Dennis Quaid & The Hollywood Machine

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Speaker 2 All right, folks, a little bit earlier this year, we had the opportunity to sit down with Dennis Quaid about Ronald Reagan, about the movie Reagan.

Speaker 3 Here's what it sounded like: Republicans and Democrats need each other. That's what we're

Speaker 3 going to admit, because we keep each other

Speaker 3 from going too far one way or the other. You know, the fringe is taking over.
I myself, I'm an independent. I mean, I've voted both ways all my life.
So I'm not a registered Republican. But once

Speaker 3 the judicial system was used

Speaker 3 on him, To me, that was messing with our Constitution. And that's not America.
And that's what

Speaker 3 got me back the other way that I'm definitely voting for.

Speaker 2 This week on the Sunday special, Dennis Quaid joins us ahead of the premiere of the upcoming biopic, Reagan, coming to theaters nationwide Friday, August 30th. Quaid is quite the Renaissance man.

Speaker 2 He's a two-time Golden Globe nominated actor, musician, self-proclaimed golf addict, and licensed pilot.

Speaker 2 After over 40 years in Hollywood, Quaid recently moved to Nashville, where he founded his own production company, Bonniedale Films.

Speaker 2 Quaid is known for his roles in Breaking Away, The Right Stuff, Big Easy, and The Parent Trap, but his career has spanned nearly every genre of film, from dramas to thrillers, rom-coms, and action roles.

Speaker 2 In today's episode, Quaid discusses how he prepared to portray Ronald Reagan, including his visit to the Reagan Ranch and his observations about Reagan's psyche.

Speaker 2 Quaid also reflects on the parallels between our current political moment and President Reagan's era, offers a few predictions about the future of Hollywood, and shares a few of his favorite all-time films.

Speaker 2 You don't want to miss Dennis Quaid in Reagan, coming out in theaters nationwide August 30th.

Speaker 2 From Hollywood to the Oval Office, Quaid brings one of our country's greatest presidents back to life on the silver screen. Welcome back to another episode of the Sunday Special.

Speaker 2 Dennis Quaid, thank you so much for stopping by.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. So let's jump right into it about the film.
So obviously, it's the first biopic of Reagan, which is in and of itself totally insane.

Speaker 2 He's one of the most historic presidents in American history. He left office when I was four years old.
I'm now 40. So why don't we start with what do you think took so long?

Speaker 2 Why didn't Hollywood do this earlier? He was a Hollywood guy. You would imagine it's a pretty good Hollywood story.
What took Hollywood so long to make this film?

Speaker 3 Yeah, no kidding.

Speaker 3 That's a really good question.

Speaker 3 And I don't know if I couldn't really answer it, but I do know that this script, Mark Joseph, who was like the producer who really championed this thing, he's had this script since 2008.

Speaker 3 I think that's when it began. And then it was a question of financing and everything.
And I don't think the studios really

Speaker 3 wanted to make it. There wasn't much interest around for it.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 so he basically independent financing, which I'm really glad that we had, to tell you the truth, because we had control over the story. And I was first asked to do it in

Speaker 3 2017 that Mark came to me. And

Speaker 3 it took me a while to say yes, to tell you the truth, because Reagan was my favorite president. I mean, I lived through all this.

Speaker 3 I voted for Jimmy Carter in 76. That was my first time I could vote.
But then then I voted for Reagan in 80, and I went back home there in California. My roommate said, who'd you vote for?

Speaker 3 I said, Reagan. He said, you're kicked out of the hippies.

Speaker 3 So I turned in my card, and that was it.

Speaker 2 So you get the script, and you're thinking about it. What were sort of the considerations as to why you at first didn't want to do it? Obviously,

Speaker 2 you said your favorite president, but were there career considerations also, given the fact that Hollywood is pretty famously not super receptive to warmth toward even mildly right-of-center ideas.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 as far as all that politics of it

Speaker 3 went, no, that didn't really come into my thinking about it. I

Speaker 3 said, you know, a shiver of fear went up my spine when they asked me to do it because

Speaker 3 Reagan's like Muhammad Ali. Everybody in the world knows what he looks like, walks like, talks like.
Everybody's got a story. Everybody, you know, they all have an opinion.
I mean,

Speaker 3 negative or positive about him. But at the same time, he looms large

Speaker 3 in

Speaker 3 anybody's life that's over like 45, you know, 50 years old. And

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 I didn't want to do it in personation. I guess I was a little afraid of being judged.

Speaker 3 I didn't really think I really looked like him or could get there. And so it took me a while.

Speaker 3 But mainly it was about putting all the out exterior stuff aside. For me,

Speaker 3 acting is about what makes people tick, you know, and you have the public persona, but you have to be able to get behind that as an actor in order to

Speaker 3 make someone come alive and not just be an impression. So let's talk about that.
That took a while. So I didn't say yes and I didn't say no.

Speaker 2 So how do you get into Ronald Reagan's head? Obviously, you have writings by Ronald Reagan, you have biographies of Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 2 How do you go about doing the research into playing a real-life, gigantic figure like that?

Speaker 3 Well, before I said yes, I read a couple of biographies about him, besides having lived through all of everything I lived through.

Speaker 3 But then I went, I got invited to the Reagan Ranch, which was the Western White House back then.

Speaker 3 Reagan bought it after he was governor of California.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 it's not open to the public. A group of friends bought it after his death and

Speaker 3 kept it exactly as it was when he and Nancy were there. I mean, their clothes are in the closet still.

