Helen Hunt

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If we had an IMDb off, I think I would win for the most obscure credits.

Were you on BG and the Bear?

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

Today I am thrilled to be talking to Helen Hunt.

She's a brilliant actor who's won an Academy Award, multiple Emmys, and Golden Globes.

You know her from her many roles, As Good As It Gets, Twister, Castaway, Mad About You, The Sessions.

She writes and directs as well, and I can't say enough good things about her 2007 film, Then She Found Me, which she directed and co-wrote.

Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, here's Helen Hunt.

This is for my amusement.

It won't probably be on the podcast.

Okay.

Almost guaranteed not to be on the podcast.

But Mary, you know, was delighted to find out that I was talking to you.

Sends much love and

love and.

But in the meantime, I just have to do this because we were laughing and

just the last time.

I don't know, Helen Hunt.

I sat beside her once at a concert of Paul.

Simon and Sting.

She stood up on rough in, and she never sat again.

Helen Hun danced like a beautiful wild thing, and I wanted to be her.

Lost in all the wonder, moving to the beat.

Fifty ways to leave your lover, tossing her hair, blissfully unaware of the square pair of stick in the muds who sat just right behind her

everyone should dance like helen

and i'm crying and we just started that's incredible i love that

we might i'll ask mary i mean you you recorded it but i had to be dependent on you and mary and all of that uh but i love the story that you were can we you were

randomly in a hospital in

uh or some are recovering someplace in Italy.

And you said in this letter that you wrote her saying you just sent it to me and

it was very sweet.

Yes.

I mean, should we tell the whole story or are we not going there?

Well, what I know is that very, very, very recently, this year, I ran into you guys and Mary told me that she'd written a song about me, which I could not believe.

What could that song possibly be about?

I don't have like one thing I'm known for.

Do you know what I mean?

And so she sent it to me, but she told me that you two were at a concert.

I feel like it was Sting and Paul Simon.

Sting and Paul Simon.

Okay, and I guess, was I sitting right in front of you?

Right in front.

I sent you in back, but I think maybe in front, whatever.

Go ahead.

Well, I guess I stood up and danced.

She could have written a song that went, sit the fuck down, Ellen.

You're blocking me from seeing Sting.

That's a less beautiful song, but also accurate.

But I guess I stood up and danced because, you know, you play Graceland.

What are you going to sit there?

I just had to dance.

And I guess she noticed and wrote a song about it.

So the idea that that would be my,

you know, what someone as beautiful, clearly a person as Mary is, that that would be who I am to her.

That's amazing.

And yes, I was just making a wonderful

lesson, a wonderful lesson in get up and dance.

Yes, don't be, don't be self-conscious.

Get up and move and dance and be like Helen.

Well, I'm just going to wear that.

Yeah.

I'm going to wear that.

And yes,

so I have so many places my mind is going, but my dad, always, who you met,

when he saw a performance he loved, he wrote a letter, always, never didn't.

And I tried to do it, but he always did.

And so she sent me that song.

And I happened to be doing a movie in Italy and I had some weird stomach thing and had to go to the Pisa hospital a couple of times.

And in my inbox is this

image of me as, you know, dancing in Graceland.

It was lovely.

Yeah.

It was lovely.

I love that.

We may have to keep this.

You You may have to keep it.

If it's with your permission.

Yeah.

So you have my permission officially.

Mary doesn't, you know, Mary is writes beautifully and success.

You know, she's an award-winning songwriter and all of that, but she doesn't sing.

She'll sing in a movie when you can control it and be in a booth and all that stuff.

So I'll have to ask her if she's okay

if we use that.

Yeah, let's start with your daddy.

I remember you coming on the set of Inc., and I think your dad had directed or was going to direct it an episode

and we loved him.

But I remember you came and you were so sweet.

I think we're coming to visit, but you hung around and it was like, and I can't remember, had you done Mad About You by then?

Yeah, I think his first.

television directing job at age 70, he started this career at age 70 after a lifetime of working in the theater and teaching acting and being a casting director at the Taper.

he started his television directing career at age 70, um, doing an episode of Mad About You, where he directed Carl Reiner in it.

Oh, wow.

And then he won a DGA award for it.

Bang.

How wonderful.

I mean, it was so wonderful.

It was honestly, I could say it's one of the best nights of my life sitting there and they were reading off the list of nominees who were all the fancy people.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Everybody in that world who we've both worked with, and then Gordon Hunt.

And Michael Lembeck said his name, and I almost had, had, I almost fainted

because

he just was the most lovely guy, worked so hard, so talented, and he got his day.

He's a lovely father.

I mean, you,

one of the things I want to talk about,

and we'll get to, you know, the movie you made that I

knew you were interested, that I would see it.

And I went, okay, and

devoured it.

It is.

So we'll get to that.

Okay.

And another thing I was thinking on the way here, and it's, I haven't verbalized this before, but I want to talk about artistry and being an artist.

And usually if you're an actor talking about being an artist or other actors,

you run the risk of sounding, oh, how highfalutin.

I know.

Picasso's an artist, not you.

I know.

But defining, and I was talking to my friends who you just met

about what does that mean, artistry.

And it has something to do about being conscious, I think, about what you put out into the world and being purposeful so that you are hoping to make the world a better place or reflect humanity in a way that'll make it a better place.

So we'll get to it, but I do consider you an artist.

No, I consider you an artist.

And I want to talk about that in a second, but let's stick with your daddy for a second and how you grew up, because you were

raised to be an artist.

You were surrounded by artists.

Your mom?

My mom is painting now.

So here we go.

But a photographer?

She was a photographer who now is painting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know if I was raised to be an artist.

I don't think that was their intention, but I was, but I was surrounded by art.

Yeah.

And like, what a gift.

What, you know, had I been raised by a

molecular biologist and gone to the lab with him, would my life have been different?

I have no way of knowing.

