Summary
Ethan Hawke discusses his decades-long acting career, from childhood stardom to becoming a master craftsman of his craft. He explores the psychology of performance, the importance of presence and humility, and how life experiences inform artistic work.
Insights
- Early failure in childhood acting (first film flopped at 14) provided crucial psychological resilience that enabled him to handle later success without ego distortion
- The beginner's mind—admitting 'I don't know'—is essential for growth in any craft and prevents the arrogance that stunts artistic development
- Presence and disappearance into character requires genuine listening and vulnerability; self-consciousness and ego are the primary destroyers of authentic performance
- Diversifying creative pursuits (directing, writing, documentaries) deepens understanding of adjacent crafts and prevents narrow identity formation in a single discipline
- Fear and nervousness are essential fuel for peak performance; the goal is not to eliminate anxiety but to manage it as a tool
Trends
Rejection of social media's impact on creative focus and mental health among performers and younger generationsGrowing emphasis on craft mastery and artistic integrity over commercial success metrics in entertainmentMentorship and apprenticeship models gaining renewed appreciation as antidote to algorithmic cultureShift toward understanding celebrity and public criticism as noise rather than signal for self-worthIncreased interest in contemplative practices (meditation, nature exposure, solitude) as counterbalance to digital saturationRecognition that child stardom creates developmental trauma requiring decades of work to overcomeValue of cross-disciplinary creative work (acting, directing, writing, documentaries) for artistic depthEmphasis on permission to fail and embrace of imperfection as prerequisite for excellence
Topics
Child Actor Development and TraumaPerformance Psychology and PresenceBeginner's Mind and Continuous LearningCraft Mastery vs. Commercial SuccessSocial Media Impact on Mental HealthMentorship and Apprenticeship ModelsFear Management in High-Performance ContextsArtistic Integrity in EntertainmentIdentity Formation Through Multiple DisciplinesCriticism and Public Opinion ManagementImprovisation and Listening in ActingNature and Cosmic Perspective as GroundingParenting in the Digital AgeMethod Acting and Character PreparationThe Role of Anxiety in Peak Performance
Companies
FX
Hawke is currently working on a television show called 'The Lowdown' with FX and Hulu distribution
Disney
Parent company of Hulu, which distributes Hawke's FX show 'The Lowdown'
Paramount Studios
Location where Hawke filmed his first major film role at age 14 in 1984
McCarter Theater
New Jersey theater where Hawke performed in George Bernard Shaw's 'St. Joan' at age 12
People
Peter Weir
Director of Dead Poets Society who mentored Hawke and demonstrated art-focused filmmaking approach
River Phoenix
Hawke's scene partner at age 14 in his first major film; both were young actors navigating early fame
Robin Williams
Co-star in Dead Poets Society who influenced Hawke's understanding of acting as a lifestyle commitment
Denzel Washington
Hawke's co-star in Training Day; exemplifies mastery through constant listening and improvisation
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Collaborator known for detecting inauthenticity in scenes and demanding genuine presence
Jeff Bridges
Hawke's example of an actor who maintained integrity and continuously improved over decades
Jodie Foster
Rare example of child star who survived early fame with wisdom and artistic integrity intact
Kris Kristofferson
Hawke's hero and mentor; exemplifies multidisciplinary creative excellence and authenticity
Richard Linklater
Hawke's friend and collaborator; advised him to read literature rather than pursue destructive paths
Martin Scorsese
Jodie Foster's mentor on Taxi Driver; example of how great mentorship enables child actors to survive
Paul Newman
Subject of Hawke's documentary; example of sustained excellence and integrity in acting
Merle Haggard
Subject of Hawke's recent documentary exploring artistic integrity and life experience
Joe Rogan
Podcast host conducting the interview with Ethan Hawke
Mike Tyson
Referenced for his psychology of fear management and peak performance in high-stakes competition
Cus D'Amato
Mike Tyson's mentor who used hypnosis and taught fear management philosophy
Sarah Bernhardt
Historical example of great performer who experienced nervousness as sign of mastery
Bill Russell
Example of peak performer who experienced pre-game anxiety despite being most winning player
Paul Scofield
English actor whose philosophy of performing for love rather than prestige influenced Hawke
Peter Dinklage
Recent collaborator on Hawke's film 'Blue Moon' who improvised moments of brilliance
Quotes
"When you know what you're doing, you will be nervous. That's when you know you're good."
Sarah Bernhardt (referenced by Ethan Hawke)•Late in conversation about anxiety and performance
"I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of losing. I'm afraid of being humiliated. Close I get to the ring, more confidence I get. Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god."
Mike Tyson•Referenced during discussion of fear management
"If you can say I don't know, I can teach you. If you can't say I don't know, then I really can't teach you."
Broadway director (referenced by Ethan Hawke)•Discussion of beginner's mind at age 21
"The voice of our spirit is extremely gentle. It's difficult to hear it. It's quiet. But if you can hear it, that thing—intuition—you can see what's happening around you."
Ethan Hawke•Discussion of intuition and life guidance
"I don't want to be in charge of my whole life in that way. Maybe you would, but it'd be different. You'd be coming out of rehab."
Ethan Hawke•Discussing how early failure protected him from destructive success
Full Transcript
The Joe Rogan Experience Showing by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day Nice to meet you Great to meet you man It's weird when you see someone in so many fucking movies and then you meet him in real life like okay just a regular person right there Yeah staring me in the face and you just took a leak yeah Dude you've been in some fucking banger movies man It's like you've had an incredible career Yeah pull that sucker Pull it towards me yeah it's alright very good Yeah it's been a long strange trip It's been a wild one huh Yeah When did you start acting? How old were you? Alright so I'm like 12 years old I don't have a winter sport My mother doesn't know what to do with me and my next door neighbor He lived like four houses down and he took an acting class at the Paul Robeson Center of Performing Arts and so my mother signed me up so that I could get picked up by his mom you know taken to acting class in the winter and get dropped off you know and be at home and I went there and this head of a local theater company came by to teach an improv seminar kind of thing I'm 12 years old right and afterwards in the parking lot he said hey you want to be in a play and so what do you mean he says I got a part of a guy who's a knight gets to you get to have a sword and I said well I have any lines he said you'll have one line I said alright cool and I asked my mom and she said do I have to pay you know and I said I don't think so I think they're gonna pay me so I went and I did this play and it was George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan at the McCarter Theater in New Jersey and that was a real play yeah it was it was a proper play and it was an incredible experience to be honest with you because my parents hated their jobs you know they would go to work and their life happened on the periphery of their employment you know my mom would take the train to New York and so she wouldn't get home till 730 something she would leave at dawn and she was as miserable at work I mean and I went to this rehearsal and everyone was having they were talking about whether or not God existed they were talking about what they believed in they would dress up in these crazy outfits and then we did the play and they got a standing ovation and it was it was so much fun and it was the first time I saw was that you could do this for a living you know a lot of the actors aren't people you've heard of or anything like that but they were real actors and they loved their job and the rehearsal room was so kind of thrilling watching them figure out where people should stand and when what was important and what was the scene about and what was the theme of the play and how could this scene fit in with the larger context and and I just decided that's what I wanted to do and a lot of kids want to act so that doesn't mean very much but I threw this other friend of mine I started hearing about open casting calls in New York and I asked my mom if I could go on some of these big auditions and again she said is it gonna cost me any money so if I paid for my own train fare I could go to these auditions and so I took some Polaroids and went on a few of these big auditions and I got one of them and it was for this big in 1984 it was a 30 million dollar movie directed by the guy who had just done gremlins right Joe Dante and I thought I was a made man I mean it was just it was in it was absolutely incredible to be sucked out of suburban America and brought to LA my first scene partner was River Phoenix and all of a sudden whoa I'm in LA and you know my mom couldn't quit her job or anything so my mom had a really turbulent relationship with her mother but her mother her mother and she didn't really know each other and so her mother said she'd be my guardian and my mom designed this as a way to maybe have a family healing but my grandmother was a piece of work and we lived together in Koreatown it's what they called it and it was wild and she I remember we drove into Paramount Studios you know you can picture it the image from the Godfather and you had the big gates and my grandmother had always wanted to be a movie star wow you know and she'd she was from here she's from Austin Texas well really Fort Worth but you know she would talk about going to see Gone with the Wind at the Paramount here in Austin you know and she would she would watch Gone with the Wind you know three times a week and she had dreamed of being a movie star and I remember we were in a big van driving me to set the first day and we went through the gates of Paramount opening up and she was smoking an eave cigarette in the van of course it's 1984 and she's like my first time in Hollywood as a fucking guardian and so the whole child actor thing this was a trip and I finished the movie and there's a lot of drama involved in that five was to complete that story but I finished it the movie was a big turkey how old were you at the time? 14 River and I were both 14 we you know but see we look so young in that picture right but you got to understand you know when they're that age you think you're dying to be 18 dying to be 16 we went off River and I stole a pack of camel cigarettes because we both wanted to be like James Dean and and we had a we had a lot of fun that's the truth but the movie came out and a member River and I go into the bathroom at the premiere and we'd grown a lot from the time we shot the movie to the time it came out and nobody in the bathroom really recognized us and they were all talking about what a turkey the movie was how terrible it was and I remember just looking at the eyes like it wasn't the narrative we thought you know we had bought into the dream that you know we were gonna be whatever teen icon we were thinking of at the time and and it died a quick and salty death my dream and I went back to high school and put away my dream of being an actor it seemed like it was this isolated almost like choose your own adventure book or something where I got to see what Hollywood was like but then have it denied and it kind of like putting your hand on flame I it was not a good feeling when it was over and then you know four years or so went by and I graduated high school and it was off at college and I heard about these auditions from a movie called Dead Poets Society and I hated college I was miserable and I thought I'll take the bus in and I'll go on one of these open casting calls again and and if I get the part this is what I decided if I get the part I'll do that if I don't get the part I'll join the Merchant Marines and be like Jack London that was my fantasy at the time I remember I remember calling my sister and saying alright there's seven parts this is how dumb I was I was like there's seven parts if I don't get one of those I must suck you know so he's not true at all but I ended up getting one of them and and I dropped out of college and that the success of Dead Poets Society sent me you know was like a trajectory of it shot me down a different course of water than I was on before that's probably a much better path than the first film being successful and you become a child star I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that first experience first of all if for no other reason then in the success of Dead Poets Society I didn't take it seriously at all I didn't even realize that the movie was successful until a couple years later because I had so braced myself for failure you know perception of failure anyway because of the first experience yeah because everybody's saying all the movie's so great I'm like yeah they said this last time doesn't mean anything you know and so it kind of taught me at a really young age about to ask yourself why you're doing something you know like are you doing it for the result of what happens are you doing it to do it and I by coming back to acting a few years later I was just fully braced for it not to go well and it was still gonna be worth it and and so I think I it gave me a slight bit of ballast to handle the success of that you went into it for the enjoyment of doing it rather than think I just hadn't yeah I had no expectation but I was certain I wasn't going to be a star I was positive of it I thought as a way to make some money and maybe learn about writing and learn about film and a way to get out of college now what happened is when I got there I met all these other young men who were in love with acting and that I was watching movies with them and talking about movies with them and seeing the light in their eyes and we'd go to set and there was Robin Williams you know we had Peter Weir who had just directed Witness one of my favorite movies of all time at that point and he was a master I mean he was not a lightweight human being he was a heavyweight human being and he would lead rehearsals and he would talk about acting and performance in a way that I hadn't you know I heard people talk about it that way when we're doing St. John when I was doing the like he talked about it like we were making art and like we were on a mission beyond success or failure and it was it it was an invitation to a lifestyle a life commitment and what I didn't realize at the time that's what that movie is about too you know so the movie itself is a guided meditation on Carpe Diem right it's a meditation on Gather ye rose buds while ye may I sound my barbaric yop over the rooftops of the world you know this is kind of stuff that I was getting inundated with in rehearsal and so that was I didn't I wouldn't have told you that on the day I wrapped dead poet society that my life had changed but looking back it had it had planted the seeds yeah I was thinking I've never met a person who became famous at 14 who came out of it okay I'm of yet to hurt Jody Foster school never met anybody that became famous very young I read every interview she does for exactly that reason I have it's it's so difficult I tell parents all the time like children acting is a wonderful thing put them in the school play it's so good for him get him singing lessons it's so good for him singing the church choir it's so good for him but to be a professional actor at a young age is um this it it's dangerous and in extremely insidious ways that are very very hard to perceive when it's happening that's a great way to put it yeah it's it I think it completely impedes your developmental process the way I liken to is like concrete when you make concrete there's a bunch of very specific ingredients you put them with very specific mixture like you have to have this amount of water that amount of sand this amount of rocks all this if it's off it's never fixed you can't add water after it's cured it's done it's fucked forever this is bad concrete now this is what happens to a lot of young human beings that become famous whether it's your acting or singing yeah and it's not just fame that analogy works for all walks of life really you know if you have a really something really traumatic happens in childhood it's very hard to recover it's a tremendous amount of work to recover and I agree with you like I think celebrity is