Speaker 1: Well, this is a bit of a weird update considering, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're multiple months into the year of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, but we get a lot of emails. We
Speaker 1: get a lot of emails about whether or not we
Speaker 1: have exchanged our Christmas gifts. You guys are so cute
Speaker 1: with how much you pay attention and care about these
Speaker 1: little moments in our lives.
Speaker 2: What's gonna happen Like, it's just gonna the pressure is
Speaker 2: gonna keep building, Like ten years from now, we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to be like buying each other cars.
Speaker 3: We don't have to keep getting each other bigger and
Speaker 3: better gifts.
Speaker 4: They just want to know what, Yeah, guess yeah, it
Speaker 4: sixs a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, whatever when I buy you a Lamborghini next year,
Speaker 1: because I know you so well, I know.
Speaker 4: How much you want Lamborghin exactly? Can you also go
Speaker 4: camping in it? Can you press a button and then becomes
Speaker 4: another thing?
Speaker 5: You can?
Speaker 6: I do have a poster of a Lamborghini as a kid,
Speaker 6: of course, a Lamborghini cuontash.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one of the worst driving automobiles in history.
Speaker 6: By the way, Yes, they're not a sponsor.
Speaker 4: They know they were. Lamb I don't want a Lamborghini.
Speaker 4: I don't want a Lamborghini. I don't I don't want
Speaker 4: a laborghady.
Speaker 3: Okay, So we did get together.
Speaker 1: We had a wonderful little lunch and we exchanged our
Speaker 1: Christmas gifts. So, writer, why don't you go first and
Speaker 1: tell everybody what you got?
Speaker 2: I got superhero underwear, Yes you did, Spider Man, it's
Speaker 2: still in its packaging.
Speaker 4: And how did you fly without them?
Speaker 6: Oh my god? And then you framed our baseball cards, which.
Speaker 1: Is Allen and ginter tops cards.
Speaker 4: Each one of those. I got one myself too.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was very sweet. Will what did you get?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 4: First of all, Danielle, you also got superhero.
Speaker 7: Underwear from me?
Speaker 1: I most certainly did. I got superhero boxers.
Speaker 4: Shopping for it was really creepy, I.
Speaker 1: Know, because at first you didn't go right to boxers,
Speaker 1: no superhero, but it was.
Speaker 5: Like all these super I was like, wow, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I can't look Batman the same if it's a Batman.
Speaker 1: You thought jewelry was too personal to buy me, you know,
Speaker 1: tutic imagine buying me a thong.
Speaker 5: So I'm talking to Sue, I'm like, I don't feel
Speaker 5: comfortable with this.
Speaker 4: She's like make them boxers. I'm like, okay, that makes
Speaker 4: more sense. You guys both got the same pair, And yeah.
Speaker 3: We got the same Christmas gift this year, which is
Speaker 3: very cool.
Speaker 6: We both got.
Speaker 3: Superhero boxer shorts and are framed.
Speaker 4: Down I got, which I'm actually it's funny.
Speaker 5: I'm starting to read about Rider got me an electronic calendar,
Speaker 5: which is really cool. But the problem with it is
Speaker 5: the screen is small, so as I'm writing on it
Speaker 5: with sharpie, there's not a whole lot of room to
Speaker 5: put my day stuff.
Speaker 2: The story behind this is that Will can never schedule anything, yes,
Speaker 2: without his physical what he calls the big calendar that
Speaker 2: is in their house. And so if we're texting or
Speaker 2: figuring out and we have to schedule a lot of things,
Speaker 2: guys like it's a constant can do this together. That's
Speaker 2: why it takes it April, and it's always like I'll
Speaker 2: have to tell you when I get home tomorrow.
Speaker 6: And look at the big calendar, like I can't really.
Speaker 3: Also doesn't take a picture of it on his phone.
Speaker 4: I've started doing that.
Speaker 6: He can't reference it, he can't tell you what he's doing.
Speaker 4: And he started doing that. I started doing that, so.
Speaker 2: My idea was, let's get Will a big calendar that's electronic,
Speaker 2: and then maybe there will.
Speaker 5: Be a way to learn how to use it. It
Speaker 5: reminds me of my our frame, which I love so
Speaker 5: much for a calendar. And then from uh, Danielle, I
Speaker 5: got my Batman and it actually works. Huh like it
Speaker 5: really Jeck sabacity and it's so cool.
Speaker 3: I actually pictured it in your theater room.
Speaker 4: Yes, I don't know if you can see it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, Will, when you were Batman, was it a slightly
Speaker 2: different symbol? It was, right, Yes, it was red. It
Speaker 2: was also a different what it's this symbol? Oh right, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the Batman beyond symbol.
Speaker 4: This is original. This is a this is eighty nine.
Speaker 6: Old school Yeah yeah, cool.
Speaker 4: So I love that. So yeah, I've got it right.
Speaker 6: Here and that stuff.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 4: It was very I don't have my gift.
Speaker 2: If I was recording at home, I could show off
Speaker 2: the gift that Danielle got me. Daniel and Jensen got
Speaker 2: me this amazing little work of art.
Speaker 6: I don't do you do you have? Do you know
Speaker 6: the artist's name, yes, the of your head.
Speaker 1: So the artist's name is Scott Hildebrandt and he makes
Speaker 1: incredible works of art inside vintage clocks.
Speaker 2: Yes, so it's like a vintage alarm clock. I wish
Speaker 2: I was in my office show.
Speaker 6: But it's a vintage alarm clock.
Speaker 2: And it has this little camper scene of like a
Speaker 2: car and a trailer and a little it has a
Speaker 2: flickering light so you turn it on. It's the coziest,
Speaker 2: coolest little thing. And it's in my office now, it'll
Speaker 2: be it'll be behind.
Speaker 6: Me when I'm recording there normally.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3: Very cool.
Speaker 4: Wait, what did you get from?
Speaker 7: Writer?
Speaker 1: I got an incredible pullover that has the Grateful Dead
Speaker 1: dancing bear on it.
Speaker 3: What's the designer?
Speaker 1: Writer?
Speaker 3: It's like a design it's a clothing brands clothing.
Speaker 2: Oh, Huckberry, like anybody if you if you go on Huckberry,
Speaker 2: it's like the rider's strong clothing, like you just look.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they were doing they did a special like Grateful
Speaker 2: Dead limited edition sweat sweater and this was like in
Speaker 2: September or whatever, and I was like, oh, gotta get
Speaker 2: it for Danielle because she's a dead head now and
Speaker 2: I just think it's steral.
Speaker 6: But yeah, it's it's a little Bear's. It's a nice sweater.
Speaker 3: It's such a nice pullover.
Speaker 1: It's a good quality, it's nice and thick, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love it so happy and and we already mentioned well,
Speaker 1: got me the Allen and Ginter cards. I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: my Allan in Ginter cards. I think right under over
Speaker 1: here is where I have the Thomas Guide that I
Speaker 1: frame for.
Speaker 5: And I know that so writer obviously doesn't care. But
Speaker 5: have you worn your superhero boxers to bed yet?
Speaker 3: I haven't. But I don't sleep in boxer shorts.
Speaker 7: But do you either?
Speaker 3: If it's really cold, I have sweatpants on, or I
Speaker 3: just like in a T shirt.
Speaker 4: Okay, you porky piket in bed?
Speaker 6: Really have this conversation on this podcast. I feel like
Speaker 6: we've talked about but because we.
Speaker 4: Talked about sleeping naked, so naked, you cover the bottom.
Speaker 4: You keep the top is one thing, but cover the bottom. Okay,
Speaker 4: I get it. You are You're Donald ducking it in bed?
