Episode 689 - Michael Rapaport

All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, wads?

What the fuck, Adelix? Mark Maron here. This is WTF. This is my podcast.

Welcome. Welcome to the show. How are you? I will be in Iowa City, Iowa at the Mission Creek Festival, the Inglert Theater on Friday, April 8th.

I will be at the Rococo Theater in Lincoln, Nebraska on Saturday, April 9th, and I will be at the Arvis Bank Theater at the Midland in Kansas City, Missouri on Sunday, April 10th. Those shows will be a mix of some of the new stuff I'm working on and some of the stuff from the more later special. If you haven't seen that and you live in those places, maybe wait until I come to watch it. If you want to watch it, that special is available on Epics On Demand.

It's also available now on Hulu and Amazon, my more later special that I'm very proud of and I'm glad that people are watching it. And again, I appreciate the feedback on it because we live in a media world where only a few people can get the things that you do or know that they're out there. So hearing from you is nice. I seem that my life has gotten very small in the last six months.

It's all working on the show and doing the podcast. I barely watch television. I'm barely abreast of the situation. I know things are going on.

I know that there's a charade of a political circus happening. You know, many people try to pressure me to weigh in, to get involved. Well, look, here's my belief. I don't believe America is a, I think it's a troubled country and it's certainly not fair for everybody, but it's not, it is not bad.

It is not a bad place to live. There are certainly problems, but this framing of a, let's make America great again. America's pretty fucking great. And I know a lot of people are in trouble and there's a lot of problems.

There's systemic problems. There's injustice. There's horrible issues with how things are regulated or aren't regulated and who's in charge and what greed does and how people are getting fucked. I'm aware of a lot of those, most of those racial problems.

I'm highly aware and abreast of those things that are currents of horror in this country need to be changed. I have my own ideas about how to change things, but it doesn't matter. It's not, it's not the type of show this is. You know, I deal with, I deal with sadness, existential anger, the frustrations of just being alive, trying to be a compassionate person and know yourself in the world and try to act from your heart if possible.

And I believe in what's left of democracy to some degree, I believe that if everybody out there truly voted their heart, however broken it is and what you do with that heartbreak, that's really up to you and your brain and your conscience. But I think that if everybody went out there and voted what they really believe in their heart, that things could change in the progressive and proper direction for America. Because at some point, America is a great country, but when spectacles like what are happening now are happening, it's fucking embarrassing. It's embarrassing.

Sometimes I get embarrassed for our political system and I get embarrassed about certain parts of our culture and population. And there's some part of me that thinks, hey, maybe it's time for this country to grow the fuck up and behave like a responsible nation, responsible to each other. People who have beliefs that are unshakable, that's what they're going to do. People who are driven by a selfish and self-destructive fear out of desperation, they're going to do what they're going to do.

But I think people with a little sliver of hope and with a certain amount of decency and tolerance, if all of you went out there and voted your heart and what you believed in, I think that change can happen and continue to happen. That's what I believe. That's what I think. It's no great courage or risk for me to say those kind of things in the general way I'm saying it, but I do think that being part of it, whether you think it's bullshit or not, is important.

Be part of it. Go do your civic duty. Look, I can't even avoid jury duty. I'm certainly not going to be voting.

All right, let's talk about the big events in my life. My cat shit in my pants today. That's what I woke up to. My cat shit in my pants.

I mentioned Michael Rappaport is on the show today. I should mention who's on the show. It takes me a long time sometimes. I get rambling.

But Michael Rappaport, who I met briefly like many years ago with the improv. He was not pleasant, very cocky. He was just coming up. And I ran into him at Sarah Silverman's party like four or five months ago and it was great to see him.

We talked. I've always liked the guy. He's a straight shooter. He's a real New Yorker.

I always find him entertaining. I think he's a good actor. I was happy to have him here in the garage. So he's coming up.

But my cat shit in my pants this morning. How does that happen? No, I wasn't wearing the pants. I know it's probably a good setup for a Groucho-style joke.

That was brought to my attention on Twitter. But yeah, that's what I woke up to. I put my pants in and like three or four small, you know, well, cat-sized cat turds fell out of my leg. I felt them with the leg going in.

I knew exactly what was going on. I looked over at Monkey and I said, are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? You're going to shit in my pants?

I've never really received a clearer sort of message that the litter box needed to be changed. Yeah, he shit in my pants. So that was exciting. What other updates do you need to know?

The buzz. The buzz in the office. The turntable buzz. The panic that I was experiencing.

There's a whistle to it, which is really fucking annoying. I had the electrician check the currents at the building and they checked out fine, whatever that means. But the indicator are after troubleshooting that all of these receivers, these two receivers and this one amp were picking up that frequency on some level leads me to believe that the building's fucking grounded in a not a good way. And I told the landlord and she's like, I haven't had any complaints.

That's because no one's using stereo equipment. And I don't know really what to do with that. If the building's fucking grounded wrong. Now there's still the idea that would.

Here's my question to you nerds. And a lot of you guys helped out. You sent a lot of things to a lot of people where the basic one was like your turntable needs to be grounded. I'm not a moron.

I know that. But the question was, was my cartridge, which is a picking up the antenna frequency from the roof. That was some of the assumption that I thought. So like, if there's a like a person who works in stereo, like for reals in Los Angeles, you want to email me and maybe, you know, come try to figure this out.

Cause I want to be able to listen to the records you guys send me in my office. You got a better shot of me listening to it. If it works there, I don't know if that's incentive. Uh, my buddy Langhorne Slim, Sean Skolnick, apparently had some, uh, some part in designing a hat for Stetson.

Cause I got this hat in the mail in a beautiful hat box with a card, a little note from Sean saying, look at this man, I helped to design this hat. And it's one of those hats, not a cowboy hat. It's not really a derby, but it's sort of that midway point. It's got sort of a high top rounded with short sides.

It's a bit of a derby, but it's a little higher with a little bit of a wider brim. It's a unique thing. It's a high end hat felt beautiful black hat. And I don't know how you guys feel about hats, but I bought a lot of hats in my life.

A lot of hats of this sort that were not caps. They weren't baseball hats. I never been that guy, but fairly dramatic demanding hats. And I bought them on my own volition.

I've been in stores, hat stores, places that dealt in high end hats. And I put them on. I said, yeah, man, I can fucking do this. This is a fucking amazing hat, but it doesn't ever stick.

You know, you wear that hat out of that store with a certain amount of confidence, but not as much confidence as you need to carry that hat. And you start to feel it and chip away. You start to realize like, now this hat is drawing not necessarily positive attention. Then you kind of fight with yourself.

But I like the hat. There's no reason I can't express myself with this hat. And then you look around like no one else is wearing hats like this. And the people that are wearing hats like that, you probably made fun of.

You probably think we're kind of stupid except for that one or two people like Beck and, you know, maybe a few retro seventies rock sort of dudes can pull off that hat. And by the time you get home, you're like, oh, well, this, I like this hat. Yeah, maybe I'll wear it. And then it becomes a house hat.

So it's a hat you wear around the house. And then it just becomes a hat that you have up in the corner. And you're like, I still like that hat, but I like it on the shelf. I like it hanging on the wall.

So I don't know. I don't think I can adjust my entire lifestyle to the hat that Sean sent me. But I do like the hat. And there's part of me that wants to wear the hat out there.

But I just, I don't want to be one of those guys where, you know, you can't see past the hat. You know what I mean? I think I'm old enough now to realize that maybe I don't need a hat. It's sort of a red flag in a way.

My age, it's a reasonably priced midlife crisis. And you're going to look stupid out there. So I got a new house hat. And I'm going to go put it on right after this podcast.

