Tom Hanks

Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert. I'm deck shepherd and I'm looking across for me and there's nothing but a sad empty seat. There's miniature mouse luxuries in Europe. God bless her.

We applaud her. Today we have a guest Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks owns a string of muffler shops around the Midwest. We thought we'd have them in as an expert because a lot of people end up replacing their exhaust systems and we thought, why not have an expert, right Rob?

Yeah, yeah, that's primarily what Tom Hanks is known for. And also whatever he was enforcing, comp and cast away and saving private Ryan and big and stuff. But at any rate, he has a new movie out, Pinocchio. And not only is he in Pinocchio, he plays Jepeto in Pinocchio and almost as exciting as him being in it is that it's directed by Robert Zumekis, who's just one of the all-time greatest.

Forrest Gump, these two paired together well. All that to say, we got to talk to Tom Hanks, improbable and possible and incredibly fun. What a nice sweet guy. Rob, were you shocked with how gregarious he was?

He was very nice. Yeah, and he called you Rob many times. Robby, I think. Yeah, I was in the attic by myself while you both were gone.

Oh, right. And he was talking directly to you, saying, Robby. Yeah, it doesn't happen a lot. What a gentleman.

Please enjoy Tom Hanks. He's an Ochrez guy. You know, other podcasts just give me one of these. That's a gift.

You know, Rob, we really should have armchair expert inscribed on those because it is a parting gift. What would be wrong with a coffee cup or a to bag that says we're on. We have coffee cups. We do have mugs and some of them cost $2,000.

So we'll send you one and you should be very pleased. Tom, you're laughing. That's the reality. So we accidentally made a batch of left-handed mugs.

They're not for sale on the website. So we had extras and we thought, well, let's just as a joke. We'll put them for sale for $2,000. Did I tell you left-handed mugs?

I have some left-handed pens that I sell for a lot of bucks. Maybe we could pore straight. I have some left-handed headphones. I've got some left-handed sunglasses.

So lo and behold, we've sold many of these $2,000 left-handed mugs. And of course, we have some ethics. So we're like, we can't keep that money. So now it's become a thing that anytime someone buys some of them, call them and say, what do you want us to donate this to?

There you go. Yeah. It all got figured out. But we'll just give you one and you don't have to donate anything.

I'll buy one and it can go directly to the Dax Shepherd Rolex fund. Oh, that's so kind. You're so kind. And the Monica Padman Kelly Bag.

Oh my God, buy all of them, please. Monica, did he just strike gold? Is Kelly Bag a thing I should know about? It's a fancy bag.

Comms in the know. You say I have an expert that lives at home with me. So I know some things. You know most of the things I'm pretty sure.

I'm going to catch you up to speed. So Dax, yes, birth name came from a popular book in the 70s called The Adventures by Harold Robbins. It's a very smudgy book that my folks read. Not to be confused with the carpet baggers by Harold Robbins.

Harold Robbins was a guy who wrote quote unquote, Racy novels. I never read a one of them and they were all turned into horrible movies, not to take away from anybody that was in them, but they're kind of like pulpy film. Joan Collins, I think she was in some Robert Ryan might have been in one, but was Dax a character that was kind of like a Gondreppe Red's Day, a lot of some good looking dude. He fucked.

I'll just sum it up quickest by saying this dude couldn't stay out of the bed. There you go. Literally DAX is on your birth certificate? Yeah, it's hard to believe, isn't it?

Especially given my occupation. Like I always say on the playground in Michigan, it was just a target, but now it seems very convenient. Now there was an actor by the name of Dak Rambo. Do you remember him?

He's a very good looking guy. He's kind of like Richard Jackel type. Before Rambo became the thing that Rambo then became. I would just love to meet the guy.

Hey, Dak Rambo. That's going to be my new hotel anonymous. You know, Golden alias DAX Rambo. I think I may have to go by that now.

Let's just say if you have a young son and you name him, Dak Rambo, you're betting on the fact he'll be six four and can pull that name off. That's a huge swing. That's like a Johnny Cash song, you know, boy named Dak. It's the opposite of boy named Sue is five to, you know, very slight as a wispy beard doesn't have to shave every day.

My dad, my dad, he likes to become a killer. Now I see that you're in a hotel room. I want to road. That was the other thing I kind of wanted to bring up speed so you weren't too off kilter.

So yeah, me and my childhood best friend are in a tour bus driving around the country, but I needed really good internet to talk to you. So now I'm in Birmingham, Alabama at a hotel. So I thank you for the shower. You gave me an excuse to get inside smoking on into Birmingham as the Chuck Berry a promised land song would point smoking right into Birmingham on a grand bus.

