Episode 767 - Casey Affleck
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters what the fuckadelics what's happening i am mark maron this is my podcast wtf
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Good morning to you.
Marc:Good evening.
Marc:Good afternoon.
Marc:Hope things are at least livable for you.
Marc:I hope everything's okay.
Marc:As okay as things can be.
Marc:I can't help but be like so much more...
Marc:Everything is very visceral to me in my life.
Marc:Everything's very like I can smell and taste and feel everything a lot better, especially since I took Twitter off my phone.
Marc:Number one, reconnected me, but also the complete destabilization of the planet.
Marc:On a governmental level and in other levels, it's weird.
Marc:Once that really kicks in, everything is very immediate, very present.
Marc:The panic and the terror and the anger and the not knowing really can make a sandwich taste better.
Marc:It can really make some eggs pop off a plate for you.
Marc:It can really make...
Marc:Every little thing in your life seemed like at any moment it could all be taken away.
Marc:That said, the holidays are coming up.
Marc:The new WTF cap mugs are available from Brian Jones up in Portland.
Marc:These are the same mugs I give to my guests today.
Marc:They go on sale at 12 noon Eastern, 9 a.m.
Marc:Pacific today.
Marc:Go to BrianRJones.com to get yours.
Marc:And we just got in the new Carnegie Hall posters, those hand-printed beautiful posters from my Carnegie Hall show, which really didn't...
Marc:I didn't have a chance to really sell them.
Marc:Everything moved too quickly, so I got a lot of them.
Marc:There's a lot of posters over at WTFPod.com.
Marc:You need to order it by today, though.
Marc:If you want those posters for Christmas presents, get the order in today, December 12th, to make sure it gets to you or whoever you're sending it to by Christmas.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:You got that?
Marc:Clear?
Marc:Also, new tour dates.
Marc:Hopefully, these will be...
Marc:on the site by the time you hear this, but they're not new.
Marc:Some of them are rescheduled.
Marc:Some of them are new.
Marc:I am announcing the continuation of the two reel tour heading out into the spring.
Marc:I've got dates coming up in Tallahassee, Florida, Durham, North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, Ridgefield, Connecticut, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Montreal, Quebec.
Marc:Toronto, Ontario, New Haven, Connecticut, Troy, New York, Burlington, Vermont, Oakland, California, Seattle, Washington, Vancouver, BC, Austin, Texas, Boulder, Colorado, Denver, Colorado, Portland, Oregon, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC.
Marc:I didn't even realize I was doing that many dates, but I am.
Marc:I am doing that many dates, and that might be it.
Marc:That might be the last run, the final run.
Marc:What else is happening?
Marc:Casey Affleck is on the show in a little while.
Marc:Talked to him about acting, family, that stuff.
Marc:I'll say more about that in just a minute.
Marc:oh and i talked about this is a coincidence but maybe it's not a coincidence i don't know maybe maybe people are listening that i don't realize because after i talked about tom petty being a great american bonding for better or for worse not on tom's part of course but uh who doesn't like tom petty if you heard that riff i did at the beginning of the show a while back out of nowhere secret santa
Marc:sent me both of the box sets, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, complete vinyl box sets, one and two, and it's fucking unbelievable.
Marc:It was like this gift from the... I don't know where.
Marc:I don't want to say from God.
Marc:The coincidence is not lost on me.
Marc:Obviously, it was just released, and obviously...
Marc:Someone in the industry said Mark needs this because maybe he'll like it and say how much he liked it.
Marc:It's not a paid promo, but fuck, man, to have those first five records, a new fresh minted vinyl that still smells like the press, listening to those first three albums for me specifically and Wildflowers in the second box.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Whew.
Marc:What a relief.
Marc:So I'm becoming a...
Marc:A fairly, on some level, traditional old Jew.
Marc:I like to admit it, but I think in every young Jew, every infant Jew, there's an old Jew just already built in, waiting to take over the body, waiting to fill it out.
Marc:But he's in there.
Marc:He's in there and conscious and has been talking on and off for years.
Marc:They come out in moments where you're like, oh, that's what I'm going to be.
Marc:That guy that just said that, yeah, he's waiting.
Marc:He's waiting to fill up this body.
Marc:I just got to hold him down until it becomes a natural process.
Marc:But like, you know, what you just heard when I just went, oh, God, I got it.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:I got to sit down for a second.
Marc:That guy, he's just hanging out waiting so he can be all of me.
Marc:And as we head into a fairly guaranteed dark unknown, I'm becoming a little more suicidal with my food choices.
Marc:Like, well...
Marc:Fuck it.
Marc:I'm just going to eat this shit.
Marc:What difference is it?
Marc:I got it.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Why have I been denying myself everything?
Marc:What's the point?
Marc:Got to enjoy it now where the joy is, you know, has so much more of a profound effect in comforting me.
Marc:I will go and do like after I did my show last night, I did three shows at the comedy store.
Marc:Me and my buddy, Jerry Stahl, we have a thing.
Marc:If we go out and do the comedy, he hangs out with me.
Marc:We go to Cantor's Deli and we sit and we do it.
Marc:We get the food.
Marc:And I know like there's things.
Marc:When you go into a deli, if you come from that, if it's part of your past, if you understand the culture of delis, you want your thing the way you want it.
Marc:But that is understood.
Marc:I worked at a deli after college in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Marc:And the type of special ordering people would do is appropriate to the menu.
Marc:person had their way you know fatty lean heel of the bread pancake style eggs onions grilled well no onions i want it burnt i want it browned i want it is it fresh is it from the middle it can you toast it twice the deli was the one place people went to get exactly what they wanted even if it makes the counter guy who was me crazy
Marc:I was the counter guy.
Marc:You learn how to navigate the requests and negotiate the desires of these people.
Marc:It's almost a Talmudic discussion getting to the truth of the meal for that person.
Marc:I know my deli meal truths.
Marc:OK, I know them.
Marc:And now now that, you know, since the election, you know, a futility has descended with the darkness that makes eating what you want at the cost of time off the back end, a priority and a true pleasure and a true comfort.
Marc:Everything is very tangible, very visceral to me.
Marc:Now, here's the thing.
Marc:I made the mistake of not requesting the waiter I like.
Marc:I don't usually do that because I trust most of the crusty servers, the cantors.
Marc:And my guy, he's not a crusty guy, but he knows me.
Marc:Now, this is in another way is a rite of passage for an aging Jew, realizing you need to ask for your guy at the restaurant.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I noted that and I will go out of my way to do that now because I'm I'm I'm evolving into this.
Marc:So I got a new guy.
Marc:I ordered a cup of chicken soup with just broth and chicken meat.
Marc:And I ordered a Leo, a lox eggs and onions with well-grilled onions.
Marc:I ordered a plate of pickles.
Marc:I ordered rye toast.
Marc:I ordered cream cheese and a Diet Dr. Brown's black cherry soda.
Marc:That is what I wanted.
Marc:That was my deli truth.
Marc:And I wanted it delivered.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Because I wanted, that's what I wanted.
Marc:Now, when he showed up with my lox eggs and onions, I had spinach scrambled into it and no toast.
Marc:I lost my shit a bit, but I didn't say anything.
Marc:I know that I had that look where I said, what is that?
Marc:Is that spinach?
Marc:I didn't want, I don't want spinach.
Marc:And he knew that I was, you know, there's that moment where they're like, will you just eat it?
Marc:And I'm like, he knew I'm not going to eat it.
Marc:So he took it back.
Marc:And when it came back, when he came back out with it about 10 minutes later, it was correct, but still no toast.
Marc:So now he started to lose my shit a little more.
Marc:I went over to my regular guy so I could ask him to step in, but he was busy.
Marc:But, you know, he did say something to the guy.
Marc:I looked around.
Marc:I was pissed off.
Marc:And by the time I got everything I ordered, there were at least three people involved in the process of getting me what I needed.
Marc:And even my friend Jerry, he took on my panic.
Marc:And I think he would have stormed the kitchen if I hadn't told him not to.
Marc:All said and done.
Marc:it was a great lox eggs and onions and the truth will set you free it's it's just the age-old struggle for the truth that can be a little daunting and i'm becoming that guy almost making a scene at the restaurant all right yes i made a scene at the restaurant okay what can i tell you folks
Marc:I'm about to share with you my interview with Casey Affleck.
Marc:His new movie, Manchester by the Sea, is now playing in limited release.
Marc:It's a fucking great movie, and he's great in it.
Marc:It's expanding to more than 900 cities this Friday, December 16th.
Marc:Now, I know there's been...
Marc:renewed attention on Casey Affleck being accused of sexual harassment in the past, which resulted in a lawsuit that was settled by both parties.
Marc:And there are questions about why more outlets aren't asking Casey about these accusations, particularly in the current cultural climate.
Marc:I can't speak for anyone but our show, but me, but I can tell you why it doesn't come up in my conversation with Casey, because it's a violation of the terms of the settlement for Casey to talk about it.
Marc:I was not told I couldn't ask about it.
Marc:There were no questions that were said to be off limits for this conversation.
Marc:But Casey is not going to address the details of the case because of the terms of the settlement.
Marc:There's not much I can ask if the settlement means Casey can't talk about it.
Marc:So and there have been other guests on this show who are unable to discuss incidents due to lawsuit settlements.
Marc:I mean, it's happened before.
Marc:And there's and they tell us that.
Marc:And there's not much point in me pressing them to talk about something.
