Actor and comedian Joe Rogan joins Jemele to talk about growing up in a broken family and how he got his break in Hollywood. They also talk about how he ended up in the movie industry, and what it was like growing up as the only kid in his family to be an actor.
00:00:53.000My mother doesn't know what to do with me.
00:00:55.000And my next door neighbor, he lived like four houses down.
00:01:00.000He took an acting class at the Paul Robeson Center of Performing Arts.
00:01:05.000And so my mother signed me up so that I could get picked up by his mom, you know, taken to acting class in the winter and get dropped off, you know, and be at home.
00:01:16.000And I went there and this head of a local theater company came by to teach an improv seminar kind of thing.
00:02:40.000And it was the first time I saw, you could do this for a living?
00:02:44.000You know, a lot of the actors aren't people you've heard of or anything like that, but they were real actors and they loved their job.
00:02:49.000And the rehearsal room was so kind of thrilling watching them figure out where people should stand and what was important and what was the scene about and what was the theme of the play and how could this scene fit in with the larger context.
00:03:01.000And I just decided that's what I wanted to do.
00:03:05.000And a lot of kids want to act, so that doesn't mean very much.
00:03:08.000But through this other friend of mine, I started hearing about open casting calls in New York.
00:03:14.000And I asked my mom if I could go on some of these big auditions.
00:03:18.000And again, she said, is it going to cost me any money?
00:03:20.000She said, if I paid for my own train fare, I could go to these auditions.
00:03:24.000And so I took some Polaroids and went on a few of these big auditions and I got one of them.
00:03:31.000And it was for this big, in 1984, it was a $30 million movie directed by the guy who just done Gremlins, right?
00:03:43.000I mean, it was just, it was absolutely incredible to be sucked out of suburban America and brought to L.A. My first scene partner was River Phoenix, and all of a sudden, I'm in LA.
00:03:56.000And, You know, my mom couldn't quit her job or anything, so my mom had a really turbulent relationship with her mother.
00:04:04.000But her mother, her mother and she didn't really know each other, and so her mother said she'd be my guardian.
00:04:10.000And my mom designed this as a way to maybe have a family healing.
00:04:14.000But my grandmother was a piece of work.
00:05:56.000But the movie came out, and I remember River and I going to the bathroom at the premiere, and we had grown a lot from the time we shot the movie to the time it came out.
00:06:08.000And nobody in the bathroom really recognized us.
00:06:11.000And they were all talking about what a turkey the movie was, how terrible it was.
00:06:15.000And I remember just looking in the eyes, like, it wasn't the narrative we thought, you know, we had bought into the dream that, you know, we were going to be whatever teen icon we were thinking of at the time.
00:06:27.000And it died a quick and salty death, my dream.
00:06:32.000And I went back to high school and put away my dream of being an actor.
00:06:37.000It seemed like it was this isolated, almost like choose your own adventure book or something, where I got to see what Hollywood was like, but then have it denied.
00:06:49.000And it kind of like putting your hand in a flame.
00:06:52.000It was not a good feeling when it was over.
00:06:55.000And then, you know, four years or so went by, and I graduated high school and I was off at college and I heard about these auditions for a movie called Dead Poets Society.
00:07:44.000And the success of Dead Poets Society sent me, you know, was like a trajectory.
00:07:50.000It shot me down a different course of water than I was on before.
00:07:55.000It's probably a much better path than the first film being successful and you become a child star.
00:08:02.000I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that first experience.
00:08:06.000First of all, if for no other reason than in the success of Dead Poets Society, I didn't take it seriously at all.
00:08:13.000I didn't even realize that the movie was successful until a couple years later because I had so braced myself for failure, you know, perception of failure anyway.
00:09:41.000And he would lead rehearsals and he would talk about acting and performance in a way that I hadn't.
00:09:47.000Well, you know, I heard people talk about it that way when we were doing St. Joan, when I was doing the like he talked about it like we were making art and like we were on a mission beyond success or failure.
00:10:00.000And it was it was an invitation to a lifestyle, a life commitment.
00:10:06.000And what I didn't realize at the time, that's what that movie's about, too.
00:10:10.000You know, so the movie itself is a guided meditation on Carpe Diem, right?
00:10:14.000It's a meditation on gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
00:10:17.000I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.
00:10:21.000You know, this is kind of stuff that I was getting inundated with in rehearsal.
00:10:27.000And so that was, I didn't, I wouldn't have told you that on the day I wrapped Dead Poets Society that my life had changed, but looking back, it had.
00:11:11.000Sing in the church choir, it's so good for them.
00:11:15.000But to be a professional actor at a young age is this, it's dangerous in extremely insidious ways that are very, very hard to perceive when it's happening.
00:13:29.000I think you going back to school and living a normal life for five, six years or whatever it was before you left college, I just think that's critical.
00:13:40.000That's the developmental process of the normal maturation of a person when they go through adolescence, teenage years, into college, young adult.
00:14:05.000But then I had the years after that, I have to give a shout out to my mom, who was just so devastated that I dropped out of college.
00:14:16.000I mean, she just couldn't stop crying about it, you know.
00:14:19.000And it filled me with a desire to show her that I was taking responsibility for my own education, which is what I said I would do.
00:14:31.000And so I started a theater company, and I worked really hard at a lot of different things, writing and reading and thinking, and mostly with this theater company, where I met a lot of young people who were interested in what I was doing, but we weren't paid any money.
