Episode 934 - Daveed Diggs / Bob Newhart
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuck tuckians?
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:It is called WTF.
Marc:Thank you for joining.
Marc:How's everybody doing?
Marc:Is everybody okay?
Marc:How are all my Republican comrades?
Marc:How are you doing, comrade?
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Something's going to give and it ain't going to be good.
Marc:Maybe it will be.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Look, I've got a great show.
Marc:I do know that.
Marc:today on the show david diggs is here david diggs a great actor i i like him a great deal i saw him he was the original thomas jefferson in hamilton and you know he's shown up on blackish he's done other stuff but he's got this film out uh called blind spotting which is really a beautiful very personal uh very uh
Marc:Yeah, it's a it's it's it's a heavy film in some ways, but it's definitely an Oakland based movie.
Marc:It's a real love letter to Oakland where he grew up.
Marc:And it's interesting that Boots Riley, who was just here, also an Oakland cat.
Marc:And there's a little crossover.
Marc:David saw Boots give a talk at some point in his youth and.
Marc:But I enjoyed the movie.
Marc:It has some unique stuff in it, and it was great talking to him.
Marc:And also, in just a couple minutes, I'm going to talk to Bob Newhart for just a phone call with Bob Newhart about his new thing.
Marc:I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute.
Marc:Thank you for all the feedback on my small but relatively focused rant or tirade or reaction to the superhero movies.
Marc:You know, there was a lot of reactions, but rest reassured, I have seen a couple.
Marc:This idea that I'm operating in the dark that I've never seen a superhero movie.
Marc:I have.
Marc:I have.
Marc:I still stand by what I say.
Marc:And if you're all worked up, why are you all worked up?
Marc:You're the dominant paradigm.
Marc:It's the same with Republicans.
Marc:What are you all worked up for?
Marc:You're the dominant paradigm.
Marc:Enjoy it.
Marc:Enjoy the upper hand.
Marc:Thank you for the reaction.
Marc:There was a lot of support from my point of view on the sort of inundation of superhero movies, the inundation of the culture, the sort of weird infantilization of the adult mind.
Marc:And I know some of you are like, hey, man, I'm blown off steam or I just enjoy it.
Marc:It's not taking up other stuff.
Marc:It doesn't make that big a difference.
Marc:I watch other stuff, too.
Marc:I think you're missing the point about the amount of money involved that goes into the movies that then is made and that goes into plowing it into our brains and our unconscious and leaving us either somewhat mentally paralyzed to make other choices.
Marc:And I do think it has an effect.
Marc:but also pushing out the choices that was that was that was my point and a lot of people took it and some people got worked up but again take it easy take it easy it doesn't look like it's going to change you can get all the little movies that you want to with the flying man so that being said
Marc:I'm feeling a little under the weather.
Marc:And you know why I'm gotten a little under the weather?
Marc:Because my dad came in.
Marc:It was yesterday.
Marc:My dad came into town today.
Marc:He's sitting in my house right now with his wife, my dad.
Marc:And for some reason, when I get around my parents or I'm about to see my parents, my body just...
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's just like it breaks down a little.
Marc:I don't think that's supposed to happen.
Marc:Does that happen to you?
Marc:Do you get sick when your parents come?
Marc:I think I talked about this when my mom came.
Marc:But I think I did experience a little bit what it's like to have younger children because I did something that is not really... I don't know that I would have done it otherwise.
Marc:Oh, did I tell you about...
Marc:We jammed.
Marc:We did the goddamn comedy jam, me and Dino.
Marc:And I got to play with Tal Wilkenfeld, who is a genius bass player in the regular band for the goddamn comedy jam.
Marc:But me and Dean and Tal, we did Down Payment Blues.
Marc:No, we didn't.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:We did Long Way to the Top, if you want to rock and roll, from ACDC.
Marc:And they had a horn section there, which we used for the bagpipe parts.
Marc:And I got to tell you, man, I...
Marc:That is real fun.
Marc:I'm glad I know how to play guitar.
Marc:I'm glad I'm okay at it.
Marc:And I'm glad that I'm doing this now, playing out, because that is one of the few times I experience real fun.
Marc:Like just exhausting fun playing live rock music.
Marc:I get done and I get like a postpartum depression from the jam.
Marc:Like I feel like bummed out when it's over.
Marc:I love playing guitar loud in front of people.
Marc:It's too late to shift, but it is okay to do it as a hobby.
Marc:So don't get panicky, folks.
Marc:I'm not thinking about getting the band together.
Marc:So what I was saying before is that my dad's in the house.
Marc:I just wanted him to be comfortable and sit there while I'm doing this before we go out and look for some food or something.
Marc:So they're both in there.
Marc:And he's like, do you have a TV that works?
Marc:I'm like, yes, I do.
Marc:And I'm like, what do you want to watch?
Marc:And he's like, I don't know.
Marc:I'm like, do you want to watch Fox News?
Marc:He's like, I like to.
Marc:No one else seems to like to, but I like to.
Marc:And I just had that moment where you must have that moment when you have a child and you're about to give him the iPad with something that you find annoying, if not just like completely tormenting.
Marc:But, you know, if it's going to keep the kid busy and distracted for a half hour, you suck it up.
Marc:So that's what I did.
Marc:That's what I did with my dad.
Marc:I just set him up there in front of the TV with some Fox News, sucked it up, and knew that he's not going to annoy me or cry for the next 40 minutes or so.
Marc:But I'm copping to it.
Marc:I'm copping to it, okay?
Marc:That's all I'm saying.
Marc:All right, so this is exciting.
Marc:Bob Newhart, who I love and respect a lot, has a new audio series exclusively on Audible.
Marc:It's called Hi, Bob.
Marc:Bob Newhart in conversation with famous friends.
Marc:I actually wrote and recorded the foreword for the show, and the show features talks with people like Will Ferrell, Lisa Kudrow, Sarah Silverman.
Marc:So...
Marc:Get that on Audible now.
Marc:Start a free subscription if you don't have one already.
Marc:And this is me, you know, just touching base with Bob on the phone a little while back about the show and about, you know, him and, you know, a little thing, a little phone thing with Bob Newhart.
Marc:Hi, Bob.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:So I haven't talked to you in a while.
Marc:Bob, how are you feeling about everything?
Marc:Okay.
Okay.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Considering I'm 88 and a half, I'm doing pretty good.
Marc:So are you going to be recording these episodes of Hi, Bob for Audible up there at your house?
Marc:You can have people over to the house?
Guest:No, they're recorded already.
Marc:Where'd you record them?
Guest:At the hotel, the Bel Air Hotel.
Marc:Oh, that's fancy.
Marc:So you just rented a room and got some mics out and sat there in a suite?
Guest:No, in a bar, actually.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:The sound was great.
Guest:And then we did a couple, Sarah Silverman we did in one of the rooms, and it's...
Guest:It worked out great because it was very quiet, you know.
Guest:And this all came from, I feel then for Johnny, you know, 79 times I was guest host for Johnny.
Guest:So part of that was interviewing, you know, the guests.
Guest:And the night before they'd hand you the notes and you'd try to pick out the ones that you thought were going to lead somewhere or that you and the person had some...
Guest:kind of contact with, and, um, so I always enjoyed it, so this, this came up, uh, through Audible, and, um, and you don't have to get on a plane, and, uh, and you don't have to sleep in a strange hotel room anymore, and it's, uh,
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:It keeps the mind active.
Guest:Yeah, of course, of course.
Guest:I've been lucky so far.
Marc:And those interviews you did on Carson, those were shorter interviews, I imagine, and you didn't have a lot of time to get in depth with people.
Marc:And I assume that these interviews are a little longer and more of a conversation.
Guest:Yeah, you're exactly right.
Guest:I tried to make them conversational as opposed to
Guest:And then bring a unique kind of experience that I've had of almost 60 years of doing stand-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And talking to other stand-ups and how much different that world is now.
Guest:Last night, we went to the, Jenny and I, my wife and I, went to the improv because it was Billy Crystal, 70th.
Guest:70th birthday uh-huh well improv and comedy clubs they they weren't part of my life uh and so i always found it interesting like talking to sarah what is that world like yeah it sounded it sounded terrible i mean it sounded like a cattle call and you just you're just all wait and maybe you get five five minutes oh yeah very end if you're lucky and uh
Guest:And it's totally foreign to me.
Guest:Right.
Marc:The system is different because, as I recall from our conversation, you know, you would put together your act.
Marc:And I think your story is unique to you that you would put this together, your act in a vacuum and very quickly were able to perform it in a nightclub.
Marc:And it just proved to be that that you were every all the stars aligned and everything worked out for that first record.
Marc:And I guess that the process of becoming a comic was different.
Guest:Even entirely different.
Guest:The thing that people.
Guest:that i've talked to like young comics they'll say when you recorded that that comedy album that you know the button down mind of bob newhart you had never worked at nightclub before and i said no no i hadn't so yeah that's that's kind of different but as you learned from the get-go yeah you got to pretend like you know what you're doing because if you don't it makes the audience nervous and the
Guest:So you've got to summon all the bravado you have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or you're going to bomb.
