Speaker 1: Sometimes life passes in the wink of an eye and
Speaker 1: it's like, wow, are we here already? But there's other
Speaker 1: times in that same week of an eye, you comprehend
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 2: One of the greatest and most iconic actors of all time,
Speaker 2: He's started dozens of movies over his forty year career.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm mean loving.
Speaker 1: If you're just looking at the passer saying, man, that
Speaker 1: was when it was great. I wish we could go back. No,
Speaker 1: you never want to go back. You always have to
Speaker 1: understand that our best days are still ahead of it.
Speaker 2: Well, as you keep saying more will be revealed as well.
Speaker 1: This too shall pass and more shall be revealed.
Speaker 3: The number one health and Well In his podcast set
Speaker 3: Jay Shetty.
Speaker 1: See only.
Speaker 2: Tom Hanks, Welcome to on Purpose. It's truly an honor
Speaker 2: and a gift to being your presence to have you here,
Speaker 2: and even the first few moments that we've just exchanged
Speaker 2: a few thoughts, ideas and stories, I'm already enjoying your
Speaker 2: companies so much, and I'm so grateful that.
Speaker 1: You took me time to do this.
Speaker 2: Kind of likewise, and I watched here, which is out
Speaker 2: on November first, I have so much that I want
Speaker 2: to talk about it through and through your lens. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was watching it to me, the theme of home,
Speaker 2: obviously is so strong and apparent, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: ask you where do you feel most at home apart
Speaker 2: from home?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, man, all right, let's throw deep right
Speaker 1: off the bat. Because I was so many things lined
Speaker 1: up with me at my age. I was the third
Speaker 1: of four. Uh, my parents were very preoccupied with all
Speaker 1: certain you know, like the positives and miseries of their lives.
Speaker 1: I like to joke that they pioneered the marriage dissolution
Speaker 1: laws for the state of California, you know, back they
Speaker 1: got divorces, when only like Jean Jahabor you know, or
Speaker 1: you know, Nicky Hilton got divorces. My home environment was
Speaker 1: fluid in that we moved a lot, and we were
Speaker 1: suddenly living with a whole different set of people because people,
Speaker 1: you know, my parents got remarried and whatnot, so that
Speaker 1: by the time I was seven, I had lived in
Speaker 1: eight different homes. By the time I was ten, I
Speaker 1: lived in ten different homes. And it's always been like that.
Speaker 1: So I am not intimidated by it, and I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm damaged by it at all. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, my brother, who I did not live with,
Speaker 1: he lived in the same town and in one of
Speaker 1: three houses all his life. And I consider myself the
Speaker 1: lucky one, you know, just just by the nature of
Speaker 1: so much stuff that I've seen and so much stuff
Speaker 1: that I've been able to experience and be comfortable with. Now. Look,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sixty eight. So I went through I
Speaker 1: witnessed everything, you know, whatever drug thing that you want
Speaker 1: to go. I wasn't a participantant awful lot of that
Speaker 1: because I was so I was kind of like entertained
Speaker 1: by the new rules of whatever we were. And here's
Speaker 1: a new school, and here's a new apartment complex, and
Speaker 1: now we're living in a bona fide neighborhood. And I
Speaker 1: was not intimidated by all of that stuff. And I
Speaker 1: was also comfortable, perhaps in a way that's not healthy
Speaker 1: in some ways, of being a new guy in a
Speaker 1: new circumstance, sizing up a room, sizing up a school,
Speaker 1: figuring out, all right, what's the easiest way to get
Speaker 1: comfortable here. Part of it is being open, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like taking over, cracking a few jokes, not
Speaker 1: getting in trouble. And that's different from I would say,
Speaker 1: like my older brother who was very shy, and we
Speaker 1: were connected at the hip to all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: and it was not great for the other members of
Speaker 1: my family. But there was just something about that, the
Speaker 1: roll of the dice, number three of four right there
Speaker 1: when the parents are too busy with all this other
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And my siblings were not much older
Speaker 1: than I was, but older than I, but they were
Speaker 1: social beings long before I was. I didn't become a
Speaker 1: social being until I was like seven years old or when.
Speaker 1: And by that time I'd lived in very many places.
Speaker 1: So long winded conversation, where where where do I feel it?
Speaker 1: Why do I feel at home most? I'm going to say, now,
Speaker 1: at the age of sixty eight, with some collection of
Speaker 1: my immediate family, wherever we are, provided we are and
Speaker 1: I don't mean to be good laughing, you know, provided
Speaker 1: we are laughing at perhaps the absurdity of it, or
Speaker 1: dealing with the cruelty of it, or sometimes just there's surreal,
Speaker 1: soilistic aspect of can somebody tell me how we ended
Speaker 1: up here? Exactly? Can someone? Can someone do that? Right now? So? I, uh,
Speaker 1: now that's not necessarily a strength, because along with that
Speaker 1: came Dude, I travel light, and I can travel light. Emotionally,
Speaker 1: I'm done. There's stuff that I cannot control. I have
Speaker 1: left many wonderful atmosphere or a loving atmosphere, or a
Speaker 1: friendly atmosphere. And like Ernie Banks, you know, the ballplayer
Speaker 1: for the Chicago Cubs, without ever looking back, without thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: things were really wonderful back then, I wish I was
Speaker 1: back there, Jay, I don't think I've ever thought that now.
Speaker 1: Is that great? Is it facile? Or is it so
Speaker 1: mercurial that maybe maybe you shouldn't trust me?
Speaker 2: Does it feel like it feels like it sounds like
Speaker 2: a healthy detachment?
Speaker 1: There is a type Okay, let's talk about that, because
Speaker 1: there is a version of detachment that means that you
Speaker 1: can navigate, say like, can I say assholes? So you
Speaker 1: can navigate assholes? And you know, I think my experience
Speaker 1: is about ninety percent of the people that you come
Speaker 1: across pretty decent folks, five percent are assholes, and I'll
Speaker 1: say five percent are sociopaths, you know, and you cannot
Speaker 1: avoid that other ten percent, those two five percent, and
Speaker 1: the ability to detach from those circumstances without a doubt
Speaker 1: a good thing. But the habit, then I think of
Speaker 1: choosing isolation from the other ninety percent, because what can
Speaker 1: I rely on at the end of the day. I
Speaker 1: can only rely on what I can fit in either
Speaker 1: my emotional suitcase, an actual suitcase, or the back of
Speaker 1: my car, and that lingers for a very long time.
Speaker 1: So I think the healthy aspect of it has been
Speaker 1: a grade aid to me, as well as the tendency
Speaker 1: to want to be isolated, to not need anybody. Put
Speaker 1: it that way, to not want anybody, because that's just
Speaker 1: what I learned. Life is easy if you don't need anybody,
Speaker 1: and it can be a lot easier if you want
Speaker 1: nothing more than what's in the back of the car.
Speaker 1: But that can be a solitary life, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times being solitary can be confused with being lonely,
Speaker 1: and lonely can being lonely can lead to anger and
Speaker 1: resentments and stuff that you got to work through. And Okay,
Speaker 1: at the sixty eight, you know a lot of those
Speaker 1: years have been dealt with dealing with the latter and
Speaker 1: enjoying the former at the same time.
Speaker 2: Well, I think what you've rightly said is that there's
Speaker 2: this binary feeling of if you're detached, you're lonely or disconnected,
Speaker 2: or you might be at the other end codependent and
Speaker 2: attached and not have the ability to operate in a
Speaker 2: solitary state. So how have you danced almost so beautifully
Speaker 2: between the two of being able to confidently say you've
Speaker 2: been detached in the right ways, and then at the
Speaker 2: same time, you have this beautiful relationship with your wife,
Speaker 2: you have long term friendships with people in the industry,
Speaker 2: Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, you have. So how does that
Speaker 2: dance work? Because I do think that the magic is
Speaker 2: in the dance, not in the choice.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say that I got very, very, very
Speaker 1: lucky being in the right place at the right time
Speaker 1: and recognizing something that was just for me. All Right,
Speaker 1: you go back to let's just go back to school.
Speaker 1: You know, people say show business is like high school
Speaker 1: with money. High school is like show business without money.
Speaker 1: You know, it truly was. And when I was, when
Speaker 1: I would look, I just went to school. And my
Speaker 1: joke was, we moved around so much that whenever, you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the school year, my dad would
Speaker 1: stand me out on the driveway and say, so your
Speaker 1: school is somewhere in that direction. Just walk that way,
Speaker 1: and when you see kids your own age, just follow
Speaker 1: them and they lead you to whatever school you are
Speaker 1: supposed to go to. The school was a social kind
Speaker 1: of like place for me, and every now and again
Speaker 1: there might be a moment that landed in my intellectual pursuit,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. I can't say I really loved
Speaker 1: going to school, but I certainly loved the hang of
Speaker 1: going to school. That's a different thing. Subject matters, that
Speaker 1: was a role of history was great. Sometimes some reading
Speaker 1: was great. But I was no artist. I was no
Speaker 1: you know, I was no mathematician. You know. I kind
Speaker 1: of like geography because you could visualize a map and
Speaker 1: know where like Sri Lanka was, or you know, the
Speaker 1: difference between Cambodia and Thailand. But when I was in
Speaker 1: high school and had no idea what I was supposed
Speaker 1: to do with my time other than you know, maybe
Speaker 1: go to young life, you know, hang out, you know,
Speaker 1: hang out with you know, some sort of psych theological
Speaker 1: you know, brothers. But other than that, sign up for class,
Speaker 1: maybe do your homework on the bus on the way
Speaker 1: to school, and what run track? I don't know what
Speaker 1: he is supposed to do. But there was a theater teacher.
Speaker 1: There was a theater department at this high school. And actually,
Speaker 1: this guy I had known since sixth grade was playing
Speaker 1: Dracula in the high school play. And I said, really,
Speaker 1: and so you know, we went, we went up to
Speaker 1: school at night to see him. And I'd never been
Speaker 1: at my high school at night. Looks different at night.
Speaker 1: Right Then I sat there and there was you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of people in the auditorium, and then they
Speaker 1: came out and did this play, and I thought, this
Speaker 1: is school. You can do this at school. School. Isn't
Speaker 1: this thing just to survive? This isn't this thing just
Speaker 1: to fill up your time to leave as soon as
Speaker 1: you can and get there at the lake. Oh No.
Speaker 1: I never cut class and didn't do that because in
Speaker 1: some ways the hang of school was too much fun.
Speaker 1: But when I saw that there was this kind of
Speaker 1: discipline that I had already been thinking of in my head,
Speaker 1: that just changed everything. That just would you suddenly have
Speaker 1: a reason to go and do something, and the reason
Speaker 1: is in a pursuit of something that you cannot find
Speaker 1: anywhere else. Right that I got to say my junior
Speaker 1: and senior years of high school. I have been living
Speaker 1: that same exact life and excitement ever since. I'm not
Speaker 1: kidding the idea of auditioning for the first Like our
Speaker 1: great instructor, our teacher, he wanted to do real plays
Speaker 1: because he loved to do the scenic design for it.
Speaker 1: So we did a Knight of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams.
Speaker 1: How about that sixteen year old seventeen year old kids
Speaker 1: playing Night of the Iguana that we did Shakespeare. We
Speaker 1: they did musicals as well, those were always popular. But
Speaker 1: suddenly having this tantalizing thing, that's like, if you have
Speaker 1: an imagination and if you're not afraid of getting up
Speaker 1: in front of people, which I was not. Some people
Speaker 1: can't get up, and it was a bunt for me.
Speaker 1: I did. I did it without even thinking that that gave.
Speaker 1: That gave a purpose and a pursuit that was much
Speaker 1: much bigger than anything else that had been in my life.
Speaker 1: Now I have a friend of mine from the same era,
Speaker 1: James is his name. I met him in fifth grade
Speaker 1: and he said to me he was going to be
Speaker 1: a draftsman. He was going to he was going to
Speaker 1: be an engineer. He's going to design buildings, and he did.
Speaker 1: That's what he's been doing all this life. I knew.