Marc:They say they're legally prevented from getting into the details.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So that's what's happening.
Marc:Now, if you want to view this conversation through the prism of that lawsuit settlement, you can.
Marc:The facts of the case are available.
Marc:I just feel like it's fair to let you know that before you hear this conversation.
Marc:But now this is me and Casey Affleck.
Marc:You've been out doing the thing, pushing the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Little movies, somebody's got to push them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No one knows about them and no one cares and no one goes.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Pretty much these days.
Guest:It's hard to get a... Now you know, people have said it before.
Guest:It's big movies.
Guest:They have a big advertising budget, and they just gobble up all the screens.
Guest:Plus, there's great TV being made, and so people stay home and watch TV.
Marc:I got to see it.
Marc:I saw it in the theater.
Marc:I thought it was a beautiful movie.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Guest:What did your lady think?
Marc:She loved it.
Marc:I mean, it's like one of those movies where...
Marc:it's very cleverly scripted the guy's sort of a genius because you don't really know nothing is over explained and there's none of that the actors aren't like talking to explain the story so things fall into place you where you're like oh that's who that guy is after three minutes of not knowing who the fuck it is
Marc:but that's isn't that better man you don't want to just sit there and shit crammed down your throat that's the worst it's much better because you're able to have uh some sort of emotional flow like you know you the emotions hit you differently like it's almost like once you you have that moment where you put it together for yourself and you're like holy shit like and uh yeah i thought you did a great job thanks but you're hearing that a lot can't never hear that enough though
Guest:I've got a lot to make up for, you know.
Guest:Many years where I never heard it at all, so I think I'm still in the red.
Guest:That's not true.
Marc:No, well, not really.
Marc:I mean, fuck, man.
Marc:Even in the Oceans movie, you're pretty funny.
Marc:I mean, you're able to do comedy.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, coming from you, that says a lot.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Those were my favorite movies, and I didn't actually like doing them that much.
Guest:Really?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, thank God I got to do them.
Guest:They paid the bills for a long time.
Guest:I'm not complaining about it.
Guest:But if you, you know, just talking about like... They look fun.
Guest:Yeah, they were sort of fun.
Guest:They look more fun than they were.
Guest:It's still a job.
Guest:You still show up.
Guest:You're still doing... Especially me.
Guest:I was... If it's Ocean's Eleven, I was like...
Guest:Number 11, you know what I'm saying?
Guest:I was like, maybe 10.
Guest:And so it's really the most fun for the guys who are calling the shots, doing the thing, changing the scenes, making stuff up as they go.
Guest:I was kind of stacking poker chips in the background.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But you had a little comedy thing going with James Caan's kid.
Marc:What's his name?
Marc:Scott Caan.
Guest:Scott Caan.
Marc:He's really funny.
Marc:You guys were funny together.
Marc:It was like a little team.
Marc:I like how in those movies there were little units of people that did their own schticks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you guys had sort of a comedy team dynamic.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I wanted to do Ocean's 14.
Guest:It's just me and him.
Guest:with no story just you reacting to something we don't know about yeah it's just me and him doing all the shit we would have done in the other movies which is like totally irrelevant to the plot and has pointless uh action are you friends with him off screen
Guest:Yeah, he's a nice guy.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he's on this Hawaii Five-0, so he works off in Hawaii, tough life, all the time.
Guest:I'd like to talk to his dad.
Guest:His dad's still around, right?
Guest:Yeah, he's around.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:He's a character.
Guest:I've only met him a few times, but I'm sure he's got a lot of stories.
Marc:Yeah, he's got to be a character.
Marc:He was running around in the heyday.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Old actor guys.
Marc:But this thing, like...
Marc:I lived in Boston, the Boston area for... Where?
Marc:I lived a lot of places in and around Boston.
Marc:I lived in Somerville.
Marc:I lived in Brookline.
Marc:I lived in Alston.
Marc:I mean, I was there from like, you know, 81.
Marc:I lived in Milton because I went to Curry College for a year.
Marc:And then I went to BU.
Marc:And then I went back and started comedy there.
Marc:So I was there on and off from 81 to like...
Marc:89.
Marc:Somerville, before it became groovy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's kind of like a little hard.
Marc:Yeah, it was.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But this thing, I got very nostalgic, man.
Marc:Because I knew those people.
Marc:I used to do gigs for those people.
Marc:I worked in Falmouth.
Marc:I worked in Yarmouth.
Marc:You're from Falmouth, right?
Marc:I was born in Falmouth.
Marc:You didn't grow up there at all?
Marc:I grew up in Cambridge.
Marc:Cambridge, yeah.
Guest:Cambridge was right in between Somerville, Alston, everywhere you were, Brookline.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but I remember paying my dues, playing places.
Marc:The characters in that movie would have come to a club that I went to, like a one-night gig.
Guest:Right, if you're lucky, buddy.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:But I know the type of person.
Marc:It's very specific.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:And the way that...
Guest:I don't know, maybe I'm making this up, but I feel like things used to be more provincial.
Guest:Everywhere had more culture, its own culture, a place.
Guest:Now, since I've been around and the explosion of chain stores, everything's a chain.
Guest:Everyone watches the same TV shows.
Guest:Everyone shops at the same fucking Gap.
Guest:Everyone drinks coffee in the same place.
Guest:Everything's homogenized to the point of the success of these big businesses, but it makes everything bland and everyone's the same.
Guest:Accents are kind of going away.
Guest:Are they?
Guest:Yeah, I think they are.
Guest:I mean, I go back home.
Guest:Did you have one?
Guest:When I was a kid, I don't know why, I always had this weird voice and people would ask me where I was from.
Guest:I was like, I'm from here, motherfucker.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:Motherfucker.
Guest:I live in the corner.
Marc:But your brother doesn't have it either, does he?
Guest:He doesn't have it.
Guest:I mean, our parents weren't from Boston, so they didn't have accents.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:So that's mostly where you get it.
Guest:Where are they from?
Guest:I have no idea.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No, my dad was Detroit and Florida.
Guest:He moved all around.
Guest:He was a kid and my mom was from New York.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where are they now?
Guest:My dad's in upstate New York and my mother's mostly in my guest room.
Guest:Oh, really?
Yeah.
Guest:Sometimes I get her to go back to Cambridge.
Guest:What part of Cambridge, where are you guys from?
Guest:Central Square.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, now all of Cambridge has been, they got rid of rent control in all the whole area.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was a really diverse, working class area like Somerville, like all these places.
Guest:And it just got, when about 15 years ago, they got rid of rent control in a really sneaky legislative move.
Guest:And it changed the face of the whole area.
Guest:It's a really rich Harvard and MIT gobbled up property because they could rent for really high prices.
Guest:And the whole city's changed.
Guest:So it's a homogenized hipster kind of college thing?
Guest:Completely.
Guest:So I was walking down the street in Central Square and some college kid came up to me and said, hey, you're Casey Affleck?
Guest:And I said...
Guest:Yeah, he said, we're over at the Cantab Lounge having a drink.
Guest:Let us buy you a drink.
Guest:Now, when I used to go to the Cantab Lounge, my dad was a bartender, and it was like there were four alcoholic postmen sitting in there drinking, you know what I mean?
Guest:And it was like dark, depressing spot.
Guest:Now it's full of like BU kids who want to buy you a drink.
Marc:Wild, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that's a great place to grow up.
Marc:You did all your growing up there?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:In Central Square?
Marc:Yep.
Guest:Where'd you go to school?
Yeah.
Guest:It was called Webster.
Guest:It was just a little public school two blocks away.
Guest:Then they changed it to Graham and Parks, named for Sandra Graham and Rosa Parks.
Guest:I was in second grade, so Rosa Parks, they changed the name, and Rosa Parks came to the school.
Guest:She looked like she was 120, and we put on a performance for her.
Guest:I did a play.
Guest:It was the earliest memory of ever being on stage.
Guest:I was playing a lion, and my mane fell off.
Guest:I remember this really clearly.
Guest:I'm supposed to run across the stage, go to the front of the stage, and roar.
Guest:My mane fell off as I was running, and I thought, do I go back and pick it up, and then roar?
Guest:Do I just roar without my mane, or do I just run off stage?
Guest:And so I went back, fuck it, picked up my mane, went to the stage, roar!
Guest:That was it.
Guest:That was how my acting career began.
Guest:I was like trying to put together the pieces of a broken, some broken scene.
Guest:That was basically what it's been like.
Guest:Main or no main.
Guest:Yeah, main or no main.
Guest:It's been that way for 35 years.
Guest:And then I met Rosa Parks.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I remember we all get to line up and meet her and she pat us on the head.
Guest:And it was a very, I came from a very liberal, Cambridge was like the cradle of political correctness and liberalism at the time.
Guest:A beautiful place to grow.
Marc:I don't know if the idea of political correctness was around yet, but it was definitely full of liberal intellectuals.
Guest:Yeah, that's where all that stuff was born.
Guest:I'm very grateful for that, man, I tell you.
Marc:So when did you start really kind of getting into acting outside of the Lion Man thing?
Guest:In high school, I started doing it.
Guest:I was playing baseball.
Guest:I wanted to play baseball.
Guest:Were you good?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, amazing.
Guest:I'm sure I would have been a pro.
Guest:And then- What position?
Guest:I played shortstop.
Guest:And then when I got to high school, I played mostly bench.
Guest:And that was my first year as a freshman.
