Episode 1632 - Peter Weller

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All right, let's do this.

How are you, what the fuckers?

What the fuck, buddies?

What the fuck, Nicks?

What's happening?

I'm Mark Maron.

This is my podcast.

Welcome to it again.

Welcome to it again.

What's happening?

Today I talk to Peter Weller.

Now, look, you know him.

Most people know him as RoboCop and Buckaroo Bonsai.

He was also in Naked Lunch.

That was a film based on the book.

by William Burroughs done by David Cronenberg.

And he was in the Sons of Anarchy.

But he's also a jazz musician and

interestingly, an art historian.

He has his Ph.D.

in Italian Renaissance art history and he's publishing his first book on the painter Leon Battista Alberti.

Yeah, this is that guy.

This is a multi-talented, forever curious, intelligent dude that didn't just limit himself to sitting around in a trailer waiting to go on set

in the robot suit.

And he's also been around showbiz for a while.

This was a totally surprising conversation.

All right.

I will tell you that right now.

You know, I am, I wouldn't call myself an intellectual, but I know

a few things about a lot of things.

I know some stuff about a lot of stuff.

And but it only goes so deep, you know, because I'd never really

I don't know that I ever intellectually committed myself to any one discipline.

and everything was sort of like just a rabbit hole to me.

And at some point in a rabbit hole, you reach a ledge or like a place to hang on.

You realize, like, I'm just going to stop here.

I can't

go any deeper.

And

this is where

I'm going to be comfortable with where I am now and slowly make my way back up again.

I'll be in Grand Rapids, Michigan, coming to GLC Live at 20 Monroe on Friday, April 11th.

That's next Friday.

And then in Traverse City, Michigan, I'll be at the City Opera House on Saturday, April 12th.

In Los Angeles, here in L.A., I'm at Dynasty Typewriter Monday, April 14th, Saturday, April 26th, and Tuesday, April 29th.

Those are all at 7.30 p.m.

Going to do Largo in L.A.

Got an 8 p.m.

show on Tuesday, April 22nd.

Then coming in for the home stretch, I'm in Toronto, Vermont, New Hampshire, and then Brooklyn for my HBO special taping at the Bam Harvey Theater on May 10th.

Go to wtfpod.com/slash tour for all of my dates and links to tickets.

I believe those Vermont shows are definitely sold out.

Toronto's getting close.

There are two shows there.

New Hampshire, some tickets.

I think that the HBO taping must be getting close to sold out.

But

we're coming in for landing, folks.

And I'm still sitting on about an hour and a half that I can make, that I've been told I can do 70 minutes.

I got it.

I got an extension.

I got a time extension.

I got some time added.

Well, you know, end times fun was 73 minutes, I think.

There's something about

no one's doing hours anymore.

All right.

You know, 43 is the new 60.

I don't know when the fuck that happened.

But like people are churning.

I think it's YouTube primarily and self-production primarily that you're not, you don't adhere to these things.

You don't have to.

And I get it, but I mean,

isn't that the job?

You're going to do an hour.

I'm doing an hour.

That's what you're working towards, an hour, not 34 minutes.

I mean, that's like,

that's like a middle act running the light.

Come on, man.

Let's do it.

Let's do it old school.

Let's do it big dick style.

Let's do it with some push and some swagger.

Come on.

All right, maybe that I went a little over the top with the big dick thing.

I'm just saying that.

Put the hour together.

so that's what i'm trying to do i i look man i'm just trying to like do my job all right just get off my back i'm just trying to do my job so uh i was happy to see

some people took my advice it seems or or at least i inspired them when i was talking about you know because so much horrible is going on at such a pace politically that maybe you just make a sign that says, please just stop.

This is crazy.

Many variations, but I guess a couple of people went out on

the day before yesterday, on Saturday, on April 5th, and they sent me pictures of their signs that were based on

my protest message.

Please just stop.

This is crazy.

This ongoing apocalyptic farce.

God damn it, I wish it wasn't real.

Oh my God.

But I'm preoccupying myself with many different things.

Do you know what I'm saying?

I mean, this conversation, man, with Peter Weller, man, we're going deep, man.

He's a, you know, he's an art historian, art historian.

I minored in art history in college.

Yeah, I went to college and I thought about things.

I didn't just party.

I was always a little too stressed out for that, a little too hungry, a little too wanting to be smarty.

And, but I could never contextualize anything because I was unable to compartmentalize.

So anything I read or took in or tried to wrap my brain around was really just,

it just all went in and latched onto whatever it could in my head.

I was never able to say like, well, these are the parameters of your thoughts.

No, sir.

Not for me.

No parameters.

Just throw it all into the blender and let's see what happens.

Same.

Same as happening now.

The same thing happens now.

I'll give you the one that I'm kind of rolling around in my head.

Like, cause, you know, okay, so if you meditate, and I gave this to David Harbor too, you'll hear on that episode.

Me and Harbor sat down again, did the same sort of philosophical, addictive,

you know, let's try to make sense of us kind of jam session.

Look forward to that.

That's coming, coming, me and Harbor.

But if you want to meditate, I've got a little something.

Maybe wake up and try this one.

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.

Let's say it again.

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.

That's from Hannah Arendt.

So, yeah, you know, that's a a nice wake-up.

Or you throw in a little Wilhelm Reich into that.

Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples.

That's good.

Pair those up and you make an equation out of it so you can see what's coming.

Just a bunch of hateful freaks who

can't get laid or can't keep it up or just can't do it.

Coming for you.

How are you?

Good morning.

Everything okay?

But the conversation is great because we brought up people that I hadn't talked about in a while.

Ernst Gombrich.

Ernst Gombrich.

I bet you I'm the only person in the world right now saying Ernst Gombrich.

I was assigned a book

called Art and Illusion.

A study in the psychology of pictorial representation.

He also wrote a book, I think, about art history.

But this was because I did a year-long survey class in the history of photography.

And I think out of any class I ever took in my life, and I've talked about this before in different ways, that one changed my brain the most.

And

I could never get through that book.

I still have it.

You know, there's still time.

I got a few of those books from college.

There's still time, man.

You know, I'll get to it.

Art and Illusion, a study in the psychology of pictorial representation by Ernst Gombrich.

I had some animal moments today.

Well, I hiked Runyon Canyon.

I haven't been over there in a long time.

Runyon is sort of the entry-level hike for people wanting to get into show business or tourists

where you just walk up this hill.

It's a very famous hike.

Beautiful.

I'd forgotten just how spectacular.

The views from the top of Runyon are of LA and Hollywood and all the way out to the ocean.

It's been very clear out here, very, very pretty.

Primo, primo LA weather.

And both of my flowers on either side of my door, the pots, are finally blooming at the same time.

It's very aggravating.

And I don't know anything about gardening or what to do about it.

When one blooms and the other one isn't, then the other one blooms.

It's sort of like, can't you guys get it together?

Can't you just flower at the same time?

Is that too much to ask from you plants?

You're right across from each other.

Make it happen.

But today,

yeah,

Kit and I hiked up Run In with the dog, saw a lot of people with their dogs, a lot of dogs.

And I, you know, I don't spend a lot of time around dogs.

I'm with the other, I'm with the more challenging animal, the cat.

But dogs just do their own thing.

They'll see other dogs.

Hey, what's up?

Or they won't even acknowledge.

It'll just be like, yeah, I'm moving ahead.

Got no time to socialize.

Not interested.

All the different breeds.

It was nice.

We moved through some aggravation at the beginning, some parking-based aggravation, aggravation, which can be

a relationship killer.

All it takes is one, you know, one bad sort of morning trying to find a parking space, and things can be revealed that make a relationship never the same again.

The parking problem.

We transcended it.

Took half a hike.

Anyway,

so I get home and there's a dog toy on my fucking porch.

and out of the corner of my eye, I see a coyote just come up onto the porch and take the dog toy out into my yard.

It was going to spend some downtime.

It's happened before, something about my yard.

I think it's the hedge.

They feel kind of protected in here and they take a load off.

Yeah.

But I had set my ring camera so sensitive that primarily just to catch a coyote if I could or other wildlife.

And I finally got one.

I see that coyote walk up and confidently take, as if it's his, the dog toy.

And then I opened the door because, I don't know, part of me wanted to pet the coyote and it ran off, thank God.

I wouldn't have pet the coyote.

And then I had a moment with a squirrel.

You got to check in with a squirrel occasionally.

You know, they're all over the place, and, and I just ignore them entirely.

I never connect with the squirrels at all.

At all.

I take them for granted.

And so I stopped, and there was a squirrel in the tree, and he stopped.

And we, you know, we did the thing, connected, and that was good.

I told him I put some nuts out for him.

But more importantly, Charlie, the struggle to feel good about medicating my favorite cat is,

it's been really up and down, folks.

And it makes me wonder, honestly, just who talks to more crazy people?

Psychiatrists or veterinarians?

Because

I was crazy.

I kept calling him, calling her.

They put a vet tech on the phone.

I'm like, well, I want to talk to a doctor.

He's listless.

He's lethargic.

What is it?

Well, it takes a while to

figure out what the dosage.

Well, what do you mean?

I'm taking him off it.

Man, up and down.

And finally, I realized that no one knows anything or even how Prozac works in cats or there's no research on it at all.

And, you know, it's really just about, you know, this anxiety that has now morphed into a territorial shit show.

But I just was going to take him off it and just ride it out with tranquilizing him daily when I'm gone.

And then I'm like, dude, just would you stop being so fucking whatever it is, like all or nothing, like this or that,

one or two, zeros and ones?

Just don't.

Just, you know, let's figure it out.

So I gave him half the dose that the doc prescribed.

And he did come back to life a little bit.

And I'm just going to do that.

And then if when I go away and I come back and I have some time at home, I'll assess again.

And if I have to wean him off it, I'll wean him off it.

The big problem is my needs from this cat.

I'd gotten very used to him being a certain way and him meeting my needs, or at least me accommodating or figuring it out, navigating the two of us.

And now he's like, you know, because of the serotonin, I guess, his needs are less.

And now I'm just this annoying, annoying, needy guy.

