Al Pacino

Al Pacino is a screen and stage actor. Emerging from New York’s underground theater scene in the 1960s, he refined his craft under mentors including Lee Strasberg and Charlie Laughton. Best known for his iconic portrayals in The Godfather trilogy, Scarface, and more recently, House of Gucci, he is cited as one of the most respected actors of his generation. In his career spanning over five decades, Pacino has earned an Academy Award for Scent of a Woman, two Tony Awards for his stage work, and two Emmy Awards for his television roles. In addition to his on-screen appearances in television and film, Pacino has also taken on various directorial and production roles, and he currently serves as co-president of The Actors Studio alongside Ellen Burstyn and Alec Baldwin. His New York Times bestselling memoir, Sonny Boy, serves as a reflection of his life, craft, and the roles that shaped his extraordinary career. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Vivo Barefoot http://Vivobarefoot.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA25' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Tetra Graham, it's a...

• 0:23Speaker 00

  I knew there was something about me that needed to be at least explored and understood better and used to some degree. And there was Charlie. He was an acting teacher, but also he was a great actor. And he taught acting in a very interesting way. And he exposed me to the kinds of things that are really special.

• 0:49Rick Rubin?

  And you continued your relationship with him for a long time?

• 0:53Speaker 00

  Forever.

• 0:54Rick Rubin?

  Forever?

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. We formed a little theater ourselves and we worked in the village at the Cafe Chino. And I worked for Cafe La Mama, Cafe Wa, whatever. There it was. This Dylan movie that's out right now, I just saw it. It's wonderful. And I'm thinking, when I'm watching it, it just got me because I was there. It brought back my 19-year-old life on St. Mark's Place. The bitter end and everything. I'm sure I passed Dylan in the street. I know that I met Joan Baez, who was a friend of a friend at my apartment in the South Bronx. And she was playing and she hadn't met Dylan yet.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  So I was about 19. Marty Sheen was living with me and people would come and live in the apartment. That's how we got by, you know? So we had a group. It so reminded me of my life. And Charlie was there and I do the odd jobs that most actors do to get by. At that age too, you could get a slice of pizza somewhere and you can last the whole day. It just soaks up all the value of your body. And so that was life. And...

• 2:13Speaker 00

  I spent it reading. I would spend five hours in an automat. You know, they had the automat's in those days, very liberal places because you could just sit there. They wouldn't, you didn't bother anyone. You'd sit there and you'd see certain characters. You know, you looked and saw more then. And now I can't as much. They look at me, which is, you know, so I have to find another way. Anyway, I was very, I was tutored by Charlie. And at one point, he was with me in San Francisco when I met Francis and Zotrop there.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  And we were working on Godfather 2. So he was very instrumental in some of the things I'd done. He'd stay away, we'd keep a distance from the actual parts, but he would advise, like, Johnny Cassel should play the guy in Dante Afternoon. That was Charlie. Because they, you know, and then various things, Brando in Godfather 1 was Charlie. Then in Godfather 2, we went to Lee Strasberg, who Charlie loved. He had studied with him. And of course, I did. He was my friend with the Actors Studio.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  But Francis went to a, some sort of event where there was a diocese and we're talking about to raise funds for the Actors Studio. Because the Actors Studio is free, you know. You don't, doesn't charge anybody anything. You get in, you're there, it's yours. And so I was there with Francis. And somebody said something, a question, and Lee answered the question. But he did it in this inimitable way with the wit and humor. He was the Groucho Marx of Stanislavski's. He was just funny and he threw it at you that way. I don't know if you ever met him or knew him at all.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was, he was there. And when Francis saw that, to him, it was perfect. That's what he wanted.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Because there was Gad Kozan was up for it at one time. And people were a little ajar that Lee Strasberg would dare to go into a film. I mean, he's some sort of guru, which he wasn't, you know. We'd go up there Sundays, every Sunday, he'd have a little soiree. He'd talk and he usually talked about music, which he loved. So that was where you saw, I was part of that world. And, and, and he, Francis took Lee Strasberg and said he would do, be Hyman Roth. And it's good casting.

• 5:04Rick Rubin?

  When you would hang out at the automat and you would see characters, would you ever pick up either a mannerism or a physical movement or something that you would incorporate into a character? Or did you never look at it that way?

• 5:21Speaker 00

  I didn't look at it that way, but I'm sure I did. Because my eyes were on people in New York City. I mean, the early sixties, I mean, it was like paradise. One walk down one street and you'd see five or six things you could use, you know? Can you imagine? I mean, you're sitting there and you'd see these things happening, human life. I liked it so much, it saved my life. And there was Charlie and Charlie and his family, Penny Allen, who's in Looking for Richard.

• 5:54Rick Rubin?

  She's amazing.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  She's amazing.

• 5:56Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  And that was his wife, she's passed too. But we were, we were there. I remember something happened when I was about 26. I was doing children's theater in the weekends. I'd make a few bucks. And he had a script and Penny said Al would be right for this script. And the director had directed me in this children's show. And he saw it too. And he sent me the script. And it was called The Indian Wants the Bronx, Israel Horvitz's film, play, that I, I just had a natural feeling for it, but I didn't think.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  There were two roles. I thought they wanted me for the other role, the more. But the other role was a different kind of character than the one they really wanted me for. So I started reading that. See, that happens in acting, too. That's why it's good for actors to get out there and do as many things as they can. Because they don't, we don't know sometimes what we're right for, what's in us. We discover it. And, and there it was, this character came to me. Because I come from a kind of world like that. So I understood immediately this, this is close to something I know. You know, these things you bury in yourself. And I played that role, and I knew there was something there, and that's sort of where.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Because before that, my discovery, it's again in the book, I hate to keep saying that. But when I discovered that in this gender play that I, I can speak. That, that was, really did happen. And I think that was another thing that saved me. And everything that I had gone through and was to go through is, I knew there was this thing called acting and, and the plays that are, and that I, I can do this, and this is my life. And I don't need anything else. And I really felt I don't need it. I don't even need to eat. I, I know I had this. So there it was, an Indian comes out.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  So we knew we had something, but we were still, we did it in some loft in, on Bleaker Street. And Charlie and Penny came, and he just came up to me after, and he said, let's go, let's celebrate. He said, you have arrived, Al. You're here. I thought, yeah. And we went on Canal Street. We had, we didn't have a pot to piss in. We're in a bar, and we just started drinking and drinking everything and celebrating. What? Nothing had happened, of course. Yeah. Nothing happened. Just this little play that we were doing in an empty loft.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  And yet it was a celebration. I swear, we knew.

• 8:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  It was the what they call a breakthrough.

• 8:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  And then, of course, lucky me, as I've been throughout all of this, because so much luck has to do with it, timing, right play, you know, it's just, it's part of life. But there I was, and I was, they made it an off broadway play.

• 9:11Rick Rubin?

  Isn't it amazing that the breakthrough is something that maybe no one from the outside can see? The breakthrough isn't the Academy Award. The breakthrough isn't the sellout. The breakthrough is a quiet moment in an empty loft where your friend says to you, there it was.

