Episode 841 - Jay Baruchel
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck nicks what's happening this is uh wtf it's my podcast my name is mark maron thank you for listening thank you for joining
Marc:My heart goes out to everybody out there in Texas, in Houston, Texas, parts of all around Houston, a little bit of Louisiana.
Marc:Goddamn, man.
Marc:You're going through hell.
Marc:It's a lot of fucking water, and it's a really fucking horrible event that's happening there, and I hope if you hear me now that you're safe and I somehow... I mean, I imagine you might be stranded or you're just sitting there.
Marc:I guess it's very hard to...
Marc:to get in and deal with this, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon.
Marc:It's just awful.
Marc:I'm sorry you're going through that.
Marc:If anybody is going through that who's listening to me, I'll try to entertain you a little bit.
Marc:I'll try to take your mind off it.
Marc:I mean, if you're just sitting there, you know, Godspeed, and I hope that you're getting the help you need to get if you're listening to this, and I hope that if you can help, you are helping.
Marc:It's a natural disaster, and it's a big one.
Marc:So that said, you know, when I really think about, you know, how random and how horrible these things can just come out of nowhere.
Marc:Well, I mean, it comes out of somewhere, but I don't experience enough gratitude in my life.
Marc:And I know things are awful for a lot of people and culturally things are disintegrating, perhaps permanently.
Marc:But I got to find some room for gratitude because I can lose my mind a little bit.
Marc:And I guess I should let you in on something.
Marc:It's not that big a deal.
Marc:But...
Marc:I'm getting off nicotine again, and it's really fucked up.
Marc:I've done it before a few times.
Marc:I mean, if you've been listening to this show for years, you remember maybe seven years ago I did it, and I interviewed Dane Cook, and that was a disaster.
Marc:Sarah the Painter seems to think I did it a few years ago.
Marc:I don't remember anymore.
Marc:I got off him because I got nervous.
Marc:It just wasn't.
Marc:The shit's just not working anymore.
Marc:It's the biggest disappointment about having an addiction.
Marc:that there comes a day where you're like, ah, this is just exhausting.
Marc:My system's overworking.
Marc:My organs are tired.
Marc:It's not having the desired effect anymore.
Marc:That mixture of caffeine and nicotine just making me nauseous.
Marc:I think that's what it is.
Marc:Anyways, if I seem edgy or I seem tense, you know, I got off the shit yesterday.
Marc:It was a pretty fucked up day yesterday.
Marc:Again, I'm not on top of my house looking at miles of water, but I am standing on top of my head trying to get out.
Marc:I just was like, I lost it by the end of the day.
Marc:The cravings come, and some of you know this when you quit something.
Marc:You feel like, oh, this is when I do it.
Marc:This is when I do it.
Marc:Oh, this is when I do it.
Marc:And you're just like, no, no, no.
Marc:And eventually that party, the...
Marc:Come on, man, this is when I do it.
Marc:No, we're not doing it.
Marc:No, come on, this is it.
Marc:This is where we feel better.
Marc:Nope, not doing it.
Marc:No, this is right now, right now.
Marc:You fuck!
Marc:Just give it to me!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:I will shred your brain.
Marc:I will fucking just blow up everything you're thinking, mix it all up, and just make you a...
Marc:furious babbling idiot with moments of brilliance i will throw in moments of brilliance but a furious babbling idiot if you don't fucking give us the shit that we need just to feel better
Marc:No, we're not doing it.
Marc:We're not doing it.
Marc:Oh, you fucking fuck.
Marc:We're not.
Marc:We're just not.
Marc:Can we just not?
Marc:Can we just get through it?
Marc:I'm gonna burn everything fucking down in your brain.
Marc:And eventually, by the end of the fucking day, you're gonna dump it on somebody.
Marc:You're gonna fucking dump it on somebody because you're gonna want it out of you.
Marc:It'll be like an exorcism.
Marc:So if you don't feed me my shit, I'm gonna fucking just explode something in your fucking life that you're not gonna be able to hold it back.
Marc:I'm not doing it.
Marc:This is not a negotiation.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Fine.
Marc:Talk to you at the end of the day.
Marc:Sure enough, I told Sarah the painter, I told my girlfriend, I'm like, you can't come over.
Marc:You got to stay out because...
Marc:I don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:I don't know what's going to come out of me.
Marc:It's just you got to just trust me on that.
Marc:Stay away because it's going to want to unload the thing.
Marc:The thing's going to want to unload.
Marc:The hunger's going to want to unload because it's not getting fed.
Marc:Like I have moments where I feel all right.
Marc:It's like, come on, what's the big deal, man?
Marc:What's the big deal?
Marc:Just give it, just let's have one.
Marc:Just one, man.
Marc:Why don't you just, why don't you just reduce it?
Marc:Why don't you just pull back a little?
Marc:You know, let's just not have as many.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:And this is what I'm dealing with.
Marc:Oh, this is what I'm dealing with all day.
Marc:Come on, just give me one.
Marc:All right.
Marc:See, when I focus, I can do stuff.
Marc:Did I mention Jay Baruchel is on the show?
Marc:I don't think I did.
Marc:I don't think I did.
Marc:Jay Baruchel, he wrote and directed the new movie, Goon, Last of the Enforcers, which comes out Friday, September 1st.
Marc:You might know him from A Million Dollar Baby, Knocked Up, Tropic Thunder, which was great.
Marc:Canadian actor.
Marc:I like the guy.
Marc:Always liked the guy.
Marc:Always liked his acting.
Marc:The Goon movie was good.
Marc:I don't know much about hockey.
Marc:I'll talk to him about that.
Marc:But he's coming up here in a second.
Marc:So I was on vacation.
Marc:I'm back.
Marc:I'm back in L.A.
Marc:It's hot.
Marc:Again, it's hot, but it's not covered in water, which is horrifying.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:We need water sometimes, but you know what I'm saying.
Marc:I was in New Mexico, and I got to tell you, the last few days were just great.
Marc:We went up north to Abiquiu, which is where Georgia O'Keeffe had her house and her studio.
Marc:And I like O'Keeffe, and I like her aesthetic.
Marc:I like her paintings.
Marc:I didn't know much about her, but I'll tell you, man, we've been in New Mexico like six days, and it wasn't until we drove up north
Marc:out of Santa Fe towards Abiquiu that I really felt like, all right, now this is it.
Marc:This is fucking beautiful.
Marc:I mean, I like Santa Fe.
Marc:I like Albuquerque.
Marc:I like Northern New Mexico, but I'd not been up to Abiquiu and I was like, this is where it's at.
Marc:It just moved me.
Marc:And we took a tour of O'Keeffe's house.
Marc:And it was just beautiful.
Marc:The place is kept exactly how she left it.
Marc:And you go, you move through her house, and you move through some of her choices aesthetically.
Marc:You see her teapots and her coffee maker and her table.
Marc:And you just see how she lived her life.
Marc:And the tour guide was good.
Marc:He was informative.
Marc:But it wasn't until we got out to...
Marc:The studio where she just had this huge window that looked out over this valley and mountains and Abiquiu and and just the whole feeling of the place.
Marc:I've never really felt somebody in a room as much as I felt that.
Marc:And I got choked up looking out of the window of Georgia O'Keeffe's.
Marc:I mean, I'm emotional and I cry at weird times and probably more than I should.
Marc:And then I don't cry when I should.
Marc:But nonetheless, I'm very impressed with Georgia O'Keeffe, but I don't have that much of a connection with her.
Marc:I know her work, but she's not like, you know.
Marc:I mean, she's a presence in my life, but you know what I mean.
Marc:I'm not that attached, so I was surprised.
Marc:that I was moved to that amount of emotion.
Marc:It just speaks to the power of that country, the power of that artist.
Marc:It was pretty amazing, man.
Marc:It was pretty amazing.
Marc:And the undercurrent of my entire trip was this weird bump in my mouth that I was pretty sure was mouth cancer, which obviously led to me quitting nicotine today because along with doing nicotine lozenges, sometimes I...
Marc:Do a little dip occasionally.
Marc:Not much, really not much.
Marc:But I was like, of course, I'm the guy that gets the mouth cancer.
Marc:Maybe I do.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But nonetheless, why is it that every time I go on vacation, there has to be this undercurrent of complete panic?
Marc:I think, and this is when I go with Sarah the Painter.
Marc:Personally, I don't know.
Marc:I don't know who you are, but I know I'm sort of emotionally complicated.
Marc:I may be predictable and you may get me, but sometimes I play tricks on myself and it seems that my preoccupation with whatever was in my mouth was a way of avoiding intimacy and staying out of the present.
Marc:Until I got to Abiquiu and stood in Georgia O'Keeffe's studio and looked out her window.
Marc:Everything became much bigger than me.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Let's talk to Jay Baruchel.
Marc:It's very hard for me not to pronounce it Baruchel.
Marc:I got to talk to him about that.
Marc:As I said before, he wrote and directed the new movie Goon, Last of the Enforcers, which comes out Friday, September 1st.
Marc:And it was really, this is a great talk.
Marc:It was great talking to this guy.
Marc:I hope you enjoy it.
Marc:And I hope it takes you away from anything that you want to be taken away from.
Thank you.
Guest:How do you pronounce your last name right?
