May 8, 2024 • 11 mins
Aaron Eckhart talks new movies and more!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Real fun with Mario Lopez.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's up roon Mario Lopez joining me now on zoom
from the new movie. Chief of Station actor Aaron Eckhart.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to the.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Show, Aeron. How you been man, Very good you, I'm well,
thank you for taking the time. Congrats on the new movie.
Looks like a lot of action and espionage.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
What's it about, Well, it's about you know, That's what
it is. Is an old fashioned spy movie. You know.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
We filmed it over in Budapest, you know, so it's
got that beautiful Cold War feel. It's a lot of action,
you know, a lot of a lot of slide in
hand and handoffs and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
You know, good stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I love it, my kind of flick. Have you or
had you spent any time in Budapest prior?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I hadn't. Now I know you're a pretty darn well.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I went to school in England and did my high
school there, so I was familiar with all that, and
you know, considering the Cold War kind of thing. I
lived through that in the eighties with the Soviet Union
that I lived in London, and so I was writing
the thick of it. So to go to Budapest which
was you know, behind the Iron Curtain at the time,
(01:09):
was very exciting. The architecture the Danube, this beautiful river.
I was blown away by the city, and the city
really let us use it. We used all their beautiful
architecture in the buildings, and that's all in the film
The Danube. You know. So if you go harken back
to the old sort of eighties spy films, you know,
(01:31):
it really resonates with that.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, I know they do a lot of production out
there as well. Were you a foreign exchange student with
your father in the service or how did you end
up going to school across Now what happened.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I was thirteen and came home from scout camp and
my dad said family meeting in the living room.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
And I didn't know what that was going to be.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And he says, Now, bear in mind, I was living
in California, I was surfing.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I was going into the eighth grade, so you know.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That was elemental years.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Those are big, like important years. Well, listen, you're going
from seventh grade.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
You're getting canned, you're getting put in garbage cans. You know,
in eighth grade, everything's supposed to turn right and girls
and all that sort of stuff, and it was very
much looking forward to the eighth grade. And uh uh,
my dad said. Meeting in a living room and he said,
we're moving to England.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Why no, we're not. We're not. But why though my dad.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
My dad got a job there. He was in the
computer business. We were living in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
It was just, you know, it was.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It was at the time where in Coopertino a new
building was erected in Coopertino, this big, sort of modern
building and it had an apple on it, and everybody thought,
why would you name your company apple?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You know, you see what I'm saying. It was at
that time.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Wow, that is a good time. So how much time
do you spend in England.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, I was five years in England and at the
time I thought, well, that's that's.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
A drag man, We're moving to England.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And I was sort of bummed out about that, my
brother and I And then all of a sudden we
started to see we went to a concerts Hammersmith Ody
in Wembley Stadium. You know, we were seeing football matches.
We're going into London by ourselves. At the time I
had gone to I think it was an eighty two
or eighty three. My friends and I we went from
(03:33):
the Soviet Union. Two weeks in the Soviet Union all
the way to North Africa. I've seen every cathedral and
museum in Europe by the time I was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Against my will, by the way, wow, I wanted.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
To go back to California and serf. However, I did
serf in England. I served in burits in France. I surfed,
you know, all over Europe.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And after that, interestingly enough, and that's why I got
into the Cold.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
War stuff, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I mean at the time in London they were just
putting cruise missiles in England.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
And there was big demonstrations about that.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
You know, London was a very different place than it
is today, very different in a darker place it was
back then. And Americans, you know, I was obviously I'm
an American going over there. And it's interesting when I went.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
To the Soviet Union at that time, I was We
were in.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
A museum one time in this this elderly Russian woman.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Came up to us and said, she said, Russians don't
want war, we don't want war.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
And I looked at it, I said, we don't want
war either. Yeah, you know, it was a time of mistrust.
We were picked up off the street by two gentlemen
in a in an old Russian car and taken down
below a freeway or a road.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Rather and asked about you. Is it true? Is in America?
You know?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Are you free?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Can you get work in America? You know?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
It was a very interesting trip and I'll never forget it.
And I use it in this movie. You know, I
use it in this movie.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, and you're right. They do film in Bulgaria a lot.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
They are in Budapest, but they also film in Bulgaria
and it was all behind the iron curtains, So I know,
I hope this isn't boring your audience. You know, when
I was with my driver in Budapest and Bulgaria, you know,
they would I didn't even ask them.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
They would just be driving along to our location.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Or whatever, and they would point out an apartment building
and say that's that's Soviet. They wanted me to know
that that was a Soviet apartment block.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And I would say, well, so what does that mean
to you?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
And they would tell me, and it had a certain
architecture to it, you know, that was not as desirable,
I think as the pre Soviet architecture, and people are
still living it in today and so they're.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Very you know that part of the world. East Germany.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I remember in nineteen eighty nine, I was living in
Europe and I was in Geneva and I decided to
go to East Germany and so I went through Checkport Charlie.
