Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. My guest today
Speaker 1: is actor Mickey Rourke. And if you're a millennial who's
Speaker 1: binging on Orange is the New Black, and you haven't
Speaker 1: seen him in the Pope of Greenwich Village or diner,
Speaker 1: I suggest you do. Rourke is an actor of great
Speaker 1: focus and intensity, and he often appears to be lit
Speaker 1: from a fire within That fire has gotten him in
Speaker 1: trouble with directors, co stars and producers, earning him the
Speaker 1: reputation of being difficult to work with, but nearly always
Speaker 1: with breathtaking results. Rourke's childhood was, as he calls it,
Speaker 1: a nightmare. Before he found his acting teacher, Sandra sik
Speaker 1: Cat of the Actor's studio, Rourke sought refuge in a
Speaker 1: much different place. The boxing ring. I started when I
Speaker 1: was about eleven years old and had also I had
Speaker 1: four step brothers that were the toughest fights I ever had.
Speaker 1: You grew up in Schenectady, I was born up State
Speaker 1: New York, but I was raised in Miami. My mother
Speaker 1: married Cox Sucker, a policeman down there, brutal son of
Speaker 1: a bitch, which was a good outlet for me with
Speaker 1: the boxing, you know. And we we grew up in
Speaker 1: Liberty City, which was the black section of town, and
Speaker 1: you either were a really fast runner or you had
Speaker 1: to fight. We actually wed in a neighborhood where you
Speaker 1: had to ride to school in a pack or else
Speaker 1: you'd get your bike taken from you. And I remember
Speaker 1: days where I was riding my bicycle alone to school
Speaker 1: and then there's four guys, five guys whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: waiting for me to cross Seventh Avenue and I would
Speaker 1: go hide in the gas stations and until they left
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to get beat up from my
Speaker 1: bicycle taken from it. Yeah. Absolutely, When he was a kid,
Speaker 1: he talked about yeah, you know, yeah, I was. I
Speaker 1: was a chicken ship all my all my stepbrothers could
Speaker 1: kick the ship out of me, the ones that were younger,
Speaker 1: the ones that were older. And you have a full
Speaker 1: brother and a full sister and my yeah, my full
Speaker 1: brother passed away about eight years ago. Yeah. Um, he
Speaker 1: never got into Joey never got never got into the boxing.
Speaker 1: He uh, he was in the marijuana business. He was
Speaker 1: very quiet, I think because of what had happened growing up.
Speaker 1: He couldn't. I fought and he got he got quiet
Speaker 1: and couldn't. He didn't trust anybody, and he was very
Speaker 1: shut down and he could only sort of communicate in
Speaker 1: the outlaw world part of society. Um. She is, but
Speaker 1: when my brother died in my arms, I could never
Speaker 1: speak to her again because I blamed joe being anti
Speaker 1: social and and uh to be able to function on
Speaker 1: her because she allowed certain stuff to happen. She just
Speaker 1: turned her back to you. So boxing is something you
Speaker 1: do with a kid. You would have to record you
Speaker 1: you know you you you want a lot of fights.
Speaker 1: I'm want a lot of amateur fights. So it was
Speaker 1: undefeated as an amateur. Uh So when you jump up
Speaker 1: to New York and to go study with Sandra Sikat
Speaker 1: correct and you're gonna start doing the acting. That what happened? Why? Um,
Speaker 1: I had gotten a had gotten a two concussions in
Speaker 1: a row, and I think I was gonna I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was about sixteen or seventeen, and um, the doctors
Speaker 1: told me to take a year off, did not have
Speaker 1: any contact. And there was a kid in my class
Speaker 1: in my school who was going doing acting and you know,
Speaker 1: and he's asked me to do a play and I
Speaker 1: had no idea, and so he talked to me into
Speaker 1: doing this play. And I thought that this is the
Speaker 1: better than getting up at five in the morning and
Speaker 1: running the country club where he would get up and
Speaker 1: runner each day. And uh, you know, back then it
Speaker 1: was it was a ritual to you know, to do
Speaker 1: your road work before the sun came up. And and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this acting thing I thought was a lot
Speaker 1: easier than the grind at the gym. And I was
Speaker 1: very undisciplined. Uh young man, and uh I had I
Speaker 1: had trouble just listening to anybody. And um, did you
Speaker 1: listen to see kat? I listened to her, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to listen to my boxing trainers. And
Speaker 1: why did you listen to her? Why did I listen
Speaker 1: to sound? Yeah? What was it about that? You know?
Speaker 1: I said to myself, I'm going to give myself five
Speaker 1: years to see if this acting thing is anything. I
Speaker 1: said the same, we give myself one year. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I was living at the time at this welfare hotel
Speaker 1: down on Eighth Street, and it was there was an
Speaker 1: old man behind the desk who was a big theater buff,
Speaker 1: and he would give me books to read. I had
Speaker 1: no idea who Marlon brand Don't was or Tennessee Williams,
Speaker 1: Tennessee Williams. You know, I knew who bo Jack was,
Speaker 1: Sonny listen email Griffith, you know Roberto the Round, James Dean.
Speaker 1: I didn't know who he was. So it was like,
Speaker 1: you weren't you weren't a movie going down, not at all.
Speaker 1: You weren't a movie watcher. No. And I was working
Speaker 1: construction at the time. I had I worked on a
Speaker 1: construction crew on a jackhammer. And I remember after work
Speaker 1: when I had my jeans on. I think I only
Speaker 1: had two pairs of jeans with three black T shirts.