Guest:I say, now there is no right, because technically right would be the Hebrew pronunciation, but I say Baruchel.
Marc:Baruchel.
Marc:Isn't that what most people say?
Marc:Some people go Baruchel.
Marc:I get Baruchel.
Guest:Baruchel.
Guest:Very few.
Guest:Very seldom.
Guest:Baruchel.
Guest:That's how it should be said.
Guest:When you do the junket in Israel.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:Baruchel.
Guest:The Israelis don't believe that that's actually my last name.
Marc:really because it's fucking super full-on yeah no yeah it's usually that's like the the jewish version of a name a filipina name right right rosario crucifixia yeah like uh like my hebrew name it's it's similar like my name is mark maron but then when you go get your hebrew name it's michael david ruben borach you know it's like a whole legacy of uh
Guest:My friend Richard had the worst one because there's nothing Hebrew about Richard.
Guest:So his Hebrew name was Hanach.
Guest:Hanach?
Marc:They just make them up.
Marc:It's close.
Guest:Sounds like it.
Marc:But wait, are you Jewish?
Marc:Half.
Marc:Which half?
Guest:My dad.
Guest:So technically I'm nothing because in Judaism it's what your mom is and in Catholicism it's what your dad is.
Guest:And the two cancel each other out for me.
Guest:Well, that's good.
Guest:That's freedom.
Guest:I suppose, or crippling guilt on both ends.
Guest:Did you get that, though?
Guest:Oh, I have a really shitty joke that I've been telling you since I was a teenager.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Well, that's a good setup.
Guest:Boy, let's get on with it.
Guest:It's two very different, very potent forms of guilt.
Guest:One makes me feel guilty for masturbating, the other for not returning phone calls.
Marc:Oh, good, good, yeah.
Marc:What, did you do stand-up, or you just wrote that one day?
Marc:Just full of chutzpah.
Marc:Yeah, this is a keeper.
Marc:Yes, I am.
Marc:This is how I'm going to do it.
Guest:It summed it all up pretty well.
Marc:But, like, a lot of times, it took me a while to realize that there is a huge Canadian Jewish community.
Marc:Big time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Big time.
Marc:And it's old school, too.
Guest:No, it is.
Guest:It's been there since, technically, in Montreal and Toronto since, like, yeah, end of the 19th century.
Marc:Right.
Marc:When there's trade, there's Jews.
Guest:That's...
Guest:It's like, what?
Guest:We can make money on fur?
Guest:And here's a morbid statistic is slightly morbid, which is like, yeah, Montreal, probably not so much anymore, but for a long time, Montreal, world's third highest population of Holocaust survivors.
Marc:That's because that was one of the places they went.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Israel's hot.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Get on this boat.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:It must be.
Marc:And our cousins are in New York.
Marc:That's the idea.
Marc:So there's, yeah, the port in Montreal, port in Ellis Island.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:Israel.
Marc:No, those are the three options.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:But they've been there since... Oh, so you're saying...
Marc:Since that or before that?
Marc:I think before that as well.
Marc:Usually when there's fur trading and there's money to be made through exchange.
Guest:Well, it's like when you're talking about Jewish diaspora, which one?
Guest:There's fucking... That's right.
Guest:Thousands of them because for... Spanish Inquisition.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The Purge.
Marc:But, you know, sometimes they just left, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so on my dad's side, the Baruchels, we are Sephardic.
Guest:So we are not of that sort of traditional what most people that are... Eastern European.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, not at all.
Guest:No, we were from Italy originally and then chased out of Italy and settled in Algeria and Palestine and Egypt.
Guest:And we were in Alexandria, Egypt for generations, which was used to be the world capital of Sephardic Jews.
Marc:Wow, you did the homework.
Marc:You did the research.
Marc:I'm just a huge history nerd.
Marc:This was passed down to you.
Marc:Alexandria, Egypt.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:That's where you guys hung out.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Up until, what's his face?
Guest:Nasser.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, that long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the story in our family was that, yeah, one day, you know, we'd been there for God knows how long.
Guest:And then one day we were just sort of told, you owe nothing.
Guest:You're not welcome here.
Guest:Get the hell out.
Marc:yeah well sadly i'm waiting for that day here so i'm hoping boy yeah i know tell me about it so i'm like there's all these things it's so funny i've been talking about it on stage like there were things like i always liked going to canada but there was a there's a moment as an american the first time you go to toronto or montreal where you're like well it's kind of like america but there's no edge to it it's a little slow it's kind of like there's no anxiety there's no panic just day-to-day life you know there was a shot you know when you first go to montreal or toronto you're
Marc:Why is that guy just sitting outside on a bench at 10 third?
Marc:What kind of crate?
Marc:There are people walking, you know, but now I'm sort of like, sounds good.
Marc:Sounds relaxing.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:Although that's the thing.
Guest:A lot of our our our political issues and all of our sort of big debates don't make it down here.
Guest:So this sort of narrative of Canada as the big pastoral, huge version of Minnesota and Vermont, which it is in a lot of way.
Guest:But it also, you don't know how the sausage gets made.
Guest:And we have our own issues.
Guest:No, I'm sure.
Guest:We're divisive about enough stuff.
Guest:Yeah, especially in Montreal, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And also there's like our big shame, the big cross to bear in Canada is our relationship with our native community.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which I'm constantly amazed that that doesn't seem to be a narrative down here at all.
Guest:America seems to have made peace with the fact that they got rid of them.
Marc:I don't know if they've made peace.
Marc:I think years ago, they're like, we gave them the casinos.
Marc:So it's okay.
Marc:So everything's fine.
Marc:They've got money coming back in.
Marc:How much do they need?
Marc:No, it's a heinous part of history.
Marc:It is.
Marc:But as a national storyline, yeah, it should be more.
Guest:But that's all I'm, you know, and it's because it's all consuming in Canada.
Guest:It's a part of our narrative.
Guest:It's in the headlines every single day.
Guest:There's a multimillion dollar inquiry happening right now into missing and murdered indigenous women.
Guest:Because like if you're born native and female in Canada, you're six times more likely to die a violent death.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At the hands of who?
Guest:Well, take your pick.
Guest:Yeah, there's a yeah.
Guest:And there's a massive cultural disconnect.
Guest:And Canada, finally, we're owning up to it and doing what needs to be done, at least to explore and try to figure out how we can make stuff better for so long, though, I suspect we didn't.
Guest:Yeah, because it went against our superiority thing of thinking we're better than America.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And and this was the sort of dirty little secret that that didn't dovetail with the rest of our branding as the sort of liberal north.
Marc:But how much of... How integrated is that community?
Marc:Do they still... Are there still large populations throughout?
Marc:Were they subjugated to ghettoization and reservations?
Guest:Yeah, that's precisely right.
Guest:So there's a great deal of them live in reservations, which is...
Guest:You know, listen, I'm not from that community, so I can't speak to it.
Guest:And I know people from those communities who prefer living there than they would in the cities.
Guest:But also there are cities like Winnipeg where you have a marginalized ghettoized population of natives in the urban cities, in the urban community.
Guest:And it's like...
Guest:It's this... My friend put it perfectly.
Guest:My friend Jacob Tierney put it to me 10 years ago.
Guest:He said, if white people were dying at the rate that natives are dying, there would be a billion-dollar inquest into figuring out what the hell is wrong.
Marc:Sure, of course.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's sort of like now they're going to do a sort of national emergency over the opioid epidemic.
Marc:Unlike the crack epidemic.
Marc:Right?
Marc:It's funny how that happens, eh?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fighting the good fight is a...
Marc:They don't make it easy nowadays.
Marc:No, it's fucking scary.
Marc:But everybody seems to love your prime minister.
Marc:I don't know him.
Marc:But I feel like, you know, like in my fantasies, if, you know, things got so awful here that I, like he, you know, publicly he presents a persona like, I could probably call that guy.
Marc:Like, you know, now that I know Jay.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's exactly it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, he's I'm I'm a I'm an avowed fan and I come by it.
Guest:Honestly, I have voted Liberal Party pretty much since I was 18.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My parents did.
Guest:My grandparents did.
Guest:And my mom was a huge fan of his father.
Guest:His father's wife was pretty... Yes, she got into some trouble, Maggie, with the Rolling Stones.
Guest:With Mick Jagger.
Guest:Yeah, and then Pierre went to the Oscars, I think, with Barbra Streisand.
Guest:Did he?
Guest:Now, is Maggie his mom?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:No kidding.
Marc:Is she still around?
Marc:I don't know, actually.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Marc:The old man's gone, right?
Guest:Yes, he is.
Guest:And that was a big, sad sort of national day of mourning because that's our longest serving prime minister.
Guest:He had three terms for us.
Marc:Like, I remember not knowing anything about politics, but knowing him.
Guest:Yeah, he was one of these guys.
Guest:He was erudite and dressed super well and very charismatic.
Guest:And captured that sort of 60s, 70s kind of renaissance man zeitgeist.
Marc:Sure, he was a groovy guy.
Marc:Back when the New York intelligentsia meant something.
Marc:When most of culture was dictated by what was going on on the Dick Cavett show.
Marc:That's exactly it.
