Episode 999 - Alfred Molina
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckologists?
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Mark Maron here.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it, if you're new to it.
Marc:Or I just, you know, I'm in the habit of saying welcome.
Marc:I hope everyone's having an okay Monday already.
Marc:Or, you know, do what you can.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:You all right?
Marc:So today...
Marc:On the show, Alfred Molina is here, which is great.
Marc:One of the great actors.
Marc:Very exciting guy.
Marc:Very exciting to talk to.
Marc:And of course, of course, I talked to him about that scene.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:He's got he's he's constantly working.
Marc:Right now, he's a voice actor on the 10 part narrative mystery podcast.
Marc:The Angel of Vine.
Marc:You can get that where you get podcasts, and you can listen to me and Alfred talk in a few minutes.
Marc:I have some housekeeping, though.
Marc:I have a bit of housekeeping.
Marc:A couple of things.
Marc:A couple of things in relation to the last episode, the Gary Clark episode, which I'm so happy that people enjoyed so much.
Marc:We had a very nice time.
Marc:I might see him in Austin.
Marc:Did I mention I'm going to Austin?
Marc:Have I mentioned that?
Marc:I don't know if I've gotten you up to date, but let's do...
Marc:the housekeeping first which is I was talking about Jason Isbell who made a statement on Twitter which was old guitars aren't really all that special and I didn't do any research I don't know why I just saw that part of it but I don't want to misrepresent Jason's view of old guitars because the tweet he was responding to was if you were kidnapped and were being forced to tweet so things appeared normal what would you tweet to alert us you need help
Marc:Old guitars aren't really all that special.
Marc:So it's the exact opposite, which makes more sense.
Marc:But, you know, I'm willing to believe shit at face value at first until someone calls me out and says, dude, that was a that was an ironic.
Marc:So so I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea about Jason.
Marc:The other thing.
Marc:And I'm going to talk about Jason Moore in a minute.
Marc:The other thing is that Magic Sam piece that I was obsessed with and am obsessed with that I played for at the beginning of the Gary Clark thing, which was a conversation we had, is actually called, it's not called Sam's Boogie.
Marc:It's actually called Looking Good.
Marc:And it's actually a cut on...
Marc:on the West Side Soul album, which I have, and I didn't realize I had it, and I didn't realize that song was on there because that live version is just so crazy on fire, and the un-live, un-live, not live version of it is a little more laid back, but probably a little more of a portal or a key to how to learn how to play it.
Marc:Okay, so that being said, while we're in the music groove here,
Marc:As you know, there have been many musical guests on this show.
Marc:Many of them have played.
Marc:And almost all of them, I would say all of those moments, for me, are beyond anything I can even imagine.
Marc:I mean, to have people...
Marc:play guitar and sing right in front of you, literally three feet away from me in front of right here.
Marc:And I'm just it's just me and them in here.
Marc:And I'm just on my dumb little mixer trying to make it sound right, trying to make the levels not peak.
Marc:I'm no master engineer, but I've recorded some amazing people in here.
Marc:And it's been some of the most amazing experiences in my life.
Marc:And people have always asked us, me and Brendan, that being, about putting together a compilation of these songs, you know, from the show.
Marc:And we always wanted to, but it's a tricky thing to do logistically.
Marc:So good news.
Marc:We got hooked up with the folks at Newberry Comics.
Marc:who were interested in doing something with us.
Marc:And in partnership with them, we've put together, I think, something really special.
Marc:Record Store Day is on April 13th.
Marc:And for this year's Record Store Day, we're releasing an exclusive limited edition vinyl album called In the Garage, live music from WTF with Marc Maron.
Marc:And it's got some great performances on it.
Marc:Okay, these are 10 acoustic performances with Jay Mascus, Melissa Etheridge, E from Eels, Karen Kilgariff, Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite, Nick Lowe, Margot Price, Jason Isbell, Amy Mann, and Dave Alvin.
Marc:And I actually play with Dave Alvin on that track.
Marc:I mean, all these artists in responding to this record were extremely generous in allowing their performances to be featured on the album.
Marc:And Brendan and I are donating our proceeds to the charity Musicians on Call who bring music to the patients of health care facilities and bring a little joy into their day.
Marc:So Record Store Day 2019 is happening April 13th.
Marc:So you can pick up your copy then.
Marc:Participating stores can be found at RecordStoreDay.com.
Marc:And I listened to the test pressing of this thing.
Marc:You heard the list of artists that I just told you about.
Marc:If you put their produced music from their albums up against each other, it would seem very odd.
Marc:It probably wouldn't fit together, but they all fit beautifully together because it's recorded in the same way.
Marc:Very simply, I'm not going to say badly because I use pretty good mics,
Marc:But but basically the setup here is it's the same mic that we talk into.
Marc:It's an SM7, a Shure SM7.
Marc:I don't have any effects.
Marc:I don't know how to use even this very simple mixer.
Marc:So I just stick that mic in their face and I stick a mic in front of their guitar.
Marc:Back in the day, it was a blue Encore 200 only because I had them.
Marc:And then I would just sit here and it's on one track.
Marc:They're not even separate tracks.
Marc:I record on one track of GarageBand.
Marc:So any conversation, it makes it difficult probably, certainly difficult to do any remastering or work with the song after the fact.
Marc:But for me and Brendan, it's pretty... Even then, two tracks would be nice, but I don't.
Marc:So all of these...
Marc:Recordings are done the same way, you know, except for the Jason Isbell one.
Marc:So with that as the through line, basically with the garage and my way of recording people, which is very raw and straight up, it provides a connector.
Marc:And all the performances are relative, you know, or, you know, done like that.
Marc:These are all just people with guitars and a harmonica in the case of Charlie Muscle White.
Marc:And they all fit together because you just hear the artist with a guitar.
Marc:And I tell you, man, I can't tell you how... I like talking to people, of course.
Marc:But there's also something about these recordings that I think are exactly like what happens here.
Marc:All these were done, I believe, in the old garage.
Marc:But these performances were great.
Marc:And everyone sitting across from Jay Mascus with his antique Gibson, just going at it.
Marc:It's just amazing.
Marc:Melissa Etheridge is probably one of the most...
Marc:charismatic and moving performances I've ever seen in this place, in my old garage.
Marc:E was great.
Marc:Karen Kilgariff made me cry.
Marc:Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite.
Marc:Charlie Musselwhite is one of the last of the great old harp players.
Marc:Nick Lowe singing the beast to me because I asked him, great.
Marc:Margot Price, come on.
Marc:Amy Mann, solid.
Marc:And me and Dave Alvin, Dave being very gracious, letting me play with him.
Marc:But the Jason Isbell one is the only one
Marc:that wasn't recorded here in the garage.
Marc:And I've told this story before, but just so you know, in relation to us talking about music, in relation to us talking about this release of this record, Jason Isbell, I didn't know a lot about him or his music until I realized that we were both gonna be doing the same show up in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, I think.
Marc:We were both on an episode of Wits, that radio show, that podcast.
Marc:So I got in touch with him probably through Twitter initially, and I said we should talk, and then I got caught up on his work.
Marc:And then we got there, and I met him at that show, and we did the show, and he'd been on the road for weeks, and we were staying in the same hotel.
Marc:And that night at about 12, 31 o'clock, I went and interviewed him in his room, and then I sat there with him with his guitar.
Marc:He had a guitar.
Marc:It was in a hotel room.
Marc:We were both exhausted.
Marc:He probably more than me.
Marc:And I sat in front of him and I held the mics.
Marc:I held one mic to his guitar and I handheld one mic to his face.
Marc:And I sat in a chair right in front of him.
Marc:And he did that song, Elephant.
Marc:And it was one of the most moving musical experiences I've had in my life.
Marc:It's a very intimate, odd recording, almost like a field recording.
Marc:of a song that, that is a powerful song and, and heartbreaking in its own right.
Marc:But just the, uh, the intimacy of the recording process was pretty crazy, but that's on there.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So I guess I'm just telling you my experience with these things and, uh, that, that, that album will be available from Newberry comics on record store day, 2019, uh,
Marc:It's happening April 13th.
Marc:You can get a copy then and you can find participating stores at RecordStoreDay.com.
Marc:And I imagine that you can go ahead and tell them if you have a store that you are in relationship with, you can tell them maybe they could get you one.
Marc:So, yeah, I'll get you up to speed here.
Marc:You know what I did?
Marc:I put the old rug from the old garage up in one of the bedrooms in my house here that's going to be sort of an office-ish kind of space.
Marc:I unrolled that rug.
Marc:And I remember I had vacuumed it.
Marc:When I got to this house out on the out in the front yard and then I brought up into the bedroom last night and I vacuumed it again, it was just like inches and inches of dust.
Marc:And I just I and I've talked about this before in relation to that fucking rug.
Marc:But here it is in a new place in a new home and all that dust from all those talks, little bits of skin and pieces of dirt from the journeys of my guests.
Marc:It's just sort of weird.
Marc:It was like, you know, the history of WTF and dust.
Marc:I could make that available.
Marc:Would anyone like a vial of WTF dust from the from, I guess, skin and hair and skin?
Marc:things that come off of the guests any any hundred i got to assume some of that shit's been in there since the beginning you never know how the things lodge a history in dust but now i i threw it away they should i should i kept it what do you keep shit for why am i even keeping that rug i've had that rug forever it's been through several apartments a house and then it ended up in the garage but uh you know you attach meaning you attach meaning
Marc:Yeah, that rug.
Marc:It's a magic carpet, man.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:Magic carpet.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:I don't even know the words to that magic carpet ride.
Marc:But...
Marc:So, yeah, I'm going to be at South by Southwest for a few days this week.
Marc:The premiere of the film, the sort of trust that I am in.
Marc:Lynn Shelton film, a completely improvised movie.
Marc:It was shot, I mean, I think some of you were with me during this.
