Robert Zemeckis | Club Random with Bill Maher

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Speaker 1 And by the way, I love your movie.

Speaker 1 You know I do. You know, I love it.

Speaker 1 You know, I love that. I know because you called me.

Speaker 1 Bill, you just stated the premise of my movie. I know.

Speaker 1 Everything, everything,

Speaker 1 everything changes.

Speaker 1 Robert? There you are. Bill, please call me Bob.

Speaker 1 How are you? If I have to. You don't have to.
You can call me.

Speaker 1 if you don't want to you call me you can call me robert you ever see that book on the name bob all the bobs in the world no somebody put on oh like bob newhart bob dylan there was this something they found commonality because this it's it's a very common name case you never got my book i did but you will sign one for me please thank you Hollywood Royalty for a reason.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. I love that.
Thank you. This means a lot.
Thank you. It's great.
It's great, by the way. I'm glad you're here.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 It's fantastic. And I certainly mean that

Speaker 1 in Scripture.

Speaker 1 Appreciate that. Thank you.
Well, it's undeniable if you just go down the list of all the big ones. I mean,

Speaker 1 my friend and I were talking the other day. We're driving back from the airport and songs come on the radio.
And we were saying, like, how tough it must be to be a one-hit wonder.

Speaker 1 Like, lots of people, there's lots of one-hit wonders in music. You do it once, and it's like the greatest six months of your life.
You got a number one hit.

Speaker 1 You're on the the top of the charts, and it never happens again. That happens a lot in music.

Speaker 1 I guess in your business too, but you don't think, but you know, to have like the number of biggies that you've had is

Speaker 1 not a lot of people in that company. You know what the closest to this was is back in the day, the Charlie Rose show.
Oh, well, but that's TV, yes.

Speaker 1 Right, but there was, you, there were, all the cameras were remote control. Is that right? Oh, yeah.
You were in that black void.

Speaker 1 I did it. I remember.
And there were no, there was nobody there. Those cameras were all operated on servos and

Speaker 1 you couldn't see anybody. And it was just a table.

Speaker 1 That's how he ran his personal life, too.

Speaker 1 You couldn't see anybody, which is why he came out in a bathrobe. Exactly.
It's amazing the way

Speaker 1 the number of guys in that first Me Too wave,

Speaker 1 you know, like around our age, who were just doing things that I just wanted to go, you know, it's not all of us. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ugh, like, can't, don't you just hate yourself that this is how you get laid? I mean, everybody's got a way to get laid. Cops pull you over.
I mean, everybody's got a scam. Right, right, right.

Speaker 1 But it's just how elegant they are. Yeah.
And this was like the least elegant. I emerge from my bedroom in a robe.

Speaker 1 Like the 28-year-old's going to go, oh, my dream has come true.

Speaker 1 I get to see Charlie Rose

Speaker 1 naked

Speaker 1 thank you jesus exactly exactly i hear no i know i mean you must have seen some shit on movie sets i had this well i i've always i i've never i i actually

Speaker 1 never

Speaker 1 no actually no actually um actually you're nervous now no no no there was there was one there was one there was one time where i nothing could happen but it was like i

Speaker 1 um uh

Speaker 1 it was a scene in Forest Gump where Robin is in the dorm room with

Speaker 1 Tom, right? I'm sure you remember that.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Joanna Johnson, my long time costume designer, she's very English, very proper.

Speaker 1 And she kept coming up to me with showing me what I, if I approved what she was going to be wearing as, as her underwear, it was all this period stuff.

Speaker 1 And I'm looking at it and I'm going, this looks like you know something her grandmother would wear this doesn't i don't you know and she kept showing me the stuff i said and i finally i got upset and i said you know what get a model who get a model who has the same dimension same body as robin and put the stuff on her and take a picture so i can see what it's going to look like

Speaker 1 so a day later i i hear you know joanna says or the 80 comes and says joanna wants to see you in your trailer so i go on my trailer and there's this model with a robe on in my trailer.

Speaker 1 And Joanna's there. And she says, well,

Speaker 1 show them the underwear. So she opens up a robe.
I said, that looks great. And then the model said, you want me to take them off? Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm looking at Joanna. I'm saying, no, it's okay.

Speaker 1 I wasn't even asking about you. I just meant that you're in show business.
If you're in show business, I'm in it too. You're going to be around some sleazy people.
That's a boy.

Speaker 1 I mean, especially in the music industry. Not so.

Speaker 1 I always found that the ones that were the most talented were not the sleaziest.

Speaker 1 I mean, obviously, there were, but in my, in my, I mean, in my Michael Jackson was very talented, and he was fucking little boys. That's true.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 no, it's true.

Speaker 1 It's hard to. I know what you mean, like the bigger they are, the nicer they are.
That's, you know, often true.

Speaker 1 It takes all kinds. I mean,

Speaker 1 I've never thought you could, like, pigeonhole show business people. It's a spectrum.
Are they smart? Some are brilliant. Right.
And many are not.

Speaker 1 Same as humanity. Are they good? Some are awesome.
Yeah, you're right. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't think we'd want it any other way. We want to recruit from the full panoply of the the human race, right? I think you're probably right.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
And everybody's flawed.

Speaker 1 And every, you know, I don't know what your casting process is, but I'm sure you know they once asked John Houston, what's his secret to directing. Do you remember that? No.
And he said,

Speaker 1 I drew most of my directing and the casting process.

Speaker 1 Which means, you know. Yeah, I don't know what that means.
I know what it means. I know what it means, but I know what he, but yeah, but you could look at it.

Speaker 1 I guess you could think of it two ways because you know it's like

Speaker 1 you know it's the old it's the old adage what's uh you know what makes a good movie you know good writing and good casting you know that you know so we might have been reluding to that you know well I think he

Speaker 1 look I mean I don't know I'm not a movie maker like you are but just as a fan I know there's so many things that can go wrong in a movie I mean there's so many elements right you can have good writing and good casting and it could get fucked up by half a dozen other things Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Editing and

Speaker 1 timing and lots of stuff. But I think what he meant by that was, you know, if Humphrey Brogard is on my team and I write his name in the lineup card, we've got a good chance to win this game.

Speaker 1 That's exactly right. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's getting guys up there who are going to, you know, who are going to show up.

Speaker 1 I mean, you use... obviously some of the same people because you as most directors do you you work with somebody you have a good time, they fulfill your vision, and you're like,

Speaker 1 you've just solved my biggest problem in this next project. Can I, right? And it's like a shorthand.
I mean,

Speaker 1 I've made a bunch of movies with Tom Hanks. Right.
And he'll, and he says, he says, I can hear in your voice when you say cut that we're doing another take.

Speaker 1 So it's kind of like that shorthand has gotten gotten to that. He knows exactly what I'm thinking.
He knows when you're not quite satisfied. Yeah, just from the way he hears me say the word cut.

Speaker 1 That's what he claims anyway. But that is a short, but that's the great thing.
I mean, I keep working, I've worked for, I've made, I can't, you know, over 20 movies with Alan Silvestri, my composer.

Speaker 1 And it's just great having a shorthand where you kind of finish each other's sentences. Of course.
And

Speaker 1 when people are delivering and you can have that shorthand, it's great. But I've been very fortunate.
I've worked with,

Speaker 1 I mean, some of the absolute greatest actors that, you know, of our country. And I would say the same about you.
I mean, the people

Speaker 1 in any industry, but we know it in ours,

Speaker 1 they want to, you know,

Speaker 1 you're not doing them any favors. They want to work with someone who's going to make them successful too, who's going to provide the material, provide the direction.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm sure you're friends with a lot of these people, but maybe they'll do one movie for you at a friendship, but that's it.

Speaker 1 You know, like they want to work on what they want to work on, you know. Yeah.
But, you know, you come to them with good stuff. I mean, you know, if especially like Tom Hanks, you

Speaker 1 was Forest Gump the first one you did with it? That was the first one. Okay.
But then Castaway, how many years later was that?

Speaker 1 When Castaway was like four years later, and then we did.

Speaker 1 The Polar Express.

Speaker 1 I never get tired of the plane going down. And Castaway.
I mean, mean, the whole movie is great, but that is.

Speaker 1 I don't feel like I'd ever seen that quite on camera. I mean, it's so a lot of stuff that's super action-y and CGI and all that kind of stuff is stuff that would never really happen to me.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, I'm not worried about some monster shooting rays out of the end of his fingers at me. Right, of course, right.

Speaker 1 But a plane, a plane crash, I mean, it's very gripping because you could be exactly in that scenario. Yeah.
And I guess that's what it would look like.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think the trick, and I think the thing that makes it the most terrifying, and I, and I, and it was, and, and it was a decision that I made,

Speaker 1 you know, early on was you only see any of it from Tom's point of view.

Speaker 1 So you, you know, we never cut to what the pilots are seeing. We never cut to outside the plane, you know, God's point of view.
We never, it's, the whole plane crash happens from his

Speaker 1 well until it hits the water. Then we see

Speaker 1 well, we saw the plane,

Speaker 1 all the shit in the water when the plane hits the water. No, he's there.
No, you see, you know, you see it only from him.

Speaker 1 So it's like he, he's, he comes up on that, on that raft, and then you see the big tail of the plane coming at him. Right.

Speaker 1 It's all it's and but then at the very end, when he starts floating away, then the camera pulls back up, you know, like way way up into the sky as you just see him in that black ocean.

Speaker 1 How do you make these decisions like what to do? You,

Speaker 1 I mean, like,

Speaker 1 you're a little like people like Kubrick, who

Speaker 1 you know, made a bunch of great movies, and none of them are like the other ones.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, there's no like, like Scorsese, you would say, well, it's mostly a certain style.

Speaker 1 Obviously, he's done other movies that aren't mob movies, but he'll always be the first thing in his obituary, you know, master of mob movies, you know.

Speaker 1 But you seem to be all, I mean, Back to the Future is not really anything like

Speaker 1 Castaway. No, I, I, just what you I've been very fortunate.
I've, I've actually, I, I'm, I'm too restless or maybe it's a madness. I don't know what it is, but I just an artist.

Speaker 1 I just didn't want to do the same movie again. I wouldn't, it would be boring.
But that's what I feel like that's the key to art is

Speaker 1 that the person doesn't want to be bored exactly i just have no interest in doing um

Speaker 1 i i just would i mean

Speaker 1 a teen time travel movie i just i just would have absolutely no interest in doing that you already did it i did it right exactly exactly by the way it so holds up

Speaker 1 and of course

Speaker 1 Like any movie from the past, there's things in it you absolutely couldn't do today, or or they would just jump on you. Oh, yeah.
I mean, Biff is a rapist.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's flat out rape, which even if he's the bad guy, they would go nuts. Yeah.
Right? Yeah. I know, I know.
And it's like, it's just like, yeah, the bad guy in town,

Speaker 1 he rapes. That's his like thing that he, you know,

Speaker 1 he rapes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, well,

Speaker 1 people don't approve, but people don't approve it.

