Episode 727 - Jane Lynch
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, 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 fucking delics?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my fucking podcast.
Marc:WTF.
Marc:I broadcast from my garage in the hills of Highland Park from the Cat Ranch, which is a self-designated name.
Marc:It's not really a ranch.
Marc:It's a small two-bedroom house with one bathroom that is slowly being taken back by the earth.
Marc:Some repairs need to be done.
Marc:Fires continue out here in L.A.
Marc:I'm sorry if you've been inconvenienced or you lost property.
Marc:My heart goes out to you.
Marc:I do not know why it happens every year.
Marc:I'm sure there's an explanation.
Marc:Gets awfully dry.
Marc:Perhaps the fires come from the lack of water.
Marc:The lack of water in the city.
Marc:But it's been a little humid and the sky gets black and apocalyptic.
Marc:And last night the sun looked red.
Marc:Is it?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'm wary to drag God into it.
Marc:But, you know, on a yearly basis, I do believe that the universe, let's call it the universe, the forces of nature try to reclaim and take over or destroy the
Marc:The L.A.
Marc:County region.
Marc:Perhaps it's spite.
Marc:Perhaps there's some sort of malice on behalf of the forces of nature that we here in L.A.
Marc:are busy constructing a malignant alternate reality that we feed people.
Marc:We feed them.
Marc:We create an alternate reality that manufactures falsehoods and fictions that end nicely or end badly but still not real.
Marc:But L.A., man, the fire is creeping me out.
Marc:I do need to fix some shit in the house.
Marc:I mean, I know I've talked about this ongoing thing.
Marc:There are some ongoing themes, if you've been with us since the beginning, that I can't seem to shake, that I'd like to shake, that would sort of be relatively simple to shake, it would seem.
Marc:Today on the show, the amazing and funny Jane Lynch will join me shortly.
Marc:If you're not connecting that with a person, you know her.
Marc:You know her from Best in Show, from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, from Glee, from Party Down, from Talladega Nights, from A Mighty Wind.
Marc:She was supposed to come over once before, and that didn't work out because she got frustrated, I believe, and lost.
Marc:And mad.
Marc:a little and then uh you know we we made up for it we made up for it i'm sweating i don't have the air on i can't put the air on why i'm recording thanks for asking tour yes i will be in bloomington at the comedy attic this thursday friday and saturday i believe all those shows are sold out stand up live in phoenix august 20th for two shows still tickets albuquerque journal theater september 3rd still tickets the comedy club in rochester
Marc:The 9th and 10th of September.
Marc:Don't know what's up with that.
Marc:There's probably some tickets.
Marc:But the bigger shows, a few theaters for the two-reel tour with my new two-reel photo shot.
Marc:At the Wilbur, September 24th in Boston.
Marc:At the College Street Music Hall, September 25th in New Haven, Connecticut.
Marc:At Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, New York, October 14th.
Marc:At the Carolina Theater, November 17th in Durham.
Marc:At the Knight Theater in Charlotte on November 18th.
Marc:At the James K. Polk Theater in Nashville, Tennessee, November 19th.
Marc:I'm at the Vic for two shows in Chicago, December 3rd.
Marc:That's all that's released right now.
Marc:Those are the dates leading up to some other things.
Marc:I'll let you know.
Marc:Good.
Marc:I did that.
Marc:I self-promoted me.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Buster the kitten.
Marc:How's Buster the kitten doing?
Marc:Buster kitten.
Marc:Buster kitten.
Marc:Buster.
Marc:He's all right.
Marc:The black cat kitten is okay.
Marc:I've posted a video on Instagram today.
Marc:Yes, I did that.
Marc:I posted a cat video.
Marc:It's not that great, but there's a lot of heart to it.
Marc:What's happening is I have these old cats, Monkey and LaFonda.
Marc:LaFonda is a slightly temperamental older female cat.
Marc:And Monkey, it turns out, is a very skittish and somewhat cowardly male cat.
Marc:And now I have this little, like he must be three and a half, maybe three months old, you know, Buster kitten.
Marc:And all Buster wants to do is play.
Marc:So he's pushing up against these old cats.
Marc:And they're not...
Marc:they're not hitting them they're starting to accept it but they're not playing and i and it breaks my heart this is my little my little melodrama my little uh theater of heartbreak is to see buster just jammed with kitten energy running around looking for pals and these old cranky fucking cats are just like and i talked about this but
Marc:It's ongoing, but it looks like Monkey's starting to give in.
Marc:It looks like Monkey is starting to engage and sort of become open to the kitten.
Marc:He's more mature than I am, it seems.
Marc:He's able to process trust a little quicker.
Marc:It's only been a couple weeks.
Marc:LaFonda, I don't know.
Marc:I don't know what's going to happen there.
Marc:I just hope that Buster doesn't lose a fucking eye.
Marc:so here's the deal you know you get old you get older you get set in your ways you start to justify your shitty behavior now mine has become more limited you know there's only so much i can do but there's some part of me that thinks that i can't change or i don't want to change or i'm too old to change i never thought i would be that guy i do think i've changed a bit i've evolved i'm not sure if people change but you you can tweak and uh
Marc:And sort of kind of rewire and try to sort of disable some old machinery.
Marc:But I still got this thing.
Marc:I still got this heart.
Marc:I still got this heart problem that's not necessarily, it's not a physical malady.
Marc:It's a mental and emotional malady.
Marc:I just noticed that I was getting angry.
Marc:My relationship is nice, it's going well, and I don't know whether I react to stress or what happens, but I started talking about politics a little on stage, and I got to this point where I don't even really like my tone when I talk about it, because I've been so open up there.
Marc:So you try to do it in an open way, but then I feel anger coming out, and then when the anger comes up, there's a little bit of satisfaction to self-righteous anger.
Marc:It feels good.
Marc:feels good to to fucking you know swagger around up there with a very defined and biased and partisan point of view and call out the dummies and and do that thing i get i used to live in that and i it's not very far away from me so i feel that happening on stage and i feel like i'm distancing myself from my true self
Marc:It's a manifestation, but it's not a good one.
Marc:No one likes that.
Marc:Even if you're funny, they're not going to like you.
Marc:I mean, you can get laughs, but they're going to be like, this guy's a little worked up.
Marc:But I feel it's important.
Marc:So sort of wrestling with how to discuss my feelings about the political climate.
Marc:And then do the other material, which seems not irrelevant, but mundane, which it might be.
Marc:But there's a lot of existential beauty in the mundane.
Marc:If there wasn't, there'd be no poetry.
Marc:There'd be no painting.
Marc:There'd be no art.
Marc:So...
Marc:But I felt the anger crunch.
Marc:I felt the clamp coming down on my heart and it started to pervade.
Marc:I started to sort of like, you know, get sort of cocky and defensive and reactive.
Marc:I started engaging with trolls on Twitter.
Marc:I started to feel the juice of rage bubbling up within me and riding it, but not letting it consume me.
Marc:And then over nothing, after we had a lovely day,
Marc:I got mad over nothing and kind of raged around like an asshole a little bit.
Marc:It was weird in those moments where you have a little outburst, which is not unusual in the couple situation.
Marc:You know, I haven't been doing it much and I, you know, maybe it was building up or maybe it was, but it's really, there's other ways to communicate.
Marc:I didn't choose those.
Marc:Something just popped and you got to get a handle on that popping.
Marc:But what is that emotional injury right there?
Marc:What is it that happens when you feel that pop where you're like, blah, blah.
Marc:I mean, just opens up so fucking quickly.
Marc:And then you're in the rage and it's like crack and you got to fucking come down from it.
Marc:And then, you know, then, you know, you think you're justified because you have to be because you don't want to shoot down the the shame shoot.
Marc:You want that to be a slow decline if possible.
Marc:You don't want it to be immediate because then, you know, I don't know, maybe it's a buzzkill.
Marc:But whatever the fact is, little little ashamed that that that happened that I raged out a little bit.
Marc:And just cop into it.
Marc:And we talked about it.
Marc:And I got to fucking work on it.
Marc:You know, because I've just, I've been avoiding it.
Marc:I don't do it much anymore.
Marc:But it happened.
Marc:And, you know, it's like, I got to get a handle on this shit.
Marc:You know, what is so goddamn scary?
Marc:What is so threatening?
Marc:What little dumb childhood wound in this grown-up fucking rib cage needs to be cauterized?
Marc:Got to cauterize that fucking hole in my heart so it doesn't volcanically erupt at the sort of delicate moment of building intimacy and
Marc:Got to move through it.
Marc:Got to focus.
Marc:Got to get myopic.
Marc:Got to fucking close down the distractions.
Marc:You know, stay in the feelings and not fucking ruin everything.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:But I guess I'm just trying to reach out.
Marc:If you have this situation and you know something that I don't know about cauterizing the childhood wound on my heart so it doesn't have lava-emitting properties, so we incapacitate it to keep the lava inside.
Marc:So again, Jane Lynch, very exciting.
Marc:I hope you enjoy it.
Marc:I told you where you would know her from.
Marc:Best in Show, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Glee, Party Down, other stuff.
Guest:And I was happy she stopped by.
Guest:I had indoor cats when I moved to the canyon, and they eventually became outdoor cats.
Guest:And they survived.
Guest:They did?
Guest:Yeah, they loved it out there, you know, and they would always come home.
Guest:And now I have another cat.
Guest:They passed away, both of those cats.
Marc:Naturally?
Guest:Naturally, yeah.
Marc:In the canyon.
Guest:I purposely put them down.
Guest:Yeah, in the canyon.
Marc:That's astounding.
