Episode 813 - Griffin Dunne / Bill Burr
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck is Stannies?
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:Let me just tell you who's on the show today.
Marc:Griffin Dunn is here.
Marc:He's on I Love Dick, that show that Jill Solow is doing, the one I talked about with Kevin Bacon.
Marc:And special guest, Bill Burr.
Marc:Bill Burr is going to be here in a few minutes because his new season of F for Family, the animated Netflix thing, that's starting up on May 30th.
Marc:But isn't it nice?
Marc:It's a weird thing.
Marc:And, you know, obviously, most of you, I think, will understand.
Marc:But now that the president is away for nine days, I really had this.
Marc:Look, I didn't grow up this way, but I really had the feeling.
Marc:I think a similar feeling of relief if you have like this shitty, horrible dad or stepdad and he goes out of town on a business trip.
Marc:There's sort of like, whew, maybe we got a few days, a few days of somewhat relief.
Marc:So I'm back from Chicago and...
Marc:Had a great time shooting another episode of Easy with Swanberg.
Marc:It was me, Michaela Watkins, Jane Addams.
Marc:And it was pretty cool.
Marc:It was pretty great.
Marc:I'd never really worked with Michaela.
Marc:She's been on the show here.
Marc:But it was fun.
Marc:There were some local Chicago actors.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:And...
Marc:I'm in Chicago, and some of you know that my cholesterol is a little high, and I've been eating better, and I've been on the pills.
Marc:And I don't know if they're working or not, because I haven't had time to go to the fucking doctor.
Marc:But it's interesting, that slippery slope, you know, because I'm in Chicago.
Marc:Yeah, you know, I've got to get Lou Malnati's pizza, and then Joe Swanberg likes to go out for these dinners, and the place in the hotel was good.
Marc:And, you know, by the end, like, I'm eating steaks.
Marc:I'm fucking just, you know, it's...
Marc:It's just weird, you know, how in certain people's minds that, you know, I'd like to live a relatively long time, you know, naturally.
Marc:I don't know what outside circumstances could bring that all to an abrupt close for many of us, maybe all of us.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:Exciting times.
Marc:But like the slippery slope from like, you know, it's like, don't the statins mean I can eat?
Marc:Or then it's just a slippery slope from, you know, doctors.
Marc:They don't know everything.
Marc:I mean, I'm not going crazy.
Marc:It's just for a week.
Marc:And then, you know, right from there to, you know, there's, you know, I mean, things get...
Marc:get get get hazy in the beliefs that you believe what you want to believe that'll accommodate your own fucking needs at that particular moment yeah it just depends where your brain's going maybe maybe there is an antichrist maybe there's some validity to this end times prophecy uh you know it's it'll all be okay it'll be okay fuck it i'm i'm eating some ice cream it just it's a slippery slope there you know what i'm saying do you know what i'm saying so
Marc:Right now, my buddy Bill Burr and me talk about his new season of F for Family on Netflix.
Marc:Premieres May 20th.
Marc:He stopped by.
Marc:I always like talking to Bill.
Marc:This is me and Burr.
Marc:Congratulations on the child.
Marc:Oh, thank you.
Marc:I think I said that to you at the club, but I've only seen you once.
Marc:I believe as you walk away, you said, good luck with that thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I swear to God, and I just laughed.
Guest:I love comedians.
Guest:I thought that was funny as hell.
Guest:Because I didn't take that as an insult.
Guest:It's just like, we don't know how to we don't know how to be in that moment.
Marc:Well, I don't have them.
Marc:You know, I've you know, and I it was never I've avoided it somehow.
Marc:And I'm not I don't know.
Marc:I wasn't trying to be cynical, but I can only base it on my own experience and how I came out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there you go.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:I mean, I think that's actually a very evolved thought.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I obviously want you to.
Marc:I hope.
Marc:Is it amazing?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It is every cliche.
Guest:Do you talk about it much?
Guest:No.
Guest:On stage because it's just been awesome.
Guest:So there's really no reason to- You're not looking- I actually, what I've more been making fun of is other parents who talk about how difficult it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now look, obviously if you're broke in your 20s and you have a kid, yeah, that's going to be like a difficult thing.
Guest:But the bottom line is we've been having babies since- Yeah, everybody.
Guest:They've been in caves and it was a lot- That's when it was harder.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Guest:That's the bit is basically some woman laying on a rock- Yeah.
Guest:Giving birth with no drugs- Right.
Guest:As you're fighting off a pterodactyl.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now you're in a house or an apartment where you can control the weather.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's a lot of books you can read and there's different devices and things and carriers.
Guest:However, single moms and all that type of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All that type.
Guest:They still have to work.
Guest:That's obviously hard.
Guest:But I'm talking about like, you know.
Guest:white women who are married and they're living in nice houses who every day at four o'clock go, oh, you know, only two classes and then you're not an alcoholic.
Guest:You know, those people, they go to a cheesecake factory.
Guest:There's a trolley at the mall where they go to.
Guest:Yeah, like they- They're all right?
Guest:No, like the level that they complain.
Guest:I can't listen to them complaining.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You drive off in some $60,000 SUV with some NASA level car seat for your kid.
Guest:Yeah, just trying to get the kid to the sitter so you can go to yoga class.
Guest:You have no idea just how tiring.
Guest:Shut up.
Guest:Shut up.
Guest:So how old is the daughter, right?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:She's a little over three months.
Guest:And this is what my proudest dad moment I have is numerous people have said how chill, relaxed and happy she is.
Guest:And I swear to God, dude, like I joke, like I come home, I go into like, like, like I'm a big fan of Tom Bergeron.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like that guy's like his ability.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I watch him on Dances with Stars and he has to deal with some lunatics on there.
Guest:And he has this ability to be there, but not be there, but he's there.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He doesn't give a shit, but he does.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he just, it's like he is in this Zen mindset.
Guest:I go in there and I'm like, like, I just think of that guy.
Guest:He would come in smiling and, you know, no matter what happened, he'd be like, oh, we'll be right back after this.
Guest:He has the, like, that is an, I'm not shitting on the guy.
Guest:It's an incredible skill.
Guest:He's a Boston guy, right?
Guest:Didn't he start in Boston?
Guest:Which is even more impressive.
Guest:that he grew up in that angry soil and he can come out of that.
Guest:And it's just like, that's the guy I so want to, like it just rolls off his back.
Guest:My wife watches that show and there was just somebody clearly after every dance trying to get a 12 picture movie deal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Rather than just killing the dance and just standing there like a human being.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:she's like doing all this shit this stuff right all this crazy over-the-top stuff that was hard to watch 40 years ago and he just sat there going well okay well i guess i didn't need that shirt all right blah blah where i would immediately be like you know will you get the fuck off of me you fucking lunatic isn't it people saw you dance you're ruining it now like i would have done that and then i would look like the asshole that's why you're not hosting that show
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But I am hosting a show when I come home, which is I pretend that I am not a complete lunatic.
Guest:So I've already worked it out the first time I know when I snap in front of her and she's able to communicate that that's what happened.
Guest:I'm just going to own up to it.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:You're planning that.
Guest:This is something...
Guest:Thank you for calling me out.
Guest:I've been waiting for this moment.
Guest:Yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I'm working on this.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You got to help me out.
Guest:Cause you know, you know, you're learning how to ride a bike.
Guest:Like daddy's learning how to do this.
Guest:So I come, so I'm not, not approachable.
Guest:So she can look at me in the moment of anger, you know, flipping out of over, you know, updating my iPhone, you know, all the serious stuff in life that's worse.
Marc:get angry about i like that you're preparing for this already that it hasn't happened but when she's able to understand and talk and everything you know you're going to do something angry and inappropriate because i know myself yeah well that's good i know myself and i am hardwired like dude i i walk around at a six so to get up to a ten like my resting like having a great day i'm like five and a half yeah you're already halfway there yeah more than halfway there yeah so i'm
Guest:I've been meditating.
Guest:You have?
Guest:I can get it down to like a three.
Guest:My wife already knows now.
Guest:She goes, you haven't meditated lately.
Guest:And that actually bugs me.
Guest:You've been meditating?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How does that go?
Guest:It's good, but it's the classic thing where it's an app that you listen to.
Marc:The Headspace.
Guest:You've been using Headspace?
Guest:Yeah, which I'm sure is like a hacky thing.
Marc:No, they sent it to me, and I've been talking about it on stage too.
Marc:The one time I had the experience of meditating successfully.
Guest:but i there is no success when all you have to do is try and just trying and just being yeah that's what they do and that's the kind of thing you guys like you and me how we're wired yeah it just yeah see how you're gritting your teeth as i'm talking to you right now i didn't even like your version of that voice yeah well that's that's that's the hardest thing about headspace yeah is as you start to get relaxed and everything the dude keeps talking right you want to be like will you shut the fuck up
Guest:I'm there, just ease up.
Guest:But you have to just have it be like, oh, this is just like, why am I having this reaction to this guy?
Marc:You got to let it go by, right?
Marc:You just got to let it, you don't hang on to it.
Guest:Because the problem, Mark, don't you see, with the person you're sitting across from is I have two emotions, not angry and angry.
Guest:What about sad?
Guest:When I'm sad, it's like I'm literally a one-trick pony.
Marc:Sad immediately is put through the filter.
Marc:It's immediately put through the transformer and turned into anger.
Marc:Tell me about the meditation practice.
Marc:Are you trying to do it every day?
Marc:Yeah, but I- For like five minutes, 10, what?
Guest:Yeah, I've gotten up to like 20.
Guest:And like, there's this thing like this, over 20 years ago, I started meditating.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just out of pure ignorance, I was able to kind of get to this place where it literally felt, you know, as you were just imagining, you know, your diaphragm basically breathing in and out.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:all of a sudden if you feel like you're floating and it feels like your stomach is like you know nine miles like yeah it feels like it's across the room yeah it was amazing so then had a body experience almost sort of yeah so then i felt like oh i have this down so then i'm like okay i just need to do this this this and this and then i'm up here again and now i can't do it then it becomes frustrating and then it becomes like i didn't do it good i didn't do it as well as the last one yourself up yeah and and it's it's uh it's so challenging
Guest:I'm finding it so freaking challenging but like the bottom line is even if I don't get to that point which is most of the times when I'm done I kind of have like that fuzzy feeling between the ears of like I just kind of like kind of you know ejected everything out oh man so it doesn't build up that's the thing if it the fact that my after me just doing it for two months I stopped for a month my wife could tell after three weeks she goes you haven't been meditating lately and of course that bugged me you know yeah yeah she knows me that well
Guest:I'm like, wait, wait a minute.