Speaker 1 And it doesn't really, it doesn't really, well, but you know what the intention is obviously yes no no no no he's in that car oh yeah and her feet are in the air he's plainly raping oh yeah oh yeah

Speaker 1 and and and and and both of them and and and tom and leah are so great doing that scene and it was it it it it was it was uh yeah it gets pretty it gets pretty scary by the way we have a sort of weird tangential connection which you'll never guess this but in 19 were you making the movie in 85 i know what you're going to say Gary Goldberg.

Speaker 1 You're right. Now, you know how come I know you're going to say that? This is, this is crazy, because I was having dinner with

Speaker 1 Michael Jay on Monday night. Really? Yeah,

Speaker 1 he was in town, and I was having dinner with him, and we were talking about,

Speaker 1 because I think he's thinking of doing

Speaker 1 a memoir about his life when he was, I mean, literally doing. the movie at night and the show during the day and getting two hours of sleep for

Speaker 1 what is my connection to this, do you think?

Speaker 1 You I was asking him this. I was saying, so what, you know, was Gary like, was he like, like concerned about if you were getting enough rest or anything?

Speaker 1 He was, no, no, no, because he was, he was too busy doing another show.

Speaker 1 He was doing another show with Bill Maher

Speaker 1 called Sarah. Correct.
Gina Davis was saying. Gina Davis, right? Alfre Woodard.
Yep. And Bronson Pinchot.
We were four lawyers in San Francisco.

Speaker 1 I was the office prick,

Speaker 1 and Bronson was gay, and Alfre was black, and Sarah was the lead.

Speaker 1 And that's who we were. And that was, yeah, Gary Goldberg, the producer, writer, he had family ties with Michael J.
Fox, which was the hugest hit.

Speaker 1 So we were thrilled to be on a show with TB's biggest producer. And we had a pretty good time slot.
You know, it was NBC when they were kind of like the king of the hill.

Speaker 1 So I don't think we followed directly family ties, but we were doing fine. I think we were against Dynasty, which was not easy, but

Speaker 1 come on.

Speaker 1 It's 1985. But I do remember Gary Goldberg talking a lot about how Michael J.
Fox

Speaker 1 was, he had to, or he did, loan him. to you

Speaker 1 to do this movie while he was still filming Family Time. Yep.
Which is crazy. It's It's crazy.
And it was crazy.

Speaker 1 So he couldn't have been there

Speaker 1 until he finished

Speaker 1 blocking and whatever the sitcom shit that he was doing, right? Well, yeah. So I think if you, well, I think the way the way he,

Speaker 1 the heavy, the heavy days

Speaker 1 in the sitcom were always the

Speaker 1 Thursday and then the taping on the Friday, right? Those were the heavy days. And those were the days where he had to work absolutely the most.
There was no wiggle room.

Speaker 1 But on Monday, I think he, I think, I think he kind of wrote him a little lighter in the show and he didn't have to sit through too many read-throughs and things like that to get a little bit more sleep.

Speaker 1 Well, he was so good. I mean, he was such a natural

Speaker 1 that, and sitcoms, you know, I did three or four of them. It's gentleman's work.
You know, it's not heavy lifting.

Speaker 1 And if you're smart and a real pro like him, I'm sure he could, you know, Jackie Gleason used to do it with zero rehearsal live. Right.

Speaker 1 He'd have to stand and do it with the other cast members, and they hadn't even seen him do it.

Speaker 1 And he memorized it like sitting in the chair, drunk before the show, like memorized the whole script, and then just went. That's like baller-like.
I can't even tell you. Exactly.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it really holds up. It's

Speaker 1 the Calvin Klein joke is. one of the all-time classics.
Yep. He thinks his name is.

Speaker 1 And the line that Michael wrote and he's is

Speaker 1 he came up to me

Speaker 1 and he goes, you know, he gets up and he's like,

Speaker 1 you know, where are my pants?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the script said, over there.

Speaker 1 She, you know, Leah says over there. And he says, you know what? She should say, they're on my hope chest.

Speaker 1 And I said, that's great. That's going in the movie right now.
You know, I got those great gems from Michael. Just kept doing that.
The other thing he taught me so many things about

Speaker 1 just comedy timing.

Speaker 1 You know, he would come up to me and say, you know what?

Speaker 1 I should take three steps and say this line, stuff like that. And I go, Okay, that makes, oh, that's great.
That's better. Let's change the marks.
You know, so

Speaker 1 it was great having someone who just understood the, I'll call it, I guess, the mechanics of comedy.

Speaker 1 It's funny to watch a movie about time travel when you are now 40 years past when the movie was made.

Speaker 1 So the jokes that are funny in 1985 about when they go back to 1955, you know, oh, if you know everything about the future, who's president in 1985? Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 1 Oh, right. And I'll bet Jerry Lewis is vice president, you know, made sense in 1980.
Now looking from 2024, it's funny in a different way. It's like a double

Speaker 1 time travel. You know the story of when Reagan watched the movie in the White House.

Speaker 1 Well, so

Speaker 1 we heard this. Bob Gale heard this because

Speaker 1 his speech writers who put

Speaker 1 one of our lines in the State of the Union address

Speaker 1 that he said that year

Speaker 1 were big fans of the movie. And they were there on the night that he ran it at the White House.

Speaker 1 And the story they told was that when that scene came on,

Speaker 1 where, you know, you know, Chris Lloyd says, Ronald Reagan, the actor, um, Reagan said, stop, stop,

Speaker 1 back it up, back it up, I gotta see it again. Then shut the movie down, rewound the reel.
Wow, and he wanted to watch that part over again. Isn't that wild?

Speaker 1 I guess they had it reel to reel, then. Well, it was a film, it was film, right? It was projectors, yeah.
There was no video, yeah. You had to like, you had to like rewind the movie, rewind the reel.

Speaker 1 Yeah, something about Canadian

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Speaker 1 Comedians, you know, like michael is a comedian yeah dan aykroyd matthew perry right you know

Speaker 1 there's something about them that like they get they get us

Speaker 1 they're part of us but not completely you know

Speaker 1 yeah and they i don't know i don't know i i don't know what i don't know what it is but you're i think yeah there's something about being able to look at it with a little bit of a little bit of distance man so what's the new one about

Speaker 1 the new one. Well, the new one is really interesting.
The new one is, again, me being on my

Speaker 1 restlessness. It's called Here.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's based on a graphic novel by Richard McGuire.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the camera... is only positioned in one view of the universe and the camera never moves ever.

Speaker 1 And then,

Speaker 1 but the universe moves around the camera, or the view, I don't want to say, or the view the audience is seeing, which is obviously a camera recording it. And that it and it goes

Speaker 1 through many, many

Speaker 1 centuries. And it's not like a time-lapse movie or anything like that, but at some point, very early on, a house is built and a room is built around the camera, and it's a living room in

Speaker 1 New Jersey.

Speaker 1 And across the street is a colonial mansion, which used to be the

Speaker 1 mansion that Benjamin Franklin's illegitimate son lived in. This is all in the graphic novel and it's in the movie.
And

Speaker 1 our family

Speaker 1 now inhabits this room and we watch them

Speaker 1 we watch their lives through uh

Speaker 1 two generations so we see tom and robin from 18 to 80 in the movie how's that sound robin robin wright and tomorrow are back together in this and they're back together yeah tom hanks robin right and uh the other the other reunion is um uh eric roth wrote the script with me he wrote for us go

Speaker 1 so why do i mean but you said the you we the camera sees the universe. Well, I say universe.
I mean, not, well, whatever. I mean the world.
The world. What part of the world is it focused on?

Speaker 1 What are we seeing? We're just seeing this house. No,

Speaker 1 you're seeing the Earth before the house is built. The Earth.
The world. The whole Earth.
No, just what you could see.

Speaker 1 Just like if you were looking... Okay, so if

Speaker 1 you were looking at that wall and then

Speaker 1 your view of that wall never changed, but time changed around you. But what is the camera trained on that the people who are watching the movie see?

Speaker 1 Exactly what's there. Whatever is there.
So to give you an example,

Speaker 1 the camera is looking at

Speaker 1 the mansion, the colonial mansion, before the house is built, right? And the colonial mansion is always in one place after it's built.

Speaker 1 But the trees around it are now disappear because they were cut down. And then walls are constructed in frame.
And then suddenly

Speaker 1 a room is constructed, and then a window is there, but you can still see the man.

Speaker 1 Do the actors age, yes, and you see them age. Oh, yeah, and so you de-age them, yes.

Speaker 1 I hear that technology has gotten better since the Irishman. Oh, this is this is in this movie, it's

Speaker 1 perfect. So, you can make them any age you want.

Speaker 1 Is this a union issue? I feel like

Speaker 1 it is. No, no, no,

Speaker 1 No, but it's like makeup. It's digital.
I call it digital makeup. Right, which I would assume would upset the makeup union.
Well, I mean,

Speaker 1 whenever things change, somebody usually gets hurt. Yeah.
And then that person is going to cry and moan. Sometimes justifiably, sometimes not.

Speaker 1 My view is that you can't bitch and moan too much about when things change because they just are going to.

Speaker 1 So what the fuck is the use of crying you know that 20 years ago barry sanders was like the highest paid player in football or close to it

Speaker 1 now no running back is one is even in the top 100 right but why because things change Why did it change and become a passing game? It just did. So why fucking obsessed about it?

Speaker 1 That's just the reality.

Speaker 1 Music became a producer's industry. They get all the money.
Songwriters are dying. They don't get paid anymore.
Either direct making a hit record, you don't get paid because of fucking Spotify.

Speaker 1 Streaming is basically where serious movies went. People are not going to go to the theater.
Look what happened in Megalopolis. I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's good or bad, but

Speaker 1 in the old days, there'd be more curiosity just to see it. Yeah.
Bill, you just stated the premise of my movie.

Speaker 1 everything,

Speaker 1 everything changes. I'm going to pretend I meant to do that,

Speaker 1 but it's a great theme.

Speaker 1 It is, that's what fascinated me about it because it just, it's a meditation on,

Speaker 1 I hate to use that word because the movie is wildly entertaining.

Speaker 1 So I don't want it to sound like it's like,

Speaker 1 but it's about the fact that everything changes, nothing stays the same.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that's, and, and well, let's hope that some reviewer says wildly entertaining because then you can put that in the ad.

Speaker 1 And that always gets to me because when I watch anything, I want to be wildly entertained. Well, that's it.
So you were talking about back to the future.

