Joe Mantegna | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Billy Corgan sits down with Joe Mantegna to trace his journey from singing Beatles tunes in his Chicago high-school band The Weasels, playing clubs with acts like Neil Diamond and Chicago, to dodging mob-run venues, goth “Judas” cult fans, and finally finding his groove in theatrical productions of West Side Story, Hair and Godspell. He recalls tiny residual checks, eight-shows-a-week stamina, and how that grind led to a Tony Award and iconic turns in The Godfather Part III, Criminal Minds and The Simpsons. Watch The Magnificent Others on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Ironically, you mentioned it. I got a residual check for a penny yesterday for Simon and Simon. One penny.

• 0:35Billy Corgan?

  Were there Judas groupies?

• 0:36Speaker 01

  There were Judas groupies. There was a group called The Process.

• 0:39Billy Corgan?

  Hot Goth girls? I'm down.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  They came to see Goth Spell, and I'm playing Judas, and Goth Spell at the intermission.

• 0:45Billy Corgan?

  This is such a good story.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I walk in, and the owner of the place looks at me and goes, Joe Montana, you son of a bitch, you're gonna be in a Goth father movie.

• 0:52Billy Corgan?

  Oh, my God.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  But that's all I knew.

• 0:53Billy Corgan?

  The pizza guy knows?

• 0:54Speaker 01

  The pizza guy.

• 0:59Billy Corgan?

  I know you're a big star and all.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I'm a big star.

• 1:03Billy Corgan?

  But we gotta start here.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  OK.

• 1:06Billy Corgan?

  The Apocryphals.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  The Apocryphal, wow.

• 1:08Billy Corgan?

  Me, the Weasels. We'll go even further back.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  You are going further back.

• 1:12Billy Corgan?

  This is your high school band?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Yes, it was.

• 1:15Billy Corgan?

  About 65?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  About 64, 65. Yeah, that's correct.

• 1:21Billy Corgan?

  Take me.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Take you back?

• 1:23Billy Corgan?

  I'm very interested in this part.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. And I get to tell us to a rock and roll god here. This is, this is good for me. This is, this is fun for me. Well, what it, basically what it was is,

• 1:35Speaker 01

  it was junior, I was a junior in high school, and we were in, it was English, my English class.

• 1:42Billy Corgan?

  OK.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  And I remember that the assignment was, we want to do something on English history, England, English history. They said, you come back with a project based on something that has to do with the history of England and how it's affected.

• 1:57Billy Corgan?

  So the Beatles.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  So the Beatles. So in other words, of course, everybody else was digging up things like, well, there's a Cromwell, and there's this and that, or everybody's digging up the kings of this. And there was another guy in the class, who was actually a wonderful musician, my friend Neil Sordelli. And he had this idea, he goes, you know, the Beatles are really big now. He says, you know, I play guitar. He says, you sing, because I've been doing some singing in the theater department at the school at the time. He says, maybe we should just do some, you know, that's English, right? And I said, yeah, that'd be cool, because we really didn't want to work very hard on this project. So he said, we'll do this, we'll do this thing, we'll come in, we'll learn a Beatles song. You play the guitar, I'll sing it. And we'll say, well, this is part of English history. But the Beatles, because they were like red hot at that time.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  So of course, we did it. But when we did it, I mean, it was just him and I, and I think we had another guy in the class who just used like a bongo drum to just give us a little percussion while we sang the song.

• 2:52Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  But the class went crazy, like, oh my God, this is great. It was like, we're like, hello? Well, maybe we got something, more of this. So we decided, eh, just for fun, let's do, well, the teacher then asked us, you know, there's an assembly coming up. If you guys want to duplicate this at the assembly, I think the kids would enjoy this.

• 3:12Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  So of course, we took it seriously. We get this other guy, no, these are all Italian guys, because this is Cicero, Illinois. So you're either Italian or Polish or something in between.

• 3:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  So Chris Mantegna, Joe Mantegna, Tommy Misari and Neil Sordelli, these four people. We put together this thing. We had an extra guy that we wound up not using later named Art Stout. Maybe because his name didn't end in a vowel, we didn't stick with him. But anyway, but we took this seriously. So we had one guy's Tommy, the drummer, Tommy Misari. His sister made us little jackets without the collars, because the Beatles were wearing them then. She like made them out of material.

• 3:51Billy Corgan?

  Beetle wigs?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, beetle wigs, the whole thing. And we figured, well, let's call ourselves the Weasels, because it kind of rhymes a little. It'll be fun, we'll come out on stage at the assembly and they say, and here they are, Morton East High School's own, the Weasels. And people go, Weasel, what? And then we would do this number.

• 4:08Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Well, we do that assembly. And we had, the auditorium is a, it's like a landmark place now. It's called, I think the Cole Auditorium, it's in Chicago, it's in Cicero, Illinois. But it was built like in the 30s, holds like 2,500 seats.

• 4:22Billy Corgan?

  It's packed.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  It's packed, it's beautiful theater, packed with students. We finished the song. They go berserk, because the Beatles were just so hot, and I guess we sounded pretty good. They go berserk, so they're screaming at us, we leave the stage, they're stamping their feet, they want another song. We didn't know another song, so we came back and played the same one over.

• 4:43Billy Corgan?

  Do you remember the song you played?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I think it was, uh, Please Please Me. I think it was giving, it was the, ooh, must have really got them when we got to that part.

• 4:51Billy Corgan?

  That's a tough song, though, you guys must have been decent.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Well, we were decent, I mean, like, but decent enough, you know?

• 4:57Billy Corgan?

  But you did record records, there were 45s and...

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did a couple of records, we did, um, because ultimately the Weasels became, the head of the drama department embraced us.

• 5:07Billy Corgan?

  Yes.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  He came up with the name The Apocryphals, so we changed it to The Apocryphals. And so, within the Midwest at that time, we were a pretty popular Chicago band, like, just a local band, but we were a cover band. We played, if we played in the, kind of the hippie neighborhoods, we'd wear paisley shirts.

• 5:23Billy Corgan?

  You're touching, you're touching me here, because you're about five months younger than my father, you guys were born in the same year. And my father was playing in bands around Chicago at that same time.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  What was the name of the band?

• 5:36Billy Corgan?

  He was never in any kind of bands that did anything, never really recorded much, but he, but he was playing all those same places you guys were playing. So I saw a list of the places you guys played.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Sure, probably like the Blue Village, the Cellar.

• 5:45Billy Corgan?

  He played all those places.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  The Dark Spot.

• 5:47Billy Corgan?

  So you guys might even have played together at some, so it's, I grew up hearing about these times.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Exactly, The Cheetah, no, we played all those kind of...

• 5:54Billy Corgan?

  Even the Aragon, right? You played the...

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Well, that's The Cheetah, the Aragon Ballroom.

• 5:57Billy Corgan?

  Right, they kind of made it like a psychedelic...

• 5:59Speaker 01

  They turned it into The Cheetah, and there was one in New York, and there was one in Chicago, the Aragon. And it's, yeah, they, because they had this beautiful, kind of, if you walked in, it was all, it was supposed to be Aragon.

• 6:09Billy Corgan?

  I thought it was kind of psychedelic, right?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, they changed it, in other words, so behind it, you saw all these, like, woresh towers and things, because the original ballroom...

• 6:17Billy Corgan?

  It's still there, yeah, we just played it recently.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  So, yeah, you know, so what they did is they just, underneath it, they put in...

• 6:23Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  They put in psychedelic lights and...

• 6:26Billy Corgan?

  Um, did you ever open for any other, kind of, famous bands?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we, we opened for...

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Well, we opened for Neil Diamond once. We opened for-

• 6:37Billy Corgan?

  He was pretty hot back then.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was pretty hot. And we played at the- Dick Clark used to have a thing called a Dick Clark Young Worlds Fair. They'd have the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. So, we played along with the Kingsmen, who had Louie Louie at the time. We played with Dave Clark V.

• 6:51Billy Corgan?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  We played with Sam the Shaman, the Pharaohs. But we, like I said, we were the local opener band.

• 6:59Billy Corgan?

  I just think it's interesting, because not many- I've met very few people who actually were in the world that you were in.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:05Billy Corgan?

  And that's the world that I heard about growing up.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And in fact, we played at Kentucky State Fair. And we played with a group called The Missing Links.

• 7:12Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Who, as it turned out-

• 7:14Billy Corgan?

  Chicago Transit Authority.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Became Chicago Transit Authority in Chicago. And in fact, we remembered it was kind of monumental when they changed their name. Because we were playing, I remember, we were playing at the Cheetah, which was the old Aragon Ballroom. And they were on an off night as The Missing Links. And they came to see us. And they came backstage during the break and they said, "Hey, we're changing the band. We're getting rid of the guitar player," because the father and the guitar player weren't-

• 7:36Billy Corgan?

  He didn't have an Italian name.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever. And so, they said, "We're gonna let Terry, who was the bass player, Terry Cat- Terry's gonna play lead. And we're adding a trumpet and a trombone." Because they already had the sax. Walter Peresada was already sax. So, they went from like a four-piece band to seven. And they said, "And we're gonna call ourselves Chicago Transit Authority." And we're like, "Oh, great." You know, then of course, when they left, we went, "They're nuts."

• 8:00Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  How are they gonna support seven guys?

• 8:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  You know, seven-piece bands were unheard of.

• 8:05Billy Corgan?

  What, I want to ask you, because you were in this environment. My father often talked about the reason he was fearful of those times, and he didn't maybe get as far as he would have liked, was the sort of the mob influence in Chicago involved in the clubs and in signing bands.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  True, absolutely true. We were the house band at a place called The Purple Twig in Lyons, Illinois. And Lyons, Illinois was like-

• 8:27Billy Corgan?

  As soon as you say Lyons, I start laughing. Because we know what that means.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Well, you know what that means. Because in that small town, that you had a place called the Gigi Agogo. You had the Club Algiers. You had The Purple Twig. And all these things were a little nefarious in terms of ownership and what they were all about. And there was this one guy who used to hang out there. You know, he'd sit at the bar. And we were the house band there. We played for many, many- And I remember he called us. He said, "I think I got it with you guys. I got a business proposition." So, we all met at my house. My parents' house. And he explains to us, he goes, "Look, I got these connections in Vegas. You guys will be the band and you know, you'll play that, that, that, that." And he was very frank about who we would be working for, basically. He says, "You'll never be out of work. You'll be working all the time because..." And we were, we got nervous. We're like, you know, seventeen years old and we're thinking...

• 9:15Speaker 01

  You know, we started making up stuff like, "Yeah, no, we would love to, but you know, I've got this sick mother we take care of and we can't leave town." You know, whatever it is. We decided not to take that route.

• 9:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  And so, but there were, there were a couple of bands that kinda went that way.

• 9:31Billy Corgan?

  Was it the thing back then that they would kinda give the wise guys like clubs? Like, they kinda, you ever hear that? The idea would be that, you know, a guy would be a wise guy.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:40Billy Corgan?

  Kinda get a little old, on the older side, not wanna be in the game as much.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Oh, give him a club.

• 9:44Billy Corgan?

  They kinda give him a club so he can make his money.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  It, it sounds right. I mean, it's, and it's certainly...

• 9:49Billy Corgan?

  I'm not saying you have knowledge, I'm saying you had...

• 9:50Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, yeah, absolutely. Because in a way, much of Vegas was kinda like that anyway. It's, it's really true.

• 9:57Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, a lot of, given the casinos back then.

• 10:00Billy Corgan?

  One funny thing I wanted to tell you. You guys played with the Buckingham's, I'm sure you probably...

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:06Billy Corgan?

  So, so, uh, when I was a kid, my father was close friends with Nicky Fortuna, the bass player.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:12Billy Corgan?

  So, I remember being five years old, like in Nicky's house.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 10:16Billy Corgan?

  You know what I mean? And Nicky had the brand new Cadillac and it was Nicky Fortuna of the Buckingham's, you know what I mean?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  So I was close to Dennis Tofano, who was the lead singer.

• 10:26Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. So I just think it's so cool that, you know, despite our very different paths in life, we have this beautiful kinda connection there.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 10:33Billy Corgan?

  To that time, cuz it was, I think most people have a hard time understanding that music culture back then particularly was very small. There weren't a lot of musicians, you know what I mean? Not like there is now. I mean, there was like, in all of Chicago, there was only a handful of bands and everybody kinda knew each other and...

