This week on The Sunday Special, Dennis Quaid joins us ahead of the premiere of the upcoming biopic, Reagan, coming to theaters nationwide on August 30th. In today s episode, Quaid discusses how he prepared to portray Ronald Reagan, including his visit to the Reagan Ranch, and his observations about Reagan s psyche. He also reflects on the parallels between our current political moment and President Reagan s era, and offers a few predictions about the future of Hollywood. Plus, he shares a few of his favorite all-time films. You don t want to miss this episode! From Hollywood to the Oval Office is a biopic that brings one of our country s greatest presidents back to life on the silver screen. Director Mark Joseph's script is based on Reagan's life and was written by Mark Joseph, who also served as Reagan s Chief of Staff from 1981-1993. Quaid is a two-time Golden Globe nominated actor, musician, musician and self-proclaimed golf addict. He s known for his roles in Breaking Away, The Right Stuff, The Little Easy, Big Easy, and The Parent Trap, and has recently moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he founded his own production company, Bonnydale Films, a production company. He is also the co-creator of the hit TV show, The Big Easy. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times Magazine, and hosts his own radio show on SiriusXM's Morning Drive, The Morning Drive. and hosts the morning radio show, The Real Reel, which he hosts a podcast, The Reel Guys. with his good friend and former co-host, John Rocha, who is also hosts a new podcast called The Real Talk on the Real Talk, and is a podcast with his new book, Real Talk Radio. John and Ben sit down with him to talk about his new movie, Reagan, which is out in theaters nationwide. The Reagan Biopic, coming in theaters in theaters on August 29th. coming on HBO, September 29th, September 9/30th, and 9/31st, and September 9th, 2020, coming in September, and coming out in October 9/9/19th, coming out on the 27th, 2019, and so you can catch up with him in the coming weeks! Thank you for tuning in! Ben and Ben! -Ben and Ben -
00:00:23.000But once the judicial system was used, This week on the Sunday Special, Dennis Quaid joins us ahead of the premiere of the upcoming biopic, Reagan, coming to theaters nationwide Friday, August 30th.
00:00:49.000He's a two-time Golden Globe nominated actor, musician, self-proclaimed golf addict, and
00:00:54.000After over 40 years in Hollywood, Quaid recently moved to Nashville, where he founded his own production company, Bonnydale Films.
00:01:00.000Quaid is known for his roles in Breaking Away, The Right Stuff, Big Easy, and The Parent Trap, but his career has spanned nearly every genre of film.
00:01:06.000From dramas to thrillers, rom-coms, and action roles.
00:01:08.000In today's episode, Quaid discusses how he prepared to portray Ronald Reagan, including his visit to the Reagan Ranch, and his observations about Reagan's psyche.
00:01:15.000Quaid also reflects on the parallels between our current political moment and President Reagan's era, offers a few predictions about the future of Hollywood, and shares a few of his favorite all-time films.
00:01:24.000You don't want to miss Dennis Quaid in Reagan, coming out in theaters nationwide August 30th.
00:01:28.000From Hollywood to the Oval Office, Quaid brings one of our country's greatest presidents back to life on the silver screen.
00:01:32.000Welcome back to another episode of the Sunday Special.
00:01:35.000And it's quite the Thank you so much for stopping by.
00:02:10.000That's a really good question, and I don't know if I can really answer it, but I do know that this script, Mark Joseph, who is the producer who really championed this thing, he's had this script since 2008.
00:03:13.000He said, you're kicked out of the hippies.
00:03:16.000So I turned in my card, and that was it.
00:03:20.000So, you get the script, and you're thinking about it.
00:03:22.000What were sort of the considerations as to why you at first didn't want to do it?
00:03:26.000Obviously, you said your favorite president, but were there career considerations also, given the fact that Hollywood is pretty famously not super receptive to warmth toward even mildly right of center ideas?
00:03:38.000Well, as far as all the politics of it.
