Episode 996 - Jon Bernthal
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 fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:As of this recording, which when you hear it will have been a week ago, my cat is still is doing amazingly well.
Marc:I'll let you know next week when we're back on schedule and Brendan's back from vacation.
Marc:But that aside...
Marc:We're coming up on our one thousandth episode.
Marc:OK, thousand episodes of this show.
Marc:And I like to read emails on the air occasionally.
Marc:So I want to hear any questions you might have as we approach that milestone show.
Marc:One thousand.
Marc:You can send your questions to WTF pod at Gmail dot com.
Marc:Any questions about any of the one thousand episodes of the show or any past guests that you want some follow up on.
Marc:Any questions you have for me personally, if they're nice or yeah, you can be challenging.
Marc:Just don't be a fucking asshole.
Marc:Questions about what goes on off the mic are fine and behind the scenes.
Marc:You can some of that or any advice you think I might be able to dispense.
Marc:I'm willing to give it a shot.
Marc:Send those to me at WTF pod at Gmail dot com.
Marc:If you can get us to questions by the end of the month, that would be helpful.
Marc:Also, John Bernthal is on the show today.
Marc:John Bernthal is an actor.
Marc:You probably know him from The Walking Dead, the first season or two of The Walking Dead.
Marc:He's now in the third season of The Punisher, which is available on Netflix.
Marc:You can stream all three seasons right now.
Marc:He is The Punisher.
Marc:He was in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Marc:You'll recognize him when you look him up or you've seen him.
Marc:He's an intense fellow.
Marc:He usually plays an angry dude of some sort.
Marc:Oh, he was in the first Sicario movie, too.
Marc:I like him.
Marc:I like him.
Marc:He's he's he's all in.
Marc:And it was exciting to get to talk to him.
Marc:So you'll get to hear that pretty, pretty unique story, really, in terms of life and acting.
Marc:It involves Russia.
Marc:That's what I'm saying.
Marc:There was collusion between John Bernthal and Russia.
Marc:But I would like to add this, that I am recording this a week out because, as you know, if you listen to this show regularly, my business partner and producer, Brendan, is on vacation with his wife.
Marc:So we did these shows last week.
Marc:So I'm wary.
Marc:I'm wary to sort of go into any immediate stories that are happening today because they're a week old and who the fuck knows what could happen in a week, right?
Marc:Not just with me, with you, with the world, with this country.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:So I can't really do a show like that where I'm engaged in.
Marc:Well, I'm immediately engaged.
Marc:I'm talking to you about right now, but it is a week ago.
Marc:Does that make any sense?
Marc:I would like to get back to it.
Marc:I got a couple of things that happened.
Marc:This this if some of you were listening.
Marc:A while back, I got an email from this guy, Jacob, and he basically was talking about me doing, he saw me in Bloomington at this small club up there, a great club called the Comedy Attic.
Marc:And he said, I saw you in Bloomington last year working out your new stuff.
Marc:And at one point, you got up from the stool, walked to the side of the stage, looked at me and said, how's it going?
Marc:In that moment, I thought you were asking how I was doing.
Marc:So I said something along the lines of good.
Marc:You said, OK, went back to the stool and continued on with the show.
Marc:Now, I also told you after that, if I said that, if my recollection was correct, I would not have done that unless I thought this dude was threatening somehow.
Marc:If I projected some sort of threat that I saw him as somebody, he was probably alone.
Marc:Maybe he you know, I thought he was going to kick my ass or he got he gave me stink eye.
Marc:I don't know what it was.
Marc:But I knew that if I was doing that, there's only one reason I do that is to disarm a potential situation that I'm making up in my head.
Marc:And and he wrote me back after I said that I told you guys that what I thought it was.
Marc:He said, hey, Mark, my bed is on.
Marc:I was a scary looking dude.
Marc:I've got long hair and a long beard and something about the way my face is.
Marc:I just look angry a lot of the time.
Marc:I get a lot of questions like what's wrong or what are you thinking?
Marc:Which is what I did from stage when nothing is wrong and I'm not really thinking anything.
Marc:I stuck around after the show and I got to tell you that I loved Attempting Normal, especially the Lou Reed guitar pick story.
Marc:And I got a quick picture of you and attached it.
Marc:And yeah, even smiling in that picture, I look a little scary, angry.
Marc:Now, I wish you could see this picture because this guy, he's a big boy.
Marc:He's got long hair, a beard.
Marc:Looks like he just break me like a fucking stick, like a twig.
Marc:Just twist me up like a pretzel.
Marc:Just like crush me in his hand.
Marc:So I guess I'm just tooting my own horn that I knew exactly why I asked a guy in the audience, how you doing?
Marc:Because he looked like he could do some harm.
Marc:Turns out not a bad guy, apparently.
Marc:Not a bad guy.
Marc:Another thing happened today.
Marc:I think it's sort of an evergreenish kind of thing.
Marc:It's not time relative.
Marc:I got a call on my cell phone.
Marc:I was in my car.
Marc:I didn't recognize the number.
Marc:But I'm an idiot.
Marc:I know what spam numbers look like, but this looked like it was local.
Marc:So I picked it up.
Marc:It was just some guy going, hey, is this Marc Maron?
Marc:And I'm like, who's this?
Marc:Is this Mark Maron?
Marc:If this is Mark Maron, I'm so-and-so.
Marc:He's from a talent agency, a big one.
Marc:His name was Pete.
Marc:And I'm like, what's this about?
Marc:He's like, I just saw you.
Marc:I was at the art show at the Freeze.
Marc:Sarah the painter had a piece, an installation over at Freeze LA in the back lot at Paramount, which is where they had the fair.
Marc:It was pretty amazing.
Marc:And I'm like, and I was on the other line with Brenda.
Marc:I'm like, hold on a minute.
Marc:I got back on.
Marc:I'm like, now what is this?
Marc:Who is this?
Marc:He goes, my name is Pete so-and-so from this agency, that agency.
Marc:I got to tell you a story, man.
Marc:Now, I'm going to preface this by saying, rarely in my life has my being an asshole necessarily done anybody any real good, myself included.
Marc:But this guy out of nowhere says, look, man, I just got it.
Marc:Is this you?
Marc:Is this your number?
Marc:I'm like, just what?
Marc:So you got 30 seconds.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, come on.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:He goes.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I just figure he was he was legit on some level.
Marc:I mean, it wasn't great that he was calling me, but he was doing.
Marc:He says, look, man, back in I was I went to Emerson College.
Marc:It was like before school even started.
Marc:I had a crush on this girl.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I just saw this girl and I really liked her.
Marc:And and, you know, we ended up like, you know, having lunch one day.
Marc:I'm paraphrasing a story.
Marc:And she decided it wasn't scary that we could hang out one night.
Marc:We went to Harvard Square.
Marc:I was like 17 or 18 years old.
Marc:The guy's 45 now.
Marc:So what is that?
Marc:20, 30 years ago?
Marc:Almost 30 years ago?
Marc:We're walking around Harvard Square.
Marc:The doorman at Catch a Rising Star says, you want to go to a comedy show?
Marc:I didn't know if I was old enough or whatever, but we got in.
Marc:They walked us in.
Marc:This is the first night he's with this girl.
Marc:He says he walked in.
Marc:They see him right up front.
Marc:And he says he's with this girl he doesn't really know.
Marc:It's like a first date.
Marc:So the guy, the doorman, probably thought he was doing him a favor.
Marc:He said the first guy on stage was me, and I did about five minutes of material, then I just opened up on him.
Marc:And I just fucking ripped into him for 15 minutes.
Marc:He said it was devastating.
Marc:Just leveled him.
Marc:And at that point, what was that?
Marc:That long ago, I must have been just a fucking bully.
Marc:I probably for no reason just eviscerated this guy.
Marc:Is that the word?
Marc:But apparently after the show, this woman who this was their first date said, you didn't cry.
Marc:You didn't you didn't fall apart.
Marc:You didn't come unhinged.
Marc:You didn't.
Marc:And she said, I'm going to marry you someday.
Marc:And now they've been married for like like over 25 years.
Marc:And he just wanted to call me because it reminded him, I guess, to thank me.
Marc:I said, how'd you get my number?
Marc:He says, I'm a crazy agent guy.
Marc:I've got everyone's number.
Marc:But that was nice.
Marc:I guess it was a little weird, a little without boundary.
Marc:But it's rare that, you know, you're a complete dick and it brings people together.
Marc:And that's a lasting bond.
Marc:I'm sure I didn't have anything to do with the with the thing lasting.
Marc:But anyway, that was that story.
Marc:And that was that email.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So John Bernthal.
Marc:I always liked him on screen.
Marc:I always liked Jon Bernthal on screen, and I was happy to talk to him.
Marc:He seemed intense.
Marc:I was wondering, you know, what was in there?
Marc:What's in that guy?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:He's in The Punisher.
Marc:He is The Punisher.
Marc:The third season of The Punisher is now available on Netflix, and you can stream all the seasons right now.
Marc:And this is me talking to the nicer than you think, Jon Bernthal.
The Punisher
Marc:So Ojai, when did you move up there?
Marc:How long you lived up there?
Guest:You know, I moved up there.
Guest:We'd been there about five years.
Guest:I did a movie.
Guest:I did this movie, Sicario, just a small part, and Emily Blunt was in it.
Marc:Yeah, you were a morally bankrupt fucker.
Marc:It's kind of my thing, man.
Guest:It's kind of my MO.
Guest:But she lived up there, and I'd been in Venice for...
Guest:years, you know, since, since about 2003.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and, and, and, you know, I had three kids at this point and really sort of wanted a big life change.
Guest:And I was talking to, to Emily about it and she said, you know, make the move to, Oh hi, it's incredible.
Guest:We went up there and I saw a house.
Guest:I fell in love with it.
Guest:And, and that was kind of it.
Guest:And then the second I moved up there, she moved out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It wasn't, it wasn't that serious.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I don't know, man.
Marc:I, so you drove down here today.
Guest:I drove in last night.
Guest:I actually saw some friends last night, which is something I never, ever do.
Guest:You had a good excuse?
Guest:Some old friends.
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:I went to a really cool bar at Union Station called The Streamliner.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Completely untouched from back in the day.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:One of those old-timey drinking bars?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I don't drink, man, but it was cool to sort of be there, and then when everybody gets drunk, I take off.
Guest:You never drank?
Guest:I definitely did.
Guest:Yeah, I definitely did, but no longer.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No longer, yeah.
Marc:You got sober.
Guest:uh yeah yeah yeah in in in some ways i mean i i i uh i still will uh smoke a little marijuana from time to time you know what i mean sometimes right oh so it's not like you're not like because i have been sober a long time you're not like no nothing it was it was really for me a um a big a big big kind of life change that kind of all happened at once and and
Guest:The drinking wasn't necessarily my problem, but it was the things that would happen when I drank.
Guest:I guess that's the same for fucking everybody, but I really needed to cut the other shit out, so drinking helped with that.
Marc:Sure, right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was a few days.
Guest:Yeah, you know, I mean, it was right around 2009.
Guest:It was July 3rd, 2009.
Guest:I'd gotten in a bunch of trouble sort of growing up.
Guest:Kind of different episodes of some...
Guest:you know street street violence you know and and there was one more thing and it was just it happened at a time in my life where it just I it just had no excuse to you too old for that shit and way too old then and uh it was weird that it was kind of like an acute sort of thing and I it it was uh you know this this one event happened and that was kind of it I had a real honest conversation with myself and oh yeah it's just done
Marc:Well, because you probably realize like, well, that's the thing I always realize is that when you're doing shit, you sort of, your odds of getting, you know, fucking dying one way or the other or getting into trouble that you can't get out of is exponentially much higher.
Guest:100%.
Guest:And especially when you've been in trouble and when you've been in that situation and you've lost friends and you've seen all this shit and you just keep on pushing it and pushing it and pushing it.
