Episode 589 - Michael Imperioli
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksicles how are you i'm mark maron this is wtf welcome to the show very excited today
Marc:uh michael imperioli christopher is on the show i don't know if he likes that uh but that's what he's known for god damn it i miss the sopranos do you ever sit down and just think to yourself fuck i miss the sopranos
Marc:Like back, can you say back in the day?
Marc:I don't know if it was back in the day, but when they were on, it was really the first kind of show of its kind where you just look forward to it.
Marc:It was like a craving.
Marc:Like Sunday nights, you lock in and just what's going to happen?
Marc:I had no idea that was coming.
Marc:That type of television, that sort of, I don't know if it's long form or serialized.
Marc:I mean, there's nothing new about that, but just the fact that, like Breaking Bad that way too, that you enter every episode not knowing what the fuck is going to happen.
Marc:And also the great characters.
Marc:And Michael Imperioli, he played a great character on that.
Marc:And he was great in Goodfellas.
Marc:And he's great in his movie.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:He's a great guy.
Marc:And I was thrilled to talk to him.
Marc:Because he's one of those guys, the character was so defined on The Sopranos where you think, I'm going to talk to that guy.
Marc:And he's not that guy.
Marc:But it was great talking to him.
Marc:Made me miss New York, you know.
Marc:And I was just there.
Marc:I didn't mention some stuff about New York.
Marc:You know, as I go back, I finally got some good weather.
Marc:I think I told you that.
Marc:And I went down.
Marc:I lived there a long time.
Marc:And on a nice day in New York City, there's really nothing that compares to it.
Marc:There's nothing like New York.
Marc:There's no comparing any other...
Marc:city or place or or feeling to New York because it is it is of itself and it is amazing huge spectacular moving the best city and I was talking to some guy cab driver of all people because that's what you do in New York right but we're just talking about it about how nothing feels like New York you get in it
Marc:And when you're in it, you're filled with the energy of it.
Marc:And if you know how to be there, there's nothing more exciting.
Marc:Just a walk in New York City on a beautiful day.
Marc:And there was a couple of moments there.
Marc:You know, I was walking and I was in between things.
Marc:I was there to meet with people for a thing, about a thing.
Marc:I had like two hours.
Marc:And I was just, it was almost like fall weather.
Marc:And obviously I went to Joe's and I had the slice.
Marc:Or two, maybe three.
Marc:Don't, you know what I mean?
Marc:I was on a trip.
Marc:And...
Marc:I was wandering around and I literally had nothing to do.
Marc:I was like, why don't I have anything to do?
Marc:I'm in New York.
Marc:Isn't there somebody I need to see?
Marc:Isn't there someplace I need to go?
Marc:And I was like, no, man, you're just in New York.
Marc:You're just here.
Marc:So I went to a place that's near and dear to my heart.
Marc:I went to the secret meeting place at Perry Street and went back in time to the early days of the crazy clean time.
Marc:Historical place, if you know what I'm talking about.
Marc:Some of you do.
Marc:If you don't, if you're in the secret society, be sure to go to Perry Street when you're in New York City.
Marc:It's a classic.
Marc:It's an institution.
Marc:It's old timey, man.
Marc:But I was with my my producer, Brendan McDonald, my business partner in this endeavor, WTF.
Marc:And, you know, we were downtown and we were at a meeting.
Marc:We went to a meeting about a thing and we were right there at the World Trade Center at the site and at the new building.
Marc:I had not seen the new building and I had not seen the memorial.
Marc:And I was there that day.
Marc:I was in Queens on my roof, feeling obliterated and in shock.
Marc:And I don't think I'd been down to that site, certainly not since it had been under construction.
Marc:And maybe, you know, I had gone down there weeks after the horror.
Marc:where it was just a smoking pile of steel, mangled steel, that you couldn't really get close to, but you could see down the street.
Marc:And I remember there was a lot of talk about what the memorial would be, what the new building would be, and everybody was chiming in about this or that.
Marc:So I had been really out of the loop, because I had left New York.
Marc:But I felt compelled, and I felt like I needed to go see the memorial.
Marc:I had no idea
Marc:what it was going to be like, what effect it would have, how it could be effective.
Marc:And it was amazing.
Marc:It's an amazing memorial.
Marc:It's literally the bottoms of the original towers.
Marc:There's two of these pieces to this memorial.
Marc:And it's just a giant square.
Marc:It's a hole.
Marc:And it's a waterfall on all four sides.
Marc:And then there's a pool at the bottom.
Marc:And then another square hole.
Marc:It's just darkness that you can't see anymore.
Marc:the bottom of the water goes into it all around the top are the names of the victims.
Marc:And there were two of these and they're massive and they're quiet and they're subtle and they're profound and they're moving.
Marc:I didn't know how I would feel when I went down there, but to stand there and to, to have the reflection and to have, to honor the dead and, and, and honor the, the, the memory of what happened there and the ongoing,
Marc:sort of heartache of that.
Marc:You don't really realize that you have this heartache, this grief, until you check in.
Marc:You check in with it.
Marc:And there's something that was felt obviously around the world, but certainly if you lived in New York, it was a profound injury.
Marc:And as I stood there, I was like, you know, they did this right, man.
Marc:You know, I am moved.
Marc:I am thinking back.
Marc:I am elevated.
Marc:And it was beautifully done.
Marc:And it's something you should really see if you're in New York.
Marc:No matter what you think about what happened, it happened.
Marc:And people were killed that day.
Marc:And it was horrible.
Marc:But to really pay respect was no easy trick.
Marc:And I don't even know who designed this thing.
Marc:But to use the space of the towers that were once there and why they're gone and what that represents and to integrate into that space a sense of living grief and respect for everyone who was lost there
Marc:It was no easy trick, no easy task, and it's a beautiful, beautiful piece of living memorial art.
Marc:And the new tower is nice, got to be honest.
Marc:I didn't go up in it, but it's nice.
Marc:It's hard to be there, but I'm glad I did.
Marc:It definitely had the effect of bringing back something painful, of integrating the grief and of elevating the loss and sending it off.
Marc:It was a little bit of closure there.
Marc:It was profound.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:You don't know how something like that's going to hit you.
Marc:But obviously, you know, there were those of us who were there.
Marc:And it was, yeah.
Marc:Well, everyone knows.
Marc:I'm not saying anything new.
Marc:It was a tough day.
Marc:But the memorial was spectacular.
Marc:And I appreciate it.
Marc:Also, a funny thing happened in NYC.
Marc:I thought it was a classic thing.
Marc:I was in a coffee shop having a coffee with Brendan, and I was walking out, and I knew some guy was looking at me like, you give me that look, that look where it's sort of like, yeah, I know who you are, and I like you, but I'm trying to be cool.
Marc:Happens.
Marc:I've had that look for others.
Marc:I'm familiar with the look from within and without.
Marc:And I'm walking out, and he looks at me, and I look at him, and I'm like, hey, what's up, buddy?
Marc:He goes, hey, hey, Mark.
Marc:Hey, Mark.
Marc:Yeah, big fan.
Marc:I'm a big fan.
Marc:And his brain got a little jangled there in the moment.
Marc:And I was saying, well, thank you.
Marc:Nice meeting you.
Marc:I asked him his name.
Marc:I don't remember now.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:He told me his name, and I'm walking out.
Marc:And he goes, hey, hey, keep up the good luck.
Marc:I mean work.
Marc:Keep up the good luck.
Marc:Oh, boy, I screwed it up.
Marc:But keep up the good luck.
Marc:That was a beautiful mistake.
Marc:It was one of the greatest things I ever heard.
Marc:I'm walking out, I'm like, dude, that's a shirt.
Marc:That's what that is.
Marc:Keep up the good luck.
Marc:I'm going to try, man.
Marc:I've been trying all my life.
Marc:Finally got a little run of it.
Marc:But Jesus, folks, keep up the good luck if you can.
Marc:If you got a run going, keep up the good luck.
Marc:I cleaned the garage, man.
Marc:I'd like to say I do it yearly, but I hadn't done it in a while, and I had to throw out a lot of stuff, move some stuff out, vacuum.
Marc:Where does the dust come from?
Marc:I don't even have the window open here.
Marc:What is dissolving?
Marc:What is eroding?
Marc:What is coming apart that causes so much dust?
Marc:Is it just from me?
Marc:Am I emanating dust through the guests?
Marc:It got to the point here.