Guest:I mean, we had a big school.
Guest:We had Patrick Ewing went to our school, Ramil Robinson.
Guest:It was like a big sport, 3,000 kids.
Guest:What high school?
Guest:Public school, Cambridge Ringe and Lime.
Guest:Competitive.
Guest:It was competitive.
Guest:I was a freshman.
Guest:I didn't get a lot of play.
Guest:And then that summer I was going to play baseball again.
Guest:Someone came to me and said, hey, we need a kid, we need a boy to do the musical that summer.
Guest:And so I thought, well, I could ride the pine on another season of baseball or I could go hang out in the theater department with a bunch of girls.
Guest:So I did that.
Guest:And then that was amazing.
Guest:What was the musical?
Guest:It was called Dear World, The Mad Woman of Chayot.
Guest:Did you sing?
Guest:No, it turned out I was tone deaf.
Guest:They didn't kick me out, though.
Guest:They let me stay in because they didn't have any other guys.
Guest:You're tone deaf still?
Guest:Still, yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I can't sing.
Guest:In fact, I auditioned for a part a couple years ago.
Guest:I was dying to do it, and a guy had to sing.
Guest:He had to sing really, really well, and the director said, we have to have someone who can really sing and play the guitar.
Guest:I said, yeah, I can do it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I knew I was fucked.
Guest:I knew when I was saying the words, I knew I couldn't do it.
Guest:I said, yes, I can.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:I've been playing the guitar for years.
Guest:I can sing.
Guest:You've never played guitar?
Guest:Never.
Guest:And I thought, it can't be that hard.
Guest:I'm going to learn a couple songs.
Guest:So I went, spent a couple weeks killing myself to sing and play the guitar.
Guest:Learned how to do it.
Marc:You learned how to sing?
Guest:I was like, learned how to sing, learned how to play guitar.
Guest:I was like, I found a new talent.
Guest:Now I'm going to do this movie, and then I'm going to book some shows.
Guest:Who's going to be in my band?
Guest:That was the idea.
Guest:I was thinking big.
Guest:How am I going to do an album?
Guest:Should I just put it straight online?
Guest:And then I sent the tape in to the directors, and it was like crickets.
Guest:They didn't even respond.
Guest:What movie was it?
Guest:I can't say that, man.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It's got to be a long time ago.
Guest:What the hell did it say?
Guest:No way.
Guest:It was recently.
Guest:Oh, it was recently?
Yeah.
Guest:You know, because... Is it out yet?
Guest:Someone else ended up doing it and he was amazing.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Is the movie out?
Guest:Inside Owen Davis.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:For the lead?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:And I was like, he was fantastic.
Guest:He was a great, beautiful voice.
Guest:He sings like shit.
Guest:He could play...
Marc:played the part amazing that movie though the end of that movie is one of the best endings yeah that movie man I could watch it over and over I have to watch it more I don't know what happened to my copy of it because it's one of those movies with their movies like sometimes it takes two or three times for me for it to really register the groove yeah you wanted to work with them though huh
Guest:Well, they're my favorite.
Guest:Come on, they're the best.
Guest:And you're right.
Guest:You watch it.
Guest:Like, first time I saw Lebowski, I thought, that's all right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like, that was an all right movie.
Guest:Are you a Lebowski guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've watched it 25 times.
Guest:I can't.
Marc:That's the one that, like, I know people are like, that's the one.
Marc:And I, like, watch it over and over again.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:And it's fun.
Marc:And it's funny.
Marc:But I'm not, like, I'm not as into it as I am, like, Barton Fink.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Miller's Crossing.
Marc:Miller's Crossing.
Yeah.
Guest:yeah that's crazy that's a great movie beautiful Serious Man I love that movie yeah and the last one I thought was fucking great Hail Caesar I loved it yeah did you see it I haven't seen it you haven't seen it it's the only one I haven't seen those dudes are masters they can't be stopped have you met him I met him for that thing I sat in a room with him and looked him in the eye and told him I could sing and play the guitar probably the last time I'll get to talk to those two guys oh no they'll have you back around they like that Clooney yeah they do
Marc:He's a funny guy.
Guest:Did you do scenes with him?
Guest:In Oceans, he would have some scenes in the foreground and I would be blurry a thousand feet away if we call that being in a scene with someone.
Marc:But he seems like a pleasant... He's one of those guys like...
Marc:You know, there are movie stars and there are actors, right?
Marc:Do you think that?
Marc:Like, he just seems like one of those guys is he's always going to be some variation of himself.
Marc:But like, he can do comedy and he's just very grounded or something.
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:Some guys just can do that thing.
Marc:They're good looking.
Marc:And then they take the mantle as movie star and they carry it somehow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He does it well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a good movie star, and I think he's a good actor and a good director.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He's like a smart guy, and he's an artistic dude.
Guest:Do you want to be a movie star?
Guest:I don't want to be in that sense.
Guest:I don't think I could be ever.
Guest:I don't have that thing, but I don't want that thing.
Marc:Well, you can carry a movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If that's what being a movie star is, I can I can carry a movie.
Guest:And I and now I've played a lot of smaller parts.
Guest:And I know the whole thing.
Guest:There are no small parts for small actors.
Guest:But I think there's and I believe in that it's really hard to do a small part in some ways to make it stick.
Guest:To do it well, to find your rhythm, to play.
Guest:Especially in movies, there's not a lot of time to show up, do your job, you go home.
Guest:And you've got to walk on set prepared to really do it.
Guest:And so the lead of the movie is often given more latitude and more time to warm up into things and get it right.
Guest:And they might have one or two bad scenes, but they sort of drown out by all the other good stuff that they do.
Guest:If you're if you only have three scenes in a movie, you know, you want to deliver.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got to convey a lot in those scenes in some way.
Guest:You know, I know there's a school of thought of you just just be the person in that.
Guest:And that's all you have to worry about.
Guest:But anyway, it's more interesting to me right now to to get to play a whole arc of a character, you know, of a character.
Marc:Did you have that?
Marc:Did you have a nice amount of time for Manchester?
Marc:Yes, you did.
Guest:Yeah, I was in almost every scene.
Guest:And so you really get to be a lot of different colors.
Guest:You can be a little bit of purple here.
Guest:And then even though you're mostly brown, you can sprinkle on a little stuff here.
Guest:You get to play with nuance in a way that is exciting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like in thinking about it, because like that role had a...
Marc:What it didn't have, oh, well, that's not true.
Marc:Because in the flashback scenes or before the thing, you were kind of a happy guy, having some beers, just enjoying life.
Marc:I based that on you.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Marc:But then you had to do this other thing.
Marc:You had to shut down.
Marc:It just shattered Walking Dead, dude, almost.
Guest:He was more like, I mean, I would think of him as like...
Guest:It's so funny, man.
Guest:It was really hard sometimes.
Guest:This movie was brutal in some ways because it was, you know, what you had to do every day on set was to carry all of this tragedy around every day, and it was heavy.
Guest:But it was...
Guest:And I know people, you know, listening to actors talk about how hard their job is.
Guest:There's nothing worse than that.
Guest:It sounds so pretentious and stupid.
Guest:But the truth is that, you know, if you want to be good, you do have to sort of hold on to the emotional state of the character and just find a way to step into whatever his life is.
Guest:And that life was heavy and it was very emotional.
Guest:So...
Guest:So I didn't think of it as like The Walking Dead.
Guest:It was more like the walking, like too much living.
Guest:It was like a balloon with too much water in it.
Guest:That's why he had to keep everyone away from him because he's like any little thing would make him explode, you know, and he wasn't going to forgive himself.
Guest:He's had suffered this tragedy.
Guest:That's what I meant.
Marc:I didn't mean The Walking Dead, but like a broken heart that will never heal.
Guest:Yeah, that's it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, it's just the part that keeps bleeding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like, uh, now when you do something like that to shift from it, I like talking to actors and I think the job of acting is difficult because what people don't realize is that you're going to do coverage.
Marc:You're going to be there all fucking day to do five minutes.
Marc:And you know, you've got to, you know, you've got to show up.
Marc:It's, it's draining.
Marc:And like, if people condescend that
Marc:you know like actors you know talking about acting like it's a big deal it sort of is a big deal because this is what we chose to do it's not any sort of guaranteed living you know and and you know you keep pushing and you keep pushing and then when you get successful you work but it's work you gotta you're up where were where'd that shoot in manchester yeah new hampshire yeah which is pretty yeah beautiful but you're you know you're in the trailer you kind of you're in the trailer being sad for what how many months
Marc:Yeah, two months and no trailer.
Guest:No trailer.
Marc:You're sitting on a chair.
Guest:You're being sat on a chair.
Guest:It's true, man.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:But I also, I love it.
Guest:I mean, I've done enough other jobs to appreciate, like, okay, I'm getting to do what I like to do.
Guest:And I could be stuck on a daytime TV show that I hate.
Guest:And I probably would just stop and do something else if that was the case, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I'm like...
Marc:there are a lot of people who are good and could would love to be doing this and i'm for the time being i get to do it so i thank my lucky stars and then i very quietly grumble and complain to people in the business yeah directors or another actor or like how long something takes or whatever yeah like work everyone complains about work yeah but like you so you do a musical in high school so what makes you what sells you on the idea that this is something to pursue was your brother
Guest:only in high school we were in high school together how old what's the difference uh uh three years it's like me and my brother yeah we were really we were really close still really are close to kind of uh you know some guys some like my kids they're about three and a half years apart and they have different friends and stuff ben and i had the same friends and always we're kind of hanging out oh yeah yeah oh that's sweet because me and my brother we didn't we didn't he took a whole different course
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, we're close now, but it wasn't like that growing up.