Guest:And then sometimes it's something that maybe compared to other shit you've done is quite benign.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But this one thing for this one reason, it's all about fucking timing.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You know, something happens and you stare yourself in the face and you talk to somebody else and you're just like, hey man, you get me out of this one.
Guest:I'm fucking done.
Guest:And that's what happened to me.
Guest:And really everything in my life shifted after that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know how many of those you get that get me out of this one.
Guest:Such a blessing if you get it and you're aware of it and you actually do something about it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Well, wait, so you were some sort of fuck-up kid?
Marc:Yeah, look, man.
Marc:Where'd you grow up?
Marc:I grew up in D.C., Washington, D.C.
Marc:Do you know D.C.
Marc:?
Marc:A little.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I know I've been to the city a few times.
Marc:I've been to Alexandria a few times.
Marc:I wouldn't know it to sort of like if you were to start naming neighborhoods, I wouldn't know it.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But it wasn't like you grew up, you know, in the bad side of town or anything.
Guest:No, I mean, D.C.
Guest:was a crazy place, man.
Guest:I absolutely didn't.
Guest:You know, I came from a really, really good home, a lot of support, you know, great parents, great brothers.
Guest:My parents were also foster parents.
Guest:They brought in kids.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Wait, so what was the family business?
Guest:So my old man was a lawyer, but he kind of built himself up.
Guest:He sort of got from Syracuse.
Guest:He's sort of a blue-collar guy.
Guest:And then he became a lawyer and became more and more and more and more successful as we got older, which was kind of a crazy thing to see.
Guest:His own firm?
Guest:No, no, nothing like that.
Guest:Nothing like that.
Guest:But, you know, he...
Guest:It's funny because he was one of those self-hating lawyers.
Guest:Look, deep down, he came from a very different world.
Guest:I think growing up, he looked at lawyers with their fancy cars and their fancy houses and all this bullshit.
Guest:Nobody hated a lawyer more than him.
Guest:Slowly but surely, he became exactly that as we got older.
Guest:A slippery slope.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Marc:It starts to look good and feel good.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And, you know, he ended up he ended up giving it all up.
Guest:And, you know, he retired and dedicated his life to the Humane Society.
Guest:Then he was the chairman of the board of the Humane Society.
Guest:Animal guy.
Guest:It's a big time.
Guest:It loves animals way more than people, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you get it.
Marc:So his family.
Marc:And does your mom work?
Guest:My mom worked with troubled teens, clinical psychoanalyst, social worker, all that.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Social work, it fascinates me.
Marc:I don't think they get enough credit.
Guest:I totally agree, man.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I think D.C.
Guest:at the time, when you look at D.C.
Guest:in the 80s and the 90s, it was an extremely rough city and a fascinating city.
Guest:A conglomeration of all these different kinds of people coming together and...
Guest:You know, I found that, you know, very small city, too.
Guest:So we're all kind of on top of each other.
Guest:And if you're sort of an adventure, it doesn't really matter what part of D.C.
Guest:you grow up in.
Guest:If you have a sort of knack for adventure and you want to get into shit, it's all right there.
Marc:But you were the one in your family.
Guest:I mean, how many brothers and sisters do you have?
Guest:I have two blood brothers, and they're both enormously successful guys.
Guest:I got a little brother who's an orthopedic oncologist, a surgeon at UCLA, like Princeton, basketball player.
Marc:You guys get along?
Guest:They're my best friends in the world.
Marc:And what's the other brother do?
Guest:Super successful businessman.
Guest:What was in journalism, he was a producer for NBC, won a bunch of Emmys and left and started a market research company.
Marc:Were here in New York or here?
Guest:All here.
Guest:We all lived in Venice.
Guest:Then my four best friends from D.C., we all moved out to Venice.
Guest:What about your folks?
Guest:They are back in D.C., but they come out a lot.
Marc:So they're originally from upstate New York, you old man?
Marc:My old man, yeah.
Marc:From working class Jews?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:From the peasant stock?
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:Ashkenazi alpha Jew?
Marc:Big time, brother.
Marc:Big time.
Marc:Big time.
Marc:Big time.
Marc:Mobsters and plumbers.
Guest:That's exactly- You fucking hit it on the head.
Guest:That's all I'm going to say about that, but you hit it, brother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So what about your mom?
Marc:Is that the same thing?
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:You know, my mom's family is interesting.
Guest:They're, you know, Texas and Missouri.
Guest:Jews?
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:And like really, you know... I love that, man.
Guest:Farmers and soldiers and, you know... Isn't that wild?
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:It's funny because it's like the idea where I grew up and how I grew up, there weren't Jewish culture.
Guest:To me, it seemed much more of a New York thing.
Marc:Yeah, an upper class too.
Marc:There's that moment where you realize as a Jew that the generations had to come up to that.
Marc:And there's all these, you know, just I remember I worked at a Jewish deli outside of Boston when I was in college.
Marc:It's an old Jewish deli.
Marc:And these guys, cops would come in, Jewish cops.
Marc:And it's like there was a whole generation before our parents generation that really scrapped.
Marc:There was a bunch of Jewish boxers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My my my my dad's uncle was Golden Gloves champion in New York.
Guest:You know, they you know, they every day walking to school, they had to fight the Italian kids.
Guest:And those are the stories that I grew up in.
Guest:You know, they're you know, they were they were you know, I cut cousins who were robbing banks, you know, the whole thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and it was a very different.
Marc:It's a sobering thing as a Jew to realize that, like, it makes you feel good.
Marc:Like, you know what I mean?
Marc:Like, we're not all rich assholes.
Guest:That's right, brother.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:I talked to Tim Blake Nilsson.
Marc:He's Oklahoma Jew.
Marc:Wow, I didn't know Jews.
Marc:I know, man.
Marc:His parents got out under the Nazi thing and they were relocated by that agency.
Marc:It's an old organization that was designed to get Jews out of the pogroms and integrated into the states, but they spread everybody out because they knew that they were going to come to get us at some point.
Marc:So if we could relocate everybody in different parts, they'd have less of a shot at getting all of us.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So his family ended up in Oklahoma City and they became oil Jews.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:He was a wildcatter.
Marc:His grandfather, his maternal grandfather was out drilling oil wells and then became a huge oil guy.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Isn't that crazy?
Marc:Missouri and Texas Jews.
Marc:I know Texas Jews.
Marc:Do you?
Marc:El Paso, Houston.
Marc:El Paso had a big Jewish community.
Marc:I grew up in New Mexico.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:No, I know that.
Marc:So you do?
Marc:Did you do some research?
Guest:No, man.
Guest:I'm a huge fan of your show.
Guest:I love your show, man.
Guest:And it's funny because Tim, he's the next one.
Guest:I skipped over that and listened to Maggie.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:I love that interview.
Marc:Well, the thing about Tim, I didn't know anything because you just make assumptions about people.
Marc:100%.
Marc:And then I did a little research and I'm like, what the fuck?
Marc:And he's a very eloquent, kind of mild-mannered Jewish guy from Oklahoma.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Does he have an accent in real life?
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, he sure does.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:All right, so you're growing up the black sheep, the troublemaker, and the lawyer's kid who's got problems.
Marc:Is that you?
Guest:I'd say that's fair, man.
Guest:I'd say that's fair.
Guest:I think, you know, it's-
Guest:I really had, I really had, and I think what it comes down to is all kinds of deep, deep fears and shit like that and all kinds of, you know, confusion.
Guest:But, you know, I really was sort of fascinated at a young age with violence and I was in this really, really ultra violent city and I was in ways protected by it in ways when I think of now my own kids living in a teeny town like Ojai and
Guest:and I look at the way I grew up, you know, I mean, I was, I started, it didn't seem scary or anything to me at the time, but, you know, I started getting mugged, you know, when I was probably 10, you know what I mean?
Guest:And, you know, taking the subway and the bus to school, you know, just shit that kids don't really do anymore.
Guest:And, you know, I was always sort of attracted and wanted to be best friends with the kids that, you know, at first it was the kid that carried the switchblade.
Guest:Then it was the kid
Guest:that was dealing crack.
Guest:Then it was the kids who carried guns.
Guest:And I just, I always, that was sort of my thing.
Guest:And I had this core of best friends that are still my best friends who are all successful guys in their own right and really got out of that.
Guest:But we just had a fucking nose for trouble, man.
Guest:And it was just, we loved each other and we got each other's back.
Guest:And I think for young men, it's a strange thing because we grew up at this time where our way of...
Guest:telling each other we loved each other and kind of making love to each other, for lack of a better word, was to sort of engage in these kinds of street feists with people and to stand up to anybody who wanted to and get each other's backs.
Marc:Create the bond of loyalty.
Guest:This shit, man.
Guest:And it just, it stayed with us way too fucking long in this totally like- But we weren't like, it wasn't like you were in public school, were you?
Guest:No, but we were, I mean, DC's a strange place because you have conglomeration of kids.
Guest:I mean, the school that I went to,
Guest:And now, strangely, is where the Obama daughters ended up.
Guest:It's called Sidwell.
Guest:And it was a Quaker school, which was fucking nuts.
Marc:But that's one of those aristocratic prep schools, right?
Guest:Kind of, yeah.
Guest:I mean, the way that the school worked when I was going is that 30% of the kids would pay for the other 70% to go.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Marc:So it wasn't really a prep school.
Guest:It was, but it was, you know, really some of the main tenets of Quakerism, which I find fascinating, are diversity.
Guest:And it wasn't just racially diverse or socioeconomically diverse, but, you know, there was a huge pressure for behavioral diversity.
Guest:And kids who got kicked out of public schools could come to this school.
Guest:And there was this whole idea there that...
Guest:within this sort of utopian community, these kids who were dealing with real shit outside of the school, everything, you were supported there.
Guest:And it was all about conflict resolution.
Guest:And it was this place where everybody could come together and feel loved.
Guest:And what you had is on campus, these kids who were engaging in real shit outside of school were really kind of proud and happy to be there.
Guest:And interestingly, what happened to that school
Guest:uh you know when bill clinton won the election you know he he he brought chelsea to dc and it was this thing where you know the dc public school system at that time was just a fucking i mean it was you know the secret service looked at what those schools were like they said we cannot send chelsea how can we secure this child that's right and uh you know the and and and you know they they took a look and you know
Guest:Clinton had done so much for the public school system in Little Rock, and they looked politically, you know, where do we send her?
Guest:Because if we send her to one of these sort of hoity-toity private schools, it's not going to look good.
Guest:And they looked at our school, and they said, wow, it's so diverse, and they got all kinds of kids, let's send them there.
Guest:And then the Secret Service took a closer look, and they looked at some of these kids, and they have legitimate criminal records and shit like that.
Guest:And what was crazy is that in the 150-year history of the school,
Guest:There had never been an expulsion ever.
Guest:All disciplinary measures were student run.
Guest:And, you know, the students, it was really a community of support.
Guest:And what happened was when the national media spotlight was sort of focused on this school in a two year period.
Guest:they kicked out like half the African-American males.
Guest:They brought in a new administration.
Guest:They just started kicking these kids out left and right.
Guest:And it was this crazy fucking, this crazy contradiction, this crazy, you know, it was everything that we had been inundated with.
Marc:What was it, a business move?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I think really what it was was PR.
Guest:And all of a sudden, now that you have the president's kid there, all of a sudden we'll get a different... You'll have more kids maybe paying full flight.
Guest:And I'm not exactly sure what it was.
Guest:But I know that right before our eyes, I think... You were there?
Guest:I was there, man.
Guest:And I think that high school...
Guest:is always a sort of coming-of-age time, and you start to see a lot about how the real world works.
Guest:In D.C., you see a lot when you're really young, but the absolute hypocrisy and sort of institutionalized racism that took place from this institution that we totally believed in and totally preached... I mean, we sang the Black National Anthem in that school.
Guest:We were...
Guest:absolutely inundated.
Marc:And the kids believed in it.