Guest:Yeah, we have now an eight-year-old cat who has survived.
Wow.
Guest:You know, most of the eight years.
Guest:I mean, not that he was killed in the middle of it, but he lived elsewhere.
Guest:He lived in Berkeley with my ex.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Now she lives with me.
Guest:I live with my ex.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:We get along and it's- As roommates?
Guest:As roommates, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, we don't like sleep in the same bed.
Guest:She has her own room.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But we're like co-pilots in life.
Marc:So you both have lives outside of the life.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:But she's also my assistant when I need one.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And she doesn't feel like demeaned by any of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's really a perfect human being.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:She's really perfect.
Guest:She's even more perfect than when we dated.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I don't even know how that happens.
Marc:Me just thinking about like, oh, me and my ex are roommates now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Never.
Guest:Never.
Guest:Well, I have several exes where that would not happen.
Yeah.
Marc:Good.
Guest:I just want to make sure you're a normal person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not like, what is it?
Marc:Modern love.
Marc:I don't understand it.
Marc:I really don't.
Marc:I don't understand any of it.
Marc:I'm a monogamous person.
Marc:If I'm in a relationship, I don't know how people do open relationships.
Marc:I don't understand it.
Guest:Well, I think that romance is the problem.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I think the expectations that come with romance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which are unnatural.
Marc:You mean romantic thinking like this song?
Marc:Yeah, romantic thinking.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Like this is going to be something that's going to complete me.
Guest:I mean, how about the movie?
Guest:You complete me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's bullshit.
Marc:The worst.
Marc:Oh, it's the worst.
Guest:I do a live stage show.
Guest:We do a medley of songs, love songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we sing the stuff that, you know, we were brought up with those notions.
Guest:Let it please be him.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I won't last a day without you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then that's it?
Marc:That's the show?
Marc:The commentary?
Marc:That's it.
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:Is it ironic?
Guest:Yeah, it's ironic.
Guest:I started out singing that song.
Guest:It all depends on you.
Guest:And in between each phrase, I go, you know, romantic relationships are basically bullshit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I tell, you know, that I basically had a renaissance in terms of thinking and I'm done with the romance.
Marc:It's stupid.
Marc:So what do you look for now?
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:I'm a happy girl right here, right now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:I love the now.
Marc:The romantic thing, like if somebody has romantic notions that you're with, you start to feel the pressure of them.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:It's so hot.
Guest:You start to change.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're both acting artificially.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And they start getting disappointed by their idea of what you should be.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then you're like, oh, I got to rise to what their idea is of me.
Marc:Oh, it's crazy.
Marc:It's the biggest lie in the world.
Marc:And then you end up resenting the reality of them.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It's crazy, isn't it?
Marc:Lower your expectations.
Marc:I'm not who you think I am.
Marc:Whoa, Nellie, relax.
Marc:So we tried to do this once before, and I remember I had this horrible vision of you got lost.
Guest:I got lost, and I was really cranky to your assistant, and I want to say right now, and I know she doesn't work for you anymore.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I can't leave the Los Angeles general area because I don't know where the fuck I am.
Guest:I was at a gas station where Glendale Boulevard meets the two meets.
Guest:I didn't know where I was.
Marc:Oh, I know where that is.
Marc:So this is really, this is like a day trip for you?
Marc:Oh my God, yes.
Marc:It's a big deal.
Marc:Come on, it's not as bad as going west.
Marc:No, it's not.
Marc:At least it's more interesting.
Marc:There's streets you've never seen before.
Guest:But I know my way going west.
Guest:Now I know this.
Guest:And the trick for me is to stay on the 101 to the 134 to the two.
Guest:And I got here with no problems.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I didn't know.
Marc:So I apologize.
Marc:I was available.
Marc:Well, I'll tell her.
Marc:I'll tell Sam.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I just had this vision of you just aggravated in your car and just saying, fuck it.
Marc:Which I've done.
Marc:You know, we all do it, I guess.
Guest:It was at a time, too, when I was just too busy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was doing too much.
Guest:I mean, that's a great quality problem, but I was doing too much.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And now I'm like, I got the whole day.
Guest:I can hang out here.
Marc:Oh, good.
Yeah.
Guest:I'm settling in.
Marc:Maybe we could just listen to some records or something.
Marc:Yeah, why not?
Marc:Let's hang.
Marc:So what, you're on break from everything?
Marc:Everything.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:On purpose?
Guest:Who knows if I'll ever work again, and it's okay.
Marc:I think you've done all right.
Guest:I'm kind of sitting back and loving having no plans.
Marc:Was that a choice?
Marc:It sort of was.
Marc:You have to make the choice, because somebody like you, I imagine, are like, come on, just do this thing.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, that's happened, and then again, it's not happened, too.
Guest:It's almost like because I put that energy out there, nobody's coming in.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:It's kind of like... But you're not freaking out.
Marc:You're enjoying it.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:I'm having a great time.
Marc:Well, it's sort of astounding how long you've been in show business in a way.
Marc:I mean, not in a bad way, but I mean, I was watching The Fugitive.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I'm like, oh my gosh, Jane Lynch is just being a doctor.
Marc:Right.
Guest:In 1980-something.
Guest:Straight roll?
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:In Chicago, I was a local hire for that film.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you grew up in Chicago?
Guest:I grew up on the south side of Chicago in a suburb.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and I worked in Chicago for probably eight or nine years before I came out here.
Guest:Like a big family?
Guest:Not a real big family.
Guest:We're Irish Catholic, but we kind of, you know, the rhythm method kind of kicked in.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:They were responsible Irish Catholics?
Marc:They were responsible Irish Catholics.
Marc:Not like, ah, another one.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Just make room in the other one's room.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:No, there were three of us.
Marc:Oh, that's it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what kind of family?
Marc:Irish Catholic?
Marc:What'd your dad do?
Guest:Yeah, my dad was a banker and local savings and loans kind of thing.
Guest:Like small bank before the big banks?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But he worked at LaSalle National Bank, which I think now was bought up by Bank of America.
Guest:But it was one of the bigger.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He started out there and then he got progressively smaller banks, but bigger banks.
Guest:And he was a loan guy?
Guest:He was a loan guy.
Guest:He had his desk at the bank?
Guest:And did everything with paper.
Guest:And so you would walk in and he'd say, I'd like a loan.
Guest:Go see Frank Lynch over there.
Guest:Hey, how you doing?
Guest:Sit down.
Guest:So what do you got there?
Guest:What do you got for collateral?
Marc:I mean, it was like old school.
Marc:I like those guys with the desks at the bank.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:look like they're more important than anybody they do and you kind of are yeah yeah yeah he was one of those guys uh-huh and your mom did my mom was a um a stay-at-home mother but she didn't want to be i don't think deep down inside she wanted to be any of them do yeah really i think that was kind of the response to um after world war ii you know the women basically ran everything in world war ii right and then the guys came home and so they had to develop washers and dryers and and vacuum cleaners to get the women back
Guest:into the house you know and i think my mom was like i don't know about that yeah but uh the second she could as soon as my younger brother uh was in school she became a secretary for the school district that's so funny i was about to say real estate license yeah no she didn't go that far she was a great secretary and she was a she did shorthand oh really yeah she knew how to take shorthand which like no no one does that anymore no one yeah i remember seeing like a you know like a like a notebook that had shorthand right and i'm like what's the point of that
Marc:I can't read my regular writing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But they sit down with the boss.
Guest:Fast, I guess it was.
Guest:And then they go back and type it.
Guest:And she was a great typist.
Guest:And she worked until she retired.
Guest:I think she was about 65 when she retired.
Marc:And you're the oldest sibling?
Guest:I have an older sister who has four children.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:Two have lived with me at different times.
Guest:One lives with me now.
Marc:How many people are living at your house, Jane?
Guest:Right now, I have my friend, Jennifer, my ex and good friend.
Marc:The ex and good friend, yeah.
Guest:Yes, and my niece, Ellen, she's 25.
Guest:She lives in the guest house.
Guest:And Jennifer's son, Harry, he's 23, and he lives in the guest bedroom.
Marc:So there's a guest bedroom and a guest house.
Marc:Your niece lives in the guest house.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Because she wants to be here or she's... Yeah, she wants to act.
Guest:And she's doing really well.
Guest:She did three national commercials since she's been here a year and a half.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she looks nothing like me.
Guest:She acts nothing like me.
Guest:She's a completely different human being.
Marc:I like hearing stories when family members are living with other family members and it wasn't because, like, I had to get out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:No, that wasn't it.
Marc:It was a beautiful thing.
Marc:And you started, like, when did you start really acting?
Marc:Did you always want to do the...
Marc:Acting?
Guest:Yes, I knew right away that's what I wanted to do.
Marc:What made you know?
Guest:I guess watching television.
Guest:Oh, that's it?
Guest:Yeah, and I remember going to see a play when I was about... I was so young that the memory is foggy.
Guest:It's through mist.
Marc:It's happening to all my memories.
Guest:Two hours ago is a mist.
Yeah, right.
Guest:And I went to see a play at the neighborhood school with the older kids, and I remember the lights went down and the lights came up, and it was this whole world, and I was so enchanted and fascinated by it.
Guest:I will never forget that moment.
Marc:Theater's mind-blowing.
Marc:Even if you see bad theater or amateur theater, there's something about it where it's like, this is really happening.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I agree.
Guest:And you know, when I go to little towns, like I'll visit, I went to Cambria once and there was a little theater there and they weren't performing, but they were rehearsing and it said, open rehearsal.
Guest:Come join us.
