Billy Crudup on Working with Adam Sandler & George Clooney + Theater Horror Stories

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2:45Let me see what you got, Spade. Look. Not as good. Not as good. Nice. Scribbles. I called for line, and we didn't have any system in place for line. So calling it back? From the booth, I hear our poor stage manager go, I don't know what it means to me, but I'm going to be here. Yeah, you have to tell the audience there's real bullets, and you're really shooting at each other. It's just a great idea. And one person gets the kind of producing we need. So Billy, crewed up is, what did we, will he's on the morning show he's in prefontaine right yeah i was really excited to talk to billy because i've just you know he he's one of those just kind of always good actors you know uh everything he does is great he amazing in the morning show like an electric yeah and yet he's sort of under the radar as a celebrity i don't know how you describe those kinds of people he's always good but he's he's not around then he comes in he's always great and he's in uh j kelly which he was promoting with with adam sandler and george clooney yeah and just very very interesting guy to talk to very interesting yes adam says a lot of great things about him because once we talked to him i went on the road with adam and loves this dude thinks he's a big star he's a great looking cool dude that uh you you guys get into that prefontaine movie a lot yeah and he started steve prefontaine there was a few movies about this famous olympic runner uh from the 70s and his was great he did a great job with that so i don't know it's just fun talking to a guy like that you know he's in so many once you see his face he's he's very well known anyway but you go oh that guy okay okay yeah we were watching spotlight last night it's a michael keaton movie spotlight and and then he shows up in spotlight it's like and he's great you know so anyway really fun nice guy and um highly entertaining highly intelligent anyway i enjoyed it i hope you will there he is billy cruder we're not going to talk about how good looking he is we're going to skip that because people get so look at those notes look at look at let me see what you got space look not as good not as good scribbles man who prepares that's right you and uh i found justin thoreau is when i found out you were friends i went oh that makes sense yeah this is how i connect it good looking guys handsome guys because i'm obviously spade and are you know sex symbols with a small s but you guys and you don't you don't play it up that much the Small what?

5:36Which S? Is it the sex or the symbol that's small? I don't know. Or the wiener. What? No. Somewhere an angel gets their wings when he says wiener. Wait, Taylor. Got it in fast this show. This is where Justin and I met. We were doing a play in New York, and he and Paul Giamatti and I were all in it. And the three of us used to take breaks regularly while the rest of them were doing drama to go play video games in New York Times Square. and that's when he and I became friends back in 1996. Whoa. I love it. There's something about you guys. I'd say two ex-cons, you know, white-collar criminals become undercover cops and it's called We Know All the Tricks.

6:19We go to the same surgeon. We've been using the same guy year after year. Giamatti decided to go with a different guy.

6:28God, these are three of my favorites. You're already in my top three. Giamatti, I love. Talk to Justin and now you. We can stop right now. You guys are my... Because that guy's... Both those two are incredible. They're incredible. I can't keep up with them. Well, Giamatti is just... He's a monster. Yeah. Are you in New York now? I'm in LA right now just doing some press and stuff. Now, here's a big question everyone gets with you. Is it... Three options are crude up, crude up, or... Some people pronounce it fuckwad. Fuckface. I, my family and I have always pronounced it Crudup. Crudup. It's German and I think there used to be an umlaut over it.

7:13Oh, an umlaut. Yeah, like in Lowenbrow. Yeah, Crudup. Yeah. I'm doing the movie with being Crudup. Crudup. That's right. You did that play where you played 14 characters. You get, what were some, did you do a lot of different voices and accents? Can you do seven of them? Could you do, I've already seen two characters. German. I'm not giving it away for free, pal. If you want something on the side, I'll give you three. I heard that movie multiplicity with Keaton was seven or eight. That was, I thought that was impossible, but this was a play where you came out naked and then you do 14 characters.

7:52I think you're complaining two things. I'm not a good researcher. That's right. Your fantasies and the actual off-roadway production. Actually, the theater that I did do the play in, that was the first place I ever did a play in New York in 1994. And in fact, there was a scene where I appeared completely naked for$225 a week. And what I might say was a relatively chilly theater. That being said. Yeah, I would say that. Did you ever consider saying? Put it on the playbill. It was an esoteric think piece on Japanese internment camps, so I'm sure you didn't miss it, Spade. You know what? I was sick that week, but I usually try to get out and watch the boards.