like it's like a tiny drop of mercury or it's poison it's poison for your brain now if you're mature you can handle it and if you get it in slow ink like I got it in slow increments dead poet society happened I had a little taste of fame but I wasn't nobody knew my name I was you go to restaurants yeah I was that kid from dead poet society oh look at him yeah but and I got it in slow I got to develop what do you what do you call it when you you get a little bit of poison like a resistance yeah resistance to it and it came so slowly for me I even think about people I remember the weekend Pretty Woman came out two days before no one had ever heard of Julie Roberts two days afterwards she's the most famous woman in America I think that's a huge thing to absorb I wouldn't wish that on anyone and I know that my personality couldn't have handled it I've worked hard to handle it is poorly or well he is I have you know yeah it's I think you going back to school and living a normal life for you know five six years whatever it was before you left college that's I just think that's critical that's the developmental process of the normal maturation of a person when they go through adolescence teenage years into college young adult then you can kind of handle things and then maybe you're also fortunate that like you said dead poet society not you know you didn't get too huge from it you just got some juice a little bit juice a little bit of confidence that wasn't you know it's like something's happening something's happening but then I had the years after that though you know I have to give some a shout out to my mom who was just so devastated that I dropped out of college I mean she just couldn't stop crying about it you know and it filled me with desire to show her that I was taking responsibility for my own education which is what I said I would do and so I started a theater company and I worked really hard at a lot of different things writing and reading and thinking and mostly with this theater company where I met a lot of young people who were interested in what I was doing but we weren't paid any money and we worked our asses off and we built sets and we you know it was fun I don't want to lie we had a great time but it was a college experience that I gave myself through this theater company and that changed me because I met a lot of people who were really excellent at what I do that weren't making a lot of money I met a lot of people who loved it as much as I do who weren't getting their picture taken who weren't being told they were special I knew how gifted they were I could understand I had a little bit of balance and a little bit of humility to go along with the superficial elements of my chosen field hmm hmm do you ever think about like what would have happened if that guy didn't invite you to do that play when you were 12 it's kind of crazy how there's just pivotal moments in your life you know he just died. Nagel Jackson was his name and he was a great theater director I mean I don't know if you feel this way I don't know what I have a sense often and I know this sounds really dopey to say but I sometimes have a sense of a guardian angel of some kind of why did this guy talk to me in the parking lot and why was he such a kind decent human being throughout my life I have had opportunities presented to me and I had enough intuition and enough intelligence maybe to follow it but I do think about it all the time all the ways that are imperceptible on the Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday that they happen but where your life is kind of guided and it doesn't really feel by your own doing yeah I know it sounds wacky to say but I believe it too I mean I don't publicly profess it as the definite reason why everything happens but there's a bunch of I think most people that have gotten anywhere in life there's moments in their life like how did that happen like what why did this feel like it was a destined path like why was I compelled to try this what was the what was the thought behind that and what am I being guided is there is fate real I wonder how other people feel but I do think one of the keys I think that probably everybody has a path that is there for them and the trick about knowing yourself the value and taking time to like be still with yourself and listen to yourself you know that there's an expression the voice of our spirit is extremely gentle it's difficult to hear it it's quiet it's quiet yeah but if you can hear it that thing intuition that thing the path idea of a guardian angel would have you can see what's happening around you if you're in touch with yourself and if you're not in touch with yourself you keep tripping on the same you're not seeing the angles and the roads that might be available to you so I do think that part of the trick is taking time to actually get to know yourself so that you can see the light when it appears because I bet you everybody has it I bet they do too I bet there's also a real factor in recognizing the misery of your mother's life what she was doing where she didn't take these chances she didn't she had responsibility she was yeah but can I tell you something funny about that yeah this type of the year when life ramps up and demands more of your energy more work more plans with family and friends and holiday travel all while it's getting darker and colder out you can let it all drain your juice or you can get out ahead of it with a g1 a g1 is a daily health drink that can help you stay one scoop ahead of all the energy drains coming your way this season because the superfoods and b vitamins and every scoop of a g1 support steady energy production without the crash in fact just shaking up one scoop of a g1 and water covers your multivitamin your pre and probiotics antioxidants superfoods and more it's one simple step to start your day ahead of anything that might come your way and that's why I partnered with them for years and when you need energy support a g1 delivers with superfoods and with b vitamins that help convert nutrients into energy for vigor and vitality subscribe today to get this clinically back formula in the flavor of your choice tropical citrus berry or original to help you stay one scoop ahead a g1 has a special offer today if you had to drink a g1.com slash Joe Rogan you'll get the welcome kit a morning person hat a bottle of vitamin d3 K2 and an a g1 flavor sampler for free with your first subscription that's over $100 and free gifts just head over to drink a g1.com slash Joe Rogan or visit the link in the description to get started so she was 18 when I was born right so that's that's tough you don't really have a childhood right right and but in her mid 40s she took it she joined the Peace Corps in her mid 40s after you know at once I was okay and it was right around the time my oldest Maya was born she single single child yeah yeah yeah and I think I was a big part of her on her brain a lot worrying it was a big is this kid gonna be alright is this kid gonna be alright it makes a lot of noise in your head you know sure and and I was alright and she looked around and I remember her saying that you know if if an accident happened today when they do happen and I died I would be extremely disappointed in myself she was probably I don't know 46 or something when she said this younger than I am now and and she said I don't want to be disappointed in my life so she joined the Peace Corps of which she wasn't all that impressed with but they sent her to Romania and she fell in love with Romania and she fell in love with the people there and she got obsessed with the racism against the gypsy culture the Roma culture I'm supposed to call it and it reminded her a lot of growing up here in the 60s in the racism she saw as a young girl and she just decided to do something about it she spent 25 years there and she got thousands of kids into school who wouldn't have gone to school she just recently retired back to Fort Worth and it's she's a different woman than the woman I grew up with which is I think a remarkable story I loved both the women the woman the woman now and the woman I grew up with I don't want to paint some portrait that she was miserable she had so much she just was miserable at work right you know she was not a miserable person to be with the opposite and she kept that fire in herself alive enough to when the window presented itself she took and she took it hard I mean she disappeared for a quarter of a century to Romania the young woman born in Fort Worth right and that's a wild thing to do and she made a huge impact and I'm extremely proud of her and proud of the work that she's done and so is everybody who knows her and and now she's in Fort Worth doing her thing and has a different sense of herself because she followed her own intuition and her own path it just she had to deal with the responsibility of raising a child for a long time yeah yeah yeah well that develops a different kind of character too you know the the character of a woman trying to raise a child and also a boy you know I have all daughters you do yeah I have three daughters and one boy yeah yeah all my friends are boys like dude it is so much harder it's just that you just just trying to keep them from burning the house down yeah I was a pain of course of course and if you're a single child you know but I she must have gotten some inspiration from your path from your choices I wonder if you have to ask her I think she had in her own way went for it because everybody told her not to have a baby and she wanted to and she didn't want to run with the pack now she didn't I think when you're 18 you don't understand the ramifications of the decision of having a child right you know how you know permanent you know I remember she told me when Maya was born here well congratulations you know you now have something to worry about the rest of your life yeah I think it's a gift though it's I mean I certainly think it changes you as a human being in in my case the most positive ways possible I could imagine being a single mother though it's a much more difficult position to be in and there's a lot of pressure on women you know sure you know if if you work you're a bad mother if you're just to stay at home mom you're not a good strong woman you know I mean they're damned if they do they're damned if they don't that's the position they get put in yeah yeah absolutely yeah it's all those experiences when as an actor I mean one of the more fascinating things to me about watching people's how they can assume different identities again and how critical is it to have had so many different people in your life and different life experiences to draw from to try to understand things through their eyes if you're a regular person running through if you're a stockbroker you run through the world thinking like a stockbroker you know you're not thinking what would it be like to be a janitor and what does it like to be this guy who's trying to raise a family and he's got a drug dealer in his neighborhood it's causing problems and your life is this constant state of drama like you're drawing from all these different experiences so having had like not I mean I wouldn't say it's your life was complicated but it sounds like you have a really good mom but complicated like and not necessarily that stable in that way you're young and you're you know you're trying this thing out and you're going off to Hollywood and then you're coming back and going to college like having all these different bizarre interactions with people in life experience it how much do you draw upon that when you're trying to like create a character well that's a really big question is well I have to break it into parts it started getting bigger as I was yeah yeah because it's kind of two parts but the first part about drawing on a character is touching on my favorite aspect of my life and my job most people if you're an actuary you're an actuary you think in numbers you think in this this is in this your job you have to you know you I have I got to play World War two vet got taken out to basic training I got to read World War two veterans journals over and over again I got to wear the clothes they wore I was working in that movie for a few months reading all kinds of books watching documentaries about that then that movies over moving on now I'm gonna get cast as a LA cop gonna do ride arounds through Los Angeles in the backseat of a cop car right when the crash unit thing was happening and and I'm thinking like a cop and I'm not it's not it's even it's it's different than being a journalist and writing about it I'm really trying to imagine being them and I'm not looking at it from a judgmental point of view I don't have an agenda about whether they're a good person or a bad person or whether this army sergeant should have made that decision or that one I'm thinking why did he make it why did you make it why did you do that yeah right I play a jazz musician a drug addict right I'm not sitting there judging him what a bad person you know I'm thinking why do you do it you know it's it's a painkiller why is he taking it where's this music come from why is it so important to him why is he practice 12 hours a day what what is that about you know you all these characters are these invitations to a expand your own sense of what it what identity means like what is who is Joe Rogan right and who Joe Rogan is with his mom is a little different than he's watching the Super Bowl with his best friends who Joe Rogan is at 40 is different than he is at 20 we we have inside of us so many aspects to ourselves you know when you're we're in in love you change when you see your child for the first time you change your your biology your chemicals start to shift a little bit if you're in a violent situation you know your molecular structure alters a little bit you start to realize that that's not you and that's not you they're all you and and that's what performing is like and you start to see society and see yourself and see a continuity that is really kind of exciting I've had if you don't get ruined by breaking your arm patting yourself in the back or something like that I've met a bunch of older actors who've lived really interesting lives that I've learned it's like I once had dinner with Vanessa Redgrave this old English actress and she she's spent her life doing Shakespeare and Chekhov and Beckett and Tennessee Williams she's spent her life with some of the greatest minds of the last 50 years and she carries that with her she's powerfully intelligent powerfully humble woman and it's it's like being next to somebody you really admire you know a master craftsman doesn't matter what the craft is when they when you take it to a high level it has a lot to teach you so anyway that was a multi-part question the other thing that part of your question is how did I stay balanced and a lot of it had to do with my father who has he doesn't care about celebrity doesn't particularly think it's very interesting and not in a judgmental way really cares about integrity and whether you're a good person and whether you tell the truth and it doesn't it's not interesting to him how much money you make that's not where his value system is placed on whether he's naturally suspicious of people who want too much attention naturally suspicious of that in me which was good for me it's a good suspicion it's a healthy suspicion yeah he had was very realistic about the chances I had of making a profession out of this that's not a bad thing you know everybody says so great to tell people to follow your dreams and it is important to follow your dreams but it's also important to be realistic and have a plan and take care of yourself and and when you say you're going to do something to do it to show up when you're asked to tell the truth all these things that so when ever things would start to go well I had this person in my life that's very important to me who doesn't place a value on anything superficial and when we talked about why it's so hard to meet young people in this profession who make it what starts to happen regardless of how good or not good your parents are something your circle can get infiltrated with a lot of people trying to make money off you and and that's dangerous because they don't care about you yeah that is an issue there's an issue of people trying to get you to take work that you really shouldn't take just because they're gonna get a percentage of it or it's gonna be good for you in the next three years but they don't have your long term right you know what is gonna be good for the 65 year old version of you right you know is this like you said yeah if I could if I could have decided my life explorers would have been a huge hit it would have been ET big and you know what I wouldn't be here on this talk show today you know so I don't want to be in charge of my whole life in that way you know you maybe would but it'd be different you'd be coming out of rehab oh for sure Charlie yeah yeah dude I'd