Actor Josh Brolin: A Life in Vivid Color

Since the turn of the century, actor Josh Brolin has had quite a run. From No Country for Old Men and Hail, Caesar! from the Coen Brothers, to Inherent Vice from Paul Thomas Anderson, to Sicario and the Dune films from Denis Villeneuve. His new memoir, From Under the Truck, contains stories about the life in between. We discuss his upbringing bouncing from Paso Robles to Santa Barbara (8:49), the influence of his mother (10:05), and his entry to writing (19:40). Then, Brolin reflects on his vivid early adulthood in the 80s (26:14), the power of a story (32:30), and what actor Anthony Hopkins illuminated about sobriety (34:35). On the back-half, we get into his collaborations with the Coen Brothers (38:48), his challenging relationship to drinking (50:50), and why finally, after three decades of playing characters on screen, it was time to fill in some of the backstory (1:07:13). This conversation was recorded at Spotify Studios. Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:12Speaker 00

  Pushkin.

• 0:30Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Stan Ferguson. Welcome to the show.

• 0:47Sam Fragoso?

  Today, I'm joined by actor and author Josh Brolin. Since the turn of the century, Brolin has been on quite a run. You have No Country for Old Men and Hail Caesar from the Coen Brothers, and Heron Vice from Paul Thomas Anderson, Milk from Gus Van Sant, Sicario and the Dune films from Denis Villeneuve. That's not even including his work in the Deadpool Pictures and the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But what is it about Brolin that keeps us coming back? The Guardian had a pretty good description in a profile of the actor, where they wrote, "If you're looking for the classic outsider on the inside, a study in friction, then Josh Brolin's your man. He's the child of

• 1:29Sam Fragoso?

  privilege who trails a rough and tumble history, a 21st century movie star who's out of joint with his time." And it's true, there's always been something about Brolin that feels of a bygone era. Maybe it's the long shadow that his actor father casts, the great James Brolin. Or perhaps it's his spirit, which reads on screen as "searching and battled." But it's the battles themselves that make up a majority of his new book, From Under the Truck, a celebrity memoir that's almost anti-celebrity in nature. Instead, Brolin offers an unflinching look at addiction and recovery.

• 2:10Sam Fragoso?

  Diving headfirst into a tumultuous childhood, the son of a larger-than-life mother, whose alcoholism he inherited, either by nature or nurture. The book is guided more by feeling than chronology, a series of vignettes bound by an emotional logic, which is also how we tried to structure today's episode. And so we begin with the early years of Josh Brolin, bouncing from Paso Robles to Santa Barbara, where the role he was best known for, outside, of course, of his turn in The Goonies, was that of a juvenile delinquent prone to outbursts and bar bras. That's act one of his story.

• 2:53Sam Fragoso?

  From there, we get into his collaborations with the Coen Brothers, his challenging relationship to drinking, and why, finally, after three decades of playing characters on screen, it was time to fill in some of the backstory. This is Josh Brolin.

• 3:26Sam Fragoso?

  Josh Brolin.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 3:28Sam Fragoso?

  Nice to meet you.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Nice to meet you.

• 3:29Sam Fragoso?

  How you doing?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  I'm good, man. I was actually really looking forward to meeting you. A lot of podcasts that I do and have done over a 40-year career, not that there's been podcasts over 40 years, but you just kind of show, I like the idea of just showing up and not knowing. But with you, for some reason, I listened to part of your Joaquin, who's, you know, my good buddy, and it's always fun with him. It always makes me laugh, and it always actually makes me feel about anything that can happen, and it's just how it is. And then Willem Dafoe, I told you, I listened to. And then I saw that Marina is somebody who you've interviewed, and her and Tilda Swinton are the two kind of heroes of mine. But it's this unpretentious kind of, we're just experimenting, man.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  We're just looking for the vivid, truer, you know, access, which I loved.

• 4:20Sam Fragoso?

  You're gonna find this whole podcast is one act of experimentation.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Good.

• 4:25Sam Fragoso?

  So should we try to do it together?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Yes, let's do it.

• 4:28Sam Fragoso?

  Your agent, Kimberly Witherspoon, she received the first 50 pages of the book, and she quote, "corrected hidden agendas I hadn't told anyone about. I still don't understand..." How you knew and you always somehow found my hand through the phone when I needed something true. So what were the hidden agendas then that you didn't know at the time?

• 4:51Speaker 02

  The book kind of organically wrote itself. I mean, there were, there were, there was some moments in the process of the book where she said, you know, you don't have any of this at all. And I said, oh, no, I definitely do. And, you know, I just talked to her this morning, you know, there's very few people that I'll call and I'll say like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't like I'm, and I said, I'm spinning. I said it this morning. I said, I'm spinning.

• 5:19Sam Fragoso?

  About what?

• 5:20Speaker 02

  This is how I described it. I said, when you do a movie, people think that you're on this perpetual red carpet, just waving at people your entire career. Right? And I go, the, the truth of the matter, and you can't even tell them, you can't go on a podcast or go on an interview and you go, listen, you have no idea how scrappy it is on set and how vulnerable you are and you're, you're, you're trading ideas and you don't really know which is the right idea. And you're trying to design a scene within the scheme of the bigger story and all this kind of stuff. And it may work out and it may suck. You know what I mean? Ultimately, you know, people see the movie, you work your ass off. And the people see the movie and they go, yeah, it's all right. You know, when they go up an octave, you know,

• 6:01Speaker 02

  you've just blown it. I said, writing this book and promoting this book so far, not always, has been like being on set all the time, but in the public.

• 6:13Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  You know, that, that dream that you have where you wake up in the playground at school naked.

• 6:19Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  That's what it feels like. And I asked for it. Nobody did it to me. And I can't go, oh, the director said this, or the other actor did this, or this was the setting or this was it. This is like, so I was in the middle of doing the audible and I was like, why the fuck would I do this to myself? Why would you do this?

• 6:38Sam Fragoso?

  We're just gonna have to dive in.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:40Sam Fragoso?

  Eight years old on a ranch. Passeroles, is that how I say it? Five thirty in the morning, you're feeding fifty-eight horses, mowing acres of grass for a dollar a week. In one interview, you were asked, uh, what's one word to describe your childhood? And you used the word feral. What did that, that look like?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Bruised. That's what it looked like. It looked purple and bluish and a little yellow. It's all in hindsight that it's romantic enough to be able to write about. But during it, it's just, I mean, everybody I, I grew up around, it was that. So it's normal. It's normal life, it's a normal living, it's what you're expected to do. Back in Passeroles at that time, when our address was Route One, Box Seventy-One A, it wasn't even a real address. It was bucolic enough where you would take your kids out of school for two or three weeks if they had to do, if you had farming to do. You know what I mean? It was back in that mentality, like Dust Bowl mentality of like, you have kids to help you work. That wasn't necessarily the case with my family.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  My family were raising horses, they were racing horses, they were breeding horses. We had a very famous horse named Stud Spider, who was a, a famous stud and, and all that. But waking up at five thirty in the morning, especially with a mother that, you know, ran a wildlife waystation. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was a pain in the ass and it was feral and it was bloody.

• 8:10Sam Fragoso?

  You said once that, uh, she was better with animals than she was with people.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  For sure. Anybody would tell you that. Anybody who knew her would say that exact thing.

• 8:20Sam Fragoso?

  Did you understand that as a kid?

• 8:22Speaker 02

  No.

• 8:22Sam Fragoso?

  What did you think?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  There's two reactions and my brother and I, I can't, I think, represent both reactions. One is, why aren't you paying attention to me? And the other is, you will pay attention to me.

• 8:34Sam Fragoso?

  Which one were you?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  You will pay attention to me. I'll become an animal for you and therefore you will see an animal and not a child and be able to relate.

• 8:43Sam Fragoso?

  So you weren't just tending to the animals, you were also becoming one.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  It was like, what do they call it? Lycanthropy? That was the thing, like, become more like her, which she definitely was animalistic. Become more like her, more reactionary, less thoughtful. And therefore be able to share sensibilities, something like that.

• 9:06Sam Fragoso?

  Like her was a five foot three, a hundred and ten pound woman. Who often smoked out of the corner of her mouth, uh, cool kings.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:18Sam Fragoso?

  You said that she raised you to be a drunk.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  And I don't say that as a victim.

• 9:23Sam Fragoso?

  How did you understand that as a kid?

