Episode 930 - Peter Fonda / Andy Kindler & J. Elvis Weinstein
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckocrats?
Marc:What the fuck publicans?
Marc:What the fuckakins?
Marc:What the fuck publicans?
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:I was trying to do the two sides thing on the day after Independence Day.
Marc:I don't know what happened.
Marc:towards the end of yesterday i'm recording this in the middle of yesterday if the uh if the civil war that alex jones prophesized came to pass maybe everything's more in shambles than it was before i think more than worrying about a actual civil war it's a civil war you probably had to deal with at the barbecue or at the place you were hanging out or with somebody you're talking to i don't know when that's going to end probably never
Marc:Today on the show, I talked to Peter Fonda and I don't want to disappoint anyone.
Marc:This was before he impulsively expressed his anger on Twitter in a crass way.
Marc:And it was, you know, startled and excited.
Marc:The outrage machine that happened after I talked to him and he was on a bit of a time budget here.
Marc:So we went we just went right into Peter Fonda land and I just I jumped in.
Marc:childhood fourth of July's came to mind smoke bombs trying to get a brick of black cats I don't know how old you are I'm 54 apparently I said I was 53 talking to Paul Rudd I'm not sure why if I was lying about my age why would I only shave a year off I just didn't like you know I guess I'm having mild moments of brain skid
Marc:You know, as I sort of kind of like fall horizontally through time into it.
Marc:But no, I'm 54.
Marc:But I just remember just like the mythical M-80, man.
Marc:Where do you get the M-80s?
Marc:Apparently around here, over where Sarah the Painter lives, M-80s are all over the place because they're fucking, it's crazy over there.
Marc:Back in my old neighborhood.
Marc:This neighborhood, not so much.
Marc:Not so much.
Marc:People are taking walks around where I live now, and it's pleasant.
Marc:Is that okay?
Marc:Can I graduate to that?
Marc:Can I graduate to a place where people take walks?
Marc:But man, I remember seeing an M80 once, but never ever getting one.
Marc:One time we got a brick of black cats with them all at once, and it was just a clusterfuck of random explosions.
Marc:You didn't know where to run.
Marc:It was your own little...
Marc:Very muted and harmless Vietnam, unless one caught you by the eye.
Marc:You weren't going to catch any.
Marc:There was no enemy other than your hand lighting the fucking thing.
Marc:But you just never... It was a rain of crackle.
Marc:Yeah, I remember that.
Marc:I remember smoke bombs.
Marc:I remember snakes.
Marc:I remember just hanging out in front of the house on the street.
Marc:You had about a two-block rain back when I was a kid where you could go outside and...
Marc:The creeps that kind of drove by.
Marc:There weren't many.
Marc:It was a neighborhood.
Marc:It was suburbia.
Marc:Setting up bike ramps on cans.
Marc:Doing that kind of stuff.
Marc:I remember one time we made a...
Marc:A cannon.
Marc:I don't remember who made it, but we made a cannon out of, back then it was tin cans, soda cans, I think four or five of them.
Marc:And the bottom one, you had punched holes in the top.
Marc:The rest were opened up on both sides to make sort of a cannon.
Marc:And then you made a little hole on the bottom and you pop a tennis ball in and you shoot some lighter fluid into the hole on the bottom and then light it.
Marc:And that fucking tennis ball would shoot like 100 feet up.
Marc:It was the greatest thing.
Marc:I don't hear about them much anymore.
Marc:I guess I'm not really running in those circles, but are there tennis ball cannons around anymore or do the cans not enable you to do that?
Marc:I think you required a more durable can than an aluminum can.
Marc:Yeah, smoke bombs, snakes, mythical M80s, the occasional black cat, sparklers, bottle rockets, the best.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, and the tennis ball cannon.
Marc:Man, I remember we tried to hold that thing, and it blew off.
Marc:Almost killed Frankie Fool.
Marc:I also remember playing chicken on the street, on bikes, on ride bikes.
Marc:And for some reason, I stayed in it, and me and Frankie hit each other, and it was just this monumental, dumb thing.
Marc:It's like the idea that you play chicken, and it's exciting, but you don't fucking hit each other just because no one's gonna chicken out.
Marc:What a dumb, dumb thing.
Marc:This would be four skateboards.
Marc:But, you know, that was my childhood.
Marc:There is two parts to this show.
Marc:Remind me to tell you about Henry Fonda's boots.
Marc:OK, just remind me.
Marc:All right.
Marc:And I'd remind.
Marc:Oh, the other thing is I got a few emails with I think Paul Rudd.
Marc:I said Bob Hoskins, the British actor, the great British actor was a British Jew.
Marc:It's not clear that he was.
Marc:If someone knows otherwise, please tell me, because there were certainly several volunteers to tell me he wasn't Jewish, not not totally inappropriate.
Marc:So that's good.
Marc:I was going to tell you that I have Andy Kindler here, Andy Kindler and J. Elvis Weinstein, Josh Weinstein.
Marc:They host the podcast Thought Spiral.
Marc:They have a live taping coming up on Tuesday, July 10th at the Hollywood Improv, if you're interested in that.
Marc:And I'm always happy to see Andy.
Marc:And he brought a guy with him and we tried to have a conversation.
Marc:I have to say not tight on the promoting of their show.
Marc:they might want to get that script down.
Marc:But always good seeing Andy, and it was good to meet J. Elvis Weinstein, Josh Weinstein.
Marc:Again, I didn't remember meeting him the first time, but here we are.
Marc:Here we are.
Marc:Me, Andy, and Josh.
.
Marc:Why do you look so serious?
Marc:Why are you guys here?
Marc:What's this guy's name?
Marc:J. Elvis Weinstein.
Marc:J. Elvis Weinstein.
Guest:How do you get a name like that?
Guest:Because I joined the guild and there was another Josh Weinstein.
Guest:So I threw the Elvis in to make my initial spell Jew.
Marc:So Jew.
Marc:That's a good story.
Marc:So you write for The Simpsons?
Guest:No.
Guest:So that's why he had to do it.
Guest:Mystery Science Theater and Freaks and Geeks.
Guest:Oh, but same universe.
Guest:Yeah, nerd fodder, for sure.
Guest:If you were a person who was social back in the 90s, and you were hanging around with me and my gang, you would have met Jay Elvis.
Guest:Have I never met you?
Guest:We've met a couple times, but only in passing.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Guest:That's okay.
Guest:It's the kind of meeting where the person less famous remembers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know that if it was in passing and it was one time ago that I would call myself famous.
Marc:No, I knew.
Guest:I knew at the time.
Guest:You now insist that I call you famous.
Guest:Well, I think that's reasonable at this point.
Guest:Well, there's already famous Amos.
Guest:He comes along with famous Mark.
Guest:Boom.
Guest:Boom.
Guest:How funny am I in the morning?
Guest:Have a cookie.
Guest:You're great.
Guest:Look at these three Jews here.
Marc:Very much.
Marc:A whole lot of Jew.
Marc:Half a minion.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You don't even, you know, the thing about- No, actually, it's not half.
Marc:We need four and a half guy.
Marc:We need another Jew and a half a Jew.
Marc:Isn't it nine?
Marc:I think it's 10.
Marc:Is it 10?
Marc:Since when?
Marc:Did they add one?
Guest:Maybe it's nine.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I haven't, it hasn't come up.
Guest:So you go by J. Elvis?
Guest:I go by Josh in life.
Guest:Josh Elvis?
Guest:But my credit is J. Elvis.
Guest:J. Elvis?
Guest:J. Freaks and Geeks?
Marc:Freaks and Geeks.
Guest:Mystery Science Theater?
Guest:Mystery Science Theater, cinematic.
Marc:Original Mystery Science Theater?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:With Conniff?
Guest:Before Conniff.
Guest:Before Conniff.
Guest:Conniff replaced me.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, what are you guys doing?
Guest:We do a podcast.
Guest:It's just me and him.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:There's no guests.
Guest:There's no anything.
Guest:It's called Thought Spiral, and we sit there for an hour and a half and try to make it work.
Marc:Should it be called, let's see if Josh can get a word in?
Marc:It's kind of that.
Marc:It's kind of running alongside and just taking jabs when I can, finding the opening.
Marc:So what's it called again?
Marc:Thought Spiral?
Marc:Thought Spiral.
Marc:Now, is this... Tell me about... What does that mean?
Marc:Do you pick a subject?
Marc:Do you... It is... There is no prep.
Guest:It is a comedic life dump.
Marc:Please tell me to use shitty mics and don't record properly.
Guest:58s.
Guest:We use 58s.
Guest:That's all right.
Guest:He lives three blocks away from me, so every Monday... I don't want to make it sound like we're family members, but just in the fact that to get me going in life...
Guest:I go to his place once a week.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's a tradition now.
Guest:But you did this before the podcast?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:This is how we socialize now.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It is basically our friendship on tape now because we don't talk in between shows.
Guest:So you catch up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He hasn't even seen my condo.
Guest:You haven't seen my condo.
Guest:It's like your show.
Guest:When have you invited me to your condo?
Guest:I know.
Guest:That's the problem.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Whose problem?
Guest:Susan wants to invite you.
Guest:I say I can't take it.
Guest:Too close.
Marc:We're asking for trouble.
Marc:We have Marin over.
Marc:We should have a dinner party.
Marc:We should.
Marc:That's our new podcast.
Marc:He's a very good cook.
Marc:I can cook.
Marc:I like that.
Marc:I'm not sold on it yet.
Guest:Neither is any of the nation.
Guest:Have you seen our numbers?
Marc:So, but do you, like, for instance, how many have you done?
Marc:For instance?
Marc:60.
Marc:60 of them.
Marc:Already?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So how long is it going on for?
Guest:A year and 10 weeks.
Marc:Oh, so this is like a Hail Mary pass.
Guest:Yeah, we're doing a live show.
Guest:And that's why we really do want to appreciate it.
Guest:I hope you enjoyed the gift basket.
Guest:No, we're doing a live show.
Guest:No, but Mark, it was really, I mean, when you said that you want to help your down and out friends, I don't wish you would phrase it that way.
Guest:Yeah, we're doing a live show, but somehow, I don't know, you said, we put up a paywall.
Guest:I wanted to put up a paywall.
Guest:He wouldn't let me.