8:34Spade worked as a stand-in naked guy. Remember the Broadway show you did, Spade? There was a guy supposed to be naked and then you would stand in for him. It was kind of a shadowy thing. Remember the last time we used stand-ins on stage? Yeah, it was the stage version of Police Academy 4. It said there's no such thing as a stand-in. It's like, I'm here and I'm naked. so when i'm a stand-in the audience was like this girl or boy and they go um just go skate that's all yeah they go it's a spade whatever that is yeah uh the other one that i did was um uh just i told a story for you know an hour about a guy who's going through a bit of an identity crisis and he's from indiana but he grew up wanting to speak with a british accent so his dad beat the shit out of him and he'd never none of them had ever been to england but he didn't like he didn't like that his son like to speak like this all the time and so he came up with this other alter ego which was like oh go you want to fuck with me go fuck yourself how about that dad you know let's take this punch in the nuts you know so there was uh that kind of character was going back and forth so i was having dialogues between the two of them and so by the end of it you just feel like you've seen a story and then the lights come up and it's just one dude so you go oh theater's fun So that was the kind of hole.

9:56Is that the 14? Yeah. Oh, wow. So you had to do all that is very tough to do. It was it. Well, it it was so tough, in fact, David, that they during the first preview, first week of previews, I went up, I forgot my lines. And so we didn't I've never forgotten my lines like that. And I started to have a full blown panic attack. You know, you get tunnel vision. My heart's coming out of my chest. There's only 150 people there. It's not like anything terrible is going to happen, but still you feel responsible for their$30 in each seat. So I called for line and we didn't have any system in place for line.

10:35So calling it back from the booth, I hear our poor stage manager go.

10:44At which point I shit my pants. I cut about 20 minutes from the show and it's a thriller that things are supposed to accumulate over time. so nobody knew what the hell i was talking about and then i get home and um my wife is like i'm sure it wasn't that bad and i'm telling this story a couple years later and there's silence that we're at a um a brunch and there's silence at the end of the table and this director who my wife knows says gabby you you i'm sure it wasn't that bad right and she goes i was at that production and that night one of the worst experiences of my life I said, well, put it on for me.

11:23But you know what? The audience would never forget it, though. I'd actually rather see a debacle because it's fascinating. Yes, it was. It was a complete train wreck. Why do they say - I was like selling it live, yeah. This is - We have so many - It's going to be a two-hour. But why do they say when an actor loses their train of thought or they've gone up? Is that their expression? I mean, this is the first time I've thought about it, Dana. But I suppose because when you forget your lines, you typically go like this. oh yeah looking for you look up because you go wait yeah maybe that's it i don't know i'm sure there's a better explanation the first few beats they think you're acting so they don't know and then someone is it you're standing supposed to yell it out is someone well typically it's a stage manager but actually that reminds me of another time that i went up but i didn't have a panic attack on this when it was just a quick you know as you get older you i think this is my theory guys any actor already has a brain that's hardwired for internalizing text so you can take a speech you read it once or twice and you know the general gist of it you get the story of it and the words kind of go you just have a brain that's ready for that and as you get older that starts to atrophy a bit and you don't until you're front of people and all of a sudden the words aren't there and i was doing a play with martha plimpton and ethan hawk amongst many others and And I had this big, long, like five minute monologue.

12:49And at the beginning of it, I went up and that was the first time I'd really gone up on stage. And I thought it was kind of funny. So I just kind of paused and I'm supposed to be lecturing the whole group and they're listening to me. And I paused and I was like. And it works. This is an awkward experience. So I went and sat down and just kind of put my hands together waiting for the lines to come. And to watch Martha Plimpton go from fake listening to real listening was my most joyful feeling. She was listening like this and then she was like, something's happening. Yeah. This isn't the way it's supposed to go.

13:34They have to adjust their acting because you're adjusting. You're like, oh, he's doing this. It's real happening. Exactly. Somebody might die. They think you're coming over to make a new move on your speech. And they're like, okay, we're doing this now. Right. There might be. Billy's going to improv some Tom Stoppard. Some Tom Stoppard. It was. It was a Tom Stoppard play. There's no improvising there. That's funny. Sounds like a Dennis Miller reference. Oh, Dennis Miller had some great references. Tommy Stoppard. You know, it's like the Sam Shepard of the East Side. All right. I don't know where that came out of here.

