Titus Welliver

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is actor Titus Willober Tightest. Good to
have you. Thank you for having me, Bob. I'm a
big fan. Okay, good we're Are you located right this
very second in the era of the pandemic? I'm in Venice, California,

(00:30):
a k a. The Andromeda Straine set. And how are
you coping with self quarantining? You know what I have
to say, Um, it's it's I'm not losing my mind.
Two of my kids are home doing their school work,
and it's just sort of become the new norm. I
venture out and uh walk around and do things. But

(00:53):
you know, a lot of reading, a lot of watching
tons of television old new, uh yet to come, and
and lots of films. So I'm trying to utilize this
to my best ability. And it's it's not so bad. Okay,
So you're not really paranoid about getting it now. I've
been really hyper vigilant since it first kind of was

(01:18):
creeping into the into my news feed. UM and my
girlfriend had lived in Hong Kong at one point and
had gone through stars and so she um, we sort
of immediately disimplemented all the the you know, the cautionary behavior,
and it's it seems to serve as well. I mean,
we venture out to go to the grocery store, and

(01:40):
that's really the extent of it. But you know it is,
you know, you mask up and glove up and go
in and and that's all we can really do. So
what do you reading? Oh my god, I've just finished
reading a great book about Sam Peck and Paw who
was one of my eric directors, called it they moved
of him, and uh it's been on my shelf. It

(02:03):
was given to me years ago and uh I cracked
it and quite fascinating. Um, you know, a bit of
an undignified end to a guy who who was a
game changer in the field, but fascinating, really quite fascinating.
So what did you learn? Well, he he had been

(02:25):
in the Marine Corps and he was you know, he
was not unlike a lot of the characters that that
appeared in his films. I think that his the kinship
to the to the Pike character, to William Holding character
in The Wild Bunch. He was this sort of avid
outdoorsman hunter, um, you know, boozer, womanizer. It's interesting. I

(02:49):
told now, go back and look at his films. I
see a lot and hear a lot of of him.
Um in the characters in his films. Now he did
straw Dogs, didn't he he did? He did. That's the
only film I've ever seen where I said, wait a second,
this might be too violent, you know what. I saw

(03:11):
it at a drive in, completely inappropriate from my age
at the time to come out in theater as a
year before, and I ended up going to see it
get this double bill with Deliverance. So if you really
want to completely, you know, destroy your your teenage mind. Um,

(03:32):
it was a game changer. But I remember being very
very disturbed, of course, drawn to it like a mop
to a flame, but then kind of realizing once I
was watching this film and I was a bit in
over my head, although it stayed with me, I have
to say, Um, but yeah, both of those films that
I was shaken for quite a while after that. The

(03:52):
only film that I've really been scared at, and I
was scared in the book too, was Angel Hart. Did
you ever see Angel Heart? Oh? Yeah, yeah, that's why
I actually really really liked that film. In the book,
is is really really fallen Angels a great book. I
thought the film was was quite good. I loved Mickey
Rourke in it, and I thought de Niro, I mean,
Alan quintessential, kind of Alan Parker visually kind of stunning,

(04:18):
and de Niro comes in and suitably menacing and charming
all at once. Now I'm I'm right there with you.
I really enjoy that film. So what's next on your
reading list? Well, you know what, I'm just looking at
my bookshelves. There's uh. I have all the tash and
books that you know, the films of the sixties and

(04:39):
the seventies and the eighties, and so I thought what
I would do is peruse those books and come up
with a with the greatest hits list of films that
my kids have probably not seen, and sitting down with them,
we've been sort of going through some of the films
of Scorsese and and Peck and Paw and Trufou and Melville,

(04:59):
and I've got my own little film school going here.
How old are the kids that are bumping up with you?
Eighteen and fourteen, My daughter's fourteen, my son is eighteen.
Now they're used to me throwing um, you know, films
at them, But I'm trying to kind of I want
to expand it a little more. I mean, I don't
think I'm we're gonna, you know, sit through any bonwell

(05:20):
or anything like that. You know, I'll certainly try to
I'll try to sweeten the deal with something. Although we
did do Polanski's The Tenant, which I that I find
that film very very scary, maybe more disturbing than anything.
But that film really unnerved and are they receptive, very
much so, very much so. I think the Innocence, you know,

(05:43):
the debor Caraclic has got to come next, because that's uh,
for me, yet another film you know, still holds up,
still quite quite spooky. I think it's time to to
break it. Of course, my kids want to jump right
to The Exorcist, which I say in my fourteen year
old you're not ready for that. You won't recover that
will take you years. Well, that was still in the

(06:05):
era of platform releases, and I remember people have seen
it over Christmas. I've been out of town and I
went to New York to see it, and I think
I was overhyped, you know, also being Jewish, maybe it
doesn't really connect. But uh, I wasn't frightened but the
fact that Max von Sita was in a genre pick
I couldn't believe it. Well, I know, you know, and

(06:25):
it's very funny because I remember there was an interview
with with him ben Cito, talking about it, and he said, well,
you know, I'm Scandinavian and so we have lots of
folklore and everything, but the Devil for us really kind
of falls into the column of being sort of silly folklore.
We don't really um, you know that it doesn't we

(06:47):
don't absorb that. UM. I just think that for me,
and I was raised in an agnostic household slash probably
more of a Jewish household than anything. But it's still
scared to beat Jesus out of me. But I think
it was also because I never really considered I remember
kind of finding the paperback book at a friend's house

(07:08):
that I was having a sleepover, and and kind of
cracking it open and and reading it and thinking, I
don't I don't want to, I don't want to pursue
this any further. And then of course I saw the
film and it it just it really knocked me. I
didn't sleep solidly for for at least a month after that. Wow,

(07:29):
So what are your favorites if we had to boil
it down to a few from the late eighty Uh, Well,
I love bullet Um and uh love Copolist films, Love
the Conversation, love um and lament huge, Lament, fan Um,

(07:49):
Long Goodbye. I also love I love you talk about
the Long Goodbye with Ellie Gould, with Ellie Gould, Yes, yes,
um uh friends of Eddie coil Um another I I
always have considered that sort of Mitcham's King Lear. I
mean as his performance in that film. There there there

(08:11):
are aspects of that film that feel like a movie
of the week, just in the way that it's shot,
in the music yet the performances Richard Jordan, Peter Boyle
and Alex rock Ohan's sort of amazing collection of actors.
Um the last detail which I just uh, that was
a great movie. So Brandy Quaid has kind of left

(08:33):
the planet. Yeah but literally, Yeah, he's on space stations
qu Equaid right. The funny thing is the woman he's
involved with is the daughter of a professor was at
my college. I never took a course room, but he was.
He taught Russian and he was an odd guy. So
reading about that story was a weird. You know, six
Degrees of Separation. You know another one wages a Fear,

(08:58):
which I just check back into a couple of weeks ago.
I'd forgotten how much I love that film, and I
you know what, I have to say, the remake that
Friedkin did with Roy Scheiner Sorcerer has has got a
lot of merit great. So I agree. I told freaking
when I saw him a couple of years ago, because
that movie was really denigrated when it came out, but

(09:18):
I felt it had an amazing tension. I saw it
in the National, which was the theater in Westwood before
they tore it down, and probably five people in the theater,
but it really hit me. Oh no, it's it's it's great.
And that you know that Tangerine Dream score is is fantastic.
I mean it's super solid. I think it's really good.

(09:39):
In Scheider is great and all those other actors, um,
the foreign actors that that surround him, and I know
it's I think it's a very very underrated film and
kind of unappreciated, but you appreciate it. I do so.
And where the two guys, based on this conversation, you
really seem like a Stu into the game very much.

(10:02):
So my parents were both cinephiles. So the weekends were
and of course this is very you know, long before
we ever had VHS or any right. He actually went
to the theaters and then had the Great Revival theaters
all over New York, Cinema Village and the Waverley Twin
and UM and the Thalia on the Upper West Way

(10:23):
Upper My My weekends were spent seeing the films of
Curasawa and Um and and Bent well Um. My father did,
unfortunately take me to see Sorrow and the Pity when
I was entirely too young, which actually really really traumatized me.

(10:44):
And I can remember waking up from this horrible nightmare.
I was little, I was a little boy, and my
mother said, well, you know, and I was sobbing, and
she said, what what do you What happened? I had
a bed a nightmare at a nightmare And she said, well,
what was your nightmare about? And I said, the Nazis
were We're shooting people and pushing them into a ditch.

(11:05):
And my mother went, why would you even think of
such a thing? And I said that movie that I
went to with dad. My parents were divorced. He said
what movie was that. She's trying to think of some
World War two maybe something with Burt Lancaster that she
was unaware of because my dad loved World War Two films.
And I said it was The Sorrow something and she
said the Sorrow and the Pity and I my mother

(11:29):
literally going to her nightstand and picking up the phone
and it was probably one o'clock in the morning and
calling my father and just saying, what were you thinking,
you know? And he said, it's a it's an important film,
and she said, you know, I can hear them going
back and forth. I agree, but you know he's he's
too little, and he went, he's got to know. Uh,

(11:50):
he's that Max Offals, I believe. But what I remember
seeing and then he made one just after that was
like six and a half hours. I remember bringing a
sandwich to the movie. I don't remember my name right now.
It's funny you talked about because I can remember my
dad taking my brother and I to see um, Lawrence

(12:11):
of Arabia and it was the first film I'd ever
seen and had an intermission, um but of Court yet again.
You know, that was the Lean films when I was
a kid. They were the Greatest Adventures as absolutely loved
did Doctor Javaga. And I remember having a friend, uh
sort of a playmate friend of mine come along and

(12:32):
my dad took us to see Doctor Javago, and this
kid just it didn't land on him at all. He
kept staying this stupid and it's so long. And I
was because that was my life. I was looking at
him like, what a philistine. This kid hasn't been raised properly. Um, okay,
but your father at the time was teaching at Yale. Yes, yes,

(12:56):
but you were living in Manhattan. No, we were living
in New Haven. I was born in New Haven, and
so the films that I saw, the very early films
that I saw, were shown at the co Op at Yale.
So I can remember seeing Um Big Deal on Madonna
Street as a little boy there and and the Beatles
movie helped. And then he he left there. He was

(13:19):
snatched away from Yale by the University of Pennsylvania, where
he became the chairman of the Graduate School of Fine Arts,
and we then moved to West Philadelphia. I wish there
were a lot of UM great theaters, and in particular,
there was the one down on South Street that showed
UM you know. Every time I turned around, we were

(13:42):
going to see a Kurasawa festival. I remember going for
one one afternoon and and starting with high and Low
and then it was you know, Jimbo, which is to
this day one of my all time favorite film Santuro
seven Samurai um, and I was. I was thrilled. I

(14:04):
was happy, happy to be there. It was good for
my reading skills too. I always maintained that I learned
how to read because my parents just for films. I
wasn't doing you know, green eggs and him, I was,
you know the city up there, you know, reading the subtitles.
So I had knew what the hell was going on
in all the chaplain of course, and the Silent films

(14:24):
and Buster Keep films, UM and Harold Lloyd and those films.
I just remember I went to hear John Simon speak,
who recently died, of course, was the film critic for
multiple magazines. And I remember talking to him and he
was not a open guy, and I said, I, if

(14:45):
it's up on the screen, I can pretty much sit
through anything. I love the experiences. No, no, it's not good.
I leave. But you know it's different because when I
first moved to l A in the mid seventies. And
the great thing about living in the l A because
movies at the time open in New York and l A.
You could literally see everything, whereas today that's literally an impossibility.