Guest:Why would you put up a paywall?
Guest:I know.
Guest:That's my excuse of why we don't have big numbers, because we don't have a paywall.
Guest:Give me an example.
Guest:I'm sorry I didn't do my homework.
Guest:Go
Guest:You want to do a little, I'll do it right now.
Guest:You ready?
Guest:This is a podcast.
Guest:Welcome to Thought Spiral.
Guest:I'm your co-host, Andy Kindler.
Guest:Hi, Andy.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:So we go like that.
Guest:He doesn't even introduce us.
Marc:He doesn't come in by name?
Guest:No, because we don't do it.
Marc:He didn't even say his name.
Marc:So you just said, I'm Andy Kindler.
Guest:It would never actually start like that is the thing.
Guest:We actually just start.
Guest:What, do you have music?
Guest:No, I pet his dog.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And things like that.
Guest:No, there's no music.
Guest:The overall feel is it's meant, I mean, as deliberate as it actually is, which isn't much, is my hope is that it just feels like an ongoing conversation.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:People who like it say it's like having lunch with us, but they just don't get to talk.
Marc:Oh, I get it.
Marc:Well, that is just like having lunch with Andy.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:I couldn't hear what you were saying because I was thinking of a comeback.
Guest:Because you didn't have a headset on?
Guest:But it's a lot of talking about it.
Guest:I mean, a lot of it is just trying to figure out how Andy Kindler gets through life.
Guest:Oh, okay, so, but do you talk about politics, Andy?
Guest:Yeah, so what I talk about, you sound like an old Jewish guy.
Guest:You sound like an old Jewish host trying to get some energy going.
Guest:There's a guy who can't explain it.
Guest:He's trying to help us form a pitch for ourselves.
Guest:Andy, now, no, the thing is, really kind of what starts- Do you use a microphone?
Guest:Yeah, we do, but we don't amplify it.
Guest:Oh, that's very good.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:No, I was, and I think I talked to you around the same time.
Guest:I had just gotten into therapy for the first time in my life, and I was- How many years ago was that?
Guest:I think almost two years.
Guest:Like two years.
Guest:Wow, just two years.
Guest:A year and a half maybe.
Guest:That's wild.
Guest:And I got into, and I'm on Prozac.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so this has been, and we've been friends for a very long time.
Guest:So it really is us talking.
Guest:You and Josh?
Guest:Jay Elvis.
Marc:Yeah, Jay Elvis.
Marc:Either one.
Marc:Jew.
Marc:Jew.
Marc:J. Elvis Weinstein.
Guest:Yeah, and so we really do get to the point where I think we have interesting discussions, but forget about how I said the word interesting.
Guest:But the thing is, it's the hard, in a lot of ways, it's the hardest thing I've ever done, and you say that when you see my stand-up.
Marc:Yeah, it's the hardest thing you've ever done?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You say that this is the hardest thing you've ever done?
Guest:When I started, because what you, you, and I don't want to shoot, paint up your...
Guest:Yeah, whatever the saying is.
Marc:I don't want to blow marbles into your head.
Guest:You changed my, and this is true, you changed my life.
Guest:And I don't know if you remember this, but when I started to listen to your podcast, I had been watching politics.
Guest:I couldn't get it out of my head.
Guest:And so it was driving me crazy.
Guest:I loved it when you would talk about your mom.
Guest:So that's kind of what we're trying to do.
Guest:It's your show, but the guests never show up.
Marc:You should introduce him at the beginning and just say, I guess they're not coming.
Marc:I guess Brad Pitt chose not to make it.
Guest:Should we do that?
Guest:My initial thought was the Andy Kindler therapy wrap-up show.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Well, what are you finding with therapy?
Marc:What have you learned, Andy, that's been life-changing?
Guest:I have learned that I didn't realize that when I was young, I hated myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that I hated myself for a lot of my own life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Struggling with a liking, trying to like myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But trying to overcome hating myself, which was the internalization of the voice.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Look, God bless my parents.
Guest:I know my mom doesn't listen to this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's a wonderful person.
Guest:But sometimes as a kid,
Guest:Yeah, you need a little support.
Guest:You need a little positive input.
Guest:And the reason why I eventually, and the reason why I went was I kind of was hit rock bottom with the OCD.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And I was on Twitter all the time.
Marc:With the OCD, were you just like, were you walking in circles, reorganizing things?
Guest:No, I was on Twitter.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:going to the interaction area checking to see what people think about me that's the whole thing is that i as i now stop hating myself i am now able to like accept feedback from my wife yeah you know without being defensive yeah because she's not telling me i'm a horrible person yeah she's telling me she stopped doing that it's the subtext though it's still a subtext and he's very read between the lines andy
Guest:Now, you would think, we have a similar background, but he's more, see, I see him as being a lot more well-adjusted than me.
Marc:Well, yeah, because- It's a low bar.
Marc:Well, no, I feel like right out of the gate, I'm not feeling exhausted by him.
Marc:See?
Marc:See, he's not demanding my attention.
Marc:Right.
Marc:He's not challenging me to like him.
Guest:Yeah, he has his own self-esteem.
Guest:It's the Minnesota Jew.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:That's the special brand.
Guest:The Dylan style.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Coen Brothers.
Guest:Coen Brothers.
Guest:I can't tell this.
Guest:You knew Dylan's mother.
Guest:You did?
Guest:That's true, yeah.
Guest:She was at my bar mitzvah.
Guest:Nah.
Guest:My grandma and Dylan's mother grew up together in northern Minnesota.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my dad was a pledge brother of Dylan in college in Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity and tutored Bob Dylan in English.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Wow, maybe your dad should get a little bit of money on the back end.
Guest:Yeah, I think he really is.
Guest:He didn't do any of the rhyming help.
Marc:Oh, no, no rhyming.
Marc:He didn't teach him Iambic.
Marc:Freshman comp, I think is what it was.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So was Dylan's grandmother a nice lady?
Marc:She was, Beatty.
Marc:Beatty Ruttman was her name by the time I knew her.
Marc:It was his grandmother?
Guest:His mother.
Guest:His mother.
Guest:It was the contemporary of my grandmother.
Marc:Oh, I get it.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Dylan and my dad are the same age.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Now, do you live up by where the Dylan compound is or was?
Guest:No, I live out here.
Guest:Did you grow up near it?
Guest:No, I don't know where the Dylan compound was.
Guest:I grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis.
Marc:Oh, but that was where his mother lived?
Guest:Yeah, his mother lived in Minneapolis, outside of Minneapolis.
Guest:And then eventually I think she moved to Arizona.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Remember when we went out for that movie?
Guest:Me and you?
Guest:The Jewish movie for the Coen brothers?
Guest:Yes, for A Simple Man.
Guest:For A Simple Man.
Guest:That's exactly- A Serious Man.
Guest:A Serious Man.
Guest:That's exactly- That was my suburb.
Guest:That movie was about my suburb, basically.
Marc:I love it up there.
Marc:I taped my last special in Minneapolis.
Marc:I love Minnesota.
Marc:I do too.
Marc:I like them people in Minnesota.
Marc:I think they're decent people.
Marc:They're a good audience.
Marc:They're pleasant.
Marc:They're polite.
Marc:It was a great place to start stand-up.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, the Jews are quiet and the Lutherans are pleasant.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was a great place to start stand-up?
Marc:It was, totally.
Marc:You were a stand-up?
Marc:Yeah, I still am.
Marc:Now I feel like an asshole.
Marc:That's all right.
Guest:Well, that's because- How am I going to know?
Guest:Because he started with, no, with Louis Anderson or after Louis?
Guest:Post-Louis Anderson.
Guest:Post-Louis Anderson.
Guest:I started, I was 15 and 87 when I started.
Guest:15 years old, he was doing stand-up in clubs.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So let me ask you something.
Marc:Let's go through some of the subjects that come up in a standard conversation.
Marc:You do a little politics.
Marc:You talk about your therapy session.
Marc:Music.
Marc:Do you talk about music ever?
Marc:Yes, and he's been playing.
Guest:He is a musician, and I am a musician, but I haven't brought my stuff to the actual... He has good recorded stuff, and then we talk about my original song I wrote called Karen at 16.
Guest:And it was just a terrible song.
Marc:You were 16?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you wrote a song called Karen?
Marc:Yeah, because she had a crush on me.
Marc:When I was 14, I wrote a song called Jessica.
Guest:I can't believe you started guitar that early.
Marc:Started guitar when I was like 11.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:But you're better than me, right?
Guest:This is the kind of thing that stops.
Guest:This is another thing I learned from therapy, Mark.
Guest:No, it's not.
No, no.
Guest:another thing I learned from therapy market was that the reason why I didn't progress as a musician was because I hated myself and I hated my voice and so you can't it's like saying I hate myself speaking comedy yeah but see the thing is who doesn't what good Jew doesn't hate themselves because of the expectations their parents put on them
Marc:No, that's true.
Marc:So the problem is, at some point, you've got to push through the fear out of complete necessity, and then you get to the higher ground.
Guest:No, but the thing is, at some point, if you say you can't write songs, if after every song you say to yourself, is this good?
Guest:Do you think they'll like it?
Guest:That's not the way Dylan wrote.
Guest:You know, it's like, I'm not that way with comedy, but I used to be that way with music.
Guest:So I'm learning now why.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was like, the reason is why is like, you jammed with Amy and Michael once, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Michael Penn said, what happened?
Guest:You were jamming.
Marc:Yeah, I was just, I was doing like a sort of a cock driven blues lead.
Marc:And he goes, and so what did he say?
Marc:And he's like, I don't do that.
Guest:And he goes, oh, we could do that.
Guest:He said, yeah, we could go that way.
Guest:So that's the thing.
Guest:My whole thing is I wanted to be a musician, but I want people like Amy and Michael to tell me I'm great.
Guest:And that's what it wouldn't.
Marc:It's a pretty small audience.
Guest:He is a great singer.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:You're making me uncomfortable, Andy.
Marc:I'm the same way with music, though.
Marc:I mean, I was never confident, but it wasn't so much because I hated myself.
Marc:I just didn't think I was good enough.
Marc:That's kind of work, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and in recent years, I've practiced and I've gotten better.
Marc:And I still don't think of it professionally, but like Jimmy Vavino, let me sit in with him.
Marc:You know, when they do a blues night or something.
