Lewis Pullman

0:00Legally, we can't say drinking Storm makes you smarter and more focused. But with zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine, and immunity support, you're smarter and more focused for drinking Storm. Storm. Good energy in, good energy out. Energy for life. Girl, winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cut-offs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. that perfect hang on the patio sundress those sandals you can wear all day and all night and you've had enough of shopping from your couch done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear open that envelope it's time for a little in-person spring treat it's time for a trip to ross work your magic into the wild i read it probably 10 times and then the movie came out i was ready to just hate it well lewis pullman welcome to one night stand thank you charlotte I'm glad to have you here.

0:59Have you always been a big reader? I've always been a big reader. No, maybe in high school, kind of once I discovered books that felt like they were for me, then I was like, okay, I can get into this. Once I kind of let go of the homework side of reading, yeah, and then locked in, I was like, this is an imagination playground. Oh, that's fun. And you worked at a bookstore, right? When you were a grad? Yeah, yeah. So you were a janitor or something? Yeah. Yeah, my best friend Kyle McNeil is a great musician. He found this bookstore called Equator Books, which was on Abbot Kinney. And it was owned and run by this guy, Michael Diamond, who's a great writer and painter and artist.

1:39And I think my buddy Kyle, the legend goes that he stole a book. And Michael caught him and was like, listen, you can pay that off by working here. he ended up like creating this beautiful friendship with him and then I would start to hang out there and we were in a band we started to play music it would play you know shows at Equator Books and then they had to sell Equator and then he bought this place called Diamond that he called Diamond Books just down the street and then I started working there with Kyle and we had a book club called reading for winners and because my reading for winners and michael would just you know basically was giving us all these books that they weren't teaching us in school that he was like i think you know boys at this age we're gonna love this stuff stuff like he introduced me to harry cruz and like um this great john yount um and like i think that and also a lot of dennis johnson and just some like great you know and you know Bukowski which like at that age you're like this is so yeah I'm not supposed to be reading this that's so fun also stealing a book I feel like that's such a noble crime like yes totally I think that Michael saw that you know he's like there's there's some twisted intent here there's good intent just just twist it a little that's so fun I do think it's those books that you fall in love with when you're about 17 18 those are the ones that stick with me the most because they sort of like unlock something in yourself that you like can't forget what are some of those for you i read uh vera britain's memoir testament of youth when i was younger and it's about world war one well her brother and fiance and best friends all died in world war one and it's about her sort of like depression and stuff after and i remember this is one scene where she talks about being convinced she's growing a beard because and because her mind is like playing tricks on her and i remember at the time i was definitely going through my first like bad mental health stuff and i obviously i wasn't coming out of world war one but there was just something about seeing that on the page i was like oh my god okay this isn't like i'm not going mad kind of thing like yeah and so and then another one is some as buyer books but yeah i don't know it is that feeling when you're like oh okay i'm not insane or like yeah this is something i've felt yeah some some like little hidden camaraderie chest that you open up exactly yeah so it's the friends that you can find in a book was so she's kind of in that i haven't read that but is she basically kind of like entirely alone and in in like absolute solitude she sort of no she's kind of in like society she's sort of like upper middle class and like it's kind of and then during world war ii she gets pretty sorry in between world war one and world war ii she gets very involved in the like feminist movement in the uk and so i think she decides to be become more politically active after that so she doesn't kind of retreat away from the world but it really is like just the absolute dissolution of like all of these young men going off and just never returning and there's something about the way they were just literally going over the top and being shot at I mean it was such an insane strategy yeah yeah I know there was a strategy called the never waver strategy I think that started in civil war yeah but it was like where they would intentionally put in in your troop put you like next to your uncle and your neighbor so that if you so that you wouldn't retreat because you if you went home you would be shamed you know and it basically made like huge generations of men get wiped out oh god it's awful yeah depressing books as a teenager what's not to love but anyway well let's start with the solace of open spaces by gretel alec tell me what you love about this book actually i feel like these two kind of go in a pair a little bit because i I was introduced to them both, Close Range and The Solace of Open Spaces, at the same time through my friend and colleague, Brian Watkins, who wrote and was the showrunner for this TV series I did called Outer Range.

