Edward Norton

Tetragrammaton I think if you do a thing for a really long time you can get into anything and you can get to the place where you're doing things beautifully unconsciously and then you can get to where you're on autopilot. The right instinctive and unconscious is wonderful and then there's that thing where I don't want to say phoning it in because I hope I've never done that.

But where you're too familiar with a set of moves and I definitely am approaching a place where I almost feel that I'm not really sure I remember what I'm supposed to do or how I'm supposed to approach it and I'm kind of happy about that. But I think if I kind of stand back from it all I think when it's working really well you feel like you're channeling something through that.

Yeah, you might have, you know, just like a musician or anything, you've done the work and the craft work to create the conduits that you're accessing the channel through but that you've tapped into something where you're not having to. Yeah, you're letting something go through you that's not you and I think at the center of it is empathy. I kind of think if an actor can't anchor themselves in real empathy there's nothing really good.

There might be performative kind of bullshit or comedy or humor or whatever but for me it's kind of like you got to get to a place where you're trying to seek some sort of a deep, a deep understanding of a different person's experience and what flows out of it in interesting ways but ultimately that's I think that's empathy. When you're in it, do you know you're in it?

I think sometimes because the times that I know that I felt really good something unbid in is happening, something unplanned or really great film director and one of my real mentors in life, Miloš Forman used to call it the unrepeatable moment.

You know the thing that even with all the cameras and even with all the artifice and the rehearsals if there were something or the fact that it's the fifth take or anything that something happens that is just sort of unrepeatable and blooms not out of a conscious plan and those things can be really delightful when when they happen and make you feel like this is good.

I think the other thing is that and this isn't in no way my own you know original observation I think but but listening is really really important because listening is just another word for you know being really genuinely available to what's going on and I think many of my favorite actors sometimes what I feel I'm riveted by is my awareness of their

presence and absorption of what's going on you know stillness listening whatever you want to call it but also if you're not listening with other actors you're not really available to that unexpected thing and so I think that's I don't know if it's true in in all things I'm sure you know I've talked to our Anthony about you know writing lyrics and coming in and performing them even for friends of 30 40 years you feel self conscious you know there's like self consciousness in performance

and I think in acting you fight self consciousness or you have to try to cultivate space with other people where self consciousness recedes so that you feel that you're not you know standing outside yourself and watching yourself you know do something and reviewing it even as you're doing it and I think that it's really interesting to me that like I had an experience once with Robert deniro of all people right

the person we all came up on who you know he's certainly in the short list of reasons I became an actor right or a spy to do a certain type of work or whatever and the first film I did a couple of films with him but the first film I worked with him on I also was one of the writers on the script and

that was in some ways a bad thing because even though he was super complimentary of the work I had been doing what it meant was that the first scene that I did with him in the film which was a life ambition being realized like I dreamed of working with him my whole

young life you know yeah and it was there in front of me and he was there and I knew he he was very supportive of me in my early career and all these things I knew he had nothing but good feeling toward me in life but as we began the very first scene I ever worked on with him I got this adrenaline feeling that that he wasn't happy with what I was doing and I got into this real moment of feeling hugely self conscious I went completely out my analytic brain was just going

Kapow Kapow Kapow Kapow what's going on why why isn't he what what's going on here he seems really out of sorts with me or there's an energy coming something and we we did it a few times and then he kind of caught my eye and he looked at me and he gave me this look that was kind of like me going yeah seems like good it was a real check in it was like kind of real brother wow

and I was like wait a minute and I walked around the corner and I had and this was like I've made a lot of movies at this point I wasn't new I walked around the corner I had this total epiphany which was I realized that I was interacting with a videotape in my head of what he was going to do in the scene because I had written it and because I had an idea of what Robert De Niro's performance was going to be like in the scene in my fantasy life

really yeah and in my writer's mind and when in fact we were doing the scene and he was doing something else I took it as a rebuke my mind when he's not showing up he's resisting me he's not doing this why and and in a funny way it was was funny because what I thought he was going to do was in a scene of conflict like rise to meet me yeah

with a certain energy right yeah and when he didn't I actually took it in as a negative like a negative not from him right character didn't take it in it and I took it in and but this is I know this this gets really down the weeds but it was an amazing moment for me because at this point like I'm I'm already a celebrated actor right well you're you're in the scene with Robert De Niro so clear that you're a celebrated actor

he'd ask me to be there all these things and I and I walked around the corner into the hall and I had this like great self conversation and I said you fucking idiot you idiot you dreamed about this moment your entire life he's there in front of you and you're not even available to what he's doing you're not even listening to me

listening to the actuality of what he's doing you're interacting with a videotape in your head and in fact what he was doing was brilliant which is just like me my character was trying to get a rise out of him and his creative choice was no no I short circuit this young guy coming in with all his energy by not giving an actual you know fuck I'm not getting you're not going to rise out of me

and it was so brilliant it was so much more true to in a way what a veteran person a wiser person would do and the thing was it was having the intended effect on me he was putting me until right yeah and when he gave me that look I realized he's not he's just doing the he's actually doing what he does so well and I literally said Edward just turn your brain off and be

be where you always wanted to be with him and it was a great moment for me because I realized like this this never ends you know like it never ends you can your brain can mess you up badly in and take you out of it can take you out of that presence of and in the moment so fast because of self consciousness

because of ego really at the end of the day if if I'm honest it's just your ego flares and says like I'm being you know all kinds of things right was at the first time you were ever shook in a performance had it ever happen before where you just based on what the other person was bringing it took you out of yourself

I mean I've certainly had you know the the thing I love about doing theater as opposed to working in film is the like concert work versus studio work it it's a Zen Act you know it really is like a you dip your brush in in the ink and you try to stroke that character character and when it's done it's gone that's what we did tonight yeah and it was a little more this there was little less that and someone might do something and when things are complex I did I did a

play years ago with Catherine Keener that was that was really hard it's wonderful play called burn this by Lamford Wilson and there's a line in the play about writing but about creativity and he says one character says you know you got to make it personal make it true and then write burn this on the cover and I I had it on the wall in my dressing room just because I thought that's what we're doing every night every single night we

just got a burn it at the end and we did you know you did like you do a play for months and months and it was such a heart it was so hard the whole thing was so hard and it could be you know Korean around based on what you were feeling that night or whatever that I think like I'm not sure I ever felt we figured it out until really like the very end which is great you know but I found doing that that when you're

doing live theater I think like you can get I don't even say thrown off in a bad way you can be completely buffeted by within the same text you can you can end up in a totally different place sometimes someone can forget a line you know they can drop a section and suddenly your your brain is going in one way it's going what do we do now what do we do now what is it matter you know that we

drop that piece of text what how do we catch back up you know and it's there's a lot of things can put you on tilt but I had a really interesting experience once with I think one of the great my favorite

makers Alejandro in your redo who makes these unbelievably poetic films and one time when we were doing Birdman we were doing a scene that that was really wonderful and hard Michael Keaton and I and we we did it and I think Michael Keaton I looked at each other like wow that felt great you know that was that was almost impossibly see an Alejandro came in and just like ripping his hair out he goes like guys guys guys guys you know

I don't even remember what he said but effectively he said you just did white and I need black like that's how that's how far off that's so far and Michael was a little thrown and I thought I love Alejandro so much I think he's such a great artist and I always he was one of those kinds of people that I thought I mean I'm here in service to him like I like I love the way in your book you talked about things being the best

things are a diary entry and why why do you even care what other people think about your own diary that's up like Birdman it was Alejandro's diary entry it was every character was him Keaton was him I'm him Emma Stone's character the daughter is him everything being expressed in that film is a component of Alejandro's soul and character and I think the whole film is a dialogue with

himself about the different wrestling with his own ego and impulses and everything and I knew going in I am here to serve his diary it's so good I'm so interested in I'm interested in his process and I I was in the best possible place you can be I think as an actor with a director which is complete surrender and complete trust it's one of my favorite movies it is absolutely yeah it's beautiful it's a movie that made me I remember when I saw it I felt like oh this is a reason for

there to be movies yes I agree that's how it made me feel I agree I agree because you also because it isn't it's a meditation you know it's a meditation you know it's a meditation on aging and it's a meditation on ego and it's a meditation on aspiration to do work that matters in any way in

any field and it's it's creating stakes emotional stakes out of like you know people wrestling with themselves yeah but there's nothing ordinary stuff like the stuff that was happening was ordinary yeah but it comes up to this operatic level in the film yeah and you know

it like I think one of the great great maybe the maybe the original film and when I say that I mean where I think a film that before it there is no reference point for it is felonies eight and a half that I think is kind of the first great modernist film in terms of

being a meditation on self it's a completely stream of consciousness surreal meditation on creativity and ego and sex and love and everything and I remember one time I don't know Martin Scorsese super well at all I've met him in passing a few times but one time I ended up at a table

everybody else kind of got up and I was just sitting there and he said hello I said I love I said I have a weird question for you I said what's before eight and a half and he goes nothing nothing wow he goes great question nothing you know and I

and I think and I think he's right I think that's right because and I think but you know you can tie bird mandate and half for sure yeah you can tie you can tie many other things I think you can tie like if you take like felonies on record also it was just really memory of youth I can name six

films that flow from on record I can't really name that many before on record that that are that personal and structured just as memory of youth you know I think he really was an amazing innovator in terms of thinking that the medium of film can just be meditation and image and self and all these not plot but Alejandro's in that he's that kind of a filmmaker I think he tries to he tries to take in the totality of the world and how it's refracting through people and it's never about plot I think

burn man is really really great I think the one he did right before it called beautiful I don't know if you ever seen that when it's in Spanish it's such a masterpiece of emotional life like it it absolutely destroyed me and I think when he came in on us and said

whatever you're doing I need the opposite I felt Michael kind of bristle the little I I was in such a good place that I went I start laughing and I was like I was like that's the guy I want like that's yeah that that is whatever if he says blue I want to go blue what did it turn it do you remember what it turned into versus how it started this is what was really funny so it is really interesting thing especially because that was quite a rehearsed film because of the technical necessities

doing super long choreographies and things like that and it's real like okay so wait you're saying just throw out everything we're doing it go okay and so so we started doing things that were just wildly different and I thought in a funny way it was a good we got to some pretty interesting maybe for me that not as connected or whatever but after a while a hundred came back in just equally frustrated with his wild hair and and he basically in essence he

said as though there had never been a previous thing he was like this is white and I need black you know he was basically saying go back to black but without any knowledge he never went you know what thank you thanks for that it helped me see that I was wrong and that the other was that he just he was so caught up in it he said no it has to be this he walked away and two vote of Betsky the cinematographer who

they've been for instance college I kind of just shot him this look just to see if I and he looked at me and he goes he's he's not talking to you he's talking to himself and I and I was like exactly right it's it's and and sometimes I'm in the best relationships and you've been in so many of them I think but in the best relationships in creative work like that you that's allowed you know like someone someone says I need

to go I need to know that you'll go a hundred percent with me into an experiment without begrudging it and without telling my wrong and so that I can know that you gave me the full force of what you've got so if it doesn't work I have confidence that it doesn't work because it doesn't work not because you wouldn't fucking try it with me yeah because you disagreed because you would ever right and if you have that going along with people you know anything can happen like you can you can get to

that place where you go happily no it I thought maybe that but not so you've sort of like you know try it out and let it go but people you've worked with so many bands like I don't know if you see that dynamic where people get people get defensive about I think one person wants to do something one

person wants to say so they're at longer heads right all the time yeah and and sometimes it's sort of like hey look we're we're here like what what is it cost you know why why be self protective or what is

trying yeah what is it cost us right yeah we always have to try it the other thing is is when you're sharing an idea I tell you my idea you imagine something what you're imagining what I'm imagining often are nothing alike yeah just because language is so imperfect and we all have wild imaginations

you know we can all picture we can all hear the words we saw and imagine a very different story from the or for a poem you know yeah so when you actually do do the test and try it then everyone at least is on the same page because we just heard the same thing so at least we're talking about

the same thing we're not arguing about a theoretical idea yeah I was pretty moved watching the um that Beatles thing that Peter Jackson put together did you get did you yeah yeah I mean I seen the songs come out of nothing nothing was shock so amazing but I also it doesn't it doesn't

even matter what the cultural you know the way that we you know we take the stories of creative acts that we like like the white album or let it be or whatever like that and then you get this there's all this reductivism it just happens legends get born and people say you'll go broke up the

band and this was going on and that was going on right but you realize that apart from it just being silly there's something sad about reducing complicated things that happen to stories of conflict right and I've had that happen to many people still say like you know this film was you know

became a fight and it's like no it didn't it like they I did a film American history X that that you know has really endured a lot of people the thing it was a strange process because the the guy directed at Tony was a was a very eccentric figure I've met Tony very very eccentric

yes beautifully so yes in many ways there are many things that and the truth is our process on that was totally non-traditional but really vital really vital and and I didn't begrudge him his eccentricities at all and actually I he was really appreciative to me the things that went on

they were nuanced and complicated and they had phases of you know do we trust each other or we literally think you go you go through a process and then he got into sort of this he got into some things with the studio over one and more time and there you know sometimes just practical practical

exigencies come and and you know you have to abandon the piece ultimately like you have to finish it and nobody's ever like you know if something's good maybe you're never done and he didn't want to be done and it came down to that but but then in retrospect people love the film yeah absolutely

we and I think he does and I and I do of course there's anything coming you look at I you know I maybe that or this or that you you always hold that if you're inside it right there's no taking away from the fact of how that affected people it still affects people you know and

and when I look at it I'm like wow a lot of what was being expressed not only didn't go away it went away from the margins and became much more central in American life in scary ways you know the rage that it was really about has bloomed it hasn't it hasn't gone more marginal and

but the point was then then you just get subjected to like people saying oh there was a fight because it's salacious and it's you know good copy or whatever and you kind of just you go through that experience and you know that for whatever reason sometimes people like to focus on the idea of conflict that went into creative things and LMNT Element Electrolites Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? You want to maximize your endurance and feel your best?