• 9:34Speaker 00

  Yes, and that's something.

• 9:36Rick Rubin?

  It's amazing.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  And then that bar, I'll never forget that bar and those moments, yeah, we used to drink anyway, but this was a celebratory event. It's amazing.

• 9:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's a great feeling. Tell me about the relationship between an actor and a director.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Hmm, yeah. Well, I've got about a thousand stories on that one, so.

• 10:01Rick Rubin?

  And tell me the range from good to bad, like.

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Well, you know, there is this thing that you get with a director and various actors. It's a lot to do with what you come from. Some actors just can't stand that relationship. They have a, you know, reaction to it. But there are directors who understand that.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  I don't know where I stand in all of that. I've done, I've been on both sides. But once I directed, of course, in films, I realized, wow, what a job that is. Oh, my. And everything, I just said, what have I been doing to these poor people throughout my life? You know, and it's very important that you have a relationship with a director that is, you know, some mutual understanding of things. That's important. And once you alienate an actor, it's very tough.

• 11:06Rick Rubin?

  It's over.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's over. And then I remember doing a film with a great director, Harold Becker, who was my friend. And doing it with a particular actor at the time.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  And I remember being a bit pouty about it, you know, and he said to me, what's up? I said, I don't know. I don't know how I can how I can love this fellow actor. In a way that I don't know how I'm gonna do it. And, and, you know, because I didn't like this person. I had, he just looked at me and said, Hal, grow up.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Grow up. I said, yes, got it. That was good direction.

• 11:57Speaker 00

  And when I was at the church doing Richard III, I was young. Charlie would come. He was always encouraging. And there I was in the middle of Richard.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  And there are these monologues.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  It was over. He liked it. And he came to me and he said, remember one thing. When you talk to the audience about what you're gonna do. Remember, they've seen what you've been doing. They've heard every word of what you said for the first hour of this play. And what you're gonna do, they're hearing right now. Whoa. That's, that's all. Not how to do anything, what you're, just that fact. And I said, that's directing.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  And Lemet did it all the time, too. I mean, Lemet just set things up and hardly talked to you about it, your character.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  But what you learn is when people or directors tell you about what something is.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  About your character that you're playing. I did one thing. This is the kind of wise ass I was from time to time. You know, especially when I was 25. You know, it was like, who are you to say anything to me? That kind of stuff. I never said it, but I felt it. But this one director came up to me, foot of the stage. And he said, you know, my character's name. I don't want to expose anybody. That's why I'm very careful when I, when I say certain things. But picture a director coming up to you and saying, you know, you're playing this part. And I wanted to say, yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, but you know who this guy is? I thought, yeah.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  He said, this guy, you know, bum, bum, bum, bum. And he's describing what the, the, the words in the, in the actual script are saying, you know, the definitions of, he's a tough guy. He drinks, he's sour from the south and he's sour and he doesn't, you know, he was. And I said, wow. I says, really, you know, I did read the play.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  He looked at me and said, but you know what? You really know a lot about this character. I think you should play it.

• 14:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  Anyway, and that was it, you know? I, I mean, this, this is really, uh.

• 14:37Rick Rubin?

  He got the message.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, he got the message, but this is how I operated from time to time. That would, you know, and it just alienates people. There's no need to do it, actually. You have to be able to say, okay, yeah, that's just, I mean, but I had another director, big director, come up to me while I'm in the fucking scene with this person and say, you see, this is what you're thinking. That you're thinking this and that. I thought, how dare you? How dare you tell me what I'm thinking? Asshole. I'm thinking about getting a coke after this fucking scene is over.

• 15:22Rick Rubin?

  So funny.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  You know, it's that kind, you go through those processes, you go through those actions. And that's what I say about time and doing, things happen all the time. And, and, and, and this, in this intimate relationship with trying to express something. And, and, and in a play between the director and the actor. But most, most good directors, they, they don't go there. They may say something and it's, and I mean, I welcome when they say something that's, but I've learned how to separate the shaft. You know, it's, it's there. And I'm, I'm lucky that I've finally turned a corner a few years back. Yeah.

• 16:11Rick Rubin?

  If there's another take to do, how often is it the director saying, let's do another take? And how often is it you saying, let me have one more?

• 16:19Speaker 00

  Well, I would say it's the actor saying it, more or less. He wants another take. And directors are very good with that.

• 16:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  But as long, you know, I, and there are directors who just want another take.

• 16:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  So you, you say, okay. Mostly you say, yeah, another opportunity.

• 16:43Rick Rubin?

  Why not?

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, why not? But I always say, could you give me a free one?

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Could you give me a free one? Meaning, let me have one here. We, we, I think we got it, but I, I'd like a free one to play with. They always do. But when you're younger, you know, I, nobody listens to you as much, you know?

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, but when you get a little sort of, a little clout, maybe.

• 17:10Rick Rubin?

  Maybe that's the reason you're good when you're young is because no one listens to you. So you really have to make your point.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  You have to make, that's good. Yes. Yes.

• 17:21Rick Rubin?

  You have to mean it.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  I, I loved it. I, I've been saying the other day, I say, you know, I think of myself as an actor. Serious, what's serious anyway? I don't even know what serious means. But I do know that when I was fourteen, fifteen, I was taking the roof off. I was like, I was all there, you know, something was going on, the young people.

• 17:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  You see it in your kids and stuff, you know, and that, and I was, I never did anything better than that. I'm just always trying to reach that, that level of, you know what I mean, freedom? And I'm not thinking about anything.

• 17:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, pure.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  I've been striving for that the last twenty years. I mean, it's like impossible, but every time I go out there, I say, this is the first time, never before. I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I've gotten there a little bit, but I have to use an earwig now. And it helps because now I really don't know the lines. So it's fine, I can really listen, I can still hear, so I can listen to somebody telling me a line. And then I know I'm confident that I'm listening, because I know I'm gonna get the next line. Because I got an earwig, somebody's gonna give it to me. It's like heavy, you know, I said, hey, there's nothing too bad about that.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  Marlon Brando used it as a life, I said, this, I understand the reason. And your life is sort of saved when you don't have to spend four weeks on a monologue just to remember it. I mean, you do remember by doing, that's how lines get absorbed and words get absorbed. But, you know, it's, it's, it's something, there's a freedom that comes with it. But you have to live with the character and do your own work and absorb it and let it seep in.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  And if you do that long enough with a purpose of finding something, and I've done that. That's sort of what I do now. If you can do that, it doesn't matter that you don't know the words, because you know who you are and you know the situation and you know what's going on. It's like, why didn't I always do this? Thank God. The hours spent just learning these things, you know? But I do now still, you still have to go through those motions, because you have to learn about what's going on. I do like rehearsals. I miss them.

• 20:03Rick Rubin?

  Do you take the characters home with you? Or when you leave the set, do you leave them behind?