Marc:And it's very exciting for me.
Marc:And I still enjoy playing.
Marc:And I've sung a bit out.
Marc:But I was terrified.
Marc:I had a bad experience as a teenager singing in public.
Marc:To me, it's a very vulnerable place to be.
Marc:I just never thought I was good enough.
Marc:But you just, I put too much pressure on myself.
Marc:I don't think it was self-help.
Guest:And it's hard as a comic, though, too, to commit in that way, to commit to that kind of sincerity.
Guest:Yeah, singing.
Marc:But some people like Aukerman, they can just go up there and sing.
Marc:Kid Jambino?
Marc:Kid Jambino?
Marc:Well, he's sort of a genius, that guy.
Marc:He's something else.
Marc:But there are people that can sing without investing that.
Marc:I don't know how to sing and just be... Everything is so visceral to me and so close to the surface that I can't just put on airs and be like... If I'm going to sing, I'm like, oh God, here we go.
Guest:For me, that's been my lifelong battle is battling against self-consciousness.
Guest:So now I get to, now I'm at a point where I did a Harry Nielsen thing at Molly Malone's the other night.
Guest:It was like a birthday.
Guest:You can sing like Harry Nielsen?
Guest:Well, we did a song.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:My wife, we did You're Breaking My Heart.
Guest:My wife and I had a band together for like 20 years.
Guest:His wife is an amazing songwriter.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And we brought, Paul Feig was our drummer for years and Dave Gruber Allen was in the band.
Guest:So it was a comic and it was a comic-y band.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But now I felt like the other night we did this thing and we went up and we felt like we could just go do this thing, commit to it, not be pretentious, but still have fun.
Guest:And it felt fun.
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:Well, that comes from doing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's my whole point, Mr. Mark.
Guest:You don't do it.
Guest:You live in your head.
Guest:No, I could do it now.
Guest:I'm ready to do it now.
Guest:I'm trying not to hate myself in my 20s because it's not a positive emotion, but it's always like...
Guest:When you're in the mode of, am I good enough yet?
Guest:You're not probably good enough yet, but you have to, if you loved it so much, you'd keep going.
Guest:And I just found that comedy was more... Easier.
Guest:Well, to start with, and it was frightening.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know what, like, I feel that comedy is so immediate that, you know, the actual time you put into, like, developing whatever it is you develop over the years doesn't feel the same as work.
Right.
Marc:right and it like you know if you have if you're driven to do comedy it's because it's like all right you know i'm not the waiting to get on staging at the beginning is horrible but you know once you're on there you know there we go that's it did you know i cried though i cried they see he started out uh confident i started out crying oh i was terrified and like you know compressed and angry you cried
Guest:I cried because I was in a duo and then the first time I went on my own.
Guest:On stage?
Guest:No, no, in the car.
Guest:Oh, so you should have cried on stage.
Guest:Yeah, I had the complete delusional confidence of being a teenager.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:I never was a confident teenager.
Guest:That was the thing that made me confident, though.
Guest:Oh, I'm a comic.
Guest:That's what I am.
Guest:That was your thing.
Guest:Finding that identity got me through the rest of high school.
Guest:Yeah, I still haven't found my identity.
Marc:You're close.
Guest:I'm close.
Guest:I feel very close.
Guest:I wear it.
Guest:I mean, I direct documentaries, too.
Guest:In fact, I direct, you know, Louis Lee.
Guest:I did a doc about... Acme?
Guest:Acme comedy, yeah.
Guest:Really?
Marc:I directed a doc about... Was there a long discussion about why he banned me for 12 years?
Marc:Uh...
Marc:No, but he let you back, didn't he?
Guest:He did.
Guest:That is my class.
Guest:It's unbelievable that Mark is like me on my deathbed, which I hope they don't call it a deathbed.
Guest:I still feel Lewis shouldn't have... He will not die until he gets through his grudge inventory.
Guest:Andy, come here.
Guest:Come here.
Guest:No, he apologized very nicely.
Guest:Tell Gavin Pullover to go fuck him.
Guest:I've been waiting to say that my whole life.
Guest:Make sure you tell him.
Guest:That would be who I would tell.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I'm afraid that people like him.
Guest:That's his angle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's like a guy I think who beat me up, so that's always extra fear from me.
Guest:So you never really seem to be scared about getting beaten up.
Marc:I am, but at a certain point, it's sort of like I've learned to live with these things and just...
Marc:move through some of them, you know what I mean?
Marc:Of course, you know, but like I have found that most of what you're afraid of and reacting to is something your head is making up, whether it's on purpose or reactive, it's not real.
Marc:And like you have to decide like, is this a waste of time and energy or is it not?
Guest:yeah well i've and also i decided through therapy this is why i say i'm the oldest jew to enter therapy yeah as i learned that uh me feeling ashamed because i avoided like fights and yeah maybe at three o'clock i'd start crying right you know before the fight no i wouldn't go to the other area to fight that's the thing but you set the
Guest:fight up earlier in the day no I refused the guy would torture me by that way so I thought that you have to fight to be a man and now I realize that if I'm talking to a man if he if they want to punch me I don't I don't necessarily there's nothing I can do in other words like my fear is I'm gonna knock on someone's door and go please keep your noise down or whatever and they're gonna punch me
Marc:But the thing is, you forget that you're a comedian, and if that ever happens, if some guy goes, I'm going to kick your ass, you'll be like, really?
Marc:Do we have to do that now?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, so you get out of it.
Marc:Well, I'm short, though.
Marc:You guys, well, I don't know how tall you are.
Marc:I'm not a fighter.
Marc:Here, I'm going to tell you something between you and me, and it'll be on the podcast soon, that I think will make you feel better.
Marc:Ray Liotta.
Marc:Punched you?
Marc:Never been in a fight.
Guest:Oh, I love to hear that.
Guest:Oh, that is so great.
Guest:Right?
Guest:I don't think you've been in a fight either, right?
Guest:I have.
Guest:See, we've talked about it.
Guest:But it was bad, and I wasn't good at it.
Guest:You're not a scrapper.
Guest:I'm not a scrapper.
Guest:You got scrapped.
Guest:I got scrapped.
Guest:I landed a couple, but they were very flailing.
Guest:You've only been in one?
Guest:One real with a stranger fight, yeah.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:Was it messy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, on my end it was.
Guest:How about you?
Guest:Did you ever get in a fight?
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I was at this party and these two girls came in and went, someone come quick.
Guest:And so like an asshole, I did and ran outside and saw two of my friends squared off against three of these other guys.
Guest:So now I'm suddenly on their team and it's the Jew team, not the good team to be on in this scenario.
Marc:They're trying to decide who's going in first.
Marc:How are we going to do this?
Guest:And the littlest of their guys says to the biggest of their guys about me, because I was big, get him.
Guest:It was over.
Guest:It was his teenage shit?
Guest:I was like 20, probably.
Guest:And there was noises like, I think that came out of me.
Marc:Yeah, it was always surprising.
Marc:Surprising noises, fear and pain.
Marc:Well, Andy, I'm glad you're doing better.
Marc:Podcast sounds wonderful.
Marc:Wait a second.
Guest:What do you mean doing better?
Marc:That was really sarcastic.
Guest:Was I out of the loop?
Guest:Was I in rehab?
Guest:I'm following your lead.
Guest:I was doing a bit on your bit.
Guest:My character is the downtrodden guy.
Guest:It's good.
Marc:That's what you've landed on?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You're not sweating.
Marc:You seem clear.
Marc:I'm not sweating as much as I normally would be.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you actually do make me very nervous.
Guest:Oh, did I leave the air on?
Marc:No, it's good.
Guest:Hold on.
Guest:Oh, has that noise been there the whole time?
Guest:This is unbelievable.
Guest:You will make the same face when you're checking the temperature.
Guest:It only hit the mic when you moved your head away.
Guest:It did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:I wonder if you heard that.
Guest:That'll be an experiment.
Guest:Well, that's the thing people like these days, is they like to hear audio recordings with the air on, and they like to hear... And when you don't air this, you can say, oh, sorry, it was the AC.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No way.
Guest:Please don't.
Guest:You have to.
Guest:Please.
Guest:We're going to go back so far.
Marc:And Marin, remember?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What's happening now?
Guest:This is still my character.
Marc:Yeah, no, you were great on Marin.
Marc:All the energy, puts all the energy, it all goes away right when the camera's going.
Marc:It's an amazing trick that Andy has.
Marc:He entertains the entire cast and crew.
Marc:As soon as action happens, Andy's asleep.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:It's really kind of true, and I used to...
Guest:That's why when I used to audition, I would go in and go, look, I can't audition well, but can I say, hey, you have a nice funny shirt on and hey, show business joke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's what I've always been doing.
Marc:And then they go, you ready to read?
Marc:And then it's... Well, it sounds like you got it figured out.
Marc:Yeah, we do.
Marc:We do.
Marc:So what are we promoting?
Marc:The live show?
Marc:Live show, yeah.
Marc:That's on July... July 10th at the Improv Lab.
Marc:What time?
Guest:Seven o'clock.
Marc:No guests.
Guest:No guests.
Marc:Well, good luck with it.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Can I plug my doc too?
Marc:Of course.
Guest:It's called I Need You to Kill.
Guest:It's about stand-up in Asia, and it's available on Amazon Prime.
Marc:That sounds interesting.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Tom Segura.
Marc:I love Tom Segura.
Marc:So he did stand-up in Asia?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, and you went with him?
Guest:I went with him and two others, yeah.
Marc:And Louis Lee.
Marc:And who?
Guest:And Louis Lee, which is what I was... He was there too?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Was he producing it?
Guest:Because he put together the tour, and he ultimately produced the movie, yeah.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:So that's why you're kind of backing off of any negative things about.
Guest:No, I've known Lewis.
Guest:I've known Lewis since I was 16 years old.
Guest:I've known him since.
Guest:Lewis used to pour me scotch in a coffee cup when he was a bartender.
Guest:You can't.
Guest:Different liquor license.
Guest:A whole different club.
Guest:Lewis had to fire me the first time I met him.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Because I couldn't follow the middle.
Marc:Oh, no, I don't know what I did to upset him, but we're good.
Marc:No, everything's good now.
Marc:Yeah, we apologize.
Marc:I've worked with him.