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That one, David McKenna wrote this edgy, weird story of a young skinhead getting Sent to jail and trying to change his life and I was really struck by it David and I went and worked on it for months together to My argument to him was that it wasn't a milieu piece. It was actually a fellow

right? It really was that if you think about like Not to get too academic, but the Greek idea of tragedy which Shakespeare picked up and took on into a kind of an extension It has in it this idea of like the fatal flaw It had a person of enormous capabilities and beauty and and potential brings themselves low Through an excess of one like characteristic, you know

And I've always liked that even when I was a kid and I was learning about drama. I thought it's such a neat idea that like Your strength Take into excess becomes your weakness your weakness isn't like a thing. It is actually your best quality Take into far can be the thing that

That actually you know hurts you or impedes you. It's an amazing idea And I thought I said to David like what if we approach this Not as just sort of a punk rock film about Skinheads and things what if he's what if he's in that tradition of a fellow in Macbeth and Edipist like people who were on their way could have been great and instead their story becomes a tragedy because something and I said to David I say I think what you're

What's unsaid and but let's make it explicit is that it's about rage. It's about anger. It's a it's about You know this person brought low by the way that raged The roads his life and and once we hooked on to that It got exciting to us because we felt like we can work in what for us is kind of a punk rock way We can shoot like down and dirty and in black and white and in Venice and we weren't gonna listen to white power music

But we had like frugazis 13 songs in our head and we had minor threat. You know, we there was a lot I grew up on That Like we can talk about channeling. I felt like that's the energy of this. This is that's the way we want to make it It's the energy that's being expressed in it and so for us it was like we can have you know a kind of a gorilla attitude But we can have a classical a classical value in it a dramatic ambition that

This elevates the whole thing. Yeah, right and it doesn't take away from The greedy story. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's still it's it's really I mean we made them move for nothing like like I mean Did Tony get involved so I can't really remember the the studio You know, he hadn't made any films he had shot um He shot a lot commercials. He was a he was a very like he was a kind of a cutting-edge commercial director mostly and when we all David and Tony and I kind of bonded over it he

It was funny. He and I I think actually agreed that we weren't sure that I was

You know pulled that off right? That was what really drew me to it, but I was cautious. I thought You know, you got to see so Tony and I decided to do a test and I I didn't I didn't bulk up yet I but I I kind of literally I shaved my head and we put a lot of tattoos on and we did we shot we shot this like improvised kind of thing where a lot of What David and I put into some of the character speeches we made up and we shot it and Tony I looked at it together and we went

This is kind of working. This is pretty interesting You know, and so then we we kind of all jumped in you know, he he was really interesting because he's he's a great photographer

Maybe it's his greatest strength and and you talk about availability. He's extremely available He does not come at things with many preconceptions He actually did a really funny thing that I really liked one time we had a really great Dinner we were just we were talking the whole thing and it was very vital and we were excited about the whole thing And it was I think he was very lit up and he he grabbed this piece of paper and in kind of an artistic kind of way

He just wrote the date on a piece of paper and he stuck it out the window in the rain so that the He wrote something like Tony and Edward this night this date blah blah blah blah blah and he stuck it out in the rain So the rain hit the ink and kind of and then he took it and he was like

He was like let's keep that you know what I mean It was really it was like and that's kind of who he was you know, he was really he was very impressionistic and very stuff and when we would work he He did all the lighting and and He shot the movie but he also operated the movie he operated every camera You know, he was really was a tiny crew and he did Yeah, yeah, but also he A lot of times there was a great first AD on that film named Mark Cattone who was brilliant and

Really down for kind of the gorilla where we were working and a lot of times Tony would come on the set and just say To me he would go you know Directing actors wasn't his thing particularly Was staging anything. Yeah, and he was often saying to me

Will you rehearse it? He knew David with and I had Basically done the work on the script and then I was so he would have me kind of direct the actors and work with the actors and get the Get the scenario set up and he actually liked to be brought in Only when he could sort of sit and watch something and more often than not he would just go

It's so fucking brilliant. It's so and then he would just start going light here light there real fast You know put the on my rig put put the rig on my shoulder and let's rock You know he would quickly do the mental math if I'm gonna do this and this and this and this and this and this let's rock You know and we were often just rocking and rolling and going so fast and he would literally fling one handheld thing with the mag off his shoulder as it ran out and have him drop another one on

I've never you know it was almost like we never stopped. Wow. It was crazy. He shot like he shot like two million feet of film on a on a Short on this movie. It's crazy and it was very vital and um

It was great. I mean honestly like I the whole experience was was was really um It was the way you want to work when you're that age and everything And it You know the the process it took over a year the editing of it because Tony was nuts I mean he brought in a commercial editor and they cut a thing in the story wasn't there and then But the studio gave him a lot of time and we worked together and I actually went and brought people said I cut them

I hadn't cut the movie. I I actually just like Tony went away. He went away to do a gig He kind of actually took a break from the whole thing and we were left sort of sitting there going what are we gonna do? And I I never cut the film. I just I cut him put an assembly of the raw materials together

So that we could try to recruit. I think Tony agreed as I remember that Maybe his commercial editor wasn't the guy to cut it But we couldn't recruit somebody because we didn't really have a thing So we put the we put the whole thing together almost like just like a master, you know

And out of that we got this guy named Jerry Greenberg who had cut um the French connection apocalypse now Kramer versus Kramer legend, you know and Jerry Greenberg was the guy who really came in and really made it the film that it is

And it was the truth is it wound up like really positively the stuff that everybody talked about being conflict later was kind of in my opinion looking way back on it I think it was more than anything Tony being anxious about the moment when you have to say I'm finished And he sort of spun out on the idea That it was complete and that it was done and started insisting on more time and kind of Got him and do a little bit of almost a performance already kind of mode in his fight with the studio

You know what I mean? And that's too Tony is too. He is a bit of a performance artist You know his life and his conduct of life within art is kind of a piece unto itself Yeah, he doesn't turn it off. He actually is Which is he is a performance yes, and there's and there's a point at which standing back for me You can kind of go to a made him unique and kind of hilarious and great it got to a place where It was starting to become a practical impediment

To having something that was more than good enough. It was really Working yeah, and in a way I always said to people like that people were saying like why is he doing this? Are you in a fight with him? And I was like I'm not in a fight with him at all like like I'm actually sort of I ended up feeling sorrowful that he cut himself out from the pleasure of

The result and not not not not not the credit. He directed film But in a way he cut himself He cut himself off at the last minute From the ability to do that best thing when you've come through the whole thing together And you all put your arms around each other's shoulders and put your heads together and go We did we did this you know. We've ever done it since With him. Yeah, I've never done have you ever had that head down moment? No, we did it

I've never run into him. It's really really weird. I don't have to feel like today. That would happen Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've even I've even heard second-hand that he I've heard I've heard from a distance that he acknowledges that in some ways that he It's kind of what we were talking about the way the brain can spin you up into A negative space I think Maybe he maybe he knows in a way that like it's endured it and by the way that's the thing

I like in your book. It's like you get a thing done. It's not it's not yours the minute you're done Number one is things move so far from what they were when you conceived them It's very very difficult to wrangle things into what was in your head And they become what they've become and then all these unexpected things happen, you know

They take kind of life to their own. Yeah, and people form a relationship with them They see things in them that you didn't intend They relate to them They misinterpret them they interpret them in ways that are cool that you didn't intend and in a way You know for Tony like I think maybe maybe now maybe all this time later

He's able to see that it's had a beautiful life. Yeah, like it. It's had a beautiful life that everything In the intentional sense which was to affect people he achieved it like in spades and um And the film wouldn't be the film unless all of the things that happened happened. Yeah. Yeah But again the whole process was it was right up there in the At that time in my life. I was like this is the way I want to work. Yeah. This is the way I want to work

I want to work. I don't want to do John Grisham movies, you know like I don't I just didn't want to do that stuff And I was like this is what I want to do and then these are the kinds of things I want to say and I was getting to The interesting thing about that one

You ever listen to things you work on at a certain time And think wow like It's so different than I thought it was at the time You know what I mean like where you're like older now and you look at the thing and you go How I thought it worked because of X but in fact when I was now I see it in a totally different light, you know where I hear it in a different way or whatever on that one I was with some people

Some people hadn't seen it brat. I was with Bradley Cooper and some other people and he was exoriting these people to watch that film You know and so someone screened it right and I and I hadn't watched it in I don't I don't know how long more than 20 years You know I just did the thing and I had to really

I had a really interesting experience. It was very it's powerful But the thing that really struck me was that I thought when we made it like I thought I was a man, you know like I thought yeah I thought I was expressing myself as a forceful adult person

You know you tell yourself yeah look I got I got some muscles on me. I got the ink. It's powerful. It's iconic It looks good and I thought it worked Back then I thought it worked because I was doing something Muscular and powerful right and when I watched it and actually teared up a few times watching it I watched I realized I was tearing up because it's about kids. Yeah, it's not because I'm a man and for it's not working for the reasons

I thought it was working. Yeah, it's working because It's about really young people Yeah, fucking themselves up yeah around rage and sadness and and I was looking at going It works more because he thinks he's a man. Yeah And then and then fails so horribly and in a way Is barely growing up or or is about to grow up when the consequences hit him? Yeah, you know

But I but I really thought like holy crap. You were the character. Yeah, but I really thought like look how you I mean I was a kid, you know what I mean like and I and that's that's kind of wild to also to realize like That you you have a relationship with a thing. It's not even really necessarily It's not necessarily communicating In the way you think it's communicating

Maybe in some levels it is. I don't think I don't think we can know. I don't think you can ever really know no no But that in a funny way it's like I feel like all those things The kind of headspace I was in When you're in your 20s like you your your aspirations are so different

Or hopefully they are I think if your aspirations don't change as you get older. You're in big trouble in a way, you know like the aspirations Apart from ego and apart from Wanting applause wanting money wanting any whatever it is you think you're asserting and things I also think like I think I was interested in wanting to I wanted to assert

An ability to channel things that weren't like me, you know what I mean? Yeah, and in a weird way over time I've gotten this place where I'm like I don't say totally lost my interest, but I I've definitely lost my interest in violence, you know like I don't I was super interested in some of the things that I think young men get polluted by And they gave me the chance to exercise certain kinds of muscles And I was very uninterested in things that

Came close to my own vulnerabilities or experiences or whatever. I really wanted to incarnate Things I'm more and more interested in things that are closer to home. Yeah, you know what I mean There's an honesty in what's really happening. Yeah, and Did you read Barbarian days? Did you read that poem?

This kind of you know highly celebrated writer at the New Yorker who turned out had this Whole young life was like just chase surf all over the world and surfed at a lot of the places like taverua and Long before other people went there and it's called a surfing life, but it it's a meditation on

I'm getting older. I Take it as like a look back at the way that when you're young You're pushing yourself toward an aspirational idea of what you want to be Even though in many ways what you are is more present and unencumbered and the older you get

As you get toward those aspirations you actually are looking back wanting to retain that Unencumbered feeling of just being present I relate I relate to that I relate to In all ways the challenge in life is is like recovering simplicity You know, it gets really hard to recover the state of mind

And it's gotten worse. I mean I I think I do agree with like If you read Walt Whitman's poem crossing Brooklyn fairy which I think is honestly one of the greatest pieces of American art ever because it It's so wild how he's saying in the poem you 200 years hence I am thinking about you More than you can possibly know and you're looking back to me and I'm telling you That the dark days that fall on you they fell on me the horrors of Fratricidal war

That was known to me. It's like such a Wild thing the way he is like Everything you're going through I went through it

The warfs along the edge of the river in Manhattan. I walked there too. I looked at the light on the water And when I was living in New York young I remember reading that and just like feeling like A time portal was this guy opens a time portal and he's talking to you through it and he and he has this stretch in that where he says You know there never was any more age or beauty than there was now or ever will be and sometimes I think that's true Sometimes I think obviously like the balances

And the difficulty of achieving balance That it's the same It's the same in different forms in all ages and people's existential challenges are the same And in a way that's like you know, that's what the Dharma says too. It's like you're in a state of anxiety That's rooted in your your animal nature your desires You got to stand to the side of yourself and see that to be able to To let go right

But at the same time like it's also incontestable to me that we are succeeding in creating More noise and distraction Around ourselves with every passing year and I I know there was Things in the 70s when we were growing up Television and stuff, but these things in our hands now The the attention span the assault on attention span and the the assault on slow thinking Quiet It's just unreal. It's unreal. I'm shackled to it for a whole variety of reasons that are their rationalizations, but

You tell your story. Yeah, but I got my guitar tuner on it Right really yeah, I got a guitar tuner that put goes on to the end thing too I don't need my fucking phone for that like and you say like but I like to check the tides Right or I like to do this, but then There's the crack cocaine on it

That you just get sucked into and you're just like this is just noise. It doesn't make you feel good. No It's just noise and I'm I'm sure our parents were worried about television in the way we're worried about social media I can't say I think those are entirely the same thing. I feel like um The age of Assault on your attention is

The good news is I think people are talking about it. I don't think it's like I don't think we're all just I don't think we're unaware and it's happened fast and caught us But I do think I do think there's awareness and there's some Communication going on there's a lot of people who are discussing it Welcome to the house of macadamias macadamias are a delicious superfood sustainably sourced directly from farmers macadamias

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House of macadamias I roasted with an amebian sea salt crack black pepper and chocolate dips snack bars come in chocolate coconut white chocolate and blueberry white chocolate Is it house of macadamias dot com slash tetra When did you get into surfing?