• 20:08Speaker 00

  I didn't. I, I, I am the character here for a while. So I may do odd things in my real life that show that I'm. I remember having, when I was doing Scarface. I, I don't know, I was fortunate at that time because I, I had fallen in love. And that was really good. So every time I'd finished shooting a machine gun for endless hours and swallowing sort of some sort of substitute for cocaine. I, I was not, I was in a daze and I'd meet the person and she would talk to me about what her day was like. What a relief. And she'd go on and on about things that happened to her.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  And I'd just go right, right into my own world with her and I was saved. Because you know, you sometimes, when you're a younger actor, you sometimes ponder over certain things you did. Cause you're not in control of it. There's the directors, the editors, the people. What are they gonna, I don't think I got that. You know, once you start obsessing about that stuff, you're done. That has to find a way not to think about it, doesn't matter.

• 21:20Rick Rubin?

  In the book, you say that since Godfather two, you learned. You don't have to get as isolated in your life as you do in your character. But before Godfather two, you would be more in it.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think I did it partially too in Godfather two. That was a, that was a journey. And yeah, I, I learned that they, they keep away from that, that you don't need that. Now, this last Lear that I did, I would come home from a day shoot. And I just would sit in a couch, on a couch.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  And I would not move. I would be an hour not moving or not thinking.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  And I needed to, it was almost a trance. But Godfather two was different than any film I've ever made in terms of how I, uh, what was going on with me. It was very strange.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  I can't even describe it.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  I tried to a little bit in the book and it got overly confusing, so we took it out.

• 22:34Rick Rubin?

  Tell me as much about it as you can.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Well, I remember the time I was alone.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  And I was in this frame.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  I guess the character was.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  And I think being away from my home, my apartment, whatever I got used to, there was no break. Not really. Good people around. I had my closest, one of my close friends, John Cassell there, you know. And I think his girlfriend at the time was with him, but he would talk to me. When we were in Vegas, he was, he was there. He said, let's play roulette. I figured it out, Al, roulette. And I said, oh, I'll go down with you. We'll play roulette.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  But I had him always. I had John because I, I knew him so well. And I guess there was, part of it was in San Domingo where I was alone. And Lee was there with his two little kids, so that was fun in the pool. But mainly I was, I was nipping a little bit, not much. I didn't have any desire even to do what I, what I loved to do was drink.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  And it was.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  It was.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  The days were long. The shooting was long.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  And the space that I was in.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  You know, like in Scarface, when I was there, it was a long time in that room with a machine gun and smoke. And that would be, you know, you put yourself in a state in order to get through it. But I had my girlfriend at home who would bring me out of it. I would come too. And I guess there was a problem. I don't know how Francis and I related. By that time, this whole thing had happened. This was an explosion in both our lives. You know, it was that kind of thing is unexpected. You don't know when that's gonna happen. Or if it ever does, it's just like, and it happened.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  And here we are, taking it the next step. We're actually taking it, you know, touching this popular film that was filled with Francis's vision and his gifts. And, and it just, and there we are now trying to do something again that could be. So maybe there was that, it was, it felt almost like a bit of a burden.

• 25:26Rick Rubin?

  It's an impossible task, trying to live up to something that you could have never expected happening the way it happened.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  I think one of the perks about it, one of the things to focus on and what I learned is a sequel should be about what's coming.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  The new world that's coming. And that's what Francis knew and was able to. That's why, but at the time, you're still, you're changed. You're treated differently in everything. You have six bodyguards or something. You are, you know, so the isolation moves in. I think that had something to do with it.

• 26:19Speaker 00

  It was a different experience than I've ever had.

• 26:23Rick Rubin?

  Do you think returning to the character had anything to do with it or no?

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Yes, I did. Because when I saw Godfather one again recently,

• 26:32Speaker 00

  I hardly ever saw it in my life. But I saw it again and it, you know, it works. Let's put it that way. It works. And at the end of it,

• 26:47Speaker 00

  I saw somebody who had gone to a place in themselves, in their life, that was like stone, encased. And I think that encasement was fine. But now I had to go and do it again. And I don't think I had at the time the experience or the understanding of what we do. So I thought I brought it with me, so much so that I wound up in a hospital there. And because I had something, what did I have?

• 27:30Speaker 00

  I don't remember quite what was wrong with me. I was getting fevers or something.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  And I had Valium. I had a little too much Valium and also a little booze. You're not supposed to mix that stuff.

• 27:48Speaker 00

  And they came up to get me and they took me back to New York. And they did the Bob De Niro stuff, the Vito stuff in New York. We had to go back out there again. But when I went back there again, I took friends with me.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  Marty Bregman came with his wife. Charlie came with Penny. So I had, I had some sustenance. I had something there to hold on to, friends.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  I think that was part of it. So it was better the second half of my stay. Just because of that, I don't know what'll overcome me. Happens.

• 28:40Rick Rubin?

  It's interesting also is that The Godfather was such an unbelievable phenomena. And then you come back to it and you have this impossible task of following it up. And now, many of my filmmaker friends like Godfather 2 even better than 1.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know.

• 28:59Rick Rubin?

  Like, it's... No one thinks it's a step down at all.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  No.

• 29:05Rick Rubin?

  It's unbelievable.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  It's something, really.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  And that was... Well, I would say that it's a film that was much more personal to Francis. And, because he was resisting it. And I was resisting it too. I didn't want to go do it again. And they kept offering me money and I kept turning it down. And Francis said to them, when he got on the project, when he came on the project, he did something like, "What's going on with Al?" He said, "Well, no matter what we give him, he's turning it down. We got it up to a certain amount." He said, "No, don't care about... Don't give Al money. It doesn't matter.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  It's the script he wants." That's how much he knew me.

• 30:00Rick Rubin?

  He knew.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:01Rick Rubin?

  He knew you.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because money and me, like the book, you know, I mean, a fool and his money are soon parted. So that's always... Of course it was. Francis has that himself too. He has a feeling about... He had the big businessman part of him. But I sympathize, let's put it that way. His whole idea of money and wealth and all is very interesting. It's not first.

• 30:38Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the story of your Scarface. How did that movie get made?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Well, at that time, I was doing very well in terms of where I belonged in the world of films. And it was okay. I had something. I was doing a film here by accident. There's all these things. And I'm passing the Tiffany Theatre, which was way back when, on Sunset. And I see up there a marquee Scarface.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  And I'm with a group, a few people are walking. And I said, wow. I remember first my grandfather talking about it. And George Raft flipping the half a dollar and Scarface became a real thing. And Paul Muni was the lead. A great actor, Paul Muni.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  And I said, and I knew Berto Pricke loved the gangster films of the 30s. And he inspired him to do Arturo Uri, which is a classic. And I did Arturo Uri. I did it in downtown in 2000 with a great cast. And anyway, I went in and I saw it with my friends.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  It was Howard Hawks and directed. It was amazing. And all I wanted to do was do it and imitate Paul Muni. I wanted to, you know, I was so inspired by this performance in this film. And I thought it was so right. So I went out, called Marty Bregman. Marty Bregman, another big part of my life. I mean, he's the one who discovered me in Indy Wants the Bronx. And he said, I mean, these classic words he said to me were,

• 32:41Speaker 00

  "Don't worry, kid. If you're in trouble, I'll pay. I'll pay you. I'll pay you money. If you get down on money, you got it." It's the first person in my life who ever said that to me. I thought, this is crazy. He's lying. He's got to be lying.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Apparently wasn't. Because, you know. Anyway, he, you know, I went to him and I said, "Look, I saw something I think we should do." I said, "I saw this thing called Scarface and it's amazing." It's amazing. He said, "Wow, what do you mean?" I said, "Just see it, take a look at it." So, soon as he saw it, I must say, he said, "Yeah." And then what happened was, um... The whole process of doing this film with Universal, everything that goes with it. And Bob De Niro and Scorsese had ideas about it too.

