WEBVTT - Edward Norton on Directing – and His Directors 0:00:04.000 --> 0:00:09.559 I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Generally, 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:13.119 the actors I idolize are the greats of the past. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:16.840 I like some younger ones. I respect them, They're just 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:21.040 not on my mount rushmore like Kirk Douglas or Barbara Stanwick. 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:25.479 One of the few current actors who tempts me to 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:30.280 make an exception is Edward Norton. He melts into his 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:33.800 roles so totally it can be hard to recognize him 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:37.880 from one film to the next. After playing a sociopathic 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:42.120 murderer and Primal Fear, he moved to the cheerful Singing 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:46.280 Boyfriend and Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, and 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.880 from there a long list of great works by great directors, 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:57.480 including American History, X, Fight Club, and Spike Lee's. But 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.080 movie making has changed over his quarter century as a 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:05.119 leading man. Fight Club was shot over one thirty days. 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.679 That just doesn't happen anymore. The money's not there and 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:12.240 the studios don't have the patients. Norton has tried his 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.520 hand at directing twice, once on either side of that divide. 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:21.559 He's just releasing his adaptation of the Jonathan Leatham novel 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:25.800 Motherless Brooklyn. I'm in that one and it's out November one. 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:29.520 His other directing Foray was in two thousand with a 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:34.080 romantic comedy Keeping the Faith. I actually had more money 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:38.679 and more time to make Keeping the Faith, a rabbi 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:43.000 priest joke turned into a romantic comedy than I did 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.560 to make Motherless Brooklyn, which is a big, epic New 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:50.760 York period period piece of the fifties, done at scale 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:53.000 with you know, I think we ended up with six 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.800 and eight something effects shots in the film. I could 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:00.560 have never made this film in the constraints of budget 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:04.240 and time that we had back then, because I could 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:08.120 barely pull off Keeping the Faith with more. And that 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:13.480 was partly a function of in the years since, you know, 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:17.280 when we made the with Spike Um, which I think 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:20.640 is one of his better films, which is saying a lot. 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.600 He made that film in twenty six days and it's 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:27.400 a It's a really cinematically robust film shot in New York. 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:32.960 Going through the training camp of seeing how he did that, 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:37.920 seeing how Wes Anderson does his on fractional budgets and 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:44.040 schedules in your rito, doing Birdman in days unbelievable planning 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:49.760 just like planning at a level rehearsal um engagement with 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:55.639 actors in a way that necessitates less handholding and kind 0:02:55.680 --> 0:03:01.200 of debating. On the day Spike and s they know 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:04.440 what they want to do, They give themselves out and 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:06.280 things like that. They don't edit the film in the 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:08.840 way they shoot it, but they are not making it 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:11.480 up on the day. Um. They have put a lot 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:15.919 of thought into it and and they drive the proceedings 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:20.960 along in a very determined way. And when you see 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:24.840 really good people pulled out off, if you take mental notes, 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:29.639 you're like, Wow, this can be done. This can be 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.200 done in a different way. It can be done without compromise, 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.760 and you can pull this off. I never ever could 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.880 have made this film without working with Spike West, Alejandro 0:03:40.160 --> 0:03:42.000 and others. Did you know when you make Keeping the 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:44.040 Faith that you said to yourself over the past several 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:45.680 years that you would do it again? Did you know 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:48.280 you do it again? I already had this one rattling 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.400 around in my head. Not unlike my character in this 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:54.400 My character Lionel says, let's just say, an unfinished puzzle 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.560 makes my head hurt worse than most people. That's as 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:03.240 close to a line about myself as I've ever written, I, 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:07.240 I'm also probably obstinate, and um, I don't like to 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.440 be denied. But I but but some of it is 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:14.880 just that idea that he discusses in the film about 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:17.440 having glass in the brain. I if I get a 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:19.960 thing in my head, it just I really I suffer 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:23.760 a little bit from not achieving the satisfaction of ultimately 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.719 like putting the story together and getting it told so 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:29.359 I can get it out of my my brain loop. 