Listen, we're perfectly into my first question for you because I just watched you on Seth Meyer and your ability to pull up these random things is pretty unparalleled. There's so many pop culture icon references here and I wonder, do you feel them dissipating? Are you still in total command I turned 66 this year and I think this happens as you go back to what is essentially your core rope memories like some ancient hard drive that just goes down. I can still sing the Nestle's quick commercial.

I saw on TV when I was four years old. Will you do it? And NDSDLES Nestles makes the very best show. They had this little hound dog puppet that you could hear a slits clacking when he, you know, the New York City of New York.

We were always pissed off because mom got either oval teen or Nestle's quick and what we wanted was Bosco. We wanted the chocolate syrup that was called Bosco. So first of all, ADD, attention deficit disorder, which I turned into a lucrative living, which I believe Dak Shepherd has as well. And then I knew what time it was by what was on TV.

When love of life was over, I had to have my clothes on and I had to go to school. When Star Trek came on, I had to go upstairs and have dinner with the folks. It's like when you would sit around with your grandparents or anybody who was in their 60s, they'd start talking about Fibber McGee and Molly or Allen's Alley. And these were huge radio shows that they listened to when they were kids and they were bits.

You go into a closet, oh, go watch out for that closet, McGee. And you say, what is that a reference to? Oh, it's pretty McGee and Molly every time they open the closet, all the stuff would come out of it. So yeah, I got them.

I got too many of them. Ask me the lyrics of a dual epison. I can't say I have no idea. You're not supposed to know that.

Nobody knows that. All right. I'm still proud that I can sing. I'm going to knock you out.

Mama said knock you out. That's how current I am. By the way, that might mark the tail end of your imprint period. I'm not kidding.

You were a healthy age when that came out, right? You were 40 or something. You do not want to sit around with me. And if you go on YouTube and start bringing up those three and a half hour compilations of old commercials or opening credits from old television shows, I remember them all and I just disappear.

I take off into a stratosphere and take me forever to come back. What did I say on Seth Meyers? That was impressive at all. Oh, there was a rapid fire list of things.

You were talking about the pantheon, then you were talking about the iterations of it. You were just blasting. It was like seven or eight factoids in a row. And I was like, how long can you maintain this pace?

I get worked up for a TV show. You know, you're a clever show. Can you imagine? Okay, in this day and age, have you ever gone on any TV show, a chat show, a late night show, in which they have not just tried to keep it going as fast as humanly possible.

You get jazzed, worked up, and you just go out and try to talk in an easy going cadence, man. You're gone. They cut to a commercial before you're. I don't think people understand that a starter pistol goes off as they come back from commercial.

And yeah, if you don't get this story in in the next three and a half minutes, they unplug your movie. Well, then you miss the train. They're not conversations. They're performances.

Although, I will say that Seth Meyers does put on a pretty easy going chat show. And Jimmy Kimmel do, I must say, that was the appeal to do this for me is like, I love doing like my talk shows as I'm sure you do. It is a performance. I think that might be the thing I'm better at than acting.

So I like doing them. But at the same time, you're not learning the thing about me. Oh, dear Lord. No.

Yeah, you're not getting any sense of actually who I am. And then in this medium, there's just the unlimited space. That's kind of the appeal of it for me. I can imagine you've done a ton of podcast.

Have you? No, I don't view these as work. These are just projected conversation. If you and I in Monica were gonna go and Monica was gonna buy us lunch because you have an expense account.

I'll treat you. The three of us were just gonna sit around and chat. That would essentially be worthy of podcasts. Yes.

You're right. Talk shows are fun to do. But I have been filled with such self-loathing on the drive home because I didn't think I was funny enough or I blew a thing or I didn't live up to the white hot four hours of the segment producers conversation that you had prior to it. Well, surely you've had the experience where you schedule a call prior to being on a talk show and you talk with a segment producer and they're asking random stuffs like, Oh, I saw you went on vacation and then you start telling the story and by God, you crush this story.

The dude is in stitches and then you think, well, I'm not even on TV yet. Wait until I'm in a suit saying this. And then you do it. And God, even if it's fine, you can't help but compare it to that telephone conversation.

It just never gets better than that phone call. It's like we were better in the matinee than we were in the human performance. You guys, I have a hard reality. It could be wrong.

But the guy who's doing the pre interview with you on the phone, of course, he's going to laugh. He's so excited to be talking to you and talking to you. They're hardcore professionals. I can go back.

Mary Connolly, Maria Pope, there's a number of others that I could bring up. I have to say, I've been laughing so hard with them for four hours on the phone. And then they say, well, we think we got enough. And I said, no, no, I want another two hours tomorrow because I'm only going to be on your show for seven minutes and five, six hours of prep is not enough time.