• 33:45Speaker 00

  They sensed how great a film it was. But to find the way in was the big thing. How do you get there? How do you do it? Do you do it in the 30s? What do you mean? And Sidney Lumet, of course, saw it and said, uh... Put it on the boat arriving from Cuba when Castro gave us all these interesting, strange people. And the Mariel Lift, it's called Mariel Lift. And he's an immigrant, the same way he was in the original Scarface. He was an Italian. And I thought, "This is an idea."

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Oliver Stone, the great one, was called to, uh, to write it. And then there was discrepancies between Bregman and Lumet for the first time on what kind of film they wanted to make. And there was a falling out. And of course, Brian De Palma came. And it was that, you know, that thing that happens sometimes where, you know, I keep pointing out the luck of things. You get bad luck too, but this was good luck. Uh, Oliver, uh, and he come out to my house and we would talk together about how I saw it and stuff. But his idea with Sidney's idea...

• 35:17Speaker 00

  Was. And then Brian came in and Bregman. Now, Bregman, Brian, Oliver and me were like, we were not in the same, we're not on the same globe. It's just we're different. However, the difference sort of kind of stimulated things and we understood it. And it just happened. And Sydney wanted to do it more socially. You know, a kind of ideology and go into that. That's Sydney, which he's great at.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  But Bregman said, no, that's been done. And so we came up with this sort of operatic thing that Brian wanted to make an opera out of it. And we're just working. I mean, it cost a fortune, but it was for a reason. He, Bregman, really wanted that high intensity and that crazy world at these. And it just took the film into another place. And I saw it recently. The Arrow Theatre does reruns of things. Because when it first came out, it was devastated.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  It just was. They wanted it. I said, I think I may have to leave the country or something.

• 36:50Rick Rubin?

  People hated it when it first came out.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Oh, they hated it. Not people as much.

• 36:56Rick Rubin?

  The critics.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  People, but the critics and the movement out in Hollywood too was just, it was, except for the few, as always, that saw something there. And then as time went on, there was, you know, the, it just started to grow. And the hip hop generation and the, and the, and the rappers just took to it and understood it. And started, and they just started, the word got out and it just, and, because they understood it in a way that, and that related. And so people started watching it. And that's when that came out.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  The V H Rs came out, you know, cassettes of this. And then it just went through. I just maintained and just became this thing. And it's still going. So I feel, I feel very close to it naturally because I started it.

• 37:58Rick Rubin?

  Is that the first film that you started?

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:01Rick Rubin?

  So you had an instinct to make something different than the things you were being offered?

• 38:07Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 38:08Rick Rubin?

  And it turned out to be Scarface. And at first, the critics didn't like it. The Hollywood people didn't like it, but the world liked it. And the world continues to like it and love it.

• 38:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, it says something.

• 38:20Rick Rubin?

  Amazing, right?

• 38:20Speaker 00

  It is.

• 38:22Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your experience with therapy.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Therapy was necessary for me. And it started way back when I was in Boston. And The Godfather had opened.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  And I was staying with David Wheeler. I was staying in his house. He gave me a room in his house and we were doing

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Pablo Hummel, Basic Training, David Rapes play. Beautiful play. The Basic Training of Pablo Hummel. Did you know it? Did you, have you heard of it? Oh, it's, it's great. I won a Tony for it. It's a masterpiece about Vietnam. Anyway, I was staying at David's and I woke up and David said, hey, Al, look, you just won the National Board of Review. You won the award, Best Actor in Godfather One. I thought, wow. I said, followed by afterward, I said,

• 39:36Speaker 00

  you have contact with a psychiatrist in Boston?

• 39:42Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  It's all timing, isn't it?

• 39:45Rick Rubin?

  It's amazing.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  And he said, yeah, of course.

• 39:53Rick Rubin?

  This is the flip side of the story of the breakthrough.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  There it is. Yes.

• 39:58Rick Rubin?

  This is the exact opposite.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  So I started and, you know, it got me through many, many, many periods. And I just kept with it and this guy in Boston told me about someone in New York who finally, you know, you do this. I got to the point was every day. And then things would happen and I really, I grew to love this man, this therapist with me. I actually loved him, you know, that's a relationship that can happen. And it did. And then I went on to do it. And I still would do it. I do it today, but I haven't found it with someone yet.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  Cause I've had about three and I had Peter Newbauer in New York who I also to love. Then out here I had another doctor. They, I outlived them for some reason. I don't know what that means.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  But they're great and they were great to me and they, they got me through it.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  They got me to here. Anyway, I'm so grateful.

• 41:15Rick Rubin?

  Have you ever played a scene against an actor who's so good that you forget you're in a play or a movie?

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:25Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 41:26Speaker 00

  That happens. I mean, it just happened to me in Lira. I'm doing work with this great actress.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  Jessica Chastain, you know, who.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  And I've known her for years and years. She was, did Salome with me and so. And we're doing a scene.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Big scene. And I'm saying my piece in the ways. And I'm directed to, at this point, take a garment off her sister, who's my daughter, and she, my two daughters. And I reach out and just rip the garment off.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  It's like, and she goes crazy and attacks me. I mean, literally.

• 42:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  She attacks me. And we go, ah, and we go through this whole thing. Shakespeare, I love it. That's the kind of feeling we have in this film. And, and, and now, of course, we have to change everything afterward to suit that movement that she did. But it's so beautiful and so beautifully done. That just happened to me, so I.

• 42:50Rick Rubin?

  And it completely took you by surprise?

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Completely.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  I mean, out of this world. I said, what, what's she doing to me? But it was so appropriate. It just worked for her character and for me and the scene. Oh, my God. So that's just happened. So I'm always ready for them. They, they, they go sometimes. I was, I remember in Performing Arts High School, I'm in a scene with this young, I mean, fifteen years old. And we're doing a scene from one of those Cagney plays with Henry Fonda. Did this movie together. Anyway, I was playing Henry Fonda's part and.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  All of a sudden, the other actor gets so excited. And he lifts both his fists and he turns them on the, on the desk and powers them down and bangs it and looks at me. And he is a ferocious pit bull. He's a pit bull because we always had animals we would study and he studied a pit bull. And he made it work. He, he put the pit bull into the character. That's the whole point of it, you know? And I was stunned. I remember thinking, my God, give him a donut or something. Throw, throw, throw him a cracker. My God, it was scary.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  And it was brilliant, of course.

• 44:28Rick Rubin?

  It's great.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 44:30Rick Rubin?

