"RE-RELEASE: Don Cheadle"

26:06And that's a very specific kind of jazz. Yeah. Right? I'm more like, I'm open to it if there's a melody that I can hum back, like a song. Right. I'm not open to the jazz that's just people just playing. Sort of fusion-y, improvised fusion. Yeah, because I can't latch on to anything. You can't whack off to anything? What? What did he say? I love it all because if you're really, you know, if you're... Jazz, you can whack to. Sorry. Jazz. No, latch on to. Grab your thing and have some fun. Yeah. JB, you heard it too, right? I think I might have. So, Don, so you're learning the saxophone at an early age.

26:49That gets you into music. That's eventually you find an appreciation for Miles Davis. And then that project comes about. Was that a documentary that you produced? No, no. No, no. A movie. A film. And you played him? Yes? Yes. We're not good journalists. Brilliantly. And I remember you telling me when I ran into you, you were working on that. You were so great. Some nominations or even some wins for that, I believe. Well, that was the Grammy that we got for the soundtrack, which is really cool. That one we put together with Rob Glassberg. He and I put that together. So that was really cool. But yeah, I think it's a big category.

27:26Talk about jokes on shows. We had one on Black Monday where I'm talking to, thank you very much. I'm talking to Regina Dawn, her name, the character's Dawn about it. And she goes, yeah, I can never get into jazz. It just always sounds like a bunch of instruments thrown down a flight of stairs. yeah um now um in my in my my incredible research uh did you really work on the fresh prince funny enough i did i was on one of the first episodes of fresh prince and i have a funny pilot firing story too um about a pilot that didn't go so i i did the i think it was the second or third episode of the fresh prince where will was still super green he's like mouthing everyone's words you know along with his so he'd say his line and he's staring at you and you say your line yeah he's mouthing it that's such a thing we've all we've all worked with people who do that with it's such an actor thing right yeah yeah you're like yeah mouthing my dialogue to me as i'm saying yeah so he was so studious you know he knew everybody's lines and then he would like mouth everybody's lines but so we did that one and by the third or fourth show the the creators Susan and Andy Borowitz, who were the head writers on the show, they said, we want to do a show around you.

28:46Uh-oh. Not necessarily based on the character that you're playing on this, but we just want to do a show around you. And I was like, okay, that's cool. So they wrote this show. How old were you? When I did Fresh Prince? Yeah, early 20s? Is that really germane to the story? I think it is. When you get offered your own show, it's like, what? I was six, okay? I was fucking six. No, he's just jealous. He's just jealous because he's like, when are you getting offers for your own show? And he's like, I worked my whole life. Michael Landon did create a show for me. Sorry, JB. I know that. Michael Landon.

29:21So third day, they come down. They're like, we want to do the show. I said, okay, great. So they wrote this pilot. We shot the pilot. It's called In the House. I wrote the theme song to the thing. Wow, cool. It's just everything was great. Heavy saxophone. It had super, super heavy saxophone. It was on the schedule. And I, you know, I'm pretty like, I don't believe it until I see it. And I just kind of wasn't believing that it was real. And also it just was a huge thing. It was the biggest thing that had happened in my career at that point. I was like, I don't, something's telling me this isn't real.

29:56But it was on the schedule. It was going. So like the day before I got this faithful call, I gave my brother my car. I was like, hey, it's on. Take the car. I'm about to have this huge windfall. Yeah. I'm ready. And the next day I got a call and they said it's off the schedule. How old I was was Brandon Tartikoff was still running NBC at that time. Okay. We're late 80s. I don't know if people are listening to me. No. Yeah. But when he stepped down and Warren Littlefield came in, he killed all the shows that were under Brandon. And that was one of the casuals. You know, Sean, you told me a story, and correct me if I'm wrong, about where you shot the pilot because they had mignonette sauce instead of cocktail sauce for your oysters.