5:44And I was like, what are some things that I can read when I'm gearing up for this to kind of like immerse me? And I had heard of Close Range, but I had never heard of Solace of Open Spaces. and this is just I mean you know bear with me as as we talk about some of these because I think part of the beauty of like I'm excited to reread these like these were like ones that I was like well I know these impacted me but I could they're they're at a stage where I could probably benefit from you know diving back in but what I remember being so taken by in this is like the kind of um autobiographical nature of it you know she i believe was shooting a documentary um in in wyoming about sheep herders and then decided to just like she couldn't bear to leave and and so it's all very like firsthand experience in of wyoming these are both kind of Wyoming based and I've got a lot of history in Montana and they very much feel like cousins and her description of you know I feel like sometimes like nature poetry can for me feel a little repetitive or dull and that's my own problem because obviously that there's a lot of great nature poetry out there um but this to me really like made you feel like you were you know the the excitement and also the the quiet um you know she has some great i remember like basing some of the my speech patterns in that off of her description of like how how some of these ranchers speak you know and their economy of words exactly they collapse all yeah these words together yeah yes yeah because because they're there's you know saving their essentially like on a very like survival survivalist level like saving their literal energy in in terms of like how they compress their sentences and their the poetry of their words in order to kind of like say less with more um say more with less yeah and sorry it's early for me and um yeah i just remember thinking like you know and also even like the way they might turn their head away from the wind or in the side of their mouth um and uh yeah i i would love to meet her she seems like a very interesting person yeah she also writes with such compassion about especially these men who are kind of i mean some of these characters i couldn't get over it like when she's telling the story about one of the guys who's like his like undergarments have been changed so infrequently like the hairs are growing into them and like another guy who like almost tries to well he doesn't almost try he sort of tries to like harass her a bit but she's sort of so compassionate about these people she's like they're living in complete isolation they never encounter many people yeah it's kind of remarkable yeah yeah it is I think that that um that story about that reminded me of this story that my uncle who's a doctor out in montana in butte he told me a story of like one of his friends who had i think it was like they found this hermit um who had been a felt fall fallen ill to something and they found him i think a hunter like went up there and found him and he was like kind of comatose and they like went to go strip him of his clothing and he hadn't changed his his long johns for so long that those like waffle long johns his skin had kind of started to almost like it was just you know yeah encompass that and then he they had to like peel some of his flesh off as they're like trying to pull it off um but you know it makes you think about sometimes when you know he must have been he was up there by choice yeah totally you know that that um alienation was in some ways like his that's how he you know knew to exist best and um yeah i i think that like the plea for company while also like the total dismissal of society at the same time that kind of marriage is something that i feel like she captures really well yeah an isolation person do you like being isolated or i i'm always like when i've got one i'm i miss the other yes i completely agree yeah and i yearn for it and it's like a kind of yeah this antsy thing of like even just being here in new york like i feel it pretty immediately coming here and i love i like it i like the hustle and bustle i like watching people i like overhearing bits and pieces of their conversations but um um i do feel like there's this weird crust of this like hard shell over the earth that's like kind of hard to um hard to puncture here yeah i agree some of the bits that i wrote down as well that i thought at the end of the first power she talks about how we like build against space in most of the world and rather and i thought that was so like beautifully kind of put and kind of captures how i sometimes feel when i'm in cities that you like it's almost not in cooperation with the space yes right yeah yeah i know and all our instinct in structures to go for hard corners yeah i always love like a spanish house you know like an adobe house because of the rounded kind of more organic shapes it feels like you're like you've burrowed into a boulder or something cozy there's also so much in this book about kind of animals and the importance of animals i think at one point she said they hold us to what is present which i thought um is interesting Are you a big animal person?

11:43Definitely. Yeah. I remember feeling like she captured that very well. My aunt is, you know, she has a huge cattle ranch, my aunt and uncle. And I was just there for a little while with my dad. And there was branding, you know, on Saturday. There was branding. And I was doing, you know, in putting these, you kind of, it's an interesting process. because she she you know it's like there's she knows every calve and she knows when they come through she knows their history yeah and some of some of the process can feel you know like i was putting this vaccine into their nostrils which is like kind of a a blue it looks like a liquid jolly rancher and like in the kind of act itself you have to like you try and make it as brief as possible and and use as much empathy as possible and you know they're branding at the same time and so that you smell the burnt burning you know hide and um some of it is like you know it does like you're i'm helping them and and elongating their life and giving them their uh their quality of life, you know, enhancing it, but it is like the, the, like the kind of like coexistence of life and death in, in kind of in a, in a place like Montana or Wyoming in, in the conditions like a, you know, like what, what Gretel was experiencing is like very well captured.

13:18I think that, yeah, I am an animal person. And I do, I like, you know, people ask, like, what are you, cat or dog person? And I definitely am like, I just like all animals. All of them. Yeah. Do you have any pets? I have a dog. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. And does he, or does he travel with you? You know, I got him, I actually got him while I was shooting out of range. Very fun. And in New Mexico from a pound in Santa Fe. he was found in the streets of albuquerque he had a big scar on his nose and like a chip missing from his ear and he's a little skittish blue healer so i can't really take i can't put him on a plane i've drove i've drove with him a couple places if i can drive to location i do bring him um but i haven't put him on a plane i think like i've gotten him to a place where he exists like pretty comfortably yeah you know he still has his weird things he's he's scared of shiny floors oh interesting and he tries to he would be trying to hurt everyone in this room in the one corner right now um interesting but i miss him whenever i'm out with him um but also like i understand that he's a creature and like he needs consistency so i don't want to mix it up for him too much has any i mean in your sort of new movie remarkably bright creatures the sort of marcelos the octopus is obviously like a sort of catalyst for change in the movie right yeah has has your your dog ever like do you feel like he's been a catalyst for change in your life in any way definitely sally field and i talked about this a lot um because she had just gotten a dog in covet in covet and and that's when i i got bodie my dog because we were shooting and it was like peak covid we couldn't really hang out with anyone i think for me um the immediacy like his kind of like the reminder like I so often will be caught in a spiral in my head and and kind of almost enter this state of paralysis and like his he literally like will like I have a video of him in my car where we were driving and he's like putting his paw on me like this kind of like metronome of like reminder of like the seconds that are happening and like he needs like one of five things you know at any given point and it's the simplicity of that and then also like his unconditional love it's just like a total reminder of like what's what's important yeah yeah totally how was that making the movie with sally field it's so fun i watched it last night i loved it yeah oh my god it was so fun yeah i like i'm gonna miss working with her because it It was just every, I looked forward to every scene that I got to do with her because she's so, so playful.