be on marriage 18 by the way it was a fantastic guy to talk to I bet he was he I listened to it it was fantastic wonderful guy like a sweetheart of a guy a guy who went through the exact opposite of what I'm saying is good for you if you survive yeah anything is a learning tool right I mean some of you must have this some of the wisest people I know have been through the 12-step program yes and so addiction and misery can be an unbelievable teacher if you can if you pull yourself out of it if you survive if you survive it's not I wouldn't wish it for my children it's not a dare I want them to take oh hey one path to wisdom's yeah yeah yeah a lot of my friends died from it but a couple of them are really wise from it read a book okay it's a right I remember it's funny even as you said remember when I was about 24 starting to get successful I met my friend Richard Linklater and we were hanging out in New York and we met this really cool this guy we really admired fancy pants writer really badass you know you kind of just and we were smoking cigarettes well Rick wasn't of course but we're shooting pool and this guy said to me you know what you're almost interesting you know what you gotta do is you go got it gotta go down to Mexico and disappear for a couple of years you know live life a little bit then you'll be somebody and the guy finally when the night we're walking home with Rick Rick said let me tell you what you don't need to do read some William Burroughs that might be a good idea read some Hunter S. Thompson skip the addiction path you know learn what you don't have to you don't have to do it you know you don't need to that's that's not the path to wisdom right you know it has worked for a handful of people but most of us you know I keep coming back in this conversation to Jody Foster much I'm I read her interviews because I admire because I know what she survived right but but she's wicked smart yes you know you don't want to you don't want to place your bet that you're as smart as she is yeah she's smart and also wise that's what the odd thing of someone it was in like how old was she in taxi driver 12 14 crazy I know crazy and it's a very bizarre movie for a young child to be sexualized and in this very weird psychotic movie but what she took from it was this great mentor and Martin Scorsese she kind of understood she was making art that's where the wisdom comes in she's just naturally precociously wise that way that she didn't get hung up on the fame or the CD aspects the sexuality aspects of it she got hung up on who's this guy Martin Scorsese what is he doing what is this movie saying how could I be a part of that you know and that's how I think she survived but I don't know the woman so I shouldn't speak yeah I don't know either but I do admire her when I hear her talk yeah me too that's why I was bringing her up as the lone example that I've ever come across with someone who's been through childhood stardom that seems to be like very well and put together yeah and she's still really good at her job yeah right right it's like that's it that's a me a caricature that to me is really exciting you know see if you're me you're like I look at Jeff Bridges a lot too so like when dead poet society came out I went I remember I went in this long talk with myself I was like like sunrise and I've been up all night it was New York I was about 19 or something I was just thinking about who had gone through this that I actually admire when I look at them and I admire and Jeff Bridges had starred in the last picture show which was one of my favorite movies and he was amazing and he just slowly got better and better and better and better and better and I was like all right so it can be done you know this you know he's got an amazing wife he's really super into Buddhism I started getting like what what is he's really into photography like he takes I mean I don't know him either right so I'm just I'm talking like a fan here I don't know these people but I watched him from afar I was like okay this race can be won and and I've always thought I remember I was so happy he won the Academy Award for true grit I guess it was and I was like damn what a long slow burn he had and just keeps getting better and more interesting he comes out these weird little books I love and I read them and he writes books yeah he has this book with his like he's a mentor in Buddhism and they kind of wrote a book together about the Dow of the dude or something like that but it's actually you know I don't know if you've read the Dow of Willie I love all these kind of to the left versions of sometimes I find it hard to read the I want to read what Willie thinks about the dumb bottom more than I want to read the dumb bottom myself yeah there it is yeah the dude and the Zen master it's a great book by the way here's a mantra in it that I just love which is row row row your boat gently down the stream merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream and he talks about how valuable that song has been to him I'm probably misquoted but it meant a lot to me and it's just like one step at a time one step at a time keep keep a smile on your face you know don't forget it's all a dream you know it's like it's a great mantra yeah it is and it's it's always great to have someone who has gone through it all and has come out fascinating interesting and wise so you go okay it can be done yeah did you ever meet Chris Christofferson no he was cool yeah yeah well I my secret fantasy is is your job you know I I wrote a profile on Chris I don't know 15 years ago now for Rolling Stone magazine and I made a documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and I just finished a documentary about Merle Haggard and I really enjoy studying other people and but Chris you know his his life stories you know what I mean he was in the military and then he gave up everything became a songwriter and it's kind of like imagine if you know the equipment is like at the point of height of his career it's like imagining if Brad Pitt had also written a number one single for Amy Winehouse and you know what I mean I mean you know he wrote me and Bobby McGee for Janice Joplin and yeah yeah oh yeah wow and he was you know a helicopter pilot and he wrote songs for Johnny Cash and he was acting in Sam Peckin Paul movies he was in Blade yeah he was in Blade but he was a real he's a Rhodes scholar and a boxer he would like this guy he would be right up your alley a real free thinker and didn't trap himself in any way of thinking and really fought for individual rights and he was a great great guy I got to interview him and he actually starred in my first movie I directed to so I got to know what was that so movie called Chelsea Walls I don't necessarily recommend you watch it you can if you want to I learned a lot making it I like it a lot but I was learn you know I was learning a lot but Chris Chris was in it and he was amazing yeah having known people like that is so beneficial in your life that they they're not just like inspirational it's like a mental fuel a type of a type of nutrient almost it's like having a person that you know exists it's been through something has come out amazing and it and is so not tied down to anyone specific identity has varied interests pursues them all with passion having mentors yes it's like you know how you're gonna be a samurai if you don't know what samurai right you know you gotta see the way they tie their shoes you gotta see the way they make dinner you don't just gotta see the fancy sword play that stuff is hard earned and and so I'm not scared of that you know you don't you don't have to hero worship people you don't have to turn them into deities they're human beings but when you get to experience and see that people like oh you don't have to lie I knew a guy once who didn't lie you know you don't have to back down when somebody says that I watched the person up you can be a good parent you can have your parent your children say I love my dad it's not gonna come easy but it can be done and and so I like heroes I have no I like I also like seeing older people you know there's not not the fixation on the 23 year old James Dean you know but a fixation on you know the 72 year old Chris Christopherson you know you know pick whoever yours are there's you know Muhammad Ali I mean there's so many amazing people that you can say like wow life was not always a picnic for them how did they handle it and then you cannot be you know too upset when life's not a picnic for you you can just ask yourself how did you handle it yeah I don't think there's anything wrong with really appreciating people that concern of hero worship is legitimate because I think there are some people that will take a person and change who they are and make them not just extraordinary but not even human yeah that's a mistake it is a mistake but it doesn't mean you can't love and deeply appreciate who they actually are flaws and all because that's what we all are and when someone is extraordinary and they have gone through so much or they have expressed so much and they do resonate with you so much that's a valuable person and you should treat them like they're a valuable person it's not necessarily hero worship it's just appreciation yeah like I'll tell you I don't know why I just flashed through my brain and when I was making this film Chelsea Wallace you have to understand like digital video it just came out this movie the celebrations Danish film amazing movie Thomas Vinterberg directed it and it just kind of changed the rules the camera was cheap like movies that were always so expensive to make and now you could just I was like all right I want I made this movie for a hundred thousand dollars in a 2000 and I was like all right we're just gonna play with this new camera and I talked Chris Christofferson into being it he was my hero and he can't he agreed to do it I couldn't believe it you know he shows up and on that set and I had this elaborate shot I had planned I'd found this apartment that was amazing I hope this isn't boring but I think it's a funny story so it's my first day with Chris and I'm really trying to press him like I've I've ripped this shot off from this French film I've seen it's amazing you're gonna come into you're gonna he his character orders a bottle whiskey the guy delivers a bottle whiskey to the room and in my idea from this apartment you could walk from the living room into the bedroom and from the bedroom to the bathroom and then out of the bathroom into the kitchen and the kitchen opened back up into the living room was a one of those New York City square apartments in the Chelsea Hotel right and I showed him this path I wanted to take and he was gonna turn on the lights in this room and he was gonna put on a cowboy hat while he's talking the phone he's gonna look in the mirror and point thing and he's gonna walk in the bathroom and flick that light on and then slam the mirror shut and then walk out and then sit down in the kitchen right where he was pop open the whiskey and pour himself a glass right as he says the last line of the and he looks at me and he goes are you an alcoholic and I was like no no not really no because I'm an alcoholic okay his character's name is buddies buds and alcoholic like yeah so you mean to tell me I order a bottle of whiskey I'm about to fall off the wagon and I don't open the fucker until I walk through this room turn on a light trying a cowboy hat flip on a light slam a mirror and then sit down I was like well I think it would be a great shot and he's like Ethan there is no way in hell that I can remember all those lines and do all that that you're asking me it'll that shot will never work so what I think is buds an alcoholic and he's gonna get his bottle he's gonna open it I'm gonna sit down say my model log and drink my whiskey okay great let's do that there's also the terror of someone you deeply admire not liking your idea which is your whole body just shrivels up you know you know you know you didn't see the guitar from I don't give a shit about the guitar film there's no way I'm gonna remember those lines but then to finish it I'll say when he wrapped the movie he was getting he'd you know said his goodbyes and everything he's getting in the elevator to leave and I ran out I said to him I said hey listen you know you've given so much this whole project and I know that being this whole crew's working for free right and could I beg you would you come in and sing one song for us just like just for the crew for me is there anyway you do that yeah you got a guitar I do I do so it sat down and he proceeded to tell this elaborate story that I'm sure he's told a thousand times but it was such a gift the room he sat and told the story about how he met Janice Joplin in the elevator this very building and we and she fucked me about four minutes later I played her this song and he's playing you know busted flat and bad and rouge waiting for a train I was feeling best faith right in the whole crew everybody's crying everybody's so happy I mean he was just he was that giving you know to to everybody understood what it would mean to this group of young artists you know and so but he wasn't perfect he was a real dude with real issues and you know and I loved him yeah he was I mean you think about what he did and all the different songs that he performed and movies he was in and different things that he did that's an extraordinary life yeah I'll stop in one second but for some reason yeah I think you'll love this apparently the legend Johnny Cash used to say that you know that song Sunday morning coming down I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt in the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad so I had one more for dessert great song okay so Johnny Cash had a number one single out of this song and Johnny Cash would tell the story how Chris was flying helicopters offshore oil and he landed in Johnny Cash's front yard with a beer in one hand and the song in the other and his helicopter and said damn it you got to listen to my song and I listened to it went straight to number one that's the story that you know Cash would tell and I asked Chris about it and he said have you ever flown such and such chopper no I haven't there ain't no way in hell you can fly that thing with beer in one hand and a cassette in the other that story I don't know where he came up with that story he's just trying to help out my career and make a legend out of me too but but no no I just I sent it to him via airmail you know for a person that watches movies I've done a small amount of acting but I'm not good at it for a person who watches movies there's a thing that happens like a hypnosis when someone is a really good actor where they become that person and even though I know it's Ethan Hawke I know it's Phil in the blank Daniel Day Lewis I know I know who it is but it's not them at this moment they're so good that they've convinced me that they're this other person what is that because there are moments where I see a good actor and I say I don't believe them I don't I think they're phoning it in they're saying it the right way but there's just something in the air there's a missing connection and it is the key to a great movie the key to a great movie is everybody has to be in that fucking weird zone that weird zone where you become a different person you use the essential word in your first sentence which is hypnosis I mean I've spent my life studying what you just talked about and when you're acting with Denzel Washington the power and strength and completeness of his imagination is hypnotizing and it's an invitation to join him in a great film is a collective imaginative experience when you watch the Godfather you're not fucking thinking about Al Pacino or James Conn or you think about Michael and Sonny and Tom and you know Vito there I remember I watched Godfather I felt like I'd see those guys at the Nick game tomorrow that's how we that's how much you're not thinking about the music you're not thinking about the shots you know it's all one thing all these disparate elements turn into one fist you cannot do it alone right but the best people I've worked with it's like the easiest example to show it like for anybody when you go to a concert every now and then it happens the performer hypnotizes you and you disappear yeah you did you're inside those songs yeah you know you're not talking about those songs you're not looking at them you're not listening you are inside the song you're inside a dream and bad acting for me is glib bad acting is commenting on the song bad acting is slightly the feeling you're talking about when somebody's slightly outside of it it's very very hard to do and a lot of people study it and work on it and voice and speech is a huge I mean this stuff is very it's it's way more interesting to me than it would be to our audience here today but it's like all these elements of what creates hypnosis if I if you were if we're talking about the