May 29, 2024 • 52 mins
LOOK OUT! It’s only Films To Be Buried With!
Join your host Brett Goldstein as he talks life, death, love and the universe with the absolute American treasure of an actor WILLIAM H MACY!
William is an actor so iconic that you could likely drop one line from any one of his characters and you'd be there instantly, in that world. From Fargo to Magnolia to Pleasantville to Shameless, William's been incredibly busy in his acting life and it's almost a guarantee that you've witnessed his greatness on film or digitally. Hear about it all, including the world of David Mamet, the pain of separating from the Shameless family, that one-shot in Boogie Nights, throwing yourself off the mountain and love of imaginary situations. This one's got it all!
Video and extra audio available on Brett's Patreon!
KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
SUPERBOB (Brett's 2015 feature film)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Look out. It's only films to be buried with. Hello,
and welcome to films to be buried with. My name
is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian and actor, a writer,
a director, a chalkboard and I love film. As roy
(00:22):
T Bennett once said, more smiling, less worrying, more compassion,
less judgment, more mad Max sargus, less not having mad
Max sargus. Hmm, yes, good point. Every week I invite
special guest over. I tell them they've died. Then I
get them to discuss their life through the films that
meant the most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins,
Mark Frost, Sharon Stone, and even Bed Campbell's. But this
(00:43):
week it is the Wonderful actor, writer, producer and director
William H. Macy. Head over to the Patreon at patreon
dot com Forwards Last Brett Goldstein, where you get an
extra twenty minutes of chat with William H. We laugh
a lot, he tells me a secret, We talk about
beginnings and endings. You get the whole episode, uncut and
ad free, and does a video. Check it out over
at Patreon dot com Forward slash Brett Goldstein, So William H.
(01:05):
Macy can you believe it. He's one of the finest actors.
You know. You've seen him in Shameless, in Fargo, in
Boogie Notes, You've seen him in one of my favorite films, Magnolia.
He is currently in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,
and he's in about a million other masterpieces. We've never
met before this. We recorded this on zoom a few
weeks ago and it was a really lovely time. I
think you're going to love this one. That's everything, isn't it.
(01:26):
I hope you're all well. So that is it for now.
I very much hope you enjoy episode three hundred and
one of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and welcome
to Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein,
(01:48):
and I am joined today by an actor, a writer,
a director, a producer, a stage legend, a screen legend.
He's in literally probably ten of at least ten of
the greatest films of all time. He's one of the
greatest actors that has ever lived. He's worked with the
(02:10):
greatest people. He's one of the people, when I've said
he's doing the podcast most excited about. He's a hero,
he's a legend. I can't believe he's here. He really is.
Look at him. Here he is. Please, welcome to the show.
It's the brilliant. It's William H. Macy.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I think that's enough for to day.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, I think we did work. Yeah, good to catch up.
It's very nice to have you, William H. Macy. I've
got so many things I want to discuss with you.
Can we talk about David Mmmott. You may not know this,
of course you won't know this. When I first started
like properly acting, I did four or five David Mammett plays.
(02:50):
That was like my first thing. I did Edmund. I
played Edmund, which you've done many times and as a film,
and you sort of started with him, and you are
the originator of a lot of these parts.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Right, a lot of them. I met Dave at the
now gone Goddard College up in Plainfield, Vermont, and it
was a hippie school, so there were no grades, no tests,
no requirements. As a result, we just did theater all
day and there were a group of us. Stephen Chapter
is still one of my dear friends. After college. Dave
(03:24):
was from Chicago. He said, bully, Steve, you got to
come to Chicago. I just did Central Perversion in Chicago.
It's a big we'll do some plays. It will be great.
So we started doing plays. The first play that we
did at our new theater at the Saint Klaus Theatre
was American Buffalo and I played Bobby the Kid. And
we did a lot of work with Dave and he
remains a good pal and he's writing really stunning stuff.
(03:48):
Now he's back to writing plays and they are you
would love them. You would love them because there is
not an ounce of exposition, but they tell wopping big stories.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Cool. That's that good. And then and you developed like
an acting technique with him, Is that right?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yes? This is when we were in New York. New
York University went to David and said, will you teach
some classes? And he called me up and he said,
I got this new idea. They've studied with Sanni Meisner
at the Neighborhood Playoffs. Did a year there, and he
sort of expanded on that technique, which he called practical aesthetics,
and we taught it to this group of NYU students,
(04:27):
went up to Vermont where we had gone to college,
and did a summer residency there and that became the
Atlantic Theater Company, which still exists down on Chelsea. It's
one of the I think it's a deep premiere off
Broadway House and practical aesthetics is an extension of the
Meisner technique, just refined and simplified a bit.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
It is it a technique that you still used? Does
it work in every second? Does it work on film
as well as place? Yes?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I mean when in the classes, the all these steps
that you go through, and the point being that it
will become habitual. So yes, the technique has a lot
to do with the way I act. I don't go
through the steps anymore because they have indeed become instinctual.
But it's all about the objective, what does the character
want and let the emotions go hang effective memory and
(05:19):
sense memory. It doesn't work, at least it doesn't work
for me. It's all about what do you want?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So I was thinking looking at your CV, is that
what you call it? In Omega? Your resume? You tell me,
I don't know how much choice you've had in it,
and how much is random accident? But like you're in
excellent films, you're in a series of really really excellent films.
How much of that was choices? How much of it
(05:46):
these people just came to you, they offered it, Like,
how much was it making decisions where you chose good
projects versus this would be the only things that happened
to be offered.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
It's a great question. A lot of it was luck.
I happen to smoke a doob and drive up through
Vermont to Goddard College and decided I wanted to go there.
Had that not happened, I never would have met Dave,
who changed, and Stephen Chapter. Both of them changed my life.
Very few actors get to choose what they're going to do. Basically,
(06:17):
you wait for an opportunity to come along and you say, yes.
I have turned down films, but it's very rare. Nowadays,
I'm a lucky Peluca and I get more films that
I can do and I get to choose. But this
is a new thing for me. I had some notions
that I think held me in good stead. I always
(06:37):
wanted to do a good film as opposed to the
great role. I'd rather do a smaller role in a
great film than the lead in the film that's not
going to work. People sought me out. It's very flattering.
I don't know what's wrong with these people? But they
did and I did everything. I said yes, yes to
the universe. I thought I should get on the boards
(06:57):
and stay on the boards as long and as frequently
as possible. And that's where you learn how to act. Really,
you know what I'm talking about. That's it's when you're
up there in the fire and a good, for instance,
is shameless. I got to do that for over a decade,
eleven seasons in Boy that I learn a lot about acting.
I threw away a lot of crap that I thought
(07:18):
was important. I learned to do my job and relax
and let other people do their jobs and not worry
about them. I learned that tomorrow is another day, you know,
And if you blew the scene, you blew the scene,
there's going to be another scene. I put down a
lot of tension and a lot of bungst that wasn't helping.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
That's fascinating. I was going to ask about saving because
that's long. That was eleven years of your life. Then, yeah,
did you love it?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah? I loved it. I got to go to work
every day, and at first I brought my old habits
into it, which is struggling with all the scenes and
wanning rewrites and quizzing everything, and I carried it so heavily,
but just the fact that we did it for so long,
I finally calmed down, and boy did my acting improve?
And boy did people.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Like me interesting? And I guess he must have been
a real fucking family. Eleven years of that. How is
it when that ended? Was it devastating?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It was time? But it was very, very sad, and
I do miss them, and they're all doing really well,
which is great. And I feel that these sort of
are my airsats kids, So I'm very proud.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That's nice, man, that's so nice. And is this true?
I looked on your IMDb? Did you write an episode
of thirty something? Or is that a mistake on your IMDb?
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, we did Stephen Chapter, whom I met in those
original classes with Dave Mammon. He and I started writing
Movies of the Week and it was a great gig.
We did it for many, many years. We did a
lot of TNT and at first he and I would
write them and he would direct, and then is my
star shined a little brighter? We wrote them, he directed,
(08:54):
and I got to star in them, and we did
Oh my gosh, a dozen of them or so, and
it was its great. One of them calls the Door
to Door that won a lot of Amys that year.
But they were all pretty pretty interesting. I was proud
of them.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That's nice. And now you seem to me, well, you
tell me, do you love all of this as much
as you always did? It is exciting to you as
it always was. Yes, that's great.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
At the end of the day, what it comes down
to for me is that I really love being in
imaginary circumstances. I love acting. I love it. Everything attendant
to it is a pain in the ass. But when
everyone gets quiet and it's my turn to talk and
the pressure's on, I loved that. I still really love it.
And it's not unlike an athletic event. I liken it
(09:45):
to skiing sometimes. Living in Colorado, I ski a lot now,
and you know, every cell in your body is telling
you to hug the mountain because you're falling down a mountain.
But the technique is no, You've got to point your
skis downhill and throw your weight downhill. As frightening as
that is, that's the only way to have control. And
when you're acting, you got to do the same thing.
(10:07):
You've got to throw yourself off the mountain and just
play it as it lays. And what happens is real.
That's what the audience saw, so you better react to
it in real time. And the pressures of it, I
dig them. I think maybe I'm a money performer. I
like that pressure. I mean, you haven't lived until you're
(10:30):
running around in your nickers and you're supposed to be
simulating a love scene with someone and there's a bunch
of teamsters standing there watching you. It takes a lot
to go, okay, put all that aside and concentrate on
what you're doing. But it brings me to life. I
love doing it. And I do know actors who don't
have a good relationship either with the camera or with
(10:52):
the audience. They find them to be adversarial. And I
don't know how you would act with that attitude.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
What does it say about a person you putting it
like that? And I completely relate to it. By the way,
this thing of enjoying living in imaginary circumstances, what does
it say about Does it say any thing about real
circumstances where you're like, yeah, this is this is not
for me? Much better when it is made up.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
It's a craft number one, and every once in a while,
if you're lucky, you can turn it into an art.
But you do go to work and it's something that
you do. And I don't find myself getting into a
character or a story that I'm telling and I get
stuck in it and I take it home and I
live with it. I don't do that. And also I
(11:40):
don't think that helps to try to become the character.
I don't think you can do that. It's a trick
we play on the audience. Really, you know. You tell
them I'm the King of England and put me on
a throne giving a crown. They say, okay, you're the king.
I don't have to prove it. I don't have to
be the king. They believe me.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah. Do you have a favorite of your film as
in the ones that you've been in. Is there one
that's like that's your personal favorite film.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Not a favorite that's like which of your kids is
your favorite? Yeah, but in no particular order. I loved
working with Paul Anderson. Boogie Knights was magnificent. Every time
I see it, I think it's a stunning work of
on his part.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
The stuff I've done with Dave American Buffalo on stage.
