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I had a I had a stretch in high school where I got very I got very Self-conscious about anything to do with acting partly just because I was small and I I remember having this terrified Sensation that girls from my school. We're going to see me in this song and dance thing that the you know, and I don't know why there's paralyzing self-consciousness came in and I quit the whole thing would be a good thing if they went and saw yeah exactly. I don't know why I had that I was at I went to a school that was a little tough. But um, but my mother was very my mother was very upset. She I mean Upset at me, but I know she knew I loved it and she was like, why are you quitting this and I don't want to talk about it and stuff and then we went and a school trip. We had a school trip to the National Theater and Ian McKellen was doing this one man show that he wrote about his life in the theater. It was called playing Shakespeare and it was like it was his we've he did of Shakespeare's life as an artist his life and the way that the text of Shakespeare's plays had Informed his own understanding of a life in the theater and he was magnificent like really really the the most unusual thing and very personal. It was really like an actor's life, you know, but he turned it into this great piece of theater and he I remember he did he say he asked for volunteers and I went up with I was about 17 and I went up I went on stage and and above with a Two other people and he kind of came over and you know has has whistles horses and he says he's just On Cue slide out and so we are so he says this thing and we all laid down and then he did he did Macbeth's tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow on the battlefield with all the dead around him. And and I was I was lying on the stage at the national I was looking he was about as close as me to you and I watched him do this thing from literally like right under him and it had a very profound effect. Chanmi, not just the angle like that. It was a really I went hot the whole ride home. I thought I remember thinking to myself. This is this is to you have to take this much more seriously, like it was very very profound because he made it seem like a life, right and and that was just before I went to college and I think it had a pretty big effect on reignite in my my my interest in. Okay, so hold up. So you guys have seen the famous video where like Bradley Cooper is The audience at Inside the Actors Studio and he asks Robert De Niro question and then cut to you all those years later. They make two movies together. You do this you're like laying on the stage with Ian McKellen and 10 years later. You guys are both nominated for best actor at the Academy Awards and well anything the same the year the Year. There was a year where it was the year that like Primal Fear and Larry Flynt and those things came out and Ian had done this thing on arrest Putin memory - and he wanted Golden Globe. So did you exactly actly so I met him I met him backstage and I never forgot on he what he was wearing a red velvet suit a brown velvet suit and which I was very impressed by and he and he we met and he said some very nice things and everything and I said, you know, I told him I told him that story and he was very touched by it. And I think that that's the kind of bonded us in a nice way, but then when I saw then I saw him at the luncheon. I would see him here and there and he was always very very sweet about my story and and and all of that effect he had and he I remember going up to him and saying can you believe the ice like this is the best thing ever and he goes, oh, it's awful. It's awful. You know, I hate it when I said why and he goes he goes because I want it. I want it. I'm not going to get it and I you know, we had a funny exchange die. Yeah, it was there's more to that story that I shouldn't tell that's fine. Well, I'll tell you I am a very positive person. I you will be hard-pressed at find me saying something negative especially in a public forum. But the fact that you were nominated for American History X Ian McKellen for Gods and Monsters and Nick Nolte for affliction in the same year. Not to mention Tom Hanks for Saving Private Ryan and you guys lost Roberto benigni is ridiculous. No, well, I'm the county that I'm a big fan of Roberto benigni. Okay, I love Roberto benigni. So I and I'm meeting him was like the prize that year I had dinner with him. And I really I think he's magnificent I and I love that film. So I was like you were okay losing to that I knew going in like I took a pool. I was like I got an 18 inch swastika on my chest and no one expected me to be here in the first place what you know, what I basically said to a circle of trusted friends, what's the over-under and everybody was like not a chance? We smoked a little something before that a great time. So when he when he got up on the chairs, you were loving it annoying, but the only thing that he stepped on Ian's here. I'll know when he ran across the chairs and that wasn't a good move. No probably them. But I also remember that was the best thing that year was Tom stoppard get a screenplay word and said and said when he say he said I feel like Roberto benigni on the inside. So, okay. So you we're digressing. No, this is good. We can jump around I have I've got all my notes here. So anyway you finish school in 91 what happens for those first three or four years after college graduation? How are you spending your time? I did a lot of theater in that school to I didn't study. I took some classes have but the amazing thing about, you know, I'd gone to public school and when I got this chance to go to Yale, the thing was so incredible about is how they were. So much theater going on there not because there's the Yale drama school and it's an unbelievable raft of Productions there the Yale rep. I remember seeing you know, you could you literally you could one we in one weekend. I was 19 you can see I was an undergraduate when I was 18 or 19. Paul. Giamatti was a year or two ahead of me in school. And and I remember going to see him in an undergraduate production of who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Wow, and Paul looked at the same as he looks now. This is a topologist aged into the way. He looked when I was 20 got it, and I remember I remember thinking so this is like some 50 year old guy who's come back to school together. He's amazing. He's just amazing. But I remember seeing that and then the same weekend. I saw at the Yale rep Fran McDormand and David strathairn were doing moon for the misbegotten. And and then I saw Henry the fifth and Leah was played clarinet Liev Schreiber was Clarence. He was at the drum school it was Like there was so much going on there and you could do plays. I did plays. You know all the time. I did check off plays and Shakespeare plays and had had a ball just you know, but you didn't have to be a you don't have to have a you know, you don't have to be getting a degree in theater there. It was it was wonderful and then afterwards you went to Japan for a while. No. No that was that was that was just a summer in part of a semester. I spent while I was in school God I lived over there so you so after finishing at Yale you went to New York and Looking for work as a working actor at that point. No, I actually went and worked in. I worked in affordable housing. I worked I did it's complicated. I was we were we were my grandfather who had a big impact on me making this film because he was an urban developer who was kind of the ante Robert Moses. And in fact many of Willem dafoe's lines in the film are things my grandfather said in speech is about about service and the idea of caring for people and and