Speaker 6: I get it.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Bond Meets World. I'm Daniel Fishel, I'm right
Speaker 1: or Strong, and I'm Wilford. We are very excited for
Speaker 1: today's guest. During our journey through Boy Meets World. In
Speaker 1: addition to trying to create a definitive audio time capsule
Speaker 1: for our own show, we have taken on some quick
Speaker 1: side missions, hoping to learn a little bit more about
Speaker 1: our Friday night neighbors and the details surrounding a programming
Speaker 1: block that would change TV forever. Whether it was Jim Janisek,
Speaker 1: the brainchild behind the TGIF campaign, or Nick Backay, a
Speaker 1: man who went from a writer to the voice of
Speaker 1: a cat who could somehow make us time travel, we
Speaker 1: are interested in all the info, and today we're not
Speaker 1: only talking to someone who was the star of TGIF's
Speaker 1: first ever anchor, but his legendary run on TV and
Speaker 1: unforgettable appearances in classic movies makes him a first Ballot
Speaker 1: Comedy Hall of Famer. You know him best as Balki
Speaker 1: Bartolomeus from the Island of Mepos, a lovable goofball who
Speaker 1: has immigrated to Chicago to live with his distant and
Speaker 1: unsuspecting cousin Larry. The show ran for eight seasons and
Speaker 1: it was a massive hit, with Balki becoming the face
Speaker 1: of the channel, and the ratings were so high they
Speaker 1: would lead the way on the mission to turn Friday
Speaker 1: Nights from a TV graveyard to appointment family viewing. And
Speaker 1: even before Balky touchdown in the US, our guest was
Speaker 1: already a bona fide movie star. His first movie ever
Speaker 1: was alongside Tom Cruise in the seminole eighties movie Risky Business.
Speaker 4: Awesome movie, awesome role.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna be saying that all day to day, just
Speaker 5: so you know everything you're about to mention.
Speaker 3: And it didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills, Cop one, two and three, Ah, After Hours, Ah,
Speaker 1: the First Wives Club, I can't And True Romance.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, he's got Oh he was so guy.
Speaker 5: You've forgot about True He was so good in True Romance.
Speaker 2: Oh my Truman, Okay, I have to be honest. True
Speaker 2: Romance is the only one of those I've seen.
Speaker 5: You've never seen any of the No, I know, there's
Speaker 5: like Cepy Holes and then Risky Business.
Speaker 6: I've never seen either.
Speaker 2: After you've never seen the hours of Scorsese film, Yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 6: After I know. I just it's actually on my list,
Speaker 6: Like I'm dude, it is. It is absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 4: Everything.
Speaker 5: You just listen and actually you forgot He's done four
Speaker 5: of the uh, Beverly because they just did the new
Speaker 5: one and the whole cast got together, got back together.
Speaker 4: He was one banger after and next. And he's never
Speaker 4: the lead. He always is a character actor who comes
Speaker 4: in and then steals whatever the hell he's in. It's
Speaker 4: so good, Oh my god.
Speaker 5: His performance in the first Beverly Hills cop movie, Eddie Murphy.
Speaker 5: You see him on camera just trying to keep it
Speaker 5: together as he's speaking to him. He's like, Eddie Murphy
Speaker 5: is trying not to break. It's so funny, funny, it
Speaker 5: is amazing.
Speaker 1: There is no TGIF without cousin Balki, and so we
Speaker 1: are honored to welcome a legend to the podcast this
Speaker 1: week break out the Dance of Joy.
Speaker 3: It's Bronze and Pinchot Bronson. We are so honored that
Speaker 3: you agreed to spend some time.
Speaker 1: With us today. So first off, thank you you so much.
Speaker 1: It is really great to see you. Before we get
Speaker 1: into the branches of our big TGIF family tree, we
Speaker 1: wanted to delve a little into your.
Speaker 3: Actor origin story.
Speaker 1: I know you were born in New York, but you
Speaker 1: moved to California at a very young age. But neither
Speaker 1: of your parents were in the business. So how did
Speaker 1: acting find its way into your life?
Speaker 7: It found its way in. I had a friend I
Speaker 7: was I was all ready to be an illustrator and
Speaker 7: an artist, you know, painter, illustrator. And I had a
Speaker 7: friend who I was an actor at the UCSB Santa Barbara, Yeah,
Speaker 7: And I went to see him in a play, a
Speaker 7: really interesting, you know, dark Russian play, and I came
Speaker 7: home and felt a strange emotion which was something like
Speaker 7: I guess initially it it might have been something like jealousy,
Speaker 7: but it was so much deeper than that. It ended
Speaker 7: up being that's what I'm supposed to be doing. And
Speaker 7: now what do I do because I don't have any
Speaker 7: acting training, but that's obviously what I need to be doing. So,
Speaker 7: uh we were very poor, we were poort so but
Speaker 7: but I had gotten a scholarship to go to Yale,
Speaker 7: which I mean, I mean.
Speaker 3: Just just just a scholarship.
Speaker 4: School. I got this scholarship.
Speaker 6: Part of the system.
Speaker 7: So I went and I started to to do you know,
Speaker 7: drawing and painting and studying ancient philosophy. But but they
Speaker 7: had uh, you know, student plays you could audition for,
Speaker 7: and I auditioned for, uh a Shakespeare play and I
Speaker 7: got it. I didn't know what I was doing, but
Speaker 7: the head of the acting department came to see it
Speaker 7: and said, you don't know what you're doing, but there's
Speaker 7: something there because when you walk on stage, it's like
Speaker 7: a breath of fresh air. Would you like to actually
Speaker 7: learn how to do this? And I said I would.
Speaker 7: So he created a little tutorial for only just five
Speaker 7: of us, and he started to teach us how to act.
Speaker 7: I got into it. So at a certain point, the
Speaker 7: fine arts department makes you do a portfolio review where
Speaker 7: you put up all your stuff and they tell you
Speaker 7: what they think. And I remember very distinctly with what
Speaker 7: they said. The guy leaned back and he looked at
Speaker 7: everything and he said, well, it's very exuberant, although heavy handed,
Speaker 7: and I guess we'll take you. But this acting crap
Speaker 7: has to stop. And I thought, what is it? You know,
Speaker 7: life is just so well scripted. I was like, you're
Speaker 7: I went an arrogant butt head, What are you talking to?
Speaker 7: What the hell are you talking about? I'll do plays
Speaker 7: if I want to. What difference does it make? But
Speaker 7: I mean I didn't. It was like done. I don't
Speaker 7: want you, you know, you're arrogant and uh, anyway, you know,
Speaker 7: drawing and painting is the thing you do by yourself
Speaker 7: in an attic, and I'm a very social creature, and
Speaker 7: he made the decision for me. It was it was
Speaker 7: a terrible thing to say to a nineteen year old,
Speaker 7: but a wonderful thing because I literally just was like,
Speaker 7: screw you, I don't have anything. No. So fast forward
Speaker 7: about a year and I did a I did a
Speaker 7: play by Ian Escoll called The Lesson, which is just
Speaker 7: a crackpot professor teaching this one student and kind of
Speaker 7: coming on to her. And it's it's a very weird play.
Speaker 7: But anyway, the director had come in every single day
Speaker 7: and just hump. He would just had me get on
Speaker 7: top of this actress and it was like an acting exercise.
Speaker 1: And I finally said, wait, I'm sorry, did you say
Speaker 1: hump or hum?
Speaker 7: Hum?
Speaker 3: Oh? I heard hump, and then I wasn't sure how
Speaker 3: you were Okay.
Speaker 7: You did have a sexual undertone undertone. So I finally said,
Speaker 7: the play is opening in like ten days and we're
Speaker 7: doing theater games and I feel really odd about that.
Speaker 7: I mean, there's no play happening, So I will I
Speaker 7: will propose to you that you go away and I'll
Speaker 7: just figure it out myself. And if you don't go away,
Speaker 7: I'll go away because you've really had us here for
Speaker 7: three weeks.
Speaker 3: You've done nothing well also.
Speaker 7: You know, doing voyeuristic weird stuff. So he went away.
