Episode 1676 - Mark Hamill

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Lock the gates!

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.

Today, I talk to Mark Hamill.

Mark Hamill.

I mean, Luke Skywalker, sure.

But that was not my primary interest in talking to him.

And there's a whole other generation of people that know him as the voice of the Joker from the Batman animated series.

But, you know, he's been in hundreds of movies, TV shows, plays, video games.

He was in the life of Chuck, which I liked earlier this year.

Now he's in this new film, The Long Walk, both of which were Stephen King stories.

And I was just curious about the arc of him being Mark Hamill.

I mean, he's been a public person a long time and, you know, for some people, a hero, a hero.

Luke Skywalker and the Mark/slash Mark Hamill.

Can you separate them?

Are you just watching Luke Skywalker get older or do you know Mark Hamill?

And being a guy that, you know, I think I saw the first two or three Star Wars, but I don't think I didn't lock in for life

but uh i was happy to have the conversation with him it was uh pretty great i'm at largo with the band this wednesday september 10th you can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for ticket info and uh you know we've been practicing yeah which is one of the reasons that i I kind of shifted, you know, a lot of the guys I used to play with who were great guys, good players, but I needed to work with a group of people where I could rehearse on a regular basis at least once or twice a week, you know, leading into something so I could feel like I was making some progress

kind of getting better at something, you know, at something.

It's not new.

I mean, I've been playing guitar on this show and in my life for years, but to play with other people, that was always the initial.

reason was I wanted to feel what that felt like because it was a dream of mine that I never pursued.

And we did a lot of shows And I always felt like, you know, we would just sort of kind of, you know, kind of get through the songs.

But I really wanted to learn how to build confidence in a creative pursuit that I

didn't do publicly.

And I got some confidence in doing that, but I was always pretty self-effacing when I would perform, you know, or fuck up because I was choking.

I choke on stage when I have to sing or play guitar, and it's annoying.

But I know from doing other creative pursuits that if you keep doing it, and a lot of times with music, people don't necessarily register that you choke or that you're flailing up there because you're protected by the band.

But I just wanted to feel relaxed and

feel like I was, you know, doing it with consistency.

And that seems to be happening in playing with people and practicing.

It's weird because I had a conversation with somebody the other day about

practicing.

And when you are a creative person, that you have to put your hours in.

You have to, you know, keep in shape with it.

But you really do have to put your hours in.

But with stand-up, I never thought of it as practice.

You were just going up there trying to get laughs.

And that was the deal.

I mean, I've been thinking a lot about.

the life I used to live and the life that I seem to be entering in a different way, but with similar amounts of time, you know, just how I filled that.

You know, what do you do all day?

I'll try to talk about that in a minute, but practicing stand-up was just so immediate.

You know, you write the jokes or you write the ideas, and then you just find the courage to do them on stage.

And eventually the courage,

whether it's fake or not, becomes relaxed and you can do it.

And it still gets scary.

It's different with music because you really have to practice.

You can't practice jokes until you get on stage and that's where it all comes together.

But you can practice guitar and practice songs and figure out how they work together and how you sing them and how you play them and what your lead is and all this stuff.

And it's a whole different process.

So needless to say, I've been practicing pretty hard because I do not want to feel, I don't want to choke.

on stage anymore and there's just nothing I can do about that until it happens until I feel comfortable.

But I'm just, I'm putting it out there.

I'm just putting it out there

because a lot of people get discouraged with creative pursuits, you know, whether you're not getting enough feedback or you think you suck or whatever.

There is a zone that you can reach where you feel good about your work.

But fuck, that can take a long time.

The documentary about me, Are We Good, opens on October 3rd in New York and Los Angeles Angeles with special screenings around the country on October 5th and October 8th.

You can go to arewegoodmarin.com to see where it's playing and get tickets.

I think something about that dock,

this is another thing about,

you know, for me,

it was, you know, a long process of being the subject of a documentary.

And I was, you know, very forthcoming.

You know, I made the agreement with myself and with the producer and director of the film that

I would show up for it.

And it got pretty tedious, but it went on for years.

And I don't know if people really realize that.

There's just so many people involved in these things.

I mean, a documentary is obviously less than...

you know, a feature film or a TV show, but I believe that I was approached by

Julie Sebaugh

maybe late 2020, early 21.

I'm not even sure because at that point, I was still pretty submerged in grief.

And it was still kind of COVID-y.

And

I was, and they wanted to, well, she, she had

the idea to do a dock.

And initially, I was like, I can't, what do you want from me?

And my manager and everybody was like, you know, what do you need to do it for?

You're not dead.

I I don't see it.

And then, like, she pulled in Stephen Fine Arts, who I knew as a director.

He directed Bitter Buddha.

And I knew Julie because she's been sort of a journalist in the comedy community for a while now.

I mean, she's written a couple books.

The last one was about the Rose Battle.

The other one's a collection of her comedy journalism.

So I knew her as a journalist, an author.

And then they re-approached me, her in fine arts,

who I knew as a director, and I really just didn't see the point

of doing this thing.

But the truth was, because of the time and because of the idea that we'd explore what I was going through, and you know me, I mean, I do this thing here.

And,

you know, I eventually agreed to it.

So this is like three or plus years of work.

And the editors, I mean, it's kind of crazy.

I mean there were three editors Derek Boonstraw Natalie Akana and Jen Harper and you know fine arts directing Julie producing so there was sort of a passion project in a way for a lot of people but for me it was just sort of like oh fuck they're coming over with the cameras so it's it's kind of amazing when I look at it that it is the arc of it is is about three years of work.

You know, and now it's going to be in movie theaters, and we'll see where it ends up on streaming.

But it's kind of crazy.

And I think I mentioned before, I'm totally happy with it, even though it makes me uncomfortable.

I think it's honest, and I think it's a great job

with

how they edited it and how Steve directed it and how Julie produced it and did some story editing.

It just,

for me, though, I'm just the guy in it.

You know, that is my sort of part in this.

And the only time that I was cringed out, oddly, you know, given the vulnerability of it or the grief of it or the feelings that I expressed, the only time I was really like, fuck, was when they showed old stand-up clips of me from the 80s.

It made me very uncomfortable to see little me.

It's hard to see little you thinking that they know what they're doing when you're in that period where you're just trying to get jokes to work.

And also, another thing on Kickstarter, you can still get in on the

pre-sale for our graphic novel, WTF as a Podcast, written and illustrated by Box Brown.

See, this is another project where, you know, I'm not totally passive.

You know, Box did some fairly thorough interviews with me and Brendan

and other people, but

it's another kind of passion project by

a proficient and professional and inspired

graphic artist and author, Box Brown, who

is really doing this thing.

And he's done other work like this, biographical work.

But I love that that is the choice we made: to partner up with Box to have an interesting approach to the history of the show.

I went through my time reading graphic novels.

It didn't stick, but there was a few years there where I was locked in to graphic novels and a few comic titles.

And I'm excited to see what the final product is.

You can go to z2comics.com/slash WTF.

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So,

you know, as I enter this next phase of my life, I guess we could call it, you know, obviously I'm not retiring, but I am going to have some space and I have plans to approach my creativity differently.

But because we don't have a backlog to sort of serve in terms of interviews and we're coming in for landing here, there's been a lot fewer talks.

So I'm really starting to get a taste of what it's like to not have to record three, four, five interviews a week.

And all of a sudden there's this space.

And I'm hanging around.

You know, I'm cooking stuff.

I'm practicing my guitar.

I'm re-watching the sopranos, I'm doing a little stand-up, but the days are a little more fluid.

And there are moments where I'm like, oh my God, you know, what am I going to do at the time?

What should I be doing?

What can I clean up?

What should I be writing down?

And I realize,

like, there's a mild panic to that, but not much of one.

But then I realized, like, I spent most of my fucking life like that.

It's a very, it's a very interesting thing when you spend a life pursuing,

a creative goal

because it's different.

It's a different thing when you're sort of just getting by in pursuit of something else as opposed to just getting by

in pursuit of getting by.

And

it's sort of compounded in a way.

Because you're broke most of the time.

You have this thing hanging over you.

There's no guarantees of anything, but you're still willing to sort of make that sacrifice.

And it's just interesting when I look back on the periods that I was in Boston

and then New York and then San Francisco and then Los Angeles and then back to New York.

But all that time, before I was involved in any other projects other than stand-up and the random opportunity here and there, it was really just me

in the world, in my life, wandering around,

trying to create some routine for myself with my notebook talking to people out in the world making stops at record stores and guitar shops and bookstores and talking to people or hanging out with other comics occasionally during the day but really just in service of that fucking notebook and then getting on stage whenever you could if you could and manifesting the work.

But there were years of that where the days were just these nebulous, free-floating, free-floating, panic-ridden, anger-ridden, you know, sadness-ridden periods of just trying to come up with things

that I could do on stage.

And I'm back on that level.

Obviously, my life is completely different and I'm in a different place, but that sort of core

darkness of creativity, you know, where it's like, how do you fill this darkness?

How do you bring something into the the world?

How do you put it out there?

And not having this outlet is going to be a big change and sort of reconfiguring my focus on, you know, hopefully producing a film and doing some acting and music and obviously comedy.