Marc:It was shot in Birmingham, Alabama.
Marc:It's me, Jillian Bell, John Bass, Michaela Watkins are the primary characters.
Marc:Lynn Shelton directed it and has a small role in it.
Marc:Dan Backdahl is also in it.
Marc:Toby Huss is in it, among a few other people from the area.
Marc:and we improvised that in about three weeks and now it's a movie and it got into south by southwest and the premiere is friday night all the music for the film is um music that was played here in this garage or in the other garage we she kind of lynn took a lot of my guitar pieces and layered them throughout the movie and then the the song under the credits the instrumental under the credits
Marc:is something that me and Tal Wilkenfeld wrote and played in a studio with some amazing musicians, Doyle Bramhall, one of them.
Marc:Well, anyway, so I'm going to be at South by Southwest for just a few nights.
Marc:And more importantly, in terms of that trip, the premiere is exciting, but OB's barbecue, OB's.
Marc:Going to go to Opie's and Spicewood.
Marc:Always great.
Marc:So, yes, I'm looking forward to the movie premiere and doing press for that and being part of that.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:It's pretty 50-50.
Marc:Movie premiere, Opie's.
Marc:Alfred Molina, obviously one of everyone's favorite actors.
Marc:Maybe you don't know that, but he is.
Marc:And it was definitely a great honor and exciting thing to talk to him.
Marc:And he lives...
Marc:Not far from me, which made it even better for him.
Marc:You can hear him currently as a voice actor on the 10-part narrative mystery podcast, The Angel of Vine, which is available wherever you get the podcasts.
Marc:And you've seen him in everything you've seen him in.
Marc:Go look him up if you're like, who?
Marc:Because that's crazy.
Marc:This is me talking to Alfred Molina.
Alfred Molina.
Guest:How long have you lived up in this area?
Guest:Only about a year and a half.
Guest:I lived in Hollywood before that.
Guest:Because you had to?
Guest:No, just because it's just where we ended up.
Guest:When we first arrived in the States, we arrived in New York.
Guest:And the when was that?
Guest:That was ninety ninety three.
Guest:Uh huh.
Guest:And I'd been coming here to work on and off since the mid 80s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But always just for a specific job.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this time we came out and we kind of made a conscious effort decision to to live here and, you know, to do the L.A.
Guest:thing.
Guest:Do the L.A.
Guest:thing.
Guest:We arrived in New York and we were hoping to stay in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then my then agent kind of said, oh, no, you've got to be where the action is, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Come to L.A.
Guest:So we kind of came to L.A.
Guest:But what I didn't realize in my naivety at the time was that L.A.
Guest:Hollywood is not...
Guest:the center of the film industry it's the center of where they'd make the it's the center of the film business yeah right you know it's where the deals are made it's where you know it's not where the work is made not not as much anymore no and we could have easily i mean i can see now we could have easily have stayed in new york which we preferred um but then you're gonna be flying out here every other week yeah but you know what i that's not so bad yeah
Guest:I mean, you know, it's not like they fly you and they take care of you.
Guest:You can still do it.
Guest:You can still go back to New York.
Guest:I could.
Guest:I could.
Guest:But now, of course, I think we missed out.
Guest:We sort of missed the boat a little bit, I think.
Guest:You missed the window to buy the building in Brooklyn.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When things were cheap.
Guest:I mean, it's... Mind you, I've always had terrible luck with...
Guest:buying houses like that, I've always seemed to have sold when the market was low and bought when the market was high.
Guest:I've never been one of those people.
Guest:I have friends who are like that, friends who kind of do things like, oh, got this for a steal.
Guest:And they'll say things like, there's all these buzzwords like, I bought it when it sank.
Guest:I bought this when it was good.
Guest:Aren't they annoying, those people?
Guest:They piss me off a little bit because what they're saying, they're not celebrating the fact that they've had a stroke of good luck.
Guest:They're celebrating and lording it over you of how stupid you are that you didn't manage to do the same thing.
Guest:It's a kind of modesty brag combined with a sort of slap around the face.
Guest:you know it's like you know i could do this and you didn't it always reminds it reminds me of that great thing that chevy chase used to do when he was on uh saturday night live when he was when he would say hi i'm chevy chase and you're not yeah it's like hi i'm a i'm a lucky fucker and you're not yeah you don't have the foresight or the wisdom or anything you do or the luck yeah you can't yeah how do you function in the world i'm a
Marc:But the thing is, like, I don't know about you, but I buy when I've only owned two houses in my life and I live in them.
Marc:I don't I don't ever think like I always think they're too expensive.
Marc:The two I've bought and.
Guest:You carry the resentment around with you.
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:But it turned out the other one, the little one, that went crazy over there in Highland Park.
Marc:When I bought that house, I thought, who would pay this much money for less than 1,000 square feet?
Marc:And what little I knew.
Marc:Now it's crazy.
Marc:But I buy places to live there.
Marc:Those kind of people, a lot of people don't get attached to places.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think it's that moment when a house turns into a home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's all to do with... Good luck.
Guest:When people kind of brag about how they've made money on houses, that's fine.
Guest:And I've had good experiences and bad experiences.
Guest:This is only...
Guest:This is only the third house that I've actually owned.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you like to live places.
Marc:You're not thinking like, I'm going to buy this and I'm going to... You're not thinking when you buy it that you're going to sell it.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I never think of the house as a possible investment or something that is going to make me money in the years to come.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's just...
Guest:I mean, the house in Hollywood, I was in there since 95.
Guest:I was there for the best part of 25 years.
Guest:And you lived in the hills?
Guest:Yeah, no.
Guest:We lived in what was told.
Guest:The realtor said we were Hollywood Hills adjacent.
Guest:Oh, so not the hills.
Guest:Not the hills.
Guest:It was like we saw the hills.
Guest:At the top of my street, there was suddenly this precipitous rise.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Where those houses were.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You could see the houses that were in the hills.
Guest:And I remember the realtor saying, and you're really close to Sunset Boulevard, and that's where the action is.
Guest:And the first action I was aware of on my street, we moved there when the neighborhood wasn't so gentrified as it is now.
Guest:And the third night, I think the third or certainly within the first week that we were there,
Guest:In bed, one o'clock in the morning, there's some noise outside.
Guest:I get up, I look out the window, and there's a hooker in our driveway.
Guest:Working?
Guest:Well, she's making a deal with someone.
Guest:She's having a little argument with some guy.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe they were just negotiating the deal.
Guest:And my wife said, what's that?
Guest:And I knew.
Guest:I knew.
Guest:If I said to her, there's a hooker in the driveway, she'd have packed a bag and gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I just went, oh, kids.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, because I just knew she wouldn't have born that.
Guest:But now it's kind of smartened up now.
Marc:When I got my house over in the other place in Highland Park, like within a week, someone had tagged my wall.
Marc:They'd spray paint it.
Marc:And I was like, holy shit.
Marc:It's already someone else's territory.
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:But it leveled off.
Marc:But you grew up...
Guest:you were in england most of your life oh yeah yeah i mean i didn't i didn't come to i didn't come to uh the states until i was in my 40s really yeah yeah so where'd you like what was uh where'd you grow up in england i don't know i grew up in london i was i uh my my just quick my background is basically my parents were my father was spanish my mother was italian what did he do my father was a waiter yeah and uh my mother cleaned hotel rooms she was italian like
Guest:Like Italian-Italian?
Guest:Italian-Italian, not Italian-American.
Guest:I did an interview once and someone said, and your mother was Italian?
Guest:And I said, yeah, she was Italian.
Guest:And the interviewer said, from New York?
Guest:I said, no, no, Italy.
Guest:She's not Italian-American.
Guest:And your dad was Spanish?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From Spain?
Marc:From Spain.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah, Madrid.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, just outside Madrid.
Marc:I've been there.
Marc:I was in – oh, no, I haven't.
Marc:I was in Barcelona.
Marc:Make your mind up, Mark.
Marc:I'm just trying to seem international.
Yeah.
Marc:I spent a week in Italy and I was in Barcelona briefly.
Marc:I don't know how to speak Spanish or Italian, but I've walked through the areas.
Marc:So did you grow up with the languages?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:My parents, kind of both of them, they had finished their formal education by the time they were like 15, 16.
Guest:My dad worked as a laborer in Spain before he kind of joined up with some trade union militia and
Guest:He was a refugee from the Civil War in Spain.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And he arrived in England just in time for World War II.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:So he couldn't go back to Spain.
Guest:So he just signed up.
Guest:He signed up to the British Army.
Guest:So after the revolution in Spain, because he was on the... He was in a trade union militia.
Guest:He was on the Republican side.
Guest:He was fighting Franco.
Guest:And they got pushed out.
Guest:Yeah, there was a lot of a lot of refugees who were political refugees.
Guest:They went.
Guest:A lot of them joined the refugee trail into France.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And from there, they kind of scattered around the world, really.
Guest:Many went to South America, Latin America.
Guest:My dad went to France.
Guest:It's here where the family history gets a bit murky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He spent some time in France, certainly enough time to learn how to speak French.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he ended up somehow, he ended up in England.
Guest:Murky, like a well-kept secret murky?
Guest:Well, murky like no one.
Guest:I never quite found out what he was doing.
Guest:I remember my mother once told me, oh, yeah, yeah, your father was in the Foreign Legion.
Yeah.
Guest:And I think that sounds a bit fanciful to me.
Guest:I think from what I know, the Foreign Legion, once you're in, it's really, really hard.
Guest:You can't just pop in for a few months and kind of go, you know, guys, I'm good.
Guest:And so anyway, he arrived in England in top of 39, 1939.
Guest:My mother emigrated from Italy after the war.
Guest:She arrived in England.
