"Jeff Daniels"

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Speaker 1 Diary 2021.

Speaker 1 The days are getting shorter.

Speaker 1 Am I losing my mind?

Speaker 1 Or are they losing their minds?

Speaker 1 Or are we all

Speaker 1 losing our...

Speaker 1 Oh my god. I was supposed to do the...
Hey, welcome to Smartless. Smart.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 1 Smart.

Speaker 2 Listener, Sean's got a walking booty.

Speaker 1 He's got a booty. He's got a booty.
Now I got a foot boot. Oh, Sean, you've been saying for a while you wanted to get some booty, and that is just great.
I got a foot boot on. What happened?

Speaker 1 You know, I don't have to wear it, but the doctor said if you want to heal fast, you should wear it. I have a tiny, tiny, tiny torn thing in my third toe on my right foot.

Speaker 2 I think what we're really looking for is how did we hurt the toe?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Hang on a second.
Working out, maybe a little bit.

Speaker 1 Let's pause for one fucking second. That entire boot that goes halfway up your leg is because you have a tiny torn thing in your one little piggy.
It's a toe. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why, is that the one that didn't go to market? What happened?

Speaker 1 It refused to go to market.

Speaker 1 Yeah, what happened, John? What happened to the toe? No, I don't know. I swear to God.

Speaker 1 You know, when you walk and

Speaker 1 your front part of your ball of your foot turns up, I was doing it too much. I guess I would walk too much.
Oh, is that what it is?

Speaker 2 So you've got an exercise injury.

Speaker 1 Is that what it is? From walking. Uh-uh.

Speaker 2 If anyone would have an exercise injury,

Speaker 2 it's the tight silhouette of Will Arnett. Yeah, look at that.

Speaker 1 You know, when Jason was, you both were out at the house recently when we were all on the East Coast. And

Speaker 1 Jason got to see you firsthand. I don't think he believed me that I worked that hard because he's kind of the guy who runs six miles every day.
And we know that he's the guy who puts the road work in.

Speaker 1 And then he got to see firsthand that I'm actually doing it, right, Jay?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well,

Speaker 2 here's what it is.

Speaker 1 Okay. There's a basement room.
I'm trying to fucking cue you up to compliment me.

Speaker 2 No, I'm done with it. Now we're going to switch it.
We're going to balance it right now. Listener, there's a basement room in Will Arnett's fabulous second summer home because of your kind listening.

Speaker 1 It's my first summer home, but it's my second home.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Your kind listening has given him the means to provide.

Speaker 1 I've said that before.

Speaker 2 I've had it. That's true.
All right. So now you're working on a third, right? Let's let them know how rich you are, Will.
They love that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Shut up. Trying to be so dumb.

Speaker 2 He's got a basement/slash gym in the bottom of the house, and it's all white. Yeah, with some wood panel walls, but it's white.

Speaker 1 First of all, that's not true. There's the floor is leather.
That's true.

Speaker 2 Let me get to the white part. The white part is the standing punching bag.

Speaker 1 Okay, it's real, real white. It's hot white.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the biggest violation are the white boxing gloves and the white tennis shoes that are down there just for the boxing sessions. So

Speaker 2 he's getting skinny while doing it in Miami style, I suppose.

Speaker 1 It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 Jason, when I was there, Will showed me that too, and he actually demonstrated. So I had to stand there and watch him box for a little bit.
Yeah. But it was impressive.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 But then this is what I like. Jason FaceTimed me from that same gym running on the treadmill.
Running on the treadmill. That's true.
Jason, when I got down there, like I said, the floor is leather.

Speaker 1 I don't want to get into the whole thing. Oh, you've got an Italian leather floor.
But the point is, when I came down there. Is it really leather? Sure.

Speaker 1 Every time I come down there, we'd come down there, Jason would be running. It would be a a spray, like somebody had just,

Speaker 1 you know, had put pressure on the end of a garden hose and just sprayed the amount of sweat that was surrounding the truck. You sweat a lot.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, and then what did I do? I take my towel

Speaker 2 and I mop it all up. I wipe down the machine like

Speaker 2 a guy who has spent some time in a public gym.

Speaker 1 You know, it's just courteous.

Speaker 1 Hey, listen, mystery guest, you can't participate yet.

Speaker 1 God damn it.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's get to it because he's laughing. Did you? I'm still in the thing that everything is white.
Oh, okay. No, wait, wait, wait.
Let's guess. Let's go.
Don't bear off to that.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 He's an actor. He's an actor's actor.
He's from Michigan. He yelled.
He yelled. He's comedic.

Speaker 1 Wait, he's from Michigan.

Speaker 1 He still lives there. He made his film debut in Ragtime.
And instead of listing his credits, one of my favorite movies. You're going to guess who it is.
Let's ask him about his credits.

Speaker 1 It's the incredibly gifted and talented, one of my personal all-time favorite actors of all, all time. One of the good guys, it's Jeff Daniels.
Hello. How are we? Daniels.

Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 2 That's a booking, everybody.

Speaker 1 Daniels. Let me ask you about the punching bag.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a good workout, but psychologically, emotionally, are we dealing with some shit when we're dealing with

Speaker 1 it? First of all, yes. Yeah.
Yes. I have a lot of issues that I'm trying to work out right now.

Speaker 1 Jeff Daniels, thank you for being on today.

Speaker 1 I really am such a gigantic fan, as I'm sure I can speak for all of you. Gigantic fans.

Speaker 1 Now that's nice. Thank you.
You live in Michigan. Not that Michigan isn't awesome.
One of my best friends lived there. Well, you know, Raina, she lives in Lakeside, Michigan.
Oh, I didn't know.

Speaker 1 But it's, but it's unusual for actors to live there, right? You hear this all the time. Why Michigan? And why didn't you ever want to leave?

Speaker 1 I did leave. I left for about 10 years.

