Episode 870 - James Franco
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck sticks what's happening i'm mark maron this is wtf this is my podcast that i do out of a garage on a hill precariously on on uh i think what might be cinder blocks from the early 1900s just
Marc:perched here, waiting for something, waiting for something.
Marc:Maybe nothing will happen.
Marc:I'm still in my garage.
Marc:I'm not as much in the house, but I'm here, man.
Marc:I'm here.
Marc:Today on the show, James Franco will talk to me for a while.
Marc:All right.
Marc:This is one of those shows where I'm rushing.
Marc:I'm harried.
Marc:I'm still in makeup here.
Marc:I've got I've got stuff in my hair that makes me Sam Sylvia.
Marc:I have to shoot in Pomona later this week.
Marc:Sadly, maybe I'll have some Pomona stories next week.
Marc:God knows Pomona's got tails.
Marc:Maybe I'll have an experience in Pomona.
Marc:But as of right now, it's just moving and shooting.
Marc:Moving and shooting, people.
Marc:So this... I know some of you are going to be heartbroken, but I might not ramble on as much as I usually do.
Marc:Because I talked to Franco for a while, and I'm a little crunched for time.
Marc:Do you dig what I'm saying?
Marc:So, like, as I said, James Franco is here.
Marc:Now, I guess I can... You know, I was...
Marc:I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:I didn't know him.
Marc:And those of you who listen to this show know that we had an episode that had some James Franco on it.
Marc:I was in Austin.
Marc:I was at South by Southwest, I believe.
Marc:I was doing a live WTF there.
Marc:I can't remember who was on.
Marc:I do remember Nate Bargetze was there.
Marc:I know there's some other people.
Marc:And then Franco and Harmony Corrine...
Marc:We're promoting the film Spring Breakers.
Marc:And in sort of a last minute thing, Charlie, the dude who booked some of this stuff up there, said, well, they're going to come by.
Marc:So they did.
Marc:And I talked to Harmony backstage and I met James Franco.
Marc:And Harmony seemed very animated, very funny.
Marc:James was what I perceived as a bit aloof.
Marc:And then I started the show and they came out.
Marc:Uh, and they did, uh, you know, and it was difficult.
Marc:It was weird.
Marc:You know, it was a live audience and I had made an assumption.
Marc:I had assumed, and this is, this is something we all do and we don't necessarily need to do.
Marc:I had assumed that James Franco was some kind of, um, uh, you know, pseudo intellectual kind of affected pompous guy.
Marc:And, uh, you know, he was doing a lot of stuff, going to a lot of schools, uh,
Marc:doing a lot of art, and I just made assumptions before I met him, and he came out, and I thought Harmony would be fun because he was always fun when he was a kid on Letterman.
Marc:He was pleasant backstage, just chatty, and he kind of locked up on me and acted affected and weird, and Franco, I asked him some straight-ahead questions, but he seemed to... I just decided he was being a dick to me, and we got to hash this out, and we will hash it out, but what I realized, and I'll tell him this...
Marc:is that I realized the day that I interviewed him, he didn't know what he was walking into.
Marc:He didn't know me.
Marc:He didn't know the show.
Marc:And the live show was the live show.
Marc:And there's an audience, so I'm acting like an asshole and busting his balls a little bit.
Marc:But he didn't know what he walked into.
Marc:And I sort of blamed him.
Marc:So we're going to straighten this out.
Marc:But I certainly have no stranger to people sort of misunderstanding or deciding something about me.
Marc:And I do it with other people, too.
Marc:Like that guy's an asshole.
Marc:That guy's arrogant.
Marc:Who does that guy think he is?
Marc:Oh, he's too good for us.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:You know, he thinks he's all this or all that.
Marc:And most of the time what I find and this is just with me.
Marc:When people think I'm being an asshole or when people think that outside of acting like an asshole, which I don't usually do in the way that I used to, but sometimes I'm dismissive or I don't say thank you or I don't listen properly.
Marc:And it's not because I'm being a dick.
Marc:I might be being a dick, but...
Marc:Here's what I'm doing.
Marc:I'm lost in my own fucking head.
Marc:I'm not paying attention to what you're saying.
Marc:I'm not paying attention to what you're doing.
Marc:And when you're on set, that's important to do that.
Marc:People are putting makeup on you.
Marc:They're doing your hair.
Marc:I mean, you don't... It's just...
Marc:90% of the time, I think for me, when I'm being an asshole, it's because I'm just lost in my own head, preoccupied with myself.
Marc:There's no malicious intent, but it's just rude behavior.
Marc:And when you don't respond or you don't engage properly, you become sort of a blank canvas for people's assumptions.
Marc:because they don't know what the fuck is going on.
Marc:You're not even acting polite.
Marc:You're not even saying thank you.
Marc:You're not even acknowledging that you've heard what somebody said.
Marc:You're taking everybody for granted.
Marc:You're just moving through the world like it's your screen, treating the people that wait on you places shitty.
Marc:So as soon as you do that, when you're that disconnected from the humanity around you on a day-to-day basis, you make yourself just a tabula rosa.
Marc:for people's projections and assumptions about you.
Marc:You can only use that excuse so many times.
Marc:I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention.
Marc:I'm sorry I was thinking about me.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Were you just, have you been here long?
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Did you, oh, did I just eat your lunch?
Marc:Jesus, I've got to pay attention.
Marc:I've got to engage in some basic etiquette or manners or some respect for other people.
Marc:I just thought that was my food.
Marc:I don't know what I was thinking.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Did I just sit on you?
Marc:I thought you were a chair.
Marc:So needless to say, you know, entering the James Franco thing, you know, I was I was sort of a little bit anxious to make a connection, to talk about things that matter to him.
Marc:I was also, you know, anxious to get to know him because I made assumptions before that turned out to be way off.
Marc:And we ended up jabbering for a long time.
Marc:I had to go.
Marc:It was one of those situations where we talked for a long time, and I'm like, I'd like to keep talking, but I got to go.
Marc:So this is me and James Franco.
Marc:The Disaster Artist is now playing in New York and L.A.
Marc:It opens wide tomorrow, Friday, December 8th.
Marc:So this is a couple of guys getting to know each other.
Marc:I was thinking about poetry, and I was going to give you, I don't know, I got some good books.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, I mean, I was going to, I don't know what I thought, like, maybe you read some poems.
Marc:You want to read some poems on here?
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:Well, you mean you played Ginsburg, you know, right?
Marc:You played him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are we going?
Marc:Is this the thing?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I played Ginsburg.
Marc:Because he, like, for some reason, he was very important to me.
Marc:Allen Ginsberg?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you ever meet him?
Marc:I never did meet him.
Marc:I got a signed book by him.
Marc:He was around a bit.
Marc:I grew up in New Mexico, but he was in New York, and I knew people that knew him, but no, I never met him.
Marc:Did you meet him?
Guest:No.
Guest:He was already gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think he died...
Guest:I just remember... Not terribly long ago.
Guest:Yeah, Good Will Hunting, I think, was dedicated to him and Burroughs.
Guest:I think they died around the same time.
Guest:Did they?
Guest:And I think it was like that year.
Guest:I love Burroughs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's hilarious.
Guest:He is.
Marc:Did you ever realize that about him?
Marc:How funny he fucking was?
Guest:Well, in Drugstore Cowboy, he's hilarious.
Marc:But like the writing, like the writing, they're bits.
Marc:It took me years to realize it because I was so looking for something else.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I was like, this guy's got, he's like a Kabbalah, you know, like Burroughs, it's all coming through him.
Marc:And then if you read parts of Naked Lunch, they're just like schtick, they're funny.
Marc:And I saw him, like when I was, my freshman year of college, I saw his appearance on SNL and he was doing bits from Naked Lunch.
Guest:right he just read his work on right yeah i funny i'm going to do snl um next week really for it'll be my fourth time but i remember being on there i did actually made a documentary yeah about it my about going on snl
Guest:Yeah, well, my documentary, I'm not the host of the documentary.
Guest:It's John Malkovich.
Guest:And I was in with them.
Guest:It was actually an assignment when I was at NYU to do a documentary and just follow somebody for seven minutes, like an observational doc.
Guest:And I was going to follow Bill Hader and just make it a seven-minute doc.
Guest:And then Lorne, I guess, liked me.
Guest:And he gave me access to everything.
Guest:And I was like, well, I'm not gonna waste this.
Guest:I'm gonna make a feature.
Guest:And I went and it's like, it's the only SNL doc where you get to see what happens every step of the week.
Marc:And you followed Malkovich.
Guest:malkovich and the whole you know all the writers sure sure yeah everyone yeah how long ago was that uh seven years ago i think where's that at where can you see that it was on hulu i think it's still on hulu it took a while to like get it released just because um of all the rights and whatever else and because i was looking at the stuff like there's some movies that you made that i was like wait how'd i miss that too many because there's too many that's why
Marc:How'd I miss that?
Marc:Oh, it's only seven minutes long.
Marc:There's gotta be another one.
Marc:No, no, no, this one's a feature.
Guest:No, I know, I know.
Guest:Actually, you know what happened with that?
Guest:It was, I was gonna be put out by Adam Yow's company.
Marc:Yeah, the Beastie Boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he passed?
Guest:And he passed away.
Guest:Such a great dude.
Guest:Seemed like a nice guy.
Guest:And then it took a while to find another place.
Marc:But, like, I didn't realize that you did the Faulkner novel, too, As I Lay Dying.
Guest:I did two of them.
Guest:I doubled down on Faulkner.
Guest:What was the other one?
Guest:You'd think one would be enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I read those books for the first time in high school.
Guest:Because I...
Guest:My dad introduced me to As I Lay Dying.
Guest:I got in a lot of trouble in high school.
Guest:We can go into that if you want.
Guest:But not reading Faulkner.
Guest:No.
Guest:And then after I got arrested enough times, it was like, all right, I guess I can't go out with my friends anymore.
Guest:And so I would spend the weekends.
Guest:at home reading Faulkner with the yeah with the cliff notes oh cliff notes and it was amazing for me you know like that book and Sound and the Fury when we did the movie
Guest:I realized it'll be easier.
Guest:As I lay dying.
Guest:Or for both.
Guest:At first, I did As I Lay Dying.
Guest:So, okay.
Guest:You did The Sound and the Fury?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I had no idea.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You got to check it out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where do you see that one?
Marc:It's online, is it?
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's on iTunes?
Guest:iTunes, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do how to watch it.
Marc:I'm just talking about the book, and now you went and shot it.
Marc:Okay, so as a guy, you're doing... Your career's going well, and you're like, I'm just going to challenge myself with those books, those impossible books?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But what was the impetus?
Guest:That was very... Well, I'll tell you.
Guest:Let's see here.
Guest:Well, first, I want to... We're going to get to this, but I think...
Guest:I think the beginning of your and my story is Austin.
Guest:Because I've been listening to your show nonstop for the past month.
Marc:Yeah, I was a little off.
Marc:I was hard on you afterwards.
Guest:Well, I want to break it down because I'm still a little confused.
Guest:So we both can kind of stay away.
Guest:I think I know what happened.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I just listened to Harmony's interview from years ago.
Guest:Oh, yeah, in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, which is great.
Guest:And you kind of brought it up there a little bit.
Guest:So this is what I remember happening.
Guest:So I was there for Spring Breakers in Austin at South by Southwest.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was just doing interviews all day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I admit that I... Because I don't... You know, I work with Seth Rogen and Judd.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But like...
Guest:I don't know the comedy world that well.
Marc:You don't know me, you had no idea.
Guest:So I didn't know who you were.
Marc:No idea what you were walking into.
Guest:Yeah, so they're like, all right, we're going to this little theater, and you guys are gonna, you know, this guy Mark will interview you.
Guest:And there'll be a group of us, I don't even remember who was with Harmony Eye, but there were a couple other guys on stage.
Marc:Well, yeah, when I did the live WTFs, there was usually like four or five comics.
Marc:I think Nate Bargetts, he was there, and a couple other ones.
Marc:And then you guys just walk in because the guy who runs the festival had got it.
Marc:You know, he had cooked me up.
Marc:And in retrospect, I realized you walk out in front of a live audience with Harmony and me, who's being acerbic because I'm in front of a live audience.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And I'm kind of like, you know, I don't know if I was dickish, but there was no other way for you to behave.
