John Malkovich | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bill Maher kicks back with John Malkovich for a candid conversation that jumps from Death of a Salesman and his new series Bad Monkey to his unexpected love of classical-music collaborations—and why so much theater ends up “a misery.” Malkovich opens up about his Leave-It-to-Beaver childhood, his 82nd Airborne environmentalist father, getting beaten as a kid, and the lingering feeling he’ll never quite measure up. Along the way, he and Bill veer into AI, driverless cars, nightmare hotels, and that golden window of being born after antibiotics but before the robots take over, with a detour to a great story about how Con Air came to be, as well as Bill’s unabashed love for In the Line of Fire. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support our Advertisers: Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at ⁠https://www.trueclassic.com/RANDOM⁠ ! #trueclassicpod #ad Get 30% off your first purchase and free shipping at http://wonderballsusa.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=wbaudiolaunch2025&utm_term=clubrandomwithbillmaher&utm_content=weekof12/1read Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Maher?

  Hey folks, why are you remodeling your backyard to make it more, you know, zen-y? We were remodeling our merch store to make it more random. We slapped our new logo on t-shirts, tie-dyes, hoodies, and hats, and all with premium printed labels. Look, I wasn't kidding. We have it because tags are like the junk mail of clothing. All merch is available exclusively at clubrandom.com. Once again, that's clubrandom.com.

• 0:33Speaker 01

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• 1:01Speaker 02

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• 1:31Speaker 03

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• 2:02Bill Maher?

  Whole stage, wooden stage on fire. Since it was opening night, did they think that was what was supposed to happen in the play? They always think that.

• 2:12Bill Maher?

  Now you're the older guy. I'm the older guy, but I'm not. You're running out of people who are older than us. Yeah.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  John.

• 2:25Bill Maher?

  Hi.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Hey, man. How are you? Good to see you.

• 2:30Bill Maher?

  Just had a sprint? From my studio?

• 2:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. Jesus. What's the hurry?

• 2:37Bill Maher?

  You, when I told me, I mean, I never do a show on Friday because I tape my show from four to five. I've never run out of that studio like a bat out of hell like I did tonight.

• 2:46Speaker 04

  Jesus.

• 2:47Bill Maher?

  No, no. I'm such an admirer. I haven't seen you in years, but you know, I'm just...

• 2:53Speaker 04

  I was just thinking the last time, do you know, I think the last time I saw you was also the last time I saw Chris Walken.

• 3:03Bill Maher?

  Christopher Walken?

• 3:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, at a party which was for something, I have no idea what.

• 3:10Bill Maher?

  Out here?

• 3:11Speaker 04

  Out in L.A., out here, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but outside.

• 3:17Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  And I have no idea what it was for or anything like that. I never go to stuffs like that.

• 3:22Bill Maher?

  I never know.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  But that was like kind of 20 years ago, I think, a long time ago.

• 3:26Bill Maher?

  I have so much stuff, some of it's in this room, that, you know, people say to me, "Where'd you get that?" And I'm like, "I don't know."

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Well, I'm gonna be one of those people. What about the...

• 3:38Bill Maher?

  The Supremes?

• 3:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:40Bill Maher?

  That, I know where I got.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  Who did this?

• 3:42Bill Maher?

  That's, nobody did it. That's a poster that was inside their album. See, that fits inside an old LP.

• 3:50Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 3:51Bill Maher?

  And it's triptych.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 3:53Bill Maher?

  Of the...

• 3:53Speaker 04

  It's fantastic.

• 3:54Bill Maher?

  Isn't that fantastic?

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Beautiful.

• 3:56Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. I wondered whether it was, it reminded me of a painter from Chicago, but he mostly did sport people. God called, I think, Tim Anderson. It's a very similar vein to what he did.

• 4:09Bill Maher?

  I mean, memory is such a funny thing, the way whole swaths of time will, like, be gone for me. And then, like, the slightest little detail, the slightest little moment that seems to have no significance. Like, why do I remember in 1978, when somebody said to me, you know, "All the things you put out for snacks are cheese."

• 4:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:34Bill Maher?

  Cheese is not important in my life. And yet, I remember that kid saying that. Why? Why? I have no theory on that. Deal?

• 4:44Speaker 04

  No, not so much a theory.

• 4:46Bill Maher?

