430: Enrico Colantoni—The Balls on this Guy!

He's your friend.

He's my friend.

He's Canada's friend.

He's America's friend.

He's our friend, Rico Colentoni.

Second time on the podcast.

This time, I think it really is just a, it's kind of an opportunistic get that you got, but I'm so glad you got him because crap, that was fun.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

And you're right, it was a crime of opportunity or a podcast episode of of opportunity.

He's actually in town to get hip replacement, which he just got.

He's 12 days out.

He's been convalescing at my house.

I had the great misfortune to assist our friend Amy in changing his bandage last Saturday, which, of course, I showed you a picture of that, which was horrifying.

Yeah, and this was really, really fun.

Yeah, it's not NC 17.

I don't even think it's R-rated, but I will tell you, we come in kind of hot.

We've known each other, me and Rico, 40 years.

As long as you've known him, and of course, you've known him a lot better than I have.

He's living with you now

in his convalescence.

Look, if you don't know Rico, well, then you probably don't have a TV.

Hope and Gloria, just shoot me.

Veronica Mars, Galaxy Quest, Contagion, Stigmata.

Stigmata.

He played the Italian priest in Stigmata.

AI.

AI, yeah.

Yeah.

So many movies, so many shows, so many plays.

He is our favorite and consummate working actor.

He's a true actor, but he is such a real human and such a sweetheart and so vulnerable at the moment that I

almost feel bad.

I made him cry twice.

Oh, yeah.

And he made me laugh and then I made him laugh.

And then we both laughed so hard for so long.

I don't even know if it's usable.

Oh my God.

Yeah, that's that's funny.

It's very funny.

Yeah, look.

And you know what?

You learn some things along the way because

he's thoughtful and he's smart and he's lived six decades and he has a unique perspective on the world, I think, as most actors do who stay that busy for that long.

But he's so forthcoming, our friend.

He's so honest about...

the things in his life that are challenges and

well

some things that are attached to his body that have have swollen to dimensions that a lot of people would not be comfortable discussing.

And yet.

And yet, it just makes me say the title of this episode, which is.

Enrico Calentoni, the ball's on this guy.

Full disclosure.

He says something toward the end that's so sweet.

His exact phrase was, you know, it's important to be louder than the noise, which was going to be the title.

And it's probably a better title.

But again, full disclosure, I always think about the person who can't quite decide whether or not to click on this thing or not.

And if you're that person and you looked at, you know, be louder than the noise, you might think, ah, you know, that's probably useful, but very earnest.

Maybe later.

But the balls on this guy?

What about those balls?

What could it mean?

Well, by all means, stand by and let me explain it to you right after this.

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Like veins.

I mean, this has happened to you, I'm sure.

You've coughed up things

and you've marveled.

You've just looked at it and wondered how your body could create something.

Where did that come from?

I mean, you know where it came from.

It came from your lungs, but

how did it spend so much time in there?

You know what, Mike?

I don't know.

I'd still marvel at what comes out of my ass.

I mean, you know what I mean?

Ever do a real cleanse where you see worms coming out?

It's like all that

wiggling around.

Full disclosure, it's going to be one of those conversations.

We don't have a lot of governor on Rico Colentoni.

He's been on the podcast before.

More importantly, I've known him for 30 years.

Chuck's known him for about 50.

Is that possible?

How long have you known him?

No.

By a year and a half.

I met you the same year that I met Chuck.

So I've known you about 40 years.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, that's true.

You were at the Academy.

Yeah, you came to New York to visit us, yeah.

Did we talk about that night?

Still one of my favorite nights, my whole life.

Which one?

I've already forgotten.

We were high, of course.

It was night.

It was dark.

And we were walking by,

and there was a guy laid out

on the sidewalk.

and somebody's looking at him and Mike goes yeah he just uh he just fell out from the sky he just like landed there and he was just like what really

and he you had this total stranger just kind of keep looking up and how this guy ended up on the floor yeah of the sidewalk I remember that

no I remember it I also it was the same trip though when

I think I was helping you move in, I guess.

And

it was my first experience with a truly homeless person who had taken up residence in the gutter and was just lying there.

Actually, I don't think he was homeless because he was wearing a suit.

Yeah, he was dressed drunk.

And you were like, hey, I just step over the guy because it's New York and I've been living there for all of like two months, so I know what...

what's what.

And you're like, hey, man, this guy doesn't seem right.

I think we ought to help.

I'm like, oh, no, he's just drunk.

I'm just drunk.

What happened to you, man?

I mean, I've known you a long time.

You're a man of compassion and humanity rico he just when did you stop caring when did he stop caring that was my question new york killed your spirit chuck well i knelt down next to the gentleman and and rolled him over checked his pulse you did for real oh yeah oh no i mean as eagle scout man this is like this is my chance to maybe save a life or at least yeah at least call it in you know at least call it in what happened did he just like

what happened was he wasn't dead uh he was in fact drunk as chuck had pre-saved Well, you called a police officer over.

Yeah.

And the police officer came over, slapped him a little, and he kind of went

and he looked at you and said, oh, he's just drunk.

And I'm like,

that was the most annoying part, to glance back at my friend Chuck and to see a look that I'd never seen before.

It was, I told you so, but there was also a kind of a world weariness about it.

Like, I don't know if you've understand, but I've been in a big city

a couple weeks now.

I've seen some things.

I've seen some things.

So you had just moved there, too, then, down from.

Yeah, we started at the same time.

Chuck and I started at the Academy in February.

So I just came in from Toronto.

Yeah.

Staying at the 92nd Street Y.

Remember that one?

It's still there.

It's still there.

They do all kinds of broadcasting out of that thing.

It's a thing, right?

Big theater, too.

Did you ever perform there?

No.

No, but I live there.

Ever invited to do so?

Nope.

Any hopes, dreams, aspirations?

No, not at all.

92nd Street Y at this point is not on your

wish for you.

It was great.

We need to live there.

It was so alive.

And it bordered what I, you know, back then was like probably the most dangerous part of the city.

What exactly was that?

Well, anything beyond 93rd and 94th on Lexington

was not what you had.

East side, uptown.

Was not what you had south of 92nd Street, right?

86th Street, that was considered the upper east side.

Well, 86th is definitely south of 92nd,

to to the tune of six, if I'm doing the math right.

93, 92, yeah, yeah, yep,

six,

six numbers south.

Yeah, remember those days?

Those are fun days.

It was a long time ago.

Chuck is a constant reminder.

I'm so grateful that he's in my life to remind me how far.

Because you need a witness.

Well, I'm sure he's grateful that you're in his house right now.

He needs me there.

Yeah.

He needs me there.

We need you on that wall.

I know.

You want me on that wall.

For those of you.

Are we started, by the way?

Oh, yeah, we're deep into it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we came into it with that whole comment about the disappointment that sometimes leaves your body by way of your lower

lungs.

Your lungs or your lower.

No, we started there, but you came into that.

I bring it right back to a level where I understand.

I don't understand the lungs so much, but I'm really hip with

the bowels.

Well, since you dragged your hip into it.

Just so the listener and hopefully the viewer understands.

if you're not watching this

why do i say yes to this if you're not watching this friend

what i'm looking at is a version of rico that i haven't seen uh there's a cardigan yeah there's what appears to be some kind of active sweatpants leisure wear they're that's linen linen pants just comfortable i'm 12 days out of a hip surgery yeah so this is my like comfy i got it because if i have to whip my pants down and check my bandage i'm ready to go it's like everything is okay just hang on for a second i just I took pictures today.

I'm doing really well.

I'm going to look at the pictures.

With your permission, we'll share the pictures.

I think part of what we ought to do with the time we have is bend this in, if not necessarily to a public service announcement, at least to some teachable moments for people.

Oh, yeah.

Warning signs.

Well, that happened.

Can I share what happened?

I want to hear what happened.

Oh, my God.

Because, again, I ran into you 20 minutes ago out front.

You were needlessly early.

There's no extra credit for that.

But Chuck, I'm letting myself back in from lunch.

You know, I got Mary and I got Ken from Big Speak with me.

Right.

And this older homeless gentleman walks up to us,

you know, wearing a cardigan.

With a cane.

With a cane and mumbles something behind his.

Mr.

Rowe.

And I was like, oh, well, isn't this nice?

Because I'm here with this big-time agent, right?

And it's like, it's always nice to be recognized, even if it is by the great unwashed.

And this grizzled man is my old friend Rico.

I'm like, good lord, with the cardigan and the cane.

Cardigan and the hair.

I haven't done my hair.

I came, I came.

Way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way.

You haven't done your hair.

I haven't done my hair.

I usually trim it.

It's never this long.

This is like post-op Rico.

I actually shaved my, I trimmed the beard.

You've got more hair on your face than you do on your head.

On my chest.