the first job I had was working for this organization. He built it that very Innovative Tax Credit Finance on affordable housing and a my job was actually going all over in in New York City. Every Borough interviewing people who had gotten out of situations of dislocation and into a stable affordable home and it was the most amazing way to move to New York City and get this like exposure to the breadth of the city and people's experiences and it and it was the period in which I got really interested in sort of the dark the dark history of New York. You know New York's dirty secret of the mid-century was was in many ways how the poverty traps that we deal with today many of the modern problems that we still deal with in New York, where a function of things done by Design in the 50s. And it's if Ella is if LA's kind of original sin is that it stole all its water and water corruption in many ways New York's is the way that Discrimination was really baked into the city of the in the infrastructure of the city as it was converted from a 19th Century City to a 20th Century City and I was I was in that period working in housing. I got I got actually pretty hooked on the things that I finally got into this film so great. So how long did that last before you then made the pivot? I was working I was I you know, I would get backstage and I was taking classes. I was Moonlighting in the theater and an even when I was doing that work I was I got you know, I was I did a I would audition, you know, four things out of Backstage. I auditioned for Yale drama school. I didn't get in audition for Juilliard and get in. So I was interested but in a weird way, I think I didn't get into those places because they're hard to get into but I also think I was II looking back I bet it emanated off me that I was not all the way in. You know what I mean? And I I kind of found my way to some really good teachers one in particular but and I was doing that and then I got into some you know off off plays Waiting for Lefty Clifford odets Waiting for Lefty. I did Brian friel's lovers. Shanley's the Italian American reconciliation. I was I was I was doing a lot of theater and I got and and out of that Edward Albee saw me in one of the plays I did and and that's what led to getting an audition for The Signature Theater and that's how I ended up starting to do kind of work. It was getting a little more. I don't know of a profile to it or something but still as I understand it you had to attend an open call for Primal Fear. Yeah, but everybody everybody. Let me know or like every one of my we all did like I mean honestly, I mean I've laughed at Sam Rockwell Bobby Cannavale a Mark Ruffalo Leo. Yeah, but no but Leo Leo was of start he was you know a famous he was like a really he was a star already and he oh, I see what you're saying. He he he I think that the line I've heard is that they offered that part to Leo and he he passed on it. And Christian Bale was kind of being talked about Stephen Dorff. I think I don't know how many but I don't know any I was I was like lol was Mars to me at that time. I had never been to La so but everyone every every actor. I knew everyone I was coming up with and was friends with in New York in the theater scene who wasn't you know in a graduate school like Sam and Bobby and Phil Hoffman and Mark Ruffalo every every and a million others everybody I noon About that part and it was kind of one of those things where you were like you thought you had an ace up your sleeve and then you realize everyone had the same Ace up their sleeve like you were like, yeah. I got this audition and it was like, oh you did fuck everybody like everybody got that audition like so wasn't it was like that's all Deb Aquila who was the casting director at Paramount got Greg ha blood to let her really go around Chicago and I don't London and New York and and really do a old school search, you know, but my understanding which I think is really interesting for a room full of actors is that you went into this audition and whereas it was written that the character was sitting in a chair you'd asked to do it sitting on the floor in the corner of the room and I think that's interesting because my understanding is that it was one of several ways that it kind of set you apart from a lot of the I think like that sometimes These things like they get a life in them. That was that it's it even happen in time by the time I came out and did the screen test. I was like going around and Lala. I didn't know where I was. I so didn't know where I was out here that I was at the Third Street Promenade and they had me staying at the Bella the it's still you know across from The Whisky a Go Go Oh and I was on the Third Street Promenade and I saw these buildings in the distance and I was like, I'm just going to walk to the hotel and I was like, I like four hours later. I hit the I hit the Brentwood, you know. Oh mom is something wrong here. But I I think that that even like my screen test people it was like it was like the Nirvana demo tape. It was like people were telling me Oh, I saw that and that's how the fuck did you get ahold of my like screen test, but but the things that were true but it wasn't one does that to the thing is I had auditioned for Deb's Deb and her partner when they were big into casting directors in New York like they she did. Like sex lies and videotape and Last Exit to Brooklyn and so she she was now if you were into you know indie film and stuff Deb Deb was kind of like one of the ones you wanted to get in on and some time. I had I had auditioned her partner had said to her like we should have met and then I remember saying a thing I would do a lot is if I felt if I felt an audition had gone even even a little bit well, I would say take and I could I ask you even if this doesn't work out. I'd love to be a reader, you know, and I would always ask casting directors. If I got a positive vibe off from we please call me. If you ever need a reader happy to work for free blah blah blah and I did that all the time. I would I would work, you know as the reader and I did that for Deb's partner once or twice and I think even doing that kind of tuned Iran a little bit more, you know to So I didn't go in blind. I did there's a funny story. I don't believe it. But I knew Connie Connie Britton and I were friends and that period and she I ran into her on the street and she was like gonna bail on an audition and I told her like what's it for and she was like, it's some film in backstage and I was like, well, you should just go I pushed her so she went then I see her later and she was like, oh I got that that little film but I'm not going to do it. It's like 10 weekends in a row at this kids house on Long Island are like Connie like you get it you've never done a film like do the film, you know, she's like, okay. Okay. And so that that was The Brothers McMullen unbelievable The Brothers McMullen and then she went out she went to Sundance. It was a big deal. She went to LA she got an agent and she and then she went in to read for Deb for the more a teener the Maura Tierney part in Primal Fear and she called and she went out of that audition and she called me from the Paramount loud and she said She goes I was ready for something. She goes. I'm not going to get it but there's a part and they're going to look at she goes I have the creepiest feeling like you have to read for this part. It's like it's you and she goes I'm gonna pay you back right now. You should get it you should facts debacle of facts and I did I found I wrote a fax to Deb's partner and just said if you're coming to New York, can I see this and you know blah blah blah. So that's how that happened. Did you I mean the performance in Primal Fear was so spectacular. It was such