Marc:You know, like I felt like, well, what's he like?
Marc:He's got to be a dick to me.
Marc:But like, what are you don't know me?
Marc:And that's a life situation.
Marc:And I'm sitting there like, you know, hammering on you.
Marc:What else are you going to do?
Marc:You can detach a little bit, right?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So you, so you weren't your normal self or you're not, it's not this, this mark.
Marc:Well, no, because there's an audience to service.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Marc:Because when you do this, you go deep.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We just talk.
Marc:It's one-on-one.
Guest:And you know you ain't going to get the deep stuff if you're like... No, you can't do it in front of... And you can't do it in front of a live audience.
Guest:So you weren't in that mode?
Guest:No.
Guest:Because that was the mode that I thought... Because I've been to... I went back to school.
Guest:I've listened to a lot of...
Guest:guest lecturers and you know authors talking about their work yeah and it's always or directors or whatever it's always such a bummer when you get the you know the well my work speaks for itself i don't know right and you just they don't answer it i mean it must be a bummer if you're an interview it must be the worst if somebody's just like yeah they don't want to do the interview they're just sort of doing it to sell their thing or something but they're not giving you anything i don't yeah i don't do too many of those and usually i'll hammer like i had paul thomas anderson in here yeah i heard that
Marc:Yeah, that just went movie for movie.
Marc:I was like, fuck this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like, what?
Marc:What is that?
Marc:And he was good.
Marc:I didn't realize he was such a goofy, fun guy.
Guest:So, like, you know... I think you got more out of him than anybody probably ever has.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But, like, I thought... Because he's a little bit like... I used to do interviews for, like, Playboy and different outlets.
Guest:And I know him a little bit.
Guest:And he's the one.
Guest:Him...
Guest:and cormac mccarthy yeah i haven't talked to him yeah did you meet him well you did i've talked to him on the phone uh-huh did you did you adapted one of his too didn't you yeah child of god and i remember asking him when we did child of god right i got on the phone he was like my favorite writer and i was like living writer and i was like all right so this is a book about um a necrophiliac that's running around the woods murdering people so they can have
Guest:sleep with them and So people are probably gonna ask me why I made this movie So I'll just ask you Cormac like why did you write that?
Guest:Why did you write the book and he and this is his answer.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know James Probably some dumbass reason like that like that.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like it's a great, you know a great story, but I'm not you know, it doesn't give me much and so when I was on stage with you I
Guest:I was trying to give you answers.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:I don't know if you have that on record somewhere, that interview.
Guest:We played it, yeah.
Guest:I remember you were asking me about Freaks and Geeks.
Guest:This is what I remember.
Guest:And you were asking me about Freaks and Geeks, and I was trying to give you a somewhat informative answer that I like...
Guest:improvised you know but like then would improvise off camera like yeah and the other actors were like not into it and it wasn't helpful and I said this is what I remember I said uh yeah I took myself too seriously then and then you jumped in and said it's a good line yeah and
Guest:my reaction probably shows that you were right.
Guest:You're like, what did I say?
Guest:Then?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're like, Oh, as opposed to now or something like that.
Guest:And boom, I was just like, in my, in my mind, I was like, yeah, fuck this dude.
Guest:I'm trying to give him a good answer.
Guest:And he's kind of, what's he doing?
Guest:Took a shot at you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, all right, no more good answers for you, motherfucker.
Guest:And then, and I remember you saying, well, don't, don't shut down on me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there wasn't that much more to the interview, I remember.
Marc:No, no, no, it wasn't.
Marc:It wasn't.
Guest:And so I later heard like you were kind of pissed about it.
Marc:But I was thinking about it today.
Guest:Yeah, because I was coming in.
Marc:Well, yeah, but I wasn't worried about it.
Marc:But I realized my part in it was...
Marc:What did I expect?
Marc:I realized I think just this morning that he had no idea what he's walking into.
Marc:And he didn't know who I was.
Marc:And then Harmony, who's like chipper and funny offstage, immediately turns into a weirdo the second he's onstage.
Marc:Like just shuts down completely, gives me nothing.
Marc:And then you, you know, like I just lumped you two together as like, what is the point of this?
Marc:They're just going to, they're going to like stonewall me with like some sort of artistic cockiness.
Guest:Weird.
Marc:Because I thought I was giving you answers.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:Look, I'm not a perfect person.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Neither am I. It was a difficult situation.
Marc:I'm sorry I shut down.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:I am sorry that I was a dick.
Okay.
Guest:That's so funny, though, when you talk about Harmony, because he's, I think he's just one of the most incredible, you know, directors.
Guest:Oh, definitely.
Marc:And he's a tricky dude, you know, because like he's got a lot in there and he's got a lot of past.
Marc:And, you know, I think there's a lot he doesn't like to talk about.
Marc:So like he kind of moves around things, you know, when you talk to him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there's such an interesting thing.
Guest:My new thing that I'm interested in is where people are sort of confident in performance and different sort of performance spaces.
Guest:And there's this new amazing documentary out called Jim and Andy on Netflix.
Guest:I saw it, yeah.
Guest:where Jim Carrey, you know, it's footage from when Jim Carrey played Andy Kaufman on Man on the Moon, but then a recent interview, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, they were backstage making a documentary of him being Andy on the set of Man on the Moon.
Guest:And he goes so far into it, Jim's gone.
Marc:Well, his premise was that he was a vessel, and he went on the beach, and he was occupied by Andy, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:But then you see Milos Forman, the great Milos Forman.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just trying to deal with it.
Guest:One of my favorite movies ever.
Guest:And he did Amadeus, too, didn't he?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, great.
Guest:And Larry Flint, which was great, too.
Guest:Yeah, great.
Guest:And there he is cowed.
Guest:Like, he can't even...
Guest:Talk to his actor, really.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And he's calling Jim up saying, Jim, I just want... Can I talk to Jim?
Guest:He's asking Tony Clifton.
Guest:Yeah, he's like, well, we can fire Andy and Tony Clifton, and I can get Jim back, and he can maybe do a good impression of those guys.
Guest:Is that what you want, Milos?
Guest:And he's like, oh, no.
Marc:But what was your feeling in that?
Marc:So this is what you're thinking about, how you occupy different performance spaces.
Marc:What was your reaction to that film?
Marc:As an actor, watching that.
Guest:That it was amazing.
Guest:Like, Jim Carrey is such an, you know, his thing, when he does it, it's miraculous.
Guest:And it's also, the documentary is also a story of Andy's life and Jim's life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you see, and Jim, the way he talks about his performance persona is like, he calls it Jekyll and Hyde, except it's a benign Hyde, right?
Guest:Another person takes over.
Guest:And I guess he learned that from stand-up.
Guest:After a while, he's like, no plan.
Guest:I'm just gonna go out there and let this Hyde character take over and just...
Guest:figure it out on stage there's something I kind of love about that but it's also a little crazy I think but didn't you watch it as an actor and think like oh these poor people on this set well I think about that sort of yeah it's an amazing exercise and that documentary is amazing but I think when they were making Man on the Moon it feels a little like it wasn't after a while it was diminishing returns you know what I mean like yeah
Guest:My guess is when Daniel Day-Lewis is playing Lincoln, yes, Spielberg has to go over and say, Mr. President.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he can... But he's not going to be an asshole.
Guest:Yeah, it's not like...
Guest:What do you want?
Guest:Stephen, I can only speak about the 14th Amendment.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's like you can talk to him about the mission at hand and that there's still an inkling of Daniel Day-Lewis's consciousness behind the facade of Lincoln.
Marc:But you immerse yourself in a similar way.
Marc:But when you say how people occupy spaces, are you talking about
Marc:Because it seems to me that over in the more experimental modes of what you've done creatively.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, you've you've you've done that.
Marc:I mean, you've experimented with putting yourself in spaces, some of them commercial spaces, some of them covered in gold leaf, some of them.
Guest:That was not my idea.
Guest:That was Marina Abramovich's idea.
Guest:That was bizarre and absurd.
Guest:I watched that.
Guest:I don't know what it meant.
Guest:They put honey on me and gold leaf.
Guest:But you showed up for it.
Guest:You were willing.
Guest:That was part of it.
Guest:That was part of a lot of those things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:the showing up and putting myself into different places.
Guest:And I actually, that idea that I was just talking about with Jim Carrey of figuring it out on stage or figuring it out in front of camera, that's something that this performance artist that I worked with and all around artist, Paul McCarthy, do you know that dude?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:He does a lot of, he's sort of like, do you know Mike Kelly?
Guest:Do you know who that guy was?
Guest:Yeah, sure, sure.
Guest:He was in that crowd of this LA artist.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:My girlfriend's a painter.
Guest:Okay, she'll know him.
Guest:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:He's one of the biggest LA artists around.
Marc:I think you almost bought one of her paintings once.
Marc:You liked it, but it was sold.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:That's the story.
Marc:That's the story I heard.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:All right, so this guy McCarthy.
Guest:I did a project with him that was sort of, and a bunch of other artists, but it was inspired by Rebel Without a Cause.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:How long ago?
Guest:Probably about six years ago, no, seven years ago.
Guest:And he talks about it that way.
Guest:Like when he does his performances, it's sort of like, he's like, you work it out in front of the camera.
Guest:And his things are like, he'll take,
Guest:a movie like Rebel Without a Cause, and the way he describes it, he's like, and then we fuck it up.
Guest:Or he'll take Snow White and then fuck it up.
Guest:And it just becomes this weird thing with lots of fluids, like ketchup and mayonnaise to stand in for body fluids and stuff like that.
Guest:And anyway, it's a certain kind of way of working.
Guest:And so...
Guest:Part of my thing, I think in hindsight was, oh, I'll show up.
Guest:I'll put myself, I'll insert myself into this thing.
Guest:So when I did General Hospital, right?
Yeah.
Guest:That came out of a conversation with an artist friend of mine, Carter.
Guest:He wanted me to do his weird art film where I was gonna play a character.
Guest:Carter?
Guest:Yeah, it's like Madonna, like Carter.
Marc:Just Carter?
Marc:Yeah, Carter.
Marc:I knew a guy named Carter who was an artist in New York.
Marc:Oh!
Marc:Carter Costera?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, it's just Carter.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know his last name.
Guest:Okay, yeah.
Guest:And I was gonna play a character that had been on a soap opera but had been fired because he had a mental breakdown.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:and we were just walking on the streets of new york and we're like oh yeah what if you were like actually on a soap opera and i was like oh and i was in that mode it was like oh yeah that'd be cool and you could do it like you knew that like if you wanted to do it they'd write oh they were excited they were really excited yeah they were like uh
Guest:General Hassel was like, yeah, you can come on.
Guest:Do you want to write your own character?
Guest:What do you want to play?
Guest:You can do anything you want.
Guest:And I said, no, I want the full soap opera makeover.
Guest:I don't want to write anything.
Guest:I want you guys to write it.
Guest:All I want is my character to be an artist.
Guest:I want him to be crazy.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And they came up with the idea that the character would be named Franco.
Guest:And it was awesome because it was this cliche version of an artist.
Guest:Started with the street art and now he's doing installations but he's secretly a murderer.
Guest:And the murderer is secretly in the art and all this stuff.
Guest:And
Guest:It was so hokey on one level, but because it was on a soap opera and I clearly didn't belong there.
Guest:The move, the tacit understanding of an actor's trajectory is you start in a soap opera and move up to movies.
Guest:And here I was...
Guest:Movies, I was like doing 127 hours around that time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'm going to a soap opera.
Guest:So already I was like an imposter.
Guest:But then they called the character Franco.
Guest:So it was like you couldn't help but...
Guest:not be pulled out of it.
Guest:It was like already meta, you know what I mean?
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Were you trying to undermine it?
Guest:I think just my presence was undermining it.
Guest:I, and then I went on and it taught me a lot.
Guest:I went on and I was like, didn't you do like 30 of them?
Guest:Yeah, but I'll tell you how that went down.
Guest:I went on and before I went, I was like, am I gonna have to do soap opera acting?
Guest:And it was a great lesson where it was like, no.
Guest:You as an actor in film and television and theater, you are so tempered by everything around you.
Guest:It was such a great lesson.
Guest:And that's why you can see
Guest:great actors that are awesome in one movie.
