"Sam Rockwell"

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Hey, good morning. I was talking to my friend.
Did you just restart yourself? Still rolling.

We get a clean, just a clean start there.

Wait, just do Sean.

Hey, hey, hey.

Hey.

Hey. Hey.

Welcome.

It's an all new Smartless. smart now Sean says that he got up at four this morning went back to bed and that that's his standard routine i guess i remember you telling us about that but what what is what do you do when you get up at four that gets you back down i read i play games on my computer and anything to kind of get my brain back so that's something you haven't been able to stop doing no for years you don't sleep through the night i mean if i take something i do well what's wrong with that i just don't want to it all the time.
Oh, you're so worried about the temple that is your body, right? You don't want to put anything nasty inside there. Yeah, nothing to mix with the other crap that's already in my belly.
You don't want to screw up the mac and cheese gut by now. Your bamboo shoot healthy body.
Sean, how would you describe your body? Because I'll go first, because somebody asked me to describe Sean's body. And right off the top, I said, pigs in a blanket.
How would you? You know what's so funny? That's what came to. I was watching the Bill Maher show the other night.
And some of the guests got on. And Bill said, gosh, you've lost so much weight.
And he goes, yeah, there's nothing worse than a skinny guy with a pot belly. And I raised my hand, and Scotty was like, yep.
No, I don't see you as that. No, me neither.
You guys have both have very nice frames. I could get there.
You have a very nice proportional frame, isn't it? Sure. How big do you think you could get, Sean? I wanted to get so big when I was younger.
I wanted to get like, I would go to the gym all the time. I'd drink milkshakes.
My oldest brother would take me out for burgers. And I would constantly, constantly eat.
I just couldn't gain a pound. Well, it was like what, like.
How'd that pan out? Did it give you, did you get the look you were looking for? Well, well hundreds and hundreds of years ago that was a sign of power right exactly big and huge and sort of a glutton right yeah yeah so if you were thin what you had no power yeah you were you were uh it was a sign of yeah it was if you were kind of bigger it was a sign of prosperity well right yeah right i would well here Well, here's something that happened to me yesterday. I was at the car wash.
There you are. Okay.
I threw my stuff. You like to ride through? You like one of those? No, no.
I do that with the kids every once in a while. Oh, you do for real? Well, it's fun.
Yeah. It's fun.
No, this, I, Scottie's like, you got to get a car wash. That's what I call, by the way, good, clean, fun.
Good, clean, weekend, fun. No.
When the car wash is good is good clean fun. No, we get the quotes.
No, you didn't. Thank you.
Go ahead, Sean. Back to Sean.
So I get it hand washed, right? So I'm sitting there. Oh, look at this.
Hold your jokes. Hold your jokes, Will.
God, look. He's just.
Oh, we heard hand. Time for a H.J.
joke. Fucking clown.
H.J. Go ahead, Sean.
Fuck. So I gave my car away for a hand wash.
I come sit down. I'm waiting.
Yep. And I threw my stuff in the trash, right, when you clean your car up before they wash it.
And all of them consist, you know, there's a lot of near full bottles of water. And so I was sitting there because I didn't think I was going to be thirsty.

20 minutes later, I'm like, God, I'm kind of thirsty.

So I go back to the trash

and pulled out one of the bottled water.

God, I hope someone took a picture of that.

And a woman just stared at me like I was,

there's something wrong with me.

And I was conflicted.

I was like, do I care what she thinks?

Do I not care what she thinks?

And I cared what she thought.

So I looked at her.

I said, I threw my bottle out prematurely. And god she goes she just got crazier in her eyes she goes aren't you afraid it's dirty i said no it wasn't touching anything bad and um so she just glared her in a conversation yeah oh wait that was the end of it that was the whole thing that she just ended up staring at me and i drank it would you ever would you ever do that yeah Fuck, man, I don't even know where to attack that story.
It's just every part of it is just open for assassination. Wait, so was your water bottle slang already filled with a bottle? Why didn't you just put that thing right in your little water bottle purse and just go sit down and wait for your car to be done? You've got one of those, right? No, because I threw them out thinking, well, I don't need them.
And there was a little water left in them. Then sitting there, I was like, oh, I'm kind of thirsty, actually.
So I went back into the trash. I love that.
You don't want to use a glass bottle that's reusable? How fucking dare you? Or a metal one? Oh, sure. I know.
I need to get like a water bottle. That is, to me, the height of privilege.
Will is opening up a plastic water bottle right on. Okay.
The height of... A visual joke for our radio audience.
It's not fair. Well, anyway, enough about that.
Are we getting to the guest? Oh, no, no. You don't want to do another hour on that? Will, what'd you get into last night? Last night I got into nothing much.
It was pretty chill. It was kids.
It was movie night for the little guys. Every night is movie night.
Did you watch the movie with them? Yeah. What movie? Last night we ended up watching the classic Peter Pan.
And so what they'll do is they'll go. Awesome.
So we're talking about the little boys, not the big boys. The little boys.
So they'll go, we want to watch Pinocchio. And I'm like, okay, so you put it on, right? We put it on in our room.
They come in, they call it movie night, sort of 20 minutes before their bedtime. And then they don't really watch.
What they really want to do is they want to be flipped on the bed and thrown into the pillows. Yeah, I get it.
Like, Denny will actually go, he'll just look at you and go, can you throw me, please? And you go, oh, yeah, okay. But doesn't get them all fired up and then they can't go to bed? No, as it turns out, and you can look it up, as it turns out, that kind of activity, getting thrown around and getting sort of squeezed and stuff, it gets a lot of, like, nervous energy out, and they end up falling asleep.
And it's been... Oh, really? Yeah, it's been about...
Maybe I need to try that so I can sleep. Yeah, have Scotty throw you around a little.
Maybe choke down. No, hey, will you throw me? I'll throw you for sure.
Hey, what about... Have you ever gotten real close to accidentally really hurting one of your kids doing that? I mean, it's like...
And trampolines, by the way. Forget it.
Yeah, Maple wants one. I'm like, honey, no, you're just going to get better and better and better at it, meaning you're going to be flipping yourself higher and higher and doing more revolutions, and then it doesn't end well.
Yeah. It's the trampoline.
We have one. We have one.
We have a little house out on Long Island in New York State. Next to the bowling alley.
And we have a trampoline. And now, of course, it's endured, I'm going to say, six winters, it's real it's real rusty you've seen it it's always covered in debris uh huh and I'm so stupid I let the kids are like we're going out I'm like okay and I'm just wait it's just it's gonna be a moment there's gonna be somebody come back and go my arms backwards yeah yeah I can't I know it's just go in the pool kids I know how fun, ready? Sunday was super fun.
Guys, you may be noticing a pattern with our guests lately. They're a lot cooler than we are.
And my guest today is no exception. We're getting right into the intro.
Before becoming an Academy Award-winning actor, he made his acting debut alongside his mother in an East Village improv show at age 10. What? As a teen, he dabbled in breakdancing to impress the girls.
Ditto, the breakdancing part. And then he played Head Thug in the 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.
But I think he's done just a few things since then. We'll have to ask him.
It's one of my favorite actors of all time, Sam Rockwell. Oh, Sam, he's all healed up.
What's up, guys? It's all better. I'm so sorry you had to wait a really long time for that.
No, that was amazing. That was fantastic.
Listener, our guest today had an illness, what, a few weeks ago? Yes. I did.
I had some sort of neurovirus or something, whatever makes lots of poop come out of you. Right.
And you pulled, you had to pull the handbrake day of. Yeah.
I did. So what he did was.
I had a temperature. And he doesn't know that it's a surprise guest situation.
So he texted each one of us individually, or at least me, and said, Hey man. I texted Jason, yeah.
No, I think it started with just a picture of a thermometer. And, you know, Sam, and Sam, we're going to let you talk in a second.
But, listener, you need to know that Sam, one of the things that he's very famous for is sending pictures of really life-scarring images. And I thought, what could this, okay, so what could this thermometer be? It must be a rectal thermometer coming from Sam.
So I didn't really respond. And then a couple days later, he said something like, yeah, listen, man, I'm still sick.
I'm not going to be able to make it. I'm like, hey, Sam, I think you meant to send this to somebody else who might be waiting for you to show up somewhere.
And he should just know you sent it to the wrong person. He's like, was I not supposed to be on your podcast today? I'm like, oh.
So you were a surprise guest. But that didn't matter.
Will didn't know, and Jason didn't know when you were going to come on, so it's fine. That's right.
Still a surprise to all of us. Hey, guys.
It's so good to see you, Sam. Thank you for being here today.
This is so cool. Good to see you, man.
And are you doing the same Jason Bateman thing because of a part? Were you growing all this facial hair? Yeah. I am.
I'm doing something in April where I sort of look like. Yeah, me too.
April 15th. I got it.
Oh, yeah? What if it was the same part? You grow a man's beard. Yeah, what if it was the same part? You grow a man's beard.
Mine's... Well, how long has that been? How long you gone on that? About six years.
No. This is about...
You might need some hair and makeup. You might need to go into the trailer.
But my guy's supposed to kind of be a real loser and is incapable of... Well, you got that part, but get to the beard.
Yeah, I got another month left. Sammy, thanks for being here.
Tell me, I want to get into all of it, but I want to know about the breakdancing thing. Yeah.
That was bad breakdancing.