Guest:What did he do?
Guest:What do you mean?
Marc:Well, he wanted to be a tennis star, so he put his whole life into being a jock, and he went to tennis school for a while, and then we went to different junior highs and high schools.
Marc:It just didn't... He was here last night for a minute.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Have you had him on the show?
Marc:No, I did.
Marc:I think we tried to record it once, but it's just it's a little it's a little painful sometimes.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Well, I mean, that wouldn't stop me.
Marc:But, you know, he just you know, he's got his life and it's it's a different life than mine.
Marc:But like when your brothers and like, you know, he.
Marc:The dynamic between us, he's very intense, my brother, and he's always trying to fix himself.
Marc:He's always sort of like, I'm working on my problems.
Marc:So the conversation just drops right into that, just immediately.
Marc:And I can do that, but when it's with your brother, eventually, like last night, I'm just like, all right, okay, okay, let's just eat.
Guest:You know, it's intense.
Guest:Yeah, it's intense and it's such a bore, man.
Guest:I gotta remind myself, like, enough.
Guest:Stop thinking about your own little problems, man.
Guest:There's a world out there.
Marc:What's pressing?
Marc:What's the big fix for you?
Guest:For me?
Guest:Yeah, what are you like?
Guest:Oh, where do I begin?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You can make them up.
Guest:I think if you're a problem solver, you tend to make problems.
Guest:That's the trick.
Guest:You got to stop.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like I think to myself, yeah, you got to just turn it off.
Guest:I try not to let the terrorists win.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, in your brain?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So are your folks alive?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You should have a big family show.
Marc:I used to have my dad on, but I wouldn't tell him.
Marc:When I used to do a radio show, I'd call him up and ask him what movies he'd seen because then he'd just start talking about the movies.
Marc:It was a film review segment.
Marc:It was hilarious.
Guest:And he didn't know you were recording?
Marc:No, not for years.
Marc:It's funny how you can torture your parents and it just feels so good.
Marc:Yeah, my mom's all right.
Marc:They came to it.
Marc:They're all right.
Marc:My dad's a little sad, but my mom's all right.
Guest:Where do they live?
Marc:She's in Florida and he's in New Mexico where I grew up.
Guest:oh nice you might want to which one of those places do you think of his home new mexico you want to go back there like don't you ever well i mean you're younger than me don't you have those fantasies where it's like i'm out oh my god every day sitting out in my car in front of your spot here going look what am i doing here i'm out i'm out i gotta i can't live i hate i hate this place i do hate la it eats at you somehow
Marc:you know everything's an ordeal to go anywhere yeah you know what i mean and like especially like whatever you're going through now for this big push it's just at that part of the job but just going like if i got to go the west side i'm like oh fuck i know i don't want how long is that gonna take me you know i'm gonna have to pack a bag
Guest:I know, it's the worst.
Guest:Spread out, you spend all your time.
Guest:Listen, there's a million things to complain about L.A., you know?
Guest:And I've said them all, I think, right now.
Guest:But I can't actually get, I never get to the heart of it.
Guest:I never get to the heart of what it is that is so bad about L.A.
Guest:But you came out here when?
Marc:You said like 20 years ago the first time?
Guest:I was 18.
Guest:I got out of high school.
Guest:Me and my friend got in a car.
Marc:So you did how many musicals?
Guest:I did one musical.
Guest:They let me stay in the show, but they were not going to get me in another one.
Marc:How much acting did you do before you came out here?
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:I did high school theater.
Guest:That's it?
Guest:Well...
Guest:Boring story, but my mom's best friend was a local casting director in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Guest:So she would bring us in for little auditions or weather commercials.
Guest:Who, you and your brother?
Guest:Yeah, all of our friends.
Guest:The casting director had kids, too, that were our age.
Guest:So we'd all go in just to be kids in the background.
Guest:Like if a movie came to town.
Guest:Right.
Guest:i didn't even think of i was being an actor i didn't even know what that was but it was a day off from school and you get back then it was like they gave us 50 bucks and you just eat donuts and shit all day and then i did um are you hanging around matt damon too at this point he was older no i i didn't i mean he was like on my school bus when i was a kid you know what i mean your brother was friends with him
Guest:No, he wasn't friends with him.
Guest:We didn't know him until high school.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He was older than both of us.
Guest:Matt's, you know, 59 now.
Guest:Wow, looks great.
Guest:59, he's got 12 children.
Guest:He's four or five years older than I am.
Guest:I didn't really know, but I had met him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, so I didn't do any of that.
Guest:When I got out of high school, I thought, I'll be an actor.
Guest:It's fun.
Guest:I like doing theater.
Guest:I like doing plays.
Guest:I liked it all.
Guest:I guess I'll go out to, you know, Hollywood, California, where that's where all the action is.
Guest:And so drove out there, stopped at my buddy's parents' place in Bastrop, Texas, stayed there for a while, and then continued on to- The guy you're driving with?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His parents in Texas?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What happened to the guy you came out with?
Guest:He came out.
Guest:We lived together for a while in Eagle Rock.
Guest:How did you end up in fucking Eagle Rock?
Guest:Why the hell?
Guest:Oh, because Ben was going to Occidental College.
Guest:Oh, it's right here.
Guest:It was right there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we all got a place together with another friend of ours.
Guest:Yeah, that was it.
Guest:And then I got like three auditions that year, basically.
Guest:It was like got nothing.
Guest:I worked as a busboy.
Guest:I wasn't old enough to serve alcohol.
Guest:I was only 17, actually.
Guest:So I got a job as a busboy in Old Town, Pasadena, and just worked my ass off.
Guest:And I thought, hey, I don't really like it out here.
Guest:I'm not getting any auditions.
Marc:Did you have an agent or anything?
Guest:I found an agent kind of midway through the year, and then right as I was packed up and leaving, I was going to college, and I got an audition for a movie called To Die For, which was a Gus Van Sant movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I went and did that job, which was amazing.
Guest:Had the best time.
Guest:Where was that job?
Guest:Toronto.
Guest:Became really good friends with all the people there.
Guest:It was the best possible first experience.
Guest:You were one of the townie guys?
Guest:It was like two, you know, it's basically kind of Pamela Smart, right?
Guest:She hires a teacher who hires kids to kill her husband.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I remember the movie, Nicole Kidman.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it's Joaquin, and you were one of his friends?
Guest:Yeah, it was me and Joaquin, and then Matt Dillon was the husband, and- He was really good in that.
Marc:Everybody was good in that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People were always good in Gus's movies.
Guest:It's like, it's a sign of- Why is that?
Guest:Um, because he knows how to take, well, he's good at casting and then he knows how to take what people are giving him and use it in the right way.
Guest:You know, like, uh, I sort of have this theory that you could take a performance and it could be good.
Guest:Any, any performance could be cut to be terrible.
Guest:It should be great.
Guest:You know, and any, anyone off the street can kind of be, give a great performance or a bad, terrible performance.
Guest:And like, uh, uh, so, um.
Guest:So you got that right as you were packing up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where were you going to go to school?
Guest:What was the big plan?
Guest:I was going to Columbia.
Guest:Then I had a girlfriend who was in Washington, D.C.
Guest:In New York.
Guest:I went first to Washington, D.C.
Guest:And I went there for a few months.
Guest:After the movie?
Guest:After the movie.
Guest:And I had a girlfriend.
Guest:And then we broke up.
Guest:And I didn't want to be there anymore.
Guest:And I went to New York City.
Guest:Went to Columbia.
Guest:For how long?
Guest:Two and a half years total.
Guest:On and off.
Guest:I'd go over a semester.
Guest:I'd go to work.
Guest:It's a good school.
Guest:That was great.
Guest:You must have been smart.
Guest:Not as smart as the other kids, I tell you.
Guest:Every time I thought I really liked some subject, I'd get in that class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They'd just blow me away.
Guest:They'd bury you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This is not for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That fucker up there knows everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By the end of the semester, I'm sitting in the back corner hiding my face.
Marc:What were you studying?
Guest:Well, you got to do this.
Guest:Columbia's got this great program where they have their best professors teach all the incoming freshmen, sophomores.
Guest:They have a core curriculum where everyone's got to take the same classes, more or less.
Guest:You don't get to pick a lot of classes, which I like.
Guest:It's the classics and stuff.
Guest:But then you get to pick one class a semester or something that you really want.
Guest:astronomy and physics because i thought i liked it in high school i really loved it and i thought i was good at it but let me tell you something when you get in the physics course at an ivy league school boy um yeah i can't you're in trouble if you're not like really yeah i don't have a math brain yeah it seems complicated yeah
Guest:All right, so you split, and you come back here?
Guest:Boom.
Guest:I was out.
Guest:No, I moved to Somerville.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, moved to Inman Square.
Guest:This is after you fucking do- Davis Square.
Marc:The movie.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Your first movie.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And you're just sort of like, what, you waited around, or you just left?
Yeah.
Guest:I didn't really know if I wanted to keep doing it.
Guest:I didn't really- You did nothing before that?
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:I mean, as a kid, I did those little tiny things.
Guest:I did that movie to die for.
Guest:And then I, yeah, I was going to school and not going to school.