Marc:precisely and then he rolls into the oscars wearing uh sandals and no socks like the guy was a gangster at least he didn't wear a canadian tuxedo which i do occasionally yeah we all have to every once in a while so now you live there still i do and that's a choice yep do you i mean you must have been here for a while i mean i've been coming down here on and off since i was never lived here
Guest:No, that's not true.
Guest:I've done stints.
Guest:I've done stints, but it was never home.
Guest:Simple as that.
Guest:You got brothers and sisters?
Guest:One little sister.
Marc:Oh, you got a little sister.
Marc:And what are your parents, what's their business?
Guest:What's their racket?
Guest:Well, my dad passed in 04.
Marc:Sorry, buddy.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:But before he passed, he was a...
Guest:He got most of this out of his system before I was born.
Guest:But, yeah, my dad was a big, like, he was a hood.
Guest:He was a drug dealer.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And went to prison the whole nine yards.
Guest:Really?
Guest:When I was a kid, though, he sort of had stopped that stuff for the most part, you know, as much as he could.
Guest:But all of the friends that he'd bring over, like, all the adults in my house were all guys that are, like, no longer in Canada.
Guest:Or if they're in Canada, they're, like, in cemetery.
Marc:Well, see, for me, but I've learned better.
Marc:But there's part of me that kind of stereotypically goes, like, a Jewish drug dealer?
Marc:I have that moment.
Marc:But there's Jewish gangsters.
Marc:Jews do a lot of things.
Marc:Yeah, Meyer Lansky.
Marc:Business is business.
Marc:Meyer Lansky helped design the American mob.
Marc:Yeah, no shit.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Long East woman.
Marc:There's a long history of...
Guest:Big time.
Guest:Jewish criminals.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:And my dad, although my dad really, he didn't run with.
Guest:Henry Kissinger, another famous Jewish criminal.
Guest:Famous Jewish, Woody Allen, famous Jewish criminal.
Guest:But my father ran with the West End gang, which is an Irish gang in the west side of the city.
Guest:And it all came from my dad had the fight in him.
Guest:He moved there.
Guest:His family moved to Canada when he was like four years old and they didn't move from Egypt from France.
Guest:They had gone from Egypt to France to Montreal and they didn't move to one of the great Jewish communities in Montreal.
Guest:They moved to a very French neighborhood where they were the only Jews on the block.
Guest:Is that where he met your mom?
Guest:No, he met mom at a nightclub.
Guest:Fucking hell.
Guest:And then they had dated for six weeks and then someone dared them to get married and they fucked off to Montego Bay, Jamaica and got married.
Guest:And then six months after that, mom's visiting him at prison.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:She was this country girl and she had only been in the city for a year or two.
Guest:And then all of a sudden she's like the...
Guest:drug dealer's wife and she stayed together they stayed together so roof over her head and food in my belly and um no kidding so you so he did a stint in the can yeah and then he tried to go legit and sold microchips um but legit microchips
Guest:Yes, as legitimate.
Marc:As an ex-drug dealer, the microchip business, going right from drug to microchips, already suspect.
Guest:He'd sell anything.
Guest:That was my dad.
Guest:And then on their weekends, they would sell antiques, restore and sell antiques.
Guest:My father was just a chaser.
Guest:And I grew up in a real haggle culture.
Guest:And my dad could just, he would claim he could sell sand to an Arab was his term.
Marc:Yeah, huh.
Marc:So he was in this French-Canadian neighborhood, and that's where he sort of took to the streets?
Guest:Yeah, and started fighting.
Guest:He started dealing at 13 or 14.
Guest:What?
Guest:First pot, then cocaine.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And cocaine's where he made and lost most of them.
Guest:In the 70s, 80s?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was like the guy with all the party favors, and mom was the model on his arm, and they just cut the line and went to the nightclub.
Guest:Disco assholes.
Marc:So he probably knew Maggie Trudeau.
Guest:they definitely cross paths i hear all these i will get these snapshot anecdotes from like 70s coke montreal discos of like tony bennett and leslie nielsen coming through and all this i remember your dad that kind of stuff yeah and um he was a character that's it and then they fucked off to florida tallahassee florida for a year of all places yeah there was not even beach or nice it was close to columbia
Guest:and uh oh yeah and like before the shit went down and literally the first pet that i grew up with our german shepherd when i was a kid her name was coca yeah come on i swear to god he was really in i swear not hiding much both of them both of them no difference is is and my namesake who i'm fucking named after just speaks to this awful life that they were living but um because mom when she found out she was pregnant
Guest:that day on cold turkey nothing hadn't done anything and not since didn't look back since oh she stopped doing right away drinking and booze she was like this is it yeah uh my my father did not um and and i'm jay but my real jays for me is short for jonathan my name is jonathan and i asked mom who am i am i named after somebody yeah and
Guest:And I might as well not be.
Guest:It's pretty fucking arbitrary who I'm named after.
Guest:Do you remember a TV show with Robert Wagner called Heart to Heart?
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And his character's name was Jonathan Hart.
Marc:No.
Marc:That's who you're named after?
Marc:And then it was the two of them.
Marc:They were like a couple.
Marc:What was her name?
Marc:They're like Private Eyes or something?
Marc:Yeah, Private Eyes, yeah.
Marc:I kind of remember that.
Guest:So that's who I'm named after is Jonathan fucking Hart.
Guest:A character on a TV show.
Guest:That Robert Wagner played for what, two seasons?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That's bizarre.
Guest:It's awful.
Guest:And had I been a girl, I'd have been jazz.
Guest:And my parents hate jazz music.
Guest:So put that, yeah.
Marc:That's what your sister's name is?
Guest:No, thank God.
Guest:She's Taylor.
Guest:Taylor.
Marc:She got normal.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, that's pretty normal.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So did he die of natural causes?
Marc:No, he had an overdose of 49.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Of what?
Of what?
Guest:Well, his sort of nightly cocktail would be, do you know Dilaudid's?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Hardcore.
Guest:Yeah, Dilaudid's and vodka.
Guest:And he'd do a pint of vodka every night.
Marc:So he was gone.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:oh man so that that's a that disease uh alcoholism addiction it's a big one and 49's young and it's something i know a lot about and and i have very strong and specific opinions about it um and uh you're lucky you didn't get it i did i am and and i had it was 50 50 because um so dad's family are all drunks really mom's family strangely the irish side of me no one this is really crippling alcohol allergy they
Guest:that my mom has, my grandmother had.
Guest:So they're companions to drunks.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You got some of the codependent Irish.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:And I had 50% chance of being allergic to liquor or an alcoholic.
Marc:And I thank God inherited mom's terrible tolerance.
Marc:And do you find yourself dating troubled people?
Fuck.
Guest:Jesus Christ.
Guest:I mean, yeah, no more than anyone else, I suspect.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah, all right.
Marc:Well, no, I mean, I know it because I'm sober 18 years.
Marc:Oh, mazel tov.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Just the other day.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:But, you know, the mindset of it, you know, how you're brought up and what you grew up.
Marc:You know, part of your brain looks to recreate that at every turn.
Marc:And it's hard to shake it because it feels right.
Marc:And a lot of times when you come from crazy, you're going to find yourself from crazy.
Marc:Yeah, if only for familiarity's sake.
Marc:Well, yeah, but it happens at such a deep level, you can't even figure it out.
Marc:Like sometimes they seem normal for a month or two.
Marc:Yeah, no, I know.
Guest:Yeah, and especially this industry has a lot of people that one of the first lessons I learned when I first started coming down here was that there's a difference between being good at chatting and being a good person.
Guest:And there's a lot of people here that are very good at talking.
Guest:And when you come from a normal place, meeting someone that is good at has the gift of gab, you're like, oh, cool.
Guest:I can connect with this person.
Guest:Well, fucking everybody down here is good at talking.
Guest:And so it took me a year before I was like, oh, oh, they can string a sentence together.
Guest:It doesn't mean they have a conscience.
Marc:They seem to like me.
Marc:That doesn't mean they do.
Marc:That means garbage.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Total fuck all.
Marc:Yeah, they're looking for what they can get.
Marc:Always, always.
Marc:And your mom stayed with them until the end?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:She got into her wits end about seven years before he passed.
Guest:And what does she do?
Guest:Well, she was a homemaker for most of my life.
Guest:And then when my folks split up and...
Guest:And my dad didn't have a pot to piss in, so didn't have any child support to throw our way whatsoever.
Guest:And I started kind of paying our bills at 14.
Guest:No kidding.
Marc:You were that child actor.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But always with the caveat, my mom never...
Guest:she made it abundantly clear i do not depend on my son right we're a family you have the money now we'll take care of you but by the way you want to stop tomorrow you stop tomorrow she said it to me very specifically she says we do poor very well yeah okay so we will go back to being poor very easily and my mom no guilt in that none whatsoever no the opposite but but in the back of your mind you're like man we may do it well but no no
Guest:I don't mind it.
Guest:Because everything's fun and everything's a treasure.
Guest:And I grew up with very little money in our house.
Marc:Sporadic money.
Guest:Yeah, if any.
Guest:And necessity is the mother of invention.
Guest:So I had a much more interesting, rewarding childhood than a lot of my friends who grew up with not a single care in the world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And mom told me at nine that no one's going to give me anything.
Guest:I remember saying to her, because I'd see all these American movies that filled my head with nonsense that I turned 16 and my parents will get me a car or some stupid thing.