Whereas before it went back and forth.

And now I'm like, you know, not needed

by my cat.

It's fucking heartbreaking.

You know what I'm saying?

Am I being,

what's wrong with me?

Here we go.

This goes a lot of places, this conversation, and it's pretty...

Pretty rewarding.

It was for me.

This is me talking to Peter Weller.

Peter's first book is called Leon Battista Alberti in Exile, Tracing the Path of the First Modern Book on Painting.

Yeah, that's for real.

It's available May 1st.

This is me talking to Peter.

Okay, I got a question for you.

Yes.

Is that you playing the guitar sometimes in your breaks?

Yeah.

It's great.

Thanks, Thanks, man.

Yeah.

It's got to be him because then I hear strumming, then I hear some lead, then I hear some...

Yeah.

That's cool.

It's something I started doing, and I generally

just

sit here for a while with a riff

and work it out and then just lay it down with no...

no real production value.

Right.

Just stick that mic into one of those old tube amps and play one of these fuckers.

And

that's where it goes.

I'm no genius, but I've got some.

That looks like a telecat.

Is that a telecat?

Yeah, there's a telly there.

That telly is a great one.

Like, I finally settled on a couple guitars.

You know, after I'm not a big, I don't collect and I've been given a lot of guitars, but I finally settled on two that I really dig.

And, you know, over a period of kind of being obsessed with these old amps, I finally found one that I dig, and I think I'm good.

Now I just have to unload some.

So you got a telly, and what else there?

The tele's tele,

I think they're called tele deluxe.

Right.

It's got a, it's like a Keith Richards guitar.

That's a reissue strat there from the custom shop where they relicked.

Right.

That thing face forwarding, forward-facing is a 1960 Les Paul Jr.,

which I love.

The Jr.

is a lighter guitar, right?

It's a light guitar, and it's got that 1P90 in it, so it can get pretty dirty.

Right.

You got a little range in there.

You get that kind of New York doll sound, or if you want to plug into a big amp, you can get that Leslie West sound, but they clean up.

Leslie West, man.

Yeah, man.

Heavy cat, literally, but great.

I know, I just listened to him recently.

Like,

you know, because he's like a force to be reckoned with, and I think he's forgotten.

I think he's one of the great unsung

driving rock totally.

Ideally, and

can hear the guy I mean I'm a jazzer but I'm a rocker I came up in the 60s my mother was a jazzer and so

as my mother said all music is great yeah

but but Leslie West I think to me anyway is one of those cats that I can pick him out when I hear just yeah it's that tone yeah and I think oh my god he's the great unsung hero of the riff driving yeah oh totally rock riffs man well yeah well he played one of those that was his thing man uh the les Paul Jr.s So when I hear you, you know, I want to talk about cats, and then I hear another podcast.

No, I want to talk about politics.

I can't get into that.

Then I will talk about music.

Yeah.

And then I hear...

That's your life, though, isn't it?

Well, all that, yeah, art.

And then you talk about Rothko with somebody, and I think, oh, God, now I got to get on there and talk about Rothko.

Yeah, sure, you do.

And

then

I was listening to you yesterday.

I was picking up something from, because I love the cat.

I met him at Sony once,

W.

Camel Bell.

Yeah.

And you said on there that something that just lasered me.

You said,

I'm paraphrasing.

You said, you pick up the phone or read the news and then you hope your kid doesn't come in and see you crying.

Yes.

Right.

So, I mean, my kid has seen me crying over.

I don't have a kid, so that might have been a kamal, but certainly, yeah, it's the.

Maybe it was him.

Maybe it was.

Yeah, but no, yeah, we talk about that.

Yeah.

So I got a 13-year-old.

Oh, yeah.

And it's the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and the worst thing that ever happened to me.

Sure.

Why is it bad?

Well, it's how do you guide them?

He's going through adolescence, and there's that amazing series now on

I don't want to watch it.

You know, I just hear it's like terrifically piercing.

Yeah.

And do I want to be that upset about what the possibility is?

Except that it's informative, and the best thing that communication can do is inform.

Yeah.

And subsequently, if it's about

weaning

a boy

away from

gender belligerence, which it seems to be about,

then it's a good thing.

I just don't know why I want to jump into that.

Sure.

Well, I mean, you know, you got time, it'll be there.

Yeah.

So tell me.

It's not going anywhere, man.

I don't know, man.

I got a couple of chapters left, brother.

Yeah.

But, you know, so like, you know, I'm thinking about this a lot, and it seems like it's a focus of your life at this point.

So tell me, you know, because in this time of

authoritarianism that is going to unfold, you know, fairly quickly, and

I've got a big picture thing going on in my head around.

Hasn't it already?

Yeah, for sure.

But there's still this idea, there is a facade of democracy that people are still honoring in order to keep their gigs and feel like they've got a handle on shit.

But in these times

where you uh

you know where you have these kind of forces culturally and politically that the the there's an a notion

that art is

important and incendiary and uh

vital to uh to push back.

And I don't know uh that Americans have experienced the nature of this

type of fear where you know you you implant something in your head you know that starts on your phone that tells you that maybe you should just keep your mouth shut and keep your head down, which is easier with a phone.

But how does art save us, Peter?

Well, to me, okay, let's talk about visual art for a second.

I got into visual art through film.

Right.

I was sort of embarrassed into it.

How's that?

Well, my mother tried to turn me on to it.

I didn't want to go to any fucking museum and sit around and look at scriggly lines and shit.

And then a great...

Where'd you grow up?

I grew up all over.

My father was was sort of a G-2 intelligence helicopter pilot and a bunch of wars.

And he was one of LBJ's

Army One pilots and

Vietnam, Korea, and all that stuff.

Oh, really?

So did he talk about it?

No.

And no.

My dad was, and then he retired and became a federal judge.

So you can understand the control freak that that guy was.

At the same time, my mother was extraordinarily liberal and artistic and a piano player, and her mother and her grandmother are a piano player.

So I was turned on to jazz.

That was interesting.

This was in the 60s, late 60s.

50s and 60s, yeah, yeah.

So my dad was stationed at the United States Armed Forces Headquarters of Europe in 59.

Yeah.

And the Cold War is going on, and the Cuban Missile Crisis is going on.

And hard bop is going on.

Hard bop is going on.

But

my mother tries to turn me on to hard bop when I was about nine because I pick up a trumpet.

Yeah.

I still play a trumpet in a quick set.

So

I like big bands, I like Duke and that, right?

And then later on,

and it's in there because that's my Miles Davis diary.

I kept a diary about my experiences with Miles, yeah, and then this and Rutledge asked me to edit it down to 5,000 words, and so subsequently that's that.

In this jazz and literature,

yeah, I like the title.

It's like a lot of books that have titles like that that I have, and I usually get through 20, 30 pages.

Yeah, me too, man.

And then I say I read it and I skimmed it.

Sure.

But anyway, look,

I want to celebrate today

because in this art jam, Allie McGraw, the great and beautiful, the azure as Ali McGraw, turned me on to contemporary modern art.

I was doing a movie with her.

We never hung out.

After the movie, you started hanging out.

And people think of her as a movie star and a model and so forth.

But what she really was was a stylist.

She was a graduate from Wellesley in art history and design and so forth.

And

stylist for Diana Vriel and Vogue and whatever.

So when do you meet her?

I did a movie with her called Just Tell Me What You Want, Sidney Lehmet, who is sort of a granddad to me.

Really?

He is an amazing sort of mentor and friend.

Oh,

he's the best.

So Allie,

after the film, takes me to the largest Picasso exhibit ever is when the Guernica, his sort of...

Where at the Ed MoMA?

Ed MoMA, before it went back to Spain.

Because I wanted to go to South.

My mother took me to that.

That was in 82 or something like that.

Yeah, we made a special trip.

I think I met my mother down there.

So you got five floors of Picasso.

So whatever buddy thinks of Picasso, they forget that he's a great figurative artist, a figurative real artist.

That's the important thing.

It's one of those things where it's like, can you write free verse without not knowing how to do the other thing?

Yeah.

He could do it all.

Yeah,

can you play

Night in Tunisia without knowing your Bach inventions?

Yeah, yeah.

You got to have the foundation.

Exactly right.

Dig it.

Unless you're Jimmy or somebody.

So she takes me to that.

I go, where do I start?

Okay, I start with

Impressionists, wherever it's easy to see, Monet, Monet, and I say

I sort of pick up the books going forward.

Then I go pick up the books going backwards, man.

You get to the Renaissance, brother.

It's too much.

It's war, it's politics, it's poetry, it's economics, it's patronage.

It's patronage, it's taxes.

It's this thing you're talking about.

What does art mean?

Is art political or not?

Or is it possible to, is it revolutionary?

Yeah, is it revolutionary?

But dig,

it's too much.

Yeah.

So I stop.

You stop what, looking at it?

I stop.

I don't want to go.

I don't want to study one my way back.

I want to become the smarty pants in the room who could talk about Saitwomi or Frankenthaler or whatever, you know, because I've jammed with Allie, who knows a bunch of these people, the MoMA people, and all that.

The guys who are still alive.

Yeah, and I've had lunches and

hanging out and so forth.

So anyway, I am at the Japanese International Film Festival, Kyoto, with the great Jean Moreau, Trufo's Jean-Moreau, and Mike Metaboy, a great Orion producer, producer of many films, and Vittorio Storaro.

And for those of people listening to this who don't know Vittorio Stararo, if I said the movies Apocalypse Now, Sheltering Sky, Last Emperor, Last Angle in Paris.

TP?

What is he?

Yeah, he's the guy that first

filtered

Technicolor

with Dario Argento.

That's where he began with it.

Okay, so he's at Visions of Light.

Light.

He's a

true

cliche game changer.

Yeah, those guys are the real geniuses.

Genius.

So I'm with him, and he wears Versace

all the time.

As a matter of fact, Coppola said he's the only guy who could spend two years in a Philippine jungle in a white suit.

And if you've met Vittorio, he's born on my birthday 10 years after.

So I try to place Art Smarty Pants with Vittorio.