Speaker 1: I knew people that at the same age. They said, well,
Speaker 1: I really love to cook, and they have written cook
Speaker 1: books and they've run their own catering companies. That is
Speaker 1: what That's the same sort of thing that I that
Speaker 1: I landed upon without really knowing it. Because my parents
Speaker 1: were divorced. I spent a lot of time I'm traveling
Speaker 1: to and from, you know, where my mom lived in
Speaker 1: this small town where my dad lived in Oakland in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area. And those hours on a Greyhound bus,
Speaker 1: starting when I was seven, seven or eight years old,
Speaker 1: five hours of just daydreaming, five hours of looking out
Speaker 1: the window, five hours of looking at people passing cars,
Speaker 1: air trains, going by, farms and whatnot, buildings within the
Speaker 1: natural preponderance. I had to sit there quietly and imagine
Speaker 1: what was going on. Was that fueled me into realizing
Speaker 1: that there's this thing, that there's actually a discipline and
Speaker 1: a trade and an art and a what's the word
Speaker 1: I'm looking for and I'll just say it again, a
Speaker 1: pursuit that is, let's put on a show, Let's tell
Speaker 1: a story that came along and bang. That was it.
Speaker 1: And I'm telling you it's the same exact now as
Speaker 1: it was then.
Speaker 2: Did you write on those journeys or was it mainly.
Speaker 1: I wanted to write specific glee, but I did not literally,
Speaker 1: I did not have the I did not have the
Speaker 1: scholastic example. I did not learn the tools because I
Speaker 1: just wanted to fake it, you know, at the last moment. Now,
Speaker 1: I started writing about about twenty years ago by just
Speaker 1: incorporating the work that an actor does that is not
Speaker 1: told to anybody, that is not spoken. That actually was
Speaker 1: a form of writing that came about, and I was
Speaker 1: sort of like instructed on how that come how that
Speaker 1: comes along, but without putting it down on paper. I
Speaker 1: had malleable, cohesive narratives in my head for all of
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I just thought, well, isn't that what
Speaker 1: everybody does. That's the way you do this, right, Because
Speaker 1: it's not just showing up on time and you know,
Speaker 1: learning your words and doing what you're told. There is
Speaker 1: something beyond that. And the beyond that was always fifteen
Speaker 1: times greater than the actual physical showing up. I can't
Speaker 1: I can't discount enough the power of the hang. You
Speaker 1: want to hear a story. Here's here's the sor Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the story. Darlene Love. You know who. Darlene Love is,
Speaker 1: legendary singer, you know singer, A fantastic, fantastic uh motown artist,
Speaker 1: among other things were I was on the Christmas show
Speaker 1: of the old David Letterman Show, and every year he
Speaker 1: brought her along to sing It's Christmas, this fabulous rendition
Speaker 1: with a big orchestra and male choruses. I saw her
Speaker 1: there and I said, oh, oh, I'd seen her on
Speaker 1: the David Letterman Show for like six or seven years,
Speaker 1: and I said, I met her, and I said, I mislove,
Speaker 1: I cannot believe that I am on the show with
Speaker 1: you. You are you. You have been belting out you know,
Speaker 1: so so many moments of the soundtrack of my life
Speaker 1: that I'm just I'm just thrilled that you're here, and
Speaker 1: I'm here glad that you're still doing it. And she
Speaker 1: looked at me, said, Tom, I'm just here for the hang,
Speaker 1: and I got I completely, I completely got that, because
Speaker 1: the hang, the interaction with everybody dealing with the attractiveness
Speaker 1: of those ninety percent avoiding or learning how to negotiate
Speaker 1: around those other five percent, you know, the jerks and
Speaker 1: the evil people. Ain't that just living? You know? Ain't
Speaker 1: that better than being alone in a room when you
Speaker 1: don't have a thought in your head?
Speaker 2: Well said, yeah, absolutely, I was wondering. You talked about
Speaker 2: luck a lot. There can we all become a bit
Speaker 2: more lucky.
Speaker 1: The fellow who ran the Great Lake Shakespeare festal Vincent Dowling,
Speaker 1: I worked for him for three years and he's the
Speaker 1: number of people that loved that man and worked with
Speaker 1: that man. He touched a great many people's lives. He said.
Speaker 1: It's the most unfair business in the world. That's one
Speaker 1: aspect of it, because so much of it requires being
Speaker 1: in the right place at the right time, by choice
Speaker 1: and by sacrifice, you know, and that's not easy to do.
Speaker 1: I feel that I was fortunate that from as we
Speaker 1: spoke about, from that upg bringing, I had no qualms about, Hey,
Speaker 1: let's go. I got enough money for gas. I drove
Speaker 1: across the country with four other people one time, and
Speaker 1: then the next year I drove across the country by myself.
Speaker 1: Did not bat deny. And there are people that listen,
Speaker 1: they just can't do that, you know. There is a
Speaker 1: degree of security and fear and intimidation that can go
Speaker 1: along with what putting yourself in the right place at
Speaker 1: the right time, and along with that will come all
Speaker 1: it's a fifty to fifty. Okay, it's a fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1: Have you heard this great thing? I'm no mathematician, but
Speaker 1: when I heard this, I thought, that's actually a principle
Speaker 1: for living. Jay. If I had a quarter and I
Speaker 1: flipped it and aim up heads five times in the row,
Speaker 1: what are the odds that it's going to come up
Speaker 1: heads a seven times, six time, six time in a row?
Speaker 2: Is it still fifty to fifty?
Speaker 1: It's absolute fifty to fifty. Just because something has happened
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's going to Just because you're in a
Speaker 1: place doesn't mean that's where you should be. So along
Speaker 1: with luck, shouldn't the shouldn't the other requirement be faith
Speaker 1: or some degree of disconnected to it. To whatever the
Speaker 1: end result is going to be, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to be I was. I was talking to a friend
Speaker 1: of mine and he said he read somebody I don't
Speaker 1: know who it was, but someone someone wrote down you
Speaker 1: have to be all right with what's going to happen,
Speaker 1: and I just well, okay, yeah, so yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let's let's try to do that. So you have to
Speaker 1: be all right with what's going to happen, right or wrong, disaster, disease,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever you have to be. You have to
Speaker 1: be all right with what is going to happen with
Speaker 1: some degree of faith and luck that what happens after
Speaker 1: that is the best thing that could possibly be.
Speaker 2: What's helped you get closer to that. That sounds hard,
Speaker 2: it is, it sounds impossible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I am going to say that age in
Speaker 1: all honesty experience, you know, that thing of what has
Speaker 1: not destroyed me only makes me stronger. And look, let's
Speaker 1: not discount the power of getting your ass kicked, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just you know, suddenly not professionally as well.
Speaker 1: All sorts of you know, all sorts of personal things
Speaker 1: go along that give you a bloody nose and bust
Speaker 1: your teeth, and you have to go through those metaphysically,
Speaker 1: perhaps physically. I made this movie where I wrote a
Speaker 1: Scooter Vespa, and so because of that, I wrote a
Speaker 1: Vespa for about two years until I realized that I
Speaker 1: had been so close to kill myself on this thing
Speaker 1: making a stupid missy thing that I'm going to give
Speaker 1: up this vestival. This was a smart This was a
Speaker 1: smart thing to do that only came about because I learned,
Speaker 1: you know that, you know, sometimes a hair's breadth between
Speaker 1: you know, cracking up or falling down or needing that
Speaker 1: crash helmet or not. So it is a degree of
Speaker 1: that experience and also being I think open to some
Speaker 1: of the most basic I don't want to say philosophical truths,
Speaker 1: but I have been to the Holy Land. I have
Speaker 1: seen the sights that are precious, divine. I was. I
Speaker 1: was actually working this a long time ago. This was
Speaker 1: before the great many of the great problems that were
Speaker 1: going there. And I was driving back, being driven to Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: I was with a guy and I said, Hey, so,
Speaker 1: so Moche tells me, tell me tell me about where
Speaker 1: we are. He says, okay, I will tell you.
Speaker 2: This is.
Speaker 1: We are bound by a key boots. This is a
Speaker 1: very old key boots. You know key boots. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is a very old one. It's been there a very
Speaker 1: long time, very popular. And uh now we are coming
Speaker 1: up of a moshav. You know what is moshove is
Speaker 1: not like a kaboots it's different, more more socialists, less comfortable.
Speaker 1: But this is also much like that. And people live
Speaker 1: there and they work in their farm. And this is
Speaker 1: where David killed Goliath. And coming up here said well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa whoa packed the car just a little packed this side.
Speaker 1: Did you just say this is where David killed Goliath? Yes,
Speaker 1: he says. There's a little sign there It said in
Speaker 1: English and Hebrew and Arabic. This is well, tell me
Speaker 1: about that. Okay, Well, okay, there you see the valley, yes, okay.
Speaker 1: And on one side was the the Philistines. Philistic they were.
Speaker 3: They were there, okay, And David and the Israelites were here,
Speaker 3: and they sent down to the middle. There the the
Speaker 3: the guillant, the the giant yes yes, the golight yes.
Speaker 1: And the David goes says, I will fight this man.
Speaker 1: And he puts the stones and he kills him, and
Speaker 1: and I said this is the place. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to argue with that. Absolutely not going
Speaker 1: to argue with that. So move along. And I you know,
Speaker 1: you visit great cathedrals and whatnot have been all place
Speaker 1: around around the world, some of the great face. And
Speaker 1: we were in we were in Japan, the family and I.
Speaker 1: We had this fabulous guy that was driving us around
Speaker 1: and he took us to some Buddhist places, some Shinto shrines,
Speaker 1: and there was a big tree at one of them,
Speaker 1: uh at one of the one of the temples the shrines,
Speaker 1: and people would write down prayers on these on wooden
Speaker 1: wooden signs and they would hang them up like ornaments.
Speaker 1: So this tree is just covered with a million prayers,
Speaker 1: beautiful kind of like sensibility. And he wrote down something
Speaker 1: and he hung it up and I said, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: she what did you write? This says oh, I wrote here.
Speaker 1: I'll show you. And it was in Japanese, you know
Speaker 1: the language. And he says, this, this, this means I
Speaker 1: will never know all I need to know. That's all
Speaker 1: we talked about, you know, later on, you know what,
Speaker 1: So the ongoing education of we're never going to know
Speaker 1: what we need to know more is always going to
Speaker 1: be revealed. And this too shall pass. That governs absolutely everything.
Speaker 1: If you are having the greatest time in your work,
Speaker 1: this too shall pass. If you are successful, that this
Speaker 1: too shall pass. If you are sick, if you are
Speaker 1: experiencing and great tragedy and great drama, great difficulty. This
Speaker 1: too shall pass. Now. I don't know if I'm still
Speaker 1: answering the question you ask. This was educated to me
Speaker 1: over the course of my twenties and thirties and forties
Speaker 1: or fifties, at a time when you think that, no,
Speaker 1: what you have to do is have a master plan.
Speaker 1: You got to stick to the plan. You got to
Speaker 1: lay your head down, you got to fight for it,
Speaker 1: you got to compete. Yeah, Okay, there's times when you
Speaker 1: know you got to do that other kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and other times you just kind of like got to
Speaker 1: roll over and say, I surrender, you know, just I
Speaker 1: will never know all I need to know and I'll
Speaker 1: never be able to do all that I should do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 2: It does make sense. It does make sense. And I
Speaker 2: appreciate you saying that it comes with wisdom and age
Speaker 2: and experience, because I used to have a mentor you
Speaker 2: sadly passed away during the pandemic, but he would always
Speaker 2: replace He would always repeat to me, there's no substitute
Speaker 2: for maturity, and it was.
Speaker 1: No shortcut to it. Yeah, yeah, the maturity was just
Speaker 1: and yet didn't you know somebody when you were young
Speaker 1: who was the same age as you that had it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Oh. I came across all sorts of people like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just said, first of all, what makes you
Speaker 1: so special? And what makes you so smart? What makes
Speaker 1: you so calm?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 2: Did you have a figure out?
Speaker 1: I having the vegus idea, you know, some combination I
Speaker 1: would probably say of connection, you know, a connection to
Speaker 1: a family, connection to you know, uh, perhaps a heritage
Speaker 1: that goes along with that that you know. Some friend
Speaker 1: of mine we were we went to their sons bob mitzvah.
Speaker 1: And I'm not Jewish, but I said, you got by
Speaker 1: me said O, yeah, of course I got bom Mitzvah,
Speaker 1: he said. And he said, let me tell you something
Speaker 1: about the bomb Mitzvah. This is what's great about it.
