Chris Pine

In short

Podcast Summary: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Episode: Chris Pine

Overview In this episode of "Tetragrammaton," host Rick Rubin engages in a deep conversation with actor Chris Pine. The discussion delves into Pine's multifaceted career, his personal reflections on ambition and success, his experiences in the film industry, and his recent directorial debut with "Poolman."

Key Themes and Discussions

Ambition and Success

Perception of Success:
Pine reflects on the societal pressures of ambition and the expectations set by parents and culture.
He offers a warning titled "Beware Ambition," stressing the importance of self-reflection on the motivations behind one's ambitions.

Personal Growth:
Pine discusses his journey into midlife (turning 44) and the introspection about the sources of his drive.
He emphasizes the necessity of evaluating whether one's ambition serves personal happiness or is merely a societal construct.

Family and Influence

Parental Background:
Pine shares insight into his family's history, including his mother’s acting background and father's transition from medicine to acting.
Both parents' careers influenced his path, highlighting the theme of familial support and expectations in the arts.

Growing Up in LA:
He paints a vivid picture of his childhood in Los Angeles during the '80s and '90s, filled with cultural and artistic influences that shaped his identity.

Sensitivity and Connection

Social Anxiety:
Pine opens up about his struggles with social anxiety, describing how he manages sensitivity to stimuli in his environment.
He expresses the need for grounding and connection in conversations, valuing relational depth over superficial exchanges.

The Creative Process

Directorial Debut - "Poolman":
Pine discusses the inception of "Poolman," describing it as a project born from delight and intuition rather than traditional storytelling formulas.
He explores themes of joy, innocence, and the importance of maintaining a playful spirit in artistic endeavors.

Artistic Influences:
He references inspirations from classic cinema and the significance of capturing emotional truths over strictly adhering to narrative structures.
Pine shares his desire for the project to reflect a sense of joy and to connect with audiences on a deeper level.

Spirituality and Awe

Spiritual Exploration:
Pine touches on his spiritual journey, describing a sense of awe in the unknown and the importance of meditation in achieving personal peace.
He credits meditation, particularly Vedic practices, with helping to manage anxiety and foster creativity.

Reflections on the Industry

Changes in Hollywood:
Pine discusses the evolution of the film industry, particularly how it has affected actors' careers, drawing comparisons to his father's experiences in earlier decades.
He laments the decrease in opportunities for middle-class actors and the impact of changed financial structures in Hollywood.

Key Takeaways

Authenticity in Art:
The conversation underscores the importance of authenticity in artistic expression and the desire for meaningful connection over commercial success.
Mental Health Awareness:
Pine’s openness about anxiety and the importance of mental health illustrates a growing trend in the industry towards vulnerability and self-care.
Joy as a Guiding Principle:
Throughout the episode, the pursuit of joy emerges as a central theme, guiding Pine's artistic choices and life decisions.

Conclusion Chris Pine's conversation with Rick Rubin offers a rich exploration of ambition, personal growth, and the artistic journey. His insights into the film industry and personal experiences provide a reflective perspective on navigating success while staying true to oneself. This episode not only highlights Pine's talents but also invites listeners to consider deeper questions about their own paths in life and art.

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Transcript

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0:01T�ragrammelton what What was taught about getting somewhere, not a lot about why or what you should do when you get there, or the meaning and import of that, but not a whole lot about sitting in it, whatever it is. After growing up with ambition, how is success different than you imagined it? It's a great question, and I've been asked to give the commencement speech of my alma mater for years, and I've always tried to do it because I'm kind of terrified, firstly knowing the kind of amount of time that I'd want to spend thinking and doing it right and all of that. But also, there's so much good advice, and there's so much bad advice, but really at the end of the day where you're sitting with or your choices, and you're going to have to live by them, and it's your feeling in the moment of what that choice feels like in your soul, I've contemplated the title of it.

1:16I know the title of which is Beware Ambition. Ambition is a wonderful thing, but I think when you're a child, you take so much on of what your parents and society and cultures told you, the shoulds, not a lot is invested into it. What does it make you feel like? Is it making you feel like doing this thing? So I think to your question specifically, certainly now I'm turning 44 this year, and in that midlife space, really investigating the source of my ambition, the fuel that is fueling that fire. Is it a healthy fuel? Is it a fuel that serves me? And that has been quite profound, I think. Tell me about your parents a little bit.

2:09My parents have been together for 50, almost 60 years. They married for 56, maybe. My mother grew up here in Beverly Hills, her mother was a film actress in the 30s and 40s, and my grandfather was a lawyer. She was from Corpus Christi, Texas, a full red head beauty, and my grandfather was a Ukrainian son of Jewish tailors. So she grew up in the 50s in Beverly Hills, which is a very particular time in the Golden Age Hollywood, I guess, growing up around all these sons and daughters of and whatnot. My father grew up in Scar's Dale, super wasp, his full name was Granville White Law Pine. And he went to Small River Lourdes College in Ohio, and his parents wanted to become a doctor and that didn't work out.

3:03And he decided to come out to LA and become an actor. Did you ever talk to you about that decision? Very briefly, I remember that only really in sports, I played baseball and love sports. Went to college and realized that wasn't going to really be happening. And then found acting as a way really for validation more than anything. And I did a play and enjoyed it, and I remember them coming backstage and sound type or ball, but literally my mother looked at me and she was like, you sure you don't really become a lawyer? And I think she was very serious. And I said, I'm pretty sure. But that was it.

3:37And then they supported me in preservation. In preservation from outside or inside, describe the feeling of validation. Outside, for sure. The sense of being 20 or parents. Audience for sure. Audience. I don't think I ever really doubted it. Parentally, I was always told we love the you and you can do anything and all of that. No, I think it was very much for Mike Purik and their brothers and sisters. Which sister, your years, do the actors too? Very briefly, and then worked in production for many years. And now it's a psychotherapist and my mother became a psychotherapist as well. That's interesting.

4:13What was it like having a mom psychotherapist? Well, it was a very particular time when I was about 13. My motherhood quit acting. I was born more or less. I was born in something and I was born. My father was struggling finding work and there was a stock marketer at real estate crash in 1887 or 18, which was really devastating. My motherhood, been a state of a mom, ended up having to go back to school. She worked four jobs. My father was working extra jobs. So we're going back to school and becoming a psychotherapist really did come from wanting to do it obviously. But really came from this very trying moment where we needed to get jobs.

5:02Like we need to dab something to get some income in. If I remember that part of my life being mostly one of the sort of frantic busyness. Did you feel a sense of fear from them? Oh my god, yeah. That kind of static electricity in the air and fights by and closed doors and all that kind of stuff. Did they speak about it or was it more just in the air? I think my memory of it is more in the air. And certainly going through puberty then when puberty is hard enough and then having that low level for a sensitive kit was definitely something many years of... When did you realize you were sensitive? I had a tremendous amount of social anxiety growing up.

5:46I think the loudness of the situation could really affect me. So music on top of conversations, on top of small talk, on top of the visual field that I was trying to incorporate. You could get overwhelmed. Super easily. It still can. I mean a lot of work and pharmaceuticals have helped that. But I still can. I mean I even find in my space at home and have created a nest. I guess is the best way to describe it. The lighting is very particular and it's of the amber scale. There are not many lights on at night. If there's music, it's jazz, it's bebop because it's really the only thing I can have that feels comforting.

