Episode 761 - Michael Shannon
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fucking avians?
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:You've tuned in.
Marc:You've downloaded your streaming.
Marc:Whatever you're doing, it's me.
Marc:I'm here.
Marc:I'm here in your head.
Marc:How's it going today on the show?
Marc:Actor Michael Shannon.
Marc:You've seen him in everything.
Marc:Yeah, Boardwalk Empire, the movie based on the play Bug.
Marc:He was in Revolutionary Road.
Marc:He was in... We'll talk about what he was in, but he's an intense dude.
Marc:He generally thought of as a...
Marc:A heavy, scary, but I had a very beautiful, thoughtful conversation with the guy.
Marc:And believe me, I was nervous.
Marc:I didn't know if he would talk.
Marc:He doesn't seem like the guy.
Marc:You watch him on screen.
Marc:It's like, does that guy talk?
Marc:Well, he does.
Marc:And he's a real actor with a real sweet, intense story about getting to where he is and his thoughts on things.
Marc:uh it's been what however long it's been since i told you i took the twitter off my phone now i mean some of you were you know quick to jump on me when i go on on my computer and say like i thought you couldn't stay away huh i baby steps man baby steps but i will say this you know i've been off it for a few days like what is i don't know however long it's been four or five days halfway through a novel uh
Marc:I'm looking at people and I'm looking at them hard and I'm thinking about things at the pace that my brain naturally operates on.
Marc:And it's a welcomed, it's not even a distraction.
Marc:It's a fucking revelation.
Marc:You don't realize how much your brains get zapped.
Marc:I had this fantasy that Twitter and Facebook both decided to take a hiatus.
Marc:They just shut them off.
Marc:They shut them off for two weeks.
Marc:They just said, yeah, we just, we're going to, we got to retool some shit.
Marc:Whatever excuse.
Marc:They're privately owned companies.
Marc:They can do whatever they want.
Marc:And they just shut down.
Marc:And then all of a sudden you're like, ah, you're sitting there fidgeting.
Marc:You're like, well, I'm all alone.
Marc:I'm disconnected from the shit storm.
Marc:What do I got to do?
Marc:Hey, who's that guy?
Marc:Ah, it's the,
Marc:That's the guy who lives across the street.
Marc:I wonder what, I wonder what he's doing.
Marc:I think I need to talk to him in person.
Marc:I gotta, I don't even, do I know how to do that anymore?
Marc:Hey, hey man, you all right?
Marc:You all right?
Marc:Are we all right?
Marc:What are you gonna do?
Marc:How you feeling about it?
Marc:Yeah, can I, you wanna have some coffee or something?
Marc:What are you working on your, you need any help with that?
Marc:What are you doing?
Marc:You putting up a... What is that?
Marc:Is that a... You building a bunker?
Marc:I can help out, I guess.
Marc:Maybe I should buy some stuff.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:It's good to see you.
Marc:I kind of don't want to leave yet.
Marc:I'll tell you, man.
Marc:I just started reading this book.
Marc:And it's fucking genius.
Marc:Like, it's like it's been a long time for me to just focus on a fucking novel and not drift.
Marc:I mean, I realized when I started reading the book that I've always had that problem where I'll just read and my brain's doing another thing.
Marc:But the eyes are reading, brain's not registered.
Marc:And I'm like, oh, shit, I got to go back three pages because I was I was I was I was winning something in my head.
Marc:But I started reading The Sellout by Paul Beatty.
Marc:And it happens to be one of the funniest, most genius pieces of satire I've ever fucking laid my hands on.
Marc:I'd love to talk to him.
Marc:And it's a hard book to even explain.
Marc:It is so lyrically...
Marc:And language wise, just so elaborate and so fucking dense and rich and hilarious, just fucks with language and it fucks with his.
Marc:I don't even know how to explain the book.
Marc:It sort of turns the black experience inside out.
Marc:It's just an ongoing firework display of language and imagery.
Marc:And it's fucking hilarious and poignant and resonant.
Marc:And I'm only halfway through and I can't fucking put it down.
Marc:But I'm just, the only reason that I made time to read it, because I usually read nonfiction.
Marc:My buddy Sam Lipsight, you know, recommended it.
Marc:It's elaborate.
Marc:It is.
Marc:It's no fucking holds barred.
Marc:And it just turns it all inside out and dances.
Marc:It's about a guy that sort of through a series of events, a black dude through a series of events, you know, finds himself almost involuntarily having a slave and trying to bring back a urban farm plot where he grew up in L.A.
Marc:out there.
Marc:And by I guess it's by South Central.
Marc:It's in that area.
Marc:And I know it sounds crazy and it sounds wrong and it certainly is crazy, but it's certainly wrong, but it's wrong for all the right reasons.
Marc:It is a power punch of literary genius.
Marc:What a fucking treat.
Marc:What a fucking treat to read and fill your brain with something amazing that's provocative.
Marc:And to talk to people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Turn it off.
Marc:Turn it off.
Marc:A lot of it's an illusion.
Marc:I do also want to say I had a whirlwind cross-country trek trip.
Marc:I got back from Nashville, Tennessee this morning.
Marc:I performed there last night at the TPAC Center at the James K. Polk Theater.
Marc:And it was fucking spectacular.
Marc:Great audience.
Marc:Got about 900 people out.
Marc:And I tell you, man, and people who listen to this show know this, that over the years, I've developed a fairly...
Marc:loving relationship with the South, you know, having been sort of a narrow minded about it in the past, you know, I started going down there different parts and just seeing that part of the country.
Marc:And, and I really, I really have, I always have a beautiful time down there and I always have very nice people come out and, and I always love eating down there.
Marc:I love the way the place looks.
Marc:But, you know, going down there, this is the first trip I've made.
Marc:Post-election, I was nervous.
Marc:I'm nervous anyways.
Marc:And, you know, I'm flying on Southwest.
Marc:Not great, but good, you know, if you do the early check-in thing.
Marc:And I had that one first-class seat in Southwest where, you know, by the door there's one seat that doesn't have a seat in front of it.
Marc:And somehow I managed even being A36 to get that seat.
Marc:So I was like, things are working out all right.
Marc:As we're flying in, man, and we're coming into Tennessee, you know, I'm looking out and I see the fall colors and I see all that dense, you know, southern land.
Marc:And I'm like, hey, man, that doesn't look like Twitter.
Marc:That looks like America.
Marc:And I'm going to perform in a great old city.
Marc:I stayed at a beautiful hotel right across from the venue.
Marc:This kid opened for me, local guy who my buddy Nate Bargazzi recommended, Josh Wagner.
Marc:And I'd never met him before, young dude, local.
Marc:Nate picked me up at the airport, eased me into it, quelled my nervousness.
Marc:I love Nate, and we got to talking.
Marc:And we went and had some lunch.
Marc:And then I just sort of locked in, and I go to the venue.
Marc:My buddy Mike Binder, who I've talked to on this show, comedian from the old days, but very busy guy.
Marc:movie and television director and novel writer he happened to be in town he's directing episodes of the show Nashville and he came down and I went over to the venue it was a big beautiful venue and I didn't really know what to do or how to talk you know sometimes that happens to me I know you doubt that
Marc:But I usually have to speak my feelings and speak my mind and speak my fears and and speak my my anger to in a relative degree.
Marc:So it doesn't seem detached or strident or or bizarre.