violin there are ways to practice the violin and I'm not gonna make somebody virtuoso but I can if I'm an expert violin peed help you be better and I think the same is true for acting acting it is an art form it's beautiful it's some weird collage of where performance and writing and all these elements music all it's all a part of it and when it's happening it's all effortless and there's a lot of work you can do to inch it to being easier and to inch your scene partner into being easier and there are ways that they can help you and there's ways that they can ruin it they can break the dream but when it's good it is like diving into a dream and it's a feeling that I got for the first time when I was 18 years old acting in dead poet society and it is a feeling was it was seconds long I mean it was not much but a feeling of disappearing and that's the irony I always feel about acting is that you know people think about actors and they see these pictures in the red carpet or something they think that's what acting is you know what it really is it's a life of it's completely antithetical to that of trying to disappear it feels like the celebration of the self the celebration of the personality but when you're doing a scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman you know it's not Phil that's talking to you you know it's it's it's like you know in the cartoon when the eyes go all squirreling and like that yeah and then all of a sudden I'm not me and if I've done my work right all of a sudden I'm saying what's coming out of my mouth is what I prepared what what's coming out of my pocket is what I prepared the way I'm moving is what I'm prepared because and I'm not thinking about it it's like watching the great athlete when a great athlete is makes a behind-the-back pass to the guy at the perfect second he's not thinking oh I've got a cool idea right I'm gonna throw up behind my back and catch him right as he's in stride it it's years of practice that have let them know that I know where he is because where else would he be right you know and things that are at first difficult become easy and then you can even get better from there and get better from there but that's the difference people talk about you know I love Daniel Delos too I think he's kind of a high-water mark of my trade and you know you hear these stories about what he does and people so was that what you're supposed to do and the thing about when people said method acting is they really don't fundamentally understand what the method is the method is an invitation to find out for yourself what will unlock your imagination and that might be going hungry for two weeks that might be sleeping in a jail cell it might be reading 25 books about it it might be wearing a weird headpiece it's it's not a rule it's about how to unlock what's in here and bring it forward that's what the greats do and find that zone this episode is brought to you by uber eats every football season the same thing happens the game somehow makes everyone really hungry quarterback scrambles clearly assigned it's time for breakfast burritos turnovers suddenly dessert at 2 p.m. doesn't sound so crazy and wing formations well those can only mean buffalo wings as if they're ever not in play even the goalpost start looking suspiciously like french fries it's almost like football is sending the message to eat more food the good news uber eats makes those cravings easy to satisfy with game day deals all season long from wings and pizza to chips and drinks even last-minute grocery runs you'll find savings on all your favorites delivered straight to your door order now on uber eats and when you're watching a movie it does the exact same feeling like I'm there with you whatever you're experiencing when you are in that zone and you really are that person I I'm not just saying oh he really is that person I'm with you I'm with you in the moment I feel your anxiety the scene in the goddamn I forget the name of it the film you did with Julia Roberts the dystopian end of oh uh a station movie yeah exactly now that you said it it went out of my head to it's great movie all the tessels crash yeah with Marshall Ali and I can't leave the world behind thank you that's embarrassing for me I'm supposed to know but when you said you couldn't remember it then all of a sudden it went out of my mind less embarrassing for me now that you didn't remember it sounds like shit I gotta remember the name the scene where you go up to the guys house and he pulls a gun on you yeah I'm right there with you I'm like oh shit it was a great scene it was a Kevin Bacon yeah phenomenal performance because I fucking believed you I believed him I believed you I believed it was happening and I was like oh shit it was oh shit like it wasn't like that scene is exactly what I'm talking about yeah because that's maher shall Ali Kevin Bacon and myself in a very well-written scene and those two guys are so easy to act with they are so they are is so easy to disappear with them we did that scene over and over and over again 15,000 different ways and it was always I always loved it and you know I did I had a temper tantrum that day on set but I because your body you you're you're winding your body up in such a way that it's like a emotional currency or something you have this thing you're gonna spend but you have your body doesn't know it's fake and if you do it right you trick your body into believing that I'm begging for my child's life I'm not acting I'm begging Kevin Bacon for my child's life and he's gonna decide whether or not my child gets to live right and if you can get that that going shit starts to happen to you right things you don't plan and and if Kevin is good which he is a merciless good then they're doing the same thing right he's if he gives me this thing that I need he's putting his wife at risk you're not gonna do it I don't care about your kid you know and then Marshall has got his character in his head and then then all of a sudden people are actually behaving they're not reciting lines they're not it's like I did one of my earlier movies with a wolf right it was best acting teacher I ever had this wolf because it was this movie called white fang right little Disney kids movie right but it was a great teacher because I had to do these scenes with this half half breed wolf and if I'm if you're the wolf all right and we're doing a scene together and what I'm really thinking about is the camera you know the wolf turns around looks at the camera hmm you know you know when you meet somebody and you know they're self-conscious right you know why she's why she's so tense that you don't you just you know we're nonverbal we can communicate with each other animals pick up on it instantly if I'm actually talking to the dog the wolf if I'm actually in if I'm present with this animal the animal interacts with me you know mmm and especially a wolf especially a wolf and damn thing bit me bit me that day did it really yeah hard yeah why to bite you all right this is one of best days of filming in my life no kidding all right which is that amazing animal trainer Clint Rout was his name and we wanted it was a scene where I'm getting the wolf to trust me and and it's gonna eat out of my hand for the first time and so Clint had this amazing ideas like what if you can see for even from that shot how far that's a long lens that thing put me on a little tiny island where to you know like some two rivers for and so there's a little island of land right there and so we put see this wolf surrounded by water right and and I this is flame this isn't the animal that I knew really well but which the way to get to look like this we have to not know each other and I spent all day out there with this wolf and whenever the camera started thinking I might have a chance of getting to pet him they would start rolling and I just talked to the wolf and I'd walk around and play and I just had to try to be real with him and he started to like me I'll show you it's not boring and this I'm getting close because he's starting to like me we've been playing a lot and comes over and okay you'll see he you'll see him bite me if you want but amazing amazing animal but the point I'm trying to say is I we sat out there for 11 hours with this starving wolf right trying to get him to eat ready ready and ouch okay what never what a bled Joe did it really yeah but it didn't look he was trying to hurt you no no he wasn't he went that's what I mean he wasn't he was and so and by the end of the day check this out man I mean it was one of the most incredible experiences my life I know it's the corny kids movie or whatever but but it's a real wolf and he doesn't know he's acting yeah and he doesn't know he's acting yeah right and so I got to be real and I mean I wept when that dog died you know because and I think about that scene if when I'm doing anything you know about being present right and that's a if I'm trying to get the shot the dog is not gonna eat out of my hand if I actually want to say hey oh you can trust me right you know I'd have to give up for hours you know and just sit there and we didn't have a phone I just sit there and whittle or something and walk over there toss rocks for a little bit until they got you know it was it was such a fascinating experience wow well that's yeah you can't act right and you never can you never can never can you never can and one of the things about you know there's a handful Laurie Metcalfe comes to the line Denzel Washington Sally Hawkins Laura Linney there's a handful I mean I could a bunch of them Philip Seymour there's a lot of great actors I've worked with in my life and what's so wonderful about them is if you start acting what are you doing this is this is kind of kind of censoring why what yeah you something smells weird right Phil was the best at it because it wasn't it wouldn't just be about you Phil was amazing you'd sit down to do a scene with him and he'd be running it and stuff and just what is it something smells bad what is it is it you as me I don't know man it's the cups a cup wrong maybe I should be sitting over there what smells wrong some is fake what is it what's fake paste it up let's try pacing it up that's not it still bad all right let me let me try this and then boom next day be scream at you or something and everything would shift and you know the smell would change in the room yeah and it was like he it's like we're just shaking out what is self-conscious something is self-conscious here somebody's posing is it me is it you is it the fucking prop is a table wrong I don't I don't believe this scene and what it means is when you're watching the movie you the paying audience aren't gonna be able to disappear something you know having haven't never see you see a movie sometime you're like why is she wearing that red jacket who thought that was a good idea in all you think about the red jacket it's just wrong I don't know why it's wrong but everybody knows it it's like it in the wrong note I don't necessarily notice with clothes because I'm not very close conscious but I do notice what you're saying about self-consciousness and I don't understand what it is it's like this untouchable unwaivable unmeasurable element that just exists and we know it we know it's real don't you don't you feel it in here yeah when somebody's being funny with you oh yeah somebody has a big agenda about what they want to accomplish in your show or something like that oh for sure especially political people or people that have some sort of a controversial technology that really probably should be regulated what we're going to be able to do is amazing things and they get that tone in their voice that that Charlie Brown what was just a air of bullshit and I don't know what that is and I it's but it exists in acting it certainly exists in comedy too I would say that when I watch a great comic on stage they they take me on a ride like I let them think for me I'm sitting down think for me you're thinking for me and when someone's thinking for you it's just like you're you're you're free to explore their mind and it's if there's self-conscious you'll feel it like I see someone tense like I have a club and a comedy club in town and when new people audition there or perform there you fucking feel the nerves you feel the nerves and I'm always like just give him a few minutes let him shake it out just let him shake that it's so hard when so much is on the line to not be self-conscious it's to be present but you're smart to give him space that's always what I feel just give me space give me space give me space to be bad yeah I need I need space to be bad and it's kind of like in basketball you gotta touch the ball let me touch the ball let me make the list of it well we've all been bad so it doesn't mean he can't be good when I see someone on stage and they're they're self-conscious and clunky I'm like this is a process this is not this is not like a rocket that when you screw in the last rivets you ready to light the fuse I love watching an actor I admire be bad I love it because it's not it's not a science right it's not science sometimes you got to take a shot sometimes you miss well that sometimes you're going through a divorce or you got a fucking drug problem or the directors an asshole or the scripty of the day or or you hate the DP producers a douchebag and but when I was I was tell my kids who are really interested in my profession or any young actor is like I call that permission to fail is I don't I don't give anybody my I don't have permission to fail you know you I don't care if you don't like the first 80 I don't care if you don't like this this cannot give them that ability I still fail I'm not saying that but I don't want to see it mm-hmm you know it's yeah then and but that takes time I spent the first 15 years of my career saying I didn't do a good job because that guy was a jerk or didn't do a good job because they changed the script or I didn't do a good job because of this that and the other thing and then you see people like back to our hero thing you know then you see people are really good and they don't they don't rabbit the near doesn't give somebody the ability to screw up his work day they don't have that power mm-hmm he takes responsibility for that power is that a learn thing or is that as you could certainly learn some of it from watching other people but is that just an experience thing I think it's it's the right manifestation of confidence right young people have to fake confidence they just have to when you watch a young person your club they gotta fake it they of course they're gonna have to go burn through their nerves they're gonna have to but once you have experience you can have real confidence because you fought this battle before I know I have a certain if I'm overwhelmed with if my nervous system is at war with myself I've certain process I can I've walked these woods before you know and I know why I'm lost and I know what I need to do and it doesn't mean I'll always work through it but it I'm much more likely to than I was 20 years ago yeah um it's knowing that it's this process when you watch younger people do it do you ever like are you ever working with a young person and it's not clicking somehow and you're trying to figure out how to help them because there a thing you can say to them is there can you just do it by example only well you examples the best the best teachers example unasked for advice has never heard from the problem with young people they don't often ask for advice right they think they're trying so hard to pretend like they know everything that they feel like to ask advice I can't feel that's a generalization though because I do know a lot of young people that do ask advice all right well one of the my my thing is I can't I cannot believe the amount of young people show up on set with their phone oh yeah and when you were seeing about hypnosis let me tell you what's a destroyer of collective imagination yeah is is our phones I was reading an article today and I think it was psychology today about a study that they've done recently on the impact of social media on cognitive function for children and that it's just fucking nuking their brain new all your kids I have a 15 year old and a 17 year old and a 28 year old so what is your like because my wife and I go through this all they want it's so bad and you as a parent you want them to be happy and all their friends have Instagram I know it destroys my brain how could it not hurt theirs I find my own powers of concentration are suffering I'll be reading a book which I used to do all the time in every 10 pages I take a break to look at my phone what's happening why am I doing this right you know what so but they want it so bad yeah and I want them to be how do you handle that I do not put restrictions on my children's use of social media but we do have discussions about it because I think it is an inexorable part of modern society and I think there is a social ostracization