Episode 673 - Crispin Glover
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:New people.
Marc:Don't hesitate to go to WTFpod.com slash guide to see who's been on the show.
Marc:And then you can move from there.
Marc:You can see the entire list of however many 600 and something episodes, and then you can act accordingly and go find them.
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Marc:All 600 and some odd ones.
Marc:But if you just need to know who's been on, go to wtfpod.com slash guide.
Marc:Check it out.
Marc:A lot of people.
Marc:A lot of people have been in here in this garage.
Marc:And that wasn't even really an ad.
Marc:It just came to my mind thinking about it.
Marc:Today we have Crispin Glover on.
Marc:Crispin Glover, I don't know how it happened, but man, he came over and he's like a brilliant freight train of compulsive ideas and philosophy and psychology.
Marc:I didn't know what was going to happen going in, but I knew I wanted to talk to him.
Marc:He's an interesting guy.
Marc:He rolls in an interesting world.
Marc:I think sometimes it's mostly in his head, but that's fine.
Marc:I can certainly relate to that.
Marc:So that's happening in a few minutes.
Marc:I have a nice lengthy conversation with Crispin Glover.
Marc:He showed me a trailer of his film he's working on with his dad is in it and he's in it.
Marc:And he was just all lit up.
Marc:and he came in and he's like, you want to see this?
Marc:You want to have my, he pulled his computer out.
Marc:He showed me this new trailer.
Marc:He had just edited.
Marc:He's also in a, in a movie, which I think is, is how we got him or how he came up on the radar.
Marc:He's currently in a movie called, uh, Amy in a cage, which is available now streaming and on demand.
Marc:But, uh, he does a lot of things.
Marc:He wears a lot of hats and, and many of them are Gothic styled.
Marc:Uh,
Marc:He's into the old-timey darkness.
Marc:And it was good.
Marc:So that's happening today.
Marc:Me and Crispin Glover.
Marc:But the reason I bring up...
Marc:you know, like the past, maybe, is it the past?
Marc:Looking back on how many people have been on this show and how many people have been in this garage, it's sort of fascinating, but between you and me, I don't always clean in here.
Marc:I just, I don't, you know, I stack things, things come in, a lot of things come in, but I don't always, you know, I tidy up occasionally, I'll do the vacuum and I'll wipe the floors down, but
Marc:I'm about to start shooting the fourth season of Marin for IFC, and I'm spinning out a little bit.
Marc:So what do I do when I get stressed or anxious or frightened?
Marc:Well, one of the things that I do, if I'm so driven, which is not all that often...
Marc:is to fucking clean up.
Marc:Like I've gotten into this situation here at the house where so many wonderful things are sent to me.
Marc:A lot of artwork, a lot of records, books.
Marc:Some of them are sent personally, some by publishers.
Marc:Stuff gets stacked up, you know, and I got a lot of stuff in here.
Marc:And what I neglected to realize, I kind of realized it, but maybe I was in denial about it, is the amount of fucking dust, dude.
Marc:And dudettes.
Marc:The amount of dust.
Marc:I mean, I had, if most...
Marc:If most dust is human skin, if that's a truism, I have the skin of about 670 relatively some very famous people covering my garage.
Marc:My garage is covered with probably about, or was, about a millimeter
Marc:of uh many different skins that sounds a little weird and gross but it's got to be true now now the thing is is out here i'm in a garage and i've got it uh you know capped up the best i can i put what's not great you know i put a a floor in here i didn't really do it right these are platform floors definitely holes in it so also there's all these
Marc:little spidey webs up in the corners and around in the bookshelves.
Marc:There were spidey webs everywhere.
Marc:I don't see that many spideys, but there's spidey webs and they're not attractive.
Marc:You know, they're just not attractive.
Marc:And I just kept putting it off, man.
Marc:I kept putting it off.
Marc:And finally, you know, consumed by stress and a need for distraction, I got in it out here.
Marc:I got in it on my knees with the deep clean.
Marc:I moved the shit out, not all the books and stuff, but anything that wasn't
Marc:sort of really heavy, I moved it outside to assess.
Marc:So it's been an intense few days of stress cleaning, but the dust, man, the dust was fucking insane.
Marc:So I'm like meticulously cleaning, and by the time I finish, new dust will start piling up.
Marc:But it got to the point in here where I was like, is word out?
Marc:Is word out that there's spidey webs in the garage?
Marc:Because what started to happen is that...
Marc:you know, six years ago, whenever the hell I started this thing and started amassing stuff and started moving my operation out here into the garage, it had sort of a, you know, kind of a pseudo-intellectual man cave vibe to it.
Marc:It was a collection and still is of everything for my entire life.
Marc:So that was kind of cool at first and it still is kind of cool to me.
Marc:I'm still comforted by it.
Marc:But if you don't clean it, what happens is if people look closely, it's like going into one of those...
Marc:It's like going into a sad museum, like a roadside museum that isn't really kept up well.
Marc:And the exhibits are kind of gross, and they're a little dusty, and some of the dust has kind of been humidified a bit, so there's grime.
Marc:So I was walking into my garage saying, this is pretty cool.
Marc:And then I'd look around, and I'm like, oh, no.
Marc:No, it looks sad.
Marc:It looks like it's sort of dying, like it's becoming a relic, like it's becoming just a...
Marc:like some sort of tomb or mausoleum of what I thought was important or what represented me and was not being kept up that well.
Marc:So I kind of got paranoid.
Marc:I'd like people to walk in here and be like, oh, this is kind of cool.
Marc:Not like, I don't know what he's got going over there, but it's a little sad.
Marc:So needless to say, I've cleaned it up.
Marc:And now it's alive again.
Marc:I've been watching some of my screener movies.
Marc:And here's what I know.
Marc:I've watched The Revenant once.
Marc:And then I went back and went through it to watch certain scenes again.
Marc:And again.
Marc:That DiCaprio is impressing me.
Marc:Not that that's anything, you know, like, you know, it's hard.
Marc:You kind of want to judge people, but like I've seen him in public and talking.
Marc:He's definitely got shit together, that guy.
Marc:And he did a great job in that fucking movie.
Marc:And he should come over and talk to me.
Marc:Also, I don't know what you guys are thinking, but that movie Joy, David O. Russell's movie, is a sweet movie.
Marc:You know, I had a hard time with American Hustle, but I had to watch it three or four times to understand that he's working within a tone that I've never quite seen before, and it took me a while to get the handle on and enjoy.
Marc:Again, there's a tone to it.
Marc:There's something beautifully human muting the pain in this movie.
Marc:It's certainly an entertaining movie, as was American Hustle, and that there's some weird thing he's doing where he's meeting his own artistic needs and creativity, but also kind of...
Marc:appealing to a mainstream audience, and he was doing this with The Fighter and also with Silver Linings Playbook, and I just didn't understand the trailer for Joy.
Marc:It made it look like, I don't know what it made it look like, but it was not the movie that I saw, and I enjoyed the movie.
Marc:Hateful Eight, I liked it, and people should fucking relax.
Marc:Tarantino's a fucking wizard, and it's a comedy.
Marc:If you don't think that those characters are fucking clowns, you're out of your mind, and all that blood and all that gore and just the beautiful lyricism of the talking,
Marc:is it's so it's it's pretty hilarious and pretty exciting i think now we should talk to crispin glover uh and you know strap in you know he he operates at a level of intensity that is not uh your day-to-day level of intensity but i think through the through the conversation you'll
Marc:Yeah, I think a lot of people judge Crispin and they've decided he's nuts or whatever.
Marc:But what I found is that he's a guy with a specific vision about what he wants to put in the world creatively.
Marc:And we get there, I think.
Marc:So enjoy this conversation, if you want, with Crispin Glover.
Marc:Your father had a profound impact on me when I was younger.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:How?
Marc:I'm sure he had a profound impact on me as well.
Marc:I would think so.
Marc:He was in...
Guest:what's his full name bruce uh he was given the name bruce herbert glover yes and my my whole name is crispin hellion yeah and he didn't like his middle name herbert yeah so as a struggling actor he would say in new york he would say to himself i'm bruce h glover and bruce hellion glover i'm a troublemaker yeah and it made him feel good as a struggling actor but they gave him your
Marc:They gave you that name.
Guest:Yeah, my mother.
Guest:He told my mother that was his real middle name.
Guest:And so then when they were married, she saw Bruce Herbert Glover.
Guest:She thought, who am I marrying?
Guest:But they gave it to me as my real middle name.
Marc:Oh, that was it.
Marc:You were destined.
Guest:I guess they gave me a good name.
Marc:Yeah, the reason why he haunted me was he was in Diamonds Are Forever.
Marc:Yes, right.
Marc:Which I saw when I was very young, I imagine.
Marc:I can't remember when it came out, but it must have been the early 70s.
Marc:72.
Marc:Right, so I was nine.
Guest:74, yeah.
