Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm standing Forgoso. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show today. I'm joined by actors, songwriter and playwright
Speaker 1: Jeff Daniels. I've been hosting Talk Easy for eight years now,
Speaker 1: and one of the byproducts of making something every week,
Speaker 1: at least for me, is that I have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends and family, especially my mother and father, that
Speaker 1: will send text messages to the effect of, how's it going,
Speaker 1: where have you been? Are you going to take three
Speaker 1: weeks to respond to all thirty seven of my very
Speaker 1: funny memes? How come you don't call more? These are
Speaker 1: all very fair and justifiable questions, especially from my mom
Speaker 1: and dad, and I have to imagine for most people listening,
Speaker 1: this is a typical refrain you've had from your parents,
Speaker 1: or if you are a parent and have kids, you've
Speaker 1: probably sent that text, had that call. And so I've
Speaker 1: come up with a solution to this, which is what
Speaker 1: if I could solve this very real problem I'm having
Speaker 1: in my life through the show itself. What if instead
Speaker 1: of taping a typical intro for Jeff Daniels, I just
Speaker 1: try calling up my father and have him guess who's
Speaker 1: coming on the program this week? This is just an experiment.
Speaker 1: We may not do this every Sunday, but I thought,
Speaker 1: after eight years and four hundred episodes or so, why
Speaker 1: not try something a little bit different. I should note
Speaker 1: that my father has and I mean this, he has
Speaker 1: no idea that we're going to try this. I've not
Speaker 1: prepped him. There's been no debriefing. I'm not even giving
Speaker 1: him a heads up that I'm calling. So why don't
Speaker 1: we try him and uh, just see how this goes.
Speaker 1: He loves Jeff Daniels, so he'll probably get this pretty quick.
Speaker 1: But let's see what happens. By the way, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be the one time he doesn't pick up his phone.
Speaker 2: Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.
Speaker 3: Oh god.
Speaker 1: Okay, So for listeners, we've made an edit. I've called him.
Speaker 1: I've called him six times. He hasn't answered. I'm going
Speaker 1: to try one more time. He's going to think something
Speaker 1: is terribly wrong. I know, and he's going to think
Speaker 1: like something bad has happened to me. Okay, we'll try
Speaker 1: them over time. If not, we'll call my mom.
Speaker 4: Here we go, Hello, Hey, what are you doing this?
Speaker 1: This is your son? Sam Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4: Is going on God, are you pulling up for hostage
Speaker 4: or some shit?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have my hostage in this closet. How did
Speaker 1: you celebrate the solar eclipse week?
Speaker 4: Well, it took fifty eight students to the science and industry.
Speaker 4: How many fifty eight?
Speaker 1: Fifty eight? Wow, fifty eight.
Speaker 4: It was intense, but it was great, beautiful kids.
Speaker 1: I heard, this is this is weird. I heard actually
Speaker 1: only fifty five of them made it back to your school.
Speaker 4: Well, you know that's a good that's a good ratio.
Speaker 4: It works out.
Speaker 1: Fifty five over fifty eight.
Speaker 4: That's right. No one's asking about them. So something was okay,
Speaker 4: oh my god, this is fine. We had a time.
Speaker 4: They got to run around before the eclipse. They had
Speaker 4: big lawns in front of the science industry, in front
Speaker 4: of the lake, beautiful weather. That was a great time.
Speaker 1: Did you did you experience totality?
Speaker 4: None? Yeah, So it just got like it was it
Speaker 4: felt like it was dusk, and then that was it.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you know, but we have
Speaker 1: a very special guest on the show.
Speaker 4: Am I on the show? Right now? What the hell?
Speaker 4: What you were calling me? Some nonsense? Oh my god?
Speaker 4: Not again?
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, so's see if you can guess this,
Speaker 1: and I'll let you guess it. Our guest is someone
Speaker 1: I've been trying to have on the show for a
Speaker 1: long long time. He was born and raised in Chelsea, Michigan.
Speaker 1: He still lives and works there, running the Purple Rose
Speaker 1: Theater Company. Okay, he fell in love with theater in
Speaker 1: college at Central Michigan University. He's also I think the
Speaker 1: university's most accomplished college dropout because he never actually finished school. Instead,
Speaker 1: he left for New York City in nineteen seventy six. Now,
Speaker 1: when he was a young actor trying to make it,
Speaker 1: Jack Lemon once gave him some words of wisdom. He said,
Speaker 1: you gotta be different. Everybody's the same. They walked at
Speaker 1: the door and they're all the same. Actor, you got
Speaker 1: to be the one who's different, and sometimes that gives
Speaker 1: you choices. And so sure enough, he took Lemon's advice
Speaker 1: and made a career out of it. I'm going to
Speaker 1: read some credits and then maybe you'll have a better
Speaker 1: idea who this is. His early work includes Terms of Endearment, Heartburn,
Speaker 1: The Purple Rose of Cairo, Speed, Dumb, and Dumbo. You
Speaker 1: already know dumb and dumber. Isn't that one of your favorites?
Speaker 1: Dumb and dumber?
Speaker 4: It's fine?
Speaker 1: What about what about a rachnophobia? Do you remember that one?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, Spider's cool.
Speaker 1: My personal favorite is a movie called Something Wild by
Speaker 1: Jonathan Demi. Have you seen that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're talking about Jeff Daniels.
Speaker 1: Wow, you guess that quick?
Speaker 4: I mean I had what is that line? You had
Speaker 4: me at Hello at no but Chelsea Michigan. No, I
Speaker 4: was getting there, but more with terms of endearment.
Speaker 1: Terms of endearment. Okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's also done a whole lot of theater. He's been
Speaker 1: nominated for three Tony's, his latest being for his portrayal
Speaker 1: of Atticus Finch and Ta Kill a Mockingbird, adapted for
Speaker 1: the stage by Aaron Sorkin the last performance, I think
Speaker 1: I just want to highlight the newsroom he played Will McAvoy, Yes,
Speaker 1: the moderate Republican anchor hosting a fictitious show called Newsnight.
Speaker 1: He won an Emmy for that. It was his first
Speaker 1: Emmy win. Were you a newsroom guy?
Speaker 4: Big time? Yeah? We used to watch it when you
Speaker 4: were when you were a young you've.
Speaker 1: Never said young lad once. I'm twenty nine, you've never
Speaker 1: said the word lad, lad.
Speaker 4: So the big thing for me that the speech everybody knows,
Speaker 4: the speech.
Speaker 1: The America used to be. Speech used to be great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not number one.
Speaker 4: Anymore exactly, And I play that for my students so
Speaker 4: they can get a perspective of that we're not the
Speaker 4: shit we can be. And so that speech, it's just
Speaker 4: it's riveting. I mean, I played for certain classes who
Speaker 4: can get it. And so my deal is that, look,
Speaker 4: in four years from now, all every single one of
Speaker 4: you have the opportunity to vote, and you can change everything.
Speaker 4: Your generation can change everything. So what you do with it,
Speaker 4: it's your future.
Speaker 1: I'm laborating this political point because in the last decade
Speaker 1: Daniels has made a pretty strong commitment to making work
Speaker 1: about politics. There's the Komi Rule, the Looming Tower, American
Speaker 1: Rust or you know, even playing Atticus Finch and To
Speaker 1: Kill a Mockingbird post twenty twenty and all the protests
Speaker 1: that happened. Before we go to Jeff, what do you
Speaker 1: like about Jeff Daniels the actor?
Speaker 4: He's authentic and I think that you know his his roles,
Speaker 4: especially lately, I mean Looming Towers to me, is just amazing.
Speaker 4: I've been trying to get you to watch it because
Speaker 4: I've seen it like four or five times already. He's authentic,
Speaker 4: and I think he wants he wants to change. I
Speaker 4: think he's sees his generation screwed up a lot of
Speaker 4: things and he's calling them out. That's amazing. You're going
Speaker 4: to have them on the show.
Speaker 1: I know it's been this has been a long one.
Speaker 1: This has been a long time in the making.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I've been throwing out that name, Kevin Costner, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, don't.
Speaker 4: We don't.
Speaker 1: We don't need. Look, we don't need. The short list
Speaker 1: of people that I've tried who have not agreed to
Speaker 1: come on the show. That's always my favorite thing. When
Speaker 1: I call my mom, She's like, you know, what'd be great?
Speaker 1: Have you thought about Brad Pitt? At least on this one.
Speaker 1: We have someone that I I really do love and
Speaker 1: I think started asking to come on like five or
Speaker 1: six years ago. And so with that, here is actor, playwright, songwriter,
Speaker 1: devout Detroit Tigers fan. Oh yeah, ok, baby exactly. Jeff Daniels.
Speaker 1: Jeff Daniels, Nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: Nice to be met?
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 1: How are you? How are you feeling today? Good?
Speaker 2: Fine, terrific?
Speaker 1: Yeah, good, I'm sensing some ambivalent.
Speaker 2: No, I'm I've been on a family vacation with five grandkids,
Speaker 2: so it's been kind of and I just got in
Speaker 2: you back yesterday. I kind of left it, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like this is like a different experience New York
Speaker 2: City versus you know, Florida in a house with the kids,
Speaker 2: which are great, but it's it's, uh, I'm re entering
Speaker 2: the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: So am I offering you a vacation from your vacation?
Speaker 2: No, I don't want to say that. I don't want
Speaker 2: to say it because it is enjoyable. We do enjoy it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, suddenly it's just much quieter.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll try to keep vaguely quiet. The show is
Speaker 1: called talk Easy. Oh oh okay, after all, we're taping
Speaker 1: this together in New York City. Neither of us live here.
