Paul Giamatti

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by the Minister of Mice. Squawk, squawk.

That's me. Squeak, squeak.

Warning, Monica's not in this episode.

Yeah, the Minister of Mice.

Was tending to the Papa Mouse.

I was tending to the Grandpa Mouse.

The Grandpa Mouse.

So I had to miss this, which was really, I hate missing interviews so much. It really, it stirs up stuff.

I know, sure, sure. I don't wanna make you feel worse, but I really wish you had been here, because it was really fun. He's really delightful.

I'm a huge fan, really. He's such a good actor.

Oh, it's insane. Paul Giamatti, what an actor. He was in Sideways, Billions, Big Fat Liar, John Adams, Cinderella Man, and his new movie that is out now is awesome. I enjoyed it so much, The Holdovers, which is an Alexander Payne movie. We trust Alexander Payne, very trusted brand.

Also, Paul has been nominated for a Golden Globe since the record.

Probably because of the record.

Well, I actually do wanna say that. This is probably true. So if anyone in the future ever wants to get nominated for anything.

Yeah, you don't even have to be in acting. Like if you're Mick Jagger and you want a Golden Globe, come on the show.

Come on this show, and it happened to Willem Dafoe as well.

Okay, great, that neutralizes it, because I was gonna say they might, if they're superstitious, think they have to come when you're home dealing with. Don't say that. Well, I'm just saying the example of Paul Giamatti.

He's probably gonna lose because I wasn't here.

Oh, my God, don't you dare say that. Paul's gonna win. He should win. He must win. We love Paul.

He's an armchair experimenter.

He's an armchair experimenter.

This is very nice.

Have you been offered everything?

I have, I'm having some tea.

Okay, great. I'm gonna put this here.

I know you don't want it, but change your mind, there's water. I love this stuff.

It's fun, right? Yeah, it's really fun. When we were kids, there was no attempt to make water cool.

No, it's very bizarre, the whole water thing.

Yeah.

Very strange. Oh, there we go. Oh.

Don't you find that you sound 10% smarter?

I sound smarter. I sound more attractive. Uh-huh.

Now, you have a podcast.

I do.

And I'm wondering if, when you would be out promoting movies and stuff, and they'd make you do radio, did you find that you loved it?

Yes, I actually generally enjoyed the radio stuff more. Yeah. And I think because of that, they used to make me do the radio stuff a lot more. Radio in general, audio, just sound stuff, I still like to listen to old radio drama. Yeah.

How do you find that?

There's a whole station. that's all old radio shows.

Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow. Well, now that you do a podcast, can't you imagine how much work those things were?

It's insane. And I was just saying, the whole thing is so much more work than I expected it to be.

The podcast. Yes. And it's not even written, right? No. It's not like these radio plays.

I wish people did that stuff still. And I don't know why they don't. They do it in England still. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's great.

Yeah, I just met a dude who writes for a radio show in England.

There's one that's been on for like 70 years, called The Archers, which is only 15 minutes a day. And then on Sunday, they play the whole week's thing.

And it's episodic. Yeah. Yes.

And it's been on forever. And some people, their entire career, has been being on The Archers, playing one of these farmers.

Like these people on Simpsons or-.

Or the soap operas.

We're gonna talk about soap operas. Oh, absolutely, very good. Back to it. being on for 70 years, the only thing I have in my life like that is 60 Minutes, which my grandparents had it on every Sunday when I was there. And then when I watch it on Sunday, it's like the only thing I have that reminds me of tradition and this thing that I've been doing forever.

Super comforting. A little while ago, I was in a hotel. It was like a Sunday night. So I watched the CBS Evening News and then 60 Minutes. And I was like, this is so sane feeling.

No, no, no. I get plenty of those in real life.

I don't need opinion. I don't need any of it. I got it really gently. I got just enough. And 60 Minutes, I got three different stories.

And there's some genius to the construct of 60 Minutes, which is. I generally want five more minutes, which is probably the sweet spot.

That's right. Yeah. You do want a little bit more, and that's smart.

Yes, it's a bit of coitus interruptus. Yes, it is. In a great way.

But you're right. It leaves you wanting more, which is nice.

And then, if you think about pitching 60 Minutes today, there's some devices in it that seem almost off-putting. Like it starts with an actual stopwatch. It's almost like a task. It's like, oh, you've got 60 more minutes in this.

That's right.

Yet it works and I don't know why.

Yet there's something exciting. We've started.

Off to the races.

Boom, the starting gun and you're going. So it gives it that too. Yeah. And that's always been the thing. Even from the beginning, it's had a stopwatch.

I'm embarrassed. I don't know the history. This is kind of my nature, though. Like I'll be so into something. I've been in AA for 20 years.

I get the gist of something, which almost feels better.

I want the spirit of everything.

Exactly. I'm not a big details guy either.

Yeah. Okay, now have you had the fun experience watching 60 Minutes where, for all of my life, none of the commercials pertain to me at all? It was for a Viking cruise down the Rhine River. Sure. Medication for very old people.

Geritol and stuff like that.