00:03:43.000No, that didn't really come into my thinking about it.
00:03:47.000A shiver of fear went up my spine when they asked me to do it, because Reagan's like Muhammad Ali.
00:03:55.000Everybody in the world knows what he looks like, walks like, talks like.
00:07:13.000I've played several real people in my life, and I feel like I have a responsibility to those people, whether it be Doc Holliday, who's not even alive anymore, or Jimmy Morris in The Rookie, to do it from their point of view.
00:07:30.000You know, because that's the way we live our lives from our point of view.
00:07:33.000And there was that thing of Reagan, I heard from everyone that knew him, that there's this impenetrable space that he always had.
00:07:46.000You know, this is the great communicator.
00:07:54.000But there was this place that you couldn't get past as well, a very private place.
00:08:01.000And I think that was always there with him from childhood, really.
00:08:08.000And I think it had something to do with people, you know, a lot of people coming at him, you know, being so public.
00:08:20.000He had to have that even in a crowd to be able to have his privacy, in a sense.
00:08:28.000And I think that also was kind of a place where he, you know, that was really where he would go in prayer or meditation or whatever you want to call it, but, you know, that place was reserved.
00:08:45.000And I think He really needed something like, a place like that because, you know, the world was, you know, always coming to his door.
00:09:00.000And that goes all the way back to his childhood.
00:09:01.000I mean, obviously, he had an incredibly rough childhood.
00:09:03.000His father was not around when he was, wasn't good.
00:09:12.000He's a true American legend in terms of his success story and in terms of the trajectory, but you carry that with you, I'd imagine, that sort of damage you carry with you your whole life.
00:09:20.000I mean, having an alcoholic father like that, you know, that you're having to take care of, he dragged him Dragged him, he was passed out on the porch a couple of times, had to drag him inside.
00:09:31.000That kind of puts a protective coat on you, I think, as a child, because you feel, in a way, responsible for the parents, in a sense.
00:09:48.000And his mother certainly had a big effect on him.
00:09:52.000His mother, like my mom, really, was the rock in his life.
00:09:58.000In some ways I could really relate with Reagan, because my dad was an alcoholic.
00:10:04.000You know, there's certain degrees of it that are around, but he was an alcoholic, and my mom was kind of that rock for me as well.
00:10:16.000So, as you say, you don't want to do an impersonation, but you're saying some of the most iconic lines in the history of American politics and American life.
00:10:36.000Yeah, that was the fear that Saturday Night Fear comes up.
00:10:41.000But like I said, that had to get down to playing the emotions of the scenes and what they were, and really getting down to the person.
00:10:51.000That's the person that has insecurities like all of us have.
00:10:56.000Degrees of self-esteem and the way to find a way into that like I'm an actor myself and Reagan as an actor.
00:11:05.000I don't think he ever got to the place that he wanted to be as an actor thinking kind of felt not a failure, but he just never really got there, you know, whether it's because Jack Warner.
00:11:19.000Uh, never gave him the parts, but, you know, John Wayne really had his slot.
00:11:24.000So he was kind of relegated to B-movies.
00:11:27.000And he was also married to Jane Wyman.
00:11:30.000When his career was really going down at the end, hers was, you know, sky-high.
00:12:04.000And, but, Also out of that, his career going down, he became vice president and then president of the Screen Actors Guild, which is a job you don't really aspire to when you're starting out as an actor.
00:12:26.000I think that's where Reagan found his purpose.
00:12:29.000And, you know, he becomes president of the Screen Actors Guild.
00:12:31.000He's fighting the communists from within while protecting the actors who may be ideologically diverse inside the Screen Actors Guild, which is not an easy balance.
00:12:54.000You know, it was kind of like People took that as a wives' tale or something, a communist infiltrating, you know, the unions and everything.
00:13:04.000But, you know, when the Soviet Union fell, you know, all those papers came flooding out.