Guest:Big time, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what was interesting is the one sort of bit of the institution that they couldn't touch is, I don't know if you know anything about Quakerism, but one of the things I really dig about it is, you know, there's no hierarchy in that religion, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So there's no, there's no priest, there's no, so the way you pray is you all sit in silence and if that of God moves any of you, anybody can get up and address the congregation at any time.
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:So there's no, you know, there's no leaders, no followers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So once a week for sort of my entire upbringing, the entire school body, buildings and grounds, security, coaches, teachers, students, all sat in silence.
Guest:And if anybody was moved, they would go and they could address the entire community.
Guest:Did you preach at times?
Guest:I preached once.
Guest:I got up once, man.
Guest:I got up once.
Marc:Because you felt God...
Guest:You know, the time that I don't think I've ever fucking talked about, the time that I got up was, you know, I was sort of in and out of trouble with the law a bunch, even in high school.
Guest:A lot of fighting and bullshit and always in trouble with the school, always, you know, about to get kicked out.
Guest:Usually fighting?
Guest:A lot of that, a lot of that.
Guest:Shoplifting?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was younger.
Guest:That was sort of a younger thing.
Guest:Car theft?
Guest:No, never stole a car.
Guest:We took the subway, man.
Guest:You don't want to fuck around with a car.
Guest:But I remember there was a guy, I was out in Maryland, and D.C.
Guest:is interesting because you have these pockets of Maryland and Virginia right there, and you can be in D.C., and then all of a sudden you can be in this little spot in Maryland or Virginia, and it's like all of a sudden you're in the deep south, you know?
Guest:You know, it's so crazy where that is.
Guest:And we were in a spot like that and I remember a man was there and started going after, we were playing basketball, went after one of my friend's little brothers and grabbed him and threw him on the ground and we tried to get him off and he ran away.
Guest:And I remember I went into a pay phone and I called the police
Guest:And I was so ashamed that I snitched on this guy.
Guest:And this is how fucking crazy my head is.
Guest:The outlaw code.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And that's what I got up and talked about.
Guest:It's fucking embarrassing.
Guest:I just admitted that.
Marc:No, it's a weird... Loyalty among thieves.
Marc:I guess so, man.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:I mean, not even thieves.
Marc:But no, I understand the predicament.
Marc:You know, man... There was part of you that thought, you know, we should have handled this.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:I guess so.
Marc:And think about the... If you had beat the shit out of him, would you have felt better?
Guest:I don't think I would have got up in meeting for worship.
Guest:Yeah, you know what I mean?
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:But I just... Look, I'm extremely grateful for how I grew up.
Guest:And I think that the challenge now is...
Guest:I think being an artist, I think that by itself saved my life, changed the course of my life.
Marc:Sure, but let me ask you something, though, about the impulse.
Marc:When you guys were together, when you guys were fighting other dudes, do you see yourself as somebody who was a bully or just somebody who was fighting like-minded people?
Guest:We were that was the thing with us.
Guest:You know, we were the guys that we sort of our school was sort of the we were the underdogs.
Guest:We were the laughingstock.
Guest:We're the guys who our football team had never won a homecoming game in 100 years.
Guest:You were on the football team?
Guest:I was.
Guest:I was.
Guest:And I grew up with these guys.
Guest:And our one team.
Marc:It's rare that a football player is the underdog in high school.
Guest:Well, compared to the other schools.
Guest:Because they were smart.
Marc:Oh, just in school.
Guest:Right, compared to the other school.
Guest:It was never within our school.
Guest:It was always other schools.
Guest:And they would all, you know, we were never, you know, my best friend, my best friend growing up, Greg Zumas, you know, he grew up his...
Guest:His mom's a brilliant writer, you know, would write for the New Yorker and his sister.
Guest:His sister's a great writer.
Guest:And, you know, he grew up in this like unbelievably sort of progressive feminist home.
Guest:And, you know, his mother's a Buddhist.
Guest:And he was this guy.
Guest:He never cursed.
Guest:He never, but like literally one of the most legendary street fighters in the history of D.C.
Guest:And he was one of these guys that never raised his voice.
Guest:But when it was this thing like, hey, if you guys want to do this.
Guest:But we were never the guys that look for it.
Guest:Never.
Guest:We were never.
Guest:We were just always willing, willing participants.
Marc:But it's funny because it seems like you had a relatively, you know, thoughtful, progressive, like, you know, moral Jewish upbringing.
Marc:And, you know, he did, too.
Marc:Like, I guess there's a sort of like if you've got it in you to push back on that.
Marc:I mean, like I like I guess I did it, but not in a fighting way.
Marc:But, you know.
Marc:For me, I liked gravitating to charismatic fuckheads.
Marc:And I think my dad was kind of a charismatic fuckhead.
Marc:But the thing was, I was never a fighter.
Marc:But there's room in the progressive sort of upbringing where you're sort of like, well, I'm going to push the envelope this way.
Guest:That's it.
Marc:You have the freedom to do that because you're not being disciplined like regular fucking parents.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And look, man, to rebel is to rebel.
Guest:And I think like, you know, violence is some sort of disruption.
Guest:You want to disrupt.
Guest:You want to disturb.
Guest:And that can be something that you're doing to yourself.
Guest:It can be something, you know, that you're willing to participate in when it's with someone else.
Marc:But you had this, I mean, you must have at some point, I mean, what were your parents' reactions to this?
Marc:You have some other thing in you.
Marc:I mean, you have whatever they, you know, whatever makes your brother an orthopedic surgeon, you know, you have that as well.
Marc:So how are they reacting to all this shit?
Guest:You know, look, you know, my brothers have said it before.
Guest:I can, you know, especially as a parent now, I cannot believe the patients that they fucking had with me.
Guest:I mean, you know, there were times literally, you know, I remember my mother saying,
Guest:you know, my poor mom, my mother having to, you know, looking down the block, looking at what police, what cars are coming out, seeing if it was policemen telling her to hide, telling me to hide behind the kitchen counter, you know, really?
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:And, and I, but I remember like, you know, it's very progressive, but here's the thing, you know what I mean?
Guest:But the thing is, is that, you know, like it,
Guest:really was they really always did see something in me i always felt loved by them i always felt supported by them and and and you know when i said to them i mean it's it's also just sort of a good life lesson of setting the bar really fucking low because you know i think a lot of kids who may have grown up the way i did if they said hey i want to be an artist i want to be an actor their parents would say i fucking paid for this educate there's no way you're doing that but all my folks were like great yeah he wants to do something he wants to do
Marc:He's not going to end up in jail.
Marc:I mean, I mean, I guess that's really the fear is that, you know, you've got this kid that that is this way.
Marc:You know, how do we stop him from doing himself in for life?
Marc:So what was the white light moment that enabled you to find this other way?
Guest:I think it all started for me.
Guest:My mother had done a little bit of acting in college, and she always told me, you're an actor.
Guest:She always told me that you could do it.
Marc:You got to be a pretty good bullshit artist to be a criminal in a progressive Jewish house.
Marc:You got to sell some line of bullshit to your parents.
Guest:Right, right, right, right.
Guest:But, you know, man, I went to a small liberal arts college in upstate New York.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:It's called Skidmore.
Guest:I know that one.
Guest:That's good school, right?
Guest:Yeah, pretty good.
Guest:I played baseball.
Guest:That's how I got in.
Guest:I ended up taking an acting class.
Guest:There was a woman there named Alma Becker.
Marc:So you were the jock in the acting class?
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:And I took the class totally...
Guest:Just because it would be easy.
Guest:Just get rid of a fucking requirement.
Guest:And me being the asshole I was, I thought I was taking a class.
Guest:It was going to be 300 people watching movies, you know, and I ended up with 10 theater majors.
Guest:I signed up for the wrong fucking thing.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:So you're kind of a dick.
Guest:Total idiot.
Guest:Total idiot.
Guest:But I ended up in this class and, you know, the...
Guest:Alma saw something in me.
Guest:She really saved my life, man.
Guest:She put me in my first play.
Guest:She was the one when I couldn't finish school.
Guest:I had gotten into some trouble.
Guest:I couldn't finish school.
Guest:What trouble there?
Guest:I had gotten in trouble back before I'd gone to college and was sort of hanging over me the whole time I was there.
Guest:You got busted?
Guest:There was a fight, yeah, a fight before I went to school.
Guest:Hanging over you?
Guest:Hanging over me.
Marc:And then... You mean you had to do time or you're on probation or what?
Guest:Probation.
Guest:And so I went to Alma and I said, hey, look, I really want to do this.
Guest:I really want to be an actor.
Guest:And she arranged for me to move to Russia and audition for the Moscow Art Theater.
Guest:And...
Guest:I think that event and Alma seeing that in me really changed everything.
Marc:So when we took the class, it was just a year with her initially?
Marc:It was a year with her initially.
Marc:And what were you learning?
Marc:So you're this guy, you've got this attitude, and you get to this class, and then what do you see that makes you realize that I can do this?
Guest:I think that there was an energy that
Guest:an energy of adventure and an energy of abandonment oh that didn't require beating people up like you could get up there and pretend and you know it's all very immediate go fucking nuts man yeah you could dive into this and it was just as chaotic just as dangerous as anything i'd ever done except now people were supporting me there's a context yeah that that is not some sort of outlaw code
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:And no, you know, and it was just as dangerous.
Guest:It was just as exciting.
Marc:Because it was terrifying to go up there and what, to be open or to try to do things?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And to get up in front of an audience.
Guest:And, you know, I think it's something, I mean, to this day when I think about, you know, stand up, you know, one of my best friends is a...
Guest:A guy who I grew up boxing with, he's a stand-up comedian named Sean Kerrigan and pro fighter, undefeated pro fighter.
Guest:And I really looked at the link between being a boxer and being a comedian.
Guest:And it's one of the things, just to go up there and that risk that you take and the danger and that anything can fucking happen, you can fucking get killed up there.
Guest:And it's such a, I'm so envious of it.
Guest:Or you can just die.
Guest:Or it can just be fucking lame.
Guest:But I just think any high stakes situation, it was something that I got a huge rush off of.
Guest:And then I realized, wow, for the first time in my life, adults and peers are looking at me and saying, hey, you're pretty good at this.
Guest:You're not like a total fuck up.
Marc:Yeah, and you're doing something creative, and depending on what you're doing, there's meaning and lessons in it.
Guest:I think that's right.
Marc:But yeah, but I know the juice you feel when you first get up there.
Marc:It's usually about, like, am I going to look like an asshole?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:You know, like, am I going to make a fool out of myself?
Marc:And you do, right?
Marc:And then you start to integrate that.
Marc:Because I think, I imagine with somebody like you, I'm not a psychoanalyst, that the fear of looking, of embarrassment had to be a big thing.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, like, you know, I'll be honest with you.
Guest:I was always kind of an outsider in that theater.
Guest:I mean, I was the guy showing up, you know, in a baseball uniform or, you know, going to practice right after.
Marc:Scaring the fragile people.
Guest:But see, it was really the other way.
Guest:They scared me, man.
Marc:And I think that's the coolest part of it.
Marc:Did they know that?
Guest:You know, I don't know.
Guest:You know, I don't know.
Guest:I think that- It was like an after school movie.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I just... You know, that theater specifically in that theater department... At Skidmore.
Guest:At Skidmore was really sort of steeped in the avant-garde theater scene.
Guest:There's a... The head of the department was this guy, Gautam Dasgupta, who was a huge dramaturg in the 60s and in the avant-garde theater.
Marc:So you had... So like what, Julian Beck Living Theater, Theater Cruelty.
Guest:Richard Foreman.
Guest:Oh, Foreman, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so like my...
Guest:And basically, I had these two things kind of pulling at me.
Guest:I had Alma, who was this teacher.
Guest:I mean, once I got the bug, that was it, man.
Guest:I was in a play.
Guest:I was in a play every second from then on.
Guest:What was the first play?
Guest:The Scarlet Letter.