And I go in Italian, I say, Chief Fevirito Vittorio.

Who's your favorite painter?

And he goes, who's yours?

And I go, I don't know.

I just dropped some names.

And he says, have you ever been to Padova

to see Giotto in the very first narrative of one by one four six frames of depth, feeling, color, perception,

narrative, movie.

Giotto.

Giotto.

Yeah.

G-I-O-T-T-O.

And I go, who?

And he says, Giotto.

And so Meta-Boy and Jean-Moreau are watching this.

And so I don't want to eat shit in front of them.

I said, Giotto, I said,

I don't know who you're talking about, brother.

And he flips his Versace scarf and says, well, Peter, we cannot talk about art.

And walks off, man.

And dig, I run after this pretentious.

And I say pretencioso, which means you're a pretentious fuck.

And he goes, no, you are pretentious because you're like most Americans who can spout off these names.

Jackson Pollock, whatever, Larry Rivers,

But you got no context.

Because if you don't go see Giotto in the Capella Scroveni, which is only 20 yards long, in the very first narrative, by the way, everybody talks about him.

Leonardo talks about him.

Michelangelo, Picasso, Rothko.

Rothko writes a whole sort of homage to the guy.

So if you don't know this guy, you got no context.

Yeah.

None.

And I feel slapped.

Yeah.

You were?

And I was, yeah.

And I call up Allie.

Yeah.

And I say, hey, man, what's with Giotto?

Yeah.

She says, I tried to turn you on to him but you didn't want to listen to that you wanted to do all of a contemporary show yeah anyway it is the anniversary of that church opening and revealing those frescoes which are

which is insightful turn of all visual art takes today yeah March 25th 1305.

When did you get out there?

I went immediately.

There's a great friend of mine, Brian Hamill.

Brian Hamill is a brother of Pete Hamill, one of the great sports writers, Reverend Dennis John Hamill, one of my first friends in New York, and he's one of the great poster photographers ever.

Yeah.

De Niro and Raging Bull and Hatton and so forth.

I had that poster.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's Brian.

Yeah, one of my oldest friends.

I said, we got to go, man.

We got to go to this place.

It sounds like

a beatnik adventure.

It is.

And so we went to Venice and we took the train and we sat there in the days you could smoke a cigar and sit with the cappuccino, look at this thing.

And Brian goes, Oh my god, man, I ain't seen nothing like it.

So I go every single December 24th now.

Yeah.

To look, to sit.

To sit.

Be present with me.

Now you're only allowed 15 minutes because it's all hermetically sealed and restored.

So that's Giotto.

It's called the Arena Chapel in English.

It's a Capella Scrovino.

So you dig Rothko's chapel in Houston.

You're rapping on Rothko.

Rothko's whole square imagery of color comes out of Giotto.

No shit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Had to come from somewhere.

It all came.

Carlo Carrá, maybe the guy who invented Cubism, comes from Giotto.

Picasso was a little bit of a correctly.

Oh, it's interesting that the arc from Giotto to

Rothko is a complete deconstruction of narrative.

It truly is, but you know, it's like what Ernst Gomberg said.

Oh, you got through that book?

What, Story of Art?

Yeah.

I keep it by my bedside, man.

Like a Bible, man.

Like, you know, some people read Torah.

I read that shit.

Yeah.

So, but I also read Torah.

I was like, what the hell?

But it's all connective.

Yeah.

And I dig what Gomberg said.

Gomberg's the man.

Yeah, he said the hip thing, you you know, everybody wants to be cool and say, I know what I like.

Yeah.

You don't know what you like.

You like what you know.

If someone takes you by the hand and walks you from Johto to Rothko, you're going to end up liking Rothko.

It may not be your favorite, but you're going to get it.

Yeah.

Instead of just looking at a bunch of red squares.

Put it into context.

Exactly right.

Okay, well, that's an interesting place to start in the sense of my question is that, you know, in a time where, you know, there is no context, that, you know, the imposition of context on young minds now is going to be a tall order, dude.

You know, everything's happening all at once, all the time.

Yeah.

So, you know, you're taking in what you can to get your dopamine jolt.

And, you know, are you putting it into context?

And in a world where

there's no context, all you're running on is, you know, little reactive triggers to things, and you have no foundation for shit.

So.

Especially when the media is coming at you so fast that you can't, that you can cut everything else out.

Yeah, yeah, no.

We have the delivery system right here, and we fucking annihilate our brains every morning.

That's right.

So so my question, like in terms of

well, it's not even a question necessarily you can answer, but it's just something I think about, you know, when

well, it's funny because I did, I'm doing this bit now, that's starting to work, you know.

I'm talking about like these, when you flip through reels on the phone.

And the bit I'm doing is, you know, I watched a drainage pipe unclog itself for a minute and a half.

And it did not feel like wasted time.

And then like...

meditative, man.

Well, I know, but it's on my phone and it's there for a reason.

It's getting me to hold my attention for a minute and a half with all the other garbage coming through.

But then I said, like, this must, I have, the way my brain works is like, this is it.

This is what art is now, man, because art doesn't answer questions.

You know, it asks them, you know, and so now I'm like, what, what, what is that coming out of that pipe?

Is that a private house?

Who are those people?

This is, this is poetry.

There's so much there, you know.

But, you my struggle is: if I go sit at the Rothco or I listen to people talk,

I'm talking to you, or if I'm at the gym today, I got a guy two treadmills over telling another guy about how his wife fucked around on him.

And it's like there's a human connection to all of it that once we get out of the visceral human connection of things, which I think most people are out of,

you know, how do we have community?

But these aren't questions for you.

These are just the ones I'm fucking with in my head.

Yeah, thanks a lot for laying that shit show on me, man.

But you know something?

Did it make sense?

Yeah, it totally makes sense.

Good.

Look, I got to

another thing you talk about is sobriety.

I'm sober.

Yeah.

So another thing is that you talk about you had Sam Quinones on here.

Yeah.

Okay.

I couldn't get through it because all that drugs, those are my drugs.

Oh, yeah.

You're a meth guy or a dope guy?

Meth guy.

Yeah.

Meth guy back in the 60s and

biker meth.

No, real deal does liquid does oxen shit, man.

Yeah.

Geeze it, yeah.

Yeah.

You know what geezing means?

No.

That's the old William Burroughs term for

shooting it.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, that's what it was?

Yeah.

Geezing.

I should know that one.

Yeah.

Those people

are huge influence to me.

Sure.

And thank God I'm sober, but the thing is, what you're talking about, watching the trash come out of a pipe.

Yeah.

If it wasn't, the people say, you know, this is the other cliche about being sober.

It's, you know, I thank God for my drug addiction and my,

and whatever, because it wouldn't have led me to a place where I can appreciate that.

The shit coming out of a drainage pipe and stare at it.

Yeah.

Or sitting, and now I do Zen meditation, and I have to do it.

How does that go for you, all right?

I have to do it every day, man.

Like what, twice, once?

You know, I should do it twice.

I do it once.

15 minutes?

No, 25.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And just to watch the shit, the garbage come out.

Yeah, okay.

So there's the metaphor.

Yeah, yeah, no, no, no.

It's like

staring at that or staring at a wall.

It's a relief to it.

Or staring at a flower or star.

Or a Rothko.

Or a Rothko

for 25 minutes while my mind unloads garbage out of a pipe is a salvation to me.

And I can't explain that to.

A 24-year-old who's on the rise on Wall Street,

thinking about a Ferrari.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I don't know.

You know, I think you're right.

But I don't think they ever would have gotten it.

I just worry about, I guess, when it comes right down to it.

Because, you know, I've dug into jazz a bit.

I hear what you're saying about art, and I get that context.

And where we started was how does it make an impact?

Okay, so if you put it into context and appreciate it, but I'm just talking about the power of art and whether or not I'm missing what's going on now and or does does it have any power still?

So, like, when I sit in the Rothcoat Chapel, I'm like, this is something people should do.

You take this in, right?

And if I listen to jazz and you realize, no, but

99.5% of human beings don't even know this shit.

And these guys were fucking astronauts.

So, you know, like, you know, what is the impact, man?

You know,

how do we facilitate, how do we elevate the culture in a expansive way if all we do is sit and take in this garbage from our phone?

Certainly, there's some music, there's some movies that do it, you know, occasionally, but

I'm just worried about all of us untethered creatives who are now being

kind of held down by our own minds and what is a genuine authoritarianism.

How do we keep people still churning away?

Yeah.

You want a response to that?

Well, I mean, talk about jazz.

Well, look, jazz is anger.

Yeah.

You read

Leroy Jones

about jazz.

It it comes from, yeah, it comes from marching and funerals and whatever, but it becomes a vestige of black American anger.

And

I get it.

But to listen to music, any of it, if I hear Jimmy or I hear Leslie West

or I hear Miles or I hear whatever, I hear Resurrection.

I hear

Blowback.

It never takes me into a place of I can just like accept everything that's going on.

It agitates me.

And that agitation alone is the thing that wakes me up.

And it does it more than, look, somebody said, I don't know, Pascal, somebody said, some great philosopher said, that all arts can only aspire to music

because everything else is interpretive and music is not.

It's in you and does something to you.

Music is magic.

It's magic.

Right.

And it's also personal.

And it's also upsetting.

And so I

have, call me a glass half-fold guy.

Yeah.

But as long as music is around, and by the way, there are certain times in certain cultures where it's been suppressed.

Yeah.

I have hope.

I have hope that somebody's going to...

The music.

Look, Mark, from 63 to 73, and that's not my idea.

Music was on the cutting edge of all the arts.

It was on the cutting edge of poetry, plays, theater, doesn't matter what it was.

From 63 to 73, if there was an album doesn't come about, about, whether it was Jimmy or Moody Blues or Otis or Rita or Bob Dylan like every other thing, you know, or Donovan or the Cream

or Zeppelin.

Yeah.

That it was furious music.

Yeah.

And it infuriated me.

Yeah.

In a good way.

In a good way.

And as Cheech Marin says, you know, as a joke, as a joke, he says, you know, we had a reason to take drugs back then because

there was a fucking revolution going on.