You can't even know it's on my chest.

But it's like, I was like under a knife two weeks ago, and I barely started walking.

And this weekend,

I got an allergic reaction to the bandage,

and things started oozing everywhere.

Oh, dear.

And now you're in the guest bedroom at Chuck's place.

Well, I wore

the sheets, and I watched the sheets and stuff.

Yeah.

You've slept in that bed?

Many times, and I'm sure I'll be back into it

now with thoughts of ooze and sputum.

Right?

No.

Visions of sugar plants.

It was clean.

It was all caught.

Bandages.

In fact, my friend Amy Amy had a sanitary napkin for me.

That's nice.

Right?

First time for me.

Sure.

I had to throw the first one away because I didn't know that they had adhesive things that you could stick.

Oh, yeah.

And the angle of it.

But I finally figured it out and it caught everything that was oozing from my junk.

In a sanitary napkin.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Oh, yeah.

That's it.

We're talking about your wound.

I know.

It was here and it's dripping, and all of a sudden, my junk turns into what looked like John Merrick's

head.

It was just oozing and pussing and everything was leaking and I go, I'm going to die.

I'm going to die.

And the great story is that when I left the hospital, they didn't give me the surgeon's number.

So I.

You have no one to call.

I had no one to call.

Just quick point of order, or at least clarity.

You're

oozing from your junk.

Yeah.

I'm thinking that that would happen with the hole that's already there.

Yeah.

But

no, it wasn't that.

It wasn't an infection.

It was an allergic reaction.

So I don't know why it was going there, but it was coming up my side.

I had a big rash there, and it just pooled

in your scrotum?

Yeah.

And in, can I say penis?

If it applies.

It does.

And it just looked like a beer can, which is not unflattering, but it's like, really just, you know.

Did you see this, Chuck?

No, no, I wouldn't show anything.

He couldn't stop staring at it.

Chuck showed me a picture of your wound.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Which is, that's fine.

You're staying at a man's house.

Your wound is oozing.

But it wasn't oozing.

That's the point.

What was happening inside was good.

It was actually an allergic reaction outside because of the bandage.

Ah, so you had a topical.

Yeah.

But back to the oozing around the testicles.

Yeah, I don't know.

I asked the doc, I go, why is it there?

He goes, I don't know.

When a doctor says, I don't know,

but he gave me some

antibiotics.

Steroids?

Steroids?

Steroids and antibiotics.

Now it's just a little itchy, dry, a little topical, and good.

All right, look, look, we're going to spend a little time on this.

See,

I don't know.

I've got pictures.

Here, let me show you.

I hope you're not kidding.

Because, look, I've been traumatized by this myself, not directly, but my dad had an inguinal hernia.

And part of the reality of repairing that thing affected his, what they call a hydroseal.

It's a sack of fluid in your scrotum.

And when your body drains

excess moisture, fluid, whatever it is, you know, it goes to the lowest point.

Well, my dad is a fairly

circumspect guy.

He's, I wouldn't say shy, but he's courtly.

You know, he doesn't talk about any of the things we've already touched on.

But when I walked in the apartment to see how he was doing, his scrotum had swollen up to the size of something

like a small, you know, the small footballs, not the full-size NFL.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

And

he greeted me in a bathrobe and immediately said, take a look at this thing.

Does this look right to you?

No, there's nothing that looked right.

No, no, no.

And so I think when you're that old and when your body does something that it's never done before, for him anyway, it made him curious,

but also certainly not proud, but not ashamed either.

It was like a new tattoo that he was showing it to everyone.

Amazing.

Yes.

Amazing that he would have such pride around that.

My mother, in vacuuming in the news,

wrote about this.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Here, look.

How is your ma, by the way?

She's great.

She turned 87 yesterday.

That's wonderful.

Yesterday.

Yep.

And five years ago, she wrote this.

Late that night following the surgery, my husband and I were at home as the anesthesia was wearing off.

He lifted the sheet, stared wide-eyed for a moment, then screamed like a man engulfed in flames.

Peg, come here, quick.

I pulled away the sheet and thought, my lord, what's an eggplant doing down there on his private parts?

I knew, of course, that it was my husband's scrotum,

but only because of the position it occupied between his legs.

Oh my God.

Again, folks, I apologize.

No,

I mean, you know, we've got to talk about it.

Anybody who says, oh, hips, oh, no complications, no nothing, you get your hip replaced, you're walking right away.

They don't talk about how difficult it is to sleep, how difficult it is if you get an infection, because it's still a surgery.

So I've had one done six years ago.

I had a rash, I thought it was normal.

This time, I thought it was the same rash, but then when you're

smaller.

Sideways.

Yeah.

And wrinkles, and it was a frightening moment.

So we don't talk about those things, and we should.

Well, we are.

It's too late.

But back to the age.

I'm so used to just looking at Chuck.

Why can't he sit there?

We tried it.

We focus grouped it.

And the people were unanimous.

He's in the shot too much.

Oh.

No.

Well, he's got a dedicated camera.

If you miss him, just cut right now, Chuck.

There you go.

See?

He's there.

Actually, we probably should have put him back here because it's you guys.

When a new person comes in here, you only have so much time.

He'll make a new guy nervous, I know.

You know what?

Chuck has a nervous energy about him that he didn't used to have.

And I'm wondering if you can confirm any of this.

I think since he started working with you, Mike, I'm pretty.

It's possible.

I think if I had to narrow it down.

100%.

I think that's when it all happened.

We were like whiteboarding some ideas like seven or eight years ago, maybe more, when I really noticed this.

But see that girder up there?

Yeah.

Like on that girder.

Hang on a second.

I'm going to grab one of these right now.

It's these things.

These little stupid things.

Yeah.

Yeah, these things are great.

He would stand there and just start throwing them to try and make them stick.

And then he'd start pacing.

He was like a wildebeest with the turning sickness, just walking in circles with these little yellow foam squeeze hard hats.

And he couldn't sit still.

And I'd never noticed that about you before.

And now it's

all I see.

All I see.

Yeah.

It's tragic, but true.

It's it's true but you haven't noticed oh I've oh yeah he's big big he's like walking around he's always on the phone well that's always I mean he doesn't stop working it maybe you don't know this about him but he doesn't stop oh I'm he doesn't stop moving

now if we want to take

that could be it that could be it if you want to equate it with work with work yeah maybe fine maybe that he does do a lot of pacing moving's hard he's lost so much weight he's can oh he's a rail yeah he's kinetic no no but I'm I'm just thinking, no.

Back to your hips.

Six years ago.

Six years ago, you get, what's up?

You're a young man.

What'd you do to yourself?

I don't know.

But mom and dad both had them done, you know, in their 70s.

So I figured it was just a matter of time.

And everybody said, well, it's inevitable.

You've got arthritis there.

And I was like, all right, well, that's something.

And so I was dumb enough to take a kickboxing class this summer.

And it jacked me.

But I had to go to work.

I'm doing a show up in Canada called Allegiance where I have to play a police officer, a beat cop.

Oh, God.

So they had to write in that I had hip issues because

I couldn't not limp,

storming the castle.

You know what I'm saying?

I got my gun all ready to kick the door down.

And I'm like Ratzo Rizzo,

storming the castle.

It's not good.

So for four months, I'm in absolute agony.

I had this window to get it done because English teacher supposedly is coming back at the end of February.

New show by me.

And I've been waiting in Canada for hip replacement for four years.

So we could talk about a whole segment.

Four years.

They must have lost my number.

I put my name on a list in Ontario four years ago, and I still haven't heard from them.

So you got your left hip done six years ago.

Here.

Here.

Yeah.

Then you go back up to Canada.

And I'm going, I'm going to need this done.

Yeah.

I'm putting myself on the list early because I know it'll take some time.

Four years later, I'm still okay, but then when it happened, I would have to wait another year.

As you may have heard me say several thousand times before, we need to close the skills gap in this country and we need to do it stat.

I hate to be an alarmist, but there are currently 7.6 million open jobs out there, most of which don't require a four-year degree, and currently 250,000 of those jobs exist within the maritime industrial base.

These are the folks who build and deliver three nuclear-powered submarines every year to the U.S.

Navy.

And there's a real concern now that a lack of skilled labor is going to keep us from building the subs that need to get built.

On the positive side, there's a growing realization that these jobs are freaking awesome.

I'm talking about incredibly stable, AI-proof careers, just waiting for anybody who wants to learn a skill that's in demand and start a career with some actual purpose.

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That's where all the hiring is happening, and you really need to see it to get a sense of just how much opportunity is out there.

That's buildsubmarines.com.

Come on and build a submarine.

Why don't you build a submarine?

At buildsubmarines.com.

How many many movies have you done?

I don't know.

How many TV series?

Chuckle now.

Chuck, look into it for me.

Okay.

It's a larger point I want to make.