I got into surfing later and uh I actually was working on a film in China and I had an accident doing a stunt and I I broke my back I you know I it sounds really dramatic I cracked three vertebrae right I would normally do stunts it depends I mean everybody does There's some blurry line between what Like a level of that that

You actually learn it. There's techniques and And it's it's fun to figure out plays into the character also yeah, it's fun to figure out the puzzle even of Like in filmmaking especially the to figure out how do you do that stuff and make it look great What was the safely, but but no this was this was um this was like a beautiful Film about forgiveness. I called the painted bail. But what was the how did you get hurt?

Oh, I got chucked off a horse. Uh, I was I was the horse a horse cut that I was on got spooked You know, it's bucked me off and I landed funny But my father was living in Indonesia then And when that film was over I went down There to hang out with him and recuperate and

How do your dad come to live in Indonesia? He was doing conservation work. Yeah, he was he's a he's a big conservation pioneer and Environmental advocate and program builder and he was he was working them for a big conservation organization down there and um I met someone introduced me to um famous in the news and surfer resolve To a great great guy and it actually first appealed to me because it looked like It was the direction I wanted to stretch my back, you know what I mean?

I needed to open my back up. I was really locked up and also I had I was a sailor and When did you do the sail when I was a kid? Yeah, yeah I grew up near the Chesapeake Bay and I learned I learned to sail and I love I love the ocean. I love sailing scuba diving and I had wind surfed and everything I just had never surfed

So I started doing it like in my 30s and I just got completely addicted to it. It really um I think it's like the thing that I've found That I can have a positive addictive relationship with yeah, I never had a you know a toxic addiction All those sugar and shit like that is It's definitely In the matrix for me, but um But it's just the kind of thing that I feel like surfing is like music. It's

It's infinite. You will never assess it or encompass it Because the movement of water and wave form is so infinite And so nuanced and so beautiful and so changeable That Just like a musician all you're trying to do is Get yourself inside the pocket of that flow and have the ephemeral moment of getting in sync with that energy and It doesn't matter how many times you do it There's no guarantee you're gonna get it right the next time and every single place you go and do it

You can do it. I mean, you know, we have the Takuji's our friend You know, one of the great surfers and you know, piedpipers of surfing and everything and I

I know being when when you're in the water with someone who's done it their entire life. They're still watching the water and the way it's moving toward them and doing all these micro reads I mean, it's the ultimate in availability to the moment Because you have to perceive what is actually just taking place right now and get yourself in sync with it and it's good for you physically It's great mentally. It's just completely

I mean, I have to say like I love the antidote to the social media. It is. It's exactly Exact opposite and it and I gotta say in a funny way like I love doing yoga. I like There's something about surfing that It might be for me. It's like the most accelerated gateway To a clear mind

like it um and presence. Yeah presence It's you so like you do yoga to prepare to meditate or or you meditate and you focus on your breath and you get You work toward emptying your mind and then you hear your mind come in and then it pings you back and then you go

There there it is again. Let me try to let it go again. There. There. I am again, you know and um and all of it's great every single form of that kind of practice literally whether it's yoga or meditation or scuba diving or anything that gets you through into that that state is great sometimes

because of how noisy life is and the fact that I'll get into periods where I'm like I cannot shut my brain off, you know like I just like the I've electively Chosen to take on a lot of stuff and it's overstimulating my lists, you know, it's not even it's not social Meanish that like that for me as much although that will be this cheap fun projects things you know I don't think but but it's like the radio head song spinning plates, you know

Sometimes you just go what have I done to myself? Yeah, what have I done to myself? Why have I done this? Yeah, like it's an embarrassment of riches for sure. I know I'm lucky I know that there's very little I'm doing in my life that I don't want to do for positive reasons You know other than taxes or whatever, you know what I mean? So it's it's an embarrassment of riches and it's an uptown problem for sure

Lucky problem to have to to sort of electively take on a lot of things that are interesting. You're missing life. A crossman. Yes, that's what's so wild. Yeah, it's so wild to realize that you have You've built paint Floyd's wall No one else built it around you you built it And you're trying to take the bricks off the wall you get to a point in life and you're like All I want to do is take bricks off this wall

You know and um, but then you can imagine but if I put this brick on top here. It's gonna look so cool And there's the compulsion to engage with things that are That are thrilling vital fun people who are great It Sometimes it's like you can't help yourself and then low and behold you're sitting there With your brain In a state of anxiety That the the literal lists you've made or the ones or even worse The brain bouncing around worried That it's forgotten something on the list, right?

You know if I club that has that great line the things you on end up owning you That's definitely true in a material sense But there's a non material version of that where the things that you've engaged in become this This matrix of of noisy mind that you can't And you're like where's my time to read? You know like where's my time to just listen to music?

Which is B with no agenda or hang out with kids or or walk in the be you know all of it and and then it becomes this thing of um Going You gotta get in the practice going I can't I can't do everything every day I just can't like and I and they're and so you gotta put the balance

But it's funny like like great literature or music like there's sometimes you think you knew what something was about when you were young Then you like read it again when you're old or like marquesis books or but I do think like the wall like the wall is really interesting

Right because we loved it when we were kids because Hey teacher leave those kids alone or there was like these little there's these things you grabbed in it right You grabbed you grabbed what applied you at the time I like laid back and listened to that whole thing one night

I couldn't cannot sleep and I was like fuck it. I have these good new headphones I put it on and I listened to the wall like all the way through which I had and done in a long time And I was like wow like this is really about self imprisonment You know it really is this like thing of like am I gonna be able to To deconstruct The the thing I put around myself and I really I had this whole different response to it um The the thing is that you were saying what's acting and I'm saying

Like like I feel pretty disconnected from it right now just because My my last big personal diary entry was this film I wrote and directed motherless Brooklyn And it was completely Satisfying to me like I was You know you always care because you people invest in you know back you and whatever But I really like needed to just exercise it right like I had worked on it put it down for like eight years Wow, I wrote half of it tell me this way from the beginning Well

Well, there was a there's a book called motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Latham wonderful novel about a guy with Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder It's a modern novel. It's a detective story from when the 90s like the late late 90s But it's the pleasure of it wasn't the plot It was the head the inside the journey inside the head of this character And I related to it like so intensively like really like

The way in Joseph Conrad's you know heart of darkness Marlow's looking at Kurtz and going that I'm looking down into the void and there he is and I'm just on the edge of it Mother's Brooklyn's funny and empathetic and warm, but I really was like I really do feel sometimes if 20 synapses

Had been wired differently. I might be a really painful version of obsessive compulsive just you know Or Tourette or whatever I related so much to the To that aspect of it that like words triggering compulsive mental play with the words phrases rhythms lines sounds you know and the need to repeat them and the need to twist them around and make a rhyme out of I mean, it's just like I I really related to it and then Separately and kind of in parallel

I was really interested in in this guy named Robert Moses who you know from growing up, you know Moses State Park. Yeah, he's this towering figure in New York and American history who who was very poorly understood until this great book called the Power Broker was written about him and in many ways You could argue that he was the Darth Vader of American life in the 20th century he he was

Like Anakin Skywalker a Jedi like a person of incredible capabilities who went to the dark side actually Went over to the dark side and did incredible damage to the social fabric of New York Based on racism and based on power and based on all these things and

And people thought he was the Parks Commissioner and and and I was fascinated by I was fascinated by him and I was fascinated by the idea of um the way that like Injustices become systemic You know they get they get baked into the actual way our society is built

But he seemed kind of um he seemed esoteric in a way like like the kind of thing that You could tell yourself the lie that you could make a movie like a citizen Kane about him and you could say yeah I'm gonna make citizen Kane but in the back of my mind I knew you needed a vehicle for looking at him So I had this wild idea to use the Tourette detective as the vehicle for To agree that it what happened, but I had to go to yeah I had to go I had to go to Jonathan who wrote my lowest Brooklyn

And there's this is an and I said to him I got the craziest idea and I said but I can't do this without your permission Honestly like I said I I want to take your character But I want to like Philip Marlow or I want to take your detective and I want to send him in often to another adventure

I still want to Explore like the idea that his boss and the only person who understood him is murdered, but I want I want what he unspools the thread that he pulls on I want it to be a vector for looking at what Robert Moses did in New York in the in in the

It's the coolest idea in the fifties and thank God he he said hey, I wrote my book You don't have I don't need you to rewrite my book and he said I love films many of the best adaptations are Springboards into something you always know you want to call it motherless Brooklyn such a great title

I see such a great title. I see the other but the other thing is he didn't write motherless Brooklyn about Robert Moses and and the and what happened In the bifurcating of the neighborhoods, you know he it was a my But motherless Brooklyn is such a great That's what happened to the city. Yes, no one was looking out for it. Yeah, you know And all these places that we know these places that were communities the African-American communities in Brooklyn and the Jewish communities in the Bronx and

They ravaged them. They They chased people out. They did unbelievably scuzzy and destructive things and and purposely put highways through the middle of portions of them You know, there was there was a lot about The way that they remade New York from the 19th century city into the 20th century city that was

That was purposefully and cruelly and unnecessarily destructive You know, including even things that Sound apocryphal but that were true Robert Moses Dreamed up many of the parks and the parkways and things like Jones Beach He also intentionally had the overpasses set at a height That buses would not be able to go Under them so that minorities couldn't go to Jones Beach. Wow. Yeah

And that's true. He really did that. Wow really really tried to make sure that public transportation Would keep minorities from his new public beaches And I love the idea of like of motherless people and but of mother of whole communities that no one's looking out for you know Thankfully Jonathan like now it gave me his blessing He was like I'm fast. It is like I love this idea and he let me Do this wild transposition of his character into a totally different story and

You know, and I had when I moved to New York when I was in my early 20s. I worked in housing. I worked in affordable housing Synance and and I used to go around in all these neighborhoods and everything So it was really connected to a lot for me and I um and I really wanted to get it done But when I went to write my own mystery

My own Chinatown. I got really hung up I got really hung up in the in the jigsaw puzzle of it And then I was you know because I was lucky and I had gigs coming at me and I was like I'm gonna put it down and I'll do this gig And I lost you know, I lost it. I lost the thread. I lost the momentum. I lost the impetus And it kind of was like there

And it was haunting it haunted me for like 10 years. Wow And I kept saying yeah, I'm gonna pick it back up and finally a friend at a studio He stuck a fork and he was like Maybe I should give this to someone else You know, maybe I should let someone else have the right so you can still play the role or whatever It kind of like smack me in the face in a good way and I was like what are you gonna do you are you gonna? You know What's gonna satisfy you more than finishing this?

Nothing and if you don't You're gonna it's gonna be an actual regret. Yeah, like an actual regret not like a passing thing like you're gonna regret it If you don't see this through so I finally I finally picked it back up And I bounced it around with the writer friend and it was really weird It was like the thing I'd been so hung up on it unlocked like that Yeah, like it just and it wasn't just like in my sleep. I came up with it. It just Enough time had gone by

And something that seemed illogical to me just suddenly didn't anymore. I It just unlocked and then I did it really fast, you know, I did it in a big salvo of You know a whole bunch of nights of just staying up all night sleeping in the day writing all night sleeping in the day

And I finally got it done and Then it took me a while to get the you know figure out how to get it made So much of today's life happens on the web Square space is your home base for building your dream presents in an online world

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The square space app helps you run your business from anywhere Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand Square space makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website Visit square space dot com slash tetra and get started today How hard is it to get a movie made?

Well, we're in I mean I don't I don't know if you feel this is true in music too, but the we're in a golden era For storytelling narrative storytelling is in a golden era Now it might not be the form we grew up with where you went to cinema all the time and everything

But I but the what's happened in terms of Streaming platforms and all the business of it all You can gripe about the change in the form and the change in the way it's delivered and where people are seeing what they're seeing and all of it And it's true, but at the same time What effectively has happened is that People have set up these blast furnaces and they need coal

You know there was a there was a series that I love called um. I made destroy you. I don't know if you ever saw that this British Ganean woman Michaela coal wrote directed and stars in this it's so good. It's so brilliant And to me, it's an example of like there is so much more diversity of Storytelling now So many more so many different voices are finding their way the forms have been exploded

It's not all two hours and 20 minutes. You know, it's like Multi-part and three part and ten part and multi-seasons and big long films and I think it's almost indisputable that if you There are more doors to knock on more forms more ways and more types of storytellers getting

To do their their stuff than ever All the things people are saying about making you know democratizing it more all true all great You know it just be pushed and pushed and pushed but I don't think anybody can contend with the fact that There are more ways to get things done today than there ever have been

And that's cool. I think that's that's cool I think certain types of things like Aren't getting made as theatrical films as much anymore But you got to decide at a certain point if you care like do you know, it's like I got a lot of vinyl records I still like to put them on But I can't pretend that I also don't love Moving around in the world with the entirety of all music that's just ever been made available to me

I love it. You know, I love it. I love being able to like What's the flea turn me on to like Farrow Sanders the that is that last record or whatever you know and it's like floating points Yeah, where where would I find to be able to get tipped off to something and then settle in with it And it's so great, you know, so great. I love the availability of of that. It's that's like, you know It's great. When's the last time you went to the cinema to see a movie?