I got to play Bobby originally, and then I got
to play teach over in England and back here. That
changed my life. One of the films that Stephen and
I wrote, Door to Door. It was sublime, really, just
everything worked beautifully, with a beautiful cast and a fabulous
story to tell. Didn't one of Dave's plays State in Maine.
(12:44):
I just saw it recently, all pee your pants funny. Fargo,
of course changed my life. Shameless changed everything. I'm a
lucky Peluca. I've been in some really good films, sometimes
in very small parts, but as I said, that's when
I look for good films.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Pleasant Ville is a very important film in my life.
Pleasant Villa Magnolia. I'm putting on your list two of
my favorite films. All right, w's Mazie. There's something I've
forgotten to tell you that I should have told you
up front. I guess I'll say it and then we'll
just deal with it. You've died, You're dead. You're dead,
Oh my god. The people know, well you're finding out.
(13:22):
Everyone else knows. I forgot to tell you, and that's
the problem. I didn't formed everyone else. Everyone's dealing with it,
but it's.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Good to know. I think I'll just keep going away.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
I'm going yea, it suits you, we do very well.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, I'm dying a bunch of films.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
How did you die in this? How would you like
to die? What's your dream death?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Oh? With my brain intact and in my sleep, painlessly privately, I.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Think, yes, boy, it's sure.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
The older you get, the more you think about it,
because it's getting closer. Sixtieth birthday party and Felicity said,
my wife said, what are you going to do in
your third act? It took my breath away. And what
a brilliant question, I know, because third acts are notoriously short.
(14:17):
And anybody who's anybody who's ever done on a play
or a movie knows you want to drive for the curtain,
you know, so pick up the pace. Yeah, but in
my third act, to answer her, I really like acting.
I wanted to be a director. I've tried it. I
might do it again, but it's not where my strength lies.
I just wrote a script, had a great time writing
(14:38):
it that was new, and I wrote it by myself,
and that'd be lovely to get at me. There's nothing
like doing a script that you wrote. You know it
so well?
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Would you want to act in that? Direct it? Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
By, I'll act in it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Also.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It's a it's a western that would star my daughter Sophia.
And but again I get killed about halfway through.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Jesus, what a shame. What a shame?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Killed again, dead again, dead again.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
By by yourself? What is? What do you think happens
when you die? Do you think there's enough to life? No?
Speaker 2 (15:12):
No, I think I think you can find heaven right
here on earth. And I think you can find hell
right here on earth too. And I think when you die,
the world needs those parts back to reshape them and
put someone else here.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
So I like that.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I want to do it all when I'm alive. I
don't want to I'm not banking on a second shot
at this.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Well, I've got a surprise for you. Despite what you're saying,
is really beautiful. There is a heaven and you're going
to it at least for a bit, and it's filled
with your favorite thing. What's your favorite thing?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I'm a family guy. Play ukulele. I never have a
ukulele far away from me because I've always loved music.
It's soothing to me. I like making things, so like
my gardener, I like working with my hands. I love
breaking down a script, figuring out what's going on, trying
to figure out what the writer had in mind. I
help my daughter, I help my wife, and they help me.
(16:11):
We talk about it a lot o my family.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
You know what's in your in your heaven, there's a
series of workshops. One of them is a wood workshop,
one of them is a script workshop, one of them
is a music workshop. And you just move through workshops,
your family in each of them, whoever you want in
each one, and you're just making stuff, tinkering with stuff,
playing music. It's fucking great, to be fair, it's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
You make that sound pretty good.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, I won't worry about it.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
If when I die it's not like that. How am
I going to get in touch with you?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Because I'll leave you. I'll leave you my email. We
can you can just that's cool.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, Well, after my death, if your computer freezes up
and you can't figure out what the fuck is going
wrong with.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
It, yeah, it's you to me, it's you for the
workshop where you're like, this is a ship workshop. Now listen,
when you get to heaven, everyone's very excited to see you.
They're huge fans, but they want to talk about your life,
but they want to talk about it through films. And
the first thing they ask you is, what is the
first film you remember seeing William et Macie.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
It's a good'un. When then they'd Gone with the Wind
they did this. It was a public city stunt, but
they went all over the country looking for Scarlett O'Hara,
and my mother was a Mississippi girl, born in Pascogoula, Mississippi.
We lived in Georgia at the time, and my mother
actually went to one of those calls to audition for
Scarlett O'Hara. As I said, it was a public city stunt.
(17:35):
But when the film came out, my mom said, we're
going to see it, and we got in our Sunday
best and we drove into Atlanta to see Gone with
the Wind. Wow, it was overwhelming. It was pretty big,
big screen, very loud. How old were you maybe eight
or nine? I have to check when it was released.
I was born in fifty so that was something. I've
(17:57):
seen the film since then. It's a creaker.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, it's got some issues. Did you feel like I
want to be part of this do you remember thinking that.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
No, I got the bug in high school?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I did.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I was a frightened kid in high school. I grew
up in Cumberland, Maryland, and my brother came home from college.
He'd learned to play a guitar and he was in
a folks singing group and I lost my mind. I
just loved it. I said, you got to teach me
how to play this guitar. And my dad, God bless him,
he bought me a guitar. My brother taught me this very,
very sketchy, off color song. I signed up, way out
(18:36):
of character for me. I signed up to sing that
song in the talent show at Allegheny High School. And
the punchline was your papa ain't your papa, but your
papa don't know? And oh dear God, the whole auditorium
lost their minds. I got a laugh that was so big,
and I thought, holy crap. And I spent the rest
(18:59):
of my life trying to get that laugh.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Man, I get that interesting. What about being scared? What's
the film that scared you the most? Do you like
being scared to make or to see? You haven't done
that horror? Have you?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Or have I missed it now, The Exorcist. I was
driving across country with a Powell. We stopped in Chicago
because they've been talking about it on the radio, Downtown
South side of Chicago, and one of those giant theaters.
It was packed. Oh my god, the whole audience was terrified.
We were all talking to each other. It scared the
(19:34):
shit out of us. And I've seen that film many
times since then, and it should have won a lot
of awards. It's brilliantly done. Alan Burston was robbed, plus
a bunch of other people, and that scored. Oh my god,
it was a seminal film, changed a lot man that
was scary. When I was a kid, I saw my
brother took me to see the Thing with James Arness.
(19:56):
That scared the Jesus out of me too. I guess
I was twelve or thirte team. I remember they go.
They finally figured out that the thing is plant based.
It's terrifying them up in the Arctic Circle and they're
alone and there's a storm and they can't get out
and it's slowly killing all of them, and I don't know,
he cuts himself, right, He catches something and they analyze
(20:17):
it and they find out he's plant based. He's close
to spinach. And one of them says, what do you
do with a six foot, five hundred pound piece of spinach?
And somebody said, boil it, cook it, and that's how
they got the thing.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
It's right, it's a fucking big carrot in it. Did
you so you've never wanted to do a horror Oh,
you've just never had It's interesting you never wanted to
do it.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I don't see a lot of horror films because I
don't like to be frightened. But you know what, the
clock's ticking and I'd love to try everything. I did
a sitcom a while back into the column, the Connors.
I'd never done it, and I know all those guys.
I want to try every look. I'm I'm down for
a horror film, you know. I want to be the
(21:06):
guy that's just like me who goes, there's no supernatural Jesus,
grow up, there's an excellent well the monsters, you know,
not to tap me on the shoulder. I want to
be the guy who says, grow up.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Well, if anyone's listening and he's making a horror, I
think that sist you. Now, what about crying? Are you
a big crer and what's the film that made you cry? Them?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I am a big crier and it's gotten worse as
I've gotten older. Oh my daughters mock me because a
commercial will come on and I'm weeping like a baby,
and are you crying at a commercial? And I cry?
And everything else too. You know, crying is a big
thing in acting. Everyone goes, how do you cry? How
do you cry? And that's one of the things that
(21:54):
Dave taught us. One don't cry. It's fun to indulge in,
but it's boring to watch. Don't cry. Do something about it.
And that is sage advice because if you put your
attention on solving the problem rather than crying about it,
it makes you really emotional and it's really easy to cry,
(22:15):
and that's the best. When an audience sees a person
crying to get emotional, it's boring, they're losers. But when
they cry in frustration because they can't not cry, that's
when the audience loses their minds. For me, the film
that got me this is Weird, I had never seen.
(22:35):
It's a wonderful life. I was working in Chicago, I
was in my forties. I was working in Chicago. It
was eleven o'clock. I guess it was holiday season. Eleven
o'clock in the morning. It's a Wonderful life came on. Oh.
I was at a friend's apartment all by myself. I
was on my hands and knees in front of the couch,
(22:56):
just weeping, weeping. And you know when Jimmy Stewart's at
the bar and he's weeping, and they did that extreme
close up Clarence. I don't want to die, you know,
help me, Lord, I don't know what's going on. Oh God,
I was a bleeding mess and I had to go
shoot that night and it was some I don't know.
(23:17):
I was a mess when I got to work.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So when you I was going to ask you about
that about crying stuff. When in Magnolia, which is one
of my favorite films, when you're crying at the end
of it. So for you doing that, you're playing the frustration.
You're not you're not thinking I have to cry. You're
playing the of quitz Kit, Denny Smith.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
It's in there. It's in there for all of us.
And if you can't cry, for all your act yourself.
If you can't cry, don't worry about the cool thing
happened to me. Gary Ross did Pleasantville. He directed Pleasantville,
and I was in that and there's a scene where
I had to cry. It's in the script because the
gag of the thing is it's all in black and
white and when you feel emotions, so it's scripted. You
(24:02):
know that this tear rolls down and suddenly you see
my pink skin under it. And I worried about that scene,
and so I went to Gary and I said, look it,
I can do it, but I can't do it all day.
You got to tell me when the money shot is
and if you have to start with that, you know.