Speaker 7: I figured out to play with this with this wonderful
Speaker 7: young actress and another young actress who was in it,
Speaker 7: and somebody came to see it who was in He
Speaker 7: was studying music composition. I wish I remembered his name,
Speaker 7: because he's responsible for my whole career. He came to
Speaker 7: see it, and then he went back to his class,
Speaker 7: which was being taught by a composer named Maury Yeston.
Speaker 7: And Maury Yeston was writing incidental music for a play
Speaker 7: off Broadway called Cloud Nine, and he mentioned, in passing
Speaker 7: to his students, we're seeing people professional actors in New York,
Speaker 7: and they're supposed to be funny. They're not. Isn't it
Speaker 7: a pity? Because I'm sure there's somebody right, you know,
Speaker 7: within spinning distance who is funny. And his students said,
Speaker 7: I just saw somebody in a play called The Lesson,
Speaker 7: and he's funny. So that the Yeston said well, I'll
Speaker 7: get him an audition, and he got me an audition
Speaker 7: site unseen. I went down. They kept me waiting five
Speaker 7: hours because I was the charity case. But at the end,
Speaker 7: at the end of five hours, I did a really, really,
Speaker 7: really a good audition and the casting director kim all
Speaker 7: the way out of the back of the theater because
Speaker 7: she's the one that had kept me waiting five hours,
Speaker 7: and she said, where did you come from? I said, well,
Speaker 7: I've been in the lobby for five hours, and she said,
Speaker 7: well you've you're I didn't. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 7: see what's up here. So she she took me under
Speaker 7: her wing. Her her name was Mary Cahoun. She took
Speaker 7: me under her wing, and she she she brought me
Speaker 7: to casting sessions. And then I got a play in
Speaker 7: New York and the producers of Risky Business came see
Speaker 7: the play and cast me in Risky Business, and then
Speaker 7: I was off. And so it it it's that's that's
Speaker 7: my acting origin story, and that's the that's how it happened,
Speaker 7: you know. It's I saw Isabella Rossellini on a thing
Speaker 7: the other day saying that she asked her mother Ingrid Bergman,
Speaker 7: how do you get into acting? And her mother said,
Speaker 7: you don't. If it's a calling, it comes for you,
Speaker 7: which is true because you can knock and knock and
Speaker 7: knock and knock and knock on the door, but you know,
Speaker 7: it's like the mailbox opens and somebody reaches out and
Speaker 7: pulls you in. And so that's how that's how it happened.
Speaker 3: Wow, And so Risky Business was your first movie.
Speaker 7: It was my first movie.
Speaker 3: And is that the movie that you were auditioning for
Speaker 3: at the time where she came out and got you
Speaker 3: or was that a different project? And then she.
Speaker 7: Product at the plate the thing where I said, in
Speaker 7: the lobby for five hours, which is funny because it
Speaker 7: then happened again the second most important juncture of my career.
Speaker 7: They had a movie called Beverly Hills Cop and there
Speaker 7: was a character in it who was named Jack. He
Speaker 7: was American, and there was just a brief scene where
Speaker 7: Axel comes into a store, a clothing store called can
Speaker 7: you Imagine with a question mark? And there's a character
Speaker 7: named Jack who's described as an extremely this is why
Speaker 7: I said I wouldn't go in it is described as
Speaker 7: incredibly good looking and gay, and he had just a
Speaker 7: few lines, and the whole purpose of the scene was
Speaker 7: for it was nineteen eighty four, for Axel to just
Speaker 7: be like, you know, kind of beat on him because
Speaker 7: he was gay and leave. And they came to me
Speaker 7: and said, we can't make this funny. And I looked
Speaker 7: at it and said, I wonder why there's there's it's
Speaker 7: a it's a one beat. You know, it's one beat.
Speaker 7: It's it's the main character being kind of like a
Speaker 7: jerk too. So they said, well, can you can you
Speaker 7: come up with something? So I said, I don't know,
Speaker 7: there's nothing really there. But I took a long, long
Speaker 7: walk with the script and I kept doing it and
Speaker 7: doing it. I was like, what, And then it came
Speaker 7: to me that it might work if I did the
Speaker 7: voice of this Israelian makeup lady that I'd worked with,
Speaker 7: and also her body language because she had no bones.
Speaker 7: So I went and the director, Marty Breast, he really
Speaker 7: loves actors. He loves them so much that I sat
Speaker 7: there for three hours. Three hours is a long time,
Speaker 7: so long, and I sat there for three hours and
Speaker 7: I thought, I should you know, I've I've been in
Speaker 7: risky business, and I've been in the Flamingo kid, and
Speaker 7: why do I have to wait three hours? So I
Speaker 7: called my agent and she said, yeah, you're absolutely right,
Speaker 7: you can leave if you want. But I stayed. But
Speaker 7: over the course of three hours, I cycled through. I
Speaker 7: cycled through these these emotions about six times, which were
Speaker 7: how dare they too? Well? I mean, really, there's a
Speaker 7: there's a nice couch. I mean, you could go get
Speaker 7: a you could go get a nature valley. How bad
Speaker 7: is it to how dare they? I mean, what where?
Speaker 7: What do you got to do? What are you going
Speaker 7: to do? You know? And so by the time I
Speaker 7: finally went in to see the director, I had cycled
Speaker 7: through there so many times that I was relaxed enough,
Speaker 7: even though I was twenty four, to say, so, here's
Speaker 7: what I got, and this is all I've got. So
Speaker 7: if you don't like it, I'll totally understand. And if
Speaker 7: you do like it, then we can talk. I mean.
Speaker 7: And I didn't say it arrogant. I just was like,
Speaker 7: this is it. I mean, I didn't say I'd been
Speaker 7: here three hours, but that's what I'd cycled through. And
Speaker 7: I did it, and he said he he went like this, Marty,
Speaker 7: so shit done? He went I love that, And what
Speaker 7: would you call him? And I said, I just came
Speaker 7: up with this name, Sash and so so uh that.
Speaker 7: So you know, those were the most important eight hours
Speaker 7: of my life because you have to cycle I think
Speaker 7: in absolutely everything, everything, whether you're meeting a person who's
Speaker 7: going to change your life, or auditioning or even sitting
Speaker 7: in traffic, you have to cycle through. I shouldn't have
Speaker 7: to wait. This has been too who are you? Just
Speaker 7: once you get a few times to what who are you?
Speaker 7: Then you get to the good stuff. So those were
Speaker 7: and I think of that now quite often nowadays. I'm
Speaker 7: sitting on a set and I'm like, oh god, I've
Speaker 7: been here five hours and they haven't even and I'm like, so,
Speaker 7: who are you? A big deal? Wait my four hours?
Speaker 7: Because you're doing a great project and they're taking their
Speaker 7: time with it, and who are you? Who the hell
Speaker 7: are you? And it's a it's really it's really a
Speaker 7: foundational thing for anything, which is just get to the
Speaker 7: point where you're like, you're you're a big deal. You know,
Speaker 7: we're all sitting in traffic, so calm down and mellow
Speaker 7: out and get over yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I also love I'm sorry I love how you are
Speaker 5: so casually mentioning so many films that were so growing up,
Speaker 5: just like throwing up like oh, and I mean from
Speaker 5: Risky Business to Flamingo Kid, which I used to watch
Speaker 5: on a loop.
Speaker 1: So Risky Business in Beverly Hills, Copper about a year
Speaker 1: apart career.
Speaker 3: Wise for you.
Speaker 7: Here's the math I love the most because it makes
Speaker 7: me happy. I came out in the play in nineteen
Speaker 7: eighty two. The producers of Risky Business came to see
Speaker 7: it and put me in Risky Business, which came out
Speaker 7: in eighty three, and by the by nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 7: I was shooting Beverly Hills cop and Christmas of eighty
Speaker 7: four eighty five it came out and I was so
Speaker 7: so poor. I was at the end of my tether.