Guest:It's the only thing I had going.
Guest:I mean, I think if that didn't work, it would have been back to accounting or something.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Or back to advertising, right?
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, but I think that that experience, it seems to me, is a common experience.
Marc:I think that half of our job, or if not more than half of our job, is pretending like we're not scared.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, if not 90%.
Guest:And then I was playing these big places.
Guest:I mean, I was playing the Hungry High and the Crescendo in Los Angeles.
Guest:And the Crescendo, especially in L.A., I mean, I was a major star, was in the audience.
Guest:And they'd say, be sure, and introduce...
Guest:Groucho Marx.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Be sure to introduce me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm trying to learn the business, you know, from the top down, not from the bottom up, but from the top down, and trying to act like I know what the hell I'm doing.
Guest:Yeah, and you pulled it off.
Guest:You did it.
Guest:Well, you know, there was one, I forget where I was.
Guest:I think I was in Texas.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I came off.
Guest:I had 18 minutes, and I came off.
Guest:And the maitre d' and they were applauding.
Guest:And the maitre d' said, go back out.
Guest:And I said, well, that's all I have.
Guest:And they said, well, they're applauding, go back out.
Guest:So not knowing that much about the business, I went back and I said, which one do you want to hear again?
Guest:That's all I have.
Marc:Did you actually do one again?
Marc:I did one again.
Marc:I forget which one it was.
Marc:So when I guess on the series here, you talk to you talk to Will Ferrell and and Judd Apatow and Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman.
Marc:And some of them have done their professional hosts.
Marc:And one's a professional comic actor.
Marc:One's a comedy producer.
Marc:One's a stand up comedy comedian by trade.
Marc:So what did you find was the commonalities that you had with them or that they had together?
Marc:What did you learn in talking to all these people?
Guest:The odd thing, I'll tell you what happened with Judd.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Judd Apatow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're talking, and he was asking me questions, and we're talking, and I said...
Guest:Judd, I'm trying to interview you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, no, no, your life is more interesting than mine is.
Guest:So you have to get it back on track.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Believe me, I know.
Guest:Well, you know how it is.
Guest:I mean, you've done it both.
Guest:You've done stand-up and now the podcast.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, Judd is a very humble guy, but clearly he's got a lot of experience.
Marc:He probably just feels like he doesn't have as much life experience.
Marc:Did you end up getting him to talk about himself?
Guest:Yeah, eventually, yeah.
Guest:At that point, I think he was going back into stand-up.
Marc:Oh, yeah, he did a good stand-up show.
Marc:I liked his stand-up.
Guest:I haven't seen it yet, yeah.
Guest:It's on Don Cable, right?
Guest:It's interesting.
Guest:I mentioned last night we went to Billy Crystal's 70th birthday.
Guest:And Billy and I, I was playing golf with Tom Poston.
Guest:Billy was Tom's guest.
Guest:So we're playing along, we're enjoying ourselves, having laughs.
Guest:And I said to Bill, I said, Billy, do you still do stand-up?
Guest:And he said, yeah, I'm working on a project.
Guest:I'm going to get back into it.
Guest:I said, you know, Billy, I think people who can make people laugh...
Guest:have an obligation to make people laugh.
Guest:There aren't that many.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:It's a calling.
Guest:It's a calling.
Guest:Yeah, I hate to call it a gift.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:It's a calling.
Guest:And it's just great.
Guest:I mean, I still do, I'll do this year maybe five stand-ups.
Guest:Yeah, it feels good.
Guest:It's just a wonderful thing to be able to do to make people laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, look, laughter is one of the great sounds of the world, you know?
Guest:To me it is.
Marc:I think you're absolutely right.
Marc:And when you interviewed Will Ferrell, like Will Ferrell is one of the funniest people who ever lived, but a lot of times when you interview him, he doesn't act funny at all.
Marc:Was he funny with you?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, he was.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:He was, but, you know, we had the experience of Elf.
Marc:Oh, that's right, yeah.
Guest:Which was a great experience.
Guest:Because when I was offered to Elf, I read it and I said to my wife, I said, this is going to be a perennial.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it became a perennial.
Guest:Yeah, it's funny.
Guest:But I could just see it every Christmas being played.
Guest:And that's what happened to it.
Guest:It was just such a wonderful story.
Guest:And I complimented him on his role because very...
Guest:dangerous kind of role because it was very easy for him just to come off as a large guy who isn't very bright and doesn't realize that he's not that he's an elf right but he was able you were pulling for it so much he pulled that off and that and that wasn't easy because it was
Guest:Very dangerous, and the whole movie could have fallen apart if you did believe him.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:He's a very talented guy.
Marc:He's a good actor, a very funny guy, too.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, listen, Bob, I wish you had nothing but success with this thing, and it's a pleasure to talk to you again, and I'm excited for everybody to hear these conversations you had.
Guest:Well, Mark, I'm embarrassed.
Guest:I mean, we're talking on the phone.
Guest:I mean, you had the president come to your place.
Yeah.
Marc:But I went to your house.
Marc:We had a nice conversation.
Guest:I know you went to my house, but you had the precedent.
Guest:Even though, I mean, he had a motorcade.
Guest:I mean, there's a big advantage.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:When you have a motorcade, you know, it really knocks the hell out of the time.
Marc:Well, I'll tell you what, next time you and I talk, I'll have your motorcade pick you up and bring you over here.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Thanks, Bob.
Guest:Thank you, Mark.
Marc:That was nice, right?
Marc:Talking to Bob.
Marc:The show is called Hi, Bob.
Marc:Bob Newhart in conversation with famous friends.
Marc:You can get that at Audible.
Marc:You can start a free subscription right now if you don't already have one.
Marc:So as some of you might remember, I went to see Hamilton in New York and I had a great experience.
Marc:I enjoyed the show.
Marc:But at the end of the show, when they were walking off after their curtain call, Lin-Manuel knew exactly where I was sitting.
Marc:And he looked at me and he said, Boomer lives.
Marc:Very exciting.
Marc:And I think it was towards the end of my next guest's run with that show.
Marc:Daveed Diggs was one of the original cast members of Hamilton, which we talk about a bit.
Marc:And his new movie, Blindspotting, which he stars in and co-wrote, opens in select cities tomorrow, July 20th.
Marc:And it's a really, it's an intense but great movie.
Marc:And I enjoyed it.
Marc:It's a very personal movie.
Marc:It's a small movie about real people.
Marc:There's some great stuff in here about what it's like to grow up in Oakland, but also in approaching conversations about race a bit in a way that I hadn't really seen on screen.
Marc:And it just happens naturally.
Marc:And it's sort of a quick beat, but it's an interesting twist.
Marc:but it's also a beautiful sort of a sad, bittersweet love letter to the city of Oakland.
Marc:And it's also about class problems.
Marc:It's about gentrification, but, but at the core of it, it's about, about a guy sort of coming into his own and about a, about a friendship.
Marc:And, and I was happy to talk to David about it.
Marc:So this is me and David digs.
Marc:I saw you in Hamilton.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Did I meet you that night?
Guest:I think you ran out.
Guest:I might have, but you know when we met was five years ago at the Sub Pop 25.
Guest:You were headlining their comedy thing.
Guest:With Eugene and everybody.
Guest:Yeah, and so my band Clipping is on Sub Pop, and we had just signed with them then.
Guest:We played that show, but we came to the comedy night beforehand, and we all hung out and got drunk after.
Marc:Did we?
Guest:I wasn't drinking.
Marc:I know that.
Marc:But I remember there was like, was that the outdoor stuff?
Guest:Like is it big?
Guest:No, that was like a big, some big indoor space in Seattle.
Guest:But yeah, the concert was outside.
Marc:You went down and wandered around.
Marc:There's like three or four stages.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And we're playing the 30 this year.
Guest:That's the reason I remember this.
Marc:How many records have you put out with Sub Pop?
Marc:uh four now really three or four yeah there's a 30 i didn't ask me to do the 30 i guess i didn't uh i didn't do it but yeah i remember there was an outdoor area and i saw mud honey and i met jay mascus yeah yeah and uh yeah that was that was kind of fun yeah yeah man okay so you met me there yeah yeah i'm sorry i didn't remember that's all right i don't remember people i met two weeks ago i have the same problem
Marc:So you came to that show, there was like five of us on there?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Me, Eugene.
Guest:Yeah, Eugene and John Benjamin.
Guest:Kristen Schaal.
Guest:Yes, I think so.
Marc:So, okay, so did you originally, let's go back because I love the movie.
Marc:I thought it was really good and there's a really great twist in a way that like, or things were approached in a way that I'd never seen them approached before, which I'm sure people are saying.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But what was the other guy's name?
Marc:Rafael Casal.
Marc:And you grew up with that guy?
Guest:Yeah, we went to high school together.