Guest:And then another movie, you're like, what the heck?
Guest:There's still the great actors.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I mean, some, some, some change, but other times it's just like, what a, what a weird, you know, disparity between those levels of performances.
Guest:And I, I believe a lot of it has to do with who you're working with, what the material is, how it all comes out, because it is such a collaborative medium.
Guest:And, and,
Guest:And the soap opera thing though, like, but so that's one of those things.
Guest:So I went in there and it was like, you say those lines, they have to shoot, you know, so they have five episodes a week.
Guest:They have a certain budget.
Guest:It's just plain easier to have the two characters sit on a couch and talk and say, you know, just about this issue again and again and again, you know, you can't have car chases and whatnot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You have to have them sit in the same place and have them talk for 10 minutes.
Guest:For economical reasons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And all the, like you go in a soap opera set, you've got those sets and all the lights are already on a grid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So all they have to do is like, okay, three, five, 39, da, da, da.
Guest:And then you've got four cameras.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's not just one take per setup like you do on your show.
Guest:You know, you do different setups.
Guest:On Glow, I'm sure they take time to light it and everything.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:this is not just one take per setup this is one take per scene like you just learn the scene do it once good check moving on yeah done like that yeah so the way i did uh all those episodes they called them they were so excited to have me yeah
Guest:That they would just block all of my scenes on Fridays, right?
Guest:They called them Franco Fridays.
Guest:And I was in New York at the time in school, at NYU.
Guest:I would land on Friday at like 10 a.m., go there.
Guest:I'd shoot from 11 to about 2 a.m.
Guest:I was doing, and now you have appreciation for this because of your show.
Guest:I was doing 80 to 90 pages a day.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's like a full feature length film script.
Guest:In a day.
Guest:With all you?
Guest:In a day.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:And I would, I had, it's how I met one of my assistants, Samantha.
Guest:She was working on the show and she and I would just read the scene and I'd get it down.
Guest:Okay, ready.
Guest:And we'd go and do the thing.
Guest:One take, boom, next.
Guest:And just like that, all day on Fridays.
Guest:So on three consecutive Fridays, we logged 21 episodes worth of my character's material.
Guest:So they just had that to have.
Marc:But in your mind, there was a tongue-in-cheekness to it, but once you followed through with it, it was a sort of experiment in that idea of people occupying different spaces, but it seems like as an actor that it was also challenging.
Guest:Yeah, it had its own challenges for sure.
Guest:It was...
Guest:But I didn't have to act like a soap opera actor.
Guest:My point was like, I just say those lines and you lit in a certain way and they cake on the makeup.
Guest:They would always say like, yeah, James, you got to put on that makeup or it's going to be, you know, Nixon in the, you know, the debates or whatever.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The Kennedy debate.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And so they cake on the makeup and you look a certain way and you're saying these lines and it's, you know, blocked the way it is.
Guest:And you just start coming off like a quote unquote soap opera actor.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's just a particular thing.
Guest:thing but the context is too big it's too like it's too instilled it's like the context is you're not bigger than the context right although in a way i was because then when it started coming out yeah people started reviewing and and so general hospital was excited because all of a sudden yeah they're getting wow all the all these cool places salon or whatever slater's talking about general hospital like yeah yeah
Guest:this kind of meta weird thing.
Guest:And then what was so cool about the soap opera format is they have to turn out the material so quickly that then they could start writing in response to the critics or the phenomenon that was going on.
Guest:And so it became even more meta.
Guest:And then my mom, who's a children's book author had been taking acting lessons in Palo Alto and she had a,
Guest:Improv group called Suburban Squirrel.
Guest:And I had mentioned it to the writers and they're like, well, we should get her on to play your real mom.
Guest:So my real mom came on and acted with me.
Guest:But that was so weird because like she...
Guest:was playing my mom.
Guest:She should know how to do that.
Guest:It was like, she, the character was like a former hippie and, um, and she just started playing it so weird.
Guest:Like she was like talking to me, like, I don't know, just drawing out her words, like, huh?
Guest:like oh what are you doing I'm like mom why are you why are you talking like like I was just trying to help her like as a fellow actor like mom yeah you should just relax and kind of be yourself it'll be better yeah and I think she learned I've put her in things since and she learned from that but anyway that was there then the funky thing about that was
Guest:After a while, I was like, all right, I'm done.
Guest:And actually the producer, like daytime, if you didn't know, is sort of fading.
Guest:And so they got rid of some of the producers that I'd been working with.
Guest:And so I just stopped going on.
Guest:And so they had another guy play my character, but he's still called Franco.
Guest:And then they kept bringing my mom back to play this new Franco's mom.
Guest:And what had once been meta... Your mom was having a good time?
Guest:Yeah, but what once had been meta, then soap opera fans would just read it as their show.
Guest:And I now still run into people in the, you know, usually older women in the airport and be like, oh, I loved you on General House, but I don't like the new Franco as much as... And... They just accept it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that's hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then finally the whole soap opera saga ended with this weird art thing where I got mocha here in Los Angeles.
Guest:We did a show at mocha at the Pacific Design Center space that was...
Guest:an episode of General Hospital, but it was as if my character Franco was having the art show there.
Guest:And then his art pieces were sets where he had interacted with this other character, Jason, because he was obsessed with Jason.
Guest:But that it was also kind of a show and performance at MoCA and we had like soap opera fans come and also museum patrons come and watch the filming of this thing.
Guest:That was going to be an episode.
Guest:It was an episode on ABC.
Guest:It aired.
Guest:It was nominated for Emmys.
Guest:But then I also had my own camera crew filming the whole thing that turned into this movie called...
Guest:And when I say it, everyone's going to be like, oh yeah, that's so James.
Guest:That's the ultimate James Franco thing.
Guest:It's called Francophrenia or the subtitle is Don't Shoot, I Know Where the Baby Is because it's a line that my character says.
Guest:But then we eventually aired that on Comedy Central when I did my roast.
Marc:So you see a set, like you understood the idea as a creative person, as an artist, that you have a public persona and it's big.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're like, you know, like, well, that's something that's malleable.
Marc:Like I can fuck with that.
Guest:Right.
Marc:OK, so that so that that's a that is an awareness that that's important in the sense that, you know, your consciousness of it kind of gets you a little slack, you know, for you can't be a full dick if you knew you were fucking with people with your own persona.
Guest:what you're talking about also goes back to the freaks and geeks days where when i was on freaks and geeks i had been taught like by an acting teacher like don't let your public don't don't put too much of yourself out there don't do talk shows don't do shows like this one that we're on like if people get to know you too much then you won't be able to disappear into the characters right mystique yeah john c reilly did you listen to that one he came in here it's like i don't want to talk about i don't like doing this
Marc:I don't like talking about myself.
Marc:I need to manage my, you know, I don't want to blow my mystique, whatever it is.
Marc:And then we ended up talking like we ended up talking about clowns for 20 minutes and he was wide open.
Marc:But like he was aware of it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That as an actor, the one, you know, the one card you have that you could play is that people don't know me that well.
Guest:I mean, I took it too far.
Guest:Judd and Paul Feig on Freaks and Geeks were like, this kid's one of our leads.
Guest:He doesn't want to do any press.
Guest:Who's this little jerk?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And so I was trying to manage my public persona in that way.
Marc:From the beginning, it seems.
Guest:Yeah, and then later it was like,
Guest:oh, okay, I can't really control this thing.
Guest:Like, people aren't writing about me like I'm the coolest guy ever.
Guest:Like, I just can't control it, you know?
Guest:So it was like, all right, I might as well have fun with it.
Marc:But they're not writing about you as the coolest guy ever.
Marc:They're writing about you sort of like, what's up with this fucking guy?
Guest:Yeah, like, oh, another stupid James Dean wannabe?
Guest:Like, screw this kid.
Marc:Well, you kind of, you know, you got stuck in that because of the movie.
Marc:You had to play James Dean and you locked into it.
Guest:Actually, that wasn't a problem.
Guest:After James Dean, that wasn't a problem.
Guest:Everybody around me said, don't play James Dean.
Guest:You're going to be scrutinized and you'll be typecast from then on.
Guest:That actually wasn't a problem after I played James Dean.
Guest:It was just before when I was actually doing the Jim Carrey off-camera James Dean shit.
Guest:That's when it was a problem.
Marc:You did that on that set?
Guest:Yeah, but not to the carry extent.
Guest:At least part of that deep dive into Andy Kaufman and Tony Clifton is that avoidance of self, avoiding running from fear and pain.
Marc:Sure, absolutely.
Marc:But also to have a... This is a good question for you because you don't seem untethered.
Marc:You don't seem that you're lacking self.
Guest:I had to work on it, man.
Guest:I mean, what we're talking about, the period we're talking about was a search.
Guest:Which period?
Marc:James Dean?
Guest:I guess all of it, but like the last 10 years, let's say, seven to 10 years.
Marc:Were you going to nine colleges and you're painting?
Guest:Yeah, because after James Dean,
Guest:I learned on that movie, like, everybody around me said, don't do it, don't do it.
Guest:My agents, everyone said, don't do it, don't do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My only person that said do it was my teacher.
Guest:The acting teacher.
Guest:Robert Carnegie.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because I realized, oh, he was, you know, a James Dean, he was like 50 or 60, and
Guest:And he was still obsessed with James Dean.
Guest:He's still dressed like James Dean.
Guest:And so it was almost like... So you listened to that guy.
Guest:Yeah, it was almost like he was experiencing it through me.
Guest:But it worked.
Guest:He knew more about James Dean than anyone.
Guest:And so it really worked and it paid off.
Guest:I got some recognition for James Dean.
Marc:But was that the first... When did you do that?
Marc:It came out 2001.
Guest:It was after Freaks and Geeks.
Marc:Okay, so it was your first movie.
Guest:My first lead role.
Marc:And it's like this mythical actor who is known for this very specific method.
Guest:I mean, I did some things, some that were silly and some that were... I don't know, whatever.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's hard to go back and be like...
Guest:Well, because I'm happy with the performance.
Guest:I mean, like, you know, I got a great response from him.
Guest:I remember Sean Penn, you know, like all my heroes were coming around.
Guest:They're like, man, I just showed, I just showed, I showed Rebel to my kids.
Guest:And then I just, and I showed your movie and I'm like, look, same guy.
Guest:Like that, you know, it's always like, wow, it really paid off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I did go to extremes.
Guest:I started smoking.
Guest:I didn't talk to friends or family for four months.
Guest:I isolated.
Guest:I watched his movies all day, every day, read all the biographies.
Marc:Was that because of your training?
Marc:Were you trained to do it that way?
Marc:Or is that just the way you thought to do it?
Guest:That's what the teacher told me to do.
Marc:James Dean, the James Dean worshiper.
Guest:Yeah, and it worked.
Guest:And so then...
Guest:after that movie i was like well that's how you do it that's how you do everything yeah but then i did a series of movies where i was doing this prep eight months of prep like whatever learning how i ride a horse like this scripts was like okay there's a battle on horseback he's charges down the hill and you know some epic like braveheart battle and yeah
Guest:And so I was like, well, I gotta learn how to ride a horse.
Guest:And then also thinking naively like, oh, I'll do all my own stunts.
Guest:Not thinking like, oh, as the lead, they're not gonna let you do your own stunts because if you get injured, the movie's over, dude.
Guest:And actually I did get injured and the movie like got stalled six months.
Guest:But learning how to ride a horse and then...
Guest:on my own dime.
Guest:We're talking hundreds of thousand dollars every day going to Griffith Park, riding these horses that were movie horses.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Retired movie horses?
Guest:No, still active.
Guest:Like they were like one of them were, or two of them were Zorro's horse from the Antonio Berenderes thing.
Guest:Like, so I'm riding Zorro's horses and stuff like that.
Guest:And getting, after eight months, I got good.
Guest:I could, I could, I could stand on the horse's back as it galloped.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Guest:And then getting to Ireland and the director saying, here's the new script and I'm looking through for the horse battles and it's like, instead of the epic horse battle, it's like six men sneak on foot through the woods.
Guest:And it's just like, no, you know, that's just like a small, clear example of how like I didn't know how to collaborate or, you know, build a character with the director.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And so.
Marc:And also, what do you get?
Marc:How do you know anything about rewrites?