Speaker 1 And I was having this, you know, so back in Santa Barbara over the summer, they have an old,

Speaker 1 beautiful

Speaker 1 theater. called the called the Granada.
And it's having its 100-year anniversary. And they want to remind people that, you know, movies are all back in the 20s and 30s, they used to run movies here.

Speaker 1 So they did a movie program, but they only wanted to use movies from people who

Speaker 1 filmmakers who lived in Santa Barbara. So they ran my movies.
And

Speaker 1 people who I knew who aren't in the movie business, who are

Speaker 1 in their 30s and 40s, they would come up, they came up to me and said, oh my God, we took the kids to the Granada and we watched Back to the Future. And they said, and you know what?

Speaker 1 People were laughing

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 people were cheering and they would burst into applause at certain moments in the movie. And I was sitting there thinking, yep,

Speaker 1 that's why we use, that's what, that's what movies, that's what we did when we, that's what movies are going to do. There's something about a communal experience that makes it better.

Speaker 1 Or it's not always, but it can. It definitely has that.
I mean, concerts. I mean, yeah, they're just things that people, there's some sort of

Speaker 1 like that we get from, oh, I'm among all these other people who feel the same way about this as I do. Maybe it makes you feel not so alone in the world.
Church is the same thing.

Speaker 1 We all think Jesus Christ is God. We all think that.
It's just something comforting about that.

Speaker 1 I'm not in that group. No, I'm not in that group either.
And by the way, I love your movie.

Speaker 1 You know I do. You know I love,

Speaker 1 you know, I love that. I know because you called me and I always appreciated.
I'm so glad you reminded me of that.

Speaker 1 Yes, when Religilist came out in 2008, you tracked me down and called me and it meant the world to me. I'm a director of your stature.
Well, I'm so glad I just love that you made that movie. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, I loved it too. Yeah, man.

Speaker 1 It's about so much, but it's so entertaining.

Speaker 1 It's wildly entertaining. It's wildly entertaining.
It really is. And I, you know, half the credit goes to Larry Charles, who directed it and did such a great job.
Did a great job. Put it together.

Speaker 1 But, I mean, it was a labor of love, even though a labor, I mean,

Speaker 1 traipsing around the Middle East. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't do it again. Well, but you had to get all that.
You had to get all that great stuff. But here's the thing, though.
I mean, the art form, though, was designed.

Speaker 1 It was always supposed to be this communal thing, I think. Because the idea of seeing, well, you know what? Maybe I'm wrong.
No, flickers. No, those things, those

Speaker 1 individual. You started with those little machines

Speaker 1 where you watched something. So that was, you watched it in isolation.
You're completely right. Right.
So it just everything, everything changes. But that didn't mean it was better.

Speaker 1 People then liked it better. Of course, obviously, then we could sit down and watch it.
And then the silent days, wasn't there a guy in the theater playing the piano? Yep.

Speaker 1 During the silent days, that was his soundtrack. And then this thing started to happen, I guess, which is...
Sound. Well, sound.
And then, of course, then people were getting.

Speaker 1 I just remember, I just remember

Speaker 1 the first time that I was emotionally moved in a movie. And that was the moment when I said, I got to do this.
What was that?

Speaker 1 It was Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde, yeah.
Okay. So there's a great scene in there where

Speaker 1 Gene Hackman was shot in the head.

Speaker 1 And he's in this field and he's dying. I remember, yeah.

Speaker 1 And I remember being a kid in, I guess I was freshman in high school or something. I don't know what I think,

Speaker 1 I am feeling real bad, really bad. I feel so sad for this.
And I went, and I just, I remember having this clear thought thinking,

Speaker 1 this is some strange power.

Speaker 1 I think this is, I got to, I got to figure out. And that's when I started to learn.

Speaker 1 that, oh, wait, there's a director and then there's a writer and then there's, and this is, and it's not just, you know, because I only went to movies to see special effects.

Speaker 1 But Bob, you know that the Clyde Barrow gang were not really good people, don't you? Oh, God, of course I do. Just fucking.

Speaker 1 I know you are. But I mean, that was the experience of the movie.
I mean, absolutely.

Speaker 1 I fell in love with these people because they were just so. Oh, how could you not?

Speaker 1 How could you not? Faye Dunaway was so cockerific in that movie. Absolutely.
I mean, she was super hot.

Speaker 1 When they're in that diner and,

Speaker 1 you know, she's in this hot chick in a small town waiting for someone like him to show up. And she just wants to get out of there so bad.

Speaker 1 And she's got this curlicue of her hair by her ear that's comes down a little sideburn, a little woman sideburn. I thought it was kind of sexy, but he goes, change that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And she immediately like puts down her hairbricker and wipes off the grease off her hands with a napkin and does something with it. And it was just,

Speaker 1 oh, I'm sure people will say, well, that's you, Bill Maury. You like to see women dominated.
No, it wasn't that.

Speaker 1 But it was. It was just hot.

Speaker 1 And it was a great moment. It was hot.
It was a great moment. And sexy is not politically correct, and it never will be.
No, it will be.

Speaker 1 They are at loggerheads.

Speaker 1 You know, William Hurt throwing that chair through the window in body heat.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 By the way, that plot, I just saw this movie. I watched...

Speaker 1 movies that I never heard of very often, like scroll through the list to when I'm in the kitchen, you know, making food and things I don't really have to pay attention that closely to but I like see everything

Speaker 1 this one came on I think the title I could be wrong was Be Careful What You Wish For. I'd never heard of it.
It's with the Jonas.

Speaker 1 Right. One of the Jonases, Nick, I guess.
Right. Who's fine? Yeah.
You know, again, proving my point I've made many times. Acting, not that difficult.
Lots of people could do it.

Speaker 1 Wrestlers, bodybuilders, dogs do it. Children do it.
I did it. It's just not.
I said this to Sidney Pollack once. I interviewed him and he was like, you have no idea how right you are.

Speaker 1 And he proved it because he was a fine actor. Yeah.
I worked with him. Yeah.
On what?

Speaker 1 He does what the, he does a

Speaker 1 in

Speaker 1 Death Becomes Her.

Speaker 1 He plays the doctor that examines Meryl and realizes she's a zombie.

Speaker 1 And he is spectacular in it. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 1 eyes wide shut. Yeah.
He just stepped in the Woody Allen movie. Yeah.
Husbands and Wives. Yeah.
You know, and he looks, he just looks like he's doing it effortlessly.

Speaker 1 Like he, as the director for so long, he knows what the deal is. He's like, you know, don't over fucking think this.

Speaker 1 Just fucking

Speaker 1 hit your mark and bark. You know, it's it's not rocket science here.
I mean, it is for some roles. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, if you're playing Sophie's choice yes there's a level of acting but most of it is just a version of you yeah a version of you and in a situation right and and knowing

Speaker 1 i think the thing that i appreciate the most

Speaker 1 about the really great actors i've had a chance to work with is they understand the medium they they know how movies are made right and that is critical where the camera is and what and and when you talk about an actor like Tom Hanks, and he's so generous as an actor, because he knows this isn't my scene.

Speaker 1 You know, this is, this is,

Speaker 1 I'm here to just say this one line. Right.
And that's what I'm supposed to do here and completely get it. And it's not like

Speaker 1 sometimes you hit a sacrifice fly. Absolutely.
And it brings in the

Speaker 1 job. Right.
Absolutely. I mean, I'm sure a lot of who you choose to work with, especially as you get older and you have the esteem to

Speaker 1 be able to demand it, is, you know, just the life is too short list. Life is too short.

Speaker 1 To work with people who are assholes, who try your patience, who just a lot of lateral motion when we could be moving forward on something because of your issues or whatever.

Speaker 1 you know the older you get

Speaker 1 right life is too short no we all have that i'm obviously i'm not going to mention anybody but we all have the life is too short list and and it's that way in in it's that way in the whole

Speaker 1 in the whole

Speaker 1 the whole thing it's like life is too short to work at this studio life is too short to work it's like life is too short all the way down the line you know it's like you get to the point where you just say no it's

Speaker 1 and yet in that book i gave you

Speaker 1 in the chapter on show business, there's a good one about how, I mean, the point of of it is,

Speaker 1 if people in Hollywood can work together when they absolutely despise each other, which has happened in a zillion movies, why can't government?

Speaker 1 Couldn't government be as efficient as the movie Chinatown, where Roman Polanski and Faye Dunaway hated each other so much that she once peed in a bottle and threw it in his face.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I heard that story.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, but you're right.

Speaker 1 And you're right. And I don't know why that is.

Speaker 1 I mean, that never happened to Ted cruise well maybe maybe the difference is is that there's not a finished product see one of the things i love about movies is they they end

Speaker 1 see i think i mean i mean well good ones do yeah but i mean my process ends and we are at some point but it's going to be a wrap and we're all going to go home

Speaker 1 i've said this to many people perhaps here before like everyone has a great idea for a movie and some of them are very few have the ending.

Speaker 1 The ending is the key. If you don't stick the landing, don't start down the road.
And it looks like so many people,

Speaker 1 my mother used to say it, like she'd, how was that movie? She's like, yeah, it was okay, but he didn't know how to get out of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, that's, well,

Speaker 1 it's true.

Speaker 1 He has to know how to get out of it. Well, 100% right.
I mean, that's my mantra whenever I'm

Speaker 1 working with writers and kicking around ideas and things. It's like, well,

Speaker 1 I'll say to writers that I'm working with, I said,

Speaker 1 I can't start writing this until I know

Speaker 1 what the ending is. I don't even know, if I don't know where the ending is.
And the tone.

Speaker 1 Well, the tone is a critical thing. Yeah.
The tone is

Speaker 1 a sweet sauce. But you also see people who like never really made a decision about the tone because it's more than one tone.

Speaker 1 The tone of Back to the Future is one level. It's very different from, like I said, Castaway or

Speaker 1 even Forrest Gump. I mean, it just, there's a different tone.
Like, are we taking this super seriously? No, we're not taking it DeLorean that time travels seriously.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's one of the, they used to say in comedy, buy the premise, buy the bit.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. And it's okay.
You know, that's, we're on here for the ride.

Speaker 1 We're not, we're not, we're not going to, anyone who picks it apart, like picks the sides apart is like you're just an asshole okay no one really thinks this could happen it's it we're it's we bought the premise no you bought your ticket go on the ride right you know it's the roller coaster no it's not real if it was you'd die and and and and i guess that's one of the hard things about doing what i love uh you know the audiences seem to have a hard time with black comedy and i mean dark comedy oh no no you know what i mean you know what i mean not you know what i mean you're canceled

Speaker 1 But you're still going to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 No, no, you know what? We don't have to apologize for saying something that other people who are ignorant don't know what that means. It has nothing to do with race.
Black comedy.