Guest:And I'm like, all right, nah, you're right.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I have it.
Guest:She goes, I can tell.
Guest:Already defensive.
Guest:You know, she's right.
Guest:And you're like, what are you talking about?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How dare you know me?
Guest:That means I'm vulnerable right now.
Guest:Oh, I know what I'll do.
Guest:I'll get angry about it.
Guest:I'll ruin it.
Guest:back in the day when you had your phone yeah you just you could decide i don't want to update it right and you could keep the phone forever i used to take pride in that you got the seven i still got the four until it got so slow yeah it was like the size of like one of those school bricks you know you couldn't do anything that was the problem because i don't do shit on it but talk and text so it still so it wouldn't yeah it wouldn't fill up right i mean obviously i get emails and stuff but where do you put the headspace app
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:So now what it is, now the new thing is if you don't update it, then all of a sudden your texts come in like half.
Guest:They forced you to do it.
Guest:So you fill up the phone.
Guest:So then you then turn it in and then they sell it to some kid in a third world country.
Guest:They can never have enough.
Guest:They got to keep you buying it.
Marc:Yeah, that's what I don't like.
Marc:Well, that's capitalism.
Marc:So maybe you should work towards it.
Marc:No, I understand.
Marc:No, but there's options.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:What happened to stuff that just lasted a lifetime?
Guest:That's the big question.
Guest:Repairmen disappeared.
Guest:And that became that thing where people are stuck in this mindset of like, well, you know, it's going to be cheaper to buy a new one than the old one.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:Planned obsolescence is a horrible thing because you can't believe in any products anymore.
Guest:No, and then it all ends up in the fucking ocean or in a landfill.
Guest:Oh, yeah, the swirling.
Guest:You're the one who told me about the swirling island of garbage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what it is?
Guest:Also, one of the driving forces, too, for me, and I'm getting much better at this shit, is getting control of my anger issues is...
Guest:Is that's really the only thing my wife has on me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's a big fucking thing.
Guest:But if I could eliminate those moments.
Guest:Level the playing field.
Guest:Then it's just like, what is the problem?
Guest:I'm making a great living.
Guest:I got all this free time.
Guest:I'm killing it as a dad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I always tell her how beautiful she is and how much I love her.
Guest:I mean, if I just, you know, wouldn't stab my laptop with the... Everybody's got their Achilles heel.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You want that moment where she's got nothing.
Marc:When she comes at you, you're like, you got nothing.
Marc:What do you got?
Guest:I'm perfect.
Guest:What do you got?
Guest:Yeah, everything's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So like I said, I'm going to Mexico four days with the buddies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With the fellas.
Guest:What are you going to say?
Guest:What do you want?
Marc:So the new season of F for Family.
Marc:F is for Family.
Marc:Yes, sir.
Marc:That's what's happening.
Marc:You finished it.
Marc:Season two.
Marc:Season two.
Guest:How long did it take you to do that?
Guest:A year.
Guest:And then it comes out May 30th.
Guest:And if it gets the amount of stars or thumbs up, whatever Netflix is doing.
Guest:Doing another one?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the writer's room starts up in June.
Guest:So it's taxing.
Guest:A lot more work, huh?
Guest:Yeah, but you know what?
Guest:Fortunately, the people I work with are fucking hilarious.
Guest:I know I met those guys.
Guest:They're good guys.
Marc:I don't know your writers, but I know the production company.
Guest:Well, Mike Price, the great Mike Price from The Simpsons is hilarious.
Guest:He's just such a nice guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's just a great guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dave Richardson, all these guys that we work with over there.
Guest:Everybody is...
Guest:It's a fun room to work in, and there's a lot of ball breaking.
Guest:None of the ego pecking order shit.
Guest:Everybody's just sort of shitting on each other, and the table reads are fun.
Marc:Who do you got doing voices over there this year?
Guest:Same as we have.
Guest:We got Laura Dern does...
Guest:the voice of Susan and got Justin Long.
Guest:We got Sam Rockwell.
Guest:We got Mo Collins does so many.
Guest:She's so funny from Mad TV.
Guest:I remember her.
Guest:She kills it.
Guest:Haley Reinhardt, who I forget what show she was on.
Guest:She's a singer.
Guest:She was on one of those shows and she came in.
Guest:She does the voice of Little Bill and that's one of the hardest things is to have a little boy voice before his balls drop can be really annoying.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But she's got that raspy thing, so it sounds like she does such a great job.
Guest:Debbie Derryberry, David Koechner.
Guest:I mean, it's just monster, monster.
Guest:I learned watching Seinfeld, but he was like, I surrounded myself with the best talent I could get and people that I felt like I could get along with, and that's what we've been doing.
Guest:So they've been propping me up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But voices are fun.
Marc:People have fun doing them.
Marc:Because you've got a lot more... When you get into that booth and you can just keep doing a bunch of different versions, there's nothing at stake.
Marc:There's no film.
Marc:There's no crew.
Marc:There's just a guy on a board.
Guest:That's the best one.
Guest:Before anybody's drawn anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they're going to draw to what you did.
Guest:That's when it's the freest.
Guest:But with each version, the walls start closing in.
Guest:So you got to make sure you're there...
Guest:You actually do a radio play first?
Guest:Well, yeah, you do the table read.
Guest:You see what happens, what works, what doesn't.
Guest:And then you go into the booth, you record the episode, and then you listen to the episode, you take the best takes, and then you splice together the audio.
Guest:And then you send it out and then the guys in Ottawa, big jump, they animate it.
Guest:So then it comes back and it's really in the rough form.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, and then this is, you know, all the work starts coming in where it's just like, it's not like a lot of the stuff that you do on your show where it's like, okay, I'm going to be sitting here and this person's over there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't know that.
Guest:So they just start putting people in the scene.
Guest:So if it's like, why is Frank in the kitchen?
Guest:He should be, you know, sitting down on the stool.
Guest:So they got to redraw that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, have him move his arm more when he says this word.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:Then it becomes like, wow, this is so much work.
Guest:And then with each one, it's more drawn.
Guest:There's more layers to it, and it becomes more locked in.
Guest:And then it gets to the point where you're almost getting ready to lock the thing.
Guest:Is now, if a line isn't working, you have to come up with a line that's the same amount of syllables so it fits the mouth that's moving.
Guest:So it's definitely creatively a challenge.
Guest:Um, and there's no, there's no way I could do it if I wasn't working with the people.
Guest:And I got to tell you, you know, Netflix gives great notes.
Guest:They're great notes.
Guest:They make sense.
Guest:And, you know, the people that I work with over there are actually cool.
Guest:Industry people actually cool.
Guest:I've hung out with them at comedy festivals.
Guest:They're a great hang.
Guest:And I feel like, you know, I, I really, you know, hit the lottery.
Guest:So I'm trying not to mess this thing up.
Marc:So now is this kid going to age?
Marc:Are you going to stay in the same world?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But what it is, it's kind of cool.
Guest:It's like every season is basically a semester of school.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Or maybe like a season, I think, is when we do like winter and then it's fall.
Guest:And like we started last year, we were like in the fall.
Guest:So I think, yeah, we got to do Halloween and all of that and into Christmas.
Guest:And now this year we're doing like sort of, we jumped ahead a little bit, but it's the winter time.
Guest:There's a little bit of snow on the ground.
Guest:and um you know kevin's getting more into his band bill's getting you know gets a paper who wants to try out for hockey and um you know just like stuff that either i did or my brothers did or people down the street did and um you know frank lost his job on the last one so now he's hunting for a job so you know i just wanted to have them be standalone episodes just like the uh the simpsons yeah and it was netflix idea to serialize it and at first i was like i don't want to do that and then
Guest:it took the writing to a whole other level right where everything had to be connected and it's just like i mean the show wouldn't have been you know i don't think half the show that it is if it wasn't serialized so once again that goes back to netflix giving good notes so i'm really thankful that they said that because my dumb ass was like who wants to see that and then i then we started writing i was like oh wait a minute this is awesome this is kind of amazing right so well that's great man congratulations and how's the uh how's the drumming coming
Guest:Oh, it's going good.
Guest:I sold all my Bonham fanboy stuff.
Marc:Yeah, Dino, show me.
Marc:You got Dean selling it for you.
Guest:Yeah, because Dean's the best.
Guest:And somebody bought it, and I just finally realized, you know, I had that, it was a 1970 Green Sparkle Ludwig kit, 26-inch bass drum, 14-inch rack, and then 16, 18.
Guest:I had, you know, the superphonic snare.
Guest:I had a Rogers hi-hat.
Guest:I had the pasty cymbals that he used, all the same size.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And guess what I sounded like?
Guest:What?
Guest:Me.
Guest:bought all of that and then I was just like just from doing stand up I was like I'm literally trying to do somebody else's act right now right that's when the epiphany finally hit me as I came home with you know I even have a picture of John Bonham like near the drum kit and shit and I just one day I just pictured what if John Bonham somehow came back to life
Guest:And for whatever reason came over to my house and I was like, hey man, I'm a big fan.
Guest:Come on, check out my drum kit.
Guest:And I think if he saw it, it would have weirded him out and he would have slowly backed out of the room on like some single white female shit.
Guest:That's when you start to walk down that road that you're playing shit that other people play, can play easily, but they're like, why does that sound so much better than when I do it?
Guest:which is where I've lived my entire drumming hop.
Marc:Right, yeah, I do the same thing with guitar.
Marc:You find your thing and you just sit in it.
Marc:And you're not gonna open it up until somebody shows you something.