But I, not only my dad, who was directing plays in New York, our circle of friends included

like their best friends were Henry and Mary Gettle.

Who are they?

So Henry Gettle's maiden name was Rogers, Richard Rogers' daughter.

Oh, Adam Gettle's mother, who won a Tony for composing Light in the Piazza, has Floyd Collins on Broadway now.

He's like a bit of a genius, which we don't want to make him wear that word, but I won't be the first to say.

I won't do the genius, but do artistry.

Well, he's an artist for sure.

And then there were Helen and Steve Kellogg.

Steve Steve Kellogg is a Life for Children's book illustrator, sort of in the Marie Sendak vein.

They grew up as best friends.

So I was around

art and music.

And

by proxy with Mary was Leonard Bernstein and Sondheim.

And so we would sit in the living room and listen to what Sondheim had written.

Yeah.

Amazing.

And watching the adults in my life.

listen for every note and every way the

way the thing is composed is reflecting the the content of the thing.

Like I watched them be interested in it and I got interested in it.

See, I had the scientist.

But everything he did went right over my head.

And I went out and fantasized and played with my friends.

You, though, listened, didn't you?

You weren't, you were not.

You soaked up your parents and your upbringing.

Well, imagination, you know,

more and more as an actor, I'm using my imagination.

I studied and still study and studied when I was nine years old and and am really still going.

But maybe because there's some mileage there now,

I'm finding the work I enjoy doing the most has to do with imagination.

So rather than calling on the tragic event to play a dramatic scene, you know, my dreams are affecting what I do and what I imagine as I drive here.

I'm trying to remember it because it might

not be boring.

It might be interesting to use as an actor.

Wait, what do you mean when you were driving here?

Well, I'm just saying you never know walking around when an image comes to you.

And I've now learned, like, grab that, grab it.

Yes.

Might seem mundane, might be really interesting in a piece of work you do.

Some of my favorite writers

have said, you know, I get this weird image in my head that just delights and tickles me.

And then I'll work backwards to find out how to get in a reasonable fashion.

Yeah.

to that image.

That's Jonathan Ames, who's one of my favorite writers.

Do you work with people?

I'm bouncing around.

Do you work with an acting coach who does work with dreams?

Because I know somebody who does.

I do.

Kim Gilliam.

I haven't worked with her, but yes.

Yes.

She's incredible.

I don't want to, she's terrible.

Don't go to her because I'll never get in.

If now, if everybody listens to this podcast,

her work's not very interesting.

Stay away.

She's amazing.

She's amazing.

She's so cool.

And she's one of my closest friends, and she'll never say who she worked with ever.

It's almost like a therapist.

She will not discuss it.

And then I'll hear Benedict Cumberbatch on a podcast say, I worked with this woman.

So she's incredible.

She's incredible.

And she's very well trained as an actor and very well trained in this sort of Jungian world of imagination.

So she's just, she's a whole package that I'm interested in.

And I work with other people too.

You know, I'm not in acting class anymore.

I teach sometimes, but I'm not in a class.

But my class is that I get a hold of a piece of material and get to bounce it off someone.

I just did a play and I worked for all year.

I'm proud and embarrassed to say I worked all year with different people.

Tell me about it.

Where was it?

I worked on it.

I did betrayal at the Goodman Theater in Chicago.

What a beautiful theater.

Oh my God, with loyal patrons who are interested that you're doing Pinter.

And it was sold out from the first preview.

And that was partly because the actors were terrific and partly because it's Pinter and partly because it's a city that loves the theater.

And you knew you were going to do this for a year.

Yeah, which I almost never, you know, you don't get that luxury.

And I had a dialect to get right.

And so I got to spend a year working with someone that I know in the UK from a play I did two years ago because I'm bad at accents until I work.

Until you work, you know, you chip away at it and you suddenly it's nine months later and you're doing it.

So now I'm bouncing around.

I've only done that once on damages and it was that Minnesota, you know.

And I knew I was bad, so I spent three months in advance.

Yeah.

And it was a literal.

It wasn't like I have music in my heart and soul or dialect.

I don't.

But I finally got there.

And what was wonderful was it literally informed my character.

Yes.

Just, you know,

you learn, you don't just learn every word.

You learn every syllable and are familiar with every syllable every time it takes you someplace.

A few times I've had to do an accent or wanted to, and I've said to the dialect coach, I'm just going to do a little.

That's the worst idea in the world.

It's a horrible idea.

You've got to commit and you've got to sound bad for a long time until you suddenly realize, oh, I'm kind of

doing it.

Yeah.

Going back, I'm not through with Peter, your uncle.

Yes.

Did you know Peter?

No, but I know of him.

So were you exposed?

Yes.

So he won a Tony Award for directing 1776 and did a lifetime of theater up until and after that.

And then my dad directed the national tour of it.

So it's a strange, obscure musical for me to know every syllable of, but I do.

But I do.

And he ran the Williamstown Theatre Festival for a while.

Quite different from my artist.

From your scientific.

Yes, very different.

It's miraculous that I get to sit here and talk to you.

Okay.

Well, maybe not child actor, but you started acting when you were a child.

Yeah.

That's a nice way to say it.

Yeah.

When?

Nine.

And I went to an actor.

How did that happen?

Was it in the making for a while and you finally

had no plan at all?

I have an aunt who's my age.

That's a whole other story.

My mother and my grandmother were pregnant right around the same time.

And so she was, I grew up with her as my contemporary and my sister.

And I lived in New York City and we'd come out to California for the summers and I would just do whatever she did.

And so she was going to ballet class.

I would go.

She was going to an acting class.

All right, I'll go.

But I got in there and I really liked it.

I didn't ever imagine.

I really didn't think I want to do that on a big stage or I want to do that on camera.

I liked being in the room with these older, fun, creative people telling some kind of story, whether it was silly or deep.

I just wanted to be around them.

And she had a kids' class from like 12 to three and an adult class from three to six.

