Tom Hanks

28:47And he would do things like show all three James Dean movies in one night. Nothing but Nicholas Ray movies for one night. Nothing, you know, nothing but true faux movies for one night. And everybody started getting the three month long calendars and putting them up on the refrigerators or the bulletin board to just say, I'm gonna see that one, I'm gonna see that one, I'm gonna see that one. And I did go into those things by myself because I couldn't get anybody else interested in going to see, you know, East of Eden and Rebel Without A Cause and giant all in the same night. But shit, I did, because I, This was all brand new stuff for me.

29:27The biggest thing that happened when I was 13, I was seeing 2001 a space Odyssey. I saw it one weekend with some friends of mine, and I immediately went back the next Saturday to see it by myself because that was a blend of nothing but shots, color, sound, not even a lot of dialogue. And I had to see it probably 15 times, but I'd understand what was really going on with it. but from the get bill from the very first moment. I, without knowing that I was watching cinematic art, without calling it cinematic art, bang, hit me on the head just like that. I said, oh, something else is being communicated here in a completely different way.

30:05And I think I get it. Yeah, the idea that something that abstract could speak to you when you were that young says a lot. At the age of 13, yeah. Yeah. I had a tendency to isolate a lot because I was the youngest in the family. A lot of times I just got lost in the shuffle and a lot of times I was the only one home alone. And I was never bored when I was there. And I'd take some degrees of loneliness or something like that might have crept in. But I filled up that loneliness with some other degree. It left just a call it a type of curiosity that was different from going to school. I loved going to school.

30:42School was action, man. School was fun. and you know, if you had a couple of classes you liked, that's all you needed to get out of it. But it was where things were popping, and I was always able to kind of like get up in front of people like it was nothing at all. But that was counterbalanced by long, long hours of being alone and creating stories sometimes with toys, but sometimes just with the TV on, not really paying attention what was going on on it, but periodically looking at it and taking in this kind of like a subjective concept of image and sound and why something seemed really accurate, not authentic and why other times it just seemed as fake as fake could be.

31:21And both of them would hold my attention for one. Were you a big reader as well? I became a big reader when I was in high school. And I started reading what I like to say nonfiction novels by the likes of Leon Yeritz who wrote historical things like Exodus, This is a Mela 18, which was about the Warsaw ghetto in World War II. Armageddon, which was about the divided city that Berlin was. Exodus was about the formation of Israel. Then I would read Alex Haley books, you know, airport, hotel, wheels about, you know, certain types of industry. And they were all sort of like turbulent, turgid soap operas.

32:07But along with it too, it comes some sense of news reporting, some sense of facts, some sense of history that really got super shifted when I read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I just, it was one of those things. I knew it was a movie. I knew adults watched it. There was a book in the Skyline High School library that I said, I'm going to give this a shot. And it scared the living daylights out of me. And I read it in record time. It was one of those things that see kids reading on the bus on the way home from school. and started goofing off. That's what I was, what I was reading in cold blood.

32:42And it just terrified me. The randomness of it, what had happened to that family, the two guys that did it. And no, no small amount of what, the pros of Truman Capote and the what he made up and what he kept, you know, what he fancied and what he imagined was all in there. And, uh, man, oh man, after that, I would say my reading tastes really shifted because I started, I never read fantasy. I never read the Lord of the Rings. I didn't read that kind of stuff. If it didn't happen, or if it wasn't based on some sort of real thing, it wouldn't hold my interest. Would you read nonfiction as well or no?

33:19I'm gonna say no, because I don't think I read really serious nonfiction books until I was probably in my early 20s and read William Manchester's biographies on Winston Churchill. William Manchester is a great storyteller, scholarly in ways that you need to be scholarly, but more than anything else is like, oh, this guy told a story about Winston Churchill at dinner last night that I didn't want to end. And what the op, it opens up, I remember, distinctly remember, it opens up with like almost a time machine trip back to Victorian England that was describing the daily life of your average Londoner at a time when Victoria was still on the throne.

34:06And this was this was the era in which Winston Churchill was born. And it talked about among other things how filthy the Jin ghettos in London, or you know what a Jin ghettos is? A Jin ghettos is where all the poor people live who can't afford beer because it's expensive, but can't afford gin because it's made so cheaply. So they were all drunk on gin all the time. It was their version of pot or their version of something. And I just thought huge swaths of poor, uneducated, illiterate people who are toiling around in sweatshops and stuff like that are working is butlers or you know in that in that class service economy that the Britain was.

34:52And I just remember thinking, gin ghettos, man, oh man, that's a different sort of way of looking at social. So that I would say that's the that's the the bona fide nonfiction history. And after that man, I just I throw I can only get through certain nonfiction books because they're not written, I've tried to read Barbara Tuckman's, a distant mirror, and the guns of August so many times, and I just can't crack at about 120 pages. The story is what drives your interest. Yeah, and also I think what the author finds fascinating. For example, Stephen Ambrose, I started reading Stephen Ambrose back when we started doing Stephen Private Ryan.

35:38and I met him, I think it's the desire to see history as a story that reflects who we are even now. Stephen Ambrose told this great story. He went to the university at some New Orleans or something in order to be pre -med, right? He was going to go pre -med be a doc. And you had to take this one history class, the first class, and it's probably like 200 200 people in the class. And the professor came out and gave his first lesson for an hour. And it was so mesmerizing talking about history and the importance of history and moments from history that Stephen Ambrose said he went down at the end of the class to the teacher's desk and said, how do I get your job?

36:28That's what he said. He understood history is this great story that is about who we are right now. It's not locked away in some ongoing nostalgia. It's not about the mythic formation that never would have happened any other way. It's about people trying to get by doing one damn thing after the other in the face of terror or accident or trying to get out of a gin ghetto so you can improve your life.

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38:29It's also interesting when you read history from different periods of time about the same period of time. The history changes based on the culture of the time it's being written And then the perspective on what is important and what the connections were at the time. I just had this experience because I've read this book by William Manchester many times called a world that only by fire. I talk about it. The first time I read it, which is essentially about what life was like back at the end of the 14 months, right? It's about the 15th century that coincides beautifully with the start of the Renaissance and how people lived.

39:11And how if you were, if you were an average Joe, meaning if you weren't landed gentry, if you weren't the clergy and if you weren't a soldier, essentially you work yourself to death and we're hungry all the time. That's it. And you never traveled more than a few miles from the place you were born. So you always died pretty much right there. And yet at the same time, Gutenberg has invented the printing press. Martin Luther has come through with breaking with the papacy. Magellan has sailed around the world and essentially the Renaissance has begun and chances are if there's a cathedral being built in Your town either in Germany or Italy or France or Spain Your grandparents worked on that cathedral and your grand kids will work on that cathedral because that's how long it takes to build them right Why did I read that and I've gone back over and over over again because I ended up spending some time in places where it takes place You know, I made a movie in Rome, I made a movie in Florence, I lived in London, I did all these kind of things.

40:12So I was always reading it for this ongoing sort of like background to get an understanding of the difference between now and then. And I just now finished reading a book called The Swerve by historic and by name of Stephen Greenblatt, who I met not too long ago when I was in Boston. And I said, I've heard of you. I wrote this book called The Swerve. I said, I have a copy of The Swerve that I have a crack. So I opened it and it is another window on that same period of time. And it's not so much thematically different, but it ends up getting into a very different sort of the division between the halves and the have not.

40:52I mean, it's about the ongoing aspect of what how crooked the papacy was, how insane everything, how often you did not want to be called a heretic. you didn't want to be accused of being a heretic, as if you question anything about the church, you died a horrible death, and everybody showed up to watch and be entertained by how you were flayed alive or burned alive or drawn to important. And it didn't so, I think all these kind of historical things they pile up on each other. And when even when they do disagree, like if you can read your average history of like, say, the Apollo space program, there's a lot of stuff in there that people disagree with each other, you know, historical data and also thematically.