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:32.640 You know. Part of my fascination with this piece was compulsion, 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:36.240 the idea that, as Lionel says, you're doing something for 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.719 certain reasons, and at some point you even forget what 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:42.320 the original reasons, where you're not even sure why you're 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:46.599 still pressing on a thing long after everyone's kind of 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:48.440 blaring it. You're like, yeah, isn't it time man to 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.640 let that to bury? Yeah? I always it's funny, isn't 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.840 it too? Because there's things that are much more important 0:04:55.120 --> 0:04:58.320 in the world, and you can sell yourself like why 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:01.520 am I? Why am I applying so much in my 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:05.400 time in life to telling a story? But at the 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:09.240 same time, we're living in an age where a lot 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.080 of things are encouraging people to be passive, you know, 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.880 so pushing back against anything. That's just a good feeling. 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:20.920 Your dad was a federal prosecutor. Yeah, at one where 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.120 he was best attorney. It was a U S attorney. 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.360 And your mom most of my life taught high school 0:05:25.360 --> 0:05:28.120 English in a public school. And your and your mom's 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.760 dad was this very successful real estate developer. Yeah. His 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:37.640 name was Jim Rowse. He was. He was very celebrated. Uh, 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:38.960 it was. He was. He was on the cover of 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:40.800 the New York Times when he died, which amazed me. 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:43.880 And he was on the cover of Time magazine, like, well, 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.560 you know when, when was the last time for positive 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:49.640 reasons a real estate developer was on the cover of Time. 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:54.159 He um, He was considered He was considered one of 0:05:54.160 --> 0:06:00.800 the great visionaries of progressive, humanistic ideas about cities. He 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:05.840 achieved these very very notable sort of downtown revitalization projects 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:08.480 like the Baldwin or Harbor or Fanuel Hall in Boston, 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:11.520 place that parts of the cities that had been written 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:15.240 off abandoned, and he saw vitality in them and was 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.320 convinced that you could bring life back into cities, make 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:22.760 cities the marketplace of ideas, culture, all of it. Yeah, 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:26.839 and in many ways, you know, he really um decried. 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:29.440 He was one of the first people to talk about sprawl, 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.920 that highways were going to create low density development, and 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.000 that this was gonna be people were going to flee 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:38.560 the cities and we were gonna get kind of non communities, 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:40.560 We were going to get these sort of like limitless 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:43.719 um you know, and and that the old world town 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:45.560 was going to disappear in a way. And he was right. 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:48.440 He proved these things he talked about in the fifties 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:50.640 turned very true in the sixties and seventies, and so 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:53.320 people really looked at him as a a gurup. But 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.480 he um. Then he he developed kind of the first 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:00.480 planned city in America, which was Columbia, Maryland, UM between 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:07.039 Baltimore and Washington. It was very progressive um, you know, socioeconomically, ethnically, diverse, 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.080 lots of open space. It was. It was kind of 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.320 this utopian idea of of what American communities could look like. 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:15.320 But what what I want to get to is, I mean, 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:18.840 you know, you go to Yale and you go and 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.760 you you switch from astronomy, I studied history. I thought 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:24.120 I wanted to study physics. I didn't have the math 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.800 for it at all. Like learned that very quickly, which 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:30.560 was one of those good humbling moments, realized I was 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:34.280 like better at writing. You switch to Asian history. You 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:37.040 you live in Japan, and you did you work for 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.520 your grandfather's company in Japan? Yeah? I did. He he 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:42.480 was consulting to two places that were trying to replicate 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:44.600 what he had done with in our harbors and stuff. 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.600 I um, I wanted to live and work abroad, like 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.880 in the Foreign Service or like the intelligence agencies used 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:54.680 to recruit at Yale. And I was was pretty enamored 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:59.440 of like the idea of doing something something and living overseas. 