Episode 853 - Jeff Bridges / Beau Bridges
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, 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 nicks?
Marc:What the fuckocrats?
Marc:What the fuck publicans?
Marc:The few of yous that are out there listening to me.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:By the way, I've got both Bridges boys here today.
Marc:I've got Jeff Bridges and Bo Bridges, separate conversations that...
Marc:We pulled together.
Marc:We figured it was appropriate to post them together.
Marc:It was great to talk to both the Bridges fellas.
Marc:I'm a fan of both Bridges boys.
Marc:It's hard to say that too many times.
Marc:Both Jeff and Bo, I enjoy their work.
Marc:So that's coming up.
Marc:What else is happening?
Marc:I know some of you relate to this.
Marc:The fact that...
Marc:Many of us are terrified on a day-to-day basis.
Marc:It's a reasonable response if you're checking in, if you are plugged in, if you are trying to wrap your brain around what's going on in the world now.
Marc:And don't misunderstand.
Marc:We have a president that enjoys terrifying us.
Marc:He's not unlike his nemesis in North Korea in that.
Marc:Those of us who are terrified of him, he enjoys terrifying us.
Marc:And he feels like that is a fine way to exhibit what he feels is power.
Marc:So given that and given that it is somewhat successful, I do I do honestly feel terrified some days.
Marc:What's interesting that's happening is in light of this, I think many of us are not only realizing that we can do what we can do.
Marc:We can do all that we can do.
Marc:However you're getting involved, however you're getting active, however you're preparing or pushing for the upcoming elections anywhere you are or standing up for causes or whatever you're connected to, you're doing that.
Marc:And we're doing that.
Marc:And also you have to deal with the terror.
Marc:And this is where it gets weird for me.
Marc:Something happened a few months ago with me.
Marc:the constant sort of foreboding and sense of destabilization and terror has really forced me to prioritize my life a little bit in ways that I haven't before.
Marc:Like, let's do some things that are proactive.
Marc:Let's do some healthy things.
Marc:Let's do some things that are fun, that make me feel good.
Marc:Let's do nice things for other people.
Marc:All that stuff that maybe some of you do anyways, you know, I'm trying to engage in more.
Marc:But
Marc:I guess what I'm saying is I'm just trying to compartmentalize the terror, function, you know, be proactive, help people in my life, not be a dick if possible.
Marc:It's another problem I have.
Marc:I don't know if it's your problem.
Marc:When I feel good, I could tend to be a dick.
Marc:And there's part of me that's sort of like, who cares, man?
Marc:Who cares?
Marc:You know, you made it.
Marc:You got this far.
Marc:And, you know, it's like just fucking enjoy yourself.
Marc:Whatever that means.
Marc:Anyway, that's what I'm doing.
Marc:Trying to manage my fear and hope for the best.
Marc:So, Bo Bridges.
Marc:He's done a lot of work.
Marc:Both these Bridges guys have worked.
Marc:They've done just dozens of movies, TV movies.
Marc:Bo's done a lot of TV work, but also big movies, movie movies.
Marc:He's in this new... He's got a very important pivotal part in The Mountain Between Us.
Marc:He's not on screen long, but he's the catalyst to the romance.
Marc:in this plane crash movie, but it was great talking to him, uh, just about the arc of, uh, his career and, you know, where he's at now.
Marc:And he was great in the descendants and, you know, it goes way back.
Marc:You know, I'm just, I'm just going off the top of my head.
Marc:But, you know, we talked, so you'll hear that, uh, the mountain between us with Kate Winslet and Idris Elba.
Marc:Uh, it's, it's out now the plane crash romance.
Marc:And, uh, yeah.
Marc:So this is me talking to Bo Bridges.
Uh,
Marc:Oh, Bridges.
Marc:The man.
Marc:It's kind of insane.
Marc:I watched a screener of the new movie, The Mountain Between Us.
Marc:I knew going in, and I think everybody does from watching the trailer, that the plane's going to crash.
Marc:something's gotta happen yeah it's gonna happen pretty quickly yeah and then when you come out and you're like there's the guy with he's gonna be flying the plane i'm like all right well he's got about 10 minutes that's it and you got it right yeah but you know it's wild is that uh you know you you you work the hell out of that 10.
Marc:You know that you're going down.
Marc:You're going into it.
Marc:I'm not spoiling anything for anybody.
Marc:But the way you played what happened, it was very deliberate.
Marc:There was a moment there before what happens happens where you do something with your speech pattern.
Marc:And it's just a little bit of a, I don't remember, you screwed up a saying.
Marc:A little guffawful.
Marc:Right, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I was like, uh-oh.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:Something's not going right with that guy.
Marc:But when you do something like that, because it was very convincing, is that something you came up with?
Marc:When you're playing a guy that's having that kind of situation, how much of that was in the script?
Guest:Well, some of it was indicated.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But the director was very, very hands-on.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, and he helped me a lot, honey.
Guest:We talked about it a lot.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I did my research about what happens to a guy when he has a stroke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the airplane crash itself, he had a very strong vision of how he wanted to do that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Like in one take, that was.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And when I signed up for the movie, I had only two questions.
Guest:I said, number one, am I going to have to get up in a small plane and do all kinds of crazy shit up there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For real, I mean.
Guest:For real.
Guest:I didn't want to do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, and I don't want you to drag my body all over the snow and the ice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those were your two requests.
Guest:Those were my two requests.
Guest:So they assured me that now we'd be doing the plane crash in a hangar.
Guest:Simulated.
Guest:Dummyed airplane.
Guest:And that I would do a full body cast and they'd be dragging a dummy of me around.
Guest:So that worked out good, but as it turned out, the airplane crash was hairy.
Guest:I mean, you know, we were about... Even in the hangar.
Guest:Oh, we were about 200 or 300 feet up in the air.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, and with my dog as my co-pilot, of course.
Guest:The good dog, yeah.
Guest:The director wanted to do it in one take, so we all had to hit our marks.
Guest:I, fortunately, was just in a seat so I could strap myself in really well.
Guest:And I was fully padded with body armor and everything.
Guest:And I told Kate and Idris, and I said, you guys better, you know,
Guest:pad up because I said, this is going to be pretty crazy.
Guest:And it was.
Marc:You mean when the plane comes apart?
Guest:Yeah, when it starts to bang around and stuff, they really shook the hell out of us.
Guest:And Idris and Kate had to run up and down the airplane.
Guest:The camera was on a line that went right down the whole length of the airplane so that the camera would go past me, turn around, see me,
Guest:then go back all the way to them.
Guest:So we had to not only say the lines and deal with all that, but we had to watch out for this flying camera that was coming by.
Guest:And then the dog had to hit his marks.
Guest:And below me, the aircraft was just open.
Guest:So it was like a hundred foot death drop if we fell out.
Guest:I was okay because I was strapped in, but the dog wasn't because he had to go back and forth.
Guest:so i had to kind of have a hold on him you know it was it was interesting and we did about 25 takes but we finally got you didn't get it in the one take oh no no no and no the dog everybody got everyone was okay everybody was okay i think idris banged himself up a bit but everyone else was okay
Marc:It's sort of an interesting movie because it's one of those movies where it's clearly a plane crash, but they don't even eat the dog.
Guest:Yeah, right, exactly.
Guest:For each other.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's sort of like, what's going to happen then?
Marc:And then in about a half hour in, you're like, oh, it's a romance.
Marc:It's a romantic movie.
Marc:Yeah, it is.
Marc:So you've been acting for your entire life.
Guest:Well, since I was six, I did my first job.
Marc:I mean, when you look at your filmography, it's sort of like, oh, my God, there's like 100 movies here.
Marc:There's 100 movie movies, about 100 TV movies and TV shows.
Guest:Yeah, I never counted them, but I'm sure there's a lot of them.
Guest:My first job was...
Guest:Well, no, actually, I guess it was earlier.
Guest:You were right, my whole life, because I think John Garfield carried me through a movie.
Guest:I can't remember the name of it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, he was a buddy of my dad's, and he carried me through a scene.
Guest:John Garfield.
Marc:Postman always rings twice.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The one I was in was one of his classics, and I can't think of the name of it.
Guest:But then the one where I had my first line was The Red Pony with Robert Mitchum.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who's the famous author?
Guest:John...
Marc:Steinbeck.
Marc:Oh, Steinbeck.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:The Red Pony.
Guest:And I can still remember my line.
Guest:I had only one line.
Guest:It was a coming-of-age story, a buddy of the kid.
Guest:And he was brushing a horse.
Guest:And I said, you're going to brush the hide right off him.
Yeah.
Marc:That was the first line you uttered on screen.
Guest:That was it.
Marc:But like your dad, Lloyd Bridges, is another guy.
Marc:You look at his filmography, and that's 100 movies.
Marc:So you grew up in this town, right?
Marc:I mean, you were born and raised in Los Angeles.
Marc:Beverly Hills?
Guest:No, I went to Venice High School.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:You guys are all from Venice?
Guest:Near the corner of Sautel National.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And when I think about old Hollywood, which you grew up in, it seemed like, and your dad was in the business, was he a studio guy?
Marc:Did he have a deal?
Guest:Yeah, he got his first job at Columbia.
Guest:He kind of starved in New York for a while in the theater.
Guest:My mom sold hats and gloves and kept them alive.
Guest:Then he came out to...
Marc:to california to get a get a contract with columbia so he was on on a lot he was working he was just a go-to actor guy right and you grew up in that so it was my it's my it's my belief that it was a smaller town then right and that like i have to assume that you know you're you your dad's friends were all these you know guys that we're all familiar with from movies and television and
Marc:Not really.
Marc:No?
Guest:No.
Guest:There were a few people like that.
Guest:But he really befriended people from all walks of life.
Guest:We lived in a small community where every four or five houses looked the same.
Guest:What do you call that?
Marc:Development.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And right across the street, it was a new development, and right across the street from our house was Beanfields, as far as you could see.
Guest:This is right in the, you know where Sawtelle and National.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:This is in the 40s.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so it was a real community feel, lots of kids.
Guest:So his best friends were really neighbors.
Guest:And they came from all walks of life.
Guest:But there was the occasional actor person that was around.
Marc:Occasionally, he didn't have any good friends that were actors?
Guest:Oh yeah, sure he did, yeah.
Guest:Larry Parks and Betty Garrett were good buddies.
Guest:And then the guy that directed that show, The Red Pony, Lewis Milestone, I called him Millie.
Guest:He's an iconic director, won an Academy Award or two.
Guest:He was around a lot?
Guest:He was around, because what happened was,
Guest:My dad and a couple of his buddies bought a prefab shack, and my dad bought like an acre of land near the Ventura County line on the beach in the sand dunes.
Guest:And they threw this shack over the cliff.
Guest:There was no access road down to it.
Guest:And they put it up amidst the sand dunes.
Guest:It had no electricity, no water, anything, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we used to have one of those phones that goes like this to get across to the highway to the post office.
Guest:A crank phone.
Guest:And there was only one other house, and Louis Milestone lived in that house.
Guest:That's how I got that part.
Marc:Right, down the beach from the shack?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That was the only other house in the area.
Marc:So now, when you start acting at that age, I mean, how do you know how to, and your brother's doing it too?
Marc:How soon after you started did he start?
Guest:Well, Jeff is eight years younger than me.
Marc:Oh, he's eight years.
Marc:How many... There's people between you?
Guest:Well, we had a brother, Gary, who died at two years old.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Crib death.
Marc:That's awful.
Guest:It was tough.
Guest:It was tough for our family.
Guest:And then Jeff came along, and I...
Guest:I acted when I was young like we've been talking about.
Guest:And then I got really interested in athletics.
Guest:And played all through school and college and stuff.
Guest:And then when I got out of college, right around toward the end of college.
Marc:But you're still doing bit parts, right?
Marc:It seems like you're still doing TV stuff.
Guest:Well, that's when I started, when I got toward the end of college, I started to do the guest shots on TV things.
Marc:But like my three sons, you were in college?
Guest:Yeah, oh yeah, Mr. Novak and Wagon Train.
Guest:Did Sea Hunt with your dad?
Guest:Did Sea Hunt, so did my brother.
Guest:Yeah, we all, the family did that.
Guest:We have a sister too, Cindy.
Guest:She acted.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I got heavy into acting probably in my early 20s.
Guest:And then my brother, his first job, I think he was like 17 or 18.
Guest:And I'm trying to think of the name.
Guest:Last Picture Show?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, he did one before that.
Guest:But yeah, that's the one.
Guest:The Last Picture Show, he was about 18.
Guest:And he got nominated for an Academy Award for that.
Guest:How'd you handle that?
Guest:Well, I was disappointed because my brother, my dad traveled a lot.
Guest:He's a great dad to us, but because he was away a lot, I took over a lot of the stuff that a father would do with my brother.
Guest:Because he was out on the movies?
Guest:Teach him how to throw a ball, how to do all the stuff.
Guest:One of the things that I was impressed with with my little brother was his musicianship.
Guest:I mean, he took my Dano electric guitar that I bought and I learned how to play EAB7 pretty quick.
Guest:To play all the old rock and roll tunes and stuff.
Guest:But then I got into sports and I put my guitar down and my little brother picked it up.
Guest:And I'm listening to him, and by the time he's 16 or 17, he's a pretty decent guitar player.
Guest:And I said, wow, he's starting to write things.
Guest:And I thought he was going to become a rock and roll star.
Guest:That was my dream for him.
Guest:So he goes and gets an Academy Award nomination on his first acting job, and that was the end of his music stuff for a while.
Guest:And that was disappointing to me.