Guest:So I was 11.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there was just something insidious
Marc:yeah about those two about your father and the other guy yeah right and uh like i i remember like i don't think i've seen that movie in decades and i remember one of them they put a bomb in his pants right and threw my father and they threw him over the side of the boat right but your father in acting was so bizarre and his his tone and his demeanor was so fucking bizarre that it haunted me good yeah
Marc:i'm sure he would be happy to hear would he and he was also in chinatown not right not in a haunting role and i was i was on the set of both of those films briefly which i'm very happy to say do you remember yeah very well like me i'm sure you like met sean connery i did yeah yeah yeah briefly yeah and jack nicholson
Guest:Well, I have met Jack Nicholson, but that was later on.
Guest:I met Roman Polanski.
Guest:My father and Roman Polanski were friendly, and they'd play chess together.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I was there on the day that they shot the final scene in Chinatown, but I wasn't there while they were shooting.
Guest:So your dad only brought you the bloody horrible parts at the end?
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:I didn't always go on the sets.
Marc:But yeah, but your father was this bizarre presence, and you look exactly like him almost.
Guest:Well, it's close enough, so like you said, in this new movie that I'm editing right now, we play the same characters at different ages.
Marc:It was interesting what you said when I had that reaction to the small amount
Marc:of what I watched of Amy in the Cage.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you said, well, I'm sure you could cite influences, but he's trying to do something that is sort of utterly unique in a way.
Guest:It is actually unique.
Guest:He did something interesting.
Guest:He'd never made a movie before, and...
Guest:I wasn't exactly certain what it would be like, but I appreciate it.
Guest:I want to work with him again.
Guest:I just got a script today from him, and I really like him.
Marc:But it seems to me that it's something that you do as well, that at some point your creativity and your style of living and your imagination seem to kind of persist against anything that was accepted or understandable.
Guest:Well...
Marc:Is that too much at the beginning?
Guest:Well, no, no.
Guest:I mean, it's an interesting way to think about it.
Guest:I don't know that I initially have set out to do that, but it might be interpretable that way.
Marc:Because I remember at some point, I'd like to talk about growing up in this weird cesspool of a show business town.
Marc:And I also noticed in the trailer you just showed that there was a recurring symbol of the illuminated eye on the watch.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Which is, I guess it can be attributed to...
Guest:to egyptians to the illuminati to crowley that you know where did you pick that eye up i mean might as well start there i i i have uh uh i i this is my third feature that that i i've i'm well i'm in the midst of editing now but the the the first film i made which i started shooting in 1996 yeah
Guest:called What Is It?
Guest:Actually, I should also say I'll be at the Egyptian Theater here in Los Angeles.
Guest:I think it's March 18th and 19th at American Cinematheque.
Guest:And I've been touring for the past 11 years now with my shows and films.
Guest:I perform a live show.
Guest:What does that entail?
Guest:Well, actually, I have two different live shows.
Guest:I've been interested to talk to you about it because...
Guest:Well, I know that you tour as a comedian, and I'm not a comedian, but there is something of humor within the shows, and I tour, so I relate very much.
Guest:I've been watching a lot of comedians recently on YouTube, and I'm very interested.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There's something I'm very interested in about that.
Guest:Like who are you watching?
Guest:Well, I was listening to the Louis C.K.
Guest:thing because your interview with him because I was studying him.
Guest:I had dismissed George Carlin for most of my existence until about, I don't know, three years ago.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it wasn't that I disliked him.
Guest:I had heard the, I don't know, like when I was, I don't know, when it came out, 11, 12, whatever.
Guest:Seven words.
Guest:The seven words.
Guest:And I liked it.
Guest:I thought it was intelligent and funny.
Guest:And you're a kid, so it's exciting.
Guest:You're right, right, right.
Guest:But somehow I mixed him up.
Guest:It sounds kind of weird with Gallagher.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I kind of thought he was like a guy who... It's a bad mix-up.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's a very bad mix-up.
Guest:But I thought of him as like a hippie humorist that did puns or something, and I just kind of thought that's not interesting.
Marc:So what brought you back around?
Guest:I was watching on YouTube an interview.
Guest:I thought he had just died a few years before, and I thought, well, okay, there's an interview.
Guest:It was like American greats on television, and I thought, well, this guy lived his life, and...
Guest:I'll see what his interview is.
Guest:And I was wide.
Guest:I thought, this guy is incredibly intelligent and funny.
Guest:And then I watched everything.
Guest:Where did the melon thing come from?
Guest:Why was he smashing melon?
Guest:Well, I wasn't that mixed up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I kind of thought they were similar.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, I get it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't think they were the same person.
Guest:I just thought something similar.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So then you got into Carlin?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, early on, like when I was studying acting, I started going through professional acting class when I was, what, 15.
Guest:After you'd already done some work?
Guest:Yes, yeah.
Guest:I got an agent when I was 13 years old.
Marc:How did that happen?
Marc:Were your parents into it?
Marc:Were your parents together out here?
Marc:Yes, my parents are still married.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's amazing.
Guest:Unusual, yeah.
Marc:Do you have siblings?
Guest:I was raised as an only child.
Guest:And so I had seen... My mother's retired as a dancer and actress when I was born.
Guest:So I was... I saw essentially how the business had worked.
Guest:And I...
Guest:I originally, the first thing I was interested in profession, I knew I had to get a job.
Guest:I was raised middle class and I knew I'd have to move out and make money.
Guest:I was aware of it.
Marc:But acting, you were raised in the world.
Guest:Well, I didn't know initially that acting would be it.
Guest:I initially was-
Marc:Your father was an actor.
Guest:He was an actor.
Guest:But I was initially thinking I would be a geologist.
Guest:I thought I liked, but my concept, this was like at age nine or something.
Guest:And so my concept was I'd have a pick and I would break open geodes and find beautiful crystalline interiors.
Guest:Mysterious, amazing things in rocks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I realized they'd probably have to work for a geothermal corporation.
Guest:At 11, you realized that there was a geothermal corporation?
Guest:Yes.
Yes.
Guest:And then it probably wouldn't be that much fun.
Guest:And so I recognize that acting actually was a pretty good business.
Guest:I was starting around age 11 or so.
Guest:And then it wasn't until I was 13, there was a kid at school who was at the Mary Grady agency.
Guest:and he had done some commercials, and I recognized that I could get some commercials or be on TV or something.
Guest:And you did some sitcoms, didn't you?
Guest:You did some cute stuff?
Guest:Well, I did some commercials.
Guest:My very first job, which I got from a cattle call, was at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown LA for the Sound of Music.
Guest:And Maria...
Guest:was played by Florence Henderson.
Guest:So I got that, and then I did- As one of the Von Trapp kids?
Guest:Yeah, I was Friedrich Von Trapp.
Guest:And then I did that for six months, and then I got a commercial after that.
Guest:And then I did, when I was 16, I started studying professionally when I was 15, and when I was 16,
Guest:I went on another cattle call for a sitcom, which involved an improvisation.
Guest:And I did an improvisation for that.
Guest:And I got essentially the lead part in this television show called Pilot, called The Best of Times, which is, I still can't watch it.
Guest:It was embarrassing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I mean, actually, I like the improv that I did, but I... But did it ever... It didn't get made or it did?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:And it's out there on YouTube somewhere.
Marc:But it didn't become a series?
Guest:No, no.
Marc:So you lucked out in a way.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, and I learned a lot from it.
Guest:Why can't you watch it now?
Guest:Is it just... Oh, it makes me uncomfortable.
Guest:It was...
Guest:I still can't watch.
Guest:But it was like at that point I had not figured out how to take that which was written on the page and I played what was written on the page.
Guest:The improvisation they wrote into the script and that was basically okay, but there were other things that I just played the page and it's just, it's uncomfortable.
Marc:Well, it's weird because doing some television, writing some television is that, and I know this even in writing it,
Marc:is that you know where that thought and that idea is going to end.
Marc:I mean, it's one thing doing theater and whatnot when you're doing the work of geniuses in terms of doing lines.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Marc:But sometimes what an actor has to bring emotionally and to make something actually present and somewhat believable and engaging is quite a task.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:That's the task, is to take the thing which is on the page and then to give it depth.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But sitcoms notoriously, a lot of times the depth you're looking for is not on the page.
Guest:That's correct.
Guest:That's correct.
Guest:And it is the job of an actor.
Guest:I find that's the most thing that I have to concentrate on when I'm acting in somebody else's screenplay.
Marc:And who'd you study with at that age?
Guest:I was at a place called Staircase Studios, which was, it's no longer there.
Guest:It was on Beverly, it was on Beverly and, no, on Fairfax and Olympic.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And it was a great little place.
Guest:And I studied there straight for three years, improvisation with technique as opposed to improvisation with comedy.
Guest:And then although it was something that I saw, that good work, whether it was dramatic or whatever, it tended toward having humor within it.