And he said, okay, okay, it's okay. Well we got
there to do the scene, which was a long scene,
(24:24):
and Gary said, let's read it, and I burst into
tears cutting to the chase. Seven hours later, I'm still
weeping every time I do the scene. I guess I
had some issues to get out. Finally Gary's up and
you know, he's up on a crane somewhere and he's
going he said, Bill, you're this big and you don't
have to cry anymore.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Build it. Oh good, that's nice. What is the film
that people don't really like it. It's not critically acclaimed,
but you love it unconditionally.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I don't know. I I've got that question. I went
through it, and I can't come up with anything. I
think I have relatively Catholic tastes.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
If I like it, I'm.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Pretty sure a lot of people will like it. And
I flatter myself. I'm really good at reading scripts, and
there's a trick to it. I try to read the
script in one sitting, and I try to read it
in real time. Scripts are notoriously loaded with stage directions,
and they're nonsense. They're just horseshit. So I skip the
(25:32):
stage directions and just read the dialogue, and when I
get lost, I'll go back and see what I'm in
the stage directions. I need to understand the scene. But
in that way, I can see the film in my
mind's eye and about the same time that you'll see
when the film's finished, about an hour and a half.
And if you've seen the film in your head, it's
easy to know which are the good ones and which
(25:53):
are the bad ones. So to answer your question, there
are more films that were critically acclaimed that I don't like.
It's jarring to your artistic integrity. When everyone says it's genius,
you've got to see it, and you see it and
you go, I think it's overblown. I think the acting's terrible.
(26:14):
I don't buy this story that happens to me more
than the opposite.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
What about a film that you used to love but
you've watched recently and you've gone, I don't like this
anymore because maybe you've changed it.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes, but films have changed too, I like probably every
other father. Both my daughters love films. We kept them
away from film and TV Felicity and I as long
as we could so they're readers. And then Sophia fell
and broke her collar bone. She had to sit on
the couch. So we said, guess what, here's the world
(26:47):
of films. But they wanted to know, Pop, what are
your films? And I went, oh my god, my daughters
want to know what I like. So I had this
list of films and most of them disappointed me. You know,
and it's not because I've changed as much as filmmaking
has changed. I mean, we used to tell films, tell
(27:09):
stories at a glacial pace, and now no, I get it,
I get it, Come on, come on. And then We
went through that period after MTV when it was all
quick cuts, and that was a bore too. There was
a bunch of years there where they'd never finished a scene.
They were just cut out of them, and I thought,
come on, that's sloppy writing. Give me the dilemma and
(27:32):
write your way out of it. But you got to
keep it going. So a lot of the films that
I said, wait till you see this Airplane, I said,
the funniest movie you've ever seen. Well, the funny beds
are still funny, but you got to sit there and
wait for him to come along. There were a couple
of others. There are notable exceptions Doctor Strangelove. I mean
my kids were ten and twelve when they watched Strangelove
(27:55):
and I said, this is a fabulous film. By that time,
I said, I remember it as a fabulous They watched.
They watched it beginning to end, and so did I.
And it is a magnificent film, particularly that scene with
Sterling Hayden where he's saying Jack, Jack, give me the codes, Jack,
and they're on the couch. It must have been an
(28:17):
oversized mag on the camera because they don't move and
it goes on for four minutes with the windows getting
blasted out, two guys on a couch with no cuts.
You can't take your eyes off of it.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
That's cool, That's very cool. What is the film that
means the most to you? Not because the film itself
isn't necessarily good, but the experience you had around seeing
it will always make it special to you.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
See Well, I would say the biggest one, and this
is sort of changing me artistically and the experience of
seeing it. I went to see The French Connection Gene Hackman,
and I was still in college at the time, studying
this Stanislavsky's method with Dave Mammott and a bunch of
(29:07):
us went to see it and I thought, if I
could act like Gene Ackman, oh man, I thought, that's
what I want to do. And we've talked about it
all night, and one of the things we came up
with was that as an actor, Gene Hackman don't give
a shit. He knows exactly what he's going for. He's
(29:28):
really smart with analysis, he knew what the writer was
going for, and he doesn't care whether you like him
or whether you're judging him, whether this is a good moment,
whether it's a full moment and he didn't give a shit.
His attention is out there and I couldn't take my
eyes off of him. One of them and that film
pulls up. It's a stunning film. I've seen Gene Hackman
(29:51):
almost everything he's ever done, and I've never seen him
be bad. I've seen him in terrible movies. I've never
seen him be bad.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Did you ever work with him? With him Friedkin? No,
never did, No, Shane big regret. There's a film critical Markamod.
I don't know if you know him. And he talks
a lot about William Friedkin. He's like an expert on
the Exorcist, and he talked about and he'd done lots
of interviews with William Freakin and apparently Gene Hackman had
been very difficult to direct on the French Connection because
(30:21):
he was worried about being liked, I think, and William
Freedkins sort of beat that out of him. So it's
very interesting that that wasn't I think there was an
issue with that that freaking got rid of.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
I love knowing that.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, it's interesting, that's the thing he liked about it.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, it makes me like Gene Hackman even more because
he's got feet of clay just like the rest of us.
And good for Billy freakin. Yeah, Jeane was stuck to work.
He's a tough guy to work with. I mean, I've
heard that, but boy, I still wanted to do it.
There's a bunch of actors out there really rough, especially guys.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
What's that about? I don't like that? Yeah, how do
you deal with that?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I think one of the common denominators of the nightmare
actors is fear, going back to the throwing yourself off
the mountain analogy. You show up and you're about to
put your ass on the line, expose yourself, potentially make
a fool of yourself. You don't know if the director
(31:25):
knows what he or she is doing. You worked on
the scene, and the actors who are doing it aren't
doing it the way you saw it at all. There's
a lot to be afraid of, and the only answer
is to throw yourself into the belly of the beast.
You've got to attack it head on. You've got to
(31:45):
go say to yourself, I'm frightened, but I'm going to
do it anyway. That's what I'm getting paid for. And
I think what a lot of actors do, especially when
they get successful, they try to mitigate the fear by
bringing an entourage on. They try to surround themselves with
people who will make them feel safe. They try to
get angry about something that they can do something about
(32:09):
this costume, this hair person, that director. How can I
do my work with this incompetence around me? And I
think they just do it because they would rather have
a problem that they can lick than face the real problem,
which tess takes courage and faith. And I think maybe
(32:29):
another thing is that when actors get really, really big,
and when the biggest elephant in the room is the
actor who at the end of the day can hire
and fire the director and for that matter, get the
producers thrown off the set. When they got that much
power and bad habits, then they're insufferable.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Do you have I'm sure you've worked with some of
these people. Do you have a key to making it
work for you with people like that.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I've been a lucky guy. I've been on maybe two
or three three sour sets, and all the films I've done,
it's always been pretty good everywhere I've worked. And I
must say I was a problem actor when I was young.
I was insufferable because I was frightened and I wanted
to get it right. And it takes maturity to realize
(33:17):
you can never get it right. You can only keep
doing it and do it as fully and as bravely
as you can, but it'll never be right. That's the
wrong thing. I've seen it in myself, and i've seen
it in others. You do a take and it's good,
and you think, let me go again. I think I
can do it better, and that's the kiss of that.
(33:37):
You can't do it better. Maybe you can be more full,
maybe you can be more simple, but you can't do
it better. It's the wrong words.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
That's great, that's great. What is the film you must
relate to?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Obviously, as an actor, every film I'm not in, I go,
wait a minute, I could have done that. Call my agent.
I didn't even know this was out there. What's going on?
I can play thirty yeah, But I, like everyone else,
I relate to the hero, and I see myself as
(34:16):
the hero. I guess. Maybe a better way to answer
your question, what did I really relate to that I
see myself in is that I have trouble with the
comic books because there's nothing at stake. And I haven't
seen a lot of the Marvel movies, but I do
know that they're taking a chance when they have their
(34:38):
hero have doubts, and they've done that, and I've heard
it's worked. But I think, you know, the dragon keeps
attacking the city, and so you suit up your finest
warrior to slay the dragon. But he gets strapped through
and so they have to send in the cobbler. They
have to send in the last guy who should be
(35:01):
fighting the dragon. That's the story I want to see. Yeah,
that's that's the one.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Completely agree. What is the sexiest film ever made?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
I saw Zepparelli's Romeo and Juliet No. I was almost
Romeo's age when I saw it, but boy, she was sexy.
That was really sexy. I love the way they did
the sex scene in that it was so innocent and
so it was a bit matter of fact. It's memory serves.
There wasn't a lot of score in the at that point.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
How old are you? How How old is Romeo? How
old is he supposed to be? Is he like sixteen?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
They're kids, they're supposed to be fourteen to fifteen. Their
brats Susan Sarandon. I've seen her in a bunch of films.
Remember in Atlantic City and Jason the Window. They're Washington, They.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, that's the same.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I saw Patricia Arquette and Tommy Lee Jones on a
TV version of Executioner Song.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Do I have that right?
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Anyway? I marveled at that because it was on television,
and Patricia Arquette, every time she would look at him,
they clenched a lot. Every time she would look at him.
She looked like a woman who was going to explode
if she didn't get laid really quickly. I've never seen
anyone look so hot, and it was so great that
(36:24):
it was on television, so there's nothing that the board
could say, Oh, that's inappropriate. It was her intention. It
was genius, and that was one of the hottest things.
I've often thought that she could be in a room
with four beautiful women, completely fuck naked, and you see
through the window a woman in a her braad and
(36:46):
underwear combing her hair, and that's what you look at. Yeah,
it's the mystery of it.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
What is objectively the greatest film of all time. It
might not be your favorite film, but is the pinnacle
of cinema for you.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Man, that's another one I can't answer. I could do
top five or ten. As I've gotten older, I look
at the big films and whether you like it or not,
I'm marvel that they got the thing shot. I'm talking about,
you know, D Day.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Or Spotsicus or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, or these giant films are so many moving parts,
and my god, the work that goes into them, like Apes,
like Planet of the Apes. It's that's such a big film,
and hats off to the producer and the line producer
and the director to keep that thing going. I think
it's an experience of all actors. You do a film, even.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Sorry, you've just done Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Right,
this is what you have coming out? Are you? Are
you an ape in it? Are you a human in it?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
I'm a human?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Tell me about I love the trilogy. The previous trilogy
I think is phenomenon. Is it excellent? About? How is
making that that? Well?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
I've done two of those kind of films. I did
Jurassic Park, the third one in the trilogy, and I
did Apes. Jurassic Park I was through the whole thing. Apes.
I did three or four scenes, but the experience is
humbling because, as I said, the size of it, and
you're working with filmmakers, the best and the brightest filmmakers
(38:27):
doing the best work they've ever done. And I love
it when the technology doesn't bury the story, that the
technology is used to tell the story. I've not seen
Apes yet, but I suspect it's going to be good,
and when you get down to it, a simple story.