He says, I don't know why people are taking drugs now.

I mean,

say Queen Yona's thing.

And I agree because

that music was the agitator.

Music was the wake-up call.

And so as long as I'm hearing it, I know I'm not dead.

And I know I'm not impervious to saying,

I hate this.

And this is immoral.

And this is cheap shit.

But

I'm glad I still live in a country

to get to

a particular guy that you were quoting on TV shows seems a little bit passive about it,

a liberal dude.

I'm glad I'm not living in North Korea, brother.

You know, I'm glad somebody has.

Well, I don't know.

Maybe I'm the cock-eyed optimist, but I think as long as we got music, you know, that we got big inspiration, we got big hope.

Good.

Well, I, you know, as long as we got art, too.

Well, that's because look at that.

Okay, so that's better.

Okay, there you go.

Hope.

Okay, the Nazis censored art.

Yeah, the Russians have censored art.

And Trump just closed down the Kennedy Center so he could run Broadway shows and Christian extra.

So

he knows the playbook.

So like, you know, but how does that look at, you know, in the big picture?

How does art get censored?

How do you know it gets defunded?

It gets, you know, the platforms don't

integrate it.

You know, like it's a different time.

I'm trying to adjust to it, you know.

And, you know, I'm a guy that, you know, even if I don't want to go to art, like I go to Houston, I'm going to go to the Rothcote Chapel because I know that every time I sit before that stuff or every time I take in a movie masterpiece or I listen to a jazz record of one sort or another, that as I age and as my brain changes and as I become deeper or more humble or more angry, that that thing's going to sing to me in a different way.

I got to go back there.

You know, you inspired me to go back there.

I've only seen it once.

Yeah, well, it's just

that that is, for me, you know, what defines genius is that you can go back to their work at different points in your life and have a completely different different experience every time.

True, but what are you taking away from the experience?

Are you taking away the freedom?

Yeah, sure, you take away freedom.

You take away, you know, if your brain is wiser, you know, there's a depth that happens that wasn't there before.

You know, it could be relative to your emotional state or to what you've learned or to what you've let go of, but, you know, something keeps going deeper in.

I guess it's freedom.

I definitely appreciate their freedom because you're sitting and looking at or listening to

a free motherfucker.

Right.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that's definitely part of it.

You're like, this guy was out there, and now I'm halfway there.

I was only a quarter of the way there when I saw this 20 years ago, but now I'm halfway there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You inspire me to go back.

If I can inspire you to go to Padua to see Joto.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I'll do it.

You got to go, man.

Where is it?

In Padua?

Padua is about 15 minutes out of Venice.

Okay.

You go to Venice, you take the train.

Padua is the second oldest civic university that we have after Bologna.

Yeah.

And it's one of the hippest cities, man.

It's beautiful.

It's like a small town city.

All right, well, I'm not a big vacation guy, but maybe that's the vacation.

I think you've got to go to Venice, man.

So now let's take it back because, you know, you've been in some movies that were kind of cultural

touch points and culture changers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know?

But like, and people know you from RoboCapa, and I remember being very excited about

Naked Lunch and about Cronenberg's approach to Burroughs, because he's one of those guys, even though

I wasn't hip to geezing.

I've seen the word, but I didn't know necessarily what it meant.

Also, 16 years of the theater in New York, and I listened to you with Tracy Letz.

Nobody brings up the theater in New York, man.

Theater in New York.

I talked to Pacino for like

a mentor to me.

He's one of the great guys.

Great.

I mean, like, to me.

One of the greats.

I had one of these conversations with him, you know, and it was fortuitous because I was just about to do a role, which is a big role for me, a leading role.

And that conversation with him was a fucking game changer.

Yeah.

Because I think people, you know, they project onto him and they don't know him.

But if you listen to him, he's a very sensitive, kind,

but a real truth seeker, dude.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know, he's very aware of the compromises he made because of his, you know, fiscal irresponsibility.

But when it comes down to it, you know, he's like he's an artist.

Yes.

He's not just a working actor.

No.

He's an inspiration to me when I was coming up.

Yeah.

In the theater?

Well,

Panic and Needle Park is the first thing I saw when I was starting off in the theater.

And also, he was a studio guy and a method guy, and so am I.

How did you end up in New York?

Ah, good idea.

I went to North Texas State, a big jazz school, playing the trumpet, had my whiplash moment.

It's sick of people yelling at me.

I wasn't going to be Miles Davis.

I didn't know what to do.

Had to stay out of Vietnam.

My brother and my dad just came back.

And so I switched to English and theater, and then realized the only thing for me was to act.

Well, now tell me, like, what was the moment of

what was the catharsis of I'm never going to be good enough at this?

At the trumpet?

Yeah.

I'm sitting on a bandstand.

I'm playing a Count Bezy tune called Cloudburst.

Yeah.

I'm playing, I'm soloing on Cloudburst.

Yeah.

And a very nice guy who's running the band.

it's all Leon Breeden.

This one o'clock.

You know, the guys in the one o'clock are all famous guys: Bones Malone, Lou Marini, these are all Lou Marini.

Yeah, these are the cats I went to school with.

Lulou Marini.

Yeah, yeah.

And Dean Parks, great studio guitar player.

These are the guys who in one o'clock.

I'm in the four and the five o'clock, but I'm sitting on a bandstand and the guy's yelling at me, man.

And he says, You're not making a transition, I don't know what, from B-flat-minded or whatever.

And I go,

it's like whiplash.

It's totally whiplash.

The guy wants to throw a symbol at me and I want to quit.

So I go, man,

I'm not going to do this for $49 and change.

And I'm not going to be Miles,

who's in this book and is my only hero.

I just want to preface it by saying I was with Miles the last gig he ever played in his life.

Last person out of the dressing room and walking to his car 18 days later, he was dead.

So there's not a change in my life that I don't have a Miles Davis album that corresponds.

But I realized it wasn't going to be be Miles.

Which is the one you go back to the most?

Ah.

Miles Alban?

I got one.

Okay.

The one I go back to the most, because I hear it every time I go to the dentist, is Bitchesbrew.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For me, it's in a silent way.

Well, that's right before Bitchesbrew, man.

I mean, that's Joe Zolvino.

Oh, yeah.

And he annoys me, but that.

Does he?

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's something about his swagger and his hat, but I get his place in it.

But I'm not a weather report person, but in a silent way, the transition from.

That's like

liquid heart is what that is.

And I'll take the Jack Johnson record, too, knowing how to do that.

No, I love Jack Johnson.

Oh, my God.

Or on the corner.

If I take those two, yeah.

You know, it's hip that you are saying that because most people go to kind of blue because

I was Coltrane.

Well, I can't say it's hacked.

No, no, I mean, but it's it most of those people

are guilty of what you had that moment with that DP.

And that's right.

Yeah, that's exactly, they got no context.

Right.

Yeah.

They got that and they stopped there.

And then it's like with Keith Jared said, Miles, why don't you play those ballads anymore?

It says, because I love them.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And because that's all I'll play.

Yeah.

So yeah, bitch, in a silent way, love you for that, man.

Yeah.

Because he goes out there.

Most people will not bring that up.

And Herbie on there?

Herbie.

Yeah.

That record to me is like, oh, it all comes from here.

Yeah, anything, you know, like, you know, any ambient music, any Brian Eno, like, you know, Velvet Underground aside, but like the space that he creates is.

I'm not so certain that Velvet Underground doesn't come from that thing.

Yeah, man.

Herbie doesn't, man.

Yeah, yeah.

I had a couple convos with him, man, about big jazz influence.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

All right, so you go, so

you fuck off.

I fuck off.

You're like, I'm done with this shit.

And you're like, I'm going to act.

I'm going to act to stay out of Vietnam.

I'm going to just do this.

And then all of a sudden, I'm hitchhiking down to Austin.

How does that get you out of Vietnam, bro?

Well, I got to stay in school.

I got to do something.

Right, okay, stay in school for a while.

Yeah, I got to stay in North Texas.

Otherwise, the second I jump out, I'm going to be.

Did you grow up?

Was there a lot of years in North Texas?

I grew up in San Antonio, your favorite town.

I heard you talking about San Antonio.

Yeah.

That's where I grew up, man.

And then Denton, I spent three years there.

And then I said, I was hitchhiking down to Austin.

My dad had now retired.

He was going to law school in Austin.

And I'm hitchhiking.

And a guy says, what are you doing?

Out of my mouth, I said, I'm an actor.

And I said, ooh, that's what I am.

Now, here's the interesting thing about parents.

My dad, who does not get acting, jazz, music, nothing.

My mother, who comes from that,

I apply for a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

I think, oh, wow, my mother's going to be so happy.

I'm going to go there, man.

I'm going to do New York.

This is where I'm going to be.

I

go to Texas, to go to Middle Walls, Texas.

My dad is now a judge.

I say, hey, Ma, guess what?

I got a scholarship to New York.

My mother absolutely annihilates me, man.

Really?

Yeah, she says, you ain't going to New York.

I'm from New York.

And New York's going to kill you.

You never make it to New York.

You're going to stay in school.

Yeah.

Actor, you're kidding, man.

Nobody makes it as an actor.

Your dad will never give you money for that.

La, la, la, la, la.

I feel absolutely denigrated.

This is from the spirit.

This is from the creative side of of the family.

This is the one I'm expecting to go hooray.

Yeah.

And I go to see my dad in his judge's chambers.

I'm knocking the door.

He says, I know why you're here.

I said, yeah, I'm going to New York.

He says, what do you want?

I said, I need some loot.

How much?

I said, I don't know, about $600 a month.

How long?

I said, two years.

When do you get paid back?

Two years after that, it's just done.

I said, really?

He says, yeah.

I said, really, you're going to do it like that?

He says, listen,

the only thing, the secret of life, is do what you want to do.

So go.

Yeah.

Bingo.

That's beautiful, right?

Isn't it, man?

Well, you didn't expect that.

No, no.

You must expect that going into those judgment chambers.

This is going to be the end of the dream.

Here's another thing about, I just want to vamp on this.