The journey of the hat. But it's a nice enough hat that if I hang it on the wall, it'll look good as a, as just a wall hat. Got the house hat that will slowly become a wall hat. Right now I'm going to talk to Michael Rappaport.

It's a, you know, there's a lot coming at you. You know, strap in. All right. Before we go to that conversation with Michael, I want to mention that he has a podcast called I Am Rappaport.

So go check that out. If this, if this, if this rhythm of what you're about to hear resonates with you, go to, go check out I Am Rappaport, his podcast. Okay. I'll see you on the other side.

Michael Rappaport. I never give anyone an intro. Like, you know, I've known about you and I've seen you around forever. Did I run into you at that party?

Yes. Sarah Silverman's party. She's got a good party. It's a good party.

I didn't stay the whole run, but it's a nice party. It's a good party. It's a, it's a, it's a, I see a lot of people there who I only see at that party. So I like it.

That's a good party. It's like a low key celebrity party. And no one's, you know what I liked about the party? And I told her I was impressed with the party.

Nobody was on their phone. Right. Which in this day and age is a sign of a good party. And Senator Al Franken showed up.

Did he? I didn't see him. Yeah. I was, that was something else.

I was like, that's Al Franken. Because now, you know, I know now for years and I did America with him. But now it's like, that's Senator Franken. Right.

Right. Hanging out with the show business. Right. Right.

And then, you know, and of course, it's the Sarah Silverman party. Not to say that Senator Franklin had anything to do with it because I didn't see him there. Yeah. But you know, everybody was, you know, it's in Los Angeles openly smoking marijuana and eating stuff and all that stuff.

But it's a good party. New York pizza. New York pizza. From Joe's.

Yep. Good pizza. Good party. You know, is there good pizza here?

I think there's good pizza. I think the whole pizza culture in general. It puts a thought into it. It's changed.

It's like, you know, like now, like there's good pizza here. It's different. I think like pizza in New York is no, is no fucking, uh, nothing to be so proud about. A couple.

There's a couple. There's gotta be a couple. There's good places. But it's not like where it was like, you know, church and state where it was like just good pizza in New York and then like Mulberry Street opened.

And now there's all sorts of different kinds of pizza. Right. There's fancy pizzas. There's vegan pizzas.

Woodo oven. Moza. There's all sorts of shit. Where do you go in New York?

You go? I go, I go, I go, like you can get a good pizza at a local place, like a local slice place. I go to my local slice place. But I go to Patsy's I like.

Yeah. But I'm not waiting on the line for a slice of pizza. Right. I'm gonna fuck if God shat it out of his ass.

I'm not going for, uh, I'm not waiting on the line. Cause there's that whole thing too. So, but I like Joe's downtown. Joe's at, you mean on six?

On six? That's always good. Right? Yeah.

I think that's the best one. Yeah. I think it's, you know, I don't know if it's the best. I'm sure there's other ones.

But I'm not like a pizza scavenger. Me neither. But there used to be a place on like 48th right off of Broadway there that was really good. I can't remember what the fuck the name of it.

They had that grandma slice. Right. Right. Which became popular.

I like that. And now Two Boots opened downtown. Two Boots is good. Two Boots is good.

I remember when the first one opened on Avenue A, I think. Yep. And they put a little one right downtown here. I don't know who goes to it.

But it's pretty good. Two Boots is good. But again, I'm not going all out of my way and all that shit for any kind of food. Yeah, I don't wait on line either.

I'm not waiting on line. You go to Austin? No, I've only been to Austin once and it was just briefly. Why?

Did you say they never had me out there? Yeah, for any reason. There was no reason. I never had any reason.

Does it live up to all the expectations and hype? No, but there is. The reason I brought it up is because there's a barbecue place called Franklin's. That's a hipster barbecue place.

People wait on like three fucking hours. Fuck that shit. How the fuck can I do? I can kill my own cow barbecue myself.

In the time that would take you. All right, so let's go back over because I'm trying to think when I first knew you were alive. I guess it was around with the Zebrahead movie? Yeah, Zebrahead was when I first made my enormous splash.

But wait, am I mistaken in that you were a stand-up? Because I remember there was some contention over the fact like, who's this guy, Michael Rappaport? Is he a fucking stand-up? What's he doing up there?

I don't know him as a stand-up. Right, right. Well, at the time, there was a little contention. My stand-up career was short-lived.

Uh-huh. So I came out to Los Angeles in 1989. From New York. From New York.

I was 19. And I started, you know, I never really was like, you know, like, uh, you know, I never really considered myself like a stand-up. Like, I didn't understand the whole idea of making an act. I was 19.

Right. So I would talk a lot of shit. Pretty much the same thing I do now. Right.

But more unstructured shit-talking than I'm actually even doing for you right now. Right. Because right now I have like a beginning, middle, and end to some of my shit-talking. Oh, yeah.

You've honed it. The story. The life story. Exactly.

So as far as like my stand-up, yeah, I was doing stand-up. But I mean, I would host, you know, I had my 20 minutes and all that. I didn't know that there was contention. But, you know, I felt like, you know, like at that time, stand-up comedy was like, it was like disco.

Yeah. It was a disco era of stand-up comedy. And there was like, you know, there was a lot of good stand-ups hanging around, especially the improv, which was my stop-around. But were you affiliated, were you a relative as Claudia, your cousin?

Claudia is my sister. Claudia is my half-sister. Her actual name is Claudia Rappaport. And her stepfather is Mark Lano.

Right. Who owned the improv with Bud Freedman at the time. Exactly. So, I mean, but I did my shit there.

You know what I mean? Like, I would go up on open mic and all that stuff. But I was doing my thing, Mark. Like, I wasn't a chump.

Right. I wasn't like, you know, Chris Rock or Jay Leno. But when I got up there, motherfuckers laughed. Yeah, it was real.

And at the end of the day, it's like, you get up there and either motherfuckers are gonna laugh or they're not gonna laugh. But wait, I don't understand. So wait, so Mark Lano is not your stepdad? Mark Lano is my half-sister's stepfather.

So she remarried. That's why I try to keep this over. Yeah, so Claudia, I would come visit my sister. And I would actually come visit her before I even thought about becoming a stand-up comic.

When I was 13, I come. Were you growing up now? Manhattan, New York City. You did?

All New York, everything. Really? What part of New York? Inside Manhattan.

Really? So you're a real Manhattan kid? My whole life. How old are you?

45. I'm 27, right? Right. Absolutely.

So like even when you were a kid, like when I was younger, so you remember like when New York was like full of drugs and great and you know, the disco time and you're running around. Of course. Like did you go to CBGB's when you were 13? No, no, no, no.

That wasn't your thing, right? That wasn't my thing. That wasn't my thing. I mean, I started probably more like CBGB's than you would think because it was definitely like an underground.

Yeah, I never knew about the hip-hop thing. Where'd you go? I would go to like Union Square. Latin Quarters had a big hip-hop night that was like a big thing.

Then we started going like to a place in Harlem called The Rooftop. Yeah. Like sort of quintessential hip-hop spots before like the spots before that. And you see live shows?

Live shows. Do you remember who you saw? Shit, I saw everybody. I saw Bismarcky.

I saw fucking Big Daddy Kane. I saw, you know, KRS. I mean, I saw like, you know, it was emerging. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and the clubs that I went to, there was no, there was no alcohol served. So I was in there as 15 with grown men and there was fights and there was girls with fat asses. Yeah. It was a wild thing to see.

I was 15 years old and you know, people would be getting the shit beaten out of them and music would be playing and people would get carried out. Girls would get the earrings snatching. You know, I loved the music and we just went one weekend and I was like, we just kept going. So wait, did you grow up?