Marc:I mean, sometimes it's just little things.
Marc:Like if I go do Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Favino will always come in and show me a few licks.
Marc:And I'll be like, holy shit, that's how you do that?
Marc:And I don't do it at home.
Marc:But when he shows me one, I'll work the shit out of it.
Marc:Just that little bit of new information, you're like...
Marc:It's a whole new world.
Guest:Yeah, that's amazing.
Guest:I'm such a obvious fan boy of the musicians that can sit down at their instrument and play in the moment what they're feeling.
Guest:And it's flowing out of them the way a comic is riffs on stage.
Guest:I've had a lot of great comedy music conversations with Dave and the overlap
Guest:of the two art forms is it's this it's the same thing having a craft in place to do what you want to do yeah it's get out what you want to get there's those drummers that you're going to go see who are going to you know live with the band are going to play it the exact same way right and i remember i used to love those guys when i was a kid when i go to the hair metal concert and then i would get upset when the guy changed the solo right like he didn't play it right
Guest:And it wasn't until now I realized like he probably played it that one way that one time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That one fucking time.
Guest:And the one asshole said, fuck that.
Guest:Like that's the way to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The way he did it that time.
Guest:And it's just like, no, the reason why that solo sounded so great was that's how he felt in that moment.
Guest:And that's the way it came out.
Guest:And then like, you know, art is not recreating what you already created.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's an art form to that.
Guest:Some cover bands are amazing, but I don't want to live in that part of art.
Guest:I've done that, and I became John Bonham's single white female, and I occasionally have a panic attack because I dreamed of owning that kit, and I got to play it at the Roxy on Sunset and shit, and it sounded fucking amazing and all that, but it wasn't me.
Guest:It's stupid, dude.
Guest:It'd be like if you went out to a club and you had the Eddie Van Halen guitar,
Guest:If anybody's a musician in the crowd is going to be like, all right, what are you going to play?
Guest:Eruption now?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like, why don't you just tattoo Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me.
Guest:And it's like, you're not going to have your own voice.
Guest:Like, I think I would probably be a snob fucking musician.
Guest:And if I saw that, I would give the guy like, like a minute to impress me.
Guest:And then I would, I would go up to the bar.
Guest:I would walk out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's a good point though.
Marc:Like, but you know, it's also realizing that, you know, sometimes we take for granted the work we put into what we did because we just didn't have any choice and we were on those stages doing that shit.
Marc:And then you finally get to a place where you're like, I'm not afraid and I can say whatever the fuck I want.
Marc:And if it doesn't go well, doesn't matter.
Marc:I can get out of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and, and now like to, to take it to another sort of form, which is music or drums and then starting to put that shit together.
Marc:So you can sort of surprise yourself and have those moments.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Elitz showed me this Tony Williams drum solo that he does.
Guest:He goes, just watch this guy right now.
Guest:He's completely in the moment.
Guest:He goes, watch this right now.
Guest:He plays this thing on the snare and then tries to mimic it on the bass drum.
Guest:And he goes, and he completely eats shit.
Guest:And he does it in front of a live crowd.
Guest:And he is like, whatever the fuck he does.
Guest:And then he goes, and just fucks up on the bass drum.
Guest:And you see him.
Guest:He continues to play.
Guest:He just makes this face of like, ah, that didn't fucking work.
Guest:And it's just like, and it blew my mind.
Guest:It's like, this is like a comedian.
Guest:trying to joke, and it bombs, and you just make fun of yourself, and then he just kept going.
Guest:And I was just like, wow, so the same way there's comedians who word for word write their stuff out, and it's just like I always open with this, and then it goes to this, and then it goes to that.
Guest:We all did that at some point.
Guest:Yes, and that is an art form to do that, but I didn't realize that when there was guys taking drum solos, they were also doing that.
Guest:Like, wait, they had this all worked out?
Guest:I just thought they were just like, well, some of them do,
Guest:But some that I feel reach a higher plane of like they felt something, they started playing it, and then that made them go to the rack tom.
Guest:And then that made them go over here and all of that.
Guest:I just feel like it's so much easier to do that as a comedian because it's like you've been talking since you're a baby.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it's like you're always doing this.
Guest:But for them, they had to learn a whole new fucking language.
Guest:And then they can speak on that instrument as fast as I can sit here talking to you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's to me is like, that's what keeps me coming back, watching all those drum videos, guitar videos.
Guest:And I swear to God, I'll literally watch somebody play a trumpet if they can fucking kill it.
Guest:You know what's funny is I try to like, I'm trying to do this with comedians, but I can do it more with music.
Guest:As I just look at it, if this person's just trying to be a pop band, I'm looking at it like that.
Guest:Yeah, no, that's a good thing.
Guest:Trying to make hit songs.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But everybody was like, oh, that's fucking lame.
Guest:Fucking Jimi Hendrix.
Guest:They named the same fucking 12 bands.
Guest:It's like, dude, you're naming shit that everybody agrees.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Yeah, you just got to put people into context.
Marc:Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do.
Guest:Good talking to you, Bill.
Guest:Always a good time, man.
Guest:And, you know, this was like the perfect time.
Guest:It's like a quarter to 12.
Guest:I know I can cruise home.
Marc:Yeah, no worry.
Marc:And you don't got to go far.
Marc:No, I don't.
Marc:You're close by.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:Always great seeing you.
Marc:All right, thank you, buddy.
Marc:Bill Burr.
Marc:So...
Marc:Griffin Dunn.
Marc:Griffin Dunn will be here in a second.
Marc:And I think my entire house smells like salmon.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:I've got a vent coming out here into the garage that doesn't really work.
Marc:But I had them build an air conditioner line when I got the system put in years ago.
Marc:to just run out to the garage.
Marc:So the actual venting is outside getting heated up by the sun.
Marc:So it basically comes in heat.
Marc:But if I cook anything in the house, it just infuses the garage with the worst of that smell.
Marc:Whatever's cooking, it seems to pull out the worst of it and dump it right here into the garage.
Marc:So there's a fine salmon mist happening in here.
Marc:So Griffin Dunn,
Marc:He's been through a lot, and many of you remember After Hours, great movie, American Werewolf in London, but he's doing an amazing job on this new series, I Love Dick, on Amazon with Kevin Bacon.
Marc:But it's always good to see Griffin Dunn.
Marc:It's good to see someone you haven't seen in a while, on screen and off.
Marc:I'd met him a few years back, many years ago, but he's doing well, and it was a real...
Marc:Real privilege to sit down with Griffin, and this is me and Griffin Dunn chatting.
Marc:Chatting as we do here in the garage.
Guest:So you were around then?
Guest:Yeah, I was at the comedy club.
Guest:Comedy store?
Guest:Comedy store.
Guest:Really?
Guest:During the Kenison ring?
Guest:Yeah, and I was researching.
Guest:I had a deal at Warner's to play a stand-up comic, and I was developing the story, so...
Guest:I would go there a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Sam was always there.
Guest:He was always screaming my name whenever he saw me.
Guest:It was very exciting.
Guest:Yeah, he could do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it made me feel very welcome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a very loaded welcome.
Guest:Yeah, it really was.
Guest:There's always a price to pay for that welcome.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And I paid it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and then I went around to a club called Sir Laughs A Lot in Memphis.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What were you doing in Memphis?
Guest:That was what, I had the studio, you know, it was like research, so I was like, let's go to that one.
Guest:I love the name.
Guest:To Memphis.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:Yeah, well, Sir Laughs A Lot was the first appeal, and then Memphis was just the gravy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, like, what happened to that project?
Oh.
Guest:So you had another undeveloped development deal.
Guest:Yeah, but what was the angle?
Guest:Oh, the angle was a story that's been told many times since of a struggling comic during the years, what goes on, finding your voice, finding your act, and just the unglamorous life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:of being on the road and driving yourself from gig to gig.
Guest:Yeah, all that matters is to stand up and the rest is just dirty.
Guest:It was so dirty.
Guest:It was so dirty.
Guest:And I stayed in the motels with the guys and the chicks and the hookers.
Marc:Did you stay with the condos?
Marc:Did you do comedy condos or all hotels?
Marc:These were motels.
Marc:Good for you.
Guest:Yeah, you got in it, huh?
Guest:Well, you got a taste and then you got out.
Guest:One chick told me, she goes, I'll go with you, but I got the clap, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then,
Guest:As if that was a negotiating point.
Guest:You did?
Guest:No, I didn't go.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:I didn't really want to get the clap.
Guest:It was a weird period of my life.
Guest:Back when that was all you had to worry about.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:That was my biggest problem.
Marc:Back when VD had a cute name.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Oh, just that?
Guest:Oh, you got the clap?
Guest:Just go to the dock.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Go to the dock for the clap.
Guest:Yeah, before that, it was the vapors, you know?
Marc:So you don't live out here, do you?
Guest:I don't, I live in New York.
Marc:Right, you're like a full on New York guy.
Guest:Full on New York, but I grew up out here.
Marc:You did?
Marc:How did that work out?
Guest:Were your parents together?
Guest:My parents moved from New York to here when I was about two years old.
Guest:Why?
Guest:My dad got a job as a television executive.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:He was in live television.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then he came out here and started a company called Four Star.
Guest:Charles Boyer, David Niven.
Marc:David Niven.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, incredible gig young.
Guest:Four Stars started this studio.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:But your dad was from here, though, right?
Guest:Yeah, he was from, well, he's originally from Connecticut.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He worked in New York in live television, I said.
Guest:And then he came out here in about 59 and loved this place.
Guest:And he's a movie producer.
Guest:And, yeah, he started off in television and became a movie producer.
Guest:So you grew up in the business.
Guest:Oh, very much.
Guest:Because my dad, on top of everything else, was also an incredible schmoozer and socializer.
Guest:That was always him.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, he would give parties, exhausting my mother, at least once a week.
Guest:They went out six nights a week.
Guest:And this is the 60s and 70s, so Hollywood is still spectacular and small towny.
Guest:It's very small town.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it doesn't know what it's going to... What's going to hit it some.
Guest:You know, it's like... Which thing?