Speaker 1: And I showed up at the hotel and this elderly man,
Speaker 1: who older man who worked it behind the desk, Carl.
Speaker 1: He was all done up, like, you know, really dressed up.
Speaker 1: And I he says, we're going to the theater and
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, let's go. He goes, you can't go
Speaker 1: to the theater like that, you know. I had the
Speaker 1: dirty jeans that just from my construction job. Some proper clothes.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any proper clothes. He dressed me. He
Speaker 1: dressed me up and h He actually died this year
Speaker 1: at a hundred. You know, he kept we've kept, we've
Speaker 1: kept in touch, and he was a hundred years I
Speaker 1: call Montgomery, So you go to the theater with him.
Speaker 1: I went to the theater and saw a play with him.
Speaker 1: It was Ralph Richardson and John gilgu It was okay,
Speaker 1: and you know it was it didn't rock my boat.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Muhammad Ali and Sunny listen. You know. It
Speaker 1: was a whole different world for me. And so I
Speaker 1: go to the acting classes and I think it was
Speaker 1: about a year and a half or two years that
Speaker 1: I would go. But I wouldn't get up and do anything.
Speaker 1: I would just sit there and watch other people and
Speaker 1: actually treat Williams and Christopher Reeves Pressed the Soul were
Speaker 1: both in the class. And they get up there and
Speaker 1: they didn't get all the you know, emotional and you know,
Speaker 1: and do all this stuff. And I thought, I can't
Speaker 1: because you know, being on the street, you can't. My
Speaker 1: other job was I was running a massage parlor on
Speaker 1: Fort Street. I was in charge of the fly boys.
Speaker 1: I had these young Puerto Rican kids that would you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make some money. I give them sacks
Speaker 1: of flyers and they'd hand them out to customers. And
Speaker 1: my job was when the pimps came over, they would
Speaker 1: take the flyers from the young Puerto Rican kids and
Speaker 1: throw the flyers away because they had their girls work
Speaker 1: on the street. So my job was going over to
Speaker 1: the pimps and I would say leave my funcket fly
Speaker 1: boys alone, and if they didn't get it, I'd opened
Speaker 1: my coat and show them the ship and they got
Speaker 1: the message. So well. It was weird because that yeah, right,
Speaker 1: do a different jackhamps the street life and then acting
Speaker 1: class clash. So it was so it was because I
Speaker 1: had to keep you got to keep a certain face
Speaker 1: on the street and to go into acting class, and
Speaker 1: that become vulnerable. It was hard for me to uh.
Speaker 1: But you auditioned for the studio and they let you
Speaker 1: win very quickly, correct if I read very quickly, and
Speaker 1: they said your audition was one of the best auditions
Speaker 1: they've seen in thirty years. Because Anne said that to
Speaker 1: me when I finally knew who because that was I
Speaker 1: finally realized it was an amazing Well, there's a story
Speaker 1: to that. Um I I said to my acting coach
Speaker 1: Sandra one days, you know, because I used to see
Speaker 1: al Pacino at the studio and um and Chris Walkin
Speaker 1: and Harvey Kite Towel and you know guys that I
Speaker 1: really admired. And I said to Sandra one day, can
Speaker 1: I ever be as good as like al Paccino? And
Speaker 1: she said, you have to work harder than the rest.
Speaker 1: And I understood that. But because I related, I could
Speaker 1: understand that in the relation to boxing, you know, if
Speaker 1: you you don't win the fight on the night of
Speaker 1: the fight, you win the fight the ten twelve weeks
Speaker 1: that you do your worthy, you know. So when you're
Speaker 1: sitting in the dressing room and they're wrapping your hands
Speaker 1: in the door opens and you hear the crowd, that's
Speaker 1: when you know, that's what That's when I would get
Speaker 1: right the fear with come in. But if I did
Speaker 1: my home, my road work, you know, all I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about is that that prick in the other room, he
Speaker 1: didn't work as hard as I could. So with the
Speaker 1: acting I I would literally go there after my jobs
Speaker 1: late at night she got I got a call to
Speaker 1: the key to the studio and I would walk in there.
Speaker 1: What I would do is there was a bum on
Speaker 1: the street. Uh. I forgot his name, but I would
Speaker 1: pay him like five dollars to read lines with me.
Speaker 1: He could hardly read, but I buy him a big
Speaker 1: giant bottle of beer and he would as good as
Speaker 1: he could read. He would read the other lines and
Speaker 1: I would. When you're in the actor's studio at night,
Speaker 1: like around one, two in the morning and twelve at night,
Speaker 1: you know, and you start thinking about you know, who's
Speaker 1: been there before you, who's walked on that floor before you?
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's a. It's a. It's a.
Speaker 1: It was a really beautiful feeling. It was mind blowing.
Speaker 1: And to be there all at night, and I was
Speaker 1: there every fucking night, and I would work and I'd
Speaker 1: work harder, and I would work harder, and then did
Speaker 1: eventually got up in front of people. Eventually I got
Speaker 1: up in front of people in the state field. It
Speaker 1: was okay because Sandra knew my background from fighting, and
Speaker 1: she also knew that I had I had a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of guilt for quitting the boxing walked away. I
Speaker 1: felt like a coward that I quit. Yeah, And she
Speaker 1: had me to you know, it was a Stanislavsky method
Speaker 1: type of acting, of course, and she had me to
Speaker 1: a sense memory of me in a place that I
Speaker 1: loved to be. And what I was doing was lacing
Speaker 1: up my boxing shoes. And I remember because Ali was
Speaker 1: at the gym at the same time, and Jimmy Yellis
Speaker 1: and Jerry Quarry, oscar Bonavet, you know, all the great ones,
Speaker 1: you know, And I remember I had gotten these white
Speaker 1: boxing shoes that were the same ones that Ali had.