6:32I can't listen usually to music with words in a massive way because that's happening. I have got to be engaged with it. I can't read into other things. I have to quite honestly find it hard. It's one of the reasons why I reached out to you to have the conversation because I like your... You're an ineralocutor of a type that makes me feel grounded. Because often in conversations there's very little or degrees of relationality. What is actually being heard and listened to to them be reflected back. You have the soul cycling so to speak feels firm and like a ballast. It's been even being disrupted in conversations where I don't feel where there is more static or I'm sensing that you're not actually present or you're looking to wait for the response.

7:26I think you were just speaking about that in your book. That also is enough to kind of... they throw me. Yeah. It feels like it's not a real moment. It's not really happening. Yes, it feels like it's not happening or my response to that is one much more frustration than anything else that please get me out of here because I'm also adept enough to kind of... I can do that dance but it also feels that much more exhausting as I get older to do this dance. And it's an empty dance. It doesn't seem like it's good for anyone involved. No, and it also kind of highlights to me how much of our lives or how much of my life I speak to my life has involved that sort of thing.

8:11Yes, much more as I get older I seek relationalness or whatever the vlogger does. I wonder if that's related to the feeling of the audience of being seen. Yeah, I often think like witnessing and being witnessed is like... it's one of the fundamentals of being human, certainly of being an artist, but I think really more of being human. Because we are in these shells and we are ultimately alone in that regard and our subjectivity. So the idea being witnessed exactly as one wants. I don't know if it's even possible, but certainly I feel like we search for it, right? We want to be reflected back like, oh you see me.

9:00I've had that experience where I'll see something and not be sure that I'm seeing what I'm seeing. What do you mean? I used to live in town. I woke up in the middle of the night one night. I heard sounds and my house where I was living was on a hill and it looked out over the city. But everything outside of the window was low down like I was looking more at the sky. And it was a really misty night. We couldn't really see. And there were all these lights in space. And I couldn't figure out what was happening. I couldn't figure it out. It's like it can't be. It's like it's looking at space. No, it was close.

9:43But it definitely was it was something not stars and not lights from the city. It was not lights from the city. Wow. And it wasn't where there was any place for there to be lights in space. Couldn't tell because it's when you see lights without any reference. It's hard to know. I've seen UFOs. Have you? Oh yeah. Tell me. I've seen ghosts. I've seen UFOs. I saw it was New Year's day for just struck New Year's and I gone outside and I was in outside a Joshua tree and I looked up at the sky. A light zoomed in. Wiggled. We should back off. Next way. Yeah. Now if you were with someone and they didn't see it.

10:29I would have been just a stout. Yeah. I've had experiences with ghosts where it's like, well, this definitely. Tell me about a ghost experience. This is happening. I'm shooting a movie in 2006. It was in New Mexico. It's in Santa Fe to be exact. We're shooting at a hotel and we're staying at the hotel. Wake up in the middle of the night. It's 3am. I'm lying on my side and I look towards the door. And a woman with no face and her hair is on fire. It's moving towards my bed. Now, what I saw was in a shape like you. It was basically energy outlined in the darkness. They like a light, violent energy in the darkness in the space coming towards me.

11:19And I knew exactly immediately what it was. Like an abstract painting of what I just described. I knew exactly what it was. Like without a doubt. I woke up terrified. Well, my perception perceived and I understood my emotional side of me knew immediately too that she wasn't violent. She had to test, frustrated, tired. I think she had to do this fucking dance over and over and over again. She was going to hurt me. But she was fucking pissed off. You have to do with the place you were in. I wake up the next morning. I go to the makeup frill. You know, hi, how are you? How did you sleep? I said, I fucking didn't sleep at all.

11:55You know, I have a story. And my co -star said, I have a story. I was like, please tell me, you know, I bet you've done nothing on mine. So I can't. 3 a .m. I woke up lying on my side, looked towards the door, woman with no face and her hair is on fire, coming towards my bed. The same exact thing. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable. So my mind is blown. And of course my makeup artist, he's a not only makeup artist, but Wicked and Priests. So he gives me. He says you're going to have to go in your go in your room and take this and just say outspirit out and talk to the spirit, which I've now actually done every time I go into a space that I don't say.

12:36To say I'll do really anything. Sage Paul Sanato. In sense if I haven't, but I'll talk to the room ever since that moment. Turns out we were at this hotel on top of the hill. That was an actual, in fact, Indian burial ground. And there were ghosts all over the place. You went into the restaurant. Every, there were five ghosts in the restaurant that came out at different times. They were named. Many, many years later, I see my co star. We're at a concert. I said, man, I get so much mileage out of this ghost story. It's fucking incredible. He's like me and me too. I never told you the, the coded of the story.

13:10I was like, how fuck tell you? He's like, I'm in the bathroom. I'm taking his shit. And I'm looking towards this door because the door to the bathroom was looking towards the front door where this woman came from. Keep in mind this fucking door. Keep in mind this fucking door. Keep in mind this fucking door. All of a sudden out of my right ear, I hear this sound. I'm like, in that moment, I knew exactly what was happening. He turns the look down at the toilet roll. The toilet roll is going like this and unspooling. Wow. So if this always makes you think it was like, I know for a fact this should happen.

13:44Not only do I know what happened, I got corroborated by someone that I didn't even share the story with. So I'm like doubly confirmed. This shit is happening. It feels like something that we should be talking about all the time. Yeah. It's like science. Great. Have you heard about this thing? Or are experiences with two rational, logical human beings? Definitely saw some shit that is unexplainable. And yet we don't. One of my, I guess, living principles is to be an awe, right? To constantly try to lean into awe, to lean into... Not rigidness, lean into soft lines, lean into questions. And that was a great moment for me to be like, I have no fucking idea what's going on.

14:27But something's going on that is way bigger than me. Yeah. That we're not even as human beings, and scientists, and doctors, and astrophysicists, and whatnot, haven't even scraped the surface up. So in some ways, it was very... freeing. It's like, okay, cool. Yeah, there's so much we don't know. I don't have to rely on faith alone to say, to get me out of, you know, I guess before that I could have easily said I was some currub. Atheist. Walk me through your saging practice. You get to a new hotel room. What do you... I travel with a bag of sage or sweet grass or incense, and it's not all the time, but if I feel like it's a room that I immediately just don't have a vibe with, I'll let it just be like, hey, spirits, what's going on?

15:15You're still trapped here. I wish you well in your journey wherever you're going. I mean, you know harm. I'm here as a guest. Tell me the Los Angeles you grew up in. The LA grew up in was the 80s and the 90s. I would say it felt very small to me. I grew up and went to a very small private school so it felt very insulated. I would say artist Hollywood centric universe where I grew up around a lot of people in the business and run the dinner table. That's what was discussed in my dad's day at work with whom he worked and what interviews he went on. He never calls the editions. He calls them interviews.

15:53He's got my favorite rubber planisms. Well, elegant, you know. So LA, I remember dodger games with my dad. I remember him taking me to CBS Television City to meet Mickey Mantle because he knew Platte Sejrack and Mickey Mantle was on Platte Sejrack. I remember a lot of it was baseball. I remember the 1988 World Series and my dad taking me on the field to make Kirk Gibson and Steve Sachs and Brandon Bounds away on all these cats that were like my idols. I remember the forum and Lakers games. I remember Lake Arrowhead. I remember Henry Stalko's very deli when I was sick, bowling. I remember what it was in the valley.