Guest:So I went in there and they looked at me like, what are you doing here?
Guest:I said, open rehearsal.
Guest:And they said, oh, yeah, okay.
Guest:And it was very Corky Sinclair, man.
Guest:Why is Jane Lynch here?
Guest:I wasn't Jane Lynch back then.
Guest:Oh, you weren't?
Guest:The schmuck off the street.
Guest:This would have been like 2000.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you just kind of wandered in?
Marc:I wandered in.
Marc:What were you doing in Cambria wandering around?
Guest:I was with my parents and we had just gone to the, what's his name, the place down, oh God, the Hearst Castle.
Guest:Oh, the Hearst Castle.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did you see the elephant seals?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:Amazing.
Marc:What the fuck is going on?
I know.
I know.
Marc:it's the weirdest thing i never i didn't know it existed and me and my buddy he had never done the coast we're driving down we just see people like hanging out we're like let's get out and there's just a thousand seals giving birth fucking beating each other up and i'm like what is happening yeah and kids are watching it there's they're still doing it i was just i just went to big sur and oh every 15 miles people were turned off the road watching it's really astounding but it's a little it's a
Guest:They're a brutal breed.
Guest:And they're huge.
Marc:Oh, Hearst Castle's nice, too.
Marc:Yeah, Hearst Castle was a good one.
Marc:That swimming pool inside, the blue one with the gold and stuff.
Guest:And did you have a decent docent?
Marc:I think so.
Guest:Our docent was amazing.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Like obsessed?
Guest:Yeah, obsessed.
Guest:And she was funny.
Guest:And yeah, I just was enchanted with her.
Marc:But you know, when you get done with it, you don't feel good about him.
Guest:no i mean you're like what was he trying to do yeah he was kind of a dark guy but i love that everybody went there and i love that they had to take a helicopter and the 101 at that time was like you could go 25 miles an hour on it so it took you five six hours to get there at least just for a party yeah just for a party that's how important he was yeah charlie chaplin would travel seven hours yeah to come to him in his pool
Guest:You know, Charlie Chaplin has a hotel in Montecito, which I love going to Montecito.
Marc:Are you serious?
Guest:It's right on the corner.
Guest:It's called the Montecito Hotel.
Guest:And he founded it, built it, and everything.
Marc:For any special reason or just because?
Guest:I think that that's when people were going to, like, the ranch, the San Pedro Ranch.
Guest:They were taking vacations there, and they were helicoptering in and driving up the 101.
Marc:The only story I hear about Charlie Chaplin, either residences or extras, like, I've met several different people in L.A.
Marc:who said,
Marc:Yeah, apparently my house used to be one of Charlie Chaplin's girlfriends that he'd keep on the side.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:I've heard that like three times.
Marc:He just had women everywhere tucked away in bungalows.
Guest:Have you ever been to Largo?
Marc:Backstage at Largo?
Marc:Cornette, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, the Cornette.
Guest:He has several terrific pictures of Charlie Chaplin, a little older, because he used to have an office in the Cornette.
Guest:He had an office.
Marc:Oh, is that true?
Marc:I didn't know that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What do you do over at Largo?
Marc:You do the state show?
Guest:Well, I usually do Harry Shearer and Judith Owens' Christmas thing, but I have the state show, the live music show that I've been doing around the country, and we did two nights there.
Guest:We did Wednesday and Thursday.
Marc:And this is where you sing the romantic songs?
Guest:Well, that's one of the numbers.
Guest:It's one of the bits.
Guest:Is it just you?
Guest:It's me and Kate Flannery.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Kate Flannery was Meredith the Drunk on The Office, and she's a really good friend, and we've been singing together forever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, and we have a five-piece band that is just to die for.
Guest:They are amazing.
Guest:Yeah, and you guys do shtick?
Guest:We do a little shtick, and the band gets involved in the shtick, but it moves really fast.
Guest:It's hopefully very, very funny, and it's eclectic music.
Guest:It's everything from Irving Berlin to Nicki Minaj to Mark Frischberg.
Guest:I don't know if he does great, funny jazz.
Guest:Do you sing earnestly?
Guest:I do sing earnestly, and then I sing goofing around.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Do you know Jill and Faith Soloway?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They wrote a song.
Guest:They're good friends in Chicago.
Guest:I know Jill.
Guest:Yeah, Jill and her sister is Faith, and they've been working together forever.
Guest:But I've worked with them a lot in Chicago, and they're good friends.
Guest:They wrote this song called If Wishes Were Rainbows, So Am I. And so I opened with that.
Marc:You met Jill from out here.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've not met her.
Marc:Maybe I met her sister once before.
Marc:I know Jill.
Marc:She's been in here a couple times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:since i've known jill she's always been somebody giving birth to something fantastic and mind-blowing yeah did you know her in chicago yeah i lived with her mother what i lived in the basement of the house that she grew up in for probably a year and a half how the hell does that happen well i was here in la doing the real live brady bunch which is jill's baby jill and faith's baby we did actual episodes of the brady holy shit i forgot
Guest:we were a little bit of a cultural phenomenon no i remember i saw it in new york oh did you at the village were you there yeah then i saw you do it yes downstairs at the village gate at the village gate yeah right right oh my god yeah and then i went back to chicago and i did was doing a play and i didn't have an apartment anymore so i stayed with elaine in her basement
Marc:Okay, so you see acting, you saw plays.
Marc:Did you act in high school?
Guest:I did, yeah.
Guest:I acted in, but I quit my first play.
Guest:I got scared.
Guest:I was doing a one-act adaptation of The Princess and the Pea and I was playing the king.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got a lot of laughs at the audition and then the first rehearsal I didn't get any laughs and I quit.
Guest:really just freaked out i freaked out and then i got in my little high school community theater community i got the reputation of a quitter so i wasn't cast after that until i did a production of godspell senior year in my theater arts class where you had to so you always sing yeah yeah i love to sing and you but did you want to be a serious actor did you because like or it didn't matter it didn't matter i was one i was non-discriminating i said yes to everything
Marc:Because you're primarily, I would say, a comic actress now.
Guest:Yes, probably, yeah.
Guest:But I love to do everything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I saw you.
Marc:I saw you in the fugitive.
Guest:That was serious in that.
Marc:Yeah, very serious.
Marc:You had, like, slides.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:And you had proof of something.
Guest:I had proof of something, and I solved some mystery.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:About a liver sample.
Marc:It's very important.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:Locking eyes with Harrison Ford.
Guest:He seems like an intense guy.
Marc:He's very serious.
Marc:I know he's been funny.
Marc:I've seen him be funny.
Marc:He's funny in the Star Wars movie.
Marc:Maybe not off camera.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm trying to think.
Guest:In Star Wars movies, he was charming.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I don't think he's a guy given to levity, though.
Guest:He doesn't impress me that way.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And he was really, really lovely to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But maybe not so much everybody else.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Maybe.
Maybe.
Marc:You're not going to say yes.
Marc:I'm not going to deny or confirm.
Guest:But just for a second here, I thought, would he be listening to this podcast?
Marc:I don't think so.
Guest:That bitch.
Marc:I was so nice to her.
Marc:Oh, well, that'd be exciting.
Marc:Then maybe he'd have to come on here and go like, I want to answer some of the accusations.
Marc:And really seriously with no sense of humor.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So when you went to college, did you do acting?
Guest:I did, yeah, at Illinois State.
Guest:And it just so happens it was the only state school I could get into because I had shitty grades.
Guest:But it also had a terrific theater department.
Guest:And all the kids from – now they're all grownups, of course – the Steppenwolf Theater, which is a fabled theater in Chicago.
Marc:I know, yeah, yeah.
Guest:With Joan Allen and John Malkovich and Gary Sinise and Terry Kinney.
Guest:Tracy Letts.
Guest:Tracy Letts.
Guest:Actually, he came even more after that.
Guest:He's around my age.
Guest:These guys were probably about eight or nine years older than me.
Marc:So wait, so they were involved with your –
Guest:They went, a lot of them went to Illinois State University.
Marc:Really?
Guest:So I had a lot of their same teachers and some of them would come back and teach workshops.
Guest:So I got to meet a lot of them.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:I met Rondi Reed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Joan Allen.
Guest:I don't know that Joan came back to ISU.
Marc:I just saw.
Marc:Lori Metcalf.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And so when I got to Chicago, I had a kind of a natural, I got to be in a couple of their plays.
Marc:Now, were you actually in Steppenwolf?
Marc:I was not in the ensemble, but I did about three shows.
Marc:How did it work there?
Marc:Because I don't know if I've talked to anybody who's been inside that world.
Marc:I mean, was it a troupe?
Guest:Was there a core group?
Guest:There was a core group, and then they would add now and again, but it was kind of a big deal.
Marc:They were known for intensity.
Guest:Yes, they were known for intensity.
Guest:It's an actor's theater.
Guest:So it was completely revolved around the actor's art.
Guest:Everything served the actor.
Guest:And not that we didn't pay attention to wardrobe and everything, but the acting process was given great reverence.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And whose concept was it?
Marc:Who were the guys?
Guest:Gary Sinise started it.
Guest:In fact, I don't think he went to college.
Guest:He's the one who found the church basement in Highland Park for all of them to come.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, he was like sleeping in his car and he was the one who loved Steppenwolf and named the group after them.
Guest:So he was kind of the wind beneath the wings of that formation.
Guest:Then came Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry.
Marc:Terry Kinney's a great actor.
Marc:Yeah, he's a great actor too.
Marc:I haven't seen him lately.
Guest:Yeah, he's a New York guy, I think.