(15:06):
I know, I agree, and and and it breaks my heart.
I mean, we do have one in Brentwood on Montana
that that revival theater, and they and they throw up
some really substantial films and every now and then someone
connected to the film will actually be there for a
little comment afterwards. But uh, you know, because everyone has

(15:27):
blu ray players. Um, the a lot of those theaters
have have have gone away, which kind of breaks my
heart because there's really nothing better, even even watching the
krummy print of a great film. That it's that, you know,
it's that tactile experience of being there, and um, it's
just it's entirely different. And I have a giant TV,

(15:51):
a high def four K ultra gas powered turtlenext letter
to that's with a so no sound system and it's
amazing it. My popcorn isn't as good. And uh, and
I miss if someone should bottle that old cinema smell
like a room spray that you could just sort of
put on your couch before you tuck into a good film.

(16:14):
I really missed that a lot, those great double features,
things like you know, American Graffiti and the Wanderers, or
what a great double bill? Oh god, what did that
guy say when he was banging the bottles together? Wanderers?
That's the Waltering Warriors, Warriors, Wanderers. Brain said Wanderers, My

(16:35):
lip said warriors. But the Warriors was another one. But
you're talking about that experience. I remember I went to
Hollywood Boulevard for a preview of Halloween and the squel
and the theater was full, and just at a tense moment,
somebody yelled out, you deserve to die, and it was
like that really made the whole Well, that's the day.
I mean those When I was a kid in New York,

(16:58):
we would go to the Times Square because you could
see a triple bill there for three bucks, and so
you would typically get two really awful films and one,
you know, sort of substantive film that would kind of
make up for it. But we didn't care, you know,
we would go and see a triple feature. You know,
kung fu movies that were you know, maybe they were

(17:21):
they were. They were not high art, but they were
you know, very very entertaining. Um. But you know, that's
where we lived. The popcorn was horrible. They smelled like
cat yearn because all of them had rodent infestations, so
they were just wildcats roaming inside. And you'd have you know,
emotionally disturbed people in the audience with you that would

(17:43):
live in the theater. It was kind of like Escape
from New York waiting for Ernie borg nine to come
strolling out. But the but there was you know, and
they would have these fantastic dialogues with the screen, these
these characters in the movie really and that was sort
of that was worth the price of admission, as it was,

(18:04):
you know, he didn't even care necessarily what was happening.
But they'd be yelling always, typically at the at the
victim who sprains their ankle when they're trying to run
away from you know, the Jason Borhees character. Right, Okay,
we can't leave New Haven without asking you about Peppi's pizza.
H that's you know, I I it's in my d

(18:25):
n A. I mean there any time my my eldest
son attended Choke Rosemary Hall and so when I go
to visit him. Uh, it was essential that we we
made our way into town. Uh, just to do that.
I mean the really truly is There's lots of different pizza,

(18:47):
but for me, when I eat that pizza, it's my
favorite movie, my favorite song, my my favorite pair of pajamas.
Everything is just rolled into one. Just can't beat it.
It's it's something in that you know. Okay, So at
what age do you lead to Haven? I was about four, okay,

(19:11):
so very early. And how old were you when your
parents divorced? Well, I my I never knew my parents married.
My my my mother got pregnant with me and my
dad uh split sky, So I never I never knew
them as a couple. Um and I didn't even really
technically meet my father until I was almost two years
old because he was um part of a h An

(19:37):
artist program that was sponsored by the State Department in
which American artists and artists from all over the world.
It was like an exchange program. So my dad traveled
all over the globe for almost two years, living with UM,
you know, hosted by artists in in Vietnam, in France

(19:57):
and Italy. And so he was on and I you know,
my first memory of him, I was about two years old.
He had just come back and of course, you know,
there was no face time or anything like that or
and I kind of wandered downstairs to my bedroom and
there was this chap was asleep on on the couch.

(20:20):
And I went back upstairs to my mother's bedroom and
I said, uh, Mommy, there's a there's a man sleeping
on the couch and she said, that's your dad. Wow. Yeah.
I went down and I poked him a few times
and he sort of rolled over and looked at me,
and I said hi, and he said hi, and uh,

(20:42):
he said, come here and give me a hug. And
I said, there was two. I said, I don't know you. So,
um it was sort of crazy, crazy, uh memory. But yeah,
I didn't really sense of of his his presence until
that age. Okay, so you were there to four and
then you moved to outside Philly. No, we we we

(21:05):
we moved right into the center of West Philadelphia and
my my my parents didn't live very far far apart
from each other, so you know that I had access
to both parents, could could walk, My brother and I
could walk to and from their places, and my dad was.

(21:25):
My mother was a fashion illustrator, so she had a
studio at home where she did her work. As my
father also had his painting studio at his home, but
he was um, you know, nine of the time he
was down on the Penn campus. So I spent a
great deal of time down there. And so siblings, you're
talking about your brother, does he share the same mother? Yes,

(21:47):
I have, Well, I have only one natural sibling, my
brother Silas, who passed away about eighteen years ago from
a pre existing um medical issue. He had a form
of my autonic muscular justtry feet which manifested in his
heart and and he passed away at forty five, sadly
ply um. But so we lived there and my father

(22:11):
remarried and he had three children, two of which passed away.
One was my infant sister. She died from what they
called then crib death now we call it a sudden
infant death syndrome, four months old. And then my other brother,
Eli was killed by misadventure in Thailand. He was in

(22:33):
a saloon and he went to use the bathroom and
while he was there, these guys sort of targeted him
for for a robbery and they put heroin in his
beer to incapacitate him. Beeknownst to him, he came back,
drank the beer and was uh, you know, losing it.
But he was allergic to heroine and didn't know that

(22:54):
and went into anaphylaxic shock twenty one and died quite
quite tragic. Well, how does death in your feeling? Obviously
you missed these siblings, but how does it affect you
emotionally in terms of your viewpoint on the world. Well,
I would say certainly, you know, being a father, um,

(23:17):
I have I might be a little bit. I don't
want to classify myself as a helicopter parent, but I'm
I'm one of those cautious parents who have you know,
not not necessarily overprotective, but have really tried to raise
my kids with a sense of always being aware of

(23:37):
their surroundings, their environment, you know, having their head on
a swivel without being paranoid and and um because obviously
I wanted my kids to have a normal childhood. Um
but but you know, awareness, great awareness. But it's certainly
you know, many many a sleepless night when they were
when they were little, for sure. Okay, so, oh, you

(24:00):
moved to Philly at age four. Do you stay there
through high school? No, stayed there until I was about eleven,
and then my father decided to He had a summer
home in Maine, in a little town called Lincolnville, and
he decided he wanted to move there and live there
full time. That was where he painted. He painted the

(24:23):
landscapes of Maine, and he he wanted to kind of
he just said the city was too much. And you
know this is in in the at the very beginning
of the seventies and uh So he moved up there
into the summer home, which had no indoor plumbing, had

(24:44):
no electricity, it was gas lights. There was a privy
that was connected to the house. He ultimately, you know,
brought electricity and um by way of having a windmill.
So he was really living off the grid. Um. And
so I was sort of thrust into the public school
system in rural Maine, which was, you know, very primitive

(25:06):
compared to So where is Lincolnville and Maine. It's between
Camden and Belfast, Maine. So it's really central central Maine.
It's about an hour northeast of Augusta, Maine, a couple
hours north of Portland. That's really deep beast I mean
main is its own mentality. They think it's like New

(25:27):
Hampshire Vermont, but it's not. No, it's not. No, it's
not unlike Texas in that way. Right, it feels when
you're there, there is there are strong connections to the
other New England states, but it's still very much this
kind of autonomous um entity in that way. You know,

(25:47):
Manners are a very very different breed. Okay, so you
moved to Maine full time. What about your mother? She
stayed in Philadelphia and then ultimately moved up to Boston
so that she could be closer to my older brother
and I And then I ended up going to boarding
school and stayed in Maine and went to a boarding

(26:08):
school in Basslborough, Maine, which is right next to Waterville
School called Oak Grove Coburn School. And it's now it
went belly up due to some financial issues in the
early eighties. I believe. Um. It's now the main State
Police Academy. The state came bought it. It's a beautiful

(26:30):
old set of buildings, you know, it looks like a
giant castle on the hill. And I got a fantastic
education there, top notch teachers and students that i'm you know,
friends with to this day. So that's one thing that
people don't realize about prep schools, the level of education
you get. I remember going to college and there were

(26:52):
people were prep school students and it was just astounding
what they knew irrelevant of their intelligence. Yeah, well, it's definitely,
I mean, there is a reason they call it prep
school because it you know, I I felt very much um,
you know, I felt not necessarily ahead of the curve,
but I was not UM. I would say that I

(27:15):
was very aware that what the way I was being educated, UM,
which worked very well for me, UM, was was kind
of exceptional or that at least that the teachers that
I had, for the most part were people that really
inspired me to want to learn. But however, when you're
at prep school usually there's a big us versus them.