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:50Billy Corgan?

  My dad even talked about how you'd play a set, pack up, go across town, play another set.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:55Billy Corgan?

  It was just a different culture.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  No, it's true. And there'd be these teen clubs that's, you know, and if you did well at a certain club, they'd, you know, you, you can, you'd be a semi-regular.

• 11:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  And sometimes, I mean, literally, when the band...

• 11:05Billy Corgan?

  You gotta play nice music for the people.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Well, exactly.

• 11:07Billy Corgan?

  Gotta look nice.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  And, and I remember one, one instance, when, when Chicago became Chicago, when they became Chicago Transit Authority, they started to wanting to do their own stuff.

• 11:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  But the kids back then, you know, this is the sixties.

• 11:18Billy Corgan?

  And they just wanna hear.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  They wanna hear Top Forty.

• 11:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  So I remember literally, there was one night, it was a Saturday night, we get a call from one of these clubs, I think it was the Blue Village out in Westmont. They gave us a call, say, can you guys get out here, you're off, because we were off that night, we happened to be off. Can you guys get out of this goddamn band, Transit Authority, they won't play what the kids wanna hear, and they're booing them and stuff, and they're pissed. And he says, I'm gonna get rid of it, if you guys can make it, I'm gonna get rid of them, you guys finish the night. And we, well, okay, we packed up and we went. And the guys were getting, they were packing their stuff, because we're coming, and we're like feeling bad for them, we're saying, geez, and we're thinking, how stupid are they, why don't they just play, you know, you know, do Shadows of Night Gloria, that's what they wanna hear. You know, and they're like, you can see they're mad or leaving, they weren't mad at us, they figured, but of course, it wasn't long afterwards, their first album came out, and that's when I realized,

• 12:05Speaker 01

  I gotta do something else.

• 12:06Billy Corgan?

  So, in poking around on your story, I feel like there isn't much information of like, what started your interest in acting? Like, if it's a story that's been oftold, I'm sorry, but I couldn't find like,

• 12:19Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 12:20Billy Corgan?

  Like, the one quote that was like, I saw somebody and I decided, or somebody in my family.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  To try to make it concise, it's this, I had seen the movie, I had no inkling to be an actor, nothing pointing my direction, nobody in my family, nothing in my culture, I hadn't even seen a play till I was like fifteen, sixteen years old. But I saw the movie West Side Story, was captivated. I stayed in the theater at that time, and you know, I'm sure it was the Olympic Theater in Cicero, saw it probably four times in a row, because as long as you stay in your seat, they never kick you out, you know. So I watched thinking, this is, so like, maybe six.

• 12:54Billy Corgan?

  What was it about that that's so?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  It was just because it was the music, the dancing, the urban thing, I grew up in inner city Chicago.

• 13:01Billy Corgan?

  You see yourself.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Somewhat, not that it was in a gang culture.

• 13:04Billy Corgan?

  I get you, but it was an identity thing.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like a fantasy gang, and I'm thinking, I live on the streets like this, I have friends like this, we're like, wow, you know, we never lived in a house, we always lived in apartments, it made, I could relate to it. So sometime later, it must have been within a year or so, there were signs at the high school saying, auditions for West Side Story, I go, what the hell is that?

• 13:23Billy Corgan?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I already saw the movie, what are they making it, I didn't know it was a play. They said, no, no, no, it's a play, it's a play? God, maybe, could it be possible? You know, and I think, I'm gonna try out for this play.

• 13:35Billy Corgan?

  That's fantastic.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I go in, I audition, I didn't get the part. I got, but I got up on stage.

• 13:40Billy Corgan?

  That doesn't make for a good movie. You're supposed to get the part.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  No, but in a way it was good because I got up, I sang the song, but I was only 15 years old. I think, I sing the song, I get to the last note. Maria. My voice hadn't even changed. And I got this applause, and I thought, man, nobody's ever applauded anything I've ever done before. And it was that moment, I said to myself, I gotta, I gotta pursue this.

• 14:01Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  I'm gonna pursue this.

• 14:02Billy Corgan?

  Was there anybody in the family who had a history with?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Nothing, no.

• 14:05Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Nothing, no. Once in a while, when I was growing up, they would say, Joey, sing that Johnny Ray song, you know.

• 14:11Billy Corgan?

  Crying or?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  When no heartache, you know, I was, I was like, at the birthday parties, I'd be like.

• 14:18Billy Corgan?

  Did you know that whole thing about Johnny Ray, how he had hearing aids and all that?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  I did.

• 14:21Billy Corgan?

  That's such a crazy.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:23Billy Corgan?

  That's super deep Johnny Ray stuff.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 14:26Billy Corgan?

  How he sang like that.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Him and.

• 14:27Billy Corgan?

  Maybe that's why he sang like that, because he couldn't hear himself.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Him and Gene Pitney were like my two favorite singers back in the day.

• 14:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Um, please forgive the projection, but the Chicago I remember, particularly the, the Italian neighborhoods, you know, they wouldn't necessarily think of a life in the arts as a, as a masculine.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:48Billy Corgan?

  As a masculine endeavor. Did you get, did you get guff from the neighborhood?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  I didn't get really guff from the neighborhood, it was more like, like, like, more like, hmm, okay. You know, I think they, they, maybe they just trusted that maybe it's just a phase or just like, I guess it's okay, it's not.

• 15:04Billy Corgan?

  You're not hurting anyone, no.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  What kind of surprised me was that I had no reaction from my parents. My mother and father, who were pretty, fairly old school. And my brother's eight years older than I am. So I remember asking my brother later on, I said, you know what? Mom and dad never made any mention about me doing it, being, wanting to be an actor and going into show business. Did they ever talk to you about it? He goes, actually, they did. He says, early on, we looked like you were taking this seriously. They said to him, said, your brother, this thing with the acting, should we say something?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  They wanted like permission to stop me maybe. And God bless my brother and his wisdom, you know, said, look. Joey's, he's a good kid. He's smart enough that if it's his phase, he'll, he'll leave it alone and he'll walk away and do something.

• 15:51Billy Corgan?

  That's an amazing thing to find out later though, right?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  I found out later. And that's exactly what it was. And, and my mother lived to be 101 years old. And I'm fairly convinced that she really didn't know what I did for a living, even up till she died. She kinda knows an act that people will have her watch things I did, but she didn't understand it and didn't care.

• 16:10Billy Corgan?

  Was that just old country stuff? She didn't really understand?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Just like, it was more like, it didn't, she couldn't, it didn't relate to it. The point is she was more interested, how are your kids doing? This, that and the other. And this is what my son does, but it's like not, she wasn't like, okay.

• 16:24Billy Corgan?

  That's so funny.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  As long as you're safe and having a good time.

• 16:27Billy Corgan?

  So how do you end up in hair? 1969 is what?

• 16:30Speaker 01

  1969, well, I've been acting.

• 16:33Billy Corgan?

  Did you have to be naked? Cause it was the hair?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, there was a nude scene. I mean, it's, they make, you know, it's, on paper, it sounds more exciting than it was.

• 16:41Billy Corgan?

  But still.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  I mean, the first act ends with, you know, everybody's, we've got this giant, almost like tarpaulin, but it's made out of like gauzy material. And it's, and we're all seeing, the whole cast is like floating it and singing, you know, whatever we're singing the song was at the time. Ends the first act. And then you throw it up in the air and we all go up under it. And then these lights shine on it, on it, and it makes the pattern of flowers. And there's little slits in the thing. And so now we're underneath the thing, we start going, beads, flowers, freedom. As you come up, each person through the slit, they're naked. Cause underneath you took off all your clothes. But you've got strobe lights going, you've got flashing lights, you've got this.

• 17:17Billy Corgan?

  So it's like a moment of liberation?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  It's like a moment of liberation. And it's also Tom O'Hara, the director, realizing, this will sell. This is be a good publicity thing.

• 17:26Billy Corgan?

  Was this a localized hair production?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  No, no, this was the, this was the Chicago, I mean, it was same director, Tom O'Hara. No, it was Broadway, the Broadway show was still going on.

• 17:35Billy Corgan?

  Okay, that's what I was trying to understand.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  It was a huge hit. Think of, think of it like being nowadays would've been Hamilton. I mean, it was, it was monstrous.

• 17:42Billy Corgan?

  Franchise though, yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  It was huge. So it was the Broadway show. Now they opened a production in.

• 17:47Billy Corgan?

  Where'd you do it in Chicago?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  The Schubert Theater, Schubert downtown. So there was an LA production at the Aquarius Theater. They renamed that theater to Aquarius. Then we had the Chicago production. So one time it was those three. Then they started opening others. There was, and we ran for like a year and a half in Chicago. It was a huge hit, the show was.

• 18:04Billy Corgan?

  How'd you, how'd you feel about the grind of theater life? Cause that's, I've never done live theater. But it always strikes me, the whole eight, eight shows a week or.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I would hear, I was, when I was maybe 20 years old. So, I mean, I'll do 16 shows a week if they were. I mean, it was.

• 18:21Billy Corgan?

  I'll be naked as.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, because it was fun. I mean, it was, it was free form. It was, it was, it was, uh, it was, it was exciting. I mean, to this day, I'm still close friends with many of the people from the show.

• 18:32Billy Corgan?

  Sorry, this is an indulging question, but like.

• 18:36Billy Corgan?

  I mean, being naked in this culture isn't really a big deal anymore. But being naked in that culture was a pretty big deal.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  It was a big deal, yeah.

• 18:43Billy Corgan?

  Did you, is there a self-consciousness that goes on with being naked suddenly in front of the world?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  There was something empowering about it because Tom Horgan, during the rehearsal progress, really kind of instilled in us. He says, don't be embarrassed, don't be, they're gonna be more embarrassed than you are. You gotta, you gotta own it. This is what, you know, and you gotta remember 1969, peace, love, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Woodstock had just happened. So it was like, no, man, this is. Vietnam War was on, so the audience was more nervous than we are, you know.

• 19:13Billy Corgan?

  Plus they'd all heard about it.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:15Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  And I remember a lot of the, a lot of the cast's parents either would not see the show or if they did, were a little nervous. But my, my mother, of course, my mother and father.

• 19:23Billy Corgan?

  Your mother came?

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Oh, of course she came.

• 19:25Billy Corgan?

  Okay, wait. Okay, she may not understood what you did, but she understood you standing naked.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what was great afterwards, the cast was so impressed by this. My mother comes backstage and goes, oh, the play was great and you were great. She goes, and you're, you're, you got a nicer body than a lot of these kids. And that was her comment. And some of the kids in the cast whose parents were like aghast that their, their child was in a nude scene. Not even a scene, it's like, it lasts for 10 seconds. But my mother's take on it was like, you look pretty good up there. I thought, that's my mother, that's why she lived to be 101, nothing bothered her.

• 19:59Billy Corgan?

  I'm particularly obsessed with Godspell because I don't know why. It's just one of those weird.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:05Billy Corgan?

  Things in American culture. Like I saw it as a kid with no context.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:10Billy Corgan?

  I knew there was Jesus Christ Superstar.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:13Billy Corgan?

  And I got that Godspell was somehow related. It was another Jesus like.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:18Billy Corgan?

  But I remember seeing it at the time, you know, somewhere in the seventies, maybe on television or something and thinking, this is so weird.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:26Billy Corgan?

  And it strikes me as such an anachronistic kind of moment in time, you know, Jesus personality cults.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Right. So you didn't see the play in Chicago in the early seventies?

• 20:36Billy Corgan?

  No.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Because you would have seen me do it, but go ahead.

• 20:38Billy Corgan?

  No, I, no, I didn't. I, I wish, uh, cause I'm getting there, but I did see like a revival production, maybe 10 years ago in New York.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:45Billy Corgan?

  And it, it, it felt a bit musty, but because it's, it's very much of its time.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 20:51Billy Corgan?

  You know, it has a 1972 kind of thing to it.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  That's when I did it.

• 20:55Billy Corgan?

  Yes. Uh, I mean, I usually, literally when you watch it, even the movie version, it's, it feels like what Chicago felt like to me as a kid in 1972 was like people wearing macrame and whatever that was.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:06Billy Corgan?

  Those, those, those types of faces, those types of bodies, that type of optimism even.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:11Billy Corgan?

  And of course you play Judas in the thing.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:16Billy Corgan?