Speaker 1: Because my thirteen year old son when he's getting bod mitzvah,
Speaker 1: and I told him, I said, after this, my son,
Speaker 1: your sins are your own. He's thirteen. But this is
Speaker 1: the you know, and there's studies of you know, there's
Speaker 1: examples of that all through all sorts of cultures, uh,
Speaker 1: and all sorts of histories that said, there is a
Speaker 1: time when you and you alone are responsible for everything
Speaker 1: that goes on goes on in your life. I have
Speaker 1: a I have a friend who is studying with a
Speaker 1: Buddhist monk. You know, a guy whose name he's literally
Speaker 1: got his name venerable in his first name. How about that?
Speaker 1: When I was talking to the venerable you know whatever
Speaker 1: it and I said, look, I know squat about Buddhism
Speaker 1: outside of you know what I you know, see on
Speaker 1: TV shows, So well, what's the deal? And he said, Well,
Speaker 1: one of the smartest things I heard from a guy
Speaker 1: who precious Buddhism is my life used to be nothing
Speaker 1: but chopping wood and carrying water, and now that I
Speaker 1: have received some enlightenment, I find that all that is
Speaker 1: necessary for me to live is to chop wood and
Speaker 1: carry water. Okay, all right, man, that's some high country.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you hear that. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know. If I had heard that at the age
Speaker 1: of twenty two, I would have had the slightest an
Speaker 1: idea of what are But at the age of sixty eight,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I can get a little bit
Speaker 1: closer to that.
Speaker 2: Definitely to that. Yeah, I think there's two things you
Speaker 2: brought to mind for me. I think one of them's
Speaker 2: been when I've noticed some of the wiser people that
Speaker 2: I've met along the way or at a younger age.
Speaker 2: As you were mentioning, it's always been people who were
Speaker 2: exposed to more generations, and so people who were in
Speaker 2: their twenties but new people who are seventy and spent
Speaker 2: quality time with them, or people who are in their
Speaker 2: fifties and spent time with someone who is eighteen or
Speaker 2: twenty one, and that kind of juxtaposition of being surrounded
Speaker 2: by people that weren't just all your age in the
Speaker 2: same space, there was a sense of you being able
Speaker 2: to learn and grow and take and receive. I was
Speaker 2: spending time with couple that my wife and I have
Speaker 2: become very close friends with, and they're both seventy, and
Speaker 2: my wife and I are in our in our mid thirties,
Speaker 2: and we were we spent a weekend with them, and
Speaker 2: it was brilliant because I got destroyed at pickleball by this.
Speaker 2: For me, Yeah, he's playing pickleball and tennis for four
Speaker 2: hours a day and I can barely play. For a
Speaker 2: couple and so big inspiration. But just the life experience
Speaker 2: and the engagement you get from that. And I think
Speaker 2: so much of our going back to what we were
Speaker 2: seeing about community and even your mention of church there
Speaker 2: or the Holy Land. I was researching something recently. I'm
Speaker 2: writing my third book, and something that I came across
Speaker 2: and I've been playing around with is this idea called
Speaker 2: the third space theory. And what the third space theory
Speaker 2: lays out is that back in the day, we would
Speaker 2: have home, we would have work, and we would have church.
Speaker 2: And church was a place you could look back on
Speaker 2: working home and reconcile and reflect and think.
Speaker 1: About you can ponder why bad things happen to good
Speaker 1: people and vice versa. Yeah, a place literally meant for that.
Speaker 1: This is why you come here exactly.
Speaker 2: And now what's happened is let alone three spaces. We
Speaker 2: don't eat, We just have one, so we work from home,
Speaker 2: we live at home, and then our third space or
Speaker 2: the closest thing to it is a television. Probably there
Speaker 2: is there isn't a separate space, and so it's arguing
Speaker 2: the fact that there isn't that space almost to have
Speaker 2: those thoughts, conversations, ideas, insights that may arise.
Speaker 1: The generational thing I think is wickedly important, whether or
Speaker 1: not you like they don't. You know, sometimes it's just
Speaker 1: the old person that's sitting in the corner, you know.
Speaker 1: But other times it's like, you know, a big there
Speaker 1: is some aspect of the big family that is not
Speaker 1: for everybody, you know, because God knows, not everybody wance
Speaker 1: to come to Thanksgiving sometimes because they don't want to
Speaker 1: have that same fight again.
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who he had his His grandmother
Speaker 1: was like and already had an like she was ninety
Speaker 1: three or something like that, and she was always just there,
Speaker 1: you know, just there. And at one point he was
Speaker 1: he was arguing with his parents about not wanting to
Speaker 1: do something. I can't remember what it was, didn't matter.
Speaker 1: But everybody say, why are you doing it? Why do
Speaker 1: you what's that about? How can you do? How can
Speaker 1: you da da da dah blah blah blah. And my
Speaker 1: friend said, wow, hey man, because life's too short. And
Speaker 1: this ninety year old grandmother is just sitting there and
Speaker 1: she said, no, life's not short. Life is long, which
Speaker 1: I interpreted as being life is long. So if you're
Speaker 1: doing something stupid, you know, you're spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time relishing, you know, living inside inside that that stupidity. Yes,
Speaker 1: and my kids are my my old my youngest kids
Speaker 1: essentially were raised along by us as well as a
Speaker 1: couple of people that have you know, been uh employee
Speaker 1: like families for members of him, but also their grandparents,
Speaker 1: their yai and popoo, as they say in Greek, people
Speaker 1: who were never not engaged with them when they were babysitting.
Speaker 1: We never had to have babysitters, We never had to
Speaker 1: have a nanny, We didn't have anything like that. What
Speaker 1: we had instead was two generations removed of people speaking
Speaker 1: Greek to them, asking them questions what are you doing?
Speaker 1: From the moment they are toddlers until they're fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: What they got from that is so different from from
Speaker 1: what I got from mine. There is a joke in
Speaker 1: my family about how bad I am with tools. I mean,
Speaker 1: as soon as I pick up a screwdriver or a hammer,
Speaker 1: I start getting cold sweats. Because my dad had no
Speaker 1: patience with me about He never said, let me show
Speaker 1: you how to use it, let me show you how
Speaker 1: to scrape that off. It was always I'll come on you,
Speaker 1: not head. Don't you know how to stand a board?
Speaker 1: Don't you know the difference between a standard socket wrench
Speaker 1: and metric And I never did because nobody said, let
Speaker 1: me show you how you do this. You got to
Speaker 1: learn it so that you're talking about something there that
Speaker 1: is it's almost it's like water on a stone, you know,
Speaker 1: it just has an effect over time. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know for in many cultures you have to look at
Speaker 1: that and say, the more, the more generations around that
Speaker 1: table with regularity, you know, not just for you know,
Speaker 1: three holidays, three holidays a year, the richer the lesson
Speaker 1: is going to be, you know, the deeper, because you're
Speaker 1: going to pick up some stuff just by like a
Speaker 1: like an old story from you know, from the old country.
Speaker 1: My uh my, my father in law, dad he was
Speaker 1: he was Greek but grew up in Bulgaria and had
Speaker 1: to escape the communists at whatnot which is a fascinating
Speaker 1: story unto itself, but but what what hell? The story
Speaker 1: about being told by his dad to take the donkey
Speaker 1: up to this, you know, up to the mountains and
Speaker 1: get something and bring it back, knowing that there was
Speaker 1: the meanest dog on the planet Earth up there that
Speaker 1: was going to uh try to try to bite him.
Speaker 1: He came back there. Oh, I think of what it
Speaker 1: was is he said, take the donkey up there, and
Speaker 1: he didn't want to wrestle with the donkey. He just
Speaker 1: wanted to go up there and get it back really fast.
Speaker 1: And on the way there, this dog, you know, nearly mauled,
Speaker 1: scared the living daylights out of him. So when he
Speaker 1: came back down, his dad said, I told you to
Speaker 1: take the donkey because the donkey would scare off the dog.
Speaker 1: You know like that, So you know you don't That's
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff you got to pick up over time.
Speaker 1: But did you did you have multiple multiple generations in
Speaker 1: the home as you were growing up?
Speaker 2: I felt that for me. My my monk teachers became
Speaker 2: that for me because they were older, and so I
Speaker 2: had had among teachers in his probably his sixties when
Speaker 2: I met him, at an who was in his thirties
Speaker 2: when I first met him, and so they became that.
Speaker 2: I wasn't so close to my grandparents and so I
Speaker 2: didn't really have that same interaction as you wasn't mentioning
Speaker 2: your children, did I didn't really have that with them.
Speaker 2: So I had my parents, I had my uncles and aunts.
Speaker 2: But then I think it was really later on when
Speaker 2: I met those two generations in the monastery, that that
Speaker 2: really expanded my breath of you know, human experience.
Speaker 1: The guy's worked across the board. But sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: grandpas are drunk and you know, and and grandma does
Speaker 1: not to but smoke cigarettes and you know, and watch
Speaker 1: Wheel of Fortune. So maybe it's not always me.
Speaker 2: So gave me it gave me. Was there you were
Speaker 2: talking about your experience with your father and you know,
Speaker 2: with the tools, And it's so funny because my dad
Speaker 2: was the opposite. He was he was useless at di
Speaker 2: y and so I'm useless, and so I have that.
Speaker 1: My dad was great. My dad could fix everything. There
Speaker 1: was a there was a story I was talking to
Speaker 1: my older brother that he and my dad my dad
Speaker 1: was a w Why in the word was spending a
Speaker 1: lot of money for crying out loud? We could get it.
Speaker 1: We could get electronics kit and make our own amplifier.
Speaker 1: We don't have to go off and pay all this
Speaker 1: much money. But I'll get up to a turntable and
Speaker 1: a speakers there we have stereo systems. So they got
Speaker 1: a kit and I saw them working on it together,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of jealous and I'm honestly forty
Speaker 1: years later I said to so you know that when
Speaker 1: you made the amplifier with Dad, I was really jealous,
Speaker 1: being like, oh man, I wish I would have done
Speaker 1: anything to trade shape places with you. My dad was
Speaker 1: so miserable as we're doing it always or you not head?
Speaker 1: Don't you know? Don't you know why? To Solder, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, there's a perspective of everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, did you try to? Did you try to
Speaker 2: pair in differently? Like? Did you?
Speaker 1: You know? You try to? But I made every mistake.
Speaker 1: You know, you scar the kids somehow in the same
Speaker 1: exact way, and as they get older, you know, you
Speaker 1: come back around it said, hey, can I talk about
Speaker 1: what a nodthead I was with you for all those years?
Speaker 1: And said yeah, sure, Dad, Yeah, I've been kind of
Speaker 1: waiting for this. Why don't what did you? What are
Speaker 1: your unloads? So no, but I would say at the
Speaker 1: same time, I think there was you know, does it
Speaker 1: come up to be fifty to fifty? Maybe the attitude
Speaker 1: and the you know, the life that we led, the laughs.
Speaker 1: You know that stuff's worth its weight, and you know,
Speaker 1: gem encrusted gold.
Speaker 2: So what's something that they've taught you, What's something that
Speaker 2: they've How.
Speaker 1: Different they all are, you know, they are not the
Speaker 1: same type of human being. Ever. My youngest at one
Speaker 1: point said something that was definitely true for him, and
Speaker 1: I thought, is in fact true for all of my kids,
Speaker 1: which makes makes me feel good. And that was he
Speaker 1: was younger, he was like seven or eight. I said, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, at one point, let's let's go down we
Speaker 1: were New York. Said let's go down the park and
Speaker 1: we'll take our gloves, we'll throw it around, we'll bat
Speaker 1: the balls. Let's just find a place of grass. And said, okay,
Speaker 1: do that, and it got away from me. Didn't happen?
Speaker 1: This called that something happened and I realized that, oh,
Speaker 1: the sun's going down. I said, oh my god, oh
Speaker 1: my god. Hey, I'm sorry. I said we were going
Speaker 1: to go down in the and throw the ball around.
Speaker 1: It got away from me. Forgive me, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: it's okay to and he sounded disappointment. That's okay. I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel bad. I just I just I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want you to be bored. And he
Speaker 1: looked at me with a look on his face and said, Dad,
Speaker 1: I'm never bored. And that is that's curiosity. That speaks
Speaker 1: to curiosity and drive and also the comfort of where
Speaker 1: one is in order to feel free, in order to
Speaker 1: explore whatever world that is. And I can I think
Speaker 1: I could say that maybe in varied degrees for all
Speaker 1: the kids, their ability to pursue their own interests without
Speaker 1: being prodded, without being forced to, I've learned from that
Speaker 1: because look, there was that isolation that I'm that I
Speaker 1: ays talking about. There was a time when I was
Speaker 1: so comfortable doing absolutely nothing or you know, pursuing some
Speaker 1: brand of you know, disconnection that wasn't good for me.