16:11And, you know, she has that perfect balance of taking it so deathly seriously while also being so childlike in her exploration. And it makes for a lot of surprises. Yeah. I remember you know because she would she worked so hard on Anna she had read it in galleys before it had even come out and she had been with this story for a long time a lot longer than I had but she still then each morning you know when we got there wouldn't make that like influence her in in her rigidity of like you know keeping to the whatever she had planned or anything it was quite the opposite like yeah um and so it took me a second because i'm such like a the only way to like quell my anxiety about a project is through preparation yeah and i you know have all those stupid you know little actor plans and ideas that you know that when you get there and you want to she kind of would throw you not throw it all out but like you know let those live and coexist within her spontaneity and like the the the change of the the air in the room and and so like at first I was like terrified for the first week just because I was like um she's mixing it up and changing the words and improvising and um and then once I realized like my sole job is to basically show up prepared and then basically be her you know yeah listen and react and once I found that it was like such a freeing experience.

17:52And like, I'm going to take that into every project I do. With Plan B Emergency Contraception, we're in control of our future. It's backup birth control you take after unprotected sex that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts. It works by temporarily delaying ovulation and it won't impact your future fertility. Plan B is available in all 50 U.S. states at all major retailers near you with no ID, prescription, or age requirement needed. Together, we've got this. Follow Plan B on Insta at Plan B One Step to learn more. Use as directed. I love that. I also feel like the line that she says often in this of like there's a right way and a wrong way to do things is a kind of theme in a lot of these books as well.

18:34Like especially like all of the kind of wild outdoorsmen in a lot of these books have that kind of mentality. Yes, yeah. And then I think as we get into the Harry Cruz maybe and the Sam Shepard of it there's a little more wild untameable aspect in there but yeah the right in the wrong way thing strangely like even however simple that is like definitely did affect me afterwards in a weird like kind of practical way yeah like even just like keeping order within in my house and room and kitchen. Oh, interesting. And kind of seeing the buildup of laziness or of thinking something, I don't know, even just like putting my, washing your dishes immediately after you eat.

19:26And taking the time to do those things and not just doing them to do them, but also finding the enjoyment and the meditation within those yeah totally mundane like pride and discipline I guess yes pride and discipline yes I always remember Josh Brolin saying discipline is freedom and I was always like I don't get that what are you talking about and like eventually that really sunk in to me like that within that kind of like structure provides a sense of like like security and like strength and power yes like you have this this these this like skeleton you went with if it's routine or habits like it gives you this sense of like um i don't know it gives it gives me a feeling of like i've uh i'm like a little indestructible when i'm really flowing with something like i agree i also think it's that like um i was remember reading like a big interview with barack obama and he talked about how he will the same suit every day because he's like i've got a finite amount of decisions i can make in a day and i can't waste it on an outfit and i think there's some of that with discipline where it's like it's not a discussion in my mind whether i'm doing these things so i can use all my brain power on other things rather than these things i've already decided are happening i've heard david lynch did that as well really that's why he always was kind of uniformed interesting yeah i can see why I can see how it works definitely yeah because it's like if you use a lot of your brain space on something early in the morning like deciding oh am I gonna do that today or tomorrow I'll just leave it like whatever yeah yeah do you have what what habits and and like routines do you have that you feel like you've been able to really stick with oh gosh good question um I'm pretty good with my like night routine of like reading before bed that is really like my no phone time like kind of switching off um and then in the morning I'm like a big tea drinker and tea is like my if I'm having a cup of tea I feel like grounded I guess yeah yeah um and then I guess being outdoors sometimes but I don't know what about you wait I need to know more about your reading ritual how do you where do you put the phone how do you how do you not fall asleep what's your routine well I phone on the floor but I also go to bed really early like I'm like an early to bed person I'll be like half eight like and then sit and read for like 90 minutes that's my like dream 90 yeah oh my god this is a great routine I don't know I mean is it I just I mean I get a lot of pleasure from it so it's not it's I think it's like when those not assholes I don't mean in a bad way but people who like running marathons I'm always like could never but I think they just like running right and I think I like reading I don't know yeah yeah I think that it's working for you you seem like very alert and articulate at this hour well I'm also a morning person I don't know I'm not sure if the reading does that but I don't know what about you though oh that's i need more structure in that in that area like i was you know in in when i'm not at home i like my structure goes out the window and then i kind of feel destabilized and like yeah and that's when when you're doing the when like well this is a great this is i wouldn't even consider this press this is such a great kind of um just conversation but like you need that i don't know it's so kind of like you're bouncing around going somewhere different places and like kind of like repeating yourself so much and kind of getting sick of the sound of your own voice and like same questions same answers yeah yeah which is what's nice about this you get to kind of like reframe the story and you know this is about remarkably bright creatures but it's also about books and so then you get to kind of like shift your seat in the room a little bit look at it from a different perspective but I do find that like I feel really stupid doing these things because I end up answering the same thing multiple times And only I only have so many ways of saying the same thing.