Marc:Well, obviously, I've been in production a lot, and some of you have figured out that sometimes we record interviews and we don't...
Marc:put them up right away but now it's like we got to get back on it and i was sitting in my garage i'm like i'm a little ashamed of this mess and it no longer has the kind of cluttered charm that the garage once had now it just looks cluttered there's just stacks of shit everywhere there's chaos there's a mess there's garbage there's dust and now i got it yeah i cleaned it up can breathe in here and now it's time to start entertaining people again
Marc:more frequently with pride in my cluttered shithole of a garage looks good though looks good i feel all right about it found some interesting stuff uh it's weird when you do the cleaning because like i was like i gotta do it i set my mind to it but then you end up just just watching your life slowly pass before your eyes as you go through piles and boxes you know looking at my high school diploma
Marc:looking at stuff i wrote 10 years ago i got a stack of fucking like uh week at a glances from 2001 1999 what i don't even know why i kept those i think you had to keep them at some point for tax reasons just looking at my schedule that was sort of weird underneath an amplifier in here like a little amp that's flush with the ground it's flush with the floor of the garage
Marc:I picked it up and there was a fully preserved lizard skin.
Marc:A lizard had shed his skin under there perfectly.
Marc:And I don't know how it got under there because it was almost pressed.
Marc:I don't know if it was magic, but I do know that a lizard shed his skin perfectly.
Marc:beneath an amplifier in my garage.
Marc:And I've tried to do that.
Marc:I can only aspire to the perfectly shed skin.
Marc:Right now, let's enjoy my conversation with Michael Imperioli.
Marc:spectacular great guy you're just gonna i mean if you're a fan you're just gonna love hearing his voice i just loved listening to him for as long as we talked all right here we go
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I guess I associate you with New York in my head.
Guest:Oh, I was there forever until two years ago.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Are you happy about it?
Guest:You don't seem thrilled.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I'm very happy.
Guest:No, it was time for me to change.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where'd you go?
Guest:Santa Barbara.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So why Santa Barbara?
Guest:You know, I didn't want to live in a big city anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the thing.
Guest:I mean, New York is the greatest city in the world, but if you don't want to live in a big city, you can't live there.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Well, you could have went upstate.
Guest:I'm not really crazy about the suburbs in New York.
Marc:But no, but further up, like the country, the Hudson Valley.
Marc:I wanted something different.
Marc:We were ready for something different.
Marc:Do you live by the beach?
Marc:About a mile and a half.
Marc:That's not bad.
Marc:How long of a drive is that?
Marc:An hour and a half.
Marc:Well, thanks for coming down.
Marc:Thanks for having me.
Marc:It's weird because you're one of those guys that I feel like I've seen all my life.
Marc:I feel familiar with you, but of course I'm not.
Guest:No, I feel the same about you.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:We're not familiar with each other at all, but we feel like we are.
Guest:But in reality, we're not, right?
Marc:No, I don't know.
Marc:I guess not.
Marc:I mean, like, because it's hard when you do a role like you did on The Sopranos for as long as you did it for people not to have this fucking relationship with you.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:And then, like, even, you know, when you played Spider and all that stuff, like when I was, you know, younger.
Marc:I feel like I was younger when I saw you.
Marc:How old are you?
Marc:Almost 49.
Marc:Alright, so I'm 51.
Marc:Not that big a difference.
Marc:But I mean, I imagine that people come up to you all the time and they're like, hey, what's up?
Marc:All the time.
Marc:All the time, yeah.
Marc:It's never gonna go away!
Guest:Probably not.
Guest:I fucking miss that show, buddy.
Guest:Do you?
Guest:It was a lot of fun.
Guest:You know, I miss the camaraderie.
Guest:I knew a lot of those guys even before The Sopranos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From other jobs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Some of them from acting school.
Guest:Who?
Guest:I knew John Ventimiglia, who played the chef Artie Bucco.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's in your movie.
Guest:I met him when I was 17 in acting school.
Guest:And we were roommates.
Guest:And then Sharon Angela, who's also in my movie.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:The Hungry Ghost.
Guest:We went to acting.
Guest:I know her since I was 19.
Marc:Really?
Yeah.
Marc:How old were you, around the same age?
Marc:It's hard for me to get ages.
Guest:Yeah, but we, you know, some of those people in my class started working together in indie film and in theater, and we started a company together.
Guest:What school was it?
Guest:It was an offshoot of Lee Strasberg Institute.
Guest:It was a woman named Elaine Aiken who started her own studio.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Alec Baldwin was in that class for a while.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it was one of those ones where everyone kind of gravitated around the personality of that woman, whoever that was.
Marc:What's her name?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Elaine Aiken, yeah, she died a number of years ago, but she was a great teacher.
Marc:So you were part of that whole sort of New York acting thing, like going through that school.
Guest:Yeah, we did that.
Guest:I took some classes with Stella Adler.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Who was Brando's teacher.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She was still alive.
Guest:I took some classes with her.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:17.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:And you just had to do that, right?
Yeah.
Guest:I just said, you know, I finished high school and I wound up not going to college.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I kind of bailed the night before I was supposed to leave in September and just said I was going to go upstate to Albany.
Marc:State school to SUNY?
Marc:SUNY.
Guest:And I was like, you know, I want to be in the city.
Guest:I want to be an actor.
Guest:And that's what I did.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know, my teacher was really cool because she was like, you know, look, you don't have to go to college, but if you want to be an actor and you want to be an artist, you have to really educate yourself and you have to learn about art.
Marc:This was Elaine?
Guest:Painting and music and literature.
Guest:She told you that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I went to museums with her and she turned me on to books.
Guest:One-on-one?
Guest:Sometimes, yeah.
Guest:So this woman who was, what, in her 70s?
Guest:By then, she was probably in her late 60s, maybe early 70s.
Marc:Is taking you around, the 17-, 18-year-old kid?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:To the Museum of Modern Art and stuff?
Guest:To the Met.
Guest:She was very generous, you know, that way.
Guest:And very, you know, another kid who was in that class, a guy named Tom Gilroy, who's now a writer-director.
Guest:He just had a movie called The Cold Lands that came out, and he directed a movie called Spring Forward a number of years ago.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And he was an actor then, and we started... He started...
Guest:We produced an Arthur Miller play called Incident at Vichy that Tom directed, and I produced back in 88.
Guest:I started producing when I was in my early 20s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he started directing, and then he started writing, so we started producing his stuff.
Guest:And a lot of the people who were in my movie were way back in the 80s we were doing this stuff.
Marc:But no, it's interesting to me.
Marc:It's also interesting how when she would take you to museums and stuff, what did you learn?
Marc:What did you put together at that time?
Marc:Because where did you grow up?
Marc:I grew up right outside of the city in Mount Vernon, New York.
Marc:And what was your family like?
Marc:What'd your old man do?
Marc:He was a bus driver in the Bronx.
Marc:Really?
Marc:For 30 years, yeah.
Marc:So he's a government job, right?
Marc:City job.
Marc:City job.
Marc:Got his pension, retired.
Marc:That's what he was gunning for the whole way, right?
Guest:Semi-retired.
Guest:He still works, but he gets a pension.
Guest:What's he do?
Guest:He drives a couple of doctors.
Oh.
Guest:Oh, Perl likes in the car.
Guest:Yeah, it's pretty mellow.
Guest:They treat him really well.
Guest:And your mom?
Guest:My mom's retired.
Guest:She was in the school.
Guest:She worked in a public school.
Guest:So what'd she do?
Guest:Teaching or?
Guest:No, secretary.
Guest:And so you grew up working class, New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Italian?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Very?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Italian, you know, third generation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But very much that was my neighborhood and friends and stuff.
Guest:Catholic?
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Food.
Marc:Lots of it.
Marc:Good food.
Marc:Good stuff.
Marc:Well, you won the Chop thing.
Marc:I was obsessed with Chop for a long time.
Marc:I won the celebrity competition.
Marc:I've had Conant on here, Scott Conant.
Marc:He wasn't on my episode.
Marc:I've had, what's her name, Alex Gernicelli.
Marc:She was one of my judges.
Guest:She's tough, man.
Guest:She was good to me, though.
Marc:She was really good to me.
Marc:Who were you up against?
Guest:The finalist was Brandy Chastain, who was the Olympic women's soccer team.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was the chick who took off her shirt and was wearing a sports bra, that famous picture.
Guest:It was me and her in the final.
Guest:Was she good?