Guest:I remember...
Marc:That was the letdown, that he almost won an Academy Award and he had to give up his almost rock and roll career.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:But did you ever continue playing or no?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, no, we all play music.
Guest:We jam all the time.
Guest:You do?
Marc:To this day?
Guest:In fact, we had a big jam recently.
Guest:My niece, Jeff's daughter, Jessie, who's a great performer, great musician, she got married up on his ranch in Montana.
Guest:And the night before the wedding...
Guest:we had a jam and a lot of musicians in the family and friends of his and that started off my niece sang the first song and it's one of those guitar passing things you know yeah so she says who wants to take it now you know and she looked at me because she knew i'd do it for her yeah just to get it going uh-huh
Guest:So I took it, and I sang the first song after her, and then I handed the guitar to Jackson Brown, who I've known for years.
Guest:And Jackson said, wait a second.
Guest:He's a real one.
Guest:But he got in there and sang, and it was fun.
Guest:But we loved to play music.
Guest:And of course, in the Baker Boys, we played music.
Marc:Down the piano?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you a piano player as well?
Guest:My brother's a pretty good piano player.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, he can still play all those Dave Grusin tunes that he was playing in that movie.
Marc:Oh, you can?
Guest:I had to kill myself to learn my stuff.
Guest:But I can still chord with my left, play melody with my right.
Guest:I'm okay for sing-alongs and Christmas time.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:Stuff like that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So I guess my question then, when you're acting at that young of age, how do you know how to act?
Marc:Does your dad tell you?
Marc:Do you learn?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:None of my dad was my teacher.
Guest:A great teacher.
Guest:He gave me all my tools.
Marc:Do you still remember?
Marc:Do you use them to this day?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I can still hear him.
Guest:I'd say, make it true, even if it's just your own truth.
Guest:Be simple.
Guest:Don't push.
Guest:And it was basically the Stanislavski method of acting.
Guest:And he only gave me one book on the craft of acting.
Guest:Which was?
Guest:called Acting the First Six Lessons by Richard Boleslavsky, who was a student of Stanislavsky's.
Guest:He was the first guy to bring the Stanislavsky method to the states.
Guest:The book was written in 1939, and then... Was that like the group theater stuff?
Guest:Yeah, all those guys were from that.
Guest:So I loved that book.
Guest:I gave it to all my children.
Guest:I have five kids.
Marc:Did you give it to your brother too?
Guest:Oh, yeah, I'm sure he did, yeah.
Guest:And then my daughter and I, about five years ago, we wrote a play based on the novel because it's not only a how-to about the craft of acting, but it's a relationship between the teacher and his student who he calls the creature, this young girl that comes to him.
Guest:and learns these six lessons of acting.
Marc:That's the text.
Marc:It's sort of like Plato's dialogue.
Guest:Yeah, and it's published by Sam French, so anyone who wants to see it can just go get it online.
Guest:But it's always interested me that, you know, that relationship between a teacher and his students.
Guest:It's a beautiful one, you know, mentorship and all that.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:and uh so it explores all that because this this girl she comes for the first lesson and she thinks she's god's gift to acting and the teacher reams her a new one and she leaves crying and then she comes back all through her career she becomes a famous actress and she comes back for another lesson each time it's pretty cool and you and you did the play with your daughter
Guest:Yeah, we performed it here in L.A.
Guest:How'd it go over?
Guest:Great.
Guest:We performed it again recently in Minneapolis, too.
Marc:And how'd that go over there?
Guest:Great.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So what are some of the lessons?
Marc:That's what your dad told you.
Marc:Stay present.
Marc:Be real.
Guest:Be true, even if it's just to yourself.
Guest:Slow down.
Guest:Memory of emotion.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Observation.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Observation.
Marc:Applied observation?
Marc:Like, you know, study people?
Guest:Yeah, but just make sure that you...
Guest:Acting, there's a line in there, acting is the life of the human soul receiving its birth through art.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So acting is basically kind of reporting on how we live on our lives.
Guest:So these acting lessons are life lessons as well.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then there's one on rhythm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's about, you know, making sure that you observe and take in the different rhythms of your life experience and what it's like to be in the city, what it feels like to be out in nature and how those different things, you know, resonate differently for you and how they're both necessary and all this and observation and memory of emotion.
Marc:So you can put yourself into those places when necessary.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Because a lot of times you're on a set.
Yeah.
Marc:You're not out in nature.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:A lot of pretending needs to happen.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But pretending, in a way, you act... I think we act in our lives, too.
Guest:Of course.
Marc:Yeah, you do.
Marc:You can't walk around just being real all the time.
Guest:Some of us act more than others.
Guest:We won't talk about that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you know, you got to do what you can to keep your shit together, Bo.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like... But it seems like in your career that...
Marc:I guess it becomes a question of... Because you did a lot of... In the 60s, you were doing... L.A.
Marc:must have been nuts in the 60s.
Marc:I just picture... You talk about knowing Jackson Brown.
Marc:I imagine during that period in the late 60s to be part of this community, the show business community, must have been a blast.
Guest:Oh, it was really fun.
Guest:And I kind of hit pretty early in my career.
Marc:What do you consider?
Marc:What was your first hit?
Marc:Well... You were working a lot.
Guest:Yeah, but... Like the landlord?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know, not having a calendar of my work in front of me, I'm not sure exactly what the different years were, but yeah, the landlord and around that time I did The Other Side of the Mountain, which was kind of a surprise hit for Universal.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:and then i had then then i had one called gaily gaily that came out that that crapped out and it was a probably the most expensive movie of that time i was getting all the all the big big stories were coming my direction when i was like in my early 20s i was quite fortunate and that was a norman jewison movie yeah and hal ashby directed the landlord that was his first one
Marc:And so those guys, well, Hal, anyways, went on to sort of define that period of filmmaking.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He was something else.
Marc:Last detail.
Marc:What was he like?
Marc:I mean, was he a hands-on guy?
Marc:He was a wonderful man.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What made him a great director?
Guest:Well, you know, for Hal, he loved making films so much.
Guest:And so his films were like major parties.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Like the landlord opens up with his own wedding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was his best man.
Guest:In real life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In the movie.
Guest:He tells the preacher to hit his marks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It had nothing to do with the movie, really.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But all his work is so personal.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Jeff did his last one, so we bookended his career.
Guest:What was his last movie?
Guest:Eight Million Ways to Die.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But anyway, so I was very fortunate there, and then I kind of nosedived.
Guest:You know, I mean, our business is such a...
Guest:up and down roller coaster ride for most of it.
Guest:I've always worked.
Marc:Right, but you did sort of like, you worked with it.
Marc:It seems like these are movies that I didn't see, but when I'm looking through it, like Hammersmith is out.
Guest:Oh, that was wild.
Guest:I don't know if you ever saw that one.
Marc:I didn't see it, but it's like, it's Burton and Taylor.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And Peter Ustinoff is directing.
Marc:Oh, it's crazy.
Marc:And those two must have been like huge at that point.
Guest:Oh, yeah, they were.
Guest:And I was attracted to kind of weird, crazy films that I would pick.
Guest:Some of my friends or my parents would say, why are you going to do that?
Guest:But I always liked kind of strange ones.
Guest:But then... What was that like?
Marc:What was that movie about?
Guest:Oh, that movie was a road picture with the three of us.
Guest:Me, Elizabeth, and Richard.
Guest:That must have been nuts.
Guest:Yeah, and it was kind of like, you know, I was a guy working in an insane asylum, you know, kind of cleaning up around the place, and Richard was one of the inmates, and he breaks out, and it was sort of a Faustus tale.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:And it seems like, how does movie making change, like, because I was also looking at the, I remember the movie Two Minute Warning, I kind of remember it, because a lot of this stuff happened when I was a child.
Marc:But like Charlton Heston, like, you know, I've done some acting myself, so I know that once you're on set, you're just at work.
Marc:But these are huge, you know, mythic guys in the business.
Marc:I mean, Cassavetes is in that movie, too.
Guest:Well, the guy that directed that is a good buddy of mine, by the way, Larry Pierce.
Guest:I probably work with him more than any other director.
Marc:How has it changed?
Marc:He's great.
Guest:He's very involved in the characters.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And you didn't play a bad guy in that one, did you?
Guest:No, I played a guy who when the shooting breaks out in the football arena in the Coliseum, I'm getting a hot dog or something and then I try to make my way back into the stadium to get to my family when the shooting starts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they had like a casting call for about 1,000 extras that came there like 2 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:And they were just local people.
Guest:And so when we got to that scene, I asked my old friend Larry, I said, Larry, how are you going to do this scene when I have to go through and all those people are pouring out?
Guest:I said, somebody's going to get hurt and it could be me.
Guest:I said, how are you going to do that?
Guest:He said, don't worry.
Guest:He says, I got a guy that's going to run interference for
Guest:for you, and he's one of the baddest dudes in the business, a stuntman.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:So the guy comes around the corner, and it's an old friend of mine that I was in the Coast Guard with.
Guest:We were in boot camp together.
Guest:Ronnie Stein, and he's built like a...
Guest:Brick Shithouse.
Guest:Great guy.
Guest:I still am in touch with him.
Guest:And yeah, he just knocked people down.
Guest:As we went through these people, it was pretty scary.
Marc:Did anyone get hurt?
Guest:No, not bad, not bad.
Marc:And what was it like working with Charlton Heston?
Guest:I didn't have any scenes with him.
Guest:You didn't?
Guest:Charlton Heston, I'll tell you a great story on Charlton Heston.
Guest:Because I knew him.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah, just from, we played in charity tennis tournaments together.
Guest:And my parents knew him and stuff.
Guest:And I used to debate him in magazines and stuff on the gun control issue all the time.
Guest:Because he was the NRA.
Guest:From my dead hands.
Guest:President and all that stuff.
Guest:And just a wonderful guy.
Guest:But we would debate each other.
Guest:And so and I'll come back around to him in a second.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So in the last stages of the Vietnam War, there was a big protest happening where people were going to Washington, D.C.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there were buses leaving from all the major cities.
Guest:This is like about 68.
Guest:Oh, yeah, okay, early.
Guest:So I decided to call all the talk show hosts, the guys that I, you know, Johnny and all the different ones that I'd been on, and say, guys, can I come on your show?
Guest:And I said, I don't want to make a big political statement, you know, but I would like to just give the addresses in the major cities where these buses are leaving from, so if anyone wants to join the protest.
Guest:And it ended up being like millions of people going to Washington.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And to my surprise, they all said, yeah, come on.
Guest:And it was all last minute.
Guest:So there was a guy named Irv Cupsinet out of Chicago that had a talk show.
Guest:And it was very relaxed.
Guest:And I did this last minute with all these guys.
Guest:And so I didn't know who was going to be on.
Guest:With Johnny too?
Marc:Carson, you did Carson too?
Marc:I think I did Carson.
Guest:I'm not sure, but I think I did.
Guest:I did a lot of them.
Marc:So you went to Chicago as well to do this show?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Earl Cupson happened to be in L.A.
Guest:Oh, okay, okay.
Guest:Shooting here.
Guest:But he was out of Chicago.
Guest:Okay, got it.
Guest:So I go there and my heart kind of sinks because I see the other two guys that are in there are Charlton, who is a very conservative guy.
Guest:And the other guy was Jack Warner.
Marc:Another guy.
Marc:The one who used to wear the uniform around the lot.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So these guys are there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm thinking, oh, man, this is going to be interesting.
Guest:So they talked first, and they were talking about old Hollywood and how the Warner Brothers got their thing going.
Guest:It was fascinating.
Guest:I was kind of listening to it, you know, the popcorn business and all the stuff they ran into.
Guest:Then it comes time for me, and the guy had told me, he says, I'm going to put you on at the very end.
Guest:I said, fine, I'll make it short and sweet, believe me.
Guest:And I was sitting out there with Charlton and Jack when they were doing their thing so that I had met them.
Guest:But you knew Charlton, right?
Guest:I knew Charlton, and I'd actually met Jack Warner because I'd worked with him on different things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I do my thing, and I'm making my little announcements, and I had made my own little signs with the addresses on that I was holding up, and I hear this low, guttural sound coming out from the side.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I turn around and it's Jack Warner and he's about to have a stroke.
Guest:I mean, his face is all red.
Guest:His veins are popping out.
Guest:He's pissed.
Marc:Just because you're announcing.
Marc:Oh, but I'm doing this.
Guest:And he says, I mean, I could finally understand him.
Guest:I stopped and looked at him and he says, when I first met you, he says, I thought you were a nice young man.
Guest:But now that I think of it, the name Bridges has an all too familiar ring.
Guest:Now my dad was, you know, he was called up in front of the witch hunt.
Marc:Oh yeah, House Un-American Activities Committee.
Guest:Activities Committee, yeah.
Guest:And he was exonerated finally.
Guest:But he was blacklisted for a bit?
Guest:He was blacklisted for a while, yeah.
Guest:So he said that to me and my sweat popped out of me.
Guest:Oh my gosh.
Guest:And I said, what the?
Marc:Did you know at the time that's what he was referring to?
Guest:Oh yeah, immediately when he said that.
Guest:And I didn't want to get into all that with him, but what am I gonna do?
Guest:And then before I had to do anything, Charlton speaks up.
Guest:And he says, Jack, Jack.
Guest:He says, this is America.
Guest:He says, Bo has every right to free speech and to peaceful protest.
Guest:So let's listen to what he has to say.
Guest:I thought, whoa.
Guest:That was amazing.
Guest:And I've never forgot that.
Guest:So it was beautiful.