00:13:09.000Lo and behold, they actually were trying to take over the unions in Hollywood.
00:13:16.000And then, of course, he runs for governor of California.
00:13:20.000But before he does that, he goes on this GE tour where he's going all over the United States and he's talking about politics.
00:13:27.000Frequently, like every week, doing these speeches, and really getting himself familiar with the material.
00:13:32.000I think one of the great rips that his critics have is they pretend that he was an idiot, or that he was uneducated, or he didn't know anything about politics, that he was a dilettante.
00:13:50.000This is not something he had to do, but he took it upon himself to go around to every factory, every GE factory, and go out on the floor and talk to all the workers, you know, on their lunch breaks or, you know, coming or leaving at the end of the day, and talk to them.
00:14:08.000And that was the beginnings of his political base, was right there.
00:14:53.000My dad was pounding the dashboard and, you know, Go Ronnie and stuff like that.
00:14:59.000And that was my first inklings of him as a is a political figure.
00:15:06.000Before, he was just a guy on TV who sold Baraxos soap.
00:15:11.000What's fascinating about Reagan is that he really is a combination of all of these different, really diverse factors.
00:15:16.000He's somebody who spends time in Hollywood, which of course is a very left-wing place politically, so he knows how to talk to people on that side.
00:15:22.000And he was a Democrat back then, by the way.
00:15:24.000And then he shifts to the right, but still knows how to speak that language.
00:15:28.000He's somebody who becomes very hard on communism, but at the same time is almost Innocent about the nature of human beings and how human beings can operate.
00:15:38.000And very famously during his presidency, he wrote, probably his worst speech actually during his presidency, there's a part where he writes about how maybe one day a child from the Soviet Union and a child from America will get together and they'll play in the park.
00:15:51.000And it's this very sort of innocent take.
00:15:53.000And a lot of his foreign policy team was like, this is, you shouldn't be saying.
00:15:58.000Oh, that was the couple who met the very nice couple who happened to be Soviets and we got
00:16:43.000But it took a it took a cold warrior like that to win the Cold War.
00:16:49.000You know, before that, we'd We'd had Carter, who was, you know, this is not against Carter, but he was what he did in the Middle East with, you know, peace with Egypt and Israel.
00:16:59.000I mean, that was quite an accomplishment and everything.
00:17:03.000But with the Soviets, you know, we had given away the B-1 bomber.
00:17:12.000America is sort of like that speech that Reagan, you were talking about Reagan, that innocence that we just want to be friends with everybody.
00:17:22.000We don't see why it couldn't be that way and appeal with reason.
00:17:29.000You know, the people in the Soviet Union and Iran, you go through it, most of the world didn't grow up like we did.
00:17:38.000It's a very brutal world out there, and a very brutal reality.
00:17:47.000When America is like that, I think they sort of laugh at us a little bit, or they take advantage of it, for sure, because they see it as weakness.
00:17:59.000So when you look at Reagan, obviously you've identified as a political independent for a long time in Hollywood.
00:18:06.000This election, you said that you plan on supporting President Trump in the election.
00:18:10.000What are the sort of similarities that you see between President Trump Well, I think it's more the circumstances of the world right now.
00:18:23.000I mean, if you go back to 1980, 1979, we had the hostages, which nobody talks about.
00:18:29.000We have hostages right now in the Middle East.
00:18:32.000I don't know why nobody talks about them.
00:18:36.000But that, you know, the economy was...
00:18:39.000Was in a bad place at the time with gas, oil, you know, being a big thing.
00:19:10.000We're in a shiny city on a hill, and we're going to get back to that.
00:19:16.000And people believed in me, inspired people.
00:19:20.000And that's why I won the presidency, I think.
00:19:25.000One of the things that's amazing about Reagan is that you look at his first term, and he has a rough first couple of years.
00:19:30.000In the economy, obviously, he's trying to quash inflation, and that means that he has to radically increase the interest rates using sort of Volcker's plans.