Speaker 1: And uh, I you know they everybody has it in
Speaker 1: some some some degrees, but it could be of a
Speaker 1: with all that you were, with all you kids, with
Speaker 1: all your advantages, I do not want to hear that
Speaker 1: you're bored. And they have never they have never said
Speaker 1: that they're bored. They they have always had some action
Speaker 1: thing that was going on, whether I understood their passion
Speaker 1: for it or not.
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Speaker 2: the code on purpose. What attracted that isolation and disconnection
Speaker 2: at that moment in time? What was it that was
Speaker 2: so appealing on them?
Speaker 1: I think I just had to get used to it
Speaker 1: because I was number three. People ran out of time,
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't have the wherewithal of the interest
Speaker 1: because I was so young when my parents split up,
Speaker 1: and there were so many other factors that had to
Speaker 1: go into Man, there's logistics and legal thing, time and
Speaker 1: distance and stuff like that that I took care of myself,
Speaker 1: and you know, was satisfied. I think it was reprieve
Speaker 1: for them. So I just got used to occupying myself
Speaker 1: by being alone. Yeah, and that's really great and it
Speaker 1: can be really detrimental.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can relate to so much of that as well.
Speaker 2: I felt I was the eldest, just one of two
Speaker 2: and my parents. You've used this word previously in other
Speaker 2: interviews of having your parents had a fractured relationship, and
Speaker 2: so did mine, and so there was definitely a sense
Speaker 2: if I had to build independence, accountability, and responsibility very
Speaker 2: early on because I had to take care of things.
Speaker 2: And I also look back at that as such a
Speaker 2: strength and I'm so grateful for it in a kind
Speaker 2: of weird way because I feel like it made me
Speaker 2: grow up earlier. Not in a way that I felt
Speaker 2: I lost to childhood or I didn't have amazing experiences,
Speaker 2: but I'm really happy now when I look back that
Speaker 2: it gave me strength and courage much.
Speaker 1: But as the older one did, they have some expectations
Speaker 1: of responsibility put on you, like where are you going
Speaker 1: and you have to be back by now? Where there
Speaker 1: are rules placed.
Speaker 2: No rules, no rules for me, more expectations educationally and
Speaker 2: what was strange, which is so much link to what
Speaker 2: I do today, and I've drawn that line fairly often
Speaker 2: for myself is I was emotionally dependent on by both
Speaker 2: of them. Okay, so I became the therapist.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's no wonder you went off for three years
Speaker 1: to sleep on the floor exactly on the ground.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm grateful for it now though, because I
Speaker 2: think it gave me the ability to listen closely, be empathetic,
Speaker 2: understand both sides, care for both, like he gave me
Speaker 2: that ability to recognize how it takes two to ten go.
Speaker 1: I think, I think this is a viable study about
Speaker 1: where you are in that pecking order every now. And
Speaker 1: I agreed about it because because I was last and
Speaker 1: last by like five years, I had no rules. I
Speaker 1: had no expectit. They had. They had spent so much
Speaker 1: time trying to establish that with the older you know,
Speaker 1: my older siblings. They didn't want to bother with it anymore.
Speaker 1: So if I was gone for you know, like two weeks,
Speaker 1: I just didn't come home for two weeks in high school,
Speaker 1: they knew I was sleeping at somebody's house and doing
Speaker 1: my homework and getting to school on my own. They
Speaker 1: were thrilled that they didn't have to, you know, they
Speaker 1: didn't have to discipline me or punish me. They didn't
Speaker 1: have even have to think about me. I just came
Speaker 1: and went by myself. So, but I was not the oldest,
Speaker 1: you know, I did not have somebody that was establishing
Speaker 1: the rules and you know the structure of the family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was Yeah, that was different for me too.
Speaker 2: I had expectations that academically, which is normal in an
Speaker 2: Indian family, but there weren't any rules for me as well.
Speaker 2: So if I was out and about and doing whatever
Speaker 2: it was, it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: And so so I'm gonna it's the stereotype of the
Speaker 1: Indian family, are they? Are you all brilliant students? Do
Speaker 1: you all work really hard.
Speaker 2: And finish all you're forced to? Yeah, you're forced to.
Speaker 2: You're forced to prioritize homework. Education is all that matters.
Speaker 2: Your social skills, life relationships don't matter. It's all about
Speaker 2: how well you're glad.
Speaker 1: I'm not an Indian and there's no way I could
Speaker 1: have been.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all about how well you perform academically. Your
Speaker 2: whole life revolves around that.
Speaker 1: Were your parents like high academic and June.
Speaker 2: Well, I think they I would say they did very
Speaker 2: well for what they had. So my dad became a
Speaker 2: chartered accountant. He qualified in England, but he grew up
Speaker 2: he was raised in India, and my mom never did
Speaker 2: any more than what you'd started up until age sixteen,
Speaker 2: and then after that also became an entrepreneur and became
Speaker 2: a financial advisor. So they both struggled and worked hard.
Speaker 1: I love it. It was going it was going right
Speaker 1: where I thought it was until you said, and then
Speaker 1: became an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ok, yeah, which I realize growing up that she
Speaker 2: was an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: Well, that comes from somewhere of that structure of education
Speaker 1: and homework done even no matter the gender.
Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly, exactly definitely. But I was thinking about, as
Speaker 2: we're talking about your life, I can't help but think
Speaker 2: about the movie here that I'm so grateful I got
Speaker 2: to watch a couple of days ago, a couple of weeks, no,
Speaker 2: a week ago now, and I really just felt that
Speaker 2: it was a work of art. That's kind of what
Speaker 2: I took away from it. It was a work of
Speaker 2: art because really, as a film more recently had me
Speaker 2: so fixated on. First of all, the way it's produced
Speaker 2: and created is beautiful, and the way it's a pretty
Speaker 2: deep throat, it's it's so deep, and it's perfect for
Speaker 2: this conversation that we're having. And even as you're reflecting
Speaker 2: on all of these scenes in your life. To me,
Speaker 2: I can't help.
Speaker 1: The project, oh dear, Oh but you because because it
Speaker 1: was four of us, you know, Bob, Bob Zamacus and
Speaker 1: Eric Roth and Robin and I and everybody everybody else
Speaker 1: in it, you know, Paul and every re actor. Did
Speaker 1: we The scenes are very very specific of a moment
Speaker 1: in a family's life, yes, and everybody was armed for bear.
Speaker 1: Everybody had a thing that it had happened to them
Speaker 1: that was like that. Not necessarily example, but the sensory experience,
Speaker 1: the emotional connection to every single moment in this thing
Speaker 1: was really quite resonant for us all. And I had
Speaker 1: to when I people say what are you working on?
Speaker 1: Or I'm making a movie called here? I say not
Speaker 1: h E A R it's h E R E. I said, well,
Speaker 1: what's it about? I've said it is about how important
Speaker 1: things are when they happen here, you know, because you
Speaker 1: cannot control them, and they are if you the film,
Speaker 1: I mean all of the permutations it goes. You know,
Speaker 1: we say the camera stands still in space, but it
Speaker 1: moves in time. You know, everybody, every character in it
Speaker 1: is going through that profound thing that happens in a
Speaker 1: specific moment in their life. And where does it happen.
Speaker 1: It happens right here. So we were always to talking
Speaker 1: about presence, you know, some big aspect of it, and
Speaker 1: also that we do not know that we're living in
Speaker 1: a moment of history. We don't know. They don't know
Speaker 1: that the first tribes, you know, the Native Americans, they
Speaker 1: don't know that they're Native Americans. They're just living in
Speaker 1: the moment. They don't know they're living, you know, six
Speaker 1: hundred years ago. Nor do the people that build the
Speaker 1: house that takes place, and they don't know that they're
Speaker 1: living in nineteen eleven. They think that they're just living
Speaker 1: in the right now of it. And that's a type
Speaker 1: of thing that really is so examinable examine the bull
Speaker 1: in a very specific type of cinema that that is
Speaker 1: the point of the what the whole movie is that
Speaker 1: you know that Bob and Eric fleshed out long before
Speaker 1: Robin and I came along, and along with that comes together.
Speaker 1: The four of us have a history that we can
Speaker 1: go back to. I mean, Robins worked with Bob a
Speaker 1: couple of times. I've worked with Bob a number of times.
Speaker 1: Eric is one for in mine. We worked on stuff
Speaker 1: all the time, and every time we've done it, we
Speaker 1: have a pinpoint of the difference between here at the
Speaker 1: moment that had happened and now at this moment where
Speaker 1: we're talking about establishing a whole new other place in time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I mean, when I was watching it, I
Speaker 2: couldn't help but think of every place that has been
Speaker 2: monumental in my life, and then think about how many
Speaker 2: other events must have taken place in that room, in
Speaker 2: that space that I'm not even aware of, and I
Speaker 2: might even take for granted and not recognize the value
Speaker 2: of both in my life and previously, and of course
Speaker 2: the future as well well.
Speaker 1: I had to wrap my head around this thing that
Speaker 1: I had never experienced. We lived here. I've never lived
Speaker 1: any place, you know, you know now I've now I've
Speaker 1: had I've lived had in the same literally home as
Speaker 1: in three dimensional structure and time and space. I've had
Speaker 1: that now for you know, a couple of decades here,
Speaker 1: but this idea of someone putting so much I don't
Speaker 1: want to say importance, but having so much emotional centeredness
Speaker 1: in literally this place, in a room, by these stairs,
Speaker 1: through this door. The TV used to be there, and
Speaker 1: there it was there. Here's where mom and dad did this,
Speaker 1: Here's where I did that. I don't have that. Oh
Speaker 1: I got it, you know, like we got married, and
Speaker 1: you know, finally I didn't. But I didn't get it
Speaker 1: until I was thirty five years old. And my kids
Speaker 1: have it, and sometimes I have to ask them about
Speaker 1: their perspectives. I moved around so much as a kid.
Speaker 1: I looked forward to it. When we moved out of
Speaker 1: the house that my kids had been born in and
Speaker 1: lived in for the better part, you know, lived in
Speaker 1: for like fourteen years a piece, they were sort of
Speaker 1: undone by it, and I didn't understand it. I literally,
Speaker 1: in the back of my head, if not verbally, said,
Speaker 1: what's a big deal? You know, how's that for a perspective?
Speaker 1: It is a huge deal if you're actually there and Richard,
Speaker 1: you know, Robin and I are characters. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: born in the house, I grow up in the house.
Speaker 1: My kids are born in the house, or entire marriage
Speaker 1: and family is spent in that house, and is it
Speaker 1: a solace or is it a boundary that you're never
Speaker 1: able to get through of that? Experiencing that and examining
Speaker 1: that was, Oh my lord, I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: many how much conversation. This whole movie was just one
Speaker 1: big ass conversation about what it means, and not so
Speaker 1: much about what the words are, how we move around.
Speaker 1: That's the technical stuff that goes along. But every moment
Speaker 1: that we were off by ourselves, it seemed to me
Speaker 1: we were trying to weigh this very specific thing of
Speaker 1: what we have always, what we have all been through
Speaker 1: in our odd you know, celebrated goofy stupid individual lives,
Speaker 1: and what it meant to this the h E R
Speaker 1: E aspect of this story that we were trying to tell,
Speaker 1: and Bob particularly I mean Bob's, and we all I think,
Speaker 1: incorporated our own approach to our art form and commercial
Speaker 1: life to it. Bob is a filmmaker, is not about
Speaker 1: to do a shot that anybody could do, you know,
Speaker 1: And he's not about to tell a story cinematically in
Speaker 1: ways that have been done before. He's just built that
Speaker 1: way hell anybody could do that. You know, he says
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And Eric, as a screenwriter, he's constantly
Speaker 1: landing on this place where only his words on paper
Speaker 1: can translate this thought process. And Robin and I you know,
Speaker 1: I'll Paul everybody, everybody, And the thing is like, I know,
Speaker 1: the lines turned me loose. Let's go, let's go. What
Speaker 1: are you going to do? You're going to try that?
Speaker 1: Let's try that? Are you going to just take it?
Speaker 1: You know, this ongoing game of improvisational emotional football in
Speaker 1: which you're just and I mean football is the international sense. Yes, Premiership,
Speaker 1: the Championship, as league. It is a ball that is kind.
