BONUS WTF Collections - Directors
Marc:In your mind, so the idea for Boogie Nights came from where?
Guest:from my from pornography from my life from yeah from all that stuff right but you it started out as a short piece it did yeah which was a comic piece yeah it was kind of like make it like a fictional documentary you know that spinal tap style like about a how long was that half hour okay so that was a dirk digler character yeah who played it in the short this guy named mike stein the only guy i knew that had long hair and he wanted to be an actor so but it was a it was a goof
Guest:Yeah, it was a fuck off.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:And so that evolves into Boogie Nights, which is not really a goof, but there's comedic elements.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But you didn't shoot that one as a comedy.
Marc:Boogie Nights?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We were laughing a lot when we made it.
Guest:No, obviously.
Guest:But no, I mean, I think by then, yeah, things settled and doing something about pornography got a little bit more well-rounded rather than just laughing at the goof of it all.
Marc:In your mind, what's that movie about?
Guest:Boogie Nights?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't even remember now because I feel like I'm just regurgitating things that I've read about it over the years, that it's about family, surrogate family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I suppose that really is what it's about, you know.
Guest:And it's about filmmaking.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's about the valley.
Guest:It's about family.
Marc:It's also about the, like, there's a monumental moment that, you know, the shift from film to video is a big fucking deal.
Guest:Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Guest:yeah and that's where you brought in the heavy that's right where you brought in hall to deliver the news that's right right yeah i mean these stories are good these kind of an end of a certain kind of innocence you know that always sort of makes for a good thing and i think that's what's going on there it's singing in the rain basically it's like you know what happens when we gotta start talking you know what happens when video comes in now anybody can make a porno movie yeah what the fuck
Marc:Now, how much porn did you grow up with outside of consuming it?
Marc:I mean, did you know houses in the valley?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There was one across the street from my grandmother's house.
Guest:Honest to God.
Guest:And I probably wouldn't have put two and two together if she hadn't been so indignant about it all, that she saw this van there all the time and the windows were blacked out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, if you waited long enough, you would see some pretty suspicious looking characters coming in and out of there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then I remember so well looking at the frame of the front window.
Guest:There was kind of a bay window in the front of the house.
Guest:And any time I would watch a porno film, I'd be looking for that bay window.
Guest:I'd be like, where's that bay?
Guest:I wonder if that's in that house.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I feel like I saw it a few times, but I don't know.
Guest:It's a pretty standard bay window in a valley.
Marc:And then you also dealt with some of the drugs and some of the John Holmes story.
Guest:Yeah, there's a great Rolling Stone article that I read.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That fucking thing was mind-blowing.
Guest:There was two things.
Guest:That article was gigantic to me to help figure some things out.
Guest:And also, do you remember a show called A Current Affair?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They did a piece on Shauna Grant, who was a porn star who had a really sort of tragic end, and she committed suicide.
Guest:But those two things were really like this sort of bridge the gap between...
Guest:Growing up around it, knowing what it was, having a feel for it, and really seeing a fuller story.
Marc:The Heart of Darkness.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But still, it's sort of upbeat.
Marc:Burt Reynolds really stayed steady for you on that one, didn't he?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He did.
Guest:Oh, man, Burt Reynolds.
Guest:Well, how was that?
Marc:Tough.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Really tough.
Marc:He was huge when we were kids.
Oh.
Guest:skimoki and the bandit hooper yeah i mean the longest yard that was before yeah yeah the longest yard was a little bit before but believe me i saw that on tv and it was all part of game ball idolizing him you know great um hooper was a big one for me yeah you know when he would just the beginning when he just put on these pads as the stunt man and
Guest:And, yeah, I think there was, again, a big distance between that time and when we were working with him.
Guest:And he was tough, but ultimately it was great and it was worth it.
Guest:Was he tough because he didn't trust you?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think that's for sure that's one element of it.
Guest:I think that he had, I mean, he had a lot of goodwill.
Guest:I mean, we all came and we were all excited to work with him.
Guest:And I think to put myself in his shoes for a second, he, a lot of us were just starting out, you know.
Guest:Maybe he'd seen Riley in a couple things and there were a few people, but...
Guest:I think he felt pretty quickly he sized it up and thought, I am slumming it, and I don't know how I got here.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And just wasn't feeling good to him.
Marc:That's funny, because they get to a certain age where they don't really keep up.
Marc:So, like, maybe he saw some of those people.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Maybe he saw Riley.
Marc:But, you know, he's down in Florida running his school.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So, but you know what too, I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I can only guess here, but you know, we didn't have any money and you go from being the biggest movie star in the world and you're in a trailer and you're going to share the trailer with three different people.
Guest:Maybe that's an element, but he, he was a team player to a certain point.
Marc:He really kind of like outdid himself in vulnerability wise, you know, and sort of being the rock.
Marc:What is it with you and Ricky Jay?
Uh,
Marc:Oh, come on.
Marc:You love Ricky Jay?
Guest:Ricky Jay, actually funny, Burt Reynolds and Ricky.
Guest:Ricky Jay had the obligation when Mark and Burt are in this big fight scene out at the pool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's coming at Mark.
Guest:He's saying, get out of here.
Guest:You know, you're high and all this kind of stuff.
Guest:And Ricky Jay had the job...
Guest:of holding Burt back, which is not a job that Ricky should have.
Guest:Ricky has these magician's hands and everything else.
Guest:And Burt started to improvise, and Mark says to something like, you know, I haven't been up for two days.
Guest:He says, you don't look good.
Guest:You've been up for two days.
Guest:You've been doing blow and everything else.
Guest:He says, I haven't been up for two days.
Guest:And Burt said, nevertheless...
Guest:You don't look good, and I'm not going to shoot you this way.
Guest:And so every time Bert would say nevertheless, I kept noticing something happened over Ricky's face.
Guest:I said, what's going on?
Guest:And he said, I can't.
Guest:I'm almost going to laugh.
Guest:I'm suppressing laughter when he says nevertheless.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, why?
Guest:And he told me this great story of being at a football game where this woman is being introduced to sing the national anthem.
Guest:And her name is Helen Forrest or whatever it is.
Guest:And they said, now to sing the national anthem, Helen Forrest.
Guest:And somebody in the stand screams, Helen Forrest sucks cock.
Guest:And the announcer says, nevertheless.
Guest:It's a long story to tell, but I swear.
Guest:And every time I see the movies on TV or I see it, you can see Ricky Jay when Bert says, nevertheless, just like because of that trigger.
Guest:So any time I hear the word nevertheless, I think I'm going to explode.
Marc:So what movies were informing you through that?
Guest:through boogie night yeah well goodfellas was a big thing you know i mean that was a kind of like way to look at you know that kind of energy that kind of cocaine energy but also to that kind of like like a subculture like a kind of like a tribe of people right right right like tell and that was insulated insulated in their own little hierarchy and here's the chief and here's the side people and
Marc:And also, they can only socialize with themselves, because at that time, you know, sex worker, you couldn't just be out having dinner parties.
Marc:They weren't empowered yet.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:You know, it was a freak show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the biggest thing.
Guest:I mean, Nashville, of course, and sort of the way that you have sort of multi-characters and sort of intersecting lives and all that kind of stuff, but...
Marc:That's something that kind of moves through.
Marc:That Altman thing kind of moves through you in a couple movies.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:And the last and the newest one a lot, right?
Guest:Yeah, the funny thing is, it was the first time I really tried to... I mean, I had to size up.
Guest:I mean, there's some similarities to The Long Goodbye, but I just thought, you know...
Guest:I don't need to do another Altman movie.
Guest:I didn't quite feel that.
Guest:I think The Long Goodbye is pretty sparse.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:This is not sparse.
Guest:Altman... I mean, I think The Long Goodbye and Nashville, seeing them for the first time was probably one of the biggest...
Guest:holy fucking shit moments in my life what the fuck really look at this yeah for sure for sure but um but with this one i remember thinking i've got to try to forget that this film exists the long goodbye because there's similarities you just got a detective thing and all that but just put it to the side don't even think about what about the big wabowski and that came into my mind instantly when i read the book i was like well
Guest:Fuck me.