What were your parents? Were they in show business? No, my father was the general manager of a radio station, speaking of disco, a radio station in New York called WK2 Disco 92. Yeah.

It was the first station in New York to play disco music. In the 70s? In the late 70s. Well, in the 70s they played mellow and then like 78, 79, he was the one who said we should play disco.

They went from the bottom of the charts to the top of the charts. So your dad was on the cutting edge of all that dance deterioration shit studio 54, all that? They called him Disco Dave. Oh my God.

You know, he was just a Jew from the east side trying to raise a family. Is he still around? Oh yeah, he's still around. Did he have his time?

Did he party? He had his time and party more than I think he shares with me. But you know, he was a single dad. I mean, I was with my father most of the time, but my mother and my father divorced when I was young.

So he was just a guy, you know, raising his kids. But he had his nights at Studio 54. Yeah. He was doing his thing.

He was running the hottest radio station in New York City at the time. So it was a big deal. You know, it was disco and it was Studio 54 and cocaine and I don't know what the fuck he was doing. Yeah, but it's interesting though, because if he was running the station, you know, the relationships is sort of, you got access.

Sometimes you've got free shit. You know, like I'm sure it's like, we want a car. I got a guy, right? Cars, sneakers.

The sneakers thing was cool because the radio station had some deal with a non-chain sneakers place in New York called Fuck on the Run. Yeah, and they had a deal. so i'd go in there and get free sneakers as a kid it was like you know like yo i could go and get free sneakers it's important yeah so it was cool and you know and because of he worked at the radio station you know how i got exposed to you know all sorts of music but hip-hop is like in 1979 he brought home um a test pressing of the sugar hill games rappers the light promotional copy right and he was like we're gonna start playing this on the radio it's called rap music yeah and that was it for me i fell in love i was not i fell in love and it was like you know at the time there was no internet there was no plus i was nice when i got the record it was like you lived in the record yeah you would play over and over and over and over and it was so unusual you know all the words of course of course of course i mean i of course rappers the light i know it was a long version it was a 33 inch so i knew the long version and there was a short but it was like a 15 or 20 minute version of rappers light and we me and my brother and then finally he bowed out and my father was like turn that shit off i was like you brought it home you know but i just like it was like a love affair like i fell in love with that music as a kid innocently yeah and it was just you and your brother and your father me and my brother my father my sister claudia who started this whole fucking thing um she lived with her mom and then she she was an actress my sister she she was actually uh you know a teenage actress she she started acting early uh she got a part she went to music and art in new york city right and her mother was an actor joanne too yeah she was an actress yeah yeah and she's still like how uh you started coming out i started coming out visiting my sister but when i was 13 i was telling you about improv i would come visit i didn't know what anything was but she would say let's go to the improv and i saw everybody perform i saw a seinfeld leno um keenan ivory waynes was the first person i saw on stage i saw arsenio i saw i saw eddie murphy i saw robin williams when there would be four people in this i mean every single person and i was just a kid what year was that like this is 83 so they have all happening that was like the middle of the boom kind yeah and so it was like a unique thing like eddie murphy i mean everybody would come to the improv it was like the spot it wasn't 15 comedy clubs like they were in no no there was only two and it was like sort of like you know church and state yeah you're a comedy store guy or improv and i was improv i was like in my head like fuck comedy like i hang out at the improv 13 years old but you know like and claudie's older than you claudie's older than me yeah she will tell for this sake because she's probably listens we'll say she's younger than me okay but she used to host there too after a while you know i don't know when yeah she used to do some comedy yeah i remember i mean i know her you know she i hung out with her before i did not fuck your sister i did not fuck your sister okay okay um but you know like it was it was just an exciting time and it exposed me at the time i had dreams of being in the nba i wanted to be a basketball player you're a tall guy could you play you know in my head my head was a lot of things going on you never wanted to rap never wanted to rap i was just a fan just a fan never wanted to rap never wanted to be an actor never wanted to be a comedian like i was going to be in the nba at 13 but you liked comedy i loved it you know but i didn't know what it was but you met bud and everybody i mean of course everybody because i remember like after zebra head like i was 89 right but i know but i just remember walking into the improv and you were like holding court yeah yeah yeah i had been there i'd been hanging out there since i was literally since i was 13 but in 89 it was like you know you fucking not quite but yeah you weren't around no i wasn't they never really put me on that much one time i went on around probably 92 or something i was there and mark was there i was a very angry guy at that time very angry comic i did my shit and it was like it was uncomfortable and i walk off and mark's standing there by the door going out to the hallway and he looks at me goes very uplifting and that's saying something coming from him he's mocking me right right right he's all right yeah sorry so you're 13 and you're going back and forth i'm going back and forth and getting kicked out of new york city public schools and private schools really oh yeah why you're a criminal i wasn't i was so just the only thing i was was disruptive i was so disruptive that i got kicked out of ps158 which is a public school in the third grade in the 70s so you got to be i think back now like being to get kicked out of a public school in the 1970s you know it's in new york city you got to be such a fucking pain in the ass there was no fire starting there was no violence right there was no anything like it's just old school smart just an old like on steroids and i was like a fucking pain in the ass i have no memory of it right but i just think back how do you get kicked out of the school in the third grade that's an accomplishment right sure so put that on your resume exactly like you know and then it was just i went to one school to the next school and my father tried me a private school that was a way somebody said where'd you go i went to send you out of state or not no i mean i went to i went to mcburney i went to a school called robert lewis stevenson was like for like you know um middle class kids like it was like basically like a high-end place to send your kids they're like on the path to nowhere yeah but it was new york and it was like i just the one thing that did keep me focused is that i was gonna be in the mba yeah so there was no drinking there was no i didn't care about girls i didn't care about it i just played ball stayed out of trouble talk a lot of shit i i loved um i like the idea of a school for kids who are on their way to nowhere they still have i know like you know they have private schools where they're like you know we're gonna get you out of high school right and the parents have money and they're gonna pay for you to like you know do whatever the fuck you want liberal learning yeah you'll get hopefully it'll work out somehow if you get kicked out of those schools you're a piece of shit like because they're being paid a lot of money to keep you so like the threshold is high jail's the next step jail or like you know rehab or like forest programs and stuff like that like you know here's your gear right the mountain exactly because if you get kicked out of that shit and it's always you know more privileged kids than than not so you know like you know my family you know so anyway i i wind up getting kicked out of one of those schools so that was in the eighth grade and the ninth grade my father sent me back to wagner junior high school public school and then tenth grade i tried to live with my sister i went to fairfax a lot here for a year i was in i just missed new york i missed my friends too much and then i went to erasmus hall high school in brooklyn and and if that school that year was voted in the daily news in the worst public school in new york city yeah which is means a lot yeah because i mean it was like a riot zone literally out of there they asked me not to come back they didn't kick me out but they said you know what the fuck were you doing i just was a motherfucker and then at this point i thought i was hot shit i had a bunch of wild restless you know thug friends yeah i was the only white kid in the entire school and this is a rough school and it wasn't like well you must be a tough guy like i just had a lot of friends and you know everybody had their thing like some dudes could fight some dudes could play ball i could talk shit like i could snap you know like i could talk shit so i could play ball i you know i was just you know i know how to use my mouth that was my weapon like you never got arrested i got arrested once in 1989 um for some loitering bullshit nothing nothing to be proud of loitering loitering in a mall and you know like and then it was just it was like a quick arrest i got arrested out here in virginia it's nothing to be nothing good and actually yeah but nothing i got a couple little small things like that but nothing like you know worth mentioning like no stories no story behind getting arrested in virginia 19 loitering it was literally loitering and i think the only reason why they arrested because i didn't have idea what were you doing in virginia visiting my friends that were quote-unquote