Speaker 7: Somebody had given me as a Christmas present the littlest,
Speaker 7: stingiest gift basket you can imagine. It was a packet
Speaker 7: of water crackers and apple, a Granny Smith apple, and
Speaker 7: a little chunk, not even a whole thing of cheddar cheese.
Speaker 7: And I had nothing else to eat. So every day
Speaker 7: would I would take a sliver of the apple and
Speaker 7: a sliver of the cheese and a one cracker and
Speaker 7: eat it till I couldn't stand it anymore, and then
Speaker 7: do it again, and the apple was starting to go brown.
Speaker 7: The movie came out and I a friend said, you've
Speaker 7: got to go read what they wrote about you in
Speaker 7: Newsweek magazine. I said, well, why would they write about me?
Speaker 7: He said, go read it. So it was a review
Speaker 7: of Beverly Hills cop and I walked to the supermarket
Speaker 7: to read it, and then on my way home, a
Speaker 7: carful of teenagers drove off of a Point Statia Avenue
Speaker 7: and onto the sidewalk and came right up to like
Speaker 7: three feet in front of me and jumped out and
Speaker 7: started hugging me. And that's when they happened.
Speaker 1: Your whole life changed. So how drastically does your life change? Then,
Speaker 1: what's the first thing that you do when all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know your reviews are out, you're a star.
Speaker 1: What's the first thing you do to turn your situation around?
Speaker 7: The first thing I did was I ran away. I
Speaker 7: got because it was you know, we have not caught
Speaker 7: up at all with the way our brains are wired
Speaker 7: is still from two hundred thousand years ago. So I
Speaker 7: got a residual check for risky business, and I ran away.
Speaker 7: I went to Greece and I just would turn the
Speaker 7: lights out at night and I would take out a
Speaker 7: big map of grease and I would put my finger
Speaker 7: on it. Whenever my finger landed, I would I would
Speaker 7: go there wow. And I remember once there was a
Speaker 7: guy yep my age, so that was twenty five. He
Speaker 7: was coming down a very steep hill with the sheep,
Speaker 7: and he was a sheepherder, and he had a book
Speaker 7: under his arm, and so I thought there's a fair
Speaker 7: chance he might speak speak English. The people Tom Miller
Speaker 7: and Bob Boyatt and Dale mccraven had come to me
Speaker 7: with this idea that I didn't think sounded very good
Speaker 7: for this TV show about an innocent sheepherder. And I
Speaker 7: didn't think that I had any business playing innocence. I
Speaker 7: thought I was rather sophisticated and urbane. So I said,
Speaker 7: I said, I don't know about that. But anyway, I
Speaker 7: ran out of money and I had just met this
Speaker 7: sheepherder whose dog was named Dog and uh, so I
Speaker 7: went to a phone booth in Athens and called them
Speaker 7: and said, do you still want to do that show?
Speaker 7: I didn't add because I'm out of money.
Speaker 1: Right and I just met Ader whose dog is named Dog,
Speaker 1: and they said, yes, we do still want to do
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 7: I said, okay, like.
Speaker 3: Soon, how soon can we get it going?
Speaker 6: Can you check so I can get home.
Speaker 7: I was completely out of money, so I went back
Speaker 7: and uh, and we we shot it, and then uh,
Speaker 7: the network wanted to replace the guy playing cousin. Uh
Speaker 7: Louis was was his name, because he was played by
Speaker 7: Louis Anderson. They wanted to replace Louie, so they did
Speaker 7: auditions and incomes marklyn Baker and we realized instantly, and
Speaker 7: then it's it's the same way today. We can read
Speaker 7: each other's minds. And I'm not even kidding. If he
Speaker 7: was sitting right here, he would if you asked us
Speaker 7: a question, he would know what I was going to answer,
Speaker 7: and he'd start laughing, and then I'd start laughing at
Speaker 7: the fact that that he knew. And we the you know,
Speaker 7: no speaking would happen that when we when we do
Speaker 7: Q and A with audiences, we just we just rock
Speaker 7: back and forth, laughing, and then he has to hold
Speaker 7: my mouth and explain to them all the all the
Speaker 7: things that they've missed because someone would just say something like,
Speaker 7: are you friends in real life? And then I started
Speaker 7: laughing because of course we're must closer than friends, but
Speaker 7: I want to say something like like, it's ridiculous, and
Speaker 7: then he and so we just laughed. So the whole
Speaker 7: whatever when we were interviewed, we laughed for ninety percent
Speaker 7: of it, and he explains for nine percent of it,
Speaker 7: and I have one or two things to say, and
Speaker 7: it's so he walked in the room and and that happened,
Speaker 7: and and then and then we were we were off.
Speaker 7: But I still what I had missed because then I
Speaker 7: was really famous. I had not yet had a chance
Speaker 7: to at all find out how to be a functioning
Speaker 7: human being. And I also didn't really know what my
Speaker 7: process was as an actor. I had no idea, so
Speaker 7: I didn't know how to be a person or an actor.
Speaker 7: And then they were in the top ten, and and
Speaker 7: they were, you know, to me, it's almost like not
Speaker 7: my life, but more like a movie I saw, because
Speaker 7: the level of craziness was was was I can't even
Speaker 7: really quite grasp it now, but I mean it was.
Speaker 7: It was crazy. And then there were stilly things like
Speaker 7: I bought my first house I ever bought was the
Speaker 7: house where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio had moved right
Speaker 7: after their marriage. So there were people from Europe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, driving by your house.
Speaker 7: No no, no, no, no, not driving, camping to take pictures
Speaker 7: of it. And then I would come out like this
Speaker 7: to go get the mail and oh my god, it's
Speaker 7: not only Marilyn's house, but he's there too, so you know,
Speaker 7: and but so I that it's I'm not complaining, but
Speaker 7: it delayed. I was not ready to come out of
Speaker 7: the egg. I was not ready to be a person,
Speaker 7: for sure. I had never had money. I'd grown up
Speaker 7: on welfare and then been, you know, eating an apple,
Speaker 7: a Browning apple when the first so he was kind
Speaker 7: of like taking a toddler and saying, here, you're going
Speaker 7: to drive this submarine and you'll be fine.
Speaker 6: So I was.
Speaker 7: I was not equipped to do anything at all except
Speaker 7: to play the character. I knew how to play the character,
Speaker 7: but I didn't know how to do anything else.
Speaker 3: So how did that play out for you?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 3: Over the course of the years that you were on
Speaker 3: the show, What did that look like?
Speaker 7: What it looked like? Very soton very soon I would
Speaker 7: play the thing, and people would make you know, they
Speaker 7: would roar and and and love it. And then I'd
Speaker 7: get in my car to drive home and I would
Speaker 7: I would fantasize about a truck hitting me head on.
Speaker 5: And just.
Speaker 7: Because I didn't know how to live, I didn't know
Speaker 7: how to do anything except do that performance. And I
Speaker 7: was I wanted it. I wanted some some some, I
Speaker 7: wanted something. I wanted it to stop. But I didn't
Speaker 7: know how to tell anybody. So that that meant that
Speaker 7: how can I explain it? It was really almost like
Speaker 7: being you know, if you took a chair and waved
Speaker 7: a wand over it and said now you're a person.
Speaker 7: And and they don't really know how to fake being
Speaker 7: a person. They just wait for it to you know,
Speaker 7: wait for the enchantment to be over. It was just
Speaker 7: too soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it happened so fast.
Speaker 7: It happened so fast, And it wasn't It wasn't just
Speaker 7: that I was a guy with no money who suddenly
Speaker 7: had money and fame. It was that I was the
Speaker 7: person who didn't even know how to I didn't even
Speaker 7: know how to be a person.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Did you feel more like you were a person when
Speaker 4: you were in character than you did when you were
Speaker 4: were not acting.