Guest:You know, Dennis Hopper, right there on your wall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's about to rock their world.
Marc:Oh, it's before... So it's pre-69.
Marc:Yes, exactly.
Marc:So you're saying hit that period.
Guest:Yeah, they think Dr. Doolittle is the way of the future.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Musicals too, right?
Guest:Yeah, musicals.
Guest:Everybody loves a musical.
Guest:We just need another Oklahoma.
Guest:You know, since I've become, I was so young, you know, I was like, you know, from six to about nine.
Guest:I wish I knew as much about movies then as I do now because, I mean, I'd love to.
Guest:George Stevens would be at our house all the time.
Guest:I'd love to talk to him about Giant.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, William Wyler, Billy Wilder.
Guest:They were there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, just hanging out.
Guest:Just hanging out.
Guest:He drew an incredible crowd of the greatest filmmakers in Hollywood.
Marc:It's so funny because I talked to guys, you know, who... Like, oddly, the one who gave me the biggest insight into that era, into the shift...
Marc:was uh ed begley jr oh yeah sure because he was just running around no we talk about that all the time oh yeah yeah he's uh he's he's older than me but but the overlap is um right is right because his dad was a character actor but but he also was like kind of a wandering soul and was doing the party circuit in the early 70s yeah no he was totally on the scene yeah um you know
Marc:before he was an actor oh absolutely yeah no and and a much in demand dude because he was so fucking funny yeah i can't say that right sure you can so funny like he has a story about finding himself out at the spawn ranch wow yeah like i haven't heard that yeah like he i don't think he met charlie or hung out with manson but he went out there for something to pick something up to do something yeah well and you forget that it was like well charlie was around yeah he was around yeah
Marc:Take one of his girls.
Marc:He won't mind.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:He always brings the good chicks to the party.
Marc:That's who he was.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was his appeal.
Marc:Kato Kaelin gone wrong.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:There's always those people in this town, man.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:That service, the darker needs.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:Well...
Marc:i i'm not on their mailing list no no i don't know who they are anymore well now it's all very insulated because there's just too much social access it's all you know yes there's a lot of uh things that have to be signed for anything to transact absolutely so like growing up it was you and you had what you had a brother and a sister got a brother and a sister and uh
Marc:And you're all out here living the life.
Marc:You got a pool.
Guest:You got a pool.
Guest:Were you up in the hills?
Guest:No, we were in the flats.
Guest:In the valley?
Guest:Or out here in Beverly Hills?
Guest:In Beverly Hills.
Guest:And, you know, had a house that looks like, it looked like a house you'd see in, like, Greenwich, Connecticut.
Guest:oh really or more hartford connecticut really which is where my dad was from that's why he bought the house now is your dad one of these these guys like uh like mayflower family type no no no irish irish um a great grandfather came over famine oh okay 12 years old right and so not old money connecticut
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It all came from him, though.
Guest:He's an extraordinary man who became... He's like a Horatio Alger figure.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:At 11 years old, he was sweeping out the grocery store, and then within 10 years, he bought it and parlayed that into buying a bank.
Guest:Ended up getting knighted by a knight of Malta from the Pope, and schools are named after him in Hartford.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, he would lend... He was like a much-beloved guy.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:He came over illiterate.
Guest:And then he became also a great, you know, passionate about literature and would read to his children, you know, Yeats and all the Shakespeare and... Oh, that's an amazing story.
Guest:Yeah, and he just infused my, particularly my uncle and father, with this love for literature.
Guest:And your uncle became the big writer?
Guest:John Greener Dunn, yeah.
Guest:And your aunt's Joan Didion.
Guest:Correct.
Guest:So you had quite a life on both coasts.
Guest:I did indeed.
Guest:I did indeed.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:One was like the zenith and decline of the 60s with my parents.
Guest:In Hollywood.
Guest:In Hollywood.
Guest:And then the...
Guest:with john and joan they were like in the you know hot spot of the 70s with the with the sort of literature and the literature and and filmmakers this past six years i've been making a documentary about her really yeah i'm just about finished really that's a hell of a passion project it sure is well she's worth it yeah so how are you putting it together
Guest:Well, I started off with Kickstarter and then got more money since then.
Guest:And now I'm, you know.
Guest:You're doing good.
Guest:Coming to a close.
Marc:So have you been interviewing her over the last six years?
Marc:Or are you using a lot of archival footage?
Guest:I'm using a lot of archival.
Marc:Like Dick Cavett appearances and stuff?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:She never did Dick Cavett.
Guest:She never did?
Guest:Mm-mm.
Guest:No, she wasn't doing talk show stuff so much as, but she did a lot of press, both she and John.
Guest:And there's a lot of archival stuff and a lot of stuff we've dug up.
Guest:But also, you know, at the center of it is an interview that I did with her over a period of a few days some years ago.
Guest:yeah and and what what what did you find out about her that you didn't know what was revealed to you in terms of the relevance importance of your aunt joan didion well a number of things but but but one of them is how important how how important and deep an impression the landscape of california and of sacramento and and that sort of homestead morality
Guest:And work ethic lives within her.
Guest:It's made her survive this long.
Guest:And she's outlived all of her friends and her husband.
Guest:And she basically, she wrote when she was at Vogue at the age of like 21 or 22, a piece called On Self-Respect.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It became sort of a, I don't know, a guidebook for how to live your life and how to be able to sleep in your own bed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How to live without shame.
Guest:To be a woman, too.
Guest:And to be a woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was particularly embraced by the women readers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she really hasn't changed at all.
Guest:It's the same person all the way through, despite all the things that life has dealt her.
Guest:I think it's her innate Western sensibility that's kept her in the room longer than anybody else.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:And I imagine that she must enjoy the time to be involved and to have you hanging around.
Guest:What also keeps her most alive is work.
Marc:But so when did you go back to New York and start the... Well, I imagine you got the acting bug pretty early if you're living in it here.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:More I had the New York bug.
Guest:I remember going to New York when I was about, I don't know, eight or nine, and I just knew I was going to live here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I lived there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just loved the energy of the city, and my dad had a funny sense of humor, a dark sense of humor.
Guest:We were standing in a street corner, and this...
Guest:And people were so brusque and rushing around.
Guest:We went there because they were researching Panic in Needle Park, which my dad produced and John and Joan wrote.
Guest:And so Needle Park was like all junkies, and I thought this was... Even then, I thought that looked glamorous.
Guest:But it was all seedy and so unlike the clean look of Beverly Hills.
Guest:And we were crossing the street, and this old lady needed help, and my dad watched me just take her elbow and help her across the street.
Guest:And he goes, you know, you're way too polite for this town.
Guest:And he goes, did you get her purse?
Guest:You're supposed to get her purse.
Marc:And I don't know, I just loved it.
Marc:And that planted the seed, you're like, this is both darkness and goodness.
Marc:That's right, I can make this work.
Marc:I can bring them together.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because I imagine in L.A.
Marc:at that time as a kid, the darkness didn't seem as tangible and menacing, though arguably it was probably more so.
Guest:There was an underlayer that as I got older, it's all I can see of what was really going on.
Guest:Therapy, huh?
Guest:Yeah, there we go.
Guest:Lots of it.
Yeah.
Marc:So when did your family move back to New York?
Guest:They never did.
Guest:I was the only one, yeah.
Guest:Oh, is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, what happened was I moved to New York in the 70s.
Guest:I went when I was 18 after a very unsuccessful career in high school.
Guest:Which was what?
Guest:Being kicked out.
Guest:And then I moved to New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Why did you get kicked out of high school?
Marc:It's pot.
Guest:Like right now I'd be given an award for it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like a stupid joint.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Boom, you're out of here.
Guest:In 1970?
Guest:In, uh, 74.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, um, so, so, uh, so I came to, uh, so I moved to New York and, um,
Guest:And then while I was in New York, you know, a lot of misfortune happened, self-inflicted misfortune happened to my dad in terms of losing all of his money and his life went into haywire.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And he had sold all his belongings and he moved to Oregon.
Guest:How do you lose that much money that quickly?
Guest:The bottom just fell out?
Guest:No, lots of booze helped.
Guest:Lots of enemies.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:He alienated a lot of people.
Guest:And he was washed up, as they say, in this town.
Guest:He moved to Oregon?
Guest:So we moved to Oregon, only because his car broke down in front of this motel.
Guest:So anyway, he lived there, and then afterwards, after he'd written a book, he moved to New York.
Guest:So then he was the next person to go, and he lived down the street.
Marc:That's very jarring.
Marc:So you're like 18 or 19, and all of a sudden everything you grew up in is just gone, and Dad's in a hotel.
Guest:Well, my mom was comfortable, but Dad was...
Guest:Because they had gotten divorced before he lost everything?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Okay, good.
Marc:So she left him at the peak.
Guest:She also had most of the money, too.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah, he was in a- What does she do?
Guest:She's no longer alive.
Guest:She's-
Guest:She was a daughter of a cattle rancher, and the ranching family did quite well, so she didn't really work.
Guest:She had MS for most of her life, and so she spent the last half of her life in a wheelchair and eventually bed, and incredibly strong, beautiful woman.
Guest:You got some tough genes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cattle ranchers and Irishmen.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I'm very proud of that.
Guest:So anyway, then he moved to New York and started over, lived in an apartment smaller than I had, and I was a waiter at Beefsteak Charlie's.
Guest:Beefsteak Charlie's.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:All-you-can-eat salad bar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Were you guys close?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, when he came back, we were very close.
Guest:When he moved to New York?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He lived in the village.
Guest:He lived down the street from me.
Guest:And, you know, when I moved to New York, I had this, like, the boxer kind of a, you know, I wanted the whores on 7th Avenue to know my name, you know, and I wanted all the... You romanticized the decadence.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:You know, the Bukowski characters.
Guest:And I wanted them to all go, hey, Griff, and, you know, and all that stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my dad had only been living there about two months.
Guest:We were in an outdoor cafe in the village.
Guest:And like drag queens and hairnets go, hey, hey, Dominic, hey, Dominic.
Guest:And, you know, hey, Nick, Nick.