But there is this space there where you're just looking at the sort of nameless abyss and trying to kind of fill that in or pull something out of it that you can put into the world.

And that's really the life.

I am less stressed on some levels than I was before, but I have new stresses now.

And, you know, I'm up against time.

But I don't know if I made it sound like it, but I'm looking forward to it.

Come on.

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Okay, Mark Hamill is who I'm going to be talking to right now.

He's in the new movie, The Long Walk, which opens in theaters this Friday, September 12th.

And this is me talking to him out here in the garage.

So

I guess there's some things.

I've seen

the two most recent movies, and I imagine people talk to you about Star Wars Wars a lot, but I'd like to focus the entire hour on Sam Fuller.

Oh,

please do.

Listen, I'll tell you something.

When they offered me that, I- The Big Red One?

The Big Red One.

Yeah.

I had an offer to go do Equus in San Francisco.

And I was sort of thinking, why would I want to go, we were shooting in Israel, recreate the, you know,

storming of Normandy Beach with all these young Turks that are around my age.

But I thought, I love Sam so much, I said, I should go at least go meet him and not just turn it down outright.

So my point was, I was going to go meet him and explain to him why I didn't want to do it.

He was such a dynamo little guy.

But he got up and he started like acting out the movie.

It was first-hand experience.

He was just a teenager when he fought World War II.

And I'm watching this guy and he says, and then you get out there.

Actually, it was Kalowitz, but I'm going to give it to you because you're so handsome and he's acting out the movie and I'm mesmerized and I'm thinking holy shit I've just been drafted yeah there's no way I can't work with this guy yeah

because

both he and Lee Marvin had first-hand knowledge it's not it's by the time you get to private saving private ryan there's no one that was actually there right

and uh both of them were incredible lee marvin was he surprised me he was hip to saturday night Live, the National Lampoon.

I could make him laugh, which is a real gift.

But he one time,

we were in Bet Sean.

It was like 111 degrees in the shade.

And he got up and told us he started miming when he was in the South Pacific, how he got shot in the ass.

This guy's like 6'2, and we're all watching him.

And he's doing it, and he's doing the signals and all this stuff.

When he gets shot in the ass, he bolts straight up and then crumples to the ground.

Now, I thought, why would he do this?

Yeah.

For us.

Yeah.

But he was amazing.

And if he...

He wanted to show you how to take a shot.

I guess, but he was one of those guys where

he would cringe at compliments.

Yeah.

But he loved insult humor.

Yeah.

Like, shut up, Marvin.

What do you know?

You turned down jaws, which he did.

I found out he turned down Robert Shaw's part.

What do you want from me?

I thought it was a story story about a fucking fish, he would say.

But

he was hilarious.

That's interesting, though, that

he thrived on getting his balls busted.

Yeah, he didn't like that.

I'll tell you one time

we were sitting at a little table at an outside cafe,

and a tourist walked by and said, oh, Mr.

Marvin, you could see him start to freeze up because he just tell people, fuck off.

But he mistakenly, he was talking about paint your wagon.

He says, I like you so much when you're singing, I was boring under a wandering star.

And he, well, you got that right, pal.

Sit down.

Because it was

an unintended insult.

He had the guy sit down and bought him a drink.

So that's it.

But because like, you know, my old man's like that.

You know, if you can get in there and take them down a notch, it humbles them.

It humanizes them somehow.

They can't handle the adulation because they don't believe it themselves.

Maybe.

Yeah.

I never thought about that.

Because he was such a massive presence, Lee Marvin.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my God.

There was never a badass like him.

I mean, in the movies, stood up to

Marlon Brando and the Wild One.

And yet, I'll tell this story to 20, 30, something.

They go, who's Lee Marvin?

Yeah, well, that's so bad.

You know, the funny thing is, is all these people that claim they don't know, or sometimes I'll post an episode and they're like, who?

I'm like, you research everything else.

Just use your fucking phone.

Google.

Look at it up, stupid.

Well, it shows you how fleeting fame is because, I I mean, when I was a kid, Dirty Dozen, on and on, Ship of Fools, he was just always around.

Yeah, I just watched a Dirty Dozen again.

It's so good.

It's a great movie.

That's the one where they're all lunatics, right?

Yeah, pretty much.

John Cassavetti, Teli Savalos, Woody Strode, yeah.

Teli Savalos plays the Southern Wack Johnson.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bronson, too, right?

Charles Bronson.

What a fucking movie.

It's a who's who of great character actors.

Yeah.

That's what I love.

You know, to me, the working stiffs are almost more interesting than the stars because the stars always had to deliver something that was expected of them.

Yeah.

You see somebody like Martin Balsam and he can play villains, he can play

the character actor.

Wonderful.

Ned Beatty.

Yeah.

Later on.

Yeah.

But I mean, you work a lot.

I have to assume that you like to do it.

Well, first of all, I'm 73.

I certainly did not have any inclination that I would be working this long.

There came a time about, I don't know, nine, 10 years ago, I thought, you know, I've pretty much,

I lost my motivation.

You know, I didn't have that burning gut to, oh, get me in a Marvel movie, do this, do that.

I thought, you know, I'm happy.

I love my dogs.

I love my wife.

I've, you know,

I got to start spending more time wandering in the beach with a metal detector.

Yeah.

But can you do that?

Yeah.

Well, the thing is,

what my point is,

I didn't say the word resignation.

I mean, the only ones that didn't like hearing that was my agent and my wife, because it's good to have me out of the house.

Yeah, sure.

But I said, look, I'll keep doing animation voiceover.

I mean, I love doing that.

I mean, in voiceover.

Oh, it's so nice, right?

Because they cast with their ears, not their eyes.

They don't care what you look like.

I'd never get so many of these parts, just a wide range of character roles in voiceover, and I'm content.

Yeah.

I did a voiceover for the bad guys, right?

So that just came out.

Yeah, yeah.

And DreamWorks is like eight minutes from from here.

Oh, good.

It's easy commute.

I don't have to change.

We have a shared credit.

You did three episodes of Metalocalypse.

I did.

I played Senator Stampingston.

And you can always get another

three roles before they have to pay you a bump.

Yeah, I did Hammersmith, yeah, the angry guy.

That was a good show.

It was bizarre.

That was fun.

Brendan's a great guy.

Yeah, he wrote.

And you were the Joker forever.

I think I played

in DC Super Pets.

Right.

I played Lex Luthor.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, so I'm part of that universe, right?

Okay, great.

But there's all generation of kids who knows you as the Joker from the Batman cartoons.

And what was interesting about that is the way it came about.

You know, when you talk to young actors, I say to them, don't

give any indication that you want the role.

Yeah, I generally don't.

Well, that's good.

That's good because when you want something, and I'm guilty of it myself, a neediness comes through that puts them off.

So, you know, be aloof.

As Neil Simon wrote, the aloofer the better.

That's the big acting job.

Exactly.

Pretend like you don't give a shit.

With the Joker, it just so happens because I would have really wanted that role, but here was the background of that.

It came about a month after the fans freaked out that Michael Keaton was going to play Batman.

They hadn't seen him.

Oh, he's Mr.

Bomb.

He's comedy.

He can't play Batman.

I thought he was like the best Batman.

He was great.

but what I'm saying, this all happened before they even started shooting.

Yeah,

so in that atmosphere, I went in and I think, wow, if they think the fans freaked out about Mr.

Mom being Batman, how are they going to feel about Luke Skywalker being the Joker?

There's no way they can cast me.

Yeah, they just can't.

So I had no performance anxiety whatsoever, because I, whatsoever, because I knew I couldn't get it.

So I go in there, and like I say, I just let it rip.

It had, there was only one drawing of the Joker.

The only direction was Don't Think Nicholson.

Yeah.

And so I just did it and I had a blast and I pull out of the parking lot thinking, top that, they're never going to find a better joker than that.

Of course, the minute they said, you got it, I did a 180, like, oh, no.

I said, I wanted to play someone that had never been done before, whether it's Clayface, Rasha Ghoul.

I don't want to play such a high-profile character.

But to cut to the chase, that role really changed my career, at least in voiceover.

And

gave you a whole other

possibility.

Yeah, exactly.

So, I mean, it made me more desirable, not on camera, but in voiceover.

And to tell you the truth, I mean, I went to Broadway to try and get character roles I couldn't get on camera, and it was all right under my nose.

I thought, why didn't I go directly to voiceover in the first place?

It didn't occur to me.

Well, that's, but it's interesting that idea that Skywalker became an obstacle your entire career on some level.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, it's one of those things where

you just

the interesting thing about that is normally when you do a job, you finish it and you move on.

That's our life as actors.

You just, you get it, get it done, put it behind you, go to the next thing.

Put it behind you, go to the next thing.

Right.

It's very difficult for some people to accept that

it's in my past.

Yeah, because it made such an imprint on the culture and on kids and on, you know, everything.

It was like, it just happened to be the, just, just in transparency, my, my knowledge of Star Wars drops off around the second or third movie.

After the second or third movie.

Yeah, that's it.

That's it for me.