And this was the time before you know, the wall
was still up in that and it was a very
different place. And so I said, well, I'm going to
go find a girl and I'm going to have tea
(06:27):
with her, so if she have tea with me for
the afternoon, and I did manage that for you, and
I said, will you come out tea with me and
talk with me? And she did, a very nice girl,
and we sat down and we went through it all,
you know, her feelings and all that sort of stuff,
and it wasn't long after that the wall fell and
(06:53):
everything changed.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, you really got to live through history. What an
incredible experience. Thanks for sharing. And really I got to
imagine puts some things in perspective and a great education
as a young guy. That's that's very cool. Dad ended
up hooking you up at the end nice, So congrats
on that film. Also in the works deep Water, where
you and Ben Kingsley are going to be fighting sharks.
(07:16):
I believe, is that true? The basic probably.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Before before we fight sharks, we we have to go
down in the plane.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
We're pilots together.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So it's a plane.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Don't tell Ready, Yes, don't tell Rennie Harland, I said this,
but it's a it's a plane crash shark movie.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That sounds awesome playing and Ready Arland directing too, that
sounds awesome.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I'm in for both of these.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I said to Ready, you said, how can you miss
with the plane crash and then you're going into sharks?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah? Can you get cooler than that?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
We had Nina dough brev in your not too long
ago for The Brick Layer, and she said, you memorize
a script faster than anyone she's ever seen.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
What's the what's the process? Well?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
No, I I I think we had a conversation and
makeup one time and we were talking about that and
I said, I never step on script uh set without
knowing the script backwards and forwards. I've too completely memorized everything.
I'll never do it. And if I do do it,
it's tough for me.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Uh. So for example, right now I'm working with Jesse
again that did did did this movie? Uh? And you know,
I just spend all day, you know, getting to know
my stuff. And you know, I'm getting older and.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
I can't remember lines, you know, as well as I
used to. And so I I make sure that you know.
This is my philosophy. I try my philosophy on set.
Is my motto is I just got to survive the day.
I've just got to survive the day. And the easiest
way to survive is to know what you're doing and
(08:55):
to not have to think about words and not have
to think about character and and when if the direct
comes up to you and says, Aaron, would you mind
doing it this way? So yeah, absolutely no problem had
I not done the homework before, if a director came
up to me and said, Erin, would you mind trying
it this way?
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I know it it's not the way you thought about it.
But you know a lot of times you.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Would be thrown by that and you'd say, oh, I
can't do it that way or I you know, but
it just makes the day.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Go by easier. And uh. And so that's my that's
my philosophy.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Absolutely, there's nothing like being prepared because then you have
freedom to be creative. Yeah, you were a bare knuckle
fighter in Rumble through the Dark. I just had a
bare knuckle boxing event that I was hosting. Get involved
with the company this past while it was wild? Did
you did you keep up with any of that training afterwards?
Not say of the bare knuckle, but with the box
(09:44):
saying what have you?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Oh? Yeah, I trained every day.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Hey, good for you.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I train every day. I've been training for years.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
And that movie, that bare knuckle stuff is out of control.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
It is these guys. It's really interesting too.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
When I watched studying Belt, a lot of guys, you know, lawyers,
you know, dentists, whatever, professionals you know that would be
on the side or bare knuckle guys, and they're good.
They go in there and take care of business. And
uh so, what's what's the what's the lesson to be learned?
There is never take anybody for.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Granted, never underestimate anything.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Ye, So I tell my boys.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
They always look at you know, when you're out on
the street, you look at a guy, you always ask yourself,
He said, can that guy is that guy a fighter?
What's he got what's he got in his pockets? You
know what's his first move?
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Mario? I'll ask you.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I always ask all my trainers, all my fight trainers, everything, and.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I always ask him, what's your first move?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
My first move left hook.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Same as Freddie Roach, left hook, left fook, right hand.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Always got within two hand, two feet, keep my hands up,
left hook, right hand, that's first move.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
All there you go, my man.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I look forward to hopefully seeing you in person soon.
Thank you so much for taking the time. And I
know you were holding up. I think your phone or something.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Chief of Station is the film. It's in theaters right now, Aaron,
thanks so much for hanging out, Bud.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
All right, guys, okay, take care.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Let's see with Mario Lopez
Real fun with Mario Lopez.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's up roon Mario Lopez joining me now on zoom
from the new movie. Chief of Station actor Aaron Eckhart.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to the.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Show, Aeron. How you been man, Very good you, I'm well,
thank you for taking the time. Congrats on the new movie.