Guest:You know what I saw him in?
Guest:I saw him in Sarah Silverman's movie.
Guest:He played the drug counselor.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Guest:Yeah, he was wonderful.
Guest:Yeah, he was great.
Guest:Yeah, just a little thing.
Marc:He's always great.
Marc:Very honest.
Marc:What plays did you do at Steppenwolf?
Guest:I did a play called Reckless, Craig Lucas wrote, with Joan Allen, and Terry directed it.
Guest:Terry Kinney directed it.
Marc:So you're working with Joan Allen.
Guest:And Boyd Gaines.
Guest:I worked with her, yeah.
Guest:I worked with her back in 19... So she was still there.
Guest:She was actually living in New York and came back and do it.
Guest:In those days, anyway, they would be gone elsewhere, but they would come back and do a play.
Marc:What was that like?
Guest:Great.
Guest:Because you were young, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was just out of college, and maybe I was 28 or something.
Guest:But yeah, it was a big deal.
Guest:Not only did I know who she was from movies and such, but growing up in the theater and...
Guest:You know, we knew who the Steppenwolf people were.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was a pretty big deal.
Guest:It's like a mythic.
Guest:And then Terry Kinney directing it was a huge deal.
Guest:I did a show called Terry Won't Talk, and a guy named Jim West directed it.
Guest:And I understudied a play called Stepping Out, which I ended up going on.
Guest:And that was a great thing.
Guest:And then I did a – that was a wonderful play.
Guest:Then I did a play called Inspecting Carol that I did while I was living with Elaine Soloway.
Guest:So it was after the Brady Bunch.
Marc:In the basement.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was living in the basement and doing that.
Marc:That's cool.
Marc:Theater in a basement.
Guest:Inspecting Carol.
Guest:Yeah, with Austin Pendleton.
Guest:Eric Simonson directed it.
Guest:Did Steppenwolf stay in the same location?
Marc:Was it actually a basement?
Guest:It was in Highland Park first, and I didn't know that.
Guest:That was way back in the early days.
Guest:And then it moved to the Jane Addams Hull House on Broadway in New York.
Guest:and it was like kind of still in a basement yeah and then it moved to a theater on halstead um and they were there that's where i've performed i did the last show that was there and now they've got this huge they're still in halstead they have this huge beautiful state-of-the-art theater that was you know sponsored by united airlines or something like that and i did the second play there okay yeah so that's a wonderful so malkovich never came back
Guest:He did.
Guest:I think he did.
Guest:When you were around.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:He did a play with Joan Allen, and I can't remember what it was called, but it was a two-hander, and I forget what it was called.
Marc:Burn This?
Marc:Did you see that?
Guest:Yes, it was Burn This, and they went to Broadway with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So that was like in the 90s.
Guest:I saw that.
Guest:You really know your Steppenwolf.
Marc:I saw that.
Marc:You saw that.
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, I don't see a lot of theater, but I remember at some point when I was younger being a huge Malkovich fan and going to see Burn This and just like him running around yelling.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he's very good at that.
Guest:Yeah, he's great at yelling.
Guest:He's a great yeller.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you see Baum and Gilead?
Marc:No, I didn't.
Guest:That was Laurie Metcalfe's big star turn.
Guest:I think it's Lanford Wilson.
Guest:It's really dark.
Guest:And she's kind of the yokel from the south side of Chicago.
Guest:She's in the big city sitting at a diner and all these characters.
Guest:Yeah, she was fantastic.
Guest:Do you go to theater?
Guest:I do, yeah.
Guest:I go a lot.
Guest:Here, not so much.
Marc:I don't know where it is.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know where it is.
Marc:I'm going to get a lot of bad emails.
Marc:We're doing a show right now.
Guest:Yeah, right, exactly.
Guest:You know, I did theater here, too.
Guest:I did some, like, on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Guest:I did a lot of sketch comedy where Upright Citizen Brigade is.
Guest:I did a show.
Marc:The Tamarins?
Marc:Yeah, the Tamarins.
Guest:A lot of shows there.
Guest:My first one-person show, and I'm doing air quotes for those who can't see me because I had, like, four people in it.
Marc:So you like, so that, that implies to me that when you got, like all those theaters, I just assume are just filled with relatively good actors.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like the Hudson.
Guest:Or just trying to get something done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do their thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's when I first got here.
Guest:That's what we did.
Guest:There was like a group of us.
Guest:We had done the Real Life Brady Bunch and we absorbed other people.
Guest:Like Will Ferrell did stuff with us.
Guest:We had this thing called the Beachwood Palace Jubilee that we used to do every Monday night.
Marc:Wait, but wait, let's go from wait.
Marc:So did you go to graduate school?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Let's go back.
Guest:I went to graduate school after Illinois State.
Guest:I went to Cornell in upstate New York.
Marc:To acting, for real.
Guest:Right, and they had a two-year MFA program, and I got a nice little scholarship.
Guest:You know, it was really good, but I've got to tell you, the training I got at ISU was really fantastic.
Marc:So, like, two-year-old Cornell, that's a fancy school.
Guest:It's a fancy school, kind of a small theater program.
Guest:MFA in theater.
Guest:Right, and I did Curse of the Starving Class there, among other things, which is a Sam Shepard play.
Marc:Oh, and so were there like 12 of you?
Marc:Was it like that small?
Guest:Very small, yeah.
Guest:In my class, there were probably eight.
Guest:And the class, you know, eight to 10, 10 max.
Marc:And you're doing all this stuff, like sword fighting and all the weird training.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:Alexander Method.
Guest:Yes, and we did this thing called American Mime.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:It's this mime troupe in a very weird group of people from New York.
Guest:I don't even know if it exists anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's almost militaristic.
Guest:There's a certain way it's tension release.
Guest:And after a two hour class, you're crying with fatigue.
Guest:And people are like, the only thing you're allowed to say is, I am exalted or I am diminished.
Guest:That's it?
Guest:Yeah, that's all.
Guest:You can only express an extreme.
Guest:But you have to be quiet.
Guest:And the teacher, you know, is really like a drill sergeant.
Guest:And you have to jerk around?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's very controlled tension release.
Marc:Interesting.
Guest:And if your stomach's sticking out, they slap it.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, so it was really good.
Guest:It was really good.
Guest:It was kind of like... Did you do ballroom dancing and stuff?
Guest:We didn't do ballroom dancing.
Guest:We did movement and ballet.
Guest:Ballet.
Guest:Ballet.
Guest:It was so good, especially for me and most of us.
Guest:We weren't dancers, so we had to learn this very precise, controlled kind of bar movements.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you do it to this beautiful music, classical music.
Guest:Every time I hear those pieces now, my feet kind of want to do the thing.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm not a good dancer, but it was such a beautiful thing to get in touch with your body that way.
Guest:And just it's their small, beautiful movement.
Marc:Well, that's what all of it does.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because sometimes I talk to actors who didn't necessarily study acting.
Marc:And a lot of them, you know, there is a certain natural ability that you either have or you don't.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But a lot of the people that didn't train as actors in college or anything, they're just like, I don't know what my process is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But whether you use that stuff or not, it integrated into you.
Guest:Well, you get to – like they said, my teachers at Cornell, one guy said, we want you to look – we don't want you to look like you rented your body this morning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We want you to be in touch with it all the way to the tips of your fingers so you're not at the mercy of it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You are in control of – it's your clay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's your medium.
Guest:And we did fencing.
Guest:Another thing, you know, after an hour of fencing, you're dripping sweat and wanting to cry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we had this Olympic guy who used to coach the French Olympic team.
Guest:His name was Jean-Jacques Gillet.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Of course it is.
Marc:It has to be his name.
Guest:No, we didn't say, your feet have to be fleet on the floor.
Guest:Now I just did a Russian accent.
Guest:That's okay.
Guest:But that's all right.
Guest:Like I said, I did not excel in accents.
Guest:I can do a lot, but accents and dancing.
Guest:Just mix them up.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:As long as it's your interpretation.
Marc:We gave the guy the right name.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Remember Christopher Guest in Waiting for Guffman when he's talking about doing My Fair Lady and he says, I can't wait to get out of this L. That's supposed to be his cockney accent because they dropped their H's.
Yeah.
Marc:He's so funny.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So you go to Cornell, you fence, you dance.
Marc:I fence.
Marc:You do some mime.
Marc:American mime.
Marc:Some draining mime.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:And then you go to Steppenwolf and you're in Chicago.
Marc:So how's your life?
Marc:Are you ambitious?
Marc:Ambitious.
Marc:Are you fucked up?
Guest:I'm fucked up, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ambitiously fucked up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm drinking a lot.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:With the Steppenwolf people?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not necessarily.
Guest:I mean, I was in the theater community.
Guest:We played softball.
Guest:And I was also in and out of the closet, don't let anybody know.
Guest:So I would go to this bar, literally called The Closet.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:That was your sneak away?
Guest:Yeah, that was my sneak away.
Guest:So I suffered around everything.
Guest:That's Catholic, right?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Have to.
Guest:And I was very much involved in non-equity stuff.
Guest:They don't pay you.
Guest:So I would work temp during the day.
Guest:I was in a Shakespeare company.
Guest:um holy shit you did shakespeare we did shakespeare where we did it like out at schools and then we would do little shows we would do shows in the park and uh then i got cast at second city in the touring company oh you right to the touring company well that you know that's kind of where you start i didn't take classes no but that trajectory of classes to the touring yeah he really never happened that that that was just to sell classes oh really yeah so the touring company that's that's hardcore kind of
Guest:Well, it is, except it's a set show.