Listen, people come up to me and say, I'm really sorry, I've never seen Star Wars.

Like, I care.

That doesn't matter.

No, I know I, you know, I know your place in the world, but like, I'm not a huge sci-fi guy.

It doesn't matter.

Yeah.

But getting back to what the Long Walk and

the life of Chuck, one guy really changed my career.

That's Mike Flanagan.

Now, I was a fan of his.

I saw The Haunting of Hill House.

It was like an eight-hour mini-series.

Yeah.

The haunting of Bly Manor.

And then I watched Midnight Mass.

And he has these big ensemble casts.

And he contacted me, he came over to the house with Trevor Macy, the producer, and asked me to be in the fall of the house of Usher.

So I read this thing, and it's just bonkers.

It's like way over the top horror to the point where it's almost self-parody.

And I told him that.

I said, I hope you don't mind, but I mean, some of this is just so bizarre.

It's just funny.

He goes, oh, no, please.

Yeah.

Anyway, so I played this small part of the family lawyer, the sociopathic.

In the fall of the House of Usher.

In the fall of the House of Usher.

I'm the lawyer to this horribly evil family.

And one thing that's clever about Mike is he makes it relatable in the sense that the Usher family is a, they're all terrible.

Yeah.

All the kids, they're just awful.

Anyway, they've made billions of dollars selling a drug Ligodone, which is another Edgar Allan Poe reference,

that kills people and is highly addictive.

You go, oh, Usher's Ligodone, Sackler family, OxyContin.

So there's a foundation that you can relate to.

Sure.

And it's in the present.

Yes.

So anyway, what I thought, I said, this is a role that would have been commonplace if it were voiceover.

This is the first time they've given me a character part on camera.

And it's so great because, like I say, there's this massive cast.

The weight isn't on your shoulders if you were like the main lead.

Right.

Anyway.

Mike Flanagan.

Mike Flanagan.

And I'm telling you, then he asked me to do

The Life of Chuck.

I thought that was a sweet movie somehow.

The Life of Chuck.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

What's bizarre to me and amazing is that Stephen King wrote both of these.

Yeah, under

The Long Walk was under a pseudonym, right?

Yeah.

What's his name?

Richard Bachmann.

Richard Bachmann, exactly.

He was 19, Mark, when he wrote this thing.

Well, let me ask you.

19.

I'll tell you one thing about the movie because I saw it yesterday.

What, Long Walk?

Yeah.

The one thing I thought was like, this is clearly was written as a Vietnam analogy.

It was clearly a metaphor for that war to me.

And I walked out thinking, like, if they made this in 73 on a small budget, it would have been fucking mind-blowing.

Yeah.

But, you know, the updating of it worked.

All the performances, I think, were great.

Those young guys, they're the heart and the soul of the movie.

What's interesting is I do this, and I'm thinking, well, it's this dystopian retro future, and you have to make the leap of faith to buy the premise.

But once you do, it's really about the guys' relationships.

Then you see...

Foxhole friendships almost.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then you see masked thugs dragging people out of cars, breaking windows, all this stuff.

That was all after the movie when ICE came to Los Angeles.

And your mouth's hanging open.

Oh my God, we're now relevant in a way we weren't before.

Sure.

It's hard to believe what's going on.

Was there a sense of, oh, yeah, yeah, with the big shift towards authoritarianism, it's happening.

I don't know why

people don't just call it what it is.

Well,

the thing is,

It was bad enough that, by the way, I mean, one of my two big things I have about politics, get rid of Citizens United, get rid of the Electoral College.

Gore beat W by half a million votes in popular votes.

Hillary beat him by nearly 3 million.

Dead bang, whoever gets the most votes wins.

There's no modern country that has an Electoral College.

And

now he's going to rig it.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

But that aside, were you aware, you know, going into the long walk that it was a Vietnam metaphor?

I thought so, yeah.

Is there any truth to

your knowledge that Star Wars was also in response to Vietnam?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

George is very political.

I mean, there's no denying it.

I mean,

it's dressed up as a children's fairy tale, but the evil empire and the rebels.

I mean, he came out of, you know, he's not that much older than I am.

I think he's maybe, I was 24 and he was 31.

Yeah.

So seven years older than me.

Harrison's actually older than George.

Yeah.

But

I didn't read and go, oh, this is a Vietnam.

Once I saw the finished film and I saw discussions of it, I said, oh, okay, I'm getting more and more.

I mean, because you can take it on any level you want, which is why it's great for children, but it also engages older people.

Who wrote that first one?

Just George or was Casden on that?

Well, no, George wrote it, but he was assisted by Willard Hike, Gloria and Willard Hike, who had written American Graffiti.

They get uncredited.

He'll pay them, but he won't credit them.

But

they were the ones that came in and did the snappy dialogue between the princess and Hansel back and forth and made it

humorous.

No, they weren't on set.

You still talked to George?

Yeah, I have.

I went to his birthday,

his 80th birthday

a while back.

And it was odd because when we were doing one of the sequels was the first time Hillary was running against him.

And English people on the crew would come up to me and say, Mark, why do Americans love Donald Trump so much?

And I'm going,

I don't know a single person that could stomach him.

I used to think when I was living in New York doing theater, he was amusing to me.

What's not funny about a blowhard egomaniac with zero self-awareness?

Buffoon.

Yeah, and it's so needy to be spotted in lanes.

I mean, he has that actor's mentality of, you know, give me attention.

Where's my camera?

He was a buffoon.

But what turned me on a dime was in 2011 when he went on the birther thing.

Sure.

Which was interesting because that was his first foray into politics, and he got a great response from that.

Sure.

Ooh, I'm appealing to the racists and the

conspiracy theorists.

But, you know, it's one thing for him to have sneaked by the first time.

When he got re-elected, that's on us.

That's where I'm really ashamed of, because I always thought there are more decent

Americans,

honest Americans than there are others.

And

I proved I was wrong.

I'm in the minority in my own country.

Don't underestimate the power of handheld propaganda to break people's brains.

Yeah, I guess.

But New York, I mean, like, another thing that I don't know that I fully realize is that just how long you've been sort of kicking around a bit doing television before Star Wars.

Oh, yeah.

The first job I got was the summer of 1970 and I was a fairly prolific television actor.

Where was that?

You were out here?

Where did you grow up?

My dad was in the Navy.

Was he like the major?

Well, he wasn't authoritarian.

He wasn't quite that extreme.

I'm the middle of seven children.

Oh, my God.

Roman Catholic family.

Wow.

One older brother, two older sisters, two younger sisters, and a younger brother.

Do you know all of them?

Yes.

And we moved.

I went to nine different schools in 12 years.

That's crazy.

So we're in always coast to coast.

And living on base or off base?

No, off base until we got transferred.

I was in Virginia.

We got transferred to Japan.

I went to Yokohama High School.

In that case, I lived on the Marine base.

And so just walking to the teen club or to the PX,

I walked across the parking lot of the Marine base where the major types were putting the troops through their paces in sweltering heat.

And I saw, I mean, I told Francis Lawrence, the director, I know this guy.

I've seen him.

I mean, I'll never forget.

I saw

a soldier throw up and be forced to eat it

with a spoon by a major type.

Eat it!

Yeah.

And he was not kidding.

And the guy, I had to turn my eyes away.

I mean, but it rattled me because I'm like 16 years old.

So anyway, I moved from

Yokohama, Japan, when I graduated.

Were you able to take in or be affected by the culture of these places, of Japan?

Oh, I'm sure, absolutely.

And opened my eyes.

I mean, I love Japan.

You can get anywhere in Japan.

Like 100 yen, 25 cents, you get on the train and you're in Tokyo in 45 minutes.

Yeah, so

because that was another bummer.

I was 16 and a half, about ready to get my learner's permit, and then we get transferred.

Oh, that's so funny because

at that age, you can't appreciate the global adventure because they're like, I can almost drive.

Yes, exactly.

That's my worldview.

But no, so I come to Los Angeles thinking, what am I going to do?

The family moved?

No, that's when I graduated, so

they got their next assignment, which was in Tracy, California.

But I came to Los Angeles for my brother's wedding.

But I had to get into school or I would have been drafted.

I had no money, but since I'm a California resident, I was able to get an LACC, $8 in a pen, and you're in.

And what was interesting that when my brother had

one of his best friends was Michael Franks, who's a recording artist and sort of a niche.

I know that name.

Did any of your siblings serve?

No.

So you grew up in the military?

Yeah, my brother became a doctor.

How do you top that?

You can't.

Yeah.

Was your dad okay with your pursuit?

Oh, no, of course not.

Are you out of your mind?

You know, he was, I'll tell you how long it lasted.

I got my first job in 1970, and I was nine months on a soap.

I did, I don't know, 15 TV movies.

I had a short-lived series that was critically acclaimed, but got canceled, the Texas Wheelers for Mary Tyler Moore,

and then guest starred and all this stuff.

He visited me in like 1975 or six, the year before I did Star Wars.

And I took him to see the paper chase.

And I thought, well, this will be impressive because it's on the lot at 20th Century Fox.

Timothy Bottoms and John Hausman?

Yes, exactly.

But here's the key thing.