Here's another thing about sobriety.

Yeah.

It's only being so many years of off shit.

Yeah.

With some sort of program, what you want to call it spiritual or not, that I can put my parents into context, like you're just talking about.

Yeah.

Without being the kid who has to remove the parents and put them in a snapshot on an iPhone

and go, yeah, fuck them, that's what they were.

I could put my parents in a context and actually take away huge gifts.

Yeah.

They gave me in spite of the fact that my mother was a functioning alcoholic.

My dad was a control freak.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, you got to at some point get the gifts and put them up front.

as opposed to liabilities.

True, but a lot of cats don't do that.

No, I know.

You can't hold on to that forever because then you're just going to you know, repeat it.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, it takes a while, you know, to go like, all right, well, let's focus on the good things.

Yes.

How am I who I am in a good way that I can give them credit for?

Yes, you depoliticize your folks.

Yeah, yeah.

And then there's a little bit of give and take.

So when the drugs start for you?

The drugs?

Yeah.

Oh, man.

67?

So

when you're playing horn, you got to do the drugs.

No.

After.

I never liked performing or doing anything beyond drugs or even being on a date.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, speed's not a great, it's not a great art drug, I don't think.

That's not the go-to.

That's not the go-to to get deep.

No, no, no.

Yeah.

No, it's not the dreamland thing.

No.

No, that's a guide deal.

Let's go out and let's

go out and

get on a Harley-Davidson and go 100 miles an hour interstate 35.

You did that?

Yeah.

How is that?

It's the greatest excitement I ever had, and I'm really grateful I did it.

It went 100 miles an hour on a Harley-Davidson shot up with stuff.

But I'm also glad that I survived because there's so many cats.

I mean, my wife says, how can you laugh about that stuff?

Like, I'm laughing with you.

And my friend Joe, who's another sober guy, says, and he said to Sherry, who has no experience about it all, she says, because we're living.

Yeah.

Because we lived through it.

And there's so many people who are dead or in jail or whatever, you know, or maimed.

Oh, you got to laugh.

We gotta laugh.

Yeah.

You pulled it off.

Yeah.

That's true.

And don't you feel that?

Then we have to have some sort of Oh, no, it's the best, dude.

Like, because Normie's never gonna get it.

And even if you tell them the story, it's not gonna help your case.

They're gonna be appalled.

They're just appalled.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Yeah, that's right.

And that's the comedy of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And my dad said that about my mom.

He says, don't ever tell your mom the stupid shit you ever did.

Don't ever tell her at any age.

And one time I was 55, she was 80.

We're sitting in Italy, 15 people.

Somebody brings up some stupid thing like that.

Yeah.

And she loses it on me.

Why would you want to do that?

I said, mom, I was 19 years old.

It doesn't matter.

Are you stupid?

I said, oh, my dad was right, man.

You don't tell your mother nothing.

So you go to New York kind of jacked up.

Yeah.

The American Academy.

I start working right when I get out of there.

And where'd you move to?

Where'd you live?

In New York?

I lived on 86th of Riverside, and then I lived on 72nd 2nd.

And then I finally got a nice joint on 82nd between Riverside and Wikipedia.

Always uptown.

Yeah, always uptown.

And so you're at the American Academy?

I was at the American Academy and realized I started working right away.

Who were you working with over there?

I started, well, I got a gig thanks to Rick Nasita, my original agent, with C.A.A.

William Morris.

Was that Bill Esperance?

Is that the American Academy?

Bill Esper was not at the American Academy.

No, Bill Esper was at Neighborhood Playoffs.

I think Neighborhood Playoffs, yeah.

So who is your guy?

Okay, so I'm at the American Academy.

I'm with a couple people, but the thing is,

I'm in a Tony Award-winning play.

Right out of the gate?

Right out of the gate.

Sticks and Bones, David Rabe.

Yo, Rabe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know that one.

What's that one about?

It's about Vietnam.

It's Ozzie and Harriet.

It's a black comedy while Vietnam was going on.

Who did streamers?

That's Rabe.

That's me.

That's Rabe.

I did that too.

Yeah, dude.

I did that once too.

I did it when it came to New York and Nichols put me in it.

Oh, my God.

And Mike Nichols remained another sort of godfather to my career and great friend.

So you're hanging out, you're dealing with Ray because he's workshopping it too, and he's there or what?

No, no, no.

I just go audition for it.

It's going to Broadway.

Joe Papp is there.

I get the part.

I understudy it, and then I take it over.

This is 70 what?

This is 73.

Oh, so this is prime time.

Yeah, prime time.

There's real shit going on.

And then I realize I know enough that I don't know enough.

And then Utah Hagen's book, Respect for Acting, comes out.

Because I don't know the tentacles of how, or the process,

or just the process of self-examination

as an actor.

How deep you got to go, how deep you don't have to go.

And there is a limit because you don't want to put it in your head, as Kazan said.

Don't put it in your head, leaving your crotch in your heart.

You can't act out of your head.

So I go audition for Uda.

She rejects me.

And then I go, okay, man, I don't know.

I haven't

done.

What are you doing in the room?

What are you doing in the room?

Before the guy comes in with a gun, before the girlfriend comes in and says, I hate you.

What are you doing in that room?

What is the physical life?

It is not business.

It is life.

It is a physical life.

Like, no one is standing around with their arms folded in a close-up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, nowadays, television is overloaded with it.

It just drives me fucking nuts to see, like, can't you have that guy, like, wash the...

Carbine before he puts it in there.

And you could see actors who are brilliant at it.

Maybe the most brilliant at it is Brando.

Yeah.

There ain't nobody like him.

But what are you doing in the room?

He's good with the fidgeting.

Yeah, there's nobody like Brando, Mark.

It's all about the fidgeting.

No, it's like what Dustin said about him.

There's nothing.

See the scene with Maximilian Schell in the Young Lions when he goes to see Maximilian Schell after he's been shot.

See that, man.

Dude, when I learned...

that the scene at the opening of The Godfather,

where he's talking to The Undertaker, Right.

That that cat wasn't, wasn't, it was just around.

Yeah.

So that fucking cat will, for whatever reason, climbed up on Brandon.

I know, man.

And he's just like, you think that they.

You think that guy doesn't know what to do in a room?

Yeah.

The cat, man.

How about the glove scene with Eva Marie Saint and on the waterfront?

Oh, yeah.

He goes and sits on the swing and takes her gloves.

She drops her glove.

That's his invention.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what are you doing in that room?

Anyway, I go back to Udah Udahagan.

I audition, I get in her class, then I get the streamers, I get a bunch of plays, and then I'm rolling to become a member of the actor's studio under the aegis of Kazan.

Not Lee, but Lee was great, but sort of a Kazan guy.

Yeah, Kazan was there.

Kazan would take over the acting unit and also, you do a final audition.

Is the older Kazan?

Where is he at that point?

70.

70 years old.

It's 19.

So he's made all the movies and now he's giving back.

Yeah, now he's giving back.

He's giving back to the director's unit, but if Lee he ain't there, he'll run the actors.

But the judges

into that audition were fierce, man.

I mean, you know, you get Eli Wallach, you know, and

where you got in.

Yeah, and I got in unanimously.

And then I did a couple improvs with Kazan and Mind Blower.

Yeah.

I mean, to do a 15-minute improv with the guy.

Why wasn't it Mind Blower?

Because the guy had a sense of what you wanted and what time, place, character, circumstances defined.

Yeah.

And that's the method.

Yeah.

And how to keep it living better than anyone that I've ever met.

And everybody gives him homage.

I mean, Lev Met did.

Nichols did.

On and on and on it goes.

Al will, you know.

I mean, they just go like, okay, that guy had a sense of reality.

And he comes out of the group theater, which is the Russian, which is Schwarman.

Yeah.

And

Odettes.

Odettes, yeah, man.

Yeah.

Odettes.

Odettes.

Wow.

What a gift.

Huh?

Yeah.

What a gift.

Yeah.

Well, sweet smell of success.

Yeah.

I became sort of obsessed.

Didn't Eliot Kazan did, he did Face in the Crowd, didn't he?

Yes.

Yeah, I just watched that again.

How do you get that out of Andy Griffith?

Do you know that must be?

Well, do you know the story he tells about he was not, he didn't want Andy Griffith at all.

I think he was in Sardis, and the agent brought Andy Griffith to him.

Yeah.

And Kazan's thinking, I'm paraphrasing this thing, but he's thinking, how can I get out of here?

This guy's like wrong.

Yeah.

And goes to the bathroom as an excuse.

And Griffith accosted him in the kitchen, coming through the bathroom

and goes into this rant

about, I'm the guy, I'm the guy, I'm the guy.

You know, I'm Mr.

Kazan.

You don't want anybody.

And just by

firing up in this.

He needed to get it out of him.

And then he said, he is the guy.

And sometimes.

Sometimes you're sitting with a guy at a table that's not the guy.

You ever seen that weird movie that, like, I got obsessed with this very late Kazan movie that no one knows about.

That he, it was his son's script, and they shot it at the house in Connecticut.

It's called The Visitor.

Yeah, with Jimmy Woods.

Jimmy Woods.

What the fuck?

I know.

That movie's nuts.

I know, man.

And Jimmy Woods, one of my oldest pals, also.

These are all pals to me, man.

I came up with these cats.

Yeah, well, what do you know about that movie?

Anything?

No, I know nothing that he, it was his son's script, and he shot it there.

Because it was almost like an attempt, you know, it looks like it was shot

on a very low budget, and it was a very of the time, it was a very 70s movie.

It had existential weird fucking business.

It was the same story that Casualties of War came out of.

It was like the sequel to De Palma's Casualties of War, when those guys come find that motherfucker.

Yeah.

And I was just, I just.

When did you see it?

How long ago?

Not long, like a year ago.

I want to go see it again there because I ain't seen it since it happened.

And

I got the Kazan biography, and I even reached out to,

I don't know, I got a little obsessed and like I wanted to find out about

what the story was because I think they shot it at the house.

They did.

Yeah.

But apparently that house is like in disrepair and it's just still.