41:32But you put it all together. What it is, is just more of a complete picture that, you know, there's no definitive definition of what it is. With the same one damn thing after another that people went through back then, it's everybody's arguing still about the one damn thing after another that mattered the most. And it's all part of this big massive card game that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. And I can't get enough of that. I mean, I got to say, my wife, Rita says, what historical book are you reading now? And I said, you don't want to ask that question because I'm going to start talking and I won't stop for the next hour and 45 minutes because I'm finding out nothing but fascinating stuff.

42:11And it put us all about, I always think about this, what would I do if I was in that same circumstance? You know, what would I do for a living if I were back there? What would I be interested in that? What courage would I have and what stands would I do? We'll need to take. And, uh, ain't that kind of like, uh, the best version of any kind of, when you hear a story, well told, isn't that sort of like part of the contract between the storyteller and the person who was hearing the story is what would you do in these same circumstances? I don't know about that. I think that's fascinating. That says a lot about you because when I read, when I read a historical story, I never imagined myself in that story ever.

42:53Seriously. Maybe you would if you read the next one. If you read another interpretation of what those same time, sorry. Some of them, of course, they do concentrate on the turgid. They do want to be involved in the specific, like, okay, say, for example, I've read plenty of stuff about D -Day. All right? Part of it was for research. Part of it because I'm fast and anti -but there's other thing. I need to hear a little bit more about this stuff. And even there, there's some moments I never think for a moment. What would that mean if it, but there's other times I've read it. It's like, if I'm 20 years old.

43:28And this is the first time I've seen combat, which is on D -Day, what do I do? What do I trust? How afraid am I? What dumb thing would I do? And you also have to consider the fact, what if I just crawled up in a hole and stayed there for as long as possible. I never put myself. All of these things are possible because we don't know. And even when I see like, go to go into the movies. And look, there's plenty of movies that are just sheer action adventure and you want to be cool. And you want to kiss the girl and shoot the guy and ride the motorcycle and pet the dog. You want to do all those. But then there's other aspects of it.

44:08We just think, who would I be in this story? Would I be the hero? Would I be the villain? Would I be the goat? Would I be the coward? what would I do if I was in these same kind of like circumstances? And isn't that... when I see those type of movies and they come out, that's the stuff that you end up talking with your friends heatedly about, you know, over coffee afterwards, sir. The next time you all get together. When you read a script, are you focusing on the story of the script or are you paying attention to what your character would do and is it right for you? It's the theme is the first thing that has to be evident.

44:45And that theme then, if it's definable, has to then be worthy of doing all the work of a movie in order to examine it. What are we talking? What's the option here? I will tell you, I made a movie called Charlie Wilson's War. It was written by Aaron Sarkin, was directed by Mike Nichols. We talked theme constantly about, and I don't know that we agreed. I'm telling you that right now. I don't know what you're going to agree to. Greed upon. And actually, Charlie Wilson was alive. I mean, he was around. He, I talked to him all the time about Charlie, what were you doing here? What was the point of all of this kind of stuff?

45:26After you understand what everybody sort of has to agree that this is the movie that we're making, you have to come to a collective thing. Once you agree what the movie is making, then anything you bring to what that question is going to be as valid, because there's no right way. Because it's literally, how do we solve this problem? It's like a scientific thing. How many different ways can we come at examining this theme? After that, then most screenplays are very malleable, you know, because you get together with them. They're written by, usually written by somebody and directed by somebody else.

45:59And if you're doing it right, you're always, always, always testing the material. The work that I feel like I have to do as the actor is, number one, show up on time. This is very important because time is money. You have to know the text and by text, I mean certainly your own dialogue. But also that of everything else that is going on within the scene, what other people are doing and what they mean by what they say, you have to know that. But you also have to have an idea in your head that you haven't told anybody about, that you haven't shared with anyone. You have to come in with an understanding of what your character is, what he was doing right up to that point, what is experiencing in the course of what the scene and then what he does with that information.

46:50And it constantly varies. It always goes on you can you can prepare for it for up to a certain, but it's not unlike writing. except you don't, I don't, you don't have to sit down at the laptop, you don't have to come up with 1500 words every morning. But you do have to come up with the superstructure. I like to use those kind of words. Those, these superstructure for what happens in that scene. And there's very, actually very little that you can bring out in sort of the verbiage of it. There is the interpretation of the lines. There's the give and take with the other characters. There's also body language.

47:30There is how you stand, how you sit, how you, I'll, this today is an effect I was just having lunch, and I found myself holding a fork and a knife, and I'm thinking about this possibility that we might be doing in like the next year or so, and I just thought, hey, I think this is the way he eats. I think he holds his knife and fork like that. Oh, I'm gonna remember this, because what it will communicate something that is so ephemeral. Now, maybe no one will get it, but as long as I present it, that means that behavior is up there on the screen. So, when you get around to the story, the story is plot and all honesty, and that stuff is given take.

48:12You kind of like make that stuff up on the day. Why are you coming in and why do I go to the window? And what happens when he comes in and says that? But that is literally the easiest stuff in order to discuss. The harder philosophical arguments that you can have with everybody on the movie of your smart, the director, the writer, everybody else's, and even the cinematographer. I mean, I've had talked about theme with the guys who are bringing the props in. It's like, wait, I think eat smoked Chesterfield's guys. Why Chesterfields? You gotta know something about Chesterfields. They never had a filter on them.

48:47And yet they weren't the cheap version like Lucky Str - You know, you can have all this kind of stuff when you're going on. But then the unspoken part is what you're carrying around inside your head. You know, good act is great. I've never worked with anybody that I didn't just respect like crazy. And I don't care who they are. I know that they're coming in with unspoken story in their pocket, ideas that I'm going to have to react to and divine simply by how they look at me, what their timing is like and how authentic the scene is. And when that's man, it's just, it's just man, it's not work at all.

49:23Would you say that there's a whole unspoken story going on between the actors that the person you're acting with has no idea about. They're doing the same thing. You have no idea what they're doing other than the surface. We know what the surface is, but everything below the surface is just happening. I'll use the word adlib even though it's silent. You're absolutely correct and I wish sometimes a movie could actually show all the takes that have gone on either side of somebody, right? Because they only use one. That's a movie. Yeah, but that's an interesting movie idea. If it's a movie about making movies and showing all of that, it's really interesting.

50:08You know, there's been a couple of movies that did. I want to say The Hale Caesar by the Cohen brothers captured it at one moment with George Clooney at the end when he's playing the Centurion at the crucifixion of Christ. And I want to say in Moll hall and drive, I want to say Naomi Watts does it in a scene with Chad Everett, which it's literally talking about the making of a movie. You could say the same maybe for Truffauts, Day for Night, but it's never really been captured anywhere else. It's just sort of one of the reasons why I wrote the book the way I did. But what happens is you're in there connected with somebody.

50:45Sometimes it's a woman, sometimes it's a guy, sometimes it's a bunch of guys, sometimes it's a group of people who are just going back and forth. If you could be present and see the difference between what you have just learned from the previous take and what you're going to try in this one and the ongoing back and forth of, you know, it's like a game of blackjack. Hit me. Oh, I'm going to stand. Oh, no, I'm going to. It is fascinating. And it's one of the most exciting thing that happens in a set because sooner or later, right, you're in a close -up, okay? And the close -up is never the first thing shot.

51:21You've done all sorts of other things. So you have a you have a wide understanding of where you can go in the scene. But if you if you are off camera looking at your scene partners and you get a sense of how far they stretch things and how how they change it around and how they give you something else and how they've discovered it themselves. When you come back around on on you, you remember it and then you start throwing other stuff back the same way and it's too bad that you could make, I accidentally might make a really great documentaries. If we can get, we have all 17 takes, you know, from both sides of this.