  Can you think of any examples where you did something in your performance? That was so unexpected that the people you were playing against didn't know what to do? It's the opposite story.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  That's absolutely true. I've done it. I've been on Broadway and everywhere I go, I do it. I don't know, especially on live, in live theater, you know? I, I, I do do these things occasionally, but, but what, what I do is sometimes when I do them, I notice that my fellow actors working with me together are ready. I mean, they're paying attention. You know how it is.

• 45:12Rick Rubin?

  They know who they're dealing with.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, you're doing eight performances a week in these plays and you've been doing them and doing them. Now you, you gotta get gilded up and they are. When I come in the room and they know, what's he gonna do tonight? Usually I don't, I don't, I, I, I try to keep it, you know, spontaneous. I mean, you don't wanna start doing that because I fell in love with a gesture. Once I did, I was in a play with James Earl Jones and I, and I did this thing. I was 26, right? And I did this thing in the middle of the play. And I got a laugh from doing it. It was really funny what I did. Just came to me, right? The next night, guess what I did?

• 46:00Speaker 00

  I tried to do it again. And I couldn't repeat it. I screwed up. I forgot the source from which it came. It had a source and I forgot what made me do it. And then it was stale and didn't get anything, you know? So I try not to do anything that I'm, you know? I start dancing on stage in Glengarry Glen Ross. I'm playing a salesman.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  And I all of a sudden just start dancing between things. And ah, I said, later after the play, I was like, what the hell? What happened to me?

• 46:42Speaker 00

  Ah, my father was a salesman. And my father was a great dancer. Ballroom dancing, won prizes and things like. So I said, that's gotta be there somewhere, you know?

• 46:59Rick Rubin?

  Unconscious, in your unconscious, they're connected.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  That's right. That's why I say you gotta free that, free that unconscious. That's what I hope I can do, right? You know?

• 47:12Rick Rubin?

  But you didn't do it in rehearsal. It just came out in the performance.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  I didn't do it in rehearsal, though. The poor guys, they had to deal with it. But no, I remember too, I read a lot about the oldest actors when I, like Keane, Edmund Keane, the booths. And I read their biographies, either they wrote or someone wrote about them. And Eleanor Duce, I've read a lot about Sarah Bernhardt. I was very attracted to the old school of what actors did before films.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  And Dusa, Eleanor Dusa, the great Italian actress, would do things. Like at one time in Ipsen's Ghosts, this play haunted by the memories, by all kinds of things. But she would say, just come out and say, "Ghosts." That was the line. "Ghosts, goss, goss." And she'd say it and practice it so much so that in the theater, it would echo in the audience's ears.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  That's how far she went. And the other one was sometimes she would just start walking towards something. And everybody would stop if the impulse moved her. What it came out of, of course, was a situation in the play where it served the play. It didn't, it wasn't egocentric or doing, it had its own purpose. That's something I think she would repeat at times and times not. The life up there is, I mean, it's, it's, it's high wire.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Let me tell you that. It's a higher, and I think, I always talk about the wire that's on the floor.

• 49:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  And then the wire up there. And the theater is up there. In films, it's on the floor. "Oh, I just did that. Let me, oh, wait, let me, let me do it again." You can't do that in the theater. Once that starts, you're on the wire.

• 49:38Rick Rubin?

  It's live. It's.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  It's live.

• 49:40Rick Rubin?

  It's it.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  And what happens to you, you get used to it because of the challenge that it, it sort of ignites something in you. And, and, and the, and the danger of it is addictive. And you're sort of scared, but at the same time, you want it.

• 49:57Rick Rubin?

  You're forced to do your best. In the moment, there's no second chance.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  There's no second chance. So write it.

• 50:05Rick Rubin?

  And if anything goes wrong, you have to get out of it.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:10Rick Rubin?

  In the moment.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. The old telephone that rings at the wrong time. And you pick it up and you say to your fellow actor, "Oh, this is for you."

• 50:21Rick Rubin?

  You tell a story in the book of a woman coming up and asking if you have a light for her cigarette while you're on stage.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Yes. I remember I had debuted in London. You know, the theater, the wonderful theater. It's great. London theater is great. And all of a sudden, this wobbly woman, you know, she's a classic dinner party girl, you know, and she's coming down the aisle toward the stage. And she's jacking a little bit. She's see her, she's tippy toes, kind of. And she has a cigarette in her, between her fingers. And she looks up at me and says, "Got a light? Got a light?" I said, uh...

• 51:13Speaker 00

  Well, at the moment she came, we were talking about this thing we were gonna rob, you know, together, me and it's about these three thieves. And I said, "We're working here, lady." "We're just working. Can you give us a chance here? We're trying to do something." In the context of what we were saying to each other, robbing something, we were just working here. We were both working as actors, but working in the scene too, to pull a job. Louis was down the... Louis came down the aisle, just grabbed a woman and says, "Please, I mean, no light today." But that would be...

• 51:57Speaker 00

  A few things would happen in London, would happen anywhere. I mean, that's the beauty. The, you know, the one I have when I was playing Pavlo Hummel is the... I'm playing and all of a sudden, I just pick up these eyes in the audience. I pick it up, I see the eyes and I think, who is this? They seem just so penetrating. And I thought, what is this? And I sort of moved my entire performance in that direction. I couldn't, I couldn't help it. I mean, I was just... So when curtain call came, it was over, I really had to find out who belongs to those eyes. That's gotta be Miss Right, you know, or something.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  I thought, what was that? And I turned and I looked in its direction and it was two seeing eye dogs.

• 52:51Rick Rubin?

  Wow. That's amazing. Amazing.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  That's theater.

• 53:02Rick Rubin?

  How much of a performance is based on the words and how much is based on something else?

• 53:09Speaker 00

  Well, you've got the behavior. The importance of the word is that, that's why it's, you know, they had silent films, you know? And they worked, but they would have the titles on another, on the screen afterward. I was watching a film that I really liked, but I had a problem because there were subtitles and a lot of action in the film. And I would, I was caught between the action that I wanted to hear and the subtitles, the ones that's great in English. So it got, it got a bit overbearing.

• 53:53Speaker 00

  But it is, it's both, of course. It's behavior and it's things that happen to you. But I, I, I think also it's the situation you're in that you're playing. Whatever that situation is, how much you're, you know, it's both. It's the situation and the word, but the word is first.

• 54:21Rick Rubin?

  How much of what you do is dictated by the actor you're playing against?

• 54:29Speaker 00

  I have to say another story here to tell these things. I'm in a film and I'm working and I'm talking to this person, another actor, who is not looking at me, which is very strange. And I keep doing it anyway, wondering what's gonna happen. And then I talked to the director and mentioned,

• 54:53Speaker 00

  "The actor's not looking at me."

• 54:58Speaker 00

  I mean, why?

• 55:02Speaker 00

  And I said, "Okay." So director goes to her and says, "You're not looking at Al."

• 55:12Speaker 00

  Says, "Well, it's not my turn."