Guest:Okay, there's a lot of parallels here between what Pinchon has written and The Big Lebowski, which is an all-time classic for sure.
Guest:And again, it was working through that and going, you just got to ignore it.
Guest:And, you know, obviously I know it exists.
Guest:I know every word of it and I love it.
Guest:But what's Pinchon all about here?
Guest:And what's this thing going to be?
Marc:I think he nailed that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're almost going to get there.
Marc:I'm not done with the other stuff.
Marc:You in a hurry?
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:I'm fine.
Guest:As a matter of fact.
Marc:Have a cigarette.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Do you need water or anything?
Marc:I do.
Marc:You do?
Marc:Just a sip of water?
Guest:No, they've got this right here.
Marc:You want me to go get some?
Guest:I don't want you to leave.
Marc:I won't leave, man.
Marc:I'm not going to leave you out here.
Guest:I like being here.
Guest:This is just like it is in the Bob Dylan video.
Marc:In the Bob Dylan video.
Marc:That's your point of reference.
Marc:All right, so now let's just do Magnolia.
Marc:I'm going to do the same question again.
Marc:In your mind, what is that movie about?
Marc:Like if you were to say one poetic line, give me a haiku.
Marc:My dad.
Marc:The whole thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:I mean, I just lost my dad and I wrote a movie.
Guest:It was like that.
Guest:I remember talking to an oncologist on the phone who was essentially telling me that there was no way my dad was going to make it.
Guest:And one of the first things that popped into my mind was, you know, you're telling me that frogs are falling from the sky.
Guest:And I remember that kind of just popping into my mind.
Guest:Because Michael Penn introduced me to the idea of Reign of Frogs and...
Guest:So that had been rattling around.
Guest:Reign of frogs as in biblical?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Biblical or the non-biblical version of Reign of frogs, which is just sort of clippings of stories where sort of bizarre occurrences would happen where a farmer wakes up and there's a field of frogs and there's nowhere.
Marc:Oh, so there's a folktale of some kind.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's precedent.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought hearing that your dad is going to die is as bizarre as hearing that frogs are falling from the sky.
Marc:So it was about the death of your dad.
Marc:Obviously with the Robards character, and I'm going from memory, and I remember having this feeling about that movie.
Marc:I've had struggles with your movies before where I've had to repeatedly go see them.
Marc:Because I, you know, I felt like I'd walk out of your movie sometimes like, what does that guy want?
Marc:What does he want from me?
Marc:I got to go see that again.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, all right, this is the fifth time I'm going in to see this movie.
Marc:I got to turn something off to let something in here.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So do you take that as an insult?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, no, I think what it makes me think is of times where I've felt that way with filmmakers.
Guest:I think, fuck this.
Guest:I'm not coming back.
Guest:You know, which is probably how I'd feel about my movies if I saw them.
Guest:I'm not going back to this.
Marc:No, but I have to go back.
Marc:I have to go back because they demand it.
Marc:You make movies that, you know, even if they bother you at first, it's a lot to reckon with.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, you know, in Magnolia at that time, you loaded that thing up.
Marc:That was an emotional, like, hurricane on all fucking levels.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, that was like one of those moments in time where you just...
Guest:I had enough vinegar and confidence, and I wasn't really editing myself.
Guest:And this sort of open wound and all that stuff came out.
Guest:I look back proudly at that.
Guest:Well, you should.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But if you were given the opportunity to do another cut of it.
Guest:Oh, I'd slice that thing down.
Guest:It's way too fucking long.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Oh, no, it's unmerciful how long it is.
Marc:No, I liked it, though, and I liked the frogs, but it seemed like there was a whole story in there, if I'm remembering it properly, there was one trajectory that could have just been taken out.
Guest:Yeah, and maybe a few.
Guest:Yeah, you won't get any... I won't defend it.
Marc:Julianne Moore was genius?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Like, that felt like out of life.
Marc:I mean, was that something you had to deal with?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was your father married to somebody else at that time?
Marc:Yeah, he was.
Guest:He'd gotten married again late in his life, and...
Guest:And it was a sort of tragic end for this woman, really sweet woman, but she just couldn't handle his sickness and she sort of had a sickness of her own.
Guest:And it all kind of tumbled forward in a pretty similar way to the way that it is in the movie.
Guest:I think when you're dealing with something like that, and thankfully I didn't have any... Was she much younger?
Guest:Not much younger, but she was younger.
Guest:But I think I just sort of, I was putting it all out there.
Guest:Not really even thinking twice.
Guest:Loading it up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what was the Tom Cruise character to you?
Guest:That was just a great character.
Guest:It was, but what sparked that?
Yeah.
Guest:Heard about a guy named Ross Jeffries who did those things and kind of got obsessed by him and just couldn't resist.
Guest:When I was writing it out on the page and I would look at this thing that this guy was saying, yeah, it was just too good.
Guest:I was like, well, I've got to do this somehow, you know.
Marc:Were you astounded that Tom said yes?
Guest:A little bit, you know.
Guest:But I'd met him and he'd wanted to do something together, which was a vote of encouragement, you know, from him.
Guest:And I was kind of in the middle of writing it.
Guest:And then I just started to sort of tailor it, thinking if he wants to do this, then let's do it.
Marc:Before we go on, I forgot.
Marc:Like, you know, like I can't look at Alfred Molina without thinking of that scene.
Marc:Do you know you ruined that guy for everybody?
Marc:The firecracker?
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that scene is like one of the greatest scenes ever put on film.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:That song and that guy.
Marc:Sister Christian.
Marc:Yeah, it's over.
Marc:They're inseparable now.
Guest:Well, that is a scene that really is those firecrackers.
Guest:Where did that come from?
Guest:It's a steal from Bob Down.
Guest:It's a steal from Putney Swope.
Guest:It's a little bit of a steal from Putney Swope because he's got this character Wing Sony who shows up, who's got an assistant in the background who's just randomly throwing firecrackers in the hallway of their ad business.
Guest:And I think the other thing was that my dad always had an obsession with firecrackers.
Guest:He was blowing stuff up with Goularty and...
Guest:You know, I didn't really, I thought it was a good idea, but man, when you get on the set for the first time and you're in a tiny little set like this and one of those, that first firecracker goes off and everybody jumps and it's so fucking loud.
Guest:That's when I thought this might be pretty good.
Marc:Well, it's a comic scene.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Even when he gets, when he starts, the weird thing is the guy he's based on, Eddie Nash, there's no way to make that guy funny.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, but somehow or another, between that little Japanese kid and Alfred Molina with his robe flying open and his half effeminate disposition was completely comedic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the true story of that guy was menacing, man.
Guest:Yeah, no, it got, it went dark very fast.
Guest:Read that Rolling Stone.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It is weird.
Marc:You made it, it is lighthearted, dude.
Marc:It's still kind of uplifting.
Marc:Well, you know.
Marc:But I found Shortcuts uplifting.
Marc:I'm a freak.
Marc:Like, I thought Shortcuts was like a celebration of life somehow.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I have the same feeling.
Guest:I mean, look, if you can get out,
Guest:With a low body count, it's uplifting, I suppose.
Marc:When was the last time you watched Freebie and the Bean?
Marc:Do you realize how many fucking people went down in 70s comedies, like those weird buddy cop movies?
Marc:I don't know when they stopped killing people, but they certainly didn't give a shit in the 70s.
Guest:No, they didn't.
Guest:Up until the late 80s when Mel Gibson was running around killing people in Lethal Weapon.
Guest:The higher the body count, the better in those things.
Guest:You're just laughing through it.
Guest:No, I know.
Marc:Weird.
Marc:Weird.
Marc:I know.
Marc:And also, I noticed in Magnolia that the one thing that stands out in my mind is you zoomed in on a Freemason's ring.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I'm like, that's it.
Marc:It's there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why'd he do that?