a great day. View for those of us who had seen you onstage. I just remember I was working Entertainment Weekly at the time. We went to see the moving. We were like, holy shit. This was amazing. Were you did you know that you were kind of filing firing on all cylinders did were you surprised by the Acclaim? How did it strike you it was I mean The whole thing it just it run it like unfolded in slow motion. The because the in I used to look at things like that timeout adjusting. It's just like well, I'm not going to get it but it'll be a good shot to try something a little weird, you know, or just see what I knew and and I used to always go into auditions and kind of say I would I hate the thing of chitchat before you read. I think it's it's it's like introducing your own film. It's a disaster. It's like it's like you're atomizing everything. You're about to try. Do it's like hey, let's meet each other. And then now I'm going to go put on a Kentucky accent and pretend, you know, it's like why would I why why does this help so I would always kind of subtly in a way say to whoever was like, can we just can we talk after you know, he's come and do the thing and usually people like, you know like that and that's what I did with Deb is I just asked the assistant. Can I just be in the room and can she come in? Can we just start you know, and And that's that's what that's that's why that's what Deb sometimes later talked about was because Deb didn't use readers. She's a really good actor. So she would read the scenes with you, which I thought was cool. And and I think I did do that. I think I sad over in the corner. So when she came in she kind of to find me in the corner of the prison cell or whatever and we did those things and and then and I felt it had an impact on her and I think the thing on that was that It didn't the part was written it evolved when we made the film a lot. It didn't have a stutter. It didn't have these things and I remember thinking like this just needs this needs a hook. This needs this needs and if this is going to work, there's there's got to be something that that kind of You know cons this this sharp lawyer fast and it seemed to me like that the vulnerability that you know, the way you empathize with someone who has a stutter stutter stutter creates instant empathy sure. And so I thought it was a good a good way to do without presuming to mess with the script just finds put something in it there wasn't there and I think that may have been part of it that was obviously working and so I kept I kept working on it. Leaning into it. And by the time we got into doing it, it was almost like that had become part of the DNA of it before we even made the film and I think it was a great experience. Overall. Richard Gere was amazing to me. He was he was a very very generous Ally in helping me go through a first film experience. Everybody on that was it was it was great. And you know, it was really I really Michael Chapman like who shot See driver and Raging Bull and was the DP and I was quite nervous about that. But he when we did it it was I don't want to say it was a mess. But it was it was no one knew what the ending was supposed to be and they wasn't decided is is it a con or is it things and there was the student Studio was pressuring people to have it be that Richard gets over on that Richard wins in the end and and to his huge credit. He was like no. No, no, no. No, he's like it's a con. I don't get it's a body blow. The last frame is me with my shoulder sagging. That's why it works. You know, he was very unprotected of of the idea of like a heroic ending for him love that. Yeah, and and but when we shot we kind of improvised that whole thing that became the ending that really worked and I remember a lot of people go on like I heard crew guys going we'll be back to be redoing this. You know what I mean? Oh shit, like, you know there were there were yes, some people it wasn't like but then there were the hot Koch who was the producer that film head of the academy while back I remember seeing hawk in the corner kind of giving me this look like like Don't listen to any of that that was great like that that really worked and and it was kind of like, okay, but the thing is it's not like Birdman. I mean honestly, I it was a great experience and I felt great about having had the chance but it wasn't like the film was at Thriller with a Twist at the end and it was sort of like in the back of my mind. I was like, I better hold on to my per diem because this this could just not work at all. It could be it could be real turgid. Melodrama that that that doesn't work and and so I didn't I wasn't like people were nattering in a way but I was definitely not counting my chickens like about that film. And in fact I got I was very excited because I got to I got in a Woody Allen film I got and everyone says I love you and and even more significant to me. I got to work with me before men. I knew that was coming. I For Primal Fear came out. We started shooting Larry Flynt and he he was I mean would he was very formative for me. But me Lo she was like one of my Idols I really his films had a huge effect on me. And and I I really was I was just completely. Immersed in not just in doing the film but in hanging in his shoulder and watching him make a film like and some tough things were going on in my life. My mother was ill and so I really was like living this life between going home, excuse me, and um and really hunkered down in this thing melosh who was involving me at a lot of levels of it. He kind of really engaged involved me in the script and involve me in the editing and he And it was like such a tutelage a real mentorship for me that I know this sounds like BS but it really is the way it went for me. We were in Memphis we're doing these things and Primal Fear came out while we were doing it and I really did have this sensation of kind of like it was like something in me was like this is I was resistant to it was exciting but I kind of was like did it do? Okay and people like you did great. I was like great and I went back to work. because because I felt like I felt like this opportunity of working with me Lo she was like it was almost like a new Pinnacle and you know, and it wasn't that I was took that for granted but it felt it felt like I think I knew it was going to there was gonna be a lot of noise and in a weird way, I think consciously and unconsciously because of the things that we're going on in my my life, you know, there were tough the the I knew that that kind of noise was going to be very bad for me right then and that the best thing was just a work which is to keep working and and literally I had seen all of my my parents took me to Amadeus and and I remember the theater we saw it in I remember how old I was and and I was talking to my mother like almost every day while I was making Larry Flynt and she wanted to hear about it and dissected and asked what he was like and all these things and it just felt like in that period I was like Just just keep your head in these things that matter and while she was alive. I wanted her to like engage be engaged in the create, you know, what the pleasure of the creative process and happy she got to experience at least the beginning. Yeah of this part of your life and your career. Yeah, when you think back to everyone says, I love you and singing my baby just cares for me and doing like the dancing at all. That is that terrifying was it's super fun. What was your mindset on that filming? I was I was I was thrilled I was fascinated to I was fascinated to watch him do his thing because as just as a student of film, it's like how does he do these things is really interesting. I was I was completely flummoxed by the musical component of