Guest:She was pretty good, yeah.
Guest:Where'd you learn how to cook?
Guest:You know, I worked in restaurants for many, many years in all aspects of the business.
Guest:And I learned a little bit there, but then I really learned from doing it because my wife doesn't cook.
Guest:So when we started having kids, we used to get takeout in New York from every restaurant because we were always on the go.
Guest:And I started hating every... I just got sick of everything.
Guest:Stack of menus.
Guest:Yeah, I just wanted home food.
Guest:So I started learning stuff that I liked and, you know, still just keep...
Marc:after you know 18 years of doing it you start you got a knack for it getting good yeah yeah but you know you gotta have a feel for it yeah I like to eat so I like to eat but some people can't fucking do it they can't cook they just can't get it yeah it takes a little I guess you have to have a little knack
Marc:I think the key is you have to be able to conceive, conceptualize what you're cooking.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got to see the end.
Guest:You got to see the end and you get inspired by an ingredient.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like where I live, they have a great farmer's market on the weekend.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you see what's in season, what looks good.
Guest:And then you're like, oh, I can make this.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:With this and- You love it, right?
Marc:Oh, it's nice, yeah.
Marc:All right, so back to the museum.
Marc:So you're hanging around with this acting teacher.
Marc:What's her name again, Elaine?
Marc:Elaine Aiken, yeah.
Guest:Famous.
Guest:I think John Ventimiglia and I went with her when they had a- I remember in the late 80s, they had the Hermitage in Russia.
Guest:They sent this big collection of a lot of the big impressionists like Van Gogh and Picasso and stuff, but stuff that had never been seen in the West, you know.
Guest:for a long time i don't think the it was probably right before before still before the wall came down yeah but somehow they had this exchange so we went to see these paintings and it really made it big it was the first time i kind of understood what an artist did you know like well what is he doing what he's not just painting what he sees he's painting he's interpreting what he sees through his emotion that day i really kind of sunk in right so exactly what she wanted you to know about art yeah
Guest:Yeah, there was a painting by Van Gogh called Rain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I haven't seen it since, but it was very abstract.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it was, you know, it was his thing of the rain.
Guest:And then it kind of clicked.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:For me, at least at that point.
Guest:It's a good moment, right?
Guest:It was a big moment, yeah.
Guest:But, you know, I remember that.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And it really instilled, you know, a conceptual notion of what an artist does or can do.
Guest:And she gave me that.
Guest:That's very big for a teacher to instill in a student, you know.
Marc:Well, it's interesting that she knew innately, as somebody who's teaching creative people how to act, that you need to know about these other things.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:If you're not going to go to college, you need to broaden your thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She never said you need to get good headshots.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She was totally unconcerned with-
Guest:the whatever methods of getting work.
Guest:She never spoke about agents.
Guest:She never spoke about auditions or anything like that.
Guest:She was all about the craft and that was it.
Marc:And what, do you still use her principles or ideas?
Guest:Yeah, all the time.
Guest:I do because it's, the thing I took most from her is a way of creating privacy.
Guest:On the set, really.
Guest:So you can be free to express yourself without inhibitions.
Marc:And now that was an idea she showed you guys.
Guest:Well, through technique, through... They use sense memory.
Guest:There was this one exercise called private moment, which basically you create, say...
Guest:You know, Mark, you're going to create how you feel in this because you like being in the studio.
Guest:You get inspired in the studio.
Guest:You create here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you imagine, okay, here's the walls.
Guest:Here's the shelves.
Guest:Here's the books.
Guest:And then you infuse that with whatever scene you're doing.
Guest:Okay.
Yeah.
Guest:And I can use that because sometimes you're shooting on the street and there's people watching and there's helicopters and there's noise and there's people yelling and let's go, let's go.
Guest:You need to find a way to center yourself, to concentrate, to focus in these things.
Guest:And that's one way that really works for me and that's something that she taught us.
Guest:That was a big...
Marc:exercise for her yeah and I noticed you know in your movie which I watched yesterday which it's been a few years right we shot that in 2008 and where is it at now you can just get it it's available on well it was on Netflix for a long time I don't know if it's still there it was there for a long time
Guest:It's called The Hungry Ghost.
Guest:So I don't know if the website, if you can order it there.
Guest:Virgil Films is the distributor.
Guest:You could probably order it from them.
Marc:Were you happy with that movie?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:How long did it take you to make that?
Marc:25 days.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you wrote the whole thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And directed the whole thing.
Marc:You have a little bit of a cameo in there.
Marc:No.
Marc:You're not in it at all?
Marc:No.
Marc:I thought you were the cop.
Marc:You're not the cop.
Marc:That's my brother.
Marc:I look at him and I'm like, geez, he put on weight.
Marc:What?
Guest:My younger brother, yeah.
Guest:My father was the guy who picks Steve up in the car service in the beginning.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No, I thought it was a very engaging movie, and it was a little disturbing, and it took on all the big questions, but I noticed that everyone was acting their balls off.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:In the sense that these were... Because I didn't know a lot of those people.
Marc:I know the kid.
Marc:I saw him in the movie with... With Ryan Gosling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think this was his first movie.
Guest:How old was he?
Guest:He was 18.
Guest:I didn't know him.
Guest:That was pretty much the only part that we auditioned people.
Guest:Pretty much everyone else in that movie, the parts were written for them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My wife and I had a theater that we built in New York.
Guest:We produced new plays for a number of years.
Marc:I remember that.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:Studio Dante.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And about 18 or 19 of those actors were either in productions or in the class.
Guest:We had classes there.
Guest:We taught acting.
Guest:You taught?
Guest:Yeah, I taught Sharon, Angela, Vince Curatola, who played Johnny Sack, and Nick Sandow, who is now on Orange is the New Black.
Guest:He's the other lead in the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Four of us taught at the theater, but mostly we produced new plays.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sharipa, I know from comedy.
Marc:He used to book a room at the Trop.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you work the room there?
Marc:No.
Marc:No, I never worked there.
Marc:But I remember his name and I remember him being around.
Marc:But did you stand up in Vegas?
Marc:Not much.
Guest:I wanted to bring my son tonight because he's a stand-up comedian.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:Yeah, he just turned 17 Saturday.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And the last year he's been performing in clubs.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:I don't know if I've met him.
Guest:No, you've never met him.
Guest:But he's a junior in high school, so he had a lot of projects, but he couldn't make it down.
Guest:But he kind of was the one who said, you have to do this show.
Guest:Because he has a book that you wrote that I got him.
Guest:Oh, my book?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a very big fan of you.
Marc:That's very nice.
Marc:That's what landed you?
Guest:He kind of sealed the deal, you know, because he's a big admirer of you.
Guest:Well, that's very sweet.
Marc:What's his name?
Guest:Vadim.
Guest:Vadim.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where'd you get that name?
Marc:That's a Russian.
Marc:My wife is Russian.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's exciting, man.
Marc:I wish him the best of luck.
Marc:How's he doing?
Marc:Is he funny?
Marc:He's funny, man.
Guest:He writes his own stuff.
Guest:He's good.
Guest:He performed once in L.A.
Guest:at the John Lovitz Club at Universal City Wall.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's horrendous.
Guest:It was a good experience for him because he was with, you know.
Guest:Real comics?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just a weird location.
Right.
Guest:Yeah, it's not a destination.
Guest:It's people who are going on their way.
Guest:But the staff there is great.
Guest:They're really good people.
Guest:And he's done a bunch of clubs in Santa Barbara.
Guest:He opened for Lee Camp.
Guest:He opened for Yakov Shmirnov.
Marc:Yakov.
Guest:I had Yakov in here.
Guest:Yeah, a team opened for him once in Santa Barbara.
Guest:A couple of pretty good comments.
Guest:So what's he got, like 20 minutes?
Guest:15, 10, 15.
Marc:That's great, man.
Marc:How do you feel about your kid going into the arts?
Guest:I mean, that's scary watching him.
Guest:I mean, 10 o'clock on a Saturday, there's a room full of drunk people.
Guest:He looks really young.
Guest:He's 17, but he looks even younger.
Guest:He gets on stage, and it's pretty frightening.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But in terms of like, are you concerned for the struggle of entering show business?
Guest:I think today everything's a struggle.
Guest:I mean, what isn't a struggle?
Guest:I mean, it's, you know, he's going to have to support himself doing other things anyway.
Guest:So it's not unlike any other job, it seems.
Guest:That's a good way to look at it.
