean, it was very little.
Marc:What are some of the memories of watching any of these guys where you were like, holy shit.
Marc:I know it's hard to focus on that specifically, but there are certain moments in your life that you probably remember.
Guest:I remember very vividly Martin Scorsese directing my mom and Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.
Guest:And they had a brilliant and beautiful scene.
Guest:Two scenes that I remember vividly that I was there for.
Guest:One is in a bathroom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where my mom Ellen's crying and my mom follows her in the toilet to talk about being single moms together And my mom talks about how her daughter has to have a bunch of dental work and she can't pay for the you know dentist and and
Guest:halfway through the scene i'm looking at the pages i'm holding i mean i've just started reading people and they're not saying the stuff that's on the page right and scorsese's telling them you know talk about this talk about your necklace touch your hair throwing ideas out and they keep rolling and they're they and then suddenly it's two women talking about their lives and the men they've lost and are they enough to raise a kid on their own and i just i literally remember starting to cry and
Guest:Because I was so moved by the honesty of these two women.
Guest:And it was all happening in the moment.
Guest:And he was, you know, he was so much more than a filmmaker.
Guest:He was this guide on the journey to, you know, to themselves in a way.
Guest:And I was so moved by that.
Guest:Equally, same summer, my dad was doing a Hitchcock film family plot, which was.
Marc:Late Hitchcock.
Marc:Late Hitchcock.
Marc:Almost the last one, right?
Guest:Yeah, and very regimented.
Guest:He was a taxi driver or something?
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:Ah, I remember.
Guest:Karen Black and Barbara Harris.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and they were all around, and it was like being on a comedy set.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He loved being entertained.
Guest:He loved it funny.
Marc:Who, Hitchcock?
Marc:Hitchcock.
Guest:He had them make a little mini director's chair and put it next to him for me to sit in.
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's like insane.
Guest:How did I get this life?
Guest:But, of course, jump forward to 15, 16 and the auditions I didn't get.
Guest:I mean, there are paths that found me and directors that found me.
Guest:This isn't just I came up with this by choice.
Guest:But I auditioned for a Bogdanovich movie and a Brat Pack movie.
Guest:And I got the Bogdanovich movie.
Guest:Then I started to get to make choices.
Marc:That was Little Foxes?
Guest:No, that was Mask.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Oh, yeah, he directed that.
Marc:Mask, yeah.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And you were the girl.
Marc:Blind girl, yeah.
Guest:That was heavy, emotional.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's pretty beautiful.
Guest:And he was part of that tribe by chance.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And then the next year, I mean, Smooth Talk came at a time that I was, it was the first time I was offered a sort of formulaic teen movie that probably would have brought me lots of success and Blue Velvet.
Guest:And I had an agent read Blue Velvet and be like, oh my God, you can't do this movie.
Guest:This is so offensive.
Right.
Guest:So suddenly now I'm an almost 17-year-old trying to decide what kind of movies do I want to make.
Guest:And it wasn't necessarily brave or not.
Guest:It was kind of what I knew.
Guest:I met David Lynch.
Guest:He seemed like the kind of people I grew up around.
Marc:Dennis was in it.
Guest:Dennis was in it.
Guest:I'd just seen Elephant Man, which was one of my favorite movies of all time.
Guest:I saw Racerhead, which I was just obsessed with.
Yeah.
Guest:It was my orientation.
Guest:I felt like I'd found my people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You grew up in this sort of high-minded, risky, kind of art movie world of the 70s.
Marc:On some level, that explosion that your parents were involved in that you grew up in was just the most defining era of American movies.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And let's be clear, there was another parent in the house.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And Paul Thomas Anderson is the only person I've talked to about this because he also lived in the Valley at the same time and at the same school for a couple of years.
Guest:There was my mother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was my father.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Both working actors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who was my babysitter?
Guest:Who?
Guest:Z Channel.
Yeah.
Guest:and there weren't restrictions buddy yeah so i was 11 and i was watching clockwork orange right or luna yeah and i was like mom it was so heavy she's in love with her son and she's an opera singer and jill clayberg and unmarried woman you know sobbing on this is what it's like to be a woman and you were what 15 14 12 11 i saw clockwork orange when i was 11 and paul thomas anderson related to this yeah
Guest:You know, there were a couple of cable networks that we all and Maya Rudolph, his wife, that we all kind of growing up in L.A.
Guest:grew up on and saw everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we were learning about, God help us, you know, relationship and what the world looked like and where you stretch boundaries and that people are complicated.
Guest:Dog Day Afternoon.
Guest:I mean, to me, that was one of the sweetest men I'd ever seen on screen.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I loved him.
Guest:I wanted him in my family, you know, and so I grew up knowing that you don't judge people in film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I guess long for that in life.
Guest:So I wanted to kind of keep doing that.
Marc:Isn't it amazing when you watch that movie and you watch sort of what Pacino became and you're like, is that guy still in there?
Marc:And then he does Jack Kevorkian and you're like, it is kind of in there.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Oh my God, he's amazing in that.
Marc:It was so relieving to see him play Jack Kevorkian with all that weird vulnerability.
Marc:It blows me away, man.
Guest:Blows me away.
Marc:All right, so you choose to do Blue Velvet.
Marc:Now, could you wrap your brain, even watching Bergman and everything else on the Z Channel, whatever you were watching, I mean, could you wrap your brain around that script?
Marc:I mean, in terms of what it really looked like?
Guest:Yes, in that somehow I think I understood him in terms of light versus dark, Sandy, my character versus Dorothy, the overtness of sort of the Wizard of Oz aspect of David, the good witch and the bad witch.
