Episode 1678 - Jamie Lee Curtis

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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.

What's happening?

Jamie Lee Curtis is on the show today.

She's an Oscar winner, an Emmy winner, and she's been doing this since she was 19 years old.

She says that she's the most creatively fulfilled she's ever been in her career, producing movies like The Lost Bus and Freakier Friday.

She's also in the new James L.

Brooks movie, Ella McKay, which comes out later this year.

And we had a great conversation.

Spent a little time hanging out before even.

She came to my house, I would say 45 minutes early.

I had woken up about 20 minutes before.

I just fed the cats.

I was in the middle of my first cup of coffee walking around my house, fortunately dressed when I saw her on the porch waving her arms at me.

And I let her in, and she met my cats, and then she sat on the floor.

She had brought me some beautiful gifts, a couple of books, and a nice piece of art from a foundation that she had started

that tries to help people with loss and loneliness.

And she talked about Lynn.

So before we even get out here, I'm crying a bit.

And I really was not fortified.

I didn't have my light emotional mesh armor on.

And

it got very connected very quickly before we even got out of my house.

But then she came out here, and

what an amazing person.

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

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I have been out doing the comedy, and I've been aggravated, and I've been on edge, and I've been not knowing what to do with those feelings.

I forget that this is part of my process.

You know, I get done with a special that took me years to put together.

very quickly try to let go of that material and then I'm in the kind of vulnerable and nervous place of not having anything and having to go up on stage with limited

stuff

and just kind of hammer that out.

And it's easy to get

to get kind of to kind of buckle under that fear of not having anything.

And then all of a sudden the anger comes, the aggravation, the discomfort, the

just edginess.

And yet that usually is the fuel.

That is usually the launching pad for me to think out loud, sometimes in an angry way.

And then I got to temper it, got to hammer it out, not soften it, just give it some form and less angry.

But it's still got an edge to it.

So that's starting to happen, which is good.

Though I don't know how propelled I am.

I've been having a little difficulty with propulsion lately.

You know, why, I don't know.

It's like, just, so what?

Just enjoy your life, he said to himself out loud to people listening.

Enjoy it.

I don't know.

I just feel like, you know, all of a sudden I'm like, I don't want to go to the gym.

I don't want to cook my dinner.

I don't want to try these jokes.

Fuck it.

I don't want to

veg.

I just want to veg.

Aren't I entitled as an American to veg,

to do a deep veg?

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Oh my God.

What do you want?

Update on my cat problems.

I'm just trying to accept what's happening.

I've been in contact with Jackson Galaxy.

We're texting.

There's a plan in place.

I don't have a lot of faith in it.

I just want peace in my house.

I'm not feeling sorry for myself.

I'm not a victim.

I just don't deserve to be on edge all the time worried about fucking cats.

I don't know how you guys do it with kids.

At least you kind of know they're going to grow out of something.

I think Charlie is emotionally stunted.

I think he's, he's a perpetual kitten and he's too big and too strong to be that right now.

We took him away from his mother.

Well, he was left under the, under my doorstep, under the backstairs by a feral mother moving them around.

He was only two, three weeks old.

We had to bottle feed him, and he doesn't know how to act around cats.

So he never got, he never made that jump.

He never made that jump emotionally from like mommy to like playing with cats, learning how to be a cat, you know, and then, you know, to maybe a human home.

He went right from mommy to human.

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I think he's just locked in kitten mode, sort of spoiled, self-centered, and emotionally stunted.

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Hello.

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But I wasn't taken away from my mother.

I probably would have been better off.

I think that from what I understand about myself and some of the investigations I've done, is that

because my mother and father saw me as just this appendage or something that they would worry about and panic about and use as an extension to them, I don't think I was ever given the opportunity to break away properly.

To just sort of like let them work it out kind of thing.

That mom was always trying to troubleshoot and make it about her.

So that's how I got emotionally stunted.

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Okay, folks.

Jamie Lee Curtis is here.

She just produced this movie called The Lost Bus,

which I thought was great.

I think Matthew McConaughey, when he sets his

mind to it, is great.

America Ferrara is in it as well.

And it's a true story, or it's based on a true story about the campfire that burned through the town of Paradise up in Northern California.

And

it's, I found it completely compelling, and it's just great to see great acting.

And the guy who directed it, Paul Greengrass, did kind of an astounding job with it.

And because I'm sort of studying a little harder now in preparation to possibly direct my first film, it was very kind of inspiring.

It's a great movie.

I just found it compelling as hell.

The Lost Bus is in Select Theaters September 19th and streaming on Apple TV Plus on October 3rd.

Freak of Your Friday is also still in theaters.

This is me hanging out with Jamie Lee Curtis.

The old house had all my books, Tchotchkis, it was like a museum of me.

And this place, you know, I didn't.

Like Richard Lewis.

Richard.

I'm just going to cry the whole time.

I already cried a little bit

for Lynn, and he gave me the nice present.

I'm going to speak of him this afternoon at their HBO is making a documentary about him.

As time goes on,

my love for Richard Lewis just grows.

He's my Eskimo, by the way.

Yeah.

Oh, he is.

He's a good one.

He's a good one.

When you did the show with him, was he already sober?

No, he was

far from sober.

Yeah.

Way far, like another continent from sober.

He was out of his mind.

Yeah.

Out of his mind on top of being out of his mind.

On top of being out of his mind and terrified.

Yeah.

because he

you know he had never done something like that which required memorization you know when if I'm sure you

he would have that sheet yeah those yellow

legal pad stuff with all the scroll and everything it was his first big acting gig

it was his first regular

I don't know

I actually don't know his biography so much but it was his first regular acting gig for sure Yeah.

And, you know, it requires memorization.

It requires a lot.

And he was freaking out the whole time?

He,

yes.

I just like, you know, out of out of all the comics in my, in, in, you know, as I grew up,

you know, I always loved him and I felt we had something similar.

And as I got to know him, you know, as an older guy, like we didn't hang out much, you know, but he liked me and we talked.

You know, his process is the most like mine.

And what we put at stake, what's at stake when we do comedy is the same

because you're just moving through things.

Yeah.

And it's over repetition.

You're not going up there with set jokes.

You're like going up there, like, all right, I got this and I'm going to go.

Right.

And then I'm going to take that and then

go somewhere.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was,

I will tell you

that

I'm,

how old am I?

However old I am 67 this year, 66.

No, I'm 67 this year.

I've only been in the movies.

Never done a play.

The closest thing to live work I ever did was host Saturday Night Live twice, which was awful.

I'm not a sketch comedian.

It's like it was just

uncomfortable and terrible.

It just wasn't, it's not my métier.

It's not my, you know, I'm not,

I'm comfortable sort of in life, but it's not what I do.

Yeah.

So

there's nothing memorable about any of my appearances on SNL.

But Richard was only a live

person, right?

So he needs to be.

And I,

so when you're doing a TV series, you do it live in front of an audience.

And I became like a heroin addict addict for the audience.

I

came, I literally felt

more alive than I've ever felt in my life.

Yeah.

When I got that first laugh with a studio audience.

And it just unleashed me and it freed me and I loved it.

And Richard Lewis, who is live with a sheet of paper and some notes for an hour and a half or whatever, however long the set would be.

Hated.

Hated the words.

Because it wasn't his words.

It wasn't his words.

And

his,

he hated the idea that there were people watching.

He wanted the audience gone.

And I loved it.

So it was like a perfect weird combo platter.

Well, it's interesting.

He probably didn't like

the limitations of the jokes that he, you know, that he was confined by.

Well, for sure.

And he didn't like our writers.

Oh.

And he early on wanted Larry David.

Uh-huh.

And the head writer of our show didn't want Larry David for whatever reason.

And he was drunk.

Well, no, I don't, I don't,

I actually don't think he drank during the work.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

I don't think he was drunk.

Yeah.

He was petrified that he wouldn't remember.

So I don't know if you know this,

and I'm about to tell this to the HBO documentary that's going to be made, but I'm happy to divulge it here with you.

Okay.

A friend of his, someone who loved him.

Yes.

Richard Lewis taped every single line

he had to say

to every prop

that there was in front of him.

So

if you ever see the show, he always carried around a clipboard.

Well, the clipboard had every line he had to say.

On his desk, in front of every item would have been taped lines that he had.

I had to tape lines on my body for him if it was a, if we were doing a pickup and the close-up was on him over me.

Wow.

I think he was terrified to have to remember

it in a very fixed, as you said, a very controlled fixed way rather than his way.

You know, I think that just terrified him.

Yeah, it's funny with the lines.

You know, I mean, I don't know how you do it, you know, because I talk to actors and there are actors because I'm fairly new to it.

And there are actors who were like, I read the script a hundred times before I shoot a movie.

Yeah.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to, that's not going to happen for me.

Yeah.

