Wyatt & Kurt Russell

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Hello, we have a blast from my past today.

Yeah, it was really fun.

Kurt and Wyatt Russell, father and son.

Father and son, our first father and son duo.

Our first, but not to be our last.

I hope not.

If they go as good as this one did. Yeah. I'm now very open to father and son duos. Kurt Russell, I don't need to tell you about him. I mean, fuck, Kurt Russell, the thing, Hateful Eight, Escape from New York, fucking.

Icon.

Icon, my favorite growing up. Snake fucking Plisskens, what a guy. And then, of course, Wyatt Russell, the most beautiful boy who's grown into the most natural and wonderful actor. I'm so happy for him. Black Mirror, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

It was.

Please enjoy Kurt and Wyatt Russell. He's an armchair expert.

He's an armchair expert.

He's an armchair expert.

How's it going? I was looking at his RV. And that Lincoln, did you see that Lincoln? Oh, yeah. That Lincoln is really nice.

You and I were just discussing that you don't give a shit about any of this stuff. And then, your dad already checked out the whole fleet. It's so fucking funny.

He's got a Sprinter. Where is it?

Yeah, you didn't mention the Sprinter.

The Sprinter's cool. I mean, there's no car element to it.

But it's like set up for overlanding or camping.

Yes. My wife and I spent two months, when she was pregnant, the first time in the van during COVID. We did like the tour of all the national parks and stuff. And it was the greatest thing I ever did. I never would make one of these buys where you go down to Costa Mesa and just some dude, he's 21,.

Pregnant wife. Getting close to deliver? Oh yeah. Cause I watched an interview with y'all that happened really recently. And they were saying you weren't going to travel for the holidays cause it might come.

Happy birthday.

Thank you so much.

Well, first one is December 26th. So it was day after.

Oh, what a terrible.

Terrible birthday.

In another shit one coming.

We woke up day after Christmas, on Boxing Day. Everyone's fucking exhausted. Buddy wakes up and it's still dark outside. And, like, buddy, just to grind it through. We're like, it's your birthday.

I haven't played with the shit I got yesterday.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cause I make an argument that my birthday's the very worst cause. it's January 2nd. So everyone just made their resolutions. No one wants to drink. No one wants to eat.

Today is my mom's birthday. Now. she died three years ago, but for all of our lives, January 4th, we always felt like we got to do something. We got to, you know, come on. Yeah, yeah.

But did she acknowledge? it's a shitty birthday?

Terrible time. His is worse. 26th. It really did feel like the same kind of thing.

26 might be the worst. That's really bad.

That's number one. If he's anything like me, it would be the best. Because I fucking hated my birthday. Why? I didn't like being the center of attention.

Hated that. That's me too. I love attention, but I panic that everyone's going to be bored at my party. Yes. Like, I just have no confidence in my ability to host a party.

Yeah, none. I luckily married a woman who's the greatest at it. And we were talking about that the other day, where I was like, if I didn't marry my wife, I'd be a shut-in recluse. I wouldn't see anybody. It would be awful.

You really need to marry your opposite. Yes.

There's a Russell gene, though, that's really telling.

Deep. Yeah. It's deep. It's a strong, it's a dominant gene.

It's a dominant gene. My sister, Jill, we call her the Herman of T.O. She takes it to a good extreme.

Yeah, Kurt, you're like borderline living off grid and eating moose for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So here's the weird part of today. I haven't seen Dax for years. It's great to see you. And all I can think of is I'm looking at that T-Rex head there. I'm calling it a T-Rex head.

It is. Yes, that's correct.

Because when we worked together on this Monarch show in my RV, there was that exact T-Rex head and it was stolen. No.

You son of a bitch.

Hell, you son of a bitch. You got it. Happy Christmas.

It's a sex hotel.

It's not just, you, don't just come and go.

Right.

It's like. there's amenities and stuff.

Sorry.

Wabi, will you trim me up a hair? I think I have Monica's setting from synced. Monica likes it nice and soft.

Seriously, though, how great is where your life has gone, where you've taken it? You've always been a very talented guy, and all that, but to be able to personalize your life, that succinctly. Congrats, man. Way to go.

Thank you so much. Honestly, it's hard to comprehend that it could have worked out the way it did, but I'm sure you have felt that many times throughout your life.

Oh yeah, yeah. Way beyond.

Yeah, do you deserve this? How did I get this? Am I going to lose this? It's complex and fucking incredible.

I never worry about losing it, because I never minded where I was. It's never been bad.

I try to remind myself of that. I'm more excited about this interview than I've been for one of years. And I'm telling you the truth because I want to tell you guys what a magical week of my life that was. I mean, it is in my, like if I had my top 20 weeks in my life.

Great place.