Guest:And so I said to her, I said, when I'm 16, I get a license, she'll get me a car.
Guest:She said, absolutely not.
Guest:She's like, if you decide you want a car, I'll help you figure out how to save your money.
Guest:I was like, oh, but you'll send me to university.
Guest:She's like,
Guest:No.
Guest:Once again, if you decide at 18, you want to go to university, I'll help you figure out how to save your money, but I'm not sending you anything.
Guest:You're going to be a grownup.
Guest:You'll buy it yourself.
Guest:And thank fuck.
Guest:I got that because so many people I know got out of university with this God awful sense of entitlement that they had done their four years and wasted 200 grand or however fucking much money they spend.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And now they feel that they've, they're owed something.
Marc:And I've never without do it without getting any skills necessarily at school.
Guest:Or, you know, getting dirty and fucking suffering for it because they think school is suffering enough, right?
Guest:And I just always was raised to know big bad world.
Guest:You got no one to trust but your friends and your family and no one's going to give anything to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's seen me in good stead.
Marc:Yeah, no, I think it's a good thing to learn.
Marc:You know, that this idea that everybody can be rich has really- Horseshit.
Marc:Horseshit.
Marc:It's horseshit.
Marc:And also, I think it diminishes people's engagement.
Marc:Agreed.
Marc:With trying to do something.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:When I was exactly right, the old fucking thing was, what do you want?
Guest:What's the house you want, the car you want, the life you want?
Guest:How hard and long do you have to work to get there?
Guest:Do that.
Guest:And now, as my friend points out, every morning someone's on Facebook, sees their friend's TV or car or backyard or like, oh, I want that.
Guest:And that's fine.
Guest:But rather than the metric of how can I work to get that, it's,
Guest:How can I have this tomorrow?
Marc:Yeah, how can I get credit?
Marc:How can I get... Well, yeah.
Marc:I don't know what I wanted.
Marc:I just wanted to feel okay.
Marc:Yeah, that's a fucking perfectly reasonable thing, man.
Marc:I'm living in a crumbling house.
Marc:I could probably get a better house now, but I don't even want that.
Marc:I just want to be okay.
Marc:Yeah, normal.
Marc:But yeah, I know.
Marc:I guess it's really hard for people to know what the hell they want to do when they don't have to do it.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Very, very, very true.
Marc:Like, that's the weird thing.
Marc:Like, people who have to fucking do shit... You figure it out.
Marc:You figure it out.
Guest:Because your other option is homelessness or death.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like, honestly, or living on the dole for the rest of your life.
Guest:And, like, I just... It bums me out that people aren't... Every generation has less staying power than the one before it, you know?
Marc:And more access and more convenience and more, you know, like, distractions and...
Marc:Yeah, it's hard for me to wrap my brain around all of it.
Marc:Because, I mean, you're not exactly saying pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Marc:You're saying, like, I'll just get engaged somehow.
Marc:Find something.
Guest:Do something.
Guest:Give a shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And work.
Guest:That's the other thing.
Marc:Or if you're not going to give a shit and you don't know what you want to do, try and help some other people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, or if not, keep your fucking mouth shut and just sit there then and know that you've figured it out.
Guest:You're gaming the system in some way, but there's this awful need of self-branding that maybe it's a function of social media culture.
Marc:Right, but we're also in a specific world that nurtures a certain delusion on behalf of people who want to be involved in it.
Marc:So there's a lot of self-branding and those brands aren't taking.
Right.
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:No, no kidding.
Marc:But there's no one to tell them they're not there.
Marc:I got 200 likes on this.
Marc:I'm like, all right.
Guest:And what?
Guest:And I honestly, I think this is going to sound like an exaggeration, but I really think that has terrible repercussions on like discourse because I've noticed I've seen this awful thing.
Guest:I'm someone who would probably most of my beliefs would probably be described as liberal.
Guest:And I am constantly offended at how people that are supposed to be ideological allies of mine don't actually try to convince people that are opposed to them.
Guest:They just scream their opinion louder.
Marc:Or get defensive.
Guest:Yeah, get defensive.
Marc:Call them names.
Guest:Or hope they get that retweet.
Guest:I got that stinging dig in there.
Guest:I won that fight.
Guest:Well, you fucking didn't because the country and culture are suffering because of it.
Guest:I firmly believe...
Guest:Your goal should be to try to convince this person of your bridge to get right Yeah, and the only way you're gonna do that is by trying your best to not get their backup and not and to and to find common ground You you grew up like me you you're you're trying to pay your taxes and feed yourself, right?
Marc:We're doing the same thing in defense of some of that you don't want to start a DM relationship with kill all Jews
Marc:No, no.
Guest:Obviously, there's a scale.
Guest:There's a tier system.
Guest:There's a triage system to it.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:At Hitler is right.
Guest:It's not going to be your friend.
Guest:No.
Guest:At coming race war is not the guy that I need to be.
Guest:Although, to be honest, an argument could be made that if I don't try to convince that man of mine, or at least try to plant the seed.
Marc:Find some common ground.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then that's how bad shit happens.
Guest:And I know that it works.
Guest:I don't often get into political arguments on Twitter because I believe that I don't get on.
Marc:I got off it altogether.
Marc:I just use it for promotion and occasionally answer some questions.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:And for me, it was I believe that if you share a viewpoint, you should have you should have the patience to then defend it.
Guest:If you don't have that in you and the appetite, keep it to yourself.
Guest:That's why we vote behind a curtain, is my opinion.
Guest:And once in a while, I get into it.
Guest:And I had said something last year during the American election.
Guest:I was quite pissed at the Muslim ban that he was trying to run on.
Guest:And I called him a fucking brown shirt on Twitter.
Guest:And, of course, that opened up a whole hella beans on me.
Marc:The army of brown shirts reacted.
Guest:The army of brown shirts.
Marc:The army of unfuckable hate nerds.
Guest:The Sturmabteilung came at me en masse.
Guest:And what I was so mad about was the Jewish people that tried to call me a traitor to my people for saying that.
Guest:And I would have these sort of very kind of Netanyahu.
Marc:Anti-Muslim Jewish people.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And they would accuse me of betraying my ethnicity.
Guest:And I got bloody mags.
Guest:I said, no, it's because of my ethnicity, because my parents and grandparents and people that look like me and have my surname have been fucking marginalized and painted as the big bad other for the better part of 500 years.
Guest:No, 500.
Guest:Fuck that.
Guest:2000 years.
Guest:3000 years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's why I, it behooves us.
Guest:We should know fucking better.
Guest:That's where it comes from.
Guest:How dare you fuck that?
Guest:And that pisses me the fuck off.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:And all the triangulation just, it just mutes everything.
Marc:Yes, it does.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Echo chambers screaming at each other.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it just, but like that whole thing where you can't like there's within each subgroup, there are subgroups and there are divisions.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:You know, on the left, you know, on the right.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:But when the left starts to break apart, you know, it really starts, it really kind of continues to fragment.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:To where there's just like a group of two people that are really against glue.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I think, you know.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And very, very grossed out and offended anytime someone mentions glue.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But yeah, it's hard to get on the same page.
Marc:So like, but you weren't brought up politically active.
Guest:Oh, actually, I was.
Guest:No, I in a big way.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What about like, what was your relationship with your grandparents?
Marc:I mean, your father's parents, they must have had some ideological.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Well, yeah, big time.
Guest:So my dad's mom converted to Judaism.
Guest:She was a French woman from Normandy that met my grandpa and got married and converted.
Guest:So when she was before she was Jewish, she was a child in Normandy when the Germans conquered it.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And then she became Jewish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they, you know, they had very strong opinions about that stuff.
Guest:You know, like we were never a German car.
Marc:A lot of converts are really Jewish.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pride of the convert is what they call it.
Marc:They put the work in.
Guest:That's like nobody from New York likes New York as much as people that just moved there.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All my friends from there are like, yeah, it's a great town.
Guest:It's where I grew up, but it's just a city.
Guest:Everyone that moved there thinks, oh my God, have you tried this place?
Guest:And it's just so freeing.
Guest:I can walk anywhere.
Guest:So no German cars.
Guest:No German cars.
Guest:And so on that side, and then on mom's side,
Guest:my granddad was a career soldier, um, and was, uh, then in the first one of the first UN peacekeeping missions in Cyprus.
Guest:And I, and, and like I said, and like a great deal of my uncles and cousins on my mom's all military, most of my mom's sisters married soldiers.
Guest:And, um, and so I grew up in a very sort of on that side, incredibly patriotic, uh, belief system.
Guest:Um, because like my uncle Ron, in addition to being a soldier,
Guest:He was a Mountie for 35 years.
Guest:He guarded Her Majesty the Queen as well as Pope John Paul II.
Guest:And this is like a big point of pride in our family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we have seen Canada as ours and ours to serve for generations.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'm probably imbuing a bit of romance on it because my mom's family were just poor and soldiers are good poor people jobs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, but there was always a sense of, uh, of patriotism and honor to it.
Guest:And it was like my great lump in my throat.
Guest:The great shame in my life is that I never joined the army and never went to roll military cottage in Kingston, a college cottage, Royal military college in Kingston.
Guest:It was something that from three years old, I said, mom, I want to be a soldier like uncle Doug.