(27:37):
That's when you really you know, experience and learn the
hi jinks, etcetera. In the dorms completely and you really
separate from your parents have become your own identity. That's
been my experience with the prep school kids anyway. Well, yeah,
but the other thing is that then there's a kind
of in house process of discipline when you when you

(27:59):
break the rules, and uh, they were very creative with
those with with certain types of punishments that they would
they would administer to kids who like myself. But I
mean I was I was far from an angel. I
was into mischief all the time. So well, just you
gotta give me one, give me one of the creative punishments. Well,

(28:22):
I um, it wasn't just me, but my this, this
friend and I we we discovered that if we could
push snow up against the side of the backside of
the girls dormitory and create footholds that we could climb
up in through one of the rear windows and gain
access into the girl's dorm to see our girlfriends. And

(28:45):
it didn't take them long to figure it out. And uh,
we had done such a good job taking watering cans
and covering it so it was a solid block of ice.
Then we had to go out there and break it
apart with sledgehammers, and it took a hell of a
lot longer to take that thing about. Okay, so you
have this somewhat peripatetic upbringing. What kind of kid are you?

(29:08):
The kind of as friends, you're the outsider? How do
you fit in? You know what I had a lot
of friends. I was. I was very social, gregarious kid.
But I was also a kid who my dad nicknamed me,
used to call me lone wolf. Because I also was
very comfortable being by myself. I would frequently go and

(29:30):
camp um on his property, um on my own, and
would kind of disappear, even as a kid of twelve
years old. I would just go and at the middle
of nowhere, out in the woods and and live out there.
But I was, I had a lot of friends. I
had a lot of friends and um and was very

(29:50):
very very social and were a good student, bad student.
I at first was kind of a mediocre student when
I first arrived at Oak Grove and then through just
having very very good teachers. There was the ratio, the
student teacher ratio was it was kind of perfect. Um

(30:15):
I had. I had dyslexia, which manifested in my ability
to do mathematics. Had no problems at all with reading
or writing or anything, but I really really struggled terribly
with math. So that was my big bugaboo to overcome.
So I started out as a as a mediocre student

(30:36):
and ultimately became actually a good student with the with
the help of Um, really good teachers and tutors and things,
and and embraced and really enjoyed school. I have to
ask with a name like Titus growing up to get
shipped from the kids or they accept you now? And
and I mean when I was a little kid. I

(30:57):
mean I still to this day, I'll meet adults and
you know, they they'll say, oh, tight ass, and god,
I haven't heard that since kindergarten. That's that's great. I
took a lot of ship from my name. And you know,
as a kid, I hated my name. Uh, But as
I got older, I appreciate it certainly when they would,

(31:20):
you know, call out names and um, I was the
only the only Titus in my class. But yeah, it's
a it's a heavy one to hang on a kid.
But but as an adult, I'm okay with it. Is
there a backstory with why your name Titus? I was
named after Rembrandt's son. Both of my parents I loved
Rembrandt and uh, and they they just really liked the name,

(31:44):
and so they they gave their name. It's not a
family name or anything like that, which I would chide
my father later in life. I would say, I guess
you really really thought a lot of yourself. You graduate
from high school, what's your next direction? Well, then I

(32:04):
went to I did a year of of art school
because I originally my my career path was gonna I
was gonna be a fine artist like my father. And
I went to Bennington College and I, um just um
screwed around. I just never went to class. I was
majoring in in pot smoking and carousing and beer drinking

(32:29):
and just kind of up to nonsense. That being said,
it was one of the one of the most interesting
years of my early days. Um. But after an uneventful year,
my father just said to me, you know, what are
you thinking you're going to do with your life, to
which you know, when I was eighteen, I said, I'm

(32:50):
going to join the Marine Corps. But my father just
spent a shipload of money for me to go to Bennington.
He was quite quite cross with me, so he sort
of installed me at our family compound and and uh
sort of put me. We we called it inward Bound,

(33:13):
in which my I was sequestered in in a guesthouse,
an old cape house and my father's property, no visitors,
no girlfriends, no phone, no anything. And one day a
truck came along a flatbed that had massive moving boxes
and they were filled with books. And my father said,

(33:37):
here's how this is gonna go. And he basically said,
you're gonna read these books, and I'll give you the option.
You can either do an oral presentation or you can
write a paper. And knowing you, you're probably gonna wanna
chat about it because you're too goddamn lazy to write
about it, which is fine, um. And you're gonna you're
gonna live in that in that house, and you're gonna

(33:59):
you're gonna cut to cut firewood, which I was fine with. Um,
But you know, when you read Crime and Punishment and
sit down and basically regurgitate all of that over the
course of almost four hours, and just to have my

(34:20):
father turned to me and said, yeah, you're gonna have
to do that one again. There's a lot you missed. Uh.
That part of it was brutal. But I must say
by the time that time period had I've read all
those books and gone through it, I realized many years
later and I went back to school. I went eventually

(34:42):
went back to school. I went to n y U
did my undergrad and graduate work there that I a
large part of my education had occurred in that period
of time. And how long it was almost a year? Wow?
And just before we leave Bennington, did you read the
Secret History? Yes? Yeah I did. I mean, yeah, if

(35:07):
those walls could talk, I mean, there's a lot to
be said. And I think it's a it's a very
very different school and it was when I was there. Um,
there were really no checks and balances. So unless you
were a seriously self disciplined kid, um, it was it
was not a good fit. And I was not. I

(35:28):
was not self disciplined, not certainly, not in that way.
There were too many distractions, and there was you know,
you you were kind of isolated, but you know the
fact that the the ratio was, you know, there were
twelve girls to every guy. I just lost my mind.
And and so how had you end up? How'd you
end up at n y u? Um? I then what

(35:51):
my I said? My father said to me, so, what
are you gonna do? I mean, clearly, you know painting
is not what you really want to do? And I said, no,
it's not. And he said, well, what is it gets
you up in the morning when when when you're not
thinking about drinking beer and and and girls? What do
you think about And I said, acting anyone, Well, then
that's what you should do, because if you're any any
pursuit in the arts, be it writing, you know, or

(36:15):
or being a musician or or a painter or an actor,
in order to have a modicum of success and I'm
not talking about um financial success, We'll just say intellectual
sustenance for for oneself. You have to it has to
be a quasi obsession. Otherwise there's no point in doing

(36:35):
it because it's it's that's true. Did you learn that
from experience or did your father tell you? It was both?
It was I mean that that was sort of you know,
he forewarned me. And so he said, and you know,
obviously you can't do that here in Maine. You're gonna
have to go back home to New York. So I
packed it up. I got on a Greyhound bus with

(36:57):
an army Duffel bag full of my belongings and and
crashed on people's sofas until I had enough jobs to
be able to get my own apartment and pay my rent.
And did that for years, and then um I decided
that I wanted to go back to school, and of
course I had applied. UM an auditioned and was accepted

(37:19):
at Juilliard and at the Neighborhood playoffs. But when I
sort of sat back for a second looking at my options,
I decided to go to n y U. Because for me,
despite the fact that I knew I wanted to be
an actor, I wanted to investigate um other areas of interest,

(37:41):
and so I that was so rather than doing a
straight conservatory, I decided to go to n y U.
And I really got the you know, I got to
have my cake and eat it too. It was a
It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. Once again. So you said,
your father, in this inward value, you wanted to an actor.
There must be a backstory there. Well, I had been.

(38:05):
I had acted in high school production, always been interested
in that, and of course, growing up seeing so many films,
I was always pulled in in that direction to a
certain degree. Um and then it it really kind of
turned a page. My mother was living in Boston, and

(38:25):
because I didn't live there full time and didn't go
to school there or anything, I had no friends, there
were no kids. She was living right in the center
of Boston, and so I was kind of hanging out
at the house a lot, and you know, reading comic
books and kind of screwing off going to the cineplex
that was a couple of blocks away. But there's only
so many times you could see the same films over

(38:49):
and over again. And I think that the three films
were walking tall uh Buford. Yeah, it was the second
one with both vents and not that not the first
one was better, Yeah, much better. And then Beyond the Door,
which was which was a low grade attempt to try
to remake The Exorcist with Juliette Mills and Um and

(39:13):
the Return of the Pink Panther U And that was
the only theater that was close. And my mother just
came one day and she said, I've signed you up
at this place called Actor's Workshop. And I went, wait,
what do you mean, I'm not going to a camp.
She said, it's not a camp. It's it's an acting program.
It's a summer acting program. You can walk there, it's

(39:34):
four blocks away, and you're gonna go give it a shot.
And that was the beginning of it for me. Um.
I walked in there and within you know, several hours
of being in the company of a lot of these
kids were really there studying seriously who wanted to you know,

(39:54):
and we're already working here and you know, doing commercials
and things like that. Um, I got I got bitten
by the bug and it carried me through. So I always,
you know, interestingly enough. Cut to many, many many moons later,
I'm shooting the first UM film that I did with
Ben Affleck, Gone, Baby, Gone, and back in Boston. And

(40:19):
we had a whole conversation because he said he started.
We were just having a you know, passing conversation. When
did you decide you wanted to be an actor? And
I told him and he said, I never went there,
He said, but I knew people that went there. And
he said that's interesting, and I said, yep, here we are.
So it's all come full circle. Okay. How long were
you in New York before you went to n y U?

(40:42):
About three years? Okay, so when you went to n YU,
you were older than most of the students. I was
a transfer student UM. And part of that was that
I was working all these jobs and I wasn't really
acting all that much because everything that I was doing
was to pay my rent. My father said to me,
I thought you were going to be an actor. I

(41:03):
remember I had gotten a job. Um, I was working construction,
and UM the foreman said, hey, I'll put you in
an apprenticeship UM at the tin Knockers Union. You can
go there, you'll learn the trade, and you'll get health
benefits and all these things. And I was excited by
that because I knew I was going to get a

(41:23):
substantial pay raise. And I called my father and told him,
and that's when he said, but I thought you were
going to be an actor. But I suppose if you
want to be a tin knocker, go be a tin
knocker that you know you can make a good he said,
But but stop telling people that you're an actor. And

(41:44):
that kind of shook me up a little bit. I
kind of thought, no, no, no no, he's actually right, and
I thought, I really need to get my ass back
to school. I want to complete my education. You know,
this isn't what I want to do. So I was
very poor. I mean I still even when I was
going to school full time, I had to work multiple
jobs to pay my rent things. But I was I
was a full time student as well, and it was

(42:04):
n YU was an amazing experience, but you were, uh,
focusing on acting at n y U. That was your
number one, your major, so to speaking, that was my
that was my major. So where were you in the
hierarchy of students? Were you one of the people they said, Oh,
we give him the roles, he's gonna make it. Just
one of the troop. I was one of the troop.