00:19:36.000And by 1982, you know, his popularity is waning a little bit, and then he sort of kind of roars back in 83, 84.
00:19:43.000He wins this enormous victory in 1984.
00:19:46.000And you look at the way that America is now, And one of the things that you wonder is, no matter how successful any president is, is there a possibility of anything like that sort of American unity again?
00:19:58.000And maybe that can just be chalked up to the fact that it used to be that Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill would battle it out, and then they actually kind of liked each other and would have conversations.
00:20:06.000Yeah, they would get together, like, after five o'clock.
00:21:18.000It's not going to change overnight as far as, you know, inflation and the economic policy that was put into effect.
00:21:27.000And then I think he had an extended honeymoon period because of the assassination attempt, which we've just done as well.
00:21:40.000But once things got going, I think you saw a lot of like Activists from the 60s who had grown up and were now on Wall Street, you know, they, uh, I guess the Reagan Democrats, you could call them, the, that, uh, you know, things started to change.
00:22:00.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:22:07.000We're talking editors, attorneys, engineers, you name it.
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00:22:16.000She's been doing tons of stuff around the office.
00:22:18.000Thanks to Sarah, we can make shows like this one, and we can continue to create thousands of leftist tears every day.
00:22:23.000Well, that's enough feelings for one day, but the facts remain.
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00:23:03.000Have you felt a lot of blowback from, sort of, your social circle?
00:23:06.000I know that you don't live in Hollywood anymore, but, you know, coming out and saying that you're planning on voting for President Trump is not necessarily the most popular sentiment in Hollywood, for sure.
00:23:16.000I have my friends and, you know, our relationship is quite solid with that.
00:23:21.000And, I don't know, there's got to be a conversation, you know.
00:23:25.000A lot of actors have been told, like, you know, shut up in Hollywood.
00:23:30.000Just don't say anything because, you know, it's going to affect you.
00:23:34.000You're getting a job or this and why is it okay for, you know, say Michael Douglas to go on, you know, talk shows and talk about Biden and, you know, and yet you can't be, you can't be for Trump.
00:23:55.000We've got to have a conversation about this.
00:23:58.000It used to be even back in Reagan's day, you would have, Liberal Republicans, you had conservative Democrats, so the lines weren't so blurred as they, today it's just black and white.
00:24:13.000And we've got to get, more than anything, we've got to get back to being able to interact with each other.
00:24:23.000Republicans and Democrats need each other.
00:24:46.000But what I saw with, I wasn't going to vote for Trump either
00:24:51.000because I thought things needed to really settle down in this country.
00:24:56.000And there were a lot of other candidates that I thought would be good.
00:25:02.000But once the judicial system was used on him, on him. Yeah, that's...
00:25:11.000To me, that was messing with our Constitution, and that's not America.
00:25:16.000And that's what got me back the other way, that I'm definitely voting for him, because I believe in America, and I believe in the Constitution.
00:25:26.000So, one of the things that you mentioned very early on here is that this film was independently funded, that it didn't come through the Hollywood studio system.
00:25:34.000Do you think that that's going to be the future of where Hollywood goes?
00:25:37.000That you're going to see a lot more independently funded films, whether it is through people like Mark, whether it is through Angel Studios, or through all of the, through your production house, that sort of the studio system has been essentially broken because the theater model has largely been broken, and somehow so has the streaming model.
00:25:54.000Yeah, by COVID, and even before COVID, they were having trouble with that.
00:25:58.000When I first came to L.A., back in those days, each studio, say five, would be producing at least 40 movies a year.
00:26:40.000But more than that, I think that Hollywood has sort of lost its Relevancy with an audience, to a certain extent.
00:26:51.000Very similar to what was going on in the late 60s, that they kind of lost track of their audience and who they were.
00:27:02.000It took a film like Bonnie and Clyde, That French New Wave thing that set off a whole new thing in the 70s, you know, to a new golden age.