30:39Is that true? And you guys were about to leave Van Nuys and you were so mad. Because you're like, I hate mignonette sauce. I like cocktail sauce. And you shot the pilot and left him on the show. But I spared the co-pilot. As a lesson. So he could live to tell the story to other pilots to get the sauces right. Now, all right. So now, Don, could you imagine if that show had taken off, became a big success, you would have been a big sitcom star. I wonder where your career would have gone. I was thinking the same thing. But like, even, so going back before that, was there another significant fork in the road either where you grew up, like a fateful move to a certain city or what your parents were doing or saying or sibling, where you could have easily seen, oh, if I'd just simply gone right instead of left, I would be a veterinarian today or I would be an architect today.

31:35Or was there a fork that would clearly? That's such a good question. Thank you. I mean, you know, it's crazy that my fallback was music. Like if this acting thing doesn't work out, I'll be a jazz musician. That'll get me there. It's like, so, I mean, that's where I was trending. That's what I wanted to do. And quite honestly, there's still no greater pleasure that I have, you know, in any sort of performance capacity than being with musicians and creating music. Really? That's to me the highest. I love that. It really is. I think because of, as you were talking about, improvisation, that you're creating things spontaneously.

32:15I don't know what it's doing biochemically to you, but I'm sure if you have electrodes on and, you know, they were testing you, you're getting dopamine hits that are just through the roof because it's just so alive. Yeah. And it necessitates this connection with these fellow, pardon the term, artists that you're kind of communicating without speaking and there's a handoff and a yes and thing. You get that also in acting. Yeah, you do. And there's also that thing you do when you perform live, when you also get that feedback from an audience, when you're on stage and you get that thing and it starts to inform you a little bit.

32:51they become part of your creative process because you get juice from that i think yeah yeah absolutely you do and and it transcends language and it transcends you know the english spanish we can all speak this language and yeah yeah there's a there's a big unifying thing that it does that's just like beyond i had the same thing don you know i was i always had music to fall back on should the you know the acting thing and i still have the music to fall back on if the acting thing doesn't work out. But I always thought my fallback was going to be, oh, I'll just be a pop star. Well, you can sit your ass off.

33:27So you had a shot. Let's play it. Can we just play it? Can we just play a little bit of it right now? We do this every once in a while, Don. Sean? Let me know. Bennett's going to find it for us. He's going to play before Don leaves. Bennett or Rob are going to play it. Drop that needle, Bennett. Hey, Don, do you have a place where you go, like Woody Allen famously took his clarinet out once a week or whatever, and that's not a euphemism. Oh, nice. It's not a euphemism. Right in there, Will. You're the best. You're my new favorite guy on the podcast. Thank you. Do you have a place where you go whip out your sax and go play it?

34:03Fucking hang on, man. I just said Will got that one. You don't have to jump on Dr. Will's thing. I'm trying to piggyback on that. Hey, you hear what I did? Jump on Dr. Will's thing? This is some tripping-out fight. Your turn, Sean. Get in there. Ooh, that was a good one, too. I'll take it all. But, like, do you have... I'll take it all. There it is. Do you have a band that you play with or a jazz club that you go to every once in a while? No, and I've been, like, bouncing around on dip. So I played the sax, and then I didn't do that. You know, when I went to Cal Arts, it was kind of like a conservatory, the amount of time that you had to spend on all that.

34:39There was no time, really, to do anything but theater and voice and movement and dance and all that stuff. So I just kind of dropped it. And then I was in New York doing a play and I walked by a pawn shop and I saw this beautiful tenor sax. And I was like, I'm going to pick it back up again. I'm going to see if I have any facility because, you know, you lose your embouchure. You lose that musculature to be able to play it. It's hard to get it back. So I started playing it again. It sounded terrible. I was like, no, just hang out. Just like stay with it. So I started doing that. And then I took a gig, actually, the Rat Pack movie and playing Sammy Davis Jr., who played drums and played trumpet and, you know, gun twirled and could play piano.

35:28And so I kind of went back to school again, having, you know, having lessons from all of these teachers to learn how to do all these different things. and that's when I started trying to pick up the trumpet, which became something that I didn't know I was going to need later when I did the Miles Davis thing. So I've been playing bass more than anything lately and piano more than anything lately. That's great. I haven't gone back to the sax. I did bring, I bought a really beautiful brand new sax and let this dude play and he just recorded an album with it and it's like, so it's always in the periphery somewhere, but I haven't, you know, I think the most amazing experience I had in musical experience in the last couple of years was Rob Glasper was at his, he was recording something.