Guest:We started working together really after I got back from college.
Marc:So you've known him.
Marc:Because there's something about you Oakland guys.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's a true statement.
Marc:It's true, right?
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:I had Boots Riley in here the other day.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:And him and Kamau go back.
Marc:There was definitely a thing.
Marc:that holds you guys together.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you grow up the whole time there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah, I was born in Oakland.
Guest:We met at Berkeley High School, and Rafael grew up in Berkeley, and I've sort of always bounced between my father has always lived in Oakland, and my mom was in Albany, El Cerrito, Richmond, sort of.
Guest:Albany, California?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Little tiny town between...
Guest:And how do you get the name David?
Guest:It's Hebrew in my case.
Guest:But I've never seen it spelled like that.
Guest:That's just my parents not wanting people to fuck it up, but they do anyway.
Guest:So it didn't help.
Guest:But yeah, they had seven dogs all with Hebrew names by the time I came along.
Guest:So I was just the next...
Marc:Oh, so my mother used to call animals before she'd get to me.
Marc:She didn't know what name she was calling.
Marc:There was no real differentiation.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, it was like Mezuzah, Delilah, Hamantaschen, Shlomo, Kasia.
Guest:Who's the Jew?
Guest:David, my mom.
Marc:she must be really jewy not not even but uh i don't know maybe more so at the time i don't know i think i think culturally jewish because those are all you know you know how that goes yeah yeah but like was she where's she from is she from the east coast yeah jersey she's from jersey i'm from jersey oh yeah she's from haskell get the fuck out of here stop it yeah no real
Marc:Dude, that is a little fucking town.
Marc:Yeah, bro.
Marc:And my grandfather owned an appliance store there.
Marc:Oh, no way.
Marc:And a hardware store.
Marc:Oh, damn.
Guest:My mom's from Pompton Lakes, which is like down the street.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:I mean, I've been to Haskell.
Guest:I went to my mom's 35-year high school reunion.
Guest:I was in college or something at the time.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:No one comes from Haskell.
Marc:Yeah, I'm telling you.
Guest:It's like hill people land.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know, they were the Jewish family in Haskell.
Marc:Well, that is crazy.
Marc:Jack's Hardware and Jack's Appliances.
Marc:Jack's Hardware.
Marc:I'm going to tell my mom about it today.
Marc:You've got to tell me.
Marc:That is so crazy.
Marc:Because there's that little triangle there.
Marc:There's a Haskell, Butler, and Pompton Lakes.
Marc:But Haskell, I mean, I used to go there when I was a kid.
Marc:It's rare what's happening.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't know what it means for us.
Guest:I don't either, but there's something.
Guest:There's something happening in this basement right now.
Marc:She's a Jew from Haskell.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And she comes out to Berkeley for what?
Guest:You know, the 60s.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:She hitchhiked across the country with her dog, Beowulf.
Marc:So how old is she?
Marc:She was in her late teens when she came out there?
Marc:Yeah, like 18, I think.
Marc:So she did that thing.
Marc:I'm going to where the people are doing things.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:That's my understanding of it, yeah.
Marc:That's crazy.
Marc:And she met your dad when she was young?
Guest:A while later, she might have been, I don't know, late 20s by then.
Guest:She went to Europe for a spell.
Guest:She was one of the first lighting designers of Berklee Rep Theater in Berklee, actually.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:Which is way before they even moved into their space there.
Guest:Now they were up on College Avenue in a thing that's now a little tiny movie theater.
Guest:Was that something she studied or just learned?
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:Yeah, she just, you know, fell into it.
Guest:In the hippie way.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:But she's always loved theater.
Guest:And then she went to Europe and was like hanging lights for the first European tour of Fiddler on the Roof with Zero Mostel and shit like that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, she's got crazy stories from that.
Guest:Let's get her in here.
Guest:You should.
Guest:That would be a much more interesting interview, I think, either of my parents.
Guest:But yeah, they met.
Guest:My mom, after that, was a DJ.
Guest:It was like a club DJ.
Guest:In the 70s?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And she used to have the basement of this bar called The Graduate that's still there on college.
Guest:And apparently, from what I understand, she...
Guest:play the best black music in town.
Guest:So black folks used to line up down the block to come see my mom's spin.
Guest:And that's where her and my dad met.
Guest:She was DJing.
Marc:In the basement of The Graduate?
Marc:In the basement of The Graduate.
Marc:And what'd your dad do?
Guest:Is he still around?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, my dad at the time sold drugs.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Both of them, that was like kind of their- He knew the DJ and he could sell drugs in the club.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And did he move on to other businesses?
Guest:Yes, yeah.
Guest:After I came along, they both got out of the game.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:It became clear that that was not a particularly dangerous way to raise a kid in the 80s, I think.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So...
Guest:So they got out of it.
Guest:When did they split up?
Guest:When I was young.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I don't remember them ever together, really.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you have other siblings?
Guest:Yeah, I have a little brother who's, I guess, technically a half-brother.
Guest:Different father, but my dad raised him, too.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So that's the backdrop, but you didn't grow up with any Jewishness.
Guest:I mean, I went to Hebrew school.
Guest:I was this close to a bar mitzvah, you know, and then I dropped out.
Guest:You pulled out?
Guest:I pulled out.
Guest:I was going to bar mitzvahs and I was like, I don't have any rich family.
Guest:I don't know what I'm in this for.
Marc:What's the payoff?
Marc:I got to learn lines in another language?
Guest:I'm saying it was like a whole...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, this is really a whole thing that I don't need to.
Marc:So when did you start performing?
Marc:I mean, what was the sort of like the process of you, you know, getting involved with theater?
Marc:I mean, I don't know.
Marc:Was your mother always involved with theater throughout your life?
Marc:I mean, was it something you grew up with?
Marc:Not really.
Guest:But I, you know, she always loved it.
Guest:But it was mostly music that I was around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I have this memory of being in fourth grade and our teacher making us memorize poems and shit like that.
Guest:What'd you pick?
Guest:I don't remember, but I remember everybody was memorizing essentially the same poem, and I decided one day that I was going to act my poem out.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I was a very, very shy kid, so I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I just remember everybody laughed when I wanted them to laugh, and it was the only...
Guest:All of a sudden I was like, oh, this gives me a reason to be around people.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was very shy.
Guest:I still am.
Guest:Getting those laughs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just being in a room and having a thing to say.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I could be around people but not have to deal with being myself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, hell yeah.
Marc:I mean, if you're like the entertainer, you know, it's a good position to be in.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because you just get some laughs, you get out.
Marc:Exactly, exactly.
Marc:And then eventually you get a girl who sees through you and then everything starts to go bad.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's all downhill from there.
Marc:In Oakland, like in the Oakland that you capture in the, I think the film is really sort of like, it's kind of a love letter to Oakland in a way.
Marc:Yeah, definitely.
Marc:And, you know, of a passing time, you know, I don't know, like it seems like,
Marc:If if it is autobiographical to some degree that the Oakland you grew up in is much different than the Oakland that's happening now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that but like what was the what was the the sort of community factor and slash danger factor of the world you grew up in.
Guest:Yeah, well, I think a bunch of us who are from there sort of remember this moment maybe, I don't know, it must have been eight, maybe nine, ten years ago at this point.
Guest:But like the New York Times published this article.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Oakland was like number two or three on a list of top five places to visit in the country.
Guest:And we were like, what are you possibly talking about?
Guest:And you read further into the article and everything they mentioned was something that had popped up in the last year that none of us really knew anything about.
Guest:This this kind of moment where we were like, oh, shit, something something's about to go down.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, this is the same.
Guest:There's there's a kind of.
Guest:rebranding that happens in all cities, right?
Guest:Sure, happened in my old neighborhood.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so there, you know, the earliest thing I remember is changing, East 14th Street has been changed to International Avenue.
Guest:That happened more than a decade ago.
Guest:And that was this very intentional, East 14th Street had this connotation.
Guest:It was a very dangerous street.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:It was mythic?
Guest:Yeah, a lot of shit went down on that street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they replaced all the street signs, International Avenue.
Guest:And it was like this very intentional thing to sort of draw businesses to this street.
Guest:And it's kind of like a major.
Guest:They just erase the name, erase the history.
Guest:Erase the name, erase everything in that.
Guest:And you see that happening all over the place.
Guest:And you see new neighborhoods popping up.
Guest:Like Temescal was not a neighborhood when I was growing up.
Guest:That was called North Oakland.
Guest:Now there's a part of downtown that's called Uptown.
Guest:Things like that that start to be like, well,
Guest:What are you saying when you erase a history that has existed in this place for that long and that we all grew up with?
Guest:And what are you placing the value on?
Guest:Because we love this place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it certainly had problems and there's certainly things that are worth fixing.
Guest:But in an attempt to draw new people here instead of...
Guest:helping to sort of uplift and fix and work with the communities that are there.
Guest:Instead, we pave over them and pretend they never existed and claim a new name for a thing.