Speaker 7: Yes, but then something would happen like, I mean, everybody,
Speaker 7: you know, they really adored that character. But of course
Speaker 7: he was. He was the kind of person that's like,
Speaker 7: you know, you at your very best. And then when
Speaker 7: I would go home, uh, to normality, and my girlfriend
Speaker 7: would be sitting watching TV with the dogs and not
Speaker 7: look up, I would be crushed to a point like
Speaker 7: something was wrong. Well, yeah, I mean there were police
Speaker 7: holding people back from coming and giving hugs, and then
Speaker 7: there were you know, and then there was just a
Speaker 7: person who was bored by me or whatever the problem was.
Speaker 7: You know, I started playing the happiest, happiest, most optimistic,
Speaker 7: loving person alive, and I was the most unhappy.
Speaker 4: So you're Polachi essentially kind of.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I was afraid. I was afraid to go
Speaker 7: get treatment because I was afraid whether they fixed me
Speaker 7: and then I couldn't act anymore or I couldn't play anymore.
Speaker 7: But that turned out not to be the case, because
Speaker 7: it just gave me more, It gave me more control
Speaker 7: over my acting, and it gave me better access. But
Speaker 7: but because of that doubt, I waited until nineteen ninety
Speaker 7: six to go to go get you know, to go
Speaker 7: get help. And by that point I would have if
Speaker 7: somebody says something that I thought was hurtful or whatever,
Speaker 7: I would go dark for like three days. And when
Speaker 7: I say dark, I mean zombie. Wow. So I finally,
Speaker 7: you know, I finally got sorted out. And then then
Speaker 7: then I then I started to and enjoy myself and
Speaker 7: live and do Broadway and do the West End and like,
Speaker 7: and I was like, oh, is this what it's like?
Speaker 7: Because markln Baker used to say to me all the time,
Speaker 7: ro so, just let stuff roll off your back, And
Speaker 7: I thought he was making that up. I didn't think
Speaker 7: that was a thing that a human being could actually do.
Speaker 7: I thought that was just a phrase. I didn't know
Speaker 7: that somebody could come up and be unkind or just
Speaker 7: dumb and that you could let that roll off your back.
Speaker 7: I thought he was making it up to just get
Speaker 7: me through the moment. I had no idea people could
Speaker 7: do that. So that's been really eye opening, because you know,
Speaker 7: there's lots of people who were ridiculous. I mean there
Speaker 7: was somebody once I was getting on a plane and
Speaker 7: I had lots of suitcases and things, and she ran
Speaker 7: up just as we were boarding, and I don't like flying.
Speaker 7: It makes me nervous. And she ran up and said,
Speaker 7: could you sign this? And I said, I'd love to,
Speaker 7: but as you can see, I don't have a free hand,
Speaker 7: and I'm just getting on the plane and I I
Speaker 7: hope I'll meet up with you again someday. So she's
Speaker 7: she stood there and she yelled at the top of
Speaker 7: her lung as well. I helped. The plane crashes, and
Speaker 7: so there we all were, Oh my god, And that's
Speaker 7: you know, that's that's bad enough if you've got if
Speaker 7: you've got anxiety, if your own you know. Yeah, but
Speaker 7: that's the kind of thing that happens if you're on
Speaker 7: people's if you're on people's TVs and you're playing somebody
Speaker 7: incredibly loving.
Speaker 1: Do you ever look back on those years then that
Speaker 1: you were on the show and feel sad that you
Speaker 1: didn't get to really celebrate those wins of that time.
Speaker 7: Yeah. And I mean every day the whole cast and
Speaker 7: lots of you know, members of the staff would go
Speaker 7: out for lunch, and every day, God blessed them, they
Speaker 7: would ask me, and I would say, no, I have
Speaker 7: to stay you know, in character, and I have to
Speaker 7: stay here and on perfect strangers. I have to stay
Speaker 7: in my dressing room and be very simple and quiet
Speaker 7: and have my berry because I was a vegan at
Speaker 7: the time, and every day they would ask me, which
Speaker 7: was so sweet when I look back on it. They
Speaker 7: never gave up on me. But I'd never socialized. I never,
Speaker 7: I mean, it all had to be for the character.
Speaker 7: I wouldn't party, I wouldn't do anything for me. Life
Speaker 7: was like I had an oxygen tank and I didn't
Speaker 7: know how long I would be down snarkling, and so
Speaker 7: I couldn't give any of the oxygen for anything else.
Speaker 7: Like yes, so just just the way it was, I mean,
Speaker 7: I look back on it, I couldn't even even with
Speaker 7: my family. I would come and I would do Thanksgiving,
Speaker 7: and one of my brothers would always have a new
Speaker 7: girlfriend for Thanksgiving and then there'd be a new one
Speaker 7: for Christmas. Every which meant that I had to make
Speaker 7: a rule, which was no show biz at all, because
Speaker 7: at Thanksgiving, I'm gonna have to sit there and talk
Speaker 7: about what's so and so like, and what's so and
Speaker 7: so like, and then three weeks later do it all
Speaker 7: over again. And I don't like that. No show biz,
Speaker 7: No show biz so I had I had a million
Speaker 7: rules because I didn't have the skill set like nowadays.
Speaker 7: There was a woman on a plane a few months
Speaker 7: ago and she didn't know who the hell I was.
Speaker 7: She sit next to me, and a flight attendant came
Speaker 7: up and said, would you sign this menu? I said shirt,
Speaker 7: and the woe next to me looked over, like, what's
Speaker 7: that all about? And I didn't yeah. And then and
Speaker 7: then somebody else came up and said would you sign
Speaker 7: my napkin? And I said okay. And finally the woman
Speaker 7: next to me said why are they doing that? And
Speaker 7: I said because I'm an actor. And she said the
Speaker 7: thing that they always say, well have you ever been
Speaker 7: in anything that I have seen?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 7: So instead of you know, getting up up at the
Speaker 7: I just said, let the words just come to Bronston
Speaker 7: because you're a friendly, nice, warm person and you can
Speaker 7: do this with humor. And it came to me and
Speaker 7: I said to her, I don't know, why don't you
Speaker 7: list everything you've ever seen and if I was in it?
Speaker 7: And she laughed and I laughed, and then we had
Speaker 7: a nice flight and we talked about nothing, because I
Speaker 7: I there is a there is a fantastically nice, funny,
Speaker 7: warm way to say no, I'm not gonna listen to
Speaker 7: my credits. And I didn't when I was younger. I
Speaker 7: didn't know that if you just take a breath, something
Speaker 7: will come to you. That's that's kind of like true
Speaker 7: but also fun. And we were laughing. We were laughing.
Speaker 7: She was like, oh, yeah, I get it. Yeah, And
Speaker 7: if we had the Greens time we chatted, we we've
Speaker 7: made fun of the movie. We but I, you know,
Speaker 7: like I didn't know that if you just took a second,
Speaker 7: the right, the right, and and and and just choice
Speaker 7: words that let everybody still be a human would come
Speaker 7: to you.
Speaker 4: Well, now I'm so curious.
Speaker 5: You talked about how essentially you were one person in
Speaker 5: the early eighties, and like we all do, we change,
Speaker 5: but you really had a big change in the nineties.
Speaker 4: So when you got to go back to then play the.
Speaker 5: Same character again that you did in something like Beverly
Speaker 5: Hills Cop, did you come at it from a different
Speaker 5: way because now you were such a different person When
Speaker 5: you went back to the character again, you came back
Speaker 5: it the same line characters.
Speaker 7: You know, as any astrophysicists will tell you, there really
Speaker 7: is this thing as time, and as any psychotherapists will
Speaker 7: tell you, the unconscious has no grasp of time. So
Speaker 7: I mean, I kai smell if someone makes big plant
Speaker 7: farmers dount exactly the way my mom did, I'll start
Speaker 7: crying because that's it. So what you know, characters certainly
Speaker 7: have no concept of time. No, And as soon as
Speaker 7: you start to do it, or I do that, and
Speaker 7: it's the same, it's nineteen eighty four again, and there's
Speaker 7: no there's no passage of time at all. And also
Speaker 7: I was quite lucky in around two thousand and three,
Speaker 7: two thousand and four, two thousand and five, as fate
Speaker 7: would have it, I did two plays back to back
Speaker 7: where I played multiple characters, and I'm talking about one.
