"Sam Rockwell"

So I was talking to my, I was talking to my friend, I was talking, hey, hey, good morning. I was talking to my friend.

Did you just restart yourself? Still rolling. I mean, we get a, just, I just need a, just a clean start there.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,

Now Sean says that he got up at four this morning, went back to bed and that that's his standard routine. I guess I remember you telling us about that, but what, what is, what do you do when you get up at four? that gets you back down?

I read, I play games on my computer and anything to kind of get my brain back.

So that's something you haven't been able to stop doing. You don't sleep through the night.

I mean, if I take something, I do, well, what's wrong with that? I just don't want to do it all the time.

Oh, you're so worried about the temple. That is your body, right? You don't want to put anything nasty inside there.

Yeah. Nothing to mix with the other crap that you don't want to screw up the Mac and cheese.

gut by now.

Sean, how would you describe your body? Cause? I'll go first. Cause. somebody asked me to describe body, Sean's body, and, and right off the top, I said pigs in a blanket.

How would you, you know, I was watching, um, the Bill Maher show the other night and, and, uh, and some of the guests got on and he, and Bill said, gosh, you've lost so much weight. And he goes, yeah, there's nothing worse than a skinny guy with a pot belly. And I raised my hand and Scotty was like, yep.

No, I don't, I don't see you as that.

You know me neither.

You guys have, I mean, I could, I could get there and get there.

You have a very nice proportional frame. It's true.

How big do you think you could get Sean?

I wanted to get so big when I was younger, I wanted to get like, I would go to the gym all the time. I don't drink milkshakes. My oldest brother would make like make, take me out for burgers and I would constantly, constantly eat. I just couldn't gain a pound.

How'd that pan out? Did it, did it give you, did you get the look you're, you were looking for, or?

Well, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, that was a sign of power, right?

Exactly.

Big and huge and sort of a glutton, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So if you were thin, what? You had no power?

Yeah.

You were, you were, uh.

It was a sign of, yeah, it was a, if you were kind of bigger, it was a sign of prosperity.

Wealth.

Right. Yeah. Right.

I would, well, here's a, here's something that happened to me yesterday. I was at the car wash.

There you are.

And the, I threw my stuff.

You, you like to ride through? You like one of those? No, no. I do that with the kids every once in a while.

Oh, you do, for real? Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. It's fun.

That's what I call it, by the way. Good, clean, fun.

Good, clean weekend, fun.

Um, no.

The word of the car wash is good, clean, fun.

No, we get, we get the, we get the quotes. No, you didn't. Thank you.

Go ahead, Sean. Go ahead, Sean. Back to Sean.

So, so I get it hand washed, right? So I'm sitting there. Oh, look at that.

Hold your jokes. Hold your jokes. Will. Oh, God. Look, he's just, Oh, we heard hand.

Fucking clown.

Go ahead, Sean.

Um, so I, I, so I got, so I gave my car away for a hand wash. I come, sit down, I'm waiting and, and I threw my stuff in the trash, right? When you clean your car up before they wash it. And all of them consist, you know, there's a lot of, uh, near full bottles of water. And so I was sitting there cause I didn't think I was going to be thirsty.

And she said, she goes, she just got crazier at her eyes.

She goes, aren't you afraid it's dirty? I said, no, it wasn't touching anything bad. And um, so she just glared at me.

You're in a conversation.

Yeah.

Oh wait, that was the end of it?

That was the whole thing. She just ended up staring at me and I drank it. Would you ever, would you ever do that?

Fuck man, I don't even know where to attack that story. It's just the whole, every, every part of it is just open for assassination.

I, wait, so did you, was your water bottle a sling already filled with a bottle? Why didn't you just put that thing right in your little water bottle purse and just go sit down and wait for your car to be done? You've got one of those, right?

No, cause I, I threw them out thinking, well, I don't need them. And there was a little bottle, but there was a little water left in them. Then, sitting there, I was like, oh, I'm kind of thirsty actually. So I went back into the trash.

I love it. You don't, um, you don't want to use a glass bottle that's reusable. How fucking dare you?

Or a metal one?

Oh, sure.

Let me just tell you something. I know, I need to get like a water bottle.

That is, to me, the height of privilege.