Guest:And
Guest:and the witness to all of it, the boy on the journey, which in the case of me kind of turned to me in more recent movies maybe.
Guest:So whether it's a boy or a girl as the lead, someone's on a journey and they're exposed to extreme opposites.
Guest:Did he explain it to you like that?
Guest:No, he never said a word to me.
Guest:He's never said a word to me still.
Guest:People are like, what's Inland Empire about?
Guest:Don't ask me.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I loved every minute of it and he taught me so much about acting, but he's never told me a word about it.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Never.
Marc:And there was no explanation, but you had conversations.
Guest:Not really.
Guest:We talk about coffee and... But it's okay.
Marc:So you're 17 and you're choosing to go into the Lynchian universe as opposed to like, you know, what are you guys doing?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:And he definitely talked to me about...
Guest:What he wanted from me as Sandy.
Guest:And it was innocent and pure.
Guest:And, you know, the beauty of David, which is also what I think makes his movies so funny.
Guest:And I think what makes Mike White so funny and a lot of other people we love as writers and as filmmakers is the part that is poetry is interesting.
Guest:is god to them and even though we're laughing it means everything to them and it's fiercely protected just like what's dark is deeply dark and that's where the humor is it's that the world's insane because we're trying to like handle life being this extreme and
Guest:And that is so funny.
Guest:And David, I think, becomes so funny because there's an absurdity to his movies.
Guest:But in fact, that's what, you know, growing up in the Northwest obviously felt like it was white picket fences and there was murders down the street.
Guest:I mean, something's crazy in this country and he's just reflecting it.
Guest:And we go, God, his movies are so weird.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Because CNN looks just like that.
Marc:Except not as articulate.
Marc:Yeah, not quite as pretty.
Marc:The framing's not as good.
Guest:But I didn't understand at 17 the Frank Booth part of that movie.
Guest:I think I just had the feeling of it, but I don't really get it.
Marc:I don't think any of us did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that when that happened, I mean, if you were 17 when you did it, I was 19 or 18 when I saw it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So when we went to see that, I think it was maybe my last year of high school.
Marc:When did it come out?
Marc:81 or something?
Guest:It came out in 85.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:85, 86.
Marc:Really?
Marc:So I was already like, well, I was in college, but like that Frank Booth character, that was, I don't think anybody, it just represented some sort of pure human darkness that was vague and incredibly defined at the same time.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:No, you know.
Guest:I remember doing the last scene of the movie and kind of not knowing much about it.
Guest:And interestingly, even though David doesn't say much about sort of theme of the film or whatever, I would hang out and visit certain scenes when I wasn't working.
Guest:But the Frank Dorothy world, I never came to set and he never let me come.
Marc:Because you were too young?
Yeah.
Guest:Was it protective?
Guest:No, I think it was like keeping Sandy out of it.
Guest:Like keeping the goodness away from the darkness or something.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because your goodness was like when your goodness sort of got angry and desperate.
Marc:You know, there was something, not grotesque, but something verging on a possible darkness there too.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:But I remember when we shot that scene and he said, you're going to go into the set.
Guest:We won't rehearse.
Guest:Just walk into the...
Guest:to dorothy's apartment and whatever you see just respond to it however you would respond to it and i remember walking in oh my god when she was like bleeding wasn't she yes and i have this little pink dress on i remember looking down at my dress and it had these little flowers and i was walking with sandals and at my sandals i was stepping on brain oh yeah and i looked down i thought is that what is that is that
Guest:dog shit is that no that's a body part oh that's blood wait oh my god i think that's real brain is that and i still don't know what he used but let me tell you something yeah i don't think it was a prosthetic people it's some kind of brain it was some kind of brain yeah oh my god i'm so glad that's the only time i was ever in that apartment how we've continued to make movies and then you embraced right or did what i can't remember how this scene went
Marc:I can't either.
Guest:I haven't seen it in so many years.
Guest:We just talked about that, actually.
Guest:We were saying we should see it again.
Guest:And Wild at Heart.
Guest:I mean, I haven't seen those movies in so long.
Marc:Wild at Heart's a trippy movie, too.
Guest:It's so trippy.
Guest:I love that movie.
Marc:I haven't seen it in a long time, either.
Marc:So you just rode that out, like, you know, Lynch called you and said, you're right for this, do this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's a road movie.
Marc:Yeah, it's a road movie.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And it's, you know, in a lot of ways, an amazing opportunity to have a director who knows you and feels in his mind he knows you well enough to constantly ask you to play very different people.
Guest:And that's the beauty of my great fortune with David is he believes I can play anything instead of going, you did this for me, keep doing this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So Lula was this amazing departure from the kinds of roles I was being asked to do.
Guest:And I was Sandy in Blue Velvet.
Guest:I was a blind girl in Mask.
Guest:I mean, even though I had done this film Smooth Talk, which is a small Indian, a very kind of sexualized character in a way.
Guest:I wasn't really known for that.
Guest:And Lula was kind of a sex siren of sorts.
Guest:And so it was just amazing for me.
Marc:Amazing for me.
Marc:Was it comfortable or how did you enter that?
Marc:I mean, did you... Very comfortable.
Marc:Had you turned that on before in your life?
Marc:I mean, was that one of those things?
Guest:No, I mean, I was 22, you know, so I was so young.
Guest:And I mean, I...
Guest:I was comfortable in it and exploring it for the movie.
Guest:And so I think it just so happened that at the exact same moment of that movie, I was interested in it in my life, that kind of energy.
Guest:And I couldn't ask for it.