And, but I can remember lines, you know, scene per scene, you know, and know it.

But I had this experience.

You know, Danny Trejo?

Sure, of course.

Sober.

Very sober.

Super sober.

Well, in my show, it's very funny.

You know, I hired him to, he played a guy that I was sponsoring.

He played a guy that just got out of the joint, and I was his sponsor.

So that dynamic was not great for him.

Right.

Because he's like, he's that guy.

Right.

And he had a lot of lines.

He's way that guy, man.

Way that guy.

God bless him.

And he had a lot of lines.

And, you know, he wasn't feeling well that day.

And we had to tape cue cards.

We had a scene in a car.

Yeah.

You know,

and

the lines were, we had to tape them all over the place.

And at some point he goes, I haven't had this many lines in my entire career.

And he looks at me and he goes, they hire me for my face.

That's fun.

By the way,

I think there are great actors who like to have cue cards.

I think there are great actors who wear earwigs and have the dialogue fed to them so they can interpret it on their own.

This is not me,

like, I'm not making it a pejor, like,

I don't care what anybody does.

Honestly,

I don't care what your plan.

I've recently heard that there's an act,

because of the internet, which is, as you know, our favorite thing, there have been actors who've I've recently seen say they write their dialogue out, but only the first letter of the words.

And that's how they remember.

And I just do it like on my own in repetition.

Yeah.

Right.

And,

but I, but I,

I just do, I, I don't say the words to another person.

I don't work with a scene partner.

I don't work with a coach.

I don't work with somebody to feed me.

I just,

so like, for instance, on there's a, the bear.

Yeah.

there was an entire episode that was just me and abby yeah

it's great you did great on that it's fantastic but thank you but the work the words are so amazing and and donna is in that episode particularly

you know abby's giving birth sugar's giving or is in labor yeah and donna just starts talking about all of the children's birth stories so there are these beautiful monologues about

memory of these experiences and they they aren't linear and they kind of pop off all over the place.

But it was so beautiful.

And for me, learning them, it was

the writing was so great

that you want...

you don't want to miss a word because they're so powerful.

And

I've been lucky that the times I've had to memorize something in a big chunk

has been great

writing versus having to memorize something that's awful.

And then I'm sure it would have been much more difficult.

Well, it's strange with

because I'm a performer and a writer to a degree.

And then

when you have to do that work and you don't like the writing, it's tricky.

Yeah.

Are you confrontational?

No,

please.

Am I confrontational?

Hardly.

I'm like the, I'm a, no.

Team player.

Oh.

I'm head cheerleader.

I'm, I'm, I'm not confrontational.

In fact,

I recently did a piece of work and there was a moment where I I felt someone was out of line with another person.

And to this day, I'm still angry that I didn't didn't step in and go, hey, hey, hey,

what are you doing?

Why are you doing that?

Back it up a bit.

Step away from the vehicle.

Like, what are you doing?

I am not confrontational on almost any level.

Yeah, I think,

well, with the acting,

it seems that like if you have lines that you don't think are true to the character you're playing, it becomes really hard not to be like, what the fuck are you doing?

I one time had not done a, you know, I done a few, obviously, a few movies.

And at one point, TNT

was going to do Wendy Wasserstein's, the Heidi Chronicles for television.

And they asked me to play Heidi Holland.

And I remember Wendy Wasserstein had to approve me.

So we went to breakfast at a hotel where, you know, we talked for 20 minutes about whatever it was we talked about.

It was fairly quick to dive into whatever it was we were doing.

And then I remember she looked across at me at one point and went,

okay,

okay.

And I said,

okay,

what?

She goes, okay, you can do it.

Yeah.

And I didn't realize that actually it was an audition.

Right.

But the reason I'm telling you it is in the middle of the Heidi Chronicles, Heidi Chronicles, is about the women's movement in the 60s.

And she's an art historian.

And at one point, she's invited back to her girls' school to give a keynote at a women's luncheon, a girls' school luncheon.

Women, Where Are We Going?

That's the title of her speech.

And Heidi is so

disgruntled and so

confused

by where we are as women.

And this was when she wrote it.

And

she goes on to talk about,

it's sort of a rambling monologue where she talks about going to the gym.

First of all, she talks about what you assume her life is like, which is like this sort of tiger mom whose daughter plays violin and you know, who's gluten-free and whose husband shtups her on the kitchen table when the children have first gone, you know, like this fantasy of what women do

in today's world.

Yeah.

And then

she talks about going to the gym and how all the women at the gym were just talking about a shoe, and these are the best shoes, and this is the best pair of jeans, and blah, blah, blah.

And just the sort of pre-Instagram messaging of

branding.

Branding.

Yeah.

And

how this one's cheating on that one's husband and this one moved this one out of the way for a job and how this woman, you know,

stole a job from another woman.

And at the end of it, she gets very emotional

and she says,

I thought the point

was we're in this together.

I thought that was the point.

She's really frustrated.

The reason I tell you this is I'm a movie actor.

I'm offered to do this, what was a play, Joan Allen originated the part on Broadway, you know.

And in the middle of this play is this, what, six-minute monologue of this woman's free association about her day.

Yeah.

And I decided I needed to know that monologue locked before I ever rehearsed one day of the of the TV movie.

And so I learned it.

And so the day of the table read,

we were at the Wilshire Ebel Theater.

We were sitting around a table.

We were reading this script.

We all had our scripts.

And then when it came to that speech, I closed my script.

And I remember somebody looked at me like, what the fuck is she doing?

And I gave the monologue.

And

for me,

that

is how I work.

That's why I told you that story.

Just simply, I need to know it

in order to be able to live it.

If I'm looking for it, if I had to be looking for a line right now,

I wouldn't be in it.

And being in it is my only gift.

I don't have discernible gifts, but my gift

is I need to be in it with you

here.

And if I'm looking for something or if I'm feeling like I'm not in it,

then I'm terrible.

Yeah, and that's like what's tricky about, I've noticed that, like I had to do my first movie where I really had a lead.

And there were definitely times where

I was rationalizing that, like, if I'm looking for it, it looks like I'm thinking of what to say.

Yeah, far.

Right.

Right.

I understand.

There's an immediacy to it.

I know.

Yeah.

I just worked with James L.

Brooks on a movie that he wrote and directed.

How is that?

Well,

so the first day I met him, he asked me to play this part.

It's a beautiful part in this movie.

It's called Ella McKay.

It comes out in December.

It's a family dysfunctional comedy, dramedy.

And,

you know, it's James L.

Fucking Brooks.

And I go to his house and we sit in his living room.

And I said,

just so you know,

I don't like to rehearse.

I said, because for me,

I'm trained to basically be prepared for my work.

So be it that I did horror movies or be it I did television, I am loaded.

Yeah.

Like I show up.

I am fully loaded to go.

Yeah.

Whatever it is.

Yeah.

I will never not know a line.

I am ready to go.

And he looked at me and he said, oh, I love rehearsal.

It's the best part of the whole process.

And I was like,

oh, well, this is going to be interesting.

He said, why don't you like to rehearse?

I said,

because I feel like you're wasting.

If

something happens.

Yeah.

It's movies, right?

You've got a camera on you.

Roll the freaking camera.

Like, let's go and let's rehearse on camera.

Yeah.

Because what happens if something magical

happens in the rehearsal?

Right.

And he said, but that's why you rehearse.

We had this wonderful thing.

And so the movies finished.

It was a beautiful experience, challenging because of

he likes to do it a lot.

He likes to explore it a lot.

And I'm not used to that.

I'm used to exploring it twice.

Yeah.

Right.

And then moving on.

And

he said, so we were doing a thing with people who had seen the movie and I kind of brought that story up.

They said, how was it working with Jim?

I said, oh, that's an amazing experience.

I love him, by the way.

I love him.

Yeah.

Like deeply.

But I said, but you know, when I first met him, he and I kind of looked at each other and I said, I don't like to rehearse.

And he said, well, all I do is like to rehearse.

And Jim said, no, no, no, that's not what you said.

You said, I don't like to be directed.

And he, I don't think I said that, but I think that's what he was saying.

That's what he was saying.

Which is,

you just want to do what you want to do.

Yeah.

And up to this moment,

you've gotten away with it.

Uh-huh.

But not with me.

Because I'm going to direct you.

And it was that experience for me.

Was it good?

Yeah.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I've talked to direct directors.

Different.

Yeah, I've talked to directors.

A lot of them think like you do.

Like, you know, I hired the actor to do their job.

I'm not there to train them.

Well,

it's a different interpretation of the word direct.

Yeah.

Jim Cameron

did not direct

the performance.

He's so visual.

I mean, you have to remember, True Lies,

he wrote it.

It's freaking funny.

There are jokes.

The jokes land.

He's like a comedy writer

in secret for a guy who has such

respect for a more serious, more

deeper, darker

vision, big, giant vision.