Marc:But I do have feelings.
Marc:And, you know, we Americans are going to have feelings and feelings are running hot.
Marc:Obviously, you know, not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist, misogynist nutbag.
Marc:But but there are those within it.
Marc:And I know we're all Americans and I get that.
Marc:But there just comes a point where the even dudes I know who are Republican vote a party line or whatever.
Marc:You're like, all right.
Marc:So, OK, I guess you did that.
Marc:I understand, you know, what our relationship is now.
Marc:You know, it's troubling.
Marc:But but, you know, I've known you a long time.
Marc:And then, you know, they're like, come on, man, we're all Americans.
Marc:This shit will sort itself out.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:We all love Tom Petty.
Marc:We all love Tom Petty.
Marc:We, you know, we like barbecue.
Marc:You know, I mean, we, you know, I like a burrito occasionally.
Marc:You do too, right?
Marc:Well, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, so let's just be Americans and work through this together.
Marc:I'd like to believe that's possible.
Marc:But what about that guy?
Marc:What, that dude?
Marc:He likes Tom Petty and burritos.
Marc:Yeah, but he thinks all Muslims are terrorists and he doesn't think gay people should get married.
Marc:I know, man, but I mean, you know, he's still, he likes burritos.
Marc:He likes burritos and Tom Petty.
Marc:I listen to Tom Petty with that guy.
Marc:yeah i know but still like it's you know it seems to be a little wrong-minded ah come on we're all americans he likes tom petty yeah but he hates gay people so you know tom petty come on rock and roll bro well i don't know if tom petty can bridge that gap but i understand where you're coming from and uh it's gonna be it's gonna there's going to be struggle
Marc:But performing in Nashville was just great.
Marc:I did about an hour and a half.
Marc:Josh Wagner did great.
Marc:I got up there and I talked about where I was at in that moment.
Marc:And something actually happened for me down there that I don't think has ever really happened.
Marc:And I don't know why it happened.
Marc:I guess it was a matter of time, but there was absolutely no distance between me and that audience and me in that space.
Marc:There's times in your life where whatever it is you do for work, however long you've worked hard to do it, if you get the opportunity to do it and you love your work, something just happens.
Marc:If you're lucky and you get into a zone where there's no self-consciousness, there's no moment of...
Marc:Oh, no, what's going to, you know, or am I doing okay?
Marc:There's just no insecurity.
Marc:There's no self-consciousness.
Marc:You're just, you know, kind of purely in the moment and present and moving through something at your own time and at your own speed.
Marc:And that happened there.
Marc:Like, I was on stage, and I knew I was in front of 800 people.
Marc:I knew they were listening.
Marc:I knew they were laughing.
Marc:And I had no...
Marc:There was no sort of self-consciousness.
Marc:I was just in it.
Marc:And I was in it all the way through.
Marc:And it was at my own pace and my own speed.
Marc:And I was free with my thoughts and the jokes and everything.
Marc:But it was just so whole.
Marc:It was almost like a moment.
Marc:I know Carnegie Hall happened, but I kind of had to fight my way into being present there.
Marc:And maybe it was that experience.
Marc:Maybe it was just the appreciation.
Marc:And immediacy of what's happening maybe has something to do with not being on Twitter and then realizing that that doesn't represent the best of people or all of people in any way.
Marc:And just dealing with the nice people at the hotel, nice people at the venue, beautiful people in the audience.
Marc:seeing some comic friends down there, having some nice food.
Marc:I didn't eat the hot chicken.
Marc:I heeded my own concerns about having just my intestines full of burning spices on a four-hour plane ride.
Marc:I'm glad I did not do that.
Marc:But again, people hanging out with people.
Marc:Just got to look them right in the face.
Marc:It's better if you're looking at someone right in the face.
Marc:So my guest, Michael Shannon, as I said, was a little intimidated just by my projection of what he might be like.
Marc:And it was a pretty intense, pretty great conversation.
Marc:He's in a few new movies.
Marc:Nocturnal Animals opens this Wednesday, November 23rd.
Marc:He's also in the film Loving, which is now playing.
Marc:And this is me and Michael Shannon.
Nocturnal Animals
Marc:Do you live in town?
Guest:I live in New York City.
Marc:So you're just here for a little while?
Marc:Yeah, I got here on Wednesday.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you like coming out here?
Guest:I do.
Guest:You know, I lived out here for a couple of years.
Guest:I came out here in 99.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was here for a couple of years, so I have some nostalgia for it.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:In 99.
Marc:You've been at it a long time.
Guest:Yeah, I guess we got cranking about 25 years ago, yeah.
Guest:It's wild to think about that, isn't it?
Guest:It is, although, you know, it seems like a short period of time considering in comparison to some of the other actors that I admire, you know.
Guest:Look at somebody like I saw Sir Ben Kingsley last night.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where at?
Yeah.
Guest:the governor's awards uh-huh yeah they're uh they were giving uh honorary lifetime awards to people jackie chan oh yeah yeah and ben got one too ben was presenting had you met him before ben no i just i just saw him give a little give the speech i didn't get to actually meet him
Marc:I just saw him in something... Oh, I re-watched The Sopranos.
Marc:Oh, is he in there?
Marc:And he had that one part as himself when Imperioli goes to L.A.
Marc:to meet with the... to talk to Ben Kingsley's agent.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Yeah, and he just plays himself a heightened version, obviously.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I don't think he's that much of an asshole.
Guest:I didn't really watch The Sopranos, which is kind of... I guess I should be embarrassed about because I worked with all those guys on Boardwalk, but I never...
Guest:Why not?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't... I very rarely watch TV.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Although one of my favorite shows was Dr. Katz, which you were on.
Marc:Yeah, I did a couple episodes of those.
Marc:Yeah, that's... Squiggle, there's my Dr. Katz picture right up there.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I'm actually in awe.
Guest:How old were you, though?
Guest:You must have been like a kid.
Guest:Well, I didn't watch them when they were airing.
Guest:I have them all on DVD.
Guest:Oh, you just like it?
Guest:Yeah, there was a period where me and my girlfriend, we would watch it pretty much every night before we went to bed.
Guest:Really?
Guest:We'd watch a couple episodes.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's got a great timing, Jonathan.
Guest:Yeah, and that H. John Benjamin.
Marc:Oh, he's funny, man.
Marc:So funny.
Marc:Still really funny.
Guest:Yeah, he's got some new show.
Marc:He's always got something going on.
Marc:He's hilarious.
Marc:He's a hilarious guy.
Marc:But you don't do a lot of comedies, do you?
Guest:I tend to find comedic elements in things that I do that may be considered dramatic.
Marc:Well, I saw Elvis and Nixon.
Guest:There's an example, I guess, yeah.
Marc:I think that's definitely a comedy.
Guest:Yeah, it's kind of all over the place.
Guest:I mean, at the end of the day, it's kind of trying to recreate one of the stranger events in United States history, I would say.
Marc:I thought it was pretty amazing.
Marc:I thought that to take on Elvis is no easy feat.
Guest:Oh, it's horrifying.
Ha ha ha!
Guest:I didn't think it was a good idea.
Guest:It was this producer, Holly Wiersma, I had worked with her on Bug.
Guest:Every once in a while she'd say, you know, you should really play Elvis.
