"Ethan Hawke"

Speaker 1 Wondering how you can invest in yourself and work towards a goal that will last? Rosetta Stone makes it easy to turn a few minutes a day into real language progress.

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.
It's French, right?

Speaker 1 And now, Smartlist listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. Visit rosettastone.com slash Smartlist to get started and claim your 50% off today.

Speaker 1 Nobody wants to spend the holiday season clicking from one site to the next to get their hands on the best brands. But who knew Walmart has the the top brands we all love?

Speaker 1 Like the big names that your friends and family actually want, and all in one place: Nespresso, Nintendo, Apple, you name it. Get the brands everyone loves at prices you'll love at Walmart.

Speaker 2 Who knew?

Speaker 1 Go to walmart.com or download the app to get all your gifts this season.

Speaker 2 Oh man, it is finally good to be here.

Speaker 2 Solo, you know, this is the way I always envisioned the podcast. And because initially it was called Smart.
And then when I added Sean and Jason, I had to add the less.

Speaker 2 And that was a, it was a whole thing. And they can't, their whole thing is like, no, less is more.
And I'm like, no, man, less is less.

Speaker 2 Anyway, welcome to Smart.

Speaker 2 Less. Smart.

Speaker 2 Less.

Speaker 3 Oh, where'd you go, Sean?

Speaker 1 Oh, so I went to go visit Will, and then I went on vacation with you, Jason.

Speaker 2 With me? When? Yes.

Speaker 3 Oh, no, Jason. My memory's not so good.

Speaker 2 Oh, Jay. Believe me.
Jay, did you switch gummies? Not related, but did you switch gummies recently? Yeah, this one says memory suck on it.

Speaker 3 I got a deal.

Speaker 2 Wait,

Speaker 2 by the way, speaking of memories suck, Sean, I don't know why it's not related, but I texted Jason last night or the night before, I can't remember, alone

Speaker 2 on Discovery, that show about people being stuck up in the woods. Have you seen it?

Speaker 1 No, I want to see that.

Speaker 2 Jason's been trying to get me to watch it, or both of us, for a year at least.

Speaker 1 At least. Oh, yeah, it's Jason.
You told me about that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I remember that. Dude.

Speaker 1 Is it so good?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 I I mean, it's kind of

Speaker 3 cinematic, too, right? It's like it gets all dark and creepy, and the sounds and the little what is it like Naked and Afraid?

Speaker 3 No, Naked and Afraid looks like a kind of like the difference, kind of like survivor. It's kind of grab-assy and, you know, kind of hijinksy.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That was me last night, Naked and Afraid.

Speaker 3 Naked and Afraid, playing a lot of grab ass.

Speaker 2 I unlocked my keys.

Speaker 2 I left my keys in the house and I thought everybody was skinny dipping. And then, but anyway,

Speaker 2 the point is that this is people, Sean, they take 10 people, put them in the woods, and whoever can last the longest with literally like a thing to not even a match.

Speaker 1 God, all I would think about is Blair Witch.

Speaker 2 And I know, well, and there are people hilariously who are like, man, I'm going to give this bear a run for its money. And then the guy doesn't even make it.

Speaker 3 They're all professional survivalists, too.

Speaker 1 Wait, but dude, if they're getting chased by a bear, is like somebody from the crew step in and there is no crew.

Speaker 2 There's no crew. You got a bunch of films.
You're going to have to go. You got a bunch of GoPros.
You have to set up. You're joking me.
No, no.

Speaker 1 I got to watch this.

Speaker 2 It's pretty great. It's incredible.
It's pretty great.

Speaker 3 I can't wait till you get to the point.

Speaker 2 Wait a second. You're thinking bears.

Speaker 2 I'm not talking about

Speaker 2 Scotty. I'm not talking about Scotty.
No, no, no. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's not a bunch of dudes. Oh, it's happy bears chasing me.

Speaker 2 They haven't shot it inside rawhide at 21st and 8th.

Speaker 2 Okay, listen, speaking of 21st and 8th, which takes me to New York. This is a segue, Beyond All Segues.

Speaker 2 Guys, can I tell you something? I am really excited because I don't know this person.

Speaker 2 We have had a passing hello, I think, a few times over the the years, but he's one of those people that I've always,

Speaker 2 I'm going to say it, I've always absolutely adored his career and what he does. Is he a bear?

Speaker 2 No, he is. No, no, no, no, he's not.
He is just talented from the get.

Speaker 2 He's been doing it a long time, and he's about all of our age, but he's been doing it and we've all been admiring him for a really long time. Not only has he been making movies and then

Speaker 2 directing movies and then writing movies and writing plays and writing books and then going back and doing this and that. He's been doing it a really long time.

Speaker 3 I can tell you respect this guy. Like, you know, Will gets a certain look on his face.
He has a certain

Speaker 3 listen, listen, mystery guest, before I meet you, just know that

Speaker 3 Will, Will actually is not phoning this one in.

Speaker 3 You've got something on your head.

Speaker 2 It's true. He does.
He does.

Speaker 2 He's impressed. I've always been like, oh, man,

Speaker 2 that was so good. And everything he's done, he's really good.
And he's done stuff that's been so

Speaker 2 different from where he started to where he is today.

Speaker 2 He's always mixed it up. And I think that that's the hallmark of somebody who's really curious and really talented that they keep trying to do different stuff.
I mentioned the books and the plays.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I mean, this guy, this guy,

Speaker 2 he verged on cannibalism in one of his movies. He stood on the top of his desk in another one of his movies.

Speaker 2 He was trying to get to space, but he didn't have the right DNA in another one of

Speaker 2 his movies.

Speaker 2 He's now got,

Speaker 2 he's been doing a

Speaker 2 new series over on,

Speaker 2 I guess, on Disney Plus that's at right now. He's doing a film on Netflix.
He's got, most importantly, a new documentary that he directed that is about Paul Newman joining Hogwarts. It's Ethan Hawk.

Speaker 2 No way.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. Ethan Hawk.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. Good morning.

Speaker 1 Ethan, I just watched The Black Phone. Is that what it's called?

Speaker 2 That's what it's called.

Speaker 2 I just watched it last.

Speaker 1 I've been telling everybody about it. You're amazing in that movie.

Speaker 2 Well, thanks. Yeah, I love that movie.

Speaker 3 I want to see it.

Speaker 2 I'm glad I got a legit intro from Will. I feel honored.

Speaker 3 He's got a legit smile out of Sean Hayes.

Speaker 2 He's usually faking it most of the time.

Speaker 3 Smiles come easy to him, but that's genuine.

Speaker 1 Wow, it's such a pleasure and honor to meet you.

Speaker 2 It really is. I mean, Ethan, we've never really met.
I don't know if you remember. We one time ran into each other on the street in the West Village.
You probably don't remember. At Rawhide?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Rawhide. Rawhide.
Do you remember?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, we were. I was.
Who were you?

Speaker 2 I think you were with Sherm. I know John Sherman.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I was wearing a shirt.
I was wearing a Brian Jonestown mascara t-shirt. This is like 15 years ago, and you just went, I said, saying hi to Sherm.
And then you went, hey, man, nice t-shirt.

Speaker 2 And I was like, thanks.

Speaker 2 I was so psyched.

Speaker 3 And Ethan was in a tube top.

Speaker 2 A tasteful one. A tasteful one, yeah.

Speaker 3 Now, I was just talking with somebody yesterday about that Paul Newman documentary. I cannot wait to see it.

Speaker 1 I want to see that.