And I just begged her, just let me be in the room for the whole thing.

And then an agent walked in and I found myself in Alberta, Canada, running through a wheat field in some TV movie.

Oh, yeah.

Pioneer Woman, obviously, to

yes.

Yes, you say.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, please.

That's your favorite movie.

Yeah.

If we had an IMDb off, I think I would win for the most obscure credits.

Were you on BG and the Bear?

Were you a princess from outer space on the Bionic Woman?

Oh, mic drop.

I hate that I always win this context, but I always win this contest.

I so loved any, I started late.

You know, I was a fresh sophomore in Stanford when the lights were.

It's only late when you're looking at me.

It's really not late.

It's the perfect time to start.

I had no idea at all.

And then I was just, and I still am enamored with going to work.

I love driving through a studio gate.

Me too.

I love Universal because I take a right on Jimmy Stewart and I cross over Gregory Peck Peck.

You know, these are all people that, not Jimmy, but who I met.

Anyway, I love it.

But I would be an extra in a commercial joyfully.

Yeah.

No, no shame.

No, I love it too.

I love it too.

I didn't care if I was in an acting class or I was being paid to work.

But see, that's it.

I get asked a lot.

I'm sure you've been asked 100,000 times.

What's your advice for young people?

I'm like, you better love it in the crappy room in Studio City

because that's the thing.

Doing that work in whatever room is the thing.

And then you have the big fancy moment and then you have the I can't get a job moment.

But if you don't love that, you should tiptoe out of it because that's the thing.

And I think a lot of the art of it, which my dad was so good at, is what do you do when you're out of work?

You're never out of work.

I don't.

It feels like you're never out of work.

It looks that way, but I am.

Okay.

I'll take your word for it.

But that's a lot of TV shows.

Okay, I'm not.

You're not very.

Thank you.

Nice of you to offer it up.

But how do you stay acting?

You know, if you and I are painters, Mary, if she's writing songs,

it may be frustrating that no one's looking at the paintings, but you're painting every day.

How do you stay acting?

And I don't know the answer, but I've had play readings in my living room.

I'll invite you both if you want to come.

We want to come.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'll throw it out there.

Maybe not to read, but to listen.

Maybe the second time.

You can read stage directions the first time.

But like getting in a room with actors and acting and not waiting for someone to say, we choose you.

You got to find a way to do that.

And my dad had sort of a PhD in that.

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I keep holding back the reins on talking about you as a director

because I want to keep going.

No, sorry.

Then she found me.

It is your first, it wasn't your first directing period.

It was your first film.

Yeah.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

Because you did

mad about you and a bunch of other stuff.

Do that.

Get us into, first off, mad about you.

I know.

It's a big, it's a long career.

No, no, but I mean, that's that is when they sometimes the research people say connections you have.

It wasn't that we had literal, you know, connections.

It was both in massive hips.

And we got to be working in that style.

I don't know about you, but I grew up on I Love Lucy.

Like it, I Love Lucy raised me partly.

And so there I found myself, and my mother was legitimately concerned, shouldn't I be going to drama school?

Like I believe you did,

or something.

And

instead of sitting in my room watching I Love Lucy, and then I find myself on a sitcom about a married couple in New York City going, Well, it's kind of arguably kind of worked out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I met Paul, who you had on your show, I know.

He's the best.

I love him too.

Gentle, sweet.

He's the best.

And like my dad, Renaissance artist in ways you don't know.

Oh, you majored in music.

Oh,

Kaminsky method, where you suddenly have transformed yourself into a character that makes you cringe and laugh at the same time.

So I'm

his biggest fan.

Remarkable.

Yeah.

Remarkable man.

We met because

his wife and my roommate in the like 1990 or something were friends, and I had a dinner party, and he was suddenly in my kitchen.

And

is that where working together came about?

Yeah.

Well, two days later, he said, can I send you this pilot?

And I went, oh, God, this might be awkward.

And I had just started to do, you were around for this.

It used to be if you were in TV shows, you didn't get to be in movies did you you know what I mean it was like a horrid line and I remember when Robert Redford put Mary Tyler Moore in ordinary people as an actor it was like an earthquake happening we all looked around and went is that real you can't do that and she was nominated yeah and was brilliant in a lasting performance that you and I could both quote she was so impactful but you didn't put a TV person, especially a sitcom person in a movie, which is so totally absurd now.

Just the phrase sitcom.

I know.

It's so diminishing.

It is so diminishing to like what we've devoted our lives to.

But then, so she knocked down the door, and then Michael J.

Fox suddenly was coming back to the future, and George Clooney, and then I got Twister, and then as good as it gets.

So thank God that stupid fake wall disappeared.

What were we talking about?

Technology also helped because now the biggest movies in the world, as I like to tell Woody Harrelson, who I'm slightly competitive with, the more successful his movie is, the smaller the instrument I will look at.

I know.

You know, I'll watch him on my cell phone.

On your phone at the airport, interrupted by flight upside down.

Just to get back at him.

Were we starting with Paul?

Oh, yeah.

So I didn't want to do a sitcom because it was exactly what you didn't do if you start, we're starting to make movies.

And I was starting to be in some movies.

And then I read it and thank God was smart enough to go,

that's juicy.

Yeah.

That's juicy.

That's 12-page scene that's funny, but they want something.

You know, all the ingredients that matter.

12-page 12-page also saying you're doing theater, basically.

Yeah, and two of us.

I mean,

the good news and the exhausting news of that show is I didn't have a big group.

It became more and more and more the two of us because instead of bigger and bigger, the aspiration of the show is that it would get smaller and smaller until we did one episode that my dad directed, which was one locked-off shot of the two of us.

Oh, you're kidding.

We did one that was, we were sitting outside.

I feel like you would like it.