• 9:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, when you go to, when you hang out in, in cafes and when you're on CB radios, basically half your life, if not more, because we were on the road fifty, sixty thousand miles a year. She was driving because she didn't fly, so we were always in the car with her. I was always in the car with her. You know, my dad even tells this story. He says, I remember you being in the passenger seat, her driving and me in the back with my hands over my ears. So what does that mean? That he was the child? And I was the surrogate husband or whatever that was. So it was like I was the partner.

• 9:59Sam Fragoso?

  Is that how you took it?

• 10:00Speaker 02

  When I look back on it, you're trying to define it. You go, what is, what is the, what's the Freudian, you know, definition of that, which I totally accept. It's not even, I look at and I go, oh, that's horrible or what a horrible mother. I don't think in those terms. That was the movie that was playing and it was Apocalypse Now and I was three. And she was Kurt's and she was all the other characters too. She was the one dancing for the guys and that was flown in. And she was the one dropping from the helicopter and she was at all. So for somebody who appreciates, you know, a vivid experience. She was vivid in every which way.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  What I think was lacking was a, was an emotional caress. Do you know what I mean? So when you wake up in the middle of the night. And she's had a blackout, but she was drinking Calypso coffees. So she had to wake up because the alcohol wears off. And then now the coffee's starting to.

• 11:00Sam Fragoso?

  Is that, what is it, rum?

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Rum, Tia Maria, coffee with a little whipped cream on top.

• 11:05Sam Fragoso?

  Unbelievable.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a speedball, dude. It's a speedball. So she'd wake up and she'd wake me up, my brother. And she'd say, you know, what happened? What did I do? So all that lends itself to your future in some way. You either defy it or you accept it.

• 11:25Sam Fragoso?

  The way your dad described you in the front seat of the car. As a kind of surrogate partner. Reminds me of a section early in the book. I think around page thirty five, which is you in the early seventies. Your dad has just come home. I'm assuming from a late night of shooting on a set. Or whatever else one does.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Whatever else one does.

• 11:49Sam Fragoso?

  Working late.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Late at night.

• 11:50Sam Fragoso?

  On the set.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Right? The coffee mugs that mother had bought in Mexico the summer before were just missing the father's head as he walked down the brick walkway of the home where the family lived. The glass of the windows where little Johnny was looking at the moon and the moon was looking back at him were no longer there. The windows were now in sharp pieces all over the carpet that looked like curly brown dog hair and all over the grass that had just been mowed earlier the day before. The mother screamed and told the father to leave, even though the father had just gotten there. The mother was mad at the father, that the father had just been gone. And now the mother was mad that he was there in the home where the family lived.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Little Johnny watched and thought how he learned about numbers in school. How he knew that when you have one and one, that it makes two. But there was one of the mother and one of the father and one of him. And he didn't know what that made. And there was a bunch of numbers on the ground now, and he felt bad for those numbers. All those numbers on the ground didn't make more, little Johnny thought to himself. He liked the window when it was one and he liked the moon when it was one. And he thought of himself as being one and he liked himself that way. The father got back to his truck and the red lights came back on and then slowly disappeared down the driveway. The dogs barked. The mother wiped her nose and opened the cupboards to make pancakes.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Little Johnny fed the mother of the mice in the plastic container in his room and put a check on his blue chore chart. The phone rang while little Johnny ate his pancakes and the mother crushed across the broken numbers on the ground to pick it up. There was talking and there was smiling and there was laughter. And the sun rose in the sky and the dogs stopped barking and lay down in the dirt resting their long chins on their crossed over paws. And through the broken windows, little Johnny saw in the distance the moon as she slowly walked down the driveway disappearing quietly like the red lights had done just moments before. Yeah, I like that story because it's it's an innocent child. You know what I mean?

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And and it's written and I know I wrote that story initially straightforward. And then I liked the idea, the cadence of it. I liked the idea of it being a little sing songy, almost a little Dr. Seuss. And I love the idea of seeing it through a child's eyes. I used to have these dreams and I only had it like three times. And I guess they were called, they were like night terrors of sorts where something would break in half. And it makes sense to me because the family was kind of breaking in half or broken in half. So I would see a ship break in half or I would see a Rolodex spin and then stop halfway and then I'd wake up in a terror.

• 14:46Sam Fragoso?

  The fact that you were more used to seeing her screaming than crying.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:52Sam Fragoso?

  And that moment of consoling her and her feet on the bed. Did you understand why she was crying?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  No, I didn't. And it was like you just said, I mean, you pointed out very astutely that it's very rare. It was very rare for her tears. You know, and then you see yourself later on, myself of like, you start to mirror that and then you realize you get into life, into public life. You realize this is not necessarily how people do things. So it's kind of hard to fit in. Meaning that the way my mother demanded that I speak to her is not normal. My mother liked to be put in her place because nobody would put her in her place.

• 15:37Sam Fragoso?

  And your father wouldn't?

• 15:37Speaker 02

  No. So she cultivated this relationship. So when I would see her cry, it was confusing. And you want to be a caretaker. I mean, even at four years old, who was it? Morgan Stapleton, Chris Stapleton's wife, read the book and said, I want to give that little boy a hug. You know, and it's one of those things that I take sweetly as opposed to, oh, you poor thing. Now we have to take care of you. Like, look, I've taken care of it. I've definitely confronted all this stuff in a big way. As traumatic as it was, it was, you know, there was, it was very normal. It was all the time. So if it was, if it was a fight in the house,

• 16:18Speaker 02

  or it was a five, you know, 300 pound, 500 pound lion biting somebody's thigh. It was, it was relentless. It never let up. It was always something heightened.

• 16:31Sam Fragoso?

  But she could tame the lion.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:34Sam Fragoso?

  She couldn't tame you, though.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Maybe that's why I lasted as long as I did is that she couldn't, she couldn't figure me out because I was more like her than any of those animals. But I think that she instilled that in me. Keep fighting. Fight beyond me.

• 16:50Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  And it's so interesting. I'm literally just thinking of this for the first time. My dad said to me at some point, it was after my mom died. He said, I remember when you went to war. And I go, what does that mean? And he was like, with your career, but I think my career is always, it's a personal thing. He was like, I remember when you just, you wouldn't take no for an answer. It was like, oh, you should go do this. And I go, yeah, I don't want to do that. I want to be, you know, I want to do more character stuff. I want to do more theater. And you just fucking went for it. Just saturated yourself with it.

• 17:23Sam Fragoso?

  I want to talk about that period.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:25Sam Fragoso?

  But I think one of the earliest instances of you going to war, to bring it back to writing for a second, is a formative piece of poetry that you wrote, I think around the age of eight or nine. And it was a poem about death, written in the shape of a circle.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Very good.

• 17:42Sam Fragoso?

  I don't think it's in the book.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:44Sam Fragoso?

  And I wondered, one, why is it not in the book? And two, when you showed your mom that piece, what did she say?

• 17:53Speaker 02

  I didn't show it to her. She found it.

• 17:55Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  And then she confronted me. And she said, what is this? I don't understand it. Why are you thinking like this? And it wasn't, but it wasn't a, it was a death piece, but I don't, it wasn't like, oh, I'm feeling black and I want to die. It wasn't like that.

• 18:08Sam Fragoso?

  It was more abstract.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  It was more abstract. It was definitely more abstract.

• 18:12Sam Fragoso?

  In a circle.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  In a circle. It was circular. And I don't really remember what it was, but I do remember that she confronted me about it. More curious than anything. There was never a, like a, you shouldn't behave like this. I think when I, later, when I started going to jail and, but even then, I told you, it'd be like a smile on her face. But, but then I remember I was in Tucson, Arizona, and then I started really writing. A lot more poetry and a lot more prose. And, and she was sitting on the floor in my little office. And she was reading through stuff and she looked at me and she said, I don't understand you. And I go, no, you don't.

• 18:53Sam Fragoso?

  When she said that, how did you feel?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  I can't say I was devastated because as I just told you before, I think there was something in her. There was something silent in her that couldn't help express and want me to be more than what she was cultivating.

• 19:15Sam Fragoso?

  And what was she cultivating?

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Just a cowboy, fighting, drunk. That guy. Being a man was all encompassing. It was, it was very specific and it was very like truck driver and cowboy and, and CBs. And, you know, it was like every fucking old school country western song you hear.

• 19:38Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  You know?

• 19:39Sam Fragoso?