Looks like a lot of action and espionage.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
What's it about, Well, it's about you know, That's what
it is. Is an old fashioned spy movie. You know.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
We filmed it over in Budapest, you know, so it's
got that beautiful Cold War feel. It's a lot of action,
you know, a lot of a lot of slide in
hand and handoffs and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
You know, good stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I love it, my kind of flick. Have you or
had you spent any time in Budapest prior?
Speaker 1 (00:42):
I hadn't. Now I know you're a pretty darn well.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I went to school in England and did my high
school there, so I was familiar with all that, and
you know, considering the Cold War kind of thing. I
lived through that in the eighties with the Soviet Union
that I lived in London, and so I was writing
the thick of it. So to go to Budapest which
was you know, behind the Iron Curtain at the time,
(01:09):
was very exciting. The architecture the Danube, this beautiful river.
I was blown away by the city, and the city
really let us use it. We used all their beautiful
architecture in the buildings, and that's all in the film
The Danube. You know. So if you go harken back
to the old sort of eighties spy films, you know,
(01:31):
it really resonates with that.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, I know they do a lot of production out
there as well. Were you a foreign exchange student with
your father in the service or how did you end
up going to school across Now what happened.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I was thirteen and came home from scout camp and
my dad said family meeting in the living room.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
And I didn't know what that was going to be.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And he says, Now, bear in mind, I was living
in California, I was surfing.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I was going into the eighth grade, so you know.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That was elemental years.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Those are big, like important years. Well, listen, you're going
from seventh grade.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
You're getting canned, you're getting put in garbage cans. You know,
in eighth grade, everything's supposed to turn right and girls
and all that sort of stuff, and it was very
much looking forward to the eighth grade. And uh uh,
my dad said. Meeting in a living room and he said,
we're moving to England.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Why no, we're not. We're not. But why though my dad.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
My dad got a job there. He was in the
computer business. We were living in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
It was just, you know, it was.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It was at the time where in Coopertino a new
building was erected in Coopertino, this big, sort of modern
building and it had an apple on it, and everybody thought,
why would you name your company apple?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
You know, you see what I'm saying. It was at
that time.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Wow, that is a good time. So how much time
do you spend in England.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, I was five years in England and at the
time I thought, well, that's that's.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
A drag man, We're moving to England.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And I was sort of bummed out about that, my
brother and I And then all of a sudden we
started to see we went to a concerts Hammersmith Ody
in Wembley Stadium. You know, we were seeing football matches.
We're going into London by ourselves. At the time I
had gone to I think it was an eighty two
or eighty three. My friends and I we went from
(03:33):
the Soviet Union. Two weeks in the Soviet Union all
the way to North Africa. I've seen every cathedral and
museum in Europe by the time I was sixteen.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Against my will, by the way, wow, I wanted.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
To go back to California and serf. However, I did
serf in England. I served in burits in France. I surfed,
you know, all over Europe.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
And after that, interestingly enough, and that's why I got
into the Cold.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
War stuff, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I mean at the time in London they were just
putting cruise missiles in England.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
And there was big demonstrations about that.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
You know, London was a very different place than it
is today, very different in a darker place it was
back then. And Americans, you know, I was obviously I'm
an American going over there. And it's interesting when I went.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
To the Soviet Union at that time, I was We
were in.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
A museum one time in this this elderly Russian woman.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Came up to us and said, she said, Russians don't
want war, we don't want war.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
And I looked at it, I said, we don't want
war either. Yeah, you know, it was a time of mistrust.
We were picked up off the street by two gentlemen
in a in an old Russian car and taken down
below a freeway or a road.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Rather and asked about you. Is it true? Is in America?
You know?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Are you free?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Can you get work in America? You know?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
It was a very interesting trip and I'll never forget it.
And I use it in this movie. You know, I
use it in this movie.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, and you're right. They do film in Bulgaria a lot.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
They are in Budapest, but they also film in Bulgaria
and it was all behind the iron curtains, So I know,
I hope this isn't boring your audience. You know, when
I was with my driver in Budapest and Bulgaria, you know,
they would I didn't even ask them.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
They would just be driving along to our location.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Or whatever, and they would point out an apartment building
and say that's that's Soviet. They wanted me to know
that that was a Soviet apartment block.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
And I would say, well, so what does that mean
to you?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
And they would tell me, and it had a certain
architecture to it, you know, that was not as desirable,
I think as the pre Soviet architecture, and people are
still living it in today and so they're.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Very you know that part of the world. East Germany.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I remember in nineteen eighty nine, I was living in
Europe and I was in Geneva and I decided to
go to East Germany and so I went through Checkport Charlie.