But I remember years ago,

I saw you do the splits on Saturday Night Live.

I was like, is that really him?

Was that really you?

Yeah, I did.

I did.

I tore my hamstring doing it during Fool for Love,

actually, eight times a week.

Wow.

Wow.

And we did it.

It was a bit in the play.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not...

You got to be warmed up.

You did the full-on splits? You know, it's a cheat. It's a cheat.
I don't know if it's the risky business or the James Brown, but you're kind of like... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Careful. You know, it's not quite...
Yeah. Yeah, careful.
It's not quite the split splits. Well, have you always been able to kind of do that? You've always been a bit of a dancer? I kind of messed around.
I remember watching James Brown and watching Michael Jackson. It was a way to meet girls when I was 12.
And I guess I watched Risky Business and tried to imitate that. Now, but then the great limited series that you did with all the Fosse.
Fosse Burden. Yeah.
You don't just sort of train for that. You need to be somewhat gifted before you even consider taking that part on.
So you know what you're doing on the dance floor. Yeah? Well, thanks.
Thanks. But that was the first formal training I did, I think, on that thing.
How much dancing you doing these days, man? Hey, cool it, bro. I just want to know.
Hey, man, we did G-Force, man. Cool it.
I know. It's true.
Wait, you guys were in G-Force together? Yeah. Yeah.
What a cast, by the way. What a cast, Zach.
Galifianakis, Bill Nighy. Yeah, Bill Nighy.
That's right. That's right.
Heck of a cast. So, Sam, when you were a kid, San Francisco, right? I love San Francisco.
Yeah, yeah. In the city or just like in the Bay Area? In the city proper, yeah.
Wow, and your parents were both actors too. Yeah, and my father was a union rep for the supermarket clerks and the printers.
And we lived everywhere. Fillmore, Tenderloin, Castro.
I met Harvey Milk when I was eight years old. No way, He was getting into unions and stuff.
Yeah. That's wild.
Yeah. My dad was a big union guy.
Couldn't cross a picket line. And do you think that San Francisco had more of an artistic community or as much of an artistic community as New York? Or was it different? Or what's the It wasn't as cool cool.
I wanted to go to the famed school. I went to sort of a small school of the arts in San Francisco.
I went to high school with Margaret Cho, Aisha Tyler. Me and Aisha dated for a while.
And we were in a very terrible improvisational troupe called Batwing Lubricant. And it was bad.
We did bad improv. We performed at the other cafe, which is a famous place.
Wow. So what age are we at now when the acting bug starts to take hold? Well, I was 10.
I dabbled with it, and then I was sort of busy getting stoned and trying to meet girls. And then I didn't take acting very seriously.
And it was kind of a rough school, McAteer, but we had the soda kids within that, like 500 of them within the 2000. And Juvenile Hall was across the street.
So it was like a mixture of kids from the mission. There were rich kids coming in for the school of the arts and uh i was dating a dancer and it was it was around you know 16 i was kind of dabbling in it but i didn't take it seriously well and then when did it get serious did you did you move out of there did you go to new york i got a movie when i was 18 and then i moved to new york I didn't really get I do like you know toothpaste commercials and shit like that and then I I studied with William Esper when I was 23.
Sure. I did two years with him and then I met my acting coach there Terry Knickerbocker and studied Meisner yeah.
Wow. Now why was the move to New York instead of Los Angeles? Shorter drive, more opportunity? Yeah, I guess my mom lived there

and so I thought

that was the place to go

and I kind of romanticized

being a struggling actor

because I'd seen my mom do it.

And a free place to stay,

maybe.

And a free place to stay.

But I love that story

you told in your acceptance speech

when you won your Oscar.

Yeah.

Sorry,

I just told you

because we are going to put,

we're going to put applause in.

Use mine.

For sure.

But dude,

so you win an Oscar

and you tell that great story

I remember... won your Oscar.
Yeah. Sorry, I just hold it because we are going to put, we're going to put applause in.

Use mine.

For sure.

But dude,

so you win an Oscar and you tell that great story

about going to the movies

with your dad

and I loved the way,

and I'm just going,

I literally just remember it

because it was so impactful

that your dad would take you

out of school

and he'd lie to the school

saying that you had to do some shit

or somebody died.

Yeah,

that my grandmother passed away.

Again.

It's pretty morbid, isn't it? That's so good man yeah i mean i i i was in music camp when i was a kid and i sent a letter to my mom saying can you please come pick me up please just tell them grandpa died please just tell them grandpa died and you have to pick me up she never did she never did yeah and did you love it did you love getting school, going to the movies, or did you want to stay in school and hang out with your buddies? No, I loved it. I loved it.
It was, the school I was in at the time, I think I was getting beat up a lot. It was kind of a rough school.
Yeah, you were like in fights. I read you were in a lot of fights in the white supremacist.
Yeah, but I didn't win any of the fights. I was getting my ass kicked.
And then my dad, yeah, so my dad took me out. I was like, yeah, let's get the hell out of here, you know.
And then thank God Grandma was alive. And then we went to the opening day of Rocky.
Oh, God, really? Nobody had heard of it. My dad took me to all of those movies during that time too.
They were so good. All those movies that none of my friends were seeing.
But like my friends weren't going in to like, the Werner Herzog, you know, documentary, you know, or, like, any movies with subtitles. No.
Yeah. I remember my mom would take me to, I was kind of like her movie pal, I remember her taking me to see, was it Missing, the one with Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon? Yeah, and Jack Lemmon.
Yeah, about the people going missing in Chile. I was 11.
How old were you when you saw that? 11. Pretty heavy.
Sure. Couldn't sleep for months.
I saw The Deer Hunter when I was 10. I saw, like, Taxi Driver when I was 8.
Exactly. Right? It got you excited about movies, but it makes you grow up quick.
But there's something there. Okay, but there is something there messaging-wise, which is, like, you don't want to take your kids to just see something that's got gratuitous violence or language or whatever, but if it's great filmmaking and it's a great story and it's a great, then there's, and it's great art, then there's value in that.
The violence needs to be done cinematically. Yeah, but I mean, people enjoy the other thing.
I was on a plane once and I saw a guy watch Fast and Furious movies with the sound off. I'm just saying.
So there's something for everybody. Right.
That is when you've had the full lobotomy. That's when they took it all out.
They just scraped it clean. Wait, Sam.
So I also read you hurt your hands or something. Was that from fighting? No, it was a car accident.