Speaker 1: And so when I did my sense memory and and
Speaker 1: then I had this monologue that she had me do,
Speaker 1: and I was lacing up the shoes and just everything
Speaker 1: kind of just cracked, and it was like and she
Speaker 1: had me she she want to say the lines, and
Speaker 1: it was and then I understood what the work is
Speaker 1: and how to make it personal and how to tap
Speaker 1: into an emotion and then be able to to use
Speaker 1: it and the scene in the work. So here's but
Speaker 1: what's interesting to me is when you show up in
Speaker 1: films and you come across as very vulnerable and very tender,
Speaker 1: you know you're a handsome leading man. The first movie
Speaker 1: that you star in is what pp ganche Village diner
Speaker 1: pupla grange village and ensemble the nine and half Weeks.
Speaker 1: That girl who's in that movie, but what's her navy?
Speaker 1: Remember her? The Blonde with Georgia um so pupla greendige village.
Speaker 1: That is probably your first starring role, correct, not an ensemble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it happens to be my favorite movie that I've
Speaker 1: ever made. Why how can you say that? I think
Speaker 1: because Eric Roberts is probably him and him de Niro
Speaker 1: and Chris Walking the best three actors I've ever worked with.
Speaker 1: And Eric was on fire at the time. He just
Speaker 1: come off King of the Gyp season and he was
Speaker 1: the hottest actor on the planet. And it's to me
Speaker 1: it's a shame that he doesn't work more now. Um,
Speaker 1: and he was. I had to be on my toes
Speaker 1: with Eric. Eric is a is a great actor. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'll say that to the day I go to my grave.
Speaker 1: But when you come onto the set of a film
Speaker 1: early on, did you rely on directors to help you
Speaker 1: at all? Today? Um? Well, Levinson was the first time
Speaker 1: director at the time. You know. Um, he was more
Speaker 1: of a writer where I was really happy. He was
Speaker 1: working with Coppola on Rumble Fish and and then I
Speaker 1: did three movies with Simino, and then of course the
Speaker 1: movie with Arean Line, and those three were real actor directors.
Speaker 1: He was so well prepared. He does an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of pre production and research himself. And when I did
Speaker 1: Year the Dragon with Semino, I was playing a cop
Speaker 1: and uh, he actually made me meet the real Stanley White,
Speaker 1: and he made me he ordered me too. I had
Speaker 1: to Back then they didn't have cell phones at peepers,
Speaker 1: and the real Stanley White was a homicide cop, and
Speaker 1: so he gave me this peeper and every night that
Speaker 1: there was a homicide, I had to go. And I
Speaker 1: went on thirty eight homicides with him, and the first
Speaker 1: three or four it was terrifying for me. I mean
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to see dead body, you know.
Speaker 1: And then after like the fourth or fifth one, it
Speaker 1: was nothing. It's interesting. Yeah. Um. The only thing that
Speaker 1: really stuck with me that was to this day that
Speaker 1: was terrifying was he made me go to an autopsy.
Speaker 1: And I've never been to a uh that kind of
Speaker 1: place before. But you don't forget it once you've gone inside.
Speaker 1: And he wanted me to really sink into this. This
Speaker 1: This was one badass cop. And I, you know, Stanley
Speaker 1: and I to this day are really close. And uh,
Speaker 1: he's just this tattooed, muscled, you know cop that did
Speaker 1: two tours in Vietnam and really intelligent. Um. I went
Speaker 1: out with him for three months, you know, before we
Speaker 1: did the movie. So when I walked over to a
Speaker 1: dead body, I knew. You know, you've you look for
Speaker 1: the defensive wounds on the hands, You look at it.
Speaker 1: You can look at the gums and tell how long
Speaker 1: the person has been dead. You look at the different
Speaker 1: colored blood that's on the ground, and if it's a
Speaker 1: darker red, that means it hit like a liver along
Speaker 1: or a art So Chimino was. He picked out every
Speaker 1: thread of clothes I wore, and I usually don't want
Speaker 1: anybody do that. But did you trust him? Why? You
Speaker 1: just liked him? Because I respected him. He just connected
Speaker 1: what he absolutely same thing with Coppola and with the
Speaker 1: Adrian line, you know from boxing, and I don't stand
Speaker 1: up straight, you know, I hunt over and I ure
Speaker 1: and it's just a habit and Adrian as I'd be
Speaker 1: doing the scene. Sometimes I would he Adrian would look
Speaker 1: at me and he put his shoulders back, you know,
Speaker 1: and it meant for me to stand up, you know,
Speaker 1: just but the adjustments that Adrian Line is not known
Speaker 1: as an actor's director, but he's so intelligent and he's
Speaker 1: so prepared, and he you know, he doesn't he does
Speaker 1: a movie like every nine to twelve years. But why
Speaker 1: doesn't he make films that? Do you keep in touch
Speaker 1: with him? I do see him, you know, Um, why
Speaker 1: isn't he make any films anymore? He's just an eccentric bird,
Speaker 1: doesn't well, let's put it this way. It's no picnic
Speaker 1: making a movie, right. Everybody has an right, but everybody
Speaker 1: he has an idea of oh, you're in the movie business.
Speaker 1: But we spent eighty percent of the time sitting on
Speaker 1: our trailer. Wait, you know, and uh, I think, I
Speaker 1: don't know, he's made nothing in the last two years.
