Episode 494 - Jared Harris
Marc:Lock the gates!
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Guest:How are you, what the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck buddies?
Guest:What the fuck in ears?
Guest:What the fuck nicks?
Guest:What the fuck sticks?
Guest:What the fuck the delics?
Guest:What the fuck go very thins?
Guest:What was that about?
Marc:Hey, I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:I was paying attention.
Marc:I'm just actually making a note while I was doing it simultaneously.
Marc:I was doing the intro that I've been doing for years and writing down a little something on a piece of paper.
Marc:I just wrote wedding and I underlined it because I went to a wedding yesterday.
Marc:Look, folks, how are you?
Marc:Relax.
Marc:Hope you're doing well.
Marc:Hope you're enjoying your run.
Marc:I hope you're okay at work today.
Marc:If there's anything I can do to help you out, if it's a hard day and you're sitting there with your second cup of coffee wondering how the fuck you're going to get through it, you're going to get through it.
Marc:All right, just keep it in the present.
Marc:It'll pass.
Marc:You'll be done.
Marc:You'll be able to go home.
Marc:I don't know what's going on there, but I'm just telling you that time just keeps going, man.
Marc:Hey, right on, man.
Marc:Oh, yeah, let's plug some stuff, okay?
Marc:I am going to be...
Marc:If you're in Albuquerque, I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I'm going back to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:I will be at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
Marc:That is a venue.
Marc:I am not not that I have any.
Marc:I just don't want it to be.
Marc:Look, I'm doing a benefit for this for this endorphin power company.
Marc:I believe it's called.
Marc:It's a sort of a drug halfway house and whatnot, but I'm going back home.
Marc:That is on May 31st.
Marc:You can go to my site, wtfpod.com, and go to the calendar and get the info of where the tickets are.
Marc:I'm excited to go back to Albuquerque.
Marc:If there is a comedian or two in Albuquerque that's got a pretty solid 10 minutes, why don't you email me?
Marc:At WTF pod at Gmail with a link to your 10 minutes.
Marc:I could use a couple of openers out there.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Comedians, Albuquerque comedians.
Marc:Are you there?
Marc:Is there a scene in Albuquerque?
Marc:Is there someone out there that could come do a few minutes to open the show for me?
Marc:Please send some video.
Marc:WTF pod at Gmail dot com.
Marc:I'm going to be at the Wild West Comedy Festival in Nashville, Tennessee.
Marc:on May 15th, and I believe the plan is to interview Vince Vaughn in a one-on-one live WTF, and I was told you can go to wildwestcomedyfestival.com.
Marc:It says that that's sold out.
Marc:So, okay, so that's sold out.
Marc:But I was told that I will be doing a show at Zaney's, and that's not on their website.
Marc:That is not on the Wild West Comedy Festival website.
Marc:I will be in Chicago, Illinois, Saturday, June 14th for the 26th Annual Comedy Festival.
Marc:That is going to be a big show.
Marc:I'm excited.
Marc:I love Chicago.
Marc:It's going to be me and my buddy Adam Burke is going to open for me.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com and go to the calendar and you can figure out how to get tickets.
Marc:Man, you better get tickets.
Marc:That's a big fucking theater, man.
Marc:That'd be cool if I sold a lot of tickets there.
Marc:Thursday, June 26th, Saturday, June 28th.
Marc:Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Indiana.
Marc:That is a very small club.
Marc:If you would like to come see me in a small club and you live anywhere within a 300 to 500 mile radius of the comedy attic in Bloomington, that's the place.
Marc:I think that seat's like 12.
Marc:Where are we at?
Marc:Jared Harris.
Marc:Great actor.
Marc:He was on Mad Men.
Marc:He played the British guy on Mad Men.
Marc:The first time I saw him, I didn't know who he was, but someone told me who he was, was in the movie Happiness.
Marc:He played the Russian cab driver guitar guy.
Marc:And I was like, who the fuck is that guy?
Marc:And someone said, that's Jared Harris.
Marc:That's Richard Harris's son.
Marc:I'm like, Richard Harris's son?
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That's got to be a story.
Marc:That was a long time ago.
Marc:And now I finally got the opportunity.
Marc:We were chatting.
Marc:He's out promoting a movie he's in.
Marc:It's a thriller called The Quiet Ones.
Marc:I think it's out now.
Marc:But I needed to talk to him about himself, about his process, about where he comes from, about his dad.
Marc:Because you know about me and my dad.
Marc:He sent another apology email.
Marc:Now he's apologizing for being a dick after, you know, I was a dick.
Marc:It's gotten very complicated.
Marc:You know, I imagine that I'm supposed to apologize, but I'm too proud and too stubborn.
Marc:I will.
Marc:I will.
Marc:I will.
Marc:OK, I'm going to Albuquerque.
Marc:He's probably going to want to come to the show.
Marc:Have you guys read this book, The Humor Code?
Marc:I just got this book, The Humor Code, a global search for what makes things funny.
Marc:And I've been skimming it.
Marc:It seems to be pretty in depth, pretty interesting.
Marc:I'm not sure what the angle is.
Marc:I'm a little wary of these kind of books, but but this one seems to be.
Marc:Have you guys read it?
Marc:The Humor Code by Peter McGraw and Joel Warner, because they're going to be on the show.
Marc:Uh, very soon, but I got the book and I, did you guys buy it?
Marc:We, would someone buy the book, the humor code to global search for what makes things funny and tell me, uh, exactly where it's going.
Marc:I need, I need a synopsis in an outline.
Marc:I'll do it.
Marc:I have time to do it, but I'm going to have those guys on the show.
Marc:So maybe I'll,
Marc:I'll do the research and fucking get in it.
Marc:Anyways, look, I went to my buddy Brendan Small, his wedding to his lovely now wife, Courtney, and I want to congratulate them.
Marc:Brendan's a great guy and a pretty snazzy guitar player, some of you know.
Marc:I've not gone to a lot of weddings.
Marc:I wasn't planning on going myself, but that's the way it played out.
Marc:So I went to the wedding myself, and I got there, and I became famished immediately.
Marc:It was up in, not all the way up in the wine country, but wine country, Santa Barbara-ish, Solvang, Buellton area.
Marc:And I just, and I was, you know, a lot of my friends were there.
Marc:It was great to see everybody.
Marc:And I just started, I couldn't understand why I got famished.
Marc:And I don't know if this is a common thing, but like right when they put the food out for the hors d'oeuvres, I just started shoveling food into my fucking face.
Marc:And I did some hardcore emotional eating at this wedding.
Marc:It makes sense now.
Marc:It was very touching.
Marc:It was very funny.
Marc:My friend Craig Anton did the ceremony.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:And I just I just ate away all of my regret standing at an hors d'oeuvre table, shoveling salami and cheese, just jacking those cholesterol numbers.
Marc:To fill the hole of failed relationships.
Marc:There's a hole in my heart that is filled with garbage and failed relationships.
Marc:And now I just start.
Marc:I'm going to top that off with some food.
Marc:Weddings.
Marc:Squirted out a few tears.
Marc:Very touching.
Marc:I can do that.
Marc:I will do that.
Marc:And then as the evening went on.
Marc:I never knew this about weddings, but I mean, I think it's sort of a known thing.
Marc:I think I might have been the only single man there.
Marc:And it was kind of interesting as people got a little drunkier, as some of the women got a little drunkier, they became very forward.
Marc:And it was very interesting.
Marc:And I ran away.
Marc:I ran away because I am a solitary man.
Marc:And I drove two and a half hours by myself.
Marc:How great is that?
Marc:How great is just driving?
Marc:Do you remember when you could drive when there wasn't traffic?
Marc:We could just get in your fucking car and drive.
Marc:I hadn't done that in a while.
Marc:I'm going to do it more.
Marc:I always fantasize about doing it.
Marc:And sometimes when I do it, I'm like, why the fuck did I do this?
Marc:But I drove up there two and a half, three hours through the hills, through the mountains, by the ocean, just like listening to some music.
Marc:You know, I listen to Radiohead in Rainbows, and I listen to some Paul Butterfield, and I listen to some War on Drugs.
Marc:I'm trying to get the hang of that record.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:Listen to some Silver Jews because I want to talk to him.
Marc:And I just relaxed, man.
Marc:That is the classic, you know, great American meditative way.
Marc:It's just get in that fucking car and lose your mind.
Marc:Let it go away.
Marc:Because you're grounded, man.
Marc:Some part of you has to drive the car, but your mind can just go and can relax.
Marc:You just watch the road.
Marc:You look at the ocean.
Marc:You drive fast.
Marc:If you can, get away with it.
Marc:I got pulled over on the way back in the dark.
Marc:Pissed me off.
Marc:Pissed me the fuck off.
Marc:But you know what I know?