In this version of Apes, the Simians are ascendant there
(38:50):
on top, and the humans, because of a pandemic, have
gone mostly feral, and there are some that were immune
for it and they're trying to So it's a struggled
there's a grade line and that there's only room on
this planet for one major animal and it ain't the Apes,
so say the humans. But just AI is a big thing,
(39:12):
and I worry about it. The notion that someone would
have a computer write a scene is disgusting to me,
or write the score. I don't know what kind of
artists could say that, and I certainly don't want to
work with them. On the other hand, we can use
technology and AI to our advantage to tell the story
(39:35):
directly and simply. So the Apes, first of all, these
guys went to Ape school. They were there for a
month learning how to do that, and they did it brilliantly.
And it's hard on their bodies because they're all bent over.
But they wore these it's like coveralls, and they had
sensors on them so that the computer could read it.
(39:58):
And there were dots on their the computer could register that.
And then they had this sort of a World War
two thing that the flyers put on in World War two.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
It's made of canvas and leather, and there was a
little thing sticking out with a GoPro on the end
shooting back at their faces. So I'm acting with these guys.
And they got the hat on and they got the thing,
and they got dots on their face, but it's their faces,
and they were doing their voices, but I was acting
with them. When you looked at the monitor, you saw
a chimpanzee in real time, in real fuck yeah, in
(40:33):
real time. So that's what the GoPro was. So if
they raised their eyebrows, the chimp raised there. If they
went ha ha ha ha, the chimp with it bottled
the mind. It really helped the director and everybody else
to know what this scene is going to look like
the go pros just for the monitors that you know,
there's the film that they took in, but that's all artificial.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Interesting. Yeah, fucking amazing, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Jurassic Park was older. So I had a fight with
a stegosaurus and it was an excavator. It was a
huge excavator that they dressed up, and the velociraptors were puppets.
They had a full one. They had one waist up
and they had one about this big, and it took
five men and women to run the thing. One of
(41:21):
them had a helmet on, so when he went like that,
the raptor did that, and someone was operating all the thing.
The raptor had a heartbeat right here, so you could
see it's heart beating, which they would vary depending on
what was going on. The iris in its eyes would
open and close. They had an air thing. This raptor
(41:42):
goes up and snips Tai Leoni and he smells and
he goes like that and it blew her hairbag. That
was all on real time. I loved the AI and
I love all the computer stuff, but man, when you
can use off the shelf magic in front of people,
that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
It that's this year right there. So is your greatest film?
Something like Original Planet of the Eye, So any of
these big ones.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I saw the Original with Roddy McDowell and I thought
it was really well done and interesting. But we're in
a whole new realm now. It's if you can think it,
someone can figure out how to make it.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
What is the film you could or have watched? The
mist Ivan Iver again.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
The Godfather's a lot of Francis Ford, Coppolists, stuff Newman
and Redford, the Sting Sundance Kid. I've seen them over
and over. They hold up. They're great every time. During
the pandemic, we have a big, a big yard sideyard,
and we hired a company that came in and set
up a huge screen with big column speakers and you
(42:48):
could play movies and we taped off the whole yard.
So each family came and they had their own pot.
The only thing we shared was the microwave for popcorn.
And oh my god, some of the neighbors. One of
the mom's cried, she hadn't been out of her house
for six weeks. And we had blankets there and everyone
lay on the grass with pillows and blankets, and we
(43:10):
watched a bunch of films, but we rescreened Hannah and
her sisters and I was knocked out by it. What
a fine film, great acting, great acting, one of what
he's best.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
I think, Yeah, I love the end. Yeah, well, a
lovely thing to have done. That's nice. They loved it.
What's the worst film you've ever seen?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Boy? I rarely get through them. Look at I think,
at the end of the day, one thing any story
has to be is true.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
It's got to be.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
True to the human experience. And I think the test
is if you put it out there and a couple
of million people see it, that most of them recognize
the issue and it moves them. And what offends me
is films that aren't true. And I guess the most
obvious example, and I can see the will to live
(44:04):
just fade from people when I get on this kick.
But I think Hollywood is doing a lot of damage
to the world with our portrayal of violence. It's not
true and it's not a good place to be lying
when it comes to our portrayal of violence. And it
used to be they would say, we would say, hey,
(44:26):
it's violent, you don't like it? You're shooting the messenger.
We're just reporting the world as we see it. But
that's not true anymore.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
It offends me and that it's cost me a lot
of work because well, this Western that I was working
on when it first started off, there were nine bodies
on page four, and I lobbied for us to go
back to the real West and not to westerns. Don't
imitate films. Let's go back to the real West. And
(44:55):
the biggest shootout in in the real Old West was
the shootout at Okay Corral. Four guys. Four guys. They've
written songs, movies, poems, plays, they've written about it. It
was the biggest thing. Four guys. Most of the scripts
you get there's four guys. On the first page. You
see them downtown, blasting away in New York City. There's
(45:16):
not a cop to be seen. People get shot four
times and they give a speech. I've tried to sell
this a couple of times, but I want to do,
especially on a series. I want to do a thing
where you take three episodes to have you fall in
love with one of the major characters and then shoot him,
but don't write him off the show, and every week
(45:36):
you can see what a bullet does to a human body.
You can see how it wrecks his marriage. You can
see how he gets infections. You can see how he
has to learn to walk again or use his hands again.
You can see the deep, dark depressions. Let's tell the
truth about it, because I swear to God, you kill
one person, there's nothing more dramatic than that, you kill
(45:57):
eighteen people. It's just porn. The only thing you can
do to make that more dramatic is k eighteen more.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
So.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yeah, I don't even know what the question was, but
that's my round. And you do look like you've lost
a little bit of the will to live.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
No, I'm I'm moved. I moved, and I agree, and
I think it's interesting things very interesting about the Oka crowd.
I did not know that twenty four people.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
I heard a story about a cop homicide. Cop in
an elevator with one other guy looks at him and
he's most wanted. They were on the fourteenth floor. By
the time he got to the lobby, they had discharged
both their weapons, all six shots, five shots, and nobody
had hit in an elevator.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
I also believe that. Yeah, I once went to I
have never fired a gun and never any of that.
A friend said, let's I was in La and they said,
let's go to a shooting range and we and I
was like, okay, that's an experience. And I found it
fucking terrifying. I found it really disturbing, just this. It
(46:59):
was hot, like it was hard to shoot again, and
I was like, oh, it doesn't look hard like. It
was really disturbing the whole just people. I just found
the hoping really like fuck. I didn't expect it to
be so such a horrifying What is the film that
made you laugh the most?
Speaker 2 (47:18):
You know, I remember the specific laughs the aforementioned airplane.
I just howled. I just saw Dumb and Dummer again.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Oh lord.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
I lived near Aspen, you know, and when I saw it,
I hadn't seen it in a long time. And when
when they dressed up it was supposed to be a joke, well,
if you live in Aspen, it wasn't a joke. A
lot of people with the cowboy hats and the fringe
and everything. I mean, they did Michale's Navy. It was
a film version. I might be delusional here, anyway, there
(47:49):
was a laugh in that where they asserted operate on
a guy they didn't like, and they sewed up some
things inside of him, and I just laughed and laughed
and laughed. Oh horrible bosses too. Those guys are freaking geniuses.
The plot is they're trying to lead the cops to
the bad guys so that they can get off the hook.
So the cops they go, Nana Nanda, the cops, and
(48:11):
they go, it's them and there's this chase and there's
a training coming, and they go, you can make it,
you can make it. And so he goes over the
track and the train goes grow like that and they
stop and they go yeah, yeah, and then they go, wait,
don't we want the cops to follow us? So it
cuts to them all sitting there. Some of them got out.
The train's going and going and going, and they go,
(48:32):
here it goes, and they jump back in the car.
There's the cops waiting, and then they take off again.
Oh my god, I thought that was an original joke.
I laughed and laughed and laughed. God, I love to
laugh at.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
William Kee. Macie. You have been a pleasure and a delight.
Thank you for doing this. However, when you were very
very very old, and you privately and painlessly died in
your sleep, as I heard about, through fences and went
through your house and trampled you to death in your sleep.
And you didn't even notice, you were fast asleep. And
(49:06):
I was walking along with a coffin, you know what
I'm like, And I'm like, where's with you? Mate to
Macy and your family go oh, I think he got
trampled to death by Elk while he was asleep, privately
and painlessly. And I go all right, and I'm seeing
it's a mess, and I go, oh God, We've got
to get all this in the coffin. And we're having
to dig up some of the land and get you
in there, chop you up into pieces so you fit
(49:28):
in the coffin. Coffin is absolutely rammed. It's only enough
room in this coffin for me to slide one DVD
into the side for you to take across to the
other side. And on the other side, it's movie night
every night. What film are you taking to show the
people of heaven and all your workshops when it is
your movie night? Will you make mace for.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
There's a possibility you eat therapy. I'm just saying, okay,
the film would be Are you ready? Because this is
the kind of heaven I want to go to? Debbie
does Dallas's genius. That is a right if there's only
room for one in the coffin. Debbie does Stallas. It
doesn't have to be the Blu ray.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
It could be on.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Videotape, but I'd prefer a CD, don't. I don't know
what format they haven't haven't.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
But we'll figure it out. Whatever is your favor.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Debbie does Dallas. You know d's are funny, and Debbie
does Dallas has a lot of d C.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
People are gonna be very excited to see that. Really
wapace you a bit of delight. Is there anything you
would like to tell people to look out for coming
soon starring you, written by you, directed by you.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
No in the can. I have planeted the Apes. I
just did Ricky Stinicky and that's selling pretty well on
blue or something that's pretty funny. And I did a
film called on Fire which is coming out just soonish,
very moving film, might be might be good, have not
seen it. And I got a bunch of films that
are circling and maybe I'll get lucky and get to
(50:58):
make another one.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Fantastic. Thank you man, Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
And this was a great interview. I love this, love
your questions, I love your style. You could do this professionally.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Shut up.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
I'm serious. I'm serious man.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
Man, it was a pleasure to talk to you. Thank
you very much. I'm going to stop the recording now,
have a wonderful death, all right.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
So that was episode three hundred and one. Head over
to the Patreon at patreon dot com. Forward slash pret
Golsteing for the extra twenty minutes of chat, secret and
video with William H. Go to Apple Podcasts. Give us
a five star rating. But right about the film that
means the most of you and why. It's a lovely
thing to read and it really helps numbers. And my
neighbor Marian loves it. It always makes her cry. Thank
you so much to William H for doing this and
for giving me his time. Thanks to Scribiu's Pip and
(51:44):
the Distraction Pieces Network. Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it.