Speaker 3 Expect him to come back

Speaker 3 anytime. But I went up the worst road in California, five miles of it to the top of that mountain and came out through the gate.

Speaker 3 That's when I made up my mind, basically, because I felt like I got him.

Speaker 3 I could feel him there at that place.

Speaker 3 And it was very obvious that Reagan was actually a very humble man.

Speaker 3 He really did do all the work around there. You can feel that.
And the house itself, the Western White House from back then, it's maybe 1,100 square feet.

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 you know, very modest.

Speaker 3 The bed was a king-size bed, but it was two single beds that were zip tied together.

Speaker 3 You know, it was, you could just feel both of them,

Speaker 3 he and Nancy in that place. And that's, that's where I

Speaker 3 made up my mind to do it.

Speaker 2 One of the things that's fascinating when you read biographies of Reagan is that pretty much everybody who knew him, maybe except for Nancy, talks about him having this sort of inner reserve, how he would, you know, he would be in the room with you, and obviously he would interact with you, but there was a part of him that he sort of kept behind a wall.

Speaker 2 What do you think that was?

Speaker 3 That's the thing between

Speaker 3 the impersonation and getting to

Speaker 3 the person about what makes them take i i've played several real people in my life and i feel like i have a responsibility those people to

Speaker 3 you know whether it be doc holiday who's not even alive anymore or you know or uh jimmy morris and the the rookie to to do it from their point of view

Speaker 3 you know because that's the way we live our lives from our point of view and there was that thing of reeagan i I heard from everyone that knew him, that there's this impenetrable

Speaker 3 space

Speaker 3 that he always had.

Speaker 3 This is the great communicator,

Speaker 3 quite jovial of a person.

Speaker 3 But there was this place that you couldn't get past as well, a very private place. And I think that

Speaker 3 I think that was always there with him from childhood, really.

Speaker 3 And I think it had something to do with people, you know, a lot of people

Speaker 3 coming at him

Speaker 3 as far as, you know, being so public. He had to have that, even in a crowd, to be able to have his private, his privacy, in a sense.
And I think that's also.

Speaker 3 was kind of a place where he, you know,

Speaker 3 that was

Speaker 3 really his, where he would go in prayer or meditation or whatever you want to call it, but, you know, that that place was reserved. And I think

Speaker 3 he really needed

Speaker 3 something like a place like that

Speaker 3 because,

Speaker 3 you know, the world was, you know, always coming to his door.

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Speaker 2 And that goes all the way back to his childhood. I mean, obviously, he had an incredibly rough childhood.

Speaker 2 His father was not around when he was, wasn't good.

Speaker 2 He grew up not wealthy at all.

Speaker 2 He's a true American legend in terms of his success story and in terms of the trajectory, but you carry that with you, I'd imagine, that sort of damage you carry with you your whole life.

Speaker 3 Right. I mean, having an alcoholic father like that, you know, that

Speaker 3 you're having to take care of, you know, dragged him, dragged him. He was passed out on the porch a couple of times, had to drag him inside.
And,

Speaker 3 you know, I just, that

Speaker 3 kind of puts a protective coat on you, I think, as a child, because you feel in a way responsible for, you know, the parent, in a sense. And his mother certainly had a big effect on him.
You know,

Speaker 3 his mother, like my mom, really, was the rock in his life. And so there were some ways I could really relate with Reagan because my dad was.

Speaker 3 an alcoholic. You know, there's certain degrees of it that

Speaker 3 are

Speaker 3 around, but he was an alcoholic, and my mom was kind of that rock for me as well.

Speaker 2 So as you say, you don't want to do an impersonation, but you're saying some of the most iconic lines in the history of politics and American life. So

Speaker 2 how do you do that balance? How do you be Reagan without being

Speaker 2 a Saturday Night Live performer who's just doing a weak version of the Reagan act kind of? Right.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was the fear that Saturday Night Fortune

Speaker 3 comes up. But

Speaker 3 like I said, that had to get down to playing the emotions of the scenes and what they were and really getting down to the person that that's the person that has like insecurities like all of us have, varying degrees of self-esteem.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the way of to find a way into that, like I'm an actor myself and Reagan as an actor, I don't think he ever got to the place that he wanted to be as an actor. I think he kind of felt

Speaker 3 not a failure, but he just never really got there. You know, whether it was because Jack Warner

Speaker 3 never gave him the parts, but John Wayne really had his slot.

Speaker 3 So he was kind of relegated to B movies and he was also married to Jane Wyman when his career was really going down at the end. Hers was you know, Skyrim.
She won an Academy Award, you know, and,

Speaker 3 you know, say what you want, but I think that, you know, that kind of does something to your own sense of self, self-esteem or whatever. I related it in my life.

Speaker 3 I was married to Meg Ryan, you know, and, you know, my career was kind of going like that and hers was, you know,

Speaker 3 going like that. And you want to say, well, I'm above all that and stuff, but you're a human being, you know,

Speaker 3 you question yourself.

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 also out of that, you know, his career going down, he became vice president and then president of the Screen Actors Guild, which is a job you don't really aspire to when you're starting out as an actor, you know.

Speaker 3 But it's amazing how God works. You know, he,

Speaker 3 I think that's where Reagan found his purpose.

Speaker 2 And, you know, he becomes president of the Screen Actors Guild.

Speaker 2 He's fighting the communists from within while protecting the actors who may be ideologically diverse inside the Screen Actors Guild, which is not an easy balance.