Guest:And her husband at the time, Cassian, Cassian's brother, Cary Elway's actor, he was... I know who that guy is.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Princess Bride?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He was writing this script about Elvis and Nixon.
Guest:And Holly kept saying, you got to do it, you got to do it.
Guest:And I was like, bleh.
Guest:yeah i you know i just didn't feel comfortable because i i didn't really know a lot about all this yeah but uh yeah she talked me into it i'm really glad i did it why because elvis is a fascinating person like beyond just the you know icon cultural icon he is and um
Guest:You know, in the movie, you see his relationship with a fellow, Jerry Schilling, who is one of his best friends.
Marc:That's a real relationship.
Guest:That's real.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Jerry, I met Jerry and spent a lot of time with Jerry.
Guest:And Jerry and I went to Memphis, and he showed me all the things you would want to see if you were playing Elvis.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And Jerry kind of gave me his blessing and said he was very interested to see what I was going to do.
Guest:He believed that I would...
Guest:maybe go beyond the surface, the caricature of it.
Guest:Because, you know, he has a lot of love for his friend.
Guest:He misses his friend, and he thinks his friend Elvis is kind of a misunderstood human being.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In what way specifically?
Guest:Well, you know, he says Elvis died of a broken heart.
Guest:Elvis was a very serious artist.
Guest:He really loved acting, and he wanted to be taken more seriously as an actor.
Guest:He got caught up in a lot of contracts and things.
Guest:He wound up doing things that other people wanted him to do.
Guest:And if he was left to his own devices, he might have pursued some different...
Guest:you know right he was a very spiritual person yeah i would have never guessed in a million years but you know um his favorite book was siddhartha which i had actually never read but because i found that piece of information i said well i guess i should read siddhartha i never read it yeah how was it
Guest:It's beautiful.
Guest:But, you know, half the time as I was reading it, I just imagined Elvis, like, sitting in a chair reading his book, and it kind of blew my mind.
Guest:But, you know, he was always looking for...
Guest:peace yeah he wanted peace and um you know jerry said even though he was one of elvis's best friends he could only understand elvis up to a certain point because it was a very lonely elvis is a very lonely thing to be yeah there's nobody else that really can comprehend what it was so anyway he said i i think you might be able to
Marc:And how close were the events?
Marc:Because I watched it on the plane, and I like Elvis like everybody else, but both you and Kevin Spacey somehow were able to transcend caricature and get into the humanity of these guys.
Marc:I mean, one thing you don't want to do, having not any real memory of either of them,
Marc:I'm 53 and I was a kid, but we've been taught that you're not supposed to look at Nixon as a human being.
Marc:And then you start to think like, well, I never even thought about the humanity of Elvis.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you both were able to do that in a fairly warm and comedic way.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Guest:Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's fascinating because it's a real event.
Guest:It really happened.
Guest:And yet the conversation that between Elvis and Nixon, when they were alone in that room, nobody knows what they talked about.
Marc:So that's all fictionalized.
Guest:Yeah, there's no document of that.
Guest:There's no recording of that.
Marc:How long did it go on for?
Guest:You know, it wasn't too lengthy.
Guest:I mean, it was a strange thing for the president to do during office hours.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it couldn't be like an all-day-long thing.
Guest:But probably a little bit longer than it is in the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:It's just a really unusual story.
Guest:It's very funny.
Guest:I'm glad I did it.
Marc:Yeah, it was good.
Marc:And Spacey, I thought, acted the shit out of that thing.
Guest:Yeah, he was really impressive, particularly because he did his whole part in five days.
Guest:And we started basically with the end, with the meeting between us, which is...
Guest:It's kind of crazy sometimes how you have to do that.
Guest:At the first day of shooting, you're jumping into the climatic scene of the movie.
Guest:You're like, well, I don't even know what I'm doing yet, and here we are.
Guest:But he was so prepared and really gracious and easy to work with.
Guest:I was nervous.
Guest:I had never worked with him.
Guest:Were you a fan?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He's a good actor.
Guest:Yeah, he's been around.
Guest:He's been killing it for a long time, though.
Guest:Now, where did you grow up?
Guest:I was born in Lexington, Kentucky.
Guest:Horse country.
Guest:Sort of, kind of, yeah.
Guest:On the outskirts of Lexington are a lot of beautiful horse farms.
Guest:And, of course, we have the Keeneland Racetrack, which I prefer to Churchill Downs.
Guest:Secretly.
Guest:Well, not secretly, no.
Guest:Did you go there a lot?
Guest:We would go there sometimes.
Guest:They had a real good breakfast you could get there, so you could go on the weekends.
Guest:The whole family?
Guest:Get your biscuits and your eggs, and then you could watch a couple of races.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, my mom...
Guest:It would be with, like, my mom and maybe some of my younger siblings.
Guest:How many you got?
Guest:Well, with my mom, she had me, and then she had two girls and a boy after me with some other dude.
Guest:Not my father.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This guy, Big Mike, is what we call him.
Guest:Because I was Little Mike, I guess.
Guest:Big Mike.
Guest:Big Mike, yeah.
Marc:Sounds a little ominous.
Marc:Was he an all right guy?
Yeah.
Guest:geez louise we weren't we weren't the best of buddies but i sure do love those kids uh so it wasn't all bad i guess and then uh
Guest:And my dad had two daughters before he met my mom.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So I guess I have four sisters and a brother, yeah.
Guest:And your dad lived somewhere else?
Guest:Well, yeah, when I was very young, my dad moved to Chicago, which is how I eventually wound up in Chicago.
Guest:Great city.
Guest:Yeah, I think so, too, yeah.
Guest:It certainly was a great city to...
Guest:Start acting in so you would go back and forth.
Guest:Yeah, you know like Summer break Christmas break all that kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah, and then when I started high school I actually went up to live with my dad for a couple of years and then I
Marc:That was a resolution to the Big Mike problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, actually, Big Mike, he had resolved himself by that point.
Guest:That, unfortunately, made things even more hinky.
Guest:But, yeah, I went up and lived with my dad, and then I just started going down into the city and auditioning for plays and stuff.
Marc:And what'd your old man do?
Guest:My father was a CPA.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a professor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had a PhD in finance.
Guest:And he taught at DePaul University for, I think, almost 30 years.
Marc:Is that in Chicago?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:So were you on campus a lot?
Guest:Well, my dad really wanted me to go to DePaul because he was tenured and all his kids could go there for free.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they have a really great theater school there.
Guest:It's kind of renowned.
Guest:But by that point, I had already started doing...
Guest:theater in the city and i didn't understand why i would go to college if i was already doing what i wanted to be doing and you were learning on your own terms yeah yeah definitely i mean it was this was the early 90s and it was a great time in the city there were so many talented people steppenwolf company i i worked with them a little bit but this was kind of um
Guest:Because Steppenwolf really created the Chicago theater scene to a large degree.
Marc:And that had already been going for a while?
Guest:Yeah, but they had been going for a while.
Guest:And then, you know, back in the early 90s, I mean, there were like, it seemed like 200 companies in Chicago.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How old were you, like 20?
Guest:I did my first play in Chicago when I was 16.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In what theater?
Guest:Well, it was actually on the outskirts.
Guest:It was in the burbs.
Guest:It's a place called Illinois Theater Center, appropriately.
Marc:And you just went out for it and got cast?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In what show?
