Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, welcome to Talk Easy, a weekly podcast
Speaker 1: of intimate interviews with the people shaping our culture today.
Speaker 1: I'm Sanfordgoso. Thank you for tuning in. This week on
Speaker 1: the show, we have legendary actor Robert Forrester. Since nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, the Rockchester born performer has been in front
Speaker 1: of the camera and rolls both big and small. He's
Speaker 1: played bad guys, good guys, bondmen, lovers, fighters, fathers and grandfathers.
Speaker 1: He's worked with every sort of director from various eras,
Speaker 1: including John Houston, Haskell Wexler, Quentin Terranino, David Lynch, and
Speaker 1: Alexander Payne. To those who perhaps don't know Forrester by name,
Speaker 1: his filmography highlights include Medium, Cool, Mulholland, Drive, Lucky, Number Sleven,
Speaker 1: The Descendants, and most recognizably for his OSCAR nominated work
Speaker 1: in Jackie Brown And. Looking at his varied IMDb page,
Speaker 1: Forrester truly is a cross generational talent. There are more
Speaker 1: pertinent facts about his life, many of which we get
Speaker 1: into throughout this sprawling interview. Forrester is the type of
Speaker 1: human being who invites another human being into his regular
Speaker 1: morning breakfast shop to talk for two hours. He's endlessly
Speaker 1: generous and kind a natural born storyteller. For the first
Speaker 1: time in the years I've been doing this, I was
Speaker 1: given a gift before even conducting an interview with the subject,
Speaker 1: in a red box with the bow. There was a
Speaker 1: letter opener. And oddly enough, I'm pretty sure I can't
Speaker 1: remember now, but I think I've been wanting a letter
Speaker 1: opener for a while, but a letter openers. But letter
Speaker 1: openers are kind of one of those things where you
Speaker 1: always talk about getting him but never actually do until
Speaker 1: you do. Anyway, Thank you, Robert. Apparently this letter opener
Speaker 1: gift is customary for Forrester, who gives one of these
Speaker 1: to every actor he works with on set. He's the
Speaker 1: type of person you kind of hope you end up
Speaker 1: turning out to be when you grow up. And again
Speaker 1: that's not just hyperbolic sentiment. I think by the end
Speaker 1: of this conversation you'll understand a little bit where I'm
Speaker 1: coming from. So finally, here is Robert Forrester. Tell me
Speaker 1: what this You you come here every morning or is
Speaker 1: this your spot? You gotta have a spot. Okay, I've
Speaker 1: had a spot for many years since I've been doing this.
Speaker 1: My first spot was Schwab's drug Store. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the name of Schwab's drug Store. You know I know
Speaker 1: this because I did research last night and I heard
Speaker 1: you talk about in some speech. You were talking about, well,
Speaker 1: Lanta Turner was supposed to have been discovered wearing an
Speaker 1: angora sweater at the fountain at Schwab's drug Store, which
Speaker 1: was located on Sunset Boulevard at Laurel Canyon. And it
Speaker 1: was a spot for hundreds of regulars, and that included
Speaker 1: actors and directors and writers and publicists and the horse
Speaker 1: players and hookers and hangers on and all kinds of folks.
Speaker 1: And it was a real fun place to go for breakfast.
Speaker 1: But then it closed in eighty three, and so everyone
Speaker 1: went to the Four Winds. I went to a spot
Speaker 1: directly across the street from where we are now. But
Speaker 1: and that place was torn down several years ago. But
Speaker 1: for twenty seven years that was my spot. And now
Speaker 1: for the last three or four years, this is my spot,
Speaker 1: right And you need that in your life. Yes, I
Speaker 1: start here every morning. I read the paper, I do
Speaker 1: any work that I've got to do. I read scripts,
Speaker 1: I take meetings, and they as you can see put
Speaker 1: a little reserve sign on the table. It is a
Speaker 1: thrill to have a spot. They like you here, they
Speaker 1: like me here. I'm you know, I sit and it's
Speaker 1: a window. As you can see, it's um. I feel
Speaker 1: like Joe Lewis, who later in his career spent time
Speaker 1: as a greeter in a couple of different restaurants. One
Speaker 1: of them was in New York City on Times Square
Speaker 1: and I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but
Speaker 1: I would pass by and Joe Lewis would be sitting
Speaker 1: there in the window and as people walked in, UH
Speaker 1: greeted them? Did you do you greet people when they
Speaker 1: come in here? Oh? Not actually, but anybody who comes
Speaker 1: by and waves, I wave back. Really do people come
Speaker 1: and do they know you're here? And people something? You know,
Speaker 1: this is a small town, small la and it seems
Speaker 1: big to people. I don't live here. It seems large. Well,
Speaker 1: it's spread out. You live in a one of the
Speaker 1: great cities, San Francisco, and that's a city, city city.
Speaker 1: And occasionally when I go to work in places like
Speaker 1: New York or Toronto or Montreal or you name it, Vancouver,
Speaker 1: these are real cities that you can walk around. So
Speaker 1: when I, you know, get wind up in a hotel,
Speaker 1: I'm always hopeful that it's close to the center where
Speaker 1: I can get up and walk around and so forth.
Speaker 1: Are you doing, Freddie? Freddie just walked by. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Now that happens in the moment of this, uh conversation, Well,
Speaker 1: it happens. So your love for a city. You you
Speaker 1: were born in Rochester, right, Rochester, New York, which is
Speaker 1: small I know nothing about. I know nothing about Rochester.
Speaker 1: Rochester used to be a thrive place in upstate New
Speaker 1: York on Lake Ontario because of three industries Kodak, Bauschan,
Speaker 1: Lam and Xerox. But they are now all of them
Speaker 1: pretty much gone. Each of them has suffered either lack
Speaker 1: of business. Kodak, for instance, did not get on the
Speaker 1: digital camera parade or train pick your metaphor, and wound
Speaker 1: up losing their business. So now it just makes chemicals
Speaker 1: in a small amount of film. But they were the
Speaker 1: originators of strip film. They were the ones that made
Speaker 1: movies possible with the kind of strip film that they
Speaker 1: shoot movies out. Have done for not quite a hundred years,
Speaker 1: but a long time, a long time. What do you
Speaker 1: remember about Rochester. It's cold in the winter. There's an
Speaker 1: awful lot of snow. We once, when I was in
Speaker 1: high school, got a over one hundred sixty inches of snow.
Speaker 1: One's winter one hundred and sixty inches. And almost any
Speaker 1: year you can go around Rochester and if you find
Speaker 1: the a shaded spot where they have pushed snow together
Speaker 1: in a parking lot, for instance, there's still piles of snow.
Speaker 1: And it's now the middle of June, so there's always snow. Well,
Speaker 1: it finally goes away in June, but there are piles
Speaker 1: of snow dirty by now, and you know, but it's
Speaker 1: very snowy, I mean, besides the snow. Do you have
Speaker 1: fun memories of that place? Of course, you grew up
Speaker 1: in a place I thought it was the best place
Speaker 1: in the world. Where were you like back then? What
Speaker 1: was I like? Yeah? Same was Robert like Robert Foster
Speaker 1: as a high school kid without much direction. I my father,
Speaker 1: who was my father, who had an interesting life of
Speaker 1: his own, who was a logger and then an elephant
Speaker 1: trainer on the Ringling circus and then flew in World
Speaker 1: War two and then came out and started a little business,
Speaker 1: a dry cleaning business. That's a hell of a unique life. Well,
Speaker 1: he had a unique life. And he always, however, said
Speaker 1: you're going to go to college, Bob. So I had
Speaker 1: the initial notion, whatever college was, I was going to go.
Speaker 1: So he says, you have to go to college. He
Speaker 1: insisted that I was going to go to college. And
Speaker 1: so eventually I graduated from high school and applied several schools,
Speaker 1: got in one, went there for a year, Heidelberg College
Speaker 1: in Ohio. Then I transferred to a place closer to home.