Speaker 1 New York City. Great research.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Kathleen, my wife is from there. We're from the same town.
And

Speaker 1 we were in New York City for 10 years. We had a two-year-old boy.

Speaker 1 I had about three or four movies at that point, but had no faith that the career would last whatsoever. They don't, right? No.

Speaker 1 So I didn't want to be somewhere where I would get the phone call that you're over. Right.

Speaker 1 And I had heard that. My agent had said that once.
I said, you know, somebody is going to be in the movie. Do you think so-and-so is a good actor? He goes, no, no, he's over.

Speaker 2 So I've been told more than once by one of my reps that, you know, let's start thinking about something else.

Speaker 1 I've seen people tell you that after a take. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 2 And I've whispered it to myself in the mirror a few times.

Speaker 2 Jeff, sorry, continue.

Speaker 1 No, and that's so, you know, being fatalistic,

Speaker 1 I went back to Michigan. We built a house

Speaker 1 for a lot less money than L.A. or New York and

Speaker 1 had another kid and kind of used the Detroit airport to commute, which was unusual. But I just, I didn't know how to raise my kids in L.A.
or in Hollywood specifically.

Speaker 1 You know, the joke is I just didn't want them to grow up going to Sly Stallone's house for an Easter egg hunt.

Speaker 1 Why not?

Speaker 1 I didn't know how to pull them out of that. So I said, why don't we just go home? And so when the career is over, I can go, oh, okay.
And I'll hang up and I'll already be home.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was the long-term plan. Hey, Jeff, tell the kids

Speaker 1 the Easter bunnies fucking late today.

Speaker 1 The worst one. You know, there's this thing that I heard a long time ago.
I might not be getting this right, but somebody told me this. This is an actor's career summed up.
You may have heard this.

Speaker 1 I'll use my name, for example. Who is Sean Hayes? Get me Sean Hayes.
Get me a Sean Hayes type. Who is Sean Hayes? That's the trajectory of an actor's career.
Is there a young Sean Hayes in there too?

Speaker 1 Because Because that happens. Sure, yeah.
That happens too. Well, him, but younger.

Speaker 2 But Jeff, you have always been a couple of steps ahead

Speaker 2 in your choices, in your perception of things.

Speaker 2 I mean, you're just, you've been a pro for

Speaker 2 so long.

Speaker 2 It's...

Speaker 1 And I wonder if not sort of being able to step back to go and work and then be able to not live in this. I also didn't want my kids to grow up in Hollywood, which is why I moved to Beverly Hills.

Speaker 1 But the point is, I think that maybe was this, but do you get to have that kind of Hamptons for the summer, though?

Speaker 1 And Hamptons for the summer. Yeah, I'm not an animal, Jason.

Speaker 1 But do you, do you, do you get to have that kind of race? We had a Formula One driver, Daniel Ricardo, on, and he talked about needing to take that step back and get that perspective.

Speaker 1 And do you feel like staying, being in Michigan, you get to have more spe perspective and that helps you do what you do?

Speaker 1 Does that kind of recharge your batteries a little bit?

Speaker 1 A couple things. Yeah,

Speaker 1 the recharge happens.

Speaker 1 You know, the movie or the TV show ends and you're still in that town and other people are working, just not you.

Speaker 1 That would have been harder.

Speaker 1 When I did have like time off back in Michigan and then I would get a job and you're going to shoot at Warner Brothers, you'd walk on Warner Brothers and

Speaker 1 it's exciting. And that enthusiasm that you had as a kid for not making a film, but for making a movie.
I'm making movies. And

Speaker 1 it kept that kind of wonderment of when I first got into the business of,

Speaker 1 you know, you go to sound stage, whatever, and there's a plaque that says streetcar named Desire was shot in this one.

Speaker 1 I get off on stuff like that. So it brought all that back.

Speaker 1 It also made me different. Jack Lemon, I saw him, you know, we ran into him and I asked him about acting and all he goes, you got to be different, kid.

Speaker 1 You got to be different than the other 25 guys sitting outside that door. And Michigan made me different.

Speaker 2 That's cool. And where does it all sit for you today as far as your, your, your, your, your passion and your investment in, you know, emotional investment into the future? Because you've done it.

Speaker 2 I mean, you've got the gold medal for longevity. You've got the gold medal for quality.
You've got the gold medal for providing, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 So do you find yourself in in a place of uh sort of that that thing that uh will's tired of hearing me say that sort of that sexy indifference that allows for you to be really hireable because they can smell this kind of well he doesn't need it he's done it um where how does it all sit for you now what do you what do you want to do uh that that's the question and that's you know i've often you know, and you guys,

Speaker 1 when do you know you've made it?

Speaker 1 Is it money?

Speaker 1 Is it roles? Is it an Oscar? Is it what is it? And I've never been able to answer that.

Speaker 1 And one of those things was that question when my agent, you know, I said, well, I'm, you know, I got what's next year? I'm looking at next year.

Speaker 1 He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's some things, but what do you want to do?

Speaker 1 And I've never been in a position to do that, not until Newsroom and then a string in a map. I mean, Newsroom bought me 10 years.
You were so amazing on that show. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 Not even Dumb and Dumber. Dumb and Dumber didn't give you that position.

Speaker 1 I would have thought that you've always been in that position because you seem like maybe this is a testament to what a great actor you are. You seem like you sort of, the roles that

Speaker 1 you play and

Speaker 1 the stuff that you do is kind of feels like it. It feels like it's by design.
Yeah, because

Speaker 1 like to Will's point, terms of endearment, something wild, Purple Rose of Cairo, you know, Newsroom, Gettysburg, like all these things that you've done, which are just mind-blowing.

Speaker 1 And then you have Dumb and Dumber, which to me was one of the smartest moves you could ever make because it showed immediately.

Speaker 2 That's what you did there, Sean, with the title and everything. That's a fucking classic.

