Edward Norton on Directing – and His Directors

from one film to the next. After playing a sociopathic murderer and Primal Fear, he moved to the cheerful Singing Boyfriend and Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, and from there a long list of great works by great directors, including American History, X, Fight Club, and Spike Lee's. But movie making has changed over his quarter century as a leading man. Fight Club was shot over one thirty days. That just doesn't happen anymore. The money's not there and

the studios don't have the patients. Norton has tried his hand at directing twice, once on either side of that divide. He's just releasing his adaptation of the Jonathan Leatham novel Motherless Brooklyn. I'm in that one and it's out November one. His other directing Foray was in two thousand with a

romantic comedy Keeping the Faith. I actually had more money and more time to make Keeping the Faith, a rabbi priest joke turned into a romantic comedy than I did to make Motherless Brooklyn, which is a big, epic New York period period piece of the fifties, done at scale with you know, I think we ended up with six and eight something effects shots in the film. I could have never made this film in the constraints of budget and time that we had back then, because I could

barely pull off Keeping the Faith with more. And that was partly a function of in the years since, you know, when we made the with Spike Um, which I think is one of his better films, which is saying a lot. He made that film in twenty six days and it's a It's a really cinematically robust film shot in New York.

Going through the training camp of seeing how he did that, seeing how Wes Anderson does his on fractional budgets and schedules in your rito, doing Birdman in days unbelievable planning just like planning at a level rehearsal um engagement with actors in a way that necessitates less handholding and kind of debating. On the day Spike and s they know what they want to do, They give themselves out and things like that. They don't edit the film in the way they shoot it, but they are not making it

up on the day. Um. They have put a lot of thought into it and and they drive the proceedings along in a very determined way. And when you see really good people pulled out off, if you take mental notes, you're like, Wow, this can be done. This can be done in a different way. It can be done without compromise, and you can pull this off. I never ever could have made this film without working with Spike West, Alejandro

and others. Did you know when you make Keeping the Faith that you said to yourself over the past several years that you would do it again? Did you know you do it again? I already had this one rattling around in my head. Not unlike my character in this My character Lionel says, let's just say, an unfinished puzzle makes my head hurt worse than most people. That's as close to a line about myself as I've ever written, I, I'm also probably obstinate, and um, I don't like to

be denied. But I but but some of it is just that idea that he discusses in the film about having glass in the brain. I if I get a thing in my head, it just I really I suffer a little bit from not achieving the satisfaction of ultimately like putting the story together and getting it told so I can get it out of my my brain loop.

You know. Part of my fascination with this piece was compulsion, the idea that, as Lionel says, you're doing something for certain reasons, and at some point you even forget what the original reasons, where you're not even sure why you're still pressing on a thing long after everyone's kind of blaring it. You're like, yeah, isn't it time man to let that to bury? Yeah? I always it's funny, isn't

it too? Because there's things that are much more important in the world, and you can sell yourself like why am I? Why am I applying so much in my time in life to telling a story? But at the same time, we're living in an age where a lot of things are encouraging people to be passive, you know, so pushing back against anything. That's just a good feeling. Your dad was a federal prosecutor. Yeah, at one where he was best attorney. It was a U S attorney.

And your mom most of my life taught high school English in a public school. And your and your mom's dad was this very successful real estate developer. Yeah. His name was Jim Rowse. He was. He was very celebrated. Uh, it was. He was. He was on the cover of the New York Times when he died, which amazed me. And he was on the cover of Time magazine, like, well, you know when, when was the last time for positive reasons a real estate developer was on the cover of Time.

He um, He was considered He was considered one of the great visionaries of progressive, humanistic ideas about cities. He achieved these very very notable sort of downtown revitalization projects like the Baldwin or Harbor or Fanuel Hall in Boston, place that parts of the cities that had been written off abandoned, and he saw vitality in them and was convinced that you could bring life back into cities, make

cities the marketplace of ideas, culture, all of it. Yeah, and in many ways, you know, he really um decried. He was one of the first people to talk about sprawl, that highways were going to create low density development, and that this was gonna be people were going to flee the cities and we were gonna get kind of non communities, We were going to get these sort of like limitless um you know, and and that the old world town was going to disappear in a way. And he was right.