Marc:I know they're always expecting you to be drunk.
Marc:And I love being able to say like, yeah, I'm not drunk.
Marc:This guy didn't even give a fuck.
Marc:I think he just wanted to make his quota.
Marc:But there is something bittersweet about being pulled over and knowing you're not drunk.
Marc:But then if they still give you a ticket, you don't win.
Marc:You don't fucking win, man.
Marc:Okay, I think I'm on the verge of making up with my dad, and certainly this conversation I had with Jared Harris, whose father is the great actor, Richard Harris, was very encouraging.
Marc:I've been talking to a lot of people about dads,
Marc:I don't want it.
Marc:I don't want it.
Marc:I don't want to lose them without.
Marc:I don't want any of that garbage.
Marc:I'm trying to get rid of garbage.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I'm trying.
Marc:I'm going on a small intimate amends tour.
Marc:I got some outstanding apologies that need to be done in private.
Marc:And hopefully they will be received.
Marc:It fucking reminds me.
Marc:I got to reach out and do that too.
Marc:I got to reach out.
Marc:Look, some of you, you know, I carry that shit with you.
Marc:I don't want to carry it with me.
Marc:I've got knots in my heart and I'm going to take care of it.
Marc:And talking to Jared about his old man was was pretty encouraging.
Marc:It's a great story.
Marc:He's a great actor and a good guy.
Marc:So let's let's talk to Jared Harris.
Marc:So you worked with Iggy on Deadman, Jim Jarmusch.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:This is that weird thing, like I was looking at your stuff, and you've been in a lot of movies, but you're one of those guys that people go, like, oh, there's that guy.
Marc:There's that guy.
Marc:Oh, my God, that was that guy in that thing.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Is he the same guy who's in... Yeah, I know.
Guest:It's a sort of... I mean, it's kind of on purpose, you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like...
Guest:It's like being different in everything I've done.
Guest:But, you know, that's a risk because you have to wait for it to catch up with you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also, I think for a while there, it must be nice to really... I was talking to my friend about this, is that you're one of those guys that even if it's a shitty movie, you're going to...
Marc:you're gonna light it up you know you got sometimes you got that five minutes man you're gonna knock it out of the park right there well i think that's a compliment thank you no you know what i'm saying i do i'm teasing well i mean like the the idea of like knowing that uh because you're very versatile with characters and it seems like you really commit and you know you embody characters and i imagine for the first chunk of a career to to do that in short spurts is better than kind of taking a risk to ride the whole thing out
Guest:uh no i mean it's just opportunities you know and um and and sometimes normally what happens is the person who the move the character yeah the film is riding on the back of yeah there's always an obsession with will the audience like this character yeah that's a sort of the mathematics that goes into every single scene
Guest:And they tend to be blander characters to play, and you have all this pressure from the money people on your shoulders all the time.
Guest:And the other characters are more fun.
Guest:You can mess with how the people feel about your character, and you can take them through different journeys.
Guest:Yeah, you're like color.
Guest:You're like, there's that guy.
Guest:There's that guy.
Guest:He can do whatever he wants.
Guest:A good friend of mine called Gary Marks called me up because, I forget, it was one of the movie channels were doing That Guy Thursday.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a special sequence they have of films.
Guest:They were doing That Guy Thursday movies, and they were doing a series of my films.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Which one did they show?
Guest:I think it was Igby, Igby Goes Down.
Guest:Happiness?
Guest:Yeah, stuff like that.
Marc:I think that was the first time I remember really saying, who the hell is that guy?
Guest:I was at the premiere of that movie, New York Film Festival, standing next to Francis Ford Coppola, who was chatting to Todd Salons.
Guest:And he said, where the hell did you get that Russian guy?
Guest:And I'd just been introduced to him.
Guest:And he went, oh, that was Jared.
Marc:I was like, what?
Yeah.
Marc:He was in here.
Marc:Solon's came.
Marc:That was a tricky interview.
Marc:You know, he trained as a stand-up.
Marc:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He did not tell me that.
Guest:He trained as a stand-up.
Guest:What does trained me?
Guest:Well, I mean, that's how he started off.
Guest:I mean, you can see that, and he's got those rhythms in his script.
Guest:He really understood...
Guest:exactly where the joke was and he was obsessed when you were doing the scenes because he was incredibly specific about you pick the pen up on this line and then there's certain lines he understood which the setup was and where the joke was and you couldn't move on the setup.
Marc:He was that specific.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also, his jokes are not, you know, they're not ha-ha necessarily.
Marc:No.
Marc:They're very dark and very sort of like, ooh.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Those kind of jokes.
Marc:So when you did that film, though, you'd already done like a dozen movies, right?
Guest:I actually had done the Andy Warhol movie for Christine Vachon's company.
Guest:Oh, I remember that, yeah.
Guest:And they said, meet Jared for this movie.
Guest:And I went to meet him for the part that Philip Seymour Hoffman played in the movie initially.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And so I was chatting to him and I really, I pitched myself to play Vlad because I, you know, even though I was opposed to, he said, oh, I didn't realize you were interested in that role.
Guest:I said, you know, I am because it's a better contrast for me from having played Andy Warhol, you know, than to play the guy who jerks off against the wall and sticks postcards and sticks them to the surface of the postcards.
Guest:I said, it'd be more fun for me to play this other character because people would go, wow, look at that, you know.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And when you do something like that... Which was lucky, because Philip was always going to play that part.
Marc:Yeah, and he was... He was amazing.
Guest:Yeah, tragic in that part, but endearing in some odd way.
Guest:The one piece of direction he got from Todd was you cannot smile in this film.
Guest:There's one scene and one moment when you're allowed to smile, and that's it.
Guest:Otherwise, you can't smile in this film.
Guest:And he knew exactly when that was.
Guest:Yeah, it was when he gets interrupted when he's on the phone by the co-worker, and he turns around.
Guest:He's like, hey, how are you?
Guest:Yeah, you know, that was the only moment he could smile.
Marc:It's that specific with Todd, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Now, were you tight with Philip at all or just worked with him?
Guest:We didn't have scenes together, so I only met him when we did the promotion.
Guest:Obviously, he's a great guy and I admire the man's talent enormously.
Guest:Yeah, it was sad.
Guest:I saw him on stage.
Guest:Did you see that he did... True West?
Guest:No, Death of a Salesman.
Guest:Extraordinary.
Guest:He just did it about two years ago.
Guest:He was incredible.
Marc:I bet.
Marc:He probably brought some weight to that part.
Marc:The sadness must have been profound.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So like when I saw you in Happiness and then I did some research and I found out that you were Richard Harris's son, I thought like holy fuck.
Marc:That's a heavy legacy.
Marc:And you grew up in sort of show business family.
Guest:Yes, you could say that.
Guest:Although, weirdly, my mother married Rex Harrison after... Dr. Doolittle?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Dr. Doolittle, My Fair Lady.
Guest:My Fair Lady.
Guest:Professor Higgins.
Guest:She married him after my father.
Guest:And weirdly, we were more around show-busy things when she was married to him for about five or six years.
Guest:And never really show-busy around my dad.
Guest:No?
Guest:No.
Guest:Never.
Guest:I mean, he would like to go down to the filthiest pub and hang out there and chat and talk to the local people and tell jokes.
Guest:Where did you grow up?
Guest:I grew up in England.
Guest:My father had a place down in the Bahamas for 30 years, so we used to go there for holidays.
Guest:We'd come visit him.
Guest:My stepfather had a place in Italy, so we were going there for a while.
Guest:Sounds sweet.
Guest:Yeah, it was good.
Marc:I'm not complaining.
Marc:Yeah, but like, did you, were you aware, like, when you were younger of the sort of, like, the weight of your dad's, you know, career?
Marc:Celebrity, you mean?
Marc:Well, I don't know if it's celebrity, because he's like, I mean, obviously celebrity, but he was a great, great actor.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, okay.
Guest:Acting-wise, he did very adult movies, so we didn't actually get to see his films until we were older.
Guest:But in terms of being aware of him being an actor, being a celebrity or famous...
Guest:There's a weird relationship that you have with that because in a way you don't want to share your parents with the world.
Guest:You want all their attention and there's a sort of jealousy that you have with the fact that the world wants his attention as well.
Guest:But in the end, all that you care about as a kid is that your parents love you and you did.
Marc:But you do feel that the idea that there's all these fans out there.
Guest:Well, people will come up to him on the street.
Guest:He was always recognized.
Guest:But he was also the kind of personality who he did not enter a room and have it go unnoticed.
Guest:Just by sheer force of his personality, he would turn all the focus to him.
Guest:And I didn't realize how much singing he did.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He had a huge singing career.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Huge singing career.
Guest:He was a pop star.
Guest:We used to see him.
Guest:We were showing him called Top of the Pops.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I'd see him on that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And did you know you wanted to do acting?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:No.