  Came with a beer.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then you have this poetry that came out of nowhere. Like, where is that? Is that innate? Is that something that I just kind of came out of me? Was I the first person to ever create a poem? Because it was like, I didn't, I didn't have books of poetry in the house.

• 19:56Sam Fragoso?

  You know why I'm asking you about this?

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Why?

• 19:58Sam Fragoso?

  Because when she says, I don't understand you. The two of you, as you've said, are so, were so similar. And so when she saw you at 20, I'm like, did she not see what you were going through? Your, you know, newfound fatherhood and you drinking, did she not relate to that? Like, did she not, I don't know, empathize with where you were at?

• 20:21Speaker 02

  I think, tell me if I'm wrong, but it's, it's one of those like emotionally, you don't understand me. It wasn't that. It was, I'm surpassing you. There was nothing that she offered. There was nothing that I felt like I wasn't getting from my mother until later. Like when I got sober and when I was looking at many years in prison and my mother came, you know, those family things, right? And my mother fought against it tooth and nail. And she looked at me one day and she said, you're doing this to me. You're gonna give me cancer again.

• 21:00Sam Fragoso?

  When was, when was?

• 21:01Speaker 02

  When I was like 19, before I had my kid. And, and my, my, my significant other Debbie was pregnant at the time. That was one of those moments, like, I go, there's no support in what you're telling. You're saying that I'm hurting you by taking care of myself. Whereas the other one is, I don't understand you. And I'm like, yes, because something in me want to, wanted to graduate out of my family. Something in me wanted to, to be more substantial, more well-rounded, more worldly than what my family represented.

• 21:41Sam Fragoso?

  Was there a part of you that also wanted to leave behind? You and Santa Barbara in the Cito Rats bottle shop parking lot on Coastal Village Road, hanging out with you guys, you know, doing all the things that happened in the eighties?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  All, all of, every part of me and every milestone that you're mentioning always wanted to graduate. There was a part of me that always wanted to graduate out of it. The only thing I've never wanted to graduate out of are my children. And I think I can confidently say my marriage. It wasn't always the case.

• 22:18Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  But I think, and I would be honest.

• 22:20Sam Fragoso?

  We're gonna send it to tape after this.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Well, that's all right. It's all right because it is what it is. I never understood the longevity of one thing.

• 22:28Sam Fragoso?

  Reading the book, the reason I think it's cathartic is because there always seems to be two people warring with each other. And the challenge of that to me is wrapped up in you dropping out of high school. And it's my understanding that your dad said to you, well, it's fine. You wouldn't have made it anyway. This is from the earliest interview you've ever done from like 1988.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  I was probably lying. I'm curious, you have the interview?

• 22:59Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  No shit?

• 23:03Speaker 02

  I'm already really enjoying you. Yeah, dad wasn't pleased when the young writer dropped out. So he used reverse psychology. You wouldn't have made it anyway. You don't have it, he told his son. It worked. I went back and graduated with honors. In school, he became interested in theater and in writing. His father gave him some stern advice. It wasn't that he forced me. He was just very persistent. Yeah, that's whatever reverse psychology that he used. He, it, it worked. It was, it was along the same lines as when I, you know, became an actor or wanted to become an actor and was pursuing becoming an actor. And people would say, you should find a new profession. That just worked.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  That was, that was along the Jane Brolin line of defiance.

• 23:54Sam Fragoso?

  You going to war?

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Me going to war. A version of me going to war. Going to real war didn't happen later because the real war was with myself.

• 24:03Sam Fragoso?

  When you think of that now, is that wrapped in drinking and drugs and all that?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Absolutely, man. I mean, like, who, like, how many people you know that are sober now? And it's like, oh, jerk off, you're sober. You're another sober guy. You know, but I think in my case.

• 24:21Sam Fragoso?

  I don't really. Think like that.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Well, I think some people do, though. I think some people like, oh, that's cool. You're sober. But then I also know that there are things that are trending. It's like, hey, I'm sober and I'm doing Pilates. It's like, oh, Pilates is like a new thing. And it's like, what's that? You're doing ice baths. Of course you are. Yeah, I've been doing ice baths for 20 years. It's just been a thing that's always been in my life for a very long time. I find massive benefit in it and all that. So, you know, the sobriety thing before was kind of, maybe I'm just, I'm expressing it in a way that I thought about it before.

• 24:57Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  It was a ball and it was a ball and chain. Sobriety was a ball and chain. It was keeping me from doing the thing that came natural to me, which was to act out. So if you're sober, that means you can't be yourself. Zero belief in that.

• 25:14Sam Fragoso?

  That's how you thought about it in the 90s.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  In the 90s.

• 25:17Sam Fragoso?

  So when you're bouncing between New York and California.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:21Sam Fragoso?

  And you're wrapped up in drugs and all that shit. You thought without it, you wouldn't be Josh.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. You're not letting me be me. Like, I didn't like the effect and how I was acting and who I was hurting and how I was hurting myself when I would act out on drugs and alcohol. But it came down to the last time I went out, when I finally went from sober for the second time to going out for 12 years before I finally got sober this time.

• 25:56Sam Fragoso?

  And when was that?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  I think I went out when I, let's see, I was 29 when I got sober. Five years later, I went out and then I stayed out for 12 years. So when I went out for those 12 years, I said, I will never get sober again. It was almost like one of those Leaving Las Vegas moments where I was like, this is how I will die. I'm not, I don't want to die soon, but this is, I will die with this stigma on my back.

• 26:23Sam Fragoso?

  When you're in New York.

• 26:27Sam Fragoso?

  And you're like picking up between 11th and 12th street, avenue A and B.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  How do you know that? Did you? Were you there too?

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Were you there? Were you a little kid on a stoop?

• 26:42Sam Fragoso?

  Not sure I was.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Was your mother a dealer?

• 26:44Sam Fragoso?

  Born yet? Yes, she was. She actually, I don't know if, I didn't want to tell you this, Josh, but um, this whole thing is about me collecting.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  You owe me.

• 26:54Sam Fragoso?

  There's back pay on uh, on drugs you bought from us.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  Avenue, between A and B or between B and C, between A and B on like 10th street.

• 27:04Sam Fragoso?

  Can I ask you, what did you like about heroin?

• 27:08Speaker 02

  I didn't, I never, like, I had, God, I haven't talked about this very much, but I was, I had junkie friends, like severely, you know, junked out friends.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  True, true, true, like strung out addicts. And they were like, what is the matter with you, man? Because I was, when I was into that, for the short time that I was into that, I was always sick. I was either sick getting on it, or I was sick getting off it. So they were like, just be a junkie. And I was like, I can't. I don't want to.

• 27:39Sam Fragoso?

  You always had a foot in and one foot out.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  That's exactly what it was.

• 27:43Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Because I didn't want to be just that. I didn't want to be defined as that thing. So something, alcohol was different. Alcohol was a total through line for me, whereas drugs, I was in and out of, all over the place.

• 27:57Sam Fragoso?

  And was any part of it pleasurable? Like, what kept the foot in, I guess?

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Probably the idea of it.

• 28:05Sam Fragoso?

  The romantic idea of it.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  The romantic idea of it, and also that I came from a culture that did a lot of it.

• 28:11Sam Fragoso?

  When you were a kid, when you first started all this, you're in Santa Barbara, teenager, you do some acid in the beginning, and that turns into heroin and that stuff.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Way later.

• 28:23Sam Fragoso?

  Way later, okay.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  For me.

• 28:25Sam Fragoso?

  For you, yes, for your friends. Most of whom, it should be noted and should be on the record, are not here now.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  No.

• 28:34Sam Fragoso?

  And their lives are, in some ways, embedded in the stories of this book.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 28:41Sam Fragoso?

  You said about that group, they were the impenetrable group that you always hoped for, romanticized, wished for when you were a kid.

• 28:50Sam Fragoso?

  But the dysfunction was on a massive scale.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  There was nothing romantic about it. And I'm not saying it was morbid or anything. It was super. It was there were so many great times. But it was, it was, you know, somebody said the other day, they were like, well, you know, tell me about this Cito Rat gang. And I was like, there was no gang. It was a group of people that became known and are still known as the Cito Rats. And Cito Rats don't exist anymore. Some people will say they do. They're not. They're us, old school. Most are dead. Some are still around, you know? I mean, it's like there, there's a fluctuation of the people who have survived. The romantic side is I'm into story. I love story.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Again, we keep saying it, the vivid nature of a story, whether it be, I love the idea of hybridating emotional content and heavy, heavy visual. You know, I don't want it just to be technically brilliant. I don't want it to just be me going.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  You know, I want there to be something that's driving it forward, like the thing that I feel. But that's the thing about that group of guys is it's, it was always driving forward and we could always lean on each other. And it's something that I've now noticed myself recreate again and again.