Will is opening up a plastic water bottle right now.

Okay.

The height of a visual joke for our radio audience. It's not fair.

Um, well, anyway, enough about that.

Are we getting to the guest?

Oh, no, no. You don't want to do another hour on that?

Will, what'd you get into last night?

Uh, last night I got into nothing much. It was, it was pretty chill. It was kids. It was movie night for the little night for the little guys. Every night.

Did you watch the movie with them?

Yeah. Last night we ended up watching the classic Peter Pan. And so what they'll do is they'll go, we're talking about the little, the little boys,

not the big boys.

So they'll go, we want to watch Pinocchio. And I'm like, okay, so you put it on, right? We put it on in our room. They come in, they call it movie night, sort of 20 minutes before their bedtime. And then they don't really watch.

Yeah. I get it.

Like Denny will. actually, he'll go, he'll just look at you and go, can you throw me please? Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay.

But doesn't get them all fired up and then they can't go to bed.

As it turns out, and you can look it up. As it turns out, that kind of activity, getting thrown around and getting sort of squeezed and stuff, it gets a lot of like nervous energy out and they end up falling asleep and it's.

been really.

Yeah. It's been about.

Maybe I need to try that. So yeah.

Scotty, Scotty, throw you around.

No. Hey, will you throw me?

I'll throw you.

For sure.

Hey, what about, have you ever gotten real close to accidentally really hurting one of your kids during doing that? I mean, it's like, and trampolines. by the way, I forget it. Yeah. Maple wants one.

Yeah. It's a, the trampoline. We have one, uh, we have one, we have a little, we have a little house out, out on the Long Island.

Sure. Next to the bowling alley.

And, um, we have a trampoline and now, of course, it's, it's endured, I'm going to say six winters, and it's real, it's real rusty. You've seen it. It's always covered in debris. Uh huh. And I, I'm so stupid.

Yeah. I can't. I know. I know. It's just go in the pool kids.

I know.

How fun was Sunday? Okay. Here, ready? Sunday was super fun. You may be noticing a pattern with our guests lately.

We're getting right into it.

Before becoming an Academy award-winning actor, he made his acting debut alongside his mother and an East village improv show at age 10.. As a teen, he dabbled in breakdancing to impress the girls, ditto the breakdancing part. And then he played head thug in the nineties, 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. But I think he's done just a few things since then. I'll have to ask him.

Oh, Sammy's all healed up.

What's up, guys? It's all better.

I'm so sorry you had to wait a really long time for that.

No, that was amazing. That was fantastic.

Listener, um, our, our, our guest today had, uh, had an illness, what, a few weeks ago?

I did.

I had some sort of neurovirus or something. Whatever makes lots of poop come out of you.

Right.

And you pulled, you had to pull the handbrake day out.

Yeah. I did. So what he did was-.

I had a temperature.

And he doesn't know that it's a surprise guest situation. So he texted each one of us individually, or at least me, and said, Hey man, I think it started with just a picture of a thermometer. and, you know, Sam, and Sam, we're going to let you talk in a second, but, listener, you need to know that, Sam, one of his things that he's very famous for is, uh, sending pictures of, um, really life scarring images. Um, and I thought, what could this, okay, so what could this thermometer be? It must be a rectal thermometer coming from Sam.

But that didn't matter. Will didn't know. And Jason didn't know when you were going to come on. So it's fine. That's right.

Good to see you, guys, man.

Um, and, and, and is, are you doing the same Jason Bateman thing because of a part where you're growing all this facial hair out? Yeah, I am.

I'm doing something in April where I sort of look like, yeah, me too.

April 15th. I got it.

What if it was the same part?

You grow a man's beard. Yeah. What if it was the same part? You grow a man's beard.

Mine's, um, uh, well, how long has that been? How long have you gone on it?

About six years.

You might need to go into the trailer.

But, but my guy's supposed to kind of be a real loser and, and is incapable of, get to.

the beard.

Yeah. I got another month left.

Sammy, thanks for being here. Tell me, I want to get into all of it, but I want to know about the break dancing thing. when you, that was bad break dancing. But I remember years ago I saw you do the splits on Saturday Night Live. I was like, is that really him?