Yes, it's been a musical. And now 75% of the commercials, I literally, I'll go, I should ask my doctor about that medication.

Maybe I should get Centrum Silver.

And then the Rhine cruise looks incredible to me now. I used to think it looked so boring. And now I'm like, wait, you sit down and Europe goes by out the window?

What a hack. A cruise in general looks kind of amazing.

Yes.

Those giant cruise ships, it's like a building. It's like a skyscraper on its side. It's just crazy.

Yeah, it's like a city block. It is. And they're so fucking tall. That's the overwhelming thing when you see one in real life.

They're freakishly fucking giant. And then they conceive of something going so horribly awry, like all the toilets break down or something. It's fantastic. And somebody hasn't really done a good movie like that, have they?

No, other than-.

Everybody trapped on a thing, crapping in plastic bags. Has somebody done it?

Close. Did you see Triangle of Sadness last year? No. Oh my God, Paul. Listen to me.

I've heard, it's really good.

And there's a 30 minute set piece on a yacht that's gonna give you everything you wanted in the world of puke and shitting and toilets malfunctioning.

And people have urged me to watch it, so I'll say it. Oh, it's delicious.

Okay. You know, I don't know that I... Well, let me start by saying I'm an enormous fan. Genuinely. I appreciate it.

My question to you is, what did you think my background was? I've gotten this frequently for years. Oh, yeah. What a shock.

Well, let's just say that my fantasy of the life you had, everyone looks like a Kennedy and is on Martha's Vineyard all the time.

Oh, you mean, my actual background? Sounds like it must be all Kennedys playing football on the lawn. Yes.

Like the East Coast, blue blood, sweaters around a neck.

I was around people like that. My family is not exactly like that. I have a weird jumbly background.

Yeah, I looked at pictures of Bartlett. Yeah, your father.

He's Italian guy.

Right, so it's not the waspy thing I was imagining.

No, his mother was waspy sort of. Okay. And so there's one line of waspiness. His mother was from New England. She has roots that go back.

May have lost a family member to a witch burning or something.

That's perfectly possible. I would love to find out.

Have you been tempted to do that? genealogy show?

The TV show? Yeah. They asked me to do it once and I was like, I'd like to know first what's going on and then maybe I'll be okay with everybody knowing. There's a certain degree to which I have enjoyed people not knowing. That's why I think I didn't do it.

So my thing is, I don't want to roll the dice and find out I have slave owners.

And there's an excellent chance that it might be true.

Double digits.

Yeah, you don't want to find that out. And I don't know that. I want to know that I had an ancestor that burned women at the stake. Right. It'd be interesting.

Also, I'm not someone who gets great pride from my previous generation's accomplishments. You know, like I meet people and they're like, Beauregard, whatever it was. And I'm like, you didn't show up for work this morning. Like, that's what you did.

Yes, it doesn't really matter that much. It's not trickling down to me. I don't have that. either. You can find something very unexpected or something strange.

I've been writing about my family and, yes, a couple of my great uncles were murderers. Now that I'm insanely interested in.

Great uncles, that's not that far back.

No, no, I grew up with them. The Honchels from Kentucky.

Amazing.

Crazy. That does give me pride. I'll tell you why. It's like a reverse pride, which is they were batshit crazy.

It doesn't always degenerate. Actually, things can get better. And it isn't that thing of the sins of the father visited on the child all the time. It doesn't have to be that.

It can be a clean slate. Now, you've got a lot of things going on, because I too am a younger brother and you have a very dynamic father. Did you have a sense that it was gonna be hard for you to shine in this family?

My dad was a very down to earth person. So there wasn't ever some sense of expectation was such that you have to measure up to something, you have to be this or that.

And you didn't inherit that generic American, you gotta do better than your parents. Well, just this notion that this country is based on you sacrifice for your kids, they have a better opportunity. It keeps getting higher. And your father's the president of Yale and you're like, where do I go from there?

That's a good point. No, I don't think I did. But I will say other people in the world would look at who he was and be like, well, you gotta live up to that shit, don't you? So any sense of that came from other people. And you have to deal with that because there's expectation.

Okay, and what's the age gap between you and Marcus?

Six years.

Do you grow up thinking you're terrible at everything, and then you're around, peers and you go, oh, I'm not as terrible as I thought I was at everything.

Yes, and definitely in terms of athleticism. My brother was a great athlete. My sister was a really great athlete. I actually come from a lot of athletes. My great grandfather was a champion long distance swimmer.

Which explains why you were on the swimming team probably.

Yes, and so swimming's a big thing. My grandmother was an Olympic diver on the Olympic diving team. My mother was some kind of champion synchronized swimmer, which always makes me laugh. My mother's father was this big football coach, sportsman. So all this sports stuff.

I think what happened was you looked around and you're like, well, I'm not gonna be the president of Yale and I'm not gonna be in the Olympics. I better just pick my own fucking path.

Well, no, I think my dad and I looked around and we're like, not us. So my dad and I bonded about books and movies. It was an artsy family.

Your sister's a jewelry designer?