I saw some things in the last in the last couple of weeks. I didn't go I mean I you know it sounds fancy But I a friend with a screening room put something so I love seeing things on big screen. I love it You know that no matter how big your home TV is it's not quite the same

As watching it in a room with other people. I love that. This is it's funny because I I wanted to ask you a question It flows up and out of what we're talking about which is like After I did muddle us Brooklyn I felt satiated in a way like exhausted But I got to fully exercise I got to fully realize the thing that had been in my head for a long time That was great It was great as an actor. I really loved and related to the character. I got to express something

I got to write it. I got to direct it. I had great great great actors that I absolutely adore it in it and One of the biggest unexpected things was that I Got to produce all this music in it right great Tom York wrote a new track for me. He played it for me in a demo And I got to go to Oxford and work with him on that This brilliant composer Daniel Pemberton We worked night after night after night on the music together and

recorded it in Abbey Road great and in air studios of George Martin's other place and And And went in Marcellus and his band Created the music for a jazz band in a jazz club that's like Miles Davis's quintet So I got to work with Wynton on recording re-recording

Amingus piece and a Clifford Brown piece and And then Wynton and his quintet played The sort of new ballad standards that Daniel wrote and we recorded so I got to like make music in Abbey Road in New York with Wynton in Oxford with Tom and I got to really

actually produce all that and cut it and weave it in a thing and you know, I've directed other films but this was like and It was like an exalted experience for me yeah getting to work with those people absolutely on that kind of music and to shape the music I'm I play but like it was like I got to

I got to slip into a world that you guys work in all the time and do it in a way that was such a it was so gratifying Like I never wanted to end you know, it was so much fun And then I finished it and then COVID you know hit which was fine with them That was fine with me creatively

I was looking for a big sabbatical for my mind and everything anyway and I've done one or two things but I really like almost like just gave myself a permission to Just stop and and almost go through the the the cruise of the Like a junkie, you know like the brain and what am I supposed to be doing what I do or I got work like what am I doing?

What are you doing? What are you doing? Yeah, there's the voice like screaming in your head like You're crazy not to gig, you know or you're crazy not to work and I almost had to like Let that fade a little To even get around to a point of going It feels distant super distant and that feels good fine like really really good and fine and The last year or two I've actually had to like Like repeatedly kind of Meditate talk to myself and just go

Do an exercise of like imagining I'm oh my deathbed. Yeah, and I'm looking back and Knowing that I want like a tapestry. I don't want the repetitive experience of playing dress up And make believe I'm adding finitum like I want to do other things I want to like just Experience other things and and I read this um I actually read this essay that Voslav Havel wrote

The you know the guy who was the playwright who became the president of Czechoslovakia Incredible figure and he wrote this this essay called second wind And he basically said that In a creative life you do this wave of work and you exhaust it and then you have two choices You can start to repeat that work In one form or another you can essentially keep revisiting the same Ideas or you can stop And refill Yourself with life

And be willing to start again a whole new adventure. Yeah, and I love that I I it's scary It's definitely scary It definitely like has given me some moments of all the brain, you know wobbles insecurity like Is anybody gonna let you back in and do it? Are you gonna know how to do it? And that's why I was saying at the very beginning like I'm getting damn close to this place where I'm like I don't I don't really I'm not sure

Yeah, you know how to do it. Did I know how to do it? That's great. Yeah, yeah I think that's good because I think um I'm not physically the same person anymore. I don't look the same. I think And there's a part of me that thinks that that's even good Within what what acting is that it's best. It's like I I do have that thing where I'm like I've seen these people too much. I can't I can't let go you know or There's some of my favorite actors who I think have

You know you kind of forget about them. Yeah, and and then it's like whoa But that's hard to do if if if you're working like relentlessly, you know but I the thing I was gonna ask you is I When I pulled up I was playing um The chili peppers track white white braids and pillow chairs from that let uh, I guess not the you guys did another one But the from the Yeah, that whole thing I think it's one of the best things they've ever done And in particular, I think the back half of the second record

Which isn't the stuff you know that makes the radio and it wasn't it's not even what they've been playing out in Taurus and I've seen everything but like those tracks like it's only natural and white braids and pillow chairs and she's a lover and Let them cry

They're in such a fucking groove in that like I went down on that like a kid With the first you two record or with you know, I mean or Or Or like the clap you know, I mean I was listening to it over and over and over again and You know, I've been friends with those guys a long long time

I think they're playing at a level of musicianship and I think Anthony wrote some song that song when I was thinking I think it's like one of the best songs He's ever written It's just unbelievable like there's just not a lot of people who have been making music together for over 30 years Who still in my opinion find that it's just great But I have this kind of theory that in part

It's because John stops. I think so too It's crazy to think about but it it's relevant to this conversation to me not just because you've worked with them or anything but because to me Like in the culture that we're in if you say out loud you say like oh

The first time John like went out of that band for health reasons and everything right came back in but they do like That whole run of great records that you guys did like You know, California Cation and by the way and standing my camera these things

But between that and now like that's like over 16 years. It's like 16 or 17 years between that and John playing with them again, you know and in our culture and in our minds even If you say the sentence is out loud of like who would quit playing with the chili peppers like or like Who would give that up? right like most people would reflexively go No way right And yet to me

I really feel like if they didn't it wouldn't be the same. I don't think you could There's definitely a feeling of Everyone has a tremendous amount of gratitude that they have it now right and that might not have been the case if you had it all the time Yeah, you know when something is yeah gone and comes back. It's that much sweeter. Yeah, you treat it precious But it's also making for granted. Yeah

And it's funny they play like them, but I also have to say to me. I don't know if you've musically developed mentally They're playing like jazz musicians on the record like they're they're playing Chad too. I mean, I mean like hey the best musician. He's playing John The best musicians and Anthony from the beginning till now has just continually gotten better and better and better It's funny. I asked Anthony. I wrote Anthony about that song white braids

But you're never gonna hear on the radio right? It's one of my favorite songs on the album. Yeah, it's it's gorgeous piece of writing and And John's not even playing I mean John's playing this beautiful like less Paul like rhythm fill

You know what I mean just these I mean I sat there trying to work those chords out Because they're it's just this gorgeous and I and I asked and I was like I wrote him I said I think that's like one of the best songs you've ever written And um and he said you know what's really weird is he said I

The scene he said I saw the scene of that I saw those two people in a cafe like 20 years ago and I wrote it down Like he's I've been sitting the image of this couple Me too Which I love too because I think like the Sure I think it's I can't remember what it's in one of Rilka's

The Austrian poets letters. He says he had that said like to a real artist 10 years is nothing Justation is everything I think about that a lot I think like But it's something that I really admire about I don't even know John as well as I know fully in Anthony but But I really admire that the courage to Live a life and take a break from an identity

You know, it's really really hard to do. Absolutely. Let's listen to that song I'm a tank of tiger in a one-of-a-ribbit artist So why can't ask it why She's a loaded cobra and she wanted to be with me for the ride In a Sunday dine I'm reminded there's no final place to kiss Then one like this

But hey, I can see what's right with you Why pray to pillow J I could spin my nights with you This puts it way away I can see your sights of you Why pray to pillow J I don't know what I would be With that chup pillow she's a bobby darencing into the fish inherent sacrifice All that's unknife

There's a common bee a pop that back in we believe it is a lie You can see the river running through my devastated concrete eyes Take only night But hey, I can see what's right with you Why pray to pillow J I could spin my nights with you This puts it way away I can see your sights of you

Why pray to pillow J I don't know what I would be Call it for your views say to you, say to you Call it for your views say to you Deep into the sky, rolling high, rolling high Deep into the sky, rolling high I can see your sights of you So nice So nice There's so much romantic song

There's so much longing in it and dreaming of connection You know, it's just a great It's a beauty I really love it But it's funny in your book I like the idea you had that there's people are making themselves antennas And conducting things down They could come through different people but they come through It's really weird I think there's lots of I mean I play guitar not great but I love guitar I really love the instrument and I just you know I'm in music

And I love lots of bands and you know identify or relate to things but there is such a funny thing And to me John is like one of the all time you know for me John sits in this really specific Like Hendrix and Prince and John for me They play the same way there's a lightness of touch there's a flickeringness to it But it's really wild The best way I can put it is like when I'm listening to this record Like I was listening to it's only natural when I come out here

Sometimes the path of the notes that a certain person finds land in you and they're right You know they're just right there's lots there's lots of people I listen to and I'm like they're great that's great I can't explain the level of satisfaction my brain gets out of like where John puts notes

They're like to me they're like perfect and I kind of get that sensation you're talking about in the book where I'm just like Why am I you know so other other people may not feel that And it relates to the Molo's Brooklyn thing I get really thrown off if I feel like a note or a syncopation

Or something lands in the wrong way you know what I mean a rhyme or a thing I think that is such a strange aspect of the brain that something in you is saying like it's not language It's not logic it's not anything but your brain is saying that's in the right place Yeah why you know

Yeah we don't know why but you really can feel it I think that's the key to all music I've recently come to this like it really is just the timing that the little timing between the notes That's where all the energy lies the juxtaposition the space The way these guys are laying this it's also the way people lay space over each other Like they may someone makes space and someone else who's pushing someone's pulling

Right and on this group of tracks that I like one of the things I love so much is it's like this inversion because John's flees playing a lot of melodic complexity around spaces John's making with some very simple rhythmic things

There's a big inversion going on of a lot of what you associate with like bass and guitar you know But I just find the whole the way that I have to be honest like the older I get the more I envy music as a form of expression I like what I you know I like the things that I've gotten to work on

I think also maybe because it's not work for you do you know what I mean like the fact that it isn't work It's true you get to enjoy it in a different way Yes and look I know musicians spend an enormous amount of time on the math to get to the place where it becomes not math Right because there's mathematics and music there's patterns And musicians can get very analytic and wonky also to create a thing that helps the rest of us get out into the non-anal...

You know the rhythm and the and vibration stuff but there is something really enviable to about the autonomy that's in music Like I feel this with like Tom and Johnny and these guys you know I stopped in to see Tom and Johnny were in studio at Abbey Road late and I went in And I was just watching them you know I was like these guys have been just like fleeing empty they've been given since high school you know And they're still sitting on the floor on the park a floor in studio too

And in Abbey Road just playing you know playing literally figuring shit out and they don't have to get anybody's permission to do it They don't have to get anybody's money to do it they don't ask anybody to do anything they can just go and do it

And there's a cataclysmic gulf between that freedom and the form that I've worked in more where The amount of headache I mean I love that I can sit down and write a thing right and if it would it have ended there That'd be great But the lack of autonomy not just as an actor like film in general

No the number of people involved it's such a big production It's so it's so it's an assault on your desire to have that kind of sacred space Right it doesn't facilitate and in some cases it doesn't even permit the creation of a sacred space

And I find that really enviable and the longer I'm friends with people like like and fleet you know we're friends a long time Like he's a monk I mean he and I it's like I envy the purity I really envy the purity of the fact that like lots of times I pop across to his house And he's in the middle of a base lesson a base lesson. Yes. He still takes lessons with his jazz teacher and he's practicing and practicing You know those guys have a devotional relationship Tom expresses this too that like

He can't think of it as content if he doesn't have a devotional relationship with it You know it and it keeps him Do you think in life it's very hard to have I'm gonna be honest it's hard to have a devotional relationship to keep a spiritual space in work that is as crowded as making films is But I love the idea of that as a that's a problem to solve

Like don't think of it. Yes, it hasn't been that way. Yeah, but maybe there is a version of that and it could be really interesting maybe you can basically put together essentially small theater group yeah and film everything you do and have it be And it could turn into some there's some you can get yeah, there's a way to do it There's a way to do it that approaches it burn them as damn close that was this that was like right up there with for me

How quickly was that shot very quick like I think 28 days or something like that lots of rehearsal

Yeah, which was wonderful. Yeah, and I'm not saying that you know Francis Coppola's line I love like he said the best things about making movies is that they're collaborative and the worst thing is that they're collaborative You know, it's like it's like really true, but but and I think it's I think it's also unfortunately true the the Hitchcock line that like directing a film he said directing a film is to be pecked death by a thousand pigeons

So true, right? It's just like the questions never end and the the the left brain assault on the right brain is the intrinsic challenge in making movies

And there's just so much artifice. It's also unfortunately and maybe this is why Alejandra wanted to do when I read Birdman he hadn't he didn't originally say I'm going to try to create the single shot experience Right, I think whether he knew it or not what he was trying to do was come as close to flow state in a filmmaking process as you can And I know look you got you guys are craftsmen you're you're stitching together a lot you're you know I know it isn't pure flow state it's not live

It's it's a lot of crap it's a combination and a lot of stitch work. Yeah, right a lot of stitch work and yet If you guys do a take and you see you take you're trying to find Those things where the flow of the notes arrives at the right place right and that that's actually when I talk about it

That's not dissimilar from doing takes on a film similar It's like when it just locks in and comes together and you say that was the one that's the one yeah, yeah same But and then you still might do something else to it after it's true even as we're talking about it Even I mean think about it just putting the scoring changes. Yeah, oh hugely hugely I'm never Seize to be amazed by not just what music but sound mix in general most films just don't work like at all until the sound mix is done

It's not even like it's not even very dust. It's literally like It's like a piece of furniture that's gouged and you can see the bolts and the cracks and everything and until the sound mix is done There's no show it's like shellac that goes over the whole thing and something it looks beautiful and it works and There's this whole slight of hand this I

Can't explain it but it suddenly makes the whole thing co here. I mean I've been right up against the edge of going Oh my god, this just doesn't this doesn't work at all And when you do the sound mix It suddenly it's like oh my god, it works like gangbusters, you know It's wild how much the auditory

experience of It can change the story you told about the deniro scene and being Taken out of the moment by what he was doing Reminds me very much of the scene in Birdman Where your meeting Michael Keaton's character on the stage and he's got all these ideas of

How the performance is supposed to be and you start Your performance is so good that he doesn't even understand that that started He thinks you're still talking to him when you're doing the scene It was just like that and he didn't even know what to do with it It was a great moment Yeah, it's there's a lot in that that's multi-layered and fun Amazingly that is the scene I was talking about Where Alejandro said you guys are doing it like all wrong