Guest:You're not improvising.
Guest:You're doing, you know, the greatest hits of scenes.
Guest:Are you doing pretend improvising?
Guest:No, we do a little bit.
Guest:We do games.
Guest:Like, I don't have a first line of dialogue in a location.
Marc:Thank you, ma'am.
Guest:And then Faith Holloway was our piano player.
Guest:Well, he's a piano.
Marc:Faith, that's where you met Faith?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you don't do the main stage or you never got there?
Guest:No, I did not graduate up.
Guest:I never got asked to the show, as they say.
Guest:I understudied Bonnie Hunt a lot.
Guest:I got on stage and got to do her stuff, which kind of suited me very well.
Guest:I think she's pretty brilliant.
Guest:But no, I remember I said to Joyce Sloan, who was the woman at the head of it and made these decisions, I would go in periodically because I was told to this, just go in and remind her that you're here and that you'd love to be on a stage.
Guest:So I would go in and the last time I went in, she looked up and said, Jane, stop.
Guest:You will never be on a stage.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:I'm sorry, honey.
Guest:And she went back to work.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I was just...
Guest:Devastated.
Guest:Just devastated.
Marc:Well, I think you did all right.
Marc:I did okay.
Marc:And you know what?
Marc:Do those stories, is there any sort of schadenfreude-like satisfaction?
Marc:No, not really.
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:But I got, she sent me, Andrew Alexander actually sent me flowers when I won an Emmy for Glee.
Guest:So I thought that was very nice.
Guest:Very nice.
Guest:But you'll never see my name.
Guest:They won't claim me.
Guest:You know, you have to be on a stage to say, you know, people who have been with Second City.
Guest:They have all these people.
Guest:My name will never be on there because you have to have been on a stage.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:You think they just go ahead and claim here.
Marc:Make an exception.
Yeah.
Marc:Maybe they will someday.
Marc:She was almost here.
Guest:She was almost.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Put a little asterisk by my name.
Guest:I don't care.
Marc:People who are ready to go.
Guest:Right.
Guest:People who are unfairly shunned.
Marc:Okay, so is that where you started your relationship with the... Steppenwolf?
Marc:No, with the Sawways.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, it kind of happened, but I got a job almost immediately doing a play at Steppenwolf right after that.
Marc:Well, that was after Second City.
Guest:So I was rewarded.
Guest:Yeah, that was after Second City.
Guest:But, you know, I met Faith through Second City.
Guest:And we started when Nick, Mick Napier started the Annoyance Theater.
Guest:He had Wednesday nights free and he had this overhead that was really crazy.
Guest:He had to make this rent.
Guest:He said, Jill and Faith, do whatever you want.
Guest:Just get people, you know, get butts in the.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so they decided to do real live episodes of the Brady Bunch.
Guest:We don't have to write anything.
Guest:And we'll just transcribe the script, which Jill would do.
Guest:And we all went to resale shops, got outfits for ourselves, and had our first rehearsal.
Guest:And we're dying laughing, having so much fun.
Guest:And so they announced it and we were up on the roof drinking beer and having pizza before the first show.
Guest:And we looked down and there was a line down Broadway around to, yeah, just drive.
Guest:Yeah, it was like from the second it was announced.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was packed and Mick loves drinking and smoking.
Guest:So he allowed people to smoke and drink in the theater and we had old couches and old, I mean, it was a fire hazard.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was a raucous, fun, good time.
Guest:And who was Hutzel?
Guest:Melanie Hutzel?
Guest:Oh, Melanie Hutzel, who did play Jan.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Melanie Hutzel, Becky Thayer.
Guest:Becky Thayer.
Guest:Pat Town.
Guest:Richter.
Guest:Andy Richter.
Guest:Me.
Guest:My friend Mary Weiss played Alice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we had a bunch of guest stars.
Marc:How long did it run there?
Guest:It ran in Chicago for about, let me think.
Guest:Our first commercial was, well, it's the summer of 1990.
Yeah.
Guest:And I think we went to New York in 91, like the spring of 91.
Guest:And then we came out here in the spring of 92.
Marc:With the show?
Guest:To Westwood Playhouse.
Marc:So when did you decide to move here?
Guest:I went home after the Westwood Playhouse to do Live with Jill's Mom and do the play at Steppenwolf, Inspecting Carol.
Guest:And then I came back here.
Marc:After the run in L.A.?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:After the run.
Guest:Then I came back here in probably 93.
Guest:And I got an apartment and I haven't left.
Marc:And that was it?
Marc:That was it.
Marc:I was here.
Marc:So how bad, like, you know, in terms of like, when did you finally, you know, come out?
Marc:You mean got out of the closet?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was never official.
Guest:It just kind of happened.
Guest:You know?
Marc:It just kind of happened.
Marc:You didn't need to announce?
Marc:I didn't need to.
Guest:I didn't have to have a press conference.
Guest:I remember there's this story of one of the guys in our group who everybody knew he was gay and he wasn't out yet.
Guest:And he said to Mick one day, Mick Napier, who's kind of fluid in terms of his sexuality, he said, Mick, can we have margaritas tonight?
Guest:And Mick's looking at his watch going, yeah, sure.
Guest:He knows exactly what it is.
Guest:I have to talk to you about something.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So...
Guest:He's got so much to do that night, too.
Guest:It was the night that Brady's opened or something.
Guest:So they're having margaritas.
Guest:He's eating the salsa.
Guest:And he's looking at his watch.
Guest:And he goes, OK, what's up?
Guest:What's up?
Guest:He goes, well, I think I'm gay.
Guest:And he said, I knew that.
Guest:Now let's get back to work.
Guest:You're OK with it?
Guest:I'm fine with it.
Guest:I'm fine with it.
Guest:What do you think was going to happen?
Guest:No!
Guest:I don't know you.
Marc:I don't know you.
Guest:You're not my friend anymore.
Marc:That doesn't happen in theater.
Marc:So I didn't do that.
Marc:I didn't have any of those moments.
Marc:But you grew more comfortable with it.
Marc:Oh, yes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And in terms of your comfort factor around that, how did that coincide with alcohol use?
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:I bet they probably went hand in hand.
Guest:I never really thought about it.
Guest:But, you know, I got sober while we were doing them because I was a big drunk doing the Brady Bunch at Chicago.
Guest:Were you messy?
Guest:Were you known?
Guest:No.
Guest:I wasn't messy.
Guest:Everybody else was much messier than me.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And they're still drinking and they're fine with it.
Guest:Bastard.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I don't know how they do it.
Marc:Yeah, I haven't drank.
Marc:16 years I got.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Oh, good for you.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I'm still having a glass of wine.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That's nice.
Guest:But, I mean, it's 25 years.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So, I think I'm going to be fine.
Marc:She said the last time anyone interviewed her.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Jane's final interview.
Guest:She's not dead.
Guest:She's just at home.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:She hasn't left the house.
Guest:Yeah, so that, yeah, I didn't get sloppy.
Guest:But I think I started getting much lighter as a person around the age of 33 when I got sober.
Guest:Just like our Lord Jesus Christ left the planet at that point and ascended.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I ascended in my own way.
Guest:And everything became lighter.
Guest:Everything.
Marc:Lighter, you mean you felt better with yourself?
Guest:Oh, I was happy.
Guest:I was giggling happy.
Guest:Kind of in a bliss that's never left me.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I haven't been depressed in decades.
Marc:And what do you attribute that to?
Guest:I think I dropped stuff.
Guest:It just happened?
Guest:Yeah, I don't think you can consciously do it.
Guest:I got struck sober.
Guest:I really just woke up one day and I was done.
Marc:Well, you seem to have a strong personality around that.
Marc:Around things like decision making.
Guest:Yeah, but it wasn't conscious.
Guest:And it wasn't like...
Guest:Is it a spiritual moment for you?
Guest:I think it's a spiritual moment, yeah.
Guest:I'm trying to describe something in a soundbite that's really, I think, quite something you can't describe.
Guest:And you see it that way?
Guest:Yeah, well, I've experienced it that way.
Guest:Yeah, I guess if I were to tell the story of my life, I would put it in the spiritual chapter.
Marc:The white light moment.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Marc:But your spirituality is fluid?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I hope I live in a good state of presence as much as I can.
Marc:Presence.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I think... Is that a Buddhist word?
Marc:Like, how is that word?
Marc:Like, I understand the word and I like it and I know I feel when I'm on stage and I think we do what we do for that immediacy.
Guest:It's like hooking into that thing where the ego doesn't really exist and where trying and effort doesn't exist.
Guest:It's just kind of a...
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So like, did any of that coincide with you?
Marc:Getting sober?
Marc:Well, no, not so much getting sober, but to have that thing to like the happiness thing, because the only time that's happened to me is recently because like I finally got to a point where I wasn't just trying to get somewhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I stopped trying to get somewhere.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I was still very, yes, yes.
Guest:And I was driving.
Guest:I had a little Red Golf.
Guest:I still have a Red Golf.
Guest:I just bought a new one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was driving around in my little Red Golf and going to auditions.
Guest:And I was like, hey, I want to do voiceover.
Guest:Let me get a voiceover agent.
Guest:Hey, I want to do this.
Guest:I want to do commercials.
Guest:I wonder if there's a way I can, you know, start doing guest spots on sitcoms.
Guest:And, you know, and I just started.
Marc:When you got here.
Guest:Yeah, when I got here.
Guest:And I was lucky in that I had an agent from...
Guest:Chicago, who also had an office here in Los Angeles.
Guest:And so I kind of hit the ground running.
