"Edward Norton"

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Speaker 1 Scotty and I are here in England still, right in London. And before we leave, we're talking about going to Paris while we're over here because it's like, when are we going to be over here again?

Speaker 1 And so we might take a day just to go over to Paris. And we talked about how great it would be to use Rosetta Stone to learn just a little bit of French before we go.
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Speaker 2 Sean, happy holidays to you.

Speaker 2 If you're a musical genius, if you were to make up a new Christmas classic song,

Speaker 1 how would it go?

Speaker 2 I mean, should I, what about if I give you a little beat right now?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you write some lyrics, right?

Speaker 1 So, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Merry Christmas,

Speaker 1 to Jason and Will.

Speaker 1 Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. Do you know anybody named Bill?

Speaker 1 Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

Speaker 1 Merry Christmas.

Speaker 1 This is going to give kids nightmares. What's going on? Welcome to Smart List.
Welcome to Smart List. Welcome to Smart List.

Speaker 2 Enjoy the show.

Speaker 1 It's going to be better than the song. Smart

Speaker 1 List.

Speaker 1 Smart

Speaker 1 List.

Speaker 1 Oh, hey. Snap.

Speaker 2 Snap. We were just talking about dirty desktops, Sean, and dirty inboxes.

Speaker 1 Okay. Do you have

Speaker 2 like a bunch of emails that

Speaker 2 you haven't read or you did read and you haven't really deleted them and it's not in sync with your iPhone? And are you a mess technologically or is it tight?

Speaker 2 So funny.

Speaker 2 Answer the question.

Speaker 1 Answer the question, Sean.

Speaker 2 Or take your time. We're not on the air or anything.

Speaker 1 You know what?

Speaker 1 I don't delete emails,

Speaker 1 but I don't go back and check them out. Is that the question?

Speaker 1 How many do you keep unread, I think, is what he's doing? Oh, no, no.

Speaker 1 I like zero, zero, zero unread.

Speaker 2 Okay, but so once you read them, you don't delete them? Why not?

Speaker 1 No. Well, I don't know.
It's an extra step I didn't think I had to do.

Speaker 2 So you just have all the emails you've ever received are sitting in your

Speaker 1 inbox. So your inbox is empty? No, no, it's full.
No, all my emails I've ever read. Yours, I'm saying, to Jason.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely clean.

Speaker 2 The only emails that I have read that I keep in there are the things that I need to respond to when I have the time to really focus on them and respond to them.

Speaker 2 They're like little reminder, like to-do list.

Speaker 1 You keep them unread, right? No, no, I read them.

Speaker 2 And then if they're in the inbox still, that means I still have yet to respond.

Speaker 1 So what you can do is, alternatively,

Speaker 1 you can keep them read,

Speaker 1 but you still hold on to them in case you need to reference them and go, like, hey, what was that thing I need to go back? Because I go back all the time. But that's in the trash.

Speaker 2 You can just go into the trash and

Speaker 1 eventually get deleted. And so, like, I need...

Speaker 2 Do you have a thing you can check and say never delete?

Speaker 1 Guys, guys. I'll be like, you know, did I get that version of the script?

Speaker 1 Or especially if I'm going back and forth and I'm doing drafts with Chappie, I'll be like, oh, wait, where was the fucking draft?

Speaker 2 Boy, Sean, I knew we'd get a Chappie in the Chappy.

Speaker 1 It's early too.

Speaker 1 Chappie.

Speaker 2 Mark Chappell, the greatest writer in the history of Britain.

Speaker 1 There we go.

Speaker 1 There's the quote. That's the quote.

Speaker 1 Wait, but do you, what was I going to say about you?

Speaker 2 You know, the problem I have, and I hope Apple's listening, the problem is on iMessage.

Speaker 2 When I read a text from somebody and I go, oh, I really want to respond to that, but I don't have the time to really focus on it the way that it deserves,

Speaker 2 I want to mark it as unread

Speaker 2 so that it stays lit up, because otherwise I'll forget to go back to it. And then the person thinks I'm just the a-hole that I'm trying to pretend not to be when I don't respond.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Sean's Sean's having a conversation with somebody on the side.

Speaker 1 Yeah, can you tell? Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 Do you not have a red light spinning around in your room like we do?

Speaker 1 You know, we're rolling, right?

Speaker 1 Sorry, Scotty was asking me something. Wait,

Speaker 1 what? No, but is it about whipped cream?

Speaker 1 He asked me if I wanted another sugar in my tea. Did he, really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Wait, you have tea? Oh, that's right. You don't drink coffee, do you, Sean?

Speaker 1 No, I drink tea. But it's like a milkshake because I put tons of cream and sugar in it.
That's shocking.

Speaker 1 But wait, last thing about that because I think you know now, Jason, you can unsend from your phone.

Speaker 1 That's the latest iPhone update. So if you send an email.
So if you send an email, you have, you can.

Speaker 2 Oh, right. Yeah.
You can, there's an oops.

Speaker 1 There's an oops button. Yeah.
Like if you wanted to edit it.

Speaker 2 How does that work?

Speaker 2 Does it then disappear from the sender's inbox or from the

Speaker 1 recipients? Oh, this is correct.

Speaker 2 Well, I still think that it would be easy for them to mark text as unread if you'd like to, but they haven't done it yet.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm pissed about it today. Will, I see you're in white again.
Sean, I see you have a hat on again.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I don't always wear white.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you do. Makes your teeth pop.

Speaker 1 What are you talking about?

Speaker 2 All right, let's get on with it. It's early in the morning, and my friends aren't that chatty, so we're going to go ahead and we're going to introduce you.
No, I can chat about stuff.

Speaker 1 I am very chatty, but I can chat about stuff. Yeah, and I do want to get to your guests, but.

Speaker 2 Do you have anything worth chatting about?

Speaker 1 Sean, go to your list. Okay, let let me ask that.
What have you worked on?

Speaker 2 What are your bits today?

Speaker 1 Well, I have. Oh, the first bit was, oh, what if he started reading? Scotty come in and ask me,

Speaker 1 no, Arnie did that.

Speaker 1 No. Well, remember when we had Ryan Johnson on and Scotty just...
Scotty appears whenever there's a Star Wars reference of any kind.

Speaker 1 When Ewan was on, he made him

Speaker 1 great appearance as well.

Speaker 2 All right, we got a fellow today.

Speaker 1 Okay. who has had to put up with a lot of BS.

Speaker 1 Well, probably.

Speaker 2 So we got a fellow today that has somehow managed to keep his head down and do some really cool work in a lot of different areas that many people notice and are affected by. Some of that is acting.

Speaker 2 Some of that's directing. Some of that's producing.

Speaker 1 Some of that is entrepreneurial, philanthropic, environmental. Did you just say philanthropic? Yeah, he did.

Speaker 2 Philanthropic.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 He's been all, I'm going to start at the top.

Speaker 1 Don't you dare.

Speaker 2 He's been all around us, but we know very little about him, or at least less than you would assume given his fame. Well, that ends today with this hard-hitting investigative journalistic hour.

Speaker 2 He was born in Boston. He's married to a Canadian.

Speaker 1 Prick up, Will.