that comes from eliminating social media telling your kid they can have a phone I see it in other kids I don't think that's the solution my daughter is loving you right now she is just like see because she says let me be teach me to be responsible for it myself yes help me do that's what I believe and you know when we were thinking about what restrictions we're gonna do we went on this walk with this really good friend of mine Richard Linklater is an amazing person and they tried to my daughters hit him up what he thinks he said I don't know all I know is that the most important thing is to be your own best friend and that this is a slight obstacle to it that boredom boredom and sitting still with yourself is a membrane you kind of have to pass through and if you can make best friends with yourself then your best friend is always with you and so that's been my solution to is to say alright let's all there aren't limitations but let's all sit down and look at I'll show you how much I looked at it how much did you look at it how we doing do you feel is it helping is it hurting because what you're a thousand percent right about is it's part of the social structure of their lives yeah and to isolate them from it is to has has you can't pretend that doesn't have negative side effects well one of my children well both of my children my young children are very disciplined and one of them just opted out just decided she's not gonna get on social media anymore and she got this app and this is nobody forced her to do this she got this app that locks you out and it shows you how many days you've been off of Instagram sort of sort of incentivize you you know to stay off of it you know the last time she checked she'd been off like 99 days no Instagram no nothing but it is addictive and but there's a lot of things in life that are addictive and so the question is like how addictive is it like what is calling you to get nothing because that's what you get you get nothing you get these like tiny dopamine hits like staring at something for a few seconds like that's provocative or that's crazy like why is he saying that or why is that happening oh my god they're gonna die you know what I have this terrible text thread between me and my friend Tom Segura where we send each other the absolute worst things that we find online every day like every day it's guy got you can run over by a train car accidents gunshots South American assassinations it's just all every day it's all the worst things you could possibly find on the internet there's no good in that you know we do that to fuck with each other because it's kind of funny because he's a comedian too we just fuck with each other it's just like silly like oh boy like he sends me things and I send him things but for the most part I get nothing it's mostly nothing occasionally I say it's like as a I make this excuse like as a comic oh I need to be up on the zeitgeist need to be paying attention to what people are paying attention to but you kind of get it anyway you kind of get it anyway just through life and it's better that way because then you only get the real significant things you don't get them you don't have to sift through everything it's like you have you have a filter society acts as your filter to get you the most pertinent information but I think leading by example with kids is the best way with everything my kids are both very disciplined they get a lot of things done and they work really hard which I'm very proud of they're also really nice which I'm also very proud of I think that's like it's a hard fucking thing to do is just be nice to be a kind person the worst thing for kindness is social media children in particular are so fucking mean to each other on social media there's so mean to each other in comments and they talk about how one of their friends is getting bullied and this person is doing this and they're leaving comments on this and from a rival high school and of this and of that and like I think that that process of understanding that this there is this bizarre social interaction that's not real that is a part of life and that you have to develop a resilience to this getting tough is important like I think one of the one of the things kids are experiencing now is what I experienced with the first blush of celebrity I mean you want to talk about negative comments try being an actor where everybody's got opinion about you what a fake you are what a phony you are this is sucks about you you're this is dumb this is what you're like you know it's I have lost unbelievable ridiculous amount of hours to my mother will send me a really nice review of something something positive about me right I'll look at it and my brain goes what are the comments nasty I mean just the nastiest things you can't believe that some but I don't want to you know give it too much time but I actually think it really makes you stronger to realize of course people don't like you over time it will make you stronger it's fine they don't like you guess what half the people every party you went to didn't like you okay but they're also not thinking very much about you they're thinking about themselves and you start to realize that this is just people talking at the barbershop people have been gossiping their whole throughout the history of mankind now you can read it if you want but it's it has no venom in it it's not real right in the sooner you learn that other people's opinions don't have to affect you I think the better off you are so in that way it hurt me I've seen it happen to actors on especially if you're doing stage I'm sure with comics it's when you're doing a play and you have to do it every night and you start reading a lot of bad things that people say about you it is it is demolishing to your confidence you know I mean I had this actor friend of mine he we shared dressing room and one day came in he was great in the show and he came in and just his whole energy was dark I was like you're already I went down the rabbit hole last night read what people are saying about me on the internet and everybody thinks I'm terrible in this play and I'm like they don't like your character you know like there people are not so brilliant you know there's no geniuses out there chiming in on what a jerk you are at 3 in the morning okay he's he's he's he's he don't take a serious but you know he it took him weeks to get his mojo back because every he would step out on stage just imagining this chorus of hate I had the exact same conversation last night with a the famous comedian friend of mine. Don't say his name, but he went down a Reddit rabbit hole. The other night. I don't do it anymore. I don't do it. He goes, I fucked up and I went down this rabbit hole. Don't do it, don't do it. No good comes from it. And he was like, they fucking hate me. I go, no, no, no. They hate themselves. They hate everything. There's no, like Michael Jordan's not leaving Reddit comments. You know what I'm saying? Like, these aren't winners. These are fucking people that are not doing what they want to be doing. And they want to hate on everybody that's out there. That's out there in the public eye. And some of it is valid. The really scary hate is when you get hate like from Quentin Tarantino, where he's going off on that guy from, Paul Dano. He'll be blood. But you know, that's a great lesson. It is. Actually, there's a great lesson. You know what? I don't think Paul Dano ever knew that so many people loved him. Right. Here's the thing. I don't know where. Yeah. I don't know where. Paul Dano's just going about his life. He's got to wake up one morning and find out this director's just went off on him and saying this hateful things. But anybody that knows Quentin knows he just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks, talks. Right? Anybody that knows Paul knows he's a great world class human being. And you know, and all this love for Paul's coming out. And it's a great lesson in that. You don't have to worry about the negativity that people send your way. You don't have to worry about it at all. Even from one of the greatest actors or one of the greatest directors of all time. Yeah. It's OK. And guess what? Every, you know, I'm positive. Positive. There are great directors that think I suck. I'm positive. Quentin at least says the, you know, he just says whatever comes into his mind. I remember once I met, I met some director, I won't say his name, at a bar. I was just at his dive bar in New York. I sat up and he's a fairly famous big shot director. He's sitting there. And he'd just seen my most recent movie. He's like, you know, you were pretty good in that one. And in the comment was the subtitle underneath it, was I have hated you for 27 years. It was so clear. You know? The hypnosis came through. Yeah. I mean, it was so clear. I was like, wow. Well, no wonder you've never offered me a movie. Directors have opinions, right? They have super strong opinions. What do they have a strong opinions about acting? And you know, he's talking about the movie he would have directed. OK? That's what he's not talking about. Paul Dano. He's talking about something else. He's like you said about the thing. They're talking about themselves. Obviously, whenever anybody says something hateful, they're talking about themselves. 100%. That's who they're talking. And the punchline to this whole thing is, you know, I've worked with Paul a couple of different times. And I love the guy. And I'm so happy for him. Immediately, every other comment everywhere, somebody's saying something great about Paul Dano. Yeah, the majority, the vast majority of comments were really positive about him. And I went and re-watched the scene because of it. He was fucking great in it. Oh, he's a great actor. I thought he played a great, like that guy. It's not a for debate. It's, you know, it's not a for debate. I'm sure if you were alone drinking with Steven Spielberg, he'd shock you with some opinion. He, you know, he hates Orson Welles or something like that. Do you know what I mean? I mean, we wouldn't be a good director if he wasn't opinionated. Of course. You know, it doesn't mean he's the truth. Of course. It's just the opening up your vulnerability to the masses and the most trivial and flippant ways of commenting, which is like leaving a comment on a YouTube video or something like that. It's just not wise. It's not good. Especially if you actually let it get into your psyche and you take it in as real. Because we are designed to recognize threats, danger, negativity, because it's important. Like that's sorry to cut you off. No, that's the truth. Yeah. The reason why it hurts me when it comes is exactly what you. I'm worried they're going to take my career away. I love what I do. If I do a big movie and I really work hard in the New York Times or the LA Times, he sucks. I don't really care about that critic's opinion. Yeah. I care. Is this going to stop me from doing what I love? Because I know it's fragile. I know that there are a million talented people. I know that. I know that I'm lucky. I know that I'm fortunate. So it is scary. It is a threat. Right? I mean, but you got to get tough. I'm sorry I cut you off and I didn't really have a good point. It's fine. You know what I mean? Yeah, you do. I mean, I don't want to be cruel, but also this is how I feel. Critics in particular. I do not think they want to be critics. And I feel like most people who become critics become critics because they don't have anything to contribute. They're not great writers or they never develop the ability to be a great writer or they never pursued it or whatever it is. They're not great actors. They're just criticizing. Criticizing, like criticizing from Quentin Tarantino was a very different thing than a criticism that comes from a person that's just a critic. And I remember I had this, there was this moment when Fear Factor came out. Like Fear Factor is a fucking completely idiotic show. It's just that's all it is is just escapism. It's chaos. People doing stupid shit for money. This is crazy. This is nuts. Oh my god, are they really going to do this? And maybe you get something out of the end like that guy pulled it out or she did it. She didn't want to do it. She faced the snakes. Yeah, but it's really usually like the end thing is like something physical. But Fear Factor came out right after 9-11. That's when it came out. And one of the criticisms was do you really think America needs to be facing fear after we just experienced September 11th terrorist attack? And I got this question in an interview. And my perspective on Fear Factor in the beginning was I'm only doing this because I think it's going to get canceled. I'm like, I'll get some material out of this. I'm like, they're going to stick dogs on people and make me animal dicks. I'm in. I'm like, this is going to get canceled in like fucking three weeks. And I'm going to have a bit on how fucking stupid the show was. And it wound up doing like 168 episodes. It was ridiculous. And I said, and I got upset in this interview. I go, that's just ridiculous. Like they were questioning me whether or not America needs to be scared after 9-11. I'm like, it's not fucking scary. And I'm like, what are you talking? You're making something into something it's not. Just so that you can write an article. This is nonsense. And I go, that kind of criticism is the kind of criticism from a person where I'm not interested in your opinion. I don't think you're a particularly unique thinker. And you're saying something that's nonsense. It's nonsense. It's a stupid show. I'll tell you it's a stupid show. And it's my fucking show. I don't care. It's just entertainment. That's all it is. And I think the people that write this are writing this in that way because you don't have anything to contribute. And I met that person at a party. There was one of those, you know, they have like, if you're on a television show, they have those NBC things where you go and it's like, there's all these different reporters and all the actors from all the shows are there. And the guy was like, you know, I got to tell you, that really pissed me off. I go, why? Because it's accurate. I go, what pissed you off? I go, you say horrible, hurtful things about all these different people. And the course of their career is dependent upon your opinions to a certain extent. You could shape other people's narratives about who this actor is, about who this person is. And you just do it because you don't have anything else to contribute. And so when I said you don't have anything else to contribute, that hurt your feelings. That's why it pissed you off. It didn't piss you off because I wasn't accurate. And we had this like weird moment, you know, where he was like taking into consideration what I was saying. And he was like, OK. And I go, I'm not a bad guy. I don't think you're a bad guy. But you have to realize this weight to your words. And I've realized there's weight to my words. That's why I lashed out like that. I think this is stupid. I'll tell you this show's stupid. It's a stupid show. We're not making fucking Shakespeare in the park, bro. We're making people line up, cough and fill with rats. It's retarded. But it's OK. It's OK to have dumb shit. It's OK to have burgers. It's OK to have filet mignon in a fine restaurant. Absolutely. All these things are OK. But call it what it is. If you want to say it's a dumb show, I'm right there with you. But if you want to say, this is bad for America, because America just got attacked by it. And it's called fear fact. Like, shut up. Just shut up. And I just think he didn't like the fact that I was willing. That you were criticizing him? Yeah. Yeah. Well. I was willing to do what he does to him without fear. Because I had already checked out of acting. I did five years on news radio, and I decided I'm done acting. I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I only did it for money in the first place. I never wanted to be an actor. The only reason why I ever got on a sitcom, I got on a sitcom with zero acting. Zero. I mean, I had none. How did it go? I did MTV, Half Hour Comedy Hour, which was this comedy show that used to be on MTV. I did like a 10 minute set. And I got a development deal. I was like, what? Like, all of a sudden they gave me money. I was poor my whole life. And then all of a sudden I had $150,000. I'm like, this is crazy. I have money. Like, it was nuts. And my manager actually thought I had a gambling problem, because I was spending so much money. And he was like, what are you spending money on? I'm like, eating lobster every night. I'm like, God, God. I was so dumb. I thought I was just going to run out. And then I'd go back to being poor again. But all of a sudden I'm on this show and I'm acting. And I realized at the end of five years it was a wonderful job with an amazing, incredible group of talented people. But I don't want to do it again. It's not my thing. I don't like it. So when Fear Factor came up, I'm like, ooh, this is