Speaker 1 Actually, you know what, Sean, you just mentioned the one. So, I mean, Jeff, we met, I don't know if you remember a few years ago, we both, I was on there for a couple weeks

Speaker 1 on RV with

Speaker 1 Robin and that whole gang and

Speaker 1 our buddy Barry Sonnenfeld.

Speaker 1 And I remember, I kept thinking, like, I don't want to, don't talk to Jeff Daniels too much.

Speaker 1 Don't tell him how much you love Something Wild. Because for me, that movie.
And you didn't.

Speaker 1 I didn't. I didn't.
And I just pretended I had, because Jason just kept saying sexy indifferent, sexy indifferent. So I was posing a lot.
I was pursing my lips like I didn't care.

Speaker 1 But I will say, I want to get to Something Wild. Something Wild was the first movie I ever owned.
And I'll tell you why. I rented it and I forgot to give it back to the video story.

Speaker 1 This is a true story.

Speaker 2 These are the way the compliments come from women.

Speaker 1 This is an absolutely true story. And I've watched that movie.
Not only have I watched it dozens and dozens of times, there's something, I reference it all the time

Speaker 1 because I love that character you played.

Speaker 1 You know, I've seen versions of it before, but this guy who's got this secret and you take it throughout the whole film and you're really funny and you seem like you're really hapless and whatever.

Speaker 1 And then it turns out there's like this whole other twist to it. And this guy's got this burning, he's got this thing burning in him.

Speaker 1 And I've always used that as a touchstone of a character who's got something else going on.

Speaker 1 There's something about it that I just love. I don't mean to embarrass you, Jeff, but I just love that film so much.
Was that a big experience for you making that movie?

Speaker 1 It was great because of Jonathan Demi.

Speaker 1 I mean, you guys do improv. brilliantly.
I've never taken an improv class in my life. And Jonathan used the script as an outline.
And that was the first movie where, yeah, don't worry what they wrote.

Speaker 1 Here's what you're, you know, say this, say this, try that, go. No way.
And that was a new territory for me.

Speaker 1 So you got the freedom, as you know, from improv to kind of go.

Speaker 1 But I never, the secret thing is that sometimes actors will

Speaker 1 hide it a little bit, maybe a lot, but not completely.

Speaker 1 And I think I, if I look, if I remember right, I just completely ignored the fact that there's this secret that I'm going to get to later because I went into that movie going,

Speaker 1 The two guys I had grown up with idolizing, or at least got me interested in acting, were Dick Van Dyke and Jack Lemon. They were two of them, but they were the guys who could do comedy.

Speaker 1 Alan Arkin was another one. Alan is so, you know, understated and all that.
But these guys, you know, like in in-laws with Peter Falk, those guys, they could go big comedically. and not get caught.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so that's Jack Lemon and Dick Van Dyke had a baby and its name was Charlie Driggs in something wild. That was, I'm going to do what they would do.
And then I just rode that into that secret.

Speaker 1 But you had that, there's a scene in the, if you remember, there's a scene in the coffee shop at the motel where Ray Liotta comes, Ray Liota at his menacingly best.

Speaker 1 First movie. First, first movie.
So there you go. First movie.
He was so scary. I bet he was scary even just doing the scenes.
He was so good.

Speaker 1 But you have this scene where you kind of, there's a cop in the diner there, and you know that he can't do anything because the cop's there. Oh, yeah.
So you've got like the freedom.

Speaker 1 And there's something, again, about the way you played that scene. I was like, this is the way you do a scene.
Like, I thought, like, if I taught a film class, I'd go, this is how you do a scene.

Speaker 1 And that dynamic and that chemistry and that thing that, and those instincts that you had,

Speaker 1 for me, again, not to embarrass you, I've just always taken with me. It's a strange thing, but it's true.

Speaker 1 You don't teach? Well,

Speaker 1 I should. This is a good point.

Speaker 1 It's a really good point, Sean. And I'm going to put my number up in the chat after if anybody wants to.

Speaker 1 You could use it, Sean.

Speaker 2 Go ahead, man.

Speaker 2 That's a movie that

Speaker 2 one of my heroes, Paul Thomas Anderson, talks a lot about. And

Speaker 2 I've scolded myself for having never seen it yet. But after this talk, I've got even more impetus to see it.

Speaker 1 Jonathan Demi would, if you gave him 10 grand to make a movie or 100 million, he'd have the same enthusiasm at 6 in the morning, same thing. And he never met an idea that he wouldn't give it a shot.

Speaker 1 Yeah, try it. Go.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Anything, any. He was so encouraging.

Speaker 1 Others have been so, but no one more so than Jonathan Dummy was. He was a pleasure to work with.

Speaker 2 And we will be right back.

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Speaker 1 And now, back to the show.

Speaker 2 One of my favorite movies, like top five, is Ragtime.

Speaker 2 Tell me about that. Tell me about working with Milos Foreman.

Speaker 1 Ragtime was the the first movie. It was

Speaker 1 my agent had been an agent at ICM for about a week.

Speaker 1 He inherited a client list of which I was on it, one of the people on it. He recently was the casting director for Ragtime.

Speaker 1 So Paul Martino was, he knew Milos. And he said, Milos, you know, yeah, I've started a job and I got an actor I want you to see.
Put him in the movie. And so Milos, it was perfunctory.

Speaker 1 I went over and met Milos. He goes, yeah, okay, and said said hello and looked at me and said, okay, right, you can play this part.
Get out of here. That was it.
And I got it because of Paul.

Speaker 1 The thrill of ragtime was Cagney working with Jimmy Cagney.

Speaker 2 That was his last film, wasn't it?

Speaker 1 It was. And the story, he didn't want to do it.
He was living upstate New York. He was 81, going on 101.

Speaker 1 He wanted a screen test

Speaker 1 to prove to himself that he could do it. Wow.
Milos Milos really wanted him. So

Speaker 1 this is 80, 81. They rented a studio at Channel 13 in New York City and WNET.