Speaker 7: In one play, thirty eight different characters, and then right
Speaker 7: after it a play where I played eight different characters.
Speaker 7: And in both plays it was male, female, old, young,
Speaker 7: in between every nationality, every ethnicity, every everything. And in
Speaker 7: both plays it was part of the magic of the
Speaker 7: play that you didn't have. There were no costumes, there
Speaker 7: were no props. You just transformed. So doing that for
Speaker 7: three years really expunge the final you know, I used
Speaker 7: to be the kind of person who would say, well,
Speaker 7: I'm you know, if you want me to play this
Speaker 7: seventeenth century musketeer and you don't have the musketeer hat
Speaker 7: and the exact rapier, how am I supposed to.
Speaker 4: Be having from?
Speaker 7: But after you play thirty eight plus eight forty six
Speaker 7: characters without having anything, and you have to turn, you
Speaker 7: have to go from an eighty five year old Irish
Speaker 7: priest to a five year old you know, and to
Speaker 7: it for a little boy to a box and sexy
Speaker 7: amazing female movie star boo boo boo boo boom blah
Speaker 7: boom like that. Then you stop, you know, you stop
Speaker 7: saying if you don't give me the hat and the rapier,
Speaker 7: I can't do it. You never the final the final
Speaker 7: piece was that I did for two seasons on DIYTV.
Speaker 7: I did my version of a home renovation show on
Speaker 7: the DIY TV where I worked on my own homes.
Speaker 7: I had half a dozen I would redo rooms, I
Speaker 7: would redo the whole house using pre Civil War architectural salvage.
Speaker 7: And it was called the Bronzen Pinchow project. And once
Speaker 7: in a while they would say, oh yeah, when you
Speaker 7: went to the salvage yard, you got out of the
Speaker 7: truck before the truck even stopped moving, and we didn't
Speaker 7: get a clean shot of that, so let's do it again.
Speaker 7: And I would say, well, no, that's what I do.
Speaker 7: I'm excited. And I got out of a moving truck
Speaker 7: and they called the Bronzon Pincho Project and it ain't
Speaker 7: going to get any more bronze and pinch show than that, right,
Speaker 7: And they'd say, well, the shot is, the SHOT's not cleaned,
Speaker 7: and I would say, well, maybe you should be readier,
Speaker 7: because I mean, I wasn't being a brat. I was
Speaker 7: just there was another time where you know, they move
Speaker 7: into your house and the cameras are there, they live there.
Speaker 7: And another time, these two beautiful like eighteen forties gas
Speaker 7: lamps arrived and they had been poorly packed and they
Speaker 7: were broken into a million pieces. But you have a deadline,
Speaker 7: so they're filming me. I opened the box and I want, okay,
Speaker 7: get the dealer, you know. I sent an email to
Speaker 7: the dealer and find out if you ensure them. All right,
Speaker 7: what are we doing next? And they said, cut, cut,
Speaker 7: cut cut. You really need to be a lot more upset,
Speaker 7: said I just was in real time, just out as
Speaker 7: Bronson Pincho at my own house, opening a thing in
Speaker 7: real time, no happening to be what what do you
Speaker 7: want me to do? Reality TV? That's that's as upset
Speaker 7: as I have the time and energy to get. That's
Speaker 7: what you got to be kidding me, Well, we need it,
Speaker 7: it would be more accident. No, thank you. I actually
Speaker 7: I had a great I had a great line. He said,
Speaker 7: we need we need you to be more worried all
Speaker 7: the time about something you can pick. I said, well,
Speaker 7: I'm worried that you're not giving me enough money to
Speaker 7: do these episodes. And they said no, but but you know,
Speaker 7: could you can we can we make it that there's
Speaker 7: a giant storm coming And I said, And the director
Speaker 7: loved this so much because he was a goofball. He
Speaker 7: said that the network said, like, if if you could
Speaker 7: do like there's a storm coming, or there's a there's
Speaker 7: a you know, like a building inspector coming or something
Speaker 7: that just makes it all like worried all the time.
Speaker 7: And I said, I am not participating in bull crape.
Speaker 7: The only real stress I have is that they're not
Speaker 7: giving me enough money to do these rooms the way
Speaker 7: I want. So I'm using my own money, so I'm
Speaker 7: not making any money the real stress and if you
Speaker 7: don't want to show the real stress, I'm not doing stress.
Speaker 7: So I'm not participating. And all the crew who all
Speaker 7: lived up there and would be in the house and
Speaker 7: they went went you. Did you hear them in the
Speaker 7: other room say that. Samony would say, do you want
Speaker 7: to get like chicken salad? And I'm not participating inpating.
Speaker 1: Well, a few years ago we did a commercial together
Speaker 1: for the ABC reboot of TGIF. It was me Reginald
Speaker 1: Bell Johnson and you and Mark Lynn Baker, and I
Speaker 1: vividly remember they wanted you to to do the dance
Speaker 1: of joy and yes, and there was like a real
Speaker 1: hush on the set and it was so incredible because
Speaker 1: both of you were not really sure you fully remembered it,
Speaker 1: and then you guys rehearsed it very briefly. You nailed it.
Speaker 1: It was perfect. It was like no time had passed
Speaker 1: and the both of your faces just lit up, and
Speaker 1: there was so much.
Speaker 3: Joy around the two of you.
Speaker 1: I just I just had to mention that because are
Speaker 1: you guys still very close?
Speaker 7: Oh? Yes. The funny thing is we're so close that
Speaker 7: I don't even know every once in a while I'll
Speaker 7: think of something and I'll just text him. And we
Speaker 7: share an agent for personal appearances. And the agent, well,
Speaker 7: he's a very nice guy, but he'll he'll say to me,
Speaker 7: are you on board? Uh, We're gonna do a personal
Speaker 7: appearance in Knoxville in July. Are you on board uh
Speaker 7: for these? Uh? This, this and this? And I'll say yes,
Speaker 7: and he'll say great. And I'll say, but I but
Speaker 7: only if Mark is nude. So I know that he
Speaker 7: has to professional. As a professional, he has to pass
Speaker 7: that message.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk very briefly about another classic movie
Speaker 1: or in True Romance. It was written by Quentin Tarantino,
Speaker 1: directed by Tony Scott, a star studded cast.
Speaker 3: What was that experience like for you?
Speaker 7: Well, I want to tell you about the most Hollywoodish
Speaker 7: thing that ever happened to me ever, all all in
Speaker 7: one thing. Okay. So there's a scene in it where
Speaker 7: I'm driving in a was it open that was open convertible?
Speaker 4: Yeah it was. It was a nine to eleven slant
Speaker 4: nose with the open top, the white one.
Speaker 7: Okay, So with this adorable actress playing a crackhore and
Speaker 7: we're driving and then I and then we shot me
Speaker 7: driving first, and then I had to pull over, and
Speaker 7: because the cop was behind me, so we had already
Speaker 7: shot a good portion of the scene when it was
Speaker 7: time to pull over. And when it was time to
Speaker 7: pull over, Uh, I looked down and realized, because they're
Speaker 7: they're toning you. They're toning you, you know, and shoot
Speaker 7: you tell truck is playing. So yeah, I could pretend
Speaker 7: I'm driving, but then it's time to pull over the car.
Speaker 7: And I said, oh my goodness, this is stick shift.
Speaker 7: I don't know how to drive stick shift. And you
Speaker 7: can't very well pull over in park if you can't
Speaker 7: drive stick shift. So Tony says, are you kidding me?