Guest:And I think I had a chance later on to express that to him, my appreciation for him standing up for me there.
Guest:Isn't that something?
Guest:That was cool, yeah.
Marc:Especially what we're going through now.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:The right to protest.
Guest:Oh, peaceful protest.
Guest:It's an American tradition.
Marc:So at that time, you were actively against the war and doing everything you could.
Guest:And as a veteran, too.
Marc:Yeah, in the Coast Guard.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That time must have been pretty crazy.
Marc:I mean, you saw the whole shift.
Marc:That's what's interesting about your career, obviously, and your brother as well, and even your dad's, is that the entire movie business changed in the late 60s, right?
Marc:Because none of the old guys knew what to do anymore.
Guest:Yeah, and I went up for a movie that John Huston directed.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:I'm trying to think of it.
Guest:It was a boxing movie.
Marc:Oh, the one?
Guest:That Jeff, my brother, did.
Marc:Yeah, Fat City.
Guest:Fat City, and I went up for that to meet John Huston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, geez, he had several meetings with him.
Guest:He says, Scott, you're so great.
Guest:I really love you in this role.
Guest:He says, but you're just probably five or six years too old for it.
Guest:So I said, well, guess what?
Guest:I said, meet my little brother.
Guest:And Jeff came in and got that role.
Guest:Now you go speed ahead, maybe 15 years later, my career is kind of tanking a little bit.
Guest:And Jeff gets the script for Fabulous Baker Boys, and they wanted some big timers, guys that were really popular at that time, big stars, to play his brother.
Guest:And he told young Steve Clovis, who wrote it at the age of 23, and he was 26 when he was directing it, first time director.
Guest:And Jeff said, no, I'd like my brother to play my brother.
Guest:So I went in and I said, Jeff, don't blow this over me.
Guest:And he says, no, no, this will be good.
Guest:He says, you just go have lunch with Steve.
Guest:And so I went in and I took a little Polaroid picture.
Guest:that I had taken of my brother when he was 16 and me on the back of a flatbed truck.
Guest:I used to do a lot of what they call street theater in those days.
Guest:We'd just go and set up and do scenes and poetry.
Marc:When was that, in the 60s?
Guest:Yeah, and I used to take my little brother along with me on a lot of these things.
Guest:and what we usually do is we'd go in and then we'd stage a fight we'd fight each other to draw a crowd yeah and then when the crowd came around we'd jump up on the track and do you know scenes from come blow your horn oh really yeah acting scenes yeah yeah and so uh i showed that picture to steve and i think that's what
Marc:That's what did it?
Marc:Did it.
Marc:That's what sealed the deal?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When you say your career was tanking or that it kind of took a nosedive, like how long was that for in your mind?
Guest:Well, I was never really out of work.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:That's what it doesn't look like.
Guest:But like I said to you, I got such a fast, big start.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And it didn't last real long.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I've always, you know, it's been up and down, but I've always worked.
Guest:And I remember my dad, toward the end of his life, in his career, he was like saying, geez, you know, there's so many things I wanted to do, and my career is not what I'd hoped to be.
Guest:And I said, Dad, come on, man, you're an iconic actor.
Guest:I said, you've...
Guest:You've been in probably one of the greatest Westerns ever made, High Noon.
Guest:You had a huge television series.
Guest:I said, what do you want, man?
Guest:I said, come on.
Guest:So maybe that's the way it is.
Guest:You always want a little bit more.
Guest:I don't, though.
Guest:I feel blessed.
Guest:I feel so happy to be working in this business I love and to make a living in.
Marc:Well, it seems like even when you did some maybe not high-quality movies, then you do Norma Rae, right?
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And I was looking at some of these credits.
Marc:There are certain ones that are sort of kind of mind-blowing.
Marc:Oh, you worked with Richard Pryor.
Guest:Yeah, oh yeah.
Marc:On Greased Lightning.
Guest:Yeah, what a great guy he was.
Marc:I remember that movie.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:It was about like stock car drivers or stunt drivers?
Guest:True story, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:How was working with him?
Marc:Oh, great.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Wonderful guy, real quiet, soft-spoken, which really surprised me.
Marc:And at that time, that was, let's see, what year was that?
Marc:So he was a huge comic then.
Marc:right yeah but he could do serious acting very well very well yeah i thought that was a good movie pam greer yeah yeah i think i think it was a good movie oh honky tonk freeway that's that's what i wanted to ask you so that well i didn't think that was a very good no no of course not but a lot of big time actors and john schlesinger that's right schlesinger directed it great guy you know really fun british guy right yeah
Marc:Did some great movies.
Marc:Did Marathon Man.
Guest:Yeah, took us all to the Magic Castle for our seance thing for our wrap party.
Marc:But that was, I guess, based on it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world or something, or just one of those huge casted comedy kind of things.
Guest:Yeah, something like that.
Guest:A bunch of people stuck on a freeway.
Marc:Yeah, but when you take a movie like that, are you thinking like, well, yeah, I'm just going to take the job.
Marc:Are you looking at the director?
Marc:What do you do?
Guest:And yeah, I thought it had a chance to be kind of an interesting story.
Guest:I mean, for me, the story is the most important element.
Guest:But then it depends on kind of where you are in your career.
Guest:I can't remember exactly where I was there.
Guest:Maybe I needed a paycheck.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:but that plays into it right yeah but i'm sort of like it's sort of amazing when i start looking through the credits like some of these directors like uh stanley kramer you worked with another great one on that on uh i don't even know what movie that was do you
Guest:Yeah, that was with Dick Van Dyke.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, what was it called?
Marc:Was it the Runner Stumbles?
Guest:Yeah, that's it.
Marc:And Dick Van Dyke's another funny guy who could do great serious acting.
Guest:Yeah, I thought he was very good in that.
Guest:That movie didn't do business, but I thought it was decent.
Marc:But somebody like Stanley Kramer, who's a big old-style director,
Guest:Yeah, you know, he told me, Stanley, I was the first character on screen in that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, you know, it's important to me that it's silent.
Guest:You're a young lawyer.
Guest:You're on your way to see your client who's in jail, Dick Van Dyke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're walking through this small town.
Guest:And he says, I'm going to run the credits over it.
Guest:And I want it to be important, but there's no dialogue.
Guest:So I want you to conceive of something interesting to do.
Yeah.
Guest:So I had this idea of stepping in dog shit in front of these kids that are in this small town, and they see me, and I try to scrape it off the side of the curb.
Guest:He's, oh, yeah, yeah, that's good.
Guest:So we get in there.
Guest:It's about 5 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:The sun is coming up.
Guest:And he has to have the crew guys go out and try to find dog shit at 5 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:They were not happy with it.
Guest:With me for the idea.
Guest:And in the end, they couldn't find any because it was too cold.
Guest:I guess the dogs.
Guest:They weren't shitting?
Guest:No, they weren't shitting out where anyone could see it.
Guest:So they had to get like Mars bars and melt them and put them down.
Marc:Which is a better way for them.
Guest:I think that part was cut out of the movie.
Marc:Oh, come on.
Guest:Maybe not.
Guest:Maybe I have to go back and look at it.
Marc:You're just one of those ever-present guys in TV and in film.
Marc:You're always working, but there was never a point where you're like, oh, it's over.
Guest:You're like, oh, God, I'm never going to work again.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I always, well, you know, I'd worry about, you know, where I was going and stuff.
Guest:But, no, and I've always been fortunate to have a good story come along that I can get attached with.
Guest:Another wonderful experience for me was, without warning, doing the James Brady story, you know, the press secretary.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Guest:That was a TV movie?
Guest:It was a great one.
Guest:I really enjoyed doing it.
Marc:Because you got to spend time with him?
Guest:Yes, and become lifelong friends.
Guest:He and Sarah are both gone now, but their family, the whole family, was really important to me.
Marc:So when you do something like that, he was the press secretary, right?
Guest:Yeah, but when I met him, he was already in a wheelchair and had been shot.
Marc:Yeah, and what are the challenges of playing a real person?
Marc:Especially someone who's still alive.
Guest:Well, it's a hand up because you got the person sitting there so you can see them and get a sense of who they are.
Marc:Yeah, so you can kind of mimic them, get the vibe, get the feeling.
Guest:Well, I had his family read the whole script for me, including Jim and his wife.
Marc:So you stayed friends throughout his life?
Marc:And you played Nixon too, didn't you?
Guest:Yeah, that was interesting because he's like not one of my favorite presidents of my lifetime.
Marc:I would imagine in the 60s it would be, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and...
Guest:I remember I was doing research on him, and my parents and my wife and I were down in San Diego for some other event or something.
Guest:We were all in the same car, and we're heading back up north, and I said, do you guys mind if I drop off at the Nixon Library?
Guest:Because I want to get some research material, and they have life-size things of all the...
Guest:the big honchos from the different countries at that time.
Guest:I wanted to see those and everything.
Marc:The arc of his life.
Guest:Yeah, and I said, it's not going to take me long.
Guest:I said, you guys don't even have to come in.
Guest:And my dad says, no, no, I'd like to come in.
Guest:I said, well, if you do come in, I said, I don't want you to say a word to people in there.
Guest:Your dad.
Guest:I said this to my dad about why I'm there.
Guest:And then, of course, the minute we get in there, oh, my son is playing Richard Nixon.
Marc:So then you got the special tour, probably.
Guest:And my concept on playing Nixon was called Kissinger and Nixon.
Guest:It was a small piece of time during the Vietnam War between those two guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ron Silver played Kissinger.
Guest:But when I did it, my decision was to look as much like Nixon as I possibly could because I'd seen the other guys that had played Nixon and none of them went for that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Full makeup.
Guest:Yeah, so it was almost like kabuki.
Guest:I mean, all I had was my eyes.
Guest:Oh, you did the nose and everything?
Guest:And Ron was the same way with Kissinger.
Guest:Full makeup.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, everything.
Guest:It would take me two or three hours.
Guest:I'd fall asleep in a chair and wake up like Richard Nixon.
Guest:I thought they did a great job.
Guest:But unfortunately, my first scene was Nixon dives into a swimming pool with all that makeup on.
Guest:I was so afraid it was just going to hang off my face like a horror movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Scary Nixon.
Marc:Well, he was scary, but in another way, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but it didn't.
Guest:It hung in there.
Marc:Do you feel good about the performance, all in all?
Guest:Yeah, I like that movie.
Guest:That's another director that I worked a few times with that was a really great director, Dan Petrie.
Marc:There's not a big difference in terms of how you approach a TV movie and a regular movie, right?
Guest:No, not really, no.
Marc:No?
Guest:No, I mean, maybe a little bit because you realize on a big screen, you know, the subtleties come through a little better.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Stage is a lot different.
Marc:How much stage work did you do?
Guest:I've done quite a bit, yeah.
Guest:Recently, I went back to Broadway and did How to Succeed.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:That was quite a jump, doing dancing and singing.
Marc:Was it great?
Guest:I had to train my ass off.
Guest:Oh, yeah, it was great.
Guest:I did it with Nick Jonas one time and Darren Criss.
Marc:I thought you were great too in The Descendants.
Marc:I love that one.
Guest:Yeah, with George.
Guest:What a wonderful man he is.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:He seems like it.
Marc:Oh, God, he's a great guy.
Marc:I want him to be a wonderful man.
Guest:Oh, he is.
Guest:I mean, I couldn't say, I've never heard anybody really say a bad word about him, which is not surprising.
Guest:I've worked with him twice now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he's just great.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he seems like... He's one of those guys where... And I imagine you've seen some of them growing up where, like, he's a real movie star, that guy.
Guest:Well, yeah, but that's not the effect you get.
Guest:Right, but he seems like a decent... Yeah, and he's one of those... He's so friendly and down-to-earth that, you know, you work with him for a couple of days and he's like a good bud.
Guest:Right, that seems like him.
Guest:Yeah, he's real nice.
Guest:And he's always looking out for...
Guest:who he's working with, and he's great.
Marc:So now, what's your relationship with your brother like now?
Marc:Is this good?
Guest:Oh yeah, I mean, he's my best friend.
Marc:Oh yeah?
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:I love him.
Marc:I love hearing that.
Marc:It's so nice, and you're happy for each other's success.
Guest:Yeah, and I don't torture him anymore like I used to when he was little.
Guest:All I had to do was I'd point my finger at him just like this and kind of wiggle it at his face, and he'd go ape shit.
Guest:He'd just go crazy and cry and everything else.
Guest:And then when my parents told me to stop it, when they realized what I was doing, then I'd move my hand down underneath the table.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like I'm doing it to you now.
Guest:I'm looking at my finger, but I'm looking at you.
Guest:But you can tell him by the way I'm looking with my eyes at you that I'm doing it.
Marc:And he'd go, ah!
Marc:Because it was threatening to him?
Marc:Or you thought you were going to hit him?
Guest:No, it was just creepy, I guess.
Guest:Annoying.
Guest:But he paid me back.
Guest:When he was about 18, he jumped on top of me and tickled me until I peed in my pants.
Guest:Oh, that was it?
Guest:Yeah, then I had to stop all my torturing.
Marc:And you both have kids, right?
Marc:Older kids now.
Marc:I have five.
Guest:He has three.
Guest:The cousins love each other.
Guest:They all hang out.
Marc:It's sweet.
Marc:And is your sister still around?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, she has boys.
Guest:And all the cousins really hang with each other and have a great time.
Marc:It's a beautiful thing.
Marc:I like that you guys are friends.
Marc:I'm going to talk to him, you know.
Guest:Oh, when are you talking to him?