Fuck the place. Like, hey, I love you guys. You too, Kurt. I had so much goddamn fun with you.

It was fun. It was so fun.

And then I'm curious. Yes, I'll tell the whole story.

It's about at this point, they don't know what you're talking about.

That's my job.

For me, it was so special. And then, of course, over the years, I'm like, I wonder if they remember I was even at their house. Totally. But yes, when I was dating Kate, I got to come up to y'all's Canada house on the lake in Muskoka. And I had never been there.

Yeah, right. I was a libertarian at the time.

I could talk to all of you. Don't tell me, you wandered, son.

Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't hurt.

Well, that place, they got it when I was 10 and just shaped every great experience that I ever had. And it became, I think, my friends were up there when you were up there. Yeah.

We're talking about Muskoka, Canada. Muskoka, Canada.

A few hours north of Toronto. Summers? What is this? It was like August-y, I think.

Yeah, like late July, August. We joked that it was like Hogwarts. If you knew about it, you knew. Since then, it's blown up. It's become a whole different place, but it had a very magical feeling to it, because we didn't have TV.

I totally agree with you. And I would argue that even you and I had more chats in a week than we would in modern times if we went somewhere for a month.

And it's always like at two o'clock in the morning, two to five. Yeah, right. You're just sitting in the Muskoka room. You can hear the loons outside. It is magical.

It's medicinal. Every morning, I jumped in and I fucking swam across the little bay you were in.

When the water's glass, it's just amazing.

And so, Wyatt, I met you and I was, like, this fucking guy's, so special and sweet. I guess you hadn't stopped playing hockey yet. No, not yet.

You haven't gotten injured yet? Yeah, not yet.

So you were playing professional hockey, but you were also really into guitar. You were practicing guitar the whole time. Yeah. And you were like writing songs. Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that.

It was a little difficult because for me, playing hockey, it's a blue-collar Canadian sport. You know, Michigan, Minnesota, they have their own hockey culture. So when I was instrumental, anything with strings, I love. If I did that too much, my coaches and some of the people that were gatekeepers for hockey would go, ah, he's not interested in really being a hockey player. He wants to go into the arts.

And maybe self-fulfilling for them, because you're already the son of artists. Oh, yeah. They all got a chip on their shoulder about that.

Exactly, so. you're completely trying, you're a very fucking artist, to show them, I'm going to buzz my hair. I'm going to be like this soldier who's going to do my job and put my head down and work hard.

You're going to lose some of my teeth.

Yeah, exactly. Even though they didn't get knocked out, I'm going to say they did.

But he refused to lose his flip-flops.

Yeah, I had eczema on my feet. After games, I'd be like, I'll take the shoes off because they're a little moist. Water and eczema don't mix. So I would wear my flip-flops around the hotel. And the coach was like, no flip-flops.

And you were from California.

And I was from California and parents of Hollywood. It all didn't work. I was supposed to play and I'm walking down to get a Gatorade in the hotel in, like, you know, Hampton Inn or wherever. we were in Sioux Falls. And I go down and I'm wearing my flip-flops.

You do have to understand that the Canadian athlete, maybe the last athlete on the planet that truly has a lot of respect for authority.

Yeah, there's no questioning it. I didn't wear flip-flops. But anyway, the point is, is that I had to be sort of one way for them. And then I had to be one way for me. And eventually it got to a point where, when I got hurt, it was like, okay, now I'm going to be who I am.

where we were playing a full singer.

We got to sing and write songs together and fell in love and still write songs and sing together and have a blast together. And now I'm building violins. And it's a real part of my life that I don't make the center of myself, but it is sort of who I am.

Can we geek out for 14 seconds? Because I literally just read this three days ago. The Stradivarius, which I was aware of, the violins, I did not realize. those are all from the 1600s or 1700s.

1700s, yeah, from a certain period of his life. Not all of them, but he had a golden period in his seventies that he made most of his great violins.

I just read about one. It has like the least amount of play on it.

The Messiah.

Oh my God, that might be the name of it. It's like a $14 million.

It's probably the Messiah. The Messiah is like the most untouched of all the Strad violins. So where I make violins, Jay Brown violins. I go there every Tuesday and Thursday and he's my violin making teacher. And he has a client who lives around here actually.

Many millions.

And it's like his ticket to the world. So I'm building a Strad model called the Titian. And so I got to look at the actual model that I'm building from the mold that was made. It's the real deal. Like very, very few people get to do that.

What is the ingredient that makes them so coveted? Is it the wood that was used? Is it the geometry?

There's a bit of a mystery to it, which makes it so fun and exciting for people to talk about. One of the things is that where they got all the wood, the forest that they got the wood from is gone. It was a high altitude forest. They were getting wood from like very, very, very old trees and they would go on these amazing wood trips.