Marc:I always never had anything against him, never understood why.
Marc:There's never a reason been given.
Marc:Probably had something to do with a waitress, but we're good.
Marc:Very gracious man.
Marc:And that said, like I'm doing that too.
Marc:You're wrapping up a thing that's a different type of show.
Marc:Yeah, I'm wrapping up a thing like I'm overcompensating.
Marc:Yeah, no, no, he's great.
Marc:It's like the senator from Nevada in Godfather 2.
Marc:The Corleone family is a great family.
Marc:They've done nothing but good things.
Guest:Lewis Lee, that's what show business should be more like.
Guest:All right, we'll have fun at the thing.
Guest:Thank you, sir.
Guest:Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:Okay, so that was good.
Marc:That was Andy.
Marc:That was Josh.
Marc:Thought Spiral has a live taping coming up on Tuesday, July 10th at the Hollywood Improv if you want to go.
Marc:So...
Marc:Peter Fonda, second time I've met him.
Marc:I met him many years ago on a live taping of the Alex Bennett Show, and I was very excited to meet him because he's fucking Peter Fonda and because he may be remembered and mostly known for one thing, but it was a pretty fucking amazing thing.
Marc:Easy Rider was a pretty fucking amazing thing.
Marc:And before I even knew what the movie was or knew anything about it, back in 1969, 1970, 1971, I lived in 1204 Dakota.
Marc:albuquerque new mexico in a shag carpeted basement me and my brother and on that wall because i always was i don't know how it trickled down to me but i was a avid reader of mad magazine and i i must have been looking around because it was the time 69 70 71 i was seven years old eight years old but for some reason my mother and father being the blissfully
Marc:selfish and and relatively permissive i would say very permissive parents they were maybe they just didn't get down to the basement much but i had a picture of dennis hopper uh throwing the bird and uh you know i had a picture of the three of them fonda hopper and nicholson that and i had a mini bike and i had that american flag helmet that fonda had i had another poster i had the horoscope sexual positions i'm not lying and i was that age and they let me have that
Marc:Don't arrest my parents.
Marc:There's a statute of limitations on that shit.
Marc:But it was a blacklight poster.
Marc:I did not have a blacklight.
Marc:Does that comfort you in any way?
Marc:But Fonda is Fonda.
Marc:And he was very reflective.
Marc:about his childhood in this conversation.
Marc:And again, this was before he kind of went crazy on Twitter in his anger, in his reaction to the policies at the border.
Marc:And if you're a right winger listening to this because you want to hate buzz, or if you're listening because you want to dredge up some clickbait about it,
Marc:I'm sorry to disappoint you.
Marc:It ain't here unless you want to talk about Peter working through childhood trauma and some probably well-worn Easy Rider tidbits.
Marc:So I think there is a new one here about a beef him in Hopper hat.
Marc:So this is me, Peter Fonda.
Marc:talking here in the new garage.
Marc:It was a tight talk.
Marc:He had to be somewhere.
Marc:He didn't seem to care, but his publicists were very explicit about him getting out of here inside an hour.
Marc:The movie that he's in is called Boundaries, which is in theaters now.
Marc:Oh, the cowboy boots.
Marc:Well,
Marc:I did a movie with Lynn Shelton down in Alabama, and my character wore these brown cowboy boots, just classic lizard cowboy boots.
Marc:And I was able to take them, and I have them.
Marc:And in my mind, I thought, well, maybe I can wear these.
Marc:Maybe there will come a time.
Marc:I definitely wore cowboy boots from my past.
Marc:Years I've wore black cowboy boots.
Marc:I don't know what years they were, but I remember wearing them out.
Marc:To where the seams broke.
Marc:So there was a time where that was okay.
Marc:Black cowboy boots.
Marc:Levi's.
Marc:You know the scene.
Marc:Maybe a western belt.
Marc:It's probably in college.
Marc:It wasn't the tacky style.
Marc:I was going for the rock and roll style.
Marc:But nonetheless...
Marc:I'm meditating on whether or not I can wear these new brown lizard skin cowboy boots I got.
Marc:And that's just in the back of my head.
Marc:And then the car pulls up with Peter Fonda in it.
Marc:The back door opens and out of that back door comes the exact boots that I got.
Marc:And it was then I realized maybe it's not time.
Marc:Maybe that time hasn't come.
Marc:You know, of course, Peter Fonda can wear cowboy boots.
Marc:What else is he going to wear?
Marc:But maybe it's not time for me to reintroduce them into my wardrobe because they do imply certain things that you either always wear cowboy boots or because you're not a cowboy or or that it's just not time.
Marc:It's just not time.
Marc:This is me and Peter Fonda.
Marc:So, nice to see you.
Marc:Thanks for coming.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It's my pleasure.
Marc:I think this is my first podcast.
Marc:Is it the first?
Marc:How about that?
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:It doesn't feel that unusual, does it?
Marc:It's just a little cooler.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I met you once.
Marc:I remember what it was.
Marc:You'll never remember, but I remember.
Marc:Back in San Francisco, I don't know what you were plugging, but it was a radio show, Alex Bennett show, in the morning, a live radio show.
Marc:I wouldn't expect you to remember, but you had a nice leather jacket on.
Marc:I remember complimenting the leather jacket.
Marc:I don't know when it would have been.
Marc:It probably would have been in the early 90s.
Marc:um uh yeah it could have been it could have been like 96 maybe 97 i don't know 97 when i was uh promoting uly's gold yeah man that was a that was a big that was a big thing yeah that was like he's back
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I'd never left.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:They love to say he's back.
Guest:Yeah, well, I did.
Guest:You know, I was living on my own sailboat.
Guest:It was an 82-foot, 20-foot abeam.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For so many years sailing around the Pacific.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And, of course, don't you know everybody said, oh, he just don't have his head out there sailing around.
Marc:No.
Guest:And...
Guest:You don't pull over and park at night.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:So you can't be still under your head.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Now we have GPS systems.
Guest:You had to grab the section.
Guest:I'm a celestial navigator.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Go ahead and make the shot on the moving deck of the boat.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You can't be still.
Marc:You can't be still, yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, but I mean, it would seem that being out on the ocean is enough.
Marc:I mean, why would you need to be high on top of that?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That's the trip.
Marc:You bet.
Marc:When did you start doing that?
Marc:Well, I began sailing a little boat when I was 11.
Marc:Oh, so it was in the family.
Marc:It was something you always did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My dad was in the Navy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I had this little, it was called a cat boat.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:It had a Marconi rig, which is, you know, it doesn't have the gaff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like 14 feet long, 13 and a half feet long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this was off the north shore of Long Island, a place called Lloyd Neck.
Guest:And I'd sail out there.
Guest:And you really learned how to get as close as you could on the wind with a very difficult boat.
Guest:Right.
Guest:With no jib.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because that maintenance is just way up forward.
Guest:So you get a sense of it.
Guest:Yeah, you learn a lot about making way and not being able to get very close on the wind.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:So that's how I started there.
Guest:And you loved it.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:I got a seal fish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we went over to the Mediterranean and my father had it shipped over.
Guest:Only problem was the French people wanted me to put a French flag on it because it was an American hull.
Guest:This is a bloody sailfish, you know.
Guest:It's like a surfboard with a sail.
Guest:What do you mean I need a flag on this?
Marc:Holy moly.
Marc:Was that a problem?
Marc:Was it an international incident?
Marc:No, I mean, I just ignored them.
Marc:You lived over there for a while with your family?
Guest:Yeah, my father.
Guest:My second stepmother and my sister Jane.
Guest:How many were there?
Guest:Five.
Guest:Five stepmothers?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Four.
Guest:Three stepmothers for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he was married five times.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And you and Jane and the second stepmother were in the Mediterranean in France?
Yeah.
Guest:The second stem of the album.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was in France, though?
Guest:It was in France.
Guest:It was Cat Ferrat, which, I mean, Picasso had a villa at the end.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And there was a Swedish summer school there with all these Swedish kids, including Carl Gustav, who was now king of Sweden.
Guest:Oh, he was there, huh?
Guest:He was the kid.
Guest:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And you were going to school there?
Guest:I was.
Guest:No, he was.
Guest:I was just trying to figure out how to keep my head above water in this bad family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we would invite all the kids down to the villa where we were staying because my dad would be gone with my second stepmother's, and that was very good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was good when he was gone?
Guest:We had these kids from the Swedish summer school.
Guest:They were there.
Guest:And a couple of good-looking gals and Carl Gustav.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He must have been 15.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was 17.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at one point, there's this image coming through the hedge is Greta Garbo.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Now, Gustav does not know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Carl Gustav has no idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But this is Greta.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she's got a bathing cap on and a big terrycloth robe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she walked straight over, said, I'm going to go swimming now.
Guest:I said, yes, it's perfectly fine.
Guest:And she just took off the terrycloth totally naked.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And by that time, when she talked to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Carl Gustav realized it was Greta Garbo.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Jaw dropped, and she got in, did 50 laps, got out, put her back, and went back.
Guest:She was coming from John Gilbert's villa.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:Oh, there was some amazing stuff happened, and that gives me something that I can talk about in a good way.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There was a lot of real bad shit that was going down.
Marc:In terms of your family?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But...
Marc:What was it?
Marc:The old man?
Marc:Was this an abusive dude?
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:I think he was extraordinarily shy.
Guest:And he had a difficult time expressing love.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:In the sense that he became uncomfortable when he felt...
Guest:that he had to put on some demand.
Guest:He had to respond to some demand.
Guest:And that wasn't really what was happening.
Guest:But regardless of how tough things were in different times, I'll tell you what.
Guest:I grew up the first...
Guest:Eight years of my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I knew nothing about race or color.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had no idea.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:First African-American I saw was Nat King Cole.
Guest:So he's the first black man I see.
Guest:At your house?
Guest:At my house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had 12 acres out on Tiger Tail just out in Brentwood, but up in the hills.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they had some parties that would come up there.
Guest:And one of them was this guy.
Guest:I'd never seen him before.
Guest:I'd never seen a black man before.
Guest:I thought, remarkable-looking guy.
Guest:And then he smiled.
Guest:And he was just around with everybody else.
Guest:He was a guest.
Guest:But he sat down at the piano.
Guest:And began to play.
Guest:And it was beautiful.
Guest:I had to take piano lessons.