Guest:It's a really amazing play, actually.
Guest:It's called Winter Set by a writer, Maxwell Anderson.
Guest:He wrote Key Largo as well.
Guest:The movie or the play?
Guest:The play, yeah.
Guest:He'd be an old guy who wrote the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh, well, yeah, I think the play is the source material for the movie that they made.
Guest:So he was an old dude?
Guest:Yeah, this was about, uh, you know the Italian anarchist Sacco and Vinzetti?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So what this play is, is imagining one of their sons trying to get justice after his father's been executed.
Guest:He's kind of, now he's an orphan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:set in like the what the 30s or something yeah yeah it's written in blank verse oh really yeah it's really unusual it's funny because I actually I found a copy of it recently I was thumbing through it seeing if I could remember any of it yeah it's been such a long time and it wasn't it wasn't coming back to me I actually knew these lines once upon a time how did it read to you
Guest:It's very unique.
Guest:It's not like anything else you've read.
Guest:Some people should do it.
Guest:So I did that play, and then I did a play a little bit closer to the city.
Guest:What was that one?
Guest:It was two one acts by Howard Corder, who ironically wound up being one of the main writers on Boardwalk Empire.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, so it was kind of wild to... Was he involved in the production?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:This was a little tiny theater he would have never heard of, but...
Guest:Yeah, these two plays called Fun and Nobody.
Guest:And the first play, Fun, is about these two kids who ditch school one day and they get in all kinds of trouble.
Guest:And then the second play, Nobody, is about the father of one of the kids who loses his job and kind of goes off the rails.
Yeah.
Guest:And my father was played by a fellow named Tracy Letts, who has become one of the more significant people in my life, at least professionally.
Guest:But he was like the bee's knees at the time in Chicago.
Guest:It was like Tracy Letts, the best actor, and he was playing my dad, even though he's only nine years older than me.
Marc:So that was sort of a big theater break in a way.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:And meeting him obviously led to some, because he started writing and he wrote a couple of plays that I did.
Guest:Bug?
Guest:Kind of changed my life.
Guest:Yeah, Bug and Killer Joe.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Both of those.
Guest:I saw both of those.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Not in the theater, but in the films.
Marc:Oh, you saw the films?
Marc:Well, I talked to Friedkin in here.
Marc:Oh, did you?
Marc:For a couple hours.
Marc:Really?
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I love Billy.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I haven't seen him in a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You should call him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:I don't even know if I have his number.
Guest:But yeah, in Killer Joe, I originated the part that Emile Hirsch plays in the movie.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I did that part 400 times.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So it had it all in Chicago?
Guest:Well, it started in Chicago in this little theater, the same theater we did Fun and Nobody in.
Guest:It started there, and it was a little tiny theater.
Guest:You couldn't get more than 40 people in there.
Guest:So we wound up doing it for like eight months doing the play there, and then we went to the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, and then we wound up doing it in London, and then eventually wound up doing it in New York.
Guest:And how old were you then?
Guest:When I did it in New York?
Marc:Well, just like when that started.
Marc:Oh, when that started.
Marc:I think when Killer Joe opened, I was 19, maybe?
Marc:So you're just living in Chicago, and you had some good breaks, and you were delivering.
Marc:You know, as an actor.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was the life like, though?
Marc:Were you a tormented dude?
Marc:Were you, like, banging your head against the wall?
Marc:What model of... Because these are dense plays.
Marc:You seem like a thoughtful guy.
Marc:So I have to say, you have to think for this stuff to resonate with you, you know, you have to have a certain amount of darkness in your own soul.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I had some ammo back then.
Guest:You know, I was...
Guest:You know, I had gone through a lot the first 18 years of my life, so I had some stuff to get off my chest, I guess.
Guest:And it worked?
Guest:Well...
Guest:nothing ever really works there's no there's no solution but uh but you got good yeah that's one thing yeah that helps you hone the craft at least yeah and i got to the point where people would pay me to do it which is a big big hurdle yeah yeah so do you stay in touch with let's
Guest:Oh, yeah, we were just, um, we had a lovely little texting conversation, uh, the other morning, yeah, um, I mean, we're hardly ever in the same place at the same time, but, uh, yeah, he's one of my, my best friends, you know.
Guest:And was, uh, now, he was a Steppenwolf guy, right?
Guest:He's definitely very much a Steppenwolf guy right now.
Guest:He's joined the company, and they do his plays, and they're doing one of his plays this season, I think, a brand new play of his.
Guest:But he's also, you know, he's worked with a lot of other people, too.
Marc:Oh, he's acting now, too.
Marc:I think I saw him in that new show, Divorce.
Guest:Yeah, he's in Divorce.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:He's been in a lot of great movies this last season, too.
Guest:Wiener Dog, Christine, Indignation.
Guest:Which is cool, because when I first came out to L.A., he was living here, and he couldn't get arrested.
Guest:He was like, well...
Guest:And it was hard for him because he was, in Chicago, he was kind of a legend for his stage work.
Guest:But that's the thing about L.A.
Guest:is you can be great and come out here and just kind of fly into the window.
Marc:Yeah, Barton Fink.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It's been going on for years.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:Like in Chicago, though, were you going to theater?
Guest:I mean, were you going to... Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was my life.
Guest:I'd see theater, do theater.
Guest:I'd do it anywhere, see it anywhere.
Guest:I mean, I...
Guest:Started a little theater company, did plays in basements of coffee houses and anywhere you could put some folding chairs and a couple of clamp lights.
Guest:And I wasn't terribly ambitious about it.
Guest:I didn't have an agenda to kind of...
Guest:become a star or anything i just just loved doing it yeah being in it yeah it was like a film wasn't really the interest it was i mean i loved movies too i i would go see movies all the time yeah um we have some really beautiful theater in chicago the music box theater yeah go there all the time but um
Guest:But it didn't bother, I wasn't pining to like, you know, a lot of my friends, like I used Tracy as an example just now, would say, I got to try LA, I got to try and make some money at this stuff, you know, I can't live like this anymore.
Guest:And then they would come out here and...
Marc:get beat up struggle yeah and i was like i'm not doing that i'm i'm i know i'm not rich but i'm i'm having a pretty good time here so uh yeah yeah and what do you think like there the vitality of it you know because like it seems to me that you're innately a theater actor you know right that's where your heart is yeah i love the theater and the the intensity of that like the connection of that i guess is something that is not like anything else
Guest:Can be.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I just finished doing last year Long Day's Journey Into Night.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:On Broadway.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With Jessica Lange, Gabriel Byrne.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:It was, I mean, it was heaven, you know, and it's hard as shit.
Guest:I mean, you just, like, you know, you go in for those Saturdays where you got two shows, you know, it's a four-hour play about a family that's basically falling to pieces, and, um...
Guest:And you're like, I don't know how I'm going to get through it.
Guest:But you get out on stage with those people and that dialogue, and it's just the biggest rush in the world.
Marc:Yeah, that was sort of like Tracy's play.
Marc:What was it, August?
Guest:August, Osage County, you know.
Marc:I saw that on Broadway, and I thought that thing was devastating and hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He's very good at devastating and hilarious.
Guest:Yeah, Tracy's got a... I mean, like, for example, when you asked me earlier about comedy, there's a lot of comedy in what Tracy writes, but it's, you know... I don't tend to do, like, straight-up comedy where there's nothing else involved.