  So what's your, I, of course, if you want to share anything about being in the, but I'm more curious how you, how you see Godspell in the rearview mirror as a, as a sort of cultural moment, because I think it's such a, if you look across the American landscape, there are these moments where things kind of, there they are, but they don't really make sense. Like they, they don't necessarily translate 50 years later.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 21:37Billy Corgan?

  You know, like, like you, you were in Godfather, Godfather three, right?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:41Billy Corgan?

  But so that's one of the, people still talk about the Godfather. I mean, people are obsessed with the Godfather.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:47Billy Corgan?

  Not so obsessed about Godspell.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:49Billy Corgan?

  And it came out of a, whether it was a junior college production or something.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Carnegie, Carnegie Mellon was a college production that John Michael Tobler and Stephen Schwartz.

• 21:58Billy Corgan?

  And real people came in and put money behind it and fixed it and then it became what it became. And it's this institutional thing.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:05Billy Corgan?

  So I'm saying you having been at sort of the ground zero of. This moment and also in the production, I'm just curious for your sort of reflections on that.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Well, my reflection was, it relates a little to what you said earlier, the thing about the Jesus thing. Cause I remember right after Hair closed, the next thing I tried out for was Jesus Christ Superstar.

• 22:21Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Cause that was like the next thing out there that was like, was like, wow, okay. And I went to New York and tried it. That didn't work out, you know, which was fine. But then within about six months later, Godspell, it was sort of seemed like there was like an influx of like, wow, these, these Jesus God things happening.

• 22:38Billy Corgan?

  But indulge me here, uh, what's, what's a theatrical tryout like that? Like you'll go to Broadway, okay. It's a big production. It's Andrew Lloyd Webber, right?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Jesus Christ Superstar, yes, it was.

• 22:50Billy Corgan?

  I have a funny story. They once asked me to rewrite the music for Jesus Christ Superstar.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 22:55Billy Corgan?

  And Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't like my answer and I got thrown out of the whole thing. But that's another story. But, um, but just take me through a theatrical audition, cause I literally don't know anything about theater world.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  You know, at that, a song and then, and then be prepared to do whatever they ask you to do. You know, and after, after having done Hair, I was pretty comfortable with that because, because Tom O'Horgen being the free form director that he was, and he was more like, they had a living theater back then. It was, that was out of England and stuff like that. And, and so, like the sixties, it was all wide open. You never knew what to expect. And so there was no, there wasn't like a real format or a strict kind of, okay, do this and do this. More like, okay, let's see what he got. Hey, how about doing an improv of this? Or pretend you're a dog, or you never know what they were gonna throw at you.

• 23:42Billy Corgan?

  They could throw you in the deep end just to see.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  They could throw you in the deep end just to see what you're gonna do. And so having done Hair made it easy for me because that's our whole rehearsal process was then like, I said, hey, I've been naked on stage. What more can you, could you ask me to do that I won't try?

• 23:55Billy Corgan?

  So was Godspell in Chicago then?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  It was Chicago, it was the Studebaker Theater.

• 23:59Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Which was on Michigan Avenue, right above the artist cafe. It was almost like, just, just across the street, basically from the Art Institute, just down the block.

• 24:08Billy Corgan?

  Okay, yeah, I know where it's at.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  It was in the Fine Arts Building there. It used to have, they used to have like, you could go there for voice lessons or works. You know, you know, learn instruments in that building. But they had a nice theater. It was called the Studebaker Theater. It's not, not the huge theater, maybe 1100 seats. Uh, so we did that for, I did that for about a year, that theater of Godspell. And it was. It was great. I mean, it was, you know, it's the gospel according to Saint Matthew, I believe. It's either Matthew or Mark. It's one of the M guys.

• 24:38Billy Corgan?

  I get lost in the hippie stuff.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But it was, and he was influenced a lot by, I think, the production of Hair. Because I remember when I came in and they saw on my resume, you were Berger in Hair for like two years, because I had done it a year and a half, then I did a national tour. And I could see that John Michael Tebbly was like, he respected that. Like, in other words, oh, these are the kind of people maybe he was looking for.

• 25:02Billy Corgan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  I think. I kind of felt that.

• 25:05Billy Corgan?

  Well, there's a free, there's a freedom in the production somehow?

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what, and I think that's what it was. I mean, I think it was that thing of like, oh, you'll get it. You get what I'm maybe trying to do so.

• 25:15Billy Corgan?

  Sorry to unpack, but were you always okay with the grind? You said you liked the, the virility of you was fine with it, but like, walk me through the grind of a year, year and a half production, same theater, eight shows a week.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Well, you're getting into the essence of what's the, and I get this asked, I get asked this often. What's the difference between working in a theater and working in movie and television? And to me, that's the definitive answer is like, all right, you're doing a play, whether it runs a year, and I've done plays that have run over a year, two years. There's a routine that happens, maybe similar in a way to a band, in the sense that you know you're going to show up at a certain time. You're going to do this thing, you're going to go up there, you're going to do it. When it's over, the experience, what you get from that live audience is you're energized. You draw this energy from them. So when it's over, you're not like, you're like, oh, you're charged.

• 26:13Billy Corgan?

  Where are we going?

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Where are we going? You go to dinner, you go out, you go, and then maybe at two o'clock in the morning, you're out. Unless you got a matinee.

• 26:20Billy Corgan?

  Well, you are Judas, you gotta go.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, there were instances I played that up.

• 26:25Billy Corgan?

  Did you have Judas groupies? Were there Judas groupies?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  There were Judas groupies. There was a group called, I'm trying to think of the name, The Process in Chicago.

• 26:32Billy Corgan?

  There's, you know, there's a book on that.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:34Billy Corgan?

  A friend of mine put out the book. It's all about The Process Church. I know all about it.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Oh, you know about it?

• 26:38Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Okay, they were very big in Chicago at the time with the capes.

• 26:41Billy Corgan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  And they, and, and they always had like German shepherd dogs and the girls were always attractive.

• 26:47Billy Corgan?

  The girls were hot, right?

• 26:48Speaker 01

  The girls were hot and they're with these guys.

• 26:49Billy Corgan?

  I mean, if you're gonna start a cult, right?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Right, they had these crosses and they worked and so.

• 26:54Billy Corgan?

  Hot Goth girls, yeah. I'm down.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  So they, they came to see Godspell and I'm playing Judas and, and Godspell at the intermission.

• 27:01Billy Corgan?

  This is such a good story.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, during the intermission, you invite the audience onstage, you know, to, you give them little cups of wine. That was the thing. That was like the gimmick of the intermission, you know? And so, uh, one night, some of The Process people came to the show and they come onstage. They got the capes on the thing and of course, I'm Judas, so they made a beeline toward me. They're like, hey, you know, we're like, we'd like to like meet with you sometime, you know, like. You know, I said, all right, cool. And I invited them to come to my apartment like the next day.

• 27:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Cause I'm thinking, cause they're with a couple of hot chicks and I mean, I'm thinking, oh, this can't be bad. I like, and I like their outfits. I swear to God, I was taken by the cape.

• 27:40Billy Corgan?

  Oh, they look amazing.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  The cape was beautiful because it was a nice cape with the red lining and stuff.

• 27:44Billy Corgan?

  No, they, listen, they did it right.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  So I met with them. They came to my apartment. I had this basement apartment on Fullerton in Chicago. They came to the apartment, uh, and they, and they give me this whole pitch about who they are, what they do, that they, they, they, they, they believe that the, the bad angels or we learn so, whatever it was. It was a, they lost me right away. It was like.

• 28:08Billy Corgan?

  It's just, it's sort of a long range excuse just to do whatever you wanted to.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, it was like, well, if Judas was the worst person in the world and, you know, God forgave him, so how bad can we be maybe? I don't know.

• 28:19Billy Corgan?

  That's the, that's the, that's the foundation.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  So bottom line, they wanted, and what I wanted from them was a cape. That's really all I was interested in. So I said, well, look.

• 28:26Billy Corgan?

  You're killing me.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  I said, um, I don't know. I said, this is all interesting. I said, but can I get one of the capes?

• 28:32Speaker 01

  And they will say, well, no, we can't give it a cape. I said, well, maybe how about one of the dogs?

• 28:35Billy Corgan?

  Or one of the girls in the cross is kind of cool. Al stations?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was going for somebody accoutrements, you know, but I wasn't into their whole thing.

• 28:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  And the guys' names were all phony names like, you know, like.

• 28:49Billy Corgan?

  Luther.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. These biblical names and I'm thinking to myself, this guy's real name is like Freddie Govanovich from Merwin.

• 28:57Billy Corgan?

  Oh, amazing.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  So, but that was my.

• 28:59Billy Corgan?

  Thank you for sharing that. That is so good. Cause I, I feel like I saw them back in the day, but I think I just imagined it, you know?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  No, you, you saw them. They were there.

• 29:08Billy Corgan?

  Right?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:09Billy Corgan?

  They were just kind of.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  They didn't last long. It was like it lasted a year, probably, you know, in Chicago politics.

• 29:15Billy Corgan?

  Kind of like a band, like the great bands really don't last very long.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  No, and also.

• 29:18Billy Corgan?

  You can't, you can't keep them.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  No, in Chicago politics back then, I'm sure the alderman probably said, get those kids off the street. They're just, you know, blocking the sidewalk.

• 29:24Billy Corgan?

  In the, in the movie of your life, we know how it ends, right? You've had this incredibly long career, you know, 200 movies and television shows. I mean, it's, it's almost like there's so many rabbit holes. We could jump down into amazing things you've done, but I'm struck really by those intervening years. I think 69 to 77, let's say.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:50Billy Corgan?

  You're not a struggling actor, but you're not.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:53Billy Corgan?

  A star.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 29:54Billy Corgan?

  So you don't have to go point by point, but like walk me through your mindset during those times. You know what I mean? Like, wait, what, what keeps you going is, you know, I'm gonna be a star someday. This guy believes in me. Like what is, what is the animating feature for you?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  The star aspect of it never came into play. And also, first of all, I was with the, this, we, I, the girl I'm with today, we will be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary in October.

• 30:18Billy Corgan?

  Amazing.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  But we had gone to high school together. We'd done plays together. She was in the high school. I was in the junior college where we do these district wide musicals. And so we knew each other. As it turns out, we both get cast in Hair and that's when we first hooked up. So 1969 was like, hey, you're trying out for this. I'm, we made it to the callbacks. We both got cast. In fact, she, she had a lead role before I did.

• 30:39Billy Corgan?

  Your relationship goes back that far?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  So our relationship goes. Starts in nineteen sixty-nine, I mean, where we're a couple. Then we got married on top of the Eiffel Tower in nineteen seventy-five when we were on tour with the Organic Theater Company out of Chicago, making a hundred bucks a week. We figured, hey, we're in Paris, we'll probably never get here again. Let's go to top of Eiffel Tower and we'll just, we'll do it hippie style. We'll just do our vows.

• 30:58Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  There was, there, there happened to be a Chinese guy up there that we used him as our witness and you, come here. I didn't know, you know, we didn't know him. We said, you're the witness.

• 31:06Billy Corgan?

  Poor guy.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. But that's, that's, that's the day we celebrate, you know, our, our anniversary, October fourth, nineteen seventy-five. So, but in terms of what I was doing, I was with this, I, I, after Godspell, I joined this group, the Organic Theater Company out of Chicago, was, was run by Stuart Gordon. Had some wonderful actors came out of that, Dennis Franz, me, Shaq Taylor, John Heard, uh, and Stuart.

• 31:31Billy Corgan?

  Chicago has had a, had a good rep back then for theater, you know?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:35Billy Corgan?

  Something about, even, like, even the people that came out that ended up in SNL and.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 31:40Billy Corgan?

  There was a sort of a vibe.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Well, there was Second City was happening. You had Steppenwolf got started then with all the wonderful actors that came out of that. There was the Remains Theater.

• 31:47Billy Corgan?

  I guess what I'm saying, and you know it because you were there, but there was a sort of a feeling in the air that Chicago had something unique to offer as a voice.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  And I think the reason was is because we had nothing to lose and nothing to gain.

• 31:59Billy Corgan?

  Well, everything was New York.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  You either go to New York, you go to, go to, go to LA and be in TV and movies, go to New York and be in the theater.

• 32:04Billy Corgan?

  You know, as a fellow Chicagoan, when you, when you grew up there, especially then, all you heard about was New York and LA.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 32:09Billy Corgan?