We were sitting outside our baby's room trying to sleep train her but feeling like it was the wrong thing to do so it was one locked off 22 minute shot brilliant concept directed by my dad take one is what ended up on the air we did it twice

so the good news about that is as an actor it was just juicy and the hard news is on the weeks when the table redraft was not perfect and you got the script on Wednesday night or Thursday for the Friday shoot, that's a lot of learning to do and a lot of remembering and a lot of, but there's next week's outline.

And so it was,

I like to say it was the opposite of everything I feared.

I thought it would be easy and I'd be home at 9 p.m.

We were there till one in the morning.

I thought it would get boring.

It was never boring.

It got more and more fun to do.

But the whole experience really, it was the writing and it was Paul, you know, that we happened to immediately have whatever this thing is that we have.

Still, it was effortless and right there from the minute I met him.

People talk about chemistry and I always go,

chemistry is

take really

two or three or whatever, two really accomplished actors who are good actors and really good material.

That's your chemistry.

That's your chemistry.

I think it's like 80% of your chemistry.

And then I've had the experience where I've had the thing happen where you don't get along, but there's chemistry.

Yes.

And when there's no chemistry, it's really, really hard.

So I think I have come, even though Paul and I used to roll our eyes at the word, I've come to believe it's a little bit true.

There's got to be something

that you can't just, that you can't point to that's there.

But my joke on myself is I was the one who, and this is why no one ever takes what I say.

Well, they take what I say and do the exact opposite and are very successful.

I looked at Shelly Long when we were auditioning for cheers.

I went, no, no, no, no.

Never gonna hire her.

It'll ruin the show.

She made the show.

She came out hitting a home run

in that form, but

not like before.

But we were so different.

Grew to love her, absolutely.

But different.

It was hard for us to sit around and just talk.

But when we got in front of a camera, it was like a prize fight.

So I think that might be chemistry a little bit.

Well, it's, yeah, it's

worth poking a hole in your theory.

No, but it's two good actors.

And it's two good actors.

It's good writing.

That's true.

That's true.

Maybe that is the.

I don't know.

Both are true.

I think your idea is probably smarter.

Okay.

So how did you decide, oh, I'm going to direct one?

I never had and still don't have an aspiration to be like a journeyman director.

Get me my next job to direct because,

I mean, have you directed?

You've directed.

You've never directed.

No desire.

Are you one of those people?

Not to.

You're paying well.

I'm paid well not to.

I mean, at its best, you are the most creative element.

And at its worst, you're like a traffic cop.

You know what I mean?

Especially TV.

Well, TV, I've done a lot of TV, and I always say you're a little bit like,

you know, the concierge.

They would like more salt in your performance.

Okay.

Oh,

they would prefer to do it more slowly.

No, they want you to speed it up.

You're just kind of the messenger.

Messenger.

But when you write something, directing becomes the next draft.

Right.

Every choice you make.

You've already visualized it.

Well, yes, but also you discover things.

And

I don't know whether to talk about then she found me, but I made this first movie that meant a lot to me.

We're in.

We're in.

Okay.

So I'm going to.

So let me start and then hold that thought.

It's easy.

It's brilliant.

Oh, thank you so much.

You know how some movies are really good because you like this and this and this, but maybe whatever.

It's perfect.

It's a perfect film.

And I'm really glad you asked me to watch it because I missed it.

Well, it's not your fault.

So

it took me 10 years to make, which is what most independent filmmakers say.

It doesn't just happen.

It took me 10 years to make.

It fell apart.

It came together.

It fell apart.

It came together.

And then it got chosen to go to Toronto and it had the biggest sale of the year.

And then the company went bankrupt the Friday before it opened.

So it really disappeared, which is sort of, you know, the great creative wound of my life.

But if you want to watch it, it's on Astronaut.

Please listen to us.

It is absolutely spectacular.

Thank you.

And if you forget the title, you Google Helen Hunt and Bette Medler and Colin Firth and it'll pop up.

Yeah.

And then you found the film.

Yes.

And then he found.

And then she found it.

And then she found the film.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's based on a novel by Eleanor Lippmann.

But you wrote the adaption?

Yeah.

Well, no, it had a beautiful, very loyal adaptation that was lovely, but I couldn't get it made.

And then I rewrote it with a writing partner, couldn't quite get it made.

And then I just took the whole thing and shook it and kept sort of the central DNA, this mother-daughter story, and changed everything else.

The Colin Firth character, the Matthew Broderick character, they're not in the book.

In the book, she's not wanting to get pregnant.

She's a high school teacher in her 20s.

And I just sort of.

How did you then bring that?

Why did you, and how did you think of doing that?

Because it's brilliant.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

I told my daughter,

when I die, just play that movie because that's everything I care about.

You don't need to have a funeral.

Just play that.

But it was your idea to do the woman trying to and not have a funeral.

Because I was trying to have a baby.

And, you know, you know enough about the basics of storytelling.

The central character has to want something.

And that wasn't quite there.

And there I was

in my late 30s,

really wanting a baby.

And I thought, well, if I'm going to play this part

at my age, and I was late 30s, I thought this woman either wants a baby or doesn't want a baby.

At 39, as a woman, you don't nothing a baby.

You know what I mean?

And so I thought maybe that's what she wants.

And, and,

and then I also read, do you know James Hillman's writing?

Not really.

Sorry.

No, I'd like to fake it.

No, don't fake it.

I will not.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't.

Really?

He

was a beautiful essayist, Jewish-Jungian writer.

And he wrote an essay called Betrayal that I read.

And it's incredible.

And the two things I know about movies from the great movie filmmakers I've worked with is the central character has to want something, and you've got to have the magic sentence of the movie.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, this movie is about

Jim Brooks told me that as good as it gets was about

that which you cling to to keep you safe ultimately imprisons you.

So once you have that,

she clings to that her kid is sick and she has to be there and she has to let that go.

Jack clings to don't touch any cracks on this.

He has to let it go.

The Greg Kinnear character clings to being beautiful and successful.