He proved these things he talked about in the fifties turned very true in the sixties and seventies, and so people really looked at him as a a gurup. But he um. Then he he developed kind of the first planned city in America, which was Columbia, Maryland, UM between Baltimore and Washington. It was very progressive um, you know, socioeconomically, ethnically, diverse, lots of open space. It was. It was kind of this utopian idea of of what American communities could look like.

But what what I want to get to is, I mean, you know, you go to Yale and you go and you you switch from astronomy, I studied history. I thought I wanted to study physics. I didn't have the math for it at all. Like learned that very quickly, which was one of those good humbling moments, realized I was like better at writing. You switch to Asian history. You you live in Japan, and you did you work for

your grandfather's company in Japan? Yeah? I did. He he was consulting to two places that were trying to replicate what he had done with in our harbors and stuff. I um, I wanted to live and work abroad, like in the Foreign Service or like the intelligence agencies used to recruit at Yale. And I was was pretty enamored of like the idea of doing something something and living overseas. But I had the bug. I kind of had the theater bug, and I kind of gave myself. I was like,

I'm going to move to New York. And I couldn't really admit to myself I wanted to do that. You know, yeah I could, You're like doing this, you don't. There's something like it was an apology inside me to me too.

I and and and and in some ways, because my grandfather, by then it devoted all his entire focus was on affordable housing development, and he had built one of the great organizations in America, a nonprofit organization figuring out how to get complicated finance structures to get money into affordable housing development. And he was in They were in New York, redeveloping thousands of city owned abandoned buildings across the late eighties and nineties. And I was working for him in

New York. I literally went down. I was like twenty one. I went down, sat on the porch with my grandfather and sort of apologized to him because he paid for me to go to college. And I thought, how do I tell him? How do I tell him I want to be an actor? You know? And he and he was the greatest. He was. He was a very eccentric, eclectic guy. He was orphaned when he was a kid. He he never he never wore suits. He wore like moder's jackets and fishing hats. He was originally Yeah, he

really was. And he and I was shocked. He said to me, he said, don't don't. He said, don't don't chase money. He said, whatever you do, just don't chase money. Just he said, just do whatever, do what you love, doing what you have a passion for. And in good time, you'll figure out how you can be of service through it. You know. He said, you can be of service in anything. And he loved the arts. He loved He helped create Center Stage in Baltimore by supporting it in the early years.

He really believed in the arts. So he kind of gave me this permission. I was still working for him to New York, but then I started moonlighting in the theater and I felt like, um, I was allowed. But but what I want to get to, I mean, I don't know exaggerate this, but but it's like, you know, you grow up, you go to Yale, and you come from a very right, u stable family and a lot

of successful people there. And my point is that in your acting, especially like book Ending now and Primal few years ago, where you really really start to take off in the movie business, are two damaged people. Yeah. Uh, it's hard to say. You know, it's a funny thing because I am I'm not drawn to damage, but I I am drawn to sort of the duality, like the idea of the layer you see and the layer you

don't see, and sometimes they're paradoxical, you know. I think it's not by chance that like the Greek drama symbol is the two masks, the comedy and the drama masks, right, because everybody's operating on these multiple level. There's these levels in ourselves and sometimes they coexist and they're not necessarily antagonistic to each other, but they really are the end

of the yang, right. And I think that when you find um, when you find a character that the the yin and the yang is going on like really clearly at the same time in them, that's interesting. And sometimes it's I don't want to call it cheap, but sometimes it's like the kind of primal fear, like a person who's faking a thing that's sort of juicy. That's like the pulpy version of it. And it was a lot of fun, right, especially when no one knows who you are,

so you can actually surprise a lot of people. But then sometimes if it's like American History X, that's not really a damage persons, but it's a person with this huge complexity going on it. It is like a fellow or something. He's a real leader, he's a lover of his family, he's got a real intellect, his potential is limitless, and he totally destroys himself with the one dark thing

with this this rage. Right, he's got rage, and the rage just just dismantles everything else, right, And those paradoxes are sometimes really compelling. Um, playing those parts, I find me and I watch you in this film, and I'm very drawn to the and of vacuity of that, like I need to believe underneath that there's a sensitive person. Yeah, you know you're not just it's not just externalized. No, No,