Guest:And then at 18, I simultaneously started studying at a place which is more well-known called The Loft Studios with Peggy Fury and Bill Traylor, husband and wife, and a lot of well-known actors who studied there.
Marc:Who was in your crew when you were a kid, people we know?
Guest:Well, people that studied at that, there were ... Sean Penn had studied there before I was there, but while I was there, Nicholas Cage was there, Eric Stoltz was there, Chris Penn was there.
Marc:Really?
Marc:And you were all like under 20?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, I was 18 when I started acting.
Marc:And that's really, I guess, your generation and my generation of actors when you think about it, huh?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I recently worked with Eric Stoltz.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In a Bayer aspirin commercial when I was 16.
Guest:And then he played my, well, originally started to play my son in Back to the Future.
Guest:And then he was fired and he was replaced with Michael J. Fox.
Guest:That's sort of a big deal.
Marc:I don't remember who I was talking to about that.
Marc:I don't know if it was him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or what?
Marc:But that was like, he was hired, correct?
Guest:We shot for five or six weeks with him.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:I had shot most of my role by the time- Michael came in?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I had to reshoot it.
Marc:Sort of devastating in a way.
Guest:It was, I'm writing a book right now.
Guest:Oh yeah?
Guest:Good.
Guest:I'm on page 300 and it's not just about that, but I'm writing about things having to do with that and a lot of other things that are very important.
Guest:I was in terms of- Sounds like you're writing volume one of a many book series.
Guest:Anything's possible.
Guest:I mean, I've been saving interviews that I do my interviews by email usually when I tour with my shows.
Guest:And so more than 10 years of written interviews, I have, I think-
Guest:I'm forgetting what it is.
Guest:It's like 3,000 pages of interviews that I've done.
Guest:But it's like I'll copy and paste the essential portions.
Guest:And so I thought initially I would just start cutting down stuff from those interviews.
Guest:But there's a very specific subject matter that I'm honing in on.
Guest:Which is?
Guest:Well...
Guest:It has to do with propaganda.
Guest:And it's a subject matter that I'm somewhat passionate about.
Marc:And how do you define it?
Guest:Well, the kind of propaganda that I'm specifically reacting to is corporate interest propaganda, which is really devastating on the culture right now.
Guest:And I'm very happy...
Guest:And my first film, What Is It?, is a strong reaction to this.
Marc:To the brainwashing.
Guest:Well, yes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:How does the events of Back to the Future play into this as a foundation?
Guest:Well, I knew this would happen when I came in here, which is not... I don't mean about Back to the Future, but I mean what I've recognized and part of why I'm writing this book right now is because...
Guest:I've been very hesitant to talk in great detail about several important things that people always ask me about.
Guest:And it's because on some level, this would be the kind of show that would be right for me to go into those details about.
Guest:But there's a can of worms that starts to open that if I...
Guest:Like I said, I'm on page 300 of this book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like I could talk to you in great detail about it.
Guest:And it would be far beyond the time that would be the constraints of the show.
Marc:Well, what I got like right away, you know, for like something just popped in my head, you know, having the conversation in the order we've had it.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:that we go from this sidebar, which is the Eric Stoltz story, and then you say, well, it's part of my book with some urgency, and then you say, which is about that and more important things, is that what immediately popped into my head when you hinted at propaganda and whatnot is I've had this thing in my mind lately about what are...
Marc:our own thoughts you know what is what really constitutes the culture cultural reality that we live in yeah and uh and then when you said propaganda i thought you know movie companies i thought the the the spielberg vision yeah uh and also zemeckis and you know whoever and and then i went back to thinking about the original uh you know the original uh jewish studio owners who constructed
Marc:a film life for America, and in their inability to be accepted into America, they built the illusion of America, which became the reality of America, which sort of is the foundation of film's power over our cultural reality.
Guest:I've seen, you know, there's that book that came out that they were talking about that stuff a lot.
Guest:Something of our own.
Guest:Something, yeah.
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I love that book.
Guest:Neil Gabler, I think.
Guest:I know things about it.
Guest:And I think I saw they made a documentary on it.
Guest:I haven't read the book.
Guest:But there's something that's what I'm writing about is different from that because it's...
Guest:The thing that I'm very happy that's starting to happen, which when I started touring 10 years ago, my film What Is It is a very specific reaction to this situation.
Guest:You get good audiences?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I've recouped on my films.
Guest:Oh, good.
Marc:all over the world yeah yeah i've been i mean i mostly have toured in the united states and canada but i've been in europe i've been in japan i've been in australia i've been in okay so so now we come back to where we are and we can build up to where you want to go which is that you know we started you were you're studying carlin uh for comedic elements and and you talked about training and improvisation and and and and this had something to do with your performances
Guest:Oh, well, George Carlin, I only looked at more recently.
Guest:Probably more influential to me personally would be Andy Kaufman, which I saw when I was studying improvisation with technique, that episode on Fridays when it was 1980.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can tell he goes off script.
Guest:Do you know the episode I'm talking about?
Guest:I think so, yeah.
Guest:It's on YouTube, and Michael Richards is in the skit.
Guest:And, you know, Friday's was very, like, drug-oriented.
Guest:And at that time, people would laugh about these things.
Guest:And there was, like, an announcer introducing, saying, we...
Guest:When people are going into the bathroom, they're actually taking some kind of drug and the audience kind of cheers.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So each of the, like I think one of the, there's two couples in a French restaurant and one of the wives or girlfriends goes over and she goes into the bathroom and the audience kind of cheers and they're having small talk at the table.
Guest:Then Andy Kaufman gets up and he goes to the bathroom and comes back.
Guest:And the audience is kind of cheering.
Guest:He sits down and he obviously has a line.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he kind of says, I can't.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:And then one of the actors, it seems like she probably has the reaction line and he hasn't given the cue and she starts going, ah, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Kind of force, repeating a forced laughter.
Guest:She doesn't know what to do.
Marc:She doesn't start prompting him.
Yeah.
Guest:She just kind of laughs.
Marc:And it's live, I think, right?
Guest:I believe it was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I saw it because I was very interested in watching it at the time.
Guest:And I was studying improvisation at the time.
Guest:So I could tell.
Guest:I liked it because I could tell the improvisation.
Guest:He was actually making it a real improv.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was making it.
Guest:So nobody knew what to do.
Guest:And I found that really funny.
Guest:And compelling.
Guest:And compelling.
Guest:And then eventually Michael Richards goes off camera.
Guest:He picks up a stack of cue cards and throws them down on the table.
Guest:And then Andy Kaufman...
Guest:I think throws a glass of water in his face and, and then, you know, they go to, to, to, to commercial.
Guest:So, so Richards probably did that out of anger.
Guest:Like, yes, it feels like that.
Guest:Do your job.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:And what about that was so amazing to you?
Guest:Well, I could tell that it wasn't, I could tell that it was something genuine was happening.
Guest:It was much more fascinating than what the actual scripted or cue carded skit was.
Guest:And as studying acting, that was fascinating to me.
Marc:Now, when you did your early film work,
Marc:You know, was this something that was sort of gnawing at you, this desire to have more freedom as an actor?
Guest:Well, I mean, I was taught very clearly, even though I was taught improvisation with technique, I was taught not to go off script.
Guest:And I generally don't as an actor.
Guest:Actually, the Huru Jackson movie, they're the ones that contacted you.
Guest:Amy in the cage, when I first talked to him, he told me he wanted to have me improvise, which is not, I've done very little of it in my career.
Guest:And yet it's how I initially studied, learned to act.
Guest:I mean, of course, my father's an actor and he's an acting teacher.
Guest:I never formally studied with my father.
Guest:I'm sure he perked things up, obviously.
Marc:But you've always gotten along with him and he's been supportive and
Guest:Oh yeah, my parents, when I said that I was interested in it, my father was, he was actually surprised because he wasn't ever like super famous or super wealthy or anything.
Guest:So he was pleased that I actually, you know, there was struggle.
Guest:And so he was pleased that I actually thought there was something that seemed okay about.
Guest:Oh, right.
Marc:Oh, he was like on a respect level that he liked what he did.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I think just that he thought that it seemed like a business that was okay.
Guest:I don't think he put it this way, but that probably something that he felt, yeah, it was a compliment on some level.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And then my mother was helpful and would bring me to audition.
Guest:So yeah, that was a very good thing that my parents were supportive.
Guest:I'll tell you.
Guest:And then also that they didn't push me into it because I've seen people that were children actors and stuff, and it can really mess people up.
Guest:And luckily, 13 is actually an old age for a child actor, but it was a very good age to start for a young actor.
Guest:Right.
Marc:An adult actor.
Marc:What's amazing to me is just how profoundly memorable you are in almost everything you appear in.
Marc:Good.
Marc:And that even with scripts or whatever, that you seem to find a frequency at which these characters operate at that is very visceral and disconcerting.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Like, I mean, even in Back to Future, which is this huge mainstream movie, you made me uncomfortable.