a way to make a lot of money without doing anything that's acting. OK, I'll do it. And so dealing with these people that I'd seen the impact of their words on all the people that I worked with, we used to sit around, you have the table reads, and then people would start reading Variety. And they'd start reading The Hollywood Reporter and all those different things. And they would all be super bummed out. And I would call it The Devil's Rag. So I'd go there, oh, you guys are reading The Devil's Rag again? I go, fucking throw that away. It was like the early versions of Don't Read the Comments. I go, you guys are reading The Devil's Rag. Don't fucking read that, because then they would be all bummed out, like, oh, they think we suck. No, they suck. We're trying to make a good sitcom. Let's just try hard to. The best way to not make a good sitcom is to read shitty things about you. Definitely. That's the surest firework. You're going to go in and be really bummed out. And this constant process of dealing with other people's opinions, and especially negative opinions from people that you don't really like in the first place. They're not happy people. It's such a poison for your mind. And that's why we're talking the same thing with the internet is figuring out a way to give it no space in your mind. Because people are going to do what they're going to do. And you're not in charge of them. That's what I feel like. When you absorb too much of that hate and take it on yourself, you're forgetting that somebody writes something hateful about somebody else, whether it's Quentin, or whether it's this person, or that person, or whatever. Most people hear it and think, wow, I wonder why he said that. What's wrong with him? They don't think something. So a lot of times, I might take really personally something that somebody hateful writes about me. But it's not like the world believes it. The world has people. Michael Jordan, who's not writing comments, might come across that and think, God, that writer's an asshole. That's what he's not thinking you're an asshole. If you're not saying something substantive, other people have a brain in their head, and they know it. I feel you can just ignore it. I've never gained anything except perhaps the value of a thick skin from all that. The value of a thick skin is important, though. And there's some value to being pert, to taking it in, and then realize it's dangerous to take it in. And you must know, like with your show, I imagine, I don't really understand really how this works. But there's people who finance it and distribute it. There's people you have to work with, and they all have opinions. Like I'm doing this show right now, the lowdown with FX. It's the first time I've ever done a television show. And I'm having a great experience with it. But you have to figure out, you're working with a lot of different people. You got FX, it's got their opinions about how the show is, and they're going to distribute it on Hulu, and they're owned by Disney. And you have to learn how to take criticism. All right. And also how to stand up for yourself when you know your aim is true. And you have to be humble enough to tell the difference, because anybody who thinks they're always right is an asshole. Right? So sometimes you need their help. And you have things to be taught. And sometimes you have to stand up for yourself and say, this is the kind of art I want to make, and I'm living and dying on this. But actually, what you're saying actually could help me do what I'm doing. The same thing with directors. If you can't, when you were talking about advice for young people, the first thing that popped in my head is something one of my first directors said to me, which was, he said, I was 21. I was doing my first, I was making my Broadway debut, and this director said, what have you done? And I said, well, I did explorers when I was a kid, and I did this movie Dead Poets Society. And I acted in this school play. I played Tom in Glassman, Ashery, my senior year. And this director looked at me and said, so you've done nothing. And I took offense at that. I said, I have done some things. And he said, I need you to say I've done nothing. I need you to say I don't know. And if you can say I don't know, I can teach you. And if you can't say I don't know, then I really can't teach you. And my 21-year-old ego was just buckling. I do know what I do and do. I do know what I'm doing. And he said, you've never been on Broadway before. You've never done Chekhov before. And you can't say I don't know what I'm doing. I said, I can't say that. I don't know what I'm doing. See, it's not that hard. Because if you can say that, I remember this like the first time going out surfing went. Somebody's trying to teach me how to surf. And I was like 16. I kept saying, I know how to do it. I know how to do it. I didn't know how to do it. But my ego couldn't buck. And if you can get to that Zen Tabularasa's no place, the beginner's mind. See, now at 55, I always say I don't know what I'm doing. It's so easy for me to say it. It is so easy. And one lifetime is not enough to know what you're doing. There are so many more rooms. There's so many more layers. And so the advice I have for young people starting is to be humble. And admit because you've done a handful of things, doesn't mean you know what you're doing. And even though I might have even had some success, I didn't know why it was successful. Right. You know? That's a great. The beginner's mind is a great point to start. Because even if you're really good at something, like say you're a good piano player and you want to learn how to play tennis, you start from a beginner's mind. You have to. And if you go into that tennis lesson going, do you know how fucking good I am at piano? Like, don't talk to me like that. Like, no, you don't know how to play tennis. Let me show you how to play tennis. Like, everyone is a beginner at a thing they don't know. And to take on as many things as you don't know as possible to keep that beginner's mind is actually immensely beneficial for your ego, for your objectivity, for everything. For everything could see it with somebody like you who's had a lot of transitions in your life about different career paths and different things that you're. That's always forcing you into a beginner's mind. And that's, I think, I've done the same thing to myself. You know, like, what keeps me excited is like, all right, God, I don't know. I'm going to write a graphic novel. I'm going to work with this guy, Greg Ruth. He's a brilliant illustrator. I'm going to make a graphic novel. Now, I've never done that before. I have no idea how a graphic novel works. I know I've loved them my whole life, but I've never made one. Greg has, right? We work together. He teach him. Sterling Hardjo with the show, The Lowdown. Boom. I've never done a show. He made Reservation Dogs. He's done this. I don't know this landscape. And I love that feeling because I don't lose all the value of the things I do know about. It's all there for me. It's all there for me. I don't have to announce it over everybody. It's not going anywhere. But if I can orient myself into learning, I like making these documentaries because I'm not a professional documentarian. But what's weird about it is if I do that and I get in this real kind of open space and then I come back to acting, that beginner's mind channel is open and I'm available to learn something from somebody else that maybe I might. Because one of the things I thought when I was young is I thought there was a right way to be an actor. And I was obsessed with somebody doing it wrong. This director is fucking moron. And he's ruining my work. And then slowly I really realized it's so obvious there isn't a right way to make art. There are successful ways and unsuccessful ways. But I wanted everybody to be Peter Weir. That's what I wanted. Peter Weir had made Dead Poets Society. And that's what rehearsal is supposed to be like. That's what the set is supposed to be like. That's how you're supposed to talk to other people. I didn't know my mentor was a card-carrying, awesome human being. And I was having unrealistic expectations about other people on their path. They haven't done all that Peter's done. They don't know it all. And it would anger me that they weren't. And then if you can get in a more open mind, then you can really listen to people and absorb where they're at in their journey. And you're not going to change them. This idea that, especially in a film shoot, three men, you're not going to change the way they think. You've got to try to do your thing. Lead by example. And try to let them not negatively impact you. But maybe you can be open and learn something from them. And that whole beginner's mindset is just immensely beneficial. Like you're saying how you carry it over to your acting. I would recommend that with anybody who does anything. Find another thing that you're not good at at all. And get into that. Because that will help you with the thing that you're good at. And having the evidence like I took, it happens so often that it's funny. Like I take my son out to teach him how to shoot. First ski thing is just blast it right out of the air. Second one, blast it right out of the air. You teach somebody to shoot a bow or something. First air, they fly. Hits the target. Then they don't have to target again. You start thinking too much. I hear about anything about golf, but I hear the same thing as true with golf. Young people are often great actors. It's adolescence in life that makes it harder to get back to that childlike place. You know? And so I think, I've even been talking to my wife a lot about I want to start trying to take piano lessons just to do something I've never done. Because I know it rattles my brain. And makes my brain see things differently. Take a new language on, learn how to play chess, do something. Yeah. It's hugely beneficial to be a beginner. I think a person that only does one thing, there's something very valuable in that too. But do one thing, immerse yourself in that one thing, and do it the best you can. It's true. It's true. You know, the term kaizen, it's a Japanese term for refining something over and over and over and over again for decades until you absolutely have it perfected. And I believe in that entirely, but I also believe that to master a craft, you have to apprentice three or four. That it's good for like, I'm an actor. And I'm going to die an actor. And this is what I'm going to do. And I have met older actors who are amazing, who I know I'm not as good as. And it kind of thrills me. It thrills me. There's little nuances of conversation that I don't quite understand yet. But I know that they do. And I know that they're right. And I want to understand more deeply. And I just feel that, I don't know. I lost my train of thought about that. I don't know. I just totally, my computer just shut down. I forgot what I was talking about. It's OK. I think more people need. I think the problem is when you're really good at something, you find identity in it. Oh, that's what I was saying. It's like, I know I want to excel at this one craft. But I know that when I direct something, when I write something, if I make a graphic novel, a documentary, I'm learning about things that are adjacent to my specialty. And by doing that, when I go to set and I'm talking to a writer, I know how hard he worked on the script. I'm not going to willy-nilly change his lines because I'm not in the mood or I don't like the way my hair looks or something like that. I'm not going to do that. I have respect for what he did. And because I have that respect, I can offer him my thoughts. And we can probably get involved in a really mutually beneficial conversation. Because I've directed, I don't look at some director and think, well, like I did when I was younger, he's stopping me. I'm thinking, I know this guy's sweatless. I know this guy picked this location for a reason. I know this guy has a tenuous relationship with a cinematographer. I know the producers are breathing down his neck. I know he's got a lot of headaches. I'm going to help him. And I'm going to try to find an app. You know what I mean? So these ancillary, I do want to have a specialty. But I do think learning the piano might help me be a better actor. I don't know why. I don't know the logic behind it. I think in particular, in acting, that would be true. Because acting is you becoming someone else who's in life. And life involves a lot of different aspects. There's a lot of different things that go on in a human being's mind. The more you can introduce to your mind, the more that would help you become a variety of different people that you're performing as. See, I mean, wouldn't it be phenomenal? It'd be very weird. But like, so you and I have been talking. And I would venture to say, we're doing pretty well. Three quarters of the time, we're completely immersed in what we're talking about. And then my brain, why my computer shut down is I start thinking about this actor that I love, Richard Easton. And I start thinking about how I'm still not as good as he is. He's not even famous. And then I couldn't remember what I was going to say. And you're talking to me about your kids or something. There's no way your mind doesn't drift to something going on in your life. And mind does too. So that's what real life is like. And the actor's job is to figure out the text. And the text to be so clear and in there that then you can figure out all the other wavelengths. When you're watching somebody grade, there's all these other wavelengths that are happening. They have nothing to do with the script. But it's like the difference between a sketch and an oil painting. The script is kind of a beautiful sketch. And the actor's job, director's job, production designer's that we're turning that into an oil painting. And so anyway, I'm just saying, if I could put a subtitle under everything we're really thinking while we're talking, how different would it be? And how much more would I learn about you if I knew what your guys' relationship is really like? Does he get on your nerves? Do you hate it that he wears a black cap? Do you wish he'd wear the red one? Do you know what I'm saying? I got to do so much about when I'm in your space, so much I don't know about what's going on today and what you guys are doing later today or how you cut the show or what's important to you about the show. Well, I forget about things I'm talking about all the time because I'm trying to lock into the other person's brain. And sometimes I forget what I want to say because I'm trying to think like you. I'm trying to completely be in the moment and think like you. That's what I try to do. When I'm having a conversation with a person, I try to be as completely locked in as possible. So much so that sometimes I forget people's names that I know really well. I forget all kinds of things. That's cool. Because I'm not thinking about anything else other than what that person's thinking and saying. And trying to decipher it. And trying to guide the conversation in some sort of an interesting way. But I forget all kinds of things. I forget important people's phone numbers, birthdays. I don't remember anything. So many times I'll ask Jamie a question like, who is that fucking? What is this fucking name? And then I can't believe I can't remember. It's because I'm not there. I'm lost in what this person is saying. So I have to sit down and open up my files and go, oh, there's all the information again. But I'm not there. So I can't do that. So I've got to go, let me go back to my desk and I'll open up my files and now I have my information. But when I'm talking to you, I'm not at my desk. That's what it's like for me to have a great role. My brain disappears. Into that other psyche. And I can kind of do some of the normal stuff of life, drive my kids to school and do some things. But this part of me is floating over here, imagining, was this the right way? How should I wear the jacket? Oh, would he drive a car? What kind of car would he drive? Is that the right car? Is that the right, like, you know, and just my imagination when it's really cooking takes me away from what my favorite things about it is. I don't think about my phone. I don't think about the emails. I didn't return. I didn't think about whether I forgot someone's birthday. For this period of time, this job is so important to me that I'm willing to say nothing else matters. But doing as good as I can in this moment. Obviously it's going to matter again when I leave the dressing room and when I do this. Obviously I'm trying to be a good adult and father and husband and citizen and all that stuff. But it gives me a space where everything else can disappear, everything else. And that's what's so fun about a big ensemble move. Like, people may like the movie or not like the movie, but I did this remake of Magnificent Seven, right? And when you have a big cast and everybody's in period