I think you did a great job. I'm not just saying the thank you and uh and I'm not just saying this because you're in the film and great in the film. But I think, um, it's a very it's a very interesting thing to me, like this idea of like the counterpoint in people, the capacities and people and yeah, Lionel in this has tourettes, but you it's a it's

absolutely stolen from the book over Black. At the top of the film, you hear his inner voice, right, So from the beginning, it's the trick of going you're gonna know me like a friend. I'm gonna let you right in on the inside, so that you can see the sensitive, smart person, of depth of feeling, of loneliness, of longing.

You're gonna have immediate empathy because you're gonna go, I like everything about the way this guy talks, the way he tells his own story, and then I'm going to let you in on the fact that I've got a really messed up condition that makes life very difficult, very funny, etcetera. And that's a great dramatic trick because you're not forty seconds in and you go, I'm on this guy's side, right, And that's credit to Jonathan Leatham who wrote the novel.

That's how the novel works on And speaking of which, you walked around with the novel for how long? I read the book, loved it, sort of got the rights to it, knew I couldn't work on it for a long time, and then got into this idea of taking this great character study of the book and grafting it into this kind of bigger idea. When I say bigger, I mean just that the plot of the novel is

small and byzantine. And I said to Jonathan, Hey, what if we let lionel this great emotional relationship you create with the character. What if we let that be a vehicle into looking at something a little more cinematically grand, like the dark history of New York in the fifties, and he's he's born and raised Brooklyn Knight. He knew the heart of his novel was the character, and he loved the transposition, the idea of loved it. So he's a real cinemophile. He got it. Yeah, he got it.

And and also we talked about how, you know, Chandler wrote multiple Marlowe detective stories, and it was like, let's take the great emotional um connection you create in this character and let's let's send him into his next mystery. Right. He loved that idea. And thank god, Jonathan's not only a secure as an artist, but he also he understands that in going to film, you're going into another medium. You need something different. I would do a part in

a film I'll never forget. We do the movie Pearl Harbor and Dolittle of the famous aviator. I play him in the film and where they're shooting in l A one day and members of his family are they're like his granddaughter, and they're involved in some foundation or something that keeps the flame alive of the the Doolittle memory.

And I forget what the organization was but this is back in two thousand we shoot this movie Big Sunny Day, where they are shooting at I forget where we were, and I walk up to him and I go, so, how's it going. You're enjoying watching the movie? And she goes, yes, but Granddad would never do that. He would never talk to people that way, the way you're doing that. And I was on the tip of my tongue. I want to go and this is true of men who had to be built a certain way to fit into the

cockpits of those planes. And they were a little bantams. And I wanted to say, you know, if we really were going after the whole granddad thing, Bob Balabanda, we're playing your granddad, not me. I'm about, you know, sixty pounds heavier than your granddad and at least so now I don't want to meet the people. I don't want to know the people I'm gonna go in there, just

you know. My point is is that when you said about Leatham in the book, well, I'll say to someone, the character in the film represents an idea in the film,

We're no I felt that way about your character. Some people have said to me, well, clearly it's based on Robert Moses, and you don't want to contend with that, because yes, it's infused with Robert Moses, but it is also there's a reason I didn't pretend that these made up characters of Motherless Brooklyn were interacting with real historical figures, because then you end up asked answering all these ridiculous questions about your It's like, well, wait, did Robert Moses

really do that? Is that really true to this? And that really happened to go? You know? This is this is why the Wisdom to Me in You could Go Back, Citizen Kane is about Charles Foster Kane. It's not William Randolph Hurst. And yes it is the essence of it is distilled, but as you know when you read about that, they infused quite a few details in that story from other people's lives as well to create an essential American character. Right.