Speaker 1: I had a girlfriend in Rochester, so I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be that far away. So I went to Alford University,
Speaker 1: which is about sixty miles from Rochester. And then after
Speaker 1: three semesters, I couldn't take it anymore and I transferred
Speaker 1: to the University of Rochester and I graduated from the university.
Speaker 1: So so was this Did you move back for the girl? Well,
Speaker 1: you know some it's it's strange how things happened. Uh,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the same girl that I that I that
Speaker 1: I traveled to Rochester for. It was a new girl.
Speaker 1: It was no girl at all. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: get closer to home. But I did meet a girl,
Speaker 1: and my first day of my senior year in college.
Speaker 1: Eventually I married her and we have three daughters. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: that's and did you know when you met her you
Speaker 1: were a senior in college somewhet around my ages. I
Speaker 1: can't even fathom seeing someone now and being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I'll marry that person, and well falling in love.
Speaker 1: Everybody understands that and uh. And it was the very
Speaker 1: first day of my senior year at the university. I
Speaker 1: pulled into a parking spot, and before I could even
Speaker 1: turn off the engine, in front of my car walked
Speaker 1: a beautiful brunette. She was wearing a black London fog raincoat,
Speaker 1: high heels. I was struck by lightning. I leaped out
Speaker 1: of the car. I followed the girl. I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of something to say. She walked into the auditorium.
Speaker 1: I followed her into the AUDITORI and there they were
Speaker 1: doing an audition for Bye Bye Birdie. I had never
Speaker 1: seen the play, and I hadn't seen the movie, but
Speaker 1: I had seen the trailer to the movie, and I
Speaker 1: knew it was about a guy with a gold suit
Speaker 1: who did who did an impression of Elvis Presley. I said,
Speaker 1: that's how I'll meet the girl. I'll be in the play. Mike,
Speaker 1: you were committed to this? Well, you know, I was
Speaker 1: following some instinct and I auditioned for the play for
Speaker 1: the part of the guy with a gold suit. They
Speaker 1: didn't give it to me. They put me in the chorus.
Speaker 1: I went the following day to look for my name
Speaker 1: by the guy with a gold suit. It wasn't there.
Speaker 1: My name was by the chorus. I said, nah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be in the chorus. And then I thought, well, gee,
Speaker 1: I like to meet that girl in the chorus. No,
Speaker 1: she was in. She was in the production. She was
Speaker 1: I don't remember quite what, but I decided to stick.
Speaker 1: I did meet the girl, and eventually, a couple of
Speaker 1: years later, I called her up. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: after a lot of things had transpired, including me going
Speaker 1: to New York City and getting a job and being
Speaker 1: on Broadway. And I came back and called her up
Speaker 1: and said, hey, June, you remember me, and she said sure.
Speaker 1: I said, let's have coffee. And I was broke at
Speaker 1: the time, so coffee was a limit. And I said,
Speaker 1: and after several days I proposed to her. So I
Speaker 1: had held this in my mind for a very long time.
Speaker 1: So you guys had a coffee date. We had a
Speaker 1: coffee date. It extended to dates four or five nights
Speaker 1: in a row, and that was the U And that
Speaker 1: was all you needed. That was all I needed. That's
Speaker 1: incredible you. I mean, I don't know, maybe it's a strange,
Speaker 1: sincerely generational thing, but to me, like, that's an amazing
Speaker 1: Like five dates, Robert, if I'd proposed to someone after
Speaker 1: five dates, I mean, they would strangle me. Your mother
Speaker 1: would kill you. They would, yeah, her first. And your
Speaker 1: parents what did they think? Well, I'm I've always always
Speaker 1: had my own choices. One of the things I I
Speaker 1: am grateful for is, uh the kind of freedom that
Speaker 1: my mother and father always seemed to give me. My father, boy,
Speaker 1: he gave me something when I was five years old
Speaker 1: that probably, uh what probably was a an indicator for me.
Speaker 1: I lived down a little street. The street was, you know,
Speaker 1: not heavily traveled, and there was a girl across the
Speaker 1: street who I liked. The name was grew Ball, Janice
Speaker 1: grew Ball, and I was crazy about Janice grew Ball.
Speaker 1: She was six, I was five, And during those days,
Speaker 1: you had to get somebody to cross you across the street.
Speaker 1: I had to get my aunts or my mother or
Speaker 1: somebody to let me cross the street. My father gave
Speaker 1: me some instruction on how you watch for cars when
Speaker 1: there wore some they weren't a lot of cars, and
Speaker 1: he gave me the permission to cross the street on
Speaker 1: my own. I was five, she was six. I could
Speaker 1: cross the street and she couldn't. I felt like a
Speaker 1: big guy. Oh, big five year old man. Big five
Speaker 1: year old man. So I can tell you that my
Speaker 1: father gave me the responsibility that I needed to make
Speaker 1: my own choices with. And I've done that for my
Speaker 1: own children. I've given them, you know, I thought a
Speaker 1: great deal about parenting. I've got four, four children, and
Speaker 1: I as early as they could take any responsibility of
Speaker 1: any kind for picking their own clothes or cleaning up
Speaker 1: their room or whatever it was, I gave them the
Speaker 1: responsibility so that they would know what what mistakes cost them.
Speaker 1: So you were not. You weren't someone when they went
Speaker 1: away for school that was upset. You seem you were
Speaker 1: you okay, You were just like, oh, well you're mature
Speaker 1: and you're growing up and you's time to go. Well, sure,
Speaker 1: you look, you cannot you can't protect them enough. Sooner
Speaker 1: or later, they're driving a car, sooner or later, they've
Speaker 1: got to be responsible for what happens to them, and
Speaker 1: whether they get home at night and all the rest.
Speaker 1: So you propose, she says, yes, Yes, And you guys
Speaker 1: moved to New York. No, we got married in Rochester.
Speaker 1: The minister thought for sure she was pregnant because of
Speaker 1: the speed with which I insisted we do this. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to do it quick because I had a
Speaker 1: deal at Fox. I had been on Broadway in a
Speaker 1: You said you were poor in New York. Pardon me,
Speaker 1: you said you were pretty poor in New York. Oh,
Speaker 1: I had nothing. I broke for many, many years. How
Speaker 1: did you make it work? Which part being poor in
Speaker 1: a city like that? Well, there's two rules of money.
Speaker 1: I have two rules of money. Rule number one, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter how little you got, you can survive on it.
Speaker 1: Rule two, it doesn't matter how much you got, you
Speaker 1: can spend it all and be in trouble. So when
Speaker 1: did you learn that? Oh? I don't know. I probably
Speaker 1: learned it early, but I formulated that particular little those
Speaker 1: little rules not so long ago. Right, they're good rules,
Speaker 1: they're good rules. Let's say, so you guys moved back
Speaker 1: to Rochester. No, what do you get married to Rochester?
Speaker 1: And Rochester? We she hit a car. We drove to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles from Rochester from Rochester in nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: on Root sixty six when it was still when there
Speaker 1: still worth the Root sixty six. Tell me what is that?
Speaker 1: What does that ride look? To move from Rochester your
Speaker 1: hometown and you're married and you're starting this whole new
Speaker 1: life and you have this deal and marriage is new
Speaker 1: and you're taking your this is a long drive. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, the first step in our in
Speaker 1: our married life. Yeah, that was their honeymoon somewhat. We
Speaker 1: got here to Los Angeles after I suppose three days
Speaker 1: or four days, you know, we were I drove steady
Speaker 1: and we took an apartment right close to where we
Speaker 1: are now on Fountain Avenue, and the phone was installed.
Speaker 1: Took several days to install a phone in those days.
Speaker 1: And the very first phone call was to the agent.
Speaker 1: The agent says to me, do you know who John
Speaker 1: Houston is? I said, no, I don't. He said, well,
Speaker 1: he's a big guy in this business and he wants
Speaker 1: to meet you for reflections in a Golden Eye. I
Speaker 1: read it quick. I jumped on an airplane. I flew
Speaker 1: to New York City. It was a hot Saturday. I
Speaker 1: found this hotel where I'm gonna meet this John Houston.