But I'd be right to assume that the older the tree is that, the less it's going to change after it's been made and used.

You want to keep the moisture consistent, but yeah, the older the tree, if it's not diseased, the better it is, because the harder the wood's gonna be. The other thing is the alchemists and the violin makers and apothecaries of the time would create these varnishes and blends with metals in them and stuff that they've discovered that they don't really use anymore.

So a lot of it's the finish as well.

The finish as well. And then mostly Strad changed how the violin was actually structured. He elongated the body. He did certain things that changed it. And that's the violin that we know today.

Oh, my God.

And so it's a great lesson for life. It's been important for me because I can get a little jittery and it's like the wood won't do what it doesn't want to do.

Right. You can't control.

There's a lot of acceptance involved.

Yes. I can't make that go any deeper. I can't make it go any lower. I'm just gonna have to live with that as it is.

What a lesson as you enter fatherhood. Oh, my God. It's true.

It's made me so much more patient because you get so frustrated. sometimes. You're like, why the fuck won't this fit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a microcosm for waking up every morning with Buddy and my wife and being patient and going, okay, no.

He hates his birthday today. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? Can't make him like his birthday.

I'd consider it the first love of my hobbies and my life, and it's important to me.

And can you play the violin?

No, horribly. My grandfather was a professional violinist. On my mom's side, he owned a jewelry shop, but he played the Baltimore Philharmonic, played White Houses. That was his job, he was a violinist. Oh wow.

You just pointed to your dad.

My grandfather.

You had a musician in your lineage?

He was a first chair violinist for Fritz Kreisler in that orchestra.

He was the Boston Conservatory. Oh.

Wow. So violin runs in the family and I was like, well, and I did play violin when I was five because I wanted to play like my grandfather. My mom's got some of his old violins in our basement. One of them's actually a prominent maker. It was something I wanted to do, but my wife would murder me if I didn't learn how to play violin.

Well, if you don't play it perfectly, it's the most offensive sound you can hear.

There's actually a great video of me.

There's a reason why all horror movies.

Yeah, you tell it.

It's a classic. Goldie's mom, Laura, was in her last weeks of living and she was in hospital, and so Goldie wanted quiet to come in and play.

He was twinkle, twinkle, little star on the violin and it was absolute fingernails on a chalkboard. In the hospital. In a hospital, and it was enough to hit the hospital. Ripping wires out of her.

On video. And she jumps out the window. My dad was videotaping the whole thing.

He was slow zoom on her face.

and it is excruciating.

The video, one of those things where it got so bad. it starts to shake.

I thought it would make any noise.

but I couldn't help it. It was so bad. You were like loving it from the way it was, and it's a dream. It was so bad, it was terrible.

Oh my God, I must get that video. You have to get social media, you must post that.

It's crazy.

The last thing she experienced was auditory torture.

from a voice she didn't recognize.

Yo, that was the end of my violin playing career. If you can't do, Bill.

Well, when the last person you performed for died.

So yeah, guitar making's a little cooler, more accessible.

He's a really good guitar player. Have you guys ever played together?

No, I only watched you play when I was up there and I was pretty blown away.

Meredith, my wife, she's an unbelievably talented singer. Her grandmother finished second to Patsy Cline in the, you know.

I don't know if you would know this, Monica. I didn't know this until I was reading about you today that your wife is in Search Party. Yes. She's the blonde.

I haven't seen it.

Oh, please. Oh yeah, it's a great show. I know, I know, I know.

Oh, my God, it's so good. She's incredible on that thing.

She's so funny. Yeah, she's so good. Yeah, and she's the best. She's a 10 times better person than I am in every possible way. Like holds down the fort.

She can sing.

Yeah, I keep saying, you gotta do something with music. We keep looking for it.

Yeah, that seems hard to manifest, but I would imagine this thing. we're here to talk about, Monarch, similar thing, where it's like you guys have been offered a ton of opportunities to play father, son, and then you're probably not even sure how you would ever work together. And then this bizarre version, which is probably the coolest way to do it, is you guys are gonna play the same person throughout time, which is so cool. You couldn't have scripted that six years ago.

Over the years, Wyatt and I, like Oliver and I, Austin and I, Wyatt and I, have talked about doing things together, what it might be. So there were a lot of opportunities to play father and son. It was also the kind of thing he and I would kick around an idea. And we had some good ones, but we're just both so lazy. We're not gonna do anything about it.

You're bow hunting, he's violin. Yeah, exactly.

So this one was unique in that it was the same person. We thought, wait a minute, that is interesting. And then it turns out that it had never really been done before with two known actors. It was a challenging idea.