And Robert Penn Warren's great book All the King's Men, it's about Hughie Long, but it's not about Hughie Long. It's a made up story. That's why he made it. Will he start and to to me um without revealing where we know this film goes in the end. There's a huge amount that happens in this movie that has nothing to do whatsoever with anything that happened in Robert Moses' life, on a plotting level, on a psycho sexual level, all kinds of stuff. So there's distillations of the type of

person he was. There's also a weave of everything from Strong Thermond and other you know, there's people that had details of their lives that inspired me to kind of go, I want to distill this into the essence of a type of person that we as Americans have to really think about. How much of them were willing to tolerate? And when he saw the movie, what kind of reaction did you get? He that that was one of my

most nervous days. Uh. You know, there was like the day I when you showed up on set and I'm like, well, you know his lines. No, I'm kidding. I did the best I can with what I have showing it to leave him. I was nervous, and he was great. He was very very emotional about it. It was very gratifying um for him. I think it was you know, it's like you've you've done a thing and then the thing

has refracted and become a whole other thing. And I think he was artistically really thrilled when you had the book. Over the ark of the time you had the book, was here a moment you threw in the talent said I don't think I'm going to do it. I had I had a couple of moments of feeling like I was done Quyhote and tilting it wind mills and you know, well, because we have kids who were the same age and stuff, you get into this chapter of your life and you just say, how much am I willing to bend our

lives around a mirage? Right? Like? Am I going to keep us on the camels going towards the mirage? Are we going to are we going to am I gonna not do other work? Am I going to like say no, we can't take that trip because there's a possibility that

this might come together. You know, it starts to get into a real like life priority crosses over into neurosis, yeah, or ego or or but I think you know, Joe, I mean I really think and uh, I'm not flipping around on you, but you You've said to me, I'm doing this thing on Saturday nights as if it can't

coexist with the you that we all came up on. Uh, I saw you in Streetcar, Yeah, you know, Glen Garry, Glenn Ross, these things that became for us really iconic moments of of what I'd call like the you know, dark um way do you think Miami Blues, which I was always a big fan of, but them, to me, this notion that just because you're functioning in a certain gear let's call it the smiley off of the Greek mask, that the other thing doesn't coexist, and that it's not

more interesting because it coexists. That's the thing is to me, it's like it's not even that they cancel each other out, it's that they become more interesting when they're both there, right, because that's more true. There's a lot of dark stuff going on under a lot of people's smiley narratives right. To me, one of your most interesting sessions in here was the one you put up after it all broke

the Schneiderman. I guess you did, and I thought the way, yeah, the way you lead that in with Hey, we've we've had these conversations with someone, We've had a conversation in a gear that is we're connecting with a conscious humanist,

progressive yeah and um. And then there's this thing going on unseen by almost anybody, right, that's so dark, and you just constantly forced, I think, to grasp this idea of there's a narrative in a ark, in life and in our lives individually, and then there's the shadow narrative, this thing that's going on underneath it. And it's very very rare that we find ways into having honest conversations about how we integrate those two things, right, because that's

that's like the argument. It's the argument inside ourselves privately. You think about anyone we know who we know has a measure of quality, admirable quality as a human being, and he's doing stuff that is uh, either you know, detestable, unforgivable, whatever. We know that person is having an argument inside themselves. Right,