Thanks to iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network
for hosting it. Thanks to Adam Richardson for the graphics
and at least load them for the photography. Come and
join me next week. Oh, we've got a very special
episode for you next week, when you've been waiting for
nearly a lot of months. But I will say no more.
That is it for now. In the meantime, have a
(52:06):
lovely week, and please, now more than ever, be excellent
to each other.
Look out. It's only films to be buried with. Hello,
and welcome to films to be buried with. My name
is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian and actor, a writer,
a director, a chalkboard and I love film. As roy
(00:22):
T Bennett once said, more smiling, less worrying, more compassion,
less judgment, more mad Max sargus, less not having mad
Max sargus. Hmm, yes, good point. Every week I invite
special guest over. I tell them they've died. Then I
get them to discuss their life through the films that
meant the most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins,
Mark Frost, Sharon Stone, and even Bed Campbell's. But this
(00:43):
week it is the Wonderful actor, writer, producer and director
William H. Macy. Head over to the Patreon at patreon
dot com Forwards Last Brett Goldstein, where you get an
extra twenty minutes of chat with William H. We laugh
a lot, he tells me a secret, We talk about
beginnings and endings. You get the whole episode, uncut and
ad free, and does a video. Check it out over
at Patreon dot com Forward slash Brett Goldstein, So William H.
(01:05):
Macy can you believe it. He's one of the finest actors.
You know. You've seen him in Shameless, in Fargo, in
Boogie Notes, You've seen him in one of my favorite films, Magnolia.
He is currently in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,
and he's in about a million other masterpieces. We've never
met before this. We recorded this on zoom a few
weeks ago and it was a really lovely time. I
think you're going to love this one. That's everything, isn't it.
(01:26):
I hope you're all well. So that is it for now.
I very much hope you enjoy episode three hundred and
one of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and welcome
to Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein,
(01:48):
and I am joined today by an actor, a writer,
a director, a producer, a stage legend, a screen legend.
He's in literally probably ten of at least ten of
the greatest films of all time. He's one of the
greatest actors that has ever lived. He's worked with the
(02:10):
greatest people. He's one of the people, when I've said
he's doing the podcast most excited about. He's a hero,
he's a legend. I can't believe he's here. He really is.
Look at him. Here he is. Please, welcome to the show.
It's the brilliant. It's William H. Macy.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
I think that's enough for to day.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, I think we did work. Yeah, good to catch up.
It's very nice to have you, William H. Macy. I've
got so many things I want to discuss with you.
Can we talk about David Mmmott. You may not know this,
of course you won't know this. When I first started
like properly acting, I did four or five David Mammett plays.
(02:50):
That was like my first thing. I did Edmund. I
played Edmund, which you've done many times and as a film,
and you sort of started with him, and you are
the originator of a lot of these parts.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Right, a lot of them. I met Dave at the
now gone Goddard College up in Plainfield, Vermont, and it
was a hippie school, so there were no grades, no tests,
no requirements. As a result, we just did theater all
day and there were a group of us. Stephen Chapter
is still one of my dear friends. After college. Dave
(03:24):
was from Chicago. He said, bully, Steve, you got to
come to Chicago. I just did Central Perversion in Chicago.
It's a big we'll do some plays. It will be great.
So we started doing plays. The first play that we
did at our new theater at the Saint Klaus Theatre
was American Buffalo and I played Bobby the Kid. And
we did a lot of work with Dave and he
remains a good pal and he's writing really stunning stuff.
(03:48):
Now he's back to writing plays and they are you
would love them. You would love them because there is
not an ounce of exposition, but they tell wopping big stories.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Cool. That's that good. And then and you developed like
an acting technique with him, Is that right?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yes? This is when we were in New York. New
York University went to David and said, will you teach
some classes? And he called me up and he said,
I got this new idea. They've studied with Sanni Meisner
at the Neighborhood Playoffs. Did a year there, and he
sort of expanded on that technique, which he called practical aesthetics,
and we taught it to this group of NYU students,
(04:27):
went up to Vermont where we had gone to college,
and did a summer residency there and that became the
Atlantic Theater Company, which still exists down on Chelsea. It's
one of the I think it's a deep premiere off
Broadway House and practical aesthetics is an extension of the
Meisner technique, just refined and simplified a bit.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
It is it a technique that you still used? Does
it work in every second? Does it work on film
as well as place? Yes?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I mean when in the classes, the all these steps
that you go through, and the point being that it
will become habitual. So yes, the technique has a lot
to do with the way I act. I don't go
through the steps anymore because they have indeed become instinctual.
But it's all about the objective, what does the character
want and let the emotions go hang effective memory and
(05:19):
sense memory. It doesn't work, at least it doesn't work
for me. It's all about what do you want?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So I was thinking looking at your CV, is that
what you call it? In Omega? Your resume? You tell me,
I don't know how much choice you've had in it,
and how much is random accident? But like you're in
excellent films, you're in a series of really really excellent films.
How much of that was choices? How much of it
(05:46):
these people just came to you, they offered it, Like,
how much was it making decisions where you chose good
projects versus this would be the only things that happened
to be offered.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
It's a great question. A lot of it was luck.
I happen to smoke a doob and drive up through
Vermont to Goddard College and decided I wanted to go there.
Had that not happened, I never would have met Dave,
who changed, and Stephen Chapter. Both of them changed my life.
Very few actors get to choose what they're going to do. Basically,
(06:17):
you wait for an opportunity to come along and you say, yes.
I have turned down films, but it's very rare. Nowadays,
I'm a lucky Peluca and I get more films that
I can do and I get to choose. But this
is a new thing for me. I had some notions
that I think held me in good stead. I always
(06:37):
wanted to do a good film as opposed to the
great role. I'd rather do a smaller role in a
great film than the lead in the film that's not
going to work. People sought me out. It's very flattering.
I don't know what's wrong with these people? But they
did and I did everything. I said yes, yes to
the universe. I thought I should get on the boards
(06:57):
and stay on the boards as long and as frequently
as possible. And that's where you learn how to act. Really,
you know what I'm talking about. That's it's when you're
up there in the fire and a good, for instance,
is shameless. I got to do that for over a decade,
eleven seasons in Boy that I learn a lot about acting.
I threw away a lot of crap that I thought
(07:18):
was important. I learned to do my job and relax
and let other people do their jobs and not worry
about them. I learned that tomorrow is another day, you know,
And if you blew the scene, you blew the scene,
there's going to be another scene. I put down a
lot of tension and a lot of bungst that wasn't helping.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
That's fascinating. I was going to ask about saving because
that's long. That was eleven years of your life. Then, yeah,
did you love it?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yeah? I loved it. I got to go to work
every day, and at first I brought my old habits
into it, which is struggling with all the scenes and
wanning rewrites and quizzing everything, and I carried it so heavily,
but just the fact that we did it for so long,
I finally calmed down, and boy did my acting improve?
And boy did people.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Like me interesting? And I guess he must have been
a real fucking family. Eleven years of that. How is
it when that ended? Was it devastating?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It was time? But it was very, very sad, and
I do miss them, and they're all doing really well,
which is great. And I feel that these sort of
are my airsats kids, So I'm very proud.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That's nice, man, that's so nice. And is this true?
I looked on your IMDb? Did you write an episode
of thirty something? Or is that a mistake on your IMDb?
Speaker 2 (08:32):
No, we did Stephen Chapter, whom I met in those
original classes with Dave Mammon. He and I started writing
Movies of the Week and it was a great gig.
We did it for many, many years. We did a
lot of TNT and at first he and I would
write them and he would direct, and then is my
star shined a little brighter? We wrote them, he directed,
(08:54):
and I got to star in them, and we did
Oh my gosh, a dozen of them or so, and
it was its great. One of them calls the Door
to Door that won a lot of Amys that year.
But they were all pretty pretty interesting. I was proud
of them.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That's nice. And now you seem to me, well, you
tell me, do you love all of this as much
as you always did? It is exciting to you as
it always was. Yes, that's great.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
At the end of the day, what it comes down
to for me is that I really love being in
imaginary circumstances. I love acting. I love it. Everything attendant
to it is a pain in the ass. But when
everyone gets quiet and it's my turn to talk and
the pressure's on, I loved that. I still really love it.
And it's not unlike an athletic event. I liken it
(09:45):
to skiing sometimes. Living in Colorado, I ski a lot now,
and you know, every cell in your body is telling
you to hug the mountain because you're falling down a mountain.
But the technique is no, You've got to point your
skis downhill and throw your weight downhill. As frightening as
that is, that's the only way to have control. And
when you're acting, you got to do the same thing.
(10:07):
You've got to throw yourself off the mountain and just
play it as it lays. And what happens is real.
That's what the audience saw, so you better react to
it in real time. And the pressures of it, I
dig them. I think maybe I'm a money performer. I
like that pressure. I mean, you haven't lived until you're
(10:30):
running around in your nickers and you're supposed to be
simulating a love scene with someone and there's a bunch
of teamsters standing there watching you. It takes a lot
to go, okay, put all that aside and concentrate on
what you're doing. But it brings me to life. I
love doing it. And I do know actors who don't
have a good relationship either with the camera or with
(10:52):
the audience. They find them to be adversarial. And I
don't know how you would act with that attitude.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
What does it say about a person you putting it
like that? And I completely relate to it. By the way,
this thing of enjoying living in imaginary circumstances, what does
it say about Does it say any thing about real
circumstances where you're like, yeah, this is this is not
for me? Much better when it is made up.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
It's a craft number one, and every once in a while,
if you're lucky, you can turn it into an art.
But you do go to work and it's something that
you do. And I don't find myself getting into a
character or a story that I'm telling and I get
stuck in it and I take it home and I
live with it. I don't do that. And also I
(11:40):
don't think that helps to try to become the character.
I don't think you can do that. It's a trick
we play on the audience. Really, you know. You tell
them I'm the King of England and put me on
a throne giving a crown. They say, okay, you're the king.
I don't have to prove it. I don't have to
be the king. They believe me.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah. Do you have a favorite of your film as
in the ones that you've been in. Is there one
that's like that's your personal favorite film.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Not a favorite that's like which of your kids is
your favorite? Yeah, but in no particular order. I loved
working with Paul Anderson. Boogie Knights was magnificent. Every time
I see it, I think it's a stunning work of
on his part.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
The stuff I've done with Dave American Buffalo on stage.
I got to play Bobby originally, and then I got
to play teach over in England and back here. That
changed my life. One of the films that Stephen and
I wrote, Door to Door. It was sublime, really, just
everything worked beautifully, with a beautiful cast and a fabulous
story to tell. Didn't one of Dave's plays State in Maine.