52:01Let's look at the other scene that this movie could have been. I mean, you could take the greatest motion picture scenes in the history. If you want to choose a couple of other takes that they did, it's completely different scene and need something totally different and doesn't have any of what it. But you can't get to that final version. Of course, you don't get to make the decision either because somewhere between the directors and the editors and then and certainly the film score or everything else that goes along with it, alter -sleep it. But just the actors themselves, I think have this moment where, in their line, in their scene, in their moment, in the creative beat in the scene, they can change the direction of the entire movie with a knot of the head or a pause in the line, or in a new presentation of, I think, what the subtext is, because all scenes are made up of two things.

52:49Text, that's the words, and subtext, which is what those words mean as you say the meaning given moments, fascinating stuff. And when it, you know, sometimes it's intimidating. I've worked, I've worked with people who just scared the living daylights at it because they're so good at what they've done. And there's other times where I just said, I don't know where that came from, or I'm glad I stumbled upon it because I think it's actually something I didn't even see come.

53:15Has there ever been a moment where you've tried something in one take, a throwaway moment that you didn't do in later takes, but for some reason that one thing that you didn't think much of ends up being pivotal in a movie or a memorable scene or a emotional moment. It happens all the time and it happens by accident and sometimes it's something that you did sort of remember trying that wasn't in the screenplay. I'll give you one. And by the way, no one's seen this movie. He says, I made a movie with Emma Watson that was directed by James Poncell from the Dave Eger's movie, The Circle, about an internet kind of thing was around for a while.

53:55There's a scene with me and Patina Oswald and Emma Watson, and we're internet moguls that are trying to convince this woman to do something that is not honest, right? And she has a soul over the barrel. And we did the scene and we, that's a great actor and, uh, an image incredibly, incredibly gifted. And the three of us were having a really great time going around in this thing because it was a, it was a triangle. Patten wondered something. I wanted something. She wanted something and none of them meshed, right? And at the end of it, on just out of nowhere when before was cut, it was the end of the scene.

54:34In character, I looked at, uh, Patten and I said, and we are so fucked. And he said, yes, we are. And it ended up being the moment that the scene called for somehow. And it wasn't in the script. It was not in the script at all. It was. And I think that's one version of it. But when I worked with, I've worked twice now with Paul Greengrass, he directed United 91, he directed Captain Phillips and made a movie called News of the World with him as well. Well, he made Bloodie's Sunday. He's a great filmmaker. And he came out of documentaries. And when we were doing the Captain Phillips movie, we shot everything that was in this script for the end of the film.

55:20And we were on the ship, and we were actually talking to the actual participants of the day when Captain Phillips was rescued from the Somali pirates and everything that went along with it. And we were talking to the Captain, who was actually in command of the ship, that rescued Richard Phillips. And Paul, Paul, who's English, he says, when exactly did you first have a convert? He was looking for something else to shoot, no, honestly. We had shot everything that was on paper. And we're just saying, we're here on the ship. We got a few hours. What else can we grab, which is a great way in order to make it film?

55:56And the captain said, well, of course, I was busy with the Department of Defense and all the Navy seals and whatnot. So I didn't see Phillips until we got out of the infirmary. And Paul regressed the infirmary. Yeah. And he said, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, the protocols is is that all of that, anybody coming off some like that, he's got to be, he got to be looked at the medics to find out, you know, if he's injured or anything. And we had never heard this. Didn't know it. Wasn't in the book. Wasn't anywhere. And so we went down to the infirmary, you know, with Barry, with Barry Acroyd, who was our DP, me and Paul.

56:35And we walked into the folks that were on duty. And the woman I think her name was Cynthia and her staff. She was in command of the infirmary. And we walked in and it was like they knew we were on the boat. The ship and they wanted to maybe be in the movie. And you know, because we're moving in the bulkheads around the deck and stuff like that. And it's oh my god, hi. So Paul started saying, this is can I ask you a question? You know, the story, right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, phythops would have been brought to you in order for a checkup. What would you have done? And she just snapped into what we would immediately try to do is get all these vital signs.

57:11We'd try to clean them up. We would have tried to figure out what blood was his. Was he injured? Had he been shot? Did he have any stab wounds? Was he malnurved? Was he dehydrated? We would just do the whole all over all thing. And he said, you would actually have a procedure for this is, oh yeah, yeah, it would be standard. He said, well, if we dress Tom up in all of his kit, he said, you know, blood stains ripped up shirt the whole bit. Do you think you could, we could do it with you? And she said, you mean like on camera? And he said, yeah, that would be like a drill. Could you just do it as a drill?

57:45And she said, yeah, I suppose so. And it's great. And by that time, very accurate was he worked with Paul before so he was sticking up lights everywhere right so no you know if we come around because a very small space I mean very tiny space and so I went off and got all my kit put back on and came and then by that time we had shot so much of me beaten slapped around and beat up by the the the guys who played the Somali pirate so I was pretty much corked I was I was still still carrying that all around with me and we did it the first the first past we didn't go very far because they were nervous and they were bit intimidated.

58:24And they said, no worries, no worries, worries. And I just gave a said, look, this happens all the time. I've done it. You can't do anything wrong here. If it's not good, it won't be in the movie. Just try to say it straight out of your face because that's all we're trying to do. And if you think I haven't stopped the take in the middle of it because I'm not there, you're wrong, I do it all the time. So this is the way this is the way movies are made. And we did it. We probably did three or four takes of it and every time it was her protocol, her behavior, and it was as natural as natural could be.

58:56And we were done in about 40 minutes. And that was the epitome of understanding what the procedure is, getting somebody to do the actual physical behavior of it, but exploring another way to get deeper, deeper down into the theme of the movie, which in that scene was particularly a very gentle, pleasant human being, a woman telling Richard Phillips that you're going to be okay. You're okay. Which is like, I mean, come on. There's a lot of movie makers that would not have done that. There were a lot of people who had been satisfied with what they had, who would think, well, we have these other scenes that can be the end of the movie.

59:38We'll figure something out. And that's a type of thing that if I had not had one absolute faith in Paul, as well as a shitload of experience of how to get there when the time comes that you have to get there. We would have missed out on that. And I also had had so many conversations with the actual Richard Phillips that I had plenty of written imaginings in my head of what he had been through and what he had seen and they all came out in the scene that was not in the script and was not on the shooting schedule and was only in the movie because Barry Acroid is fast with a lighting. All this fantastic was seeing what the possibilities are and the crew that was inside there only behaved according to the protocol.

1:00:29And some people would say, why would we do something so realistic like that? It's a movie we can do something. Do you always do a lot of research before going into a role? There is some that you have to do and there's others that you must not. For example, I made a movie called The Green Mile, directed by Frank Garibond, Stephen Kignaval, and as soon as I began doing research and what the character was, I realized that the authentic truth about being a guard on death row into Louisiana State Prison would not match up with a motion picture. So I just stopped. I said, okay, we're going to make up our own logic on this.

1:01:04And it was a good thing I did, because I think that's a long prison movie that is still pretty damn hypnotic, if you stick with it. So you have to, that's where you come into, like what I said earlier, everybody has to agree with the movie that they're making. They have to say, this is what we're doing. And if I hadn't said, guys, I can't make this movie because Louisiana guards on Death Road did not wear uniforms, they didn't have guns on their bolsters. Well, if you're gonna do that, you ain't in the movie. And you kinda like Wonderwell, this is the better way to examine this theme in this other way.

1:01:39Yeah, and you then you go because you can establish your own procedure and behavior, but everybody has to agree with what that procedure and behave. How different are different directors stylistically? None has ever been the same as the other. Part of it is, all directors come to their gig from some other perspective. You know, some are writers, you know, nor Efron was a writer. from books to screenplays to the movies that you Frank Deribont started off as he was a guy in charge of Swing Gang art direction. That's how he got into the movies. He started doing you know making sure the the right wallpaper was in it Ron Howard grew up, you know, he knew he wanted to be a director when he was seven years old doing the anti -grifits show We you know with Barney five Stephen, of course, Stephen Spielberg, he started directing movies when he was 10 and still directs them the same exact way as he did then still does it with the same natural instinct.