Speaker 3 No, it's not. In fact, a little tidbit,

Speaker 3 You know, we have great health insurance actors, the Screen Actors Guild. I mean, like the best.
It was Reagan who got us that, fought for it for nine years, and he got it.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 he did fight communists. And, you know, that's, it was kind of like

Speaker 3 people took that as a wives tale or something, a communist infiltrating, you know, the unions and everything.

Speaker 3 But, you know, when the Soviet Union fell, and, you know, all those papers came flooding out, lo and behold, they actually were trying to take over the unions

Speaker 3 in Hollywood.

Speaker 2 And Reagan takes charge of that. And then, of course, he runs for governor of California.

Speaker 2 But before he does that, he goes on this GE tour where he's going all over the United States and he's talking about politics frequently, like every week, doing these speeches, really, and really getting himself familiar with the material.

Speaker 2 I think one of the great rips that his critics have is they pretend that he was an idiot or that he was uneducated or he didn't know anything about politics, that he was a dilettante.

Speaker 2 He read widely and broadly.

Speaker 3 He educated himself. He really did.
He really did.

Speaker 3 The GE was, that's a great point because

Speaker 3 this is not something he had to do, but he took it upon himself to go around to every factory, every GE factory, and go out on the floor and talk to all the workers, you know, on their lunch breaks or, you know, coming or leaving at the end of the end of the day and talk to them.

Speaker 3 And that was the beginnings of his political base was right there. And he also got out into the country and

Speaker 3 really found out what was on their minds, what were the issues, you know, in their lives.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 that, I think, more, just about more than anything else, had a lot to do with him becoming president. I know my dad was one of those people, in fact.
You know, my dad was an electrician.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I remember we're going to Galveston. It was like 1964.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the speech was on

Speaker 3 the radio. It was during an election year.
He was out for Goldwater, I think. And

Speaker 3 it's a very famous speech. My dad was pounding the dashboard and, you know, Go Ronnie and stuff like that.
And that was my first inklings of him as

Speaker 3 a political figure. Before he was just the guy on TV who sold Baraxo soap.

Speaker 2 What's fascinating about Reagan is that he really is a combination of all of these different, really diverse factors.

Speaker 2 So he's somebody who spends time in Hollywood, which, of course, is a very left-wing place politically. So he knows how to talk to people on that side.

Speaker 3 And he was a Democrat back then, but

Speaker 3 he was.

Speaker 2 And then he shifts to the right, but still knows how to speak that language.

Speaker 2 He's somebody who becomes very hard on communism, but at the same time, is almost innocent about the nature of human beings and how human beings can operate.

Speaker 2 And very famously, during his presidency, he wrote

Speaker 2 probably his worst speech, actually, during his presidency, there's a part where he writes about how maybe one day a child from the Soviet Union and a child from America will get together and they'll play in the park.

Speaker 2 And it's this very sort of innocent take. And a lot of his foreign policy team was like, this is, you shouldn't be saying that.

Speaker 3 Oh, that was the couple who met the very nice couple who happened to be Soviets and we got together.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 2 It's a very great take.

Speaker 2 He's this. very strange combination of somebody who's incredibly hard-nosed in the use of American power and the threat of use of American power.

Speaker 2 I mean, he builds up the military, he walks away at Reykjavik, he says no to the Soviets, but at the same time, he holds out the prospect that nobody ever said no to the Soviets, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and so that's the that's what makes him such a sort of mystery and a fascinating character is all these internal contradictions, right?

Speaker 3 And you know, I think when he was elected president, he was

Speaker 3 you know called a warmonger. He was definitely going to get us into a nuclear uh conflict with the Soviet Union, you know,

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it took a Cold Warrior like that to win the Cold War.

Speaker 3 Before that,

Speaker 3 we'd had Carter, who was, you know,

Speaker 3 this is not against Carter, but he was what he did in the Middle East with peace with Egypt and Israel. I mean, that was quite an accomplishment and everything.

Speaker 3 With the Soviets, you know, we had given away the B-1 bomber. We had given away, we had appeased them.
And

Speaker 3 America is sort of like that speech that Reagan, you were talking about Reagan, has that innocence that we just want to be friends with everybody. That's a natural thing for us to do.

Speaker 3 We don't see why it couldn't be that way. And

Speaker 3 appeal with reason.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 the people in the Soviet Union and

Speaker 3 Iran,

Speaker 3 you go through it, most of the world didn't grow up like we did. It's a very brutal world out there

Speaker 3 and a very brutal reality.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 when America

Speaker 3 is like that,

Speaker 3 I think they sort of laugh at us a little bit, or they take advantage of it for sure, because they see it as weakness.

Speaker 2 So when you look at Reagan, obviously you've identified as a political independent for a long time in Hollywood. This election, you've said that you plan on supporting President Trump in the election.

Speaker 2 What are the sort of similarities that you see between President Trump and Reagan? Obviously, very different in a lot of ways, but there are some similarities too.

Speaker 3 Well, I think it's more the

Speaker 3 circumstances of the world right now. I mean, you go back to 1980, 1979.
We had the hostages, which nobody talks about.

Speaker 3 We have hostages right now in the Middle East.

Speaker 3 I don't know why nobody talks about them.

Speaker 3 But that, you know, the economy was

Speaker 3 in a bad place at the time with gas, oil, you know, being a

Speaker 3 big thing, inflation was high.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 a lot of the very same circumstances, I think. In fact, Carter had even made his famous

Speaker 3 Malays speech that America was in. And

Speaker 3 Reagan came along and said, no, we're not a nation in decline.