00:27:14.000But it was a different kind of filmmaking that hit the audience and actually hit a nerve to what was going on underneath the surface in the country.
00:27:23.000You know, you started having anti-heroes and the rebel hero came back and all that.
00:27:31.000We're in a very similar place now that I think Hollywood has lost contact with its audience.
00:27:39.000But now that void can be filled from anywhere because you can finance a movie from different places and there's different centers going on now.
00:27:52.000What Taylor Sheridan is doing in In Texas, and what's going on in Georgia, there's a whole, if I was a young actor today
00:28:19.000But that's the start of an industry there, because people are going to wind up living there and moving there, and they're doing quite well.
00:28:28.000On a sort of narrative level, it's sort of fascinating, just the history of Hollywood, how it went from heroes to anti-heroes in the 70s, and then it was kind of stuck in anti-hero land until now.
00:28:38.000I mean, you have superheroes, but those are the only kind of heroes that you can depict on screen.
00:28:41.000That's one of the things that makes Reagan different, is that Reagan's an actual heroic figure that can be put on screen.
00:28:46.000And that feels almost like a throwback, just because you have a biopic where the person isn't being treated like crap.
00:28:52.000Where the person isn't being treated as some sort of evil person under the sun.
00:29:45.000The debate between he and Mondale, which I thought was just, it was a piece of theater to begin with.
00:29:54.000You know, they'd already had, he and Mondale had the first debate where Reagan had been, you know, kind of loose on the facts and whatever.
00:30:06.000He just didn't perform well in the first debate.
00:30:10.000So they were talking about he was too old and this and that.
00:30:15.000I think he was, what, 74 at the time or something?
00:30:17.000And so the second debate, he did the famous, you know, he was asked the question.
00:30:37.000He knows he's lost the election with that.
00:30:40.000But Reagan did something even better is that he said that and then he, I call it the Jack Benny, he reached over and took his water and took a sip of it just to like... Let it breathe.
00:30:54.000So, you know, let's talk about sort of your journey, both in terms of life and in terms of acting, because, you know, on a personal level, I first saw you in film with Breaking Away.
00:31:06.000So I grew up on what would now be considered older movies.
00:31:10.000My parents and I would go over to Eddie Brand's Saturday Matinee, which was like the big kind of video rental place in North Hollywood, and we picked up all these movies.
00:31:48.000And it kind of made me go, wow, you can actually do that, you know?
00:31:53.000You could actually go there and get a job doing that.
00:31:56.000And I really fell in love with acting in college.
00:32:00.000There was a particular teacher that was also my brother's teacher, Cecil Pickett was his name.
00:32:05.000And he taught, the great thing about him, it was exactly what I said, you know, it was about what makes people tick, you know?
00:32:14.000And what's on the outside, the way they walk, the way they, Talk, mannerisms, what causes that?
00:32:22.000What's the psychological reason that they do that that leads you to the inside of somebody and
00:32:26.000So I went out there when I was 2021 almost and
00:32:34.000You know sit my picture around every agent got rejected. So I I just started calling up casting directors
00:32:40.000There'd be this thing in the back of the Hollywood Reporter, Films in the Future, and it would list the producer and the director and stuff, and the casting director.
00:32:48.000So I just started calling them up, and I got turned down.
00:32:52.000eight of ten times, but two of them would see me, then went in to see them, and then I'd stare at my shoes
00:32:58.000for the first couple of interviews until I got used to talking.
00:33:02.000And then one of them got me an agent, and then I got a job a couple of months after that.
00:33:09.000But Breaking Away was really the first movie that made things a lot easier for me,
00:33:17.000and that really, I think, connected with audiences.
00:33:22.000It was such a great experience to do it.
00:33:24.000Peter Yates is written by, you know, a first generation Czech and directed by an Englishman.