But part of it is because they are hilarious too. Yes. I've never chatted with a segment producer that didn't just crush me on the back end of their give and take as well. Yeah, there's even been times I don't know if you've had this, they'll say something funnier in response.

Then I get so they drop in like a rewrite or a punch up. Can I work that into this bit? Can I steal that? Now, let me ask your question, Monica index.

I have one literally a single example of when I was watching a talk show and saw somebody that was so fabulous, I thought I have to see the movie that this person is in. Have you ever done that? I'll tell you mine, but it's literally only one time. So I'm out there flopping around like a trap in the bottom of a canoe saying, please, please, please, please go see Larry Crown.

And nobody does. All you'll do is say, well, what are you going to do? It talks a shot and actually there's an anomaly in the chat show process anyway that no one is really paying attention to the clip on Conan O'Brien. I saw an unknown at the time to me, Jack Black, talking about Hi, Fidelity.

And he was so brand new and sparkly, shiny, I'm going to see Hi, Fidelity based on this guy named Jack Black. And I did and I've been to Jack Black, but that's the only time. Well, yes, I have the same argument, right, which is they may love you. They may even be like that guy was great.

I'd love to see him at the mall. I'd even pay five bucks to go chat with him at the mall basically walk across the street. But the smoothie is I don't think I can make a watch a clip and ultimately you're judging it based on the material as maybe you should. So you can't outperform this terrible clip you bring if that's the case.

There was a time you had to set up the clip now they just showed the clip. So you want to set up this clip for us? Yes, yes, I do. What has happened is a monster has come up with me and my girlfriend who I have broken up with because I fell in love with her sister having a conversation and I vented to Chevy and we were out by the reservoir.

We're not aware that the monster, you know, you can't set up a clip. Yes, here's a clip from our movie. It comes about the 45 minute mark. That's just nailed exactly why they got rid of that.

And it was probably right for them to do so because they don't know when to start a story. This is probably the biggest hiccup people have just in general. My wife, I always make fun of her is she starts a story about who she saw at the grocery store this morning. And all of a sudden we're back in her elementary school.

I said, you know, Jen, right? We went to school zone. So I went to high school with, you know, after I came out of element and I go, baby, baby, you're eight years old right now. What happened at the grocery store?

The same thing. If I go to grocery store with you and my kids or grandkids, it'll be turned on one aisle. I literally said, now this was the aisle that the Bosco used to be on. My mom would get the oval teen and that would make me sad because we all want to next thing.

We're going to pop who? What year is it? Can you tell me what year it is right now? Okay, I got to manhandle you for one second.

All right, wrestle me to the ground kicking and screaming. I kind of want to give a testimonial about who you are outside of the show. And then I want to cycle analyze you about the recent nostalgia. Okay, go ahead.

Okay, here's the testimonial. I had done a movie with your wife Rita. And I think I must have told her one of my Schwarzenegger stories. I can't even remember what story I told her, but then apparently she had relayed it to you.

So then, at least a year after I had worked with Rita, Chris and I were walking out of some event. We were all waiting for a valet. You two were waiting for valet. I was thrilled.

It was the first time I had ever seen you in real life. And I, you know, was even nervous. And then you walked directly up to me and you said, hi, Dax, I'm Tom. I heard the story about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Will you tell it? I mean, talk about if I could have drafted my interaction with you. Not only do you know my name, you already know I have a good story. You're asking me now to tell it.

And so I just want to say off-camera, off-screen, off-podcast, that's two Tom Hanks's. And I've had a couple other interactions with you where you're that way. Almost like I don't know how you have the capacity for that. Look, I was waiting for a car, man.

I was waiting for it. Like I'm like, does this guy have an earpiece in? I said to Rita, what is that guy? No, I would mention came home, send him your braids and said you were hilarious.

Because we all judge all movies by how good the hangtime is. Well, that's all it's about, right? Yeah, it's all about the hang. Who's there?

Who's funny? It was great. Because when you're working, you know, your eyes roll up in the back of your head and all you can do is try to tell the truth. But all the rest of it is what was it like a baggage claim?

Oh, there was such a great guy at baggage claim. You were like, oh, you're just waiting. I can't remember what the story is, but you have some killer Arnold Schwarzenegger calling me to ask me if I would come bring him out on stage at some rallies because I do an impersonation of him. And on the phone, I said, oh my god, I'm so flattered.

For the governor thing? When he was the governor, yeah, it was please hold for the governor when the phone calls him. And I said, I'm so flattered I'd love to do it. And by the way, I'm not anymore.

But at this time, I was a libertarian. But I can't come out and bring up for these Republican fundraisers. I'm a libertarian. And he goes, me too.

Over the news, a libertarian. You know, right there, that is hilarious story. I got to go. My Tesla is here, but I'm good to see you.