You've been a working actor, I think, longer than any other working actor I know.

By the way, Tim Allen says hello.

He sat right here.

Did he remember me this time?

No.

Yeah, I didn't think so.

No, but he did say hello.

It's just impossible to come to any other conclusion, but for the undeniable fact that you're a remarkably successful actor who has thrived in his chosen field.

And you can certainly, you can get your hips done, you can get your legs replaced,

you can do whatever you want.

You can get better testicles, get the whole scrum thing worked out.

You're a man of resources and means is what I'm saying.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And you're living right now, you've been at Chuck's for the last month and a half.

Yeah.

In the guest bedroom where I will sometimes crash.

Yeah, but it's clean, I swear.

Margarita comes in and she makes sure that she fumigates, it'll be fumigated by the time you get there.

You could be in any facility in the Los Angeles area.

You could be any home.

Yeah.

You choose to be where you are now.

Yeah.

Make it make sense for me.

I love Chuck.

That's it.

He's my oldest and dearest friend.

And coming back and just knowing that there's a place that I can feel absolutely at home.

They offered hotels.

Sure.

I could say an hotel.

But I go, no, it's just easier at Chuck's.

I love it when he, because, you know, he's literally working with you during the day, so I have the place to myself.

Oh, yeah.

And then he comes home and we just catch up.

Well, he actually didn't come home last night.

No, he didn't.

All week he's been away.

You know what he did?

He took an arrow bed I bought

20 years ago.

Facts.

Right?

Because when he was living in that shoebox not far from where he is now,

I would crash there, really for the same reasons you're describing.

Of course.

But, you know, there was no place to lie down comfortably.

He had this chaise lounge.

He had the chaise lounge.

Yeah.

What do we call it?

No, I don't say we're not.

No, we don't say we don't say this.

Don't call it the splooge chair.

A lot has happened on that chair.

Let's call it the ooze chair at this point because you've been oozing all over the place.

But the point is, you know, at that point in my life, yeah, I could probably have stayed any number of places, but I got an arrow bed and I blew it up and I slept like a dog at the foot of his desk.

And he was in the other room with you know who knows who yeah and i'm just lying out there and there were nights where i would say to myself what what are you doing like what are you why are you here exactly i could be ordering room service someplace right now right anywhere but it'll amuse you to know that last night right there to your right on that same arrow bed this on the same arrow bed did you find it in the closet by the way yeah you just dug it out yes we knew it was there it was there still there still had the sheets with it that fit it so that was it worked real quick.

It still had the sheets already on it, like fitted, ready to go.

No, no, they were folded up.

Okay.

You know, if they were clean.

That'd be weird if it was just ready to go from 20 years ago.

Why is it relevant?

Why is it interesting?

I'll tell you why.

Because most of the people listening to this don't have famous friends.

And many of them are thinking, God, if I were famous, what I would do is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But your choices, and to some extent, I think maybe my own,

reflect the fact that it never changes.

In the end, whether it's your hip or your sphincter or your test, whatever's let you down, if you need some time to get your feet back under you, you want to be around somebody who you

care about or who cares about you.

Just doesn't matter where you go.

I'm going to make you cry.

You've done it.

You've done it.

You cry.

I'm going to note the time because this is going to happen a lot, I'm sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So sweet.

You're just one of the sweetest dudes walking around.

Fuck this guy for that.

Nice, nice try, dude.

Nice try.

Oh, shoot.

Oh, my God, Mike.

Fuck off.

Lil, you made me cry.

You want to hear something funny?

That's true, but it wasn't just her.

Amy was there.

Yeah.

Amy spent, you know, 10 nights on that side of the couch.

It's like, where

people in toronto are going well why don't you get it done here i go because truck and amy are down there so why is it

why is it that the people we've known the longest get more important as we get older mike really i feel like

i just got just got

ambushed imagine there's a microphone pointed somewhere towards your mouth

if you're going to be poignant be poignant in a way that i'm not poignant i'm just emotional i just I'm sentimental.

But I want the lesser famous people listening right now to understand the universality of the unassailable truth that you're...

I think in all the years that I've done what I've done, I've made two legitimate friends, like Hollywood friends.

Not someone that I've known from New York or from the past or from high school.

Two legitimate Hollywood personalities that I could call and say, hey, let's get some dinner.

One of them is is no longer with us, and the other one lives on the East Coast.

That's who Alan.

Alan Rickman was the most generous human being and lovely and welcoming, and he made you feel like you were his dear, dear friend.

And Whoopi Goldberg is the other one, and Whoopi is just one of my, I just adore Whoopi.

But anybody else that I've worked with in the passing, blah, blah, blah,

I don't gravitate toward them.

I don't gravitate toward them because these two specific people, Hollywood people,

look you in the eye and they really make you feel like they want to know you.

And so why would

when you look back, I referred to Chuck as a witness.

I refer to you as a witness.

I've seen where you started.

I knew to be able to say that,

to be able to

know that no matter what, I'm going to be there for that man and he'll be there for me and Amy.

And it's like, I'm not going to pass that up for anything.

But precious.

It's absolutely precious.

And the older you get,

and the more people you meet, and the more people that want to know you,

you know, I don't, you know, going into a hotel and have people greet you with a smile, you know they're waiting for some, you know,

but

no, I know how to make it more profound than that.

That's other than after 40 years,

he's my brother.

Which brings us to the question of the the rent.

Oh, now you really made him cry.

Look at him.

Oh, my God.

He's really worked up about the rent.

We have a deal.

If I'm there for a period of time, I feed him.

You know, dinner.

Which is quite expensive.

As you know, I like to eat.

I feed him.

Yeah.

And I think that works well for both of us because, you know, I think that's a pretty good deal, yeah, Chuck?

Oh, yeah, that's a great deal.

I love that deal.

Well, I mean, you're obviously talking about the literal business of chewing and swallowing actual food.

I pick up, you know, yeah, yeah.

But we're also talking about nourishment, right?

Like, what actually nourishes?

When do you feel truly fed?

It's not when you jam your gob full of whatever available sticky fodder is within reach.

It's when you sit there and watch somebody who loves you prepare a meal for you.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, you know, we don't prepare that much anymore, but we'll, you know.

Well, Amy cooked.

That's what she did while she was there, which is great.

She's amazing, as you know.

So for 10 days, she was making something, and she would ask, what do we want?

And Chuck could come, come on,

this.

Poof.

And there it was, you know?

Yeah.

That sorbet is still in the freezer.

It's really good.

Chuck had four huge pomegranates just sitting there and they were hidden.

It was time.

And Amy saw them and she goes, What can I make with pomegranate?

And she turned it all into this great sorbet.

So it's sitting there.

So it felt like camp.

It felt like camp.

When you were in camp, Mike, did anybody make pomegranate sorbet?

You may be confused as to the type of camps I attended.

We were really skinny.

I was a Boy Scout.

Yeah, but no pomegranates.

No, there was no pomegranate.

That would have been frowned on.

That would have been viewed with suspicion.

Looked at askance.

Well, imagine me looking at Chuck over the counter, just literally peeling all the membrane between seeds and just eating it like that.

It looked

sad.

So Amy interrupted it all and just turned it into magic.

But just back to the scrotum briefly.

Was it oozing as the pomegranates were being peeled?

Is there some metaphor?

Because my mom really leaned into

the eggplant.

That's good.

And so, like, it's

the crushing of the pomegranate juice.

And the seed reference.

But beyond that, like, there's something in our brain that forces us to think about growths, tumors, organs, all these things.

We try and find their corollary in like the fruit or vegetable world.

And I don't know why we do that, but it interests me.

I think because trying to describe it otherwise is impossible.

I couldn't describe what was going on down there.

Right.

But if I had thought of a pomegranate at the time,

it would have applied.

But definitely a crushed beer can, just like,

I know, it was scary.

It's amazing.

Do you have pictures?

I mean,

you really didn't die.

I couldn't.

I didn't want, it was that.

Angle wasn't wide enough.

Simply couldn't find a lens.

I couldn't find the light to accommodate.

To really capture.

it's like a landscape it's like the grand canyon you can't really capture the scope of the grand canyon on a cell phone so i said it's like enough this is just for me and you you and me

and i was good for that especially when it started to die down

oh my god oh my god oh god yeah according to the graphic that chuck has put up you're an award i'm an award-winning actor is that how you spell winning Two N's?

I guess.

That would be whining, I guess.

Three of them, technically.

Three N's.

Three N's.

Yeah, just not a whining.

That's funny that you say whining.

Just one letter away, you could be an author.

I could be a whining actor.

A whining actor.

Is there anything less attractive in your estimation than an actor who's not sufficiently grateful?

One who whines, in other words?

I hope I never meet anyone like that.

Oh, come on.

You've encountered some actors who don't.

I wouldn't call them whining.