She was a jewelry designer and she was a ballet dancer. She did a lot of things.

Can I ask you one really inappropriate question? I've noticed that the professional divers, they have the best bodies. I don't know what it is about that activity. When you watch the Olympics, you're like, yeah, those are good fucking bodies.

Yeah, better than the swimmers too.

Did grandma have an incredible body?

I think grandma back in the day did. Yeah, the pictures of her, she's foxy. You're right, the divers, men and women, they get these incredible bodies, and it's gotta be aerodynamic to hit the water and cut into it nicely.

Yeah, I think all the rotating, like the abdominals, were great.

Probably, yeah, probably.

Okay, so is your sister in the middle?

My sister is in the middle. She was three years older than me. She passed away this year. It was a sudden thing and it was several months ago.

Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry.

No, I appreciate it, thank you. But she was an amazing athlete. One of these kinds of physical geniuses. Anything you threw at her, she could take it up and master it.

So were you the baby of the family? What was your role?

I was a little bit the kind of hammy. Well, I mean, everybody was funny, but I was definitely clowny a little bit and it was not the most uncontentious household that I'll say. And so I think I was also not the peacemaker, but I was a little bit the jester, gonna make a joke.

Yeah, relieve some tension.

I'll be over here reading a comic book. I'm gonna stay out of the way.

One thing I've noticed about siblings and I'm watching it with my own two children, I think one benefit is you really learn to take it on the chin. You get blasted nonstop. If you have siblings, they tell you the harshest shit. Brutal. And maybe the whole family's having a good laugh at when you fell.

Yeah, there was a bit of a teasing, ragging culture through the whole family. My parents ragged on us and it was affectionate a lot of times. Sometimes I forget I have that and other people don't necessarily love that.

I have that too. Well, also, I married an only child, and so her appetite for being made fun of is generally lower than mine. And then my sister will be over, and we're just so cruel to each other, and we love it. Cruel. It's like such a sign of endearment.

Yes, nothing would make me laugh more of my sister just ripping the shit out of me.

Yeah, it's perverse, but you learn to love it. Yeah, you do. I think it's an advantage when you interact, because the beatdowns are endless.

I think that's a good point and very true. You developed a pretty thick skin already.

Did you do good in school and what kind of kid were you in school?

If I was interested, I did. well. I could fuck off a lot if it didn't interest me, but also I'm pretty much math illiterate, major blind spot. Okay, okay. Yeah, like it's incomprehensible.

Demoralizing and incomprehensible.

I can count on my fingers that that's tricky.

We'd make a great team, because I'm dyslexic, so reading was not for me, but math came very natural.

That's very interesting. My brother had some stuff like that and he's actually pretty good with math, and I'm the opposite. Somebody told me there is such a thing as dyscalculia, which is sort of numbers dyslexia.

I wouldn't doubt it. We give these very arbitrary names to things we observe and all they're observing, because I was labeled that as a kid, but then when I was at UCLA, I had to go through really comprehensive testing to have that label. And what they're looking for is some baseline of intelligence in all these categories and then a huge trough, because that's inconsistent with how most people's intellects are.

That's right.

But if you just have this fallout, like clearly you have, that would be a learning disability these days.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think back in the day, I can remember somebody saying to me, maybe you just have this sort of thing. Nobody did anything about it.

Well, what could they? Nobody gave a shit. I was at the phase where they knew how to label dyslexia, but they had absolutely no way to help you with that.

I can remember that and it's terrible. I remember kids where it was just miserable. There was no help for it, but you had this stigma of something attached to you. It was terrible. Are you chewing?

Was that what you were doing? I was, yeah. You know what happened is you were early, so I came down a little early. Oh, I'm sorry.

I always get places early. They usually have to build lateness into my schedule because I get everywhere early. Sorry.

No, no. No, it's admirable. It's on a resolution every single year, but I had mapped out perfectly. Oh yeah, I'm going to get a dip in. I'll be 20 minutes and I'll finish up and then I'll see.

I would do it sometimes. I had a roommate in college who really did it a lot.

Where was he from? Chicago. Oh, okay.

He did it a lot and some other guys that I knew growing up did it a lot. It's disgusting. It's disgusting.

It is the grossest habit. It really is.

And I've had a lot of nasty habits, and that was one that I couldn't, I mean, the spit aside-.

Like you right now, the audience can't see where you're looking, but you're just staring at my spittoon.

At a bottle full of spit.

And you're just thinking, I was like consuming you.

I'm remembering how my roommate, there were like big gulp cuffs sitting around, just brimming with fucking spit. You know, we would all do it and it was disgusting. It's foul. You know, it just tasted bad. Now I smoked cigarettes like nobody's business.

Me too. What was your brand?

When I was younger- Oh, can, I guess? It was Marble, yeah. Oops. I just said, but it switched.

But that's where you started and that's where I started. I started with Marlboro Lights and then I landed on Camel Lights.

Yes.

I could tell. That's exactly where I went. Now I couldn't tell your background, but I knew you smoked Camel Lights. And let me tell you something. I was elitist about this.