14:09I just watched Baby Boom last night with my wife in honor of Diane Keaton. Sam Shepard was in that. It's slapstick. It's 1930s. It's absolutely brilliant. And so is Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard. But anyway. Thinking about refreshing the carpet in your home? Now's the time to do it. For a limited time at the Home Depot, get 10 % off installed carpet projects on trusted brands like LifeProof, Life-proof with pet-proof technology, home decorators collection, and traffic master. Plus, with installation starting at just 49 cents per square foot, upgrading your space is more affordable than ever at The Home Depot.

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15:30Let's go! Get ready for a new case. We're going to crack this case and prove we're going to create as partners of all time. New friends. You are... Gary Death Snake. And your last name? Death Snake. Dream Team. New habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. You're clearly working at it. Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney Plus Rated PG. So, where do you want to begin? I mean, morning show's out now. yeah we've got the fourth season out now uh and um you know it feels like we did it more than a year ago i can barely remember what happened but i know it's a great experience working on it i have never worked on a character you know more than a couple of months so to return to this uh this guy where they keep writing you know weird shit for me to do has been it's been really fun.

16:28Actually, the best part has been just being with the cast and the crew, because it's been seven years now and you never get a chance when you I mean, you've had the you know, I do plays and movies and wherever kind of jobs come up. So it's like three months somewhere and you get really intense with a group of people and then you don't see him again for a while. So this one getting to come back again to Los Angeles year and year with the crew and the cast has been And that's been fucking awesome. I'll say that this true story. So my wife and I are watching, I guess, season three or something. And Jon Hamm's in it.

17:03And you're in it. And, you know, with live streaming shows, sometimes you miss a season, you come back. So we watched your character, who's sort of a genius egomaniac. And by the end of it, we went, fuck, Billy Crudup. We both said, we were just sort of reintroduced to you. by that that season and that arc and that character where someone is so in the pocket and so ribbed and so connected and those monologues and your alpha male confidence it just must have been a blast but it really landed with us we're like hey honey you want to watch anything else like fucking billy i had to convince them though they didn't want me for that part i i had just done that um a play where i was doing all those different characters so i was like no if you guys give me a lot to say.

17:53I bet I can do it okay. And then when I read that specific character, if you've ever spent any time in New York and gone to a gala of any kind, it's just riddled with dudes who are room readers looking for the power. They don't care about the charity. They don't care about their jobs, whatever. They just want to be in proximity to power and they know how to read people. They talk fast. They think fast. They're very proud of themselves. They've never failed before. If they have, they thought it was a lark. And so that's not how I live. It's a sweaty experience for me being in those, but I knew those guys.

18:29And so when those monologues started to come, the writer Carrie Aaron, she just started writing them for me. Like she would use the kinds of ways of speaking that I would use. So it was, and I never had that experience either it was just she was teeing it up for me so all I had to figure out how to do is think more quickly because the guy thinks in paragraphs he doesn't think in you know like little phrases and he's sure he's seeing around corners knows a lot more than everybody else does very proud of himself it's very easy it's a good character in that environment too because everybody's so um it all the the stakes are so high everything's so yeah it's kind of wound tight so tightly wound and so when you've got a guy who comes in and goes hey this won't be a problem let me tell you the very laissez-faire the audience gets a quick reprieve and then you get back to the drama so the smartest guy in the room who knows he's the smartest guy in the room and you know what's funny too is that there are plenty of producers out here and politicians too who will either come up to me or come up to my agent and say that's based on me isn't it because they're the smartest guy in the world really and bernie sanders said that to you wait how would he have said it jana yeah i'm you'll base the character on me did you just have a cup of coffee this is how i talk i'm 80 do not proceed why do him as a crosswalk guard in my standing back don't proceed don't Pussy.