Yeah, I did it. I did. I tore my hamstring doing, doing it during Fool for Love, actually, eight times a week.

Wow. We did it.

It was a bit in the play. Yeah. It's, it's not, uh, you gotta be warned.

You did the full on split?

You know, it's a cheat. It's a cheat. I don't know if it's the, the Risky Business or the James Brown, but you're kind of like,

oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, it's not quite, yeah, careful. Um, it's, uh, it's not quite the split splits.

Well, have you always been able to kind of do that? You always been a bit of a dancer?

I kind of messed around. I watched, uh, I remember watching, uh, James Brown and watching Michael Jackson. I was in the, it was a, it was a way to meet girls when I was 12 and I, I guess I watched Risky Business and tried to imitate that.

Um, now, but, but then, uh, then the, the, the, the great limited series that you did with all the, the, the, with the Fosse, like, yeah, you don't, you don't just sort of train for that. You need to be somewhat gifted before you even consider taking that part on. So you know what you're doing on the dance floor. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, thanks. Thanks. But that was the first formal training I did.

I think on that thing, how much dancing you do in these days, man, cool it, bro. He's, I'm just wanting to know. man, cool it. I know it's true.

Well, you guys are in G force together. Yeah.

Yeah. What a cast, by the way. What a cast. Zach Galvin, Ackers, Bill Nye. Yeah.

Bill Nye. That's right. That's right.

So, Sam, when you, when you were a kid, San Francisco, San Francisco, right? I love San Francisco.

Yeah. Yeah.

In, in the city, or just like in the city proper, yet moved on. Wow. And, and your parents were, uh, both actors too. Yeah.

My father was a union rep for the supermarket clerks and the printers. And um, we lived all, we lived everywhere. Fillmore, Tenderloin, Castro, uh, I met Harvey milk when I was eight years old. He was getting into unions and stuff. Yeah.

That's wild.

Yeah. My dad was a big union guy. Couldn't cross a picket line.

And, and what do you, do? you think that San Francisco had more of, um, more of an artistic community or as much of an artistic community as New York, or was it different, or what's the difference?

It wasn't as cool. I didn't, I wanted to go to the fame school and I went to sort of a small school of the arts in San Francisco. I went to high school with Margaret Cho, Aisha Tyler, me and Aisha dated for a while. And uh, we were in a very terrible improvisational troupe, uh, called bat wing lubricant.

Wow. Well, so what, so what age are we at now? when, when the acting bug starts to take hold?

Well, I was 10, I dabbled with it and then I was sort of busy getting stoned and trying to meet girls and then I didn't take acting very seriously. And, um, it was kind of a rough school, McIntyre, but we had the soda kids within that, but about 500 of them within the 2000 and, um, juvenile hall was across the street. So it was like a mixture of, of kids from the mission that were rich kids coming in for the school of the arts. And, uh, I was dating a dancer and it was, it was around, you know, 16, I was kind of dabbling in it, but I didn't take it seriously.

And then, when did it get serious? Did you go, did you move out of there? Did you go to New York?

I got a movie when I was 18 and then I moved to New York and I didn't really get, I do, like, you know, toothpaste, commercials and shit like that. And then I, I studied with William Esper when I was 23,, did two years with him. And then I met my acting coach there, Terry Knickerbocker, and studied minds. Yeah.

Wow. Now, why was the move to New York instead of Los Angeles? Shorter drive, more opportunity.

Yeah. I guess my mom lived there. And so I thought that was the place to go. And I kind of romanticized being a struggling actor, cause I'd seen my mom do it.

And a free place to stay, maybe.

And a free place to stay.

But I love that story you told in your acceptance speech when you won, won your Oscar. Yeah. Sorry. I just hold it, cause we are going to put, we're going to put applause in.

Use mine.

For sure. But dude, so you win an Oscar and you tell that great story about going to the movies with your dad. And I loved the way, and I'm just going, I literally just remember it, cause it was so impactful that your dad would take you out of school and he'd lie to the school saying that you had to do some shit or somebody died.

Yeah. Then my grandmother passed away.

Again.

It's pretty morbid, isn't it?

That's so good.

That's so great.

He's fucking the best, man. Yeah. I mean.