(12:44):
I just saw it recently, all pee your pants funny. Fargo,
of course changed my life. Shameless changed everything. I'm a
lucky Peluca. I've been in some really good films, sometimes
in very small parts, but as I said, that's when
I look for good films.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Pleasant Ville is a very important film in my life.
Pleasant Villa Magnolia. I'm putting on your list two of
my favorite films. All right, w's Mazie. There's something I've
forgotten to tell you that I should have told you
up front. I guess I'll say it and then we'll
just deal with it. You've died, You're dead. You're dead,
Oh my god. The people know, well you're finding out.
(13:22):
Everyone else knows. I forgot to tell you, and that's
the problem. I didn't formed everyone else. Everyone's dealing with it,
but it's.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Good to know. I think I'll just keep going away.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
I'm going yea, it suits you, we do very well.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, I'm dying a bunch of films.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
How did you die in this? How would you like
to die? What's your dream death?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Oh? With my brain intact and in my sleep, painlessly privately, I.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Think, yes, boy, it's sure.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
The older you get, the more you think about it,
because it's getting closer. Sixtieth birthday party and Felicity said,
my wife said, what are you going to do in
your third act? It took my breath away. And what
a brilliant question, I know, because third acts are notoriously short.
(14:17):
And anybody who's anybody who's ever done on a play
or a movie knows you want to drive for the curtain,
you know, so pick up the pace. Yeah, but in
my third act, to answer her, I really like acting.
I wanted to be a director. I've tried it. I
might do it again, but it's not where my strength lies.
I just wrote a script, had a great time writing
(14:38):
it that was new, and I wrote it by myself,
and that'd be lovely to get at me. There's nothing
like doing a script that you wrote. You know it
so well?
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Would you want to act in that? Direct it? Oh?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
By, I'll act in it.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Also.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It's a it's a western that would star my daughter Sophia.
And but again I get killed about halfway through.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Jesus, what a shame. What a shame?
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Killed again, dead again, dead again.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
By by yourself? What is? What do you think happens
when you die? Do you think there's enough to life? No?
Speaker 2 (15:12):
No, I think I think you can find heaven right
here on earth. And I think you can find hell
right here on earth too. And I think when you die,
the world needs those parts back to reshape them and
put someone else here.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
So I like that.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
I want to do it all when I'm alive. I
don't want to I'm not banking on a second shot
at this.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Well, I've got a surprise for you. Despite what you're saying,
is really beautiful. There is a heaven and you're going
to it at least for a bit, and it's filled
with your favorite thing. What's your favorite thing?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I'm a family guy. Play ukulele. I never have a
ukulele far away from me because I've always loved music.
It's soothing to me. I like making things, so like
my gardener, I like working with my hands. I love
breaking down a script, figuring out what's going on, trying
to figure out what the writer had in mind. I
help my daughter, I help my wife, and they help me.
(16:11):
We talk about it a lot o my family.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
You know what's in your in your heaven, there's a
series of workshops. One of them is a wood workshop,
one of them is a script workshop, one of them
is a music workshop. And you just move through workshops,
your family in each of them, whoever you want in
each one, and you're just making stuff, tinkering with stuff,
playing music. It's fucking great, to be fair, it's pretty great.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
You make that sound pretty good.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, I won't worry about it.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
If when I die it's not like that. How am
I going to get in touch with you?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Because I'll leave you. I'll leave you my email. We
can you can just that's cool.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah, Well, after my death, if your computer freezes up
and you can't figure out what the fuck is going
wrong with.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
It, yeah, it's you to me, it's you for the
workshop where you're like, this is a ship workshop. Now listen,
when you get to heaven, everyone's very excited to see you.
They're huge fans, but they want to talk about your life,
but they want to talk about it through films. And
the first thing they ask you is, what is the
first film you remember seeing William et Macie.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
It's a good'un. When then they'd Gone with the Wind
they did this. It was a public city stunt, but
they went all over the country looking for Scarlett O'Hara,
and my mother was a Mississippi girl, born in Pascogoula, Mississippi.
We lived in Georgia at the time, and my mother
actually went to one of those calls to audition for
Scarlett O'Hara. As I said, it was a public city stunt.
(17:35):
But when the film came out, my mom said, we're
going to see it, and we got in our Sunday
best and we drove into Atlanta to see Gone with
the Wind. Wow, it was overwhelming. It was pretty big,
big screen, very loud. How old were you maybe eight
or nine? I have to check when it was released.
I was born in fifty so that was something. I've
(17:57):
seen the film since then. It's a creaker.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, it's got some issues. Did you feel like I
want to be part of this do you remember thinking that.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
No, I got the bug in high school?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I did.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I was a frightened kid in high school. I grew
up in Cumberland, Maryland, and my brother came home from college.
He'd learned to play a guitar and he was in
a folks singing group and I lost my mind. I
just loved it. I said, you got to teach me
how to play this guitar. And my dad, God bless him,
he bought me a guitar. My brother taught me this very,
very sketchy, off color song. I signed up, way out
(18:36):
of character for me. I signed up to sing that
song in the talent show at Allegheny High School. And
the punchline was your papa ain't your papa, but your
papa don't know? And oh dear God, the whole auditorium
lost their minds. I got a laugh that was so big,
and I thought, holy crap. And I spent the rest
(18:59):
of my life trying to get that laugh.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Man, I get that interesting. What about being scared? What's
the film that scared you the most? Do you like
being scared to make or to see? You haven't done
that horror? Have you?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Or have I missed it now, The Exorcist. I was
driving across country with a Powell. We stopped in Chicago
because they've been talking about it on the radio, Downtown
South side of Chicago, and one of those giant theaters.
It was packed. Oh my god, the whole audience was terrified.
We were all talking to each other. It scared the
(19:34):
shit out of us. And I've seen that film many
times since then, and it should have won a lot
of awards. It's brilliantly done. Alan Burston was robbed, plus
a bunch of other people, and that scored. Oh my god,
it was a seminal film, changed a lot man that
was scary. When I was a kid, I saw my
brother took me to see the Thing with James Arness.
(19:56):
That scared the Jesus out of me too. I guess
I was twelve or thirte team. I remember they go.
They finally figured out that the thing is plant based.
It's terrifying them up in the Arctic Circle and they're
alone and there's a storm and they can't get out
and it's slowly killing all of them, and I don't know,
he cuts himself, right, He catches something and they analyze
(20:17):
it and they find out he's plant based. He's close
to spinach. And one of them says, what do you
do with a six foot, five hundred pound piece of spinach?
And somebody said, boil it, cook it, and that's how
they got the thing.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
It's right, it's a fucking big carrot in it. Did
you so you've never wanted to do a horror Oh,
you've just never had It's interesting you never wanted to
do it.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I don't see a lot of horror films because I
don't like to be frightened. But you know what, the
clock's ticking and I'd love to try everything. I did
a sitcom a while back into the column, the Connors.
I'd never done it, and I know all those guys.
I want to try every look. I'm I'm down for
a horror film, you know. I want to be the
(21:06):
guy that's just like me who goes, there's no supernatural Jesus,
grow up, there's an excellent well the monsters, you know,
not to tap me on the shoulder. I want to
be the guy who says, grow up.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Well, if anyone's listening and he's making a horror, I
think that sist you. Now, what about crying? Are you
a big crer and what's the film that made you cry? Them?
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I am a big crier and it's gotten worse as
I've gotten older. Oh my daughters mock me because a
commercial will come on and I'm weeping like a baby,
and are you crying at a commercial? And I cry?
And everything else too. You know, crying is a big
thing in acting. Everyone goes, how do you cry? How
do you cry? And that's one of the things that
(21:54):
Dave taught us. One don't cry. It's fun to indulge in,
but it's boring to watch. Don't cry. Do something about it.
And that is sage advice because if you put your
attention on solving the problem rather than crying about it,
it makes you really emotional and it's really easy to cry,
(22:15):
and that's the best. When an audience sees a person
crying to get emotional, it's boring, they're losers. But when
they cry in frustration because they can't not cry, that's
when the audience loses their minds. For me, the film
that got me this is Weird, I had never seen.
(22:35):
It's a wonderful life. I was working in Chicago, I
was in my forties. I was working in Chicago. It
was eleven o'clock. I guess it was holiday season. Eleven
o'clock in the morning. It's a Wonderful life came on. Oh.
I was at a friend's apartment all by myself. I
was on my hands and knees in front of the couch,
(22:56):
just weeping, weeping. And you know when Jimmy Stewart's at
the bar and he's weeping, and they did that extreme
close up Clarence. I don't want to die, you know,
help me, Lord, I don't know what's going on. Oh God,
I was a bleeding mess and I had to go
shoot that night and it was some I don't know.
(23:17):
I was a mess when I got to work.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So when you I was going to ask you about
that about crying stuff. When in Magnolia, which is one
of my favorite films, when you're crying at the end
of it. So for you doing that, you're playing the frustration.
You're not you're not thinking I have to cry. You're
playing the of quitz Kit, Denny Smith.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
It's in there. It's in there for all of us.
And if you can't cry, for all your act yourself.
If you can't cry, don't worry about the cool thing
happened to me. Gary Ross did Pleasantville. He directed Pleasantville,
and I was in that and there's a scene where
I had to cry. It's in the script because the
gag of the thing is it's all in black and
white and when you feel emotions, so it's scripted. You
(24:02):
know that this tear rolls down and suddenly you see
my pink skin under it. And I worried about that scene,
and so I went to Gary and I said, look it,
I can do it, but I can't do it all day.
You got to tell me when the money shot is
and if you have to start with that, you know.
And he said, okay, okay, it's okay. Well we got
there to do the scene, which was a long scene,
(24:24):
and Gary said, let's read it, and I burst into
tears cutting to the chase. Seven hours later, I'm still
weeping every time I do the scene. I guess I
had some issues to get out. Finally Gary's up and
you know, he's up on a crane somewhere and he's
going he said, Bill, you're this big and you don't
have to cry anymore.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Build it. Oh good, that's nice. What is the film
that people don't really like it. It's not critically acclaimed,
but you love it unconditionally.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
I don't know. I I've got that question. I went
through it, and I can't come up with anything. I
think I have relatively Catholic tastes.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
If I like it, I'm.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Pretty sure a lot of people will like it. And
I flatter myself. I'm really good at reading scripts, and
there's a trick to it. I try to read the
script in one sitting, and I try to read it
in real time. Scripts are notoriously loaded with stage directions,
and they're nonsense. They're just horseshit. So I skip the
(25:32):
stage directions and just read the dialogue, and when I
get lost, I'll go back and see what I'm in
the stage directions. I need to understand the scene. But
in that way, I can see the film in my
mind's eye and about the same time that you'll see
when the film's finished, about an hour and a half.