Well, listen, I'm gonna be dead honest with you. I know you guys are coming. I'm like, I gotta watch that fucking monster show. And I'm like, oh, I'm gonna do this because A, it's my job, and B, I love these guys. And then I wrangled my children into watching it with me, my nine and 10 year old.

It's different.

I thought it was gonna be kind of corny,

bad CG, Godzilla. But we didn't wanna do it.

We didn't, too, in a way. You're like, what's this gonna be?

Well, anytime you take one of these properties, like, we're gonna do the Tonka Trucks movie. And you're like, hmm, I love Tonka Trucks, but I don't know about that as a movie. Right. And similarly, you've been watching Godzilla.

It's a double edged sword idea. And we were just a casting idea. Do you do the double? You'd kind of go, Godzilla. You could go either way.

Wait a minute.

Keep saying Godzilla. What would it be, what would it be? Godzilla. If we did a Godzilla.

You know, and you finally say, well, let's take a look and start thinking. I don't know, it seems to have been something in my life that I've just always latched on to doing things that people don't understand to begin with. And then it takes a long time to go, oh, I see.

So many of your successes were terrible ideas, if we're being honest. Yeah. Escape from New York.

I wouldn't say it that way. See, that was the thing. I wouldn't say it was terrible. I think it's a great idea. If New York's a prison, that's already funny.

Okay, okay.

Back in 1980, for people who weren't from New York, it was like, you went to New York, I mean, this place is a prison.

I wasn't specific enough. A lot of the things you tackled had a high probability of failure, and they fucking worked. But they were huge swings. Yes.

But did you see it as, at a rate, you just like, I like this.

Just tickled my funny bone, or it struck me, as I really think this is good, I think this is different. I started early with Disney stuff, so I guess maybe I sort of had my fill of mainstream, if I could try to figure it out, which is no point in doing.

And can I just add a detail to that, because I think it'll fascinate you? He, as a boy, had a 10-year contract with Disney. He was the highest-grossing movie star for Disney Pictures throughout the 70s, as a child.

Oh, wow, I did not know that.

Right, I don't think a lot of people would know that. The left. The left alive?

Yeah.

They didn't know that. Yeah.

One of the last things Walt Disney wrote that they have is him writing down Kurt's name. Oh!

Yeah, it was a weird thing.

And you like, knew him, right?

Actually did, yeah.

Was he a lovely dude? What kind of guy was he?

He was an interesting man. He reminded me of my grandfather. He was very creative.

Did he have, like, a child-likeness that you would imagine?

No, I always liked watching him be here on the set, because you could see that he was watching things for a purpose. He wasn't just observing, you know? He just was wonderful to me. He gave me the opportunity to go to all the departments and meet the department heads, and he talked to me about what this department did, what that department did.

You told me a cool story in Muskoka, which was like, you had done all these years of acting, then you pursued baseball, and you know, Kurt played professional baseball for years.

No, I don't know.

We need all the deets. I know, I'm telling you. I'm gonna annoy you, but I'm gonna tell all the details. Professional baseball player gets injured, decides to go bar, at least is what you told me in Canada, gets injured, decides, I'm going back into this business, but I wanna fucking know this thing inside and out, and what did you do?

Well, at that time, I was 22 years old, and I had gone to junior, I'm looking at Monica. He's already heard it. Yeah, I went to junior college for 29 days in 1969, so that's good for me.

29 days. Did that.

Couldn't make it a month, so I didn't continue on, and I just continued to work. I decided that I did wanna have an education in something, and so when I knew I wasn't gonna be able to play baseball anymore, that was a big change for me. I never really looked at the motion picture business as something that I was gonna do to make my living at.

Can I add one detail? Yeah. Because it's a really fascinating parallel between both of you, which is his father was a successful actor. He was in a bunch of Westerns, Bing.

And he was a professional baseball player.

Oh, wow.

Right, he's growing up. second generation actor. It frames the whole thing so differently. Whatever your parents, like, I didn't wanna go sell used cars. That's what my dad did.

But we did. Right. The apple just kept falling very close to the tree. Finally then, I said, I've gotta learn something. I've gotta really know something.

Oh, wow.

And I did. For every single thing in our business, I spent one show with the sound department, the electricians, the camera department, all the way up to studio head, who I promised I would never reveal who that was. Ooh. And that's because it was hearing conversations you're not supposed to hear. Yes.

We need to really make a meal of how preposterous that was, because you were Macaulay Culkin.

Okay.

You were a child superstar.

Oh, yeah. I was starring in Disney movies when I was young, and I did do a television series when I was 11..

So, if I was on a movie set and I went to craft service and I saw Macaulay Culkin was stocking the fucking candy bars, that's an insane proposition.