  I think it's secretly somehow insignificant?

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know. I'd say, was this a friend?

• 4:55Bill Maher?

  I just remember in college, I mean, I could pick so many examples like that. But just like a moment where somebody said something and you'd just be hard pressed to find why it was significant, but it just stuck in your mind when so many things. And then there's so many things where like, I wish I could remember. Why did it's so significant? Why don't I remember what, you know, losing my virginity was like? It's like, it's just very vague.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I have no idea. I remember very strange things as well. And I have a pretty good memory, all in all. But I tend to remember. I can see a photo from 40 years ago and kind of remember, yeah, that was there at this point of blah, blah, yada, yada. But I always think I don't much remember my life before I had children.

• 5:52Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, not too much.

• 5:54Bill Maher?

  Because your life takes on a dimension of significance that's incomparable to before?

• 6:02Speaker 04

  Not so much my life, but I think your life focuses and

• 6:09Speaker 04

  you're not, you're not really part of that focus. There is a kind of new focus and you have a kind of role in it, you know?

• 6:19Bill Maher?

  That's one reason I never had kids.

• 6:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:22Bill Maher?

  Well, I never wanted to be 2.0.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. That's probably a good idea you did.

• 6:29Bill Maher?

  Well, no, I mean, people, there's nothing, and I'd say this to someone who never had kids, but it's just so obvious that even an outsider like me can see that there is nothing like the love a parent has for the child.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 6:45Bill Maher?

  Possibly because it's sort of you.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, and, well, I don't know if it's that. In fact, I think.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  It's funny, and I think now I'm kind of in a phase that's even removed from that, which is I went home last week. I'm shooting a series out here, and I went home last week. These clothes, we live outside of Boston. And my daughter had our second grandchild on the 17th. And I, the hospital was already closed. It was near midnight. And I, so we went to see the baby on the 18th. And I was reminded that a friend and collaborator of mine, his grandmother, when she had her first,

• 7:38Speaker 04

  they had the first grandchild in Mickey's family. The mother printed a T-shirt that said, "Had I known it was this much fun, I would have done this first." And I kind of, I really began to understand that after I had the first grandchild, because there's a lot about bringing up children that's not so much fun.

• 8:03Bill Maher?

  But the grandchild is a no-brainer.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  For the most part.

• 8:06Bill Maher?

  Because you're not doing the heavy lifting, right?

• 8:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:09Bill Maher?

  Although, that often does not become the case when the, when the kids are near to worlds, which happens a lot.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Of course, yeah.

• 8:16Bill Maher?

  The kid's on smack, so who takes over? The grandma.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, you never know. I think our daughter loves being a mother. And I got to talk to my granddaughter right on the way here, who I hadn't been able really to talk to, because my daughter's been busy. And when I called, I don't get an answer, et cetera, et cetera. But, so I got to hear her pooping, and, you know.

• 8:49Bill Maher?

  How old?

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Seven days.

• 8:51Bill Maher?

  Oh, good.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:52Bill Maher?

  Because if it was like five.

• 8:55Bill Maher?

  Be like, I could have to call child services. That's right, yeah. I hope we're still friends. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I can relate to absolutely none of this, but it is one reason I like to hear about it because it just fascinates me as things fascinate a person when you can't relate to them because it's it's just more interesting because it's so not you. Me, I get me. I know me. Sure, yeah. Those things are.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  Did you come from a big family?

• 9:22Bill Maher?

  No, I came from an absolutely Leave It To Beaver background. My parents were World War II vets, both of them. My mother a nurse, my father in Patton's Army.

• 9:34Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 9:34Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and barely knew each other in high school, but reconnected in Europe at the end of the war.

• 9:42Speaker 04

  How funny.

• 9:42Bill Maher?

  Yeah, very romantic.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, wow.

• 9:44Bill Maher?

  And my father's Catholic. I was raised Catholic. My mother's Jewish, but only culturally. I didn't even know it when I was a kid. But my father was gonna marry somebody else because you Catholic boys just didn't marry Jewish girls in 1951. But at the last minute, he had the change of heart and so, yeah. So he was, you know, I was very, you know, you're just so lucky if you have good parents.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh, God.

• 10:13Bill Maher?

  And so unlucky in ways if you don't.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:16Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:17Bill Maher?