Guest:And every village character, Damon Runyon-esque, I go, how did,
Guest:I've been living here for two years.
Guest:How do you know these people?
Guest:And he just went, the rooms.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he was legendary, you know, as a storyteller.
Guest:So he got sober.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:His rehabilitation was remarkable.
Guest:It was really rising out of the ashes.
Guest:Stayed sober the whole rest of the life?
Guest:oh always oh wow yeah yeah except pot he was really into pot yeah but um but you know he became a writer and a very successful one and uh so then then my aunt and uncle moved so we all ended up in new york right um but i was i was the first to move
Guest:And when did the acting start?
Guest:The acting started a few years after I arrived.
Guest:Did you train?
Guest:I went to the neighborhood playhouse.
Guest:That was your place?
Guest:Mm-hmm, yeah.
Guest:And what was it, a class situation?
Guest:It was like pretty much of a school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You had modern dancing and ballet dancing.
Guest:You wore a dance belt.
Guest:There was a teacher who was...
Guest:studied under martha graham yeah and she took it very very seriously and i had a very hard time taking modern dance very very seriously i looked so ridiculous and tight were you there to dance or there to no it was like to get an all-around oh yeah i mean i think there was even fencing sure um very important yeah movement mm-hmm
Guest:And so I would, but I would just make up dance moves on the spot.
Guest:Autobiographical dance moves.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Marc:A memoir of movement.
Marc:A memoir of my feet.
Guest:They should have appreciated that.
Guest:You would have thought.
Guest:Who was your acting teacher?
Guest:Sanford Meisner started this school.
Guest:Was he still around?
Guest:And he was just on the final year of his life.
Guest:He actually had his larynx removed.
Guest:So he had one of those machines.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Solid me dog.
Guest:And it was like, oh, shit, I'm just a year too late.
Guest:You know, because I didn't get to.
Guest:Just the cusp.
Guest:I had no sympathy at all for his problems.
Guest:I was like, I'm getting this.
Marc:I can't.
Marc:My timing.
Marc:He's dying and I'm about to happen.
Marc:Son of a bitch.
Guest:But you weren't able to glean anything from him?
Guest:No, he was pretty much done.
Guest:But I had a wonderful teacher afterwards.
Guest:With the Meisner method?
Guest:Total Meisner method, which is basically using your imagination to pretend.
Guest:You don't need to dig in and look at your dead wife.
Guest:Anti-method.
Guest:Make it up, asshole.
Guest:Yeah, exactly right.
Guest:Pretend it's cold.
Guest:And this guy named Freddy Karaman was my acting teacher.
Guest:Huge inspiration.
Marc:Sometimes when I talk to actors now, I'm curious.
Marc:Because the Meisner thing, Meisner exercises are sort of legendary.
Marc:The repetitions.
Marc:And I've talked about this on the show.
Marc:But what's interesting is are there things, because now with I Love Dick, which I watched I think five of them.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Like you and Kevin are very different actors, I think.
Marc:But what do you use from that time?
Marc:Like, because it seems to me when I talk to actors, there are things that happened in the first year that they learned how to act that have sort of ingrained as part of your process.
Marc:So when you do it, what do you do first?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it all goes back to the simplest thing.
Guest:I don't know why I spend thousands of dollars on
Guest:Because you've got to teach you this.
Guest:To learn how to, all you'd have to do is listen and be present.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And boom, you're there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, you arc a performance and you, I think.
Guest:Arc and mean that you see the end?
Guest:Yeah, you kind of see where this character, this journey is going.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No matter how long the piece is.
Guest:Yeah, but you don't play the end.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You just play the moment.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So the trick is getting present, listening, and still making choices, I imagine.
Marc:Do you do the choice thing?
Guest:I do the choice, and then hopefully I've... You know, the incredible thing on the series was you make a choice, and then Jill will go, or Andrea, the director, they'll go, okay, you made the choice, now let's try something different.
Guest:Let's try something.
Guest:I love different, different, different, different things.
Guest:There's no mistakes.
Guest:There's no...
Guest:We're not in a hurry.
Guest:Have fun.
Guest:Those are my favorite directions.
Marc:Well, the funny thing about you is that I hadn't seen you on screen in a while.
Marc:And my knowledge of you was sort of initially pounded in with American Werewolf in London.
Marc:And then After Hours, like those are the two big Griffin Dunn movies.
Marc:I know you've done a million movies, but as a kid- Oh, no, it's true for everybody.
Marc:Right?
Marc:So, but what I always like when I haven't seen someone in a while is that, you know, you have a very specific aggravated intensity.
Marc:There's a way you lose your shit that hasn't changed.
Marc:Right, no, Sanford Meisner didn't teach me that.
Marc:I'm like, there it is.
Marc:That's the same guy that was freaking out in both of those other movies, in every movie, if you have the opportunity.
Guest:I only know how to freak out one way.
Marc:But that's good because that type of acting to me is appealing because that gives me hope that you are fundamentally dealing with your own emotions.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That's all I got.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So when did you start working as an actor?
Guest:No, it took me a while.
Marc:You did the full program at the Neighborhood Playhouse?
Guest:I did a year, and then I studied with Uta Hagen.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah, who was terrifying and brilliant.
Guest:I talked to someone else who did that as well.
Guest:What was her method?
Guest:Her method was... Well, the way I got into the class was by sheer lying.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did an audition...
Guest:from Catcher on the Rye.
Guest:I forgot every word when I got up there and I just talked like Holden Caulfield about and told a story about being on the subway and coming up.
Guest:I just made it up.
Guest:About phonies?
Guest:She goes, yes.
Guest:But it was like me doing Holden.
Guest:And she goes, I loved it.
Guest:Oh, darling, darling, you're wonderful.
Guest:And she could tell I was a little out of my league.
Guest:Everybody else was working actors.
Guest:But her thing was...
Guest:If she liked what you did, she would terrify you.
Guest:She would scream at you because she cared so much and go, what were you thinking when you did this?
Guest:And the worst thing that could happen would be if you did your scene and she went, oh, darling, that's wonderful.
Guest:Okay, who's next?
Guest:She didn't care anymore.
Guest:Is that what that meant?
Marc:That was devastating.
Marc:Right, you wanted her to yell from her chair.
Guest:You wanted her to, yeah, you wanted to get her out of that chair and come over and mock you in front of the whole class.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because that meant something.
Marc:Acting teachers in chairs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Not what you want.
Guest:And, you know, students would, and these were professional actors, people would, like, vomit before they did their scenes.
Guest:Oh, for who to?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think there was a period, it was very fashionable in, uh,
Guest:in acting circles, for the teacher to break you down, I guess, in preparation for how tough life will be outside of class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that was the kind of... Every class I knew, everybody who was studying...
Guest:had a teacher that would just like fuck with her head.
Marc:Yeah, destroy the ego.
Marc:The throbbing mass of talent and sadness.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And Uta wasn't like that.
Guest:It was a different thing.
Guest:But I was thinking, I haven't taken a class in a while, but people I know who do, there's a much more...
Guest:Everybody has a much softer approach now.
Guest:Everything's more supportive.
Marc:But you do a lot of directing.
Marc:Yes, I do.
Marc:And you do a lot of sort of community-oriented theater stuff, right?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:So you are in a position to educate.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I try to in a supportive way.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah, I don't subscribe to that terror, school of terror acting.
Guest:And making people, you know, screaming and yelling, making people afraid.
Marc:Well, I think there was a period there where not unlike, you know, post, what was it, the group theater, and then the Method, and then Meisner, and then Uda, and then Strausberg, and then, you know, all these, like, kind of like the teachers themselves became these stars.
Guest:Absolutely right.
Guest:These mythical stars.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And you wanted to be abused by them.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:It was like a cult.
Marc:you know i went to one in new york i can't remember the guy's name his first name was mark he was an old guy and he was like a meisner he was that generation i wish i could remember his name uh but he was of that ilk where you know just this older man who sat in a chair with all these young people around and you waited for him to yell at you yeah
Guest:Well, it was an honor to be yelled at.
Marc:Just watching like one after another, you know, sort of like childlike grownups, you know, moving towards tears.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:They took you there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't know to what end.
Guest:That's what I mean, too.
Guest:And I wish I had a little movie of these abusive teachers, what they're like when they get home, you know, in their tiny little apartments in there, you know.
Guest:Well, a lot of them are failures, right?
Guest:Well, exactly.
Guest:That's why all that rage comes out and they take it out on their students.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But some people learn things.
Marc:I think the guys, the people that developed the ideas, like it seems like the movement of, you know, whatever created, it was the group theater, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Harold Klerman.
Marc:Yeah, like the guys who pulled Stanislawski from Russia into a sort of socialist idea, that crew.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Clifford Odets and John Garfield came out of there and Stella Adler, who's the greatest teacher.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:You took with her?
Guest:You did?
Guest:I studied with her for a summer.
Guest:In New York?
Guest:No, in LA.
Guest:Out here?
Marc:Because she's the one who came out here.
Marc:She was West Coast Method.
Guest:She came out here, she'd do a stint out here, and then she'd go back to New York.
Guest:And when she got really excited about something, and this is in her 80s.
Guest:When she got really excited about something, she'd grab her blouse and pull it down.
Guest:You'd see her tits like this for like one second.
Guest:And then she'd pull it back up.
Guest:She goes, that's acting.
Guest:Did I just see that?
Guest:Is that a good thing?
Guest:She was an incredible teacher.
Guest:I loved her.
Marc:Okay, so you're working with Uda, and then what do you start?
Guest:So anyway, I get this play.
Guest:It's called The White Album, and I got some attention from it.
Guest:Sidebar, when it went on to a bigger production, for whatever reason, Kevin Bacon was in the same play, and not me.
Guest:But that's when I first heard of you two.
Guest:That's when we first heard of each other.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Because, yeah, he was in New York and you guys were contemporaries for this all this time.
Marc:We started like within minutes of each other.
Guest:Have you guys talked about that?
Guest:Oh, sure, sure, sure.
Guest:And so anyway, then I go to an appointment.
Guest:What was the White Album about, dude?