All the way down to the, what do you need next week? How many crew are gonna be here? Is there gonna be a B-side to this A-side? Every department has its difficulties. It has its real things to deal with.

And were people around you, witnessing you?

Yeah, they understood it.

They probably respected it.

Well, also, gotta understand, every time it was a different- Many times they didn't know. One time it was with a director. I think, yeah, it just kind of felt like I was an ass kisser. But it was just something that I needed to do for myself to say, okay, I have an education in something. I do understand what I've gone to school myself for.

It takes five minutes on a set to realize you wanna be a stuntman.

Yeah, it's fun.

And all you do is sit around and tell stories of all the gags you've pulled and the times you've broken your back.

Yeah, you figure it out. I grew up with stunt guys because my dad had them at the house all the time.

Stunt energy is like, they're always right there. Hey, what do you need? I'm like, they've been out here for 14 hours and the energy level has not dipped.

Also, talk about paradox. All they talk about is safety. Yeah. And then they're so fucking reckless. Yeah, I know.

You try to set everything up. That was the thing in my career that I enjoyed about as much as anything was being able to work with my two stunt guys. I did 26 movies with John Casino and 24 more movies with Dick Warlock. If this isn't done safely, it's not safe for anybody to do, but I was also an athlete. So it was like, if this is safe for you, I can do this.

Is it fair for me to guess as well, because I think we have the same chip on our shoulder, which is the acting's a little, it's not very studly.

There's a phrase for that. Okay. Which is very simple. I always have carried it with me proudly. Every actress says a little more than a woman and every actor is just a little less than a man.

I'm very proud of that.

It fits me to a T.

Yes, yes, yes.

That's great.

My first goals on a set are, I don't care about impressing the director. I want to impress Transpo.

It's something that, after I was done playing hockey, I could relate to the stunt team more in certain ways, because they're more in the world of what I was doing.

Destroying your body for a goal.

Exactly, and testing the limits and the energy was there and I associated myself with it more.

The brotherhood too.

The brotherhood.

The brotherhood between actors can be dicey, because everyone's kind of competing for the attention of the brotherhood. There's not, but then you're the stunt dudes. They're bros.

They hang out in the barbecues.

You gotta be careful with this, because it really gets you in trouble, and I will dispel that. now. I don't think. in my life, and I've had the opportunity to do some really cool stuff with airplanes, baseball, wine, hunting. I mean, I've done things that are unbelievably fulfilling in so many ways, but when you do something as an actor with someone else, then you just have this little magic thing that happens.

I totally agree with you.

I was having a difficult time. What I was gonna say is that before, I wasn't able to get what I was getting out of hockey, which was this scenario where you're placed on the same team. It's very clear. Any idiot can figure it out. We are on the same team.

Totally. When you have the leverage to set the vibe on the set and kind of set that tone,

it's imperative that you do.

Cause someone will.

It should be you. If you're gonna play on any team, you better be the impact player that you need to be. Help everybody else. Let's win. And that means I'm gonna go.

Yeah. You know when I've had that experience? Well, A, I've had it on movies. I mean, my very first movie without a pals, me, Seth Green and Matthew Lillard in New Zealand for four months in canoes. Oh, what a life experience.

I did a show called Lodge 49. that was like that very special show. Very special to me, time of my life, all the stuff that worked out. But it was one of the only things that was like that, because it was an ongoing aspect. It only went two seasons, but there was not one person with an ego.

But I wanna go back to what you were saying, because I totally agree. And for me, that's why I liked acting so much is there's a part of me that is from Detroit and you gotta be a dude and you gotta do all this shit and you gotta fight. And then there's this little pocket where I get to be vulnerable and connected and have an experience with a dude I probably wouldn't have in life. For me, that's the beautiful part of it. On Parenthood, Peter Krause and I, he was my older brother on the show, were friends.

Well, there's that special circle of love that happens with every movie that you do. But so much of it depends on, everything starts with the story, then there's the character you're playing, but it's all led by the director. And if the director's vision is something that you understand and that you're helping he or she get on film, you feel like you're doing your job. But there are those special moments where you work for three or four months with someone. It's fantastic.

That's the story of my life.

You know, this is the weirdest thing. Yeah.

What do they think you're gonna be?

An asshole. Oh, sure. Entitled. Entitled. Yeah.

And he's done a nice job fulfilling that title. Yeah.

Didn't come easy, but fuck, I deserve everything I get.

I should mention. you landed in my yard in a helicopter.

The cool thing was, he was flying it.

But did you have resentment about that?

Earlier on, yeah. But then you quickly learn that it's binary. There's no gray area to live in there. It's just black or white. You either become a person who is resentful and constantly thinks that strangers should somehow, for some reason, understand who you are and understand your story.