Guest:in 1947 and she she got a job uh as a chambermaid in a hotel where my dad was working in the restaurant as a waiter oh and that's where they met so they'd pass each other in the hallway i guess yeah as they were changing into their outfits and that he stayed in that in that job his whole life his whole life yeah he was he was a waiter bartender um he was a uh he was a restaurant manager for a while um
Marc:It's a certain deal in England, I guess, when you have your health care covered and also there's a union to it too, isn't there?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, just after the war, it was really the beginning of what became known as the welfare state, you know, where you had universal health care, free education, all of that stuff.
Guest:I mean, I...
Guest:I think I may be part of the last generation in England who... I got educated from the age of 5 to 25, and I didn't pay a penny.
Guest:And it was good education.
Guest:It was a good education.
Guest:I went to good schools, parochial schools.
Guest:They were Catholic schools.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went to drama school and got my degree at drama school.
Guest:And, you know, and that was it.
Guest:I mean, all I had to all I had to find was like my pocket money.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But all my tuition, all my school expenses were all covered.
Marc:It's a beautiful thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was no shame in the working class then.
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:There was, in fact, it's quite the opposite.
Guest:There was a great deal of pride.
Guest:You know, there was a movement after the war.
Guest:There was a movement where the working class had had a kind of profile and people were, you know, it was clear that there was many, many talented people in the working class and all that they were lacking.
Guest:They weren't lacking the skills or the talent or the ability.
Guest:What they were lacking was the opportunity.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was given to them by successive governments after after World War Two.
Marc:But it strikes me like in growing up in England that there is sort of a class system.
Marc:Oh, completely.
Guest:No one talks about it here.
Guest:Yeah, but there's a class system here too.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:But I think the difference between the systems in a way is that here it's –
Guest:It's a meritocracy here.
Guest:I mean, and also it's all about whether you have money.
Marc:It's a meritocracy, but it's also what the merit could be is just your ability to bullshit and hustle.
Marc:And make money.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And make money.
Guest:Right.
Marc:If you can make money, then it doesn't seemingly at this point, especially with this president, it doesn't fucking matter how.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:Here's the difference.
Guest:This is my theory.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When you talk to an American.
Mm hmm.
Guest:When you're talking to someone from America.
Guest:Like me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You hear the accent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Now, all I can tell from your accent is I can maybe have a vague guess at where you might be from.
Guest:But your accent doesn't give me any information about your education, your financial status, how you were raised or anything like that.
Guest:When you talk to a Brit, all that information is in there in their accent.
Guest:In seconds.
Guest:You can kind of tell, you know, he's middle class.
Guest:He's working class.
Guest:He's upper class.
Guest:He's had an education.
Guest:She hasn't.
Guest:You know, you can.
Guest:There's all that.
Guest:And it's all subtle.
Guest:It's all subliminal.
Guest:But all that info is there.
Guest:And as Brits, we kind of we respond to it and act on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so someone comes in.
Guest:I remember being when I was a student.
Guest:constantly being told about you know you've got to you've got to neutralize your accent other my first my first agent actually said to me you really got to calm down with the london accent because otherwise you're going to be playing spanish waiters all your life because my name was alfredo yeah you know and he was saying drop the o or change it but i mean now it was that like it was that obvious like london was a bad accident what was the preferable accident
Guest:When I went to drama school, my accent was a lot more kind of a lot rougher than it is now.
Guest:I mean, I sweetened it up, you know, because I took his advice.
Guest:This was 1971.
Marc:And then it just sticks?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Or are you putting on an effort now?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:This is now how I talk.
Guest:But I think that's after years and years of, you know, kind of reading.
Guest:Like, what did you used to sound like?
Guest:Well, it was all sort of a bit like that, you know, a bit kind of thrown back in the mouth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A bit kind of, you know, oh, hello, hello, Mark.
Guest:You know, all right.
Yeah.
Guest:But, of course, now when I do it, it does feel to me affected.
Guest:Yeah, when you do your old accent.
Guest:Yeah, but at the time it was just the way – I mean, every now and again my daughter said to me once, she said, Dad, when you get – I said, I can really hear the London when you get angry.
Guest:Oh, there it comes, yeah.
Guest:Because suddenly it goes from this to kind of like, I fucking told you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:how many more times that's interesting that's what it comes out it's still in there it makes sense because we all you know at those moments of high emotion we always betray ourselves right or or you betray yourselves but no but you're probably being more honest on some level yeah you know like then that's when people go that's who you are that's the real i can see it now you faker
Guest:But so what was the education?
Guest:Where did you go to drama school?
Guest:I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, or as it was known then, the Guildhall School of Screech and Trauma.
Guest:And it was a very good education.
Guest:It was a kind of classical education.
Guest:This was the very early 70s.
Guest:But were you doing it in high school or whatever you call it?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Our version of high school was secondary school.
Guest:I went to a Roman Catholic secondary school for boys.
Guest:Were you very Catholic?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:My parents sent me there just in case.
Guest:In case what?
Guest:There was a God?
Guest:Just in case there was a God.
Guest:My parents were not what I call kind of...
Guest:They were like part-time Catholics.
Guest:Well, Spain and Italy, those are big Catholic strongholds.
Guest:They were raised Catholic, but they weren't practicing.
Guest:In fact, if anything, my father was actually very anti-clerical.
Guest:He had some experiences during the Civil War that really kind of turned him off.
Guest:The church.
Guest:Catholic fascists.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All the Catholic fascists.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my mother was just, you know, so they sent me to a Catholic.
Guest:I was baptized.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They sent me to a Catholic school.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that was partly because it was a good school and it was the nearest one to where we lived.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:My brother went to a Catholic high school and he's a Jew.
Guest:There you go.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, my parents' choices weren't quite so stark, but I'm kidding.
Marc:Yeah, there was some point where my brother went to some school and he came home singing a song about Jesus loving him, and my parents were a little taken aback.
Marc:Sort of set him straight with the vague notion that we don't do the Jesus thing.
Guest:We're not sure what we do, but it's not that.
Guest:That's right, that's right.
Guest:I remember coming home from school one day.
Guest:This was primary school.
Guest:I was younger than 10, certainly.
Guest:I remember coming home and telling my dad that one of the priests or one of the nuns at school had told me off because I'd said that we didn't go to Mass.
Guest:And the nun had said something like, well, there's a good chance that people who don't go to Mass will go to hell.
Guest:Something like that.
Guest:and i told my dad and he hit the roof he was so he was so i've not i've never i've never seen my dad it was scary actually he was like screaming and shouting in italian spanish and and he went down to the school he went down to the school yeah the next day and he kind of just was screaming at the head mistress and just you know and after that i
Guest:What was he screaming about?
Guest:He was just basically just saying, you know, don't talk to my son this way.
Guest:Terrorize the kid.
Guest:How do you say these things to my kid?
Guest:I remember he said something about, I know about you people.
Guest:I saw things in Spain.
Guest:And he told me this story that he had seen in the bowels of some church...
Guest:He had seen sort of the bones of babies.
Guest:And this may well have been just him swallowing propaganda.
Guest:But he said that these were the bones of babies who had been born from nuns and how they'd been killed and kept there secretly.
Guest:All this kind of weird and wacky stuff.
Guest:And I remember thinking, oh, come on, he's probably exaggerating.
Guest:But then, of course, you talk to kind of hardline Catholics, and you kind of know that there's all that shit in the background.
Guest:There's layers and layers.
Guest:Yeah, and you start thinking, well, maybe...
Guest:Yeah, there's just maybe there was a there were elements of truth now.
Guest:But anyway, on that day, he was absolutely furious.
Guest:But the irony, of course, was that he scared the bejesus out of me because he was so angry.
Guest:But when I went back to school the day after, I was like the hero for a couple of days.
Guest:You know, your dad, your dad, your dad told Mary's sister, Mary Kevin, that she was an old asshole.
Guest:I was like, you know, I started a revolution.
Guest:Yeah, I was on the cool kid for about a day.
Guest:Yeah, you fought the fight against hell.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:But you were acting then?
Guest:No, I didn't start.
Guest:Not at 10.
Guest:No, not at 10.
Guest:But I know that around that time, we used to do this thing in school.
Guest:I think it was just a way of filling the last hour of the Friday.
Guest:We used to do this thing where we would kind of put on little plays, put on little shows.
Guest:And I just remember...
Guest:Doing a little thing, a little skit that I'd worked out with my chum.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And getting a laugh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, this is a story you hear a million times from performers.
Guest:That first laugh.
Guest:The moment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That you kind of go, oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, this is it.
Guest:Now, I had no idea.
Guest:My mother told me once that I was nine years old when I first said, I want to be an actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I can't believe for a moment that at that age I had any idea of what it implied or what was involved.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You were just a showman.
Guest:I was a show-off.
Guest:I was a show-off.
Guest:And in fact, years later, when I was doing my first leading role on Broadway... For which play?
Guest:It was a play called Art.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it was a huge success.
Guest:And my old drama teacher from high school...
Guest:who I'd stayed friends with.
Guest:This guy was a very, very, very important part of my life.
Guest:And he came with his partner to come and see the show in New York, which I was thrilled about.
Guest:From England.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I took him and his partner out to dinner with another friend of mine who happened to be in town.
Guest:And my friend Andy turned around to Martin and said, so, Martin, when you were teaching Fred at school, was he a good actor?
Guest:And Martin instantly kind of went, no, he was a dreadful actor, but he was a marvelous show off.
Guest:So that's how I started.
Guest:I was a terrific show off.
Guest:This guy's name was Martin?
Guest:Martin Corbett.
Marc:And he just encouraged you?
Guest:Yeah, his first day at school as a teacher was my first day there as a student.
Guest:And he came in as, I think he was deputy head of the English department.
Guest:And the one of the first things he did was he started a Wednesday night drama club and he started teaching plays and putting on plays at the end of each semester.
Guest:And of course, I was like I was happy as a pig in shit.
Guest:I thought it was just the most fantastic thing.