36:13He said, hey, come by, come listen. And I said, yeah, keep a track open because I'm going to bring the bass and I'm just going to like, you know, kill you guys with some shit. So just keep the track open. I was completely joking. And so I came over and I listened to him for a while and he goes, OK, here, here's the bass. Let's go. I said, no, no, no. I was joking. I don't want to play. It's like, oh, no, you're going to play. And it became sort of like, you know, trial by fire. And I don't play like that. But when you play with great musicians, you know that they lift you up. Yeah. It's just like acting.

36:45I wish I could find that. Yeah. People who lift me up. It's fucking unbelievable. I'm just dragging these two. Don, you seem to be like so great at surrounding your life with the things that mean, you know, I have great value to music, acting, family. You always seem to be in a great mood too. Golf. Golf, yeah. How do you do that? How do you, for people who don't know how to do that, where they're like, I'm in this rut. To us, we've all found the thing that we love to do or things we love to do. How did you learn how to gravitate towards the good versus the bad? You know, the things that are good for you, the things that fill your soul.

37:27This is a question. This is a question. This is an interviewer, Will. This is somebody who knows how to shape a question, okay? Sorry. Go ahead, Don. I love the commentary. I'm just here for the potshots from the sideline, man. You know that. Will's killing, and you're killing the potshots from the sideline, by the way. I appreciate it, man. Don't encourage him. I honestly have to attribute a lot of it to my upbringing. I was very fortunate to have, and people get to it however they get to it. You know, I was very fortunate to have really solid parents, you know, really sort of, you know, corny, traditional picket fence, three, you know, the 3.5 kids and a dog and the whole thing.

38:10I really was able to grow up like that with parents that never dissuaded me from going after what I wanted to go after. That's great. I think it was, you know, really fortunate that my mom was sort of a frustrated, you know, performer, a frustrated singer. So when I wanted to be an actor, she was like, yes. yeah so after that that's you have an older do you have an older sibling that knocked the crap out of you when you got too too too big yeah well she's a she's a girl so i like took advantage of the different muscles you know i had i was stronger than her uh and then we moved into weapons and that's when i was like oh then she's leveled the playing field so we got to chill out and that's when we stopped fighting um but uh just really close-knit family and it's something i think i just wanted to replicate in my life and i'm really lucky that you know i have friends from when i was in elementary school still and oh that's from college that's great the people that i'm close to are still are still in my life and i think we all know people who have gotten to a certain place and have looked around and they don't know anybody that's no one that around them has been around them for five years and you go right that person's probably going to have some problems so yeah you I need people who will laugh at you and say, you're not important.

39:19Chill out. I don't keep those people around because, because people can't breathe the air up here the way I can. Yeah. You're one of the, you're one of those people we were talking about, Will. The air is so thin up here. It's so, it's so rarefied that I can bear. I'm, I'm handing out masks to these two because I'm like, guys, we're going on a ride. We're going somewhere. We're going down or we're going down. No, it's so important. I love that. It is, it is a measure of somebody, by the way, how many old friends they have from back in the day. And I think I'm with you on that. I think it's really great.

39:51I've got a lot of my old buddies too. Now, Don, I got a question here. You've been a part of so many incredible projects. I want to know if any of them felt or smelt like turds right in the middle of it, and you were shocked at the end of it that it turned out so well. Projects like Crash, Oceans 11, 12, or 13, Traffic, Out of Sight, Boogie Nights. I mean, yeah, any of the Marvel stuff. Did any of them just like go, oh, Jesus, what did I do here? I think I've had the opposite where I'm like, this thing's going to crush. And then it comes out and I'm like, ooh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not so much.

40:37Not so much, right. I mean, we don't know, right? You just go in with, you know, your best, you know, you've made the best decision you could and you go in and throw everything into it. And then sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. But I've never, you know, I've always had, I've always believed that the thing I've said yes to has value and it's going to be good and the experiences. And then it turns into being what it's going to be. I've been really fortunate to have really, really great experiences. I've had very few experiences where it's a toxic set and people are horrible. You know, I've just been very, very, I've been, the things I've gravitated toward have gotten made and I've just been very, very fortunate.