00:14:45.000And we worked our asses off and we built sets.
00:15:42.000I mean, I don't know if you feel this way.
00:15:46.000I don't know what I have the sense often, and I know this sounds really dopey to say, but I sometimes have a sense of a guardian angel of some kind.
00:15:56.000Why did this guy talk to me in the parking lot?
00:15:58.000And why was he such a kind, decent human being?
00:16:02.000Throughout my life, I have had opportunities presented to me, and I had enough intuition and enough intelligence maybe to follow it.
00:16:14.000But I do think of it, I think about it all the time.
00:16:19.000All the ways that are imperceptible on the Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday that they happen, but where your life is kind of guided and it doesn't really feel by your own doing.
00:16:32.000Yeah, I know it sounds wacky to say, but I believe it too.
00:16:35.000I mean, I don't publicly profess it as the definite reason why everything happens, but there's a bunch of, I think, most people that have gotten anywhere in life, there's moments in their life where they're like, how did that happen?
00:16:48.000Like, why did this feel like it was a destined path?
00:16:53.000Like, why was I compelled to try this?
00:17:06.000I wonder how other people feel, but I do think one of the keys, I think that probably everybody has a path that is there for them.
00:17:20.000And the trick about knowing yourself, the value and taking time to like be still with yourself and listen to yourself, you know, that there's an expression, the voice of our spirit is extremely gentle.
00:17:39.000But if you can hear it, that thing, intuition, that thing, the path, the idea of a guardian angel, you can see what's happening around you if you're in touch with yourself.
00:17:49.000And if you're not in touch with yourself, you keep tripping on the same, you're not seeing the angles and the roads that might be available to you.
00:17:59.000So I do think that part of the trick is taking time to actually get to know yourself so that you can see the light when it appears.
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00:20:44.000And she looked around, and I remember her saying that, you know, if an accident happened today, when they do happen, and I died, I would be extremely disappointed in myself.
00:20:57.000She was probably, I don't know, 46 or something when she said this, younger than I am now.
00:21:01.000And she said, I don't want to be disappointed in my life.
00:21:07.000So she joined the Peace Corps, which she wasn't all that impressed with.
00:21:11.000But they sent her to Romania, and she fell in love with Romania, and she fell in love with the people there.
00:21:20.000And she got obsessed with the racism against the gypsy culture, the Roma culture, I'm supposed to call it.
00:21:29.000And it reminded her a lot of growing up here in the 60s and the racism she saw as a young girl.
00:21:37.000And she just decided to do something about it.
00:21:39.000She spent 25 years there, and she got thousands of kids into school who wouldn't have gone to school.
00:21:43.000She just recently retired back to Fort Worth.
00:21:46.000And she's a different woman than the woman I grew up with, which is, I think, a remarkable story.
00:21:53.000I love both the women, the woman now, and the woman I grew up with.
00:21:57.000I don't want to paint some portrait that she was miserable.
00:21:59.000She had so much, she just was miserable at work.
00:22:02.000You know, she was not a miserable person to be with, the opposite.
00:22:06.000And she kept that fire in herself alive enough to, when the window presented itself, she took it and she took it hard.
00:22:14.000I mean, she disappeared for a quarter of a century to Romania.
00:22:17.000It was a young woman born in Fort Worth, right?
00:24:40.000When as an actor, I mean, one of the more fascinating things to me about watching people is how they can assume different identities.
00:24:49.000And how critical is it to have had so many different people in your life and different life experiences to draw from to try to understand things through their eyes?
00:25:00.000If you're a regular person running through, if you're a stockbroker, you're running through the world thinking like a stockbroker, thinking, well, what would be like to be a janitor?
00:25:08.000What is it like to be this guy who's trying to raise a family and he's got a drug dealer in his neighborhood that's causing problems and your life is this constant state of drama?
00:25:17.000Like you're drawing from all these different experiences.
00:25:21.000So having had like not, I mean, I wouldn't say it's your life was complicated, but it sounds like you have a really good mom, but complicated, like, and not necessarily that stable in that way.
00:25:39.000You're young and you're, you know, you're trying this thing out and you're going off to Hollywood and then you're coming back and going to college.
00:25:46.000Like having all these different bizarre interactions with people and life experiences.
00:25:50.000How much do you draw upon that when you're trying to like create a character?
00:26:41.000Now I'm going to get cast as a LA cop, going to do ride-arounds through Los Angeles in the back seat of a cop car, right when the crash unit thing was happening.
00:26:55.000And I'm not, it's not, it's even, it's different than being a journalist and writing about it.
00:27:02.000I'm really trying to imagine being them.
00:27:05.000And I'm not looking at it from a judgmental point of view.
00:27:08.000I don't have an agenda about whether they're a good person or a bad person or whether this Army sergeant should have made that decision or that one.
00:27:15.000I'm thinking, well, why did he make it?
00:29:19.000She's powerfully intelligent and powerfully humble woman.
00:29:23.000And it's like being next to somebody you really admire, you know, a master craftsman, doesn't matter what the craft is, when you take it to a high level, it has a lot to teach you.
00:29:36.000So anyway, that was a multi-part question.
00:29:38.000The other thing that part of your question is, how did I stay balanced?
00:29:41.000And a lot of it had to do with my father, who has, he doesn't care about celebrity.
00:29:50.000He doesn't particularly think it's very interesting.