Speaker 1: But season two of American Rust is about a part
Speaker 1: of the country in southwest Pennsylvania often ignored and films
Speaker 1: TV shows policies. Even when the first season debuted in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, you said that the show speaks to
Speaker 1: the crossroads this country is in, to the people who've
Speaker 1: been abandon left behind as jobs go elsewhere and the
Speaker 1: American dream fades. So here we aren't three years later,
Speaker 1: do you still see the show and the country in
Speaker 1: those same terms.
Speaker 2: The Midwest has always been flyover country for a reason.
Speaker 2: You know, the people on the coast, they don't want
Speaker 2: to go there. It's boring. The people aren't interesting, they're simple,
Speaker 2: they aren't sophisticated enough.
Speaker 1: They haven't met my uncle or grandmother in Michigan then exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know, I grew up there, and then after
Speaker 2: ten years in New York, and when we moved back there,
Speaker 2: we raised the kids in Michigan. And so when the
Speaker 2: chance to do America and Rust came up based on
Speaker 2: Philip Myers's book, It's set in Pittsburgh, and I'm reading
Speaker 2: the book, and I know these people. I live around
Speaker 2: these people, and in some ways I am of these people.
Speaker 2: I just thought it was so authentic, and even the
Speaker 2: pace of the show the season, that small town pacing.
Speaker 2: They're just so people. But what the show does, and
Speaker 2: what Philip did, and then Danny Fotterman and Adam Rapp did,
Speaker 2: the writers you have simple on the outside but complicated
Speaker 2: on the inside, and they were able to write a
Speaker 2: story now based on Philip's book and then extended it
Speaker 2: and then made it really complicated so that it was
Speaker 2: something that people would want to watch.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Suddenly there are bodies dropping and things like that in
Speaker 2: season two. So that's that's that, ain't Andy of Mayberry.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that's not happening in Chelsea, Michigan, where you live. No,
Speaker 1: I mean not often at least.
Speaker 2: No, not of, not of And it's certainly not like this.
Speaker 2: And that's where it goes beyond just you know, trying
Speaker 2: to do a documentary of what it's like to live
Speaker 2: in a small town in the Midwest. It isn't that.
Speaker 2: I do like the people. I like the characters. They're recognizable,
Speaker 2: they have stuff underneath what they're saying. They're saying one
Speaker 2: thing and thinking another, and all that stuff that you
Speaker 2: see in the Midwest. We don't. We don't as a rule,
Speaker 2: kind of tell you what we're thinking all the time.
Speaker 2: I mean, you asked at the top of this interviewed,
Speaker 2: how are you doing? Really you're a little ambivalent. No,
Speaker 2: I'm just from the Midwest. You just don't get to
Speaker 2: read me. I'm not transparent. I'm not like over in
Speaker 2: your lap telling you exactly how I feel. That's that's
Speaker 2: kind of I remember coming to New York and being
Speaker 2: of the Midwest and having to learn how to like
Speaker 2: drop all that you know, how to you know, repress
Speaker 2: that kind of close to the vest, that kind of
Speaker 2: don't let anybody know what you're really thinking thing.
Speaker 1: I'm born and raised in Chicago, so this is very
Speaker 1: familiar to me.
Speaker 2: Definitely, the small town thing, kind of don't say anything
Speaker 2: and let them do all the talking kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So when I came to New York in the seventies,
Speaker 2: I was I was on an island. They kept going, Jeff,
Speaker 2: get up, do something in the acting class today, anything please?
Speaker 2: You cannot sit in the chair and be silent anymore.
Speaker 1: And did you say to them, well, less is more
Speaker 1: on it. I read that I didn't know what that meant. No, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I was twenty one,
Speaker 1: and I just I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 1: But in the sense of this show is part of
Speaker 1: you that you recognize yourself in the character of del
Speaker 1: Harris and the community of American rust. You know, you
Speaker 1: grew up in Michigan, the eldest son in a working class,
Speaker 1: moderate Republican household. Her father ran a lumber company in Chelsea,
Speaker 1: a company he planned to passed down to you. But
Speaker 1: the first indication that lumber may not have been in
Speaker 1: your cards was not going to be in your cards came,
Speaker 1: I believe in sixth grade, when a music teacher named
Speaker 1: Diane Elroy got incredibly bored on a Friday afternoon and
Speaker 1: instructed students to do one today.
Speaker 2: We're going to do a skit. We're gonna do a
Speaker 2: bunch of skits. We didn't even know it was improv.
Speaker 2: She didn't even know it was improv. She was bored.
Speaker 2: It's a Friday, We're gonna do skits. So she had
Speaker 2: a kid get up and do something, and then another one.
Speaker 2: About the third one, she said, Jeff, you're a politician
Speaker 2: who is giving a speech and your pants are falling down.
Speaker 2: Go ahead. And I got up in front of the
Speaker 2: class and had the presence of performance mind to not
Speaker 2: just go right to the pants are falling down. I
Speaker 2: started with whatever I was taking. A sixth grader thinks
Speaker 2: a mayor might say, you know, at the open ribbon
Speaker 2: coveting ceremony. I'm glad here today the firehouse, and I
Speaker 2: would tug at the belt just a little. The firehouse
Speaker 2: is the best firehouse we've ever built in our town.
Speaker 2: Tug at the belt again, and then it kept, and
Speaker 2: then it was we're now both hands are tugging the belt,
Speaker 2: and I keep talking about the firehouse. And then by
Speaker 2: the bottom, I'm gonna guess seemed like five minutes, but
Speaker 2: about minute and a half in, I'm holding up my
Speaker 2: pants as if they've got four hundred pound weights on them,
Speaker 2: trying to get to the floor. So it's this struggle
Speaker 2: to hold my pants, and the classroom was cracking up.
Speaker 2: And she went to my parents and she said, keep
Speaker 2: an eye on this one. There's something going on.
Speaker 1: When your teacher went to your parents, I wonder how
Speaker 1: much she relayed about the skit itself, because you were
Speaker 1: playing a mayor. Your father was elected mayor of Chelsea
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one. And so when I heard that story,
Speaker 1: I thought, No, wonder this kid knows how to do
Speaker 1: a stump speech. He probably has seen his father.
Speaker 2: No, never saw dad, No never, no, No, he went.
Speaker 1: And you didn't. You didn't support it.
Speaker 2: I know the mayor thing. No, he just went to meetings.
Speaker 2: He just went to meetings on Tuesday nights, and then
Speaker 2: he came back and he was still the mayor. We
Speaker 2: didn't know. We didn't know now that had.
Speaker 1: That was a tough, demanding job, don't. You can't put
Speaker 1: that down, not in.
Speaker 2: A two stoplight town. It wasn't. But my dad also
Speaker 2: was the guy that when the Kiwanas Club did their
Speaker 2: annual pageant. I remember this, I was five or six.
Speaker 2: They played Swan Lake and then he came out in
Speaker 2: a pink two two a ballot with a wig, probably
Speaker 2: a pink two two, and black high top converse sneakers
Speaker 2: and did his version of Swan Lake and everyone was
Speaker 2: cracking up that comedy that my dad had. I remember
Speaker 2: when they would have Bridge Club and they'd have eight
Speaker 2: couples and they're all playing bridge, and it's a Saturday
Speaker 2: night and we're downstairs and you can hear them, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you hear my dad talking and
Speaker 2: it's loud, and you know, the martinis are flowing, and
Speaker 2: you crawl up the stairs and you look and there's
Speaker 2: your dad standing up in front of all these other
Speaker 2: couples telling a ten minute story and they're all cracking up.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing that. It didn't click like I'm going
Speaker 2: to be an actor, but it was that that's in me.
Speaker 2: Those Jeanes are in me.
Speaker 1: You remember seeing that and thinking what and feeling what.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 1: What is how does he do that?
Speaker 2: That's not the that's not the dad.
Speaker 1: I know you saw a different person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't know it. Didn't know what I was seeing,
Speaker 2: but I was seeing something that clicked. And then the
Speaker 2: sixth grade thing with the classroom and the mayor speech,
Speaker 2: and then when I was a sophomore in high school,
Speaker 2: they were doing musicals. The same teacher sixth grade teacher
Speaker 2: was now doing the high school musicals, which they do
Speaker 2: would do once a year, and she'd pick one and
Speaker 2: she'd get all the kids from chorus. She taught chorus.
Speaker 2: I was in chorus because I could sing, but I
Speaker 2: was also on the basketball team because if you could,
Speaker 2: you know, walk in a straight line, you were athletic.
Speaker 1: The team was five and twelve that year.
Speaker 2: We were thank you. It was it was grim.
Speaker 1: The last game you played. I think you lost my
Speaker 1: thirty points or something like that.
Speaker 2: Is that is that true?
Speaker 1: Yes? I mean I don't have the statue in front
Speaker 1: of me, but thank you. Actually, I have your field
Speaker 1: goal percentage if you want it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to see that. I was either
Speaker 2: I'd either score twenty one points or three, but I
Speaker 2: would shoot like I was going to score fifty.
Speaker 1: You shooting like it's your last game.
Speaker 2: I was walking after a very bad basketball practice where
Speaker 2: all we did was run. I walked by the high
Speaker 2: school auditorium as a sophomore, and she was waiting for me,
Speaker 2: that same teacher. She said, get in here. I said,
Speaker 2: what we're doing auditions for South Pacific. I need sailors.
Speaker 2: Get up on stage. Go damn it. So I went
Speaker 2: up and I you know, whatever that kid did in
Speaker 2: sixth grade he did again in that audition and got
Speaker 2: Now I'm hooked.