I call them entitled and thinking that somehow they're bigger than

the

scrotum.

If you pause in the middle of the sentence and you're searching for a metal,

somebody's going to hop in.

Somebody's going to hop in.

And the odds are good for the next 40 minutes or so that the answer is going to be scrotum.

If there's an awkward pause, yeah.

Hey, listen, going back to what you asked before, there, Rico has, according to IMDb, he has 110 acting credits, seven producing credits, seven directing credits, one writer credit, and 37 appearances as himself.

Huh.

Just 110?

That's it?

Oh, that's specific credits,

not ours.

No, not ours.

No.

No.

So if this were

the actor studio, and I were James Lipton, I suppose the question would be: of which of those many credits are you most proud, Enrico?

Hope and Gloria.

Really?

Yeah.

Why?

It was the first job that got me to L.A.

It was the first steady gig that made me feel like I'm a working-class actor.

I can see why that would make you feel grateful,

but proud, was the question.

And

Alan Thick was on there.

Taylor Negron, Cynthia Stevenson, Jessica Lundy.

And

it was the kind of show that was just,

it was ostentatious for that time.

And I got to play a complete doofus, a guy named Lutz.

Elliotts.

Utz.

No, that was just shoot me.

Oh, right.

Just shoot me was a lot of fun.

But playing a guy named Louis Utz,

I could play.

Find me Louis Utz, for God's sake.

Right there.

That's it.

That's me.

Yeah.

Oh, I was looking at the wrestling going on, like diving through the air.

There's no way that's you.

Let me see.

Look if I can make this bigger.

With those hips?

Yeah.

Oh, that's the wrong thing.

The wrong way, Chair.

Proud because it.

Oh, my God.

But I'll tell you, it'll always be Galaxy Quest that made me...

That show, I think, actually legitimized me as an actor.

Did you know it when it was happening?

The fun that we were having, that's all we knew.

I said to Tim yesterday, stupidly, as he was leaving.

I didn't say it when we were sitting here, but the thing that really struck me about that movie was I liked.

everybody who was in it before I saw it.

And afterwards, I liked everybody even more.

Yeah, we had a great time.

Sam Rockwell?

Yeah, fantastic.

He had just finished The Green Mile and stuff.

Yeah.

Daryl Mitchell, who's now on Tim's new show.

Shifting gears.

Yeah, shifting gears, yeah.

But Dean Pariso, who was sort of hired behind the eight ball,

because I think it was Harold Ramos who was supposed to do it originally, and it was Mark

Johnson directing, right?

Mark Johnson was producing.

Kevin Klein was supposed to play Tim's part.

This is how I heard it.

Yeah.

And so

they backed out, and Dean had all of like two months to pick up the ball and run with it.

So he was just really hands-off.

He cast it, and he literally just let us play.

So we had more fun, and it left us with a feeling of like, you know, the danger of we're having more fun than an audience is going to have watching it.

Right.

Like breaking sometimes.

Yeah.

Oh,

it's indulgent.

Oh, my God.

It was just the most fun.

And Tim was notorious.

Yeah.

And it was only Sigourney who would sort of bring him back down to planet Earth and bring him back.

Come on, Tim, we have to go back to work.

Because if you gave Tim audience, that's it.

It was just like, it was endless.

And Chill would always be at his feet, just like laughing hysterically.

So it was always Sigourney who said, Come on, Tim, got to go back.

Got to go back to work.

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You needed Segourney here yesterday.

No kidding, man.

Look, I loved him.

And this is the second time I've interviewed him, but he is

at such an interesting point in his life, right?

Like us, older than he's ever been.

He's got a lot on his mind.

And in the wake of the fires, he's a philosophy major, and he's contemplating the mysteries of the universe and physics and like the unexamined life in Kierkegaard and like all of these.

I mean, he literally got off the elevator in the middle of a sentence.

And there was nobody on the elevator.

So he's like talking to himself.

And we come out and we say hello and just we're talking, we're talking, and we just sit down.

And so there's no real beginning or end of this conversation, but it goes on for well over two hours.

Yeah.

And nothing's changed.

He thinks deeply on big ideas.

And funny.

And funny, yeah.

Always funny.

Were you and Rickman pals prior to this?

No.

That's where you met.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in the same way I met Whoopi.

in the Hollywood Squares is like, you know, we would do back when she was the center square.

Yeah.

um

they would move us around we did five in a day covered the whole week and so i found myself next to her and i knew i was next to her

and i sort of

look over there toward the microphone just to just to see her yeah and she was already waiting for me

hello right right and that was it and she hasn't stopped looking at me like that since you know just

how are you?

Welcome.

I don't know.

It's like, it was just a thing.

I see it in her.

She sees it in me.

Good folk.

Good folk.

And Tim was, and Alan was at my point, is that Alan was the same way.

He looked at me.

He goes, I would like to see you in the theater.

You know what I mean?

He'd like to see you do a play.

You know?

And did he?

Did he ever see you do a play?

You know what?

I was in London doing a new play.

Chuck came to see me.

But he was in New York directing a play, but Rima, his partner, and his stable of friends all came to support me

and took me to dinner on his behalf.

What was the play?

Neil Abut wrote a play called The Distance from Here.

Yeah, and it was, they didn't like it at all.

The Brits didn't like it at all.

Who cares?

But it was fun.

When did I see you on stage?

I saw you do.

Did you see Vanya?

Did you see Vanya or Macbeth?

Macbeth.

Yeah.

It was Macbeth.

You came to Macbeth, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's just, I just, you know, that's a mouthful.

That's a mouthful.

That's a full words, man.

You're doing sitcom.

I say, you wanted to, and I was,

I wasn't that far out of theater school, so I just, I still needed to do it.

What was the twist on the Macbeth show that I saw?

Six cast members, and it was sort of a cyclical story where he's like living in his head.

Everything was happening in his head.

So we started in a traditional way, but we ended up in the exact same spot before the witches, because

he just got the

witches told him that you will be king.

And so he's like all wrapped up in his head.

The story goes, and then we ended up right back there, living in his head.

So it was...

How else do you do it with six actors?

Come, sealing night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, and with thy bloody and invisible hand, cast off that wretched bond that keeps me pale.

Light thickens.

The crow makes way to the the rookie wood.

Good things of day do droop and drowse while night's black agents to their prey arouse.

Yeah, man, he could turn a phrase, that dude.

Wow.

I'm going to cry again.

Good.

I'll tell you why I know that one.

It'll make you laugh.

I might make you weep.

I don't know.

I was living in New York, and this is so crazy.

My friend, who I was living with, owned a recording studio called the Giant Lizard Company, and he had somehow forged a relationship with Tip O'Neill's,

I think, son or relation or some guy was related to

Tip O'Neill.

And he was involved in a project of Japanese anime.

And so this is a long time ago.

And it was called Vampires of New York.

Oh.

And so it's about this hyper-violent animated show about vampires who somehow saved the day in some kind of vigilante construct.

And there was no real dialogue.

It was all just acted out with beautiful symphonic music playing

with layers of creepy narration on top of it.

And so this guy would only, he only wanted to record at the Giant Lizard Company at midnight, and he would call my friend Dan, and I was living with Dan at the time, and Dan says to this guy, hey, my friend Mike has kind of a creepy voice, or at least he can make it creepy.

So I would go in and read these random chunks of great Gothic literature.

So there's Lovecraft, there's Shakespeare, obviously, there's Camus,

the rats coming to dine in the happy city, and like all this stuff.

And it was the weirdest combination of stuff because these guys were smoking all the weed in the world.

And it was just a cloud of cannabis in the air

with this great music.

For all these years, you remember that one particular

page.

I do.

It stuck.

And I remember you saying those words, too, even if you don't

at all.

In that production, I was like, oh man, I remember that.

Because it wasn't that long before you did that show that I was doing this very strange.

I wish I didn't know that.

That would have been cool.

Proving once again that Shakespeare is always in the room.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, that was.

Oof.

Rico, who played your Lady Macbeth?

I see her.

She was on

Breaking Bad, the wife in Breaking Bad.

Oh, she's terrific.

Yeah, what's her name?

Mrs.

White.

Do you cross paths with

Cranson here and there?

Brian Cranson?

No.

No.

No, we did Contagion together.

And thank God that.

That's crossing paths, too.

And a gun.

It's a gun.

And a gun.

Thanks, Jack.

And I got your gun.

Yeah.

Brian and I did contagion, but I hadn't seen Breaking Bad at that point.

So sort of like, hey, man, what's up?

If I had seen Breaking Bad and then gotten to work with him, I think I would have been a little nervous.

Sorry, but I got that beat.

Question.

Is that Rain Wilson, a very young Rain Wilson on the far end?

That's Rain.

Wow.

That's Rain Wilson.

Wow.