Speaker 3 We are going up.

Speaker 3 We're in a shiny city on a hill, and

Speaker 3 we're gonna, we're gonna get back to that. And people believed him.
He inspired people.

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 you know, that's why he won the presidency, I think.

Speaker 2 Well, one of the things that's amazing about Reagan is that you look at his first term, and he has a rough first couple of years.

Speaker 2 In the economy, obviously, he's trying to quash inflation, and that means that he has to radically increase the interest rates using sort of Volcker's plans.

Speaker 2 And by 1982, you know, his popularity is waning a little bit, and then he he sort of kind of roars back in 83, 84. He wins this enormous victory in 1984.
And you look at the way that America is now.

Speaker 2 And one of the things that you wonder is, no matter how successful any president is, is there a possibility of anything like that sort of American unity again? And it feels like sort of not.

Speaker 2 And maybe that can just be chalked up to the fact that it used to be that Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill would battle it out and then they actually kind of liked each other and would have conversations.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they would get together like after five o'clock. That's why they said we're going to be enemies until after 5 o'clock.
And there were just a couple of Irishmen having a beer. And

Speaker 3 Tip O'Deal would be at the White House. And

Speaker 3 at least they had a conversation with each other

Speaker 3 back and forth. And, you know,

Speaker 3 also

Speaker 3 Reagan was elected in 1980. You know, the hostages, the Iran hostages were.

Speaker 3 freed like 20 minutes after he took office because they think Iran knew that he wasn't going to take anything from them but it was also uh especially in the economy you know interest rates were 20 at one time i i remember that because i was trying to buy a house and

Speaker 3 i think he really won on

Speaker 3 um are you better off than you were four years ago

Speaker 3 and you know that was uh

Speaker 3 that was uh the that question is very similar to what it is now and uh

Speaker 3 and it's it took a a couple of years for, I think, changes to happen. You know,

Speaker 3 you see progress in something. It's not going to change overnight as far as inflation and the economic policy that was put into effect.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 then I think

Speaker 3 he had an extended honeymoon period because of the assassination attempt.

Speaker 3 which we've just done

Speaker 3 as well. And

Speaker 3 but

Speaker 3 once things got going, I think you saw a lot of like

Speaker 3 activists from the 60s who had grown up and were now on Wall Street. You know, they,

Speaker 3 I guess the Reagan Democrats, you could call them,

Speaker 3 that, you know, things started to change.

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Speaker 2 Have you felt a lot of blowback from sort of your social circle?

Speaker 2 I know that you don't live in Hollywood anymore, but coming out and saying that you're planning on voting for President Trump is not necessarily the most popular sentiment in Hollywood, for sure.

Speaker 3 Well, I have my friends, you know, I have my friends, and, you know, our relationship is

Speaker 3 quite solid with that. And I don't know, there's got to be a conversation.
You know, it's just

Speaker 3 a lot of actors have been told to like, you know, shut up in Hollywood. Just don't say anything because, you know, it's going to affect you getting a job or this.
And

Speaker 3 why is it okay for,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 say Michael Douglas to go on, you know talk shows and talk about

Speaker 3 biden and you know and uh

Speaker 3 yet you can't be you can't be for trump uh that's not a way america works we've got to have a conversation about this

Speaker 3 it used to be even back in reagan's day you would have

Speaker 3 liberal republicans you had

Speaker 3 conservative democrats so the the lines weren't so blurred

Speaker 3 as uh they today it's just black and white. And we've got to get more than anything, we've got to

Speaker 3 get back to being able to interact with each other. Republicans and Democrats need each other.
That's what we're,

Speaker 3 that's what we don't admit, because we keep each other

Speaker 3 from going too far one way or the other. You know, the fringe is taking over.
I myself, I'm an Independent. I mean, I've voted both ways all my life.
So I'm not a registered Republican.

Speaker 3 But what I saw with,

Speaker 3 I wasn't going to vote for Trump either because I thought, you know, things needed to really settle down in this country. And there were a lot of other candidates that I thought would be good.

Speaker 3 But once

Speaker 3 the judicial system was used

Speaker 3 on him,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 to me, that was messing with our Constitution. And that's not America.
And that's what

Speaker 3 got me back the other way, that I'm definitely voting for him because,

Speaker 3 you know, I believe in America and I believe in the Constitution.

Speaker 2 So one of the things that you mentioned very early on here is that this film was independently funded, that it didn't come through the Hollywood studio system.

Speaker 2 Do you think that that's going to be the future of where Hollywood goes?

Speaker 2 That you're going to see a lot more independently funded films, whether it is through people like Mark, whether it is through Angel Studios or

Speaker 2 through your production house.

Speaker 2 The studio system has been essentially broken because the theater model has largely been broken and somehow so has the streaming model as well.

Speaker 3 Yeah, by COVID. And even before COVID, they were having trouble with that.

Speaker 3 When I first

Speaker 3 came to LA,

Speaker 3 back in those days, each studio,

Speaker 3 say five, would be producing at least 40 movies a year. That's a lot of movies.
There's like 200 studio movies that are coming out. And they would be

Speaker 3 all places on the spectrum

Speaker 3 of genres.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 today, I think there might be

Speaker 3 eight, maybe.

Speaker 3 And those have all got to be big tent poles because the only way to

Speaker 3 make money for them is to spend $200 million.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 that's really changed. But more than that, I think that Hollywood has sort of

Speaker 3 lost its

Speaker 3 relevancy with an audience to a certain extent.