Guest:That's what gentrification is, and that's happening in every city, but it feels...
Guest:Particularly, I think, you know, when you leave the place that you're from and then you start coming back periodically.
Guest:And so you don't feel the gradual change.
Guest:You just see these gaping holes in your history.
Marc:Yeah, where you're driving around going like, wasn't it right here?
Marc:It was right here.
Marc:I know it was right here.
Marc:Yeah, it's the worst.
Marc:It's a terrible feeling.
Marc:But I mean, but I don't I mean, there's that strange.
Marc:confrontation of old and new where you know the new people think they're improving something and then the people that have been there forever are like no you're you're you're plowing over yeah yeah we can't afford to live here anymore is usually what happens yeah yeah exactly and then where do people go are your folks still there no no both of them live in Richmond now uh which is you know north a little further north um but yeah it's do you remember being dangerous when you grew up
Guest:I guess.
Guest:I mean, I was back and forth between... So my mom was living in Albany, California at the time, and my dad was always in Oakland.
Guest:When I was young, we were in North Oakland.
Guest:I'm 44th in MLK, and I remember not being able to hang out outside when the lights came on and stuff like that, but it never felt...
Guest:particularly dangerous you heard gunshots sometimes but it was like you know i didn't that's just california that's just california i didn't feel like i was particularly in danger and also i think having having parents who were sort of in the game like that they just you know right we're always very open with me about like this is a part of the city you don't go to without me like this is in here and like you know you have family on c street don't go there without us like right right it's not a you know
Marc:Well, that's weird because to have family who are streetwise is that it's almost a safer situation.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You just don't do dumb shit.
Marc:So how did you get out to, you know, you didn't stay there for college.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:I went to Brown University.
Guest:on uh to study what what was the theater i ended up being a very reluctant theater major but you didn't do theater in high school i did i did theater all through high school um yeah that was that was it you did you it was your focus uh i didn't i was not very focused i did i did plays every fall i ran track that was kind of the thing i loved um you still run i do not like i used to but i you know were you like long distance guy no no hurdler
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, I can't sprint like that anymore.
Guest:That's a very specific skill.
Guest:It was, it was, yeah.
Guest:I actually, it's so funny, I just talked to my old track coach.
Guest:He did?
Guest:Who's gonna come to the premiere.
Marc:Of the movie?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:Both my coaches are coming.
Marc:Both?
Guest:From high school and?
Guest:College or?
Guest:No, these are my like pre-high school.
Guest:I started running when I was like nine.
Guest:So these are my like early, early.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, I ran for the police athletic league in Oakland.
Guest:And so my like first track coaches are both coming to this premiere.
Marc:Oh, that's sweet.
Marc:So these guys are life changer guys.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:I'm curious to see what they think of the film, you know, because it's a film that deals with sort of community relationships to police.
Guest:And these are police officers who grew up being who I grew up as having as my track coaches who like.
Guest:When I was going to college, literally went door to door to raise money to help me go and stuff.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Sent me off to college with $4,000 or $5,000 that they had hand-to-hand gone to collect.
Guest:I mean, really just incredible people who I grew up with.
Marc:They looked out for you.
Guest:And they probably taught you some life lessons.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, running, you know, running for them was was the end.
Guest:It was the only way I got to travel.
Guest:You know, we used to I ran in the like Junior Olympics every year.
Guest:So like as a kid, I got to go all over the country.
Guest:I went to New Orleans for the first time when I was like 12 or something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Things sort of with the team.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like Seattle and.
Guest:buffalo new york you know like places that i would never have gotten to see the only the only reason i ever got to to travel we didn't have money so it was just you know was this team with these guys so who are these guys they're both cops yeah yeah yeah yeah one i they both claim they're retired but they still they still coach track all the damn time so right right but one was a was a san francisco sheriff uh maurice valentine and then margaret dixon was the oakland work was oakland police
Marc:So you started running when you were like 10?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Nine years old, I think.
Marc:And were you sort of a natural?
Guest:No.
Guest:Actually, I think just for a thing to do, my mom used to take me and my little brother to...
Guest:Hershey's used to sponsor these track meets every year that you weren't allowed to wear track spikes for.
Guest:They were just for community kids on tennis shoe track meets.
Guest:Tennis shoe track meets?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She would take us to running those.
Guest:I think Coach Dixon saw my brother run, who was much more naturally gifted in this than I was.
Guest:Your little brother?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was trying to put together a relay team of young kids.
Guest:for kids in his age group so she approached my mom and was was like hey would you like your son to come run with with our team and she said sure but you have to take my other one i'm not gonna this is child care you're not gonna leave me with one kid what's the point yeah so yeah so that's that's why i started they must have tried me at everything until i was old enough to run hurdles and which was like 11 or 12 you can start running hurdles they're shorter distances but
Guest:And that was sort of a cerebral enough race for me that I could kind of... I was a very good technician.
Guest:So even though I wasn't as fast as some other kids... It's not a straight line.
Marc:I got to do those things.
Guest:I would win over the hurdle.
Guest:And then I was able to get faster as I got older.
Marc:So that's sort of a beautiful story in terms of having...
Marc:You know, these adult influences in your life that are completely outside of the family operation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, because I imagine it gives you a certain amount of self-confidence and a certain amount of support.
Marc:It's everything, man.
Guest:I mean, having, you know, I...
Guest:And I think to be in the industry that we're in, that has to happen for you somewhere from somebody, right?
Guest:I mean, it's such a weird thing to sort of decide I'm going to do this.
Marc:But I think it's, I also, yeah, and I think some of it in my case is compelled by some other need that wasn't met, you know, parentally somehow.
Marc:Like, you know, to want to.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:You know, to be, and I don't admit it much, but it's sort of like, you guys like me or what?
Marc:Who likes me?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it was the opposite for me, I think.
Guest:My parents were always very much like, go and we support you and we love you.
Guest:I lived a very blessed childhood.
Guest:I'd say all the time, I grew up poor but not sad.
Guest:I don't remember ever being sad or ever being bored.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:Well, I mean, I meant like my parents were not, they were supportive of what I did, but they were detached from it.
Marc:They were like, he'll be all right.
Marc:No, no, yeah, I get it.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I think I wished my parents were more detached sometimes.
Guest:So they were very attentive.
Guest:Moms for sure.
Guest:Because my mom, after my brother was born, she'd never finished college.
Guest:She did like half a year of college and then hitchhiked across the country.
Guest:So then after my brother was born in her mid to late 30s, went back to school and went straight through and got her PhD.
Guest:So the whole time I was growing up, she was in school.
Guest:Oh, yeah, what'd she get her PhD in?
Guest:Social welfare.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, and ended up running an organization called the Child Welfare Research Center out of UC Berkeley.
Guest:Still around?
Guest:It is still around, yeah.
Guest:It's still housed there.
Guest:She's retired and traveling lots.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:She's living it?
Guest:She's living it.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:My dad just retired, too.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:He was a bus driver.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:That's where he ended up?
Guest:Muni, yeah, in San Francisco.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Well, they get a good pension.
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were trying to get him to stay longer, and I was basically like, get out.
Guest:It's killing you.
Guest:Like, get out.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He'd had enough.
Guest:It was horrible.
Guest:I mean, you know, it's just that driving a bus wreaks havoc on your body.
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:And emotionally, it wasn't good.
Guest:It's a horrible company.
Guest:He should have burnt it down, but...
Marc:Yeah, but what's better he spends is the last year's out of prison.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc:No burning down the municipal.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, well, that's sweet that these two coaches are coming.
Marc:They must be thrilled.
Marc:I hope so, yeah.
Marc:But were they like, is it the sort of thing where it's like, we'd always knew you were going to do good?
Marc:Or did they think that you were going to be an athlete?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I'm not sure what they thought.
Guest:I think they, you know, what's what's I think so amazing about folks who really dedicate their lives to working with kids that young.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it's not really about that.
Guest:You give them the tools to be an athlete.
Guest:And I was good.
Guest:Eventually, I was good.
Guest:I was, you know, by the time I finished, I even ran a little bit after college.
Guest:Like I thought maybe I could make the try the only big trials and stuff like I was.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:So you ran in college?
Guest:I ran all the way through college and then after college for a little bit.
Guest:And then once I started having to balance working a job and training, I was like, oh, this is not sustainable for me.
Guest:What about those people that work with kids?
Guest:Yeah, well, they're...
Guest:you know it's not about that it's about giving them the tools to be like successful humans right so i think they knew that i would be successful in whatever i tried to do and if that was going to be athletics cool i had the tools that was mostly about this is gonna we can get you into college with this we they're all kinds you know these are all poor kids from oakland like this whole team so you know it was about really trying to give you that us as many sort of avenues for for success as possible thank god for
Marc:those people oh my god so um did you go to college on a on a athletic scholarship ivy league schools don't give any merit-based scholarships so no but i was recruited by the track team which college this is brown university oh in rhode island where is it yeah province yeah like that's a that's an arty school it's an arty school it's an arty school but i was who were some of the famous celebrity children that you went to that's so real
Guest:Lucy DeVito.