Guest:I live for those Wednesday nights.
Guest:It's weird how that one guy or that one teacher in high school can change your whole life.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:He was the first adult, apart from my mother, who I sort of confided in and said, I want to be an actor.
Guest:And Martin basically said, okay, I'll do whatever I can to help you, but the minute you drop the ball, I'm washing my hands of you.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Basically, what he meant was, if you're serious, I'll be serious and I'll help you.
Guest:In high school.
Guest:Yeah, but if you're being flippant or you don't put 100% effort into this, I don't want anything to do with you.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He really... Yeah, and I was a little taken aback by that approach, but actually, I really appreciate it because he gave me reading lists.
Guest:He gave me things to look at.
Guest:He suggested...
Guest:Plays I should read.
Guest:Movies I should see.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Well, kind of just stuff that was appropriate and that would help me understand what being an actor was going to be like.
Guest:But you would never know about them, hadn't he told you?
Guest:Not really, no.
Guest:Certainly not the plays.
Guest:He said, if you're serious about being an actor, you've got to start reading plays.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like Shakespeare?
Guest:Yeah, Shakespeare, Noel Coward, George Bernard Shaw, you know, all that stuff.
Guest:Stuff which in the normal traffic of events probably I wouldn't have been exposed to.
Guest:Yeah, you need that guy.
Guest:Yeah, and he did things like when I auditioned for drama school, for instance, in my second last year, my last year at school.
Guest:Uh, I had to, I got into, I got a place at drama school and then I auditioned in front of a board, um, the local educational authority for a grant.
Guest:So I could, you know, I could afford to go to college and I forgot my lines in the audition and they turned me down.
Guest:So I was heartbroken.
Guest:I went back to the school.
Guest:I told Martin what had happened.
Guest:And he wrote a very impassioned letter to the board saying, please, this young man is talented.
Guest:Give him another chance.
Guest:He was nervous.
Guest:You know, I guarantee you he'll be spot on next.
Guest:And he really fought for me.
Guest:And I got another audition and I passed and I got my grant.
Guest:oh that's great yeah yeah like what movies did he make you watch uh well i think it was things like um it was i tell you what it was i can't remember the title of it now but there's that wonderful movie with tony curtis and sydney poitier about the escaped convicts oh yeah uh in the heat of the night he told me to look at um he told me to look at movies like lawrence of arabia um and all these comedies all the all these these were like old movies
Guest:which would turn up on TV.
Guest:So he said, you know, make an effort, watch these movies.
Guest:Was it the Defiant Ones?
Guest:That's it, the Defiant Ones, yeah.
Guest:I can't believe I remembered that.
Guest:Neither can I, but I'm thankful.
Marc:My brain rarely works.
Marc:I just want to make it clear I did that without Googling.
Marc:Yes, I can verify that.
Marc:I'm sitting right directly opposite him.
Marc:Did not touch my keyboard.
Marc:I just remembered that.
Marc:It's a rare thing.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So, but like the education, like, I mean, you've done so many different roles and you're constantly working.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Touch wood.
Guest:That's been the case.
Guest:I've been very fortunate that way.
Marc:But like, what was the, you know, because I do a little acting myself now and I know my listeners get tired of me now that I'm acting a bit and whenever I have actors on, I'm like, so what's your process?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the education, because I didn't have any of that education, but, I mean, you were classically trained.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was the traditional and accepted and expected journey was to go to drama school and get trained.
Marc:But that was what, Shakespeare, the classics?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We didn't...
Guest:The most contemporary play that we actually worked on in my drama school was written in 1939.
Guest:Everything else was before that.
Guest:It was all kind of everything we looked at was in the classical canon.
Guest:But that was the way that drama was taught in those days.
Guest:I mean, now it's very different.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But like, like in doing that, you know, what, what exactly, what paces are you sort of walking through that, that stay with you?
Marc:I mean, like, you know, when you're just doing, if you're doing Shakespeare or you're doing, I don't know, you're doing Greeks too.
Marc:Like, you know, what, what, what, what does that mean?
Guest:program in your brain i think what it i think what it gives you is an understanding of the the history of the tradition that you are now joining right you know and and it's it's a bit like uh you know it's a bit like the old adage about you know breaking the rules is great but you got to know what the rules are first sure sure and i think that's essentially what it is you know you you in order to in order to kind of express and and and and kind of break new ground you have to understand how that ground arrived there in the first place
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or else you're just you're just a cheater and an idiot.
Guest:Well, kind of.
Guest:You can't be trusted.
Guest:Or you don't have a context for what you're doing.
Guest:You know, it's you know, I remember the first time I heard very kind of out there freeform jazz.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cecil Taylor.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:People like that.
Guest:And I didn't get it at all.
Guest:I'm kind of going, what is this?
Guest:It just sounds like people just kind of making noise.
Guest:And then it was a friend of mine who was a jazz fan said, no, no, you got to understand these guys, they could play you anything you ask them to play.
Guest:They've arrived.
Guest:They've journeyed here to get here.
Guest:They've journeyed to fuck you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They haven't just they haven't just landed and kind of gone, hey, what's this?
Guest:A saxophone?
Guest:What does this do?
Guest:But this is the 70s, you said?
Guest:Yeah, I was at drama school from 72 to 75.
Marc:So when you get out, I mean, is the heyday of experimental British theater, it's already going?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:When I came out of drama school, there was a very healthy alternative theater circuit and a theater scene.
Guest:There were lots of small companies kind of applying for project grants and so on, and they were doing some really interesting work.
Guest:There was a big...
Guest:explosion in uh in in feminist theater in in in kind of gay theater alternative theater there was loads of these wonderful disparate voices people making work making theater yeah sometimes they do it in a garage or they do it in a small little black box somewhere in the middle of nowhere they would tour that you know touring art centers working class working men's did you do some of that stuff yeah yeah i worked with
Guest:Two companies, one company was called 784 and the other company was called Belt and Braces and we took shows that had a very strong political content and we took them on tour to colleges and working men's social clubs and stuff like that.
Guest:And how was the reaction?
Guest:Well, the reaction was, depending on the quality of the show, the reaction was good.
Guest:Sometimes it was not so good.
Guest:We did a play.
Guest:We did, for instance, with 784.
Guest:Sorry, with Belt and Braces, I did what was then the original British production of a Dario Faux play called Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I remember that.
Guest:And that was a hugely kind of successful.
Guest:We had a very successful tour.
Guest:It went to the West End eventually, but without me.
Guest:And, you know, it was a time when there was a lot of public money available for art in all its forms.
Guest:Art, theater, music, you know, fine arts.
Guest:There was a generosity with state money.
Guest:And that started to shrink once Margaret Thatcher became prime minister.
Guest:There's always a blossoming of public money for the arts whenever there's
Guest:a labor government in power yeah as soon as the conservatives get back in it all starts to shrink again and did you find that in britain that there there's more of an audience for theater there is very much so very much so there there's an audience for theater there's an audience for good theater certainly because you know uh the the british enthusiasm for theater doesn't mean that they'll just they'll take anything you know right if anything they're quite they're kind of quite fussy yeah you know it's i remember i
Guest:I remember going to the theatre in New York with an English friend of mine and he said, I've seen five shows this week and every single show there's a standing ovation at the end of the show.
Guest:And quite honestly, Fred, one of them deserved it.
Guest:The other four certainly did not.
Guest:Because in England, in London, audiences don't stand up.
Guest:They stand up if it's really exceptional.
Guest:Here, I mean, I think here you get a standing ovation if you turn up.
Guest:Yeah, if you get through it.
Marc:If you get through it, it's like everyone's on their feet cheering you.
Marc:But I guess that's also part of that tradition that you sort of learn when you do classical stuff and you do Shakespeare that there is that.
Marc:It all started there.
Marc:So there's like, you know, centuries of what it sort of invented theater in a way.
Guest:And also now that theater has become, you know, theater, I think somewhere along the way,
Guest:In the modern era, somebody, I don't know who, I don't know when, but somebody somewhere suddenly said, you know what, this can make money.
Guest:This is a good, workable business model.
Guest:And so people like Cameron McIntosh, who was an independent producer that I worked with.
Guest:They started putting money into the infrastructure.
Guest:They started renovating theaters, so making the whole experience of going to a theater much more pleasant.
Guest:When I was a kid, going to the theater was a bit of a challenge because the theaters were a bit grubby.
Guest:They were run down.
Guest:You couldn't get a drink in the interval.
Guest:The ice cream came in these tubs, and it was weeks old and warm.
Guest:Yeah, there wasn't there wasn't much care.
Guest:Warm ice cream, warm ice cream, basically like a thick milkshake.
Guest:That's really bad.
Guest:Yeah, it's disgusting.
Guest:But, you know, but then but that started to change.
Guest:So now, you know, you go to the theater now in London and major cities in England and it's it's a great night.
Guest:What was the big break?
Guest:I mean, were you gunning for television?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:You were going to be a theater guy.
Guest:Yeah, that was the thing.
Guest:For my generation, theater was always the first entry point for work.
Guest:You didn't even think about, like, how to get in movies.
Guest:No.
Guest:Movies and TV was something that was way ahead in the future that you had to work towards.
Guest:You had to, in a way, get well-known enough or earn the chance to do a TV or a movie.
Marc:And who were the elders for your generation in the theater world that everybody looked up to?
Guest:It was people like Glenda Jackson, Trevor Nunn.
Guest:We had some great actors.
Guest:uh you know uh donald sindon um uh peter o'toole yeah uh you know there were some there were great there were actors who were like maybe 10 15 20 years ahead of us yeah who were doing great work and that was what we aspired to and and the idea of getting into the national theater or getting into the royal shakespeare company
Guest:uh working with you know really good provincial companies like the bristol old vic or the exchange theater in manchester and so on that was what you aimed for yeah um but it was always theater because that's all we were trained in i mean there was no when i when at my drama school the the the most technological class was a class that was rather vaguely called radio microphone technique yeah
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:There were no classes about screen work or how to audition for cameras.