23:21And then I get to the bottom of my answer and I'm left like with just the facing my own limitations and my own intelligence. And I basically every day doing something like that, end up like looking at it. And then every once in a while, like this is a great way to kind of like pry into, especially when you have an experience like movies, making movies, like you do it for three months or however long it is or 20 days or if it's an indie. Um, and then you leave it, um, for months, if not a year, year and a half, this was, you know, over a year ago for me now. Um, and, and kind of like looking back and being like, what did stick with me?

24:05You know, even, even that just thinking about, um, you know, there's a right and wrong way to do things like what stuck with me, what stuck with me from working with Sally what stuck with me from doing a book adaptation that's different you know every I've done that I've done that now three times and I think yeah Salem's Law um uh lessons in chemistry I love lessons and yeah I love that one too and there's something interesting about that challenge yeah it's a lot of pressure especially with a book like lessons in chemistry that people love yes yeah people really love and I and I and I I kind of like I felt that I remember feeling that with Into the Wild I read that that was one of my favorite books um and it really shaped me yeah um and I read it probably 10 times and and then the movie came out and I was like had all these I was ready to just hate it and I loved it oh that's good I loved it and that became one of my new favorite movies and i thought that that sean penn did such a good job adapting that because it was like you know you know there's so much within that that's so playful um and so much about capturing i think a book is the spirit totally and like acknowledging what people loved about it but then also being like i think the only thing that i can really my only compass is what i loved about it so like with remarkably bright like i i for a while was like okay trying to like read up on everyone's like favorite things and all the kind of like conversations around cameron what makes him lovable what makes people not what they felt like unfulfilled by or whatever and i was like i can't answer all these questions can't i just have to try and answer the questions that i have about cameron and i think that's i like that i like when an adaptation like takes a swing yeah and it's like the director's point of view on that book especially because i mean i grew up reading a lot of like british classics like the austens and the brontes and stuff and i love it when they take a swing and just like go no i'm gonna do something different yeah what's one of your like favorite books that has been adapted where you were like yeah there's a a early Jane Eyre like a BBC or an ITV like British TV adaptation that had um oh god I can't remember her name Ruth Wilson in it that was I liked that I thought that was fun yeah I like when they with the Austin I mean I love the um Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice have you seen that one yes do you like it so much it's so good right it's kind of like fun and I I don't know.

26:52I remember when that came out, there was like outrage about parts of it. But I don't know. I thought it was. I don't. Yeah, I liked that one. I miss Keira Knightley. Right. She should be doing five movies a year. I would love to. But although maybe she's just happy. Yeah, she's probably like. She's just being selective and doing what she wants to do. And good on her. Yeah, onwards. But no, I think that Pride and Prejudice one's fun. But I'm trying to think. There must be a weirder one I can think of. But my mind's going blank. Yeah, it'll come. All right. Well, why don't we talk about the Annie Prue book next?

27:20Yes. that's kind of similar yes absolutely uh tell me what you love about these short stories i like her the permission she gave herself to kind of go into this sort of like she flirts with magical realism in this in a way that i love yeah i love that genre i love it in film i love it in books. There's some of that, you know, Shepard does that quite well. And in some of these stories too. But I think, you know, this collection is probably most famous for the Brokeback Mountain short story. But I just remember each one feeling like, yes, this is such a good compilation, and they all are related.

28:13But I felt like, it almost felt like they were written at different times of her life and they feel so very much individual and they stand alone so well. I think that's a hard thing to do. I'm not a writer, but in all the creative writing classes I took in high school and college, I remember feeling like, almost like if it were a record, like my songs were too similar. you know and i think annie has a great kind of a lot her color wheel is is is very broad yeah it's actually amazing how much she does in such a small space as well yes because i mean that one story at 55 miles to the gas pump which is two pages the one where the bodies are in the attic i don't know if you remember i was just like what in like how does she do that like it's so vivid it's so immersive you're like in that world yes right yeah that's right also i think she has one of my favorite titles and one of these i can't remember right now um where's her index here oh people in hell just want to drink of water yeah it's just such a good name yeah the blood bay the bunch grass edge of the world pair of spurs yeah pair of spurs the magical realism in that one some story i think maybe i'd read the half-skinned um steer before but i hadn't i hadn't read broke back mountain in full and some of the others and i found it like hard to lock into at first because the sentences are quite unwieldy yeah do you are you good with that kind of structure or do you tend to lean more like short and crisp and to the point if my brain isn't like kind of like synthesizing well with with how the words are trickling out like i've learned to be a little more forgiving about like yeah leaving that yeah for someone else yeah um but I think like and it depends on like I you know poetry I guess yeah I do tend to lean more um I don't know I think Harry Cruz does it really well which is like a simplicity while also like um having like Like it has space still for these larger esoteric ideas.