I, I, I was in music camp when I was a kid and I sent a letter to my mom saying, can you please come, pick me up? Please just tell him, grandpa died. Please just tell him, grandpa died and you have to pick me up. She never did.

She never did.

Yeah. And did you love it? Did you love getting pulled out of school, going to the movies, or did you want to stay in school and hang out with your buddies?

No, I loved it. I loved it. It was, uh, I, the school I was in at the time, I think I was getting beat up a lot. It was kind of a rough school. Yeah.

You were like in fight. I read you were in a lot of fights or the white supremacist.

Yeah. But I didn't win any of the fights. I was getting my ass kicked. and then, um, my dad, yeah, so my dad took me out. I was like, yeah, let's get the hell out of here, you know?

Oh God.

Really? And nobody had heard of it.

My dad took me to all of those movies during that time too. They were so good. All those movies that none of my friends were seeing, but, like my friends, weren't going in to see, like the Werner Herzog, you know, uh, documentary, you know, and like, or like any movies with subtitles.

No.

Yeah.

I remember my mom would take me to, I was kind of like her movie pad. I remember her taking me to see, was it missing, the one with Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon?

Yeah. And Jack Lemmon.

Yeah. About the people going missing in Chile. I was 11..

How old were you when you saw that?

11..

Yeah.

Pretty heavy.

Sure. Couldn't sleep for months.

I saw The Deer Hunter when I was 10.. I saw like Taxi Driver when I was eight.

Exactly. Right? And it got you excited about movies, but it's, uh, it makes you grow up quick.

But there's something there. Okay. So, but there is something there, messaging wise, which is like, you don't want to take your kids to just, just see something that's got gratuitous violence or language or whatever, but if it's great filmmaking and it's a great story and it's a great, then there's, and it's great art, then there's value in that.

The violence should be done cinematically.

Yeah. But I mean, people enjoy the other thing. I was on a plane once. I saw a guy watch Fast and Furious movies with the sound off.

That is when you've had the full lobotomy. Right? But that's, that's when it's, that's when they took it all out. They just scraped it clean.

Wait, Sam, you, so I also read you, you, you hurt your hands or something. Was that from fighting?

No, it was a car accident. Yeah.

What?

Wait, wait. Is that, is that fully extended?

Oh, wait, do it again.

Can you not straight? Oh yeah. You can straighten them out. Oh, look at that.

Wow. Oh, the Ginger.

What happened?

You see it in the green mile for a second.

Uh, yeah.

It works for that character. But I usually.

So he's got, so he has a tweak tip of, uh, of, of his, uh, what the FU figure.

They were all crushed. All four of them were crushed.

What happened?

I flipped a Jeep Cherokee on a Sunset and La Brea.

Just fucking got into a squat. You just flipped it. Oh, you were in it.

I'm fucking strong. Use your legs.

Yeah. I started the Royce really early.

That'd be so good if you were like driving around and you just see Rockwell and you're like, is he flipping a fucking car?

So wait, Sunset and La Brea, that sounds like, so. you were upset at the fat burger there on the corner when he was not getting you?

Yeah, I was, I hit the lead a little, you know, after it rains, when it gets kind of oily, you know, the roads and I hit the, I hit the lead kind of fast. I was trying to impress a girl and she kept going. I took a left turn and I got into a skid and I got out of the skid and it just went. But those models, I think, tended to flip pretty easily.

They're tippers.

Wait, you're a model. You're still, you're talking about the car or the girl?

The Jeep Cherokee.

Walk me back. You're trying to impress a girl at the stoplight that you don't know.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm trying to make, I'm trying to like do, like American graffiti, kind of hit the, hit the lead kind of thing.

For sure.

And, uh, but then I had, I took a left and I got into a skid and I got out of the skid, but then I hit the curb and I went, fuck.

Do you miss driving, being in New York?

No, I don't miss driving at all.

Not at all?

No, I drive, I drive in movies, but that's like a video game.

Yeah, that's true. I once had to drive in a movie and, and the, the scene was, I was driving a car that was, that was going the wrong way on a freeway and what they did was they built one of these pods on top of the car where they have a stunt driver up there with a wheel that is steering the car so that he or she can make all the correct turns. They're not relying on an actor to go left, go right, in coordination, with the cars coming at you going left and right that they've worked out. It was the most horrific thing I've ever been through, where I'm speeding the wrong way on control. Yeah, and I'm not in control, but looking as if I am, I'm turning my wheel, but there's a dude up on top of the roof in a little tiny built pod just, just a couple of hours earlier.