  So I was lucky and, you know, Leave It To Beaver. I mean, you were the same age almost. I mean, you were like the, the, the America of, this is New Jersey, you know, all white. You know, no, no drugs in the high school. I mean, it was just such an innocent, black and white time.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  My life was a super Leave It To Beaver. In fact, probably the big event of my life.

• 10:45Speaker 04

  Was when I was, one of them was doing a play out here in Los Angeles at the Mark Tabor Forum. And at the end of the play, there was a knock on the door. And I opened the door and it was Barbara Billingsley.

• 11:01Bill Maher?

  Barbara Billingsley from, wait, wait. Is this, I watched all these shows and reruns as a kid, that's either.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  Beaver's mom.

• 11:10Bill Maher?

  Oh Beaver's mom.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  And.

• 11:12Bill Maher?

  Beaver's mom, yes.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  She kind of started with, you know, I just have to tell you this, we're fine, just, excuse me. So, sorry, can we stop right there? You're Beaver's mom.

• 11:23Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  You were like my whole sexual.

• 11:27Bill Maher?

  Beaver's mom?

• 11:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:29Bill Maher?

  Couldn't wait for I Dream a Genie?

• 11:31Speaker 04

  No, first it was Hayley Mills and then for quite a while Beaver's mom.

• 11:36Bill Maher?

  John.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  And Hayley Mills too, I met backstage and I had to kind of say the same thing. Sorry.

• 11:43Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, I'm your biggest fan, but Barbara Billingsley, that's sick. I mean, like, I could see Hayley Mills, she was cute.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 11:51Bill Maher?

  But Barbara Billingsley was strictly mom vibes.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, well, probably. Some problem. You know.

• 12:02Bill Maher?

  No, I had Barbara Eden sitting in that chair this year.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 12:06Bill Maher?

  And she's ninety-four and like.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  Really?

• 12:08Bill Maher?

  Betrays it by, I would say, a quarter century. I mean, you would think.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:13Bill Maher?

  And some people just carry themselves with an energy and a movement that does not suggest age, you know?

• 12:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:20Bill Maher?

  I mean, Trump has that quality, he's almost eighty and it doesn't, he doesn't read as eighty.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  Funny.

• 12:26Bill Maher?

  Reads as crazy.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:28Bill Maher?

  But not eighty.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  Different topic, but it's funny because I was thinking about Barbara Eden, who I haven't thought about in years. I was staying at a hotel when I came out here for a few days. Cause I had stuff to do in Burbank and I just stayed out there at a place called Amarona, I think it's called. Nice, perfectly nice. And it had only photos of showbiz people everywhere and one was Barbara Eden with Groucho Marx.

• 12:54Bill Maher?

  With Groucho.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  Which was a fantastic photo. And so I was just kind of, every time I'd leave my room and go down the stairs, I was kind of contemplating it. You know, which must have been. I remember, I remember the thing about it that when I was a kid, of course, they seemed ancient, the Marx Brothers, when I was small.

• 13:14Bill Maher?

  Me too, yeah.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  And probably they were forty.

• 13:17Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  I mean, or, or not even.

• 13:19Bill Maher?

  I remember George Burns, when I was a kid.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:22Bill Maher?

  And he was like, his character was almost an old man. He reminded me of, not just my uncle, but every uncle.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:29Bill Maher?

  Because a smelly cigar. I remember, I had an uncle who smoked this, and it was like, this awful burning, smelly, horrible thing, and there's smoke. It was just a kid, and a human rejects, that you have to like, force yourself to like things.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 13:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, um, but he was still playing an old man when I was an adult. Like, he played an old man for like, forty years.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember he did, the last time I was on, he did a, did, he did a movie, I don't remember the name of it, didn't he, with John Denver?

• 14:04Bill Maher?

  Oh, God.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 14:05Bill Maher?

  He's God.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:07Bill Maher?

  He was so old, you know, now they'd probably cast you.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:12Bill Maher?

  I mean, there's, if you're iconic enough, you get to play God. If you haven't done it already, you will. You're, you're a perfect, they must have asked you to be God before.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  That would alarm me for his manner.

• 14:25Bill Maher?