Guest:I was kind of kicking around.
Guest:I moved to- Inman Square?
Guest:To Davis Square in Somerville.
Guest:Davis, that's where I lived.
Guest:I was waiting tables in Harvard Square.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Where?
Guest:Giannino's.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:David Mamet used to come in there.
Marc:With his glasses?
Yeah.
Guest:I shouted at me one time.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Not getting the food out.
Marc:He was like, yeah, I used to see him at the cigar place in Harvard Square.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You know that smoke shop?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, upstairs they'd have an area where people would sit and play chess, and he was always up there writing.
Guest:I've sat there and played chess there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:So, all right, so then what happens, man?
Guest:Well, you know, life goes on.
Guest:You working at a restaurant?
Guest:Working at a restaurant.
Guest:Where's your brother?
Guest:He's still out here?
Guest:God damn it.
Guest:My life story's boring, man.
Guest:No, it's not.
Guest:Holy my God.
Guest:It goes from busboy to waiter to getting yelled at by Mamet to school and out of school.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:I care.
Guest:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Because then somewhere along the line, you become an amazing actor.
Guest:Yeah, but there's more to it.
Guest:This is the chronology.
Guest:Where's your brother?
Guest:He's still here?
Guest:What's he doing?
Guest:Did he graduate?
Guest:No, he was in Somerville, too.
Guest:We were all living in Somerville.
Yeah.
Guest:We all lived in Davis Square.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're having a blast.
Guest:You know, we didn't have any responsibilities.
Guest:No one was in any relationships.
Guest:It was, we'd sit around, you know, and watch movies and talk and hang out.
Guest:All our friends were around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we weren't kids anymore, so you can kind of do what you want.
Guest:But you're a Boston area.
Guest:But you still want to do the same things you did when you were a kid.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So it was like, just eat cereal, play video games all day.
Guest:It was, you know, and-
Guest:In Somerville.
Guest:In Somerville.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I did Good Will Hunting.
Guest:Gus Van Sant.
Guest:Again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who directed Todavia Ford decided to direct Good Will Hunting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I went and did that.
Guest:That was fun.
Guest:It was like, you know.
Guest:I've been so, so strangely lucky.
Guest:At some point in the future, I think I'm going to look back and everything will come into focus and I'll see sort of some system here, something that's happening.
Guest:Right now, I don't really...
Guest:I don't really understand it all, but I've been... Are you grateful?
Guest:Yeah, and I've been able to work with my friends and family over and over again, and great directors that I never thought I would get to work with.
Guest:I didn't work with them for four or five movies, you know what I mean?
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Like Gus.
Guest:I edited him on a movie for him, and I acted in a couple, three things, four things of his.
Guest:My friend David Lowery had done two coming up on three movies with him, and
Guest:All these people.
Guest:Was Kevin Smith a big break?
Guest:No.
Marc:It was for your brother, I guess.
Guest:That was kind of a favor.
Guest:I didn't want to do that.
Guest:That was basically an extra.
Guest:That was kind of a, hey, I'm making a movie.
Guest:You want to come say a line in it kind of a thing?
Guest:I hate doing that.
Marc:But your brother was in it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I guess maybe that was one of his breaks.
Guest:That was one of his kind of breaks.
Guest:What was that called?
Guest:Chasing Amy?
Guest:Chasing Amy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I really don't like doing that stuff.
Marc:What?
Marc:Showing it?
Guest:Showing up.
Guest:Yeah, because it's not really what's fun about acting for me.
Guest:It's not kind of like hanging out on set and, hey, I'll say a line.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I'm not a loose like that.
Guest:I like to start months and months before and start thinking about what the character is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and build it, you know, create it.
Guest:It's like being on the floor of the pile of Legos and sort of putting it all together.
Marc:How do you do that?
Marc:I mean, like, because I've talked to a few guys about, like, I talked to, who do I have in here?
Marc:I've been talking to more actors.
Marc:I don't think I knew how to talk to them at first in the sense of how they go about their process, but lately I've been better at it because some people have a process.
Marc:But the thing you can't really ask an actor really is, like, you know,
Marc:There's part of acting that you just happen to be able to... You fit on screen.
Marc:You can do it.
Marc:You don't have that self-consciousness.
Marc:When you said anyone could do a part, kind of, but there's some sort of trick to not...
Marc:paying attention to the fact that you're surrounded by people with cameras and gear like you were able to find that space i think that's just a gift i don't think you can learn that kind of that focus but when you say you take months like what was the first part was it billy the uh was it uh jesse james where you were like i gotta take i'm gonna start months in advance and put this together
Guest:Well, that was the first part that was a leading role, the great piece of material and a great director where all of the work could be put into.
Guest:It was a big enough container that I could fill with all the work that I was putting into it.
Guest:Before that, I would do all the work because I love doing it.
Guest:And that's sort of how I was taught to do it all.
Guest:Who taught you?
Guest:Man, I had this guy in high school who I know it sounds like it wouldn't be that impactful a thing or great an experience for whatever reason because it's just public high school, but he was one of the best teachers I've ever had and one of the smartest guys I've known.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:His name was Jerry Speca.
Guest:He was just a high school teacher, theater teacher, and it wasn't about teaching.
Guest:He wasn't a guy who knew this Stanislavski and this and that, all these other different acting techniques or acting, schools of acting.
Guest:But he taught us how to do the work about the importance of doing preparation and of asking a lot of yourself and not anytime you're going to do something, doing it as well as you can.
Guest:That was four years of that stuff, and it really stuck, man.
Guest:And when I would go to do a job, I still do those things that he taught me when I was 15 years old.
Guest:Every morning before I go to set, I do the same physical vocal warm-ups, the same things.
Guest:Everything that I learned then has carried me through all these jobs.
Guest:So all the work, the preparation that would go into these other jobs before Jesse James was...
Guest:I just wouldn't get to do anything with it because I'm just being asked to step up and do some, you know, the material wasn't that good or no one else was paying attention to see what was good and bad in the performance.
Guest:And so I was lucky enough to get a part with The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford because Andrew Dominick was directing it.
Guest:He cared about actors and he cared about the difference between a good performance and a bad performance.
Guest:And then he took everything that I was giving and then elevated it because he had great ideas himself.
Guest:And that's, man, when it gets really fun and you think, there's nothing in the world I'd rather do than this.
Marc:When you say you start a couple months in advance, just as somebody who does a little acting myself, and I never really got much training except on set.
Marc:So you start with the script, so what do you first think about?
Guest:start looking at them, not thinking about the character, but looking at the material, what's happening in the story, what's happening in this moment, and then start thinking about what does this guy want?
Guest:What's standing in his way?
Guest:And why does he want those things?
Guest:And if he wants those things for those reasons, how is he going to get over this hurdle or around this obstacle?
Guest:Just trying to understand from the inside out what's happening so you're not thinking of it in terms of how is it serving the
Guest:story or how is it appearing or what is this moment supposed to be for an audience but really making a trying to understand as if it was a real person so you can be that real person and if you've done all that work I tend to feel that it doesn't it almost doesn't matter what is coming out of your mouth what face how you look or any of that shit it's not at all you're supposed to be thinking about you're supposed to be just thinking about what is happening before you've entered this scene and and
Guest:Where are you bringing into the scene?
Guest:What is it you're trying to get out of this person or this moment or what you're carrying about, what you're carrying?
Guest:Those are the things that give a scene some depth and make it interesting to watch.
Guest:You go like, what's going on in this guy's head?
Guest:Makes it look like real people on screen.
Guest:And you're wondering what's happening for them.
Marc:So the inner life has got to sort of, you've got to put that together for yourself.
Marc:And then if you're working with that inside yourself, it's going to translate.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So like with the assassination of- Jesse James.
Guest:Jesse James.
Guest:By Howard Robert Ford.
Marc:Yeah, it's a big title.
Marc:Beautiful looking movie.
Marc:I know Pat Healy.
Marc:He had a little part in there.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:He's a good guy.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Good actor too.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:So when you do that character, what was the thing that stood right in your face of like, that's my obstacle?
Yeah.
Guest:I think he's like, you know, he wanted, he thought of himself as being capable of greatness.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he was a little kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And part of the obstacle was that people didn't take him seriously.
Guest:Part of the obstacle was that he didn't know how to mask his own ambition.
Guest:So the people saw it.
Guest:He sort of just like oozed ambition and it made people not want to give him respect.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Also, his own ignorance about the world stood in his way.
Guest:He had read these nickel and dime books about Jesse James.
Guest:He didn't know about this Robin Hood figure who stole from the rich and he gave to the poor.
Guest:He was this great, magnanimous, heroic dude.
Guest:And he believed it.
Guest:He believed these comic books, and he thought, I'm going to be just like this guy, and he's going to see in me.
Guest:He's going to see this man who's so great.
Guest:He won't be able to miss my own potential for greatness.
Guest:And I get out there, and he's not that.
Guest:He's just a murdering, crazy, aging maniac.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um who doesn't see anything in anyone else because he's only thinking about himself and so i don't feel the uh what i was hoping to feel when i'm around him you're right and and it kills me right and um and i think pretty pretty quickly think okay fuck this guy yeah i feel horrible i feel horrible when i'm around him and now i'm in this position where i have to you know uh
Guest:I'm going to kill him.
Guest:Like this, it becomes the avenue to respect and greatness that I see is to kill him.
Guest:Kill him or catch him.