Speaker 1 No, no, great black comedy is great.

Speaker 1 Social justice warriors out there. Black comedy means like apocalypse now is a black comedy.
It's a very strange love. Yes, but it's about a subject that is very dark and very serious,

Speaker 1 but we're still doing comedy about it. Right.
And that's, but it's always been a difficult tonal thing I found because I, you know, because I've made a few movies that

Speaker 1 Death Becomes Her, by the way, which is

Speaker 1 wonderfully is having a,

Speaker 1 it's caught up to its time in an interesting way.

Speaker 1 Where,

Speaker 1 you know, the tone,

Speaker 1 that, that comedy tone with a dark theme like that is just hard. It's hard for audiences to

Speaker 1 tap in, you know, connect with American audiences.

Speaker 1 It's probably having a resurgence because there is a starvation for it now because they don't make those anymore, because they don't trust the audience enough, partly because the audience is dumber, probably, but there's still a sizable number of people that keep proving it.

Speaker 1 Look at Oppenheimer. I mean, would you ever think a movie like that would have pulled in that kind of money at the box office? I wouldn't.
I wouldn't. No, I didn't know.
It's very encouraging. It is.

Speaker 1 It really is.

Speaker 1 It's very encouraging that the people are out there.

Speaker 1 And if you just, you know, service them.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 well, yeah,

Speaker 1 there's a whole shift going on in the middle. The Fablemans do.

Speaker 1 What's that? The Fablemans. How did that do?

Speaker 1 I don't think it was as successful

Speaker 1 as you would expect.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 for him, not as successful is still like, I mean, Lincoln was

Speaker 1 really. Lincoln was more successful.
Very successful. Right.

Speaker 1 You know, it's another one like Oppenheimer. Like, if you really give it to them and make it wildly entertaining, they will eat the dog food.

Speaker 1 I completely agree. I, I, you know, I think we're in this strange world now of,

Speaker 1 well, we'll see. I mean, I made this movie, which flies in the face of

Speaker 1 everything that's going on. I mean, it's completely original, both in its style and its premise.

Speaker 1 And it has, it's not a pre-sold title. It's not a sequel.
When is it out? November 1st.

Speaker 1 Well, I want to see it, not just because it's your name on it, and there's a lot of credibility there, but

Speaker 1 I'm just so curious now, the way you describe it. Yeah, it's like

Speaker 1 it kind of has to be seen. Well, it has to be seen, and it's going to be, it's going to be.

Speaker 1 Well, it's going to be difficult. It's going to be difficult.

Speaker 1 Even after you see the movie, it's going to be difficult to describe, to describe what the actual story is but but that can be okay that can be okay you know what's interesting about back to the future this is from back in the day uh you remember um blockbuster

Speaker 1 of course

Speaker 1 of course you did street in west hollywood here's that they never knew what shelf to put back to the future on really yeah they didn't know if it was science fiction shelf should be a comedy shelf right is it an adventure shelf right they didn't know where they didn't know where where to put back to the future it's a comedy isn't that interesting it is it's a comedy but it's you know it uses as its fodder futuristic stuff but again it's not really in that category again because we don't really take seriously

Speaker 1 you know the the science in it whereas in contact that is taken seriously that's the whole point of it is that it's serious

Speaker 1 it's not that hard to It's not that hard to stalk the shelves at Blockbuster. Well, and I got my greatest compliment from Carl Sagan when I was working on,

Speaker 1 he said,

Speaker 1 Back to the future is the best time travel,

Speaker 1 best time travel, I guess he said, scientific theory that I've ever seen in a movie.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I didn't tell him, well,

Speaker 1 I took it from H.G. Wallace.

Speaker 1 If I was putting together a little film festival and Back to the Future was one night, I would feel like a great couple of companion movies would be

Speaker 1 Groundhog Day,

Speaker 1 which is also great and also fucks with time. Right.

Speaker 1 And did you ever see Pleasantville? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So good.
Yeah. Toby Maguire and Rhys Witherspoon.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it'd be a good, yeah. Well, that'd be a good, that'd be a good like little movie retrospective thing to do.

Speaker 1 I was just on, I was very proud to be on TCM.

Speaker 1 you know, the yeah, I know by, yeah, wasn't that it, TCM? I think so.

Speaker 1 Oh, Jesus. TCM.

Speaker 1 Oh, wait. The movie is a channel that shows the movie channel.
Yeah, it's part of

Speaker 1 Time Warner. Right.
And, you know, they do these little interviews before the show. Maureen Dowd just did Three Days of the Condor.
I watched that. That's a great movie.

Speaker 1 That's a great movie, and she did a great interview about it. And I did Red's

Speaker 1 with Ben Mankiewicz, who

Speaker 1 sat here and that's one of my old time favors. Yeah, I really like that movie.
Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 I was able to recite word for word Jack Nicholson's scene and I thought they would use it and they didn't.

Speaker 1 Where

Speaker 1 he goes to Diane Keaton, you know, because she was this feminist from 1920 and he's like, Jack leaves you alone a lot, doesn't he? It must hurt. Remember that?

Speaker 1 And she's like, he's got his things and I've got mine. And he goes, what are they?

Speaker 1 What are what? These things of yours. What are they? And then you go, well, he has my work and my work and I do my thing.
And he's like, are you making this up as you go along?

Speaker 1 And they did the whole thing, but then they didn't get it.

Speaker 1 But it was still really good. And

Speaker 1 it is a great movie. And

Speaker 1 who's your, like, when you want advice from your peers,

Speaker 1 do you like show them stuff? I know some directors do that. They will show it.
Like, who's your kitchen cabinet that you

Speaker 1 can say, Am I on the right track here, or don't you care? Yeah, I well, I have my,

Speaker 1 you know, I have Bob Gale who wrote Back to the Future with me, and he's my, he's my

Speaker 1 long, long, and he'll, and he'll tell me,

Speaker 1 I mean, he doesn't, you know, he doesn't blow any smoke. I mean, he'll say, oh, that's, yeah, you're, you're in trouble with this movie.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 yeah, so yeah, and it's a, but, um,

Speaker 1 yeah, and and and then Alan, my um my composer.

Speaker 1 He's generally

Speaker 1 generally when you know, when we do a rough cut, or I do a rough cut, my editor. Um,

Speaker 1 and it's not really a rough cut because I don't believe in rough cuts where I make the movie five hours longer, so I never do anything like that. Good.

Speaker 1 Um, I've always, I always kind of can't stand watching it, so I always you know, cut it down to where I was, I want to, I do the best that I can, and that's what I call my rough cut, my very first cut.

Speaker 1 And I always bring Alan in.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I can just tell from his vibe what scenes are working, what scenes aren't. And it's just like just,

Speaker 1 you know, him and my editor, they're the ones that I'll feel first. But no other like directors feel.
I know you're close with Spielberg, aren't you? Yeah, no, I haven't. No, I haven't.

Speaker 1 I haven't brought Steven in. I haven't brought Steven in in a rough cut.
And the Rough Cut thing,

Speaker 1 not for any reason other than it's, it, it's,

Speaker 1 it's never been something where I think I've ever said, I really need somebody to tell me what to do here.

Speaker 1 Like, if I was in any, in any trouble, it's kind of like, it's sort of like when the movie is finished or in the rough, in the finished stage, it'll be like, okay,

Speaker 1 is this working? You know, and if there's anything you can suggest to do that I can help, you know, that can help it. Oh,

Speaker 1 I just remembered what I was talking about.

Speaker 1 The Jonas Brothers movie. I mean, the Jonas Brother movie.

Speaker 1 It's, if it's not a direct remake, I guess it's just a rip-off like they do.

Speaker 1 Double Indemnity.

Speaker 1 You remember from... Yeah, I remember Double Indemnity.
What movie? It was the Jonas Brothers movie? What should he do? I'm telling you. Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 It's also Body Heat. Okay.
And now they've redone it. Again, either they really, I guess they just take the plot and it's fine.

Speaker 1 And the plot is great. When Fred McMurray did it with,

Speaker 1 who was that, with Barbara Stanwick?

Speaker 1 But it's a hot chick

Speaker 1 who's unhappily married, usually to some older guy who's mean to her, and she wants to fucking kill him.

Speaker 1 And she picks

Speaker 1 as an instrument of her vengeance, some young guy.

Speaker 1 And because she's hot, she gets him to either kill the husband because she loves him so much and they're gonna go away together and then after he does the deed

Speaker 1 she's like see you wouldn't want to be you and she actually frames him you know because that's what you were crime right yeah so I think that's so interesting that they've done that now through all these different generations.

Speaker 1 I mean, that was exactly what body heat was. That was double indemnity.

Speaker 1 And somebody from the new generation saw those movies and what a difference. Oh, okay.
We can do that. We can do that.

Speaker 1 And why not? Because there's only so many stories. Yeah.
I mean, there aren't. Yeah, somebody said that.
I don't remember who said that. Somebody said there's only like seven stories or something.

Speaker 1 I remember hearing that back in the day. I forget who said who said that.
But yeah.

Speaker 1 And then Bob Gale and I always thought that every story, every movie story has always been in an episode of Leave It to Beaver.

Speaker 1 Really? Yeah. I mean, really?

Speaker 1 Well, like, you know, just, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever Beaver's

Speaker 1 character arc has to be, the lesson that he has to learn, the moral of the story,

Speaker 1 it's all there. You'll find an episode where it's there,

Speaker 1 where his father has to do something,

Speaker 1 or Gus the Fireman has to give him words of wisdom, and you'll find these little gems in there that are always sort of like premises that you'll find in most movie stories.

Speaker 1 I think that's actually more apropos. for Andy Griffith's show.
And that too, probably, yeah.

Speaker 1 That was more, I mean, maybe I don't remember Beaver too well, but I do remember Andy Griffith when I was homesick as a kid and they would, the reruns would be on. And

Speaker 1 there was always like a good lesson there. Like one time Opie killed a bird with a slingshot

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the baby birds were crying and crying.

Speaker 1 Opie said, can you do something about that? And Andy was like, no, I'm going to let you listen to them cry for their mother. So you know what you did.

Speaker 1 We could use a little more of that today. Exactly.

Speaker 1 And there was one episode where

Speaker 1 in the beaver, where the beaver got swindled by sending in a coupon from a box of cereal or something and had to learn the lesson of

Speaker 1 understanding false advertising, all this great stuff. It blows my mind the difference in

Speaker 1 life,

Speaker 1 just life in America. I don't know about other countries.
I only lived in this one. Just from when I was alive, which is, I was not really aware of life, but mid-50s.
I was born in 1956.