Speaker 1: Now I'm in in your audio memoir Alive and well enough,
Speaker 1: you said that quote. I've always thought that art is
Speaker 1: what gives us wings. Sometimes it's a teacher. So Diane
Speaker 1: clearly did that for you. Yeah, but so too did
Speaker 1: acting teacher and guest director Marshall W. Mason, who first
Speaker 1: cast you in a production of Summer and Smoke in
Speaker 1: your junior year of college. I think it was what
Speaker 1: do you think Mason saw on you at the age
Speaker 1: of twenty.
Speaker 2: I think Marshall saw that thing maybe that I saw
Speaker 2: at the top of the stairs and my dad was
Speaker 2: telling that big story in front of all those people.
Speaker 2: He saw someone who could become someone else. He saw
Speaker 2: raw talent with self taught technique that was guessing right,
Speaker 2: and that whatever I was doing, I could become someone
Speaker 2: else seamlessly. Not to the degree that I could if
Speaker 2: I actually moved to New York and got into his
Speaker 2: circle repertory acting classes, which I eventually did. But that's
Speaker 2: where he gave me the technique and that kind of
Speaker 2: internal playbook that you use to get you where you
Speaker 2: need to go, whether it's on stage or in front
Speaker 2: of a camera.
Speaker 1: I still use it today for those unfamiliar. What are
Speaker 1: the tenets of that techno? Well, I mean to the
Speaker 1: extent that you still find them, musul.
Speaker 2: As I tell directors five words or less. If you
Speaker 2: can't tell me what you want in five words or left,
Speaker 2: stay in the chair. It was a descendant of Stanislavski,
Speaker 2: who then Strasburg at the Actor's Studio took it Sandy
Speaker 2: Meisner at the Neighborhoo playoffs kind of they all took
Speaker 2: versions of what Stanislavsky had discovered and kind of morphed
Speaker 2: it into their own thing. And I think Marshall was
Speaker 2: certainly a fan of Sandy Meisner and Sanford Meisner and
Speaker 2: put together his version of that. So it really was
Speaker 2: kind of a descendant of that stan of Slovsky method
Speaker 2: without all the personal trappings of please call me by
Speaker 2: my character's name. It was really focused on listening, on
Speaker 2: using the other actor. You know, half your performance is
Speaker 2: in the other actor, which is not what we're taught
Speaker 2: in Hollywood and Hollywood your talk of you know, I'm
Speaker 2: ready for my close up, mister Demil, you act in
Speaker 2: front of a mirror, and he was kind of very no,
Speaker 2: make it about her, make it about him, Make it
Speaker 2: about that other person. And then suddenly it's tennis back
Speaker 2: and forth and the audience goes in, you know, And
Speaker 2: a lot of The Fifth of July was a play
Speaker 2: that I did in nineteen seventy eight where that quiet
Speaker 2: kid in the acting class got a part where he
Speaker 2: didn't say much the play and Lanford Wilson had written
Speaker 2: that for me, and I listened a lot and I
Speaker 2: learned how to listen doing that play which I did
Speaker 2: treat in three different productions.
Speaker 1: So when you got cast in that play, you had
Speaker 1: been in New York for about two two and a
Speaker 1: half years at that point. But I just want to
Speaker 1: hold the drive over when you did decide to move
Speaker 1: from Michigan to New York September one, nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: at two pm in the Holland Tunnel, some clothes in
Speaker 1: your car, a guitar, and the forty five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: your father planned to spend on your senior year of tuition.
Speaker 1: When you clocked it was two pm and you were
Speaker 1: no longer in Kansas. What was racing through your mind?
Speaker 2: Fear, I'm here for a reason, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: give it. I mean, I'm going to give it some time.
Speaker 2: Marshall thinks I'm good. I have one person in the
Speaker 2: city who thinks I'm good. I remember that, and he
Speaker 2: stuck with me. He wouldn't let me leave. After a year.
Speaker 2: I was ready to leave. I was done. I'm just
Speaker 2: going to go home.
Speaker 1: You called back home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, yeah. I was about a year in and
Speaker 2: you know, I was living in one room on twenty
Speaker 2: third and seventh, and it was just one of those
Speaker 2: you know, horrible apartments, and man, I'm not happy. And
Speaker 2: you know, off Broadway was great, but you know, I
Speaker 2: wanted to go home. I was done. I'll go back
Speaker 2: to the lumberyard. I don't need to do this. I
Speaker 2: was never invested to the point of I want to
Speaker 2: be a star. I want this is my dream. I
Speaker 2: have to fulfill it. I was just told I was
Speaker 2: good at it. Okay, I'm here because I'm good at it,
Speaker 2: but it's not happening. So I think I'm going to
Speaker 2: call the parents and I'm just going to tell him
Speaker 2: I'm going to come home. And my dad was, well,
Speaker 2: it's your decision. I guess he's starting to think lumberyard
Speaker 2: again now. And mom was on the other end of
Speaker 2: the phone and was silent, and he talked for a
Speaker 2: few minutes and then he goes, Marge, what do you think?
Speaker 2: And she goes find a way to stay and hung up.
Speaker 2: So I stayed, I'm not going back to that, and
Speaker 2: I stayed. And she was right, tough enough.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised she said that my mother?
Speaker 2: No, No, she was tough.
Speaker 1: She was a farm girl, tough, tougher than your father.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dad was, you know, Dad was strong, in his
Speaker 2: own ways, and you know, could could talk to anybody
Speaker 2: and basically persuade people into thinking that what he thought
Speaker 2: was right was the right thing to do, because it
Speaker 2: usually was. I kind of grew up with Atticus Finch.
Speaker 2: You know, that's what Dad his reputation in town was.
Speaker 2: Mom suffered no fools, especially with her children.
Speaker 1: When you spoke as a kid, did she stare at
Speaker 1: you with her arms crossed the way you do when
Speaker 1: I speak.
Speaker 2: I don't know where to put them. I can put
Speaker 2: them here, I'll put them here. No, there's a microphone here.
Speaker 2: I can't. Oh no, I'll I'll just hang on the Sepiday.
Speaker 1: Look you give when someone else is speaking, it's very complsed.
Speaker 2: I listen. I listen, Yes, I listen. There's not a
Speaker 2: lot of active listening. There's a lot of very direct
Speaker 2: kind of listening. Yeah. She would do that.
Speaker 1: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: Dad would. Dad would move around, but she would. She would.
Speaker 1: He was more amiby.
Speaker 2: She would stare at you and wait for you to
Speaker 2: stop talking. And then here's what you're going to do.
Speaker 2: Someday I'll play my mother in a movie.
Speaker 1: Since dub and Dumber, we're wondering when will you finally
Speaker 1: challenge yourself Harry Harry Dunn's mother, So you stuck it out,
Speaker 1: You listen to her, you stick it out, you get
Speaker 1: that role in Fifth of July by Lamford Wilson. Was
Speaker 1: that the first time that you felt like a writer
Speaker 1: saw you, that a writer wrote for you?
Speaker 2: Definitely was the first time a writer wrote for me.
Speaker 2: As I was at twenty two, twenty three, sitting in
Speaker 2: the back of the acting class, not wanting to do anything,
Speaker 2: scared to do anything, scared to make a mistake. All
Speaker 2: those you know, dredge up some personal memory and sob
Speaker 2: and acting class and that let everyone discuss it after
Speaker 2: you're done. You know, that's it was. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like therapy in an acting class. It was, Oh, that's
Speaker 2: where we're going to go. I don't get to do
Speaker 2: what I do in musicals, which is wings and kind
Speaker 2: of no, we're not doing that here, Okay.
Speaker 1: Anti therapy is very Midwestern.
Speaker 2: I'd say, oh god, yeah, yeah, we don't need help.
Speaker 1: That's what we say to ourselves.
Speaker 2: Wow, we say, or to anyone who happens to ask, Yeah,
Speaker 2: now we're fine, we don't need help. You're the one
Speaker 2: with a problem.
Speaker 1: Thank you for looking at me when you said that, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's what acting class felt like. Was like, Okay, we're
Speaker 2: going to open you up. And again I'm I'm in
Speaker 2: a Midwestern moderate, soft Republican household where being except when
Speaker 2: dad got a couple of martinis in him being extroverted
Speaker 2: was why do you have to be so noisy?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And in New York you come to learn how to
Speaker 2: if it's on your mind, it's out of your mouth
Speaker 2: and you're up on your feet and you're you're out,
Speaker 2: it comes. You have to learn to come out with
Speaker 2: those emotions instead of you have to unlock them. And
Speaker 2: that's what Marshall taught me. It was how to unlock them.
Speaker 4: He was one.
Speaker 2: He was the first one to teach.
Speaker 1: Me that while you're performing on stage, you're also auditioning
Speaker 1: for commercials, films, etc. In the early eighties, before you
Speaker 1: land that breakout part. In terms of endearment, casting director
Speaker 1: Juliet Taylor told you to be quote less defensive and
Speaker 1: less angry at auditions. You've got to be more personable.
Speaker 1: What does getting defensive and angry at an audition look like?
Speaker 2: You're not going to give me the part? So why
Speaker 2: am I here? I mean, what do you want?
Speaker 1: And that didn't work.
Speaker 2: No, I can't believe they didn't. Wait, well, you got
Speaker 2: to understand this was several years now of terms of endearment,
Speaker 2: was seven years in of commercials in off Broadway, and
Speaker 2: you know, the dream of can I be in the
Speaker 2: movies is Broadway? Even an option, is having a career,
Speaker 2: making a living as an actor, even an option. You know,
Speaker 2: when I talked to college kids brought in, I start
Speaker 2: out with rejection because that's the one thing that the
Speaker 2: academics can't teach you.