00:29:55.000He really cares about integrity and whether you're a good person and whether you tell the truth.
00:30:00.000And it's not interesting to him how much money you make.
00:30:05.000That's not where his value system is placed on whether he's naturally suspicious of people who want too much attention, naturally suspicious of that in me, which was good for me.
00:30:29.000You know, everybody says, it's so great to tell people to follow your dreams, and it is important to follow your dreams.
00:30:34.000But it's also important to be realistic and have a plan and take care of yourself.
00:30:38.000And when you say you're going to do something, to do it, to show up when you're asked to tell the truth, all these things.
00:30:47.000So whenever things would start to go well, I had this person in my life that's very important to me who doesn't place a value on anything superficial.
00:30:59.000And when we talked about why it's so hard to meet young people in this profession who make it, what starts to happen, regardless of how good or not good your parents are or something, your circle can get infiltrated with a lot of people trying to make money off you.
00:31:16.000And that's dangerous because they don't care about you.
00:31:23.000There's an issue of people trying to get you to take work that you really shouldn't take just because they're going to get a percentage of it.
00:31:29.000Or it's going to be good for you in the next three years, but they don't have your long-term what is going to be good for the 65-year-old version of you.
00:31:38.000You know, is this, like you said, yeah, if I could have decided my life, Explorers would have been a huge hit.
00:35:03.000That's why I always bring her up as the lone example that I've ever come across of someone who's been through childhood stardom that seems to be like very well and put together.
00:35:12.000Yeah, and she's still really good at her job.
00:36:38.000Yeah, he has this book with his, like, he has a mentor in Buddhism, and they kind of wrote a book together about the Tao of the Dude or something, something like that.
00:36:47.000But it's actually, you know, I don't know if you've read The Tao of Willie.
00:36:50.000I love all these kind of to the left versions of sometimes I find it hard to read the, I want to read what Willie thinks about the Dampada more than I want to read the Dampada myself.
00:38:21.000He was in the military and then he gave up everything, became a songwriter.
00:38:25.000And it's kind of like, imagine if the equipment is like at the point of height of his career, it's like imagining If Brad Pitt had also written a number one single for Amy Winehouse, you know what I mean?
00:38:46.000I mean, you know, he wrote me and Bobby McGee for Janice Joplin.
00:39:57.000It's like a mental fuel, a type of nutrient almost.
00:40:03.000It's like having a person that you know exists that's been through something, has come out amazing, and is so not tied down to anyone specific identity, has varied interests, pursues them all with passion.
00:41:35.000And then you cannot be, you know, too upset when life's not a picnic for you.
00:41:40.000You can just ask yourself, how did you handle it?
00:41:42.000Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with really appreciating people.
00:41:46.000That concern of hero worship is legitimate because I think there are some people that will take a person and change who they are and make them not just extraordinary, but not even human.
00:41:59.000It is a mistake, but it doesn't mean you can't love and deeply appreciate who they actually are, flaws and all, because that's what we all are.
00:42:07.000And when someone is extraordinary and they have gone through so much or they have expressed so much and they do resonate with you so much, that's a valuable person.
00:42:17.000And you should treat them like they're a valuable person.
00:43:13.000You're going to come into the, you're going to, his character orders a bottle of whiskey, and the guy delivers a bottle of whiskey to the room.
00:43:19.000And in my idea, in this apartment, you could walk from the living room into the bedroom, and from the bedroom to the bathroom, and then out of the bathroom into the kitchen.
00:43:29.000And the kitchen opened back up into the living room.
00:43:31.000It was one of those New York City square apartments in the Chelsea Hotel, right?
00:43:35.000And I showed him this path I wanted him to take.
00:43:37.000And he was going to turn on the lights in this room.
00:43:39.000And he was going to put on a cowboy hat while he's talking on the phone.
00:43:42.000He's going to look in the mirror and point the thing.
00:43:43.000And he's going to walk in the bathroom and flick that light on and then slam the mirror shut and then walk out and then sit down in the kitchen right where he was, pop open the whiskey and pour himself a glass right as he says the last line of the monologue.
00:43:56.000And he looks at me and he goes, Are you an alcoholic?
00:44:14.000Yeah, he goes, so you mean to tell me I order a bottle of whiskey, I'm about to fall off the wagon, and I don't open the fucker until I walk through this room, turn on a light, try on a cowboy hat, flip on a light, slam a mirror, and then sit down.
00:44:29.000I was like, well, I think it would be a great shot.
00:44:33.000And he's like, Ethan, there's no way in hell that I can remember all those lines and do all that that you're asking me.
00:46:20.000I mean, he was just, he was that giving, you know, to everybody and understood what it would mean to this group of young artists, you know.
00:46:34.000Yeah, he was a real dude with real issues, and I loved him.
00:46:42.000Yeah, he was, I mean, you think about what he did and all the different songs that he performed and movies he was in and different things that he did.
00:46:54.000Yeah, I'll stop in one second, but for some of you, I think you love this.
00:46:57.000Apparently, the legend, Johnny Cash used to say that, you know, that song Sunday Morning Coming Down, I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
00:47:05.000And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert.
00:47:08.000Okay, so Johnny Cash had a number one single out of this song.
00:47:13.000And Johnny Cash would tell the story how Chris was flying helicopters offshore oil, and he landed in Johnny Cash's front yard with a beer in one hand and the song in the other on his helicopter and said, damn it, you got to listen to my song.