Speaker 3 Very similar to what was going on in the late 60s,

Speaker 3 that they kind of lost track of their audience and who they were. And it took like a film like Bonnie and Clyde,

Speaker 3 that French new wave.

Speaker 3 that set off a whole new thing in the 70s, you know, to a new golden age, where it was a different kind of filmmaking that hit the audience and actually hit a nerve to what was going on underneath the surface in the country.

Speaker 3 You know, you started having like the anti-heroes and the rebel hero come back and all that.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we're in a very similar place now.

Speaker 3 But I think Hollywood has lost contact with its audience.

Speaker 3 But now that void can be filled from anywhere because you could make a, a, you know, you can finance a movie

Speaker 3 from different places. And there's different centers going on now.
What Taylor Sheridan is doing in

Speaker 3 Texas and

Speaker 3 what's going on in Georgia.

Speaker 3 There's a whole,

Speaker 3 if I was a young actor today,

Speaker 3 I wouldn't go to LA. I would go to Atlanta because they're casting the smaller roles roles there.
They're not going to fly people

Speaker 3 from LA. And

Speaker 3 that's where I'd start. But that's the start of an industry there,

Speaker 3 because people are going to wind up living there and moving there. And

Speaker 3 they're doing quite well.

Speaker 2 On a sort of narrative level, it's sort of fascinating just the history of Hollywood, how it went from heroes to anti-heroes in the 70s. And then it was kind of stuck in anti-hero land until now.

Speaker 2 I mean, you have superheroes, but those are the only kind of heroes that you can depict on screen.

Speaker 2 That's one of the things that makes Reagan different is is that Reagan is an actual heroic figure that's been put on screen.

Speaker 2 And that feels almost like a throwback just because you have a biopic where the person isn't being treated like crap,

Speaker 2 where the person isn't being treated as some sort of evil person under the rise, the boop.

Speaker 3 Right, exactly.

Speaker 2 Or it's Jay Edgar Hoover, and secretly it's about how he cross-dresses. And the real sultry stuff is the stuff.

Speaker 2 It's a different sort of throwback feel to biopic of, say, the 30s, 40s, and 50s, where you're very busy.

Speaker 3 It reflects Reagan. It reflects the eras in which you know he lived and and thrived and

Speaker 3 well for instance the love story of he and he and nancy is very central to to the movie uh and reagan probably wouldn't have been president if it wasn't for nancy it was just the strength of their relationship was uh

Speaker 3 which is very rare

Speaker 2 so there are a lot of amazing scenes in the film which one of them was sort of your favorite when you think of the the most interesting and fun to film which which one comes to mind oh well you know the the uh

Speaker 3 the uh debate between he and mondale which i thought was just it was a piece of theater to begin with and you know they'd already had he and mondale already had the first debate where reagan had been you know kind of uh

Speaker 3 uh loose on the facts and and whatever he just didn't perform well in the first debate and

Speaker 3 so and you know they were talking about he was too old and this

Speaker 3 and that. I think he was, what, 74 at the time or something.
And

Speaker 3 so the second debate, he, he did the famous, you know, he was asked the question. It was a great setup.

Speaker 3 And he just said, I will not, for political purposes, take advantage of my opponent's youth and inexperience, which was fantastic. And even Mondale laughs.
Okay.

Speaker 3 He knows he's lost the election with that. But Reagan did something even better is that he said that.
And then he, I call it the Jack Benny.

Speaker 3 He reached over and took his water and took a sip of it just to like. Let it breathe.
You let it breathe. And it was beautiful.

Speaker 2 So let's talk about sort of your journey, both in terms of life and in terms of acting, because on a personal level, I first saw you in film with Breaking Away.

Speaker 2 So I grew up on what would now be considered older movies.

Speaker 2 My parents and I would go over to Eddie Brand's Saturday Matine, which was like the big, the big kind of video rental place in North Hollywood. And we picked up all these movies.

Speaker 3 So you saw it in VHS.

Speaker 2 Of course. Or beta.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. VHS.
I'm not of the beta generation, but yes, the VHS. And

Speaker 2 wore out the tape on breaking away. So how did you actually break into the industry? What got you interested in acting in the first place?

Speaker 3 Well, my dad was a frustrated actor of things. And

Speaker 3 my brother got it into it first. And, you know, he did the last detail.
We were both, I was in high school drama and stuff like that he did the last detail

Speaker 3 and it kind of made me oh wow you can actually do that you know you could actually go there and get a job doing that and I really fell in love with acting in college there was a particular teacher that was also my brother's teacher Cecil Pickett was his name and

Speaker 3 He taught

Speaker 3 the great thing about him, it was exactly what I said, you know, it was about what makes people people tick, you know, and what's on the outside, the way they walk, the way they talk,

Speaker 3 mannerisms,

Speaker 3 what causes that? What's the psychological reason that they do that that leads you to the inside of somebody? And

Speaker 3 so I went out there when I was

Speaker 3 20, 21 almost, and

Speaker 3 I sent my picture around every agent and got rejected.

Speaker 3 I just started calling up casting directors.

Speaker 3 You know, there'd be this thing in the back of the Hollywood Reporter Films in the Future, and it would list the producer and the director and stuff and the casting director.

Speaker 3 So I would just started calling them up, and I got turned down like eight or ten times, but two of them would see me, then went in to see them, and then I'd stare at my shoes for the first couple of interviews until I got used to talking.