That's

beaten out of him.

So you got to find that sentence.

And it took me the better part of a decade to find that sentence, but I found it partly from this essay about betrayal.

And

you can't really love till you've made peace with betrayal.

Once I had that sentence.

You can't really love till you make peace with betrayal.

And the good, the best one of those is if you can argue about it over dinner.

Like we could, the four of us could go to dinner and you could say, that's not true.

You can't, if you don't trust them, and we'd all be right.

That's a juicy magic sentence.

Am I making sense?

Totally.

Okay, good.

Thank you.

Totally.

So once I had that, I got rid of the characters and created the Colin Firth character and the Matthew Broderick character.

It all sort of fell into place once I knew what I wanted it to be about.

My daughter at age 44

had our

kind of brand new grandson, Sonny.

She was a doula.

So everything that you were talking about in that movie,

I felt an emotional connection to.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was amazing.

And then there's Colin Firth.

Give Give me a fucking break.

I know.

As proud of him.

He's so charming.

Isn't he so good?

But that's just, you know, who cares?

Talking about an actor's charm is kind of sideways.

I'm as proud of his performance.

I had whatever little bit a director has, whatever little bit of credit a director can take is all I can take because it's him.

But the New Yorker wrote a review of his work in it and said he was like a storm cloud when he gets, you know, he gets angry because she betrays him.

And

boy, I think he's good in that movie so good right and so so little you know these little character things of before he blows blows when he's really betrayed by you

he gets up and walks yeah

and that I wrote dope take because I remember hearing the phrase go take your anger out for a walk so I made his character just that's who he was yeah but it's kind of brilliant because it's not always being mad and you're forcing an act and you're allowing an actor to be like

i don't know i it's so not on the nose you know oh here's the scene where he gets angry and da da da da da you see here's the scene where he gets up and walks briskly and it's so interesting and different i think with without meaning to or meaning to jim brooks's work made a big impression on me both before i worked with him and after i worked with him

and i don't know how to sum up his characters but they're filled with emotion, filled with real struggles, and can articulate it at the same time.

Do you think that's what the magic sauce might be?

Yes.

And

you are talking about things that matter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not just your characters, but to all of us, I think.

And so that can be medicinal unless you add humor.

And there is.

Not jokes.

They're no jokes, but there is humor that makes it so much,

I think the medicine go down.

I think I took this.

It's not medicinal.

No, no, no.

No, the darker parts of the story.

Yeah.

I think I took this from Jim, so I'm going to give him a title.

I was about to say he does.

But what I think I took from him was, it's a comedy until it refuses to be.

That's great.

I don't think I've ever heard that.

I mean, you just, that's what we're making.

We're making a comedy.

Whoops.

Wow.

Deborah Winger's sick.

Do you know what I mean?

It's a good motto, I think.

And And it's a little bit acting, you know, it's neighborhood playhouse.

Don't do anything until the other thing.

The other actor makes you do it.

Yes, it is.

Don't stop being funny until your story just runs into a wall.

Yeah.

You're fun to talk to.

Oh, you're fun to talk to.

We're members of this weird tribe.

Let's bring Beth Midler into the story.

She was people have to see the movie now, or this is going to be super boring.

No, no, they know people see.

Yeah, they know Betsy.

And anyway, this is my podcast.

Good.

So the story is about a very

not

fancy, rich, and famous woman played by me, a very flying low-to-the-ground school teacher, elementary school teacher in Brooklyn, not a stitch of makeup on her face,

who finds out or is told by an emissary that her birth mother

is a famous talk show hostess.

So I had to find like an icon.

Yes.

It It couldn't just be a terrific solid actor.

In a way, it had to be, that's what was funny.

There's this theory, my dad used to say, every love story, everything's the odd couple.

Every story is the odd couple.

Every love story is the odd couple.

Think about even Shelley Long, right?

That's part of it.

And

so for this movie,

I hadn't have a ton of money to pay anybody either.

So they were going on some

good feeling about me and the script that they read.

But she's an icon for sure.

So I just drove to her house and she thought I wanted her to wear big loud purple feathery outfits and I didn't because it's a story about betrayal.

So I said, if you come out in rich jewel tones and my character is going to be more likely to trust you than if you're an obviously frivolous person.

Anyway, she agreed to do it.

And I have Bette Midler out in Brooklyn in a little indie going,

hope she doesn't kill me because these aren't the movies she usually makes.

And the show hostness of her, I mean, talk show host

enabled her to still be.

Yes, to be her funny, fun self.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, which was, which was great.

And you don't, anyway, you're right.

We're going into the weeds too much.

Some people should go see it.

Please, yeah.

Truly.

I appreciate it.

It's a really lovely film.

I really appreciate it.

Beyond lovely.

It's great.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Let me talk.

We can talk about this a little bit.

Okay.

And it doesn't have to be about this, but directing something you're in.

Terrible idea.

Don't ever do it.

How do you handle that?

Well, I worked on the part first.

I said to myself, if I'm going to do this, it has to be like this is the eighth month of a run of a play where in my scene.

For you,

I've got, yeah, because

I'm not going to have time to talk to myself.

I got to know it that well as an actor.

So how did you do that?

Alone in a room.

No, I worked with Larry Moss, who's a coach I've worked with a lot.

Alone in a room,

making sure I knew all my little things.

What does she want in this scene?

You know, all the work that we do as an actor.

And I had two scripts.

I had an acting script and a directing script.

And I had lunch with Warren Beatty and said, I think I'm going to be in this movie.

Is it a terrible idea?

And I thought he'd say yes, but he said, there will be someone

in the movie who sees it the way you do.

And he was right in a way, because when you're a director, you're trying to download what's in your head into the the mind of the production designer and the actors.

Well, at least what's her name is taken care of.

What's her name, me, is going to do it the way I see it.

And then you just prepare like crazy.

I had a wonderful DP named Peter Donahue who read the script and said, Kramer versus Kramer.