Marc:Now I'm all fucked up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ricky Jay had a Freemason.
Guest:That's absolutely right.
Guest:And he says, we met upon a level, but we're parting on a square.
Guest:What is it?
Marc:You were in such deep grief, but obviously you were going into very dark places.
Guest:Well, that, you know, blame Michael Penn for that.
Guest:He's the one who got me on all that stuff.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I lent him a couple of my Freemason books.
Guest:So really?
Guest:He's way in deep with all that stuff.
Guest:And he's obsessed.
Guest:Yeah, still?
Still?
Guest:I don't know, but I can't imagine that it was an obsession or an addiction that went away.
Guest:I think it was not just the passing fancy.
Marc:We didn't really talk about how the French Connection happened.
Marc:How'd that happen?
Guest:Everything happens by luck or accident.
Guest:And everyone turned it down.
Guest:Every studio turned it down for two years.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I actually was on the unemployment line.
Guest:I hadn't done anything for two years.
Guest:I had just finished The Boys in the Band two years before.
Guest:But I wasn't working.
Guest:And finally, one day, Dick Zanuck...
Guest:Called and said, look, I don't know what the hell this thing is you guys are trying to do.
Guest:I'm sort of intrigued by it.
Guest:If you can make it for a million and a half dollars, go ahead.
Guest:You better make it soon because I'm going to be fired out of here in six months.
Guest:And he was.
Guest:But he greenlit the film.
Guest:We had a budget of $3 million, but we anticipated having a star like Paul Newman, who was getting the top salary then, which was $500,000 a picture.
Guest:Today it's chump change for a movie star.
Guest:But it wasn't then.
Guest:And Dick Zanuck said, you don't need a movie star.
Guest:Just get the right actor in this thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember saying to him, would you go with a non-actor who was right?
Guest:He said, well, like who?
Guest:Who are you talking about?
Guest:I said, do you ever hear of a journalist in New York called Jimmy Breslin?
Guest:He said, yeah, yeah, I love Breslin's writing style.
Guest:He wrote a lot like Damon Runyon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, I know Jimmy Breslin.
Guest:He's a good friend of mine.
Guest:Let me go back and audition him and see how he did.
Guest:I had hired Scheider.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I hire people based on instinct.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't read them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If I thought you were right for a part, I wouldn't ask you to read it and audition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He walked into my casting director, who was not a casting director.
Guest:He was a film and theater critic for the Village Voice in New York.
Guest:He knew every actor in the country.
Guest:And he discovered Whoopi Goldberg and a lot of people.
Guest:And one day he brought Roy Scheider into my office.
Guest:And Roy sat down opposite me as I'm sitting opposite you.
Guest:And I said, how you doing, Roy?
Guest:He said, oh, great.
Guest:I said, what are you doing now?
Guest:He had never shot a film.
Guest:He said, I'm in an off-Broadway play by Jean Genet.
Guest:And I said, well, what kind of part do you play?
Guest:I knew instantly he was the guy.
Guest:And he said, I play a cigar-smoking nun.
Guest:I said, oh, yeah?
Guest:He said, yeah.
Guest:I said, okay, you got the part.
Guest:He said, what?
Guest:Do you want me to read something?
Guest:I said, read something.
Guest:There's nothing to read.
Guest:These guys just run after guys.
Guest:They chase guys.
Guest:Get your hands up.
Guest:Stop.
Guest:Hey, you.
Guest:You ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?
Guest:There's nothing to read.
Guest:You are right for this part.
Guest:And I hired him.
Guest:And then I had him rehearse with Jimmy Breslin.
Guest:And the first day of rehearsal,
Guest:Breslin was great.
Guest:It was all improvisation.
Guest:He was wonderful.
Guest:And he improvised scenes with Scheider.
Guest:And I had the young African-American actor, Alan Weeks.
Guest:And we would improvise scenes outdoors.
Guest:And the second day, Breslin would forget what he did the first day.
Guest:On the third day, he showed up drunk.
Guest:The fourth day, which was a Thursday, didn't show up at all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And on Friday, I knew I had to fire him because it wasn't going to work.
Guest:He came in very contrite.
Guest:But he said to me... He was a good friend, so I didn't know quite how to fire him.
Guest:But he said to me... I'm sorry I was drunk and all this.
Guest:And he said...
Guest:Isn't there a car chase in this movie?
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:He said, well, I got to tell you.
Guest:He said, I promised my mother on her deathbed I would never drive a car.
Guest:So I don't know how to drive.
Guest:I said, you're fired.
Guest:And that's how he got out.
Guest:Hackman was not even on our radar.
Guest:And where'd he come from?
Guest:Well, he was suggested by his agent.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We met with him, the producer and I. I wasn't convinced.
Guest:He had never done a leading role either.
Guest:But he was a good supporting actor.
Guest:He had been in Bonnie and Clyde.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Played Warren Beatty's brother.
Yeah.
Guest:Good in a number of things as a supporting actor, but I didn't see him as this dark Irishman.
Guest:But he was the last man standing, the last guy.
Guest:And Zanuck was going to get fired, and so we had to go.
Marc:And it worked out.
Guest:By the grace of God.
Marc:You know, not my genius.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Believe me.
Marc:And you were capturing it like immediately with that documentary style.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you got all that life.
Guest:No second takes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There are no second takes in life, Mark.
Marc:Is that true?
Guest:Try it sometime.
Guest:Try to do a retake on when you were 15 years old.
Guest:You know, I feel okay.
Guest:I don't think there's too many things I need to retake you.
Yeah.
Guest:I would if I could, but I can't.
Guest:So what the hell?
Guest:What would you change?
Guest:Or as you say, what the fuck?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:What can you do?
Guest:Change?
Guest:No.
Guest:But, you know, the Robert Frost poem about the road not taken.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're walking in a forest and there's a path that breaks left and another that breaks right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The decision you make right there to take that path is what leads you to the rest of your life.
Guest:And why did you make that decision then?
Guest:Who in the hell knows?
Guest:You know the great story, The Lady and the Tiger?
Guest:You do?
Marc:No.
Guest:Oh, when I was a kid, I read it.
Guest:About some guy in ancient Rome who falls in love with the daughter of...
Guest:one of the Caesars, one of the kings.
Guest:And the king says, okay, I'm going to put you into the arena where the Christians are thrown with the lions.
Guest:And there'll be two doors.
Guest:Out of one door will come a man-eating lion, if you choose that door.
Guest:And out of the other door will come my daughter.
Guest:And if you choose the right door, you'll have my daughter.
Guest:And if you choose the wrong door...
Guest:Your memory.
Guest:And the story never reveals what door this guy took.
Guest:That captured my imagination, although I read almost nothing when I was in high school.
Guest:But that story captured my imagination.
Guest:Every door we take is the lady or the tiger.
Marc:Yeah, sometimes both.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:I had to think about that.
Guest:I hate blank air.
Guest:But, you know, sometimes you hit me with something I have to think about.
Guest:Sometimes both.
Guest:Yes, indeed.
Guest:Indeed.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:But who the hell knows?
Guest:I'm sure that, you know, when you started and wanted to be a stand-up comic, there probably wasn't such a thing as a podcast.
Marc:No, there was not.
Marc:Yeah, you know, sometimes desperation yields the most amazing things.
Marc:When you're up against a wall and you got nothing but a tunnel of darkness looking at you, you know, you can't give up.
Guest:You take a door, you open a door.
Marc:Yeah, you got to open a door.
Marc:You can't go back.
Guest:There was a time when if somebody said to you, I'd like you to do a podcast, you'd say, what the hell is that?
Marc:Pod?
Marc:What pod?
Marc:Or even talking to people.
Marc:I never saw myself talking to people.
Marc:So you go from the French Connection to the Exorcist, and that must have been... Here's how that happened.
Marc:But I mean, you have this weird fascination.
Marc:It's not weird, but this, you know, about menace, about thrillers, about... It seems like from when you were a kid listening to radio, that the haunted nature and the sort of supernatural and the magic...