That sounds kind of...

No, but it worked. Thank God.

If you have control issues, especially.

I kind of want to race cars. Does anybody else want to race cars? I'm not kidding. Do you really want to race cars? I do kind of want to just try it once.

Do you really? I can set that up. Yeah, we can go to Willow Springs.

I'm not kidding.

Jason fucking won. We've talked about it. Jason's won that thing three times.

I know. I want to try it.

You've raced cars, Jason?

I mean, in a celebrity race. But then I did have two...

What kind of car is that?

No, you flipped a car in a real race in the Poconos.

Yeah, exactly. Holy shit. It was professional for two races, and then I got upside down and said, okay, I'm good. Wow. I'll go back to the celeb stuff.

Bass Fender's doing that, right?

Oh, yeah. But he's doing the real, real, real version.

He races, like, BMWs and shit across Europe.

Yeah.

Wow. Sam, I want to get back to you.

I do that.

I want to get back to you when you're at the beginning.

I do it on Broadway. Sure. I do it on the boards.

I can't wait to just talk theater and all that.

Yeah.

Sam, anything ever funny ever happen on stage? Anyone ever forget a line?

I've never seen Sean skip over, I want to get to Broadway. I've never seen him go like, oh, we'll get to that.

Can we talk about this little show that Sean did at the Tabasco?

Oh, the Tabasco.

Was he not just spicy as hell in that?

Oh.

Oscar.

You're very nice to come, Sam. It meant a lot. to me. It meant a lot.

But seriously, listen, I go on about all you guys, and, like, the rest of development, I go on about Ozark identity theft. If Jason hears me say identity theft one more time, he's going.

to punch me in the face.

That was the movie. I was driving the wrong way down freeway.

Was that the movie?

Was it really?

Yeah.

But, I mean, I'd seen you in a play before. I didn't realize that you're a fucking assassin.

I know.

I mean, what the fuck?

What was that?

And do you think that's why we were all so knocked out? Because we just thought it wasn't going to be good at all. Like, here we are, boy. We're just sitting here. We're going to watch a train wreck.

Sam, you know, when we went and saw the opening night, and we're all there, and we're sort of fucking like, and Jason, right as this sort of curtain comes down, Jason turns to me, tears in his eyes, and he goes, podcast is over.

When it was over? Yeah. No, when the play was over. And he had, just, like, gained mountains of respect in Will and I's mind. And it was already very high.

It's ruined.

So now you've got to double down on the bust, his chops.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, there's nothing.

That's very nice.

Shut up, Sean.

Hey, Sean. Sean. Fuck you. Sean, can I ask you a question for real? Can I be real now that we're on this subject?

And we will be right back.

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All right. Back to the show.

You know what? You know what? I'm going to tell you something and then, Sam, I want one ready, locked and loaded. So get ready, because you're off theater. Don't fucking threaten me.

with a great story.

But listen, I just sent Will this thing that stretches out your calf, because if you stretch out your calves and your hams, you release your lower back, because Will's been having lower back stuff. So I got that during Goodnight Oscar, because I started getting plantar fasciitis. Like, my feet start hurting. Oh, yeah. And it was so bad.

Sean, so Sean sent me.

Did you forget the boot?

Yeah, I got the boot. It's that thing, that kind of rocks you know, to stretch your calves, right? You put your foot on it and it just Yeah.

And you sleep in it, right? You sleep in it. No, no, no.

You just stand on it. No, you just stand on it and you just kind of seesaw. My son Abel, I mean, my son Denny, who's almost, who's like three and a half, looks like that.

Oh, okay. That's something else. Oh, that's advanced.

So these guys? I've been having this issue with my. it was my hamstring and then it became like a sort of sciatic nerve thing and I'd be fucking going to see this guy. We're not going to mention Tarek again. This would be four in a row.

where we mentioned.

Dr. Turek. Tarek is great.

You know, Tarek.

Have you seen Duran, the Israeli magician?