Speaker 1: I walked into the lobby of a hotel on Madison Avenue,
Speaker 1: and as my eyes are adjusting to the dimness of
Speaker 1: the light inside, everywhere, I look everywhere. Everywhere there's guys.
Speaker 1: They all look like me. This is a cattle call.
Speaker 1: Holy Moley. I thought this guy wanted to bet me
Speaker 1: for reflections in a Golden Eye. Flew all the way
Speaker 1: from California. I took a hike. I walked around Midtown
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours. You didn't even talk to him.
Speaker 1: Oh were there were forty guys in the lobby. I
Speaker 1: walked around. I talked to myself. I said, Bob, you
Speaker 1: came all the way from California. Don't you think you
Speaker 1: gotta go over there and say something to this guy.
Speaker 1: I had a plane at five o'clock to go back
Speaker 1: to Rochester and then on to here to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: And eventually I talked myself into going back. I looked around.
Speaker 1: When I got to the hotel, there were less guys.
Speaker 1: I put my name at the bottom of the list.
Speaker 1: Eventually somebody calls my name. I'm escorted up the elevator,
Speaker 1: which I'm boy. I think I'm Robert Forrester. By then, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had done a play and as soon as I
Speaker 1: as soon as I joined the Union, I realized there
Speaker 1: was a guy by the name of Robert Foster in
Speaker 1: the Union. And so the agent snuck an oar in
Speaker 1: my name, and now I'm Robert Forster. And eventually somebody
Speaker 1: is or scored it out. I'm escorted in. I'm introduced
Speaker 1: to this tall old guy, John Houston. What have you done?
Speaker 1: What have you done? I said, Look, I haven't done much.
Speaker 1: It did one Broadway play. I wasn't bad, but I
Speaker 1: don't make myself an actor. Is that how he sounded? Yes,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard John Houston? Not? I haven't heard
Speaker 1: your impression of him before. Well, they wait a minute.
Speaker 1: It's not a bad impression. Let's let's start with the facts.
Speaker 1: It's not bad at all. He said, what have you done?
Speaker 1: And I said, I hadn't done much. I never made
Speaker 1: a movie. I never I don't know what the tricks are.
Speaker 1: But if you hire me, I told him, I'll give
Speaker 1: you your money's worth. He says, Ray ray Stark, a
Speaker 1: big producer. Come in here, Ray, I'd like you to
Speaker 1: meet an act door. And I'm thinking, who is this guy?
Speaker 1: Told him I only did it once. I didn't oversell myself.
Speaker 1: Incomes Ray Stark. I shake hands with him. I turned
Speaker 1: back to the big guy. The big guy says, you'll
Speaker 1: be hearing. I'm awes. I figured when somebody says you'll
Speaker 1: be hearing from us, you never hear from anybody. I
Speaker 1: went back to the airport. I flew to Rochester to
Speaker 1: say hello to my father on my way back out
Speaker 1: here to Los Angeles. Friend. When I got off the
Speaker 1: plane in Rochester, only two hours after this meeting with
Speaker 1: John Houston, my father says, quick, call your agents. They
Speaker 1: just made a deal. So I was astounded. I had
Speaker 1: no idea they make they make decisions that fast. But
Speaker 1: there you go. My first picture is reflections in a
Speaker 1: golden eye with John Houston and Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando
Speaker 1: and other notables and and and there you go. I
Speaker 1: had no idea what was at stake. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that there were a gigantic number of actors and a
Speaker 1: very small number of roles jobs. So, not knowing that
Speaker 1: was my best friend, I went to New York without
Speaker 1: having a clue. You were on sething Marlon Brandow on
Speaker 1: your first movie. Yeah, Elizabeth Taylor, how do you have
Speaker 1: the SiGe so call? At nineteen sixty six? I was
Speaker 1: twenty four at the time, maybe maybe twenty five. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was just twenty five going on to that set.
Speaker 1: Are you feeling terrified? I mean just intimidated, not at all.
Speaker 1: I somehow thought the only people who had anything to
Speaker 1: worry about were them, because they knew what they were doing.
Speaker 1: You know, they couldn't have any confidence in me. I
Speaker 1: had confidence in myself, but they couldn't have much confidence
Speaker 1: in a guy untested. So no, I was, as I say,
Speaker 1: I had no idea what was at stake. I did
Speaker 1: not I did not know how rare this opportunity was.
Speaker 1: I just was gliding through without knowing that it is
Speaker 1: such a long shot. Right. So do you remember a
Speaker 1: certain moment on set on that first movie of yours? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I remember some moments. John Houston was very good to me,
Speaker 1: I now having told him that I did not had
Speaker 1: never been in a movie, and I didn't know how
Speaker 1: they were made. About a week after I got back
Speaker 1: here to Los Angeles, after my agents said that they
Speaker 1: had made this deal, they arranged a telephone call between
Speaker 1: me and Houston. And now I'm on the phone with
Speaker 1: Houston and I say, you know, I appreciate very much
Speaker 1: that you hired me, and I thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I said, but do you remember, I said, do you
Speaker 1: remember I told you I never did a movie? He
Speaker 1: says on the telephone, I remember, I said, well, and
Speaker 1: reading my mind, he says, I'll give you some instruction. Great,
Speaker 1: the guy's going to tell me how to do it.
Speaker 1: About a month later, he comes out to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I meet him at Western Costume. We're gonna do the wardrobe.
Speaker 1: I go straight to him. I said, look, they sent
Speaker 1: me the script and I read the script and you
Speaker 1: said you had some instructions for me. What are they?
Speaker 1: And he says, but not yet a bobby, Okay, not yet.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's gonna take me on a set, Maybe he's
Speaker 1: gonna take me to lunch. Maybe who knows, But you know,
Speaker 1: he's the boss. And I'm willing to wait. And I
Speaker 1: wait and I wait, and days go by and nobody calls,
Speaker 1: and days turn into weeks, and nobody calls, and weeks
Speaker 1: turn into months and nobody calls. And during this time,
Speaker 1: Montgomery Cliff dies and has to be replaced by Marlon Brando.
Speaker 1: Montgomery Cliff was the original character, and during that period
Speaker 1: he died. This thing took months to put the picture
Speaker 1: back together and to hire Marlin and all of that.
Speaker 1: Finally I do get a call. We're gonna be down
Speaker 1: Long Island at an old military for ten days, and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna go to Rome, Italy for twelve weeks. Wow.
Speaker 1: I arrived three days early on Long Island at an
Speaker 1: old Mitchell field, and I go straight to Houston and
Speaker 1: I say, look, all summer long, I've been reading this
Speaker 1: script and you said you had some instructions for me.
Speaker 1: What are they? And he says, but not yet, Moby Okay.
Speaker 1: I don't know what he's waiting for. But now it's
Speaker 1: the night before we're gonna shoot. We're all having dinner,
Speaker 1: everybody in the casting crew, not Elizabeth Taylor, not Marlon Brando,
Speaker 1: but everybody else. And I'm sitting right next to Houston,
Speaker 1: and all during dinner, I assume he's going to lean
Speaker 1: over and cost me these pearls of wisdom. No such thing.
Speaker 1: At the end of dinner, I lean over to him
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, look at tomorrow morning, we're gonna
Speaker 1: start this thing. Don't you think now is the time
Speaker 1: to give me those instructions? He says, Tomorrow morning, Bobby,
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning finally comes. They put me in makeup, they
Speaker 1: put me in wardrobe, They stick me in a car.
Speaker 1: They drive to the set. The car comes to a stop.
Speaker 1: I get one foot out. The back door went from behind.
Speaker 1: I hear Houston say, now's the time, Bobby. I say, shoot,
Speaker 1: I'm all ears. He says, go take a look through
Speaker 1: the lens. I walk over to the camera. The cameraman
Speaker 1: steps aside. I look through the lens. I turned back
Speaker 1: to Houston and Houston has his hands the way they
Speaker 1: do when they show you what the frame line is,
Speaker 1: with his fingers, and he says, see those those are
Speaker 1: the frame lines. I look back again and I said,
Speaker 1: you mean that line that shows the cameraman what the
Speaker 1: audience sees. He says, those are the frame lines. Now
Speaker 1: ask yourself this what needs to be there. He gave
Speaker 1: me one zen like piece of instruction. He made me
Speaker 1: realize that what was necessary in that frame line was
Speaker 1: my responsibility. My responsibility, and I had the authority to
Speaker 1: put inside those frame lines what was necessary. He didn't
Speaker 1: tell me that I was going to have to do
Speaker 1: a detective job to figure out what the writer intended, because,
Speaker 1: as you know, movies are shot one shot at a time.