• 30:09Sam Fragoso?

  That driving, that desire to drive forward together into some great unknown. It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that there was a period of time where you thought in order to be a great, dynamic, interesting and interested actor, you had to experience everything.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 30:31Sam Fragoso?

  Is that what you thought the job required when you're in your twenties and early thirties?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  That's what I wanted it to require because I didn't want to be a personality. I didn't feel like even had enough of a personality to be a personality and to have my. Profession rely on a personality. I wanted to, I was somebody who was not interested in acting as a celebrity, as a conduit to celebrityism. I was interested in behavior because it was curious to me because I grew up around a fucking bunch of crazy people that I couldn't figure out. And then I had my guys and then I, and even then behaviorally, they were all over the place. There's still be stories being talked about, about Cita Rats or about my mother. People are still, God, I miss your mother so much.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Because they miss that story in their life because it made their life bigger than how it is, than what it was. And acting to me was absolutely fucking useless. If we didn't get into, inside the behavior of what people do and why they do it and how curious and how chaotic and how nutty it is, which I think is the manifestation of this book. If there's anything to me to identify with, it's the fact that instead of a self-help book that used to be as big as the poetry section, about a foot wide and about six feet high, is now 75% of the bookstore. And it's fine, but why do they all, why are there so many? Because they don't work. Most of them don't work.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  So you go buy another one and you go buy another one because they say, find the solution and then just live in the solution and breathe. And you go, life is way more chaotic and messy than that. Do you really exorcise the demons in you? Or do you get to a point where you actually just accept them? And you learn to direct them. As Anthony Hopkins told me, it was one of the greatest things I ever heard in sobriety. He was like, how great is it that we're like this? And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? And he was like, that we're alcoholic and we're edgy and we're driven, we're angry. And I was like, why is that a good thing? And he was like, because left to its own devices can be the most destructive, hurtful

• 32:45Speaker 02

  personality, behavior ever. Directed in the right way can have such a profound and positive impact. And it's just that, it's learning and acquiring tools to be able to direct it in a way. That engine, that engine in a way that is showroom ready.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  And I'm kidding because I will never be showroom ready. But you know what I mean? In the most positive sense. And I was like, oh, so I don't have to be somebody else in order to be good or in order to be productive, in order to have a positive impact. And I'm not even looking to have a positive impact, but I'm looking to be able to find things in myself that shine a little bit, that maybe sparkle a bit.

• 33:37Sam Fragoso?

  After the break, why don't we talk about what that engine

• 33:43Speaker 02

  is.

• 33:44Sam Fragoso?

  And what it produced.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 33:46Sam Fragoso?

  And that's the work itself.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:48Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, we'll be right back with Josh Brolin. We're going to the bathroom.

• 33:54Sam Fragoso?

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• 34:39Sam Fragoso?

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• 35:27Speaker 02

  Just for the audience, we just urinated together. Separate urinals.

• 35:32Sam Fragoso?

  I didn't look.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  I had the lower one. I didn't look either. You're taller than I am, I think. So if anybody looked, it was you.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  Tell me afterwards.

• 35:44Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back from the bathroom break here, when you're a young actor, in all the years leading up to No Country For Old Men, you would go on all kinds of auditions. And there's one woman who used to work at Miramax named Merrill Poster.

• 36:01Sam Fragoso?

  And she said, "You and Benicio del Toro were the worst auditioners we ever experienced. In all the thousands we saw, by far, the two of you were the worst."

• 36:13Speaker 02

  By far?

• 36:14Sam Fragoso?

  By far.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Like, why add that?

• 36:16Sam Fragoso?

  I don't know.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Why not just say you were bad auditioners?

• 36:18Sam Fragoso?

  It's what we call insult to injury.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  That's an insult to injury, for sure.

• 36:22Sam Fragoso?

  And yet,

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:24Sam Fragoso?

  did you think you were that bad?

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Yes. Benny, I don't think did. I think Benny thought he was being pretty fucking good. Because he's a great actor. But I hated auditioning. I hated auditioning, man. You're behind a couch and you're in the Black Forest in Germany and, you know, and you have a gun and everybody's sitting in their chairs and you come up from behind the couch and you go, "Don't fucking move!", you know? I mean, it's super humiliating. It's just fucking awful. You're sitting there and you're like, they're like, "Do the thing", and you're like, "What thing?", you know? Do, be a good actor. How?

• 37:04Sam Fragoso?

  And you seemed pretty reluctant about the whole thing in the first place.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Reluctant about acting?

• 37:10Sam Fragoso?

  Kinda.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  It makes me want to cry when you say that because it makes me so, it makes me so happy when you're sitting there telling the truth. It's a rarity. That's what was a great thing with alcohol is that, you know, if you needed information, just alcohol somebody up and you probably would find out a lot more shit than they were presenting. But I do think that we all have that kind of contrasted thing. And that's super funny. Um, yeah, I think that I have a love hate relationship with it. I just did something with Ryan Johnson. It's, uh, Knives Out Three. There was a pleasure that I found in doing that movie with him that I have not experienced for quite a while.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  I've found pleasure for other reasons doing movies. Denise, a really close friend of mine and that, but from an acting standpoint and scaring myself and living up to something. I've, that was something that I, that I just experienced for, and that keeps me going. It's like hitting the golf ball well, once in a great while, and you go, I guess I'll just keep playing fucking golf.

• 38:30Sam Fragoso?

  The first time you hit the golf ball well.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:32Sam Fragoso?

  Was Flirting with Disaster.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  It's funny, I was gonna say that.

• 38:36Sam Fragoso?

  Right?

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:37Sam Fragoso?

  You opposite Richard Jenkins.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, genius actor.

• 38:40Sam Fragoso?

  The second time, I think, is No Country for Old Men. When you think of this period now, and, and you, you described yourself once as a guy who was always on the verge of making it.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  That was other people's perception.

• 38:55Sam Fragoso?

  Right, you didn't think that.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 38:57Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me about the distance between those two. How you saw yourself and how they saw you.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  There was a process in me just admitting that I was a working actor, you know? So if Alan Mandel called and said, hey, can you put on pantyhose and play a, you know, I'm like, sure. We just need you in Milwaukee for two days.

• 39:15Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Great.

• 39:16Sam Fragoso?

  It was a paycheck.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  It was, yeah, it's just what you do. You act, you know, you didn't have a choice.

• 39:21Sam Fragoso?

  We had two kids.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Going to act. I had two kids at the time. Sometimes I wouldn't work for 12, 16 months and it was nuts, man. And the, in hindsight, looking back on that, I got to spend so much time with my kids and I had this amazing time during my kid's childhood, which I was so, I'm so pleased with now, but the frustration, like I went into my, I won't say who the agent was, and he's my good friend now, still, but I went in and I was like, is my head too big? Are my arms too short? Like, like, just tell me, like, just be honest with me and then we'll go from there. Like, I don't understand how I'm not getting so much work.

• 40:00Sam Fragoso?

  What did he say?

• 40:01Speaker 02

  He put in a tape and he had played both parts from the big scene in Heat between De Niro and Pacino.

• 40:08Sam Fragoso?

  At the diner?

• 40:08Speaker 02

  And he played at the diner.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  And he played me the version of him playing both parts. So his response was showing me how well he acts.

• 40:21Sam Fragoso?

  He's an agent?

• 40:22Speaker 02

  He's, he's no longer an agent. It wa, it was amazing to me and we tell, I tell that story because it was such a ballsy move.

• 40:32Sam Fragoso?

  Wow.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  It's such an insult and I know he didn't mean it like that in the least.

• 40:36Sam Fragoso?

  I really hope Michael Mann has seen that tape.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  That's seriously, and I go, God, man, my fucking agent is showing me a tape of how good he is acting. He's so pleased with the tape. I'm fucked.

• 40:48Sam Fragoso?