No, but do you know, Tarek? Wait.

Do you get to watch magic tricks?

Okay, so Tarek's the fucking. So I've been going to Tarek. I've been living in his office for the last two weeks.

Tarek is fantastic. He's got a great elbow. Duran is also great.

Great. I don't know Duran. I don't know Tarek. Tarek has an unbelievable elbow. When he gets it there, forget it.

Really?

That's really good.

Oh, really? Good.

It's unreal. stretch your hands and your calves and you're good to go.

Yeah, you've been screwed up for a few weeks on that.

I have. That's great. Indeed I have.

It starts with the feet.

So, so, so hand injuries from the car. Any injuries from Broadway? Uh,

yeah, hamstring. Well, I have, I've had tendinosis, two calves from other stuff. That's about it. Shoulders are creaky. Yeah.

How old are you now, Sam?

I'm 77.. No, I'm 55..

Right. So we're all about the same age. You look fantastic. Thanks. Yeah.

It does break down. It's really annoying.

But, so Sam, go, go talk to me about the quote, well-paying 1994 Miller Lite commercial. Oh my God. Right. So that's when, is that? when you knew like, okay, I got this big commercial.

Well, I worked in a lot of restaurants, bar, back, busboy. I delivered burritos.

No shit. What do you go furthest back with? of the, of the, of the actor buddies that, that you still have? Like, do you go back furthest with like Crudup or, um, well,

yeah, Crudup and Thoreau and I were, we're together during 9-11 and, and we knew Phil and, and very happy for, uh, Jeffrey Wright and Paul Giamatti.

and Ruffalo. For Tracy, that's Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

We don't really mention, as you probably know, we don't really like to mention Thoreau on this podcast.

so we'll cut that out. We'll go back, we'll trim that out.

He's kind of persona non-G around here, you know? Yeah, well, uh-oh, does he have a message for us?

He told me to, uh, give you a message. He said,

uh,

you could ask Arnett this question from a listener in New York named Justin T. Will, when you buy button-down shirts, do you take them somewhere,

take them.

to someone to remove the top five buttons, or do you just buy them pre-removed? Also wondering, what's your nighttime, let me get this right, décollage routine? Love the show, keep up the good work.

Oh, my god, that is so true.

Well, that's rich, coming from a guy that removes his sleeves.

I didn't, even, I didn't realize. you don't, you don't usually button, you don't have any buttons.

Is that true?

Yes, it's true.

What do you call it? Is that called a Burt Reynolds? You mean like, you go like that?

Yeah. I do.

I do. If I'm wearing a button shirt, I do a lot of this. Why? Why?

Because you think people, like you're doing people a favor.

and you gotta show a little skin. You gotta give people what they want. Right. This is a world, you have to understand that we are always transmitting and receiving, and so I'm putting out and I'm also receiving, and so I feel from the world they want, they wanna get more skin. Sammy knows what I'm talking about.

Oh, my God. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta do it. All right, Sammy. Lawn dogs.

Yes. Talk about skin. Yeah, lots of skin on that.

I know, right? Wait, so you received critical acclaim, Yeah. and your performance was like incredible. Thank you, thanks. Yeah, I love that.

Those were the days I had abs.

I've not heard, I've not heard of lawn dogs.

Lawn dogs, you gotta see it, it's so good.

Yeah, I get naked and uh,

I think I've seen it.

Boy, I was in good shape back then,

that was fun. Yeah?

Is that the thing you think? kind of opened the doors for you?

The porn? Yeah, I think so. I think that that was one of them. We did Safe Men with Paul Giamatti, Ruffalo, Dinklage.

I was gonna say Safe Men, that Hamburg, right? Isn't that Hamburg's?

You know, Safe Men? Yeah, it's a little, it's a little gem, I think.

I knew those guys, I knew some of those guys, because those guys who produced it, I think they were the same dudes who made my buddy Steps' movie that I did. Yeah, anyway, great guys.

Yeah, and then Box of Moonlight was those three kind of.

Box of Moonlight.

Yeah.

Helped me get, and then Galaxy Quest and Green Mile.

sort of happened. Okay, so I wanna talk about Galaxy Quest, it's one of my favorite movies.