Speaker 1: It's not you don't shoot a movie. You shoot one
Speaker 1: shot at a time, and in that fraction of the
Speaker 1: content of the movie, the writer has some needs for you.
Speaker 1: He wrote the thing with intentions, and you've got to
Speaker 1: understand the writer's needs so that when you hear action
Speaker 1: you can deliver what the writer needs. That's not the
Speaker 1: end of it. The director has created a shot, and
Speaker 1: in the shot, maybe there's a moving camera, or maybe
Speaker 1: you've got a move, or maybe you've got to deliver
Speaker 1: some dialogue. Maybe you got to put a cup in
Speaker 1: the middle of the table or move some props around.
Speaker 1: You have to know what the director's needs from you
Speaker 1: are so that when you hear action, you can deliver
Speaker 1: the director's needs. That isn't the end of it. The
Speaker 1: one who set the lights wants you to be in them.
Speaker 1: The one listening for the words got to hear them correctly.
Speaker 1: Otherwise at the end of the shot, somebody says, no
Speaker 1: good for sounds, Start again. Or if I put the
Speaker 1: cup in the wrong spot, somebody says, no good for continuity,
Speaker 1: Start again. Or if I do something too big for
Speaker 1: the size shot I'm in, somebody behind the lens says,
Speaker 1: no good for composition. Start again. Everybody has needs of you,
Speaker 1: and you must deliver a stroke that advantages everybody's needs
Speaker 1: at once. And that's not the end of it. The
Speaker 1: other actor may have to do this. They have to
Speaker 1: ascend emotionally in a scene. You've got to deliver a
Speaker 1: little ramp. You've got to create a ramp so that
Speaker 1: the other actor can emotionally ascend in the scene. And
Speaker 1: for the one who is cutting this picture together, you've
Speaker 1: got to understand how the roller coaster track of this
Speaker 1: movie is constructed so that you can contribute to the
Speaker 1: downs and the ups and going around the curves. If
Speaker 1: you're not believable, your audience won't be with you at
Speaker 1: the end of the ride. You owe your audience something
Speaker 1: as well. And for the one who hired you, you
Speaker 1: are responsible for helping them get their schedule done on time.
Speaker 1: You got to be ready on that first shot so
Speaker 1: that when you hear action, you can deliver a good
Speaker 1: take quickly so that they can cut print and move
Speaker 1: on to the next shot. It is a real interesting proposition.
Speaker 1: Each shot is a little bit like a magic trick.
Speaker 1: You got to learn the trick. You gotta be You've
Speaker 1: got to understand what has to happen in that trick,
Speaker 1: and when you hear action, you must fulfill the needs
Speaker 1: of everybody on that set. Everybody is your boss. Everybody
Speaker 1: needs something from you. And creating an action which advantages
Speaker 1: everybody's needs at once is not that hard actors do
Speaker 1: it eight days a week. So I remind people who
Speaker 1: are not actors that if they wish, they can create
Speaker 1: better actions ones that that contribute to everybody else's needs.
Speaker 1: It is not that hard actors do it all the time.
Speaker 1: It is possible to create a stroke which advantages more
Speaker 1: than just yourself. And these are the kind of things
Speaker 1: that on a daily basis, anybody can be doing. It
Speaker 1: goes back to the same thing you you were talking
Speaker 1: about with parenting. Houston gave you that responsibility from day one. Yes,
Speaker 1: he gave me the responsibility and the authority to do
Speaker 1: it right. You had done no movies, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: what's necessary in the frame? Yep, it was zen life.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's sort of correct description. I
Speaker 1: think it very little piece of information that has unfolded
Speaker 1: to um to unfolded, uh to to be what it
Speaker 1: is that I you know, I go with that information.
Speaker 1: I go with that is is true? Um, Actors you
Speaker 1: never know where you're going to start picking up information.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure that every actor from the first time
Speaker 1: he or she ever said to himself, God, I think
Speaker 1: I'd like to be an actor. You start collecting ideas,
Speaker 1: and that was an important idea that I that I
Speaker 1: was given John Huston. So what happens up for sixty seven? Um?
Speaker 1: I have an ascending career for about five years, and
Speaker 1: then I have a television show that fails Banyon uh
Speaker 1: was canceled. Uh. Then I do a couple of pictures.
Speaker 1: Then I have another television series that fails, and then
Speaker 1: I start sliding hold on where where we're jumping ahead? Well,
Speaker 1: you said, what happens after sixty seven? You know, I
Speaker 1: had five years of s end and then about twenty
Speaker 1: seven years of descend. Well, let's uh, what happens? What
Speaker 1: year is medium cool. Medium cool is nineteen sixty eight. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is like right after that, Yeah, you didn't
Speaker 1: medium cool? Well right after um reflections in a golden eye,
Speaker 1: I did the well I went. I went to work
Speaker 1: as an iron worker for a while because I didn't
Speaker 1: have a job, and then I got a job with
Speaker 1: Gregory Peck a stalking moon, a Western and then medium cool.
Speaker 1: What was what was Gregory Peck like? He is as
Speaker 1: he was as good a guy as he seems. It
Speaker 1: seems like one of the best. Yes, what a good guy, queen,
Speaker 1: lovely guy. Uh had a great voice and uh and
Speaker 1: uh was a genuine uh gentleman. Uh. Did you guys
Speaker 1: become friends after that? Well? Yeah, you know, friends all
Speaker 1: in respect that. Yes, he was a good guy. He
Speaker 1: loved it when I when I got nominated UM for
Speaker 1: Jackie Brown, which is many years later, Yeah, ran into
Speaker 1: him only rarely. He I went to him to ask
Speaker 1: him how you get into the the Academy, right, and
Speaker 1: he sponsored me. He was my sponsor into the Academy.
Speaker 1: The first time I asked him, he said, well, you
Speaker 1: have to do a few pictures. Um. I asked him
Speaker 1: right away, how do you get in the Academy, and
Speaker 1: he said, you give yourself a little time, have a
Speaker 1: few more starts, and uh and and apply and they
Speaker 1: will the nominating committee will will talk about it and
Speaker 1: uh and then they let me run Greg repact. To me,
Speaker 1: having only seen him in movies, seems like the type
Speaker 1: of person that I would like to go to for advice.
Speaker 1: He was a genuine guy, and you know, he was
Speaker 1: what he looked like. George Clooney is another good guy.
Speaker 1: He's what he looks like. He's a real good guy.
Speaker 1: And you see these things in their work. I remind
Speaker 1: actors if they want to be admired by an audience,
Speaker 1: they need to make themselves into someone who their audience
Speaker 1: can admire. Um And so the camera looks deep at you.
Speaker 1: The camera really catches who you are. And if you're
Speaker 1: a jerk, chances out of the camera will catch it.
Speaker 1: So if you want to be a guy who they admire,
Speaker 1: be a guy who can be admired. So you consider
Speaker 1: yourself a good guy. I consider myself a straight shooter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I play, for the most part, good guys until you
Speaker 1: did a stretch of bad guys before we get to that.
Speaker 1: Because I do want to talk about your thirteen years
Speaker 1: of bad years of playing there. Yeah, bad guys? What
Speaker 1: was medium cool? Sort of? I think grown and cult
Speaker 1: status and ascended only since, you know, since coming out
Speaker 1: in sixty eight, and I know what Wesley recently passed away.