costume, everybody's on their horse. And your jacket's from 1876. And their shirt is from the Civil War or something like that. And it's all real. And there's these old taverns built. And there's dogs on the set and horses peeing. And you know what? I mean, it's all so real. And my life is gone. Yes. And I'm just goodnight Robo Show. And I've got to worry about how many bullets I have left in my thing. And it's back to hypnosis. And it's a wonderful relaxation. And that's the strange thing about it, is it's like, you know when you're a kid and you first look at the stars or the ocean or something and you feel powerfully your own insignificance. And your intellectual brain would think that that would feel bad. Oh, if somebody told you, hey, you're insignificant, that feels bad. But when you look at the stars, it feels great. And it's the same feeling of like, why would disappearing feel so good? I did this play with Steve Zahn. Great act. Have you had Steve on your show? No. Oh, he's a genius. And he's so funny. We were doing a play together. And I would say to him, tonight's show went really good. Do you think I went well? He'd go, yeah, I thought I went really well. And then the next night I come back. Tonight sucked. And it sucked as well. Thought I went really well. You always think it goes really well. He goes, I never remember. And the truth is, he's so zen. He's so in the moment. What you're talking about when you do comedy or when you do your interviews, he is so in. He's so present that he honestly doesn't remember. And that's the trick, because he doesn't have this huge opinion. Because the opinion gets in your way all the time. Yes, it really can. Yeah, and I think the ultimate in the moment for a person that doesn't have a craft or a thing is staring at the stars. Because you realize you are a part of everything. And you are in this infinite soup of existence that all of your troubles and your stuff, it seems so insignificant in comparison to the vastness of what's in front of you. And that lets your shoulders lighten up. And then you can handle what you can handle. I've talked about this before, but I'll tell you. When I was younger, when my oldest daughter was, I think she was only like five or six, we went to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. And I don't know if you've ever been there. It's on the Big Island. But they told us, it's like an hour and a half drive. They told us, when you're driving up there, go, you're going to go to the top. And hopefully, there won't be any clouds. So you get a clear vision of the sky. So as we're driving up, there's all these fucking clouds. I'm like, oh, this sucks. This is going to suck. We're driving all this. We're not going to see any stars. We drive through the clouds, because it's really high. And you get up to the top, and you're above the clouds. And we got out of the car, and my fucking jaw dropped. It was nuts. It was the craziest image. And I've been there three times since, never recreated it. There's always been cloud cover that's higher up. I just caught it the first time I went there, the absolute perfect. It changed my life. It changed my perspective on the universe itself, because it felt like I was, it felt psychedelic. It felt like it was in a spaceship, like a convertible spaceship, and I was looking through the windshield, and we were flying through the cosmos. And there was an impossible amount of stars in the sky. There wasn't a spot in the sky that wasn't filled with stars. The Milky Way was clear as day. It was fucking bananas. That's what it looked like. You didn't feel like you were on a spaceship. You are on one. You're on a North American spaceship. Look at that. That's it? That's what it kind of looks like, but it's actually even more profound than that. But that is the Keck Observatory. You know when I was telling you about White Fang? My experience with it. So I was out there. This is 1989, right? I'm in Haynes, Alaska. It's about 100 miles north of Juneau. There's no internet. The mail comes once a week on Monday. If it's bad weather, the mail doesn't come till the next week. I'm there for six months. 19 years old, there's nobody to talk to. I mean, there's no coastline. Wait, are you the only 19-year-old there? Listen, the guy who was the production manager or whatever, he was hyper AA, and there's one bar in town. And he told the manager, if I was seen in there, he would shut it down. There was nowhere else to go. What a dick. I was like, I told the guy, look, I'm not going to drink. I got it. The stuntmen are hanging in there. All the other actors are hanging out in there. And I had nothing to do, because I couldn't go in the one frickin' bar. And for the first three months, I was there. It was always dark. And then the second three months, it was always light. But anyway, the point is, I went on this long walk, and I saw the roar of Borealis by myself. And I'd see it night after night. I just see the sky rippling. And it was like what you're talking about. It was like, it actually made me laugh. Wow. It just seemed, it was funny. It was like the cosmos was teasing you going, oh, you think all this is real. Yeah. I was like, I do. I do think it matters whether White Fine is a good movie. And then I just giggle. And I was like, oh, you have no idea what's going on. And it was like you're talking. Something you don't unsee. I still have over my desk, I have a little postcard from Haines, Alaska. And it still comes to me in my dreams all the time. I'm back there. Wow. I think we're being robbed of that because of cities. Light pollution has robbed us of what I think all of our ancestors always inherently observed. When nighttime came around, everybody realized, well, you're a part of the infinite cosmos. And there's magic to the universe. Which is why there were so many people, hundreds, not thousands of years ago, that had these whimsical tales and these ideas of the importance of life and existence when they're in the most brutal moments of history. They're in the most brutal moments of life, life or death, hunter-gatherers, warring tribes. But yet at night, you're presented with this impossible majesty of the cosmos above your head every night. Now today, we have fucking social media. This is your sun. This is your star. You're staring at a stupid fucking screen. And when you look up, you just see nothing but blackness because there's all these city skyscrapers and all these street lights. It's blinded out, the one thing that is one of the most important humbling, grounding experiences appearing at the cosmos. It's so weird. It's so hard to be in a bad mood when you're looking at the stars. It's so hard to be in a bad mood when you're riding a bicycle and you feel the wind. It's such a simple little thing, a stupid little invention, this bicycle. But you get in, you're right around. It's very hard to stay in a bad mood if you spend two hours on a bicycle. And there's so many things like that that we rob ourselves of. I don't know. Even I find when I'm in nature, exercise, when I run outside and I'm running through the trees and I see a hawk and I see the wind blowing through and I pass a farm with sheep, and I come back from a long run high. And I feel like I like myself. And in the city, I go to the gym and I got on one thing, highlights of all my sports teams that I love and they're blinking up and down. And then I got the world is ending on all the news channels blinking up and down. And I got guys who are in better shape than me walking by and girls who are super hot walking by that I'm trying not to look at and be a good person. And I walk out of the damn gym and I hate myself. You know what I mean? I mean, I've got some exercise. But it wasn't a long for the country. But anyway, it's a certainly a different experience. Yeah, doing it outside is certainly a way to do it. Is that too much information? No, that's us. That's me. That's everybody. And the thing is, the gym wants to keep you occupied because then you'll show up more often. It won't be incredibly boring. If you go to a dank dungeon of a gym with nothing on the wall so other than a small mirror that's covered with other people's spit. I just think that's what we all liked in Rocky when he goes to Siberia. That's the one I'm thinking of when the barn is freezing out. And it's just him. Carrying the log. Yeah, it's hilarious. Yeah, well, we like the idea. And I was going to bring that up earlier when you were talking about immersing yourself in a role and preparing for a thing. It's one of the more romantic things to me about fighting. When I know that this past weekend there was a big UFC, when a fighter goes into a camp, they go off somewhere. They leave their family behind often for like two months at a time. And they just completely immerse themselves in preparation for this one thing that's going to happen. And every little thing that distracts you robs you away from the potential of that one possible majestic performance, that one career-defining performance, which they're all chasing after. And for a championship-level fighter, it's like the immense pressure. And then this thing, this, you call it romantic, because it is kind of romantic, this romantic task. Oh, it's dedication to excellence. Yes. It's full dedication. Full complete dedication. The way that you're even talking about trying to do your interviews or trying to do your comedy, you're trying to be insane. But to have something so, I mean, I envy that when I read about fighters and the dedication. I really, I'm kind of long for that experience. Yeah. That idea of going away. And I think there's something about, I've always, I don't know if you think this, but whenever I pass by a monastery, the convent or some of these people who are dedicated to their spiritual calling so completely that they've isolated out all the noise of life. Yes. I'm really glad they exist. I'm glad. In the same way I feel about fighters, I feel like, I mean, with the fighters, I really envy it because we all would like to test ourselves. How much could I dedicate myself? How could I go to the next level? How far can I go? And I think that, oh, just singularity of focus. It feels really good. There is something, I think, I love stories about fighters and for just that, and the fact that it all rests on these X amount of minutes. Yeah. And chaos. And just. What was it like? Was it like watching? Fighting. No. Oh, fighting? Terrifying. Yeah. Would you ever get to a place, I've always wanted to, would you ever get to a place where you're walking into the ring and you weren't afraid? No. If I did, I didn't perform well. There was a few times I was overconfident, and I didn't perform well because I tricked myself into not being scared. So because I wasn't scared, because I didn't like being nervous, so I tricked myself into thinking, I'm so good, I don't have to be nervous. And then I'd fought so many times. Like, the problem is complacency. So if I probably, when I was competing, I probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 fights in martial arts. And so I did nothing but that from age 15 to 21 to travel around the country. And there was times where I did it so much that I was not nervous. And then I would go there, and I wouldn't fight well. And then I would go, why is I? Why would I miss opportunities? Even if I won, I was like hypercritical. Even if I won, I just didn't like, I got hit when I shouldn't have got hit. Like, something was off. I didn't perform that well. And I realized somewhere along the line, I think right around I was like probably 19 or 20 when I really started to figure it out. I was like, oh, you have to be scared. That thing that you don't like, that's critical. It's critical to your performance because it keeps you on edge. You have to be nervous. You have to be. Mike Tyson talked about it. There's a fantastic video of Mike Tyson from his documentary where he's talking about his mindset leading to him getting into the ring. And that, you know, he talks about, see if we can find that, Jamie. It's fucking excellent. Because this was Mike Tyson when he was Mike Tyson, when he was the most terrifying heavyweight boxer that ever walked the face of the earth. There was a period of time over like two or three years where I don't think anybody has ever come close to Mike Tyson. I know that's true. He was just supreme. He was so good and so different than anybody before him. But it was also his mindset. He's a great scholar of history. You know, I had a fantastic conversation with him about Genghis Khan. And when we started talking about it, he knew Genghis Khan's real name. His real name was Temujin. He knew his history. That you know that. He's such an interesting person. I loved to watch all his interviews. He knew that Genghis Khan's mother had been kidnapped by, on her wedding day, been kidnapped by a rival man and taken away and impregnated. The man that she was supposed to marry, she never saw again. And then that Genghis Khan was born with a blood clot in his hand. He was holding on to a blood clot as he was a young boy. And it was like a sign that he was going to be a great conqueror and a warrior. But listen to this. I'm gonna have supreme confidence. I'm scared to death. I'm totally afraid. I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of losing. I'm afraid of being humiliated. Close I get to the ring, more confidence I get. Closer I get more confidence I get. All during my training, I've been afraid of this man. But close I get to the ring, I'm more confident. Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god. No one can beat me. That's an abbreviated version of it. It's different in the film. It's like a little bit more drawn out. Somebody edited that down for Instagram. But it's this thing where you would think, how could that guy be afraid? How's he afraid? He's Mike Tyson. And this was Mike Tyson in his prime. But you have to be afraid. You've got to be nervous. If you're not nervous, you're not gonna perform well. Well, it makes me think about earlier in our conversation when I was talking about, oh, you know, when I think about when I was young and I'd be really nervous and pretending I wasn't nervous. And that was the problem. And that now I said to you, I still experienced it. I just know what to do. You remember like that when you're talking like that? What I was, what I know what to do is not to pretend that I'm not nervous. Right. That's, it's as simple as that. When he's saying, I'm afraid, that's very powerful. It's kind of the same, a different spin on what I'm saying about it. It's okay to say, I don't know. Yeah. I am afraid and there's, there's a great Sarah Bernhardt story about this young actress comes up to Sarah Bernhardt. She was this great actress from the previous, you know, a long time ago, but this, before Sarah Bernhardt was about to go on stage, this young actress asked her to sign her program. Sarah Bernhardt took it in her hands were shaking and this young actress said, why are your hands shaking? And she was, I'm nervous. And the young person said, I'm never nervous when I act. Sarah Bernhardt was, when you know what you're doing, you will be. And, and, and it's a part of like what you're talking about with your fighting, knowing that there's nothing wrong with anxiety and with nerves. They can be your friend. They are there. They are here to warn you, prepare you, make you train a little harder, make you think a little sharper, treating it like I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed of being nervous. You know, Bill Russell apparently would like, be sick to the stomach before every game. This is the most winning basketball player in history. He was still, and that's why he wants so much. Right. You know, you have to care. You have to care. And then strangely what that Tyson clip gets at, if you can say that the closer you get to game moment, now you're not pretending. And you realize, oh, for me, it's just a scene. It's just a play. It's just, I can handle. This is, you remember that Jaguar, Paul in a Pocalypto, when he has that moment, he's running through the woods and he's so afraid. And he realizes, this is my forest. You know, he's like, I don't have to be afraid in my forest. You know, I'll fight these guys. I don't want to stop running. It's a great moment in that movie. And I feel that way. When before I'm doing something, this last movie I did, Blue Moon, really, really challenging part, I had so much confidence when we were talking about making the movie. Then all of a sudden it was green lit and so, but like when I flew to the location and I saw the set and was like, oh, it was the weekend before we started. I got so nervous. I got sick. You know, I woke up in the middle of the night just in pools of sweat. And my body was just like going, Ethan, this is gonna, are you ready? Are you ready? You know, and I would wake up, ah, I had to get up so early to go to work. I'd wake up an hour and a half before. I was supposed like, I gotta go over these lines again. I