16:37I remember thinking, hang on a park and I'll feel it's in these mystical places of all these old homes. Did you live in the valley? Yeah, deep valley, kid lived in studio sitting and then lived in North Hollywood. Let's talk about Poo Man. Let's talk about it. Did you know you wanted to direct first of all? Well, I'll start with the reason why I reached out to you. Firstly, your book, and how you speak about art and the artistic process, and secondly, kind of my layman's knowledge of you and your kind of spiritual framework from which you approach everything life, and your work, and stuff. Resonated deeply with mine.

17:13And you talk about in your book, you have to follow these signs from this, whatever the fuck is happening out there that's bigger. It's just, you just listen to it and no question it's so much. You just kind of allow it to come through. I was making a film and I was doing a bit. I was joking around with a friend and I came up with Poo Man and Darren Barronman, which is the main character's name, and there was something about sound of it that made me laugh. There was something about those glimmers of a Poo Man in an apartment complex that delighted me. Delight is really, I think, you know, well, where'd I keep on coming back to?

17:55It's hard to describe what delight is other than it's not a laugh. It's not particularly joy. It's like a carbonated fizzle at the back of your brainstem that just like lifts the sides of your mouth just kind of a boutique smile in a way. Right. And really the entirety of the process has been trying to stay as true to that initial delight in Giggle as much as I desperately can, and following that instinctual level of what the lights make, which can be super cerebral and fern deflect with intellectualism and intellectuality and thoughts and whatever you want to call it. So to try to like, I even the heart chakra and just kind of turn off the thought.

18:46Just kind of as delicately matrix my way through it, listen as much as I can serve, which is so, can be so difficult. Or has been for me. So that was the genesis of the project and then like many things in my life, I feel like it snowballed into me directing and writing it.

19:13Did you know you were pullman from the beginning? Not necessarily in envisioning and ideating on it. I cast myself in it to kind of bring it through, so to speak. But it became ever more obvious that like at some point I was just gonna do the whole thing. It felt inevitable, felt holistic. It's like, yes, of course. Yes, yes. Is this the first feature you've directed? Yes. How was the experience? Blissful. That's great. Remendously blissful. Was it advantageous all the years of acting that you've done? Yeah, I would imagine, there's a lot of, you know, I would imagine in your business, there's a lot of regular role that is just the daily of, when you show up, and you talk to an AD, what are those guys doing?

20:03That by being on a set for so many years, you've taken care of so much of the optical, and you actually have a lot at your disposal in terms of faculty and facility and knowledge that you display really kind of without. You're just playing a different position. Yeah, you're playing a different position that you... But the game is the same game. Ultimately, yes. And completely unbelievably different, because it's another thing coming into something where you're the helmet, which is you're learning a lot of the intricacies and the minutiae and the stuff that you don't have to as an actor, as a hired hand, so to speak.

20:42Yeah. Have to worry about really learning about what the fuck is the sound department doing? What are their daily tasks? What are their worries? What are their concerns? I also learn more than I ever would have if I hadn't done it. How similar or different is the finished film to what you imagined when you had the script done? It's much different in so far as my original script incorporated a were dance sequences, there were music videos, there were animated or agami sequences, there were... It was really lynching and like... and it's scope, and then having to make a whatever it was a seven and a half million dollar film, you're trunked down considerably.

21:31But the beating heart of it is the same. And the beating heart of it is really... joy, uncinnical, unfettered, uncool joy. And trying, I think, if I'm analyzing it, it came about during a time when I really needed to access that little boy at play. You know, I think you also talk about that in your book, the idea... The playfulness, the infishness of being a kid, where everything's at your disposal, sad, happy, joy pain, felt in its entirety, at level 100 without a wink, that was really important to me. And I still get that every time I watch it as someone deep at the hard work of playing, you know?

22:27Trying to capture that spirit without being too worried about anything else. If the film had a lineage, what would be all of the predecessors you could name that led to this film? Definitely starts with the kind of archetype of the innocent. And that goes back to... I don't know, the first in cinematic history, but it's certainly Buster Keaton. There's certainly Chaplin in there. It all began when I rewatched Being There and had this really emotional experience watching Being There's with definitely Peter Sellers in that. I watched this incredible film by Alice Roaker, called Happiest Lazaro, which again is the story of the innocent, the cynical world and what happens to the cynical world.

23:18There's a bit of Fisher King in there. There's a bit of the neuroses and family dynamics of, you know, maybe a David Russell. I've always been inspired by the visual sensibility of a West Anderson. Things as far out as Bertolucci is the conformist. These are all things that I was like watching, especially during COVID when I was like going to film school for the first time. I took it as an opportunity to just start watching all the things I should have watched, you know, at some point in my life. So they were all thrown in there for sure. Definitely like, what's up Doc? There's a group of comedy in it.

23:52And it just came out as it came out. And I don't really have any rhyme or reason for... Like the voice that came out and how these people spoke and all that. But it kind of came out. Tell me about the writing process. The writing process was a lot about learning about how to write, learning structure and story and watching films that appealed to me, watching films that I thought narratively from a structural standpoint made sense. And really ultimately has it got into the writing of it. It was just a process of following, as I said before, enjoying the life, whatever made my art flutter and like, oh, that's fun.

24:36That makes me happy. That makes me happy. That makes me happy. So really the process though, frustrating at times, every time I sat down, if, you know, my brain wanted to go in a direction, I let it. And some of that remained in potentially the deficit of the linear story. But I had to make a decision along the line of what I wanted to appeal to. And I was asked myself, you know, we could go left here and do the thing that should be done at this point in the story. What's rather, how do you know, a two minute monologue about something that sort of has to do with it more because I just want to see the idea of you know, talk.

25:17I think there's something about a series of moments that hold your attention that might trump the straight storytelling. I think there are arguments on both sides. I think, you know, like, as like Campbell showed us, there are certain things that have existed for millennia that just exist for a certain reason. Certain archetypes, certain keyer journeys, the reluctant here and all that. And I totally agree. There's a certain algorithm seemingly to the storytelling process that if you'd cared to and done well can achieve a certain goal of moving an audience. And whether you call it just like willful manipulation or conscious manipulation on all sides.

26:01So be it. And I think there's another level of filmmaking that I guess falls more into the poetic or the tone poem. You know, like I think about this moment and brave New World that Malik did with Colin Farrow and they hit the New World. And I remember bursting into tears as Malik is dooting this world for the first time and it's Malik doing Malik. It's crows gliding across water. Three of the life is a perfect example also of that. Or Lynch or Kisłowski is another favorite of mine. And I've been watching a lot of where there's something else going on, something much older and much more feeling oriented that is almost impossible to describe.

26:51It's like what I've heard that maybe this is apocryphal but Hans Zimmer does with music where there's music that you're not hearing it. It's a liminal or whatever in order to access parts of us that again talking about science, the metaphysics of being that we're not really quite sure of. And even in the ridiculousness of my film, there was always a mind of mine trying to kind of play around in that world of by going back to Ashby. How is it after this very quiet film? He has a moment of the lead character walking on water and a weird Masonic temple right happening to the left. And somehow I found it to be the most moving and profound thing I'd ever seen, you know, at that point.

27:42You had the character first. Yeah. Then do you have other characters? Do you have a scene? Do you have a story arc? Tell me the order of the events from my limited one time experience. It began as the title of the film and the character name. And then I started seeing what the character looked like. And it was only until I was in Joshua tree at this cafe and I saw this. A dirt bag hippie rock climber. I was like, OK. I was like immediately knew he was a dirt bag 70s rock climber. It was like done. So that was to care of that. And then I started seeing him around this pool and like what? I started writing a short story basically about this guy around the pool.