1:02:42I guess the question is, is how do they approach it? And I've done movies where we had three and a half weeks of rehearsal in which the set is taped out on the floor and you have props and you run the scenes and you do rehearse it and you get it downward perfect so that when the day comes you're doing it. I've done movies where all we did for three and a half weeks was to sit around and talk about what other characters mean and what they do. Stephen doesn't rehearse for a moment. Stephen assumes that you're going to show up. You're going to know the dialogue and he will tell you where you are in the shot.

1:03:16And guess what turns out he's done all the work for you because the shot tells the entire story and you are but a cog in it. I'm very lucky, I think, that because I came from Reptory Theater, when I was young, working with a lot of directors, our job was to facilitate the director's desires. Not wait for the director to tell us exactly what to do. Because if you're doing that kind of thing where you're going to say, hey, why didn't you move to the window, right? Well, why would I move to the window? What's my motivation for moving to, no, you can't do it that way. He says, hey, anyway, any way you can move to the window in this scene, I always say, watch this.

1:03:56And then I'll come up with my own reason to watch the move go out the window. And he asked me, why do you want to do it? I'll tell you, because I really suddenly realize I'll let the window down in my car. And it's part of, I want to see if anybody's breaking. I can come up with any motor. That's my job. That's my job. But the grand refreshment, if I could use it that way, is that everybody does this things, does this differently. And everybody brings to it a different sort of challenge and comfort level. And that's part of the magic of the variety that you're gonna make. Sometimes movies cannot be made any other way, except in this incredibly artificial atmosphere, of blue screens and hitting marks and focus places and stuff like that.

1:04:42Well, I made a comedy with, oh man, I have a cranial plate shift. I'll scream his name out in a second. You know, he was at Sinmetagra, the Godfather. Gordon Willis for crying out loud. All right, so we're making the money picked, right? We're making a comedy called The Money Pick. It was about a couple that buys a house and it destroys them financially and almost destroys them. That's a big, huge comedy directed by Richard Benjamin. And he says, Gordon Willis is gonna shoot it. And I thought, Gordon Willis? Gordon Willis is going to shoot the money pit with our funny gags and our repartee and stuff like that.

1:05:21And when I finally, when I met him, I said, Gordon, I'm going to ask you a question. Why did you want to shoot this movie? And he said, because there's no reason that comedies can't be well shot. So what he was saying is, I'm going to bring all of the composition and lighting and camera moves to a comedy that you'd bring to any great story. And of course, he made the greater Woody Allen move. He said, you'd have to say those were comedies too. And it was because it was Gordon Willis, I was going to do anything that man said. And it was incredibly limiting. There was a way I noted a hit in Mark for Gordon Willis that didn't have just to be accurate.

1:06:02It had to be precise. Gordon Willis would be looking through. He measured every shot from the length of the floor to what the actual lens was. and he would literally move his finder six inches or up or down or to the left. And there was a huge difference between each one of those positions. And I would be on my mark, thinking I was on my mark, and he would be looking through it, and he would say, Tom, you're not on your mark. And it was because my weight was on my left foot, instead of my right foot. All right, you think, well, that's still to find. No, it's not. It's actually liberating. Because when you get to the place where you realize it requires that amount of fidelity, that means you do a shitload of other stuff with your shoulders and your eyes and the tone of your voice and whatever you're getting from that point with Shelley Long's in the movie with me and in it up being and that you have to go and be remolded into the type of artist and the type of professional have to be certainly by the material.

1:07:03It's always different certainly by the DP, you know, but along with a director itself. I have worked with the same director a number of times. I worked with Penny Marshall twice. I worked with Bob Semeckis five times. I worked with Steven five times. I worked with Nora. I worked with Ron Howard many times and I just played with other people. I say, hey, let's get back. What do you got? Let's do some more stuff. Tom Tiffer. I worked with him on Cloud Atlas and hologram for the king because once you get past the way they work in the and the vocabulary of working, you're that farther ahead down the process.

1:07:38And so you get to unleash all this other, you get to go deeper into farther, you don't have to do just A, B and C or actually working in other letters of the alphabet is incredibly liberating.

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1:09:27When the camera is on you for a close -up and it's an emotional scene and there's no dialogue and your eyes are telling the story. And it feels like every movie I see of yours, that happens, where there'll be a decent length shot, where we're just looking at your face, we're looking at your eyes, and we're going along with the whole story that you're telling. Are you telling the story that we're watching? Are you telling yourself something about your own life? Or what's going on in you when we're watching your eyes? The insanity of all of this is that a scene like that could have been shot three weeks prior and you're thinking about something totally different.

1:10:14But that size, that background is the shot that is needed for a scene that hasn't even been shot in. They put it together in heaven. The fact is it works both ways and I can walk you through any number of mine, is it said? We didn't shoot that that day. That wasn't in that. That was a completely different thing. But the other side of it, it also works when all you're doing is being in the scene, being in the story, taking it in exactly as it is playing itself out at that very, very specific moment. The thing that you learn or not, I don't want to say learn because it makes it seem possible that almost anybody can do it, is the thing that you divine over time.

1:11:03is an acceptance that it can work both ways, but that there is some difference, I think, in your own sense of authenticity, when it all comes together in the scene on the day that you are shooting it. The other thing that comes along, where they do have to, that you have to understand is sometimes it don't work at all. Sometimes you think you got it and you've nailed it. And then they put it together and it just ain't there. There's nothing you can do about it. It's not. But there's any number of moments where I thought, oh, this is the big close up. This is the big banger here. I better be there for the big banger.

1:11:46I gotta get there for this one. And there's something about the scene that doesn't land. Not necessarily anybody's fault. It's just something in the mix. It's like you're playing cards and you think, oh my God, I've got a full hand. I've got three threes and two sevens. I'm gonna win this and you lose because somebody else has two queens and three tents, you know. That happens all the time. So there remains this ephemeral sense of magic and serendipity that comes into play all the time. At the same time, there are moments where you got to go there, man. And if it is, how do you do that scene where blah blah blah happen?

1:12:27And I said, I'll tell you how. I went there. That's why it happened. And then you also witness other people going there as well. People are in the scene that you're in. And you say, undeniable, that person right there just went to a place that was so so profoundly deep and spiritual. And then you see it when the end of the flight coming when the movie comes out. You say, hey, I was there when they did that. And I hope given the same circumstances, I can get there as well because I can walk you through. Like, you know, if you make enough movies, you can just say, no, no, no, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, not quite, not quite.

1:13:10No. Yes, yes, yet you can, you get to do that. But I wish there was some other way around it. But oftentimes you just have to go there. In terms of going there, the actor you're against goes there. And now you're responding. Is there a sense of competition or is there a sense of this is really happening and I'm in it? Do you get carried away in the moment or is it something else? I can only respond because of the way things have been as I become more and more in tune to I think whatever instrument I get to bring to it. And also the fact that I have I've only said yes to things that I have immediately been fascinated by as soon as I read them forever or or when did that start.

1:14:07Oh, no, no, I'm going to say that, you know, it started at some point where number one, I felt that I needed to go farther and I didn't have to start worrying about, you know, financial aspects of it. And I realized that I didn't have to take every job that the job to be a writer and I think the job to be an artist just to make a different type of judicial choice. And that honestly went to, I'm going to say somewhere around a poll, sometime around working with Penny Marshall. I just, I'm big, I just realized there's a whole type of movie that I don't want to do. And not that I knew what type of movie I did want to do, but there was a type of theme.

1:14:45There's type of movie that was going to examine a theme in a way that that's the type of, those are the type of people that I wanted to work. And that's the type of movie that I wanted to make. Even in the confines of something that are just kind of like, rich, norting scavenger hunts like the Da Vinci code or something like that. There's actually a logic in the theme that I got to explore even in those movies. But as time has gone by, I have been able to, I think, gravitate towards a different sort of focus so that there's a ton of stuff I just don't even notice anymore. I don't see the camera crews anymore.