Guest:I was very shy.
Guest:And I...
Guest:I was, I guess, academic.
Guest:I mean, I hated school.
Guest:My elder brother managed to get out of school early.
Guest:How did he do that?
Guest:Well, he got out, and then my mother made him do private tutoring so that he still passed his exam.
Guest:So I realized there was no getting past the exam, so I stuck my head down and tried to do it on my first try.
Guest:And my parents thought, oh, he likes academics.
Guest:So they thought that I would...
Guest:Either become a lawyer because I was the middle child and I was always arguing and fighting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or, you know, I would go into academics.
Guest:So I actually took the chance to go come to America.
Guest:I went to Duke University.
Guest:And where's that?
Guest:North Carolina?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I was just down there.
Marc:I was in Raleigh last weekend.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Raleigh, Durham.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Saw Iggy Pop down there.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He was just there?
Guest:Oh, no, when you were in college.
Guest:When I was at college, yeah.
Guest:And when I worked with him on the movie, I told him I'd seen him down in, I think it's called the Cat's Cradle down there.
Guest:Yeah, that's what it's called.
Guest:And he knew exactly what he wore.
Guest:He went, oh, yeah.
Guest:That was the tour where I wore the gold boots and the tight hot pants and nothing else.
Marc:You know?
Yeah.
Marc:I was amazed at how good a memory he had.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because, you know, you make assumptions based on the character.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or what you think the guy is.
Guest:Well, that was all quite true.
Guest:But he's been doing, he's lived a very clean life for a long time now.
Guest:And he does Tai Chi every morning.
Marc:Yeah, he did a little out on my deck.
Marc:It was very interesting.
Marc:You know, he came over and he just started doing it out on the deck.
Marc:And then he took his shirt off and he came in here and sat down.
Guest:Of course he took his shirt off.
Guest:Anybody else would be like, what the fuck is happening?
Marc:But now you're like, no, now he's Iggy.
Marc:Yeah, there's definitely a difference between the character Iggy and Jim Osterberg, that's for sure.
Marc:But he does have an amazing memory.
Marc:So you went to Duke, and was that the first time he'd lived in America?
Guest:It was the first time I'd lived there, yeah.
Guest:I'd been to America several times.
Guest:I'd been to Los Angeles several times, New York several times, and I mistakenly thought, as a lot of European people do...
Guest:that New York and Los Angeles is America.
Guest:And it's completely different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, what do you remember being the mind-blowing thing?
Guest:I remember being asked what language they spoke in England.
Guest:And I said, well, we speak the same language as you, English.
Guest:And the guy goes, I don't speak English.
Guest:I speak American.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:That did.
Guest:Actually happened.
Guest:I'm telling you, shoot.
Marc:That was in North Carolina?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I feel like I need to apologize.
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:I was fascinated.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:I mean, you know, I loved it.
Guest:I mean, partly it's because when you're in, you know, I grew up in England and we're sandwiched in the middle between Europe and America.
Guest:So you're aware of what's happening in Europe.
Guest:And we're pretty bad as well in England, I have to say.
Guest:You know, the French are much better at it and the Germans are much better at it.
Guest:We still have that little island mentality, you know.
Marc:But in America, you... The island mentality of a passing empire.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Did I mention that?
Marc:Which makes it a little more... It's not like it's Nantucket.
Marc:It hurts more.
Marc:It hurts more.
Marc:It's like the Hawaiian Islands.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The shame and anger of letting it all go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then everyone still blaming you because you left behind this giant mess.
Marc:Yeah, an old mess.
Marc:It goes back.
Marc:But when you lived in England, did you live in London?
Marc:I'm sort of fascinated with Britain because I've only been there a couple of times, but I'm not really an Anglophile, but it seems that people who grow up there have a very specific type of life.
Marc:It seems very pleasant to me.
Yeah.
Marc:It depends.
Marc:I mean, depends where you grow up.
Marc:Did you grow up in a small castle?
Marc:Do you have royalty in your family?
Marc:All little castles all over there.
Marc:There is little castles all over there.
Marc:I went to Ireland.
Marc:I went to England.
Marc:If you go to some places.
Marc:There's lots of little castles in Ireland.
Marc:Your dad's Irish, right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's on the west coast of Ireland.
Marc:Do you have family up there?
Marc:I mean, did you grow up?
Guest:Yeah, cousins, uncle.
Marc:One uncle there.
Marc:How beautiful is
Marc:Ireland, man.
Marc:Gorgeous.
Marc:It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
Marc:Yes, gorgeous.
Marc:I have no family ties to it, and I went there and I'm like, holy shit, this is amazing.
Marc:Yeah, they love Americans in Ireland, yeah.
Marc:They do.
Marc:I like the Irish.
Marc:I feel like it took me a while to connect with them because my neurotic problems didn't seem to equal centuries of just harsh living.
Marc:All right, so let's get back to how you grew up in England.
Guest:We were shipped off to boarding school when we were seven.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In fact, my experience of growing up in England is in boarding schools where you used to... You know, our favorite movies were prisoner of war movies.
Guest:Because you related?
Guest:Because we would relate to them.
Guest:And we'd go, well, that's the headmaster who was the commandant.
Guest:And the various teachers, the sort of really strict sort of SS ones would be the sort of...
Guest:There was a sister at the school who was sort of supposed to look after your sort of health and be the matronly type person.
Guest:Was it Catholic boarding school?
Guest:The most vicious, sadistic, unkind, you know, personality.
Guest:He would constantly send you to the headmaster so you would get beaten by the headmaster.
Guest:And she'd wait outside to hear you being thrashed and then look at you like, and let that be a lesson.
Guest:It's awful, man.
LAUGHTER
Guest:That's why we like the POW films, right?
Marc:Someone else has had our experience.
Marc:So it was a Catholic school.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, I don't see I just that was so far out of my my experience I don't know because everything you hear about them seems to be true But you but it was bad.
Guest:It's changed a lot.
Guest:Changed a lot.
Guest:There's none of that stuff.
Guest:It doesn't happen in we brought up Catholic though Yeah, yeah, and he believed it
Guest:Well, you believe what you're told when you're a kid.
Guest:I shook the monkey off my back now.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After that school, we went to a school run by Benedictine monks.
Guest:Different attire.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you went from a Catholic boarding school to a Benedictine- Another Catholic boarding school, yeah.
Marc:But a different branch.
Marc:So 13 to 18.
Marc:One were the sisters and the other were nun habits and the other were monk robes.
Guest:Well, there was a sister who was a sort of, you know, like a nurse.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:Like someone who, the sister as someone who works in a hospital, it's like that type of sister.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Rather than a religious.
Marc:So there weren't nuns there?
Marc:No, no nuns.
Marc:But so you believed in hell and the whole business?
Guest:All that stuff, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Were you concerned early on that you'd be spending time there?
Guest:You know, it seems pretty arbitrary and a pretty kind of crazy idea when you start to rationalize it in your head that it's, you know, love me or I will condemn you to the burning pit of hell for all eternity.
Guest:And you go, well, that doesn't seem like much of an alternative.
Guest:I haven't got much of a choice.
Guest:I guess I'll say yes.
Marc:So you did the confession and all that stuff?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And you went every Sunday?
Guest:You'd make stuff up because you'd feel like if you didn't show up, there was something that could really confess that you were, you know, they'd be disappointed in you.
Guest:So you'd make stuff up.
Guest:You don't want to bore the priest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're like, oh, I told a lie.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:We do some terrible stuff at that first school.
Guest:We do some really wicked stuff.
Guest:One of the things we used to do was there was in the summer months, we played cricket.
Guest:And cricket's a long, long game.
Guest:And when you're batting, you spend a lot of time waiting for your turn to bat.
Guest:So we'd pick teams and we always used to pick this, the first boy that we'd pick on our team was this little kid called Davies.
Guest:And they could never figure out why they always pick this guy first.
Guest:And what was happening is we'd put him as the 11th batsman.
Guest:That meant he had a long time to wait.
Guest:And we'd get all the copper and change that we could find.
Guest:And then we'd sneak through the hedge with Davies because you weren't allowed off the school grounds.
Guest:And we'd hide along the hedge and we'd go out onto the street into the local town, make our way to the town, go to the sweet shop.
Guest:We'd go to the sweet shop and we'd give him the money and we'd ask for something from the top shelf so that a woman had to get a ladder out and climb all the way up.
Guest:And while she was climbing up to the top, we'd steal all the sweets and stick them in Davies' pockets because she'd never suspect him because he looked like this little cute kid.
Guest:You had a plan.
Guest:And then we'd come back to the school and then we'd auction it all off.
Guest:And you made some money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's it.
Marc:And then you go into the priest and confess your- We never confess that.