00:47:29.000And I listened to it and went straight to number one.
00:47:30.000That's the story that, you know, Cash would tell.
00:47:33.000And I asked Chris about it, and he said, have you ever flown a such-and-such chopper?
00:47:40.000He goes, there ain't no way in hell you can fly that thing with beer in one hand and a cassette in the other.
00:47:46.000That story, I don't know where he came up with that story.
00:47:50.000He's just trying to help out my career and make a legend out of me too.
00:47:54.000But no, no, I just sent it to him via airmail.
00:47:59.000For a person that watches movies, I've done a small amount of acting, but I'm not good at it.
00:48:05.000For a person who watches movies, there's a thing that happens like a hypnosis when someone is a really good actor where they become that person.
00:48:20.000And even though I know it's Ethan Hawk, I know it's fill in the blank, Daniel Day-Lewis, I know who it is, but it's not them at this moment.
00:48:29.000They're so good that they've convinced me that they're this other person.
00:50:07.000But the best people I've worked with, it's like the easiest example to show, like for anybody, when you go to a concert, every now and then it happens.
00:50:20.000The performer hypnotizes you and you disappear.
00:50:48.000And a lot of people study it and work on it and voice and speech is a huge – I mean this stuff is very – it's way more interesting to me than it would be to our audience here today.
00:51:01.000But it's like all these elements of what creates hypnosis.
00:51:06.000If you were, if we were talking about the violin, there are ways to practice the violin.
00:51:12.000And I'm not going to make somebody a virtuoso, but I can, if I'm an expert violin, help you be better.
00:51:19.000And I think the same is true for acting.
00:52:10.000I mean, it was not much, but a feeling of disappearing.
00:52:14.000And that's the irony I always feel about acting is that, you know, people think about actors and they see these pictures in the red carpet or something.
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00:58:20.000Because I had to do these scenes with this half-breed wolf.
00:58:23.000And If you're the wolf, all right, and we're doing a scene together, and what I'm really thinking about is the camera, you know, the wolf turns around and looks at the camera.
00:58:36.000You know, you know, when you meet somebody and you know they're self-conscious, right?
01:01:49.000I'd just sit there and whittle or something and walk over there, toss rocks for a little bit until he got, you know, it was such a fascinating experience.
01:06:55.000I spent the first 15 years of my career saying I didn't do a good job because that guy was a jerk, or I didn't do a good job because they changed the script, or I didn't do a good job because of this, that, and the other thing.
01:07:06.000And then you see people, like back to our hero thing, then you see people who are really good.
01:08:21.000It's knowing that it's this process when you watch younger people do it.
01:08:28.000Do you ever, like, are you ever working with a young person and it's not clicking somehow and you're trying to figure out how to help them?
01:08:38.000Like, is there a thing you could say to them?
01:09:12.000And what you were saying about hypnosis, let me tell you what's a destroyer of collective imagination is our phones.
01:09:20.000I was reading an article today, and I think it was Psychology Today, about a study that they've done recently on the impact of social media on cognitive function for children, and that it's just fucking nuking their brain.
01:10:15.000I do not put restrictions on my children's use of social media, but we do have discussions about it because I think it is an inexorable part of modern society.
01:10:26.000And I think there is a social ostracization that comes from eliminating social media, telling your kid they can't have a phone.
01:10:48.000And, you know, when we were thinking about what restrictions we're going to do, we went on this walk with this really good friend of mine, Richard Linklader, who's an amazing person.
01:10:58.000And they tried to, my daughter's hit him up of what he thinks.
01:11:04.000All I know is that the most important thing is to be your own best friend.
01:11:10.000And that this is a slight obstacle to it.
01:11:12.000That boredom, boredom and sitting still with yourself is a membrane you kind of have to pass through.
01:11:20.000And if you can make best friends with yourself, then your best friend is always with you.
01:11:25.000And so that's been my solution too, is to say, all right, let's all, there aren't limitations, but let's all sit down and look at, I'll show you how much I looked at it.
01:12:51.000You know, like, what you, I have this terrible text thread between me and my friend Tom Segura, where we send each other the absolute worst things that we find online every day.
01:13:00.000Like, every day, it's a guy got run over by a train, car accidents, gunshots, South American assassinations.
01:13:27.000Occasionally, I say it's like as a, I make this excuse, like as a comic, oh, I need to be up on the zeitgeist, I need to be paying attention to what people are paying attention to.
01:14:03.000They get a lot of things done and they work really hard, which I'm very proud of.
01:14:07.000They're also really nice, which I'm also very proud of.
01:14:10.000I think that's the hardest fucking thing to do is to just be nice, to be a kind person.
01:14:18.000The worst thing for kindness is social media.
01:14:21.000Children in particular are so fucking mean to each other on social media.
01:14:28.000They're so mean to each other in comments and they talk about how one of their friends is getting bullied and this person is doing this and they're leaving comments on this and from a rival high school and a this and a that.
01:14:39.000But I also think that that process of understanding that this there is this bizarre social interaction that's not real, that is a part of life.
01:14:50.000And that you have to develop a resilience to this.
01:15:15.000You know, I have lost unbelievable ridiculous amount of hours to my mother will send me a really nice review of something, something positive about me, right?
01:15:27.000I'll look at it and my brain goes, what are the comments?
01:15:34.000And you can't believe that some, but I don't want to give it too much time, but I actually think it really makes you stronger to realize, of course, people don't like you.