Guest:It was by a guy named David Rimmer, who sadly just passed away.
Guest:And it was about four kids in the 60s.
Guest:And when these two albums kind of came out around the same time, a Beach Boys album, Pet Sounds and a White Album, and how it affected these two group of kids.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah, these four kids.
Guest:A beautiful, beautiful play.
Guest:So anyway, I get sent to this audition.
Guest:I meet this guy named John Landis.
Guest:And we talked for about 15 minutes, and he says, I only got one question for you, claustrophobic.
Guest:And I said, no.
Guest:He goes, okay, cool.
Guest:And I figured, well, that movie's about a guy trapped in an elevator or something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then my phone rings, and he goes, hey, Griffin, I got an armed guard.
Guest:He's coming outside, and he's going to hand you a script, and I want you to read it, and then call me right back.
Guest:And I read it, and it's American World for London.
Guest:And I loved it.
Guest:And I was so hoping to play Jack.
Guest:I loved that part so much.
Guest:And I call him up.
Guest:He goes, you like it?
Guest:And I went, yeah.
Guest:He goes, do you want to play Jack?
Guest:And I went, yes, yes.
Guest:He goes...
Guest:I gotta ask you again, are you claustrophobic?
Guest:I said, no, I'm not.
Guest:And he meant, of course, because my head was going to be in plaster.
Guest:For the plaster cast, he just breathed out of two little straws in my nose.
Guest:So no reading, no nothing.
Guest:He'd never seen me.
Guest:He'd never met me.
Guest:He gave it to me for whatever reason in those 15 minutes he saw the part.
Guest:And then next thing I know, I'm in England, and I'm shooting this amazing movie.
Marc:That was the first movie that you ever did?
Marc:Yep, yep.
Marc:And that was such a great movie.
Marc:They had no idea how great it was.
Guest:It was ridiculous.
Marc:It was like menacing and fun at the same time.
Guest:Yeah, it was like, it really, other movies have been given credit for it, but it really was the first movie to combine horror and humor.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you were really in.
Marc:You're right away.
Marc:You're somewhere else.
Marc:You're doing big makeup.
Guest:I mean, like six hours of makeup.
Guest:And I must say, I loved Rick Baker.
Guest:I hated that damn makeup.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Well, it was a different... They do it differently now, but they glued it onto your face, and it would shrink and pull...
Guest:pull on you yeah yeah and it always had to be touched up and and then the worst part was taking it off it took like an hour then to take it off right um and it hurt and so then that movie was successful it was not it was to to our chagrin no it became successful when uh you know vcrs came in and then people rediscovered it it was like people were annoyed well critics were particularly were annoyed how dare
Guest:humor find a place in the horror genre.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Like Pauline Kael?
Guest:Across the board.
Guest:You could read all across the board, I think.
Guest:I don't remember the names of it, but I would have had Vincent Camby or whoever was doing it at the time.
Guest:That was their beef?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those fucking... Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Those authorities.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Those highbrow motherfuckers.
Guest:Highbrows on the genre of horror.
Marc:They wanted to protect the horror genre.
Guest:They really... They felt very deep about it.
Marc:That at that point, no one was even giving a shit about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, of course, then, like, Ghostbusters will come out and they'll go, this is brilliant, the way they combine the two.
Guest:You know, like, you fucking assholes.
Guest:It was right there.
Guest:But it was a real disappointment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I mean, I didn't... It was my first movie.
Guest:It was exciting.
Guest:I wasn't devastated.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, all that time I was...
Guest:Because I was not working very much as an actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I really love working.
Guest:I'd actually been producing, you know, with maybe the chance of giving myself a part.
Guest:And Amy Robinson, my producing partner for many years, and Mark Metcalf.
Marc:What was the name of your company?
Guest:Triple Play Productions.
Guest:Now, was your dad helping you out?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He was still slumming it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:But no advice?
Guest:Uh...
Guest:Be careful, son.
Guest:They will kill you.
Guest:Actually, quite honestly, it was kind of terrifying to kind of get into the business closer knowing that this is the same business that destroyed him.
Marc:It was a little different because they'd gotten over that hump of the late 60s, and so now it was a different field.
Guest:It was a different field, a different generation, and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:But there's still some overlap with...
Guest:You know, Bob Evans and Sue Mangers and all those people that became his archenemy were still in power.
Guest:They made the transition.
Guest:Yeah, they survived.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He made the godfather, but he's staying right where he is.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And so you produced a film.
Guest:I produced a film called Chili Shins of Winter.
Guest:And I had a small part in that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Actually, that's how I got my first acting job.
Guest:That was by giving myself the acting job.
Guest:And then American Werewolf came after that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then what else did you produce?
Guest:Baby, It's You.
Guest:Oh, the John Sayles movie?
Guest:John Sayles movie.
Guest:Michael Bauhaus shot it.
Marc:It was his first movie.
Marc:That was a sweet movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What happened to Vincent Spano?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I know he's been directing, and I haven't been in touch with him for a while.
Guest:He's still pals with my pal Matt Dillon, and so I hear about him from them.
Guest:Like the smart guys get into directing.
Guest:Yeah, that's where we go.
Guest:Yeah, TV.
Guest:Well, it makes a lot of sense that actors, of course, become directors.
Guest:You just know how to... I've always noticed that...
Guest:Many of the directors I've worked with and have spoken to, they talk passionately about every aspect, but talking to the actor scares them the most, or it's the most foreign to them.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Well, you know who I had in here?
Marc:Walter Hill.
Marc:Oh, God, yeah, I love him, man.
Marc:He said something straight for me, sort of like, this idea that people have that the director is somehow guiding the actor, it's just not true.
Marc:I mean, really, we're hiring someone to do a job.
Marc:Job, exactly.
Marc:And it is sort of like, it didn't blow my mind, but to hear it in that sort of nuts and bolts thing, of course that's why you hire them.
Marc:This idea that these great actors are guided by directors,
Guest:is is really for the most part a misgiving it's like you know you hire you cast somebody because they do the job a director does not want to see a doe-eyed actor go tell me what to do it's got to be a nightmare yeah and and you know woody allen will write a 15 page scene he wants to do it in one take right um no direction and you just better have your shit together right have you worked with him i never have
Marc:There's time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a resurrection.
Guest:Yeah, it's a total resurrection.
Guest:It's Griffin Dunn's time again.
Guest:Woody, I'm back.
Guest:It's a fourth time around.
Guest:It's right.
Guest:That's exactly how I look at it.
Guest:Again?
Guest:I didn't get another shot.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Please don't let me fuck this one up.
Marc:Well, so after hours, well, that was like, you know, I guess, you know, I mean, it's no mystery.
Marc:I don't know how much you talk about it.
Marc:But, you know, the tragic loss of your sister must have been like a horrendous time in terms of like, you know, career and personal and everything else.
Guest:Yeah, it was a terrible, obviously a terrible thing.
Guest:But it was it was a, you know, something.
Guest:It came at a time of, professionally, a lot of good fortune.
Guest:You were just starting to take off.
Guest:I was starting and everything.
Guest:And my mother also at that time was quite ill with MS.
Guest:So it was something I've gone to a lot of therapy about was that...
Guest:that terrible feeling of having something good happen or something people you love something terrible has happened and and they're happening at the same time and you so you can't enjoy one thing and you feel bad if you do and you you know it's it was a
Marc:And everybody knew about it.
Marc:It wasn't like some personal inner family tragedy.
Marc:It was a horrible event that was international news.
Guest:And it was something that I refused to talk about, unless it was family or friends.
Guest:But my father and my mother, they both took this...
Guest:this tragedy and made it a source of power.
Guest:My father and mother became an advocate for victims' rights.
Guest:It led to my father becoming a journalist, writing about murder trials.
Marc:He was the O.J.
Marc:guy.
Guest:And he was the O.J.
Guest:guy.
Guest:He was the Menendez Brothers guy.
Guest:He covered...
Guest:He covered all the big trials.
Marc:I can't imagine, no matter how public the tragedy is, that the sense of justice not being served when it was clearly that it should have been.
Marc:Yeah, no, it's outrageous.
Marc:You can't, like, what do you do with those feelings?
Marc:And that happens, you know, all the time.
Marc:It does, it does.
Marc:And that, you know, that guy who murdered your sister, you know, walked away and lives in the world that, you know, the only way I guess that your parents and the family could reconcile that is to become active.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And, you know, they put their... My mother's responsible for something called Marcy's Law, which is where you have to... The parole, you'd think they didn't need a law, but the parents of whoever the criminal has killed, that if they're out on parole...
Guest:they have to let the family know that the killer's out back on the streets again.
Guest:You'd think.
Guest:Right, that would be a no-brainer.
Guest:Because it would happen over and over again.
Guest:You'd see the killer in the supermarket.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Anyway, and so they put their energy into that.
Guest:My energy on the advocate level went into and continues to be my passion.
Guest:I've been involved for a long time is gun violence prevention and gun control.
Guest:And I've been working... Well, I'm now with Brady.
Guest:I work with Brady.
Guest:Oh, you do?
Guest:But before that, I've been just working with gun control for a long time.
Guest:Yeah, it's important, and it's not going to get any better.
Guest:It's not getting any better.
Guest:It's getting... Worse.
Guest:Everything's going away.
Guest:It's one of those...
Guest:is yet another sidebar tragedy of shitheading.
Guest:American culture and politics.
Guest:No, it's mystifying to me why there's never any traction on it.
Marc:It's a powerful lobby, I guess.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:They are formidable.
Marc:Yeah, and they're just like, sometimes I start to think that the way that capitalism has metastasized requires a turnover at any cost.
Marc:So whether it's guns or denying people healthcare, the system in its cynical way just allows for it.
Guest:Well, it is, as you said, a very powerful lobby and industry, and I was listening to your excellent interview with Obama.
Guest:And, you know, he brought that up, how gun sales go up after all these mass shootings.
Guest:It's just a cash cow.
Marc:Yeah, and always this thing hanging over the gun people is that they're going to take them away, and no one has ever tried to take them.
Guest:No one's ever said a thing.