Okay, so that's my testimonial about you as a person. And I bumped into you a few times over the years and you're just so fucking generous and nice. And I don't know how you remember everyone. She says hello, by the way, please tell her I love her.

I have delivered under you her best. So it's interesting you and I it doesn't really matter what you achieve or I do. We're married, right? And both of our wife's saying and they often sing at the same event.

So then you and I are inevitably at these things. I love him so much, man. When you go with your wife, the most you have to do is wear a laminate and carry her lip gloss. That's all you have to do.

That's the only work that you get a free snack backstage. Yeah, they'll take you out to your seat. You don't have to work. It's fantastic.

I'm asking you to read it. Hey, put more dates, wouldn't you? So that I can, you know, hang around in the bus and be backstage and eat with a crew and go see the shows. If you're like me, there's the added element that if my wife did improv, I'd hate it because I want to be doing the improv.

I can't sing. I have no illusions that I'll ever be up there singing. So when I watch this thing, I'm also not filled with envy that I don't get to perform that night. It's just like, this is your thing.

And then I actually cry every time she sings because I'm like, I don't understand how you can do that. That's like a different realm that you can do. I can comprehend it. I once asked her, she was going to perform at a fundraiser in a hockey arena in Indiana with Sugar Land, I think.

I said, oh, man, are you nervous? She said, nervous. She said, I can't wait to get out there. She became like this performance beast.

And by the way, the All Singer Priest has got a record dropping a CD dropping next month, Duet's with Smoky Robinson, Tim McGraw, Elvis Costello, Jackson Brown, Elvis Presley, Buddy Hollis. Let's keep going with that. It's a fabulous record from songs from the 70s. That's awesome.

And she'll be up promoting the Dickens out of that too. And I hope she does a lot of dates so I can hang around backstage. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

I'm not ready to cycle analyze you yet, but I am ready to suggest, or at least ask you if this crosses your mind. We've talked to a couple of people. They're like, enormously successful. A magician, there's a handful.

When you say, Amy, is your share? Yeah, he's the one. He's about as successful as you can again. That's right.

I think he has a record for all time tickets sold in any kind of thing, period. But he has recreated this comic book and magic shop in Las Vegas to every single detail. It's the one he would go into as a kid. And I got curious talking to him.

There's some bizarre aspect. And I know it's dangerous for you to even talk about this because minimally, everyone thinks you have a perfect life. Don Hanks should wake up in the morning and fuck and leap out of bed. Like life's not one damn thing after another.

You don't have to brush your teeth. Yeah, I was on set mire. So therefore, I'm doing our fair experts. I'm coasting from now on, baby.

Just living the dream. But he recreated this whole thing. And I said, you know, I have a similar nostalgia. And I wonder if any of it's about the ride, the fantasy of the life is really, really intoxicating.

It's really, really fun. And it's worth pursuing and it's worth dedicating your whole life to. And then if you're lucky enough to get it, you can enjoy it and you can be grateful for it. All those things can be true.

But yet it's never going to be what the fantasy was. And it's almost like I think David has created this weird loop where he can step inside that magician's shop, remember the fantasy and it can almost help him feel that he's living the fantasy. Does that make any sense? Yeah, I think what you're saying is the reason we did this in the first place back when honestly have a tank of gas and being able to achieve Chinese food a couple of times a week was the luxury was to go back to when it is that mindless instinct that you just pursue naturally.

Everything else just melts away and you're doing it because it's a blast. You can't imagine doing it for a living professionally and be looking at other people do it and think, man, I don't know how they did that. I wish I could get up to that level. And so every job every year, every day ends up being a pursuit of something that you haven't yet figured out about the job that you do.

I would imagine that David Copperfield is probably eight years old going into a magic shop learning that if you squeeze the sponge bunnies in one hand, it looks like they're born when you do the distraction kind of thing. And it's that same sense of wonder. Have you been watching the Paul Newman join Woodward doc? No, I'm saving that.

Oh, God. I'm so fond. I thought this was going to be the GCs thing for us to talk about. I made one movie with Mr.

Paul Newman. It took a bit for me to make peace with that fact. I'm in a movie with Paul Newman. Yeah, did you have imposter syndrome at that point?

Oh, absolutely. He gave everybody this great gift because it just so happened that the movie was called Road to Perdition. Same Mendez? Yeah, yeah, yes.

And Paul gave a gift to everybody because the very first day, the very first day was a day with like 60 extras. And we're supposed to be at Irish wake and everybody stands on an eating pie and doing all this kind of stuff. And we shot in Chicago and Paul Newman is in the scene and you cannot not think about it at all time. No, there he is.

He's very quiet. You know, he just comes in and he's the lowest maintenance guy you've ever come across and easy to talk to. And he had to make an Irish toast. He had to lift up a bottle of some and say a few words in an Irish wacky kind of like proposing a toast kind of way.