Guest:Can't catch him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But no one, everyone else is afraid of him.
Guest:And it's pretty amazing what he did.
Guest:He was a 19-year-old kid and he shot Jesse James.
Guest:The whole country was terrified of this guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, rightly or wrongly, maybe it was just, like, people in the Northeast afraid of, you know, the James gang coming into their town.
Guest:It was a myth, you know, but it was people were afraid of him.
Guest:There were a lot of lawmen out there looking to capture this guy or kill him, and they couldn't, and this kid did it.
Guest:And was he celebrated?
Guest:No.
Guest:He was ridiculed.
Guest:He was, like, the myth of Jesse James was so big that
Guest:That even though the man himself was a monster, and though the myth even was sort of of a criminal, people still were not going to celebrate this guy who killed him because they wanted to believe in this sort of comic book version of the story.
Guest:And so in this, you know, I was the villain.
Guest:Robert Ford became the villain in this comic book.
Guest:And they just made him out to be a guy who...
Guest:killed the heroic Robin Hood figure, and no one really cared about the truth.
Guest:They wanted the nickel-dime book story.
Guest:And you like that character.
Guest:Well, boy, that's a great complicated guy to play, for sure.
Guest:The ups and downs there are pretty extreme.
Guest:And working with Brad was good?
Guest:Amazing.
Marc:Because I think you guys are kind of, I think when he sets his mind to it, he really can act.
Yeah.
Guest:He can.
Guest:You know what's great about Brad is that he has taken his, you know, you were talking about movie stars versus actors.
Guest:And I don't know where the lines actually is.
Guest:Maybe it's too simplistic a distinction.
Guest:But Brad, there's no doubt that Brad Pitt was the biggest movie star in the world and a great movie star.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:I don't even know exactly what it means, but I would find myself looking at that man, gazing at his... He's got a great face.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He has an interesting... He has something watchable about him.
Guest:And he's also very committed to being good.
Guest:So he would take a movie like this three hours, 15-minute weird meandering...
Guest:awesome complicated non-western western yeah and take no money for it and go get it made he would use his movie star wattage to get something made yeah you know and he helps little movies like he does it over and over again money ball he helps great directors get their movies made takes risks i love him for that and he's good to act with
Guest:Yeah, because he's supportive.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's not saying, I'm Brad Pitt.
Guest:I'm the movie star.
Guest:This is going to be about me.
Guest:He's playing a scene.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Brad's the best.
Marc:Yeah, he seems like it.
Marc:He's a nice guy, too, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Funny guy?
Guest:Yeah, he's funny.
Guest:He's interested in stuff, architecture, different things.
Guest:I have no sense.
Marc:It's weird.
Guest:You got to get him in here, dude.
Guest:All right, call him.
Guest:Hold on a sec.
Marc:brad come in will you he's out in the car yeah he's listening and then like you did the movie with your brother now what when your brother becomes like you know for years he was like the the biggest movie star in the town in the world now was uh were you like were you uh what was your role in that in the sense of like did he need someone to talk to like i mean was it just like my brother's just working i mean he's like fucking everywhere
Guest:all of a sudden did he was did you find yourself in a different position as a brother to sort of like be a confidant or at least have like his back and shit i always have his back yeah um uh i always have his back and love him and we're pretty we're very close so and he's got my back too you know so we would uh nothing really changed in terms of like oh now i have to be his confidant or vice versa um
Guest:But I've been, I've had this weird life, man, where I've seen so many people go from being, like I've known them very, very well when they were not, you know, famous.
Guest:And then they became very successful and famous.
Guest:Most people kind of, they might have that in one person in their life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like I knew, you know, I went to high school with Mark Zuckerberg.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire and he's Mark Zuckerberg.
Guest:And then they go like they get some glimpse of sort of what that does to people.
Guest:And and also they get they also get to understand fame in a different way, like humanize it.
Guest:But they I've had a lot of that.
Marc:Like who?
Marc:Like Matt?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I'm going to invite, you know, a new him, Matt.
Guest:I'm going to be taking a school bus with him in third grade.
Guest:And so it does a couple things.
Guest:And one is it just sort of makes, it takes all the mystery out of that kind of, like, fame.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you know the guy.
Guest:You see it for what it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you go like, oh, it's just, it's kind of gross.
Marc:So much of it has outside of you.
Marc:It all happens outside of you.
Marc:Because that's one thing I know from being in here and doing 700 of these conversations.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:is that you know guys who were my heroes like there's something sort of amazing because i can't i can't always separate and i'm like if i'm going to talk to neil young or something i'm fucking nervous because that guy all i know about him is any anyone else who likes his music knows about him he's like this mythic guy he's fucking neil young keith richards yeah and then you get in there and you're like no he's just a interesting old dude that's hanging on you know and still doing what he loves to do the humanization thing
Marc:It's pretty powerful.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's like it is so different.
Marc:And I'm always amazed because I still fall like victim of like mythologizing people.
Marc:Like, you know, when you read shit about people, because there's always part of me.
Marc:It's like they can't be that weird.
Marc:I mean, they're just human.
Marc:You know, what do we think they're doing?
Marc:You know, but they're not usually doing anything you read about.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the narratives are created by other people.
Guest:And in my experience, people are, public eye gets sort of flattened out into a narrative that's created by others.
Guest:And depending on how much the subject of that narrative, the person who's becoming famous, wants to really invest their time and energy into controlling the story and their image and the narrative, they can sometimes do so.
Guest:They can control it.
Guest:They've got to hide, though.
Guest:Yeah, some people want to hide.
Guest:They go, fuck, I don't want to deal with that at all.
Guest:And then if they do that, it's like you're leaving it up to others.
Guest:And then they're like all the bloggers and people online and people, journalists, everyone is sort of just making, fitting you into this, their own idea of what's happening in the world.
Guest:It's kind of like what happens in Jesse James.
Guest:And I don't know why people still believe it, but most people don't really have time and don't care that much to think about
Guest:the lives of others with that kind of nuance.
Guest:They don't want to go like, well, he's not really this or he's not really that.
Guest:They just want to give me the headline.
Guest:Who's the good guy?
Guest:Who's the bad guy?
Guest:Who do we like?
Guest:Who do we not like?
Guest:Who's the bad boy?
Guest:Who's the rebel?
Guest:Who's the all-American hero?
Guest:And it's almost never, in my experience, from the people I've known and seen depicted one way or another in press and media and entertainment.
Guest:And your brother.
Guest:You see a lot of that, right?
Guest:Yeah, it's never accurate.
Guest:It's never what they really are.
Guest:Very, very, very rarely.
Guest:It's usually like sometimes it's too kind.
Guest:The image is too generous.
Guest:Sometimes they're depicted to be in horrible ways.
Guest:And you go like, none of that's true.
Guest:I'm sure, yeah, as you say, you get to see it, talking to people here.
Guest:But it's also like kind of a boring topic.
Guest:You go like, people know.
Marc:Well, now you're like, you're probably going to be nominated for an Oscar.
Marc:So you're going to take some shit.
Guest:I'll take a ton of shit.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:Either people say really nice things about you and it's embarrassing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or they say really mean shit about you and it hurts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm telling you, both are not that pleasant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's nicer to have them say nice things about you.
Guest:I'd rather be embarrassed than hurt.
Guest:But it doesn't feel good, man, when they say mean shit.
Guest:And you can't go out there and always be out there defending yourself because you feel like, what's the point?
Marc:Because then you get further into the soup.
Guest:These people don't know me, and then you're standing in the swamp with them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So you have to just sort of, I guess, accept it and not let the terrorists win.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:So working with your brother, how was that as a director?
Guest:Great.
Guest:I mean, he hired me.
Guest:I was doing Jesse James in Canada, and he came up to visit, and he said, asked me to do the movie.
Guest:And I knew he'd been trying to do it for a while and been trying to cast it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at the time, I don't think anyone knew that
Guest:I think people thought of him only as an actor from movies that at that time hadn't done that well.
Guest:And so they didn't want to be in him.
Guest:Sometimes actors are reluctant to be in movies that are being directed by other actors.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:Competition.
Guest:I don't know what it is.
Guest:But I think he tried to cast a few other actors.
Guest:Couldn't.
Guest:And I had the advantage of knowing that he's a very smart guy with good taste.
Guest:And so...
Guest:I thought, hell yeah, I'll do it.
Guest:Also, I just wanted to spend time with him.
Guest:It was like an opportunity to hang out with your brother for a few months.
Marc:That movie was Gone Baby Gone, did I, right?
Guest:It's a great... I mean, it's a new great song.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I can't remember how much... I just heard your... I heard the Boston.
Marc:I heard the Boston accent for a second.
Guest:Right now?
Marc:Yeah, when you said great.
Guest:Yeah, fucking great.
Yeah.
Guest:The way you say great.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Great.
Marc:But it was fun.
Guest:Yes, it was fun.
Guest:I like working with people that I know.
Guest:I like getting into it on movies where you, with people you're comfortable arguing with.
Guest:People who can argue with love, that's how I like to work.
Guest:When you go like, they know it's not personal.
Guest:But you can disagree because you don't have that much time to make a movie.
Guest:So if you can just say...
Guest:You're making a big mistake.
Guest:This is not the way to do the scene.
Guest:You don't understand.
Guest:Let me explain it to you.
Guest:That would be, people would take offense to that.
Guest:People would be hurt if they didn't know you.