We're having that argument as a country. We're having to say to ourselves, Hey, we have to be able to hold the ideal, we have to be able to still take pride in our engagement with the ideal, but we absolutely have to confront the the shadow narrative. We have to be honest about what we are do win that's antagonistic to what we're saying. That was movie star, director producer Edward Norton. Another great actor whose career spans the then and now of old school movies and streaming television

is Michael Douglas. You know, if I get one more drunken guy from the street, hey, man is good. You're the man. You're why I got into this business and everything I quo it. Hey, you know, that's what I'm doing. The rest of my interview with Michael Douglas is in our archive at Here's the Thing, dot org ed Norton on his favorite directors coming up next. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing. To keep

up with the next part of the show. Here's what you need to know about some of Edward Norton's movies. Fight Club was directed by David Fincher. American History X was directed by Tony Kay, who took out full page ads and Variety complaining he'd been knifed in the back after the studio gave Norton final cut on the film. And The People Versus Larry Flint was directed by one of Norton's heroes, the late milosch Foreman born in communist Czechoslovakia.

You know, he came out from behind the Iron Curtain and landed in America and then made these definitive films about individual spirit pushing back against depression, right Cuckoo's Nest and Ragtime and Amadeus, and he just made like film after film after film that you know, they set the bar very high. They were like, wow, you can you can take things that no one would call a traditional commercial story and make these great pieces of art out

of them. And the thing was came to him having made very few films, and I still kind of considered myself more of a you know, my my life had been in theater. The funny thing is the first two films I did, we did kind of do them in a way where we made the scenes work in the room, right, They worked in the room. And what what he Allen shoots a lot of single takes, so it has to it works as one. I got on there with me Losh and realized that he would shoot in this very

open ended, improvissational way. He would let things change and shift, and then he wouldn't cover it from the other side. And I started to get this anxiety. Like he would say, great, you know, let's move and I would say, but nothing happened, like we never we never got anything. It didn't work. The scene was never played. And he would kind of look at me like, what do you think this is? This is you know, he said, this is not We're

not doing play. He goes, I am, he said to me, when time he goes, I am a man with a pick X and there's a cliff and I must take the clay from the cliff. I'm not making sculpture. I make sculpture later, you know. And I was thinking I might be on the first Milish Foreman film where he has lost the plot completely. I'm going to be in the first really bad Milosh Foreman film. Because I would see him move on from things I could not, for

the life of me think how he was finished. And I happened to have free time and he let me in on the editing process, just not to be just to literally. I would bring him. I would bring him coffee, I'm not kidding, just to watch, and I began to realize that he was his he was a master of casting and and one of the greatest editors ever. He would take things that had never happened and create He would create scenes out of raw material that had never occurred.

And I it was this enormous awakening to the plasticity of film. I realized that when you're an actor, you're just giving a director raw material to work with, and you have to hopefully you trust them in a devotional way because you are surrendering, You're surrendering clay to them.

And I remember Mike Nichols saying, the reason you love Jeremy Irons was that if he had a bad idea, he knew that Jeremy Irons would give it the full force of his talent so that he could get off the bad idea because he would say to himself, Jeremy gives me everything, and if he can't make it work, then I know it's a bad idea, right, And that was that was very profound because I think obviously we all get into situations where maybe there isn't trust, and

so we defend, we protect, we resist, Yeah, we shut down, but in that happy circumstance when you're with when you're with in a trusting relationship, you serve, You really do just serve. And if the guy says you know, when we were doing Birdman in your wo we could sometimes come in and go, guy, this guy's guys, it's got to be you know this, it's too white. It has to be black, you know. And we would do black for a while and then he would come back and

he would say, no, guys, what are you doing? It's all black. I was telling what has to be white? And I said it was the other you know, And you realize he's having a conversation with himself, not with not with you, and and that what you wanted to do is serve the debate he's having with himself and give him whatever he needs. It's kind of a happy place to be when it's going like that, right. But Fincher, well, he's more talented across more divisions of filmmaking than anyone. Yeah,

he's He's as great a cinematographer as any cinematographer. He's a great editor. He's annoyingly great with a line reading, you know what I mean. He's funny and sometimes you have one of those moments like it was sort of the like, hey, you know, you're you're feeling each other out, and at some point on that movie, I was like I was running in wing tips and underwear, and and I was maybe I was, I was probably leaning into the to the farce of it a little bit too much.