Guest:I honestly like it to have a little bit of everything.
Guest:To me, it's like...
Guest:Be like going to a salad bar and just getting lettuce.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You want some depth, a little range?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, you did what?
Marc:You worked with my friend Bob Odenkirk on that movie.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Let's Go to Prison.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a hoot.
Guest:That's a pretty silly movie.
Guest:That was a very silly movie.
Guest:I mean, and I had to.
Guest:There's no way I could take that seriously at all.
Guest:I was playing a skinhead.
Guest:So I wasn't anxious to get into the psychology of that.
Guest:Just show up and be silly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that's a rough psychology.
Marc:So when you came out here, because my producer brought it to my attention that you had this one little scene in Groundhog Day.
Guest:They're making a musical of Groundhog Day.
Guest:I just saw this in the New York Times.
Guest:A full-page ad for Groundhog Day the musical.
Guest:I was like, I wonder if my part will be in there.
Guest:Will he get a little song?
Guest:Have you ever done musicals?
Guest:Well, when I was in high school, auditioning for stuff, I would get a little, like, I'd be in the ensemble.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Kind of doing the lame dance moves in the background.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Or sometimes I would play in the pit, because I'm a musician, too, so I'd play the bass.
Guest:Your bass player?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the time, yeah, I was playing bass there.
Guest:But since I left school, I haven't done any musicals, no.
Guest:No?
Guest:How about music?
Guest:Well, I have a band that unfortunately lately I haven't been really able to put much into, but we exist.
Guest:Do you play bass?
Guest:No, in the band I sing and kind of haphazardly strum a guitar.
Guest:We made a CD a while ago, and you can find it on the internet.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:Well, the band's called Corporal.
Guest:And the CD, the album's kind of, by default, it's called Glory, just because there's a sign that says Glory on the cover.
Guest:I never technically called it that, but that's, I guess, what it's called.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you work with, like, when you do one scene, because, like, you know, I'm looking at...
Marc:All the films you've been in, you definitely had the opportunity to work with some pretty amazing directors.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And I imagine that has a profound influence on how you evolve as an actor on some level, no?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it'd be hard to put it into words.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because so much of what I do is like impulse and instinct, and it's a lot of subconscious work, you know.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't have many conversations about acting theory or anything, but sometimes... Out of choice, or you just don't like to talk about it?
Guest:Well, I don't...
Guest:I don't think anybody likes to talk about it.
Guest:Well, no, that's not true.
Guest:There are some people like that.
Marc:What I realize about talking to actors, because I have started to talk about the actual process, is that, look, either you can do it or you can't at the baseline.
Guest:It's kind of, yeah, that's kind of the way it is.
Marc:And you're going to put together whatever tools you have, either on your own, or you're going to get pounded with certain techniques that either stick or they don't, or they become part of your unconscious process.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But anybody who sort of thinks they have a way, they don't have a way.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I think somebody... I heard recently somebody... Like Anthony Hopkins kind of broke it down that way.
Guest:He said, people have been asking me my whole life, you know, what's your technique?
Guest:What's your technique?
Guest:He's like, I can't explain my technique to you.
Guest:I don't... He's like, I think about it.
Guest:I mean, you think, you know... And it sounds kind of cliche, but it really is like kids playing.
Guest:I mean, you go in and you put on your costume and you look in the mirror and you're like, oh...
Guest:I'm going to be this person today.
Guest:What's this person doing today?
Guest:What are they trying to accomplish?
Guest:And then you go out and you try to accomplish it.
Guest:And I think, you know, a lot of times you're just drawing on your imagination and all the...
Guest:experiences that you've had over the years as a human and and the observations you made of other people and and it just kind of comes out you know it's like trying to explain how you play ski ball yeah i don't know you roll the ball up the ramp and you hope it goes in the hundred and
Marc:But also, I have to assume that having done all that kind of basement theater and bigger theater and then being on stage on Broadway and O'Neill shows, that the engagement, once you're locked in, that the emotional engagement, the ability to do that...
Guest:Well, yeah, that kind of communion with other people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's fascinating because at the end of the day, you don't necessarily know the people you're working with super well.
Guest:Like, we didn't spend a lot of time together socially during Long Day's Journey in the Night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yet you're able to get to such an intimate place.
Guest:And with a play like that, I mean, that material is full of...
Guest:longing and despair and the despair of people that desperately love one another but can't help but harm one another and that's such a universal thing I mean it's not easy to do but it's not complicated you know I just find myself always saying well how does this relate to my experience my life and I can draw the parallels and then jump into it you know
Marc:yeah and even like even in the new movie the uh the nocturnal animals there's like that at first scene with you there was some very specific choice to question that guy's masculinity yeah yeah yeah yeah and it was a really you know a very startling turn yeah you're right out of the gate you're like why why would you do that yeah one it's you know it's really mean because
Guest:I think at that point everybody's feeling pretty sorry for Jake.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jake's character's gone through some... Jake Gyllenhaal, yeah.
Guest:Tony's gone through some pretty gruesome stuff there, so he kind of just needs a hug.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I show up and I'm like, it doesn't sound like you handled this very well.
Guest:So...
Guest:Again, that's comedy, right?
Guest:To me, that's funny.
Guest:I mean, it's also disturbing and gruesome, but there's comedy in that.
Marc:Oh, definitely.
Marc:That movie is definitely not a comedy, but there is definitely that moment.
Marc:Yeah, it's a very intertwined, emotionally compelling thriller.
Marc:Yeah, in a way.
Marc:I get very anxious watching movies like that, but this one, because of the two tiers, the two different narratives going on, it was good.
Marc:When he started dropping into her life, it was good, man, and you were great.
Marc:Oh, thanks, Mark.
Marc:Yeah, it must be fun to play Texan.
Guest:Yeah, Bobby's just... I just love the guy.
Guest:I mean, you know, I'm a big fan of, like, Jim Thompson novels and things like that.
Guest:To me, he's just out of that world, you know, and I just loved how...
Guest:The combination of his innate sort of nihilism, but the fact that he couldn't help but get drawn into Tony's dilemma and try and help him and care about him and do something to...
Marc:help him feel better even though ultimately it's probably not going to make him feel better but at least you know he tried and it's compounded by you know he's got a chronic you know he's dying yeah yeah yeah yeah that is yeah that is like jim thompson character yeah yeah these characters that you do like i've seen like the ice man is one of those movies where you're like that you played a real killer a real dude yeah but he was dead by the time he made the movie or he wasn't he
Guest:Yeah, no, I never got to meet him.
Guest:And from what I heard, I probably wouldn't have been brave enough to sit in a room alone with him.
Guest:I heard he was a hard person to be alone with in a room.
Guest:But I did meet his kids, which was really interesting.
Guest:They came to the premiere.
Guest:What's his name, Richard Kuklinski?
Guest:Kuklinski, yeah, Richard Kuklinski.
Guest:Savage.
Guest:Savage.
Guest:Yeah, but this was the thing, and the point I was going to make is that, you know, and really what drew me to that story in the first place is that despite his pathology, which was obviously very dark, he still longed to have a family, and he was trying...
Guest:He was trying to have love in his life.
Guest:He wanted to have a good life and he wanted to have a family and he wanted to be loved and to love other people and yet do this horrible stuff.
Guest:He was a contract killer, right?