Guest:I'm so left-handed, and I'm looking at 88 keys of right-handedness.
Guest:But this guy, he's doing, he's smiling up at me.
Guest:His smile is just an explosion of teeth and white.
Guest:And I was staring at him, and he said, do you play?
Guest:I said, well, they make me take lessons.
Guest:And he got very serious.
Guest:He said, you know, never look at playing an instrument like somebody's making you play it.
Guest:You've got to think you want to play it.
Guest:I said, well, sir, I'm very left-handed.
Guest:There's 88 keys of right-headedness.
Guest:He looked at me.
Guest:He said, watch this.
Guest:He crosses his hand over and plays cow-cow-boogie.
Guest:And then he taught me how to play cow-cow because boogie-woogie...
Guest:Up here, it's going ching, ching, ching, ching, ching.
Guest:The run is down in here.
Guest:The important stuff's on the left hand.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:The whole thing is on the left hand.
Guest:I felt like such a fool, and I only know it.
Guest:It was boogie-woogie, and not, you know, mares-eat-oats, and oles-eat-oats.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:So that's a great lesson to learn.
Guest:Well, I did tell him a little bit later that the first piano recital I had to do, the song I was playing was Ladybug, Ladybug.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And so as I was playing it, I wasn't singing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was singing Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home.
Guest:Your house is on fire.
Guest:Your children will burn.
Guest:Whoa.
Guest:That's terrible.
Guest:And in a sheer terror, I ran from the stage.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's a little recital.
Guest:You know, I was five years old or something.
Guest:Blew your mind?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fucking disturbing.
Guest:That is like Rockabye Baby in the treetop.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:When the wind blows.
Guest:The trade will rock.
Guest:Yeah, the kid's going to fall.
Guest:When the bell breaks, the credit will fall.
Guest:Whoa, you know what?
Guest:I don't like this idea of falling, breaking.
Marc:Too heavy, man.
Marc:Yeah, too heavy.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:I'm glad to know that your dad was shy because I don't know the whole history of your family, but there's that.
Marc:What fucking movie was that he did with Charles Bronson?
Marc:The one at the end where he sticks the harmonica in his mouth?
Marc:I can't remember, but it was like he had this look in his eye.
Marc:He was the heavy.
Marc:Your old man was.
Guest:Frank.
Guest:His name was Frank.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Fucking just terrifying.
Marc:And I'm like, oh, man, I hope that's not what they had to grow up with.
Guest:No.
Guest:You saw it sometimes.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I remember, you know, there were lots of famous people that were around all the time.
Guest:Jimmy Stewart, you know, is his dear friend and had been for such a long time.
Guest:John Wayne.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ward Bond.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Randolph Scott, some good people in Westerns and other types.
Guest:One morning, I remember coming down for breakfast, and there was Ward Vaughn and John Wayne.
Guest:Yeah, hanging out.
Guest:And we're having breakfast.
Guest:We all get in.
Guest:The Duke had a four-door Cadillac convertible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a cream-colored car with red leather seats.
Guest:Years later, I reminded him of it.
Guest:He said, my God, you remember that?
Guest:I said, oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And I remember this and I remember that.
Guest:And they were finishing a film called Ford Apache.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Which was a John Ford film.
Guest:And it was Ford's version of Custer's Last Stand.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And my dad was Custer, but he was called Colonel Thursday.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So when people say, what was it like growing up with your father?
Guest:I said, did you ever see Ford Apache?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Colonel Thursday, that's what it was like.
Guest:Because he plays this ramrod, terrible person.
Guest:He deserves to get killed in the end.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:That one lesson.
Guest:No bigotry, no racism.
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had no idea.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So you... Yeah, there was somebody very different in that King Cole.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he was a person.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you didn't learn it.
Guest:In other words... I learned nothing to hate.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So being sort of insulated in a kind of Hollywood world, you weren't given any hate.
Marc:Never got it.
Marc:Yeah, that's nice.
Guest:And we weren't that insulated in a way...
Guest:We would see different people come in.
Guest:They were all people.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:To me, Pedro the Gardner.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He spoke a different language.
Guest:I tried to learn to talk with him, but he could speak English, too.
Guest:I had no idea that he was Mexican.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He just spoke differently.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We all look alike.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's good when you're a kid and you can hold on to that mind.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:And we had a Japanese maid, and we hit her during the war so she didn't have to go to detention camp.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, of course, I didn't know anything about that from I was...
Guest:One and a half went to war.
Guest:When my dad went to war, I was three years old.
Guest:And then he was in the Pacific as a sailor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was already an actor, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He had been an actor.
Guest:It was very successful.
Guest:We had 12 acres of land up in...
Marc:In Brentwood.
Marc:He'd been around a long time, right?
Guest:We say at most times during the war, they were called victory gardens.
Guest:Everybody was encouraged to grow some food for themselves.
Guest:We had a truck farm.
Guest:I mean, there was every vegetable you could imagine.
Guest:And my dad made all the dirt through composting.
Guest:So I thought his job, I had no idea what he was doing.
Guest:I thought his job was making the best dirt in the greater LA area.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it was really good dirt because we had great veggies.
Guest:Right, right, yeah.
Guest:So do you live here?
Guest:Do you have a house here?
Guest:Do you have a place?
Guest:I have.
Guest:I'm out.
Guest:I call it in the wilderness.
Guest:I'm on the west side.
Guest:I look down and see the back of the Getty Villa.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And then out and see the ocean in the Palisades.
Marc:Oh, that's beautiful.
Guest:A place called Kessel & Mary.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:So you don't have the place in Montana anymore?
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:No?
Guest:No, I decided, you know, what I say is I don't want to see the mountains anymore.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't want to see snow.
Guest:I don't want to try to blow snow out of a quarter mile long drift that's 10 feet high in the center.
Guest:No more than that.
Guest:I don't want to see the wind bringing dust to the logs of my house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't want to wet a fly on the Yellowstone River.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't want to, however.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If there's film in the camera and money in the bank, what time do you want me there?
Marc:Right.
Marc:I'll fly.
Marc:Very practical about that part.
Marc:So when you grew up here, though, at what point... Because I've talked to guys... Because you talk about your dad's friends, but you had a whole crew, too, from the late 60s and 70s that were equally as kind of...
Marc:important in the big spectrum of show business and movies and counterculture.
Marc:And a lot of those guys, they're going away, too, now.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the thing about getting older.
Guest:You lose more friends.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's so sad, right?
Guest:But in a way, I know it's coming.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We all know it's coming.
Guest:People say to me, oh, how are you today?
Guest:I'm alive.
Guest:And they think I'm being cynical.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:No, the alternative sucks.
Guest:Yeah, I'm on the right side of the grass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although it's inevitable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At this moment, unacceptable.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we keep trucking.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:So if the drive-by hits me and I'm out, it's been a hell of a ride, man.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It has been, right?
Guest:You bet.
Yeah.
Marc:But I try to get a sense of what's interesting about Hollywood and about show business is that when your dad was around, it was like, what, three, four studios.
Marc:And then when you started coming up, it wasn't much bigger, just a new generation of people, but it was still a small town kind of thing, wasn't it?
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Marc:And it must have been like everyone, I feel like there was a real community and everyone kind of knew each other.
Marc:Everyone knew it was up.
Marc:And in the 60s and the late 60s, you must have felt that when things started to shift, because you did a couple of straight up, what were your first movies?
Marc:Tammy and the Doctor.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then The Victors, a War is Hell movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it was like, those are straight up studio movies.
Marc:Kind of.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Universal and Columbia.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then like, I mean, so you were just at that pivotal point where shit started to break apart, right?
Marc:You felt it.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, shit actually started breaking apart when I was six years old, but we don't want to get into it.
Guest:Sure, we can get into it.
Guest:I know, you don't want to.
Guest:I promise you.
Guest:In 2004, I found out the name of what was fucking me up.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:What?
Guest:Post-traumatic stress disorder.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I had no name to why I was so fucked up.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what's that track to?
Guest:Like, from what?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, it starts... Yeah.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:It starts when I was thrown out of a barn window and fell 18 feet to the ground, a hard, packed ground on my chin, and broke my neck.
Guest:I didn't know I'd broken it until 85 when I broke it the second time.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who threw you out of it?
Guest:The older boys who were jealous because I was Henry Fonda's son.
Guest:I mean, that's how I was...
Guest:described yeah i had no idea who he was so that was hard identity to live up to whatever you didn't have a sense of how how big he was or what you know he did really i knew that he made movies and uh i just didn't know how that worked he never talked about it he never talked about his job yeah
Guest:And we knew that he had friends and they were all making movies, but we weren't sure what movies were.
Guest:You have to remember, until 1940, basically I was born then, and those first years of my life, there was war.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And rationing and all that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we had only a couple of friends that we could visit with.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Leland Hayward's three children.
Guest:He married Margaret Sullivan, who was my dad's first wife.
Guest:This gets really weird.
Guest:And they had three kids, and so they were like our best friends.
Guest:We were either at their house or they were at our house.
Guest:He stayed friends with her all that time.
Guest:Yeah, and Leland had been his agent.
Guest:Leland sold his agent's list to Lou Wasserman and Jill Stein.
Guest:At MCA?
Guest:When they came out from Chicago, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was a bunch of incredible actors.
Marc:So, Washerman was an agent before he was the head of... He was the music, but it was all about music progression stuff.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And they decided where they wanted to be.
Guest:He was in Los Angeles, and they wanted to make movies.
Guest:You know, I'm glad they did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So those were your peers.
Marc:Those were the people that were hanging around.
Marc:And then they threw you out of a barn.
Guest:Well, I was sent away to school.
Guest:I was almost 10 pounds when I was born.
Guest:A big boy.
Guest:And I was in New York for eight and a half weeks.
Guest:There was nothing wrong with me.
Guest:I was a 10-pound baby boy.
Guest:But my father, when he heard about it, was hooping and hollering around the set of whatever movie he was making.
Guest:And I probably would know, but I just prefer not to know what to say.
Guest:Saying, oh boy, I've got a fullback for a son.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I was 10 years old.
Guest:I was almost 10 pounds still.
Guest:So I flunked that one right out the gate.
Guest:No fallback.
Guest:No, they wanted me to become more of a man.
Guest:I mean, shit, I was six.