00:33:32.000And I think that's what gave the movie its charm because it was, you know, they saw America Better than we did, I think, in that middle part of America.
00:34:08.000He taught all four of us guys film acting, you know.
00:34:12.000He was very fatherly and mentorish with us, and I mean, all throughout.
00:34:17.000And I remember the night of the opening, you know, of it.
00:34:24.000It was kind of like the first film of the 80s, too, I think, in a way of, you know, youth.
00:34:29.000Going to the theater, and there was a line around the block, and You know, audiences smell movies, or they used to, because that was back in the day.
00:36:11.000For your own sake, and for mine, please do not.
00:36:13.000I mean, you can watch the movies, but you should fast forward the scenes that I'm in.
00:36:16.000And the question that I have after acting, after my vast and extensive acting experience, which of course is similar to your own, what do you...
00:36:35.000Especially because, you know, for those who have never had the experience of being in a film or watching a film get made, it's all filmed out of sequence.
00:36:42.000It's not as though you're filming it chronologically through time.
00:36:45.000How do you maintain a character through that when you have to be at point C in a character development in this scene, and then the next day you have to be at point A in that same character's development?
00:37:03.000But it's, I don't know, the first time the camera came in on me, I remember in the first film, it was just quite intimidating.
00:37:11.000But it's about just really learning to just be.
00:37:17.000be in the scene. You know, I do all of the research I can and character development with
00:37:23.000Reagan. I had a couple of wound up having a couple of years really before we even started filming,
00:37:29.000which was great. But the like the voice, you know, in the early part of his life,
00:37:34.000like you see him at the in Hollywood at the House of Un-American Activities. You know,
00:37:40.000his voice is way up there and it's very, very talks a lot faster. And it's, you know,
00:37:45.000I believe our system can take it, you know, that that that's a long way from, you know,
00:37:50.000getting to the later years where he speaks a little slower, but it was her.
00:37:58.000So it's just all those nuances and, you know, little things like he had a crooked smile, which had something to do with maybe, you know, nerve damage from childhood or whatever, or, you know, the psychology to it.
00:38:14.000He kind of, either knowingly, it may have been unknowingly, because they taught you how to walk in Hollywood, you know, when you became an actor in the studio system then, you had to have a certain walk.
00:38:27.000And his was very similar to John Wayne in a way.
00:38:31.000And so, little things like that, you know, that all add up.
00:38:39.000And then you just have to, in the end, just trust it and just go dive in.
00:38:46.000So in terms of acting methodologies, obviously we talked about method acting.
00:38:52.000My favorite sort of method acting story is the old story from Marathon Man where Olivier is with Hoffman and Hoffman Yeah.
00:39:00.000Is acting like his character for the entire time.
00:39:14.000I mean, obviously, there are people like Daniel Day-Lewis who live in the forest with a bow and arrow for three months to prepare for The Last of the Mohicans or whatever.
00:39:25.000He says he doesn't want to work, but anymore, you know, it really kind of comes down to that's kind of like, I guess, when you get asked these questions and stuff like that, you kind of give responses like that and try to put it into a method or a way of work.
00:39:38.000But I find that Most people I work with, and myself too, it's just, you come to work, and you've been hired because they think you're right for the part.
00:39:51.000And you do your work to do it, and then you just do it.
00:39:56.000I guess I used to think a lot about, when I was younger, I used to angst about Technique and this and that and the other, but I think it's part of just like learning it, then forgetting it, and then you just go do it.
00:40:09.000Like you do your show every day, you know what I mean?
00:40:11.000Sure, you do your show differently than when you first started doing your show, when you got out of the business, right?
00:40:17.000You don't angst about as much stuff as you used to, because it's become very natural to you.
00:41:04.000That's what, you know, like cocaine back then was like, you know, in movie budgets and stuff.
00:41:09.000And, you know, there was this, I remember there was a cover story in People magazine about cocaine, about how it wasn't addictive and, you know, it was a party drug and, you know, harmless.