Guest:And you felt the need to serve.
Guest:And mom would be like, and having grown up on that culture in that culture, having seen like the good side of it with my granddad, but maybe some of the bad side of it as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She wanted to keep me as far away from as possible.
Guest:And then we moved back to Quebec.
Guest:We left Quebec in 88.
Guest:anglos moved to toronto like a lot of them did we moved back to quebec in 93 there was a provincial election in 94 and a referendum in 95 when we moved back to montreal everyone was telling my father you're going the wrong way down the 401 and within a year of us getting back to montreal my father started his own political party with two of his friends and so i at 12 13 i was watching my dad on the debate circuit and um he's a real uh real hustler huh
Guest:What was his political party based on?
Guest:So it was an issue party.
Guest:They didn't expect to get any seats whatsoever.
Guest:It was purely they wanted to make sure that everyone was aware what the true issue in this election was.
Guest:Was it about secession?
Guest:And so, and that will, for whatever reason, that wasn't the biggest narrative at that point.
Guest:And so dad's party, the Canada exclamation mark party was there to debate and bandy about this idea to everyone that if you elect this party, you can expect a referendum inside of a year.
Guest:And and so I watched dad learned how to debate and then was on the debate team myself.
Guest:But I watched this.
Guest:I had a very grassroots vital introduction into Canadian politics.
Guest:And then so fucking grassroots that.
Guest:So my dad's party didn't have a pot to piss in.
Guest:He made his own posters.
Guest:He literally just went to the fucking metro station, got in the photo booth, took the photo that looked the least like Saddam Hussein, because my father is very Sephardic and look very much like Saddam Hussein.
Guest:He then went to the photocopy store, made up a bunch, and then staple gunned them to trees.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Everyone else was tying them to light poles.
Guest:And so in like very progressive lefty Montreal, so we- Can't staple shit to trees.
Guest:At a certain point, we saw these people writing, thanks for killing the tree, asshole.
Guest:All this little like-
Guest:Bubble writing?
Guest:Yeah, it was amazing.
Marc:Well, it's interesting.
Marc:In the haze of dubious employment, your father found to take it upon himself to create a political party.
Marc:Very smart man.
Guest:That's what it was.
Guest:Just like a fiercely, fiercely intelligent man.
Marc:Did his debating and presence provoke anything in dialogue around that?
Guest:Oh, definitely.
Guest:And he was asked to join one of the bigger parties because my dad could always fucking argue better than anybody.
Guest:My dad liked fighting, period.
Guest:Whether it was a fistfight or an argument, he just had the fight in him and he was fucking good at it.
Guest:And and so he got he was asked to join the Canadian Quebec version of the Progressive Conservative Party.
Guest:I turned them down.
Guest:But yeah, no, he it.
Guest:I learned so much, and it made me understand that these institutions are ours.
Guest:There was never a disconnect.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:The Capitol never felt far away.
Guest:And to me, I posit that that's America's biggest problem is the average taxpayer voter feels a billion miles away from the Capitol.
Marc:Yeah, but some of that has to do with, you know, I don't think it's intentional.
Marc:I think there's just a disconnect.
Marc:There's a massive disconnect.
Marc:That these people actually do anything.
Guest:Yeah, 100%.
Guest:And that's why there's always a kernel of truth in any bad lie.
Guest:And so the one thing that righties and lefties in the States can both agree on is the system doesn't work.
Marc:That's the one thing everyone says.
Marc:But they also, outside of people gaming the system and mobilizing people who may not know better, they don't realize that it's their system.
Marc:And they own it.
Guest:You know what I've never heard?
Guest:This was a very telling thing because the time that I was in the States the most consistently was from 2000 through 2005, which is a very colorful era.
Guest:And something that I constantly heard that always made my spider senses tingle was when I heard these people talk about W and said, we have to support the president.
Guest:We're at war.
Guest:We have to support the president.
Guest:And I was like, he's not the fucking God emperor.
Guest:He's your employee.
Marc:And the weird thing is, is that like this was this is the most mind blowing thing I learned recently that I can't remember his last name, but he used to work for McCain.
Marc:He's a pun.
Marc:He's on the shows now.
Marc:But he said that when Nixon resigned, he still had like a 29 percent approval rate.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So there's always going to be 100 percent.
Marc:Those people like, you know, do you believe that the president's the president died in the wall no matter what?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So what made you get into the acting?
Guest:Oh, really a super simple thing.
Guest:My dad found a brochure for like a once a week kids acting class when I was 12.
Guest:He's working the angle.
Guest:So I started taking these courses and I auditioned for a student film that these kids were making and they couldn't afford to pay anybody.
Guest:And I got the gig and I met a pro actor who was doing a favor on that movie, recommended me to their agent.
Guest:And mom said to me, you want to go to film school, you want to be a director, which is what I've wanted since I was nine.
Guest:She said, this is the best film school in the world.
Guest:And so literally every day on set since I'm 12 has been film school for me.
Marc:oh yeah yeah and uh so what were your first because i we were in a movie together were we yeah i was in almost famous holy fuck really yeah another bit part like mine yeah the smaller bit part what did you do i was the angry promoter who chased the bus amazing amazing yeah that's me there's a few of us that are bit parts of that movie that did pretty good yeah mitch hedberg was in it nick schwartzen was in it that's right mitch hedberg i don't think he had a i don't know if he had a line but he was in the poker
Marc:Yes, that's right.
Marc:Nick Schwartzen is the guy who went, David Bowie.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:Yeah, there's a lot of people in that movie.
Guest:Hedberg.
Guest:Hedberg's favorite of all time.
Guest:I got to see him live at Just for Laughs when I was 16.
Guest:That was a big one.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Was he on his game?
Guest:Yes, he fucking was.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yes, he was.
Marc:Well, yeah, yeah, he was great.
Marc:And it's a weird thing about Mitch is that his stuff is so, it holds up.
Marc:Yes, it does.
Marc:He's my favorite ever.
Marc:Yeah, because like it's not hinged to.
Marc:No, no, no, no, no, no.
Marc:To anything really personal.
Marc:It's all observation.
Guest:Yeah, and there's nothing about any specific era.
Marc:Yeah, it's like poetry.
Guest:Yes, yeah, it just makes sense and it will always make sense.
Marc:Yeah, it's sad that he's gone.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, but that was like one of your first movies, huh?
Marc:But it was not your first gig, obviously.
Marc:No, but it was my first job in the States.
Marc:But what was your first movie?
Guest:Well, my first gig ever.
Guest:First gig, yeah, it was a TV gig, probably.
Guest:It was.
Guest:I got killed in the opening of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Guest:The Nickelodeon show.
Yeah.
Guest:yeah and then you just did a lot of canadian stuff yep yep as a kid yeah and then and then i had were you ever like a teen sensation or anything in canada i wouldn't say that but i was on a kid show that a lot of kids watched which one it's called popular mechanics for kids uh-huh and um and it's still the thing i'm recognized most for in really yeah
Guest:And and Or I mean most people know the rest of the career and think they're being very clever by being like hey No, I'm you know, you know, you know I'm a fan of yeah PMK.
Guest:Yeah, and I'll be like yeah motherfucker Everyone says it you know you're the first guys a child.
Guest:Yeah Some other stuff by the way go fuck yourself No, but I but also because my ambition was to go to film school I had thought I'd act and
Guest:Till the work kind of dried up and I got to that awkward stage that every kid gets to where I'm no longer cute kid.
Guest:And I'm not like a man.
Guest:I'm just this gangly fucking idiot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so and I stopped getting auditions.
Guest:And so I was like, OK, great.
Guest:So hopefully whatever.
Marc:What age were you 15?
Marc:18.
Marc:18.
Guest:I was like, whatever money I have saved saved up.
Guest:I'll go to film school and then I'll just live.
Guest:I'll get like a normal job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'll write indie scripts to try and make indie films in Montreal for the rest of my life.
Guest:So I was already done acting.
Guest:And then I got this gig on the judge show undeclared and here I am.
Marc:But no, but you did big parts, though, man, before that.
Marc:I mean, you're making it sound like everything dried up, but the first time I think I registered you was in Million Dollar Baby.
Guest:Oh, wicked.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:That was great.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:That's after.
Marc:I still get choked up when you get all beat up.
Marc:I'm just thinking about you getting beat up.
Marc:It's a sad one.
Marc:Yeah, it's a real sad one.
Marc:It's rough.
Marc:It's a heavy thing.
Marc:You're just this wide open kid.
Guest:It ended up being so much heavier, I think, than any of us necessarily bargained for.
Marc:Really?
Marc:I think Clint knew it was going to be heavy.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Clint knew the whole movie was a bummer, but I think that particular scene was a bit harder than we all anticipated.
Guest:Oh, but that was actually after Undeclared.
Guest:Yeah, that's after the sort of everything... So everything did sort of shit the bed.
Guest:And anything that you know me from is from post-Undeclared.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Most likely.
Guest:So how did Judd find you?
Guest:Casting director for that show...
Guest:Went to go see Almost Famous, and I guess I resonated.
Guest:Yeah, and I was home.
Guest:The Led Zeppelin kid.
Guest:Yeah, and I was at my mom's house.
Guest:I was in my sister's bedroom playing PlayStation.
Guest:The home phone rings.