Marc:I think I'm going to talk to him next week or something.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:You know what you should do?
Guest:What?
Guest:Is don't say anything about it.
Guest:But when he sits down at the chair, just go like this.
Marc:Wiggle the finger at him like that?
Guest:Yeah, just like this.
Guest:And don't pull it down until he understands what you're doing.
Marc:I wonder if he will.
Guest:Oh, are you kidding?
Guest:He'll know exactly what you're doing.
Marc:Are you guys, you think you're ever going to do another movie together?
Guest:Oh, we'd like to, yeah.
Marc:How does this happen?
Marc:Let me ask you a question about, because I just, I mean, I did look at, I had to look at the whole filmography.
Marc:It says that you were in Jerry Maguire Uncredited.
Guest:That was stupid.
Marc:What does that mean?
Guest:Well, it was dumb.
Guest:It was dumb.
Guest:I wanted to work with Tom Cruise.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because he was young and hot, and I just wanted to see what he brought to the table.
Guest:And there wasn't much money involved, and then they got into a big dispute about how they were going to bill me.
Guest:And I thought, you know, this is not why I'm in this movie.
Guest:I don't care, really.
Guest:So I just told my agent.
Guest:I said, just tell him not to bill me.
Guest:Not the Bellman, I don't care.
Guest:And now it's a movie because I had such a small part, but it was a very pivotal part of that movie.
Guest:So I have people coming up saying, my word is stronger than oak and whatever the shit I said in the movie.
Guest:And then loads of people say, why didn't you take credit?
Guest:And I feel like such a jerk.
Guest:I should have.
Yeah.
Marc:And what did you find when you worked with Tom Cruise?
Marc:What was your curiosity?
Marc:Was your curiosity, how did that pan out?
Guest:Oh, he was excellent.
Guest:I thought his work ethic was very strong, very impressive.
Marc:Charismatic guy.
Guest:Yes, just great.
Guest:And my son in that movie, Jerry O'Connell, I was doing a movie up in this weird little, I mean,
Guest:town way out of the boonies in north ontario recently just about a week or two ago oh really called north bay ontario yeah doing a hallmark christmas movie yeah and who should come up about one o'clock in the morning to our thing but jerry o'connell and he says dad there's a lot of movies shooting in that little town he's got a series now i forget what it's called oh that's so yeah a lot of stuff shoots up there that's hilarious and you hadn't seen him in years no no it was good to see him
Marc:And there's some other interesting credits here for you.
Marc:There's these Japanese animation things.
Guest:Yeah, that was fun.
Guest:I did two of those with my daughter, Emily.
Marc:And how did they come to you?
Guest:Someone just called and asked if I would do it.
Guest:I've done a few animated things.
Marc:Yeah, it's fun, right?
Marc:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:Because you can lean into it and no one's looking at you and get the voice right.
Marc:Was your mother an actress, too?
Guest:Yeah, she was.
Guest:She...
Guest:She was in college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then when my dad, like I said, was a struggling actor in New York, she had to go out and get the paycheck to do any job she could.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And then she kind of gave it up, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I put her to work in a movie I did, a couple of movies, actually.
Guest:And I directed my dad, too, in a few movies.
Guest:And she would play his wife one time.
Guest:In fact, he threw her down some stairs in a movie.
Marc:That you directed?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:She dies at the bottom of the stairs.
Guest:She had a death scene.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Was that a TV movie?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What movie was that?
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:Secret Sins of the Father.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:yeah it turns out okay actually and you cast and i had my two of my sons in it and then i had a i did a disney movie which became their thanksgiving special for many years called the thanksgiving promise it was a uh coming of age story that my son jordan who's now a very successful actor he was in uh he played uh frankie rizzoli and rizzoli and isles you know it went for seven eight years oh yeah
Guest:And he was 12 then, and he played the lead character.
Guest:My brother was in it.
Guest:My entire family was in that movie.
Marc:And the Thanksgiving movie.
Guest:The Thanksgiving Promise, yeah.
Marc:And that's a Disney movie?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And they ran it for every year?
Guest:Yeah, TV movie.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it became sort of a mainstay?
Guest:Yeah, for them for Thanksgiving.
Marc:Well, that's nice.
Guest:It still pops up every once in a while.
Marc:A little residual trek?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So how many of the cousins and the sibling, or the kid, that generation of Bridges are acting now?
Guest:Well, I'll run down my kids because they're all involved one way or another.
Guest:My oldest, Casey, is a documentary filmmaker.
Guest:He also runs an organization called Tools for Peace.
Guest:If anyone wants to Google that, it's a great organization.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:They have schools.
Guest:They have programs in schools teaching kids compassion and stuff like that.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:But he also makes documentary films.
Guest:then my son jordan i told you about him he's an actor uh and then uh my son dylan is uh a director of marketing at universal for uh all their social media so he's on a roll that dude oh yeah they're just killing it yeah yeah you know yeah yeah with the big movies oh god yeah and uh he's a young guy are they doing all the superhero movies
Guest:Oh, yeah, well, they have Fast and Furious.
Marc:Oh, right that way.
Guest:Straight Outta Compton.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That was a great movie.
Guest:Yeah, one giant hit after another.
Guest:And then my daughter, Emily, I told you about her.
Guest:She's a playwright with me and an actress and just got her master's in...
Guest:arts and cultural leadership, which is providing the arts to underserved communities.
Guest:So she does that as well as being an actor.
Guest:And then my son Zeke, who's the youngest, is just beginning his thing as an actor.
Guest:And we did recently, we did a reading of Johnny Got His Gun.
Guest:Do you know that piece?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dalton Trumbo.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:About the young soldier with no arms and legs.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Straight shot off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My son was great in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we did it as a two-hander.
Guest:I was kind of the narrator.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:So it's a family business.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.
Marc:It was a real honor to talk to you.
Marc:And I'll say hi to your brother for you.
Guest:Wiggle the finger at him, man.
Marc:I'm going to wiggle the finger.
Marc:I'm just happy that there's no bitterness or jealousy.
Marc:And that never happened.
Yeah.
Guest:No, because, you know, as I say, sometimes I'll get mistaken for my brother.
Guest:I'll say, hi, Jeff.
Guest:I said, no, no, no.
Guest:I said, I'm the pretty one.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Great talking to you.
All right.
Good talking to you, Mark.
Marc:Genuine guy, that Beau Bridges.
Marc:Nice guy, professional, and still going.
Marc:Just doing the work.
Marc:So, Jeff Bridges.
Marc:We all know Jeff Bridges.
Marc:We've all grown up with Jeff Bridges.
Marc:Jeff Bridges was always just over there in a movie through our entire lives.
Marc:Me, anyways.
Marc:But, you know, he's been at it since he was a kid.
Marc:Last picture, he's always been there.
Marc:And he's done some of the great characters that we love.
Marc:Many of you Lebowski fans love the dude.
Marc:I'm a big fan of Cutter's Way.
Marc:And the new one, the new one, the big fire movie, Only the Brave with Josh Brolin and Miles Teller opens Friday, October 20th.
Marc:And I saw it.
Marc:and it's compelling and it's exciting it's got some stellar fucking acting in it and the fire does an amazing job as well there's great fire in it this is me talking to jeff bridges
Marc:So, your brother was here.
Marc:Yeah, oh, cool.
Marc:And he told me to do this.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I'll tell you all about that.
Marc:To do the finger.
Guest:Oh, very good.
Guest:Yeah, but you're too active.
Guest:His was more subtle.
Guest:He was just as simple like this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then he'd get very subtle, like he could be just kind of resting on a table with his... About his expression, you know, he would have an expression.
Guest:Then at dinner table, he could have his hands...
Guest:on his lap.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would just look at me and I know that he was pointing at me under the table and he would drive me absolutely crazy and I go, stop it!
Guest:They'd say, what's wrong?
Guest:My parents would say, what do you mean?
Guest:He'd say, he's pointing at me under the table, Bo, stop pointing at you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not pointing at him.
Guest:And I would know he was because the way he looked at me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it was just some sort of annoying.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It wasn't frightening.
Marc:It wasn't intimidating.
Marc:It was just mind-fucking you.
Guest:Mind-fucking, yeah.
Guest:Or he would hover.
Guest:He would take his hand and get very close to my face but not touch me.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Stuff like that.
Marc:Yeah, and he was older.
Marc:How much older?
Guest:Eight years.
Guest:So it was intimidating.
Yeah.
Guest:he was intimidating but wonderful i mean i see all the guitars you got around here so you can imagine being a young kid and out of your older brother's room pours all this chuck berry little rich he was the guy oh man he had all that you know yeah i mean i you know i i feel um fortunate for uh you know having the beatles and dylan but bobe man he grew up with a whole oh man what an era
Marc:Right, he grew up with a whole other thing.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Eight years apart, so you're like, you know, so he grew up with Buddy Holly and all that, and then you, like, come, and you're coming to, like, when you're blossoming, it's just a completely different scene.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I turned him on to the Beatles and Dylan.
Guest:No, you turned him on?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's stuck in the old groove?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, like I do.
Marc:No shit.
Guest:Are you stuck in the groove?
Guest:I mean, what music do you like?
Marc:I'm 54.
Marc:I like all kinds of music.
Marc:But I grew up in the crashing wave of your generation.
Marc:So that was what defined me.
Marc:But when I was in high school, it was Zeppelin and Skinner, ZZ Top.
Guest:So we got here a little bit early to the show.
Guest:And I was turning Gene on, who's younger than you.
Guest:And I said, do you know who the Fleetwoods are?
Guest:Do you know who the Fleetwoods are?
Guest:Do you know who they are?
Guest:Not Fleetwood Mac, but the Fleetwoods.
Guest:I know the name.
Guest:Give me the hit.
Guest:Give me the hit.
Guest:And I'm Mr. Blue.
Guest:You know that song?
Guest:So that was pouring out of Bo's room, too, those kind of songs.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Marc:Do you remember the one that struck you the hardest?
Marc:Was it Chuck Berry?
Guest:It's hard to beat Chuck Berry.
Guest:I mean, it really is.
Guest:Gene, you know, represents a Brian Wilson, you know, on the whole beach.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we were just talking about Chuck Berry and all their early influences were, you know, Chuck Berry.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Chuck Berry.
Guest:Little Richard, man.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Great.
Guest:James Brown.
Guest:You don't get, you know, James.
Guest:I remember seeing James when I was a kid.
Marc:But it's funny, I listen to some of your music.
Marc:It seems like it's sort of country-driven, almost a little petty-ish in places.
Guest:It's pretty eclectic.
Guest:You know, when you said petty, we just got to say, oh, man.
Marc:Just devastating.
Marc:God.
Marc:You know, yeah.
Marc:It's great music.
Marc:Did you go see him the last?
Marc:No, I missed him.
Marc:I just saw him second to the last night.
Guest:Oh, man.
Marc:Like I said to my audience, it looked like he was having a great time.
Guest:Yeah, that's what I hear.
Marc:That's what everybody was saying.
Marc:So sad.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:But you play pretty seriously.
Guest:Oh, so I was saying, you know, I got this big break with Crazy Heart, you know, this movie.
Guest:Yeah, the great movie.
Guest:And it's funny, I turned that down for a couple of years.
Guest:It was kicking around that long?
Guest:Yeah, it came to me, you know, and...
Guest:I said, well, there was no music attached to it.
Guest:So I thought, well, there's no music.
Guest:No matter how good the script is, it's going to be no good.
Guest:The music's not good.
Guest:So I kept turning it down.
Guest:And also, there's kind of another secret reason that I was turning it down, even to myself, I think, that I realized later.
Guest:And that was, you know, when things are in the dream zone, they're kind of safe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:right which means like like well like you know you can't fail you can't succeed you can't fail but you know you're cool because it's in your mind you can you know taste it sure but i've always wanted to make a movie about music you know it was great yeah but and to have it really come into focus and we did when my buddy t-bone burnett you know we go back you know 30 years we've known that long
Guest:We met on Heaven's Gate, yeah.
Marc:He did the music arranging for Heaven's Gate?
Guest:No, that was David Mansfield, another buddy of T-Bone's.
Marc:What was T-Bone doing on that?
Guest:T-Bone, I like to tease him about this, he played my maid.
Guest:in the movie in an apron and he kind of sweeping up the barn and stuff but christopherson who's the star of that movie invited all these great musicians from t-bone uh ronnie hawkins sure you know yeah all kinds of um any of the band guys well steve bruton you know i don't know if you know him he was he was you know you know steve bruton
Guest:An incredible guitar player, dear, dear friend of T-Bone's, and was so instrumental in making Crazy Heart.
Guest:You know, the movie Crazy Heart was dedicated to him.
Guest:He died right after the movie came out.
Guest:He was on your record, though, wasn't he?
Guest:He's on my record.
Guest:He wrote a lot of the record, a lot of songs, and Crazy Heart, too.
Marc:Yeah, he had Roseanne Cash on a song and Sam, what's her name?
Guest:Sam Phillips.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:T-Bones X. Mark Rebo.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Mark Rebo.
Marc:Are you a fan, man?
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:Oh, gosh, man.
Guest:Some of his solo stuff.
Guest:Have you done his solo stuff?
Guest:Yeah, it's out there.
Guest:Isn't it great?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, all that, the standards, that's one of the standards that he does.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You heard that?
Guest:But he can travel with that guitar, man.
Guest:Oh, he does whatever you want.
Guest:So anyway, Bone, I run into Bone, and he says, what do you think about this script, Crazy Heart?
Guest:And I said, why do you ask?
Guest:Well, there's no music.
Guest:He goes, oh, that's the easy part.