28:35I achieved Bruce Lee. Did you know it was going to bleed to more than that? Or that time did you think I'm writing a short story? No, at that point we were going to write it. And I was like, how the fuck? My writing partner is much more of a structuralist. And the structure bums me out because I. I'm the kid in the sandbox and I need the kindergarten teacher. It's great. I kind of just want to get the sand played now now. So to alleviate my anxiety and frustration, I was like, fuck it. I just started writing, you know, five, six, seven pages of whatever was coming out. In that process of writing, are you saying lines out loud and then writing them down?

29:18Or is it all happening in your head? It's like vomiting. It's like, kind of don't want to fuck and puke. And you're like kind of holding it off and you're in your bed. You know, like, you know, it's going to happen. You know, it's going to happen. Finally, you do that's kind of the first part of the process of writing was like, stop up, stop up. And then the moment I had to come out, I just started writing, writing, writing, writing, and then read it out loud to my partner. And he's like, what about that? What about that? And that would be good. And then we start placing and moving and placing and moving.

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29:47With that opening thing that I wrote became most of the script that we wrote reads more in some ways, like, is as a reader of many scripts, I like someone who acknowledges the fact that I'm sitting down to read for an hour and a half something, a rather experience that with great action, as if I were reading a short story, I, Chris, prefer that experience, unless the minimalism is a part of the spirit animal of that thing and that that's fine. But I don't like someone that diminishes that hour and a half for me as a reader. So I wrote, I just kind of got for both and really painted the picture of what it was like in this little working lot in this, you know, Valley, Backwash, 60s apartment complex with this guy and a trailer, and what he was doing.

30:43And then these things came out like, and then it's, it's really the same. It was more a series of images than it was anything else to start. Yes, I would say 100 % was visual colors kind of immediately came to me. I'm attracted deeply to like Codacrum and that era, although I knew this wasn't right for that, but I wanted basically Codacrum and Titanic cover as if it were bleached out by the sun. So it wasn't kind of the hail khakis of Chinatown, which I'm like, I didn't even talk about anymore because I seem to have been run away with itself, but felt more like a MGM studio film that had been like left out in the sun for a long time.

31:27And was that first short story version? The story of the movie. We literally just the first scene. Just how do we, how do we encounter this man immediately? So it was the first scene you wrote and it is the first scene in the movie? It was a much kind of denser and longer thing, which I would have been happy shooting, but kind of the strictures of the format. We condensed it a bit, but it was meeting him in this little diagram of an existence. And this man who took his pool cleaning like he was a ballet dancer, like he was at the Dojo and what that would have been like. And what books was he reading and what music was he listening to before any of wrote six pages of just him being before?

32:18Just character development. Filling out the little crevices of this guy in hopes of by doing that, I could figure out what he was about and how he spoke. But it was all outward. You never describe what he was feeling. You're painting a picture. That's very, that's very right, very, very, very right. So it starts with the picture. For me, this one was very, it started from the external. It started with, again, as I said, the name of the film, what he did, occupation. The name of the character. That brought me into the physicality of this guy. The physicality of the guy dropped me into the emotion.

33:01And I should say, while we're doing that, I also knew that it was a poor man, a story about a character who follows a water mystery. I knew that component to describe the water mystery. The water mystery is something that is obviously part and parcel of what it means to be an Angelina. And it's the William Mall home and the bit all. And it is indeed what China Town was about. In our case, it's about hanging out with these characters and getting on the wavelength of this dude. But it's essentially about a future present. Los Angeles that is encountering a major drought. With all of its concomitant realities, meaning like how are they going to get fucking water, which is probably, I don't know in that future state.

33:51Only to find that there is something happening within the bounds of Los Angeles that could both save and destroy it. But that is what's happening in the outside world. But if you fall into the stories I hope people do what you'll find is that this whole world that you're experiencing is really deeply in the lens of this character of Darren Barman. This kind of Los Angeles is this time and place is and that this is much more about the journey of this man, you know, the pool being the seat of the soul, the water being the seat of the soul. He's tending to his soul only to find that there is disruption and darkness within it.

34:44He has to go search out what that is in order to become whole. And thus he goes on this journey that is both important and not the same time.

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36:36My surrogate parents, my best friends, it's character Jack Dennis Soff played by Danny DeVito and Diane Esplanade played by an F -Bending. And I love this idea of a boy man whose best friends were essentially this elderly couple who they all come from mysterious backgrounds. I mean Darren, his backstory developed over a long time but essentially, you know, he's an abandoned kid that was adopted essentially by these people at some time during his life. I think probably in his early 20s and he's just this eccentric character that loves water that came to clean their pool and just ended up staying.

37:14Jack, Danny's character reminds me of this kid's father that I grew up with who was a horror movie director that had a great film that came out and then ended up moving away from Hollywood. But it's a type of character attracted me because it's kind of a people I grew up with which are actors not in the they're adjacent to the Hollywood dream. They dip their toes in and touched it but it's not like they're writing the fucking rivers of great wealth and fame. And this idea that he wants back in, you know, meantime he's bought the apartment complex to try to make whatever money he can. And he married his own Genu, Diana Spanade who had to go back to school and become a psychotherapist, definitely an ode to my mom.

37:58And the fact that she's also, yeah, his young and analyst, that was the trio that initially attracted. When you end up with Danny DeVito as the actor, how different is that than the guy you were writing? The first scene that really came to me is this scene when they're packing up in the beginning of the film and getting ready to go to city council, Darin the character I play Jack Dennis off Danny and Diane Annette. Danny is telling this story about this Japanese restaurant is not actually serving Japanese food. They're giving you. They're giving you frozen pieces of meat to defrost. Food. And it's this conversation I have my father over COVID.

38:52He in fact has this experience that a Japanese restaurant remember going over to their house and listening to my father tell his story and it was. It was the longest story about a meal I think I've ever had with an ending that kind of stuck the landing, but he kind of didn't stuck sick landing. So that the first thing that came out with them was that scene, which is apropos absolutely nothing but somehow you get to learn about the character. Yeah, just this guy's obsessed with detail that might not matter. Sure, I mean again, it's like I was attracted to him. It reminded me so much of my mother and my father and how they interact and how my father can go on these things that.

39:34There are stories in my mother, but my mother loves it. My mother loves the kind of. The thing the bits it's all about these bits it's all about these little things and it was one of those moments in the storytelling process was like I know I'm going to have to kill some babies this baby that just delights me such to no end. Yeah, if no one were to get it at least forever I can have Danny sang the word sashimi and that just gave me great. Did your parents like her? Well, my parents certainly have they've gone to myriad sort of evolution of the relationship at certain times, bickering arguing. What they've gotten to now is this really lovely.

40:18There've been together 60 years like they're not many things to fight over. So what they do is they do this play act fighting that mimics the bickering at a certain intensity that they would have had which now is more because they light each other in the thing like they're going to go into the thing where buzz oh stop it. You don't really mean that you know that whole thing I might add all being into it. You know, and that's that's kind of the thing. Do you remember the first time you got to watch the movie with an audience? Tell me about that experience. Well, it gets to really the fundamental reason why I'm here is because I wanted to talk to you some sort of doctor art therapist because I really have to say I had all the kind of wonderful crazy experiences been independent filmmaking.

41:09I had a billionaire that wouldn't give me the money he never ended up existing. I got finance and then they want to meet a shoot digital and I had to fight for film and the et cetera but in the blah blah blah. And then I lost an actress on day. You know, all the fun little stuff like that all great, you know, gris for the memoir milk. And yeah, I was frustrated along the way. We never had any money in the distance of that, but ultimately it was a fucking gas. Ultimately, I was in flow state for such an extended period of time working on stuff that was fundamentally important to me, which was how about this one time Chris you just follow your heart.