Right.
Guest:You know, I have not seen the film since it came out.
Guest:I don't I don't know if anything is possible.
Guest:I suppose that's interesting.
Guest:I haven't heard that particular take on it.
Marc:I mean, I'm well, I haven't seen it in a while either.
Marc:But my recollection is you were an uncomfortable character.
Marc:I mean, weren't you?
Guest:Well, I think the character was, for the most part, uncomfortable.
Guest:At the end, there's a change in the character and it becomes comfortable, which there was some questions that I had about why the character became comfortable.
Guest:And I had not been given the screenplay before...
Guest:I auditioned with a side.
Guest:It's just a single scene.
Guest:And it was right around that time, this was 1984, when they were just... They didn't want to give the script out for worries that they would give ideas away.
Guest:And I was 20 years old.
Guest:I was glad to get the part in a Steven Spielberg Universal Studios big movie.
Guest:And my agent...
Guest:And I thought, well, I asked my agent, this seems like a good part.
Guest:There was another character in the scene.
Guest:Should I audition for this part as well?
Guest:And he said, no, no, you don't understand.
Guest:The character plays like an older version of itself.
Guest:It goes back and forth every time.
Guest:I said, wow, that sounds amazing.
Guest:Great, yeah, get the deal done.
Guest:So I didn't read it until I was already contracted to be in it.
Guest:And being that, I was...
Guest:I had studied basically the Stanislavskian type of psychological understanding of the character.
Guest:I had to ask questions to understand why things were or how I was supposed to be.
Guest:And a lot of the questions that I asked...
Guest:There was an ending that I had... It affected what my character was wearing and how the character was being.
Guest:And it was before Eric Stoltz got fired that I had very...
Guest:a strong conversation with Robert Zemeckis and I felt that there was a moral in it that was because there was a reward with money that it ended up being that money equaled happiness.
Guest:And I didn't use the word propaganda, but I said people are sheep and if our characters get a financial reward in this,
Guest:A monetary reward, it will mean that money equals happiness.
Guest:And he did not like that.
Guest:And the weird thing is, I've talked about this before.
Guest:You're reading too much into it, kid.
Guest:Well, and people will say that.
Guest:But the fact of it is, I had to figure out what...
Guest:what how I was going to play it and what it was going to mean when I was writing this thing right and and I mean ultimately I had a good relationship with Robert Zemeckis and I ended up working with him later in in in Beowulf I wasn't in the sequels there's a lawsuit about they'd put a prosthetics on another actor to make him up to look like me from the original molds that were made of my face from the really yeah yeah why they cut you out
Guest:Well, that's the problem is they didn't.
Guest:They just gave somebody your face?
Guest:They put my face on another actor.
Guest:It's funny if it isn't you.
Guest:I know, I know.
Marc:It's disturbing, but it sounds very sort of relevant and bizarre to the things that you're interested in.
Marc:I just watched a trailer that you did that involves several very realistic looking masks.
Marc:I'm wondering how much that reality of that is.
Marc:May have informed some of your aggression and creativity.
Guest:Probably so.
Guest:There was a lawsuit about it.
Guest:And because of my lawsuit, the rules in the Screen Actors Guild that make it so this kind of thing can't ever happen again.
Guest:But it puts me in a very rare category to be the only actor to have had this specific crime committed.
Marc:Your face was stolen.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Quite literally.
Guest:They had the molds of my face from the original film and they applied my features onto another actor in order to fool audiences into believing I was in the sequel, which many people still to this day believe it was me and it was another actor.
Guest:playing me.
Marc:Do you know that guy?
Guest:I've never met him in person.
Guest:He ended up being a witness in the lawsuit.
Guest:Against you or for you?
Guest:For me.
Guest:And so I had a conversation with him.
Guest:Did you win the lawsuit?
Guest:Well, like I said, I have to be careful about how I phrase it.
Guest:But because of the lawsuit, there are rules on the screen.
Guest:It was settled with mutual satisfaction.
Guest:And there was a precedent set for it.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, there are legal precedents.
Guest:They can't do it anymore.
Guest:That's correct.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, technically, it was always illegal.
Guest:What they did was totally illegal.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Stole your face.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's bizarre.
Marc:It is bizarre.
Marc:It's bizarre.
Marc:Do you know why they didn't just cast you?
Guest:Well, they were mad at me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because I'd ask questions.
Marc:They're like, he's difficult to work with.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, the weird thing was, I wasn't really difficult.
Guest:I mean, anybody can make that argument.
Guest:You're an intense fellow.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I guess.
Marc:I don't feel like that, but I suppose so.
Marc:People who are intense and intelligent make people in charge uncomfortable.
Marc:It can be that.
Guest:It shouldn't be that way.
Guest:No, that's right.
Guest:It shouldn't be that way.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And that's where it comes to the corporate problem.
Guest:Because if corporate interests were not having influence on the content, which is what is happening in our corporately distributed and funded film and media.
Guest:Reality.
Marc:Reality.
Guest:It makes it so that if you're questioning that, then that's a problem.
Guest:It shouldn't be that way.
Guest:And there's political things that I'm very happy that are going on right now.
Guest:I'm surprised that Bernie Sanders is...
Guest:making the kind of awareness that's going on right now.
Guest:It's very positive.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I'm very happy that that's happening.
Guest:Of course, it has to do with business and it's specifically with corporate interests.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:But what I'm writing about is how it affects art.
Guest:Because I've been talking about these political elements lately, but I hate politics.
Guest:It's not my interest.
Guest:My interest is art.
Guest:But when I see that it's affected art and it has affected my life, it gets to me.
Marc:Well, there's very limited public funding for art.
Marc:That's okay.
Guest:I mean, it sure would be nice, but the problem is that we're not living in a true democracy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And not in a functioning democracy.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's true.
Guest:And what it really comes down to, which I also am happy that there's a movement, is about getting an amendment passed, which would get money out of politics, because right now we have legalized bribery.
Guest:Corporate money out of it, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's unfortunate.
Guest:The positive thing is that the propaganda has been that we live in a democracy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there's more of us than there are corporations.
Guest:The only reason corporations are able to be enjoying the existence that they're enjoying is because people are letting it be happening.
Guest:And the government has made concessions to allow it.
Guest:That's correct.
Guest:Well, not even concessions.
Guest:They've been paid off to make it happen.
Guest:So what's positive is because it's called a democracy, all we have to do is align it through a proper amendment.
Guest:And then it could become a functioning democracy and then corporations could be put in the proper placement.
Guest:So they're serving the people as they should be serving.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And what that would take is for someone to listen to what you're saying all the way through and not go like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, it's also why I really think, I mean, I don't know what the ultimate solution is, but I can tell that getting an amendment passed to truly get money out of legalized bribery out of politics.
Guest:We have a good start.
Guest:That would have a domino effect of really positive change.
Marc:Now, when you talk about art and you talk about...
Marc:This crusade, in a way, in terms of your agenda against corporate occupation of the government and the arts.
Marc:When you take your films out, what is the show?
Marc:I'm curious.
Marc:I mean, how do you use it?
Guest:Yeah, since the 80s, I started making the live shows.
Guest:It consists of eight.
Guest:Well, I have two different live shows, and it consists of eight different books.
Guest:I have them here.
Marc:These are your self-published books.
Guest:These are self-published.
Guest:I started publishing these in the 80s.
Guest:They're nice looking.
Guest:Yeah, I'm very proud of the books.
Guest:These are heavily illustrated books.
Guest:The images are projected behind me as I dramatically narrate the books.
Marc:These are sort of like things that you've written and cut out and played with.
Guest:Yes, and like I said, I made most of these in the 80s and very early 90s.
Guest:Oh, these are nice.
Guest:Yeah, I'm very proud of the books.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you have a company that binds them for you so beautifully that you work with, or do you do this?
Marc:I self-publish them.
Marc:Who does the binding?
Guest:Oh, it's classic.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They're done in the style of books from the 1800s because they're taken from books in the 1800s and made into different books.
Guest:Well, some of it.
Guest:I mean, it's...
Guest:Each book is done in a very different way.
Guest:Like the one that you're looking at right now is something I found photographs of in an old thrift shop.
Guest:It was like a photographer, semi-professional, professional photographer.
Guest:They had thrown a lot of his work away and there was this kind of model-y looking woman by a trash can and I thought an interesting story could be made.
Guest:That one rat catching, I found the binding.
Guest:on hollywood boulevard in probably 1983 i made that in 1984 i started it before i made back to the future and finished it just as i right after i finished this was this when you were living there on hollywood boulevard yes i remember reading about your place right yeah yeah someone had gone over there and you had a lot of interesting uh bits of ephemera
Guest:Well, People Magazine, it was the first article that I ever had that was when I was promoting River's Edge.
Guest:That was the first time I ever did publicity.
Guest:My original plan was never to do any publicity at all.
Guest:I was just be an actor that would play different parts and you wouldn't know anything about me.