  It was like we didn't even, what we cared about didn't mean anything to anybody.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  No, exactly.

• 32:14Billy Corgan?

  You didn't see it represented until, now it was all these, Chicago Fire, Chicago this. There was no, Chicago, nothing.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  No, you got no respect.

• 32:21Billy Corgan?

  Other than Gangster, uh, was, was Untouchables.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, Al Capone and all that.

• 32:25Billy Corgan?

  That's all we got. That's all we were.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Growing up in Cicero, that, that was it.

• 32:29Billy Corgan?

  I, I used to live in Cicero too. I got, our, our family got run out of there. So that's, that's another story for another day.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  There you go. But yeah, that's where I went to high school, junior college.

• 32:38Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  They named the other street after me.

• 32:39Billy Corgan?

  Point is, I know, I know the, I know the world that you grew up in.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  You know the world, yes, you know the world.

• 32:44Billy Corgan?

  It's a very rigid mind.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 32:47Billy Corgan?

  So, again, what are you telling yourself during those years? As long as I'm working, we're good?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Long as I'm having a good time, I'm doing what I like to be doing.

• 32:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Did you love acting? Did you feel it in your bones?

• 32:58Speaker 01

  I did. I loved, I loved performing. I loved the feeling of the camaraderie. I loved, it was like being, similar to being when I was in the band.

• 33:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  It was like.

• 33:08Billy Corgan?

  You're in the group.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  And I had to make that choice. I mean, when the band was doing pretty well, I was making decent money as a good cover band that we were. But it was really when that first Chicago album came out and I saw how good it was and I thought, we'll never do that. And yet I was also doing, acting on the side, doing in junior college and doing plays. I thought, I can't do both. And then when I got cast in Hair, that sealed the deal. Cause now I'm doing eight shows a week. I can't be in a band anymore.

• 33:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  And that did it. That's when I said, I gotta take this path.

• 33:34Billy Corgan?

  In thinking I was gonna talk to you today. It's, I don't know, it's maybe it's the songwriter in me, I was sort of, I like to work with visual images, right? And the visual image that came to me was like, how many times you sat in a makeup chair?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:48Billy Corgan?

  That, that, that, not that there's anything glorious about it, but my point is, is you gotta really wanna be there.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:55Billy Corgan?

  At 6am.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 33:57Billy Corgan?

  On a cold set.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. But there's a, there's a certain fantasy and excitement of the fact that I'm sitting in a makeup chair.

• 34:04Billy Corgan?

  You're doing it.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.

• 34:06Billy Corgan?

  That's why I say, we know how the movie ends. That's where your, that's where your story is good.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I'm not at General Motors, putting a fender on a Chevy.

• 34:11Billy Corgan?

  But I'm just as interested in those years because, you know.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Right. It was, it was great. It was.

• 34:17Billy Corgan?

  It wasn't like the first time you stepped on the stage, somebody said, hey Hollywood kid, let's go. You know, you had to work your way.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  But it's like, I know you're a big baseball fan. I know you're a big Cub fan, as I am.

• 34:28Billy Corgan?

  Look to your left.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  There you go. There you go. So I relate a lot of it to that.

• 34:32Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  I think of it, those are the years that I'm in.

• 34:35Billy Corgan?

  In the minor leagues.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  In the minors.

• 34:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  And so I think if you question any ballplayer, they'll, they'll speak fondly of those years.

• 34:42Billy Corgan?

  So what did you learn in the minor leagues that you still?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I think you learned everything that you needed to do to get, to stay in the major leagues.

• 34:49Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Let's put it that way.

• 34:50Billy Corgan?

  How to, how to keep out of a slump?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  How to keep out of a slump, what it takes to get where you gotta get.

• 34:55Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  And realize that, you know, the one thing may lead to another and it's okay and it's gonna be periods, things don't happen.

• 35:01Billy Corgan?

  When you, when you would hear people whisper about you, because inevitably when you're in the entertainment business, people around you will start to tell you what your value is. Does that make sense?

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:12Billy Corgan?

  So, in those, in those years before you start to really bust out of the pack, are people telling you, you're just a character actor, you're not a leading guy? Like, you know, how?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:22Billy Corgan?

  What, what were people giving feedback to you that?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  I, I feel, I feel fortunate that I had really a lot of positive reinforcement because I was getting. Good roles. I was, you know, in other words, I was, I was, I started out as one of the tribe in Hair, and within six months, I was one of the leads in Hair. I was instantly, because Judas and God's

• 35:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  When I got to the Organic Theater, the very first play I did there was, became a lead role. So whoever the people were making that

• 35:50Billy Corgan?

  But is there a doubt that creeps in, like, because, you know, it's sooner or later, there's going to be an agent in the theater.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:56Billy Corgan?

  We had the same thing. There's somebody coming to sign you or not sign you.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:59Billy Corgan?

  When those opportunities didn't click, maybe in the way that you would have hoped, or you saw somebody else in your role get plucked out and taken to LA?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saw that on occasion, but it never dissuaded me in the sense, because I guess I just still felt fortunate to be just doing what I'm doing.

• 36:14Billy Corgan?

  I've been lucky to meet you a few times in, in real life, and you always strike me as somebody who has a sort of, an inborn optimism. Is that a fair thing to say?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  I do think so, because I hopefully think I got that from my mother, because my mother, I think the reason she lived to be 101 is because everything went

• 36:30Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, unless it was

• 36:32Billy Corgan?

  You are a cool customer.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  I mean, unless it's life or death, it's just, we'll get through this. And I like to think of that, you know?

• 36:39Billy Corgan?

  The first time I met you, I, not that you would remember, but I wanted to talk to you about Bleacher Bums, because I'm obsessed with Bleacher Bums. For those who don't know, Bleacher Bums was a theatrical production local in Chicago.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:52Billy Corgan?

  The reason I saw it was because it was on the local PBS station.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:55Billy Corgan?

  Which they aired it ad nauseam.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Right, that was the original cast, too.

• 36:59Billy Corgan?

  Which, you know, you were

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I conceived the play.

• 37:01Billy Corgan?

  That I know, but I'm saying is, so I, I have a visual in my mind, 10 years old, I remember seeing you in the play.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 37:09Billy Corgan?

  And, and when you gained, you know, so much prominence and you maintain that prominence, I didn't necessarily put together, like, let's call it the 40-year-old version of you with you know, the 25-year-old version of you. But I think it's so cool because it's such a seminal, weird, a Chicago moment, but I think for the, for the indulgence of the crowd watching, give, give, give the one sentence or two-sentence pitch on what Bleacher Bums was.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Bleacher Bums was Me being a Cub fan, starting at like five years old, going to Cub games, now now jump cut to me like nineteen years old, sitting there, interested in being an actor and that aspect of my life, and realizing I'm back at Wrigley Field again, I'm looking around, I'm thinking, what the hell, they got forty thousand people here to see this mediocre team play, and I said, I'm with this theater company.

• 38:01Billy Corgan?

  And were they mediocre in nineteen seventy-five?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm in this theater company, trying to get, we're trying to get a hundred people into the theater with a show that's basically got good reviews, I'm thinking, what, what is it, what is it, what's that thing that, that brings the fans here no matter what, and that was the impetus for me to say, there's a play here, if I could, if I could tap on to what these people are feeling about this, this Cubs here in a play.

• 38:28Billy Corgan?

  So the baseball fans watching, it's, the show takes place basically in a section of the bleachers.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you walk into the theater and you think you're walking into Wrigley Field.

• 38:35Billy Corgan?

  And for historical context, back then, now, of course, you have to get your tickets in advance, but back then, you could show up the day of the game.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 38:42Billy Corgan?

  It was a buck fifty.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was a buck and a quarter when we did the play.

• 38:45Billy Corgan?

  Right, you could stand up at nine in the morning, you get in the game, and then, depending on where you sat, left field or right field at Wrigley Field, which is, you know, the Cubs' home for over a hundred years.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:56Billy Corgan?

  Left field hated right field, right field hated left field, so they tackle each other, and there was this like subculture that would go on, so as a kid, when I would go in the seventies, you would think, what is all this weirdness?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:06Billy Corgan?

  It was like being surrounded by like a hundred Bill Murrays.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:08Billy Corgan?

  Everybody had a take and a character, it was very colorful.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Left field were really the rowdiest, they were, they were, they were wild.

• 39:14Billy Corgan?

  That's why I always sat in right, I wanted nothing to do with left field.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, left field was a lot, a lot of Vietnam vets and stuff, like, these were the guys that when, when they played the Mets, they would throw snakes out onto the field because they knew that the, the, one of the outfielders for the Mets was afraid of snakes, things like that, and right field was a little, a little more sedate, and I, I gravitated toward these guys that were just to the right of the center section, the center, that was always blacked out, so that they.

• 39:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, yeah, the hitting background, yeah.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, the hitting background, and those were the older kind of hardcore guys that didn't want anything to do with left field or right field, these were the gamblers. These were guys that were betting.

• 39:49Billy Corgan?

  That's where Bill Beck used to sit, remember? He would sit.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so that's where the play takes place. Because these were this group.

• 39:55Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know that.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, the play takes right, in fact, if you look at the set, there's this little fence right along that we're leaning against. And that's the fence that separates you from the black.

• 40:04Billy Corgan?

  You just illuminated something that makes total sense to me.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:07Billy Corgan?

  Because I remember that crowd too.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Right, and I was fascinated because I'd sit with these guys. And of course, the game was important, but it was only mostly important.

• 40:14Billy Corgan?

  It's the game in the game.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  It was the game in the game. A lot of bets are going on and arguments going on over something that's got nothing to do with baseball. And I thought, this is fascinating. If I could just capture this in a play, we got something.

• 40:25Billy Corgan?

  You really did. It's, I mean, can you find it on YouTube or anything? Is it like?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I think you can. I think the original production.

• 40:33Billy Corgan?

  If you're a baseball fan, I highly recommend.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  TTW, yeah.

• 40:35Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, but if you're a baseball fan, you should watch. It's a really particular moment in time.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  You'll see Dennis Franz before he was Sipowicz and.

• 40:42Billy Corgan?

  So how do you, when do they start calling you? Your film debut is 1977, Medusa Challenger.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:50Billy Corgan?

  So how does that process start where you start getting recruited into the film?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Well, that was, that was, that was a no brainer because it was a college, it was a college thesis movie for a student from DePaul who wanted to make the movie.

• 41:03Billy Corgan?

  I didn't know if Hollywood had called.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  No, this was not Hollywood at all. So me and this Jack was, the first, the Hollywood thing was that there was a thing called towing. With this, this woman decided to make this movie. And she hired Sue Lyon, who had been in Lolita, the movie Lolita.

• 41:16Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I know who you're talking about.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  And then, then she, but she was from Chicago and she got the financing from Chicago. It was Morris Smith. And Morris got this money together and shot this, you know, basically a very low budget Hollywood type movie in Chicago. And that was my, wow, I get to play. And I'm playing the boyfriend to Sue Lyon, you know, so.

• 41:33Billy Corgan?

  So what do you think, looking back, is, is what starts to pull you from, not the chorus, but, you know, localized productions where you are doing well to where you start going into the bigger system? Is it just?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  One thing really changed my life in terms of professionally. I mean, I was banging around, banging around in Chicago doing, like I said, five years I was with the Organic Theater. Bleacher Bums was the last play I did with Organic. Because it was, and it was a fitting one because it was the play I, I conceived it. It was very successful. We did it in New York, it ran off Broadway.

• 42:02Billy Corgan?

  Oh, you know that.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Got wonderful reviews. We just weren't prepared for it. Because we went in there just to do it for two weeks as a, as a kind of like a showcase. But it got such good reviews, they said, we gotta keep it open. But we didn't have enough money to really support it to do ads and stuff. So it ran for a while. But then we had done a tour of the of the west coast prior and my wife and I decided, this was 1977, we said, you know what, let's go back to California, at least the weather's nice. We can do plays and we can, it wasn't like I wanted to be a movie star, a TV star. I just wanted to be out of the snow. Because everybody who knew me knew the the motto was, when the snow blows, Joe goes. Because I just hated it.

• 42:39Billy Corgan?

  I learned that lesson late in life, unfortunately.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  So we came to California and I just, we did theater, we did some of the, we did Bleacher Bums.

• 42:46Billy Corgan?