As we were driving back, I said, well, what did you think of the movie, Dad?

He goes, well, I thought it was a remarkable depiction of young law students.

And you know, Mark, if you ever thought of going back to law school, I would match you dollar for dollar.

And I'm thinking, are you kidding me?

I could level this guy by just telling him how much I made last year, which I know was triple what he made.

And it would have felt good in the moment.

I'm glad I didn't do it because I just swallowed my pride and I said, okay, Dad.

Well, that's interesting because like usually

that sort of adversarial dynamic between a rigid dad for whatever reason, for whatever their principles are, and a creative kid is,

I have found talking to people, a lot of it's rooted out of fear for you.

Probably.

And your security.

That's what he was saying.

He said, no, he said, you can't make a living with puppets and magic tricks, you know, because that's what I had, a Jerry Mahoney dummy.

That was very empowering.

I hosted an assembly and I realized how when you were a kid?

Yeah, when I was in sixth grade.

Yeah, so you had the ventrocus?

I had the dummy and I realized I could say.

outrageous things and blame it all on the doll.

Sure.

And the laughter was like an endorphin.

I said, uh.

You must have had a moment where you got a laugh and thought, I want this in life.

This is what I want.

I guess so.

I didn't have the talent to be a stand-up comedian, but I just knew I'm doing this.

I don't care how.

So it was one of those store-bought Ventroquis dummies.

Exactly, exactly.

Jerry Mahoney wasn't Edgar Bergen, though.

No, that was Paul Winchell.

Yeah, Paul Winchell.

But I also love Sherry Lewis.

Oh, yeah.

I would sit in front of the mirror practicing all day, not knowing I live.

You can kind of do that.

So hours and hours.

And they'd see this and say, there's something wrong with him.

And I love television so much.

I love television.

I have to credit Walt Disney because the first time I ever saw how movies were made.

I mean, he'd say the making of Darby O'Gill and the Little People or whatever.

They show the camera crew and wardrobe and hair.

And you go, oh, my God.

I mean, this is like an education.

It's the whole world.

No other.

person was showing you how you do this.

And I'm telling you, whatever it was, I thought, I mean, I didn't think, oh, I'm going to be an actor, but I like I'd see King Kong on TV and I think, oh, my God, how did they make the dinosaurs move?

And I cried my eyes out when Kong dies.

So I go to the library.

I'm looking up on microfiche, reviews from 1933.

Willis O'Brien, special effects, Marcel Delgado, model maker.

Because I'm thinking, I want to go to a job where you bring dinosaurs to life.

I mean, when I realized how it was done frame by frame, I thought, oh, I don't know if I have the skill, but I'm not a bad cook.

I could cater.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yeah, I just want to be near the show.

I don't have to be in the show.

I want to be near the show.

And so I had that determination very early on.

I couldn't admit it because I had all the brothers and sisters that ridiculed me to no end

about being in the business.

But you're right.

They were concerned that it was an unrealistic

pursuit.

Yeah.

Like, we don't know anybody in shows.

Not only that, we don't know anybody who knows anybody in show business.

It's that simple.

Well, you're kind of insulated in the military.

Of course.

Yeah.

So how do you break out?

So outside of the

Jerry Mahoney moment, when do you start doing stuff?

And were you interested, like the dinosaurs, Kong, were you always interested in fantasy, science fiction?

Yeah, I loved all that stuff.

All of it.

Comic books, the whole thing.

But I mean, we weren't allowed to have comic books unless they were classics illustrated.

But then I'd make buddies in the neighborhood who were allowed to have comic books.

And go to their house and sit.

What was the radical comic at that time?

Oh, well,

probably Mad.

Oh, yeah.

Mad magazine.

And then I discovered there were Mad Comics.

Like I said, this guy had a father who also collected, and he had all of his.

That's the first time we realized there was Mad Comics.

Where was that?

Although they did paperback books, black and white reprints of the well, they started with the small comic books and then moved to the magazine format.

So the early, early Mads.

Yeah, exactly.

And so the dad had you always need that guy, right?

The friend who's got the big brother.

Exactly.

Or the dad.

Exactly.

What year was that, though?

How old were you then?

It was probably

uh 60 61 because by you know when the beatles came out everything changed yeah where you go i'm not spending any money on comic books anymore got to save up money for the records yeah and uh you're a little too young you were born in 63 yeah so yeah you were born in what 51.

so the the the beatles generation i'm telling you it just rocked our world i mean they talk about going from black and white into color the day after they were on the ed sullivan show

there was nobody in school who had not seen them.

And then A Hard Day's Night, we couldn't believe it, how funny they were.

And it seemed like a documentary.

You know, those, we'd never heard those accents before, and London was so acerbic, and all of it.

It was just perfect.

And then the whole British invasion, the Stones, the Kinks, the Who, it just was never ending, and it was fantastic.

It was a great time to be a teenager.

And then, you know, like I was looking at my younger brother, the biggest group when he was in high school.

The village people.

I think how sad because disco was just not my thing.

Like, because when I was in high school, you know, disco kind of died.

Right.

And I saw what happened after.

And, you know, but, but you saw the great stuff and then you saw it turn to garbage.

Yeah.

But you can't find redeeming things in disco.

Obviously, there's some great performers.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, of course.

Of course.

No, they're skilled performers.

So it's not my music.

Well, once disco happens, you go back to comic books and fantasy.

Well, for a while, I was collecting comics.

I mean, you know, the thing is, they remind you of your own mortality.

Oh, yeah.

You think, I just spent $1,300 on a 10-cent comic book, and I'm 57.

How long am I going to be able to enjoy this?

I mean, because, you know, they get to the point where they're so valuable, your accountant is saying, you better get them into a storage box in the bank.

Like, when are you going to go to the bank and visit?

And what kind of

comic book?

And what are we going for?

Because I do that with with records a bit yeah but the the bigger question is like now how long am i going to live to enjoy this book that's in a safe but like what are we reaching back for

who knows you know what are we trying to connect with because i i go to the record store and i'm going through the bins and i look over to the side of me and on both sides of me there's guys that look roughly like me within a five-year age range i'm like what are we looking for fellas if whatever it is it's gone

yeah well you think about that i mean uh

all these extreme weather events, and you go, I remember when I was like a teenager, late teens, when scientists were warning about the dangers of climate change of CO2 and

fossil fuels and all that.

And they were warning, so this would have been late 60s, early 70s, warning.

If we don't do something right now,

it will be unsustainable in the future.

Fast forward to an administration that calls climate change not just a hoax, a Chinese hoax.

Sure.

You get that racist jab jab in there.

Let's play that on the Chinese.

Well, maybe everyone will die at the same time and no one will miss anything.

Well, who knows?

I mean, what was that James Cameron article I was reading today where he's talking about if artificial intelligence ever gets mad

or involved with the nuclear code, it could be all over.

Yeah, you can't rely on it too much, and now we're all passively adapting to it.

But that aside, so

when do you start acting?

When is the training?

What happened?

Well, like in school, I'd always try out for stuff.

And sometimes I'd get apart.

But if I didn't get apart, fine, I'll be on the crew.

I'll do props.

I'll work in the lighting booth.

You just love that.

Yeah, like I say, I have to be near the show.

And it got to the point where

I'd done so much that by the time I got to high school, it was like school, these six hours are just what I have to get through to get why I'm really here is rehearsal.

Right.

That's when I was in my element.

What, you like doing musicals and stuff?

Well, whatever.

You know, I mean,

and also my father

took business trips when he lived into Virginia.

Twice I got to go to New York and see Broadway shows.

He wouldn't go with me.

I'd get a single

and go see The Odd Couple, The Mad Show.

And one time I remember, I thought, well, I don't like musicals.

I've seen him on TV.

I love you.

I'd seen operettas.

I had never seen like a funny musical.

Later, I'd discover how to succeed in business or damn Yankees.

But at that time, I just had an aversion to musicals, but I saw an ad and I thought, well, wait a second.

It says book by Neil Simon.

So it's a musical, but it's got to be funny.

So I'll take a chance on it.

I went to see Sweet Charity.

I'd never seen human bodies move that way.

It was sexier than hell.

hilarious.

Gwen Verden, you just wanted to hug her.

I mean, that changed my mind.

And then I started, you know, I mean, we didn't have Google, but, you know, like I say you go down to the library and look up microfiche in the new york times and that's when i discovered a whole world of shows that i'd never thought of before and that then we get transferred to japan and my drama teacher i bring him up mr burl john and burl yeah but he was sort of stuck in the 40s what he liked he planned for the big

play in my senior year, Time Out for Ginger.

And I read it and I said, yeah, okay.

But I said, you got to read this.

And I gave him a copy of The Odd Couple.

I said, it's the funniest thing I'd ever seen in my life.

He wound up doing it.

Now, I wanted to play Oscar, but he said, Mark, you got to play Felix.

Because Oscar gets laughs because of his lines.

You just say him deadpan.

What do you got to eat?

I got brown sandwiches and green sandwiches.

What's the green?

It's either very new cheese or very old meat.

Just deadpan.

And we can get somebody from, you know, because a lot of guys wouldn't go out for drama.

It was too fae or not masculine.