I never knew knew that.

Yeah, I didn't know it until just now.

We're looking at a picture of Galaxy Quest.

And yeah, that's Rain Wilson from the office.

Wow, and who knew?

Of course, that's way before the office.

Way before the office.

He would come

and watch, just shoot me, go, I want to do this.

It was just like, yeah, you're going to do this.

It's crazy.

He created things.

He came out of the NYU

with,

you know, with that group of

Deb messings and stuff.

And

he had created a clown

show called The New Bozimo or something.

So we already knew that he was a genius sort of crazy guy.

I mean, how many guys like that and women do you think are walking around in this business who truly have the goods, who have something special and unique, but just have not yet stumbled into

the world or the opportunity that's going to unleash it or haven't found their hope and glory.

Yeah.

I don't know, Mike.

I don't know.

That makes me sad too, right?

Don't cry.

Oh, but

that's a different kind of sad.

Oh.

Because you got to want it too, right?

You got to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I want that.

I have the goods and there's got to be the,

I've got the goods plus.

Yeah, yeah.

A willingness to eat bouillon cubes and to go through the mud and really develop a thick skin and deal with the rejection and keep going.

I think,

I mean, you know, my daughter is in theater school now and she has the benefit of me talking her through it, but I worry about her because how bad does she want it?

Is she willing to go to New York?

Is she willing to walk away from everything and just create something and really just close any back door.

I don't know who's willing to do that.

I don't know how many of these talented people we're talking about are willing to shut a door so that other door will automatically open for them.

But too many of them leave it way open just in case.

How bad did you want it?

Enough to walk away from my family and live in New York and it just one step in front of one foot in front of the other and kept going.

Had you not had Hope and Gloria or the successes that you did

when you did,

Would you still be pushing the rock up the hill?

Did you want it that bad?

I think I would have.

I think because even the theater,

even though, you know, monetarily you're not making that much doing plays, but...

Hell, you're losing money.

Yeah, yeah, you're paying them.

But that need to be connected to, I call it the spirit, that creative spirit.

I like to laugh as much as the next guy, obviously.

But, like, the older I get, the more I think about, you know, the honest answer to that question.

And I'm just sitting here looking at my mom on the front of her third book, right?

Mike, you're going to keep creating something new.

I mean, you might not be doing this in five years or next month.

You're going to make something else up.

You can't not

make something else up.

I can't not try.

Yeah.

I can't determine, right, what's going to happen.

But something

for as long as I, you know, and that's the spirit.

That's the energy.

That's that creative spirit that will, that is always bigger than ego.

It's always bigger than pride.

It's just that need to just keep creating something.

Yes, but you can have it.

Like, how long do you stand at the slot machine pulling the lever and never winning?

Right?

That's different.

That's got to be different.

Well, I think maybe, maybe mechanically, it's different, but this woman, my mom, her dream was to be a best-selling author.

And then her dream was to be a published author.

She didn't care about being a best-selling.

And then when it became clear that those two things weren't going to happen, after writing for 35 years every day and not getting a book deal, she gave up on the dream, but she didn't give up on the work.

This woman wrote every day for 60 years.

Yes.

And when she was 80,

she got her first book.

Yes.

And it went to the top of the bestseller.

So

in some way, shape, or form, I always come back to, do you have 60 years of doing the same thing every day and getting no success?

Do you have the facility to stay at the machine that long?

I don't think I do.

You know, I got enough success early on to go.

I think it's different because that machine is an expectation outside of yourself.

You're waiting for the world to change.

as opposed to staying connected to putting your work boots on

and going to work.

Amy Diston was telling this great story about her dad and how he was working for Lockheed Martin

and he was laid off for four months.

But every day he

got dressed and he went to the office.

Yeah.

He would perform it.

His wife didn't know about it.

Nobody knew that he got laid off.

But every day he woke up, he got dressed and he went to the office and he just waited there.

And the more he waited, the more he showed his face, and the more he just committed to that who he was,

it only lasted four months.

They positioned him, they brought him over there, they just

didn't last long.

Everybody else was laid off and they've forgotten about, but he was there, still doing, just showing up,

just showing up.

I don't know what the lesson there is.

I mean, it's a great story, but

have you read The War of Art?

Oh, sure.

Right?

Pressfield?

Yeah.

Pressfield.

Yeah.

Just like he puts his boots on and he goes in and he starts typing.

That's what your mom did.

She didn't give up on the need to write.

She didn't give up on that.

Her office was her kitchen.

Okay.

She wasn't literally going into a building.

Yeah, but she was doing, she was doing a painter's paint.

Writer's rights.

Okay.

You know, actors act.

Okay, I'm on a TV show now.

I'm making literally hundreds of dollars.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But I need to act.

If it's a small theater or a big venue, I need to do that.

I need to do it.

And not out of, just out of, that's who I am.

That's part of who you are, dude.

The other thing you need to do is not act.

Like, you need to be so off book.

You need to be so off script.

You need this.

You need to cry at a card trick.

You need to hear something that resonates in a way that just feels so completely honest and real.

And I guess maybe, obviously, that's it.

But it's you, Mike.

But it's you, too.

It's you, too.

I've known you.

I've known you.

I mean,

You know, you know,

I mean, your intellect is

this.

It's fast.

It's fast.

And I'm not that fast.

No, no.

Vast.

It's vast.

It's not fast.

It's vast and fast.

It's enormous.

It's no facile.

Not unlike myself.

Not unlike

Pommigran.

It keeps coming up.

Seriously.

It just keeps growing.

You know what I'm trying to say.

So

for as long as I've known you,

not only have you been, you're an intimidating presence because of your vastness,

but at the same time you make me feel completely at home and okay to just mumble and bumble.

Well, you make me proud to share the species with you.

You really do, because you're like a tuning fork.

You're an emotional tuning fork.

You walk into a room and somebody goes ting, and there's where you ting.

Boo!

There he is, man.

He's in the room.

He's in the room and the frequency.

He's crying.

Crying.

But

he hums with his own unique enthusiasm.

And there's something about.

I squealed, didn't I?

That was a squeal.

That was a cry squeal.

Just now.

You made me squeal.

Yeah, you're welcome.

You and Ned Baby.

Oh, my God.

Oh, no.

You just got that?

Oh, no.

Fast and fast, Rico.

Oh my god, he's crying hard enough.

What'd you find?

What'd you find?

What is happening?

What is happening?

I just swallow it.

Those aren't meant to be swallowed.

Let me tell you what happened to me yesterday.

Why did Ned Beatty make you cry?

The squeal part.

The squeal part.

Oh, poor Ned Beatty.

What's funnier than sodomy?

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

I don't know why that.

Oh, that was good.

And you know, you know, four weeks ago, if I had laughed that hard, I'd be in such pain right here.

I'd be in such pain right here.

So that was a good laugh that reminded me, oh, I'm healing.

That's good.

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Well, you know, I was in Ned Baiting.

I was trying to find a way to transition into humility.

So, what happened to me yesterday, I got to tell you,

I was in a meeting across the hall with Mary and some CEO, some big company in Australia, and they're in the middle of this pitch.

And they're, I mean, they're leaning in.

I'm sipping my tea, and I'm full of steroids and antibiotics.

From their thing?

From whatever that was?

Oh, yeah.

I don't normally cough like this in the middle of 10 years.

That was a huge cough.

Well, that happened yesterday.

Oh, my.

Time's about five.

And so the reason I wanted to get that out now is because I didn't get it out yesterday.

I fought it, you know, and I keep it down because I'm in a meeting and I'm trying to look interested as this guy is explaining his wish fulfillment and his life story.

And he's created his company and he's here to ask me if I would speak on behalf of his dream.

okay.

And in the back of my throat, it's like things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

Okay,

I'm going full Yates on this thing.

And then I had to cough so bad, but wasn't that I started to cry.

Oh, I'm looking at the guy, and the guy's looking at me, and he's thinking, I'm killing him.

I got him, I got him, I got him.

He's hanging on every word as I'm sitting there crying.

And all I'm trying to do is not cough a crap up my back, okay?

And this guy is telling me, he's telling me the story of his life

And out of nowhere,

and Mary's sitting there, she knows something's wrong with me because I don't cry.

I never cry.

I don't have any feelings left anymore.

I cry at all.

I'm the opposite of you.

I'm a tuning fork with one prong.

And so I hold up my finger and I try to say, hold that thought.

It'll just be a minute.

But what comes out is,

and I stand up and I open the door and

I leave Mary's office and now I'm coughing like

fuck off.

And I'm running for the bathroom.

Not because I feel like anything's going to tear loose, but because I need to cough as loud as I can and as hard as I can.

And I don't want to do it in my office.

And I certainly don't want to do it in front of this poor guy who flew from Australia.