Speaker 1: I have here. You tell actors that rejection is going
Speaker 1: to be part of it. And so are antidepressants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean we're hot. The highs are high
Speaker 2: and the lows are really low. It's how we're wired.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not the only one. I mean Clapton wrote,
Speaker 2: you know, talked about it. Eric Clapton talks Every artist
Speaker 2: is because there's no sameness. And then when you do
Speaker 2: get in a hit, whether it's a play or whether
Speaker 2: it's a movie, it's temporary. Fame is fleeting, and you
Speaker 2: have to understand that now they're going to be focused
Speaker 2: on someone else and something else, and it's no longer.
Speaker 2: You're no longer the number one movie in the country
Speaker 2: or the number one show on Broadway, and now what
Speaker 2: And the trap is trying to sustain that somehow with
Speaker 2: being famous and being seen and being all that stuff,
Speaker 2: which I just is like a poison to me.
Speaker 1: Was it a poison to you? Then?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's always been Yeah, I just want to act.
Speaker 2: Why do I have to do anything else? Well, you
Speaker 2: have to promote yourself. Well, you have to be out
Speaker 2: there marketing. Well, you have to sell your personality. You
Speaker 2: have to be a brand. Gable was a brand. Tom
Speaker 2: Cruise is a brand.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Jimmy Stewart was a brand. You go to see Jimmy
Speaker 2: Stewart being Jimmy Stewart. I don't want that. I want
Speaker 2: to be I don't I want to be other people.
Speaker 2: That's all I want to be.
Speaker 1: In those early films, I'm talking about Something Wild and
Speaker 1: The Purple Rose of Cairo. I want to start with
Speaker 1: the Jonathan Demi movie. When Something Wild came out, there
Speaker 1: was an article in the La Times by a writer
Speaker 1: that described you as quote the guy with the face
Speaker 1: like one hundred dollars cotton flannel shirt. To be clear
Speaker 1: that was in the nineties. I didn't adjust that number
Speaker 1: for inflation. He also wrote, Daniels was born to picnic
Speaker 1: table bread for family portraits. The station wagon was invented
Speaker 1: with him in mind.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is the La Times talking about the Midwest. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm just let me just start with that the standard.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for labeling me and based on
Speaker 2: one performance, and that's who I am and that's what
Speaker 2: my face is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, Norman wrote that for.
Speaker 2: Look, it was some of the while was Jack Lemon
Speaker 2: and Dick Van Dyke had a baby and it was
Speaker 2: named Charlie Drags And that's what I played in the movie.
Speaker 2: I loved Lemon, I loved Dick Van Dyke growing up.
Speaker 2: Those were my influences going into that. I said, just
Speaker 2: do what they might do and just bounce off everything
Speaker 2: that was DEMI was thrown at me.
Speaker 1: Which parts of each of them? Did you take? Lemon
Speaker 1: and Van Dyke.
Speaker 2: They were both physical. It was on their mind. It
Speaker 2: was out of their mouth, which is the opposite of
Speaker 2: what I went to New York with was so now
Speaker 2: is here are guys that are out.
Speaker 1: The opposite of the Jeff Daniels from Chelsea Michigan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that's fun. That's where the fun is.
Speaker 2: So you know Dick Van Dyke, the physical comedy that
Speaker 2: he did, well, I mean I would sit in my
Speaker 2: living room and watch that show and probably that made
Speaker 2: it into some of those high school musicals. I just
Speaker 2: loved what he did, and he was funny, and he
Speaker 2: was fast and he talked fast. Jack Lemon was the
Speaker 2: same thing. Jack did some dramatic rules, but both those
Speaker 2: guys were kind of you couldn't see the script and
Speaker 2: it wasn't that they were ad libbing so much. Certainly
Speaker 2: Jack Lemon, could I call it the Jack Lemon stutter start, which, yeah,
Speaker 2: well I'm okay, I look all right, if you want
Speaker 2: me to sure, I'll answer the question when the line is,
Speaker 2: I'll answer the question. That's what Jack would do on that.
Speaker 1: So would by the way, it would be incredible if
Speaker 1: you did the rest of the interview as Jack Lemon.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I mean you sure, thank you. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: but it was it was kind of a way to
Speaker 2: loosen me up.
Speaker 1: That's a dead on impression. It is not that's done,
Speaker 1: I mean, not doing the voice, but the mat that
Speaker 1: that the way the mannerism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean they were
Speaker 2: just so.
Speaker 1: This is an audio medium, so that's tough to play.
Speaker 2: That is to I hope you can see that at home.
Speaker 2: It was tough, It was it was it was fun
Speaker 2: to try to dive into that. Every role you're looking
Speaker 2: for a key thought, the one that you grab and
Speaker 2: then that launches you and that you can hang on
Speaker 2: all the way through the movie.
Speaker 1: What is that key thought? What does that mean?
Speaker 2: It's the thing again, this is boiling down what Marshall
Speaker 2: Mason taught me. I have to have a key thought
Speaker 2: that I can tape to the inside of my forehead.
Speaker 1: And for something wild that was one.
Speaker 2: Jack Lemon, Dick Van Dyke, you know, just the two
Speaker 2: of them right there, and then just kind of go
Speaker 2: through that. So you look for that in every role.
Speaker 2: That kind of it's cliff notes, it's a cheat sheet.
Speaker 1: The key thought for Purple Rose of Cairo is.
Speaker 2: What everything I have ever learned. Please let me remember
Speaker 2: now that was Woody Allen at the height of his
Speaker 2: Woody Allen noess as a filmmaker. And I get that role.
Speaker 2: And it's two roles, two leading roles in a Woody
Speaker 2: Allen comedy and you start on Monday.
Speaker 1: So the first role is the matinee idol in a
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six movie. And then when you step out
Speaker 1: of the screen, you're a standard neurotic actor.
Speaker 2: Gil Shepherd the standard neurotic actor, and Tom Baxter was
Speaker 2: the safari wearing, one dimensional young hero in a black
Speaker 2: and white film that really probably wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: Did the training at Circle Rep prepare you to star
Speaker 1: on a Woody Allen movie?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know again, back and forth, back and forth,
Speaker 2: that tennis thing. And I was reminded of it on
Speaker 2: Purple Rosa Cairo when Woody because I was about a
Speaker 2: week in shooting it and I just.
Speaker 1: You had replaced Michael Keaton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had mutually decided that it wasn't working after
Speaker 2: two weeks, and then he went on a screen He
Speaker 2: screen tested about well, probably four or five of us,
Speaker 2: and I got it. And about a week in I
Speaker 2: just went to Woody. I go, Woody, I'm not Errol Flynn,
Speaker 2: according to the La Times. I'm just a guy who
Speaker 2: could sit at a picnic table somewhere outside you know, Columbus, Ohio.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I could read traumatize him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, oh, I remember that crap and he goes,
Speaker 2: Aero Flynn. He goes, oh, I don't need you to
Speaker 2: be Aero Flynn. He goes, You've got Mia Farrow off camera,
Speaker 2: just adore her. And it was like, oh, so the
Speaker 2: and that led to again listening and going using the
Speaker 2: other actor and all that stuff that we're not taught.
Speaker 2: Circle taught it, but we're not taught. And that so
Speaker 2: the closer the camera got and I stayed with this forever. Oh,
Speaker 2: that extreme close up where it's like Darth Vader is
Speaker 2: a foot away from your face and you're worried about
Speaker 2: every little poor and your No, that's when the closer
Speaker 2: it gets, the more you make it about the other person.
Speaker 2: And by doing that, this thing happens where the camera
Speaker 2: can go in. The camera will now go in and
Speaker 2: see your thoughts and feel what you're thinking in a
Speaker 2: way because you're subconsciously you've let that all go. You've
Speaker 2: let the filter and the blockade go of that kind
Speaker 2: of here's the camera. It's really close, and that's all gone,
Speaker 2: and now you're pouring it into her and the camera
Speaker 2: goes in.
Speaker 1: Demi and Alan, is there any commonality between the two
Speaker 1: of them besides both being.
Speaker 2: Great, Jonathan had a spirit that was just he could
Speaker 2: have ten grand to make the movie or one hundred million,
Speaker 2: he'd be the same and the film would be the same,
Speaker 2: and it would have his stamp on it. Definitely, he
Speaker 2: was a filmmaker that was so is Woody. They had
Speaker 2: that kind of confidence in where to put the camera
Speaker 2: and what they saw and reflected on this shot, and
Speaker 2: you knew you were in a Jonathan Demi movie, and
Speaker 2: you knew you were in a Woody Allen movie just
Speaker 2: by where he put the camera. The commonality was that
Speaker 2: even though we had a script on something wild, Jonathan
Speaker 2: encouraged me to just use as an outline. I had
Speaker 2: never taken an improv class, but I somehow was able
Speaker 2: to kind of, you know, loosen it up and say
Speaker 2: some things and then you go, great, keep that, don't
Speaker 2: say that, but now maybe to talk about you know.
Speaker 2: It was that loosening up from take three to four
Speaker 2: to five to six. Woody was similar. I mean I
Speaker 2: went into Purporosa, Cairo with that script and going okay,
Speaker 2: just and I'm not going to change a word. He goes, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: no no. If you want to say it a different way.
Speaker 2: Go ahead. It's not the Bible, you know. If I
Speaker 2: need you to say it a certain way, I'll I'll
Speaker 2: ask you to do that. But he was very nice
Speaker 2: about it, and and that just makes you want to
Speaker 2: make what he wrote, you know, work even better. And
Speaker 2: as a writer, I kept going back to getting even
Speaker 2: and without feathers. Those books he wrote that were like
Speaker 2: master classes and comedic writing. And so now I'm with
Speaker 2: him and I'm going to improve on top of them.