Marc:No, because- Yeah, because they might stop you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:There is no confidentiality in the confession when you're a kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You just get right in trouble.
Marc:It's not just between you and God.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's between the headmaster.
Marc:The headmaster is going to thrash you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The priest told me what you were up to.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's where you learn how to distrust religion.
Guest:So how long did that stick with you?
Guest:That stuck with me for a long time.
Guest:Yeah, a long time.
Guest:I'll tell you what really started to open my mind to it.
Guest:And, you know, it's getting sort of, I don't know if this is a good subject or it's getting serious, but I read Joseph Campbell.
Marc:I like serious.
Marc:Joe Scanlon, the Hero of a Thousand Faces?
Guest:Reflections on the Art of Living, that book.
Guest:And it was really about a series of lectures that he'd given at the Essen Institute.
Guest:And, of course, because he studied myths, early myths, and a lot of myths are all centered around people's religious beliefs and early religion.
Guest:But he started to break down the Catholic faith and Christianity for me.
Guest:And I started to understand...
Guest:What always bothered me about it, I had never been able to conceptualize.
Guest:And when I read what he said, I said, this is exactly what has always bothered me about it.
Guest:And it's the first time I started to be able to separate from it.
Marc:And what was the specifics?
Guest:Well, that idea, I mean, what we talked about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think there was some, I think there was some, is it the Hindu thing about the five stages of love and the first stage of love is between master and slave.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what Christianity is based on.
Marc:So it's not even evolved.
Marc:You don't have a choice.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:It's like the very first.
Marc:Well, isn't it sort of interesting too that once you start to break that stuff down that you realize it's all mythology?
Marc:That it's almost a genetic human imperative to want to be part of something larger than yourself so you feel like life has some sort of purpose.
Marc:That's in us.
Marc:Because if we didn't have it in us, we would just sit around terrified waiting for death all the time.
Marc:But once you start to realize that there's all these different kinds and Christianity evolved out of this one and that one, it gives you a little freedom, I guess.
Marc:But did it die for you with a crash?
Marc:I mean, were you... Did you feel like, oh, my God, it's all bullshit.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I felt liberated from it because I could start to choose what I wanted to believe and how you want to interpret what we're...
Guest:what we're going through.
Guest:And I suppose the thing that for me, again, getting serious, was I think that the gift is that you have an ability to appreciate what this all is.
Guest:And it is an amazing...
Guest:Creation is an incredible thing.
Guest:You sit in there and look at what they're discovering in physics now and looking through the pictures coming through the Hubble telescope.
Guest:It is an incredible thing.
Guest:And if you weren't alive, you wouldn't be there to recognize how amazing it is.
Marc:So you're able to elevate your appreciation.
Guest:Yeah, you appreciate.
Guest:And the only way you're going to be appreciated is that you have to make this terrible bargain, which is that you have to exist, but it's a finite thing.
Guest:You can only appreciate it whilst you exist, and you can't appreciate if you don't exist.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah, that's true.
Marc:It is going to end.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's the horrible thing.
Marc:That's the one thing we're all trying to sort of like, let's not focus on that too much.
Right.
Marc:What was your guidance in your family?
Marc:I mean, your dad lived a pretty rough life.
Marc:It seems like by choice.
Marc:Right.
Marc:By rough, I mean fun.
Marc:Yeah, he enjoyed himself.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:He enjoyed himself.
Marc:Because it was like he was part of that crew.
Marc:Wasn't there like a crew?
Marc:Wasn't like Burton and O'Toole and your pop?
Marc:And Finney.
Marc:And Finney?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, they were notoriously... They were notoriously enjoyers of life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hacked it off with great big chunks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is Finney still around?
Guest:Yes, he is.
Marc:Are you friends with him?
Marc:No, I've never met him.
Marc:Oh, you never have?
Marc:No.
Marc:I guess that's another odd thing about growing up with a father who was a celebrity is that you read about things about him...
Guest:Yeah, I hear his stories.
Guest:I mean, I met Peter O'Toole for the first time at my father's memorial service and they were great friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember when he walked out on stage, he sort of looked over at us and we all bear different resemblances to my father.
Guest:So he kind of looked at us and it was a strange look he had on his face.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he gave his tribute.
Guest:And after it was over, we went backstage to go see him.
Guest:And he was putting on his coat to leave and he looked at us and he started to chat to us and talk about dad and everything.
Guest:And he put his arms out and he gave us a big hug and he held us all in.
Guest:And you can see he was starting to get emotional.
Guest:And he didn't want us to see that he was going to become emotional and cry.
Guest:And he literally flung open the door and shoved us almost with his foot out the door and like out.
Guest:Like I didn't say a word.
Guest:It was like, I just can't.
Guest:I'm going to become overwhelmed.
Guest:And he pushed us out the door.
Guest:I mean, he gave us an enormous hug and then closed it to compose himself again.
Guest:That's sweet.
Marc:It was, it was, it was incredible.
Marc:That's powerful, man.
Marc:Are you able to sort of look at your father's work differently as an actor?
Guest:Um,
Guest:I mean, in two sort of ways.
Guest:Yes, as an actor, but also in terms of you do that thing where you go, how old was he then?
Guest:Because your parents always seem older than you.
Guest:And you do the math and you go, God, he was like 34 when he did that.
Guest:and wow you know i mean like which movie you're thinking in particular well i just i we just um i i just saw this picture of myself with my father and i was four years old and he was 34 and and um i mean you look at him he just all seemed so much older he's going wow he was younger than i am now and is that a trip um you know and he was uh i mean he he he got to where he got through force of personality and i'm i said that a couple of times but
Guest:The big break for him was Camelot.
Guest:And when Richard Burton decided that he didn't want to do Camelot and they were going, okay, well, we're going to do a worldwide search for who's going to be King Arthur, Dad campaigned to get that part.
Guest:And, you know, he had, as you mentioned earlier, he had number one records around the world and he'd won the Cannes Film Festival, Best Actor, and they weren't interested in him at all and they were looking at other people.
Guest:And he would send telegrams.
Guest:He sent one thing showing how tall Vanessa Redgrave was because they'd cast her and how all the other actors they were thinking of were way too short.
Guest:He was actually taller than her without putting boots on.
Guest:And again, they weren't interested.
Guest:And he found out that the director was going to be at a dinner party in Palm Springs.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So he went down to Palm Springs and he paid one of the people who was working the dinner party to give him his clothes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he went round the table serving food and they were talking about who is going to be King Arthur.
Guest:And my father says, well, there really is only one person and that's Richard Harris.
Guest:And the director goes, what?
Guest:And he looks at him, he goes, oh my God.
Guest:He says, will you ever leave me alone?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He says, no.
Guest:He says, well, what the hell do you want?
Guest:How am I going to get you to leave me alone?
Guest:He says, I want a screen test.
Guest:He says, is that it?
Guest:He says, yeah.
Guest:If I give you a screen test, will you leave me alone?
Guest:He says, I promise.
Guest:He says, okay, you got it.
Guest:And he did it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he locked it out of the park.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, that's what I mean.
Guest:He was totally determined.
Guest:It's an amazing story.
Guest:Where did you hear that one?
Marc:From him, from my mother.
Marc:I mean, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you think it's interesting that your father was completely driven by force of personality and that you seem to be a kind of a shapeshifter?
Guest:I think, I guess that's what I was attracted to in terms of the performers that I saw.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And maybe it was because I saw him, he was shape-shifting when he was acting, because he was completely different.
Guest:My experience of him as a father was very different from the roles that he played.
Marc:I just remember when I was a kid, the poster for A Man Called Horse, and then seeing that movie was just great.
Marc:crazy yeah i saw it too young yeah we was hanging from the thing yeah like bone hooks or something it was crazy yeah and and and and then you i did and then i watched the unforgiven recently and you know he still was like you know completely loaded up you know in terms like he embodied yeah it was pretty a great scene in the prison where he in the cell after he's being beaten up by gene hackman yeah he doesn't have a word of dialogue in that scene yeah it was just incredible yeah he did with it
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's been offered the gun.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He thinks about it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you go to Duke and you're not planning on being an actor.
Marc:I wasn't.
Marc:What were you planning on doing?
Guest:I just, I had no idea.
Guest:I didn't know what I, I didn't really know who I was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't know what I, you know, you get, you've been beaten up through boarding school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just went there to sort of reinvent myself and figure out who I was and have people respond to me rather than what I thought was through because people were always aware of my father.
Guest:So that was sort of a burden at some point.
Guest:Well, you were always having to filter what people were saying to you because in terms of, well, are they reacting to me or are they reacting to what they think?
Guest:who he is or, you know, so I was there and nobody knew anything and you could, I could just start from scratch.
Marc:So it was like anonymity.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That you couldn't have in Britain.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:Well, I, I apologize for talking about your dad.