Speaker 1: And this is just tragic because he's he's a great filmmaker,
Speaker 1: and Shamino hasn't made a movie and sixteen years or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you don't think he doesn't care anymore. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is with Michael Um you keep in
Speaker 1: touch with him, Yes, I do. He does Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
Speaker 1: Eastwood says to him, you could direct the film he
Speaker 1: does his first film. Because he directed a lot of
Speaker 1: commercials of one of Bridges of Jeffrides best performances. The
Speaker 1: film makes a lot of money. They say to him,
Speaker 1: He's going to do Deer Hunter. He wins the Oscar.
Speaker 1: It's like this fairytale. Well, look at the acting performances
Speaker 1: and Deer Hunter, from from de Niro to John Savage
Speaker 1: to Chris walk into Meryl Streep to everybody was in
Speaker 1: the fucking movie. Was just everybody was great in that movie.
Speaker 1: And then and then of course he does Heaven's Gay eight.
Speaker 1: I was in that too, exactly exactly, and it seems
Speaker 1: like like all the goodwill is undone by the one film.
Speaker 1: And then you start to make a couple of films
Speaker 1: with him after that. Yes, but after that there was
Speaker 1: a backlash against him because of what happened with United Artists,
Speaker 1: the crumbling a United artist with what was he like
Speaker 1: to work with them? The two films you made after
Speaker 1: Havings came, Um, I did Desperate Hours, whether with Anthony Tony,
Speaker 1: which his named Hopkins. Uh. This the industry by the
Speaker 1: time after Heavens came out, and everybody was against him.
Speaker 1: So when we did a Year of the Dragon together,
Speaker 1: they they they purposely tore him a new asshole. I
Speaker 1: loved Chimino, and he also taught me a lot of
Speaker 1: valuable lessons that I've stayed with me. Um. I remember
Speaker 1: when when The Year the Dragon came out, and Uh,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed working with somebody that I had so much
Speaker 1: respect for and that I have so much respect for.
Speaker 1: And then I was so much wanted to please and
Speaker 1: I wanted him to two. I wanted to please him
Speaker 1: so badly. I would do anything too. I would go
Speaker 1: just through through walls, and I did go through walls
Speaker 1: from him. I had a lot of blood on me
Speaker 1: on that movie. Um. He said to me when the
Speaker 1: movie came out and it didn't get received well, but
Speaker 1: it was mainly because of of the industry and the
Speaker 1: people wanted to break him and they weren't going to
Speaker 1: give him a fair shape. Right he did so. I
Speaker 1: remember I was reading reviews one day of all the
Speaker 1: papers in the United States, and I had a big
Speaker 1: pile on the left side that were the good reviews.
Speaker 1: We're not a big pile of medium sides file that.
Speaker 1: I had a gianantic pile on the right side. And
Speaker 1: I read every review from every every city. And there
Speaker 1: were a lot of bad reviews, and unjustly so. And
Speaker 1: I remember we were writing as Black Cheep and I
Speaker 1: I was so upset. I started to cry and Michael
Speaker 1: pulled the jeep over and he says, what the funk
Speaker 1: are you upset about? And I'm going Michael's he says,
Speaker 1: he says, did you read the good reviews? And I
Speaker 1: said yes, He says, and how did they make you feel?
Speaker 1: And I said good? You know? He said did you
Speaker 1: read the bad reviews? And I said yeah, how do
Speaker 1: they make you feel? And I said, well, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm And he says, listen. He said, do you know
Speaker 1: those people that wrote there was reviews? And I said no,
Speaker 1: and he says, I don't know them either. He says,
Speaker 1: what do you care about what someone thinks so writes
Speaker 1: about you that you don't know, And he says, if
Speaker 1: you can't handle reading the bad ones, don't read the
Speaker 1: good ones either. And from that day on, I've never
Speaker 1: read a review or a remark in my life. The
Speaker 1: film I've done, even when people said, no, the kindest
Speaker 1: thing about you and the rest of it, doesn't it? No, No,
Speaker 1: you know what happened. We're going to get to that
Speaker 1: period in a minute. But I want, I want, I
Speaker 1: want to go back, and I want to say when
Speaker 1: you did movies back then, and you were starring in
Speaker 1: films and you were leading man with a lot of
Speaker 1: films back then, what scripts did you choose and why
Speaker 1: was that? Was that a yes because it was Chemino?
Speaker 1: It was absolutely yes, because it was Michael Chremino. No,
Speaker 1: you didn't care about the being a remake of the
Speaker 1: Bogart film? Absolutely not. Did it intimidate you know? I
Speaker 1: would do anything with Michael. It was all about Michael.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing with Francis Coppola, where it's the
Speaker 1: same thing with are you in line? And when when
Speaker 1: time goes on? Did you feel Maybe you didn't, but
Speaker 1: I'm wanted did you feel that there was a place
Speaker 1: that the business wanted you to be in, that they
Speaker 1: wanted you to occupy? And he started to get uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with having to play I got uncomfortable when I realized, well,
Speaker 1: the two things happened. I tried to. I looked at
Speaker 1: like al Pacino's career, and I admired in respect the
Speaker 1: fact that Al never really sold out and he's always
Speaker 1: stuck to doing the best work and and with with
Speaker 1: respect and dignity that he could do. And I at
Speaker 1: the time, I was my agency or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: wanted me to live in Los Angeles, which I spit on,
Speaker 1: not the agency Los Angeles. I just hated there. And
Speaker 1: um I used to sit for a year two or
Speaker 1: three and wait for like the right script or right
Speaker 1: for Tremino, and um, nothing fell on my plate. And
Speaker 1: because once again I did another movie after all those
Speaker 1: movies Papa Grandich Village with with Eric and they you
Speaker 1: know that guy. There was a change at MGM at
Speaker 1: the time and a new regime came in, so they
Speaker 1: didn't really want to promote the film, and um, so
Speaker 1: it was a little bit of a dry run for me,
Speaker 1: and there was no work coming in because I was
Speaker 1: waiting for you know, Jamino or Adrian or Popoland. It
Speaker 1: didn't happen. So if it did happen, what happened was
Speaker 1: this piece of ship fell on my plate and they
Speaker 1: offered me a boatload of money and like a whore.