It really is.

You need attention. I mean, I do too, but you're going to be, what, European? What are you doing?

But Parliament's were the ones with the weird filters, weren't they?

Yeah, I think they had like a triangle at the top of it.

Oh yeah, it was that thing. But just seemed to me, I don't need some gizmo. I don't need some fancy gizmo of my cigarette. I just want the straight delivery system.

Here's my fantasy. They're going to come out with a pill. Well, let's just ask you. If they came out with a pill that inoculated you from lung cancer, would you return to smoking? Oh, wow.

That's a really good question.

It's a hard one, isn't it?

No, I think I'd say yes. No, I'm not sure. I think I'd absolutely say yes. Even though when I quit, I'm quit now, and I have no desire. The first time I quit, when I was about 32, I smoked a lot and I was like, I'm going to die.

A couple packs a day.

More than a couple.

Okay, and if we're drinking, we're going to die.

Even more. And I was like, I'm going to die. And so I stopped and I thought about it all the time. And about six years later, I started again. Then I was getting back up to a couple for sure, and then edging over that.

I don't either.

But.

But.

I'd still do that.

I wonder if we have the same trigger, especially if I'm back in the Midwest or on the East Coast, where it's raining, and I'm in a car and I go, roll the window down and fucking. That's kind of it. There's something about.

It's generally that kind of thing.

In a car with the rain. Yeah. Roll the window down.

I know what you mean. Oh baby.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

The sound of the rain, the smell in the car.

There's more humidity, the smoke's thicker. It's burning different. There's like a lot of things happening.

It's very romantic. Yes, it is.

All grown up, my father, we'd go to his house on the weekend. He only owned a Corvette. So there's one seat for two boys and he fucking killed, listen to this, Vantage Menthol 110s. Wow. What?

What are you doing, Dave?

What the fuck is that? We would drive to 10 gas stations, Paul, so he could find his cigarette. Well, yeah.

Benson and Hedges, 10 thousands, or whatever they were, is my father. And they were these giantly long things.

Yardstick cigarette.

And he was the guy who was lighting two of them at once, forgetting he still had one going and lighting up the other one.

Yes.

And so actually, I think probably the first time, I can't believe I'm talking this much about smoking.

We don't have to talk about smoking so much. We're kind of promoting it. I like that. Totally.

Probably the first cigarettes I ever smoked were his that I stole. My mother smoked too, but not quite like my dad. So I think those are probably the first things I started with. were those Benson and Hedges. Would you light one up now?

Never, because, like you, I quit at 30.. I have not gone back. We're going on 20 years.

Yeah, I quit at 32 and then I quit 10 years ago, again at 46..

Have you ever gotten ensnared in the vape?

No, I found that unpleasant. Oh, great. I worked with a guy who was just sucking on that thing all the time and I tried it and I was like, nah, I don't care for this.

Yeah, so I'm glad that was your response. I, at 17 years off cigarettes, during COVID, I was up at Lake Arrowhead. Have you ever been up there? Yeah. Through in the mountains, it's snowy.

It was snow.

I was really desiring it. Another guy was vaping. I'm like, well, I want to smoke. so bad that I'm going to pacify myself with this vape. Look up a year later and I'll tell you why I'm so glad for you, you never got on it.

Yes.

It's not lit, but it's always in your hand and you can smoke all day long.

The hand thing was a big part of it for me. Yes. The prop thing, the physical nervousness or whatever it was of having this thing to play with. It's huge. I could see that with those things.

It's a fidget. Yes. Okay, so I'm really glad you don't like those, because then I had to fucking quit that thing and I was like, wow, there's just like quitting smoking all over again. Maybe worse. Probably worse.

Right.

Let's go to the boarding school. You weren't a boarder.

I wasn't.

But I don't know why, because I do have this chip on my shoulder about the elite class and snobby people. Sure. All that stuff. Yet, many of my favorite books take place at boarding schools, whether it's Tobias Wolf or Catcher in the Rye. I do also have this.

Sure. It's a really great fantasy.

Yes. And you experienced it.

The fantasy around. it's really powerful. I really genuinely think it starts with the English, because the whole thing is a knockoff of the British system, of those fancy boarding schools. All that fucking Eaton boarding school, all the guys in the swallowtail coats, walking around with the bow ties on and going to their classes. And that's really all Harry Potter is.

Tradition.

Scones, and then I'm playing field hockey or whatever the hell it is. And I have my school master and I'm doing all this stuff with my scarf wrapped around my neck. I think it comes from the fantasy of the British and it's transplanted here.

I agree with that. But what do we think is so appealing? I'm spitballing because I don't think this is it, but is it like the notion of being with all boys? It's almost like summer camp forever.

I think there's that too.

And there's this idea of like being a rascal and fucking around a bit, trying to get away with shit.

Boys will be boys together. Young men being formed. But again, that all comes from the British, man. All this notions of kind of young men and tradition and all this stuff.

So you went to Choate? I did. Which is very much one of these schools, right? There were people that were- Very much so. You weren't boarding, though, were you?