41:45Fire got fire is thing. And then I finished it in December of what is a 24 2 3 22 and pretty immediately I went into a state of grief. One, the state of grief of having been so creatively fulfilled and engaged like a drug that being taken out there's this third amount of like physical and emotional up people. But secondly, I kind of deeply knew that I was setting myself up for a pretty hard road and one that I think I ultimately probably chose for myself. There is no part of me that wanted to make like a non commercial film. I thought just by following what it kind of delighted me with equally delight large audience.

42:31And then after having a situation where no one wanted to take the phone knows festivals. Kind of alerted me to something to feedback alerted me to something we showed it to an audience in Truman Oaks and I mean. So in a test screening you can if you want which I did sit with an audience watching your film.

43:01Which is an illuminating experience to say the least. Roundly disliked like roundly dislike walkouts thought people did not like it but there was one dude we call them front row Joe. His name was Joe and he sat in the front row in the talk back after. They got it you know that really got it he mentioned inherent vice inherent vice was another kind of touch them. Anyway he totally got it we always talked about front row Joe became kind of like our our patron saint of lovers of the film. It was simultaneously brutal experience and was an ultimately super beneficial experience. Because I had eight weeks of editing was is not a lot of time and I was really down to the wire.

43:47And just taught me some great things about getting raw and real with your piece and just gripping it down to what it needs to be. And it ultimately became a much better film. So what would you say changed from the first screening till now? Well we have some voiceovers in it which always a helpful spot to help guide an audience. Those became clarified and we you know tried to marry a different. The problem is that we only had one desk green would have been nice actually it would have been interesting to see what would have happened otherwise but it's it's fine. And then there are these sequences in the film that are these meditations where he in which Darren main character has these moments with this tree that's kind of stalking his meditations and his dreams.

44:32Well due to certain financial constraints that area of the tree moment was always nebulous because I just I couldn't afford what I wanted to shoot. I only found that out. Sometimes during filming so we had to get really creative. Discovering what precisely those things were from a sonic visual and emotional standpoint and how they evolved over the course of the film. We're clarified immensely there and there were sequences there was a moment in this Chinatown chase sequence that was different that we changed out there was a whole relationship with Bruce Lee that was taken out there was an Alan Watts voiceover.

45:14There was a lot of shit happening in my there's already a lot of shit happening in my film so what I can gather from people having seen in Toronto as many people still don't understand the film so thank God we like stripped it down really the essential.

45:32So I'm not going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say that I'm going to say I'm going to say that I'm going to say downtown.

46:11N O O F N O N spending some time since that moment in September to think about how to reintroduce this earnest, happy little bird of the film back into the world, knowing full well that it may not be witnessed in the same way as I would like. It's been a trip. Different than acting, way different than acting. Acting is like this point I'm so enured to, you can hide behind so much. Riders, directors, editors, studios, campaigns, lighting, music. This is the closest one gets to being a singer, songwriter, or a comedian, or whatever, you know. There are so many cases of great films that come out and are either ignored or not, well received in the beginning and then over time they take on a life of their own.

47:19But I've been thinking about that too. I'm not saying that's going to happen, but I'm saying it's interesting. It's like there isn't any rule like the game doesn't end when the picture comes out. Well, I think that's true. And I also think that pieces of art are often viewed in their wholeness as a separate entity from the creative life, let's say, of the individual. There's no like soft edges to a Picasso painting. It is just that painting, right? Which is fair. I'm not saying I have the same experience too. I listen to a song, I listen to a song. The fact made is not effect me. It's kind of black and white.

47:55Yet the kind of ocean that that thing comes from is broad, ongoing, came from somewhere. This thing is also a part of an evolution. One of my favorite quotes is this Teddy Roosevelt quote about the man in the arena, which I'm sure you know, right? And if the end he says, well, and if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly so that his place will never be with his friend in him and so will that have no neither victory nor defeat. But this idea of failure, like, what does failure mean? There's a failure in terms of the eyes of the world. But if you stayed true to... Yeah, if you made the thing you want, there is no failure in that.

48:29There's no such thing as that. I think the desire to make these things comes from this human urge to self -express and say, this is how I see the world. This is my experience. This is what makes me laugh. This is what makes me happy. This is what entertains me. My next question for you is about inspiration. What do you do when you feel inspirationally bereft? It's just a matter of time until you feel inspired again. You talked about liking that feeling of awe. All in inspiration are very closely linked. Interesting. Is there a way to like move the coals around? I think I would have to know more about how you do what you do to answer that.

49:10One of my favorite quotes, it's better than that, and I forgot it. But vigor grows from the wound. Vigor grows from the wound. I love that. We were talking about ballasts. We're talking about what roots you were talking. I think what a blessing that experience was to... Much easier would have been to have something come out and everybody's like, man, it's just like... And really like really getting in all those ego parts of you that are just waiting to bask in it. Much better than to have the opposite. Really take a step back and go, okay. What do I need to leave this experience joyful and happy?

49:49What do I need? Well, the joyful and happy comes from you signing off on the movie. I finished this. Now I'm sending it out into the world. Whatever happens doesn't matter. You did it. How many years have you been working on it? Four? Four or half maybe? And would you say in the four and a half years it's been all consuming? I would say it's been a snowball into all consuming. It began an idea. Carom went off. Carom and those things became shorter and shorter and told it was all that. Yes, so I'm missing the... I'm missing flow state. I'm missing like disappearing into something. Do you feel like what am I supposed to do now?

50:29100 percent. Kind of with my life, quite frankly. I've had some pretty monumental pivotal existential moments in my life and this one I've never quite. And this is the first time you've ever made something in this way. It's a big difference. It's a big difference and also a kind of revelatory one in that the completeness of artistic imprimaturalists is so complete. It's so satisfying deeply. It's the only thing I can actually point to in my entire career to be like, no, this is the all of me. Yeah, but what you're describing is the success. That is the success. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing else after that means any more than what you're describing.

51:23No, I know. But you've been working for how many years? Yeah, 22 years. This is the peak creative output that you've had. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. You've done it. Right? Yeah, no. And now it's like, what's the next mountain? And it doesn't have to be the same mountain. And it could be, I've never played this kind of role before. And this is a director I love and I'm going to get to do that. I not have to think so much about all the aspects. Or I want to start writing something else. Or I want to pick a script that I didn't write and do it as a director. And you have a lot of choices. And you don't have to make a choice so much as engage in everything and see where you're on.

52:07Right. That's that part of the process. You talk about it. Yeah, you can't. You can't. There's no way to make it a goal. You know, you can't set a goal of now I want to do this. You don't know. I guess you could, but that is so very really happened. Yeah, I don't think that's the way it happens. I think it's more like, I mean, invaded, they call it charm. It's like, where's the charm? Where's where is that leading you to? Yeah. And really being open pay attention and take advantage and enjoy whatever sense of openness there is where you're not totally focused on making this thing now. Right. It's like, this is the exhale.

52:44The making it was the inhale. And now you get to exhale and experience that. I've been fucking up an exiling for a year. And that's where I'm like, yeah. I have firstly, I have the luxury to rest a year, you know, to be aware of that. But the whole the whole time having that static electrical background of like, kind of what what now, you know, and also doesn't have to be anything big. The next thing could be something really small. Get it to, but it's like I'm like, it could be a little theater piece that you get to do in front of 50 people. And that will feel good like whatever it is.