30:21And I don't know. I think that the kind of like, I don't like to read something that feels like a puzzle. No. I don't like a poem that feels like you have to figure it out. I completely agree. Yeah. Can't stand it. No. I could never, when I studied English at university and whenever it was any of that kind of like poetry, I was just like, why are they just trying to say it in the most complicated way possible? Yeah. I'm like, fuck off. I don't, yeah, I don't need that. Yeah. but no it does it it makes sense with Annie's writing it's sort of like you're immersed in this world and like once I locked into it I felt like I was like almost gliding along yeah yeah right it took me a minute definitely yeah definitely did you like the Brokeback Mountain story specifically yeah specifically I do like I like how she um works with language like language within this story like what people are saying and how she kind of like her vernacular and um and when she when she decides to kind of like interpret what someone's saying versus say actually write what they're saying yeah I think it's really smart totally there's also like a lot of like placelessness in her book in her stories I thought of people who are like maybe have come from one place and they're now in another place and they still feel tied to that place do you I know you grew up between sort of LA and Montana is that right Do you ever feel that way?

31:41You're sort of like split in two of it all the time, right? Yeah, that's that's the blessing and the curse of being lucky enough to, you know, have multiple homes in your life, you know, in places that you feel like you could call home. and my dad is from upstate New York and so even then I have that you know that tether which is like an anchor and a tether you know yeah I feel like I probably you know very much am composed of of my experiences in both places in all places and also you know my dad following him around as a family we ended up living in in little little periods you know in different places um so we would go and follow him be homeschooled and wow in vancouver calgary or prague um wow did you like that or is it hard at the time maybe not i had a brother and sister who I love so much so in some ways it was like I had the consistency within my family but I did like I think it it like helped kind of curate my appreciation for like the the vast nature of of humankind I think and like not allow like a bubble to kind of form over my head in a lot of ways and kind of like keeping keep sort of like the peripheral macro image in my mind yeah and but yeah it's the same thing you know when i'm when i'm in california i can't wait to get up into montana and although i was just in montana and i was like i could stay there for another two months i was like ready to stick around do you have your own place there or do you stay with family or yeah we've got my whole my my folks have a place yeah that's across the the way from my my aunt and uncle oh that's so lovely so you can go and then just like completely unwind yeah yeah but it is a weird place as i feel that with being like living in a different country now like i refer to both home interchangeably when i'm in the uk i'm like oh i'm going home next week and when i'm here i'm like i'm going home in two weeks it's a weird yes right yeah yeah but i know i'm like i'm here in new york for another week and a half and i'm or so and i'm I'm like, I know I've got so much stuff to do.

34:00I'm so excited about it. And I know I'll probably like go home and be like, damn, I didn't do it. I didn't appreciate, you know, the kind of like, I don't know. There is like there is a very romantic thing about New York that I definitely can get into. Yeah. I didn't mean to like, I do like it. I feel the excitement. I just think that when I go inside a house, like even now I can feel the kinetic energy rolling around us right now, even though you can't hear it. Yeah. I can feel it. Have you ever shot a movie in New York? No, but I've shot in Hoboken. Okay. Yeah. New Jersey. Would you ever want to do like a New York movie kind of moment?

34:41I could get down with doing a play here. Oh, yeah. You know, I've seen, I was here when my dad was doing a couple different plays and, you know, and got homeschooled here. And so I think I spent like six months here and I saw him with his routine and like the community around that is so rich and so exciting. I could get down with that. How old were you when you did the six months in New York? I think I was, however old I was, I think he was doing the goat. I forget how old I was. I wasn't allowed to see it, but I obviously, I think I must have been around 10 or something. Okay. Yeah. Gosh, that's, I can't imagine what that's like, like to be popping up in different cities when you're that age.

35:22but I suppose were you pretty much yeah just like in the suburbs of Birmingham just yeah yeah the same but I don't know I guess we only know what we know right how old were you when you came here 31 okay six years ago yeah how often are you missing Birmingham um I go back like four times a year probably because I'm close to my family I've got sisters with kids that I could love to go and see but I also love leaving as well like it's a weird thing isn't it you sort of I like I find cities quite anonymous in a way that I like and the way I actually find sometimes like complete isolation of open spaces almost a bit oppressive and like the quiet can make me feel anxious.