Yeah.

What?

Wait, wait.

Is that fully extended?

Oh, wait.

Do it again.

Can you not straighten?

Oh, yeah.

You can straighten them out.

Oh, look at that.

Wow.

Oh, the Gingar.

What happened?

The Gingar's almost tweaked.

You see it in the green mile for a second.

Yeah.

It works for that character.

But I usually...

So he has a tweaked tip of his, what, the FU finger.

Yeah, they were all crushed. Four of them were crushed.
What happened? I flipped a Jeep Cherokee on Sunset and La Brea. Just fucking got into a squat and you just flipped it? Oh, you were in it.
That's right. I'm fucking strong.
Use your legs. I started the Royce really early.
That'd be so good if you were driving around and you just see rockwell and you're like is he flipping a fucking car so wait sunset la brea that sounds like so you were upset at the fat burger there on the corner when you're not getting you yeah i was i hit the lead a little you know after it rains when the it gets kind of oily yeah in la that the roads and i hit the i hit the lead kind of fast i was trying to impress a girl and she kept going i took a left turn and i got into a skin i got out of the skin and it just went but those models i think tended to flip pretty easily they're tippers wait you're a model you're still you're talking about the car or the girl walk me back you're trying to impress a girl at the stoplight that you don't know okay okay i'm trying to make i'm make, I'm trying to like do like an American graffiti kind of hit the lead kind of thing. Sure.
And, but then I took a left and I got into a skid and I got out of the skid, but then I hit the curb and I went. Fuck.
Do you miss driving being in New York? No, I don't miss driving at all. Not at all? No, I drive all no i drive i drive in movies yeah that's like a video game yeah that's true i once had to drive in a movie and and the the scene was i was driving a car that was that was going the wrong way on a freeway and what they did was they built one of these pods on top of the car where they have a stunt driver up there with a wheel that is steering the car so that he or she can make all the correct turns.
They're not relying on an actor to go left, go right in coordination with the cars coming at you going left and right that they've worked out. It was the most horrific thing I've ever been through where I'm speeding the wrong way.
I'm freaking freaking. Yeah.
And I'm not in control, but looking as as if I am, I'm turning my wheel, but there's a dude up on top of the roof in a little tiny built pod. Just a couple of hours earlier.
That doesn't sound great to me. That sounds kind of...
No, but it worked. If you have control issues, especially...
I kind of want to race cars. Does anybody else want to race cars? I'm not kidding.
Do you really want to race cars? I do kind of want to just try it once. You know, guys, for my birthday, that's what I want.
I'm not kidding. Do you really? I can set that up.
Yeah, we can go up to Willow Springs. I'm not kidding.
Jason fucking won. We've talked about it.
Jason's won that thing three times. I know.
I want to try it. You've raced cars, Jason? I mean, in a celebrity race.
But then I did have two. What kind of car is that? No, you flipped a car in a real race in the Poconos.
Yeah, exactly. Holy shit.
I was professional for two races, and then I got upside down and said, okay, I'm good. Wow.
I'll go back to the celeb stuff. Bass Fender is doing that, right? Oh, yeah.
But he's doing the real, real, real version. He races like BMWs and shit across Europe.
Yeah. Wow.
That's intense. Sam, I want to get back to you.
I don't need to do that. I want to get back to you when you're at the beginning.
I do it on Broadway. Sure.
Sure. I do it on the boards.
I can't wait to just talk theater and all that. Yeah, yeah.
Sam, anything ever funny ever happen on stage? Anyone ever forget a line? I've never seen Sean skip over, I want to get to Broadway. I've never seen him go like, we'll get to that.
Can we have to talk about this little show that Sean did at the Tabasco? Oh, the Tabasco. Was he not just spicy as hell in there? Oh.
Oscar. You're very nice to come, Sam.
It meant a lot to me. It meant a lot.
It was, wait, but seriously, listen, I go on about all you guys and like the rest of the development, I go on about Ozark identity theft. If Jason hears me say identity theft one more time, he's going to punch me in the face.
But that was the movie. I was driving the wrong way down the freeway.
Was that the movie? Was it real? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I'd seen you in a play before.
I didn't realize that you're a fucking assassin. I know.
I mean, what the fuck? What was that? And do you think that's why we were all so knocked out? Because we just thought it wasn't going to be good at all. Like, here we are, boy.
We're sitting here. We're going to watch a train wreck.
You said, when we went and saw the opening night, and we're all there, and we're sort of fucking like, and Jason, right as the sort of current comes down, Jason turns to me, tears in his eyes, and he goes, podcast is over. When it was over.
Yeah, no, when the over and he had just like gained mountains of respect in Will and I's mind and it was already very high. But to see you do that, the level you did it and I'm crying and the curtain comes down after the curtain call and I did.
I turned to Will. I said, well, the fucking podcast is ruined now.
It's ruined. So now you got to double down on the Bust is Chops.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's nothing.
That's very nice. Shut up, Sean.
Hey, Sean. Sean.
Fuck you. Sean, can I ask you a question for real? Can I be real now that we're on this subject? Do you have any good theater stories? And we will be right back.
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I'm going to tell you something. And then, Sam, I want one ready, locked and loaded.
You know what? So get ready because you're all theater. Okay, okay.
Don't fucking threaten me with a great story. But listen, I just sent Will this thing that stretches out your calf because if you stretch out your calves and your hams, you release your lower back because Will's been having lower back stuff.
So I got that during Good Night Oscar because I started getting plantar fasciitis, like my feet start hurting. Oh, yeah.
And it was so bad during a couple shows. I was literally shuffling along like I was 95 years old.
I was in so much pain doing the show. And two days later, Will, I used that thing I sent you.
It was gone. Sean, so Sean sent me...
Did you ever get the boot? No, it's that thing that kind of rocks, you know, to stretch your calves, right? You put your foot on it and it's just... Yeah, and you sleep in it, right? You sleep in it.
No, no, no, you just stand on it. No, you just stand on it and you just kind kind of seesaw.
My son Abel, who, I mean, my son Denny, who's almost,

who's like three and a half, looks like that.

Oh, okay, that's something else.

Oh, that's advanced.

So these guys, I've been having this issue with my,

it was my hamstring, and then it became like a sort of

sciatic nerve thing, and I'm fucking going to see this guy.

We're not going to mention Tarek again.

This would be four in a row.

We were going to mention Dr. Tarek.

Tarek is great.

You know Tarek.

Have you seen Duran, the Israeli magician?

No, but... We're not going to mention Tarek again.
This would be four in a row. We were going to mention Dr.
Tarek. Tarek is great.
You know Tarek?

Have you seen Duran, the Israeli magician?

No, but do you know Tarek?

Wait, you get to watch magic tricks?

Okay, so Tarek's the fucking...

So I've been going to Tarek.

I've been living in his office for the last two years.

Tarek is fantastic.

He's got a great elbow.

Duran is also great.

I don't know Duran.

I don't know Duran.