Speaker 2 I just started that let's talk about how how did this how did this happen for you ethan this doc well i was

Speaker 2 it was like right before the pandemic started and i was getting out of the shower in my apartment and the phone rang sean's got it sean's eyes are closed he's got it

Speaker 2 sean open up your eyes

Speaker 2 talk slower

Speaker 2 no i i picked up the phone you know how like now when the phone rings and you don't know the person's name you should never answer it right you know because it's well i just decided what the hell i picked it up and it turned out it was um

Speaker 2 paul newman and joanne woodward's youngest child who got my number from a friend and she's like introduced herself and said i really want you to direct a documentary about my parents nice call and

Speaker 2 i basically my first thought was how the hell do i get out of this you know um

Speaker 2 it just sounded like so much work uh

Speaker 2 and and i i talked to her for a while about what she had and why she thought it would be good and and i tried to recommend some some other people and she was like no well i'm asking you i was like well

Speaker 2 i was like let me think about it for a minute and i just couldn't figure out a way to say no when i first arrived in new york falling in love with acting they were i mean not to be corny but they had kind of a godlike status you would see them sometimes at an opening and the fact that they both had achieved at such a high level in such different ways.

Speaker 2 You know, she was kind of like the actor's actor. She was teaching acting.
She was obsessed with theater and ran her own theater company. And, you know, he was a card-carrying cinema luminary.

Speaker 2 And they've been married for 50 years. So whenever you think it can't be done, the image of Paul and Joanne would be in my brain.

Speaker 2 Like, wow, you could live a good life and be a decent person and make great art and have love.

Speaker 2 So I basically asked the kids if by doing this, was I going to find out anything that was really revolting. Right.
You know, like

Speaker 3 your image of them.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 2 i love my fantasy version and i thought is this is this remotely accurate and they're like yeah it's remotely accurate and anyway i i couldn't figure out a way to say no so i said yes and then almost three years went by right wow you know what's so crazy that you're on here i always think these this kind of stuff is is nuts somebody just texted me like two days ago that i'm in that I'm in that documentary.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's like a photo of me or something that they cut to at the theater in Connecticut.

Speaker 2 Isn't that funny? Really? Really?

Speaker 1 Isn't that bizarre? And then here you are.

Speaker 2 Did you get a buck for that? Some sort of an appearance?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm now all of a sudden in legal hell.

Speaker 2 Oh, wait until your shit.

Speaker 2 Nobody likes to litigate more than Sean Hayes. Wait, so Ethan, this is amazing.
So now here you are.

Speaker 2 It's 2022, and you've just made, you spent the last three years of your life making a documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. And let's really rewind to

Speaker 2 that nice. So now

Speaker 2 you're what? What's the What's your first acting gig? And where are you not from New York? I always, you feel like such a quintessential New Yorker to me.

Speaker 2 Where are you from, Maria? Where'd you grow up? Well, born in Austin, Texas.

Speaker 2 My parents split up and I traveled. My dad stayed in Texas, so I'd spend the summers in Texas.
And my mom.

Speaker 1 How old were you when they split up? How old were you?

Speaker 2 Three. Oh, okay.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to touch that then. It's not.
Yeah, no, it's not. No, no, no.
You got over it fast, probably.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no pain at three.

Speaker 2 No pain, no pain. No pain, no pain.

Speaker 2 My mother bounced around a lot from Atlanta to Connecticut to Vermont to Brooklyn to New Jersey.

Speaker 2 So I graduated high school in Jersey. Just a series of bank robberies, or what was she running from?

Speaker 2 Well, we'd have to ask her. Well, the truth is she was 18 when I was born.

Speaker 2 She was trying to figure out who she was and kept changing jobs and changing her identity, so to speak. I mean, not as a bank robber, not literally her identity.

Speaker 2 No, but can you, you can imagine, I'm just saying that, like, I'm 52 and I'm still trying to figure out who I am. By the way, all you're doing is,

Speaker 3 but you can't, you don't play a day over 35, though.

Speaker 2 You can't get cast on somebody that's older than Carlos.

Speaker 2 Maybe, maybe a little, maybe 39.

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, but that's a stretch.

Speaker 2 No, it's funny. In your intro, you were talking about, you were saying nice things about me about curiosity and things like that.
But I feel that way too.

Speaker 2 The whole time I was making this documentary, I kept saying to the editor, I'm not a documentary filmmaker. I don't know what to do.
I mean,

Speaker 2 I didn't know how to do this. And I do enjoy doing that, putting yourself in a position where you have that beginner's mind sensibility.
Yeah. Yeah.
Do you feel closer to it now?

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 there's only one thing I feel close to, which is acting. That's the only thing I know anything about.

Speaker 2 The other,

Speaker 2 you know, writing, doing other things,

Speaker 2 it's a similar exercise. It's just storytelling, right?

Speaker 2 But I don't, no, I don't feel closer to it. It feels just as mysterious as if.

Speaker 3 You've done some directing, though, haven't you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, a bunch. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 that you feel a closer pull to acting than directing, yeah?

Speaker 2 Well, the great thing about directing is you get to choose your material and you get to hire people. So everybody that you're working with, they're people that you like to be around.

Speaker 2 When you're an actor, you often get set on these sets where you're like, why is this guy such an asshole? And why is she, who hired her? You know, I mean,

Speaker 2 or you get into a situation where you really like the character or something, but the director envisioned it completely different and your imaginations are like at war with each other.

Speaker 2 And that doesn't happen when you're directing. Yeah, well, I was just going to say,

Speaker 2 but it strikes me, so, again, like you get to go and you, and you, you're directing some and directing a documentary, some, all because, probably a lot of it because of you've been so good at acting for so long.

Speaker 2 And again, this has happened a couple of times on the show, but you and Jason are similar in that you guys started young and you've continued and done great stuff.

Speaker 2 And they're always used to sort of the dangers of being a child actor and blah, blah, blah. Both you guys kind of sidestepped a lot of that and stayed true to and have continued.

Speaker 2 And everything you do. keeps getting better and it's and it's unusual and that's not even a question that's more of a statement or an observation But what was that moment?

Speaker 2 Because I wanted to go back before.

Speaker 2 What was the first thing you auditioned for? I mean, do you remember?

Speaker 2 Were you saying to your mom, I need to audition for this? Or was she like, there's a part available?

Speaker 1 Yeah, did you pursue it?

Speaker 2 Well, all right. I'll tell you, I'll try to do it fast.
Jason, I'm sure you have your story about, you know, child acting is dangerous. A lot of the people that we came up with are dead, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And there's not a bunch of them that have, that are, that are still making a living. I mean,

Speaker 3 I don't say that to brag. I'm just, I'm so, I'm so proud of, of us, of anyone that can somehow

Speaker 3 navigate that transition from kid to young adult to what, like, because it's so fickle. And it's, it's not about who's good.
It's just who can kind of stay

Speaker 3 like kind of semi-cool to hire. I don't mean to sound like a cynic, but, you know, oftentimes it doesn't have anything to do with talent, I think.

Speaker 2 Well, it has to do with, I don't think it has to do with talent. It does have to do with a little bit of your DNA,

Speaker 2 who brought you up, your ability to handle failure,

Speaker 2 your ability to grow from failure. You know, I saw, I talked to Martha Plimpton the other day on the phone, and she's just grown up to be such a remarkable human being.

Speaker 2 But if you don't do the stuff on the inside, your talent dies, you know, or it just gets, it gets beaten up. My first, my mom, I didn't have a winter sport.

Speaker 2 My mom didn't get home from work till seven, so she needed me to do, you know, I needed to be doing something in the winter.

Speaker 2 So she signed me up for an acting class at the Paul Robeson Center for Performing Arts in Princeton, New Jersey.