1:15:20I don't see the carnival that a movie is. I don't see the tools. I don't see the booms. I was in a movie. I was doing a thing, my name made a movie called Fench with Miguel Sapochnick, me and an actor by that name of Caleb Landry Jones and a dog. That's all that we were in. It was just the three of us in this movie. And we were shooting a very tight scene in an RV in the boom operator, the guy who had the mic because we were doing stuff with a dog or something like that. And I kind of looked up and I saw something new for the first time in this scenario of a camera and a focus puller and boom up.

1:15:55There's always a bunch of people there. And I stopped seeing them long ago. And the new thing in it was was a the boom up the boom operator was wearing sunglasses. And I can't remember his name, but I said something like Steve, what's with the sunglasses? And he said, oh, this is because I don't want to distract you with where my eyes are. And I said, dude, that is so caring. That is so thoughtful of you. That is magnificent. But all I can see now is a parasympath. So he took him off. But what he was doing was he realized that in type quarters like that, for other people, you know, I'd be distracted by it.

1:16:43And I don't see that kind of stuff anymore. So I think over the course of the last, I'm gonna say 20 years of doing it. I'll say since, since maybe, I don't know when it, some movie this all began to sort of like kick. And maybe when I started working with Bob Zamekis where it just became, hey man, you just gotta be there. I need you to be there. I need to be my soulmate in this. And I need, I see what you're trying to do. I need you to just be there. And somewhere around there I stopped seeing all that other, you know, debris that can get in the way of what you're trying to do. I don't see the lights.

1:17:16I don't get the sense. And to me, it's more so now that it's just me and whoever I'm in the scene with just like that. I feel lucky. No, it's a great skill to develop. And I imagine the only way to get that is through years and years and years and years until they disappear. Well, I think there are some geniuses level. You know, I think there are people who do it quite naturally. I've never been one of them. You know, I remember when I was auditioning for stuff, you know, and I said, unemployment, you know, and that they needed a job. I remember going into audition circumstances and thinking just for my own benefit, I'm better than 50 % of these people here.

1:17:52You see all these guys who are my age and my height, my color or whatever it is, I'm better than 50 % of it right now. They should just leave. If there's 100 guys, 50 of you can go, just take off right now. Believe. Then I would look at them and say, you know what? And there's there's 45 of you guys that I'm just as good as. So if I'm to write, if I'm louder, if I'm funnier, if I'm quiet or whatever it is, I got the same exact shot at this than you guys do. So if I get the job, tough titties, guys, I was in the right place with the right time. But then there's always four guys that you cannot touch.

1:18:32They are geniuses and they are on some other kind of like stellar plane. And I've worked with people that are like that. I just I don't know how they do it, but they are operating on some other formula one fuel here. And that if I watch them carefully, I can emulate them and go from emulation into invitation to actually a genuine reinterpretation of how to do this on my own. And that's also part of the grand as magic of doing all this. And sometimes I'm going to tell you right now, it comes out of people that, Why does this role have somebody this brilliant in it? Oh, I say because he's the best person or she's the best person for what this role is and it was meant to be.

1:19:18And I'm just gonna watch this and carry on with it. I'm gonna try to do it like these people. But it's not just an invitation thing. He said, how do you get to a place where you're so comfortable in this moment? They're artists, man, and they don't need to explain it. And I don't think they probably couldn't explain it if they wanted to. How different is performing on stage versus acting in movies? The great thing about performing on stage is that you get to start at the beginning every single night and you get to ride it out to the very end. I haven't, recently I was on Broadway in 2013 in a play called Lucky Guy, Fandalous Ensemble directed by George Wolf.

1:19:56And I played Fall Staff in a great production of Henry IV, part one and two with the Shakespeare Cinalace Anders directed by Dan Sullivan. And in both of those, there was an single individual performance that was the same as the next one, because you go out at the beginning and something happens in the cookery of that audience and that night and that moment. And you can hear it, you can sense it. There are a little bit behind us. So let's lay it out a little bit more specifically. There are a little bit ahead of us. So we can pick this up or they are so into this all we have to do is be real and they are going to get it Hands down.

1:20:39No no performance lasts a send -in amount of time nothing rides exactly nothing lands exactly the same time You can celebrate or you look at Bruce Springsting on and in one of his shows You know that everybody's gonna be in their feet, you know for a couple of those songs that he pulls out and And those exist in any broad way, any theatrical show you that you have some moments that this scenario here, this is the well made place. So let's ride this baby out. Let's celebrate it. But then you have to go into whatever the next beat is and it's completely different. I think it's the purest life that an actor can have.

1:21:14You're in charge. No one is cutting around you. It's your speed. It's your voice. And at any individual moment, it's your interpretation of what the language is. I think the thing that's more important when you're doing something on stage is that you have to be in tune with the rest of the ensemble. Everybody has to mesh. It has to be a beautiful orchestra. And everybody's got to come in with their lines so perfect because even if you're just playing French horns, there's a moment where the most important thing you're hearing is the French horns. I was on a in the play that I did on Broadway. There was a scene between me and Peter Garrity.

1:21:52Peter Garrity is a great, great old actor and he and I had done a number of things. He was in Charlie Wilson's War. And we were out on stage and we had a scene together at the end of the first act every single night for about 162 performances. And we were out, I'm gonna say, somewhere around performance 72. I heard him for the first time. You know, I heard what he said and how he said it for the first time. And the reason I heard it for the first time is because he just put some other kind of hitch in it for that performance. And it was a difference between hearing a line in a scene that leads to my cue and hearing an idea in a scene that was actually about two people talking to one another and after After that, it was like, oh, Katie, by the door, it said, oh, I get, oh, I've experienced this thing now.

1:22:48Every night we get to find some new thing and put it out there. My friend, Peter Scaleri, we had done bosom buddies and we were in the show together. And every night, every night he had one, one percussive line that he said that was at the end of a, you know, a thing. Every night he put something else into it and every night he absolutely killed me. God bless him. and every night when we were done, I would come off the use of the bitch. You said, you said, you got me again. We lost Peter, he passed away to cancer in last October. That's a great thing about every night. I mean, you know, I'm going to, I don't like to make a lot of analogies between actors and musicians, but every show is different, man.

1:23:33You know, you hit some lick differently or you know the the crowd is not as into the surefire hit that you thought they were going to be in but instead they take to this other B side that you're playing and everybody knows lyrics of that thing happens all the time and it's the great joy of performing live. It's the best I think it's the best life an actor can have but when you got to do it six or eight times a week, man, you got to be concentrated. You got to take care of the instrument.

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1:25:26Considering the story you just told about the different audiences and the different reactions to essentially the same play, even though there may be slight differences, talk about the way different audiences experience the same movie. I think a play is something that you experience knowing that you're with a bunch of other strangers, that you are part of a group. It's palpable. There's a lobby that you go through. You find your seats. You step over other people. A motion picture, I think, at its core is a singular experience for every different movie. You get into the theater anytime you want.

1:26:05You sit down any place you want. You will have your accoutrements. You popcorn or non, your soda or none. You might read the paper before it starts. You might be with somebody. And so it's really a shared moment with you or a handful of other people. And even though you end up perhaps in a room that might be full of strangers, chances are if the theater holds 200 folks and you're there on a Thursday night, there might be 80 people there. You know, the first week it might be much more of an event. Okay, I'm going to that's different. But motion pictures are one -on -one experience between the movie and the person who is watching.

1:26:45You need a movie that I saw in a theater somewhere I can tell you how old I was, what theater it was in, the circumstances around it, probably who I was with. But what really matters is what I got from that movie all by myself. So it's a singular interpretation of what you just saw. Not, not to mean you go out and argue or not, I'm sure you do that all the time. But everything, all the connections that are happening are happening so deep inside the recesses of your own head and the connections of your own head because you might be I've gone off to movies and no one, no one. All I would think about was what would I do if I was in that circumstances the other person we're looking at from completely objective, you know, this is about somebody else got nothing to do with me.