Tarek has an unbelievable elbow. When he gets it, forget it.
So anyway, so Sean and Sunday night were at dinner with our friends and he goes, I'm going to get you this thing, this rocking thing. It comes the next day, Monday.
I do it yesterday. By yesterday afternoon, I feel infinitely better.
Really? That's really good. Dude, it's the fucking, it's unreal.
You just got to shut your hands and your calves and you're good to go. Yeah, you've been screwed up for a few weeks on that.
I have. Indeed I have.
It starts with the feet, yeah. Sam, so hand injuries from the car.
Any injuries from Broadway? Hamstring. Well, I've had tendinosis.
Two calves from other stuff. That's about it.
Shoulders are cre Yeah. How old are you now, Sam? I'm 77.
No, I'm 55. Right.
So we're all about the same age. You look great.
You look fantastic. Thanks.
You guys look great. Things start to ache a little bit, right? I don't feel like I deserve the kind of knee kind of tweaking or the hip kind of tweaking.
Because we all stay in pretty good shape. We exercise and stuff.
Yeah exercise and stuff yeah you know the car the car does break down it does break down it's really annoying but so sam go go talk to me about the the quote well-paying 1994 miller light commercial oh my right so that's when is that when you knew like okay i got this big commercial it pays really well maybe i can quit all my other

jobs and what were those other jobs well i worked in a lot of restaurants bar back bus boy i delivered burritos um wow you know i oh yeah i heard your ruffalo when he was bartending it was kind of a similar time around when i was 28 29 i started working more as an actor that started doing movies and stuff. Yeah.

Delivering burritos on a bicycle was my

last job. shit who do you go furthest back with of the actor buddies that you still have like do you go back furthest with like Crude Up or Mark Crude Up and Thoreau and I were together during 9-11 and we knew Phil and very happy for happy for Jeffrey Wright and Paul Giamatti.
For Tracy, that's Philip Seymour Hoffman. Philip Seymour Hoffman, yes.
We don't really mention, as you probably know, we don't really like to mention Thoreau on this podcast. We'll just cut that out.
It's funny you should say that. We'll go back.
We'll trim that out. He's kind of persona non-G around here, you know? Yeah.
us? He told me to give you a message. He said, you could ask Arnett this question from a listener in New York named Justin T.
Will, when you buy button-down shirts, do you take them to someone to remove the top five buttons? Or do you just buy them pre-removed? Also wondering, what's your nighttime, let me get this right, décalage routine? Love the show. Keep up the good work.
Oh, my God. That's so true.
That's rich coming from a guy that removes his sleeves. I didn't realize you don't usually button.
You don't have any buttons. Is that true? Yes, true.
What do What do you call it? Is that called a bird Reynolds? You mean like you go like that?

Yeah.

I do.

If I'm wearing a button shirt, yeah.

I do a lot of this.

Why?

Because you think people,

like you're doing people a favor.

You got to show a little skin.

You got to give people what they want.

Right.

This is a world,

you have to understand

that we are always transmitting and receiving.

And so I'm putting out

and I'm also receiving.

And so I feel from the world they want to get more skin. Sammy knows what I'm talking about.
Oh, my God. Yeah, you got to do it.
All right, Sammy. Lawn dogs.
Yes. Talk about skin.
Yeah, lots of skin on that. I know, right? Wait, so you received critical acclaim.
Yeah. And your performance was, like, incredible.
Thank you. Thanks.
Yeah, I loved that movie. Those those were the days i had not heard i've not heard of lawn dogs oh you got to see it it's so good yeah i get naked and uh i think i've seen yeah boy i was in good shape back then that was yeah is that the thing you think kind of opened the doors for you the porn yeah i think so i think that one that was one of them did safe men with uh paul giamani ruffalo dinklage i was gonna say safe men that hamburg right you know safe men yeah it's a little yeah yeah it's a little gem i think yeah i knew those guys i knew some of those guys because those guys who produced it i think they were the same dudes who great buddy steps movie that i did yeah anyway great and then Box of Moonlight was, those three kind of.
Box of Moonlight. Yeah.
Helped me get, and then Galaxy Quest and Green Mile sort of happened at the same time. Okay, so I want to talk about Galaxy Quest.
It's one of my favorite movies. Dude, I saw Safe Men.
I really love Safe Men, by the way, and I knew a lot of those dudes, but then when you did fucking Galaxy Quest, Rockwell, you absolutely destroyed. Yeah, incredible.
You destroyed it. Incredible.
Thanks, guys. I auditioned for the Enrico, Colin Tony part.
Yeah. Still waiting here.
You're not right for it. I know I'm not right for it.
Well, they agreed, but I'm just saying that you're not right. This is from, so your character Guy Fleegman, right? Yes.
He was so fucking great. Fuck.
It was like a pick-me energy. This is from Scotty, okay? Oh, boy.
Scotty said the whole bit about you not wanting to be sent down first, your character, like whenever you go to a planet. Those characters always died.
That was a reference to Star Trek. You probably know this.
Star Trek and the red shirts. Yes.
They're expendables. But a lot of people don't know that.
I didn't know that. That in Star Trek, whenever Spock and Kirk would come to a planet.
That's right. They would always send these guys down first and they would always die.
I just kind of stole my performance from Bill Paxton in Aliens. Hey Sean, just widen it out.
I just want to see if I can see them make out the Mountain Dew on your desk if it's possible. Wow.

The fucking monster energy drink. And the Star Trek cosplay outfit.

No, but it was.

You know what, though?

It is true.

That was the first time somebody sort of made that kind of joke on screen.

Your fucking delivery, Sammy.

It's just un-fucking-real.

Dude, every time.

We lucked out with that movie.

Sammy, you're one of those guys, and I talk about this from time to time on the podcast.

You're one of those people.

It doesn't matter what you're doing.

It never sucks. It could be the worst.
You never suck. You could be in the worst movie, the worst play, the worst TV.
You're always unbelievable because you're so committed. I fucking love that about you.
I know, I love that too. Do you ever feel like, I was going to say the same thing.
Do you ever feel like movie to movie, obviously you never know what you got or what you're in or what you have. Can you feel it by now at this point in your career as you're going day one, week one, month one, month two? You know what? I think I'm in a piece of shit.
Or I think this is working. Or I think this is really working.
Because I said when I did Good Night Oscar,

we had an invited dress rehearsal

with a bunch of kids who didn't get any of the references

because it takes place in the 50s.

And it was crickets the whole play.

I came home to Scotty.

I said, I'm in a piece of shit.

I think I'm in a piece of shit.

Yeah.

It's always scary, isn't it?

Yeah, it's scary.

And the next night it was scary.

Yeah, that's a great thing.

So what is your barometer on that?

Like, how do you feel?

Well, first of all, thank you. And right back at all three of you guys.
But yeah, I think you always think it's fucking Hamlet, right? I mean, you think it's Citizen Kane. I mean, when you're working on it.
And then at a certain point, you realize maybe it's not. And then...

Yeah, it starts to take on water.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you're like, oh, yeah.

And then you're like, oh, shit, this could be bad.

This could be.

I remember Baldwin would say to me, Alec once says to me, he goes,

you never intend to make a bad movie.

He goes, you know, you go like, you agree to do something,

and you're making this movie with people, and they go,

hey, we're going to go over here.

And you go, great.