Guest:I played Chillingworth.
Guest:So you quit the team?
Guest:Quit the team.
Guest:I got involved with this theater company.
Guest:We all lived in a house together.
Guest:And the theater company would do shows.
Guest:Well, in Saratoga.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We performed at this place called Cafe Lina, which was this little coffee shop in Saratoga Springs where Bob Dylan started.
Guest:It was just beautiful.
Guest:And we did these crazy fucking shows.
Guest:And then Richard Foreman saw our stuff and he had us do shows at the Ontological in New York.
Guest:So I would be in school and driving down to New York doing plays there.
Guest:And then we would start doing plays in D.C.
Guest:as well.
Guest:So I would be in the school play.
Guest:I'd be in the- Just you or the troupe?
Guest:The whole group.
Guest:The whole group.
Marc:So you did some Foreman stuff?
Guest:Yeah, we did Foreman stuff.
Marc:There's always a lot going on on stage with Foreman.
Guest:Big time, man.
Guest:Big time.
Marc:A lot of people, a lot going on.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, anything.
Guest:Masks, noises, you know what I mean?
Marc:All kinds of shit.
Marc:I saw one Foreman show and I was like, what the fuck?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was like your brain's trying to figure out what it's about and then you realize like, nah, don't, you know, just take it in.
Guest:Let it happen.
Guest:Just be there, man.
Guest:Just be there.
Guest:He's there controlling the lights like a puppet master.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:It's great, man.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:But I...
Guest:I really dug that in it, and I think that I'm enormously grateful to the time in Russia, and I think that's where I kind of became it.
Marc:How does that happen?
Marc:So Alma Becker, and what acting tools, or what were you learning?
Marc:What was the approach to the craft with her initially?
Guest:With her, she was...
Guest:I think more than anything else, when I think about Alma, she just, there was a vitality to it.
Guest:It was vital.
Guest:It was unbelievably and deeply important.
Guest:And I mean, look, the way that it kind of literally sparked for me, and I hate fucking, I feel like such a douchebag repeating myself, because I've told this story before, but I've told it to you.
Guest:The way that it kind of all started is one of the first...
Guest:uh, exercises that we had to do in that class before I had any idea that this was something I wanted to do.
Guest:Everybody had to bring in something that mattered to them and share it with the rest of the class, you know, like a game of fucking show and tell.
Guest:And I get there and the first girl, she has a blues traveler CD and she's, she's talking to the rest of the class about how her boyfriend gave her this blues traveler CD and she's crying her fucking eyes out.
Guest:And I'm like, this is the craziest girl I've ever seen.
Guest:Why is this CD so fucking important to her?
Guest:And for 15 minutes, she's going on about it.
Guest:And then the next person with a teddy bear, the same shit.
Guest:And I'm like, I just cannot believe how important this shit is.
Guest:But it's slowly dawning on me that in this fucking circle, it's going to come to me.
Guest:And I didn't bring anything.
Guest:I got nothing.
Guest:Did you have your baseball hat?
Guest:Well, what I did have, actually, I was going to baseball practice right afterwards.
Guest:I was a catcher, so I had my catcher's glove.
Guest:So I get my glove, and I just launch into this fucking story about how my mother had given me this glove on her deathbed.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Did she?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, she's alive and well in D.C., man.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And I'm just lying my fucking ass off.
Guest:But I look around the room and everyone is crying their fucking eyes out.
Guest:I'm crying my eyes out.
Guest:It's like this.
Guest:And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Guest:Hang on, man.
Guest:This is just the acting, you know?
Guest:And Alma...
Guest:She took me aside.
Guest:Did you cop to it?
Guest:I copped to it to Alma.
Guest:And Alma really, for all the shit I had done in my life, she made me, I just felt fucking awful about it.
Guest:But I think it was because I'd never exposed myself like that.
Guest:And...
Guest:And what she said is, you need to come audition for my play.
Guest:That was kind of my punishment.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:And, you know, it was with all these, you know, older theater majors who took it so seriously and lived it.
Guest:And they really, you know, they really welcomed me in and they saw something in me.
Guest:And then, you know, Alma really, I think above all else, there was just, she just, it was so, you know, she's this beautiful actor who came out of San Francisco, was in a bunch of Shepard plays, you know, original Shepard plays out of the Magic Theater in San Francisco.
Guest:Did you ever play Lee?
Guest:I did Fool for Love and I did- You did True West?
Guest:I didn't do True West.
Guest:No, I did Fool for Love and I did Cowboy Mouth.
Guest:Cowboy Mouth?
Guest:Yeah, we did scenes from it.
Guest:I did the whole play of Fool for Love.
Marc:But that's interesting to me that still, I'm a little hung up on the bullshit impact.
Marc:in the way that you're seeing these people and your brain just sort of like, what the fuck?
Marc:And then you go just make up something.
Marc:Full fucking bore.
Marc:But it does connect with you and you do have the feelings.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:So I imagine the sense of being a natural actor is that if you could pull that off, I guess my question is in that class,
Marc:that you feel like you got vulnerable, but you were still making something up.
Marc:Was there a point where, you know, you were able to access, you know, really who you were in the sense with true stories and stuff?
Guest:You know, I don't know that I said anything that was truthful in that class.
Guest:I do remember, I remember there's one part specifically where I just, and you know, now even thinking about it, it's so fucking ridiculous, but I,
Guest:how my brother and I would go and have a catch and think about mom, which is such a, it's like such a perverse thought, but because it's so thought out, but you know, the way that we would do, and I remembered, but seeing it and believing in it and having this kind of out of body experience and saying, I want more of this.
Guest:I want this.
Guest:This is all right.
Guest:And it wasn't,
Guest:You know, I had been in situations where I'm talking to a principal or an administrator where I'm lying through my teeth.
Guest:And if I got over on him, I'd walk out and be like, got him, you know, like bullet dodge.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But I, but I had also remember times.
Guest:I remember, I remember being a young kid and taken into the principal's office because I, like sixth grade, I had a switchblade and I had, you know, done something, pulled it on a kid, some shit.
Guest:And I remember the principal asking me about that and I had it in my pocket and, you know, breaking down in tears being like, I would never do that.
Guest:And it's right there, you know, like burning a hole in my pocket.
Guest:And I don't know, there was something different about, I didn't feel like it was as much as, you know, duping anybody.
Guest:I felt maybe what it was, was my mom who had always said, Hey man, you have this, you can do this.
Guest:And for the first time saying, you know, maybe, maybe I kind of can.
Marc:It's sort of funny to me because I've talked to a lot of actors and some of them will just basically say it's pretending.
Marc:That's what you're doing.
Marc:You're pretending.
Guest:Believing it fully.
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:And then I think then through diving all in the way that I did from that point on.
Marc:Well, what was the Russia thing?
Marc:How does that happen?
Marc:I never heard that before.
Marc:She just says go to Russia.
Guest:I mean, what was in Russia?
Guest:The Moscow Art Theater.
Guest:The Moscow Art Theater.
Guest:So I moved.
Guest:I lived in a place called Park Kulturi, which is Gorky Park.
Marc:They had a program for what, you were, what, second year of college?
Guest:No, no, it wasn't a college program.
Guest:It was just part of the Moscow Art Theater.
Guest:So you dropped out of school?
Guest:I was done, yeah.
Guest:Dropped out and went to Russia.
Guest:And she was supportive of that?
Guest:Big time.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:She was my advisor, too.
Marc:Alma was.
Marc:So you dropped out as a sophomore?
Guest:Junior.
Guest:Junior.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yep, junior year was my last year.
Marc:And you go to Russia.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:You told your parents, I want to do this thing, and they're like- This is what I want to do.
Guest:All right.
Guest:There was pro baseball over there.
Guest:I got on a pro baseball team, played a little bit of baseball.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:You found out in town where the pro baseball was?
Guest:It was part of the European Professional Baseball Federation.
Guest:I'm not even sure.
Guest:sure how I found that.
Guest:But school there was ridiculously all-encompassing.
Guest:How long were you there?
Guest:I was there the first time I was there a little over a year.
Guest:And then I went back because ART, Harvard's got a graduate school for acting.
Guest:They take their students to
Guest:to Russia to get taught for like a semester.
Marc:So you're in Russia the first time.
Marc:You're playing pro ball in Russia.
Marc:Is there a baseball card to you?
Marc:No, definitely not.
Marc:A Russian baseball card would be very great.
Guest:It would be awesome.
Marc:So all encompassing.
Marc:So what do you mean?
Marc:What is the training?
Marc:Because this is where
Marc:I believe probably, at least in Russia, where some of the big thinkers of modern acting happened.
Marc:It's everything, man.
Guest:100%.
Guest:Yeah, it's Chekhov's theater, Stanislavski's theater, Meyerhold, Michael Chekhov.
Guest:It's the theater.
Guest:And you're talking about...
Guest:A place where, you know, and my teachers kind of coming out of this world where, you know, all public gathering in Russia was outlawed.
Guest:You know, there were state-sanctioned theaters, the Moscow Art Theater being one of them.
Guest:But, you know, you had shows that were sanctioned by the state.
Guest:But once the government would start to sort of figure out, hey, this artist that we're celebrating that's doing these pro-Russian plays, there's actually something a little bit behind it there.
Guest:I don't know if we like this anymore.
Guest:And all of a sudden, these guys were getting assassinated and sent to Siberia.
Guest:Artists, you know, Meyerhold, a great, brilliant director of the Moscow Art Theater, was assassinated in his apartment.
Marc:For being subversive.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And at one time, completely celebrated by the state.
Guest:It was just a difference of opinion.
Guest:And, you know, my teachers, you know, they came from, you know, one of my teachers eager to avoid the war in Afghanistan.
Guest:He pretended to be crazy and lived three years in an insane asylum.
Guest:My three teachers.
Marc:That's a real commitment to a role.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:brother eager sergey and roman they the three best friends they all went to school together and they would do this play in secret called shinzano and basically what they would do is they would do it in subway tunnels and in different locations all around moscow and people would go and see it during communist times and if they had got caught they would have all been arrested right it was a play that just continued and continued and continued with them or with others
Guest:Always with them.
Guest:But when you think about the vitality, that thing that Alma was talking about, about how important this is and to take it so seriously and what is at stake, I think for me, a kind of rough and, you know, I thought of myself as this big, bad, tough guy from D.C.
Guest:to go to Moscow in the late 90s and to be taught by these motherfuckers who, you know, and to be in a city where you talk about dangerous, you talk about alive, you talk about wild.
Guest:You were out badass.
Guest:Oh, my God, man.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I mean, I learned very, very quick.
Guest:I was not in Kansas anymore.
Guest:But, you know, at the same time, you know, there was such a reverence for the arts there.
Marc:Well, like, what was the program?
Marc:Because, like, what strikes me is that, you know, when you get the American method, you know, there's all these middlemen, you know, like Uta Hagen and... Meisner.
Guest:Meisner and the other ones.
Guest:Strasburg.
Marc:Group theater.
Marc:All that work.
Marc:But they were taking, you know, I think maybe Strasbourg had met with Stanislavski.
Guest:It was based on one tour of the show.
Guest:So their first show was The Seagull.
Guest:Which one?
Marc:The group theater or who?
Guest:Moscow Art Theater.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, I got this tattoo here for it.
Guest:So that's the symbol of the Moscow Art Theater.
Guest:So basically the first show that they did was called The Seagull.
Guest:You know, Chekhov wrote it, obviously, and Stanislavski directed it and acted in it.
Guest:And they took this...
Guest:play on a world tour through england paris and then through new york chicago la and san francisco and it was just that for the first time actors you know not standing on the foot of the stage proclaiming to the audience but for the first time really talking to each other and wow they're really drinking tea and that motherfucker
Guest:just turned his back to the audience.
Guest:You know, this realism, naturalism, realism, whatever you want to call it, it drove people crazy.
Guest:And then it was all about how do we now sit down, how do we get this little bit of time that we have with this guy?