• 55:17Speaker 00

  I didn't get it either. I just thought, "Well, what does that mean?" It means this person has not done a lot of films or something. Or she is saying, "I'm giving him an opportunity to do his work." But part of that, she doesn't know yet, that part of the work is that we look at each other, yeah.

• 55:42Rick Rubin?

  Connection.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's inexperience, really. I mean, I don't know where that was learned, but whatever it was.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  So I just sort of, then the next, he told her, "Well, look at him. He prefers that." And she did it fine, it was fine. But that was interesting. I explored that a little bit. And it's, you know, you find that a lot of people are not experienced yet. You know, that's all there is to it. Like we were saying, just keep doing it and that won't happen again.

• 56:21Rick Rubin?

  Maybe this is, this is a good question, I think, related to that, which is because you've done so much theater, have you ever done a part where the character you mainly play against, where the actor changes over the course of the run? And how does that change things?

• 56:42Speaker 00

  Well, it does change things because if, like anything else, if, if, if something's askew, something is not right. I was in a play where I would do a lot of things in the play that would come, impulsive things.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  But I owned that, having done it for a long time.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  And it was a role that I, I did.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  And another actor started to do it. Either he was inspired by the fact that I do my thing, whatever it was, but it was in the control. It was in the play I had been doing for a long, long time. So, uh, but I have had those incidents where all of a sudden someone's doing something different because I did it. I, I didn't investigate it much because I don't like to have any, you know, but it is disturbing.

• 57:48Rick Rubin?

  In the book, you talked about one night where you've connected with the loving spirit of energy. Such a beautiful way of describing it. The loving spirit of energy. It's beautiful.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  Wow, did I say that?

• 58:02Rick Rubin?

  You said that, it's in your book.

• 58:04Speaker 00

  Wow, that's cool.

• 58:07Rick Rubin?

  In the book, you also use the phrase, to know someone else inside yourself.

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Wow, was lit up.

• 58:15Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful, beautiful. It's like when you're acting and it's going good, it's when you come to know someone else inside yourself.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  Isn't that's really good? I'm, I'm sorry. I don't remember, but I thought you've made it up. It's great.

• 58:32Rick Rubin?

  No, that's, those are your words.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  I'm so glad I said that.

• 58:35Rick Rubin?

  The book's really good, by the way.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Oh, thanks, thanks a lot. It's, it's wonderful to hear that. Yeah, I, I think that's true. I really do, I think you do. And that's, that's kind of a pleasure too, if it happens.

• 58:53Speaker 00

  You know, if you read a great book, sometimes you don't want to finish it. So you keep, because it's talking, it's in you. You know, it's like your friend, your new friend. It's a wonderful feeling.

• 59:09Rick Rubin?

  I want to talk to you a little bit about the book. I listened to the audiobook and it doesn't sound like you're reading the book. It sounds like you're just telling stories. I wanted to ask, how does that come to be? Because most audiobooks, when you listen, even if it's the writer who's reading it, it sounds like they're reading the book. This sounds like you're telling the story.

• 59:30Speaker 00

  Well, I was taught that from Sean Penn. Because Sean Penn, I don't know the name of the last Dylan book, but I was reading the Dylan book and, you know, I was, audio. I was, I thought I was listening to Dylan, but it was Sean Penn. It's an amazing performance. It's like just, you're there with Dylan. So I don't know, I think it just comes natural. I've been through these things, you know. So relating, like when I talk about a story here with you, you know, I see it. You see the story, you know, I see the street that it was happening on because it happened.

• 1:00:13Rick Rubin?

  You're describing what you see.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Rick Rubin?

  There's a part in the book where you refer to yourself, or someone refers to you, as an off-off-Broadway movie star.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:00:28Rick Rubin?

  It's really funny.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, my friend Harold, he said, he said, "What are you doing these films for?" I was doing these films. He's just like, "You want to be an off-off-Broadway movie star? What is this? You're a movie star." And Bergman would say to me, why you do these movies too? He said, he had a thing, he says, go down in the village or something and do it. Don't put it on the screen and get millions of dollars for it. Please, people don't wanna see this stuff here. Because everything I've ever done that has something to do with my, my read on things is always a failure, completely, utter failure. I do it, so I do it with my own, when I did do it, when I had money,

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  I used to put it into films, making films. And the films were not viable, you know?

• 1:01:20Rick Rubin?

  There's one called Local Stigmatic?

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Local Stigmatic. I, I have a story, this is, the Jonas Mekus, do you have any idea who he was? He was the village guy and he was the anthology of films. I loved him and he was, and I showed him the film. And he had said to me, my God, Al, you're going to get the Oscar for this? I thought he was, he went crazy, you know? He went crazy, S and G. We all, we all get a little older. And I, and there it was, I liked him a lot. And I said, no, I don't think so. I, so I showed it to, of all people, Elaine May, who is just a genius.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  And I said, I don't know quite what to do with this, so I showed it to her. And she said, well, it's over. She said, Al, it's okay, yeah. But you don't wanna put this out. I said, uh, she says, Al, you don't know how famous you are. Can you? I saw, I, I, I said, that's right, somehow I don't. I don't. And, and it, this, this is so true. It's so, it's so wise on her part to tell me this.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  And then I never did, put it back, keep it there. And someday it's legacy, my kids will.

• 1:02:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I hope someday it comes out. And who knows? Because it, some of these people might also have hated Scarface, you know?

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I dread that. But I think, though, it's got its own thing at the time. Who knows if it'll even kick in when you see it now?

• 1:03:17Rick Rubin?

  Is there a way to treat it like Shakespeare? Where you make a documentary around it? And it's part of the story, but there's additional information that makes it?

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  If you told me this 10 years ago, I might have. But you're scaring me to death now. I think, oh, I'm sorry. I need, I need a, whatever it is that you carry around with you, a wind machine of some sort?

• 1:03:46Rick Rubin?

  You told a story in the book about Revolution Revised.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Rick Rubin?

  And I want to know, why does that not happen more often? The idea that there's a film that, for whatever reason, didn't work? And that you took it upon yourself to recut it?

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  Yes. Me and Hugh Hudson.

• 1:04:06Rick Rubin?

  And put it out?

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Rick Rubin?

  It's very interesting.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  He did a lot of the work. And he, I guess he put it out, but something happens. As someone had once told, Marty Bregman once told me, because he heard it, that when you have a back end in a film, meaning you get residuals for the film if it does well, it's, those residuals are like, the studio has like a hose. And there's a lot of holes in the hose. And by the time the water gets to you, it's relatively empty. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's the money. It's the money. And then it's the, why do you do this?

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  The understanding of why the artist would put this together for the, for the sake of what the film represents and what was trying to be done. Because after all, you do make these things and you do do them.

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  So that an audience can absorb them and have a certain feeling about them. And if that can be done, and I don't know if it still resonates, but we had, Arrow gave us the screening room, the big theater. And we had, and we lost Hugh Hudson, he's gone. And so I went up there, talked a little bit about it. And I agree with you, why it isn't done more often, but it depends. You see, you take Megalopolis now.