I think that's a great movie. He goes, you know, you go like, you agree to do something and you're making this movie with people and they go, hey, we're going to go over here.
And you go, great. I can't wait.
I'm excited to go over here. And then you start making it.
And all of a sudden you start going in the other direction. You go, hey, I thought we were going over there.
And they're like, no, no, no, no. We're going over here.
Yeah, yeah. And you can, yeah.
Sometimes it comes from watching another performance or a decision a director makes or just the general vibe on the set from the crew or whatever. And you could start to smell it, right? And you just can't get, there's nothing you can do about it because you're only doing one little piece of it.
So does it take away the energy? Like, do you start depleting yourself of kind of yeah same chutzpah you and i don't think you do i can you you always deliver though well i think if you sign up and you you get talk i think when you get talked into something yeah and i won't mention any names but when you get talked into something that's when you're that's when it's bad you know what i mean and you try to do to do a fixer upper thing on it. Right.
But you have, you know, Willie, you said that, you know, that he fully commits and that's certainly part of why he's so great. But I've seen a lot of crappy actors fully commit to a crappy performance that doesn't fix it.
I mean, he's fully committing to a performance that has, that's coming from a guy with great taste. Yes.
There's somehow that you have the ability to keep one eye on yourself and judge whether the choice you're making sucks or not. And you're staying away from sucky choices with the way in which you play characters.
Is that... Sean, do you make a lot of sucky choices in your life? Ignore that, Sam.
Ignore it. You know, you want to make God laugh telling your plans, right? So you just never know.
You never know. Right.
But you have good taste. Did that come from, did you get it from mom or dad or from watching a bunch of great stuff? You know, again, I think it's just more ego, to be frank.
I think it's more like just wanting to have a big part of it. Right.
Have a reason to get up there. Right, and doing something that you're going to want to watch.
It doesn't mean that it has to be a lead role. It can be a supporting role.
Sure. Yeah, that you're going to want to be a part of.
Do you your stuff? Do you, do you, are you one of those actors that can't watch? If it's good, if it's good, it's like a home movie. If it comes on, um, seven psychopaths came on.
I, I, I love, I, that experience was really great. Yeah.
I hear Martin McDonough is just about the best guy in the world to work with. He's the best man, you know, and Chris Walken, I'd done a play with him, and then we did the movie, and Colin and Woody, so we had, you know,

it was just a really nice time.

We had a great time.

Yeah.

So it's like, isn't this like a home movie, right,

when you see, and it's either a bad experience or a good experience, you know?

But what about, like, on set?

Will you watch playback to sort of help

in calibrating your performance,

or do you like to stay in the dark?

Only if it's, like, mainly for the canvas, canvas or if I'm a lot of times just to get

maybe a tone and then I stay away from it.

Like, and a lot of times I'm noticing if I do look at it,

I'm under or I used to be over the top,

but I'm noticing it's actually,

I need more and then I need to contain it.

I would say tell the director to bring the camera closer instead of you

reaching out, you know?

Thank you. It's actually, I need more, and then I need to contain it.
I would say tell the director to bring the camera closer instead of you reaching out, you know? Fucking, if they can't see it, they got to get closer. You stay small.
Or bring your own. Wear one of those GoPros, turn back on yourself.
When you say to see the canvas, do you, to see the canvas and the tone are those two different things? Like, do you mean sometimes that you actually look at look at and go like because when you're in it some you don't have a sense of like the bigger picture and then when you get to see it you go oh okay okay with it in terms of staging and what what effect it is i guess i'm talking about stakes you know i'm talking about stakes um interesting you know you know crude up is one of the people i've gone to uh beyond my acting coach or my friend Chris Messina, who, you know, you know, crude up is one of the people I've gone to, uh, beyond my acting coach or, or my friend Chris Messina, who, you know, uh, I'll go to, I've gone to a lot of friends for help. Um, Stanley Tucci, lots of people.
And, uh, but crude up is particularly bad. So he's rough.
Sorry. I cut you off.
Yeah. Yeah yeah he's got to go back to nyu and yeah he's hard to look at hard to look at he's tough to look at he's tough to look at no what are you gonna say he's he's particularly helpful yeah he's very articulate about acting he he can i went to him with american buffalo i was like i was losing my saliva literally i couldn't get through the speech and i went i said man i need your help man i gotta i gotta i can't get through this fucking thing and he came over and he really he really helped me he really broke it down for me he's really smart yeah what was it started if you yeah what's the key to keeping your mouth nice and lubricated? Who's this for? Who's that question for? Sorry, Sam, I was looking at you.
Okay, okay. Very good question.
Voice warm-ups, Sean. Voice warm-ups, right? Yes, very good.
Keeping, I mean, they say bite your tongue, but, you know, I do a voice warm-up, 20-minute Linklater warm-up. Also, isn't it wild when you're doing a live...
Pee a lot. Free a little water.

Yes, that's good.

When you're doing a live play,

that you've created this character and this world

through weeks of rehearsals.

Then you get up on your face, so you created this piece of art,

and you think people will know your choices.

Like, they think...

So, for your speech, for example, you're like, well, I can't change it. This is how it's supposed to go.
But people don't know that. So you're like, well, I don't want to change.
But you're like, hey, buddy, you could take the biggest pause in the world in the middle of a monologue, drink a glass of water. You can add anything.
Nobody knows how it's supposed to go. But in your mind, you're no i'm compromising the role i'm compromising the part and that's the thing i always bump up against i want i once saw john malkovich do uh burn this oh yeah me too i saw that right so what about that opening opening monologue as he comes in after you know fucking trying to get a parking spot out in front of the goddamn building and he's fixing his hair in the mirror and he stops in the middle of this middle of a sentence not at a punctuation but middle of a sentence for at least a minute while he's fucking with his hair and then picks right back up on his monologue another minute or two you know talking i just couldn't believe the balls yeah you know i was a young actor watching this like oh fuck that's incredible what fuck.
That's incredible what this guy does. Incredible.
He's one of my favorites. That performance was unbelievable.
Yeah. It's unbelievable.
So anyway, I added two glasses of water in the scene. I'm like, I think my character should drink water now.
Yeah. No, no.
Absolutely. I had a six-page monologue.
I had the director. I said, can I have like a water fountain? He said, no.
Oh, really? I said, well, what can I have? He said, get a lifesaver. I was in a park.
And so park and so i was like all right now i'll ask you a real hacky question here um that there is no answer for but i'll ask anyway you prefer doing theater over uh camera work no i mean it's totally different i think it's just the gym and it's really scary and it's like going to the gym yeah and it informs your film work, I think. But it helps, you know, like Chris Walken does that monologue in Pulp Fiction.
I think it's because he did Hamlet, he did Rose Tattoo. Yes, but.
Stanley Kowalski. But would you not agree that if you do a stage-level performance in front of the camera, you'd be doing too much? Oh, yeah, for sure.
Definitely. But interesting, Sam, talk about that idea.
It's like going to the gym for film work. Well, it's just obviously you can't scream.
You can't do a stage performance, especially the ones I've done, because they're big. In front of a camera, that would not work.
But I think all you've to do is turn the volume down, I guess. That's, I mean, maybe that's not as simple as it sounds, but.
Was calibrating. Do you enjoy the bigger movement or do you enjoy getting super, super small and letting the camera find the little stuff? I prefer being small even on stage.
I don't want to get big on stage. In fact, I think that's the trick of, but I've never done a musical, so I don't know.
That's a whole other thing. But I think keeping it real and still being loud with your, and still being able to hit the back row with your voice is a trick, you know? Yeah.
Right. Phil Hoffman taught me a lot about that.
I mean, he thought, no, it sounds name droppy, but he also is somebody who, he directed me in a play and he, he was very, he, you know, but no, but listener doesn't want to hear about process. Well, I'm sure they do.
They'll listen to whatever, they have to listen to whatever the fuck we tell them to listen to. Really? You know what I mean? They can get, by the way, the podcast, it's free, and they can not, they can not listen.
If they want. Yeah, man, what the fuck? I love hearing you talk about this shit.
Yeah, I do too. Well, Phil, you know, Phil was the, he was, you guys know him.
He was, yeah, of course. I'm envious that you guys knew him, and I didn't.
But tell me about, do you like doing, I love that whenever you're doing like a lead role in a film, I just like, because I'm just, I want more of you at all times. I love you.
But oftentimes the lead role is not as spicy or as fun as some of the secondary or tertiary roles. What's your, do you have a preference? Yeah, you know, I think that's something, I mean, here we go with the name drop shit.
But Clooney, I think. George Clooney.
George Clooney. I don't know.
Clooney's not a name drop here. But Clooney taught me a lot, you know, because I come in with all these props and all these, I'd be schmacking it up.
Well,, you were the lead in his first film. And I was the lead in the film.
And he's like, hey, man, you know, we can't do Bows of the Clown every scene. You know, we got to.
That was the note. He didn't say that.
But I was like, you know, zero my still in there. I mean, one of the great actors, zero my still.
But, you know, he said, you know, too many props and let's just keep it.