He wrote some really funny jokes in True Life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And landed them not only

in the writing, but in the directing of it, because you can screw up a joke if you don't shoot it properly and cut it properly and go to the reaction shot.

So he, I loved that about him.

But

there are people who don't interject that much.

I'm somebody who likes, like, I want you to say literally faster, slower, colder, hotter.

I even like

a color.

And here's an example, which

you will

totally get.

Maybe, or maybe not.

Maybe you will think I'm an asshole.

I doubt it.

During the bear, it was the Christmas episode, the fishes episode.

Io

was shadowing Chris Storer Storer

because she knew she was going to direct episodes in the next season.

And

that episode, she's not in it because it's a flashback to the family.

And so she was on set shadowing Chris.

And we were in a tiny house, crowded with crew, crowded with a lot of actors.

So there was virtually nowhere to go.

And so I was sitting on the stairs, and I remember she came and sat next to me.

We had this lovely talk, you know, while they were setting up somewhere doing something.

And,

you know, we were talking about process.

And this was the fishes episode.

And by the way, I'm coming in blind.

I don't know one person.

Yeah.

Not one.

On the cast, you mean?

Anybody.

Yeah.

I didn't know Chris Storrs, the director.

Yeah.

I had just met him the day I got there.

Right.

He and I had texted twice.

Right.

Seriously.

Yeah.

That was it.

Yeah.

So you fly to Chicago, you're in a hotel by yourself, and then they pick you up and they bring you to set.

And you're walking around going, Hi, I'm Jamie.

Hi, I'm Jamie.

Hi.

Hi, I'm Jamie.

Hi, I'm Jamie.

And then you do action.

And then action, sort of.

And

so she and I were sitting on the stairs, and I was saying about like process.

And I said, you know, I'm one of those people.

I like somebody to whisper in my ear.

I don't like to be shouted at across the stage.

I want you to come up and whisper in my ear a suggestion.

I said, you know, pace it up, slow it down,

give it a little more heat, give it a little thing.

And I said, I mean, I would even like if somebody just said a color to me.

Yeah.

The one word, a color, and then I will interpret the note.

It takes a poetic director.

And so we do, so we'd shoot in the kitchen.

It was pretty insane and beautiful.

But again, fast.

Yeah.

Fast.

Yeah.

Like in about a half an hour, 40 minutes, we've done that whole kitchen.

I mean, it's all handheld.

You like that, though?

I love.

Are you kidding?

I was unleashed.

I loved it.

But, I mean, it's, it's,

but

then, like, the next day we did the dinner table

because it was a set because we had to drive a car into it.

With Mulaney and Odenkirk and everybody.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And it's a big table.

Yeah.

A lot of people.

Oh, and Bernthal.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, they're going to get a big fight, and then I'm going to drive a car into the, into the room.

Yeah.

And so it was a separate day.

It was a separate set.

It was actually built on a soundstage because they had to, because they had the car gag.

And, you know, we

did this big, you never know where the camera is because it's all handheld.

We did that scene.

I think we did it twice.

It went as pitch, you know, and it's, again, beautifully written,

painful,

violent.

And we did two takes of it.

And then they had to reset because they had to fix all the broken plates.

And at one point, Io came over and whispered in my ear,

purple.

She said, purple.

And what she was saying is, you've done red and you've done orange.

Give me purple.

And what she was saying is, give me the wound.

A purple is a bruise.

It's not anger

and it's not rage.

It's pain.

That's the take they use.

So

for aspiring actors,

for unaspiring actors, for old, tired, I'm done actors,

it doesn't fucking matter.

None of it matters.

I don't give a shit if you write every line.

I love actors who work with coaches and they do deep, deep backgrounds.

I don't care.

I read the script once.

I never read it again.

I learn my lines.

I show up and do the work.

That's

JLC.

Yeah.

So what's interesting is I have to assume that in your childhood, having grown up with two actors, you know, big actors, and growing up in a Hollywood that was so much different,

that your earlier memories of what the job was like has to be different.

I have no memories.

None.

None.

I have no memories.

My childhood memories are smells and sounds, and I'm tactile.

Like I've already

probably put my hands on you twice.

Yeah.

I'm a little handsy.

Yeah.

I have zero memory of show business.

Really?

I grew up on a dirt road in Benedict Canyon in a house.

My parents were divorced.

I was three.

I think if we ever visited, we were dressed up alike, me and my sister Kelly.

Yeah.

And we made the obligatory half-hour appearance on a set.

Yeah.

And people took pictures of my parents with us.

And then we were...

shuttled away.

I have zero memory.

There's no process.

There's no reminiscence.

There's no nostalgia.

There's nothing.

My memories are the smell of eucalyptus trees

in Benedict Canyon on a dirt road.

The smell of chlorine in a pool because we had a pool and I love to swim.

I have a tactile memory of cold upholstery

because

I know I've in my dotage have kind of made this joke that like I wish concerts were midday and like I go shry about why can't Cold Play do a matinee?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like started at noon.

Yeah, why not?

I would go.

So we could all enjoy it.

So we could all enjoy it rather than start it at nine.

By nine, I'm asleep two hours.

So

but my memory is, I think I was that way, Mark, since I was a little girl because my memory is falling asleep at restaurants and being carried to the car.

And the memory I have is the feeling of the cold upholstery in the back seat of a car and me asleep.

Do you think like it's like trauma?

Of course.

Yeah.

Of course.

But trauma, like everybody has trauma.

No, I know, but I mean, but life is trauma.

But at some point, you wake up and have memories, don't you?

No.

The memories don't like they don't start at like 10?

Nothing.

Well, yeah.

But, you know,

I have very few memories of my youth.

Very few.

Very, very few.

And I guess that's most people, if you really think about it.

You have events, maybe.

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't.

There are, I'm, I am, I am a sensoral person.

So I have bionic hearing.

But were your parents cold?

I can tell you that my mom was

a beautiful, charming,

sweet

woman who had a lot of joy,

but also a lot of sadness.

And

I'm not going to say cold.

I mean,

she just wasn't yummy.

She wasn't sort of a yummy person.

She was a lovely person.

And I had a beautiful life with her.

Don't get me wrong.

And Tony, of course, I didn't know because they divorced and he got, you know, Tony left Janet

for

a 17-year-old girl.

Yeah.

I'm going to dare say she was 16 when they met,

17 when they worked together, and he married her at 18.

So Tony Curtis left Janet, who was in her 30s with two daughters, for a 17-year-old girl.

And he married her and had children right away and had another life.

And so my youth, there was none of this conscious uncoupling.

Right.

It was war and awful and betrayal and public and hateful, hateful between my parents.

And, you know, again, when you talked about being confrontive,

I was the ultimate good girl.

I kept my mouth shut.

You're going to go one way or the other.

Either you're going to be fuck you or fuck me.

Yeah, and it was, it was the opposite.

Yeah, yeah.

But I am sensoral.

So I am, I'm telling you, I have like acute hearing.

It's creepy.

Like to the point where it's annoying.

Well, it's crazy.

I'll say, oh,

you know, a package just arrived.

I'll say, what?

Yeah.

And I'll say, oh, yeah,

a truck dropped a package over the fence.

How do you know?

Oh, I heard it.

Do you have that thing where you can't be in loud places?

Yeah, I'm not great with loud noises.

I have incredible olfactory

senses.

I am more smell attuned to time and place.

Sort of the verisimilitude of a place and time is through my nose.

Did you ever, like, were you ever able to find some?

I mean, because we're both sober and there's this process of this.

Were you ever able to, you know, find a place of forgiveness for Tony?

Oh, fuck yes.

Yeah.

Oh,

of course.

When did that happen?

Oh,

I

mean, forgiveness.

I mean, he just wasn't there.

He just didn't factor.

Yeah.

I mean, in a weird way,

he just didn't factor.

Right.

He was never there.

He just was never there.

And the existence of him was there because, of course, he was famous, so people

were attached to him.

I wasn't attached to him at all.

But I will tell you,

in answer to was she cold or were they cold?

Yeah, my mother was cool.

Tony

was yummy.

Yeah.

But yummy went away

really early.

Now, yummy, he was yummy when he was with you when you were a child.

Yeah.

Yummy.

Yeah.

Zero consistency for that yummy, but I know it was yummy.

Charming.

So

actual memory I have, at one point Tony Curtis

now was married to his third wife, a woman named Leslie Allen, a model,

had his first son with her.

He was doing, so it was at his career when he was doing a TV series with Roger Moore.

called The Persuaders.

It was sort of a James Bond.

They were paired kind of detective-y guys.

And it was with Roger Moore.

Yeah.

Another charmer.

My sister and I went and visited in the summer to London.

How old were you?

I was 12.

Yeah.

And then he rented a house in Sardinia.

And he had a convertible Rolls-Royce.