01:16:21.000I've seen it happen to actors, especially if you're doing stage.
01:16:24.000I'm sure with comics, when you're doing a play and you have to do it every night and you start reading a lot of bad things that people say about you, it is demolishing to your confidence.
01:16:39.000You know, I mean, I had this actor friend of mine, we shared a dressing room, and one day he came in, and he was great in the show, and he came in, and his whole energy was dark.
01:16:49.000It's like, Yari, I went down the rabbit hole last night.
01:16:53.000I just read what people are saying about me on the internet.
01:16:58.000And everybody thinks I'm terrible in this play.
01:17:02.000And I'm like, they don't like your character.
01:17:05.000You know, like, people are not so brilliant.
01:17:07.000You know, it's not all geniuses out there chiming in on what a jerk you are at three in the morning.
01:20:47.000It's just the opening up your vulnerability to the masses in the most trivial and flippant ways of commenting, which is like leaving a comment on a YouTube video or something like that.
01:21:29.000If I do a big movie and I really work hard and the New York Times or the LA Times says he sucks, I don't really care about that critic's opinion.
01:22:35.000Criticizing, like criticizing from Quentin Tarantino is a very different thing than a criticism that comes from a person that's just a critic.
01:22:43.000And I remember I had this, there was this moment when Fear Factor came out.
01:22:48.000Like Fear Factor is a fucking completely idiotic show.
01:22:51.000It's just, that's all it is, is just escapism.
01:23:17.000And one of the criticisms was, do you really think America needs to be facing fear after we just experienced September 11th terrorist attack?
01:23:28.000And I got this question in an interview.
01:23:30.000And, you know, my perspective on Fear Factor in the beginning was I'm only doing this because I think it's going to get canceled.
01:23:37.000I'm like, I'll get some material out of this.
01:23:39.000I'm like, they're going to sick dogs on people and make them eat animal dicks.
01:24:41.000There was one of those, you know, they have like, if you're on a television show, they have those NBC things where you go and it's like, there's all these different reporters and all the actors from all the shows are there.
01:24:51.000And the guy was like, you know, I got to tell you, that really pissed me off.
01:24:57.000I go, you say horrible, hurtful things about all these different people and the course of their career is dependent upon your opinions to a certain extent.
01:25:07.000You could shape other people's narratives about who this actor is, about who this person is.
01:25:13.000And you just do it because you don't have anything else to contribute.
01:25:16.000And so when I said you don't have anything else to contribute, that hurt your feelings.
01:27:05.000I thought I was just going to run out and then I'd go back to being poor again.
01:27:08.000But all of a sudden, I'm on this show and I'm acting.
01:27:11.000And I realized at the end of five years, it was a wonderful job with an amazing, incredible group of talented people, but I don't want to do it again.
01:27:29.000And so dealing with these people that I'd seen the impact of their words on all the people that I worked with, like we used to sit around, you know, you'd have the table reads, and then people would start reading Variety and they'd start reading the Hollywood Reporter and all those different things, and they would all be super bummed out.
01:28:11.000You're going to go in and be really bummed out.
01:28:13.000And this constant process of dealing with other people's opinions and especially negative opinions from people that you don't really like in the first place.
01:28:43.000When you absorb too much of that hate and take it on yourself, you're forgetting that somebody writes something hateful about somebody else, whether it's Quentin or whether it's this person or that person or whatever.
01:28:56.000Most people hear it and think, wow, I wonder why he said that.
01:29:18.000He's not thinking you're an asshole or I. If you're not saying something substantive, other people have a brain in their head and they know it.
01:29:28.000I've never gained anything except perhaps the value of a thick skin from all that.
01:29:34.000The value of a thick skin is important, though.
01:29:37.000And there's some value to being pert to taking it in and then realize it's dangerous to take it in.
01:29:44.000And you must know, like with your show, I imagine, I don't really understand really how this works, but there's people who finance it and distribute it.
01:29:53.000There's people you have to work with, and they all have opinions.
01:29:56.000And like I'm doing this show right now, The Lowdown with FX, right?
01:30:00.000It's the first time I've ever done a television show.
01:30:02.000And I'm having a great experience with it.
01:30:05.000But you have to figure out, you're working with a lot of different people.
01:30:09.000You got FX has got their opinions about how the show is, and they're going to distribute it on Hulu, and they're owned by Disney.
01:30:17.000And you have to learn how to take criticism.
01:30:52.000If you can't, when you were talking about advice for young people, the first thing that popped in my head is something one of my first directors said to me, which was, he said, I was 21.
01:31:08.000I was doing my first, I was making my Broadway debut, and this director said, what have you done?
01:31:12.000And I said, well, I did Explorers, you know, when I was a kid, and I did this movie, Dead Poets Society, and I acted in this school play.
01:31:19.000I played Tom and Glass Menagerie my senior year.
01:31:23.000And this director looked at me and said, so you've done nothing.
01:33:09.000That's a great, the beginner's mind is a great point to start because even if you're really good at something, like say you're a good piano player and you want to learn how to play tennis, you start from a beginner's mind.
01:33:35.000Like, everyone is a beginner at a thing they don't know.
01:33:37.000And to take on as many things as you don't know as possible to keep that beginner's mind is actually immensely beneficial for your ego, for your objectivity, for everything.