Speaker 1 You were born in the 50s. I mean, that's where you go back to in Back to the Future, 1950.
55.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 that world.

Speaker 1 Now, from 1985, when you go back 30 years,

Speaker 1 it was recognizable but weird but from 2024 kids today who that's like the civil war era to them right or if they even knew what that is or the revolutionary or or cavemen time it's just like it's it's alien yeah and yet we spam the whole time right i always have i have a theory about why world war ii movies have such longevity because this it was a time it was a time when obviously the whole world was at war and we knew who the good guys were and the bad guys were and there was this incredible conflict going on but the world was familiar

Speaker 1 in other words it wasn't like the civil war or the revolutionary war the world was familiar you know you had telephones you had cars you had you know you had newspapers you had movies radios so there was enough that was still going on where the modern audience can relate to the life that the people were in, and they could then say, Oh, yeah, and they're in this tremendous conflict.

Speaker 1 I think that that's why there's so many of them keep getting made and why it's so powerful. That's my own theory.
It's also because Nazi uniforms were sharp.

Speaker 1 Oh, well, well, but the whole Nazi thing was so diabolical, it was so fantastic. Well, of course,

Speaker 1 dramatic, of course, that's true, too. But the uniforms

Speaker 1 were just awesome. Yeah, I mean, the cut.

Speaker 1 I mean, am I wrong? I mean, no.

Speaker 1 Can we have nuance in life? I mean, they were diabolic and evil, but yeah, the wardrobe was fantastic, especially like the jadrenals. I mean, those full-length leather coats, the lapels,

Speaker 1 and then the

Speaker 1 generals had the red stripe on the leg. I mean, it was all just very well thought out.
Hugo Boss, I believe. Well,

Speaker 1 I think I've heard that, but I don't know if it was him or his company or what the real truth is.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the real truth about that is.

Speaker 1 I've heard that though well a number of companies that we still have today started out supplying the mitsubishi i believe in japan made a few planes that flew into the decks of aircraft carriers uh certainly the volkswagen yep and um

Speaker 1 bear bear chemical

Speaker 1 what bear chemical what's that well the the bear well the bear chemical uh the bear chemical company

Speaker 1 bayer what did i say bayer yeah bayer chemical they built the bayer aspirin aspirin yeah they built the um right the bergen-belson um you know um

Speaker 1 they probably also yeah i'm just guessing here um so don't sue me nazis

Speaker 1 i'm just guessing but uh they may have made the speed that they gave to the german oh yeah oh yeah the young the uh there's a book about that oh yeah that i that would be a great movie not that i need to give you any ideas but uh there's a book you could take the book and make the book into a movie.

Speaker 1 And it's about how

Speaker 1 the Wehrmacht were, the soldiers were given speed. Speed.
To go into battle. And like, how did they get to Paris in three days? That's how.
Exactly. It was like Paris.

Speaker 1 They would have been in the Atlantic Ocean if they didn't stop them. They just jacked them up.
And that's, you could do an interesting thing through history because it's there are,

Speaker 1 we gave our officers, like before there was a push, coffee.

Speaker 1 I don't think we gave them speed, but you know, the Nazis were efficient like that.

Speaker 1 There are certainly

Speaker 1 tribes and more primitive peoples who would chew on certain plants that would give them cocaine, you know, the coca plant, or in Africa, something called GATT. I think it's K-H-A-T.

Speaker 1 It's like their cocaine that you just chew on it.

Speaker 1 But Germany,

Speaker 1 I don't want to get in any trouble, but

Speaker 1 I think maybe

Speaker 1 we gave our guys certainly maybe

Speaker 1 some of our bomber crew

Speaker 1 some amphetamines doing those bombings. Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 1 Right. There was amphetamines back then.

Speaker 1 I mean, certainly the Beatles took them in Hamburg. Right.
Well,

Speaker 1 I allude to that in a scene I did in Allied where they said, you know, you were saying, take this before the mission, that after the mission. So I don't know if it was true or not.

Speaker 1 Did you watch that series on, I think it was on Apple. I think it was, it was Hanks.
Yeah, the one about the

Speaker 1 Masters of the Sky. Masters of the Sky.
I thought it was, you know what I loved about that? So great. I love there were so many little moments.
So I loved all the little minutiae they put in there.

Speaker 1 Like the little things like just when they're coming back from the mission, they're standing there with a tray of whiskey for everybody. I just thought that was like great.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I mean, they did Band of Brothers also.

Speaker 1 Same tone. I mean, it's just like nobody does World War II like Spielberg.
No, no, and yeah, and that's one of his greatest movies.

Speaker 1 Well, Private Ryan. My favorite movie of all time.
And that's partly because it's personal because, I mean,

Speaker 1 the guy who plays

Speaker 1 Ryan, the movie opens with him as an older man,

Speaker 1 was exactly my father, who was in World War II, practically in that campaign.

Speaker 1 So when I saw it in the theater, I mean, to say I was like a puddle was sure, you know, it was only about four years after my father died.

Speaker 1 And it was like, you know, I've never had that experience in a movie theater or,

Speaker 1 but, you know, he looked, he Spielberg put him in like the exact sort of shirt my father would have worn in 1990, whatever, when that movie was, you know, goes back in time.

Speaker 1 And then we see him as a kid. And, but, you know, that generation just is,

Speaker 1 I'm sure the kids are tired of hearing that they're the greatest generation, but they kind of were.

Speaker 1 I mean, fighting what Hitler and

Speaker 1 Tojo represented and how close they were to achieving it was not something people today can relate to. We're just not in that kind of dire situation where, yeah, they could have won.

Speaker 1 For a while, they looked like they were winning. Yeah.
I mean, we were on the ropes. There were some close calls.
You read that, read the history of that thing. There were some.

Speaker 1 Well, if Hitler hadn't been nuts, they would have done it. Because like there's no people in the world as efficient as the Germans.
And when you put efficiency in league with evil,

Speaker 1 it's not a good combination. They were very efficient at everything they did,

Speaker 1 but the guy at the top, this is their Achilles, the guy at the top was insane.

Speaker 1 So he thought he was invincible. If he had just not turned against Russia,

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 they took Europe and North Africa all in a year. And

Speaker 1 if he had invaded England

Speaker 1 instead of go to Moscow, it would have been.

Speaker 1 Instead of trying to do both at the same time, which was never going to work.

Speaker 1 We dodged a bullet with that one.

Speaker 1 But we were not really ready to fight a war.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 for

Speaker 1 four years,

Speaker 1 this country made no cars.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 They just shut down the car factories and said, no, you're making planes and tanks now. And nobody said, boo.
I mean,

Speaker 1 that is just a different

Speaker 1 fucking universe. Yeah, and everybody did, everybody did do their bit.

Speaker 1 Everybody just said, okay, we got to go, everybody, we got to do this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it really is. I mean, that's the spirit that Hanks and Spielberg are always after in those World War II things, and that they do capture.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That great scene in Private Orion where Hanks goes, what's the pool on me now? What's the pool on me now?

Speaker 1 I'm a school teacher.

Speaker 1 All these guys just dropped their, you know. And the fact that he saved it to that moment

Speaker 1 when he needed something to diffuse. I also loved in that movie, I mean, there were many firsts that they did, like the first beat scene, showing

Speaker 1 the true carnage of war looks like. Oh, yeah.
That had not happened before. Oh, I was, no, that was, or just the, you know, just

Speaker 1 a camera going up and down out of the water. Also, until then, like everything I'd ever seen about World War II, I was a huge combat fan.
Remember the oh, God, I've seen every episode. Me too.

Speaker 1 Love them all. Right.
But all the movies, all the TV shows kind of presented it like,

Speaker 1 yeah, war as hell, but the thing you can count on is that when the superior officer says something, the other guys just do it. And

Speaker 1 Private Ryan said, it's not quite like that.

Speaker 1 It's not like that in the field. It's a lot of, Captain,

Speaker 1 we shouldn't do this. It's like,

Speaker 1 that's not how combat did it. It was like, whatever Sergeant Saunders said, they just did.

Speaker 1 And of course, under the heat of battle and, you know,

Speaker 1 and when they let the German guy go,

Speaker 1 which they didn't agree with, and then he comes back to kill the, I mean, it's just, it's the great, I always say Saving Private Ryan is simply the greatest combat episode ever. It is.
It's.

Speaker 1 And that was just a really, and that was what it was. It was, it was, every, every great moment in combat was in that movie.
It's just fantastic. Yeah, it's really, really good.
It's funny when

Speaker 1 the Cold War ended, you you know, we had World War II as the great enemies, all the great World War II movies. And then we had the Russians.

Speaker 1 And then like in the 90s, people were just lost for an enemy. You know, like James Bond was fighting drug dealers.

Speaker 1 It just doesn't. Come on.

Speaker 1 We didn't have anybody. James Bond doesn't fight drug dealers.
James Bond isn't a D. Why don't you get him a fucking jacket with the letters on it?

Speaker 1 He fights crime in a tuxedo and fucks three hot chicks every movie. That's who Jay, by the way, in the last one, he dies.

Speaker 1 Right. Talk about a generational change.
James Bond dies.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 1 James Bond wins. Yeah.

Speaker 1 In Back to the Future, we got a lot of pushback when we made the villains, the Libyan terrorists. Oh, right.

Speaker 1 You know, in a van. Be in a van, you know, with a rocket launcher.

Speaker 1 Yes. A grenade launcher yeah a grenade launcher um

Speaker 1 but we you know and and we would get these notes from the studio and say it can't be can it be the mob i said why would the mob want plutonium you know makes it makes

Speaker 1 it makes no sense it's got to be a terrorist organization who wants a wants to wants to build a bomb

Speaker 1 you know so yeah

Speaker 1 there you go and of course that's almost 20 years before 9-11 so terrorist No, it was longer than that.

Speaker 1 It was way longer.

Speaker 1 It was.

Speaker 1 85 to 2001. That's about 20 years.

Speaker 1 That's 16 years. Oh, yeah.
That's 16. It's all 16 years.
You're right.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 but I mean, terrorism certainly was something people were aware of, but it just moved to that completely different level. It was like something you put in a movie.
Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1 We're not really afraid of Libyans with rocket launchers.

Speaker 1 So we could put this in the movie. And

Speaker 1 I mean, at a certain point, they did start to bitch and moan. When I say they, I mean the usual suspects who are looking for something to bitch about whenever the terrorist was

Speaker 1 of any sort of Islam or Arab. And it's like, okay, but like, you know, then who did do 9-11? You know, we're not saying all Arabs or Muslims are terrorists.

Speaker 1 We're saying when that kind of shit happens, it has often been Iranians or Saudi Arabians. There is just a battle going on.
Yep. Yep.
I mean, don't get me started on the kids today and their protests.