Guest:I said, are you interested?
Guest:And he says, well, I'll do it if you'll do it.
Guest:I said, you're kidding me.
Guest:He says, no.
Guest:So there goes the dream, and now it's becoming reality.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's that fear.
Guest:The image that comes to mind is a wide receiver going out for that perfectly thrown path, and you just pray that your hands are going to catch that thing, and you're going to do justice to the throne.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you do justice to what you've been given right?
Guest:And it was you know, so frightful with T-bone from the beginning of the concept was you were gonna do it You were gonna do the music you're gonna do the singing you know bone said oh Yeah, man, the music's the easy part.
Guest:I said, what are you talking about?
Guest:Oh, yeah, you said, you know, that's what I do I can you know music will come up with several get Bruton and his altar to come to I say oh, man This could be just too much fun to not care
Guest:of it fails.
Guest:So we got together.
Guest:I brought my ancient friend, we go back to the fourth grade, a guy named John Goodwin, who wrote kind of the title song in a way to Crazy Heart, Hold On You, that's based on a... Bowen put some words in there too, but it's basically a Johnny Goodwin tune.
Guest:but we got together and we just started jamming on tunes and hanging it was so great and you've been playing a long time yeah since i was a you know a kid 12 or so right because your your your brother's like it's funny because he's like yeah i had the guitar around that i never and then he yeah was it your dad's guitar or was it well he my dad had a uh a goya oh yeah
Guest:And he had some kind of finger infection or something, couldn't play.
Guest:So I played on that.
Guest:And then Bo had this white Dan Electro.
Guest:Right.
Guest:An original Dan Electro.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The weird cutaway.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Groovy guitar.
Marc:With vinyl on the side.
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're making those again.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Yeah, they reissued that stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so you took to it.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I started just, you know, you learn, you know, the cool thing about guitars, it's got those, you know, the graph, you know, it tells you little points where you put your fingers.
Guest:Oh, the chords, yeah.
Marc:In the songbook.
Guest:Yeah, in the songbook.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, I learned, you know, a couple of three chords, and then I started to write right away.
Guest:And that's kind of, you know, I started to just make up stuff.
Marc:Before we stop talking about Crazy Heart, you won an Oscar.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That was a long time coming, Jeff, right?
Guest:Well, thank you, but, you know.
Guest:You don't think about it like that?
Guest:No, I mean, you know, God, that was pretty wild.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:It's better you got that than the lifetime achievement.
Marc:yes right yeah that's true too like you know you don't want to be one of those guys he's 90 like we never gave him one that's right give him the big one oh yeah exactly no that was very it was very cool yeah yeah it was great man you've been doing great work for so many years i can't thank you well there's just so many uh moments in my life like there's other like that american heart movie that's one of those movies that i love you in gotten you got ripped got in good shape for that one
Guest:oh yeah yeah and like cutter's way i've seen yeah oh yeah it wasn't john great john we lost him recently but he should have he should have got some award you know so many guys that um are just so good that you don't see it you know they're just right you know like another guy that reminds me that i work with early on was timothy bottoms in last picture that's way back
Guest:And then he did that was in the paper chase.
Guest:He was in paper chase.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He kind of, you know, dropped out of the movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He was very sweet.
Marc:Very natural.
Marc:And last picture show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Johnny got his gun.
Guest:He was in that as well.
Guest:But yeah, picture.
Guest:And he was, you say natural.
Guest:It was like, he's not, he's not acting.
Guest:He's just there doing it.
Marc:Well, how did that, how did that, how'd you guys work with Bogdanovich?
Marc:How did that all come together?
Marc:Cause that was your first big movie, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was my, yeah.
Guest:My second movie.
Marc:But you did some shit as a kid.
Marc:Both you and your brother, because your dad's Lloyd Bridges, you did Sea Hunt.
Marc:We did Sea Hunt.
Guest:Oh, I was, you know.
Guest:What else did you do?
Guest:Some weird TV shows?
Guest:Oh, I did a bunch of TV shows.
Guest:My parents, especially my father, was so gung-ho about showbiz.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He loved it.
Guest:Oh, he loved it.
Guest:All aspects of it.
Guest:You know, what we're doing here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Signing autographs, doing the movies.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And, you know, my first part officially was when I was six months old.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my parents were visiting...
Guest:A friend of theirs, John Cromwell, was shooting a movie called The Company She Keeps with Jane Greer, an incredible actress.
Guest:And they needed a baby.
Guest:And they needed a baby, and they gave Jane me, and I was kind of a happy baby.
Guest:They wanted a crying baby.
Guest:My mom said, oh, just pinch him.
Guest:He'll cry.
Guest:Pinched me, and I cried.
Guest:Oh, see that method.
Guest:And now we cut like 30 years later, and I'm doing a movie with Jane Greer, the...
Guest:The redo of a wonderful movie that she did with Mitchum called Out of the Past.
Guest:Ours was called Against All Odds.
Marc:Who was the female lead in that?
Marc:In mine, Rachel Ward.
Marc:I remember that.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:I love that original.
Marc:And the remake's good, too.
Marc:But did you watch the original study?
Marc:I didn't.
Guest:I watched it.
Guest:I didn't study it.
Guest:But that is a real masterpiece.
Guest:Kirk Douglas.
Guest:Kirk Douglas, Mitchum, and Jane Greer.
Guest:Jane Greer.
Guest:Jane Greer, man.
Guest:That's who it was.
Guest:So intense, dude.
Guest:And so style-less.
Guest:Scary.
Guest:Yeah, back in those days, some of the acting seems kind of stylish.
Guest:Some kind of style.
Guest:So did you say it or did she remember you as a child?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So, of course, we teased about it and I'd say to her, we're doing it against all odds.
Guest:She's playing...
Guest:Her character in the original, her mother, and she's playing Rachel Ward's mother.
Guest:And I said to Jane, I said, you know, Jane, I'm having some trouble emoting in this scene.
Guest:How about a little pitch?
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:They harken back.
Marc:Did she get it?
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So that's so wild that you were... Not only with your brother with the music, but generationally, your personal experience in show business.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, your dad's generation, there must have been a lot of characters around.
Marc:I tried to kind of get it out of your brother, but you said your dad didn't hang out exclusively with... You know, there wasn't too many showbiz guys.
Guest:My dad didn't do that too much.
Guest:But I was just coming over here.
Guest:I was talking to my publicist, Gene, and I'm going to tomorrow night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm going to my 50th high school reunion.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And you went to high school here.
Guest:I went to uni.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, uni high school there on Barrington and Westwood.
Marc:Where is it?
Guest:In Westwood?
Marc:It's in Westwood.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's nice to go when you've achieved some things.
Guest:Well, we'll see.
Guest:It's going to be pretty wild.
Guest:But I was telling Gene, I said, guess who was in my class?
Guest:I said, do you know who John Raitt is?
Guest:And she said, no.
Guest:I say, you know who Bonnie Raitt is?
Guest:I said, yeah, John Raitt is Bonnie's father.
Guest:John established all of the great musicals, Carousel, Oklahoma, on Broadway.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:You didn't know that.
Guest:No, I didn't know that.
Guest:Yeah, John Raitt.
Guest:That's where Bonnie gets those pipes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, she was in my class.
Guest:Bonnie was in my class.
Guest:Bonnie was in your class.
Guest:And my girlfriend, Kaya Keel, her father is Howard Keel, who did all of those parts, a lot of the parts that John did in the movies.
Guest:Howard did it in the movies.
Guest:In the musicals?
Guest:Yeah, they were in my class.
Guest:Jan and Dean went to my high school.
Guest:A little older?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were a little older.
Guest:They were about Bo's age, but they had all those hits, man, in high school.
Guest:You know, a lot of those hits in high school.
Marc:Surf hits.
Guest:Can you imagine having that stuff going on when you're in high school?
Guest:That's the time for it to go on.
Guest:You keep in touch with many people from high school?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:A lot of my dear friends are still high school guys.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:Isn't that wonderful?
Marc:Yeah, you seem to have survived show business pretty well.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you don't live here anymore at all?
Guest:I live in Santa Barbara now.
Marc:Oh, you do?
Guest:Yeah, I got shook out with that earthquake 20-some years ago.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:You've been down there that long?
Marc:Or up there?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's pretty up there, though, right?
Guest:Oh, gorgeous.
Guest:Yeah, we love it up there.
Marc:So now tell me about like how, because I tried to get it out of your brother because he told me that, well, you did Last Picture Show.
Marc:You were both sort of doing TV and doing stuff and you were both acting, right?
Marc:But he's a little older.
Marc:You're a little younger.
Marc:He seems jealous of your guitar playing ability.
Marc:And then you start acting and you get this break in Last Picture Show.
Marc:And he said that he had gone out for Fat City.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He says he got me the part.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I like, you know, people often ask, do we compete and stuff?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:We're on the same team.
Guest:You know, we root for each other.
Guest:You know, he always mentions me.
Guest:I always mention him, try to get each other, you know, one of our teammates a gig.
Guest:It could have gone another way.
Marc:It could have been, you could have Kane enabled it.
Marc:But you guys, you love each other.
Guest:You mentioned Fat City.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I think he did his agent work and got me to see John Huston.
Guest:And my agent calls me and says, John Huston wants to see you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I say, really?
Guest:Oh, gosh, okay.
Guest:All right, where and what time and stuff?
Guest:And he says, well, it's in Madrid.
Guest:Spain.
Guest:Yeah, and I understand he wants to meet you at the Prado there, and it's tomorrow or something, you know, really like this.
Guest:And I'm like, you know, a young kid, you know, in my early 20s.
Guest:I say, oh, okay, you know, our adventures are.
Guest:So off I go and I'm like checking into the hotel.
Guest:They pull you out to Spain.
Guest:They pull me out to Spain and I meet this beautiful girl in the lobby while I'm checking in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we start talking and she says, have you been to Spain?
Guest:I said, no.
Guest:And she says, well, I'll take you out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I say, great.
Guest:So I go out that night.
Guest:I wake up the next morning just, you know, I got to be at the Prado at 11 or something.
Guest:I wake up at, you know, 10 or something and I just puke my guts out.
Guest:I've got a terrible case of food poisoning.
Guest:And here I have got to go to the Prado, you know.
Guest:So I'm going to the Prado.
Guest:John is not talking about the movie at all.
Guest:This is Velasquez.
Guest:And I'm going puking in my mouth and swallowing my puke.
Guest:I don't want to puke on the Velasquez.
Guest:Or John Easton.
Guest:I would rather go there in one of his pockets.
Guest:But no, I'm doing my best to hold it.
Guest:We don't talk about the movie at all.
Guest:um i think uh well i didn't get the part i go home and i'm dying man i can't speak spanish i and the door knocks in my hotel room i crawl on my hands and knees open the door and who's there but james mason what and we had done a movie just prior to this the yin and yang of mr go what happened to that movie
Guest:anyway he james saves my life and he gets me a shot but that movie wait so i didn't mean to interrupt so he takes you to doc no he just you know i i could i was paralyzed on the floor and just he's so but what's wrong with you jeff and he got you know the doc came gave me a shot and he basically saved my life i wouldn't know what i would have done oh yeah i got all dehydrated
Guest:But, you know, a few, maybe a year before that, I did a movie.
Guest:I think it might have been right after Picture Show called The Yin and Yang of Mr. Goh.
Marc:It sounds like one of those crazy 60s, 70s movies.
Guest:It was a totally crazy, weird movie written, directed.
Guest:produced and also starring Burgess Meredith.
Guest:A young Burgess Meredith.
Guest:Yes, pretty young.
Guest:He was pretty old at the time.
Guest:I thought he was anyway.
Guest:And what was that groovy movie?
Guest:And that was about this guy, James Mason, who played this Chinese-Mexican...
Marc:A Chinese Mexican?
Guest:Yeah, he played a Chinese Mexican.
Guest:Burgess played a Chinese guy, too.
Guest:And it was about this weapons dealer who just changes like, boom, overnight.
Guest:He's struck and says, I want to make good things.
Guest:And I play a Vietnam vet.
Guest:And it was such a wild scene because, well, a couple of things.
Guest:First of all, Burgess was such an incredible cat.
Guest:He said, you know, you play guitar.
Guest:Let's make your character a guy who writes rock opera.
Guest:Write some songs.
Guest:So he had me writing songs for the movie and stuff.
Guest:Then after the movie was over...
Guest:A few years, quite a few years later, we kept up our relationship.
Guest:He also turned me on to John Lilly.
Guest:Do you know who John Lilly is?
Marc:The dolphin guy?
Guest:The dolphin.
Guest:He also invented the isolation tank.
Marc:Oh, sure.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So this is some hippie shit.
Guest:Yeah, big time.
Guest:So Sue and I were kind of guinea pigs for him.
Guest:John would put us in there and then take notes.
Marc:You met John.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Part of the study?
Guest:Through Burgess.
Guest:Part of the study, man.
Marc:Part of the study.
Marc:The late 60s?
Marc:Early 70s?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you're floating in the tanks.
Marc:You got wires on you?
Guest:No, we're just floating in the tanks.
Guest:The first thing you do, John instructed, you get out three times.
Guest:You just lie down and you get out.
Guest:You know what the tank is.
Guest:Saline.
Guest:Yeah, but about 1,000 pounds of salt in this kind of coffin box.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it's just one person per tank, right?
Guest:One person per tank, but you float.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the water is 98.6.
Guest:Your ears are underwater.
Guest:The idea is what happens to consciousness when you have no input, you know?