Speaker 2 Yep. He speaks Japanese.

Speaker 2 Got the acting bug from watching Cinderella. He debuted in Annie, Get Your Gun, Prick Up Sean.

Speaker 2 Has one kid, three Oscar nominations, a degree from Yale, knows Aikido and Krav Maga, and he's big brother to Molly and James. Folks, please welcome Sean's dude, Edward Harrison Norton.

Speaker 1 Edward! Hooray!

Speaker 1 Oh, look at this guy.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Yeah, big slice of class today. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You go.

Speaker 2 Classy guest.

Speaker 1 So nice to meet you.

Speaker 2 There he is.

Speaker 1 I like the light.

Speaker 1 I needed a towel to bite on. I bit through my thumb

Speaker 1 during the warm-up. Because it was so embarrassing.
Yeah, because it was so embarrassing.

Speaker 2 Because of the Kelly and Regis vibe to

Speaker 2 our past.

Speaker 1 I think we're all.

Speaker 1 It's just early. We're tired.
We're a little tired of it. It's early.
It's too cute.

Speaker 2 Let's get into some hard-hitting journalistic.

Speaker 1 There was so much weird stuff in what you just read. Like,

Speaker 1 where do you, what are you on? Like, yeah, well, I, you know. There's nothing other than Wikipedia that's no, no, it's just

Speaker 1 straight Wikipedia.

Speaker 1 It's all Wikipedia. Were you making that stuff up? Like, Krav Magazine? He kind of weaves in.
His little funny is that he weaves stuff in.

Speaker 1 Well, you know,

Speaker 2 I usually add some stuff that's not true, but this is, I didn't do any ads.

Speaker 1 Akito and Krav McGah is is on your page is that not is that not accurate no um i i i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to go talk with jimmy west i think

Speaker 1 your car is getting stolen right now stealing your car

Speaker 2 or is that sean no that's not me

Speaker 2 that's scotty making a run for it while sean is distracted i don't know that's that's not me um so you but but hang on but you do know japanese yeah i'm okay on that No, but for real.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? Okay on that. I did, you know, it's like one of those things I did in my youth with a lot of passion, and then I went and lived over there.
And

Speaker 1 I'm okay. I'm okay.
I can do enough to impress, like, in the junket in Tokyo. I can get them all aflutter.

Speaker 1 And then I don't understand anything they're saying after I've done my few key phrases that sound sophisticated.

Speaker 2 Can you say, good God, somebody's stealing my car?

Speaker 1 No, I see. That's what I mean.
Really? No.

Speaker 2 But you did study it, and then you went there and you worked for a few years.

Speaker 1 But this has been a long time. We're all like middle-aged now.
Yeah. I can't wait to see.

Speaker 1 I'm well past middle-aged now. But

Speaker 2 we all play roles in our 30s, which are amazing.

Speaker 1 Edward, where are we finding you? Are you on the East Coast right now? Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 I'm in California. California.

Speaker 1 And wait, and so you're married to a Canadian? Yeah, Shauna Robertson. I didn't know that she, I've only met her a handful of times.
I don't think we've ever met. Nice to meet you formally.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a lot of times.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that Shauna was Canadian. Where is she from? Toronto.
Canadian farm girl from

Speaker 1 outside Toronto. Parents are still on a 100-acre farm out there.

Speaker 1 What part of Ontario? Can you say the area? Markham. Markham.
Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. Markham.
Oh, is that okay?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Yeah, but she came, she, you know, she started producing movies when she was literally like 18 years old.
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 For Mike Binder.

Speaker 1 Oh, of course.

Speaker 2 Mike Binder, friend, friend, friend of ours, friend of the show.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah, we know Mike Binder.
Sean.

Speaker 1 It's funny.

Speaker 1 I'm really, I'm sitting here thinking. I'm actually surprised that we haven't met.
Like, I feel, I feel like.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm surprised too. I'm surprised you don't know Shauna.
Will.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we do.

Speaker 1 I've met Shauna a number of times, probably four or five times over the last 20 years, just briefly.

Speaker 1 Did she work for Judd at one point? Yeah, she well, she and Judd started Appatel. She produced all Judd's movies.
Right. Oh, really? So I suppose that was it.
And then

Speaker 1 she did Elf. She did Elf and

Speaker 1 she produced Elf, and she produced

Speaker 1 Anchorman, Anchorman, and then she and Judd teamed up after Anchorman and then did that whole run of 40-year-old Virgin. Right.

Speaker 1 Did she produce something that you were working on? Is that how you guys met? No, no.

Speaker 1 We met in London.

Speaker 1 Woody Harrelson and his wife introduced us. Wow, how about that?

Speaker 1 Woody was doing Night of the Iguana

Speaker 1 on the West End. Amazing.

Speaker 1 And actually, it was very I was I was rehearsing a movie in New York and I

Speaker 1 I was getting a little aggravated with the process. And

Speaker 1 they were like, can you do another day tomorrow?

Speaker 1 And I had this very impulsive, it was a little bit of a passive-aggressive thing. I said, no, no, no, no, I can't.
I'm not free tomorrow. And they said, you know, how come?

Speaker 1 And I said, oh, I'm going to London tonight to see a friend in a play.

Speaker 1 And I had that.

Speaker 1 And then I called, I literally went on like, you know. Expedia.
Yeah, Expedia and got a ticket to London and called Woody and said, I'm coming to see you.

Speaker 1 And that's, you know, that's.

Speaker 1 And then it changed your life. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that was

Speaker 1 meant to be.

Speaker 2 And now you got Atlas, and you're just sailing off into the sunset, playing dad.

Speaker 2 Now, so.

Speaker 1 Wait, Jason, do you and Ed know each other?

Speaker 2 We do. We know a little bit.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 from where?

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Well, through Shauna. Shauna.

Speaker 1 Dax. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Little mixers.
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 And Amanda. Sean and Amanda are friends.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Amanda is the key to my entire social life. As you two guys know,

Speaker 2 Will and Sean. Yeah.
You know,

Speaker 1 I know no one.

Speaker 2 I have no friends.

Speaker 1 Jason, I must say, I'm always amazed/slash slightly shocked at how well you know other people's kids' names. You always call out their names like

Speaker 1 the way that you throw it out with such ease makes it seem like I'm really familiar with their name.

Speaker 2 And in fact, I've just been studying my notes.

Speaker 1 And what happens is, and it's disarming

Speaker 1 for the guests because they go, oh man,

Speaker 1 and I realize it's a style, and I call BS on it.

Speaker 2 They think that I care and that I'm close with them.

Speaker 1 And it's all, it's all, I'm a professional liar.

Speaker 1 Let's bust him right now, though. But because he's on Wikipedia, he actually thinks I only have one child still, and I actually have two

Speaker 1 because they have that wrong on Wikipedia. And so

Speaker 1 he just by the way, you know who's going to kill me.

Speaker 2 Let me finish.

Speaker 2 Tell me how little Sebastian Sebastian is doing.

Speaker 1 Is he still a little angel?

Speaker 1 Jason, Amanda is going to kill you for this.

Speaker 2 She fucking kill me for that.