Guest:The power of it?
Guest:Not necessarily the power of it, the sensual experience of knowing your own sexuality.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And feeling what not just the euphoria of love feels like, but, you know, being sexy and finding something else sexy.
Guest:And Nick Cage was so amazing to work with and so crazy brave.
Guest:And that was such an amazing story.
Marc:He was, wasn't he?
Guest:Amazing time in his career where he was constantly doing everything I was inspired to do.
Guest:So he was like the perfect partner for me.
Guest:And Sailor and Lula were like the perfect couple to play together at that time in our lives.
Marc:When you looked at that script, how did that frame out in your mind?
Marc:Were you just sort of like, this is sort of like Candide or some sort of weird journey where you meet all these weird characters along the way?
Marc:Or how did you look at that?
Guest:I mean, just total bliss.
Guest:You know, I feel like David is, yeah, David's, you know, it is like a family member.
Guest:And maybe, you know, in the outside world, someone would say, you know, her dad is like an addict.
Guest:And
Guest:crazy other families don't look like this but you're in it so you don't know what other things are supposed to be look like it's like okay you're gonna you know pick up they're basically the munchkins you're gonna pick them up on the road they have 12 puppies then you guys are gonna have a sex and you're gonna pick up a girl and then you're gonna go here your mother is gonna be there I'm having your mother play your mother she's gonna be riding a broom what
Guest:She's the Wicked Witch.
Guest:Stop asking so many questions.
Guest:Then I was like, what?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So, I mean, you're in it.
Guest:You got to just go.
Guest:And it was definitely my upbringing.
Guest:And now with David or any director, I don't need to ask.
Guest:I'm just happy for the ride.
Marc:Yeah, and when you did, what is it, Rambling Rose?
Marc:So that was one where you had to not only harness your sexuality, but be very aware of how powerful it was and what you could use it for.
Guest:Totally, totally.
Guest:It was a very different thing.
Marc:And you got to work with Duvall.
Marc:Which was amazing.
Marc:I can't even fucking imagine.
Guest:It was amazing.
Marc:He's like the best.
Guest:He's the best.
Guest:He's the best.
Guest:And he was really amazing with me.
Guest:And it was really a complicated relationship.
Guest:You know, he's this very loving sort of archetypal father and husband.
Guest:And yet, you know, he's messing around with a nanny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, and I'm messing around with a 14 year old boy who's, you know, I mean, I don't think the movie could be made now.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it was I remember seeing and just being like, what the fuck?
Marc:I know it's really on top of it.
Marc:I think what made it even more powerful was sort of a period piece, you know, was set what in the 30s or what?
Marc:And it was because then you're all of a sudden dealing with that.
Marc:The the idea that like all this all this complicated sort of darkness and within the family that that that happened, then it's not just cool pictures of things.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And very commonly, a girl as young as 1920 would be given a hysterectomy if she had sex that was premarital sex in the South.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So just the whole concept of a woman's sexuality at that time in this country was kind of amazing to explore.
Guest:But that whole time, I mean, that whole time, I think what I'm still doing now, but...
Guest:It was a huge time for me to start really blurring the lines because I was working with the right people.
Guest:I was with people who wanted her to be a wild, innocent and perhaps manipulative.
Guest:There was no one thing or the other.
Guest:And David really set the tone of that for my career.
Guest:Rambling Rose was a big turning point for that, not only in terms of the writing, Calder Willingham's beautiful novel, which it's based on and he adapted.
Guest:And it's a true story.
Guest:It's his childhood.
Guest:And so Rose was a real person to him that he considered a true innocent.
Guest:So really kind of carrying that story, working with Alexander Payne on Citizen Ruth, same thing.
Guest:They were all saying, you know, this is a boundaryless opportunity.
Guest:So you play this person completely and...
Guest:you know, however you play it, it would be nice if people can be with you on the ride, but we're not seeking empathy.
Guest:And that's a different requirement than a lot of directors.
Marc:A lot of freedom to find, you have a very specific, you know, empowered, you know, female energy that, that, you know, like no one takes the risks you do really in terms of like pushing the emotions to the point where you're like, oh my God, I don't know whether I love her.
Marc:I just can't fucking be in this room anymore.
I can't.
Guest:I mean, at some point, I pray you and I will sit in your garage again, you know, 10, 20 years from now, and I'll say, God, you know, enough of these gals have rubbed off on me, and I really don't care what anybody thinks.
Guest:Because as an actor, I really don't.
Guest:I really, really don't.
Guest:And I just... Nothing makes me happier.
Guest:The only compliment I've ever wished for and longed for is that compliment of...
Guest:You know, I felt all these complicated feelings about her.
Guest:And by the end, I really kind of grew to love her.
Guest:I was sort of rooting for her.
Guest:I couldn't believe it.
Guest:I hated myself for rooting for her, but I did.
Guest:You know, whatever that thing is.
Guest:I mean, one of the biggest challenges as an actor I ever had by such an amazing director...
Guest:Truly one of the great directors of all time, the loveliest human being, such a brave man is Mr. Jay Roach.
Guest:He's so funny.
Guest:He's so all the things we know.
Guest:But emotionally as a director...
Guest:He is inspired and finds the muse for his story in the darkest place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that forces you to really not judge.
Guest:Which film?
Guest:We did recount together for HBO and I had to play Secretary of State Catherine Harris.
Guest:The monster.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I'm very known for my opinions politically.
Sure.
Guest:And had very strong ones about her and that time in history.
Guest:And so many of us did.
Guest:And so I remember, you know, day one on the set for the first time ever on a movie making a joke.