It's amazing. I'm not sure that what's in there isn't the very first One of those early ones if it isn't it's the one we went away from it and came back to it It's very disarming watching that scene because we all have the same effect as Michael Keaton We're experiencing Michael Keaton that the viewers Yeah, and when we come to realize it's already started like oh this is what it's really like

This is when it's good. Yeah exactly It's like you don't even know it when it's good I just I just think that and maybe maybe it's familiarity breeds contempt or you're always looking across You know whatever grass is greener There's something in me though that some of it's the autonomy

I've always envied musicians and their autonomy to do their work in a room together They don't need permission from anybody It's harder to make films that way you just maybe I'm rationalizing it If I was I should be able to take my iPhone and go out and do whatever I want

But it's the way of the world But I actually think I think what everybody's really chasing on some level is a feeling of flow state You know surfing music, anger, whatever and maybe maybe two it's because I like going and hearing live music so much

And when I see live music where you just go what is what could be better than that like what could be better than to be To have the facility with the in with an instrument or your voice to be able to be having it flow through you and working it out as you're going

It's like to me it's just incredibly enviable But I mean I guess you've done it so long It's not like you can romanticize that it isn't struggle Like it's like people No but you people get in and they when it happened when something magical happens and happens often

It's still shocking every time you can't believe it when it's happening Yeah when when we were up in that other building and John Shounty started playing guitar First time I went back to see a rehearsal after John rejoined the band I just started crying when they were playing together

Because it was such an emotional thing to see it's so tightly knit between them where it's like the psychic connection is so deep They move like they're one you know like a half of an octopus Yeah no they just work together perfectly together

And then when they're doing a take-live and I've heard the song in rehearsal many times And then there's a dramatic thing that happens in one of the songs or in all of the songs often And something happens where you can't believe you're in the room while this is happening

It's almost like they can't believe it's happening or that they're not even there They're so there that they're not there and it's remarkable Had that experience also with the color centana when he starts playing it's like it's coming from somewhere else It's some other thing

I don't know how to explain it Yeah I mean I think Tom York told me that there's a track I love of theirs called There There It has that line just because you feel it doesn't mean it's there And I think Tom told me that when he listened to it back he started to cry

Like that it was like one of the even though they were pretty far along in their career at that point that he really like It went beyond him you know what I mean Yeah and that he was made emotional by it It's funny because Anthony you know he's such a fun master and he writes things but

But I kind of think of my friends who are songwriters like the thing I'm really knocked out by it means he's really like a Surrealist I mean he really is like a linguistics surrealist And that's that same part of me that relates to the terratic thing in model is Brooklyn the word play

The impulse to it like if anybody plays with words more I mean I don't know who writes in a way that's word play more than Anthony Like he he stitches things together He puts rhymes and concepts together like if you look at them I'm a bit I mean don't make any sense at all

Like literally it you could write it and it's and I always know what it's getting at Yeah it paints a picture it's so wild though what is what is that line you know there's a Carmen Gia parked out back and we believe it's alive Like why am I moved by that like that's that's really wild you know what I mean like it that hits me in the heart Because it's words that don't make sense but you know that it's about a guy wanting to get in a car with a girl and drive

You know what I mean and that's amazing to me I love how oblique the ability to just put words together that are funky and that rhyme and everything But that don't make literal sense and have so much feel and have that much longing or juice mojo whatever the vibe of the song it's a pretty wild thing to To be that non literal and always be able to communicate

An emotional sensibility you know it shows you it's like those things where we've ever seen those things where they'll take a Paragraph and every single word of the paragraph they jumbled the letters But you look at the paragraph and you can read it out loud perfectly yeah

It's it's something like that it's like you don't need the logic of it to to get the essence of it But that's another advantage I think that music has over images is the image shows you so much that it's hard to imagine your own version Because you're looking at a version whereas if you if you're listening to a story what you picture an i picture will picture different versions of that story Yeah but if we see the picture we're looking at the same picture

Yeah in a way it's why there have been some great music videos but on the other hand Yeah it can be just as limiting yeah I don't have a lot of use for a lot of them Tell me the craft of learning to act what was that for you when did it start how did it work?

It's hard I mean I saw I saw my parents used to like to go to play as a night I think I had a babysitter who was in a play And I saw I saw a play when I was like five and the whole thing seemed very magical to me And it wasn't movies at first I don't remember watching movies as a small kid but I saw plays And I I immediately wanted to be in that I don't think it was more articulate than that I just I wanted to be a part of it

And I took you know I took I started taking acting classes at a little community theatrical arts school Not at my school or anything just this this great little community How old are you at the time?

Five At then yeah you started taking lessons at five Yeah it's amazing But I did you know I play piano too and I did soccer and I did it It was not like this is what I'm gonna do at all it was pure play Yeah just play yeah I just thought it was fun I bounced around doing you know all my jumbled little life It wasn't it wasn't like a calling at that point But I will say there was a lady who created our little community theatrical arts school who was completely legit

And when I and I mean at the like Stella Adler Lee Strasberg sent that level of seriousness of intent Yeah To communicate what this is and that you take it seriously and that you you got to learn the craft of it And incredibly lucky that that incredibly interesting too this is like in suburban Columbia Maryland like Central Right this lady she came out in New York moved her husband and she built a community theater arts program

In a little Newer'sville in Central Maryland that lots of people flowered up and out of into Broadway careers Of a guy so cool And that my recollection of it was it when you say a studio it was a studio Yeah it was a place that the kids who were there were like if you're here you come you come correct Right like you it's real it's real yeah it's wild And then after that when did you reengage with it?

I think a measure of seriousness about it notched up when I was like 16 or 17 and my public school just went for whatever reason went down Went to the national theater in DC and Ian McEllen was doing this one-man show Which when I think back on it I'm like why would they take a bunch of public school kids from outside ball to more to see Ian McEllen in a one-man show about acting Shakespeare

That's what it was called and it was kind of about his life in theater in a way it could have been right at home in this conversation It was him kind of meditating on creative life and how in his case Shakespeare's texts had opened up the gateway for him into It's kind of like a great show Like it was what it was for me was you know your teenager and you're kind of you fantasizing a different at least I was kind of like

Oh great to be a pro baseball player. Oh it'd be great to be a spy. Oh it'd be great to be you know whatever he made it seem like Oh that's a that's a life like that's something you could actually do like it's not like oh there are people who are in movies but I'm here

It was like no no this is a door and you can walk through it you know and I definitely remember my wheels turning after seeing it and going This is in the realm of the possible you know and maybe maybe something I should not let slip out of the mix you know what I mean But then when I went to college and I'd studied theater some but I can't explain it I had this I had this kind of part of it was I just didn't know who I was

I thought I wanted study physics I studied history and then staying languages and to be honest to be honest I disliked my school experience up through high school I was so emotionally unhappy that when I really luckily got to escape to college and for me it was a total reboot like no one knew me tabula rasa people seemed actually switched on about things and suddenly I was like the kid in the candy store I just you know I kind of wanted to sample everything

So I didn't have direct I didn't have a sense of directional like thing it was more just like oh I get to just be enthusiastic without self consciousness and that was a real gift But I knew I wanted to go to New York just because New York had a I can't explain why New York was in my fantasy life it was like a place I wanted to

And it was like I had the Beastie boys in my thing you know there was that version of New York there was the like talking heads CBG B version of New York there was the punk there was the hip hop there was Bruce Springsteen for me was just an a huge figure in my in my desire to get out of where I was and I was I grew up in that route 95 corridor

You know like some of his like tracks like like New York City serenade and you know 10th Avenue freeze out and these things these he painted this picture to me that I was like I'm going I'm going into that right like and and then there was Scorsese films and there was I had this whole New York just had everything to me I really thought like that's a place

And I still feel that like I think it's changed a lot but it has a density of collisions like and when you're young the thrill of being in New York to me was you literally might go from one scenario to the other scenario in two or three blocks with five minutes of walking and I loved the

density of the collisions in New York was nuts it was everything I wanted when I was that age you know I wanted I wanted all of it and I wanted to have a lot of unexpected encounters and and everything but I went through this thing of going I literally would still have these sort of flip as I go like I am going to go apply to the state department and I'm going to go work for CIA I mean I I

sounds really weird but I I wanted to live abroad I had lived in Japan for a minute just I was studying Japanese and I was studying I keto and like between two years in college I just was like I'm going there and I and how is that experience amazing amazing really exotic and great not like I lived in Osaka huge city you know but it was like it was so amazing it was it was a it was the first taste I had it was the first window I had

into the recognition that what's going on in America is not the beyond and all in other places that the world's a lot bigger than no matter how big we think American culture is sometimes it's really big and people do know you know no and I and I it was like being it was going to another planet I really felt like I was on another planet there was no one had any reference point that was familiar me and I and it was that was healthy and good but um

it's different read this is a weird reference but this is really obscure essay called within the context of no context we read that George TRO TROW W it was kind of famous in among New York intelligentsia kind of like the way they talk about Marshall McCluen and you know the whole idea of the medium is the message and all that stuff but this guy basically he wrote this and it's funny because your book I I really like I really enjoyed reading your book

it kind your books kind of writing me to of Milan Condera the great check writer his book it's called the book of laughter and forgetting I never and it it also is just like one page you turn and it's just got a paragraph this long on it and the next page is a full essay and the next pages is the thing it it it's beautiful um but within the context of no context is kind of this meditation on the idea of like does a thing have an intrinsic quality or is it does what a thing is

exists outside of the context that's around it you know and I thought about it when it's making motherless Brooklyn even because I was thinking about that thing of like do I want to set it in the modern times or do I want to set it in the fifties making about this thing he has this one line in that where he says in America today if I walk down the street wearing a fedora without irony it would crush my head

and I really think there's something in that because we're not a homogenous culture anymore we're not a white dominated me you know we're now we're we're becoming a true polyglot culture but it doesn't interesting thing which is it means that there isn't a context that we you know men wore fedora hats without thought because in the context of the time man wore a fedora hat there was no commentary there was no commentary in it right today like your self selection is an assertion of something

whether you mean it to be or not and he was kind of this was it was way ahead of his time because he was he was basically saying we're heading toward a context of no context and what is that going to do to us and I think some of all this taught you know the lot going on today about identity and in all forms and I feel like he was meditating on that then he was kind of saying what happens

when there's not a unifying context there's a lot of liberation in that and but we was on that too I feel like I feel like he was way ahead I think one of the reasons we were all obsessed with him was he kind of like I am completely outside of any context that you want to put around me even rock even yeah even the 60s rock and nothing that you nothing that you even think a rock star is fuck you like I'm I'm an androgynous alien in the kabuki you know it's like it's like it's like oh my god

oh my god the liberation from him was a whole other order you know how did you decide to put the movie in the 50s instead of now why did you make that decision because it was two things one was I really wanted a context in which the character with threats is isolated because the context of the time is not sympathetic or evolved I wanted a less evolved social context in which he's a freak

and in which treating the person in the way that he needs to be treated to be isolated is not you know today we'd almost acknowledge that that's not the way you should treat someone and I wanted his isolation to mirror the isolation of a young black woman in the 50s I wanted there to be a theme of people who aren't seen for what they are

so that he's not his condition makes him not seen for what he really is to the black woman in which he's not seen for what she is and then I also think that Robert Moses was the is the dark he what people thought he was the parks commissioner and he was a autocratic racist who ran the city you know and there's like danger in not seeing some things for what they are

but I just thought like I thought you could it solved a lot of issues by putting it in the 50s yeah and also in the 50s was when the in the US in American cities we baked in a lot of the discriminatory injustice that you know like we built the projects and we created things that became like poverty traps you know like social ghettos I mean we that happened in the 50s

prosperous African American and Jewish and Latino neighborhoods that were real middle class neighborhoods got raised so that like Pratt housing could get built you know and and it was intent you know and that that kind of stuff was intentional so it was also like a thing I think that was worth that that was kind of what I was interested in but so tell you about moving to New York

you know I loved it I love New York it was you moved to the city in the mid 80s I went to NYU I think in 1981 yeah I think New York was probably even tougher in the 80s than in the 90s oh for sure I mean it was like for sure there was still like a boarded up buildings everywhere and yeah I mean in the 90s I think it's you know Brooklyn still had a lot of edge and