Speaker 1: It's a matter of engines, it's a matter of a curve.
Speaker 1: It's a matter of being in the right place at
Speaker 1: the right time in order to receive what's given to
Speaker 1: you and then pass on to somebody else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. I know the film uses digital anti
Speaker 2: aging technology and you have to see yourself many years younger.
Speaker 2: Was there any special feeling of that?
Speaker 1: It was kind of great. Yeah, I mean because it's
Speaker 1: a great tool because it's been you know, people are
Speaker 1: aged and younged up in movies, you know, since since
Speaker 1: Edison stole George Melier's film process back in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. It was fascinating to watch because it ended
Speaker 1: up being the tools were so much better that it
Speaker 1: was a different completeness to it. Absolutely, you know, we
Speaker 1: all had you know, you always have hair and makeup.
Speaker 1: We went through extensive everything you know they did. At
Speaker 1: one point, I'm sitting there and Jennifer are fabulous makeup artist.
Speaker 1: She's just looking at me. She just grabbed both of
Speaker 1: my ears and then lifted them up and shoved them
Speaker 1: into the top of my head, and I said, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? He said, oh, Tom, we're working on
Speaker 1: you being seventeen and as you age, your ears grow
Speaker 1: and lower on your head, and so I'm trying to
Speaker 1: see if I'll be able to glue them up on
Speaker 1: the side. I said, have at it, girl. So that
Speaker 1: all of the tool aspect of it is standard. What
Speaker 1: was new is that we could see it in real time.
Speaker 1: We didn't have to send it off and wait for
Speaker 1: a long post production thing. Because that was the deep
Speaker 1: fake technology that uses some form of AI just to
Speaker 1: make it much much faster and immediate. And listen, what
Speaker 1: one of the things that it shows is just how
Speaker 1: old bio because you know, you got to have posture
Speaker 1: and energy. If you're if everything else about you looks
Speaker 1: like you're twenty two years old, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to embody a twenty two year old. I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you right now, it's very hard to leap off
Speaker 1: a couch and enthusiasm as a as a as a
Speaker 1: sixty seven year old guy. At the time that.
Speaker 2: We did it, I didn't even think of that.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know what, had a lot of tea, had
Speaker 1: a lot of protein for us, you know, got a
Speaker 1: lot of rest, got a lot of stretching, you know,
Speaker 1: in order in order to make that happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned presence there, and that was a theme
Speaker 2: that definitely struck me. What do you find helps you
Speaker 2: be the most present today as you're living.
Speaker 1: There are times that I think you have to be oblivious.
Speaker 1: You have to sort of like enforce it. You have
Speaker 1: to not think of things. It's crazy, but one of
Speaker 1: the most basic things I think that I learned probably
Speaker 1: in junior college when I actually for the Chabeau Community College,
Speaker 1: when it truly did begin to study this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: is that the words what you are saying has to
Speaker 1: be so familiar to you that you don't think about it.
Speaker 1: And that is a degree of being oblivious to the
Speaker 1: specifics of what you're doing, because if you're trying to
Speaker 1: get through it, that means self consciousness. That means you
Speaker 1: are not getting out of yourself, and self consciousness is
Speaker 1: the death of performance. Ask any actor this thing is
Speaker 1: that if you have a scene, well, you have to
Speaker 1: go to a deep emotional place and the only way
Speaker 1: to do it is to go there. Chances are you
Speaker 1: have had the most wonderful day of your life prior
Speaker 1: to that, or that it is so much fun to
Speaker 1: come to work that day, all right, So that's one
Speaker 1: thing that you have to do. And the other side
Speaker 1: of it is if you have to be charming and
Speaker 1: convivial and funny on paper on stage a day, chances
Speaker 1: are you're going through some personal health you know off uh,
Speaker 1: you know off camera that you just have to be
Speaker 1: oblivious to somehow. And along with that, there's a I
Speaker 1: can't discount enough the joy of the hang I think
Speaker 1: what I do for a living joy does does it
Speaker 1: promotes it? The and joy not necessarily being we're all
Speaker 1: having a great time, We're all you know, singing campfire songs,
Speaker 1: but the joy of allying yourself with great collaborators and
Speaker 1: trusting that they are going to get better stuff out
Speaker 1: of you that you could possibly bring yourself, and being
Speaker 1: open to just knowing it so well. Everybody says, well,
Speaker 1: what do you mean by what do you mean? What
Speaker 1: do you mean by learning the lines? I mean learning
Speaker 1: the lines like you know, the of the lyrics to
Speaker 1: the best song you ever heard in your life. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: all my trouble seems so far away now. I need
Speaker 1: a place that's here to say, Oh, I believe you
Speaker 1: got to be able to rattle it off that fast,
Speaker 1: that easily. It's going to be so much a part
Speaker 1: of you that you don't have to think about it all.
Speaker 1: If I actually sang the right words to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that makes a lot of sense. And I
Speaker 2: feel there's this It's amazing to see your enthusiasm, excitement, joy,
Speaker 2: you know, continuing your career when you're even what you
Speaker 2: just said now of working with people who can get
Speaker 2: even more out of me, and that belief that there's
Speaker 2: more in you always. You've talked about imposter syndrome in
Speaker 2: the past, which obviously I'm sure everyone when they look
Speaker 2: at you find it hard to believe. But I recognize
Speaker 2: when you've shared or I've heard you talk about it before,
Speaker 2: it's very real. It's very genuine, this feeling of like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, walk us through that. How you've been able
Speaker 2: to constantly believe there's more in you, to give, more,
Speaker 2: to do, more, to find.
Speaker 1: Somebody wanted me to do a movie, all right, and
Speaker 1: it was great and I should have done it. It
Speaker 1: was going to be for a lot of money or peing.
Speaker 1: You go somewhere cool, you get a good you know,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. There was no reason not
Speaker 1: to do the movie, except there was something that I
Speaker 1: just said, this is not the match for me because
Speaker 1: number one, I don't have any curiosity about the subject.
Speaker 1: Now that's not the only reason to do it, but
Speaker 1: in order to translate the theme of the movie through
Speaker 1: a performance, there has to be some sort of challenge
Speaker 1: and curiosity to it, and I had none. That was
Speaker 1: one thing. But the other part of the two I
Speaker 1: was searching. I was I was having a one on
Speaker 1: one talk with the director and I just I said, look,
Speaker 1: I said, I don't I don't have the I don't
Speaker 1: have the I don't have the countenance, and the drinker said, countenance.
Speaker 1: The hell does that means? Said, there is a thing
Speaker 1: that we all carry with us. We have a countenance
Speaker 1: that comes from everything we've said, all the work that
Speaker 1: we've done, all the all the times that we've either
Speaker 1: succeeded or failed, Because they both go together. Failure teaches
Speaker 1: you a lot more than success does. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: commercial success, but that idea that you walk away from
Speaker 1: a job and you think that we went to a
Speaker 1: new place in order to in order to examine this
Speaker 1: theme that only we could have done unless we all
Speaker 1: got together and challenge each other and made it happen,
Speaker 1: and without that type of stretching of one's countenance that
Speaker 1: you come into. Uh, that's that to me is the
Speaker 1: That's that to me is the big mcgilla. I still
Speaker 1: find myself, uh, completely at the mercy of that instinctive
Speaker 1: moment of oh my god, that's what that's what I think,
Speaker 1: you know, and the next thing you know, you'll want
Speaker 1: to do it and you're talking talking about it continuously,
Speaker 1: And there is nothing that anybody says that detracts from
Speaker 1: that initial initial experience because you know the other other,
Speaker 1: you know that there's there's plenty of the things that
Speaker 1: you can do because they're fun. I mean, my my,
Speaker 1: my beginnings. The first time I was a professional actor,
Speaker 1: we were in repertory theater uh at uh with my
Speaker 1: Vincent Dowling at a place called the Great Lakes Shakespeare
Speaker 1: Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. And because we were in a
Speaker 1: rep we did everything we did. We did Hamlet and
Speaker 1: King John at Othello at the same time we were
Speaker 1: doing fabulous Rip Warren comedies that everybody, everybody dug. The
Speaker 1: countenance then is exchanged between them between the two, and
Speaker 1: that's something that it's not a burden at all, but
Speaker 1: it is a it is a prism through which a
Speaker 1: decision has to be made. Going back again to this
Speaker 1: idea of this, I believe that mike my count and
Speaker 1: look it up staff, look up countenance for me. My
Speaker 1: countenance is not going to aid the examination of this theme.
Speaker 1: And movies work when the theme is worthy of being
Speaker 1: examined by that movie. And so in that case you
Speaker 1: just have to say, uh no, there's a you need
Speaker 1: somebody that's going to come in there like a you know,
Speaker 1: like like a like a mad dog and devour that
Speaker 1: bone and I just my countenance doesn't match up to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like you've never compromised that.
Speaker 1: Oh, I've compromised you twenty of time. Okay, you know
Speaker 1: making mistakes. You know, there was a period of time.
Speaker 1: Look look at my IMDb. It might be up in
Speaker 1: triple digits by now, you know. And it was a
Speaker 1: time where I just said, they are asking me to
Speaker 1: be in a movie. You don't say no to that.
Speaker 1: And that's young. That's the stuff that you do in
Speaker 1: your twenties and in your thirties, and then sometime in
Speaker 1: there you start thinking about no, no, no, no, wait
Speaker 1: to bit, Wait a minute, wait a minute, the greatest decision.
Speaker 1: By the way, I don't think I've ever said no yet,
Speaker 1: except by schedule. But now it turns out to me
Speaker 1: that's where you start shaping what your your art and
Speaker 1: the body of work you have to start. The power
Speaker 1: is saying no. And that's really it was really hard
Speaker 1: to do when you know everybody thinks you're great. You
Speaker 1: show up and everybody wants you to do it, and
Speaker 1: everybody says fabulous things. But I've I didn't know I
Speaker 1: was compromising because I didn't know any better. But there
Speaker 1: was a moment. I guess when you say, like, ah,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't. I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 1: want to. I think I'd be compromising somewhere here. And
Speaker 1: so the first time I said no to something, it
Speaker 1: was a very it was it was on one hand,
Speaker 1: liberating inter course. I might have thought I made the
Speaker 1: biggest mistake of my life. You know, I tell you,
Speaker 1: if you take any great take, any great magnificent take,
Speaker 1: let's just pull from to take Faye done Away and
Speaker 1: Lawrence Olivier, they have very specific countenances. There is a
Speaker 1: thing that you will say, oh my god, the countenance
Speaker 1: of Lawrence will really really Ozzie Davis, Well, you know
Speaker 1: any grade then wow, that countenance matches. Yes, And that's
Speaker 1: I guess that's what I'm.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, there is.
Speaker 1: It makes like a you know, some sort of cosmic
Speaker 1: weight that they carry along with it that makes sense
Speaker 1: for what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, there's a listening to you speak about
Speaker 2: I mean, it's so relieving to hear that you've compromised sometimes,
Speaker 2: like because it's a relief I'm.
Speaker 1: By my house right if but not a compromised you know,
Speaker 1: how about that you want to do that. We'll bring
Speaker 1: that well, I love it. I mean, we'll bring the
Speaker 1: DVDs and say this is the DVD of Compromise.
Speaker 2: I mean, that'll be amazing. No, I think, because I
Speaker 2: think we're so good, we forget that. You're used to
Speaker 2: celebrating and counting someone's wins and hits when they've had
Speaker 2: so many, and you look over the compromises or whatever
Speaker 2: it may have been. And so it's a relief hearing
Speaker 2: that because your values of how you pick a project,
Speaker 2: of how you work on a project seems so so
Speaker 2: strong and defined now, and that's obviously come with time.
Speaker 2: As you were making here, was there a particular scene
Speaker 2: that reminded you of a time in your life that
Speaker 2: you want to revisit, relive, rethink.
Speaker 1: Eugene O'Neil wrote All Wilderness. He wrote that play as
Speaker 1: the life he would have, he wanted to have, he
Speaker 1: wished he had had, the family that he had wished
Speaker 1: he had. And I always read that Eugene only is
Speaker 1: a big reason why I became an actor, because I
Speaker 1: saw great productions of his stuff back in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: seventy six, And when I finally saw All Wilderness, I
Speaker 1: was knocked out because it was as delightful a play
Speaker 1: as it was. And I'd always heard that he wrote
Speaker 1: that as you know, the family that he wished he had.