Guest:People are going to do what they're destined to do and what they would hopefully.
Marc:If they feel the courage, yeah, and the support.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he has a really good teacher in Santa Barbara named Louise Polanker.
Guest:A stand-up teacher?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, she runs a teen... That's how he got into it.
Guest:She runs a teen comedy class in Santa Barbara.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:And he was kind of doing class clown stuff and getting in class clown trouble in school.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I found this class.
Guest:I said, you're going to go...
Guest:You suggested it?
Guest:He said, no, I don't want to do this.
Guest:And the first time he went, he goes, that's the greatest thing I've ever done.
Guest:And now he's hooked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I suggested it to challenge his energy.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:And now it's stuck.
Guest:And Louise is a great, she's been a great mentor.
Marc:And now you've got a comic in the family.
Marc:I've got a comic in the family.
Guest:And what are the other kids?
Guest:How old are they?
Guest:Is he the oldest?
Guest:He's the middle.
Guest:I have a daughter who's 24 who's into photography.
Guest:She's in school in New York at SUNY Purchase.
Guest:Shooting?
Guest:Shooting and art management now.
Guest:Really?
Guest:She's getting into studying that.
Guest:And then I have a 13-year-old boy who's into guitar.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:All artists.
Guest:All in the arts.
Marc:All in the arts, yeah.
Marc:You play guitar, right?
Guest:I do, yeah.
Marc:You good?
Marc:Yeah, that's very... What?
Marc:You know what I'm saying.
Marc:I mean, I play in a band.
Marc:I mean, I read about that.
Marc:I couldn't find a record, though.
Marc:The soundtrack was a great soundtrack.
Guest:The opening instrumental is my band, is Zopa.
Guest:But a lot of the singer that you hear, the singer-songwriter stuff, that was...
Guest:Elijah Amatun who plays in my band, he plays bass, but he writes his own music and he scored a lot of that original stuff.
Guest:It sounded great.
Guest:Yeah, he did a lot of that for the- Yeah, some of it sounded kind of stonesy.
Guest:Yeah, he's really good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the band stuff, like the opening instrumental is our band, but he did his own stuff for the score.
Marc:Was that the original dream or was it the side dream?
Guest:Rock and roll, playing music.
Guest:Acting kind of was the first thing I went into, but I started playing in bands pretty much at the same time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I played guitar in one band, and then I started singing with another band right when I started working as an actor.
Yeah.
Guest:couldn't do both at the same time at that point in my life.
Guest:So, you know, I was, you know, the one band I was in, I was singing.
Guest:It was a drummer and a guitar player.
Guest:And they went on, they, you know, after I left, they got this woman, Brenda Sauter, who was in the Feelys.
Marc:Oh, I'm in the Feelys.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they formed a band called Wild Carnation out of that.
Guest:Some of the music that we wrote, they went on and did...
Guest:other versions of without my lyrics.
Guest:Did you all right?
Guest:Yeah, really good.
Guest:That was something.
Guest:In the 80s in New York, a lot of people were doing a lot of different things.
Guest:It wasn't uncommon for artists to- Basquiat had a band that he played in a band with Vincent Gallo.
Guest:Vincent Gallo does a lot of things.
Guest:Vincent Valgo was a painter when he started, before he was an actor.
Guest:Are you friends with him?
Guest:I met him once on the street.
Guest:We ran into each other and had about a two-hour conversation on Bleecker Street.
Guest:That was the only time we ever met.
Marc:I don't wonder if he lives here.
Guest:He's an interesting guy.
Guest:Yeah, I'm curious about that guy.
Marc:Yeah, I haven't seen him in a while.
Marc:I don't know what he's up to.
Marc:He's very talented.
Marc:He's a little scary to me.
Marc:Some people think that, I guess.
Marc:He's just one of those guys where he strikes me as a guy.
Marc:He's like, I don't know if he's fucking with me or not.
Guest:No, we had a very... It was one of those times you just...
Guest:All of a sudden, you stop what you're doing and have this two-hour conversation with someone you never met.
Guest:It was very, yeah, it was really interesting.
Marc:Well, New York in the 80s.
Marc:I was there in 89.
Marc:You know, that's when I got there.
Marc:And it was sort of like there was still that feeling of vitality to Lower East Side art scene and what was left of performance art was sort of still around.
Marc:It was right before it all kind of went away and became something else.
Marc:It seemed like a very exciting place to live.
Marc:It was very exciting.
Marc:When were you there?
Marc:83.
Marc:Oh, so that was like the middle of it.
Guest:And you were like, what, 17?
Guest:17, yeah.
Guest:It was like Oz.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, not the TV show.
Guest:Yeah, everything was still happening.
Guest:It was very exciting.
Guest:Parties and stuff.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And did you know Basquiat?
Guest:No, I didn't know.
Guest:I knew some of the people from that scene a couple of years later, like Kenny Scharf and Debbie Mazar was part of that scene, and Joey Arias and those people.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was exciting.
Marc:God damn, man.
Marc:Well, I know, like, watching your movie, like, if you wrote that, if that came out of you, you had to fight with something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there was... A lot of people had, you know, a lot of people in my circle.
Guest:That movie came out of a place of, you know, spiritual searching and... Addiction.
Guest:Seeing a lot of addiction around me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of, you know, and what started out as...
Guest:kind of part of the scene and kind of you know casual and part of the lifestyle and and then over time you see it start to just destroy people it's horrible yeah yeah people get strung out can't stop who's yeah and they rely on it and you know it's it goes from being you know something that's that's part of your youth to put something that's killing you yeah you saw a lot of that
Marc:yeah well that movie like they're struggling with uh you know spiritual elements you know and and to be the lead character was an interesting character it reminded me a little of the movie like it's a hard role to play you know the the guy that is you know sort of demonically possessed with the truth and it's existentially sort of what he thinks is the truth right yeah but he's he it's all a negation and
Guest:Yes, that's what it became.
Guest:He probably started out with very good intentions and had a lot of artistic sensibilities and ambitions, but never quite fulfilled them and was a seeker, a spiritual seeker.
Guest:And then that stuff started to turn on itself when he couldn't... Basically, he couldn't let go of his ego.
Guest:He wanted it on his own terms, you know.
Guest:He kind of was almost too smart for his own good.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he understood things in a very literal, intellectual way, but he was never able to really integrate those things into true, compassionate action.
Guest:He does, he takes this homeless guy in, but he starts out with very different intent.
Guest:He kind of does it as this kind of...
Guest:karaoke and kind of beat on the road where I'm hanging with this guy drinking in the park and then he kind of feels responsible he gets a motel room he puts this guy up and this guy kind of you know starts to treat him like shit you know and shits all over himself and he has to clean it up and you don't see it but I spared the viewers all that stuff but I thought that was an interesting moment because what's that guy going to do and the fact that he cleaned him up you know was you know was sort of an interesting moment right that he made that choice right could have split yeah it um
Guest:It kind of was based on a real-life experience, actually.
Guest:My wife and I owned a bar for a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've never actually told anybody that it was based on this.
Guest:What happened was, there was a guy who was drinking in the bar, got really drunk, passed out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we kind of figured, all right, let him sleep it off.
Guest:Now it's 4 o'clock in the morning, we're cleaning up, the guy's still passed out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we wake the guy up.
Guest:Turns out he's on leave or AWOL or something from the military.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And doesn't know where he's staying.
Guest:This is with bars in Chelsea.
Guest:Doesn't know where he's staying in New York.
Guest:His ID says Arizona.
Guest:I call his father in Arizona.
Guest:His father doesn't know anything.
Guest:Doesn't know where he's staying.
Guest:Doesn't know if he's with the army or not.
Guest:And the guy was an asshole.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The guy was, you know, just...
Guest:degrading women, cursing at other customers, nasty to me, you know, fuck you.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Marc:No, you can cuss here.
Marc:You can.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:But now he passes out.
Guest:Now he wakes up.
Guest:I don't know what to do with him.
Guest:So I put him in a cab.
Guest:I get in a cab with him.
Guest:Is he still shit-faced?
Guest:Shit-faced.
Guest:Out of his mind.
Guest:Doesn't know where he is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We go to this hotel.
Yeah.
Guest:on the west side that i know is like a flop house and cheap place because you know i didn't have i didn't have a lot of money on me then or whatever yeah get him a room was like 50 bucks bring him now i gotta get him up the stairs and he starts cursing at people and i start yelling at him pretending i'm like his sergeant yeah i'm like you're a soldier your job is to protect the people not to abuse the people he's like oh yeah yeah okay yes you're right
Guest:And put him in bed.