01:33:48.000Because with somebody like you who's had a lot of transitions in your life about different career paths and different things that you're, that's always forcing you into a beginner's mind.
01:33:58.000And that's, I think I've done the same thing to myself.
01:34:01.000You know, like what keeps me excited is like, all right, God, I don't know.
01:34:37.000But if I can orient myself into learning, I like making these documentaries because I'm not a professional documentarian.
01:34:44.000But what's weird about it is if I do that and I get in this real kind of open space and then I come back to acting, that beginner's mind channel is open and I'm available to learn something from somebody else that maybe I might because one of the things I thought when I was young is I thought there was a right way to be an actor.
01:35:06.000And I was obsessed with somebody doing it wrong.
01:35:10.000This director is a fucking moron and he's ruining my work.
01:35:16.000And then slowly I really realized it's just so obvious there isn't a right way to make art.
01:35:23.000There are successful ways and unsuccessful ways, but I wanted everybody to be Peter Weir.
01:35:30.000Peter Weir had made that Poet Society and that's what rehearsal is supposed to be like.
01:35:35.000That's what the set is supposed to be like.
01:35:38.000That's how you're supposed to talk to other people.
01:35:40.000I didn't know my mentor was a card-carrying, awesome human being, and I was having unrealistic expectations about other people on their path.
01:35:50.000They haven't done all that Peter's done.
01:35:53.000And I just, it would anger me that they weren't, you know, and then if you can get in a kind of a more open mind, then you can really listen to people and absorb where they're at in their journey.
01:36:08.000You know, you're not this idea that, you know, especially in a film shoot, three minutes, you're not going to change the way they think.
01:36:14.000You know, you've got to try to do your thing, lead by example, and try to let them not negatively impact you, but maybe you can be open and learn something from them.
01:36:25.000And that whole beginner's mindset is just immensely beneficial.
01:36:30.000Like you were saying, how you carry it over to your acting.
01:36:33.000I would recommend that with anybody who does anything.
01:36:35.000Find another thing that you're not good at at all and get into that because that will help you with the thing that you're good at.
01:36:42.000And haven't you ever noticed, like, I took, it happens so often that it's funny.
01:36:48.000Like, I take my son out to teach him how to shoot, right?
01:36:51.000First skeet thing, you just blast it right out of there.
01:36:53.000Second one, blasts it right out of the air.
01:37:18.000And so I think I've even been talking to my wife a lot about I want to start trying to take piano lessons just to do something I've never done because I know it rattles my brain and makes my brain see things differently.
01:37:30.000Take a new language on, learn how to play chess, do something.
01:37:47.000The term Kaizen, it's a Japanese term for refining something over and over and over and over again for decades until you absolutely have it perfected.
01:37:59.000And I believe in that entirely, but I also believe that to master a craft, you have to apprentice three or four.
01:38:07.000That it's good for, like, I'm an actor, and I'm going to die an actor, and this is what I'm going to do.
01:38:14.000And I have met older actors who are amazing, who I know I'm not as good as.
01:38:27.000There's little nuances of conversation that I don't quite understand yet, but I know that they do, and I know that they're right, and I want to understand more deeply.
01:38:36.000And I just feel that, I don't know, I lost my train of thought about that.
01:38:56.000I know I want to excel at this one craft, but I know that when I direct something, when I write something, if I make a graphic novel, a documentary, I'm learning about things that are adjacent to my specialty.
01:39:12.000And by doing that, when I go to set and I'm talking to a writer, I know how hard he worked on the script.
01:39:19.000I'm not going to willy-nilly change his lines because I'm not in the mood or I don't like the way my hair looks or something like that.
01:40:41.000But like, so you and I have been talking.
01:40:43.000And I would venture to say we're doing pretty well.
01:40:47.000Three quarters of the time, we're completely immersed in what we're talking about.
01:40:52.000And then my brain, why my computer shut down is I start thinking about this actor that I love, Richard Easton, and I start thinking about how I'm still not as good as he is.
01:41:15.000And the actor's job is to figure out the text and have the text be so clear and in there that then you can figure out all the other wavelengths.
01:41:24.000You know, when you're watching somebody great, there's all these other wavelengths that are happening.
01:41:30.000It's not that they have nothing to do with the script, but it's like it's like the difference between a sketch and an oil painting.
01:41:37.000You know, the script is kind of a beautiful sketch, and the actor's job, director's job, production designer's, we're turning that into an oil painting.
01:41:45.000And so anyway, I'm just saying, wouldn't it, if I could put a subtitle under everything we're really thinking while we're talking, how different would it be?
01:41:55.000And how much more would I learn about you if I knew what your guy's relationship is really like?
01:42:06.000Do you know, you know, you know what I'm saying?
01:42:09.000I got there's so much about when I'm in your space, so much I don't know about what's going on today or what you guys are doing later today, or how you cut the show or what's important to you about the show.
01:42:18.000Well, I forget about things I'm talking about all the time because I'm trying to lock into the other person's brain.
01:42:24.000And sometimes I forget what I want to say because I'm trying to like, I'm trying to think like you.
01:42:30.000I'm trying to like completely be in the moment and think like you.
01:42:50.000Because I'm not thinking about anything else other than what that person's thinking and saying and trying to decipher it and trying to guide the conversation in some sort of an interesting way.
01:44:56.000And that's what's so fun about a big ensemble movie.
01:45:02.000Like, people may like the movie or not like the movie, but I did this remake of Magnificent Seven, right?