Speaker 1: I thought about that when I was doing here, because
Speaker 1: there are moments, for example, when we're just sitting watching
Speaker 1: TV and you know, Robin is there, the kids are little,
Speaker 1: and we're just there. We ended up talking about what
Speaker 1: would be on the TV, you know, and I went
Speaker 1: right back to you know, I don't know it was
Speaker 1: a Dean Martin show or an episode of something, even
Speaker 1: down to some of the commercials that we wanted to
Speaker 1: and those moments were transporting for me, but not in
Speaker 1: a home the way we were picturing it. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing those in an apartment that we lived in for
Speaker 1: two and a half years when I was walking to
Speaker 1: school by myself, or the first year's you know, somebody
Speaker 1: was married to a step spouse that was not the
Speaker 1: most benevolent human being in the planet earth. Right. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I remembered sometimes just that that gathering around like mindedly
Speaker 1: getting the same thing out of a TV show, like
Speaker 1: an electric fireplace. But it was solace. It was a
Speaker 1: togetherness that belied what was really going on. In the house.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of those, particularly when the kids
Speaker 1: are little and Robin and Iron the early early years
Speaker 1: of our marriages, that were sublime right then and there
Speaker 1: because we're laughing, it's there, the kids are being goofy,
Speaker 1: there's a moment that there's a moment that comes along
Speaker 1: and what I don't think there's a better example of
Speaker 1: a true sense of family and home and connection in
Speaker 1: moments that are not Thanksgiving or Christmas morning, or a
Speaker 1: wedding or a kid They are when you're just sitting
Speaker 1: around on a Thursday night, you know, content and happy
Speaker 1: and nothing is happening except the sense of presence that's there.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of them. That's funny that they usually
Speaker 1: asked that because I realized now that the amount of
Speaker 1: the amount of suggestions we all had for how we
Speaker 1: would sit there, what would be on the TV, what
Speaker 1: we had done just before, was coming right out of
Speaker 1: right out of our individual lives, from Bob, from Eric,
Speaker 1: certainly from Robin and myself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it felt so real. It feels so real. Every scene,
Speaker 2: every conversation, every event feels so real.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we learned because it's shot
Speaker 1: in this very specific you know, aspect ratio, you know,
Speaker 1: camera position is that everything works. Everything if you're in
Speaker 1: the scene, even if you're not talking, you are registering
Speaker 1: in a way that warrants attention. The stuff that is
Speaker 1: on the walls. I can't say enough about the TV.
Speaker 1: Here's something goofy. I walked onto the set one day
Speaker 1: and it was from a period from you know, early
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties or something like that, and the TV was
Speaker 1: an old General Electric TV that was the same model
Speaker 1: we had when Apollo eight flew around the Moon we had.
Speaker 1: This was the TV we had, all black and white
Speaker 1: thing with General Electric, had this big channel changing knob
Speaker 1: on the side. It was like that, and it was
Speaker 1: the same maple cabinet. It wasn't big. It was just
Speaker 1: not much. You know, it's on legs, and it had
Speaker 1: the cloth speakers at General Electric and any thing like that.
Speaker 1: And I immediately took a picture of it and I
Speaker 1: sent it to my siblings and I said, you recognize
Speaker 1: this and they all said, ah, that's a TV from
Speaker 1: the Johnson House. You know. It was like that. So
Speaker 1: it had these kind of like talismans that came along
Speaker 1: with it that oddly enough, they were. They were both
Speaker 1: great to see and bittersweet to remember. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure? Sure? Do I know you're fascinated by space?
Speaker 2: Do you have any desire to go to the Moon?
Speaker 1: Oh? You know, if they were going to do a
Speaker 1: thing where you know, regular blokes could just go up
Speaker 1: and go around it, I mean I take that.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, just just to do it. But oh yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think I'm sure love to take.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm not going with him, but he's not going
Speaker 1: there anyway. You know, they're just going up. But I've
Speaker 1: met I've talked to the I've talked to the crews
Speaker 1: that are in line to make the next orbit around
Speaker 1: the Moon that could happen as early as twenty five
Speaker 1: twenty six, And man, oh man, I just say, hey,
Speaker 1: if you need someone just to clean up and crack jokes,
Speaker 1: you got room in there, give me a call. I'll
Speaker 1: dead down to whatever weight requirements are necessary, because I
Speaker 1: wouldn't pass it up. But I said, but only if
Speaker 1: all of the windows are clear, because a lot of
Speaker 1: times those they have gone up and the windows get
Speaker 1: kind of like messed up because of zero gravity and
Speaker 1: the vacuum outside and the building material.
Speaker 2: Right, was that fascination only from movies? Is that where
Speaker 2: it came from?
Speaker 1: No, No, that came from I was right, smack dab,
Speaker 1: and I was that educatable generation for which it was.
Speaker 1: Space travel was the embodiment of every discipline that we
Speaker 1: were studying, current events, politics, physics, art, engineering, math. It
Speaker 1: was all all all wrapped up, all into one. It
Speaker 1: was on TV TV regularly. I was. I was just
Speaker 1: I was that the of course, now you're going to
Speaker 1: think about this, but the idea of being alone in
Speaker 1: space in a space suit, it was kind of mirroring
Speaker 1: my life when I was like seven, eight, nine, ten eleven.
Speaker 2: Years Well, yeah, I mean it's I don't know if
Speaker 2: you saw that movie fly Me to the Moon recently, No,
Speaker 2: I did not.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, it's streaming in the new movie economy,
Speaker 1: so I know it'll be there for a thousand years.
Speaker 2: Yea. I just want to catch fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of the conspiracy theory really didn't
Speaker 1: happen yet. Normally I hate that kind of stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's good quality people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tru exactly that. I'd love to get your thoughts
Speaker 2: on it when you see it. Yeah, and your other
Speaker 2: fascination is world wars.
Speaker 1: Well, this is another thing that goes back to the
Speaker 1: study of it. Let me put it. Let me put
Speaker 1: it to you this way. I was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, that's eleven years after the war has done.
Speaker 1: So essentially everybody who is an adult in my life
Speaker 1: had memories of those years, whether they went to war
Speaker 1: or not. They had memories of the what I like
Speaker 1: to call the emotional stasis of the early nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: in which go back again. They did not know the
Speaker 1: war was going to end in nineteen forty three. They
Speaker 1: had no idea how long the war was. Who's going
Speaker 1: to live, who's going to die, who's going to win,
Speaker 1: who's going to not, who's not, who's going to come
Speaker 1: back nineteen forty three. If you're alive, they're not saying, hey,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. The war is going to be
Speaker 1: over in just another eighteen months. They don't know that.
Speaker 1: And that was a palpable thing that was passed on
Speaker 1: to me because when it came around time to get
Speaker 1: to know the life stories of a teacher, a friend
Speaker 1: of my dad's, you know, parents of my pals, they
Speaker 1: would talk about those years, their youth in three distinctive parts,
Speaker 1: three acts of their lives, you know, which might have
Speaker 1: been picking up on because you know, some sort of
Speaker 1: story since when they were kids. It was before the war,
Speaker 1: when my dad was in high school. It was before
Speaker 1: the war, when he was working on a farm, listening
Speaker 1: to the radio and worried about, you know, not being
Speaker 1: able to afford the dentist. It was before the war.
Speaker 1: Then there was well that was during the war. It's
Speaker 1: a whole different storytelling process, the whole different guidelines of
Speaker 1: the narrative. Well, you have to understand that was during
Speaker 1: the war. That was forty two, was during the war,
Speaker 1: and their daily life was completely different than what had
Speaker 1: had been. There was less of things. There was this
Speaker 1: fear of this unseen enemy, possible attack. There were blackouts,
Speaker 1: They couldn't get cling peaches, they didn't have birthday cakes
Speaker 1: as much they had that it was during the war.
Speaker 1: And also I said, well where were you, Oh, well
Speaker 1: that was during the war. Well where were you, Well,
Speaker 1: I was in a you know, I was you know
Speaker 1: was my dad was in the South Pacific. He was
Speaker 1: a machinist and he would never have been in the
Speaker 1: South Pacific as a machinery were not for the war.
Speaker 1: Then the rest of their lives. When we show up,
Speaker 1: you know, and with this next generation shows up, when
Speaker 1: their kids show up, all this stuff happened, and again
Speaker 1: the narrative has completely changed. We have to understand that
Speaker 1: was after the war. So on one hand there was
Speaker 1: something to celebrate, but on the other hand, there was
Speaker 1: guess what. Life became one damn thing after another in
Speaker 1: a different way than it had been before the war.
Speaker 1: During and you know the people that you the people
Speaker 1: who did it well, you know, these storytellers, the teachers,
Speaker 1: or even the friends of my dads. When we're sitting
Speaker 1: around and everybody's relaxed on a Thursday night and they're
Speaker 1: drinking beers, you know, and they're talking about when they're
Speaker 1: getting to know each other. These the stories from any
Speaker 1: one of those acts I thought we were fastre were
Speaker 1: ponderable because as a seven year old, I'm hearing my
Speaker 1: dad and my mom and other people talk about when
Speaker 1: they were seven years old with the magnifying glass and
Speaker 1: the division of well, that was before the war. We
Speaker 1: did not know what was coming down the pipe. Then
Speaker 1: everything else that goes along with it. I still can't
Speaker 1: quite get past the fact that in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: the Beatles are on the Ed Sullivan Show, and my
Speaker 1: dad is of the generation of just twenty years prior.
Speaker 1: The war was not yet over and they had no
Speaker 1: idea when they were ever going to come home. And
Speaker 1: now these four kids are up on there saying yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and playing guitars and stuff like that. Andybody, everybody's making
Speaker 1: a big deal about it. Part of it is never
Speaker 1: saw this coming, never would have never. And in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways now us younger generation did not have
Speaker 1: the same attention span for they had what they had
Speaker 1: been through. I mean until the you know, you can
Speaker 1: talk about Elvis Presley all you want, rightly, so he
Speaker 1: was a massive generational force, changed the world a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. But still VI's a v a World War
Speaker 1: two generation. The Beatles come along at nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and it's almost as though the last vessage of that
Speaker 1: generation carries import you know, has has weight that we
Speaker 1: can pay attention to, even though I've you know, I've
Speaker 1: never stopped studying of it, because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's just great storytelling. You want to talk
Speaker 1: about great protagonists, antagonists, You want to talk about the
Speaker 1: irony you want to talk about the schizophrenia of what
Speaker 1: can happen in good and bad. World War two is
Speaker 1: about as good as you're going to get. And also,
Speaker 1: here's this other thing that's ridiculously satisfying about it. It ended,
Speaker 1: there was a time when it was all done. And
Speaker 1: wars now go on for generations, and they go on
Speaker 1: for decades, and there are no there are no moments
Speaker 1: when you know, the swords are pounded into plowshares, not
Speaker 1: that that happened in you know, one hundred, nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems it seems as though, like not that
Speaker 2: it's any comparison with the events that took place, but
Speaker 2: our language of this generation has become pre pandemic during
Speaker 2: the pandemic abdemic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could, you could probably look at it. There
Speaker 1: was a moment certainly the AIDS crisis came along and
Speaker 1: the pandemic of the of AIDS that certainly altered all
Speaker 1: of society in the same way you can talk about it.
Speaker 1: You could talk to an awful lot of guys who
Speaker 1: will say, well, you know what I'm saying, that was
Speaker 1: before AIDS. You know that that means and yeah, you
Speaker 1: would say the same thing about certainly the COVID pandemic.
Speaker 1: We went through something that I mean, my look, I
Speaker 1: got grandkids who are now talking about their lives. Well,
Speaker 1: that was doing COVID. Yeah, and so they didn't go
Speaker 1: to school, and they didn't see their friends. They were
Speaker 1: trying to do things online. It was really different. And
Speaker 1: now COVID has let go, and guess what now they're
Speaker 1: just getting on with the rest of the tasks of
Speaker 1: growing up with their life. So they too, you know,
Speaker 1: it might be a little young to remember, you know,
Speaker 1: before COVID, but they do. So. Yeah, so what's going
Speaker 1: to be next? Do you think what's going to be
Speaker 1: that next three acts structure to our to our collective history.
Speaker 2: Well, as you keep saying, more will be revealed as
Speaker 2: well as.
Speaker 1: This, Yes, this too shall pass, and more shall be revealed,
Speaker 1: and we will never all know of everything that we
Speaker 1: need to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you've been seen as the or even in
Speaker 2: a poll, voted the most trusted man in America.