Guest:Oh, dig it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's pretty wild what happens because what you find out is how much you're projecting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:right how much you are supplying right right everything you know to what you think is reality what you think is reality and and uh like so many things you know our brain you know you you get parent you know paranoia is really hand i mean it's right there man you know all the time sure so the first thing i do i'm in there i get out three times and i'm lying in this thing and the thing is
Guest:And I say, okay, here I am.
Guest:I just fucking relax.
Guest:John Lilly, he looks so weird.
Guest:He was in that weird blue jumpsuit.
Guest:Did he have breasts?
Guest:It looked like he had breasts.
Guest:What's in this water?
Guest:Am I going to have breasts?
Guest:Am I turning into... Wait a minute.
Guest:That's just my mind.
Guest:Turning into a dolphin?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's the kind of thing.
Guest:And then when you come out, of course...
Guest:All the reality kind of rushes in and it's harder to see how much projection you're supplying because the screen is all complex with everything.
Guest:But we're constantly doing that.
Guest:So that was a mind blower that successfully altered your consciousness.
Guest:A big mind blower.
Guest:Yeah, that was a big mind blower.
Marc:Were you a drug guy in the 60s?
Marc:Uh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Did your share of acid?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did all of that stuff.
Guest:And, um, what'd you get out of it?
Guest:Uh, when I get out, when I get out acid specifically,
Guest:Well, I had a, I overdosed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which was problematic, which, you know, which kind of makes me, well, let's not do it ever again, you know.
Guest:But, you know, it's that old thing about, you know, it's, you know, it's open.
Guest:Now, you must open.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, open.
Guest:You've done, you do, you've done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So open, open, you know.
Guest:And so I went to this party and it was a birthday party and we had some acid in the punch and we had a,
Guest:And then my friend, his birthday it was, he comes over the next morning and he's giggling.
Guest:I said, what are you giggling?
Guest:What's in that jar?
Guest:I said, what is it?
Guest:He says, it's the dregs of the punch, man.
Guest:So he says, let's do it.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:So we split this, we chuggalug this thing.
Guest:And it was just too strong, man.
Guest:It was like, you know, shooting up.
Marc:And it's during the day now?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It happened too fast and open open open I can't Oh, and it was just terrible man, and I just you know fell on the floor just a quivering Fetal thing and then you had to do that for 10 hours.
Guest:Oh, yeah, and I just said on them, you know, but but you know of course it's you know opens up a
Guest:opens up things, you know, and encourages you to maybe see things that aren't exactly as you.
Marc:Yeah, it sounds like both of those things are like that.
Marc:But the paranoia thing, I mean, that came in handy in that Arlington Road movie, right?
Guest:Well, everything finally comes in handy.
Marc:I love that movie because I like that stuff.
Guest:That was a good one.
Guest:Tim Robbins.
Guest:Tim Robbins.
Guest:We got down to the end.
Guest:You know the end.
Guest:You saw the ending.
Guest:And we're getting about ready to shoot the ending.
Guest:And the studio says...
Guest:We want you to shoot a happier ending.
Guest:I said what the fuck you talking about?
Guest:That's the whole point of the thing What's the point of the movie?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, and they say so They wanted to do it.
Guest:They got the they're funding the thing, you know, so our director Mark Pellington, huh?
Guest:Yeah, so Mark Pellington said we're gonna shoot the happy ending Yeah, but we're gonna shoot it really bad
Guest:Which was a bold thing to do because that could have been our thing.
Guest:But we shot it poorly enough that they went with the other ending.
Marc:So after Last Picture Show and doing all this stuff, it just seems that... Did you...
Marc:Learn on the job.
Marc:Did you study acting?
Marc:Did you at some point because you have a lot of range?
Guest:Yeah, my father He taught me all the basics, you know, when we're doing sea hunt He'd have me, you know sitting on his bed going over the lines and and he would say now, you know, make it
Guest:sound real, you know, make it sound like it's happening for the first time.
Guest:And don't just wait till I stop talking to say your line.
Guest:You can listen to what I'm saying and let that inform what you're saying.
Guest:And now go out of the room and when you come back, I want you to do it completely different.
Guest:So he, you know, worked me.
Guest:He did it with Bo too.
Guest:And Bo was, you know, right after my dad, Bo was my next acting coach.
Guest:You know, we'd work on scenes and stuff, you know, for agents and this kind of thing.
Guest:And one of the challenges for an actor is getting your audience.
Guest:You know, where are you going to perform when you're just starting?
Guest:So Bo came up with this brilliant idea.
Guest:He would rent a flatbed truck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we would work up some scenes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would pull into a supermarket.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then our father taught us how to stage fight, how to fake fight.
Guest:So we would put on a fight and people would gather around.
Guest:It looked very real.
Guest:People gather around when they're starting to break up and we go, no, it's a show.
Guest:And we'd jump up on the flatbed and we would do our scenes.
Guest:Until the cops would come.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we'd try to incorporate the cops in some sort of improv.
Guest:You know, they didn't like that too much.
Guest:They'd get pissed.
Guest:We'd go, no, we're out of here, officer.
Guest:And we'd go off to the next supermarket, do our fight.
Guest:You know, we'd get up and we'd play at the supermarket.
Marc:Guerrilla theater.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:that's trippy man but that was what was the point of that just for fun well no for for training oh really well like yeah work on your scenes man you know and you have an audience and you know we would we would do what scenes were they we were working on um particularly beau uh and i were working on a scene uh from catcher in the rye oh were they gonna do did they do a movie yeah
Guest:Uh, no, I don't think he's ever allowed the movie to do it, but that was a movie.
Guest:Um, we were working out for my eight to get an agent.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so Bo and I, we'd go into the agent and, uh, you know, we'd go into the agent's office and we would, you know, talk for a second.
Guest:And then Bo would say, I got to go to take a lake and he would go out to the bathroom.
Guest:And the idea what that we had planned was that when he would come back in, uh,
Guest:that's when the scene would start.
Guest:We wouldn't say, okay, now we're going to do our scene.
Guest:No, it was just going to be a blend of real thing, and then they would realize it.
Guest:So he came in, and he was playing Loose.
Guest:Do you remember the book?
Guest:He was like this... I can't remember the scene, but it had to do with fencing foils, and I can't quite remember, but it was a scene from the book.
Guest:Did it work?
Guest:Yeah, man, it got me the agent and, you know.
Guest:First agent, your first one?
Guest:Yeah, my very first one.
Guest:How long did you stay with that guy?
Guest:I stayed with him for quite a while.
Guest:I can't remember, you know, a long time, 15, 20 years.
Guest:Now, was your dad thrilled that you guys were both in the game?
Guest:Oh, yeah, he loved it.
Guest:You know, I fought with my dad, you know, because I, you know, what young teenage kid wants to do what their parents want him to do?
Guest:You know, I said, no, I'm into the music, you know, painting, art and stuff.
Guest:He goes, Jeff,
Guest:Don't be ridiculous.
Guest:That's what's so wonderful about acting is you get to use all of your talents and things that excite you.
Marc:So he's really into it.
Guest:Oh, he was deep into it.
Guest:He loved it and just supported it.
Guest:And I got to work with... Whenever I got to work with Bo or my dad was really...
Marc:How often did you work with your dad in movies?
Guest:I worked with him twice.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:In Tucker and Blown Away.
Marc:Did he play your dad in Tucker?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Oh, he played the congressman?
Guest:Yeah, he played a bad guy.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah, a guy who was trying to shut my character down or something.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And then what was the other one?
Guest:And the other one was Blown Away, where he played my uncle in that.
Marc:He was a great actor.
Marc:Oh, man, he was so good.
Marc:And then he did comedy, did the Airplane movie.
Guest:I remember when I was doing Blown Away, talking to the producer and we're casting the movie.
Guest:I said, you know who would really be good is my uncle, wonderful actor, Lloyd Bridges.
Guest:Are you familiar with him?
Guest:And he laughed.
Guest:He says, oh, yeah, your dad is a, you know, he's very talented, but he's really more of a comic.
Guest:I say, what the fuck are you talking about?
Guest:I said, well, you know, airplane.
Guest:I said, yeah, but that's just a tool in his kit bag.
Guest:So I said, you want him to come in and read for you?
Guest:He said, yeah, would he do that?
Guest:I said, oh, God.
Guest:So, of course, he came in, knocked it out of the park.
Guest:You Bridges guys getting each other jobs here.
Guest:But my dad, he was...
Guest:I think of all the things I learned from him, and I learned, like I said, all the basics, was just the joy in which he had when he worked.
Guest:I got to work with him as a kid in sea hunt, and that was a little...
Guest:That was different.
Guest:I mean, now as I'm even telling it, I'm imagining a weird story.
Guest:It kind of embarrassed me, but now as I look back, I was kind of pleased where he was working with a director on that show, and I played a small little part, and the director was giving a lot of shit to some PA, just kind of a guy who was doing errands.
Guest:The director was really taking out...
Guest:And my dad said, could I have your attention, please, to the crew?
Guest:And he said, when our director apologizes to this young kid, I'll be in my trailer, and you can come and get me.
Guest:But I want him to apologize in front of everyone, too.
Guest:But that's the kind of guy my dad was.
Guest:And when I worked with him later, like in Tucker,
Guest:Oh, man, Francis Copeland, you know, who's like a big kid in a way, you know.
Guest:And Francis made this, you know, called all the crew and the cast.
Guest:We had two weeks rehearsal.
Guest:The first week was kind of getting to know each other.
Guest:The second week...
Guest:Well, Francis says, we're going to spend this second week shooting the entire movie on this little video camera.
Guest:Vittorio Storaro, the famous, you know, our DP, he will use the little wheelchair as a dolly and he'll be shooting.
Guest:And you actors, now when you're doing the car scene...
Guest:When the car stops, I want you to go, you know, give a little jerk, you know, and you wardrobe people, you know, the wedding scene.
Guest:Look at these curtains could be good wedding.
Guest:So it was kind of like our guy in comedy or the little rascals.
Marc:Let's make a movie.
Guest:We shot the whole movie in one week.
Guest:In place of storyboarding?
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:What he did... I found this out later.
Guest:He storyboarded very extensively.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He took photographs and then replaced those pictures, the drawings, with photographs.
Guest:Then he shot this movie...
Guest:and replace the storyboard with this... The film, the video.
Guest:The video film.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which he gave to us at that week.
Guest:We didn't know it, but he was editing that film going to and from work.
Guest:So, he gave... At the end of that second week of rehearsal, he said, here's our film.
Guest:We're just going to polish it up.
Guest:Isn't that wild?
Guest:So, the film was always there.
Guest:And we only did one take...
Guest:For that whole thing.
Guest:For the video thing.
Guest:For the video thing, but it was such a spirit of play and that was such, it really was kind of my dad's style because this joy that he had and the sense of play was really contagious when he showed up to work.
Guest:People realized, hey, yeah, this is kind of fun what we're doing.
Marc:As opposed to being like, what do you mean we're shooting the whole movie?
Guest:Or just something.
Guest:And all through the movie, during the movie, we had this sense of joy and play.
Guest:And of course, when you're kind of playful, you tend to relax.
Guest:And when you relax, your best stuff can leak out, man.
Marc:And also, that character was very buoyant.
Marc:And resilient and always sort of optimistic, your character.
Marc:Oh, yes.
Marc:Yeah, very much.
Marc:And there was sort of a kind of a lighthearted comedic element to that movie, to the pace of that movie.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That he kept just trying and trying and taking the hits and taking the hits, but he never got sunk.
Guest:As we talk about Marty Landau, my dear friend from that movie, he just passed away.
Guest:He was an incredible guy.
Marc:What a great guy.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:He was your financer in that movie, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's a fascinating guy.
Marc:It's sad.
Marc:But he lived a good long life.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:What other actors do you look up to that changed your game?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, all the guys, I'm a fan now of Bloodline.
Guest:You've been watching that, Bo's in that show?
Guest:Oh, man, do yourself a favor.
Guest:All the actors, and I can't even think of all their names, but it's wonderful when things come together.
Guest:You've got great directing, great DP, you've got a great story, and the actors, and it all comes together, and that's the case with Bloodline.
Marc:But later on, you work with Eastwood, George Kennedy in that movie, in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and then all these, there's a Farrah Fawcett movie.
Marc:You've worked with everybody.
Guest:You've worked with everybody.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I've worked with a lot of great people.
Guest:That's my favorite thing about the gig is all the artists that you get to work with.
Guest:Not only the actors, but costume designers.
Guest:Tron.
Guest:You did Tron.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Cutting Edge Future.
Guest:Well, you know, they got now Tron.
Guest:It came back, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We did another one, like a picture show.
Guest:We did another picture show 20 years later with the same cast.
Guest:What was that called, though?
Guest:Which one?
Guest:The second picture show.
Guest:Texasville.
Guest:Texasville, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But with Tron...
Guest:Joe Kaczynski directed the second Tron.
Guest:I can't remember the name of the second Tron, the sequel.
Guest:But that was his first movie.
Guest:Can you imagine directing something like that for your first movie?
Guest:The original Tron, it was shot in 70 millimeter black and white and then all hand tinted.
Guest:And it was a real kind of a primitive thing.
Guest:The second one, I got scanned.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Into the computer.
Guest:I mean, literally.
Guest:I mean, as an actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I could play myself as a young guy.
Guest:And so that's, I think, the future of my profession will be, you know, they'll just have us all in there and they say, let's try a little Mitchum, let's put a little De Niro, just a splash of bridges and let's see what happens.
Guest:Is that a good thing?
Guest:It's a thing.
Guest:It's what's going to happen, man.