Speaker 1: I took the four million or whatever it was and
Speaker 1: bought a big fucking Elvis Presley house that I couldn't afford.
Speaker 1: And uh, I remember doing this film and hating myself
Speaker 1: every day. I'm talking about hating going to work, and
Speaker 1: it just I couldn't keep a lid on ship and
Speaker 1: I acted out. I acted out. Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of rage inside of me, and I was mad
Speaker 1: at myself, and I was in the director couldn't he
Speaker 1: couldn't direct traffic, you know. And uh, I mean Don
Speaker 1: Johnson used to tell him where to put the camera
Speaker 1: and he put the camera there. I think I'm a Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harley Davidson in the all problem which blows my mind
Speaker 1: to this day is I was working on this little
Speaker 1: documentary thing or whatever with Bob Dylan and Bob just
Speaker 1: making a Harley David's man it's my favorite movie. And
Speaker 1: I go, oh, here's the here's the most interesting man
Speaker 1: I've ever met in my life, and that's his favorite movie.
Speaker 1: And that blew my mind. Um, But that I ended
Speaker 1: up losing the house to the bank. But I even
Speaker 1: I can't even drive by it. Um. I think it
Speaker 1: was a four million dollar house. I put two million
Speaker 1: down cash and then put two millions to renovating it,
Speaker 1: and then I couldn't even Yeah, I couldn't make the payments.
Speaker 1: So it all started a crumble by then, and the
Speaker 1: women became my thing. And you know, I'm just living listen.
Speaker 1: I mean I tell people all the time, so this
Speaker 1: is the mistake that I made and said, I got
Speaker 1: hooked on money. You're Harley David's in The Marble Man.
Speaker 1: I did about eight of those, right, So for the money.
Speaker 1: For the money, that was sort of the end of
Speaker 1: my love affair with acting was Harley Davidson in the
Speaker 1: More Romance. Mickey Rourke took a long time off from
Speaker 1: the business, and when he returned, he played almost exclusively
Speaker 1: supporting characters until director Darren Aronofsky offered him the starring
Speaker 1: role in a film about the redemption of an ex
Speaker 1: professional wrestler. Rourke wasn't sure about the script, but Aronovski
Speaker 1: allowed him to rewrite his part More About the Wrestler,
Speaker 1: for which Rourke received an OSCAR nomination and won the
Speaker 1: Best Actor Golden Globe and the BAFTA Award. Coming up,
Speaker 1: listen to our Here's the Thing Archives, where Dustin Hoffman
Speaker 1: describes what he was doing before he got cast in
Speaker 1: the Graduate. I had been just starting to get somewhere
Speaker 1: off Broadway doing you know, my own style of stuff.
Speaker 1: Hunchbacked German, gay guy with a limp. Take a listen,
Speaker 1: and here's the thing. Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to here's the thing. Before the wrestler
Speaker 1: Mickey Rourke had no prior experience in that sport, but
Speaker 1: he grew up boxing in Miami, and when he went
Speaker 1: to l A to act, he continued training. He says
Speaker 1: he learned the concentration required for acting from his hard
Speaker 1: work in the gym. There was there was Hoover Street
Speaker 1: and there was the fourth Street Broadway Gym and Watts.
Speaker 1: I used to go there. There was an old trainer
Speaker 1: named Bill Slayton there, and Michael Doaks was there and
Speaker 1: he had Kenny Norton before that. It was an all
Speaker 1: black gym. I used to say, I'm the toughest fucking
Speaker 1: way game here. I was the only way gner you know,
Speaker 1: so um but yeah, no me. It was like when
Speaker 1: the little okay, when the bell sounds, you know, when
Speaker 1: it goes ding, you gotta go brother, So that's to
Speaker 1: help me when the red light goes on the camera. Actually,
Speaker 1: I knew it gave me a confidence and a technique
Speaker 1: where I'm usually going to give you the best thing
Speaker 1: I can give you the first two takes or right
Speaker 1: on the first take. Who was someone that wrung you
Speaker 1: out and wanted you to do a lot of takes?
Speaker 1: If anybody Darren Aronovski, oh yeah, in that movie, Darren
Speaker 1: Aranowski is probably this. I would say him and Shimino
Speaker 1: have a lot in common because Darren Darren would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want you to do this. Okay, I give it
Speaker 1: to him, and you know, I mean I would bring
Speaker 1: it and give it to him. And then he goes,
Speaker 1: I want you to do it again. I said, you
Speaker 1: didn't get out of that shot. He goes, you can
Speaker 1: do it better. I said, well, I gave it. I
Speaker 1: gave you everything I had. He goes, listen to me.