  You even did Bleacher Bums out here?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  We did Bleacher Bums out here. We opened it in 1980. It ran until 1990. To this day, it's one of the longest running plays in Los Angeles history.

• 42:58Billy Corgan?

  That's why people should really see it. It really isn't anachronistic thing, but it's really beautiful.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  It was a waiver play. We only did like three nights a week, like on Friday or Saturday, Sunday, maybe two nights a week, three performances. But it ran for 10 years. Because it had that, because it's fun. You don't have to be a Cubs fan.

• 43:12Billy Corgan?

  And there was a lot of, there was a little improv thing that would go on, right? There was a, was there, was, was there a little wiggle room in the way that the cast would play the?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  It was pretty tightly scripted, only because there's a baseball game is going on, so you have to follow every out, every hit, everything.

• 43:26Billy Corgan?

  You guys did it so well because I felt like you were almost kind of half improv-ing.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  No, no, it was all, but that was the nature of our theater company. But it ran at the Century City Playhouse on Pico, the element of it is still there, but it's at Pico right near Fox there. And ran for 10 years. So anyway, I was doing stuff like that, doing guest shots on Archie Bunker's place or Simon and Simon.

• 43:46Billy Corgan?

  Greatest American hero.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Exactly, all that.

• 43:48Billy Corgan?

  Simon and Simon?

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 43:50Billy Corgan?

  It was like, wow, you were in Simon and Simon. That took me way back.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  I just got, ironically, you mentioned it, I got a residual check for a penny yesterday for Simon and Simon, one penny. I thought zero, one on the check. I thought, oh, that's, that's welcome to Hollywood. But it was during that period, and I always still enjoy myself. My wife and I were living in a little one bedroom apartment in Studio City and it was fine. I was doing what I liked to do and making enough money to pay the rent. But then I get the phone call from a guy I'd worked with in Chicago on and off, David Mamet, who had done a few of his things in Chicago.

• 44:21Billy Corgan?

  You might have heard of him, yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, might have heard of him. And he says, hey, Joe, I got this new play called Glengarry Glen Ross. I'm thinking we're gonna open it in Chicago. Maybe we'll get lucky, we'll take it to New York. Well. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Next thing I know, jump cut. They're handing me a Tony Award. They're handing him a Pulitzer Prize. Needless to say, that was a life-changing experience for me.

• 44:44Billy Corgan?

  Three hundred and seventy-eight performances. You won, of course, the Tony for the Best Featured Actor that year. And the character, Richard Roma, right? He has his own Wikipedia page, I found out.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 44:59Billy Corgan?

  But I'm saying that's a hallmark of some cultural thing that that character that you played has his own Wikipedia page. He's become such a kind of a, like, an avatar.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  I'll have to check it out, yeah.

• 45:13Billy Corgan?

  So what was it about that play that you think was the kind of the zeitgeist moment for you? Not just you personally as an actor, but sort of like, right time, right place, or?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  I guess in essence, I was ready for it, in a sense that...

• 45:25Billy Corgan?

  Okay, stop. Because I love this. This is my favorite part of interviewing someone like you. I like to slow this part down, like watching game tape. So take me through the game tape. Right place, right time. What was it about you in that moment that you were ready?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  I'll put it this way. And I could maybe sum it up in the one sentence of being at the Tony Awards that night. When I had won the Tony, got up and they handed me this Tony. The thing that I'd been watching people get in acting school on TV, saying, "Look at that, wow." The after-party. Somebody comes up to interview me and says, "What's it feel like to win a Tony Award?" And I said, my response was, "It's like winning the lottery, but I've been buying tickets for the last fifteen years." And that's kind of what it was. So in other words, my point being, fifteen years prior, I'd been doing all that stuff. All the things you mentioned, the plays, that hair.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  It led to a moment where now I'm in a position, again, we'll make the baseball analogy. You're banging around, you did Little League, Pony League. You played it in college, you played American Legion ball. Oh, you made it to the minors, AAA, oh my God. Your first time at bat. Wrigley Field and you're wearing a Chicago Cubs uniform.

• 46:44Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  You're playing left field for the Cubs. What's that moment like? And you, so on one hand, you're like, I can't believe it. But then on the other hand, you gotta say to yourself, no, wait. I want, I'm gonna believe it because I put in all that time, that fifteen years. So I was read, that's what I mean by ready. In other words, the door opened, I was ready to walk in the door and say, excuse me.

• 47:03Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  I'm closing the door behind me.

• 47:05Billy Corgan?

  I saw a quote where it said something like you, you went on stage every night like a wolf or something that can't, it's.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Like a matador.

• 47:13Billy Corgan?

  Thank you, yeah. It's like, it's the image of you, like.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:16Billy Corgan?

  It's my time.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  I'd put on the, especially for Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, I'd put on, because luckily, man, it was of the, of the mindset, like, you're supposed to be a very successful, you know, salesman. I'm not gonna have you wear a cheap suit that looks expensive.

• 47:30Billy Corgan?

  You were a real.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  I had like a two thousand dollar Versace suit I wore every night. And I'd put that, here I am on Broadway, putting that suit on every night.

• 47:37Billy Corgan?

  Joey from the neighborhood.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Joey from the neighborhood, just like, you know, like a matador is putting on the, quote, the suit of colors. And saying, I'm going to fight the bull now.

• 47:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  And you, and that's was my, that was my mindset. I'm gonna hit that stage. I'm killing the bull tonight. I'm taking, cutting off both its ears and, and giving him to the crowd.

• 47:54Billy Corgan?

  You know, moments like that don't happen often, you know, like in a long career, this, these beautiful peaks where it's like, there's the, there's the role, there's the playwright, obviously one of the most famous of all time. There you are, you're on Broadway, you're not in Poughkeepsie, right?

• 48:12Billy Corgan?

  But, um, from a, and I'm not an actor, but I'm fascinated with the art of acting because like, like, I remember reading this story once where Olivier was, was in a, I can't think of the, the, it's the, gosh. I'm terrible. It's the actor who was a big method actor around the time of the fifties. And he saw him in the corner getting himself into a froth as a method actor.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 48:36Billy Corgan?

  And so, you know, Olivier is standing there waiting. So Olivier finally went up and said, you know, they call it acting for a reason.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:45Billy Corgan?

  So what was it about your acting chop, fifteen years in the making, that you, you know what I mean?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:52Billy Corgan?

  Take me inside that, like, like, like if you and I were reviewing tape of you as a hitter, what kind of hit, what kind of actor hitter are you? Yeah, sorry, it's analogy.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:01Billy Corgan?

  Clash, but.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 49:03Billy Corgan?

  Cause you, you have such an effortless style, I think.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Well, let's put it this way, I'm not, I'm not a method guy. I'll put it that way.

• 49:11Billy Corgan?

  Okay, good start.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  That's why I tended to gravitate toward a lot of the British actors. I mean, I got to know Ben Kingsley pretty well, because we did two movies together.

• 49:19Billy Corgan?

  Talk about a great actor.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  We did Bugsy, and we did Searching for Bobby Fischer together.

• 49:24Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  So it became pretty close. And, and that's what I mean, Ben is Ben. But Ben doesn't, you know what I mean? And when we, he, we could be like talking like we are right now, and all of a sudden, they said, "Action." He'd become whatever he'd become, and I would try to become what I become, and we'd do our thing. They say, "Cut," and we go back to this. So, it, it, I guess my point being, I followed that school of it.

• 49:46Billy Corgan?

  But isn't, is it, again, for a novice, is it an availability? Is it a, is it a, I can, I can live in both worlds and not have to sort of?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  I just think it's, it's, it's maybe just the way you've been trained, or the way you've been affected in, in, in your formative years of becoming, let's say, an actor. In other words, if you have a certain kind of training where it's been instilled, and you, you should try this and do this, and maybe if you want to be a homeless person, you should go live on the streets for three weeks, and, and, and, you know, and, and, and, even off-hours, act that way, and don't let people address you by your real name. If that works for you, God bless you.

• 50:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  I guess for me, I thought to myself, "No, that's too much. I don't, I don't think I need to do that." It's, let's pretend. You know, it's like when you're a kid, "I'm gonna pretend to be this." But as soon as your mother calls you to go for dinner, you gotta stop pretending to do that and leave.

• 50:34Billy Corgan?

  Has anyone ever asked you, or have you put yourself in a position that you felt was beyond your reach as far as a character? Meaning like, now you're a gladiator, you know what I mean? Like, or in your mind, was, was, was your character?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Well, you do the, you do your best you can within who you are and what you can do.

• 50:50Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So I think you, that's where you reach a point where you say to yourself, "Look, if, if they think I can do it, and they're sending me a check, I'll give it a shot." You know?

• 51:00Billy Corgan?

  Okay, so now, now, now here come the movies.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 51:03Billy Corgan?

  Uh, I, it's impossible with you, there's so much work. I mean, somebody could interview you for twenty hours about the work you've done. So, we'll cherry pick a little bit here, but like, uh, Three Amigos.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was an experience.

• 51:16Billy Corgan?

  I mean, great movie, and, I mean, uh, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Brought them two to get thing together, Chevy and, and, or not Chevy, but Steve and Martin Short. That started, I think, that

• 51:29Billy Corgan?

  Oh.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  That kind of, why they're

• 51:30Billy Corgan?

  You brought them together?

• 51:31Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying that movie.

• 51:32Billy Corgan?

  Oh, sorry, I missed.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  I think that was the thing that kind of started that relation, them doing that movie together. Cause you see them, you know, just on Saturday night.

• 51:39Billy Corgan?

  I mean, those guys are so, I mean, it's

• 51:41Speaker 01

  They're like, joined at the hip, and that was, I think that was the beginning of it.

• 51:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah. Okay, so now you're, now you're rocking, you're, you're out making movies, and you're in a steam company, and

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:51Billy Corgan?

  How's that feel? Because you, you'd earned it, you know, like I said, you weren't picked like twenty, and somebody said, okay, come on.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 51:57Billy Corgan?

  I got you, and, and they built you up in the old Hollywood thing, you had to kind of navigate your own way out here.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  And I, and when I talk to young students and stuff, when they ask questions like that, some, what, one, the point I try to make too is this. You pay your dues in this business, one way or another. So you're either gonna pay him on the front end, or you're paying him on the back end. I paid by it on the front end. I, those fifteen years that I kind of got to that point where all of a sudden, oh, so that did prepare me for those moments, things like that.

• 52:22Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Like Godfather Three, where my first line I have to say to Al Pacino, where Francis Coppola is standing there thinking, oh my god, this is the Godfather. You know?

• 52:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  But yet, some people, right out of the box, is like, they, they get some major thing, and now they're like, boom, just catapulted to stardom. It's not like they're gonna avoid paying their dues. Now they gotta pay those dues on screen, on camera, in front of everybody. And, and it's harder, I think, because now you gotta back it up.

• 52:47Billy Corgan?

  I know you know these conversations, invariably, a, a parent will pull you aside and said, my kid wants to be a blank actor, musician. And I always find myself saying a variation of be careful what you wish for.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:01Billy Corgan?

  Because it's not an easy life. And especially to a parent, I'll say, if your kid's got it, talent can't be stopped.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 53:09Billy Corgan?

  But it ain't easy, and even when you make it, it ain't easy. It doesn't suddenly become a boulevard of roses. It gets complicated in ways that's almost impossible.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely right. And you have to be careful that they're not trying to live vicariously through their, like, wanting them to do it because they never got that shot or wanted to do it. And so they're trying to instill it in them.

• 53:29Billy Corgan?

  That's, yeah.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  You know, I obviously had the opposite, that my parents didn't even know what the hell I was doing.

• 53:32Billy Corgan?

  I was gonna say. I have to ask, because I love, love, love old Hollywood, and you were in a movie with Don Amici.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, God, loved him.

• 53:43Billy Corgan?

  You know, who, when he, in his youth, was like a romantic lead. But when he had this kind of interesting comeback in the eighties, he was kind of cast as a, almost like George Burns or something, like this kind of anachronistic character in a, in a modern world.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Well, it was, it was a total fluke that he came back. I mean, it was trading places.

• 54:01Billy Corgan?

  Oh, right.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Right?

• 54:02Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  What had happened is, because of course I got this whole story from Don, you know, himself. He, he, he made his last movie like in the sixties, and it was like Herbie and the Love Bug or something. And then he started to realize, you know what, I think this is it.