Speaker 3 And then one of them got me an agent, and then I got a job

Speaker 3 a couple of months after that. But Breaking Away was really the first movie that it made things a lot easier for me and that really, I think, connected with audiences.

Speaker 3 I really love that movie. It was such a great experience to do it.
Peter Yates is written by a first generation Czech and directed by an Englishman.

Speaker 3 And I think that's what gave the movie its charm because it was

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 they saw America better than we did, I think,

Speaker 3 in that middle part of America. And it really had a charm to it.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 it still holds up. I saw it about four months ago.
It really. Oh, it's great.

Speaker 2 The script is terrific. You're great.

Speaker 3 Everybody's great.

Speaker 2 I mean, really, all the way top to bottom. And it is such a pro-America film.
It really is a pro-American film.

Speaker 3 It really is. Peter Yates, who directed it, he directed Bullet.
Right.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 he taught all four of us guys film acting. You know, it was very fatherly and mentorish with us.
And I mean, all throughout. And I remember

Speaker 3 the night of the opening, you know, of it. It was kind of like the first film of the 80s, too, I think, in a way of, you know, youth going to the theater and there was a line around the block.

Speaker 3 And, you know, audiences smell movies, or they used to.

Speaker 3 Because that was back in the day. We didn't have any social media, just be an advertisement in the newspaper.
There was, you know, no television ads or anything like that.

Speaker 3 I don't know how that happened, but

Speaker 3 it was, it was kind of magic the way it used to happen. How an audience could smell a good movie.

Speaker 2 We'll get to more in a moment. First, it's very simple.
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Speaker 2 You started off doing acting in college, and you mentioned there the difference between stage acting and film acting.

Speaker 2 I have, unfortunately, for the audience, cameoed in a couple of movies that we've made, and I'm a terrible actor.

Speaker 3 Oh, really? Absolutely. I've got to see this.

Speaker 2 You should not. For your own sake and for mine, please do not.
I mean, you can watch the movies, but you should fast forward the scenes that I am in.

Speaker 2 And the question that I have after acting, after my vast and extensive acting experience, which, of course, is similar to your own,

Speaker 2 how do you bring it every take? I mean, like, that's a hard thing to do. And how do you maintain a character

Speaker 2 across an entire span like in Reagan? You're spanning decades.

Speaker 2 How do you extend that? Especially because, you know, for those who have never had the experience of being in a film or watching a film get made, it's all filmed out of sequence.

Speaker 2 It's not as though you're filming it chronologically through time. How do you maintain a character through that when you have to be at point C in a character development in this scene?

Speaker 2 And then the next day, you have to be at point A in that same character's development.

Speaker 3 Or in the afternoon. Well, I mean, for one thing, you have the luxury of take two, which we don't have here, or do we?

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 it's, I don't know, it's somebody first time the camera came in on me, I remember in the first film, it was just quite intimidating. But

Speaker 3 it's about just really learning to just be,

Speaker 3 be in the scene. You know, I do all the

Speaker 3 research I can and character development. With Reagan, I had a couple of, wound up having a couple of years really before we even started filming, which was great.

Speaker 3 But like the voice, you know, in the early part of his life, like you see him

Speaker 3 in Hollywood at the house of Un-American Activities, he, His voice is way up there and it's very, very, talks a lot faster. And it's, you know, I believe our system can take it.
You know, that.

Speaker 3 So that's a long way from getting to the

Speaker 3 later years where

Speaker 3 he speaks a little slower, but a little wiser. So it's just all those nuances.
And, you know, little things like

Speaker 3 he had a crooked smile.

Speaker 3 which had something to do with maybe, you know, nerve damage from childhood or whatever, or,

Speaker 3 you know, the psychology to it. And

Speaker 3 he kind of either knowingly,

Speaker 3 it may have been unknowingly, because they taught you how to walk in Hollywood, you know, when you became an actor in the studio system then. You had to have a certain walk.

Speaker 3 And his was very similar to John Wayne in a way. And

Speaker 3 so

Speaker 3 little things like that, you know, that

Speaker 3 all add up.

Speaker 3 And then you just have to, in the end, just

Speaker 3 trust it and just go dive in.

Speaker 2 So, you know, in terms of acting methodologies,

Speaker 2 obviously, they talked about method acting. My favorite sort of method acting story is the old story about from Marathon Man, where Olivia is with Hoffman, and Hoffman

Speaker 2 is acting like

Speaker 2 his character for the entire

Speaker 2 coming out of character. He's just living in the character.

Speaker 2 And then Olivia looks at him and says, it's called Acting Young Man. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 much work.

Speaker 2 So how do you address a part? I mean, obviously, there are people like Daniel Day-Lewis who live in the forest with a bow and arrow for three months to prepare for Last of the Mohicans or whatever.

Speaker 2 Does he still?

Speaker 2 He might. I don't know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I know he doesn't want to work. He says he doesn't want to work, but anymore.

Speaker 3 You know, it really kind of comes down to that's kind of like, I guess, when you get asked these questions and stuff like that, you

Speaker 3 kind of give responses like that and try to put it into a method or a way of work. But I find that

Speaker 3 most people I work with and myself too, it's just

Speaker 3 you come to work

Speaker 3 and you've been hired because they think you you're right for the part and you do your work to do it. And then you just do it.

Speaker 3 I guess I used to think a lot about when I was younger, I used to angst about technique and this and that and the other, but I think it's part of just like learning it and then forgetting it.

Speaker 3 And then you just go do it.