36:00Yeah. I don't know, but I know that's odd. No, I think that's why New York is filled with so many people. Yeah, exactly. I don't think you're alone in that. We're all seeking to be overwhelmed. Well, maybe we could talk about Motel Chronicles. Yeah. Sam Sheva, which is, I loved reading this. Oh, wow. You're a fast reader. I try. There's no way you read all these. I didn't get through all of these. I mean, this is like three novels. I know. Yeah. Yeah. But I did read all of these. Yeah. Yeah. That's really impressive. I listen as well. I do listen. Okay. Yeah. I listen to a lot of this. Yeah. Sally and I discussed this and we both believe that it counts.

36:36It definitely counts. Tell me what you love about this book. You know, it's not, it's in some ways a little inside baseball. um i think that uh as an actor like him and his experience kind of being this this kind of um i don't know what you call it you um i'm thinking of a word that is i don't think kosher to say anymore but he um he is like a oh gosh um he he's like uh he's a traveler yeah um in a way that i really relate to you know this kind of like going from hotel to hotel or motel to motel and like having you know the these kind of in between sort of uh like um purgatory esk towns be your temporary home and what that feels like um and kind of going from these because he basically essentially these are a lot of you know some of them are not related but some of them are like these these accounts of his experiences you know working on movies and going from movie sets to movie set and kind of putting on the different clothes and kind of losing yourself a little bit in the the swamp of of identity and um and i just think that in some ways he captures the the the loneliness of that really well and in some ways he can kind of like romanticize it in a way that i feel like helped me make it feel like okay well this is an old trade and i'm not you know this is not like a unique experience and maybe maybe there is something like kind of noble about about this kind of like rootless existence in some ways also was inspiring to be like well you can tell that these are stories some of the some of the stories are like bred of from his experience there and and there they don't feel like like you can tell that I don't think he probably wrote these thinking I'm gonna put these all in a book and call it the motel chronicles no definitely not no i think i mean he gives such like dignity to the things he sees yeah i think like you know i loved that one page where i think he gets back from a bar or something and he runs into the woman who's been acting as the stand-in for the like lead actress and she's like sad and drunk because the movie's leaving town and she's going back to being yeah right oh gosh it's so i don't know it's really moving yeah he kind of like really captured the kind of the traveling circus yes element yeah the film business really well yeah i forgot about that part that's such a good piece it was so good and i loved the um the like sort of poem or if that's the right word for it about la where i think it's on page 63 i wrote it down because i was i just thought it was he sort of captures this what feels like the sort of vacuousness of like hollywood i think which probably feels most vacuous when you come back from being on a set around like yeah right normal yeah it's interesting you know like this reminds me of this feeling of like um this is maybe he was maybe in a little bit of a pessimistic moment in this part which i can i can relate to at times um the loneliness is covered with grins um yeah and the loneliness is smothered in a circle of quote friends yeah he that was that's bleak um i I think like I think what I relate to there is like you definitely feel like you know when you go and shoot these things it is this it's like you create this little small village and you you make you know these incredible it's all that very intense yeah and your experience every day you know such an isolated experience that only you guys share yeah it's intimate it's intimate and And you all kind of leave your lives behind.

40:52And you're trying to kind of keep your lives back home afloat and your friendships and whatnot. And then you go home and everyone has kind of been experiencing their lives. They've not just been on pause, you know. And you're trying to catch up. And then you feel a little lonely because you've missed so much. And then you try and go back and connect with your friends who are just on the shoot and connect with them and feel that camaraderie again. but they're all off in their own hometowns busy doing their you know revitalizing of their lives and and the kind of um continual um like tilling of the land does never stay settled for for too long um and I think yeah that that I I connect to that he must have been in in a rut in that in that beat yeah definitely um I know that your father worked with well he would start in some of his plays right i know that he or is there in a movie together as well yeah what did they do together right angel oh my gosh that's right yes and he's done yeah he did buried child and yeah with kathy bates and i'm sure he did a bunch more definitely when he was younger yeah totally i think it was like earlier did you ever meet sam shepherd at all or no i didn't would you have liked to or is it the kind of thing where you would have found it like don't meet your icons kind of vibe I would have loved to.

42:21Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I mean, my old agent Hildy Gottlieb represented him and heard a lot of great stories about him through her. And I think, you know, well, it depends as certain like I met, you know, meeting Jeff Bridges was a huge like he was an icon and is an icon and a huge hero for me. And I think, you know, he was so generous with his, like, friendship and time and wisdom to me. And really was like a very, he exceeded all my expectations. But I think even if he was, you know, a bitter curmudgeon or something, I would have been like, well, you earned it, Jeff. Yeah, literally, truly.