1:27:31And I think that's the difference. Yeah, there is certainly the kind of metrics that say, you know, this national audience liked it, this of this group sought like here, you know, a lot of Greeks were in the audience, and so they liked you because you're married to a Greek. All sorts of things come around with it, but I think if you can continuously keep breaking that down, it ends up being a solitary experience for the movie because in a lot of ways, in some ways, I'm sorry, but the best way of seeing any movie is by yourself in a screen that is the best version of the movie ever could possibly see.

1:28:15And I think we all end up end up having, you know, sing alongs and stuff like that. But when that contract that the audience has with the motion picture screen itself, when it kicks in somewhere around, you know, the opening credits. I think your field of vision starts being narrow and narrow and narrow, so it's just a cone between the screen and yourself, even though you're with your family and with your kids, whatever if it's moving and it's involving. It's not that, I don't think it's different at all from going to a museum and standing in front of a painting that you are the only person looking at that painting, even though everybody else has looked at it.

1:28:53So that, I guess the question is, what is the difference? Is that whatever the distance goes in between it being a group experience to being a singular experience is much faster in the cinema. It really does land in your consciousness almost in real time. So that what you're walking out of there is a singular opinion or a singular experience of how it how it touched you and what you're going to carry away when you have to move. You know, on that topic, do you read reviews of movies before you've seen the movies? I never do. Sometimes, sometimes. Maybe I'll just try to get a gist of, you know, what's the, what's the box popular I going to be talking about here?

1:29:34What does it really mean? But I really only read the entire review until after I've seen the movie myself. And I'm amazed at how often I didn't get that. I didn't see it like that. That's not what I'm not from this experience. It's not just, you know, is it good? Is it three stars or five stars? It's not that. It's always some other, you know, interpretation of what it meant. And I, you know, maybe it's my ego, but I always think I'm more right than whoever that is. So there's that, it's pretty neat and good. I'm the right one here. Ask me about this movie. I'll tell you what it's all about. What motivates you to see a movie?

1:30:09Natural curiosity. I don't think I'm always seeking, I think, the same thing anybody else is, I want time well spent. I want my investment in a movie to be absolutely worth it. And there's nothing, there were a few feelings better than coming out of a movie saying, thank God, I saw that movie. Oh my God, my life is so much. My day is better because of this. And I'll never forget where I was and what I was doing when I saw this movie. That's what you want. And on that side of it, it's awfully easy to give up on a movie now in 20 minutes or so. Cause oftentimes watching at home, there's other things you can do.

1:30:42But when you pay an order to go to see it, you have a little bit more reason to stay. But I am always, I just want to see something I've never seen before. I don't want to see something brand new or new interpretation of something. You told a story earlier about holding the knife in the fork a certain way. And I wanted to ask after a film has the character that you've been playing for a period of time ever changed you. Does it work its way into your personal life? or can you really leave it behind? No, I think as time has gone by, the investment that I think I have to put into something can, in fact, it can change my perspective.

1:31:22There's been a number of jobs of recently that couldn't help but alter kind of a perspective. Part of it certainly is the work experience of doing it in the first place, where you find yourself challenged in a way that you haven't been challenged. But there's also other parts that impact the way I sort of looked on the world that I would not have done it had I not had sort of like the work assignment of going off and getting some version of a bachelor's degree and what the subject matter is. like I don't think I fly on an airplane the same way that I did after playing knowing Chesley Sullivanberger and doing Sully.

1:32:03I just knew all this stuff about aviation now that I never knew. Meaning like what are the pressures on these people who are doing this for a living? And what are the odds? And where has this plane been? And what sort of maintenance has it's gone for? That's one aspect of it. Something else will come about like, you know, I can get, because I played Fred Rogers in a movie about Fred Rogers is only a man. He must have been really been changed by that. And yeah, the stuff that I found out about Fred was absolutely fascinating. But what all there be more was the effect that Fred Rogers had on the writer who wrote the piece that the entire movie is based on.

1:32:42That all came about because the writer who did this cover story for Esquire wrote a story on Fred Rogers. And this guy had become persona non grata because of the style of expos, celebrity exposé that he had written. There were people just said, I'd love to do a cover for Esquire, but not with that guy. And he had approached his job as being some version of literary historian and journalist. This is, you know, I'm going to, if I'm going to do these stories on somebody, I'm going to really find out what makes them tick. And I'm going to place them in the proper place in the zeitgeist and doing that made people want to have nothing to do with him.

1:33:25Okay, bit of the contract. But then he almost has pennants, Don Duneau, Tom, who was around the set quite a bit. And I asked him about this specifically because I remembered the pieces that he wrote that turned him into a guy who was persona non -growing. And he said, red Rogers changes life for the better by doing this celebrity profile. Now, there's a lot of reasons to admire Fred Rogers, all sorts of things about him. Now, Kinde was the fact that he was a reverend, that he was ordained, that his ministry was three -year -old kids who were watching television who had no idea how the world worked, who needed learn how to communicate and deal with such things like the death of a puppy or something like that.

1:34:08A lot of reasons to look at Fred Rogers and just say, man, I'd like to be more like Fred Runch. But what Tom experienced from him was a type of renaissance of kindness and understanding that began when he wrote the article about him, but then continued on for years afterwards. Fred remained invested in Tom's life. And Tom credited, I don't want to necessarily put words into his mouth. But when he said, Fred Rogers changed my life for the better because he gave him a bigger understanding of once placed in the zeitgeist, if that makes sense, you know, that you can actually, anybody can impart change in this world at certain levels.

1:34:55That's what he, Tom, do not learn from bread Rogers. And it's like, what am I? My job is not to change the world. My job is to be a journalist and do my job and my job is blah, blah, blah. And Fred Rogers said, well, of course, that's your job. But what's your place? What's the meaning of life? And it's not just be kind and be nice and like that. And I will say that that was part of, I think, a bit of an answer that I was, that I might have been searching for, because I'm not about to be the calmly self -ethyologian in any way. But I, I saw an interview and in the research that I was doing, and he was asked, you know, why should anybody pray?

1:35:40They asked this of Fred Rogers. And I will tell you that his wife and his kid said, oh, you know, Fred prayed every night. I said, what do you mean he prayed every night? I said, no, he said his prayers every night. I said, what were they? I said, well, he would just pray for people he knew. And I said, well, what does that mean, exactly? And they couldn't answer my question necessarily. But you could always put it on, well, maybe it was just a meditative place, which was, you know, I'm thinking about so and so. And he prayed for Tom, you know. Now, he was asked specifically, how are we supposed to pray?

1:36:20What is a good prayer? He says, there's only one anybody can pray and there's only one prayer, there's only one prayer to say. And it's just three words. And I was, as soon as he said that, I started leaning forward, you know, what are these three words, Fred? and they said to the three words are thank you God. Thank you, comma, God. And you don't even have to believe in God to see the wisdom in that or the patience or the zen quality of that, which means thank you for getting me through the day. Thank you for the struggles you give me. Thank you for seeing the world through somebody else's eyes.

1:36:59Thank you for stubbing my toe. Thank you for the time to, you know, So there's just in a lot of that because I have gone through that and I've learned more about the human condition because of that. So thank you, comma, God. Now I can say that I've learned all sorts of stuff about specific moments of history. I've learned about specific moments of the human condition. I've learned about, you know, I learned about Charlie Wilson and Jim Lovell and plenty of other people been Bradley by talking about the mall and out of it all comes some kind of like longer -ask education of almost like the humanities.