Marc:No, it was okay.
Marc:I love my father.
Marc:I absolutely, I love him.
Marc:I love him.
Marc:But it does, it must be quite something to get out from under the shadow.
Marc:And then, and then the surface is an actor.
Yeah.
Guest:that's ballsy right thank you yeah so so okay i mean that what happened was that they send you to duke and you do orientation week right right where they basically get you hammered yeah there's a there's a party every night right and at the on the sunday night i realized i was going back to class again i've been in boarding school since i was seven yeah i thought what the hell am i doing here how did i end i was out the frying pan into the fire type thing right
Guest:I saw a flyer on a table and it said there was a free keg of beer at Branson Theatre.
Guest:I thought, I don't know why I'm here.
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:A free keg?
Guest:Yeah, there's another party.
Guest:So I just went to the theatre to go and, you know, drink their free beer.
Guest:And the next thing I knew, I was auditioning for a play.
Guest:And the funny thing is, is that...
Guest:Several years later, when my movie, I Shot Andy Warhol, is premiering in New York.
Guest:And at that point, the director of that play, my first play that I'd done, was now living in New York.
Guest:And I thought, oh, it'd be cool.
Guest:I'd invite him to my, here's my movie, my names and lights, the red carpet and everything.
Guest:I said, yeah, I'll bring him along.
Guest:It would be a sort of good little, you know, story, if you like.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're walking up the red carpet, and the journalist says to him, so you cast him in his first play?
Guest:He's like, I did, yes.
Guest:He said, you must be very proud.
Guest:Oh, I am, yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, so you must have seen something in him all those years ago, and here he is.
Guest:He says, no, I didn't see anything special in him.
Guest:He says, what?
Guest:He goes, I'm looking at him, like, no, I was doing an English play.
Guest:I needed someone to keep an eye on the accents.
LAUGHTER
Guest:You had to appreciate the honesty.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:I said, say that all the way up the line.
Guest:It's a great story.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:You know, you never cut funny, right?
Marc:No, you don't.
Marc:And did he say it all the way up the line?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you did a play, but did you end up studying theater?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:After that, I went to Central School of Speech and Drama in England.
Marc:So you did four years at Duke.
Guest:Yeah, four years at June.
Guest:Undergrad in theater?
Guest:Well, they didn't really have an undergrad, which is lucky because, you know, the universities that have undergrad theater programs are incredibly competitive.
Guest:There's sort of 500 people, you know, auditioning for four roles.
Marc:Might have killed your spirit.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, who knows if I would have got a shot or not.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:So what did you end up studying?
Guest:I studied it.
Guest:I made a movie.
Guest:Yeah, in undergrad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I made a movie.
Guest:I got credit for that.
Guest:I studied literature and history and drama.
Guest:Is that where you read Joseph Campbell?
Guest:No, that was later.
Guest:That was after a breakup.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:You get your heart broken and then you're open to things, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm constantly open to things.
Marc:There's no shortage of heartbreak, man.
Marc:Okay, so tell me about this program in England.
Marc:What was it?
Guest:The Central School of Speech and Drama.
Guest:It's a theatre training school, specifically theatre training school.
Guest:They've had... Laurence Olivier went there, Vanessa Redgave, they're fantastic.
Guest:And it's a theatre school.
Guest:They basically just chuck plays at you and you figure out what different styles of acting certain plays require, you know?
Marc:Well, that's interesting to me because there's that famous story about Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier on the set of Marathon Man that there's this idea.
Marc:I can only paraphrase the story.
Marc:You know what I'm talking about.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Dustin Hoffman stays up all night and runs and doesn't eat to do the scene.
Marc:And, you know, and what is, uh, Olivier walks in, just comfortably rested and said, Dustin, you should really try acting.
Marc:But is there a difference?
Marc:Were you exposed to, to, to that, to, to method acting or to the idea of method acting or what is the British idea of acting at that school?
Guest:I mean, it's interesting because when you're at drama school, um, although you're studying theater, um,
Guest:All of your heroes and your references are cinema, you know?
Guest:I mean, at that time, the actors that we all emulated and admired was Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and Hackman and... Hackman.
Marc:What an amazing, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was something that's... Obviously, you want that sort of emotional intensity and that honesty.
Guest:When you apply it to stage, it really only works for the first three rows.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you've got to figure out how to amplify all that so you can hit the back of the theater.
Guest:But also...
Guest:That approach is completely useless when you're trying to do restoration comedy.
Guest:You have to figure out a whole different set of tools that you need.
Guest:You can't sit there and ponder.
Guest:Yeah, and be all introverted and method.
Guest:It's just not going to work.
Guest:The play will be seven hours long, and there won't be a single laugh.
Guest:So you have to figure out a whole different set of stuff.
Guest:And they try and teach you, but really you learn off the other students.
Guest:And someone who's successful in a part
Guest:um in something that you found difficult you'll sit and talk to them in the pub and what do you do how did you do it really yeah you try and figure out and they'll they'll you know give you some sort of insight so that you can try and see if you could follow their method right into into being able to be successful in that type of uh that style of the teachers were no help they just
Marc:It was just word of mouth.
Marc:Well, the weird thing is you've got to admit that I don't talk to a lot of actors, but I talk to a few.
Marc:And when you start talking about craft, no matter what they say, you begin to realize that either you've got a knack for it or you don't.
Marc:Well, that's what they say.
Marc:Acting can't be taught, but it can be learned.
Marc:uh-huh but but you know the i think that the the better actors just they live up there i mean there's something that comes out it's not you can't explain it necessarily so the difference between getting instruction from a teacher and talking to somebody at a pub about how to handle a restoration comedy i mean what would that guy tell you like just you know project i tend to turn around like this and i mean well i mean it's crazy stuff
Guest:I remember one guy, you had to do speeches and so you wouldn't do the whole place.
Guest:You'd do Shakespeare speeches or you'd do Ibsen speeches.
Guest:We did restoration speeches and I remember talking to the guy and he said, what was the key?
Guest:And he said, I thought of myself as a hairbrush.
Guest:And, you know, it was so crazy.
Guest:You go, what the hell does that mean?
Guest:But something about it, because you would go and then you wouldn't try and be a hairbrush.
Guest:It sounds ridiculous.
Guest:But you understood that you can't think literally.
Guest:You can't think linearly.
Guest:You have to be lateral.
Guest:You just try and find some way to jump out and use your imagination.
Guest:Were you ever able to piece it together, though, what the hell he meant?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I had to play a character in a restoration play, and I thought he was a sort of... My conception of the character was that he was like an old castle that had been left to, you know, and that now and again he'd let the drawbridge down for people that he was familiar to come inside and offer them sanctuary.
Guest:You know, it's things like, you know, it's like a metaphor that you're using.
Guest:But it's not like animal work.
Marc:We did that.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I did that in jail.
Guest:You did?
What do you mean?
Guest:I broke into London Zoo to go and visit the animal that I'd studied, and of course, you get arrested.
Guest:What animal?
Guest:A gorilla.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Were you drunk?
Guest:We were drunk, and it was the end of term, and I was going to wave goodbye because we'd graduated.
Guest:You spent a lot of time with this animal.
Guest:yeah you would you go yeah i'm they were amazing i mean i remember we were with a group of us and we were at the orangutan enclosure and um it was cold so we were wearing gloves and scars standing by this sort of green this is when you broke in no this is like earlier today yeah um uh like a year before and uh we're standing by this green chain link fence and the orangutan comes over
Guest:and starts pulling on the finger of one of the girls and she's got a glove on and it pulls, starts pulling on the glove.
Guest:And so she pulls her hand back and she took the glove off and she pushed it through the fence to the orangutan.
Guest:It took the glove, put it on its hand and then went back to the other orangutans and was playing and they were all excited and we realized we had to go back.
Guest:So we shook the fence like this to get its attention and she went like that to the orangutan and it came back, took it off, pushed it back through the fence.
Marc:get out really yeah that's unbelievable that feels like something you should report to a scientist you should tell that was a gifted orangutan well the sad thing was that implies that they knew that they were in a cage right yeah i think well but me but they also knew they were getting food three times a day or whatever they also knew that like people were cleaning up after them it was like the ritz hotel exactly it's not so horrible
Marc:So when you do animal work, that means you took a whole semester and spent time with that?
Guest:You'd go to the zoo a couple of times a week.
Guest:You'd have to go sit there and study them.
Guest:Then you'd have to bring your animal in and show it to the teachers, and they would critique you.
Guest:And the class sits there?
Guest:Yeah, and you'd watch them.
Guest:It's actually great fun because it's so nutty.
Guest:But what happens is that you study different animals, and you have to bring them in.
Guest:And at the end of the term, then, they choose the animal that they think that you would...
Guest:succeeded in the best.