Speaker 1 And we went down there and he got a bunch of the other actors that were in this one scene with the police commissioner, which was Cagney. They got Kenny McMillan, who's passed away.
He was amazing.

Speaker 1 He was a bulldozer fire plug of a, you know, angry actor that could just go. I mean, he was just an open vein.

Speaker 2 A racist fire chief.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
And then he added, I think Howard Rollins was there, and then three or four of us, other cops who were just, you know, to fill out the room.

Speaker 1 And I don't know why, but we didn't say anything. But I got to go.
Yeah. So you're sitting in there, and there's nothing, there's like one camera and a black and white monitor up on a wall.

Speaker 1 That's where you could see what the camera saw. No video village, just that.
Black and white. In comes Cagney, drove down.
Here he comes. A nurse is helping him in

Speaker 1 on a walker. Sound familiar.
On a walker.

Speaker 1 Puts the walker down, sits in the chair. It's a three-page scene.
He can't do it. He can't remember the next line.
He can't. He turns the page.
It's 10 seconds. It's bad.

Speaker 1 Again, Niels goes, all right, all right,

Speaker 1 don't worry about it. Let's just do the one page.

Speaker 1 And he puts the one page down. There are three lines.
Can't do it. It's all right.
Let's just do the one, the one line. You do the one line.
You read that line.

Speaker 1 Cagney went over it, went over it, went over it.

Speaker 1 And then he looked up and he looked at Kenny McMillan and you could see it on the black and white TV monitor. There it was.
That thing

Speaker 1 that only guys like Cagney have. The only other guys I've seen that have it that I've been on a set with were Clint and Jack Nicholson.
That thing where the camera goes and they become that thing.

Speaker 1 and then they come out of it.

Speaker 2 They make eye contact and the presence is there.

Speaker 1 And yeah. Yeah, or just you can see all the movies he's ever done are right there again.
He's just old. And that he, we cut after that one line and Milo said, perfect, you got it.
We're going to be.

Speaker 1 And he shot it line to line. Just for Tracy, Milo Schforman, he directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ragtime, Amadeus, Man on the Moon, all these huge movies.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's a great beautiful director. I'm so jealous you got to work with him.
Amadeus is my favorite movie.

Speaker 2 Can we go to Newsroom? Can you?

Speaker 2 Now,

Speaker 2 I think think everyone except Tracy has probably heard

Speaker 2 the stories about Aaron Sorkin and

Speaker 2 his incredible writing,

Speaker 2 but in sometimes

Speaker 2 his intransigence when it comes to actors making the lines their own.

Speaker 2 Can you speak to any of that without risking any sort of career suicide?

Speaker 1 No, not at all.

Speaker 1 It's very clear. It is very clear what the rules are, which is don't change your word.

Speaker 2 Like, I've heard you can't change um to uh.

Speaker 1 Correct. Huh.

Speaker 2 How did you like that?

Speaker 1 Uh, it's um, it's actually um, yeah.

Speaker 1 I had come out of the theater,

Speaker 1 so in New York, where it was, that's the way it was in the theater. It was whether it was Lanford Wilson in my case off Broadway, uh, you go ask if you want to change one of the words.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 so that was just the rule. And so your job was to make the writing work.
And if they didn't, it didn't work, they'd they'd rewrite it or they'd redo you or something. But that was the deal.

Speaker 2 But in the interest of trying to make lines sound like they are coming out of thought, one sometimes, you know, like I'm doing right now,

Speaker 2 you break them up, you mess them up.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're acting right now?

Speaker 2 No, but you know what I mean. Like there's like, there's things that sound natural that a writer might not write because it is a lot of ellipses and a lot of

Speaker 1 words.

Speaker 2 Exactly. And

Speaker 1 he's saying that I'm sure his defense would be: like, I know that's what makes me good at what I do, is that I understand that. And

Speaker 1 there's the also the sort of underlying that is that I understand better than you.

Speaker 2 Well, but there's the separation between what is writing and what is acting. And I guess my question is: how much is he tolerant of the merging of those two things?

Speaker 1 You have to marry yourself to the rhythm of the writing, the melody of Sorkin.

Speaker 1 There is a melody, and

Speaker 1 I call it like riding secretariat. You get on it and you write it.

Speaker 2 Right, like a mammoth or even a Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 Or Neil Simon was the same way. Don't change it.
Don't change your word. And you guys know from comedy, you take one word out, it's not funny.

Speaker 1 I did Promises, Promises on Broadway, this musical, and Neil would come to rehearsals and rewrite with me on the spot. It was crazy.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh my God, Neil Simon's rewriting words. I've never worried about the fact that

Speaker 1 I get what Jason's saying completely.

Speaker 2 And I'm not advocating for one way or the other. I'm just curious about what the process is.

Speaker 1 No, I know, I know. But here's the deal.
Like Patty Chaevsky and Network, for example,

Speaker 1 when

Speaker 1 William Holden and Faye Dunaway are going at each other in that room, there are three people in that room. And one of them is Patty Chaevsky.

Speaker 1 And you know it, and you can feel it, and you can hear his voice. And that's where Sorkin's coming from.
He is in every scene.

Speaker 1 And so my job is to make it sound as thoughtful and it's falling out of my head for the first time as possible. But at the end of the day, if it also feels written, we like that.
Right.

Speaker 1 There's someone driving the bus. And so you marry yourself to that as an actor and you do your best job to make it as real as possible.
Got it. But you know, Jason, we talk about this sometimes.

Speaker 1 There's that kind of, look, at the end of the day, also, and maybe this is more prevalent now. It's it is much more a collaborative experience on set.