Speaker 1: I said, well, he goes, you can do it better. Bang,
Speaker 1: I do it, and I do it better. Okay. Then
Speaker 1: I think, oh wow, we're done with the scene. And
Speaker 1: he goes, I need another one. I said, I thought,
Speaker 1: I said I did it better. He said, you did,
Speaker 1: but you showed me. He says, he goes there was
Speaker 1: something wrong with the camera. You know. He really start
Speaker 1: you know, and then he says, I want you to
Speaker 1: do this, and da da da da da, And we're
Speaker 1: talking about twelve. It's twelve thirty now, Okay. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get the help back to Manhattan from Hoboken, you know.
Speaker 1: And I had a dog at the time named Loki,
Speaker 1: who I had for god seventeen and a half years.
Speaker 1: And look, he was having heart trouble and she was
Speaker 1: in the hospital that night. And so one of the takes,
Speaker 1: Darren said to me, I don't want to have to
Speaker 1: tell you this, but we got a call from a
Speaker 1: hospital and I said, looky he said yeah, And I said, um,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I don't want to bother you right now.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you after, but I need you to do
Speaker 1: another take. You know. He you know, he walked with you,
Speaker 1: but I let him. I knew what he was doing,
Speaker 1: but I let it sink in. And then uh, he
Speaker 1: would he would talk off camera about my dog to
Speaker 1: me and say things that got me upset, you know.
Speaker 1: And if I ever get a chance to work with him,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say to him if you loki me, you know.
Speaker 1: Well that's the other thing too. It's it's very rare
Speaker 1: that you get have directed that you're going to respect.
Speaker 1: But you trusted him. I trusted him because I respected
Speaker 1: him and I come instantly or he had time when
Speaker 1: he was pointing his little finger at me and telling
Speaker 1: me you're gonna you're gonna respect me, and you're not
Speaker 1: gonna ever say anything to me in front of the crew,
Speaker 1: you know, the first day that he met me, and
Speaker 1: I said, okay, uh. And I'm sitting there, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: if he's got the balls that we and his finger
Speaker 1: at me like this, and he must be the ship
Speaker 1: and uh. And had you taken on other directors on
Speaker 1: the set before, I would have broke other directors fingers
Speaker 1: right off if they would have done pointed their fingers.
Speaker 1: But the other directors that you really did battle with
Speaker 1: on the set even not really no, not really no. Um.
Speaker 1: I've worked with probably more bad directors, and I have good,
Speaker 1: great directors experience with Alan Parker, he's a really great filmmaker.
Speaker 1: But what he did was because he had his handsful
Speaker 1: with de Niro and me, and I was younger, so
Speaker 1: he picked on me. Plus he was you know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't in the greatest shape, so he was pretty nasty
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah. Um, I didn't do anything wrong, but
Speaker 1: he needed somebody, you know. I was his whipping boy,
Speaker 1: I guess, and I came in with At that time,
Speaker 1: I didn't have the greatest reputation on the planet, so
Speaker 1: he was like waiting for me to do something. At
Speaker 1: that point, what do you think that was from when
Speaker 1: you say you didn't have the greatest ship, Because people
Speaker 1: talk to each other. Like I did a movie with
Speaker 1: a guy. I mean we didn't talk the whole time.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you're doing a movie with somebody who's
Speaker 1: directing a movie, it's twelve weeks and you just the
Speaker 1: minute you see the guy, your hair stands up on
Speaker 1: your back. It's stressful, man, and you don't want it
Speaker 1: to be that way. No, but it's usually that way
Speaker 1: more than it is the other way. After oh God,
Speaker 1: after I'd been in the business more than a decade,
Speaker 1: I had to go see a therapist and um, I
Speaker 1: had some childhood issues I that had affected me. Um impressed.
Speaker 1: Now it was anyone with authority who would uh you
Speaker 1: live up? Yeah, because after what happened to me with
Speaker 1: one man early in my childhood, even if somebody looks
Speaker 1: at me sideways, it's it's on. And I don't care
Speaker 1: if the guy's nine ft tall, it's on, you know.
Speaker 1: And it was like if there was one time I
Speaker 1: was doing a movie with Walter Hill, really nice Johnny
Speaker 1: Johnny has him, and this this fucking prick comes in
Speaker 1: the room and he's got his little polo shirt on
Speaker 1: with the collar up and his ray pants and he's
Speaker 1: and it's our first day of rehearsing and he's folding
Speaker 1: his arms and he's standing there like he owns the
Speaker 1: fucking air. We're all breathing, right. And I said to Walter,
Speaker 1: he only said, who's that guy? He goes, that's the producer,
Speaker 1: and I said, oh, so I walked over to him.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, man, I said, this is the first day.