Guest:How do we translate his books, take the information that he has and make it our own?
Guest:And what I think is, look, man, I'm definitely no expert, but to me,
Guest:I think that is the process of coming up with an acting method.
Guest:We all have to have our own.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And it's all about taking in as much fucking information as we can and then figuring out what works for us.
Guest:And I think that's exactly what those guys did.
Marc:But you were there sort of at the source.
Marc:Like the people that you were working with were kind of direct legacies of that.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:But what was really interesting is there was no one method from them.
Guest:Look, you have to do acrobatics.
Guest:You have to do ballet.
Marc:Like what do you mean acrobatics?
Guest:So that's like in... Trapeze?
Guest:Um, no, no, it's not that kind of acrobatics.
Guest:It's, it's more about getting to be completely training your body to, you know, walk on your hands, to be able to do things with partners, to lift people and to be able to make, to, to, to, to make performance just out of body movement, to use props in a way, all that kind of stuff.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And then ballet as well.
Guest:You know, we'd have a Bolshoi ballerina.
Guest:She would come in and she would, and it,
Marc:How are you at the ballet?
Marc:You're pretty good.
Guest:I was all right.
Guest:I would be terrible now.
Guest:I've not kept up with it.
Marc:No one's asking you to use your ballet chops.
Guest:No, I'm waiting for that phone call to ring.
Marc:Next roll.
Guest:You're going to switch it up, man.
Marc:You're going to be the morally corrupt bloody guy for your entire career.
Marc:Oh, shit, man.
Guest:Shit, hell.
Marc:All right, so you're doing all that and you're doing plays in Moscow?
Guest:Yeah, doing plays in Moscow.
Guest:I mean, it's interesting.
Guest:In the first sort of section, in the first year, I mean, the way that Russian theater training works, it's quite different.
Guest:First of all, the teachers, the highest honor you can get as an actor in Russia is to be a teacher.
Guest:So my teacher, Oleg Tabakov, that would be like Robert De Niro or Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Guest:He's the teacher.
Guest:It's absolute reverence.
Guest:It's such an honor to do it.
Guest:It's not one of these things where...
Guest:You know, if it doesn't really work out.
Marc:You're not working out of a strip mall in West Hollywood.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That doesn't exist there.
Marc:A small black box situation.
Guest:Seven other people.
Guest:Which, hey, God bless them.
Guest:But, you know, it's very different there.
Guest:And I think it's, look, it's very brutal.
Guest:It's very cutthroat.
Guest:But it's extremely honest.
Guest:So, you know, there's a huge audition process.
Guest:And then when you get into the school, they cut the class in half every year.
Marc:How many were English speaking?
Guest:When I was there, when I was there, none.
Guest:I mean, there was one girl from England.
Guest:So you're just training in Russian?
Guest:Yeah, but I had a translator.
Guest:They provide a translator if you get into the school.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was wonderful.
Guest:And I was at the theater every night seeing plays in Russian, understanding every fucking thing because it was so clear.
Guest:People were playing their actions so clearly.
Guest:I mean, really, man, overall, you know, there was a, there was a, for lack of a better word, there's a, there's sort of just a masculinity to, to, to, to being an actor there and an artist there that for me at that time in my life really, really resonated with me.
Marc:Because it wasn't based in, in like outlaw bullshit.
Marc:It was a masculinity based in arts.
Guest:fuck yeah and and instead of sort of this coddling kind of hey we can do no wrong come come to the theater department where you know yes we're all great and wow beautiful it was you're not good at this get the fuck out you're good at this work harder and and uh i really responded to it it was it was much more athletic it was much more cut throat uh and it really really it really really worked with me and and uh i i'm i'm i'm will always be grateful to to it and
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you come back from Russia the first time, then you end up at Harvard?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they took their students over there to get taught by these Russian masters.
Guest:They saw me in a show and they asked me- The Harvard guys.
Guest:The ART.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're like, you want to come to Harvard?
Guest:I was like, shit, man.
Guest:I didn't even finish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went to Harvard.
Guest:Just to say I went to Harvard.
Guest:Just tell my old man I go to Harvard.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I can stop at
Guest:After that, you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah, and I had been playing baseball with a bunch of guys, some South Boston guys, crazy motherfuckers, man.
Guest:And so I lived with these guys while I was- If you went to Harvard living with guys from South Boston.
Guest:Brother, yeah.
Guest:I mean-
Guest:Bunch of Wahlbergs.
Guest:Oh, dude.
Guest:Dude.
Guest:And, you know, so that was a crazy experience.
Marc:I lived up there.
Marc:Those guys were rough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:Crazy.
Marc:So you had a new crew.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Totally new crew.
Guest:And I was kind of, you know, I still, and I still stupidly kind of had one foot out, one foot and one foot out.
Guest:But I knew as far as.
Guest:This acting thing, that was it for me.
Marc:Well, that's funny about that one foot because if you got the right guys going, come on.
Guest:That's it, man.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:All right.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:But what was crazy is all my friends always, whether they were athlete friends or criminal friends or through my whole life,
Guest:They always supported me doing this and they always, you know, I'll never forget when my baseball team, when my college baseball team saw me in my first show in the Scarlet Letter, they all came and they all say, Hey, you suck at baseball compared to this.
Guest:Like you can do this, man.
Guest:And that felt that really, you know, there was never, yeah.
Guest:And there was never this sort of thing of like, Oh, you're a pussy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:None of that shit, man.
Guest:I never, that, that never happened.
Guest:Never happened.
Marc:So, like, the thing I was going to ask you, where's your Jewish roots from?
Marc:Are they Russian?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What kind of Jew are you at this point?
Guest:Never.
Guest:I mean, you know, man.
Marc:Were you bar mitzvahed?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I'm bad.
Guest:I'm bad.
Marc:But was it an option or your family just didn't give a shit?
Guest:I think I could if I wanted to do it.
Guest:Were you brothers?
Guest:One of my brothers was, you know, and I think that, you know, for me, I just, yeah, it was not even on the radar.
Marc:Were you fascinated at all with the genealogy of you and being in Russia or did you have any connection that way?
Marc:Did you see people that look like you kind of or, you know, I guess most of the Jews.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, honestly, I was fascinated by being in Russia.
Guest:I was fascinated by, you know, that place was such a, I mean, it was while I was there, it was the Wild West.
Guest:And I think that, you know, the brutality and the danger, things that are always really fascinating.
Guest:You know, there were shootouts at the door while I was there.
Guest:That was your religion.
Guest:That was my thing.
Guest:So that I was just like, holy shit.
Guest:But at the same time, again, I think this, you know, you get on the subway there and you got people reading Bogalkov and Tolstoy.
Guest:It's not us weekly and fucking people, you know, like there's this absolute reverence and respect for the arts and for literature and for Russian actors and Russian, you know, my best friend there is this guy named Dima who, you know, I lived in this really shitty part of town called Park Kulturi and every night when I'd walk home,
Guest:Him and his buddies, they would be, like, drinking a two-liter bottle of vodka, and they'd call me Bloodhound Gang because they said I look like the guy from Bloodhound Gang.
Guest:They just make fun of me every night.
Guest:And one night, I saw him in a fight with a couple skinheads, and there were three of them and one of him.
Guest:And for some reason, I decided to go help the guy out.
Guest:For some reason, you're like, eh, finally.
Guest:No, no, no, not at all, man.
Guest:I'm not—
Guest:But I helped him out, and he and I became really close.
Guest:He was just this guy who is basically this street kid.
Guest:But he knew every member of the Moscow Art Theater.
Guest:He knew everything that was at the Bolshoi.
Guest:He went to the Taganka Theater.
Guest:He was just steeped in it.
Guest:That was his thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But that was the thing there.
Guest:It was not like this kind of highbrow.
Guest:The theater was not for rich subscribers who are all falling asleep during shows.
Guest:It was vital, like you were saying.
Guest:Fucking vital, man.
Guest:And, you know, there's not a single free seat at any theater.
Guest:There's no fire code.
Guest:So people are sitting on the steps and people have to get in there.
Guest:And the seats are enormously cheap.
Guest:And, you know, just the way of doing, you know, when you do a show in Russia, the way it works is you decide to do the play and then you rehearse it.
Guest:open-ended until the director says it's time to go up.
Marc:But when you were acting, you were speaking English.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I did some scene work.
Guest:After a while, I started to pick it up, and I got okay.
Guest:But the scene work that I did and the plays that I did, I would act in English.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So when you go to Harvard, now ART, I know that area.
Marc:I lived in Boston for years.
Marc:So that's Harvard Square at that time before it was sort of gutted of its personality.
Marc:You still had the Tasty where you could get a hamburger on the corner, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All night.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that was it.
Marc:But you could always go to Somerville or wherever.
Marc:But so like, what were you?
Marc:Did you stand out there?
Marc:I mean, because it seems to me that like in terms of your disposition, you're pretty unique in acting in general.
Marc:I mean, did you find that that you were different than the rest of them when you were at Harvard?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:big time yeah big time i think even more so i think i think the only play the the place where i felt sort of the most kinship or the more the most where the other actors were sort of like me was in russia you know where the i it was really which was crazy because a lot of the people in russia were like you know from the from the mountains you know and they had their whole 16 people there's 16 people in their family living in their little dorm room eating off hot plots off of hot plates you know
Guest:nothing like me, but I felt such a kinship with them that, you know, I have nothing the same as you.
Guest:It's all on the line.
Guest:And like, you know, it wasn't the case.
Marc:So what'd you do at ART?
Guest:Uh, which plays?
Guest:Oh man, I did a lot.
Guest:Yeah, I did a lot.
Guest:You know, we did, uh, we did, um, Murat Saad, uh, with this great Hungarian director.
Guest:You know, ART is a really cool theater because it's real director driven and, uh, you know, it's, it's always, you know, uh, classic plays with, with, with real contemporary takes and great, great directors.
Guest:So,
Guest:You know, Robert Woodruff and Yanar Saz and Yuri Uriman came over from Russia, and we got to go back to Russia, but this time as an ART student, so all of a sudden you're in clean rooms and locked doors.
Guest:I saw a whole other side of Moscow, sort of the western side of it, which I did not like nearly as much.
Guest:But it was great to kind of go back and be the guy that had been there and sort of take all these kids through.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like I it was my home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You knew Russia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was really, you know, it's strange.
Guest:I when we landed in Russia as an A.R.T.
Guest:student, I remember just landing at the airport there.
Guest:And I just, you know, for no for no reason at all.
Guest:I just I just kind of broke down in tears, you know, and I wasn't.
Guest:You know, and I just kind of hid, and the place just... The place really is my heart, man.
Guest:And, you know, I loved it.
Guest:I loved it there.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:So you studied at Harvard for a couple years?
Guest:Yeah, and then I started doing all the shows there, and then, you know, you do like a showcase to get agents and all that stuff, and that's sort of like... At ART?
Guest:At ART.
Guest:Yeah, well, you go to New York and you do it.
Guest:So, you know, I got my agent, and then I boned out.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You didn't finish?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:You know, it was really one of those things that was...
Guest:I thought when I was... There's no offense to my fellow classmates there, but there was a lot of great people in that class, people I got really, really close with.
Guest:I really thought that when I got into that school and that I was going to that school, that I was really going to be... Like in Moscow, I was going to be with the best of the best.
Guest:And then when I saw everybody and I saw...
Guest:It really wasn't the case.
Guest:And the competition wasn't as defined.
Guest:I just thought, wow, we're going to have two years of people who just, you know, all we're going to do is just make the greatest shit ever.
Guest:And we're all going to dive into this and we're all going to want this so bad.
Guest:And it's really not what I found.
Guest:And then what I started to see in the second year, you know, a lot of the kids were sort of saying, hey, this isn't fair.
Guest:You know, some people are getting more roles than others.
Guest:It was just this shit that I just couldn't.
Guest:I just couldn't wrap my head around, especially after my experience in Russia, which is a total meritocracy.