Speaker 1 I think that I don't know if all you guys can attest to that, but certainly,

Speaker 1 you know, there are moments where, for instance, you know, Jimmy Burrows, the great TV director who Sean and I had the

Speaker 1 honor to work with. Jason's known forever and ever and ever.
And Jason, did you guys ever do anything do you and Jimmy ever?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, a bunch of stuff actually.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, you did a bunch of stuff. Yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, of course.
So I remember one time Sean and I were doing a show with Jimmy, and

Speaker 1 I remember I came, I had got to walk in and deliver a line and then like take a drink or something. So I come in and I say the line and then I take the drink.

Speaker 1 And as we're walking away to the next set to

Speaker 1 go rehearse on the next set, he says,

Speaker 1 Willie, say half the line, take the drink and then say the other thing on the other side. And I was like, okay.
And I try it and it was like 24% funnier. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Isn't that amazing? And I kind of was like, huh. He just walked away.
He was like, he was so fucking right.

Speaker 1 I love that. Yeah, the good one.
Jim Brooks is another guy like that. I mean, they just know.
They just know.

Speaker 1 But they got to see it. They got to see you do it.
And so that's kind of what I go, you want to see the words you wrote? Here they are. Boom.
And that's kind of how I go into it.

Speaker 2 With all your experience, all your set exposure, set experience,

Speaker 2 understanding of process, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff, has it ever drawn you towards

Speaker 2 wanting to utilize all that

Speaker 2 by jumping in the director chair?

Speaker 1 You have, right, Jason? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You love it.

Speaker 1 I can't stand it.

Speaker 2 Oh, really? God, I cannot get enough of it.

Speaker 1 I can't stand it. Why?

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 the questions,

Speaker 1 the constant questions, the coming up and going, is it the red sweater or the blue sweater? I don't care.

Speaker 1 I just don't care. And so I, I mean, I completely get the

Speaker 1 having the vision.

Speaker 1 So true, yeah.

Speaker 1 But having the, I don't have the patience for it. Yeah.
And but having the vision of the overall, the overall piece, I completely get that that's the chair you got to sit in. Right.

Speaker 2 What about when you're on the set with a director that isn't as comfortable on a set as you are?

Speaker 2 And as a result, the process, you know, the 10 hours of work you guys might have to do that day is going to take 14.

Speaker 2 And does that ever just start to eat at at you? And you're like, well, if I would just utilize all that I've absorbed,

Speaker 2 we might treat ourselves to a more efficient.

Speaker 1 Jason got into directing so that he could do scenes like whatever would get him back on the 10 quickest. Yeah, exactly.
And just collapse this coverage into a... Yeah.

Speaker 1 Everybody just stand in a line. I'm going to shoot that.
Is this setup going to put me on the 405? Because if it's not,

Speaker 1 it's another wonder.

Speaker 1 Listen, you underestimate Jason's appetite for discussing minushai and arguing about fucking just details and stuff that's meaningless. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 He can fucking talk about shit that you're like, we already got it a half hour ago, idiot. And he's like, but listen, why would they, you know, you know, shut the fuck up.

Speaker 1 But you know, if you think about it, it's unreal. It's unreal.

Speaker 1 No interest whatsoever. Here's the other problem with being a director, or that I, I did, I actually dur, I wrote, directed, and acted in two independent films.
Yeah. So I did it.
I got it.

Speaker 1 I've been in the editing room. I completely get how there's, that's where you write your final draft.
I can, all of that. But

Speaker 1 you rap principal photography. Yeah.
I'm done. Yeah.
I was an actor. I'm done.
You are one-third of the way through this thing. Yeah.
And I, I just, I'm, I'm over it. I, I, that, that I learned that.

Speaker 1 I'm going, oh my God. Now I got to go promote it.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Well, that speaks to something interesting. Jeff, do you like that?

Speaker 1 Well, you obviously just said you kind of like that, that you're rapped. But do you, you have such a huge

Speaker 1 resume. You've done so many films and television programs, et cetera.
Do you love constantly kind of jumping into new things and going a completely different direction?

Speaker 1 Like your stuff, the breadth of your work is crazy. Yeah.
Comedy, drama, indie, huge movies.

Speaker 1 Theater. What is that about?

Speaker 1 It's keeping me interested, to be honest.

Speaker 1 The pandemic happened, and I was 65 when the pandemic happened. So it really was like forced retirement without the gold watch.
You're just done. And this is what, oh, this is what retirement is like.

Speaker 1 I got it. Okay.

Speaker 1 And then I came out of, well, in March, almost out of the pandemic, we hope. I went down to Pittsburgh and we've just finished five months of shooting this Showtime series called American Rust.

Speaker 1 And I was curious as to whether I'd still be in love with acting or wanted to do it. I was getting used to semi-retired and all that.
And I missed it. I missed between action and cut.

Speaker 1 I miss, I missed even going back to Mockingbird, you know, on Broadway. I miss what Atticus Finch is going to be able to do to this post-George Floyd crowd.

Speaker 1 Acting is a kind of thing, just for me,

Speaker 1 if I just stay focused on acting, I can take 43 years of doing it and be better than I've ever been because it's cumulative, right? We're not athletes. Our bodies don't deteriorate.

Speaker 1 Or if they do, play your age, which is also what I'm doing. I'm still playing 20 to 25.
Yeah. Thank God for Sean.
Well, that's your choice. Sean's deteriorating one toe at a time.

Speaker 1 The market thing was funny.

Speaker 1 But I just, I'm still interested. And I got to be challenged.
I got to risk failure. I got to, like, they're writing it for me, but I've never done this guy before.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to go all in on that and see if I can pull it off. And I, and if I do, I do.
And then I keep,

Speaker 1 whatever process I got is working.

Speaker 1 And it comes from newsroom.

Speaker 2 How do you know if you've pulled it off? Do you, do you defer to the critics? I bet no. Is it for yourself? In other words, do you watch what you do?