1:37:38For me, I would take those kind of classes like, but we're going to study the humanities. Well, what the heck does that mean? Like, so it means like how we became a little bit more enlightened than we were prior to that. I said, oh, well, I think that's what my education I've been receiving as an actor through all of this stuff, is a lesson in the humanities. But making some sort of peace between why good things happen to bad people and why bad things happen to good people. Specific question based on the Gordon Willis example of Oh yeah. Hitting your mark properly. Would you say since that day, you've hit your mark in the Gordon Willis way or no.

1:38:22Do things stick that become part of your craft? The thing that is stuck, I'm asking, yes, I'm giving you that, yes. But the biggest thing that is stuck has been reading the room. I think, certainly because the way I grew up, I had self -defense mechanism of controlling the room. So I made a big entrance. I would always do that. Because I always always kind of like sweeping, do some kind of self -defense mechanism. And I'm here and I'm open. I'm on and I'm loud and watch out. And who else is in here in the same position as I am. But now I think I'd like to think my wife might disagree with me is that I have intends you now to come in and read the room.

1:39:05Because sometimes you do have to come in and read the room and understand, oh, this is a Gordon Willis room. I need to be very, very specific of where I am and how I'm there, what I say and how I say it. I have to have a different sort of presence and consistency in this room that might be called on in some other place. You know, some of it is business, of course. You know, I have a company and you know, we talk about creative stuff all the time and I love to hear myself talk and I love to hear how right I am all the time. But if I'm reading the room properly, I understand that, hey, there's other folks that are going to test this theory and buy their testing and by their whatever confrontation be it intellectual or even humorous, this is going to be made better.

1:39:49And I think I have learned that by having all sorts of demands put on me certainly by material, but more specifically by the people that you actually interact with in the course of a movie. That just say, I see what you're doing here, Tom, and it's not quite a, it's good. It's not enough, though. You're actually cheating the process by being satisfied with what you've brought to this. So you need to read the room just a little bit better than you are. Then you have been. And I think that's come across because of the demands that I figured out that the work requires of me. I place certainly on the call sheet, you know, because if you're never one or number two on the call sheet, a lot of people are going to like snap to when you show up, whether they should have not.

1:40:36But along with that comes a responsibility to have earned that place where you are up on there because listen, when you're making a movie, someone is always the big dog. And if you're the big dog, you better protect everybody and make them feel safe. And you also better protect your own boundaries there. So I think I've learned over the course that my job is to be flexible. My job is to believe it or not. There's something very specific, very concrete, I do have to show up on them. I do. You have to. And you do have to be ready. You have to, you have to know the text. You do. And you do have to have an idea that is yours and yours alone.

1:41:23And if you don't do all three of those things, you're going to be missing out on all sorts of opportunities. And that case, why are you doing it? Tell me the story of Playtone. Play -Tone came about because when I did Philadelphia with John of the Dimmie and I as a company called Clinic Estetico and we were talking about doing some other things and I told them about this one idea I had for doing about a rock and roll band in 1964 and they said you need to work with Gary Getsman who is the producer. Gary was the main executive producer. He wrangled all sorts of stuff for Jonathan Demi and all the movies and silence of the lambs and all of And he and I started, I got together with this guy and Gary is a bit of a genius in so many ways and he goes back and you know a type of, you grew up in the valley, you know, as a matter of Gary gets men is the basis for the character Gary valentine in licorice piece at like Walt Thomas and he's a guy that was a bit of an entrepreneurial millionaire before he was out of high school.

1:42:22he knows production backwards and for it. So in the course of doing a movie called That Thing You Do, he and I just, I realize, oh, we finish each other's sentences. This guy is a genius at fixing anything. Gary and I were trying to go to a recording studio on sunset Boulevard to record jazz composition that we were just, we just titled it, I Am Spartacus. And we were going into to talk with these guys, who literally banged it out that very day. Gary knows everybody, the music business, you know. And the parking lot was full, right? The parking lot literally said, had a sign on it that said parking lot full.

1:43:04And Gary said, no, just go in the exit, just go in the exit. And before I knew it, Gary had gotten a pay man, take care of this for me. Yeah, we'll be right back. We're only going to be here in about an hour and a half. And for some reason, the guy took $20 and watched our car in a full parking lot. Anybody else would have said, oh, he can't park there. There is not intimidated by such rules. So we've been doing that now since 1990, good, good, 95, 96. We've had playtone. And all we do is sit around, come up with ideas that we think would make great, interesting, long form stories. TV has changed.

1:43:43We did Vanda Brothers. We made the movie cast away. We made the movie Polar Express. We made John Adams. We made the Pacific. We made Mama Mia. We, it's just a production house. We don't own it. We're just guns for hire. We just come up with the ideas and sort of, he does the hard work and I try to get involved and do quality assurance on it. And I think one of the best things that we've done is we did this nonfiction series for CNN that was about each of the decades, the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and which we go back and try to break up all the tropes and find that footage that has been completely lost and forgotten.

1:44:25Because history is a goofy thing with a lot of different kind of like interpretations of it. We would just try to like put it up and say, here's what was said. Maybe this is what it means, but this is how it played out in real time on TV. And that's been very. That sounds great. I've seen many of those and I love them. Here's a problem with all of them. You think they're an hour long, but they're actually only 42 minutes of content because CNN plays so many commercials. Yeah, it seems like it's an hour long, but we're always frustrated because there's stuff that we want to get into. And if you've got only 42 minutes, like for example, we were doing something about music in the, I want to say music in the 90s, I guess.

1:45:03And I ran into a derriest rucker of hoodie in the blowfish. Yeah, and we had an attire. We never mentioned them in as it is, how can you do a story about music in the 90s and not talk about hoodie and the blowfish? And I said, Darius, you have to understand there's a big difference between having 44 minutes of programming and having 42 minutes of programming. I'm sorry, man, you just didn't make the cut. No offense. He laughed. How did you learn to act? I never had a problem getting up on stage. I didn't like nothing at all. I had a natural kind of like it was fun to get up and I knew there were people that couldn't do it and I had no problem doing it.

1:45:50Learning how to act came in a number of phases. One was realizing that it was a class you could study. I didn't know that. We had a drama of class in high school And it wasn't just people wanting to be in the plays. We actually studied the plays, and we did it. Junior college, I always took a theater class or an oral interpretation class because I needed the juju, I needed the creative release. And that led into, oh, this is actually a discipline I can declare as a major. I can study theater arts. And it was stage managing and stage lighting and set construction. I loved it all. along with it came, I thought acting was just something you did in order to blow time because it was fun.

1:46:37But then I saw people that were doing it pretty seriously. And I started taking it seriously enough in order to start auditioning for stuff to do in elsewhere. And then I came across the best thing that happened, I think education wise was I did a play in Sacramento for a gentleman by Vincent Dowling, who was the artist or director of an organization called the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. And he did, they did a full season of six plays in rotating repertoire. And they needed bodies. They needed bodies to fill out the roles on the stage, spare carriers, what have you messengers.

1:47:14But they also needed bodies to do the physical work of changing over the sets every night. And so he collected this coterie, this company, about 15 of us, who by the way, most of us are still friends, we still get together. And he put it to me this way. I'd like you to come and work in our theater because I think if you wanted to, you could be an actor. But that was a decision that you'll have to make. I cannot pay you, but what I can do is give you something of infinitely more value and that is experience working with professional actors. And he was absolutely up. We ended up going and working with people who had been in the professional theater business for decades.

1:47:58There were guys that I'd seen on TV when I was a kid, Barney Cates. He'd been in an episode of combat. He'd been in the untouchables. There were people who had been doing it, who'd studied it, conservatories that had hundreds, hundreds of plays on their resumes, and they were good at it. And they were polished, and they were professionals. and they were the ones who showed up on time, knew the lines and had ideas in their head. And I did that for three years and came out of that. Understanding what was required, I think, but also all that I didn't know and I came out of there, I think, with a pretty competitive edge.