Maybe Anyway, he comes over and he just goes a little less Jerry, a little more Dean. And that was and I instantly I was like, that's all we have to say the rest of this movie. That's the key to the whole movie. I want to say this about Fincher because it had a big impact on making Mothers Brooklyn. There are times when being a director requires a certain amount of almost sociopathic lack of empathy for other people's stresses.

There are many demands, money's going out the door, time is running down, and you feel stress in other people you there's no way that won't happen. And one of the things I learned, with not a shred of of sarcasm in this about was that Fincher was amazing at facing down the dresses of others in defense of the aesthetic value that he knows. And there were many, many times, even within this massive hundred and thirty days shoot where Fincher,

you know famously he does a lot of takes. Early on I decided I already know this about him, whatever it is that he's chasing. I have seen the result in his films. They have a hypnotic visual elegance that I have not seen equaled. And so whatever he takes, if he needs thirty five, I have to find the

way to stay in gear for thirty five. Right. But I would say one of the things that I observed watching him and nobody is him, but you do realize that when he says we're not done because a move of the camera where it bumps in the middle that everyone else says that doesn't matter, he knows it matters. And there are times when you have to say to

everyone else who thinks you're done, we're not done. You have to see the portrait of what a person looks like who's standing firm within reason, you know what I mean? So um tony kay, Now, I only asked me. Obviously, that was a contentious thing and it talks about how that was a tough set and everything. But did he help you with an act? But see here, this is this is interesting and I don't want to sideline on it too much, but I think you know, you kind

of hinted at it. But we're living in this age where clickbait journalism likes to create headlines, and before it was even clickbait, entertainment press was doing their version of it. People like to manufacture antagonism because it sounds like a good story, whether or not it in fact existed. So the very fact that, even down the chain of it all, what's come to your head is that it was a tough set, right, that's what you just said. That, that's just there's not a spread of truth in it. We

were We worked center just stickally. He Tony is a great photographer. He lit and shot and operated the film himself, and he had a great gift for a visual sensibility and why what I would call a very pure meter for just a kind of a gutsy, visceral thing. He never professed to a shred of experience with or or even I don't want to say interest in He did not want to control narrative, right. He David, my friend

David McKenna, and then with me. We had worked on that script for a long time, and he ceeded that to us. He he was like, you guys are good at this. I know what to do with it, blah blah blah. And we worked hand in glove together through a very vital, very guerrilla kind of a shoot. Um. There was many, many many times throughout where great film. Yeah,

we had truly lovely moments together. I remember Tony, He's very emotive and one time he cried and hugged me and said, you know, I've I've never felt so supported. I've never had a collaborative experience like this, and and I felt the same. I thought he was a very intuitive things what went on turned into this thing as if it was about me and him. He got into I would call it a fear of release that he he was very He cared a lot and in a

really difficult time finishing things. I'm bringing up in spite of what people had said, Yes, you can tell. That's why I'm saying it. I can, and I want to, and I know for a fact he's told people he's very proud of it. In the end, I am I just think people. I think people they want to distill some sort of negativity in into situations that are complex.

And I think you know this too, you knowiced. But the funny thing is is what's strange about it to me is work, work on things done with passion is going to produce people contending with each other, right ideas are gonna are gonna bump up against each other and burnish each other. They're gonna test each other and they will refine the thing. People get through those experiences together and generally shake hands and thank each other for the work. It's not about you, it's not about the ego, it's

not about the thing. It's like, this is how we do the thing that makes it good. And most people come out the back. Most people who know what they're doing come out the back side of that and celebrate that in each other, and then other people turn it into some bs argument. Well, let me let me say

two more things. One is that, um, you know, one of the I tell young actors, I say, one of the worst traps you can fall on is that time goes by and you work with anemic directors, and you work with directors who don't offer you much in film and television, and you become as we must self directing. That not that you've stealed yourself against collaborating with a good director. You forgot how, you've forgotten how to do it.