You're the lead guy.

You've got to, like, keep it simple.

And I learned a lot from him about that.

It's true because it's a canvas, right?

So you're not necessarily the color red all the time.

Right.

You know, Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves.

I mean, he's, you know, they've got other people providing those colors. Yeah, you got to really, you really suss that out when you read the script and you talk about it and you develop it and you show up, you're like, where am I, where do I fit? Yeah.
Yeah. And you have to be, sometimes you have to be a blank canvas, right? If you're the lead in a certain way, you have to be able to let other colors.
Jason obviously has been a blank canvas to me for so many years.

He's been this off-white mayonnaise sort of eggshell color.

Well, I think Jason's performance in Identity Theft is...

There we go.

Now, you love Identity Theft.

Let's walk through Identity Theft.

Let's show a clip.

We'll just show a real quick clip.

Let's go to Clip.

I think it's pretty amazing.

By the way, I will say I love Identity Theft as well. I've told Jason before.
It's a fucking great Identity Thief. It's really good, man.
Identity Thief. But the other one I like a lot, even more than what I saw recently, and I've told him, is Game Night.
Have you seen fucking Game Night? I love Game Night. Game Night's a good movie.
Jason is... Sammy, have you not seen Game Night? I need to see that.
I need to watch it.

Oh, my God.

It's so fucking...

It's so good.

It's so funny.

I need to watch that.

Jason is so good in that.

Jason is...

And he knows how to play stakes, right?

Dude.

And still be like, you know...

Dude.

I love that movie.

That movie holds up to multiple viewings.

It's fucking...

That's one of my favorites.

By the way, Game Night is one of the most...

Is one of the, like, last great... I haven't seen a great film comedy since Game Night Game Night I'm not even kidding those guys it's gonna be your new identity thief Sam you have not seen it yet right I haven't seen it no so good it's not bad it's Rachel McAdams.
I've seen Horrible Bosses. I've seen the one.
Jesse Plemons. You piss in the pond.
Oh, yeah. The old magic pond with Ryan.
You know who's really funny in that movie? Billy Magnuson. Yeah.
That guy's a real talent. He is hilarious.
Yeah. He is hilarious.
He's a really good dude. I've seen him in a great thing.
And Sharon Horgan's in it, too. Sharon Horgan is amazing.
Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights. How great is Kyle? Fucking Sam's with us.
Sam Rockwell. Game night.
Game night. I'm on it.
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Our show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Hey guys, everybody should have a support system, right?

Who's your support system? My support system,

as you well know, talk about it all the time, is Scotty and of course my two besties, Will and Jason. Whenever I have a problem, an issue, I talk to them about it.
And if they're not available, I will talk to a therapist and I've been going to therapy for a long time and it's always great. So think about your favorite leaders, mentors, and idols.
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Visit betterhelp.com slash smartless to get 10 off your first month that's betterhelp.com slash smartless and now back to the show so wait sam i you guys haven't said anything about my shirt my t-shirt i was trying to yeah, what does it say? I was trying to read it. I couldn't see it, and I wasn't...
Sorry, that's bad framing. I am serious, and don't call me...
Wait, he's wearing tan pants, and for a second I thought he was shirt-cocking, that he just had a shirt. Wait, Sam, what does the shirt say? Shirt-cocking is a real...
It's an airplane shirt. It's airplane.
And it says, I'm serious, and don't call me'm serious and don't call me Shirley oh yeah yeah yeah

that's great

that's a great

see

I mean

they should redo

that movie right

I mean there's a whole

not because it needs

to be redone

but just because

there's a whole new

generation or three

or more now

that haven't seen it

that would love

Will's upset

I'm against the reboots

I'm against the reboots

all together

just haven't watched

the old one right

I watched the old one

and it

maybe it's not as quick

or it doesn't cut as fast

but it's good

it's got value

and then let's do

some new stuff

let's create some new stuff. Leslie Nielsen.
Let's create stuff now that people 20 years will say, let's reboot. You know what I mean? Yeah, okay.
There's so much of the same shit. No, no, no, let me go on a fucking tirade.
Wait, Sam. By the way, guess who Sam worked with a couple years ago? You guys are going to blow both of your minds.
Leslie Nielsen. No, it's a friend of the show.
It's one of the great names of the show. It's one of the all-time references of the show.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He comes up on the show all the time.
I talk about him all the time. Chappie? Chappie, Mark Chappell, who wrote See How They Run.
Chappie's one of my best pals, and he's my corretter. He's great.
And must be giving Will at least $10,000 every time his name is mentioned. Chappie comes up a lot.
He's a recurring on the show. Get the scissors out, guys.
Sean, drive the interview. We're not cutting Chappie out.
Great scripts, the other one. So Moon, when you did Moon, I loved Moon.
I mean, it was just you. God bless you.
God bless you. I loved that movie so much.
Now, Duncan Jones knows how to direct, huh? I know. Yeah.
Go back and talk about, like, I know we were, it's okay. You can talk about process.
That's why we're here. Okay.
I don't want to bore the hell out of... Because I'm fascinated how you, what was it like day to day? Did you like the process of being the only person in the movie? Yeah.
Tracy, this is a movie where he's the only guy in it and he's stuck on a spaceship. It's stunning.
It's incredible. It's a really good movie.
Thank you. Thanks, guys.
Well, you know, my acting coach, the first thing he says, watch buddy movies. He said, watch Midnight Cowboy I watched.
Midnight Run. I stole a lot from Midnight Cowboy.
And then, you know, Rachel Weisz just did a reboot of Dead Ringers, which is fucking amazing what she did. Wow.
And I was watching the Jeremy Irons one. That was the best time, the best version of that trick I had seen.
And I listened to the DVD commentary. And there's a very noisy camera called the motion control camera that's used for that gag to get two people in one frame.
And it's a very weird process that I could go into. It was a little bit.
Well, there's a lot about timing. The guy, the sound guy would put the previous take, the master on the on my iPod.
And while I was going to hair and makeup for the other one,

I would listen to it.

So the ping pong scene would be a timing thing.

So when I went back to the other clone.

So you're acting against yourself.

Acting against yourself.

And so I would listen to the sounds.

So like if he dropped the handle of the paddle like that, the other clone would retract because he's coming towards him. So I'd have to listen for that.
And know how many beats you have to wait before you speak. Yeah, and he was saying, Doug was like, don't ad-lib, don't ad-lib.
But you could ad-lib if you fit it in the window. Right, right.
The timing, you know, you could change the line, but it'd have to be that time, you know? I wonder if today, technologically, it would be less antiquated. It's got to be.
Tom Hardy did a good job with it, too. But it's tricky.
It's tricky, and it's a lot of work. And talking about paying attention, you have to pay attention in a scene as it is.
But now you've really got to pay attention. Because you're also trying, pick up on timing and other things.
Did it scratch?