And I went, yeah.

It should be that simple and the frames should be that still.

I was going to say, it was beautiful.

There was a shot that stuck out of my head.

I think it's his apartment.

It's his, not yours.

That is

near the water.

And the street kind of goes down towards it.

And there's a brick.

And it looks so,

I don't know.

It was just so beautiful.

It was like, oh, paint that.

Yes.

Kind of.

But beautiful, not fancy, beautiful.

No.

So that was the GP.

It was picturesque or something.

Yeah.

It wasn't rich.

But boy, are you lucky you found the most beautiful little poor place to live.

You're not kidding.

Every location manager, when we're actors in bands, we're like, oh, the location manager is going to talk to the restaurant owner who's yelling but when you're a director you're like you just found a piece of my movie yeah so

so um

the fun of directing something you wrote and care about a ridiculous amount is that the directing and every decision you make becomes another draft editing becomes a whole other draft yeah scenes you thought you die without you suddenly Yeah, throw in the trash.

You loop one line and everything makes sense.

I mean, this magic you can do to make make the horrible movie you've shot because it is so horrible when you look at a first assembly of a movie.

You just, it's the worst experience ever.

And then you can start to make it better.

Yeah.

When you cut it.

Technology is such that

you shot on film earlier.

I did.

I shot on film.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

But you can edit, right?

With digits.

Yes.

So it goes on.

I'm older now, but I never did like the Moviola version.

No.

Which I heard that Steven Spielberg.

Still.

Well, maybe, maybe still, but certainly did long after he needed to because he said his brain used at the time when you took the film off and put it on another, actually cut it and spliced it, that it was good for his brain.

But can you imagine now in this sped up world, everybody would go, that's adorable.

Get on the

you can look at 20 different choices in that time in one cut.

Yes.

But now you can even,

pardon me, you can take a scene with two people and somebody crosses behind the other person.

You can take different takes

and make them

as if magically.

It's incredible.

I think that's good, or it's scary.

I don't know which.

Anyway, anyway,

I'm not overdoing how much I loved it, but we can move on.

I appreciate it.

Did you become a raving alcoholic when the film company went

to the company?

It was a dark day.

It was a dark day.

I'm not kidding.

It was a dark day, you know.

This comes back to our thing: you better love it in the room.

Yeah.

You better love it in the crappy room.

You better have loved making it.

You better love the times when you meet someone you respect who sees it and says, I saw what you were trying to do.

You better love

the heartbreak of losing a location and the thrill of getting Colin Firth.

You better love all that part because you do not know, you know, what's going to happen.

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Mary's son,

Charlie McDowell, is a wonderful writer-director, and he just shot a film in Finland.

I'm going to mess this up, I know, but Glenn Close was in it, and it's called Summer Book.

And it's from Tove Janssen,

who created the

Newman's

Newman's.

I don't know anything you're saying, so you're smart now and I'm not.

No, no, Charlie's listening and going, oh, for God's sake.

But it's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant movie.

And it doesn't have a strong narrative because that's not the story.

The story is basically, it's almost like you have a meditation around

these three characters and nature and the island they were on.

It's absolutely beautiful.

It's a huge hit in Finland and Europe europe because people still go to movies there here you have to have for marketing you have to have you know i exaggerate but you know but then adolescence comes along you've seen adolescence this year no i haven't yet but i've heard it's just but we usually watch tv at night and that may be a little tough it's a little it's a little heavy but it breaks all the rules we've said right they don't splice magically shots together and it's brilliant and yeah

wait so did they literally

ted i know one take or did I know we're doing your podcast.

I'm not going to spoil it for you.

You have to watch it.

Yeah.

And then you have to make them hire both of us, whatever they do next.

I don't do one takes.

Well, you would in this.

Yeah, I know.

Don't learn anything about it.

But after you watch it, we're now plugging something neither of us are in.

This has been terrible.

We're failures.

No, we're not.

We're looking for work.

Okay.

We're looking for work.

You got to see it.

And don't look at any of the behind the scenes and then watch all the behind the scenes.

But just keep in mind, when you watch it, there was no splicing of one take another.

That's a fact.

Yeah, that's a fact.

Okay.

Got them another job.

What about us?

All right.

I want to bounce.

Good.

If you had to say what your artistry, your talents, your,

you know, your...

What you want to, what is it you want to put out into the world?

What do you care most about?

You know, what is it you want to impart to your child?

What is all of that kind of Airy Fairy stuff?

Yeah, no, it's not Airy Fairy at all.

It's not Airy Fairy.

And my dad really,

my dad tells a story.

I will get to your question, which you might have to repeat if I've forgotten it exactly.

But my dad tells a story about being in some hospital waiting room and some couple holding hands and God knows what they were waiting for, you know, what results from what surgery and all in the family's on.

And he watched them start to laugh.

He was like, that matters.

So I do believe that

art matters.

And we are curing cancer.

Yes, and we are.

Or at least we're making

essential workers, they say.

But

yeah, so it's not going to be one because I'm bad at one.

Like

whatever.

So I made a movie called The Sessions, and that was about also brilliant.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's a beautiful movie.

And it's a movie.

about healthy sex, which I can think of almost none.

So I felt like I wanted, I'd like young people to see that movie because there's so many, so much footage out there, whether it's on the internet or in movies, where sex is either fake and beautifully choreographed and pretend beautiful or dark and

punishing, especially to women.

And so here's this movie

about

this man, true story.

about a man who had polio and was getting on in his adult life.

And he wrote a book called

How I Became a Human Being.

And one chapter was that he said he felt like he was up against a big glass window.

And on the other side, there was this banquet that other people got to enjoy that he didn't, which was having a sexual life.

So he hired this sexual surrogate to

do these sessions with him where he could have sex or learn about sex or be in his sexuality.