I talked to some people that knew the family.

I don't know.

I just became obsessed with the darkness of that movie.

It seemed very like an outlier for him.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, that's what New York gave me.

Okay.

All those people.

And the method.

And a process.

Yeah.

And gifts.

Yeah.

And some great directors.

And how did you get the first movie?

Oh, the first movie I did with Cliff Robertson called Man Without a Country was a TV movie.

It had five lines.

And

it just went into audition for it.

So you're just working.

Yeah.

But the first thing I did of substance was

I was doing streamers, and Gene Reynolds and Alan Burns, the guys who started Mary Taylor Morris, were starting this.

They offered me this role based on a real guy that Showtime later did a movie of an Orthodox Jew who disappeared out of high school and resurfaced in New York as the head of the neo-Nazi American Party of George Lincoln Rockwell.

Rockwell?

George Lincoln Rockwell.

George Lincoln Rockwell is the head of the neo-Nazi American Party.

This guy, true story, is a guy who was an Orthodox Jew, bullied, and then disappears for two years and resurfaces under a different name,

working for George Lincoln Rockwell.

How about that for a victim who becomes victimized?

It's like Stephen Miller,

Trump.

Yeah.

I don't want to pull it

shot, but yeah.

So they offered me that, and Rick said they don't really offer you stuff to come out to L.A.

And I researched it at the Fifth Avenue Library, and I thought, oh, my God, I got to do this.

So I did it with me and Brian Denny.

He went to do it, and that was the first thing I did.

And then out of that, I got a movie.

What's that called?

It's the Lou Grant, first season of Lou Grant.

It's the second episode, and I forget what it's called.

Oh, okay, got it.

Yeah.

And I was friends with Ed Asner forever, who was one of the great cats I ever met.

Oh, yeah, he's great.

I talked to him.

Oh, what a dude.

Yeah, real history, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Real, uh, real

old school Jew socialist.

What a compassionate dude, though, man.

Great.

Yeah.

And

then when do you, like, how does, because I mean, like, I remember the adventures of Buck Diabonzai.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

Good.

Can you tell me what it's about?

Because I don't know.

Well, you know what I remember?

And it's always in my head on a fairly regular basis, wherever you go.

There you are.

Yeah, man.

Yeah.

But you know, people forget the head to that.

The head to that is don't be mean.

Yeah.

Hey, don't be mean.

That's the matter.

Wherever you are.

There you are.

Because remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

Yeah.

And those are all pals to this day, Lloyd and Lithgow and Bill Bloom.

Yeah.

Well, it's kind of

an amazing,

I guess you would call it a cult movie.

It's become a cult movie.

It's become a unique film.

It was indemnified into the Lincoln Center Library about some years ago, and Lithgow and I put on a tuxedo and went to celebrate it.

He said, what are you going to say?

I said, I don't know.

I don't know what to say.

And the guy introduced it was Kevin Smith, comes out in a New York Rangers

hockey jersey, talks about it for 30 minutes about its racial divide with

blacks and rednecks and the social drip down of it.

It

doesn't feed you any genre, and it sort of plunges you into the middle of, and it defies

its action science.

And Lithgar keeps looking at me going, I didn't know that.

Did you know that?

So we

don't know what it is, but Dennis Haysbury says about love.

Okay, I'll take that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just had an amazing time doing it, and I'm so glad those cats are still friends, man.

Yeah, I always wonder about that.

Every time I talk to actors, I'm like, you still hang out with those guys?

And they never do.

You know, Mark,

the cliché that I saw when I was Olivier said the best thing that anything you can get out of this theater film is love.

Yeah, you know, it ain't the glitz and the glamour.

Yeah, it's love.

And I think when you truth?

Well, I think love is true.

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

I think those are equanimous.

And so

when you're reading that at 23 and your eyes are on the gold,

and your eyes are on like, yes, to do good work and to be recognized by your peers, but also to make a buck,

really the best thing you take out of this is love?

Come on, man.

It's a little touchy-feely for me, man.

I already just came out of this love generation shit, man.

I'm in New York.

I want to get something harder than that going.

Now,

it's the truth.

The best thing that ever happened to me in the entire my career, it doesn't matter.

The accolades, yeah.

The money, sure, fine.

Okay, great.

But the love, the friendships, the people that I retain that I can say thank you to are really the gold.

Well, yeah.

And all those, like, you know, you talk about nickels, you talk about Lumette, you talk about, you know, they gave me gifts I can't even speak.

Kazan?

I can't speak to those gifts or Utah Hagen, or what you're in.

And Utah Hagen gave me, those people gave me not only the gifts of the epitome

as an actor,

but also the epitome of living.

Yeah.

Living your truth.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'll give you a case.

Can I give you a case a point?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm doing a scene for Uda in her graduate class from Franny and Zoe.

You ever read that?

Yeah.

And Uda was great at picking out scenes from books.

Yeah.

And go do that because you could create the circumstances, time, place, whatever yourself.

Yeah.

And not necessarily dictated like a script.

So I'm doing it with a really good actress, and I'm doing the part Zoe.

I'm about 26.

Zoe's supposed to be 25 in it.

He's a commercial actor.

The mom is painting in the apartment.

You know, Franny comes back, and the brother Seymour killed himself.

You know, if you read J.D.

Salinger, then

she's reciting this Jesus prayer over and over again.

And they're getting this rebop about what is important and what's not important.

At the end of the scene, Uda says, Peter, I want to ask you something.

What's your objective here?

I said,

to

save my sister from killing herself.

She goes, yeah, right.

Why?

And I said, because

she doesn't like herself.

And Uda's sitting there with her cigarette look at me.

She says, why else?

I said, well, I don't know what you mean.

I'm here to save her.

She says, why are you trying to save your sister?

Again, I'm thinking, what am I missing?

I said, because she doesn't like herself.

And she reaches across the desk and yells, and neither do you.

That loud.

I'm like crushed.

I go, oh my God, man.

She said, she turns to this class.

She says, there is no hegemony here.

You know, there's no,

if you are infused with some sort of empathy, compassion, la la la,

you must know that drama is drama and it's based on your own bullshit that you are trying to solve about you.

And I think, oh, man, that put my head in the sand, man.

And I came away with that, Mark, as a transformation, man.

That was a good moment, right?

Oh, shit.

But sometimes, you know, it's a slap in the face.

Yeah.

Because I never read that book about Zoe trying to save himself, too.

Yeah.

Yeah, they are.

They're panicked.

Yeah.

That family's panicked about that brother.

Yeah.

So that was a big one.

Huge.

So when do you hit the wall with the drugs?

I hit the wall with the drugs the first time when I left Texas.

Yeah.

I left Texas.

I'm going to New York.

Okay, man.

I can't do that shit no more.

I don't.

I never liked pot.

I was always a go-faster guy.

I never liked the slowdown shit.

Yeah, yeah.

What we call in Texas, slobber drugs.

You always You sit there with your head nodding on your thing.

I was always a go-fast guy.

Yeah, I always go fast.

You just balance it a little with the boobs.

Yeah.

It's right.

That's the only reason why I drank.

Yeah.

Was to knock off the edge.

Yeah.

To keep the edge off.

Then I go to New York, and New York is great.

You know,

drink some beers, hang out with the actors, so forth.

My dad said before I left, by the way, when he gave me that money, he said, I'll give you some cheap advice.

Stay out of bars.

That stayed with me, but I didn't stay out of bars.

I was bars.

Then I make a movie, then I get some glitz, then I get some glamour, and Studio 54 opens.

And there's an amazing documentary about Studio 54 that came out about three years ago, and it was the very first sort of interpersonal, harangue, intercultural, intergender thing.

If you wanted to go to a Cuban bar, you went to Cuba bar.

You wanted to go to salsa there, you wanted to go to a black bar, you went to that.

You wanted a gay bar to pick up the hot chicks because the hot chicks would hang out at gay bars.

Yeah, you went to that.

All of a sudden, Studio 54 was everybody,

everybody together hanging.

And therein was, for me, and no offense to 354 because I loved it, was cocaine.

And so cocaine is my deal.

And a friend of mine said to me, another sober cat, he's about 10 years old and he says, you ever realize no matter how much money you had in your pocket, no matter how many times maybe you would go to LA, whatever, that you were an outlaw?

Yeah.

That you were like the James gang on a run?

I go, what are you talking about?

He says, weren't you always looking over your shoulder for a cop?

or somebody or whatever

when you had that shit in your pocket?

And I said, I never thought about that.

I always thought I was impervious

to busts.

Yeah.

Because I wasn't that guy.

Yeah, yeah.

He was going to buy it on the street.

I was going to buy from high-end.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know what your jam was, but my jam was going to the guy who was the accredited coke.

I used to have a guy down the lower east side, called himself Hammerhead.

Oh, shit.

Of course, that's his name.

Yeah.

He's an interesting guy.

But anyway, so that was it, and people started dying.

And then going to jail.

And then the light light went off on me for 1983, and it was.

That was the end?

Yeah.

It's so funny when you come from speed and you do blow, it's kind of slumming.

Yeah, but the beautiful thing about it is that speed, the speed I was doing, which was real deal liquid,

was an operation that was like going to, truly like going to the doctor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You had to get the syringe and the thing, and la la la la la la.

And blow is all of a sudden just, wow, you could just kind of travel on the subway with that shit.

So

it was

movable.

Yeah, sure.

It was a movable thing.

The different little containers, you had a little vial, you had a little thing, a little snort apparatus.

A little grinder.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I was partial to the pen cap.

Yes.

Well, you know, that's why I couldn't, I couldn't watch.

Big pen caps were perfect.

I could not listen to all the Quinonis thing.

Yeah.

It had me so back into the jam, not when I'm worried about myself, but so many people of

legend and so forth and friends who died.

Yeah.

And so I have not finished that episode of yours, but I will.

So when you do RoboCop, you're sober?

Yeah.

Because that's flat.

That's for

training for the New York Marathon, vegetarian, sober.

Oh, all in.

Totally all-in, moni-yakim, mime, just a complete physical nose of the grindstone.