I get to the bathroom and before I get the door closed behind me, I fall to my knees and I start coughing kind of like

my entire

trachea spasm.

And I throw up all over my feet.

I cough so hard, I throw up on my shoes.

I was so stunned because I didn't have any feelings of nausea.

I was just coughing suddenly, wow.

So now,

through the wall, I can still hear the guy going, anyway, we're thinking, right?

You know, you come in with this idea in the market, we introduce you

know, Austin first, and then maybe we come over here.

And I'm thinking, man, if I can hear him, he just heard me.

He did hear you that

he just heard that.

So, in the midst of all of this, you know, whether it's your hydrocell or your oozy scrotum or your weepy wound.

We're getting old.

It's getting harder, isn't it?

When you walked in in that cardigan,

I thought, that's it.

That's where we are, man.

I mean, the quality of the cardigan is nice.

It's nice.

It's a nice.

You want to touch it.

So, what a life now.

Two shows in production, is that right?

A Canadian show?

Two Canadian shows and an English teacher on FX.

So Chuck has been bragging on the English teacher thing forever.

Have you not seen it?

I haven't seen it, but my parents were both teachers, and I'm English by extraction.

So I feel as though you finally did a project for me.

I think you'll like it, Mike.

I think you'll like it.

Can we watch a promo or something?

Is that possible?

Go.

For the love of Pete.

This is new, by the way.

Did Chuck tell you this is new?

Just like the lies.

I live there.

I know exactly the stress he's been under the past two weeks.

The sleepless nights.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, how the f am I going to do this?

It's my fault, but I can't.

Oh, I know.

But I'm not trying to torture him.

No, I know.

It's that feeling where,

I mean, don't you think that

I think of it like a pop fly.

Foul balls are either going up or they're coming down.

And like there's a moment where they're doing neither.

They're just sort of suspended there.

And there's a temptation to look at any good thing, a marriage, a relationship, a TV show, a role, as like, oh, yeah,

we're in that sweet spot, and it's just going to stay there.

But it doesn't.

Not for you.

I don't know for anybody.

I know, but you're, I mean, you know, I've known you long enough.

It's just like you just keep reinventing yourself.

So I get.

Well, you keep getting new roles.

It's the same sort of thing.

Like you're playing.

Yeah, and you get better and better and better.

And it becomes sweeter and sweeter and sweeter and easier and easier to use it to transition from one to the next.

You get better and better and better at being lots of different people.

I hope I get better at being me because that's all I do, whether it's behind a mic or in front of a camera.

And the reason I make his life miserable is I know we have to

keep

always being uncomfortable

somehow.

That's great.

But I don't know how to do that necessarily outside of like, like in your world, it's get a new part, get a new role.

Yeah, it's always like first aid kindergarten.

Oh, I know that guy.

He's good.

What's his name?

Which one?

Brian or...

No, not the other guy.

He's no good.

The good one.

No, you'd love this show.

I mean, I think it's got a nice take on woke versus conservative.

You know, they make fun of everybody.

Yeah.

Nobody's safe, you know.

As long as they make fun of everybody.

They make fun of everybody.

They really, really do.

Brian is gay in real life.

He plays a gay English teacher.

But one of my favorite lines from the first episode is the coach is saying, come on, you're defending yourself.

Just tell them that you're a proud gay man.

He goes, I'm not that proud.

You know?

It's like, yes, finally.

You know,

I'm not that proud.

Yeah.

I'm a deeply ashamed gay man.

Yeah, yeah.

You You know what I mean?

I'm human.

Look at you, man.

It just kills me to look at you.

Independent Spirit Award nominee right there.

That's right.

Independent Spirit Award nominee.

What makes a spirit better if it's independent?

Don't even answer.

Don't even answer.

I mean, who

come first?

The chicken or the egg?

Well, I just like to think of it in terms of who's going to award the dependent spirit award.

We've given it a lot of thought.

And we realize that you're utterly dependent on the spirit.

You know what?

This might not be answering your question, but I did a Broadway show two years ago called Birthday Candles.

And they gave me a

Theater World Award for like a debut, Broadway debut.

And I remember going to receive this award, it wasn't a competitive award.

It was basically, you did a good job, and you and these five other people

were giving you this award.

And I go, well, that's the spirit, right?

That's the creative spirit.

It's not a competitive spirit.

I know in America we like to claim who wins and who is.

But the trophy does have a certain spirit.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, but does it feel like a participation trophy?

It's like, no, it doesn't, because how do you determine that one performance is better than another performance?

And that warrants it that you're going to walk away with that trophy.

So I feel it's the same way with the Independent Spirit Awards.

In the name,

it represents

just the creative spirit as opposed to, oh, I got to win that award.

How many of these things do you have?

Not that specific one, but if you were the kind of person to take your many accolades and awards and put them on, say, a mantle,

obviously, it would be a large mantle.

Like four or five.

Are you proud?

Of which are you most proud, Enrico?

I mean, what do you got?

You got Emmys?

No.

You never had an Emmy?

If I don't want to win an Emmy for this, I'm never going to win an Emmy.

Because it's so much fun, and people love it.

I think it's going to be a very popular show.

I mean, that's what it is, right?

Popularity has a lot to do with it.

I should have won an Emmy for, you know, Lewis Utz, but nobody saw it.

Lewis Utz was greatest.

Hope and glory.

Hope and glory.

The greatest performance of my career.

I won one.

Yeah.

An Emmy, I know you have.

Yeah, I got nominated a bunch for the show everybody knows.

Like Dirty Jobs got nominated every year.

I never won one.

I won an Emmy for hosting Returning the Favor on Facebook.

I won it during the lockdowns.

And when I won it, I forgot.

it was even happening.

Somebody was accepting it for me virtually.

I was walking my my dog, Freddie, who

at the moment my phone rang, this guy Jacob called me to tell me I wanted Emmy for best host of a reality series as my dog was shitting, right?

But the funny part is the minute my dog squatted,

he was in front of a driveway and the people walked out of the house.

Right.

So the dog

is about to crap on a driveway.

And the people, so I have the bag in my hand

so I put the bag in my hand and I reach down to catch it and I catch Freddy's crap mid-air as my friend Jacob tells me I want an Emmy

memories am I right

you never forget moments like that it was just a great time tell us about the time you won that Emmy

I was on Golden Gate Avenue

but it gets even better.

One week later, they canceled the show.

Oh.

Yeah.

Oh, how many times has that happened?

You win it, Emmy?

And you canceled it.

Nobody cares.

Yeah.

Nobody cares.

Why is that?

It's quality, but yet nobody's watching.

So

that's just the business of the business.

Well, I wasn't in business.

Yeah, Zuckerberg, you know, he spent a billion dollars

to see if he really wanted to compete with Netflix.

to see if he wanted to be in that business.

So he launched a platform called Watch,

and he hired like Jada Pickett Smith and me and some other people to do whatever show we wanted.

And I wanted to do the show that I did.

And it ran for 100.

And I'm super grateful.

People loved it.

It was downloaded 400 million times.

In fact, we're rebooting it right now under a different name because it was good.

It was a celebration of nice people doing good things and little talents.

But

of all the shows to hit, only to go away because the the larger grand experiment turned out to be, nah, we don't want to

after a billion dollars.

I mean, imagine having

Just Shoot Me canceled at the height of its popularity because, was it CBS or ABC?

NBC.

NBC, one of them.

Bound to be one.

Yeah.

Just decides, ah,

we don't want to do shows with cameras in them.

Yeah.

Well, he was the guy who canceled us.

Who?

Jeff Zuckerberg.

Jeff Zuckerberg.

Isn't that who you just mentioned?

No, there's Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Facebook.

There's Jeff Zucker, who runs Facebook.

Jeff Zucker.

He went to CNN, right?

He went to CNN.

He came from NBC.

He was the last chief that got rid of Just Shoot Me.

Did you know him?

Jeff Zucker.

Yeah, he seemed nice to us, but I don't think he.

My mother called him.

Called him

to complain

that I was doing a show called Somebody's Gotta Do It, and it kept getting preempted.

It came on before Bourdain's show.

So, like, we shoot the show and we'd promote it, and then there'd be like a riot in Haiti or something, and they're breaking news.

She had enough.

So, she calls him, leaves a message, gives him all kinds of hell.

And it was so funny.

We went back and filmed her doing it and turned it into a promo because they kept moving the show.

That's so awesome.

And I'll tell tell you one other thing about that guy.

You know, we don't see eye to eye on a bunch of stuff, but he gave me the rights to somebody's got to do it back after Trump won.

And he literally said, I'm going

into the Donald Trump business.

And if you thought your mother was pissed before about the amount of times, you're going to get preempted everywhere.

So we had shot season four.

Oh, that was the first term, right?

That's when it does the first time the right, right, right, right.

CNN made.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep.

That was the first of

2016, yeah.