And so

because

I think the disability in that movie took away the chance of making it perfect and choreographed and it was just human and awkward and funny and sexy and not sexy at all, like the way real sex is.

So I like that I've left that movie behind and I hope young people see it.

So the only vision they're getting isn't all the other stuff that's out there.

I mean, what do I care about the most in the world?

My daughter.

You know, like I just,

my daughter is sort of

kind of everything.

So this, I made Then She Found Me.

She was two.

I did a reading of it in my living room when I was pregnant with her.

So

and it's dedicated to her.

At the end, it says for a canal.

Yeah.

So I care about mothering, good mothering.

I care about good mothering.

I think directors are good mothers.

They always have this image of directors as like leading you into battle.

Yes, absolutely.

Heart of darkness.

And a good mother says, I want to hear your opinion.

I'm in charge, but I want to know what you have to say.

I know where we're going.

I've looked into it, come aboard.

It's going to be okay.

Let's not panic.

Like all the things a good director says is what I think a good mother says.

And then just making people laugh.

I mean, my God.

During the pandemic, my daughter was

15, turning 16.

I mean, there's no good time, but that's a bad time to be locked in the house.

That was a horrible time.

It was horrible.

And if you have a teenager.

My God.

And so we put in these Nancy Myers movies, and there we are laughing at Marty Short.

But that mattered so much, a break from the worry and the futurizing, you know?

So I want to make people laugh.

I would love another opportunity.

I want, you know, I don't know if you ever feel this because you keep working on show after show, but I would love a chance to really let loose in the way I got to do on Mad About You and be funny.

Me too.

And I, there's all sorts of funny.

I mean,

Mary did

stepbrothers.

I'll tell you what.

More people come up watching

the pleasure that's given people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And huge laugh.

So what I'm about to say sounds like,

if I could be in a stepbrothers, I would love it and would.

Except I don't think I'm good at that kind of thing.

I think you absolutely could walk into that movie.

I mean, there are some people who you don't, aren't going to walk into that movie.

You could walk in that movie.

Thank you very much.

But I'm working now with Mike Shore.

Yes.

Again.

Again.

I read his book that your first show was based on about ethics, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm so glad I have it all right.

No, you did.

You did.

Yeah.

And he's amazing.

And he, he,

ethics.

How do you do a show about ethics?

And he did it.

He did it.

He wrapped it in nine-year-old fart humor

and

beautiful visuals.

Yes.

And a big idea.

It took a big swing of the bat.

They had two, at all times on their speed dial in the writer's room, ethics professors from around the country.

It is taught in,

you know, I think it was Notre Dame or someplace taught it.

Many colleges have as a...

part of their syllabus or whatever in their ethic classes.

So it's

and kids love it.

Yeah.

That 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 year who are coming into their own about and observing what makes them laugh and caring about it.

And

my whole fan base is now 11 to 14.

I see you.

I know.

I know.

It's amazing.

And good on them that they saw something and cared about it.

He put that out in the world.

And then the thing I'm working on with him now, and I'm going to work with Mary.

We're going to be together.

We're going to get work every day.

Oh, my God.

How fun.

So excited.

Is A Man on the Insight.

And it was about,

let's talk about aging and grief and memory loss, which we don't want to talk about in this country.

And he did it again.

And he did it with grace and humor.

And will you tell him in his spare time?

I will.

I'm ready to go to work.

Oh, very nice.

I mean, if he's not busy running your entire show after running your last show.

Okay, but then you have to get me a job because you're guaranteed to get on this.

No, I read that book.

And that's sort of what here's why I liked

the sort of imagination Jungian mythological

influence on even

a comedy on TV or

a big action movie because people, kids in the case of your show before, can feel when the story's right and they can feel when it's off.

And so when it's right, they can forget and they can laugh at what you're doing.

So like the bones of the story matter.

Calling the ethics professors matter.

When I did Twister, I was like, how am I going to act this thing?

Talk about, I'm not the person you would expect to walk into that movie.

But I talked to one of the guys they hired to rewrite it who said he was thinking about Ahab and the whale and how she was going down under to follow this thing.

Nobody.

comes up to me for an autograph and Twister is thinking about, you know, Melville.

But I had a thread to pull.

She is drawn to this thing that could kill her, but killed her fan.

She's going to, and it just made me able to show up.

What people like is all the big flying cows and the fun and my hair blowing.

But I knew, and the writer knew, you've got to get the story right, whatever the form is, something silly, something serious.

It almost it's

that your first huge box office?

I can't remember.

Yeah, it was.

Yeah.

I had done a season of Mad About You, and I got a call.

You know, Yan Debont and Steven Spielberg want you to come over for lunch.

I went, what now?

Sorry, what?

But I had seen Speed that Jan Devon directed.

You know, Sandra Bullock is a clown on top of being a serious in the highest sense, in that Carol Lombard sense.

And he hired her.

And when I went to talk to him about this movie, he wanted me and

Bill and Phil Hoffman and, you know,

theater.

Why does he want these kind of actors in his movie?

Well, because he's smart and he knows that he'll take care of all the wind blowing.

He needs good actors to show up and it seems to matter sometimes.

I mean, it matters to me.

Yeah, it matters.

You can't chalk it off.

No, seriously, Bill and I are taking our fight about whether to chase the tornado.

And

again, people are eating popcorn and

waiting for the next tornado, but in some, the movie did really well.

And I don't think it was, it was in spite of the good acting, you know, or the theater actors.

I miss Bill Pache.

Yeah, he's so good.

And Phil Hoffman.

Oh, my God.

Oh, God.

That's right.

I forgot.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, I miss him too.

Woof.

I know.

Oh, well.

I know.

We live on.

We live on.

This sounds really lame, but the whole hanging your hat on something.

I get research on people, the amazing research department.

I watch things that they recommend or that I know and I need to catch up.

And then I sit down and I go through the phase of how can I be interesting in this podcast?

Then it dawns on me that ain't the point.