it. That was like they didn't tell us it was a musical. What so the everyone who died in it was like You know, I did an audition they have me come back. They I was waiting in the lobby. They came out and said so yeah, he wants you to do it. So it'll be September and I was like, wait, what did you say, you know, and they were like you wants you to do it I said well, can I go back in and say thanks, you know and you know and and I came back and I said I just wanna say I'm so I can't believe it. I'm so so thrilled he was much, you know, it's going to be terrific, you know, and I and I said I said, well, you know, thanks so much and he goes not be great. Walking out and he goes he goes. Hey, you know just you sing it all and I said what and I said, you know, okay and he get your drunk. Yeah. It was like he was like eagles nice just something I'm playing with and then and then like monthly a couple months later. I get this thing saying you should go in and work with Dick Hyman The his great arranger and his vocal coach and I was like what is going on and I said to my mother Oh my God, it's like I get I Get Away Island moving into musical like, you know, but it was fun. It turns out to be very fun crazy. I had no idea that you didn't know that. Okay. So this leads into the first question either. I'm going to intersperse a couple of your guys this questions. I hope I'm reading your name, right? Is it yeska Yeah, how's it going? So his question is how did you get into character for American History X which is the next movie I want to talk about. It was the whole that film benefited in a lot of ways from being, you know, we made that phone for three million bucks. They think it was a total budget on it. We did it really fast David McKenna and I wrote it was he wrote the script we worked very intensively together for this period of like six months before it like trying to sort of take this amazing idea script. He'd had an almost Like pare it down and imagine it as a Shakespearean tragedy. And by the time that that I know it is an actor's room. So this is this is the right room talk about this, but I think that people people have a tendency to in our trade to say like there's kind of a romantic value placed on like I did ideas like instinctual or visceral or about acting and I think that's true. But the I always think it's nuts that like the notion that any of the very best actors aren't analytical and cerebral first is the biggest load of crap and it does a disservice. I think when people talk about the method and they don't know what they're talking about and they talked about this what they what they're really doing is inadvertently they're encouraging actors to not do their fucking homework, and and I've Kevin two phones with Robert De Niro. I know Daniel Day-Lewis. I know Sean Penn all the people you say like people talk about the American she acts like those people. I guarantee you every single time there the they're like investigative reporters it all starts. Analytically it all starts from the cerebral dramaturgical point of view. What's the piece? How does the piece function? What's the style? What how does the role fit within the style? What type of person there's nothing instinctual about it in the early phases its It's dramaturgical work its literary work. It's it's style work its theme work. It's like it's all that work before to me before you can even begin to go. All right, what's the skin? What's the what's the body? What's the voice? What's the what's the instrument of the whole thing and what how do I get it into the musculature? And in that case that time with David that I spent we talked really? Thinking about it thinking about it from the point of view of Othello's about jealousy Macbeth's about pride and ambition. This is about rage. We're going to strip away everything in this the drug subplot all this bullshit. We're going to strip it down and make it. This is about a person who destroys himself all of his potential because of anger and anything else is purple and the more we got down into that in the more we started realizing we don't need that. We don't need that and we need more in the prison. We need to see what happens to him. Or that is the work. That's that's like for me. That was the work. That was that was the getting ready. Like that was the like absorbing. What the hell is this really all about? Because then you can start to go. All right. Well, you know, what has he done to himself physically that is the is the is the physical echo of these things? How does he talk? How does he things what's his relation with and getting in and actually just start to do the work of physical izing it and all these things but but but the accelerant, you know, the clarity and the accelerant for me that comes from the the analytical work before is the notion that you would what I don't like about the role the over romanticization of like some idea of the method or whatever is that it kind of says it kind of suggests something that I think is really Really weak sauce, which is show up and wing it, you know what I mean, like like getting there and just feel it and I don't I don't go for that. And in fact when I cast motherless Brooklyn which in some way but we had to make this there's a big movie we had to make it in 46 days and and I didn't cast a single actor in that movie who wasn't someone with deep theater experience because I couldn't have needy actors on that film. I couldn't have anyone. Who hadn't had the experience of having primary responsibility for the text and by that I mean has been on stage and had the experience of saying the ball is in my hand and I am carrying it from moment one to moment. And I know how to synthesize the totality of the peace do the work ahead of time and be ready on stage to deliver the whole thing because I couldn't give people on this film more than two or three takes there was just no way to do it and I had to have people who had that kind of command of text. And and I think nobody on motherless Brooklyn. It's probably has one of the best ensemble cast I've ever worked in or with as an actor or flanking. Nobody on that film was in anything even approaching a method mode. Everybody was in there working as a tradecraft pro nimbly. We prepared ready and not Askin for a precious environment of concentration because I couldn't give it to him. I couldn't give it to him. And and and and in fact, I was the disruptive Force because you work together to degree actors can what do we all do we Bloom up a bubble of suspension of of all of the what's going on around? You especially on Films you help each other push all that away and within your little thing pretend it's real and be in it. And when one of you is ping-pong out of it, you're the you're the one messing it up. You know what I mean? And I couldn't have actors who who were going to be like, you know, you know snowflakes right about about that and I think that that I think it's important to say that because I think think it's like not everything not every approach serves every the demands of every piece or every type of work and I think there's times you need you need, you know, pure professionalism like a violinist. They know they know how to play the instrument, you know, let me quiz you about a couple other ones before we get into more of a conversation about motherless Brooklyn Fight Club the the Lord On that film is that the executives weren't sure about it, you know all the way through is is it too dark to we need to change you know how we're selling it? What are your Recollections of that experience and how that one felt because it mean 20 years later. It's so iconic. I mean, you know the inside baseball of like what's what terrifies studio people think I think it's almost like a irrelevant