Speaker 2 And when you see the final product or the dailies or playback or whatever, are you the barometer? Are you the one that decides whether you've gone outside your skill set?

Speaker 2 If it's if you're doing too much acting, if you're staying within yourself, how do you know if you're pulling off a character?

Speaker 1 It's the work ethic. I had to work so hard on the first season of Newsroom, harder than I've ever had to work.

Speaker 1 You have to memorize mountains of dialogue, and then you got to spit it out at 100 miles an hour. That means you have to learn it so that you can do that the Sunday night before the entire week.

Speaker 1 You can't learn it in the makeup chair. You just can't.
I've seen day players come in on newsroom and they're trying to learn three pages of sorkin in the makeup chair and the flop sweat hits them.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's really, I've never seen it anywhere else.

Speaker 1 And we all go through it. I went through it on episode five.
I got in, and I just couldn't keep a word of it in my head anymore.

Speaker 1 The computers overloaded, and I literally took a knee in the middle of the newsroom and said, give me the line again. Give me the line again.
And she gave it to me three times. Couldn't say it.

Speaker 1 They sent me home. Wow.
Oh my God. We called it getting sorkinized.
You just hit the wall.

Speaker 1 And everybody, everybody did it. I mean, I can go around the cast and go that day.
Yeah, I remember when Allison did, I remember what Tommy did.

Speaker 1 All of us. So I knew the amount of work that I had to put in to pull off Will McAvoy every fucking day.
I'd love to see Jason do that because Jason's memorization is

Speaker 1 Jason's crazy. He's the best of all.
I think I'm good, but Jason's is the best of all time.

Speaker 2 But you know what, though? I think that would be my kryptonite, though. I wonder if I'd be any good at that.
To memorize things word-perfect, that's not the way I do it. That's not the way I memorize.

Speaker 1 Many don't, and that's perfectly wonderful and fine. You know, it's just this was, I had to do that.
So I knew the amount of work I had to do to pull off season one of Newsroom.

Speaker 1 I took that work ethic.

Speaker 1 Are we going to sag in,

Speaker 1 I mean, I won the Emmy for that first season and only because I had that Northwestern speech. No, I don't think that's the only reason.

Speaker 1 I think you're amazing. You're with

Speaker 1 me. That was the episode that they submitted.
And literally, we're going to the Emmys and

Speaker 1 HBO is saying, look, just enjoy the meal.

Speaker 1 And you're not going to win. Gandalfeene never won the first two seasons.
So just

Speaker 1 enjoy the night. Okay.
All right. You're up against Spacey in House of Cards and Damian Lewis and Homeland and John Hamm and in Mad Men, Brian in

Speaker 1 Breaking Bad. I mean, there was no way

Speaker 1 it was that speech, that Northwestern speech. I can't believe that Aaron wrote your speech for you, too, your acceptance speech.
That's so crazy that you had to do that perfectly as well.

Speaker 1 $100,000.

Speaker 2 Is that true you had to pay him $100,000 for that?

Speaker 1 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 2 All right, back to the show.

Speaker 1 So, Jeff, I want to go back to Kill a Mockingbird with Aaron Sorkin and Broadway. It broke some box office record or something like that, right? The top sales of all?

Speaker 1 That's incredible. Yeah, I think of the top 10 weekly grosses, we hold the top nine.
Wow. Isn't that unbelievable? That's crazy.
And do you guys, I don't know if this is a question to everybody.

Speaker 1 You know, because I come from theater, you come from theater. That's where it all starts, right?

Speaker 1 So do you remember when Bravo used to air operas and plays and things like PBS used to air some great theater stuff and people watched them all the time. As a kid, I used to watch them.

Speaker 1 Did they really? Operas, they used to to put them on. Yeah, they used to do all that stuff.
Do you remember that, Jeff? Did you ever watch that?

Speaker 1 No, not specifically Bravo, but I remember CBS Playhouse. Oh, yeah.
Or not that I'm, you know, I'm old, but not that old.

Speaker 1 But I remember seeing like Paul Newman as a young actor walking on to that, a show of CBS Playhouse directed by Sidney Lehmet, you know, oh, God, Ernest Borgnine as a

Speaker 1 Marty, you know, they would do stuff like that. Yeah.
Yeah. But I do know, and I'll only use the Mockingbird experience, is that it's different than watching the movie or reading the book.

Speaker 1 And it's that you feel the play

Speaker 1 for a year, eight shows a week, proudly went Cal Ripken Jr. and didn't miss a show for a year.
That's great.

Speaker 1 I was on a mission. That's great.
That's great.

Speaker 1 I remember doing God of Carnage with Gandalfeene, Hope Davis, Marsha Gayhardt, and we were doing it, I don't know, seven months. And across the street was, they were doing Westside Story, I think.

Speaker 1 And Arthur Lawrence, 92 years old, they had to bring Arthur in because the 20-somethings were getting drunk on Tuesday night and skipping the Wednesday matinee.

Speaker 1 The actors, yeah. Yeah, and Arthur came in and read them the Riot Act.
And

Speaker 1 there's just a thing. And Henry Fonda did Mr.
Roberts for how many thousand performances, never missed. I'm going, that's, I'm aiming at that.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to go old school on that, just to see if I could do it. The other thing, too, is to see if in the 10th and 11th and yes, 12th month of this show, does it die? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Creatively, do you hit the wall and I can't repeat it and I can't do it anymore? I'm phoning it in. And I was happy to say that that did not happen.

Speaker 1 We were performing surgery at 100 miles an hour. That was the time to see this show.

Speaker 1 It it was at its best because you knew it cold. Yeah, and we just kept it alive, which it, which is the thing is, it's this listening and reacting, which is a form of improv.

Speaker 1 It's just against the script. And that's what we did.
You don't know what he's going to say next. So wait to hear what he or she says and then use that.
Half your performance is in the other actor.