Speaker 1: You know, we're just we're not rehearsing, but we're just reading,
Speaker 1: like the lines through something. I said, you want to
Speaker 1: why don't you just, you know, go take a walk
Speaker 1: and come back when we're all done. And I can
Speaker 1: call him a cocksucker because to this day, when my
Speaker 1: agent tries to send me up on a movie, he's
Speaker 1: doing you know me, He goes, you know, you still
Speaker 1: got a heart on for me, So you know what,
Speaker 1: go funk yourself, motherfucker. You and Donald Trump should get
Speaker 1: a hotel room. You know. I got too many stories
Speaker 1: like that I want to tell. But no. But but Parker,
Speaker 1: that was not a positive experience because I think it's
Speaker 1: a pretty good It wasn't really a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: and and he it was weird because he ended up
Speaker 1: bad mouthing me. And then I didn't understand why because
Speaker 1: I gave him everything I had, you know, And Okay,
Speaker 1: let's put it this way. The easiest way to gain
Speaker 1: any power in Hollywood, in the movie business is if
Speaker 1: you can write. And so lots of times you get
Speaker 1: writers have become directors, and then because they have been
Speaker 1: writing in the in the room for the last or
Speaker 1: twenty years or whatever, they don't know how to interact
Speaker 1: with an actor or or to bring a performance out
Speaker 1: of an actor who can't fucking act at all. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's where it gets really difficult because you've got a
Speaker 1: guy in there and they said, oh, his last movie
Speaker 1: made two million dollars that he wrote, and now he's directing,
Speaker 1: but he can't direct at all because he doesn't know
Speaker 1: how to relate to an actor or get a performance
Speaker 1: out of someone else who can't, who isn't up to
Speaker 1: the hype. And uh, I went through that recently, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's no fun when you're on a movie set the
Speaker 1: last let's say ten years or more. I mean, I'm older,
Speaker 1: now years old. I started making movies ninth in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties, said the TV before that, and I talked
Speaker 1: about how it's changed, you know, and then when I'm
Speaker 1: on the side of a film, how is it changed
Speaker 1: for you. Let's put it this way. If I could
Speaker 1: get a job walking dogs and get paid the same
Speaker 1: amount of do making movies, I walk dogs the rest
Speaker 1: of my life and never make a movie again. I
Speaker 1: loved my wife more than anything. My wife and my
Speaker 1: kids weren't but I said, if I had met these
Speaker 1: two dogs before I met you, we wouldn't be married. Well,
Speaker 1: i'd have my two No, I mean, the movie business changed,
Speaker 1: has changed a lot to the point where it's just
Speaker 1: you know, Um, I'm not gonna go into any bitching
Speaker 1: up and growing and growing about things just because I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do that. But it's just it's not
Speaker 1: what I it was or what I would hope that
Speaker 1: it would be. It's no. I mean doing a lot
Speaker 1: of action hero movies and really silly comedies and so um.
Speaker 1: Somebody told me the other day they're doing better ship
Speaker 1: on TV than they are in the films. Do you
Speaker 1: have to do a TV show? I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: because with me it's I'm very director oriented, and it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to know who the director is
Speaker 1: going to be and who he is, and and I
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want some tin horn coming
Speaker 1: on and not knowing how to how to tie his shoes.
Speaker 1: If they if I I don't know either one of them.
Speaker 1: But if I end up respecting them after four days, fine,
Speaker 1: I don't care who you what your fucking name is.
Speaker 1: But it depends on the day and how the week
Speaker 1: goes well. I talked about how difficult it is to
Speaker 1: make a good movie. Now, I think the scripts out there,
Speaker 1: there's good scripts out there, there's good actors out there.
Speaker 1: There just aren't a lot of good directors out there.
Speaker 1: I think. But as difficult as it is to make
Speaker 1: a good film, you come along and you make a
Speaker 1: very good film with Darren and there's a tremendous, tremendous
Speaker 1: swell of good feeling for you when you make that movie.
Speaker 1: You're great in the movie. You're great in the movie.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna say that back in ninety three, when
Speaker 1: I drive across country to move to l A, the
Speaker 1: oscars come on, and I throw my beer can or
Speaker 1: my beer bottle at the TV when Ben Kingsley beats
Speaker 1: Paul Newman for The Verdict. Not that I didn't think
Speaker 1: Ben was great, but brand of course, brings the mantle
Speaker 1: of Gandhi into the into the theater with him. And
Speaker 1: I thought that The Verdict was Newman's best performance, in
Speaker 1: its most beautifully crafted performance. And I was really wouting
Speaker 1: for ball and I love Ben well the incredible, and
Speaker 1: and and and the Verdict is his greatest performance. And
Speaker 1: he loses to Ben Kingsley, and I fucking flip that
Speaker 1: when I watched, and the same thing happened when you
Speaker 1: lost to Sean. Nothing against Sean, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: she's a wonderful actor, but he brings all the sympathy
Speaker 1: of Harvey Milk into the theater with him. And when
Speaker 1: you lost, I threw the fucking diet cocaine. But I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you one thing, Um, I went over in
Speaker 1: the in the United King to the Bathta. I was
Speaker 1: happy with that. That that that was a great moment
Speaker 1: that well, I'll tell you what topped it off was
Speaker 1: after winning that. I remember going backstage and I think
Speaker 1: I had a kind of a funky speech up on
Speaker 1: their upon the platform, and I remember Mick Jagger Kevin
Speaker 1: gave me a hug and said, oh, thanks for waking
Speaker 1: up the dead for me because he was the host.
Speaker 1: So that was the highlight of my evening meeting. You know,
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen making like over twenty years, but like
Speaker 1: I went like, oh, man, you know, because there's not
Speaker 1: that many guys walking around anymore. You know, you were
Speaker 1: great in that movie. Wow, not many movies I can
Speaker 1: watch again. That's how powerful your performances. Yeah. But the
Speaker 1: other thing too is Seawan and I knew each other
Speaker 1: a long time, okay, and I have a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of respect for Sean. And if I'm gonna like not
Speaker 1: get something and they're if they're going to give it
Speaker 1: to somebody, also let it be Sean Penn because I
Speaker 1: gotta say this. You know, he's going through some ship,
Speaker 1: right now. But as an actor, you look, you gotta
Speaker 1: look at the big picture. For the last twenty five years,
Speaker 1: twenty years whatever, there's thousands of young young men, young actors, women,
Speaker 1: and Sean has set the bar really high, and there's
Speaker 1: there's there's young there's kids going to acting school. They go,
Speaker 1: I want to be an actor like Sean Penn. The
Speaker 1: same thing that when Sean and I were going to school,
Speaker 1: we went, we want to be an actor like so
Speaker 1: two other things. Late thirties or thirty three years old.