content that that to me again. Then from work point of view it was wonderful. It was beautiful. It was like there was an enormous amount of humor on it. There was a strong sensibility of irreverence and and a desire to I think stick a fork into the the foibles this you know, the most the existential moment. We were feeling like we're all living in right now and it was fun. It was fun. It was it was a there was a troublemaking mischievous sensibility on the whole thing and and it was great people funny people like Helena is really funny. That is really funny. Fincher's really funny. My abiding memory of the whole thing was a lot of a lot of laughter a lot of hard work a lot of takes. Oh, yeah, right and thank God I worked with him before he went digital. I can't even I mean at least there was a at least he could run out of film right here, but I but by the way, I'm glad you said that because that that to there's no you can't You can't be a method actor with Fincher. There's no way he'll burn you out. He'll he'll he'll take you into da da he'll take you into a place where you're you're beyond self beyond beyond connection where and when I say the concert violinist you he even if you go, wow, he's never happy till 20. I'll just save it until 20. I'm going to bring the good stuff between 20 and 25 and on 45 you start going. Oh my God, he's going to use these ones, you know, and I and you're like I can't feel the front of my face. I can't hear my own voice. You're in Saving Private Ryan mode. Everything's gone silent. You don't know, you know what you're saying and and it forces you to get to a very interesting place, which is this is not about this is not about any kind of like connectedness that happens like hours ago and and he was and he was not doing anything other than looking at whether the Steadicam bumped, you know what I mean? And and you just go I better find a gear to be in on this or I'm not going to survive it and and what's really interesting to me. Is it puts you in a you get into a technical craft place where you go? We're going to work together to find it. There's a lot of them. There's no rehearsal. So it's like You almost get his pastry like okay with this director the first 10 to 20 actually is a rehearsal and and there's where you know will block things but this is actually really finding it and he's okay with that and so we can we can explore we can you know, F around try some weird stuff things and and then there's going to be this Zone where maybe it'll happen. But you kind of just with David have to get into a place of you can't be precious and you can't look. For emotional connectedness to anything you have to you have to work like a dancer and and trust trust that you've that all the time spent together is creating a stylistic like Synergy that you have gotten into each other's Vibe and that you're that that that you can trust when it you can trust that. He's a great choreographer and that he's going to He's going to let you know when when the moves of you and this other thing came together and he's a master of that a master of the dance between camera and and actors. Right and I think that was that was interesting. Is that book? He also said I mean again the antithesis of like what everybody thinks is like, you know, the kinds of conversations that go on with directors and actors the the best gaming on the best notes I've ever not gotten as an actor probably in the first one or eight days. We were doing a lot of stuff and I did something where it was always with him. Like are we being very tongue-in-cheek here and very funny or are we leaning a little on the darker side of it? And you know, it was pretty much that kind of a play and I did something leaning. I think I read was in my underwear running and I think I did a very like, you know, like Like a florist. Yeah little bit of a flourish or something and he kind of came over to me and he goes a little less Jerry a little more Dean and I was like, that's his like that's it. I say that's this whole film and I kind of said like we were laughing I was like I got you but later I said, you know something that's pretty much it the whole time I said, all you got to do is you just tell me Jerry you're Dean on this phone the rest of this and we know where to go. You know what I mean? It was it was sometimes it can be simple like that. What was your experience with your director of the following year on Keeping the Faith it was him. II you know When I look back on that it was it was those were those were the fat days. I had more time and more money to make a rabbi priest joke into a romantic then I had to make like an epic New York Noir. It was just so different so luxurious and and also and super fun super fun light and Ben is vanities himself a director who's next. They're so you you couldn't have had a more a dance partner who was more facile more willing while the tapes Rolling its let's go back. Let's just go back to there and pick it up again and go and just very old school old old school lemon Matthau patter looking for looking for the rapid Tata of it all did Disney come to you and say would you like to direct this or no? You had it all know. We my partner Stewart wrote that script and we set it up and originally we're going to do it in one studio and got put in turn around and we it was one of those things it felt it felt the way it way. It all landed was great super fun. And it was it Fincher said it we're making Fight Club. Well, we're setting it up and I was asking about certain things and I Stuart and I thought maybe we just like do this because YY said over someone else's shoulder and and and Bug them because they're not getting your jokes or whatever. And so but I said something to Fincher like like do you think it's a this kind of light and he was like, he goes the first one just just do something you don't care about he goes don't do anything you care about on your first one and it's not that I didn't care about it, but he was like, he goes Alien 3 was not my heart's desire. He's like, but it gets you it gets one. Belt and it gets you things and that and it was that way for me. It was it was fun. And I really liked what it was about we had a great time, but it wasn't it was in a way getting to go through the exercise of making one right that leads into a question from Causeway Blackwell who asked it must be hard to be on camera and direct at the same time. How do you deal with it? it they're armed. It really is very eun-jung. There's things I absolutely love about it. And there's things I really hate about it it. On motherless Brooklyn because the character if anyone has had the character has Tourette syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's a very chaotic very spontaneous. Kind of a characterization and it was tricky in a funny way on that because of the time constraints which were very real. I actually could not the director me the producer. I could not afford actor Edward needing a lot of time and I and in a weird way the fact that I knew I was going to cut it and shape it. I felt very, you know, I trust myself so I wasn't I wasn't Cher's I was free to experiment and to very quickly bracket the performance and do one at to do want it for do you want to 8 and do one redlined, you know crazy give myself a lot of raw material which was very much by the way a Milos Forman wisdom to me. He was he Miller told me once like that making films is all about casting and editing and in between all you're doing is gathering raw clay. And and if your actors are right You're a good editor you get yourself everything you can get yourself and it's it was and it helped me on this because it let me as an actor serve myself in an uninhibited way. I had less self-consciousness less protectiveness about doing