Guest:And then I didn't do any publicity for Back to the Future.
Guest:But when River's Edge came out- Can I have these?
Guest:Yes, you may.
Guest:I bought those for you.
Guest:That's beautiful.
Guest:But the Back to the Future, I mean, when River's Edge came out at that time, it made sense for me to promote it.
Guest:And I ended up going on to the Johnny Carson show twice in a row.
Guest:And then they wanted me to go on to the Letterman show.
Guest:But I'd never done any publicity.
Guest:It was very outside of what my interest was.
Marc:How about your comfort zone?
Guest:Well, again, this is the territory that part of what I'm writing about.
Guest:It is not what I had planned to do.
Guest:It's not what I liked.
Guest:Publicity.
Guest:Well...
Guest:I'm a business person as well, particularly as a filmmaker.
Guest:I have to publicize my films.
Marc:And you put out books.
Guest:And I put out books, although that's not something I'm so... Films are very high... I fund my films myself.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:So I put a lot of money into them.
Guest:The books, I fund the books myself, and that is kind of actually how I learned about business because my parents essentially were actors...
Guest:which is not a very business-oriented background.
Marc:Sure, we never know.
Marc:The artist, the actor is sort of like, you got two or three people doing that stuff.
Marc:And you're like, how does this work?
Marc:Don't worry about it, kid.
Guest:Yeah, it's not my background.
Guest:And so when I had a record out also in 1989.
Guest:I remember that.
Marc:That was pretty out there too.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm proud of the record.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And in fact, there's some of the book readings on the record as well.
Guest:But it was around the same time that I'd published the first book, Rackhatching 88.
Guest:And around the same time that I published, I'd sold the same amount of books that I had sold on my records.
Guest:And I had made much more money on my books because I'd published them myself.
Guest:I never made any money on the record except for a very small amount.
Guest:What was that record called?
Guest:It was called The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution.
Guest:The Solution Equals Let It Be.
Guest:And there was an idea that people would...
Guest:listen to the different elements.
Guest:And there was a telephone number on the back because it was pre-internet.
Guest:The telephone number let people know how to buy the books.
Guest:But the idea was that people would call up and they would say what the big problem was.
Guest:I didn't give the answers to what the big problem was, but it let people think about it.
Marc:That in and of itself is an artistic experiment.
Marc:It's almost a performance piece.
Marc:And the first book, the rat one,
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It wasn't the first book I made, but it was the first book I published.
Marc:But these were like, you seem to find, and this is something I feel about you, even in, you know, when you showed up at my door.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:In the way that you're dressed in a way that you seem to be interested in these portals to other times.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That reveal a certain human darkness that is unexplainable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I like things that are a bit mysterious.
Guest:And I do, I tend, I mean, my first two films are not specifically period films, but there is an aspect to them.
Guest:The new one is very much a period.
Guest:It takes place in four different time periods.
Marc:It just reminds me of this sort of like there's like I somehow like when I talk to you, you know, and what I've seen of your work and what you're interested in.
Marc:There's something about like how I know you covered a Manson song.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I know that you you sort of you seem to be somewhat creatively fascinated with the mythologizing of individuals, but also the darkness available in individuals.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Uh, and, and that like you seem to have a respect for, for, for Hollywood's tabloid past in a way.
Marc:How do you mean?
Marc:Well, I mean that there's, there's something I've always found this place poetically haunting Hollywood in the history of show business.
Guest:I think it's the most interesting thing about it is the underside.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's what I mean.
Marc:So I called that tabloid.
Marc:My mistake has different definition now.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:But yeah, the havoc it wreaks on the souls who try.
Guest:My favorite book ever about Los Angeles, which I read when I was 13 or 14, was The Day of the Locust.
Guest:Have you read that book?
Guest:Yeah, it's crazy.
Guest:It's great, but it captures, you can tell that Nathaniel West, he was writing screenplays.
Marc:Yeah, he knew.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah, and the very thing, I read it when I hadn't gone through everything that I've been through, but I liked it initially when I was 13 or 14 years old.
Guest:And then I kept thinking, it's the only book I've ever reread.
Guest:I didn't reread the whole thing, but I wanted to go back and look at it.
Guest:I mean, they made a movie about it, which has certain portions are poetically quite perfect and beautiful.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I like the movie.
Guest:There were...
Marc:I like the end of it, and I like Donald Sutherland in it.
Guest:Well, he's great.
Guest:He's great, and Karen Black is great in it.
Guest:Who directed that again?
Guest:It's the guy who directed Midnight Cowboy.
Guest:Schlesinger?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, that's right, that's right.
Guest:Yeah, it's a masterpiece.
Guest:It's a masterpiece.
Guest:It is, and the thing that still is in Los Angeles
Guest:is in that book.
Guest:That was in the 1930s.
Guest:So he very much captures the... Because he talks about the surface quality of the architecture.
Guest:A lot of that's been torn down now, but things that look like owls and the idea that it was...
Guest:There was a surface value, which is totally true.
Guest:And that ends up being the thematic element in the book, which is completely true about this city.
Guest:And it's a very good thing to be aware of.
Guest:If I meet somebody that's newly in Los Angeles, I say, read this book.
Marc:But what is that thing, though, that surface value is there?
Guest:Because it's quantifiable.
Marc:You can make money out of it, but it's not of actual value.
Marc:No, I get that.
Marc:But what's always there is the strange sort of dark desperation.
Guest:Because people, when they come to the city and they don't have that background, they can get confused about what that surface value is.
Guest:And they start thinking that it's their internal value.
Guest:And it's a very bad way to think about the city.
Guest:The city, you have to look at it as a business city.
Marc:Right, but they destroy people.
Guest:Of course, because they believe that they put their internal self as being the external self.
Marc:So this was sort of the battle you fought all your life as an actor, in a way.
Marc:I mean, okay, maybe battle's the wrong word, but your awareness of this.
Guest:Well, yes, I'm very aware.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But at the age that you took it, that you started to have it, because if you were sort of investigating this stuff creatively, you know, at the time of Back to the Future, that you knew that, you know, you had to fortify your heart and mind against this business that you were involved in and made a living in.
Guest:The thing was, I didn't think that at the time because I was going to... When I was 16, I learned how to drive and I started going to all of the revival houses.
Guest:When I started as an actor at age 13, it was... I mean, I thought of it abstractly as maybe this is what I could do as a living, but I wasn't...
Guest:I was relatively artistically sophisticated in terms of I liked Salvador Dali or Hieronymus Bosch as painters.
Guest:And I had read interesting books, but I did not equate.
Guest:I'd grown up watching television mostly.
Guest:And I didn't see Chinatown, for example, even though my father was in it.
Guest:I didn't see that until I went to the New Beverly Theater when I was like 18 or 19.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, my parents didn't take me to see a rated movie.
Guest:Good movie.
Guest:a great movie.
Guest:Although I didn't realize how great it was until I had always liked Polanski's Repulsion very much, which I saw that when I was 16.
Guest:So the movies I was seeing, this was 1980.
Guest:So the movies I was watching were movies from the 70s, 60s, 20s, 30s, which were highly questioning films.
Guest:There was something that happened in the 1980s
Guest:But I was, as a young actor, excited about being part of this great industry that would question things that should be questioned.
Guest:But in retrospect, I realized there was a strong shift in the control that was happening in the 1980s, the early 80s.
Guest:And I was thinking, where are these questions that I was expecting to be a part of?
Guest:And then I started feeling there was essentially a lie.
Guest:And that lie is that it's supporting corporate interests, which want people to not be questioning things.
Guest:Because if people question things, they will have the ability to take the power away from corporate interests.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And that's what's important to have happen, which I'm very happy about because people are starting to realize this.
Guest:It has something to do with the internet, which is it's a very positive thing.
Marc:So in knowing that, so in starting to have these realizations as a young actor.
Guest:It took me a while to really put this stuff together, though.
Guest:It was when I started making my first film.
Guest:What year are we talking?
Guest:1996.
Marc:Okay, but it still seems to me that even movies, I can't remember what you played in A Close Range, but was that with Christopher Walken?
Guest:Yeah, Sean Penn, Chris Penn, yeah.
Marc:and uh and river's edge yeah that that so that was a good very good script and dennis hopper was in that it was great yeah and the thing is is that like the character that you put like i remember in that movie when you finally pass out in your car you know that like the the insane you know uh kind of like you know speed driven loyalty you know
Marc:Yeah, no.
Marc:But that seemed to be a movie that had integrity.
Marc:It did.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:That was still coming out of that era.
Guest:That was the kind of movies that I was expecting would be slingshotted into more of that kind of thought process.
Guest:And instead, I can see very clearly in retrospect that this is the kind of movie that was being shunned away.
Marc:Right, but even The Doors, which was, was that Oliver Stone?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you must respect his early movie.
Guest:Oh, of course.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because he seems to fight the same fight.