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54:53Have you done any or much theater? Huns, tell me about that. What's the difference? It's been a long time. I did the USC kids that I met. I told you about the William San Diego Festival before that I'd done pretty much the majority of my work in theater at university and then did some musical in a play out here in LA and then did a two plays at the Gaffin, this Neil and Bude play and this a Willemann play. And then I did the Lieutenant of the finish more at the taper, which is the big theater out here. And that was 12 years ago. So it's been a while. Fun? Do you like it? I used to love it. I mean, it was the high of being able to have the closest that I could get to what I've always been jealous of musicians to get on stage to have that connection with a live audience.

55:43There's really nothing like you don't get in film certainly. You know, maybe a taste of it if you go see a film of yours in theaters and you get to see the audience interact with it, but there is certainly a separation from the immediacy and the potency of that live experience to find something that you're going to play with eight shows a week for three or five months. I just haven't found something that is engaged me in a way that makes me want to go back in that way. When acting, how much does what you do change depending on who you're acting with? I think the best of circumstances all the time.

56:25Yeah. It is being relational on the deepest level. Now, there are certain tricks or there are certain realities of the construction and craftsmanship of the film by which I mean your co -star in an off -camera moment could have given you a fantastic moment to play off of. But you know because on their coverage, they didn't achieve the same thing. You're reacting in such a way probably won't make it in the cut. I'm just thinking from a mathematical component. You are modulating and you're cutting it in your own mind. Can you think like that when you're working? It seems like that would get in the way.

57:05I mean, look, I come, I'm a different than a, I'm sure someone who's like a deep Bethetter or whatever who has to be in the thing the whole time. But I think the more you do it, the more you have greater multitasking is a wrong word. The more things you can juggle with ease, you know it can work. So I can do both things and I can be absolutely right here with you and also bring in to context. There is a boom guy that smells. And there is a director that I don't like. And all of those things can exist at the same time and maybe fully present. The blessing of having done it for a while I think for me at least, especially is that being able to do that and kind of getting great joy out of it too and nimble enough that you can play with anything given at you at once.

57:52And also knowing too that having come from theaters that are craft as a business of editing. So that I may as a performer want to achieve this three page scene in perfection for my own gratification. But in reality, I can say, you know what I'm going to stop and can you just move a little bit to the left? Thanks man. Is that good for you, Sound and whatever? So you can you're like you're at your easel. Yeah. And you are painting the way that you want to paint with that camera's on you. How many different directors have you worked with over the course of your career? I don't know. Doesn't 15. How different are they?

58:29Usually I would say what you do is in many ways probably can to that as of a director. I mean, I don't remember sat in on the session. But I think that's right. Some actors love to be left alone. And I think there are some actors that really don't give a fuck about who's directing them. They have about this is their bandwidth of what they want to do and they will achieve it. And there are many actors that have been very successful. I think doing that because they protect their performance because they know that once it's out of their hands, it goes into an editing bay with God knows how many people that have their hand steps on it.

59:01I have never been that way. And I've better for words, love being directed. So I love coming with a Kansas paint being like, what do you want me to paint, man? You want me to, I'll go happy, sad, red, white, blue. You can whatever, give me a line reading because I'm like, I'm playing. I'm actually playing. There's nothing. Anything can happen. What do you want me to do? And I think that probably ultimately does me a disservice if it gets in the hands of an editor who I wouldn't have picked or trusted to do the job or whatever. I'm probably making microchanges on the fly given what I think the director's capable of or what I think is going to happen down the line.

59:43But the greatest directors that I love, just from a human standpoint, the directors that I certainly don't like from a human standpoint, the directors that I deeply trust, very few, what I think and push me and actually have, and put aside whatever they're going through and need and really be with me in that moment, that's the most energizing for me that I feel someone's putting on the wet suit and diving in with me and it's like there with me. After a take, what's the range of suggestions? Got to can be anything from as simple and basic as fast, for latter funnier to a line reading, which I'm totally open to if I don't feel like I'm understanding the direction, to essentially, garb and really good that I think is probably the director's desire to communicate on an actor level, which they probably took from a book which I don't totally understand.

1:00:47Really engaging with me on the practicals, remember, you just came from your mom's and your mom told you the car was stolen, remember, and you're fucking this and that. Remember, don't do this quite yet because in Act 3, 20 pages down the road, remember we're going to have that moment. So, we want to all, that's the biggest sorts of things. It's interesting. To strictly visual stuff like, in the big movies, it's the hero moment, which usually is like, there's a camera pushing in on you and you're thinking about something and from a leading man role, there's certain things that you're going to have to help carry the audience with you.

1:01:29So, the audience has got to see that you are, I want to go left, but I got to go right, and then I know if I go right, I'm going to fucking head his shit storm. I'm going to do it anyway. And there's musical beats to that nonverbal moment. Tell a whole story. And then sometimes they'll come and try to give me direction. Most directors want to be kind and want to try to tell you in a way that is not do this to that. And sometimes I go, just show me the monitor and playback. Yeah, yeah. And I go into the playback and I'm like, oh, you want me to fucking look down and then look up? I got to see. Yeah, that's right.

1:02:05Yeah, sometimes it's really easy. It's sometimes very, very easy, which for some actors, I think would maybe take Umbridge it, the ones and twos of it, but for me, I'm like, oh, you want me to do it? You want me to go up with the line. So, like, I think you should go there instead of, I think you should go there. I got you. Okay. What do you do during the downtime on the set? If I can handle it, I'll read a lot. Duolingo has become a best friend of mine. We'll study languages just because I can, you know, not think about it too much. I feel like I'm doing something learning full. Yeah, God, there's just so much downtime.

1:02:44It's unbelievable. I feel the little bit of time I've been around. Movie sets where you do something like, okay, we need to just reset something and there's five hours. It's unbelievable. That's was another one of the great joys of making this film as we had no time. We had no money and I was doing everything. So it was like the closest, my little knowledge of like, busters and the charles of the world is like, that's how they rolled. They wrote, directed and were in everything. So it's like, yeah, talking about like the future of where I could find inspiration. Wherever the inspiration comes, what I do know is, how do you go back from them?

1:03:22Yeah. How do you, I don't know how you go back to money, certainly, trying to make a living for sure. Would you feel the same way if you weren't in it? I have no idea. Pyraming off your question about the downtime, it's like, yeah, I can make my heart for 12 hours straight. Like hours forgetting about everything. The bliss of that. Because what is flow state, if not a way to forget about the deep truth that we're all just dying a little bit every moment, you get to be alive, fully engaged. You know, I don't surf, but I imagine like in the barrel. That's it. Imagine I say you're more comfortable in front of the camera or in outside life.

1:04:09It's funny. I think there was a moment where I was neither comfortable in or out. I think it took me a steady practice in my 30s to achieve deep comfort on and off. And they came together, would you say? Yes. Very much so. You think it's because you worked on yourself and as you... Well, this is the great thing about, I think, about what all art is, is the better, more interesting human you become, the better, more interesting your art becomes and vice versa, vice versa, vice versa, vice versa, and vice versa, and over and over. It is the end spectrum of it is deep narcissism and this, you know, this solipsism where it's all about you, all of the time and everybody's thinking about you can lead to really unhealthy toxic shit.