going to college down here you know mingling in you know in small time yeah drug dealing yeah small time yeah i'm doing dumb shit yeah doing dumb shit that disco dave's son and june brody's son shouldn't be doing right doing dumb shit doing really stupid shit that when i think about this little period of time i shudder of what could have wind up happening to me so you got did you somehow get scared straight you just fucking found show business you know what um if you see you see my my left ear mark yeah my ear yeah i got into a fight with with like a street fight and and and with with a bunch of dudes that were really that were really bout about it and got my ear bit off and and if you see like you know like the shape of my ear yeah like and at this point i knew i wasn't going to the nba no college scholarships to come in like i had doing their practice for hours and hours the guy got kicked out of school every year there's no college no for the six foot two jewish kid from the upper east side of manhattan strangely smart ass big mouth motherfucker who averaged 11 points i was no colleges came knocking down my door i don't know why to this day i feel like a lot of the biggie schools missed out but that incident i called my father was like dad i've been in the hospital for the last day and and i got my you know i told him he was like you know listen to me and and he said to me this is true so he said to me i'm afraid the next time you call me somebody's gonna tell me you got a bullet in you yeah and and i remember i don't have a great memory but i distinctly like remember like like like a shiver going through me and i was like that really like in my head that happened and then i actually came back to los angeles um and and and got an apartment for 325 dollars what was it so how old were you when the fight happened 19 yeah and then i came to los angeles just hanging out some bad guys and shit went down like i mean like real rough dudes like real rough dudes but were those the dudes you were hanging with regular at that time oh yeah i was hanging with rough guys and i was taking care of and protected but like i was hanging you know like my friends were like all from uh the brownsville section of brooklyn which is the ungentrifiable section of brooklyn and harlem and they were street dudes like and i you know fancy myself street but i was i was fucking i was not but i was around them and it literally started over some like what are you looking at shit and the next thing you know we're like in a four-on-three street fight and people are throwing rocks and throwing punches and i was actually getting the better of this dude and he bit my ear and at this point i had a looming thought that i would be a stand-up comic and while he was biting my ear i said to him you're biting my fucking ear i swear to god and as i pulled away from him i touched my ear and i couldn't feel it because it went numb but no bullshit the first thing that popped in my head was you can't be a stand-up comic with one ear like that's no bullshit like i was like how am i going to be a stand-up comic you're just like i'm gonna get 10 minutes of material no no no no i never tried at this point right so then you know so be the one ear guy i should have went with that see that's why i wasn't a good stand i had most of your ears i put it back on i got a skin graft all right so so you know uh anyway that that kind of woke me up and i think that's it like if you know it and you feel it and you know you know he says something like that and you realize you look at your life and where it is and it lands that's terrifying and it was great luckily it didn't go any further because i had no business doing the shit that i was doing um and i was you know and i just was you know i was so fucking dumb like when you're 19 you it's the dumbest part of my life yet the time that i thought i was the smartest in my life like now i know how dumb i am yeah and i know like what my parameters are but at the time i thought i knew everything yeah and i was untouchable and i was dumb as shit and it wasn't tough and i wasn't i was just dumb isn't it weird don't you have kids now two sons you have two sons 15 and 13 really already when did that happen when i was 30 do math mark i know it's crazy though yeah because i don't know i don't know you're one of those guys i think i know but i don't know i don't know but uh but like you know when i look back on it i see young people doing comedy now and they're like they're saying all this shit and this part of me is like that's not gonna that's not gonna happen right yeah what are you thinking right but when you're in it even if an old guy says to you like what the fuck are you doing you're stupid like right right what do you know exactly and now you're old guy like i know i have teenage sons how are they doing they're doing good you know like they're ahead of me um you know they're doing well in terms of where they are in their lives you know i mean good students they're good students they're getting there i mean they have the rapport name and they're boys so you know there's a sort of genetic disposition to be a fuck-up but in general they're good kids and they haven't gotten kicked out of school yet so they're sweet kids and and you know and they're good they're good boys so you move out here you get an apartment for 300 bucks 325 bucks yeah 25 changes the game so you say 300 it was 325 it's 1989 it's okay 325 you know it wasn't 375 i don't think i could afford where's that it was actually it was it was one of these apartments that sort of talked about by comics it was like this it was on carlton way in hollywood and a lot of other comics live there like j anthony brown yeah jimmy woodard um i remember jimmy woodard yeah there wasn't that guy jimmy i think still be still around yeah but there was it was like the comic place i started doing my little stand-up and you know i was able to to pay the rent and you're 20 i'm 19 yeah so you're doing mostly the improv well at that point actually i didn't start doing stand-up like i didn't make any money in for about a year i mean we're talking like 25 dollars 50 work another job yeah i was a messenger yeah a driving messenger yeah and and uh which was actually fun because it helped me learn the city because i didn't know i didn't know how to drive you thomas guide thomas guide yeah and i would deliver scripts to like actors and agencies a fucking messenger you have like you know packages i remember that i delivered a script to the guy from dukes of hazard and he came out i was like oh shit that's a dude from dukes of hazard like it's like i was like you know he came out and got like the package i think it was a script but that was like a big deal like oh that's the dude from dukes not that i gave a fuck about dukes of hazard but i went to this and i was like i know i know where the guy from dukes of you know i would see people but i wasn't impressed you know like i wasn't you know whatever the job was good but i kept that messenger job for about a year year and a half yeah family out here and you got along with mark you could eat at the improv improv yeah and and the cost of living was just so cheap and my apartment 325 the fucking shithole and um my mother gave me a used car yeah and you know i was off and running and i was at this point i was gonna be the next eddie murphy in my head i was going to be eddie murphy yeah that's like what i was gonna be but i had no sort of plan or how to get there and i was not a great stand-up comedian nor did i understand what it takes to become a great stand-up comedian and then after about a year year and a half of doing stand-up i would go on late or real early like i was never prime time yeah of course you know a casting agent saw me doing stand-up and they were casting the movie zebrahead and they were like yo you want to come in and audition for this movie and and and at the time like that's like like i was like zebrahead was like like it was like perfect time it was a perfect storm like it was like the perfect part right at the perfect time and and when i read the script i was like i'm going to get this part like it was like your life it was like my life it was a softer version of my life yeah but like i related to the whole culture the music the sort of outsider aspect of it all the interracial and at the time like i was like i flew myself to new york i auditioned it's a small movie you know it's like a you know a big movie and i auditioned and i was like in my head i was like there's no way i'm not getting this part yeah and you did right and i got the part and that and you had more than the movie you got you got sort of uh noticed yeah yeah and and then i was an actor and then i was like i'm not doing stand-up anymore i'm an actor i quit because you know and i remember like adam sandler and you know ben stiller and sarah silverman i don't do this shit i'm gonna fuck stand-up comedy i quit i'm an actor and you know i made like 27 000 before taxes but like yo you're 20 21 years old that's fucking huge and you think you're on your way i think i'm on my way you work kind of i was kind of bought a honda accord and i was like yo this is it you know like and you know and you know fortunately i started working like i know you're still frugal are you up on the court yeah practical guy i was always good with money i was always good with money um until i got divorced but that's a whole other fucking subject i know that one you know that one yeah i do yeah yeah what from the mother of your kids i don't even i got divorced once and that's all i'm saying i'm not saying anything i'm not saying anything it's over though you know there's the kids are still alive and you know there's still there's still there's still bills to be paid yeah i get you were you divorced i was i got no kid i was divorced twice oh shit the second one hurt because i had some money it hurts when you got money but i imagine if you have kids it's a whole other ballpark yeah well you know what i don't know because you seem like you're a smart dude and i don't know i need to ask you was the president sitting right where i'm sitting right there wait a minute yeah right where i'm sitting he was sitting here when he walked in was he like this is a fucking hovel like has he been