something that I later would go. I hope he doesn't use that, you know, and I want any did liberate me to to work in a somewhat more freely experimental way. Without without too much self-consciousness, that's good. What's what's not so great is just all the all the headspace that you try to put all this all the space. You try to create for yourself as an actor to get out of your head and into the muscle memory goes away. It gets just completely eaten by the necessary work directing and and vice versa because As you you lose all of your time as a director. Literally to the makeup chair and you know, it's that that part of it is tough. But you know again, this is a room vectors. I think it's a great thing to do. It's a great there's such an amazing tradition in American film of actors. may you know making films we all come up on those films from from Citizen Kane the great one too, but you know like do the right thing had a big impact on me was one of the more formative films of my life Reds had that effect on me Robert Redford's films, you know, and and and when you see these things done and and sometimes I think Actors if they've been in if they've you know, if they sometimes actors have a sense of their own Sweet Spot their own thing and sometimes it's something very special can emerge out of out of somebody having a deep feeling for something like Dances with Wolves, you know, like a beautiful film. I think Costner absolutely understanding where he is. Where he was best, you know, he knew what that was about for him and it comes through, you know, it comes through and I love that. I I always I always felt like whatever the whatever is difficult about it. It's worth it's worth it. It's worth trying to find those things and take a swing because we we exist in the Netherworld of I always think I always hated. When I was in my, you know first in New York, I hate I hate having the lack of autonomy that actors have I hate that we wait on other people. It's their beautiful things about what we get to do, but waiting on other people to give us a gig sucks. Like eternally it will never not suck. It has always sucked. It will never not some and and it and inevitably I just think that it's part of the existential the existential burden of actors is Is at some point. You just got make the work you want to make you you got to make your own work. You gotta be part of making the work is what I loved about Shakespeare in Love truly loved about that film is the whole idea of of actors the minstrel tradition put it all in a wagon go to town set up the fucking set put on the costume do your own makeup, you know, it's like that that that we you know, We've been boxed in the separated unions and all these things. But the truth is I think in it's just none of us at any phase are lucky. I mean, there's so few are lucky enough to like just get to like read one thing reading and I'll do this. I won't do this. I wanted that's just not the condition of the tribe. It's the it's always and I think the did to some degree we've got to make our own way and make our own make our own opportunities for work. I like this question for Marco Para. Ha who says what advice do you give to actors who are serious about wanting to make films as well? I mean, how did you study the directors that you like to make sure that you were picking stuff up without distracting from the work that you were brought there to do. Well, I think I think litter is literacy is important. I when my friend used to run the acting program at Juilliard, I'll go and talk to the kids there and it's like it's an extension of this same conversation. You could you have to be literate. You have to be you have to be I'll read you have to read plays you have to watch films. You have to understand. I think one of the best pieces of advice the teacher ever gave me was you got to understand style in the sense that like the Coen Brothers demand a very different sort of work than Paul Thomas Anderson does maybe you know what? I mean? It's like like there is style. And if you're doing the hudsucker proxy and you're bringing like a low-key banal like a naturalism you're out, you know what I mean? Mean like you're gone like you need you need Converse in see with the filmmakers you hope to work with right? And and so I think that I think literacy is important and I think looking at you know, in a funny way. I mean this kind of stuff is great. I always used to look for stuff like this there was um, you know, those Chi a de Cinema. I used to love, you know or projections. There was that that series of books and Or somebody on somebody, you know, like the everything about film process I used to devour is also Turner Classic Movies during a classroom is pretty good chance to know what my weight. I totally agree. I totally agree. I think that the we have a rich were in a rich moment of access to I remember having to chase down tapes of the old RSC. There was a great RSC director John Barton and Trent and then and Trevor Nunn. They did this thing the series on the BBC called called acting Shakespeare and it was like all the best Shakespearean actors out of in England doing these filmed working sessions. If you can ever find them they are they are to this day amazing. Wow, they're amazing. It's like Patrick Stewart and David suchet and Ian McKellen and Lisa Harrow and she Sinéad Cusack and all these great actors dissecting how they break. down Shakespeare's texts and all these things is amazing, but I think I think on a on a technical level when you go I think anyone would tell you that if you're going to direct a movie or an act in it, you got to Triple the preparation time. Like if someone tells you like prep is 10 weeks you go. No, it's not as 20 like it's and if you have to do that, unofficially off the books because and you got to carve your time as an actor, you're the guy whatever. I don't know who's seen the film but the guy who plays the mayor yeah in the film. We did plays together at the Ninth Street rep in New York when I was like 24 and he's a terrific actor teaches acting as a Lewis and and he was my rehearsal partner. So like long before prep started I would work he would play all the other parts and I would work on the scenes with him because I knew I wasn't going to have time one Scout start until you know, like the Alfred Hitchcock line that directing is getting pecked to death by a thousand pigeons is His I really like it's very true and the pit and you and it's your the pigeons are the ones that make you look great. But yet but they do have a lot of questions and and and it's going to end it's going to eat your if you're going to act in something your prep time is going to go like like down the hall. I wonder what came first that line from Hitchcock or the Birds. Yes. They are related. Maybe it was his revenge. It was like the any instant Recollections of working with Marlon Brando on. score Yeah, sure. I mean. it's it's funny you say that because I was I was having a conversation about him and that not that long ago and that was got me thinking about it and I hadn't in a while and there was like yeah, I was I remember feeling a little dismayed because I felt and this is not a negative on anybody because when you're making a film like as we all know, there's all kinds of pressures of different people. They have their own things going on, but I felt that. I felt that some of what was going on for the director of the film that was making that was it was it was putting him in a slightly tight place. He he had a notion. He had a notion that he wanted the vibe between these three actors. He wanted it to conform to a videotape that he had in his head. And I thought what was a shame was that Marlon? Marlon was doing really really cool funny very tender stuff. He