43:06I don't think you can really take away from all that I've learned from reading or from watching Sam Shepard. But I would have loved to have met him. And yeah, obviously a huge fan of his. Are you much of a like, I mean, I feel like these are like scraps of journals almost, like all of these different entries. Are you a journaler at all? I am not maybe in the most, no, I would love to be kind of a rigorous journaler. I'm not I feel I can do like kind of the brain drain like the untethered not necessarily like me centered yeah journaling which is maybe not as cathartic but I don't know I always feel like a self-conscious writing about myself I'm like maybe gosh who was I just talking to about this who said that they burn their journals oh really yeah oh darn it somebody recently was saying that they burn they write they write their they they oh god it'll come to me and then i can credit them for this brilliant tool but they write oh okay it was a friend of a friend who they they they write their journals and then and and then they hide them away lock and key and then once the book is filled they burn it and that's like something that they know that'll that that they will do and they might you know have a separate journal for things if they want to have their own motel chronicles or something i like that i like that too i think that i want to adapt that because it feels like a pretty easy way to get rid of all of that kind of voice in your head like is this you know am i going to be reading this when i'm you know in my deathbed is my kids going to be reading this or yeah i never want to read pages that i've journaled i'm like yeah it's like out and gone never want to think about it again yeah yeah right i know i mean i feel like this book as well and kind of the annie stories they have like quite interesting portrayals are like the challenges of masculinity in a way and the sort of like different pressures and liberties and like and I guess the the different ways that it arrives depending on what culture you're living in do you ever feel that now in like your work and in your life like the pressures around like how we think about masculinity today hmm big question I know that's a great question I guess you know I was a social work major um and this came up a lot in conversations because i was the only male in my class oh wow interesting which says something alone yeah you know that social work which is such a the the act of like this endless kind of this endless act of giving and um and um this kind of like yes totally like not not asking for anything back kind of uh profession and and I did find that there were times where I was you know where it was like my none of my classmates or teachers were ever expecting me to be the voice of all the men in the world but I there were times where I was like having to kind of try and speak to that but I you know I don't I don't think too much well obviously I do I do a lot of projects that are that are like you know i i think that the most interesting projects are the ones um from voices that are less heard or less you know stages that are let there are not as acquired by those voices as as often and so i think i have done a lot of roles that by that nature are you know unfortunately for our narrative for some reason in the zeitgeist like well now we're in a great time where female voices are being heard a lot more and they but there's still a massive massive amount of room to increase that and so like I think I don't know I think that I probably come from a great place of privilege where I you know my I was raised a lot by my sister and and mom you know and so I have a lot of them in me I don't feel like I have to like proclaim my masculinity in a way and maybe that's as a that's a result of me being like lucky enough to not have to or lucky enough to have them to kind of like encourage me to not feel like the need to fill that space with whatever my my my generation might consider masculine I guess I was raised more like in values that are kind of genderless yeah and values of what make a person strong or confident or true to themselves what speaking your mind looks like and what expressing yourself looks like and what not expressing yourself looks like yeah I guess we should have a schedule another hour to talk about that well Well, your final book has some very interesting ideas about masculinity as well.

48:16The classic Cruise collection. Because, I mean, the story in this car was so crazy. Oh, my God. Yes. Remind me about this. It was the one where the man eats the car. Oh, yeah. Right. I was like, what the fuck? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Well, that reminds me of there's a true story about a guy who ate an entire airplane. What? I've never heard that before. Nut by nut, bolt by bolt. I wonder if he was inspired by that at all. I mean, yeah. But I mean, it's crazy. But the memoir at the start as well about his childhood is so beautiful. Yes, that's one of my favorites because I think that he, him as a person is such an interesting guy.

48:55He, you know, grew up in Bacon, Georgia. Yeah. And, you know, his dad died very young. And then his mom married his brother. Yeah. and he didn't know that he was his dad for quite a long time um and yeah he had these two very traumatic experiences where he had gosh what was it some sort of like rigor mortis or something his legs were he um polio was it yeah yes yeah and then the vat of something where his skin came off yes he fell into a vat of boiling water i think that they were roasting a pig or something which I think they did. They dig a hole and they, you know, they build a fire down there and it was a vat of boiling water that he fell into and all except for his head.

49:45Yeah. And so he was bedridden a lot of childhood. And so I think that he, yeah, he definitely, yeah. I think that, you know, car story, a lot of his themes are definitely considered kind of more musculature and muscular and, and like definitely like he touches on, you know, you know Feasts of Snakes is a great novel of his that he does this really well and and also oh gosh what was the one about the bodybuilder body it's just called body yeah I think that he subverts it really well where he's also in very intrigued by the alien and the outcast exactly yeah the I think uncanny yeah yeah yeah and I think like he has a beautiful celebration of that like the the person who's maybe considered the the freak or whatever it is um um he has like a great humanization of that and um intrigue in that kind of like the the cobwebs of of society yeah when i was reading up on him a lot of the stuff i read said that his essay about fatherhood was really good so i read that last night it's quite short but the um i thought it was so it's so beautiful because it starts with the scene of his son dying from in a pool and like his first son and i it was just like and then it ends in the most beautiful way where he's it's basically he talks about his son that survived they're like on some kind of hiking trip together and his son's like i'm dropping out of college and he like worked at a college as like an english professor so he was really distressed by that and his son was like i want to be a musician and he's like how many people do you think leave college to be musicians and he's like probably as many who wanted to be writers and his dad is like touche good luck kind of vibe I thought it was so it was so loving because it was so sort of like it was like account it was that like ping pong of a good relationship with a parent where like they can say something to you and you can hear it and you can hit it back and like I know it was really beautiful yeah oh my gosh oh you're making me want to read it again yeah it is it's a good one I thought it was going to be like a more tortured relationship of him as a father and he talks about being a flawed father but I thought it was just like such a beautiful way of like wrapping it up yeah my my friend Kyle who I was telling you about who um I worked at Diamond Books with he he was in the grade below me and um and then when I was going to college he was like I don't want to stay at high school another year and so he got his GED and applied to the same college that I was going to and then we both went together and he was taking a creative writing class and he reached out to harry cruz oh wow and was like and was like i want to interview you and he he i think responded in like maybe 10 words or something and it was like if you if like not i don't something like you know I don't usually do that but here's my address or something like that and hung up and then that was all that he could got from him and he tried calling him back and he didn't hear back and then my friend Kyle was like I'm gonna just buy a ticket and go out there to Georgia and he did and he knocked on his door and he spent like I think like four days with him oh my gosh and he He was bedridden at the time and had a nurse living with him.