Guest:Hello, this is so-and-so from Alison Jones Casting in Los Angeles.
Guest:I'm like, yeah?
Guest:Like, is this Jay?
Guest:I'm like, it is.
Guest:Like, we saw you in Almost Famous.
Guest:We'd love, we think you'd be great to audition for the Untitled Judd Apatow Project.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ah, fuck, what else am I doing?
Marc:Hold on, I'm almost done with this game.
Guest:And then that's kind of how it happened.
Marc:And then that started that relationship.
Marc:So you didn't know Seth or Evan or anybody before you met Judd?
Marc:That's it.
Marc:There's this idea that all Canadian funny people know each other, but you don't.
Guest:Canada's a very big fucking country.
Guest:Vancouver's very far from Montreal.
Guest:But it's a small entertainment industry.
Guest:It is, totally.
Guest:But Seth wasn't in it before.
Marc:Right, that's true.
Guest:All he did was some stand-up in Vancouver.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you do not undeclared, but then all the movies come knocked up.
Marc:You're great in that.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Tropic Thunder, I think, is one of the great underrated satirical masterpieces.
Guest:I think so, too.
Guest:I think history will be very kind to it.
Guest:I think what has to happen... I mean, it's not that people hate the movie.
Guest:Already quite a good amount of goodwill for it, but... It's a deep movie.
Guest:I think it gets overlooked as deep as it was.
Guest:Precisely.
Guest:And I think what's going to happen to it will be the Blade Runner Scarface thing, where once the kids that were 10 when that movie came out go to film school and analyze it, then we'll have a cult of appreciation truly for it.
Guest:Yeah, it's a real smart movie.
Guest:It really fucking is.
Guest:And we knew it.
Guest:Like, I remember Nolte saying to me, he's like, this is going to be like strange love.
Guest:And I was like, you're fucking right, man.
Guest:It really could be.
Guest:And that's like a lofty thing to compare.
Guest:And I'm sure I'll get a lot of hate for saying that.
Marc:I'm sure Ben would love to hear that.
Guest:But I honestly think history will regard it, I don't know about as kindly as Strange Love, but in that vein.
Marc:Well, I've watched it several times after seeing... Because the stuff that oddly that pops out as...
Marc:as for me outside of the war stuff was the celebrity stuff yeah i mean that stuff scathing it's scathing but it's deep you know when he's like you know with his like wooden oscar and shit i mean it's weird it's insane and weird and born of reality yeah and downey is great yes yes and what's amazing is so obviously we were all very well versed in talking points about that
Guest:Like, we were just like, this is going to be an issue.
Guest:So what none of us anticipated that was the real issue, because that didn't seem to trigger an angry reaction.
Guest:What did was the full retard run.
Marc:That's what got more attention than the racial issue.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:We had protesters at the premiere and stuff.
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:i understand and it's not for me to tell people from another community that they have no right to be offended by something that's not my place but i was also at the same time like that i get it but you're not necessarily reacting to the point of the scene that's right yeah well that happened yeah it does you know people have to make their stand to make their uh to get their territory and
Marc:And also, by the way, I get it.
Marc:Well, yeah, it's a righteous fight.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And if that's the price you pay for being on the right side of things is that every once in a while you throw the baby out with the bathwater or you attack someone that isn't the right target.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's a small price to pay because out there they're banging.
Guest:The bigger point.
Guest:Yes, they're banging the right drum.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was like a bummer and none of us were ready for it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Right.
Guest:so yeah throughout the the judd movies like how many did you do you did knocked up just that that was it yeah just just undeclared and knocked up and then and then but you became friends with seth and evan yeah i i've known seth and evan since i was 18 since we did undeclared together and like when i'd go to vancouver it stayed at his parents house and all that stuff oh really only time i ever snowboarded i was wearing evan's snowsuit and uh yeah and then uh yeah and then we did uh this is the end together
Guest:Well, that's a good movie, too.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:I liked it.
Marc:I agree.
Guest:I thought that much better than it had any business being.
Guest:Yeah, it's it's amazing.
Marc:Another sort of scathing indictment of celebrity.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think but one that makes a lot of sense as a story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it actually structurally is a pretty strong thing.
Guest:And and it's what I like is it has an energy to it.
Guest:That's kind of its own thing.
Marc:I find the effects at the end.
Marc:Satan was good.
Guest:that's it's it's really its own animal and it is odd movie and it has like a bit of fellini in its dna and i think and i was just happy that it was definitive because my biggest criticism of comedy cinema in the past 10 years is that it's the same movie yeah the same uh font on the titles yeah everything's lit the same the wardrobe is the same it's all just four shots the the one bit of the take where they weren't talking over each other and the ad-libs were okay right like it's a they're all movies of
Marc:four shots yeah you can fall asleep to one on a plane and wake up in the middle of another one and you would think it's the same fucking movie no it's true and this is the end to me feels like I won't I'm not gonna embarrass them and call them auteurs but it is it's like a definitive intended bit of cinema no I think so and I think that those guys have a like you know that crew you know Jonah and you and Seth and Evan they're you know they kind and Judd specifically kind of created a new tone for just comedy in general yeah
Marc:I mean, I know Judd gets a certain amount of criticism for the types of people that he seems to be capturing.
Marc:But in terms of just the language of the timing and everything.
Marc:And the vibe.
Guest:And it's a shared process that him and Ben Stiller both have because they came up together on the Ben Stiller show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a neat thing for me to compare the set of Tropic Thunder to Undeclared or Knocked Up and to see where it came from the same place.
Guest:You want to go into that a little bit?
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:uh i i saw where it was similar but need to see need to see where they differed uh-huh yeah yeah i think one of them runs a set differently yeah uh slightly all right but now let's talk about your relationship and the canadian's relationship with hockey because i i didn't see the first goon movie but i watched uh this is a new one yeah oh really yeah yeah fucking right thank you it's not awkward
Marc:i mean like i don't know i didn't expect you to have seen number two so that's awesome they sent me a screener awesome and you know the one thing that i i like i started to do because i don't know hockey and i'm not a sports guy in general though i didn't learn how to skate when i was a kid uh we lived in alaska for a couple years i had a stick i had hockey skates very cool i went to the ring i could skate around a bit um but i never really knew how to play i was never on a team or anything well you just called it a ring not a rink so that a rink yeah that's
Marc:A boxing ring.
Marc:Well, it's similar in your movie.
Marc:Yes, yes.
Marc:Ring in the ring.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:One in the same.
Marc:Shared geography.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But when I was watching it with my girlfriend, I'm like, are these... Because the idea of the enforcers getting washed up and having to do these shows.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that a real thing?
Marc:Yeah, so that is... Because it's like comedy.
Guest:It's fucked up.
Guest:So that, our version of it, is like a bit kind of enhanced movie version of a very real, very sad thing that only ever happened once.
Guest:It was this thing called the Black and Blue Hockey Enforcers Tournament.
Guest:And the footage of the tournament itself is a bummer.
Guest:The documentary about them making it is very interesting because...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You see them go from town to town in Canada and every city council is like, we don't want this.
Guest:We don't want to just see two guys beat each other up and skate.
Marc:In hockey.
Guest:But not play hockey at all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then eventually Prince George, B.C.
Guest:was fine with it.
Guest:And when you see the behind the scenes things of all these guys who are like five years out from actually having been on a team.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And the checks are bouncing.
Guest:And they're having to go chase the promoter down and be like, wait, this is not what we negotiated.
Guest:So it's like wrestling.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it's like.
Guest:But it's real.
Guest:And they're actually fucking hitting each other as hard as they can.
Guest:And like, now don't get me wrong.
Guest:I am someone that.
Marc:I have to step in here and go.
Marc:The guys who wrestle get hurt.
Marc:But go ahead.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Sorry, you're right.
Guest:But let me put it.
Marc:It is choreographed.
Marc:That's what I'm saying.
Guest:Every one of those guys know who wins that fight.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:in this case they just beat each other up until it's over and uh yeah and and this bare knuckle and and they're just squaring off so this was a real thing that the opening thing like because i i know the hockey is a sport and i knew what what was being captured there were these these washed up you know fighters hockey fighters who are now just doing that yes like it it it seemed like it couldn't wasn't fabricated
Guest:It has to be born of something real.
Guest:Now, the kind of battle royale 10 guys at once thing, that's our bit of movie flourish.
Guest:But that's still the heart and spirit of that idea is the real thing of this incredibly ridiculous, over-the-top, sad thing to see.
Guest:And it's like we thought it connected perfectly to the overall theme of the whole movie, which is that evolution versus extinction.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, when you define yourself solely by what you do and especially if what you do is very finite and hurts you and you're going to have to say goodbye to it, you're faced with a very important, fundamental, profound ultimatum.
Guest:Do I evolve and embrace this next part of my life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or do I stay there trying to hold on to what I used to have?
Guest:And you pay a price if that happens, I think.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:And now in professional football, we're really seeing that most of these guys are like, we might all have this brain damage.
Marc:Well, they're running right into each other.
Marc:It was down to be that.
Marc:And in those sports like hockey and football and I imagine, well, not soccer, but there's got to be other sports where people get horrendous.
Guest:Actually, and what's so weird is they're finding it in even the soft sports.
Guest:Even soccer, it's all because no one was charting head trauma and concussions until like 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
Marc:And they fought that.