Guest:And then you have Zoo Day.
Guest:Everyone's their animal.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Which one did you end up doing the best?
Marc:I did the gorilla.
Marc:And everyone's just on stage?
Guest:Yeah, you have penguins and you had polar bears and you had, you know, lemur monkeys.
Marc:And do you find that that work is a functioning resource for you or that it was just that the exercise may have done something that you're not quite aware of, but it did help a certain freedom?
Guest:Yeah, it's about movement.
Guest:It's about utilizing movement to express character or express emotion.
Guest:And what about Shakespeare?
Guest:How comfortable are you with it?
Guest:I love Shakespeare.
Guest:It wasn't the cornerstone of our training, restoration comedy was, but you do a lot of Shakespeare.
Marc:I can't wrap my brain around it.
Marc:Shakespeare?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I know he's great.
Marc:I'm not well read in it.
Marc:When I see the plays, it's hard for me to follow.
Marc:I know it's brilliant, but I can't, I just, as someone who does Shakespeare,
Marc:Do you find that it evolves with you, that from when you were a student to now, that it gets deeper as you get into it, that it keeps revealing itself to you?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And you understand the ideas and the concepts better, and your feeling for it evolves.
Marc:Your father did a movie Lear, did he, was he ever, because it seems to be the journey of a lot of British actors to eventually.
Guest:They actually avoid Lear for quite a long time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it's like the last, well, that and Prospero are the last one.
Guest:They're hoping they make it to that.
Guest:Right, I know.
Guest:We also really encouraged Dad to do it, and he just kept putting it off, putting it off, you know.
Guest:Was he, what do you think, was he afraid?
Guest:I think because it sort of means that you've got to that point, you know what I mean?
Guest:And that's in terms of you're that old.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his mind, you know, I remember we were at a pub with him and it was Christmas and this girl came in in a little sort of...
Guest:school girl sort of dress on with a sort of Santa Claus hat and she was collecting for charity and we're in the middle of a conversation this girl comes in and he stops he's not listening anymore so what's going on talking he just stops and he just follows this girl as she walks in looking at her and she's this gorgeous girl he walks to the back of the bar and he turns to me and he notices that we're all looking at him he goes in my mind I'm still 28 years old
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I think that was it.
Guest:That's why he didn't play Lear.
Guest:I think it's like he probably thought he had more time.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was the film you directed?
Guest:Oh, it was this movie that I wrote called Darkmore, and it was about subliminal advertising.
Marc:What drove you to do that?
Marc:You just wanted to try it?
Marc:Was it a short?
Guest:No, I went right for the whole thing.
Guest:It was a feature film.
Guest:When I saw it several years later and I realized it was one of the most pretentious things I'd ever seen.
Guest:And I thought, I'll dub it into French because I'll probably get away with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you ever do that?
Marc:No, I didn't.
Marc:That's still on the background.
Guest:I could rewrite all the dialogue and...
Guest:yeah i mean you know visually some of it still works but in terms of you know the writing and the story it was i was way out of my depth and have you have you done any directing since i've directed theater yeah i've directed theater and it you have a desire to direct film
Guest:Yes, I'm curious about it.
Guest:I mean, it seems as though the game's changed a lot because there's a huge, huge emphasis on technology and CGI and sort of producing a really big experience.
Guest:But you can do a little movie.
Guest:People do a little movie.
Guest:They're hard to fund.
Guest:They're really, really, really difficult to fund.
Marc:I know.
Guest:I talk to guys.
Guest:You have to dedicate your life to it.
Guest:Right, to make one movie.
Guest:To make one movie seven years into a movie that no one will see, maybe.
Marc:It's tough.
Marc:Yeah, it's really tough.
Marc:So how long before you got out of school, before you started working?
Guest:Probably about eight or nine months after I got out of Central.
Guest:Then we have a thing called Pantomime in England, which is around the Christmas holidays, and they're orientated towards children.
Guest:So my first job was playing a character called Young Dick in Treasure Island.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And that was on stage?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I was a sort of wannabe pirate, you know, pirate in training with the whole.
Guest:But it was, you know, it was, you know, Long John Silver.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Do you love this stage?
Guest:It's great fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's really good fun.
Marc:Is it in movies?
Marc:Movies can be sort of tedious, right?
Guest:Well, the acting part of movies is great.
Guest:There's a lot of waiting around.
Guest:But it's a different type of pressure and intensity.
Guest:And even on big budget movies, you don't get that many opportunities.
Guest:You're still talking about three or four takes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:yeah yeah and and but like theater it's right there there's no there's no breaking you know you're in it you've got four weeks to practice though yeah that's true that's true but like every night you can feel the audience and they're different yeah you know and then certain nights you can always tell friday night audience is different from a saturday night audience and yeah stuff like that sometimes they don't laugh where they're supposed to or they're not saturday night audiences will normally have less energy because they've been out shopping all day i've noticed that too in stand-up like friday for some reason
Guest:reason friday night it's great it's the beginning of the weekend yeah and everyone's excited that's what it is yeah i couldn't i'm drinking and it's like a relief from work and the you know the pressure the lids blown off the top right they they they want to have a good time right and my thought has always been that saturday they realize the life they're living
Guest:i just assumed they spent all day either you know they've got kids right shopping and they're doing these catching up they've had a you know they've had a busy day and they're tired by the time they haven't had a nap yeah and they get to the theater and it's like oh god we've got tickets right here we go
Marc:exactly down there and then this better be good yeah i can barely yeah and then they're already thinking about monday right yeah dinner so like the number of movies you've done is a lot ben mont you played ben montench in dead man yeah that was the um the movie with iggy but you know who that is don't you ben montench that's hilarious ben montench is the piano player for tom petty and the heartbreakers
Guest:Well, that was Jim Jarmusch's In Joke.
Guest:It was?
Guest:Did you know that?
Guest:No, I didn't know that.
Guest:That's bizarre.
Marc:I just got his record.
Marc:They just sent it to me.
Marc:Really?
Marc:He was in here.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Ben Montage.
Marc:How long ago?
Marc:It was great, but I didn't know that.
Marc:Oh, that's interesting.
Marc:Okay, but you did work pretty intimately with Jarmusch.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:What was he like?
Marc:He was great fun.
Guest:I mean, we essentially improvised that entire scene.
Marc:It's a trippy movie.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's the one with Johnny Depp, right?
Guest:Johnny Depp.
Guest:He gets shot through the heart early on, and it's sort of a journey about him making his way over to the West Coast, isn't it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's the passage of his soul, isn't it?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I remember seeing it and not quite wrapping my brain around it, but now that I have this information, I will go back and look at it appropriately.
Marc:And the Andy Warhol one, was that the one with Lily Taylor?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was good.
Marc:Yeah, she was great in that.
Marc:See, I didn't know you were Andy Warhol, now I gotta go put that back together.
Marc:The fucked up thing is, man.
Marc:Is that you know until a week ago till I knew you were coming over like I didn't connect you with fucking Mad Men could I'm like that's a compliment I like that I had no idea I remember I mean and I watched all your episodes I've watched the entire series and I'm like that guy's great thank you and but then like and then I'm like but that's the guy from from happiness I was my mind was blown thank you I'm happy
Guest:That's exactly what I'm looking for.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Now, as you evolve as an actor, when you look at yourself in happiness and you're doing that Russian thing, you have an ability for dialect, obviously.
Marc:Some people don't have that.
Marc:And you pulled that off because Coppola thought you were a Russian.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, when you approach a British character like Lane... Yes.
Marc:What do I do?
Marc:What are your resources?
Guest:Well, I...
Guest:I thought that, well, first of all, Lane, he's a middle-class Englishman who has wanted to be accepted by the upper class, so he's adopted their ways and their appearance and their manner of speaking.
Guest:But they know exactly where he comes from, and they'll never let him in.
Guest:They'll never let him in the club.
Guest:They might let him into the lobby.
Guest:The British.
Guest:Yes, the British will.
Guest:Whereas in America...
Guest:they accept him as who he wants to be, how he wants to be perceived.
Guest:So he sort of falls in love with America for that reason.
Guest:And in my mind, there was a certain sort of BBC radio speak that people grew up with back then
Guest:in terms of what you were hearing and what you were trying to imitate, if you like.
Guest:And one of the models for that character was my stepfather, who I think was born in Liverpool.
Guest:But he became the sort of quintessential English gentleman, Rex Harrison.
Guest:But he didn't come from that background at all.
Marc:It was an illusion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, you sort of try and again, you're using patterns and role models of people that you've met.
Guest:They were teachers.
Guest:They were friends of my family that you would sort of pick bits of the character out and construct this idea of the person in your imagination.
Marc:And so you spent a lot of time with Rex Harrison.
Guest:About five years, yeah.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:We were teenagers.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And we spent a lot of time with him.