Guest:Yeah, a contract killer.
Guest:And you can see that when his kids are watching the movie and they're there and they come up to me and they're like,
Guest:yeah yeah you know good good job you know it's funny it was like you know that's my dad that was my dad you got it and i and i loved him you know and they loved him and he loved them and it's it's that's if that component hadn't been in the story i don't think i would have been interested in doing the movie
Guest:Because then he would have been... It just would have been one-dimensional.
Guest:Irredeemable.
Guest:Yeah, well, and we have so many movies of people just running around killing people.
Guest:It's not... I don't think it's something we're missing from our culture, necessarily.
Guest:People killing each other?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or movies about... In movies or real life.
Marc:I'm trying to remember.
Marc:I saw Mud.
Marc:Mud was at...
Marc:The Matthew McConaughey thing.
Guest:Yes, with the two little boys.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I just love working with Jeff.
Guest:I mean, he's made five films, and I've been in all of them.
Guest:Jeff Nichols?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he's like my brother, you know.
Marc:What makes it... What is it about the relationship that makes it great as an actor to work with a director like that?
Guest:You know, we're both from the South originally, and...
Guest:I think we have similar tastes and similar thought patterns, concerns about, you know, the world.
Guest:Like, for me, Take Shelter is the most meaningful kind of significant piece I've done.
Guest:And...
Guest:The fact that Jeff wrote it, Jeff was able to put down on paper basically the summation of all my deepest anxieties and that I was able to get the opportunity to make that into a movie.
Guest:It's just a very...
Guest:It's startling when you have that much synchronicity with somebody.
Guest:And you think it's relative to you guys being from the South?
Guest:You know, that's part of it.
Guest:Part of it's just dumb luck, you know?
Guest:I mean...
Guest:I mean, Jeff, you know, he's got qualities that I think anyone would admire.
Guest:He's a really hard worker.
Guest:He's really intelligent.
Guest:He stands by his convictions.
Guest:He's not afraid to walk into any room anywhere and say what he wants and how he plans to go about getting it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he's also very kind.
Guest:He's not a bully or anything.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:And that movie's about doom?
Guest:Well, for me, take shelter is about how do you function in this world, particularly if you have people that you care about, particularly children.
Guest:The storm that's coming is a metaphor.
Guest:There's always some sort of storm coming.
Guest:There's something...
Guest:horrifying happening that you're not sure you're going to be able to protect your children from.
Guest:I mean, for example, right now, this week, you know, I have two little girls and I can't stop thinking about what the world's going to be like for them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you don't have, you don't, I mean, I hate to sound like I'm giving up, but it seems like you don't have any control over it.
Guest:So what do you do?
Guest:You know, do you,
Guest:Are you able to just enjoy your life anyway?
Guest:Is it living in the moment or whatever?
Guest:How do you not get crushed by this sense that the world's just out of control?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And how do you?
Guest:Well, I just go pretend to be other people and do imaginary things.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I do believe a lot of it is just taking each day as it comes and realizing that the time that you have right then, there, in the moment is special.
Guest:And you also have to try, if you really believe...
Marc:that something's wrong you have to try and do something about it yeah which i'm still trying to wrap my head around well i mean it's interesting that you know you said that that movie is is you know comes out of uh this relationship of a couple of guys from a part of the country that that gets you know hung out to dry as being this you know
Marc:difficult place for a lot of the reasons that I think we're all feeling now.
Marc:Now, was that part of your experience?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, we shot the movie in and around Grafton, Ohio, which is not...
Guest:I'm pretty certain it's the only movie that's ever been made in Grafton, Ohio.
Guest:It's not like the Hollywood of the Midwest or something.
Guest:Yeah, I stayed... When we were shooting the movie, I was staying downtown, which was basically like a block-long strip, and I was staying in an abandoned building, and
Guest:And there was definitely a sense of, like, it's hard to live here.
Guest:It's not easy to live here.
Guest:And I have so much... It's so frustrating because I really understand how people feel.
Guest:I understand that they're... It's hard to have hope right now, and people feel like they've been screwed over.
Guest:But...
Guest:At a certain point, you just have to take responsibility for yourself and realize that someone else isn't going to fix all your problems.
Guest:But yeah, I think that's... The people, they're good people.
Guest:It's just a confusing time in our country because the solution is not...
Guest:in arm's reach, it seems like.
Guest:It's not... And it's not what just happened.
Guest:That's not going to solve anything.
Guest:So what is going to fix it?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the interesting thing is that even when I travel...
Marc:I travel all over the place.
Marc:And for years, the South was stigmatized in my mind for whatever historical reasons.
Marc:But that has nothing to do necessarily with individual people.
Marc:So you get to this thing where I find myself, I love the country down there.
Marc:I've met nothing but good people.
Marc:I don't know them intimately.
Marc:or personally or what lurks in their hearts or how they're going to act out of their own fear and frustration or maybe i didn't meet those people maybe i met a lot of like-minded people but i certainly have been able as i've gotten older to to realize that you know the country is made up of people and all those people have their own you know little lives and problems but by and large you know you can meet them somewhere in the middle right
Marc:You know, and it becomes very frustrating when you see masses guided one way or the other that people are their ability to just sort of like, you know, at least appreciate that we all share something becomes shattered.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a weird thing happening right now with how people are understanding the world and kind of creating their own identity.
Guest:Because it used to be that these places, you can say the South or the Midwest or whatever, that it would be fairly isolated.
Guest:But there's this weird combination of being isolated and yet being inundated
Guest:through technology by, like, everything that's happening in the world.
Guest:And this false sense of, like, oh, I understand because I'm getting all this information all the time.
Guest:I get it on my Internet and my TV.
Guest:I know exactly what's going on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Even though I am very isolated from all of it.
Guest:And then that information is dubious.
Guest:Yeah, it's false.
Guest:Yeah, so it's... I almost wish that we could just...
Guest:go back to when that wasn't so readily available all the time and and because i don't i'm not necessarily sure that it's helping um it's a false sense of community that is you know very easily the momentum of it is just brutal yeah yeah it's uh i mean you can see i mean um you know the campaign was run by a guy who's a media you know right has a media company right and he knows
Marc:how to work people how to work it yeah yeah but you know as a creative person now i mean that's you know all this stuff begins to inform your your you know how you're going to do your work and we got it we have to assume that the work we do is provocative yeah and that you know maybe you know maybe it'll level out and and and do like that's the amazing thing about theater is that you can tangibly feel how it touches humanity yeah
Marc:You know, immediately, the emotional dynamic between a performer and the audience is like, you feel it hit.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Guest:It's, yeah, it's like when you did, you've done stand-up and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So you get that too, right?
Marc:Well, yeah, no, absolutely.
Marc:And, you know, depending on how vulnerable you want to be...
Marc:You know, if you're in a character, I imagine it doesn't necessarily make it any safer, but that's the courage of it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I'm going to put myself out there because, you know, I got to own that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it can be, you know, for me, I always find it helpful to focus less on whether I think I'm doing a good job or not.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:the glory of my own whatever yeah and just focus more on the experience that all the people are having together right right like it's i don't need people to like stand up and shout my name afterwards but i i do want people to to get wrapped up in it sure because it's uh you know particularly something like long day's journey in the night is uh very worthwhile you
Marc:Yeah, and my question lately, because I've been doing a little acting, is just that...