Harlem still had a lot of edge like and but you know I don't know I don't know it's some policy New York probably still has a lot of edge if you're the certain age I love that New York's a world city I love that it's like did you move there though with a mission like did you move you just want to live in New York yeah I figured I I felt like I was going to find the adventure that I wanted

and what was some of the adventures that you got into you know I worked for I think my granddad had set up that was a housing development organization and it was great for me because I moved to New York and one of my early jobs was I went all over the five burrows

interviewing people who had like left a shelter and gotten into good affordable housing you know it was like we were making the case for how important access to affordable housing is right it was that kind of thing and that's all great it was great work it was cool to the people who were doing that work I still kind of think of as very heroic people like I really admired them still you must have met some really interesting people

was really but I was lucky I you know I had my little Nikon camera and a little mini cassette recorder and I I would knock around you know to all over you know into mostly lower income neighborhoods and stuff and I was interviewing people taking their pictures and interviewing them and I was I was almost like a go for but but I was I was getting to see a lot of the city and encounter a lot of people

and you know and I waited tables and I like did I mean I had bizarre jobs I mean I like I did I did so many I have this memory I had a job I wasn't job I I used to do a thing for extra dough because I could read fast I found out that I couldn't type but I had a girlfriend who worked courts

stenographers take the transcripts of courts but it's in code they take a tape deck and they read the this is the way used to be then they read it someone who can type sits with the tape and types it all out and they got paid the best up here and then the types of

the laptop the bottom of the thing was the proof reader the law firms and the courts had to have court documents and deposition and court testimony proofread so the bottom of the pecking order was you could go to these services and you could take as much as you could

say it has to be backed by X right but they paid 17 cents a page and you could read fast and I could and I could read I could read you know like 100 pages an hour right when if I was have you always just have that ability yeah yeah I I could I was good at reading and

good at words and things but it was also almost like a game because you were reading it but you weren't sitting there and trying to absorb it you were looking for errors and a lot of it is like Rick did you ask her at that time if you could come Edward yes Rick and what did she say you know what I mean but there was format stuff that they want you catch and here's the thing in every batch that you could take and get paid 17 cents a page they put 10 purposeful errors to

check you they couldn't go through and check it but if you missed more than three so they would just take it they would check the 10 planted errors and if you missed more than three you didn't get paid right so you had to be a little bit careful yeah I got I got pretty good at it and I used to like this is my subway gig I would sit on the subway and try to pick up 17 bucks an hour by by reading fast right but of course I was also doing my little downtown I was

moon lighting in play I was doing my thing I was doing acting classes I was moon lighting in plays when I would get into them and I was staying up too late and I would be tired so I have two memories one was I fell asleep on the uptown like three express at like midnight or one in the morning trying to pick up a few extra bucks the things and I fell asleep and I woke up like in the south Bronx I woke up like I

looked around and I knew I was not like where I wanted to be at 2 a.m. and I like tried to jump off the train and the guy you know they shut the doors and remember they would like caught my ankle and then the

guy was like nudging the train forward and I was screaming I was like come on come on man they let me out and I was like well maybe this young and then another time I was coming off in acting class in East 4th Street and I knew I had this batch that was due it was winter and I was like shit if I

don't turn this in I think I got to go sit somewhere and I was so fucking cheap at the time I mean I had like I should just go and set in the coffee shop or something right pass like I just have to find a quiet place focus and get this done and I've poked into like one of those NYU buildings near Washington Square Park and I kind of like went past this security guard I was like I'm just going to find an empty classroom I poke around and thing classrooms are locked or there's things in them like

shit I go in this bathroom there's this door and I'm like open this door in this like NYU bathroom and there's a storage closet and it has like desks and like bathroom and I'm like great and I'm so fucking Michael Ante I go into this storage closet off a bathroom in NYU building and I sit down

to like do my proofreading and I fall asleep so sleep and some janitor came and locked the door and so I'm like I wake up I've missed my thing whatever it's nighttime I'm locked in a storage closet off a bathroom in an NYU like building and I start literally like going hell you know and I'm

like holy shit I can't even get to the toilet like I'm gonna what am I what's gonna happen to me I like I'm gonna have to spend the night here did you and I'm like patting thing something I hear this these keys great this dude open store and he's janitor just looking at me like

what are you doing you know and and I remember kind of having moments like that where I was like you feel like man this is like marginal you know this is just this I'm I'm what am I doing like I'm you're like going by the CD or pants and you're kind of like nothing you're

not you're like I'm not putting anything together here like what am I doing you know the and those are the times I'd be like I gotta get I gotta get out of New York I gotta go I gotta do something I gotta get a job or I gotta do it but every time I would contemplate what I was

gonna do and I had ideas or something like that then I I kind of would be like yeah but I did get this auditioned for this play and and I and I would always land like every time I got ready to the cusp of like fuck this this is just crazy something good would happen something

that was enough of a taste a re injection of what I was loving about it and I kept going along I mean I feel like when you were doing music even when you were at NYU I remember in high school the Zines and everything coming out of like Ural's early stuff I mean I remember

like the way deaf jam percolated to us you know we had do you remember we had one station called W HFS it was the mid Atlantic alt rock stations it was where spike Jones and I are both from and here's the weird thing I made some money one summer and I started building my own

BMX bike and I used to cobble the parts together and I would save up to get the right kind of pedals or Shimano cranks or whatever and spike worked at the only cool it was like rockville skate and BMX wow and I used to go there so cool to get and we're the same age like he

has and he worked there as like a prodigy like a kid I think spike has to have been at the place I used to go get my skateboard trucks and stuff which was really well but anyway W HFS was the only place they played like the clash and Brit pop and later you know R E M and the

Pixies and all of it alternative yeah all the alternative stuff so and we didn't have any there was no hip hop station right there in Baltimore why same same in New York yeah there was no hip hop station so W HFS what was the only place they put you know hip hop any you

would get these little flickers of hip hop and then the beast of boys and stuff like that but in my view that's happening by like Rundi MC's like 86 or no even earlier like 80 when was the first Rundi MC record it's like maybe 84 for yeah like I'm in high school and we had this feeling

that this thing was leaking down to us you know like this springston kind of talks did you read his biography did you read his autobi I read but I saw the the Broadway yes which was amazing amazing in his book he has a really beautiful kind of section about what it felt like

to live in a small town and how the radio was the thing beaming you know from exotic places and I really felt like the stuff you guys were doing it was leaking to us through one channel you know I had the same experience growing up on Long Island and getting the music from

New York like the Ramones or yeah were they big for you biggest the Ramones were I saw them play 50 times yeah more that's amazing was were like the talking heads to the TV they were CBG right they I mean they were big huge huge huge who else in that time

I vote Divo but also there was always that and then like trouble funk from DC or Rundi MC DC we had I was in the Baltimore DC so we had like you know minor threat and the Gazi were are love minor threat that was like they were pretty much the pinnacle of what was coming

up and out of there but there was that club the 930 club I saw radio hit there at the 930 club holy shit that's amazing I actually remember I didn't I can't claim that I went and saw them there but I remember the police played the 930 club you know and that

was they were like the kind of band that was coming through like outlandos to more was coming through on that one alt rock station and the Smiths and you know were you getting involved enough in things that were lighting you up even while in college that you never

had like a this is marginal I'm not putting anything together I'm out of here moment like basically did it did it ladder up did it ladder up for you successively without you know from from clearly like college straight through to when you guys were setting that

up I thought I was going to have a real job I didn't think music was I didn't do music thinking it was going to be my job I did music because that's what I love to do and luckily music took over before I ended up going to law school or something regular did

it just keep flowing and getting better and better such that you never had a moment of what I would call like you know existential there was never an existential yeah that's so lucky it was unbelievable unbelievable I didn't even know it was a job it just happened

yeah that's really lucky because I think it's wild I mean now that I have kids their educational experience so different from mine was like I really hated mine they love theirs it's and I'm happy about that I'm to me I'm like great with if they're joyful great win win

win but but what's really weird is for me it wasn't good and then getting to go to college was good right the more I look at American life though the more I think that in a lot of ways I'm lucky I'm lucky that I made it through to a point where I don't want to

say non-straight war like I wasn't comfortable in the straight world and by that I mean like I never even con him swear I never even contemplated like taking a job at a bank or going to law school or anything I just couldn't see myself that way but literally because

of what I experienced in college and the degree to which the definitions of success were very informed by plugging into the next thing as a result I had existential big existential doubt moments about pursuing a creative life big right and because my grandfather paid

for me to go to college I even had a thing of like I have a responsibility to think thank God he was amazing and told me no that's ridiculous yeah like the arts are the best thing in the way you know he actually said no go go go go you know keep going for it right in

my case if it wouldn't have happened the way it happened I would have had a regular job that would have probably made me very unhappy yet I would still be doing music as much as possible but it's interesting isn't it because I think fleas book is really beautiful

you know his crown call of his young life is so beautiful in the sense that it's just he assesses it with such wisdom you know but I'm like when I look at him and Anthony or when I look at Bruce or kids who are left to their own devices in a way that we wouldn't

want for our kids necessarily right who have lives that have a lot of danger and a lot of uncertainty and a lot of instability and a lot of drugs and a lot whatever you want to say like flea his crown of clothes like music saved his life like music is the vector

and it's the only way up and out so there is there's danger but there's not necessarily an existential crisis because it's like this is this is the path to me it's a funny thing because and I'm kind of wrestling with it now like it's almost like a veil you have

to deal with the fact that like sometimes you think you've liberated yourself from certain things but you still hold the DNA memory of a way you were taught to view the world and I am almost going to think because it's a long way for my kids being a college but I'm

I've almost come to this place where I'm like I not only don't care if they go to college I'm not sure I will I even want them to given same given what I see going on and I don't mean the modern fears about ultra left and I think none of that more that I'm not sure that even what I went through doesn't hold within it more than I was even aware at the time a value system that's hard to break away from.

Oh there's the Marlon Brando line in with the female character is saying how you know how nice it is to be a little kid and to be free and then he has the line about the indoctrination do you remember the line I can't remember what it is it looks like it's an ad lib.

Is it in last angle in Paris yeah which by the way that that talk about a movie that you understand better as you get older holy crap he's I mean he's a super complicated beautiful tragic in many ways figure I think the film that I was talking about having

that experience with the Niro on was Marlon's last film he Marlon was in it and I knew him before it and how did you know before that I knew him because someone who was a friend of his said to me that he had liked some of the stuff I'd done and then kind of said

to me you know you should go up and see him and I was like I don't you know I'm not going to present and he goes no this person said no you know he needs people you know and what I started realizing is that there was there was a period where I think I think he

was lonely and I think that I think that his who he was almost in a weird way put a cocoon around him like I think there were people who got invited to kind of go and just bring him some stimulation and some you know youth and fresh conversation and stuff and he and

I that's how I met him through him through this mutual friend what was it like medium it was great I feel looking back on it that I think Marlon was very guarded out of habit the habit no not the habit the long experience of too many people venerating him yeah made

him not tricky in a funny way but he was a little coy he would he would wait a bit to see what you were going to be like to see if you were going to be gushy or if you were just going to you know yeah talk shit with them yeah yeah and he was really funny yeah he really

like jokes he really think so I think it was sort of like I think if it got to oh okay you know you're all right yeah you're just you're just a pal you're gonna give me shit you're gonna thing then you kind of met him and and I found him he was you know he's old I

thought he was really funny he was he was very very interested in other people he was inquisitive he you know wide ranging like you know you could tell he was like a an auto-diadactic person he like what he had learned he had learned himself kind of you know and he was I don't know

maybe maybe in a way maybe I got lucky and he he was in a time in his life when he was less I know for sure there was stretches where Marlon was so contemptuous of this is the of the bullshit around him and he was so contemptuous even of movies and contemptuous of he had a very he went

through definitely through periods of of really disdaining his own talent craft the form itself I think he had a pretty I don't want to say tortured because that's not there but he but I I think he he he had real ebbs and flows in the measure of how much he respected even the form

that he was known for and didn't want to talk about it and didn't want to think maybe I got to a point with him where he was comfortable enough but I I would ask him certain things and he and I found him really on he was he was great he'd I talked to him about his early days in theater

and he was very relaxed and funny he was really funny you think it came from the fact that he was so deified that he felt like he wasn't he was never seen for who he was for sure I mean you've seen Scorsese he's you know the big epic film on Dylan no direction huh you know I don't mean

this in the wrong way but it's actually one of my favorite things Scorsese you did and like and the I think that's such an important film because it's a portrait of a person becoming an artist but then also at an incredibly young age having to defend the integrity

of everything we've been talking about here against the onslaught and I actually find myself pretty amazed you you watch this 20-year-old guy who has the density and the sense of self and the awareness before there were even pop stars or any of it he's way you know you forget how

few people had been made famous in that way like Frank Sinatra and like Brando or what Elvis but but being told that you're the voice of a generation when you're 20 years old and having the presence to go that's nothing I can relate to and and refuse to unpack the work I mean that's

like how many of us have ever refused to dissect the meaning when the ego stroke of the interview comes at you you know I mean it's it's pretty unbelievable it's cool about that Scorsese film it's the first time you ever hear Dylan answer a question yeah because up until then it's always just

stark asm and deflection deflection deflection no it sounded like he was really honest there's one part in it where they're cutting between the interviews with him parrying with people there's a the famous one he said the table on the guy says you know what what is the meaning of this this

and he goes he goes I don't know what it means I wrote it but I don't mean I know what it means what do you think it means yeah you know and I'm like who says that at 20 like who who in their 20 has people telling them asking them to explain and their stuff and saying that there

a generational voice and goes don't saddle me with that shit man I can't relate to that yeah that you know you figure it out and then to your point they go to him I think he was in his 70s at the time and and and saying yeah I was very interested in Woody Guthrie's idiom I mean he literally goes I was pretty interested in Woody Guthrie's idiom and and and and I took what I saw going on around me and put it through that but I wasn't gonna talk about it at the time you know I mean it's literally

fine it was like to your point finally it was like Dylan the craftsman yeah Dylan the guy who created characters yeah Dylan the guy who goes yes it was fucking constructed yes I knew what I was doing but I wasn't gonna compromise it by unpacking it for you I not only don't think many people