Guest:And it was, even though, I mean, I wasn't a star and I wasn't rich, everything was flowing so nicely.
Marc:And you were enjoying yourself?
Guest:I was enjoying myself.
Guest:I was loving it.
Guest:Loving, loving, loving.
Marc:Well, that's great.
Marc:So what was this thing you did out here with Will Ferrell and those people?
Guest:How did that go?
Guest:Everybody would do their gigs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they'd come in like the Roxbury guys.
Guest:Chris and Will came in and did it at our thing.
Guest:And Anna Gasteyer would do her thing.
Guest:Molly Shannon would do her thing.
Guest:And then we'd do things together.
Guest:We'd do scenes.
Marc:So there were a lot of groundling people.
Guest:Yeah, a lot of groundling people.
Guest:And then, of course, all of us, too.
Guest:The real live Brady Bones.
Guest:so it's a variety show yeah it was a variety show and at the end we always did a musical number we had no business doing something like it's a hard knock life we did once we did good morning star shine uh we did a chorus line we did my god there's such a ballet such funny people yeah it was great it was hilarious it was a night to be reckoned with i bet it was monday nights and we did it probably a couple years
Marc:I mean, Will Ferrell is like, you just sit there when you're around him.
Guest:He wasn't there every day.
Marc:No, no, but he's one of those oddly kind of like, how do you get that funny?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Marc:I don't know where it comes from.
Guest:I saw him in a Monday show at the Groundlings way back when I first got here.
Guest:And every scene was absurd.
Guest:and weird and done with such love and such joy.
Guest:And then Chris Kattan used to do this thing where he'd climb up him like a monkey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Will would just stand there and he'd kind of help him and he'd climb all the way up to his neck and then grab ahold of him.
Guest:It was hilarious.
Guest:I'd never seen anything like that.
Marc:So were you doing all that when you came out here?
Marc:So you had a good agent and you had all these great friends.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the Brady Bunch had a great reputation so you're hanging out with top-notch funny people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But you didn't want to be in the Groundlings.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't even think about it.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:You were done.
Marc:Yeah, I think I was done with the training.
Guest:And where I was, the people I was working with, I didn't even cross my mind to take a class or anything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you just started working.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you would do anything.
Guest:I would do anything.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah, I did anything.
Guest:I mean, short of porn.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I would.
Guest:At one point, I stopped doing the sketch stuff, and it was falling away for all of us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I remember going, I don't want to do another closing number in my underwear.
Guest:We did a lot of that, too.
Guest:A lot of pantyhose and briefs.
Marc:You got to for the closer.
Guest:You have to.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Close big.
Guest:We got to put it out there.
Guest:And so I started doing, I took a bunch of my stuff, like monologues, stuff I had done alone.
Guest:And I started bringing it, like there was a show at Highways that Terry Sweeney was putting on.
Guest:And I met people like Taylor Negron.
Marc:Taylor, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he was amazing.
Guest:He was an amazing monologuist.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Kathy Griffin.
Marc:Great rhythm.
Marc:Great rhythm.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:He had this thing where he was talking about Uggs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how wonderful they are in the snow.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And his voice would trail off.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah, he was just the- So that was that un-cabaret crew.
Guest:Yeah, I guess it wasn't- A little before?
Guest:Yeah, but it wasn't on Cabaret.
Guest:Maybe it was a little before.
Guest:Or maybe it was at the same time.
Guest:So it was Kathy Griffin.
Guest:Kathy Griffin and Nora Dunn.
Guest:So I met a lot of people who were stand on their own types, who did their own thing.
Guest:And so I started doing my own thing.
Marc:What was your own thing?
Guest:My first thing was this character I called the Angry Lady.
Guest:And I wore a neck brace.
Guest:I had an eye patch.
Guest:I had a broken middle finger.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:And she was just a victim and everything was about how she was minding her own business.
Guest:Oh, that's so funny.
Guest:And somebody passed her on the right while she was on her bicycle and she, you know, broke her neck and I'm going to sue everybody within a 20 mile radius and she could barely talk to talking to the microphone.
Guest:like this and she was so angry and i came on to the uh ride of the valkyries music uh-huh you know that so that was my first one and then i took a monologue class and one of the people in the class was nora dunn who's a wonderful writer and a wonderful girl and um good actress yeah and a great actress and we were all started writing yeah marshall wilkie too another wonderful writer and writing for characters
Guest:Yeah, writing for characters and, yeah, I guess it would end up, yeah, they were monologues.
Guest:Was Julia Sweeney around?
Guest:She was not around, but she was doing her show at that time.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And then I cobbled together all these monologues and all these characters and some silly little lesbian folk songs that I'd come up with.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I put a show together and put it on a tamarind and I called it Oh Sister, My Sister.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And it was Deeply Feminine Tales of the Deep Feminine.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I had a couple of friends in it.
Guest:I had a friend who did the sound.
Guest:And at that time, it was cassette tapes.
Guest:So every time a sound cue was coming up, she'd be quick play.
Guest:Exact quick play.
Guest:So that was her job.
Guest:And a lighting guy.
Guest:And I had my two friends in it.
Guest:And it was great.
Guest:It was a lot of fun.
Guest:Great little theater.
Marc:Yeah, great theater.
Marc:Did you find that was, like, I imagine at this point that to the gay and lesbian community, you're somewhat of a hero.
Marc:On some level.
Guest:Well, I took that show to the Gay and Lesbian Center and I premiered it.
Guest:I was one of the first shows at the Lily Tomlin Jane Wagner Theater.
Guest:And so, yeah, that's when I started getting a little cred in the LGBT community.
Guest:Did you meet Lily?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I met Lily under different circumstances later on and she's the best.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've given her awards.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:We're honoring Lily Tomlin.
Guest:I'm like, I'll do it.
Guest:I'll make the speech.
Guest:Who does the Lily Tomlin awards?
Guest:Jane Lynch usually does them.
Guest:Jane Lynch does them, yeah.
Guest:And she gave me one.
Guest:Oh, she did?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:How great was that?
Guest:Oh, just a peak experience.
Guest:Doesn't get any better than that.
Marc:It's sort of amazing.
Marc:The evolution of that community in general is a beautiful thing.
Marc:It is.
Marc:Because in your lifetime, the differences in how people live is extraordinary.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's just a huge leap.
Guest:And now, and this is what I hope will happen.
Guest:I mean, I bet it happens on the coasts first.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, hopefully, it's just such a non-brainer, no-brainer that we don't even need a gay and lesbian center.
Guest:I think we will always need a gay and lesbian center, though, for the kids who are in the flyover states that don't have the support that we have here.
Guest:So we always need a place to...
Guest:you know yeah it's weird for all kids all kids need a place where to go where they're loved you know and right to feel accepted and feel accepted you know and i know there's a lot of straight kids out on the street too the gay and lesbian center specializes in getting those gay kids that have been kicked out of their but what about just the sweet sensitive chubby ones i know and you know what they are not turned away which is wonderful
Marc:what about the people that just don't know how to talk to the other people but they're good folks inside exactly how everybody deserves a place of refuge yeah it's well it's sort of interesting that there's a philosophy of like you know come on fight it out high school's high school but like you know high school's ruined quite a few people it sure has boy you know you know what i mean like not gay aside gay lesbian aside just like people who are
Guest:sensitive yeah like if they don't gravitate towards some sort of nerdy pastime they might be full-on loners well the great thing about the world today is that people like bill gates are now our heroes i mean take a look at the face on that guy when it's now and when he was a kid i'm sure he probably but he had such confidence in what he knew you know and i think that uh it's revenge in the nerds right now
Marc:It is.
Marc:And culturally, I think we're getting a little exhausted of the nerds.
Guest:I've had it with the nerds, actually.
Marc:Me too.
Guest:I think they need to go back to be marginalized.
Marc:Can we just go back to entertaining everybody?
Right.
Marc:i don't know enough about comic books or sci-fi movies right yeah so all right so how do you uh how does it happen that you you know start defining yourself as a comic actress when does a relationship with chris you did commercials and everything i never defined myself as anything i really didn't it's just okay let's say that the world did right that's fine they defined me but you did commercials and you did like voiceovers and little things right and guest spots on sitcoms right stuff like that so you were just around
Guest:Yeah, I was kind of in a position that there isn't a world for it anymore, that kind of middle class actor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's either feast or famine in the business.
Marc:Well, there are a few of them, but they're the only ones working.
Marc:Yeah, right, exactly.
Marc:There's a middle class actor, but there's nine of them.
Marc:There's nine of them, exactly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But there was when you were starting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There was a place, and there was enough, well, it seems like there's a lot of stuff being made, but there might not be a lot of stuff being seen.
Yeah.
Guest:yeah maybe yeah you mean now yeah yeah there's so much being made i guess there's not a lot of stuff being made for no money yeah is the difference is that there's so much on television now it seems to me that there can be a middle class actor maybe i'll bet there is because you know there's shows i've never seen oh people bring shows up all the time they're like have you seen this it's in his fourth season i'm like what the fuck where is it it's a bates hotel i watched the first episode yesterday it's an
Marc:amazing show i didn't even know about well like you said before though you run out of time i don't even know how people have time to have dinner with people yeah i know i just you know when you do what we do yeah you're sort of half self-employed and if you're employed you know that that's completely consuming yeah and then when you're not doing something steady you got a million other things going right right so there's no time for anybody no that's why you just have a community in your house yes i've got the warm bodies right there right yeah
Marc:We just have dinner there.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I would say, wouldn't you say that the first time that you really sort of became defined as a comic actress was with Chris?