Marc:Yes, they did.
Guest:It's a good movie, that concussion movie.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:I haven't seen it.
Guest:It's good.
Guest:Tell the truth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tell the truth.
Guest:That one?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, I'll see it.
Guest:Yeah, no.
Guest:It's good on a historical, because I know about it.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:It's an important thing for people to know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and, and, and I, and I think it's, it's better for people to have the most information they have.
Guest:I think the difference is though, is when people start proselytizing and condemning.
Guest:And I think it's more about give everyone fans, players, everyone the appropriate info and let them as consenting adults decide what they want to do with their lives.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So after the success of the first Goon movie, which you wrote, you didn't direct.
Marc:And you've been a lifelong hockey fan.
Marc:Yes, sir.
Marc:That goes with your national pride, I imagine.
Marc:That's the sport.
Marc:And being my dad's son.
Marc:He's a big hockey fan?
Marc:He was the biggest.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, it was a surprise success, the first movie.
Marc:It built a cult following among the players and among... So in the States, it's in the Boondock Saints Donnie Darko cult category.
Guest:Back Home is just a bona fide success because we opened at number one across the country.
Guest:I can't tell you another time in my life where an English-Canadian movie was number one and American Picture was number two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it happened on Goon that weekend.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then we also, in the UK, we're like one of the highest, if not the highest grossing Canadian film in UK box office history.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we have these three awesome kind of fan bases.
Guest:In Canada, Canadians feel like we finally just...
Guest:named the elephant in the room and gave them the movie that they've been waiting for.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In the UK, it's this weird thing that everybody thought they would hate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then we're like, oh, yeah, no, the UK has got the biggest, oldest fight culture in the world.
Guest:Of course they like this movie.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And then for Americans, this really neat thing happened where...
Guest:In the States, hockey is like a black sheep, third tier, fourth tier sport.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And so the people that are really into it, that sort of otherness underdog thing becomes part of it.
Guest:So when a fucking movie that's like ramshackle and blue collar and kind of handmade like ours comes, it just dovetailed perfectly with how they felt already.
Guest:And it was like someone made a movie for them.
Guest:So it was kind of a really neat thing.
Marc:Well, the thing that I found in watching it was once the story kind of found its groove, I mean, I knew where it was going, but not in a predictable way.
Marc:But you're like, is that guy going to come back?
Marc:And he's so funny, that Sean William Scott.
Marc:He's amazing.
Marc:Because he plays a doofus.
Marc:Yes, he does.
Marc:He's not a very bright man.
Marc:And then you got Liev Schreiber out of nowhere, who just acts the shit out of that guy.
Marc:Yes, he does.
Marc:I couldn't believe it, because as a comic, I know the old guys.
Marc:In any profession, the guys who are- Salty dogs.
Marc:Right, and, you know, almost over.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And, like, you know, right when he hits the screen, you're like, damn.
Guest:He got the vibe, right?
Guest:He's a real character.
Guest:Yes, he is.
Guest:No, and we were so lucky.
Guest:We were spoiled for riches on the cast in both films.
Guest:T.J.
Guest:Miller had a little part in there.
Marc:Yes, that's right.
Guest:Allison Pill was genius.
Guest:She's very funny.
Guest:She is.
Guest:That was an awkward one, just purely because her and I used to live together.
Yeah.
Guest:But when professional, but we, well, it was such a, we were such a, her and I are both such like Canadian.
Guest:She is.
Guest:We're both very hokey, hard on our sleeve artists that we're not trying to like hang out.
Guest:But when it was apparent that we were going to make another one of these, there wasn't a moment's hesitation on either end about whether or not we should do it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because we both wanted to and knew the movie would be good and, or, and it was the right thing to do.
Guest:So, but she, she fucking kills it.
Guest:And, and I think Alicia Cuthbert is her sister.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:fire in that movie like even as like a non-canadian you know like having worked in boston you know there's a certain tone yes to the it's called white trash yeah well they don't like that but yeah i'm allowed to say okay working class uh you know uh foibles that's it and caricatures
Marc:But yeah, it was sort of familiar to me, but like, but so like, let me understand it.
Marc:So, so in hockey, there was a, there are guys that were hired onto teams that may not necessarily be great players, but were great fighters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's, it's, it's the dot that that era is drawing to a close.
Guest:Is that sad?
Guest:For a lot of people, yes.
Guest:I mean, it's a hard one.
Guest:If you want to go down a rabbit hole, Google the hockey fighting debate.
Guest:And what's amazing is all of the people that are against fighting is a minority of people for the most part.
Guest:It's usually writers.
Guest:None of the players really seem to have an issue with it.
Guest:Every time there's an informal poll about whether or not the NHL should ban it, the players vote overwhelmingly in favor of keeping it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And watch any fucking hockey game where two guys drop the gloves.
Guest:Find me the guy sitting in the audience.
Guest:like they're saying like oh no there's like maybe three of them overwhelmingly we appreciate it and understand it and feel connected to it now i also can't take away and dispute any of the reasons people don't like it and fine society has decided it's time for it to go which is why there's a bit of melancholy romance in all of last of the enforcers we named it last of the enforcers for a reason
Guest:right right because it's a bygone era he's meant to be the last of the gunslinger how's it doing up in canada it opened already yes it did and um it's it's been such a amazing lovely connection like people own that movie yeah it's it's and it's a hard thing to describe to someone who isn't from there because it's the only country in the world where we don't see ourselves reflected in our cinema uh-huh oh really all of our cinema is american yeah
Guest:okay yeah but there's i you know who's that um that that great armenian director up there oh yeah no adam mcgoyne's amazing yeah but what i'm saying is how many of his movies connect to the average guy in calgary i guess well that's true i i i guess there aren't the comedies that would define that's the point in right in the states in england in australia i think it's taken for granted that you flip on the television or go to the movies you'll see a movie that takes place in your country right we don't ever have that i
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:And it has repercussions.
Guest:So for us to do these, you know, because I also believe there's no such thing that's prohibitively Canadian, that this movie is not alien to Americans.
Marc:No, I got it.
Guest:Yes, you didn't see a Nova Scotia license plate.
Guest:What the fuck is this?
Guest:Where am I?
Marc:throw the remote out the window no but i never thought about it obviously i wouldn't have put that much thought into it as you did no but like yeah i don't know that i could identify outside of performing in different parts of canada you know what the the social no structure is what the what what our version of those kind of like characters are so that's it and and so we made movies where people hear
Guest:People that sound like them and look like them and like let me tell you when we did this one of the screenings in Calgary Yeah, which is a very important one for me because I said often we didn't make this movie for Toronto Vancouver Montreal made it for Calgary Hamilton Winnipeg Halifax We made it for the all the small towns.
Guest:Yeah, and we did a screening Calgary best fucking audience I'm gonna one of my proudest moments I'm gonna start crying and this kid came up to me afterwards in the Highlanders Jersey and you got to remember I came up with these teams man I invented this shit so yeah
Guest:With Evan, but I'm the one that came up with all the team names.
Guest:And so when I see people tattooing that shit on them or wearing that dress, it's a fucking huge deal.
Guest:And this kid came up to me and he said, Jay, thank you for this movie, Last of the Enforcers.
Guest:He said, Goon is my favorite film.
Guest:And since that movie's come out, I've gotten married and I'm a new father.
Guest:yeah and now you made this movie and it's like my life is is tracking in these two movies and that kid doesn't really get that very fucking often right and so that was a that was a pretty big one for me that's that's beautiful thank you yeah man thank you i've actually been to calgary yeah
Guest:yeah i worked in calorie nicest fucking people and i've been to winnipeg yeah that's where we did the first one that city's pretty beat up it's a hard it's a hard town it's a hard town it's it's often the murder capital of the country is that true we call it murder peg really yeah it's just but the actual city looks like the weather is yeah it beats the shit out of it every year it's it's the windiest part of north america i was pointing i showed i was showed that corner twice portage in maine yeah it's
Guest:fucking sucks yeah it's just this you're in the center of this like the apex of a storm it's awful it's so cold cracked cold as shit but fucking lovely people in that town salt of the earth people yeah and i will say this strangely because i didn't expect this amazing food and not just like greasy spoon good food like you
Marc:sushi steak four-star stuff like they really have a strange and and a very important but there's community yeah there's a highbrow culture there i mean like i definitely noticed that when i went and they've given the world a lot of good punk rock as well oh good yeah i mean canada's given the world a lot of good actors a lot of funny people yep i mean and but the experience of directing this was the first time that you really took it on
Guest:Yeah, aside from an episode of Trailer Park Boys, pretty much.
Marc:Yeah, I directed one of those.
Marc:But there's a Canadian thing that is uniquely Canadian.
Guest:And those are my boys, and they opened the door for us.
Guest:I've said it in many interviews, there's no goon without Trailer Park Boys.
Guest:They built an infrastructure that allowed us to make that movie.
Guest:Did you ever watch Slapshot?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:But I'm not my dad.
Guest:That's definitely for, like, there's a bit of a culture generation gap.
Marc:There's a bit of a generation gap.
Marc:But there is a theme there.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:Oh, big time.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:We're the heir apparent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:100%.
Guest:For being crass and vulgar and having that fighting spirit.