Guest:Can't you let me be six?
Guest:No, they packed me off to this boarding school up in Topanga Canyon in 1946.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:Not too far from home.
Guest:For me, it was like the other side of the world.
Guest:Well, you were living in New York then?
Guest:No, no, I was living here.
Guest:But it was still.
Guest:And we lived in this beautiful knoll top.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of sun, big fields, orchards and stuff.
Guest:Veggies, as I've told you.
Guest:And just great.
Guest:To this little school up in Topanga.
Guest:which was really weird to me.
Guest:I was wondering, why are we living like this?
Marc:To the floors.
Marc:Was it like an outward bound kind of thing?
Marc:Was it supposed to toughen you up?
Marc:It was that kind of school?
Guest:Well, that's where they sent it to toughen you up, but it was just a school where people in the industry or famous people dropped their kids.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And that's where you got hurt?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's where you track the post-traumatic stress too?
Guest:That's the beginning.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was compounded later that very year, and 46 was a hell of a bad year for this boy.
Guest:At any rate, let me just say that I flew back east with my mother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought, oh, I'm going to go to a hotel.
Guest:I've never been in a hotel high school.
Guest:And I'm looking at this taxi cab far out.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:What do I know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And later I would find out there are people in hotels who come out and get your bags and help you.
Guest:But my mother had her little case and I had my little, you know,
Guest:a small case and a teddy bear.
Guest:And I'm wondering, wow, all this brick, this is far out.
Guest:Walked up these stairs and then flattened up more stairs into this, is this the lobby?
Guest:I know nothing.
Guest:It was just all these incredible floors.
Guest:And my mother said, and as I'm telling the story, I can actually see her.
Guest:And a black dress, black hat, and a wide mesh veil.
Guest:It was just kind of the thing then.
Guest:And she said, you stay right here.
Guest:Someone will come and get you.
Guest:And I watched her go click, click, click her heels.
Guest:I could hear them hitting the floor as she walked away.
Guest:And I didn't know.
Guest:I said, somebody's going to find me here.
Guest:Well, I have my bag and my teddy bear.
Guest:What the hell?
Guest:And somebody finally came along.
Guest:Right this way, I got an elevator.
Guest:I've been in elevators before.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:They took me into my hotel room, which was a funny green paint on it.
Guest:It had a bed with this metal table that swung over the bed.
Guest:And I remembered the table when I lost my tonsils.
Guest:I was three years old when they took my tonsils.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So far out.
Guest:You didn't know you were in a hospital.
Guest:No.
Guest:I remember this kind of bed.
Yeah.
Guest:Why were you there?
Guest:Because I was so skinny, they thought that I had a tapeworm.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So all you have to do is to put two and two here together and figure, how are they going to figure out if I have a tapeworm?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Where are they going to go looking?
Marc:They're going to go digging around.
Marc:Where?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In your ass.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:And so I was mechanically raped when I was six years old in John Hopkins Hospital.
Guest:Fortunately, those guys are all dead now.
Guest:Otherwise, I would be a known murderer.
Yeah.
Guest:I would go and shoot those bitches.
Guest:I tell you.
Guest:That was strike two, huh?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:They didn't give me a shot of anything.
Guest:I'd remember.
Guest:See, I'm into the details, which really drives my family nuts.
Marc:You hold on to it.
Guest:I don't hold on to it.
Guest:It's just there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I wish I weren't holding on to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was 2004.
Guest:I figured out, oh.
Guest:No, it was actually a psychiatrist who said, well, don't you know what's going on?
Guest:I said, no, I really don't know what's going on.
Guest:I'm really fucked up.
Guest:And I...
Guest:She said, here's what it is.
Guest:You had all these things happen.
Guest:Your mother died when you were 10.
Guest:You probably went on and on.
Marc:Oh, she did when you were 10?
Marc:That's big.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She died of a suicide, but I didn't know it then.
Guest:I wouldn't find out about that until I was 15 the first time.
Guest:Then 20...
Guest:where she died and then 25, how she died.
Guest:So every bit, every time I was being slammed.
Guest:Again.
Guest:Yeah, because there was no word.
Guest:She died and her name was never mentioned again in the house.
Marc:Right, because your old man just shut it out?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, so that messed up a lot of shit in my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:None of the things, you know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Hey, I'm very fortunate to be here.
Guest:I've dodged so many bullets.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was a month shy of my 11th birthday, January 9th, 1951.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was a Sunday.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was going trap shooting with two other young boys my age, Tony Avery and Reed Armstrong.
Right.
Guest:And it was on the Kresge Estate in New York.
Guest:So we went from Greenwich, Connecticut over to the Kresge Estate.
Guest:And Reed Armstrong had brought this little pistol with him, a little .25 caliber, you know, single shot, break open.
Yeah.
Guest:And so we wanted to shoot it, and I didn't understand the pistol thing.
Guest:I understand rivals and shotguns.
Guest:So I put the shell in, and you're supposed to – the opening to eject the spent cartridge?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you put the new one.
Guest:That's cocking the gun.
Guest:So instead of doing it smoothly, keeping a hand of the barrel and hand on the handle –
Guest:The pistol grip.
Guest:I just slapped the barrel to go up.
Guest:It did spun in my hands and blew off right into... It blew off the tip of my liver to the top of my stomach and center punched my left kidney.
Guest:Jesus, man.
Guest:So basically, I died three times on that operating table, lost too much blood, my heart stopped.
Guest:Ah, fuck.
Guest:And it's a wonder...
Guest:timing yeah um i went and met the doctor later when i was 21 i went up and drove up to see him uh-huh and his name was charles clark sweet yeah and dr sweet had told me that they saw this blood and they didn't understand about the tip of my liver being blown off and they just thought maybe my aorta uh my abdominal aorta was hit
Guest:Or my heart.
Guest:Because when they were looking through to try to trace the bullet, the bullet was stuck on the end of my skin, on my back.
Guest:It had to be cut out.
Guest:It was just lying flat on it.
Guest:And as they were trying to trace the shot...
Guest:The heart, it was the heart and the abdominal aorta kept coming in because the heart's a muscle that pumps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Contracts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Contracts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the bullet hit my ribcage.
Guest:This is told to me.
Guest:I mean, I didn't know, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Charles Clark Sweet told me.
Guest:It hit my rib cage and started tumbling.
Guest:So the heart was just that part of the ventricle.
Guest:It was contracting, bringing everything, lifting the aorta up in the boat.
Guest:It went flipping by.
Guest:That's called timing.
Guest:Now, when does that really play?
Guest:Yeah, that played pretty heavy.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:But here's how I get out.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:In 1965, David Crosby called me up.
Guest:He said, come on over.
Guest:We're going to oversee the Beatles.
Guest:They were up on Bennett Canyon.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I said, cool.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Do you want me to bring anything?
Guest:He said, no, no, I'm bringing it.
Guest:No, David had the best of everything, right?
I'm bringing it.
Guest:So I drove up.
Guest:I had an E-Jag.
Guest:I thought a wall would come in that.
Guest:British Racing Green.
Guest:Is it your car?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I pulled in.
Guest:I knew the password.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the hills were alive with the kids.
Guest:I bet.
Guest:It was pretty frightening.
Guest:But we took acid.
Guest:So you go to Crosby's house and you take acid?
Guest:No, we go to the house of the Beatles and rent it.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:How long were they here?
Guest:Not long?
Guest:I'm only tracking that day and a half.
Marc:That day or two?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, so you go there.
Guest:So we go there, and then it's announced that we're going to take acid.
Guest:I said, oh.
Guest:The good shit.
Guest:The good shit.
Marc:The elderly shit.
Guest:No, that was not much better than that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Straight out of Sandhouse.
Marc:Where?
Marc:Sandhouse.
Marc:Oh, yeah, really?
Marc:Oh, the pharmaceutical.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And that was Crosby's?
Marc:He had that?
Guest:Yeah, but he'd gotten it from me.
Guest:You were the source.
Guest:I just, I got there.
Guest:You knew the guy.
Guest:Yeah, and you know, it's the old dropper.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You could actually put it in the palm of your hand and wait 45 minutes.
Guest:And you'd blast off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At any rate, we've all done this deed.
Guest:And I'm looking at everybody sitting at this big lunch thing.
Guest:They shouldn't be doing that.
Guest:But that's kind of a judgment I'm not going to call.
Guest:And finally, Crosby came and found me.
Guest:For some reason, he said, find it.
Guest:You got to go talk to George.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:Is he losing it?
Guest:Well, he thinks he's dying.
Guest:I said, well, Cross, that's what this drug is all about.
Guest:And your brain's trying to stop the effect.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But actually, you're cutting loose.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:You're going to go out of freewheeling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little tour of your brain.
Guest:Handle it.
Guest:Handle it.
Guest:So I went down to talk to George.
Guest:George was sitting with John at his table in an outside area.
Guest:We were disregarding the screaming kids.
Guest:I said, we've got to prove that we're here and they're not.
Guest:So I went down.
Guest:I think I was the oldest guy there, right?
Guest:That's why I'm sent on this journey to Manzanar with George.
Guest:Go take care of George.
Guest:He's flipping out.
Guest:He's flipping.
Guest:And I went down and I said, George,
Guest:You know, when you take this drug, what happens is it's all cutting loose and your brain doesn't want that.
Guest:So your brain's hanging on and telling you, I'm dying to make you stop.
Guest:But don't do that.
Guest:Just take breaths, just relax.
Guest:Look, George, I know what it's like to be dead.
Guest:Believe me.
Guest:My heart has stopped three times.
Guest:I lost too much blood.
Guest:And I'll tell you, it's just really cool.
Guest:There's nothing.
Guest:There's no light.
Guest:There's no tunnel.
Guest:There's no people.
Guest:It's just nothing.
Guest:And it's really nice.
Guest:And I'm here to tell you about it.
Guest:So just let it go because I know what it's like to be dead.
Guest:All right.
Guest:You know, I mean, when I was a boy, in my life, things were basically all right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, everything was right, but this was a mistake.
Guest:It was an accident.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although my family thought I'd tried to commit suicide, George.
Guest:I hadn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a stupid, stupid accident for a little boy.
Guest:I mean, I was just a little boy, and everything was all right.
Yeah.
Guest:And Lennon looked at me.