Again, it's the way you say it, which is I can't do anything that I think's gonna make you happy. I just gotta do something that's gonna make me happy and I hope it makes you happy.

Yes, exactly.

I can't do what you want me to do. I have to do what I wanna do, but I sure hope it makes you feel this way.

Right.

And that's caring. But that's something that any kid that has a parent of note, you deal with it. It's how you deal with it that matters. And I think that it's very healthy to go like, yeah, of course you're gonna think that. I empathize.

Yes, it's kind of human nature.

You know, it's like see a guy when he's hot, stepping on a baseball field. They got that stink on them. They're just running hot right now. This guy's really good right now, right? You can feel it.

Yes, you got to be that.

That's a privilege that I'm gonna use, that versus somebody who's got not a lot of talent and thinks that, well, my last name is X and therefore I got positioned. No, that's very bad.

And it's about what you do with it. Cause I look at it, I was thinking about this the other day, someone said they look at the kids of athletes and it's like, well, that's just genetics. And you're like, there could be no genetic link to whether or not you can be a good performer or comfortable performing. But it was interesting. I was thinking about it and I was like, I really am so lucky to have had the upbringing that I did and the way they did it, because there was never any onus on being something that I'm not, being something for somebody else.

Your beginning was an interesting one too, because there's a man named Darren Bogosian who grew up in Fresno, came to Los Angeles and went through his process of becoming an agent. But very early on, when he was still playing hockey, he looked at him. What did he say to you?

I was in a movie that my friend directed. I was still playing hockey in Alabama and I was injured. And he calls me up and he's like, hey dude, I lost my actor for my first day. He had like a $15 million movie he was gonna make. John Stahlberg's the director and my partner, and one of my best friends in life, my brother, Oliver Hudson.

Yeah, you were a fucking extra. You needed a body. Where's Wyatt?

That's exactly right.

Put ketchup on him.

And so John calls me and he was like, can you get to Detroit day after tomorrow? And I was like, well, I'm not playing. So if I say I'm gonna go do a movie, I'll get cut from the team. But if I lie and say there's been a death in the family, which there had been six months earlier, my 103 year old great grandmother had passed away.

on the coast. How lucky for you.

What a blessing.

Rest in peace, Dewey. But I was like, there's been a death in our family. I have to go back east. I wasn't lying. And I made it back there.

I'm on the phone with the oiler.

Oh, no, I'm not interested in that, but maybe in the future, I don't know. And then, when I got hurt, I called him and was like, hey, I'm not playing anymore. Is that offer still stand? And I had tape of stuff. So I had some things to send around to casting directors and I'm a good hedged bet for a casting director to come in.

Well, I got to tell you my own experience. So I hadn't seen you in years and I was watching Black Mirror. And I was like, oh my God, that's Wyatt. Like that casting director, I had this enormous curiosity. I'm like, is he going to be able to do it like the rest of them?

Yeah, and it all could end tomorrow.

I think you got this super viable violin man. Yeah, that's right. I got a 27 grand a year job waiting for me.

So you both had career ending. sports injuries. That's crazy.

And Bing did too.

Otherwise known as blessings in disguise. Yeah.

But you know, what are the odds that three generations of-.

The exact same thing happened three times.

Yeah. I can't wait to interview Buddy in 20 years after he's-.

Well, can I tell you something? I'm old enough now to have watched things. I bet on it. Yeah. I've seen it.

Dude, it's fucking crazy.

Guys on the range were going, get over here. They said, what are you, five? And he said, no, I'm two. And he's two years old, and he's got his little sucker in his mouth and he's banging the ball out there. I don't know.

Hand eye.

Because you were a goalie, right?

I was a goalie. Yeah, yeah. It's all hand eye.

He was a good baseball player too. That was the one that hurt me. That was the one where, you know, your kids always have to separate from you. Yeah. And it's an interesting moment when they do.

Could've stuck with it.

The other beauty of baseball is you can be completely out of shape. At least from my point of view, I'm looking at Cecil Fielder on first base. I'm like, this guy's the best first baseman. A hitter in the baseball? There's no hockey players fucking hustling down the rink.

Phil Kessel, I was going to say, wait a minute.

Phil Kessel's a dude's bag of milk body.

Maybe a Hall of Famer.

It's funny, I look back on the lineage of our family and the thing that comes up is like, well, don't fuck it up now. Everybody's been grinding for 700 years. We just learned a couple months ago, kind of this fun thing about our family. that's totally not related to movies. But on the first day of The Revolutionary, where I told the story, this isn't an exclusive.

Damn it.

Then don't go further.