Speaker 1 No, no, well, listen, I agree with you. Yeah, I say anyone says, what do you think about any subject, Bob? I say, well, you know, just watch Bill Maher.
No, thank you.

Speaker 1 That is the right thing to say. Yeah, I agree with him about everything I agree with him on all subjects, you know, but you're 100% right about that.
Exactly. What is your ethnicity?

Speaker 1 What is is your background? Okay. I'm not some sort of a person.

Speaker 1 Okay. No, this is I no, no, no.
I'm Lithuanian.

Speaker 1 My name is Lithuanian. Okay, cool.
Okay. Now, my, my father, um, my father is

Speaker 1 first generation Lithuanian. My mother was born in Italy.
Oh, wow. And the only time you're going to get an Italian Lithuanian combo is going to be in Chicago.
Right. And

Speaker 1 I grew up in the far south side of Chicago. Oh, it's great.
You don't know the accent. I don't, yeah, I don't think I have too much of one.
You don't, because I always don't like it.

Speaker 1 I don't like that Chicago accent. You mean I didn't say he's up on the roof? Roof is something.
No. He's up on the roof.
No, it's more in Dubai's.

Speaker 1 I mean, they're just a certain, I'm sorry, Chicago people.

Speaker 1 There's a certain accent that I just find grading. It's, you know,

Speaker 1 but I find the... He's on a motorcycle.
I can't understand a Guy Ritchie movie without subtitles. I'm like, speak English, you fucks.

Speaker 1 Speak American for Christ's sake. I don't know what you're talking about.
Exactly. So, yeah, no.

Speaker 1 So I grew up in, and, and, and, you know, and, you know, had the, that's why I love religion so much because I got to like be, you know, go through the Catholic school thing.

Speaker 1 Oh, you, I was raised Catholic also. Oh, yeah.
And what was your experience? Loved it, I bet. Oh, isn't it a joy?

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 always think about, you know,

Speaker 1 I think that the, when I think about why do I have an image of death in every single movie I make, it's because

Speaker 1 that's what eight years of Catholic school will do to you, you know. Come for the fear.
Come for the fear. Stay for the shitting in your pants.

Speaker 1 Exactly. No, it was,

Speaker 1 it was,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 it was scarring. Scarring is the exact word.
Yeah. Not that I've been scarred for life, but I bet you I've been changed for life.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 How can you not, when we're talking about something at such a formative age, an age where you are defenseless because you don't know anything, so you're just at the mercy of any sort of authority figure who tells you anything.

Speaker 1 So if they are scaring the shit out of you and filling your head with bullshit ideas,

Speaker 1 that can't help but be scarring. I mean, sometimes people have accused me because I made religious and made a career of making fun of religion all the time.
You know, are you bitter? I'm like, yeah,

Speaker 1 very bitter. So what? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Aren't you bitter about certain things? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm if someone raped your mind when you were a child, wouldn't you be bitter about it? I was mind-raped.

Speaker 1 I think it was the, it was the, it was the fear and the shame, the indoctrination of the fear and the shame, which, uh, is, is, which I think is the, uh,

Speaker 1 I don't know, I guess it's the, it's, it's.

Speaker 1 Were you still a Catholic in your mind when you started masturbating?

Speaker 1 Oh, God, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't think I, I'm not sure when I was ever.

Speaker 1 I never would, I don't think I was ever really, no, I didn't have any, I didn't have any hangups like that, thank God, but it was just the, the, you know, that under, that under,

Speaker 1 like low-grade headache thing of

Speaker 1 you're unworthy because you exist.

Speaker 1 You know, the shame, the shame that,

Speaker 1 you know, there's nothing, there's nothing,

Speaker 1 there's nothing worse that you can do to someone than shame them, especially a kid.

Speaker 1 And that's the number one controlling thing of that cult, in my opinion, is

Speaker 1 you're a sinner because you exist.

Speaker 1 And you felt shamed because of specific sins you thought you were committing that you then were announcing in confession, did you? No, it's a feeling of, it's just a feeling of

Speaker 1 not being

Speaker 1 not being,

Speaker 1 just thinking that

Speaker 1 you're not measuring up. You're always falling short.

Speaker 1 You're always not

Speaker 1 pleasing God. Pleasing God or yeah, you're just you're you're you're you're not

Speaker 1 measuring up. You're not getting, you're not getting across the finish line.
It's so psychotic, religion, to like purposely create this being

Speaker 1 who you are always going to disappoint. Aren't you disappointing enough people in your real life? I mean, you've got your wife.
You've got your family.

Speaker 1 You've got your kids. I mean, you're disappointing all of them all the time.
Is there a need to create this one more person who you're constantly, oh, I'm so sorry, God, I fucked up again.

Speaker 1 Please forgive me. You're the greatest.
You're all merciful. Thank God because I'm such a shithead.
It's like, it's all in your head. Absolutely.
These things that go on just in your head.

Speaker 1 And it's just, you know,

Speaker 1 it's just completely, completely diabolical. And all the rituals and the, and I actually liked, I think I really, I, I, I was really,

Speaker 1 I really was, you know, like the drama of the violence and the, you know, the scourging of the pillar and, you know, the, and the,

Speaker 1 you know, nailing on, nailing to the cross and all that stuff. I was kind of digging that.

Speaker 1 But, um you know it's just really endless endless endless you know blood and death blood and death you know that's why to team up with mel gibson and make make a christy movie i mean you know uh yeah i mean there you go i mean that's that i mean that was that you know can't deny him as a filmmaker no he's great i gave him i presented him his academy award good for you for no i was there at the on the day when he won this after he no no this was for uh this was after i won back in those days oh braveheart braveheart yeah back he wasn't controversial no that and you know um

Speaker 1 but no so yeah i think he's awesome i mean

Speaker 1 braveheart has got stuff in it well you know like i just have little patience with the perfect people in the world who like has he said some really

Speaker 1 up things he has but you know and is is drinking an excuse no because drinking actually makes you more honest so you can't use that as an excuse like oh i was was drunk.

Speaker 1 I didn't know what I was saying. Yeah, exactly.
You said what you, but, you know,

Speaker 1 I would love to just talk to him because I just don't think he's a bad guy.

Speaker 1 I don't know him personally, but yeah. Yeah.
And I think he could be, I think he understands where he went off. And also he's got that

Speaker 1 super duper, literally more Catholic than the Pope Father. And we are all sort of like at the mercy of who brung us into the world.
That's the theme of the Godfather. Right.
Right. I think I was.

Speaker 1 I really didn't want to be in the mafia, but when my father needed me,

Speaker 1 I had to,

Speaker 1 yeah, I had to. I had to.
I think I was lucky in that my parents weren't really like fanatical. You know, they weren't.

Speaker 1 But, but that thing about, you know, if the nuns, if the nuns were saying you did something and you didn't do it, the nun was right. You know, it was that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 They held that power over, you know, the parents couldn't believe that the nuns would say something that wasn't, you know, something that obviously must be, they must be telling the truth.

Speaker 1 I remember going to confession. They started us going to confession.
I remember making my first communion. That's the one you do at seven.
Right. And there's another one you do at 13.

Speaker 1 That's confirmation. I never quite got to that one.

Speaker 1 But at the first communion, which was a lot of days after school practicing for whatever practicing, you stood there for a minute while the priest like gave you, I don't know, confession.

Speaker 1 But that's when you started confession. And I had such anxiety because I was like, I'm seven.
What fucking sin could I have committed? Yeah, I killed a hooker in Vegas.

Speaker 1 Your holiness. Well, I would say that forgive me.
So I would like, you know, to make it up. I remember, I remember, you know, you know, the difference between the mortal sin and the venial sin.

Speaker 1 Yes, of course. Okay, the mortal sin and the venial sin.
And of course, the venial sin,

Speaker 1 if you died with a venial sin on your soul, you would go to purgatory. You have to work it off.

Speaker 1 Mortal sin, straight to hell. Straight to hell.
Straight to hell. No, no, no get out of jail, nothing.
You go straight to hell. And

Speaker 1 I remember this and being in this, must have been the first grade, second grade, talking about

Speaker 1 stealing, stealing money.

Speaker 1 And how much, you know, hey, sister, how much money is what's a venial sin and what's a mortal sin? And she broke it down.

Speaker 1 Anything under a dollar is a venial sin.

Speaker 1 And anything over is a mortal sin. Adjusted for inflation.

Speaker 1 Of course. Well, it was like folding money straight to hell, loose change.
You only went to purgatory.

Speaker 1 Did you used to put money in the basket when they came around?

Speaker 1 We had a thing.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Well, you did

Speaker 1 on Sunday.

Speaker 1 I'd go to Mass every single morning in the crazy. Every morning? Every morning.
Oh, you had a worse than that.

Speaker 1 For some reason, in my Irish,

Speaker 1 Catholic.

Speaker 1 But we used to do a thing where you had to buy pagan babies. What?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you, yeah. So, in other words, you would buy a pagan baby.
Buy. Yeah.
Yes.

Speaker 1 The money was used to

Speaker 1 save them.

Speaker 1 And the missionaries would use the money to go, and you would go buy a pagan baby like in Africa or something and they would and and and and the point was instead of buying your candy bar after lunch you're supposed to like put the money in this thing to to uh talk about colonizers huh

Speaker 1 man oh man and i like i'll never forget that buying you know paying to buy some pagan babies so you could we could convert them you know i uh i don't know what the but you know what It wasn't that long ago.

Speaker 1 That's what I keep thinking. I keep saying that.
What I keep saying is what's so amazing is like,

Speaker 1 I think it was Bill Gates who once said, like, if you look back over two years in your life, it's like, Jesus, nothing ever changes.

Speaker 1 But when you look back over 10, it's like it's a whole different world. And it's like in the country, too.
It's like, you know, how did we get so different from 1985?

Speaker 1 You know, he's got that vest on in the beginning, right? The funny running gag.

Speaker 1 In 1955, they think he's a, you know, some sort of sailor because that's who else will also wear that vest that we call it. Well, in the script, it says he's wearing a light preserver.

Speaker 1 Right, life preserver. That's what it looked like to them.
Right.

Speaker 1 But here now in 2024, it also looks weird. But here's what we're so funny because in that space of time in 1985, it was what people wore.
It was not what they wear now or then.

Speaker 1 But here's a question I have for you, because I think about this a lot. I'm thinking that there's been a, there's, I think one of the things that is stagnated is

Speaker 1 the culture.

Speaker 1 Something, I don't know if it's because of the internet or social media or the, you know, technology just being the most dominant thing,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 cars look the same.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, I mean, pretty much music is the same.