Speaker 1 She is going to kill you.

Speaker 1 And you know what else?

Speaker 1 Let me tell you something.

Speaker 2 God, you just busted me, Edward. So here's the thing.

Speaker 2 So I was doing my little notes about an hour ago, and I see on Wikipedia, yeah, so Atlas, and I'm like, boy, you know, Amanda sent me two pictures yesterday. It looked like two different kids.

Speaker 2 But then I thought, then I thought, well, no, Wikipedia's just got Atlas there.

Speaker 1 That must be a second picture of an older picture of Atlas. Boy, because I, and I'm like, God damn it.

Speaker 2 So now Amanda's going to be like, hey, Dick, I sent you two pictures, two children.

Speaker 1 And she's going to say, once again, you trusted Wikipedia over her.

Speaker 1 And once again, it's proven one thing. Always trust my instincts.
I was so right. I'm so glad that we dug into this because there was so much fruit here.

Speaker 2 All right. But in my defense, they both both have beautifully long, luxurious blonde hair, right?

Speaker 1 Which could be boy or girl because they're got these cold, sharp features. Edward Harold? One's a boy, one's a girl.

Speaker 1 And they're nine and six. But

Speaker 1 they did both have,

Speaker 1 he had real like Greg Allman level, you know.

Speaker 2 A lot of that was extensions, though, right?

Speaker 1 Some people were saying, God, he looks like, you know, Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall. And I was like, I think it's a little more Greg Allman, like Cher era.

Speaker 1 You know.

Speaker 1 so wait Jason speaking of kids I want to see if this is an urban legend because it's become an oft repeated story in our family when it comes to work family dynamics

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 one of the girls heard you over telling Amanda that Ozark was going to get picked up for season two and that she leaned in and said oh, I was really looking forward to getting to know you better.

Speaker 1 Is that true?

Speaker 1 No, I need to know if it's true. Did one of your girls say to you?

Speaker 1 First on how you fucking heard that.

Speaker 1 But I don't doubt that it's true.

Speaker 1 Amanda passed that one along to us.

Speaker 2 Well, you see, Amanda is probably protecting me, and you, Edward, have now scarred me.

Speaker 2 No, that's.

Speaker 1 Murder, no.

Speaker 1 Murder!

Speaker 1 This is one of the greatest things.

Speaker 2 It sounds like Franny at about age six.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which times out about right. Is Smartless is Smartless now for people? Is this what it is now? Is Edward a permanent? This is so phenomenal.

Speaker 2 We would love to keep you in the bullpen in the event of illness or anything like that to any of us.

Speaker 1 I could be the fourth Beetle on the Let It Beat.

Speaker 1 We would love to beat it. The rest of you will all be in light, and I'll be Paul in red.

Speaker 2 Sean, did you know that there was only three Beatles and then they brought in the fourth?

Speaker 1 Not true.

Speaker 1 This is you're talking. Yeah,

Speaker 2 the guy laughing is the dumbass that was surprised to hear that Beatles is spelt B-E-A-T.

Speaker 1 Hey, hey, he and he was like, huh. Hey.
Well, that is clever. Hey, listen, Penis.

Speaker 1 There's a ton of comments. Are we still calling him Penis? Okay.
I called him Penis. There's a ton of comments that agree with me.
They didn't know either.

Speaker 2 Well, they're dumb as you.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 1 Sean's like, oh, that's like in the Tom Hanks movie, The Wonders.

Speaker 1 What was his movie about the one-hit, you know, the one-beat

Speaker 1 O-N-E?

Speaker 1 He uses a Tom Hanks directorial debut to reference the Beatles.

Speaker 1 Wait a second. What was it? That thing you do.
That thing you do. That thing you do.
That thing you do.

Speaker 1 Speaking of debuts, so Edward, I don't know where, where did you, what part of the country did you grow up in? Columbus. I've got that part.
I've got that part. Central Police.

Speaker 2 He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and then he was brought up in Maryland.

Speaker 1 In Maryland. Oh, wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Baltimore, Washington. Didn't you spend time in Chicago? I thought, no.

Speaker 1 All right. No.
Never mind.

Speaker 1 Did you, so did you grow grow up and were the arts a big part of your life as a kid? Were you doing stuff?

Speaker 1 How old were you when you started to perform or act or whatever?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, the answer is yes.

Speaker 1 My folks were like really not artists, but aficionados of the theater. They loved theater.
They loved film.

Speaker 1 I'm glad you said aficionado. It's a word I would have used, and it would have befuddled both of these fucking idiots, but thank you.

Speaker 2 Yesterday, he threw out a couple of multisyllabic words that was.

Speaker 1 I said it, I said it, and Sean squinted even more. No, I know why.

Speaker 1 You will audibly go from healing.

Speaker 1 I sometimes keep a log of funny shit that everybody says. And as you were telling your very nice story, I started laughing at Jason saying, Well, they're as dumb as you are.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So he was also on a delay, Edward.

Speaker 1 I have a little bit of a delay.

Speaker 2 The synapses are a little rusty.

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Speaker 2 And now back to the show.

Speaker 1 Sorry, we interrupt. So your parents were aficionados, yeah.
No, no, I, I, my mom was an English teacher. She taught Shakespeare and all that kind of stuff.
But, but they, um, but um,

Speaker 1 honestly, I just, I had a babysitter who was at a local theater arts school. And

Speaker 1 my parents took me to see her in a, in a, in a thing, and it really lit me up. And I started.

Speaker 2 Was this Cinderella? Does Wiki have that right?

Speaker 1 Not really.

Speaker 1 It was a, I think it was a musical of Cinderella or something like that, but it wasn't called Cinderella. It wasn't called Cinderella.

Speaker 2 The babysitter brought you to the show?

Speaker 1 No, no, she was in it. So

Speaker 1 my parents took me to see

Speaker 1 this very, you know,

Speaker 2 well, but hang on a second.

Speaker 2 What was a musical version of Cinderella that was so like, oh, I got to do that?

Speaker 1 Because it was a, it was a theater arts school, you know, like a outside of regular school kind of thing in our community that, um,

Speaker 1 like waiting for Goffman, basically, yeah, but for kids, but it was, um, it was, uh,

Speaker 1 it because it had kids ranging from like 18 to five, they would do these productions where there was something for everyone, and there were little kids in the, in this production, you thought that might be for me.

Speaker 1 I thought that was pretty cool, yeah. And, um,

Speaker 1 and I just, it wasn't like, oh, this is what I'm gonna do at all. I just was interested in,

Speaker 1 you know, if I said, if I said soccer looks fun, my parents would put me in soccer. Or, you know, And it was a thing I started doing like many of us.
It was, you know,

Speaker 1 one among many things I did when I was young. And then I kind of, I was,

Speaker 1 I, I, I loved it. I was, I was, I think I was good at it then, but, but mostly it was just fun.
It was just, I, I, it was something I did after school. It was fun.
I did it. I did it with regular.

Speaker 1 Then in high, but in high school, I got very self-conscious. I went to public school.
There actually was a really great theater director there, but I, I, I got super self-conscious in high school.

Speaker 1 I was really little.