Guest:You took that role?
Guest:And put $5 on his... Yeah.
Guest:The nightstand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then closed the door and then just left.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, a lot of people say, well, why are you going to do that?
Guest:You know, the guy's an asshole.
Guest:You should just... But if I left him on the street, he probably would... Someone would have kicked his head in or something because he was... Rolled him, whatever.
Guest:Yeah, or he would have started mouthing off to the wrong person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know, so when I was writing the script, I kind of thought of that thing and it's like, when you take that step to kind of help somebody, just because you feel a little bit, you know, he was young.
Guest:He was probably 21, 22.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He got drunk in my place.
Guest:Now I feel kind of responsible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I didn't know what else to do.
Guest:I'm not going to take him to my house.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Because, you know, I have kids and the guy, yeah, who knows what he's going to do.
Guest:Right.
Yeah.
Marc:But you felt like you wanted to take care of him.
Guest:I didn't have the heart to leave the guy on the street, which was the only other option.
Guest:He didn't know where to go.
Guest:He had a hotel key with no name of the hotel on it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It was just like- So maybe he'll figure it out the next day.
Guest:That's what your thought was.
Guest:He's going to figure something out the next day when he's sober.
Guest:At least he'll know where the hell he is.
Marc:But what were you saying about when you start to get involved, when you do something compassionate, there's a moment where you-
Guest:Well, you know, where you're opening yourself to, it's not necessarily going to go the way, you're not going to get reward.
Guest:I mean, the guy, like, abused me the whole time, pretty much.
Guest:Cursed at me.
Guest:Well, attacked me at one point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When we got out of the cab, started, you know, went at me.
Guest:And that's, I just remember that.
Guest:I left that part out of the story.
Guest:Literally attacked me and I had to kind of calm him down again.
Guest:But you take that step and it doesn't, just because you're acting out of a...
Guest:You're trying to be a nice guy doesn't mean that it's going to go the way you want and they're going to understand that you're being nice or appreciate it.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:That's where that scene came out of.
Marc:Well, that's interesting, isn't it?
Guest:It's not the same scene, but it was inspired by it.
Guest:But the idea of selflessness, let's say... Because it was, I think, I'm looking back on myself saying it was kind of a bullshit, altruistic act in my mind.
Guest:I think I was kind of...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, maybe in some respects.
Guest:Well, no, you took care of the guy.
Guest:I felt kind of responsible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I probably shouldn't have served him all those.
Guest:I didn't serve him.
Guest:Someone else did.
Guest:But we probably should have been a little more careful on how much the guy was drinking when we were, you know.
Marc:So it wasn't completely altruistic.
Marc:You wanted to clear your conscience.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Probably.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's still good.
Marc:I never heard back from the guy.
Guest:Never heard back.
Guest:Well, I didn't leave him my information, but I don't even think he probably remembered where he was.
Guest:I don't know how he got there.
Guest:I think he got there with people, but at some point he was alone.
Guest:He didn't remember who he was with.
Guest:I mean, imagine waking up in this hotel.
Guest:Then I thought, God, imagine he's going to wake up in that hotel room hungover.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's not going to know where the hell he is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even when he walks out, he's not going to know where he is, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He had no money on him.
Guest:Exciting day for him.
Guest:Exciting day.
Guest:Trying to figure out how to get back.
Marc:But with all that, did you find that with that script, because, you know, it's nicely shot.
Marc:It's beautifully put together.
Marc:It's a big undertaking, that movie.
Marc:It's funny because I noticed you were shooting at Gimme Gimme Records.
Marc:They have one.
Marc:I just saw him.
Marc:It's him.
Marc:It's the same guy.
Guest:He moved here.
Guest:He was a friend of the producer.
Guest:Yeah, Dan.
Guest:He let us have- I've shot there on my TV show.
Guest:I drove by and I was like, God, that's the place.
Marc:I texted him last night.
Guest:I said, look at your old store.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, same guy.
Guest:And we got posters from- Robert Pollard gave us some posters.
Marc:Oh, from, yeah, Guided by Voices.
Guest:And Lou Reed gave us a poster to use for the movies.
Guest:oh that's nice see i had to reach out for my tv show i got to reach out to everybody you can't fucking everything you can't put anything up yeah did you know lou reed yeah he came to this when we uh screened it in new york he came to see it which was a big deal for me i get you know lou is my hero basically yeah out of anybody god i fucking love him and uh i just bought a second copy of the blue mask yesterday
Guest:Oh, that's a good one.
Guest:So he performed in 2000.
Guest:He did the Ecstasy album and he did a tour and he played at the Knitting Factory in Tribeca.
Guest:So I called my manager.
Guest:I said, listen, could you get... Because the show was on the air.
Guest:So then I was able to get tickets sometimes.
Guest:I said, can you get tickets for Lou Reed?
Guest:She said, okay.
Guest:Because it was sold out.
Guest:She got me tickets.
Guest:The show was over and my wife and I was about to leave and someone came and said, Lou wants to meet you.
Guest:And I was like...
Marc:Just out of nowhere?
Guest:Well, I guess they got the tickets through the publicist.
Guest:But you never met him before.
Guest:I met him twice, but he didn't know who I was.
Guest:I met him on the street.
Guest:I lived in the village.
Guest:You'd see Lou Reed walking around the village from time to time, and a couple of times I said stuff, but he didn't know who I was.
Marc:Because I went and got a record signed by him in college at a record store.
Marc:I told a story before.
Guest:He was just shopping there.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:He was there to sign the record, and I waited on line to get it.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:What record was it?
Marc:Well, I got him to sign Transformer, but he was on the new Sensations junket.
Marc:But he signed Transformer.
Marc:Yeah, I got Transformer.
Marc:But I got all the Velvet stuff.
Marc:I got all kinds of stuff.
Marc:I love that guy.
Marc:All right, so, okay.
Guest:So we went backstage, and he was like, you know, he just was really nice.
Guest:stayed in touch.
Guest:He was nice.
Guest:What did he say?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He just was very complimentary about the show and my acting, and he was really happy that I came.
Guest:And I just said, man, I said, your music...
Guest:has always been with me in my adult life and has got me through a lot of things, and he gave me a big hug.
Guest:It was a very big moment for me.
Guest:And on my wall, my office, I have the last email that I got from him two months before he passed away.
Guest:You know, to me, he was the great American poet of the 20th century.
Guest:No doubt.
Guest:I mean, him and Ginsburg.
Guest:I mean, when you look at the scope of what he's done over all this time, I mean, he was still so, throughout his, you know, to the end of his life, so creative and still doing new music and just being brilliant.
Guest:And so New York.
Guest:So New York.
Guest:It's not the same without him.
Guest:It can't be.
Guest:No.
Guest:Did you go to the funeral or anything?
Guest:No, I didn't go to the funeral.
Guest:I was here on the West Coast.
Guest:I wasn't able to get back.
Guest:Did you know he was sick?
Guest:Yeah, everyone pretty much knew.
Guest:And then I found out that he had the transplant.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Is that what happened?
Marc:Didn't take?
Marc:Is that what happened?
Guest:Mutual friend said, yeah, he got the transplant.
Guest:It wasn't so... I got back in touch with him and then...
Guest:You know, that was, yeah.
Guest:But the night we had the screening of The Hungry Ghost was at the Rubin Museum in New York, which was a Buddhist museum, Tibetan Buddhist art.
Guest:And he came, and I was like, that was, to me, that was...
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:But that was a generation.
Marc:We're a third generation away from that.
Guest:But they were around, man.
Guest:I worked at a place called Cafe Brooksells on Greenwich Avenue in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Across the street from that place, this is 1988, there was a place called the Rare Book Room.
Guest:So one day I walk into the place, Gregory Corso's in there.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:With the owner.
Guest:Gregory Corso's behind the counter.
Guest:I don't know if he's working there or what.
Guest:And then Herbert Hunky walks in.
Guest:Really?
Really?
Guest:And Peter Orlovsky.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Those guys were all still around in the 80s.
Marc:Hunky must be just a little tiny ex-junkie, huh?
Guest:Hunky, right when he died, I was living on the same floor as the Chelsea Hotel.
Guest:He lived on the 8th floor.
Guest:He lived in the Chelsea Hotel?