• 54:14Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  This is, and he was fine with it. He, you know, he's got a beautiful estate out in Encino, and he liked to go out to dinner at night, and that was it. He was done. What had happened was, that movie, um, was, the, the, the, the, the two old men in the movie that make the bet.

• 54:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Trading places, was supposed to be, uh, Ray Maland.

• 54:36Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  And, um, I've got the other actor who actually did it. But Ray Maland, they were getting ready to shoot the film, they purposely put all of-

• 54:45Billy Corgan?

  Montgomery Clift, I just remembered the name of that.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Montgomery Clift, exactly right.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:50Billy Corgan?

  I had to get it out.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  The nervous guy, exactly right. But they're getting ready to shoot, uh, um, they're gonna shoot on Monday and they put the old, the two old guys, it was Ralph, Ralph Bellamy, I think it was.

• 55:00Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Ralph Bellamy and, and, and Ray Milland, they're gonna shoot all their stuff together in like one week, cause they were old, they figured, wanna just shoot them out, so we don't have to encumber them over the course. But Ray Milland hadn't done his physical, which the insurance company insists you get when you make a movie, cause they have to bond the movie. It was Friday, they're gonna start shooting on Monday, multi-million dollar picture with, you know, Eddie Murphy.

• 55:23Billy Corgan?

  They just grabbed Don out of obscurity.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  So no, no, what had happened is they called Ray's agent and says, hey, you know, you gotta get him to the doctor to get the physical, you know, and, and a movie physical is like, they just wanna make sure you live long enough to make the movie, they really don't care how healthy you are, they really don't. Like, how long you in the movie, a week? Yeah, you only make a week. Well, the agent says, oh, okay, I'll make sure he goes to the doctor. This was like the, one of the first times in Hollywood history, what the doctor called the producers and said, when does he start? Monday? I don't know, I don't think so. And they basically said, they can't, the doctor would not sign him off, they said, no, this guy's, Ray Milland was in tough shape, and the agent was trying to get him one more job, figure two, two weeks he'll make it, he can make a little money. So now they're stuck, and they're talking, we can't, if we, if we don't shoot on Monday, the sets, that, that, we're done.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  And the producer said, you know, I happen, and I heard this from the producer, cause I get it from both sides, the producer said, I happen to see Don Amici sometimes, cause he was living in Santa Monica at the time, I happen to see him walking on the beach on Sundays, you know, and he looks pretty good, looks in good shape. And they said, we'll track him down, see if we find an eight. Cut to the chase, they tracked him down, they hire him, he does the movie, that starts his career again, the next thing movie he does is the one, Cocoon, and he wins the Oscar, which, and, and when he gave his speech, I remember he gave the speech in, somewhat in Italian, and, and explained to me how, how exciting it was, because when he was a big star, he was the second star, because the big star with the studio was Tyrone Power.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  He did all the A movies, Don did all the leads in the B movies.

• 56:56Billy Corgan?

  But he was a romantic lead.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Romantic lead, but you don't win Oscars for romantic leads, you know, Cary Grant never won an Oscar, you know? So anyway, that was a big, big deal for Don. But what's funny is Don, the producer told me a story, that's how we got Don Amici. Don's version of it ended with, well, you know, Joe, they called me in, and they offered me the part, but I turned them down. I said, really? He goes, yes, he offered me shit money. He goes, and I always swore I'm never gonna come back to the business. You know, in a bowing position. He says, so I went out to dinner that night. And at the restaurant, the Bader D brought the phone to the table. And said, Mr. Michi's a call for you. And it was them saying, well, we've met your price. And that's how he did the trading places.

• 57:37Billy Corgan?

  What a beautiful story.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:39Billy Corgan?

  Well, I'd be remiss, I mean, we talked about it briefly, but. Godfather three, it's, it's shocking how certain things in our culture become institutionalized. They almost grow beyond their thing. So what's it like to be, and you're, you're a member of a few franchises. We'll get to the other ones in a second, but the Godfather, it's like, let's call it the family. You're part of the Godfather, uh, metaverse.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:02Billy Corgan?

  How's that feel? Because it seems to me it's like, it's the way I look back in my life where, where I think like, I did that. Like it's.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:10Billy Corgan?

  Like it's something you hang your hat on.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  My friend, Vinnie Guastafaro, who's, who's not Irish, but you could tell by the name.

• 58:17Billy Corgan?

  Thought he was my cousin.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  He, he made, he made the one quote that sums it up. When he found out I'd gotten the role, he says, Joey, you're gonna be in the Italian Star Wars.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  And I think, yeah, I guess that's right.

• 58:30Billy Corgan?

  Now that is some Chicago right there.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  And, and yeah, and so, uh, that kind of summed it up.

• 58:34Billy Corgan?

  The Italian Star Wars?

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Well, sure, because you think about it, okay, I was gonna, cause yeah, the one, cause it would have been 18 years, I think, after the second one had, had come out. And now they're coming out this new movie and I find out I'm being considered for a role in Godfather that wanted it, you know.

• 58:49Billy Corgan?

  What do you tell your wife that day? Like?

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, what, what's really interesting is how I found out I had the role. Because I knew I was up for the role. There's a pizza place, it, it, it was, um, I'm spacing on the name, but it was, it was in Studio City. I go to this pizza place and, and to pick up some dinner for my wife and I at night. And I walk in and the owner of the place looks at me and goes, Joe Montana, you son of a bitch, you're gonna be in a Godfather movie. I said, what? You're gonna be in a Godfather movie? Don't be goofing around with me. And I knew I was up for this role, but, but that's all I knew.

• 59:26Billy Corgan?

  The pizza guy knows?

• 59:27Speaker 01

  The pizza guy. I go, what are you talking about? He goes, my nephew, he called me on the phone just a little while ago because he works in an office, in a casting office in New York. He said, they put the pictures up under the wall. They got a picture of Al Pacino, they got a picture of Diana Keaton, they got a picture, they put up a picture of you.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Under the wall.

• 59:45Billy Corgan?

  You must have flown over.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  And I knew that casting, that's how they do it. When they they put pictures up to kind of so you can all see. Can our here's our cast. I said, well, I said, I know I'm on being considered. I rushed back to the house with the, you know, linguine. And I I call my agent. It's a Friday night. They call him at home. I said, the pizza guy just told me I'm in the.

• 1:00:04Billy Corgan?

  The pizza guy.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  He goes, he goes, oh, we're gonna call you. I just got the call saying that.

• 1:00:09Billy Corgan?

  Wow.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  And so and literally he told me, that's how I found out. He knew before I did.

• 1:00:14Billy Corgan?

  OK, so you just found out you're gonna be in The Godfather.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Billy Corgan?

  But still, it's The Godfather.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  It's The Godfather. Hey, I'm part of that trilogy, you know. I mean, I don't think.

• 1:00:22Billy Corgan?

  And as an Italian American, I mean, come on.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  It was the Italian Star Wars. I mean, I.

• 1:00:27Billy Corgan?

  Come on.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  I I was like.

• 1:00:28Billy Corgan?

  I mean, you go back to the neighborhood. It's got to be like.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:31Billy Corgan?

  A party.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't have to buy a drink for for a long time after that. Uh, but yeah, it was it was monumental. And just to know like, oh, and by the way, you're gonna fly to Europe and you're gonna shoot most of it in Rome. You know, a Chini Cita studio where Fellini did his movies. It was like, what what more could be better about, you know? So that was, yeah, that was a whole experience unto itself.

• 1:00:56Billy Corgan?

  Um, I'm not so much interested in like, let's call it the the boring part of being typecast.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:02Billy Corgan?

  Um, and it's less so these days. But you grew up in a world where it's like, OK, you become the Italian guy.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:10Billy Corgan?

  You know, there's somebody's like, I need an Italian guy. And then we look at four pictures. It's like, oh, I know him.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:16Billy Corgan?

  Are you conscious of that at the time? Or again, it's just, I'm so happy to be working. I don't care.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  My my attitude was this, if it's a good role, what do I care? The point is, I'm never gonna play a Swedish sea captain. You know, I wouldn't cast myself.

• 1:01:30Billy Corgan?

  But could you? That's the question.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  I I might, but then why would I? I mean, the point is, you know, get maybe get somebody who's a little closer to the to to to that thing. So, no, I never. And also, I feel lucky enough, fortunate enough that I did enough things that weren't necessarily.

• 1:01:44Billy Corgan?

  Did anybody ever try to get you to kind of deaccent yourself, you know?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:01:49Billy Corgan?

  You speak, you speak in the world you grew up in.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Not really, because also I didn't like enough, because you take like a movie like Searching for Bobby Fischer. I'm playing a, you know, that father in reality is Jewish, you know, the Waitskin family. And I'm playing that father.

• 1:02:02Billy Corgan?

  You just became Jewish right in front of me.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there you go. But, uh, so to me, the ethnicity that, like I said, I'm probably never gonna play, you know, yump and yam and yam, I'm from Wisconsin, you know, that's not gonna happen. I get that. But as long as it, those are good roles and roles that I can grab it or I can embrace and say to myself, I can do that.

• 1:02:20Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  And then, then, there were times, believe me, when I was especially before things started going well for me and I was training up for bit parts, I would read them and it would be a role like in a sitcom where it was like, hey, oh, Jimmy, how you doing, Jimmy, Jimmy? And I'd look, as I walked in the audition, a couple of times I know I blew the audition because I'd look at the casting people, I say, okay, what level of like, you know, of Rocky Balboa do you want me to be? And they'd look at me with this thing like, and I think, oh, they're not amused.

• 1:02:49Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  They don't want to be told that.

• 1:02:51Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  But I knew that's exactly what they wanted. They wanted like, hey, you would, you would, they wanted John Travolta in the, you know, the TV show. And, uh, but it was okay. I wasn't offended because I thought that's, that's Hollywood, that's where it goes.

• 1:03:03Billy Corgan?

  Okay. Gotta be a little pressure playing Dean Martin at some point. Is that, from an acting point of view, are you conscious of doing a, a really good impression or you're trying to figure out your own version of Dean Martin, like?

• 1:03:20Speaker 01

  It's a little of both. The point is, the main thing was, I was scared to death to do it, but then I was scared to death not to do it because of being offered it. I thought, oh, God, it's my chance to play a guy I idolized. But I thought, do I have it in me? Can I, can I fool people for the two hours?

• 1:03:35Billy Corgan?

  What a great comedian he was. His timing is.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  The whole thing and the look. And so what I started to work on was I did all the research I could do. I read, you know, autobiographies of him, listened to tapes, watched.

• 1:03:46Billy Corgan?

  Did you talk to family members?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  I, I, well, I reached out to Deena Martin, his daughter, because what had happened was, it had gotten around that Frank Sinatra's daughter, Tina, had wanted to co-produce the movie.

• 1:03:59Billy Corgan?

  Right.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  You know, with HBO.

• 1:04:01Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  And they didn't want her to, because first of all, they didn't necessarily want anybody in the family necessarily saying, well, you can't say that, you can't do that. So she was, from what I'd heard, she was a little bitter about that. So she was like calling all members of the other families, like Dean's family, saying, we gotta boycott this movie, we gotta da, da, da, da. And I felt so the opposite about the script and about how these men were being portrayed. I got a, I knew somebody who knew Deena. I said, I got, I said, can you get a message to her and let her know that Joe Mantegna was playing her father? Would invite her to the set if she wants to come and I'll let her read the script just to show her that what respect I have for him and this thing. And that, that started the relationship. But one thing that stuck with me and was almost my key to playing him was I thought,

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  for two hours I have to suspend people's belief that I'm not Joe and that I'm Dean Martin. So how do you do that, you know, but there, but you know, millions of biopics, you do what you can do. But I thought the sound, what's that sound? What does he sound like? Cause if I can get a little bit of the sound, and then I started to think, what does he sound like to me? And then as a kid, I remember the Sugar Crisp commercials with the sugar bear. And the sugar bear would talk like this, oh, can't get enough of those Sugar Crisp sugar bear hair. And I thought to myself, that's the kind of the cadence that Dean Martin would talk about. When he talk like the sugar bear. So when I, so then I started to think whenever I had a line like, oh, how all these people get in my room? It was the sugar bear talking.

• 1:05:25Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  And that to me, once I had that in my head, I thought, as long as I'm thinking the sugar bear, I, I'm kind of in the ballpark.

• 1:05:33Billy Corgan?