So he literally gave me the rights.

He was licensing that show.

And you know, Mary, this is like, you'll appreciate the extraordinary complexity of that deal.

We own the rights.

They took a license and then they just gave it back to us and didn't even air the fourth season.

That's how committed he was.

The money they lost on that was bananas, and they just gave it back to us.

So we cut it in a half hours and sold it around the world.

Oh, because he, yeah, he wanted to, he found entertainment in who he was.

Well, he also knew that.

But we're talking about CNN, too, right?

That's right.

Talking about a news network that is supposed to be newsworthy.

Yeah.

And it was all about entertainment, and there it is.

You know what, man?

Okay.

I think.

How do you think about that?

Like, I know you're not a political guy, really, but you're living with a political animal.

Chuck is very, very, very, very opinionated.

What?

Very opinionated.

I mean,

I became a U.S.

citizen after the 2000 election, right?

When Gore and

Bush had that, it was crazy, like the Super Bowl.

And I go, I want in in the next four years.

So

I became a U.S.

citizen so I can play.

And Chuck, you know, being really balanced in his thinking,

Because he knew he was talking to me.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, why the laughter?

Why?

He said, listen to

NPR, listen to Fox, listen to all of it.

Listen to talk radio, listen to all of it.

And I just found it interesting that people on the left were just so mean and angry.

Yeah.

And people on the right were just sort of like, this is, they just seem logical to me.

But I'm still apolitical, but I

naturally

lean to the right, I think, because just because

logic will prevail over emotion and name-calling and vilifying people just for how they, because that, first and foremost, I'm an actor.

And to be an actor, I have to be non-judgmental.

I can't play a character and judge them.

So people's behavior and choices they make are it's gold for me.

I don't judge it.

And who you vote for, I don't judge either.

But there are a lot of people who can't help but

just dig into them and call them things and call them names and mean or racist or this or that.

It's just like, what are you talking about?

You don't understand why this person is voting for this person.

Maybe he just, it's about paying the bills and feeding his family.

It doesn't make him racist.

It doesn't make him anything other than I'm going to vote for that guy.

And that, and

that's the part that confuses me about how divisive

it is in the United States.

It's still,

people on the left just love throwing, being mean.

And I love it when a guy like Jon Stewart says, stop calling him anything, stop calling him names, and start changing things.

Yeah.

Do something.

Well, I was like, finally.

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and this animal

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Yeah, I think you're right.

Like the only thing that's persuasive today, not the only thing, but we need to be able to criticize our own tribe.

Yeah.

Like when Bill Maher

speaks that kind of truth to that audience, it matters because that audience doesn't necessarily want to hear it.

Likewise on the right, you know, if you can, you know,

who did a good job?

Ben Shapiro did a good job for years when he would weigh in on Trump every single day, called Good Trump, Bad Trump.

This is what he did, I like, this is what he did, I don't like.

And the people who were all in really hated him for

pointing out that.

But in the end, that's kind of what we have to do.

It can't be about Ds and Rs.

And I wonder how you felt because I guess you were down here a couple weeks ago when the fires happened.

You know, this is like your second home.

Yeah.

Or I don't even know how you think of it.

But what was that like?

Had you just gotten the operation?

It was pre, it was pre.

So I wasn't sure if they were going to cancel the surgery.

I didn't know what they were going to do.

If it was going to shut the whole city down,

I had no idea.

And these alerts on my phone, our phones, like,

and then, you know, things settle down and you realize, oh, my friend just lost that house, another friend just lost.

But then you learn things along the way, too.

It's like, wow.

I mean,

personally, I look at California and I go, where is Hollywood?

It feels like the desert that it's built on.

Literally, there's no water.

There's no work that's dry.

It's like, why is that?

Why is California so dry?

People are moving to Atlanta because the work is there.

It's like it's Hollywood.

We should be making films in Hollywood.

We should be making TV shows.

It should be that.

Do you think of Hollywood purely as a geography or as a sort of a state of mind?

It's a culture.

It's absolutely the culture of the area.

And

when you dedicate yourself to a craft, you know, you're a cinematographer or a grip, these are working class guys

making things that entertain, You know, it's like that's the simple version of it.

Then it becomes, and you weaponize it and you have an agenda and all that stuff.

But, you know.

See, I.

But there's no reason to not keep it here.

And who do I go?

Who do I blame or who do I try to hold?

It's like, you know, it's whoever's in charge, right?

I shot a show in Atlanta during the lockdown.

Couldn't afford to shoot it here.

Shot a show in Oklahoma.

Seven seasons in Oklahoma.

Yeah, yeah.

Because that was a better deal than Atlanta.

Yeah.

But it was impossible to even think about doing it here.

What if Hollywood needs a new hip?

Right?

I mean, like, really,

what if this town has become like a stubborn 61-year-old man

who refuses

to lie down

and let its own scrotum swell up to unnatural sizes and to deal with a weepy wound.

That's a good point, Mike.

Right?

Because you pivot or perish.

You adapt or die.

And this town, to me,

feels intransigent.

And so like, no, we're going to do it this way.

And whether it's a union that won't budge or whether it's a producer's guild who won't budge or whether it's,

I don't know what it is.

But man, it's like that pop fly.

We're not going to hover here forever, guys.

No,

I got no argument against that.

That's a really, really good point.

I didn't want to argue with you.

I want you to.

No, but I mean, I'm romantic about it.

I want it to be.

When When I came here in the 90s, it was still beautiful.

People were happy.

People were making money.

And it was just, you know, it was like sitcoms where

everybody was watching sitcoms.

Are you sure?

Or did you just have a part of the elephant, like, were you holding the tusk?

and concluding that the whole creature was ivory because that's what you had your hands on.

Maybe.

I mean, I was coming from the theater school.

I just wanted to work.

I mean, that first paycheck, we didn't talk about weeping, but I'd made more in one week doing a Hope and Gloria than my dad did in a whole year as a laborer.

And it's like,

all right, man.

You want to cry?

Yes.

Cry.

Yeah, tell me that.

Because I live in a pretty nice house now.

And my dad came to see me for the first time about five years ago.

And he taught public school his whole life.

And he knows what I do, but he doesn't really.

Like the idea of being hired to go give a speech and getting paid more money

than he earned

in any given decade.

We don't talk about that.

I think he kind of knew it, but

he walked out onto my deck and

he looked at the view that I'm blessed to enjoy and he wept.

And he looked at me, dude, with that,

just like,

what did I miss?

How did you do that?

It reminded me of that

scene in

Death of a Salesman.

Oh.

Right?

Where Willie says to his uncle, Ben.

Yeah, how did you do it?

And he said, I walked into the forest with nothing, and I came out a rich man.

And poor Willie can't connect the dots.

It's like, but

how?

Gold mine, what?

How?

How?

That's the thing about this town.

Everybody knows what's possible.

If you work hard and you're lucky, everybody knows you could be Enrico Collantoni with a resume.

You can't even name your credits.

But they don't quite know how until it happens.

You know what?

I think it took me going back to Toronto to realize what's so magical about

this place.

And Disney proved it.

You see barren land.

But if you plant it and you water it

and you nurture it, it'll grow.

It's not like New York City where you feel the creative energy, just like

it just literally carries you moment to moment to New York.

But in L.A., in this area, if you plant it and work it, and it'll grow.

Dude, that's Chauncey Gardner right there.

That is Chauncey Gardner.

That's Peter Sellers, man.

But isn't it true, though?

Yes.

And how many people come here with the expectation that it's just going to happen, that they don't have to do anything?

Talk a little bit more about that juxtaposition between the difficulties and the advantages of New York, since that's where we started.

Yeah.

Right.

Me stepping over, him stepping over

a body that I thought was dead.

Like what could possibly be the advantage for a creative type in that environment?

Pros and cons of each place.

Imagine somebody's listening who's trying to decide, I know I'm going to be in this business.

I'm just not sure where to live.

Yeah.

I guess in New York, you have to be louder than the noise, right?

You have to make a statement that is louder than what's going on.

And here it's so quiet.

I go back to that analogy of like, you know, plant it in your own garden.

You could create something just and make it your baby, and it'll grow.

But in New York, there's an energy that everybody's tapped into.

But is it channeled?

Do you know where do you want?

I mean, I came out of Yale and I started working for so many of my actor friends are saying, Well, why you?

Right.

You know, why you?

Yeah, and I go, huh, I I don't know.

I guess because I want it.

I want it.

I'm a working class guy.

When I set out, I didn't say I wanted to be, dad, I want to be a star.

I didn't say I want to be a movie star.

I said, I don't understand that.

My parents were working class.

I understood that.

Apply that

to this.

I'm going to be a working actor.

We went to the academy.

It was about how to become a working actor.

I just wanted to work

and keep working.

And New York really gave me the people, the energy, just kept me buoyant.