Guest:Like, oh, my God, can you believe her?
Guest:And he just nailed me and was like, whoa, she's my muse.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:Excuse me?
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:We hate what they did, right?
Guest:Look at the laws that were broken.
Guest:Look at people whose voices were stolen from them.
Guest:It's like, no, but she believed she was doing what was right for this country.
Guest:And I was like, whoa.
Guest:And it's what takes you from the attempt at a skit on SNL where you can go as big as possible to create a caricature of sorts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And really find the humanity in a person who was going to protect this country for God's sake.
Marc:Right.
Guest:By making sure the right guy won.
Marc:Literally for God's sake.
Guest:For God's sake.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And if you have to steal some votes, that's what you got to do.
Marc:Because you're doing this for God.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And she believed that.
Marc:And that's what moved him was her commitment to her ideal.
Right.
Guest:And that's a level of narcissism that's fascinating, too.
Marc:The delusion of God commitment?
Guest:In a way, it's like you've got to believe so fiercely that your God is the only God, which I am a believer, and I love every path, and I'm always interested in anything anybody's got to say, and I want to read as many books as possible in every religion because I think it's fascinating.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But wow, growing up as a Catholic, I was like, wait a minute.
Guest:I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church.
Guest:That was hard for me.
Guest:I believe in one religion.
Guest:My mom and I were like, huh?
Guest:Mom was like, no, we don't.
Guest:We don't even a lot of religions.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:This happens to be ours right now.
Guest:But hold on, guys.
Marc:You know, that's how you grew up.
Guest:Well, I was raised Catholic by a very Catholic grandmother, but my mom was a meditator since I was a kid, and we would go to Catholic church.
Guest:I went to Catholic school for several years.
Marc:So that's weird because you were probably in between the first real departure of generations from that.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:The whole tone culturally of the 60s was like, hey, cut loose, man.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:And then you had the staunch kind of like tradition of her, and there you were in the middle of this.
Guest:Yeah, which was super lucky, actually.
Guest:And I think it's part of this acting path, too, because both things are true.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:What do you give your kids religion-wise?
Guest:funnily enough i just said to my son the other day we gotta start going back to church he was like really how old he's 11 but um i love ritual yeah so as a meditator as someone who does yoga as someone who loves the ritual of
Guest:church and saints and prayer good stories candles and and storytelling i i love that for my kids and for myself like i love i loved having that in my childhood and that's the one bummer if you don't have your ritual of sundays is about that or
Guest:But for me, going to church for an hour was rhetoric and non-connection and not groovy.
Guest:But there are a lot of places people go now that's about music and fun and celebration.
Marc:It's funny if you just tweak ritual a little bit.
Marc:I mean, yeah, the Catholic church was non-groovy, but if the priest was wearing something different and the music was a little groovier, people would be like, this is all right.
Guest:If you're at St.
Guest:Monica's in Santa Monica and they're talking about same-sex couples and honoring everybody in the congregation, you're like, whoa, something cool is going on here.
Guest:It's actually about equality.
Guest:So there's that.
Guest:I mean, I have very strong opinions about human rights, one of the human rights being a woman's right to choose.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It becomes very complicated for me to have any opinion the minute anyone's setting rules for an individual.
Guest:And yet, I love spiritual practice and ritual.
Marc:Well, when you say meditation, what do you do?
Marc:Are you like a TM person?
Guest:I am a TM person.
Guest:Did Lynch get you into that?
Guest:He actually wasn't the first person to get me into that.
Guest:But he's inspired me to kind of stay far more regular than I was for years.
Marc:Will you explain to me?
Marc:So it's not, it's just a system.
Marc:It's not a community.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, you know, it is for many people a community and certainly was in the 60s.
Guest:You know, there is a guru to follow in the 60s.
Guest:There always was.
Guest:Is there one now?
Guest:The Maharishi is no longer...
Guest:Right.
Guest:tm is used by corporations it's used by the lakers it's used in the nfl it's used as truly a systematic practice to dive in in terms of a deeper level of focus do i do i need to do it dude you totally do what do you get out of it uh for me yeah
Guest:I have an ability I never had before.
Guest:And when I'm consistent, I can consistently have it.
Guest:And that is I can literally feel all the feelings that I have in the face of someone throwing something at me and actually take that breath they tell you about and detach a little.
Guest:And I know it comes from every day making a commitment for 20 minutes to let go of every other thought in my head where there's a silence and there's a connection to only self.
Guest:And if you have that practice as an actor, as an artist anyway, it's hugely influential on my work because I know how to be in the moment.
Guest:And it takes a few minutes to get all those cobwebs out and just focus on one thing.
Guest:But as an actor, I need that desperately to make everything else go away.
Marc:Is detachment tricky for you?
Guest:Completely.
Guest:Almost impossible.
Guest:Do you do The Secret Club, too?
Guest:What's that?
Guest:You know, Al-Anon or anything like that?
Guest:Oh, The Secret Club?
Guest:Is that what it's called?
Guest:That's what I call it on the air.
Guest:I love The Secret Club.
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:I wouldn't be here without The Secret Club.
Guest:You heard me use my slogan.
Guest:I used a slogan earlier.
Guest:And by the way, that's all part of the same thing, too.
Guest:But TM is, you know, when I hear athletes talk about the practice of meditation, that's a real turn on because they're literally applying it to talk about how their level of focus in the game, their mindfulness in the moment, being in the moment.
Guest:in a very high stress situation is so much better.
Guest:So why wouldn't we all need it?
Guest:We live in high stress all the time.