Marc:That can happen the day of.
Guest:I had to learn the hard way.
Marc:But now you can ride a horse.
Guest:Well, I've got that great video that my friend shot on a little camcorder.
Guest:But if you needed to jump on a horse, you could do it.
Guest:Yeah, I can do it.
Guest:I have never used it.
Marc:But how do you see this as being the beginning of this arc of you kind of blowing open your sense of self into all these different directions?
Guest:Yeah, so after a while, I was like...
Guest:i this is really disappointing like not only like was i doing movies that i i shouldn't have been doing like for what because they were well a i gave too much credit to the teacher because he had said do james dean when everyone else said no so i was like he's got the answer yeah so i gave him too much weight yeah i didn't know you stayed with the guy the teacher he kept taking his advice like i went to that
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:I went to that school for eight years.
Guest:It was also partly, you know, I needed an artistic father.
Guest:Like when I told my parents I was gonna drop out of UCLA, they were like, well, then you gotta support yourself.
Guest:It was probably a great thing that they did that.
Guest:Because then I went and worked at McDonald's and it was like, I'm working drive-through, it's like, you better work hard at the acting.
Marc:Did you choose McDonald's just for... That was all I could get.
Guest:I didn't have a car because I crashed my car in high school and had a suspended license.
Guest:So I had to get a job within walking distance of my Sherman Oaks apartment.
Guest:I was sleeping on the couch.
Guest:So McDonald's.
Guest:And then I went to all the restaurants, but I was just this 18-year-old schlubby kid.
Guest:I had very little work experience.
Guest:All the other actors had all the good waiting jobs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And somebody in my life was like, well, are you too good to work at McDonald's?
Guest:I was like, no, I guess not.
Marc:You like taking those challenges, don't you?
Guest:I went there.
Guest:They hired me right away.
Guest:Go figure.
Guest:They were happy to have you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And but it made me work really hard.
Guest:And so then when I went to the school and this guy, Carnegie was like, yeah, come here.
Guest:You don't, you know, if you can't afford the monthly payments, just pay me what you can and write it, write down what you owe me.
Guest:And when, if you make it, then pay me back.
Guest:Or I think he maybe even said when you make it.
Guest:Like he had that much belief.
Guest:He's like, yeah, sometimes you need to take a chance on yourself.
Guest:And he was the only one in my life that said that.
Guest:And it was like, it was really.
Guest:How'd you find that guy?
Guest:Valuable.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was the first acting school I ever visited.
Marc:Did he have other students that you knew?
Guest:Jim Carrey, well, I don't know how long Jim Carrey went there, but I think when he was doing Earth Girls or Easy or something, because Jeff Goldblum was a teacher there.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so I think Jeff had Jim go there.
Guest:He probably went to one class or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I stayed there too long.
Guest:It was eight years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, get out of the net.
Guest:I was doing Freaks and Geeks with Judd and you'd think like, just lean on this.
Guest:I didn't know it was my first real job.
Guest:I didn't know I was working with the best of the best.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:I was still going to acting.
Guest:It was like, yeah, okay, after work today, I'm going to acting class.
Guest:It's just like, you know what I mean?
Marc:But because you thought you had to work.
Marc:You wanted to keep doing the work.
Marc:But what was the method he had?
Marc:What was his angle?
Guest:It was based in Meisner.
Guest:Basically, the best thing I got out of there was...
Guest:how to relax and be, be present.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, and when he took me through the preparation for James Dean.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's something I always kept.
Guest:And ironically, the character I just, you know, in the movie that I played in the movie that's coming out now, the disaster is Tommy Wiseau.
Guest:That dude was a huge fan of James Dean.
Guest:He's not anything like James Dean.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:On the outside, he's like part pirate, part,
Guest:vampire part yeah Alice Cooper Rhodey or something but he's aiming for James Dean
Guest:And I found it really ironically satisfying that I prepared to play Tommy Wiseau the same way that I did to play James Dean.
Marc:Do you prepare the same way for all roles?
Marc:From learning from doing the James Dean?
Marc:I mean, what was it that he taught you to do that is a regular part of your process?
Guest:The general thing is always there.
Guest:Like...
Guest:basically for every character you got to get the insides you got to figure out the insides that's the key some characters are like the behavior the outer behavior the outer look yeah is closer to me and i don't have to do that much work on it like it wouldn't like when i'm doing this this is the end you know we're all playing yourself exaggerated versions of ourselves it wouldn't serve me to throw on a british accent or you know what i mean it's like
Guest:But I do need to figure out still the inner life of that character in that context, right?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I figured out... It's funny about that one in particular.
Guest:This is the end?
Guest:Yeah, they had a tricky thing.
Guest:It was funny.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:I think that movie is just incredible.
Guest:But in the first script, they had to figure out versions of each of us.
Guest:That would sort of emphasize, you know, a few aspects of our personalities and exaggerate them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then also find a way to fit those into this overall overarching kind of arc.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And originally they had me.
Guest:It was weird.
Guest:It was like.
Guest:My character was really materialistic and all about his Gucci clothes because I was modeling for Gucci at the time.
Marc:You were in real life?
Guest:At that time, yeah.
Guest:And I was like... But to Seth and Evan's credit, they met with each of us and they're like, tell us what you think would make this...
Guest:better and I was like I want this basically I feel like is at least for my character the unofficial sequel to Pineapple Express and what was the key to Pineapple Express for Saul Silver my character he wants a friend it's a love story that's why it's called a bromance you know he wants a friend and that emotional grounding which is also something that Judd taught us and what revolutionized comedies
Guest:is having that emotional underpinning the need yes yeah and to make that real yeah as big as the jokes are to make that emotional thing real and tether that you know yeah make that that's the character's tether yeah and in pineapple i just you know he just wanted a friend yeah you know yeah and that was the same thing in this is the end and i was like no i want i want to you know my character needs seth
Guest:Like, if we're coming, if this is the end, what does my character want?
Guest:He wants to survive with Seth, or he wants to save Seth, and that's what I do at the end, right?
Guest:I sacrifice myself for Seth, but then I can't get over my grudge with Danny McBride, and so I don't get to go to heaven.
Guest:I think that they...
Guest:I still tease them about it.
Guest:I think they lost at least 10 million at the box office because I wasn't in heaven.
Guest:They should have at least put me and Danny in purgatory or something like that.
Guest:Together?
Guest:At the end, yeah.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:But that's what I do with every character.
Guest:But with a James Dean character or a Tommy Wiseau character, those are characters that are based on real people.
Guest:But not only that...
Guest:they're public figures like people know how they sounded they know what they looked like they know how they more dean yeah but tommy like the super fans like tommy's very specific yeah so that became part of that character but but also there's like you know the one thing that you know that i couldn't wrap my brain around like because i watch a movie you know and it's it's not it's not a comedy the disaster artist
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Guest:Well, we didn't... That was... I mean, our approach always... I mean, I had Seth Rogen produce it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because I wanted him to take out... Take me out of the artsy, literary, indie world of Falkner and McCarthy, right?
Guest:I was like, look, I did all those movies, those dramatic movies after James Dean, and I was, like, not happy, not satisfied.
Guest:Went into a depression.
Guest:Because it was like...
Guest:And it was a depression that was compounded by the fact that on the surface, I'm in these Spider-Man films and stuff.
Guest:And I like the Spider-Man films.
Guest:But that aside, it was like, you should be happy, dude.
Guest:Look at this.
Guest:You got this career.
Guest:You're supporting yourself on your acting and everything.
Guest:And I was depressed.
Guest:And so I couldn't complain to anybody about it.
Guest:Because it'd be like, oh, wah.
Guest:You have to play Spider-Man's best friend.
Guest:Oh, it's another sequel.
Guest:Oh, wah.
Guest:Oh, you have to make all that money.
Guest:Wah.
Guest:And I couldn't talk to anybody about it, but I was deeply unsatisfied with my work and the way I was doing it.
Guest:And so one of my – and I searched.
Guest:I was like, how do I get out of this?
Guest:I did everything.
Guest:I did charity work.
Guest:I worked with the kids in the hospitals.
Guest:I –
Guest:friends were like come to my church i tried that i did everything and then also the art yeah no one of the things i found was oh i can go back to school yeah and ucla had this policy where like once you were admitted you could go back at any age and i went and so i started at ucla extension and then after a while they're like no you can re-enroll as a student so i went back at like age 26 27 and was a student at ucla and then
Guest:that sort of attitude of humility and surrender, I think, you know, did something to me and the energy that I was putting out.
Guest:And I ran into Judd at the Austin Film Festival.
Guest:He had just done 40-Year-Old Virgin and he was like,
Guest:Finally, like people don't remember, like there was a time when Judd's things were not landing.
Guest:They were getting canceled, undeclared in Freaks and Geeks.
Guest:He's like, oh, he was in a new place.
Guest:He's like, I have my hit, finally, finally.
Guest:And he's like, I don't know why you left the comedy world, James.
Guest:Come back, come back.
Guest:And I was like, I'm ready.
Guest:Like I hit bottom, I'm ready.
Guest:And he's like, and Seth had kind of just been sort of a writer for five years or so.
Guest:Judd kept him afloat.
Guest:He had pulled him out of high school and he was like, God, I got to do something.
Guest:I can't let this kid sink.
Guest:And he was finally coming back and he's like, I'm going to do this movie Knocked Up with Seth.
Guest:I think it's going to do good for him and then you two should do a movie.
Guest:And so the same time I was going back to school, I then did Pineapple Express.
Guest:And then that same year, I also did Milk with two of my heroes, Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn.
Marc:That was great.
Marc:You were great in that.
Marc:It's a great movie.
Guest:Yeah, thanks.
Guest:And so that year was like a huge transition year for me.
Guest:And I learned, and what I was maybe trying to say on your show in Austin was like...
Guest:It was a huge lesson for me.
Guest:Judd and Seth have been there at every transition period.
Guest:This latest movie is one too, where I learned on Pineapple, oh, you can trust the people you work with.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So you're saying that throughout the course, even though you like the Spider-Man movies, you were working a lot.
Marc:You did a lot of movies, good and bad.
Marc:And you were in your mind, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We don't have to mention them.
Marc:But you were completely unsatisfied, went into the darkness, couldn't understand it.
Marc:I know that feeling.
Marc:Like if you're not wired to... Some people just aren't happy.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Some people aren't innately working towards happiness, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're working towards...
Marc:What's the thing?
Guest:But I think you can... That's one of the fascinating things that, for me, when I get more and more into the comedy world, because I... Like, in my movie, The Disaster Artist, we have...
Guest:amazing comics and dramatic actors.
Guest:A lot of them in there.
Guest:Bob Owen Kirk and Cranston, but also like, you know, Paul Scheer and Jason Manzoukas.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Uh, yeah.
Marc:And then you had some people talking about the, the room, but that was, those were brief.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Paul Scheer, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Uh, yeah.
Marc:A lot of them.
Marc:And who was it?
Marc:Was Melanie Griffith?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Played the acting teacher.
Guest:Yep.
Marc:And Judd, his cameo was great.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:Because, because you like, there's, I've known Judd for a while, not as long as you, but I'm like, you kind of know, that's got to be in there somewhere.
Guest:What?
Guest:Whatever came out of it.
Guest:Well, Seth Rogen said to me, who knows, who has worked closely with Judd for many, many years.
Guest:He's like,
Guest:Yeah, I've seen that look in Judd's eye, you know, when he's about to like lower it, lower the boom on somebody like and and it was that was an important thing to me for me to to have Judd in that role because it's a great scene.
Marc:It's kind of brutal.
Guest:yeah because he judd was i didn't know it but judd was an artistic father for me yeah i thought you know thinking about this movie and actually listening to your interview with judd which is amazing you guys are you guys are geeking out on being comedy nerds right before there were comedy nerds and when you were kids just in your rooms just surviving by watching comedy right yeah and i was like thinking like
Guest:what's my thing?
Guest:I didn't, I didn't watch comics like that, but I did in high school kind of get into James Dean and Marlon Brando and, and Gus Van Sant.
Guest:And well, yeah, so after sort of at that same time, but also after I, I kind of cleaned up and stopped doing all that.
Guest:Gus Van Sant's like drugstore cowboy, my own private Idaho.