  Really? Because Anthony Hopkins, God, or, uh, like, I think Zeus, or something like, you know, maybe not our God, but a God, you know? Morgan Freeman.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Morgan, I'm, I'm comfortable with. That, that I'm good with.

• 14:41Bill Maher?

  Oh, he's the best God, yes. Anthony Hopkins is great, but you get the feeling God is just doing it for the money.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, could be. Uh, yeah, that can be a little worse. I like him, great actor.

• 14:54Bill Maher?

  Oh, so great.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:56Bill Maher?

  So what do you, what's this project you're working on here?

• 14:59Speaker 04

  I am doing right now, uh, the second year of a series, which I liked, uh, and, and which I watched all of it, uh, called Bad Monkey. Uh, Vince Vaughn, uh.

• 15:14Bill Maher?

  Oh, Vince Vaughn, I saw it. I was gonna start it.

• 15:20Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm sorry I didn't. I didn't know you were in it.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  No, that it's not that. Mine is year or two.

• 15:25Bill Maher?

  Oh, I see.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  I didn't do the the first year.

• 15:27Bill Maher?

  I like Vince.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  I do too. He's funny.

• 15:30Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 04

  This was terrific part for him.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  And I liked it very much. And somewhere somebody had asked me, what are you watching? Or something I said, why is that? I found you quite funny. And.

• 15:44Bill Maher?

  And you're happy working?

• 15:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm always working. If it's not. If it's not that, it'd be something else. You know, I tour and maybe six pieces. Fairly constantly for for decades.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  I direct, write.

• 16:06Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Do whatever.

• 16:07Bill Maher?

  No, you're Steppenwolf. You still have.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  I'm not in Steppenwolf anymore. It got too much for me.

• 16:14Bill Maher?

  Oh, I always associated you.

• 16:17Speaker 04

  Yes, sir.

• 16:18Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  I was for forty years.

• 16:21Bill Maher?

  No, I know.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you know, it's time for kind of new generation and their their culture, their ideas, their life. I do. I do, for the most part, I spend a lot of times doing classical music collaborations for the last twenty years. Almost. Four with the Viennese Broke Orchestra and colleagues there. And other ones with different colleagues, all kinds of different.

• 16:52Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you're a deep guy. I must say, like, I spend a lot of time on this thing, like, getting high and then talking about, like, well, show business, I try to avoid politics because I started this, so I have a place not to talk about.

• 17:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 17:05Bill Maher?

  It goes where it goes. As you can see, there's no question.

• 17:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:09Bill Maher?

  This is my attempt to get as close as we possibly can to just being exactly how we would be, which I feel we are.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  I understand.

• 17:16Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's why I didn't want microphones and all this shit. But I I just got off the road at seventy. I've been on the road doing stand up for forty two years, along with this and my show. So, you know, it's a lot. And it feels right as the right thing. I mean, we just, and I just. I don't know. I sort of pictured that you were. Like Brando-esque, because you are Brando-esque to me on that level. And when he, well, like, he was just, in his later years, you know, he was not into the work. You seem like you actually like it.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  I love the work.

• 17:54Bill Maher?

  And you don't mind being like on the set and in the trailer and?

• 17:56Speaker 04

  No.

• 17:57Bill Maher?

  Oh, see?

• 17:57Speaker 04

  I, I love the work. I don't.

• 18:00Bill Maher?

  Even if it's in something that's not like the deepest, really?

• 18:03Speaker 04

  Doesn't matter. I never was a genre person.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  When my, my mother said that when I saw Peter Pan, Mary Martins, I think that was like fifty six or something like that.

• 18:19Bill Maher?

  I remember it in black and white on TV.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 18:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 04

  That I stayed behind this for two days. I, I guess I was so upset by it, you know, and why I have no idea was the idea of, you know, Wendy, I'm back. Well, no one cares, you know, fuck you. Or, you know what I mean, something along those lines, but.

• 18:45Bill Maher?

  That's true.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Unlike a lot of wonderful actors, I, I think,

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Brando was certainly one. George C. Scott, I think, was one also.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  And, and there are many others, I think, that fit into that category. They grew to be embarrassed by that kind of work.

• 19:15Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  Or grew to dislike it. I don't feel that way at all.

• 19:18Bill Maher?

  That's so much better.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  I, I, I'm lucky.

• 19:21Bill Maher?