(42:25):
I mean there was there were definitely some some favorites there.
But um, the the student productions, the the level of professionalism.
I had to say, some of the best directors that
I have worked with were some guys that we were

(42:46):
doing theater, they were directing. They were in their twenties. Smart,
smart guys. The playwright Frank bulliais being one of them
who's gone on to have great success as a screenwriter. Also,
um uh drawing a blank right now. On the show
um House of Cards, it was was one of them. Um.

(43:10):
And a lot of people my class mates that came
out of there are people actors of note, Clark, Greg J's, Alexander,
Felicity Huffman, UM, A lot of really substantial people. And
we did, you know, little student productions together. Um. But

(43:32):
you had you had access to people at n y
U who were who were actually working in in the
business I mean, you know, we had people like Hulu
gross Bard and um, you know, Kevin Klein and and
Fred Zolo and Wendy Wasserstein. We got to interact with

(43:55):
these people who who were really in it. Ma'am. That
was one of my teachers. I eventually left Circle in
the Square and went to study with W. H. Macy
and David Mammot that had started their own little studio
from a summer program in Vermont into a full blown
UM studio that was part of the n y U

(44:15):
system called the Practical Ascetics Workshop, which eventually became the
Atlantic Theater Company School. And those are all my classmates
from that time that that formed that you know, very
successful UM prolific theater company. So why did you go
to graduate school? What was that about? Well? I got
offered a gig. I had a professor he passed away

(44:37):
a couple of years ago, Mel Gordon, and he taught
this this class. It was an academic class, but it
was called character development. And he had come out of
the check off UM school that's where he had trained
that but he was now living a life of being
really an academic UM. And so what you ostensibly did

(45:00):
was you would create a character. You would have a whole,
an entire semester to create a character from the ground up,
and he didn't care what the character was. And then
you had to write your own monologue. UM. So it
was all ground up stuff. And I really found that
class to be invaluable. What it did was it really

(45:21):
sharpened my ability to observe people, because you know, I
was sort of looking around going what am I? What
am I going to create a character? You know what,
who's what's the character going to be? And you know,
one week it was all it'll be you know, the
bartender at this saloon. You know, mcsorley's sort of based
on that, or this this the schizophrenic homeless guy that

(45:45):
I come into contact with. Um And after a year,
um Mel said to me, look, you know, I've been
teaching this class here for a million years, and UM,
I'm kind of I just feel like I don't have
anything else to do with it. But you've got an
interesting and fresh perspective on it. You could teach this class.

(46:07):
And I went, well, I don't know anyone. Yeah, you're
gonna just do it. You're gonna teach. You're just gonna
teach this class and I'm going to arrange it so
that so that the credits work towards a graduate degree
for you, so you get to So it was it
was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.
And he um, I know, I know, I really didn't

(46:29):
see very much of him. He just kind of he said,
I have fun. But it was it was very interesting,
um to take something over. Of course, the immediate thought
on a lot of my classmates was oh, well, I'm
going to take his class, because that's gonna be But
I made everybody audition for the class, and that was
my way of weeding out people who thought they were

(46:51):
just going to show up and get a get a
pass grade. Um. But also because I only wanted serious
people in there, you know, I wanted I wanted to
people that really came there, that wanted to do that work,
to do the work. I didn't want to have the
babysit people and or listen to bullshit excuses with that

(47:12):
I had used a thousand times. So I weeded them
out and it became a substantially smaller class when I
was teaching it. But they were all really top shelf people.
So how many years did you did it take for
you to get that graduate degree, or you were doing
that program, yeah, for two hours, doing that for two years?
And then were you taking any other courses or your

(47:33):
only gig was too No, No, I was doing I
was taking classes in cultural anthropology, UM to a couple
of pre law classes. I mean therese are just things
that I thought. I thought pre law. I felt it
would be inevitable that I was going to play a
lawyer at some point in my career. And I had
a couple of friends that were in the law school

(47:55):
and when they would do their mock trials, UM, they
would come to me and they would say, I, you
know you're an actor. I want you to to teach
me how to do opening and closing statements. Here here's
my opening statement, and UM, I want you to kind
of coach me through this. How am I gonna? And

(48:16):
so I was. I went to a few of them
just to observe these guys doing their things, to see
if they actually had listened to anything that I had
told them, and was kind of pulled into it, and uh,
I very quickly realized that that was not what I
want to do. And my father was very very disappointed.
And I remember at one point he said, so what

(48:38):
are you taking that? I said, oh, I've got these
pre law classes. And he said, well what do you
why what are you? What are you taking pre law for?
I said, well, you know, you never know. He's the tightest.
You know, when you're an artist, there's no such thing
as a fallback. And I went, well, yeah, I know,
and and he was. He was really irritate, and he said,

(49:00):
why would you? He said, anybody can do that. Anyone
can become a lawyer. You you just gotta you just
have to put in the time and put in the work.
But not everyone can be an artist. I thought you
wanted to be something substantial and that's not And my
father had many friends who were lawyers. I don't think
that he had any lack of respect for them, but
he for me. He took umbrage to the idea, you know,

(49:24):
as if you were raised in this fucking environment, and
how could you not absorb all this stuff and now
you're gonna go and do a regular job. Um, well,
that does beg the question that it is certainly hard
to make it financially as an actor. So you're done
with your schooling, what's the next step. Yeah, I've done

(49:46):
with schooling and I'm out in the world and and
it's you know, the crickets are chirping. I mean, there's
just it was the endless backstage um submissions, showing up
at theaters with headshots and resumes and you know, and
I had, I had a large resume. I had done
a lot of work. Um there and then at n

(50:10):
y U and and off off and off off off,
you know, other Planet Broadway stuff. Um. But it was,
it was, it was really really tough. And so there
I was, again, you know, sort of working multiple jobs
to be able to you know, just to pay my rent.

(50:32):
And you know, it would would come into contact with
people who would say that they were managers or agents,
and you know, at the time it was some sort
of come on or or bullshit story. And um. And
I was working at a at a saloon called The Edge,
and that guy who frequented the place had I had

(50:56):
just done a production of American Buffalo and he had
seen it. And uh, He's sitting at the bar one
night he said, I just realized I saw you an
American Buffalo. He said, oh, yes, yes, I didn't play.
So what are you doing behind the stick? And I said, well,
you know, I'm trying to make a living. He said, well,
are your agents not doing a good job? And I said,

(51:18):
I don't have an agent. He said, I'm an agent.
I thought. I said, oh boy, okay, here we go.
But he seemed like a straight shooter to me. Um
gave me his card and I didn't. I think it
went to my pocket and I kind of forgot about it.
And then about ten days later he came in and
he said, hey, man, I haven't I haven't heard from you,
and I didn't have a number on and I didn't

(51:40):
know how to how to contact you. Are are you
do you want to take a meeting or not? He
said it's not you know, I'm not I'm not gonna
chase you. I said sure and and sure enough he
had a legit agency represented some super solid actors, not
a big agency, and it had a large modeling age
and see very successful modeling agency. And he started sending

(52:04):
me out and after a couple of weeks of working
with him, I landed my first role, which was kind
of a walk on in a movie called Navy Seals,
where I played this this um, you know, redneck who
starts a fight with Charlie sheen, and Charlie beats me
up and uh, and then things just kind of kept going.

(52:25):
But you know, so for me, it's always been um,
more of a slow burn, you know. Um, I've it's
been the journeyman path. For me. It's always been you know,
work to work, to work to work, um, and which
is good because I think, honestly, if I had, if

(52:46):
I had had success when I was younger in my twenties,
like a lot of my friends did, I would have,
you know, I had ended up like one of those
monks and Saigon, you know, with a Jerry can of gasoline.
I mean, it's a weird analogy, but there was definitely
a part of me that was kind of wild, maybe
a bit self destructive. And I don't think that having

(53:08):
access to money and and uh then other things would
have been would have been necessarily good for me. My
journey in that way was very, very humble, and I
think it kept me very grounded and kept me very focused.
I I would see people around me that were, you know,

(53:29):
always talking about getting new headshots and trying to go
to this party or to this nightclub because X hung
out there, and I thought, what's that you know, this
isn't schwabs. I mean, it's You're not going to walk
into a nightclub in New York and unless you're a
beautiful woman and someone's gonna walk up to you and say,
I'm gonna make you. You know, I'm gonna give you

(53:50):
every opportunity you could ever dream of to achieve a
monicum of successes as an actor. So in that way,
it was it was uphill and it is truly navigating
the sea of heartbreak. But as things started to become
more and more consistent, um as far as getting work,

(54:12):
and it's also it's a process of learning, you know.
I I learned what worked um in in the business
as far as um the auditioning process and things stuff
that they don't teach you. They don't teach you how
to act in front of a camera. Um. You know,
my background was purely in the theater, and so jumping

(54:33):
to film and television it was a massive learning curve.
I've learned a lot from watching some of my favorite
actors on screen. But then it becomes a technical thing.
I didn't know the difference between an eighty millimeter and
a hundred fifty millimeter lens and what my field of
play was and how I was going to do that,
and finding my light and all those all those things

(54:54):
that you really learn are on the job training. Okay,
so the agent you meet in the bar, he sends
you out on gigs. You're auditioning. Usually many people are auditioning.
What was it about you? What was the way you
audition that would seal the deal for you? I was prepared, um. I.