01:45:07.000And when you have a big cast and everybody's in period costume, you know, and everybody's on their horse and your jacket's from 1876 and their shirt is from, you know, from the Civil War or something like that.
01:45:22.000And it's all real and there's these old taverns built and there's dogs on the set and horses peeing and you know what?
01:45:48.000And that's the strange thing about it is it's like, you know, when you're a kid and you first look at the stars or the ocean or something, and you feel powerfully your own insignificance.
01:46:00.000And your intellectual brain would think that that would feel bad.
01:46:03.000Oh, if somebody told you, hey, you're insignificant, that feels bad.
01:46:07.000But when you look at the stars, it feels great.
01:47:08.000Yeah, and I think the ultimate in the moment for a person that doesn't have a craft or a thing is staring at the stars because you realize you are a part of everything.
01:47:20.000And you are in this infinite soup of existence that all of your troubles and your stuff, it seems so insignificant in comparison to the vastness of what's in front of you.
01:47:34.000And that lets your shoulders lighten up.
01:47:36.000And then you can handle what you can handle.
01:47:39.000I've talked about this before, but I'll tell you.
01:47:41.000When I was younger, when my oldest daughter was, I think she was only like five or six, we went to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
01:47:50.000And I don't know if you've ever been there, it's on the Bag Island.
01:47:53.000But they told us, it's like an hour and a half drive.
01:47:56.000They told us when you're driving up there, go, you know, you're going to go to the top and hopefully there won't be any clouds so you get a clear vision of the sky.
01:48:06.000So as we're driving up, there's all these fucking clouds.
01:48:37.000It changed my perspective on the universe itself because it felt like I was, it felt psychedelic.
01:48:45.000It felt like I was in a spaceship, like a convertible spaceship, and I was looking through the windshield and we were flying through the cosmos and there was an impossible amount of stars in the sky.
01:48:55.000There wasn't a spot in the sky that wasn't filled with stars.
01:50:09.000Like, the stuntmen are hanging in there.
01:50:11.000All the other actors are hanging out in there.
01:50:13.000And I had nothing to do because I couldn't go in the one freaking bar, right?
01:50:20.000And for the first three months I was there, it was always dark, right?
01:50:23.000And then the second three months, it was always light.
01:50:24.000And it was just, but anyway, the point is, I went on this long walk and I saw the Aurora Borealis by myself, you know, and I'd see it night after night.
01:51:17.000I think we're being robbed of that because of cities.
01:51:21.000Light pollution has robbed us of what I think all of our ancestors always inherently observed.
01:51:27.000When nighttime came around, everybody realized, well, you're a part of the infinite cosmos and there's magic to the universe, which is why there were so many people, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, that had these whimsical tales and these ideas of the importance of life and existence when they're in the most brutal moments of history.
01:51:51.000They're in the most brutal moments of life, life or death, hunter-gatherers, warring tribes.
01:51:58.000But yet at night, you're presented with this impossible majesty of the cosmos above your head every night.
01:52:06.000Now, today, we have fucking social media.
01:52:54.000Even like I find when I'm in nature, exercise, when I run outside and I'm running through the trees and I see a hawk and I see the wind blowing through and I pass a farm with sheep and I, it's like I come back from a long run high and I feel like I like myself.
01:53:14.000You know, and in the city, I go to the gym and I got on one thing, highlights of all my sports teams that I love and they're blinking up and down.
01:53:24.000And then I got the world is ending on all the news channels blinking up and down.
01:53:28.000And I got guys who are in better shape than me walking by and girls who are super hot walking by that I'm trying not to look at and be a good person.
01:53:36.000And I walk out of the damn gym and I hate myself.
01:54:02.000If you go to a dank dungeon of a gym with nothing on the walls other than a small mirror that's covered with other people's spit, you know?
01:54:09.000I think that's why we all liked in Rocky when you like gloves and goes out into the Rocky IV.
01:54:26.000And I was going to bring that up earlier when you were talking about immersing yourself in a role and preparing for a thing.
01:54:31.000It's one of the more romantic things to me about fighting.
01:54:36.000When I know that, like when like this past weekend, there was a big UFC.
01:54:41.000When a fighter goes into a camp, they go off somewhere.
01:54:45.000They leave their family behind, often for like two months at a time.
01:54:48.000And they just completely immerse themselves in preparation for this one thing that's going to happen.
01:54:56.000And every little thing that distracts you robs you away from the potential of that one possible majestic performance, that one career-defining performance, which they're all chasing after.
01:55:11.000And for a championship-level fighter, it's like the immense pressure.
01:55:16.000And then this thing, this you call it romantic because it is kind of romantic.
01:55:49.000And I think there's something about I've always, I don't know if you think this, but whenever I pass by a monastery, a convent or something, these people who are dedicated to their spiritual calling so completely that they've isolated out all the noise of life.
01:58:28.000Because this was Mike Tyson when he was Mike Tyson, when he was the most terrifying heavyweight boxer that ever walked the face of the earth.
01:58:36.000There was a period of time over like two or three years where I don't think anybody has ever come close to Mike Tyson.
02:00:15.000If you're not nervous, you're not going to perform well.
02:00:17.000Well, it makes me think about earlier in our conversation when I was talking about, oh, you know, when I think about when I was young and I'd be really nervous and pretending I wasn't nervous and that was the problem.
02:00:28.000And that now said to you, I still experience it.
02:02:23.000This is, you remember that Jaguar Paul in apocalypto when he has that moment, he's running through the woods and he's so afraid and he realizes, this is my forest.
02:02:33.000You know, he's like, I don't have to be afraid in my forest.
02:05:02.000And that's great for young people to hear because they think that there's going to come a point in time where they made it, where there's no fear.
02:05:09.000And I'm here to tell you, you don't want that.
02:05:46.000One of the things about in the rooms that I've been in with a lot of money, compared to the rooms I've been in where there isn't a lot of money, if you compare the laughter.
02:08:31.000What I said earlier, like, the last thing I shot, we had a couple moments of grace.
02:08:40.000You know, just where, like, I can tell the crew's losing their lunch and everybody's so happy with the take that we got and it's kind of moving and oh, it was perfect.
02:08:50.000And the light came through the window at the right time.
02:08:52.000And then Peter Dinklich said this hysterical thing and he wasn't supposed to say it, but it worked out perfect because then the other actress, then she responded in that way.
02:09:00.000And then my hat fell off and everybody's, and it's just, it's high.
02:09:05.000And I drive home and I want to tell everybody and I can't wait for the world to see it.
02:09:09.000You know, I am chasing that, like, could that happen again?
02:09:46.000And it happens to me all the time, and it bothers me that what people think is pretentious and what people, if I say to you, you know, I really want to make $100 million.
02:10:20.000If you came home today and she had made this crazy collage and it was combining pictures of her friends from high school and this beautiful watercolor that she did around it and she sprinkled glue on it and dropped sparkles on it and put it in a weird wood frame that her mother had given her, that she like, and she said, isn't it beautiful, dad?
02:10:41.000You would you ever say that's pretentious?
02:11:11.000Yes, you know, when Johnny Cash comes out with a sound you've never heard before, when it's a great rap song, you're like I got to hear that again.
02:11:21.000It's not pretentious, it's it's, it's real and and so I I feel that way very strongly and that makes me want to go to set and that makes me not care whether the movie makes a billion dollars.
02:11:35.000There's a great one of the great old English actor Paul Schofield.
02:11:39.000I I i'm gonna destroy this quote, but it was in his obituary and he was in this great movie when I was a kid Man For All Seasons and he was in Redford's quiz show and he was a great English actor and when he died in his obituary there was an interview with him.
02:11:54.000He said, you were performing King Lear at your local church.
02:11:57.000At the end, why weren't you doing it on the West End?
02:12:41.000Yeah, when you're, you're not chasing any prestige you're, you're only doing it for the thing, And I bet there are people that he loved there.
02:12:55.000And it's probably more purity to it, knowing that it's not going to be reviewed in the New York Times.
02:13:01.000It's like you're doing something that you're only doing it for the love of it.
02:13:05.000And if you want to play Pro Ball, there's certain things, you know, if you're, you know, the Augie the great, he used to coach for UT baseball.
02:13:19.000His great thing that he'd say that why he didn't coach the Yankees or the Red Sox, because he won five NCA championships.
02:13:27.000See, the problem is with Pro Ball, the object of the game is to win.
02:13:31.000And in college sports, my job is to develop young men.
02:14:31.000You know, and to keep them both in some kind of balance.
02:14:36.000And that's, for me, been my adult life.
02:14:38.000The term developing men or developing people, developing young people.
02:14:42.000My martial arts instructor, when I was a young boy, there was like a pamphlet that they had released explaining what the classes were all about.
02:14:53.000And in it, one of the quotes that always stuck with me forever is, martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential.
02:16:02.000And in the art of teaching myself about acting, about how to be present with my scene partner, I've learned how to be present with you, with my kids, when I'm at a baseball game with my friends.
02:16:17.000It actually, like, it's meaning I'm taking the same idea that if you train to do a fight well and you really feel what excellence at that level is like, you can feel it in other things.
02:16:34.000If you've been relaxed while you're doing something hard, you know what it's like when you're tense because you're not having that feeling that you had in that fight where you were really great.
02:16:44.000That's the same with my I've done performances where it goes up all by itself.
02:17:29.000I mean, it's like, yes, the short answer to your question is, it was we would be doing ride-arounds, you know, in the back of these cop cars watching these arrests or talking to some of these people who really lived the life that we were doing.
02:17:45.000And they would say something really funny, you know.
02:17:49.000And I would just see Denzel glance at me and I realized, oh, that just went in the computer.
02:17:57.000And then it would come out, you know, in a scene two months later.
02:18:01.000That line that that guy said, exactly, it would come out.
02:19:57.000I'm walking out of the, you know, walking away from me, screaming all this stuff.
02:20:02.000And that's when I say I'm chasing a feeling.
02:20:05.000Like, that's one of the, I mean, to just be there that day, you know, to watch a great, somebody's working on a different level than everybody else.
02:20:15.000You know, he's, he, you know, he makes all of us look like we're mastering checkers, you know, and he's, but to be there and be part of the magic.
02:20:23.000And I knew where I'd heard him audition some of those lines other places.
02:20:27.000You know, we'd run lines together and he'd try this thing.
02:20:55.000I even remember he came to the set the day, I have the scene that he's not in with the Cholo gang, you know, and they're playing cards and, you know, you read your shit pushed in, that scene, you know, where they put me in the bathtub.
02:21:10.000And Denzel came to set, and he watched the scene.