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:01.920 But I had the bug. I kind of had the 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:04.520 theater bug, and I kind of gave myself. I was like, 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:07.200 I'm going to move to New York. And I couldn't 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.920 really admit to myself I wanted to do that. You know, 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.080 yeah I could, You're like doing this, you don't. There's 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:17.880 something like it was an apology inside me to me too. 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:20.680 I and and and and in some ways, because my grandfather, 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:24.000 by then it devoted all his entire focus was on 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:26.840 affordable housing development, and he had built one of the 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:30.960 great organizations in America, a nonprofit organization figuring out how 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:35.240 to get complicated finance structures to get money into affordable 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:37.200 housing development. And he was in They were in New York, 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:42.120 redeveloping thousands of city owned abandoned buildings across the late 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.280 eighties and nineties. And I was working for him in 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:46.760 New York. I literally went down. I was like twenty one. 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:48.520 I went down, sat on the porch with my grandfather 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.480 and sort of apologized to him because he paid for 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:53.760 me to go to college. And I thought, how do 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:56.040 I tell him? How do I tell him I want 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.520 to be an actor? You know? And he and he 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.840 was the greatest. He was. He was a very eccentric, 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:05.000 eclectic guy. He was orphaned when he was a kid. 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:07.800 He he never he never wore suits. He wore like 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:12.320 moder's jackets and fishing hats. He was originally Yeah, he 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:14.560 really was. And he and I was shocked. He said 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.880 to me, he said, don't don't. He said, don't don't 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.319 chase money. He said, whatever you do, just don't chase money. 0:09:20.400 --> 0:09:22.679 Just he said, just do whatever, do what you love, 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:25.800 doing what you have a passion for. And in good time, 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:30.720 you'll figure out how you can be of service through it. 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:33.319 You know. He said, you can be of service in anything. 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:35.600 And he loved the arts. He loved He helped create 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:38.680 Center Stage in Baltimore by supporting it in the early years. 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:41.640 He really believed in the arts. So he kind of 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:43.640 gave me this permission. I was still working for him 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:46.360 to New York, but then I started moonlighting in the 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:50.079 theater and I felt like, um, I was allowed. But 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:51.680 but what I want to get to, I mean, I 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:55.480 don't know exaggerate this, but but it's like, you know, 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:58.560 you grow up, you go to Yale, and you come 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.319 from a very right, u stable family and a lot 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:04.560 of successful people there. And my point is that in 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:08.160 your acting, especially like book Ending now and Primal few 0:10:08.240 --> 0:10:10.080 years ago, where you really really start to take off 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:14.760 in the movie business, are two damaged people. Yeah. Uh, 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:17.640 it's hard to say. You know, it's a funny thing 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:23.920 because I am I'm not drawn to damage, but I 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:28.079 I am drawn to sort of the duality, like the 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:31.080 idea of the layer you see and the layer you 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.520 don't see, and sometimes they're paradoxical, you know. I think 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:39.120 it's not by chance that like the Greek drama symbol 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:42.520 is the two masks, the comedy and the drama masks, right, 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:47.560 because everybody's operating on these multiple level. There's these levels 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:50.679 in ourselves and sometimes they coexist and they're not necessarily 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:52.800 antagonistic to each other, but they really are the end 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.360 of the yang, right. And I think that when you 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.280 find um, when you find a character that the the 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:02.319 yin and the yang is going on like really clearly 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.480 at the same time in them, that's interesting. And sometimes 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:07.720 it's I don't want to call it cheap, but sometimes 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:12.160 it's like the kind of primal fear, like a person 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:16.320 who's faking a thing that's sort of juicy. That's like 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:18.719 the pulpy version of it. And it was a lot 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.559 of fun, right, especially when no one knows who you are, 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.960 so you can actually surprise a lot of people. But 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:27.720 then sometimes if it's like American History X, that's not 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:30.760 really a damage persons, but it's a person with this 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:33.480 huge complexity going on it. It is like a fellow 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:35.960 or