(55:18):
I had a a big belief in not to half acid.
And one of the things that I learned is that
I couldn't really act with a paper in my hand.
So um, I would spend a lot of time memorizing
the material for an audition, and it always sort of
vexed me because I would go to No, that's not

(55:38):
to say I've never gone into an audition holding a
holding the script in my hand. You know, certainly during
pilot season, um, when you've got seven eight meetings in
one day, you you have to kind of cherry pick.
And that's what I would do. I would go, Okay,
this is the one that I think I can I have,
I have a good chance of getting this. It's in

(56:00):
my wheelhouse, so I'm going to put all of my
energy into memorizing this material and then the rest, you know,
would I would do the best that I could possibly do.
But for me, I think, um, it was the investment
of time and focused that um that kind of won

(56:22):
the day for me. And I was also very UM,
I didn't really fall necessarily into any category. You know,
I wasn't Brad Pitt cute, and I wasn't you know,
John Casali character actor. I was sort of what they

(56:43):
would call an off leading man. And so you know,
the beauty of that was I did get to play
and have been been privileged to play lots of different
types of characters. The other hard part is that you play,
you know, if you do a heavy which I did
quite a few heavies, UM, they the temptation or the

(57:06):
you know, the term pigeonholed, it tends to kind of
carry over to a certain point. So there at one
point I did I was getting offered a lot of
sort of the same type of roles, and despite the
fact that you know, for the sake of commerce and
and looking after myself, UM that I had to turn

(57:27):
stuff down, which I really was not in a financial
position to do. But I thought, if I don't set
the President. Now by not doing this, I'm gonna forever,
I'm gonna get locked into doing this, and I don't
want to do it. And just as I made that decision,
I got a call to go and read for a
role on NYPD Blue, to read for Mark Tinker and

(57:50):
Steven Bocho and David Milch. And I thought, of course
when I got the call, oh, it's a it's a cop,
it'll be a cople And he said, no, actually this
guy is. He's a Trump the surgeon in in the
er and Nick Deturro's character gets shot and shootout, and
you're the guy that that patches him up. And they're

(58:11):
not going to cast me as the doctor. They never
will see me as as a hard guy of Hollywood
thinks that I'm Italian and I'm actually English and Irish,
you know. So I don't want to waste anybody's time.
I'd rather wait until a coprole comes along, because that'll
be something i'll get. And they said, well, they know

(58:31):
who you are and they want to see you for this.
And went in and I kind of pulled myself together
and I read and and and they cast me on
the spot, and that character ended up kind of recurring
over the years on NYPD Blue. But he was a doctor.

(58:52):
He was a very kind of um. He was unlike
any character that I had played before, certainly on on screen,
is sort of soft spoken, you know. He was the
he was the doctor that if one had a doctor,
he had, you know, impeccable bedside manner. He's a guy
you would want to treat you, who wouldn't treat you
like an idiot um um, but also wasn't perfunctory and

(59:15):
in the handing off of bad medical news and that
kind of uh. That opened up my relationship with David
Milt and Stephen Bosco. I then went on to do
Brooklyn South with them and then Big Apple. After that
with with David Milton went on to do Deadwood with

(59:36):
David milchon so that collaboration lasted over several shows, and
I did some other work with Steven Bochco. But that
was for me a major turning point and how I
was I was perceived. I mean, I think casting directors
and other people in the business sort of said, oh,
he can, he can do this other thing and I

(59:57):
and I owe that to Botch going to Tinker and
into Milch to sort of say we're going to give
you this shot to do this thing. It was a
game changer for me. And at what point after you
get the gig and Navy Seals do you stop having
to have a day job. Oh I I'm trying to

(01:00:19):
think I stopped having a day job. So let's for arguments,
I did Navy Seals. I. Yeah, I didn't go back
to like, I don't No, I don't don't think I
ever did go back to a day job after that. Okay,
And you talked about the heartbreak, and you tell us

(01:00:40):
a little bit more about the heartbreak of being an
actor and auditioning, etcetera. Yeah, Well, it's it is that
it's so personal and you have to learn or to
not be personal because there's so much there is so
much rejection, and particularly when you put in a considerable
amount of time into an audition and you go in

(01:01:02):
and you do really well, um, and it's evident that
you've done well, and you're being um sort of not
necessarily pat on the back, but you know, and you've
made your casting director friend very happy that they've brought
you in. Um. Only two then find out that they've
cast someone who is not only not physically right for

(01:01:26):
the role, but not a very good actor. Um those things.
That's that's a hard Pilba swallow. But I kind of
learned pretty quickly to remove my ego from it and
to just focus on what it was that I could do,

(01:01:46):
so that if I didn't get something, I would say, oh,
there was something that if I had done something differently,
or and also to listen to the notes that were
being given by directors and certain things. Um, yeah, there's
always gonna be I mean, I think even at the
highest level there there will always be roles and an
actor might want that they're not going to get just
because you know, the time they want the guy or

(01:02:10):
the gal to walk in the door. Then they go eureka,
you're you're precisely you know what I'm looking for with
a character. Now, if you can act, that's gonna be
even better. But the physicality, the physicality is all there. Um.
But that's what it was for me. I learned to

(01:02:32):
not take it personally, and I think it helped me
because I would I think, you know, and I've been
on the other side of the table when people have
come in and auditioned for for things that I've been
a part of that um when you when when you
carry that that anxiety, it's it's it carries an odor,

(01:02:55):
you know that that that that it's not necessarily ambition,
but it's it's it's the anxiousness. I want to you know, I,
I want to do well I And you can't charm
your way into a into a part. You have to
come in and do the work. And once I realized
that it wasn't about the small talk and the bullshit

(01:03:17):
that occurred, you know before and after the audition, or
you know, how your kid was doing in school. It
was really my only job was to do the best
possible job that I auditioned that I could do, and
that was it. And then I had to just and
either they were going to get it or they didn't

(01:03:37):
get it. And once I got to that place and
it wasn't it was arduous. That was a conversation I
had with myself that went on for a minute. It
was liberating, and then I was was truly able to
just go in, do that, finish it, walk out and
be okay. Okay. Now, beginning, you were a stage performer,

(01:04:04):
and you're mostly known as someone who's on screen, So
have you acted on stage? Or is that something that
you want to do or where does that leave you? Yeah?
I mean all of all of the beginning work that
I ever did was on the stage and I have
not been on stage in in many, many years, and

(01:04:25):
I miss it and I would really like to find, um,
the right play to do. I mean a couple of
things have come across my desk. That's also been a
timing issue, um, and a commitment thing because of my
shooting schedule with Bosh and or other other projects that
I've been involved with. Because it's it's a big commitment.

(01:04:47):
I would nothing would make me happier than to find
the right play and to go do you know a
four or a six month run of a play? I
think every actor worked or saw or at least who
is who comes from the theater is that's always where
you want to get back to you. You know, there's
there's nothing like performing in front of a live audience.

(01:05:09):
It's it's you fire on all cylinders as an actor
when you're doing that. So how did you get Bosh? Well?
I got the script, and um, who's your agent? Is
you is the same agent from when you got Bosh? Yeah,
I've had the I've been with the same agent for

(01:05:31):
Why Something Ears, and that agent is in works where
at Paradigm Chris Shman at Paradigm Agency. Um, and she's
I mean, she's not she's like a member of my family.
I mean, so she's we've we've we've been through it
all together. So I got the script. Wait, did well?

(01:05:54):
How did you get the script? Did you say, I
have something perfect for you. Hey, we're emailing you the script.
It's a it's a it's a pilot for Amazon. It's
called BOSH. I said, okay, great. Um, And interestingly enough,
I had just written a pilot from myself. I've gotten
to a. UM. My late wife had been ill with

(01:06:23):
cancer and that had been obviously my primary focus was
looking after her, but also having to work at the
same time to be able to pay for medical bills
and to take care of the family. So in the
last couple of years of her life. I would show
her script. So it's again, look at this pilot, read
this thing. She would go, God, it's direct, that's direct.

(01:06:43):
You don't want to do that. Don't you don't want
to do that? You don't want to do that. Um.
And so she said, why don't you you're a writer,
why don't you write something for yourself, something that And
I thought, okay, sure, that's a good challenge. So I
wrote something for myself and was literally getting ready to
go to the next phase, which would be to go
out with my manager and my agent and take meetings

(01:07:06):
to see if someone wanted to do this as a show.
Just to stop for a second, you have a manager
in an agent. Can you explain the roles of each
from my audience? Yeah, one, Well, my manager sort of
is the keeper of the castle, and um, the sort

(01:07:28):
of trajectory and and the brand, the you know, the
and he navigates different things with the you know, with
the agents. Silan, how long have you been with the manager?
For fourteen years? Okay, so you're a loyal guy. I'm

(01:07:49):
a loyal guy. Um. So, so you were writing this
thing that your late wife inspired you to do. Yeah,
so I wrote it and and um I was able.
I'm I'm lucky because I have lots of very very strong,
successful writer friends that I was able to send it to.