There wasn't a soul on the sound stage that wasn't thinking, this is it. This is the first scene, the first take of the movie that I am in with Paul Newman. I'm going to remember this moment for the rest of my life. And he did it.

And there was a moment of silence. And then he looked at us all and he said, the first day you feel kind of self conscious, don't you? And everybody was released from any sort of bondage of honor that we were feeling. And that was a guy.

I would probably say I could talk about these individual moments I have with Paul Newman for the rest of any podcast. You add some into your brain. I will tell you this one. And this is an extraordinary thing.

I don't know when they work together. But the cinematographer Conrad Hall and Paul Newman saying hello to each other after how many decades together in this business. Conrad Hall was a very gentle, soft, soul man to see him say, and have Paul say, ah, Connie, you know, Conrad Hall and Paul Newman, not just giants, but giants who left footprints in lava that will remain for the rest of time. You have those moments.

And that's when I felt like David Copperfield in a magic shop to be here doing this and being trusted just to follow my instincts and try to keep up or just try to, you know, try to remember my lines in the same scene with Paul Newman with says, pension. When I was thinking about if you were watching it, I guess I was imagining you watching Paul Newman, even though you're just talking about him right now, right? He is a mythical creature. He occupies some space in our mind that is the fantasy still.

And I was imagining you watching him thinking like that his life was somehow different than yours. In road to British, you were Tom Hanks already. It wasn't like you were 18. I didn't Tom Hanks since I was three years old.

Monica. Like you're saying, Paul Newman, you're Tom Hanks. I understand that. I mean, I remember seeing Brian Keith, a family of fair walking down Broadway once and I thought, my God, I yelled, that's Brian gang.

You know, and scared to live in daylight. Cause he was already blanking in the hang, which is crucial to making any movie. Everybody says, did you ever not have a good time on a movie? No, you can probably make a hang a pretty good time.

The work is always the work. Work is a constant. It's hard. You have to forget everything you got to do a bit of a hang.

That's actually malleable. You can actually shape that in the course of the day, particularly if you're in the 17th hour of a 20 hour shoot, you can actually turn it into a thing. It might even be where you feel most powerful. You can steer a hang as well as you could ever steer any scene.

So to leave the scene that's scary and then to walk into the hang where you actually are really competent. You can host a hang without a doubt. And we're going to be working a lot of late nights on Angels and Demons down at Old Hollywood Park. We're going to be working until three o'clock in the morning.

So I set up a blackjack table. He just laid blackjack. Oh, yes. Yeah, we put out some Christmas lights and the Chiefs just came by.

It wasn't real money involved, but we gave away a bicycle to anybody who officially won the most fake money. So that was Paul. Let me go back to Paul. There is a moment where if you are smart, you steer the conversation towards the daily life that somebody had back in quote, unquote the day, because I know that Paul, you know, he was in the actor studio and when have you did live television, much of which I had seen.

He was the original live television broadcast to bang the drums slowly. And so I asked a couple of questions about live TV. And then I asked questions about working in Hollywood, in business, in like the late 1950s, early 1960s, because that was the last gasp of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Television had been around and completely altered the work structure.

Movies did not work as long as they did. A lot of people left working on movies to work on things like Aussie and Harriet, because they got more hours because TV was not union, but the studios Fox MGM Paramount, they could not afford to pay overtime. So movies wrapped at five o'clock. Oh, wow.

I didn't know that. Everybody had a cocktail in their hand at 430. That's just the way it was. And there was not a shot that could be gotten before nine a.m.

because the lights in the makeup are so heavy. And if you were in a movie with a beautiful actress, that lady got her shots first thing in the morning because after lunch, you're a little tired. So a workday for Paul Newman in a movie in the 1950s began at eight o'clock. And he was maybe in the first shot, but probably not at nine a.m.

And he was done at five. He said it was fantastic. Oh, wow. Because you would be at the studio.

All movies were made in Hollywood on the sound stages. And you would be out of your costume at 10 minutes after five. He said, you'd go home and have dinner with the kids. And as they're getting off ready for bed, he and the wife would be putting on their fancy clothes to go have a lovely dinner with friends at Ciro's or Romanov's.

Oh, wow. Yeah, what a lie. A dinner party somewhere in town. And they would all be home at 11 o'clock at night with a number of cocktails inside them.

And he didn't have to be at work until eight a.m. He described this to us. And I just thought, Oh, but look what he was talking about. You can talk about the work and the director and all this kind of stuff till the cows come home.

And at the end of the day, that's not the stuff that fills up your life. What fills up your life is, what time did you go for? Yeah, how hot were the lights and stuff like that? And Paul was extremely giving on that.