Guest:Chris, yes, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah, I was doing a commercial for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He directed it.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I went through the audition process.
Guest:And then at the callback, there he was.
Guest:Directing a process.
Guest:I guess everyone's got to make a living.
Guest:He directs commercials all the time.
Guest:He does the ESPN, the hilarious ESPN commercials.
Guest:If you ever laugh out loud at a commercial, Christopher Guest directed.
Marc:Does he do it because he likes to?
Marc:I think because he likes to.
Marc:He does not need the money.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I think he does it because he loves it.
Marc:Because, like, advertising people, if you're in the funny advertising people game, I mean, that's a very competitive, sometimes very brilliant little world.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, it is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:The Joe Pitkas.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And one of the rules that Chris has, and he has it when he makes a movie, too, is nobody is allowed to have any input.
Guest:So that can be maddening for like a client.
Guest:But they do it.
Guest:They do it anyway.
Guest:They are off in a room like the Kellogg's people were off in a room, not allowed to talk to us, not allowed to talk to him.
Marc:Oh, OK.
Marc:So that's his fuck you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I had to assume there had to be a fuck you in there somewhere.
Guest:I think he collaborates in the beginning, but then he basically says, this is how it goes.
Guest:When he's creating and he's doing his thing.
Marc:And that's how you met him?
Marc:That's how I met him, yeah.
Marc:And then he just loved you, or how did it work?
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:Wouldn't that be nice?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I love him, too.
Guest:He told me at lunch when we were doing the Kellogg's Frosted Flakes thing, he said, you know, I do movies.
Guest:And I'm like, yeah.
Guest:I'm waiting for Guffman.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:It's Final Tap.
Yeah.
Guest:And he said, you know, maybe doing another one.
Guest:I hope we can work together again.
Guest:And I said, I would love that.
Guest:And then I ran into him at a restaurant about six months later.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Jane, I forgot about you.
Guest:Come to my office today.
Guest:And by the end of the day, he had asked me to go to Vancouver to do Best in Show.
Guest:So that's how that came down.
Marc:That's a great character.
Guest:Yeah, thank you.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:That's so funny.
Guest:Jennifer Coolidge, the best partner a girl could ask for.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Guest:In her maiden voyage with the Christopher Guest people.
Guest:Was that her first time?
Guest:It was her first time.
Guest:Where did she come from?
Guest:She'd been around.
Guest:I had seen her around.
Guest:She's about my age.
Guest:I had seen her around.
Guest:She'd done SheTV.
Guest:Do you remember SheTV?
Marc:A little bit.
Guest:It was really funny.
Guest:And she was at the Groundlings.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She was at the Groundlings.
Marc:But that role for her was just hilarious.
Marc:Yeah, it was her breakout.
Guest:Yeah, she was just...
Guest:firing on all cylinders and now he when you work with him is it it's a lot of improv it's all improv yeah there's no and there's no rehearsal and he just shoots so that experience yes how did that change your whole life well it changed my career for sure because people knew who i was and kind of almost by name so that was nice and i started getting offers as opposed to having to audition which i loved um uh and then uh yeah but how many of them were for for uh butch women
Guest:Right.
Guest:There were a lot.
Guest:Let me tell you, I had a brilliant agent who would send me out for things that were written for men.
Guest:And then the casting directors get to feel like they were thinking outside of the box when they cast me.
Guest:So I got a lot of those roles.
Guest:Got a lot of doctors, therapists, cops, detectives.
Guest:That were written for men.
Guest:That were written for men.
Guest:Now, when Glee happened, did you have any?
Guest:How did that happen?
Guest:That, you know, I knew Ryan Murphy.
Guest:I had done a really funny guest spot on Popular.
Guest:Very popular.
Guest:It was an insane, hilarious.
Guest:I played like five different people together.
Guest:And we had a blast.
Guest:And then 10 years later, he offered me Sue Sylvester, which was kind of a cool thing.
Guest:And I guess Sue Sylvester was not in the pilot.
Guest:And Kevin Reilly, who was running Fox at the time, said, you need a villain.
Guest:And so Ian Brennan, who...
Guest:The guy who actually is Glee was his brainchild and he's one of the darkest, funniest guys I've ever met.
Guest:He's a Chicago guy too.
Guest:Also, when you meet him, he's all light.
Guest:He's very, oh, but he writes really dark stuff and he created Sue Sylvester.
Guest:And so I was the recipient of his crazy manic darkness for six and a half years.
Guest:It's done?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:Yeah, it ended at, let's see, we did five and a half seasons actually, but it was six and a half years.
Guest:I guess the last episode was on about a year ago.
Marc:And it's like, it was hugely successful.
Guest:Yeah, especially in the beginning.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It changed culture.
Guest:Yeah, it did.
Guest:I mean, a lot of kids just, you know, it really helped kids who love to sing and love to do plays and stuff like that.
Guest:And it showed the cool kids doing it as well.
Guest:I think it might have brought the musical back.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:On TV though?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:no no but i mean in general yeah i think people yeah i think kids because and adults too love this show um they kind of stuck to the musical format not not 100 right um but uh you know how a musical is you don't sing a song unless you are uh in such a state as a character that the only way to express yourself is through music we didn't always stick to that right but um uh yeah i think it did it revived the musical in a lot of people's hearts
Marc:Yeah, because I don't know.
Marc:Some people are very... Did you grow up with music?
Marc:Yeah, I did.
Marc:I loved them.
Marc:Yeah, Rodgers and Hammerstein and... Because I'm affected by them, but I don't seek them out.
Marc:You don't seek them out.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:Like, if I go to one, I'm immediately emotional because people are singing and I find that to be so vulnerable.
Guest:It is, isn't it?
Guest:It's one of the most vulnerable things.
Marc:I think so, too.
Marc:I totally think so.
Marc:Standing up there and going... It's just so revealing.
Marc:Right then I got emotional.
Marc:Aw.
Marc:It is.
Marc:It is raw.
Marc:But people who sing, they don't really think that way necessarily because they're singers.
Marc:But to somebody... Like, I think because I'm so... To me, it's such a vulnerable place to be.
Marc:Yeah, I agree.
Marc:But to people who just belt it out, they're like, what are you talking about?
Marc:Just get up there and put it out there.
Guest:But I think the reason we respond to it is because it...
Guest:they express for us too you know and i think that's why a lot of kids want to be singers because they they feel something so deep that they don't even understand yeah and and they can uh experience some release and some catharsis through singing yeah and it's so human like when you see like it's that theater thing again i've been talking about this for to a few people i think like like even when you go to the opera i don't have any idea what the hell the opera is i've only been to one or two
Marc:yeah but you forget that like you it's not amplified you just have someone up there singing over an orchestra of wooden instruments well now it's amplified no i know yeah but like the vulnerability is still there because of the human factor yes and you don't you don't see that very much right and with singing like with musicals you can hear the the foot stomping and like oh my god
Guest:It's so real, isn't it?
Guest:It's a world.
Guest:It's a whole world and it's lit.
Guest:It's alive.
Guest:Do you want to do a musical?
Guest:I do.
Guest:Yeah, I did Annie on Broadway over two summers ago.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I stepped in for Miss Hannigan for two months.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:The best.
Guest:I hadn't been on stage in probably 25 years.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I just had the best time.
Guest:And that's why I started doing the stage show.
Guest:I had so much fun.
Guest:What kind of venues are you doing the stage show in?
Guest:A lot of performing arts centers, huge 1,500-seat theaters.
Guest:Subscription theaters?
Guest:Yeah, a lot of subscription theaters.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Some gorgeous places.
Guest:We were just in Omaha.
Guest:And they have this performing arts center that is just gorgeous and with the best acoustics in the world.
Guest:Now, everybody came out if they filled the joint.
Guest:Same thing in Minneapolis.
Guest:But then we'll do smaller places.
Marc:That's a great theater town, though.
Marc:Yeah, they are.
Marc:Minneapolis is a very great culture town.
Guest:Yep, indeed they are.
Guest:Yeah, so we are a lot of performing arts centers.
Guest:And then, of course, we just did Largo, which was a joy, about 300 seats.
Guest:It was so much fun.
Guest:Did the Hollywood people come out?
Marc:Hi, James.
Guest:They kind of did.
Guest:They kind of didn't.
Guest:too yeah it was a mix of people it was it was it was a it was a blast there were a lot of great people that came out that surprised me i don't know about you but i don't like to know who's in the audience oh no i never do it bothers me sometimes i just want to do the show yeah it bothers me to know that like because then you're sort of like well that person's going to judge me that way exactly because i'm judging them yes i barely know i judge them of course they're judging me yeah i don't like to know who's out there in fact people come and go get you know who's coming and i go don't don't don't don't don't don't don't tell me
Guest:And we're doing a big tour in June all over the country.
Guest:We're doing like 21 dates.
Guest:God help let my voice last through that whole thing.
Marc:Do you take care of it?
Marc:I do.
Guest:Do you have tricks?
Marc:Do you know things?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:No, I don't have tricks.
Guest:But I don't, you know, I was just going to say I don't drink and smoke.
Guest:But I've been doing a little bit of that lately.
Guest:Maybe I have to cut that out.
Guest:Yeah, I'm pretty good at, you know, getting my sleep and stuff.
Guest:So I think I should be okay.
Guest:Did you take voice training?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:I have very strong pipes naturally, knock on wood.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:And there have been times that I've lost them.
Guest:I got acid reflux where it was burning my esophagus and my voice started to suffer.
Guest:And oh my God, I took it for granted for so many years.