(01:08:10):
And of course, you know, I would say I want
to hear everything. I don't you know, don't don't don't
soft sell it back and so uh. The responses were
very very positive. People were saying, you should, you should
do this. I I struggled with it because I felt like, um,

(01:08:33):
it's actually about a painter. And I thought, Okay, the
dialogue is solid, the idea is very very solid, but
what's going to sustain an audience interest in this guy's
who's having a kind of existential midlife crisis. Anyway, cut too,
I'm doing sort of some final tweaks before we're going

(01:08:55):
to head out with it, and I get bosh and
I read it, and I mean I read it very fast.
It was the pilot script was a page turner, and
I went to myself, oh wait, I read one of
these Harry Bosch novels years ago. Oh marvelous. But everything
was on the page, so it wasn't you know, even

(01:09:16):
if I hadn't read one of the books many many
years prior to that. It you know, it was Eric
Overmeyer and Connolly had had written this together, and it
was really strong. The character was clear, and I thought, ship,
you see, now I'm in trouble because this is I

(01:09:39):
couldn't write a better, you know, role for myself. I
understood the character immediately. Um, I knew how I would
want to play this character, but I also felt like
it wasn't broke, so there was no need to fix it.
I mean that was was on the page, was was
really clear. Through a series of mishaps, I was supposed

(01:10:00):
to meet with Overmyer and Connolly and with the producer
Peter Young Brug and Henrick Baston while I was hopping
the train. I was at my farmhouse in Connecticut. I
was going to hop on the train and go to
New York to meet them, and my cell phone got stolen,
and my kids were little, and I didn't you know,
they were with friends, but I didn't want to not

(01:10:22):
be able to communicate with them, so I jumped off
the train and went, not, I'll have to reschedule it.
And I was shooting one of the Transformers films at
the same time, which when I was in Chicago, I
was in Michigan, Hong Kong. It was all over the place,
um And so the meetings kept getting pushed and pushed
and pushed, And a couple of months later I got

(01:10:44):
a call again from my manager and he said, look,
you got a little window. You're gonna be in l
A for a couple of days. So, um, we're you're
gonna have the meeting. You're gonna meet Michael Connolly and company.
And I went, wait, wait, wait for bosh and yeah,
so I thought that boats sailed. That's been months. He said, no,

(01:11:04):
they can't find Harry. It's a big problem. They're actually
even considering sort of shutting down for a minute and
regrouping because there they can't find Arry. So lo and behold.
I went back, looked at the material, got tight with
the material, went in, met Michael and Jim McKay, who directed,

(01:11:26):
the director who did the pilot, and Henry Computer yawn,
and once again it was sort of it wasn't that thing.
I didn't want to want it too much because I realized, hey,
it's a great character be it shoots in Los Angeles, um,
and it's this brave new world of streaming content from

(01:11:50):
the ground up. This is a really really interesting place
to be. And I got a call not long after
the meeting from my manager, Um, and uh, he said
you're the guy. And I was thrilled. And I literally
had to pull the car over because I thought I might,
you know, crash the car. I was so excited and

(01:12:11):
and it's just been it, and I knew after meeting
with them, and certainly I knew on the first day
that we were on the set shooting the pilot that
I was a part of something that was. It's not
we didn't reinvent the wheel, we just it was. It
was a great character, it was a great environment, and

(01:12:32):
the source material of Michael's books was substantial, really interesting,
and we hadn't seen anything like that, um, certainly not
within this format. Right, rather than being the typical sort
of standard fare of police procedural television show, we were
going to take ten episodes to work one case. Rather

(01:12:56):
than Bosh coming in, catching the call and getting of it.
Then the middle of the show is him working the case,
and then he's got the bad guy Embracelet's book him Dano.
By the end of the show, things were going to
carry through, and so it was much more an established framework. Two,

(01:13:16):
the experience of of actually reading one of Michael's books
and and also having Mike there, the cast, quality of
the writing and and the cinematography, I mean everything. I
remember watching the first pass at at the pilot and
I went ship, you know, if this doesn't go, um,

(01:13:38):
it's gonna take me It's gonna take me a long
time to get over this, because this is something that
I think, um has more weight than anything I've ever done,
you know, And and that was that's a tall that's
a tall order considering that, you know, obviously having done
shows like The Good Wife and Sons of Anarchy and

(01:13:59):
and the work that I've done with David Milch, Um,
this this one was was kind of perfect. And you know,
fortunately Amazon I saw, found their way too to make
the show. And I think the show honestly has has
consistently gotten better each season that we've we've we've gone on.

(01:14:20):
I certainly agree, not that it wasn't good to begin with.
Did Amazon hesitate or were they immediately in? I think
that they were immediately and you know not just because
of the the massive fan base for lack of a
better term, that Michael's books have. I mean, Jesus, the
you know, the people that read his books are deeply dedicated,

(01:14:42):
um and and those books are you know, incredibly successful globally,
and we're you know, having Michael there. I think if
you took this material, if you built this from the
ground up, um, it would it would be different. But
it resonates the way Mike spins spins the case and

(01:15:07):
the tail is what makes it exceptional. But once again,
you know what we've seen. We've seen many cops shows,
and I've done many of the Cops shows. It's it's
not new, but it's um. I think it's it's a

(01:15:27):
revisitation to films of this genre of the sixties and
the seventies or something that feels older, and that's comforting.
But it's kind of older. It's something familiar to us,
but it doesn't feel um. We're not constantly pushing the
what my grandmother would have called the blood and thunder envelope.

(01:15:50):
I mean, it's really about a guy who's relentless and
he's very good at his job. Um, and he's a
grinder and he's but he's flawed. He's human. I think
that's what I think pulls the audience. They kind of
that that humanity of him. He's you know, he's fallible,

(01:16:11):
he's vulnerable, he's he can be a cranky prick. Um.
He doesn't subscribe to this sort of societal norms that
most people do of coming into a room and saying, Hi,
how are you nice to meet you? Though you know
he Harry comes in, he's got something to do, and
he doesn't wanna He's not a small talk guy, you know,

(01:16:34):
and you kind of have to. You have to support
and dig a character that has that kind of UM
has a sense of direction and commitment. There's nothing wishy
watching about him at all. He's you know, he's got
he is that forward speed. Well, it's just funny talking

(01:16:56):
to you now. It really poses to character because you're
in by minute personality outside the role. He's not the same, No, No,
we're very very do We share some similarities, certainly, and
I've tried to but once again, you know, there was
only so much I could necessarily bring to this character
because Mike had created such a strong, strong character, and

(01:17:18):
there were things that we had to change. Obviously, we
didn't follow the books chronologically, and we weren't going to
do a period piece and set it back so that
we could would be Harry's military service in Vietnam, so
we updated it. But I always felt that it was
very important for that Harry's military service be central to

(01:17:41):
a certain degree as to who who he was. You know,
a lot of the cops have said to me, who
enjoy watching the show, Um, you know, it's interesting when
I watch you move and the tactics that you employ
in your weapons handling, it's hut, that's not cops stuff.

(01:18:02):
That's that's that's military. And I said, no, I wanted that.
That was something that was important to me. Is that
that muscle memory, that he not moved like a cop,
that he moved like an operator, like a former SF operator.
So all those little things, and and Mike was um
and and Eric were very open to those, to those ideas. UM.

(01:18:23):
So that was your idea to make it a military style, well,
to make yeah, to give him that physicality. And how
did you achieve that? I mean you to hire a
trainer or someone with insight. Well, I've trained many times
over the years, not only with law enforcement, but with
military guys. UM, just for my own for my own

(01:18:44):
pleasure and my own education and also for roles. And
prior to doing BOSH, I was with a group of
UM former Navy Seals. When I did that, I can
did with when I did Transformers, they they did a

(01:19:05):
training program as well as if you see that film,
all the guys that are with my character, those are
all real seal guys. There's there there are none of
them are well, they're some of them are actors. Seal
former seals slashed and they become actors and stuntmen and
technical advisors. UM. So I had just gone through a

(01:19:27):
hole a series of weapons handling with them, and I thought,
this is a great way to kind of move that.
Even though Harry wasn't um, he wasn't a Navy seal.
So when I went back to was to look at
the weapons handling techniques of a special forces guy, army
guy that would be match with Harry's age. So the

(01:19:52):
way that the way that Harry holds his weapon is
is very kind of old school. Um. And that stuff
gets picked up on by by military and law enforcement guys. Um.
But it's sort of my way of you know, I
and I get that. I mean, if I watch a

(01:20:14):
film and there's weapons handling and it's badly done, it
will it will literally take me out of the movie, um,
because I just say to myself, wait a minute, it
had time. It's not brain surgery, it's it's muscle memory.
Do the goddamn work. Um. So there's little little things

(01:20:34):
like that about Harry that Okay, So we live in
the air of peak TV four d scripted series whatever
per year. Bosh comes out, it's on Amazon. At the time,
people are not quite as accepting of streaming media as
they are today. First season comes out, What does it
feel like on your ind I mean, if you look

(01:20:54):
at Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad was on TV. Wasn't on
until it was on Netflix a couple of years later
that people even caught on. Yeah, well, I it was
interesting to see um, and I kind of gauged it
basedly Amazon at that time they didn't really well and

(01:21:15):
a lot of a lot of networks don't either share
a lot of that data. So you know, the process
of trying to figure the numbers was was a process
of kind of extrapolation. UM. So we had a sense
that the show had done well. UM. Just in now,
I've never read been one to read reviews um of

(01:21:41):
my work. And it sort of goes back to something
that my father said to me when I was a kid,
when I called him up to congratulate him on this
love letter that John Ashbury had written to him in
Time magazine and I and I said, oh, you know,
that's so great that you you got from Ashbury. He said,
I've not read it, And well, you've got to run

(01:22:01):
out and get it that it's really it's quite it's amazing,
it's beautiful. Said no, no, no, have you ever have
I ever read a review of my work to you
will know? Have you ever seen me or even discussed
a review of my work with anyone? He said, right?
And I said, why is that? And he said, you
either get a swollen head or a broken heart, and
neither neither stayed as desirable. And that resonated with me,

(01:22:27):
and so I carried it through. UM. And so there
were all these online reviews on the Amazon website that
they were encouraging us to read. Oh, you know, five
stars people are rating this thing. So it was the
Brave New World UM. And as I said, I think
if this was a purely original show that someone had

(01:22:49):
just written the pilot, UM, it could have been. It
could have been a tougher road. But I think because
of the success of Michael's books, that people were invested
in wanting this to succeed because they were finally going
to get to see the kind of physical embodiment of
this character that they dedicated, you know, hours and hours
of their time reading the books. And suddenly Harry was here.