Guest:He didn't have a lot of time for kids, really.
Guest:He didn't find them very interesting.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The phrase for us was, you know, he would complain to my mother about your buggering kids have screwed up the lift again.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, stuff like that.
Marc:The cranky guy.
Guest:He was a bit cranky, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He accepted us because he was in love with my mother.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know his movies beyond the ones that we mentioned.
Marc:But he had a pretty big career, right?
Marc:Huge, yeah, sure.
Marc:Isn't that bizarre?
Marc:Like, I mean, Dr. Doolittle, I know.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, and My Fair Lady.
Guest:But then was most of it, what were the... He was in a big movie called, I think it was with Charlton Heston, called, I think it was The Agony and the Ecstasy.
Guest:He did lots of them, yeah.
Marc:But it was a brief window.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, fuck, you were in Lincoln.
Guest:Hell, yeah.
Guest:It was Grunt, yeah.
Guest:I'm enjoying this.
Marc:This is great.
Marc:You were fucking great in that.
Marc:Thank you, man.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:That was, that must have, because by that time, see, I still didn't know it was you.
Marc:This is fucked up, dude, because, like, I was watching Mad Men, and then I go see Lincoln.
Marc:I'm like, there's that fucking guy from Mad Men again.
Marc:And then, like, the last week, I'm like, that's the guy from Happiness.
Marc:That's Richard Harris' kid.
Marc:What the fuck?
What the fuck?
Guest:So now you got- I shot Mad Men, my last episodes of Mad Men and Lincoln at exactly the same time.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I was going back and forth from Virginia to Los Angeles to shooting them.
Marc:Grant was such a, like, how much research did
Guest:you do on that because he was like he was an insane character yeah I did a lot of research and what a great great character he is and never he's never really been given his due he deserves his own his own study if you like his own treatment either on film or his life was huge so you could probably it would be better as a mini series or something like that but an extraordinary story you think of the absolute terrible luck that he had in the early part of his life what was that
Guest:He just, well, he failed at every single business venture that he tried.
Guest:And, you know, right up to the before the war started, he was selling firewood to keep his family fed on the side of the street corners.
Guest:And I forget what the town was.
Guest:And he would see old army buddies because he fought in the Mexican war under Zachary Taylor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And who would try and give him money and he wouldn't take it because he was intensely proud man.
Guest:And, you know, if the war hadn't broken out, you would never have heard of Ulysses S. Grant.
Guest:But when the war broke out, they needed someone to train the local militia, you know, so that they could send people.
Guest:And he was, well, this guy, he was in the army.
Guest:Let's get him to train people.
Guest:And he managed to work his way to get a commission in the army.
Guest:And if you think about it, you know, he was selling firewood.
Guest:And then eight years later, he was president of the United States.
Guest:And if that is not the quintessential American story, then I really don't know what is.
Marc:And when you were researching this as coming from where you come from, because you've got, what was that audition process like for you?
Guest:you go on tape you put yourself on tape and then he watches it and that was what you were reading for my first day on set is when I met Spielberg and that blew my mind I mean it's Steven Spielberg yeah the guy is a legend yeah it certainly is every actor in the world wants to work with Steven Spielberg and but you knew you were auditioning for Grant yes so you did this research yeah before so now what was it that that from that story that was the key to his character for you
Guest:There was something sort of doggedly determined about the guy.
Guest:There was the famous story on the eve of Shiloh when he gets it completely wrong on the first day and they're almost defeated.
Guest:It's really the lack of daylight as the sun going down which brings the engagement to an end and they're not able to completely turn his position.
Guest:And they're all talking about retreating.
Guest:All of his generals are saying we should get everyone back over the river and retreat and everything.
Guest:And his thing is absolutely not.
Guest:We're going to attack them first thing in the morning.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he gets reinforcements and he just goes at them and hammers them.
Guest:And he basically says, they'll be as tired as we are.
Guest:Whoever attacks first and pushes it is the person who's going to win this.
Guest:and on some level he was a guy that didn't have a lot to lose you know in terms of like he'd already the worst that already happened to him right in a way he's getting I think he gets a bad rap from history because some of the things that he pulled as a drunk yeah you know those sort of stories that follow you around and then they think that his achievements were based purely on numerical superiority and the resources oh really yeah and but really he pulled off strategic maneuvers that had only successfully been done before by Napoleon you know
Guest:He had balls.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There was that in terms of sort of things that you that you want to qualities that you would you want to show in the audition.
Guest:You're looking for those kinds of things.
Guest:But you also, you know, you don't want to you can't completely whitewash the whole thing because you want to show, you know, your versatile.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the whole.
Guest:as much as you can, the quality of the man, good and bad, and then it's whatever's appropriate for the scene, because you have to play the scene.
Guest:And what was it like working with Spielberg?
Guest:I mean, you're just trying to absorb as much of the man's knowledge as you possibly can.
Marc:And there's a lot there.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, he's enormous.
Guest:And the other thing is that I was really impressed with was his enthusiasm and his joy and excitement and love for shooting film and for making a movie.
Guest:And you can really see there's this sort of tremendous momentum and excitement there.
Guest:And you look at that and you see that energy in him and you realize why it's in every frame of every movie he's done.
Guest:yeah he can load it up yeah and what was it i mean that scene with you and daniel yeah i know on the porch i know yeah that was extraordinary because you you know i didn't meet him um beforehand and um you know you're waiting and then suddenly you look out across the field and there's abraham lincoln making his way across a muddy field coming towards you because it's daniel day lewis it is abraham yeah
Guest:Yeah, and he's in character.
Guest:He arrives as Abraham Lincoln onto set, and then you engage with him as Abraham Lincoln for the whole day.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes, which I found to be really fun and exciting, and it's a challenge, you know.
Guest:And then he wants to be like, hey, Daniel.
Guest:Well, you know, yeah, you told me you can't do that.
Marc:Mr. President.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:He wants to engage with you on.
Guest:He wants to stay.
Guest:It's a tremendous act of concentration.
Guest:If you think about it, he wants to stay.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:He wants to stay there in the zone, if you like, you know, maintain his focus for the entire time.
Guest:So he never feels like he's suddenly putting something on when the camera starts.
Guest:You know, he's just he's there the whole time.
Guest:But when we got in the car and we went back at the end of the day to go and, you know, you take your costume off and everything.
Guest:He's a huge fan of Mad Men.
Guest:His wife is.
Guest:So we were chatting about the show.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:You know?
Marc:Once he took the hat off.
Marc:Yeah, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Nice guy?
Guest:Lovely guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, an amazing actor, tremendous actor.
Marc:Did you, like, is that one of those situations where, I mean, having observed that and maybe not working like that, because he seemed to have processed exactly what can be gained from doing that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:From that type of commitment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that something that would appeal to you?
Marc:Would you find a purpose for it?
Guest:You know, he knew a year ahead of time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That he was going to be doing it.
Guest:I mean, someone in my situation, you don't find out with anything like that kind of time.
Guest:You normally find out if you're lucky, maybe a month ahead of time.
Guest:But normally it's a few weeks.
Marc:But it still might not be the way you would want to do it.
Marc:I mean, you can enter a role however you're going to enter it, I'd imagine.
Guest:Yeah, depends.
Guest:I mean, at the end of the day, it's imaginative.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And you have to be flexible.
Guest:And once you get to set, the circumstances always change.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I appreciate the fact that when you do it that way, you can't really say to that person, well, I really don't think that, you know, say you're playing Ozzy Osbourne.
Guest:I don't think he would do that.
Guest:And you go, well, he is that character.
Guest:You can't.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Can't argue with the guy.
Guest:Because he's him.
Guest:Because he's him, exactly.
Guest:I appreciate that.
Guest:On other jobs, like, wow, that's really clever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what is the hope?
Marc:I mean, there's the movie that you're sort of pushing now.
Yes.
Marc:It's a horror movie.
Guest:Yeah, it's a supernatural, psychological horror film.
Guest:Well, it's a small movie.
Guest:You know, it's a low-budget movie.
Guest:We made it in England two years ago for less than, you know, $2 million.
Guest:And it's really, you know, it's experimental.
Marc:The Quiet One.
Guest:Yeah, The Quiet.
Guest:ones and but the hope is not unlike many horror films that yeah they will break out yeah um you know horror is a big tent yeah you know um there are a lot of subsets within horror yeah jaws is a horror movie great movie uh yeah completely fuck the ocean yeah same here same here even actually for a while swimming pools me too at night swimming pools at night not happening not happening yeah
Marc:um thank you steven spielberg did you thank him for that on set uh he said so many people have said that to him in his life of course everyone i talked to of our age group yeah who saw it when it first came out are you kidding me yeah disaster i went i went to the beach like the week after and i was like there's no way yeah
Guest:you know Alien was a horror movie but I mean this is more in the vein of sort of horror films like The Others or Rosemary's Baby or something like that because it's relying on it's relying on your mind and your imagination rather than shock yeah and chopping people's heads off I like those kind of horror movies Rosemary's Baby is a beauty that's a beauty man
Marc:What's wrong with his eyes?