No, I was a day student because it wasn't that far away from New Haven where I grew up. I didn't want to board anywhere. My parents didn't want to send me to a boarding school, but it was a good school academically. Right.

And then it puts you probably on a trajectory. if you would want to be on one. For sure. I guess I'm always, I don't want this to sound judgmental, because I don't know anyone's story, but the notion of me sending my children away is insane to me. I'm already panicked that they're going to go.

in eight years. Devastating when they go.

Yeah, so sending them out at 12..

I agree with you. I would never do it either. My son, I liked him. I really liked him. I want him around.

Were you going to school with kids that their parents were hedge fund people or whatever they were?

For sure. I don't think I knew what the fuck a hedge fund was at the time. I still don't really exactly.

I was on a TV show about it.

and I still don't know what the hell it is. Yes, it's interesting. I grew up at this institution. that was the next step in the process of this sort of elitism and stuff like that. So I was around all of this, but I was around it in a different way.

Did you feel on the inside of it or the outside of it? No, I very much. in the outside. You felt like a anthropologist there?

Very much so. Okay. That's exactly how I would describe it. And I think at those places, if you're a day student there, it's that to begin with. You're outside of it.

Well, I'd imagine you get so much closer to everybody if you were living there.

Absolutely, if you're living in these dorms with these teachers, I mean, it's crazy.

It is wild.

And the interesting thing too was, not me, but a lot of the other day, students were scholarship kids from the area. And so they weren't that thing. It's a working class area around that school. And a lot of those schools, which is actually in the movie that I'm in, The Holdovers, that movie's all about class.

There's a couple of big, big metaphors that are happening currently that are really prevalent in it. But it is interesting, because on the surface, you're like, yes, this is a wonderful thing. Let's take people that don't have a lot of opportunity and give them the apex of opportunity. But in doing that, I mean, I felt less than in a town where there wasn't much income inequality. So I don't know what I feel like if we're on welfare and I go, and these kids are going to Vail.

Yeah, I was coming from a place, and I was like, this is fucking wacky as hell. No, I can't even imagine. And the interesting thing is, so many of those kids were the smartest kids.

The ones that came on scholarship, yeah.

So fucking smart and interesting.

And then they're next to fourth generation. Totally. So the movie's so beautiful in doing this, because I think, and I'm curious if you've had this experience. So I grew up hating rich people, and then, lo and behold, I got a bunch of money. And now I feel that ire, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, wait.

It's a really interesting dilemma, and very American.

Yes, I love this movie, because I feel like I've lived on both sides of it, and I think I've learned that, yeah, both sides suffer. There is the illusion that this thing's gonna solve everything. And then even your character, you live in a world where you too are in judgment of these lackey kids who are spoiled.

Yeah, he's not socioeconomically from that background either. Correct. But he's in this world, and he's comfortable in this world, but not really.

And then, of course, as you come to find out, the money's not solving anything for these people. No, not for any of them. In fact, it's probably-.

Making everything worse in some ways.

So it's very fair.

Yeah, it is very fair. But I mean, you know, it sucks to be a human being. It sucks more for a lot of people than other people, but it kind of sucks to be alive. sometimes. It's hard.

It is, it is. It's really hard. Do you have nostalgic feelings for Choate? Do you have friends that you made there, that you're still friends with?

Very few. I had a rough time there. Those places, I don't think they're the same anymore.

Like, bullying's, overlooked, or not even thought of?

Sure, but it wasn't even necessarily the kids. It was the teachers. That teacher that I play, when I went there, is only 10 years on from when the movie's set. It was still those guys, and a lot of them were guys. The idea of conveying learning was harsh for a lot of those people.

They're like uber intellects, but they didn't get to the upper stratum.

No, and some of them were better and more rigid and more rigorous, even in college, because maybe they have something to prove themselves. It was harsh. And so, you know, I didn't have a great time. I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna lie. On the other hand, the friends I have are great friends, because it's the boot camp thing, where you're like, okay, we got through that.

Common suffering, really, does bond people. Did that experience make you at all suspicious of what the Yale experience would be?

It was a place I was more familiar with.

Would you visit Dad there?

Sure, I can remember when he was teaching, going to his office and stuff.

He must have been so proud.

Of him in general?

To go visit him.

Oh, sure, it was awesome, too. His office, when he was a teacher, it's all this fake medieval stuff. It's all this phony fantasy. It's an awesome fantasy library.

Life's a fantasy anyways.

It's all fantasy. It's a really seductive fantasy. This was a kid, and a kind of nerdy kid like I was. It wasn't a big, athletic kid. There's books everywhere, and his weird eccentric colleagues are all sitting around in their tweed and their fucking corduroy.

Some pipe smoking.

Pipe smoke was a really evocative smell to me, because it's like they're all smoking their pipes and sitting around and talking. I mean, a lot of the time, they're sitting around talking about baseball, because they're all baseball nerds.

I don't know, maybe this is too anecdotal, but they're specifically baseball nerds.

They are specifically baseball nerds. Yeah, right?