Marc:No, I very much enjoyed working with him.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And The People vs. Wally Print, you were great in that.
Guest:And Milos Forman is definitely one of my favorite people.
Guest:And you were great in that movie.
Guest:Well, what's interesting is he's from the former Czechoslovakia, and he...
Guest:I was shooting my first film right in the midst of while I shot that movie.
Guest:And I had long hair.
Guest:He's very interested in organic elements.
Guest:He wanted to have my hair cut because it goes in from the 70s to the 80s.
Guest:Luckily, there was something out of sequence.
Guest:They were going to have to put a wig on me one way or another.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they had to shoot the 70s stuff after they shot the 80s stuff.
Guest:So it ended up making sense for me to wear the wig in the 80s.
Guest:But it was going to be a problem because in the midst for me, because I had long hair for my own production for What Is It?
Guest:And I had to shoot.
Guest:I was expanding What Is It?
Guest:from a short film into a feature.
Guest:But he came up to me one day.
Guest:And he started being really nice to me when I came on to set.
Guest:He said, good morning, Crispin.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:It's good to see you.
Guest:How are you doing today?
Guest:And he said, you know why I'm being so nice to you?
Guest:I said, no, why?
Guest:And he said, because I've heard you're making a movie and I want to be in it.
Guest:He just had a great sense of humor and a great way about him.
Guest:There are certain filmmakers that have been particularly kind to me.
Guest:He was one of them.
Guest:David Lynch is one of them.
Guest:Werner Herzog is one of them.
Guest:John Waters is one of them.
Guest:And they're all people that you could tell they came from essentially... I mean, Nielich Foreman was working in a different situation, but they essentially...
Guest:manifested their own filmmaking.
Guest:They funded their own films or something one way or another.
Guest:So the fact that those people, they in particular have been kind to me and I really appreciate it.
Marc:They're also kindred spirits in their independent vision, like you're saying.
Guest:Well, and they're people that I had watched their films as well.
Guest:What did you do with... Oh, you did Wild at Heart.
Guest:I was in Wild at Heart and another thing that was a pilot called Hotel Room.
Guest:And then he had initially...
Guest:One of the films I'll be showing at the American Cinematheque on the 18th and 19th is my first film, What Is It?, which there's parts one and two I've shot of what will be a trilogy.
Guest:I'll be showing parts one and two at the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater.
Guest:I'll show that trailer for the new movie.
Guest:But I haven't shot part three yet, but part three was actually a feature screenplay that I'd written before.
Guest:what is it was made is initially going to be a short film to promote most of the actors in the film and what is it have down syndrome the film's not about down syndrome at all what it really is is my psychological reaction to the corporate constraints that have happened in the last 30 or more years of filmmaking where in anything of corporately funded and distributed filmmaking where anything that can possibly make an audience uncomfortable is necessarily excised or that film will not be corporately funded or distributed and this is a very
Guest:damaging thing because it's that moment when an audience member sits back in their chair, looks up at the screen and thinks to themselves, is this right what I'm watching?
Guest:Is this wrong what I'm watching?
Guest:Should I be here?
Guest:Should the filmmaker have done this?
Guest:What is it?
Guest:And that's the title of the film.
Guest:What is it that's taboo in the culture?
Guest:What does it mean when the taboo has been ubiquitously excised?
Guest:Again, this is a very damaging thing because it is that moment when people are asking questions
Guest:That they're having, in the etymological sense of the word, education, meaning to learn from within.
Guest:When they're asking questions, they're having true education.
Guest:And to ubiquitously excise the possibility of genuine questioning, it becomes the opposite of education.
Guest:What's the opposite of education?
Guest:It's propaganda.
Marc:So all expression becomes propaganda.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, corporately funded and distributed filmmaking becomes propaganda.
Guest:That's the threat of the- That's the reality.
Guest:It's not just the threat.
Guest:It's the reality of our situation.
Marc:But there are people like you.
Marc:There are people that- There are exceptions.
Guest:There are artists.
Guest:There are exceptions.
Guest:And even there are people that work in the corporately funded and distributed film industry.
Guest:situation that have struggled through and they have accomplished getting things through.
Guest:It's just the exception as opposed to the rule.
Guest:And I admire it when they do that.
Marc:But the question is enough.
Marc:The answer is not important.
Marc:What is it?
Marc:Then it's the responsibility of the viewers to be challenged and to experience it and to feel their own feelings and live with them.
Marc:Now, seeing that that was a theme...
Marc:So, you know, like going back when when you started to have to do promotion, like whatever the hell happened on Letterman, you know what you responded to, you know, with Kaufman was this was this part of of your ideology all along that you wanted people to say, what is it?
Guest:Well, I do feel a responsibility toward putting something that is good for the culture at large.
Guest:I have felt guilty at certain times in my career when I felt that the messages that were being put forth that I was a part of were not...
Marc:Right.
Marc:Did that happen a lot?
Guest:That's the norm.
Guest:It's not the exception, unfortunately.
Guest:But the other side of that is you have to make a living.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And that's the thing is, of course, there's all kinds of great people in the film industry and media.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That come in and they have all these high hopes and expectations and they want to do things that are going to challenge and be interesting and entertaining and thoughtful and questioning.
Guest:And then there's a way that it happens and people start thinking, well...
Guest:Okay, I want to act or I want to direct a film or I want to write a film.
Guest:And they end up having to figure out essentially what it is that's going to please the corporate interests.
Guest:It's not said that way.
Guest:There's no kind of...
Guest:When people hear the word propaganda, they think of something like Nazi Germany or communist Russia where there was a genuine ministry that had a dictated kind of panel that said, this is going to happen.
Guest:They told you.
Guest:That isn't how it works here.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:But it still has the same effect.
Guest:Well, no, it has the same effect, but we call it entertainment.
Right.
Guest:Well, it was always entertainment.
Guest:I mean, it's like you can go look at those movies that were made in World War II.
Guest:Okay, that's a good point.
Guest:They had a great series.
Guest:I went and saw them in the 90s at UCLA of these World War II era German films.
Guest:They're very well-structured movies.
Guest:I saw about nine of them.
Guest:And most of them were love stories.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And the love story went like this, essentially.
Guest:Stay true to your love or you'll be laughed at, ridiculed, ousted from society, and ultimately killed.
Guest:Some of them didn't get to the point of killing.
Guest:But the metaphor was apparent.
Guest:It was stay true to the state or we'll kill you, which is creepy as hell.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, so we don't necessarily have that same message.
Guest:They wanted people to be true to the state.
Guest:But essentially, there are similarities.
Guest:There's staying true to the thought process of whatever it is that will serve corporate interests.
Guest:And if the messages within the film go away from that, that film will not be corporately funded or distributed.
Guest:If something is actually like...
Guest:Specifically questioning those values, that's going to be very difficult.
Marc:Let me ask you a question, though.
Marc:You're dealing with the type of work that you do, even that trailer, it definitely makes me say, what is it?
Marc:This is compelling.
Marc:There's craft.
Marc:There's a lot of mystery involved.
Marc:But there is a level.
Marc:So I'm saying you're dealing with a type of expression, even in the books, which is cryptic by nature, in a way.
Guest:Well, I do have a strong interest in... I think the Surrealists did something that was really important.
Guest:Okay, Surrealists.
Guest:Dada's too?
Guest:Well, yeah, but specifically what the Surrealists did.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And they're not... I don't know if I'm running out of time.
Guest:You're not.
Guest:But the Surrealists, they understood that Freud's understanding of the human subconscious...
Guest:Freudian analysis was used so that the patient would sit or lay on a couch and talk about in free association that which was on their mind.
Guest:And classically, you have the Freudian analyst sitting with a pad of paper, not saying anything.
Guest:And then at the end of the session, the Freudian analyst will recognize certain patterns
Guest:that have come through in the subconscious of what they're talking about, what it was in the dreams they're talking about.
Guest:And the idea is that the things that are bothering the patient, that the patient doesn't recognize that an analyst will be able to point them out and then the patient feels better.
Guest:So what the surrealists recognized
Guest:Okay, well, we don't need to make ourselves feel better.
Guest:We want to get that which is essentially operating in the subconscious and that creates interesting things that people can get something out of.
Marc:Provocative, but not necessarily defined.
Guest:Well, it lets the participant, the audience, bring their own psychology and on some level their own subconscious into it and fill in those blanks, which makes them an active participant in it.
Guest:That's good art.
Guest:And all good art does that.
Guest:It's not just the surrealists.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So it depends on to what level somebody's doing it.
Guest:There might be somebody like myself who's very subsumed in that kind of thought process.
Guest:And I very much enjoy things where I can really put stuff together.
Guest:Some people are less inclined toward that.
Guest:But a lot of that has to do with the education process.
Guest:that they're used to.
Guest:And I'm not saying it's wrong to not be able to do it.
Guest:I think people are intelligent and people want to have thoughtful things to go forward.