Speaker 2: Not so much, but he did. There's a scene in
Speaker 2: Purple Rows where I'm on the porch I go to
Speaker 2: Mia Fero's house, Cecilia's house as the neurotic actor. In
Speaker 2: what he kept saying just ad lib about what it
Speaker 2: means to be a star. I struggled with my.
Speaker 5: Whole life and now I'm finally beginning to breakthrough.
Speaker 2: And my whole career is going right down and drink.
Speaker 2: You don't have to worry about that. You'll always be
Speaker 2: a great movie star.
Speaker 5: Oh well, that's that's very nice for you too. But
Speaker 5: technically I'm not really a star yet, Cecilia, don't you know.
Speaker 5: I mean, I try to carry myself like one, you know,
Speaker 5: I do the best I can as far as that,
Speaker 5: but star that's a big word in a star. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 5: no starving.
Speaker 2: And I would go for like a minute and I
Speaker 2: could see Woody off camera laughing, you know, snorting, and
Speaker 2: I'm going, Yes, I made Woody laugh. You know, that
Speaker 2: was cool. That was cool. But they both had this
Speaker 2: kind of yeah, loosen it up kind of thing, which
Speaker 2: you know, was I didn't expect.
Speaker 1: After The Purple Rose of Cairo came out, you appear
Speaker 1: on the cover of GQ magazine. In that profile, Woody
Speaker 1: said of you, he could be the next Carry Grant.
Speaker 1: He's got that sophisticated comedic style. He could do that stuff.
Speaker 1: The question is will there be sufficient literature to accommodate him.
Speaker 1: In most interviews you've done, the journalist likes to point
Speaker 1: out the Carry Grant line, but they never read the
Speaker 1: question that he poses at the end, which to me
Speaker 1: is the whole that's the whole story. And so as
Speaker 1: you move out of New York and back to Chelsea
Speaker 1: to raise a family, did you find there to be
Speaker 1: sufficient literature to accommodate you?
Speaker 2: Occasionally, but to move back to Michigan after ten years
Speaker 2: in New York and with a two year old boy,
Speaker 2: you know, Kathleen, and I said, let's just go back
Speaker 2: home because the career is going to end. It probably
Speaker 2: peaked at Purple Rosa, Cairo and something wild and that's it,
Speaker 2: and so let's just because they all end famous fleeting,
Speaker 2: it's going to end. I was so fatalistic, and I
Speaker 2: finally had the chance to go home.
Speaker 1: Why so fatalistic?
Speaker 2: I didn't trust it for a second, didn't want it.
Speaker 1: Didn't trust or didn't want both.
Speaker 2: Didn't want, don't I don't I go to Hollywood for
Speaker 2: a meeting. I would fly from Detroit on the nine
Speaker 2: am plane, land eleven thirty, La Time, rent a car,
Speaker 2: do the meeting, hang out maybe, or get the five
Speaker 2: o'clock or get the red eye back home. I never
Speaker 2: took my coat off. I was worried that whatever I
Speaker 2: had that got me to people like Jonathan Demi, Woody
Speaker 2: Allen would be taken away. It would be.
Speaker 1: Contaminated, yes, by the stardom thing.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know how to do it. I didn't
Speaker 2: know how to schmooze. I didn't know how to suck up.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to be that actor that you saw
Speaker 2: on something and now you're hiring me to do this
Speaker 2: thing for you. Now, I wanted to get there to that.
Speaker 2: So I went to Michigan and waited and sustained a career.
Speaker 2: You know, there are a lot of movies in there
Speaker 2: that are just paying for the lifestyle. You know, one
Speaker 2: hundred and one Dalmatians my favorite march, and you know
Speaker 2: there was stuff in there. I'm just trying to stay
Speaker 2: in the business and waiting. And then when the kids
Speaker 2: finally got out of school and were off, then it
Speaker 2: became about chasing the writing. And that's where Woody was right.
Speaker 1: I read that quote from Woody because of the literature comment,
Speaker 1: but I also read it because when you go back
Speaker 1: to Michigan and you're living there through the nineties, you
Speaker 1: have this quote, and it's just it's been like nagging
Speaker 1: at me since I've read it, so I I have
Speaker 1: to ask you about it. You said, I was bored,
Speaker 1: I was playing golf, I was playing too much golf creatively,
Speaker 1: I was going to sleep. Above all, I went home
Speaker 1: and found out I was an outsider. When you look
Speaker 1: at those years, what did it mean to be an
Speaker 1: outsider when you went back home to be at home?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I naively thought it would, you know,
Speaker 2: be the same, And in some ways it is the same,
Speaker 2: but you're not the same. That's what I think Wolf
Speaker 2: meant by the quote. It's different, but you're also different.
Speaker 2: And it was great for the family. That was the
Speaker 2: number one reason I don't know how to raise kids
Speaker 2: in Hollywood. You can, it's done successfully all the time.
Speaker 2: But I didn't know how to do it. And New
Speaker 2: York was too expensive, and the career is going to end,
Speaker 2: So why don't we just go back for the family's
Speaker 2: sake and I'll just commute to wherever I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to go. But yeah, I did. I was there,
Speaker 2: and creatively I had been awakened through Marshall and Circle
Speaker 2: and being an actor and that whole imaginative world that
Speaker 2: we live in. Once you tap into it, whether you're
Speaker 2: acting or writing or songs or whatever you're doing performing,
Speaker 2: it's a drug. It's a very heavy drug, and if
Speaker 2: you're able to hit it and bring it up, suddenly
Speaker 2: it's there all the time. And that was still swirling,
Speaker 2: and so I would go home and around folks that
Speaker 2: weren't of that. I had to go to New York
Speaker 2: to learn how to do that. So that became a problem,
Speaker 2: and so I created the Purple Rose Theater Company, partly
Speaker 2: to give myself somewhere to go creatively, gambling that I could,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe do a version of what Circle Rep
Speaker 2: was in my own hometown, with no long term plan
Speaker 2: or anything, just let's see if this can work. And
Speaker 2: so that helped, and it still helps to this day.
Speaker 2: It was either I'm going to get out or I
Speaker 2: was picking up a guitar a lot, and like two thousand,
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, I thought, well, maybe that's what
Speaker 2: I'll do now, because what I'm not going to do
Speaker 2: is be the asshole father standing on a set in
Speaker 2: a sitcom while some twenty two year old is making
Speaker 2: ten million a show and he's an hour late and
Speaker 2: he doesn't know his lines. I'm not going to be
Speaker 2: that guy. I'll quit. And if I don't get what
Speaker 2: I you know, that challenges me, I'll get out. And
Speaker 2: way back when suddenly there's this movie called The Squid
Speaker 2: in the Whale and there's this young writer nobody's heard of,
Speaker 2: Noah Baumback and I read the script and I this,
Speaker 2: what's this?
Speaker 4: This?
Speaker 2: How can I get this? And they'd been out to
Speaker 2: a couple of big stars and who of course wanted changes.
Speaker 2: And then I flew to New York. I was doing
Speaker 2: because of Wynn Dixie, which was this little family movie
Speaker 2: that was just give me a job. And I flew
Speaker 2: to New York and met with Noah and I went
Speaker 2: through the script. I said, this is funny. Page page, page,
Speaker 2: This is funny, page page, This is funny. This is
Speaker 2: really funny. And he looked at Laura. Lenny said him.
Speaker 2: Squid in the Whale was one of those starts where
Speaker 2: my agent and manager and I made a conscious effort
Speaker 2: to let's chase good writing. Let's try to be known
Speaker 2: as a really great American actor. And if we don't
Speaker 2: make it, we don't make it.
Speaker 6: When my first novel came out, I had a lot
Speaker 6: of opportunities. I would feel your mother if I didn't partake.
Speaker 6: And I've never had an affair with a student, though
Speaker 6: many have come on to me. That's why you might
Speaker 6: not want to be attached to your age. It sounds
Speaker 6: like Sophy's good for now.
Speaker 4: Why do you all?
Speaker 1: God damn it, I burned myself.
Speaker 2: Cults are great.
Speaker 7: God, you do hear from that agent?
Speaker 5: Yeah, but if you liked your novel, then you get
Speaker 5: it published right perfectly?
Speaker 4: What happened to your old asian?
Speaker 2: Fred kissed me off?
Speaker 8: Made a disparaging remark about the Knicks at a party
Speaker 8: they played like thogs.
Speaker 7: I found it really offensive, kind of a jerk.
Speaker 6: I think it was important to your mother that I
Speaker 6: achieved some sort of commercial success us and when I
Speaker 6: didn't meet her expectations.
Speaker 7: In that area.
Speaker 1: The writing of that film. As someone whose parents split
Speaker 1: early and often, I have seen it a whole lot
Speaker 1: of times, countless times, maybe too many times, And the
Speaker 1: last time I watched it, I never understood how you
Speaker 1: got to that angry place. But hearing this chapter that
Speaker 1: you were in before that movie, did you see yourself
Speaker 1: in some of the anger of that character? This was
Speaker 1: a mercurial novelist who's frustrated that he's not being read enough,
Speaker 1: not being considered enough. Did you see some of yourself
Speaker 1: in that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And that was the key thought. I remember with
Speaker 2: Noah in rehearsals and just go, I know what it is.
Speaker 1: I know what it is because it's about his father
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But as for pelling Bernard and the underappreciated right,
Speaker 2: the guy they aren't looking at in the room when
Speaker 2: Norman may you are standing next to each other, They're
Speaker 2: going to look and talk to Norman Mayler. You're not
Speaker 2: good enough, You're not as good as they are. I
Speaker 2: tapped right into that, right into that. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: then let yourself go slide down, which is where Bernard
Speaker 2: goes it.
Speaker 1: Just you know, how did it feel to do that?