Guest:It's just, you know, how...
Guest:Trump could put out something on a Twitter, and then because it's on Twitter, it's true.
Guest:It doesn't require anything.
Marc:It mobilizes a movement in the whole world.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And there's no background.
Guest:There's no follow-up.
Guest:Nothing's based on truth.
Guest:You know, what is happening to the...
Guest:to our language, a breakdown of what intention is and what to believe.
Marc:Yeah, and just sort of like taking the time to process and source.
Guest:It's very alarming.
Guest:I don't know if this will pass on to generation to generation because people could just be talking about nothing to each other and just making outrageous.
Guest:And then you say something hateful to somebody,
Guest:But it's all been said so many times, you don't even feel the anger about it anymore.
Guest:Yeah, there's no... So then you start losing your feelings of love and hate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just all words.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All these words that come back to just endure everything.
Marc:And everything's so immediate.
Marc:Like, my belief is that...
Marc:because of the immediacy of platforms and everyone's access to having a way to put their immediate feelings and reactions and hostility or whatever out there, that tolerance is what begins to kind of fade away.
Marc:A road, absolutely.
Marc:A road, that's a word.
Marc:But in looking at some of the things you've done, I want to talk about after hours, but you've never stopped working.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like you do, you know, you do movies that, you know, maybe you're questionable and quality.
Marc:But is it decline?
Marc:And well, let's talk about after hours first.
Marc:I mean, because that's an odd little movie.
Marc:And I remember because I was sort of a film head in high school and it came out.
Marc:I was in college, I guess, eighty five.
Marc:But I was definitely into film, and it was definitely some sort of departure.
Marc:Did Scorsese direct it or just produce it?
Guest:No, he directed it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Amy and I produced it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was our third movie after Baby at You.
Marc:It was an interesting movie for him because it was a comedy full on, and there was a lot of interesting elements.
Marc:It was sort of a journey, almost like a picaresque process of moving through these different lives.
Marc:But it was menacing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, and then, but you never got the sense that, you know, it wasn't a comedy.
Marc:But there was definitely some things in there that were kind of specific to the time.
Marc:You know, the stuff with Roseanne Arquette and that, oh, that stuff with the medication and the burns.
Marc:So how did that come about?
Guest:Well,
Guest:The script was written by Joe Minion, who was a... It was basically his film graduate thesis script.
Guest:And he worked for a director named Dujan Makaveyev, who brought the script to Sundance.
Guest:Not the festival, but the workshop that happens over the summer.
Marc:Makaveyev was an important filmmaker.
Guest:He was indeed, sir.
Marc:Like an experimental filmmaker.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:Anyway, he said, my assistant has this crazy script.
Guest:And that's my surrogate.
Guest:Yeah, that's all right.
Guest:And so Amy read it, couldn't stop picturing me in the role, and called me up.
Guest:And she said it to me.
Guest:And I read it.
Guest:It caused me such anxiety.
Guest:I had to read it standing up with the script on the floor.
Guest:And I turned the pages with my toe and just walk away and go, oh, my God.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we optioned the script right away.
Guest:Amy had been an actress for Scorsese and Mean Streets, and so she got the script to him.
Guest:He was about to start shooting what would be Last Temptation of Christ.
Guest:He was on the serious decline because Marty had just done King of a Comedy, which we all know is brilliant now, but it was a huge disaster then, and he was unbankable.
Guest:And he's about to start doing this movie.
Guest:Aidan Quinn was going to play Christ, and they pulled the plug.
Guest:And so on his way back from Morocco, our script was on the top of his pile.
Guest:And we had to make it for a million and a half dollars.
Guest:Nobody thought he could make a movie for a million and a half dollars, or thought he was funny, by the way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we knew differently.
Guest:And so he said, yeah, I want to do it.
Guest:And we introduced him to Michael Ballhaus, who just passed away.
Guest:We worked with him on Baby, It's You.
Guest:And he's also responsible for the- No, he's the DP.
Guest:And also responsible.
Guest:It became a huge collaboration, a long collaboration with Marty.
Guest:And a lot of the menacing and the tone you're talking about is because of the camera angles and movement that Michael and Marty came up with.
Guest:And, you know, we had like, I don't know, 30 days and all nights.
Guest:And I got the grip guys to black out my windows in the apartment I was living in.
Guest:And, you know, I come home.
Guest:So it was real indie filmmaking.
Guest:Oh, it was real deal.
Guest:And in New York, of course, Soho.
Guest:you could lie down on the street at that time of night.
Guest:And I mean, it was quiet as a tomb and very menacing.
Guest:And Marty had this, he was allergic to cigarette smoke.
Guest:Oh, he's asthmatic.
Guest:He's asthmatic.
Guest:And we were shooting a scene where I dropped to my knees and scream up at the sky, what do you want with me?
Guest:I'm only a word processor.
Guest:I'm just trying to get laid.
Guest:And
Guest:This lofts are all on all sides.
Guest:All the lights are out except for one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're on like the fourth take.
Guest:What do you want from me?
Guest:And this woman throws up the loft, her window and goes, shut up.
Guest:Just shut the fuck up.
Marc:up and without missing a beat marty goes tell that lady to put out a cigarette and did that like in katherine o'hara yeah like in terry garr right terry garr katherine o'hara was terrifying it was just like you know what what i remember about that movie is this those weird during that period in time where you would find yourself in apartments with women and not know
Marc:anything about that.
Marc:And also, you know what, I remember the part that killed me because I read so much into it.
Marc:But I don't, it's good that you're here, because I have this thing that I do now, it seems, with actors, is that there are parts of movies that stay with me for specific reasons, and I don't know if there's intent there.
Marc:And some actors won't tell me, even if they know.
Marc:These weird secrets.
Marc:I'm like, did you mean, and they're like, I made a choice, but I'm not gonna, it's happened twice.
Marc:But the scene where you end up in that gay guy's apartment,
Marc:and and like and you're up against the wall and it's a brick wall and you're ranting and i thought to myself that's a stand-up comedy show like there's a brick wall and in my mind i'm like that's there for a reason that that was a reference was it um i i didn't know well the loft was the loft the brick wall came with a loft yeah and it was really a loft right that like an apartment rather right and uh i hadn't thought of that i just you're pointing it out because
Marc:i was doing comedy and i'm like of course that brick wall is exactly it's like a it's a riff on comedy the the guy you know he's and and also playing for a man who thought you know he was going to have romantic interlude and you're just this straight guy with problems to an audience that could give a shit and i'm like that's a metaphor like like i built it in my mind but i can leave it at that
Guest:No, I'd like to re-answer that question.
Guest:You know, when I was doing that, and I saw that wall, I asked for the wall, by the way.
Guest:You did?
Guest:I said, Marty, I'm thinking of stand-up comedy.
Guest:Oh, okay, okay.
Guest:So we're re-cutting it now.
Guest:I'm just re-doing it.
Guest:I'm so stealing that.
Guest:i just gave you a new part of your public narrative thank you for that what we were thinking really and i don't know if anyone picked up on it okay you know you do these make these choices that maybe no one will notice maybe they will it doesn't matter you know it's part of my process all right so you keep working and like you know and obviously producing but is it is it because you like to work
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, I have that little hamster heart that if I'm not working, I get really worried about myself.
Guest:You're up to no good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I also hate when I'm working on something and I hate what I'm doing or I hate what the thing is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember once, having gone from after hours, years had gone by, not that many,
Guest:and I'm in Toronto, and I'm doing a movie, and I'm playing either an Android or a Martian, and I don't give a shit.
Guest:You don't even know what you're playing.
Guest:I don't even know what it is.
Guest:And I'm going, this can't, how did this happen?
Guest:And so I started- How did it happen?
Guest:I made some bad choices.
Guest:Kind of what we were talking about before.
Guest:I kind of- Got away from you?
Guest:But also-
Guest:I had a very bad relationship with success.
Guest:And at the cost, it sort of came.
Guest:I made some very destructive choices.
Marc:Well, what did success do to you?
Marc:What was your reaction?
Guest:Well, it was also that thing we were talking about.
Guest:Did you get cocky?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I just made...
Guest:I made very bad acting choices.
Guest:I also, and I'm not saying this is good or bad, but at a time where I probably had the highest visibility as an actor, I decided to become a producer, and so running on empty.
Guest:I went into, from after hours, instead of going on to the next big movie, I turned down some very good movies.
Guest:I went to be behind the camera and help Sidney Lumet make one of his better movies.
Guest:And I was off the range.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:He directed Running on Empty?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That must have been amazing.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:All of it paid off later on because I became a director and I learned so much from Sidney.
Marc:What did you learn?
Marc:Because I watched...
Marc:Sidney Lumet did the verdict yep and you know I've watched that two or three times in the last couple years you know coming back to it you know what he did and I remember there was a risk there you know to cast Paul Newman like that but like to me he was one of the best yeah he sure was and what did you learn from him as a director I mean like you were producing the thing
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, when I became a director, the first feature I made was called Addicted to Love with Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick.
Guest:And all of it set in one loft.
Guest:And what Sidney used to do was get the exact dimensions and put it out on tape.
Guest:And he'd rehearsal the actors and he'd get the props that they're going to do.
Guest:And
Guest:And he'd rehearsed for like a week.
Guest:Now there's no time to do any of that stuff.
Guest:And there's no money or anything.
Guest:But at that time, I had the money.
Guest:Or Warner's had it.
Guest:And so I had a chance to take that technique and work with the... We worked out all the problems with the script beforehand.
Guest:So when we got to the set, it was completely familiar.
Guest:um saved a lot of time so it's like it's practical utilitarian kind of like you know this is how you do it absolutely i also i also learned he would nap he would take a nap every um for lunch break he wouldn't he wouldn't he'd just go lie down
Guest:And that's why he was like in his 70s even then.
Guest:And he'd already done like Serpico and like... 12 Angry Men.
Guest:And Network.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the greatest movies.
Guest:He had the most... This guy had more energy than anyone I ever saw in my life.
Marc:He did The Pawn Broker.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:No, he went through live television right through the greatest period in movies in our time during the 70s, Dog Day Afternoon.