41:19I've had a very blessed career. You've clearly got a nice connection going with Steven Soderbergh, yeah? Yeah. I heard the set of Chernobyl was toxic. Nice, Will. Hey. That's a great show. But you and Soderbergh have a great rhythm going, yeah? You see working with him again in the future? Probably, yes. Of course, right? Yeah. I mean, we have stuff. We're trying to develop things as we speak. There's a couple things. I love Out of Sight is such a great fucking movie, man. Isn't it good? So underrated and overlooked. It's such a good movie. Yeah. God damn it. Despite Clooney's looks, it's so good.

41:58No, I know. It's tough to get around. But Soderbergh's such a beast. What a good guy, too. But, I mean, like, writing and directing. and camera operating and editing. And I just, I would imagine that's got to be an easy voice to follow considering he's kind of... Are you trying to dovetail into you? No, no, no, no. That's what I'd like to do. But can I take a minute to honestly actually... Here you go. Oh, yeah, there we go. Spike it, spike it. He served it up. You might as well spike it. Guys, take a second. I do want to spike it. I'm a big Jason Bateman fan. I'm just going to say I'm a big Jason Bateman fan I love everything that I'm seeing you do.

42:37And I saw you in a roundtable talking about understanding as an actor what you were going to be doing as an editor and knowing when you get into the editing room what you're going to be able to use and not use and how you kind of craft your performance based on that. And I was like, that's so fucking smart and such a cheat. It's really fun because he lives his personal life like an editor too. so he's always thinking about the results. So he's going to cut you off. Fuck off, man. Trimming you. Well, now, Will, what Don's doing here is he's dovetailing into his accomplishments as a director as well.

43:13That he has... I wanted to get into it. Yeah, he has gone ahead and he's taken all the incredible set experience he's had and lent that to the directing experience, right? And it made everybody's life a lot easier, I would imagine. He'll never do it again? Do you... Come on. He'll never do it again. Why not? Bullshit. You must love it. I don't anticipate ever doing it again. What? Come on. You've done it a handful of times at least. That was enough. Really? Why? Why? Is it the workload or the pressure or the time commitment or what? It's the pressure. Honestly, it's the pressure. I think, you know, my agent one time said, you know, good actors are just like can be and sometimes need to just be hard sons of bitches.

43:56They just have to be able to, Not necessarily in how they deal with people, but you have to have the ability to have stuff kind of roll off and be thick skinned and not have it be, you know, penetrate and keep moving. And I think I have more, I'm more like sort of bandied about by the things that happen and the things I wasn't able to get. And I just, and it's something that I've learned about myself going through that experience. So I'm like, oh, I'm a lot more porous in that regard than I thought I was. Yeah, as an actor, you can ignore a lot of drama or problems or complications with the production, and you just kind of sit in your trailer, and then someone else will figure it out.

44:37As a director, you can't hide from anything. None of it. Yeah. We'll be right back. And back to the show. John, you bring up a really good point, though. It is true, you know, actors, as we know, historically, you take a lot of heat, and people go like, oh, fucking actors, or you hear people write like, Even people you grew up with, like, what's your life like now you're an actor? You see that people have this sort of thing. And I always say, and they're like, oh, yeah, but you're just an actor. And I'm thinking like, yeah, I am friends with, I am an actor. I'm friends with tons of actors. They're some of the most creative, amazing people.

45:11And on top of that, to what you were saying, they're also, it is a tough road, as you know, from when you're younger to start to do the things that you want to do. And you have to, you do put up with a ton of disappointment. You get kicked in the nards on a daily basis. You know, my own experience, I lived in New York for 10 years and was trying to get fucking work and just got kicked in the nards. And then as I'd go down to wincing in pain from getting kicked in the nuts, I'd get kicked in the face. You know, like Jason, like you saying, like, the show's, here's the benefit. You're fired. And then the next day, the show's fucking gone.