But on the first day of The Revolutionary War in Lexington and Concord, there was a shot heard around the world. And then the Minutemen retreat, the Bluecoats retreat in the house of the bloodiest day of fighting. on the first day of Revolutionary War was in Jason Russell Jr.'s house, which is our direct lineage grandfather of 10 generations ago. And it was like, well, fuck, that guy fought and he died in the house, but got stabbed 11 times by a Redcoats. And so it's like, don't fuck it up now.

Yeah, that guy went down.

Keep going hard, work, hard for Jason. He wouldn't want to see me blow it.

Do you want to go to the bathroom?

No, I want to get a drink of water, though. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Let's get you another one.

I would love another coffee, Rob, now that we're- These are- We're going back to the cafe.

By the way, these mugs.

Do you know about Ember Mugs?

I mean, should we do a commercial right now? Ember Mugs.

They don't sponsor me, but can I tell you how it tastes?

It's not a lake hour, but it is a liquid death. Oh, by the way, I was gonna bring a lake hour.

You don't drink anymore. I don't.

Oh, dad.

Anymore. Oh, boy.

19 years. You don't drink.

I didn't drink when I was in Canada.

No, I don't remember you as a drinker. No.

Well, I was a fucking drinker.

No, no, I mean, I don't remember you as a drinker, so it was before that.

I had my third AA birthday while I was dating, Kate. So when you met me, I was just about three years sober. Way to go. And I hated that you and I couldn't have some beers together on the dock. It really bummed me out.

Never been a really heavy drinker myself.

No, that's annoying to me, too. I know.

But let's get back to the Ember. Yeah. It's been an hour. Whoa. And this coffee is still hot.

Are you kidding me?

So listen, let me tell you about this, guys. You see this little plate right here? Yeah. It sits on there, and it's got a battery. So this is how it changed my life.

Somebody once wrote about me, said, it looks like a drunken driver handled his career. I said, yeah, and I was the guy behind the wheel, and I was the drunk driver. It's just whatever strikes you. But for instance, on that, I had worked with John Carpenter, on Elvis. John had been brought onto the show after I had been cast.

Snake Poliskin.

And for John to look at me and say, you can do that. At that time, only John would have ever said that. They wanted Charlie Bronson. I was only 28 years old. So for me, on different projects, when I read, use cars, I said, do these guys know how funny they are?

Listen to me, listen to me. I only wrote down four movies that I want to talk about, of your entire career.

I could play a guest at the Dax game.

Yeah, let's do it, let's do it. I'm lying to you, I wrote down five movies.

I don't know how up on Kurt Russell you are. I'm gonna say Use Cars would be absolutely number one.

It is, number one, look at this.

Big Trouble, Little China might be in there.

It's not.

Bone Tomahawk.

No.

Dax, you'll change your list after you see Bone Tomahawk.

Okay, okay, I'm on it. I have homework, good. Death Proof.

Yes. Yes, Death Proof.

Fucking Tombstone.

Tombstone.

Okay, well, I don't know, I mean listen, I didn't know there was that.

Kurt.

I didn't know, I didn't know you were, you know. What the fuck?

Wyatt sitting here. Tombstone. 30th anniversary.

That was a formative time for me. It was cool. On this Godzilla show, on Monarch, Legacy of Monsters.

On Apple, currently streaming.

On Apple, currently streaming.

New episodes coming Friday.

Or binge it if this comes out afterwards. But people ask me, on this tour, they were like, what did you find out about your dad? you didn't know?

I'm gonna pause you. I watched so many interviews with you two, and I was so triggered for you. Oh. So often.

You know, you're like, Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

You know, but what are you not gonna ask? You know, you have to.

Listen, I'm sympathetic to everyone, yeah.

And so I was always trying to come up with an answer, but really what I'd always come back to is people know or don't know, and now there's more out about it, but how he works on a movie, and how it's not changed for 35, 40 years since that movie came out, in 30 years I guess. I would come home with my dad after work, and he'd sit at this table in a room, about this size, it was a couch like this, and it was a pull-out couch, and I went to sleep on the couch, he'd put me to sleep, and then he'd go to a table, this round, circular table that you have with a little kitchen in it, and smoke cigarettes, and write. This was at three in the morning, after the day was over. Wow. And working the next day, and so that was imprinted into my mind, it's like, I guess that's just what you do.

You saw how the sausage was made. Yeah.

I don't know any other way to do it, and so, watching other people experience that, there was a bit of shock and awe with it, because you're like, holy shit, this is coming at me hard and fast, how can he work this fast, he's 72 years old, he hasn't lost a single ounce of energy, and then you see people start to catch up. It's contagious, and usually you get actors who are just looking out for themselves, because that's the nature of being an actor, we're all selfish and narcissistic in some way. That's mostly what you get, but then it's like, oh wait, he's actually trying to make the whole show better, and then everything catches up to him, and really exciting to watch other people see that in him.