Speaker 1 If you do all that stuff,

Speaker 1 you can keep it alive enough that you don't hit a wall with it.

Speaker 1 That's that old thing that they say: like acting is acting is reacting, or as Jason always says, acting is acting like you're reacting. But Sean, aren't you, Sean?

Speaker 1 Aren't you planning, aren't you doing Iceman Cometh on TikTok? Are you planning on that? I'm doing that, yeah. And

Speaker 1 one minute bites. Oh, it's going to be so good.

Speaker 2 One more question in the weeds about that. Just while you just said, you know, listening and then reacting.

Speaker 2 Isn't that at odds with the sort of mandate to do the style of the fast talking, don't take any gaps, pick up your cues, order of the sort of sorkinian or mammoth type of rhythm.

Speaker 2 I mean, isn't that at odds with hearing what the person just said, doing the proper acting of having that information process, formulate an opinion, construct an answer, then spit it out.

Speaker 2 All of that timing, certainly you need for comedy, but definitely in drama as well, that you're being asked to eliminate in the interest of just doing a speedy,

Speaker 2 this is the rhythm I as the writer want you to have. So it says, don't worry about your acting, serve as the rhythm of this writing.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean? Yeah, Mamette wrote a book about that, which pissed me off because it was, you know, don't act, just say my words. Well, okay.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 here's what Barnard Hughes was a great actor when I was coming up in the 70s and 80s. And he was in a show called Dah, one of Tony for it.
And I think he was in Midnight. He was.

Speaker 1 He was in Midnight Cowboy as that guy that ends up with John Voigt somewhere. Anyway,

Speaker 1 I asked, Barney told me, he goes, say A,

Speaker 1 think B, then say C.

Speaker 1 That's one way to do it.

Speaker 1 If you want to move,

Speaker 1 say A, and as you're thinking B, say C.

Speaker 1 And so that, that, that's how you beat it.

Speaker 2 And, you know, when she, you're not, you're, the cue isn't the last two words of what he or she says it's what they said in the middle but sometimes it is sometimes you don't get the necessary information you need that lives in your response until the end of their last line you know like they don't yes

Speaker 2 you know so it's i mean i you know we're in the weeds yeah

Speaker 1 and then here's no no no no and then here's what happens jason that's how aaron goes in because he doesn't want you bringing in all your things he wants you to do it the way he wrote it okay great now you're doing episodes now you're into the first season maybe you're into the second, and he trusts you.

Speaker 1 Now that pause that he wrote in there, you pitch.

Speaker 1 I'm not doing that. I'm going right straight through.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He sees everything.
He hears everything.

Speaker 1 And now you're doing not only what Aaron did, and you're sticking to his words, that's the rule, but you're putting your own thing on it, which changes the way he does it.

Speaker 1 Because Aaron writes in front of a mirror. He writes out loud.
He plays every part, which that's why you can't, there's a sameness to it sometimes.

Speaker 1 But you're able to beat that by having me and Emily Mortar and Tom Sadowski and whomever else, you know, in there doing it. It's different voices from the same voice.
So it's, you know,

Speaker 1 it's tricky, but eventually

Speaker 1 somebody like Sorkin will trust you to let you go. I mean, he never...

Speaker 1 He never came to me and gave me line readings or anything like that.

Speaker 1 Anything. We do the line through.
The rehearsal was a line through at 6.30 in the morning, sitting in the newsroom. You'd have all eight of us sitting around there, and I'd be off-book.

Speaker 1 It's 13 pages of sorkin, and I'm standing there at 6:30 in the morning.

Speaker 1 And the first day, everybody's got their pages, and they're looking at their pages, and I'm just going around the room, and I know all 13. You're like, You guys are fucked.

Speaker 1 And then, and then the next day, everybody, nobody had any pages. Yeah, it's just survival on sorkin.
It's survival. How did so? I mean, this is that's so intense, and what an intense experience.
And

Speaker 1 it takes up so much of your life. Did you ever have time, especially then, for do you follow sports a lot? I see that you've got a lot of music behind, like instruments behind you.

Speaker 1 Like, what do you do to kind of, you know, unwind? Yeah, for the listener, he's Jeff, you got like 75 guitars. Beautiful.
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 I have a home recording studio that I really enjoy. I've always played guitar.
I played it since the 70s. I never played out in a club or anywhere.

Speaker 1 I started playing in the 70s. I played out maybe the first time in 2002.

Speaker 1 And I just played on the porch.

Speaker 1 I was hanging around playwrights off Broadway in the 70s. And I had never seen a living, breathing playwright before.

Speaker 1 I'm 21, I'm 22, I'm in New York, I'm at this theater company, and every single one of these playwrights, like Lanford Wilson, are rewriting a second act. It was a living, breathing thing, the writing.

Speaker 1 In college, you just get a published script and the guy's either dead or I don't know. But that thrilled me.
And so the writing thing interests me.

Speaker 1 Directing, like it's no, but the writing interested me. But I'm never going to get a play written and done on Broadway.
So I'm going to pick up the guitar, get better at that.

Speaker 1 Oh, look, here's Doc Watson. Here's Steve Goodman.
Here's Arlo Guthrie.

Speaker 1 Now you're into the blues. Jonathan Edwards, Shaney, funny.
Christine Lavin writes funny, plays well. They stand there with an acoustic guitar on a stage for 100 minutes and they hold them.

Speaker 1 That's hard to do. And coming from musicals and high school and college, it was like I knew how to do that, where suddenly you break into song.

Speaker 1 I would just write and write and write and throw them in a notebook and just get better at the guitar and finger picking.

Speaker 1 And then eventually I had this theater company and we needed to raise money. So why don't we put you on stage with your guitar and we can sell tickets.
And that's a whole other deal.

Speaker 1 I had flop sweat

Speaker 1 and it took, it's like the first time you do Carson or Letterman or Leno or Steve or any of the guys, Fallon. You know, it's seven minutes and you got to score.