53:15But my friend wrote such incredible short essays about that time with him, and I always wanted him to put it out there. And it's horrible to even bring it up right now because I don't have them, and I don't even have excerpts to read from. But they were so incredible in the stories that he got from him and how he still like, you know, remained so true to, you know, the voice that you kind of grow to love in his books. And he is kind of like one of the characters in his books. Oh, wow. That is amazing. That's like my dream. I mean, to go and like spend that time with a writer you love, I can't even imagine.

53:54Yeah, I think he opened the door and he was like, oh, fuck. You really did it, huh? You got the ticket. Okay, come on in, kid. Is there a living writer you try and do that to? whoa good question oh my god hmm i don't know what my answer to that is it's a hard one it feels too big it's big yeah who i don't know i'm thinking it's too big but yeah it maybe like a lady smith i guess like yeah or like margaret atwood i don't know what if you could have the most reliable wi-fi at the same price for five years that's the xfinity five-year price guarantee no annual contracts no hidden fees and our best equipment included plus get online in minutes with same day wi-fi just five years of fiber powered wi-fi that boosts speeds to the devices that need them most lock in your price and unlock the possibilities xfinity imagine that select plans only restrictions apply powered by fiber connected to the premises by coaxial cable actual speeds vary yeah yeah that's interesting but i think it's also that thing of like with writers they're often like who they are on the page and off the page are so different that you sort of like maybe when i don't know if it's always helpful is dennis johnson still alive i i don't know yeah that'd be a good one good one yeah yeah one of the things that um in his memoir that harry cruz says is that he thinks everything that's been most significant in his life had all happened by the age he was six years old so i thought is that true for you do you think no no neither no but i do know there's some total truth to that you know you hear that basically like our kind of like psychological makeup that we're sitting here with right now was pretty much all shaped between like one and five yeah i like to tell that to my parents all the time when i'm dragging them yeah it's such a terrifying fact right i know it's like we're such delicate echo sketches that could be shaken up at any point in there yeah those those first years are really but then it's like okay so then after the five years what is nothing really matters exactly i don't i don't think i agree with it completely but i think like it's more that like the your gut reaction to most things is probably set by the age of six so if you don't make the effort to intervene your like instincts sometimes you you probably are a bit set on a course by then but you can i mean that's what therapy is right to sort of redirect yes when helpful you're a therapy person i am i am i haven't been in therapy recently and i definitely should be um i should go you know always we always should be right um i think that i shot something and then i couldn't and i couldn't keep up with it and then i didn't go back but it's a practice it's a habit it's exactly it's a muscle um and yeah i think that i can definitely get into a thing of like feeling like if i don't have anything to talk about them there's nothing to talk about which is exactly the wrong yeah but it is hard though when you go in the light don't have much to say this week yeah but that's when you get into the weird no i know that's so true that's so true but that's the kind of stuff i like to keep buried yeah we don't want to get it out yeah i do it with i have a great therapist that i got because we don't really have it in the uk in the same way so i only really got into it when i moved to america it's what do you mean in that in the same way it's just not normal it's not just common no were like repressed as a nationality and culturally it's not like it's very expensive it's not something you can get affordably and culturally people just don't do it in the same way like insurance doesn't cover it really yeah so it's not something that's done very much i think it's happening more now because i think just like people being aware of like american culture and therapy being so important here people are doing it more but um yeah it's definitely not as common they're kind of like yeah we have pubs for yeah literally my therapist all the time will just be like so you grew up how i'm like i know just can't i can't go into it it's fine it worked it's fine but anyway well this was so fun thank you so much thank you so much listen you've given me such a good reason to dive back into these i like i you i was asked for my favorites and i was like these were my in my mind the ones that i was like wow i could live in any of these yeah and now i'm like it's time for me to revisit them that's the beauty of having kind of a a little bit of a brittle memory is like you get to experience things you get to experience it again yeah and like have that first feeling all over again yeah well thank you so much i love thank you that was amazing appreciate it great