I actually think it's almost gotten worse it's it's not I'm not trying to stick a finger at you know colleagues or actors I think but lately I feel like you know awards which are so antithetical to art yeah I mean really the older I get the more grotesque I think it actually is

yeah and I don't think people even realize how much they're being commodified their ego is being stroked as the mechanism for getting them to become a commodity for a ratings thing and for ads being run all the shit it's an agenda and when you realize that awards are an agenda

they become you're just like this is doing such a violence to the purity of work and the connection to people it's just horrible right yeah but the more so getting creators against each other yeah it's it's the worst I don't think people realize how negative it is to the mission of having people

experience what you've done to sit in your costume talking about how much you admire the director and them saying you're just like you're completely atomizing my chance to have a moment of willing suspension of disbelief and to have the magic trick of the whole thing which is the whole

game and it's just like why would you do that and again to see someone who even at 20 years old understood that if I let you behind the curtain it's over like it's it's over is really really amazing and I think that um brando you have to really go back and and almost refresh yourself

on the fact that when he did streetcar name desire he was 23 years old and he woke up at 24 years old being told he was the fulcrum between the old world and the modern age I mean literally yeah like Miles Davis Marlon Brando Pablo Picasso Bob Dylan like those people got treated

as if they were the fulcrum between what came before and what came after and if that happens to you when you're 24 and yeah you're doing your thing but I think it made him I think it fundamentally broke his trust with humanity yeah if you really get down to it it broke his trust with people being

rational and reasonable and it totally broke his trust that anybody was looking him in the face and seeing him and who he really was who he actually was exactly and that resentment and so though then the whole thing starts feeling fraudulent and that resentment starts to cook and I

think he and I believe that he resented his authentic life being taken away from him the opportunity for an authentic life the opportunity for authentic interaction for authentic experience and you know why else do you go buy a T. H. Shen Island and yeah I was just gonna say that's

how do I want to live in T. E. B. Yeah and and we're people didn't care whatever I think that is pretty tragic it's pretty tragic for a person that young in life to feel that their chance to wander in the world he said that he was like I I used to want he told me one time he was like you know I

for all the world all I want to do is go dig ditches I just just want to go to Italy and work on a road crew you know and and just have beers with guys after work you know and I think he never war it comfortably because he never reconciled with it right you know he never reconciled with what it

what I think he feels it it ultimately took away from him but last hango in Paris is pretty amazing because my my theory on that film is it's the last time that he invested in the work and that that I mean I have I have this could be a totally crack butt theory but Marlene Chew'd gum in a lot of

movies if you if you go watch it from street car onward street car he's chomping on a piece of gum the whole time I know it sounds weird to say but and in the world in the context of the world at the time that alone was sexual like it was oral a sexual people didn't do that it's not just that he's

sweaty and in the t-shirt he's got to want him he's chewing on his gum he's just visceral and present and things and and if you watch it I think it was like this whether it was a conscious or unconscious I think it's one of Marlene's tropes he's chewing on gum a lot because it's grounding

it's relaxed it's whatever and in last tango if you watch at the end when he's dying he takes a piece of gum out of his mouth and he sticks it up under the railing of the balcony before he dies wow and in my mind he's done and he never chewed gum in movies after that again I mean in Superman

you know in whatever yes fascinating but I think my theory too is that last tango is just him the varnish is gone most of what he says is about his own life in the movie the thing that it's improvised and most of it's about him their story is from his real life and I think that he

essentially just he lets himself be seen as a as a person without any affect and then and he wraps it up and I don't and I don't think after that I think it's the last time he invested in communicating really in in the work but also by the way when you watch that film part of me goes this is what

we were talking about in the beginning part of me goes he may have gotten to the point where he said well all that's really left is the lack of artifice in any form your diary right last tango is just diary from Marlon it's mostly personal diary managed by bear luce or whatever but

and after that what are you gonna do go back to like fake teeth and a you know a military costume or whatever it's like well I get it yeah I get in a way these sort of like this is run its course I you know I've done of that that what else what do you do after you've done that yeah so it turns

into the Vegas act instead of the yeah yeah yeah yeah or a paycheck or whatever yeah and then there's the feelings that come with doing the thing for the wrong reasons and I think he had that too like kind of like you know the shame almost a kind of shame like like you didn't live up to your gift

or I'm gonna put another way I don't think it was that with him I have a theory that in some ways there's a certain kind of shame that comes when you don't have the courage of your convictions and I think his conviction was that he didn't want to do this anymore and his conviction was that it it wasn't worthy that he wanted a different kind of life but he still was doing it but he went back for the money right and I think I see and I think that there's a feeling there's a feeling that comes

with not sticking to your convictions once you have them yeah but that's that thing we were talking about too what John and taking breaks whatever it takes a lot of courage to stop absolutely it takes a lot of courage to stop doing a thing that you've done well and that you get a lot of regard for

and get a lot of money for and choose the fullness or richness or diversity of your life and your and the ground is human experience and so I think like if you're Marlon and you keep saying oh this is all bullshit and I don't care about any of it and everything I'm I'm gonna do Superman

it feels like everything we're talking about today is the same story it's all about you so you know really it's amazing well I think yeah we keep coming back to the same story of that having the courage to step away and live yeah but but you know what you know what I think the reason

Marlon though is an interesting one of my things in a way to me it's funny because he played Kurtz right in Apocalypse now but to me he is a little bit of a Kurtzian kind of a figure yeah because I don't want to feel that way but also not just there's no reason to throw a thing

you've done under the bus when you know it has beauty in it and you know it can be done in a pure way and when you've had good experiences and I don't think necessarily you even need to create false bright lines or declarations like now maybe there comes a time some I know one actor said

I am retiring like I'm done and told me that he declared it because declaring it would be a part of strengthening his commitment right but am I because it's not I don't feel that but I do think to me like maybe Marlon's like the negative example and we were talking about John and his

breaks from the band right that's a positive example to me because why because it refilled the tank or it brought around again to the place of desire and then it can be done again with love and that's what you want that that's what you want I think is like to be able to

renew or resuscitate yes but from a different place as a different person and different observations right different different things to bring to it but it isn't it isn't necessarily easy but if you and day it's like it's like the ego like there's nothing but ego that makes you say

and maybe money you know I think it's also the excitement like I know if if I'm presented with a puzzle because it's I always think of the work as sort of like solving a puzzle yeah so this is a new puzzle that's presented and thinking about it would be fun to figure out this puzzle because

every creative project is like a lot of things to figure out how to make a more yeah so it's fun you also have the benefit or the pleasure of facilitating helping other people get to their best expression and that's kind of amazing you're doing a service

for someone else every time you work with them which is pretty cool what's the longest you've ever gone without producing music never it's amazing yeah no it's always happening do you have moments of aspiration to be free of even the puzzle solving or the or the do you have do you have moments

where you say I could use a mental sabbatical from I definitely have the feeling that you said earlier of like why why did I make the choices I made but usually I have that feeling like in the morning it's a beautiful day it's sunny outside and I want to go for a walk on the beach and I know

there's going to be a group of people waiting in the studio for me and I said I was going to be there noon I have to be there at noon so and I don't want to go that that feeling of when you commit to something you have to show up and usually the commitments happen in advance right so I commit myself

in advance and then when it comes time to actually show up I don't want to show up right then when the puzzle is presented when I get there and we start figuring it out it gets really fun and I love it yeah it doesn't and it doesn't always go well like it often often doesn't go well and that's

interesting too it's not as much fun and I don't go home at the end of the day and it's good of a mood when that happens but it's just a matter of patience because I know it's not done until we do solve the puzzle and I wish we were to solve it today but we didn't it's okay you know we know

now at least we know these things don't work yeah you know what we've the solutions we've tried don't work do you get the feeling sometimes that I guess one thing I feel sometimes it's that things take longer than you think they're going to take it's true and that thing we're talking

about about you know putting up commitment a brick on the wall a commitment commencing something and it's and it could be you know building a house somewhere you know what I mean yeah but you you I think one of the negative dividends of getting some things done and they go well and they

kind of reinforce my oh I've got capabilities to do more than one thing at once and now I've got the resources now I got the help so I'm going to commence different things and at least in my case sometimes I'm like wow I thought I could do multiple things at the same time and I can but

they now are obligations that are carrying on that have more durability than I thought they were going to and it takes a longer time to unclip and liberate yourself back to simplicity I don't feel old but well I think when I was even younger I thought that I was going to get shit done

faster than it turns out you can you know complete projects and stuff like that and then like you said you you've engaged other people in the in collaborating on it and then it's an obligation which is which is challenging but also like making other kind of things you started making some

documentary projects and the book was a different thing and it took a lot of time so um sometimes I think it's more interesting to do something I haven't done before but I'm also really I love music and I can't help myself but I mean that that that that takes me back to my kind of

my mounting observation and life that a lot of my friends who work in music sustain that the passion for it is is pretty that it's a that it continues to it's it is truly a devotional practice yeah and I think a lot of my friends and music have

maintained greater simplicity in life that like music's enough you know what I mean and that's not to be reductive say people have family lives and they're complicated and you know if you're business these things but but sometimes I think like that impulse to do a diversity of things to

exercise different muscles express different express yourself in totally different ways is really satisfying and sometimes but that's that's where you can start to go like man I'm I'm spending a lot of plates yeah you know and then and then you can start having the feeling of like

am I spending any of the plates masterfully you know like or am I spending any of the plates in a way that's enjoyable you know am I allowing myself to enjoy one thing at a time you know to to to the full depth of like what it has to offer but I also I also think like there's some

point at which you got to get to where you're like you know can see like the ways you're different from other people you can be inspired by people but if you're if you're kind of like you got to just get right with yourself the way you are and go you know so and so's life is different from

my life whatever they're all we're different we're different we're all taking it on in different ways we have to play our own hands yeah we have to play our own hands I'll ask this as it relates to theater because it'll be easier to think about because you do it the show night after night

do you feel like when you're doing something every day are you always either getting better or worse or does it ever plateau I don't know if I'd say better or worse changing changing for sure um more than you'd think this can apply in movies too but I think that I had to get my head around

that is I think pulled from like music as an analogy is that like you want to believe that you're going to be able to find emotional connection every time and when there's an audience involved you have a different relationship you feel the people have come to see you make that connection

right you can be doing a play you can even be doing a film and you can be on take 24 and going I don't have it I don't feel it I'm hitting the notes but I don't feel it in a funny way that's when an actor is a musician in the sense that like you're playing your your body is the

instrument your voice is the instrument your emotional you're you're assaying this role is a thing you have to trust that you've done the work and that you are hitting the notes that it can connect for people because you've done the work it is connecting that you can't possibly feel it to the

depth of your soul every night whether you're an actor in month three of a really great play that some nights you weep in within the moment that you've done many many many times because it hits you you've got it and you're right there inside it accessing it and the mo your emotion is even

authentic and they're feeling it too but then on the night that you're playing the score and your head's a little over here it's still it's okay you know it it's not a cause for panic and it doesn't mean it doesn't mean it wasn't good it doesn't mean you didn't deliver it didn't doesn't

mean whatever I mean our friends that we've been talking about like I saw you know the guys on on this tour I mean they've been touring for fucking two years practically now I've seen a bunch times I saw them in 19 I want to say I saw them in a bar in New Haven called Toads remember Toads

yeah I think my punk rock band played it Toads once yeah I think I saw like when a mother's milk came out when John Joined and Ben and mother's milk came out I saw them somewhere like that right after that because John and I had this image so I was like 19 he was 19 you know and I feel

like like if you've seen people play a lot you can kind of towel just like oh he's like in the zone like a basketball player or whatever you feel like oh they look tired tonight you know what I mean nobody says they don't like deliver in their show like their show kills you know you know Charlie

Parker had his head off in something else on nights when his virtuosity people were like they were melting yeah you know but you got to you got to like be okay with that I think just have to remember that the audience that comes to see you doesn't get to watch the show every

night and doesn't get to compare your performance no they just see one yeah and the one they see is the one they remember and also the the yeah for you it's it's like a little bit of zen stroke and like this curve might not be as perfect as you did it last night that's the picture and also what

you're doing is the totality of what you've been doing it's not it's not your perfect connection to it on a given night and it's funny because that that's that's a pretty unique thing to the performance arts you know what I mean there's not a lot of analogies that I can think of where

like if you phone it in and soccer you're gonna lose you know what I mean like when you're trying to create magic in the live setting yeah you just can't do that professionally and not allow yourself to rest on on the muscles you've built sometimes and and be okay you know and yeah and you're also

you're representing yourself in this moment so sometimes maybe if the performance to you is less good it's still authentic in where you are in that moment and it's real well that's really interesting too because more than a musician an actor has a text that they got to stick with right

it for me one of the things it's a real nuance but I grew up a little bit in certain plays that I did when I realized that what you just said is true it's not even that I have to I may not feel it but I have to be okay with hitting the notes it's actually a little further it's it can change

based on where I am tonight I can be within the same text yeah I can be a little colder and the plays that tonight yeah it's not that I have to hit the same notes but but be faking it a little yeah or funny and in it's actually I can channel where I am I can keep it authentic by

let within reason keeping and it sounds like that also would inspire the people you're playing against they're gonna change based on your change it's like everything changes then you're in a cabinet yeah and and that's where it is like a band but that makes it more like improvisational and

more yeah keeping it real and it gets back to that challenge of just being available to what's actually happening actually you know someone who's it's weird things say but uh someone who I is is very committed to that is Bill Murray I've only done Wes Anderson films with Bill

and hung out with him a little in life and everything but I'm you know and it's not that Bill's not super appreciated as a really great actor in addition to being Bill and being funny and everything but he's he is extremely serious about his commitment to being available to what's actually happening

wow in the work and in life and sometimes he it almost seems like he's being provocative but I think that he among people I've met kind of in my trade whatever he he really wants to just respond to the moment and I've seen him in life in some ways that we're a little

unnerving in some ways that we're really funny some ways that we're kind of heartwarming I've seen him kind of not be happy when he sees a disconnect a disconnect and he'll stick a fork in make it real go you know kind of the snapping of the fingers in the work it's really cool

so Bill is in the moment anyone else you can think of that has that kind of in the moment feeling yeah I mean you realize people come at things in just very different ways even within what looks like the same thing I'm certain musicians are the same you know it's like just people who are

highly improvisational and fluid and some who for whom preparation and like really conscientious sculpting and crafting and sticking to that is matters more to them or is that that's their mojo you know would you say you're more in the second school if he depends on the gear I'm in if I'm just

acting in something it's a more pleasant experience to to have wide latitude to discover and flow and everything but I think actors have to be in the best scenarios you you are there in service you can be a primary collaborator in creating a thing at the chemistry of every single thing is

different just like it is I keep saying music but sometimes you got one person who's really the band you know they write the songs and the things and there's people are brilliant but they're the they're the leader and sometimes it's totally different it's like I think every single film every