Guest:Now, it's true there are some people that want to go to a movie and have, I don't know, some kind of escapism.
Guest:You don't see that at all?
Guest:Well, definitely.
Guest:I definitely have that in, oh, you mean in my own films?
Marc:No, no, do you go and enjoy?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, I've been going to, when I was 18, I would go and see every single film that was in release.
Guest:I lived off of Hollywood Boulevard, and so there were all the theaters.
Guest:I'd go see every single film.
Guest:And then if I couldn't, I went all the way to Westwood and make sure that I'd see literally every single film that was in release.
Guest:Because at that time, I felt I was thinking more about acting at that time.
Guest:But I felt like I could learn something, whether it was good or bad.
Guest:Now, I don't feel like that as much.
Guest:I really kind of want to see things that are excellent.
Marc:Are there filmmakers that you enjoy?
Marc:Yeah, oh, definitely.
Marc:That are working now, like movies?
Marc:It seems like there is a middle way where people are making films that do have some corporate support that are fairly good.
Guest:Oh, yeah, that definitely happens, but it's the exception as opposed to the rule.
Guest:Like what have you liked lately?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I...
Guest:Oh, I very much enjoyed Enter the Void.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:By Gaspar Noé.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:I thought that was a very interesting film and very cinematic and very well made.
Guest:And, yeah, I like that a lot.
Marc:And do you still enjoy acting?
Guest:I've always enjoyed aspects of acting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I particularly enjoy it, of course, if there's actually something that I can get behind.
Guest:But in 2000, I had to make... After Back to the Future came out and that film made so much money and it was well regarded, I felt a certain obligation because I'd had some questions about the moral element in it that I felt like I needed...
Guest:to act in something that would somehow psychologically reflect what my genuine interests were.
Guest:And the first film that I acted in after that film had been released was River's Edge, which is a film that I'm still very proud of.
Guest:Subsequent to that time period,
Guest:Most of the films that I acted in did not necessarily reflect what my psychological interests were.
Guest:I was trying to find characters or directors or things that were interesting.
Guest:And I don't regret the time period because there was a persona that was etched out at that time, which essentially I still have.
Guest:And I'm basically comfortable with that persona.
Guest:But...
Guest:In 1999, the second film that I'll be playing at the Egyptian is called It Is Fine, Everything Is Fine.
Guest:I had read this screenplay way back in 1986.
Guest:It was written by a man who had a severe case of cerebral palsy.
Guest:And when he was in his early 20s, his mother died and he was placed into a nursing home.
Guest:And the people that were taking care of him at the nursing home would derisively call him an MR, a mental retard, which is not a nice thing to say to anybody.
Guest:But Steve C. Stewart was his name, was of normal intelligence.
Guest:And the emotional turmoil for the decade that he was locked into that nursing home, I can't even begin to imagine.
Guest:Uh, but he did finally get out.
Guest:And when he got out, he wrote the screenplay in the style of a 1970s TV murder mystery movie of the week, wherein he's the bad guy.
Guest:And there was something about that he'd written it in, in this genre style, as opposed to a standard autobiography, that there were certain elements of his subconscious or psychology that come through.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:I was... Had Steve died within a month after we finished making the film, he... Cerebral palsy is not degenerative, but he was getting older.
Guest:He was 62 by the time we shot it, and he, in 1999, he was starting to choke on his own saliva, and he got pneumonia, and one of his lungs collapsed.
Guest:It became apparent if we didn't shoot anything soon, we'd never get to shoot anything at all.
Guest:I had to get...
Guest:money to fund that film was right at the time that the first Charlie's Angels film was coming to me.
Guest:And even when I first read the script, they were interested in meeting with me.
Guest:And I play a character that doesn't say anything, but it originally had dialogue in it.
Guest:And the dialogue was quite expositional.
Guest:And it wasn't necessary dialogue.
Guest:Even needing to work on the film, I didn't initially want to go in on the meeting.
Guest:Three years before, I would have just completely turned the film down.
Guest:But they said they were interested in hearing what my thoughts were.
Guest:They kept contacting my agents.
Guest:So I went in and they said, what do you think?
Guest:And I said, well, I said, whether I play the character or not, I think the dialogue for the character should be...
Guest:excised and it should just be a silent fighting antagonistic character.
Guest:And McGee, the director who can be very enthusiastic stood up and said, that's great.
Guest:That's how we're going to do it.
Guest:Fantastic.
Guest:And then they showed me the Chinese team that we're going to be doing the choreography, the Yun family who've done great work with wire work and they understand psychology of character through movement.
Guest:And I realized that a silent, quiet character with this Chinese team essentially choreographing, it could be very interesting and I could fund Steve's film.
Guest:And so that's what happened.
Guest:I shot that.
Guest:I acted in Charlie's Angels.
Guest:I flew to Salt Lake where we shot it.
Guest:I co-directed it with David Brothers who built... It's all shot on sets.
Guest:He's really good.
Guest:He built all the sets, which essentially I paid for with my salary from Charlie's Angels and...
Guest:And we shot it over in three separate smaller productions over a period of six months, flew back to Los Angeles.
Guest:And then within a month after shooting the film, I got a call and it became apparent that he was back in the hospital and he was essentially asking for permission.
Guest:to take himself off of life support if we had enough footage to finish the film.
Guest:And of course, it was a sad day and a heavy responsibility to let Steve know that we did have enough footage to finish the film.
Guest:But I know that if I had said, no, Steve, you need to get better.
Guest:He would have been there because he would have had a great attitude because he'd essentially already done that.
Guest:But this film, when the whole trilogy of the films are done, that film is the film that'll be the best film in the whole trilogy.
Guest:But not only that, I feel like it'll be the best film I'll have anything to do with in my whole career.
Guest:There's just something about the specificity of what Steve had gone through that is quite unusual.
Guest:And I mean, of course, I'm very excited about the new film.
Guest:And it's probably the new film.
Guest:The one with my father is something that's going to it's not part of the trilogy, but it it's probably something that more people will be able to enjoy in a certain way.
Marc:So would you say that now, most of the time, you take roles in large corporate movies to fund your art?
Marc:It was at the year 2000.
Guest:That film came out and it did very well.
Guest:I hadn't been in a film that had made a lot of money for a while.
Guest:Charlie's Angels?
Guest:Charlie's Angels did very well.
Guest:And then I started, you know, that's how things work.
Guest:You would like to think it's, oh, if I do a really good job in this film, then I'll get...
Guest:offers.
Guest:It's sort of that, but it's more if you do a good job in a film that makes a lot of money, then you get a lot of offers.
Guest:And so good offers did come in.
Guest:Like Willard came about, which was a very enjoyable character to play.
Guest:That to date is still the only time I've ever played the lead in a studio film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I enjoyed playing that character.
Guest:It was good for my career.
Guest:And I realized I had to change the way that I was thinking about my career.
Guest:I needed to very specifically do, you know, John Cassavetes is definitely a role model on that level of I needed to make as much money as I could as an actor.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And put that money into making my films.
Guest:And that's what you do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, the good thing is, is that there are people out there that are interested in making films that are interesting and they like they they'll find me often interesting to put in something that's interesting.
Guest:So it's it's worked out.
Marc:And also people are apparently and I'm happy to hear are engaged with what you're doing.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, that's something that I ultimately am the most passionate about are the films that I'm making myself.
Guest:Coming full circle.
Guest:Do you know, are you familiar with Timothy Carey?
Guest:Yes, I went to his house.
Guest:I knew it.
Guest:I knew it.
Guest:Yeah, I went to his house in the 80s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Late 80s.
Guest:Like, is he a role model?
Guest:Well...
Guest:There were two actors when I was studying acting.
Guest:I could always detect, I could always figure out what the method, for lack of a better word, was that an actor was employing to get to their stage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there were two actors that I did not feel that way about.
Guest:One of them was Andy Kaufman, and the other was Timothy Carey.
Guest:And I never met Andy Kaufman, but I had the opportunity to go to Timothy Carey's house, and it was really fascinating.
Guest:I'm very glad I had that experience.
Marc:Do you know him?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:But when I started thinking about you and about sort of
Marc:not a template, but somebody who was within the system and then started to kind of really break away in extreme way.
Marc:I thought about Timothy Carey, who I loved in some of the earlier movies.
Marc:I'm not that familiar with his work.
Guest:Well, have you ever seen The World's Greatest Sinner?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, he directed it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I know about the movie, but I've not seen it.
Guest:It's worth seeing.
Guest:I saw it for the first time at his house.
Guest:He didn't have it out on DVD at the time.
Marc:That's the one that Zappa did the soundtrack for, correct?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I believe that's right.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what was your experience with Timothy Carey?
Guest:Well, it was fascinating.
Marc:You were going there to figure him out in a way.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:How did that happen?
Marc:How did you get the opportunity to go there?
Guest:There was a friend of mine, Adam Parfrey.
Marc:I know Adam Parfrey.