Speaker 1: That's something. There's an anomaly in the vote taking process.
Speaker 1: After all the times I've lied to everybody. Oh no,
Speaker 1: this is a great movie. Yeah, by all means, come
Speaker 1: see this movie that was a lie? Sometimes?
Speaker 2: How does how do you how do you deal with
Speaker 2: that kind of movie?
Speaker 1: Oh? I you know, I don't know, there's there's a yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I get it. That's good. I guess that
Speaker 1: comes around to perhaps the thing that I was talking
Speaker 1: about countenance wise. You know, if you were going to
Speaker 1: take somebody who is who's an artist and say who
Speaker 1: is the scariest person alive? You know, the you'll you'll
Speaker 1: come off with you know, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: Vincent Price, you know whatever. I'm an artist, I'm a storyteller,
Speaker 1: and I think I'll take that as as a testament
Speaker 1: to I guess the veracity that I brought to my craft,
Speaker 1: my my choice. I'd like to think that, you know,
Speaker 1: you go all in on a story on and say, hey,
Speaker 1: sit down, I want you might be interested in hearing
Speaker 1: this is that you're you're this an onyx exchange between
Speaker 1: myself and the audience, and if it's an honest exchange,
Speaker 1: then you could come to trust them. You know, that's
Speaker 1: not about thing. That's not a bad.
Speaker 2: Thing, absolutely, and it's it's quite magical actually, I mean
Speaker 2: trust in that way. Of course, you know, Hollywood success
Speaker 2: you've spoken about it so many times, which is why
Speaker 2: we haven't dived into it. And then you know, a happy,
Speaker 2: healthy marriage, And how did you know Rita was the one?
Speaker 2: Like that's you know, how did you know?
Speaker 1: Uh, divine providence? Uh you know, uh, maybe it's kind
Speaker 1: of like the same thing that happened when I was
Speaker 1: in school, uh and in high school, and I said,
Speaker 1: this can be school. There was a thing with the
Speaker 1: with the with reader or I just thought, wait, it
Speaker 1: could be like this, It could be like just sitting
Speaker 1: around that's it could be like a care free union.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. How about that I had honestly,
Speaker 1: I had not truly experienced that somehow. And when it's there,
Speaker 1: you just kind of go, oh, I you know, I
Speaker 1: you know, i'd like to say. And then you know,
Speaker 1: and then we met and I said, and you know,
Speaker 1: and that was that. Okay, yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: Then you get on with it, and you know, years later,
Speaker 1: no small amount of no small amount of me saying
Speaker 1: things like, oh, let me get this straight. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of plenty of plenty of examples of
Speaker 1: that going on, you know, with so much so that oh,
Speaker 1: here goes dad, oh, here goes dad. Well, let me
Speaker 1: get this straight. Why would it work for me? Argument?
Speaker 1: I pull it out. I pull it out all the time,
Speaker 1: and you know we we do. She does too. And
Speaker 1: that's the exchange. Yes, and it's it remains glorious and
Speaker 1: you're and you can't create it anywhere else. Can't fake that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's that beautiful acceptance speech that you have in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty when you talk about how a man is
Speaker 2: blessed with this beautiful family. Oh tears, and.
Speaker 1: That you know you can't Number one, I am a sap.
Speaker 1: Number two you don't expect. You think you're going to
Speaker 1: be able to get up and you know, get away
Speaker 1: with it some even on I'm going to get it.
Speaker 1: There'll be some straight shooting. I'll see some great stuff.
Speaker 1: But then I just you look down and you know,
Speaker 1: there's my wife, and there's you know, there's you know
Speaker 1: a combination of all my kids sometimes four or five,
Speaker 1: you know, they're all just there. And what do you see?
Speaker 1: I see little babies, you know, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I you know, I see uh, I see this uh,
Speaker 1: this woman that has put up with so much stuff,
Speaker 1: and he just life flashes before your eyes. A little bit,
Speaker 1: and there's that there's that moment of surrealism where it's like,
Speaker 1: can somebody explain to me how this happened? I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 2: And here does the same thing the movie here ah
Speaker 2: t I E. Yeah, there's a sense of your watching
Speaker 2: your life flash back.
Speaker 1: What I really loved. Okay, this, I guess we have
Speaker 1: to be careful about spoiler a little yea, So we
Speaker 1: don't try.
Speaker 2: I'm trying.
Speaker 1: We don't want to go there. But I think that
Speaker 1: it ends up examining this truth that sometimes life passes
Speaker 1: in the wink of an eye and it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: are we here already? But there's other times in that
Speaker 1: same week of an eye, you comprehend it all. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what the that's what the movie works towards.
Speaker 1: If I can be so bold, And in many ways
Speaker 1: that was the theme that we were all working towards.
Speaker 1: And even in the perfectness of just the word it
Speaker 1: happened here, this is where that happened. Have you been
Speaker 1: Have you been in like a really super historic place, yes,
Speaker 1: where something went down. Now, maybe it's something from thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago, or maybe it's something that you witnessed
Speaker 1: on TV yourself. You go to I could go to
Speaker 1: like Washington, DC and stood on the you know, look,
Speaker 1: I made a movie in front of the Lincoln Memorial
Speaker 1: and believe that was happening. And then the years later,
Speaker 1: I'm going back and there is a plaque at the
Speaker 1: top of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial which is
Speaker 1: where Martin Luther King stood, and I have since gone
Speaker 1: back and read about that extraordinary day that did not
Speaker 1: happen by accident. In fact, it was originally going to
Speaker 1: be a protest, it was going to be a sit in,
Speaker 1: and the powers that be all got together said, rather
Speaker 1: than make it a protest of a sit in, make
Speaker 1: it a march. And suddenly also things happened, like there
Speaker 1: were plenty of bathrooms lined up, there were sandwiches that
Speaker 1: was made for people, there were social services, there were cops,
Speaker 1: there were army men standing by ready in case it
Speaker 1: was going to be a riot. And in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four or sixty three, a riot was definitely a possibility.
Speaker 1: It would have been a massive amount of civilic unrest.
Speaker 1: And instead it was all of these speakers. Marlon Brando
Speaker 1: was there for Charlton Heston was there along with everybody else,
Speaker 1: and Martin Luther King was everybody who could only speak
Speaker 1: for seven minutes because they did not want it to
Speaker 1: run over and become unruly. So every everybody who spoke
Speaker 1: spoke for seven minutes, and that includes the Reverend doctor
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King. And there's a reason that plaque is
Speaker 1: that that plaque is there in order to in order
Speaker 1: to place it and to be there and say that,
Speaker 1: then just envision every powerful place, powerful, powerful, spiritual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are there other places you've been to like that?
Speaker 2: We've revisited multiple times to decode and discover and.
Speaker 1: Uhh yeah, I'll tell you. I'll tell you one who
Speaker 1: cares what I said on other podcasts. When we when
Speaker 1: we were doing I Believe or Not, when we were
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, because I was making Philadelphia kids were you know,
Speaker 1: I uh are only had three kids there and some
Speaker 1: of them were with us and we were it was
Speaker 1: a freezing cold day. We had a day off, so
Speaker 1: we went and saw the sides, including it depends Hall,
Speaker 1: Liberty Bell. You know a whole bit. What are you
Speaker 1: going to do in Philadelphia? You're going to go do that,
Speaker 1: You're going to see the Liberty Bell you're going to
Speaker 1: go and Independence Hall being a famous place, and it's
Speaker 1: still in the same joint and it still holds the
Speaker 1: same you know, dimensional structure to it. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: a lot of everything it might have been, you know, recreated,
Speaker 1: but nonetheless there it is. And we were up in
Speaker 1: the Senate building and the Senate room, you know, because
Speaker 1: it had Congress, the Supreme Court and the Senate right there.
Speaker 1: And we were there and the the it's a national park.
Speaker 1: And the ranger said, if you look at all of
Speaker 1: this stuff as reproductions except that chair, you know, which
Speaker 1: is the original chair. It said, wow, it looked the same.
Speaker 1: It looked like a chair to me. So said that chair,
Speaker 1: that's an original chair and looked exactly like the same.
Speaker 1: Is that all this other stuff had been recreated to
Speaker 1: to the best of its authenticity. And it's a riser
Speaker 1: there and he said that spot in front of in
Speaker 1: front of the that the dais John Adams was sworn
Speaker 1: in as the second President of the United States, taking
Speaker 1: the place of George Washington. Was the first time in
Speaker 1: recorded history when the rule of a sovereign nation was
Speaker 1: passed to another without bloodshed, and him not being a relation,
Speaker 1: said something like that, and the head I said, we
Speaker 1: are in holy ground. Nobody died, the king is dead,
Speaker 1: long lived the king. No one was murdered, butchered. The
Speaker 1: hordes didn't come in and take away. No one was
Speaker 1: passing it on to his son in order to go on.
Speaker 1: There was no relation between John Adams and George Washington.
Speaker 1: The only thing that happened was this modicum of a
Speaker 1: thing they called democracy, which wasn't really democracy. I mean,
Speaker 1: women couldn't vote. If you were a slave, you were
Speaker 1: only three fifths of the human being. The only people
Speaker 1: that actually voted were a bunch of white men property
Speaker 1: owners who originally didn't want to pay their taxes to
Speaker 1: the to the crown. But look, look, look what happened there.
Speaker 1: I mean I I you know, I've been you know,
Speaker 1: plenty of cool joints in it, but they're they're this idea,
Speaker 1: not unlike the place where Martin Luther King's. The idea
Speaker 1: that was communicated right there was tantamount to being in
Speaker 1: you know, some version of the Holies, A Holies, you know,
Speaker 1: a precious shrine, a place of great faith and hope.
Speaker 2: I mean, speaking to that impact, you received honorary Greek citizenship.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for I got a passport for your amazing work.
Speaker 4: Then well yeah, yeah, look, we just love you know,
Speaker 4: we love Greece and you know it is the home
Speaker 4: country to to my wife's family, and well you can do.
Speaker 1: This is something that that we do and that are
Speaker 1: doing Greece. You know, you go off to some other island,
Speaker 1: you're swimming somewhere, you're on a boat and you can
Speaker 1: kind of like pivot and all you see is land,
Speaker 1: sea and sky. There's no sign of humanity. And this
Speaker 1: is exactly what it's looked like for one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten thousand years. You know, this is exactly what this
Speaker 1: island was here in this exact same force. And by
Speaker 1: the way, there's a port right there, which was you know,
Speaker 1: a place of antiquity or that. But to be able
Speaker 1: to look at something that is on scarred exactly as
Speaker 1: it was, it's like looking at primordial force, like going
Speaker 1: back in time. And you see this aspect of the
Speaker 1: sky and the wind and the aridness of it, but
Speaker 1: the power of you know, a ship in order to
Speaker 1: get there. I've done that. You know any number of places,
Speaker 1: you know, great historical places like that, and it ends
Speaker 1: up It makes you feel really really teeny tiny. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's like who are we? But you know, specs in
Speaker 1: the course of all of this is like standing under
Speaker 1: you know, a big, massive sky and finally seeing on
Speaker 1: a really super dark night, the you know, our galaxy
Speaker 1: or the Milky Way are so system and like, wow,
Speaker 1: I haven't been out of town for a while. I
Speaker 1: forgot how big that sky is and that that's a
Speaker 1: part of this. It's important to.
Speaker 2: Go through that, so important, so important.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a solar eclipse?
Speaker 2: I'm sure i've kind of, but not I'm not.
Speaker 1: Yes, not the last one, but the one prior to it.
Speaker 1: We made sure that we were in the path of
Speaker 1: totality and we saw it, and oh my god, it
Speaker 1: you I cannot talk. No special effect in any movie
Speaker 1: has ever had the same impact or effect on anybody
Speaker 1: who takes a look at what that is. You feel
Speaker 1: as though you are witnessing got the you know, the
Speaker 1: clockworks of God, and it's they can predict it, they
Speaker 1: know what it's going to be, and every step of
Speaker 1: it is you cannot fathom what you were seeing. And
Speaker 1: it made me feel in one hand, it made us
Speaker 1: all feel one hand, really super tiny, but at the
Speaker 1: other hand, magnificent because we're a race that knew when
Speaker 1: it was coming and could predict it, could make sure
Speaker 1: where there was. She was really marvel was that when
Speaker 1: you read it there was like these paths. You know,
Speaker 1: you can look at it on a map, but we
Speaker 1: just made sure that we were up in the panhandle
Speaker 1: of Idaho in order in order to take a look
Speaker 1: at people were just parking their cars willy nilly everywhere
Speaker 1: in order to be They were driving from you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles on either side of it in order
Speaker 1: to get to this very specific path of totality. And
Speaker 1: it is man it is. It is a totally immersive experience.