And if you've seen the film in your head, it's
easy to know which are the good ones and which
(25:53):
are the bad ones. So to answer your question, there
are more films that were critically acclaimed that I don't like.
It's jarring to your artistic integrity. When everyone says it's genius,
you've got to see it, and you see it and
you go, I think it's overblown. I think the acting's terrible.
(26:14):
I don't buy this story that happens to me more
than the opposite.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
What about a film that you used to love but
you've watched recently and you've gone, I don't like this
anymore because maybe you've changed it.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Yes, but films have changed too, I like probably every
other father. Both my daughters love films. We kept them
away from film and TV Felicity and I as long
as we could so they're readers. And then Sophia fell
and broke her collar bone. She had to sit on
the couch. So we said, guess what, here's the world
(26:47):
of films. But they wanted to know, Pop, what are
your films? And I went, oh my god, my daughters
want to know what I like. So I had this
list of films and most of them disappointed me. You know,
and it's not because I've changed as much as filmmaking
has changed. I mean, we used to tell films, tell
(27:09):
stories at a glacial pace, and now no, I get it,
I get it, Come on, come on. And then We
went through that period after MTV when it was all
quick cuts, and that was a bore too. There was
a bunch of years there where they'd never finished a scene.
They were just cut out of them, and I thought,
come on, that's sloppy writing. Give me the dilemma and
(27:32):
write your way out of it. But you got to
keep it going. So a lot of the films that
I said, wait till you see this Airplane, I said,
the funniest movie you've ever seen. Well, the funny beds
are still funny, but you got to sit there and
wait for him to come along. There were a couple
of others. There are notable exceptions Doctor Strangelove. I mean
my kids were ten and twelve when they watched Strangelove
(27:55):
and I said, this is a fabulous film. By that time,
I said, I remember it as a fabulous They watched.
They watched it beginning to end, and so did I.
And it is a magnificent film, particularly that scene with
Sterling Hayden where he's saying Jack, Jack, give me the codes, Jack,
and they're on the couch. It must have been an
(28:17):
oversized mag on the camera because they don't move and
it goes on for four minutes with the windows getting
blasted out, two guys on a couch with no cuts.
You can't take your eyes off of it.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
That's cool, That's very cool. What is the film that
means the most to you? Not because the film itself
isn't necessarily good, but the experience you had around seeing
it will always make it special to you.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
See Well, I would say the biggest one, and this
is sort of changing me artistically and the experience of
seeing it. I went to see The French Connection Gene Hackman,
and I was still in college at the time, studying
this Stanislavsky's method with Dave Mammott and a bunch of
(29:07):
us went to see it and I thought, if I
could act like Gene Ackman, oh man, I thought, that's
what I want to do. And we've talked about it
all night, and one of the things we came up
with was that as an actor, Gene Hackman don't give
a shit. He knows exactly what he's going for. He's
(29:28):
really smart with analysis, he knew what the writer was
going for, and he doesn't care whether you like him
or whether you're judging him, whether this is a good moment,
whether it's a full moment and he didn't give a shit.
His attention is out there and I couldn't take my
eyes off of him. One of them and that film
pulls up. It's a stunning film. I've seen Gene Hackman
(29:51):
almost everything he's ever done, and I've never seen him
be bad. I've seen him in terrible movies. I've never
seen him be bad.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Did you ever work with him? With him Friedkin? No,
never did, No, Shane big regret. There's a film critical Markamod.
I don't know if you know him. And he talks
a lot about William Friedkin. He's like an expert on
the Exorcist, and he talked about and he'd done lots
of interviews with William Freakin and apparently Gene Hackman had
been very difficult to direct on the French Connection because
(30:21):
he was worried about being liked, I think, and William
Freedkins sort of beat that out of him. So it's
very interesting that that wasn't I think there was an
issue with that that freaking got rid of.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
I love knowing that.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, it's interesting, that's the thing he liked about it.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, it makes me like Gene Hackman even more because
he's got feet of clay just like the rest of us.
And good for Billy freakin. Yeah, Jeane was stuck to work.
He's a tough guy to work with. I mean, I've
heard that, but boy, I still wanted to do it.
There's a bunch of actors out there really rough, especially guys.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
What's that about? I don't like that? Yeah, how do
you deal with that?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I think one of the common denominators of the nightmare
actors is fear, going back to the throwing yourself off
the mountain analogy. You show up and you're about to
put your ass on the line, expose yourself, potentially make
a fool of yourself. You don't know if the director
(31:25):
knows what he or she is doing. You worked on
the scene, and the actors who are doing it aren't
doing it the way you saw it at all. There's
a lot to be afraid of, and the only answer
is to throw yourself into the belly of the beast.
You've got to attack it head on. You've got to
(31:45):
go say to yourself, I'm frightened, but I'm going to
do it anyway. That's what I'm getting paid for. And
I think what a lot of actors do, especially when
they get successful, they try to mitigate the fear by
bringing an entourage on. They try to surround themselves with
people who will make them feel safe. They try to
get angry about something that they can do something about
(32:09):
this costume, this hair person, that director. How can I
do my work with this incompetence around me? And I
think they just do it because they would rather have
a problem that they can lick than face the real problem,
which tess takes courage and faith. And I think maybe
(32:29):
another thing is that when actors get really, really big,
and when the biggest elephant in the room is the
actor who at the end of the day can hire
and fire the director and for that matter, get the
producers thrown off the set. When they got that much
power and bad habits, then they're insufferable.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Do you have I'm sure you've worked with some of
these people. Do you have a key to making it
work for you with people like that.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I've been a lucky guy. I've been on maybe two
or three three sour sets, and all the films I've done,
it's always been pretty good everywhere I've worked. And I
must say I was a problem actor when I was young.
I was insufferable because I was frightened and I wanted
to get it right. And it takes maturity to realize
(33:17):
you can never get it right. You can only keep
doing it and do it as fully and as bravely
as you can, but it'll never be right. That's the
wrong thing. I've seen it in myself, and i've seen
it in others. You do a take and it's good,
and you think, let me go again. I think I
can do it better, and that's the kiss of that.
(33:37):
You can't do it better. Maybe you can be more full,
maybe you can be more simple, but you can't do
it better. It's the wrong words.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
That's great, that's great. What is the film you must
relate to?
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Obviously, as an actor, every film I'm not in, I go,
wait a minute, I could have done that. Call my agent.
I didn't even know this was out there. What's going on?
I can play thirty yeah, But I, like everyone else,
I relate to the hero, and I see myself as
(34:16):
the hero. I guess. Maybe a better way to answer
your question, what did I really relate to that I
see myself in is that I have trouble with the
comic books because there's nothing at stake. And I haven't
seen a lot of the Marvel movies, but I do
know that they're taking a chance when they have their
(34:38):
hero have doubts, and they've done that, and I've heard
it's worked. But I think, you know, the dragon keeps
attacking the city, and so you suit up your finest
warrior to slay the dragon. But he gets strapped through
and so they have to send in the cobbler. They
have to send in the last guy who should be
(35:01):
fighting the dragon. That's the story I want to see. Yeah,
that's that's the one.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Completely agree. What is the sexiest film ever made?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
I saw Zepparelli's Romeo and Juliet No. I was almost
Romeo's age when I saw it, but boy, she was sexy.
That was really sexy. I love the way they did
the sex scene in that it was so innocent and
so it was a bit matter of fact. It's memory serves.
There wasn't a lot of score in the at that point.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
How old are you? How How old is Romeo? How
old is he supposed to be? Is he like sixteen?
Speaker 2 (35:40):
They're kids, they're supposed to be fourteen to fifteen. Their
brats Susan Sarandon. I've seen her in a bunch of films.
Remember in Atlantic City and Jason the Window. They're Washington, They.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, that's the same.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I saw Patricia Arquette and Tommy Lee Jones on a
TV version of Executioner Song.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Do I have that right?
Speaker 2 (36:02):
Anyway? I marveled at that because it was on television,
and Patricia Arquette, every time she would look at him,
they clenched a lot. Every time she would look at him.
She looked like a woman who was going to explode
if she didn't get laid really quickly. I've never seen
anyone look so hot, and it was so great that
(36:24):
it was on television, so there's nothing that the board
could say, Oh, that's inappropriate. It was her intention. It
was genius, and that was one of the hottest things.
I've often thought that she could be in a room
with four beautiful women, completely fuck naked, and you see
through the window a woman in a her braad and
(36:46):
underwear combing her hair, and that's what you look at. Yeah,
it's the mystery of it.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
What is objectively the greatest film of all time. It
might not be your favorite film, but is the pinnacle
of cinema for you.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Man, that's another one I can't answer. I could do
top five or ten. As I've gotten older, I look
at the big films and whether you like it or not,
I'm marvel that they got the thing shot. I'm talking about,
you know, D Day.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Or Spotsicus or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Yeah, or these giant films are so many moving parts,
and my god, the work that goes into them, like Apes,
like Planet of the Apes. It's that's such a big film,
and hats off to the producer and the line producer
and the director to keep that thing going. I think
it's an experience of all actors. You do a film, even.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Sorry, you've just done Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Right,
this is what you have coming out? Are you? Are
you an ape in it? Are you a human in it?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
I'm a human?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Tell me about I love the trilogy. The previous trilogy
I think is phenomenon. Is it excellent? About? How is
making that that? Well?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
I've done two of those kind of films. I did
Jurassic Park, the third one in the trilogy, and I
did Apes. Jurassic Park I was through the whole thing. Apes.
I did three or four scenes, but the experience is
humbling because, as I said, the size of it, and
you're working with filmmakers, the best and the brightest filmmakers
(38:27):
doing the best work they've ever done. And I love
it when the technology doesn't bury the story, that the
technology is used to tell the story. I've not seen
Apes yet, but I suspect it's going to be good,
and when you get down to it, a simple story.
In this version of Apes, the Simians are ascendant there
(38:50):
on top, and the humans, because of a pandemic, have
gone mostly feral, and there are some that were immune
for it and they're trying to So it's a struggled
there's a grade line and that there's only room on
this planet for one major animal and it ain't the Apes,
so say the humans. But just AI is a big thing,
(39:12):
and I worry about it. The notion that someone would
have a computer write a scene is disgusting to me,
or write the score. I don't know what kind of
artists could say that, and I certainly don't want to
work with them. On the other hand, we can use
technology and AI to our advantage to tell the story
(39:35):
directly and simply. So the Apes, first of all, these
guys went to Ape school. They were there for a
month learning how to do that, and they did it brilliantly.