Speaker 1 And I grew like a foot late. A lot of that went the weed.
Yeah, the weed.

Speaker 1 No, I was very self-conscious about

Speaker 1 in high school about performing and stuff like that. So I wasn't, I kind of pulled back from it.
But then maybe I was 16 or 17, I think, I saw a class trip went down to the National Theater in D.C.

Speaker 1 And Ian McKellen was doing,

Speaker 1 he was doing this one-man show that he toured with that was about his life in theater.

Speaker 1 It was about Shakespeare's life, the Shakespearean texts, and his life in the theater. Oh, that's cool.
I can't remember what he called it,

Speaker 1 but it was absolutely amazing. It was,

Speaker 1 it sounds, it actually sounds, now that I'm saying it, it actually sounds really sort of esoteric. But he, but he, um, Sean just winted again when I said no, no.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was looking up.

Speaker 1 Dictionary.com. Yeah, I know.
But he, no, Anyway, I saw Ian McKellen when I was in a high school trip, and it had a big, big impact on me.

Speaker 1 I was very,

Speaker 1 it suddenly seemed like something you could do as an adult. But was it the performance part? I mean,

Speaker 1 if it was, I guess, you know, quasi-autobiographical in that he was talking about his life in the theater, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Was him describing that alluring to you in that way? Yes, exactly. It was the combo of the life he described

Speaker 1 and the things it had taken him into. But then

Speaker 1 it was his weave. He was doing things from Shakespeare, which

Speaker 1 I wasn't super lit up on Shakespeare or something in high school.

Speaker 1 Like everybody, you know, you wanted to like it, but

Speaker 1 it was tough to get into in some ways.

Speaker 2 Despite your mother's proficiency.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. No, she was really, and she was...
good at illuminating it for kids, I think.

Speaker 1 But, you know, you guys remember, remember when Ken Brana's thing, Henry V came out? That was more maybe when we were in college. But anyway,

Speaker 1 he, he,

Speaker 1 Ian McKellen, he would do these pieces and he was talking about his life. And then suddenly he would just sort of spin and almost.

Speaker 2 How did you have any idea that you were any good at it?

Speaker 2 Do you remember that moment where it was like, oh, some people say it's the first time they make somebody laugh or the first time they make somebody cry or something?

Speaker 2 Was there a moment where you're like, oh, I might not suck at this?

Speaker 1 That's a good question. I think I went through phases when I decided, okay, this actually does interest me.
Then I went to college. Then I was playing sports and I wasn't really doing much theater.

Speaker 1 Then I started doing theater again. And I think I started getting, you know, I wasn't, I was doing all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but you're talking about the Yale drama school. You don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. I didn't go to Yale Drama School.
No, I didn't go to Yale Drama.

Speaker 1 I went. I was a little bit.
You're a little bit crusher page, Jason.

Speaker 1 You got a wonky browser. You are like 0 for 4 today.

Speaker 1 You did go to Yale, though, yes?

Speaker 2 I did. I did not go to the drama school at Yale though.

Speaker 1 No, I did not.

Speaker 1 I was a history major and I wasn't, I thought, I honestly thought I was like, here comes Will.

Speaker 1 I was doing theater on the side, a fair amount of it. But again, it was mostly just fun.
And

Speaker 1 the idea when I went to New York after, it was in the back of my mind that I wanted to see whether you could, I kind of was having a double life. I was like, I'm going to get a job.

Speaker 1 I'm going to do something.

Speaker 1 But I couldn't kind of let go of this interest in

Speaker 1 in in it i was very passionate about film and stuff like that but i i was it wasn't even that i didn't love it or or was it was that i wasn't really giving myself permission to do it you know

Speaker 1 and why do you think why do you think so because my my granddad who was very influential in my life he he paid for me to go to college and he was very he was very excited and proud about the fact that I'd

Speaker 1 gotten into a good school and all these things. And I was very...
Mom's Mom's dad or dad's dad? My mom's dad. And I was very close with him.

Speaker 1 And he, I really actually felt I sort of owed him doing something quote unquote serious with my, you know, I felt like I, and I actually kind of worked for him when I for in

Speaker 1 doing like low-income housing finance and development when I got into school. No, no, in New York.

Speaker 1 Boy, you're, you're a hoe for a thousand. I don't know what the fuck.
Edward, you and I have very similar tracks. And yours is much more successful.

Speaker 1 Mine is like the poor man's version of you, but I also, I was very close to my mom's dad, and he was very influential and helped me out a lot. And I also was a history

Speaker 1 briefly. I dropped out of college and not Yale.
My sister went to Yale, but I, so I'm like, I'm like the loser version of Edward.

Speaker 1 Eddie. And I've

Speaker 1 Eddie Arnett.

Speaker 1 I don't think you're going to be a version of the education.

Speaker 2 No, no, your version would be Eddie Arnett.

Speaker 1 I guess so.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, I'm with you every step of the way. I was going to say, it's funny that your mom was a teacher and yet you were surrounded by this and you had access to,

Speaker 1 I guess, things like Shakespeare or whatever. But I find it interesting that as a young actor, I found it very, as much as I wanted to connect with it, I found it very inaccessible.

Speaker 1 And every step of the way, for whatever reason, this is just me personally, when it came to text like that, I just couldn't find an access. Even, it doesn't matter whether it was Kenneth Branagh,

Speaker 1 I saw Ray Fiennes do Hamlet on Broadway 25 years ago. I don't know if you saw it.
Like every time I tried to connect with it, I found it very, very difficult.

Speaker 1 And I don't know why. And I think I can appreciate it more now than I did then.
It was kind of wasted on me then. Do you know what I mean? I do, yeah.

Speaker 1 I do think people like Rafe, who I've seen, like he did Antony and Cleopatra, which is a tough play, like not,

Speaker 1 but.

Speaker 1 He was able to illuminate it. He was able to let you know what it was really about, which is becoming middle-aged and wanting to find passion again.
And I've definitely seen people

Speaker 1 who are able to bring it to life again,

Speaker 1 you know, in a special way. I'm not one of them.

Speaker 1 I did some Shakespeare stuff in college, but

Speaker 1 sometimes it almost felt more like

Speaker 1 a box that someone's ticking in a career than it did.

Speaker 1 I love it, but I love going to it when I see people who have that. But

Speaker 1 I was always drawn much more to things that felt like

Speaker 1 what could I do with that? That's, it doesn't fit me, and what could I do with it that can make it new? Or what, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I always like the blank page. I, I, I personally, yeah,

Speaker 2 it's more like it might be like performative, like, I've got to do the Shakespeare as it is intended to be done, as opposed to a freeball character that's written in an original screenplay that you have total autonomy over, and you can create a a brand new person.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 the interaction with the others, you know, with the writer, with the director, to try to like pour something into a mold and come up with something interesting together. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's, it's, and look, I'm not saying that doesn't happen when people do classic scenarios.

Speaker 2 You strike me as somebody who's, who definitely has a very specific idea or plan about the way in which you're going to play a character.

Speaker 2 And yet, you have worked worked with some of the greatest directors of our time that are famous for having a very specific idea or plan about the way in which they're going to make their film.