was putting a little bit of a Truman Capote spin a very distinctly closeted homosexual kind of a love between his character and Bob's character. There was a there was more than a paternal thing going on which is in the script which I'd been I got hired on that. I did a punch up the studio all these things so I don't Actually, like design the vibe between our characters because it had been it was more of a caper film. And once it was like me and De Niro and Brando it was like it was going to like it was going to be something else. It was not going to be tongue-in-cheek and we decided to like play it almost like a generational thing Young Turk like Stone Cold, you know Pro and then the veteran right who's gotten a little sloppy, right and it fit us and we doubted in that way, but but Marlon did that thing that he always did if you look at his work, he always has the great the great the great misperception Marlon Brando is that he was this masculine icon which he was but it's it's the way Marlon looked from Streetcar on Reflections in a golden. I mean, there's elections in Goldeneye even Terry Malloy the thing that makes Marlon Brando great is his sensitivity. He has a he has a very a very wounded Very I don't want to say a feminine because that's not quite right, but he has a there's a there's a softness and he looks like a Roman, you know, he looks like he it's the it's the juxtaposition of the way he looks with what is actually this very childlike kind of softness and sensitivity and that scene with Eva Marie Saint the famous one with the glove. And the fan with Rod Steiger in the car and all those things. It's woundedness. It's not it's not Terry Malloy. The fighter is the guy going. I needed you looking out for me. And and with her saying don't say that don't say that about me, you know what I mean? It's like he's in pain and and I think that came through so much of his stuff. Anyway, we're doing this thing and I was watching him and people were making a lot of noise about Marlon was used. He was on the first people to use an earwig right and they were going blah blah blah. He's using you. He's phoning it in and I was like the guy is 82 years old and he was doing it in a very canny way because he would have his she was realized he would do like two or three takes and yeah, there'd be like a funny little pause while he got it but he was a master. He he delivered a flying more fluidly than like most people on their best day and and after two or three he would go, you know, I got it. It just helped him find. It a little faster he was old and it was a memory thing and he would very quickly Let It Go and he was doing this. He was I started realizing he's playing this as he's playing this as a longtime unrequited love and it was really interesting really it made it. It made it more tragic and and there was an Impulse to to crush that right out and I could feel him go through this moment where he was sort of like, Here we go. Like now now it's going to become like the Marlins the difficult one and it just wasn't the case. I thought it was his last film and I thought it was. I loved watching him do that thing. He was he was very sick. I mean it's ridiculous to say he was special but eat even when long past when I think people were thinking oh he doesn't care about it anymore. He doesn't mean but he had to just an intuitive. He had a truly intuitive sense ability for I think human sensitivity a couple last questions about motherless Brooklyn before we use up our time here. I'm fascinated by The character of Lionel astronaut because occasionally you you've seen someone who has Tourette's Syndrome on film or on a TV show. I find so fascinating about this character is that this is a man who is very frustrated by and objective about his own condition. He's always apologizing for it, you know feeling embarrassed about it in a really interesting way and I'm wondering how that affected the way you played it because you're the characters has to show the frustration as As well as the throes of it that he's under. Yeah, I mean. it's always a the thing about in a way all characters who? Are heightened and I don't even mean just like carriages the disability like we're talking about Marlon Brando Stanley Kowalski or whatever Stanley Kowalski. I mean, it's not it's not like Tennessee Williams is realism, right Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski are poetic archetypal characters like no but no American playwright ever wrote more heightened archetypal characters. What's so exciting in that? Is you have Vivien Leigh and while brand of taking these things and just hauling them down onto the ground so that they become visceral right? And they take that language that's impossible. It's so hard that language you what so few people can can and they make it real right and when they make it real they then it becomes I it's like heightened but becomes identifiable right and you get the Joseph Campbell phenomenon of transparency. You're like, well, even I'm not you know, and that's why he had such an impact a whole generation of actors a whole generation of people. It was like it was like suddenly they were they could they could see the tensions of there. Masculinity and sensitivity in him. He's this way, but then he's on his knees in front of Stella, you know, and it's like it's all heightened, but what it's doing is becoming transparent lie about all of us, right and I think that that's always the case and to me like a character like Lionel with an Affliction. We don't all have tourettes but everybody everybody at some time feels misunderstood feels like an underdog feels Like people underestimate them feels lonely. And so the idea to me is not it's like the Affliction or the condition is actually just a mechanism for turbocharging your identification. Right? It's the way to get you to empathize. It's an accelerator on empathy and hopefully certainly it's true in the book. But but hopefully in the first five minutes of the film, you're like, I'm on this guy's side. Absolutely. I'm on his side. He's letting me in his head. I'm here. Who is true is true voice? I'm seeing what he deals with. I'm thinking there, but for the grace of God go I because if my inner voice came out, I'd be in trouble too. All right, you know what, I mean? And and so you you know, we're in a weird way the anchor is not like the condition or the expression of the ticks or this or that it's like I think in every character like that. It's much more. What is what they're human struggle? That's Universal underneath a specific thing. Right? And I think that's it. But you know my left foot. Let's take it like great performance of a person with a really severe physical efficient, but that's not the nature then the than the film is about what's so amazing about that film in that performance is it's as much about being Irish as it is about having Cerebral Palsy. Right? Right because he's because he's Quinta and and the three films they made together, you know in the name of the Father the boxer and my left foot all those films are about Irish life. They're all about the condition of being Irish, huh? And I think what I love about that performance is not that he amazingly inhabits the physicality of cerebral palsy. It's that he gives you this huge human portrait of a person and who just like you and me is a son of a bitch is Lusty is horny and who is fighting his daily battle is that but he's fighting through it to become who he wants to become right and and his setbacks are very intrinsically Irish the things he's also fighting through just sort of becomes a metaphor for Irish life, really and I think that I think that Lionel to me like he Tourette's the condition me on scene. It's it's woven in the film good whose character