Guest:Oh, fascinated me as it does pretty much everybody.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And, you know, it's my philosophy is basically like what Hamlet said to his friend Horatio.
Guest:There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.
Guest:And that's what I believe.
Guest:Things I don't know or understand.
Guest:I can't deny that.
Guest:the power of religious belief.
Guest:It's just there.
Guest:Do you believe?
Guest:Well, I believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I've said to you.
Guest:There are a number of things that don't filter through my consciousness easily, but the mystery of faith is something that you have to pay attention to.
Guest:For example, you take Jesus.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:A guy walking in the desert and in the diaspora over 2,000 years ago with a robe and sandals, no television, no internet, no podcasts, nothing written.
Guest:He might be back, though.
Guest:I could get him on here, I hear.
Guest:He might come because you've got a very intelligent audience.
Guest:But here's a guy that spoke...
Guest:Under the radar.
Guest:He spoke in synagogues.
Guest:He didn't come to start a new religion.
Guest:In fact, he's written about in two histories of first century Jerusalem, one by Philo, another by a guy called Flavius Josephus, who was a Jewish historian of first century Jerusalem.
Guest:And all he wrote about Jesus was there was this man called Jesus Christ.
Guest:He went among the people.
Guest:He healed the sick.
Guest:And he was beloved of the people.
Guest:That's all it says.
Guest:Now you read the gospels, which were written, you know, a couple of hundred years later, the first one.
Guest:There's nothing in his own handwriting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Nothing that he published.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No recordings of his voice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To our knowledge, there was only one remaining thing that showed him in a drawing, which is called the Mandillion of Edessa.
Guest:So people who weren't in his immediate presence didn't know him, read him, see him.
Guest:There were thousands of people crucified by the Romans.
Guest:Many of them were called Jesus.
Guest:This particular guy...
Guest:is still worshipped by billions of people who have no way of seeing him literally, hearing him literally, other than through the mystery of faith.
Guest:And I respect that.
Guest:Sometimes I don't respect something like that.
Guest:When you get a guy like Adolf Hitler's,
Guest:who also preached to the masses.
Guest:But we did see him.
Guest:People did see and hear him and saw his recordings and his newsreels and everything else, and they followed him.
Guest:And his stage production.
Marc:Tremendous stage production.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:The guys who produced Hitler were frigging geniuses.
Guest:But to me, the two most interesting figures in recorded history are Hitler and Jesus.
Guest:And it's good and evil, opposite ends of the pole.
Guest:And I don't understand the origins of either one.
Guest:I don't know if I was around at the time of Christ.
Guest:whether I would have been a follower or a believer or not, but I can't reject the teachings of Jesus.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Not in so far as they're presented by the church, as you've said.
Marc:No, but just the poetry and the story and the wisdom.
Guest:The ideas and the wisdom and a way to live and how to treat your fellow human beings.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you must possess a dark side as well.
Guest:Of course I do.
Guest:Every human being, you and every listener, we have within us both good and evil.
Guest:And life is a constant struggle for each of us to suppress our worst angels.
Guest:And to try not to do harm.
Guest:And often we lose that battle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We don't succeed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fortunately, you have a few rounds.
Marc:You hope that, you know, at least a struggle.
Marc:There are different times where the darker angels are running things.
Guest:I think I believe that there is a good and bad side to every human being.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And so, you know, The Exorcist is about that.
Yeah.
Marc:Your movie seems very personal, this new movie.
Guest:It is, yeah.
Marc:And it seems like that dynamic between your mother, Laurie Metcalf, who's a genius.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how do you pronounce the actress's name played, I assume, you?
Guest:Well, no, actually, you know what's so funny?
Guest:The character she played, her name is Saoirse Ronan.
Marc:Saoirse.
Guest:But actually, the Irish way to pronounce it is Saoirse.
Marc:Saoirse Ronan.
Guest:And I heard her explain that to Charlie Rose the other day because we were on Charlie Rose.
Guest:And then the whole interview, then I also called her Saoirse.
Guest:And then she said, why did you just change the way you say my name?
Guest:And I was like, well, I just felt like if Charlie was going to say it that way, I had to match it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, maybe she wasn't you, but she did a very good job.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It was funny.
Guest:We actually have talked a lot about this, obviously, making the movie, but now also doing press.
Marc:On the junket?
Guest:In a way, it was sort of the opposite of me.
Guest:I was not a... I mean, in the movie, for someone who doesn't know, everybody call her by the name Lady Bird, and that's not her name.
Guest:I never made anyone do that.
Guest:I never...
Marc:But what about the dynamic between the mother and, because that was very specific.
Marc:That's sort of where we were coming off the father-son thing.
Guest:Yes, yes, yes.
Guest:That, I mean, I definitely had a very complicated but very rich, loving relationship with my mom that was just, in teenage years, we just fought.
Guest:And the thing is, I kind of remember the broad strokes of the fight, but I don't actually remember the details of a lot of the fights.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't remember what exactly all the issues were, but I remember fighting.
Marc:But it's a very painful relationship, that one, in the movie because it's persistent and it's repetitive emotional dismissal and belittling and manipulation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the challenge is to find that character, to have empathy for that character, right?
Marc:But you do.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, I guess I've always sort of seen the character of the mother and the way the relationship is playing out is like, we're meeting them at this moment and it hasn't always been this way.
Guest:And that even though it's bad,
Guest:bad right now but still within that context her mom's still always helping her out and making sure that everything is as good as it can be even while she's completely frustrated and not sure that her daughter is ready for the world and I think that that's the thing that makes it so understandable is like
Marc:that's still doing anything for her right but there's an emotional price to pay for a character like that right yeah in the sense and the fact that that Saoirse that her awareness of it you know in the film that that she knew that her mom had this problem she didn't know what exactly it was but she knew that as herself became more defined that she was up against this so it didn't feel you know all out it didn't feel like emotional abuse for the whole right right right
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because she was struggling with her mom's persistence of belittling her, really.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think, too, it's like the thing or the way I think about it, too, is like.
Guest:The dynamic of – to me, in some ways, the way I write is so – I allow myself to kind of do things unconsciously.
Guest:And then I try to craft them after I've done it unconsciously.
Guest:And the part that I –
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:You stream of consciousness or you just sort of blow it out?
Guest:Not stream of consciousness, but I have the distinct experience of tapping into something where I can just...
Guest:Right and right and right.
Guest:And it doesn't feel like I am doing the choosing of the words, which I'm sure everyone who writes at some point feels like that.
Guest:And then I come back to it later and it's almost a sense of I don't know who wrote this.
Guest:And now I have to make it into something that has form.
Marc:That's good that you can do that.
Guest:It's good.
Guest:It's good, but it's odd and it doesn't make you... There's an odd disconnect with it.
Guest:Because in a way, it's like you've found something that someone's left.
Marc:Well, that's better than being sort of self-conscious about something you've done as it's happening.
Marc:It's nice that you can kind of blurt it out wherever it comes from and then work with it as opposed to sort of like over every sentence.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I can't.
Guest:There are moments where I just, once I start structuring those things and making them have more form, I have to then move it from A to B. And I do have some just teeth pulling moments of getting story down.
Guest:But for the most part, it comes out like that.
Guest:And so in some ways, I have this strange experience with a script of knowing that it works on the page, but also...
Guest:I have a certain amount of mystery to what I'm saying and how these characters function.
Guest:And when I have great actors, they give me more understanding of what it is I've written.
Guest:And that informs how I'm going to direct it.
Guest:And there's just a scene where Saoirse is... It's a bad moment and she's...
Guest:She's trying to get her mom to talk to her and her mom won't talk to her.
Guest:And then all of a sudden the character starts yelling at herself.
Guest:She starts saying everything her mom has said, but her mom isn't even saying it.
Guest:She's saying it.
Guest:And I knew kind of that that's what I had written.
Guest:But the first time I saw Laurie and Saoirse rehearse that scene, I was like, oh, that's the thing is your parents don't even need to do it to you.
Guest:You will do it to yourself.