  No, I'm so glad to hear that because like I would see you in so many things and like, oh, he's the spymaster in this thing, the movie, which I'm enjoying very much. But it's not some deep fucking, you know, it's not long days journey into Berlin. You know, it's just, it's just a good spy thing. And he's great in this because he's always great. But I just had the feeling, oh, you know, I know he'd really rather be doing like, you know, Richard the Third, and he's just doing it for the money. And I'm so glad to find out that.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  Not really, meaning I do things that sound, um.

• 19:59Speaker 04

  Like when I was a kid, of course, I grew up listening to mostly to pop music or my parents' music.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  When in just a little more than 20 years ago, I got approached by classical musicians. Would I consider doing a piece with them about blah, blah, blah? I knew nothing about classical music, no background, no interest, no, no love of it, or et cetera. And I started doing it because the, the power of that music and, and let's say especially the power of that music harnessed in the service of something.

• 20:51Bill Maher?

  Excuse my stupidity, but you're, you're doing spoken word with the classic?

• 20:57Speaker 04

  It can be that, or sometimes it, I hesitate to say I'm singing because there is some debate about that, but, but.

• 21:12Speaker 05

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• 21:41Speaker 02

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• 22:11Bill Maher?

  Okay. Well, maybe you're singing like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. Cause he famously was not a singer.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  No, I'm not a talk singer. I was many years ago, before the trans crisis, I was referred to as like, sang like a trans Tom Waits. And many years ago, when I used to see a lot of Tom, he just played my brother in a film, or rather I played his brother. And I, one Christmas, I sang Heart of a Saturday Night with my guitar into his, into his recording machine. He called me, you know, a couple of hours later and he said, "Man, you sing like a fucking girl." So, but it's a lot of different things.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  It could be something I adapt and perform in, or blah, blah, blah. They're not just kind of narrations, they're-

• 23:11Bill Maher?

  Singing like a girl is not a bad-

• 23:14Speaker 04

  It's not the worst thing, no.

• 23:16Bill Maher?

  Frankie Valli?

• 23:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 23:18Bill Maher?

  Prince? I mean, I can name a lot of people-

• 23:20Speaker 04

  That was my song at the talent show.

• 23:21Bill Maher?

  Eddie Kendricks, you remember the high-

• 23:23Speaker 04

  Oh, great, oh, yeah, that was, I was listening to-

• 23:25Bill Maher?

  "Hey there lonely girl."

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, um, yeah, I was listening to it not so long ago. That's why I remembered the name. But, so, and that kind of also revivified interests at a time in the same way that, say, when I was, I was 28, 29, something like that, I did a play with Dustin Hoffman and-

• 23:59Bill Maher?

  Oh, I saw it. I think it's the first time I ever saw it. You're talking about Death of a Salesman?

• 24:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:03Bill Maher?

  I saw it on TV, I remember the TV, I remember where I was.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  Well-

• 24:06Bill Maher?

  Was it like 85?

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Eighty, yeah, that came out in 85.

• 24:10Bill Maher?

  My first apartment out here.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 24:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah, on Westmount.

• 24:14Speaker 04

  Well, well.

• 24:15Bill Maher?

  And I was blown away.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  Well, and that, but that-

• 24:20Bill Maher?

  That was-

• 24:20Speaker 04

  His kind of work ethic and the way he worked so hard.

• 24:25Bill Maher?

  Who, Dustin?

• 24:26Speaker 04

  Dustin. Meant, meant a huge thing to me, actually, because-

• 24:32Speaker 04

  I was not a big worker. I was like, yeah, yeah, I read it. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. Yeah, I said, okay, Gladys Van Nistelrooy, yeah, I saw he's a guy, yeah, okay. I got it. You know, just go out and do it and blah. I never thought about it, never really worked on it, just did it.

• 24:50Bill Maher?

  Maybe that's the best way to do it.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  I mean, I.

• 24:53Bill Maher?

  Isn't that what they're always trying to get to? That sort of just, don't act, just be just like.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  Sure, but.

• 25:00Bill Maher?

  Don't think about it too much.

• 25:01Speaker 04

  But the older you get, you can't really do that, I find. I mean, maybe it's the 5,000 bottles of red wine. Maybe it's, it could be a Catholicity of issues, but.

• 25:16Bill Maher?