Guest:I don't know if it's good or not.
Guest:I don't think it's good.
Guest:Now, Joe, because this is the guy who directed the second one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:uh just directed me in this movie that's coming out called only the brave uh right the story of the mountain hot shot i watched it and he directed that one isn't that wild so so that's the cool thing about movies also is that you have these little lifetimes kind of and then you'll have reincarnations of those people in your another lifetime yeah because it's a relatively small biz yeah it is it's a it was smaller when he started but it's still pretty small i guess and
Marc:Let's talk about Lebowski for a minute.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I had to watch it.
Marc:I love the Coen Brothers, and I have my favorite Coen Brothers movies, but people are just... It's got a cult.
Marc:The Lebowski has a following of people that decode it.
Marc:They love it.
Marc:They watch it many times every year.
Marc:And you know this exists, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah, man.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:I mean, I had my Beatle moment when I played Lebowski Festival.
Guest:Oh, man, with my band.
Guest:And now, ladies and gentlemen, the dude.
Guest:Oh, I knew playing to a sea of dudes and bowling pins and mods, you know, the Viking helmets, you know?
Guest:Really?
Marc:So they do full-on cosplay, full-on costume stuff.
Guest:Oh, and it goes on for a couple of days.
Guest:I mean, it's pretty wild, man.
Marc:Because I had to keep going back and back to the movie because I wanted to understand why people are obsessed with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you understand?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, for my two cents, it's so deep to me.
Guest:Number one, the Coen brothers are masters, right?
Guest:They know how to make a really good movie.
Guest:And that is what that is.
Guest:That is a good movie.
Guest:When you watch it, it's like eating popcorn.
Guest:You can't stop.
Guest:I don't watch my movies when they're on TV normally.
Guest:No.
Guest:if Lebowski comes on, I'll say, well, you know, I'll just watch the turtle.
Guest:We'll lick the ball and then I'll go to something else, you know, and I'll say, Oh, I'm just going to now watch this.
Guest:And then I get hooked because each scene, you, you remember something new about it.
Guest:You kind of get a deeper vibe.
Guest:thing about it and it's it's and it's got a sweetness to it too oh yeah you know you know and uh again that bridges buoyancy well you know so it well it's i i remember you know the thing you know when when john uh hugs me you know yeah you know after throwing the ashes all over me i get pissed at him he go you know come on dude there's just some touching you know dear stuff about it
Marc:Well, someone had to point out to me, this is how dumb I am really, that it's really a play on a Knorr movie.
Marc:It's really a play on a detective.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
Marc:And for some reason, I just didn't put that together.
Marc:Oh, yeah, definitely.
Marc:And then once I put that together, I'm like, okay.
Marc:Yeah, like the big sleep.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like I didn't realize, because I'm an idiot, that that's the model of it.
Guest:And then it's just so good.
Guest:I'm sitting having dinner at this...
Guest:Guy's house.
Guest:On one side is Ram Dass, you know, the be here now guy.
Guest:And on the other side... Did you know him in the 60s?
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:This was the first time I'd met him.
Guest:And on my other side is this guy named Bernie Glassman, who is a Zen master.
Guest:And we're eating, and he says, I saw Lebowski.
Guest:I go, oh, yeah.
Guest:I said, what do you think?
Guest:He says, well, you realize in many Buddhist circles, the dude is considered a Zen master.
Guest:I say, what are you talking about?
Guest:He says, oh, yeah.
Guest:I say, no, we never talked about anything spiritual or anything like that on the show.
Guest:He goes, oh, yeah.
Guest:I say, well, what do you mean?
Guest:He says, well, who wrote and directed the thing?
Guest:I say, the Coan Brothers.
Guest:He goes, the Coan Brothers.
Guest:You know what a Coan is, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he says, the film is riddled with modern day koans.
Guest:I said, come on.
Guest:He says, yeah, I'm all about bringing Buddhism into the current times.
Guest:He says, let's write a book.
Guest:I said, what are you talking about?
Guest:He says, let's write a book about Lebowski and about all the koans in there.
Guest:I said, what do you mean?
Guest:Give me an example.
Guest:He goes like, well, shut the fuck up, Donnie.
Guest:There's a koan right there.
Guest:The dude abides.
Guest:Or that's just like your opinion, man.
Guest:So we write this book called The Dude and the Zen Master.
Guest:And I love the book, but it's that kind of depth that people see stuff in this.
Guest:Did the Coen brothers see the book?
Guest:They got a copy.
Guest:I don't know if they looked at it or not, but I sent them a copy.
Guest:They never got back?
Guest:I can't remember.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:The Koan brothers.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That is some hippie shit.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But Bernie, he's got a great organization called the Zen Peacemakers, and he's an amazing cat.
Marc:Do you practice Buddhism, though, as a person?
Guest:Well, I do practice, yeah.
Guest:I wouldn't officially say I'm a Buddhist, but I do practice.
Guest:I'm Buddhistly bent.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Buddhistically bent.
Marc:I like that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, what do you do?
Marc:You meditate?
Marc:I meditate.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I like to do, you know, I read a lot of stuff, you know.
Guest:Bernie's written some great books.
Marc:Can you meditate successfully?
Marc:Are you good at it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It doesn't take much.
Marc:I don't know why I fight it.
Marc:I resist it, and then I don't try to do it, and all you got to do is sit there, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, it's an interesting thing.
Guest:I mean, you studied, you practiced, you read any of the stuff.
Marc:Not really.
Guest:Not really, but, like, I've sat and breathed.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, that's basically, and you count those suckers, yeah, you know.
Guest:Count which suckers?
Marc:The breaths.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:Count them, and all of those thoughts, you know, one of the main things I think gets in people's way is they think they're not supposed to think or have thoughts.
Marc:You've got to let them go by, right?
Guest:That's just that our mind secretes that, just like, you know, our saliva or something.
Guest:That's just what the mind does.
Guest:It secretes thoughts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you just got to, you know, that thing about, you know, that's just like your opinion, man.
Guest:You know, that not only goes for other people, but that goes for ourselves, our own opinions.
Guest:You know, we have these thoughts that are kind of mean, you know, they don't mean shit, man.
Guest:They're just thoughts.
Marc:And it's what we hang our sense of reality on.
Guest:It goes back to the isolation.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:We don't, yeah, we project all of this.
Marc:And also, our brains are like recording devices.
Marc:It's just they regurgitate.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:What's your thought?
Marc:What's the thought that you heard?
Marc:How'd you get the information?
Marc:What's really happening, man?
Guest:There's so many cool books.
Guest:One of the most accessible people, I think, is Pema Chodron.
Guest:Do you know her?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love listening to her stuff.
Marc:I should listen.
Marc:I should get into it.
Marc:I think there's some part of me that wants to hold on to the aggravation.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, for your work, right?
Marc:Yeah, something like that.
Marc:Or just because, like, who am I without that?
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Well, who am I?
Guest:That's the big question.
Guest:You know, that's the thing to meditate on.
Guest:Who am I?
Guest:Who is this guy?
Guest:Have you figured it out?
Guest:Yeah, it's like, you know, it keeps these two mirrors facing each other.
Guest:I haven't figured it out.
Guest:Like you say, I don't know if I want to...
Marc:figure it out you know it's like um you've been to a psychiatrist sure so you know it's just like peeling i gotta go today you're going today to shrink yeah cool yeah i don't go that often but like i eat different points in my life i've gone when i need a little i need a second opinion yeah like hey dude am i fucked up
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I remember I went to a guy for about a year, maybe a little longer, and it was heavy.
Guest:It was like three two-hour sessions a week.
Guest:And I didn't have any necessarily problem.
Guest:I just wanted to experience psychiatry and dig with the guy and find out.
Yeah.
Guest:And it just kept peeling onions, peeling, peeling.
Guest:And there's nothing down there.
Guest:It's just a bunch of onion skins.
Guest:And finally, I say, well, I'm paying this guy as a friend.
Marc:It just felt weird after a while.
Marc:I understand that.
Guest:But it's a great, especially if you get a guy who...
Guest:you know, who you're getting something from.
Marc:I mean, I think it's a good thing.
Marc:I think if you have trauma or if you have some, like, character flaws, you can trace.
Guest:Yeah, right, trace that.
Guest:I'm working with a really interesting thing now.
Marc:For a movie?
Guest:No, a friend turned me on to this book.
Guest:Actually, I told my daughter about this book.
Guest:She says, I turned you on to that book.
Guest:I go, oh, okay.
Guest:But she's into this kind of stuff.
Guest:It's called Feeding Your Demons.
Guest:And it's this chod, C-H-O-D practice.
Guest:And basically what it is...
Guest:Uh, you know, we have this, uh, uh, it's very common to have this kind of, um, you know, uh, the George, you know, fighting the drag, you know, defeating our, our, our demons.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I can do this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this, uh, exercise is completely different.
Guest:It's, um, you, you feel your, your demon or this, you know, this thing that you have anxiety about fear or guilt or whatever you feel it, you try to conjure up.
Guest:its shape and its size, its color, texture.
Guest:And then you create it and you imagine it out in front of you.
Guest:And you ask the demon, what do you want?
Guest:And then you become the demon.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:They just want to hang out.
Guest:And you answer what the demon wants.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he'll say that.
Guest:And then you become yourself again and you create this nectar made out of your body.
Guest:Basically, you feed the demon as opposed to trying to kill it.
Guest:You feed it what it wants.
Marc:Yeah, but they're always hungry and then they're going to want other people.
Guest:Well, that's what you know.
Guest:But yeah, that's a heavy that's a heavy.
Guest:You know, that's an aspect of the demon.
Marc:You know, you roll with that.
Marc:It seems like your openness to this kind of thing just informs your ability to act and have range.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it goes in with the acting for sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's so many, you know, actors are kind of into this.
Guest:This thing an actor who who I really you know, you talked about actors.
Guest:Yeah, yeah Yeah, my favorite guys is a Kevin Bacon sure I got to him.
Guest:Yeah, he's wonderful cat.
Marc:He's a great guy.
Guest:Isn't he a good guy?
Guest:Hell yeah, and he gave me a little You know, I don't know if he meant it in the spiritual way, but I kind of took it.
Guest:Yeah, what did you do?
Guest:Well, you know when you're acting
Guest:You have, or I do, anyway, there's kind of an anxiety comes up.
Guest:When?
Guest:Flop sweat, huh?
Guest:Just before a thing.
Guest:You're anxious.
Guest:It's basically what I was telling you about Crazy Heart.
Guest:Are you going to be able to catch the ball?
Guest:Are you going to be able to do what you're supposed to do?
Guest:Do justice to the material.
Guest:So we've got a big scene and it's quite involved.
Guest:Which movie?
Guest:This is in a movie called...
Guest:RIPD.
Guest:He gathers us together.
Guest:And he gets us all together and then he looks at us all very seriously and he says, remember, everything depends on this.
Guest:And it, boom, it put it in perspective, you know.
Guest:You know, of course it doesn't, but then on another side, it does.
Guest:You know, this moment is the whole thing, you know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:This is how we're receiving him.
Guest:Anyway, I enjoyed working with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also another thing, you know, I see all these guitars around, and maybe we can pick after this interview just a little Scotia, unless you got to go somewhere.
Guest:But there's so many actors play music, you know.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And music is another wonderful way to connect with people.
Guest:Man, I mean, you know, it saved so much time.
Guest:When we were doing Against All Odds, Taylor Hackford, the director of that movie, the first thing we did, we split a bottle of tequila down in Mexico and worked our way through the whole Beatle catalog.
Guest:He's got a beautiful voice, and we just sang, and then...
Guest:Because that's what it's all about is harmonizing, making it sound good.
Marc:And also having a good time.
Marc:And having a good time.
Marc:You seem to be very able to have a good time.
Guest:Well, I like to have a good time.
Guest:I enjoy it.
Guest:I can go the other way, too.
Guest:I get depressed and tight and all that stuff.
Guest:Do you?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:For long periods of time?
Guest:I wouldn't say chronically.
Guest:I go back and forth, but I get down there too.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Full range.
Guest:Yeah, the full range of humanity.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Real quick, though.
Marc:Heaven's Gate.
Marc:Did that feel like a disaster when you were doing it?
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:What a shame that was.
Guest:That was a wild ride.
Guest:I can tell you all those musicians.
Guest:We talked about all those musicians.
Guest:And it was in the cocaine days, man.
Guest:I mean, you can imagine.
Guest:Everyone jacked.
Guest:Except Chris was on the wagon.
Guest:He didn't party with us.
Guest:He really wanted to catch that ball.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Big part for him.
Guest:Big part for him.
Guest:And, you know, Chimino, I did his first movie, by the way, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, the one with Clint.
Marc:That was his first movie.
Marc:Yeah, I like that movie.
Guest:And on that movie, Clint was, you know, holding all the power in the thing, you know.
Guest:And he's famous for doing one or two takes.
Guest:That's all he likes to do.
Guest:And I was the young punk who'd say, oh, Mike, I got an idea.
Guest:Can I go one more time?
Guest:He says, well, I have to ask the boss, you know.
Guest:And Clint would say, I'll give the kid another shot, you know.
Guest:And then he would, and that was wonderful.
Guest:And then Mike Cimino did Deer Hunter, which was this huge success, and it was executed so beautifully.
Marc:Just watched it again recently.
Marc:It was so great.
Guest:And then so the movie maker said, oh, whatever you want, you're our darling.
Guest:And he says, well, I've got a great...
Guest:epic Western I want to do.
Guest:And when you think about the story of the tale that Heaven's Gate tells, you know... I never saw it.