So you come and the worst thing that can happen to is you have a good direct who wants to work with you and shape you, and then you're tight and you don't let it and you don't let him in. You don't have to let him in, right, No, I think that's very true. The opposite is if there's a situation you can smell now through experience is going to lead to situations where then stay away from it, you know what I mean. Then then say no, don't, don't get suck, and also build your own tribe. You know.

That's to me the a big part of the appeal of directing is honestly, like, I don't know if you feel this, but you had Dirty Rock, which to me is like, that's that repertory. It's like having your own repertory company, right, It's something very special. I think all actors in some part of themselves want that. They want it's that dream of being part of a troop, right people. You know, it's like in West's in Rushmore the Max Fisher players. We all want to be in the Max

Fisher players, you know what I mean? And when, and by the way, that's why a lot of us will show up and do small parts when it's our turn to have a small part or a bigger part. It doesn't matter because you're in it. You're in the troop, and it's a wonderful place to be. Like it really is. I've often felt like, you know, you look at the Cohen's or or people who have these long term alliances. Sometimes I always thought like I'd like the pleasure of that.

But one of the things about directing is you you get to create your troop. Like people talk about Orison Wells, they forget the guy was a kid. He was twenty five years old when he made that film. And what did he do. He took all of the Mercury theater players from his archaeo radio days and his w P

and he pulled him into the film. Agnes Moore, hell you never heard of and they're amazing right And for me, motherless Brooklyn, I would say, honestly, one of the greatest joys of it was I looked at my roster of New York theater actors that I've known in many cases for twenty years, twenty five years done plays at the twenty ninth Street rep with done plays, and said, I know that guy's great, I know she's great. I know

Alex great. Williams. Great, These are my These are my people that I've already got shorthand with, and I'm gonna pull him together and make ap F and ensemble of the actors I get on with and love. And it was pure pleasure for me, even among the stresses. Who's the person on the set, off the set, anywhere in the whole configuration, who's helping you protect your performance? I directed the film once I hated the experience, and the person that was most underserved acting wise was it was me?

How did you prevent against that? Who was your voice? I mean? Most permit my partner Bill Migliori, who he and I met as an actor, We met as actors, and he's a terrific actor. He's my producer on this, on the help to keep an eye on the absolutely like he's just a trusted you know. You glance over a little bit of a nod, a little bit of a shake of the head like I'm not really sure. Yeah, like you know that there's that I trusted Dick, Dick Pope,

my my great cinematony. You know, yeah, there's he thinks and honestly, uh, I mentioned there's a guy, the guy who plays the mayor who you you know, um steam Roll right at the beginning of the film. Peter Lewis is a actor I worked with when I was twenty four in in New York on the stage. And he's a terrific actor, and he's a teacher. He's a he's

an acting teacher. And I did I rehearsed my part with him, doing the scenes with you, doing the scenes with Willem, just to give myself some time with someone that who I like their instincts, I like their meter, to kind of get my own rhythm, you know, going on and stuff like that. But there's dimensions of directing a thing that you're in that are that are not great for the best of the experience between actors because

you're ruining it on some level. On the other hand, though, when you have the type of people I had, what I loved about it was I love that feeling of like of a company like it's it's what when we read about Wells and these guys, the fantasy is that we're we're all in it together, you know. And on this film, God bless every actor in it. Everyone did it for me for no money because they believed in the piece. Believed in me. I told you I would

have done it for a lot less. You're You're the only person I've ever known who said pay me less. There's something when you when you can feel the weight of people's conviction. That's what I was going for. You did a great job. It was a completely thrilling and fulfilling experience. Great actor, now, great director Edward Norton. There were a lot of movie titles and director's names coming at you fast in this episode. If you'd like a list of the films Edward Norton and I discussed text

thing to seven zero one zero one. That's Thing to seven zero one zero one, Motherless, Brooklynness out November one. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing four four f