in a place like this what he said exactly was a lot of pictures of you around here sort of narcissistic isn't it mark and were you like oh shit this isn't going on no no he's making a joke i didn't he was very relaxed he listened to it no i've heard it were you tripping out like when yeah dude i mean i fucking see you have secret service all over the place there was lapd here they tented my driveway we're waiting we see his helicopters coming over he's the fucking president it's not a casual event he got five people on headsets out there was nuts gets out of the motorcade comes up through that gate right where at the end of the same gate that i walked through right and i'm standing in front they told me wait here for him he walks in with all these people coming up the driveway the staff and i didn't even see him and all of a sudden out of the crowd i see mark and there's obama waving at me and i'm like mr president did chills go through yes yes that's great chills went through me knowing that i was sitting in the same spot this is his cup i put a little glass dome on his cup that's fucking cool that's fucking cool dude like did you save the place or like because i'm not saying i'm not saying any disrespectful way more but it's got like it's got a lived-in smell and not bad not good it's got a lived-in smell but i mean this is where it will happen yeah they swept it you know they took all this in here yeah they took like they took things that were dangerous off the desk here like that hammer and the knife did you ever in all of your podcasting ever imagine that it's good and as revered as you are and it's so much of a staple and sort of like you know like a monumental pillar of pockets you ever even think even that that would even be remotely something that could happen like you'd be interviewing the president of the United States like no it was crazy I mean I had done political talk radio years ago but like even then when you get a president it just never happened and I never sat out together I don't even do politics anymore and I'm like what the hell I had no idea and then people were like well how are you going to follow that I don't know I got Rich Voss on Michael Rapoport's coming on but what else are you going to do you know what I mean I don't want to interview candidates it was an amazing event I was thrilled that he thought this would be a good outlet for him to talk to people about himself which he did and from everything I've heard there was not much backlash negative from either side why should there be it was a great interview well because there's a bunch of assholes on both sides they don't shut up and there's always a fucking problem but a lot of people are like I forgot how much I like that guy they're like yeah now I know why I voted for him why can't he stay there and then there were people that never liked him but that was great yeah so it worked out did you find yourself when you were looking at him was it surreal and were you ever thrown were you going through did you ever sort of feel totally relaxed were you always sort of on cloud nine probably right now that you're interviewing me there's probably nervous excitement of course just like when Obama was here that's what I'm saying so did it ever go away we had to cover and there was other things I wanted to get to I wanted to frame it so he didn't get lost in politics or didn't get too wonky I wanted him to connect with me so that happened pretty quickly he disarmed me pretty quickly made some jokes and very quickly he's sitting there and I'm like I see a guy there there's a guy there and he was connected that's why I felt like I heard I felt like I heard the guy and that happened so once that started happening if you listen to it like ten minutes in I'm calling a man and I'm finishing his sentences so there was a comfort there and he's very adaptable in that way but I really felt like he was present and it was a guy pretty quickly I stopped thinking about everything that was going on outside you were able to show in right because I had questions and I don't usually and I couldn't just fly by the seat of my pants on that one or else I risk having an incomplete interview and I think I covered everything I wanted to cover with no it was good so now that you did Obama did interview Obama who is the top three people aside from this you can check me off who's the top three people that you would want to get to now well there's a lot of people even in show business you could pick three if you were like these would be the three of your favorites yeah Albert Brooks would be great that would be cool right I want to talk to Lily Tomlin about the old days I think it'd be pretty exciting to talk to Coppola right of course I don't know man there's always people that like I talked to Bill Freakin the other day and like in my mind sometimes because I run through my Rolodex so now we get pitched people and I'm like of course I want to talk to Bill Freakin directly to the French Connection he was here for three fucking hours that's crazy so like if I'm interested it doesn't matter where they come from politicians are not so interested in right I hear you of course Trump would be fun right I guess but he would just steamroll me what are you going to do with that guy I mean like he's going to blow through me like people say that he's talking bullshit right well yeah he is a shit fucker I feel like I could be the president if this motherfucker's taking it that far like he doesn't know shit I don't know shit he just talks some fucking random greasy shit and he's just like I'm like yo I can do this like that's the thing that I think is almost good about him running this motherfucker makes me feel like anybody could be president like this motherfucker doesn't know anything more or less than I do he has no like I've never heard somebody double talk so well like he just like doesn't answer the questions and like he works the room he works the room and he makes bullshitting attainable but I don't know if that's good or bad but I'm like I'm going to run for something I would be the fucking I'd be a fuck I seriously feel like I could be the mayor of New York if this fucking guy could run for a president I could at least be the mayor Schwarzenegger was the fucking governor of California Reagan was the fucking president I mean you know actors have done you know what I mean it's possible it's possible but yeah no but I don't know what I do with him because like there's like here's the problem and even with Obama but not so much when I talk to him is that they have an agenda and if they have an agenda everybody sort of has an agenda so like you know that agenda like you said the ability to deflect questions and deflect conversation to sort of service what you want to talk about anyways is annoying so you know like I knew like with Obama they didn't tell me they didn't give us questions they didn't give us final edit they knew he's a pro so like anything that guy so anything they don't want to answer they're just going to be like well that's a good question I'm going to talk about something else you're going to take you down a fucking lake that's right you're going to be down a lake and by the time you realize you're at that lake you're going to be like too far to hike up you're going to be on a pond somewhere right so I don't really want to deal with the campaign what were you saying though we were talking about divorce you said I'm a smart guy I've been married twice oh I don't know we were talking about divorce child support oh the reason I was going to ask you so you don't have kids because child support I'm not going to say or not say whether I deal with this but just in general and you would think what does a random person bring up child support he's probably dealing with it but I'm not going to say but child support I just want to throw this out there so if you don't know this but I figure you're probably smarter than me is a motherfucker because with child support you get forced to pay a certain amount of money each month and there's no proof of receipt on where that fucking money is going and I thought because I like your point of views on things if you had experienced that you could really break that down because it's a motherfucker and as far as like I don't know if it's state by state or a national thing but I feel like the second amendment and the child support laws don't change those are the only fucking two things that change like iPods improve cars improve but those motherfucking things I just heard a guy talking in a coffee shop down the street I know I'm with you on that and I feel bad for that guy I don't even know his name but the truth of the matter is I guess you could ask the kid where's the new shoes that your mother said that she got your pants look too small and you look thin you don't seem like you're eating good I don't understand I sent her money where's the fucking money going and why don't you have like a seven foot Christmas tree you got that bullshit Christmas tree and why is she driving a new car I mean not me the other kid the guy at the coffee shop no I know I guess I dodge that bullet but all that shit as soon as lawyers are involved it's a no win game for anybody it's fucked up and those no good fucking judges they truly do judge you they judge you they get their job yeah I know but until you're actually judged by a real judge you've never been judged it's not like you can be like well that girl judged me my boss judged me no until you're in there with that no good judge and he's really fucking and he's seen it all yeah all of it there's not like all your fucking rhetoric all your bullshit it means nothing can't shit talk a judge a judge because they're like alright that's fine but let's talk about the issue at hand and he's going to do it in three or five seconds and you're not going to know what the fuck happened to you until you're at the fucking bank pulling out money and you might as well just be in Vegas just gambling it away because it's going nowhere yeah there's more paperwork those fucking no good lawyers do you know what got me is the disclosure process that killed me I was like I don't have kids but I'm like I'm right I have a just fucking bite here and then they have you do we need all your phone