20:04The system's rigged. The system's rigged. He has a lot of energy for an 84-year-old. He sure does. He sure does. He's only 84. Yeah. Billy got a good line in the pilot where, well, the setup is, we're setting the whole stage for the whole series, but I thought the pilot was super cool because it's very glossy, very expensive. It looks great. Mimi Leder, I guess, is the director from the old ER days, maybe? Indeed. She pioneered a lot of those winners. And so when Steve Carell gets fired and Jennifer Aniston is sort of soaking in it, and he says, nobody wants to watch a widow get fucked. I'm like, if I was reading the pilot, I would circle that and go, make sure that stays in.

20:51Let me tell you. And that was a temp one. They were like, we're going to go ahead and do a couple of takes of this. We're not entirely sure. And I have to say, I think we have a couple others that were even, I don't know. The rougher? Hard hitting. Is the right way, yes. Yeah. For a more late night audience. But you need those lines that stand out like that. Everyone goes, whoa, okay. And I would say it and they'd go cut and I'd say, I need a shower. That would be so loud. Fuck, man. Are you guys actually going to put that out there? Yeah. Yeah, Steve Carell being a bad guy is just so much fun.

21:28Oh, that was great. He was brilliant in that. I was sad to see him go. Such a sweet, sweet guy. There's one little fetish I have about this interview, and that is that you play. I'm a track and field guy, and I am a stretcher. Distance running, mile through. Oh, you did? All right. So you knew about pre-pontaine. Yes. Yeah. And yours is this. I'm a play the field guy, but go ahead. Okay, that's similar, but not the same.

21:59That's not a dick athlete. That's a dick athlete, right? That's something like that, yeah. I interrupted Dana. Dana's actually a good runner, so I'm glad we're talking about this. I was during that running, and Prefontaine was the beetle of distance running, and Jared Leto did one called Prefontaine the year before, and then yours was Without Limits, and you had Donald Sutherland, And I was just curious about your training. Did you do sports in high school? I did. My dad was kind of a jockey guy. My granddad, he set records, high school records, in boxing and football and track in North Carolina.

22:39And he had all the pictures up, all the clippings and the trophies and stuff. And my dad was always trying to live up to that, tried out for the semi-pro Jets team, but blew up both shoulders. and was selling yarn. But he was obsessed. A natural next move. You know, all of the guys who don't make it into the semi-pro, they're selling yarn one way or the other. But he had a crazy affection for sports. You know, it ended up coming out in a not necessarily legal way. He was a bookie for many years. But we had TVs on all the time. And so sports, it was a big thing. I don't know if you guys ever saw The Great Santini.

23:32We both lived it. Yeah, so that was my dad. Oh, really? After my dad saw that, he called us sports fans for about two years. And he was the kind of guy who my brother played baseball in high school. And my dad would bring, you know, six pack of Miller High Life or whatever. start to get drunk in the stands start yelling at the umpire get kicked out to the parking lot where he had another six-pack and start laying on the horn and yelling at him from out in the parking lot so there was a lot of sports um and i was you know i was the feelings guy i was short and skinny and i put on shows and stuff but i liked to compete and about when you get to high school, first of all, a fastball your freshman year, if you're not feeling it, that looks really fast.

24:21And baseball wasn't going to be the thing for me. And soccer, which I had played since I was like, you know, first grade or whatever, I became, you know, a lot slower as the guys got faster. So much so they called me flash for a while. And I thought, nope, that's not for me either but i had always i had wrestled since fourth grade and that's when you know it's a handicap system so you're always wrestling guys your weight so i wrestled when i was in high school but i was not a great asset to the team uh the year was your weight class yeah what were you i was 148 um and i think we had 152 at the time were you that's that's big for i would have wrestled oh you were a heavyweight i don't even know how tall you i don't know anything

25:14i would have wrestled it at 112 i think i was about honestly i was 114 or something i was like a fucking full pipsqueak so but i i loved the competition so when i i uh i got to do that movie yeah i did like exercising and stuff but there was a a woman named patricia donnelly who was in another of robert town's movies called personal best um which was yeah you remember that david i do sort of i know you do and robert town made a lot of great movies there was a relationship between two of the athletes and there was a shower scene and that's why i'm thinking you might remember that all right let's look at a call yeah so we did our research about you and you did your research about David.