But I would go to guys like on the football team and say, hey, you got to play this guy.

You got to play Murray in the odd couple.

You just play poker and it's funny or just read it.

So he led me to the odd couple.

I had to play Felix, but like I say, not only was it a big hit, but they liked it so much.

We toured other bases.

It must have been so odd to see a bunch of 16-year-old boys playing middle-aged divorced men.

But like I say, the material was so strong.

And

the reason I bring him up is he's the first person that gave me validation.

As we're getting near graduation, he sat me down.

He said, you know something?

I think if you apply yourself, there's a very good chance you could be successful in show business.

Nobody had ever done that before.

It probably wasn't their place.

Your drama teacher is going to give you life advice.

But he knew how much I wanted it.

And it really made an impression on me to the point where when Hanna-Barbera wanted Scooby-Doo to meet Mark Hamill,

they said it in Japan and I had a meeting with the writers where I gave them all this information.

They said, well,

we can acknowledge Mr.

Burrell, but we'll spell it like Milton Burrell because we don't know if he has any relatives that would object or whatever like that.

And he passed away by that point.

So you gave him a little tribute?

Yes, we did.

So was that the only training you had?

No, then I went to LACC and I majored in drama.

I kind of wish I'd majored in film.

But what's weird, and I've gone back to speak there and I've brought it up.

I go, why is the drama department completely divorced from the film department?

They should be working together.

But

the faculty of the drama department, they were all.

Theater, theater, theater.

Television is rubbish.

Movies.

Sure.

That's the way I think it was, sort of like, this is where you learn how to do theater.

Yes.

And it's too bad because,

you know, the business has changed so much.

But even then, we could have been in their student films and all that.

But, you know, if they found out you were acting in a student film, it was a black mark.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

They not only discouraged it, they didn't even want you to associate with anybody in the film department.

But anyway, so I do four semesters, and by that time, the draft is over.

I got,

so I land in the summer of 69, the summer of 1970,

I got an agent.

Michael Franks had written a musical, and the first summer I was there, he had seen me as a kid doing Richard Nixon Impressions and Jerry Mahoney and all that.

He grew up with that.

Yeah.

He said, I got a part for you.

I didn't even have to audition.

So we do this.

I'm talking about how luck is so much a part of what happens to you.

There's a guy whose daughter was in the cast who worked for Neil Diamond.

So he was in show business.

He said to me, if you're serious about that, I can take you around and you can meet.

And through that, I got an agent.

I would go into an office, I'd do a comedy scene, and I'd do Subject with Roses as my drama, do Snoopy for comedy.

You're like 20?

Well, summer 1970, see, I'm 51.

I was, no, I was

19.

Or 18.

Yeah.

Because by the time

I didn't have to worry about the draft anymore, then I could go out for all this stuff.

I mean, it was really hard.

My agents were saying, what do you mean?

You got to go out for this.

It's a big part.

I said, I can't.

If I get dropped from school, I'll get drafted.

Anyway, that goes away.

And

I probably sort of regret now not transferring to a four-year college, but I was getting work, so you can't.

And you're doing the sitcoms, like the Fly Partridge family?

Yeah.

And the Bill Cosby show.

No, there was an example.

The old Bill Cosby, not the newer one.

Like what?

No, no, not the Cosby show.

It was called The Bill Cosby Show.

He played a high school athletic director.

And this gives you an example of

learning early that the real person isn't always like their

public persona.

Because I idolized Bill Cosby.

I had Why Is Their Heir?

I had his comedy albums.

He did, what, eight comedy albums?

Yeah, a lot of them.

Oh, weird Harold.

I just thought it was going to be so much fun.

First of all, we rehearse without him with the stand-in.

Then when they are ready to shoot, he comes on set with a big cigar, very imperious and a minder, who takes the car out of his mouth.

He didn't say, hello, how are you?

He only spoke to us in the lines of the scene.

Yeah.

And he did the scene.

And in the scene, he's amiable and nice.

Yeah.

And then cut, and he's back, the cigar walks off, doesn't say goodbye.

Then my brothers and sisters, they knew he was one of my.

What was he like?

And I was so wanting to perpetuate the mill.

Oh, he was great.

I didn't tell him what I just told you because I didn't want to believe it myself.

But it was an early lesson for me.

It turns out he was really bad.

Well, he didn't offer me any drinks.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah,

that's a big moment, you know, for a young actor.

It's eye-opening.

You go, wow, okay, he's different.

Same thing with a soap.

I said, I don't want to do a soap opera.

The only time I've ever watched them is openly mock them.

Then you go and you realize

that, first of all, the people are great and you learn so much.

You learn how to hit your mark without looking down, how to find your light, how to

yeah be get over your fear of the teleprompter and during dress rehearsal all the actors in the show are openly mocking it does

peggy know that yeah i mean way over the top yeah they're having fun and then on camera it's does peggy know that they're professionals but that that was nine months of i was two shows a week i wasn't a major

general hospital and I wasn't a major character.

And by the way, when I auditioned,

we were playing brother and sister.

I went in with the girl I was living with, I met in drama school.

I said, let's pretend like we don't know each other.

How do you do?

How do you do?

And they thought after the scene, gee, you kids have a tremendous amount of rapport.

We're like, well, we're just good actors.

Now, it kind of backfired because when they realized they were sending scripts to the same address,

the producer had us in and said, you got to watch this because fans are going to look at it like incest.

And we can't have that.

I'll have to fire you.

So don't show up holding hands or doing anything in the in the soap magazines and stuff but it was great training and it was a good place to learn how to i mean a lot of these kids come right out of high school and get a big hit tv show so they're making their mistakes in prime time in front of millions of viewers that was a place to learn yeah it's great but you did like um i these i get kind of fascinated with these because i remember them from when i was a kid and you were already acting in them but like cannon yeah yeah with william Conrad.

You know what shocked him was I came in and I said, what was it like narrating Rocky and Bullwinkle?

And he was like,

how did you know that?

But I was one of those people.

I was one of those people before Google, I was so, I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle, all the cartoons, mostly Looney Tunes and Jay Ward.

But

you couldn't just find, you know, you had to go to the library.

You did the same thing.

You go, yeah, not only the library, you go to the record store to the children's records section, and you get a Rocky and Bullwinkle album i would write down dawes butler yeah june foray don messick people i later work with and they were like idols of mine that's great and and and uh I was always serious about it.

I mean, you have fun.

I remember I was having so much fun on the soap.

I remember one actor took me aside.

He goes, you know, Hamill, enjoy it now, because when you turn 30, you're going to look like an old kid.

And I thought about that.

I sort of brushed it off later.

I thought, I wonder if he's right.

I mean, you have no control, control, but maybe I'm going to hit 30 and I'll just look like a teenage kid with crow's feet or whatever.

But that's what I'm saying.

You can't predict the longevity of your career.

Well, it's lucky you avoided that.

But you did like Night Gallery.

Who was that?

Gavin.

What was the Night Gallery?

Night Gallery was Rod Serling.

Follow-up to Twilight Zone.

Yeah.

Room 222.

Come on, man.

Yeah, Room 222.

What was the name of that principal?

Constantine?

What was that?

Yeah, Michael Constantine, Karen Valentine.

Karen Valentine.

Lloyd Haynes.

Yeah.

And David Jolliffe, who I'm still friends with.

He was one of the students.

He had the big red fro.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember watching him.

He's

a big guy in SAG.

And I like to be, I don't, I always vote, but I'm not always informed.

So I always call Jolliff and say, where are we on these issues?

Sure.

Sean Aston is another one that I can rely on.

And you did, like, you did Ate Is Enough after you did Star Wars?

Oh, we did a pilot where they changed the actor who played the

father and three of the siblings were replaced, including me.

Yeah.

And

then it sold and had a run.

I don't know how long it was.

So it was just a pilot.

Yeah.

So when you get Star Wars, that's interesting because you probably could have gone on playing teenage parts for a while.

Yeah.

Because you did kind of maintain that.

Yeah, I was 24 when I did Star Wars, and I looked like a teenager.

But it's so fortunate that you didn't get stuck in that because that generally doesn't age well.

Yeah, yeah.

To be that guy.

Yeah, exactly.

You will look at these.

Some people survive magnificently.

My friend Bill Moomi is the best example.

But I've seen young actors, and you can understand why.

From the age of eight to 14,

they're the focus of all this attention.

The car picks them up.

There are people, you know, making them up and doing their hair.

Then it's over.

They're 14.

They're gawky.

They're no longer commercial.

And it just wrecks their psyche.

It's like when my boys came home from school one time, they said, hey,

my friend Jim just got a motorbike and all he had to do was one commercial.

Let us do one commercial.

I said, really?

You want me or your mother to pick you up after school, drive you into town,

go up into an office building, sit around with 80 other kids, go in, read a couple of lines, come back down, come back home.

By that time it's seven o'clock, you have to do your homework, eat your dinner and go right to bed.

You want that?

And they're thinking about, I said, look, when you're 18, if you still want this, I'll give you all the support I can.

But no to being a child actor.

That's it.

You scared them out of show business.

Yeah.

How to talk people out of show business.