bills for 20 years whatever the fuck it is I've never been more organized in my life I was at Kinkos three hours a day putting shit together for a dumb lawyer not realizing that all they're just a fucking shakedown it's a fucking shakedown and then you're at Kinkos for three hours yet your court session's like 36 seconds you don't even go you get a piece of paper that says that it was filed for $2,000 it's a motherfucker the lawyer bills that's a fucking see that's what I don't those motherfucking lawyers those divorce that's a show on both sides they're fucking skull bags the more you argue the happier they are exactly they just want to keep going and your lawyer is acting like your therapist but he's really just going ka-ching ka-ching I guess we can try that that sounds like a good idea yeah no fuck I don't like her and then what do you think of her lawyer and he's like oh we're going to game plan he thinks he's fucking Bill Belichick and it's just a fucking rat and then after that they go home and they call the other lawyer like how you doing I'm good they're probably fucking each other somehow shake that but that's the operative word for me with all that stuff is that really does become a shakedown and the only way it ends is when the guy with the money goes alright I'm done I'm done I've had enough I submit you put me in the figure four I got it you win I can't take it anymore exactly and then all that money you spent being righteous it's like why the fuck because any motherfucker I'll tell you this right now any guy who's been through it before will tell you right to your face pay her just give her what the fuck she wants at the top just pay her because when those when they get involved that's when the fucking party's over and you think you're like in some sort of fight but it ain't the thriller manila it ain't Pacquiao versus Mayweather it ain't Rousey versus the other girl it's a fucking slaughter it's fixed and the guy with the money is going to lose yeah Don King's coming in for the fucking fix so anyway but you're alright I'm alright the kids are good good so now going back to your story so Zebra has you launched you got an agent big agency I got a manager I don't think people realize I don't think I realize until I look at the filmography you've been in like a fucking hundred movies one way or the other yeah good bad and different but yeah I've worked non-stop since 1991 man and I've had the fortune of doing a lot of you know great movies with a lot of great people and work with a lot of great directors and you know and I've learned a tremendous amount and like your fifth movie you did was True Romance well everyone loves that movie I watched it recently I got it on Blu-ray thank you thank you it's a good movie it's a sweet part it's a sweet part that's really who I was at the time I was like an actor who wanted a break and that's why I got the part because they were casting that film and it was actually you know that was at the time when scripts were scripts they weren't sent they weren't emailed so you'd get them and The Word Around Town passed around and you know all my actor friends were auditioning for one part or another and you know we started hearing oh well Christopher Walken is going to play the mobster oh shit the mobster well Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette who had just come off a really good part in The Indian Runner they're going to oh that's cool and then Dennis Hopper is going to play oh shit Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken are going to be doing that scene yeah that fucking 8-page scene it was just his anticipation and I had to audition for a mobster part yeah a fucking Angelfini's part no just a small part a small part I'll actually say which part because I never liked to sort of discredit but it was a part my friend and actor friend Kevin Corrigan oh yeah yeah yeah so he wanted to play so I had to audition for that part and I was in the loop for that and I was like you know I interviewed him he's a good dude yeah great guy and me and Kevin have worked with each other a lot he was in my first movie Zebrahead and Kevin had already done he'd done Goodfellas he had done Men Don't Leave and I was like yo that's Kevin you know and he just like working on a film with Kevin was kind of like the first time when Zebrahead was the first actor I saw act the way I wanted to act like he exploded he had a small part in Zebrahead but he exploded at me you know when cameras were rolling I was like yo this guy's like Al Pacino and I was like I want to do that then we had pizza and like you know we became friends and the rest is you know friendship history but the casting director who was Mary Vernou she was a casting assistant while they were trying to cast Dick Ritchie she told my agent yo that guy Michael Rappaport I should come in and read like he's like that so I went in and read on a Saturday with the great Tony Scott and I remember behind me was all the photos of who the people were going to be in the movie so you know like I'm looking up there and there were like Xerox copies of Christian Slater Patricia Arquette Val Kilmer Samuel Jackson James Gandolfini who was nobody at the time and so on and so on and I'm like and I told Tony Scott who passed away I said please don't let me leave here until I get this part and he said alright mate you know we'll try it and I just read and read but I think just like that earnestness was really made sense well you probably had to peel back it's a pretty vulnerable part yeah it's who I was sweet kid almost sweet kid who just wanted this big break and you know you're so naturally filled with bluster I imagine Tony was like alright turn it down turn it down well at the time I don't know what the fuck was going through my head but I knew like somehow this was for me and there's been certain moments in my career like Zebrahead was the first one and True Romance was the second one I was like this is for me this is my part and I got it and doing that film was like you know I would show up on set when I wasn't in the movie because I was on set when they did the Christopher Walken Dennis Hopper scene and James Gandolfini he was just a guy like me we were like I can't fucking believe this and Gary Oldman was like I remember being in the makeup trailer and Gary Oldman was over there doing like a hair test and I was like what the fuck they were actually considering me for that part at one point wow that's a big part that's a heavy part right it was just a privilege to be in it and Tony Scott was so welcoming with all my thoughts and ideas and I was going to be Marlon Brando and I have these ideas and I'm going to create and some of the things he would say no no no and some of the things he would say yeah yeah yeah try it but he never told me to shut the fuck up right and then before that Poet of Justice that was a pretty big movie right was that Janet Jackson Tupac yeah yeah and I just had a little part but I wanted to be in it because I loved Tupac and I knew how special he was like a lot of other people like you knew you were around somebody who was special and then like I was just to go to the cast reading and the rap party like fucking Janet Jackson was there and this is when Janet Jackson was like Janet Jackson and Tupac was there and Regina King who these are your heroes I'm like yo and John Singleton who had just done Boys in the Little I'm like yo you know I'm 25 years old so I remember just like I don't care how big the part is it was with Tupac I went to the fucking cast read through and I went to the rap party and I remember the rap party like Janet Jackson was like oh I saw a true romance I love that and I was like this is fucking crazy this is crazy and Tupac and I got a Polaroid with Tupac you still got it? I still got it that's sweet man Singleton's great I think that movie Baby Boy fucking masterpiece me too I love that fucking movie a fucking encyclopedia he's like one of these encyclopedias film nerd of course he's a nerd nerd I'll tell him this to his face I love John he's a nerd nerd who's also a film nerd I'd love to fucking talk to that guy he's good people so you do that so you do true romance and there's a lot of movies here that I haven't seen some of them aren't that good Mark some of them aren't one seeing some of them might be other listen you don't ever know you don't take the gig I'll take the fucking gig and you go into it thinking everything's going to be Gone with the Wind it ain't Gone with the Wind Kiss the Leo goodbye up there that's one of the things you've never seen don't fucking see it it's a piece of shit great cast but you know it was with Christine Taylor Christopher Walken a piece of shit you never know but you're one of those guys that's going to represent himself no matter what there's a baseline to your personality that's not going to go away you're not going to disappear so anything you're in you're like that's Michael Rappaport doing some variation of that guy listen when you're just an actor character actor right yeah but when you're just an actor you're solely responsible and you can drive yourself crazy and this is where I think actors get a bad rap because especially the more and more successful you get and the more pressure but when you're just an actor the only thing you can control is your performance and even that at the end of the day a director and editor have the final setting but I can see why stars you hear about stars fighting with studios or stars fighting with directors your fucking ass is on the line and your pedigree and your ability to continue to star in movies is on the line and the business of show business I can see how Brando is the most famous for sort of despising it outwardly and openly first how it can drive you fucking nuts because you become a commodity and you can't even control what you're doing but for me I go into especially when I was young everything was just earnest I was like kiss Toledo goodbye that piece of shit amongst other things and we went into it thinking it's going to be this great mobster comedy and it didn't turn out that way but at the time you don't know but you were in like Higher Learning that was a big movie and Basketball Diaries that was a good movie working with Leonardo right DiCaprio he went on