Guest:And so what I did is I snuck out of school one day.
Guest:You can never miss, but I snuck.
Guest:I called in sick and I snuck down to D.C.
Guest:and auditioned for This Is Our Youth.
Guest:They were doing it at the Studio Theater, the Kenny Lonergan play.
Guest:And so I went back to my school and I said, hey, listen, I...
Guest:you know, like I know we have another semester, but I got this play and I think I can get more out of going to do this play.
Guest:And they actually were really cool about it.
Guest:They said they understood and they wish me well.
Guest:And the truth is I couldn't have gotten a degree from there anyway because I didn't have a college degree.
Guest:So it was, it all worked out.
Guest:And yeah, and then I did that and then went straight to doing a play at the Ontological with my old theater company.
Guest:And then I started to slowly but surely started to work in film and TV, which I really.
Marc:But how long did you, like, were you living in New York?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Living in New York.
Guest:Uh, I didn't really have a, you know, my first, my first sort of half year in New York didn't even have a place to stay.
Guest:I was kind of couch surfing and.
Marc:Were you doing like little shitty plays or not shitty plays, but little kind of like a off Broadway kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I was doing stuff.
Guest:I, you know, we did Arturo Uy, the Breck play, uh, with, with my theater company.
Guest:It was right at the theater company.
Guest:The same theater company- Oh, the guys from Skidmore.
Guest:Yeah, because they had moved down to New York and they had- Oh, okay.
Guest:Now they've got this theater called the Bushwick Star, but this was Bushwick back in the 90s.
Guest:It was a very, very different place than my theater company.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:It was called Fovia Floods Theater Company.
Guest:This genius writer-director named Josh Chambers would write all his own plays and choreograph them and then went on to-
Guest:direct plays in Europe, and he was a CalArts director, and then, you know, he kind of, you know, drugs and all kinds of stuff.
Guest:Lost it.
Guest:He's still around?
Guest:He is, and it's tough.
Guest:You know, he's, you know, crazy things have sort of been going on with him, and he's literally, I can say 100% to this day of all the brilliant people I've worked with, he was the most brilliant.
Guest:He's the best artist I've ever worked with in my life, and he was just one of those guys who just...
Guest:You know, he would stay up all night and write a book.
Guest:You know, he would write music.
Guest:You know, he's a filing scholar, one of the best classical guitarists in the country.
Guest:Just like, you know, too much going on big time, man.
Guest:Big time to everything.
Guest:But man, you know, it was such a beautiful thing we had because there was like 16 of us living in this warehouse space in Bushwick.
Guest:rehearsing all day, then putting our shows up at the Ontological in the city, and then rehearsing four more plays and just eating together and training together.
Guest:And it was really a beautiful kind of pure thing.
Guest:And right about at that time was when I started to get these sort of like guest spots, you know, my law and order spots.
Guest:And I felt like it was such a betrayal and such...
Guest:can't imagine going from that to sort of like this set of law and order fuck man or even just to audition for that shit and and you know this thing that was so pure and so what i had knew in my heart this is what this is you know i wanted this is what makes me feel alive this is it man and and you know what i wanted more than anything live crazy theater i wanted the wooster group man oh yeah he's my hero yeah he's like that's what i wanted and you know if i ended up doing movies down the road fine but this has to be in my center i would yeah i would i would watch shows but did you ever try to get in
Guest:You know, we were so busy with our stuff that, you know, we always had something going on.
Marc:So how do you kind of justify or rationalize?
Guest:Fully betray my own sense of integrity.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:I mean, what was the thinking around, you know, accepting that as the way your life was going to go?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think the rationale behind it was they were doing a Lanford Wilson play in New York, the 5th of July.
Guest:Parker Posey was in it and Eben Moss Bacharach and David Harbour and Robert Sean Leonard.
Guest:Harbour's out there.
Guest:Fuck yeah, man.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:And I, my, my gig in the show was to be the, it was right when I got out of school, I was the male understudy.
Guest:So I got to learn all the parts, go watch these guys every single night and, um, and then do these sort of understudy rehearsals where I would play all, all, I think four of the male parts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you know, what I saw was that, you know, the people, what I really wanted to do was I really wanted to do serious theater in New York.
Guest:And I,
Guest:I saw Parker Posey and I saw what she was doing and I saw that people were coming to the theater to see her.
Guest:And I sort of strategically, you know, was telling myself at the time, the only way I'm going to be able to do this is if people is if I have a career.
Guest:Know who I am.
Guest:It's the only way.
Guest:It's the only way you get these these parts.
Guest:And I'm looking around like that's that's who's doing it.
Guest:Like every fucking show is a guy from.
Guest:Right.
Marc:They have a profile, but they also know how to do theater.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But like, you know, for me at that point, I had done so much of it.
Guest:I, you know, whether it was stupid or not, in my mind, I wasn't the least bit worried about that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I decided to kind of go after that full force.
Marc:Right.
Marc:To become a recognized actor in the bigger picture so you could draw in the theater.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, I think at first it was just sort of like, let's go after these guest star spots and let's really pour into those things.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Marc:How did you pour into those?
Marc:I mean, how does that become satisfying for a guy like you?
Marc:I mean, I do TV now and it's like there's a lot of waiting and you're actually acting for about two minutes at a time, if not less.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So how does that satisfy you?
Marc:How do you wrap your brain or make your brain think that that's satisfying?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think it was deeply naive and just kind of pathetic, to be honest with you, to sort of think that you have a kind of understanding of something that you have literally no experience in.
Guest:Which is what?
Guest:Which is acting in front of a camera.
Guest:And I think that for me, once I got out there and I started doing it, I ended up doing this little independent film called Day Zero with...
Guest:Um, Lizzie Moss was in it and Ginny Goodwin and Elijah Wood and, and, uh, Chris Klein.
Guest:And, and, uh, I remember I had, I had gone to the audition for this thing, uh, to, to, they were only seeing people for like hot dog vendor number one or, you know, and, and I kind of went into the audition.
Guest:I love this script and I love this character so much.
Guest:And I went to Alma and she and I had worked on it together and I learned the whole script.
Guest:And when I came in, they said, what role are you auditioning for?
Guest:And I said, Dixon was the, the lead director.
Guest:And they said, okay, well, we're not auditioning people for that.
Guest:And I said, well, look, I've got some stuff prepared.
Guest:Can I just show you what I'm thinking?
Guest:They said, all right, what scene do you want to do?
Guest:And I said, I know the whole script.
Guest:So sort of as a, you know, just to test me, they're like, all right, let's start at the beginning.
Guest:And we ended up doing it.
Guest:And they ended up casting me.
Guest:And, uh, I, I, I fell in love with this process.
Guest:You know, the guy like lived on top of a roof.
Guest:So I moved into the, you know, I did all the sort of stupid young, young actor bullshit.
Guest:And, and, uh,
Guest:How long did you live on top of a roof?
Guest:For the whole shoot.
Guest:And it was just one of those things where there was a strategy to it and there was a... A different way of thinking about acting.
Guest:A different way of thinking, man, that I absolutely fell in love with.
Guest:And I said, wow, there's so much to learn here.
Guest:There's so much potential here.
Guest:It's so electric.
Guest:And I think for me, exactly what you say, that our whole thing now as actors is...
Guest:To hone our lives and to position ourselves emotionally, physically in every way just for these few seconds between action and cut.
Guest:That's the game.
Guest:And that is totally invigorating for me and exciting to me.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But what about, okay, you've done your three minutes.
Marc:So now, okay, we're going to switch out a lens.
Marc:We're going to move the cameras.
Marc:What do you do in that time?
Guest:Well, so you have a choice, right?
Guest:You can either... And I think that that's the sort of thing when we get back to Stanislavski and all this shit.
Guest:To stay in it or not.
Guest:To stay in it or not.
Guest:And for me, it's about proximity to whatever that heat is and whether that is just...
Guest:you need to be fully relaxed and fully engaged with the person you're in the scene with?
Guest:Or do you need to be close to this fire inside you to be where you think this person needs to be?
Marc:Well, with something like The Punisher, which I hadn't watched, and I'm like, well, I better watch it.
Marc:So I watched episode one, and then last night I'm on six, and I got real into it.
Marc:I think that guy, The Punisher as a character, I dig.
Marc:But something like that.
Marc:So you're shooting that thing.
Marc:That seems to heavily require a lot out of you.
Marc:So when you're not shooting during that, are you staying in it?
Guest:Yeah, and I think the more that you do it, the more you kind of know your body and you know what it is.
Guest:But yeah, definitely in the beginning and definitely when I took the role on big time, especially I think it was a real privilege to be able to do it at first when I started playing it.
Guest:In the Daredevil?
Guest:you know, really great leads in my life.
Guest:And I really, you know, like Emily Blunt or DiCaprio or Brad Pitt, got people who are, you know, unbelievably welcoming.
Guest:And part of the job is making people feel comfortable, I think.
Guest:So that's the challenge for me as far as doing the, you know, how do you stay, how do you control your proximity to the character while also...
Guest:Taking care of the people, taking care of the crew, being there, being a decent guy and being accessible because I've been the guy who just shows up for the day.
Guest:And I want everybody who's there to feel, hey, man, you can explore here.
Guest:You can go big here.
Guest:You can go for it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:feel comfortable have ideas like and you look it's marvel man you know you got a million fucking cooks and so i it's really important for me for for the artists and for the crew to feel supported and uh and that's that's kind of the challenge that's kind of the challenge there with that so you're doing these bit parts you know new york and you're doing the guest shots that everyone does in new york and uh what was the first movie outside of the independent one
Guest:The first movie that I did?
Guest:I think the first sort of bigger movie that I did was World Trade Center.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Which was crazy.
Marc:I kind of like that movie, though.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:It was heavy, right?
Guest:It was very heavy.
Guest:It was five years after when we did it.
Guest:But I think that that was sort of my first...
Guest:Experience, especially with a big budget movie of what's possible in terms of research.
Guest:Oliver Stone is extremely into that.
Guest:And I played this guy, small part, but a guy named Chris Amoroso, who left the youngest widow of all the first responders.
Guest:His wife, Jamie, his daughter, Sophia, was one.
Guest:He's a guy who was at the bus terminal, was at Port Authority.
Guest:They called him BT Dogs.
Guest:And that morning got stationed at World Trade Center and was super pissed off about it because nothing ever happens at World Trade Center.
Guest:And he went up that day.
Guest:He went up to where the planes hit.
Guest:He grabbed a woman, carried her down.
Guest:Something fell on him, and he sliced off half of his ear.
Guest:He carried her to safety all the way down.
Guest:When he got down exhausted, covered in blood, there's this picture of Chris.
Guest:He saw his best friends all coming in because they had just come from the bus terminal.
Guest:He set her down, got her to safety, and went back up and never made it out.
Guest:And, you know, it was a real...
Guest:And you know, when I got cast in that, you know, I wrote his widow, Jamie, I wrote her this letter just sort of asking permission to be a part of it and, you know, inviting her to be as much of a process as memorializing, you know, any bit of truth that she could add about it would be great.
Guest:And, you know, the studio kind of shut that.
Guest:They're like, look, kid.
Guest:You're in two scenes in this movie.
Guest:It was very, very, very delicate, the relationship with the widows.
Guest:It was all enormously fresh.
Guest:And I think that there was a whole component of that movie, which I found super truthful, where...
Guest:in the script, every time these guys were going into the building, the one thing that was uniform among all of them, all cell phone services was stopped.
Guest:You couldn't call anybody.
Guest:So all they would say is, hey man, if I don't make it out of here, you tell Jamie that I, hey, you tell Chris, you tell, and all of that as a whole, because it was so delicate and I don't know whether, how it was handled, but all of that got pulled out.
Guest:Basically all of the widows said, hey, we don't want our names mentioned in this, all of it.
Guest:And it changed it drastically.