Marc:That's the worst.
Guest:The rest of your life.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You will have those tapes playing.
Guest:Forever.
Marc:And even if left to your own devices, if you want to create just out of necessity a parent in your mind that's different than the one you have, it's not going to give you a break either.
Guest:No.
Guest:You're doomed.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:But ultimately, I feel that why Laurie and why this relationship is something that you sympathize with and understand, even though you're frustrated with it, is that I think I see Laurie as creating a character who, despite...
Guest:Making mistakes and not not doing everything perfectly that she actually does give her enough good things enough courage to go do what she needs to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So she didn't squash her.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But there's also that weird, you know, the element, because it's really just a coming of age story, right?
Marc:Is that what you would call the, it's about a teenager.
Guest:Well, I've always sort of, the way I looked at it or like conceptually, I looked at it was like, I wanted it to be one person's coming of age is another person's letting go.
Guest:And I wanted it to be with just as much attention on the letting go side of it as the coming of age side of it, which often I think movies about teenagers,
Guest:the adults are just sort of played as jokes or... Oh, right, right.
Marc:Just kind of like stereotypes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And especially with like not just parents but then also teachers or other figures in their life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wanted every person to feel like
Guest:They're in their own story.
Marc:Yeah, I thought that was pretty amazing.
Marc:Because I like seeing Tracy Letts do anything.
Guest:Me too.
Marc:And Laurie Metcalf.
Marc:So it was pretty dynamic for me.
Marc:And I love the movie.
Marc:And I don't love all movies.
Marc:But I didn't know.
Marc:A lot of times I talk to people whose movies I thought were okay.
Marc:I try to find something nice to say.
Marc:But right when people start singing, I start crying.
Marc:I don't know why it just happens.
Guest:Singing.
Marc:Singing.
Guest:Singing.
Guest:Me too.
Marc:Really?
Guest:That's why I love musicals.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I don't even know what it is.
Marc:I don't see a lot of them, but every time I watch, even when the kids were just singing, you know, when they were auditioning, I'm like, oh, good.
Marc:I don't even know.
Guest:That's how I feel.
Marc:What do you think that is?
Marc:Why?
Guest:Because it's so vulnerable, right?
Guest:It's so vulnerable.
Guest:It's so sincere.
Guest:There's something about singing, particularly people singing who are not...
Marc:Great singers.
Guest:Great singers.
Marc:The kids were great.
Guest:I mean, there's nothing more just raw than that.
Guest:And I still love going to see high school musicals when I'm home in Sacramento.
Guest:I'll go see the local high schools, put on musicals.
Marc:Do you sing?
Guest:I don't sing well, but I do.
Marc:You let yourself?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:I let myself sing.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You sang in the... You kind of were jumping around and rocking out in that movie with Annette Bening.
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:But I really sang in Greenberg.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I saw that.
Guest:I sang a Judy Sill song in Greenberg.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Was that a party or something?
Guest:Like, where did it happen?
Guest:My character sort of wants to be a singer, and she invited Greenberg to go see her sing at the Silver Lake Lounge.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Now I'm remembering.
Guest:She sings that Judy Sill song.
Marc:So you do sing?
Guest:I do sing.
Guest:I mean, I can carry a tune.
Guest:I was in choir in high school.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:But I was always second soprano, so it's always, that's like, you don't get the melody, you get the harmony, so you're kind of singing the other thing, and it's just kind of like, you don't ever get to soar.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:I was terrified of it.
Marc:I like to sing, but I was terrified of it for so long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's scary.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know why, you know, it's just a matter of like, you don't think you're going to do it well, but people, if you do it, you know, honestly, people will respond if you're not horrible.
Marc:And then even then people are relatively sympathetic depending on the venue.
Marc:And if you're not singing the national anthem.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I, I think it's very, it's very appealing.
Guest:And I've also always liked, um, you know, the, my favorite musical theater singers have in a way peculiar voices.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Well, like, you know, Elaine Stritch is, it's not a straight ahead, beautiful voice.
Guest:There's something else there.
Guest:Even Bernadette Peters is.
Marc:Well, those two like are on the kind of cabaret-ish.
Marc:I don't know a lot about musicals, but there's a, you know, there's a character to it.
Guest:There's a character to it.
Guest:I mean, Elaine will like talk sing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We actually, Saoirse and I talked about, when she sings Everybody Says Don't in the movie for her audition, there's an Elaine Stritch version of singing Everybody Says Don't.
Guest:And she talks through the whole thing and she kind of runs everything together.
Guest:And Saoirse was sort of doing a version of that.
Marc:It was great because the funny thing about that audition and just in terms of who she is and what you're building that character into is that she owned it so well you thought for sure she'd get it and she doesn't because the guy was like, all right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You got a showboat here.
Marc:She needs to be, you know, harnessed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Humbled.
Guest:It's just too much.
Guest:Everything's too much.
Guest:That character is kind of living on the edge of a cliff always.
Guest:And that's what I love about her.
Guest:But it's amazing to watch her fling herself at stuff.
Marc:And also you maintained a sort of innocence that, you know, we've grown to think is no longer there.
Marc:That, you know, the assumption is like, you know, these kids today, they've got access to everything.
Marc:But this is 2002, right?
Guest:This is 2002.
Marc:So it's a little different.
Marc:A little different.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:I just realized that as I was saying it.
Guest:I mean, well, one thing that I did on set, and I took this from Noah, it's something he does, and it's a great policy on set, is no one had any cell phones.
Guest:Because I don't like cell phones on set, because if you need to make a phone call or text someone, you can leave set and go do it there.
Guest:But there's nothing that bums you out more than looking over and seeing...
Marc:Everybody.
Guest:Everybody texting in between.
Guest:And someone said to me, oh, good luck with that.
Guest:With the younger kids in your cast, they're attached to their phones.
Guest:And actually, I think for them, it was such a relief not to have to deal with their phones and that they loved it.
Guest:They all left their phones in their trailer and then they were totally present.
Marc:Because they had to.
Guest:They had to.
Guest:But then they really enjoyed it.
Guest:And I sort of re, I made them innocent again.
Guest:Yeah, that's great.
Guest:I think, I mean, obviously there's like,
Marc:the internet giving you access to all kinds of things but one thing is yeah everybody knows things all all the time now and i'm i don't know but there is a context to childhood that you can't like you're not going to fill it up more than it can be filled up like yeah that's true that's true you know what i mean like their range of interest and you know what they're going to take in and what they can take in is relative to the brain at that age not to how much is out there
Guest:Yes, that's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:There's only just a certain amount.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:I've never thought of it that way.
Marc:And so they maintain it naturally.
Guest:Naturally.
Marc:Because they're sort of like, I don't know what that is.
Marc:I'm not going to deal with that.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Although, I mean, I even remember, though, like when I came to college, I went to college in New York and I remember having this sense of like...
Guest:Where did everybody hear about the cool stuff?
Guest:Like, I don't know.
Guest:Like, I actually literally don't know where you would have heard of that.
Guest:And like the guys who somehow at 18 already knew all the cool music and stuff.
Guest:Well, they were not in Sacramento.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And maybe they had more of a, I don't know how to.
Marc:There was definitely an exposure issue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, there was an exposure issue, which is less now because of the internet.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And that thing of like getting information through magazines is something I was, I kept trying to explain to the cast of like, there was a time when you would have, that was where the cool stuff was.
Marc:You got it?
Marc:Yeah, every month.
Guest:In the magazine.
Guest:And I always remember 17 Magazine was, I mean, they would, obviously the people who made 17 Magazine were people who lived in New York or L.A.
Guest:and stuff and they knew.
Guest:But it was this disconnect between what clearly the editors knew about and then what we were hearing on the radio.
Guest:So there would be like this, you know,
Guest:bjork being really cool right but we never heard bjork on the radio yeah where would you hear bjork like it was it was a sort of strange you'd have to go seek it out but like i knew about bjork from 17 would do a sidebar on sure her right like how do i actually how do i get that
Guest:But like studying magazines.