Speaker 1 And flop sweat happens, you know, when you're out there for the first time or two on that. So it was the same thing.
But once I learned how to do it,

Speaker 1 creatively, I controlled everything. There was nobody else telling me what to do, what to sing, what to say, what jokes were completely my own thing.
And that was an escape.

Speaker 1 And so I just kept kept collecting the guitars. And, you know, I've got too many, but, you know,

Speaker 1 better than cocaine.

Speaker 2 Is your life as idyllic as it sounds right now? Can you get perspective on that? I mean, or does it just feel like yours? I mean, do you treat yourself to take a step back

Speaker 2 and think, I'm happy, I'm healthy,

Speaker 2 I've had a long career in an incredibly fickle

Speaker 2 profession.

Speaker 2 And I've got this family and I'm living on a lake in Michigan.

Speaker 1 Yeah, at the beginning, you said, I love when you said, how do you know you've made it? Is it awards? Is it acclaim? Is it money? It just feels like you've made it. You've made it.
Yeah, Jimmy.

Speaker 1 We're here to tell you.

Speaker 2 Congratulations.

Speaker 1 That's what the show is all about.

Speaker 1 It's very nice.

Speaker 2 We let people know

Speaker 2 if they should be happy or not.

Speaker 1 You know what? You check out of the ambition hotel.

Speaker 1 You check out of the,

Speaker 1 where's that next thing? And I got to make more. And I got to do, I got to get, I got to get in a, how do I get nominated for that?

Speaker 1 I just, it's, it's sexy indifference, but if you get to a certain point, you go, you know what?

Speaker 1 Pretty good. Pretty good.
I can live with that. And if nothing else happened, and it really happened after Atticus on Broadway, that's where I felt that if it ended, I'm good.
Yeah. I'm good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Jeff, thank you so much for coming today. I really truly meant what I said at the top.
You are one of my all-time favorites. I just revere you.
I think you're incredible. Thank you.

Speaker 1 I appreciate that, guys.

Speaker 2 Very nice of you to say yes to this, Jeff. You're a treasure.

Speaker 1 Thank you for coming. Thank you, guys.
Yeah. Thank you, Jeffrey.
Thank you, buddy. Bye.
See you, Jeff. See ya.

Speaker 2 Nice going, Sean.

Speaker 1 Yeah, really good, Sean. Really, really good cut.
I love that guy. I love him.
I think he's great. You know, the thing that

Speaker 1 really stuck with me, that's why I brought it up at the end, which was how do you know? When he said, how do you know you've made it?

Speaker 1 Is it a family? Is it the work? Is it the money? Is it what is it? Is it the car you've always wanted? Is it the, you know, it's really chicks. It's chicks.
It's chicks. Sorry.
It's chicks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, as many as you can.

Speaker 2 It's, yeah, it's, I, I, I do, I, not to take this down into a dark hole, but, you know, being past 50, it's like, well, if I want to live to be 100, then I've got to admit that I'm on the second half.

Speaker 2 And you start to think about how am I doing with the years I've been given?

Speaker 2 Am I using them well? Because eventually you're going to be inside that last year or last 10 years or whatever, and you're going to start to think back.

Speaker 2 And at that point, it's going to be too late to change what you've done with the time you've been given. And it's all of those things.

Speaker 1 I always, yeah, I think all the, first of all, two things. One is I remember one time this is years ago thinking about this.

Speaker 1 There's a guy that I used to really look up to as a sort of comedic actor, and he was amazing. And I'm not going to name his name, but

Speaker 1 I remember thinking, like,

Speaker 1 he, you could tell that he thought that Gallagher could tell him.

Speaker 1 You could tell that he thought that he had made it. You could tell that he thought he was funny.
And I thought, I always think about this.

Speaker 1 The moment that you think that you've got it is the moment that you've lost it. Yeah.
And so you always have to stay, you always have to sort of stay humble.

Speaker 1 And I know it's people are going to be like, yeah, nice dry asshole actor as they're driving or walking or whatever. It's true.

Speaker 1 You always have, and you never have to, never think about yourself in the third person.

Speaker 1 Also, I remember hearing somebody say, never use the words my and career next to each other. Like, don't talk about, and I try not to think about myself in that way.

Speaker 1 I try to, my only responsibility, and I'll go even further down this road, is I always feel like my only responsibility every day.

Speaker 1 is to be happy and look for joy wherever I can and focus on the things that work.

Speaker 1 And if I do that, if I look for that kind of stuff in everyday life, you know, we all have things that don't work in our lives, but if 95% of the stuff is working, why focus on the 5% that's not?

Speaker 1 And for me, that's what I tried to do on a daily basis. Again, not to get too.

Speaker 2 I just wish you'd stop looking at doughnuts to make you happy. You're not making me happy.

Speaker 1 And you know what? So good. It's fried dough.
Sean thinks that that's wonderful. Sean thinks that that's a wonderful

Speaker 1 sentiment. And Sean's ready to wrap this up.
Yeah, you know, Sean's thinking about it.

Speaker 2 And we can tell you're thinking of a way to braid in the word buy, aren't you?

Speaker 1 You're trying to back into it.

Speaker 2 That's all you think about when as soon as the guest goes away, you just try to win the buy contest.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 you're not listening to what we're saying.

Speaker 1 You're like Googling things. Ryan's listening.
But I have to go bye, bye. I have to go pee-pee.
Bye-bye. Oh.

Speaker 2 I have to make a potty.

Speaker 1 I mean, that was like, I mean, you can't go. You can't go until you come up with a worthwhile.

Speaker 1 What a fucking surrender that was. That was

Speaker 1 so bad. Listen, if there was any show that you could do on Broadway, Sean, because, you know, all this talk about Broadway, would it be Baby?

Speaker 1 Bye, bus.

Speaker 2 That'll do. Smart.

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