Guest:For about a year, and he was on the floor of that.
Guest:And the last time I saw him, I helped him in the cab, and he said, someday I'm going to do the same for you.
Guest:And then he died a couple of months later.
Guest:Did you meet Ginsburg or was he gone?
Guest:I met him on the street outside St.
Guest:Mark's Church, outside of poetry reading, got him to sign Kaddish.
Guest:How do you pronounce that?
Guest:Kaddish.
Guest:Kaddish.
Guest:All those guys were around.
Guest:Great.
Guest:For years.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Burroughs was in New York for years.
Marc:I never met Burroughs.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I think he lived down on, you know, over by CBGB somewhere for a while.
Marc:He lived on the Bowery, yeah, the Funker.
Guest:And, yeah, there's, John Giorno lives in that loft now.
Guest:Still?
Guest:I think the same place, yeah.
Guest:I think he inherited it or took it over from Burroughs.
Marc:Who turned you on to those guys?
Guest:At what point?
Guest:You know who was the guy that I mentioned, Tom Gilroy, who's now a filmmaker.
Guest:He turned me on the road.
Guest:When you were like 18, 17?
Guest:I had never even heard of those guys.
Guest:And then I started reading all the beat.
Guest:And that was your thing?
Guest:I loved beat.
Guest:Got you in, right?
Marc:Gets you in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right, because it gets you into New York.
Marc:Through that portal, you get to Warhol, you get to Lou, you get to everybody in a way.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because if you're compelled creatively along those lines, all of it, even the art, I mean, people resist it.
Marc:They'll fight back against it, but that was it.
Marc:That beat New York is where it was at.
Guest:Well, the beats really kind of gave birth to the hippie movement.
Guest:Yeah, but I'm not sure that they're happy about it, but yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, look at the influence it had on, you know, politically and culturally and artistically.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I think that, like, the pushback against, like, you know, whatever Eisenhower was doing or whatever.
Marc:But, like, between Neil Cassidy and William Burroughs, you know, you get a lot of things, you know?
Marc:I mean, you don't really get, like, they all seem to have their role.
Marc:Because Burroughs is the portal to all that heroin stuff.
Marc:I mean, to, like, you know, the glorification of it, any of it.
Guest:And then there's the Paul Bowles thing.
Marc:Yeah, and Brian Geison doing the dream machine.
Guest:Pretty wild stuff.
Guest:Do you know they just found this long lost letter?
Guest:Have you heard about this?
Guest:The Joan Anderson letter, which it's called the Joan Anderson letter.
Guest:So Neil Cassidy wrote Kerouac a letter.
Guest:You mean Kerouac's wife?
Guest:Joan Anderson was a girl that Neil was dating at the time, but he wrote Kerouac a letter.
Guest:This is before On the Road.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:18 page letter.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Kerouac reads this letter and it basically, you know, he wrote The Town and the City, which was a very much straightforward.
Marc:Like Thomas Wolfe book, yeah.
Guest:Right, classically in style.
Guest:He read this letter.
Guest:This letter basically changed the way, and Kerouac had this epiphany.
Guest:I'm going to write like this guy, this spontaneous bop prose.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which is how Neil wrote letters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Neil was 22, but he was in, you know, kind of a reform school.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But had this incredible literary sense.
Marc:So Joan had this letter.
Guest:They call it Joan Anderson because he mentions this story of Joan Anderson, a girlfriend, I think who wound up in a mental hospital or something like that.
Guest:Anyway, Kerouac gives it to Ginsburg and it circulates among the beats and then it's lost.
Guest:It's been lost since the 50s.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It just resurfaced in the archives of an old defunct publishing house called the Golden Goose Press.
Guest:But this one letter really- Was the key.
Guest:To changing kind of American literature.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's really quite- They thought it fell into the Pacific Ocean near San Francisco of Sausalito.
Guest:That was the last time it was seen.
Guest:Hasn't been seen in 50 years.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's the letter where he's like, all right, well, Neil's not going to do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:I guess it's on me.
Marc:It's pretty wild.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's fascinating that you're into this shit because, I mean, I love it.
Marc:I love it.
Guest:Yeah, no, it was a big, big moment in literature.
Marc:But for you, I mean, I think that it sort of...
Marc:informs to me you know certainly that movie you know this the search the the idea of searching for either you know spiritual truth or poetic truth or artistic truth i mean it seemed like you know that's you're compelled by that and that you know whatever gift the beat generation gave you whatever the gift elaine gave you in understanding that you have that within you it's sort of what drives you
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So in terms of struggling with these things, was drugs ever a problem for you?
Guest:No, that wasn't a problem for me.
Guest:But it was a problem for a lot of people around me.
Guest:So you saw the horror of it.
Guest:But what about the spiritual search?
Guest:Where did you land on that?
Guest:I was brought up Catholic.
Guest:I got exposed to the Buddhism through Jack Kerouac, through reading his stuff in my early teens.
Guest:But I kind of liked the...
Guest:ideas of it but I wasn't I wasn't really ready for it you know so I started to around this time when I wrote this movie I was really reading a lot of different kind of spiritual writers like Gurdjieff and Ospensky and Castaneda and all that stuff you
Guest:I liked it a lot, but it didn't really, nothing really kind of took hold of me till I started reading Tibetan Buddhism.
Guest:Really when I started going to teachings and started seeing actual real authentic Tibetan Buddhist teachers.
Guest:You started going to teachings?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What does one do there?
Marc:You just sit there?
Marc:Listen to the teacher.
Marc:To the guy?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, my teacher is a guy named Garchan Rinpoche, who's a Tibetan Buddhist lama.
Guest:He's in his late 70s now.
Guest:He spent 20 years in prison in Tibet after the Chinese occupied Tibet in 1959.
Guest:And then when he got out of prison, made his way to the West, through India.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know, like I said, I would read a lot of these books before I got into Buddhism, and they would make sense, and they'd inspire me, but nothing really... After the book was done... Didn't stick.
Guest:Didn't stick, but through Buddhism, I found a practice that you can start to work on a daily basis or some semi-daily basis, and then...
Guest:then i felt things um sticking more like a meditation practice yeah meditation yeah definitely what else well reading reading you know texts and but the the the most important thing is to find in the tibetan buddhist tradition the the lama the guru the teacher is of paramount importance really fine and finding the right teacher
Marc:All right, so you do meditation and the Lama is of utmost importance.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Well, because he's your link to the teachings of the Buddha, which is, you know.
Guest:And that goes back.
Marc:His Lama goes back to his Lama.
Guest:Well, why I like the Tibetan tradition is that because of its geographic location, its isolation,
Guest:it was isolated for so many centuries that a lot of the teachings kind of stayed in very specific lineages, oral lineages from one teacher to the next.
Guest:So now in the 21st century, there's still these teachers alive, like Garchin Rinpoche, who became a monk in Tibet before it was occupied by the Chinese.
Guest:So now, are you in touch with your guy?
Guest:Yeah, I saw him last week in Arizona.
Guest:He has a center in Arizona, in the desert, in the mountains.
Guest:How often do you have to check in?
Guest:Well, whenever I can.
Guest:He has a center in LA, in Arcadia that he teaches there once in a while, and all over the world, actually, in Asia and Europe and Russia.
Guest:And when you say teachings, when you go, so you read and you teach.
Guest:He teaches on different things.
Guest:I mean, he'll teach on different aspects of Buddha.
Guest:I mean, the teachings of the Buddha are very vast.
Guest:The Buddha taught for 50 years.
Marc:Really?
Guest:There's a lot there, huh?
Guest:A lot, yeah.
Marc:How does it help you on a day-to-day basis outside of being calm or whatever?
Marc:How does it help you problem solve or move through things?
Guest:Well, I mean, this is more for other people to say about me who are with me all the time to confirm that it's actually true.
Guest:In my mind, I'd like to think there's certain things.
Guest:I mean, for me, it's...
Guest:A lot, you know, something happens and you react to it, right?
Guest:That's how, you know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So practice can give you a moment or a gap to think or pause before you react, right?
Guest:So if somebody cuts you off, your instinct is to drive by, give the guy the finger, cut him off, do something like that, you know, you get that impulse.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:This is just an example, right?
Guest:You an angry guy?
No.
Guest:No, not necessarily.
Guest:This is not even my own example.
Guest:It's a general example.
Guest:But then you can have a moment where you get the presence of mind that it's like, okay, is this what I want to do?