Guest:And I was really sort of sad that I couldn't,
Guest:you know reach right but you know Oliver one of the things that you know he's sort of famous for and he's so brilliant at is you know he he had us there a month and a half before and he said look he brought us to the bus terminal I met all Chris's friends officer Fairbank sergeant Finney and he said you can spend as much time as these guys as you want and I started going out with these guys every single fucking day and we became like this and they told me all this shit about Chris and
Guest:And as a surprise at the end, they connected me with her.
Guest:And, you know, it was such a cool honor.
Guest:And, you know, I think, you know, that's really what was the beginning for me and what's carried me over in terms of what I really, really love about this business and this job and what I'm so grateful for is the folks that I get to meet, man, in the research and the people that...
Guest:open up and and you know it doesn't you know whether it's a a soldier or a teacher or or any you know people who invite you into their lives and this this desire that i think is really in everybody to have their stories told and and to be told authentically for them with the bruises and the ugliness included uh it's such an honor and it's something it's such a treasure if if you get to do that yeah yeah yeah so was she how did she feel about your performance do you know
Guest:Yeah, yeah, she was great, man.
Guest:You know, she reached out.
Guest:We always sort of communicated on Christmas for some reason.
Guest:But she, you know, said really kind things.
Guest:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:You know, I didn't really do enough in the movie to make a crazy impact.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But, you know, I always, you know, in the little bit of publicity I did for the movie, I always talked about her and Sophia.
Guest:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And with, like, with Wolf, like, and I imagine, like, working with these guys.
Marc:I don't know who the – I can't remember who you were directly working with on –
Marc:on uh on that movie but like in wolf of wall street i mean you were one of the guys you know the outsider the drug dealer but uh but i mean i imagine when you work with and you worked with pit on fury was that it that you know you do learn from them you're watching how they handle themselves and and you know like i just did a scene with mark walberg and like for some reason i'm always i always speak at this level like i'm always on you know speaking at on stage level sure
Marc:And I'm doing a scene with him, and he's like, yeah, okay, man.
Marc:And then there's that moment where you realize, like, I don't have to shout.
Marc:But I also realize, like, but I shout all the time.
Marc:It's who I am.
Marc:Do I have to start worrying about, like, maybe I should try talking like I never talk, which is a normal level.
Marc:But there's just little things that you pick up, like in talking to, and just watching those guys work, because those guys, like Pitt's a really pretty amazing actor.
Yeah.
Guest:Brilliant, man.
Guest:Brilliant.
Guest:I mean, I kind of feel like they all are.
Guest:I mean, I feel like you're there, you know, for a reason.
Guest:You know, I just did this movie with Matt Damon and... Oh, he's the best.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And a totally different kind of part for me.
Guest:You know, I play Lee Iacocca in this movie.
Marc:So they fatten you up and they balded you?
Guest:Well, it's Lee Iacocca.
Guest:You know, it's in the 60s.
Guest:Oh, young Lee Iacocca.
Guest:Yeah, in 66.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know, I've always been such an enormous fan of Matt's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, God, and, like, a lot of my stuff.
Guest:It was with him and Tracy Letts, who, by the way, on the show was the best.
Guest:I love Letts.
Guest:He's the best.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:Coolest motherfucker on earth.
Guest:But, you know, Matt is so damn good.
Guest:Like, he's so damn good and, like, such a good person and open person and honest person.
Guest:And, you know, I think you said it, man.
Guest:It's learning from them...
Guest:across the board you know and well how does a guy like you get smaller you know man I think that I look I think part of it is you gotta you gotta be confident enough to and I think this is probably the boxer in me and this is probably this is something where that stuff really you still box I do yeah I'll always box and I think for me how do we miss that part of the story how long you been boxing
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:25 years?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That guy, Sean, that I was telling you about, we came up together.
Guest:But, you know, I think that you have to... You, at the end of the day, when you get in there, you have to remember, hey, man, everybody puts on their pants one leg at a time.
Guest:Oh, yeah, of course.
Guest:And, you know, it's not... I think if you go in, you know...
Guest:But but watching their choices, you know, watching their watching their choices, watching how they handle themselves, both on set and off, you know, and look every each one of them is different.
Guest:And sometimes but but I all these people that you mentioned and, you know, DiCaprio definitely in there as well.
Guest:You know, these are all people that that are just staggering human beings.
Marc:Well, now, the character in Wolf, that was a real guy.
Marc:Did you go meet that guy?
Guest:Well, the guy who I played had passed, but the guy who Leo played, yeah, he was, you know, but Scorsese's interesting.
Guest:He doesn't like the real people to be around.
Guest:You know, he likes to get the story, and then he, you know, that was just, that was the mountaintop, that movie, you know.
Guest:I love that movie.
Guest:Man, I just, every day, you just did not know what was going to happen.
Guest:It was all improvisation.
Guest:It was?
Guest:Oh, man, it was the entire thing.
Guest:You never knew which way it was going to go.
Guest:You know, there's that whole section in that movie.
Guest:I don't know how well you know the movie, but that whole thing of Sell Me This Pen.
Guest:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:And, you know, that came about that day.
Guest:that uh we shot that scene in the diner leo happened to be the security guard the guy was doing leo's security for that day it was new york city detective and when they were walking from the trailer to set to that diner scene he said you know i i had a job interview with the real jordan belfort back in the 90s and leo said oh yeah he's making small talk he says you know what he did in the interview he pulled out a pen said sell me this pen and so leo just threw that out in the scene and we just improv'd it you know what i mean but it was that in the moment that alive you know whatever it feels
Guest:that way no conversation hey let's try that and yeah you know I've never felt more watched by a director I've never felt you know these you know I don't I don't know how you feel about it but I the thing I hate more than anything is saying hey so I kind of have this idea and I want to see if I could like you know Marty makes everybody feel a hundred feet tall everybody extras everybody because
Guest:throw things out there try things try things but he sees it it's not just so sometimes when you're you're pitching on camera it's like oh did he see but he he saw every little fucking thing for what it was and then could say great or don't do that you know one or the other and and uh you know that that there was a level of there was a level of play on that on that movie unlike any place i'd ever been before oh yeah yeah that's great yeah it's cool
Marc:And, yeah, I just, the thing I liked about the movie, that movie, was just the escalating levels of testosterone.
Marc:You know, like, they show those traitors in that room, and by the end of the movie, they were doing backflips, and they were like, ah!
Marc:It was really a nice element.
Marc:But, so, like, are you happy that you got out from under The Walking Dead?
Guest:Yeah, you know, I think... Well, you did, like, 20 of them?
Guest:Yeah, I did like the, I did the first two years.
Guest:I mean, I think at that time in my life, you know, I think Frank Darabont, I mean, that was a strange thing because, you know, Frank was such a instrumental part of that show and, you know, he got fired off of it, you know, really sort of in an abrupt and acute way and that we never really understood.
Guest:And
Guest:I think for me, I was so unbelievably grateful to be doing that show.
Guest:Finally, we're on a show.
Guest:The show was super successful, and it was kind of tailor-made.
Guest:It was right in my wheelhouse and showing something.
Guest:I'd been doing sitcoms and shit before that, stuff that I just don't think I was very good at.
Guest:I loved that character.
Guest:It was such a beautiful character that had a real arc.
Guest:It had real buoys along the journey that...
Guest:You know, you could really show something with.
Guest:And I thought sort of just my luck.
Guest:I finally get on this hit show and then I get fucking killed off of it.
Guest:But definitely looking in retrospect, you know, doing the show was one of the best things that happened in my career and getting killed off of the show was was equally as.
Marc:Yeah, because those kind of things become a soap opera eventually.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:There's no way to sustain it.
Marc:And you could be stuck there for your entire career.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and I think that, you know, for me, the the the people you meet along the way is always the thing to take away.
Guest:It's always the most important part of this thing.
Guest:And I think that.
Guest:Those people, those original actors from The Walking Dead, they're still some of my best friends in the world.
Guest:We're all enormously close and totally a part of each other's lives.
Marc:Oh, that's nice.
Marc:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:You're a gregarious guy that has a real passion and interest with other people.
Marc:It's nice.
Guest:I mean, look, you know, like Cherry Jones came and spoke at ART.
Guest:I flew back up for the graduation, even though I didn't graduate.
Guest:And I remember she said, you know, in this business, she said, let me give you three pieces of advice.
Guest:She said, always live within your means.
Guest:You know, don't change your life financially just because things are going well or things are going bad.
Guest:Try to keep it even.
Guest:Never base your personal happiness on your career success.
Guest:And always, always remember above all else, it's about the humans you meet along the way.
Guest:Be a human being.
Guest:And, you know, I've been with artists that I really, really respect.
Guest:I've worked with actors that I really, really respect who totally disagree with that.
Guest:Who say, fuck this, man.
Guest:This is not about making friends.
Guest:I don't give a fuck if you like me.
Guest:This is about what happens between action and cut.
Guest:That lasts forever.
Guest:You know, man...
Guest:it's just not who I am man it's not what I believe in like I really think that being being being decent and being kind and and the relationships are really important and the best part of this thing what you take away and it all becomes part of who you are as an artist and it informs you in so many different ways and you know to let that armor down and is is is uh I think that's I mean that's my path
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, and you're fortunate to have some sort of grounded confidence about things because of the way you live your life.
Marc:Because for me, if I'm on a set, which is relatively new to me, to be working with other actors in a real, like I did my, but with this thing I'm doing now with GLOW, a lot of times I just kind of keep to myself because I know it's not about me.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And also, like, you know, you give me five minutes, I might be walking around going, how was that?
Marc:Was that okay?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, I'd rather be quiet guy than that guy.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:100%.
Guest:100%.
Guest:And knowing, I think, that arrogance or, you know, the second that you're arrogant or the second that you think you've got this fucking thing licked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is the absolute enemy and absolute destruction.
Guest:So it's like you just go to this place of like, oh, fuck that.
Guest:I mean, everything I do, you know, I think artistically I do tend to live in this place of like, oh, fuck, I fucked that up.
Marc:Really?
Marc:I do.
Marc:I do, man.
Marc:But like what?
Marc:With takes or with characters or like you or you just like there's nothing that you've accomplished even after we talk about.
Marc:how amazing it is and how you've learned all these things about yourself and this good side of yourself, still you walk away from the Wolf of Wall Street and say, like, ah, fuck that.
Guest:You know, I think that there are certain processes and certain characters and certain things that I've done where I can look at the process, I can look at everything that happened, I can look at the relationships that I made, where I say, wow, we had some magic that day.
Guest:But you have to convince yourself?
Guest:It's a pretty high bar, man.
Guest:I think, you know, like...
Guest:One of the things, one thing a teacher told me that really resonated with me was, you know, one of the problems with things like a graduate school or problem with, you know, maybe going to the same comedy club every night or surrounding yourself with the same artists or being on a show for a long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because what you do is artistically, whether you want to or not, you start comparing yourself to everybody in your immediate circle.
Guest:And you say, well, I might not be the best, but I'm definitely better than that guy.
Guest:And although that guy had a great Tuesday night, he's really kind of at the bottom of the course.
Marc:I'm air steady.
Guest:Yeah, you know what I mean?
Guest:It's just like this stupid fucking narrative that means nothing.
Guest:And this one teacher I had...
Guest:You know, and maybe this is grandiose, but it's what he fucking said.
Guest:You know, he said, you know, what you need to do as an artist is you need to have examples of perfection.
Guest:And whether it's like one play that Michael Jordan made or a riff that Jerry Garcia played or, you know, whatever it is, it needs to be these little moments of perfection.
Guest:You need to always compare your shit to that.
Guest:Always.
Marc:To other types of artists in particular?
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:Artists, athletes, you need to know.
Guest:You need to have.
Marc:So how do you win that game?
Guest:You don't.
Guest:You don't.