single project is a different chemistry of relationship and collaboration but I think as an actor you have to be prepared and enthusiastic to step into and service the vision that a director has the frequency that they're trying to establish and even it sounds like a the style you know like if

you if you're going to make a movie with Wes Anderson and you try to come to it in the same gear that you're in it's not going to work like you you must know love appreciate and be conversant with Wes's language not just because it's not like anything else you're there to service you're there

to play a role in his company yes and and what a what a pleasure you know what what a delight it's a thing I think when I'm when I'm directing I would like to do something that allows for more improvisation and fluidity and discovery as a storyteller as a director the things I've done

it's really weird like not really weird but when you shoot in New York like shooting mother's Brooklyn I had I had so much less time than I should I don't say should you do you work the way you got but there was no way to make a big period 1950s film in modern New York City

in the schedule that I had without a nearly maniacal amount of preparation the fun was that I was able to go to almost exclusively New York actors that I've worked with and no and we're all from my orbit and say I need everybody here like a play we can rehearse I need everybody to be tight

to be ready I'm not going to be able to do a lot we're going to have to move pretty quick and I only involved people that I thought would deliver and happily you know who was in their yeah they were they're all Arabian horses all thoroughbreds theater trained theater experienced able

to come and know that they're helping me by bringing the goods ready and fast you know and they did and it was great did it mean that with some of my favorite actors I was able to play no I wasn't I just I wasn't but but you got to work in the you got to play with the like you said the cards

you're given you know what I mean how different would your performance be depending on the person you are performing against I mean I I guess it can be really yeah I mean it can be hugely affected if you ever done a play where the character that you play against changed like the person playing

the character changed over the course of the play no I haven't I haven't ever had them curious to how different that would be yeah that would be strange because you've changed the rhythm of the person like if the person is a more energetic or talks faster I saw something I just saw

you know who I see Davis was great writer and actor and director I did I did a film and got to be friendly with Leslie Odom who you know he he played Aaron Burr in Hamilton he he brilliant you know brilliant singer a billion actor and he's got this revival up in New York right now of

uh of this play out see Davis wrote in the 60s and I I was completely blown away by it it made me I don't know if I was in a headspace of going got New York theater how antiquated you know I might have I kind of walked in maybe I just was in this mood of like had been back in New York in a while

and I was like you know God like what is theater like what is this like how many people is this for is this work anymore does it you know I had a lot of that going on in my head and I walked out of there going that's why theater exists like that is why it exists because it couldn't have been

anything else and it was so heightened and so delightful and satirical and great but I also really Leslie and this actress Carrey Young they were performing in a gear I don't I don't know how to describe it it was so it was so up it was so boldly operatic comedic almost

like comedia del arte it was like something you would expect like mullier or you know like those great John Patrick Shanley plays the word big and operatic and she was doing things physically that I was sitting there I was as an actor I was sitting there and going what would bring you

to that choice I was gobsmack I was like I can't even wrap my head around where you got the indication that that's where you should go because it was so wet and it but it worked unbelievable unbelievable I didn't even know how to describe it I was just like afterwards I

I was literally doing you know the we're not worthy kind of like yeah thing to them both because it was so theatrical it was the definition of like like real theatrical art like it was it was it was floating way up above reality you know it wasn't behavioral naturalism it wasn't moving inside it

was it was like it was just this totally elevated thing and it's great yeah it's it's funny in the way that like when a lot of the best things in any form it feels to me are things that shouldn't work and it's like the force of talent is hauling it down I felt that way about Hamilton honestly

I'm not a musical theater aficionado or a huge fan you know I don't say I'm not a fan but it's a it hasn't generally been my bag you know I saw that a couple times and I I actually got emotional a few times watching it I was I got emotional over the audacity of the whole thing yeah I imagined

him walking around in the Bronx with his headphones on and his pad right having the balls and the conviction that he could write something of that magnitude yeah I had that feeling about Hamilton and I had that feeling about Book of Mormon when I heard about them you're like that sounds like

the worst idea ever yeah the worst yeah and then they were mind-blowing both yeah that's the pieces I agree I but both of those I totally like one paper yeah bad ideas bad idea but but there was something about the scale of the creative audacity of Hamilton actually made me cry yeah like I

I was just so blown away at the size of the swing and also just the magnitude of it it's like it is like like a huge double album or something it's the scale of it is just like incredible the density of it and it's always something like that that is what transports you like you're

do you see the movie Triangle of Sadness you know that I I had the Swedish filmmaker I think has made some of the best modern films Triangle of Sadness was like it functions like a dream like if I said to you oh my god I had the most waxed out dream I dreamed that my girlfriend and I

were arguing about the check at dinner and who was gonna pay and it got so heated that we were fighting in an elevator over it and then we were on a yacht and there and Woody Harrelson was the captain but there was Russians there and they made the crew swim and then there were pirates

and then we were surviving on a beach but the toilet attendant became the queen that's how it works like it's it's it functions like a surreal dream and and again it's almost like knowing when you know something about making movies you're almost more impressed yeah because you know

how hard it is nothing about it's supposed to work to break out of like I saw some interview with Freddie Mercury about Bohemian Rhapsody or whatever you know and it's just like it shouldn't work right yeah like there's no bridge there's no nothing there's these things none of the things that

are the way you do a song yeah and and now we can't live without it you know what I mean it's just like those are the revolutionary works the ones that don't fit any they don't check any of the normal boxes when they work it's the most fun thing to see yeah because you you got shown something

you know I don't know if you feel this way I think the people I know in music really do have like a a real you know kind of a religious relationship with music and I think because music's not because it's so primal because it's vibrations and because people get so affected by it

it's like sacrosanct I don't think the culture even nobody questions that we need music you know I definitely do go through things where I just sort of go I know art has value I know it helps people like I think Joseph Campbell's really right that if it's opaque it tends to be more narcissistic if

it's transparent and a person can see through it and say oh that's really about me that's when it's mythological you know and I do agree with that like it makes people feel not alone or it makes people perceive the universe differently and that there's some value in that but I definitely will

go through some things where sometimes I'm thinking like the productization and commodification of content will sometimes like my synestas it's like it's like an opposing force it is like an opposing force and I love films but I literally like I do get to a place sometimes where I'm like

are we making opium are we just making opium and giving people like something to check out in front of for a minute you know a palliative against like the stress of modern life the answer is with bird man no I hope so I hope that's right as an example I hope that's right you know I I

clearly are examples the other way yeah yeah amazing too many and photography and everything like yeah but being lucky enough to know some people who I think have done like incredibly heroic and important work that's like in direct service of other people sometimes my brain goes

you've done enough of this you know what I mean I'll get to this place where it's just be like or or even I know this you you won't agree but sometimes I'm like there are voices that are coming into the mix that need to be heard like literally more than mine

mm-hmm like I and I just go I've done you know I've done this enough like I've done this enough it's room for everybody there I know I know I know it's it's it's true it's not like a um it's not zero some game no it's not a zero some game but um but I have my ebbs and flows to just like

uh what is the world actually need yeah you know what I mean um and but I it's probably overthinking it you know yeah your part isn't what the world needs it's what's your diary entry yeah yeah yeah it's what's your part that's all yeah I guess the

the other thing is it's um like we know people who work in tech and things like that too right everybody goes to think what you think you're like you think you're painting the future or something you know and like we're definitely the truth is that the not even the long-term future the

immediate future is so unknown and so unpredictable like you can say I engage with what I think is like you know um the the I think that the issue of like what we're doing to the environment of our planet is is important right because it is going to affect people

and intrinsically I think it's important when you take a breath and you step back and you just realize like you can throw yourself against ideas of of how you can contribute and what needs to be done and everything and you have to acknowledge that like in six months something can happen

that it makes everything move you know what I mean and then when you acknowledge how small your life is within this massive uncertainty about what are going to be the emergent phenomenon that actually define what things look like in the future you come back to the place of saying well in that case

hopefully it's not selfish to say then I ought to think about just the existential quality of the way I'm spending my time which gets back to like being present being available allowing yourself simple pleasures of just existing and in any day that you've got the blessing that you're healthy

you're not being bombed you know you're like don't squander it you know do you feel like there's a spiritual dimension to your work at times I have and I guess when I say spiritual I don't I don't necessarily mean divine but I think that there's actual gift of service if you're trying to connect

people to each other like there's that thing we're saying about it when we're talking about empathy if the work's got empathy and you know that through it you're reaching out to other people to say we're in this together and you can see yourself and this we're talking to each other then then yeah

and it's really interesting because people you know people can be absolutely ridiculous and disconnected in the way they come up to you because they know you but when people come up kids or when when anybody comes up who's present and isn't going like I'm so excited because

you're I know you or something when people are coming up with presence and connection and saying man that connected for me how can you be in any way cynical about that greatest feeling in the world you cannot be cynical about people affirming back to you that they felt seen they connected they

felt open you know it's the best best then you go okay this is as worthy as anything else yeah I mean when we were when we were working on fight club it's it's very reverent we were laughing our asses off it was very there's no question in my mind that sitting in the room yeah was the awareness

that this is for us and our friends our parents will not understand this yeah they won't they probably won't like it yes they won't relate to it yes it's our own we're frank of it this is ours and we better go for it the best feeling we better go for it yeah because we've got in our hands

the vehicle to remember what it felt like to be in a certain place at a certain time for a certain group of people and that and that was that was an interesting experience too because it was one of my first experiences of feeling that sensation that strongly and then the the commodification what

it didn't go well at all you know what I mean like that movie was like a flop in the beginning and Fincher was I think felt very bruised and I remember we showed it in the Venice film festival and Brad came up to me right before we walked into the big red carpet stupidity and all that stuff he said how do you think this is gonna go and I said I don't think this is gonna go well and he said he said me neither let's get high right and he of course because he came in on a private plane he had

like a joint like the size of a of a large cucumber and he's a podhead I wasn't we smoked this joint walk into the Venice thing I like felt like someone was carrying me by my ears three feet off the ground

the whole time but it was great because we I sat he and I watched it my my recollection is that we saw Scorsese walk out which was also kind of like perfect like you know it's like and then it was booed yeah right it got booed right and it was there were booze and we were in the last row in the

back and Brad turn and look to me and goes that's the best movie we're ever gonna be in and I said me to any we were like how cool is that yeah it was like it was like he we were teary eyed that's real and he and he said that's the best movie we're ever gonna be in and I love people

were booing yeah and and and and it was funny because it wasn't a joke now I want to be careful like I maybe it's maybe I was stoned and I don't I think my recollection is that Scorsese walked out of it because I also think I remember that hitting Fincher in a way but this is all a little

hazy to be honest or very hazy but there's but I hope in a weird way that I am remembering that right because Fincher had a thing on the office wall when we were rehearsing and it's had like on the path to enlightenment you you have to kill God kill your parents and then kill your teacher right

and I remember thinking like Scorsese if Scorsese walked out we did it like we killed our teacher you know like fucking critics but if we feel good even if our hero walked out then we're in good place that's an incredible story thank you for telling me that story I love that yeah it was

funny and then you know that but then it was to your point it's like it finds its way yeah it is what it is yeah yeah like you can't you know and and in a weird way like with that one what could be more true to everything it's trying to say yeah for it not to do well yes

and then be something you'd never trade like you'd never trade what that one how that one went into everyone in our friends that we made of for it you'd never trade it for you wouldn't trade it for a billion dollars it'd be a sign of defeat if it was but to know it in the moment

went while the people are booing yeah to hug each other and know this is great that's really bold I love it yeah it was yeah there's something to where you just like you know like when you're showing they should have never shown that movie in Italy with some titles it's like that should

you know yeah they shouldn't show they should have showed that I don't even know what it should have been it like it should have been in a college auditorium you know with free tickets for everybody like no pretension no nothing like do you miss um life in the like the cities of your youth

not in the least you don't do you think you zero do I think I know that about you but do you think you knew when do you think you realized that you were ready for a big fundamental shift of scene from the energy that catapulted you into the kind of work you wanted to do like you didn't take

a break but when did you just go I got to do this a different way yeah I never knew until it happened so like it came to California to work on a project I hated California I loved New York came to California to work on a project was here for like nine months ended up buying a house

because I was tired of staying in a hotel and I thought well when I come from New York I'll have a house to stay in and I just ended up never going back and grew to love it and then the next time I went back to New York I was remember feeling like I can't remember what it was that was keeping me

here you know I didn't know and the same thing happened when I moved from in town to Malibu at first when I got a house in Malibu I thought oh that's really far away and then when I moved here it's like far away from what yeah you know like nothing I wanted go through is anywhere about a year I know I had a cell because as a kneescoaster yeah Baltimore and then New York and yeah like I had a total prejudice against LA in particular and I would come out here and work and get

out here as fast as I could and I totally missed the whole trick I like thought LA was like West Hollywood and yeah you know and everything that's truly great about the state is like the space and the light and the ocean and the mountains and the snow right next to each other yeah and the desert and and but it embarrassingly it took a while for me to like perceive what was you know get out of the matrix in a way and perceive you know because you were indoctrinated yeah we were I was in New York

snotty about being like a New York theater actor and doing thing and and there was always that line like I think it was a Neil Simon thing someone told said to him like why don't you you know they're making all your plays in the movies why don't you come to LA you know it's like when the weather's

just so much better and everything and supposedly he said yeah when it's when it's 30 below in New York it's 76 in LA and when it's 110 in New York it's 76 but there's a million interesting people in New York and 70 in LA and you know but it's just not true no what it is is good and bad people everywhere yeah and you just got to find your people it was yeah I think that's right it there for me it was partly because coming out here meant working in the movies and because LA it's very diverse but

it feels like an industry town if you're in the industry it is it isn't industry town and it and in a way it's seeking to unfold you within its hierarchies yeah right it wants to define you within its hierarchies and if you're resistant to that then you just want to get the fuck out of here you