Guest:You've never seen it.
Guest:I've got to watch it.
Guest:Oh, man, yeah.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:It's about cynicism, you know, and what cynicism costs us.
Guest:I mean, that's especially for these times.
Guest:It's kind of an interesting thing about it.
Guest:You know...
Guest:You know, when all these Europeans were splashing onto our shores, you know, this is in the 1860s, they'd get out into Montana and Wyoming, they'd see all these walking hamburgers, all this beef, you know.
Guest:And they would have to eat, you know, or they'd starve, so they would get these cows.
Guest:And in those days, the cattlemen, the Cattlemen's Association was like the big oil companies today.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And maybe a handful of guys owned all the property from Texas to Canada.
Guest:And they hired 100 gunmen, Texas gunmen, to come up and kill these immigrants that were on a list.
Guest:And this letter that announced these gunmen was signed by the president of the United States to go up there and kill these people.
Guest:For killing cows.
Guest:For killing cows.
Guest:And there were 100 guys on this list.
Guest:And I'm not going to ruin it for you, but it's worth seeing.
Guest:But the movie, when it came out, it came out during a time when...
Guest:MTV was very popular and it was all this fast cutting.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Heaven's Gate is very slow.
Guest:It's almost like this, what's that Russian guy, Tarkovsky?
Guest:It's very slow, but if you get with the filmmaker Chimino's rhythm,
Guest:It's quite beautiful.
Guest:It really sets you back in those times.
Guest:Anyway, that was part of the reason, I think, because it didn't suit the times as far as editorially.
Guest:And then also, Cimino...
Guest:didn't want any of these suits to come to the set.
Guest:And he didn't want to talk to press and all of that.
Guest:And that created some animosity from the critics and from the thing.
Guest:And they let him have it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So they hated him before it even came out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so when it came out, I remember going to the big premiere in New York.
Guest:Everybody's in tuxes, you know.
Guest:and the end of the movie, and you hear that terrible sound, you know,
Guest:It sounds like popcorn started to go off.
Guest:And then in your mind, you're thinking, maybe they're just so blown away.
Guest:But it was just nobody kind of got it.
Guest:And the word had leaked out that he had spent all this money.
Marc:There's drugs and everything else.
Guest:Excess.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Excess.
Guest:He's out of control.
Guest:And then the next day, we're driving to the airport to go to Toronto.
Guest:We pick up this review.
Guest:Ugh.
Guest:And it said, if they shaved Chimino's head, they would find three sixes.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Can you imagine?
Guest:For a movie?
Guest:Yeah, for a movie.
Guest:And they just attacked him.
Marc:And that was the end of the 70s, man.
Guest:And we thought that was it.
Guest:But now it's considered a classic.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I got to watch it.
Marc:It's just one of those things.
Marc:Chris Walken is so great.
Guest:Mickey Rourke is in it.
Guest:No shit.
Marc:I didn't know that.
Marc:But your last movie, you like playing these Western type of dudes?
Guest:I remember Westerns.
Guest:My dad, who's in a lot of great Westerns, High Noon, whenever he'd come home from work dressed up like a cowboy, I'd put on his boots and his hat.
Guest:You know, Cowboys.
Marc:Sure, man.
Guest:What a time.
Marc:And you did that thing that Bad Company was sort of a Western, right?
Guest:Bad Company.
Guest:Yeah, Bob Benton's first movie, yeah.
Marc:Is that a deep movie?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:It's a good movie, yeah.
Guest:You know who's in that movie?
Guest:Who?
Guest:Who plays Big Joe?
Guest:David Huddleston.
Guest:David Huddleston.
Guest:You know who David Huddleston is.
Guest:I got to look.
Guest:David Huddleston is the Big Lebowski.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:So David Huddleston was in Bad Company and he was the Big Lebowski, man.
Guest:He was the Big Lebowski.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It's a small world.
Guest:Did the Coen brothers know that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I always wonder, man.
Guest:Put that in the co-hands.
Guest:Yeah, the co-hands.
Marc:The co-hands.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you can make all the connections.
Marc:Make all the connections.
Marc:But yeah, and also Fearless, great movie.
Marc:Vanishing, interesting remake.
Marc:Now, this is where I just read off the movies and tell you how good you are.
Marc:The Baker boys with your brother.
Guest:Oh, we should talk a little... Oh, yeah.
Guest:You want to talk a little bit about... I mean, I don't... That was just a dream come true because...
Guest:playing with Bo on that level.
Guest:We would have lunch every day, you know, split a bottle of wine, just pinch each other and say, can you believe what we're doing?
Guest:Oh, man.
Marc:And he told me, like, how did we come together?
Marc:He was a young kid, right, who had the... This guy, Steve Clovis.
Yeah.
Guest:Uh, who's like in his twenties when he wrote and directed that way.
Guest:And, uh, he, um, you know, he just, uh, we jammed on it, you know, for about a month we had rehearsals and improvs and stuff.
Guest:And we had this one improv that, uh, that really gave me faith in him as a director.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:Each of us would take turns setting up situations, and then we would do a long improv.
Guest:And Steve said, okay, here's the situation.
Guest:Jeff, you left home.
Guest:You snuck out at night.
Guest:It's about...
Guest:Three in the morning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just went to see your hero, Bill Evans, at this club.
Guest:Play piano.
Guest:Playing piano.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And everybody's kind of leaving now, and Bill Evans comes out of the bathroom, and he's just shot up in the bathroom, and he bums a cigarette off you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he says, and I'm going to play Bill Evans, the director, this young director, Steve says, I'll play Bill Evans.
Guest:And Bo, when I put my hands through my hair, big brother is going to come and try to get his kid out of there.
Guest:And so we did that improv.
Guest:And that gave me such...
Guest:faith in Steve as a director.
Guest:The number one that he would play with us.
Guest:And then I saw that, oh, he's got the chops.
Guest:He knows what it's about.
Guest:And then Michelle, man.
Guest:It was like every once in a while something like that comes down and that's, you know.
Marc:it's just amazing right yeah yeah that's wonderful and you get to work with your bro oh man but like also though like it seems like the last two like i the the ensemble in this new one uh the the fire movie only the brave right that's a big bunch of good actors in that yeah and also uh the hell or high water that was tight that was a tight little movie yeah yeah did you like playing with those guys
Guest:uh very much that uh that you know uh director um david mckenzie is you know wonderful and um yeah oh god it was yeah that was that was a great great movie oh and also that cohen's redid true grit i thought that was good too that was good brolin josh was josh brolin was in that movie we didn't have any scenes together but it was you know we hung out a little bit and he's so good in this only the brave he's a fucking good isn't he a good actor man trip right
Marc:very good you can you can feel that right again another second generation you know his dad yeah but like you know he's one of those guys where you just watched him grow and now he's just like just yeah solid man yeah grounded in it yeah yeah you guys had some good scenes in this fire yeah yeah what's the big challenge of this uh it's a true story yeah right yeah true story heartbreaking story
Guest:It's a heartbreaking story, but it really, rather than concentrating on the heartbreak, it's really focusing on who these guys are.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:By the time the shit goes down, you feel bad.
Marc:Have you seen it?
Marc:I did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You feel bad.
Marc:It's heartbreaking, but there is something transcendent about their journey.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that moment where they all pull those things over their heads.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:These guys, hot shots.
Guest:Hot shots, yeah.
Guest:Talk about...
Guest:You're right where most of us would run away from their going into it.
Guest:And they practice.
Guest:We're talking about meditation and practice.
Guest:You play guitar.
Guest:I kick myself in the ass for not practicing enough.
Guest:Practice, because that's the whole deal, man.
Guest:You want it to be fun, man.
Guest:Well, you want it to be fun, but the more you practice, the more fun it's going to be, right, man?
Guest:Come on.
Guest:You know that, right?
Guest:When you learn a lick, you're like, oh, shit.
Guest:Now I can do that.
Guest:But these guys practice bravery, practice fighting fire.
Marc:Did all those actors have to learn how to be firefighters?
Guest:They probably did.
Guest:Oh, yeah, they did.
Guest:And the only living survivor, Brendan McDonough, was with us on the set the whole time.
Marc:Was that heavy?
Guest:And it was very heavy.
Guest:It was...
Marc:The guy, that's who Miles Teller plays.
Guest:Yeah, he plays, Miles Teller plays, and it was wonderful to have his support and his stamp of approval.
Guest:You know, that was most important to us, and how the families of the survivors felt about the film, and they're all supportive of the film.
Guest:And I was really happy to see that there is a Granite Mountain Fund for people who...
Guest:Um, when I contribute to, uh, the firefighters, uh, if they go to only the brave dash movie.com, you can feel about this, uh, granite, um, the granite mountain hotshots, uh, that fund I've been, you know, we've got this climate change going on fires.
Guest:Oh, I was in Montana yesterday.
Guest:uh at my daughter giving to my daughter this beautiful wedding fires were just all over us you know yeah uh i've lost a house to a fire where in malibu oh really i've lost 400 acres of our ranch in montana burned down oh it just fires all over the place you still got a place up there yeah you spend a lot of time out there i live in the whore house from heaven's gate
Guest:It's true.
Guest:We were shooting that movie.
Guest:It's the Hog Ranch.
Guest:This is where I'm killed out in front of this place.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:And Chimino says, now the Hog Ranch is on this people's property.
Guest:They don't want it there anymore.
Guest:We're going to burn it down.
Guest:Does anybody want it?
Guest:And I shot my hand up and he gave me the place numbered and also the barn.
Guest:It was built for the movie?
Guest:It was built for the movie just how they built it in those days where no matching logs, just whatever to beat the winner.
Guest:Did you fix it up?
Guest:Over the years, we have fixed it up, but that's 40 years ago.
Marc:That's a trip.
Guest:Some of the bullets that didn't go off are still in the wall.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:So you want to knock a song out?
Marc:I was thinking maybe we can pick a little bit.
Guest:Because there's a couple of songs.
Guest:I wouldn't mind playing this song, but I'd like to brush up on it a little bit.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:What do you think?
Guest:You got time to do it?
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:Let me go get the acoustic.
Marc:Did you pick with Neil?
Marc:no no man i didn't i couldn't he didn't play here who has played here um nick lowe has played in here lucinda williams has played in here did you pick with him at all no i think i uh jimmy vaughn let me play with him dave alvin let me play with him um yeah they like you know i can i feel all right playing with you because you know because i'm no good
Marc:But no, not because of that.
Marc:Because I can feel like we're not pros.
Marc:We're guys that like to do it.
Guest:You know who I got to play with?
Guest:Who?
Guest:Bob Dylan, man.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Come on, man.
Guest:Look on your list there.
Guest:I did a movie with him, Masked and Anonymous.
Guest:Do you ever see that movie?
Yeah.
Marc:I have not seen that movie.
Guest:That's a weird movie, man.
Marc:It was about him, right?
Guest:He wrote it with Larry Charles, who was the guy who created Seinfeld and everything.
Guest:And it was Larry's first movie.
Guest:So he says to me, so you're kind of the senior thespian here.
Guest:Why don't you and Bob work on some acting, man?
Guest:So, I got to play pretend with Bob for like a half a day, doing improvs and stuff.
Guest:He's such a great presence and I think a wonderful actor.
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Marc:He did some stuff with Peckinpah back in the day.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And then I'm in my trailer and I hear...
Guest:I opened the trailer, and there he is.
Guest:He says, hey, you want a pick?
Guest:He comes in, and I'm so mad.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:What'd you play?
Guest:I had been working on that great song that he sings in Natural Born Killers.
Guest:You know that?
Guest:He just sings it with just him playing the guitar, and he's such a great guitar player.
Guest:He is, yeah.
Guest:You know, see the pyramids across the night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You belong to me.
Guest:So we played that.
Guest:And then we played, I played him one of my buddies, John's, one of his songs.
Guest:Here, let me see if I can.
Guest:Well, let's just try it once, and I'll probably need to do it a couple of times.
Marc:She's going to go nuts.
Marc:She said you guys got to go.
Guest:She's going to go nuts.
Guest:So I'm going to, what I'll do is I'm going to play, I'll just play a couple, and then we can work out.
Guest:I think the, I don't know about the publishing thing, but here, this one should be no problem.
Guest:Whose is this?
Guest:This is John Goodwin's.
Guest:Just one more airplane Just one more war to win Just one more storm to see I'm lost and I'm still sailing in Just one more hurricane Just one more time machine And I'll be free And I'll never leave you again I'll never leave you again
Guest:I'll burn my suitcase to ashes and linen I'll never leave you I'll never leave you again
Guest:Just one more rocket ship To shoot me to the stars Just one more parachute To drive me safely where you are Just one more time machine Just one more telephone And I'll be home
Guest:leave you again I'll burn my suitcase to ashes and men I'll never leave you I'll never leave you just one more hill to climb just one more road to take just one more war to win before I kiss your face I'll never leave you again
Guest:I'll never leave you again I'll bring my suitcase to ashes together I'll never leave you I'll never leave you I'll never leave you again
Marc:Yeah, man, we did it.
Marc:John Goodwin.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:Thanks, buddy.
Guest:Cool, man.
Marc:That was Jeff Bridges.
Marc:Isn't it amazing to hear him get excited and sound exactly like Jeff Bridges in the movies?
Marc:That was so Jeff Bridges.
Marc:That was fun.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:I love you all.
Marc:Godspeed into the next hour of your life.
Marc:Go hour to hour if you have to.
Marc:Minute to minute.
Marc:Day by day sometimes is a chore.
Marc:Boomer lives!
.
.