Speaker 1: That was one of you wanted to I'm disinterested on
Speaker 1: what happened on that shoot. What do you remember about
Speaker 1: the movie? Well, the movie was. The movie started out
Speaker 1: as UM, a story about a kid from Apple ha
Speaker 1: who who loved pigeons and uh and a news photographer,
Speaker 1: a news cameraman U in the city of Chicago during
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen sixty eight, which was eventually a
Speaker 1: very important political years who as history tells us. But
Speaker 1: the if the script was call it one hundred pages long.
Speaker 1: We shot at least two hundred pages worth of material.
Speaker 1: So one thing led to another. I did an impre
Speaker 1: obvisation that led to something else. We shot at a
Speaker 1: fight fight Jim. We shot in Washington, DC. We shot
Speaker 1: in Minnesota, the Illinois National Guard taking training. This picture,
Speaker 1: expanded by virtue of the political implicated the political leanings
Speaker 1: of Haskell excellent. Were you as political as the film
Speaker 1: at that time? No, not at all. He was the
Speaker 1: political guy. I was non political. Politics is a strange thing.
Speaker 1: Politics really is another word for self interest, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter when people say, well it's political, that just
Speaker 1: means that somebody is self interested in trying to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, gained position. I had no politics at the time,
Speaker 1: but I realized early on that the character that I
Speaker 1: was playing, a cameraman, had to have a either a
Speaker 1: political view, which I noticed that an awful lot of
Speaker 1: the newspeople I came in contact with had strong political views,
Speaker 1: or what I thought was more appropriate, and that is
Speaker 1: a neutral political point of view, so that the story,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, could be told with not a biased
Speaker 1: on it. I somehow assumed that that's what journalism was,
Speaker 1: non biased reporting, and so I brought a frame of reference.
Speaker 1: Whatever that was at the time, I can't quite remember,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's fifty almost fifty years ago. People
Speaker 1: rarely say the real reasons for things. Big corporations never
Speaker 1: do just politics, playing bureaucratic politics. So after medium cool,
Speaker 1: you have this ascendants, you do more and more roles.
Speaker 1: You have a television show that doesn't work out, another
Speaker 1: television show that doesn't work out. When when does this
Speaker 1: like the slide happen. The slide happens gradually. You recognize
Speaker 1: it quite at first, you just know that things are slipping,
Speaker 1: and then they keep slipping, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you're uh, your term, you're working for a scale. When
Speaker 1: was that if at all? Oh? In the uh in
Speaker 1: the eighties, nineties. Yes, By the nineties, I was, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, working for anybody that I any job I
Speaker 1: could get. I had four children, So in the it
Speaker 1: is in early nineties, and it's it's not going well.
Speaker 1: Uh No, but it's always going well because you know
Speaker 1: here and there, you get work here and there, you
Speaker 1: get to apply your trade. Whatever it was. By then,
Speaker 1: I felt sure I knew more about it than I
Speaker 1: did when I first went to John Houston and said,
Speaker 1: I never made a movie. I don't know how they're made.
Speaker 1: Did you ever feel discouraged? Um discouraged. I don't feel
Speaker 1: discouraged much, but I can tell you this, there was
Speaker 1: a moment. And what year could it have been. It
Speaker 1: was in the mid early nineties. I'd say I was
Speaker 1: a runner. I was been a runner for years and
Speaker 1: uh and I ran the nineteen eighty nine marathon here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. The eight or eighty nine. I have
Speaker 1: the shirt. It'll tell me the year they give you
Speaker 1: a shirt if you finished. My mom has done like
Speaker 1: ten marathons. Well, she's a tough guy. Who is my mom?
Speaker 1: Your mom? Well, I don't know. I don't know how
Speaker 1: she's done ten. Well I can tell you she's done
Speaker 1: it with grit and decision and determination. Because there are
Speaker 1: points during that twenty six miles when you say to yourself,
Speaker 1: I can't finish, But you do. You finished because you
Speaker 1: want to, you need to. You yourself says I got to.
Speaker 1: And partly that's the way you run a career. You
Speaker 1: say I've got to. I cannot fail. And so I
Speaker 1: can tell you this. There was a moment at which
Speaker 1: I had stopped running. I had picked up a tennis
Speaker 1: racket and was playing tennis on a daily basis, not much,
Speaker 1: not very well, but just to keep keep myself the physical.
Speaker 1: I'd stopped being a runner. I had run that nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine marathon and ruptured one of my h the
Speaker 1: second remaining cruishit ligament, So I had no cruishit ligament
Speaker 1: going for me from nineteen eighty nine till I had
Speaker 1: my knee replaced about five or six years ago. So
Speaker 1: for twenty years or so, I ran h not. I
Speaker 1: worked on a bad knee. But during that period I
Speaker 1: was playing tennis. And I was going into the tenn
Speaker 1: this park over on Fountain and saying to myself, God,
Speaker 1: am I going to be able to survive? Am I
Speaker 1: going to have to think of something else to do
Speaker 1: for a living? Because I want to get work. I
Speaker 1: had four kids. They were trying to get him through
Speaker 1: college and I and I had the weight of the
Speaker 1: world on my shoulders. I was going into the tennis park,
Speaker 1: and over there waiting for me was old Joe Stein.
Speaker 1: Joe Stein was a psychiatrist. This guy was seventy nine
Speaker 1: years old. He was still he had still writing books,
Speaker 1: He still had patience. This guy could beat me at tennis.
Speaker 1: He couldn't move very well, but all I had to
Speaker 1: do is get the ball back to him. He could
Speaker 1: put it anywhere he wanted on the other court. He
Speaker 1: was good Joe Stein. And here he was waiting for me,
Speaker 1: tapping the ball lightly against the wall, waiting for me.
Speaker 1: And I saw him over there, and I stopped dead
Speaker 1: in my tracks, and I said to myself, that's the end,
Speaker 1: Sir Bob don't quit. If you quit, you got to
Speaker 1: think of something new to do. It's going to take
Speaker 1: you a long time to get good at it, to
Speaker 1: make a living at it. You've been making a living
Speaker 1: at it sort of as an actor. You're getting better
Speaker 1: at it. You know what you're doing now that you
Speaker 1: didn't before. So stick with it. You can win it
Speaker 1: in the late innings if you don't quit. I said that.
Speaker 1: It was an epiphany, and at the very next second
Speaker 1: the epiphany went further. It said, yeah, Bob, but how
Speaker 1: do you get from the whole year in to winning
Speaker 1: it in the late innings? And that's when I said,
Speaker 1: you just deliver the best you can right now. This
Speaker 1: is the right now that you can do your stuff in.
Speaker 1: Your delivering excellence right now will give you the best
Speaker 1: shot at the best future you've got coming. And it
Speaker 1: will and you will get that reward they always tell
Speaker 1: you you're going to get when you deliver your excellence
Speaker 1: right now, the reward of self respect, the reward of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for the good life, both of these
Speaker 1: are huge components of the good life. So I said,
Speaker 1: you deliver excellence right now. That will give you the
Speaker 1: best shot at the best future you've got coming, and
Speaker 1: never quit. You can do it till the end of
Speaker 1: your days. And then I thought to myself, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: how about that good attitude. They always tell you a
Speaker 1: good attitude is essential because if you don't have a
Speaker 1: good attitude, you can't deliver excellence. So Step one, Accept
Speaker 1: all things. It does not matter. It does not matter
Speaker 1: that you're not getting the good jobs anymore. It does
Speaker 1: not matter that they're not giving you the winn a
Speaker 1: bagel anymore. Bob. Put it behind you. Your shoulders relax.
Speaker 1: Suddenly you're breathing easier. Once you accept, you take a
Speaker 1: deep breath. You can accept what is and now move
Speaker 1: on to right now, which is given this moment your best.
Speaker 1: So accept all things that will give you the best shot,
Speaker 1: that will give you a good attitude. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if she doesn't love you anymore, Bob, It does
Speaker 1: not matter all the things that are in the past.