Oh, yeah.

So much so that on Saturdays I would go dancing, and on Sundays, I would run 20 miles.

You got to get that dopamine somewhere.

Yeah.

Yes, but like Evan Cornon has said, that replacement of exercise and that dopamine from exercise and

better eating is

better.

It's good.

Yeah, I do it.

I'm in the bag.

Life is manageable.

Yeah.

You're looking good, man.

How old are you?

61.

No, you're a stud.

Yeah, I'm doing all right.

Yeah.

The only thing I've got going now is these nicotine pouches, and they're fucking.

Are you a cigarette smoker?

No, I was, sure.

Yeah.

You?

Cigars.

Yeah, I did those too.

I still do them.

Yeah, I'm a nicotine motherfucker.

Okay.

These things,

I go on and off of that shit, but I don't smoke nothing no more.

Yeah,

it scares me.

I don't know.

I got to smoke a cigar, otherwise I'm a curmudgeon.

It's intolerable.

What's your cigar?

There's a couple cubanos and a couple of fuentes.

I like

those Bolivar Cubanos.

Oh, yeah.

They're strong ones.

Yeah, the great ones.

Yeah.

Yeah, if I go to Canada, that's what I do.

Get those bolivars.

You still smoke them?

No, not in a while.

I lost a taste for them, thank God.

Okay, that's good.

At some point, I was just sort of like, ugh.

Yeah, so RoboCop I did, that was sober.

Yeah.

And that was a life changer, right?

It was great.

I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I left it.

Yeah.

Was that, but was that like, did you see yourself doing that?

Were you like, I don't know about this movie?

No, no, I'd seen Verhoeven.

That's the deal, is that once one is immersed.

I turned down gigs for money and I was just interested, truly in what it was saying yeah and i'd seen verhooven's movie soldier of orange and spedters and i thought verhooven was a gift yeah and fourth man and uh yeah and subsequently i went in to talk to him and i just talked to him yeah and that was it i said listen man you're you're all about doing a personal story with an operatic background like chekhov yeah

and We started that.

Like Chekhov called his plays comedies.

Why?

Because somebody's picking Lind out of the naval like Seinfeld, you know, while a revolution's going on.

Wow, I got got the cherry orchard.

I got my, you know, 30 acres of whatever.

Well, that's interesting.

While the revolution's going on.

Yeah, outside, the world is falling apart.

And Chakov was writing plays about people with their own little personal agenda

and obsessive.

I like this.

Yeah, and that's why you call them comedies, because they can't see the forest for the trees.

Because there's a built-in irony.

Totally.

Completely.

Completely.

What you're saying.

Like,

I'm just looking at my iPhone.

And what's wrong with that?

Yeah, what's wrong with that?

You know, hey, by the way, shit's blowing up outside.

Yeah, that's not my problem.

Yeah, nothing I can do about it.

Yeah, nothing I can do about it.

That's sort of where I'm at.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

If you've got nothing out of that, you're going to take that one?

I'm going to take that one.

Okay.

Let's talk about the relationship with Miles.

Where did that start?

Okay.

So my mother plays, it gets me weepy because when Miles bequeathed me his self-portraits on my wall, there's a great painter, Painter Lekandinsky.

And my mother turned me on to it's not, and like I said, and

I was 11 years old, it's in this diary, by the way,

which is only 5,000 words.

And I hear a boat that's leaving soon for New York from Porgy and Bess, from Gil Evans, man.

And it sends me, man, I become Miles addict.

And then I don't ever want to meet him.

I know Herbie, I know Wayne.

I know all these guys and played with him, Solving

on and on and on.

It goes, but I don't want to meet Miles.

You don't meet your heroes, man.

And also, he's nuts.

And then I'm sitting,

but you know, but he's Miles.

Yeah, sure.

He's Miles, man.

And then

I'm sitting at the Robo Cup too.

I'm sitting at Hermesa Beach Magic Club.

The owner of Hermosa Beach Magic Club comes, Mr.

Davis is expecting you backstage.

And I'm sitting with the Robo team, the people that make the comments.

Why are you the comedy club?

Because

he's playing there.

I'm at a

Miles

concert.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I go to see him all the time, but I'm not going to meet him.

I'm not going to hang with him.

I'll hang with Herbie.

Herbie's one of the great guys.

I'll say Wayne, all those guys, man.

So Miles waiting for you.

Yeah, you got to know something.

There's a friend of mine who's gone, Treat Williams, a wonderful, wonderful guy, a wonderful actor, motorcycle.

But he always told me early on: he said, Weller, you know, you're a middle-class white boy posing as a black hipster.

Yeah.

And I go, you know what, Treat, you're right.

It's basically in my soul, my wannabe thing.

So hanging out.

It's like that Terry Southern story.

What?

Red Deer Marijuana?

Yeah, it's in there.

Yeah.

What is it?

You know,

where the guy's just kissing up to the black jazz musician.

Yeah, yeah.

That's me.

That's me.

What the fuck is that story called?

It's good.

It comes from Red Deer Marijuana and other tastes.

It's in that collection.

It's in that collection.

Yeah, so I go backstage and there's Miles, and Miles obviously knows he has a sucker walking in the door because every time somebody interviews me, like yourself or anybody else about a movie, I always always switch it to jazz or music or rock or something musical.

So he knows that this guy is a fan.

So he's coming out as dude, and he goes, Hey, you're a cop, so down.

We start talking about Porgy, Beth, talking about my mother.

Oh, yeah.

His mother's got the same name, his wife's sister's got the same name as my mother, Dorothy.

It's the person who saved him from the first addiction and so forth.

We talk about the first tune, and then I'm with him every gig.

He invites me to his birthday party, invites me to this gig, that gig.

And I'm the sort of the white token movie guy groupie

hanging with him.

And, you know, I played in a trio with

Jeff Goblem.

We played since Buckaroo.

I had a guy named Peter Harris who played with Hornsby and a great guitar player.

And we were playing people's living rooms.

And Miles is the guy who said, when are you and Goblem?

When are you in Goblin?

We're going to get out of them fucking living rooms.

And gives himself a band.

I said, Miles, you know, this is in New Orleans.

I said, Miles, we're actors.

You know, where are we going to find a band?

And he said, buy one.

You got the fucking money.

And he turned around and walked out.

I go back and tell Jeff, it was one of the great, I said, Miles says we've got to get a band.

He goes, I don't know.

We've got to play.

You've got to be reviewed.

It's fun.

And slowly, and then Woody, I did Mighty Aphrodite and Woody had done Annie Hall with him.

And Woody said, just find a place that's

got no business and go in and say you'll play.

And Jeff and I and Peter Harris started.

And the rest is history.

But meanwhile, I'm with Miles.

I'm with Miles.

I'm with Miles.

I'm with Miles.

And then the wonderful Bob Thiel Jr.

is a musical supervisor.

and his father was Bob Thiel, the producer for Coltrain.

We're at the Hollywood Bowl.

We don't know what's his last gig, but this interesting thing is that all these people are there, like Quincy is there, man, and

all kinds of people played with him right there.

So is this a...

Was he sick?

See, yeah, he was, but I didn't know

because I'd just been hanging with him.

Yeah.

And then he said, hey, he would hold me by the shirt sleeve.

And I'd say, Miles, two hours.

I'd say, Miles, I got got to go.

He says, Now we're going to go talk to Mark Mann.

And then I'd walk over with him.

I'd call my mother.

And my mother was like, so beautiful, man.

She said, Peter, you're with your only fucking idol who wants you to hang.

Where are you going to go?

You know, what's better than hanging with Miles?

I mean, what in life?

Where do you want to go?

Have a beer?

Lose your sobriety wise.

So, Bob and I, and his wife, Amy Cantor,

wonderful singer and daughter of

Brando's agent, Jay Cantor.

And we walk outside and there's a kid in a wheelchair, been waiting for hours to sign an autograph.

We walk into his car, and here's the glitz and glamour part of it.

He said,

where are you going?

I said, I'm going to Paris to make a movie.

And we had the same year Ferrari.

You and.

Miles.

Yeah.

And he hated his, and I love mine.

We always talk about it.

And he said, drive my Ferrari for me.

You're going through New York?

I said, yeah.

In New York, we lived a block away from each other.

He said, drive my Ferrari for me.

And I said, I'm not going to have time, man.

And he looked at me like I was the biggest dick on planet Earth, man.

He just cocked his head and he squinted at me.

He said, Make time.

He got in the car and was gone.

And Bob said, that's pretty too prophetic words out of we didn't know his last words.

Yeah.

Those are the last words to me.

And then he's dead.

And then I get a a fax in Paris that he's dead.

And I didn't know he was sick.

I just fucking weep

like we all weep when we lose someone.

I weep, weep, weep.

And then about three days later, I get this thing from this art publisher that

his self-portrait, which I wanted,

is going to go to me.

But they want taxes,

state taxes.

And my mother calls me up.

And

man, my mother, man.

You know, sometimes you talk about somebody like his family,

and you hate him when you're 12, and this is him when you're 60.

And my mother says,

what's the deal?

I said, Miles is dead.

She says, I know.

She says, well, he willed me the self-portrait.

So what's the problem?

I said, they want $55,000

on this estate tax.

She says, well, pay it.

I said, I ain't got it.

And there's this pause.

And she says, I turned you on to him when you were nine.

I said, I didn't like him when I was nine.

She says, yeah, you did, but you just didn't know it.

So I turned him on to you.

You loved him since you were nine.

Now, do you want to be 80 years old looking at a blank place on your wall where your real only artistic inspiration wanted you to have his self-portrait, but you didn't have $55,000?

And she goes, so, another Oodahagan, sell something, goddammit, and slams the phone and hangs it down, man.

And I go, okay.

So I sold some shit.

And the painting's there.

My wife says, if there's a fire in this building, which there almost was, that painting's going to be on on the ground before your wife and kid.

And I go, you know, maybe,

because that's Miles.

And Miles is, look, you got one.

Everybody's got one.

Yeah.

Somebody.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Some artistic light that ignited you or showed you away.