Marc:What's the alternative to the moment?
Marc:I know if you have sort of like the type of childhood you had, there's a tendency towards wanting to control and sort of try to tell the future.
Marc:So the difference between being in the moment and it's just being in your head, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to tell a story about an actress and I hope she hears it one day and I haven't seen her in years and I hope she won't mind me sharing it, but it's just... You're going to leave her unnamed?
Guest:No, I'll say her name because it's so adorable about you, Winona Ryder, that I'm going to tell it because it's so adorable.
Guest:So I said, you know, I can't live in the moment.
Guest:I'm like between the past and the future.
Guest:I'm thinking about, oh, my God, if only I had made that choice, then that wouldn't have happened.
Guest:And if I had done this, then I bet he wouldn't have gotten so upset because I can control everybody's behavior.
Guest:But in the future, if I make my life look just like that, and I get it just right, and I do everything perfect, then maybe everybody else will fall in place.
Guest:Amy Jellicoe.
Guest:But no awareness that there's a moment happening right now.
Guest:And I shared this with Winona, and we were 18.
Guest:She was like, wow, really?
Guest:That's how you love?
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Yeah, I don't really relate to that or something.
Guest:And then three days later, she calls me up.
Guest:She goes, oh.
Guest:Oh, my God, I've just been diagnosed.
Guest:And I said, what do you mean?
Guest:She goes, I went to a therapist and I have something.
Guest:It's a real disease.
Guest:And I said, what is it called?
Guest:She said, it's called it's called anticipatory nostalgia.
Guest:And I said, what does it mean?
Guest:She goes, well, I don't know how he diagnosed it so quick.
Guest:And I said, what did you say?
Guest:She said, I walked in crying.
Guest:And he said, why are you crying?
Guest:She said, I was laying in bed this morning thinking one day my son will be going off to college and leaving this house.
Guest:And I said, Winona, you're 18.
Guest:You don't have a son.
Guest:And I thought it was so brilliant.
Guest:And I so relate to that disease.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, what if one day a very close friend of mine who said, you know, I was I was thinking I'll pull up the and this is OCD based, too.
Guest:But it also is that disease of like making choices now that might affect the future.
Guest:She was like the rug in the living room wasn't working and it was 2 a.m.
Guest:And I thought, you know what?
Guest:I'm going to pull up the rug.
Guest:And I can't.
Guest:Because this rug is the last rug I would have bought for my daughter if something happens to me.
Guest:And then if I lose the rug, and I thought, whoa, I mean, just all the fear of, you know, again, the future or the mistakes of the past.
Guest:And I was very affected by my grandmother.
Guest:really nostalgic over a lost love to the end of her life.
Guest:And it broke my heart.
Guest:And I thought, you know, I don't want to do that.
Guest:So I call everyone I've ever dated.
Guest:No, to either say, I'll never be with you again.
Marc:But that's interesting, though, how you like hold on, like even investing certain mystical properties to a rug as being as having implications that if you disrupt the order.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I get that all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then I never really put it together in terms of like somebody holding on to a pain or a broken heart.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:It's consistency.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:That it's based in fear and like the pain is familiar.
Marc:And why not stay there?
Yeah.
Guest:And that's what they say about OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder in children.
Guest:It's usually happening during a divorce when there's been a great loss, some kind of trauma.
Guest:Yeah, sure, sure.
Guest:It's some way of, you know, control.
Guest:And that's what's interesting is we all do it differently.
Guest:That's why I say I look forward to learning more and more from my characters because...
Guest:You know, there's a lot to learn from the abandon that one has when they're really not considering the outcome of their actions or what other people think.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:It's awesome.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So to play... You just got to be willing to take the hit if you hurt a couple people.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And, you know, I mean, listen, if you're a narcissist and you don't even clock that, it must be awesome.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I can ask my dad if we were talking.
Marc:But...
Guest:I mean, as I said to a friend the other day, they said, you know, in your work on yourself and all the things you do in your work, you know, what have you gained?
Guest:What have you learned?
Guest:I'm like, I'm really jealous of alcoholics.
Guest:Sort of what I'm feeling this week.
Guest:They do whatever the fuck they want.
Marc:That's awesome.
Marc:Well, you must have, I mean, like, not to be too personal, but I mean, I assume that learning from characters is one thing, but you've certainly made a lot of very distinctive choices in mates over your career.
Marc:Fairly charismatic, kind of erratic people.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I mean, you must have gleaned something.
Marc:I mean, like, what's the range?
Marc:You know, Jeff Goldblum, Billy Bobb.
Marc:Rennie Harlan.
Marc:I mean, you know, I mean, it's all very public.
Guest:You're breaking it down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What have I learned?
Guest:You know, and especially because I'm just coming out of a very long marriage.
Guest:Well, a long marriage in terms of what I've seen.
Guest:Ben Harper.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I would say...
Guest:You know, suddenly what feels like home isn't necessarily comfortable anymore.
Guest:And that's cool.
Guest:It's cool when you start to go, wow, I want to feel different things.
Marc:If home was chaos.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know, or not knowing where you stood or not knowing what anybody was going to feel from day to day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, not even taking into account the characters that raised me, but the mere lifestyle of people who work away and divorced families, just that environment.
Guest:And like, it's grandma, it's a babysitter, it's mom, I'm with dad.
Guest:Just that kind of lifestyle is...
Marc:There's no way to settle.
Guest:I wasn't attracted to consistency.
Guest:People assume that what I was attracted to was extreme drama.
Guest:And maybe that's the case.
Guest:I mean, I love artists and I always will.