And I go, wait, what am I really curious about this person?

For real, Jeff.

Just you alone in the room.

What do you really care about this person?

And that's today I was so excited to see you because

I wanted to talk about artistry.

I wanted to talk about being an artist.

Yeah.

And you are.

And it's been like this effortless for me conversation because I had this, I could hang my hat on this and go anywhere with you.

Yeah.

Sorry, this is turned it about a podcast, but it is, it is true.

Find out what you care about and write.

We're also separate as actors, especially.

You know, I'm home working on my thing and you're home.

And then we get to the set, hey, how are you?

Good.

And you, but we never got to compare notes on the process of it.

At least we have award shows.

That's right.

That's where we can really connect with each other.

Really?

And be who we are.

Because you are not dwelling on yourself.

You're not hearing about the people around you.

You're there to serve

to be of service in the highest way

can i just quickly do this look i i uh

i was nominated i got the carol brunette i called him no you did and man did that mean everything i mean of course it did it was she's the queen she's the queen she's you know she played my mother and mad about you

Oh my God, I got that.

I'm making it about me.

It's nice about your little award.

That's amazing that you won that award.

We'll keep taking the ball back.

By the way, she was my mother and mad about you

okay going back yes dick van dyth played my father on becker we've been here a minute to add dances oh my gosh that made me so happy i stalked him because i loved him so much i think paul may have said this on your show but i'll re-say it is that we found ourselves early on we had like asked Jerry Lewis to do an episode and he said yes and that honestly the studio was like okay but we were just you know comedy geeks and then suddenly not suddenly we begged Mel brooks to come and play we literally went to his office which was on our lot in culver city and got on our knees at his desk and said please which he liked i think and he showed up and then there was call reiner and then there was sid caesar and then there was fred decordo and then i mean it they i think because one came they all said yes and we looked at each other like we're getting to be in the room and play with like the ancestors, you know, the people who

set the whole thing in motion that you and I are talking about the joy of getting to do cheers and the joy of getting like they're the

boat launchers and they came on the show.

I'm so grateful to be part of this in whatever way, lineage.

Me too.

Me too.

So happy.

Me too.

And like I said, it saved me as a kid.

It really did.

I sat there watching I Love Lucy and Bewitched, by the way.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

Oh, my God.

Montgomery.

Yes.

Again,

she was amazing.

She was amazing.

So I feel the same way, like just getting to be in that stream of that kind of performing.

I did, I had, I used, I worked with Bill Hurt early on.

I know you did.

You were, that's an example.

I'm going to hijack your podcast of watching a movie.

Who's that?

When you came on.

It was like, what's happening?

That's a new thing.

No.

Let's do it.

Let's just leave it there.

Okay, good night.

Good night.

Good to talk to you.

But Bill, who was

going through, he's very intellectual.

He was a very intellectual person.

I worked with him right very recently and he's a very intellectual actor yeah and he can get confused in his head and he and before he was sober he was really difficult to talk to and all of that yeah brilliant yeah yeah brilliant

uh

but we had this argument about

uh oh chairs was coming up for me anyway you'd want to be a television actor and i went wait well now you know look at um

james um sorry uh well, anyway, I named some actor whose name just escaped me, who just won,

I think, was nominated for an Oscar and had done wonderful films.

What?

Mary Time and Moore.

You know, all of these people.

And he was not having any of it.

But then my bad

to Bill later in life was I would always...

when I would take a part on some television or do something, I'd always have Bill as my, over my shoulder going, ah, Ted.

Like you said, not really living up to da-da-da-da, which was

my bad to him.

I shouldn't have done that.

And later in life, damages, he said something really nice about damages and

then we saw each other and everything, but I realized, oh, that's not fair to take people in a moment and then use their voice against you as a weapon against yourself.

I also loved, I remember Jim Brooks looking for Greg Kinnear to play this part, and he auditioned everybody.

The fanciest actors you can imagine.

And what mattered to him is that he wanted to tell this story that I described to you.

A shallow guy has depth beaten into him.

So an interesting, complicated actor wasn't quite right.

No.

And he didn't care that Greg Kinnear had been on E-television or whatever, the talk, whatever he did.

He was right for the part.

Robert Redford didn't care about the stigma of Mary Tyler Moore.

And I, when I was a kid, Dolly Parton was a joke.

She'd come on Carson and he'd make jokes about her breasts, and she'd make jokes, right?

She was like, wrote these little songs.

And over time, we all now know one of the great

American songwriters, one of the most generous Americans in our lifetime.

Philanthropic.

Philanthropic.

Everything about it.

And the talent.

Yeah.

So, so the smart people, the Jim Brookses of the world,

no, don't go for the fake of don't do a TV series.

Like stay with the work.

Yep.

Stay with the work.

And now it's easier to do that because really people just want to make money.

So if you're on a TV show, come be in our movie because people will watch it, which is a smarter way to operate, I think.

One last thing.

Okay.

Mike Scher called us all.

Sorry.

Another little short story.

Yes.

Called us in at the beginning of the fourth season of The Good Place and saying, okay,

this will be the last season.

And we had just become this hit.

And it was like we so respected because he said, I will have told my story, and I don't want to go on, I don't want to vamp, I just want to tell my story and end it when it should be ended.

So, I'm doing that a little bit because this has been a dream for me for me too conversation.

Me too.

Really fun to talk to you, you too, really

cool,

Ladies and gentlemen, the magnificent Helen Hunt.

Her film, Then She Found Me, is available on Prime Video, and you can catch her in season four of Hacks out now.

That's it for our show this week.

Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco.

If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone you love.

Be sure to check us out on YouTube where you can watch full-length episodes.

As always, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you have some time and are in the mood.

Means a lot.

We'll have more for you next week where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Dancy and Woody Harrelson sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Mick Liao.

Our executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer.

Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grahl.

Talent booking by Paula Davis and Jane Batista.

Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Yen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

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