Speaker 2 And I went to this class, and they had a guest speaker come who did like a little improv thing.

Speaker 2 And I really, I was a giant ham as a kid. And after class, he came up to me in the parking lot and he said, Would you like to be? He was running the McCarter Theater in Princeton.

Speaker 2 And he said, Would you like to be in a play? I was like, Sure.

Speaker 2 And I was Dunwa's pay, you know, I carried a spear and a

Speaker 2 you know, in George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan.
But I did this play and I just couldn't believe being around all these adults who were having so much fun.

Speaker 2 They were sitting there talking about God and love and sword fighting and, you know, all this.

Speaker 2 They were having so much more fun than my parents were. I mean, they seemed to be,

Speaker 2 I loved watching these people in rehearsal. And so after the play was over, I heard through a friend of mine about some open casting calls in New York.

Speaker 2 And I just started riding the train into New York with this other kid and going on to some of the big casting calls. And one of them was Explorers.

Speaker 1 How old were you when you were just let go to go on your own on a train into New York?

Speaker 2 13. Wow.
Yeah. That's pretty crazy.
Yeah. A lot of, I should say, a lot of my friends' parents wouldn't let them sleep over at my house because they thought my mother was too lenient.

Speaker 2 Wait, was she? Was she? Oh, yeah. I mean, I went to New York by, I mean, I went to Europe by myself and rode the Uriel when I was 16.
You know, that was summer.

Speaker 2 Yeah, she put a high value on independence. And I think if she had had a different kid, I would have been in drug rehab or dead by 18.

Speaker 2 But for some reason, it suited me. I really liked my independence.

Speaker 1 Well, you were lucky enough to find the thing that brought you joy at such a young age, which I think is key to success. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Again, unusual. Not a lot of people.

Speaker 2 So Explorers is the first, your first film, is that it? First big gig, yeah. Yeah.
And who that was with River Phoenix, directed by Joe Dante. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah, with River Phoenix.

Speaker 1 Is Dead Poets the thing that kind of broke you

Speaker 1 into another

Speaker 2 category?

Speaker 2 You mean broke like... not like killed me, but

Speaker 1 like broke your, like you broke into the business.

Speaker 2 Yeah, definitely. The success of that movie gave me a career.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's amazing. It's such a great film.

Speaker 2 You're saying that.

Speaker 3 So so talk about why you're not, you know, a drug addict robbing liquor stores and doing all that stuff, even though you were brought up in,

Speaker 3 you know, kind of a permissive house, it sounds like, in a good way. You were given rope to like you were trusted till you gave your mom a reason not to, and, and you just ended up being okay.

Speaker 3 Now, can you take some credit yourself that you just kind of came out with a, with a, with a good head on your shoulders and thank God

Speaker 3 for that?

Speaker 2 I just think it's a dance, isn't it? You know, I think a lot of us with the wrong parents could be in a really bad situation.

Speaker 2 Yeah. What leaps to my mind when you ask me that is I think about my oldest, Maya.
She's acting. She's on Stranger Things right now.

Speaker 1 Wait, your daughter's on Stranger Things?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which one is she?

Speaker 2 She plays Robin.

Speaker 1 Get on it. You got to be kidding me.
No, man. I had no idea that was your daughter.
She's She's fantastic.

Speaker 2 Sean, he's not kidding you. For fuck's sake, just take it.
Is this an honest interview? That's so cool. I didn't know that.
Yeah. Well, so she's,

Speaker 2 she's a remarkable young woman. And I did some things right, and I did some things wrong.
And who she is is the person who is able to

Speaker 2 differentiate, right? And make sense out of her own life.

Speaker 3 But did you give her that? Did you give her that tool? I mean,

Speaker 3 the answer probably is no.

Speaker 2 I mean, she's just I kind of think she was born with it, yeah, exactly. Yeah, she's you weren't gonna stop her.

Speaker 2 I remember, I remember her at four years old being pretty sure that she was going to be an artist. I mean, it was just the way she related to watercoloring.

Speaker 2 You'd show her a photograph and she would change the composition of it. And if you read her a poem and she liked it, she would memorize it.

Speaker 2 I mean, she just anything that touched the arts was a part of her.

Speaker 2 And I didn't, did I give her that? I mean, here's an example for you about why it's a dance is we were having a hard time. I hope she doesn't mind me saying this.
And she's in her early adolescence.

Speaker 2 And I just decided, all right, you know, we need to spend some time together. And I said, I had a, I had a week off.
And it was actually kind of funny.

Speaker 2 I actually wrote on the calendar that a movie was starting like on the 23rd of March. And I was just wrong.
It was starting the 30th. So I thought I was supposed to leave town.

Speaker 2 And all of a sudden, I was like, geez, I have a whole week with nothing to do.

Speaker 2 And I went to her and I said, listen, I know you're having a hard time with me and I'm getting on your nerves and everything, but I think the answer is, let's go. I want to spend a week with you.

Speaker 2 Like, I've got nothing to do for a week. And I talked to your mom and I'm going to take you out of school and we're just going to go be together for a week.

Speaker 2 And I said, I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Wow.

Speaker 2 And I was sure she'd say Paris or something. You know, I didn't know.

Speaker 1 First of all, what was the reaction to, I'm going to take you out of school. We're going to spend a week together.

Speaker 2 I don't think she liked spending a week with me, but she liked getting out of school.

Speaker 2 So it was,

Speaker 2 yeah. But she said, she said she wanted to go see Graceland.
Wow. Which just completely shocked me.
I was like, why do you want to go to Graceland?

Speaker 2 She's like, I don't know, but she'd been watching Elvis videos on YouTube, you know, and she just loved him. And so I took her to Graceland and we walked into Sun's studios.

Speaker 2 And she said, Dad, look. And she showed me her arm and all the hair on her arm was standing up, you know, like that thing where you get shivers.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And she's like, do you feel it? Do you feel this room? And I remember thinking, I don't know if that's this room or her. Like the room is magical, but you have to have an awareness of why it's magical

Speaker 2 for your hair. Like she understood what Sun Studios meant.
And

Speaker 2 she cared about it and was interested in it. She understood what Sam Phillips was up to.
And yeah, she understood a lot of that because I talked about it, but

Speaker 2 I talk about the Dallas Cowboys too, and she doesn't care about that. You know, so it's,

Speaker 2 you know, these kids are who they are and they're influenced by us. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And now, a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 1 Hey, all you underwearers. Are you sick of feeling bounced around? Have you got a bad case at jugglers jock?

Speaker 1 Is your junk drawer on life support? Well, Duluth Trading Company is here to get you buck naked.

Speaker 1 Since 1989, Duluth Trading Company has been engineering unders and workwear to help tackle your toughest tasks.

Speaker 1 Everything from underwater wielding to botanical gardening to excruciating Hollywood lunch meetings. Duluth Trading's buck naked underwear, life-affirming.

Speaker 1 Doesn't matter if you're working overtime, golfing 36 holes, or dragging your co-hosts through a podcast. The no-pinch, no stink, no sweat construction keeps you comfortable.

Speaker 1 And the crotch-cradling bullpen pouch, the epitome of support.

Speaker 1 duluth keeps me super comfortable every time i'm wearing it i feel fully supported so if you've got a rear end and you're ready to go buck naked visit duluthtrading.com or shop in store today

Speaker 1 Some like it hot, but for most, a little spice goes a long way.

Speaker 1 Dorito's golden sriracha flavored tortilla chips are the perfectly balanced blend of yellow and green srirachas for a chip that's tangy and sweet with just the right amount of heat.