Speaker 1 If, if somebody

Speaker 1 went, came back, if somebody walked in here, if a kid walked in here from 1994,

Speaker 1 which is

Speaker 1 20 years ago, we wouldn't look twice at him. If he came through a time warp.
Yeah, it's 30 years.

Speaker 1 30 years. 30 years.
Excuse my math. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 we wouldn't look twice at him. And why is that, I wonder? I don't know.
It's like because... Well, I mean, I mean, there were things they were doing in 1994.

Speaker 1 Something they brought back, like those really ugly mom jeans.

Speaker 1 right everything bad comes back yeah maybe um there's only so many things there weren't so many ways you can wear clothes right um but you know i mean in 1994 yeah there was a grunge look

Speaker 1 that i don't think we're doing massively now if you were yes if serious you know right

Speaker 1 but if you walk but if but if somebody walked in you know in this in here from uh well you're you're definitely right that blackmore jungle if somebody walked in from the blackmore you know, you'd go,

Speaker 1 I know where you're from. Right, very different.
You are from the past. Right.
No, it's true. And music, I mean, rap certainly was a completely different music form that is obviously preeminent now.

Speaker 1 But like. But that was 25, 30 years ago.
That was 50 years ago. Rap.
50. 50.
Yeah. Rap celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. 1979.
I like was the first rap hit.

Speaker 1 Cypress Hill, I think, or maybe Sugar Hill Gang, I think.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, yeah, it's better. It definitely was around in the 80s.
It was, it grew and got better. Just like, I always say 80s rap is very much like 50s rock and roll.
I don't like either.

Speaker 1 Like, it needed a decade to grow up. Right.

Speaker 1 But the music I listened to as a kid in the late 60s, if you go back 25 years, was so different from what my father was listening to in the 40s, which is not the case with 1969 plus 25 years or 50 years, except for rap, which is big.

Speaker 1 But like

Speaker 1 all other kinds of pop music and

Speaker 1 there are songs that are put out now that could have been hits in 1969 or 79 or 89.

Speaker 1 Whereas the sound my father listened to, the big band sound, that was completely different. Completely different.

Speaker 1 And I didn't have anything to do with that. You know, when I was a kid, I didn't listen to that.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 I learned to appreciate that when I got older.

Speaker 1 And my father, you know, and my

Speaker 1 uncle, David, they hated it. Oh, I still don't appreciate it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's just not my kind of, I mean, Benny Goodman, I'm sure, was great, and Lindbella was some good. But I would never listen to it.
I know what it sounds like. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Maybe,

Speaker 1 I mean, Bette Midler did Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company Day, which was a World War II song, and she updated it great, and it made it like made like a pop rock sound.

Speaker 1 But basically, it's just a first of all, it's very clarinet-driven.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, that's not, to me, as good as electric guitars. That's just me.

Speaker 1 But, you know, that's what I grew up with. I mean,

Speaker 1 we're all products of what they put in our heads when we're helpless. But my religion.
My kids, my younger kids, who are in their

Speaker 1 early 20s now, they listen to my stuff.

Speaker 1 Being, what's your stuff? Well,

Speaker 1 they love the rock. And I don't, it's not because of anything with me.

Speaker 1 I'll be in the car with them. That's because it's good.
Exactly. And I'll say, why are you listening to that? Why are you listening to that Led Zeppelin?

Speaker 1 Like, where did that, how did, how did you find that? And they go, well, why aren't you seeing that? Yeah, because they have not improved upon it. Exactly.
I mean, they've done other great stuff.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's great artists now, but.

Speaker 1 But they haven't quite improved on that and that particular sound. And yeah.
But I mean, there are songs that come out now that I think, oh, that could be a hit in any decade.

Speaker 1 Those are my kind of songs. And I'm certainly not a music snob.

Speaker 1 I'm the opposite. Like, I just want to be entertained.
I have no music ability, so I have no dog in this fight, except entertain me. I don't care about important music.

Speaker 1 Yep. What a great way to have a shitty record collection.
Let me get the most important songs. Right.
No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Yep. I'm just.

Speaker 1 And when those, and, you know, and then when the, and then, you know, when the Beatles arrived, it was like.

Speaker 1 How old were you in 64? Well, it's like, I have to, yeah, I was

Speaker 1 64. I was

Speaker 1 12, 13, something like that. I think.
Yeah, five. Year were you born? Wait, 51.
So what was I? So you were 13. 13.
Yeah. And it was like life-changing.
Life-changing.

Speaker 1 13 is like the exact age you'd want to be when the Beatles arrived. I mean, I was eight, so I was not really into music yet.
And I just knew there was a hubbup going on. No,

Speaker 1 when the Beatles showed up, it was like, you know, and then, you know, when the Beatles showed up, it was like, you know, okay, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 You know, it kind of like, you know, you know, gave you that feeling that.

Speaker 1 did for me anyway that you know maybe i could do something no and i'm sure the kids if anyone listening to this, are like, okay, Boomer, the Beatles.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like what we said about some shit our parents were talking about.
Like certain things, you had to be there.

Speaker 1 And if you weren't, it just sounds like two old farts who were like

Speaker 1 getting all gaga about something that probably wasn't that great.

Speaker 1 But it was, but it wasn't, you know, completely unique in history either. Right.
I mean, there have been other pop phenomenons.

Speaker 1 I mean, Taylor Swift, obviously now is on a level that we rarely see in show business.

Speaker 1 I had Nikki Glazer here. I listened to that.
Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 And I'll listen to it. And then I'm going to take her advice and listen to the Taylor Swift album that she recommends.
Well, she recommended the movie.

Speaker 1 I'm going to see that, the one on Disney Plus. Okay,

Speaker 1 I'm halfway through it.

Speaker 1 And I must report. Yes.
My opinion has not changed. Okay, well.
I gave it a shot, though.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't, and I, as I always say, when Taylor Swift comes up, I have the greatest admiration simply for success. I also have great admiration for the way she conducts herself.

Speaker 1 You know, she does, she never misses a show. She's not late.
She, you know, she's a class act.

Speaker 1 But I don't get the music. I really don't.
I mean, Nikki was here and saying that. I said, I said, what is the key? And she's like, well, the music is just amazing musicianship and lyrics.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, okay, great.

Speaker 1 I'm going to give this a shot. Now, maybe the second half of the show will blow me away.
I mean, it's three hours long. I don't watch anything, hardly anything in full increments.

Speaker 1 I watch things like I read a book. I don't read the whole book at once.
And especially something like this. But halfway through,

Speaker 1 you know, but again, I mean, I'm looking at the audience and it's, you know, 20-year-old women.

Speaker 1 I'm almost a 70-year-old man. I mean, that is just apparently a bridge too far for this particular phenomenon.
Other things we do share. But yeah, I just, you know, and they are certainly into it.

Speaker 1 And it also says, maybe this is a great indication of the span of time and how much things change. I mean, Ray Kurzweil talks about the singularity.

Speaker 1 That's his great book about when we will meld almost fully with machines. We're certainly halfway there.

Speaker 1 I mean, there are people who have artificial lots of stuff. And,

Speaker 1 you know, Elon Musk is working on people who can move things with their mind when they don't have the use of their arms and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 But to see everyone in the audience not watching the concert, but watching through the phone.

Speaker 1 They're watching their phone, not the thing that they are purposely putting a filter

Speaker 1 between

Speaker 1 something that they know must be filmed and they could see somewhere other than their own phone.

Speaker 1 That to me is a difference of kind, not just a difference of degree, a difference of kind that my generation would would never want to do, to purposely put this filter.

Speaker 1 And they're all doing it throughout the show. You see,

Speaker 1 whenever they cut to the audience, it's all fun. But

Speaker 1 are they doing that so they can like zoom in or are they recording it so they can keep it? I think both, but I think a lot of it is recording it,

Speaker 1 which makes no sense. First of all, you have a mind.
You can remember it, and sometimes that's better. And she's recording it.
You can always see it.

Speaker 1 It's like you ever see people at the, where the Mona Lisa is? I mean, they're all taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. It's in the gift shop.
You could get a beautiful 8x10.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Could hang it on your wall.
Exactly. No, I know.
No, it's, but it's odd.

Speaker 1 But it's about, but isn't it about that thing that everyone just has in their hand now that they can just, isn't that just like this thing where everything, we have to, we have to take pictures of everything I eat?

Speaker 1 I mean, people taking, you know,

Speaker 1 pictures of their food. I mean, oh, look at this presentation.
I got to

Speaker 1 actually stop doing that more than they used to. But the point of, like, Nikki was saying it when she was here, like,

Speaker 1 she sometimes feels if some event in her life has passed without her recording it, that she missed an opportunity, which is a mindset I can't even get into. I mean, I understand it.

Speaker 1 And I think the people who are even younger than her, because she's, you know, late 30s,

Speaker 1 the kids who are like, you know, 18 or 15,

Speaker 1 they don't even have this quandary. They know you always record it.

Speaker 1 I remember, I think Bill Gates did an experiment once where he had somebody walk around with a, it wasn't an I'll use iPhone because but it wasn't invented yet, but like a device that every

Speaker 1 minute took a picture.

Speaker 1 So where this it was so wherever wherever this guy went his whole life,

Speaker 1 so his whole memory was put in a,

Speaker 1 was, was kept.

Speaker 1 And the reason, the theory behind that is so

Speaker 1 we can use our brain for other things.

Speaker 1 So, we don't have to, we don't have to have wasted mental space for our memories because we can always go back into this database and see, where was I on this day? Let me just scroll over here.

Speaker 1 And that is what we're moving toward. It is, isn't it? Kind Kind of.
Well, the cloud is kind of that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't want to be divorced from my brain. No.
But I mean, but it is interesting when I've got one of those, I've got one of those

Speaker 1 digital photo things on my desk loaded with all the digital pictures from

Speaker 1 all my kids and everything.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it'll think something will pop up and you'll go, oh, I remember that. I don't know.
It's kind of like a thing scrolling by, you know, but I wouldn't have just remembered it.

Speaker 1 But I mean, I assume as AI becomes more prevalent and everyone has it on their phone and everyone uses it more for more things,

Speaker 1 I assume it will slowly be doing this, just taking over different parts of our brain. I mean, isn't that what AI is ultimately is a colonizer of our brain?

Speaker 1 Probably.

Speaker 1 I think it is. And we're inviting it in.
And we're not

Speaker 1 really interested in putting the brakes on because now it's a race not only between different countries like us and China to have the upper hand, but also between companies to make the most money.

Speaker 1 Of course. I mean, you see even the people who started out as, we don't want to be in the profit business with this.

Speaker 1 Wait, what did I say?