Speaker 3 Like you do your show every day you know what i mean sure you do your show differently than when you first started doing your show when you got out of the business right you don't angst about

Speaker 3 as much stuff as uh as you used to because it's become very natural to you and um

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 2 great thing it's a really great job to have if if you get it it's great work if you can get it being an actor because it beats working for a living so it yeah you entered hollywood as you say really really young i mean 20 years old and you're already starting to to get movies and you do merit breaking away and then you i mean you talk openly about this you get sucked into sort of the celebrity culture so so you you develop an addiction you overcome that addiction well you know what what is the what is it like being a young star in hollywood and how hard is it to resist back in the 70s man it was fun

Speaker 3 It was really fun. That's what, you know, like cocaine back then was like in movie budgets and stuff.

Speaker 3 And, you know, there was this, I remember there was a cover story in People magazine about cocaine, about how it wasn't addictive and, you know, it was party drug and, you know, harmless.

Speaker 3 Then John Belushi died, and that kind of really changed everything for everybody. But my personal experience was that, you know, it was fun,

Speaker 3 that it was fun with problems, but then it was just problems.

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 affected my sleep. I think it affected my work.
I really do think so, think so. And,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 it affects your life. When your life kind of becomes unmanageable about

Speaker 3 it, that's when it's,

Speaker 3 you have to do something.

Speaker 3 But I had one of those white light experiences. I had a band at that time and

Speaker 3 we were the eclectics.

Speaker 3 The night we got a record deal at the Palace Theater over on Fine Street, we got a record deal

Speaker 3 performing that night, and we broke up

Speaker 3 in the direction

Speaker 3 right after because of me, because, you know, I was just, I was a little out of control, I think. You know, I just wasn't reliable.

Speaker 3 And I had a white light experience and I

Speaker 3 put myself in rehab the next day.

Speaker 3 And it was lucky I got it the first time, although it was like about,

Speaker 3 it was about three years of of like grinding my teeth. And, you know,

Speaker 3 what it does to your nervous system, you know, pretty much grinds those synapses down. And,

Speaker 3 but to get to stay away from it, it was kind of like grinding my teeth. And

Speaker 3 I went, you know, meetings and stuff,

Speaker 3 meetings every day. And

Speaker 3 I,

Speaker 3 because they say

Speaker 3 it's a spiritual problem is really what it is. You're trying to fill

Speaker 3 a hole there

Speaker 3 that uh

Speaker 3 it's a spiritual hole really and

Speaker 3 that's what that's what drugs are you know they make you feel like everything's great but you take away the drug and that's gone but it's a spiritual problem and that's so that's uh when i i

Speaker 3 i've read the bible like about

Speaker 3 five times in my life over different periods and then started to get back into that.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 before that, I'd read the

Speaker 3 go back.

Speaker 3 As far as my history on that is I was I was grew up Baptist, Southern Baptist, you know, and I became disillusioned with churchianity,

Speaker 3 I think around 12, 13, which I think a lot of teenagers start to question their life anyway. And I

Speaker 3 read a book called Siddhartha, Herman Hess,

Speaker 3 you know, which really turned me towards

Speaker 3 Eastern philosophy because it's a very new thing

Speaker 3 in Eastern religion, Buddhism, Hinduism. I read the Dhammapada, I read the Bhagavad Gita,

Speaker 3 I read the Quran,

Speaker 3 as well as the Bible.

Speaker 3 went back and this is after about three years and I read the read the Bible again and really what

Speaker 3 stood out were the red words of Jesus to me. And

Speaker 3 that's what started a,

Speaker 3 for the first time for me, a personal relationship with God,

Speaker 3 which

Speaker 3 continued to nurture and grow and ebb and flow.

Speaker 3 But, you know, that's

Speaker 3 that's

Speaker 3 that was the thing that I think that really got me through it.

Speaker 2 So now you've left LA. You don't live in L.A.
anymore. You moved over to Tennessee.

Speaker 2 How's that transition been for you?

Speaker 3 I just love it there.

Speaker 3 You know, I grew up in Texas, and so

Speaker 3 it feels like home at the same time. In fact, my grandfather was 10 miles from Tennessee as an infant, and they went to Texas in a covered wagon in 1902.

Speaker 3 So I have a lot of cousins there to begin with. And of course, music, which

Speaker 3 has always been a part of my life. I have great friends there, and I just love the way of life.

Speaker 2 I didn't even know about the music. So you're a guitarist or what?

Speaker 3 I play guitar. I've always played guitar and piano.
I mean, I did Great Balls of Fire, Jerry Lee Lewis.

Speaker 3 That's another great thing about being an actor is you get to go

Speaker 3 in to all these doors that say authorized personnel only.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Jerry Lee Lewis was like one of my teachers, one of my piano teachers. So

Speaker 3 you get to do a lot of really fun things when you're an actor.

Speaker 2 So what are your favorite? I mean, you have a huge IMDb, obviously. What are the favorite films that you've been in?

Speaker 3 For me,

Speaker 3 Reagan is now, actually, has taken over as number one from The Right Stuff, which was my favorite movie

Speaker 3 before

Speaker 3 I did Reagan. And I have a different standard for myself.
It's about the experience that I had when I was making it. Like The Right Stuff came out.
I mean, it didn't do well at all, actually.

Speaker 3 You know, it's become a classic, but at the time, it didn't do well at all.

Speaker 3 But it was about the time of, you know, I grew up in Houston, Space City. It was, it was Gordo Cooper, was my favorite astronaut.
Wound up, he lived three miles from me in LA.