Marc:But at that time, not unlike, I guess, the thing you're doing now, the Angel of Vine podcast, like the BBC had radio plays.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And in fact, in those days, they may still do it.
Guest:The BBC had a repertory company.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the BBC radio rep.
Guest:And every drama school was invited to enter a competition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so every drama school would send maybe two or sometimes three of their best students to enter this competition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you would basically audition for the BBC Radio Rep.
Guest:And if you won, the prize was a six-month contract with the BBC Radio Rep.
Guest:Now, that was like...
Marc:i mean that was serious yeah that meant that if you if you won this yeah you'd leave drama school and you'd be in a job you'd have a job a job for six months talking you know and it was like that was and so we all went we all went and did it we all kind of tried to do that no i like i did one i did a radio show for the bbc in one of their old hall like they have like those put even the bbc in that building you know i'm in this room that has an audience in it and it it has its own history you're like a lot of shit happened in
Marc:here you know there's like a true not a tradition but it's all it's all in one place there's very few places like that here where you know that that's where it all happens that we when you have a national radio you know the the the studios are are historical that's right that's right and so much has gone on yeah and you you i remember the very first time i worked at the bbc to do a radio job
Guest:I was told that the studio we were in was where some really famous science fiction series from the 40s had been transmitted when it was live.
Guest:And you would find all these sort of old actors who were radio stars who did almost nothing but radio.
Guest:And they'd be full of little hints like, you know, dear boy, when you turn the pages of your script, just...
Guest:Hold it away from the microphone.
Guest:And perhaps try and fold up the ends of the pages so you've got something to grab.
Guest:Just a little hint.
Guest:And they give you all these little... And, of course, at the time, I was young.
Guest:I loved all those old guys.
Guest:Those old guys were...
Guest:You looked up to them.
Guest:They were the elders.
Guest:They were the actors that had been through what you were going through, had experienced what you were hoping to experience.
Guest:And their knowledge, their understanding, even their cynicism about it was useful.
Marc:And also, it sounds like in Britain, there was a working class element to that.
Guest:Oh, very much so.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:These guys, you know, they had jobs for a lifetime.
Guest:It was Peter O'Toole and Albert Finney's generation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and they just kicked the shit out of that place.
Guest:I mean, you know, they were the ones that were kind of going, no, I'm not going to change my accent.
Guest:You don't like my accent?
Guest:Don't talk to me.
Guest:You know, they had the guts to kind of just challenge all
Guest:that did you get to work with you I got to work no I didn't I got to I became sort of friendly for a while with Albert Finney because we had a couple of mutual friends yeah I never got to work with any of those old guys but they were they were the people we were kind of
Guest:They were the people we adored, you know, because they seemed to walk the walk and talk the talk.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they lived the life.
Marc:They did.
Marc:Very much so.
Marc:Very much so.
Marc:I mean, there's a lot of lessons from that that you might want to avoid.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I worked with a wonderful old actor called Sebastian Shaw, who was a great character actor and leading man at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Guest:when i was there just kind of spear carrying yeah and the way you know the way yeah what it's called yeah i was a spear carrier yeah and lantern bearer and uh i uh you know like like a lot of young actors you know you when you when you're talking to older actors you you want to know so you want to and i i think i said to mr shaw i think i said something like um
Guest:Mr. Shaw, do you have any advice for me?
Guest:And I was kind of a bit gushy.
Guest:And he said, yes, I have.
Guest:He said, I'll give you some advice.
Guest:He said, never stand when you can sit and never sit if you can lie down.
Guest:And at the time, I thought, oh, he's just an old fart.
Guest:But now that I'm in my 60s myself, I'm thinking, that's really good advice.
Marc:So thank you, Mr. Shaw.
Marc:It's practical.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:So how does the big break reveal itself?
Marc:I mean, in terms of when did you start working?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I was always working, not always doing what I wanted to do or not always doing necessarily what was the best thing to do.
Guest:But that's just part of your work ethic.
Guest:Yeah, I just, you know, I grew up in a family that really lived...
Guest:Paycheck to paycheck.
Guest:Was your dad on board with the acting?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:No?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:He thought... He was a little... He was a bit bemused by it, and then I think he became slightly irritated by it, and then he just dismissed it, you know, because it wasn't... It didn't seem to be of any consequence to him.
Marc:Did he see... He didn't get to see any of your success?
Guest:He got to see a few things.
Guest:He got to see a few things.
Guest:I mean, he was... But he... I don't know.
Guest:There's something about...
Guest:He never quite was able to express any pride or any enjoyment of what I did.
Guest:There was always a caveat.
Guest:There was always it was always kind of like almost begrudgingly acknowledging what I was doing.
Guest:But then, of course, after he died, I discovered that he had a suitcase, like a big bag.
Guest:Of clippings.
Guest:And it was full of clippings and posters and articles and photographs.
Guest:But he couldn't actually.
Guest:I remember one of the last things he saw before he passed away.
Guest:uh he i did a play where in the second half of the play my character is in full drag yeah because he's that's his that's his job in this he's he's in a gang of and and there's and that's his that's his what job in the heist is to kind of like you know deflect attention right so he's in full drag on a street corner pretending to be a lady of the night um
Guest:And my father comes to see the show.
Guest:And afterwards, he says to me, he says, Alfredo, it was incredible.
Guest:When you dress up as a woman, you look just like your mother.
Guest:And I was thrilled by this.
Guest:And I kind of went, oh, did you think I was attractive?
Guest:And he goes, don't be ridiculous.
Guest:So that was the best.
Guest:That was the closest I got to a compliment.
Guest:When I was in drag, I looked like my mom.
Guest:Why is it with that?
Guest:What is it with fathers and that thing?
Marc:What is the obstacle?
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:I can only speak from my own experience.
Guest:I'm sure there's a million and one reasons why fathers...
Guest:They can't express their pride.
Guest:I think with my dad it was because I think what I was doing, the way I was living my life, what was important to me, he just could not...
Guest:I mean, he got me a job just after drama school.
Guest:He got me a job in the restaurant where he was working.
Guest:He was bartending by this time.
Guest:He was bartending in this restaurant.
Guest:And he got me a job as a waiter.
Guest:And if I say so myself, I was quite good at it.
Guest:Good enough that my manager asked me if I'd be interested in going on a paid two week course, which the restaurant would pay for to train as an assistant manager.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, if waiting tables or waiting and if working in the catering business had been my ambition, that would have been like a great thing to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I turned it down because I wanted to.
Guest:I didn't want to get stuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wanted to.
Guest:I wanted time to go to auditions and stuff.
Guest:And when I told my dad that I turned it down, his disappointment was palpable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was but I don't think he was disappointed for me.
Guest:I think he was just embarrassed, you know, because he it made it.
Guest:I think he thought that it made him look as if he hadn't raised me properly.
Marc:Or somehow, something like that.
Guest:And then when I left that job and took an acting job, which was paying me something like a third of what I was earning as a waiter, he could barely talk to me.
Guest:Yeah, he just didn't understand your choices.
Guest:Didn't get it.
Guest:So was Oklahoma the first big thing?
Guest:That was the first big sort of stage production that I got involved in, yeah.
Guest:And that was the one that kind of got me a little bit of attention.
Guest:And that was like in the 80s?
Guest:Yeah, that was around about when my daughter was born.
Guest:So it would have been like, yeah, 1980, 81.
Marc:So that was what it's like.
Guest:I don't know anything about the production, but I know it got a lot of attention and it was a revival of.
Guest:It was the first major revival of the musical since like the 1950s.
Guest:It's sort of odd that it got so much attention.
Guest:What was it about that?
Guest:Well, I think it's because it was very popular.
Guest:The show's very popular.
Guest:And it was the first time there hadn't been a production of Oklahoma for nearly 30 years.
Guest:It was like some sort of unearthing.
Guest:Yes, it was like a big deal.
Guest:And we took it on tour first, and then we came into the West End.
Guest:And also we had a great, this young Australian singer, John Dietrich, who was absolutely brilliant in the role of Curly.
Guest:And it was a it was a beer.
Guest:It was kind of big deal.
Guest:It ran for a year and a half.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I did like 10 months in it.
Marc:I wonder what the like what what the appeal was because it was I guess in terms of I guess it's Britain in Oklahoma is very specifically American.
Guest:It was a huge but it was a huge success when it first came over to England.
Guest:And there's always been a great- What, in the 30s, you mean, or whenever?
Guest:Well, yeah, when it came over in the late 40s, I believe.
Guest:And I think that was the last time we'd seen a production of it in the West End.
Guest:I don't know the show, but musicals are this whole other, their own thing.
Guest:Well, every number in the show was a hit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Over the years, every number in the show had either been released as a single or had been part of famous singers' repertoires.
Guest:So all the numbers were a hit.
Guest:my character i played judd fry the other bad guy he has one song in the original musical yeah which was cut from the movie so every night when i went on stage every other song as soon as people were singing along yeah well they were either singing along or as they heard the opening bars there was a kind of a round of polite applause you know oh what a beautiful book
Guest:You know, I'm just a girl who... And then, of course, I come on and my song starts... It's really dark, you know.
Guest:The floor creaks.
Guest:The door squeaks.
Guest:There's a mouse nibbling on a broom.
Guest:It's all very kind of dark and, you know, paranoid.
Guest:And, of course, when that starts, I could see the whole audience kind of turning their heads, kind of going, I don't know this one.
Guest:What's this song?
Guest:I've never heard this song.
LAUGHTER
Guest:So every other song in the show got like cheers at the end, you know.
Guest:People will say we're in love.
Guest:The place goes mad.
Guest:I end up with my in my lonely room.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Tumbleweeds.