1:04:59But if contained is really quite incredible, we're in the art form of becoming more fully realized. That's the bag, I think, at its best. But getting back to something I said before in my early 30s, I woke up one day, you know, rich and successful and deeply miserable. And I knew really instinctively that I either had to quit or reframe things. And so I just put as my north star joy. I'm just seeking joy. Did you figure this out yourself? Did you do it through therapy? I figured it out myself, but then engaged in, I mean, I've been in and out of therapy for 25 years. And then came across a really wonderful creative spiritual feature who comes from a Jungian background, deeply Jungian background and works with dreams.

1:05:51I've been working with her for 15 years in that practice, which again, holistically involves the entirety of your being in whatever you're doing so that it becomes inevitable, that this thing, whatever it is that you're working on, is the only thing that you could be working on at this point. It's deeply meaningful to me. And that released a lot of rigidity from the process. How important is body language when you're acting? Frenomine was telling me this story about Anthony Hopkins and Malik Baldwin. This again could be apocryphal, but I love it on the set of The Edge. And they were out in the wilderness in Alaska.

1:06:36And they were setting up a shot. And they were like, Anthony, we're going to have you stand over here. And he's like, oh no, no. And he picked the largest mountain. And he stood right below it because you knew in the master that would be the power shot. It's always very important, remember, that we're in a visual art form that is about the architecture of a shot. You are a component in the architecture of a shot. The Mizzons send. It is a painting or a photograph to speak, to be aware of of your part in that story. That's a great job. Yeah, it could be, but you as your own independent artist, it's very good to remember that.

1:07:21That's amazing. I would have never thought about it. I never would have thought about it. So cool. Again, it depends on what you're doing. Their certain roles is like a leading man, which I've been cast as, that it's this very delicate balance of creating character, but also being diffuse enough, where you occupy space, but not so much so that you are detracting from the story, that you as lead, your primary purpose is to be strong enough to carry the story. So you have to be in front of it and behind it, just them up. That sounds way more complicated, perhaps, than one would imagine, or maybe not to overshadow the two -feet.

1:08:04I mean, to find a point on it, but you can make a bunch of choices that may or may not serve the story. Like, there's Christian, bail, and American hustle. He is the star of the thing, but he's also very much playing a character. All of that characterological work is like super duper important to that story. Then there's like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. If Kevin Costner is doing a bit, and he wanted to have a fat suit with a thing and do a bunch of characters that may or may not have worked, but it also would have detracted from the point of the of the story. You're watching that and you're experiencing Harrison Ford does it.

1:08:47You're experiencing the character, but you're also experiencing persons in the star. Within that, there are a bunch of different decisions you can make, in Star Trek, there were certain ways that I would like sit in the captain's chair that were oats, the shatter, there was a whole meta thing in that. That's fun. Those are very little things that above and beyond that, I'm not there no twitches and there's no accent work and there's no particular ways to walk. Unless I think it's like deeply serving the thing. Like, I think I did hella -ray waters a whole different thing because there were components to that character that I think demanded in order to tell that story well that I do certain things with my body, but I very rarely in mind having experience because I've done deep work that way.

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1:11:04When you decide to take a role, do you ever give the character qualities? Like this guy that I'm going to play listens to country music, for example, even if it's not in the script. I used to do that stuff very right back stories in this whole thing. I found for me that it felt like work. That obviously sounds like a lazy actor, but I found for my animal that play is where I excel. I'm very adept at moving and shaking on the spot. You want to do it away and let me read that model and it'll do it. You want me to do it all by as fun. You want to change that word fun. You ever add lib lines? What motivates it?

1:11:51Because I'm having so much fun usually. It's usually from having an immense amount of either feeling super free and in the body and in the moment. Sometimes it honestly, I would say more often than not, it doesn't work. For more often than not, it goes against the grain of what the director wants. Sometimes it's because the director is really adamant that you say the lines, whereas I disagree and think it works better this way. They're all different forms of it. And then more common is like I just disagree with that beat. That little couplet that you have at the end, I don't think you need it.

1:12:29I really don't think you need it. I think honestly, paints a finer point on a moment that whatever. I don't need it. I can say it without it or you mentioned earlier the camera's zooming in on you. You have to tell a story without saying any words. Are you thinking something? For sure. Are you thinking the story or your story? This is another great one of the first things I ever did. I watched this great old actor, incredible actor. He's having this moment, he's searching, he's searching for the lines, he's looking off and doing that. I was like, what for the take what the fuck was going on? It's like I was thinking about my laundry.

1:13:12It's like, what? Those things about my laundry. It's the one of the greatest lessons I ever heard. This whole idea that like, who is the actor must go through the thing? Yeah. I think is a fallacy born from the mid -century methods. If it is effective and it achieves the thing for the camera for the most, the audience, the ultimate goal is the audience. Yeah. So whether you're thinking of a banana or your dead mother, it doesn't matter so long as it works. So, to answer your question for me, I have various and assorted things. Anything from being as technical of like, look there to look there to look there to really think about what's happening in the character thing, the knot and every actor knows it.

1:14:04The one that you were most deeply in sucked. That's interesting. Or can. Yeah, it can. It can often not work at all. You could be like, fuck man, I felt every moment of it. Yeah, but whatever works works. All that matters is what's on camera. Because a lot of it's a magic trick. Yeah. It's maybe more meaningful to you. Yeah. It also has to do with the music. It feels like the way the score tells the story when you're not moving does a lot. Think about that with the old movies a lot. I watch this old Howard Hawks movie called Only Angels Have Wings in 1939. During a period where there was a lot of like, score and a lot of these films, just everywhere.

1:14:49Score of them. Entire swaths of music. Apparently according to this book, I was reading a lot of the Warner Brothers films too, because for whatever reason, old men were really loves. Score. Man, did it make me lean in? So yeah, score, the absence of score. Silence is filled moments. Obviously, like, what Hans Zimmer is done with the Nolan films, that's a whole beast unto itself. Huge. And it goes again to this idea that we're in this deeply collaborative art form where it could have absolutely worked in the moment on the day. But what with who knows? Lighting, sound, you then have to do ADRs for whatever reason the ADR doesn't work as well as you wanted.

1:15:35And it's not mixed as well as you wanted who knows? Have you ever done improv? Yes, I love it. What's that like? Well, in fact, I just saw these guys the other day who do this thing called improv Shakespeare, which is undeniably one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen. It's incredible. And talking about the aliveness of it, you always kind of feel like you're on the edge of a rope that you're climbing over some big crevasse. But having seen the Shakespeare trip, you were saying before you're like, doesn't matter how big or small your next inspiration is, follow it. And one of the things I was thinking, I was like, I think I'm going to be a weekly improv together because it's uh -oh much.

1:16:21That sounds great. Much fun. And with the small personal ideas, you'd never know where they lead. Ever. Sometimes the small things turn into something really big and important. Or like it's like this little pad will leave you to that and who knows the why and where a force of it. I mean, really what I've been thinking of mostly is I am a lover of like old Hollywood. And there's a part of me that wishes the studio system never changed. And you were visited on set by the, you know, the Harry Cones and the fucking Xanax. And you know, I, I, I romanticize all of that stuff. The fun thing about stuff like TikTok and all these things in an engage in is that the, the media CDDR form that titulates me that I'm so desperate to get in that sandbox again.

1:17:10It's like, why not just grab a camera come up with a four page story and just shoot it. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. I mean, did you watch TV growing up? Yeah, I have memory of the thinking cranberry cocktails eating stofers mac and cheese, watching either dark room duck, gummy bears, and the animated stuff for watching the team agron pie. I'm a man. I'm a man. I'm a man. I was great. I also love the rock for it files. That's oh my god. What else different strokes? I was fusion to murder. She wrote was big in my house. When peaks had come out like 91, I remember trying to sneak in after my parents put me to bed to watch that.