  Does the process of movie, movie making, cause you've been in so many movies and I've been on a few sets in my life, not a ton. It's such a glacial, slow process.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Billy Corgan?

  I mean, it's mind numbingly slow. Especially the higher the production, the slower it goes.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely, without question.

• 1:05:52Billy Corgan?

  Does it make you cynical about the art? Because yes, you have, the stage is very big.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Billy Corgan?

  Big movies, big stage.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:02Billy Corgan?

  But does it make you cynical sitting there all those hours and? Cause again, you came out of theater where it's like that adrenaline shot every night.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Well, first you have to, like I say, you have to, once you accept the fact that theater is theater and film and television is that. It's two separate entities.

• 1:06:16Billy Corgan?

  How do you modulate your kind of emotions on, in it?

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  I, I, it, I think it helps having experience in other words, the more you do it, the more you adapt to it. You know what I mean? Just, I think for singers, I would think of the, the. Maybe the best trait or equated was when you have to sing in front of how many thousands of people live, or you go into a recording studio and you have to make the record.

• 1:06:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, I get you.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  You know, it's that

• 1:06:40Billy Corgan?

  Different zone.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  It's a whole different zone.

• 1:06:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  One, you're trying to reach thousands of people, hit that guy in the back row. The other one, you're putting it all into that mic. I'm putting it all into a lens.

• 1:06:49Billy Corgan?

  Especially

• 1:06:52Billy Corgan?

  acting to a camera is such a different art than

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's fatiguing, like we said earlier about when you finish a performance, how you're energized and stuff. The end of a movie day or TV day, you're like, sometimes you're a little beat up because you've been up and down and up and down. You sat for an hour, you're up, you did five minutes, you're on fire, now you're down. Now you've been up since five o'clock in the morning. So rather than going out to dinner, you're going, I gotta get up, it's five o'clock for tomorrow.

• 1:07:16Billy Corgan?

  From a directing standpoint, who who reached you the most, if that makes any sense? Like, you're sitting there and they're telling you and you're thinking like, wow, this is what real direction feels like.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  I've been blessed with a lot of great directors. I've been starting with Coppola, then two pictures for Woody Allen. The two pictures for Barry Levinson. Mamet, it was wonderful to work with. I've worked, I've been blessed to work with a lot of wonderful people.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Barry Levinson comes to mind only because he had a background in improv and stuff. He was out of San Francisco and worked with an improv group.

• 1:07:51Billy Corgan?

  So he kind of knew how to

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so Barry would be the kind of thing, you'd be working, like when I did the movie Bugsy. The script I thought was brilliant, it was a wonderful script. And so there was, there was plenty to do within the confines of the script.

• 1:08:04Billy Corgan?

  And you played, wait, George Raft?

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  I played George Raft, yeah.

• 1:08:06Billy Corgan?

  Who was a notorious Lothario in this town.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly, exactly. And then, but I also did a film of Barry's called Liberty Heights, which is somewhat autobiographical, it's part of that trilogy of movies he did with Diner.

• 1:08:19Billy Corgan?

  Okay, I remember, yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  And so the last one was Liberty Heights. And so within the framework of that script, which again was a brilliant script, but there would be moments when Something would come to mind and I would try something like an ad lib or something. I remember there was one thing was a phone call. Because my, it takes place, it's a period piece, it kind of takes place in the 50s. And my son, we're Jewish family and my son is out on Halloween and he's dressed as Hitler. And it's like, it's for Halloween. And, and, and my wife is complaining to me, he's out there playing Hitler. So I remember that I did a scene where I had, the scripted was like, I get him, I said, I'm supposed to just say, get so and so, what the character's name is, get him, put him on the phone, I need to talk to him because he's at a, he's at a Halloween party.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  But I remember I ad libbed at the time, I said, hey, put, hey, put the Fuhrer on the phone, will ya? Yeah, just that. But it was those moments that would like Barry was like, you know, you know, go with it. Like in other words, he would let me then take it from there and ad lib it.

• 1:09:16Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  So if you can find that kind of a director, and most of them would, would, would do that because it's a collaborative thing.

• 1:09:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  You know, oh, let's, let's see what you got. And because even Woody would let you do that, you'd go with it. But if you, if you went too far astray and maybe you just, they say, you know, why don't you, why don't you go back to the words? You know what I mean? So it just depends, all direct, but it is a director's medium. And so you kind of got to take, take through.

• 1:09:40Billy Corgan?

  Who's an, who's an actor that you've stood next to and worked next to that you think like, wow? Like your chops blow me away. Like who's a, who's an actor's actor for you?

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Well, so many of them I have been, I've been lucky. Pacino's one. Because Pacino is one of those guys that is not afraid to try something different. You know, so in Here and Gother, he was playing a guy that was, was supposed to be older than what, at that time, older than he really was. And that's not that easy.

• 1:10:06Billy Corgan?

  But what is it about his acting that you kind of, is it, is it a kineticism or like?

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  I, I just think that because he, he was, I, I think part of it is the sharing. In other words, the really good actors engage you. In other words.

• 1:10:21Billy Corgan?

  They pull it from you.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  They pull it from you and they engage you. It's not like, it's not them giving a performance and it's, and you're on your own.

• 1:10:28Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  They realize that this is a collaborative thing, that we're having a discussion.

• 1:10:32Billy Corgan?

  And you'd understand this in musical terms. Sometimes when you're jamming, you feel like they're playing the song, but nobody's listening.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:40Billy Corgan?

  And but when people start listening and you play something and you hear other people follow in.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 1:10:45Billy Corgan?

  It creates this other harmonic that's really rich.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why that's why bands work successful. They've been together a long time. They, you know.

• 1:10:52Billy Corgan?

  There's a listening that goes on.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  And makes sense that they get better.

• 1:10:55Billy Corgan?

  It's insensitive.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  You know, since I've been on this TV show Criminal Minds though for 15 years. We're such a tight group because we know each other's nuances and things like that. And that's helpful.

• 1:11:06Billy Corgan?

  So another franchise, but we're we're technically alumnus of is Simpsons.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:13Billy Corgan?

  I got to be on one Simpsons, the famous Homer Palooza episode.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:19Billy Corgan?

  Do you have that same experience where somehow when you're in the Simpsons thing, like it turns into this other thing, like you become part of this other story that has nothing to do with anything other than the Simpsons? Have you found that? Like Simpsons fans are obsessive in a very particular way, and you'd be surprised who's a Simpsons fan?

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I know. Yeah. And I've been I've been doing that role now for 34 years. And I went in thinking I was gonna do a one-shot deal because Godfather had just opened. I'm playing Joey Zaza as the Godfather. And I get the script to play this character Fat Tony in The Simpsons as a mob guy. And I went, okay, I get it. They want the same guy doing Godfather.

• 1:11:54Billy Corgan?

  Typecast, yeah.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  So I typecast me, but it'll be fun. And I did it thinking that'll be it.

• 1:11:58Billy Corgan?

  And they're great people.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Oh, great people. Little did I know, they kept calling, saying, you know, we like to, you want to come do another one? Yeah, I'll do another one. I've been doing them now for 34 years. And it's wonderful because it gives you a chance to, first of all, it's it's a reason it's run that long because they've kept the quality of it. They're smart enough to keep the writing still clever and interesting. But you write the fan base. What's interesting is when you travel the world, because I was doing a mini-series in Australia, and I get there, and I thought it was a pretty big deal that they're doing this mini-series in Australia. And so we sit down and I'm sitting with the guy that interviewed me. Like, the first two questions were, so you're here to do this? Great. Next thing you know, so tell us about Fat Tony. And then next, the whole interview is about The Simpsons. And I'm thinking, I said, I finally had to say, I gather The Simpsons

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  is big out here. Oh, yes, The Simpsons.

• 1:12:49Billy Corgan?

  I told someone in my world that I was gonna be talking to you. And the next day, some business, da-da-da, business, business, business, at the end it says, "And I'm very jealous you're gonna be talking to Fat Tony tomorrow."

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Oh, no, yeah.

• 1:13:00Billy Corgan?

  That's how you know you've kinda crossed the cultural Rubicon.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  You know, I get, we all get fan mail. I get as much fan mail for Fat Tony as I do for David Rossi, for Criminal Minds, and as many want that picture signed of Fat Tony.

• 1:13:15Billy Corgan?

  That's what I love about America. It's like the high and the low.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:18Billy Corgan?

  Tony, award-winning actor, you've been in, you know, you've been in some of the biggest movies of all time, and so, by the way, can we talk about Fat Tony?

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  No, I remember, and you know, Simpsons always have a fairly big elaborate party at the end of their season, because usually the end of their filming season, or recording, coincides with them releasing the first episode on...

• 1:13:37Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Because they have such a...

• 1:13:38Billy Corgan?

  So it's kind of a launch, but also a wrap?

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  A wrap. So they have these massive parties, they have them now at Universal, because they have Simpsons World up there.

• 1:13:45Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  They even have a Fat Tony dish in the Italian restaurant up there and up there. But, uh, uh, I don't even know where I was gonna go with this thing.

• 1:13:54Billy Corgan?

  We're just talking.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  But, yeah.

• 1:13:56Billy Corgan?

  Simpsons World.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Billy Corgan?

  Rap party.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Billy Corgan?

  It's okay.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I know what it was. So one day, one, I'm going to one of the parties, sometimes fans know they think, some of them can get into the party because they have such a connection, but some of them are just waiting outside because they know they're gonna meet the people who are into Simpsons. I remember one guy was there, waiting, and he obviously was waiting for me, because he sees me, "Joe, Joe, Joe." Like, you know, I'm trying to be courteous with the fans, you know, they pay my way, you know? I said, "Oh, hi, how are you?" He goes, "I wanna show you something." And he lifts up his arm, he's Fat Tony, he's got the tattoo of him, you know, like, and you don't even know what to say, like, all I could think of is, "I hope he doesn't follow me home," you know, is all I could think, you know? But like, "Oh, great, congratulations," you know?

• 1:14:39Billy Corgan?

  One thing we also share, and it's a bit serious, but I wanna talk about it, because I think these things are important to talk about. So your daughter has autism.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:48Billy Corgan?

  Very traumatic birth, I read a long thing on it.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:51Billy Corgan?

  I have a brother who was born with autistic, not, oh, it's always been a big...

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  I'm a spectrum.

• 1:14:57Billy Corgan?

  But I wanted to talk about that a bit because, you know, it's fun to talk about all these great things that we do.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:06Billy Corgan?

  But I think it's also important for people to understand that that life goes on.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:10Billy Corgan?

  And you have these challenges. And I think I think you being so open about it, about your family situation with your daughter, I think is very admirable. So if you want to talk about that, I don't kind of know how to.

• 1:15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no, I would just say this. First of all, when it's thrust upon you, like when my daughter was born, she was born in, in fact, I was shooting a Godfather when it when we.

• 1:15:29Billy Corgan?

  And during, sorry, but during those times, there wasn't as much understanding.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  No, not at all.

• 1:15:34Billy Corgan?

  There is now.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  No, no, she was born in nineteen eighty, nineteen eighty seven.

• 1:15:38Billy Corgan?

  You would tell people and they'd say, I don't even know what that is.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like one in a couple thousand births were considered on the spectrum. But while we were in New York, she was about a little over two years old at the time, then it started to become apparent, something's off here, something a little different here.

• 1:15:52Billy Corgan?

  And she was very traumatic birth too.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  Very traumatic. She was born at one pound thirteen ounces.

• 1:15:56Billy Corgan?

  That's just, I read that and it's like, you know, when you look and you go, is that a typo?

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  No, she was one of the smallest babies born in California that year. And they told us. And she's lucky she survived because many of them don't. But she's tough. To this day, she's the healthiest kid and person in our family. But so when she was diagnosed, we were in New York and you're kind of like, oh, God, now what? What do we do? And then then you have to make, it's not that you make a choice.

• 1:16:21Billy Corgan?

  You're also having this big career moment. So it's a lot of, that's a lot of emotions.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  I'm shooting, I'm shooting a movie, Alice, at the same time. I'm shooting a Woody Allen picture in Godfather three, back to back in New York. I was, we were there for that whole year. In fact, my second daughter was born while we were there. My daughter, G, was born while we were in New York. So I've got a new baby born. This daughter's been just, has now been diagnosed with autism. You know, wow, okay. So my plate's very full in this direction and I got a little troubling things going on here. But so what, you know, you make that decision. So now what? Now what do you do? You do all the research, this, that. But what really changed things for me or helped was, we finished in New York, we get back to LA, a few months pass, we're still doing all this research, what can we do?