The elite school people, that's their sport.

for whatever reason. It is their sport, for some reason.

They're not obsessed with football.

Not the same way, because I think it's the stats. I was just gonna say, I think it's the statistics. It's all of that kind of pouring over all the statistics.

And memorizing data.

And all this shit, yeah, all that stuff.

Being able to quantify humans so easily. Yes, yes.

I need to take a leak. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Does this happen everywhere?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. We can step out, or we can stay. No, stay here.

Record the entire thing.

Okay, great, great. I applaud that. you're confident enough to advocate for yourself when you have to pee. I can't pretend anymore.

Sorry, does it happen?

Oh, no, totally. It happens probably one in 10 interviews.

Yeah.

So we have that mic there. Yeah, we've been thinking about installing a mic over there. In fact, it happens so often. You may be wondering to yourself, why don't they have a door? And...

Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Baseball. I can remember my dad just sitting around these guys talking about baseball all the time. Weird, weird world.

So was he still there when you started? Yale? No. How old were you when he died? He died very young.

I was 22.. Okay. He was 51..

But he had already left Yale, and he was probably in between going to MLB.

Yeah, I think he was not really doing anything. He kind of took a year off. I think he still was sort of teaching. What did he teach? It's funny how vague it is in my mind.

Oh, interesting. And then you majored in English.

I was an English major, yeah.

And when you entered there, were you already set on what you wanted to do?

No, I wanted to be an anthropology major. Uh-huh. Which is, you said you wanted anthropology.

Yeah, you should have. 80% female major. Not as well.

You're exactly right. I wasn't quite sure what that meant to me. I was interested in a lot of things that anthropology seemed to cover. When I had to take a statistics class, I was immediately like, Fuck this. I see numbers.

Did you have any fantasy about what you were gonna do as a job or a career? Did you think you would be a professor?

In some weird way, there was some sort of default thing that it was like, I'm probably gonna be a teacher because everybody's a teacher.

Well, we didn't mention. your mom taught English for 20 years.

My mom taught English and her parents were high school teachers and my father's father was a professor and everybody was teachers. My cousins, teachers, everybody.

How does acting come up?

I'd always loved acting since I was a little kid. So from the school play in grade school, I was excited to do whatever in it. My mom had had some aspirations to being an actor. She didn't do it. She took us to theater a lot, took us to movies a lot.

Right, and so they have a theater program, Yale.

I didn't have anything to do with it.

Okay, you got your master's there.

I got my BA in English. there. I got my master's, I went back to drama school, to the graduate school.

Having not acted any of the four years.

I acted extracurricularly. There was a big scene of doing that. You'd do plays wherever, in the dining hall.

Okay, so you were doing that while you were.

I was doing it constantly, but I was not doing it as an actual discipline. I was just doing it for the fuck of it. Because there was some part of me that was just like, you're not really gonna do this. But I loved it more than anything else.

Okay, now let me ask you this, and I'm gonna recognize how delusional this is, but at the time it wasn't my delusion. I loved movies, I was looking at it, and I was like, where am I in this? I don't feel like I'm goofy enough looking to be a comedian, and I don't think I'm handsome enough to be an actor. So I'm wondering if any of your trepidation and committing to it is that you're not looking on screen and going like, yes. You know what I'm saying?

Not at all. That's a very funny question to me. Because I don't think I ever thought as a child, somebody asked me this recently, because I'm doing all this publicity stuff. Somebody said, so, did you want to be an actor as a child? And I said, no.

It just turns some imagination.

But my imagination was gripped by constantly things like that. I think if there was something that I looked at when I was in college and I went, I do want to do this, it was Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet.

Oh, no kidding. With the ether.

What a performance. and still that movie. But as a kid, I loved movies and I loved watching them. Planet of the Apes movies, things like that. Oh, it got me excited.

That makes sense. But if your brother was already on the path and he's like a big athlete, I might just be like, well, yeah, that's for him. He's like a stud athlete.

I think so.

He'll probably make a living at this.

Yes, and he did and he does.

Now, when did you start overlapping with Ron and Edward in graduate school?

No, it was undergraduate. Oh, okay. I don't know if they were theater majors. I was doing these extracurricular plays and both of them were in some of those. Ron was my age and was in my class.

Okay, and then Edward's a little, one year, two years younger than me. Do you remember watching him or anything?

I remember doing a play with him. Okay, well, that's probably quite memorable. I don't remember seeing him in anything else, but I remember being in a play with him and we both had tiny parts in the play.

It's pretty fucking cool that the two of you are...

It's funny. It is. It's very funny.

I mean, you guys are on a very short list. I guess. Of people over the last 30 years that have just been mind-blowing.

Well, he's amazing. As are you. I appreciate it. But he was a lovely guy. I remember him well and he was very funny and we had a good time in this ridiculous play with these little parts that we were playing.

Oh, okay. That's fun. It was great. All right, so now you get your master's in this.

That's in the graduate school.

In the graduate school. And then is the decision, I imagine, next move to New York?