And one secret about the hang is that you do not come around to the big hits. Like I could say, Paul, when you did the sting, did you know, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where did you shoot that scene?

Were you and Bob jumped off the cliff and yelled, Oh shit, as you're landing in the river because Bob can't swim. What was that movie made Casey in the sunshine band? What was that? Oh, no, no, which Cassidy?

Which Cassidy? Although can you imagine Paul is Casey? Why do you think that is because I have a theory on that as to why you don't ask about which Cassidy? I think it's because it's just been talked about.

And when you're off there servicing the business and you're in the grasp of the entertainment industrial complex, that's all we want to do is talk about the hits. Talk about the stuff that we can all relate to. I was going to argue that when you ask him to walk you through a famous scene with he and Redford, what you're really asking him to do is to be the movie star Paul Newman. You're asking him to try to fill your fantasy that that moment was magic on some ethereal level that he probably experienced and he can relate to you.

But that's not really possible. He's just a dude who had to dip his face in ice every morning to get to work because of those long nights at Sardi. That's in the dock. You should say, you know what I learned from Paul Newman?

And I use it to this day. First thing in the makeup trailer, your face in a bucket of ice water. Oh, wow. You do it?

This is what I heard. I didn't ask him about it, but I knew that he loved beer. He liked Coors Bank with beer and I had dinner with him. He always ordered beer.

And he wasn't a chugger. He wasn't like, Oh, thank God. Down. I got a lot.

Well, then I got to interject because it's in the dock and he is on traditionally candid about it. He is an alcoholic. He had to negotiate with Joanne that he would stop drinking hard alcohol after he lived in their driveway for three weeks because she was out of the house. That's another great thing about the dock.

He was so fucking candid. Like way more than I ever knew he would tell you I had no idea about sex until Joanne like educated me on sex. This whole sex symbol thing. I don't even have that.

I'm so bland. She gave that to me. He's so candid. It's wild.

He didn't tell me that the stuff at the After Studio. He said, Oh, wait right over my head. Never knew what they were talking about. Yeah.

And I said, what? But in the photographs, Paul, you're all leading there forward. You'll have to let turtled ex sweaters on. You all look so fascinated.

No, I know. I thought I got was pretty good. I mean, I just went up and I was trying to learn my mind. So they said I was great.

I didn't know what I was doing. Yeah. And he's so honest about that. Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

If you dare. Okay. So he drank banquet beer, but you should know that was the end result of multi week negotiation. Okay, that's good.

Now I heard that he did two things when he traveled with a portable team in order to sweat out the beer the next morning. Yeah, sure. If you are of your drink, you know, it comes out with you sweeter. Whether you're in a steam room or not, out it comes, man.

And everybody said, well, you had a night last night. Why? Because I can smell the hops coming out of your fork. But the other thing was tighten up that face, man.

And that is your head in a bucket of ice. And yes, I do to absolutely no avail because no matter how long I hold my breath in that freezing cold bucket of polar water, I do not come out looking like pomegranate. I still work exactly like me. So yes, the thing we're circling is that the fantasy life we start trying to pursue we come to recognize doesn't exist in ourselves, but maybe we still think it exists for other people.

That's interesting. But I will say as much as I was leaning towards like, oh, yeah, he's just a dude as well. Also not again, he's an admitted alcoholic. Somebody a guy had a six pack until he was 70 years old.

His face isn't like mine look like when I drank, I look like I'd sleep at the bottom of the Mississippi River. Like, you know, ice is going to get that thing to unswell. So he did have some superpowers. Oh, yeah, we know people who are blessed in that way that are just like, look at you.

How's it feel? You haven't done a sit up in your life. And yet I could scrub my t-shirt on your washboard apps. Where the hell do you get?

People don't like that. What are you going to do? Are they or are they secretly working out? They're secretly working out.

They're all liars. Yep. I don't know. I don't think Paul had time.

You can't take those eyes. No. You can't take that chin. Look, you can protect it.

Anytime everybody says, oh, you're looking about maintaining the temple, baby. I'm just maintaining it. Well, that's all I'm trying to do. So just to put a bow on this, my hunch is you're smart enough.

And I'm sure intellectually you comprehend your position in Hollywood's history. And then I'm guessing identity wise, there must be an intellectual recognition of that and then zero emotional recognition of that or zero, I'm Paul Newman. You don't get up in the morning looking at the mirror and go fucking one of the Paul Newman's. I think the truest analogy is baseball.

I don't think there's a man in the world who doesn't think, you know, if I could hit the curveball, I could have had a career. I could have got into double A, you know, and if I had worked on it, it's not like hockey where you can say, man, I would have been a great hockey player, but I just couldn't skate. You know, everybody thinks that they can, we played ball when we were a kid, we get it, but you can't. And even the vast majority of guys who play major league baseball are not going to be the greats.