Guest:And I think like when you get back to the seagull, maybe, but I think like, look, man, like when I go back to, you know, Alma and the seagull and what I think that play is about, you know, to me, what that play is about is it's about all these different artists and their relationship with their dream, the health of the relationship that they have with their dream, with their art.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so you have all these different people.
Guest:And if you, you know, the play,
Guest:You know, the reason why Chekhov called it a comedy and it's fucking ends with suicide and it's so fucking tragic is because you got all these people in love with the wrong people and this one loves this one and they're all so fucking miserable and they should just fucking figure it out.
Guest:But the metaphor for the dream is the seagull and Treblev's in love with Nina, calls her his seagull.
Guest:That's his dream, to be with her.
Guest:And when she won't love him because she's in love with a more successful older writer, what he does is he goes and he kills a fuck and he shoots a seagull and gives it to her, right?
Guest:And for me, what that play is always about is that the way to have a healthy relationship with your dream.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:is like a seagull there's no such thing as a seagull that you can have as a pet it needs to be wild it needs to be out in front of you you need to be chasing it it needs to be going different directions and you can't the only way you can touch it or attain it is you got to kill it and by killing it it's over man like you have to chase it you have to let it be something out in front of you but you think you can't chase it without feeling like you're never good enough well look i think that
Guest:Just because I know that what I'm after is a healthy relationship with it does not mean by any by any means that I'm there, you know, and it's a it's a journey.
Guest:It's it's it's something that I'm striving towards.
Guest:But I do think that sort of being like the feeling of, hey, I got this licked.
Guest:you know, it takes the hunger away.
Guest:And I think that that is, I think for me, that is my, that is the big thing that I really want to work on going forward, is I want to figure out how to have a healthier relationship with the things that I'm trying to do that doesn't always go to a place of... You're a piece of shit.
Guest:You're a piece of shit.
Guest:You don't deserve to be here, you know?
Guest:Because where that does drive me, hey, fight harder, go, go, go, go, go, it potentially can get in the way.
Marc:Right, well, I mean, because I've had that, and I still have that with my primary craft, which is stand-up.
Marc:Even if I don't necessarily get the recognition that some of my peers get, and my last special I thought was great, and I know that I did all the work I could have.
Marc:That was the best thing I did.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:But like, you know, here a year later or whatever it is when I'm building new stuff that I'm still sort of like, God damn it.
Marc:Why can't I just work in a different way to where I don't have to put it all on the line every fucking time to figure out, you know, a direction for a joke.
Guest:Self judging the shit that you're that is the process of self judging and being hard on yourself.
Guest:On this new one that you're doing, is that the same process that you were?
Marc:Well, it's always been my process.
Marc:My process is like you, I get something out of being in the moment.
Marc:So I'm not writing jokes down.
Marc:I'm going on stage with ideas.
Marc:And then in that moment, the way I see it is that I have to be funny because I'm cornered.
Marc:I've cornered myself.
Marc:I don't know where it's going to come from.
Marc:I don't know how it's going to happen.
Marc:I don't know what I'm going to say.
Marc:It's a defensive thing.
Marc:It's like I imagine with boxing.
Marc:It's like you don't know what it's going to take to get into that guy's head, but you've been up there enough to know what's going to happen, right?
Marc:And if it doesn't happen, all right, so that's the game.
Marc:But there are times where I say to myself,
Marc:well, why can't I work differently so I have a little more protection up there?
Marc:And clearly I don't want it.
Marc:But that's not driving me to a spiral place, really.
Marc:It's just part of my life, and I get it, and I know myself enough to accept my process, whatever the faults of it are.
Marc:But when you're doing stuff like, when you're in the darkness, like self-hatred as a compulsion to make yourself better, I don't think that's something we do consciously, but you're saying that,
Marc:What I've had to investigate in my life is that if I'm doing things that make me feel bad, and I'm not talking about art, what is it about carrying that shame that is fucking comfortable to me, and why do I have that?
Guest:Right, right, right, right.
Guest:It's tough because I think that I've always been really, really blessed with really, really solid support around me.
Guest:Really, really good group of friends who I've had my whole life.
Guest:unbelievable wife great kids great you know great family great i i've just that's never you know so i think it's this this this idea that i can take anything i i can take anything because i got this support structure but is that true or but it seems to me that at some points you must think like you don't deserve any of that sure sure so what is that sure
Guest:Well, I mean, deserve, I mean, I don't know, deserve is a funny, you know, deserve is a funny thing.
Guest:I just think that it's, we have these processes, you know, we have this process for art and up until this point.
Marc:But this was, but this preexisted art in your life, no?
Marc:I mean, like, I have to assume that when you're getting busted and you're having to bullshit your way out of situations that you didn't, you know, walk away, whatever the success was in getting away with it, you didn't feel good about yourself, did you?
Marc:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fuck.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Like, I don't know what that is because that's part of it.
Marc:That's such that's like almost a bigger component than the action is staying in that.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And I like I can't, you know, I can look at my parents.
Marc:I can look at whatever, but I can't always quite understand what that is.
Marc:Like, there's something about that feeling that is grounding.
Marc:That's home.
Marc:That's home.
Guest:That's home.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but but but I but I also think that those few times like you look at that special that you just did that you feel good about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I don't know.
Guest:Would you want to be the guy who felt like that all the time?
Guest:Like, you know, like, wow, my shit.
Guest:I'm great.
Guest:Like, I don't know.
Marc:I just feel like it's possible, right?
Marc:It's not an option.
Guest:Exactly, exactly.
Guest:So I just think a good, healthy dose of questioning yourself.
Marc:Sure, and even the guys you think, think that don't.
Guest:They don't fucking think that, man.
Guest:And I think being honest with that.
Marc:But I think the biggest fear, like when you were talking about that feeling on set after a certain amount of time on a series or whatever, and you start comparing yourself to other people, I think the bigger fear is when you're sitting there going like, now my life is just as boring as any other fuckers.
Guest:I don't know, man.
Marc:I mean, doesn't work become work after a certain point?
Marc:I mean, obviously, we're not, you know, we're working for ourselves and there's a lot of creativity to it.
Marc:But I imagine there is a sort of prison to that, too.
Guest:I think there can be.
Guest:And I think that it's up to you.
Guest:I think it's up to you to raise your stakes if they're not being raised for you.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:You have to raise your stakes.
Marc:And as a creative person, there's always stakes to be raised.
Marc:There's always something you can do.
Marc:Even if other people don't see it, you know that like, I did have something a little different there.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's it.
Marc:So how did you meet your wife?
Marc:How did you, where'd the family all happen?
Marc:I mean, three kids, a lot of kids.
Marc:How old are they?
Guest:My daughter's three and I have a son that's five and a son that's seven.
Marc:So that's pretty new.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:How long have you been married?
Guest:We've been married for seven years now.
Guest:Oh, so that's pretty new.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Where'd you meet her?
Guest:I met her in DC.
Guest:I met her in DC the night I got back from Russia.
Guest:She was an ICU trauma nurse, worked at Georgetown, met her.
Marc:That's nice to have in the house, a trauma nurse.
Marc:You know exactly what's going on, what you got to do.
Guest:Something bad happens.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, she's... You know, man, she's everything to me, man.
Guest:She's everything to me.
Guest:She... You know, I... It's been a long road with her, and she's been there with me every step of the way.
Guest:And, you know, what I was telling you before about, you know, getting in trouble kind of that last time... 2009?
Guest:2009, July 3rd.
Guest:You're a grown-ass man.
Guest:Grown-ass man, dude.
Guest:And, you know, guys...
Guest:I was in Venice Beach and I had my dogs and a guy, there's these guys having a house party, these sort of like wannabe, I don't know what the fuck they were, but there's a whole group of them.
Guest:One of them called my dog over, they grabbed my dog, I tried to get my dog back, he tried to kind of take him and I grabbed my dog, they started following me and there's about 10 of them and one of them pushed me in the back.
Guest:I hit the guy and he got knocked out standing up and busted his head on the pavement.
Guest:It was real bad.
Guest:And then I just put my back against the tree and it was a pretty bad fight.
Guest:And I got taken in and we really didn't know whether this guy was going to wake up or not.
Guest:And I was down there at the Pacific Division, handcuffed to a bench,
Guest:and, uh, you know, really did not know what was gonna go down.
Guest:And look, man, this was not like, you know, I wasn't 20.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I wasn't, you know, I was a guy, you know, been a series regular on a few shows, done a bunch of movies, you know, um... The press get hold of it?
Guest:Out of life.
Guest:No, I wasn't quite there, you know what I mean?
Guest:It wasn't like that.
Guest:Um, it was before Walking Dead.
Guest:And, uh, I remember sitting there, and literally as clear as day,
Guest:Having this conversation that if I go this way into this room and this guy doesn't wake up, it's going to be this side of me.
Guest:The darkness has got to come to the front and that's who you're going to be from now on.
Guest:That's what life is going to be like in here.
Guest:but i said but if you can just get me out just wake him up man get me out of this one like i am fucking done and i'm ready to i am ready to dedicate my life to the things that i know i need to be dedicating them to and the first first and foremost was what was her yeah and she was she had to come down the station the whole thing man and the guy woke up he did
Guest:And look, that really changed everything.
Guest:That one event kind of changed everything for me.
Guest:Did you make an amends?
Guest:Big time.
Guest:And, you know, I really look at what happened with that guy that night and looking at him, you know, I've...
Guest:I think there was part of what I was doing that night was hitting, you know, was trying to smash something that had been inside of me for so long.
Guest:And this loudness, this brazenness, this carelessness.
Marc:Impulse control too, right?
Guest:Big time, man.
Guest:Big time.
Marc:Because like, you know, I mean, I guess you got to relive that a little bit in that first episode or second episode of Punisher, you know, with those guys coming up on you.
Marc:Like, you know that.
Guest:Well, what's crazy is that, you know, I think in that, in that sense, like in that character and in a lot of the stuff I play, it's like, you know, we're tapping into a lot of this stuff.
Guest:And it's funny because, you know, 2009 isn't that long ago.
Guest:But, man, I've found I'm an extremely peaceful man now.
Guest:I love fatherhood.
Guest:I've never been humbled by anything.
Guest:I've been humbled by this.
Guest:Don't want to fuck that up.
Guest:Don't want to fuck this up, man.
Guest:And I'm absolutely in love with my wife.
Guest:I've found this thing now where I can really... I still have the fire, but I can really channel it now.
Marc:Clearly.
Marc:But I think it's interesting how you how you phrase that, because I don't think I've heard it phrased like that before, that that despite your whatever your intentions were, because of the choices you've made, the darkness will have to come to the front just to survive.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And it was clear as day.
Guest:And it wasn't one of these things like, okay, buddy, you better steal yourself.
Guest:It was in that room being handcuffed to that.
Guest:I know enough about what's on the other side of that wall that if this goes down this way, it's all over.
Guest:That life...
Guest:One way or the other, life as I knew it before was over and it was time to... It's not like, hey, man, I got to muster up the change.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:It's over one way or the other.
Guest:We're going one way or the other here.
Guest:And what a blessing to be presented with that in such a clear and concise way.
Guest:We're sticking to it.
Guest:It's not about like, hey, let's fight through this thing.
Guest:It's like, hey, look, man, it's one way or the other.
Guest:And it was as clear as anything that I've ever looked at.
Marc:It really is black or white because you know that you went too far and now you got to survive in the chaos of just monsters.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I'm glad that didn't happen.
Marc:Me too, man.
Marc:And yet now you can just do it on screen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:You too, brother.
Marc:All right, that was Jon Bernthal.
Marc:Again, The Punisher's third season is on now.
Marc:It's available at Netflix, on Netflix, at Netflix, in Netflix.
Marc:You can stream all of the episodes, all of the seasons right now.
Marc:I got my wah-wah pedal hooked up with the Echoplex into the old amp.
Marc:Kind of analog.
Marc:Echoplex is a... It's a reissue of the old sound done without the big tape loops.
Marc:Dig it.
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Guest:.
Guest:Boomer lives.