  I did find it weird when you walked in here and gave me a tape of the podcast you're gonna host next.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  That's what I mean. It's basically the same thing. It's the same thing. It's like, hey, man, by the way, like, I can't wait to do this. I'm so psyched, but I have a podcast too.

• 41:05Sam Fragoso?

  Is it long form interviews where you get into trauma of your past?

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 41:09Sam Fragoso?

  Interesting.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the things that we're gonna talk about. I've already talked about it on my podcast.

• 41:16Sam Fragoso?

  It's good we're getting laughs in here because it's been

• 41:19Speaker 02

  No, I know.

• 41:20Sam Fragoso?

  We have to oscillate back and forth. It's beautiful.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  It's the oscillation. It's the fluctuation that makes it makes for a good life.

• 41:27Sam Fragoso?

  I'm trying to think of which part I want to talk about with the movie. What matters most to you in telling the story of you getting it and doing it?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  It was such a light set. We had a lot of fun. Me, Woody, Javier was depressed off on the side, but we'd always pull him out and he'd have drinks and he'd end up doing karaoke. And Joel and Ethan, I got very close with, you know, especially Ethan. I mean, I got close with both of them, but Ethan, you know, that was a friendship that, you know, continues.

• 41:58Sam Fragoso?

  On the set, did you notice Ethan's quiet torture?

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would make fun of him all the time. I still do.

• 42:05Sam Fragoso?

  What would that look like?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  First of all, he hums all the time. I mean, he would, I mean, that's a form of insanity and it's not an affectation. That's what's so great about Ethan and Joel, but especially Ethan is that he's, he doesn't even understand affectation. He couldn't do, he couldn't think of a romantic version of how you wanted to, how he wanted to be perceived of by you. He just can't help but be organically, dumbly himself, like it or not. He probably likes it the least.

• 42:39Sam Fragoso?

  There was one project you wanted him to maybe work on with you and you said something like, would you want to revisit that? And he said to you, yeah, I'd love to revisit it when it's done.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  What was that, Quasimodo? Was that Hunchback?

• 42:55Sam Fragoso?

  Something like that, yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  He said, I would love to revisit it when it's done and I see it in the theater.

• 43:04Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, these are the kinds of people that after having worked with you on several projects, before casting you in Hail Caesar, called around and asked people if they thought you could handle.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  That's the truth, man. That's literally the truth.

• 43:20Sam Fragoso?

  I know.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  I go, why would you do that? Like I confronted them. I go, why would you do that?

• 43:24Sam Fragoso?

  Asking them, he was, they were asking people if you could handle that dialogue.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  What a fucking, what an asshole thing to do.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  But they're practical. That's what I appreciate about them is they're practical.

• 43:39Sam Fragoso?

  When you're making No Country, 2006, there's a page in this book that I tell you it's the page that has stayed with me since I first read it.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 43:52Sam Fragoso?

  And it's you on set, and I thought maybe you could read this page.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Okay, let's see, 2006, "The El Camino Hotel. I don't remember what the room number is, but they're all the same. Room eight looks like room 12, looks like room six. A queen bed, pulsing plastic alarm clock, beige carpet, paper-thin sheet rock, a sliding aluminum and glass door to the shower bath, small knobs on a small sink on either side of a small spigot. My hat sits on a cheap wooden chair and my blue jeans seem foreign against the dirty floral print of the bed's duvet. My boots stand alone next to the door with socks draped over the tops of them, as if they belonged to somebody else. A film script

• 44:39Speaker 02

  sits open on the small fromica table to a scene where I hitch a ride from a stranger and he gets shot by the bad guy the minute I climb in and close the truck's door with a metal crunching slam. I don't work until it's dark tonight. Outside it's hot, it's summer. I hear high heels against concrete and I pull back the curtain and there she is, standing in front of me at the other side of the window. I unlock the door, let her in. She doesn't even look at me, just walks right past, wafting in a scent of plain food. She puts her bag down, walks into the bathroom and closes the bathroom door behind her. I hear the shower turn on. My stomach cringes, contracts. I feel the heat of the

• 45:21Speaker 02

  day behind me and the heat of what's to come. I wish it were nighttime already. I wish my kids were here. I wish there were some things I just didn't have to do."

• 45:33Speaker 02

  That's hard for me to read, dude.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. The context is being at the Al Camino motel where I stayed with the prop master and somebody else and somebody was coming to visit me.

• 45:54Sam Fragoso?

  I wish there were some things I just didn't have to do. What is that?

• 45:58Speaker 02

  It's the life that feeds. It's the life that feeds, all that kind of stuff. It's like, what makes the, you know, is it the fact that I broke my clavicle, you know, two weeks before I did No Country? And he gets shot in the right shoulder and that's the only way I was able to do the film? And did that create a pain and did that have an impact on the movie? And do you know what I mean? My character and all that? So I think that my, in my past, and I'll get back to that, but in my past, everything had to be earned. It was like, everything had, not, not a torture. You know, you brought up Benicio del Toro before and I remember him, I did a series a long time ago when I was 19 called Private Eye. And it didn't go anywhere. And it was the guys from Hill Street Blues and Saint Elsewhere and Miami Vice.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  And, and it was Tony Yurkovich and this whole thing. And, and Benny did a two-part episode called Bario Nights. And I remember him, I think they kept it in. Like he fucked up a line or something and then he just started slamming the, you know, and I knew it was from that. He was so hard on himself. He expected so much of himself. Being a student of Stella Adler and all that kind of stuff. And we were all, that was our group, you know, it was like, not that we were hanging out, but me, Benny, Ruffalo. It was.

• 47:17Sam Fragoso?

  You studied with her too?

• 47:18Speaker 02

  And I studied with her too. And it's one of those things that it's like, it was back in the old days where it was kind of like, it meant everything. You had to go through the shit. You had to like, get. At least that's how we felt. And it was fairly cosmetic. But we're, you know, we're like, we're an actor. We want to be Brando and we want to be James Dean and we want to be all these people.

• 47:41Sam Fragoso?

  And your life outside of the frame also needed to be full of material.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, material, like writable material.

• 47:49Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Everything was a story. Everything was a story. And I say that about alcohol, by the way, you know, I go, if I speak at a meeting or something, I go, listen, without, with alcohol, I had a personality, I had it, I was, I was identified.

• 48:04Sam Fragoso?

  Who were you drinking?

• 48:10Sam Fragoso?

  Cause the identity and personality, you and I just met today.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:15Sam Fragoso?

  There's a personality.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  There's enough of a personality.

• 48:18Sam Fragoso?

  I didn't say there was enough. I said it's been felt.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  There's a personality.

• 48:22Sam Fragoso?

  And I like it.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  I appreciate that. Thank you. I like yours, by the way. Um, I think my perception of it was it was, I have a different relationship with it now. I was racked with fear. I was racked with how I was perceived. Not that I wanted to be perceived as cool, but I wanted to be perceived as something substantial. So I was racked with this heady thing that would make me trip over my words, that would make me shake, that would make me do all these things. And alcohol disintegrated that.

• 49:04Sam Fragoso?

  And turned you into what?

• 49:05Speaker 02

  It just, it didn't turn me into a monster. I was super fond sometimes, you know, it just, it's like, I think I write it in the book, what T. Roll said. It, he said, shark eyes. I would literally blink and become somebody else. You know, which is fairly well known in the sober community. It's like Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.

• 49:25Sam Fragoso?

  You wrote, I was nice until I wasn't. Shark eyes, my buddy T. Roll called it. In the snap of a millisecond, you went from charming to dark. The next morning, I'd lie there crawling through the black molasses of my memory and desperately searching for any evidence of what I'd done the night before.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's pretty bright on. I know. And, and then it became, which is an absolute parallel with my mother, which I know right before she died, which I'll get to, but there was a guy who took me out. A friend of his was visiting him and he said, do you want to go out tonight? And I said, yeah, sure. And I had gotten in some trouble or drank too much a few days before. So I was deciding not to drink. And when I decided not to drink, he was like, you know, what can I get you? We went to bar or something and he said, what can I get you? And I said, it's water. I'm fine with water. He was like, what do you mean? And I go, I'm just gonna drink water tonight. I don't think I'm gonna drink. And he was like, but I have my friend here.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  And I was like, what do you mean you have your friend here? What like, I told her about you. And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? It was like, I told her how, you know, like, and I, and I realized it's like, oh, no, no. I want you to, I want you to song and dance for her. I was like, oh, I'm a freak to you. I'm a sideshow to you.