Did it scratch an itch in a way that you didn't know? Like, were you, was it satisfying on a certain answer? Absolutely. If you're a narcissist and a director, a closeted director, you know, you have control of the scene, obviously, for obvious reasons.
And Jeremy Aaron's talking about contrasting energy. So one twin in Dead Riggers was aggressive and Rachel Weisz did the same thing very well.
One was more timid. And so we had to, that was the trick, was having contrasting energies.
And so one was a clown and one was more together. And yeah, you can control the scene.
In fact, we'd have two rehearsals. The AD would go, you know, hey, okay, you know hey okay go to hair megway so mick you know we got to do the other rehearsal we'll do the other one so you'd rehearse twice you know wow before you went oh wow yeah you'd rehearse both sides before yeah wow and then i had a body double guy and it was also an actor and then the other line was coming to you through an earwig.
Yeah, an earwig. And sometimes you'd be looking at a tennis ball.
Sometimes the actor who kind of looks like you from the back. Yeah.
You know. Yeah.
So that's a contemplative sort of melancholy, dramatic movie. Yes.
Do you, again, another brain-dead question, but do you have a preference about drama versus comedy? Well, it's funny you say that because it was a little too serious. I said we got to get some jokes in the beginning because it was so dark.
It was like Edgar Allan Poe. And we got some jokes in because we were going to lose the audience because it gets so depressing.
Yeah, but then there's the risk of setting the wrong tone for that which is going to come, right? So there's a balance there. I remember I was like, I was super precious and annoying and overly sensitive about any sort of any sort of humor going into Ozark.
You know, the writers had these great sort of moments of levity in the first season. Where did you find the compromise eventually? Well, once we established that, you know, this Jason Bateman show is not going to be a comedy, once the audience knew that after the first season, I felt more comfortable about, you know, making it.
Did you watch, serious question, did you watch, after asking them to sort of erase all that, did you watch it, once you got to post, were you like, fuck, I wish there was a moment there? Did you miss it a little bit? I don't mean a goofy thing, but it was a little bit of contrast. I was too sort of paranoid about it being taken seriously in the first year that I didn't worry about that.
But the second year, I was like, yeah. Anyway, sorry to talk about fucking me again.
It's fucking great. Sam, what do we got to do to have you working? You see where you beat the guy up in the car is fucking great.
But you earned that. You earned that.
Yeah, you fucking earned it. What about, how do we get you working 12 months a year so I, as a Sam Rockwell fan, can have more to enjoy that's a great i mean yes it's i think i have to use your balancing theater and and phil so i got to go to new york to see you sometimes yeah right which i'm coming i'm coming this weekend for seven months so get ready yeah okay we're gonna do some hanging it's a road we're all, what's the, you know, when you, we're talking about all these kind of preps things for roles in different movies.
Do you have a thing that you first do when you either walk on a set or prepare for a character? Do you have like a go-to, any kind of superstition thing like we do in theater? No, it all comes out of fear, trying to memorize the script and panic and, you know,, and then you go to go see my coach, Tara Knickerbocker, where I go. And sometimes you have time to do research.
Sometimes you don't. And you might have the luxury of a few months and then you would do research like three billboards or something.
I did research. But like you don't always have the time to do that.
So you're kind of like just like, all right, I'm an arms Okay, fuck, I'm going to watch Bill Murray and Kingpin. That's it.
That's my research. Yeah, yeah.
Are you like Billy? Because Billy talks about it and you guys know, like, Billy likes to spend time with the dialogue for weeks. Yeah.
Did you see the one man show he did? Jesus Christ. No, I missed it.
But are you good at learning your lines? Are you quick with that? No, terrible. I need time.
Really? I need a lot of time, yeah. Yeah.
I need a lot of time. Have you always been terrible? I mean, I tape the monotone.
That's a Meisner thing, but I tape him, and I run him with a reader, an actor. I think Billy does a similar thing.
Billy's smarter than me, though. He knows how to, he really breaks his shit down.
My partner does, too, Leslie. Her script is, like, really organized.
Mine looks like a kindergarten grown-up. I'm always fearful that I'm going to, if I really, really work on it and I do a bunch of research and all that stuff, that I'll end up acting.
That all of that is to do the greatest acting job ever. But come on, Jason.
But that's my own bullshit. You put work in.
I do put a lot of work into it, but there's a list of techniques and homework stuff that I used to do when I was a kid and went to acting classes and stuff like that and i and i found that i was so proud of the work that i had done that i was hell-bent on making sure the audience saw that work i understand that yeah i mean i don't like backstory that's the thing i don't really care about yeah i don't i think interesting but it's important for some actors everyone's got a different thing for me Yeah. I, you know, I think it depends, you know.
It depends if it makes an imprint on you. You know, you can get an ad lib from somebody, a real person.
Do you ever get a, I was going to actually, Sean, get into like sort of the difference and with you, Sammy, as well, about then when you work on stage, then you have the sort of the luxury of time to work on that. And you understand and you have a facility with the dialogue because you've been working on it for months.
But before I get into that, have you ever had the thing where I've had a couple of times where like a guy, like a member of the crew will go, well, like between takes ago, hey, you know what I thought would be really funny if you said? And I go, what's that now? Like pitching me a joke or like a different way to say a joke. And I'd be like, what up? And it's not bad sometimes.
And they'd go, I just thought it'd be really funny if you said this. I'm like, oh, yeah? Okay, man.
Well, I thought it'd be really funny if you moved the fucking C stand over there. You know what I mean? But what if it's a good idea, you dick? No, I'm kidding a actually actually it should be i'm just saying that just to be funny the truth is i've actually had some pretty good pitches before from like sound dudes yeah there was a there was a boom operator that i knew this guy tom who was really fucking funny jay do you remember that dude tom yeah and he was super funny and every once in a while like like between takes, he'd go like, hey, you know what? Blah, blah, blah.
And I'd go, fuck, that's fucking great. And I'd use it.
Thank you. Give him a little wink.
I know. What if an actor does it? You know, what if another actor does it? And then you're like, man.
Fuck, that's a fight. I'm always like best whatever.
Yeah. If it works, it works.
I don't mind that. I never mind like a line reading from a director either.
Because you're going to make it your own no but you know what there is that thing and I will not say who this is but there are things before where like an actor might say to you like hey you know what would be really great say this and they'll in rehearsal and they'll say it to the director as you're doing a rehearsal so you're at that point you go like everybody's kind of waiting for me to do his pitch. That he said out loud to the director.
You do it, and then they laugh. Yeah.
See, isn't that amazing? And you're so embarrassed. Well, that brings me to my thing about directing is I was thinking, Jason, I don't know what you do with actors, but I feel like you're really good with actors.
But I don't know, when a director screams a direction across a long distance over the crew, it's kind of telling the whole crew that the rabbit's going to come out of the hat before it does. And then you're like, hey man, there's a lot of pressure to take the rabbit out of the hat.
You know what I mean? Right. Right.
And then you end up adjusting your reading to make it surprising for the crew when it's not really the reading that would be right for the audience at home. Yeah.
I kind of want a conspiracy with the director. Yeah, I love it.
Yeah, whispering. Sam, what do you do when all of this is, when we're not talking about this and you're not doing this? What do you do? What's what's the hobby? What would our listeners be excited to learn that you do? Well, somebody, I think maybe Thoreau just told me, potato chips are not a protein, which is alarming.
When I was during the pandemic, you know, I got into some potato chips. No, you know, I overwork out and then I overeat, blah, blah, blah.
You know, I do it. I'm kind of compulsive.
What's your exercise of choice? Are you a jogger? Everything. Like I might hit hot yoga or I might with weights or I got the soul cycle here.
Hit the mitts, you know, that kind of shit. And that's all to facilitate your snacking.
All to facilitate, yes. Because that's why I work out.
A little bit of, a little IPA, a little potato chips, some chocolate. Well, you do a little bit of boxing, right? You do a little bit of boxing.
Not me. Thoreau got me into, like, doing the soul cycle of boxing.
Oh, yeah, my friend does that. Fight camp, right? And by the way, got me in shape.
But now my son, what's interesting is my son, my oldest son who's 15, Archie, because I started doing that, he got into it because of throw through somebody else. Anyway, he starts to fight.
Now he's fighting with a real guy in a gym every weekend, which is crazy. Oh, he's sparring.
Your son's sparring? So he's sparring and he's really getting into it. He's way better than me.
Don't be careful. I know.
I'm very excited to see Argyle. Should I be? Yes.
I saw the trailer. It looks incredible and I love Matthew Vaughn.
It's really fun. That looks like a blast to shoot a movie like that.
A whole movie about a sweater. Yeah.
So it starts with the idea, then the knitting, and then someone wears it? Walk me through it. You just gave away the ending.
That's right. No, it's a lot of fun.
You guys, your head's... Do you like doing all the action stuff and the stunts and things like that? Did you get hurt at all? You must have.
No, we had an amazing stunt team. He's agile, dude.
He's fucking looking at me. He's agile.
Yeah, but you got to do the start of the stunt and the end of the stunt, right? Yeah, you got to do a little bit of the kung fu fighting, yeah. Yeah? And you had fun with that.
I like it. It's fun.
I like it, the fake stylized violence. But, you know, I had an amazing stunt double.
Every time I would do something, I thought I was going fast, and then I'd watch him, and then I looked like I was in slow motion. Is this a stunt double you've worked with before? He's amazing.
No, he's a prodigy. His name's Greg Talley.
He's like a Jackie Chan. He's from Northern England.
He's a gymnast. He's a double for Spider-Man.
He's 26. He was 24 when he did mine, yeah.
Wow. Did he get hurt? He did get hurt on another thing, but he's fine.
Okay. He's fine, yeah, yeah.
Have you ever gotten hurt or hurt somebody doing a scene? No, Tim Roth and I kind of hit each other, kind of clipped each other in a rain machine doing a fight, but it was fine. Nothing serious.
On holiday or during a shoot? I broke my toe talking to my agent in my house once, you know what I mean? I once sprained my finger getting into a Tesla. Yeah.
You know what? Sam, we took up way too much of your time. Wait, wait.
I want to ask you about Oscar, though. How did you get ready for that? How did you do that? How did you – what was your research for that? Well, I took a G5 to New York and then an Escalade from Teterboro to the Upper West Side, I think.
You really, but you nailed that guy. I mean, that's a lot of behavior, man.
That's a lot. It's a whole thing with the imitation.
Forget about the piano. It's a long, long story and it took about 20 years.
Does it involve scooping up bagels from Zaybars and filling them with peanut butter? By the way, Sam. It's endless.
It's endless, Sean. Call me on a side-zoom.
All right, we'll side-zoom. It's on a side-zoom.
But really quick, I did put on a few pounds, and I've said this story on here before, and one of the reviews in Chicago where we opened it said, Sean's going to be great on Broadway, but he needs to kill the fat suit and the plastic wig. Both my body and my hair.
Yeah, you weren't wearing a wig or a fat suit. Is that right? No, Sean.
Oh, Sean. But anyway, thanks for asking, Sam.
That's very sweet. I'd like to hear more.
But we didn't even get to be handing in Spokane or billboards, which you won the Oscar for, which I fucking blew my mind. You blew my mind.
There's so much to talk to. I will say there are very few people.
There are a lot of people. No, sorry.
That's not true. I will say a lot of people are deserving of Oscars all the time, every year.
But to see you win an Oscar was so cool. You deserve 10 of them.
So fucking cool. I love you guys.
Because you Because you're so fucking deserving, dude. You're so talented.
And really quick, when I was doing, you were doing Be Handing in Spokane while I was doing Promises, Promises. And I went downstairs to the basement to get my haircut from a woman named, I think her name's Carmel.
And I walked down getting ready for my weekly or two bi-weekly haircut. And and there you are sitting in the chair and i was like holy shit that's fucking sam rock yeah what's he doing here yeah i'm like why is he why did he come here to get his haircut i just thought that was the coolest thing in the world like i was i was i was guffawing i'm just a person yeah listener if you're not in the entertainment, you need to know that this guy is the guy everybody wants to work with, be friends with.
He does constantly the best performances. It's just catnip for actors.
And the fact that we're able to even call ourselves friends with him is enormous. So, yeah, you deserve multiple statues.
Yeah. And I want more.
You need to get a Thalberg right now. You need to get a full, like the full, you know what? Right? We're going to give the smart list Thalberg.
Let's do that. Listen, I love you guys.
I love this podcast. I'm a true, true fan.
I know the terminology. Anyway, I love you guys.
Love you too, Sam. Thanks for being here today.