45:45And you're like, fuck, I didn't need those two kicks. Yeah, yeah, right. And by the way, and it's not once a year. it's like two, three times a week, four years. And that's if things are going well for you because those two or three rejections each week mean you got two or three auditions that week, which is really good. And I'm not saying to feel sorry for it, but it is, right, Donna? It's a tough, you do have to have a little bit of, you know, you show your mettle a little bit. Well, for me, I really could, I sound like an idiot, Aaron, you know, complaining about anything about my acting career because again, I was super, super fortunate.

46:22I've never done anything but this to support myself. I got my first job when I was still in college. In my junior, I got a gig. Oh, I did get fired from a job. That was actually the first job. I got an AT &T commercial where a kid was supposed to be on the phone and sort of trying to dodge the questions that his mom was asking because he was not doing so well. She goes, how are your grades? And he's like, my grades? I can't hear you. This connection is bad. She's like, no, I can hear you great. And it was AT &T. You know, you can't fake the funk. You know, one of those things. So I was running on my, I was going out of the door to do this audition and the phone rang in the hallway.

47:04And I just kind of knew it was for me. And I picked it up. It was my agent. She goes, Don, bad news. They're not going to use you in the spot. I was like, what? Why? She goes, they don't want to portray a black kid as failing out of college. I was like, so they're going to give a white kid my job? Wow, yeah, the irony of that. Yeah, that is crazy. That's what's going to happen. So I actually did get fired from a job I got. That was the first one. But yeah, but for me, the acting thing has been, I've been, like I said, I've been very blessed, very fortunate. But the directing part of it, yeah, it's really just, it's been these particular experiences I've had.

47:48Not when I've directed my show. That's a little bit more of a comfort zone, a little bit more support I've had, and a little bit more resources and people to rely on. But, you know, I made, we made Miles Ahead for$8.5 million in a town that had, you know, only done one other movie before that where we would show up. and there was like no redundancy in the departments. You know, we'd have two cameras and only one cameraman. I'd be like, where's Phil? It's like, oh, he took a commercial in Dayton, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Coming in one day and I was like, where's the, we had her in the scene.

48:21She's like, yeah, she didn't want to come today. I'm like, but she's in the scene. They're like, yeah, she doesn't want to come. So I'm like, put this woman in the dress, turn her back to the camera. Like every day it was something like that. Always solving problems. But the problems that didn't make sense, It's like the fire alarm going off and then the fire, then the actual fireman coming and coming in while we're shooting the scene. And so, okay, I guess we'll shoot this MOS and just mime all these things. We'll do it in post. I get, you know, just every day it was something like that. My wife came out to see me and she said, you can't do this anymore.

48:53You know, I lost weight. It was just bad. So I have a lot of scar tissue. So maybe if I get, you know, some sort of procedure where I can scrape that off, I'll try it again. For the emotional scars. I have a question just about your acting style and approach because when I first saw Ocean's Eleven which you were brilliant in I'm not making this up like halfway through the movie because of your accent I was like oh wait is that is that Don Cheadle? like you didn't do anything to your appearance you just changed your kind of way I don't know how to describe it and it's amazing what just an accent can do how did you find the the trust to do that why that character like that and how do you do that like in any uh character your approach it it was written like that and i was going to change it um and my manager at that point said there aren't black british people i was like oh i mean yeah it's like so why don't you just do it as how it's written and i was like yeah oh so it was written I'll try it.

49:58And so while I'm in my trailer with, you know, a vocal coach, a speech coach, going over, like, diphthongs and schwahs and stuff, they're out playing basketball. I'm, like, sitting in my trailer watching them play poker and have fun. And I'm like, you know, no, this works. No, uh, no, ah, no, ah. Sean, stand up real quick. Sean's wearing a diphthong. Stand up real quick. Oh, that's nice. That's a nice diphthong. but i was famously murdered you know people hate people are split right in the middle on that the people that hate that hate it when i was in london i almost had to get security because people wanted to kill me your accent and how bad they thought that actually oh the accent and why they hated it and me people literally drove they would see me and come across four lanes of traffic to pull up next to me to scream at me about how bad the accent was.