And when I talk to young actors, I tell them, if there's anything you like as much as this, do that.

Because you're in a world of

constant rejection.

It's not because you're bad.

It's just because you're too tall, you're too this, you're too fat, you're too thin, you've got blue eyes, you want brown eyes.

It's like spinning a roulette wheel.

I mean, eventually it'll come up your number, but you might have to spin it 2,500 times.

Sure.

So if there's anything else you like, don't do this.

And where's your mother in all this?

She supported you?

She was always very supportive.

She was the one.

In other words, I remember I had no political

convictions, but like Nixon versus JFK, my dad was pro-Nixon.

I'm saying to my mother, because I'm looking at JFK, he's smiling, he's funny.

You're like 12 years old?

Well, it would have been 1960.

It would have been eight.

Yeah, sure.

I felt it.

But I watched television.

I love television.

And if I couldn't get my way, because we only had one television, I would be wanting to watch Tom Terivik know we're watching the 6 o'clock news.

Well, then I watched.

So you saw the sweaty debate?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And,

well, clips of it.

I think they probably made me go to bed.

There were a lot of things where I couldn't see them until summer.

Like Twilight Zone was past my bedtime.

Dick Van Dyke Show was past my bedtime.

I remember sneaking down and lying in the hallway with my my eyes just under the door

in the hallway watching the TV.

And then, of course, when the commercial is on, you have to run and hide because they go to get snacks or whatever.

But no, and I said to my mother, I said, I don't understand that.

I mean,

I didn't, it wasn't based on politics.

I said, one guy looks like a creepy teacher that you don't want.

And the other guy has like beaming rays of light and he's funny and laughing.

And I said, I want.

She goes, well, don't tell your father this.

But I'm voting for JFK.

Those were in the days when the wife was expected to vote like the husband, and she had to keep it a secret.

But she was like that.

She was always the cool parent, the one you could relate to and

confess your voice.

That's great.

Yeah.

I mean, it was a nice balance because my father.

It was a full-time job when you got seven kids.

Yeah.

Well, my father was not a bad person, but he was very...

authoritarian, very strict.

You know, he'd do inspections where we come in and look how we tucked our beds in order to

do all that stuff.

One time he gave us a lecture on how to wipe ourselves.

We're like, oh, dude.

So when you get Star Wars, you're young and you got chops, you know, from at least on set and doing roles.

Was there anything that could have prepared you?

How did you handle the explosion of the success?

Well, I should tell you that

I had just come off of the the Texas Wheelers.

Yeah.

And they set me first, and I tested with two actors, Tom Liggin, a Broadway actor who I'd seen.

I can't remember what plays.

He's very good.

And then this guy from Oklahoma with all these gums and these teeth.

And I said, I don't know.

I mean, I didn't have casting approval.

They just wanted my opinion.

I said, Tom Liggin's an excellent actor.

But that guy from Oklahoma, I've never, he's so authentic, that Gary Busey.

I mean,

so that was the first thing that Gary got.

And the thing was,

what?

The Texas Wheeler.

The Texas Wheeler.

Okay.

And Jack Elam.

Yeah.

The character actor with the copy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he was wonderful.

And he was playing comedy.

He was playing this horrible,

he was, in the first, in the pilot episode, he comes back after having abandoned us, where Gary assumes the father figure.

So it was raucous.

There was no laugh track, which was really unusual in those days.

And it was a comedy.

And I got to play a care, it was a character role, and it was funny, but my character, Doobie,

was

he didn't think he was funny at all.

He fancied himself a ladies' man, even though he was a virgin.

He was almost like the father, but he couldn't see it.

So I love that role because I thought, I never get to play comedy, especially somebody that

lacking in self-awareness.

And when it got canceled, I mean, I was beyond, I was inconsolable.

How many episodes did you do?

13.

Oh, yeah, full season.

Four aired.

And then they canceled it.

Yeah.

I just, I was so disillusioned, I thought, I don't even care if I'm in the business anymore.

I just fuck it.

Then I got Star Wars.

And the reason I brought it up is that if the Texas Wheelers had been a hit, I would have been unavailable for Star Wars.

So that's how quirky it is.

And with Star Wars, I had my friend Jonathan Bonaire.

He worked at the LA Art Museum in the film department.

And when I got the script,

first of all,

I didn't get the script until I got the part.

We got a scene that we did, a test scene.

I did it with Harrison, but there was no context.

And I said, Harrison, you were in American Graffiti.

You know, George, is this like a send-up, like a parody?

Yeah, hey, kid,

whatever.

Let's just fucking get it done.

So he was no help.

Then I go to George.

I go, George,

is this like a send-up of

Flash Gordon?

well,

let's just do it and we'll talk about it later.

Translation, let's just do it and we'll never talk about it later.

George doesn't want to hear about backstory or motivation.

He's a film director.

He comes alive in the editing room, not on site, because he's a really quiet, shy person.

Jonathan read it.

He goes, can I give it to Meredith?

Oh, sure.

We were just passing it around, which is funny now because once it became what it was, you know, there were serial numbers.

I mean, you couldn't show anybody.

Sure.

But I said, look up all the grosses from, not, you don't have to go back to Metropolis and silent films, but look up grosses for fantasy, science fiction, not even horror films, from, say, like King Kong in 1933 on.

And he did, and he showed me the spreadsheet.

And I said, you know something?

I think this movie will make more than Planet of the Apes.

I'm talking about the 1968 Planet of the Apes.

It cost about,

I think, just about a little over $8 million in 1970.

We went over budget.

It was supposed to be 7.2 million.

For Star Wars, yeah.

For Star Wars.

But I said, so you have to two and a half times and then you're in profit.

So 8, 16 plus 4.

I said, this will make 28, 30 million if it makes a dime.

I'm sure.

And it was important because we signed a contract that if the first one was successful, they had an option for part two and part three.

Yeah.

So I, when we, even when we were filming it, I said, I, I think we were on my, Robert Watts was the production designer on the first day uh at the studio he had me in his office he says

uh what do you think about what we're about to embark on i said i think we're on a winner i really do yeah i just i've said it's got it's got humor a robots arguing over whose fault it is yeah there's a really great villain effortless feminism i mean the princess takes no she's right up in vader's face you call this a rescue give me those guns she takes over her own rescue makes the boys look like chumps yeah i said that's what i love about it it.

It works on so many levels.

Yeah.

What'd he say?

Who said rots?

Well, first of all, he said, what would you like me to call you, Mr.

Hamill or Mark?

I said, hey, I'm Easy.

You can call me Hey You.

Do you know, to the day he died last year, he called me Hey You.

Hey you.

He was fabulous, this guy.

And he did Raiders.

I mean, he had a fantastic career on his own.

But he had humor.

I mean, that's something about the Brits.

They have a sense of humor humor that's all their own.

Yeah.

And they can wield the C-word unlike the Americans.

Sure, yeah, yeah.

It's not as loaded.

No.

So it becomes a success.

So now you're a fucking star.

When does a car accident happen?

That would have been January before the movie came out.

And what was interesting, nobody wrote about it because nobody knew who I was.

And later it came out and

I broke my nose when I hit the steering wheel because I braked too hard.

Bo, they made it, then I rolled the car over.

I was crawling on the freeway.

Sure.

I mean, it was just ridiculous.

But, I mean, I didn't really want to feed that story, so I just sort of ignored it.

But it wasn't a life-threatening thing.

Oh, no, no.

No, it was stupid.

And just, it healed and you didn't get fucked up.

No, no.

I mean, it was one of those things where, you know what it was?

I was going way too fast.

It was, there was nobody else on the freeway, probably two in the morning.

Yeah.

And I saw my exit and I was one lane away from the exit.

And I thought, rather than just going to the next exit, I thought I could pull it off.

And I pulled over.

And no, I had to hit the brakes, and I broke my nose.

Okay.

So Star Wars becomes huge, and now you're in.

You're like.

I am.

I'm in, and I'm not in.

Because, like I say,

you know,

when I did the test, for instance,

I just assumed Harrison was the leading man because he's a leading man.

Not until I get the, then the.

How is he a leading man?

It's like, he hadn't been in movies that much.

No, no, but what I'm saying, he's the conventional 35-year-old leading man.

And in the screen tests,

we're approaching the desk star.

There's no Wookiee.

It's just me and him.

And the dialogue is he's in control and I'm sort of this annoying sidekick.

He's getting irritated by.

So I look through, he's Buck Rogers, and I'm, you know, whoever the sidekick is.

It wasn't until I read it, I went, oh my God, it's through the eyes of this teenager.

That shocked me.

But like I say, he is a traditional leading man, as well as being a brilliant actor.

I was not that

easy to cast, I don't think.

And so, but like I say,

I just enjoy being a working stiff.

I mean, it doesn't matter if it's television, if it's theater, movies, you know, whatever.

All right, well, cut to like post.

Like once you get, you know, you know, kind of typecast as Luke, that's when the real theater starts, right?

That's where I decided to go to, because I said,

unlike Hollywood, where you have to get an appointment through an agent, they have open casting calls.

In New York.

In New York.

Yeah.

So I read for,

to replace Peter Firth in Amadeus.