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  And what Francis has done with it, and how he produced it and worked it over the many years. It is more for the understanding of where film can go, what we can do. And the reach should exceed the grasp of what's a heaven for, that kind of thing, that spirit. You take that on with his own money, which is right in a way. It's what you do if you want to say something. Because this film is not for now. This will one day do something, or it won't.

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  We don't know, but it's got a chance. Because it's part of an expression, what he's saying. It just feels far away from the time it'll be understood. Or taken for what it is, an experience. It's an experience, that's what it is. And he was able to do that, and people go and not go, but that's it. And that's where he took what is done by a lot of the great, there's a lot of great filmmakers, and throughout history, there's so many great filmmakers, but a lot of great ones, you don't know them. I remember at the time of Tchaikovsky had told me.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Because I was gonna work with him and he was this great actor in The Connection. And he started a thing called the Open Theater in the Village in those days. But he said to me about why I was doing this. Well, how do you go out there and make films? I can't do it. Because he was really special. He was a director and an organizer and whatnot. But he couldn't understand why I did it. Well, I wasn't what he was. He lived, this was his identity in that world. And that's very important.

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  And I understood it when he said it to me. I said, yeah, I know. He doesn't know how to be in this world of films or how. Maybe it's part of being a performer than an organizer or someone who puts big things together. And he was great in The Connection, too. And his inspiration came from the living theater. And Harmony Corinne is a nephew of his. Can you believe it?

• 1:08:38Rick Rubin?

  He's great.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  Harmony Corinne, in a little movie I made called Manglehorn, did a take in a, in a kind of partially play, playground, a playland sort of place. Kind of where there's little machines and you know, that sort of thing. He started going in a monologue. And he wouldn't stop. And I'm telling you, it was like listening to James Joyce. That's how far he went. And I said, this is the most unbelievable stuff I'm hearing. And it just poured out of him. And it was like, what?

• 1:09:24Speaker 00

  Is he saying, this is amazing? It's not in the film.

• 1:09:29Rick Rubin?

  Wow, and it's all improv?

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. He just was going. He was on that roll. You know, like a rap, a rapper. And he was just, he was just coming out.

• 1:09:40Rick Rubin?

  You talk about using music to prep for a scene. Tell me about how you use music to prepare.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  Well, I did that. I, I could try to do that again, but I, I, I, you see, as time goes on, like I said, after you've done this so all your life, sometimes you don't need these accesses.

• 1:09:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  It's interesting. But when I was doing Godfather two, I just would go, you know, I didn't, they didn't have these, this kind of equipment back then. You had to listen to the, you know, photograph and, and I, I, I put on a record, either it would be Mozart or Stravinsky in Right of Spring. And I clicked on the stuff, this, these earmuffs and listened to it pounding in my head. And I'd go in there and be calm. I'd go in the scene, be calm and all of that I've just been through. I don't know why I did it, but it was something I did.

• 1:10:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. But it fed you in some way.

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  It fed me in some way, yeah.

• 1:10:50Rick Rubin?

  You also described idiosyncratic moments where you would go for a walk before a scene and do odd things. It wasn't clear what those things you would do were.

• 1:11:00Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, I would do these things.

• 1:11:03Rick Rubin?

  What would you do?

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  It got to a point, I wanted to write a book and just, it, it, it's, it's amazing. This Born on the Fourth of July, if you ever read it, was that opening, or Johnny Got His Gun, that opening, uh, chapter, the first couple of paragraphs. And, and, and that's in Born on the Fourth of July, when he's been hit and he's just thinking what, I mean, it was just beautiful writing. But I would like to write something of an actor having to go on stage in like five minutes and going through, how does he get out of the dressing room to get to the stage and make an entrance?

• 1:11:47Speaker 00

  It would be so, it would be so funny, the things I'd do and have to do and then backtrack and go. I mean, it got to such a point.

• 1:11:58Speaker 00

  Ah, I don't know. It was, it was, of course, uh, dealing with anxiety.

• 1:12:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Speaker 00

  Alcohol was my way of dealing with anxiety and drugs. But now, no alcohol, no drugs. I get a little ritualistic. When I think I've even started to move away from that, not nearly as much. See, it just keeps, you know, stay alive long enough.

• 1:12:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

  And those things came, can, not that they disappear, but they, they don't have the same kind of relevance anymore.

• 1:12:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. It sounds like also the story you told earlier of doing a play long enough where eventually you got to the point where you're just standing in one spot.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, how about that?

• 1:12:52Rick Rubin?

  It's the same thing. It's again, like, you're shedding all of the extra stuff.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:13:00Rick Rubin?

  And all that's left is you.

• 1:13:02Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:13:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 00

  And if you're not, you, you know, you gotta be ready to do that. And experience gets you ready to do that. You can, I had enough of it. You can start to say, wait a minute. Somehow, there's a little wisdom, just a touch comes into your life. Helps you.

• 1:13:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Speaker 00

  I hope. I really hope.

• 1:13:30Rick Rubin?

  You do these shows that are like, um, seminars or one man performances?

• 1:13:35Speaker 00

  Well, those, those are very, I turned out, when I was, when I got broke, I mean, you know, I, all my money was gone. And I remember this one guy, a wonderful little guy from New York. You know, "Hey Al, how are you? Al, yeah, what's going on?" And he, you know, like worked for the Rockefellers and he was pretty fucking smart, I'll tell you that. And he liked me and he said, "You know, I like you, man. Don't worry about it." He broke, I, I said, he said, "I like you." He says, he says, "Uh, yeah, but I'm just don't worry, man. I don't want to see you selling pencils in front of Carnegie Hall." And I said, laughed, like you did. And you know, he looked me straight in the eye, he says, "That's not funny."

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  I was broke, you know, and I had loads of stuff. Anyway, I remember that. And what, why did I tell you this story? There's got something connected.

• 1:14:39Rick Rubin?

  We're talking about the seminars when you started getting on stage doing the one man shows. I saw you somewhere in Europe and I saw your name on the theater recently, the last couple of years.

• 1:14:51Speaker 00

  Couple of years ago, yeah, Paris.

• 1:14:52Rick Rubin?

  But it didn't have the name of a play. It just had your name.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:57Rick Rubin?

  And I didn't know what it was. I was interested.

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Rick Rubin?

  So tell me about what those shows are like.

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  Well, those shows came out of this. I was broke. I had to find a way to make money. So I started putting that together and I started doing a few films that would pay me. They weren't high, you know, high on the, on the, whatever you call that, the list of films to do, but I had to do them because, anyway, I got this, we got this idea. I said, why don't I just go talk to people, you know, wherever? And, you know, like, that's what people do. That's what a lot of the artists and entertainment people did.

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  They wound up from Gregory Peck to Cary Grant, you know, you earn that way and you do it by telling stories. I did it and I found enlightenment there with talking about my own life. Probably, probably that's why the book finally came out because it was very, I could just talk about things. And I was in my seventies at that time. So even work was more, it was more supporting jobs and stuff, you know, they weren't making films with big office anymore.