Speaker 1 What I meant was we want to be in the profit business. I mean, come on, this is America.
We make profits. So, yeah.
I kind of agree with you,

Speaker 1 but isn't all technology a trade-off all technology? Totally, absolutely. And isn't it always feared when it first shows up? Yes.
Always. That it is feared.

Speaker 1 That doesn't mean this time couldn't be the one. It could be the one, but this is the thing that could cure cancer.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 I don't even give a shit if they become our robot overlords because, I mean, the odds are I will certainly be dead within 30 years. That's true.
We got to think about that. Unless AI

Speaker 1 stops that. Comes in and

Speaker 1 Rudolph the Red Nose reindeers his way

Speaker 1 into my heart by saving us at the last minute with his glowy nose. Because that is definitely possible.
I mean, AI in 30 years could keep people alive forever.

Speaker 1 Now, the next question is, do we want to be alive forever? Well, there you go. That's the big, that is.
I mean, if I can be alive like I am now, yes.

Speaker 1 yeah but then you know the thing i of course because i did i made a movie about that which was you know death becomes her which is which is yeah yeah well you want to sit around and watch everybody you know die right i mean or maybe well but then if nobody dies then what

Speaker 1 that's a whole that's you know that could be a really interesting movie

Speaker 1 you know

Speaker 1 I mean, do we want to sit around and have conversations like this for like the next 100 years and never and never stop i could sit around and do this which is i mean it's one reason why i love starting this podcast this is what i would be doing anyway probably on a wednesday night taking a little break from my work week my real job but now i get to do it with you

Speaker 1 Or, you know, Cheech and Chang were here last week.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Yeah, that's correct. I mean, every people kind of squeeze me like this.
It's just, it's, how could I ask for anything more in life?

Speaker 1 I mean, to sit here and just be able to, and you haven't had even a drink. I have some water.

Speaker 1 You don't drink? No, I did back in the day, but I don't drink anymore. A lot

Speaker 1 enough that it got to the point where I needed to stop.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like flight.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
No, that I

Speaker 1 that's an awesome one. Yeah, that's really.
Well, that was that's a great one. That was a great one.
That was so great. That was a great performance.

Speaker 1 Yes, again, John Houston.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, come on. Exactly.
But it's also like,

Speaker 1 is he the best one to do that? Probably. But, you know, it's not like no one else could have done that part.
It's a great idea. No, it's a great idea.
You know, beautiful screenplay. Yes.
So good.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Who wrote that? You? No, John Gatins wrote that.
Oh,

Speaker 1 so good.

Speaker 1 I mean, again, totally stuck the landing. You know, the great end.
I mean, again, you got to have a good ending.

Speaker 1 And him at the, first of all, all, with

Speaker 1 the hotel room door and the fucking mini bar. Do you know how many mini bars I've been in? I mean, I've been on the road my whole life.
Mini bar, that rang true to me.

Speaker 1 Not that I've ever fished through the whole bar and gotten shit face drunk in a hotel room, but I get it. And then, you know, the switch at the end and flying the plane upside down.

Speaker 1 He's just a bad. I mean, I said this to somebody who was here recently.
He is my all-time favorite, like Denzel, as far as I think.

Speaker 1 I mean, I like a lot of people, but he just knocks it out of the park every time. Oh, he shows up with the goods.

Speaker 1 He really does. He really does.
I mean, I, I mean, I mean,

Speaker 1 he shows up and he's, and he's ready to, he's ready to. Oh, you can tell.
Oh, yeah. I mean, just absolute joy to work with.
Yeah. He looks like no nonsense, but still.
He's not warm and fuzzy.

Speaker 1 He's not warm and fuzzy. No, no, no.
And he explains it to the crew. Yeah.
And he'll sit there and say, look, you guys have to understand something. Neither am I.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah. He says,

Speaker 1 you don't have to be. He says, you guys set up the shot.
Right. And now you want to let your hair down and relax.

Speaker 1 Now I got to come on and I got to like do it. Yes.
So I don't have time to make small talk with you. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 1 that's not what makes a good boss. I think I've always been a pretty good boss at my shop.
And I'm not the pat everybody on the back and

Speaker 1 learn everyone's name and all the things

Speaker 1 people do.

Speaker 1 Ask about your wife.

Speaker 1 But I'm also not mean and I don't yell. And I don't, you know, I think people appreciate it when the boss just isn't in your life at all.
I think you're right about that.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's not like you have to like know what

Speaker 1 the personal life is. You need your little kitchen cabinet.
Yep.

Speaker 1 And then everybody else just do their job. And I'm respectful.
But, you know, yeah,

Speaker 1 I can't be fucking with you. But I don't have a problem coming in and saying good morning to everybody.

Speaker 1 I do that. Of course not.
It's like, I don't want to, you know, come in and say, why is that cap, why is that cable over there? Right. You know, I don't, you know, try not to do that.
Right.

Speaker 1 But I mean, you hear lots of horror stories about sets. And I mean, there's hardly ever a movie set you hear about where there wasn't some, and I've been on some back in the 80s when I did acting.

Speaker 1 It wasn't uncommon that there is some blow up. I mean, there's just a lot of tension.
You're mixing dangerous chemicals. People are just fucking tense.
And

Speaker 1 it's a lot of money and you're always under the clock.

Speaker 1 And you're actually doing

Speaker 1 pretty insane things. I mean, you're always making it rain when it's sunny.
You're making it night when it's day. And it's like, it's just.

Speaker 1 And the actors are on this, you know, hairpin because

Speaker 1 their instrument. is having, you know, spilkis going around in their gut.
That's what their fuel is. Right.
So they're on this kind of like edge anyway. So like one

Speaker 1 guy who crosses and gets in your eye line when you're trying to concentrate and it's like, can everybody fucking, you know, that is not uncommon.

Speaker 1 If people want to be in show business, no, that's going to happen a lot. Yeah.
And it does happen. And you got to be respectful, you know, because they're under a lot of stress and they have to do it.

Speaker 1 And then by the way, it's like

Speaker 1 now, you know, when you walk into a set set situation like that and you know because you know even though no one says it and you're going i know that they got to get out of here in 30 minutes you know and and and and

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 you can just see it in the director's face that you know he's gonna like i can't go over i can't come back here another day they're gonna fire me all that stuff that goes on in your brain and the and the and the poor actor's got to step on its mark on his mark and and just do a great performance and i got i got i got no time you know it's just it's a horrible situation to be in but we do it for whatever reason no i mean um movies i have always said it movie stars people who make movies directors all you guys are i mean they're paid a lot and they deserve a lot yes it's really grueling the hardest time for me is

Speaker 1 when you're doing a movie And

Speaker 1 well, this is why I say, this is why they pay me the big bucks, is when you're doing a a movie and you hire a really solid actor who's a day player, and he's one of the first people you cast.

Speaker 1 And then you go off for six weeks and you're in with the key cast and you're in a groove and everybody's in a rhythm and everything. And

Speaker 1 this guy's been working on his scene

Speaker 1 for six weeks all by himself. And it's kind of, okay, come on, come on in and action.
And

Speaker 1 he's in a different movie. He's in a completely different movie.
Right.

Speaker 1 And then, and then a hundred people turn and look at me, right? They all got the whole crew because say the crew and everybody goes, this isn't the movie we're making. It's so interesting.

Speaker 1 This isn't the movie we're making. And the guy just was doing his best.
He was doing his best, but he wasn't in with the, isn't, wasn't with.

Speaker 1 And then I've got to go and I've got to then fix it. Right.
And then you got to like, okay, and that's where that's the toughest part.

Speaker 1 Is there an an example of that?

Speaker 1 I can't give, I can't give it. There's a few, but I can't, I can't, but there's a few, but there's, but sometimes there are actors in movies who are at such different levels

Speaker 1 that they're almost in two different movies. Sometimes, yeah.
They're just,

Speaker 1 you know, and it's obvious.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's just like two people in a band playing.

Speaker 1 different

Speaker 1 yeah and that's really rough when i i i don't think i've had that doesn't happen and no i don't think i've had that but I've been, you can see it in movies.

Speaker 1 I can see it in movies and really good movies. And

Speaker 1 you sit there and you say, I think

Speaker 1 those are really interesting choices that actresses make. It's an age thing.
Think so? I know so. Like actors, just like people, generally get better, smarter, wiser.

Speaker 1 They've seen the pattern go around before. So actors who are like in their 50s, 60s, they're great.
Like they just, they just, it just,

Speaker 1 and when you're in your 20s, they're doing the best they can, but they're just not on that level. Just like you're not in life.
I wasn't, you know,

Speaker 1 I was an idiot in my 20s. I mean, you know, just as far as maturity level, and it shows.
So if there's a guy who's 25 and he's in a scene with a guy who's 60, they're kind of in a different movie.

Speaker 1 I would say that's the toughest, the toughest to work with is

Speaker 1 the 20-year-old actor. Of course.
that's the toughest because

Speaker 1 you know, they're they're just, yeah, they're just 20 years old, you know, and they're and there's a lot of pressure on them.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of, and even when they're, and but then again, then there was somebody I was working with, Michael, Michael J, and he was only 20, and he was just great.

Speaker 1 And that whole cast I had in that movie, they were all great, but they're the ones that are, they're the ones that are tough. I have a funny story you could tell you.

Speaker 1 Like, when I was, I just remember I was listening to a Jack Warden on, I was

Speaker 1 fortunate enough to work with him on my second movie, Use Cars. And he gathered all the young actors and he was telling them, he said, you know, I was listening to this eavesdropping on this story.

Speaker 1 He said, you know, when I was, I always thought when I was starting out that the best way to get more screen time

Speaker 1 is to slow my performance down. Right? Who said this?

Speaker 1 Jack Warden. He said, I said,

Speaker 1 and I, so I was doing it. And then I went to the movie that I was in and I was cut out.

Speaker 1 I wasn't in it. Yeah, I guess you'd have to do it.
So now I just say everything so fast that they can't get the scissors in there.

Speaker 1 Isn't that funny? Because that's what you're always saying to

Speaker 1 the novice actor, pick it up, pick it up, take the air out, take the air out. You know,

Speaker 1 right. Just get on with it.
Just entertain us. Exactly.
Well, you have entertained me so many times. And I am a giant fan.

Speaker 1 I know, I appreciate that. But, you know, you are Hollywood royalty for a reason.
and it meant a lot to me that you would come buy my crazy little rat skills.

Speaker 1 This has been an absolute joy. It's been great.

Speaker 1 Don't be a stranger. I keep making movies.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you. It's really appreciated.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 It's fun. It's really fun.
Like I said, I had never done one of these before. So

Speaker 1 I've done the bullshit junket. We just keep getting the same question asked over and over and over again.