Dude, so I saw Safe Men, I really love Safe Men, by the way, and I knew a lot of those dudes, but then, when you did fucking Galaxy Quest, Rockwell, you absolutely destroyed.

Yeah, incredible.

Destroyed it. Incredible.

Thanks guys. I auditioned for the Enrico Colin Tony part. Oh yeah. Yeah, still waiting here.

You're not right for it.

I know I'm not right for it.

Well, they agreed, but I'm just saying that you're not right.

So wait, this is from, so your character, Guy Fleegman, right?

Yes.

He was so, he was so fucking great. Fuck, thanks. It was like the pick me energy, this is from Scotty, okay?

Oh boy.

This guy said the whole bit about you not wanting to be sent down first, your character, like whenever you go to a planet. Yeah. Those characters always die. That was a reference to Star Trek, you probably know this, Star Trek and the red shirts. Yes.

That's right.

They would always send these guys down first and they would always die. Is that right? It was such a funny thing.

I just kind of stole my performance from Bill Paxton in Aliens.

Hey, Sean, just wide it out, I just want to see if I can make out the Mountain Dew on your desk, if it's possible.

Wow.

The fucking monster energy drink.

And the Star Trek cosplay outfit.

No, but it was. You know what, though, it is true. That was the first time somebody sort of made that kind of joke on screen, your fucking delivery, Sammy. It's just fucking unreal. Dude, every time.

We lucked out with that movie.

Sam, you're one of those guys, and I talk about this from time to time on the podcast, you're one of those people and it doesn't matter what you're doing.

It never sucks.

It could be the worst. You never suck. You could be in the worst movie, the worst play, the worst TV.

You're always.

unbelievable because you're so committed.

I fucking love that about you.

I know, I love that too. Do you ever feel, like I was going to say the same thing, do you ever feel like movie to movie, obviously, you never know what you got or what you're in or what you have. Can you feel it by now, at this point in your career, as you're going day, one, week, one, month, one, month, two, you know what, I think I'm in a piece of shit. or I think this is working, or I think this is really working because I said when I did Good Night Oscar, we had an invited dress. We had an invited dress rehearsal with a bunch of kids who didn't get any of the references, because it takes place in the 50s and it was crickets, the whole play.

It's always scary,

isn't it? Yeah, it's scary.

Yeah, that's a great thing. So what is your broom around that? How do you feel?

Well, first of all, thank you, and right back at you, all three of you guys. but yeah, I think you always think it's fucking Hamlet, right? I mean you think it's Citizen Kane when you're working on it and then at a certain point you realize maybe it's not, and then...

Yeah, starts to take on water.

Yeah, yeah, and then you're like oh yeah, and then you're like oh shit, this could be bad.

This could be...

I remember, Baldwin once said to me Alec once says to me he goes, he never. he goes like you, never intend to make a bad movie. he goes. you know, you go like you agree to do something and you're making this movie with people and they go, hey, we're gonna go over here and you go. great, I can't wait, I'm excited to go over here and then you start making it and all of a sudden you start going in the other direction.

Yeah, yeah, and you can. sometimes it comes from watching another performance or a decision a director makes, or just the general vibe on the set from the crew or whatever, and you can start to smell it right and you just can't. there's nothing you can do about it, because you're only doing one little piece of it, it's just a team.

So does it? does it take away the energy like, do you start depleting yourself of kind of the same chutzpah? I don't think you do.

you always deliver, though.

well, I think if you sign up and you, you get talked. I think when you get talked into something.

yeah,

and I won't mention any names. but when you get talked into something, that's when you're, that's when it's bad you know what I mean and you try to do a fixer-upper thing on it.

right, but you have. you know, Willie. you said that he fully commits, and that's certainly part of why he's so great. but I've seen a lot of crappy actors fully commit to a crappy performance. that doesn't fix it.