Guest:Is this going to be productive?
Guest:Because one of the big
Guest:Tenants and foundations of Buddhism is karma, right?
Guest:The law of cause and effect.
Guest:Every action has a reaction in those things.
Guest:So your action, if you do a very aggressive act, very often the reaction is going to be of aggression.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, I get it.
Guest:But, you know, and I knew these things, but before they only went so far and stayed intellectual, right?
Guest:When you actually start to... If you are lucky enough to be around teachers and be around really good, authentic teachers and develop a practice, then maybe you can be able to... I mean, I'm a student, man.
Guest:I'm, you know, kindergarten.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's working for you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I find a lot of... It's a very rich...
Guest:And a lot of wisdom there for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How many years you've been in it?
Guest:Funny enough, we shot this 2008, this film.
Guest:Then as soon as it was done editing, when the film was edited, one kind of found the teacher.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So 2009-ish?
Marc:Yeah, around six years.
Marc:Pretty recent.
Marc:Six years, yeah.
Marc:That's good, man.
Marc:And it doesn't require anything of you financially or promoting-wise?
Marc:It's not like a religion.
Marc:It's more of a...
Guest:Well, I mean, it doesn't require you to do anything, no.
Guest:I mean, unless you want to, unless you feel, you know.
Marc:Well, yeah, you support what you're going to support.
Guest:If you feel inspired to do that, but it's not, no, they don't recruit people.
Guest:They don't do any proselytizing.
Guest:They don't go door to door.
Guest:We don't do any of those things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So is that why you screened the movie at the Tibetan Buddha Center?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it must have been new.
Guest:By then, I forget exactly how that came about, but we thought it would be a cool, auspicious place.
Marc:It's interesting, though, because there is something poetic about Buddhism, and with your respect for Lu and for poets and for stuff like that.
Guest:Lu and I did a bunch of fundraisers for Buddhism.
Guest:Lu was a student of Mingyur Rinpoche, who was another Tibetan Buddhist lama.
Marc:Oh, was he?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For a long time?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, you know, when you become a Buddhist, you take refuge.
Guest:That's what it's called when you actually officially, whatever become, you take refuge.
Guest:It's called taking refuge.
Guest:I don't know if he did, but I know he studied with Mingi Rinpoche for a while.
Guest:He was involved in the Buddhist community in New York.
Guest:And you spent a lot of time with Lou?
Guest:i didn't spend a lot of time but the time i spent with him was very precious to me yeah i can't say i spent tons but i mean uh yeah yeah but you know he's a nice guy to you he was very generous and kind yeah that's sweet yeah
Marc:So the first, like, when you started getting roles, you were like, what, 18, 19?
Marc:When did you play Spider?
Marc:When did that happen?
Guest:When I was 23, 22, 23.
Marc:Were you friends with the kid who played the Otis brother?
Marc:What's that?
Marc:He's a New York actor.
Guest:Kevin Corrigan.
Marc:Yeah, Kevin Corrigan.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Were you in the same crew?
Guest:I know him now.
Guest:I mean, we met a little bit after Goodfellas.
Guest:But I knew his brother.
Guest:His brother and I worked in a...
Guest:wedding hall in the bronx as waiters really his brother kenny yeah oddly enough but kevin's a great actor i love kenny yeah i think he's tremendous i just didn't know if y'all how many of y'all knew each other i do i know him way back before you know probably right after good you worked in a wedding hall yeah just the italian weddings when when you're high school 17 yeah yeah a lot of kids in my neighborhood did
Marc:So you get this job with Scorsese.
Marc:That must have been amazing.
Guest:So you go in on a general casting?
Guest:I had just gotten an agent to start.
Guest:I guess I was 22, 88, 89, 23.
Guest:So I went to meet the casting director, Julia Taylor, Ellen Lewis.
Guest:And they said, oh, they liked what I did.
Guest:And the next thing I know is auditioning for him.
Marc:Was your mind blown?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I want Italian kid, actor in New York.
Guest:Scorsese.
Guest:And then I didn't know.
Guest:And then they said, De Niro's going to be in the scene with you.
Guest:I was just like, ooh.
Guest:You know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:It's like all of a sudden you're from, you know, college and then now you're playing on the Yankees or something.
Guest:You know, it's crazy.
Guest:Was he a big influence on you, De Niro?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:How could he not be?
Guest:How could he not at that point in time?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:In the 70s and early 80s.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So they cast you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, like, you got to do that thing.
Guest:I had to do that scene.
Guest:Oh, it was all...
Guest:Pretty much all the dialogue was improvised.
Guest:It was different every time.
Guest:Except for the line where he tells the guy to go fuck himself.
Guest:But all that other stuff was all improvised.
Guest:So Scorsese said, get to go fuck yourself.
Guest:Get there somehow.
Guest:Basically he said, all he said was... So the first scene, I don't say go fuck yourself in the second scene.
Guest:The first scene he just said, just bring...
Guest:Bring Jimmy a drink.
Guest:Jimmy was De Niro.
Guest:But the thing that Scorsese did that was so cool was he said to me, when I got there, he was like, treat the actors as the character on and off set.
Guest:and that made it kind of easy for me because i was so nervous you know yeah so i didn't have to relate so what i did was i told the prop guy i said let me um take care of the table which they did and i set up the bar yeah and then i went up to when dinero came sat down i went uh what do you want to what do you want to drink jimmy yeah and he was like
Guest:I shot a scotch in a glass of water.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At first he was kind of, and then, so I brought him, and this was not, the camera wasn't, right?
Guest:Right, right, yeah.
Guest:So that kind of helped, you know, just to kind of be that.
Marc:He played along with you after a week?
Marc:Yeah, oh, he loved it.
Yeah.
Guest:Because the last thing he wants is some young actor start to talk about Mean Streets or something to him.
Marc:He just wants to do his thing.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:He doesn't want to, how did you start in the business, Bobby?
Guest:He doesn't want to hear that.
Marc:So you're like a year into acting.
Marc:No, by then I was about five, six years.
Guest:I'd studied.
Guest:I'd gone on auditions and auditions for years and never got shit for years.
Guest:I did a play right before that.
Marc:So how'd you put together, because it's a very significant, there are two scenes that are great, but you put together a character.
Guest:Yeah, well, we started rehearsing.
Guest:See, the genius of Scorsese, we shot two days, one scene one day.
Guest:I mean, you have almost a whole day to do the whole scene.
Guest:The first hours in the morning are spent just rehearsing.
Guest:Yeah?
Yeah.
Guest:improvising right so I started off and I was a little bit of a wise ass and of course they said you know maybe it's good if this guy is like a little slow right like he's not just so I was like okay so I started stuttering which made you know gave Joe Pesci a lot to work with right that's how that we just did it different every time it's just like stuttering stuck
Guest:Yeah, I guess, you know, slow, I was like, well, slow, am I going to be like, duh, what do you want?
Guest:So I just, I don't know.
Guest:It was just an instinct.
Marc:And did he like it?
Marc:And Scorsese was like, that's it?
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:I mean, yeah, he just, you know, a good director, somebody like that, he just makes an atmosphere.
Guest:Like what I was talking about before, about you want to create, you want a sense of privacy so you don't feel inhibited.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The worst thing you could have is some asshole yells at you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Embarrasses you.
Guest:Makes you feel like scared to create.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then you close up and you just do... Has that happened to you?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a lot.
Guest:I mean, more before... You became... Anybody new.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:When you have a little bit of juice in the business, people tend to treat you with a little more respect.
Guest:But when you're young, they take liberties, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I know you've done a ton of movies, but like, you know, it's like... But The Sopranos... Like, I can't imagine...
Marc:Like, did you have any idea it was going to go for as well?
Marc:No.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Not in the beginning.
Marc:Did you know James before?
Guest:No.
Guest:I knew almost everybody else, but not him.
Guest:I didn't even know his work.
Marc:No?
Marc:No.
Marc:There wasn't a lot.
Marc:There wasn't a ton of it.
Marc:He'd done a lot of plays.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Broadway.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you become friends with him?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Right off the bat.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:One of our first scenes...
Guest:I was driving him, and I think it's the pilot.
Guest:It's in the pilot.
Guest:And we chase some guy.
Guest:He's running down the sidewalk, and we chase him with the car and stuff like that.
Guest:And now...
Guest:I didn't really know how to drive.
Guest:I didn't tell anybody that.
Guest:I had to back down the sidewalk with extras running around.