But I remember I knew it was Pete Rose was on first base. They play first base for Cincinnati or maybe the Phillies. Yeah, I believe Cincinnati. I know very little about baseball.

I'm going to say somebody hit a fantastic single. Let's just say it was Carlton Fisk. It was some other great, but Carlton Fisk loaps a single as the fourth inning or something like that. And there is Pete Rose, one of the greatest ball players in history.

And there is Carlton Fisk, one of the greatest ball players in history. Fisk is on first and running. Pete Rose is playing first. You know what they're doing?

Hey, man, hey, man, it was a good game going. Yeah, man, this is a great, a beautiful night too. Now, this was the other series. But they know that they love this game that they play.

My joke is always, hey, if this was communist Russia, I'd still be doing this. And these great baseball players, despite who they're playing for, there was a moment out there when I think every single one of them in between pitches just think, bam, I'm playing ball for a living. I've had so many friends, peers of mine, on a similar rung in the ladder, not able to enjoy even a second of it because they're on the Bulls and they're not Michael Jordan. And I'm always like, but you're in the NBA.

Don't miss it. Don't fucking miss it because you're so focused on the fact that you're not Jordan. I think it's pretty common. I take them by the hand.

I say, okay, you're working for four days on this movie. That's it. I know. But if you come in and really clock these four days, your job is the IT guy who is a nerd.

Okay, that's your role. I saw you when you're commercial and you're pretty good. And you're thinking, Oh man, I wish they go. Okay, first of all, if you question this right now, somebody out there is going to say, get me the IT nerd who is in that movie.

That's one thing. That's always the potential that lays here. Someone can see how brilliant you are. Now, I'm going to take you by the hand.

I'm going to take you to this little truck and you get to have anything you want to eat that is in this. You get to sandwich. You're going to popsicle. Here's some chicken salad.

Look at these protein bars. Do you like M&Ms? Here's as many M&Ms that you want to eat. Do you not realize you get this for the next four days?

No one is going to charge you. And in fact, you can say to that guy right there, do you have it? He's strawberry yogurt. And you know what will be here tomorrow because you ask for it?

I'm a strawberry yogurt. You're in the circus for a while. Now, I shouldn't have a sort of love boat. Oh, believe me.

It's on my list of things I wanted to talk about. By the way, check it out. It's a scary, scary thing. Don't let the children watch it.

You did happy days. I was thinking I'm sure you had some time to look up a bit. All that time. I wanted to be better while I was doing it.

I was totally confused. I went home filled with self-loathing and fear. But do you not understand? I could go and get a chicken salad sandwich.

It was a hang man. It was a well-hosted party and I was not the host. By the way, can I just bust up and a theme song into the love boat? Please.

Exciting and you. Some by Jack Jones who I met living out in Palm Springs one time. We're expecting you. The love boat is making another run.

The love boat promising something for everyone. So of course, what adventure you're mind on a true romance. Oh, I love this. There was poetry and love won't hurt anymore.

What was our bartender's name? He had a great name. He was my favorite. But he was from Oakland and I was from Oakland too.

I got to share that with him. We had a little more. Okay. If I wanted to compartmentalize the different chapters of this ride for you, you have the TV experience.

I think we should maybe just mention because he was a boss of mine and he's so lovely Ron Howard. Ron Howard Splash. This movie should be terrible, this should be a bad, bad movie. The fish is gonna be out of the water.

We don't have the technology yet for that. From the studio that brought you Gus, the field gold kicking mule and the boat mix comes. Opie Cunningham's romantic fish story. It's only been pulled out twice in the other guy was Guillermo Diltora.

It's not an easy genre. No one makes a movie alone and no one gets up there without the power of the massive alliance of collaborators. And in that mix is the serendipity of fate. Because if it was any other way, every movie you've made would be fantastic.

We all know. It just doesn't happen that way. I heard this one thing. Movies are binary somebody said.

Movies are binary. They're either double zero or zero one. And if they're double zero, there's nothing you can do in order to change it. It doesn't work.

No matter how much you sell it, promote it, talk about, love it. So you are always approaching the day with a huge amount of faith in what everybody else is bringing to the mix. And without that, you're doomed. You've got to trust over into a process that a goofy accident will turn into the thing that makes them.

And there's a million examples of this throughout motion picture history. And if you were bored enough, I could walk you through some of the things that I remember, I said, I don't even remember that day. And yet it was a thing that everybody was still talking about. Yeah, I don't know.

Just your first big shot. And it's at the perfect time. Let me tell you, when I was doing Boz and buddies, excuse me, I'm going to have a sip of Bosco here. I think it was that love boat.