Speaker 2: I mean it was. It's not like you come out
Speaker 2: of it going, you know, get me in therapy. But
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, that's never the answer, never the answer,
Speaker 2: it's completely unnecessary. But when you get a guy and
Speaker 2: you can become him. And that's the other thing that
Speaker 2: Marshall Mason's thing led me to, which in my head
Speaker 2: means I need to be able to think like the
Speaker 2: character in here, the part that you don't hear. And
Speaker 2: if I can think like the character, then everything else
Speaker 2: will kind of fall into play. If you've done the
Speaker 2: prep work and all that stuff. But at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, you want to be able to think
Speaker 2: like Atticus Finch or think like Harry Dunn. You want
Speaker 2: to be able to get in there there like that.
Speaker 2: So then you're just riding in pulses. You're just writing instincts,
Speaker 2: and when you get that key into whatever the character is,
Speaker 2: then it's jump off the cliff and go. And whether
Speaker 2: with Bernard and Squid in the Whale, it was, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're gonna go dark. Let's go dark. But that led
Speaker 2: to Got a Carnage, and that led to Newsroom, and
Speaker 2: I remember doing Got a Carnage on Broadway with Jim Gandelfini,
Speaker 2: and you know, the movies were drying up and it
Speaker 2: just wasn't you know, I wasn't getting anything that I
Speaker 2: wanted to do. And I said, Jim, I think I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about television. He goes, get yourself a good writer.
Speaker 2: He said, I got David Chase, and luckily for me,
Speaker 2: Aaron Sorkin wanted me. And then when you've got the
Speaker 2: writing is what he said. When you've got the writing,
Speaker 2: you can write it. You can write it, and they'll
Speaker 2: challenge you too, the writers, the good writer will challenge you.
Speaker 2: And that's what I've from that two thousand and nine on.
Speaker 2: I've been fortunate to have good writing come my way,
Speaker 2: and that's kept me not only in the business, but
Speaker 2: interested in the business.
Speaker 1: After the break, we talk about Jeff's unexpected second act,
Speaker 1: as written by Aaron Sorkin stay with us. When it
Speaker 1: came to the newsroom, Aaron Sorkin was looking for an
Speaker 1: actor that could express that rage, that could tap into
Speaker 1: an anger. He did not think that you entirely had
Speaker 1: that at first, Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? He had been. There was nothing really in film
Speaker 2: or TV that showed what he needed, that kind of
Speaker 2: you know, knee jerk rant that McAvoy needed to go on,
Speaker 2: and he just Aaron needed to be able to see
Speaker 2: that before he cast me. And then I got a tip,
Speaker 2: a heads up on that that's what he needed to see.
Speaker 2: So when we were sitting at a breakfast table in
Speaker 2: the Four Seasons in New York to I was meeting
Speaker 2: Aaron Sorkin for the first time, and Scott Rudin, the
Speaker 2: producer Newsroom, was sitting across the table, and I told
Speaker 2: a story about where I had lost it, and then
Speaker 2: I banged the table and the orange juice glasses rattled
Speaker 2: and jumped and coffee and people at the other tables
Speaker 2: were turning around looking at Aaron's going okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: I think, I yeah, no, no, no, good good good,
Speaker 2: And you know, I was halfway through the story, so
Speaker 2: I was going to finish it so because I wanted
Speaker 2: this part, and so it just became.
Speaker 1: More strong armed him into giving you the role.
Speaker 2: I auditioned. I had to show that I could get
Speaker 2: there and that it might be uncomfortable and embarrassing. You know,
Speaker 2: That's all I knew. I didn't have any I didn't
Speaker 2: know Mac, I didn't know anything else except it's a
Speaker 2: show about a newsroom. And so that was well, if
Speaker 2: he needs to see this, here's my best version of it.
Speaker 2: And by the end of the breakfast they said, you've
Speaker 2: got the part.
Speaker 1: When we started this conversation, we talked about American rust
Speaker 1: being representative of the crossroads this country is at. Do
Speaker 1: you see the newsroom and what you and Aaron Sorkin
Speaker 1: were going for to be a kind of prelude to
Speaker 1: America post pandemic.
Speaker 2: I think one of the great strengths about Aaron's writing
Speaker 2: is that he's ahead of his time. There are things
Speaker 2: that he said, not just in the big Northwestern speech,
Speaker 2: that will outlive both of us every episode. There are
Speaker 2: things that are said that are opinions, that are dropped
Speaker 2: into conversations that the characters are having that now post
Speaker 2: COVID and you look at cable news and you look
Speaker 2: at that they didn't listen at all, not that they
Speaker 2: were supposed to listen to Aaron sork in a newsroom
Speaker 2: and maybe take some notes. But he's really good at
Speaker 2: predicting what might happen. And like a lot of things
Speaker 2: in this world today, you can't stop it. And if
Speaker 2: there's money at the end of it, whether it's MSNBC, CNN, Fox, Knew,
Speaker 2: lose and they can get more eyeballs going in that direction,
Speaker 2: and that's more money. Welcome to News.
Speaker 1: In the pilot episode, of course, there's that monologue you
Speaker 1: just mentioned. We your character explained to how America is
Speaker 1: not the greatest country in the world anymore? Why is
Speaker 1: it not the.
Speaker 8: Greatest country in the world, professor, that's my answer.
Speaker 2: You're saying, yes, let's talk about fine, Sharon. The NEA
Speaker 2: is a loser.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck.
Speaker 2: But he gets to hit you with it anytime he wants.
Speaker 2: It doesn't cost money.
Speaker 8: It costs boats, it costs airtime and column inches. You
Speaker 8: know why people don't like liberals because they lose. If
Speaker 8: liberals are so fucking smart and they lose so goddamn
Speaker 8: always hell, and with a straight face, you're gonna tell
Speaker 8: students that America is so star spangled awesome that we're
Speaker 8: the only ones.
Speaker 2: In the world who have freedom.
Speaker 8: Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia,
Speaker 8: Belgium has freedom. So two hundred and seven sovereign stays
Speaker 8: in the world, like one hundred and eighty of them
Speaker 8: at freed and got you a sorority girl just in
Speaker 8: case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day.
Speaker 8: There's some things you should know, and one of them
Speaker 8: is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement
Speaker 8: that were the greatest country in the world. We're seventh
Speaker 8: in literacy, twenty seventh in math, twenty second in science,
Speaker 8: forty ninth in life expectancy, one hundred and seventy eighth
Speaker 8: in infant mortality, third and median household income, number four
Speaker 8: in labor force, and number four in exports.
Speaker 2: We lead the world in only three categories.
Speaker 8: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who
Speaker 8: believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend
Speaker 8: more than the next twenty six countries combined.
Speaker 2: Twenty five, of whom her allies.
Speaker 8: Now, none of this is the fault of a twenty
Speaker 8: year old college student, but you nonetheless are, without it on,
Speaker 8: a member of the worst period generation period ever periods.
Speaker 8: When you ask what makes us the greatest country in
Speaker 8: the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, Yosementy.
Speaker 1: I believe I'm part of the worst period generation, period ever,
Speaker 1: period that you referring to in that speech going to.
Speaker 2: But you've come out of it nicely, I think.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, thank you. That's that's kind of you to say.
Speaker 1: I think that the comment is rooted in a kind
Speaker 1: of misplaced contempt. I don't think that's fair to our generation, frankly.
Speaker 2: But not all of you.
Speaker 1: No any other shots. No, that's it, that's it, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 2: Look, McAvoy isn't right. McAvoy isn't He isn't he isn't.
Speaker 2: He didn't care about ring right. He just cares about
Speaker 2: telling you what you need to know. Yes, and based
Speaker 2: on just what he thinks. And I think that's that's
Speaker 2: kind of where we came at it. And you know,
Speaker 2: as Sarkin wrote at the end of that season, there
Speaker 2: she is again there's a sorority girl, and we hire
Speaker 2: her because she's exactly the kind of person that we
Speaker 2: want here, you know, And and so he brings it around.
Speaker 1: Beyond me joking about it, I've always been moved by
Speaker 1: the monologue in your delivery of it, and you've called
Speaker 1: the speech the one I've been waiting to do for
Speaker 1: thirty five years. That word waiting stuck out to me
Speaker 1: because I wonder, were you waiting for thirty five years
Speaker 1: or did you perhaps need those thirty five years that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about and discussing today. Did you need
Speaker 1: them to do that scene as effectively and passionately as
Speaker 1: you did?
Speaker 2: Absolutely needed it. Had I done it twenty years earlier,
Speaker 2: not as good. It's the thing about getting older. You
Speaker 2: know more, and you've seen more, and you're hearing people,
Speaker 2: you know, give opinions that you don't agree with, and
Speaker 2: you're getting it, and it was just Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: like a perfect time for me to plant my feet
Speaker 2: and you know, unload that speech. Yeah. I didn't have
Speaker 2: to act much in that that just kind of once
Speaker 2: you learned the speech, you could just kind of let
Speaker 2: it out, you know, let it out and let them
Speaker 2: cut it together. That's the great thing about getting older
Speaker 2: is that you know, unlike athletes, who's bodies slow down
Speaker 2: and all of that, is that actors, it's an accumulation.
Speaker 2: You know, you come out of every show you do,
Speaker 2: hopefully a better actor. You know more. You applied everything
Speaker 2: that you've ever learned, whether you consciously know it or not,
Speaker 2: into this scene. And especially if the writing's good. If
Speaker 2: the writing is good, then you have to remember everything
Speaker 2: you've ever learned and you have to be able to
Speaker 2: call that up and use it to now take you
Speaker 2: into a place that's a little someplace you've never been before.