50:54I was like, you guys are pretty serious about this. Oh my God, I totally bought it. I totally bought it. Is it safe to say you'll never do another British accent again? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, doing an accent, that would be very, very tough for me because you're acting twice, right? You got to do performance and you got to do the accent. And some somehow just fit. Would you make them pay twice, Jay? I know Jay very well. Would you make them pay twice? I would like to. I would like to. Are we going to say, Don? No, I'm just going to say, and some of them, you know, fit better than others that I've attempted to take on, you know.

51:26But they're all, like you said, it's all tricky. Like you're kind of acting through a mask and you're trying to make that mask be as real and as facile as you can. It's tricky. Right, right, right. Now, all of these incredibly high-profile films, which one do you think gave you the most useful bounce? Was it Devil in the Blue Dress? I would guess Devil in the Blue Dress was probably—I was on picket fences for a couple years before that. Oh, wow. You know, I was 12th on the call sheet, and you guys know what that is. I'm sitting in the trailer all day, and they're like, we're coming to you next.

52:06We're coming to you next. And they're like, oh, no, we're not going to use you today. And you've been in the trailer for 12 hours. So I started writing. That's when I started writing and just as survival. Right. Just to not go crazy. But then along comes this film with Denzel Washington. And it was, did you leave that project with any pearls of wisdom from Mr. Washington? I mean, it was an incredible experience. it was directed by Carl Franklin who uh I did his um AFI thesis project you know his his graduation project so I had known him from before so that was really old home and felt great and Denzel and I from the audition on which is online actually our audition is online oh no way yeah and so is that pilot that I mentioned by the way people find shit and upload everything but um we just had a great time and of course i was just in awe of him and you know worked as hard as i've ever worked on anything to make sure i was in the pocket you know when i was with him i didn't come out i was super methody i was not great character i was mouse all the time you know i just stayed in it and yeah i yeah i had a great experience i loved that movie and i I love that experience.

53:26Would you, if you had, if you had, say you had a scene with a, because, you know, you're Denzel now to a young actor. If you were to do a film with it, what would you say to a young actor today that you wish you'd known back when you were just starting out? You know, anything? Stay out of my fucking light. Right, exactly. Don't you upstage me or shadow me? Don't you dare attempt to overshadow me. But we do have a tendency to overcomplicate things, right? and things get more simplistic as we get older. You know, I wonder, aside from just that generality, is there anything specific? I'm trying to think myself what I would tell somebody, you know?

54:06Probably step away from my BMW. Would that be something you could get your hands off? Which of your BMWs, Mr. Kramer? That's a great, very good. I just think that, you know, like we, I think people underestimate, you know, to what Will was saying earlier is what we really do. I think people think it's super, super easy and then they try it and they're like, oh, you're actually trying to be very naturalistic inside a completely unnatural environment where somebody standing in your eyeline chewing gum and, you know, somebody making noise off. and somebody's walkie-talkies going off and you've got to act like this is the first time you've ever done or said any of these things.

54:53It's so weird. I think that you only do that well if you're really prepared and you've really done your homework and you're not here just because you think it's going to be cool to cut line at a restaurant. It's like, this is really... We're not rocket scientists and we're not jumping out of airplanes or whatever. The hardest shit there is to do or ditch digging, but there is a craft. craft. We can play them. That's what we play the shit out of them. And we learn about them. That's another thing. Good actors are students. So we're always in the lab, right? We're always trying to, if I play a doctor, I'm going to read up on doctors.

55:29I'm going to follow doctors. I'm going to go to hospitals. I'm going to try to sit next to them. If I'm playing a cop, I'm going to do a ride along. I'm going to, so I feel like that part of it often gets overlooked that we're always in school. You know, we're always trying to learn new things. So I think that's a great boon for us as artists, that we're always expanding ourselves. Yeah. Now, Sean doesn't want you to get away without searching your memory for a really tough theater story, like forgetting your lines or trying to give something going wrong. A sandbag fell from above. What? And I landed in the first row in the woman's lap and she said, you think you're drunk?