(01:23:14):
So there's been six seasons already. How has it changed
your life playing the role of Harry Bosh. Well, certainly, Um,
you know, my my anonymity is um pretty much shot now.
I I don't. I don't. My life is not like
Bruce Willis or Brad Pitt. You know, I can walk

(01:23:36):
into a store and not and not have to be
swarmed by by crazed fans. But um no, I you know,
the people people come up to me quite often and
and talk about about the show. I'm recognized a lot
for for the character. And the sweet thing is that,

(01:24:00):
um people people like they really like Harry. So it's
there's a tremendous amount of goodwill that comes when someone
will approach me. Um. And it's different than you know,
the Lost. These we would call them when I was
doing Lost, and it would come at me with these
technical questions about the story and and the mythology, and

(01:24:23):
and I would say, look, you know, sometimes for me,
ignorance is bliss. I just kind of showed up and
did did my job. I didn't didn't know a lot
and I certainly didn't. Um. I had nothing to do
with the writing and the way that that story was
tied up and that series was tied up. Did you
enjoy it? Um? Whereas Box it's kind of all over

(01:24:46):
the place. I've got military people, law enforcement people, UM,
people who are in in the literary world, and they
all the consistent thing is they all they like Harry.
They say, you know, you've got a root for him,

(01:25:06):
and he kind of because he says and does the
things that a lot of people would like to do,
but they don't want to lose their jobs. Um. And
so he kind of because he has a bit of
that everyman thing, and I think that's what makes him accessible,
you know. And he's not it's not that kind of
toxic masculinity that we that we see. You know, he's

(01:25:28):
not a misogynist, he's not a he's not an asshole.
He could be an asshole sometimes he can. He can
be really abrupt, But then that's the thing that kind
of makes him interesting because you kind of go, well, yeah,
and when he's contrite, he's contrite certainly is he you know,
his relationship to his daughter, um, and he and he's

(01:25:50):
capable of apologizing when he's wrong. So that that's what
I think makes him accessible to people and endearing to
people and certainly if one was a victim of a
violent crime, you would want someone like Harry who is
not going to necessarily break the law, um, but would

(01:26:14):
definitely circuitously move around you know, the bureaucratic uh, you know,
blocks to to to you know, obtain justice for for
the victims. Because this Harry says, you know, the closure
is a myth. All that I can agree in real

(01:26:34):
life it's a myth I do too. So a couple
of elements about the show. Are you a jazz fan personally?
I am very much So. I don't have the encyclopedic
knowledge um or the record collection that Harry has, but
I've I've grown up listening to all different kinds of music,

(01:26:55):
but I've always loved jazz. Um because both of my
parents loved. My dad, I knew quite a few Um,
he knew a lot of those guys. He knew Coltrane,
and he knew Miles, Miles, Davison, Monk and Um was
was friendly with them. So the that his his turntable

(01:27:17):
had had a lot of jazz piled up on it, um,
And that's such a central part of who Harry is,
you know, his his love for that, And I always
kind of you know that it was mentioned in one
of the books, And I said to Connelly, I think
it was a year ago. There's that there's that marvelous
bit and I can't remember the name of the book

(01:27:38):
right now where we find out where Harry first heard jazz,
And I said, and it would be a flashback. It's
when he's a teenager. He takes a young black woman too.
He's going to take her to the school prom, and
through a series of mishaps, he's he gets kind of
beaten up, and then the girl misconstrues his desire to

(01:28:03):
take her to the prom as um being some sort
of a weird um token movements, and so she rejects Harry.
So the girl's father ends up driving Harry back to
the house that he's staying with his foster family, and
when they're in the car, Harry here's his first taste

(01:28:26):
of jazz, and and it it's a lifelong love affair.
Another thing people mentioned constantly about the show is the house. Yeah,
now did you did they find the house? Do you
have any specific feelings about the house? Yeah. Peter Young Bruga,
who's one of our producers, Um worked with Michael Mann

(01:28:48):
Um over the years had done several films with Michael Mann,
and in the film Heat, that house is Amy Brennaman's
house and Heat, and there's a scene with Bob de
Niro and Amy Brennaman that where they shot it right
there in in that in that great room. But what

(01:29:09):
Peteron told us interesting enough later a little trivia was
that Michael Man set up green plates so rather than
just shooting it in real time, which is what we do,
whatever is in the background going on. Helicopters are planes,
we don't sweat it. It happens. It happens. He shot
plates so that he could actually control visually what was
behind them. And despite the fact that some of that

(01:29:33):
technology was somewhat new, Um it may have been cleaned up.
I haven't seen the latest blue ray cut of Heat,
but I can remember seeing and thinking that's CG or
there's some sort of an effect there because you could
see a little weird kind of halo around their heads. Um.

(01:29:54):
That house is amazing. It's it's the best views of
in l A. It's a colossal pain in the ask
to shoot up there because those streets are all you know,
they're they're like their horse paths. You know, they're so
in order to um, we can't bring our big trucks

(01:30:15):
up there. So they've got a truck and the equipment
offloaded and you know, we've got a large crew, but
you can't. It's close. It's a it's not a big house.
I mean, there's that one kind of big great room
that Harry looks out onto the city and you have
his patio which is there. But it's a tiny, tiny house.

(01:30:36):
The rooms are really quite small. But it's you know,
it's Harry's nest. I mean, he's the eagle looking above
his his city and Peter Yon just it's snapped two.
It's a different location than it is in the books
because it faces out on the other side where it's
Harry's house in the books looks over over a studio

(01:30:57):
city and in the one on one, well, speaking of
studio city in the one on one, that's sort of
amazing that the city itself is a character in the story.
And for those of us who live here, it's nailed
so right. I mean, like watching the sixth season, it
seemed like you shot in the summer into the full
just based on the light. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, we start

(01:31:19):
at the end of July and we finish up usually
the last week of November, so we're really in the
thick of it. August is probably the hardest. The end
of August is the hardest month, just because the heat.
And in this past season, we shot a lot in
the Valley. You know, the three oh eight's, the you know,

(01:31:40):
the kind of crazy alt right group. All right, they're
actually they're they're for real. First, didn't we get that
story with a football player just this week to follow that? Yeah, yeah,
and he had it was three oh eight that was
tattooed on his arm, right, I think so. But but

(01:32:02):
that whole you know, those guys actually showed up on
our set, the real guys, and got into a whole
confrontation with our cops, because that's what they do. They
get in the cops spaces they had. They showed up
with video cameras. They were, you know, insulting the police,
calling them gestapo's, and um. It was interesting because it

(01:32:25):
wasn't It didn't feel to me that they were trying
to make trouble for us the production, but it was
more an opportunity for them to confront the cops, and
the cops were I have to say. They exercised tremendous patients.
I had to walk away. I mean they didn't. One

(01:32:46):
of the guys asked me for an autograph, which I
thought was really funny, and if I would take a
picture with him. Um, And I said, you know, normally
I would, but you're you know, you're really screwing us up.
You know you've already cost us an hour of time.
And you know I come to do my job. I
want to get home and have dinner with my kids.
I don't want to stand around and waste time while

(01:33:09):
you have some piss out with the police. I respect
your you know, your belief system and your right too
to act as such. But you know you're showing up
at my job and don't inflict yourself. Um. So he
didn't let was his response. He said, well, it's a
it's a it's a it's a bigger thing than just

(01:33:30):
your television show. And I said for you, I said
for you, and I'm showing you that respect. I'm not
telling you you're full of ship or you're wrong. Um.
You have every right to live the way you want
to live, as long as you're not hurting people. I
don't have a problem with it, I said, but you're
you're hurting me and all these people that you know,
this is our job so frequently, uh, contracts or TV

(01:33:54):
shows or five or seven seasons. Is that why you're
ending it after the than the season? What's going on there? No,
that's that played out a bit on social media where
people the immediate lea was that it must be some
sort of a contractual negotiation and that there is. There's

(01:34:15):
not one bit of truth to that whatsoever. This is
a decision that's above my pay grade. Um, that was
made by Amazon to have season seven B the last season.
And uh, and while I'm while I'm you know, disappointed,
there's nothing I can do about that. So I myself

(01:34:36):
and the producers and the writers, we've we've all sort
of agreed that, you know, our job is just to
make the season seven, um, you know, our best season
and see it as the glass half full rather than half.
So nobody on the creative team decided to blow the
whistle now. And if for some reason Amazon change their

(01:35:01):
mind or assuming the legalities where in order you could
shift to a different platform, could that happen or is
this definitely the end? I don't I don't know the
answer to that question. Honestly, I I don't know how
you can. Sometimes there is an ability to take a
show from one network or or producing entity and move

(01:35:24):
it elsewhere. I don't know that that's possible to do
with vosh Um. There there's certainly no lack of willingness
for the show to continue. I mean, Amazon, stranger things
have happened. They might they could peasibly change their mind
that they could. Season seven could be the last seven,
and then a couple of years could pass and they
may say, hey, you know what we're gonna we want

(01:35:46):
to bring this guy back. And and I you know,
I speak for myself and the rest of the cast
and certainly the producers and the writers that everyone would
would would be on board to do that absolutely. Okay.
One of the things someone watches notices when watching Bosh
is the tattoos. So some people might think it was

(01:36:08):
the character, but in reality those that is your body
with the tattoos. That's true. And yeah, no, that was
a discussion when we first came together because Harry has
these scars on his knuckles or when he was a
kid living down on the docks of San Pedro, as

(01:36:29):
a runaway he had to hold fast tattooed onto his
to his knuckles. And then when Harry and listened in
the army, one of the first things that happened was
his drill instructor basically came out and said he no,
no, no no, that's a sailor tattoo and that's not going
to cut it. Takes him behind the barracks and makes

(01:36:49):
him punch a brick wall until his hands look like hamburger,
and then when it heals, he makes Bosh go back
and do it all over again. So we every day
when I go to work, they pay on these little scars.
And I actually we addressed it in the second or
third season. Um Harry tells the story. Tells that story

(01:37:10):
now knowing that when I first before we started shooting
the pilot, I had a tattoo discussion with Eric Obermeyer
and with Connelly. I said, look, I have tattoos and
I continue to get tattoos, So we can do this
one of two ways. And I said, I'm aware that
he's removed this tattoos, these tattoos from his from his

(01:37:33):
hands when he was a kid. Um, so it works
either way. Either we just have my tattoos. We never
come in close on them. Um. Or I if I
ever have to wear a short sleeve shirt, it's a
couple of hours in the chair because they're going to
have to come in. They're gonna have to um air brush,

(01:37:58):
you know, with this shull kind of pigment to cover
the tattoos, and they're gonna have to flock hair on
my arms. That it's a process and it's going to
take a long time. Or I can just never wear
a short sleeve shirt and always where and and actually
I said, but I'm I'm actually fine, which was showing
my tattoos, and Connolly said, yeah, people, it's people are

(01:38:22):
no longer stigmatized by having tattoos. It's not a it's
not a taboo thing. It's not indicative of your you're
standing in society. Um. So Mike said, let's just let's
just go with the tattoos. What I will say is
I have significantly more tattoos now than I did in