Guest:But you stood out.
Guest:I stood out.
Guest:It was a real kind of learning experience.
Guest:And that started the theater role?
Guest:Yeah, well, yeah, kind of.
Guest:And then it was just after that that I did my first movie.
Guest:Which movie was that?
Guest:That was Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Guest:You've really done your research, Mark.
Guest:I'm really impressed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Sometimes I talk to people from... You've never heard of them.
Marc:Wikipedia is not always great.
Marc:IMDb is good.
Marc:But sometimes I talk to people.
Marc:It's like, well, I did this little movie that you can't find on there.
Marc:The Matrix.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, that's a big movie.
Marc:I remember the guy with the spikes coming out of you.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:It was very disturbing.
Marc:My producer, I think it scarred him for life.
Marc:My work here is done.
Marc:For most of his life, you were that guy because he was a kid.
Guest:It was like, that's the guy who was...
Guest:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So you get booked out of England for a radio?
Guest:We did, yeah, because in those days, the studio system in England was very economically depressed at the time.
Guest:The studios were empty.
Guest:People weren't shooting there.
Guest:The British film industry was going through one of its cyclical downturns.
Marc:See, I might want to add real quick that here on this particular resume, it says that there was a movie before that.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:It was a nightingale saying in Berkeley Square.
Marc:That's erroneous.
Marc:See, that's why I played stupid.
Guest:That's erroneous that I've never done a movie called.
Guest:I don't know what that is.
Guest:I've got a feeling.
Guest:It says you're uncredited and it's a port official.
Guest:Oh, I know what.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:I've got a feeling someone's got me.
Guest:I think that was the title of an episode of a TV show I did.
Guest:Ah, I see Wikipedia.
Guest:You can't trust them.
Guest:You can't trust them.
Guest:So the so the film industry is very depressed.
Guest:It was very depressed.
Guest:And so it was very cheap to shoot in England.
Guest:So basically what Paramount did is that they brought their whole production office over to England.
Guest:They'd already cast Harrison Ford and Karen Allen from the States, but every other actor in the movie was cast in London.
Guest:As a consequence, we were all working under British equity contracts, which did not include any residual payments.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No.
Guest:So we all got paid like a lump sum.
Guest:Was that a plan?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, that's just the way it was.
Guest:We never had a residual system in English film contracts.
Guest:You just got paid your fee.
Guest:And if you were a star, you'd negotiate a big fat fee.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:That's what we got.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, I think it's slightly changed now, but certainly in those days.
Guest:So we were cheap.
Guest:We were very cheap.
Guest:But also very grateful.
Yeah.
Guest:And then you were doing British television as well?
Guest:Yeah, I did a little bit of TV.
Guest:But still, even after the movie, I was still regularly working in the theater and regional theater in London.
Guest:I mean, it was just a long... The films really didn't become my main stay of employment until I came to live in the States.
Guest:And but but you were for years, you were sort of like one of those guys, like, there's that guy again.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, yeah, I suddenly was on that track of, you know, the character.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:What's isn't that?
Guest:Isn't that what's his name?
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is which I've never complained about.
Guest:I mean, that that's.
Guest:It's a better way to be.
Guest:It's a better way to work.
Guest:Yeah, that life put two kids through college.
Guest:I have no complaints.
Guest:And you don't have the pressure of like, you know, you got to be, you know.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I mean, there's a great... I've told this story often, but there's a great quote of the late Bob Hoskins who said that he loved popping in and out of movies, you know, doing little cameo parts.
Guest:And the reason he loved it so much, he said...
Guest:When you turn up, they're happy to see you.
Guest:They treat you like the crown jewels.
Guest:And if the movie sucks, nobody blames you.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:And it's perfect.
Guest:But then you had big prick up your ears.
Guest:That was a big part.
Guest:Yeah, that was a nice big lead in what was then a very prestigious, very...
Guest:That was a movie that very much kind of pushed the envelope socially and politically.
Guest:You know, it was the first time that we saw a gay relation, albeit a destructive one, but a gay relationship portrayed as as a relationship and not as some kind of, you know.
Guest:secretive criminal uh you know kind of endeavor you know yeah it was it was uh it was the opening up of a whole new way of telling a story you know and of course it was based on true events and everything so it was quite that was quite an important moment and such a
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:Yeah, very much so.
Guest:I mean, that was the first time that I actually spent a lot of time before shooting actively researching the role and the history of these two characters.
Guest:You know, Gary Oldman and I, we'd been friends and, you know, we'd done a play together and we spent three or four weeks just every day together just kind of working out these timelines of, you know, where these characters were at at any particular moment.
Guest:So when we arrived to shoot the movie,
Guest:we kind of felt very much at home with the characters and with the events of the story and so on.
Guest:And that really, that taught me a great lesson.
Guest:And that's something that I've continued to do whenever I've worked on, particularly when I've worked on films where I'm playing a character who actually existed at some point.
Marc:And I would imagine, too, because you played Mark Rothko in Red, and he was a complicated character.
Guest:Very much so, yeah.
Guest:And interesting, the more complicated they are, the more contradictory the information you get, the more interesting it is to play.
Guest:What do you mean contradictory?
Guest:Well, in the sense that there used to be an exercise at drama school that we used to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You would write down a list of all the things that your character says about himself, and then you write a list of all the things that the other characters say about your character.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the best writing is often when those things contradict each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, if a character says, oh, I'm just an ordinary person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I'm just, you know, and then someone else says, oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I saw him the other day.
Guest:He was drunk and dancing on a table.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that kind of contradiction.
Guest:You think, oh, there's some there's some interesting stuff to work.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because in real life, we're all contradictory.
Guest:We are constantly contradicting ourselves.
Guest:And so that was, you know.
Guest:So when when with Mark Rothko, you know, I read all the stuff that he'd written about his work.
Guest:I read the Breslin biography, which is absolutely definitive.
Guest:Plus, Mark Rothko's son Christopher has written a fantastic book, which is a kind of analysis of his dad's work and where his dad was at in his life at any particular time.
Guest:So all of that stuff was very, very useful and very helpful.
Guest:But ultimately, the last thing an audience is paying for is to watch an actor schlep his homework on stage with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you have to integrate it somehow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What you do is, at least what I do, is you absorb as much of it as that is useful and then forget it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because ultimately all you're doing is really recreating what's on the page.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, you can't suddenly decide to rewrite something because you happen to know what he had for breakfast in 1959.
Guest:But you believe that it goes in there and lodges itself.
Guest:Yeah, it becomes part of your, I don't know, I'm going to sound terribly highfalutin now, but it becomes part of your creative DNA.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In some way.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And that's something you've done, now you do it all the time.
Guest:Yeah, and it becomes kind of second nature in a way.
Guest:I mean, of course, if you're playing a purely fictional character, then, of course, it's just your imagination.
Guest:You just need your imagination.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:So you're going back and forth from England to the States, but the play Art brings you to New York and you stay in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was already I was already living in the States when I did art.
Guest:But then that but that was the first time that I'd worked for a long period of time in New York.
Marc:And that was a huge show.
Marc:Who's that?
Marc:Who's in that Garber?
Guest:Victor Garber and Alan Alda.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great, great company.
Guest:We became we all became good friends and we've remained so.
Guest:Alan is a good guy fantastic I mean and he was like he was like our dad yeah in a way he kind of he sort of took Victor and I under his wing and and there's a wonderful moment when Alan was always very very keen on you know on like finding a new restaurant you know and he was he loves food he was always very excited to find a new place and he came into work one night and said guys
Guest:There's a great new Italian restaurant.
Guest:It's, you know, he mentioned the name of the chef.
Guest:They've just opened downtown.
Guest:I'm going to get my assistant.
Guest:And he gave a name.
Guest:I'm going to get my assistant to do it.
Guest:And I said, oh, I thought so-and-so was your assistant.
Guest:And Alan said, well, I've got two assistants, one here and one in the office.
Guest:And then I said something like, wow, Alan, that must cost you a fortune.
Guest:And Alan very quickly said, I've got a fortune.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:You've done a lot of movies.
Marc:Some of them I've seen.
Marc:Some of them I haven't.
Marc:Some of them I forgot I saw.
Marc:When you work with somebody like Jim Darmusch,
Marc:I'm trying to remember how big the part in Dead Man was.
Guest:It wasn't very big.
Guest:It was basically one scene.
Guest:I had one scene in the kind of trading post.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer come in, you know, and there's this kind of, you know, negotiation, which gets very tense.
Guest:And that was the only time I went up to that.
Guest:He was shooting it in somewhere in Oregon.
Guest:And I went up there for a week and I was there for three or four days, not doing much.
Guest:And then we shot all that stuff in like one day.
Guest:And then a few years later, Jim called me.
Guest:And in the interim, I'd worked with Sarah Driver, Jim's partner.
Guest:And I'd done a film with her in Germany.
Guest:Which one was that?
Guest:It was called When Pigs Fly.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And starring Marianne Faithfull.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:She's an interesting woman, really interesting.
Marc:Yeah, I used to see her.
Marc:I worked at a coffee shop in Harvard Square when she was drying out at some point in, I guess, in the late 80s, and she used to come in every day, and she looked weathered.
Guest:Yeah, but an amazing woman.
Guest:Yeah, she's great.
Guest:So many stories, so much.
Guest:Anyway, and then after that, Jim called me up about coffee and cigarettes, and he'd been making these little vignettes for years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Trying to find a way of somehow putting them together.
Guest:And he just said, I've got this idea for a little short.
Guest:Would you be interested?
Guest:And it was myself and Steve Coogan.
Guest:And I said yes straight away because, you know, I'm a big fan of Steve Coogan.
Guest:He was just here.
Guest:Cool guy.
Guest:Very fantastic.
Guest:And Jim just basically said that he didn't have a script.