Speaker 2: And you can't do that when you're younger. And I
Speaker 2: think you're right. I think like that newsroom speech was
Speaker 2: like a not only was it the speech that's never
Speaker 2: handed to me, it's handed to someone else. You know,
Speaker 2: you spend a lot of films doing supporting roles. He
Speaker 2: gets the speech, she gets the speech, and you're just
Speaker 2: there listening at the defense table or something. This was
Speaker 2: Aaron Sorkin handing me an Aaron Sorkin rant that I
Speaker 2: had seen on West Way, that I had seen those guys,
Speaker 2: and I know that Marty Sheen and all those guys
Speaker 2: were getting speeches from Aaron's typewriter and whatever, and they
Speaker 2: had the same feeling I did when they got handed
Speaker 2: something that had a lot of meat on it, and
Speaker 2: that I went right home and started pouring that into
Speaker 2: my head.
Speaker 1: Before we go, can we talk about the accumulation and
Speaker 1: all the life that you brought to to Kill a
Speaker 1: Mockingbird by Aaron Sorkin? You said before I played Atticus Finch,
Speaker 1: I knew him, I grew up with him. You said
Speaker 1: in the beginning of this talk that there was a
Speaker 1: lot of your father and Atticus, and we've been talking
Speaker 1: about him intermittently throughout, and I wonder what did you
Speaker 1: make of your performance on Sunday, June sixteenth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a special one. My dad died in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, and I don't know. We twenty nineteen were
Speaker 2: doing Mockingbird on Broadway and I'm in it for a year.
Speaker 2: I had been in it for I think seven months
Speaker 2: at that time, and it was Father's Day and you're
Speaker 2: always looking to do the perfect show. Oh, I just
Speaker 2: fumfered that one line. Okay, all right, go go, go go,
Speaker 2: and you get through it, and then the next night
Speaker 2: you don't fumper that one, but just screw up something else,
Speaker 2: or you a little late on the something. Everything there's something,
Speaker 2: there's always something that you wish you could almost got
Speaker 2: it perfect, you know, and it hadn't happened seven months.
Speaker 2: A lot of great stuff, but always something. Sunday, matinee out,
Speaker 2: i go Father's Day and I'm not religious, but I'm going, well,
Speaker 2: you know, this would be the time that I see
Speaker 2: a light, you know, God, if you're there to you know, God,
Speaker 2: if you're there, you know, And if you see my
Speaker 2: dad around there, you might want to, you know, position
Speaker 2: him somewhere I can see him, because.
Speaker 7: Then I'll I'm with you.
Speaker 1: Give him a good seat.
Speaker 2: Right. So we go into the show and the show
Speaker 2: is great, and every laugh is there and and it's rolling,
Speaker 2: and I'm in the closing argument and it's as alive
Speaker 2: as it's ever been, and I'm about near the end
Speaker 2: of it, and I'm going, this is probably wow, this
Speaker 2: was there. It's a perfect show, and I would imagine him.
Speaker 2: You stand on stations as the orchestra section and the
Speaker 2: aisle goes up, and there's that space back there where
Speaker 2: the people walk and there's a light and the usher
Speaker 2: usually sits there, and I imagined him walking in to
Speaker 2: that light being brought in and you could see the
Speaker 2: usher tapping him, going, no, there's your son. There's your
Speaker 2: son right up there. And he turns and he's wearing
Speaker 2: the clothes that he would wear at the lumber company,
Speaker 2: and he would turn and look at me. And so
Speaker 2: I'm doing I'm at the end of the show that
Speaker 2: day and I'm looking into that light and he's not there. Okay,
Speaker 2: well I tried. So dressing room done. I go outside
Speaker 2: and there's autographs, and so I do the autographs and
Speaker 2: I'm starting. I get the pen and a woman, an
Speaker 2: old woman, giz, has an envelope and shoves it in
Speaker 2: my hand and I'm going, oh. The security jumps right in.
Speaker 2: I go no, no, she's okay, I thank you, I'll thank you.
Speaker 2: I'll put up my back pocket and she turned went
Speaker 2: So I do the autographs and then I go back
Speaker 2: home the apartment and I pull that letter out and
Speaker 2: it's a letter from a woman who was at the
Speaker 2: church in Chelsea that my dad went to. She was
Speaker 2: an associate pastor or something, the Methodist church, and she said,
Speaker 2: I knew your father and I remember a big, long
Speaker 2: letter about how proud she was of me, but also
Speaker 2: that she said, I remember asking your dad, aren't you
Speaker 2: proud of your son? I mean, he's famous, he's in movies.
Speaker 2: Did he goes? I'm not proud of him for that.
Speaker 2: I'm proud of him for the person that he is.
Speaker 2: And I'm reading that at the apartment and I'm just going, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe he was there. It's the first time I've ever
Speaker 2: told that without crying. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Doctor, Look, this is merely a consultation. We'll have to
Speaker 1: come back into the time for that.
Speaker 2: Oh so this is free.
Speaker 1: It's all been free.
Speaker 2: Oh good, thank you?
Speaker 1: Are you glad you didn't cry in telling it?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's been. It's it's Uh.
Speaker 2: It would have meant a lot for him to see
Speaker 2: that one. And he always knew I made the right
Speaker 2: decision just because I was able to stay in the business,
Speaker 2: and he saw enough and Woody Allen and other he
Speaker 2: saw a lot. But that would have been That's the
Speaker 2: kid who drove to New York in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: That's what I wanted to see him do.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you thought about this, and I
Speaker 1: could be off, we can move on from it. He
Speaker 1: drove to New York September first, thirty eight years later.
Speaker 1: Your father passes away on September first of twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: same day. What do you make of that?
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 7: I don't think it's I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can still rem remember driving away. Looking out the
Speaker 2: rearview mirror. I could see him standing at the top
Speaker 2: of the hill watching me go. You still see that.
Speaker 2: Here's another thing. I was doing American Rust season two,
Speaker 2: and we were shooting a scene with an old woman
Speaker 2: at the crack of a door, and we're trying to
Speaker 2: get information from her, and she's trying to think of
Speaker 2: the name of somebody that we're looking for. And we're
Speaker 2: in take one and the woman says, I don't know.
Speaker 2: In the script, I think the name was Smith. Say
Speaker 2: the name was Smith, and I think his name was
Speaker 2: smiths the line and take one and we're going and
Speaker 2: she goes, I think his name was Ferguson. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: can we cut? I don't know why I said that.
Speaker 2: I don't know, And we stopped shooting and I'm looking
Speaker 2: at her. My mom had died two months earlier. Her
Speaker 2: maiden name was Ferguson. What do I make of that?
Speaker 2: Is that them going we're okay. You've heard that I'm okay,
Speaker 2: We're okay. Is that that are from that associate pastor,
Speaker 2: that's Dad saying I'm okay? Or I see I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 7: But if you want to believe in hopeful things, it
Speaker 7: feels good and speaking of hopeful things, both the Newsroom
Speaker 7: and To Kill a Mockingbird to me, I see them
Speaker 7: both as extensions of a kind of American hopefulness and
Speaker 7: American idealism.
Speaker 1: I think, at their best, a fundamental belief that the
Speaker 1: moral universe is long, and it bends towards justice, and
Speaker 1: all the things that Will McAvoy may.
Speaker 7: Say and that are being challenged today and.
Speaker 1: On the right day, I believe in Atticus, I believe
Speaker 1: in Will macavoy, I believe in your father. And on
Speaker 1: the wrong day, on most days, these days, they feel
Speaker 1: like potentially relics of a bygone era, naive about the
Speaker 1: goodness of us as American people. And when you came
Speaker 1: back for one lafe go at to kill a Mockingbird
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, you said we have an opportunity
Speaker 1: in this country right now to welcome in a new America.
Speaker 1: What did that mean to you then and what does
Speaker 1: it mean to you now in twenty twenty four as
Speaker 1: we head towards this incredibly fraught presidential election.
Speaker 2: Every generation changes things. Dylan wasn't wrong. Times They are
Speaker 2: a changing. They are changing every ten years, every generation.
Speaker 2: Even the worst one thing it was just a character
Speaker 2: and a television show, Sam, let it go, Okay, let
Speaker 2: it go.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And that's the other thing.
Speaker 2: You get older and suddenly the younger generation is telling
Speaker 2: you everything that you aren't and why you're you know,
Speaker 2: you should die? Can you please die? Can you please
Speaker 2: die soon? You know that that kind of wave of
Speaker 2: but that's not what they're saying.
Speaker 1: That's not in my notes, by the way, I know, but.
Speaker 2: That's not what they're saying. And that new America is
Speaker 2: common and the doors are opening wide white blinds is
Speaker 2: suddenly something we oh, geez, I had no idea because
Speaker 2: you're so busy trying to just you know, survive yourself.
Speaker 2: And that's so we get hit with that. I think
Speaker 2: that was certainly the second time coming around with Mockingbird.
Speaker 2: Atticus Finch facing his white blindness, and that we are
Speaker 2: a better country if we try all not to you know,
Speaker 2: dance like Mike Pence, if we're not stuck in the fifties.
Speaker 2: We're white people right or wrong, ran everything and everybody
Speaker 2: else go sit in the back of the room. You know,
Speaker 2: that's not us at our best. And you're right, the
Speaker 2: Macavoys and the Attica says Finch has come from that
Speaker 2: and harkened back to the goodness that was there. But
Speaker 2: there was a lot of badness and a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff that needs to be changed, and it is changing,
Speaker 2: you know. Around Brownstein wrote that book about nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: four being a pivotal world in music, and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, the culture changes before the politics. And that's
Speaker 2: what you say in culture, is that we are a
Speaker 2: better country if we're opening the door to everyone. You know, we.