Speaker 1: You you get sick of the films and Harley Davidson,
Speaker 1: and you go do the get back into the boxing
Speaker 1: thing your body, your physical muscle frame and eve and
Speaker 1: you really blow up. You get big, you get you
Speaker 1: get into what I call of a hypermasculinity phase. The
Speaker 1: energy you channeled in your work as an acted role
Speaker 1: just compounding into that. You thought, I'm going to just
Speaker 1: make myself big. No, I only got big. I only
Speaker 1: got big for the wrestler because I had to look
Speaker 1: like you know, the guys that U big, Vince McMahon,
Speaker 1: who I think is a great guy, all those wrestling guys,
Speaker 1: they're all huge, you know. So I had to lift
Speaker 1: a lot of weights and and and do some other
Speaker 1: ship and to put on the weight and eat a
Speaker 1: lot and uh just wash ship and blow up. And
Speaker 1: so I was up too close to like and no,
Speaker 1: it was terrible. I have to now cut weight. Watch
Speaker 1: I eat because I fight it once seventy five pounds
Speaker 1: and I walk around at So when I fight it
Speaker 1: one seventy five, I'd like to come in it one
Speaker 1: seventy three. Um, so you're fighting again when I'm fighting
Speaker 1: late April early May in El Paso, Texas. Really why
Speaker 1: because it's there because you must only God knows, and
Speaker 1: you're doing some more after that, I'm gonna I want
Speaker 1: to retire. I have. I'm seven oh and two and
Speaker 1: now with five knockouts, and I'm going to retire at
Speaker 1: ten oh into it seven knockout. How old are you now?
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter a numbers, just the number and when okay,
Speaker 1: and when the bell rings. Now I want to throw
Speaker 1: a right hand. Then I'm gonna show throw a shot
Speaker 1: to the league. What's your best punch? Well, I've been
Speaker 1: working on Mickey Ward is a good friend of Michael,
Speaker 1: and Mickey has that liver shot and fuckingly, you get
Speaker 1: hitting the liver and any anybody gets hitting the liver
Speaker 1: one right, right way. My last thing, and that is, um,
Speaker 1: this is the question for the man who the host
Speaker 1: cards are of you all over Paris and you're one
Speaker 1: of the great romantic leading men. Women just completely falling
Speaker 1: in love with you. When you had all these girls
Speaker 1: you were dating, and you had all these supermodels you're dating,
Speaker 1: and you've had quite a you've had you've lived a
Speaker 1: good life. You've you've grazed in the meadow, and but
Speaker 1: no kids, no family. You never would have a family,
Speaker 1: No time for that. Um. I came from nightmare upbringing,
Speaker 1: and I've always promised myself that if I had a child,
Speaker 1: the one thing I would never do is what happened
Speaker 1: to me. If I had to live in my childhood
Speaker 1: over again, I would choose not to be born. So
Speaker 1: I would never let this cycle continue. And I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in the closet squeezing my eyes
Speaker 1: and like saying, please please let me disappear. You know
Speaker 1: I could well two things to wrap this up. One
Speaker 1: is that you know in that way that you are
Speaker 1: this evening, you know, I mean, it's like super tough,
Speaker 1: the boxing, the the whole. Like I said, hypermasculinity that accomplished,
Speaker 1: that accompanies that, and you're this very tender person the
Speaker 1: dogs and there's just so many contradictions to you. But
Speaker 1: I'm gonna finish with my one of my favorite moments,
Speaker 1: which is I hosted a screening of The Wrestler at
Speaker 1: the sho House and the young woman you were dating
Speaker 1: at the time was there. You weren't there. And I
Speaker 1: get up there and I say, uh, one of the
Speaker 1: main reasons I'm here is because of what a great
Speaker 1: fan I am. Going back to Pope of Greenwich Village
Speaker 1: and Angel Hart and nine and a half Weeks, all
Speaker 1: these movies. Mickey Rourke was one of the only people
Speaker 1: that drew me to the theater. When Mickey Rourke made
Speaker 1: a movie, I went and bought a ticket and I
Speaker 1: sat in the theater and watched his movies. I said,
Speaker 1: there are actors who drink and take drugs to build
Speaker 1: a fire inside them that does not exist, I said.
Speaker 1: And then there are actors who drink and take drugs
Speaker 1: to put out a fire that exists in them. I said,
Speaker 1: And that's the school I think Mickey Rourke is from.
Speaker 1: And she walked up to me. She goes, she was
Speaker 1: please tell me again, what does this thing you say about?
Speaker 1: So she could go back. But the whole, the whole.
Speaker 1: I'll have a drink. But when I have a drink,
Speaker 1: I'll drink all fucking night long. So but that's what
Speaker 1: I don't want to say. You know, I don't um,
Speaker 1: not until al Passo is over exactly. But the night
Speaker 1: after the fight, I'll drink for three days in a row.
Speaker 1: But then that's it. I'll shut it down. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying? What movie are you doing next? You know, no,
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I know what movie you're doing next. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk when this is over. Okay, thanks for doing
Speaker 1: this with me, beautiful. A reporter once asked Mickey Rourke
Speaker 1: who would play him in the biopic of his life.
Speaker 1: He said, quote, they'd have to get three people to
Speaker 1: do it because two of them would die. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.