Marc:Dog Day Afternoon.
Guest:I mean, you know, he was- Networks of genius.
Guest:Prince of the City, like, oh my God.
Guest:You know, and then, you know, toward the-
Guest:Toward the end of his life, he made that incredible movie, What the Devil Knows or something?
Guest:Before the Devil Knows, you're dead.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, that was as hardcore as anything the Coen brothers ever did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was well into his 80s when he did that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he was extraordinary.
Guest:So what did I learn?
Guest:I learned about preserving your energy and inspiration and putting out, and the way he talked to the actors, the way he loved his actors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It made him feel so good about what they were doing.
Guest:And rehearsing.
Guest:And rehearsing, yeah.
Guest:yeah so it was i don't know there was a so that was worth uh not taking the big absolutely it all that's what i mean is all choices i made then pay off later well you have to look at it that way after a certain point absolutely because at the time you don't you know what have i fucking done yeah it's like that old thing it's like uh you know where you know things will work out the way they're supposed to it's like there's no that's bullshit it's like but as you get older you realize there's really no way to look at it
Guest:yeah yeah you know everything happens for a reason that's the other one you can't think that way like you're gonna have to if you don't want to live be bitter but yeah absolutely yeah because otherwise i'm just going to track down the reason department and find the guy who runs it and beat the shit out of him that's a good one where'd you hear that i just made it up did you i swear to god just flew out of my mouth go the reason department
Guest:That guy's up to no good.
Guest:I hate that fucker.
Guest:Yeah, he's just trying to fuck us every day.
Guest:Every time.
Marc:Putting out that ridiculous.
Marc:But so tell me, so what happened, and let's go back to your alien outfit.
Guest:So I'm in the alien outfit, and I start to write a script.
Guest:I write a short script.
Guest:and it's based on a party that my aunt and uncle gave in the 60s that I was 11 years old, and they let me come to.
Guest:It was a party for Tom Wolfe.
Guest:Okay, so for Bonfire?
Guest:No, no, we're talking Europe.
Guest:This is candy-colored...
Guest:Electric Kool-Aid Acetase.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Had just come out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were giving them a party.
Guest:They had a house in Hollywood Hills, this sort of rumbling, rambling, you know, rotting villa kind of a thing.
Guest:Janis Joplin was going to come to the party.
Guest:I was insane about Janis Joplin.
Guest:You were what, eight?
Guest:I was 11, 12.
Guest:And so I fretted.
Guest:And John and John always let me go.
Guest:And my mom was letting me go.
Guest:And it was a school night.
Guest:I couldn't believe it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was writing about what to wear and what am I going to say to Janice and what if she finds out I'm there with my mother and I'm never going to get to a motel and she's not going to think I'm cool.
Guest:Oh, I had such confidence in my charm around Janice.
Guest:Anyway, we get to this party and I never got to meet Janice.
Guest:Did she not come?
Guest:She came, but my mom took me home early.
Oh.
Guest:Anyway, I wrote a short story about this night or a short script.
Guest:And the producer of the Alien movie also had a deal for short films at Showtime and took this on and got me the money for it.
Guest:And so I made this short movie and I cast Uma Thurman and Tobey Maguire and Kiefer Sutherland and Elliot Gould and got an Academy Award nomination.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:Duke of Groove.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And it was, you know, very autobiographical.
Guest:And, you know, I even used some of the film in the documentary I'm making about Joan because of Janice and Jim Morrison and all the people that she interviewed over the years came up in it.
Guest:So how about that?
Guest:That I went to the Reason Department and I thanked him for that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:I thanked him.
Guest:I sent him a fruit bag.
Guest:That guy gets no love.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One fruit bag says he's gotten it a long time.
Guest:So, yeah, anyway, that turned...
Guest:And then it got me out of the acting hole because now I can throw myself into directing.
Guest:Well, there's a lot of reward of creativity from the ground up there.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And everything that I've been doing as a producer, I understood how to apply it as a director.
Guest:Right.
Guest:helped me in working with the actors, and I'd never felt so at home on a set in my life.
Guest:It was like all of this, everything made sense.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Marc:That's a good feeling.
Marc:Elliot Gould, he's got stories.
Marc:He sure does.
Marc:I worked with him on my show, and he's one of those guys where you feel like the story's ongoing, even if you're not there, that he's still telling it.
Guest:Well, it's really funny because he's telling his story in this movie about Bob Dylan writing about a song writing for Nico.
Guest:Because I've heard him tell stories, and I said, do that storytelling thing you do.
Guest:And he just tells this total bullshit story about Bob Dylan writing I'll Keep It With Mine for Nico.
Marc:Yeah, I'd like to interview Elliot.
Marc:It was weird being on set with him because he really...
Marc:like there's a rise and fall yeah and uh you know and he knows why it happened yeah you know it's uh you know like uh uh restraint of pen and mouth or whatever yeah you know i was a um i i i i would grow up go on lots studio lots and i live not far from 20th century fox and
Guest:when you were a kid when i was a kid and uh uh i remember wandering onto the one of the sets on on the fox lot and uh and i saw elliot ghoul doing a scene with james khan ah yeah for uh what was that weird hiring walter go exactly yeah and they were so well elliot particularly was so um the bad behavior was unbelievable yeah and i was watching as a young actor going oh my god
Guest:I hope I don't act like that, or is that what I'm supposed to act like when I get famous?
Guest:And it was just like watching, and he was slowing shit down and exasperating people and talking, and then getting angry, and it was like, he's a totally different person now.
Guest:But it was like him at his highest and at his worst.
Guest:Yeah, that was an odd little movie.
Marc:Harry Walter, they play pre-Vaudeville entertainment.
Marc:Pre-Vaudeville, yeah.
Marc:So, and now you're directing theater as well?
Guest:No, no, I didn't direct theater.
Guest:I just stuck with movies.
Guest:I acted in a play, a guy named Howard Corder wrote Search and Destroy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I did that.
Guest:That was on Broadway.
Guest:That was later in the 90s.
Guest:How was that experience?
Guest:that was incredible and it was a brilliant brilliant play and marty produced the movie of it yeah uh and i played the guy um in an independent film stay in touch with marty i oddly through gun control um he he called me he knows i was involved with that he wanted to he had another person who was also involved and wanted to put us together and uh and he also interviewed joan um so we had that in common and
Marc:It's interesting how I always, and I still do, my life is not small, but it's busy.
Marc:And people who have been around a while and have all these relationships and have been in movies or worked with all these people, I want to believe everybody kind of keeps in touch, but no one keeps in touch with anybody.
Marc:You have two friends.
Guest:Yeah, it always blows my mind.
Guest:You know, it happened.
Guest:This thing, back to the I Love Dick, Kevin and Catherine, I'm quite certain, will always be in touch.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:But I haven't had that feeling in a really long time.
Guest:It's like also that thing like when you're just starting out and you're going on location in a movie, you're looking at the crew list and you're thinking, who am I going to sleep with?
Guest:Well, nobody.
Guest:I'm sure that still goes on, but I haven't seen it.
Guest:That's behind you, buddy.
Guest:That's way behind you.
Guest:But I remember one of the very first jobs I did also was we were in Poland.
Guest:And it was during Gdansk, the strike.
Guest:All the actors became incredibly close.
Guest:And Roseanne Arcat, who I would eventually work with later on.
Guest:And Tom Conte, who became a really close friend.
Guest:And Eli Wallach was in it.
Guest:And Eli Wallach was watching us and he was like obviously much older than everybody.
Guest:And he goes, you know, you guys all think you're all going to keep in touch for the rest of your lives.
Guest:But I'm telling you, once they say rap, it's arrivederci, baby.
Guest:And you won't hear from each other again.
Guest:And we all look at you, that's not going to happen.
Guest:Not here.
Guest:That's not.
Guest:And then eventually, after about 30 movies, it does happen.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You don't even see it happening.
Marc:Yeah, no, I mean, it takes less than that.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:But I think there's some part of the experience of community on a set that is very genuine.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:But it can't sustain itself.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Because the one thing you forget when you're on a set is that everyone's got fucking lives.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And they've taken time away from that.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:To do this.
Marc:It's a fantasy.
Marc:You know, both in front of the camera and what happens on screen.
Guest:Well, that's why, you know, guys who aren't actors who are married to beautiful actresses.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they go in location.
Guest:That's why they have nervous breakdowns.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:And they should.
Guest:Yeah, they should.
Marc:It's all true.
Marc:It's all true.
Marc:Everything you heard.
Yeah.
Marc:Don't marry a famous actress.
Marc:Do not.
Marc:Well, I tell you, I'm a fan of Jill Soloway, and everybody who's in the cast is great, and the world is unique.
Marc:My girlfriend's a painter, so she sort of knows the world.
Guest:Oh, yeah, incredible artist.
Guest:They've dug up.
Marc:Yeah, but it's like it's a real world that has its own folly in it and its own ridiculousness and drama.
Marc:And it's never been seen before.
Marc:Certainly not in this way.
Marc:And you're doing a great job.
Marc:And I think it's an interesting and good show.
Marc:And it's fun, too.
Marc:Sure, it's fun.
Marc:Good talking to you, Griffin.
Marc:Great talking to you, too, Mark.
Marc:Griffin Dunn.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:Beautiful talk.
Marc:Nice guy.
Marc:Doing a great job on I Love Dick.
Marc:You can watch that on Amazon.
Marc:And, you know, that's it.
Marc:That's it for now.
Marc:Is that okay?
Marc:Did we do enough?
Marc:Where's my fucking pick?
Marc:You guys, go see that Grateful Dead movie.
Marc:That documentary.
Marc:If you're prone to that.
Marc:If you've got a soft spot in your heart for the dead, go spend four hours and watch that movie.
Marc:I don't know when it opens.
Marc:I'm going to stick my earplug back in and play a guitar.
Marc:Because it's one of the two things I like doing.
Marc:And the other one, you probably don't even know the other one.
Marc:I know what you think it is.
Marc:There's no Satan, right?
Marc:Right?
Guest:Boomer lives!