Tony Curtis loved cars.

And the car was driven.

to Sardinia through a ferry so that he could have his car because we were going to be there a month.

yeah and we were visiting him it was the longest we ever spent with him and i remember when we landed it at when we got to the house none of the bags were there because they were in the car being driven we had flown and you know leslie and my sister kelly were making house and we were renting a house so they were you know, making house,

and the baby was with the nanny.

And I remember Tony said, I want to go for a swim.

And I said, I'll go.

And he and I walked down this sort of craggly path to the ocean.

We were on the Costa Esmeralda in Sardinia.

And I remember we both took off our clothes.

I was wearing undies.

He was wearing those white dude undies that you guys wear.

Tidy whities.

Tidy whiteys, you know.

And we dove into the ocean.

And I remember the feeling that I was the brave one.

I was the one who didn't have her bathing suit because it was in my suitcase, but I didn't care.

That

he saw in me in that moment, like

that was the bonding moment of my entire childhood with him, was diving off a rock into the ocean in Sardinia.

And the look on his face that that was his girl, you know, that I was his daughter and I was just like him.

Did that stick?

No.

Well, no, and yes, whatever.

Fuck, I don't care.

But ultimately, when do you decide to

pursue acting?

Oh, that was an accident.

It's too, it's really, it's a boring story.

Yeah.

I'll give you a 30-second version.

I went to college.

I had no business in college.

My mother was the most famous woman who had ever graduated from the college, University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

Stockton.

Yeah, baby.

My mother was from Merced.

She went to, at the time, College of the Pacific.

She was a genius.

She graduated in three years at 16.

My mother was really bright.

I got in there with my C-min average and 840 combined SAT scores because

they wanted me.

really because my mother was the most famous alum and I was in college.

Had no business in college.

You do it though, you know, go to college.

And you do it, but I had no business in college.

And at that Christmas, so this is 1976, I came home from Christmas and a girlfriend of mine was in the same college.

She lived in Beverly Hills.

She had a tennis court and there was a tennis teacher named Chuck Binder who taught tennis on her court.

Yeah.

You know, this is what you do.

In Beverly Hills, yeah.

But then you give lessons to the family whose court it is for free, but you can use the court to teach other people.

That's how the game works.

That's how tennis guys get by.

That's how they do it.

Yeah.

They don't have a court of their own.

Right.

So they use the courts of their friends.

Anyway, and when I came home at Christmas, went over to my friend's house, Chuck was there, and he said, hey, Jamie, I'm managing actors now.

I'm managing a woman named Karen Lamb.

who was the sort of Heather Lockalier of her time.

Very beautiful blonde.

She was married to Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys.

Another troubled guy.

But a beautiful woman,

actress.

She was in a lot of TV movies.

He said, I'm managing actors.

You know, they're looking for Nancy Drew at Universal.

You should go up for it.

And I went, oh, okay.

Had no idea.

Drove to Universal.

No acting experience.

None.

Please.

But I was cute.

I was brown-haired.

Yeah.

I was

18.

Yeah.

And, you know,

whatever.

And I didn't get the part.

But he said, you know, they really liked you.

I said, well, that's great.

He goes, you should stick around.

I was like, yeah.

But

again, I told you a long

story.

The college I went to allowed you the month of January to do one class, like a concentrated month of study.

So I called the drama department and said, hi.

If I stay in LA

and try to get jobs as an actor and go to acting class and dance class, can I write a paper

that would qualify me for credit for the month of study

breaking into show business?

I'll go to class every day, blah, blah, blah.

And they said yes.

So for the month of January 1977,

I went to auditions.

Chuck sent me out for things, blah, blah, blah.

I took acting classes, dance classes.

A man named David Craig,

who taught you to sing and act yeah I can't sing for anything yeah and I that was terrifying I took a commercial acting class

Peggy Fury who was a serious acting teacher who had narcolepsy and she would fall asleep in the middle of class yeah and I remember I did a Tennessee Williams scene and I

I'm not Christopher Guest.

I don't do accents just without studying them.

And I remember I did a southern accent in this scene.

And I remember at the end of an acting class, then the class is allowed to opine

about what they thought.

And I remember somebody raised their hand and said,

I thought it was fine, except your accent was bad or something.

And

I remember crying.

And I remember going home thinking, what the fuck am I doing?

Why do I give a shit

what that person thinks?

Like, this is an acting class?

Yeah.

This is supposed to teach me?

Yeah.

What did I learn?

Yeah.

You just got your feelings hurt.

It got my feelings hurt off.

I mean, it was awful.

So I never went back to that class.

Anyway, and by the end of that month, Chuck said, you know, they still have contract players at Universal.

Contract players back in the day were actors they kept in a group that they would use.

They would pay them every month.

But then they would use them in small parts and movies and TV shows.

And the hope was once you signed a contract that you would pop.

Right.

Then they had you for a small amount of money, but they could exploit you as a big star.

Were your parents

yet?

Of course, my mother, very much so.

So

he said they still have a contract system at Universal.

I auditioned

for the contract system to a woman named Monique James, who was the West Coast version.

There was an East Coast version, a woman named Eleanor Kilgallen, and their job was to find talent and pool them.

That must have been towards the end of that system.

It was nine, it was almost the exact end,

but two years into it before it ended.

So I auditioned, and at the end of my audition, I said to her, This is, I'm me.

I don't know anything.

I said, excuse me,

this was really fun.

Thank you so much.

I'm going back to college in two days.

So I need to know if this is going to happen kind of soon because I'm going back to college on like January 28th.

And they called the next day and said I had got a contract with Universal and I quit college and became an actor.

So

it was the last thing I thought I was going to do.

And now all of a sudden I was paid $235 a week

as an actor, as a contract player.

But isn't that interesting that despite it being the last thing you thought you would be doing, that you entered the system that your mom was in

in a full arc?

And I'm going to hit the point of the arc.

My godfather is Lou Wasserman.

Lou Wasserman was the chairman of Universal.

Yeah.

So, you know, I remember Lou Wasserman calling my mother

saying, I just heard that Jamie is become a contract player.

Now,

you've known me an hour.

Maybe 45 minutes, 48 minutes.

I'm this person at 17.

I'm this person at seven.

I'm this person when Ray Stark,

who was a very close friend of my parents, who produced The Exorcist, called my mother

and said, Will you let Jamie audition for Reagan in The Exorcist?

And my mother was like, no.

But I'm this person.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So whatever this person is

that's now successful as this person, I was still this person.

I'm the same exact person.

I guess there's a core thing that doesn't really change in us if it doesn't get beaten out of you one way or the other.

Yeah, far out.

Yeah.

So now you're in the game.

Now.

But then I became an actor, but then I got fired.

So then I got put onto a TV series.

I did a TV series called Operation Petticoat,

which was a remake of the movie that Tony Curtis and Carrie Grant starred in.

Now it was a TV movie.

I played the part opposite Tony Curtis's part.

It's a little weird.

And I did that show for a year.

It turned into a TV series.

It was a movie, turned into a TV series.

Did it for a year, got fired.

They fired.

So the premise is, of course, it's a Navy sub during World War II.

Five Army nurses get on board, right?

Because they're stranded in some atoll somewhere.

And now hilarity ensues because,

you know, five Army nurses on a Navy sub with 13 guys, right?

Yeah.

So the premise is cute for a movie because at the end of the movie, the women get off.

Yeah.

Well, on a TV series, they never get off.

So every scene was like...

Every scene we go, Captain, excuse me, hi.

When are we getting off the ship?

Anyway,

they fired 11 of 13 cast members, but kept the premise of the fucking show.

As if the premise of the show was the good thing and the actors were bad.

As if the idea that we could get off as soon as that docked, we would be off.

We're Army nurses.

We're not supposed to be on a Navy sub.

And instead, they fired me.

I thought my life was over, Mark Marin.

I thought they were going to drop me from my contract because contract system, they do every six-month options.

It's not your option, it's theirs.

So every six months, they decide if they're going to keep you and if they're going to renew your option.

It was awful.

I thought I was going to lose everything.

I now was going to have to go back to 10 years.

How old were you?

19.

I was 19, 20?

No, I was 19.

And during that, I was fired.

I was feeling shitty.

And

that was when

Chuck Binder called me and said, they're making this little low-budget horror movie in Hollywood.

I've put you up for a part.

You should go audition.

And I did.

And that was Halloween.

So if, I will tell you, had I not been fired from Operation Petticoat, I would never have made Halloween.

And then they canceled Operation Petticoat like two weeks into the next season.

Of course.

And that was, that was the thing.

And that was then the beginning of my life.

The real thing.

Yeah.

Now, do you remember, like, did you watch like your mom and psycho?