something. He's a real leader, he's a lover of 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:39.520 his family, he's got a real intellect, his potential is limitless, 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:43.360 and he totally destroys himself with the one dark thing 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.360 with this this rage. Right, he's got rage, and the 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:52.200 rage just just dismantles everything else, right, And those paradoxes 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:56.200 are sometimes really compelling. Um, playing those parts, I find 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:58.440 me and I watch you in this film, and I'm 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.160 very drawn to the and of vacuity of that, like 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:05.760 I need to believe underneath that there's a sensitive person. Yeah, 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:08.560 you know you're not just it's not just externalized. No, No, 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.559 I think you did a great job. I'm not just 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:16.440 saying the thank you and uh and I'm not just 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:18.400 saying this because you're in the film and great in 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:22.800 the film. But I think, um, it's a very it's 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:25.920 a very interesting thing to me, like this idea of 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:29.440 like the counterpoint in people, the capacities and people and yeah, 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:33.400 Lionel in this has tourettes, but you it's a it's 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:36.719 absolutely stolen from the book over Black. At the top 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:39.120 of the film, you hear his inner voice, right, So 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:43.199 from the beginning, it's the trick of going you're gonna 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:46.360 know me like a friend. I'm gonna let you right 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.720 in on the inside, so that you can see the sensitive, 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:54.920 smart person, of depth of feeling, of loneliness, of longing. 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:57.880 You're gonna have immediate empathy because you're gonna go, I 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:00.280 like everything about the way this guy talks, the way 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:02.520 he tells his own story, and then I'm going to 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:04.120 let you in on the fact that I've got a 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:10.640 really messed up condition that makes life very difficult, very funny, etcetera. 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:16.679 And that's a great dramatic trick because you're not forty 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:19.200 seconds in and you go, I'm on this guy's side, right, 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:23.000 And that's credit to Jonathan Leatham who wrote the novel. 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.000 That's how the novel works on And speaking of which, 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.160 you walked around with the novel for how long? I 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:31.520 read the book, loved it, sort of got the rights 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:33.320 to it, knew I couldn't work on it for a 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:38.160 long time, and then got into this idea of taking 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:42.640 this great character study of the book and grafting it 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.640 into this kind of bigger idea. When I say bigger, 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:47.680 I mean just that the plot of the novel is 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:51.160 small and byzantine. And I said to Jonathan, Hey, what 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:55.120 if we let lionel this great emotional relationship you create 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:57.400 with the character. What if we let that be a 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:02.160 vehicle into looking at something a little more cinematically grand, 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:06.559 like the dark history of New York in the fifties, 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:11.559 and he's he's born and raised Brooklyn Knight. He knew 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:14.480 the heart of his novel was the character, and he 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:19.280 loved the transposition, the idea of loved it. So he's 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:22.240 a real cinemophile. He got it. Yeah, he got it. 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.680 And and also we talked about how, you know, Chandler 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:29.760 wrote multiple Marlowe detective stories, and it was like, let's 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:34.960 take the great emotional um connection you create in this 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:39.000 character and let's let's send him into his next mystery. Right. 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:43.320 He loved that idea. And thank god, Jonathan's not only 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:47.840 a secure as an artist, but he also he understands 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.240 that in going to film, you're going into another medium. 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:53.840 You need something different. I would do a part in 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:55.760 a film I'll never forget. We do the movie Pearl 0:14:55.800 --> 0:15:01.800 Harbor and Dolittle of the famous aviator. I play him 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.160 in the film and where they're shooting in l A 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:06.680 one day and members of his family are they're like 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:09.400 his granddaughter, and they're involved in some foundation or something 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:13.520 that keeps the flame alive of the the Doolittle memory. 