Speaker 7: Nobody elst him. If you can drive, the fuck are
Speaker 7: you're going to get this stop? And so he was
Speaker 7: because we were really just so We're way up on
Speaker 7: mulhalland drive in LA and I'm like, to dude, he's
Speaker 7: not my fault. So my hair is black at that
Speaker 7: point in time. So they hurriedly decide, and I had
Speaker 7: not been wearing sunglasses. They hurriedly decided the only way
Speaker 7: out of it is to get this one of the
Speaker 7: one of the crew who knew how to drive stick
Speaker 7: They just spray painted his hair black, and then he
Speaker 7: pulled the car over, and Tony said, does it look
Speaker 7: a thing Bronson? So somebody said, how about sunglasses? And
Speaker 7: he said, but he's not wearing glasses in the scene.
Speaker 7: And so somebody said maybe Bronson would would pantomime putting
Speaker 7: on sunglasses and some other part of the scene, and
Speaker 7: I said, I will, It's fine. So they're they're painting
Speaker 7: this guy's head. They're painting his head and he's pulling over.
Speaker 7: Tony is still hyperventilating. The man's head is painted and
Speaker 7: he's pulling over, and I have nothing to do while
Speaker 7: I do that, And just at that moment, Madonna cycles
Speaker 7: by in head to toe lycra. God, it's never gonna
Speaker 7: get any more holiday, right, They just they just painted
Speaker 7: somebody to pretend to be me. Everybody's upset and yelling,
Speaker 7: and nobody but me sees that Madonna has just cycled
Speaker 7: by in in like purple and lime green lycra. This
Speaker 7: is so wonderful. Nobody is paying attention because they're busy
Speaker 7: watching the man painted to be me and so funny.
Speaker 4: God.
Speaker 1: Also, to call you prolific in the world of audio
Speaker 1: books would be a wild understatement.
Speaker 3: Well over four hundred books.
Speaker 7: Well over four hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: Please, oh my gosh, well over four hundred and fifty books,
Speaker 1: tons of awards. You are a legend in the field.
Speaker 1: What makes giving a voice to a book so exciting
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 7: Well, it is like it is like going to the
Speaker 7: acting gym like constantly, and I have to say, because
Speaker 7: you're sitting in the booth the size of the front
Speaker 7: seat of a car, and I'm claustrophobic, and you have
Speaker 7: to be the narrator. You have to give it the
Speaker 7: narrator a voice, and then you have to give every
Speaker 7: single character a voice. And then sometimes I just did
Speaker 7: a book where the I just did a book the
Speaker 7: narrator is he's been brainwashed with drugs to think he's
Speaker 7: three different people. So you have to have three different
Speaker 7: voices for different sections of the book. And this one
Speaker 7: is been throwing up all the time, so his voice
Speaker 7: has to be hoarse, and this one on some different
Speaker 7: kind of drug. And then you have to be all
Speaker 7: the characters. And then one character is when when people
Speaker 7: are around, she's in hiding, so she has a fake
Speaker 7: Southern accent when there's people around. But then when people
Speaker 7: aren't around she she's got her own accent and blah
Speaker 7: blah blah blah blah. And so it is like, I'm
Speaker 7: not a big fan of juggling, but when people are
Speaker 7: really good at it, I'm like, And so it's like that.
Speaker 7: It's like the kind where you're catching things you didn't
Speaker 7: even throw. It's like you're juggling and then there's a
Speaker 7: bird and then there's fire. And it's awfully good for
Speaker 7: keeping the whole acting musculature super fit because you don't
Speaker 7: have any time. I mean, I would say really, between
Speaker 7: those multi character plays and the books, my prep time
Speaker 7: nowadays is negative one minute. I because you you know,
Speaker 7: you think when you're twenty five, well, I have to
Speaker 7: have an hour in pitch dark with no sensory anything
Speaker 7: so I can get into this one character. And then
Speaker 7: you know, after you've done forty eight characters on stages
Speaker 7: from London, Sacramento, and four hundred and fifty audiobooks with
Speaker 7: ten characters each, you're like, character boom, It's like what
Speaker 7: and so I it it has and I do them.
Speaker 7: I do them all the time, and they keep me
Speaker 7: from going nuts in between acting gigs. But it also
Speaker 7: teaches you something we already all know. You know, if
Speaker 7: if you and I are going to take a friend
Speaker 7: out to dinner, and it's a very important thing, and
Speaker 7: one of us dropped the ball and forgot to make
Speaker 7: the reservation, we will look at each other and go
Speaker 7: all right, the person doing the reservations that they look
Speaker 7: like they like guys or girls. In fact, they like guys, Bronson,
Speaker 7: So I will go up and be so flirtatious. I
Speaker 7: will get us at table, because the stakes are life
Speaker 7: and death. And if we decide that they like girls,
Speaker 7: you'll go up and be like ah, and you will
Speaker 7: just do it right. You do it all the time.
Speaker 7: You you act all the time in life all the time.
Speaker 7: My mother, you know, was in a she had an
Speaker 7: operation once since she was she had to go to
Speaker 7: a rehabilitation center. And I had bought a house, but
Speaker 7: I knew my mom would disapprove, so I hadn't. I
Speaker 7: bought it in my sisters name. And my mother looked
Speaker 7: at me on the pillows and went, tell me the truth,
Speaker 7: look into my eyes and tell me did you buy
Speaker 7: that house? And I said no. And so when the
Speaker 7: when the stakes are high, we all act all day
Speaker 7: long with no prep at all, you know, or if
Speaker 7: you're trying to get a toddler to eat their yogurt
Speaker 7: or whatever, and just do it. And so if you
Speaker 7: do doing the audiobooks reminds me like, dude, you don't need,
Speaker 7: you know, to be like one guy dying on the
Speaker 7: battlefield and his best friend holding him and crying. You
Speaker 7: don't have time you like do a prep for each character.
Speaker 7: You cry, and then you say it will be all right,
Speaker 7: and then you cry and then you die and then
Speaker 7: you say, oh my god, my friend died. Now I'm crying,
Speaker 7: and then you just do it. Yeah, and and so
Speaker 7: it's it's the it's the acting gym. It really is
Speaker 7: the acting gym. And it makes me chuckle a little
Speaker 7: bit when people say, Okay, I'm sorry, I've got to
Speaker 7: stop this conversation out because in three days I'm doing
Speaker 7: the scene. I'm like, there are three days you don't
Speaker 7: need it, But that's what it does for you. Plus
Speaker 7: there's you know, there's people that are bed ridden or
Speaker 7: they're on a twenty hour trip or whatever. And I
Speaker 7: always think, okay, so I'm just gonna do this in
Speaker 7: such a way that you'll laugh or you'll cry or
Speaker 7: you'll forget you know that you're on up a big
Speaker 7: long and it's it's marvelous. It's really fun, and it's
Speaker 7: so intimate because most acting, even if the camera is okay,
Speaker 7: so this this phone here is like seventeen inches from
Speaker 7: my face. But when you do an audio book, I'm
Speaker 7: speaking into a mic, I like the mic really close.
Speaker 7: So my mic is like there, I like it. I
Speaker 7: like the you're too young to remember Tom Jones, you guys.
Speaker 4: Times of course had the mic like.
Speaker 7: Inside him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.
Speaker 7: I like the mic pretty close. I could, so I
Speaker 7: could be super intimate. And then I think to myself,
Speaker 7: this is so amazing because when somebody listens to the book,
Speaker 7: they're going to have earphones on, and the earphones are
Speaker 7: how how close are your earphones to your actual brain?
Speaker 7: Maybe an inch? Yeah? Maybe right? Yeah, I've got the
Speaker 7: mic maybe an inch from my mouth. And then the
Speaker 7: the the people that are going to experience this storytelling,
Speaker 7: it's an like that is the closest you are ever
Speaker 7: going to get, even if you're lovers. Even if your
Speaker 7: lovers you have to back up a little. It's like
Speaker 7: you're it's the most intimate.
Speaker 5: You're literally well you're the voice in our head, you're
Speaker 5: the voice in their head when we're reading ahead.