56:11Wait till O'Toole comes out or something like that. Right, Sean? Is that what you want? Oh, you were at that performance. Of course. You were there. That's exactly right. But I said, wait till my tool comes out. Oh. Yes. Double guns. Double guns. Don Chalant. Don Chalant. Don Chalant strikes again. Is that you, Sean? Oh, this is me singing, yeah. It's horrible. Here we go. As I glide through the back door. It's so bad. Okay.

56:48is that tabla is that some tabla okay that's good it's like Jimmy Somerville from Bronski Beat was put in the back of a van and driven to Beirut and forced to make a fucking Middle Eastern dance record Jimmy Somerville and Beirut that's the name of the album oh Sean yeah did you ever see by the way did you ever see Ricky Gervais' music videos or anything oh yeah those were tough yes yeah Yeah, that's what, that's, I'm similar path. Oh my God. But yeah, do you have any like tragic, horrible theater gone wrong? My tragic, the most tragic thing other than a real injury that I suffered during a play, same play, by the way.

57:28We were doing Cymbeline at the Public that Joanne Akalaitis directed, who, you know, is experimental director from Mabu Mines. If people want to go back and look at all that stuff. She's great. but we had an actor Stefan Schnabel who played the doctor in this play and you know it's kind of a stereotypical Shakespeare fifth act wrap up where one character knows everything that happened in the play like you're his niece and she actually has the potion and this king knew him like they unwrap the whole thing and we're all on stage going Oh, that's how I did that. So he had this last speech that he had to give.

58:15Stefan was, I think, 98 at the time. Uh-oh. Wow. So it comes time for him to wrap this up, and he goes up. Forgets his lines. Yeah, forgets his lines. Goes up, forgets his lines for those who want the theater vernacular. And he starts stammering and making up words and basically just sort of like, you know, standing in place and teetering. And no one, you can't give somebody in Shakespeare, you know, it's not, we're not doing something naturalistic. You can't come up with some, you could try to come up with some iambic pentameter and like slip a line there to help him along the way. but it went on so long that first the audience sort of laughed and then realized oh it's not a bit and stopped laughing and then the other half the audience laughed and then half the audience shushed that part of the audience that laughed yeah and then the actors on stage kind of were starting to laugh you know those two that would start to laugh and everyone's like shut the fuck up and everybody stops laughing and he's still kind of trying to pull it off he doesn't think anyone's noticed trying to pull it off this went on for probably um two minutes you know how long two minutes is yeah oh you guys i mean you guys have died for two minutes for sure collectively on this show oh yeah it feels like a long time yeah it's a long time and finally it's not um joan cusack who was the the lead in it who played symphony just finally just started saying his lines she just couldn't take it anymore yeah and he kind of revved up and got through it and then got off stage and he said, I want to kill myself.

59:55Yeah. I have to quit. I've never wanted to act again. And you're like, you're 98. There's no point. Sorry. Yeah, you're going to be dead soon, I guess, is what Joan said, to try to, like, you know, bolster his ego. Good Lord, yeah. That's the scariest thing. Wow, fuck. It was really sad. Going up in your dialogue like that on stage. It's the scariest thing in the world. Right? There's just nothing. You don't need that crap at 98. There's nowhere to hide. Yeah, there's nowhere to hide. Right. But now, Don, you're like one of the sweetest people ever. What pisses you off? Because I can't, the few times I've met you, even today, you're always just very in the middle, very cool, calm, collected.

1:00:33Gummy. Gummy program. What's that? Gummy. I said I'm on that gummy program. Yeah. Yeah. I bet he's not happy when he blades a bunker shot, right? You hit that ball right in the belly coming out of the sand trap. It's just, you're never happy. That's what pisses you off? Yeah. Immediately. but then I kind of let it go, you know. I think, like, stupidity without any desire to not be stupid pisses me off. I don't mind if you're stupid. People can be stupid. But when they are, like, incurious and don't want to actually look under the stupidity and see where that stupidity is coming from, that kind of pisses me.