No.

or anything no no hey i'm a scaredy cat i'm just not

have zero interest in being frightened but did you watch your mom act in anything when you started acting no really how do you watch your mom act in anything i don't know i don't live that life i know but there was no repetition yeah there was tv yeah or a movie i didn't go to movies that my mother was in yeah right and occasionally a movie would be on tv i never saw any of the work my parents did for a very very very long time.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, like anybody else, you're not going to, you know, my dad was a doctor.

I'm not going to go to the hospital.

And people think

that Hollywood on some level is so much different, but it's not in some ways.

Well, the only difference now is the internet, which allows a daily, you know, now

well,

and

I'm going to bring something up with you just because it's front of mind.

Yeah.

Charlie Christ was killed two days ago.

Kirk, not you, Charlie.

I'm sorry.

Kirk.

Kirk.

I just call him Christ.

I think because of Christ, because of

because of his deep, deep belief.

I mean,

I disagreed with him on almost every point I ever heard him say.

Yeah.

But I believe he was a man of faith.

And I hope in that moment when he died

that he felt connected to his faith, even though I find what he

his ideas were abhorrent to me,

I still believe he's a father and a husband and a man of faith.

And

I hope whatever connection to God

means that he felt it.

My point is:

yesterday was 9-11.

I know there is video

of his assassination.

I know people who've seen it.

Yesterday we watched again these images of those buildings coming down.

We don't know.

We're talking about analog digital.

We're talking about a childhood where it was like I had famous parents who were in the movies, but I never saw the movies.

I didn't see the images.

I didn't,

I would have to, how would I ever see them?

We didn't have DVDs, we didn't have VHS, we didn't have, they didn't put them on TV.

Today,

we as a society are bombarded with imagery.

So we don't know

what the longitudinal effects of seeing those towers come down over and over and over and over again, or watching

his execution

over and over and over again.

We watched the Zabruder film, by the way, my birthday, November 22nd.

I'm associated with this awful day of someone being assassinated on television.

But it's As you know, the Zabruder film is the only visual document that moves,

that shares that horror of what happened.

But here we have now these images.

All the time, every day.

And we are inured to them and we are numb to them, but they are in there.

We don't know.

We don't know enough psychologically about what that does.

What does that do?

That kind of I don't ever want to see this footage of this man being shot.

I didn't watch it.

I think it diminishes the depth of humanity.

But if that's the case, then is that the reason why we're all feeling this lack of humanity?

Because we are just saturated with this image.

These images.

Well, I think we...

Our engagement with the technology

has become, it's total, we've adapted to it and it's taken over a good part of our mind.

So I think that when it comes to depth or understanding human experience in a visceral way, it gets numbed.

Yeah.

Well,

I'm worried.

Yeah, there's nothing not to worry about.

I'm worried and I am buoyed when I hear that schools

are forbidding phones, that

people

are trying to limit the amount of the Internet that use it for the tool that it is

research or you know what I mean it's it's funny because me I use the internet primarily when it comes to like looking at things yeah to like did anyone like that talk I had with Jamie Lee Curtis oh do you actually look that up well no no I don't look it up but like my engagement with it is usually around what I've done to see if people saw it to get that sort of feedback that's that's my dopamine it's not watching assassinations or watching news over and over again I'm the exact opposite It's really like, it's validation.

It's not for me to

disengage.

My favorite line from the Heidi Chronicles is when Heidi goes to visit her best friend from college, Susan, who's now a TV executive.

Right.

And she goes and they have a scene in her office.

And then as she's leaving, the secretary or executive assistant, we can't say secretary.

The executive assistant, as Heidi walks by, says, Ms.

Holland, do you need validation?

And it's such a play on words about what you're talking about, which is,

is that what the internet has done?

Is made us all desperate for validation?

Because it certainly has poisoned

young people into that idea of trying to get the most amount

of

likes.

I did it with air quotes.

You can't see them.

And what does that mean?

My secret of the internet, Mark Marin, and I'm happy to share it here with you, and maybe it'll be what I leave

to work on.

Don't read comments.

None.

Like I have a, like Christopher Guest,

his movie opened today or last week or whenever the fruck this is.

And Spinal, and New York Times gave it a wonderful review, really funny.

It's great.

You can read that, right?

That's not a comment.

But

he doesn't read any show business journalism.

Nothing.

Not journalism.

You know what I mean?

Sure.

He reads nothing about show business.

Not even a critic he respects.

Nothing, nothing.

He doesn't read anything that has to do with show business.

Okay.

But that's his firewall.

My firewall is I put out into the internet

what I think and feel.

Yeah.

But I

decide I say what I need to say.

And then I don't need to see what you think of what I said.

Sure.

Well, that's true.

And I have, but I have, but by the way, I've gotten into a lot of trouble because, of course, the portal is open to a lot of people with a lot of anger.

And I've had a lot of friends call me and go, Hi, how are you doing?

No, this is the voice I get.

Hi.

How are you doing?

And I go, I'm great.

What's up?

Yeah.

Oh,

just checking on you.

And I'm like,

because why?

Oh,

the comments.

And it's something I've either put out politically or something, whatever.

Yeah, I don't read that stuff.

I do like the reason I like criticism if they're smart people, like for my last special or whatever,

I like to hear thinky people's insight into what I'm doing because it kind of broadens my understanding of what I might have done

to somebody else.

And it makes me think.

It actually helps me because, you know, my parents didn't do it.

So, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My parents didn't do it.

My mom was really...

My mom did say be yourself.

My mom did recognize

something.

Yeah.

And

was always hoping that I...

I mean, she knew I was funny because I've been this person.

But, you know, that wasn't the sort of opening salvo of my creative work was me being funny.

Right.

So, like, I guess, like, after all the, like, because you had a big movie career and do now.

Yeah.

But, I mean, this is.

How about fucking that?

I know.

It's crazy.

Well, that's insane.

Insane.

Mark Merrick.

I mean, you were huge.

And then, like, it's not like you disappeared or anything,

but now you're bigger than ever.

Yeah.

In a totally different way.

You know what?

It's such a rare fucking thing, isn't it?

It's amazing.

And it's beautiful.

And

I'm I'm leaning in in every possible way.

When did the drugs happen and how did that drugs happened because

what year are we talking?

Well, drugs happened.

Well, it's funny because I actually have

I brought it because I'm going to talk about Richard Lewis later today.

And so I brought, in fact, something to show them, but I'll show it to you when I leave because it's in my car.

So I dabbled.

So I dabbled, you know, obviously.

Let me say this.

I grew up in a house where alcohol was in those push, those decanters

that pushed out a full shot.

They had silver tops.

They were pretty glass containers, bourbon, scotch, vodka, whatever.

And you pushed the top and it measured out a shot.

I grew up in a house with that.

So when I was a teenager and you had that, so you'd get a Coke

and you'd go over to the vodka one,

and then you'd hit the shot of vodka because you were with your friends, and you're like, hey, love to do this.

And you know, so there was a little of that, it was a little dabbling of that.

There might have been a qualute or two in

my sordid past, but again, it was all pretty easy.

Yeah.

Cocaine, obviously, in the 80s became a thing.

I knew

I was an addict.

I knew that when I say an addict, an addict is you are addicted to the feeling you know addict has such a bad word but the truth is that if you just look at the word addiction you're just you like the feeling you want it again and again yeah

and I knew I needed to do something and I went I called a woman so you but you got you knew you were out of control I was never out of control Mark Marin but you knew you had a problem I knew I had a problem I was never out of control but this wasn't when you were a teenager it was this is me when I was in my 20s but I also knew that I was never out of control.

That was that I was a control, I'm a high bottom, like Everest bottom.

So I remember I called, I can't remember who she was,

I think she's no longer here.

She wrote a book called You Can Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.

Oh, yeah.

I remember that book.

I can't remember her name.

I don't either.

I called her

because I knew she had stopped.

She had gotten sober or had stopped cocaine.

I remember I asked her,

like, I called her, I cold called her.

Did you know Carrie Fisher?

Briefly.

Yeah, yeah.

Briefly, but I never, that wasn't who I called.

Anyway, I called this woman.

And anyway, she gave me like the name of somebody and I

got off of that pretty quickly.

And then she wrote a fucking book.

And in her book, she actually wrote, you know, I was so surprised when my phone rang.

And I thought it was Tony Curtis because he had a big drug problem.

And it was his daughter.

Like, I was like, bitch.

Yeah.

Are you, are you really?

Yeah.

Anyway, I was mortified.

Luckily, nobody read it.

I don't remember her name.

Anyway.

But then, and then I was just, you know, I was a dabbler.

I just was, I thought that didn't do anything.

You didn't?

No, I'm saying I liked.

Yeah.

No, I was, I'm fun.

I get it.

Yeah.

I'm a fun person.

So let's have some fun.

Yeah.

And I had a plastic surgery when I was very young in my 30s.

It's too long of a story, but the DP on Perfect

said that he wouldn't shoot me one day because I had puffy eyes.