I was just fortunate, all the people, mostly directors, but some producers, a lot of actors, and it's really one of those things where, if you don't keep your eyes and ears open at that point, you're really an idiot. I was just lucky, all the way from Walt Disney to Quentin Tarantino, to Mike Nichols, to Bob Zemeckis, to Meryl Streep, to Goldie Hawn, to Sly.

You were in a fucking movie with Jimmy Stewart.

Yeah. Jimmy Stewart! I mean, hundreds of people that I've had the opportunity to watch and just say, that's good, and then you watch somebody who's having trouble, and you're looking at the director, and as you get older, you finally realize it's up to you to go to that director and say, hey, can I talk to you for a second? Can I ask you a question? You gotta be really honest with me, because we didn't have a lot of time to talk about this before.

Oh, wow.

He said, who did I really want? Yeah. I said, yeah, so-and-so. I said, well, you know what? You don't fucking have her!

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you realize, at some point, it's up to you to do that.

Right. You gotta advocate for people.

It took me a long time. On the ones that it calls for, not on the ones that it doesn't call for. Doing Tarantino, all you need to do is understand what he wants you to do. That's all.

Yeah, yeah, you don't need to pull him aside. You don't need, no.

So it's not writing like that. I have everyone I want.

Right? Yeah.

But it is a matter of getting the best out of what is the vision of this, as long as we all understand it, then let's start talking about how to get that, rather than what we're doing here,

Exactly. It's like, what are we all aiming for? Yeah. Do we all even agree on what we're aiming for? Let's go to Tombstone really quick, because I want to say, while I was in Muskoka, I'm gonna back up.

I went out and got the money. I'd been on a bicycle trip with Andy Vanya, which was one of the great trips that Wyatt was on as a very young guy.

What were you, five or six? Five or six.

And at the end of it, Andy Vanya said to me, if you ever have anything that you really would like to do, please don't hesitate. And about a year later, had the opportunity to go to Andy and say, well, I actually have something here, and I've got 24 hours. It was Tombstone. Kevin Costner had moved on to my old agent, Scott Zimmerman, called me up. I was no longer with Scott, and he said, this is something that's happening, and I think this should be your next movie.

Can you greenlight this in 24 hours?

Can you figure it out? So I had a lot of inside help there, and Larry said, you can make this for 25 million, given certain things, and I said, great. So I went to Andy and said, I believe this can be done for $25 million, and if we do it for $25 million, I think I'll get you at least $1 back. And that was where the opportunity came from. Kevin Jarre was a fabulous writer, was in the process of putting a great cast together.

And you get probably the best performance of Vale's life.

Yeah, that is an interesting story, because Doc Holliday walked into the room.

Right, not Vale Kilmer.

No, it was Willem Dafoe. And Willem Dafoe was absolutely spectacular.

We just interviewed him, like two weeks ago.

Okay, they were all excited, and Buena Vista would not release the movie with Willem Dafoe and Kurt Russell. Said, that's not gonna work. And I said to the director, I said, we're gonna find out now who's directing the movie, either you or Disney. And he said, we have no other avenue of distribution. And I said, Vale Kilmer.

It's growing on me.

I mean, he was great. It wasn't like that, but Willem Dafoe was scary.

It was like Doc Holliday.

But Vale's performance was beyond.

I remember, I wanted to be Doc Holliday.

Come on.

I'll tell you what, though. Five days before we started, Andy said, hey, one thing, I have an opportunity to get us $3 million more for the movie. You play Doc Holliday, and Richard Gere plays Wyatt Earp. Whoa. And I said, I think we should stick with what we got.

How hard was that for you?

It wasn't hard.

Had you not gone out and gotten the money? Exactly. And you had just been hired to be an actor?

Wait a minute, I did this for those five scenes, but now I had other things at stake. That's right. And so I said, okay, I will do this and everybody will understand. And they did. at the time.

What a legendary fucking, the whole thing.

And Val was great. They all were. His sense of humor was very tough on some people, but was irresistibly charming and funny as hell and helpful. But there was a time where, early on, Val and I met and I listened to him and said, this guy's really smart. And I said, you're a 20 minute guy.

get, get, get, get, get, get, get, get, get, get, get,

and get it all around back to here. You're not wrong, you're right, but it takes you 20 minutes. And here's the bad news. We're not gonna have 20 minutes on the set. So do that three days earlier.

Right, right, right, right, right.

He looked at me and was like, okay. He called me conk, concrete head.

Now I see you guys as a magic alchemy of, I bet your presence there impacted greatly what he ended up doing in that.

It is interesting. The way I can put it best is at the end of the show, sometimes you get each other gifts. In those days, you certainly did quite often. Now it's kind of rare. So I sent my driver.