Speaker 1 You're asking if you're getting to did you clash with all these directors?

Speaker 2 It's not the way I would have phrased it, but

Speaker 2 my question is:

Speaker 2 was that

Speaker 2 a calculated risk that you were taking? Or were you excited to work for them in their films? Or it seemed like.

Speaker 1 I'm assuming it's Death to Smoochie that's

Speaker 1 me.

Speaker 2 But these directors are the best at what they do and

Speaker 2 might not be that flexible

Speaker 1 to accommodate your people. Actually, I think you, I mean, tell me if you relate to this.
I bet you do.

Speaker 1 There are some people,

Speaker 1 a Spike Lee, a David Fincher,

Speaker 1 a Wes Anderson, the specificity. Yeah.
of the way they do it is so liberating. Like to me, it's so great to just,

Speaker 1 and I'm not saying it's puppetry. I'm not saying they're like not looking for you to bring an inflection or a tone, you know, whatever.

Speaker 1 But I think that

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 in film anyway, when someone's in such command of the style that they're going to work in and you can just fit into it, you like it. It's, yeah, it's, it's, I find that really liberating.

Speaker 1 Who was Primal Fear your first film? I auditioned for it.

Speaker 1 Not you, Sean. We've got Edward Norton on the show today, but I did.

Speaker 1 Say how did it? Yeah, it was. It was.
And I think I might have passed Sean in the lobby of the

Speaker 1 Golf and Western building in New York.

Speaker 2 You remember because he...

Speaker 1 He told that once on the show. Did you? I did, yeah.
I remember that. Did you really?

Speaker 1 Oh, you actually did? I did. I got like two or three callbacks.
It was in Chicago. I was like 22 years old.

Speaker 1 I'm still waiting to hear.

Speaker 2 I remember we were talking to Matt Damon was on the show, and he referenced you and that part. And

Speaker 1 you were incredible in that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 I mean, oh, my God.

Speaker 2 But Matt tells a story about how he and Ben

Speaker 2 before they wrote,

Speaker 2 whatchamacallit? Goodwill Hunting. Goodwill Hunting, yeah.
That was like, well, there's only one primal fear part in a generation, and Edward just got it.

Speaker 1 So we have, we better start writing.

Speaker 2 We got to write something for us to do.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's good. Yeah.
It was a big deal. I remember I actually helped a casting director in New York as they were doing an open casting for it.
And I was like, can I read? No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Why don't you just help us? And we're not interested in seeing you. And I was like, this is great.
Well, this is fantastic for my ego.

Speaker 2 You're reading the part of Carol and you're queuing in.

Speaker 1 They asked you to read for the Connie Britton role. Yeah, they did.

Speaker 1 No, I asked to.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 it's a con, it is a compliment because they saw you as too masculine to be a stuttering altar boy who gets raped by a priest. They were like, no one would buy it.

Speaker 1 No one would buy this guy as a victim.

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 was your interest in, I apologize for being all over the place, I'm a disaster, but was your interest in philanthropy and business and investments and stuff like that, was that always a part of kind of who you are and

Speaker 2 yeah?

Speaker 1 Yeah, those are different. Within those categories, I'd say my family's been very involved in kind of, you know, I want to say philanthropic.

Speaker 1 Their work is, my dad's a great conservation advocate, attorney.

Speaker 1 He's a phenomenal leader in the conservation and

Speaker 1 land conservation movement.

Speaker 1 You know, my grandfather was a famous developer, but was involved in affordable housing very deeply. And my mother was in education reform.

Speaker 1 So I did, I grew up in a world of people swirling around me who were doing all kinds of

Speaker 1 mission-driven kind of cause-related work that was very passionate and very

Speaker 1 inspiring.

Speaker 1 The funny thing is a lot of that sounds noble when you say it a certain way. But the truth is, the thing that was coolest about my family was

Speaker 1 they were just all having a ball. My dad loved and still loves, he's 80, the work he did.
You know, he was inspired by like John Muir and

Speaker 1 Ed Abbey and Aldo Leopold and like all these, you know, these great

Speaker 1 American conservation kind of warriors, David Brower. And he was like, he wanted to, you know, he wanted to be outside.
He wanted to be fighting for these like great places and in them.

Speaker 1 And when we were kids, it was just like the work my dad did just seemed like the ultimate fun. And as you started to

Speaker 2 accrue capital and influence, it was natural for you to say, well, let me channel some of that towards, let's shine some of the light on these issues.

Speaker 1 And yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I always found that work, the stuff I've done working on conservation-related stuff, environmental work, I find it very adventurous.

Speaker 1 I think it's, you know, it's, I mean, it's fun to play people in this weird gig we do, but it's also fun to like actually get out and really help the world live a life. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sean, Sean, one time, Sean one time hired a private jet to bring milkshakes back from Chicago on their own. Holy shit.

Speaker 1 What's the name of that place? What's the issue?

Speaker 1 Portillas.

Speaker 1 Portillas. Portillas, yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a joke.

Speaker 2 While we're there, while we're on,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 charities that deserve some attention, if you had a free billion dollars that you found in your pocket, you have to channel it somewhere. Well, these aren't charities.

Speaker 1 These are causes. These are

Speaker 1 no, but

Speaker 1 that would not be difficult for me. I've spent a lot.

Speaker 2 Where would you put it? You got to put it one place.

Speaker 1 One place.

Speaker 1 Peel off a hondo for me. Don't be an addict.
Peel off a hondo.

Speaker 2 Where do you think it would most be used today as opposed to last year or in 10 years?

Speaker 1 I guess, you know, without getting too into the weeds, I think global conservation and environmental protection that's gone from sort of this idea of preservation through defense, you know, like putting lines around places and protecting them and creating protecting areas to people.

Speaker 1 I'd say there's a more sophisticated understanding now than there was even when I was in college that

Speaker 1 these complex systems wrap the world and you really can't like

Speaker 1 you can't you basically have to bring the way that 8 billion people are living in line with ecological sustainability. You can't separate like our economies from it.
So

Speaker 1 to me, the most exciting thing that's happening now

Speaker 1 is that I think people are really coming to understand that you've got to value nature and natural systems within our economic framework.

Speaker 1 And that when you price it the right way, when you understand that air and water and biodiversity, all these things actually aren't free, you can build new, very interesting models of,

Speaker 1 you know, you can have the poor people in the planet who live on the front lines of the places that we're degrading.

Speaker 1 You got to come up with better economic outcomes for people from sustainably managing like the planet than

Speaker 1 trashing it. And

Speaker 1 that's what I think is most interesting today is that we're...

Speaker 1 We can't wall ourselves off and then continue to live in this same manner, that we have to accept where we live and change the way that we live and our attitudes and our perspectives towards the environment in which we live.

Speaker 1 And does some of that also still include reclamation of various lands

Speaker 1 as well? Or is that

Speaker 1 not as worthy a... Oh, no, for sure.

Speaker 1 But I think

Speaker 1 with a different understanding, I think, of which degradations hurt us the most and what kinds of restorations restorations actually deliver value.