1:01:11And, you know, as we can see, it's incredibly dangerous. And, you know, we're in a sweet spot of stupidity right now for a lot of people. Would that extend across all sort of areas, that sort of stupidity, whether it's history or language or just geography, even basic geography of states and cities within the country that we live? Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Like if people didn't know where a city was and where a team was. Yeah, like if they don't know where a city is. It's been explained to them like five times. This feels like a shot. This is definitely, hey, a shot. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think Will's just trying to use it in a...

1:01:45It's very general. I'm just trying to get a general sense of what Don. Yeah, because Sean, remember earlier in the show I had a problem with Kansas City? Well, ignorance isn't stupidity. You know, ignorance is anyone can be ignorant, you know. That's true. Anybody can be ignorant. Thank you, Jason. So Don, honestly, you've been a dream. You're just an, you're such a cool guy. We've never hung out. We threatened once. I was on a, I was, Joey Russo wanted me to get into a football fantasy league. And I said, no. and Joe said, well, just stay in the chat and talk shit even though you don't want to play.

1:02:19And I did for about six months, I think. Really? Yeah, you were in there. You were in there. It was great. I was there with Don and Pratt and Rujo. Yeah, it was fun. It was a lot like this, just like pot shots from the side. It was a lot of pot shots. Oh, there's Will. Well, you know, Will, you and Don should go out and play some golf while I'm on my golf hiatus. And then I'll rejoin you guys in the end of fall. What happened? Why are you on a hiatus? He's in a hiatus because he's working. He shot an even par 70 two weeks ago. But who cares, really? It's not a big deal. But listen, thank you for joining us today, Don.

1:02:58Don, will you make me this pledge when you come back that you and I will play? Can we do that? Can we say that'll happen? 100%. Okay, great. He's the absolute greatest. Sean, do you play? This should be the foursome. I always say I can drive the cart. He loves to drive the cart. it's a date it's so much fun we get him a soda we get him like a float like a root beer float and he drives a car no Donnie next time next time you're a soda sometimes it's early tempo but it's a lot of sugar it's a lot he's very groggy and by the 17th old he's kind of kind of irritable a little a little a little grumpy guys it's good just pick it up we gotta go that's totally me love you Don thank you for saying yes love you pal enjoy the rest of your day down there in Atlanta, and say hi to our friend Mr.

1:03:45Hart, please. I will. Thanks, guys. Great seeing you today. Great to see you, dude. Thank you, Don. Bye, buddy. Yep, yep. I love Don Chalant. It's so good. JB, what a great, what a great, great, great guest. Yeah, yeah. He's the best. I love that dude. Don't your shoulders just drop when you're talking to him? Yes. Yeah, he's cool. Yeah. I mean, he's just such a... I can't even form a word. Mega talent. He falls into that category. Mega talent. And universally loved. And we, yeah, we say this all the time. It seems like the people who work all the time also have wonderful personalities. Yeah, I agree.

1:04:20Well, yeah, because, well, Jamie, you know, you're a director. It's a big part of your career now and your life. And when you're deciding between, you have a lot of options to do stuff with a lot of different people. And part of the calculus, I imagine, is who do I want to spend the next four months with? Yeah, for sure. And it's before I even start to get excited about the idea of them coming on. And that's cast or crew. I'll do Zooms with people that I may not even see on the set. And I just need to know that they're not going to, you know, wreck it with their not being nice people. Important.

1:04:59But he is amazing. And I could have just gone on forever and ever. We didn't get to much of anything, which is what we do on this show. Sorry, listener. You know, we get a lot of complaints about that. I think that some, from some people who say like, oh, you guys didn't, you just, and what they forget is like, we're just so excited to see Don, right? So I got like Don, so we just start talking. Yeah, we're not journalists. We're just three dummies that want to just talk a little bit and can't believe anyone's listening. So if you're like, oh, why didn't you, why didn't you get to what Don's favorite dog type is?

1:05:32We're like, sorry, we were just excited. We just wanted to talk shit with them. You know what I mean? That's on the Smartless Extras. If you want to know his favorite dog type. Or talk about vacation spots. I don't know. Has he ever been to Thailand? Or Mumbai? Mumbai! You glaze right over it, Mumbai!

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