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  That would, that used to balance my, my nut every month. So I, I saw myself enjoying it. I put together, I had some people helping me, put together a six minute.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  Thing of you, you know, excerpts from things you've done. And I had a friendly audience. They came because they wanted to see me, you know, so it was, it was cool. I was with friends and people who wanted to hear what I have to say about things. And then I would do monologues. I do Shakespeare. The last thing I did is, I was working out recently, but I had a carotid artery on both sides, two surgeries on either side. And the doctor slipped and I lost one of my vocal cords recently.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  So I just kept going because I was working on this, you know, Anthony, Marc Anthony speech and Julius Caesar, friends, Romans, kind of classic. But I wanted to do it in a way that had music and had some additions to it in my seminar, that I would come up with Caesar's body, you know, and lay it on the ground. Then I'd go up to the podium and I'd start this great soliloquy of, and out of context, we even got a sound person to do the streets of Rome, like in that, during that period

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  and how we could infuse some of that. And I was just working on it. I had about another month to go to deal with it, but I went and did it anyway. And what it did is it brought the vocal cord, the brain started to, apparently a doctor, a great doctor from Mass General came, happened to be in LA and talked to me, looked at my throat, he says, it's coming, I think you're gonna come back a little bit because the brain knows this is what you need.

• 1:18:50Speaker 00

  And I thought, yeah, and I kept doing it. Uh, so that was the seminar there. I have a tendency to wanna do seminars and do commercials. I have a hard time with that. I had a Super Bowl commercial, which you're supposed to do. But I feel that there's an interesting thing that I discovered. Keeps happening, you discover things. Uh, it's Jack Kerouac had a,

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  of course, very interesting life, was a great writer. But he was embarrassed about being famous.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  It's odd. I don't know what that's about.

• 1:19:42Speaker 00

  And I have a, it could be also that I have an innate shyness in me, which compensated by doing those things, it helped.

• 1:19:55Speaker 00

  Uh, and I, I, um, I found it, in a way, therapeutic.

• 1:20:06Speaker 00

  And I would say anything up there too. You know, that was another thing, I didn't censor myself. And, um,

• 1:20:17Speaker 00

  but I would read them. Have you ever seen Jason Robards Jr. do Iceman Cometh when he was young?

• 1:20:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:20:28Rick Rubin?

  The TV, the TV version, yeah.

• 1:20:31Speaker 00

  The TV version, oh my, Sidney Lumet directed that. That is the greatest thing I've ever seen. All I've ever wanted to do my entire life was do that. And I keep trying and failing. But, you know, find a way to make it my own. I'm still working on it. That's the inspiration of my life, that's the greatest performance I ever saw.

• 1:20:54Rick Rubin?

  Would you say you learned anything about yourself through working on the book?

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. I would say, only I don't know what it is, but I know I've learned something. I don't know what it is. I mean, sometimes when I'm talking, I'm with you and talking to you here because, not because of a film I made, but because of a book I wrote. And you know, to say I actually wrote a book, it's like, I never thought I would do it, ever, yeah. I just thought.

• 1:21:20Rick Rubin?

  And it's a beautiful book.

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  I'm so glad to hear that.

• 1:21:23Rick Rubin?

  You can see, it's a lot of work.

• 1:21:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. I just looked there and it just started and I start seeing that past that I had and myself as a youngster and it just, I just kept talking and it felt good. It felt good going back.

• 1:21:42Rick Rubin?

  Would you say that before you start a project, whether it be a play or a film, that you have your character fully developed in your head before you begin? Or do you continue learning about the character through the making?

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  Through the making, I learn more and more because I have to interchange with people that are my fellow actors and, and what is going on in my life at the time, how this thing is progressing, who are the people, this takes a lot of people to make a film.

• 1:22:18Speaker 00

  And I, I, I think things change as I do it.

• 1:22:24Rick Rubin?

  Do you ever look back and have new insight into a character you played after you've played it? And realize there's more going on than you knew at the time?

• 1:22:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm, I'm always surprised if I did something really well. It surprises me. I really am surprised by that.

• 1:22:45Speaker 00

  And I've come to start looking at my work, I never did, but I, I look at it from time to time in a film. I recently saw Serpico.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  I hadn't seen Serpico. I don't know, remember seeing it. And it's, it's, you know, it's your work. It's like the painting Picasso does is the, there's a documentary on Picasso where he actually paints right there on the counter, you see that he's painting a virgin's. And, and then he finishes the painting and he puts it at his side and he's there and his painting's there and he's smiling and he just created it, but they have nothing to do with each other.

• 1:23:38Speaker 00

  That painting is, you know, so you start to see it and understand that it's, it's work. It's a painting.

• 1:23:48Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:23:49Rick Rubin?

  When you watch, if you saw Serpico recently.

• 1:23:51Speaker 00

  Yes, I did.

• 1:23:52Rick Rubin?

  Do you see the movie? Do you see you young, you Al Young? Do you see, oh, I remember how we made this? What goes through your head when you're watching? Cause there's a lot of different versions that can play in your head when you're watching.

• 1:24:10Speaker 00

  They, and they do. All of that happens.

• 1:24:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:13Speaker 00

  It's just the hair I had and the beard and the hair. And I thought, who, who is that? Well, how did I have those kinds of things? I mean, I didn't know I had those kinds of things. And, and what I found interesting was as naive as it was, it was, it was real. I thought he's, this is personal. You know, I knew Serpico, I studied it. I studied him as much as I got to know him. And that's all you need to do is you pick these things up and don't even know it's coming to you. But, but I, I saw it so differently than I ever saw it from the first time I saw it, you know?

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  And, and it resonated for me. I thought, wow, you know? And, and you sort of want to take credit for it, but you don't. I, I don't take credit for that. I, I just, who was that guy? That's another chapter in somebody's life. How was I that? That's not me. And yet I, I could enjoy it. I could see there's a value to the film. Funny, isn't it? That's funny. Scarface really blew me when I saw that. I thought I hadn't seen that for it. And I saw it on a big screen just about a month ago. And it was like, what the fuck? Who's that? Holy smokes.

• 1:25:41Speaker 00

  Where did that come from?

• 1:25:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:44Speaker 00

  Where did that come from? My god.

• 1:25:46Rick Rubin?

  It's magic. It's all magic.

• 1:25:48Speaker 00

  Wow. Wow. So, you know, it's, it's, this is, these are the kinds of things I'm finding out as I go along with life and I continue.

• 1:25:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:00Speaker 00

  Very interesting.

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammatin? Counter culture? Tetragrammatin. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammatin. The avant-garde? Tetragrammatin. Generative art? Tetragrammatin. The tarot? Tetragrammatin. Out-of-print music? Tetragrammatin. Biodynamics? Tetragrammatin. Graphic design? Tetragrammatin. Mythology and magic? Tetragrammatin. Obscure film? Tetragrammatin. Beach culture? Tetragrammatin. Esoteric lectures? Tetragrammatin. Off-the-grid living? Tetragrammatin. Alt spirituality? Tetragrammatin. The canon of fine objects? Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars? Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age.

• 1:27:34Speaker 03

  Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day.

• 1:27:39Speaker 03

  Take a breath and see where you are drawn.