Guest:If it's your brother, you'd be like, man, shut the fuck up, please.
Guest:I'm begging you.
Guest:Listen to me.
Guest:This is the right way to do it.
Guest:And I was wrong, and he was right most of the time.
Guest:But at least we got to the point pretty quickly.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What about the clusterfuck you did with Joaquin?
Guest:You're the best.
Guest:You just call it a clusterfuck.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:It was a bit of a clusterfuck.
Guest:That's for sure.
Guest:What was the seed of that idea of I'm still here?
Guest:The seed of that idea was a broad comedy.
Guest:Spoofing.
Guest:For a long time, Joaquin and I wanted to do a spoof of boy bands.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This was like, I'm talking when we were about 21, 2021.
Guest:We pitched an idea about like an NSYNC kind of spoof.
Guest:And we'd always just talked about doing it.
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:And sort of in the same tone as like Three Amigos spoofed actors.
Guest:Right.
Guest:um we never got together to do that um we then it was okay let's spoof an actor who wants to be a musician yeah like the self-importance of actors who come to believe they they're in this this weird bubble of a world of being a you know actor living in la you know and they not knowing or caring about the rest of the world thinking only about themselves so much and
Guest:And and so he decides that he's going to quit acting and he's going to make a movie.
Guest:And he's so sure that it's going to be this like it's going to take the attention of the world.
Guest:His first album is going to be this masterpiece that he he wants to have it documented.
Guest:He wants to have someone make a documentary about it.
Guest:And so he asks his friend to make a documentary about him and follow this amazing transformation from brilliant actor to brilliant musician.
Guest:And over the course of the documentary, he alienates everyone.
Guest:His behavior is so horrible, so nasty and unpleasant to everyone around him that he...
Guest:That he alienates, he loses everyone in his life until the only people who are left is the guy who's making the documentary about him.
Guest:And then that person, he's mean and nasty with two and finally alienates him to the point where the guy releases a documentary that's very unflattering and puts it out into the world.
Guest:That was the idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so...
Guest:We tried to people the crew of the documentary with people who are also are going to be kind of cast in a way cast members because the crew of the documentary are going to factor into the story because they're there.
Guest:They turn they go from being a supportive team of documentarians.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:following this guy to being bitter resentful uh alienated documentarians who are thinking fuck this guy we're gonna show how horrible he is and put it out but they were all in on the joke everybody were all more or less than a joke but they but joaquin is such a good actor
Guest:And was so committed to the part that it was really believable.
Guest:You know, he was really, and we would go places and go to, we'd just go to open mics around LA, go to nightclubs and he'd perform, like grab the mic and do, and it would be horrible and people would boo and he'd be horrible back to them.
Guest:He would heckle them.
Guest:And one moment that was, we had a few things.
Guest:There was obviously like Andy Kaufman was inspiration.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was a moment when Michael Richards, who played the part on Seinfeld.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:He played Kramer on Seinfeld.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:He got into some trouble.
Guest:He was on stage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And someone heckled him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he kind of melted down and said some really nasty stuff to people in the audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Racial slurs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As I remember it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we wanted to do a public meltdown like that where he just said terrible, embarrassing stuff, Joaquin.
Guest:And we kept trying to create that over and over again.
Guest:We would go to nightclubs and it never was quite big enough.
Guest:So what we did was we got him, booked him a gig on this nightclub in Miami.
Guest:Thousands of people.
Guest:And...
Guest:And I had a friend of mine who's since passed away but was a really brilliant actor, Eddie Rouse, and he – really nice guy.
Guest:And he was there.
Guest:And he was the only guy I knew who could really, like, go into a situation with real people and pull off a scene and no one would know, oh, these guys are acting.
Guest:Something's off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:he could do it and, and be believable.
Guest:And, um, he went in, he was in the crowd in the nightclub and he said, started heckling Joaquin from the crowd and Joaquin jumps off the stage and they get into a fight.
Guest:And, um, that was going to be our kind of Michael Richards moment.
Guest:And, uh, after that would be the climax of the movie.
Guest:And then he would sort of disappear.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:So that happened.
Guest:And Eddie did it.
Guest:Eddie was amazing.
Guest:Joaquin was amazing.
Guest:And he's pulled out of the crowd and he goes backstage and goes to the bathroom and he's vomiting and he's all upset and traumatized.
Guest:It's the ultimate low point in the movie.
Guest:And he's like...
Guest:And and then he disappears.
Guest:And so, you know, in the story, he disappears and he goes down to what's supposed to be Costa Rica.
Guest:It was mostly my backyard here in L.A.
Guest:And we shot my dad played his Joaquin's character supposed to go see his father.
Guest:And I had my dad play the part.
Guest:And that was the story.
Guest:And it became.
Guest:Only, as you say, clusterfuck because people got caught up in feeling it was real, being pissed off about it, getting hurt by everything that was happening in it, and having their feelings hurt.
Guest:And the media hated the idea that they thought we were trying to sort of pull the wool over their eyes, and we really weren't.
Guest:It was more like, how can we possibly afford to make a movie with nightclubs filled with thousands of extras?
Guest:It would cost a fortune.
Guest:We couldn't.
Guest:So we had to just book shows.
Guest:We had to just play it like it was real, and that was how we did it.
Guest:It was largely an experiment that sometimes was successful and sometimes wasn't.
Guest:so when it was done i showed it to david fincher who was a neighbor and a friend of mine and he said uh meet me for lunch i want to talk to you about it so i went to meet him for lunch he said um i've got an idea he's such a genius he said i have an idea i want you to i think you should put this movie in a vault and i thought a vault was like a
Guest:I didn't know what he meant exactly.
Guest:I thought maybe it was like a way of some technical thing you do to a movie as a way of transferring it to film or making it look better.
Guest:I said, okay, a vault.
Guest:Let's do it.
Guest:How do you do it?
Guest:What's a vault?
Guest:He said, no, I mean just put it in a box and lock it up and don't show it to anyone for 10 years and then show it.
Guest:And I said, okay, how are we going to get our money back?
Guest:You know, we spend our money making this movie.
Guest:And he said, oh, well, now I guess you'll have to try to sell it.
Guest:I wish I'd put it in a vault, man.
Guest:We didn't make our money back anyway.
Guest:So that was the end of that movie.
Guest:And people have asked about it, and they still do.
Guest:Some people think it's real, and it wasn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I guess it was all in all maybe a positive for the experience, but it took a lot of lumps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It took a lot of lumps because of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you guys are still pals, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Very close.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How come you've never done a movie with him like straight up?
Guest:We were supposed to.
Guest:There's this Robert Olmsted.
Guest:I don't know if you like to read.
Guest:He's a great writer.
Guest:He's a teacher in Ohio and a professor.
Guest:He wrote a trilogy of books called Far Bright Star, Cold Black Horse.
Guest:He's written a bunch of books, actually.
Guest:And we were going to do one called Far Bright Star.
Guest:Um, it's set, uh, just after the Mexican revolution on the border of Mexico and the United States around the 1916.
Guest:And, uh, so a very like traditional, uh, script, you know, very conventionally made movie, um, in some ways, very different than what we did.
Guest:Um, but we, uh, it didn't, didn't come together quick enough.
Guest:We had to do it in New Mexico in the summer.
Guest:So we're planning on doing it this coming summer.
Guest:Um,
Guest:This is my son calling.
Guest:May I answer this?
Guest:Let's see what's up, man.
Guest:There's nothing.
Guest:Hey.
Guest:Hey, baby.
Guest:Your shoes?
Guest:They might be in my car.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You don't have any shoes?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:There's some of mom's shoes in my closet, I think, that'll probably fit you.
Guest:They're just Converse.
Guest:Or just wear some of mine, man.
Guest:They'll be a little bit big.
Guest:You have to have a pair of shoes in the house, man.
Guest:All right, I love you, buddy.
Guest:Listen, just keep looking.
Guest:I'm in the middle of an interview.
Guest:I'll be done fairly soon, and I'll call you back.
Guest:I'll let you know.
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:It's all right, bud.
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:I love you, bud.
Guest:How old is he?
Guest:He's 12.
Guest:He's got no shoes.
Guest:He says, what's going on there?
Guest:All right, well, we can wind it down.
Guest:I'm sure he'll find something to put on his feet.
Marc:Oh, you're divorced from his mom.
Guest:we're separated yeah she lives about a block away and i should have just told him to go over there and get shoes uh they they kind of go back and forth that's a nice setup she's you get along with her still yep very good friends and i love her and uh the kids seem to be adjusting well you know it's um part of life we got together very very young and we stayed together for a really long time but uh
Guest:You know, you're still growing so much at that age, man.
Guest:We were 21 years old.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Your brain still has another four years to develop.
Marc:At least.
Guest:Yeah, at least.
Marc:I went through a growth spurt in 48.
Marc:I was 48.
Marc:My brain grew a little more.
Marc:Or some things got changed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we had a really good run.
Marc:And you're friends.
Marc:That's such a rare story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's really important, you know.
Guest:I mean, I want to be friends with her because she's so...
Guest:You're really smart, you know, and I like, I've always looked to her for so many years for advice on different things, and I need her.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:I love the books you got in here, man.
Guest:Thanks, buddy.
Guest:You got the Alcoholics Numbus.
Guest:Are you AA?
Marc:I am.
Marc:How long?
Marc:17 years.
Guest:17 years sober.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Good job.
Marc:You have that in your life?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I mean, I'm sober for about almost three years.