Sean, Sean, do you make a lot of sucky choices?

in your life.

ignore that Sam.

ignore it.

you know, you want to make God laugh, telling your plans right. so you just never know, you never know.

right, but you have good taste. did that come from? did you get it from mom or dad? or from watching a bunch of great stuff, you know.

again, I think it's just more ego. to be frank, I think it's more like just wanting to have a big part of it, have a reason to get up there.

right and doing something that you're going to want to watch.

it doesn't mean that it has to be a lead role. it can be a supporting role. sure, yeah, that you're going to want to be a part of.

do you watch your stuff? are you one of those actors that can't watch if it's good?

if it's good, it's like a home movie if it comes on. Seven Psychopaths came on. I love that experience was really.

yeah, I hear Martin McDonagh is just about the best guy in the world.

he's the best man, you know and Chris Walken. I'd done a play with him and then we did the movie and Colin and Woody, so we had. you know, it was just a really nice time. we had a great time.

yeah, so it's like.

isn't this like a home movie? right when you see it's either a bad experience or a good experience, you know.

but what about like on set? will you watch playback to sort of help in calibrating your performance, or do you like stay in the dark?

only if it's like, mainly for the canvas, or if I'm a lot of times just to get maybe a tone, and then I stay away from it like, and a lot of times I'm noticing, if I do look at it, I'm under or I used to be over the top, but I'm noticing it's actually I need more.

and then I need to

contain it.

I would say tell the director to bring the camera closer instead of you reaching out. you know, fucking. if they can't see it, they gotta get closer. you stay small.

or bring your own, yeah.

or bring your own where one of those GoPros turn back on yourself.

when you say to see the canvas, to see the canvas and the tone, are those two different things? do you mean sometimes that you actually look and go like cause? when you're in it you don't have a sense of the bigger picture? and then, when you get to see it, you go oh, okay, okay in terms of staging and what effect is? I guess I'm talking.

about stakes. you know, I'm talking about stakes.

bad.

is that what you're saying?

yes, he's rough.

sorry, I cut you off, yeah.

yeah, he's gotta go back to NYU, yeah.

self-graduated.

and he's hard to look at. hard to look at.

he is tough to look at. he is tough to look at.

were you gonna say he's particularly helpful? yeah.

he's very articulate about acting, he can. I went to American Buffalo. I was like I was losing my saliva. literally I couldn't get through the speech and I went. I said man, I need your help, I gotta, I can't get through this fucking thing.

yeah, isn't that amazing?

what was it, sir, to the extent?

what's the key to keeping your mouth nice and lubricated?

who's this for who's that question for good question.

sorry, I was looking at you, okay, okay.

very good question.

okay.

voice warmups. Sean. voice warmups right.

very good.

keeping. I mean they say it bites your tongue, but you know I do a voice warmup, 20 minute link later warmup.

also, isn't it wild when you're doing a live?

pee a lot, it's pretty little warm.

yes, that's good when you're doing a live play, that you've created this character and this world through weeks of rehearsals. then you get up on your feet. so you created this piece of art and you think people will know your choices like they think. so, for your speech, for example, you're like well, I can't change it. this is how it's supposed to go, but people don't know that.

I once saw John Malkovich do burn this

oh yeah, I saw that.

right. so what about that opening monologue as he comes in after, you know, fucking trying to get a parking spot out in front of the goddamn building, and he's fixing his hair in the mirror, and he stops in the middle of a sentence not at a punctuation, but middle of a sentence for at least a minute, while he's fucking with his hair, and then picks right back up on his monologue another minute or two, you know talking. I just couldn't believe the balls. you know, I was a young actor watching this and I was like oh fuck, that's incredible. what this guy does, incredible, he's one of my favorites, that performance.

was unbelievable.

yeah,

it's unbelievable. so anyway, I added two glasses of water in the scene. I'm like I think my character should drink water now, yeah.

no, no, absolutely. I had a six page monologue. I had the director. I said can I have like a water fountain? he said no, oh really.

now I'll ask you a real hacky question here that there is no answer for, but I'll ask anyway do you prefer doing theater over camera work?

no, I mean it's totally different. I think it's just the gym and it's really scary, and it's like going to the gym. yeah, and it informs your film work, I think, but it it helps. you know, like Chris Walken does, that monologue in Pulp Fiction. I think it's because he did Hamlet, he did Rose Tattoo.

yes, but

Stanley Kowalski.

but would you not agree that that if you do a stage level performance in front of the camera, you'd be doing too much? oh yeah,

for sure definitely.

but interesting. talk about that, talk about that idea. it's like going to the gym for film work. well.