Guest:He just had an idea for a scene.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we improvised a lot of it.
Guest:Was it fun?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of fun.
Guest:We didn't improvise in front of the camera.
Guest:We worked it all out the day before in a rehearsal.
Guest:So we had a pretty good idea of where we were going to go with it.
Guest:But I'd never worked that way before.
Guest:I'd never done a movie or worked on a film where there was so much freedom.
Guest:To just kind of invent stuff and just cut, you know, and that, that was really exciting.
Guest:Have you done more of that since?
Guest:No, not, not, no, I haven't.
Guest:It's funny that it kind of, it was like the most, it was like finding the most delicious dish in a buffet and just thinking, you know what?
Guest:I'm just going to have that now.
Guest:And then you go to another buffet and there's nothing like it's not there.
Guest:I think you and Coogan should work more together.
Guest:I hope Steve's memory of that film is as fond as mine is.
Guest:I remember, for instance, we got into this whole riff about his coat, which was a conversation that we'd had literally...
Guest:A couple of hours before in the lunch break.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I'd said something like, that's a really nice coat.
Guest:And he went, yeah, it's Vivian Westwood.
Guest:I said, that's cool.
Guest:That's cool.
Guest:And then so in the scene, I just kind of went, nice coat.
Guest:And then he just went off on this whole thing.
Guest:It was brilliant.
Guest:I thought this was such a great way to work.
Guest:It's fun, right?
Guest:Yeah, I loved it.
Marc:In the moment.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:It's hard to get in the moment.
Marc:So like I just read, the weird thing is we could spend a long time with a lot of the stuff in the resume because he's done so much.
Marc:But I just read an article recently, like three days ago, about your scene in Boogie Nights.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah, it was like a New Yorker scene.
Marc:Someone sort of like, how does it hold up?
Marc:And there's a reference to that scene.
Marc:And I have to assume that no matter what you do, a lot of people are never going to forget that.
Guest:Oh, yeah, that comes up a lot, and I'm delighted.
Guest:I've never understood it when actors kind of get a little irritated when people kind of mention iconic stuff that they've done.
Guest:You hear actors kind of saying things like, oh, I wish I'd stopped talking about that movie I did.
Guest:That never bothers me because it's those moments that...
Guest:You know, in a small way, I mean, I may be it may be a footnote in the history of film, but it's it's there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and it exists.
Guest:And I'm very, very proud of it.
Guest:Very proud of those things.
Guest:You know, like when, you know, people come up, people still say, I mean, usually men of a certain age.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We'll say things like, you know, I'll be in a bar or something or in a restaurant or in a line in the coffee shop.
Guest:And someone will come up and say, throw me the idol.
Guest:I'll throw you the whip.
Guest:That's you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'll say, yeah, and that was me.
Guest:And then they always say, then they always apologize.
Guest:They always say, yeah, you must hate that when people do that.
Guest:And I always say, no, no, I don't hate it.
Guest:I'm delighted.
Guest:I'm delighted that you remembered it.
Guest:I'm delighted that it's part of your kind of, you know, memory of nice things.
Guest:I'm delighted by that.
Marc:But that's also the great thing about, you know, going back to Bob Hoskins talk is that when you have those moments where you're not the whole movie, but you can really be in that moment, that those are the ones that people really remember, you know, you and the boulder.
Guest:I'm very happy with the billing you've given me, by the way.
Guest:I came before the boulder.
Guest:I'm delighted.
Guest:But you're right.
Guest:I mean, it's and it's not it's not I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of.
Guest:It's nothing to be embarrassed by, you know.
Guest:And then, you know, other people might talk about boogie nights or and it's I'm it delights me.
Guest:I'm I'm I find it flattering.
Guest:And that they remember.
Guest:And I'm delighted that it's a positive memory.
Guest:It's a great movie.
Guest:He did the most wonderful thing.
Guest:TT, he did the most wonderful thing.
Guest:When Boogie Nights was released, he went to the trouble of calling every single person that was involved in that film to thank them for their contribution to it.
Guest:And I don't just mean the actors.
Guest:I mean crew, people who weren't on screen.
Guest:That movie was a huge thing for him.
Guest:And he just called everyone.
Guest:I thought that was such a classy thing to do.
Marc:Now, thinking back on that scene, I mean, like in terms of how you put together a character, you know, what was that work?
Guest:Well, the story goes, I'm not sure, I've never been able to corroborate this, but the story goes that the part was already cast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the actor who was cast...
Guest:at the very last minute dropped out yeah um the story goes that his that this actor's reps got wind that this this movie was about pornography and stuff maybe you shouldn't be maybe you shouldn't be associated with it or something yeah and so he dropped out so i got a call from uh one of the producers john lyons who i knew when he was a casting director and
Guest:And he said, look, I normally wouldn't do this, but we're in a bit of a jam.
Guest:Would you be interested in coming and playing this part?
Guest:It's only going to be like a couple of days' work.
Guest:Turned out to be about three or four days.
Guest:And I had just come back from a film.
Guest:I'd been away for a long, long time, so I was really happy to be working in L.A.
Guest:And I said, sure.
Guest:And then he said, well, I'll get Paul to call you.
Guest:So Paul calls me and says, okay, this is the part.
Guest:He's a coked-up drug dealer on a shotgun rampage.
Guest:And I went, yeah, I'll do it.
Guest:I was thinking I've never done that before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I said, yeah, I'll do it.
Guest:And then he sent me the script and he explained who this character was, how it was loosely based on this character that actually existed.
Guest:Nash.
Guest:He was based on someone.
Guest:I think Eric Boghossian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:played him in another movie.
Marc:I think his name was Nash, but he was like Armenian or Iranian or Israeli.
Marc:It was the club owner guy.
Guest:Yeah, and he was kind of into drugs and porn and stuff.
Guest:But I thought, this is going to be great fun.
Guest:Great fun to do.
Guest:And we had a wonderful time.
Marc:I think he played him in the John Holmes movie.
Guest:Yeah, was it Wonderland?
Marc:Wonderland, yeah.
Marc:That's a disturbing movie.
Marc:Yeah, very much so.
Marc:But that set must have been crazy.
Guest:It was, and it was a lot of fun because P.T.
Guest:was very inventive.
Guest:The scene with the crackers, he basically told the young man who was playing Cosmo, the young kid who was lighting the firecrackers,
Guest:The firecrackers were full bore.
Guest:They were like, you know, they weren't damped.
Guest:And he said to this kid, just light them any old time.
Guest:Don't worry about continuity.
Guest:Just light them whenever you want to.
Guest:Which, of course, the sound man just kind of went nuts, you know, because how do you... But he had a good... What he wanted to do is he wanted...
Guest:all the actors except me to be really genuinely struck by them.
Guest:So whenever you had a shot of Thomas Jane, John C. Reilly, and Mark Wahlberg on the sofa, and they're jumping every time.
Guest:That was for real because they didn't know when it was coming.
Guest:This guy would just light them and just throw them, bang.
Guest:And I said, well, how am I not going to react?
Guest:Because I'm going to be hearing.
Guest:So what they do is they plug.
Guest:One of my ears was plugged up,
Guest:And the other ear had an earwig in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I couldn't hear anything.
Guest:All I could hear was dialogue.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So for me, every firecracker just sounded like very kind of vague, faint in the background noise, which I didn't react.
Guest:So they're all jumping out of their skins and I'm walking through the scene like I can't hear it, like oblivious, like in this coke cloud.
Guest:And it was such a brilliant idea.
Guest:It was so brilliant.
Guest:And of course, it created this weird...
Guest:There was this weird energy in that scene, you know, because everyone else is like freaking out and I'm just floating through it.
Guest:Like, you know, like, like I'm oblivious, which I was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just singing.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:We had such a good time.
Guest:It must have been.
Guest:There was a, there was a John C. Reilly did an interview somewhere and he said, uh, and he was being asked about that scene and he said, yeah, yeah, we were just, we were just sitting on the sofa watching the Alfred Molina show.
Yeah.
Guest:which it kind of was it was a good show and you worked with him again on magnolia yeah yeah had a nice little part in that that was interesting and you know he's i love i love his work you know i was i was a fan you know i i'd seen hard eight you know his first movie which i thought was fantastic so this was a you know i just i would have you know i would have i said yes even before you know even before john finished his first sentence really
Marc:Yeah, and when I saw Spider-Man 2, where you played the Dr. Octopus, see, the thing is you bring something sort of so visceral to almost anything you do.
Marc:That guy seemed almost like, I mean, the way you played it was almost Shakespearean somehow.
Marc:Well, that's very kind of you.
Guest:It's that nice way of saying over the top.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that's good.
Guest:It required that.
Guest:I'm glad that came across because that was partly to do with Sam Raimi.
Guest:I think what he wanted was something otherworldly somehow.
Guest:He wanted his villain to be...
Guest:In the same way that in the first one, Willem Dafoe's villain in Sam's first Spider-Man movie had this kind of larger than light.
Guest:He had a style.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think Sam was into that.
Guest:But that was another amazing experience working in a way that I'd never worked with before.
Guest:I'd never done a movie that was so technically complicated.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you know, yeah, it was and all the CGI and the animation and all the all the technology that was that was employed in that film was a level that I'd never experienced before.
Guest:And it was exciting.
Guest:It was it was like a real it was like making movies in a whole other way.
Guest:I'd never done before.
Guest:So did you but did you have to wear arms?
Guest:Yeah, there was a huge rig that was operated by puppeteers.
Guest:There was another rig that was on cable.
Guest:Some of the shots were animated and CGI'd and stuff.
Guest:I mean, whenever there were close-ups and I had the arms behind me kind of oscillating very, very gently, that was all because the puppeteers were giving it life.
Guest:And this is the interesting thing.
Guest:The puppeteers that were operating the arms were actors themselves.
Guest:So they were kind of, they were giving the arms a kind of, I don't know, a kind of personality.