Guest:You know, and I'm interested in people who have something to say and they really want to say it.
Guest:That's super cool to me.
Guest:But there are a lot of different ways to do that.
Guest:And a lot of professions out there.
Guest:But I'm just starting to kind of become a grown-up where consistency is intriguing to me.
Marc:Well, you can sit with yourself better.
Marc:I mean, when you're in a completely sort of erratic, emotionally erratic situation where you don't know what's going to happen next, there's always that juice of like, oh, fuck.
Marc:Now we got to...
Marc:You know, like the ability to kind of like just be okay with that frequency that is you.
Marc:It can be boring at first, right?
Guest:Well, yeah, because if you think your job is to manage it, then you have no job.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's like, well, what am I going to do now?
Guest:I got all this free time.
Guest:Shit.
Guest:I mean, how much yoga can a person do?
Guest:Horseback riding?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Taking up at 40?
Guest:I mean, when everybody talks about getting hobbies, I'm like, oh, Jesus, I forgot to do that.
Guest:i have emotional hobbies i know you just got to find the right person to drive you crazy i mean i am the luckiest person alive in that my hobby really is acting it's the hobby i love the most right and i get to call it a job so um you know i'm trying everything because i've got kids so i'm surfing or we're stand up paddling or we're longboarding or you know like i'm like cool let's do this and that's
Guest:And some of them are things I did as a kid, but I don't have an obsession, which I think is good for me, by the way, right now in my life.
Guest:But I'm loving exercise.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:And I never liked that.
Marc:I got to get back into that.
Marc:shit when you like it suddenly and i've never liked it you just gotta cross that yeah threshold yeah suddenly i'm liking it it's like fun you can get obsessed with that and you can get really weirdly thin and yeah and think you look great yeah yeah i'm in that right now is she dying no i'm great oh my god who needs eating this is awesome soul cycle every day no food uh it sounds like it's becoming an obsession so you're focused yeah yeah that's another thing that all your characters seem to have is an obsessive passion
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Sometimes it's huffing paint, which is not my passion, which is probably good.
Marc:You never a drug person?
Guest:Never.
Marc:You lucked out there.
Marc:Something must have turned you off early on.
Guest:It sure did, man.
Guest:I got really lucky.
Guest:And who knew that seeing it would be the turnoff?
Marc:Well, that happens with people whose parents smoke, too.
Marc:I mean, like, it's going to go either way.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What'd you see?
Guest:I mean, I saw people's behavior, which was probably the early detector.
Guest:And not my parents, but other people's behavior around them.
Marc:Hanging out.
Marc:Yeah, sort of like, why is he acting weird?
Guest:Yeah, and the behavior didn't feel comfortable.
Guest:It was like, they're not themselves now.
Guest:That's not so fun.
Guest:So that was weird as a kid.
Guest:But I did a movie when I was 12.
Guest:um called ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains which was directed by lou adler um diane lane who's still one of my best friends i'm lucky to say and so we went off and did this movie in vancouver for about four months probably yeah and our co-stars were a member of the clash two members of the sex pistols ray winstone a now beloved great english actor was a kid then
Guest:and they were the band that we toured with.
Guest:We were a punk band.
Guest:And the Tubes and a lot of bands were in and around it, and a lot of bands, because they were friends with Lou, the Boomtown Rats, the Who, but those guys would come through town to do their show, and then they would hang out.
Guest:So we were around incredible musicians, and also a lot of recreational activity, and...
Guest:And I had an amazing experience, which is someone took me aside at that time and told me that I'd be an idiot to ever do any of it.
Guest:And he was definitely, you know, exploring in his own way and a huge punk star.
Marc:He was in trouble.
Guest:And I don't know if he was in trouble at the time.
Marc:Because that usually comes from a guy who can't stop.
Guest:And who had, more importantly, he'd lost someone.
Guest:Not that recently.
Guest:I mean, very recently.
Guest:So it was his warning and I never forgot it.
Guest:And my mom was an amazing mom in that way.
Guest:She never...
Guest:She addressed it in a judgmental way.
Guest:She was like, look, if this is something you're ever interested in, people can do crazy stuff with chemicals.
Guest:I don't trust what they're doing even with pot.
Guest:People say it's healthy and it's like homegrown, but they lace stuff.
Guest:I don't want you out at a party with kids who are driving.
Guest:Tell me if you're interested.
Guest:I would want to know.
Guest:I'd want you to be in this house if you were going to explore drinking or anything.
Guest:So, you know, if I wanted to have a beer or whatever, I did it in my own house with friends, which some people might judge.
Guest:But guess what?
Guest:I was never that interested.
Guest:I was never in a car with people drunk.
Guest:And my rule was I had to do it at home and we never got loaded.
Guest:That's why my mom was there.
Marc:Who wants to get loaded with your mom?
Guest:And drugs were totally uninteresting to me.
Guest:And I just don't like...
Guest:I guess it's the benefit of my managing crazy.
Guest:I don't like being so out of control that I can't manage myself.
Guest:That scares me a lot.
Marc:Unless you're doing it on purpose, in a role.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Emotionally, it's cool.
Guest:In love.
Guest:You know, in romance and sexuality, I mean, there's lots of ways to explore and feel unabashed in your exploration.
Guest:But to be on a chemical that's altering my brain, I just, you know, and everybody's drugged now.
Guest:It's just what you do.
Guest:But also, like...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I kind of want to know what depression feels like or anxiety.
Guest:That's how I kind of clock where I'm at.
Guest:So when I'm doing better, I can know, oh, this is better.
Guest:It's not the Wellbutrin doing it to me.