Guest:Like those were movies that started, I started watching in a new way and started understanding at least intuitively, like,
Guest:oh there's there's people behind this there's artists behind this sure making decisions it's not just the actors right you know yeah yeah coming up with it on the spot it's like there's all this there's a director yeah doing this artistic right right and um and so that was sort of my thing and
Guest:And so then I, and then I, and then when I went to acting school with Carnegie, he obviously was into James Dean.
Guest:And so like, I thought, you know, from an early age, like, oh, I'll become a dramatic actor.
Guest:But then...
Guest:I got on Freaks and Geeks and like my trajectory, I kind of got pulled in this other thing.
Guest:And when you're 2021, it's still a formative time in your, in your life, in your brain.
Guest:Casey Affleck's like, yeah, your brain, you know, is still forming.
Guest:And they're like, yeah, I remember.
Guest:And you're, and,
Guest:and so i kind of got pulled off that trajectory and this whole other thing opened up in my uh repertoire i guess yeah but you know it's like it's weird because like people judge you in a certain way but without really thinking like you know maybe you were just actively interested in learning and and figuring out a new avenue i was and and it's what i needed at the time and i and i and i look back on it and i'm like
Guest:Because now I'm all about... I'm sort of like... At least... I don't know if it's...
Guest:fully realized in Jim Carrey or not.
Guest:I don't know the guy, but the, at least he was paying lip service to a lot of stuff that was profound.
Guest:Like he was saying stuff in that documentary, like, and then you get everything you dreamed about and you realize it didn't fulfill you.
Guest:You know, I, that was like words out of my, I was like, Jim, you pulled the words out of my mouth.
Guest:And, and, and so I,
Guest:At that time when I went back to school, it was a little bit of like, oh, this feels good.
Guest:It's an alternative.
Guest:Because I was making my career everything.
Guest:That was my spiritual salvation was like career.
Guest:Any career is going to have its ebbs and flows.
Guest:Anything.
Guest:And so when it was my lows, I realized, oh, I'm going through a depression.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like I then would feel low.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And so school was sort of a distraction for that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I also grew a little bit.
Guest:I learned how to collaborate.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you read some good books and, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I grew, I grew as a creative person and I learned how to direct.
Guest:And when I went, I went to NYU and as a, for directing, like after UCLA, I got my degree and, and, um,
Guest:And it was like, this is great.
Guest:Oh, and I can go to grad school.
Guest:And like, I only have to study exactly what I want to study.
Guest:I don't have to do all these GE classes, astronomy or whatever.
Guest:And it was like, oh, let me do that.
Guest:And then, oh, if I'm going to take this time and really study...
Guest:and not work as much, then I better, why don't I just throw myself into it?
Guest:Why don't I go to multiple schools?
Guest:And then it was like, oh, I got accepted to all of them?
Guest:Like, I'll go to all of them.
Guest:I'll go to film school and writing school.
Guest:And then at the writing schools,
Guest:Most novelists teach because it doesn't pay.
Marc:One of my best friends, Sam Lipsight, he's a teacher at Columbia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't have him, but he was a teacher there when I was there.
Guest:I was at Columbia.
Guest:Gary Steingart, he was my main guy there.
Guest:And so...
Guest:I was like, oh, I can have my heroes as my teachers?
Guest:That's like akin to being directed by Scorsese or something.
Guest:And I was like, give me more, give me more, give me more.
Guest:And then when I got out of film school,
Guest:it was, film school was an awesome experience for me.
Guest:I got, in my shorts, but in my shorts, I got, short films, I got to make a movie about SNL, right?
Guest:I had Malkovich in it, made a feature of it.
Guest:I had Michael Shannon, I had Charles Dance, who's like the king in Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister, and
Guest:And I got to work with one of my heroes, Frank Bedart, the poet.
Guest:And I adapted one of his poems into a thing, Herbert White.
Guest:And so when I got out of NYU, I thought, all right, I've been in the biggest movies around.
Guest:I've been in the Spider-Man movies.
Guest:I've been in Oscar-winning movies like Milk,
Guest:What do I want to make now?
Guest:I, now I get to choose.
Guest:What do I want to make?
Guest:And I thought, and I, and then I had just read this oral biography of Sean Penn.
Guest:And I guess at one point he had thought about adapting as I lay dying into a movie and Nicholson was going to play ants and he was going to be Darrell.
Guest:And it opened up the idea, you know, the possibility like, Oh, you can adapt Faulkner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was like, well, he didn't do it, I'll do it.
Guest:And that's my childhood book.
Guest:That was my thing that I read on the weekends when I was at home and all my friends were partying.
Guest:And so that's how that started.
Guest:And it was very, you know, artsy and whatever.
Guest:And we took it to Cannes.
Guest:And I should probably have, like, stopped there.
Guest:Like, one of them would have been enough.
Guest:But, like, just like I had to go to multiple schools, it was like, oh, I got to do two falters and a McCarthy and a Steinbeck and a, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But those are so weighty because, and you wanted, but you wanted to, you know, honor the, you know, the impact of those books.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And so there were upsides and downsides to all of them.
Guest:As a director, those books pulled me in new directions because I was trying to... I figured... Because there had been an adaptation of Sound and the Fury long ago.
Guest:What's her name?
Guest:Paul Newman's Widow was in it.
Guest:Joanne Woodward?
Guest:Yeah, she was in one.
Guest:And it was not that good because...
Guest:they kind of just used the story.
Guest:They didn't use any of Faulkner's structuring or style, right?
Marc:Yeah, because they wanted to have a story.
Guest:But it's like, that story is not that, it's just Southern melodrama, you know what I mean?
Guest:Without the style.
Guest:And so I was like, I want to find the cinematic equivalent of Faulkner's style in these things.
Guest:And so, like for As I Lay Dying, I did split screen because that book is told from all the different perspectives of the different characters.
Guest:These chapters, the perspective of a different character.
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:Ooh, this will give a sense of, you know, these multiple perspectives.
Marc:So these were, these were your experimental movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they, and they opened, you know, and they pushed me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you were, you were afforded the luxury of being able to make them.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because I, yeah, well, because I, because I was successful and that got me, that got me financing.
Guest:I, uh, and I also made them for a, but I like figured out how to make them for, uh, a reasonable, responsible budget, uh,
Guest:But also pick projects that would still look good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even though they were period pieces.
Guest:So like, as I lay dying, they're on a cart for most of the movie going through the woods.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The woods, period, no matter what.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And it was like.
Guest:Yeah, they don't change that.
Guest:So I thought I had it figured out.
Guest:And in a sense, you know, doing all so many things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was part of, you know, it was kind of what I had learned as an actor when I was working at McDonald's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like, I got to make it.
Guest:I need to act every free moment that I have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I need to make it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm the only one except for my teacher who's believing in myself right now.
Guest:And it was sort of the same with the directing.
Guest:It was like, I know, I, I believe in hard work.
Guest:The only way to get better is to put in your 10,000 hours, you know?
Guest:And, um, and so that was part of it.
Guest:Like just do as much as possible.
Marc:And then you're still, and you're still acting in other people's movies.
Guest:yeah yeah well jonah hill made a joke at my roast it was like um yeah james the you know the the adage is like one for you one for them right yeah you do none for them and like seven for you or something like that yeah and it was yeah like i did sort of do one for them i would do like a big studio movie and then a bunch of my little projects yeah um 127 hours a big movie
Guest:Yeah, I did that when I was at NYU.
Guest:And you stayed in that canyon?
Guest:That's funny.
Guest:When I met with Danny Boyle, this is a funny story.
Guest:When I met with Danny Boyle, I was at NYU and I was in a weird place where I had suddenly sort of been relieved of my addiction to work, at least temporarily.
Guest:So my attitude was a little less than like super passionate.
Guest:I was like, oh, Danny, I'll...
Guest:yeah i'll do your movie oh is it sort of i when i was in my artsy mode i was sort of like oh so we'll go to the we'll go to the canyon the real canyon and i'll just sit there we'll do it for like four days yeah i understand i like i won't dehydrate myself like he really did but yeah like it'll be like an art piece i'll just go for like five days like him and you'll just film me is that what we're doing and he's like uh yeah so not really but yeah and uh and then he told my agents he's like
Guest:Yeah, he didn't seem that passionate about it.
Guest:I don't think he really wants to do this.
Guest:And so I thought I didn't have the part, right?
Guest:He met with some other actors and I don't know what happened, but they didn't get it.
Guest:And so my agents are like, okay, second chance.
Guest:They're like, Danny, come on, give James a second chance.
Guest:He really wants to do this.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he's like, all right, I'll give him a second chance.
Guest:But now he's got to read.
Guest:And I hadn't read for a movie in years at that point.
Guest:And so he's like, he's got to read.
Guest:He's got to fly out to meet me now.
Guest:So I flew out.
Guest:He was now in LA.
Guest:I flew out.
Guest:I met him over at Fox.
Guest:It was like 9 p.m.
Guest:He didn't give me any sides beforehand.
Guest:And he's like, all right.
Guest:Here's the monologue.
Guest:Cause you know, the movie, like there's not a lot of dialogue.
Guest:It's mostly talking to the camera.
Guest:So they're on the page.
Guest:Those are long speeches.
Guest:He hands me right there.
Guest:He hands me this page and a half long speech where I'm like basically saying goodbye to my, my family.
Guest:Cause I think I'm going to die.
Marc:So he's really putting it to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's like, here, go in the other room and whatever, learn it and come back in like an hour and a half or two hours and then we'll do it.
Guest:Well, I had been doing General Hospital before then, doing 90 pages a day, right?
Guest:So you could put it in your head.
Guest:I can memorize like that.
Guest:I went in there, I think 15 minutes.
Guest:I came back.
Guest:I'm like, I'm ready.
Guest:He's like, what?
Guest:I'm like, yeah, I'm ready.
Guest:Let's do it.
Guest:And I did it one time.
Guest:And he came over, he gave me a hug.
Guest:He's like, all right, you're in.
Guest:And I got it.
Guest:Thanks to General Hospital.
Marc:You got 127 hours.
Guest:And he, what's so great about him, or one of the great things about him, is he will set challenges for himself.
Guest:So, on my movie, a guy alone for most of the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:he's such an entertainer.
Guest:So he wants to do that and not make just a little art movie.
Guest:He wants to make this as dynamic as an action movie.
Guest:And it really is.
Guest:But he also is open enough
Guest:when even on set to figure things out on the fly.
Guest:And so we figured out a lot, you know, we pretty much shot in order.
Guest:We had a whole can, we shot in Salt Lake city.
Guest:Well, eventually we went to the real Canyon to do some of this stuff, but we shot most of it on a set, but he had lasered the entire little crevice, the Canyon that we were in.
Guest:And so it was exact.
Guest:And then unlike most sets,
Guest:where there's walls that fly away so they can fit the camera in there.
Guest:He's like, I don't want any flyaway walls because I want the crew to have to adjust as if they were really in the canyon.
Guest:And so it created a specific kind of look and feel.
Guest:And so one of the first scenes is when the boulder falls on my arm and then the character, uh, tries to pull himself out with brute strength.
Guest:And Danny, so Danny says to me, um, all right, I want you to do everything possible.
Guest:Bash yourself against the rock, push, pull, kick, do everything you can, except obviously don't pull your arm out and don't stop until I say cut.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I was like, okay, but I'm gonna get bruised up if I really do that.
Guest:He's like, yeah.
Guest:And I was like, all right, well, you better get it on the first take, because I'm gonna really go at it.
Guest:He's like, okay, we'll see.
Guest:And so I went at it, right?
Guest:And by the time I was sweating, crying, everything, it had been 21 minutes of just straight going at it.
Guest:And that's where we figured it out.
Guest:And he's like, that was amazing.
Guest:And he's like, I'm only going to use probably 90 seconds of that in the edit.
Guest:But...
Guest:I'll give you the 21 minutes and you can go get high and watch it with your friends.
Guest:But that's when we both kind of figured it out and realized that's how we do the whole movie.
Guest:You just really do it.
Guest:And we had these cameras that could go endlessly because they were hooked up to hard drives.
Guest:And it was like...