Speaker 7: And what happens sometimes that's a marvelous something that the
Speaker 7: book that's latent in the book becomes much more pronounced
Speaker 7: in the audio version. And one version I can give
Speaker 7: is there was a somebody that wrote a book about
Speaker 7: the race of the North Pole. It was a Norwegian
Speaker 7: explorer who actually got there first, and then it was
Speaker 7: a British explorer who actually froze to death before he
Speaker 7: got there. The book was written by a brit and
Speaker 7: he was kind of hard on the British explorer. He
Speaker 7: kept saying all the way through the book, if he
Speaker 7: had been less stuffy and less British, he would have
Speaker 7: understood this, this, and this. So he was kind of
Speaker 7: hard on the British explorer, and it just as it happened.
Speaker 7: The very last page of the book was the piece
Speaker 7: of paper they found in his frozen hand when they
Speaker 7: found his dead body, his frozen body, he was writing
Speaker 7: with a pen in his tent and he froze to death.
Speaker 7: So the very last page of it was this entry
Speaker 7: from his diary saying, I know people have found fault
Speaker 7: with me, and I know I haven't been the best.
Speaker 7: But for the love of God, whoever finds this way,
Speaker 7: you please please take care of my wife and children.
Speaker 7: And so my voice I broke down reading it and
Speaker 7: I said to the engineer, do not you don't you
Speaker 7: dare ask me to do another take of that that
Speaker 7: because that is what he was feeling. And so the
Speaker 7: audiobook version of this book, where the British author was
Speaker 7: kind of ragging on him, he gets the last word,
Speaker 7: please please think of me with humanity. I mean, I
Speaker 7: choked up thinking about it. And that's like I didn't
Speaker 7: really change it. It's just the last word is by
Speaker 7: this man who died as he wrote these words. No
Speaker 7: matter what you say about him, he actually is having
Speaker 7: the last word because it's an audiobook and you can't
Speaker 7: it's wonderful. That happens quite a lot in audiobooks. Is
Speaker 7: a quality that may or may not have. Either it's
Speaker 7: in the book, but it becomes much more luminous, or
Speaker 7: it's kind of not in the book but there's no
Speaker 7: way around it, and that's it's kind of neat, that's
Speaker 7: wonderful special, or or sometimes there's like in a mystery,
Speaker 7: you know, there's there's a there's a character with an
Speaker 7: identifiable accent, and he's actually the murderer, and at a
Speaker 7: crucial point of the book, he comes up behind the
Speaker 7: main character and says, now, I've got you. Well, on
Speaker 7: the page, it doesn't say who it is, but if
Speaker 7: you're doing the same voice you've already created, then the
Speaker 7: listener does know who it is. And that's fun. It's
Speaker 7: like whoa, it's it's suddenly in three D. This isn't
Speaker 7: this is what you isn't what it would look like
Speaker 7: on the page. My favorite example ever was there was
Speaker 7: there's a book that ended with this guy. He's getting
Speaker 7: stabbed and he's he makes his way into a building
Speaker 7: and he knows he's dying. So he's crawling across the floor,
Speaker 7: dying of blood loss, and he's trying to stay aware
Speaker 7: and alive until he reaches the phone and he's talking
Speaker 7: to himself and talking to himself, and finally, right in
Speaker 7: the middle of a sentence, it stops and the rest
Speaker 7: of the page is blank, so that you understand reading
Speaker 7: it that he has died of blood loss. That's it
Speaker 7: doesn't say he died of blood loss. He just stops thinking.
Speaker 7: And so it's very, very meaningful on the page. You
Speaker 7: see this blank page. So I did it like that.
Speaker 7: I just stopped right like that, and the note came
Speaker 7: back from the proofreader. The thought seems unfinished.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah he's dead.
Speaker 4: Yeah he's gone.
Speaker 7: And that's the way it's got to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to stay that way.
Speaker 7: That's what the You know, if you don't have the
Speaker 7: book in front of you, this is I'm not even
Speaker 7: sure it's the next best thing. It's it's just as
Speaker 7: good as it's like this. The existence of this brain
Speaker 7: has ceased. But it's so funny the notes you get unfinished.
Speaker 1: I have one last question for you, and forgive me
Speaker 1: if you do not know this, but we are one
Speaker 1: year away from Perfect Stranger's fortieth anniversary. Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: to know if you could go back and tell young
Speaker 1: Bronzon something on the set of his massive, huge hit
Speaker 1: TV show, what would be the one message you would
Speaker 1: give young Bronson.
Speaker 7: I wouldn't say a thing he for for acting wise, No.
Speaker 1: Just any message now, knowing what you know now, having
Speaker 1: lived the life you've lived, now, if you could go
Speaker 1: back and tell him.
Speaker 7: Anything, because he did it as he did it to
Speaker 7: the best of his abilities. What he did was conserve
Speaker 7: one hundred percent of himself for that performance, and at
Speaker 7: the time that led to people saying, you don't socialize
Speaker 7: very much, and you know, but the performance stands and
Speaker 7: now I'm still here, So I wouldn't change I wouldn't
Speaker 7: change anything. Not that he would have listened, but his
Speaker 7: feeling was one hundred percent of it belongs on screen
Speaker 7: and I'm going to pour my heart into it and
Speaker 7: it's still there. Yeah, So I mean nothing.
Speaker 1: Wonderful Bronson, Thank you so much for spending some time
Speaker 1: with us today.
Speaker 3: We so appreciate you.
Speaker 7: Thank you for your patience.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so wonderful. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Have a great day. Enjoy the rest of your weekend
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 7: Big love, Thank you so much, Thank you bye.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. He's got so many interesting stories he
Speaker 3: is in.
Speaker 5: Like I mean, if you listed twenty of my favorite movies,
Speaker 5: he's probably in eight or nine of them.
Speaker 4: Seriously, he has one of those.
Speaker 3: Get to ask about after hours after our.
Speaker 5: And I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want
Speaker 5: to jump in and interrupt any of his stories. But
Speaker 5: he's there for like the start of the careers of
Speaker 5: Tom cruise Matt Dillon.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, it's what Eddie Murphy you need.
Speaker 5: It's one after another of these people that became went
Speaker 5: on to define Hollywood, and he was right there for
Speaker 5: for just star after star after star.
Speaker 4: It's amazing when you love.
Speaker 2: You know, his laugh with his co star, like the
Speaker 2: idea that they have, that mind meld, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: I get it, we get it.
Speaker 6: That's that's that's still in us.
Speaker 2: I know, I know he described it so well, but
Speaker 2: also just watching him do it, like they kept happening
Speaker 2: to him and we brought him up.
Speaker 6: He's like, well, let me tell you about this, and
Speaker 6: then he doesn't.
Speaker 2: Even really have much of a story because it's just
Speaker 2: their connection. It's like it's even probably not that funny,
Speaker 2: but he's a perfect Yes, it's so cool speaking a
Speaker 2: witch rider.
Speaker 5: Right now you have the perfect Superman Clark curl.
Speaker 6: Look at that right Wow? Wow?
Speaker 4: Yeah, there you go, straight up Clark Kent. I love it, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: Time to take some heads shots.
Speaker 4: But if you put on a haired glasses, I would
Speaker 4: know who you were. Who are crazy?
Speaker 6: Who are you crazy? But the Curl's never there when
Speaker 6: he's Clark right.
Speaker 4: The curl is yeah, it's part of Superman mostly Yeah.
Speaker 5: I love it.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for joining us for this episode of
Speaker 1: Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us on
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Speaker 4: We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 5: Podmeats World is nheart podcast produced and hosted by Danielle Fischel,
Speaker 5: Wilfredell and Ryder Strong executive producers, Jensen Karp and Amy
Speaker 5: Sugarman Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor,
Speaker 5: Tara sudbachsch producer, Maddy Moore, engineer and Boy Meets World
Speaker 5: superfan Easton Allen. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton
Speaker 5: of Typhoon and you can follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 5: Podmeets World Show or email us at Podmets Worldshow at
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