Guest:So each arm had its own thing going.
Guest:We ended up calling them Harry, Larry, Flo, and Mo.
Guest:You named the arms?
Guest:We named the arms.
Guest:Harry, Larry, Flo, and Mo.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you get excited about every job?
Guest:I do.
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:Because I think that's what reads more than anything else.
Guest:I haven't lost my joy of it.
Guest:And I think it's partly because I'm... I know this is where I might sound a bit sentimental, but I look at my family and what they had to do in order to allow me to do this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you know that they may not have understood me all the time but they always but they made sacrifices on my behalf yeah and uh so i i feel i'm i'm conscious of that and i'm aware of it and i'm thankful and grateful for it and and and
Guest:It's given me they gave me a chance to in a way to live a dream.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That has become a very nice way to earn a living.
Guest:It's given me a lovely life.
Guest:It's given me a it's given me the chance to be part of a wonderful community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so I'm and I love going to I love my you know, I say to people I love my tribe.
Guest:yeah you know i'm proud of them and i'm proud to be part of it the actors yeah anyway anyone anyone who works in show business in show business really and you do like it's like it's crazy i mean you do like voices you're on rick and morty you've done a bit on drunk history you show up like you know you do like you if you've got a few days you'll go do it i'm a bit of a slut that way i mean i'll yeah i find it very hard to say no
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, I've said no in the past, but it's usually when it's really, really bad.
Guest:But, I mean, luckily I've always managed to find something that I've enjoyed in the work I've done.
Guest:And you guys resurrected Red last year?
Guest:Yeah, we did it last year because we never did a West End run.
Guest:We'd done it on Broadway.
Guest:We'd done it in L.A.
Guest:We did it in a small theater in the Donmar in London, which is officially regarded as the West End, but it's not like a proper West End house.
Guest:It's kind of small.
Guest:It's only 250 seats.
Guest:And how was it?
Guest:Good?
Guest:It went great.
Guest:Yeah, it was a big hit.
Guest:How much of it was still in your head?
Guest:Not a lot of it, actually, to be honest, because it had been a good eight, nine years since we'd done it before.
Guest:But once I started working on it and relearning, big chunks of it were coming.
Guest:So it was all there.
Guest:It just needed to be kind of dug out a little bit.
Guest:That's interesting, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was amazed.
Guest:I was grateful for that because I...
Guest:Looking at the play, I remember how kind of hard it was to learn it in the first place.
Guest:Every night I was giving it a couple of hours of just homework, just drilling the lines so they were just like would come easy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I thought, oh, God, I've got to do all that again.
Guest:But actually it started to come back.
Guest:But it came back in – it was really interesting.
Guest:It came back in these chunks.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So then my problem was working out how to put those chunks in the right order.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's like, you know, it's like you have all the ingredients and you're kind of going, well, what goes in first, the onions or the peppers?
Marc:I mean, you weren't quite sure.
Marc:And you just got it through repetition.
Marc:Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Marc:Oh, you played Diego Rivera too, so you've done a couple of artists.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You've never played Gauguin though.
Guest:No, no, I've never played Gauguin.
Guest:You look kind of like him.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Somebody sent me a photo, or no, a painting of Gauguin, like a self-portrait.
Guest:Yeah, no, that's the one I'm thinking of.
Guest:Yeah, and I looked up and he said, you know, and he sent it to me with a little note saying, look familiar.
Guest:Yeah, it's like the whole side of his head and some of the Tahitian stuff in the background.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And I thought, yeah, but I've never been asked to play him.
Guest:Maybe one of those.
Guest:Let's get on that, Mark.
Marc:Let's get on to that.
Marc:Okay, I'm making note of it.
Marc:So let's talk about, let's finish up by talking about this podcast.
Guest:Yes, Angel of Vine.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Well, basically, it's a 10-part podcast, and it's a combination of, it's a bit, it's a combination of like L.A.
Guest:Noire, and little element of time travel, little element of documentary.
Guest:The premise is that a stash of tapes,
Guest:are discovered.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the tapes are of a long-retired...
Guest:police officer on the LAPD in the 50s working on a case, working on a case that was never resolved.
Guest:And it's him recording his interviews, his encounters.
Guest:Is it a murder case?
Guest:It's a murder case.
Guest:From the 50s?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's like true detective kind of?
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:And it's loosely based on the Black Dahlia story.
Guest:Oh, that was earlier though, no?
Guest:Yeah, but it's got this kind of, it's got this sort of, you know, the tapes are discovered, and it's how this character starts working on the tapes and going through them and gets caught up in this case and wants to try and solve the case, sort of like a case, you know, going back in time through these tapes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so it's got this lovely, it's got all those elements and it's radio theater.
Guest:People often use these euphemisms like it's a movie in your head.
Guest:It's a film that's going on between your ears.
Guest:But what it is, it's radio.
Guest:It's radio theater.
Marc:Sure, it's what existed before television.
Guest:Yes, in a very kind of classic form.
Marc:That's what's amazing about this medium is that all of these forms, which were the primary forms of entertainment before anything, are now back.
Guest:The great gift now, of course, is that we have mobility, which means that you're not stuck.
Guest:sitting in an armchair glued to your radio you can hear you can hear this sure anywhere and do you guys record as a cast yeah we record we recorded as a cast we record uh um I did um I did all my scene I did my my scene with Joe Maniello you know in front of me uh and uh I which is kind of unusual because very often you record on your own yeah but this scene was so kind of intense that
Guest:It was Oliver Vaccare, who's our writer and one of the producers.
Guest:He felt that it was important that we could see each other and play off each other.
Guest:And that made a big difference.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now, of course, now all episodes are available.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Wherever you get your podcasts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just download them and go ahead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Enjoy your drive.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Have a good time at the gym.
Guest:This is the thing.
Guest:I'm hearing this a lot now.
Guest:People are saying that they love their podcast because they listen to them on their commute.
Guest:Oh, yeah, man.
Guest:And it's a habit that I've started to get into now.
Guest:I'm downloading podcasts now and listening to them while I'm driving.
Marc:Sure, people do it at the gym.
Marc:They do it at the commute.
Marc:They do it secretly at work.
Guest:Yeah, I'm busy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But yeah, it goes back up.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.
Marc:Oh, thank you, Mark.
Marc:Likewise.
Marc:That was fun.
Marc:Oh, you were great in Vice, too, that one scene.
Marc:You had the one sort of high satire scene of that movie.
Guest:What, did Adam just call you up?
Guest:Yeah, well, Adam called.
Guest:Because I'd done some work before with Funny or Die, you know, those guys.
Guest:And he just called me and said, you know, he said, I've got two parts.
Guest:They're not big.
Guest:But either one is yours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I looked at the script.
Guest:I love the script.
Guest:And I said, let me do the waiter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, because that's in and out.
Guest:I mean, literally in and out.
Guest:And I said, let me do the waiter and I'll do it without a credit.
Guest:You know, so hopefully it'll be a nice surprise.
Guest:And if it's not, no one will blame me.
Guest:Again, Bob Hoskins rule.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:So there's no credit?
Guest:No, so I don't get credited.
Guest:No, I'm not credited.
Guest:Are you working on a movie now?
Guest:Yeah, there's a couple of movies.
Guest:I did a film called The Devil Has a Name, directed by Edward James Olmos, who's a chum.
Guest:And that's due out this year.
Guest:There's also a movie called St.
Guest:Judy, with Michelle Monaghan, that...
Guest:We now think it's going to be released round about middle of February, end of February.
Guest:I played a part in it, but I was one of the executive producers on that.
Guest:And, yeah, so there's a couple of films in the can.
Guest:And I'm working on a movie that I hope to direct later this year.
Guest:Have you directed before?
Guest:Never.
Guest:Never.
Guest:Perhaps that's why no one's returning my phone calls.
Guest:But I will persevere.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Is it something you always wanted to do?
Guest:It is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I haven't left it too late, I don't think, but I've certainly... People say, you've never directed before.
Guest:Do you think you can direct?
Guest:I say, well, I've been on enough movies to know that...
Guest:I know what not to do.
Guest:Let's put it that way.
Guest:I think I know how to avoid mistakes, and I know how to run up.
Guest:I know what makes a day not go well.
Guest:Yeah, it's all about the DP.
Guest:Yeah, it's all about the DP.
Guest:It's all about the DP, and it's all about your assistant director as well.
Guest:Right, AD and the DP.
Marc:And then you just pretend, you don't let anyone see how confused and frightened you are.
Guest:That's right, yeah.
Guest:There was one thing, a director I worked with, I said, if I was to direct a film,
Guest:What would be your one piece of advice?
Guest:And he said, always have a decision.
Guest:When people ask you what you want them to do, always have an answer, even if it's the wrong one.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:He said, the worst thing you can do is kind of go, I'm not sure.
Guest:What do you think?
Guest:Then nobody knows.
Guest:Mr. Molina, where do you want the camera?
Guest:There.
Guest:Even if there is totally the wrong place.
Guest:Because someone will say, are you sure?
Guest:Then you go, no, I'm not sure.
Guest:Here.
Guest:At least if you've made up your mind about something, at least it's reassuring.
Guest:Right, sure.
Guest:They know someone's in charge.
Guest:All right, man.
Guest:Thanks a lot.
Guest:My pleasure.
Marc:that was great i learned some things that i didn't know about that scene how genius was that again uh alfred is a you can see him in everything he's ever been in which could take a lifetime but he's also the voice actor on the 10-part narrative mystery podcast the angel of vine available wherever you get your podcast and don't forget as well studies show that security systems deter burglars which is why securing your home is truly a necessity
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Marc:It's early in the morning and me getting excited about a new angle on an old rip.
Marc:probably uh made my neighbors hate me at 8 30 in the morning on a sunday okay here we go so
guitar solo
Guest:Boomer lives!