Guest:Shout out to... Shout out to Lucy DeVito, who's actually an incredible actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, there you go.
Guest:Ella Windsor.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Of the Windsor family.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The British Windsors?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's big.
Guest:Yeah, we live down the hall from each other.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But it is an artsy school, but you know, I'm coming there from Berkeley High School, so it felt incredibly, like, right-wing to me.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Old-timey.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:Oh, so conservative.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But no, that's out of the Ivy Leagues.
Marc:That's the groovy one.
Marc:Yeah, that's what they tell me.
Marc:But so what did you just lock in?
Marc:Was it uncomfortable for a couple of years?
Marc:I mean, did you?
Guest:It was uncomfortable the whole time.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:I don't think as ready as I always, I knew I was going to go to college, right?
Guest:I was sort of in the car.
Guest:I didn't know I would end up out there.
Guest:But it was culturally uncomfortable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even when you remove the money from the situation, it's just West Coast, East Coast thing.
Guest:Biorhythmically, I was so different from everybody else.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Who was throwing the bill?
Guest:Well, the secret that they don't really tell you about Ivy League schools is it ended up being cheaper for me to go there than to go to a state school.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're need-blind, so they admit you, and then they look at your parents' finances, and my mom had just declared bankruptcy at that time, I think, so we had no nothing.
Guest:And so they made it, you know, I came out of there
Guest:Need blind, it's called?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So they admit you without looking at your finances.
Guest:And then they come back to you with a financial package.
Guest:They do a sliding scale at Ivy League school?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I came out of there with like $20,000 worth of loans.
Guest:Like nothing.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:For that.
Guest:Did you pay them off?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Actually, my dad did that.
Guest:Oh, he did?
Guest:He was like, I want to do this for you.
Guest:And he took on the loan payments.
Guest:And yeah, my parents are the shit.
Guest:But yeah, and it ended up being less of a burden on my parents.
Guest:And if I had gone to UCLA or UC Berkeley or any of those places, I was also applying.
Guest:So like...
Guest:So it was... My parents did it.
Guest:My parents put the bill, but it was manageable.
Marc:It wasn't easy in there.
Marc:I had no idea.
Marc:My brother was still... Yeah, I had no idea.
Marc:What's your brother end up?
Marc:What'd he end up doing?
Marc:He's a software engineer.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:My brother figured it out, man.
Guest:He...
Guest:He just bounced.
Guest:He was very different from me growing up, like a lot sort of angrier than I was.
Guest:But after sort of getting beyond that in his mid-20s, taught him, you know, he...
Guest:He ended up getting a degree from UCLA after doing community college and stuff in political science and then came out of that and was like, this is useless and I'm going to teach myself how to code and just taught himself how to code out of books.
Guest:And he's a genius.
Guest:Him and my mom are both brilliant like that.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's doing good.
Guest:He became a software engineer.
Guest:He got this great job working for a company in New York.
Guest:This is while I was out there doing Hamilton, actually.
Guest:He moved to New York and was there.
Guest:And then he worked there for a year and he was up for review.
Guest:They just knew he was going to ask for a whole bunch more money.
Guest:He came and was like, you can pay me exactly what you pay me right now.
Guest:I just never want to have to come in here.
Guest:and they were like okay and he left and he's been living all over the damn world for the last like year and a half just bouncing from country to country waking up coding in the morning doing whatever they need and just like traveling the world that's the way to do it unbelievable i thought i haven't seen him in a year and a half but every time i think he's living in paris at the moment oh wow bro yeah man that's great he figured it out figured it out
Marc:So in high school, you did a little bit of theater, but a lot of athletics.
Marc:And then at Brown, you decided, did they not declare major for the first year?
Marc:Did you just kind of like feel it out?
Guest:I just looked around and had finished the theater major.
Guest:Well, concentration, what they call it at Brown.
Guest:They don't trust us to major in anything.
Marc:And did you find anything, like, did you lock in with the teacher?
Marc:Did you, like, I mean, or the coach?
Marc:Or, like, what was going on there that grabbed your focus?
Marc:Because, I mean, you know, you're great on stage, and you can do a lot of different things up there.
Marc:So, like, what was, what'd you learn at Brown?
Marc:Yeah, well, I think...
Guest:I mean, a lot of things.
Guest:The theater program there is actually interesting.
Guest:It's good because every teacher sort of champions a different theory.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And all theory is garbage.
Guest:But, like, you learn a bunch of different ways of doing.
Guest:Looking at things.
Guest:Of looking at things.
Marc:And then you make your own craft.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But I really I did a lot of shows there with with a theater called Rights and Reason Theater.
Guest:That's also it's within the Africana Studies Department there.
Guest:It's one of the oldest black theaters in the country.
Guest:At Brown?
Guest:At Brown.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And it's, yeah, and so Elmo Terry Morgan, who's the artistic director there, sort of, I wandered in off the street into an audition, and he cast me in a thing when I was, you know, this is a month after being there.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And so that sort of became my home there in a lot of ways, and they let me, you know, my senior year, I wrote this, I wrote this, like,
Guest:rap musical based on Gene Tumor's cane that they produced for me there and gave me like rehearsal space with a band and all this stuff.
Guest:You know, college is full of resources that are wasted on 19-year-olds, right?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I didn't understand how rare this shit was that they were giving me.
Guest:And it would be years and years again before anybody would give me those kinds of opportunities, right?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, right, sure.
Marc:But at the time, like as one of the oldest black theater companies, I mean, what was...
Marc:What was the type of shows you were doing?
Marc:What was the sort of manifesto of the company?
Guest:So they work, they do this thing called research to performance method.
Guest:So a lot of the shows that go up there are sort of
Guest:graduate student thesis project they do some area of research and create a piece of theater out of that oh that's interesting so there was there was a lot of that kind of stuff going on there but then they also bring in guest artists to develop work there so i got to work with ntsazaki shange doing a an adaptation of of lily ann that she was adapting for the stage that just you know to get to work with an artist like that like i don't know her she wrote for color girls oh yeah yeah yeah you know
Guest:Mind-blowing?
Guest:Mind-blowing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just to get to spend time around that.
Guest:And some of the directors that they had working with them, this woman, Marsha Z. West, who passed away a few years ago, but who I got to work with quite a bit there.
Guest:Just incredible artists who, it's weird that this thing is sort of hidden away at Brown University and in Providence, but it's kind of, I don't know, the experiences I got through that were amazing.
Guest:Does it have an audience when you do shows?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, folks come.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:That is a good thing about colleges, too, is there's kind of a built-in audience for things, right?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And there is also... Oscar Eustace, he's the artistic director of the public theater now, but at that time he was teaching at Brown, and I took his modern American drama class there.
Guest:That also sort of changed my life, because I didn't care about any sort of standard plays that wasn't my thing.
Guest:But he taught them in a way that all of a sudden I was like, oh, this shit's...
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:Everything about him was about historical context.
Guest:Why was this?
Guest:What does it mean that this play is written now?
Guest:Oh, so you were able to put it into perspective.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so all of a sudden I started thinking about things.
Guest:He also helped.
Guest:He was Tony Kushner's dramaturg for Angels in America.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Oscar's the real deal.
Guest:And then we reconnected years later at The Public Festival.
Guest:Actually, one of my mentors, an incredible artist named Mark Bamuti Joseph, had put me in a show of his called Word Becomes Flesh.
Guest:It was touring around and it did a little stint at the public.
Guest:I reconnected with Oscar then.
Guest:And then, of course, Hamilton ended up being developed there, too.
Guest:So it was crazy to sort of come back around and be, you know, working with this guy who was this sort of pivotal professor for me when I was there.
Marc:Well, it's interesting to me that there is this very intense sort of community of brilliant people in black theater.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that you were sort of involved with that, and it operates in a world like, well, not that I know much about theater in general, but I don't know all the names that you said, and I'm sure you're mentioning them here, and some people are like, oh, of course.
Marc:Or not.
Guest:I mean, that's the funny thing.
Guest:Well, that's the thing about theater in general, right?
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:hamilton like nobody knows shit about any of it so i mean i had to learn you know like you know you gotta go i mean it's it's a life you gotta go but it's like anything right i mean we all sort of even even hollywood right like it's actually kind of a niche thing like who i mean those movies have have this kind of output that that allow like a lot of people see them sure like
Guest:In reality, it's a relatively small community.
Guest:And like stand-up, you know what I'm saying?
Marc:Yeah, it's bigger than it used to be because of the number of outlets that are available to put content out or perform in.
Marc:So it's not as intimate as it was, but there are communities within the communities now is sort of what happened.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But when you say somebody was your mentor, what was the name of that person?
Guest:Mark Bamuti Joseph.
Guest:He founded this organization called Youth Speaks that Raphael and I both came up through when we were kids in high school that teaches spoken word to kids.