Speaker 1 We're all friends with Dax.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you happen to hear this one interview he did recently with this guy named George Monbiot. It's anything, but it is, if I've heard one person recently articulate these

Speaker 1 macro dynamics absolutely brilliantly, that interview is... Anyone who's interested in just sort of where...
What was his name again? Dax Shen. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. You know him actually what's dax short for he's he's i've always wondered dax a million you've always it's just dax

Speaker 1 we'll be right back

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Speaker 1 Back to the show.

Speaker 1 Now, I want to shift gears, Edward.

Speaker 1 I want to talk about one of my favorite stories. There have been a few times over the years where I've watched people on a late-night show and tell a great story.

Speaker 1 One of my favorite stories that I've repeated many times is you on Letterman describing working on the score with two of your idols.

Speaker 1 It's one of my favorite stories. I don't know if you can tell it.
I don't know it. And it's a little fuzzy because it was a few years ago.
It was about 20 years ago.

Speaker 1 A few. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But do you remember that? Do you remember telling it, Dave, that story?

Speaker 1 you know what is the only the ego uh narrows what you remember and of i of course what i remember in that is imitating them maybe and letterman letterman goes you are a regular rich little my friend

Speaker 1 he compared me to rich little

Speaker 1 like it was a high compliment yeah i mean but long before long before everybody was doing you know matt mcconaghy and their imitations rich little was the guy right i mean he was the guy he was amazing.

Speaker 1 He was the impersonation guy. Also Canadian.
But it was a great.

Speaker 1 He was? Yeah. It was a good pull, anyway.
I liked it. So, if you don't remember it,

Speaker 1 I'm going to do it so that you don't have to, which was, unless you do remember it.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 of course I remember. It was.

Speaker 1 I would like to hear it if you'd like to tell me. You were describing working with two of your, you know, of course, acting sort of idols, if you will.

Speaker 1 Yes. Well, it was Marlon Brando's last movie.

Speaker 1 I had known him prior to doing it.

Speaker 1 Robert De Niro kind of pulled him and me into this film. He wanted to do it.
And he was the one who sort of recruited.

Speaker 1 I credit him with the idea that it would be interesting for the three of us to line up in this kind of multi-generational heist

Speaker 1 thing.

Speaker 1 I think that Bob was getting a really big paycheck and he didn't want it to fall apart also.

Speaker 1 And he was thinking like, how can i hold it together with people i like and blah blah and um anyway he pulled us all together and it was the kind of thing i would have really done just for the poster you know i mean you really like like the whole idea that it would say um you know brando de niro affleck would have really you know it would it would i i would have i would have been on the show saying why'd i let that one uh-huh get away you know what i mean there's only one of them because they they and they had never done a movie together.

Speaker 1 The Godfather movies, but they weren't in the same

Speaker 1 scenes. Yeah.
So it was kind of like, you know, I need to get on that set

Speaker 1 just for the story. And then it was really great.

Speaker 1 It actually was, even though it was kind of a genre movie and it had its

Speaker 1 formulaic qualities,

Speaker 1 I did actually think they were both really great.

Speaker 1 And Marlon had this idea that was not in the script that he used to, you know, he got a lot of flack from people for being a little bit of an anarchist or being things.

Speaker 1 And I didn't actually think it was warranted.

Speaker 1 I thought that Marlon would, if he thought you were going to venerate him, if he thought you were going to be one of those, you know, kind of gooey-eyed, oh, I'm talking to Marlon Brando, he would really stick a fork in you.

Speaker 1 And he didn't like it. He wanted to.

Speaker 1 Well, he sure liked to stick forks in things. We know that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Good. That was a layup.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Sorry.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 he had this idea that his character was in love with Bob's character.

Speaker 1 And I think a lot of people honestly kind of got, went a little gripped, like, oh, God, what is he doing?

Speaker 1 He's going to, he's, you know, he's coming up with the idea of this character, this tough heist movie, and suddenly he's acting like, you know, Truman Capote and everything.

Speaker 1 But the thing was, is...

Speaker 1 I'm going to say this though.

Speaker 1 When you have an idea in your head about what something's going to be and someone else does something else, you can tighten up, right, and not pay attention to whether there's really something in that idea.

Speaker 1 And the truth is,

Speaker 1 I think everybody was reacting to, oh, we got Brando De Niro and Edward, all these things. It's going to be tough.
It's going to be great.

Speaker 1 And Marlon had this totally different idea, which was that he was in love with Bob. But it's, it's fantastic.

Speaker 1 It's a fantastic idea. And it is great in the film.
You can feel

Speaker 1 that the hold in their relationship has been this long-standing unrequited

Speaker 1 thing. And it's much more, I mean, who's tougher or more stoic than Bob? It's not, what's the value of doubling up on it, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you watch Brando in that movie, it's really, really good what he's doing. He's he's lighter.
He plays a character who's

Speaker 1 it adds a whole other layer to the film that wasn't in there, and it's really good. And I, and I thought it was kind of a shame in a way that he

Speaker 1 kind of got, you know, painted with the like, oh, he's being disruptive. He's being, he's being, for what? For like proposing that the character might, you know, have a thing for Bob.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like, what? But you guys have this, so you, but you have this big scene where the three of you and he's drinking sparkling water. This is the moment that you described.
Oh my God.

Speaker 1 I didn't even remember. Yes.
Now I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 Ramlosa sparkling water, by the way.

Speaker 1 To be specific. I have a crazy, weird memory.

Speaker 1 I think it was Aqua Minerale. Oh, you might be right.

Speaker 1 Anyway, he, no,

Speaker 1 now I know what you're talking about. I didn't know what you're talking about.
Yes. He,

Speaker 1 it was the first scene with the three, it was the first scene that we got to do together, the three of us. And

Speaker 1 I allowed myself a little bit of a moment of, you know, I'm walking with giants. Like, this is amazing.
And in the first take, Marlon is, we're pitching the heist to De Niro.

Speaker 1 And Marlon has this riff, and then I'm supposed to have a little riff, and then Bob is supposed to have this reaction. So De Niro is, you know, just listening and very stoic and intense.

Speaker 1 And Marlon's telling this very flowery story. And it's a big tracking shot with all three of us.
And they call it. And Marlon goes right into it.
And he's really terrific.

Speaker 1 He's funny. He's wry.
He's saying this thing. And he's talking about how a shipment got hung up in custom because of Asian longhorn beetles or something.

Speaker 1 And he's saying, you know, hamper this was the fucking bugs. And he's and he's saying this thing.
And he says, Asian longhorn beetles, they got inside the creek.

Speaker 1 And he's put, and he starts pouring his water into the glass. He's very fluid and he's terrific in the scene.
But I notice that he's...

Speaker 1 He's very in it.

Speaker 1 He's looking at De Niro and he's pouring the water down the outside of the glass onto his own linem shirt and it's pooling on his stomach in this little pool in his linen, a cup in his linen shirt, and filling the shirt.

Speaker 1 And I go to look at De Niro, like,

Speaker 1 how's he going to react to this?

Speaker 1 And Bob was falling asleep.