Speaker 1: Don't miss it if you can.
Speaker 2: Okay, next one, Tom. It has been such a joy
Speaker 2: spending time with you today. I feel so grateful to
Speaker 2: have been able to hear stories, be taken on adventures,
Speaker 2: and learn life's lessons.
Speaker 1: Mind just a delightful conversation I've learned. I've loved hearing
Speaker 1: about your history. You know how you got for the
Speaker 1: oldest boy of a what is it a fractured rriage
Speaker 1: between Indian Indian mom and dad. You've I think you've
Speaker 1: done well in your in your pursuit.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm very grateful. We end every On Purpose
Speaker 2: episode with a final five. These have to be answered
Speaker 2: in one word to one sentence maximum.
Speaker 1: One word to one sentence back, yeah, which I will
Speaker 1: probably be.
Speaker 2: I will probably break the rules, So don't worry if
Speaker 2: you do. Okay, But Tom Hanks, these are your final five.
Speaker 2: The first question is what is the best advice you've
Speaker 2: ever heard or received?
Speaker 1: Throw deep, baby?
Speaker 2: And why?
Speaker 1: If you're going to do it, do it. If you
Speaker 1: have the chance, do it. Don't pause the instinct. Man,
Speaker 1: If you got an instinct, go at it, throw deep.
Speaker 2: I love that second question, what is the worst life
Speaker 2: advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 1: Do fantasy Island. I didn't take it, but there's no
Speaker 1: reason to do fantasy island.
Speaker 2: That's great. Question number three, how would you define your
Speaker 2: current purpose?
Speaker 1: To be present wherever one is, whoever is one around,
Speaker 1: be present, be right there, show up, be present because
Speaker 1: that will teach you. Then I think how the difference
Speaker 1: between telling the truth to the best of your understanding
Speaker 1: and being all right with what happens next. If you
Speaker 1: can't do that, your life is going to be a
Speaker 1: wasted opportunity. If that makes sense. Question number four, are
Speaker 1: you making these up as you go alonger?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, no, okay, every single question of
Speaker 2: us today. What's something you believe you're learning and evolving
Speaker 2: into right now or something that you're tinkering with right now?
Speaker 1: Personally, there is an addictive quality to examining the past
Speaker 1: that can be counterproductive if you're only doing it in
Speaker 1: order to wallow in a nostalgia of how easy things
Speaker 1: were back then. I fancy myself a lay historian. I
Speaker 1: vanity of vanity. All is vanity. There's nothing new under
Speaker 1: the sun. Okay, So this stuff has been going on forever.
Speaker 1: If you are not looking, if I am not looking
Speaker 1: for examples of the frailties of the human condition, if
Speaker 1: I am only looking at the past in a version
Speaker 1: of there was an antagonist and there was a protagonist,
Speaker 1: and the protagonist one missing the point of how miraculous
Speaker 1: the human condition is. If you're going to I went
Speaker 1: to Egypt, and I saw all the stuff that tourists went.
Speaker 1: They see Egypt, right, And if you're going to Egypt
Speaker 1: in order to come up with some oh this is
Speaker 1: the home of great spirituality? Is there is a cosmic
Speaker 1: power here and this is where Okay, fine, go ahead.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you that's not what's going on.
Speaker 1: But if you're not also seeing this ongoing friggin mystery
Speaker 1: of what humankind has figured out on its own, you're
Speaker 1: missing out. You know, there is, Yes, they call them
Speaker 1: the great Pyramids. They weren't necessarily built for great reasons.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're just built in order to maintain the status
Speaker 1: quo of the halves and the have nots. When I
Speaker 1: heard a guy say the Sphinx, you know, the Great Sphinx.
Speaker 1: You could have been alive two thousand years after the
Speaker 1: Great Sphinx was built, and you're still in Pharaoic Egypt.
Speaker 1: It's still before the Common Era begins. And guess what,
Speaker 1: you and nobody else has any idea who built the Sphinx.
Speaker 1: That's how old it is, and that it's bailed as
Speaker 1: well as it And if you don't take that and understand, like, man,
Speaker 1: there's mystery there. Who did it, How they did it?
Speaker 1: That stuff's always interesting, but why they did it that's
Speaker 1: interesting too. But also that incredible impact of that the
Speaker 1: Sphinx will never be explained. If you're just there for
Speaker 1: the nostalgia union. I don't want to ride the camel,
Speaker 1: get your picture. You can do all that stuff, and
Speaker 1: that's a blast, but there's something to the past that
Speaker 1: if you allow yourself just to be soothed by it,
Speaker 1: you're missing out in a great life, lesson something of
Speaker 1: that is important as physics or.
Speaker 2: Poetry so powerful. Why do you think we do that?
Speaker 1: I think because we're looking for a We want to
Speaker 1: feel good about going to sleep at night, you know,
Speaker 1: we want to feel as though that there is this
Speaker 1: that there is this purpose that outside I think, aside
Speaker 1: the color of cosmic understanding that hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: you know, the universe is indifferent, but the human condition
Speaker 1: is not. That's what separates us from you know, you know,
Speaker 1: the chaos theory. We don't have to live in chaos
Speaker 1: if we choose not to, and if we're only looking
Speaker 1: at the past in order for some degree of Oh,
Speaker 1: we're so much easier back then. No, it's never been easier.
Speaker 1: As I said before, you know, no one knows that
Speaker 1: they're living. They're living in the fourteen hundreds. They were
Speaker 1: just live back then. And it might be high falutin,
Speaker 1: but what it says is, oh, I'll tell you this.
Speaker 1: What it says is our best days are yet to come.
Speaker 1: We are going to progress from here. And if you're
Speaker 1: just looking at the pass and saying, man, that was
Speaker 1: when it was great. I wish we could go back. No,
Speaker 1: you never want to go back. You always have to
Speaker 1: understand that our best days are still ahead of us. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: what's that say of us if we don't move forward?
Speaker 1: It says we gave up or got lazy, or ended
Speaker 1: up putting too much power in maintaining a status quo
Speaker 1: that ends up being a division between the halves and
Speaker 1: the half dots.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well, said fifth and final question. We asked this
Speaker 2: to every guest who's ever been on the show. If
Speaker 2: you could create one law that everyone in the world
Speaker 2: had to follow, what would it be?
Speaker 1: Man, you spring this on me. You really, I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a wall of shame of people that your polaroids,
Speaker 1: of people that have been they all came up with
Speaker 1: something for that. They did one law that everybody had
Speaker 1: to follow, a law meaning you could be punished if
Speaker 1: you don't obey this law. Sure well, it can't be
Speaker 1: like a philosophical thing like be kind, you know, being
Speaker 1: kind as in the eye of the both the kinder
Speaker 1: and the kind e. I would pass a law that says,
Speaker 1: no one is allowed to infringe your prom the right
Speaker 1: in regards to what somebody else reads. That is, no
Speaker 1: matter how disagreement, whatever that disagreement is. To be free
Speaker 1: is to think, And the most physical manifestation of thought
Speaker 1: is in the choosing of what you read. So I
Speaker 1: would say that no one is allowed to infringe upon
Speaker 1: the right to determine up figure out what the legal point.
Speaker 1: No one is allowed to infringe upon the right of
Speaker 1: an individual to read what they choose to read. That
Speaker 1: would be mine, That would be the law. Now take
Speaker 1: a look at all the societies. You know I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by I'm fascinated by communism, man, because those guys were idiots,
Speaker 1: you know, they truly were. And the idea that in
Speaker 1: East Berlin you cannot read, you cannot read to kill
Speaker 1: a mockingbird, or or you know any any or doctor
Speaker 1: Shivago for crying out loud. The idea that you can
Speaker 1: maintain order in society by preventing somebody from reading what
Speaker 1: they want to read. This is madness. This is tyrancy
Speaker 1: in it, This is this is this is draconian. What's
Speaker 1: the word I'm looking at that? That's despotism and its
Speaker 1: absolute height that you can do that. And I think
Speaker 1: on the opposite that absolute freedom to read what you
Speaker 1: want to read along? Would that create what you want
Speaker 1: to create as well? That should be the default position
Speaker 1: of the human condition? And is it an amazing that
Speaker 1: it's so?
Speaker 2: That would be the law I would powerful unique and
Speaker 2: completely original answers worth waiting for.
Speaker 1: Well as an author, you know, as a guy who writes.
Speaker 1: I'll bow to that.
Speaker 2: Tom, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you so much. Oh it's great.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure that I can't wait for everyone to
Speaker 2: go and watch here on November four.
Speaker 1: All right, yeah, we'll pay that. Oh yes, God. Now,
Speaker 1: by the way, you can only see it in the theater.
Speaker 1: We okay, here's the thing, this is why this is
Speaker 1: one I crack Staff is so petrified. There is no
Speaker 1: streaming deal for this movie. You know, you you you're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to you know, log on,
Speaker 1: enter your past code, you know, share it with your
Speaker 1: friends and are they the only way you're gonna You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to drive to a place and buy a
Speaker 1: ticket at a certain time and sit in a room
Speaker 1: with a bunch of strangers. I love it, and watch
Speaker 1: this movie. It's almost unheard of. And of course everybody
Speaker 1: is petrified that that's going to be the requirements of
Speaker 1: seeing a movie. But that's the way it's going to be.
Speaker 2: I love it. This is still one of my favorite experiences.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's the you know, uh not to canntinue
Speaker 1: along with. But this is thing that we talk about
Speaker 1: all the time right now, and I actually believe that
Speaker 1: podcasts can be an example of it. It is the
Speaker 1: experienial economy, meaning that it is one thing. Look, everything
Speaker 1: is a one on one. You listen to a record,
Speaker 1: you see a band, but the experience of being with
Speaker 1: others as opposed to be in your house or being
Speaker 1: on your headphones or being like that, being with others
Speaker 1: has a value to it that in some cases is
Speaker 1: worth money. Okay, that's commerce, but on other cases is
Speaker 1: to be sought. After my wife and I went to
Speaker 1: see a play in New York. It was a revival
Speaker 1: of Into the Woods, and it was more or less
Speaker 1: right after the pandemic. Theaters were back opening again. People
Speaker 1: were essentially living their lives again. There'd been enough, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody gotten enough vaccines and what have you, and COVID
Speaker 1: wasn't killing as many people as it had. And so
Speaker 1: we went to the theater we had, we knew some
Speaker 1: people in it, and it was here's this thing happened.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a theater, mumbled everybody, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: It sold out, big hit and mumble, mumble mumble. And
Speaker 1: when the house lights went to half for the first act,
Speaker 1: there was a standing ovation. People stood up before a word,
Speaker 1: before a note had been sung, nothing had happened on
Speaker 1: the What was happening was the show is about to start,
Speaker 1: and it was a standing ovation. And I literally said,
Speaker 1: that's that's the experience. People are reacting to the experience
Speaker 1: of being with strangers or a handful of friends with
Speaker 1: strangers in a room and nothing. What is going to
Speaker 1: happen in this room will never be repeated. The only
Speaker 1: people that will participate in this is the folks that
Speaker 1: are here right now. And movies oftentimes can have that
Speaker 1: same experience because I can remember going to see two
Speaker 1: thousand and one or Jaws or Close Encounters of the
Speaker 1: or Aliens or you know, or Full Metal Jacket. I
Speaker 1: can remember the specifics of all those things, and it's
Speaker 1: the same experiential experience. And maybe it's maybe it's part
Speaker 1: of the economy, or maybe it's just part of the
Speaker 1: great human purchase that we all want to win on
Speaker 1: to participate in.
Speaker 2: For sure, Thank you, Tom, thank you, thank you pleasure.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: If you love this episode, you love my interview with
Speaker 2: Will Smith on owning your truth and unlocking the power
Speaker 2: of manifestation.
Speaker 1: Anybody who hasn't spoken to their parents or their brother,
Speaker 1: call them right now. Don't think you're going to have
Speaker 1: a chance to call them tomorrow or next week.
Speaker 2: That opportunity with my father changed every relationship in my life.