a Bigger and Better Things he did alright he did alright for himself the funny thing about Higher Learning is that he was actually going to be in Higher Learning the original cast for Higher Learning was Leonardo DiCaprio Tupac Gwyneth Paltrow and I was going to play a different part and then for some fucking strange reason DiCaprio decided to do some movie about a sinking ship I don't know what the fuck he was thinking I don't know what came of that thing what a mistake that was some fucking piece of shit and James Cameron and some guys just make the wrong choices I don't know what the fuck he was thinking about Mark but anyway so yeah I mean The Cave of Basketball Diaries and then he worked with Woody Woody Allen that was a big deal of course it was a big deal that was a big movie Oscar winner with what's he doing and that was was big for me it was exciting um most people i talk to that work with him he's pretty low-key right he kind of counts on you to do what you do he counts on you to do he doesn't count on you to do what you do you know what he wants yeah the first thing he wants is he doesn't want to talk about him being woody allen that's number one like so he doesn't want any sort of fanboy shit about like what was it like when you did manhattan he doesn't want to talk about himself but you know i got him to talk very open and sort of regularly about basketball yeah um fast food in new york chinese restaurants and jazz music because i knew going into it don't talk to him about any don't ask him movies he doesn't want to talk about that but if you talk to him just regularly you're not like you know extra giddy with him he'll talk to you but like as far as his process like he writes a script it's actor proof you know the way he shoots things is very contained he doesn't do a lot of coverage um everything looks beautiful he doesn't rehearse anything so like we have like you know five six seven page scenes and he would be like let's just shoot it and see what happens and like i mean i'm talking about like you don't run the lines like he would kind of like do this part over here do this part over here walk there walk back and then we'll see what happens and a lot of times it just works yeah and um and but there's definitely a method to the madness and a method to the magic yeah but he just sort of scales down all the bullshit right and at the time i was like you know what the fuck he's got complete control and he's not complete control and that makes a big difference great people you know in the film the writing anyone could do a good performance yeah right the writing itself is so good yeah no there's there's been quite a few good ones and then like uh copland without the next that should have been a huge movie i kind of like it's a weird movie yeah did you get to work did you get to talk to sly and everybody all of them yeah all of them and i was like a fucking kid in a candy store yeah like i was rey liota de niro yeah sylvester stallone and like sylvester stallone you know like like rocky was the first movie i ever saw that moved me i was six when i saw it yeah somehow it got me on an emotional level and then de niro and harvey kytel but but to be on a set new york guys i couldn't fucking believe that like i couldn't believe he's like a fixture in my life and de niro was a fixture in my life and the first day on the set of copland like i'm on the set with sylvester stallone ray liota harvey kytel and fucking robert de niro in a movie we're shooting downtown by one police plaza and i'm just like floating yeah floating through air like i can't believe that i've done this yeah and and you know i knew to keep my fan shit you know in this before cell phones and all that i remember like you know like you know writing in my journal like you know the thing i can't believe i'm going on set i'm about to do this thing with de niro and stallone and it was just a great experience that james mangle directed and you know the film turned out good and it was it was so much excitement and hype on it because it was gonna be sylvester stallone's return and i'm gonna gain weight and all that stuff and you know i mean it was just a it was it was fun peter berg was in it i know berg yes i lived with him briefly did you really in culver city when he was starting out i was starting out steve brill me steve brill oh shit and berg briefly lived with each other that's crazy they pushed me out they got rid of you that's a crazy bunch right there yeah yeah and then we were kids but uh so did you talk to de niro were you able to sort of get a little you know we had a little little exchanges i knew better than to fucking again like i just like i don't have tourettes but i felt like i had a raging bull tourettes like i was just gonna be like raging bull yeah taxi driver but i kept it under control um you know we had funny he was very polite very like i treated him like a professional he treated me like a professional when i was in front of him i knew the best thing to do was to just bring it to him just be a pro and be as good as i could possibly stallone was a different story like i was with stallone like rocky one through six yeah every single line from every single movie we would do i would do paulie lines yeah he would do rocky lines i would do rocky lines he would do adrian i would do his lines he would do other people like he loved it he answered every single one of my rocky fantasy questions yeah burgess meredith questions my carl weathers questions my stallone every single fucking question yeah to the point where james mangle was like do not talk to him don't fucking speak to him this is cop land this isn't rocky three he's not talking about club like don't talk to him on the set unless it's within the character so it was he was cool and very generous and totally like you know appreciated and never like annoyed and like he was cool did you become friends you know until the last day and i haven't seen him since i saw him at a basketball game two years later and he looked at me like i was an usher but listen he's you know and i get that now did you see the new one loved it i gotta see it for for sylvester sloan to get nominated for best supporting actor for essentially rocky seven it's almost like you know like it's a rocky story within rocky seven yeah but he deserves it and he was great in creed i loved creed and i was as cynical as anybody going into it i had fucking tears coming down my face sure it's it's great creed's great michael p jordan is great and and the thing about creed that it does is that it serves it creates a new movie yeah for for for all of us it's not kind of it refers to the old stuff and you get the old rocky and also for your kids exactly yeah exactly all right then let's get a bamboozle that you were great in that that's a great movie spike league i love that movie you know why i love that movie because i mean he shot it on digital i think one of the first movies on digital yeah i know but but the way they they produce the minstrel show yeah as television yeah and they showed it with those colors it was disturbing and beautiful like you know that's what it would look like and how different is that yeah like it was powerful to me just specifically the way they shot those minstrel shows it was fucking devastating yeah no it was very very uh was it hard for you to do to go against character a little bit um because you were kind of the asshole the intense yeah yeah no i loved it you know like as an actor like you love that shit and spike was good to work like spike is very similar to woody like he's very much like he loves the actor to do his thing yeah very uh sort of you know um you know empowering and and lets you do because it was one of the first films on digital i mean i'm talking about digital like it was small little cameras around yeah we had cameras like we would do fucking 10 page scenes there were long scenes and we'd be done like that because there was i was like did you get the coverage like yeah there's a camera there and i was like oh shit yeah it was like surveillance cameras almost and and uh if you watch the film again it definitely deserves a second watching or first watching you'll see that like the way it was shot was very unique and exciting cast and spiky movie in new york and um you know i'm proud of that movie you know i didn't really i didn't really feel now because this is how i do it but you did you did two with you did two with woody yeah that doesn't happen all the time no i know i got invited back now now i'm concerned i didn't get invited back the third time i'm like did i fuck up did i did i step on his toes but i'm sure i'll get a chance but but there's so fucking many movies what are the ones the other ones we talked about here really made a mark on you and we work with and what happened i mean beautiful girls is a movie people talk to me about uh that's a that's a good movie yeah um and then you know i directed a couple of docs recently i directed a doc called beach rounds and life about the group of tribe called guys that's pretty recent yeah and that was a big thing for me to do and to pull off and you know you got the gimme shelter yeah yeah that's a film that i reference a lot making that film because gimme shelter to me is is perfection oh yeah it's the greatest yeah and i love that poster but you know that was a big deal because i always wanted to direct something and um you know i just kind of fell into doing the tribe movie and you know the success from that was cool and you know just everything it took and the challenge of it and the frustration of it and the work of it but you know it won awards it's fucking certified fresh on rotten tomatoes which you know you're like yo we're certified fresh on rotten tomatoes and you know and you know so it's you know it's been a bunch of shit and you you know and i've been fortunate you know to do what i do you know and you know do good tv shit and do you know direction and now the the you know i started doing you know i gotta tell you you're one of my inspirations for doing my podcast the iron rap report podcast how often you do it twice a week oh yeah you got the model yeah yeah and you know and like just even like you know because i was gonna call it the motherfucking iron rap podcast but you know