Guest:And I did it like five times.
Guest:On the fifth take, I smashed the Lexus into the tree.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was thinking, oh my God, they're going to fire me.
Guest:It's like my second day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:This guy's the star.
Guest:He must think I'm an idiot.
Guest:And he just looked and he said, you don't know how to drive.
Guest:He said, no.
Guest:And he just started laughing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and that's from then on it was always he he was a good really good guy yeah good friend that was so sad oh it's terrible it's just terrible it was just shocking and the people go and you're like how how does it you know certain people are just like these forces in the world and you're like now it's just gone yeah that was shocking right really shocking
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very young.
Guest:52.
Guest:Young guy.
Marc:Yeah, I guess he wasn't that healthy.
Guest:Yeah, but I know people who are less healthy who keep going.
Guest:Be honest.
Guest:I mean, a lot of people say, well, he didn't take care of it.
Guest:I said, you know what?
Guest:A lot of people don't take care of themselves.
Guest:It's a genetic roll of the dice.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Who knows?
Guest:Who the fuck knows?
Guest:I mean, I saw him two weeks before he died.
Guest:He looked great.
Guest:He looked happy.
Guest:He looked chill.
Guest:He was cool.
Guest:Well, I'm glad that he was happy.
Marc:yeah so you how many you did how many seasons like we did seven i fucking like i don't know what it was like to be on that show but like the experience of like looking forward to that fucking show you know every sunday was great it was it was there was nothing like it it's very exciting there's nothing like it for to be a part of it was very exciting in that respect now to do the to do to play a junkie
Marc:You know, I mean, what was your sense memory on that?
Marc:What were you leaning on on that?
Guest:I'll never tell.
Marc:You know, you make it whatever you want, you know, whatever you think is going to get you.
Marc:Now you're in New York, we all try something.
Marc:You know what you're doing.
Marc:But, you know, it was an interesting character.
Guest:Oh, he was a lot of fun to play, because he went all over the place.
Guest:Well, yeah, he's a screenwriter, then he's a dope fiend.
Guest:But he tried really hard, which I really liked about him.
Guest:You know, everybody talks, I got an idea for a movie, we should do this one, but he actually went and wrote, you know, he really kind of...
Guest:He had a lot of, you know, heart that way.
Guest:I admired that about him.
Marc:I liked that there was a sort of, there's a weird innocent sort of striving to him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But on the other side, he's just going to fucking kill her.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:And a nut and a jerk and all those things.
Guest:But made it very, very fun to play.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:Do you look back, I mean, is it nothing but good feelings about that whole situation?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Even if for the rest of your life, Christopher, you're going to be that guy?
No.
Guest:I don't have control over that.
Guest:I mean, at least it's something that I stand behind.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's an amazing thing.
Marc:Did you guys do like... I was wondering about how... Didn't they do all kinds of...
Marc:Like other stuff like lunchboxes and shit.
Marc:Did you guys get like part of that?
Marc:They did pinball machines.
Marc:Yeah, pinball machines.
Guest:Not much of that.
Marc:No?
Guest:No, I wasn't in my deal.
Guest:It's wild.
Guest:Not much of those things, yeah.
Marc:I wonder how much... Well, it doesn't matter.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you had a bar for how long?
Marc:Well, my wife had a bar when I met her.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So then I kind of worked with her there for a while.
Guest:My brother worked there.
Guest:My best friend worked there.
Yeah.
Guest:Was it, how long?
Guest:It was really small.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Really small bar, Little Lounge in Chelsea, yeah.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:CL Rouge.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:How long was that?
Guest:We built a theater after that.
Guest:How long did you run the theater?
Guest:We had the theater for about seven years.
Guest:That's a pretty good run.
Marc:What was the plan?
Marc:Did you crap out or what?
Guest:What happened was, well, it was a not-for-profit, right?
Guest:So it was all, we did fundraisers and we did donations.
Guest:But then in 2008, when the economy collapsed, we lost all our corporate funding.
Guest:And it became impossible.
Guest:So that was the thing.
Marc:So you've done a lot of big parts, small parts, all kinds of movie parts.
Marc:What was the content floss movie?
Guest:That was a Mexican film that came out this summer.
Guest:And I played Mike Todd.
Guest:Mike Todd was a producer of Around the World in 80 Days.
Guest:Cantín Flas was the biggest star in the Spanish-speaking world, Mexico, and all over, wherever they speak Spanish.
Guest:And he starred in that movie.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:They called me up and said, do you want to do it?
Guest:And I said, yeah, I went to Mexico City and shot the movie.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:How'd the movie do?
Guest:It did, you know, when it opened, believe it or not.
Guest:Because it wasn't meant for, it was a Latino film.
Guest:Yeah, but this, you know, in America there's lots of Latinos.
Guest:No, no, I know that.
Marc:But I mean, like, I didn't know anything about it.
Guest:The week it opened, it had the highest.
Guest:It was all Spanish speaking, right?
Guest:Not, my stuff was all in English.
Guest:It had a lot of English, but mostly Spanish.
Guest:But the week it opened, it was the highest gross per screen.
Guest:So it only opened on like 300 screens, but those, because all the... Yeah.
Guest:He's very beloved.
Guest:Even in America, they still watch his movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:People of the... How did you say it?
Marc:Kantinflus?
Marc:Kantinflus.
Marc:Kantinflus.
Guest:Which means barfly.
Marc:Yeah, he was one of the great Mexican clowns.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what do you got going now?
Marc:I know you've done a lot of TV shows here and there, this and that, had some good parts of movies.
Guest:I did a pilot for Amazon called Mad Dogs.
Guest:Amazon airs their pilots and then decides whether they want to do, it's a very different model.
Guest:Then they decide whether they want to do it or not.
Guest:It's kind of like Deliverance meets The Hangover.
Guest:Comedy, I'm guessing.
Guest:Dark comedy.
Marc:There's a lot of dark shit.
Guest:It's very dark, yeah.
Guest:And it's Ben Chaplin, Steve Zahn, Billy Zane is in the pilot.
Marc:That sounds exciting.
Guest:Romney Malko.
Marc:Yeah, it was fun.
Marc:And I saw you, what was that movie you played the cop in?
Marc:The one with the Peter Jackson movie?
Marc:Oh, The Lovely Bones.
Marc:Yeah, that was an interesting movie.
Guest:Yeah, that was fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That was really fun.
Marc:What about directing a movie and writing one again?
Oh.
Guest:I'm writing something now that I hope I'll direct at some point, but I'm working on a project as a writer right now.
Guest:It's not kind of finalized, so I can't really talk about it, but it's adapting a really cool movie from the early 90s, a cool cult movie to a series.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, cool.
Guest:But I'll let you know when it's final.
Marc:Is it your idea to do it?
Guest:No, somebody approached me to work on it.
Marc:Oh, that's great, man.
Guest:The producer and another writer, yeah.
Guest:So you're busy?
Guest:I'm always busy, you know?
Guest:I mean, I keep myself busy.
Marc:Good, man.
Marc:It was great talking to you.
Marc:I appreciate you coming.
Guest:Thank you for having me.
Marc:It was really, really fun.
Marc:That was great.
Guest:I never get to talk like this.
Marc:It was awesome.
Marc:And best of luck with everything.
Marc:And tell your kid, what can I give him?
Marc:Let's send him home with something.
Marc:Oh, thank you, man.
Marc:That he might enjoy.
Marc:I wonder what I have.
Marc:I'll find something.
Marc:Nice talking to you, man.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:Isn't it great to hear from Michael?
Marc:I love that guy.
Marc:It's great to hear from that guy.
Marc:Great to talk to him.
Marc:What have I got here?
Marc:I went and bought something.
Marc:I was on Twitter, and I follow Sennheiser, the mic place.
Marc:They had a mic.
Marc:They just had this guitar amp mic.
Marc:Like, it's just this little mic you put in front of your guitar amp.
Marc:I think it's like a 906 or something.
Marc:And I'm like, I need one of those because, like, God knows I'm a professional musician out here in my garage.
Marc:But it's just specifically for this.
Guest:JustCoffee.coop, available at WTFPod.com.
Marc:That is a fairly tuned up Stratocaster.
Marc:in just an old style, very basic crybaby wah-wah paddle like I used to have when I was in high school but didn't really know how to use it.
Marc:I don't think I know how to use it right now.
Guest:... ...
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Guest:.
Guest:.
Guest:Boomer lives!