Guest:I've made progress.
Guest:Yeah, I get it.
Guest:I get it a lot.
Guest:I'm probably doing very poorly, but I'm doing it with meditation.
Guest:What are you doing at old school?
Guest:I'm going old school.
Marc:I'm going to fight it out.
Marc:I want to be aware of this fight.
Marc:I'm going to plow through this.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:So, how many, okay, before we stop, how many Jurassic Parks are there happening?
Marc:Have you done three?
Guest:I've done one and three.
Guest:There have been three, and there's supposed to be a fourth, which right now I'm not in, and they were doing it, and now, I don't know, I think it's delayed now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What, they're having a hard time, what, with getting money for dinosaurs?
Guest:Yeah, probably, yeah.
Guest:It wasn't a popular movie originally, so they're probably worried if it's ever going to do anything.
Guest:But I was lucky to do it with Stephen, and that was the amazing part.
Guest:And it was a first time for everybody, including ILM.
Guest:I mean, there'd never, never been...
Marc:Yeah, it was pretty amazing for all of us.
Marc:Computer graphics in that way, yeah.
Marc:In the theater, we were like, oh my God!
Marc:It was so crazy.
Marc:Now, he seems like, as a director, compared to some of the other people you talked to, he seems like a manager and very sort of together, and how did that work?
Guest:He's amazing, because he's both things.
Guest:He always laughs, because I did an interview in Rolling Stone when the movie came out, and I compared him to David Lynch and said how similar I thought they were.
Guest:And he was just mind-blown that I had said that.
Guest:But...
Marc:In what way?
Marc:He knows what he wants?
Guest:Well, first of all, is there any film... And everybody's like, whoa, you know, the blockbuster, Steven Spielberg.
Guest:He's like, whoa, wait a minute.
Guest:He's insane.
Guest:He went, I'm going to make a movie about an alien and a kid's friendship.
Guest:I'm going to make a movie about a killer shark.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That makes people lose their minds and become obsessed with getting this fish.
Guest:Whatever it is, in a way, is sort of an insane concept that then became the box office hit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was the indie movie when he was coming up with it.
Sure.
Guest:And Close Encounters is such a masterpiece to me.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I love that movie so much.
Marc:You know what kills me about that is his casting of Francois Truffaut.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:It's so incredible.
Marc:But it's just like I read into it so much that Truffaut was the guy that was overseeing the communication with the alien that was sight and sound, which is the metaphor for cinema.
Marc:The ultimate cinema.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:I'm not crazy, right?
Guest:Not only are you not crazy, but I just want you to know, and I've never shared this, that I got a 8x10 glossy on Hollywood Boulevard where you could go through the files from movies just to find, because there wasn't the internet.
Guest:Yes, I'm old.
Guest:And found a picture of Francois Truffaut for my room because he's my ultimate.
Guest:crush yeah oh i was so in love with him oh my god those are great and he and he was he was saving art and culture and and beauty and and faith yeah and and and and let him actually explore what he wanted to explore the hero being richard dreyfus but one of my favorite images in that movie which
Guest:If you get the, I guess it's the criterion edition of the film in the widescreen where you can see his intent of everything you'd see in the image.
Guest:When Richard Dreyfuss first gets the call that the power is out, and this is Stephen to his core to me.
Guest:You have him in this just off the center of the frame with a phone.
Guest:And he's like, what do you mean?
Guest:Well, do they have it in whatever the next county is?
Guest:No, it's out there.
Guest:Wait, it's going off right now.
Guest:Oh, the lights are going.
Guest:And the lights start going off above them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Terry Gar is in the kitchen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you see her just to the side and she's washing dishes.
Guest:Would you hear?
Guest:And the left corner of the frame is this a little bit too old baby.
Guest:Maybe he's like three in a playpen.
Guest:Mm hmm.
Guest:And the whole time the baby is smashing its baby doll's head against the edge of the playpen until the head flies off into the frame.
Guest:And I just that's what I think is so beautiful about Stephen.
Guest:It's like, David, they don't waste one inch of their frame.
Guest:And real life is happening everywhere in the most absurd circumstances.
Guest:And they do it in very different ways.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there's also brilliantly adventurous thinking in the way they do it.
Marc:Construct.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's micromanaging in a way.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:It's not like when you watch some of the earlier Scorsese stuff, you're like, this is just, it's just crazy out there.
Guest:Mean streets, everything's all over.
Guest:And yeah, Steadicam everywhere.
Marc:And Coppola is the same way.
Marc:Highly constructed frames.
Marc:absolutely and like that that's amazing to me when because i was we i watched one little segment of lynch's um what was the one with the the long mile or the what the you know the the tractor the the oh oh yes uh was it straight straight straight yeah
Marc:Just the one scene where he finally sits on the porch with Harry Dean and Harry Dean says, did you drive that?
Marc:Like, I'm getting choked up just thinking about, but the composition of every fucking frame is meticulous and it's all so intentional.
Guest:And I don't know if this is true for David, but I'll say for myself.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We're also part of we got in reruns and maybe some of the filmmakers we're talking about got it originally.
Guest:But we're all within a similar era that we grew up with television that inspired us immensely and isn't talked about enough.
Guest:And for me, first of all, the Andy Griffith show defines that straight story scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They would have three-minute takes of Andy and Barney on the porch, strumming music, and nothing would happen.
Guest:And then he'd go, well.
Guest:And Barney would go.