And this was the time before you know, the wall
was still up in that and it was a very
different place. And so I said, well, I'm going to
go find a girl and I'm going to have tea
(06:27):
with her, so if she have tea with me for
the afternoon, and I did manage that for you, and
I said, will you come out tea with me and
talk with me? And she did, a very nice girl,
and we sat down and we went through it all,
you know, her feelings and all that sort of stuff,
and it wasn't long after that the wall fell and
(06:53):
everything changed.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, you really got to live through history. What an
incredible experience. Thanks for sharing. And really I got to
imagine puts some things in perspective and a great education
as a young guy. That's that's very cool. Dad ended
up hooking you up at the end nice, So congrats
on that film. Also in the works deep Water, where
you and Ben Kingsley are going to be fighting sharks.
(07:16):
I believe, is that true? The basic probably.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Before before we fight sharks, we we have to go
down in the plane.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
We're pilots together.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
So it's a plane.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Don't tell Ready, Yes, don't tell Rennie Harland, I said this,
but it's a it's a plane crash shark movie.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That sounds awesome playing and Ready Arland directing too, that
sounds awesome.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I'm in for both of these.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I said to Ready, you said, how can you miss
with the plane crash and then you're going into sharks?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah? Can you get cooler than that?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
We had Nina dough brev in your not too long
ago for The Brick Layer, and she said, you memorize
a script faster than anyone she's ever seen.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
What's the what's the process? Well?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
No, I I I think we had a conversation and
makeup one time and we were talking about that and
I said, I never step on script uh set without
knowing the script backwards and forwards. I've too completely memorized everything.
I'll never do it. And if I do do it,
it's tough for me.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Uh. So for example, right now I'm working with Jesse
again that did did did this movie? Uh? And you know,
I just spend all day, you know, getting to know
my stuff. And you know, I'm getting older and.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
I can't remember lines, you know, as well as I
used to. And so I I make sure that you know.
This is my philosophy. I try my philosophy on set.
Is my motto is I just got to survive the day.
I've just got to survive the day. And the easiest
way to survive is to know what you're doing and
(08:55):
to not have to think about words and not have
to think about character and and when if the direct
comes up to you and says, Aaron, would you mind
doing it this way? So yeah, absolutely no problem had
I not done the homework before, if a director came
up to me and said, Erin, would you mind trying
it this way?
Speaker 1 (09:10):
I know it it's not the way you thought about it.
But you know a lot of times you.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Would be thrown by that and you'd say, oh, I
can't do it that way or I you know, but
it just makes the day.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Go by easier. And uh. And so that's my that's
my philosophy.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Absolutely, there's nothing like being prepared because then you have
freedom to be creative. Yeah, you were a bare knuckle
fighter in Rumble through the Dark. I just had a
bare knuckle boxing event that I was hosting. Get involved
with the company this past while it was wild? Did
you did you keep up with any of that training afterwards?
Not say of the bare knuckle, but with the box
(09:44):
saying what have you?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Oh? Yeah, I trained every day.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Hey, good for you.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I train every day. I've been training for years.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
And that movie, that bare knuckle stuff is out of control.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
It is these guys. It's really interesting too.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
When I watched studying Belt, a lot of guys, you know, lawyers,
you know, dentists, whatever, professionals you know that would be
on the side or bare knuckle guys, and they're good.
They go in there and take care of business. And
uh so, what's what's the what's the lesson to be learned?
There is never take anybody for.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Granted, never underestimate anything.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Ye, So I tell my boys.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
They always look at you know, when you're out on
the street, you look at a guy, you always ask yourself,
He said, can that guy is that guy a fighter?
What's he got what's he got in his pockets? You
know what's his first move?
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Mario? I'll ask you.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I always ask all my trainers, all my fight trainers, everything, and.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I always ask him, what's your first move?
Speaker 2 (10:48):
My first move left hook.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Same as Freddie Roach, left hook, left fook, right hand.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Always got within two hand, two feet, keep my hands up,
left hook, right hand, that's first move.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
All there you go, my man.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I look forward to hopefully seeing you in person soon.
Thank you so much for taking the time. And I
know you were holding up. I think your phone or something.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Chief of Station is the film. It's in theaters right now, Aaron,
thanks so much for hanging out, Bud.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
All right, guys, okay, take care.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Let's see with Mario Lopez
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