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:17.080 And I forget what the organization was but this is 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:20.000 back in two thousand we shoot this movie Big Sunny Day, 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:22.600 where they are shooting at I forget where we were, 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:24.240 and I walk up to him and I go, so, 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.320 how's it going. You're enjoying watching the movie? And she goes, yes, 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.240 but Granddad would never do that. He would never talk 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.120 to people that way, the way you're doing that. And 0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:34.400 I was on the tip of my tongue. I want 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:36.080 to go and this is true of men who had 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:37.760 to be built a certain way to fit into the 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:40.640 cockpits of those planes. And they were a little bantams. 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:42.280 And I wanted to say, you know, if we really 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.400 were going after the whole granddad thing, Bob Balabanda, we're 0:15:45.400 --> 0:15:48.360 playing your granddad, not me. I'm about, you know, sixty 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.680 pounds heavier than your granddad and at least so now 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:53.320 I don't want to meet the people. I don't want 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:54.800 to know the people I'm gonna go in there, just 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:57.720 you know. My point is is that when you said 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.320 about Leatham in the book, well, I'll say to someone, 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:03.440 the character in the film represents an idea in the film, 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.040 We're no I felt that way about your character. Some 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:08.960 people have said to me, well, clearly it's based on 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:11.760 Robert Moses, and you don't want to contend with that, 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:16.160 because yes, it's infused with Robert Moses, but it is 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:20.920 also there's a reason I didn't pretend that these made 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:26.440 up characters of Motherless Brooklyn were interacting with real historical figures, 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:30.160 because then you end up asked answering all these ridiculous 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:34.480 questions about your It's like, well, wait, did Robert Moses 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:36.000 really do that? Is that really true to this? And 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:38.320 that really happened to go? You know? This is this 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:43.080 is why the Wisdom to Me in You could Go Back, 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.680 Citizen Kane is about Charles Foster Kane. It's not William 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:51.120 Randolph Hurst. And yes it is the essence of it 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:53.920 is distilled, but as you know when you read about that, 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:57.520 they infused quite a few details in that story from 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:02.240 other people's lives as well to create an essential American character. Right. 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:07.120 And Robert Penn Warren's great book All the King's Men, 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:10.280 it's about Hughie Long, but it's not about Hughie Long. 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:12.439 It's a made up story. That's why he made it. 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:16.680 Will he start and to to me um without revealing 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.920 where we know this film goes in the end. There's 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:23.400 a huge amount that happens in this movie that has 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:27.200 nothing to do whatsoever with anything that happened in Robert Moses' life, 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.120 on a plotting level, on a psycho sexual level, all 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:34.240 kinds of stuff. So there's distillations of the type of 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.280 person he was. There's also a weave of everything from 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:42.280 Strong Thermond and other you know, there's people that had 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.720 details of their lives that inspired me to kind of go, 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:50.000 I want to distill this into the essence of a 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:54.720 type of person that we as Americans have to really 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:58.040 think about. How much of them were willing to tolerate? 0:17:58.080 --> 0:17:59.560 And when he saw the movie, what kind of reaction 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:01.679 did you get? He that that was one of my 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:04.320 most nervous days. Uh. You know, there was like the 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.640 day I when you showed up on set and I'm like, well, 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:08.760 you know his lines. No, I'm kidding. I did the 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:10.520 best I can with what I have showing it to 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:13.239 leave him. I was nervous, and he was great. He 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.040 was very very emotional about it. It was very gratifying 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:20.680 um for him. I think it was you know, it's 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:22.760 like you've you've done a thing and then the thing 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:26.200 has refracted and become a whole other thing. And I 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.440 think he was artistically really thrilled when you had the book. 