Guest:well and it's just so brilliant it's so brilliant equally all in the family yeah i mean lucy and the most you know amazing gene stapleton performance of edith are are the women that raised me on the gray i mean they
Guest:went for it so completely and you wouldn't define Edith as an idiot and you wouldn't define Lucy as a rager or overtly jealous and yet they were and yet they were so complicated and beautiful and you loved them and you wanted to protect them and they were your heroes but they were a mess too and Archie was a disaster I mean we can never have that character on TV now as much as we think we're being so bold
Guest:And The Office and Modern Family have given us incredibly bold and brilliant characters or Breaking Bad.
Guest:Archie Bunker broke every boundary.
Guest:Maud broke every boundary.
Guest:So we were so lucky to have 70s television doing it for us and the reruns of I Love Lucy and Andy Griffith Show.
Marc:Forever they'll rerun.
Guest:Forever.
Marc:So what are you working on now?
Guest:Um, I'm just figuring it out.
Guest:I was working in New Orleans, which is such an awesome city on a movie and hopefully going to do a movie in the fall that I love.
Guest:I'm I'm in a really interesting place.
Guest:time of realizing that we're not going to do enlightened anymore and that's a bummer because i just love amy so it is sort of like saying goodbye to you really can't get that thing done that last season come on i don't know some journalists have been writing in lately saying they're starting some kind of campaign on kickstarter and people are very vocal about it i can't get netflix to do it does hbo uh have ownership of yes and they won't let it go i don't you can get it back i'll make a call
Guest:Yeah, we need you to make a call.
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:That's exactly what we need.
Marc:I just don't understand.
Marc:With all the money that's running around and all the availability to do something on a reasonable budget, it's just like, let's just get it done.
Guest:I know.
Guest:The biggest bummer to me, I actually haven't talked to Mike and haven't talked to him about this, but in the last three weeks, the new fans in the last three weeks who've had two seasons in their TiVo.
Guest:And they're like, oh my God, when are you coming back?
Guest:We're not coming back.
Guest:So, you know, people are sort of just finding it now.
Guest:And the plan was just to do one more anyways?
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:I mean, that's fucking ridiculous.
Guest:Well, I mean, yeah.
Marc:What are they spending their money on?
Marc:One more season?
Marc:HBO can't kick in to do what?
Marc:Another, how many episodes?
Guest:And they might have.
Guest:Ten?
Guest:Eight.
Guest:Eight.
Guest:Six even we could have done.
Guest:I mean, we could do anything.
Marc:Oh, that's fucking ridiculous.
Guest:We can do anything.
Marc:I mean, with that talent, you and Mike, what the fuck?
Guest:But it's hard because you know where it could have gone.
Guest:And Mike had brilliant ideas for the future.
Guest:And I think we had a real interest in now that we know this person and we know she can become a whistleblower.
Guest:But once you are on the soapbox, oh, my God, then what do you do with that?
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's very interesting.
Marc:For her?
Marc:I would love to see that.
Guest:So, but in the meantime, I pray in the next year and two.
Guest:I'm working with friends who are great filmmakers and just getting to party like I've been lucky enough to do and have fun while also having my two babies who, you know, I love to be around and figuring out how to do that on my own, which is cool, but interesting.
Marc:Oh, you're going to do it.
Marc:You seem happy.
Guest:I'm totally happy.
Guest:And I'd be thrilled if they just came with me all the time, which is what I did with my mom.
Guest:But now, like, people think kids should be in school.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What the hell is that about?
Guest:No, in the 70s, I went to like the most college preparatory school in L.A.
Guest:They were like, sure.
Guest:Yeah, whatever.
Guest:See you in a few months.
Marc:And now kids also seem to have their own lives younger.
Marc:Oh, they have such huge lives.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I can't even imagine it with connectivity and just, you know.
Guest:I mean, they're on Instagram.
Guest:They're texting each other.
Guest:They're making their own plans.
Marc:Movies, making their own movies.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They've all made their own movies.
Marc:It's crazy.
Guest:And they're pros at everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And by the way, their heroes who are influencing them, especially the girls.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jai's like, Mom, Katy Perry started writing at 13 and Taylor Swift started writing at 12.
Guest:I've got to write songs this summer.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:She's eight.
Yeah.
I was like,
Guest:You have time.
Guest:But she's worried that she's not going to get her first record out by the time she's 13.
Guest:There's some busy ladies out there really making music early.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me, Laura.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:You feel good about it?
Guest:I feel great about it.
Marc:Okay, good.
Marc:That's our show, folks.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:She's great.
Marc:I love her.
Marc:It was an honor to talk to her.
Marc:Just a wonderful human being.
Marc:Incredibly talented person.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:Try to watch my special.
Marc:You know, there's no window.
Marc:to watch it you can get it whenever you want thank you paying premieres on netflix uh america canada uk ireland tonight on the 21st in the non-english speaking countries from what i understand i will be at the ice house with the uh with dean del rey on october 13th that's sunday uh i will be in touch with you on thursday um more will be revealed as they say
Marc:And, you know, try to manage your content.
Marc:If you can do anything today, you know, get hold of your content.
Marc:I'm still hammering that.
Marc:It's ridiculous.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get some JustCoffee.coop at WTFPod.com.
Marc:Leave a nice message.
Marc:Buy some merch.
Marc:We're going to make more cap bowls.
Marc:We're going to make more ceramic mugs.
Marc:We're going to make more t-shirts.
Marc:Things are going to be changing a bit with WTF in coming months, just in terms of organizational things, in terms of managing content
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Look out.
Marc:Just shit it.
Marc:Just shit the pants.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Again, enjoy.
Marc:I'm dealing.
Marc:Content forthcoming.
Marc:Boomer lives!