Speaker 1 Doritos golden sriracha are spicy, but not too spicy because Doritos knows bold flavor doesn't have to mean just heat. Try Dorito's Golden Sriracha for yourself.

Speaker 1 Look for them wherever Doritos are sold or find a store near you at Doritos.com. Doritos for the bold.

Speaker 2 Paragold is the destination for luxury home. They brought the world's best design brands together, including Visual Comfort ⁇ Co., Century, Schumacher, and Four Hands.

Speaker 2 From traditional to modern, indoors to out, their curated selection of furnishings and home improvements spans every style. Craving inspiration?

Speaker 2 Their go-to edits for home include expert styling tips and exclusive designer shops where trusted tastemakers pick products they love.

Speaker 2 They promise a seamless experience with fast-free full-service delivery on most items. Ready for extraordinary? Shop now at paragold.com.

Speaker 2 And now, back to the show.

Speaker 1 I want to go back to when you were starting out because a question jumped in my head about dry spells. Like, you know, when you're starting out as an actor, you said you did this play.

Speaker 1 And I go, that was kind of amazing and thrilling being around all those adults. And then I think in people's minds,

Speaker 1 people who are as successful as you, other people think, oh, it's just snowballed and it was great and I never stopped working.

Speaker 1 But there are always dry spells for actresses, especially when you're starting out and you're younger. How do you get through those? Did you doubt yourself? How did you get through that doubt?

Speaker 1 And were you ever like, God, I can't find a job. Maybe this isn't working.
Maybe I chose the wrong thing.

Speaker 2 You know, I say this a lot and people think I'm kidding when I say it, which I guess is a compliment or something, but I've definitely was certain I was washed up at three different times.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 there were three different chapters of my life where I was like, oh, wow, it's over. Like,

Speaker 2 I didn't know it was going to end. Because

Speaker 2 when you have success young, it hijacks your brain in a kind of negative way, which is that you kind of think, oh, the world's on my side. You know, like, oh, I got this.

Speaker 2 I was in Dead Poets Society when I was 18. Like, that's my break.
Now I'm a made man.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden,

Speaker 2 four years go by and you do six other movies and they're all failures and then you want to audition for some happening movie and nobody even wants to let you audition because they've heard of you and they know they don't like you.

Speaker 2 There's all these other 24 year olds that are just graduating college and now they're finding themselves.

Speaker 2 They're coming out of the, you know, they're just graduated from this drama program and everybody's really excited about them. Right.

Speaker 2 And they're like, no, we don't want that kid from Dead Poets Society. I saw that terrible mystery date.
He's awful.

Speaker 2 I remember overhearing some

Speaker 2 film exec,

Speaker 2 I was in the bathroom and it was like a president of Paramount or something. And

Speaker 2 he was like, you know, America cast its vote for Ethan Hawk. And he's not a movie star.
He'll never make it.

Speaker 2 And I remember going, oh my, it was that after a premiere of some movie I did. I was like, oh my God.

Speaker 2 And you come rushing out and go, what did they, where's the tally's? No, I hid inside there. Yeah, of course.
People talk like that all the time. They love to write people off.

Speaker 2 You know, they're either building you up or tearing you down. You're either in the process of one of them.
And I've had three different times where I really was scared. And because I love it.

Speaker 2 I love doing it.

Speaker 2 And I think the joke is that it's how you handle those moments when, because

Speaker 2 we're all constantly being asked to transition. You know, even, you know, now my beard's going gray and, you know, I,

Speaker 2 I have to transition as an actor. I have to become a different actor.
Right.

Speaker 2 And if you try to stay the same person you were 10 years ago, you try to stick yourself in formaldehyde because people liked you then,

Speaker 2 you just die. You have to change and you have to be willing to let it all go, I think.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 You end up being wrong for the part if you keep, if you stay in the same spot.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you stay in the same spot. And how much, how much, Ethan, did you, so you, what year was it that you started Malapart, your theater company? That was in the early 90s.
Early 90s. 91.

Speaker 1 And where is that, Ethan?

Speaker 2 It was the theater company

Speaker 2 right after,

Speaker 2 you know, it was a couple of years after Dead Poets Society, and I had dropped out of college. And

Speaker 2 what city is it in? New York City.

Speaker 2 I took some of the money I made and just rented a theater on. 42nd Street and I had a lot of brilliant friends, Josh Charles, Robert Sean Leonard, Jonathan Mark Sherman, Steve Zahn,

Speaker 2 a bunch of different men and women that were young artists. And we just decided to dedicate ourselves to producing young people's work, you know, the work of our own generation.

Speaker 2 And we put on these little plays. It was, it was a, it was a real sensation.

Speaker 2 And I can tell you, as an actor who'd moved to New York in 1990 from Toronto and I didn't know a single person, it was very intimidating because you guys had that.

Speaker 2 I knew some of the people in Naked Angels. You guys were kind of the answer to Naked Angels.
You were like the next generation. And you had all these great guys

Speaker 2 and doing all this amazing stuff.

Speaker 2 But I was thinking that must have given you quite a bit of, I was going to say respite, but at least something that you could get to sort of take your mind away from all the politics and the bullshit about being a movie star and actually just focus on doing your thing.

Speaker 2 Is there any truth to that? You know, Jason, I wonder what you would say. When we were talking about surviving being a young actor, what actually popped through my head is,

Speaker 2 my friends,

Speaker 2 I had really good friends.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Josh is a good choice for that. He's such a good dude.

Speaker 2 Hello to Josh.

Speaker 2 But when you have good friends who

Speaker 2 say to you, you sound really stuck up. Yeah.
Well, you've been, you know, what have you been hanging out with your agent too long? You sound like you're on an interview.

Speaker 2 And you have friends that you admire the way that they think about art or the way that they,

Speaker 2 I think that Your friends can save your life. And if you don't have the right friends, I know like

Speaker 2 sometimes i've just feel so lucky that about the friends that i made that they're the ones who kept me alive and kept me thinking amen to that and also crossing paths with people that are behaving in a way that you recognize as a way that you don't want to be um that's also really important yeah actually you know what i'm glad you said that because uh jason you sound really stuck up Oh, well,

Speaker 2 are we still rolling? Let me go again.

Speaker 2 No, but you know, you know, Ethan, I was thinking one of your friends that I knew, I knew a lot of those guys from way back in the day, but one of the guys was

Speaker 2 Josh Hamilton.

Speaker 2 I remember when, do you remember when he did, because I was living with Missy Yeager was my girlfriend at the time when they did This Is Our Youth, yeah, with Kenny and Morgan and with Ruffalo.

Speaker 2 And Josh was so brilliant in that, man. He was so, so fucking good.
It just made me think of 42nd Street. Yeah, exactly.
And I did, Missy did a play with me at Malapart. Yes, that's right.

Speaker 2 Missy did a play with you.

Speaker 1 Ethan, you know, I always, I ask a bunch of people who come on this show who are in the theater if you have any great, like, tragic but funny theater stories that happen to you like one night.

Speaker 1 I'll share. I have one I don't think I've shared with you guys.

Speaker 1 One night just did this play. It's called Good Night Oscar in Chicago.
Hopefully it's going to New York. And

Speaker 2 we're definitely inserting applause there, by the way. Yeah, that'll be it.

Speaker 1 And in the middle of the, in the middle of, towards the end of the play, I have to play the piano every night. It's part of the story.

Speaker 1 And in the front row, there's two girls that were bombed wasted out of their mind drunk and while I'm playing it's a really intimate like kind of moment in the play and these girls every time I just like I would play like every 10 seconds they'd go right on

Speaker 1 And it was like the rest of the audience was completely silent. And the guys would come down.
They try to get on the stage. It was insanity.