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:31.680 Over the ark of the time you had the book, 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:33.520 was here a moment you threw in the talent said 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:35.399 I don't think I'm going to do it. I had 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:37.479 I had a couple of moments of feeling like I 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.880 was done Quyhote and tilting it wind mills and you know, well, 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.040 because we have kids who were the same age and stuff, 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:46.280 you get into this chapter of your life and you 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:49.600 just say, how much am I willing to bend our 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:53.760 lives around a mirage? Right? Like? Am I going to 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:57.800 keep us on the camels going towards the mirage? Are 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:00.600 we going to are we going to am I gonna 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:03.600 not do other work? Am I going to like say no, 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.600 we can't take that trip because there's a possibility that 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.640 this might come together. You know, it starts to get 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:16.880 into a real like life priority crosses over into neurosis, yeah, 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:19.760 or ego or or but I think you know, Joe, 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.760 I mean I really think and uh, I'm not flipping 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.400 around on you, but you You've said to me, I'm 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:28.840 doing this thing on Saturday nights as if it can't 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:35.240 coexist with the you that we all came up on. Uh, 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:39.040 I saw you in Streetcar, Yeah, you know, Glen Garry, 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:43.320 Glenn Ross, these things that became for us really iconic 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:47.919 moments of of what I'd call like the you know, 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:51.280 dark um way do you think Miami Blues, which I 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:53.720 was always a big fan of, but them, to me, 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.840 this notion that just because you're functioning in a certain 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:01.200 gear let's call it the smiley off of the Greek mask, 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:04.320 that the other thing doesn't coexist, and that it's not 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:08.639 more interesting because it coexists. That's the thing is to me, 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:11.160 it's like it's not even that they cancel each other out, 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.720 it's that they become more interesting when they're both there, right, 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:19.000 because that's more true. There's a lot of dark stuff 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.440 going on under a lot of people's smiley narratives right. 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:26.600 To me, one of your most interesting sessions in here 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:30.400 was the one you put up after it all broke 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:33.760 the Schneiderman. I guess you did, and I thought the way, yeah, 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:36.479 the way you lead that in with Hey, we've we've 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:39.760 had these conversations with someone, We've had a conversation in 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:43.840 a gear that is we're connecting with a conscious humanist, 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:48.760 progressive yeah and um. And then there's this thing going 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:53.399 on unseen by almost anybody, right, that's so dark, and 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.200 you just constantly forced, I think, to grasp this idea 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:00.919 of there's a narrative in a ark, in life and 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.199 in our lives individually, and then there's the shadow narrative, 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:07.680 this thing that's going on underneath it. And it's very 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:12.200 very rare that we find ways into having honest conversations 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:16.000 about how we integrate those two things, right, because that's 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.720 that's like the argument. It's the argument inside ourselves privately. 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:22.560 You think about anyone we know who we know has 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:28.160 a measure of quality, admirable quality as a human being, 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:34.840 and he's doing stuff that is uh, either you know, detestable, unforgivable, whatever. 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:38.360 We know that person is having an argument inside themselves. Right, 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:42.480 We're having that argument as a country. We're having to 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:45.879 say to ourselves, Hey, we have to be able to 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:49.400 hold the ideal, we have to be able to still 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.640 take pride in our engagement with the ideal, but we 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:57.359 absolutely have to confront the the shadow narrative. We have 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:01.200 to be honest about what we are do win that's 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:06.760 antagonistic to what we're saying. That was movie star, director 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:11.960 producer Edward Norton. Another great actor whose career spans the 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:15.639 then and now of old school movies and streaming television 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:18.200 is Michael Douglas. You know, if I get one more 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:22.400 drunken guy from the street, hey, man is good. You're 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:24.919 the man. You're why I got into this business and 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:28.000 everything I quo it. Hey, you know, that's what I'm doing. 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:32.639 The rest of my interview with Michael Douglas is in 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:36.879 our archive at Here's the Thing, dot org ed Norton 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:55.720 on his favorite directors coming up next. I'm Alec Baldwin 0:22:56.040 --> 0:23:00.520 and you were listening to Here's the Thing. To keep 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:02.960 up with the next part of the show. Here's what 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:05.600 you need to know about some of Edward Norton's movies. 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:09.840 Fight Club was directed by David Fincher. American History X 0:23:09.920 --> 0:23:12.800 was directed by Tony Kay, who took out full page 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:16.440 ads and Variety complaining he'd been knifed in the back 0:23:16.760 --> 0:23:21.439 after the studio gave Norton final cut on the film. 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:24.320