00:41:20.000Then John Belushi died and that really changed everything for everybody.
00:41:24.000But my personal experience was that, you know, it was fun.
00:41:29.000That it was fun with problems, but then it was just problems.
00:41:46.000When your life kind of becomes unmanageable about it.
00:41:50.000That's when it's, you have to do something.
00:41:54.000But I had one of those white light experiences.
00:41:57.000I had a band at that time, and we were The Eclectics.
00:42:04.000The night we got our record deal at the Palace Theatre over on Vine Street, we got a record deal performing that night, and we broke up in the dressing room right after.
00:43:21.000They make you feel like everything's great, but you take away the drug and that's gone.
00:43:26.000But it's a spiritual problem, and so that's when I've read the Bible like about five times in my life over different periods and started getting back into that.
00:43:41.000Before that, you know, I'd rather go back.
00:43:45.000As far as my history on that is, I grew up Baptist, Southern Baptist, you know, and I became disillusioned with churchianity.
00:43:57.000I think around 12, 13, which I think a lot of teenagers start to question their life anyway.
00:44:04.000And I read a book called Siddhartha, Herman Hess, which really turned me towards Eastern philosophy because it's a very new thing in Eastern religion.
00:44:17.000Buddhism, Hinduism, I read the Dhammapada, I read the Bhagavad Gita, I read the Koran, as well as the Bible.
00:44:29.000But after rehab, I went back, and this is after about three years, and I read the Bible again, and really what stood out were the red words of Jesus to me.
00:44:46.000That's what started, for the first time for me, a personal relationship with God, which continued to nurture and grow and ebb and flow.
00:45:01.000But, you know, that was the thing that I think that really got me through it.
00:48:03.000Obviously we all deal with failure and I think that's the side of American success that people don't often see, is all the failures that lead to the successes or that are the after effects of a success.
00:48:12.000How do you deal with, you know, you put an enormous amount of sweat and toil into a movie and it doesn't end up being what you want it to be or it fails in It's very disappointing, man.
00:48:20.000It goes right to your self-esteem and everything failure does, you know.
00:48:23.000People don't like to talk about it or whatever.
00:48:27.000But, you know, it's failure, actually, that if you survive it, you know, you get up off the floor, it actually can make you better, I think.
00:48:43.000Everybody's got to have failure in their life, and it's about sticking with something, I think.
00:48:52.000I think that's half of the thing about even wanting to be an actor.
00:48:57.000I mean, you're kind of set up for failure just to try to become an actor.
00:49:04.000There's 40,000 actors in the Screen Actors Guild on, you know, Only 1% are working on any given day.
00:49:12.000You've just got to figure you're going to be one of those 1%.
00:49:15.000And no matter what, you've got to have a tough skin to a certain extent, too.
00:49:24.000But also acknowledge what was wrong with something.
00:49:28.000So you talked a little bit earlier about the fact that Hollywood needs to tell some different types of stories.
00:49:33.000Obviously, Reagan is the beginning, I think, of a lot of that.
00:50:22.000as a nation for us and we went through to the very similar times to push through and become a nation that believed in itself again.
00:50:33.000That's what I would like to see, you know, is for the American people who have great faith in, we start believing in ourselves again and in each other.
00:50:47.000So, what are some of the trunk projects that you've always thought would make great movies?
00:50:53.000Things that you wish somebody had made, but they've never made before?
00:50:55.000Because I know that anybody who even watches a lot of movies, they've thought, man, I wish they'd make a movie about X, Y, or Z. Oh, right.
00:51:02.000Well, I have one right now that I really want to do about the Lakota Sioux, or Crazy Horse.
00:51:13.000That story has never been told from the native point of view.
00:51:18.000And I have a book now that is the oral history of Crazy Horse's family, as told to this writer.
00:51:28.000And the history goes back to the mid-1700s.