1:48:36And when I was convinced by them that there was only one place to be, if you were a professional actor, which I was by that time, because I got into the union, it paid me minimum. And that's when I got into the more competitive aspect. How do you get that job and that formula? If I'm better than half the people, I'm as good as 45, and the remaining four are just, they're just geniuses. And maybe I can get into their, get into their league or not, but I'm going to have to have a lot more of experience. And then just kind of like, by way of being in the right place in the right time, with the right goods, I'm not going to dismiss that.

1:49:11I mean, I think I was good at it and things. I think I could do things that nobody else could. I think I was not intimidated by things that other people were intimidated. I got onto TV and from that, I got into a motion picture that would Ronnie Howard, that no one else wanted to do because it was gonna be like a B movie, but it ended up doing well. I ended up being invited into the grander scheme of, oh, here's a young guy, we could put him in this movie and I did a ton of movies because they asked me to and I was an actor and I learned something important from every single one of them including what not to do.

1:49:49I think you go into stuff and you start assuming an awful lot. I know how to do this. No, you don't. Oh, I have this down. No, you don't. I know how to approach this. No, actually, you're lazy and you're being way too satisfied with something that you think is great. You learn, you learn all that stuff. And I still find myself being a guy like, okay, here's it. Just the other night we were talking and I said, hey, let's try to see some classical move. All right. What should we see? And some titles came up and somebody said to catch a thief, you know, 1954, Grace Kelly Kerry Grant. And I said, you know, I've never seen that move.

1:50:31And everybody was a gas. I've never seen. It's one of the, yeah, I know. I'd seen real window. You know, I'd seen the birds. I'd seen Psycho, and seen Two Catch A Thief. So we watched it. And if I could tell you all that I learned from the carry grant clinic for being a screen actor from that movie, it would take two hours of just talking to you, Rick, right now. Wow. That incredible. Okay, take a look at where carry grant was when he made that movie. He had been a huge, huge film star for almost 20 years, right? I think his first, I mean, his, I've seen his screen test from a million years ago.

1:51:11I think it was done to like 1933 or something and it was terrible. But this is a guy who would be not, he had been a screen icon for all that time. But by 54, he is a seasoned veteran. He knows camera. He knows how to keep his foot on one step of the stairs just a little higher than his other to communicate something in his body language that is a combination between the ability to flee really quickly or to feign disinterest, one of those two. So I never stopped learning from something that I see, particularly when you see it for the first time, and particularly something that is supposed to be, you know, etched in stone or captured in amber.

1:51:55Kerry Grant is supposed to be like an old school movie idol, you know, it's all a bunch of old tricks, but it's not that different then hearing like a really good Frank Sinatra record from 1948. Listen to the phrasing of what Sinatra is doing here. Listen to the orchestration behind what Nelson Riddell does just for Sinatra. Then you realize that, hey man, Bach is Bach for a reason. You know, Sinatra for a reason. Carrie Grant was Carrie Grant for a reason, man. So I still keep learning from him. It's funny you bring up Carrie Grant because I was going to ask a question about the idea of the audience suspending their disbelief when they see you, because for 40 years we've been seeing Tom Banks.

1:52:41And the example I had in my head when I thought of the question was Carrie Grant. When I see Carrie Grant in a movie, I can't help but think it's Carrie Grant. And it doesn't take away from my entertainment. Yet that's Carrie Grant. He just did something brand new. So the truth is, and I think a lot of, I've had to make my peace with this, and I think you have to acknowledge this, because it now comes off every single first paragraph of any review of a movie, talks about every other movie everybody has made that's in our countenance, my countenance of all the movies that I've done come along with whatever new movie that you're seeing.

1:53:23That's just the truth. and it's right to slay sell. It's like when you read the later stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you were impacted by all the other ones that you read. Doesn't mean you don't mean you don't mean you ate diggin it. Out of the world of the day, I was going to say, like, I saw Adele in Vegas and you know, I think everybody knows every song that Adele has ever recorded. And yet that experience was brand new and it was still a bit. Absolutely. And she was doing stuff in there that was undeniably brand new and fresh. And I know all of it down stuff. So going into emotion picture, I mean, look, this is the case with anybody that's great.

1:54:05It's the case with Scarlett Johansson. It's the case with Robert De Niro. It's the, it's, it's a, it's a case with Denzel Washington. You, it's case with me. Everything we've ever done is wrapped up and is part of the brand new movie that we are seeing. But out of that comes whatever else is shaken through, you know, the sifter. There's other shit that comes out inside there. And you know what, if you're doing it right, if you're on top of the game, if you said, yes, for the right reasons. And if everybody has agreed upon the theme and the movie that you're making, and you're being tested by every single person that is part of the collaborative process there, new stuff is going to come out.

1:54:46The only thing that happens then is more items are added to the countenance that you bring to it in the first place. Beautiful. And oh man, that's the challenge that makes me go home at night and think, look at myself in the mirror. Did I get there today? Did we land on this at all? The bar is high. The bar is high. This is real important. But here's the other thing that I have to say. And this is a thing that Joe Demagio once said. You know, I've read it. There's a really great book about Joe DiMaggio recently. Joe DiMaggio told himself, all through his career, particularly when he was a great Joe DiMaggio in the Yankees.

1:55:30He always thought, I have to play my best and I have to be perfect because someone might be here saying we play for the very first time. And that's the truth with any movie. You know, I can come across kids, you know, somebody who is 13 or 14 and they will say, when I saw you in bridge of spies, it made me want to become an, you know, these movies that are much later on because all the other stuff is, all the other stuff is, you know, accoutrements and accoutrements, you know, legacy kind of things. But it goes back to, I think, that thing is every movie is a one -on -one experience and someone is seeing your new movie and they are seeing you for the very first time, even if it's a vision of yourself that they're saying for the very first time.

1:56:17Can't deny that. That's the power of what it is. Somewhere somebody is putting on, you know, street fighting man by the roaming stones and they're hearing it for the first time, or maybe they're cognizant of it for the very first time. Can't deny that and that's why art remains this timeless thing. Someone is putting on, you know, for Kofiab for the first time. And they're hearing that for the first time. Hey man, I think this is really great, right? What was it by some Russian guy named Kofi Ev? I don't know what it is. Hallebecian dance number three or something. Yeah, I wanna hear that again.

1:56:51Last question, do you ever get nervous? Yeah, always. You gotta have that zets. What I will have, I will say, I do have faith that I've gotten over that nervousness before and I will do so again. There are some of it, of course. Look, there's a thing that happens on movies where you are petrified for the first three days of making the movie petrified. Because you don't know what it's gonna be. You don't know how it's gonna go. Have no idea. I made this movie called Road to Perdition with Paul Newman. Paul Newman. Wow. And the first day of shooting was a huge party scene, right? In which I didn't have really anything that was expected of me.

1:57:35but Paul had to get up and give a toast and character. And it's the first day of shooting. A ton of people are in there making their first movie ever. A ton of people are in there making the first movie with Paul Newman. A ton of people are in a room with Paul Newman for the first time. And talk about accountants that he carries, whether it's right. Paul gets up and the time comes for him to shoot his toast. To shoot his given a toast. you know, he says, do you know, maybe the devil not learn we're dead until half an hour. He said some sort of old Irish toast and everybody was looking at and we was done with his lines.

1:58:12He just looked at us all and said always feel self -conscious on the first day, doesn't it? And everybody just let me everybody just let go. And it was a so same thing always feels self -conscious on the first day. And there has been a time that I haven't gone out on stage in which there isn't some either nanosecond or seven seconds of what is my first line? What is my first line? What is the first line I say? What is my oh, oh, oh, then you go out and you say the first two words of it and then the rest of it is clear. So you got to have faith, man, you got to have faith, you got to get there.

1:58:50Beautiful. Thank you, sir. A pleasure speaking to you. I love talking to you. Same. I got some questions for you. I'm going to start a podcast and you'll be my third guest. I'm ready when you're ready. All right, great talk to you, Rick.