And so right after that movie, I had

under-eye surgery.

And they gave me Vicodin.

And that began a sort of 10-year dabbling of opiates.

You got out before fentanyl.

That's it.

Well, I would be dead.

Yeah.

Mark, I wouldn't be here.

There's no way to be here.

I got out before fentanyl is the great, that would be the title of the book that I'll never write.

Anyway, my point is, here's how I got sober.

I had an incident with my sister, my older sister, where I had pocketed hers because she had visited.

So you were pill pop here all day.

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

Vic o'clock.

It's like wine o'clock.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no, no.

It was like an afternoon, late afternoon.

Anyway, and

I

also

read

Esquire.

So I don't read Esquire.

I don't get Esquire.

It was in a doctor's office.

It had Jerry Springer on the cover.

I have it in my car.

It was January of 1999.

And I opened this magazine, and there was an article, Vicodin, my Vicodin, by an author named Tom Chiarella.

who was outing himself, his family, his editor, and friends by writing this article.

And the opening of the article was: I don't know where my children's birth certificates are, I don't know where my marriage certificate is,

I don't know where the deed to my house is, but I can tell you where every Vicodin is hidden in my house.

And then he described: there are two in the left toe of my cowboy boot in the closet, blah, blah, blah.

And I remember reading it, and I thought,

oh, wow,

that's me.

yeah I'm secret I like it's and then I went to a girlfriend of mine who I thought was sober wasn't she told me that she also was addicted to them she gave me the name of a doctor yeah

and then that day I got sober that night I got sober I just woke up that next morning realizing that she was gonna be dead I'd be at her funeral I'd have blood, her blood on my hand.

Did she die?

No.

Oh, good.

No, sober and great.

And where does Richard Lewis factor in?

I just told her.

Okay,

Mark Marin, you're

so pushy.

Or I would be dead and she'd be at my funeral,

hugging my kids with blood on her hands.

That was the split.

I had two children.

That day I called Richard Lewis, who I knew was sober, who I'd worked together with on anything but love, but I knew he was sober.

And he said, stay where you are.

And he called somebody and a woman, because I was afraid to go into a public room

as a very,

I was afraid to go into some recovery meeting

by myself because I was a public figure.

And he called someone who is also a public figure who was sober.

And she called me and met me in a meeting that was 2399.

I've been sober since.

I love those stories.

If there's one thing that sobriety taught me in terms of conversation

and in terms of listening, because I really think that

the idea of one alcoholic talking to another being the core of the program has a lot to do with what happens here sometimes.

And

I think that recovery over time taught me how to be an empathetic listener.

Because once you lock into recovery and it becomes the priority and someone's going to tell their story, you know where it's going to go, but it'll get you every time.

Yeah, sure.

Sure.

It's like, you know, just like what you said, Richard Lewis called a woman, and like, I feel like my eyes welling up.

you know because I that's exactly right you know because that's where it happens and you're like help is on the way help is on the way that's why when we first met in the hall of your house with your cats yeah and you told me that you were sober the same amount of years but a few months past me yeah I said to you that's my hand in the dark yeah reaching out and that you felt a hand in the dark of somebody who was a little sober before you.

Yeah.

Who was sober, reaching her hand out.

That's how it feels.

Yeah.

When you're in the dark of addiction and you think you're alone and somebody reaches out their hand and you don't know who it is and you grab it and you know that they're going to pull you into the light.

Yeah.

That's.

Well, mine was a woman who I was in love with and I was kind of reluctant to get sober and

but I held on to her for as long as I could and it didn't work out.

But I do, she did get me sober and she went through a lot of shit with me.

with me.

But she's okay.

I'm okay, I think.

We don't speak, but I think she's okay.

but that hand thing the the little piece you gave me what is that that that foundation okay it's i'm actually closing it at the end of the year so uh again uh right before covet yeah um

i like

if i had heard about lynn and i you and i were friends yeah i would have written you a letter yeah

and i would have said you know i would have said something about loss

and about strength.

And then I would have said at the end of the letter, my hand in yours, Jamie, which was just my way of saying to people all the time,

I'm not with you.

I'm not going to be there with you.

But you know what it would feel like to have my hand in yours.

I'm sending you that feeling.

And

I thought one day, and it was before COVID, I thought,

I collect these little sculptures by an artist named Ann Ricketts.

I often give sober friends her little feet.

She has little feet.

And I send them to my sober friends and say, be where your feet are.

And as a little reminder.

Trudging the path.

And I called her and I said, if I create a company, will you create a sculpture of two hands holding?

She said yes.

I was going to sell them on Instagram.

I thought I would just sell them and give money to Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Long story short, it turned out it became a foundation.

It became a much bigger company.

We had a lot of products.

And for five years.

And then COVID hit.

So that was before COVID.

Yeah.

And then in March of 2020, COVID hit.

And we launched the company right in the middle in August of that year.

And so

it's a company that offers comfort items to people in times of crisis.

And there was no bigger crisis in the world than the pandemic.

And so our little company became a very successful company.

That's nice.

It was like it caught me off guard this morning because, you know, you came early.

And I was like, like I have a very short but specific process leading into an interview and then you know and I blew it no no no I busted it up it's it's not it's just me kind of getting into a mind and I just you know woken up and I'd fed my cats and I was on the phone with my friend Jack who I haven't talked to a while

and then you were just waving your hands in front of my door in front of your door early

like 45 minutes but then you come in and we're loaded up you you we sit on the floor you give me a gift in remembrance of Lynn and you know know, usually I can kind of keep it together, but like, I'm like, if this is happening before we even get out there, I don't know what's going to happen.

Well, I didn't even know what out there meant to be honest.

No, no, but I'm just telling for you, the feelings, I think it's more about,

you know, you feel like, you know, you can think about loss and you can think about the experience of it and the loss itself.

But, you know, at some point you feel like you have the feelings a bit under control, you know, and then they're just right there.

And I appreciate you, you know, being there for that and making me have that.

Good.

It was grounding

somehow.

That's good.

Because

I know this, you're ending this part of your life.

Yeah.

It's another us.

Soon-ish.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

That's this, it's the same, my hand and yours.

Yeah.

And wherever the universe takes you,

you can always call you.

You can, actually.

I'm one of those people.

So, but for you, you know, when you do everything everywhere all at once and you win an Oscar and then like, you know, all of a sudden you were like the

elevation of you and your being,

which is purely you, I mean, that must have felt,

I don't, I can't even imagine.

No, you can't.

Neither can I.

I still can't.

The best part of it is it was pure.

Like the best part was,

oh,

I remind people.

I remind people because people,

once something

takes its form and starts to get elevated through marketing, through everything, it elevates to a place where people assume a lot about it.

I remind people.

We made that movie in January of 2020

in 38 days in Simi Valley, in an abandoned office building that was the countrywide savings and loan building before the market collapsed, and that building was like gone.

Like in a day, they pulled all the computers out and left this campus.

And it has changed hands six times.

They shoot movies and commercials there all the time.

And in 38 days,

a $12 million

movie called Everything Everywhere All At Once about the multiverse

was made.

There wasn't a person involved in that movie that assumed anything other than

kind of weird and cool.

Yeah, maybe it'll get out there.

It would get out there.

And I did it for three reasons.

I did it because it was shot in Los Angeles.

If that movie had been shot anywhere else, I would never have been in it.

I did it because they paid me a little money, enough to pay cash flow.

And mostly I did it because Michelle Yeo was going to be in it.

And I was going to play her girlfriend Nemesis.

And I thought it was cool.

I thought she was cool.

I always thought she was an amazing woman.

And she was going to star in this weird movie.

I didn't understand it.

My young Paduan, who works with me as a development executive at my now very successful company, is named Russell Goldman.

And when I walked in and said I'd been offered a movie by the Daniels,

he said, you've like without even blinking, he said, Oh my God, you have to do it.

And I was like, Really?

He goes, Oh, my God.

They're geniuses.

Yes.

Did you see Swiss Army Man?

Yeah.

I said, I did, but I didn't.

I mean, I appreciated it.

But he goes, They're geniuses.

Yeah.

Turned down for what?

They're geniuses.

And it turned out to be true.

I credit Russell Goldman.

And in terms of like, you know, I know you've been pretty public about, you know, just being you,

letting it all hang out.

Yeah, baby.

And, you know, you seem to get a lot of attention just for that.

That like a woman of a certain age owning it and not having any insecurity about it.

I mean,

then I would be, that sounds saintly.

I'm not a saint.

No, I know, I know, but you make choices.

I'm...

I understand.

I look in the mirror.

I know what's there.

I know what's not there.

And I know how to how to,

you know, look at, I did,

we just did Freak Year Friday.

Yeah.

We had a wonderful summer.

We actually, you know, had a really good summer.

How's she doing?

Fantastic.