• 50:48Sam Fragoso?

  It was, why stay home and watch a show on the couch?

• 50:54Speaker 02

  When you can experience one.

• 50:55Sam Fragoso?

  At the bar.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  In real life. And its name is Josh Brolin. It's name is Josh Brolin.

• 51:01Sam Fragoso?

  Not even with the SAG card.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Not even with the SAG, doesn't even need a SAG card. And all you gotta do is buy it a few drinks and it will dance for you. And it might even go to jail and we'll go home and talk about how crazy that was. That guy's crazy. Him, him, him, him, him. And that's what my mother was. Her, her, her, her. It's easy to point the finger at those people who are loud and do that song and dance and all that. And then you get caught up into being everybody's freak show. And that becomes its own kind of, you know, hamster wheel.

• 51:36Sam Fragoso?

  The book is so much about you and your mother and, and the relationship you had and the one that got cut short. It, it's tough because on one end, you're talking about how she was this larger than life figure in a positive way, like people loved her. And then on the other end. She was this larger than life figure. They rendered her a drunk cartoon, essentially.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:04Sam Fragoso?

  And thinking about her now, like, how do you hold those two? How people perceived her versus who she was?

• 52:12Speaker 02

  I don't think that she knew who she was. Period. I remember this one moment where she was crying at the end of her life. And she had been taken seriously about this idea that she had thought of. And I remember her crying and I said, what are you crying about? And she said, I've never been taken seriously before. That was a moment that I'm so glad that I had before her death. Because it was a reveal of you're not happy in this place. You do feel like a freak show. You feel like this sideshow, this dog and pony thing. And so when I felt that, I went the opposite direction. I said, I don't, I don't wanna, I don't wanna see what happens.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  I can either have that life. Or I can see what this other life is gonna be like. And that's sober life. I didn't have to self-destruct completely. I tried.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  I'm not supposed to be dead, you know? Whatever, for whatever reason. And I did a lot of things.

• 53:16Sam Fragoso?

  This all, to me, comes to a head.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:18Sam Fragoso?

  We do keep kind of oscillating back and forth between the past and present. And

• 53:22Speaker 02

  It's my book.

• 53:23Sam Fragoso?

  The structure of the book is such that you go from 1973 to 2003 without much explanation. And that, in some ways, the reason I'm structuring our conversation like this is because I like the idea of holding these moments. And the way they sit next to each other in and of itself is telling a story. So the personal and the professional seem to dovetail in 2013, in the summer of that year. You're making Inherent Vice. And you're playing this detective Bigfoot who's a hard-nosed detective on one end and a desperate

• 54:08Sam Fragoso?

  aspiring actor on another end. I wonder, when you think about that performance and that time in your life, because it's the year that you decided to get sober. Making that movie, did it feel like an inflection point?

• 54:23Speaker 02

  No, the trajectory of my alcoholic life, let's call it, was not a, you know, it's like, oh, it started fun and then it just got worse. And when it gets bad, it never gets good again. And then it just gets worse. And then it turned into this fiery, you know, hellhole. And it's not, it was bad at 15. There were things that I was doing at 15, which totally, you know, earned my seat, as they say.

• 54:50Sam Fragoso?

  Right. But was it also fun at 44, 45?

• 54:53Speaker 02

  Super fun, super fun. And then super not.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Which was always the case.

• 55:02Sam Fragoso?

  Right. So you're making this movie and you're having that, right?

• 55:05Speaker 02

  I'm making this movie and I would, I don't think I've ever said this, I would write texts to Paul that literally are totally nonsensical. Like I have them on my phone and I, it, it looks like I'm, it looks like a recipe for goulash, you know, for an infection together. Just like while I'm doing the movie, say I have a couple of days off and I miss Paul.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  So I'm like, hey, uh, uh, uh, obviously Josh is out having a good time, but unable to communicate, which is why I would wake up on the sidewalk because I would, I wouldn't know how to get the key in the door to open the door so I could sleep inside. That's not, didn't happen once or twice. That happened many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. I just went brain dead. So I'm doing this amazing movie that I care so much about, given that I was just stabbed before I started.

• 56:06Sam Fragoso?

  In Costa Rica.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  In Costa Rica, 10 days later, I'm beating Joaquin up in some scene where he's walking out. It's literally the first scene that we have and I think my stomach's gonna rip open. And that's my life, man. That's the whole point. It's like, and I'm not sitting here and praising it. I'm not celebrating it. I'm saying that that is, that was the moment where the normalcy of that thing, where you'd see other people go, holy shit, dude. Oh my God. Joaquin came up to me, was like, dude, you know, and I'm like, yeah, it's a Tuesday. The chaos was at a point where anything could happen at any time and it did often.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  And it didn't faze me.

• 56:53Sam Fragoso?

  And watching the film?

• 56:55Speaker 02

  If you feel that.

• 56:56Sam Fragoso?

  Anything could happen at any time and none of it fazed me.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:00Sam Fragoso?

  It all amazed me.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:02Sam Fragoso?

  Especially knowing your story.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 57:04Sam Fragoso?

  When you're watching it last night.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 57:06Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  That's funny. You know, us improvising and even Paul, to this day, wouldn't show me. There's so much stuff that we did for that film that you don't, that you haven't seen, that I haven't seen. And I would ask Paul once in a while, I'd say, do you want to Tom and Jerry this one? I remember Joaquin getting mad at some point. He was like, you guys talk more like within, this was like the first week of filming. He goes, you guys talk more than Paul and I have ever spoken. Cause we'd go back and forth and we'd have this banter and I go, do you want to Tom and Jerry this? He goes, yeah, let's do it. And we'd just heighten everything. Just, you know, do crazy shit. And maybe it was just too over the top. Maybe it took away from the story or whatever it was, but I had a great time doing that film.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  I have brilliant memories of doing that film. I'm absolutely and all have always been in love with Joaquin. And I know this is not what you're asking, but working with him felt so right because it was like, it, it played into that whole thing, especially at that time, of not knowing what's going to happen at any moment, that it was all very dangerous and with a perpetual smile.

• 58:16Sam Fragoso?

  Why don't we play a clip?

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:18Sam Fragoso?

  From film and hair advice.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  After a long and busy day of civil rights violations,

• 58:26Speaker 02

  I found myself in the neighborhood and compelled to drop in just to check and see the current state of affairs at my old stomping grounds.

• 58:35Speaker 03

  Your effort to keep lines of communication have been limited, to say the least.

• 58:43Speaker 03

  Well, I've been busy. Trying to figure out which side of the zigzag paper is the sticky side?

• 58:53Speaker 03

  Give it to me.

• 59:23Speaker 03

  Listen, I'm sorry about last night. You? Why should you be sorry?

• 59:32Speaker 03

  Weird.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Are you okay, brother?

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  I'm not your brother.

• 1:00:19Speaker 03

  How about you could use a keeper?

• 1:00:26Sam Fragoso?

  That was unbelievable.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Unbelievable, man. He goes, "Oh, man."

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  It's so genius.

• 1:00:32Sam Fragoso?

  Just, you just ate all of the weed, which is a pothead's worst nightmare. When you're done with that movie, and on your two days off, you're doing god knows, and you're coming back and having to do this job, which is an unbelievable job, you find yourself at Halloween 2013. What happens that night?

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  My wife now, um, and I, uh, put on onesies and then get on the bicycles and go down the boardwalk at Venice Beach and go look for, you know, other people with iridescent onesies. But there was nobody out and I remember the sunset took forever and it was this long, gorgeous sunset. We were riding back and I looked over at the Venice Ale House, which we'd been to many times and I knew everybody down the boardwalk. I knew all the homeless, the homeless community there. We were all close. It's all changed now. It's all gone totally berserk. But back then it was still intimate and I'd been in Venice since I was 16.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  So we saw the Venice Ale House and I go very innocently, should we have a beer? And she was like, yeah, I guess let's try, yeah. I mean, let's do it. And my grandmother was in the hospital. Her grandfather had just had a stroke in Georgia, so she was flying to him that night and I was supposed to drive her. So we stopped for a beer, which turned into five beers and five beers always turns into O'Brien's, which is no longer open, which is on Main Street, which was a scrappy, hard bar. And I had been 86th out of every other bar on Main Street, except for O'Brien's, because O'Brien's doesn't 86 anybody. You can do anything in O'Brien's.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  So I never got to take her and we went home. We rode bicycles home, might've crashed a time or two on the bicycles. And then she took an Uber and she said, don't leave home. Don't, don't leave here. And I said, okay. And, uh, and then she said, when you respond, why does it sound echoey? I said, I don't know. I think it's my phone. I was already in the car going to a bar back. I mean, there was no way I was gonna, what was I gonna do? Stay home and go to sleep? The gas had been ignited and, uh, and the engine took me back to O'Brien's, I think. Anyway, there were a lot of things. There was like some fairly innocent hit and run at Del Taco. There was a fight at O'Brien's.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  And then I woke up on the sidewalk and then I was supposed to be at my grandmother's. I was two hours late.