Speaker 1: Once you accept them, you can now move on to
Speaker 1: right now and in the now, delivering excellence. When I
Speaker 1: say excellence, I'm not talking about perfection. Perfection is a
Speaker 1: sure loser. Excellence is merely if I'm going to do
Speaker 1: the job as good as I can think up to
Speaker 1: do it and actually do it that way. That will
Speaker 1: give you the reward that I talked about, the reward
Speaker 1: of self respect and the reward of satisfaction. So the
Speaker 1: three step program that I try to sell to my
Speaker 1: children and to myself, and I know it's true. It
Speaker 1: happened in an epiphany. It was true. Accept all things
Speaker 1: that gives you a good attitude. Deliver excellence right now
Speaker 1: that gives you the best shot, the best future you've
Speaker 1: got coming, and that reward that I talk about, and
Speaker 1: never quit. You can win it in the late innings.
Speaker 1: It's not over till it's over, but then it's really over.
Speaker 1: So deliver your best right now. That's the answer. Who
Speaker 1: didn't love you anymore? Well, anybody who didn't love me anymore?
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, sooner or later, somebody doesn't love
Speaker 1: you anymore. Were there someone in mine when you said that? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the whoever it was that you loved and
Speaker 1: lost that was in nineteen eighty nine. Um, yes, so
Speaker 1: i'd been divorced for a number of years. When did you?
Speaker 1: When did you and your wife split? After about eight years?
Speaker 1: We had three three daughters. Okay, is that painful. All
Speaker 1: all these things are painful. Of course they're painful. Is
Speaker 1: do you think, um that you created this? You say
Speaker 1: you have this epiphany? And I believe in all. I
Speaker 1: think it was clear, and it took it took a
Speaker 1: lot longer to explain than it took to happen. Are
Speaker 1: you religious? No, never happened, not in any particular way.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting Well, sure, the question you ask yourself
Speaker 1: all the important questions. The first important question is where
Speaker 1: did I come from? But what's my purpose? Where do
Speaker 1: I go when I die? Is there God? Did you
Speaker 1: find an answer to any of this? Oh? Sure? Sure?
Speaker 1: I gave myself years and years of wondering, and eventually,
Speaker 1: once I realized that if there is religion of any sort,
Speaker 1: it's got to be from within. If you've got a
Speaker 1: moral compass, it has to come from experience and the inside.
Speaker 1: And so a moral compass is imperative, and how you
Speaker 1: find it and how it manifests itself in you is
Speaker 1: your journey. But once I realized that that if I
Speaker 1: were to because if there is a God, then one
Speaker 1: of the religions probably represents what you are supposed to
Speaker 1: owe to that God. And if there is, and if
Speaker 1: there's so many different religions to pick from, they cannot
Speaker 1: all be correct. It's either one of them is correct
Speaker 1: or none of them are correct, and that leads you
Speaker 1: to be an atheist. But since I'm not that sure
Speaker 1: of it, the agnostic label seems to be the only
Speaker 1: one that I can look to. I'm not sure of
Speaker 1: a lot of things, but I do know that I
Speaker 1: have a moral compass and it serves my interests. Nineties,
Speaker 1: he has some good work, and then Jackie Brown comes,
Speaker 1: and then Jackie Brown. I had only a long shot
Speaker 1: strategy by then, and that is that some kid who
Speaker 1: like me growing up would turn into a movie maker
Speaker 1: and give me a good part. And I was sitting
Speaker 1: right across the street from where we are sitting right now.
Speaker 1: That restaurant was torn down, that what's there now is
Speaker 1: with something else. And I sat there for a long
Speaker 1: time and then walks Quentin Tarantino. And as I saw
Speaker 1: him come in, I had auditioned for him for Reservoir Dogs,
Speaker 1: and so I knew that I had known him. I
Speaker 1: knew that he had known me. I'm not sure he
Speaker 1: would recognize me, but he did. I yelled at him
Speaker 1: and I said, come on over. He came over. We
Speaker 1: sat and we talked for a while. And during this
Speaker 1: conversation I asked him what he was doing and he said,
Speaker 1: I am adapting rum Punch in Elmore Leonard novel to
Speaker 1: a movie. Said why don't you read it? And I
Speaker 1: did read it, And about six months later I walked
Speaker 1: in and went to my started walking toward my my spot.
Speaker 1: I had a spot over there, and as I walked
Speaker 1: around the corner there he was sitting in my chair.
Speaker 1: And as I approached the table, he lifted up this
Speaker 1: this h script and handed it to me and said,
Speaker 1: read this. See I feel like it. So there was
Speaker 1: that long yep, that long, long shot paid off hard
Speaker 1: to know. Uh, you know, you gotta get lucky. I've
Speaker 1: been lucky. I got lucky with John Houston. I got
Speaker 1: lucky with the with the the very first audition I
Speaker 1: did in New York City. Uh and uh and got
Speaker 1: a play and uh so one little step after another,
Speaker 1: you get lucky, you get unlucky. You go through this
Speaker 1: is and that's and it's all fodder for a for life,
Speaker 1: for learning the lessons that uh and for answering those questions.
Speaker 1: Not only where do I come from? And is there God?
Speaker 1: But how do you be a man? What's an artist?
Speaker 1: How do you be a father? What's a husband? These
Speaker 1: are important questions, and sooner or later you've got to
Speaker 1: have answers for them. Did you find an answer for
Speaker 1: the what's an artist? Question? Uh? Yeah, I did? I did.
Speaker 1: I've decided and you know you can. Boy, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of it's pretty subjective. It seems to be subjective.
Speaker 1: There are an awful lot of people who sell art
Speaker 1: who want you to believe that if it hasn't been
Speaker 1: done before, it's art. But simply because something is unique
Speaker 1: and has never been done before, that does not make
Speaker 1: it art. I think that art ought to be I
Speaker 1: think the word ought to be reserved for something of
Speaker 1: high quality and value and something that will have lasting impact.
Speaker 1: That it be that it share a piece of understanding.
Speaker 1: I think that something is art which if the artist
Speaker 1: delivers a stroke, which which which conveys some understanding that you,
Speaker 1: the individual, use your life to understand with, and that
Speaker 1: when you can pass that understanding to someone else by
Speaker 1: something you've created, whether it is uh, you know, physical
Speaker 1: or a character or whatever your medium happens to be,
Speaker 1: that art is the transfer of understanding one to the other.
Speaker 1: Was Jackie Brown one of your favorite films that you
Speaker 1: sure did you know in the moment that you were
Speaker 1: doing something great? Um? I knew that I hadn't had
Speaker 1: a big start in a long time. I knew that
Speaker 1: I had gathered an awful lot in the years that
Speaker 1: I was not working much, and I knew that I
Speaker 1: was well cast. Uh. He it was a guy who
Speaker 1: was you know, had been there for a long time
Speaker 1: and was unsung, and yet was was credible and knew
Speaker 1: what he was doing and did it. Tarantino is an artist.
Speaker 1: He wrote great material. The actor doesn't think at up. Um.
Speaker 1: He created great shots and he gave the actors the
Speaker 1: confidence to know that they were listen. He cast them, right.
Speaker 1: That's that's the great, big barrier. Once you're cast, you
Speaker 1: know that they believe that you embody what it is
Speaker 1: they are hoping that you can now deliver on a
Speaker 1: daily basis. You got nominated for that role. It was
Speaker 1: your first nomination, right, Yes, when that happened, was that
Speaker 1: a moment of affirmation? Yes, I'm sure it was. And
Speaker 1: you need it. You need that, Um, whether you need
Speaker 1: it or not, it's a gigantic affirmation, and I can
Speaker 1: remember the exact day. Now. I never imagine that I
Speaker 1: would get nominated for that, but there was a little
Speaker 1: bit of talk prior to the announcements, and of course
Speaker 1: you are expected to slug that movie. And we did press,
Speaker 1: and we did press, and we did press far different
Speaker 1: from anything that was in my earlier career, because twenty
Speaker 1: years or twenty five or more years prior I had
Speaker 1: had a bigger career, and they did press differently. But
Speaker 1: now it's Jackie Brown, and now it's nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: or ninety ninety seven, nineteen ninety seven, and now they
Speaker 1: do a gigantic amount of press. And so we had
Speaker 1: been doing press. But on the morning that it was announced,
Speaker 1: I cannot say that I didn't wake up and my
Speaker 1: eyes looked at the clock, and it was five thirty
Speaker 1: or whatever time they announced them, and the phone didn't ring,
Speaker 1: and so I went back to sleep. And now maybe
Speaker 1: five thirty five or five forty or whatever, they just
Speaker 1: a few minutes later, the phone does ring. It's one
Speaker 1: of my ex wives, Robert, you gotten nominated, followed by
Speaker 1: you know the sound when call waiting and I and
Speaker 1: I said to wait a minute, like, I gotta answer
Speaker 1: this other, followed by someone else, followed by someone else.