And Sir Peter Hall.

Long really they say, oh, nice job and all that.

But here I knew they were serious because they said, look, we're having a problem getting his green card.

If he doesn't doesn't get his green card, you're it.

And they put me up in a hotel for, I don't know, four nights until they found out.

So I knew they were serious.

But as turned out, Peter Firth did get his green card.

I felt like John Cassavetti's and Rosemary's baby where you're wishing bad things on someone else just to get apart.

It wasn't a nice feeling.

But anyway, they gave me the first national tour of that, and then they transferred me to Broadway.

As Amadeus, what a great role, huh?

Yeah, fantastic.

And so you did that on open call.

You were really trying to be anonymous in a way?

I wasn't trying to be anonymous.

I just thought

I know I can do this, but they have to see me.

No agent over the phone is going to be able to convince them.

So I replaced in the Elephant Man, then Amadeus.

Oh, my God, those are rough parts.

Yeah, they are.

And let me tell you something.

I auditioned on a Sunday for

Elephant Man.

Yeah.

And I was supposed to

appear

the first time after three weeks of rehearsal on the following Tuesday.

But they said, Do you want to sneak you on on a Sunday matinee?

And I said, Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah.

And so from the Sunday, I

then went into rehearsal and had three weeks.

And then they put me on on a Sunday.

Wow.

And I mean, Mark, I didn't even know all my lines.

And there was one part where

I thought I was doing fine.

And I realized realized Carol Shelley

says to me now

I don't think you're yourself today yeah you have to

she in character yeah was going off dialogue and that alerted me oh something's wrong she goes now I'm gonna leave the room and come back in like this didn't happen and you mind your manners yeah

And then what happened, I had skipped ahead.

But I'm telling you, Carol Shelley saved my life.

Yeah.

But I'm telling you, you appear for the first time.

You're in a glorified diaper.

My wife said, I could see your knees knocking.

I was that scared.

But that's what I love.

I like being thrown out and you just have to do it.

So I did that.

I did.

Were you considered for the film of Amadeus?

You know what was interesting?

Milos Foreman had me come in to read with actresses playing Costanza.

Yeah.

And so I was in his hotel room and we'd see three or four actresses.

waiting for the next one to come in.

And I said, you know, Mr.

Foreman, I played this part and I really think

I could do a good job.

He goes, oh,

no one is to believing that the Luke Skywalker is the Mozart.

And I go, oh, okay.

Damn it.

Because you know who wanted to play Salieri?

It was Dustin Hoffman.

Yeah.

But he gave it to F.

Murray Abraham because he wanted people that no one had ever seen.

That's smart because F.

Murray Abraham was so fucking good.

And so was Tom Hulse.

I love the movie.

But I have to tell you, if you get a chance to see the play, it's a very different experience than the movie because the movie is literal.

They're out in the streets and there's donkeys and all that.

The play is much more like an opera.

It's structured like an opera and much more theatrical.

So you did, you like really kind of leaned into theater for a few years.

Yeah, I did a musical called Harrigan and Hart, which was brilliant

at the Good Speed Opera.

And

Kevin Kelly from the Boston Globe came out and gave it a rave review.

I was playing Tony Hart, and he went as far as saying, a Tony for Tony, Mark Hamill is like a young

James James Cagney.

Well, here, cut to the chase.

They take this Wunderkin director.

He was younger than I was.

He was like 28, Eddie Stone.

They fire him.

They bring in Joe Layton, who had done Barnum and other musicals.

And he took the sepia-toned mood piece and

made it.

primary colors.

He barnumized it.

And I mean, we were helpless because we knew he was ruining it if they had just transferred the show we did in Connecticut and even put it off Broadway.

Yeah.

Because people were in tears at the end and on their feet.

It was a bomb and it deserved to be a bomb because he ruined it.

And

you're helpless because you know it's not the way it should be.

He thought the ending is so depressing because my character gets addicted to laudanum and he dies very young.

Harrigan, which that song was written about, H-A-R-R-I-G-A-N spells Harrigan.

It's about him.

He lived a long life and had many children and is married to the same woman.

Tony Hart, like I say, got addicted to laudanum, lost his youth.

And we reflected that in the play.

I had a fat punch and we did makeup and receding hair, all that.

He's so depressing.

He says, let's have a moment at the end where there's a flash of magic and you spin around and you're your young selves again.

Really?

And so we did that.

I wiped off the thing and they pulled the wig back down and pulled out the punch and we were young again.

But it was so wrong for the show.

You know, as you're, because the story itself is tragic in and of itself, if you just tell the story.

Here, he wanted to make it something else.

So, in other words, so we opened on a, I don't know, we ran less than a week.

And it was really,

see, the thing is, if you're in a movie that that doesn't hit, it's a year later and it's in theaters and you're not there.

If you're in a play or a musical, you're there every night as it dies.

And,

for instance, I was in a revival of room service directed by Alan Arkin.

We got a love letter from the New York Times.

I went to the theater the next night.

There were lines around the block.

Conversely,

it wasn't even a pan.

And he was like, meh, we've seen that.

It was the Michael Stewart wrote the the book to Harrigan and Hart.

And he had written other,

Mac and Mabel.

He'd read,

we've seen other show, but

it was a lukewarm review.

And

laughs that we had been getting that very next performance after that review.

They're such cheap.

Laughs were gone.

I mean, we got them back by the end of Act One.

But that's how important, especially the New York Times is in New York.

How was Arkin?

He was a challenge because

he,

when things would go well, it somehow made him miserable.

I mean, I would be, the play would open.

I'm familiar with that.

I would see him pacing at the back of the theater and going, oh, you know, like that, really distracting.

And

one time he says, so do you hate me?

You don't like me anymore.

Is that it?

And I'm going, no, Alan, I'm just trying to process what you're trying to convey, and I'm just not getting what you're trying to say.

In other words,

he was one of my idols.

I mean, he's such a good actor.

Very difficult to work with.

And

his son, Adam, was in it.

He played the Bell Boy.

So he had a small part in it.

And his wife was in it.

So it was kind of Ark and family affair.

And they're all lovely people.

And Alan is too.

But like I say,

when the reviews came out, I thought, oh, thank God, the pressure will be off.

He'll be jubilant.

No, he was miserable.

I don't know.

So

sometimes it's hard for people to process joy.

They don't know what happiness is.

You talked about that in Panic.

Yeah.

I don't know what happens.

Am I happy?

I mean, I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have a hard time identifying it.

So I relate to Alan.

I get it.

And I'm the same way.

It's just like.

You are?

Yeah.

It's like

I know I should be thrilled and happy, but I'm not.

In the sense that,

like,

in the mass of

the Star Wars phenomenon, you immediately go to, oh, I've got to do something that breaks me out of this.

I'll be typecast.

Instead of just enjoying the moment.

Well, so you did the theater.

What pulled you back in?

Just the next movie?

Well, I always had VoiceOver.

Yeah.

And it's great.

It's anonymous.

I mean, I'm telling you, it's populated.

The voiceover community is populated with the most famous people you've never heard of.

Sure.

And you meet like Jim Cummings or Rob Paulson or whoever it is, Jeff Bennett.

And then she says, Maurice Lamarsh, oh my God, he's just marvelous and has such a range of characters.

Nobody knows who he is.

And a lot of them enjoy that.

They don't have the pressure of being a public persona.

And

I learned very quickly, yeah, I could be happy doing nothing but this.

And what was, how did you develop your relationship with the Letterman show?

Well, what happened was I was going off to do a movie in

England, and I said to the house sitter, I said, Look, there's two cases of VHS tapes.

There's a show coming on that I'm sure will be canceled within a month.

Because I'd watched his morning show, and I said, This is, oh my God,

I love the morning show.

That's where they first did Stupid Petricks.

Just his whole persona.

I realized later, of course, it's not right for morning women.

So when he got the nighttime show, I said, just tape every single one and do it at the two-hour speed because I want to transfer stuff.

So when I got back,

not only did he prove himself and he was successful, but I had

massive mounds of tapes.

And there was material on there.

I said, I can't let this go.

So I started transferring bits

to the six-hour speed.

Yeah.

Not always his monologue, usually his man on the streets or Larry Bud Melman at the Port Authority.

Sure.

And

I wound up, I now, I mean, I want to be right, I probably have at least 25 volumes at the six hour speed.

I'm sure, because I keep stand-ups I'd like, I'd see Carol Leafer or I'd see whoever.

Yeah.

But Letterman was the guy.

I mean, I still like Kimmel and Colbert.

Do you still have the tapes?

Yeah.

But I've got to transfer them to disc, I guess.

Or my wife says, put them on digital, then you can see them anywhere.

But I'd love to see him because

I put him on for other Letterman buffs.

They go, oh, man, this is, can you make me a copy of it?

Yes.

And then you started to be kind of a regular guest on Letterman, right?

Well, what happened was

who was he liked using either Tony Randall or some other Randall was on there a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But what they knew was that even when I was doing theater if they wanted me to do a bit like something in you know viewer mail or something that I could go to the studio get it done and still make curtain at 730

so they asked me to start doing that more and more and I was totally into it I mean yeah in fact I love that more than being a guest because a guest you have certain responsibilities that you have to be something yeah and here you were just

being a bit yeah you were you were part of their writers

material and there was nobody better than my writing.