It just kept me going

until the next thing I know, I'm at Yale.

And it's a different sort of energy.

You're in New Haven, you're outside of the New York City vortex, and you really see that there's

theater is all over America, regional theater.

I didn't know about regional theater.

I was like, wow, wow, that's where the working guy is.

That's where they're working.

They're in companies and they're working and they're doing plays.

I didn't think I'd come to Hollywood, but it was a sitcom, right?

Yeah.

Which was like a play.

And it was aligned with being bigger and having more fun and making choices and rehearsing.

And so it was an easier transition.

But it was always about the energy of New York and that working-class mentality came from the East Coast, Toronto, New York, the East Coast has that.

You know, Nathan Phillian?

I know he's Canadian.

Don't you guys all know each other?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, he sat right there a couple months ago.

Yeah.

And he was my neighbor in New York.

And he said virtually everything you just said.

And his thing, he's such a geek.

He's such a science fiction guy.

But

it was such a treat to talk to him because we hadn't talked in 20 years, but we each followed our respective careers on the TV.

And so I was always just so delighted.

It's a little different than you because I knew you well before that.

And I knew there was no doubt of the path you were on.

But when I met Nathan, he was

Joey Buchanan and One Life to Live, I guess.

And so it was like, it could have gone either way.

But he had to quit that gig to come out here.

Interesting.

Right?

Yeah.

And so to

reminisce with him about New York and to who else did I just listen to?

The Game of Thrones actor,

little fellow.

What's his name?

Peter Dinklage.

Yes.

God, what a talent that guy is.

I mean, how else am I going to describe him?

Dark hair, beard.

Three foot.

That's three and a half feet.

Yeah.

He just gives a great talk on

a lot of energy in that.

But

the struggle to articulate the dark matter of New York that can work in your favor if you get into that slipstream, it doesn't exist here.

It's so different.

No.

I don't know if that's part of the public service, too.

People ought to know it.

Young actors say, where do I go?

L.A.

or New York?

I don't blink.

I go, go to New York.

Go to New York.

I would rather be unemployed in New York City than Los Angeles.

Between gigs, New York City is a place to go.

You're walking down the street, you randomly run into somebody.

Next thing you know,

it's like the universe is working very well in New York City, and it's happening

that fast.

You go into a museum, you see a play, oh, we're going downtown.

Spend the whole day and not know what just happened.

And here, it's like you do, but you do have to, you have to bring that same work ethic to Los Angeles in order for anything to sort of come your way.

But maybe a different expectation in order to stay sane.

Oh, 100%.

100%.

It's about the work.

I mean, they talk about it.

It's about the work in New York.

It's about doing it.

It's about getting to do it.

And it's very interesting about Canadian film and television as well.

They very much want the success.

The standard for their success in Canada is getting to do it.

I mean, if the government is giving you money or they get financing from something else, they get to go to work, and that's the success.

They're not worried about box office.

They're not worried about anything other than we made this.

Yeah.

You know?

Is it just my imagination or is like John Candy having a moment?

Still?

Posthumously.

Oh.

Tell me why.

Well,

we're just talking about Canadians and I'm sitting here like wondering, did Second City TV loom large for you?

Like, was that a big deal?

Oh, yeah.

It was for me, too.

Yeah.

Kids in the Hall, too.

Yeah.

SC TV was like, most of them started in Chicago anyway, at the Second City, and then the show spawned from there.

But imagine the alumni that came out of that show.

How are you going to feel when Canada becomes the 51st state?

I hope it lowers taxes.

I hope it gets cheaper to live up there.

Keep more on a paycheck.

Yeah.

Chuck, did you write down Louder Than the Noise by any chance?

Yeah, Be Louder Than the Noise.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's the title for this one.

I know if I talked to you long enough, you'd say something worth writing down.

We got a crier, and then we got a cougher.

We got a crier and a cougher.

I know.

I know.

It's like a bad art.

It's like

part of my head is going,

my leg is going to spasm because it hasn't had that much exercise.

It's like it's been atrophied from the surgery, and suddenly it's just shaking like this.

Oh, man.

Oh, Mike, you're so awesome.

How long have we been talking?

Oh, my God.

Hour and a half.

All right, Jesus.

I love you.

I love you.

Thank you so much for coming here.

You know, to this day, I don't know why, but okay.

Well, but thank you for having me.

You know why?

Because you love him.

I do love him, and I love you.

It's

tertiary.

We haven't slept in the same room since that one time my son was there.

Yeah.

And he'll never forget that.

Quint.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Well, I got an arrow bed.

I mean, you guys.

Wait, wait a minute.

No, that's my own bed.

What story is that?

What story is that?

You slept in the same room with Quentin and no, no, no, no.

I was there.

Quentin was there.

Mike, I think, was sleeping on the couch.

Yeah, sure.

And we came down and Quentin got to see Mike, and it was like, oh, and that's the microphone.

We're technically still, you know, still out there.

We're still, I don't know, an hour and a half, I thought maybe we stopped talking.

No.

That meant a lot to my boy, who's now dealing with his own kind of stuff up.

Was that the same night who got so upset with me when I was over at Rico's house?

I tied

somebody's birthday.

That was Amy.

Amy Wysorick.

You tied a balloon, a helium balloon

to the cat's tail.

Yeah.

And she did not like that.

She didn't like it?

No.

No, she didn't appreciate it.

I'm pretty sure it was.

Like, on behalf of the cat, the cat didn't seem annoyed, but I like the idea of watching this cat walk around with like four or five balloons tied to its tail.

Where was I?

You were there.

I think you might have been laughing too, but you didn't.

I think I was laughing too hard to read.

She sat me down, man.

Oh, no, she did not.

She was like, let me explain

the nerves

and the importance of a cat's tail.

Let me just ask you, Michael, if you were a cat and some large creature came along and tied balloons to a very important part of your body.

Right.

Was that Halloween?

It must have been Halloween.

It must have been.

It was a black cat.

It must have been Halloween.

I remember.

It was a black cat, maybe gray.

Those balloons and all the different colors, it really snazzed it up, man.

Were you there, Charlie?

Yeah, yeah.

I remember that.

Yeah.

Yeah, Chuck was just shaking his head.

It was the same face, in fact, you had when I stepped over, when you stepped over the corpse in the road that turned out to be a drunk.

I knew it was a drunk all along, remember?

It had seen a bunch of people.

You were the only one who was confused about it.

Yeah, but you also knew that Amy was going to give me the hairy eyeball for

a couple balloons to a cat's there.

There were a couple of people in that circle of friends who would have given you.

I'm surprised it was her.

I mean,

break a few eggs.

The shows that people should watch if they have any tastes that you're currently involved in.

English teacher, you can see it on Disney Plus or Hulu FX, I think, is still on demand.

We're still waiting to hear on a second season pickup, but they just extended the

hold on us.

It looks terrific.

It's a good sign.

It's very funny.

I have a lot of fun.

Do you cry?

cry?

Any weeping?

No weeping.

I save that for you and Chuck.

I appreciate it.

There's no way to stop them, dude.

No way to stop him.

And what's the other one you're shooting in Canada?

It's called Allegiance.

I think right now you can only see it on CBC, CBC Gem.

It's not down here.

So dozens of viewers, and I hear great things.

You have to live in the 51st state to see that one.

I sound like Eeyore.

Or Snidely.

Somebody siblings.

Some animated character.

And there's another show called The Trades I Do up there with.

That's great.

We're out of time.

And then

there's a tire company that I...

Hey, man.

I know a guy in Australia who's looking for a spokesman.

I think I'm off the short list now since he heard me throw up on my feet.

The one and only Enrico Colantoni.

Chuck, thank you for getting him down here.

Oh, my God.

Rico, thank you for being so forthcoming about all your body's failings and all your hopes and dreams.

Dude, I hope you get something out of this.

It's like some of the people that you have on this show are smart and they got

worldly.

And all I do is cry.

Think of yourself as a counterbalance.

Wherever they're coming from.

I'm the comic relief.

You know what those people did.

What those people have that you don't have is the ability to talk into the microphone.

They got books, they got something to sell.

And me, I'm going, I just cry.

Do you have like a website or anything?

No,

I don't even go on

Instagram.

There's nothing anybody can do

except watch your

Instagram.

Instagram, yeah.

Enrico Colintoni underscore really.

Here it is, yeah.

Enrico Colintoni underscore score really.

Folks, do me a favor.

If you enjoyed this conversation, light up his Instagram.

And if it's not too much to ask, go ahead and post a picture of your genitals.

He'd appreciate that, all things considered.

I got the scar.

Oh, the scar is beautiful.

Well, you know what?

You're going to show it to me as soon as somebody says cut.

Say it, Chuck.

Cut.

Here we go.

Oh, Mike.

What a joy.

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