Marc:I've interviewed him.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, great, great.
Guest:Adam... Makes sense.
Marc:It's all coming together.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, Apocalypse Culture, the first volume changed my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it seems like you're kind of... He's a great publisher.
Marc:Symbiotic.
Guest:He's in my first film.
Guest:He's in What Is It?
Marc:And his father was a character actor.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's something he and I have in common is when you...
Guest:Growing up in the film industry and having a parent or parents that are... His mother was also in the industry.
Guest:She directed plays in New York.
Guest:But if you're... As opposed to... Like I said, my father wasn't super wealthy or super famous.
Guest:So if you see the reality of how that works, it doesn't give you a...
Guest:glowing view of the industry.
Guest:I have always had a very realistic view of the industry.
Guest:And Adam Parfrey, that was something he and I relate to well.
Marc:So he set you up with Timothy?
Guest:Well, there was a friend of his that somehow or somebody he knew was acquainted with that had been in contact with Timothy Carey.
Guest:And so that was set up.
Guest:So the three of us went to Timothy Carey's house and we were there for a number of hours.
Marc:And what did you glean?
Guest:Well, I'm trying to think if it's...
Guest:Right to say, but he was...
Guest:The first hour was spent talking, Timothy Carey talked about passing gas and the health of this.
Marc:For an hour.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And at first, of course, it was kind of funny.
Guest:The first 15 or 20 minutes, it was funny.
Guest:And then it was very serious.
Guest:He wasn't doing it as a joke.
Guest:And then it wasn't really so funny.
Guest:And then...
Guest:It was kind of funny again.
Guest:And then... And then, you know, we were there for several hours.
Marc:We watched the film, right?
Guest:We eventually probably...
Guest:About two hours into it, we had a guest house, which was larger than this.
Guest:It was his kind of studio.
Guest:And then we were out there for most of the time.
Guest:Then we went into his living room, and then he showed us the film, which was excellent.
Guest:It's a very interesting movie.
Guest:And then I asked him...
Guest:What I noticed about him, I went and saw both East of Eden and... The Killing?
Guest:And The Killing.
Guest:I think I saw The Killing a little later.
Guest:Paths of Glory?
Guest:And Paths of Glory I saw later.
Guest:But I noticed when I was watching the film, James Dean is one of those actors that you're studying as a young actor in Marlon Brando.
Guest:But in those scenes, Timothy Carey has fight scenes with both of them in bars.
Yeah.
Guest:But in those scenes, my eye was not on James Dean.
Guest:My eye was not on Marlon Brando.
Guest:It was on Timothy Carey.
Guest:But the part that I hesitate to say a little bit, but maybe I'll say it.
Guest:At one point,
Guest:You hear a lot of different tales.
Guest:I don't know if you've heard a lot of tales about Timothy Carey, but I've heard a lot of tales about him that are fascinating.
Guest:Like he disappeared during the shooting of Paths of Glory in Germany.
Guest:And if you look at the film, his character is...
Guest:in shadows at a certain point in the prison, but he wasn't originally supposed to be in shadows.
Guest:He disappeared during the middle of production.
Guest:And then I've heard different tales as to how he was found, but essentially they just had to hide his character and then they put him back in once he showed back up again.
Guest:Also, I think he met his wife in Germany there and Kubrick did as well.
Guest:So there's something in common.
Guest:And he kind of pointed at his head at one point and said, I almost feel like I'm betraying something private.
Guest:He said something about his mental health.
Guest:And...
Guest:So it was fascinating to me because I realized that part of what was hard for me to detect about him was there was something going on I gleaned or assumed from talking to him that was essentially indetectable because he was having, for lack of a better word, mental health issues.
Guest:And so that's part of why I would say probably it was hard for me to detect what the specific method was.
Guest:Like Marlon Brando, I mean, he's a great actor, but I essentially can understand what he's employing to get to the state or James Dean.
Guest:But like I said, the two that I can't, and I never met Andy Kaufman, so I don't know exactly where it was coming from.
Guest:And Timothy Carey, even having had that meeting, of course, I don't know those.
Guest:the exact neurons, so to speak, that we're getting to that point.
Marc:But you're sort of one of those guys, too.
Guest:Well, I mean, it might be what people... I probably, early on, have always been interested in the idea of art and madness, for the lack of a better word, as being as good for art.
Guest:But, you know, people probably question, in fact, I know people question me as if I'm a sane human being.
Guest:People will often wonder or believe that I am either psychotic or have mental issues.
Guest:But I don't.
Guest:I mean, I'm a healthy human being.
Marc:Yeah, I feel that.
Marc:I was about to say that you look like you're in good health.
Marc:And I think that my take on it from talking to you for a while and having my own assumptions, but I don't judge mental illness too harshly, is that you will take the risk of letting your mind go and then hopefully catch up with it.
Guest:Well...
Guest:I wouldn't quite put it that way.
Guest:My mind has never gone to a point of, well, in clinical terms, psychosis.
Guest:Yeah, psychosis.
Guest:Close?
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Nowhere near close.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Like I said, I've always been a very analytical person, and I've never...
Guest:I'm lucky in that I've known people that had genuine psychosis.
Guest:I've seen true mental illness, and it's a terrible thing.
Guest:And like you were saying, I don't judge it.
Guest:I feel badly.
Guest:I mean, that's something that really ruins people's lives.
Guest:But no, I count myself as lucky in being a very mentally stable person.
Guest:But I understand in terms of acting and performance, it's very important to be able to go into all states of mind.
Guest:And I've tended toward having an interest since a young age of...
Guest:That which is unusual.
Guest:But I've seen, I think I recognized at a very early age that mental illness or psychoses is on some level a...
Guest:can be an artistic realm to go into, kind of relating to what we were talking about having to do with the subconscious.
Guest:Some people might find that unpleasant, but I think like looking at certain art from the late 1800s and the early 1900s, painters were going into a psychological area that, you know, at some point it was considered by certain...
Guest:cultural aesthetics unpleasant, but they were going into something interesting.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I think there's all different palettes that can be played with, but it's a palette that I've tended toward liking.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, okay, the live shows with the screenings are happening sporadically.
Guest:And also, I mean, I've been talking about the show in LA.
Guest:I've been editing on the film right now, so I haven't posted any other shows because I've been thinking about this stuff.
Guest:But I do tour regularly.
Guest:People can sign up on...
Guest:The newsletter on CrispinGlover.com, I have an official Crispin Hellion Glover Facebook page and then a Crispin Hellion Glover Facebook page, a Crispin Glover Twitter, a Crispin Hellion Glover Instagram.
Guest:But the best way to know is by signing up for the newsletter on CrispinGlover.com.
Guest:And then, of course, we should say, because the people that initially got me here was the Hooray Jackson film, Amy in the Cage, which I'm in right now, and is available.
Guest:And I don't know what else to say.
Marc:I enjoyed this immensely.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Guest:No, you're really a tremendously talented interviewer and a comedian as well.
Guest:Thank you so much.
Guest:Yeah, I really appreciate it.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you, Crispin.
Marc:And Louis will be excited because he likes the, I was texting with him before you came over.
Marc:Oh, great.
Marc:And he likes the fact that you talk them out of having any dialogue for the Charlie's Angels guys.
Guest:Well, you know, I mean, I admire what he's doing with his show as well, where he... Seems to be up your alley.
Guest:Yeah, well, where he's... You know, that he's doing it like little movies.
Guest:You know, there's the technical aspect as well, and that he's using the lenses.
Guest:I shot the new film on a 35mm negative.
Guest:I can tell that he's, you know, a genuine cinephile, and that he's using...
Guest:comedy with the bittersweet quality of the dark quality as well, which goes into true good art and getting into the subconscious psychologies, which are interesting.
Guest:And I can tell that you do that.
Guest:I was very impressed also.
Guest:I don't know if this is true or not, but do you genuinely do your shows...
Guest:Do you genuinely improvise your shows?
Marc:The stand-up?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I generally have things I'm working on.
Marc:I don't know how they're going to go or how they're going to fall.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But I definitely leave a lot of room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm impressed by that.
Guest:Well, thanks, man.
Guest:And I appreciate that it's obvious that you are interested in going...
Guest:bringing in this kind of thing that makes people think.
Guest:The energy.
Guest:And lets people think.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Which is, that's what's important.
Marc:Thank you so much.
Guest:It's nice to hear that.
Guest:Well, I appreciate it.
Marc:Great talking to you.
Guest:You too.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:So that was a ride, was it not?
Marc:I believe it was.
Marc:I think I'm going to spend more time with him.
Marc:We were hanging out after, and we exchanged numbers.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I think it was pretty exciting.
Marc:It was an exciting conversation, right?
Marc:Oh, yes, it was.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all that stuff.
Marc:Um, I got this new pedal.
Marc:That's crazy, right?
Marc:I've never been a pedal guy either.
Guest:Boomer lives!