Marc:The guy you wrote with?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That teaches spoken word to?
Guest:To high school-aged kids, teenagers.
Guest:And so that was really what got me started writing was through this kind of spoken word community.
Marc:So you were doing spoken word poetry and rap?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I started rapping and writing stuff like that around, you know, when I was 14 or something.
Guest:But Clipping came along many years later, even though one of the band members, William Hudson, who...
Guest:I think was standing next to you when we were watching Mudhoney at that, because he remembers that very well at Sub Pop 25.
Guest:But him and I, he's been one of my best friends since we were in third grade.
Guest:We met in third grade.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Now we're in this band together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is a trip.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, this weirdo rap music band.
Marc:But was that, I mean, was that the original dream?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, look.
Guest:They just grow alongside of each other.
Guest:Yeah, I've always been doing all of those things.
Guest:But for me, when I started rapping, I'm better at that than I am at writing anything else.
Guest:So I've been doing that for a long time, and that's sort of the... And it's integrated into the film.
Guest:Yeah, and that kind of language, heightened language, was one of the reasons we wrote the film.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you're doing the theater at Brown, and then what gets you to New York?
Marc:I mean, it sounds like some of the stuff you were working on was working with big directors who were working through stuff, experimental stuff, doing all kinds of stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't move to New York until right before Hamilton.
Guest:That's not really true.
Guest:I tried.
Guest:You stayed in Providence?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I came back home to Oakland.
Guest:But after, yeah, right after college, I moved back home.
Guest:There was one, there was like a nine-month period I tried to move to New York, and I was just, you know, sleeping on friends' couches and riding the subway all night and, you know, doing the thing.
Guest:Right, but you...
Guest:But so you go back and you hang out with Raphael and you hang around with the band guys.
Guest:Is Raphael in?
Guest:Clipping?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:This is sort of pre-clipping.
Guest:We have a project called The Get Back way back then.
Guest:You and Raphael.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So we start making rap songs together and sort of become collaborators in all things.
Marc:Are you recording them?
Marc:Are you, like, on the street handing out CDs for $3?
Guest:No, no, we were recording.
Guest:This is, like, sort of early.
Guest:Our first sort of mixtape we put out is still kind of pre... I don't think Bandcamp existed or anything at that time.
Guest:So, you know, it was, like, a digital download that you had to have the link for.
Guest:So we just sent it to friends.
Guest:There's nowhere to host that shit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So there are a few projects that are, like, floating around the internet from those early days.
Guest:And...
Guest:And we would, like, we, you know, we did everything ourselves.
Guest:We shot music videos ourselves.
Guest:And we would play concerts.
Guest:You know, we could, in the Bay, we could play pretty consistently for 500 people, you know.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Did you know Boots up there?
Guest:I, you know, I grew up loving the coup, and I went to tons of coup concerts and a whole bunch of parties that Pam the Functuous, rest in peace, DJed, their DJ.
Guest:But, um...
Guest:Boots, I actually one time sat in, and Boots used to teach these poetry workshops at La Pena at a sort of famous cultural center in Berkeley.
Guest:And I one time sort of sat in the back and didn't say anything.
Guest:I was like way too shy and nervous, but like Wally was teaching one of these workshops.
Marc:When you were in high school?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:Yeah, so it was crazy to be at Sundance together and to get to sort of tell him that story when we both have movies premiering at Sundance.
Guest:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:But it's so weird the more you talk about the things that you did as you were growing up.
Marc:There was a real...
Marc:tight functioning community yeah it is and and uh it's wild it is yeah no there because so much of the movie is sort of about you know what happens to that yeah so okay so you come back you hang out and then what gets you to new york i rafael and i moved to los angeles actually in 2012 uh-huh
Guest:But before that, when I was still in the Bay, I was substitute teaching.
Guest:That was one of my things.
Guest:And through... What subjects?
Guest:Anything?
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:And then I was also developing sort of rap curriculum for middle school kids.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:I got this grant, this place called the Marsh Youth Theater wrote, like got grants to sort of pay me to go into San Francisco and Oakland middle schools.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I would work with their English and social studies teachers and sort of figure out what their...
Guest:What they were teaching and then come in once a week or every other week and just do sort of rap workshops with the kids, but that were sort of focused on the kinds of books they were reading or the kinds of periods of history.
Guest:So I'd bring in poets that had something to do with the thing.
Guest:We'd sort of study those.
Guest:Then I'd get them to write and perform their own shows.
Marc:So you were like, you know, by some strange mystical coincidence, you were the only guy that could have done Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton.
Guest:Here's the crazy shit.
Guest:So the reason that happened is I'm substitute teaching and due to a clerical error, I am called to substitute teach the same class with another sub, which is not supposed to happen.
Guest:This is like some clerical accident.
Marc:This is in LA or in Oakland?
Guest:This is in the Bay.
Guest:This is in Marin City, actually.
Guest:And we sort of team teach this class.
Guest:And as part, you know, I think these were fourth graders or something.
Guest:You just come up with anything to keep them entertained for 10 minutes.
Guest:So we're like, we start freestyling with them at some point.
Guest:We both had this weird skill set for a substitute teacher to have.
Guest:And I ended up giving them a ride home.
Guest:He's like, we're talking.
Guest:He's an actor in the Bay Area.
Guest:His name is Anthony Veneziale.
Guest:And I'm giving him a ride home to San Francisco.
Guest:We're talking.
Guest:He says, oh, I'm part of this group, Freestyle Love Supreme, with this cat Lin-Manuel Miranda and all this stuff.
Guest:You've got to meet all these people.
Guest:They're in New York, but we'll introduce you at some point.
Guest:And then he ended up starting this group that was sort of a sister group to Freestyle Love Supreme called The Freeze out on the West Coast.
Guest:And then...
Guest:Tommy Kale and Lynn would sort of call me in, because this is while In the Heights is going on on Broadway.
Guest:The Heights are transferred now.
Guest:Freestyle Love was doing monthly shows at the time, but a lot of their members were working on Broadway, so they needed to bring in new people.
Guest:So when they couldn't fill shows, they would fly me over from California and have me do these freestyle shows with them.
Guest:So that's how I met Lynn, was due to this cleric, working with a good friend of his, like...
Marc:So freestyle show.
Marc:So there's a freestyle community.
Marc:What is a freestyle show for me, the guy?
Guest:So Freestyle Love Supreme is sort of like, it's an improv show, but everything's in verse, right?
Guest:So a lot of games, structured games that are based on audience suggestion and storytelling, but everything, there's either a beatbox or on the West Coast, we did it with a full band.
Guest:And you sort of play these games that are just like improv games and you try to tell story, but always in verse.
Guest:Got it.
Guest:um so you're doing these in new york when they need to fill doing those in new york and that's how i meet lynn and tommy who are the the you know and all the all the squad who ended up creating hamilton uh and and so that's that's really what brought me out to new york i was still i was living in la i'd moved to la and they and to be an actor yeah to be an actor and then realize that that was not gonna work out so i was just a musician that's when we started clipping and
Guest:oh okay so it got grim down here and you're like we gotta do something ooh we yeah I didn't have a way in I didn't have a way in I landed a commercial agent and did one like McDonald's commercial one time just sort of like the pinnacle of my career the heartbreak begins yeah yeah and
Guest:But I was also, you know, I was never the type to sort of wait around for things.
Guest:And there's so much waiting in this town.
Guest:So I was like, all right, this isn't the thing.
Guest:Yeah, because you're busy.
Guest:You do stuff.
Guest:Me and my friend started a band.
Guest:We went on tour.
Guest:And that was the hype.
Guest:So I'm touring with that band.
Guest:I'm touring with Bamuti's Word Becomes Flesh project.
Guest:And I'm touring with Freestyle Love Supreme when they need people.
Guest:So I'm only making money on the road, and then I come back to L.A., and I'm broke.
Marc:But that stage experience turns out to be important.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:I mean, putting those hours in, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Marc:So you were there at the beginning of him creating Hamilton.
Guest:Yeah, pretty early on.
Guest:I mean, he had done sort of a performance of a couple songs at Lincoln Center before before they approached me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we were all doing a show in New Orleans on ESPN rapping about like freestyling about sports celebrities for the Super Bowl when it was in New Orleans.
Guest:They would invite Jerry Rice up, and then we'd do a weird rap to This Is Your Life about Jerry Rice.
Guest:And Tommy approaches me and says, hey, Lynn's written this nude musical.
Guest:It's like a rap musical about Alexander Hamilton.
Guest:I was like, it's a terrible idea.
Guest:He was like, yeah, do you want to come do a reading of it?
Guest:I said, yeah, are you going to pay me?
Guest:He was like, yes, that's great.
Guest:And so I went up to Vassar, and Lynn had just written...
Guest:sort of jefferson's first song in the second act yeah written these cabinet battles and he had this new fast rap for lafayette he needed a rap ringer basically right i had five days to get this thing on you play jefferson and lafayette right yeah yeah um and they had a very short time and some fairly complicated raps and they knew i could do that right they brought me up to do that and i just went up to them afterwards and i was like
Guest:This is way better than I thought it was going to be.