You know, it's weird.

Like, I, you know, I

she's fantastic.

I just, for some reason with Lindsay Lohan, I...

I feel for her, and I'm very happy.

No, I'm very happy.

I feel really happy.

No,

I feel that some, like I only pick pick up pieces of it, but it was always like, I hope she's going to come out.

She is

in a great,

she's in a great life.

She has a baby.

Yeah.

She has a two-year-old.

But that's one of those stories.

She has a beautiful husband.

It's one of those stories.

She has a very strong family unit.

I'm go ahead.

She's good.

That's all.

She's awesome.

My point was,

the movie was really successful, and then

they did an evening.

Freaker Friday.

This was a good one.

Yeah,

and we, and, you know, the movie came out, went around the world, did it all, had a great time.

Did well.

Oh, it did great.

Oh, good.

Came back, and they were like, we're going to do one more event where all of the audience come dress like your character, dress like Tess.

Yeah.

And you're going to come and, you know, greet the theater at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood.

And this is like four weeks into the release of the movie.

I was like, okay, super fun.

I'm going to come in character.

So I pulled out my wig, pulled out the clothes that even though everybody else loved i really had struggled with and you know belted it up and kind of toddled out on stage and did my thing and then went backstage and they said just do a little quick video to the fans thanking them for their support yeah right social media yeah somebody with a camera yeah like with a phone a phone yeah i'm sitting in a chair i'm like hi everybody it's jamie lee curtis thank you guys so much i'm so glad it was the you know comedy hit of the summer we loved making it it, blah, blah, blah.

What I didn't know, and I could show you, but I won't show you on a podcast because no one will see it.

But there was a video of me where

I'm a little busty.

Let's just put it this way.

Like packing serious heat

in this video from the angle it was shot at, right?

It's a Disney movie.

And it literally became the biggest thing for me of the summer in the sense of like people coming up up to me going like holy so when you talk about sort of fearlessness physical fearlessness um

for me it's it's it's it's just being the kind of who i am where i am in the moment or using something of a character to accentuate maybe something that's not so good about yeah whatever yeah And

it was hilarious to me that the thing that actually got the most attention was this little thing.

And it was like an afterthought.

Like it was like the last thing I did in the movie was say thank you to the fans.

And the next thing I knew, it was all about my boobies.

And it was just like, whoa,

okay.

Thank you, Internet.

You read some of those comments?

I didn't read any of them, but

I just was told that it became a bit of a thing.

So when did you start producing?

Listen to you.

Oh, you got very serious.

Well, because I watched that movie movie last night, The Lost Bus.

I know.

And I know whatever that journey was.

I had no idea what it was about.

You know, I get these things and I'm like, all right, I want to

do my due diligence and watch the project.

I appreciate that.

And

first of all, what a menacing,

difficult movie it is to watch when you live through these fires.

And,

you know, fortunately, I was not affected by it.

But, you know, the way it's captured by the director, was it Greenway?

Paul Greengrass.

And this feels like, in a way, a smaller movie for him, you know, because it's so intimate.

So for the listener,

I have wanted to produce things for a long time.

I'm an idea girl.

I write books for children that are very, very successful.

That's great.

I've been trying to

get filmed books and ideas for quite a long time, but you can't do it with,

I mean, it's very, very hard to do

ever,

even when you have a company behind you.

So if you don't have a company

to get it

born, raised, and distributed.

And there are many steps in that process.

So over the years, I have tried to buy the rights to a book, develop it, but I never could get liftoff.

It could never take flight.

They always died on the vine.

But I kept trying.

I'm an idea girl.

I think of ideas all the time.

And

I made the Halloween movies with Jason Blum.

And I didn't know it was a trilogy because he didn't mention it.

No one mentioned it, not even David Gordon Greene.

They did not mention to me that it was a trilogy.

But we made the first one in 2018, and it was very successful.

When that movie came out, it was the same time as the Paradise Fire.

The Paradise Fire that decimated the town of Paradise, California, was November 8th, 2018.

So it was right after the Halloween movie.

Right.

Right before your birthday.

It was right before my birthday.

But it was also, I'm in California.

And it was the deadliest wildfire in California history.

And

I was aware of it for sure.

But at the same time...

when the 2018 Halloween movie came out and was successful, and then I found out that they were doing a couple more, I went to to Jason Blum and said, hey, Jason Blum,

I have a lot of ideas.

How about you give me a deal?

How about I get a first look deal with you and you give me a small amount of money for development so that I can pay a development executive and he agreed.

Now,

Mark Marin, Jason's a good businessman.

And that made good business, right?

He wanted me to continue to do that work.

Did he believe in me as a producer?

No.

Does he now?

Yes.

Did he give me that because

it was good business and

I was going to continue with the company?

Yes.

I guarantee you he wasn't like, oh, this is going to turn into something.

And almost immediately, I brought them the Patricia Cornwell Scarpetta books.

So I'm friends with Patricia.

I found out that the rights to her book series has never been brought to screen in 30 years.

I brought it to Blumhouse and we bought it and started developing it as a TV series that comes out next year for Amazon,

starring Nicole Kidman as Scarpetta and me as her sister Dorothy.

Something I never thought I'd be in.

I thought I was just going to produce it.

But right away,

something I brought Jason turned into something quite big.

And

clearly I brought them three other things.

There was a TV show that was on a year ago called The Sticky, which was about a Canadian maple syrup heist.

That was a show that Comet Pictures produced.

So all of a sudden, I think Jason started to pay some attention to me.

In August of 21, I was in Sun Valley, Idaho.

I was reading the Washington Post, and there was a review of Lizzie Johnson's book, Paradise, The Story of the American Wildfire.

And it was a review of her book, and then there was a sidebar

of a story pulled from the book of a school bus driver named Kevin McKay and a teacher named Mary Ludwig, who saved the lives of 22 students trapped on the bus for eight hours.

And it was a kind of a sidebar.

And I said out loud, well,

that's the movie.

I was with Chris in the kitchen on

the 20th of August.

And I explained to him, he was like, what?

I said, oh, and I told him the story.

I said, well, that's the movie.

Of course.

And then the next day, I didn't do anything.

And the next day, I was driving to visit my sister Kelly.

And I listened to Scott Simon on NPR.

Weekend Edition.

He said, hi, it's Scott Simon.

My first guest today is Lizzie Johnson, the author of Paradise.

Lizzie, you know, the story that really got me was the story of Kevin McKay and Mary Ludwig.

And I pulled my car over on the side of the road and I called Jason Blum and I said, I am about to send you two links, one to an NPR, one to the Washington Post.

I want to buy that book.

I want to make a movie.

I believe it'll be the most important thing either one of us ever do in the movie business.

And he said, okay.

And he agreed.

We bought the rights to the book.

I tracked down Lizzie Johnson's agents.

He said, I need to make sure that there's a story here that I need to send it to some writers.

The day he sent it to Brad Inglesby, Brad Inglesby called him and said, I'll write it on spec.

And within 36 hours, we had the rights to the book.

We had a writer who was going to adapt it.

And, you know, within a month, I had contacted Mary and Kevin and

made an alliance and began the process of producing the movie.

So they were involved.

Well, of course, we're telling their story or a fictionalized version of their story.

It's fiction based on truth.

Right.

But that's how the movie came together.

And then Paul Greengrass, then Apple came on board.

Then Paul Greengrass, who was the, I had two directors

on my list.

I'm a producer.

I had two directors.

Paul Greengrass.

It's a wild other swing in the other direction.

Ang Li.

Did you ever see The Ice Storm?

Sure, of course.

Okay.

It felt his

ability to tell an American story like The Ice Storm.

I felt he could do a great job with this story of this.

real-life human, this Kevin McKay bus driver, and Mary Ludwig, this teacher, and these children in the midst of the fire.

I knew that the center of the story had to be those people because you could never tell that big a story.

As it turns out, Paul Greengrass can tell that big of a story.

Visually.

But the interesting thing is, you're saying it's a big story,

but he

was on top of people all the time.

And it was like a genius thing.

But that's his gift.

His background is documentary filmmaking.

But it's like

right from the beginning,

you're watching it.

And like fucking McConaughey, when he sets his mind to it man he's the best the best okay so i think he's like gary cooper i think he's like henry fonda yeah i think he's like a he can do a quiet old western star yep it's stoicism and strength and deep humanity yep in a close-up

and the camera is on his face his eyes and he's so he really inhabits stuff man because like right at the beginning you know it's on him.

Like the shooting, it's, it's, it's, I can see the documentary part of it in the, in the way it's cut.

Sure, sure, sure.

But the choice to make it about people and to be that close to them.

That's the story.

Right.

I understand it's a big story, but, you know, because of the way he shot it all the way through, you are living in their skin.

But that's why I knew

that's the movie, because I knew that was the way in to tell a story of this magnitude.