Love you.

Can't wait to see you soon.

And the beard looks fantastic.

Yeah.

Thanks, guys.

You look amazing.

You look amazing.

Thanks for doing this, dude.

Dude, thank you for having me.

Thank you for having me.

And let's give Thoreau endless shit.

Oh, yeah, please.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, you can't hurt him more than he hurts himself, you know?

Let's be honest. All right, big fat love.
All right, big fat love. Thanks, guys.
Peace out. Bye, buddy.
Peace out. Bye, Sammy.
Thank you. Bye.
Oh, Sam the Rock. Shani, great, great guest.
I love him so much. He's such a good guy, too.
He's just the greatest, you know? Yeah. Well, I sound like a broken record, but I truly do.
But But you know, when you go, like, Will, when you were saying, you go through all of it, when I was researching him and knowing he was coming on today, you go through all of his films and his projects, you're like, bam, bam, bam, bam, hit after hit. And if they weren't like a massive hit, he was great.
And like you said, he was great in it. It's just, you know, it's the result of dedicating your life like he has to a craft or an art or anything.
He also is just like no matter what part he's playing, even if it's, you know, sort of just like, you know, the lead that's kind of just kind of the straight guy, he'll find a way to give that character some quirk, something interesting. There's a little bit of like sparkle to color.
Little sort of shades. It's easy to overdo that and overplay a character because it might not be written in the character, but he finds the right spots to do it.
Yeah, you know, I was going to say, I've always sort of used John Goodman as my example of the person who's amazing in everything he does

no matter what

the thing is

over time

right

and different

volumes

different tones

dramas

comedies

Sam's in that

same category

and always good

he's in that

like dramas

comedies

things

and like you say

Jay

like just adds

color

has a little

something

brings a little

sparkle

like it's the career

that you wish you

I wish I had

of course

but I want him

I want him to be cast

in leads Thank you. DJ, like, just adds color, has a little something, brings a little sparkle.
Like, it's the career that you wish I had.

Yeah, but I want him to be cast in Leeds, you know, as well as just like the – Well, but it's not as often as they – It should be. He and I have talked about this.
Like there's, there's just, there's a, you know, there's a certain kind of sort of like an average type of look and person and presence that studios feel comfortable with putting as the lead. They don't want anybody too definitive or specific.
Well, that's because they're worried about – because they sort of think – they're always trying to anticipate what they think audiences, and they think about sort of economics. They're like, what is the thing, the prototypical? Or physical types.
Yeah, but he can play something completely normal and level, and just at the moments where it's appropriate for the lead. But he's almost like too interesting in a way.
And I mean that as a compliment, not too weird. He's got so much personality.
He's super smart. He's super fucking cool.
He's magnetic on screen. By the way, we joked about Chappie.
You should see how they run. It's a really good movie.
He's so interesting in that as this, he's the lead, he's the detective who's got all this shit going on. He's fucking, you're like, fuck man, this guy's just, he always brings it.
Always brings it. By the way, Iron Man 2.
We didn't talk about Iron Man 2. Written by? The Justin Theroux.
Justin Theroux, that's right. Yeah.
That's, he wrote so hard, that's when the first time the sleeves came off because he was writing. Yeah.
And it smoked him off. Yeah, it was.
It was a fire, right? It was a fire. It was a wrist fire that worked his way up his arms there.

Hey, Will, I don't know what you're doing later,

but are you open to throwing me?

Oh, sure.

Can you just throw me, please?

Sure, man.

You want to be careful, though.

You don't want to break your arm.

And if you do break your arm, you want to break it around the forearm.

You don't want to break it up near the...

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