Guest:And whatever you need, man, just call me.
Guest:I don't know what it is, but I have a really good time doing it.
Guest:And I didn't, you know, and then when they went off and they kept calling me and I was sort of like they had so many Broadway friends.
Guest:I knew that if it, I sort of just knew if it got to Broadway, they would replace me at some point, but they didn't.
Guest:They kept.
Guest:He's a loyal guy.
Guest:He's a loyal guy and they're friends.
Guest:You know, I mean, that's the other thing.
Guest:You just, you work with your friends, man.
Guest:Like we had known each other for 10 years at that point.
Guest:You and Lynn?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And just that I was in Hamilton, which was a totally life changing, career changing event for me because my friend asked me to come to a reading of his play.
Guest:You know, I tell that shit to kids all the time who are like trying to figure out like logic their way into this business.
Guest:And it's like, that's not it.
Guest:Do the thing you love with the people you love.
Marc:That's true, man.
Marc:You know, it's like it's weird because everyone's looking for that lucky break.
Marc:But a lot of times it's.
Marc:You know, you put your work in and you know a guy or, you know, someone knows of you because of the work you put in.
Marc:And they're like, try this.
Marc:Here you go.
Marc:Here's your life.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Here's your life.
Marc:So, like, I mean, could you, like, did any of you have any idea, you know, going into Hamilton?
Marc:When did you feel it starting to become a thing?
Marc:It must have been just been like, holy shit.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't really until we were, like, open on Broadway, even.
Guest:You know, doing a...
Guest:making a play is, is difficult work and it's, and it's so, you're so focused on it, especially it's something that's in development, you know, so your lines are being changed every day.
Guest:You're sort of in there just trying to, trying to figure out how to tell this story with a bits, this incredibly collaborative, you know, thing.
Guest:So you, we were so protected from all of the noise of it.
Guest:I imagine like the producers smelled money, but like we were, we weren't, uh, we were really protected from all that.
Guest:So yeah,
Guest:It was just grinding and working really until we were sort of comfort for me until we were sort of comfort comfortably running on Broadway.
Guest:I'm sort of looking around and like, you know, the Obamas are back.
Guest:Like when you when you meet the Obamas for the second time at your show, it's like, oh, maybe this is a thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're just packed houses and everybody's crazy for it.
Guest:It's a crazy thing, particularly if you've grown up doing theater.
Guest:This is how plays work.
Guest:You work really hard.
Guest:The work is always the same.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You work really hard.
Guest:You produce something with a group of people that you're incredibly proud of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And nobody cares.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then you repeat.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's how plays work.
Marc:And then very few people get the rare opportunity to produce something with people they like to work with and it changes the culture.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so, yeah, it was this total crazy moment where all of a sudden people are looking at a play in this, what you're saying, and like to have a Broadway soundtrack that's quintuple platinum or whatever it is at this point.
Guest:Kids are singing it.
Guest:Kids are singing it.
Guest:I did this.
Guest:I did this.
Guest:And you're on the soundtrack.
Guest:It's all the original cast.
Marc:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:I did this We Day event a couple years ago.
Guest:This is like an anti-bullying sort of organization.
Guest:They do these great things where they sort of have schools commit to doing these anti-bullying campaigns and then they invite a bunch of kids to big sort of events where a bunch of celebrities come out and speak to them and perform and stuff like that.
Guest:So they asked me to do one in Los Angeles, and they had this thing set up.
Guest:I can't even remember who I was.
Guest:Justin Baldoni, I think I was there with, from Jane the Virgin.
Guest:I can't remember who else was on it, but they had this thing set up where the lights are off, and we're all telling stories about times when we felt out of place or whatever.
Guest:And then the lights come on, and everybody's like,
Guest:oh, it's whoever, and all of the kids are supposed to scream.
Guest:But when it got to me, as soon as I opened my mouth, all the kids started screaming, because more people know my voice than know what I look like.
Guest:So they recognized my voice immediately, and I was like, oh, this is not the right.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:How old are these kids?
Guest:These are all middle school age, I think.
Guest:They love the show.
Guest:They love the show, which I don't think any of us were gunning for when we were making the show.
Guest:That's so sweet.
Guest:It's amazing.
Marc:So now, like how many years did you do it?
Guest:About two.
Guest:Yeah, like if you count downtown.
Guest:I mean, and many more before that in development, but that was sporadic coming in for a while.
Marc:But on Broadway two years?
Guest:A year and a little bit on Broadway and roughly seven or eight months downtown.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:It's funny, when I go, I've seen almost every cast do it since me, and it's not a thing I recognized as a thing I did.
Guest:It's just a good show.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, that's the interesting thing about the, I think the kind of foundational point of the show is that anybody can play, that the diversity of making these characters accessible is sort of the beauty of it in a lot of ways.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So now you and throughout the years, you and Raphael, how do you say his last name?
Marc:Casal, yeah.
Marc:You kind of are playing with this story that becomes blind spotting?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We're grinding away at this and working on a bunch of other things and making music and doing like web series and doing, you know, all kinds of just stuff that you do.
Marc:How many albums does Clipping have out?
Guest:Clipping has four?
Guest:Four?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Four out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And an EP, and we're working on another one.
Guest:But, you know, what's interesting about these times is Clipping could play, you know, a 400-cap venue anywhere in the world, which is crazy.
Guest:Like, we've toured all over the world with this project.
Guest:Oh, yeah, that's great.
Marc:International audience.
Marc:Even if it's 400, you can go.
Marc:It makes it worthwhile to go.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's incredible.
Guest:So it was really through that, through touring, I had never got to travel outside of the U.S.
Guest:before either until I started doing that with Clipping.
Guest:So yeah, the track team got you around the U.S.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Internationally, I had to rap for that.
Marc:Was giving up track a difficult thing?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I miss it.
Guest:I still miss it every day.
Marc:Because like you said, you ran a bit after, you did it after college?
Guest:Yeah, I tried and just couldn't, I couldn't keep as regimented a schedule as I would need to when I also had to work.
Guest:And eating right, you know?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's a whole thing.
Guest:So there was sort of a heartbreak of letting that go?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I still, you know...
Guest:I mean, being an athlete who's even anywhere near an elite athlete is like having a superpower.
Guest:You just feel different than other people.
Guest:Everyone's going to the gym to lose weight.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I feel like I'm going to the gym to work on my fucking superpower.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now I go to the gym because I'm vain.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:I go to the gym because I look in the mirror and I'm like, you're gross.
Guest:Just go do something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you're at peace with it now, obviously.
Marc:I'm working on it.
Guest:The window's closed.
Guest:I probably couldn't do it anymore anyway.
Guest:But still, it never leaves you, man.
Guest:I still sort of, every time I drive past a track, I'm like, I should get out there.
Guest:Where are my spikes at?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Pull over.
Marc:I got it.
Marc:So, okay, so you're doing all this other stuff, but the story evolves.
Marc:When did you first outline Blindspotting?
Marc:This is like well before any of this.
Marc:This is 2009.
Marc:So you had the crux of the story.
Guest:Yeah, so, you know, we've been working with the same producers the whole time, Jesse Keith Calder, who approached Raphael actually going through like a poetry wormhole, YouTube poetry wormhole.
Marc:He's a poet guy?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah, he's good.
Marc:He's good with the... He's good with the words there.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, yeah, so they found him and sort of approached him about, would you like to do a movie that uses verse in this sort of way?
Guest:They had just done a film called The Wackness...
Guest:So it was a concept film was sort of what they were interested in.
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:They were like, well, we don't know what this is, but the way that you work is interesting.
Guest:Eventually they introduced, Rafa introduced them to me.
Guest:Actually, another Obama connection.
Guest:At Obama's first inauguration, they were showing a screening of a film they had done there and needed someone to do a performance and Rafa couldn't make it, so I went...
Guest:Anyway, they said, oh, the four of us should work on this.
Guest:So we decided, great, we're going to work on this.
Guest:It's a piece that uses heightened language in some way.
Guest:We'll figure that out.
Guest:It's going to be about Oakland because we want to tell that story.
Guest:And it's going to star the two of us because no one else is going to do that.
Guest:So those were the constraints.
Guest:And then right around that time, Oscar Grant is murdered at Fruitvale Bar Station.
Guest:which for Oakland was a huge thing.
Guest:And it was a different point in the way we discussed these police shootings.
Guest:It was sort of early on in those types of things being reported.
Guest:And so I think there was this fantasy that if we yelled loud enough and if we protested enough, they would change because at least they were being publicized.
Guest:ultimately that's not what happened but we were out there you know and Oscar's face was everywhere on t-shirts and you know and everybody knew his name and the news is covering it all the time there's riots you know I mean right it got ugly and
Guest:And I think so when we're deciding to tell a story about Oakland, this is inherently part of the story.