Guest:He said, what the fuck do you mean?
Guest:Who put all that shit in your head?
Guest:You know, I know what it's like to be dead.
Guest:You're making me feel like I've never been born.
Guest:I looked at him.
Guest:I was far out.
Guest:And I let it go.
Guest:And the next year out comes Revolver with she said, I know what it's like to be dead.
Guest:I know what it's like to be sad.
Guest:And you're making me feel like when I was a boy, everything was right.
Guest:So to be part of a Beatles song.
Marc:Man, man.
Marc:You landed.
Marc:I mean, yeah, that's pretty amazing.
Marc:But you also directed Easy Rider.
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:I hired Hopper to direct it.
Guest:And that part that I hired him is what really pissed him off.
Yeah.
Guest:He thought he should have hired me.
Guest:But you wrote it, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, Dennis did some very clever stuff in there.
Guest:He did all the stuff with Jack talking about Venusians and all that.
Guest:Basically, the rest of it was...
Marc:But if you're doing 65, 65, you're doing the Sandoz acid.
Marc:So, you know, that's before the ship blows open down here.
Marc:It's before the, what, 68, 69, where everybody's doing it, right?
Marc:You're ahead of the curve.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Were you dealing with Leary or Keezy or any of those guys?
Guest:I knew Keezy and I knew Leary, but I really wasn't on the same wavelength.
Guest:I was closer to Keezy than I was to Leary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sort of like get out in it, not don't hole up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Get out and be out and do it.
Guest:Don't closet anything.
Guest:And I was all for that.
Guest:When I had learned that I want to do this as a job, that means acting.
Guest:I thought you meant acid.
Guest:No, no, as a job, acting.
Guest:It was a trip for me to get there.
Guest:It wasn't just because my dad was in it at all.
Guest:He never said one word to me about that or anything else.
Guest:It was my discovery that, oh, I really like this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In terms of wrangling what was going on in the culture and sort of like... I have to assume that you didn't realize that Easy Rider was going to blow up like it did, right?
Guest:No, I just knew that I was going to make money with it because it wouldn't cost me a lot to make.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:And I thought that the tale was really commercial, visually commercial.
Guest:Oh, yeah, sure, man.
Guest:It's a road story.
Guest:Well, yeah, I mean, I'm...
Guest:I was in Toronto, Ontario, and I was up promoting a film that Nicholson had written called The Trip that Corman directed.
Guest:It was about taking LSD, dealing with press.
Guest:So I have a custom-made double-breasted suit, custom shirt, Hermes tie.
Guest:Really looking fine.
Guest:No shoes and no socks.
Guest:So I sit in a room in a chair.
Guest:There's lights.
Guest:And people come into the room.
Guest:They either talk to me or take me for a radio, whatever it is, right?
Guest:The first thing they come into the room, I'm just decked out to the nines.
Guest:They see the bare feet, and that stops it, and they lose their interview.
Guest:It becomes my interview.
Guest:I can say what the fuck.
Guest:I want, promote the film, blah, blah, blah, and then next.
Guest:And I knew that was the trick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they couldn't handle that image.
Guest:Why doesn't he have any shoes or socks?
Guest:It overtakes their minds.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whoa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so the first day I was there, there was a lunch with 1,200 people, maybe a bit more.
Guest:And they were all distributors and exhibitors.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:in canada and i was there with at the aip table which was you know what it was and up there was a big uh honor table with all the vips on it and then a dais and they've been talking and i'm kind of checking everything out people are looking at my feet of course yeah and uh this little short guy comes up and gets on the mic yeah and he's he's um
Guest:LBJ's guy in the motion picture, he was the head of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Guest:Jack Valenti.
Marc:Oh, he was back then?
Marc:He just began.
Guest:He was introducing himself.
Guest:I'm the guy.
Guest:Yeah, I'm the guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:looking down at me on the floor.
Guest:He says, it's time we stop making movies about, and this is sounding like evangelical shit, right?
Guest:We stop making movies about motorcycles, sex, and drugs.
Guest:And more movies like Dr. Doolittle, which cost $27 million.
Guest:And he started this little launch by saying,
Guest:My friends, and you are my friends.
Guest:He said it twice.
Guest:Why?
Guest:I don't know, but I'm there.
Guest:Second time, oh, maybe he didn't think we heard him.
Guest:And so that's my tour.
Guest:I go back to my motel, which was called the Lakeshore Motel at that time, a real seedy joint.
Guest:i said so no more sex drugs and motorcycles far out fuck that guy yeah that's why now i have a job which is signing these black and white eight by tens and we didn't have post-its so everything's had a little piece of paper this guy owns 16 theaters he's got two daughters and now i would say you know what whoever to ever and best wishes or love or peace right peter fonda
Guest:And then one of these 8x10s comes up, and I'm looking at it, and I know what the picture is.
Guest:In that 8x10 format, in the middle, there's maybe two inches of fully silhouetted motorcycle with two guys on it.
Guest:You can't see who they are because the sun's bouncing off.
Guest:What we're doing is riding.
Guest:It's me packing Bruce Dern and riding along the cement trail in Venice Beach.
Yeah.
Guest:It's a trick because it looks like we're riding on sand.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, I looked at that and I thought, who in marketing pulled this as something for me to sign?
Guest:What was it from?
Guest:You know, dear Betty, best wishes, Peter Fon.
Guest:And she's going...
Guest:where the hell is he what movie was it from it was from wild angels oh wow yeah i looked at it and bingo that's it it's not a movie about a hundred hell's angels on the hell's angels funeral uh-huh it's two guys riding across john ford's west yeah rest oh and they're going east yeah they're going east where are they going east oh yeah journey to the east that's a little herman hesse nod that's cool going east they're going to florida to retire and um
Guest:Okay, let's see what happens.
Guest:They get there, and I've got these guys on motorcycles, of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they get there, and they get whacked.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because they don't look right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They got long hair.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Okay, that's beautiful.
Guest:Now I have to back it up to make it work.
Guest:And then I got it back to the beginning where we're bringing from Mexico, we're bringing a white powder.
Guest:We don't say what it is.
Guest:I want the moralist to have the roughest time deciding about that.
Marc:But you didn't name it in your mind either.
Marc:No.
Marc:White powder.
Guest:It was white powder.
Right.
Guest:Dennis probably promised me it would be real Coke, but it was powdered sugar.
Guest:Man, that shit burns.
Guest:And your nose no good.
Guest:And the camera's on me going, whoa.
Guest:Pin my eyeballs.
Guest:And at any rate, that was the point.
Guest:And after I got it all together with the beginning, the middle, and an end, and the journey, and what we do and what we can't do, we can't go and eat in restaurants.
Guest:We can't...
Guest:we're not allowed to be in motels and all this shit all this it's like racial profiling sure and we're going to see what's happening on america in america yeah and i knew what that last bit i knew from the beginning what i was going to do at the end that guy in that truck man
Guest:Yeah, but, you know, the idea, I knew that this was a big hit.
Guest:I'd thrown sevens.
Guest:And then I threw them between my legs, yeah, still seven, over my back, in the tub, it didn't matter.
Guest:I called up Hopper, it was 4.30 in the morning in Toronto, and I called him up and I said, listen to this.
Guest:I had wakened him.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's surprising.
Guest:He wasn't up?
Guest:Well, at that point, I don't know.
Guest:This is not a call.
Marc:You seem like a guy didn't sweep much to me.
Guest:So I told him the story.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He said, that's a really great man.
Guest:What are you going to do with it?
Guest:I said, well, I figure you direct it, I'll produce it.
Guest:We'll both write it and star it, and we can save some money that way.
Guest:You want me to direct it?
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:I mean, you have the passion.
Guest:You know framing better than I do.
Guest:You understand camera better than I do?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:You're set for this.
Guest:We can do this.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I'm so glad you called me because I was never going to talk to you again.
Guest:We don't want to necessarily go back and explain that.
Guest:That's something I'll be writing about.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:He stormed out.
Guest:He wanted to direct this album that I was going to make.
Guest:Hugh Masekela was my guy.
Guest:A record?
Guest:Yeah, a record.
Guest:And he wanted to direct...
Guest:The album.
Guest:Direct an album?
Guest:You mean produce it?
Guest:This is what he says.
Guest:Come to my house.
Guest:I want to direct it.
Guest:I said, Dennis, you don't direct albums.
Guest:You produce them, you're arranged.
Guest:You play on them, but you don't direct them.
Guest:Then he started blowing off.
Guest:Everybody steals my ideas.
Guest:I can't believe it.
Guest:Everybody steals my ideas.
Guest:I'm thinking, what?
Guest:I can't, but on and on until I finally, I have to stop this shit.
Guest:So on the floor, I had this little, it was a reel-to-reel Sony that looked like it was an Ampex.
Guest:It's a higher grade.
Guest:And I just picked that circle up and said, hey, Hoppy, I threw it on the parking floor.
Guest:It broke.
Guest:I said, when you can fix that, you can direct an album.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:I can't believe you.
Guest:Do you see what you just did?
Guest:I mean, you're a fucking child, man.
Guest:I mean, dig it, man.
Guest:Man, you dig it?
Guest:I can't talk to you.
Guest:You're a fucking child.
Guest:I'm never going to talk to you again.
Guest:I'm out of here.
Guest:He walked out.
Guest:No, I don't want to talk to you.
Guest:You're a fucking child.
Guest:I can't handle this.
Guest:I'm walking away.
Guest:I never want to talk to you again.
Guest:I'm so glad you called me because I was never going to talk to you again.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Guest:Did you guys stay friends?
Guest:Things became a tad stretched.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was out of control during the filming.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He stayed out of control for a while, but when he leveled off, did you ever reunite?
Marc:I tried many times.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Thought I was successful from time to time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But... I guess when you have a... He claimed that I cheated him.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Oh, on the... And I have tape of him being interviewed.
Guest:He's at some event.
Guest:He was in a Cadillac with his then wife.
Guest:And he said, yeah, fine.
Guest:It cheated me out of millions and millions and millions.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:of dollars you know microphone you couldn't see that i held up three fingers yeah yeah at any rate i thought oh great if he helps me find it i'll get a million and a half out of that are you fucking kidding me and he believed it and he said that he and he alone wrote easy rider oh so it just became a business megalomania played heavy on it it was too bad and the blow too i imagine for a while
Guest:Oh, yeah, but we tried to get him to stop drinking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was going to AA meetings, but he had a bag of Coke in his pocket.