Speaker 3 You were doing this play in a theater there in Chicago?

Speaker 2 Yes, I was. Yes.
They were in the front row, bombed.

Speaker 1 Wait, it was so.

Speaker 2 I have a lot of good theater stories, man. I'm trying to, I'll go with the front row.
I did a play called Hurley Burley with Josh Hamilton, Bobby Kinavalli, Parker Posey,

Speaker 2 Bobby Kinavali.

Speaker 2 A lot of great people. But the director had this idea that my character was kind of a drug addict, a ne'er-do-well type, that I should be on the stage passed out as the audience enters.

Speaker 2 So at the 20 minutes, when the doors opened, I would have to be, and I had to be in my underwear. It was supposed to be like hanging off my butt.

Speaker 2 And I'm just in my underwear, completely collapsed on a living room couch, right? It's just supposed to be bombed. And people would come and sit down and they would see me.

Speaker 2 And it was like they were looking at their television. They would just talk about me

Speaker 2 like I wasn't there.

Speaker 2 Because the first couple of rows, I could just hear, you know, he's a really terrible person. I read this article in People Magazine where he said this stupid thing.
He's really the jerk.

Speaker 2 He's a real misogynist.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, and I'm having to listen. And I can't like, I want to lift up my head and say, hey, I'm right here.
Okay. That hurts my feelings.
And that's not true.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it would be so painful. Ethan, we didn't.
I want to just hijack for one minute,

Speaker 2 interrupting him, which is what I opened up with. I was just in town here getting a coffee with my middle son and my partner, my girl.

Speaker 2 We're getting coffee, and this one comes by with her grandson and her son, whatever. She's standing, I'm going to say six feet from me.

Speaker 2 And she's looking at me, but talking to her son, she goes, I don't know. I can't really remember his name, but

Speaker 2 that's him.

Speaker 2 And I'm sitting having coffee, and I'm stuck on a bench, and she's six feet. And I just wanted to be like, hey, you know, I'm alive.
I can hear you. I'm breathing right here.

Speaker 2 Public property. Anyway, anyway so you're on the by the way who directed that version of hurley burley uh scott elliott of course yeah yeah yeah

Speaker 2 that's so funny i had another time where my friend died on stage with me how about that wait what do you mean live like literally like literally the great canadian actor richard easton we had a scene in uh tom stoppert's coast of utopia where he had to scream at me um you know i will not lend you any more money he had this huge thing where his final line was and that's my last word

Speaker 2 And as he said it, his tongue fell out of his mouth the way like a brick would fall out. Like something was so wrong.

Speaker 2 And then he, then he hit the ground like,

Speaker 2 you know, I mean, face first.

Speaker 2 Face first.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I was so frozen. I could, I'm staring.
And I knew.

Speaker 2 Yeah. The audience thought that that was part of the play, right? Because it kind of seemed like my final word.
And then he croaks.

Speaker 2 And I'm standing there and I don't know what to do. I'm looking at the audience and they're all laughing.
And I just, my brain just went to the dark side. I was like, he's dead.

Speaker 2 He's, and that guy, that guy is dead. My friend Richard is dead.

Speaker 2 And I don't know what to do. And Martha Plimpton was in the wings and she came out and she was so ballsy.
She came out and she was just like, is there a doctor in the house?

Speaker 2 Is there a doctor in the house? And then some dude in the third row is like, I'm a doctor. And the rest of the audience is still laughing.

Speaker 3 Podiatrist, but I'm here.

Speaker 2 No, he was, and then the prop guy came out and they did, what do you call it here? CPR. They did CPR on him.
And so he was dead for seven minutes and they revived him on center stage, Lincoln Center.

Speaker 2 No way. True story.
Big applause. No,

Speaker 2 the audience had been evacuated. There was no applause for life.
It's a waste.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow. I'm glad we were laughing because it has a good outcome.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
He survived and he actually returned to the show about two months later. Wow.
That's funny. What was it? A heart attack or something?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he had a full-blown heart attack right there at center stage. Wow.

Speaker 3 Hey, Ethan, I've got a question for you. Something that is, I would assume, is unique to young, young actors that become adults.

Speaker 3 Something that I didn't battle with or struggle with, but I remember it being a challenge. And I wonder if you had the same thing.
When you start training yourself to be convincing as another person

Speaker 3 at a time when you're still trying to figure out who you are or who you're going to become, right?

Speaker 3 As a child, you know, we don't really figure out who we're going to be like till we're, what, 16, 17, something, whatever the hell it is.

Speaker 3 So you're trying on all these different roles and really trying to be believable. And so that's causing you to really try to find that place inside of you that's kind of like that character.

Speaker 3 It started to develop for me sort of like a

Speaker 3 manageable form of schizophrenia, right? Like a monetizable version of schizophrenia. But

Speaker 3 it sort of confused my path to identity and who i really was when i wake up in the morning or go to bed at night did you ever deal with any of that

Speaker 3 starting as as as young as i did training yourself to be somebody other than who you were organically becoming

Speaker 2 absolutely i mean you know i mean i had that i mean for example when i was doing dead poets society um my character is extremely shy right he's extremely and so you're accessing the part of yourself that is really shy right Like, well, what am I like when I'm really shy?

Speaker 2 And you start, it's almost like a,

Speaker 2 oh, it sounds really corny to say, but you know, you hear those Buddhist guys say, just, if you just make yourself smile for half an hour, you actually are in a good mood. And it does work.

Speaker 2 It's, you can kind of hardwire your brain. Well, you can hardwire your brain for a lot of different things.

Speaker 2 And if you're doing a daily meditation on why a human being might hate themselves and not feel like what their, their words are worth anything, And you're accessing that part of yourself.

Speaker 2 Yes, you know you're more than that, but it's kind of like you're wiring your brain to highlight that part of you. And I really struggled with that when that movie was over.

Speaker 2 And this has been an ongoing theme of my life of trying,

Speaker 2 I think actors spend a lot of time inviting, you know, how to get into character, right? You hear people say that all the time. And so you spend all this energy inviting depression, anger, madness.

Speaker 2 It's most confusing with the darker emotions, right? You invite them in, but then what are you supposed to do with them once you've invited them into your psyche to play?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I found that extremely difficult. And if you're talented, you have an aptitude for this.

Speaker 2 And it's actually an aptitude for insanity,

Speaker 2 you know? For sure. And I think the big lesson for young actors is If you're going to really think about character,

Speaker 2 you have to start to think about your own own character.

Speaker 1 Well, it's, you know, it's so interesting to say, because I'm, I really am obsessed with the Black Phone. I thought it was such a great movie, and I'll watch it again.

Speaker 1 Like, it's one of those movies I'll watch again and again, where you, you actually, I didn't know anything about it.

Speaker 1 And as I'm watching the movie, you're playing this crazy, kidnapping, Silence of the Lambs kind of guy. And I didn't think you, I didn't think the character would be as dark as it is.

Speaker 1 I mean, you actually kill children.

Speaker 2 Children, yeah. Like you kill them.

Speaker 1 And I was like, how in the world do you find this person?

Speaker 1 Like, how in the world did you find out how to play that guy? Because it was scary as shit.

Speaker 2 Maybe you don't want to know, Sean. Okay.

Speaker 2 Maybe you just asked the wrong question, guy. Yeah, maybe you just fucked with the wrong guy.

Speaker 3 And she'd drop your mic and pack your shit, Sean. Start running now.

Speaker 2 Where do you live? I want to come over. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Sean.