25:57I mean, yeah, the research comes from just taking a hard look at him, right? There's nothing to know. It's already, um, she said, listen, the, the, the thing that'll screw you up if you do this is if we run anything more than 200 meters at a time, because we're going to, we're going to do these takes and then we're going to, there's going to be an hour between the setup. And during that time, if you cool down, you're going to tear something when we get back up and going again. So I'm only going to train you with intervals. And we spent about like six weeks training out here. And the guy ran in the kind of specific way, sort of barrel chested and arms a little bit.

26:39Exactly. It's kind of given it. And yeah, he wasn't as efficient as some of the other runners. He liked to run with guts. So I just had a incredible time getting to hang out with all those people and and and some really world-class athletes and runners you know that and all of them when when when you see middle distance runners it looks like they're jogging they're running like four minute mile pace you know they're just so efficient with their movement and a four minute mile pace for anybody else is a full sprint yeah learning how to do that you know was um that was that was a really fun experience i think you see them chunk together and it looks like they're all going medium totally because they are all together but if anyone else was running they wouldn't be able to keep up but a hundred percent you can't really tell the cardio on those guys it's unusual they all have you know pretty physiologically unique bodies yeah vo2 max is a big vo2 max measurement and prefontaine was 84 85 uh there was a norwegian cross-country skier that was 93 then some of the people stopped testing but lance armstrong apparently was an 83 or an 84 he knew he could be 91 or 92.

27:53just the engine your the way your oxygen gets to your muscles and through your your cardiovascular system heart lungs arteries and all that and so if you're really efficient and you have a gift like you you have a head start a little bit yeah you definitely do that's the gift of it you just can run and then you can train it but what so i I thought it was great. I thought you really captured it. And Donald Sutherland was, was great as Bowerman. So that, that was a tremendous movie. I don't know. And Conrad Hall, who shot Bonnie and Clyde, he was our cinematographer. And, you know, the fact of the matter, I was just scared shitless.

28:30That was my first like big part. And I did not want to let anybody down. And I wasn't sure that I was up for the task, you know? And so I couldn't really ever take the time to, enjoy the fact that I got to was getting a chance to work with these you know great people I I Conrad Hall was testing out some new equipment because he wanted to do these these specific kinds of shots where he was using a very long lens at magic hour so low light long lens means you have a very small depth of field which means the focus puller if you are running at him has to be able to keep up with you in a very precise way.

29:12Otherwise, you know, you'll be in real time. It's constantly moving. He was developing the laser at the time. He was one of the first ones using the laser to try to, well, meanwhile, I'm running over these hills again and again and again. He's like, all right, we got precisely, which is not the exact great attitude to take with Conrad Hall. So it was, it was, it was a bit of a mixed bag. I look back at it now and I think, oh man, And I wish I wasn't such a... I thought your pre was great. And I thought you actually had a resemblance once you got the kind of wig on and everything. And you're playing this insecure, but hyper-confident, hyper-cocky.

29:51I mean, pre was so charismatic. He was. I'll get it down to a pure guts race because then no one can beat me. His interviews are bonkers. I mean, he had such incredible confidence. and uh he also he he had he was kind of prescient about uh athletics as well he was one of the first guys who was advocating saying you're not paying for anybody you should pay for somebody i mean these amateur athletes are busting their balls they're living in you know squalor and um yeah you're the colleges are making money off of it so yeah i've always said that like the olympics is another feels like a scam because you go there you train your whole life and then it's over and And even if you won, what's next?

30:32Coaching? I mean, you win or you lose even worse. So you train all that for nothing or whatever. And then you go, I have to start studying for a life or a career or this late in the game. Because I love amateur athletics. I do love it. It's a big sacrifice for sure. It sucks. I mean, I went to Carolina, so I'm a college basketball fan. and trying to figure out, one of the things that is exciting about watching college athletics is you will inevitably be watching a game where a young person becomes themselves and they'll do it in front of a crowd of 30 ,000 people. And it is incredible to watch.

31:11All of a sudden, this young athlete becomes the professional athlete that he's going to be the rest of his life. That's cool. And, you know, you don't, if you're paying for it one way or another, I'm not sure you're going to get the same experience, but obviously I always thought it should be deferred income. They should be able to, there's like a pool of money that at 25, they start to get to tap into the rest of their lives or something like that. But at least they can do NIL, I mean, name, image, likeness. They can monetize. Yeah, they can do that. Yeah, exactly. So that's, you know, they almost don't use any of those letters.