Marc:Solving one problem.
Marc:Then he got rid of that problem, too.
Marc:But the adventure, man, I mean, the fact that you kind of blew out this, you did Easy Rider, you changed the face of filmmaking and culture and everything else, and then you're the guy.
Marc:You're that guy.
Marc:So then you're sort of like, you're the biker guy.
Marc:Yeah, well...
Guest:The next film I did, I bought the script, and I was going to produce it and act in it.
Guest:And it was called The Hired Hand.
Guest:And as I began reading it more and more, I saw more and more of the stuff that I'd want to see.
Guest:And then I'll have them do this, and I'll have them do that.
Guest:That'll really look great, and we'll shoot over here, and that'll be good because I know it's there.
Guest:And suddenly I stopped, and I said, wait a second.
Guest:I'm the producer.
Guest:I can't tell the director how to direct.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, my God, I'm going to have to direct this thing because I could visually see it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And first reading, it was a visual imprint on me that it was as strong as a visual imprint of the story I made up in Toronto called...
Guest:Later, Easy Rider.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We didn't know what to call it at first.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it's interesting, though, that the Western was still around.
Marc:And Warren Oates, you did a lot of movies with Warren Oates, huh?
Marc:Oh, I loved him.
Guest:He was a great guy.
Guest:Was he?
Guest:Really fine actor.
Guest:Yeah, great.
Guest:Very easygoing, funny guy.
Guest:We got along so well.
Guest:He didn't have to die.
Guest:No.
Guest:What about Nicholson?
Guest:Are you guys still friends?
Guest:we are i don't see him enough i in fact have to call him and just check on him see how he's doing yeah um because like i imagine like you know harry dean's gone i know man well as we said earlier well as we get older we start losing more friends but i like to know like i always ask guys like you know but there are guys that you stayed friends with you know throughout the time huh you know like through the whole ride yeah that's nice yeah you know i still know mcgwin and crosby
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I talked to Crosby at my old house.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, for a couple hours.
Marc:I think he would have stayed for the whole day if I would have let him.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:Yeah, he is.
Guest:Yeah, he's a real sweetheart.
Guest:And McGuane is, too.
Guest:And, you know.
Guest:McGuane, yeah.
Guest:How about Tom McGuane?
Guest:You talked to him anymore?
Guest:I haven't seen him in quite a few years.
Guest:That was a pretty big movie, wasn't it?
Guest:92.
Guest:Well, it was artistic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that has its own story that I don't want to get into, man.
Guest:Nothing's for the PTS part of it, but just in this book that I'm writing.
Guest:You're writing a book now?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Second memoir?
Guest:Yeah, because a lot's happened since 98.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:What's the angle?
Guest:Well, just what I'm talking about in PTS starts off with...
Guest:The title, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.
Guest:It's all about your past.
Guest:And the motto for PTS people, who are really fucked up by it, is the only good day was today.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did you try the EMDR?
Marc:I tried everything.
Marc:How does it affect you?
Marc:What are the manifestations of it for you on a day-to-day basis?
Marc:What PTSD?
Guest:I never know.
Guest:I could see a commercial that does a certain thing, and I would just break down crying.
Yeah.
Guest:Full on.
Guest:Full on.
Guest:And I've been after this for quite a while.
Guest:I just didn't understand what I had.
Guest:I thought I was nuts, and I better keep it to myself because they're liable to put the net on me.
Marc:But it's also a sensitivity, right?
Marc:I mean, it's like an oversensitivity almost, right?
Marc:Or is it more of like you don't know, like just a trigger thing?
Marc:Something triggers it.
Guest:Ah, yeah.
Guest:And as I say, it could be a commercial.
Guest:It could be something I see on the street.
Guest:It could be a phone call I get.
Guest:Anything I hear.
Guest:If it deals in a certain thing that I get caught on, it's not a barbless hook.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're going to discuss, like, so once you found out that's what you had, you kind of ran that through, you backloaded into your whole sort of past and saw.
Guest:Well, I already was dealing with my past.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:every day without understanding why.
Guest:Now I understand why.
Guest:Why you were hung up on the things you were hung up on?
Guest:No, how I got hung up.
Guest:I mean, I didn't look at those things as hanging me up.
Guest:I wondered what was going wrong with my mother.
Guest:Later, when I was trying to resolve certain crises in my life about the mechanical rape,
Guest:I talked to people who knew my mother during that particular time.
Guest:And these two women, Eulalia Chapin and Marian Parker,
Guest:And they explained a lot of stuff that went on and what happened.
Guest:About your mother's darkness?
Guest:About my mother's darkness and my father's short-sightedness.
Guest:Apparently, he used to cuff me on the head or slap me when I didn't finish my meal.
Right.
Guest:Hence my going to Johns Hopkins to look for a tapeworm.
Guest:Brilliant people, man.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Of course, it was 1946, so I guess I cut a little last slack there, but not a lot because it fucked me up.
Marc:But do you think how much of the psychological trauma do you think compelled you to push the envelope with drugs and doing all the other shit?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I figured I was bent already, so what could I lose?
Guest:Are you looking for solutions, you think, in retrospect?
Guest:No, but on my third trip, I really expanded my brain a lot and got in there.
Guest:But I still didn't see the causal effect of what was causing it.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I mean, it took me until I was 15 or 16 to realize what this terrible nightmare that I have every night was.
Marc:Night terrors every night.
Marc:And that was the tapeworm experience.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And gunshot and mother's death and so forth.
Guest:I remember on my 50th birthday, my sister Jane wrote me a fax.
Guest:I was making a movie in Switzerland.
Guest:And I came back, Great Hotel, the Bower Lock.
Guest:I came back to the hotel and there was sitting in the fax machine, this fax from my sister.
Guest:And it was a poem.
Guest:And she does the glass half full, the glass half empty.
Guest:And it was kind of a cool little poem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my response to that was my sister didn't get it.
Guest:My class was overflowing with this myriad of colors just all over the fucking place.
Guest:And I was going, yeah, yes.
Guest:And I never thought of this halfway out.
Guest:I was all the way in.
Guest:Well, why is this doing this to the pretty far out colors?
Guest:So yeah, it was overflowing and it wasn't half full or half empty.
Guest:And maybe I was half empty, but I felt I was full.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:Do you get along with her still?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Yeah, she's so into what she does.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Busy.
Guest:She's busy a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, she's got her children and she's got grandchildren now.
Guest:But no tension with you.
Marc:You're just, you're cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:We have to be.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I have to think that way.
Marc:I thought you were great in this little movie, even though you only had a couple scenes.
Marc:It's always nice to see you and you always pop up places.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, what's interesting about that fact, that moment when I meet Christopher, because I've known him in real life since I was 18.
Guest:I was able to throw my hands into that situation.
Guest:And he just instinctually, he's this great Shakespearean actor.
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:You know, the best in the Americas on film or stage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he wraps in words.
Guest:So I'm using this history I have of knowing him for so long.
Guest:Not that I hung out with him a lot.
Guest:But your old man did?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:No, my first stepmother knew him.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And he was a wonderful young guy, a lunatic.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:And so here I am.
Guest:I'm seeing this fellow that I knew.
Guest:And I just wrap my arms around him.
Guest:It's just, you can see it on film.
Guest:It's a, there's something about the way we hold on.
Guest:We just greet each other that makes you go, huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You relax.
Guest:Everything's fine.
Guest:You know, I've been waiting for this bottle of wine.
Guest:Now's a good time to open up wine.
Guest:And then we're down there vaping up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm thinking, this is so far out.
Guest:yeah man i mean i could feel that like there's a looseness to it you know the finest shakespearean actor in the americas on stage or screen yeah is selling pot to easy rider there you go that's the hook of the scene how about that yeah man and you and like your health is good everything else yeah my health is great you know
Guest:yeah man but um my mental health is questionable but i you know i i don't find as much darkness sure i'm getting um used to it in a sense so it's easier for me to stop myself from getting caught uh there's still barbed hooks we're not catching release and we should be catching release but
Guest:I do have a great deal of empathy for our soldiers, our fighting men and women.
Guest:You know, I didn't see a friend next to me get his head blown off.
Guest:I didn't lose an arm or leg.
Guest:I almost lost my life, but, you know, I dodged many bullets.
Guest:And so maybe I don't have the right to have a tough time.
Guest:I mean, I never had to worry about where I was going to eat or sleep.
Marc:But still, you got a problem, you're dealing with it.
Guest:Yeah, I now know about the tapeworm thing, and I found out the reason my mother was there, she was getting a hysterectomy, because she was a bleeder.
Guest:She had heavy, heavy periods, and she was, I now know, in postpartum.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Those are phrases you don't know.
Guest:And I took psychology in college.
Guest:I figured I better find out some more about me because something's missing.
Guest:So that was what they attract the suicide to, the postpartum?
Guest:I think that that's part of it.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And part of my dad wanting to divorce her.
Guest:Oh, he wanted out?
Guest:Wanted to marry a younger woman, my first stepmother, whom I adore.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I could look at that whole thing and say, she's the reason my mother killed herself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's not that.
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:And I could go spit on my father's ashes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's not it either.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's trying to understand that and forgive that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But before you can get to forgiving that... Mm-hmm.
Guest:You have to forgive yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How are you doing with that?
Guest:That's the hardest part.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Well, you know, you seem pretty good.
Guest:Hey, I'm an actor.
Guest:I act like I seem pretty good.
Guest:No, you know, you heard it.
Guest:You know, how are you doing?
Guest:I'm alive.
I'm alive.
Guest:The alternative really sucks, although inevitable at this particular moment, unacceptable.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Well, I'm glad you're alive.
Marc:It was great seeing you.
Marc:I don't want to hold you up because I know you've got to go get pictures or whatever.
Marc:I was told hard out, and then it's only a matter of time.
Marc:Someone comes to the door.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:I'll get that.
Marc:It might be my lawyers.
Marc:Thanks for talking, Peter.
Marc:My pleasure.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:that was in and out of the peter fonda brain me uh bouncing around in the peter fonda brain in peter fondaland it was good to see him i'm gonna play some dirty distorted barely tuned guitar now
Marc:Boomer lives!