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you I was on that phone. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't stop ringing. Finally, after about twenty minutes, the publicist
Speaker 1: got on the phone. She said, I've been calling for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes. I said, well, jeezus, a lot of people
Speaker 1: have been calling me. She said, there's a car waiting
Speaker 1: for you downstairs. I said for what. She said, well,
Speaker 1: you have to go do interviews. There are interviews all
Speaker 1: set up for and I had no idea that was required.
Speaker 1: So I jumped in and out of the shower, I
Speaker 1: put on a sweater, I jumped downstairs, I got in
Speaker 1: the car, and nineteen I think there were nineteen, twenty nine, nineteen,
Speaker 1: I don't know. There was a nine. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of interviews I did that day. Some of
Speaker 1: them were prints, some of them were this kind radio somewhere, television.
Speaker 1: And it might have been two in the afternoon, three
Speaker 1: in the afternoon when the car was driving me home,
Speaker 1: and I remember the sun coming through the window, and
Speaker 1: that was when I had the very warm feeling. I said, wow,
Speaker 1: you didn't get nominated because people check your name off.
Speaker 1: People had to write your name. That's how you're nominated.
Speaker 1: You They nominate five names, and if you get enough nominations,
Speaker 1: not enough people write your name down, you're one of
Speaker 1: the nominees. And that is the moment at which I
Speaker 1: felt that gigantic feeling of of warmth and gratitude that
Speaker 1: I said, Wow, these people, your peers, wrote your name down.
Speaker 1: They know who you are. And because I had had
Speaker 1: a career that was five years on the upside and
Speaker 1: twenty seven many years on the downslide, and so there
Speaker 1: was a moment of course when I imagined, you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't in it anymore, but here comes Jackie Brown
Speaker 1: and here comes a nomination. And that moment, I can
Speaker 1: tell you, was the moment you were asking about, the
Speaker 1: moment at which you feel, wow, they wrote your name down.
Speaker 1: By you're not dead yet. It was like the epiphany,
Speaker 1: yeah they had. It was a great moment and it
Speaker 1: came and it came true. Though you prophesize that if
Speaker 1: you just well, you know, you you keep yourself ready
Speaker 1: in hopes. Yeah, it's an amazing story. Where are you going,
Speaker 1: Spain Madrid or Barcelona? Madrid? First? Have you been there? Here?
Speaker 1: They don't eat dinner until midnight. You want to go, Thanks,
Speaker 1: but you have a good time. You sure, I can't
Speaker 1: twist your arm. Thanks for saying that. But now they
Speaker 1: scared of me a little bit. I have this menu
Speaker 1: up in front of man, all right, so you're looking
Speaker 1: at the menu now. During the years in which I
Speaker 1: wasn't working much, I decided that I'd better open that
Speaker 1: little actors workshop, because that's what you do here in
Speaker 1: Hollywood when you don't have when you're not getting work.
Speaker 1: And I did. I opened up a little workshop real cheap.
Speaker 1: I always told actors, find a place that's cheap. If
Speaker 1: it's not cheap, somebody's got their hand in your pocket
Speaker 1: and will never take it out. And you should work
Speaker 1: every single time. That's the two things I remind actors
Speaker 1: when they're looking for a class, one that's cheap, and
Speaker 1: when they work every single time. And after about a
Speaker 1: year of doing that, I had been telling these stories
Speaker 1: and somebody said, why don't you have a story night,
Speaker 1: And so we invited a bunch of people who had
Speaker 1: never been to the class, and I did the stories.
Speaker 1: That was the beginning the menu. So all of those
Speaker 1: stories were stories that I had told actors. And then
Speaker 1: there was a moment at which a guy handed me
Speaker 1: a magazine called Speakers for Free, and I decided, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I'll do. I'll become a speaker and this
Speaker 1: is these are my topics. And so I created a
Speaker 1: menu of about fifteen items and put myself in that magazine.
Speaker 1: It was not free, by the way that the ad
Speaker 1: and the first call I got was from a corrections
Speaker 1: officer in the Los Angeles or La County Department of Corrections.
Speaker 1: He said, would you be willing to speak to some
Speaker 1: white collar criminals? And I said sure, and so I
Speaker 1: prepared my menu. That's when I first put the stuff
Speaker 1: down on paper, and I drove downtown to a facility
Speaker 1: where these white collar criminals were all waiting. And I
Speaker 1: saw the building. It was up there, up ahead on
Speaker 1: the street that I was on. And as I approached
Speaker 1: just the parking lot, I got cold feet, and I
Speaker 1: drove past the parking lot and went started around the block,
Speaker 1: and I said, Oh, what's what's wrong, Bob? What are you?
Speaker 1: What are you scared of? Bob? You know they're just
Speaker 1: getting there. Do your thing. The man whose first movie
Speaker 1: was on the set with Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor
Speaker 1: is now scared to do speech in front of white
Speaker 1: collar criminals. I can tell you, I asked myself, what
Speaker 1: do you think you have to tell these guys. These
Speaker 1: guys have had real life experiences, they've been in jail,
Speaker 1: and here you are coming to talk to them about
Speaker 1: what about your bologne? So I drove around the block
Speaker 1: and as I was about ready to pull into the
Speaker 1: parking lot for the second time, I got cold feet again. Oh.
Speaker 1: I drove past the parking lot and went around the
Speaker 1: block one more time. Now I'm now I'm sweating, and
Speaker 1: now I'm flopping, and now I'm thinking, oh god, Bob,
Speaker 1: what are you going to tell these guys? What have
Speaker 1: you got to tell them? And then like that epiphany,
Speaker 1: it came to me, Bob, tell them the truth. And
Speaker 1: once I said that to myself, it was easy to
Speaker 1: pull into the parking lot. I parked, I walked in there.
Speaker 1: Here's about fifty guys. They all have white jumpsuits on.
Speaker 1: I passed out my menu. I said, okay, they gave
Speaker 1: me an hour and I said pick something from the menu.
Speaker 1: Somebody said one of the menu items. I started talking
Speaker 1: and I can tell you that that hour went by
Speaker 1: like that. That's when I realized that I could get
Speaker 1: away with it. It was most exhilarating. It was one
Speaker 1: of the most exhilarating moments of my life. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: first time I talked, and from that point on, I've
Speaker 1: talked to an awful lot of groups. I still have
Speaker 1: a menu. The menu is now expanded a little bit,
Speaker 1: and that's categorized in a way that you're looking at it.
Speaker 1: There's stuff about actors, and I don't usually talk to actors.
Speaker 1: I talk to other kind of groups. But my core
Speaker 1: material has a lot of stories that really do apply
Speaker 1: to what I do as an actor. And the John
Speaker 1: Houston story which you heard earlier. Yeah, and there are
Speaker 1: other stories. And so how about nine out of ten women?
Speaker 1: Nine out of ten women, I am proud to say,
Speaker 1: and it may even be true that I can wash
Speaker 1: a set of dishes quicker cleaner and change a baby
Speaker 1: nater than nine out of ten women. These were jobs.
Speaker 1: I hate it. These were jobs I lolled. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time my mother told me Bob. I might
Speaker 1: have been nine or ten, and it was a Saturday
Speaker 1: morning and she said, Bob, what of your jobs? There's
Speaker 1: going to be to wash the dishes. I said, man,
Speaker 1: I don't want to wash the dishes. She said, yes, Bob,
Speaker 1: that's going to be. One of your jobs is to
Speaker 1: wash the dishes. I said, I don't want to wash
Speaker 1: the dishes. I don't want to wash the dishes. She said, Bob,
Speaker 1: stand by the sink. Maybe they'll do themselves. They didn't
Speaker 1: do themselves, damn it. And I washed the dishes, and
Speaker 1: I hated washing the dishes. And I hated washing the dishes,
Speaker 1: and all through high school I had to wash the dishes.