(01:38:45):
the first season. So I would usually get a call
from my manager at some point and he would say,
I just got a call from Henrik. There's one. Hendrick
Basting is one of our producers. Hendricks is he said,
did you get some new ink? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He said, you you posted some pictures on Instagram with

(01:39:06):
some new tattoos. Um, what are you doing? And I
just said it's it's just me, I know. But anyway,
they've become a part of Harry. I mean unless someone
freezes a frame or certain certain shots you can see.
But we never talked about them. There was only one
time where uh, Brooke Smith was playing a captain at

(01:39:32):
at the Hollywood Station and it was a funny exchange
where Bosh walks by her and and Harry's got his
sleeves up and she says, roll down those sleeves, detective,
and he kind of comes back to says what she said,
unless you're gonna get a wire brush and take those
things off. No ink in my house. Um. And it

(01:39:54):
was how old were you when you got your first tattoo?
I was a teenager, okay. And we see the tattoos
on your arms. Do you have tattoos on other places
in your body? On your body? I just have to tattoos.
Tattoos on my rib cageum, which are which are two

(01:40:15):
lovely things that my my girlfriend wrote to me, And
so I was so touched, I thought I would just Okay,
So when you when you continue to get these tattoos,
do you think that this might impinge on your ability
to get roles in the future. Well, it would be
the same sort of thing. I could say, well, you

(01:40:37):
know what, this character doesn't have tattoos, so let's cover
my tattoos, or let's dress me in wardrobe where you
never where you never see them. Um, I don't think
that you know, I've been doing this long enough now,
and people know that I have tattoos, and I think
they're gonna they're gonna cast me. They're gonna cast me

(01:41:00):
from the neck up to begin with, and then we
can know what we can do deal with the tattoos. Um.
Remember my aunt saying, well, you know, you'll never be
buried in a Jewish graveyard. And I said, well, I know,
but I'm not. We're not Jewish, and she she said,
oh that's right, I forgotten. Um, I'm the only I'm

(01:41:24):
the only guy you'll ever meet who had a going mitzvah.
But that's a whole Um. Well, is there a story there? Yeah,
there actually is. When I was all of my extended
family as a kid, Um, we're Jewish. So I went
to temple. My parents were is your mother Jewish? No,
not at all. I don't have I don't have any

(01:41:45):
background at all. These were all extended family or as
people who were I called aunts and uncles who I
was very very very close to my family. And so
I'm getting ready and I uh from my birthday and
I say to my father, uh, so what are we
gonna do from my bar Mitzvah? And my father just
looks at me and said, what are you talking about

(01:42:06):
to my bar mitzvah? You're not having a bar mits?
So what do you mean? I'm not having environments? Of
course I am Danny Goldstein at Enviarnments. But David Wiseman
had apartment trying to seemed to understand. I said, why
am I not having the word mits and me? He said,
you're not Jewish. I said, yeah, I am, and he
said no, no no, no, being Jewish is a religion. It's
not just the state of mind. And so this got

(01:42:29):
back to my aunt, who was so sort of touched
and thought it rather hilarious the whole thing that she
came to me and said, I don't need to worry
about this. I'm gonna handle it, which I said what
she said just so it was a gathering and you know,

(01:42:50):
I read a little read a little text and uh
and and she said, it's a going mitzvah. So and
it was you know, and I and I, uh, it
was it was kind of a lovely, you know, coming
of age experience for me. In my hand. My father said, well,
you know what, you can say whatever you are now. Um.

(01:43:14):
But I just I think it was just because I
was immersed in that culture. Um and uh. That was
the only sense of spirituality and religion that I had,
was going to temple and observing observing the holidays, both holidays.
I mean we we would go to my aunt's for

(01:43:36):
Passover and and and uh and celebrate Hanukah at her house.
But then also they would come and you know and
have Christmas with us. So it was it made kind
of perfect sense. But I never went to I didn't
go to church. My parents would. My dad said to me,
you will never go to church with me. I wore
the seat of my pants out on a on a

(01:43:57):
psychotic you know, irish him in Catholic church bench. So
I'm not doing that to you guys. So we went
to Episcopalian schools and uh and and I and also
I was at the went to school with the Child
Studies Center, learned how to swim with the Jewish Community
Center and the New Haven. So did you go to
Episcopalion in Philly? Yeah? Yeah, I went to the St.

(01:44:18):
Peter's School down on Lombard Street. Right, Okay, you're so
well adjusted. Have you ever been in psychotherapy? Yeah? You
better believe in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis? Yeah? Is that in
the rear view mirror? You still practicing? No? I like
to I like to say I'm a work in progress.

(01:44:40):
I said, I've said to my to my kids. One
at one point when they one of them said to me, oh,
you had years and years and years of he was
pissed at me and he was sort of about my
um sometimes impatient and cantankerous nature, and and uh, yeah,

(01:45:00):
you did all these years of psychoanalysis and you're still
you're you're still half crazy. And I said, yes, and
well that's that's all that it is. It's it's you
learn to analyze. It doesn't mean you're necessarily out of
that which, but yeah, tons of it, tons tons of

(01:45:22):
psychotherapy and and and I will maintain that I'm I'm
as batshit crazy as I've ever been. I'm just a
little bit better at at navigating it and not inflicting
myself on people. I would say, I'm I'm I'm a
much more centered and well adjusted creature than I was
in the past. So, Bosh, you have all this notoriety

(01:45:46):
that this series has built. Where does this leave you
going forward? Well, I'm you know, I'm definitely utilizing this
this lockdown period. I've had a lot of ideas that
have kind of been percolating, and um, it becomes that
thing of I gotta you know, I gotta fix that
hinge and I really want to reseal my driveway kind

(01:46:09):
of thing, but of writing, and so I'm, um, I'm
putting together some ideas that have been floating around, and
the post post Bosh life will be, um, you know,
hopefully realizing those things. But you never know, because um,
I think once well, one can only hope that I'm

(01:46:31):
become a free agent again, that there will be you know,
other opportunities. It may be that thing right where I
go to somebody and I had them say, here's the
here's the show that I wrote that I wanted for
myself that I want to do and they'll go, that's great.
So I have this one that the studio has already
committed to, and if you want to do it, we
can start shooting this next month. I think it'll be

(01:46:55):
it'll be interesting. I'm not one. I'm you know, sedentary
is not my nature. So whether I'm putting it down
on a piece of paper immediately, or if I'm um
letting the idea just date and the idea has just
stated enough to the point now where I can actually
sit down and start to to write an outline, and

(01:47:18):
I think it's a I think it's good. It's very
different than than Bosh, but um, I think it's a
solid idea. So hopefully, UM, the next time I talked
to you, we can be talking about that. Or we
could also be having that conversation where you could say,
remember when I said to you when you're on the show, Hey,
what if decides they want to do this, Well here

(01:47:40):
we are, We're back and we're still doing it. Um,
you know that's a look. I I just love to work.
I'm very very fortunate that I can make a pretty
damn good living doing what I love. To do and
and and I love to work. I'm like, so let's

(01:48:00):
just say for the thirty years, will give you thirty
years on this planet if you just continue to work.
Is that satisfying? Men try to tend to think of
a totem pole. Is there some specific goal that you
want to reach or a conceptual level. I would like

(01:48:21):
to um begin to direct certainly. Uh that had been
a consideration on bosh. Uh. It just the schedule and
how it works just for me seemed to make it
too daunting. And then when I realized it was going
to be our last season, UM, I said, you know what,

(01:48:45):
I kind of pulled my hat out of the ring
because that's what we were gonna do. I was going
to come in and direct in the seventh season. And
then I just said, you know, I really want to
focus on doing the show. If that boomerangs back at
another time, if there is life elsewhere or something, yeah, sure,
but that's something I'd like to do. And I would
also like to um develop other things as a writer,

(01:49:09):
not just for myself but for for other actors, and
to direct and produce those those projects. And and as
always continue uh my career as a painter which is
something that's that's important to me. How often do you paint? Well,
right now, I'm not painting at all because my studios
back east. I typically paint when I'm back at the

(01:49:32):
at my farm during the summertime. I take that that
solid month and get up and paint every single day
because I painted acrylics and I paint very quickly. I
will typically paint for a solid six to seven hours
and in a day to complete a painting. So have
these representational or abstract? Yeah, they're a I mean it

(01:49:55):
definitely falls into the column of abstract expressionism, not dissimilar
from from my father, but also very very different than this.
But I paint landscapes, their landscapes. But there and are
these paintings shown and for sale? Yes? They are? Yeah,
um they I had a show actually here in Los

(01:50:18):
Angeles at the at the Home Gallery at Bergamont Station. Um,
and I'm I'm looking to uh actually had a print
that was purchased by the Museum Modern Art in New York. Congratulations,
Thank you, thank you. I know, I'm um. I wish
my old man could be alive to see that, because

(01:50:38):
he would uh, I know that would that would please him. Okay,
this has been wonderful, Titus. Really, as I say, you're
quite The conversation was rock and tour and we could
go on forever, but I think we've come to the
end of the feeling we've known today. Thanks so much
for doing this, Thank you much for having me, and
I just want to tell you what a great crib

(01:51:00):
as it is to to be able to talk to
you one on one. I'm a I'm a longtime fan,
and um, I have to say, for one who doesn't
read reviews, I was so um pounded and pounded by friends,
family and representation to read the beautiful things that you wrote.
So you're the first my friend, and I have to

(01:51:22):
say I read it very quickly and I went but um,
but thank you. Although that reminds me of a couple
of things on James Taylor's Guerrilla album from it was
a great song called Lighthouse, and he goes, just because
I might be standing here, that doesn't mean I won't
be wrong this time where by And the other thing,

(01:51:47):
that's what people do when people say, oh, you're so
right on whatever, I give him that back because I
can't hold that. The other thing I tell people is
every day I hear people email me that I'm God,
and people email me that I'm a ship head. So
you know nature of the Internet. If you get that
instant response, it's beautiful read it. You know, on some
levels level of inoculation. Although there's people you know me

(01:52:09):
every day to tell me that I'm a ship heead
so a couple of those people I don't read anymore.
But thanks again, thank you so much. So next time,
this is Bob left Sense

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Bob Lefsetz

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