i didn't think that would be sellable not that even the iron even wtf is a little bit of an obstacle exactly exactly but you know like i just you know like being with you and doing this show with you means a lot to me because you know as far as i'm concerned i mean you know this you you know podcasts are becoming so part of the the culture now yeah yeah but you've been doing this shit for so long but i wanted to ask you how what made you start doing it when nobody was doing it desperation like what do you mean my standard career was not happening yeah my acting career wasn't happening you know the radio thing was over and i didn't know what the fuck i was gonna do right and that's really what happened all we committed to was two episodes a week no matter what new episodes we drop them like clockwork and see what happens at the beginning it wasn't even an interview show it was sort of a mishmash of things the idea of wtf was really about a theme that we were gonna have segments and stuff and then it just sort of once i moved out here i set up in here we were doing a third act occasionally that was a comedy piece and then that just started to go away and it became what it became that's crazy man yeah it was just persistence and sticking with it and there was no way to make money out of it for a couple years and then all of a sudden it was just good cosmic timing for once in my life you know i had a certain skill set that i didn't think i had right you know i would never have thought that i'd be thought of as just an interviewer a good interviewer i still don like the word interviewer i like to have conversations right and it just sort of grew it just i happened to be there to you know at the first wave of popularity of this thing right and define my little nook of it right i'm happy that other people do it i'm happy i helped define the medium for some people or gave some people hope that they can succeed at it but you know it's like anything else there's a lot of them out there now yeah see what happens yeah well it's i mean it's a good time and honestly you know like with all the bullshit and shit talking and all that stuff that we're doing like i really respect you know like what you've done and i'm sure other people feel like you've inspired them because you definitely inspire me because you you do make a conversation you do it in layman's terms with something that i could definitely respond to because when it gets too highfalutin yeah i'm like but it's also a personality driven thing and you've got that in spades for fuck's sake you know so what's the angle of yours you know i just talk shit you know we talk about you know my sidekick is actually my best friend i call him the blackhead mcmahon but his name is gerald movie and uh you know he's been my best friend we've been friends since like 1982 and at first it was just me and i was like yo i'm doing this podcast like come come when i'm recording one day this was early when we were doing it we were only doing it a year um and i was like yo i'm gonna ask you some things and you just do what you do and he was totally comfortable and then i was like yo you gotta do it with me but we talk shit we have fun you know we do the sick fuck of the week which is an award that is earned not given so you can't just be a sick fuck you gotta be a special kind of sick fuck yeah um one of the segments that people like a lot is famous white people with no lips which is again and then charlie sheen actually inspired me to give he was a double winner because he was the first person to win the sick fuck of the week and a famous white person with no lips so like i like to have fun talking about music sports and just i like interviewing um but only if it's somebody that i really you know i'm curious and excited about yeah yeah yeah so you mix it up i mix it up comedy segments and some themes exactly exactly and how's it going it's going good man people coming around people coming around and it's fun and you know for me it's fun and at times it's challenging because you know um sometimes you're like oh shit i gotta record oh yeah but not like challenging like i gotta go like build a house with like no but you still gotta show up for it you don't want to you know autopilot something that you're in charge of exactly you know that's the thing that i like about it it's like you know you can't i can't although i'll find a way to complain about anything because that's what i do like i'll just i'll complain about the podcast that i'm doing that i have total control over because that's just what jews we just tend to do especially abrasive big mouth uh you know uh jews i got my own version of that exactly so but i just i just love doing it and you know and you know people people have loved doing it and you know we're carving out a little niche and i try to keep it honest we don't fact check anything yeah that's one of the things i pride myself on that'll get listeners excited oh yeah it's the only non-fact-checking podcast get a lot of emails that way a lot of emails that way and there's really no accountability because it's a non-fact-checking podcast sure and then people are just like you fucking idiot right and then you get to read that on the air exactly exactly and i didn't know that to begin with but i was like you know i didn't want to do it in front of a computer because when i first when you first do a podcast you're probably like you're just like you're talking into a mic alone yeah which is like crazy person hard to master that well it's an amazing skill is what it is i mean if you think about radio broadcasters right who do that for hours i mean it's like it's a fucking skill and once you learn how to do that i remember the moment where i'm like i can i can own a mic on my own right for a couple hours if i have to right if you have to right on radio right and that day was sort of like all right it's like an amazing skill set it's liberating it is liberating so that's one of the things when i say fun and challenging yeah like finding that within me and you know and trying to just make your point of view honest and genuine without being tmi yeah without telling too much i don't mind too much i mean you should be like too much yeah sure you don't mean like too much you don't want to be sad you don't want to be sad pathetic or you know like you know like you just don't want to you have to find like you know what the parameters are like i'm being 100% honest but not 150 i don't want to drag you into my shit so i'm going to stop there right but i want to drag you in but not totally drag you in it with me like i want you to feel my pain but i want you to live it so you know so i love doing it and in between things um you know it's a fun thing i enjoy doing it and it's exciting well good man congratulations on that are you doing any movies right now i just finished a movie um with liev schreiber i feel like the title might change but it's called the bleeder it's about chuck webner who's actually uh the person that really inspired rocky he's a boxer that was sort of a you know a ham and egg boxer he fought muhammad ali he knocked muhammad ali down he went almost went the full distance essentially that was what um his career was defined by until the actual movie rocky came out and when the actual movie rocky came out and stallone was talking about being inspired by chuck webner it essentially drove the real rocky the real chuck webner crazy because he's like that's my fucking life and uh it's a great script liev is fucking awesome and uh a great story is he still alive he's still alive and he's feeling good about it yeah man and he's literally like the real rocky like his you know like his whole life and you know like the way that movie affected him the success of rocky and be like wait a minute that's fucking me and then no one sort of they're like you know the academy works he's like well i won like you didn't win shit rocky won yeah and it affected this guy and so i ever reached out yeah yeah so i reached out and there was stuff i don't want to say too much or say too little movie it was in the movie not that i'm giving away things but there was legality things but it's all stuff that's public you know it's out there like they came to a settlement because when you look at it like it was he talked about it you know when stallone did rocky he didn't know it was gonna be rocky it was a million dollar movie yeah it was like a fucking independent movie starring a guy named Sylvester Stallone yeah who was not Sylvester Stallone at the time but you know that was one of the things i'm gonna star in my movie like we're gonna get James Conner fucking Paul Newman and he's like no that's the way we're gonna make the movie so that's a great story but that movie seeing that and hearing this guy talk about well i was inspired by Chuck Webner fighting Muhammad Ali it drove the real guy crazy right right so this movie's about that part of his life and and um it's a good you know it's good yeah it's good it's good this guy named Philippe Fardieu he's a Montreal Canadian yeah he's a French Canadian yeah he's a Montreal Canadian but he's like i'm not pronouncing his last name but he did a few movies and he's good and it's it's a good pedigree of people oh great so you're working man i can't complain man i'm not going you know what i'm saying yeah thanks for talking to me buddy yo i appreciate it Mark and you know like it's a privilege and i'm gonna take this chair and put this fucking thing on ebay is that cool no no no okay all right fuck it all right maybe i'll find something you can have all right well if there's a guy they should force me because i've been talking this shit the whole time like i'm thinking like maybe Obama touch this maybe Obama touch that for the first ever I can give you anything you're like yeah this is you're right yeah don't just piece of paper this bag here this is this target bag he's been into that right all right thank you all right that's it that was invigorating talking to Michael Rappaport is invigorating i like him that was fun go to WTFpod.com a lot of posters going out lately i like the posters maybe you will too get hooked up with some just coffee.coop get the WTF win yeah you know get on the mailing list go there go go go guitar went boomer lives