Guest:When you think about that movie, there's one effect in the whole film.
Marc:Where she's fucking Satan.
Guest:Yes, and the little kid with the eyes, and that's it.
Guest:Otherwise than that, it's purely about suggestion.
Guest:It's almost about paranoia.
Marc:It's also about Cassavetes' character.
Marc:Yes, brilliant.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Marc:Oh, and Ruth Gordon, the creepy old Satanist in the Dakota building.
Marc:Yeah, that stuff is beautiful.
Guest:So you're in the whole... So this is in that... Basically, the story is it's an attempt to disprove the...
Guest:The validity, if you like, of the supernatural and my character's premise is that the supernatural comes from what we think of being the supernatural is really just a manifestation of the human mind and the human psyche and that we're creating it and then ascribing quasi-religious explanations behind it.
Guest:Do you believe that?
Guest:You know, I think the thing that always interests me about people's stories, about having had experiences, is it still doesn't explain what it was or where it came from, you know.
Guest:And I don't know what I believe about that.
Guest:So many people have... I've never experienced anything.
Guest:A lot of people have...
Guest:And sometimes the sort of things that you read in these sort of, you know, I'm reading this book about Stephen Hawking's at the moment called The Grand Design, and some of the stuff that they're positing in those things are, they're as crazy as anything that people come up with in the...
Marc:right religion and yeah it's a trippy it's a tricky thing because like you're dealing with with an individual's perception under whatever pressure that individual is under and and and that perception is going to make connections however that individual is going to perceive order and things you know like with those kind of maybe not specifically supernatural events but where you're like well that's weird that i saw that and yesterday i was at that other right like
Marc:you're loading it up with your own sort of, I don't know if it's paranoia, but I think it's a need.
Marc:It's that same thing we were talking about before.
Marc:It's a need to think there is something bigger than you outside yourself.
Guest:We have a sort of knee-jerk reaction to rationalize
Guest:our experience and um when you come across something that you don't know what it is you immediately go well it was because and use x y and z and if you've been indoctrinated into the it's particularly catholics seem to have this whole thing with the possession type stories well how would they not they were very popular yeah um within the sort of catholic communities it does it's not surprising that they would manifest
Guest:that type of behavior, whereas if you're in a completely different culture, you know, you probably find that there aren't a lot of those stories in maybe in Hindu cultures or something like that because they don't believe in it.
Marc:And there's also more players in a lot of those cultures in the sort of pantheon of religion.
Marc:I mean, as a Catholic, you grow up with a fairly intimate relationship of the devil you conceive.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, it's the one guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're going to reckon with Satan.
Marc:They're out to get you.
Marc:Yeah, and you're going to reckon with Jesus.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you're given this food for thought, which is a hell that you're going to make as fucking horrible as you want.
Marc:I mean, it's fueled art for centuries.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it's all there.
Marc:It doesn't take much to trigger in a Catholic.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you're happy with this film?
Guest:I really love making it.
Guest:We had a great time.
Guest:It was only about five of us.
Guest:It was a five-hander, you know, five characters.
Guest:So it was like we were sort of a little theater company performing in this village up in Uxbridge, preparing this sort of strange performance art piece.
Guest:Because we rehearsed for two weeks.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then the audience come in.
Guest:And, you know, when you...
Guest:On a movie on that scale, you don't have all the resources that you have on a bigger film.
Guest:You have to just put so much more into it in terms of the hard work and the commitment and the passion and the belief in everything.
Guest:When you see that on the screen, it's really exciting.
Guest:And the film really lives and dies by the intensity of the relationships and the intensity of the experience that we had making it.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:And what are you hoping?
Marc:You're living out here now?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And just got married.
Marc:I got married in November.
Marc:Congratulations.
Marc:First time?
Guest:No, it's not my first time.
Guest:Do you have kids?
Guest:Not yet.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Well, good for you, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She seems pleasant.
Guest:She's loved.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I started tweeting like Mrs. Harrison.
Marc:I'm like, who the hell is that?
Marc:And then I'm like, Jared's going to do WTF.
Marc:I'm like, oh, OK, I get it.
Marc:And then she came with you.
Marc:That's very exciting, man.
Marc:Congratulations.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:And how long you been out here?
Guest:Oh, in L.A., probably since 2008.
Guest:I've lived in America mostly since 1990.
Guest:In New York before this?
Guest:Yeah, in New York for a long time, yeah.
Guest:And you liking it out here?
Guest:I know it's not cool because, you know, New York people used to say they'd look down their nose at it, but I...
Guest:Fucking love it out here.
Marc:I was in New York for 12 years, and you know what?
Guest:I was ready to leave.
Guest:I was ready to leave, too.
Guest:And it's a different place.
Marc:It is.
Marc:People from New York are like, I don't know.
Guest:You smell jasmine when you come to your house instead of urine.
Guest:Yeah, and you can cook in your kitchen.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:You have people over for dinner.
Guest:They'll actually come around.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, you kind of have to.
Marc:You've got to make plans here.
Marc:Where in New York, you could just sort of like, all right, I'll take the train.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what to you would be a great opportunity?
Marc:Obviously, you've had plenty, but what do you want to do as an actor?
Guest:As an actor?
Guest:Gosh, that's tough.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:uh there's a couple of projects that i'm attached to like independent movies um that i independent films are harder and harder to uh to do to get off the ground and um and for me they're they're more interesting in that they're gonna ask you to do something that you haven't done before whereas
Guest:In the big movie stuff, they generally ask you to do something that you've done before.
Guest:And you try and find a different way of putting a spin on it so it's fresh and so it excites and interests you.
Guest:But independent movies I'd like to do.
Guest:Some more independent movies.
Guest:I haven't done enough of them lately.
Marc:And lead roles?
Guest:I mean, lead roles, big roles, juicy roles.
Guest:I mean, you know, my thing is I say to my agents and managers all the time, you know, Ned Beatty won an Academy Award for one day's work on network.
Guest:So there's no such thing, literally.
Marc:And what a day's work that was, dude.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:I just got chills.
Marc:Am I getting through to you?
Marc:That was the greatest beat.
Guest:You have meddled with the primal forces of nature.
Guest:am i getting through to you what's crazy about that movie is because i was talking to some of the people on the the kids on the movie about it on this and um when we're doing the promotion and stuff is it all came true prophecy it all came true i mean the news media now is nuts and he and what was his name finch uh yeah peter finch was one of the great underappreciated british actors until that was he i wonder if he was a buddy with your pop
Guest:I don't think so, no.
Guest:So your dad would long enough to see your work.
Marc:Yes, absolutely.
Marc:And what was the feedback?
Guest:I remember him coming to see the first play that I did.
Guest:I mean, I think initially he wasn't, he was prepared to be embarrassed and disappointed because he didn't think I, you know, I never exhibited any kind of interest in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my mother had come and seen it and she said, you know, he's really very good.
Guest:You went, well, you would say that is his mother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I saw him after the play and I'll never forget the look on his face.
Guest:I mean, he just had this look of excitement, shock.
Guest:He was thrilled.
Guest:And it was also, wow, we're going to be able to connect in a completely new way.
Guest:And he said, wow, you've fucking got it, man.
Guest:You've fucking got it.
Guest:And we talked for the next three hours at dinner about the minutiae of the performance and about the interpretation, about the play, about...
Guest:the challenges of of uh you know how do you express certain stuff and and i mean it was great i had a totally different conversation with him from that point onwards you know that's amazing man because like he probably was like that kid that kid yeah he's gonna do yeah and i surprised him that's a beautiful uh story man thanks for talking to me thank you god bless you
Marc:That was touching.
Marc:That was great.
Marc:I like talking to British people.
Marc:Is that weird?
Marc:It takes a few minutes to sort of get the groove going, but what a great guy.
Marc:I really enjoy talking to him.
Marc:And as you know, go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Check my calendar.
Marc:You can leave comments.
Marc:We left the comment board.
Marc:You can get the app, and if you get the free app and upgrade to the premium, you can stream all of them.
Marc:On Thursday, Ben Montinch is going to be here.
Marc:He is the keyboardist for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and a great musician, and he just got a record out.
Marc:I like talking to musicians.
Marc:Tom Petty?
Marc:Are you fucking kidding me, man?
Marc:But Ben Montinch was great.
Marc:It was great to talk to him.
Marc:I'm still sweating.
Marc:I'm still sweating.
Marc:I think I ran like four hours ago.
Marc:Boomer lives!