Speaker 3 I got my pilot's license on that. Jack Yeager was on the side every day.
You know, that's like fantastic time.

Speaker 3 But I would say

Speaker 3 the right stuff, Reagan, breaking away, frequency,

Speaker 3 The Rookie, Far From Heaven.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 I have

Speaker 3 some I'm not so proud of, but those, you know, I have a good little family of

Speaker 3 there. I've been around long enough to have a few good ones.
The Parent Trap. Parent Trap gave me a new

Speaker 3 whole second career.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know. My sisters grew up on that film.
Yeah. I will admit I've watched it more than once.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, everyone, all my producers in the back are

Speaker 2 right now.

Speaker 2 I just showed it to my kids like two weeks ago, maybe. We were on vacation and

Speaker 2 my daughter and her and her cousins wanted to watch it.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 Well, I tell them, I said, I used to be your babysitter when they grow up because your parents have put it on. You'd watched it 40 times while they were in the other room doing what they wanted to do.

Speaker 3 Exactly.

Speaker 2 How would you deal with failure? Obviously, we all deal with failure.

Speaker 2 And I think that's the side of American success that people don't often see is all the failures that lead to the successes or that are the after effects of a success.

Speaker 2 How do you deal with, you know, you put an enormous amount of sweat and toil into a movie, and it doesn't end up being what you want it to be, or it fails the body.

Speaker 3 It's very disappointing, man. It goes right to your self-esteem and everything failure does.
You know, people don't like to talk about it or whatever.

Speaker 3 But,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 it's failure actually. That

Speaker 3 if you survive it, you know, you get up off the floor, it's actually going to

Speaker 3 make you better, I think. You know, it's, it, uh,

Speaker 3 everybody's got to have failure in their life. And it's about sticking with something, I think.

Speaker 3 I think that's half of the thing about

Speaker 3 even

Speaker 3 wanting to be an actor. I mean, you're kind of set up for failure just to

Speaker 3 try to become an actor.

Speaker 3 There's 40. 40,000 actors in the Screen Actors Guild on, you know, only 1% are working on any given day.
You just got to figure you're going to be one of those 1%.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 no matter what,

Speaker 3 you've got to have a tough skin to a certain extent, too.

Speaker 3 But also acknowledge what was wrong with something.

Speaker 2 So you talked a little bit earlier about the fact that Hollywood needs to tell some different types of stories. Obviously, Reagan is the beginning, I think, of a lot of that.
It's a huge movie.

Speaker 2 It's sprawling. It's awesome.
People who don't know Reagan's legacy are going to learn more about Reagan than

Speaker 2 probably they would through any other medium.

Speaker 2 The movie will reach more people than anybody will ever read a Reagan biography.

Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure. And

Speaker 3 that's very important.

Speaker 3 First off, the movie is meant to entertain.

Speaker 3 That's what it's supposed to be.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 it's for those who are like

Speaker 3 your age,

Speaker 3 you get a glimpse into what this country used to be like.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 for those like my age,

Speaker 3 you

Speaker 3 reminded what this country was and what it still can be, too.

Speaker 3 It was a great time

Speaker 3 as a nation for us. And we went through

Speaker 3 very similar times to push through

Speaker 3 and become a nation that believed in itself again. That's what I would like to see, you know,

Speaker 3 is for the American people who have great faith in, would we start believing in ourselves again and in each other?

Speaker 2 So, you know,

Speaker 2 what are some of the trunk projects that you've always thought would make great movies? You know, things that you wish somebody had made, but they've but they've never made before.

Speaker 2 Because I know that anybody who even watches a lot of movies, they've thought, man, I wish they'd make a movie about X, Y, or Z. All right.

Speaker 3 Well, I have one right now on

Speaker 3 that I would really want to do about the Lakota Sioux Crazy Horse. You know,

Speaker 3 that story has never been told from the native point of view. And

Speaker 3 I have a book now that is the oral history of Crazy Horse's family as told to this writer.

Speaker 3 And the history goes back to the mid-1700s. There were three crazy horses.
The first one was actually there when Lewis and Clark came through.

Speaker 3 The second, who was the father of Crazy Horse, and the inter-tribal wars and stuff, and then

Speaker 3 Crazy Horse, and then

Speaker 3 his nephew was, great-nephew was killed in World War I, and

Speaker 3 the family is there today. And it's a very interesting story told from their point of view.

Speaker 2 Okay, final question for you. I got to find out.
What are your top five movies? Not the ones that you're in, necessarily. It can be, but it doesn't have to be.

Speaker 2 You have to go to a desert island, you bring five movies.

Speaker 3 What were well, Lawrence of Arabia,

Speaker 3 it's a masterpiece. Godfather 1 and 2, that's one movie.
Yes. Okay.

Speaker 2 I cheat the same way when asked to discuss.

Speaker 3 Yeah. You have to.

Speaker 3 Man,

Speaker 3 you get me started on Score Sazi.

Speaker 3 The Wizard of Oz is a beautiful film, you know,

Speaker 3 what it means.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I really love that movie Lion. Yeah, it was small, but

Speaker 3 it really was huge in my mind.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the notebook

Speaker 3 took me a long time to watch that movie, but it gets me every time. I can't believe it.

Speaker 2 Well, the movie is wonderful. You're wonderful in it.
And thank you so much for taking the time to stop by. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 Thank you, Ben. I really had a good time, man.
Thank you. That was awesome.

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