I actually moved out to Seattle after college. What happened is my dad died and I think I was a little bit disorientated by that. So I went out there for three years. Three years? Yeah, I ended up living up in Capitol Hill.

Capitol Hill? Yeah, of course. That's where I did all my drinking. Oh, sure. What a great place.

What an amazing place. I live right up on the top at 17th and Republican. Oh, wonderful. And it was so great up there. Now, did you live out there?

I dated a girl for nine years that was from Marysville, Everett. And so we were up there nonstop. She had gone to U-Dub. All of her friends lived on Capitol Hill. And we would drink 40s at Gasworks Park and go to the troll.

It was fantastic.

Talk about a place to smoke cigarettes.

Cigarettes, the whole nine years.

Rains nonstop.

Raining nonstop and sitting in the car. Absolutely, no, I loved it out there.

Yeah, so great. So what were you doing there?

I moved out there. I had a girlfriend who was from out there. That'll do it. From a small town across the Puget Sound. And so lived out there, and there was a whole kind of cadre of people from out there.

Even though you had all the on the ground experience, you're entering a world of theory. Going to graduate school, having not ever studied it.

I was glad I had that real world experience. But you're actually doing a lot of plays and you do a lot that you're never gonna do again. And so you got actual real experience actually acting. But yeah, there's a lot of theory and you pick and choose what suits you or works for you.

So then, after Yale, do we go to New York? Yes. We go to New York. We go to New York. And is that scary for you?

I was excited to actually be in New York doing it. Absolutely.

What year did you graduate from getting your master's degree?

1994..

Okay. So you were on Broadway while you were there? When do you get your first?

I think that happened maybe the end of 94 or 95.. I'm not sure which year it was. But I ended up in a play at Lincoln Center.

You did back to back there, yeah?

I did. Nicely done.

Thank you. Nice digging. I'm embarrassed. I even had to look at the date.

No, listen, I'm amazed. you knew that at all. I spent about a year or so working there, which was unbelievable.

There's two things you've probably detected that's already of interest to me. I wanna know what chips on your shoulder you inherited from your childhood. And then I'm also very interested in, and we just talked about mine, which is these evolving fantasies of where you're going. Yes. I love these.

Fantasy and imagination about yourself is fascinating. Because I genuinely think it's pretty much all we're doing most of the time. I agree. I think our capacity for fantasy and imagination is the primary function of consciousness. And that's an interesting question.

Post Yale. Because to me, the theater seems way more open to you.

As an actor in general. Yes. And I think you're right.

It's a meritocracy. That's true. If you're fucking great.

That's true, yes. I think you're right. There's a lot more expansiveness in thinking about what you can play. Ability trumps a lot. I had no experience of doing anything else.

My guess is, you miss it so much, the visceral experience of staying on stage. And then the notion of doing eight a week is just insane. That's where my wife's at. She's like, I'm gonna die if I'm not there. And if I'm there, I'm gonna die.

particularly if it's not a good play. If you're in a bad play, it's 10,000 times worse than being in a bad movie or a bad TV show.

Yes, because you gotta repeat.

It's an incarcerated feeling. And yet, even in a bad experience like that, when it ends, you're kind of heartbroken. Almost more so with the bad experiences, more so than any film or TV thing I've ever experienced. Oh, really? The sense of sadness that you're gonna leave these people.

It's still like that.

Yeah, it is. It's more intense, yeah.

It's what we were saying, like. it's so bonding to be.

Yeah, it's super bonding. And I think that's a lot of what I liked about. the theater was bonding with the other actors and the audience and stuff like that.

I've talked about this too much recently because I just had this experience where Kristen joined all of my old groundlings, friends and troop. You have one day to learn a musical. They did A Chorus Line. They got it on Tuesday. They performed it on Wednesday.

holy smokes. did that thing go up in flames. Absolutely.

There's something so intimate about that moment that they're my favorite moments.

They're my favorite moments too. And I also have a real taste for when something just goes wrong too. Whatever it is. Something unexpected happens.

The reason I like that is that now we're playing by different rules.

Totally. It feels funnier. Just, it's fantastic. when something goes wrong. You have to take control of it.

Yeah, this is preposterous.

How bizarre what I'm doing is. And it's a reminder, too, of something that I like about it, which is that we're fooling people. Yes. I like fooling people. It's a benevolent con game.

Okay, so 95 things start kind of moving for you. I mean, I have to imagine this is one of your favorite years to look back on.

I guess so. It's all a little bit of a blur to me.

But you're in a Woody Allen movie, you're in a Sidney Pollack movie, and then you're in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. All in a year. And it's not like you weren't doing things. It's just, but now this year hits hard.

Yeah, no, and it was a surprise. And I do think I thought I was just going to be doing theater. I didn't think I was going to be on Broadway. That was a surprise. I had a lovely, funny, little, weird, supporting character part in that, which was just great.

Amazing. It's crazy.

I got to act with Woody Allen. I had two lines or something. And then Sidney Pollack and all this stuff. So yes, I was around that stuff and it was a trip.

Yeah, now the fantasy starts evolving, because now you've experienced it in real life.