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Okay, what therapies are out there? What's, what are the organizations we should be part of? Like, now they're starting to do the press for Godfather three. They want to do the preliminary press. And it was, I think it was either Time Magazine, it was a big publication, either Time or People. They wanted to interview me because I was the villain now of the new movie.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  And of course, they do their research. And even though it wasn't common knowledge, because there was no reason for it to be. They had found out that my daughter was on the spectrum. Because a group like, somebody like Time Magazine will find that out. They'll do enough research and talk to it, somebody's nurse somewhere.

• 1:17:39Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Somebody say something. So in the interview, it was on the phone. They sent to me a, you know, we've come to our attention that you have a daughter with autism. Are you comfortable with talking about that? And it hit me like, first of all, like, how did they know that? And then I thought, what's my response gonna be? And instantly, I thought to myself, if I say I don't want to talk about it, I'm negating her existence. That's the way I felt.

• 1:18:06Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  And I thought, I don't want to negate her existence. They're right, I do have a daughter who's been diagnosed with autism. Do I want to talk about it? Okay. Yeah, all right, I'll talk about it. So, we didn't talk about it in depth, but I just explained, this is what happened.

• 1:18:20Billy Corgan?

  You know, you opened that door, then that's it.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Opened the door.

• 1:18:23Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  So I figured, and I basically, I remember telling my wife that. I says, you know what, this probably is gonna come out. And it did. They mentioned it, but they're not elaborate, but they just says, one, Mr. John, his daughter found out while he was making the movie, his daughter had autism, and da, da, da, da, da. I got a letter sent to my agent later on, after that thing came out, from a woman. Who, it was a beautiful letter. Because one of the things I did say with describing my daughter's autism, I said, I said, yeah, I said, it's, it's, it, he says, because they asked me, is it difficult? Is it a difficult thing to go, of course, there's the difficulties. I said, one of the most difficult things is you'd be in a grocery store with your child. And she, at that time, at that age, two and a half, three years old, she would, if she'd see something like a face or something, she'd get hysterical and start screaming.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  And so I says, the hardest thing is to be in a grocery store, and your daughter starts screaming, and the other people are looking at you like you're a bad parent. Like, and you want to just scream at them like, hey, she has autism.

• 1:19:21Billy Corgan?

  Do it, yeah.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I said, that's where it's difficult sometimes. I said, but you realize that goes with. So this woman writes me this beautiful letter saying, how, how. So much he appreciated that me, this actor, who's been in this huge movie, has gone through this, that she was going through that same thing.

• 1:19:39Billy Corgan?

  That's why I like talking about these things.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:42Billy Corgan?

  It's not to normalize them, it's just part of life.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  Right, and from that moment on, once I read that letter from her, I thought to myself, well, that's it, I'm never gonna hide Mia under a blanket and say, oh yeah, well, let's not talk about that. And some people do, and that's their choice.

• 1:19:54Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  You know, they don't even wanna get into that.

• 1:19:56Billy Corgan?

  So what's Mia doing today? Is she working?

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Mia, she has done different things for 16 years, you may know about it. My wife had a restaurant called Taste Chicago, we had a Chicago-themed restaurant in Burbank.

• 1:20:06Billy Corgan?

  I think I've even been there, back in my pre-vegan days.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Sure, and my daughter Mia would, because she's savant in some areas, like in some areas, like, I mean...

• 1:20:15Billy Corgan?

  My brother's the same way. Some ways, they'll blow you away and you think, like, it's almost Rain Man-esque.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, she's like an encyclopedia, she could give you a date, like, if I told her right, if I called her right now and asked her what your birthday is, she would tell me exactly your birthday, and then if I pressed her, she'd tell me what day of the week you were born on.

• 1:20:31Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  You know, but she knows your birthday.

• 1:20:33Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Only because she knows I was coming here today, so she knows. So things like that, you know, so she's, yeah, it manifests itself in all kinds of...

• 1:20:43Billy Corgan?

  Yeah, that's what's so, such a curious thing about autism, is it, it's different for every person.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:50Billy Corgan?

  And there's no sort of known, this is the way that you make it, like, quote-unquote, "better", it's more about how to manage and navigate.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:20:59Billy Corgan?

  And it's a very intense sort of experience for a family.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:02Billy Corgan?

  And we went through it in the 70s, same type of thing, nobody really knew what it was, or how to diagnose it.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Right, and now it's much...

• 1:21:09Billy Corgan?

  Even to this point, I don't even know if he's ever been officially diagnosed, but now people would say "on the spectrum",

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, on the spectrum. And it manifests itself in many different ways. And some people are brilliant because they're able to capitalize on the beneficial aspects of it.

• 1:21:21Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  And some people aren't.

• 1:21:24Billy Corgan?

  Well, that's why I think so many artists are bipolar, is I think their brain doesn't function properly, so they develop, one side of their brain overdevelops.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  Right. Right.

• 1:21:33Billy Corgan?

  You know, they have, in order to survive, they develop imagination or something.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:37Billy Corgan?

  So they, that's why they're so crazy, but they're good for us.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:41Billy Corgan?

  So, just to finish up, thank you again for being here.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:44Billy Corgan?

  Can we talk about this, the tequila?

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  Oh, this, yeah, well, this is-

• 1:21:47Billy Corgan?

  Cause you said there was a good story there and I wanna hear it.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  Well, what it is, is, you know, look, as I said, you throw a rock in the air, it's gonna land on a celebrity who's pushing a booze. You know, but this is Senor Rio Tequila. And what had happened is, there was a TV, do you remember a TV show called The Booze Traveler? It was on, it was on the Cooking Channel or Tate or-

• 1:22:01Billy Corgan?

  I do not, I'm sorry.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Travel Channel. Anyway, this guy, Jack Maxwell, did it. And he traveled around the world, like, like, here we are in Portugal where they make port and, you know, it was one of these, it was an interesting show, cause it-

• 1:22:10Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  So anyway, he got to know this woman named Debbie Medina, who owned this company with her husband called Senor Rio. And her story was, she, she was, um, uh, as a child, her father, who was a Mexican descent, left the family. She never knew him, from the time she was a baby, he was gone. And then when she turned like near thirty or something, she gets a phone call from the father in Mexico. "I wanna see you." And her attitude was, "Go F yourself, where you been all my life?" The, her fiance at the time, her husband, said, "Let's go, I'll go with you, you get a chance to meet your birth father." Cut down, they go down to Mexico, he's a simple man, turns out, they, they spend, they get his side of the story, okay. But they're drinking tequila out of like a Coke bottle.

• 1:22:52Billy Corgan?

  And that's it.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  And, and that's it, and it's fantastic. And then finally in the morning, they're not drunk, they're not, they're not hungover. And he's explaining, "Well, there's no additives, there's no preservatives, you know." This been in his family for three generations.

• 1:23:02Billy Corgan?

  Right, right.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  And so they decide, her and the husband, they, they then got married, "Let's start a business." And they did, for fifteen years, they had this business built, they were selling out a trunk of their cars and stuff, and doing well. And then what ultimately happens, unfortunately, her husband dies suddenly and he was, it was darker, I mean, it was, you know, it was totally unexpected. So now this woman is running this tequila company all by herself. Uh, and, and she named it after her father, Rodrigo, so that's why it's called Senor Rio. And, uh, she, she tells Jack, she runs into my friend Jack, who had had the TV show, saying, "Do you know of any celebrity that maybe would wanna, uh, in, in exchange for part of the company, together we try to do?"

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  And she, and what she does is she gives a dollar, she has, she had, this time she, she had a daughter who had grown up, had twins, and the twins are special needs.

• 1:23:50Billy Corgan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  They have this, it's called Angel Syndrome or something like that, they're in wheelchairs and, and they're, they're, you know, fairly, uh, you know- Special needs.

• 1:24:01Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  So she's always given a dollar for every bottle she sells. This foundation for children.

• 1:24:07Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  And of course, my thing with my daughter, I thought, hey, this is not my day job.

• 1:24:13Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  But I said, at least you're doing something. And I like a little sip of tequila every once in a while. I said, let's give it a shot. And so I've loved the connection with her.

• 1:24:23Billy Corgan?

  Last thing.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Billy Corgan?

  Is it true you collect vintage guitars?

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  I only have a few.

• 1:24:30Billy Corgan?

  Well, it's on the internet, it's your big collector.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  I'm not a big collector. I'm lucky that I have a good friend who was worked. I played a Fender guitar in the band, for the most part. And then I went over to,

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  with the one Paul McCartney played.

• 1:24:49Billy Corgan?

  Epiphone?

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Epiphone, I think it was Epiphone. Anyway, but that was only like the last year in a band. But yeah, I was into Fender guitars. And then it turned out, the company Fender, asked me to do a charity thing out in Palm Springs, about 15 years ago, because they knew I had been in a band. I said, really, I haven't picked up a bass. And I said, I sold my bass. In fact, I sold my bass to Mitch Aliotta, who was in the Rotary Connection, you know, back in the days, with Minnie Riperton. And they said, oh no, we'll give you a guitar. Oh, you'll give me a bass? And I told them what kind of bass. I'm in.

• 1:25:22Billy Corgan?

  Show me where to stand.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  You know, where do I stand? You know, so I did it. I went, they gave me a bass, they gave me a little amp, one of those bull nose kind of amps. And that kind of started it. So then I built up my relationship with this guy Dell, from Fender. He gave me.

• 1:25:35Billy Corgan?

  I just, I had this vision of you with a vault of guitars.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  No, but I got one, they came out with, then Gibson.

• 1:25:42Billy Corgan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  Then Gibson came out with like a, it's kind of a, you probably know it. It's a guitar that's kind of an homage to the 60s. It's got all kinds of peace symbols on it and stuff. It's kind of a sweet, it's like a Les Paul type guitar. But it's got, and so they gave me one of those. So I got one of those.

• 1:25:58Billy Corgan?

  And I got, you know, so. I was just being a guitar nerd.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. No, I was a mediocre bass player anyway. I mean, I was the lead singer and so.

• 1:26:07Billy Corgan?

  Pick your fingers.

• 1:26:10Billy Corgan?

  Fingers.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Fingers on occasion. You mean to pick.

• 1:26:14Billy Corgan?

  Back in the day.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Back in the day. But I had one of those really big picks though too.

• 1:26:18Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  You know, it depended on how loud I wanted it to be.

• 1:26:20Billy Corgan?

  You know how musicians are. You know, it's like the snobs, you gotta play with your fingers.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  You know, back then, there wasn't much snobbery going on in the 60s.

• 1:26:28Billy Corgan?

  I love it. Thank you, Jim.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  I want to just say one last thing, though.

• 1:26:31Billy Corgan?

  Sure.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  This is only because my assistant wrote this book called Long Branch.

• 1:26:34Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Which I think is brilliant.

• 1:26:35Billy Corgan?

  I'm happy to promote it.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  It's called Long Branch. We're trying to turn it into a series, which we hope to be able to do. I'm gonna give this to you and plus the booze.

• 1:26:43Billy Corgan?

  I'll give this to my wife. She loves tequila.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  She would love that and.

• 1:26:47Billy Corgan?

  I will report back to you.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  And tell her if she could.

• 1:26:49Billy Corgan?

  I will report back to you.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  That's the blanco. If she likes the reposado or anejo, let me know.

• 1:26:53Billy Corgan?

  And the book is Long Branch.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  The book is Long Branch.

• 1:26:55Billy Corgan?

  By Dan Rand.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Dan Rand. He's been my assistant for 25 years and he's done a wonderful job with that.

• 1:26:59Billy Corgan?

  Does he treat you nice in the book? That's what we're on.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  Well, if we ultimately do the series, which we hope to do, I will play a character in it that is based on my dear, dear former agent, Jack Gelardi, who was legendary.

• 1:27:12Billy Corgan?

  Okay.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  He was like, he was everybody's agent back in the day. Frankie Avalon, Stallone. And he's an Italian guy from Chicago. He was like the perfect agent for me.

• 1:27:23Billy Corgan?

  It's a long story, but I recently got called cheap by Frankie Avalon. We'll just leave it there.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Wow.

• 1:27:29Billy Corgan?

  That's our out.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  That's our out.

• 1:27:31Billy Corgan?

  God bless.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  God bless.