And it's hard on their bodies because they're all bent over.
But they wore these it's like coveralls, and they had
sensors on them so that the computer could read it.
(39:58):
And there were dots on their the computer could register that.
And then they had this sort of a World War
two thing that the flyers put on in World War two.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
You know.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
It's made of canvas and leather, and there was a
little thing sticking out with a GoPro on the end
shooting back at their faces. So I'm acting with these guys.
And they got the hat on and they got the thing,
and they got dots on their face, but it's their faces,
and they were doing their voices, but I was acting
with them. When you looked at the monitor, you saw
a chimpanzee in real time, in real fuck yeah, in
(40:33):
real time. So that's what the GoPro was. So if
they raised their eyebrows, the chimp raised there. If they
went ha ha ha ha, the chimp with it bottled
the mind. It really helped the director and everybody else
to know what this scene is going to look like
the go pros just for the monitors that you know,
there's the film that they took in, but that's all artificial.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Interesting. Yeah, fucking amazing, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Jurassic Park was older. So I had a fight with
a stegosaurus and it was an excavator. It was a
huge excavator that they dressed up, and the velociraptors were puppets.
They had a full one. They had one waist up
and they had one about this big, and it took
five men and women to run the thing. One of
(41:21):
them had a helmet on, so when he went like that,
the raptor did that, and someone was operating all the thing.
The raptor had a heartbeat right here, so you could
see it's heart beating, which they would vary depending on
what was going on. The iris in its eyes would
open and close. They had an air thing. This raptor
(41:42):
goes up and snips Tai Leoni and he smells and
he goes like that and it blew her hairbag. That
was all on real time. I loved the AI and
I love all the computer stuff, but man, when you
can use off the shelf magic in front of people,
that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
It that's this year right there. So is your greatest film?
Something like Original Planet of the Eye, So any of
these big ones.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I saw the Original with Roddy McDowell and I thought
it was really well done and interesting. But we're in
a whole new realm now. It's if you can think it,
someone can figure out how to make it.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
What is the film you could or have watched? The
mist Ivan Iver again.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
The Godfather's a lot of Francis Ford, Coppolists, stuff Newman
and Redford, the Sting Sundance Kid. I've seen them over
and over. They hold up. They're great every time. During
the pandemic, we have a big, a big yard sideyard,
and we hired a company that came in and set
up a huge screen with big column speakers and you
(42:48):
could play movies and we taped off the whole yard.
So each family came and they had their own pot.
The only thing we shared was the microwave for popcorn.
And oh my god, some of the neighbors. One of
the mom's cried, she hadn't been out of her house
for six weeks. And we had blankets there and everyone
lay on the grass with pillows and blankets, and we
(43:10):
watched a bunch of films, but we rescreened Hannah and
her sisters and I was knocked out by it. What
a fine film, great acting, great acting, one of what
he's best.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
I think, Yeah, I love the end. Yeah, well, a
lovely thing to have done. That's nice. They loved it.
What's the worst film you've ever seen?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Boy? I rarely get through them. Look at I think,
at the end of the day, one thing any story
has to be is true.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
It's got to be.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
True to the human experience. And I think the test
is if you put it out there and a couple
of million people see it, that most of them recognize
the issue and it moves them. And what offends me
is films that aren't true. And I guess the most
obvious example, and I can see the will to live
(44:04):
just fade from people when I get on this kick.
But I think Hollywood is doing a lot of damage
to the world with our portrayal of violence. It's not
true and it's not a good place to be lying
when it comes to our portrayal of violence. And it
used to be they would say, we would say, hey,
(44:26):
it's violent, you don't like it? You're shooting the messenger.
We're just reporting the world as we see it. But
that's not true anymore.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Now.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
It offends me and that it's cost me a lot
of work because well, this Western that I was working
on when it first started off, there were nine bodies
on page four, and I lobbied for us to go
back to the real West and not to westerns. Don't
imitate films. Let's go back to the real West. And
(44:55):
the biggest shootout in in the real Old West was
the shootout at Okay Corral. Four guys. Four guys. They've
written songs, movies, poems, plays, they've written about it. It
was the biggest thing. Four guys. Most of the scripts
you get there's four guys. On the first page. You
see them downtown, blasting away in New York City. There's
(45:16):
not a cop to be seen. People get shot four
times and they give a speech. I've tried to sell
this a couple of times, but I want to do,
especially on a series. I want to do a thing
where you take three episodes to have you fall in
love with one of the major characters and then shoot him,
but don't write him off the show, and every week
(45:36):
you can see what a bullet does to a human body.
You can see how it wrecks his marriage. You can
see how he gets infections. You can see how he
has to learn to walk again or use his hands again.
You can see the deep, dark depressions. Let's tell the
truth about it, because I swear to God, you kill
one person, there's nothing more dramatic than that, you kill
(45:57):
eighteen people. It's just porn. The only thing you can
do to make that more dramatic is k eighteen more.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
So.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Yeah, I don't even know what the question was, but
that's my round. And you do look like you've lost
a little bit of the will to live.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
No, I'm I'm moved. I moved, and I agree, and
I think it's interesting things very interesting about the Oka crowd.
I did not know that twenty four people.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
I heard a story about a cop homicide. Cop in
an elevator with one other guy looks at him and
he's most wanted. They were on the fourteenth floor. By
the time he got to the lobby, they had discharged
both their weapons, all six shots, five shots, and nobody
had hit in an elevator.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
I also believe that. Yeah, I once went to I
have never fired a gun and never any of that.
A friend said, let's I was in La and they said,
let's go to a shooting range and we and I
was like, okay, that's an experience. And I found it
fucking terrifying. I found it really disturbing, just this. It
(46:59):
was hot, like it was hard to shoot again, and
I was like, oh, it doesn't look hard like. It
was really disturbing the whole just people. I just found
the hoping really like fuck. I didn't expect it to
be so such a horrifying What is the film that
made you laugh the most?
Speaker 2 (47:18):
You know, I remember the specific laughs the aforementioned airplane.
I just howled. I just saw Dumb and Dummer again.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Oh lord.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
I lived near Aspen, you know, and when I saw it,
I hadn't seen it in a long time. And when
when they dressed up it was supposed to be a joke, well,
if you live in Aspen, it wasn't a joke. A
lot of people with the cowboy hats and the fringe
and everything. I mean, they did Michale's Navy. It was
a film version. I might be delusional here, anyway, there
(47:49):
was a laugh in that where they asserted operate on
a guy they didn't like, and they sewed up some
things inside of him, and I just laughed and laughed
and laughed. Oh horrible bosses too. Those guys are freaking geniuses.
The plot is they're trying to lead the cops to
the bad guys so that they can get off the hook.
So the cops they go, Nana Nanda, the cops, and
(48:11):
they go, it's them and there's this chase and there's
a training coming, and they go, you can make it,
you can make it. And so he goes over the
track and the train goes grow like that and they
stop and they go yeah, yeah, and then they go, wait,
don't we want the cops to follow us? So it
cuts to them all sitting there. Some of them got out.
The train's going and going and going, and they go,
(48:32):
here it goes, and they jump back in the car.
There's the cops waiting, and then they take off again.
Oh my god, I thought that was an original joke.
I laughed and laughed and laughed. God, I love to
laugh at.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
William Kee. Macie. You have been a pleasure and a delight.
Thank you for doing this. However, when you were very
very very old, and you privately and painlessly died in
your sleep, as I heard about, through fences and went
through your house and trampled you to death in your sleep.
And you didn't even notice, you were fast asleep. And
(49:06):
I was walking along with a coffin, you know what
I'm like, And I'm like, where's with you? Mate to
Macy and your family go oh, I think he got
trampled to death by Elk while he was asleep, privately
and painlessly. And I go all right, and I'm seeing
it's a mess, and I go, oh God, We've got
to get all this in the coffin. And we're having
to dig up some of the land and get you
in there, chop you up into pieces so you fit
(49:28):
in the coffin. Coffin is absolutely rammed. It's only enough
room in this coffin for me to slide one DVD
into the side for you to take across to the
other side. And on the other side, it's movie night
every night. What film are you taking to show the
people of heaven and all your workshops when it is
your movie night? Will you make mace for.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
There's a possibility you eat therapy. I'm just saying, okay,
the film would be Are you ready? Because this is
the kind of heaven I want to go to? Debbie
does Dallas's genius. That is a right if there's only
room for one in the coffin. Debbie does Stallas. It
doesn't have to be the Blu ray.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
It could be on.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Videotape, but I'd prefer a CD, don't. I don't know
what format they haven't haven't.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
But we'll figure it out. Whatever is your favor.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Debbie does Dallas. You know d's are funny, and Debbie
does Dallas has a lot of d C.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
People are gonna be very excited to see that. Really
wapace you a bit of delight. Is there anything you
would like to tell people to look out for coming
soon starring you, written by you, directed by you.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
No in the can. I have planeted the Apes. I
just did Ricky Stinicky and that's selling pretty well on
blue or something that's pretty funny. And I did a
film called on Fire which is coming out just soonish,
very moving film, might be might be good, have not
seen it. And I got a bunch of films that
are circling and maybe I'll get lucky and get to
(50:58):
make another one.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Fantastic. Thank you man, Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
And this was a great interview. I love this, love
your questions, I love your style. You could do this professionally.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
Shut up.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
I'm serious. I'm serious man.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
Man, it was a pleasure to talk to you. Thank
you very much. I'm going to stop the recording now,
have a wonderful death, all right.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
So that was episode three hundred and one. Head over
to the Patreon at patreon dot com. Forward slash pret
Golsteing for the extra twenty minutes of chat, secret and
video with William H. Go to Apple Podcasts. Give us
a five star rating. But right about the film that
means the most of you and why. It's a lovely
thing to read and it really helps numbers. And my
neighbor Marian loves it. It always makes her cry. Thank
you so much to William H for doing this and
for giving me his time. Thanks to Scribiu's Pip and
(51:44):
the Distraction Pieces Network. Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it.
Thanks to iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network
for hosting it. Thanks to Adam Richardson for the graphics
and at least load them for the photography. Come and
join me next week. Oh, we've got a very special
episode for you next week, when you've been waiting for
nearly a lot of months. But I will say no more.
That is it for now. In the meantime, have a
(52:06):
lovely week, and please, now more than ever, be excellent
to each other.
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