Yeah, you experience it, and yet I talk about how important fantasy is. But there's a part of me that's extremely pragmatic and realistic.

Could we say maybe you're pessimistic?

We could say that. That's exactly right, and skeptical. So I don't think I was sitting there thinking, I got it made now, and everything's just going to be smooth sailing now. And I had no conception that film or TV would be anything that would pan out as anything. This is amazing and sort of surreal and fantastic, but I thought theater is what I'm going to probably actually do.

This is the one benefit of being very pessimistic, is like everything that happened for me, I was like, wow.

Still, everything that happens to me exceeds my expectations.

So private parts is a big, big. Yes. And of course, this is where I become aware of you. As someone who loves Stern, can't wait to see that movie, can't wait to see who's going to play Pig Vomit. I'm primed to like this.

It's a really good movie.

You just blast into the world, like out of a cannon in this role.

It was a really great written part. And I do think that I had been doing a lot of this wonderful little bit part stuff, but it was very confining.

It's very stressful, I think, doing those little things.

Incredibly stressful.

Having two lines is way harder than having a hundred.

Way harder. And I have nothing but the highest regard and respect for the people who come on a set and have two fucking lines. Me too. Or they have to be the bartender who has a whole fucking ballet with all the glasses and drinks, and they have to repeat it every time. Or they have to come on and burst into tears for one scene.

They're the heroes of the whole thing.

They are the heroes of the whole thing.

But you're there in private parts. And now you've got enough to do that. you're, well, I'm guessing, you're working enough that you get a rhythm going, you can get in the zone.

I suppose. so. I mean, I didn't know what was going on. I'd done some film stuff, but I still really didn't know what the hell I was doing on film. And I got this really great part that allowed me to just go bonkers.

The rehearsal and that.

Yeah, there was a lot of caretaking with a movie that really had no right to. No, I know. You could have made any piece of garbage you wanted with that, it would have been fine.

Certainly the people financing were like, give them anything and that audience will go see it. Totally. The Betty of it all, what a breakthrough. And it gave that movie actual heart and actual, yes.

It's a really good movie.

Did you get on with Sternwell? Yeah, he was great. He's so lovely, right, in real life?

The nicest guy and really fun to work with. And sincere, curious, really game to do whatever. Playing himself in that thing, which is not an easy thing to do, and actually doing it really well. The whole thing was great. It spoiled me for most movie stuff for a while after that.

Yeah, things really take off. The fact that you drop into, no, you know what? You already did, that. No, when did you do? Oh, no, yeah.

I can't remember whether that's before or after.

Well, at least it came out after.

I don't remember.

You know, you have a couple lines and stuff. Then you have private parts where you steal the movie and then boom, you're in a Spielberg movie one year later in a World War II movie.

It's bonkers. I have never had a plan. So everything was gonna be surprising to me. And then it's hugely surprising to be doing something like that.

Okay, we're gonna talk really quick about, for me, the next big thing is American Splendor. So I'd seen you as Pig Vomit. Now I see American Splendor and I'm like, oh, this guy is kind of on another level. And especially when they were intermixing the real footage of Harvey with you, I was like, oh my God, he's doing the most incredible job imaginable.

Yeah, you play a real person, you can get away with stuff, but the real people were there for all of us, which was great. I mean, I remember Judah Friedlander, who played Toby Radloff, the very peculiar friend of theirs. Yes. And people were like, well, this guy's-.

That was the one that I thought was over the top.

Of course, people were like, this is ridiculous what he's doing. And he was underplaying it. Fantastically, too. The actual guy was more than that.

You're 100% right. I almost think they should have shown the real guy first. Because I was watching going like, this guy's, swinging way too far for the fences. I guess so. And then at the end I'm like,

that guy's a genius.

And then, of course, sideways, because now you go from, even though you're a pessimist, probably started entertaining the notion of like, oh yeah, I'm a character actor that's gonna work and come buy a house. This is gonna be a profession that I'm not gonna be uncomfortable in.

I think I felt some degree of, maybe I'll be able to do this for a long time. I'll probably be able to find a job. I'm lucky as hell. But I did have this feeling of, I think it'll be okay. Because I didn't feel that.

Probably wouldn't have chose this industry if you did.

Yeah, probably not. So yes, I definitely felt a bit more of a sense of security.

So when you step into doing lead roles, do you have any apprehension or fears? Or you just saw the character and you knew you could play it, and you're like, yes, let's go.

I guess so. I mean, that part I really wanted to do, because I just thought, wow, what a crazy, colorful part. And it was a bit of a fluke by getting that part at all, but it was a great thing. I look at it, and this isn't false modesty or something. I don't consider myself playing the lead.

I don't know. Holdovers are straight. the lead. Am I?

I don't think of myself that way. And again, it's not because I'm some kind of great guy or something. No, I know. I have a big ego. I'm an actor, but I don't somehow think of it ever as feeling like I have to carry this thing.

What is the actual element you think you do?

I don't know what it is.

Okay. Well, because one thing we could say about, like movie star leads.