It sounds hyperbolic, but there's somebody if they're going to have a life or direction that's leading the way, don't you think?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Who is it for you?

Name one.

Well,

in terms of

there's people that I go back to, like when I was a kid, you know, comedically, you know,

there was some sort of truth that comics had an ability to kind of like render,

you know,

to

distill horror.

Yeah, like Lenny Bruce.

Well, Lenny, like,

you got to put him in context.

But, you know, there was something about Richard Pryor, you know, obviously, but mostly like the old Jewish guys, you know, like, you know, Buddy Hackett, Jackie Vernon, there were guys that, like, somehow or another.

What about Myron Cohen?

Well, that's a little old, but yeah.

I mean, I didn't know him when I was a kid.

But when I'd watched comics, they somehow or another made sense of the world for me in a way that I could understand and disarmed a lot of things that were terrifying somehow.

And that was planted in me, that it was some sort of noble profession to be able to

take the big thing

that's pressing down on you in whatever way and frame it in a way where we all get relief.

Or that it would disintegrate.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pryor was like that to me.

I think that pryer is maybe the guy I cannot stop listening to, maybe.

Yeah, because it's pretty,

it deepens as you get older, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, I'm a big, you know, Keith Richards guy, but I always leave room for him.

But the guys that sort of defined me,

were these comedians that I felt,

the moment of laughter because somebody knows what they're doing is a pretty magic thing.

Unfortunately, jokes don't hold up

in a silent way.

Well, some do, though.

Kind of.

I mean, some rants do, like a couple of prior rants do.

And by the way.

Has a Shagatz,

Myron Cohen brought Borschbelt humor to the Tonight Show.

I know.

First time I ever heard it.

And my mother was always talking about it, you know, because being in and around New York, she knew the jam, but I didn't.

So I never knew what the goof was.

I mean,

and then I'm watching Myron Cohen on Johnny Carson apparently.

Yeah, yeah.

And then

talk about exploding clichés.

Yeah, yeah.

So that guy's a cornerstone guy.

Yeah, I got a few of his records.

Yeah, but there are bits that, like, you know, there are moments where there was a guy named Dan Vitale who was, you know, a tortured guy,

you know, got sober.

You know, he had a shot on SNL, but, you know, he, you know, he blew it because he liked to, you know, you know, smoke crack and do blow and drink.

And he was only there for a minute.

And, you know, I met him years later where he was just trying to keep his shit together.

He passed away.

But, you know, as a sober guy, he used to do a joke.

And he'd be on stage and go, you know, I've hit bottom, folks.

I've hit bottom.

You know, you know, when you're in the gutter, you got an empty fifth of vodka next to you, a crack pipe, and you can't wake up.

You know, you know, I know what the bottom is.

And he goes, but when you hit bottom, you'd be surprised at just how much give that four has.

Oh, that's frightening.

Oh, my God, that's frightening.

So that kind of thing.

That's deep shit.

I hardly remember him, but I do.

Yeah,

he didn't have a lot of profile, and no one really knew who he was, But he was around New York when I went there after I hit the wall with drugs.

Man, that's beautiful, though.

Oh, dude.

And there's another one around the drugs.

Like, you know, Kennison, who was a monster.

Oh, but

he was an inspiration and sad.

Well, I mean, I did a lot of blow with that guy.

Oh, you did?

When I was in my early 20s.

He kind of took me under.

I would have liked to have done blow with a guy.

Oh, dude, it was like it was electric, you know, but he was not a great guy.

And I'm not sure that he,

but nonetheless, there's, you know, there's that bit where

that put the, there's certain bits like that, you know,

how much give that forehead that open up a world of like possibility of like poetry, right?

But that bit he does about Manson, you know, a lot of people remember Sam for the, you know, move to where the food is or, you know, the, you know, the, the stuff about women.

The desert and whatever.

But his bit about Manson

is the fucking bit.

Yeah.

That's the fucking bit.

Like, because he was such a, you know, Kennison was such a megalomaniacal fucking whack job, you know, that, like, the, the Manson story, you know, you know, he needed to take down Manson.

Because, you know.

I'm sorry, I'm laughing, man.

No, sorry.

You know,

I'm talking to your, your listeners out there, man.

You say, who's he actually laughing about Sam Kennison and Charles Manson?

Yes, I am.

Why wouldn't you?

So, but, you know, the whole angle was like, you know, he does this bit about, there's a couple lines in it where he, Manson's thought, just listening to that white album.

It's like that fucking album, man, health or skeleton.

And he's like, you would have got the same monk.

You would have got the same.

What was it?

You would have got the same message from the monkeys, you fucking idiot.

Last train to Clarksville, Whitey.

But he does a bit.

It's on the first record.

The only one.

Yeah, I remember.

But he says that he's like about the Manson murders.

He goes, you know, the guy I feel sorry for is that.

Polish artist, Wojciech, Wyczowski.

You know, they found this guy.

He'd been stabbed like 20 times, shot twice, and whatever, all these injuries.

He goes, you know, I'm sure this guy was standing at the door when the Manson family was leaving going, hey, where are you going?

You haven't stuck a chainsaw in my ass, you fucker.

And then this line,

this line kills me.

He goes, glad to see you fuckers can handle your high.

And that, like, just to, to the entire event of whatever the Manses were, that because of,

you know, Sam's warrior, you know, disposition around drugs was it was just these fuckers couldn't handle their high.

And that's sort of genius in a way, because because it just brings the entire event of that, of what the event that killed the 60s.

It killed it.

It killed it.

To that.

It got me to cut my hair.

To that.

Glad to see you fuckers can handle your high.

Sarcastically.

Yeah.

And I just thought that was fucking genius.

And frightening as it is, and as true as it is, and as funny as he is, and maybe one of the blackest humorists I've ever run across, that cornerstone that he's thrown that egg at is the thing that ended the 60s, as far as I'm concerned.

That's right.

Because to live in that time,

I marched for this, I marched for that, I marched for this.

I was scared.

And I'd love what Obama said on your show.

Just got to bring back Obama because he's a hero and he's one of the few presidents I never met.

And I hope to God I meet the guy before both of us pass.

Because the inspiring thing he said was,

you know, don't believe it when people say it isn't getting better or it hasn't changed or nothing has changed.

It has.

Because March in the 60s, man, March in the 60s, 67, 68, 69,

you're going to get killed.

Someone's going to come up and club you to death in a second.

I don't feel that now.

I feel a different kind of paranoia.

But for him to attack that, once the Manson thing went down, I could no longer be part of that.

Because then people started looking at me.

I had hair like you.

I had a goatee.

I had hair down to this.

Okay, it wasn't that shattering.

It wasn't like down to my ass or whatever.

But all of a sudden, the world started looking at me.

And by the way, Tex Watson, who did those murders, I went to school with in North Texas.

He was in North Texas the same time me and Donna Hanley and me and Joe Green.

And that's that year's claim to fame.

So you've got these guys who do this thing.

And then all of a sudden, they're looking at me like, oh, have you got a knife?

Are you going to cut us up?

Are you going to whatever?

And I got to see, is an honest to God chicken shit as much as Sam Kennis is goofing on it?

I I cut my hair, man.

I became looking like this straight.

I still wore bell bottoms and all that shit, still did stuff, but I was not going to look like fucking Charles Manson.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because the world was looking at it differently.

Yeah.

Just tell me about the book.

Leon Battista Alberti.

Yeah.

Leon.

That's Leon.

Battista Alberti in Exile.

Tracing the Path to the first modern book on painting.

And very shortly, in an abstract, it's about a very famous polymath Renaissance guy, everybody's favorite Renaissance guy, His family was exiled from Florence.

And then he came back to Florence and for a long time art historians would have you believe that he wrote this first modern book on painting in about nine months and a year.

And my argument is no, no, no, no.

He had a big education from Padua, where I want you to go.

Yep.

Giotti.

Giotto.

Giotto.

Yeah.

And he looked at Giotto.

Yeah.

We're celebrating the birthday of the church today.

Yeah.

And he looked at that.

He looked at stuff in Bologna.

He looked at stuff in Rome.

He saw Donatello before he ever got to Florence.

And he was loaded for bear bear before he ever hit Florence.

Okay.

So, and that's

his source.

Yeah, it's

my sources of how he came to write this first modern book on painting.

That's interesting.

So it's an academic book almost.

It is an academic book.

It's got a whole lot of pictures in it.

And I hope you buy it because it'll walk you through the Renaissance photographically also.

When's that come out?

Right now, it's going to come out April 30th.

Okay.

So if we put this on a couple weeks, we can push it.

I certainly wish you best with your HBO special, man.

Thank you, sir.

It was great talking to you.

Real honor.

Great talking to you, man.

Thanks for having me on.

Wow, there you go.

We did it.

We got somewhere.

We got a lot of places.

Again, his new book is called Leon Battista Alberti in Exile, Tracing the Path to the First Modern Book on Painting.

Hang out for a minute, will you?

Hey, nine years ago this week, I had my first conversation with my future bad guys partner, Mr.

Wolf himself, Sam Rockwell.

Have you said no to like huge opportunities?

I've said no to money.

I've said no to money.

I wouldn't say like, you know, I turned down the Titanic or something.

I've turned down, every time I've done stuff for money, I've regretted it.

I don't really, just for the money.

I mean, money's part of the equation.

Sure, no, sure.

But you want to feel like you're earning an honest living?

Yeah, you know, it's hard to make money in show business, but you know, when you get a chance to,

it's good.

But it's like,

I try to

turn down some money.

Yeah.

You know, yeah, because you because, but not just because of the money, because the project, you're obviously offering you a lot of money.

No, I want the money, obviously.

But like, I'm not going to do that for the money.

Yeah, you know, there's limits.

You know, and you're like, I can't, I can't do it, man.

I can't do it.

That's from episode 695 with Sam Rockwell.

And you can listen to that for free on whatever podcast app you're using right now.

To get every episode of WTF ad-free, sign up for WTF Plus.

Just go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF Plus.

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Here we go.

Here's some guitar.

Boomer lives, monkey and the fonda, cat angels everywhere.