Speaker 1 He had been up very late and he was listening, but

Speaker 1 he was actually starting to nod. out.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 someone says, cut, and Bob snaps up and looks at me and he says, was I falling asleep? And I said, I nodded like really hesitantly. And

Speaker 1 he goes, oh, that's a first, you know, and I was like, one of them is pouring water down his stomach and the other is

Speaker 1 pulling sleep. You're not like cats.

Speaker 1 Walking with these, oh, God, I fucked. That has stuck with me.
I have told that story

Speaker 1 three dozen times.

Speaker 2 With all of the, all of the, I mean, I'm so sort of in, in, in, in awe and humbled by your, your intelligence, your thoughtfulness,

Speaker 2 What do you do?

Speaker 2 What's the lowest brow thing you do?

Speaker 1 Well, sometimes I, oh.

Speaker 2 I mean, like,

Speaker 2 is it a,

Speaker 2 you love to listen to a shitty disco?

Speaker 1 Do you, do you watch a crappy reality show? Do you have a sugar addiction?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'm always, I have a terrible, I'm terrible with like, I'm like Sean. I, I drink coffee as an excuse for milk and sugar.
That's what I'm saying. But, um,

Speaker 1 see, we bonded, Sean. We bonded.
Yeah, exactly. So, all right.
No, no, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1 You know, it's funny. I just did this.
You said you had Ryan Johnson on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. So I did this Knives Out.

Speaker 2 Right. Glass Onion Coming Out.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's coming out.

Speaker 1 And he, I mean, you saw what a dry.

Speaker 1 humor. I mean, he, that guy is just.
He's so sweet. That guy is really sweet and laconic and laid back, but holy shit, is he funny? Yeah.
And he's,

Speaker 1 you talk about someone who

Speaker 1 you were saying, like, what's the low thing you do? But when we were doing that film, you know, sometimes,

Speaker 1 you know how this is. Sometimes you're doing a thing, right? You're doing a thing and you're like,

Speaker 1 how low can we go in this? Like how,

Speaker 1 what, what level? What's the right level? Because it's really funny, but is it all highbrow funny? Or is some of it slapstick? Yeah. You know, physical comedy funny? Or are we allowed?

Speaker 1 you know, a joke that's down here in

Speaker 2 tonal shifts.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in the shifts. And he, he just, you know, sometimes like you get this feeling that a director's not really sure and is willing to take everything.

Speaker 1 Ryan is like a Swiss clockmaker. He knows exactly what he wants.
He knows what level and tone he wants.

Speaker 1 I was so impressed by his.

Speaker 2 I would imagine Wes Anderson is a lot like that, too, because there are moments that are heartbreakingly nuanced

Speaker 2 in their drama, in their authenticity, in their humanity. But then there's just these hugely absurd, broad, slapsticky, almost cartoonish comical moments, and they all work in the same world.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would imagine, Edward,

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 Wes Anderson more sort of

Speaker 1 not tonally,

Speaker 1 tonally specific in the sense that he has a

Speaker 1 it appears to me that he might be more sort of inclined to have a set idea of tonally exactly how he wants the film to be. He does.

Speaker 1 He's, I mean, needless to say, the production design, the costumes, it's like to within an inch of its life. There's nothing.
He'll come in and

Speaker 1 he will step in and

Speaker 1 adjust your tie just so.

Speaker 1 Right, like he's like, sorry, the Donet racket, that particular model of Donet racket didn't come out until 78, so you can't have it in this shot. It's more,

Speaker 1 is it the angle he wants you to hold it at? Is the you know, his precision and his um his feeling for the the

Speaker 1 the the visual aesthetic is legendary and it's and it's everything everyone would think he is that hands-on and that that that precise and he cares an enormous amount about those details and like a lot of people who are like that when you're in the moment and he seems to be splitting hairs you can have

Speaker 1 a moment where you say, can we just, Jesus, let's just get on with it. Like, let's get on with it, right? It's all great.
But then you can't argue with the total effect. Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 You can't argue with the total effect of the final product. And so

Speaker 1 when we got, it's going back to that thing you were saying earlier. I love working with people like that because when you, when you are a fan going in, when you believe

Speaker 1 in,

Speaker 1 When you believe that the final result that they consistently deliver is so good that you just want to be inside whatever that process is, you surrender any defensiveness, you surrender self-protection, you surrender,

Speaker 1 it liberates you because you're in the hands,

Speaker 1 you're in trust, you're in the state of trust, right? And at the end of the day, if Fincher wants to do it 40 times or 50 or whatever, you find

Speaker 1 the gear within yourself that is saying, well, this is what this is. This is how he does it.
And you love it, right? And Wes, Wes will give you, I mean,

Speaker 1 you can say, people say, oh, no one would give Edward a a line reading. Wes gives line readings all the time.
Imitating Wes's line readings is a joy.

Speaker 1 It's a joy to get a line reading from Wes.

Speaker 1 You know, and

Speaker 1 I mean, you talk about like

Speaker 1 the Tenenbaums, like he, he told me one time that I'm not telling tales out of school. I think Gene Hackman was legendarily tough on people.

Speaker 1 Like Fran McDorman told me on Mississippi Burning that he was so mean to Willem Defoe that she called him mean Gene.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, look, the guys, Gene Hackman, like, my view is like, be any way you want to be, just give us that thing, right? Right.

Speaker 1 But, but Willem told me when we were doing Miles Brooklyn, Willem told me that

Speaker 1 he had been pretty tough on him, but that he was telling himself as a young actor, hey, this guy's a grizzled old FBI agent. He's supposed to be tough on me.

Speaker 1 Don't, don't, you know, don't fold, but like, let him lean into it and go with it.

Speaker 1 But he said the night before his big monologue, like his biggest monologue in Mississippi Burning, he said Hackman took him out to dinner and he said he thought, Oh, wow, you know, finally, he's kind of like, you know,

Speaker 1 taking things. And he said, They were having a drink and not saying anything.
He said, Hackton, Hackman looked at him. This is like, this is like two weeks from the end of the whole shoot.

Speaker 1 And he said, Hackman looked at me and goes, So, is this what you're going with?

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 you're going to keep doing this right to the end, huh? But anyway, I thought about that because Wes said, one of my favorite moments in Royal Time Bombs is when Hackman

Speaker 1 is in the kitchen with Danny Glover and he says, Are you making time with my wife Coltrane? And Danny Glover goes, Did you just call me Coltrane?

Speaker 1 You know, and he's like, gonna get in a fight with him, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Wes said that Hackman came in

Speaker 1 in a good mood saying, This is a funny scene. You know, it's a good scene, Wes.
And Wes said, He went, Oh, geez, thanks, Gene, you know, and he said, just one thing.

Speaker 1 I think we should change Coltrane to Satchmo.

Speaker 1 And Wes, Wes said, he goes, oh, well,

Speaker 1 why? You know, why? And he said, Well, you and I know what Coltrain is, and that it's funny to us, but a lot of people, that might be a little things.

Speaker 1 I think more people know what Satchmo means, and it's going to be more accessible to more people. And Wes said, he said, Well, I, the thing is, I like the sound of the word Coltrain.