Guest:I mean, but I like that idea of sort of like this moment where all of this stuff is rising, but it's not there yet.
Guest:It felt like, I mean, it's actually like, it's a little bit after when I was actually in high school, but it felt like a way to talk about now without actually having to shoot smartphones, which I didn't want to shoot at all.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And also, right.
Marc:You had a flip phone or two in there.
Guest:A couple kids had flip phones, and I just like that feeling of, I don't know, not knowing where someone is.
Marc:Curtis, what's his last name?
Marc:Curtis Zastapil.
Marc:Zastapil.
Marc:So he played piano and guitar.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he worked at that bar.
Guest:Yeah, he worked at that bar.
Guest:He worked at a few bars.
Guest:Two that I remember that had great names was the Drinker's Hall of Fame and one called My Old Kentucky Home.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:And was he a good musician?
Marc:Yeah, he was good.
Marc:And you'd consider him a stepdad?
Guest:Oh, he actually was my stepdad.
Marc:Because he was there for the longest?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And he was there at the really formative, formative time.
Guest:But he helped form you.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Two to seven or eight.
Marc:Yeah, and what was it about him that really kind of wired your brain?
Marc:Oh.
Guest:Well, one of the things about it, well, there's a couple of things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One is the fact that his presence, he was there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was there.
Guest:And one of the things was my mom was a nurse.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So she was working.
Guest:So before I started going to school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was working during the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He worked at night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because he was a piano bar musician.
Guest:So he was home all day long.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I was with him all day.
Guest:What'd you do?
Guest:Well, he...
Guest:Play piano?
Guest:We did a zillion things together.
Guest:No, he never taught me an instrument.
Guest:But it was like, he did all kinds of things.
Guest:And he took me with him whenever.
Guest:We went to diners and we had lunch.
Guest:Did he smoke?
Guest:Yeah, like a chimney.
Guest:But he had buddies, so he went and saw his buddies and just took me with him.
Guest:We went to see a ton of movies.
Guest:We had a whole thing that went on for as long as I was with him at a certain point, that we went to the movies every Monday night.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:Every single Monday night, no matter what.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:To all those movie theaters that you had in this book.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then like, you know, and if there was nothing else playing, we saw something we liked again.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:So what part of Hollywood or Los Angeles were you living in?
Guest:That was, it started when I was like living in Alhambra.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And then we moved to El Segundo.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But so you had to drive into the city.
Marc:It was a thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:We saw like when we lived in Alhambra, we went to like the theaters that were in that area in that East L.A.
Guest:area, Montebello area.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Montebello and El Monte area.
Guest:And then I can remember the name of all of them, frankly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then when we moved to El Segundo, then we went to like the particularly there was like two cinemas right by where the LAX is.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:There was one cinema... They're still there.
Guest:They're just office buildings now.
Guest:There was the Loyola on one end of Sepulveda and the Paradise on the other end of Sepulveda.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Every once in a while, we'd drive into Marina del Rey and go to the UA Marina del Rey Theater, which was a multiplex.
Ch-ch-ch-ch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little projector thing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:You know what?
Guest:That's actually called funky fanfare.
Guest:And it is a funky fanfare.
Marc:That was the coming attraction thing, right?
Guest:Yeah, the coming attraction thing, yeah.
Guest:We play that in front of every movie at the New Beverly, yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's where I saw it recently then.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Every movie starts with that.
Marc:You got to have that, right?
Marc:You got to have it.
Marc:And don't you have the concession stand thing, the little short?
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:We always have one little concession stand store, yeah.
Marc:So this guy was around for a while.
Marc:Now, because I was trying to figure out, because look, when I was a kid,
Marc:You know, for some reason I had an obsession with old Hollywood, but it wasn't because I watched movies.
Marc:I was literally obsessed with the pictures of old actors.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I don't even know why, but I could name a lot of them without knowing their movies.
Guest:Oh, yeah, okay.
Marc:And I found it so compelling, just the black and whites.
Marc:And I remember I got obsessed with, you know, these tabloid magazines I used to have.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:The Fatty Arbuckle thing.
Guest:Hollywood Confidential, things like that.
Marc:Those kind of things, because they used to have them at the Skaggs Drugstore next to the True Detective stuff.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I never became a full-on old movie guy.
Marc:But for some reason, I became really enthralled with just the way they looked.
Marc:Like that these guys were all dead.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, like there they are.
Guest:Well, when I was like around that time in the early 70s, 71, 72, 73.
Guest:I was really connected, especially when it came to movie stars and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was really connected to one, the Universal Monsters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was really connected to the old time old time comedians.
Guest:So it's like especially W.C.
Guest:Fields.
Guest:I was really, really, really into W.C.
Guest:Fields.
Guest:And I was really, really into Abbey and Costello.
Guest:But I also really like Laurel and Hardy.
Guest:And I didn't love the Marx Brothers that much.
Guest:I like them, but I didn't love them.
Marc:I still don't.
Marc:I tried again.
Marc:There's some part there.
Marc:Do you ever have those things?
Marc:I don't know if you suffer from that where you're like, I should like this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I love Groucho's running bits.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Groucho's mile a minute bits are fantastic, especially when he's with the woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:The battle axe woman.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:W.C.
Marc:Fields was your guy.
Guest:Yeah, but W.C.
Guest:Fields was my guy.
Guest:I don't know what it was about W.C.
Guest:Fields.
Guest:I just thought he was hysterical.
Guest:I loved him in the movies.
Guest:I loved a cartoon of him.
Guest:I loved statues of him.
Guest:I remember those statues.
Guest:Any kind of caricature of W.C.
Guest:Fields, I just thought was the greatest thing ever.
Marc:Because he was snotty to kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't even know if I understood what he was saying.
Guest:I just thought I liked him.
Marc:Isn't that weird?
Marc:Because it's like this weird cranky vulnerability.
Marc:It's a very strange and unique comic type to be that cranky or that angry, but you can't help but be funny.
Marc:There's so few of them.
Guest:But then also, I mean, the idea, though, that like something like you never give a second and even break is so ridiculously surreal.
Guest:And the idea to be a little boy and to watch that kind of surreal movie.
Guest:And it doesn't take place in this any kind of world that we know of with the rules and the laws, you know, that exist just don't apply.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:And like, what is going on here?
Guest:But then Kurt is laughing hysterically.
Guest:So I guess it's OK.
Guest:So now I'm laughing, too.
Guest:At the weird place.
Guest:One of the other things with Kurt, though, was I'm positive he wasn't a movie expert, but he knew stuff.
Guest:He is an adult man.
Guest:He knew movies.
Guest:He knew stuff.
Guest:He knew actors' names.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, um, we'd be watching movies in the afternoon on, on television.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would just like, you know, point out an actor.
Guest:He's like, Oh, that's Roddy McDowell.
Guest:I really like Roddy McDowell.
Guest:I really like Roddy McDowell where he's playing an asshole.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Roddy McDowell's a good asshole.
Guest:I dig him.
Guest:He's playing an asshole.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:All right.
Guest:All right.
Guest:All right.
Guest:OK.
Guest:Oh, that's Aldo Ray.
Guest:All right.
Guest:That's whoever.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Or something else that he would do is like we went to the movies and we saw the Disney version of Swiss Family Robinson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So then we'd be watching a movie and then the actor Thomas Mitchell walks in.
Guest:Oh, Thomas Mitchell.
Guest:OK, you see that guy, Quentin, he played the father in Swiss Family Robinson in the original Swiss Family Robinson.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you just point out things like that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then you're like, oh, they move around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, there was one before that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was like in the 30s.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the father.
Guest:He was the father.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So as a little boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought, wow, one of the things that's so good when you become an adult is you become an expert on movies.
Guest:You know, every actor who's done, who's in every movie you watch, you know, everything they've done and you are an expert.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:wow, I can't wait to be an adult so I can be an expert on movies.
Guest:I better start paying attention now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Well, little did I know that, no, you don't become, most people don't become an expert on movies when they become an adult.