Guest:My dad was huge drunk.
Guest:Forget, you know, like bottom, just bottom of the barrel.
Guest:Terrible.
Marc:Is that why they broke up?
Guest:I mean, I'm sure it had something to do with it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But it was, yeah, he was a disaster of a drinker.
Guest:It ruined his life.
Guest:And then he got sober when I was about 14.
Guest:He moved out here.
Guest:We'd never left the East Coast.
Guest:He came out to California, which may as well have been Mars.
Guest:And to me, I didn't know where it was.
Guest:And he went to a rehab out in Palm Desert.
Guest:yeah like a state mandated like god you know it's basically as a feel of a prison but it's a rehab stayed there for 12 years no kidding and um what do you mean what he got a job or what he yeah he stayed there he could not i mean i think he felt like if he left he would you know he was he had to be there so he got a job working there after being a you know resident he got a job working there and um
Guest:helped guys get their GED you know taught guys my dad's really smart and he counseled really men there and and then and then finally he left that was a big deal for him and he moved to to Savannah Georgia and and
Guest:So, yeah, and then my grandmother was an alcoholic.
Guest:It's just that my brother had, you know, spent some time in rehab, and so it's in our genes, and I understand it.
Guest:I was just going to, you know, like, Alteen meetings in the church basements since I was 12 years old.
Marc:Did that register with you, the Al-Anon stuff?
Marc:I mean, did you get it?
Guest:It was nice because no one else was talking about it, and it was a way of understanding what was happening at home.
Marc:And it wasn't your fault.
Guest:And it wasn't my fault.
Guest:And they would do things like, you know, the kids would act out scenes.
Guest:There's like role playing as a way of understanding and expressing the things that were happening at home.
Guest:So you see you're there with a bunch of other kids and they're there like pretending to be their parent.
Guest:And you're seeing things that are happening in your house that were scary.
Guest:And so you you get a sense of it that you're not sort of the only one.
Guest:And that's good.
Guest:You know, my mom would just drive us over there and drop us off.
Guest:So my memories, and it was always, you know, New England, it's like it gets dark at 3 in the afternoon.
Guest:And I remember just like these cold afternoons in the basement of some church.
Guest:And you're just like a bunch of kids talking about this crap.
Guest:And it was bleak, man.
Guest:It was really...
Guest:bleak and then i'd go go visit my dad when i got older i drove out here and i sort of got to know him really more or less because he was sober for the first time and and to hang out down there at the abc club which is where he was as it was called and and then visiting my brother up in the sort of more posh like malbu rehab it's just so many times yeah one of these meetings sitting in circles and talking about it all so when it came time when i realized that i had to stop yeah
Guest:I felt like I'd already put in all that time, so I just kind of white-knuckled it at home and imagined myself in a circle.
Marc:Yeah, and it worked?
Marc:It worked.
Marc:But your dad's still around?
Guest:Yeah, he's around.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:Still sober?
Guest:Still sober.
Marc:He dedicated his wife to it.
Guest:He did it, man.
Guest:yeah i mean if he can do it anybody can do it it was bad huh it was it was bad he could not hold the job as a bartender he couldn't hold the job he was then a janitor and he couldn't do that the only job he could hold was like he would drink it was to clean up the bar from four in the morning to to six seven in the morning which is when they would open if it tells you what kind of bar it was right
Guest:So he's just there mopping the place and drinking for a few hours every night.
Guest:They go home and sleep it off and drink all day.
Guest:I mean, just nothing.
Guest:It wrecked his body.
Guest:It just devastated his life.
Marc:And your mom?
Guest:My mom was never an addict.
Guest:All her own issue was just like being attracted to addicts.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How's she doing now?
Guest:She's all right.
Guest:She's doing great.
Guest:You know, mid-70s, hanging in there.
Guest:She's a great grandparent.
Guest:The kids might just love her.
Marc:It's nice that your old man can show up for your kids now, does he?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's sort of like, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Grandpa's sober, they don't know him as a disaster.
Guest:No, they have no idea what that's like.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:They tell me, like, if I make them turn off the TV, they say they hate me, I'm the worst dad ever.
Guest:I'm like, let me tell you about the worst dad ever.
Guest:You want to hear some stories about how bad a dad can be?
Guest:I'll let you know.
Guest:Well, for the meantime, turn the TV off and go clean your room.
Marc:How'd you guys both turn out?
Marc:So you seem pretty well.
Marc:I guess, was he out of the house when you were pretty young by the time you got to a certain...
Guest:Oh, he left when we were nine, but we would see him over the, you know, we would go drop off his place to see him once a week.
Guest:He'd be passed out or like vomiting or all bruised up from some alcohol seizure.
Guest:You know, brutal things you don't want your kids to see.
Guest:And you'd have to spend the weekend with him while he put himself back together?
Guest:Just for a night.
Guest:Just go over there, have dinner, order pizza.
Guest:He sleeps through it.
Guest:You know, you have dinner and watch the little black and white TV.
Guest:I mean, the things... So...
Guest:Pretty rough.
Guest:But then adversity.
Guest:A little adversity, I guess, if you make it through, it's okay.
Guest:It makes you stronger and resilient in some way.
Guest:Kids are tough.
Guest:I would never want to put my kids through things I had to go through, but if I had to, they'd probably be okay.
Marc:Well, there's an element of, there's a sort of undercurrent of that in Manchester by the Sea, of that sort of like disastrous, like your brother's relationship.
Guest:Yeah, I knew what that was all about.
Guest:Kyle Chandler plays that part, and then Manchester, he was really good.
Guest:I remember I read Friday Night Lights, which was a great book, and then I saw his TV show, you know?
Guest:I thought he was really good, and then he ate him in this movie, and
Guest:He's such a sweet guy and just very solid in the way the character is, like a solid, decent guy.
Marc:Yeah, and his one flaw is this love for this woman.
Guest:Taking care of people.
Marc:That's it, right.
Marc:The classic codependent sort of.
Marc:Yeah, that whole thing was, that thing, that was just mind-blowing.
Marc:He was really an amazing presence in that movie.
Marc:And then that one scene, we'll talk a little bit and then we'll wrap it up, because I got to get your kids' shoes.
Marc:Is, you know, the scene with Michelle Williams, and the fact that that is really maybe the most important scene in the movie, and it just happens in passing.
Guest:Man, we did that scene about four times.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:I mean, when you're making a little movie like this, you got no time to spare.
Guest:It's just like, crank, do it, get down to it.
Guest:That's why preparation was so important.
Guest:But yeah, man, sometimes talking about this movie, I get choked up.
Guest:It's a really emotional story.
Guest:It's so beautifully written.
Guest:And the way that all the characters are treated, it really is so much like...
Guest:empathy and love for people and their struggles and their sorrows and the mistakes that they make you know like loving people who have made mistakes and not persecuting them and watching them move through life afterward like after they've dealt with tragedy and trying to carry on and seeing them carry on in different ways it's one of the few movies where I've thought like man I'm really proud to leave this behind because I feel like people who watch it will think
Guest:in some sense, I know it sounds like it's coming out of our AA conversation, but they kind of feel like, I can do it, you know what I mean, I can carry on, I can, terrible shit happens to people, and people make terrible mistakes, they get by, and it's okay, and you move on, and life goes on.
Marc:And yeah, sometimes you change.
Guest:And you change.
Marc:And even if you don't change, the interesting thing about this movie, about Manchester by the Sea, is that there is resolution.
Marc:but but it's not what you think like your character makes decisions i don't want to spoil anything for anybody that you you feel okay about them as someone who's watching it and you understand it but it's not really what you expect yeah and the thing is that like i'm trying to hold everyone out um don't come near me my character is kind of like please no one look at me no one treat me like i'm living
Guest:I don't want to be seen and I don't want to be talked to as a human being because I can't really engage with anyone emotionally.
Guest:I can't.
Guest:So stay away from me because I'm afraid if someone touches me or looks at me with scorn or compassion, either one, I'm going to fuck fall apart.
Guest:I can't handle it.
Guest:Or beat the shit out of it.
Guest:Or beat the shit.
Guest:I'm barely hanging on to myself here.
Guest:Please just let me move through life and don't talk to me.
Guest:And this kid...
Guest:Kids don't hear that.
Guest:He's like, he doesn't let me.
Guest:He doesn't give up.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He just keeps coming back for more.
Guest:And most people, they see in my eyes the desperation and vulnerability and they stay away from me.
Guest:And a teenage nephew, he doesn't give a shit.
Guest:He's like, why?
Guest:Why?
Guest:Why?
Guest:He needs a ride.
Guest:Yeah, I need a ride.
Guest:Get me where I'm going, dude.
Guest:I'm in a band.
Guest:I got a girlfriend.
Guest:I don't give a shit about your problems.
Guest:And it draws me out.
Guest:It's such a beautiful relationship, man.
Marc:Yeah, it was.
Marc:And it was a great movie.
Marc:And I hope people see it.
Guest:Yeah, me too.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:It's good talking to you.
Guest:Thank you, man.
Guest:Thanks for having me, dude.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Okay, before we go, I was in a nice conversation.
Marc:I thought it was a cute phone call with this kid.
Marc:All right, so go to wtfpod.com slash tour to check those new tour dates and all.
Marc:Now I will play guitar for you if that's something you would enjoy.
Marc:I'm going to do something on it now.
.
.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Guest:Boomer lives!