You put your vocal cords in the full test. The ringer. Don't pull out that jack challenge without the vocal warmups. Carry, carry, carry, carry.

Yeah, you're like going for the max lift without any warmup. We knew we were fortunate at the time. Peter Sculary, God bless him, just passed away by the enter of maladies. Oh, cancer.

Yeah, we were the only guys on this TV show. And the women were Tom Hopkins, Lucille Benson, the fabulous Holland Taylor, Donna Dixon, Wendy Joe Sperber, five girls, two guys, the women were all down in some other part of the sound stage dressing room kind of areas. And Peter and I had doors that faced each other. And we leaned in each other's doorway wearing pantyhose and lip gloss because we're dressed in drag.

And he and I had the same sort of background, certainly had the same sort of desires. He had a much more impressive theatrical resume than I didn't know. I was always asking about that. But you want to talk about a gestural communication that came from the very first moment we set eyes on each other.

He and I could reference huge amounts of common knowledge between the two of us with literally three phrases, ring a ding dang, and everything to us. And Peter was persnickety. He could get pissed off for a lot of things. But we spent more time, first of all complaining about everything.

But then also taking a degree of pride because we made it a point in order to get the scripts out of our hands as soon as possible. A 30-minute sitcom script is about 30 pages, actually about 28 pages, big fat fonts and so on. It's not a lot of text per page. And we would put those things down as fast as possible and just start goofing around on the clock that would then pay off later on.

And because it was a video show with four video cameras, we could do it. We could actually stop what we were doing. The guys could do the line cuts. And the writers, they would come down and we were able to develop a trust from them so much so that they would write into the pages, boys chuff off CHU FFA.

That was their term for improv? They did not have to write the end of the scene. They just said boys chuff off. Oh, that's great.

We got so much joy out of that. And we didn't realize that in reality that was a ridiculous amount of freedom to give us. It gives you pride and ownership. It was a primer into that concept of follow your instincts.

Make sure you're playing, rely on the other guy to be there. And I will tell you, if I ever see a clip from those and buddies, I have no idea what I'm saying. But I remember everything that Peter said. I mean, because it was Peter and because we had the secret language and because we spent so much time, you know, pondering our lives because what I was 24, he was maybe 25.

We were on the cusp of what? And yet at the same time, we were completely unappreciated because Tom Selick was on CBS at the same time we were. And he was in Mag and PI and nobody watched us. Great quads and a thick mustache.

Yeah, he had a mustache. He was on a one hour show and we were on this video thing at Paramount's He's driving a Ferrari, you're in pantyhose. We always felt like everybody else was the Beatles and Rolling Stones and we were maybe fretting the dreamers. That's good fuel.

You got to hold on to that. I was say, I carried that sort of union worth ethic along with me because we spent two formative years, you know, just trying to have number one, a great hang and number two do good instinctive work in the face of and in 28 minutes. Tom Selick, he wouldn't have been given this kind of opportunity, which is it forced you to carve out your point of view pretty quickly. And you got to carry the point of view along with you.

You experimented and you were positively rewarded for it. And it gives you this confidence that, Oh, I have a take now I can bring places as opposed to I'll get plugged in. That was the beginning of S.E. TV that was on.

We were on the cost of this great thing because first of all, videotape recorders cost him here $3,000. And I started out the first videotape recorder I bought cost $2,200. And you know, if you had a camera to it was expensive, but we would record the great shows at the time, SNL on Saturday night and S.E.T.V. And we would examine these things because we felt as though we were doing the same sort of work in 28 minutes on a thing called Buzz and Buddies that was on after Mark and Mindy before Barney Miller.

So we weren't creating it ourselves, but we got to chuff off. You're in a three-year sketch. Yeah, yeah. It was empowering in a way that was more important than I think the other aspects of the gig itself, although we complained about everything else in the show business.

I just want to underscore the hang part because not everyone listening is in this business, but that can be applied across the board. Any job has a hang. Exactly. And that's where the aliveness is.

That's what you take away when you go home and you talk to your friends at dinner. So it's like, make the most of it in the middle ground. I was a Bellman for about two years for the Open Hilton Hotel out by the airport. And I will say Bellman because Bellboy is a derogatory term.

You're in Bell Service, Michael. And the hang on the other side of the desk, you're like in the back when it wasn't busy or in our Bell Service office. All we did was laugh. And carry on.

And I was a dishwasher for a while. Not a great hang because I was usually alone back there. But any kind of gig that you have, it ends up being a who do you like to go see? Who's the regular?

There's always a funny guy. There's always a genius woman. There's always somebody at work that the first thing you ruin on the day is because, oh, man, Monica's sick. She's not going to be in today.

Well, I would go home. I'm not doing it without. I was working. Not so great.