Speaker 1: And then I got into college. What do you think
Speaker 1: my job was, I'm assuming you wash the dishes. I
Speaker 1: washed the dishes, and it got worse. They became the
Speaker 1: pott and pan guy, big big pans of scraped on scrapes,
Speaker 1: greasy and stuff that you had to scrape. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: learned how to wash dishes. And there are three, now
Speaker 1: four secrets to washing dishes. Anybody who's washed a lot
Speaker 1: of dishes will tell you these are true. Number One,
Speaker 1: get them wet as fast as you can. The fast
Speaker 1: you get your dishes and pots and pans wet, the
Speaker 1: easier they are to clean. Second, use the hottest water
Speaker 1: you can tolerate. This way it works better. Third thing
Speaker 1: is without gloves. This way you know whether they're clean,
Speaker 1: whether you're the stuff you're washing is clean, and whether
Speaker 1: you got the soap off. And the fourth thing, which
Speaker 1: is new since I started washing dishes, is liquid soap.
Speaker 1: They didn't have liquid soap back when I started washing dishes.
Speaker 1: Use powdered soaps. You threw and you mixed it up,
Speaker 1: but or it was different in any event. But never
Speaker 1: this is rule four. Never put the soap on the
Speaker 1: surface you are washing. Always put it on the back
Speaker 1: of the sponge. Not the rough side of the sponge,
Speaker 1: that's what you're gonna wash with, but the back of
Speaker 1: the sponge. Park. Put the liquid soap on the sponge park.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it takes forever to get them to get them rinsed.
Speaker 1: So those are the four secrets I learned to organize
Speaker 1: my work. And and and just what's the word I'm
Speaker 1: looking for, persistence, Just get it done. I was they
Speaker 1: were paying me fifty cents an hour to wash those dishes.
Speaker 1: I sure didn't want to spend any more time than
Speaker 1: necessary doing the job, even at that lordly fee. So
Speaker 1: And I remember, and I claim also to be able
Speaker 1: to change a baby. Yeah, I had four children. I
Speaker 1: remember when I saw my aunt diaper one of my
Speaker 1: cousins and I said, oh, I'm never gonna ever touch that.
Speaker 1: You know, in the old days, they didn't throw the
Speaker 1: diapers away. They reused them. And you may not realize this,
Speaker 1: but after you take that dirty diaper off a child,
Speaker 1: you know what they did with it. They went to
Speaker 1: the toilet and reached in and shook it in the toilet. Jesus,
Speaker 1: oh Jesus, that's what I said. Never, I'm never never
Speaker 1: ever going to do that. Then they had to ring
Speaker 1: it out, throw it into a pail to be washed.
Speaker 1: Never ever, never ever. Then of course I started having children,
Speaker 1: and guess what, you have to not only do it,
Speaker 1: but you have to know what you're doing because this
Speaker 1: is not a job like they just buy them more diapers.
Speaker 1: They didn't have those kind of diapers, so those kind
Speaker 1: of diapers were just coming into use. They were they
Speaker 1: were cloth diapers at the time, and so this is
Speaker 1: a job that you do not do as you do
Speaker 1: dishes as fast as you possibly can. This is a
Speaker 1: moment of bonding between you and your baby. So you
Speaker 1: know what you do. First, you get the water the
Speaker 1: right temperature, because if it's too hot or too cold,
Speaker 1: you know what happens. Then you wash that little bottom.
Speaker 1: You get it nice and clean, and then you dry
Speaker 1: it off, and then you put the lotion on, and
Speaker 1: then you finish it up with some powder, and then
Speaker 1: you put the new diaper on. And if there's an
Speaker 1: accident while you're while you're doing it, you start by
Speaker 1: getting the water the right temperature. Again, this is not
Speaker 1: a job you do as fast as you can. But
Speaker 1: I remind people that any job can be raised to
Speaker 1: the level of an art form, any job of any kind,
Speaker 1: even washing dishes, even changing a baby, and once you
Speaker 1: are good at at it, every time you do it
Speaker 1: you get that reward that I used to talk about,
Speaker 1: that I've talked about before, the reward of self respect,
Speaker 1: the reward of satisfaction. This is one of the things
Speaker 1: you get when you take any job of any kind
Speaker 1: and raise it to the level of an art form.
Speaker 1: You ever see a good shoe, shine guy, snap that rag,
Speaker 1: put a shine on your shoes, entertain the people standing around,
Speaker 1: put a rhythm down. Any job can be raised to
Speaker 1: the level of an art form and whenever you do it,
Speaker 1: you get that reward. I keep talking about Shoo's the
Speaker 1: last thing. I'm probably the last thing. You can recite
Speaker 1: your favorite poem, Oh, my favorite poem, and this is
Speaker 1: This is a poem that my father must have read
Speaker 1: to me at an impressionable age, and it's stuck with it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I learned it. Let's see if I can remember it correctly.
Speaker 1: It is the poem if Rudyard Kipling's If, and it begins,
Speaker 1: we all know the beginning. If you can keep your
Speaker 1: head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming
Speaker 1: it on you. If you can trust yourself when all
Speaker 1: men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too.
Speaker 1: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Speaker 1: or being lied about. Don't deal in lies or being hated,
Speaker 1: don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too
Speaker 1: good nor talk too wise. If you can dream and
Speaker 1: not make dreams your master. If you can think and
Speaker 1: not make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with
Speaker 1: triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.
Speaker 1: If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Speaker 1: twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or
Speaker 1: watch the things you gave your life to broken and
Speaker 1: stoop and build them up with worn out tools. If
Speaker 1: you can make one heap of all your winnings and
Speaker 1: risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss
Speaker 1: and lose, and start again at your beginnings, and never
Speaker 1: breathe a word about your loss. If you can force
Speaker 1: your heart and nerve and sin you to serve your
Speaker 1: turn long after they are gone, and so hold on
Speaker 1: when there is nothing in you except the will which
Speaker 1: says to them, hold on. If you can speak to
Speaker 1: crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings, nor
Speaker 1: lose the common touch. If neither foes nor loving friends
Speaker 1: can hurt you, if all men count with you, but
Speaker 1: none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute
Speaker 1: with sixty seconds worth of distance, run yours is the
Speaker 1: earth and everything that's in it, and which is more,
Speaker 1: you'll be a man, my son. I offer that to
Speaker 1: courageous women as well. This is a poem if by
Speaker 1: Rudgard Kippa Robert Bob, thank you so much for doing this,
Speaker 1: so welcome saying the pleasure of being with you, and
Speaker 1: and uh and good to see you thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: there it is. We'll be releasing some bonus content with
Speaker 1: Forrester later on this week, so duke keep an eye
Speaker 1: off for that. You can catch Robert's latest film, The
Speaker 1: American Side, as it continues to roll out in select
Speaker 1: theaters this summer. The film is also available on iTunes, Amazon, Hulu,
Speaker 1: and Google Play. And a big thanks to director Jenner
Speaker 1: Ricker and actor Greg Stir for making this one possible. Lastly,
Speaker 1: a special thanks to Robert again for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: If you're listening, do be sure to subscribe to the
Speaker 1: show on iTunes and SoundCloud or your favorite podcasting app.
Speaker 1: If you want to drop us a line about anything,
Speaker 1: feel free to email the show at talk easypod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. You can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Instagram at talk easypod. As always, our theme music
Speaker 1: is provided by Vanilla. Our executive producer is David Chen.
Speaker 1: Graphics by Ian Jones, original illustrations by Krishna. Social media
Speaker 1: by Maria Maella. The show is produced and edited by
Speaker 1: Coreya Tad. I'm your host, Sam Fracoso. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.