Guest:So we had our sort of instigating incident, which is one of a police shooting like this one is going to happen.
Guest:The biggest change in the script between then and now is is actually about how the community responds to that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because at that time it was.
Guest:It was so present and Oscar in particular was so present.
Guest:And now I think we culturally, all of us have reached kind of a fatigue with that where you sort of watch the news, you see one of these things and then they start talking about the victim.
Guest:And if they have a criminal record, that's it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We can't get out of bed for that person.
Guest:Like I can't take the heartbreak of if it's not a perfect victim, that's not worth a protest.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We can't.
Guest:that's not so you know we get we're at this point now where it feels like there's just a sort of pile of incidents and bodies and and names that we can't even you know where was tamir and was he strangled or what city was that you know like yeah um so you just got a bunch of black bodies and a bunch of names and a bunch of horrific atrocities committed by law enforcement and we'd
Guest:And we don't know what to do with that.
Guest:And so in the film, Colin, my character, is the only person who can be really affected by it because he happens to witness it.
Guest:He's right there.
Guest:But none of the rest of his community is particularly affected by it.
Guest:So we get to watch Colin's PCSE.
Marc:It just becomes another news story that passes by.
Marc:And your character is haunted by it.
Marc:But as the instigating...
Marc:It was always there, but I mean, what I found also was going, aside from you wrestling with the trauma and your conscience about what you should do in light of that and your own probation, which we don't find out why you're on probation until well into the movie, which I thought was great.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because the weird thing is, you kind of accept it.
Marc:Just sort of like, what do you do?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But it doesn't bother you.
Guest:Well, you're in love with Colin at that point, hopefully.
Guest:That's why we saved it to that line.
Guest:I don't want to give you enough empathy for this guy to be like, well, you fucked up.
Marc:So there's other things going on.
Marc:There are these levels of you handling probation, of you handling...
Marc:a relationship that went bad because of what you did, and then this friendship with this white guy who is somebody you grew up with, and then this sort of loyalty to each other and also to the town, to Oakland.
Marc:There's a lot of stories that you kind of string through this thing successfully.
Marc:That's good to hear.
Marc:Because I don't think it's easy.
Marc:The idea of like how a white guy who grows up in the neighborhood overcompensates in ways by acting more sort of stereotypically gangster or black, then I don't want to give too much away.
Guest:For him, it's certainly not about blackness, but it's about, you got to imagine, right, for Miles, who's likely the only, maybe the only, if not certainly one of the only white kids in the neighborhood he grew up in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:that that kid has to prove themselves every day right right so like and you and that's that's just sort of i think a real like man shit right like you like that person's going out flexing all the time and it's always going to be the hardest one is always going to be the the first one to jump into some shit because you you know your his stripes are always being tested well yeah there's an intensity to those white dudes yeah yeah yeah was he that guy
Guest:Who, Raphael?
Guest:No, but that's there.
Guest:I mean, Raphael did grow up in mostly black and brown communities.
Guest:That's true to Raphael.
Guest:And I think both of us discovered art early on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:gives you a way to sort of intellectualize things differently.
Guest:But he certainly has those tendencies and he was certainly, you know, getting into trouble differently as a youngster than I was, you know, like I was an easy kid.
Guest:But yeah, I think having...
Guest:But when you're in cities like Oakland right now, there's a tension in the air there.
Guest:You can feel it.
Guest:And here, walk around downtown, there's a tension in the air.
Marc:Well, I felt it like when I moved down the street to Highland Park, which was a Latino neighborhood.
Marc:I had no intent of anything.
Marc:I never bought a house before.
Marc:I was out there by coincidence, and I found a little house.
Marc:Over time, I lived there for 14, 15 years.
Marc:Is that right?
Marc:Yeah, something like that.
Marc:13, 14 years, and it gentrified.
Marc:yeah and you know and i felt i didn't feel great about it yeah because it was sort of like you know people were hanging it on me you know like because i was working from my garage i was saying highland park and and again now it's sort of like really in it yeah and you feel that tension yeah and there was part of me that's sort of like i didn't i didn't want this i didn't know that it would happen you know i didn't believe it would happen i didn't need it to happen and now i'm uncomfortable yeah
Guest:Yeah, no, it's, I mean, look, I've been a gentrifier every place I've gone since I left Oakland, right?
Guest:I mean, that's just the nature of it.
Guest:When I lived in New York, I moved to Washington Heights, and I was, you know, and that's a neighborhood, and I didn't know, same thing, like, I could afford, on my off-Broadway contract, I could afford a place there, so, like, that's where I moved, and I was like, oh, great, it's dope up here, you know?
Guest:And it turns out, yeah, it is dope up here, and, like, everybody's trying to move there now, and that's, and so...
Guest:It's gentrification is such a complicated issue.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I like that you were able to really sort of because of the Bay Area is the nature of it, that there is a type of person with a lot of money who is young and white and in the tech industry.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's very like, you know, there's your guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like we know what that is.
Guest:And then to have to have Miles's character be.
Guest:have that being put on him, much like that's being put on you in Highland Park, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:For someone to be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of course he's going to double down.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:But he really grew up there.
Marc:I was just a guy who happened to move there.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But it didn't feel good.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also those people, you know, the way that guy, the way you guys wrote him to just sort of like glibly appropriating.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:The tattoo business, which I ruined, was great.
Guest:And same with the oak tree thing.
Guest:Yo, so here's some crazy shit about that oak tree thing.
Guest:So we have this bit in the film where there's, and I'll just ruin this one, where there's a...
Guest:There's a tree stump that's being used as a coffee table in this guy's house, in this new Pandora exec's house that is made out of a cut-down oak tree.
Guest:And he knows a ton of history about the oak tree, knows how many rings are on it and shit.
Guest:From Oakland.
Guest:Yeah, it's an original Oakland oak tree stump.
Guest:But that house that we were shooting in, we go in there for the first day and we're in there lighting it and shit.
Guest:outside the fucking window the house is sort of in this u-shape around around a little tiny like courtyard and outside of the window looking into the courtyard is a an oak tree that they had killed that they had cut to build this house around and we were like holy shit like you can't write that shit and we couldn't light it we didn't have time to light it we would have used that yeah it was so much more like violent and devastating than the than the table that we brought in you know it's like oh fuck man like
Guest:It was life imitating art in the worst way.
Guest:There's a thing about Oakland that we say where the only oak trees left are on the street signs.
Guest:It is the symbol of Oakland, but there aren't oak trees in Oakland anymore.
Guest:Are there not, really?
Guest:there aren't any really there are very very few like you know that one that you can't see but the history in the movie is real that it used to be they lined the streets yeah yeah I mean that's why it was called Oakland that's why it's the trees on the sign because it used to be full of oak trees wow
Marc:It was great.
Marc:I found the film compelling and surprising and informative.
Marc:It was good.
Marc:It was all good.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Marc:I'm glad you came by, and I'm happy to meet you.
Marc:I'm a fan.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:I am a fan as well.
Guest:Clipping, when you tour through this country, you spend a lot of time in the car, and we always drive ourselves.
Guest:We don't have a bus or anything, so we listen to stand-up the whole time.
Guest:You're one of our favorites, for sure.
Guest:for sure.
Guest:Well, that's nice.
Guest:And this show.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:We listen to this show all the time.
Marc:Well, now I'm going to go listen to Clipping because that's the one zone of your thing that I didn't quite get to.
Guest:Check it out, man.
Guest:It's weird rap shit.
Guest:All right, man.
Guest:Good talking to you.
Guest:You too.
Marc:Well, that was good.
Marc:I like talking to that guy.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:Again, his movie Blindspotting, which he stars in and co-wrote, opens in select cities tomorrow, July 20th.
Marc:Also, there are new dates.
Marc:You can go to new dates.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Did he put him up?
Marc:Jesus.
Marc:I don't know if they're up on my site yet.
Marc:Are they?
Marc:Would they be?
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:I'm going to look.
Marc:Yes, they are.
Marc:They're all up there.
Marc:I'll be at the Ice House tonight, tomorrow night, and Saturday.
Marc:I'll be at Wise Guys in Utah August 3rd and August 4th.
Marc:I'll be at the Comedy Addict.
Marc:Addict?
Marc:I'll be at the Comedy Addict.
Marc:Addict?
Marc:In August the 30th, 31st, September 1st, and September 1st.
Marc:Twice.
Marc:So I'll be there the 30th, 31st, and the 1st of September.
Marc:August and September there.
Marc:I'll be at Acme in Minneapolis September 6th, 7th, and 8th.
Marc:And I'll be at the Comedy Works in Denver September 21 and 22.
Marc:And I think I got a Largo Day coming up, but I don't think I've got that on the... I don't know if I booked that out yet.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:I got some bigger shows coming up that I'm just getting ready for, but these are going to be great club shows, so come out.
Marc:I don't think I'm going to play guitar today because my dad's in my house and I should go deal with him.
Marc:Boomer lives!