Speaker 2 It was really scary. No, you know,

Speaker 2 I don't really know how to answer that question, except that I feel as I get older that acting at its best is a kind of shamanistic process. And that might sound pretentious or whatever, but it is.

Speaker 2 You're the dude, like if everybody's sitting around a campfire, you like get up and you tell a story and you do a dance and you, it's, and you're kind of inviting these other spirits to be a part of the story in some way.

Speaker 2 It's you, you, you are a shaman that is kind of part of the job. And learning to invite different emotions in and letting them flow in and out makes a good storyteller.

Speaker 2 You have to know who you are.

Speaker 2 And I'm lucky. What I did on that job, for example, is

Speaker 2 I just, every day I get home from work, I would just go on a walk with my kids because

Speaker 2 the dad gene in me is way more powerful than the actor gene in me.

Speaker 2 You know, like, and it, I know who I am in relationship to them very well. I'm their father.
That's all that matters. And

Speaker 2 are we eating? Are we learning to tell the truth? Are we taking care of one another? All those really simple, banal things. It's kind of like a grounding wire for me.

Speaker 2 But I don't really know how to answer it. You know, it's funny.
It occurs to me, you touched on it, that, you know, your character in Dead Poets Society was,

Speaker 2 you know, very sort of shy. And then you had said earlier

Speaker 2 when you first started taking acting part of this theater when you were a kid in Princeton that

Speaker 2 you were actually quite a ham and whatever. And I've always thought of you, I don't know you again, but I've always thought of you as kind of a shy guy.

Speaker 2 And I wonder if it's because of that impression. I just went around to all three of you guys and I was thinking like...

Speaker 2 Sean, the character that you first like sort of introduced you to the world was your character on Will and Grace, who was very kind of crazy and all over the place.

Speaker 2 And Jason, you were kind of a wise ass. I knew you from

Speaker 2 It's Your Move before we became friends when you did that. And you were like this wise ass.
And that's maybe how you're introduced to the world is that thing.

Speaker 2 And a lot of people knew me just from the first thing they knew me from was probably Arrested Development, where I played this insane magician who was over the top.

Speaker 2 Illusionist.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 And, you know, like

Speaker 2 that, that you get kind of, and I was thinking, you get typecast not just for work, for life. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, I always say that, you know, the thing about being an actor that nobody tells you is it robs you of the ability to make a first impression anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's so interesting.

Speaker 2 You meet people and they have a first impression. And for some people, I don't, there was a whole group of people when I was younger that hated me because they hated the guy from Reality Brights.

Speaker 2 You know, they think, Detroit is a jerk. I don't like you.
You think you're so cool, you know?

Speaker 2 And you're like, what, man? I'm like, dude, I played the character, you guys. Will you relax? Like,

Speaker 2 I didn't steal Winona from Ben Stiller. Like, you don't have to be mad at me.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 Dude, that's funny. But Will Farrell used to do that.

Speaker 2 If you go with Will, people would be like, Hank, Hank.

Speaker 2 And they attack him and you end up being security for Will because people are like, we're going to party and drink and run down the street naked now, right?

Speaker 2 He's like, no, man, I've got fucking four kids. Like, what are you doing?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And we will be right back.

Speaker 1 Looking for a running shoe that does it all? The New Balance 1080 is your ultimate go-to, blending comfort, performance, and undeniable style.

Speaker 1 Whether you're clocking miles or grabbing coffee, it seamlessly transitions from your morning run to your everyday life.

Speaker 1 With plush cushion support, your feet stay secure and comfortable run after run. And thanks to lightweight, breathable materials, you'll stay cool and fresh no matter how far you go.

Speaker 1 From race day to rest day, the New Balance 1080 delivers the versatility and comfort serious athletes and everyday movers demand.

Speaker 1 Slip them on and experience what effortless performance really feels like. I got myself a pair of 1080s right before I came to London, and boy, oh boy, did I need them.
They are so comfortable.

Speaker 1 The soles are thick and it's super soft and plushy, and it makes walking everywhere such a pleasure. I love it.
Shop the 1080 at newbalance.com.

Speaker 1 This is an ad by BetterHelp. Have you ever had someone that you haven't reached out to in a long time and you're just like, you know what, just do it.

Speaker 1 I just did that recently and it was such a wonderful experience. We had a great lunch, a lot of catching up, and I'm so glad we did it.
It was great.

Speaker 1 As the seasons change, shorter days don't have to weigh you down. This season, BetterHelp encourages you to reach out, check in on friends, reconnect with loved ones, and remind them you're there.

Speaker 1 Just like it takes a little courage to send that text or grab coffee with someone you haven't seen in a while, reaching out for therapy can feel difficult too, but it can be worth it.

Speaker 1 It can leave people wondering, why didn't I do this sooner? With over 30,000 therapists worldwide, BetterHelp is one of the leading online therapy platforms. BetterHelp therapists are fully qualified.

Speaker 1 BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. This month, Don't wait to reach out.

Speaker 1 Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step.

Speaker 1 Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash smartlist. That's betterhelp.com slash smartless.

Speaker 4 The family that vacations together stays together. At least, that was the plan.
Except now, the dastardly desk clerk is saying he can't confirm your connecting rooms. Wait, what?

Speaker 2 That's right, ma'am. You have rooms 201 and 709.
No, we cannot be five floors away from our kids.

Speaker 2 The doors have double locks. They'll be fine.

Speaker 4 When you want connecting rooms confirmed before you arrive, it matters where you stay.

Speaker 2 Welcome to Hilton.

Speaker 4 I see your connecting rooms are already confirmed. Hilton, for this day.

Speaker 1 And now back to the show.

Speaker 3 Hey, Ethan,

Speaker 3 talk about your relationship with

Speaker 3 fame and success. I put in quotes because, you know,

Speaker 3 in my opinion,

Speaker 3 you've hit the gold medal with success as far as longevity goes. Like that, to me, that's the tough thing to do.

Speaker 3 Like, you know, all you need nowadays is just a sex tape to get your head above the titles and to get a lot of money.

Speaker 3 So that's, you know, to get fame and money, it's, it's

Speaker 2 so, yeah,

Speaker 2 anything,

Speaker 2 yeah, just me, just some shots of me. Sorry, I was just talking to my assistant real quick.

Speaker 3 So you strike me as somebody who is completely fulfilled with

Speaker 3 what you do, the level that you do it.

Speaker 3 You've never seemed to be a person that has had a thirst for fame, fortune, recognition, celebrity.

Speaker 3 It seems that you've always been on a quest to be an actor that's working and also an actor that's respected. And not that that is

Speaker 3 a contrived

Speaker 3 agenda, but it is just a great result of the choices that you make.

Speaker 3 Is that something that you give a lot of thought to, or is it just sort of, well, I just kind of get the roles that I get and the perception is what it is. It is not something of my making.

Speaker 3 It's not a recipe that I've got my eye on and not something that you're proactive at?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 our life is how we spend it. And so I think

Speaker 2 I could easily say, oh, yeah, it's no big deal. But no, I put a lot of thought.

Speaker 2 I'll give you an example. When you were saying that,

Speaker 2 did you guys see the new Elvis movie? No, yeah, I haven't seen it. Not yet.
Well, it's funny because Elvis is interesting to me because,

Speaker 2 you know how when Tarantino makes biopics, he changes the ending? You know, like,

Speaker 2 well, I'd like to do an Elvis movie that ends

Speaker 2 right when the colonel, you know, when Sun Studios is exploding and... Elvis is breaking.
The colonel signs him up. They leave Sun Studios.
He signs the biggest contract in music history with RCA.

Speaker 2 And I would make a strong case to be made that he died that day. You know, that

Speaker 2 when the object of your life becomes about succeeding versus what you are succeeding about.