gotta go over this. How is this character walking? What is he doing? What is he saying? Is this part ready? Is this thing ready? Do they know what they're doing in that shot? Is the cigar's ready? All the things, what are the things that are gonna be the screw today up? How much can I see the day so that none of these things that might screw it up are gonna screw it up? And so I kinda know what he means. When it comes to, you've passed through the fire. So when it comes to fighting, well, he's either gonna lose, win or lose, it's gonna be okay. But you know, there's something powerful that anxiety can be a great friend. His mentor, Customado, who was also a hypnotist. He hypnotized him. Yes, he was a psychologist. Yeah, he's a completely fascinating guy. He started hypnotizing Mike when he was 13. One of the things that he told Mike, he said, fear is like a fire. It can cook your food or it can burn your house down. It depends on how you control it. I feel the same way about money. I feel the same way about ego. It can be the fuel of a healthy life, but it has to be, garden has to be managed really well. And it's sadly daily. Yeah, daily. It's not like you, sure, we're both old enough to know. It's not like you have some breakthrough when you're 33. I've had breakthroughs. I feel like, oh, I get it, I get it, I get it. And then the next day you get it. Gosh, it's gone. You know, it happens to you over and over again. And that's life, I think. Yes, that is life. Yeah, and that's great for young people to hear because they think that there's gonna come a point in time where they made it, where there's no fear. And I'm here to tell you, you don't want that. You don't want it. It's never gonna come. And you don't want it. And even if it did come, you don't want it. It'll rob you of the exciting part of life. You ever hear that Jim Carrey bit always makes you laugh. He's like, he wins the Golden Globe and he goes to bed at night. He goes, gosh, I'm a Golden Globe winner. What if I could be a two-time Golden Globe winner? What if I could be a three, you know, the brain, the brain always wants more. Always. It can't stop it. That's why billionaires still work. Yeah. Why are they so miserable? Because it's just chasing numbers. It's chasing numbers all the time. One of the things about, in the rooms that I've been in with a lot of money, compared to the rooms I've been in where there isn't a lot of money, if you compare the laughter. Right. Yeah. It's no contest. Well, there's so much pressure involved in that kind of way of life. Why would you want a house with no laughter? You know? I don't think they have options at that point. I think they're so locked into what they do. And it gets so competitive. Yeah. I've seen guys like that who get so happy about a deal gone right. It's fascinating to me. I mean, it's like, wow, I didn't, but because the inverse is true, if that makes you so happy, what happens if you lose that? Right. A million bucks or whatever, 20 million. And it makes you happy for a brief amount of time. Because the reality is, once you're wealthy, everything else is, my friend Brian said something to me a long time ago, the only amount of money you want is where you can go to a restaurant and not worry what the bill costs. Everything else is bullshit. Well, I liken it to, what happens if you get an offender bender? You know, I don't want to get an offender bender and have a lot of trouble. Right. Like I want that to be taken care of. Right. You don't want to not be able to pay your rent because you got an offender bender. You don't want your kid not to get their medicine because you got an offender bender. You know, like you need to have room, a little padding to like, I've never, there's no vacation. An expensive vacation with my kids is not better than any vacation with my kids. Right, right, right, right. A romance, same thing. Yeah. You can spend a fortune on a romantic weekend. It's not as great as it is to get stuck in a car when it's a blizzard out. Right. And you listen to a great record and she looks beautiful and says something funny and you both laugh. That's, you can't buy that. Right. But there's this feeling like you could. Well, our society puts so much emphasis on ultimate success. Like who's the richest man in the world? Well, do you think the richest man in the world is happier than the 30th richest man in the world? They're all rich as fuck. Like everything is available to them. It's all nonsense after that, after a certain point. Like what are you doing? Why are you still working? Why are you still chasing zeros and ones? Like what is the point? What are you chasing? Me? Yeah. I don't. I don't think I'm chasing anything. I try not to be, I just enjoy what I do. I try to. I don't relate to it because that's what led me to the question. I'm like, what am I chasing? You know what I'm chasing? What I said earlier, like I, the last thing I shot, we had a couple moments of grace. You know, just where like, I can tell the crew's losing their lunch and everybody's so happy with the take that we got and it's kind of moving and how it was perfect and the light came through the window at the right time. And then Peter Dinklage said this hysterical thing and he wasn't supposed to say it, but it worked out perfect because then the other actress, then she responded in that way and then my hat fell off and everybody's, and it's just, it's high and I drive home and I want to tell everybody and I can't wait for the world to see it. You know, I am chasing that, like could that happen again? Yeah. You know, but it's not something I control. It's not something that, it's a feeling I'm chasing. But it's a tangible thing. It's not status or money. It's you're chasing, you're doing, you know, for lack of a better word, art. You know, and art has a sort of a pretentious air to it. A lot of people, you know, there's certain words that have been sort of co-opted, but the art of creation. The art of doing something. You would never, I mean, I know you're exactly right. But it happens to me all the time and it bothers me that what people think is pretentious and what people, if I said, you know, I really want to make $100 million. Nobody says I'm pretentious. Right, right. If I say, you know, I'd really like to make something, I'd like to make something beautiful. It really moves people. What a pretentious ass. Right, right. Why is it? What I was gonna say was, well, you go first. It's sincerity. It's sincerity, because some people say that and they don't mean it. And that's most of the people that say that. And that's the problem. That's true. But what I was gonna say is like, if you're, you say 15, 14, your daughter, your youngest? 15, yeah. If you came home today and she had made this crazy collage and it was combining pictures of her friends from high school and this beautiful watercolor that she did around it and she sprinkled glue on it and dropped sparkles on it and put it in a weird wood frame that her mother had given her that she'd like. And she said, isn't it beautiful, dad? Would you ever say that's pretentious? Of course not. Of course not. But the goal, when somebody says the word art to me, I don't hear pretentious. I hear the solar system. I hear like human creativity inside of us, man. It is inside me and it's inside you. And when I see a great movie or when I hear Jimi Hendrix rip a killer solo, then my whole body vibrates, oh, hey, we're alive. You know, when Johnny Cash comes out with a sound you've never heard before, when it's a great rap song, you're like, I gotta hear that again. I feel my heartbeat with that. That's art. It's not pretentious. It's real. And so I feel that way very strongly and that makes me wanna go to set and that makes me not care whether the movie makes a billion dollars, it makes two cents. There's a great, one of the great old English actor, Paul Scofield. I'm gonna destroy this quote, but it was in his obituary. And he was in this great movie when I was a kid, Man for All Seasons, and he was in Redford's Quiz Show and he was a great English actor. And when he died in his obituary, there was an interview with him. He said, you were performing King Lear at your local church at the end. Why weren't you doing it on the West End? You know, because you were healthy enough. They were asking him, why are you doing, he was doing a play at a local church in here. And he said, I really like walking to work. And I realized that I really have always only performed for whoever it was that made me. And I can do that anywhere. I can do it on Broadway. I can do it in a Robert Redford movie. And I can do it in my local theater. It's the same action and it's taking me a lifetime to realize that it doesn't, I just love to do it. And he's like, and I'd like to walk to work. So I'm not going to West End. And I thought, I love this guy. You know? Well, that is real purity. Yeah. When you're not chasing any prestige, you're only doing it for the thing. And I bet there are people that he loved there. Of course. Other people you're doing it for. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And it's probably more purity to it. Knowing that it's not going to be reviewed in the New York Times. It's like you're doing something that you're only doing it for the love of it. And if you want to play pro ball, you know, there's certain things, you know, if you're, you know, the Algi the great, he used to coach for UT baseball. His great thing that he'd say that why he didn't coach the Yankees or the Red Sox, because he won five NCAA championships. So the problem is with pro ball, the object of the game is to win. And in college sports, my job is to develop young men. And if I do that right, we will win. But it's, I like the priority. And I feel like if the priority is my own development, you know, then more times than not, something good will happen. If my priority is to win, make cash, be a big shot, blah, blah, blah. I've kind of lost why you should play the game. You know? 100%. And the trick for me is, well, I do want to be a professional actor. I like being relevant. I like making relevant art. I like talking to people and communicating with people. So you have to figure out that balance of like, all right, this is how I pay my bills. This is, you know, what facilitates on my whole life. So I have to be a little attentive to the professional part of my brain and not let it diminish the kid in me. Yeah. You know? And to keep them both in some kind of balance. And that's, for me, been my adult life. The term developing men, or developing people, developing young people. My martial arts instructor, when I was a young boy, he, there was like a pamphlet that they had released explaining what the classes were all about. And in it, one of the quotes that always stuck with me forever is, martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential. So is acting. Yeah. So is anything. So is playing chess. Yeah. So is carpentry, if you do it right. Everything. Everything. Yeah, Miyamoto Musashi, the famous samurai, had a great quote, once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things. Yeah. I carried that around. Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, that's the same idea. Yeah, yeah. There's, it's the real, the real beauty of it all is concentrating on the development of the thing. And in that thing, you will grow as a human. And that's the thing where we're talking about boxing or fighting or acting or whatever. The thing about the 100% focus is it, it's kind of, by shedding everything, there's a discipline to that about seeing all the little details I find, for example, in acting. They always talk about this. Is he a good listener? Like one of the things, like are you responding naturally like a human being? Can you listen? In the art of teaching myself about acting, about how to be present with my scene partner, I've learned how to be present with you, with my kids. When I'm at a baseball game with my friends. Right, right. It actually, it's like, it's meaning, I'm taking the same idea that if you train to do a fight well and you really feel what excellence at that level is like, you can feel it in other things. It can translate. You know what sloppy thinking is. If you've been relaxed while you're doing something hard, you know what it's like when you're tense. Cause you're not having that feeling that you had in that fight where you were really great. That's the same with my, I've done performances where it goes up all by itself. And it's an amazing feeling. A lot of work and preparation is to go into that feeling of disappearing. But now I know when it's not happening. And it doesn't mean I can make it happen. But at least an awareness that it's not happening is a great starting place to go. Why is it not happening? Right, something smells. Something smells like Phil would say. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to talk to you about, cause Jamie brought this up yesterday, Denzel Washington when you're doing training day, like so much apparently, Jamie was saying of the dialogue that you guys had was completely improvised by Denzel. He is an astonishing, and that's like, yes, the short answer to your question is, it was, we would be doing ride arounds, you know, in the back of these cop cars watching these arrests or talking to some of these people who really lived the life that we were doing. And they would say something really funny, you know? And I would just see Denzel like glance at me. And I realized, oh, that just went in the computer. You know? And then it would come out, you know, in a scene two months later, that line that that guy said exactly, it would come out. It was a great script. I don't want to, David Erich wrote the script, it's a phenomenal script. I mean, when I read that script, I wanted that part so badly. Denzel's one of my favorite actors. He is probably my favorite actor. I think, you know, Malcolm X and Raging Bull are two towering, maybe Nicholson, one for the cuckoo's nest, like Liv is, like the three great performances of my lifetime. But he's always listening, always listening, talking, asking, thinking, curious, so present, so commanding. And if you take responsibility for your own work, you can have a great experience. And if you don't, he'll run you over. Yeah. Like I heard like King Kong and God Shit on me, that was all just completely improvised. So it's like towards the last day of the shoot. And I had been, when people say improvised, they think, oh, just some magic lightning bolt happened. It's months of work. It was improvised. He's just supposed to yell, fuck you or something as I'm walking away. And this monologue flew out of his mouth, you know, y'all gonna be playing for the Pelican Bay, all stars. This is my neighborhood. You all just live here. King Kong ain't got nothing on me. Just all this stuff was, and it was, it was the last day shooting, or third to last day or something. It was all his prep. Just, he's just, this is, here's a line that didn't make the movie. Here's another line that didn't make the movie. Here's another thing I wanted to say. Here's another thing. And he just started throwing them all out there. And I, I shit you not, man. The shots, it's on me. I'm walking out of the, you know, walking away from me, screaming, all this stuff. And that's when I say I'm chasing a feeling. Like that's one of the, I mean, to just be there that day, you know, to watch a great, somebody's working on a different level than everybody else. You know, he's, he, you know, he makes all of us look like we're mastering checkers, you know, and, and he's, but to be there and be part of the magic van, I knew where I, I'd heard him audition some of those lines all the places, you know. We'd run lines together and he'd try this. So, he was, he was amazing, amazing. That's what I mean about the power of his imagination. He was Alonso. And anything that he would pick up or hear would go into the computer. And then it would, he would look for the ways that it could help the script. Look, look for ways, you know, he wasn't, you know, he wasn't putting selfishly tearing the sale up to make it about him. He was always looking to help. I even remember he came to the set the day. I have the scene that he's not in with the, the Cholo gang, you know, and they're, we're playing cards and, you know, your register pushed in that scene, you know, would they put me in the bathtub? And Denzel came to set and he watched the scene. He was like, damn, I'm like, what? This is gonna be the best scene in the movie. And I'm not in it. Hate this scene. And it's funny he walked away. And it was, it was very gracious. I mean, he was all in that movie. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Ethan, thank you very much, man. This is a really fun conversation. I really enjoyed it. I'm really glad you had me. Thank you. And thank you for all the movies, man. Join the shit out of your career. If you can't tell, it's been my pleasure. Thank you. It's been mine as well. Thank you.