Marc:There is something about, you know, because you're Michael Shannon, you're your own guy, and, you know, you're going to bring to it whatever it is, but this text, this story, this play has existed for decades.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it is what it is.
Guest:Well, and the Giants have, I mean, you're walking in the footsteps of the Giants when you play that part.
Guest:Jamie in Long Days Journey in Miami's Jason Robards.
Guest:The last person to have done it on Broadway was Philip Seymour Hoffman, so it's like...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You better bring your.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you have to.
Marc:But also that your relationship with that text.
Marc:I mean, there, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is as an actor is that it's very important to remember that, you know, that's the story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You know, like, whatever your worries are about, you know, who you are as an actor or whatever, you know, there it is.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, it's laid out for you, and that's what you're telling.
Guest:Yeah, and how much can you land that with the audience?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, ideally, you know, one of the frustrating...
Guest:things about acting, or you could consider it frustrating if you want, but is that ideally it's invisible.
Guest:You're not seeing it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So there's other things I can think of that are kind of like that, but, you know, you're really, you want to be, I refer, like, you're an aperture between...
Guest:the story, what you're talking about, and the audience.
Guest:And how much can you get out of the way?
Guest:And that doesn't mean not doing anything.
Guest:It's very, very difficult.
Guest:Make it fluid.
Guest:Yeah, it's a mysterious thing.
Guest:Did you ever work with Phil Hoffman?
Guest:He directed me in a play.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And he was a wonderful director, and he was a wonderful person, and very tough.
Guest:He never...
Guest:Never satisfied, always.
Guest:You can go deeper, you can go deeper.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's what he did to himself, you know, so he expected it of other people.
Guest:It was a play called The Little Flower of East Orange by a writer named Stephen Adley Gerges.
Guest:He just had a play called...
Guest:between riverside and crazy that was kind of a big deal in new york and also uh he wrote the mother purple with the hat uh in the hat yeah with the hat uh that was also on broadway he's he's this is all part of a theater company uh labyrinth theater company in new york um
Guest:that was his that phil phil was artistic one of the artistic directors of and um and steven was kind of like the resident one of the resident writers yeah company so yeah i did that at the public theater uh ellen burston played my mom and uh yeah it was intense yeah yeah yeah yeah
Guest:And then also, Phil and I are both in the movie Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, the last film that Sidney Lumet made.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I saw that movie.
Guest:We didn't really have much to do together.
Guest:He basically just shot me.
Guest:He just comes in, blows me away.
Guest:But most of my stuff was with Ethan Hawke.
Guest:I had him in here.
Guest:He's a thoughtful guy.
Guest:He really is.
Guest:He's got, like, mercury in him or something.
Guest:He's just so... Lit up?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, and passionate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, one of the things you always hear about acting or when people are talking about film acting, teaching film acting, it's like one of the main things you got to do is you got to relax.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You got to relax and stop like freaking out, you know, unless you're doing a scene where you're losing your shit.
Guest:But, you know, it's about...
Guest:Being relaxed and having a certain amount of confidence, not arrogance, but it's like, I can do this.
Guest:The world isn't going to end.
Guest:I will say these lines and everything will be okay.
Marc:And we'll do it again and again and again.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:From all different angles.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I have a problem with like modulating my voice because I'm always yelling.
Marc:But I've decided that I do that in real life too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That my natural voice is like, how's it going?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because when you're on a sound stage or you're in a studio, you feel like you got to fill the room.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:You seem to like, yeah, I guess that's another decision you got to make.
Marc:It's like, I can just talk like a person.
Guest:Yeah, it's funny.
Guest:I mean, sometimes even quieter than that.
Guest:I mean, sometimes they'd be shooting a scene, somebody would be five feet away from you, and you can barely hear what they're saying.
Guest:But it sounds great on their, you know, lavalier mic.
Marc:Yeah, you're mic'd up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I used to have that problem.
Guest:I was a very loud, people were always telling me, it's like, I can hear you, I can hear you, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:but then it was funny when you started doing stage then everyone's like your diction's terrible i can't understand what you're saying and then so then i had to work on that and now i think i've found the middle road middle road yeah so what was it on boardwalk empire how was um how was it to work in a period piece for that long it must have been kind of brain bending after a while
Guest:Well, you know, it was interesting just because I never really spent that much time there.
Guest:You know, outside of Steve, and even Steve towards the end, Nucky was not around every day.
Guest:But, you know, like, it would take...
Guest:Six months to shoot a season of Boardwalk, and you'd be there maybe 20, 25 days over a six-month period.
Guest:And it feels like you're a big part of the show because of the storytelling or whatever, but it's not your everyday thing.
Guest:So in a way, what's tricky about it is you're just popping in every once in a while and
Guest:popping back into that world, you know.
Guest:The design on that show was so amazing.
Guest:That always helps.
Guest:Yeah, it just got to the point where it was kind of like, he was just like an old buddy of mine.
Guest:It was like, oh, I'm going to go see Van Alden today.
Guest:And then at the end of the day, I said, well, see you in a couple weeks.
Guest:Bye.
Guest:It did not dominate my life, really.
Marc:How did you manage to come out of Chicago and not, like, were you ever, like, a manic yelling actor?
Guest:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:I mean, yeah, that was part of the vibe sometimes around there.
Guest:But, yeah, my first review I ever got when I was doing that play Winterset, the critic was like,
Guest:This guy thinks acting's waving his arms around and rubbing his forehead.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:And it was a guy, great critic, Richard Christensen at the Tribune.
Guest:But then he came and saw the next one, and he said, well...
Guest:Technically, this guy's not so hot, but he's got something going on.
Guest:I have to concede there's something interesting about him.
Marc:He's not waving his arms around in this one.
Guest:Yeah, I just had to get some duct tape and tape him down.
Marc:But Tracy, as a director...
Marc:Because that stuff's very engaged stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, I imagine he directed you a few times, right?
Marc:Tracy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I would either work with him as an actor or a writer.
Guest:He would never actually direct.
Guest:When we did Killer Joe...
Guest:It was a director named Wilson Milam, and when we did Bug, well, Wilson directed first production of Bug, and then Dexter Bullard.
Guest:Dexter Bullard, who directed Fun and Nobody, the play that I met Tracy on.
Marc:It was very intense.
Marc:I mean, they're very, like, you know, paced, man.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And, like, you know, it's just the sort of psychological movement, and then the actual physical movement, the emotional movement.
Marc:It's like, boom.
Marc:Like, just everything's blowing up all the time.
Guest:And we would do, like I said, we would do these shows in very small theaters where there was no room for the audience to escape from it.
Guest:And we would do them as, we really wanted it to seem voyeuristic, like, you know, what you were getting the chance to see had nothing to do with you and you were basically, you know, the proverbial fly on the wall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:uh that it would be happening whether you were there or not right uh so uh yeah i mean i hear people to this day every once in a while when i did bug in new york someone will come up and say uh i still i still remember that you know that feeling he's i've never been that
Guest:Tense in a theater before.
Guest:I've never experienced that.
Marc:And you're like, perfect.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We did it.
Marc:And how did Friedkin direct that?
Marc:Because I talked to him about it, and I tried to sort of push his buttons about digital versus film, because he was very able to, in his films, to get something visceral.
Marc:But he loves digital.
Marc:He loves it.