Speaker 2 Because if his goal in life was to make beautiful music, there is no doubt that he should have stayed with Sam Phillips.

Speaker 2 He loved. African-American music.
He loved what Sam Phillips was doing there. All his success came from singing black music.
And he should have stayed there and helped other musicians.

Speaker 2 And I mean, it's easy. I'm not, I'm using him as an example, right? I'm not casting judgment on the dead.

Speaker 2 What I'm saying is like, I think the path to longevity, like this is what I said to Maya. It's like, she wants to be an actor.

Speaker 2 I'm like, okay, how do you feel if you're 63 and you're teaching acting at

Speaker 2 a prep school in Seattle? She's like, oh, that would be amazing. Right.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 The second she says that, it's all going to go fine. Yeah.
Right. It's, it's all going to go fine.
And you have to, my point about the Elvis thing is if his goal was making music,

Speaker 2 he made the wrong decision. It doesn't matter what the price tag from RCA was.

Speaker 2 You know, he would have been the biggest thing in rock and roll wherever he was. He didn't understand that he had the ball.
He had the talent. Sam Phillips had the talent.

Speaker 2 They were going to change music. Music was going to change, right? That was going to happen.

Speaker 2 And he could have, he just put the cart before the horse, you know, and so what I try to do with decision-making about parts and things like that is if your focus is on how it develops you as a person,

Speaker 2 how it develops your art, how it develops your life, then there's things I knew, like, for example, I was making a joke about wanting to say no about the Newman Woodward documentary, but I knew that that would be good for me, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, these are people that dedicated their whole life to the same thing I've tried to dedicate mine to. They did it at a much higher level for a lot longer.
And here I am.

Speaker 2 I was turning 50 when I got that phone call. And it felt like, well, the universe is giving me a little challenge.
Like, hey, ready? Can you do this? And I knew I didn't want to do it.

Speaker 2 Like, I have no desire to be like a documentarian. That's not my goal in life.
But the universe is. I'm not in charge of everything.
It's dictating it to me.

Speaker 3 I knew that meditating on these two people for as long as it took would probably do good things to my life and it definitely did so if i'm hearing you right it sounds like you've got a very clear idea about what what the road looks like that fulfills your

Speaker 3 sorry for the term your your soul creatively spiritually and you're letting you just say soul i apologize um and that's informing your your decisions um

Speaker 3 and that it would also seem like

Speaker 3 you would probably and and have probably lived your life in such a way where you're not creating things in your life that are at odds with your ability to follow that instinct.

Speaker 3 In other words, you don't have some.

Speaker 3 choking overhead number in your life like oh my god you know my my six houses and my you know my 17 cars mandate

Speaker 2 don't don't fall for it jason's always trying to get to everybody's overhead number

Speaker 3 um that that you're that you know that that that dictates that you have to take that soul-crushing starring role in something that just gives you a big paycheck and then consequently probably leads to career suicide.

Speaker 3 So you haven't set yourself up for any of those trappings, even though I'm sure you live a very comfortable life.

Speaker 3 You're letting

Speaker 2 your

Speaker 3 other stuff dictate your career choices, yes?

Speaker 2 Yes, and now we're back to the like nature nurture, you know, as you say that, like my mom is an anti-materialist.

Speaker 2 Like she is, she is suspect of anyone who spends too much money on an automobile or jewelry or anything, any exterior show of an accumulation of wealth or status, right?

Speaker 2 She's she's allergic to it and suspicious of it immediately. That's the house I was growing up in.
So if I had met the colonel, you know, if I was Elvis, like I would, I mean,

Speaker 2 he's a shyster, right? Yeah. You know, and Elvis didn't have that in his life.

Speaker 2 I don't know why I'm talking about Elvis so much, but, but my point is, yes, I think that, you know, we all want to be able to have a decent roof and pay for our kids' health.

Speaker 2 You know, we all want that.

Speaker 2 But if you're not comfortable with like a middle-class aesthetic and you really want 80 million pairs of shoes and stuff, you're going to get in trouble if you're not a genius.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yes, Sean. Hey, Sean, for every person.

Speaker 2 Hang on.

Speaker 2 I do want to say, so, Ethan, Jason, I'm glad you brought that up because it...

Speaker 2 You know, if you look at the movies that you've made, you've made over the last 30 years a lot of different films in a lot of different genres.

Speaker 3 Tons of commercial movies as well.

Speaker 2 Yeah, tons of commercial. Yeah, tons of commercial, but also like,

Speaker 2 you know, you made, first of all, I want to talk about Gattaca. I love, I think a really underappreciated film.
That is a great, and I've seen it probably three or four times.

Speaker 2 I just love that, man.

Speaker 2 What drew you to that?

Speaker 2 I've always wanted to talk about that movie. Andrew Nickel wrote, that was one of the best scripts I ever read.
I mean,

Speaker 2 we haven't even talked about great art, like sci-fi really opened up my life too. Like when I read Kurt Vonnegut as a kid, Tolkien, Philip K.
Dick, you know, these things

Speaker 2 make your brain challenge society and what society throws at you as truths. And Gattaca was just a staggering script.

Speaker 2 And I'm so happy that you say that because, you know, when that movie came out, it was a failure. But over the last 20 years, it's found its audience.

Speaker 2 And I've always thought Andrew Nicoll was just one of the the best writers I've ever come across. So, so good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I saw it in the theater and I've seen it subsequent in all sorts of when you when you are because you're so Ethan, you're so immersed in

Speaker 1 everything that you love to do, the theater, the film, writing. What do you do to escape it if you ever need to?

Speaker 2 I know you like music, right? You're a big music guy.

Speaker 2 Sports, you'll follow sport. What do you like? I think one of the secret blessings of my, I'm just a huge fan.
You know, I mean, I love music. I love movies.

Speaker 2 The reason I've been able to work in so many different genres of movies, I think, is I actually really like them all.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, people can always tell if you're,

Speaker 2 oh, you know, if you're cashing in, they smell, they smell it when you don't like what you're doing. And so

Speaker 2 music is my secret great passion, listening to records over and over again, finding new music. I'm not, I have no aptitude for that art.
Like, I'm not good at it.

Speaker 2 So I can just geek out and be a fan and love what they do.

Speaker 1 Do you ever play anything?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I play the guitar badly. Both my

Speaker 2 oldest two,

Speaker 2 Maya and Levon, are both actual musicians and they've lapped me so much that it's now embarrassing to play the guitar in my house because they play so well. But no, I love it.

Speaker 1 Who would you pay top dollar for a ticket to go see a concert?

Speaker 2 Wow. Besides Elvis.
Besides, well, if I could get Elvis back from the dead, that'd be really good.

Speaker 2 There's so many people.

Speaker 2 Nathan Hawk says he wants to get Elvis back from the dead to give him advice

Speaker 2 on how to deal with the colonel.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 Hamilton Lighthouse is from the, he's the lead singer, The Walkman, and he did the score for the last movie stars, the doc I just did. And he's just brilliant.
I highly recommend people buy his music.

Speaker 2 He's just underrated and incredible.

Speaker 2 Brilliant. Brilliant, dude.

Speaker 2 I feel like we have a lot of similar

Speaker 2 Ethan's like a lot more successful slash curious slash like artistically inclined and and gifted

Speaker 2 handsome me and hands more handsome me he's just got all this I know it's amazing he's like a way more interesting and he could play even younger than me and I'm like a 10 times more interesting baby no well no I'm just saying that it doesn't matter it doesn't matter we're not going to get into it

Speaker 2 so so but but then you do here's the other thing I want to talk about so you do things like Gattaca

Speaker 2 and I don't want to belabor this too much, but I love it. And then you make these Link Letter, these movies with Richard Linkletter.