Guest:But I did because I was like boning up for it all.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that's what stuck.
Marc:You're like, this is what I want to do.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Like it was that compelling.
Guest:But I just thought it was a rite of passage.
Guest:Right.
Marc:In your brain.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because some kids are like sports.
Marc:So whatever.
Marc:But you're like, no, movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This is like it never ends.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But at that time, did you know that your real dad had set out to be in movies?
Guest:No, I didn't really quite.
Guest:They had tried to explain it to me.
Guest:But since Kurt was so much as far as I was concerned, my father.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Their explanation didn't make any sense.
Guest:It was just mush.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I just like there was another guy.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't really get it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there was I remember because I was born Tarantino.
Guest:His name was Zastapil, but he actually adopted me.
Guest:OK, so I would have his last name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember them taking me to the adoption process that I had to talk to the judge.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And they go, okay, so Quentin, here's what this is about.
Guest:And so they explain it all to me and da-da-da-da-da.
Guest:And then they bring, and I remember this, they bring me into the office and I meet with the judge.
Guest:Okay, so now, Quentin, do you know why you're here?
Guest:No.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:We just spent 15 minutes explaining to you.
Guest:Well, Quentin, let me tell you why you're here.
Yeah.
Guest:What the fuck was that?
Guest:What the fuck was that?
Marc:These people kidnap me and I don't know what they're trying to do, judge.
Guest:But yeah, so I didn't really.
Guest:So it wasn't until a bit later that when I got a little older that I realized, oh, OK, he's my stepdad and my mom.
Guest:And but I never went by that.
Guest:I didn't even know about the name Tarantino really at that time.
Guest:You didn't?
Guest:I was Zastapil.
Guest:That was my name.
Guest:All through, I was always known by that.
Guest:That's how I learned to write.
Guest:That's what I learned.
Marc:When I first learned to write, I learned to write.
Marc:That's a good one to learn to write.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, as far as training yourself to write things.
Guest:I mean, actually, I've always liked, that's almost the Ellis Island spelling.
Guest:Zastapil?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The real pronunciation is Zastupil, which I think is cooler.
Marc:What kind of name is it?
Guest:I think it's Czechoslovakian.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the Tarantino thing didn't happen until later, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I never knew him at all.
Guest:So like when I took the name, when I took the name Tarantino of like around 18 or 19, it was simply because it sounded cool.
Guest:It was Italian.
Guest:It sounded Quentin Tarantino sounded like a cool name.
Guest:It had nothing to do with him and it had nothing to do with the family.
Guest:It was simply just, I thought it was a cool sounding name.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it is your name.
Guest:And it had, yeah, and it is my name.
Guest:And it had a, but it also had the benefit of reinvention because I had never used it.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Exciting new thing.
Marc:But you're one of the few guys that creates a stage name that's actually your actual name.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Because you had Zestapul, which would not have been as compelling as Tarantino, probably.
Guest:Well, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't use the name Tarantino.
Guest:If I had to do it all over again, I would— Call yourself Burt Reynolds?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I wish.
Guest:I would use my middle name, which is Jerome, as my last name.
Guest:I would be Quentin Jerome.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:I think you made the right choice.
Guest:I get it.
Marc:But when did you – did you at some point investigate your real father?
Guest:No.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Because – yeah, well, he had –
Guest:30 fucking years to find me, all right?
Guest:And he never did.
Guest:But then when I became famous, he crawled out of the woodwork.
Guest:Did he?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, what was that like?
Guest:Fucking horrible.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, it was a drag.
Guest:It was a drag.
Marc:What'd he do?
Guest:Well, he just, you know, he just... Hey, buddy.
Guest:Yeah, he tried to reach out to me.
Guest:I wasn't interested.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, this woman named Jamie Bernard wrote a book about me, the first biography about me.
Guest:I had done two movies.
Guest:And the book was called Quentin Tarantino, The Man and His Movies.
Guest:Two movies.
Guest:Both of them.
Guest:With just Reservoir Dogs and... Yeah, Pulp Fiction.
Guest:So it's like The Man and His Movies.
Marc:A little premature.
Guest:Yeah, both of them.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:So she was kind of the expert on me at that moment in time.
Guest:And all of a sudden, like, he...
Guest:Got in contact with her.
Guest:And then she's like, oh, my God, I'm talking to the father.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No one's ever talked to before.
Guest:So she does this whole interview with him.
Guest:Who knows who I've never met.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who I've never met.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they print it big piece in Premiere magazine.
Wow.
Guest:It was so fucked up.
Guest:I mean, it's like you can't even say that he was like a bad dad.
Guest:And maybe, you know, that reflected on Quentin's life.
Guest:No, he was not there.
Marc:Did he manufacture a story?
Guest:Well, he just he just talked about himself and talked about himself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and then the and the picture of him is him dressed in a black suit like a reservoir dog.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Pointing a gun.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, it was pretty tasteless.
Marc:So did you have a confrontation with the guy?
Marc:No, I just wanted him to go away.
Marc:But you never talked to him?
Guest:Look, one time... Yeah.
Guest:One time... Did he ask you to be in a movie?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Okay, that's something else.
Guest:Okay, that's something else.
Guest:Oh, it is.
Guest:Okay, so...
Guest:He wanted to be an actor a long time ago, and then sometime in the 90s.
Guest:Him and Al Pacino's estranged father, Sal Pacino, hooked up.
Guest:And they started doing these straight-to-video movies.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Starring them.
Guest:So you could actually put on the video box Pacino and Tarantino in Silver Dudes with Guns or whatever that was called.
Guest:And so they started doing these straight-to-video movies.
Guest:Did you watch them?
Guest:No, I never saw them.
Guest:I didn't even want to know what the guy looks like.
Guest:It's hilarious.
Guest:The only movies you won't watch.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:I mean, oddly enough, I actually think there is something... Look, I'm not into this dude.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I actually think there is something kind of sweet about the idea that...
Guest:the son that he never saw ever allowed him to have somewhat of a semblance of the career that he was never able to get on his own.
Guest:I actually think there's something sweet about that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, it's done as exploitively as possible, but nevertheless, he was able to end up living his dream doing these straight-to-video movies, acting and playing roles, and my fame gave him that.
Guest:I mean, I'm compassionate enough to appreciate that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think that's actually kind of a good thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If he had been cool and hadn't tried to horn in and he had just had some class, I would actually be all down.
Guest:I might have even looked him up if he had had class.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So then one day I was in a cafe and I'm in a cafe.
Guest:I'm ordering something and all of a sudden he's just there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's like, hi, it's me.
Guest:And I look up and I recognize, yeah, I knew exactly who it was.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Does he look like you?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, he doesn't look like me.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Not that I think.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I go, oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is it.
Guest:I knew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I knew this day was going to happen.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he goes, yep, that day is today.
Guest:And he goes, may I sit?
Guest:And I just looked at the table and I waved him away with my hand.
Guest:I just looked down.
Guest:I didn't want to look.
Guest:I looked at him when I said, uh.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then I just looked down at my plate, and I just waved him away.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I just go.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Just go.
Marc:Just go.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he went.
Marc:And that was it.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:You don't know if he's alive or dead.
Guest:I'm sure he's alive.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's done enough that when he dies, they'll write about him.
Marc:Oh, right, right, right.
Marc:He'll get a variety piece?
Guest:Oh, I'm sure.
Guest:I'm sure.
Guest:I'm not saying it's going to be front page, all right?
Marc:Do you see yourself as a searcher?
Marc:Is this part of it?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Is each movie another stone in the broader understanding of your path?
Guest:Well, I believe that if you're lucky in life, at the end of your life, if you're really, really lucky, you understand one or two things.
Guest:No more.
Guest:One or two things, somewhat.
Guest:I always say the most sacred moment, the one that is in this movie, which is a sacred moment, is when you see yourself for who you are.
Guest:And it happens to everyone.
Guest:It can happen in the middle of your life or it can happen at the very end of your life.
Guest:But believe you me, we all get a moment where we see ourselves for who we are.