Guest:in those 21 minutes he has my whole trajectory of getting exhausted and emotionally upset and it's not like okay as the alternative would be like okay this is where you are trying to get out in the beginning and you're really going at it okay now you're like 12 minutes in you're more tired make yourself tired you know what i mean it's like it's all real yeah and it's like that's how we did the whole movie so like
Guest:The experience was authentic, like short of cutting my arm off.
Guest:I was really doing all the things that Aaron Ralston did.
Guest:And that's kind of the brilliance of Danny.
Guest:Did you talk to Ralston much?
Guest:We did.
Guest:And what's interesting about that is he's a real character, just like Tommy Wiseau or James Dean.
Guest:But he, as opposed to Tommy or James Dean, people don't know him by how he looks or how he moves or how he sounds, really.
Guest:Yeah, you can go to his talks and his inspirational talks.
Guest:But that's not what he's known for in the same way that, you know, you see a poster of James Dean.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's just an iconic kind of, you know, look and pose and everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so... Ralston's not modeling jackets or anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the primary thing in the Ralston, you know, performance was to...
Guest:capture that experience in the most authentic way possible.
Marc:And what was the emotion that you put in place?
Marc:Get out.
Marc:How do I get out?
Guest:Yeah, but also despair.
Guest:Also, like, you know, in its own way, it's sort of like...
Guest:this is the end.
Guest:Like if you come to the end, you're facing extinction.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're facing death.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, how are you going to, now what, what do you do there?
Guest:How do you behave there at the end?
Marc:But like, how does that lead the Oscars?
Guest:So that movie comes out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm nominated for an Oscar.
Guest:And this is sort of the moment of like the Jim Carrey, like get everything you dreamed about.
Guest:And you're still like, wait, I'm supposed to be happy now.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But not realizing it in the moment.
Guest:So I...
Guest:was nominated, I was sort of hearing like, you know, Colin Firth, King's Speech, you know, everybody's favoring him.
Guest:And so part of me, I didn't know this at the time, but part of me was like,
Guest:i don't i don't want to lose you know what i mean yeah but thinking at the same time no i'm above it i don't care i'm an i'm an artist i don't it's not about that but the other side of me is like no i want that award because i you know i want whatever it'll make it'll complete me or i'll be accepted or whatever well all those all those feelings that everybody you know yeah you can't blame me everybody has that right who wouldn't have that in that course you want to win
Guest:And so when Bruce Cohen, who was a producer on Milk, came to me and was like, will you host the Oscars?
Guest:Which was largely because Seth Rogen and I had done a little bit, like a year or two before, where we were playing our Pineapple Express characters.
Guest:And it went over really well.
Marc:And he looked at that and he's like, oh yeah, he could host it.
Guest:I probably could have if like...
Guest:If Seth was the other guy?
Guest:Seth was my partner.
Guest:And nothing against, you know, Anne.
Guest:Yeah, I love her.
Guest:It was me, you know.
Guest:I had that idea of I'll insert myself somewhere.
Guest:where I don't necessarily belong.
Guest:I never thought I would be the host or ever dreamed about it or wanted to do it.
Guest:I just thought... Same way with the general hospital.
Guest:I never dreamed about that.
Guest:It was just like, oh, this will be an experiment.
Guest:And so when I was there, they would be like...
Guest:Ann was all about, she was like gung-ho, she's like, let's make this better, and she was working on it always.
Guest:I was like, no, I want you guys to, I wanna be made over in the Oscar host mold.
Guest:I don't have anything to add to this.
Guest:Which was a big mistake, right?
Guest:And I learned later, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, when they did it, they worked.
Guest:They were writing and they knew how to do it.
Guest:The hosting job.
Guest:Yeah, and then also,
Guest:judd gave me great advice during that time he he had written some stuff yeah that for you sadly yeah sadly didn't get used yeah for various reasons and um and he just said to me on that night he's just like all right james this is your biggest acting performance yeah you gotta just pretend you want to be there like you just
Guest:And I don't think I did.
Guest:I was trying to play the straight man, and I think I just ended up playing the wooden man.
Marc:Did it feel terrible when you were doing it?
Guest:I kind of knew, because you do the rehearsal before, and I just knew, like it just, it was just a little flat.
Guest:Like the stuff that we shot, like pre-shot, was actually not bad.
Guest:It was good.
Guest:It was just, yeah, I don't know.
Guest:And like, I was going to come out, one of Judd's big things was, you need a second act.
Guest:And second act kind of bit.
Guest:And I was going to come on as Cher singing.
Guest:She had a big song that year for that movie Burlesque.
Guest:It had won the Golden Globe for that song, but then didn't get nominated.
Guest:And so that's why they said, they're like, we don't want to do that bit anymore.
Guest:I think it might've been that I was like just a bad, like so bad as a singer, they were worried, but it didn't matter.
Guest:Like that wasn't the, I didn't need to be a good singer.
Guest:It was pretty funny.
Guest:But they pulled it.
Guest:Instead, the bit was I just come on dressed as Marilyn Monroe.
Guest:It didn't make any sense.
Guest:The joke was that.
Guest:It just was not good.
Guest:Anyway, what I realized... Did you feel yourself tanking?
Guest:Yes and no.
Guest:In fact...
Guest:there's a weird thing when you host yeah what the what what plays in the room is different than what plays on what you can hear yeah yeah sure and so people came up to uh the producer Bruce after I think Spielberg he told me that Spielberg came up to him and said that was great
Guest:So I don't know.
Guest:And then I got on a plane right after and went back east because I was in school and I holed up in an apartment for a week.
Guest:I got a...
Guest:And went to my classes and just hid in that hotel.
Guest:Ashamed?
Guest:Yeah, just read all the criticism.
Guest:You did.
Guest:It was so heavy and so much stress, I got a hemorrhoid.
Guest:I remember being in that hotel room, eating the food, hiding out, and just...
Guest:Feeling horrible.
Guest:Hurt in your ass, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But the whole thing was, when I went on General Hospital into a place where I didn't belong, it was interesting to people, and I thought, oh, it'll be the same thing on the Oscars, and it was like, it wasn't.
Guest:Because people look at the Oscars in a different way than they do a soap opera.
Guest:Showbiz.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But also, I realized in hindsight,
Guest:That it was a defensive move against the probability that I wasn't going to win.
Guest:And it was like, oh, I had looked it up.
Guest:I was like, only eight times has the host also been nominated at the same time.
Guest:And of those eight, only one in the history of the Oscars, David Niven.
Guest:has won the night he hosted.
Guest:And so I thought, all right, I'll do this move and I'll be saying like, all right, I don't care if I don't, like, I'm sort of in control here.
Guest:I'm sort of precluding my chances at winning.
Guest:And in fact, I was just, it was like hiding in a weird way.
Guest:Hiding in like the plainest sight possible.
Marc:Right, it would have been better if you just sat in your seat pretending like you didn't give a shit.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Or you know what I should have done?
Guest:What?
Guest:Just enjoyed the ride.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I'm one of five.
Guest:As a host?
Guest:No, not hosted.
Guest:And just enjoyed.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you nominate.
Guest:Hey, I'm one of five guys that's nominated this whole year in the whole world.
Guest:For this thing.
Guest:Just enjoy that.
Marc:Instead, no, you got to go up there and get a bunch of bad press.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Oh, fuck, man.
Marc:Okay, so let's talk about The Disaster Artist, because I saw it, and I told Allison, I saw it, because I see your brother on set sometimes.
Marc:He comes, because Allison's, I work with her every day for GLOW.
Guest:She's the best.
Guest:I love that show, by the way.
Marc:You're really great on it.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:Yeah, it's real fun.
Marc:She's great.
Marc:She's a great actress.
Marc:It's a perfect role for her.
Guest:It really is.
Marc:She gets to do all her actors.
Marc:But to balance that much desperation and ambition and still be charming and a sympathetic character,
Marc:it's crazy it's funny actually it's it's sort of another side or flip side of my character in uh the disaster artist well that's the thing like you know i didn't know what to expect and i didn't know how it was being marketed or anything and what you know i've been in la long enough on and off for years to have remembered the billboards but never going but just remembering those menacing billboards you did remember those of course yeah but i didn't know that it'd become a cult thing i didn't know any of the history of it did you know it was a movie because i didn't even know it was a movie
Marc:Well, I knew it was a movie, and then years later, people said that it was the worst movie ever.
Marc:But I remember when it came out.
Marc:When did it come out?
Marc:2003.
Marc:Yeah, because I was coming out here.
Guest:But the billboard was up for like five years.
Guest:Ever, forever.
Guest:On his own dime.
Guest:hundreds of thousands of dollars yeah and i never saw the movie because i'm not one of those guys i can't i don't really enjoy things that are so bad they're good i never it never registers that way with me you know i always feel bad different so bad it's good right no i get that right yeah like like the laughter like if you i don't know if you've since been to like a theatrical screening of the room i haven't i need to go the laughter in there doesn't sound cruel to me right
Guest:It's like the atmosphere in there is communal.
Guest:And when Tommy shows up to those screenings, people are so excited.
Marc:Well, I like that in your movie, that turn.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:At the premiere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's, we kind of truncate the turn.
Guest:You know, it was a little longer in real life, but that's exactly what happened.
Guest:Where Tommy Wiseau, when he was making the movie The Room,
Guest:He lacked self-awareness, like, more than anybody alive.
Guest:Like, you know, it was like, I say he had reverse body dysmorphia, where he wasn't a slim person that thought he was overweight.
Guest:He looks like Captain Jack Sparrow meets whatever and thinks he's James Dean, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Narcissism, kind of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're yeah.
Guest:Certainly narcissism.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he put on the original poster, a Tennessee Williams level drama.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he and he paid for the thing.
Guest:Six million dollars.
Guest:Looks like it was made for sixty dollars.
Guest:It looks like dog shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He kept it in the theaters.
Guest:for two weeks on his own dime to qualify for the Oscars.
Guest:So it showed what he was aiming for and how kind of out of touch he was in one way.
Guest:But as soon as he realized that people were laughing at it,
Guest:he had the wherewithal to capitalize on that and then take credit for that.
Guest:And so as out of touch as he was when he was making it, he became a maestro of self publicity and like capitalizing on this thing.
Guest:Like he became as skilled as a Kardashian, you know,
Marc:using his... Yeah, but it's still like the scope of that.
Marc:I understand what you're saying, and it's all within the parameters of this event, that movie.
Marc:It's not like... He's not well-known, but within the parameters...
Guest:I mean, it's been playing 14 and a half years.
Guest:I mean, I went to London.
Guest:There is a... I mean, in London, it's like... Maybe I'm just out of touch.
Marc:But what we were... No, and I'm not saying that.
Guest:I'm sure I am.
Marc:Yeah, no, I know what you're saying.
Marc:But the thing that really got me...
Marc:after being in this business for a while, that there is a level of ambition and desperation that percolates in this town all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that, you know, what was fascinating to me was sort of the commitment of all these other people around this.
Marc:There were guys that were like, are these checks going to be cashed?
Marc:I don't give a shit.
Marc:But the actors who were like, we're going to do this.
Marc:And then they stayed with it throughout all the way to the premiere.
Marc:They went to the fucking premiere.
Marc:But there's this this this world that
Marc:It's not even B-movie stuff, and I'm hesitant to say it, but there's that moment with Judd where you're Tommy, and he's Judd, and he's laying that thing down where it's like, you're not gonna make it.
Marc:Because in that moment, whatever that character that Judd is playing knows that you're not talented.
Marc:There's no fucking way that you're gonna make it by the rules
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Of the way this thing works.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he was being honest.
Marc:I know.
Marc:So hard.
Marc:And the fact that that's the underlying thing is that, you know, there's this ambition.
Marc:There's this like, you know, everyone has a chance and you work hard and you work hard and you work hard.
Marc:But the underpinning of this character is that he's fundamentally not a talented person.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it's painful to me in a good way that you made him sympathetic and he was flawed and creepy.
Marc:And I didn't know a lot about it, but like,
Marc:Thank God your brother was there to play off you, because I don't know if there was a choice there, but it seems to me that that relationship between those two men was a lot more darker and insidious.
Marc:The real one?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For it to... Then Davey was going to allow.
Guest:It was almost like you had your brother... You know?
Guest:Could be.
Guest:I mean... Yeah, I mean, we...
Guest:There is a...
Guest:I guess you could call homoerotic sort of hint, even in our thing.