Speaker 2 You guys have this amazing, seemingly amazing relationship with him and with Julie Delpy. And how many of those films did you guys make, which you also wrote? Three.
Three. Yeah.
Which you also wrote.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 talk about a complete shift from working with Andrew Nigl and doing Gattaca to doing these movies. And then you do Training Day with Denzel and Antoine Foucault.

Speaker 2 I mean, this is, these are, you know, you're getting whiplash with the different genres here.

Speaker 2 But it's seemingly all stuff that you're really into and can do with

Speaker 2 with ease

Speaker 2 well

Speaker 2 i wouldn't it's it's certainly not easy but i i

Speaker 2 don't know how to answer how to speak to that

Speaker 3 that writing thing is that the writing tell me the writing thing is hard don't tell me the writing thing is easy isn't that like just staring at a wall trying to fill a blank page and just you're overwhelmed with all the options available to you and how do you reduce that down and write at the level that that you're writing

Speaker 2 i think it's really important for young actors to write because it gets um

Speaker 2 you know that whole thing we were saying about character and about who you are and if you're constantly interpreting other people's words it's extremely valuable to know what your words are it doesn't need to be for publication it doesn't need to be but just just the ability to hear your own voice.

Speaker 2 And I think,

Speaker 2 Will, to answer what you were saying, my mom had this

Speaker 2 quote above the toilet when I was growing up, which is, if you improve in one talent, God will give you more. And the other one was to master one craft, you have to apprentice three.

Speaker 1 I have one over the toilet. It says, please be neat and wipe the seat.

Speaker 2 But the point I'm trying to make is that for me, all these things fed each other.

Speaker 2 Like if you're sitting in a Monte Carlo for four months with Denzel Washington, working with him at a very high level, you don't unsee that, right?

Speaker 2 And you bring that with you on your next job.

Speaker 2 So when Link Letter wants me to do this 12-year project, we're going to make a short film about growing up, and I'm going to be acting with this young kid over 12 years.

Speaker 2 I can bring what I've learned from time on set with Denzel. He creates, he doesn't wait for people to create a creative atmosphere for him to work.
He makes it happen. Right.

Speaker 2 And once you see that that's possible, it opens up doors.

Speaker 2 You know, getting to be in a rehearsal room with Tom Stoppard and getting to see like how he obsesses on every consonant and vowel and the way the whole thing works like a poem and seeing writing at that level.

Speaker 2 Sam Shepard,

Speaker 2 getting to be around these people,

Speaker 2 if you're... paying attention, you bring it with you on the next job.

Speaker 2 And I was really grateful. Rick invited Julie and I to write those movies with him.
And you guys saw Days of Confused, right? I mean,

Speaker 2 it was so exciting to be working with somebody of our generation who wasn't imitating other people. He was asking this question of like, what is our generation? Yeah.
You know,

Speaker 2 what are we contributing? How can we push the forum forward?

Speaker 2 And so, yeah, you're a student of what happened before to understand how they moved their time period, but not to imitate them, but to be present in your own generation.

Speaker 2 Dude, I fucking love that so much.

Speaker 2 I'm such a big proponent of the same. There's nothing for me, I always talk about it in comedy, but I hate anything that feels too derivative.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 rail against often to these guys about other people who I feel like are kind of not just, I don't even mean stealing somebody's bit, I mean just kind of doing their thing.

Speaker 2 Stealing their attitude, yeah. Stealing their attitude, and it bums me out on such a profound level.

Speaker 2 And I often have to be talked off the ledge by these guys for being such a crank. It causes me physical pain when they make money at it.
Yeah, same here, man. Same here.
Makes me fucking crazy.

Speaker 2 I'm going to send you my list. If you see my, if you see, one of the things I'm so proud of Maya about

Speaker 2 Robin on Stranger Things is it's proof of this idea that you don't have to try to be original. If you are yourself, you will be original.
Stop imitating everybody else.

Speaker 2 She brought herself and what she has to offer to this character. And all of a sudden, I haven't seen that character in film before.
It's a unique person.

Speaker 2 yeah and that's and when when you see a comedian a musician anybody bring themselves you know then they are original exciting yeah yeah and it's inspiring it's so exciting oh man i tell you what ethan thank you so much for your you we've taken up so much of your time thank you please keep staying original keep staying curious yeah yeah love watching you do what you do man it's such an honor uh to have very very inspiring really inspiring i'm so glad to finally speak to you and meet you i can't believe we our paths haven't haven't crossed more significantly till I know.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm a big fan of you guys, and you're why I did the show.

Speaker 2 And I love the fact that you guys are, you know, the thing about being the surprise guest is you guys don't have prepared questions.

Speaker 2 You know, normally you do an interview and you can sense exactly what the interviewer wants you to say.

Speaker 2 Do you remember in 1998, you told Rolling Stone Magazine,

Speaker 2 remember, remember, say that again. Right, right, right, right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no,

Speaker 3 we're just three dummies trapped in an elevator with you, and we've got you trapped for an hour.

Speaker 2 And we also, I think all of us understood when you said, you know, it's about the friendships, and we're lucky that we get to do this because we're all friends, and I love these guys, and we get to spend a lot of time together.

Speaker 2 That's a blessing, man.

Speaker 3 Ethan, thanks for doing this.

Speaker 2 It's great to hear you talking about it. Thanks for having me, everybody.
Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Such a pleasure.

Speaker 2 Thank you, man. Thank you for your time.
Have a good rest of the day. All right.
You too, you guys. Thank you.
Thank you, buddy. See ya.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 I think he might be top on the list of

Speaker 3 I want to be friends with him at the end of it.

Speaker 3 I mean, I want to be friends with a lot of people that we meet on this show, but he might be tip-top. He just seems so damn great.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah, so cool.
And, you know, he's got this new docuseries as he talked about the, what is that, the last movie stars on HBO.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the last movie stars, HBO Max. I mean,

Speaker 2 he's just like, of course, of course they came to him. Of course,

Speaker 2 Paul Newman and John Woover's kids came to him because he's just, like you said, he's cool.

Speaker 2 You want to hang out with him, and he's the kind of guy you'd want telling do you want to see that documentary just because there's a photo of me in it?

Speaker 2 Again, he didn't really react to that. Did you notice that? Because every draw.

Speaker 3 I don't think Ethan's seen it. No.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't think he's seen it. But he kind of nodded, and I think that he was sort of.
No, he didn't really.

Speaker 3 I think he thought he's positive who you are.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 By the way, I don't disagree with you.

Speaker 2 It's the hat in the glasses.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But seriously, his brain,

Speaker 3 his soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it, seems just

Speaker 2 is this the second time today you brought up soul? Soul, yeah. What's happening to you right now?

Speaker 2 I'm just trying to get myself to a place where I can say his heart and everything just seems so bionic.

Speaker 2 I don't think we've used that one.

Speaker 2 Smart

Speaker 2 Less.

Speaker 2 Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbaco, Michael Grant Terry, and Rob Armjarff.

Speaker 2 Smart Less

Speaker 5 There are millions of podcasts out there, and you've chosen this one. Whether you're a regular or just here on a whim, it's what you have chosen to listen to.

Speaker 5 With Yoto, your kids can have the same choice. Yoto is a screen-free, ad-free audio player.
With hundreds of Yoto cards, there are stories, music, and podcasts like this one, but for kids.

Speaker 5 Just slot a card into the player and let the adventure begin. Check out YotoPlay.com.