Speaker 7: Cannot continue to shove people to.
Speaker 2: The back of the room. Because that little black kid
Speaker 2: in Alabama who's eight years old, who's got a brilliant mind,
Speaker 2: but we're not going to educate him because of his color.
Speaker 2: He's the kid that if you actually gave a shit
Speaker 2: about him and gave him the opportunities so that he
Speaker 2: could get educated in a way. Suddenly he's now at
Speaker 2: John Hopkins and he's the kid who later on cures cancer.
Speaker 2: We're not going to get there if we're just doing
Speaker 2: it with white people. We're just not And I think
Speaker 2: it's taken four hundred years for everyone around to kind
Speaker 2: of you know, oh yeah, maybe we are better. And
Speaker 2: that's one of the great things about this younger generation
Speaker 2: is they aren't going to stand for anything less. And
Speaker 2: that's why I think those who are going to hang
Speaker 2: on to whatever Trump believes today and that whole kind
Speaker 2: of white dominance thing, even though you know, as white
Speaker 2: Republicans you're going to be a minority party, you already are.
Speaker 2: You're outnumbered. That's the big difference between now and fifty
Speaker 2: and one hundred years ago. Older white Republicans are a
Speaker 2: minority now, and you don't get to run by minority rules.
Speaker 2: So I think that's all common. I think it's a fight.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, I think everyone
Speaker 2: who wants this more open New America still has to
Speaker 2: hang on to what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad,
Speaker 2: and that doesn't change and the rule of law. By
Speaker 2: the way, those things which may have been important to
Speaker 2: McAvoy and Atticus Finch. I see them being as important
Speaker 2: to this younger generation and this new America as well.
Speaker 2: And you got to hang on to that because look
Speaker 2: out here comes human nature and greed and power and
Speaker 2: all the things that take people down. So it still
Speaker 2: can be a great country. It still can. I'm looking
Speaker 2: at the younger people to kind of, you know, you think,
Speaker 2: thank you know, it's your turn go. But in about
Speaker 2: fifty years you're going to get hit upside.
Speaker 7: They had too.
Speaker 1: My last thing for you, in the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: you've made a point to fold politics into your work.
Speaker 1: I think that's fair to say. I mean there's the newsroom,
Speaker 1: there's the Komi Rule, there's the Looming Tower. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a long list, there's t kill a Mockingbird. But
Speaker 1: what it comes back to, I think in the end,
Speaker 1: is writing your songwriting your plays. The plays that you've written,
Speaker 1: the script's given to you. And the first person that
Speaker 1: saw you as a writer is Lanford Wilson. He passed
Speaker 1: away about eleven twelve years ago. Now, when the play
Speaker 1: Fifth of July is published and you take your physical
Speaker 1: copy and you get it signed by him, do you
Speaker 1: remember that day, and do you remember what he wrote
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that day and he signed it and
Speaker 2: he wrote, this play is at least half yours and
Speaker 2: he had dedicated it to his partner at the time.
Speaker 2: You know, he just was in love with me. So
Speaker 2: since I wasn't going to go there, I can write
Speaker 2: for him. And then he wrote for me. And then
Speaker 2: I turned out to be more than just a boy,
Speaker 2: a cute twenty two year old kid from the Midwest,
Speaker 2: and he was the first star I ever met, That's
Speaker 2: what he was. I had done hot Al Baltimore at
Speaker 2: Eastern Michigan University that Marshall had guests directed. He came
Speaker 2: out to pick up a check and we had done
Speaker 2: Landford's play hot El Baltimore, and I remember seeing by
Speaker 2: Lanford Wilson on the cover. And then four months later,
Speaker 2: I'm standing in the office a Circle Rep and there's
Speaker 2: Landford Wilson splayed out in a chair, going heydal, how
Speaker 2: are you, and it's nice to meet you, mister Wilson.
Speaker 2: And he was trying to rewrite a second act and
Speaker 2: he loved actors. He loved all the actors at Circle Rep.
Speaker 2: And he loved to write for actors, and then later
Speaker 2: Ronie wrote Fifth of July for me. I never wanted
Speaker 2: to be a director. I don't care about it as
Speaker 2: much that control. But I thought I could write, and
Speaker 2: I started The Purple Rows partly to try to become
Speaker 2: a playwright. And then when I brought Lanford out, I
Speaker 2: actually sent Lanford a play I wrote called The Vast Difference.
Speaker 2: I think it was a third play I wrote. And
Speaker 2: he said, I can hear your voice, which was a
Speaker 2: writer thing. You want that. You can hear Landford in
Speaker 2: Landford's work. You can hear Aaron Sorkin and Aaron Sorkham's work.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: You can hear Patty Chaisky in the scene and network
Speaker 2: between William Holden and Fae donawait, Patty Chaievsky is in
Speaker 2: the room too. I like that. That's the theater and
Speaker 2: so I wanted to learn how to do that, and
Speaker 2: Landford was my inspiration for that and also my kick
Speaker 2: in the ass. Now I know how to do it.
Speaker 2: I've written twenty two plays.
Speaker 1: He also wrote in the book, whatever you do, make
Speaker 1: it matter. Oh yeah, that make it count. My last
Speaker 1: question for you, and I guess the only question. Do
Speaker 1: you think you have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lanford wrote in the book, in the script, whatever
Speaker 2: you do, make it matter, make it count, which is,
Speaker 2: don't sell out, don't become some you know whatever. You're
Speaker 2: better than that. And again that goes back to Woody
Speaker 2: Allen and the literature and you know, and then now
Speaker 2: that to me, let's go just chase the writing. Chase
Speaker 2: the good writing. It's hard to make everything matter and
Speaker 2: everything count as for your artistic integrity, as they say,
Speaker 2: one for you and one for them, them being the
Speaker 2: family and the bills. But the longer you go, if
Speaker 2: you can hang in there and then get that one
Speaker 2: where you get actors coming to the show going, how
Speaker 2: did you do that? That's the award. And it's because
Speaker 2: of the writing that, whether it matters and counts as
Speaker 2: an actor with your peers, or whether it matters and
Speaker 2: counts with an audience that changes their lives and they go away,
Speaker 2: change forever. I don't know. I mean, you try to
Speaker 2: reach for that, and then there are things like Mockingbird
Speaker 2: and the Speech and Newsroom that did that. Years later,
Speaker 2: decades later, I think I've turned it into don't settle,
Speaker 2: don't just repeat yourself and do something then expect people
Speaker 2: to tell you that you're great, because you're not. If
Speaker 2: you don't settle, and you can continue to get the material.
Speaker 2: I don't care if it's on stage or in an
Speaker 2: indie film or in a big movie or big TV show.
Speaker 2: If you can get the writing and get the writers,
Speaker 2: then you still have a chance to make this particular
Speaker 2: project matter and this particular project count. And I've been
Speaker 2: fortunate ever since Newsroom in particular, that bought me ten
Speaker 2: years of good writing from good writers. The good writers
Speaker 2: came Scott, Frank.
Speaker 8: Came, Danny and Adam, and on Aaron coming back with Mockingbird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it still matters, and it still counts. I dread
Speaker 2: the day when it doesn't, which is probably the day I'll.
Speaker 1: Quick it made that never come. And on the subject
Speaker 1: of things mattering, this talk has mattered a whole lot
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 2: My arms are still crossed.
Speaker 1: You want to uncross them?
Speaker 2: I am. I'm comfortable now.
Speaker 1: Why don't we play one of your songs for the road? Okay, Jeff,
Speaker 1: thank you for the time.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Sam.
Speaker 3: You stood out in the crowd. You were one other
Speaker 3: kind life of the party. Never you took it all
Speaker 3: in with a grain of song. He took the blame
Speaker 3: when the wood on your phone, I swear I could
Speaker 3: see you play this day. I close my eyes and
Speaker 3: I can hear you see.
Speaker 2: I damned if I do. I'm damned if I don't.
Speaker 7: The hell I will, and the hell al.
Speaker 9: Sometimes I read that, sometimes I recall. Sometimes no matter
Speaker 9: how I try, it don't matter at all.
Speaker 3: This time, all the time.
Speaker 9: Was for someone to say, is that your grandfathers?
Speaker 1: And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be
Speaker 1: sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. I want to give a special
Speaker 1: thanks to speak to the teams at Rogers and Cohen
Speaker 1: and Amazon. I also want to thank Ian Chang, Kira Posey,
Speaker 1: my father, and of course our guests today Jeff Daniels.
Speaker 1: To find the new season of American Rust and his
Speaker 1: upcoming Netflix series A Man in Full. We've included links
Speaker 1: in our show notes at talkasypod dot com for more
Speaker 1: episodes with other great actors. I'd recommend Michelle Williams, Alison Pills,
Speaker 1: Sam Waterston, def beateel oscar Isaac, and Tom Hanks to
Speaker 1: hear those and more. Pushkin Podcast listen on Apple, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk Easypod. If you
Speaker 1: want to purchase one of our mugs they Come and Navy,
Speaker 1: you can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop.
Speaker 1: Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jennick Sabravo. Today's talk was edited by C. J.
Speaker 1: Mitchell and mixed by Andrew Vastola, who was taped at
Speaker 1: iHeartMedia in New York City. Our music is by Dylan Peck.
Speaker 1: Our illustrations are by christ Shadowy. Photographs today are by
Speaker 1: Jenna Jones. Research assistants from Sharia aroon k Graphics are
Speaker 1: by Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team
Speaker 1: at Pushkin Justin Richmond, Kerry Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Kira Posey, Jorn McMillan, Tara Machado, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell,
Speaker 1: Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso, thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here
Speaker 1: next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and
Speaker 1: so on.