It's a human story.

It's a magnitude story, but it's really about a guy saving a bunch of kids.

And the interesting thing about the way he shot it is that all the stuff that he deals with, when he's shooting people, you know, you're like a foot away.

And then when he shoots the fire, it's a monster.

And it is a monster.

Totally.

And as we,

as you mentioned at the beginning of this part of the conversation, I live in the Pacific Palisades.

You live out in Glendale, which is adjacent to Pasadena, Altadena, and the Eaton Fire.

I live on the skirt, outskirts of the Palisades fire.

And we just moved back into our house after eight months.

We were out for eight months after the fire.

But we have a house.

We did not lose our history.

We did not lose our family history.

And we both know too many people.

So it is

the tragedy, of course, is that here we made this movie a year ago.

We were editing the movie when in January of this year these fires happened in here.

But in the midst, in the middle of 2021 to now was Lahaina, where we watched an entire town burn.

People taking shelter in the ocean because it was the only place they could.

In our movie, people take shelter in a lake.

Creek, I mean, which is harrowing.

Yeah.

That's

the thing.

And again, right up on the people.

So my instincts as an actor are my same instincts as a producer.

I know a good story.

I know what I can bring to it.

And what I got to bring to it is the humanity, which is I got to go to Kevin McKay and Mary Ludwig, who've become friends of mine now.

These are people who I will

know for the rest of my life.

Because I'm the bridge.

See, I'm the one extending my hand in sobriety, saying,

trust me, I'm safe, right?

And

I'm also aware that we're about to tell a fiction.

And I'm going to be the one to help them understand that it's not a documentary.

We're not making

a doc about their experience.

We're making a film.

And how they feel about it.

I think they're both very proud that how they're represented and what the movie says and does honors their experience, even if it's not the exact experience.

Just for your listeners, because it's sort of fascinating to me, Kevin McKay and Mary both had a weird connection to me.

So Kevin McKay, when I first called him, said, you know, Jamie, we have a weird connection.

I said, oh, really?

What is it?

He said, you know, when

my mom was dying, because his mom

is dying when the fire hit yeah his mom died i think a couple months later but she was ill yeah he said

the last good time i had with my mom was going to see halloween 2018 in a theater we both loved halloween and we went out to dinner blah blah blah and we went out and that was October 19th, 2018.

Then the fire was November 8th.

And then I think she passed soon after that.

So he said, the last happy time I had with my mom was that.

And so that bonded us.

You know, it was a, we, we had a good, I felt like we had a good level of trust.

But then Mary Ludwig, the school teacher, yeah.

I'm speaking to her.

She was more hesitant.

America Ferrara pleaser.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I said, you know, we were talking.

And at one point, she said, you know, we have a weird connection.

And I said, really?

What is it?

She said, my father dated your mother.

Now, I was like, really?

My mother was from, well, we talked about it, Stockton and Merced.

And Mary's father was a Marine, and he went to the University of the Pacific where my mother went.

And he dated Jeanette.

Helen Morrison, my mother's name, before she was discovered and changed her name and became Janet Lee.

And she said that, you know, her father was a really strong man and she hadn't seen him cry much in his life.

And she said, I remember very specifically the the one of the few times I ever saw him cry was the day that Jeanette Helen Morrison died.

And so I have now two strangers who are feeling very connected to just the circumstances of life who I'm extending my hand to saying, can you trust me?

And I'm sober, as you know.

So as sober people, we say what we mean, we mean what we say, we don't say it mean, and we are trustworthy.

I want to be trustworthy.

And so I felt as a producer, That was my main job was to make sure that the real part of the story melded into the fiction and that both could be supported.

How did you get Matthew to do it?

Did he love it right now?

I think Paul Greengrass, I think he read Brad's script.

And Paul Greengrass is a master filmmaker

and creates a sense of,

I mean, the born movies he directed.

Just urgency and

vibrance.

And I think Matthew recognized both

the stoicism of Kevin

and he knew that the guy directing it was going to give it that pulsing but it's a stoicism based in barely keeping your shit together but but that's yeah that's a hero right like that's the definition ultimately it's every story everybody has a story no I just I thought it was just great yeah I mean I because I when a lot of times when I do these interviews I got to watch something I do not know I do not know what I'm getting into you know I knew it was about I knew the basic story.

I didn't do any research on it.

I just sat home last night by myself at 11 at night and watched that movie until one in the morning.

And then I, and then I'm early.

Yeah.

And

no, no.

But

it's really compelling.

And it's a rare thing where you know that it's going to end good.

But I already knew that.

But you still, the movie was still just menacing and human and intense.

And I knew it's going to be okay.

But I'm like, oh my God.

But I mean, we're almost every movie we know is going to be okay.

I mean, even in a Halloween movie, you know, it's going to be okay with me.

I guess, I guess.

But like, I felt the urgency, you know, like, and I, and I felt, and because of, you know, our own fears of fires and the reality of fires, it was, you know, you know, visceral to me.

Because when you imagine, and like you were living close to it, the worst that can happen, and it doesn't.

And then when you depict it in in a movie, you know, the worst that can happen and do it with such detail, it was impactful.

Yeah.

And what was also, as a producer, something very important to me is that we as a production team, Apple, Matthew, America, Paul, Jason Blum, myself, that Brad Inglesby, that we also leave something.

of memory.

And so we also joined together and are completing the memorial.

It's going to be called Hope Plaza.

It's going to be a place in paradise for people to gather to honor the first responders, to honor the 85 people who lost their lives, to honor the community that is today

thriving and surviving in a beautiful way.

The way

if you, I mean, I'm sure you've been into Altadena and you've certainly been in the Palisades.

It's awful

to see the amount of destruction, and then you also see the vibrancy of new life

coming back.

You know, I live in the mountains in Idaho.

When you burn through old growth, it creates, the heat actually creates new,

it opens something new.

So, yeah.

Great job.

Far out.

Great talking to you.

Oh, it's it.

That's it.

Okay, so fun.

I love, by the way, that you have this mid-century modern ashtray that most people would have like displayed out yeah kind of like as an objetar like some sort of beautiful yeah thing and yours is filled with what's stuff like what is like see i'm i'm a girl shotgun shell empty plastic shotgun shells handle some earpiece some ear some here some earps but i mean i'm telling you this it's just stuff this at a garage sale yeah is

you know

300 bucks at a garage sale.

Oddly, that ashtray was given to me in my early sobriety by a guy who was in the rooms with me, a Vietnam vet, and it had a lighter that matched it.

Wow.

And I think he might have given it to me for an anniversary.

I think his name was Paul.

And yeah, that's a sober representation.

And I hadn't really thought about that in a while.

Yeah, but I've been staring at it.

You need some of that hand sound.

I'll give you a box.

I don't box.

No, babe, babe, babe.

Seriously, I agree.

I just, it was there, and it's that lavendery one.

Yeah, peppermint.

I know, whatever.

Thanks for having me here, Mark Merrill.

I'm sorry, I'm not Christopher Guest.

What are you talking about?

Because I know.

So he wants to come on the show, but are you guys going to be in town?

Is he in town?

I'm going to give you his number.

You call him.

Just do it direct to him.

Okay.

Don't try to do through a lot of people.

Oh, it's great talking to you.

And you.

I've admired you for a long time.

Well, I think.

I love you.

And thank you for the gifts.

We are sober, and we are sober family.

Yes, we are.

I just started going back to the secret meetings.

I was a little out of it for a while.

You know what?

You're going to have my number.

Okay, good.

Goodbye.

What a great person.

What a fun conversation.

I love her.

The Lost Bus is in theater September 19th and on Apple TV Plus on October 3rd.

Hang out for a minute, folks.

Hey, people, Tracy Letz will be back on the show.

He's one of the guests I actually became friends with after he was on the first time.

And you can listen to that initial appearance on episode 888.

Now, see, now I'm hurt that, like, you know, none of the people that you know who have been in here have called you and said, oh, Tracy,

you got to go over to Mark's house.

Nobody's done that.

In fact, it kind of goes the opposite direction.

I know, why hasn't Mark had me on?

He's had all my friends on.

Did you say that?

Yeah, sure.

I've been trying to, I tried to get you on a long time ago, but I'm a fan of yours.

It goes back.

I like what you do.

I feel like I know you.

I don't know why that is.

You're one of those people.

We're roughly the same age.

We are.

We've had a long, slow, steady climb.

Yeah.

I think, you know, you've got a Pulitzer.

So there's a big difference in our success rate.

I'm hosting a podcast out of my garage and you have a Pulitzer.

Yeah, but you're on like three television shows.

Yeah, but you're in movies.

I mean,

I'm not going to do this with you.

Because

you won.

You won that one.

That's episode 888 with Tracy Letz, available for free on whatever podcast platform you're using right now.

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

Here's some simple acoustic thing.

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