Marc:It's delicate.
Guest:It can be a delicate thing.
Guest:I don't want to treat it like it's too delicate, but I got to watch out.
Marc:I took one singing lesson because someone gave it to me as a gift and I almost cried.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Why?
Marc:Yeah, because, well, because it's like, all right, just fine.
Marc:You're like, ah, like that place where you find all your breath.
Marc:Yeah, it's like you just feel like, no, this is very close to crying.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It is.
Guest:There's nothing like it, man.
Marc:No, there isn't.
Marc:I got to do more of it.
Guest:And we're, you know, we've been doing the show a lot.
Guest:So both Kate and I are probably in the best voice we've been in a long time.
Guest:And this guy, Tim Davis, also sings with us.
Guest:He was the vocal arranger on Glee.
Guest:And he's got an amazing voice.
Guest:How did you know her?
Guest:Kate, yeah.
Guest:From Chicago.
Guest:We both were at the Annoyance Theater at the same time.
Guest:So she's from there.
Guest:too yeah she's actually from philadelphia but she came out to she's a riot yeah she is she's and she's one of the nicest people in the world and she's the best freaking sidekick ever she really i kind of do an eve arden type thing and she's my k ballard you know it's a it's such a great little match you know um it's just uh i i love her i couldn't do this show without her she's the best i can't believe how much um film and television you've done
Guest:You see, I never say no.
Marc:Like, I'm sitting here, like, I pull this up sometimes.
Marc:Like, maybe there's a couple things we need to... There's too much.
Marc:Yeah, well, that's... And then, like, there are these moments with your resume.
Marc:You're like, oh, shit!
Marc:Oh, yeah!
Marc:There were a lot of those roles.
Marc:Yeah, yes, exactly.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I just remembered Afternoon Delight, Jill's movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The therapist.
Marc:That was hilarious.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:I was doing her therapist.
Guest:She's got such a great view on people.
Guest:And the most interesting people- Do you knew the person?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:The most interesting people cross her path.
Guest:It's just like she magnetizes the most interesting, and she's one of the most-
Marc:accepting and compassionate people that's what that's what's interesting about her because it's sort of hard to peg her personality if you just talk to her but like she's you know she's very um uh um what do i want she's got this weird mixture of uh completely defined yet seemingly boundaryless
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:She'll go anywhere with you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's tricky because she's definitely has a core.
Marc:It's strong.
Marc:It's planted.
Marc:But when you're with her, you're like, you're not sure where, you know, like there's a porousness to it that is.
Marc:That's a great way to put it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's hard to.
Guest:And she's curious.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I think that helps.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why do you think you did that?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Do you think A, is it because of blah, blah, blah?
Guest:Do you think B, you know, really?
Guest:Or is it a combination?
Guest:You know, she's interested in motivation and what makes people tick on a deep level, not the superficial.
Marc:You know what I just felt when you told me that?
Marc:I have to do that now.
Marc:I have to, like, I should really be more like that.
Guest:More curious?
Marc:Yeah, about that specifically.
Guest:Especially in this job.
Guest:Why do you just do that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, I don't want people to feel weird at their interview.
Marc:They say one sentence and I'm like, but wait, why did you?
Marc:No, no, it's deeper than that.
Guest:Uh-oh.
Guest:Now we're in therapy.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But I'd go there with you.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I'd go there with you.
Marc:Well, I feel like we've gone some places.
Marc:What's going on with your personal life?
Marc:You good?
Guest:I'm great, yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm very happy.
Guest:I don't have any desire for partnership or romance, so that takes a lot of pressure.
Guest:So you don't have a partner.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But, you know, Jen's like my partner, but we're not, you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We're not kissing.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And, yeah, I'm happy.
Marc:I go out to dinner with my friends, and I... But you just, like, do you randomly kiss people?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:No interest.
Marc:You're taking a break.
Guest:Sometimes in my dream, I'll have a dream about somebody, and I'll kiss them, and then I wake up and go...
Marc:But did you have that realization where you're like, you know, relationships, sexually sexual relationships with responsibility are after a certain point like taxing?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I get overwhelmed and I think I've always been that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just didn't want to admit it because I was in under the influence of the social meme that says one must find a partner.
Marc:Once I let that go, I was all right.
Marc:Maybe a little compelled by the drama, because drama is very compelling.
Guest:Yeah, and you feel you're alive.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Look, I'm screaming.
Guest:Yeah, right, exactly.
Guest:And then you think you're over, and you return to the scene of the crime.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Remember?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just want to make sure you remembered and revisit.
Guest:And also I want you to remember that I forgave you.
Guest:Okay?
Marc:You don't appreciate that enough.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I've been those.
Marc:I've had those.
Guest:It's so childish, isn't it?
Guest:Isn't it kind of on an infantile level?
Guest:And I know there are relationships that go deeper than that.
Guest:And I've seen them in my life around me where there are two people, but they have to get through that infantile stage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it deepens into something beautiful and wonderful.
Guest:And maybe even sex isn't a part of it.
Guest:Or maybe sex is a part of it.
Marc:But maybe it doesn't have to be the main part.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, if it's the main part, that's where you run into trouble.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You cannot live by sex alone.
Marc:No, you can't.
Marc:Especially as you get older.
Guest:Because you get tired.
Guest:You get tired.
Guest:It's just too much work.
Guest:It's always been too much work for me.
Guest:Always.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe it'll be over soon.
Marc:I can tell.
Marc:Can we just go quick?
Marc:Is there any way we can go quick?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I know exactly what I need.
Marc:Just tell me what you need and maybe get this done.
Marc:Wait, hold on.
Guest:I'll do it myself.
Guest:Just lie over there.
Guest:Stroke my brow.
Marc:I thought that was perfect.
Marc:Are you good?
Marc:Now, I've actually watched The Hollywood Game Night a couple times.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I didn't say that in a condescending way.
Marc:It's just not necessarily a show that was necessarily made for me.
Marc:but not unlike a musical when i have it on i'm like oh this is they're having fun and vulnerable and they like those kind of they are fun and vulnerable that's what's so great about it is the actors that show up to do it or yeah celebrities are um game and they know that there's a really good chance they're gonna look like an idiot yeah i'm terrified of it just the idea like i've never played charades in my life like because like i'd be the guy that like as soon as they didn't know i'd be like oh just just fucking tell them yeah
Guest:like i don't have that that that fun part of me for that kind of stuff yeah but it seems like everyone don't either but i love being the host of it well whose idea was that uh it's sean hayes oh yeah he he has a terrific um i don't know these had one recently but he has um terrific game nights at his house where he mixes all sorts of people like his celebrity friends his his you know a friend who's a chef and
Guest:You know, somebody who's an accountant.
Guest:And we have these great nights.
Guest:And I've been to a couple of them.
Guest:And they're fantastic.
Guest:He makes up all the games.
Guest:And we go from room to room.
Guest:And they're big events.
Guest:They're kind of events that I don't like going to so much.
Guest:But I enjoyed his.
Guest:And I especially enjoyed watching him be the host of it.
Guest:So when he asked me to do it, I was like, you bet.
Marc:Like, just describing that.
Marc:Want to take a nap?
Marc:Yeah, I don't.
Marc:I've been...
Marc:You don't seem to have this, but there's part of me that's sort of like, I know it would be fun, but I don't want to do it.
Marc:That's me.
Marc:Absolutely, that's me.
Guest:It sounds great.
Guest:My niece was saying, oh, you go to this place out in Malibu.
Guest:They play music and they have these lights and everybody gets together and they get blankets and then they watch a movie.
Guest:This sounds like so much fun, but I'm not going to do it.
Guest:There's no way in hell I'm going to do it.
Guest:And as she's telling the story, I'm like, oh, isn't that nice?
Guest:And then the ocean's right there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, how beautiful.
Guest:No, I have no interest in doing it.
Marc:I'm not driving down there.
Guest:No, I'm going to bed.
Marc:Yeah, there's sand.
Guest:Right, it's 6.40 p.m.
Guest:I'm going to bed.
Marc:I don't know what that is because usually if I go, I have a pretty good time.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:What is that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Laziness.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:And also social anxiety for me.
Guest:I just don't like a lot of people.
Marc:Social anxiety and also just like tonight.
Marc:I like a lot of people.
Guest:I don't like being around a lot of people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And also just driving there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, Malibu too.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Oh, and she gets jumping in her car.
Guest:We're going to Malibu.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Malibu.
Marc:Why?
Guest:And there's going to be in traffic for about an hour and a half of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No.
Marc:No, I can do it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But if that's being old, I've always been old.
Marc:I talk myself out of a lot of stuff.
Marc:Anxiety, that's what it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think we're good.
Guest:This is great.
Guest:Are you good?
Guest:I feel like we've given and we've given and we've given.
Guest:We have.
Guest:Until we can't give anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We probably could if there was an encore.
Guest:If I didn't have to go to the bathroom.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:I have one.
Guest:Oh, encores.
Guest:I love encores.
Guest:You do?
Guest:Yes, I do.
Guest:But we don't have to do one.
Marc:No, well, you can go to the bathroom.
Marc:We don't have to come back.
Marc:No, let's not.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:That was me and Jane Lynch.
Marc:Very nice.
Marc:I enjoyed meeting her.
Marc:She's exactly as you would expect.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:It was a pleasure.
Marc:It was a pleasure to talk to her.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get yourself a t-shirt or a poster or something.
Marc:Get the Howl app.
Marc:I'm sweating.
Marc:I'm sweating out here.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Play some guitar?
Marc:A little?
Marc:All right.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives!