The Joe Rogan Experience - December 11, 2025


Joe Rogan Experience #2425 - Ethan Hawke


Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 21 minutes

Words per minute

180.51515

Word count

25,579

Sentence count

2,170

Harmful content

Misogyny

18

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Joe Rogan Experience" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan podcast, check it out!
00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan experience.
00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan, podcast by night, all day.
00:00:14.000 Nice to meet you.
00:00:15.000 Great to meet you, man.
00:00:16.000 It's weird when you've seen someone in so many fucking movies, and then you meet them in real life.
00:00:20.000 Like, okay, just a regular person right there.
00:00:22.000 Yeah, staring me in the face.
00:00:24.000 He just took a leak.
00:00:25.000 Yeah.
00:00:28.000 Dude, you've been in some fucking banger movies, man. 0.66
00:00:31.000 It's like, you've had an incredible career.
00:00:35.000 Yeah.
00:00:35.000 Pull that sucker.
00:00:37.000 Pull it towards me.
00:00:38.000 Yeah, it's good.
00:00:38.000 All right, very good.
00:00:39.000 Yeah, it's been a long, strange trip.
00:00:41.000 It's been a wild one, huh?
00:00:43.000 Yeah.
00:00:44.000 When did you start acting?
00:00:46.000 How old were you?
00:00:47.000 All right.
00:00:48.000 So I'm like 12 years old.
00:00:51.000 I don't have a winter sport.
00:00:53.000 My mother doesn't know what to do with me. 1.00
00:00:55.000 And my next door neighbor, he lived like four houses down.
00:01:00.000 He took an acting class at the Paul Robeson Center of Performing Arts.
00:01:05.000 And 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.
00:01:16.000 And I went there and this head of a local theater company came by to teach an improv seminar kind of thing.
00:01:23.000 I mean, I'm 12 years old, right?
00:01:25.000 And afterwards in the parking lot, he said, hey, you want to be in a play?
00:01:29.000 I said, what do you mean?
00:01:30.000 He says, I got a part of a guy who's a knight.
00:01:33.000 You get to have a sword.
00:01:34.000 And I said, well, I have any lines?
00:01:36.000 He said, you'll have one line.
00:01:38.000 I said, all right, cool.
00:01:39.000 And I asked my mom and she said, do I have to pay?
00:01:42.000 And I said, I don't think so.
00:01:44.000 I think they're going to pay me.
00:01:45.000 So I went and I did this play.
00:01:47.000 And it was George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan at the McCarter Theater in New Jersey.
00:01:53.000 That was a real play.
00:01:54.000 Yeah, it was a proper play.
00:01:56.000 And it was an incredible experience, to be honest with you, because my parents hated their jobs.
00:02:04.000 You know, they would go to work and their life happened on the periphery of their employment.
00:02:09.000 You know, my mom would take the train to New York, and so she wouldn't get home till 7.30.
00:02:14.000 Something she would leave at dawn.
00:02:17.000 And she was as miserable at work, I mean.
00:02:22.000 And I went to this rehearsal and everyone was having, they were talking about whether or not God existed.
00:02:28.000 They were talking about what they believed in.
00:02:31.000 They would dress up in these crazy outfits.
00:02:34.000 And then we did the play and they got a standing ovation.
00:02:36.000 And it was so much fun.
00:02:40.000 And it was the first time I saw, you could do this for a living?
00:02:44.000 You 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.
00:02:49.000 And 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.
00:03:01.000 And I just decided that's what I wanted to do.
00:03:05.000 And a lot of kids want to act, so that doesn't mean very much.
00:03:08.000 But through this other friend of mine, I started hearing about open casting calls in New York.
00:03:14.000 And I asked my mom if I could go on some of these big auditions.
00:03:18.000 And again, she said, is it going to cost me any money?
00:03:20.000 She said, if I paid for my own train fare, I could go to these auditions.
00:03:24.000 And so I took some Polaroids and went on a few of these big auditions and I got one of them.
00:03:31.000 And it was for this big, in 1984, it was a $30 million movie directed by the guy who just done Gremlins, right?
00:03:39.000 Joe Dante.
00:03:40.000 And I thought I was a made man.
00:03:43.000 I 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.
00:03:56.000 And, You know, my mom couldn't quit her job or anything, so my mom had a really turbulent relationship with her mother.
00:04:04.000 But her mother, her mother and she didn't really know each other, and so her mother said she'd be my guardian.
00:04:10.000 And my mom designed this as a way to maybe have a family healing.
00:04:14.000 But my grandmother was a piece of work. 1.00
00:04:19.000 And we lived together in Koreatown.
00:04:22.000 That's what they called it.
00:04:23.000 And it was wild.
00:04:26.000 And she, I remember we drove into Paramount studios.
00:04:29.000 You know, you can picture it, the image from the Godfather, and you had the big gates.
00:04:33.000 And my grandmother had always wanted to be a movie star. 0.79
00:04:37.000 Wow.
00:04:37.000 You know, and she had, she was from here.
00:04:39.000 She's from Austin, Texas.
00:04:40.000 Well, really, Fort Worth.
00:04:42.000 But, you know, she would talk about going to see Gone with the Wind at the Paramount here in Austin.
00:04:46.000 And she would watch Gone with the Wind, you know, three times a week.
00:04:51.000 And she had dreamed of being a movie star.
00:04:54.000 And I remember we were in a big van driving me to set the first day, and we went through the gates of Paramount opening up.
00:05:01.000 And she was smoking an Eve cigarette in the van, of course.
00:05:04.000 It's 1984.
00:05:05.000 And she's just like, my first time in Hollywood as a fucking guardian.
00:05:14.000 And so the whole child actor thing was a trip.
00:05:18.000 And I finished the movie, and there's a lot of drama involved in the, if I was to complete that story.
00:05:25.000 But I finished it.
00:05:27.000 The movie was a big turkey.
00:05:28.000 How old were you at the time?
00:05:29.000 14.
00:05:31.000 River and I were both 14.
00:05:35.000 But see, we look so young in that picture, right?
00:05:37.000 But you got to understand, you know, when you're that age, you think you're dying to be 18, dying to be 16.
00:05:44.000 We went off, River and I stole a pack of camel cigarettes because we both wanted to be like James Dean. 0.83
00:05:52.000 And we had a lot of fun.
00:05:55.000 That's the truth.
00:05:56.000 But 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.
00:06:08.000 And nobody in the bathroom really recognized us.
00:06:11.000 And they were all talking about what a turkey the movie was, how terrible it was.
00:06:15.000 And 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.
00:06:27.000 And it died a quick and salty death, my dream.
00:06:32.000 And I went back to high school and put away my dream of being an actor.
00:06:37.000 It 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.
00:06:49.000 And it kind of like putting your hand in a flame.
00:06:52.000 It was not a good feeling when it was over.
00:06:55.000 And 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.
00:07:08.000 And I hated college.
00:07:10.000 I was miserable.
00:07:11.000 And I thought, I'll take the bus in and I'll go on one of these open casting calls again.
00:07:17.000 And if I get the part, this is what I decided.
00:07:21.000 If I get the part, I'll do that.
00:07:23.000 And if I don't get the part, I'll join the Merchant Marines and be like Jack London.
00:07:27.000 That was my fantasy at the time.
00:07:29.000 I remember calling my sister and saying, all right, there's seven parts.
00:07:32.000 This is how dumb I was.
00:07:33.000 I was like, there's seven parts.
00:07:34.000 If I don't get one of those, I must suck, you know?
00:07:38.000 So, which is not true at all.
00:07:40.000 But I ended up getting one of them.
00:07:42.000 And I dropped out of college.
00:07:44.000 And the success of Dead Poets Society sent me, you know, was like a trajectory.
00:07:50.000 It shot me down a different course of water than I was on before.
00:07:55.000 It's probably a much better path than the first film being successful and you become a child star.
00:08:02.000 I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that first experience.
00:08:06.000 First of all, if for no other reason than in the success of Dead Poets Society, I didn't take it seriously at all.
00:08:13.000 I 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.
00:08:22.000 Because of the first experience?
00:08:23.000 Yeah, because everybody's saying, oh, the movie's so great.
00:08:25.000 I'm like, yeah, they said this last time.
00:08:26.000 It doesn't mean anything, you know.
00:08:28.000 And so it kind of taught me at a really young age about to ask yourself why you're doing something.
00:08:37.000 You know, like, are you doing it for the result of what happens?
00:08:40.000 Are you doing it to do it?
00:08:42.000 And by coming back to acting a few years later, I was just fully braced for it not to go well, and it was still going to be worth it.
00:08:50.000 And so I think it gave me a slight bit of ballast to handle the success of Dead Poets.
00:08:58.000 You went into it for the enjoyment of doing it rather than thinking.
00:09:02.000 I had no expectations, but I was certain I wasn't going to be a star.
00:09:05.000 I was positive of it.
00:09:06.000 I saw it as a way to make some money and maybe learn about writing and learn about film and a way to get out of college.
00:09:13.000 Now, what happened is when I got there, I met all these other young men who were in love with acting.
00:09:20.000 And that I started watching movies with them and talking about movies with them and seeing the light in their eyes.
00:09:26.000 And we'd go to set, and there was Robin Williams.
00:09:29.000 You know, we had Peter Weir, who had just directed Witness, one of my favorite movies of all time at that point.
00:09:35.000 And he was a master.
00:09:36.000 I mean, he was not a lightweight human being.
00:09:39.000 He was a heavyweight human being.
00:09:41.000 And he would lead rehearsals and he would talk about acting and performance in a way that I hadn't.
00:09:47.000 Well, 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.
00:10:00.000 And it was it was an invitation to a lifestyle, a life commitment.
00:10:06.000 And what I didn't realize at the time, that's what that movie's about, too.
00:10:10.000 You know, so the movie itself is a guided meditation on Carpe Diem, right?
00:10:14.000 It's a meditation on gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
00:10:17.000 I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.
00:10:21.000 You know, this is kind of stuff that I was getting inundated with in rehearsal.
00:10:27.000 And 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.
00:10:37.000 It had planted the seeds.
00:10:38.000 Yeah.
00:10:39.000 I was thinking, I've never met a person who became famous at 14 who came out of it okay of yet to.
00:10:47.000 I heard Jody Foster School.
00:10:49.000 I've never met anybody that became famous very young.
00:10:53.000 I read every interview she does for exactly that reason.
00:11:01.000 It's so difficult.
00:11:02.000 I tell parents all the time, like, children acting is a wonderful thing.
00:11:06.000 Put them in the school play.
00:11:07.000 It's so good for them.
00:11:08.000 Get them singing lessons.
00:11:09.000 It's so good for them.
00:11:11.000 Sing in the church choir, it's so good for them.
00:11:15.000 But 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.
00:11:27.000 That's a great way to put it.
00:11:28.000 Yeah, I think it completely impedes your developmental process.
00:11:33.000 The way I liken it to is like concrete.
00:11:37.000 When you make concrete, there's a bunch of very specific ingredients.
00:11:41.000 You put them with very specific mixture.
00:11:44.000 Like you have to have this amount of water, that amount of sand, this amount of rocks.
00:11:49.000 If it's off, it's never fixed.
00:11:52.000 You can't add water after it's cured.
00:11:55.000 It's done.
00:11:56.000 It's fucked forever.
00:11:57.000 This is bad concrete now.
00:11:59.000 This is what happens to a lot of young human beings that become famous, whether it's through acting or singing or.
00:12:05.000 Yeah, and it's not just fame.
00:12:07.000 That analogy works for all walks of life, really.
00:12:09.000 You know, if you have a really, something really traumatic happens in childhood, it's very hard to recover.
00:12:16.000 It's a tremendous amount of work to recover.
00:12:19.000 And I agree with you.
00:12:20.000 Like, I think celebrity is like, it's like a tiny drop of mercury.
00:12:27.000 It's poison.
00:12:28.000 It's poison for your brain.
00:12:30.000 Now, if you're mature, you can handle it.
00:12:33.000 And if you get it in slow, like I got it in slow increments.
00:12:37.000 Dead Poets Society happened.
00:12:38.000 I had a little taste of fame, but I wasn't, nobody knew my name.
00:12:41.000 I was that kid from Dead Poets Society.
00:12:44.000 I'll look at it.
00:12:46.000 And I got it in slow.
00:12:48.000 I got to develop, what do you call it?
00:12:50.000 When you get a little bit of poison, like a resistance.
00:12:54.000 Yeah, resistance to it.
00:12:56.000 And it came so slowly for me.
00:12:58.000 I even think about people, I remember the weekend Pretty Woman came out two days before no one had ever heard of Julia Roberts.
00:13:07.000 Two days afterwards, she's the most famous woman in America. 0.90
00:13:10.000 I think that's a huge thing to absorb.
00:13:14.000 I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
00:13:18.000 And I know that my personality couldn't have handled it.
00:13:22.000 I've worked hard to handle it as poorly or wellly as I have, you know.
00:13:27.000 Yeah.
00:13:29.000 I 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.
00:13:40.000 That's the developmental process of the normal maturation of a person when they go through adolescence, teenage years, into college, young adult.
00:13:49.000 Then you can kind of handle things.
00:13:51.000 And then maybe you're also fortunate that, like you said, Dead Poet Society, you didn't get too huge from it.
00:13:58.000 You just got some juice.
00:14:00.000 A little bit of juice.
00:14:01.000 A little bit of confidence.
00:14:03.000 Something's happening.
00:14:04.000 Something's happening.
00:14:05.000 But 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.
00:14:16.000 I mean, she just couldn't stop crying about it, you know.
00:14:19.000 And 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.
00:14:31.000 And 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.
00:14:45.000 And we worked our asses off and we built sets.
00:14:48.000 And we, you know, it was fun.
00:14:50.000 I don't want to lie.
00:14:51.000 We had a great time.
00:14:52.000 But it was a college experience that I gave myself through this theater company.
00:15:00.000 And that changed me because I met a lot of people who were really excellent at what I do that weren't making a lot of money.
00:15:06.000 I met a lot of people who loved it as much as I do, who weren't getting their picture taken, who weren't being told they were special.
00:15:13.000 I knew how gifted they were.
00:15:14.000 I could understand.
00:15:16.000 I had a little bit of balance and a little bit of humility to go along with the superficial elements of my chosen field.
00:15:26.000 Did you ever think about what would have happened if that guy didn't invite you to do that play when you were 12?
00:15:32.000 It's kind of crazy how there's these pivotal moments in your life.
00:15:35.000 You know, he just died.
00:15:36.000 Nagel Jackson was his name.
00:15:39.000 And he was a great theater director.
00:15:42.000 I mean, I don't know if you feel this way.
00:15:46.000 I 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.
00:15:56.000 Why did this guy talk to me in the parking lot?
00:15:58.000 And why was he such a kind, decent human being?
00:16:02.000 Throughout my life, I have had opportunities presented to me, and I had enough intuition and enough intelligence maybe to follow it.
00:16:14.000 But I do think of it, I think about it all the time.
00:16:19.000 All 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.
00:16:32.000 Yeah, I know it sounds wacky to say, but I believe it too.
00:16:35.000 I 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?
00:16:48.000 Like, why did this feel like it was a destined path?
00:16:53.000 Like, why was I compelled to try this?
00:16:57.000 What was the thought behind that?
00:16:59.000 And am I being guided?
00:17:02.000 Is fate real?
00:17:06.000 I 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.
00:17:20.000 And 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.
00:17:34.000 And it's difficult to hear it.
00:17:37.000 It's quiet.
00:17:38.000 Yeah.
00:17:39.000 But 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.
00:17:49.000 And 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.
00:17:59.000 So 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.
00:18:09.000 Because I bet you everybody has it.
00:18:11.000 I bet they do too.
00:18:13.000 I bet there's also a real factor in recognizing the misery of your mother's life, what she was doing, where she didn't take these chances.
00:18:25.000 She didn't, she had responsibility.
00:18:28.000 She was.
00:18:28.000 Yeah, but can I tell you something funny about that?
00:18:30.000 Yeah.
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00:20:03.000 So she was 18 when I was born, right?
00:20:06.000 So that's tough.
00:20:08.000 You don't really have a childhood, right?
00:20:11.000 And but in her mid-40s, she took it.
00:20:16.000 She joined the Peace Corps in her mid-40s after I, you know, once I was okay, and it was right around the time my oldest Maya was born.
00:20:25.000 She's a single child? 1.00
00:20:27.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:20:28.000 And I think I was a big part of her on her brain a lot, worrying.
00:20:34.000 It was a big, is this kid going to be all right?
00:20:37.000 Is this kid going to be all right?
00:20:38.000 It makes a lot of noise in your head, you know.
00:20:40.000 Sure.
00:20:41.000 And I was all right.
00:20:44.000 And 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.
00:20:57.000 She was probably, I don't know, 46 or something when she said this, younger than I am now.
00:21:01.000 And she said, I don't want to be disappointed in my life.
00:21:07.000 So she joined the Peace Corps, which she wasn't all that impressed with.
00:21:11.000 But they sent her to Romania, and she fell in love with Romania, and she fell in love with the people there.
00:21:20.000 And she got obsessed with the racism against the gypsy culture, the Roma culture, I'm supposed to call it.
00:21:29.000 And it reminded her a lot of growing up here in the 60s and the racism she saw as a young girl.
00:21:37.000 And she just decided to do something about it.
00:21:39.000 She spent 25 years there, and she got thousands of kids into school who wouldn't have gone to school.
00:21:43.000 She just recently retired back to Fort Worth.
00:21:46.000 And she's a different woman than the woman I grew up with, which is, I think, a remarkable story.
00:21:53.000 I love both the women, the woman now, and the woman I grew up with.
00:21:57.000 I don't want to paint some portrait that she was miserable.
00:21:59.000 She had so much, she just was miserable at work.
00:22:02.000 You know, she was not a miserable person to be with, the opposite.
00:22:06.000 And she kept that fire in herself alive enough to, when the window presented itself, she took it and she took it hard.
00:22:14.000 I mean, she disappeared for a quarter of a century to Romania.
00:22:17.000 It was a young woman born in Fort Worth, right?
00:22:20.000 And that's a wild thing to do.
00:22:22.000 And she made a huge impact. 0.99
00:22:24.000 And I'm extremely proud of her and proud of the work that she's done.
00:22:27.000 And so is everybody who knows her.
00:22:30.000 And now she's in Fort Worth doing her thing and has a different sense of herself because she followed her own intuition and her own path.
00:22:40.000 It just, she had to deal with the responsibility of raising a child for a long time.
00:22:44.000 Yeah.
00:22:47.000 Well, that develops a different kind of character, too.
00:22:52.000 You know, the character of a woman trying to raise a child and also a boy.
00:22:58.000 You know, I have all daughters.
00:23:00.000 You do, yeah.
00:23:01.000 I have three daughters and one boy.
00:23:02.000 Yeah.
00:23:04.000 All my friends are boys.
00:23:05.000 Like, dude, it is so much harder.
00:23:07.000 It's just, you're just trying to keep them for burning the house down.
00:23:11.000 Yeah, it was a pain.
00:23:12.000 Of course.
00:23:12.000 That was a huge pain.
00:23:13.000 Of course.
00:23:14.000 And if you're a single child, you know.
00:23:16.000 But she must have gotten some inspiration from your path, from your choices.
00:23:24.000 I wonder.
00:23:25.000 You have to ask her.
00:23:27.000 I think she had in her own way went for it because everybody told her not to have a baby and she wanted to.
00:23:36.000 And she didn't want to run with the pack.
00:23:39.000 No, she didn't.
00:23:39.000 I don't think when you're 18, you don't understand the ramifications of the decision of having a child.
00:23:45.000 Right.
00:23:45.000 You know, how, you know, permanent.
00:23:48.000 You know, I remember she told me when Maya was born, well, congratulations.
00:23:51.000 You know, you now have something to worry about the rest of your life.
00:23:57.000 You know.
00:23:58.000 Yeah, I think it's a gift, though.
00:24:01.000 I mean, I certainly think it changes you as a human being in my case, the most positive ways possible.
00:24:10.000 I could imagine being a single mother, though, it's a much more difficult position to be in.
00:24:18.000 And there's a lot of pressure on women. 1.00
00:24:21.000 Sure.
00:24:23.000 You know, if you work, you're a bad mother. 0.99
00:24:27.000 If you're just a stay-at-home mom, you're not a good, strong woman.
00:24:31.000 You know what I mean?
00:24:31.000 They're damned if they do.
00:24:32.000 They're damned if they don't.
00:24:33.000 That's the position they get put in.
00:24:35.000 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:24:36.000 Yeah, it's all those experiences.
00:24:40.000 When as an actor, I mean, one of the more fascinating things to me about watching people is how they can assume different identities.
00:24:49.000 And 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?
00:25:00.000 If 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?
00:25:08.000 What 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?
00:25:17.000 Like you're drawing from all these different experiences.
00:25:21.000 So 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.
00:25:39.000 You'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.
00:25:46.000 Like having all these different bizarre interactions with people and life experiences.
00:25:50.000 How much do you draw upon that when you're trying to like create a character?
00:25:54.000 Well, that's a really big question.
00:25:57.000 It is.
00:25:58.000 Well, so I have to break it into parts.
00:25:59.000 It started getting bigger as I was out there.
00:26:01.000 Yeah, yeah, because it's kind of two parts.
00:26:03.000 But the first part about drawing on a character is touching on my favorite aspect of my life and my job.
00:26:12.000 Most people, if you're an actuary, you're an actuary.
00:26:15.000 You think in numbers, you think in this, this is, and it's your job.
00:26:18.000 You have to.
00:26:19.000 Yeah.
00:26:22.000 I got to play a World War II vet.
00:26:24.000 I got taken out to basic training.
00:26:26.000 I got to read World War II veterans' journals over and over again.
00:26:30.000 I got to wear the clothes they wore.
00:26:33.000 I was working on that movie for a few months, reading all kinds of books, watching documentaries about that.
00:26:38.000 Then that movie's over.
00:26:40.000 Moving on.
00:26:41.000 Now 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.
00:26:53.000 And I'm thinking like a cop.
00:26:55.000 And I'm not, it's not, it's even, it's different than being a journalist and writing about it.
00:27:02.000 I'm really trying to imagine being them.
00:27:05.000 And I'm not looking at it from a judgmental point of view.
00:27:08.000 I 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.
00:27:15.000 I'm thinking, well, why did he make it?
00:27:17.000 Why did he make it?
00:27:18.000 Why did he do that?
00:27:20.000 I play a jazz musician, a drug addict.
00:27:23.000 I'm not sitting there judging him what a bad person.
00:27:26.000 I'm thinking, why did he do it?
00:27:29.000 It's a painkiller.
00:27:30.000 Why is he taking it?
00:27:30.000 Where's his music come from?
00:27:32.000 Why is it so important to him?
00:27:33.000 Why does he practice 12 hours a day?
00:27:36.000 What is that about?
00:27:39.000 All these characters are these invitations to A, expand your own sense of what identity means.
00:27:52.000 Like, who is Joe Rogan?
00:27:55.000 And who Joe Rogan is with his mom is a little different than he's watching the Super Bowl with his best friends.
00:28:01.000 Who Joe Rogan is at 40 is different than he is at 20.
00:28:04.000 We have inside of us so many aspects to ourselves.
00:28:08.000 You know, when we're in love, you change.
00:28:13.000 When you see your child for the first time, you change.
00:28:15.000 Your biology, your chemicals start to shift a little bit.
00:28:19.000 If you're in a violent situation, your molecular structure alters a little bit.
00:28:26.000 And you start to realize that that's not you and that's not you and that's not you.
00:28:30.000 They're all you.
00:28:33.000 And that's what performing is like.
00:28:35.000 And you start to see society and see yourself and see a continuity that is really kind of exciting.
00:28:44.000 I've had if you don't get ruined by, oh, breaking your arm, patting yourself on the back or something like that.
00:28:53.000 I've met a bunch of older actors who've lived really interesting lives that I've learned.
00:28:59.000 It's like I once had dinner with Vanessa Redgrave, this old English actress.
00:29:04.000 She'd spent her life doing Shakespeare and Chekhov and Beckett and Tennessee Williams.
00:29:09.000 She'd spent her life with some of the greatest minds of the last 50 years.
00:29:14.000 And she carries that with her.
00:29:19.000 She's powerfully intelligent and powerfully humble woman. 1.00
00:29:23.000 And 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.
00:29:36.000 So anyway, that was a multi-part question.
00:29:38.000 The other thing that part of your question is, how did I stay balanced?
00:29:41.000 And a lot of it had to do with my father, who has, he doesn't care about celebrity.
00:29:50.000 He doesn't particularly think it's very interesting.
00:29:54.000 Not in a judgmental way.
00:29:55.000 He really cares about integrity and whether you're a good person and whether you tell the truth.
00:30:00.000 And it's not interesting to him how much money you make.
00:30:05.000 That'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.
00:30:17.000 That's a good suspicion.
00:30:18.000 It's a healthy suspicion.
00:30:20.000 He was very realistic about the chances I had of making a profession out of this.
00:30:27.000 That's not a bad thing.
00:30:29.000 You know, everybody says, it's so great to tell people to follow your dreams, and it is important to follow your dreams.
00:30:34.000 But it's also important to be realistic and have a plan and take care of yourself.
00:30:38.000 And 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.
00:30:47.000 So 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.
00:30:59.000 And 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.
00:31:16.000 And that's dangerous because they don't care about you.
00:31:22.000 Yeah, that is an issue.
00:31:23.000 There'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.
00:31:29.000 Or 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.
00:31:38.000 You know, is this, like you said, yeah, if I could have decided my life, Explorers would have been a huge hit.
00:31:44.000 It would have been ET big.
00:31:46.000 And you know what?
00:31:46.000 I wouldn't be here on this talk show today.
00:31:48.000 You know, so I don't want to be in charge of my whole life in that way.
00:31:52.000 Maybe you would, but it would be different.
00:31:53.000 You'd be coming out of rehab.
00:31:54.000 Oh, for sure.
00:31:55.000 I'd be a Charlie Sheen story.
00:31:57.000 Yeah, dude.
00:31:57.000 I'd be on Marriage 18.
00:31:59.000 Who, by the way, was a fantastic guy to talk to.
00:32:01.000 I bet he was.
00:32:02.000 Yeah, I listened to it.
00:32:03.000 It was fantastic.
00:32:04.000 Wonderful guy.
00:32:05.000 Like a sweetheart of a guy, a guy who went through the exact opposite of what I'm saying is good for you.
00:32:12.000 If you survive, anything is a learning tool.
00:32:16.000 Right.
00:32:17.000 I mean, you must have this.
00:32:19.000 Some of the wisest people I know have been through the 12-step program.
00:32:25.000 Yes.
00:32:26.000 And so addiction and misery can be an unbelievable teacher if you can, if you pull yourself out of it.
00:32:35.000 If you survive.
00:32:36.000 If you survive.
00:32:37.000 It's not, I wouldn't wish it for my children.
00:32:39.000 It's not a dare I want them to take.
00:32:41.000 Oh, hey, one path to wisdom is terrible.
00:32:43.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:32:44.000 Yeah.
00:32:45.000 Yeah.
00:32:46.000 A lot of my friends died from it, but a couple of them are really wise from it.
00:32:50.000 Read a book, okay?
00:32:52.000 I remember, it's funny, even as you say that.
00:32:53.000 I remember when I was about 24, starting to get successful, I met my friend Richard Linklader.
00:33:00.000 And we were hanging out in New York, and we met this really cool, this guy we really admired, fancy pants writer, really badass.
00:33:07.000 You know, you kind of just, and we were smoking cigarettes.
00:33:11.000 Well, Rick wasn't, of course.
00:33:12.000 But we were shooting pool, and this guy said to me, you know what?
00:33:15.000 You're almost interesting.
00:33:16.000 He said to me, you know, what you got to do is you go, got to go down to Mexico and disappear for a couple of years.
00:33:23.000 You know, live life a little bit, and you'll be somebody.
00:33:27.000 And the guy finally, when the night we're walking home with Rick, Rick said, let me tell you what you don't need to do.
00:33:34.000 What do you do?
00:33:34.000 Read some William Burroughs.
00:33:36.000 That might be a good idea.
00:33:37.000 Read some Hunter S. Thompson.
00:33:39.000 Skip the addiction path.
00:33:41.000 You know, learn what you don't have to, you don't have to do it.
00:33:45.000 You know, you don't need to.
00:33:47.000 That's not the path to wisdom.
00:33:49.000 Right.
00:33:49.000 You know, it has worked for a handful of people.
00:33:52.000 But most of us, you know, I keep coming back in this conversation with Jodi Foster every time.
00:33:56.000 I read her interviews because I admire, because I know what she's survived.
00:34:00.000 Right.
00:34:01.000 But she's wicked smart. 0.99
00:34:03.000 Yes.
00:34:03.000 You know, you don't want to place your bet that you're as smart as she is.
00:34:07.000 Yeah, she's smart and also wise. 1.00
00:34:11.000 That's the odd thing of someone who was in, like, how old was she in taxi driver?
00:34:16.000 12?
00:34:17.000 14.
00:34:18.000 Crazy.
00:34:18.000 I know.
00:34:18.000 Crazy.
00:34:19.000 And it's a very bizarre movie for a young child to be sexualized in this very weird psychotic movie.
00:34:27.000 But what she took from it was this great mentor in Martin Scorsese.
00:34:31.000 And she kind of understood she was making art.
00:34:34.000 That's where the wisdom comes in.
00:34:35.000 She's just naturally precociously wise that way.
00:34:38.000 That she didn't get hung up on the Seedy aspects, the sexuality aspects of it.
00:34:48.000 She got hung up on, who's this guy, Martin Scorsese?
00:34:50.000 What is he doing?
00:34:51.000 What is this movie saying?
00:34:52.000 How could I be a part of that?
00:34:54.000 And that's how I think she survived.
00:34:56.000 But I don't know the woman, so I shouldn't speak.
00:34:59.000 Yeah, I don't know her either, but I do admire her when I hear her talk.
00:35:02.000 Yeah, me too.
00:35:03.000 That'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.
00:35:12.000 Yeah, and she's still really good at her job. 0.99
00:35:14.000 Yeah.
00:35:15.000 I know.
00:35:15.000 Right, right.
00:35:16.000 It's like, that's that's a caricature.
00:35:18.000 That to me is really exciting.
00:35:20.000 You know, see, if you're me, you're like, I look at Jeff Bridges a lot too.
00:35:24.000 See, like when Dead Poets Society came out, I went, I remember I went on this long talk with myself.
00:35:29.000 I was like, it was like sunrise, and I'd been up all night.
00:35:34.000 And it was in New York, I was about 19 or something.
00:35:37.000 And I was just thinking about who had gone through this that I actually admire when I look at them and I admire.
00:35:44.000 And Jeff Bridges had starred in The Last Picture Show, which was one of my favorite movies, and he was amazing at it.
00:35:50.000 And he just slowly got better and better and better and better.
00:35:56.000 And I was like, all right, so it can be done.
00:36:00.000 You know, this, you know, he's got an amazing wife.
00:36:04.000 He's really super into Buddhism.
00:36:05.000 I started getting like, what is it?
00:36:07.000 He's really into photography.
00:36:08.000 Like, he takes, I mean, I don't know him either, right?
00:36:11.000 So I'm just, I'm just, I'm talking like a fan here.
00:36:13.000 It's not, I don't know these people.
00:36:15.000 But I watched him from afar.
00:36:17.000 I was like, okay, this race can be won.
00:36:20.000 And I've always thought, I remember I was so happy he won the Academy Award for True Grit, I guess it was.
00:36:26.000 And I was like, damn, what a long, slow burn he had.
00:36:29.000 And it just keeps getting better and more interesting.
00:36:33.000 He comes out these weird little books I love and I read them.
00:36:37.000 He writes books?
00:36:38.000 Yeah, 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.
00:36:47.000 But it's actually, you know, I don't know if you've read The Tao of Willie.
00:36:50.000 I 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.
00:37:02.000 Yeah, there it is.
00:37:02.000 Yeah.
00:37:03.000 The Dude and the Zen Master.
00:37:04.000 It's a great book, by the way.
00:37:06.000 He has a mantra in it that I just love, which is row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.
00:37:13.000 Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
00:37:16.000 And he talks about how valuable that song has been to him.
00:37:20.000 I'm probably misquoting, but it meant a lot to me.
00:37:22.000 And it's just like, one step at a time, one step at a time, keep a smile on your face.
00:37:29.000 You know, don't forget it's all a dream.
00:37:31.000 You know, it's like, it's a great mantra.
00:37:34.000 It is, and it's always great to have someone who has gone through it all and has come out fascinating, interesting, and wise.
00:37:45.000 So you go, it can be done.
00:37:47.000 Did you ever meet Chris Christopherson?
00:37:49.000 No.
00:37:50.000 He was cool.
00:37:51.000 Yeah.
00:37:52.000 Yeah.
00:37:52.000 Well, my secret fantasy is your job.
00:37:56.000 You know, I wrote a profile on Chris, I don't know, 15 years ago now for Rolling Stone Magazine.
00:38:03.000 And I made a documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
00:38:06.000 And I just finished a documentary about Merle Haggard.
00:38:08.000 And I really enjoy studying other people.
00:38:14.000 But Chris, you know, his life stories.
00:38:20.000 Do you know what I mean?
00:38:21.000 He was in the military and then he gave up everything, became a songwriter.
00:38:25.000 And 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?
00:38:46.000 I mean, you know, he wrote me and Bobby McGee for Janice Joplin.
00:38:49.000 He did?
00:38:50.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:38:50.000 Oh, yeah.
00:38:51.000 Wow.
00:38:52.000 And he was, you know, a helicopter pilot, and he wrote songs for Johnny Cash.
00:38:56.000 And he was acting in Sam Peck and Paul movies.
00:38:58.000 He was in Blade.
00:38:59.000 Yeah, he was in Blade, but he was a real, he's a Rhodes Scholar and a boxer.
00:39:08.000 You would like this guy.
00:39:09.000 He would be right up your alley.
00:39:10.000 A real free thinker and didn't trap himself in any way of thinking and really fought for individual rights.
00:39:20.000 And he was a great guy.
00:39:21.000 I got to interview him.
00:39:22.000 And he actually starred in my first movie I directed too.
00:39:26.000 So I got to know him.
00:39:27.000 What was that?
00:39:27.000 It's a movie called Chelsea Walls.
00:39:30.000 I don't necessarily recommend you watch it.
00:39:34.000 You can if you want to.
00:39:36.000 I learned a lot making it.
00:39:38.000 I like it a lot.
00:39:39.000 But I was learning, you know, I was learning a lot.
00:39:44.000 But Chris was in it, and he was amazing.
00:39:48.000 Yeah, having known people like that is so beneficial in your life.
00:39:55.000 They're not just like inspirational.
00:39:57.000 It's like a mental fuel, a type of nutrient almost.
00:40:03.000 It'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.
00:40:16.000 Having mentors.
00:40:17.000 Yes.
00:40:18.000 It's like, you know, how are you going to be a samurai if you don't know a samurai?
00:40:22.000 Right.
00:40:22.000 You know, and you got to see the way they tie their shoes.
00:40:24.000 You got to see the way they make dinner.
00:40:26.000 You don't just got to see the fancy swordplay.
00:40:28.000 That stuff is hard-earned.
00:40:31.000 And so I'm not scared of that.
00:40:34.000 You know, you don't have to hero worship people.
00:40:38.000 You don't have to turn them into deities.
00:40:39.000 They're human beings.
00:40:41.000 But when you get to experience and see that people like, oh, you don't have to lie.
00:40:48.000 I knew a guy once who didn't lie.
00:40:52.000 You don't have to back down when somebody says that.
00:40:54.000 I watched a person that back.
00:40:55.000 You can be a good parent.
00:40:57.000 You can have your children say, I love my dad.
00:41:01.000 It's not going to come easy, but it can be done.
00:41:05.000 And so I like heroes.
00:41:10.000 I also like seeing older people.
00:41:13.000 Not the fixation on the 23-year-old James Dean, but a fixation on the 72-year-old Chris Christopherson.
00:41:24.000 Pick whoever yours are. 0.84
00:41:25.000 There's Muhammad Ali.
00:41:28.000 I mean, there's so many amazing people that you can say, like, wow, life was not always a picnic for them.
00:41:33.000 How did they handle it?
00:41:35.000 And then you cannot be, you know, too upset when life's not a picnic for you.
00:41:40.000 You can just ask yourself, how did you handle it?
00:41:42.000 Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with really appreciating people.
00:41:46.000 That 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.
00:41:58.000 Yeah, that's a mistake.
00:41:59.000 It 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.
00:42:07.000 And 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.
00:42:17.000 And you should treat them like they're a valuable person.
00:42:19.000 It's not necessarily hero worship.
00:42:21.000 It's just appreciation.
00:42:22.000 Yeah, like I'll tell you, I don't know why it just flashed through my brain.
00:42:26.000 And when I was making this film, Chelsea Wallace, you have to understand, like, digital video, it just came out.
00:42:31.000 This movie, The Celebration, this Danish film, amazing movie.
00:42:34.000 Thomas Vinterberg directed it.
00:42:35.000 And it just kind of changed the rules.
00:42:37.000 The camera was cheap.
00:42:39.000 Like movies were always so expensive to make.
00:42:41.000 And now you could just, and I was like, all right, I made this movie for $100,000 in 2000.
00:42:46.000 And I was like, all right, we're just going to play with this new camera.
00:42:50.000 And I talked Chris Christopherson into being it.
00:42:52.000 He was my hero.
00:42:53.000 And he came, he agreed to do it.
00:42:55.000 I couldn't believe it.
00:42:56.000 You know, he shows up on the set.
00:42:59.000 And I had this elaborate shot I had planned.
00:43:03.000 I'd found this apartment that was amazing.
00:43:05.000 I hope this isn't boring, but I think it's a funny story.
00:43:07.000 So it's my first day with Chris, and I'm really trying to impress him.
00:43:10.000 Like, I've ripped this shot off from this French film I've seen.
00:43:13.000 It's amazing.
00:43:13.000 You'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.
00:43:19.000 And 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.
00:43:29.000 And the kitchen opened back up into the living room.
00:43:31.000 It was one of those New York City square apartments in the Chelsea Hotel, right?
00:43:35.000 And I showed him this path I wanted him to take.
00:43:37.000 And he was going to turn on the lights in this room.
00:43:39.000 And he was going to put on a cowboy hat while he's talking on the phone.
00:43:42.000 He's going to look in the mirror and point the thing.
00:43:43.000 And 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.
00:43:56.000 And he looks at me and he goes, Are you an alcoholic?
00:44:02.000 And I was like, no, no, not really.
00:44:06.000 No.
00:44:06.000 He goes, I'm an alcoholic.
00:44:08.000 I said, oh, okay.
00:44:10.000 His character's name was Buddies.
00:44:11.000 He goes, Bud's an alcoholic.
00:44:14.000 Yeah, 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.
00:44:29.000 I was like, well, I think it would be a great shot.
00:44:33.000 And 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.
00:44:43.000 That shot will never work.
00:44:44.000 So what I think is Bud's an alcoholic and he's going to get his bottle.
00:44:48.000 He's going to open it.
00:44:49.000 I'm going to sit down, say my monologue, and drink my whiskey.
00:44:52.000 I said, okay, great.
00:44:54.000 Let's do that.
00:44:59.000 There's also the terror of someone you deeply admire not liking your idea.
00:45:03.000 Yeah, which is your whole body just shrivels up.
00:45:08.000 You didn't see the guitar film?
00:45:10.000 I don't give a shit about the guitar film.
00:45:12.000 There's no way I'm going to remember those lines.
00:45:16.000 But then to finish it, I'll say when he wrapped the movie, he was getting, he'd, you know, said his goodbyes and everything.
00:45:24.000 He was getting in the elevator to leave.
00:45:25.000 And I ran out and I said to him, I said, hey, listen, you know, you've given so much this whole project, and I know that.
00:45:30.000 But, you know, this whole crew's working for free, right?
00:45:34.000 And could I beg you, would you come in and sing one song for us just like just for the crew, for me?
00:45:44.000 Is there any way you'd do that?
00:45:45.000 And he said, yeah, you got a guitar.
00:45:47.000 And I said, I do, I do.
00:45:49.000 So he sat down and he proceeded to tell this elaborate story that I'm sure he's told a thousand times.
00:45:55.000 But it was such a gift to the room.
00:45:57.000 He sat and told his story about how he met Janice Joplin in the elevator of this very building.
00:46:03.000 And we, and she fucked me about four minutes later. 1.00
00:46:07.000 And I played her this song.
00:46:09.000 And he's, you know, busted flat in Baton Rouge.
00:46:13.000 Oh, waiting for a train.
00:46:15.000 I was feeling bad as fate.
00:46:16.000 Right.
00:46:17.000 And the whole crew, everybody's crying.
00:46:19.000 Everybody's so happy.
00:46:20.000 I 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.
00:46:30.000 And so, but he wasn't perfect.
00:46:34.000 Yeah, he was a real dude with real issues, and I loved him.
00:46:42.000 Yeah, 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.
00:46:52.000 That was an extraordinary life.
00:46:54.000 Yeah, I'll stop in one second, but for some of you, I think you love this.
00:46:57.000 Apparently, 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.
00:47:05.000 And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert.
00:47:08.000 Great song.
00:47:08.000 Okay, so Johnny Cash had a number one single out of this song.
00:47:13.000 And 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.
00:47:29.000 And I listened to it and went straight to number one.
00:47:30.000 That's the story that, you know, Cash would tell.
00:47:33.000 And I asked Chris about it, and he said, have you ever flown a such-and-such chopper?
00:47:38.000 And I said, no, I haven't.
00:47:40.000 He goes, there ain't no way in hell you can fly that thing with beer in one hand and a cassette in the other.
00:47:46.000 That story, I don't know where he came up with that story.
00:47:50.000 He's just trying to help out my career and make a legend out of me too.
00:47:54.000 But no, no, I just sent it to him via airmail.
00:47:59.000 For a person that watches movies, I've done a small amount of acting, but I'm not good at it.
00:48:05.000 For 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.
00:48:20.000 And 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.
00:48:29.000 They're so good that they've convinced me that they're this other person.
00:48:34.000 What is that?
00:48:36.000 Because there are moments where I see a good actor and I say, I don't believe them.
00:48:44.000 I don't, I think they're phoning it in.
00:48:46.000 They're saying it the right way, but there's just something in the air.
00:48:52.000 There's a missing connection.
00:48:54.000 And it is the key to a great movie.
00:48:57.000 The key to a great movie is everybody has to be in that fucking weird zone, that weird zone where you become a different person.
00:49:07.000 You used the essential word in your first sentence, which is hypnosis.
00:49:14.000 I've spent my life studying what you just talked about.
00:49:18.000 And when you're acting with Denzel Washington, the power and strength and completeness of his imagination is hypnotizing.
00:49:31.000 And it's an invitation to join him.
00:49:34.000 And a great film is a collective imaginative experience.
00:49:39.000 When you watch The Godfather, you're not fucking thinking about Al Pacino or James Connor.
00:49:44.000 You think about Michael and Sonny and Tom and Vito.
00:49:51.000 I remember I watched Godfather and I felt like I'd see those guys at the nick game tomorrow.
00:49:55.000 That's how much, you're not thinking about the music.
00:49:57.000 You're not thinking about the shots.
00:50:00.000 It's all one thing.
00:50:01.000 All these disparate elements turn into one fist.
00:50:04.000 You cannot do it alone, right?
00:50:07.000 But 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.
00:50:20.000 The performer hypnotizes you and you disappear.
00:50:25.000 You're inside those songs.
00:50:27.000 Yeah.
00:50:28.000 You know, you're not talking about those songs.
00:50:30.000 You're not looking at them.
00:50:31.000 You're not listening.
00:50:31.000 You are inside the song.
00:50:34.000 You're inside a dream.
00:50:36.000 And bad acting for me is glib.
00:50:39.000 Bad acting is commenting on the song.
00:50:41.000 Bad acting is slightly the feeling you're talking about.
00:50:43.000 It's when somebody's slightly outside of it.
00:50:46.000 It's very, very hard to do.
00:50:48.000 And 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.
00:51:01.000 But it's like all these elements of what creates hypnosis.
00:51:06.000 If you were, if we were talking about the violin, there are ways to practice the violin.
00:51:12.000 And I'm not going to make somebody a virtuoso, but I can, if I'm an expert violin, help you be better.
00:51:19.000 And I think the same is true for acting.
00:51:21.000 Acting is an art form.
00:51:23.000 It's beautiful.
00:51:25.000 It's some weird collage of where performance and writing and all these elements, music, it's all a part of it.
00:51:37.000 And when it's happening, it's all effortless.
00:51:40.000 And there's a lot of work you can do to inch it to being easier and to inch your scene partner into being easier.
00:51:46.000 And there are ways that they can help you.
00:51:48.000 And there's ways that they can ruin it.
00:51:49.000 They can break the dream.
00:51:52.000 But when it's good, it is like diving into a dream.
00:51:56.000 And it's a feeling that I got for the first time when I was 18 years old acting in Dead Poets Society.
00:52:05.000 And it is a feeling.
00:52:07.000 It was seconds long.
00:52:10.000 I mean, it was not much, but a feeling of disappearing.
00:52:14.000 And 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.
00:52:21.000 They think that's what acting is.
00:52:23.000 What it really is, it's a life of, that's completely antithetical to that of trying to disappear.
00:52:30.000 It feels like the celebration of the self, the celebration of the personality.
00:52:34.000 But when you're doing a scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman, you know, it's not Phil that's talking to you.
00:52:44.000 You know, it's like, you know, in the cartoon when the eyes go all squirrely.
00:52:54.000 And then all of a sudden, I'm not me.
00:52:57.000 And if I've done my work right, all of a sudden I'm saying what's coming out of my mouth is what I prepared.
00:53:04.000 What's coming out of my pocket is what I prepared.
00:53:07.000 The way I'm moving is what I'm prepared, and I'm not thinking about it.
00:53:11.000 It's like watching the great athlete.
00:53:13.000 When a great athlete makes a behind-the-back pass to the guy at the perfect second, he's not thinking, oh, I've got a cool idea.
00:53:20.000 I'm going to throw it behind my back.
00:53:21.000 It'll catch him right as he's in stride.
00:53:24.000 It's years of practice that have let them know that I know where he is, because where else would he be?
00:53:32.000 And things that are at first difficult become easy.
00:53:37.000 And then you can even get better from there and get better from there.
00:53:40.000 But that's the difference.
00:53:42.000 People talk about, you know, I love Daniel DeLois too.
00:53:45.000 I think he's kind of the high watermark of my trade.
00:53:50.000 And, you know, you hear these stories about what he does.
00:53:54.000 And people say, well, well, is that what you're supposed to do?
00:53:56.000 And the thing about when people say method acting is they really don't fundamentally understand what the method is.
00:54:02.000 The method is an invitation to find out for yourself what will unlock your imagination.
00:54:10.000 And that might be going hungry for two weeks.
00:54:13.000 That might be sleeping in a jail cell.
00:54:15.000 It might be reading 25 books about it.
00:54:18.000 It might be wearing a weird headpiece.
00:54:21.000 It's not a rule.
00:54:23.000 It's about how to unlock what's in here and bring it forward.
00:54:29.000 That's what the greats do.
00:54:30.000 And find that zone.
00:54:31.000 This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats.
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00:55:19.000 And when you're watching a movie, it does the exact same feeling, like I'm there with you.
00:55:25.000 Whatever you're experiencing when you are in that zone and you really are that person, I am not just saying, oh, he really is that person.
00:55:38.000 I'm with you.
00:55:39.000 I'm with you in the moment.
00:55:40.000 I feel your anxiety.
00:55:41.000 The scene in the goddamn, I forgot the name of it.
00:55:44.000 The film you did with Julia Roberts, the dystopian end of civilization movie.
00:55:49.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:55:50.000 Now that you said it, it went out of my head, too.
00:55:52.000 It's a great movie.
00:55:54.000 All the Tesla's crash.
00:55:55.000 Yeah, with Maharshi Ali and I. Leave the world behind.
00:55:58.000 Leave the world behind.
00:55:59.000 Thank you.
00:55:59.000 That's embarrassing for me.
00:56:00.000 I'm supposed to know.
00:56:01.000 But when you said you couldn't remember it, then all of a sudden it went out of my head.
00:56:03.000 It's less embarrassing for me now that you didn't remember it.
00:56:06.000 Because I was like, shit, I got to remember the name.
00:56:08.000 The scene where you go up to the guy's house and he pulls a gun on you.
00:56:12.000 Yeah.
00:56:13.000 I'm right there with you.
00:56:14.000 I'm like, oh, shit.
00:56:16.000 It was a great scene.
00:56:18.000 And it was a Kevin Bacon.
00:56:19.000 Yeah.
00:56:19.000 Phenomenal performance because I fucking believed you.
00:56:23.000 I believed him.
00:56:24.000 I believed you.
00:56:25.000 I believed it was happening.
00:56:27.000 And I was like, oh, shit.
00:56:29.000 It was, oh, shit.
00:56:30.000 Like, it wasn't like that.
00:56:33.000 That scene is exactly what I'm talking about.
00:56:34.000 Yeah.
00:56:35.000 Because that's Mahersha Ali, Kevin Bacon, and myself, and a very well-written scene.
00:56:40.000 And those two guys are so easy to act with.
00:56:45.000 They are so, they are, it is so easy to disappear with them.
00:56:50.000 We did that scene over and over and over again, 15,000 different ways, and blah, blah, blah.
00:56:53.000 And it was always, I always loved it.
00:56:56.000 And, you know, I did, I had a temper tantrum that day on set.
00:57:03.000 But I, because your body, you're winding your body up in such a way that it's like an emotional currency or something.
00:57:17.000 You have this thing you're going to spend, but you have to, your body doesn't know it's fake.
00:57:21.000 And if you do it right, you trick your body into believing that I'm begging for my child's life.
00:57:29.000 I'm not acting.
00:57:30.000 I'm begging Kevin Bacon for my child's life.
00:57:32.000 And he's going to decide whether or not my child gets to live.
00:57:36.000 Right?
00:57:36.000 And if you can get that going, shit starts to happen to you, right?
00:57:42.000 Things you don't plan.
00:57:44.000 And if Kevin is good, which he is, and Mahersha is good, then they're doing the same thing.
00:57:51.000 Right?
00:57:52.000 If he gives me this thing that I need, he's putting his wife at risk.
00:57:56.000 You're not going to do it.
00:57:58.000 I don't care about your kid.
00:57:59.000 You know?
00:58:00.000 And then Mahersha has got his character in his head.
00:58:02.000 And then all of a sudden, people are actually behaving.
00:58:06.000 They're not reciting lines.
00:58:07.000 They're not.
00:58:08.000 It's like I did one of my earlier movies with a wolf, right?
00:58:11.000 It was the best acting teacher I ever had, this wolf.
00:58:14.000 Because it was this movie called White Fang, right?
00:58:16.000 Little Disney kids movie, right?
00:58:18.000 But it was a great teacher.
00:58:20.000 Because I had to do these scenes with this half-breed wolf. 1.00
00:58:23.000 And 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.
00:58:36.000 You know, you know, when you meet somebody and you know they're self-conscious, right?
00:58:41.000 You know, why is she so tense?
00:58:43.000 You don't, you just, we're non-verbal, we can communicate with each other.
00:58:48.000 Animals pick up on it instantly.
00:58:49.000 If I'm actually talking to the dog, the wolf, if I'm actually in, if I'm present with this animal, the animal interacts with me.
00:58:59.000 You know, and especially a wolf.
00:59:02.000 Especially a wolf, man.
00:59:04.000 Damn thing bit me that day.
00:59:06.000 Did it really?
00:59:07.000 Yeah.
00:59:07.000 Hard?
00:59:08.000 Yeah.
00:59:09.000 Why'd it bite you?
00:59:11.000 All right, this is one of the best days of filming in my life.
00:59:13.000 No kidding.
00:59:14.000 All right.
00:59:14.000 Which is that amazing animal trainer, Clint Rao was his name.
00:59:19.000 And we wanted to, it was a scene where I'm getting the wolf to trust me.
00:59:23.000 And it's going to eat out of my hand for the first time.
00:59:27.000 And so Clint had this amazing idea.
00:59:29.000 It's like, what if you can see even from that shot how far that's a long lens, that thing?
00:59:34.000 They put me on a little tiny island where two, you know, like some two rivers fork.
00:59:39.000 And so there's a little island of land right there.
00:59:42.000 And so we put, see, this wolf surrounded by water, right?
00:59:49.000 And I, this is Flame.
00:59:52.000 This isn't the animal that I knew really well.
00:59:56.000 But the way to get it to look like it is, we have to not know each other.
01:00:00.000 And I spent all day out there with this wolf.
01:00:04.000 And whenever the camera started thinking I might have a chance of getting to pet him, they would start rolling.
01:00:10.000 And I just talked to the wolf and I'd walk around and play.
01:00:12.000 And I just had to try to be real with him.
01:00:14.000 And he started to like me.
01:00:16.000 It's not boring.
01:00:18.000 And I'm getting close because he's starting to like me.
01:00:20.000 We've been playing a lot.
01:00:22.000 And he comes over and okay, you'll see.
01:00:26.000 You'll see him bite me if you want.
01:00:28.000 But amazing, amazing animal.
01:00:30.000 But the point I'm trying to say is, I sat out there for 11 hours with this starving wolf.
01:00:38.000 Right?
01:00:39.000 Trying to get him to eat.
01:00:42.000 Ready, ready.
01:00:45.000 And ouch! 0.99
01:00:50.000 Okay.
01:00:51.000 That wasn't that bad.
01:00:52.000 It wasn't that bad.
01:00:52.000 Bled, Joe.
01:00:53.000 Did it really?
01:00:54.000 Yeah.
01:00:54.000 Sharp teeth.
01:00:55.000 But it didn't look he was trying to hurt you.
01:00:57.000 No, no, he wasn't.
01:00:58.000 He wasn't.
01:00:58.000 That's what I mean.
01:00:59.000 He wasn't.
01:00:59.000 He was.
01:01:02.000 And so, and by the end of the day, check this out, man.
01:01:06.000 I mean, it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
01:01:09.000 I know it's a corny kids movie or whatever, but it's a real wolf and he doesn't know he's acting.
01:01:15.000 Yeah, and he doesn't know he's acting.
01:01:16.000 Yeah.
01:01:17.000 Right?
01:01:17.000 And so I got to be real.
01:01:20.000 And I mean, I wept when that dog died, you know.
01:01:26.000 And I think about that scene when I'm doing anything, you know, about being present.
01:01:34.000 Right, and that's a...
01:01:35.000 If I'm trying to get the shot, the dog is not going to eat out of my hand.
01:01:39.000 If I actually want to say, hey, yo, you can trust me.
01:01:42.000 Right.
01:01:43.000 You know, I'd have to give up for hours.
01:01:46.000 You know, and just sit there.
01:01:47.000 And we didn't have a phone.
01:01:49.000 I'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.
01:01:57.000 Wow.
01:01:58.000 Well, that's, yeah, you can't act.
01:02:01.000 Right?
01:02:02.000 And you never can.
01:02:03.000 You never can.
01:02:06.000 And one of the things about, you know, there's a handful.
01:02:12.000 Lori Metcalf comes to the line, Denzel Washington, Sally Hawkins, Laura Linney.
01:02:16.000 There's a handful.
01:02:17.000 I mean, I could, a bunch of them, Philip Seymour, there's a lot of great actors I've worked with in my life.
01:02:21.000 And what's so wonderful about them is if you start acting, what are you doing?
01:02:28.000 Just this kind of sensor.
01:02:32.000 Yeah.
01:02:33.000 Something smells weird.
01:02:34.000 Right.
01:02:35.000 Phil was the best at it because it wouldn't just be about you.
01:02:39.000 Phil was amazing.
01:02:39.000 You'd sit down to do a scene with him and you'd be running it and stuff.
01:02:42.000 And you just.
01:02:45.000 What is it?
01:02:47.000 Something smells bad.
01:02:49.000 What is it?
01:02:50.000 Is it you?
01:02:51.000 Is it me?
01:02:52.000 I don't know, man.
01:02:54.000 Is the cup?
01:02:54.000 Is the cup wrong?
01:02:56.000 Should I be sitting over there?
01:02:58.000 What smells wrong?
01:02:59.000 Something's fake.
01:03:00.000 What is it?
01:03:01.000 What's fake?
01:03:02.000 Pace it up.
01:03:03.000 Let's try pacing it up.
01:03:05.000 He'd say, no, that's not it.
01:03:06.000 Still bad.
01:03:10.000 All right.
01:03:11.000 Let me try this.
01:03:12.000 And then, boom, next day he'd scream at you or something.
01:03:16.000 And everything would shift.
01:03:17.000 And, you know, the smell would change in the room.
01:03:21.000 Yeah.
01:03:22.000 And it was like, he, it's like, we're just shaking out what is self-conscious.
01:03:25.000 Something is self-conscious here.
01:03:27.000 Somebody's posing.
01:03:28.000 Is it me?
01:03:28.000 Is it you?
01:03:29.000 Is it the fucking prop is a table wrong?
01:03:32.000 I don't believe this scene.
01:03:34.000 And what it means is when you're watching the movie, you, the paying audience, aren't going to be able to disappear.
01:03:39.000 Something, you know, haven't you ever seen a movie sometime?
01:03:42.000 You're like, why is she wearing that red jacket?
01:03:44.000 Who thought that was a good idea?
01:03:46.000 And all you're thinking about is a red jacket.
01:03:48.000 It's just wrong.
01:03:49.000 I don't know why it's wrong, but everybody knows it.
01:03:52.000 It's like hitting the wrong note.
01:03:53.000 I don't necessarily notice with clothes because I'm not very close conscious.
01:03:57.000 But I do notice what you're saying about self-consciousness, and I don't understand what it is.
01:04:02.000 It's like this untouchable, unweighable, unmeasurable element that just exists.
01:04:09.000 And we know it.
01:04:10.000 We know it's real.
01:04:12.000 Don't you feel it in here?
01:04:13.000 Yeah.
01:04:14.000 When somebody's being funny with you?
01:04:15.000 Oh, yeah.
01:04:16.000 Somebody has a big agenda about what they want to accomplish on your show or something like that.
01:04:20.000 Oh, for sure.
01:04:20.000 Especially political people or people that have some sort of a controversial technology that really probably should be regulated.
01:04:30.000 I think what we're going to be able to do is amazing things for you.
01:04:34.000 And they get that tone in their voice.
01:04:36.000 That Charlie Brown voice.
01:04:38.000 It's just an air of bullshit.
01:04:40.000 And I don't know what that is.
01:04:43.000 But it exists in acting.
01:04:45.000 It certainly exists in comedy, too.
01:04:46.000 I always say that when I watch a great comic on stage, they take me on a ride.
01:04:51.000 Like, I let them think for me.
01:04:52.000 I'm sitting down.
01:04:53.000 Think for me.
01:04:54.000 You're thinking for me.
01:04:55.000 And when someone's thinking for you, it's just like you're free to explore their mind.
01:05:02.000 And it's, if they're self-conscious, you'll feel it.
01:05:06.000 Like, I see someone tense.
01:05:08.000 Like, I have a club and a comedy club in town.
01:05:11.000 And when new people audition there or perform there, you fucking feel the nerves.
01:05:18.000 You feel the nerves.
01:05:19.000 And I'm always like, just give them a few minutes.
01:05:21.000 Let him shake it out.
01:05:22.000 Just let him shake that.
01:05:23.000 It's so hard when so much is on the line to not be self-conscious.
01:05:27.000 It's to be present.
01:05:29.000 But you're smart to give them space.
01:05:30.000 That's always what I feel.
01:05:31.000 Just give me space.
01:05:33.000 Give me space.
01:05:33.000 Give me space to be bad.
01:05:35.000 I need space to be bad.
01:05:37.000 And it's kind of like in basketball, you got to touch the ball.
01:05:40.000 Let me touch the ball.
01:05:41.000 Let me make it.
01:05:43.000 Well, we've all been bad.
01:05:45.000 So it doesn't mean he can't be good.
01:05:47.000 When I see someone on stage and they're self-conscious and clunky, I'm like, this is a process.
01:05:54.000 This is not like a rocket that when you screw in the last rivets, you're ready to light the fuse.
01:05:59.000 I love watching an actor I admire be bad.
01:06:05.000 I love it.
01:06:06.000 I love it.
01:06:06.000 Because it's not a science.
01:06:10.000 Right.
01:06:10.000 It's not a science.
01:06:11.000 Sometimes you've got to take a shot and sometimes you miss.
01:06:13.000 Well, and sometimes you're going through a divorce or you got a fucking drug problem.
01:06:18.000 Or the director's an asshole.
01:06:20.000 Yeah, you don't know anything about it.
01:06:21.000 They changed the script the other day, or you hate the DP.
01:06:24.000 Producer's a douchebag.
01:06:25.000 But what I always tell my kids who are really interested in my profession or any young actor is like, I call that permission to fail.
01:06:33.000 I don't give anybody my I don't have permission to fail.
01:06:39.000 You know, I don't care if you don't like the first AD.
01:06:42.000 I don't care if you don't like this.
01:06:44.000 This cannot give them that ability.
01:06:48.000 I still fail.
01:06:49.000 I'm not saying that, but I don't want to seed it.
01:06:54.000 But that takes time.
01:06:55.000 I 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.
01:07:06.000 And then you see people, like back to our hero thing, then you see people who are really good.
01:07:12.000 And they don't.
01:07:13.000 Robert De Niro doesn't give somebody the ability to screw up his workday.
01:07:17.000 They don't have that power.
01:07:20.000 He takes responsibility for that power.
01:07:23.000 Is that a learned thing?
01:07:26.000 You could certainly learn some of it from watching other people, but is that just an experience thing?
01:07:31.000 I think it's the right manifestation of confidence, right?
01:07:36.000 Young people have to fake confidence. 1.00
01:07:38.000 They just have to.
01:07:39.000 When you watch a young person in your club, they've got to fake it.
01:07:42.000 Of course, they're going to have to burn through their nerves.
01:07:44.000 They're going to have to.
01:07:45.000 But once you have experience, you can have real confidence because you've fought this battle before.
01:07:54.000 I know I have a certain, if I'm overwhelmed with, if my nervous system is at war with myself, I have a certain process.
01:08:04.000 I've walked these woods before.
01:08:07.000 I know why I'm lost, and I know what I need to do.
01:08:12.000 And it doesn't mean I'll always work through it, but I'm much more likely to than I was 20 years ago.
01:08:19.000 Yeah.
01:08:21.000 It's knowing that it's this process when you watch younger people do it.
01:08:28.000 Do 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?
01:08:38.000 Like, is there a thing you could say to them?
01:08:41.000 Is there.
01:08:42.000 Can you just do it by example only?
01:08:44.000 Well, example's the best.
01:08:47.000 The best teacher's example.
01:08:50.000 Unasked for advice is never heard from.
01:08:52.000 The problem with young people is they don't often ask for advice. 1.00
01:08:54.000 Right.
01:08:55.000 They think they're trying so hard to pretend like they know everything that they feel like to ask advice is.
01:09:00.000 I kind of feel like that's a generalization, though, because I do know a lot of young people that do ask advice.
01:09:04.000 All right.
01:09:04.000 Well, one of the things is I cannot believe the amount of young people who show up on set with their phone.
01:09:11.000 Oh, yeah.
01:09:12.000 And what you were saying about hypnosis, let me tell you what's a destroyer of collective imagination is our phones.
01:09:20.000 I 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.
01:09:36.000 Nuking.
01:09:37.000 How do your kids?
01:09:38.000 I have a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old and a 28-year-old.
01:09:41.000 So what is your like, because my wife and I go through this all the time.
01:09:46.000 They want it so bad.
01:09:48.000 And as a parent, you want them to be happy.
01:09:51.000 And all their friends have Instagram.
01:09:53.000 I know it destroys my brain.
01:09:55.000 How could it not hurt theirs?
01:09:57.000 I find my own powers of concentration are suffering.
01:10:00.000 I'll be reading a book, which I used to do all the time, and every 10 pages I take a break to look at my phone.
01:10:05.000 What's happening?
01:10:06.000 Why am I doing this?
01:10:07.000 Right.
01:10:09.000 But they want it so bad.
01:10:12.000 And I want them to be.
01:10:13.000 How do you handle that?
01:10:15.000 I 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.
01:10:26.000 And I think there is a social ostracization that comes from eliminating social media, telling your kid they can't have a phone.
01:10:33.000 I see it in other kids.
01:10:35.000 I don't think that's the solution.
01:10:37.000 My daughter is loving you right now.
01:10:40.000 She is just like, see, because she says, let me be, teach me to be responsible for it myself.
01:10:46.000 Help me do that.
01:10:47.000 That's what I believe.
01:10:48.000 And, 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.
01:10:58.000 And they tried to, my daughter's hit him up of what he thinks.
01:11:02.000 He said, I don't know.
01:11:04.000 All I know is that the most important thing is to be your own best friend.
01:11:10.000 And that this is a slight obstacle to it.
01:11:12.000 That boredom, boredom and sitting still with yourself is a membrane you kind of have to pass through.
01:11:20.000 And if you can make best friends with yourself, then your best friend is always with you.
01:11:25.000 And 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.
01:11:35.000 How much did you look at it?
01:11:37.000 How are we doing?
01:11:38.000 Do you feel, is it helping?
01:11:40.000 Is it hurting?
01:11:41.000 Because what you're a thousand percent right about is it's part of the social structure of their lives.
01:11:46.000 Yeah.
01:11:47.000 And to isolate them from it is to has you can't pretend that doesn't have negative side effects.
01:11:55.000 Well, one of my children, well, both of my children, my young children, are very disciplined.
01:12:00.000 And one of them just opted out, just decided she's not going to get on social media anymore.
01:12:05.000 And she got this app.
01:12:06.000 And this is nobody forced her to do this.
01:12:08.000 She got this app that locks you out.
01:12:10.000 And it shows you how many days you've been off of Instagram, sort of sort of incentivize you, you know, to stay off of it.
01:12:18.000 You know, the last time she checked, she had been off like 99 days or something like that.
01:12:22.000 No Instagram, no nothing.
01:12:25.000 But it is addictive.
01:12:28.000 But there's a lot of things in life that are addictive.
01:12:31.000 And so the question is, like, how addictive is it?
01:12:34.000 Like, what is calling you to get nothing?
01:12:39.000 Because that's what you get.
01:12:40.000 You get nothing.
01:12:41.000 You get these like tiny dopamine hits, like staring at something for a few seconds, like, that's provocative, or that's crazy.
01:12:48.000 Like, why is he saying that?
01:12:49.000 Or why is that happening?
01:12:50.000 Oh, my God, they're going to die.
01:12:51.000 You 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.
01:13:00.000 Like, every day, it's a guy got run over by a train, car accidents, gunshots, South American assassinations.
01:13:07.000 It's just all every day.
01:13:09.000 It's all the worst things you could possibly find on the internet.
01:13:13.000 There's no good in that.
01:13:14.000 You know, we do that to fuck with each other because it's kind of funny because he's a comedian too, and we just fuck with each other.
01:13:19.000 It's just like silly.
01:13:20.000 Like, oh boy, like he sends me things and I send him things.
01:13:23.000 But for the most part, I get nothing.
01:13:25.000 It's mostly nothing.
01:13:27.000 Occasionally, 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.
01:13:37.000 But you kind of get it anyway.
01:13:39.000 You kind of get it anyway just through life, and it's better that way because then you only get the real significant things.
01:13:44.000 You don't get the, you don't have to sift through everything.
01:13:48.000 It's like you have a filter.
01:13:50.000 Society acts as your filter to get you the most pertinent information.
01:13:56.000 But I think leading by example with kids is the best way with everything.
01:14:01.000 My kids are both very disciplined.
01:14:03.000 They get a lot of things done and they work really hard, which I'm very proud of.
01:14:07.000 They're also really nice, which I'm also very proud of.
01:14:10.000 I think that's the hardest fucking thing to do is to just be nice, to be a kind person.
01:14:18.000 The worst thing for kindness is social media.
01:14:21.000 Children in particular are so fucking mean to each other on social media.
01:14:28.000 They'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.
01:14:39.000 But 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.
01:14:50.000 And that you have to develop a resilience to this.
01:14:52.000 Getting tough is important.
01:14:53.000 Like I think one of the things kids are experiencing now is what I experienced with the first blush of celebrity.
01:15:02.000 I mean you want to talk about negative comments.
01:15:04.000 Try being an actor.
01:15:05.000 Everybody's got an opinion about what a fake you are, what a phony you are.
01:15:10.000 This sucks about you.
01:15:11.000 This is dumb.
01:15:12.000 This is what you're like.
01:15:15.000 You 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?
01:15:27.000 I'll look at it and my brain goes, what are the comments?
01:15:31.000 Nasty.
01:15:32.000 I mean, just the nastiest things.
01:15:34.000 And 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.
01:15:46.000 Over time, it will make you stronger.
01:15:47.000 It's fine, they don't like you.
01:15:49.000 Guess what?
01:15:49.000 Half the people every party you went to didn't like you.
01:15:52.000 Okay?
01:15:52.000 But they're also not thinking very much about you.
01:15:54.000 They're thinking about themselves.
01:15:55.000 And you start to realize that this is just people talking at the barbershop.
01:16:00.000 People have been gossiping throughout the history of mankind.
01:16:04.000 Now you can read it if you want, but it has no venom in it.
01:16:11.000 It's not real.
01:16:12.000 And the sooner you learn that other people's opinions don't have to affect you, I think the better off you are.
01:16:18.000 So in that way, it hurt me.
01:16:21.000 I've seen it happen to actors, especially if you're doing stage.
01:16:24.000 I'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.
01:16:39.000 You 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.
01:16:49.000 It's like, Yari, I went down the rabbit hole last night.
01:16:53.000 I just read what people are saying about me on the internet.
01:16:58.000 And everybody thinks I'm terrible in this play.
01:17:02.000 And I'm like, they don't like your character.
01:17:05.000 You know, like, people are not so brilliant.
01:17:07.000 You know, it's not all geniuses out there chiming in on what a jerk you are at three in the morning.
01:17:13.000 Right.
01:17:13.000 Okay.
01:17:15.000 So you don't have to take it seriously.
01:17:16.000 But, you know, it took him weeks to get his mojo back.
01:17:19.000 Because he would step out on stage just imagining this chorus of hate.
01:17:25.000 I had the exact same conversation last night with a famous comedian friend of mine.
01:17:29.000 Really?
01:17:29.000 I can't say his name.
01:17:30.000 But he went down a Reddit rabbit hole the other night.
01:17:33.000 I don't do it anymore.
01:17:34.000 I don't do it.
01:17:35.000 He goes, I fucked up and I went down this route.
01:17:37.000 Don't do it.
01:17:37.000 Don't do it.
01:17:38.000 No good comes from it.
01:17:39.000 And he was like, they fucking hate me.
01:17:41.000 I go, no, no, no.
01:17:42.000 They hate themselves.
01:17:44.000 They hate everything.
01:17:45.000 There's no, like, Michael Jordan's not leaving Reddit comments.
01:17:48.000 You know what I'm saying?
01:17:49.000 Like, these aren't winners.
01:17:51.000 These are fucking people that are not doing what they want to be doing.
01:17:55.000 And they want to hate on everybody that's out there, that's out there in the public eye.
01:17:59.000 And some of it is valid.
01:18:01.000 You know, the really, the scary hate is when you get hate like from Quentin Taratino, where he's going off on that guy from.
01:18:09.000 But you know, that's a great lesson.
01:18:11.000 It is actually, there's a great lesson.
01:18:13.000 You know what?
01:18:13.000 I don't think Paul Dano ever knew that so many people loved him.
01:18:18.000 Right.
01:18:19.000 He's just so happy.
01:18:20.000 Out of nowhere.
01:18:21.000 Right, right, right.
01:18:21.000 Out of nowhere.
01:18:22.000 Paul Dano's just going about his life.
01:18:23.000 He's got to wake up one morning and find out this director's just went off on him and saying this hateful things.
01:18:28.000 But anybody that knows Quentin knows he just talks, right?
01:18:33.000 Anybody that knows Paul knows he's a great world-class human being.
01:18:37.000 And all this love for Paul is coming out.
01:18:39.000 And it's a great lesson in that.
01:18:41.000 You don't have to worry about the negativity that people send your way.
01:18:44.000 You have to worry about it all.
01:18:45.000 Even from one of the greatest actors or one of the greatest directors of all.
01:18:48.000 Yeah, yeah, it's okay.
01:18:49.000 And guess what?
01:18:51.000 I'm positive, positive.
01:18:54.000 There are great directors that think I suck.
01:18:58.000 I'm positive.
01:18:59.000 Quentin at least says the, you know, he just says whatever comes into his mind.
01:19:02.000 I remember once I met I met some director, I won't say his name, at a bar.
01:19:09.000 It's Dive Bar in New York.
01:19:10.000 I said, he's a really famous big shot director.
01:19:12.000 He's sitting there.
01:19:13.000 And he'd just seen my most recent movie.
01:19:14.000 He's like, you know, you were pretty good in that one.
01:19:20.000 And in the comment was the subtitle underneath it was, I have hated you for 27 years.
01:19:29.000 It was so clear.
01:19:31.000 You know?
01:19:31.000 And hypnosis came through.
01:19:33.000 Yeah.
01:19:33.000 I mean, it was so clear.
01:19:34.000 I was like, wow, wow.
01:19:35.000 Well, no wonder you've never offered me a movie.
01:19:38.000 Directors have opinions, right?
01:19:40.000 They have super strong opinions.
01:19:41.000 What do they have strong opinions about?
01:19:43.000 Acting, right?
01:19:44.000 And, you know, he's talking about the movie he would have directed.
01:19:48.000 Okay, he's not talking about Paul Dano.
01:19:50.000 He's talking about something else.
01:19:51.000 Like you said about the thing, they're talking about themselves.
01:19:54.000 Obviously, whenever anybody says something hateful, they're talking about themselves.
01:19:58.000 100%.
01:19:59.000 That's who they're talking about.
01:20:00.000 And the punchline of this whole thing is, you know, I've worked with Paul a couple different times, and I love the guy.
01:20:07.000 And I'm so happy for him.
01:20:10.000 Immediately, every other comment everywhere, somebody's saying something great about Paul Dano.
01:20:14.000 So the majority, the vast majority of comments were really positive about him.
01:20:18.000 And I went and rewatched the scene because of it.
01:20:21.000 And he was fucking great in it.
01:20:22.000 Oh, he's a great actor.
01:20:23.000 He played a great, like that guy.
01:20:27.000 It's not up for debate.
01:20:29.000 It's not up for debate.
01:20:30.000 I'm sure if you were alone drinking with Steven Spielberg, he'd shock you with some opinion.
01:20:36.000 He hates Orson Welles or something like that.
01:20:39.000 You know what I mean?
01:20:42.000 He wouldn't be a good director if he wasn't opinionated.
01:20:44.000 Of course.
01:20:44.000 It doesn't mean he's the truth.
01:20:46.000 Of course.
01:20:47.000 It'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.
01:21:04.000 It's just not wise.
01:21:06.000 It's not good, especially if you actually let it get into your psyche and you take it in as real.
01:21:10.000 Because we are designed to recognize threats, danger, negativity, because it's important.
01:21:19.000 Sorry to cut you off.
01:21:20.000 No, forgot.
01:21:20.000 But that's the truth.
01:21:21.000 The reason why it hurts me when it comes is exactly what you, I'm worried they're going to take my career away.
01:21:28.000 I love what I do.
01:21:29.000 If 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.
01:21:41.000 Yeah.
01:21:41.000 I care, is this going to stop me from doing what I love?
01:21:45.000 Because I know it's fragile.
01:21:46.000 I know that there are a million talented people, right?
01:21:52.000 I know that.
01:21:52.000 I know that I'm lucky.
01:21:54.000 I know that I'm fortunate.
01:21:55.000 So it is scary.
01:21:56.000 It is a threat, right?
01:21:58.000 I mean, but it is.
01:22:00.000 But you got to get tough.
01:22:02.000 I'm sorry I cut you off and I didn't really have a good point.
01:22:04.000 It's funny.
01:22:04.000 You know what I mean?
01:22:06.000 Yeah, you do.
01:22:07.000 And I mean, I don't want to be cruel, but I would also, this is how I feel.
01:22:12.000 Critics in particular, I do not think they want to be critics.
01:22:16.000 And I feel like most people who become critics become critics because they don't have anything to contribute.
01:22:23.000 They're not great writers, or they never developed the ability to be a great writer, or they never pursued it, or whatever it is.
01:22:31.000 They're not great actors.
01:22:32.000 They're just criticizing.
01:22:35.000 Criticizing, like criticizing from Quentin Tarantino is a very different thing than a criticism that comes from a person that's just a critic.
01:22:43.000 And I remember I had this, there was this moment when Fear Factor came out.
01:22:48.000 Like Fear Factor is a fucking completely idiotic show.
01:22:51.000 It's just, that's all it is, is just escapism.
01:22:55.000 It's chaos.
01:22:56.000 People doing stupid shit for money.
01:22:58.000 This is crazy.
01:22:59.000 This is nuts.
01:22:59.000 Oh, my God.
01:23:00.000 Are they really going to do this?
01:23:01.000 Ah, and maybe you get something out of the end.
01:23:04.000 Like that guy pulled it out or she did it. 0.81
01:23:06.000 She didn't want to do it.
01:23:06.000 She faced the snakes.
01:23:07.000 Yeah, but it's really usually like the end thing is like something physical.
01:23:11.000 But Fear Factor came out right after 9-11.
01:23:15.000 That's when it came out.
01:23:17.000 And one of the criticisms was, do you really think America needs to be facing fear after we just experienced September 11th terrorist attack?
01:23:28.000 And I got this question in an interview.
01:23:30.000 And, 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.
01:23:37.000 I'm like, I'll get some material out of this.
01:23:39.000 I'm like, they're going to sick dogs on people and make them eat animal dicks. 0.95
01:23:42.000 I'm in.
01:23:43.000 I'm like, this is going to get canceled in like fucking three weeks.
01:23:46.000 And I'm going to have a bit on how fucking stupid this show was.
01:23:50.000 And it wound up doing like 168 episodes.
01:23:52.000 It was ridiculous.
01:23:54.000 And I said, and I got upset in this interview.
01:23:57.000 I go, that's just ridiculous.
01:23:59.000 Like they were questioning me whether or not America needs to be scared after 9-11.
01:24:04.000 I'm like, it's not fucking scary.
01:24:06.000 And I'm like, what are you talking?
01:24:07.000 You're making something into something it's not just so that you can write an article.
01:24:11.000 This is nonsense.
01:24:13.000 And I go, that kind of criticism is the type of criticism from a person where I'm not interested in your opinion.
01:24:19.000 I don't think you're a particularly unique thinker.
01:24:22.000 And you're saying something that's nonsense.
01:24:24.000 It's nonsense.
01:24:25.000 It's a stupid show.
01:24:27.000 I'll tell you it's a stupid show and it's my fucking show.
01:24:29.000 I don't care.
01:24:30.000 It's just entertainment.
01:24:32.000 That's all it is.
01:24:33.000 And I think the people that write this are writing this in that way because you don't have anything to contribute.
01:24:38.000 And I met that person at a party.
01:24:41.000 There 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.
01:24:51.000 And the guy was like, you know, I got to tell you, that really pissed me off.
01:24:53.000 I go, why?
01:24:54.000 Because it's accurate?
01:24:56.000 I go, what pissed you off?
01:24:57.000 I 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.
01:25:07.000 You could shape other people's narratives about who this actor is, about who this person is.
01:25:13.000 And you just do it because you don't have anything else to contribute.
01:25:16.000 And so when I said you don't have anything else to contribute, that hurt your feelings.
01:25:20.000 That's why it pissed you off.
01:25:21.000 It didn't piss you off because I wasn't accurate.
01:25:24.000 And we had this like weird moment, you know, where he was like taking into consideration what I was saying.
01:25:30.000 And he was like, okay.
01:25:31.000 And I go, I'm not a bad guy.
01:25:33.000 I don't think you're a bad guy, but you have to realize there's weight to your words.
01:25:36.000 And I realized there's weight to my words.
01:25:38.000 That's why I lashed out like that.
01:25:39.000 I think this is stupid.
01:25:41.000 I'll tell you this show's stupid.
01:25:43.000 It's a stupid show.
01:25:44.000 We're not making fucking Shakespeare in the park, bro.
01:25:47.000 We're making people like line a coffin filled with rats.
01:25:51.000 It's retarded. 1.00
01:25:52.000 But it's okay.
01:25:53.000 It's okay to have dumb shit.
01:25:54.000 It's okay to have burgers.
01:25:56.000 It's okay to have, you know, filet mignon at a fine restaurant.
01:25:59.000 Like, all these things are okay.
01:26:01.000 Like, but call it what it is.
01:26:02.000 If you want to say it's a dumb show, I'm right there with you.
01:26:05.000 But if you want to say, like, this is bad for America because America just got attacked by, and it's called Fear Factor.
01:26:10.000 Like, shut up.
01:26:12.000 Just shut up. 1.00
01:26:13.000 And I just think he didn't like the fact that I was.
01:26:16.000 That you were criticizing him?
01:26:17.000 Yeah.
01:26:17.000 Yeah.
01:26:17.000 Well, I was willing to do what he does to him without fear because I had already checked out of acting.
01:26:23.000 I did five years on news radio and I decided I'm done acting.
01:26:26.000 I was like, I don't want to do this anymore.
01:26:27.000 I only did it for money in the first place.
01:26:29.000 I never wanted to be an actor.
01:26:30.000 The only reason why I ever got on a sitcom, I got on a sitcom with zero acting experience.
01:26:35.000 Zero.
01:26:36.000 I mean, I had none.
01:26:37.000 How did it go?
01:26:38.000 I did MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour, which was this comedy show that used to be on MTV.
01:26:44.000 I did like a 10-minute set and I got a development deal.
01:26:46.000 I was like, what?
01:26:47.000 Like, all of a sudden, they gave me money.
01:26:48.000 I was poor my whole life.
01:26:49.000 And then all of a sudden, I had $150,000.
01:26:52.000 I'm like, this is crazy.
01:26:54.000 I have money.
01:26:55.000 Like, it was nuts.
01:26:56.000 And my manager actually thought I had a gambling problem because I was spending so much money.
01:27:00.000 And he was like, what are you spending money?
01:27:01.000 I'm like, eating lobster every night.
01:27:04.000 I was so dumb.
01:27:05.000 I thought I was just going to run out and then I'd go back to being poor again.
01:27:08.000 But all of a sudden, I'm on this show and I'm acting.
01:27:11.000 And 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.
01:27:19.000 It's not my thing.
01:27:20.000 I don't like it.
01:27:21.000 So when Fear Factor came up, I'm like, ooh, this is a way to make a lot of money without doing anything that's acting.
01:27:28.000 Okay, I'll do it.
01:27:29.000 And 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.
01:27:46.000 And I would call it the devil's rag.
01:27:48.000 So I'd go there, oh, you guys are reading the devil's rag again?
01:27:51.000 I go, fucking throw that away.
01:27:52.000 It was like the early versions of don't read the comments.
01:27:54.000 I go, you guys are reading the devil's rag.
01:27:56.000 Don't fucking read that.
01:27:57.000 Because then they would be all bummed out.
01:27:59.000 Like, oh, they think we suck.
01:28:00.000 Like, no, they suck.
01:28:02.000 We're trying to make a good sitcom.
01:28:04.000 Let's just try harder.
01:28:05.000 The best way to not make a good sitcom is to read shitty things about you.
01:28:10.000 Definitely.
01:28:11.000 You're going to go in and be really bummed out.
01:28:13.000 And 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.
01:28:22.000 They're not happy people.
01:28:26.000 It's such a poison for your mind.
01:28:29.000 Well, and that's why we're talking the same thing with the internet: figuring out a way to give it no space in your mind.
01:28:37.000 Because, you know, people are going to do what they're going to do, and you're not in charge of them.
01:28:40.000 That's what I feel like.
01:28:43.000 When 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.
01:28:56.000 Most people hear it and think, wow, I wonder why he said that.
01:29:00.000 What's wrong with him?
01:29:01.000 They don't think something.
01:29:02.000 So a lot of times I might take really personally something that somebody hateful writes about me, but it's not like the world believes it.
01:29:10.000 Right.
01:29:10.000 The world has people.
01:29:12.000 Michael Jordan, who's not writing comments, might come across that and think, God, that writer's an asshole.
01:29:17.000 That's what he's saying.
01:29:18.000 He'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.
01:29:26.000 And so you can just ignore.
01:29:27.000 I feel you can just ignore it.
01:29:28.000 I've never gained anything except perhaps the value of a thick skin from all that.
01:29:34.000 The value of a thick skin is important, though.
01:29:37.000 And there's some value to being pert to taking it in and then realize it's dangerous to take it in.
01:29:44.000 And 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.
01:29:53.000 There's people you have to work with, and they all have opinions.
01:29:56.000 And like I'm doing this show right now, The Lowdown with FX, right?
01:30:00.000 It's the first time I've ever done a television show.
01:30:02.000 And I'm having a great experience with it.
01:30:05.000 But you have to figure out, you're working with a lot of different people.
01:30:09.000 You 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.
01:30:17.000 And you have to learn how to take criticism.
01:30:21.000 Go, all right.
01:30:22.000 And also how to stand up for yourself when you know your aim is true.
01:30:28.000 And you have to be humble enough to tell the difference because anybody who thinks they're always right is an asshole.
01:30:33.000 Right.
01:30:34.000 Right?
01:30:34.000 So sometimes you need their help.
01:30:36.000 Yes.
01:30:36.000 And you have things to be taught.
01:30:38.000 And sometimes you have to stand up for yourself and say, this is the kind of art I want to make.
01:30:43.000 And I'm living and dying on this.
01:30:45.000 But actually, what you're saying actually could help me do what I'm doing.
01:30:50.000 It's the same thing with directors.
01:30:52.000 If 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.
01:31:08.000 I was doing my first, I was making my Broadway debut, and this director said, what have you done?
01:31:12.000 And 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.
01:31:19.000 I played Tom and Glass Menagerie my senior year.
01:31:23.000 And this director looked at me and said, so you've done nothing.
01:31:29.000 And I took offense at that.
01:31:32.000 I said, I have done some things.
01:31:33.000 He said, I need you to say, I've done nothing.
01:31:38.000 I need you to say, I don't know.
01:31:42.000 And if you can say, I don't know, I can teach you.
01:31:46.000 And if you can't say, I don't know, then I really can't teach you.
01:31:52.000 And my 21-year-old ego was just buckling.
01:31:57.000 I do know what I do.
01:31:58.000 I do know what I'm doing.
01:32:01.000 And he said, you've never been on Broadway before.
01:32:03.000 You've never done Chekhov before.
01:32:05.000 And you can't say, I don't know what I'm doing.
01:32:09.000 I said, I can't say that.
01:32:10.000 I don't know what I'm doing.
01:32:11.000 See, it's not that hard.
01:32:14.000 Because if you can say that.
01:32:15.000 I remember this, like the first time going out surfing once.
01:32:19.000 Somebody's trying to teach me how to surf.
01:32:20.000 And I was like 16.
01:32:21.000 I kept saying, I know how to do it.
01:32:23.000 I know how to do it.
01:32:24.000 I didn't know how to do it.
01:32:26.000 But I couldn't, my ego couldn't buck.
01:32:29.000 And if you can get to that Zen Tabula Rasa's no place, the beginner's mind.
01:32:35.000 See, now at 55, I always say I don't know what I'm doing.
01:32:38.000 It's so easy for me to say it.
01:32:42.000 It is so easy.
01:32:43.000 One lifetime is not enough to know what you're doing.
01:32:46.000 There's so many more rooms.
01:32:48.000 There's so many more layers.
01:32:50.000 And so that's the advice I have for young people is to be humble.
01:32:57.000 And admit because you've done a handful of things doesn't mean you know what you're doing.
01:33:02.000 And even though I might have even had some success, I didn't know why it was successful.
01:33:07.000 Right.
01:33:08.000 You know?
01:33:09.000 That'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.
01:33:24.000 You have to.
01:33:25.000 And if you go into that tennis lesson going, do you know how fucking good I am at piano?
01:33:30.000 Like, don't talk to me like that.
01:33:32.000 Like, no, you don't know how to play tennis.
01:33:33.000 Let me show you how to play tennis.
01:33:35.000 Like, everyone is a beginner at a thing they don't know.
01:33:37.000 And 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.
01:33:47.000 For everything.
01:33:48.000 Because 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.
01:33:58.000 And that's, I think I've done the same thing to myself.
01:34:01.000 You know, like what keeps me excited is like, all right, God, I don't know.
01:34:06.000 I'm going to write a graphic novel.
01:34:07.000 I'm going to work with this guy, Greg Ruth.
01:34:08.000 He's a brilliant illustrator.
01:34:09.000 I'm going to make a graphic novel.
01:34:11.000 Now, I've never done that before.
01:34:12.000 I have no idea how a graphic novel works.
01:34:14.000 I know I've loved them my whole life, but I've never made one.
01:34:16.000 Greg has, right?
01:34:18.000 We work together.
01:34:19.000 He teaches me Sterling Hard Joe with the show The Lowdown.
01:34:21.000 Boom.
01:34:22.000 I've never done a show.
01:34:23.000 He made reservation dogs.
01:34:24.000 He's done this.
01:34:25.000 I don't know this landscape, and I love that feeling because I don't lose all the value of the things I do know about.
01:34:31.000 It's all there for me.
01:34:32.000 It's all there for me.
01:34:33.000 I don't have to announce it over everybody.
01:34:35.000 It's not going anywhere.
01:34:37.000 But if I can orient myself into learning, I like making these documentaries because I'm not a professional documentarian.
01:34:44.000 But 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.
01:35:06.000 And I was obsessed with somebody doing it wrong.
01:35:10.000 This director is a fucking moron and he's ruining my work.
01:35:16.000 And then slowly I really realized it's just so obvious there isn't a right way to make art.
01:35:23.000 There are successful ways and unsuccessful ways, but I wanted everybody to be Peter Weir.
01:35:29.000 That's what I wanted.
01:35:30.000 Peter Weir had made that Poet Society and that's what rehearsal is supposed to be like.
01:35:35.000 That's what the set is supposed to be like.
01:35:38.000 That's how you're supposed to talk to other people.
01:35:40.000 I didn't know my mentor was a card-carrying, awesome human being, and I was having unrealistic expectations about other people on their path.
01:35:50.000 They haven't done all that Peter's done.
01:35:51.000 They don't know it all.
01:35:53.000 And 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.
01:36:06.000 And you're not going to change them.
01:36:08.000 You 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.
01:36:14.000 You 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.
01:36:25.000 And that whole beginner's mindset is just immensely beneficial.
01:36:30.000 Like you were saying, how you carry it over to your acting.
01:36:33.000 I would recommend that with anybody who does anything.
01:36:35.000 Find 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.
01:36:42.000 And haven't you ever noticed, like, I took, it happens so often that it's funny.
01:36:48.000 Like, I take my son out to teach him how to shoot, right?
01:36:51.000 First skeet thing, you just blast it right out of there.
01:36:53.000 Second one, blasts it right out of the air. 0.52
01:36:55.000 Right?
01:36:55.000 You know, you teach somebody to shoot a bow or something.
01:36:57.000 First air they fly, hits the target.
01:37:00.000 Then they don't hit the target again.
01:37:01.000 You know, you start thinking too much.
01:37:04.000 You know, you hear, I hear, I don't know anything about golf, but I hear the same thing that's true with golf.
01:37:08.000 Young people are often great actors.
01:37:11.000 It's adolescence in life that makes it harder to get back to that childlike place.
01:37:17.000 You know?
01:37:18.000 And 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.
01:37:30.000 Take a new language on, learn how to play chess, do something.
01:37:34.000 Yeah.
01:37:35.000 It's hugely beneficial to be a beginner.
01:37:37.000 I think a person that only does one thing, there's something very valuable in that too.
01:37:41.000 But do one thing, immerse yourself in that one thing, and do it the best you can.
01:37:45.000 That's true.
01:37:45.000 It's true.
01:37:46.000 You know what?
01:37:47.000 The 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.
01:37:59.000 And I believe in that entirely, but I also believe that to master a craft, you have to apprentice three or four.
01:38:07.000 That 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.
01:38:14.000 And I have met older actors who are amazing, who I know I'm not as good as.
01:38:21.000 And it kind of thrills me.
01:38:24.000 It thrills me.
01:38:27.000 There'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.
01:38:36.000 And I just feel that, I don't know, I lost my train of thought about that.
01:38:42.000 I don't know.
01:38:43.000 I just totally, my computer just shut down.
01:38:45.000 I forgot what I was talking about.
01:38:46.000 It's OK.
01:38:48.000 I think more people need – I think the problem is when you're really good at something, you find identity in it.
01:38:54.000 Oh, that's what I was saying.
01:38:56.000 I 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.
01:39:12.000 And by doing that, when I go to set and I'm talking to a writer, I know how hard he worked on the script.
01:39:19.000 I'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.
01:39:24.000 I'm not going to do that.
01:39:26.000 I have respect for what he did.
01:39:28.000 And because I have that respect, I can offer him my thoughts.
01:39:34.000 And we can probably get involved in a really mutually beneficial conversation.
01:39:39.000 Because I've directed, I don't look at some director and think, well, like I did when I was younger, he's stopping me.
01:39:45.000 I'm thinking, I know this guy's sweat this.
01:39:47.000 I know this guy picked this location for a reason.
01:39:50.000 I know this guy has a tenuous relationship with a cinematographer.
01:39:52.000 I know the producers are breathing down his neck.
01:39:54.000 I know he's got a lot of headaches.
01:39:56.000 I'm going to help him.
01:39:57.000 And I'm going to try to find an app.
01:39:59.000 You know what I mean?
01:40:00.000 So these ancillary, I do want to have a specialty, but I do think learning the piano might help me be a better actor.
01:40:08.000 Like, I don't know why.
01:40:09.000 I don't know the logic behind it.
01:40:11.000 I think in particular, in acting, that would be true, because acting is you becoming someone else who's in life.
01:40:22.000 And life involves a lot of different aspects.
01:40:26.000 There's a lot of different things that go on in a human being's mind.
01:40:30.000 The more you can introduce to your mind, the more that would help you become a variety of different people that you're performing as.
01:40:38.000 See, I mean, wouldn't it be phenomenal?
01:40:40.000 It would be very weird.
01:40:41.000 But like, so you and I have been talking.
01:40:43.000 And I would venture to say we're doing pretty well.
01:40:47.000 Three quarters of the time, we're completely immersed in what we're talking about.
01:40:52.000 And 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.
01:41:00.000 He's not even famous, right?
01:41:01.000 And then I couldn't remember what I was going to say, right?
01:41:04.000 And you're talking to me about your kids or something.
01:41:06.000 And there's no way your mind doesn't drift to something going on in your life.
01:41:09.000 And mine does too, right?
01:41:11.000 And so that's what real life is like.
01:41:15.000 And 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.
01:41:24.000 You know, when you're watching somebody great, there's all these other wavelengths that are happening.
01:41:28.000 They have nothing.
01:41:30.000 It'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.
01:41:37.000 You 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.
01:41:45.000 And 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?
01:41:55.000 And how much more would I learn about you if I knew what your guy's relationship is really like?
01:42:01.000 Does he get on your nerves?
01:42:02.000 Do you hate it that he wears a black cap?
01:42:04.000 Do you wish he'd wear the red one?
01:42:06.000 Do you know, you know, you know what I'm saying?
01:42:09.000 I 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.
01:42:18.000 Well, I forget about things I'm talking about all the time because I'm trying to lock into the other person's brain.
01:42:24.000 And sometimes I forget what I want to say because I'm trying to like, I'm trying to think like you.
01:42:30.000 I'm trying to like completely be in the moment and think like you.
01:42:35.000 That's what I try to do.
01:42:36.000 When I'm doing, when I'm having a conversation with a person, I try to be as completely locked in as possible.
01:42:43.000 So much so that sometimes I forget people's names that I know really well.
01:42:47.000 I forget all kinds of things.
01:42:49.000 That's cool.
01:42:50.000 Because 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.
01:43:04.000 But I forget all kinds of things.
01:43:08.000 I'll forget important people's phone numbers, birthdays.
01:43:12.000 I don't remember anything.
01:43:14.000 So many times I'll ask Jamie a question like, who is that fucking?
01:43:17.000 What is his fucking name?
01:43:18.000 And then I can't believe I can't remember.
01:43:20.000 It's because I'm not there.
01:43:23.000 I'm lost in what this person is saying.
01:43:26.000 So I have to sit down and open up my files and go, oh, there's all the information again.
01:43:32.000 But I'm not there.
01:43:32.000 So I can't do that.
01:43:34.000 So I've got to go, let me go back to my desk and I'll open up my files and now I have my information.
01:43:39.000 But when I'm talking to you, I'm not at my desk.
01:43:41.000 That's what it's like for me to have a great role.
01:43:45.000 My brain disappears into that other psyche.
01:43:50.000 And I can kind of do some of the normal stuff of life, drive my kids to school and do some things.
01:43:58.000 But this part of me is floating over here, imagining, was this the right way to, how should I wear the jacket?
01:44:06.000 Oh, would he drive a car?
01:44:08.000 What kind of car would he drive?
01:44:09.000 Is that the right car?
01:44:10.000 Is that the right, like, you know, and just my imagination, when it's really cooking, takes me away.
01:44:17.000 My favorite things about it is I don't think about my phone.
01:44:20.000 I don't think about the emails I didn't return.
01:44:23.000 I didn't think about whether I forgot so-and-so's birthday.
01:44:26.000 For this period of time, this job is so important to me that I'm willing to say nothing else matters.
01:44:37.000 But doing as good as I can in this moment.
01:44:40.000 Obviously, it's going to matter again when I leave the dressing room and when I do this.
01:44:45.000 Obviously, I'm trying to be a good adult and father and husband and citizen and all that stuff.
01:44:50.000 But it gives me a space where everything else can disappear.
01:44:55.000 Everything else.
01:44:56.000 And that's what's so fun about a big ensemble movie.
01:45:02.000 Like, people may like the movie or not like the movie, but I did this remake of Magnificent Seven, right?
01:45:07.000 And 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.
01:45:22.000 And 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?
01:45:30.000 I mean, it's all so real.
01:45:31.000 And my life is gone.
01:45:34.000 Yes.
01:45:35.000 And I'm just Goodnight RoboShow.
01:45:37.000 Yeah.
01:45:37.000 And, you know, and I've got to worry about how many bullets I have left in my thing.
01:45:41.000 And, you know, and it's, it's back to hypnosis.
01:45:45.000 And it's a wonderful relaxation.
01:45:48.000 And 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.
01:46:00.000 And your intellectual brain would think that that would feel bad.
01:46:03.000 Oh, if somebody told you, hey, you're insignificant, that feels bad.
01:46:07.000 But when you look at the stars, it feels great.
01:46:09.000 Yeah.
01:46:10.000 And it's the same feeling of like, why would disappearing feel so good?
01:46:16.000 I did when I was, you know, I did this play with Steve Zahn, great activity.
01:46:21.000 Have you had Steve on your show?
01:46:22.000 No.
01:46:23.000 Oh, he's a genius, and he's so funny.
01:46:25.000 And we were doing a play together.
01:46:26.000 And I would say to him, tonight's show went really good.
01:46:31.000 Do you think?
01:46:32.000 Didn't you think it went well?
01:46:33.000 And he'd go, yeah, I thought it went really well.
01:46:35.000 And then the next night I come back and say, ah, tonight sucked.
01:46:37.000 Didn't it suck?
01:46:39.000 I thought it went really well.
01:46:41.000 You always think it goes really well.
01:46:43.000 He goes, I never remember.
01:46:49.000 And the truth is, he's so Zen.
01:46:52.000 He's so in the moment, what you're talking about when you do comedy or when you do your interviews.
01:46:56.000 He is so in, he's so present that he honestly doesn't remember.
01:46:59.000 And that's the trick, because he doesn't have this huge opinion.
01:47:02.000 Yeah.
01:47:03.000 Because the opinion gets in your way all the time.
01:47:06.000 Yes, it really can.
01:47:08.000 Yeah, 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.
01:47:20.000 And 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.
01:47:34.000 And that lets your shoulders lighten up.
01:47:36.000 Yeah.
01:47:36.000 And then you can handle what you can handle.
01:47:39.000 I've talked about this before, but I'll tell you.
01:47:41.000 When 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.
01:47:50.000 And I don't know if you've ever been there, it's on the Bag Island.
01:47:53.000 But they told us, it's like an hour and a half drive.
01:47:56.000 They 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.
01:48:06.000 So as we're driving up, there's all these fucking clouds.
01:48:09.000 I'm like, oh, this sucks.
01:48:11.000 It's going to suck.
01:48:11.000 We're driving all this.
01:48:12.000 We're not going to see any stars.
01:48:14.000 We drive through the clouds because it's really high.
01:48:17.000 And you get up to the top and you're above the clouds.
01:48:20.000 And we got out of the car and my fucking jaw dropped.
01:48:24.000 It was nuts.
01:48:25.000 It was the craziest image.
01:48:27.000 And I've been there three times since, never recreated it.
01:48:30.000 There's always been cloud cover that's higher up.
01:48:33.000 I just caught it the first time I went there at the absolute perfect.
01:48:36.000 It changed my life.
01:48:37.000 It changed my perspective on the universe itself because it felt like I was, it felt psychedelic.
01:48:45.000 It 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.
01:48:55.000 There wasn't a spot in the sky that wasn't filled with stars.
01:48:58.000 The Milky Way was clear as day.
01:49:01.000 It was fucking bananas.
01:49:02.000 That's what it looked like.
01:49:04.000 You didn't feel like you were on a spaceship.
01:49:07.000 You are on one.
01:49:08.000 You're on an unrealized spaceship.
01:49:11.000 Look at that.
01:49:11.000 That's it.
01:49:12.000 That's well, that's what it kind of looks like, but it was actually even more profound than that.
01:49:16.000 Sad is the Keck Observatory.
01:49:18.000 You know, when I was telling you about White Fang, my experience with.
01:49:22.000 So I was out there.
01:49:23.000 So this is 1989, right?
01:49:25.000 I'm in Haines, Alaska.
01:49:26.000 It's about 100 miles north of Juneau.
01:49:28.000 There's no internet.
01:49:31.000 The mail comes once a week on Monday.
01:49:33.000 If it's bad weather, the mail doesn't come till the next week, right?
01:49:37.000 I'm there for six months.
01:49:39.000 I'm 19 years old.
01:49:41.000 There's nobody to talk to.
01:49:44.000 I mean, there's no co-star.
01:49:46.000 The only 19-year-old there?
01:49:47.000 Listen, the guy who was the production, you know, the production manager or whatever, he was hyper AA, right? 0.89
01:49:55.000 And there's one bar in town.
01:49:59.000 And he told the manager, if I was seen in there, he would shut it down.
01:50:04.000 There was nowhere else to go.
01:50:05.000 What a dick.
01:50:06.000 I was like, I told the guy, I said, look, I'm not going to drink.
01:50:09.000 I got it.
01:50:09.000 Like, the stuntmen are hanging in there.
01:50:11.000 All the other actors are hanging out in there.
01:50:13.000 And I had nothing to do because I couldn't go in the one freaking bar, right?
01:50:20.000 And for the first three months I was there, it was always dark, right?
01:50:23.000 And then the second three months, it was always light.
01:50:24.000 And 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.
01:50:36.000 I just see the sky rippling.
01:50:39.000 And it was like what you're talking about.
01:50:41.000 It was like, it actually made me laugh.
01:50:44.000 Wow.
01:50:45.000 You know, it just seemed, it was funny.
01:50:47.000 It was like the cosmos was teasing you going, oh, you think all this is real?
01:50:52.000 Yeah.
01:50:53.000 Yeah.
01:50:53.000 I was like, I do.
01:50:54.000 I do think it matters whether White Fang is a good movie.
01:50:57.000 And then I just giggle, you know, and I was like, oh, you have no idea what's going on.
01:51:03.000 And it was like you're taught, something you don't unsee.
01:51:07.000 Yes.
01:51:08.000 You know, I still have over my desk, I have a little postcard from Haynes, Alaska.
01:51:11.000 And it still comes to me in my dreams all the time.
01:51:15.000 I'm back there.
01:51:16.000 Wow.
01:51:17.000 I think we're being robbed of that because of cities.
01:51:21.000 Light pollution has robbed us of what I think all of our ancestors always inherently observed.
01:51:27.000 When 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.
01:51:51.000 They're in the most brutal moments of life, life or death, hunter-gatherers, warring tribes.
01:51:58.000 But yet at night, you're presented with this impossible majesty of the cosmos above your head every night.
01:52:06.000 Now, today, we have fucking social media.
01:52:08.000 This is your sun.
01:52:09.000 This is your star.
01:52:11.000 You're staring at a stupid fucking screen.
01:52:13.000 And when you look up, you just see nothing but blackness because there's all these city skyscrapers and all these tricks. 0.98
01:52:20.000 Exactly.
01:52:20.000 It's blinded out the one thing that is like one of the most important, humbling, like grounding experiences, peering at the cosmos.
01:52:30.000 Isn't it weird?
01:52:30.000 It's so hard to be in a bad mood when you're looking at the stars.
01:52:34.000 It's so hard to be in a bad mood when you're riding a bicycle and you feel the wind.
01:52:38.000 It's just, it's funny.
01:52:39.000 It's such a simple little thing, a stupid little invention, this bicycle.
01:52:42.000 But you get in, you ride around.
01:52:43.000 It's very hard to stay in a bad mood if you spend two hours on a bicycle.
01:52:48.000 And there's so many things like that that we rob ourselves of.
01:52:52.000 You know, I don't know.
01:52:54.000 Even 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.
01:53:14.000 Yeah.
01:53:14.000 You 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.
01:53:24.000 And then I got the world is ending on all the news channels blinking up and down.
01:53:28.000 And 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.
01:53:36.000 And I walk out of the damn gym and I hate myself.
01:53:40.000 You know what I mean?
01:53:40.000 I mean, I got some exercise, but it wasn't, I long for the country.
01:53:46.000 But anyway.
01:53:46.000 It's certainly a different experience.
01:53:48.000 Yeah.
01:53:49.000 Doing it outside.
01:53:50.000 Is that too much information?
01:53:51.000 No, that's us.
01:53:52.000 That's me.
01:53:53.000 That's everybody.
01:53:54.000 And, you know, and the thing is, like, the gym wants to keep you occupied because then you'll show up more often.
01:54:00.000 It won't be incredibly boring.
01:54:02.000 If 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?
01:54:09.000 I think that's why we all liked in Rocky when you like gloves and goes out into the Rocky IV.
01:54:15.000 That's the one I'm thinking.
01:54:17.000 That's the one I'm thinking.
01:54:17.000 The barn is freezing out and it's just him and carrying the log.
01:54:22.000 Yeah, it's hilarious.
01:54:24.000 Yeah.
01:54:25.000 Well, we like the idea.
01:54:26.000 And I was going to bring that up earlier when you were talking about immersing yourself in a role and preparing for a thing.
01:54:31.000 It's one of the more romantic things to me about fighting.
01:54:36.000 When I know that, like when like this past weekend, there was a big UFC.
01:54:41.000 When a fighter goes into a camp, they go off somewhere.
01:54:45.000 They leave their family behind, often for like two months at a time.
01:54:48.000 And they just completely immerse themselves in preparation for this one thing that's going to happen.
01:54:56.000 And 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.
01:55:11.000 And for a championship-level fighter, it's like the immense pressure.
01:55:16.000 And then this thing, this you call it romantic because it is kind of romantic.
01:55:25.000 This romantic task.
01:55:28.000 Oh, it's dedication to excellence.
01:55:30.000 Yes.
01:55:30.000 It's full dedication.
01:55:32.000 Full, complete dedication.
01:55:34.000 The way that you're even talking about trying to do your interviews, you're trying to do your comedy.
01:55:37.000 You're trying to be insane.
01:55:38.000 But to have something so, I mean, I envy that when I read about fighters and the dedication.
01:55:44.000 I really kind of long for that experience.
01:55:47.000 That idea of going away.
01:55:49.000 And 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.
01:56:07.000 Yeah.
01:56:08.000 I'm like, I'm really glad they exist.
01:56:10.000 I'm glad in the same way I feel about fighters.
01:56:12.000 I feel like, I mean, with fighters, I really envy it because we all would like to test ourselves.
01:56:19.000 How much could I dedicate myself?
01:56:23.000 Could I go to the next level?
01:56:25.000 How far could I go?
01:56:27.000 And I think that, oh, just singularity of focus.
01:56:33.000 It feels really good.
01:56:34.000 And there is something.
01:56:37.000 I think I love stories about fighters for just that.
01:56:41.000 And the fact that it all rests on these X amount of minutes.
01:56:45.000 Yeah.
01:56:45.000 And chaos.
01:56:47.000 And just.
01:56:48.000 What was it like?
01:56:49.000 Was it like watching?
01:56:50.000 Fighting.
01:56:51.000 No, fighting.
01:56:52.000 Terrifying.
01:56:53.000 Yeah.
01:56:54.000 Did you ever, would you ever get to a place?
01:56:56.000 I've always wanted to, would you ever get to the place where you're walking into the ring and you weren't afraid?
01:57:00.000 No.
01:57:01.000 If I did, I didn't perform well.
01:57:02.000 There was a few times where I was overconfident and I didn't perform well because I tricked myself into not being scared.
01:57:09.000 So because I wasn't scared, because I didn't like being nervous, so I tricked myself into thinking I'm so good I don't have to be nervous.
01:57:15.000 And then I'd fought so many times.
01:57:17.000 Like the problem is complacency.
01:57:19.000 So if I probably, when I was competing, I probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 fights in martial arts.
01:57:29.000 And so I did nothing but that from age 15 to 21, just traveling around the country.
01:57:35.000 And there were times where I did it so much that I was not nervous.
01:57:40.000 And then I would go there and I wouldn't fight well.
01:57:42.000 And then I would go, why I missed opportunities?
01:57:46.000 Even if I won, I was like hypercritical.
01:57:48.000 Even if I won, I just didn't like, I got hit when I shouldn't have got hit.
01:57:51.000 Like something was off.
01:57:52.000 I didn't perform that well.
01:57:54.000 And I realized somewhere along the line, I think right around I was like probably 19 or 20 when I really started to figure it out.
01:58:00.000 I was like, oh, you have to be scared.
01:58:02.000 That thing that you don't like, that's critical.
01:58:05.000 It's critical to your performance because it keeps you on edge.
01:58:07.000 You have to be nervous.
01:58:09.000 You have to be.
01:58:10.000 Mike Tyson talked about it.
01:58:11.000 There's a fantastic video of Mike Tyson from his documentary where he's talking about his mindset leading to him getting into the ring.
01:58:21.000 And that, you know, he talks about, see if you can find that, Jamie.
01:58:26.000 It's fucking excellent.
01:58:28.000 Because 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.
01:58:36.000 There was a period of time over like two or three years where I don't think anybody has ever come close to Mike Tyson.
01:58:42.000 I know that's true.
01:58:43.000 He was just supreme.
01:58:46.000 He was so good and so different than anybody before him.
01:58:50.000 But it was also his mindset.
01:58:51.000 He's a great scholar of history.
01:58:54.000 You know, I had a fantastic conversation with him about Genghis Khan.
01:58:58.000 And when we started talking about it, he knew Genghis Khan's real name.
01:59:00.000 His real name was Temujin.
01:59:02.000 He knew his history.
01:59:04.000 He's such an interesting person.
01:59:05.000 I love to watch all his interviews.
01:59:06.000 He knew that Genghis Khan's mother had been kidnapped by on her wedding day, been kidnapped by a rival man and taken away and impregnated.
01:59:16.000 And the man that she was supposed to marry, she never saw again.
01:59:19.000 And then that Genghis Khan was born with a blood clot in his hand.
01:59:23.000 He was holding on to a blood clot as he was a young boy.
01:59:27.000 And it was like a sign that he was going to be a great conqueror and a warrior.
01:59:32.000 But listen to this.
01:59:34.000 I'm not going to have supreme confidence, but I'm scared to death.
01:59:37.000 I'm totally afraid.
01:59:38.000 I'm afraid of everything.
01:59:39.000 I'm afraid of Blues.
01:59:40.000 I'm afraid of being humiliated.
01:59:41.000 Closer I get to the ring, the more confident I get.
01:59:44.000 Closer, more confident I get.
01:59:45.000 All during my training, I've been afraid of this man.
01:59:48.000 The closer I get to the ring, I'm more confident.
01:59:50.000 Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god.
01:59:52.000 No one could beat me.
01:59:56.000 That's an abbreviated version of it.
01:59:58.000 It's different in the film.
01:59:59.000 It's like a little bit more drawn out.
02:00:01.000 Somebody edited that down for Instagram.
02:00:04.000 But it's this thing where you would think, how could that guy be afraid?
02:00:08.000 How is he afraid?
02:00:09.000 He's Mike Tyson.
02:00:10.000 And this is Mike Tyson in his prime.
02:00:12.000 But you have to be afraid.
02:00:14.000 You've got to be nervous.
02:00:15.000 If you're not nervous, you're not going to perform well.
02:00:17.000 Well, 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.
02:00:28.000 And that now said to you, I still experience it.
02:00:32.000 I just know what to do.
02:00:33.000 You remember like that when you were talking like that?
02:00:35.000 What I was, what I know what to do is not to pretend that I'm not nervous.
02:00:40.000 Right.
02:00:42.000 It's as simple as that.
02:00:43.000 When he's saying, I'm afraid, that's very powerful.
02:00:47.000 It's kind of the same, a different spin on what I'm saying about it.
02:00:50.000 It's okay to say, I don't know.
02:00:52.000 Yeah.
02:00:53.000 You know, I am afraid.
02:00:55.000 And there's a great Sarah Bernhardt story about this young actress comes up to Sarah Bernhardt.
02:01:03.000 She's this great actress from the previous, you know, a long time ago.
02:01:07.000 But before Sarah Bernhardt was about to go on stage, this young actress asked her to sign her program.
02:01:12.000 Sarah Bernhardt took it and her hands were shaking.
02:01:15.000 And this young actress said, why are your hands shaking?
02:01:18.000 And she was, I'm nervous.
02:01:20.000 And the young person said, I'm never nervous when I act.
02:01:23.000 Sarah Bernhardt, when you know what you're doing, you will be.
02:01:28.000 And that's great.
02:01:30.000 And it's a part of what you're talking about with your fighting, knowing that there's nothing wrong with anxiety and with nerves.
02:01:40.000 They can be your friend.
02:01:41.000 They are there.
02:01:42.000 They are here to warn you, prepare you, make you train a little harder, make you think a little sharper.
02:01:48.000 Treating it like I'm embarrassed.
02:01:51.000 I'm ashamed of being nervous.
02:01:53.000 You know, Bill Russell apparently would be sick to his stomach before every game.
02:01:57.000 This is the most winning basketball player in history.
02:01:59.000 He was still, and that's why he won so much.
02:02:02.000 You know, you have to care.
02:02:04.000 You have to care.
02:02:06.000 And then strangely, what that Tyson clip gets at.
02:02:10.000 If you can say that, the closer you get to game moment, now you're not pretending.
02:02:16.000 And you realize, oh, for me, it's just a scene.
02:02:20.000 It's just a play.
02:02:21.000 It's just a night.
02:02:22.000 I can handle it.
02:02:23.000 This 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.
02:02:33.000 You know, he's like, I don't have to be afraid in my forest.
02:02:36.000 You know, I'll fight these guys.
02:02:39.000 I'm going to stop running.
02:02:40.000 It's a great moment in that movie.
02:02:42.000 And I feel that way.
02:02:44.000 When before I'm doing something, this last movie I did, Blue Moon, really, really challenging part.
02:02:50.000 I had so much confidence when we were talking about making the movie.
02:02:54.000 Then all of a sudden it was green lit.
02:02:56.000 But like when I flew to the location and I saw the set and I was like, oh, it was the weekend before we started.
02:03:04.000 I got so nervous.
02:03:05.000 I got sick.
02:03:08.000 You know, I woke up in the middle of the night just in pools of sweat.
02:03:11.000 And my body was just like going, Ethan, this is going to, are you ready?
02:03:18.000 Are you ready?
02:03:19.000 Yeah.
02:03:20.000 You know, and I would wake up, I had to get up so early to go to work.
02:03:23.000 I'd wake up an hour and a half before I was supposed, like, I got to go over these lines again.
02:03:28.000 I got to go over this.
02:03:29.000 How is this character walking?
02:03:30.000 What is he doing?
02:03:30.000 What is he saying?
02:03:32.000 Is this part ready?
02:03:32.000 Is this thing ready?
02:03:33.000 Do they know what they're doing on that shot?
02:03:35.000 Is it cigars ready?
02:03:37.000 All the things.
02:03:37.000 What are the things that are going to be that screw today up?
02:03:40.000 How much can I see the day?
02:03:42.000 Yeah.
02:03:42.000 So that none of these things that might screw it up are going to screw it up.
02:03:46.000 And so I kind of know what he means when it comes to you've passed through the fire.
02:03:51.000 So when it comes to fighting, well, he's either going to lose, win or lose.
02:03:54.000 It's going to be okay.
02:03:55.000 But, you know, there's something powerful.
02:03:59.000 That anxiety can be a great friend.
02:04:02.000 His mentor, Costa Matto, who was also a hypnotist.
02:04:06.000 Hypnotized.
02:04:07.000 Yes.
02:04:08.000 He was a psychologist.
02:04:09.000 I did not know.
02:04:10.000 Yeah, he's a completely fascinating guy.
02:04:13.000 He started hypnotizing Mike when he was 13.
02:04:16.000 One of the things that he told Mike, he said, fear is like a fire.
02:04:20.000 It can cook your food or it can burn your house down.
02:04:24.000 It depends on how you control it.
02:04:26.000 I feel the same way about money.
02:04:28.000 I feel the same way about ego.
02:04:31.000 It can be the fuel of a healthy life, but it has to be guarded.
02:04:37.000 How can it be managed?
02:04:38.000 It has to be managed really well.
02:04:39.000 And it's sadly daily.
02:04:42.000 Yeah.
02:04:43.000 Daily.
02:04:43.000 It's not like you, I'm sure we're both old enough to know.
02:04:46.000 It's not like you have some breakthrough when you're 33.
02:04:48.000 I've had breakthroughs.
02:04:49.000 I feel like, oh, I get it.
02:04:50.000 I get it.
02:04:50.000 I get it.
02:04:51.000 And then the next day, it's gone.
02:04:55.000 You know, and it happens to you over and over again.
02:04:57.000 And that's life, I think.
02:05:00.000 Yes, that is life.
02:05:02.000 Yeah.
02:05:02.000 And 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.
02:05:09.000 And I'm here to tell you, you don't want that.
02:05:12.000 You don't want it.
02:05:13.000 It's never going to come.
02:05:13.000 And even if it doesn't come, you don't want it.
02:05:16.000 It'll rob you of the exciting part of life.
02:05:19.000 You ever hear that?
02:05:19.000 Jim Carrey bit always makes you laugh.
02:05:21.000 He's like, he wins the Golden Globe and he goes to bed at night.
02:05:23.000 He's like, gosh, I'm a Golden Globe winner.
02:05:28.000 What if I could be a two-time Golden Globe winner?
02:05:32.000 What if I could be a three-year-old?
02:05:34.000 Brain always wants more.
02:05:35.000 Always.
02:05:36.000 It can't stop.
02:05:37.000 That's why billionaires still work.
02:05:39.000 Yeah.
02:05:41.000 Why are they so miserable?
02:05:43.000 Because it's just chasing numbers.
02:05:45.000 It's chasing numbers.
02:05:46.000 One 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.
02:05:57.000 Right.
02:05:58.000 Yeah.
02:05:59.000 It's no contest.
02:06:00.000 Oh, there's so much pressure involved in that kind of thing.
02:06:03.000 So why would you want a house with no laughter?
02:06:08.000 I don't think they have options at that point.
02:06:10.000 I think they're so locked into what they do.
02:06:12.000 And it gets so competitive.
02:06:14.000 I've seen guys like that who get so happy about a deal gone right.
02:06:21.000 It's fascinating to me.
02:06:22.000 I mean, it's like, wow, I didn't.
02:06:28.000 Because the inverse is true.
02:06:29.000 If that makes you so happy, what happens if you lose that million de-bucks or whatever, 20 million?
02:06:35.000 And it makes you happy for a brief amount of time because the reality is once you're wealthy, everything else is.
02:06:41.000 My friend Brian said something to me a long time ago.
02:06:43.000 He goes, oh.
02:06:43.000 The only amount of money you want is where you can go to a restaurant and not worry with the bill costs.
02:06:48.000 Everything else is bullshit.
02:06:50.000 Well, I liken it to what happens if you get an offender bender. 1.00
02:06:54.000 You know, I don't want to get an offender bender and have a lot of trouble. 1.00
02:06:58.000 Right.
02:06:59.000 Like, I want that to be taken care of.
02:07:01.000 Right.
02:07:02.000 You don't want to not be able to pay your rent because you're getting a fender bender. 1.00
02:07:05.000 You don't want your kid not to get their medicine because you've got a fender bender. 1.00
02:07:07.000 You know, like, you need to have room, a little padding to, like, I've never, there's no expense vacation.
02:07:18.000 An expensive vacation with my kids is not better than any vacation with my kids.
02:07:24.000 Right.
02:07:25.000 Right, right, right.
02:07:27.000 Romance, same thing.
02:07:28.000 Yeah.
02:07:29.000 You know, you can spend a fortune on a romantic weekend.
02:07:31.000 It's not as great as it is to get stuck in a car when it's a blizzard out.
02:07:36.000 Right.
02:07:36.000 And you listen to a great record and she looks beautiful and says something funny and you both laugh.
02:07:43.000 You can't buy that.
02:07:44.000 Right.
02:07:47.000 But there's this feeling like you could.
02:07:49.000 Well, our society puts so much emphasis on ultimate success.
02:07:52.000 Like, who's the richest man in the world?
02:07:56.000 Well, do you think the richest man in the world is happier than the 30th richest man in the world?
02:08:01.000 They're all rich as fuck.
02:08:03.000 Like, everything is available to them.
02:08:04.000 It's all nonsense after a certain point.
02:08:07.000 Like, what are you doing?
02:08:09.000 Why are you still working?
02:08:10.000 Why are you still chasing zeros and ones?
02:08:13.000 Like, what is the point?
02:08:14.000 What are you chasing?
02:08:16.000 Me?
02:08:16.000 Yeah.
02:08:17.000 I don't.
02:08:18.000 I don't think I'm chasing anything.
02:08:19.000 I try not to be.
02:08:20.000 I just enjoy what I do.
02:08:23.000 I don't relate to it because that's what led me to that question.
02:08:26.000 I'm like, what am I chasing?
02:08:28.000 You know what I'm chasing?
02:08:31.000 What I said earlier, like, the last thing I shot, we had a couple moments of grace.
02:08:40.000 You 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.
02:08:50.000 And the light came through the window at the right time.
02:08:52.000 And 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.
02:09:00.000 And then my hat fell off and everybody's, and it's just, it's high.
02:09:05.000 And I drive home and I want to tell everybody and I can't wait for the world to see it.
02:09:09.000 You know, I am chasing that, like, could that happen again?
02:09:13.000 Yeah.
02:09:14.000 You know, but it's not something I control.
02:09:16.000 It's not something that it's a feeling I'm chasing.
02:09:21.000 But it's a tangible thing.
02:09:22.000 It's not status or money.
02:09:25.000 You're chasing, you're doing, you know, for lack of a better word, art.
02:09:30.000 You know, and art has a sort of a pretentious air to it.
02:09:34.000 A lot of people, you know, there's certain words that have been sort of co-opted, but the art of creation.
02:09:42.000 You would never.
02:09:44.000 I mean, I know you're exactly right.
02:09:46.000 And 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.
02:09:53.000 Nobody says I'm pretentious.
02:09:55.000 Right.
02:09:56.000 If I say, you know, I'd really like to make something, I'd like to make something beautiful.
02:10:01.000 It really moves people.
02:10:02.000 What a pretentious ass.
02:10:03.000 Right.
02:10:04.000 Why is it?
02:10:04.000 What I was going to say was, well, you know.
02:10:06.000 It's sincerity.
02:10:06.000 It's sincerity because some people say that and they don't mean it.
02:10:10.000 And that's most of the people that say that.
02:10:12.000 And that's pretty much it.
02:10:12.000 That's true.
02:10:13.000 But what I was going to say is like, if you're, you say 15, 14, your daughter, your youngest?
02:10:18.000 15.
02:10:19.000 Yeah.
02:10:20.000 If 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?
02:10:41.000 You would you ever say that's pretentious?
02:10:45.000 Of course not, of course not.
02:10:47.000 Yeah, but the goal, what i've, when somebody says the word art to me, I don't hear pretentious, I hear the solar system.
02:10:55.000 Yeah, I hear like human creativity inside of us man, it is inside me and it's inside you.
02:11:02.000 And when I see a great movie, or when I hear Jimi Hendrix rip a killer solo yeah, then my whole body vibrates.
02:11:10.000 Oh hey, we're alive.
02:11:11.000 Yes, 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.
02:11:17.000 Yeah, I feel my heartbeat with that.
02:11:20.000 That's art.
02:11:21.000 It'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.
02:11:33.000 It makes two cents.
02:11:35.000 There's a great one of the great old English actor Paul Schofield.
02:11:39.000 I 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.
02:11:54.000 He said, you were performing King Lear at your local church.
02:11:57.000 At the end, why weren't you doing it on the West End?
02:12:00.000 You know, because you were.
02:12:00.000 You were healthy enough.
02:12:01.000 They were asking, why are you doing?
02:12:03.000 He was doing a play at a local church in your home.
02:12:05.000 He said, I really like walking to work and I realized that I really have always only performed for whoever it was that made me.
02:12:18.000 And I can do that anywhere.
02:12:20.000 I can do it on Broadway, I can do it in a Robert Redford movie and I can do it in my local theater.
02:12:26.000 It's the same action and it's taken me a lifetime to realize that it doesn't.
02:12:30.000 I just love to do it and he's like, and i'd like to walk to work.
02:12:33.000 So i'm not going to West End and and I thought I love this guy.
02:12:39.000 Well, that is real purity.
02:12:41.000 Yeah, 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.
02:12:50.000 Of course.
02:12:51.000 Other people you're doing it for.
02:12:53.000 Yeah.
02:12:53.000 Of course.
02:12:54.000 Yeah.
02:12:55.000 And it's probably more purity to it, knowing that it's not going to be reviewed in the New York Times.
02:13:01.000 It's like you're doing something that you're only doing it for the love of it.
02:13:05.000 And 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.
02:13:19.000 His great thing that he'd say that why he didn't coach the Yankees or the Red Sox, because he won five NCA championships.
02:13:27.000 See, the problem is with Pro Ball, the object of the game is to win.
02:13:31.000 And in college sports, my job is to develop young men.
02:13:37.000 And if I do that right, we will win.
02:13:41.000 But I like the priority.
02:13:43.000 And I feel like if the priority is my own development, you know, then more times than not, something good will happen.
02:13:52.000 If my priority is to win, make cash, be a big shot, blah, blah, blah.
02:13:58.000 I've kind of lost why you should play the game.
02:14:02.000 100%.
02:14:03.000 And the trick for me is, well, I do want to be a professional actor.
02:14:07.000 I like being relevant.
02:14:08.000 I like making relevant art.
02:14:10.000 I like talking to people and communicating with people.
02:14:13.000 So you have to figure out that balance of like, all right, this is how I pay my bills.
02:14:17.000 This is what facilitates all my whole life.
02:14:22.000 So I have to be a little attentive to the professional part of my brain and not let it diminish the kid in me.
02:14:30.000 Yes.
02:14:31.000 You know, and to keep them both in some kind of balance.
02:14:36.000 And that's, for me, been my adult life.
02:14:38.000 The term developing men or developing people, developing young people.
02:14:42.000 My 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.
02:14:53.000 And in it, one of the quotes that always stuck with me forever is, martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential.
02:15:00.000 So is acting.
02:15:01.000 Yeah.
02:15:02.000 So is anything.
02:15:03.000 So is playing chess.
02:15:04.000 So is playing music.
02:15:05.000 So is carpentry if you do it right.
02:15:07.000 Everything.
02:15:08.000 Everything.
02:15:08.000 Yeah.
02:15:08.000 Miyamoto Musashi, the famous samurai, had a great quote.
02:15:11.000 Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.
02:15:16.000 Yeah.
02:15:17.000 I carry that.
02:15:18.000 And the art of motorcycle maintenance, that's the same idea.
02:15:21.000 Yeah.
02:15:22.000 It's the real beauty of it all is concentrating on the development of the thing.
02:15:29.000 And in that thing, you will grow as a human.
02:15:32.000 And that's the thing where we're talking about boxing or fighting or acting or whatever.
02:15:36.000 The thing about the 100% focus is it's kind of by shedding everything, there's a discipline to that, about seeing all the little details.
02:15:51.000 I find, for example, in acting, they always talk about this.
02:15:55.000 Is he a good listener?
02:15:56.000 Like one of the things, like, are you responding naturally like a human being?
02:16:00.000 Can you listen?
02:16:02.000 And 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.
02:16:16.000 Right, right.
02:16:17.000 It 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.
02:16:29.000 It can translate.
02:16:30.000 You know what sloppy thinking is.
02:16:34.000 If 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.
02:16:44.000 That's the same with my I've done performances where it goes up all by itself.
02:16:51.000 And it's an amazing feeling.
02:16:52.000 A lot of work and preparation has to go into that feeling of disappearing.
02:16:56.000 But now I know when it's not happening.
02:16:58.000 And it doesn't mean I can make it happen, but at least an awareness that it's not happening is a great starting place to go.
02:17:05.000 Why is it not happening?
02:17:06.000 Right.
02:17:06.000 Something smells.
02:17:07.000 Something smells.
02:17:08.000 Like Philip's.
02:17:09.000 Yeah.
02:17:10.000 I want to talk to you about, because Jamie brought this up yesterday, Denzel Washington, when you're doing training day.
02:17:15.000 Like so much, apparently, Jamie was saying, of the dialogue that you guys had was completely improvised by Denzel.
02:17:25.000 He is an astonishing.
02:17:29.000 I 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.
02:17:45.000 And they would say something really funny, you know.
02:17:49.000 And I would just see Denzel glance at me and I realized, oh, that just went in the computer.
02:17:57.000 And then it would come out, you know, in a scene two months later.
02:18:01.000 That line that that guy said, exactly, it would come out.
02:18:05.000 It was a great script.
02:18:06.000 I don't want to.
02:18:06.000 David Ayr wrote the script.
02:18:07.000 It's a phenomenal script.
02:18:08.000 I mean, when I read that script, I wanted that part so badly.
02:18:14.000 Denzel's one of my favorite actors.
02:18:16.000 He is probably my favorite actor.
02:18:19.000 I think, you know, Malcolm X and Raging Bull are two as towering.
02:18:23.000 Maybe Nicholson and one flew the cuckoo's nest, like live as the three great performances of my lifetime.
02:18:33.000 But he's always listening, always listening, talking, asking, thinking, curious, so present, so commanding.
02:18:46.000 And if you take responsibility for your own work, you can have a great experience.
02:18:56.000 And if you don't, he'll run you over.
02:19:00.000 Like, I heard like King Kong ain't got shit on me.
02:19:02.000 That was all just completely improvised.
02:19:04.000 So it's like towards the last day of the shoot.
02:19:08.000 And I had been, when people say improvised, they think, oh, just some magic lightning bolt happened.
02:19:16.000 It's months of work.
02:19:17.000 It was improvised.
02:19:19.000 He's just supposed to yell, fuck you, or something as I'm walking away.
02:19:23.000 And this monologue flew out of his mouth.
02:19:27.000 You know, y'all going to be playing for the Pelican Bay all-stars.
02:19:31.000 This is my neighborhood.
02:19:32.000 You all just live here.
02:19:33.000 King Kong ain't got nothing on me.
02:19:35.000 Just all this stuff.
02:19:37.000 And it was, it was the last day of shooting, or third to last day or something.
02:19:41.000 And it was all his prep.
02:19:44.000 Just, he's just, this is, here's a line that didn't make the movie.
02:19:47.000 Here's another line that didn't make the movie.
02:19:48.000 Here's another thing I wanted to say.
02:19:49.000 Here's another thing.
02:19:50.000 And he just started throwing them all out there.
02:19:52.000 And I shit you not, man.
02:19:56.000 The shots, it's on me.
02:19:57.000 I'm walking out of the, you know, walking away from me, screaming all this stuff.
02:20:02.000 And that's when I say I'm chasing a feeling.
02:20:05.000 Like, 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.
02:20:15.000 You 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.
02:20:23.000 And I knew where I'd heard him audition some of those lines other places.
02:20:27.000 You know, we'd run lines together and he'd try this thing.
02:20:31.000 He was, he was amazing.
02:20:33.000 Amazing.
02:20:34.000 That's what I mean by the power of his imagination.
02:20:36.000 He was Alonso.
02:20:38.000 And anything that he would pick up or hear would go into the computer.
02:20:42.000 And then he would look for the ways that it could help the script.
02:20:46.000 Look for ways, you know, he wasn't, you know, he wasn't putting, selfishly tearing the sail up to make it about him.
02:20:53.000 He was always looking to help.
02:20:55.000 I 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. 1.00
02:21:10.000 And Denzel came to set, and he watched the scene.
02:21:13.000 He was like, damn.
02:21:15.000 I'm like, what?
02:21:16.000 This is going to be the best scene in the movie.
02:21:18.000 And I'm not in it.
02:21:19.000 I hate this scene.
02:21:20.000 And it's funny.
02:21:21.000 He walked away.
02:21:24.000 But it was very gracious.
02:21:25.000 I mean, he was all in that movie.
02:21:27.000 Yeah, that's awesome.
02:21:28.000 That's awesome.
02:21:30.000 Ethan, thank you very much, man.
02:21:31.000 This is a really fun conversation.
02:21:33.000 I really enjoyed it.
02:21:34.000 I'm really glad you had me.
02:21:35.000 Thank you.
02:21:35.000 And thank you for all the movies, man.
02:21:37.000 Join the shit out of you.
02:21:38.000 If you can't tell, it's been my pleasure.
02:21:40.000 Thank you.
02:21:40.000 It's been mine as well.
02:21:42.000 Thank you.