That's great.

So when do you surrender to

a life of being okay with being in Star Wars for

life?

Well, the thing is, I was given such definitive closure.

In the sequels, I do a cameo in the first one and a cameo in the second one.

And the only time I'm part of the narrative is in

Ryan Johnson's middle one.

And they give me definitive closure.

So as an actor, I've had that before.

And that's my whole life is you get the job done and you let it go.

So my feeling is people say, well, are you going to do more?

I said, well, first of all, they haven't asked.

And number two, why would they?

I mean, they're doing really well with Mandalorian and Andor.

And

I loved Rogue One.

I mean, they're doing great.

And I had my time.

I have no desire whatsoever

to go back.

Why would I?

I mean, again, I realized that I have put it in a perspective that doesn't match up with a lot of the current fans.

Because they come up to me and they know more about it than I do.

I saw each of the movies once.

I don't go back and watch them again.

I mean, when they re-release them after 20 years, my kids were all, hello, let's go see them.

I said,

you've got them up in your room.

I've seen you watch them three times in a row.

They've never seen him on the big screen.

Oh, okay.

So I did.

I went to see Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi in the theaters in 97.

But that was the last time I saw them.

I don't read the novels.

I don't play the games.

I mean, these fans come up to me, and they've seen them like 30 times in the last week.

And they'll ask you questions like, when you went to the planet of Kazizik.

I said, the planet of Kazizik, what the hell is that?

That's the Wookiee planet.

I said, do we go to the Wookiee planet in a movie?

Oh, no, no.

It's in Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster.

I said, I haven't read that.

But what I'm saying, they're sort of disappointed because I'm like a surface-level fan.

I appreciate it, but I'm not that into it.

I've left it.

And you still have like, because like these, you seem to have done quite a few Stephen King things.

Yeah, but that's, again, it's just by chance.

I mean,

and again.

Life of Chuck is so diametrically opposed to The Long Walk.

Yeah.

Not only in tone and content, but in character.

Albie Krantz is so different than the major.

Sure, sure.

When I met Stephen King, I sat next to him at the Toronto International Film Festival.

And I didn't find out until I was about to go sit down.

They go, oh, you're sitting right next to Stephen King.

I said, really?

Now, I kept it together.

First of all, he looked at me and he goes, The major.

And I think, how the hell does he know?

Later, I asked the Lionsgate people, how does he know I was even in?

We hadn't done it yet.

They said, oh, he has casting approval, director approval, script approval.

I mean, when you're that prolific a writer and you had some bad early experiences where you lost control,

he's got complete control.

Wow.

And I managed to keep it together.

You know, I know I'm a good actor because I said, how do you do?

Instead of, oh, my God, it's Stephen Key.

I didn't do that.

You love him?

Oh, love him.

And the thing is, you know, whenever they offer me something, I immediately read the source material.

Whether it's Life of Chuck,

it's in a collection called If It Bleeds.

So I read this thing, I go, oh, gosh, I hope they keep the Act III, Act II, Act I, all the structure.

Mike Flanning is not only a great director, but he's a really good writer, and he was very faithful to that.

Long Walk, fans have pointed out that there's some changes.

Different ending.

Yeah.

And here's the interesting thing.

Stephen King totally approved of it, which is, again, a great honor.

But if he doesn't like something, he's not shy about saying it.

Yeah, yeah.

So

he gave the blessing to both the life of Chuck and The Long Walk.

I'm so lucky.

But

what are you feeling now?

I mean, like I said, between voiceovers and appearances, and like you're a guy that can play against how you're known.

And sometimes you can use who you were as parody and fun.

You know, like it's a great position to be in.

Well, the great position to be in is, you know, I don't care.

I'm old.

I mean, how much more time do I have?

I mean, that's what I was saying to my representatives.

I said, you know, I mean, look,

I did what I set out to do.

I'm so lucky to have been able to be paid for what I like doing, but what's the point anymore?

I mean, it's not like, oh, I want to be in this or that.

Yeah, but so, but the point is if something comes across

your desk there and you're like, this would be fun yeah I'll do it exactly now with with Mike Flanagan it was like I loved him so much and his wife Kate Siegel and the kid yeah Cody the family's great he's just a great great person and being on set you feel like you're at home and I have a great loyalty to him so I was predisposed to when just said I've got something for you in something called the life of Chuck I'm thinking I really want to do it but I didn't say that I have to read it first

With the

long walk, the premise is so ghastly.

Yeah.

I said, I don't know if I could even see this, much less be in it.

But when I read the book, I go, oh, that horrible premise of everyone having to follow or, you know, get it in the head from the government

is just a vehicle to get you into what the heart and soul is, which is the journey of these young men

on the walk.

So,

and I had a talk with Francis Lawrence, and I love that guy from Hunger Games.

I've always wanted to work with him, and I thought, if I turn this down, my chances of working is going to plummet.

And once I had a conversation with him about the physical violence of it all, because I mean, you know, gun violence is-

Gun violence in America is one of the worst things that's ever happened in this country.

Once I realized he's not, that's not what it's about.

It's not about seeing exploding heads.

Yeah.

The first death is the most graphic.

Everyone after is much more perfunctory.

It serves its purpose.

You're gone.

But it doesn't relish the ghoulishness of it.

Yeah, it's brutal.

And I, like I say,

I'm so glad I did that because

working with Francis was just the greatest.

He's in Europe doing something else now.

So all this promotional stuff, we haven't seen him.

But he's a really great guy and a really great director.

Yeah.

And are there still people you want to work with?

Well, obviously, you go, oh my God, I'd work with, you know, Sparsese or Heartbeat.

There's the list of all those people, but that's okay.

I mean, look, I mean, I met Steven Spielberg.

He's a real nice guy.

He's never hired me.

Okay.

I still love his movies.

Yeah, yeah.

But

like I say, you know, I'm at a place where if it's, this is it, that's fine with me.

Yeah.

I don't really have any burning desire to, oh,

you know,

no desperation.

No, no.

I mean, I was surprised I like Superman because these superhero movies, first of all, they are so long.

It's like two hours and 40 minutes.

I think they think that since it's an epic, it's got to be at least two and a half hours.

But get the job done.

Then I saw Superman.

It's two hours long.

Economical storytelling, boom, boom, boom, is well cast.

I thought, well, that guy gets it.

What's his name?

He did Guardians of the Galaxy.

Gunn?

James Gunn.

First of all, Guardians of the Galaxy, I love it because the humor.

Yeah, it's great.

The humor is hilarious.

But he's just the right guy to have done Superman.

I just met that guy.

Good guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was great talking to you, Mark.

What I want to know, how close to 1600 am I?

Because you said you've done nearly 1600.

No, we're well into the 1600s.

Oh.

Yeah.

So you're, you know, this is the final, this is the home stretch.

Okay.

You were a big get for the home stretch.

No, I'm telling you, because I'm thinking when you started doing this,

it was a completely different

thing.

Landscape.

Landscape.

It's a different house.

Because, well, what I'm saying is now

everybody has a podcast.

Everybody has a podcast.

When I first heard about yours, I said, what's the podcast?

Everyone did.

So if you would have done this 10 years ago, you would have driven to Highland Park and come into my cluttered garage and be like, what are we doing?

So now it's different.

Yeah, well, but it was great.

It was really an honor and a pleasure talking to you.

Thank you so much.

That was great.

That was great.

I like talking to that guy.

The long walk is in Theaters Friday.

Hang out for a minute, people.

So, folks, there's only been one guest throughout the run run of this show who I like talking to so much that we did a series of separate bonus episodes called the Mark and Tom Show.

On Thursday, Tom Sharpling is back on WTF for the last time.

When you started, like on the radio, so none of us knew this would ever happen.

Oh, my God.

There was no sense of any of that happening.

And there was a freedom that you found.

And when you...

when you had to adapt, I mean, what were the first things that were problematic for you when you realized like, well, radio's not good anymore?

Well, I was always, me being on

a non-commercial station,

it was just understood that the pact was you will never make a nickel doing this because you're here to raise money to keep the station operating.

I did this show and it was called the best show on WFMU, which was,

it was a, that was me taunting the other DJs on the station because I was so unpopular there.

It was like, and then this, this like jerk just calls his show the best show on W, like, who are you?

Right.

But I did it.

And then, but it's almost like you start the discussion then when you do a thing like that, when you say, well, it's the best show on W.

People would be like, well, it's not the best show on WFMU.

It's, it's, it's great.

But people, I think it is the best show.

Like, you, but if I call it, like, if you, if you do, it's like the way the clash were just like the only band that matters.

And now people are like,

well, they're not the only band that matters.

Like, you're actually discussing them at the highest possible level

because you framed where the discussion is going to take place.

That's Thursday's episode with Tom Sharpling.

And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.

And

I got a pickup for my acoustic so I could plug it into the amp.

And then I came up with this:

someone should write lyrics to this.

Maybe I should.

Boomer lives, monkey and lafonda, cat angels everywhere.