Guest:There's some really funny scenes in your movie.
Guest:Thank you very much.
Marc:The characters are very good.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:That was nice of you to say.
Guest:Yeah, directing is all I've ever wanted to do since I was nine, and it was the greatest thing I've ever been a part of.
Guest:And are you looking to do more?
Guest:Yes, that's all that I'm interested in.
Guest:I'll be lucky if some awesome acting gig finds me, then that's that.
Guest:But my intentions are all in...
Guest:Trying to get this horror movie, Random Acts of Violence, going, which I might even be able to shoot this fall, as well as the comic book stuff, which is, like, I bought 20% of a comic book company, and I'm the chief creative officer, as well as writing titles for them.
Marc:A Canadian comic book?
Guest:Yeah, called Chapter Hell.
Guest:And I'm and I'm surrounded in my house by movies and comics anyway And now I have something to do with a bunch of them and it's really cool.
Marc:Oh, that's great I was just going through my storage unit and I I went through like maybe a two-year window of comic book interest Yeah, I was never brought up with it, but there was a two-year work and like I've got all the hell blazers I mean and man hell blazers a hell of a book I
Marc:Oh, yeah, man.
Marc:I was there at the beginning, and I'm like, I can relate to this guy.
Marc:That's how far out I was.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Him and I have something in common.
Marc:That you felt allied with John Constance?
Marc:Yes, yes.
Marc:Yeah, I'm like, this is my gap.
Guest:Yeah, that speaks volumes.
Guest:That speaks volumes.
Guest:I'm better now.
Marc:I reeled it in.
Guest:Than the burnt-out supernatural sting?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, I reeled it in.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:I reeled in the belief in...
Marc:manipulating beyond my means that's right well well said but the directing thing now when you did it yeah what how did you sort of do it because i i had some experience just i've done a couple of things i directed a couple episodes of my show right of course but uh but like you know you gotta have a good dp yes but yeah you spent a lot of time on sets i mean you've worked with clint eastwood you've worked with stiller you work with apatow you work with other big directors that's it and like i said it was always film school
Guest:I was never passive, man.
Guest:I was never just there.
Guest:I was always not only observing and being a sponge.
Guest:I was also always picking the brain of whoever would let me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I made the most of all of that.
Guest:I, you know, and, and I was very fortunate.
Guest:Like Stiller was so bloody kind to me.
Guest:And it's not like he didn't have enough shit to worry about on that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he would always take time when he was lining up shots on the mini monitor.
Guest:to explain the composition of the frame, where the choppers were coming in and where this is going to go, where the camera goes.
Guest:And he knew that I would dig that.
Guest:He knew that that's what I wanted to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got to work with George Miller in Australia for two weeks on a movie that never happened.
Guest:And had it happened, he said to me, he's like, I know I want you here every day because I know you have an interest in cinema and I want you to shadow me like Mel did on Thunderdome.
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:You know, that's one of the great apprenticeships in the world.
Guest:It didn't happen.
Guest:It didn't happen.
Guest:But I also got to be on set and watch David Cronenberg do his thing.
Guest:And I got to watch.
Marc:He's a great Canadian director.
Marc:Yes, he fucking is.
Marc:He's like my hero.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was that one I just watched again?
Marc:Did he do History of Violence?
Marc:Yes, of course he did.
Marc:Amazing flick.
Marc:It is an amazing flick.
Guest:Amazing flick.
Guest:And I never read the graphic novel.
Guest:Me neither.
Guest:And I think it unfolds in such an awesome way.
Guest:Scanners.
Guest:Dope.
Marc:Videodrome.
Marc:Videodrome.
Marc:But what's the weird one about the obstetrician?
Marc:Dead Ringers.
Marc:Dead Ringers.
Marc:That's a great flick.
Marc:That's based on kind of a true story.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:Geneviève Bujold as well.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:That is.
Guest:Isn't that fucking gross?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:that fucking weird yeah the fly i mean like and i got to be in one i got to be in a movie called cosmopolis and so i got to be on set with him for two days and i got to watch him do his thing and i'd have just asked to be a guest on that set anyway i would have just stood at the wall specific and very deliberate and stylized he is and also what's so neat is in my opinion the two greatest directors i've ever had the pleasure of working for on set are clint eastwood and david cronenberg right and the two of them have the exact same set
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what I mean is not too many shots, not too many shot.
Guest:Not too many takes.
Guest:Everyone's in a lovely mood.
Guest:It's all an incredibly light on your shoulders.
Marc:They know what they want.
Guest:They know what they want.
Guest:They've hired the people that they want.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they all the crews all say the same thing, though.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:It's lovely.
Guest:We move.
Guest:You just don't want to be the guy that fucks it up.
Guest:but what's amazing is like, yeah, I think I did a total of like maybe four takes of each shot on cosmopolis.
Guest:He has the same sense of confidence and knowing the movie he wants to make as Clint did.
Guest:We're like that first day on set on million dollar baby.
Guest:I was stressed as shit.
Guest:And after every take, I said, Mr. Easter was at a rate.
Guest:And he said, I was fine.
Guest:I was like,
Guest:I could already chest move him telling the producer, who's this kid?
Marc:Why does he keep bothering me?
Guest:Who else auditioned?
Guest:And then Morgan Freeman saw me nervous and he leaned over.
Guest:He's like, if he doesn't say anything, it means he likes it.
Guest:And what that afforded me was this like huge career light bulb moment where I was like, oh yeah, what difference does it make how I feel about it?
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm not the director.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If he got what he needs for the purpose of his story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fuck, then I'm done.
Marc:But you don't have those moments where you're like, I could have done that better?
Marc:Not often.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Guest:And maybe I'm just an asshole.
Guest:No.
Guest:But I just like, if they, because if I didn't, we'd still be shooting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I just believe, I tried it, because I think that with artsy stuff, you can flower it up too much and get lost in theory.
Guest:And you've got to remember it's still a craft.
Guest:And I'm digging a ditch.
Guest:And if I'm digging the ditch that my supervisor asked me to dig...
Guest:yeah then then and he thinks the ditch is done you're good then it's not for me to be like this looks like shit you know no and and and i swear that i've since that day on million dollar baby i think maybe i've asked for another take maybe twice but then you work with directors like judd who likes to improvise so that that's a whole other animal
Guest:it is it is completely and and that's like now there are also different versions of that ad lib atmosphere yeah there are some where it's uh like comedic darwinism where it's and it's like there is a slight soup song of adversarial nature pissing contest to it and then you have the the what i like is the the
Guest:The vibe that my actors had on both goon movies, which is they really it's going to sound hokey, but they did take a team at a vibe to it, which is I. So in the pissing contest, it's how can I be the funniest guy in this scene?
Guest:Right.
Guest:On Goon with those boys, it was how I want the guy next to me to look as good as he can.
Guest:I'm setting him up.
Marc:And also stay within character because a lot of times in pissing contest movies, you can feel that they've departed from story and character.
Guest:And they don't give a shit.
Guest:And it's like having a guitar solo in every fucking song.
Marc:And that's sort of what you were talking about earlier about that kind of feeds some of the redundancy.
Guest:Yes, it fucking does, man.
Guest:And then it's like, who are you doing this for?
Marc:Right.
Guest:You're a tool and a servant and a steward of the story.
Guest:That's it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:So I saw you on, I watched you, I was just sitting around trying to avoid the world, and I watched you on Kimmel last night.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And you were talking about food.
Marc:Do you think that place where he had the moose heart was a pied de cochon?
Guest:It definitely was.
Guest:Well done, my man.
Guest:My man.
Guest:It had to have been.
Marc:Right, right, because I go to that place.
Marc:Not as much anymore since I've got the high cholesterol.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that place is insane.
Marc:It'll fucking kill you, man.
Marc:Yeah, when he said a moose heart with maple syrup.
Marc:I was like, I knew it had to be.
Guest:It was one of three places.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:It had to be au pied de cochon.
Marc:Au pied de cochon.
Marc:I've had some good shit there.
Marc:That foie gras on the buckwheat pancake with the cheese.
Marc:I've never eaten there.
Marc:That's a bit rich for my blood.
Guest:look working class cup a cup of bov roll and a ham sandwich thank you very much fine you know but for one time i will all right special yeah yeah fair all right great talking to you jay thank you for having me mark
Marc:Great talk.
Marc:Love that kid.
Marc:Love him.
Marc:Don't forget to pre-order Waiting for the Punch, Words to Live By from the WTF podcast.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com and click on the book links or go to markmarinbook.com.
Marc:And remember to upload your receipt on the pre-order page and I'll sign a book plate for you that you can stick on the inside cover.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Come on, man.
Marc:Let's just have a little, man.
Marc:How about just a quarter one?
Marc:Just a quarter.
Marc:Just a quarter.
Marc:No, I'm going to chew gum, man.
Marc:The gum doesn't do anything.
Marc:I'm just going to chew gum.
Marc:I'm going to put my earplug in.
Marc:We're going to play some guitar.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:It'll get us out of this for a minute.
Marc:I just want a taste, man.
Marc:Just give me just a little, man.
Marc:How about coffee?
Marc:Let's have some coffee.
Marc:But that'll just make me want to do the other thing.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Just chill out.
Marc:Let's play some guitar.
Guest:God.
Oh.
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer Lives!