is unseen because she's a black woman and she's a lawyer but she's a black woman in the 50s. So she's written off Williams character is not seen for who he really is. Alec Baldwin's character is not seen for who he really is and I think the the idea of of invisibility or of people the dangers and the sadness of not seeing things as they are is very interesting. That's a very interesting thing. And much much more interesting. Honestly than Tourette's because if you had to relate to having Tourette's then the movie would be for like and the smallest Niche audience in the world. But if but it but it you have to figure out what is it. What is it? It's Universal underneath it. And then how does the how does the how does the manifestation that's very unique to him and hopefully kind of fascinating and humorous and all these things become a device for connecting you and it does completely yeah and in this situation when you adapted Jonathan Lee films book, this is a labor of love project for you something you've been wanting to do for ever. And what was that experience like not only for you directing it but hearing this amazing cast speak the words that you and Jonathan leave them, you know kind of created. It must have been such a thrill it was The greatest in a weird way, I was the well, that's not true. I the book takes place in the 90s and it's just about the traumatic guy working for the detective. So me my character and Bruce Willis and the guys but the whole thing the rest resetting it in the 50s and the rest of it about Robert Moses. Basically, that's you that's not in the book, right? So there's sort of its this mashup of Jonathan's character and my World my story my world and and it was neat for both of us. I think for him. It was like I think we were very true to the spirit of his character and the underlying law, you know, the loss of his only friend being the driver but then it was like his character walked off into his next novel which was he said he loved for me. I think it's one thing. That's fun. I think writing as an actor writing with other actors in mind and and writing for a huge cohort of actors that I've worked with for 25 years or known or is that you can you can hear them and you can see them and so like for me, you know, I would I was actually so hung up on Bobby Cannavale a doing a part that I got very gripped about the you know, we were trying to work out his schedule with the Irishman and oh that yeah and and Um, but like there's lines in the movie, he says he's getting frustrated with Ethan. He says like I know it's called that's why they call it winter, you know, Anna. You know, not everybody can get away with that. But Bobby can and and there are certain things that Alex says that you know, when I hear them come out of his mouth. It's a it's very You know, it's great. It's special. There's there's some people have an imprint and you can kind of hear that that in it and when you actually get when you actually get those people that you wrote with it in mind, that's pretty pretty special. My favorite stuffed will I live as I said, it's you last time the scene of you and gugu dancing where she kind of puts her hand on your neck too in that calms you down that such a beautiful moment, but I also just love the stuff with you and Willem Dafoe because for once You sense these two guys who are kind of Misfits and outcasts having this really strong connection with each other that first scene where you guys really are talking is is magical. He we talked a lot this you wouldn't think this but Willem and Alec that we talked a lot about Star Wars because we talked about these guys being like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth and Anakin Skywalker. They were Jedis together and Anakin Skywalker goes to the dark side, but he's strong with the force, right? Right, that's like who they that that was like the archetypal kind of vibe. We want to between them and I think my is sort of like Luke, you know, Obi Wan and Rags teaching Luke how to go at the Death Star. You know my God. Now you're watching the guy I'm seeing you in a whole new light, but but let me let me say let me say this because I think again, it's this it's this is a this is a very particular. Group, and I think for me will let you know again that Hulk I remember. You know, when when Phil Hoffman and me and people who when you are sort of starting theater companies and everything. We used to like Willem was William was for a lot of us. The ideal of the kind of career you could have is a New York actor sure because he you know, he helped found the Wooster group. One of the great avant-garde companies stayed very committed to it always was coming back and doing shows they're kept that group alive and vital. even as he became, you know the great film actor straddling all these things and it was kind of like that's that's that's the model of a great like New York actors career and and getting to I knew him from West's films but but getting to really dig in with him in New York work with him was very very special and I think it's worth saying he Allah in the vein of that thing of like actors doing what they have to do is like we could I couldn't we were joking about the Irishman but I made this film for like 1/10 of the budget of the Irishman and because we had to we couldn't you couldn't use very hard to get these kinds of films together even with Bruce every emanating and this this film this film was co-financed by actors because everybody in it came in and did it for me for scale like like from Bruce on down and I had to say to everybody I don't have money on this. And and that entire task Bruce Alec Willem gu Bobbi Cherry Jones, Michael Kay Williams Dallas Roberts. Josh policeman. Yeah, Leslie everybody right on down just said, let's get this made and and to me it's not is that I'm not saying that like it's not some kind of extra credit, but I do think it's important for actors to hear that like What actors can get together and leverage things we we have a there's a you know, there are ways to hack things when we get together around stuff that that you you can you can figure it out together and that was That was very gratifying to me. This this film essentially being made possible by by actors being committed to the work and I'm going to be paying it off for a long time. I've been like if you see me in Die Hard Eight and it is if it seems if you say to yourself like he any movie if it's like that seems beneath him just Just go. He's paying off motherless Brooklyn and it's worth by the way. It's worth it because you made a fantastic film for any those people who have not seen motherless Brooklyn either watching or in this room see it. It's really great and Edward. I thank you so much for being here with this treasure. Thank you for listening to this egg after foundations conversations podcast. If you appreciated what you heard, please support us with a review or donation and reach out to us on Twitter Instagram and Facebook ad seg after found. We'd love to hear from you.
A Career retrospective with Edward Norton on December 5th, 2019. Moderated by Dave Karger. Norton has been nominated for three Academy Awards, for Primal Fear, American History X and Birdman, and won a Golden Globe along with numerous other awards for his performances. Norton made his directorial debut with the film Keeping the Faith, which he also produced. He also served as producer on Down in the Valley, The Painted Veil, Leaves of Grass, Thanks for Sharing and the documentaries By The People: The Election of Barack Obama and My Own Man, a Netflix Original. He most recently directed, wrote, and starred in the film Motherless Brooklyn which he produced through his company Class 5 Films. It will be released by Warner Bros in 2019. 