• 1:03:11Sam Fragoso?

  Do you remember waking up on the sidewalk that morning?

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:03:15Sam Fragoso?

  What did it feel like?

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Normal, like you have your shame. Ah, what did I do? You know, and then I, and I think deacons, cause deacons lived fairly close by Roger and, and he would run in the morning. He would run.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  It's so wrong, dude. It's so wrong. He would run past in the morning. He would never look at me. And he always put up his hand. He'd go.

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  And I would always see him and I'd be like, he, he was not looking at me because it's shameful. It's like, it's not like waking up with a pillow and a blankie. It's like waking up and dirty and, you know, scratched up and all that.

• 1:04:00Sam Fragoso?

  Early nineties, you get into a fight with your first wife. You walk down New York, you're in New York down the street. You have no shirt on. You walk further down and you spot Philip Seymour Hoffman. He knew, talking to you, definitely high or drunk or whatever. Did he mention anything about you not wearing a shirt?

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  No, I did know him. I knew him. He had done a movie with my wife in Poland, his first. But he had just started taking off. He was like, he'd started doing a lot of independent films and was getting a lot of praise. And I said that, I say in the book, he's got his feet, always makes me laugh.

• 1:04:48Sam Fragoso?

  Going the other direction.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  It's like Charlie Chaplin feet. It's like the one that has to deal and the one where the one wants to go. And he just, he didn't want to have anything to do with me and I don't blame him because I had seen him a lot. I'd see him on the street in New York and sometimes he was super nice to me and some, but at that point, it was like he was getting some real traction around his career. And I just represented something that he was getting away from. He was sober. He was really focusing on doing the best work he could do. And I was this guy who was auditioning a lot, not getting a lot of things and then taking it out in ways that were not helpful.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  My life was an absolute chaos, even though I was a dad and I was a good dad. I was always a good dad. I did things like there were drunk episodes in my kid's life that my older kids would talk about now that were are super unfortunate and that I've apologized for and that I hate knowing exist. But the truth of the matter is, is I was pretty present for my kids and, and, and then these things would happen, you know? And that's the thing. It's like when you watch a movie, it's, it's really interesting to watch somebody who is, you know, feral and chaotic and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  And there was never an attempt at me trying to emulate that kind of thing. It just existed in my life and, and it was really attractive in film. Like you do a movie like Inherent Vice and that's how it reads.

• 1:06:27Sam Fragoso?

  We fold this in such as I'm like the way we're putting this together.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  It seems chaotic and abstract, but it's not.

• 1:06:33Sam Fragoso?

  It's design. Yes. Philip Seymour Hoffman's feet were pointed the other direction. But there was also some part of him that was letting you be you in the same way that Deakins that morning on the 31st is running past you. This is a man who's worked with you many times at this point. Who respects you as an artist, who's your friend and is doing his morning run, which of course Roger Deakins does a morning run.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:07:04Sam Fragoso?

  And he waves. That to me is significant. There's an acknowledgement, but he doesn't want to pry and he's giving you the space to do. Whatever you were doing, I don't know, waking up in front of the door. I think there is something to this.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  There's an acknowledgement of that part of me that they respect. And I don't know if that's right or not. And then there's the other part that they don't want to have anything to do with. That they realize that it comes in one package. You know, I did, I did a speech for Bradley Cooper at one point. There was one point where people were kind of, they liked how I wrote. So I became this go to guy to write people's speeches.

• 1:07:49Sam Fragoso?

  The ghostwriter of acceptance speeches?

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable, dude. Like, talk about, add insult to injury. Like, I'm not really working as an actor.

• 1:07:59Sam Fragoso?

  Hey, Josh, we know you'd like to maybe be in these movies and win some of these awards.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  But will you write one of those amazing speeches for me or whatever? And, but I gave this speech to Bradley Cooper and I had just gotten out of jail. And I had seen a couple of actors backstage. And they were all like, again, it was the freak show. They're all, it was like that guy with the Canadian girl that it's, they were like, yeah, you, no way. You're crazy, you know? And then they'd go back and do their work. And Leo was going back to do Wolf of Wall Street and, you know, whatever it was. So I was living these parts that they were playing. But Phil, there was always a respect because there was a lot of history there.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  And then when Phil went up and, you know, I've had a lot of people in my life pass and die. And, and when I was in the hills of Italy and Michael Kelly came out with a glass of wine, I'll never forget. And I walked in, in the mountains, walked into this little chalet. And he came out and he said, did you hear about Phil? And I go, what? And he goes, you didn't hear, he's dead. That it's the only time I've ever believed, which I thought was such a lame description of when your knees buckle. I could not believe Philip Seymour Hoffman.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  One of the great actors of the stage and screen, somebody who had beat the odds, every odd there was to beat,

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  was dead from a, from a, from a drug overdose. Impossible. And I think that was the end, that was the beginning of the end for me. I think I probably would have stayed sober for a couple more years and probably gone back out and justified it somehow. And, you know, I would have found my, I'm really good at like deluding myself. And that was like, that hit me so hard. And I was like, yeah, no, thanks.

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  No, thanks. The, the, the, the chaos train ends. And I'm not interested in it ending. I want to try and string this thing out as long as I can, as long as I can.

• 1:10:24Sam Fragoso?

  So tell me about November 1st, 2013.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  So November 1st, I woke up and I went and I saw my grandma because I was late picking up my brother and I, she was in the hospital and the whole family was around and I had been in charge of the whole family and kind of who can be there at what time and when. And I had been pretty dry and, and I went in there and my fam, all their heads went straight down immediately. Like they, because I'm sure I smelled bad. I hadn't taken a shower, was scratched up. And, and then my grandmother lifted her head. She turned her head toward me, 99 years old, and she smiled just the most, the biggest, she was so happy that I was there. Just this huge smile. And it just, that was it. Went off in my head. So that's it. I'm done. How

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  dare me, a woman who had lived 99 years on life's terms, and I have everything at my beck and call, for the most part. Like I have my health, I have my wit, I have my intelligence, I have my kids, I have my this, and I'm throwing it all away in the name of the freak show, carrying on the legacy of the freak show. Done. And it was done.

• 1:11:39Sam Fragoso?

  I'm, I'm curious, you know, because you've talked so much about sobriety. You had had periods, like you said, where you were sober for a while. What about now with your two new kids?

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:55Sam Fragoso?

  What about now says, no, I, this is it?

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  No, because of what I said Tony Hopkins had mentioned, you know, this is, this is the rebel way. This is the defiant way.

• 1:12:05Sam Fragoso?

  The most defiant.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  This is the most defiant way. What if you get to live two lives in one life pretty severely? This is respecting my mother and saying, you won, you won the war. The war is, is that you don't adhere to other people's expectations. There's a singer for a fairly famous rock band. And he said, surprise everybody with a happy ending. And I, and I, and it, and it affected me when he said that. I still think about it because what that means is nobody expects a happy ending out of you. And then when you get sober for a little while, I've been sober for a little while. I mean, literally within the first couple of years.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  And then people would come around like, oh, my God, this isn't just a thing he's going through that it's actually like he's taking this seriously. And then people would reveal how they really, you know, what they, what they thought was going to happen or what they were expecting. And the fact that it was pretty bad sometimes and they were pretty certain I wasn't going to make it. So I had gotten to a point where it became kind of a through line, but now we're at the end.

• 1:13:16Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  And this is, and it's going to look bad. And, and I like the idea that I was given the opportunity to say, nah. Because I do, I don't think there was ever a death wish of my mother's, of mine, of my this or that. I think it was just needing to live life on a very vivid plane, which I still am. I just do it in a different way now.

• 1:13:43Sam Fragoso?