Guest:Yeah, no, no, yeah, it comes, yeah.
Guest:Which is also weird, because it is my brother.
Guest:We didn't want to hammer that too hard, because I think it's somehow more than that and less than that, you know?
Marc:Yeah, you had to balance the film, because it is a fairly traditional movie.
Marc:Like, you didn't make an art movie, you made a movie about a guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, oh yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's why I wanted Seth Rogen and Point Grey to produce it.
Guest:I saw like, oh, this is the one that's bizarre enough that it appeals to me, but it also has the potential to cross over that the underlying thing that you're talking about of...
Guest:Everybody with a dream can relate to being on the outside, at least in the beginning, right?
Guest:I mean, I heard it in your story from what I've heard of it.
Guest:It's my story, too.
Guest:Everyone's at McDonald's.
Guest:Yeah, everyone has something of that.
Guest:And even if you're my brother, Dave, who's...
Guest:Brother, he's on Freaks and Geeks when you're actually in high school.
Guest:When he came, he had his own trials of like, oh, I gotta be James Franco's little brother.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And so we all have something.
Guest:So I knew that that was universal enough.
Marc:that it that it could reach people and people could relate to it and that we had a sympathetic character yeah potentially and i just i found it was fascinating that like you know as all these people are being brought along for this journey just because this guy has the money to do it like you know you got a guy with money saying like i'll pay you all you know there are plenty of people whether they like it or not are gonna be like all right you know how long is it gonna take right right and
Guest:that's where like this there's two parts of this movie that are interesting where it's like part of it is just the story of outsiders with a dream right and just trying to pursue that dream uh albeit through the upside down cracked lens of this bad movie the room yeah the other side of it is at a certain point
Guest:Like, all the people got on board, the actors, the crew, maybe just because they were being paid.
Guest:Like, the character that Seth Rogen plays, I shouldn't talk about him too much because he, I don't know, he probably goes out and says he's the real director of the room, right?
Marc:The guy who Seth played?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, they all were there.
Guest:At a certain point,
Guest:whether they got on board and like, you know, so you get like, when you start out, like if you can just be in front of a camera, you're like, yeah, yeah, I want to do it.
Guest:Or Jackie Weaver's character says, you know, the best day on a movie set or the worst day on a movie set is better than the best day anywhere else.
Guest:You know, part of that's true.
Guest:Like you're in, it's the dream factory.
Guest:You get, you know, this is it.
Guest:You know, that part of it, there's something about that.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:At a certain point, most of the people on that movie must've thought, oh, this is really bad.
Guest:but at least nobody will ever see it but then the crazy part of this story is that it then turned around and then did become a cult hit but here's the question like did any of those people in that original movie go on to have careers as actors um
Marc:No.
Guest:See, see, see, this is the thing that this, no.
Guest:And so they ironically are known for that, for the room.
Guest:And so that's why they're all sort of like now, now like Greg had to go out and write that book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The smartest thing he ever did was co-write it with Tom Bissell, who's an incredible writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they turned this story that could have been a series of ridiculous anecdotes into something that was very moving.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I thought the movie was very moving.
Marc:And I thought that the character that you put, you really locked into that guy.
Marc:And, you know, like if you've been in Hollywood, if you haven't met that guy, you've met guys like him.
Guest:I mean, like him.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Only in the sense of like, you know, they got a big idea.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:There's something about...
Guest:movies too.
Guest:Like there's hubris in every profession, but there's something about movies where it's so public.
Guest:It is a collaborative medium.
Guest:I think, you know, when it's working in the best way and, and
Guest:Tommy, I wrote a review of the book even before I got the rights to it.
Guest:And I said, I respect Tommy because how many millions of people come out here and they don't even make the movie, you know, their movie.
Guest:Tommy made his movie.
Guest:He got it made.
Guest:But when he then was in the process of making it, he's working in a collaborative medium and he didn't know how to collaborate.
Guest:But I also can't blame him because the guy was told no his whole life.
Guest:He was rejected his whole life.
Guest:And so he learned through experience that the only one he could depend on was himself or maybe his friend, Greg.
Guest:And so when he got to the movie set, he didn't know how to turn off the self-will and maybe listen to a few people that could give him advice and maybe help him avoid a few pitfalls like, oh, you don't have to buy all the lights.
Guest:Yeah, you don't want to shoot with two cameras.
Guest:You don't have to shoot a green screen in the parking lot.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But on the other hand,
Guest:the way most artists learn, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is you put something out there and if it doesn't come off like you intended, it fails and you realize, oh, I shouldn't do it that way anymore.
Guest:Like I should change up what I'm doing.
Guest:Like me, like, right?
Guest:Like I was doing those dramatic movies and it was like, oh, I don't know how to collaborate.
Guest:I'm doing the James Dean thing.
Guest:I'm not getting the results I wanted.
Guest:Change it up.
Guest:I learned.
Guest:I learned by hitting my head against the wall.
Guest:Tommy didn't get to hit his head against the wall because the movie that he intended to be Tennessee Williams-level drama and wasn't then turned out to be this cult hit.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Well, he'll never... Yeah, I mean, yes, thank God, but it also...
Guest:trapped him forever dude the persona but you you're like okay you just you believe that there was there was no no hope anyway for that guy
Marc:Well, it's not a matter of hope.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:It's like, I don't know why any, a lot of times you don't know why anybody makes it or whatever it takes.
Marc:It's a weird alchemy of coincidence and, and sometimes talent, sometimes ambition, sometimes timing, whatever the fuck it is.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So for me, the heartbreak of it is and who and who am I to judge really?
Marc:Because I spent a lot of time, you know, not making it and I didn't have any other plan to do anything else in my head.
Marc:But the one thing about movies is that it's one of the few businesses where people just come here with no skill or talent and go like, I'm going to be in the movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and you know, there's just this weird, magical thing where the movies will take care of me.
Marc:I'm going to be famous.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's part of it too that is actually akin in Tommy that's akin to James Dean where the movie is gonna save you if I make it in the movies.
Guest:Like James Dean had a hole in his soul.
Guest:He lost his mom when he was eight.
Guest:His dad sent him away to live with his aunt and uncle.
Guest:He lost both parents essentially when he was eight years old.
Marc:Did you ever find out what is Tommy's background?
Guest:I know, sort of, yeah.
Guest:I mean, the three mysteries are, you know, where he's from.
Guest:He's sound like this, you know, like he's from Eastern Europe, but he's, say, from New Orleans, all-American guy.
Guest:Like, it's a thin veil.
Guest:Like, you don't... You kind of know he's not from New Orleans, right?
Guest:But you didn't say it in the movie.
Guest:Because, to me...
Guest:That's not the mystery.
Guest:I know he's not from New Orleans.
Guest:I know he's not 20 years old.
Guest:I know he's at least in his late 40s.
Guest:And where he got the money is scary to me.
Guest:It's not about uncovering that.
Guest:What's interesting to me is...
Guest:the guy that holds onto that facade so tightly and why, and the emotional underpinnings of that.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:That's what we revealed.
Marc:No, I get that.
Marc:You know, and there are scenes where, you know, where he's walking around with his ass out and that scene with that actress, that was rough stuff, dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a, I mean, you got to contextualize it a little bit.
Guest:Like, no, but that was a big, that's one of the climactic scenes of the movie where Tommy is,
Guest:If you know The Room, there's like four sex scenes, the most ridiculous, absurd, horrible sex scenes you've ever seen in a movie in the first 35 minutes of The Room, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the set, the legend is he directed those scenes almost fully nude, right?
Guest:And so we show that in our movie.
Guest:But...
Guest:Tonally, that scene was so tricky.
Guest:It's sort of the gist of our... It's like a... It's the nucleus of our movie where...
Guest:The guy is acting out.
Guest:He's really inappropriate.
Guest:But it's also so absurd.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:And it's also, for our character, a moment where he feels like he's losing his best friend.
Guest:To a girl.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he...
Guest:and he's full of self-hatred.
Guest:And so he's taking it out on the, on the crew and the actors.
Marc:What I found though, for me, like, you know, I don't know how I'm reading it because I, you know, I get sort of sensitive to, to desperation and to people that are broken.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, is that, you know, that actress's decision to sort of like, I'm okay.
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:After being, you know, verbally and emotionally abused and, and, and, and, you know, and, and, you know, pounced upon in a fairly, you know, unsafe set.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You know, and for her to say, like, no, it's good.
Marc:Let's just... I want to stay in the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then Paul Scheer's character's like, this is fucked up.
Marc:You know, that... And it's just, like, the desire to be in the movie.
Marc:Right?
Marc:The desire to be... It's dark.
Marc:It's pretty dark.
Marc:And those audition processes.
Marc:It's not just about sex, either.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Even the men, too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I get you.
Guest:And I think...
Guest:I'm not saying it's I think it's a great it's a great portrait of that yeah I think I think on ours you know it is on one level dark we didn't want to but we worked really hard to balance it out no one thing that doesn't make that my character Tommy completely irredeemable at that moment because it is on one level really awful what's going on yeah
Guest:Is he so absurd like he doesn't like that he's emotionally broken.
Guest:Yeah, almost like that alien, right?
Marc:He doesn't know what he's doing or he's or he's Fundamentally, you know not comfortable with women which is probably more the right the the thing or pit or with people in general, right?
Guest:Except for and so he's like Greg
Guest:What you're talking about where the movies are going to save me.
Guest:Well, what does Tommy... What did Tommy want?
Guest:Why did he want to make it in the movies so badly?
Guest:There's an interesting thing in the book.
Guest:In the book, they go a little bit into his backstory.
Guest:In the book, they say... They keep his childhood vague, but they give you hints.
Guest:And they're like, imagine...
Guest:They kind of word it this way.
Guest:Imagine a boy in an Eastern Bloc country.
Guest:He sees an American movie for the first time.
Guest:He's enthralled.
Guest:It allows him to escape.
Guest:And that you get the sense that maybe Tommy started to think about American movies and escaping his situation by going to America as the same thing that the American movies in America
Guest:were equated.
Guest:And so that becomes the, what's going to save his life.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then there's also this thing in the book where, and we kind of touch on it in our movie where Tommy kind of hits a bottom.
Guest:Judd just devastates him, says, you're never going to make it.
Guest:And Tommy is, you know, he's, he's at the end of his rope.
Guest:Well, the real Tommy did hit a depression.
Guest:was possibly suicidal.
Guest:And then the real Greg says, and then after that, Tommy was leaving messages on Greg's machine, like saying, I don't wanna live, but I don't, but I believe in God.
Guest:But sad though, it's sad.
Guest:And then he shows up with this script, The Room, and in The Room, the character commits suicide.
Guest:And I look at that and I'm very moved because it's like he channeled his pain into the movie.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:And so in that sense, not only were the movies going to save him, like make him accepted, it actually maybe saved his life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To me, that's moving.
Guest:And that's what an artist does.
Guest:You know, regardless of the skill level, he's doing what an artist does.
Guest:And I like.
Guest:So that's what compelled you.
Marc:i mean everything i wanted to play that wacky guy like i wanted to play this no but but but but at the heart of what we're talking about and what you're talking about is that you know you you were able to to to get past the the pathos the tragedy of of this character in real life and and the the i must assume is a somewhat weird vibe around both of them yeah to this day yeah
Marc:And you were able to somehow see part of your own story, but also an artist story.
Marc:And you're not claiming that he's misunderstood or that the movie's good or that, you know, like, as we said before, it's a beautiful turn of events that happened for these two guys.
Marc:But his persistence and his will and the circumstances of his financials, you know, enabled him to execute this completely unique disaster.
Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:And, and that's, you know, it's, and, and here's the thing.
Guest:It's a disaster, but it's been in theaters for 14 and a half years in almost every major city to sold out crowds.
Guest:People are getting something from it.
Guest:And so I also like the idea that even though it is not a success or good by any conventional standards...
Guest:It is still sort of a weird, uncanny success.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I've probably watched it as much or more than any other movie in my life, you know?
Guest:And I do get something out of it.
Guest:And people I respect get something.
Guest:Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Guest:Email, I don't know him that well.
Guest:I've never met him face to face, but we're email buddies.
Guest:When he heard that I was making that movie, he emailed me and was like, oh my God, I cannot wait for your movie.
Marc:I love The Room.