Guest:Have you had them?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes, I had it.
Guest:I had it a couple of times.
Guest:You know, when the reality is pulled from under your feet, the...
Guest:The first day of the kidnapping of my father was one where I just suddenly— Everything's gone.
Guest:Everything's gone, and everything is changed, and I know— Is he still around?
Guest:No, he passed away after Shape of Water, but he came back from the kidnapping.
Guest:We got him back after 72 days.
Guest:But you're pulled apart by violence.
Guest:And then there was a time where I had a complete dehydration and I passed out.
Guest:And I almost went.
Guest:And I saw not a tunnel of light, nothing.
Guest:I saw basically the brackets of my life, if that makes sense.
Guest:I didn't see them visually.
Guest:I felt, oh, my God, I saw tiny.
Guest:I was alive for so little.
Guest:And I went, it's okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went, eh, I guess it's okay.
Guest:That's the best reaction.
Guest:That was the reaction.
Guest:It was like I saw the cosmic proportion of that.
Guest:I saw the cosmos for like a millisecond and I went, eh, it's okay.
Marc:Nothing I can do about it.
Guest:Nothing I can do about anything.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:We're here and then we're not.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that's true.
Marc:Because I've personally experienced some tragedy in my life in the form of somebody close to me passing away in an untimely way.
Marc:And then you start to...
Marc:To really think about, well, it's hard not to get cynical.
Marc:I imagine that going, eh, is the best way to embrace moving forward as opposed to like, what the fuck is the point of even searching?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you see, the thing is, and there's a big difference.
Guest:This movie, for me, is it talks about acceptance and not cynicism.
Yeah.
Guest:It's a brutal reality.
Guest:It's horrible and it's all this, but it's choices.
Guest:This guy made, and that's part of the noir.
Guest:What is beautiful about noir and the thing that gives it the dimension of tragedy is that you know when you see the character make the choices, you know inexorably.
Guest:His fate is coming, but it's his decisions that are doing it.
Guest:He doesn't see it.
Guest:He thinks in maybe the cards, maybe his education when he was a kid.
Guest:It's him.
Guest:You see him, fuck it up.
Marc:And you think that, in terms of the narrative, is an antidote to cynicism?
Guest:I think what it is, is it tells you, look really carefully, and you'll see yourself
Guest:shaping it.
Guest:If you are really somewhat true to talking to yourself, you shape what happens in some degree.
Guest:Carl Jung said, and I'm going to mangle the quote, he said, for as long as we keep doing, for as long as we don't make the subconscious conscious and we keep doing the same thing, we'll stay the same and call it destiny.
Guest:And it's true.
Guest:You see it in operation here.
Guest:The mystic thing
Guest:There's not such a thing as the tarot card told me and it's going to happen, but he turns to him and says, I fixed it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, that hubris.
Marc:But, yeah, but that moment you're like, he's fucked.
Guest:Yeah, he's completely fucked.
Guest:But you see, see, noir, one of the rules, noir, one of the rules is you have to see the character make the decision.
Yeah.
Guest:And the consequence comes from there.
Guest:That's what is beautiful.
Marc:I think I just wrote this down and we could wrap it up because I think there's a lot of nice stuff here.
Marc:But I was just thinking about True Confessions.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That movie.
Marc:I think that's as close a noir as I've seen to some of the things you're dealing with.
Guest:I think so in the sense—well, there are others that are interesting to me.
Guest:Like, I highly recommend—one of our favorites is Too Late for Tears with Lisbeth Scott, which is just such a—is that a word in English?
Guest:Discardant?
Guest:No, like such a raw, such a raw noir.
Guest:And Born to Kill, which is really interesting.
Guest:Robert Wise.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:Those are very, very good.
Marc:What's that Siadmak movie with Lancaster?
Guest:Which of them?
Marc:The first Lancaster.
Guest:You mean The Killers?
Guest:Yeah, The Killers.
Guest:The Killers is incredible.
Guest:But I think it's very well known.
Marc:One of my favorites that I watch all the time that had a profound effect on me was Out of the Past.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Beautiful.
Guest:That's one of the noirs in caps, beautiful classic.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Mitchum is always so clearly the anti-hero for that period.
Guest:And then you have, you know, the long goodbye, the Robert Altman one with Elliot Gould.
Marc:I just watched that again.
Marc:I didn't like it the first time, and I like it again.
Guest:I like it more now, yeah.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:And gold is the perfect embodiment of that anti-hero post-Vietnam dissolution.
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:You know, and then you have the 80s neo-noirs, as you said.
Marc:Well, I mean, I think that now that I think about True Confessions, it's a neo-noir.
Marc:Was it Will Ghost Park?
Marc:Who did that?
Marc:I can't remember.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there's no guy.
Marc:You know, it's the brothers.
Guest:It's the brothers.
Guest:And you have, for me, one of the great ones is Blood Simple.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That's one of the great neo-noirs.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I think that there's a couple like L.A.
Marc:Confidential.
Marc:I think there's too many storylines.
Marc:But I like it as I get older more.
Guest:I think it's a quintessentially.
Guest:American genre that was birthed here out of that disillusionment is a very existential one.
Guest:And I think it's really good for me.
Guest:One of the things that cinema can do beautiful is existentialism.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It doesn't do it often enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, and we tried to do it with a really expansive world, recreating period beautifully.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Marc:I mean, yeah.
Marc:And also, like, when you're dealing with existentialism, like, you know that in your heart.
Marc:But, you know, the sort of the trappings of your existentialism was spectacular.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:Right, so at the core of what this is, that moment that you have when you know who you are.
Marc:Great, but that's not a movie.
Guest:You get there through cinematic devices.
Guest:But it's the same as the violence or the sex or the psychosexual stuff.
Guest:If I just did a beautiful movie, then that's what it is.
Guest:It's almost a decorative piece.
Guest:But when you have the violence, you have all the inner brutality and the human ruthlessness.
Guest:then that makes for me for a complete meal.
Guest:It's the umami of brutality.
Marc:You did it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Well, congratulations on once again completing the circle.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes, it is.
Marc:And what's on the whiteboard right now outside of the Lon Chaney model?
Guest:I'm doing that.
Guest:I did research in the past for the Napoleonic era.
Guest:for a version I wrote of Beauty and the Beast for Warners.
Guest:And now I'm setting up the next project that is set during that period.
Guest:And I got to go back to my books over Christmas and annotate a couple of little military skirmishes and things like that.
Guest:And then, you know, if I solve that, I'll announce what it is.
Guest:But it's a nice, it's going to necessitate a little careful research during the holidays.
Marc:You love that.
Guest:I love research.
Marc:And Pinocchio is out?
Guest:Pinocchio is shooting, has been shooting for a while.
Guest:We are in minute 60 of about 90, 95.
Marc:And how are you approaching this differently?
Guest:Well, it's set during the rise of Mussolini in fascist Italy.
Marc:Oh, so here's the fascist movie.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And what it is is the puppet doesn't understand why humans act like puppets.
Guest:And the humans don't understand why the puppet acts like a human.
Guest:Right, and they hate the puppet.
Guest:Well, you'll see.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And the origin of Pinocchio is so moving in this version.
Guest:I came up with an idea that I think is very essential to what he is.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:So it's a different sort of...
Guest:reformulation of the myth.
Marc:Based more specifically on the original?
Guest:Well, based more specifically on some strands of the original, but very much is a fable that I, I mean, look, for me, the two great stories of my childhood, and I know this sounds very sad, are Pinocchio and Frankenstein.
Guest:Because they're the same story.
Marc:Different versions of the same story of the man-made monsters who are thrown into the world to figure it out.
Marc:And they're totally sympathetic characters.
Guest:To me they are, yeah.
Guest:And one of the things I never liked about Pinocchio is that it says that your reward is
Guest:for being good and conforming to societies, you become a real human being.
Guest:And I thought, I don't want that.
Guest:Let's see if we can reformulate that one.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey and LaFonda cat angels are everywhere.