  The expectations people had for you. Yeah, there was no bigger expectation than the man that your mom set you up to become.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:53Sam Fragoso?

  Like that guy we're talking about, the cowboy who drinks and has a story, not with a happy ending.

• 1:14:01Sam Fragoso?

  I wanted to read from a page towards the end of the book, which I think talks about where you are now and where she is now in you.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  Oh, she was funny. She was unique. She was all the things most have become so deathly afraid of becoming today, different, not as an affectation, but as a mineral. I see her in my children, the way they accentuate a point or discover awe in what would otherwise seem mundane, but in ways a little less destructive, a little more at peace. My mother at peace. Imagine. Just recently, there were several Super 8 reels revealed with her running around as a little girl. To see my mother as a little girl confused me. In my mind, she had always been an electric child. And as I watched those scratchy faded colors with her smiling,

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  she ran about. I looked to my left and right, and there were my little girls doing the same with similar smiles and similar glints of mischief in their eyes. I like it. It moves me, knowing that they have inside them what freedom she demanded. It was her lack of grace in that freedom that drove her insane. Or at least right to the edge of insanity. I don't see that in my kids. There is so much to write about. There are so many stories to tell. I guess I'm looking for a deeper sense to it all. That world was huge, and the world is now more literal. I haven't decided which I like better.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  The only thing I don't like about that last line is because it involves my kids, and my kids are always the preferred.

• 1:15:46Sam Fragoso?

  What do you not like about the line?

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know which I prefer better, which is obviously, you know, about that big of a life where things were that dangerous and that unpredictable. You know what I mean? I miss that. I miss that level of unpredictability, but less now than I did. I think the longer I stay sober, I find my moments of unpredictability and how to be able to live within that and it not be threatening to my sobriety.

• 1:16:19Sam Fragoso?

  For a time, for a long time, the unpredictability was in drinking. It was in heroin for a moment.

• 1:16:32Sam Fragoso?

  You flinched when I said that.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  I just don't talk about it often. I hate it.

• 1:16:36Sam Fragoso?

  What would you like me to do?

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  No, I'm not asking you to do anything differently. I just don't like it. I don't like that I was subservient to that drug. For any amount of time, even if I was the shortest of all my buddies.

• 1:16:50Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  I just don't like it. It's like such a, to me, it's such a check out. But then again, so was alcohol, you know, in some way. But keep going. You were dismounting.

• 1:17:03Sam Fragoso?

  Do you feel like now? The work itself, whether it's on screen or in this book, or in the play that you've recently written, you directing that episode of your show Out of Range, whatever it is, do you feel like the unpredictability is most interesting to you in the art that you're making?

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Barna, for sure. It is the thing that I have found that I think I had a real hate for in the beginning, that I had a big curiosity about because of how I found my way in it, that has now become a great solace and something that I respect highly. And if this book is anything, it's a human being finding a great release in creativity, in the manifestations of those creativities. I see it in my kids. I see it in my friends. And, uh, and I never had a respect around the idea of the art

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  because I couldn't see it beyond the idea of celebrity. And, and now I, it's hard for me to find the celebrity. And if I do see the celebrity,

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  I try and snuff it out pretty quick, even though it does maybe get me work that I, I, I need and want.

• 1:18:28Sam Fragoso?

  You know what it is?

• 1:18:31Sam Fragoso?

  You and I have never had a drink together.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:34Sam Fragoso?

  You and I will, I don't think ever have a drink together.

• 1:18:37Speaker 02

  Probably not.

• 1:18:38Sam Fragoso?

  The guy that you were, that your friend wanted you to be. Well, I brought you here to watch Josh. Give me season eight of Josh Brolin here.

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:18:50Sam Fragoso?

  At the bar.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:52Sam Fragoso?

  At O'Brien's.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:53Sam Fragoso?

  Whatever that person was, what I imagined him to be is what I have seen growing up, watching your work, especially in the last decade. Like, every part feels like some extension of whatever that person was with a few drinks in. The unpredictability, how alive and vulnerable and raw and uncomfortable your performances can be. All of those things you thought you needed alcohol to be in public. I have seen, as someone who's never met you and never saw you drink, I've seen in the work, I have felt it in the work.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  I literally can't think of a better compliment, at least professionally and personally, that I have broken that chain. You know what I mean? With the help of many other people, I have broken the chain that thinks that he exists only in the chaos that he creates in the freak show. And if whatever anomalies, creative anomalies exist in me can come out in more pure form, then I beat the system. You know? Again, nature nurture, you know? And the nature would suggest otherwise and, and because of what I was surrounded by.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  But, but I think through the nurturing of a community that I was lucky enough. I'm not just saying the sober community. But really, really interesting, good, empathetic, inspired people. Ethan. Tilda, a lot of people.

• 1:20:43Sam Fragoso?

  My last question.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:20:44Sam Fragoso?

  The first thing you said when you walked in today.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Sam Fragoso?

  You and your agent, who you talked to this morning. And you said you're going through a disaster, I think it was, or what did you, what did you call it?

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  Spinning.

• 1:20:56Sam Fragoso?

  So you were spinning.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:58Sam Fragoso?

  Now that we're at the end of this, how do you feel?

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  I feel strangely good.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  I don't know how to feel about that yet. I think that there's something about this process that means a lot to me. And that's being able to, like you pointed out, manifest things, not distilled, but a clean water with all the minerals in it. That it's productive, that it's healthy in some sense, but it reads as chaotic and dirty and messy and all that stuff that we all are.

• 1:21:38Sam Fragoso?

  Why does that make you emotional?

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  Because that's the showing up that I respect, you know? It's the showing up that I, you know, you put yourself on the fucking firing line, you know? And this scared the shit out of me.

• 1:21:56Speaker 02

  To, to, to use my own crude language. It scared, it scared me and, and that's why I didn't want to talk about being a writer, talk about writing in journals anymore. Talk about the books that I've written and put in a dark corner and just do it, man. Do it. And, and I, and I can't blame anybody else here. I can't blame a director. I can't blame setting. I can't blame timeline. I can't, this is all me. This is a hundred percent me for better or worse. And for somebody who was close to Cormac, who didn't want to talk about any writing ever. You know, there's, there's a small part of me that's like almost embarrassed to celebrate the attempt.

• 1:22:42Speaker 02

  But even then, I'm like, I'm more okay with.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  The fact that that means something to me is okay with me.

• 1:22:52Sam Fragoso?

  I appreciate the attempt.

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 1:22:54Sam Fragoso?

  I think you have been more than generous today, going through some uncomfortable pockets. What I said about the work, I hadn't written that in my notes.

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  I got, that was from you.

• 1:23:08Sam Fragoso?

  That was from you.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  In the moment.

• 1:23:09Sam Fragoso?

  That was from me in the moment.

• 1:23:12Sam Fragoso?

  Josh Boland, appreciate the time.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  Dude, you will go down as being maybe the most organic, funny, unpredictable person that I've done an interview with.

• 1:23:30Sam Fragoso?

  That's, that's the aim.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  For real. What a pleasure. What a true pleasure.

• 1:24:29Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. If you want to go above and beyond, share the program on social media, tag us at Talk Easy Pod. All of this really does help us continue making the program each and every Sunday. I want to give a special thanks this week to the teams at Relevant PR, Rachel Alinsky at Harper Collins, iHeart, and of course,

• 1:24:57Sam Fragoso?

  Our guest today, Josh Brolin. His memoir From Under the Truck comes out this week on November 19th. We'll include the link to order a copy in our show notes at talkeasypod.com. For more episodes like this one, I'd recommend our talks with John Bernthal, Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe, Marina Abramovich, and, well, since he mentioned it, Joaquin Phoenix. To hear those and more Pushkin podcasts, listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. If you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come in cream or navy, you can do so at talkeasypod.com/shop. Talk Easy is produced by Carolyn Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Lindsay Ellis and mixed by Andrew

• 1:25:42Sam Fragoso?

  Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Shanoi. Photographs today are by Maria Alvarez with assistance from Ethan Newmeyer. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Carrie Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Amy Hagadorn, Sarah Brugger, Owen Miller, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. We'll be back next Sunday with another episode. Until then, stay safe, and so long.

• 1:26:38Speaker 04

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 1:26:46Speaker 05

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 1:26:49Speaker 04

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 1:26:51Speaker 05

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 1:26:54Speaker 04

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 1:27:00Speaker 04

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.

• 1:27:12Speaker 06

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