Speaker 1 And I think if some people don't know what that means, I'm okay with that. And he said, Acknowledging said,

Speaker 1 It's just our audience, but fuck them, I guess, right? And he's just like in a black, black mood for the rest of the day.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, you know, whenever people say like, oh, you know, so-and-so is difficult or whatever, I'm like, I'm like,

Speaker 1 I used to talk about this with Phil Hoffman. I feel like there's like, there's like the, the serious actors of our generation.
And then there's those guys, you know, like, and they are just a totally,

Speaker 1 it's a totally different breed. I really honestly think a lot of those guys, I've gotten to work with a lot of them, Harvey Keitel a couple times, De Niro a couple times, John Voigt,

Speaker 1 you know, Nick Nolte. Like you go through experience,

Speaker 1 these guys, they are

Speaker 1 in a different

Speaker 1 frequency entirely.

Speaker 1 Like it, it's not the language we grew up in.

Speaker 2 They authentically don't give a shit.

Speaker 1 No, and also,

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't want to say they're weird, but they just like

Speaker 1 Like when Phil and I were doing,

Speaker 1 we did two, we did two movies back-to-back and we did the 25th Hour with Spike Lee. We were working on that.
Of course, and Phil was himself like, you know, a curmudgeonly dude sometimes.

Speaker 1 I really loved him, but

Speaker 1 he could be prickly and stuff. And we were talking, and he, we were talking about he'd worked with De Niro, and he was like, does it make you, don't you just feel like a square with these guys?

Speaker 1 And for Phil, for Phil to say anyone makes him feel like a square, like it, it's just, there's just something different about those guys and the way they work and how weird they can be.

Speaker 1 They're so not.

Speaker 1 Some of them are just not. They're kind of like not of us.
No. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 What's your, what, what, what do you, what are you, what do you, you're so great at, at, at so many things, clearly, as we've covered here.

Speaker 2 What, what would people be surprised at that you're terrible at?

Speaker 2 What do you do? Like, I can't dance or I can't, I don't even sing in the shower.

Speaker 1 I wish I, I have no facility for

Speaker 1 drawing. I've always wanted, you know, like when I draw storyboards,

Speaker 1 it's the most embarrassing thing in the world. You're useless.

Speaker 1 you can't draw depth right i finally ended up with these apps i figured out that if i wanted to go around in new york and and storyboard a car chase or something like that i would take i would take pictures of all the angles and then in my childish scrawl like try to draw the shape of a car in a general arrow direction on it and it's like i'm so envious i'm so envious of people who can like i would draw a box with a circle next to it and say that's a car and then draw an arrow and be unable to have the arrow stay on the line of the street.

Speaker 1 What about the opposite?

Speaker 2 What would people be really amazed that you're fantastic at?

Speaker 1 Amazed that I'm going to add? Yeah, like are you musical at all? Are you playing anything? I play guitar, but I'm not amazing.

Speaker 1 I've been a pilot for a long time. I'm a pupil pilot.
That qualifies that. That's amazing.

Speaker 1 I love surfing's like my later in life addiction, and it's something I'm

Speaker 1 like, I'm okay at now, but I really wish I was better. You know, if there's a thing that I, that like haunts my dreams that I really wish I was,

Speaker 1 that I'm trying to get better at and that I love like in an addictive way. I highly recommend that.

Speaker 1 Well, you've also got that great thing where you, when you and uh Pitt did Fight Club, forever people, when they think about you without your, your shirt on, they think of you as super ripped.

Speaker 1 So you kind of get, that kind of lives forever, that image.

Speaker 1 And it's something you understand that Brad is Brad and I'm me, right? Like, you

Speaker 1 Jason's crying right now. Jason is just thinking.

Speaker 2 I will never be stuck with that reputation how much less

Speaker 1 i have to eat i'm going to say something that's that's not correct because the first time we met uh oh the first time we really hung out we went to dinner took your shirts

Speaker 1 on sunset boulevard at the thing and you were in the middle of doing you were the first person i knew who did the clean diet you remember oh my god that is going back to bad you you you you and amanda had done the clean diet and you'd been on it for like a while was i small and we walked in and you walked up to the table and i went oh my god this guy is chiseled, and

Speaker 1 he's he looks chiseled, and he looks like he has the body of

Speaker 1 a college athlete.

Speaker 1 And I was like, Jason Bateman, is that fit?

Speaker 1 Not only is chiseled, but he has the body of like an old man who's in hospice, right? Like a veal.

Speaker 1 Because if you do it too long, it all becomes porridge.

Speaker 1 Because he's been on that very, you know, he's been on

Speaker 1 a version of that diet for 20 years now. Never mind.
Yeah. Just

Speaker 1 having myself.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But that was at the start.

Speaker 2 It's because I've got an enormous man inside of me waiting to get out. You know, I just have to keep my eye on the ball.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying I was actually impressed by your.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Well, there you go. You should see me now.

Speaker 1 I had an enormous man inside of me, and I was okay with it for a while. So listen, there's you, Sean, waiting for you.

Speaker 1 I'm okay.

Speaker 1 And Sean has a softball hard, too. I know, it's been delightful.

Speaker 2 No, it is. Do you have anything, guys?

Speaker 1 It's been delightful. What a delight to talk to you.
I could ask you all these questions about every single movie that I've ever thought you've been in.

Speaker 2 I know. Let's just go have dinner.

Speaker 1 The four of us will go eat.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we should. I know.
And thank you for spending all this time with us, please.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's been a delight.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Ryan. Absolutely.
Great to meet you. Catch you guys soon.
All right, Edward. See you pal.

Speaker 2 Thanks, bud.

Speaker 1 Bye.

Speaker 2 Oh, man. That was

Speaker 1 a thoughtful, pleasant, normal,

Speaker 2 incredibly talented man. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I didn't know he had all that going on, Jay.

Speaker 1 you knew, like, I didn't know the philanthropy and the investments and the

Speaker 1 you didn't ask him how much. I'm surprised you didn't say, give me a number.
Because usually you go, give me a number. How much you got? How much you got? How much you got? How much you got?

Speaker 1 How much you got?

Speaker 2 If we did have dinner together, Sean would probably open with that.

Speaker 1 Would you?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. And like while we're still looking at the menu,

Speaker 1 how much you make off of Uber? What's going on? How much did you make? How much? Give me the number.

Speaker 1 By the way, it's what everybody wants to know.

Speaker 2 You know who else has been real savvy with all that stuff? Is Ashton Kutcher? Yes.

Speaker 2 Super savvy. And Guy Oscar.

Speaker 1 Thanks for the breaking news. That one I know.
I didn't know William. That's Will.

Speaker 1 That one I know. I didn't know about.
Oh,

Speaker 1 I didn't know about Edward either.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, these guys, they've got their finger on the pulse. By the way, and all his stories, I love how open he is about the stories about each job and like the actors.

Speaker 1 Those are so funny. Right.
Yeah. I love it.
So funny.

Speaker 2 The films and the people that he's worked with

Speaker 1 just, yeah, stunning. And maybe we could all have dinner.
And Will, you could invite your Canadian friend

Speaker 1 that you're friends with. What's his name?

Speaker 1 Mike Bay.

Speaker 1 Oh, beautiful. Beautiful.
Smart.

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