Guest:Yeah, well, it speeds up the process.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he seems to be definitely in the school of, you know, let's get home, which a lot of the, you know, more established directors are, you know.
Guest:I mean, Sidney Lumet was the same way.
Guest:It was like, why stay here for 14 hours when we can be done in eight hours?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then we can...
Guest:like go have a nice dinner or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Was it exciting to work with those guys?
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:Because if you're working with somebody that you know is going to do a lot of coverage or a lot of takes, then the first take you do, you're kind of like, well, let's just see what happens and maybe I'll learn something.
Guest:But if you're working with somebody like Clint Eastwood, which I haven't done, but I've just heard the one take, unless something blows up, that's it.
Guest:So it's a different kind of... You know that going in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you can't just be like, let's see what happens.
Guest:You have to...
Guest:It's more demanding.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And also, you're dealing with personalities, too, I imagine.
Marc:Because I have to assume, having talked to Friedkin for two hours, there's definitely an intensity there.
Guest:Well, he was very... You know, he saw Bug the play, and he just loved Tracy's writing.
Guest:He loved the production, and he just really kind of...
Guest:I don't want to say this without sounding ostentatious, but he was just like, you know what you're doing.
Guest:Like, you know this guy better than, you know, because he had to fight to get me in that movie because the financiers were like, let's get a big movie star or something.
Guest:And I freaking was like, I'm telling you.
Guest:You can name any name you want to name right now, but you're not going to tell me somebody who's going to know how to do this more than this kid does.
Marc:And you originated the role.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So I owe Billy big time for that because he really went to bat for me.
Marc:So what's these new movies coming out that are... And Nocturnal Animals is very... It's great.
Marc:It looks great.
Marc:That guy, Tom Ford, I didn't know much about him, but it seems like he's a... Kind of came around to directing sort of sideways.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, he...
Guest:He's very respectful of the fact that people come together and help him make these films.
Guest:And he knows that it's like a real privilege.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he takes it very seriously.
Guest:And he's a real student of film and cinema.
Guest:I mean, there's so many influences, obviously, all over Nocturnal Animals.
Marc:Right out of the gate, it felt like kind of a film noir movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just by the look of it.
Guest:Yeah, and that DP, Seamus McGarvey, is incredible.
Guest:Some of my favorite shots of the sky I've ever seen in a movie are in nocturnal animals.
Guest:He just really used the sky so well.
Guest:Do you feel like you're starting to get typecast or no?
Guest:No, no, I don't.
Guest:I mean, for me, it's like all these characters, they're different.
Guest:They're just different folks, you know?
Guest:I mean, I think because I am ultimately, at the end of the day, one human being.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if I can completely disappear all the time.
Guest:I mean, you're probably seeing some similarities.
Guest:But for me, they're all different folks.
Marc:You just bring the intensity to it.
Marc:I saw you on a plane once.
Marc:really yeah i didn't say nothing to you no i fly constantly yeah i don't remember what it was that struck me i knew i was nervous oh really i saw you know my god michael shannon and then like you know i i don't remember if i was sitting in first class or i know i think you were and i can't remember what it was i don't know if you didn't have shoes on or there was something i can't remember there there was something like like that like you held the space pretty fucking well yeah even if you were just sitting down
Guest:I take my shoes off from time to time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, you got to, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, those long flights, otherwise you get all clammy down here.
Marc:Do you live right in Manhattan?
Guest:I live in Brooklyn in Red Hook.
Guest:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:Yeah, I live right by the river there.
Guest:I can see the Statue of Liberty from my window, which is nice.
Marc:It's beautiful.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I was just there.
Marc:I lived there for years.
Marc:I don't know if I want to live there again, but I like being there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's alive.
Marc:Where did you live at?
Marc:I lived in the late 80s.
Marc:I lived down in Alphabet City, second between A and B. Oh, wow.
Marc:And then moved up to 16th and 3rd, a little pre-war high-rise there.
Marc:It's a very interesting place.
Marc:And then I moved to Astoria for a pretty long haul.
Guest:I never go to Queens.
Guest:I was just talking about this the other day.
Guest:And I hear it's so interesting out there.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:And it was there before.
Marc:I was there, like, I don't know if it ever really turned into a hipster enclave.
Marc:But the amazing thing about Astoria was, you know, you get off that end train.
Marc:at uh you know 30th ave and it was just like all hours of the day it was just like every kind of person in the world just buying vegetables like you right when you get off there's just these like three or four vegetable places and there's just people there till like midnight right you know buying greens you know greek people people from dominican republic people from you know middle eastern countries then up on steinway there's that whole egyptian block right that you know you just you just walk around the corner and it's like i never even knew what egyptian pastries look like and there they are it was just
Marc:It's a real melting pot.
Marc:Oh, totally.
Marc:And I imagine it still is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I just miss the things I miss about New York.
Marc:It's just everything's so alive and, you know, and all the food.
Marc:Like, you know, you go there.
Marc:I used to go to the fish market across the street.
Marc:And there's these three guys there, Italian guys.
Marc:They've been running his family business.
Marc:And you just go.
Marc:I didn't even need fish.
Marc:I just go in to look at fish.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because it was there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And those guys were there.
Marc:And I talk about fish for a few minutes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's what I like about it.
Marc:Are you a cook?
Marc:I cook.
Marc:I can cook.
Marc:You know, I'm not a foodie kind of gourmet guy, but I can cook a fish.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it's not always a happy event.
Marc:I've fucked up some attempts at soft-shell crabs.
Marc:You know, but like, you know, it's just...
Marc:Nobody likes bluefish because it's oily and smelly.
Marc:I love bluefish.
Guest:Me too.
Marc:You get it the day of, it's the best.
Marc:It's like a pigeon fish.
Marc:No one gives a fuck about bluefish.
Marc:But you can just go get it in New York fresh because it's all over the place.
Marc:I don't know, mackerel.
Marc:So you cook?
Guest:I'm not very good myself, which is...
Guest:sometimes uh inconvenient because i have a couple of kids um it's just you and the kids no i mean ma's around too but she's a great cook but you know every once in a while it's up to me to make breakfast yeah yeah sure yeah how old are your kids i have an eight year old and a two year old wow so they're just you're just watching them become people
Guest:Yeah, apparently today they went into the city.
Guest:I know this won't help because it's a podcast, but I could show you.
Guest:This is my eight-year-old daughter with a sign she made to go protest in front of Trump Tower.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Diversity makes America.
Guest:That's sweet.
Guest:Eight years old.
Guest:She gets it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, Rob...
Guest:anyway that's what you got to do that's what you got to teach him that's how you that's how we push back yeah yeah i miss her i miss i hate being away uh so much but um yeah they're becoming people all right and then the little one the two-year-old she's a real she's a real powder keg she's i think she's gonna be
Guest:a rock and roller oh yeah yeah yeah that'd be all right right yeah she loves to dance and sing and beautiful you know that's got to bring a lot of joy definitely it's great talking to you man thanks mark thanks for having me yeah thanks for doing it no problem
Marc:Pretty intense dude.
Marc:Great talking to him.
Marc:Good guy.
Marc:We hung out for a little while after.
Marc:We talked a little more.
Marc:Connected.
Marc:Talked about art, the future, about being people.
Guest:Let's keep it simple.
Guest:Let's keep it simple.
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Marc:Boomer lives!