1:17:58I'm watching entertainment tonight while we dinner. And then my parents had sent me down in front of the TV on Saturdays and I watched this guy in KTLA. He's an old movie actor and he would do an old movie series like all day on Saturday or Sunday. I watch all of these like Elvis movies and watch watch all of these in my parents were off book on every and they still are on everybody. So they would remark on whatever character actor that was and what else he'd been in and who's the costume designer and what the under contract there and so it was so cool. How do you think the film and television business have changed since your dad's time till now?

1:18:44I'm incredibly so. They already changed basically in the early 90s. My father made his living really as a guest star actor and at a certain point with having been in the business for a while you build up your quotas. Anyone does. So you could make an incredible living as a middle class, upper middle class living as a guest star actor. And I don't know what the quote is now but it's like 5 ,000 a week or something. You could make 20 ,000 and then you're making a digital's on top of that. First of all, the residuals of the same amount of money that you made. The first time you made it, one word would decrease is down the road but still.

1:19:24And then at a certain point what happened is that they stopped paying. So your quote didn't matter. They'd only pay you minimum. They wouldn't even pay you scale plus 10. Scale plus 10 being in our business 10 % for the agent fees you would actually make the figure call it 5 ,000. So that business got wiped out and it's what's been happening for the past, I don't know, close to 30 years which is the kind of, the hurt and the pinch and the squeeze has happened to the middle class of actors. I guess you can see it all across the board in terms of in most different industries. And I'm probably a part of the problem because what's happened is that the people at the top get paid extraordinarily well.

1:20:08I think it probably happened around the time that Jim Carrey got the $20 million fee for people to hire something. Things just started to really wildly change financially in our business. That's been a big change but from the start of it my father came out to Los Angeles and was under contract universal. Where my grandmother was under contract ironically. Amazing. So you got paid a weekly stipend to go to acting class, singing class, right horseback, dancing, elacution and then you got to go audition for like Gunsmoke, Virginia and stuff. And that stopped I think in 68 or 69 maybe. I think it's pretty cool that I have a connection to really an older...

1:20:58Yeah, the history. Yeah. And really that history was the original system. It's not like and then there was the thing before it. It's like that was it. That was it. He was at the Crocs time. Right as the old studios were falling apart. Yeah. In the era of like the director centric. That's easy right -of -age in bowl. That's like yeah. That was Scorsese. I read that when it came out and I was listening to it again. What a great book. How many Captain Crocs have there been? I'm not off book on this but I want to say one, two, three, four. There's an original Captain Kirk before Shatter. Is that true?

1:21:41I think. That's amazing. I didn't know that. In the pilot? I may be wrong. Okay. But then there was him and then what's next? Me. You were next. You were second? I was second and then Paul. Who does it now for CBS? And then I think they're barely writing another movie for not our cast for need casts. It might have yet another one I'm not sure. When you play a character who's as familiar as Captain Kirk, how much does it need to be the Captain Kirk that you grew up watching? It was kind of buttress from that because I never really watched it growing up and I wasn't a big sci -fi guy at all. Except for Star Wars.

1:22:28So when I got it, I knew him as a cultural icon rather than as like a television actor and a television show. So I guess I thought it from a practical level. It would have been ridiculous to ask me to play a character of William Shatter just didn't make much sense. I guess in some regards, this was the origin story of what the original show was, but it just seemed kind of ludicrous. Now that having been said, like there's certain spock stuff that is very spock, so inevitably you're kind of going to be Leonard Nimoy and Carla Urban who played McCoy. It was a huge Star Trek fan. But I really had fun like, you know, JJ wanted me to pepper in some shatterisms and I did and they were great fun because it's like, yeah, he had a delicious human being.

1:23:21He's just like a guy that's eating up everything in front of him. So it's fun to like do those little things. I think I felt more pressure about the whole experience of it all and just like trying to lead my first thing in a ginormous film that I did particularly about the Shatter of it all. And I felt really, I trusted JJ a great deal. So if he wanted a bit more flavor, he, you know, would tell me, and if he didn't, didn't I felt like confident that it would work. Yeah, fun working with JJ. Oh my god. JJ's like, you know, yeah, yeah. He reminds me a lot of Tony Scott, what Tony Scott was, which is these like, Elfen like cinema lovers that are just bursting with so much joy and curiosity and engagement with what they're doing.

1:24:11That's like, they're always captaining the party. Yeah. Or he's always alive. Like, look what we're doing. So what we're doing, some of these, a great MC of creativity. I can think of anything you believe now. You didn't believe when you were younger. I guess that there is no equation for joy. You thought when you were younger, you thought there was one. Yeah, if X then Y, you know, I think with meditation is like a great example of that. It's the ultimate paradox of it, I think. You engage with the process of it. Yeah. You develop the practice of meditation. There's no beginning, ostensibly to achieve things.

1:24:55He's inner peace, inner quiet, a relationship with the spiritual, all these things. But in practice, it doesn't get you any of that. It's actually just a more, you are cultivating a more consistent sitting in the novel. Whatever that now is. Yes. When did you first learn meditation? 27. And what was the style? TM. And then I did multiple forms. A lot of deep breathing practice. A lot of it. That Wim Hof. I tried Wim Hof. Wim Hof actually gave me more anxiety than it did anything else. sorts of visualizations and stuff like that. And then I re -found TM and the Vedic form, which basically is just the same thing without the TM copyright.

1:25:44About four years ago, I've been doing that consistently. That's the Rache Yoga. Is that what you'd call it? No, it's this thing led by this guy, Tom Nolz. Tom was Maharishi's right hand for 30 -some odd years and then split with the organization over bureaucratic stuff, basically. And it's the same exact thing. Understood. What inspired you to learn when you were 27? You know, I'd heard about it and around I'd always struggled with anxiety and depression, intermixed and I'd tried deep breathing, which was super helpful, but then wanted to cultivate something else. How would you describe your spiritual life?

1:26:30I would describe it as deeply curious about the awesome unknown. I mean, everything from discussing meditation and the benefits, getting a bit more into the Vedic study and understanding that worldview and gets into some fascinating, a lot of stuff. In terms of a God, I would say I put faith in the existence of something, meaningful, large, ultimately loving, the rest of it I don't know. When did you grow the beard? I've been growing it, knowing that I was going to have to do some media, rest stuff for my film. I'm in love with it. If your new project involves a character without a beard, would you just happily shave it off?

1:27:34It seems that I'm not wanting to go back to work. Okay. So that's cool. I don't want you to go back to work, but you're also clearly antsy about what's next. It's like my fucking crucible. I've talked to my therapist all the time. I refrained with the other day. It's almost like addiction in the sense that I'm looking for a way to escape. It's a great way to escape. It's creativity. It's nonetheless looking for an outlet. Forget about now. This pickle that I'm in is I know a important one. It's getting my household, like paying attention to that static and making a relationship with that static and asking the static what the static is about.

1:28:29If we do this party, what are we looking for? I've had a real easy with that dance.

From the publisher

Chris Pine is a multifaceted actor with a Zen-like presence on screen. He’s perhaps best known for his charismatic portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk in the Star Trek reboot film series and Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman. He began his career with small roles in TV shows like ER and CSI: Miami before making his feature film debut in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. He made his directorial debut with the 2023 movie Poolman, which he also co-wrote and starred in. Along with director Joss Whedon, he created the viral video "If Congress Was Your Co-Worker," a satirical video that encourages viewers to exercise their right to vote.

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