Marc:Okay, so I think my problem is I got to see The Room.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:No, I do because I'm only approaching it without seeing it.
Marc:My heart is scared of that man and feels bad for him.
Guest:don't feel bad for him I mean in another way you know he got everything that he wanted you know what I mean he was a lonely dude he now has a community he walks into those screenings and everybody's excited to see him and he's alright you have a relationship with him
Guest:He's actually really sweet.
Guest:In his contract, I got all these stories, but we got to end this thing, right?
Guest:He demanded that he have a scene in the movie.
Guest:We didn't want him on set, right?
Guest:Because all I knew about him was what I had read in the book and we don't want that energy around, right?
Guest:He finally came to set and we were like, oh man, what's he going to be like?
Guest:And
Guest:i wanted him in the movie i thought it'd be a cool like little hitchcockian kind of yeah you know nod and yeah uh but in the background right like right he kept he's like no no i have to be seen with james i'm like tommy i'm playing you it's not gonna work it's not that kind of movie no no same with james
Guest:I'm like, oh my God.
Guest:And so he's like, I want my character to be named Han Ray.
Guest:I'm like, okay.
Guest:And we wrote him this scene.
Guest:My Tommy is at a birthday party with Greg and realizes that Greg has all these friends and I don't have any.
Guest:And so I'm in the corner by the food pouting.
Guest:And then this character Han Ray is gonna come up and talk to me, whatever.
Guest:three weeks before, or three days before we shoot, Tommy sends me this text message, he's like, he's obviously in this lens crafters, because he sends this photo, there's all these glasses behind him, and he's like,
Guest:what you think of these glasses, good for character?
Guest:I'm like, yeah, they're great.
Guest:Yeah, I can't tell it's you, it's great.
Guest:And he had drawn on a mustache with Bic pen in the photo.
Guest:And he says, if you like mustache, I draw it on better when we shoot.
Guest:I'm just like, dude, this guy, you know, I'm like, he's so out of touch.
Guest:I'm like, Tommy, if you want a mustache, we'll get you a fake mustache, okay?
Guest:He shows up, his hair's in a ponytail, he's got the fake mustache, he's got the glasses, and he's Hanrae.
Guest:He comes over.
Guest:But he comes to set, and he's actually really sweet.
Guest:He won Seth Rogen over.
Guest:Seth was like, oh my god, this guy's really... And I interviewed Tommy as Tommy.
Guest:It was so bizarro.
Guest:Tommy...
Guest:acted as if like, yeah, of course somebody will be interviewing me as me.
Guest:This was coming for years now.
Guest:If anything, we're like five years too late.
Guest:This should have happened earlier.
Guest:I asked him, so Tommy, you going to ever direct another movie?
Guest:He's like, yeah, I got this movie, American Stud.
Guest:You ever seen American Gigolo?
Guest:I'm like, yeah.
Guest:He's like, I like that, but it's with gay sex.
Guest:Very controversial.
Guest:I'm like, I'm thinking like, what, they've never made a movie with gay sex before?
Guest:He hasn't seen a movie after 1962 or something.
Guest:And anyway, Seth was like,
Guest:Afterwards, he's like, hey, it'd be really interesting to do a movie with Tommy.
Guest:Maybe we should do American Stud.
Guest:And we go over and we're like, hey, Tommy, you know, we want into American Stud.
Guest:Maybe just we'll do like little parts in your movie.
Guest:What do you say?
Guest:He had to like think about it.
Guest:And then he's like, okay, maybe I'll give you a set part, okay.
Guest:And then we're like, what's the budget of American Stud?
Guest:And he's like, well, you know, it's probably like 20 million.
Guest:We're like,
Guest:well that's never gonna get made right but he's a really sweet guy i could talk about him forever um he he is in a weird position there's like tommy before the room who was a very earnest sincere guy trying to make a dramatic movie and there's tommy after the room who takes credit for it being a comedy right you know where as before he said you know
Guest:People will watch this movie and they will not be able to sleep for two weeks.
Guest:They'd be so disturbed, right?
Guest:And now after, now he says, the room is safe place.
Guest:You can laugh, you can cry, do whatever you like, express yourself, just don't hurt yourself, right?
Guest:So like...
Guest:Oh, and I know you go to Cantor's, right?
Guest:Their place was Cantor's, and we have it in the movie, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because that was their spot.
Guest:Two weeks ago, I call it Honest Tommy Day.
Guest:We had done some press, and afterwards, Greg, the real Greg, texts me.
Guest:He's like, Tommy and I are at Cantor's.
Guest:The waiter that we used to have circa early 2000s is here.
Guest:You should come and surprise Tommy.
Guest:I'm like, okay.
Guest:So I go down there, and Tommy says to me, he's like,
Guest:And normally, I mean, normally not this open, right?
Guest:He says, and unprompted, he's like, you know, James, the room, it don't come out exactly as I intended.
Guest:I'm like...
Guest:wow because that I mean I knew that right yeah but he never admits that I was like really he's like yeah but you know what it get reaction out of people and that maybe all you can hope for I'm like yeah wow okay
Guest:okay yeah i i agree with that and then he goes i've seen your movie three times now he saw it um for the third time at the chinese theater right and it was like incredible because when he premiered his movie 14 and a half years ago it wasn't at the chinese theater but he had made all these t-shirts that said the room and he pulled up
Guest:outside of the Chinese theater and popped out of the sunroof and threw the room t-shirts at all the people standing there.
Guest:He said, don't go see that movie.
Guest:It was like Memento or something.
Guest:Don't go see that movie.
Guest:Come see my movie, right?
Guest:Here we were 14 and a half years later, you know, premiering at the Chinese theater.
Guest:And he goes, you know, after watching a third time at the theater,
Guest:your movie, it's very moving, it makes me emotional.
Guest:I was like, really?
Guest:I was like, which scenes in particular?
Guest:And he's like, well, two scenes.
Guest:First is Greg's scene, and I'm thinking, Greg's scene?
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:And then he goes,
Guest:And scene, I end, you know, when Greg gave me that advice, you know, because real Greg, real Greg do that for me.
Guest:And it made me very emotional.
Guest:And he, you know, he, my best friend, he's still my best friend.
Guest:I was like, oh man, that's really great.
Guest:That's touching.
Guest:And I go, but what's the other, what's Greg's scene?
Guest:What do you mean by that?
Guest:And he goes, you know, scene in swimming pool.
Guest:And if you know the movie, it's this scene where my brother as Greg is in the pool with Allison, his girlfriend in the movie.
Guest:I'm like, Tommy, that's your favorite scene?
Guest:You're not even in that scene.
Guest:It's Greg talking about IMDB with his girlfriend.
Guest:And he's like, yeah, that swimming pool scene, it makes me very emotional.
Guest:I'm like, why?
Guest:He's like, because swimming pool, you know, it happy place.
I'm like, what's that?
Guest:what whatever dude anyway anyway with this movie the disaster artist this uh was sort of the melding of my two worlds yeah right yeah and and it was in weird way like tommy wiseau is this weird comedic dark comedic character but underneath is all the pathos of james dean you know and all that
Guest:And and so and then not only that.
Guest:I, by playing Tommy, I could relate to him in his struggle and his dreaming, you know?
Guest:But after playing him, I realized, oh gosh, I relate to him so many more ways than I want to admit.
Guest:And that willfulness and that blindness and all that, and it really woke me up.
Guest:And I've come to this place where
Guest:I realized, that first phase, when I went back to school, I was deeply depressed.
Guest:And I realized that, in hindsight, I realized, oh yeah, I was making my career, my whatever, the goal of my life, or basing my happiness on that.
Guest:I didn't realize that by going back to school and doing all these other things, that I was just doing the same thing in a new, in a different way.
Guest:And what I had to realize was like, oh, take a step back.
Guest:I mean, I had the best circumstances possible on the Zastros.
Guest:Working with my friends and family, my brother, my sister-in-law, my oldest collaborator, Seth Rogen, all these great people on great material.
Guest:I get to direct and act and all this stuff.
Guest:But...
Guest:that can't, that can't be the end all.
Guest:It has to, I have to be okay with myself first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then you get to, and then you get to live a great life, but you have to, you have to figure out how to fill that hole in a different way.
Guest:You know,
Guest:In this forum, it kind of sounds, I don't know, cheesy or whatever to say it's a spiritual solution, but it is.
Marc:And then you get to live a great life.
Marc:Yeah, you're getting tight with the spiritual solution?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Are both your parents still around?
Guest:My father passed five years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But he got to see your success.
Guest:He did.
Guest:And that was a tricky thing.
Guest:He, because he said when I was going, when I started acting, I dropped out of UCLA and worked at McDonald's.
Guest:He was like, you're being a fool.
Guest:And I think he was just scared for me, you know, because he had been a painter.
Guest:He met my mom in painting class at Stanford and then stopped painting and went to business school at Harvard.
Guest:And so I think there was probably a part of him that was afraid to pursue the art, just like Jim Carrey's dad.
Guest:I mean, when I saw that documentary, I was like, oh my God.
Guest:Jim Carrey's dad was a musician and gave that up.
Guest:And so I then made, and then I kind of made it, I could support myself as an actor.
Guest:It was nice.
Guest:You know, we did get some time before he passed and where he did tell me, Leon, I'm proud of you.
Guest:And then the last thing he saw me do was my thesis film at NYU.
Guest:And I played this other poet, Hart Crane.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whose father was a millionaire from chocolate as his chocolate company.
Guest:Hart Crane's dad actually developed the lifesaver and sold the patent because he didn't think it would make money.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In like the 30, 20s or 30s.
Guest:Anyway, he was this millionaire, and he didn't support his son who just wanted to be a poet.
Guest:And I made this movie about it, and it was the last time I ever saw my dad was at the premiere of that movie at the LA Film Festival.
Guest:And then I remember at his funeral, I was like, you know, that was the last movie I ever saw in Hart Crane's dad.
Guest:never supported him never came around and they they never you know they never connected and i was so grateful that my dad and i had come around full circle and and he had seen you know my movie and yeah and that he did support me so that was really great oh that's good on the other hand it would have been a bad movie to go out on if you had not yeah yeah on the other hand yeah
Guest:Five years ago.
Guest:It was five years ago in October when he passed.
Guest:I think I still had something in me where I had to prove it to him.
Guest:Because when I went into acting school, left UCLA and went to acting school, it was like, oh, you don't believe in me?
Guest:Then I'll show you.
Guest:I'll show you.
Guest:I'll show you.
Guest:And so when he passed, I can see now...
Guest:All the activities ratcheted up even more.
Guest:That's when it went into overdrive.
Guest:And it was just like, I have to work 24-7.
Guest:To prove this man wrong.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:And my dad was no longer there.
Guest:So then it was just the world.
Guest:I've got to prove it to the world that I'm something.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:And I finally, you know, I did a lot.
Marc:He didn't make you feel worthless.
Marc:So he just didn't have faith in your ability to become what you wanted to become.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he always believed in me and he, he tutored me in certain things.
Guest:He tutored me in math.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:But he was a good dad.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, yeah, in a lot of ways, but yeah, but there was a part of me that didn't feel like he was the artistic father.
Guest:Right, but your mom was though, right?
Guest:Yeah, and she came around.
Guest:She's very, very loving, and we are very close, but...
Guest:But there was just a period.
Guest:By the time my brother came around seven years later, and I'm on Freaks and Geeks, and he's a freshman in high school, and then he comes out to LA, and he's going to USC, and he's like, yeah, I don't want to finish USC.
Guest:Maybe I'll do the acting thing.
Guest:They were like, yeah, do that.
Guest:You got the easy ride.
Marc:Go for it, buddy.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:Well, I'm glad everyone's good.
Marc:And also, we need to get to talk about it, but I like the deuce a lot.
Marc:You're doing great.
Guest:Oh, thanks, brother.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:Great talking to you.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:We'll have to do it again.
Marc:We got so much we could talk about.
Marc:Yeah, we keep going, but not tonight.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right, pal.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:We're going to have to do it again.
Marc:We turned those mics off.
Marc:I turned the mics off and we talked about other stuff.
Marc:He's like, we should talk about that next time.
Marc:And I'm like, you got it, James Franco.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:Can you dig it?
Marc:No guitar today.
Marc:I got a shower.
Marc:Boomer lives!
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