  Talking about memory, don't even.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, so I have to.

• 25:22Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  I have to really apply myself. And I ran into people along the road that helped me to. It's work is never something I took too seriously. I can always leave it at home. I can always go on to the next, et cetera. But I met people who

• 25:50Speaker 04

  kept me interested in work my whole life. And that was great luck. Whereas some people, I think Brando is one, for whatever reason, I didn't know him. But for whatever reason, I think there are people who really lose interest in the work. And I find the work interesting.

• 26:13Bill Maher?

  Well, because you get offered good work. And the reason why that happens is because you are great at what you do, amazing at what you do. And you also were in hit movies. You were in like movies that everybody saw. And you also have that kind of cachet as that kind of a top tier actor. Well earned, you know, the Daniel Day Lewis's and the De Niro's and the Dustin's and you, you know. So when you have both of those, you'll always work. I mean, they'll always, they'll always be in demand. And I'm telling you.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  Very lucky.

• 26:42Bill Maher?

  Got. It's not luck, but it's lucky being born John Malkovich.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's lucky being born when I was.

• 26:50Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  In America.

• 26:51Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Or et cetera, et cetera, and the color of my skin without sounding like some kind of.

• 26:57Bill Maher?

  No, no, that's true.

• 26:58Speaker 04

  Clown. I, I had a lot of.

• 27:01Bill Maher?

  No, it's absolutely, yeah.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  I had a lot of advantages, but I do think, I say luck to the extent that somebody says, you work very hard. Yeah, sure, I do, but so, so do a lot of people who work in a factory. Or do, so do a lot of actors who never get anywhere.

• 27:22Bill Maher?

  No, we are very lucky to toil in the vineyard of the muse.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 27:27Bill Maher?

  Which is a lot I stole from.

• 27:28Speaker 04

  And it's a great job.

• 27:30Bill Maher?

  That's what I mean, it's like.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  It's fantastic.

• 27:32Bill Maher?

  There's, there's jobs and there's careers.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:35Bill Maher?

  Careers are fun, jobs are drudgery. I've had both.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:39Bill Maher?

  I know the difference. And by the way, everyone in America knows the difference.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:44Bill Maher?

  And that's why they don't want jobs. I can't blame them.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  No, I don't.

• 27:48Bill Maher?

  Don't worry, kids with AI, there won't be any.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, boy, what about that though? I mean, see, this, this terrifies me on a number of levels.

• 27:59Bill Maher?

  It should, it's terrifying.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  Because I have children and grandchildren.

• 28:02Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  And also because, I, I remember already five, six years ago, I was doing a play in, in London. And I was talking to a taxi driver there, because they're always very chatty. And we were talking about this idea of, yeah, that's right. You know, they're always, we were talking about this idea of driverless cars. And I, I just kind of go, okay, that's, that's okay.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  But and and maybe they'll be better than people. We're profoundly flawed, we're distracted, we run red lights, we get drunk, we get a hug.

• 28:47Bill Maher?

  Text while driving.

• 28:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, we text while driving, we put on makeup while driving.

• 28:51Bill Maher?

  I do.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, I certainly I do. Uh, just the other day, I was watching a girl as as someone who is driving me to work, as the driver is driving me to work, who is just doing her her makeup in the visor and really not looking at the road for kind of twenty seconds and going along the freeway. You know, um, and you know, you kind of go, is this would, is this the one on one or is this?

• 29:22Bill Maher?

  You you didn't say anything?

• 29:24Speaker 04

  No, she was in the next car.

• 29:26Bill Maher?

  Oh, the next car?

• 29:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, just driving along, looking at herself, and you know, you just kind of go, wow.

• 29:32Bill Maher?

  Said something.

• 29:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:33Bill Maher?

  I would have, I was once pulled over by a citizen.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:37Bill Maher?

  A citizen, I was driving so badly, a citizen pulled me over.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Citizen's arrest?

• 29:42Bill Maher?

  Citizen. No, just a guy who said, dude, you're going to have an accident.

• 29:48Speaker 04

  Okay, well, that's fair.

• 29:49Bill Maher?

  Very fair.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:51Bill Maher?

  And then I celebrated my way into his car and he drove me home.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 29:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I remember we went, he was beefing with his wife and we wound up going to strip clubs together.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 30:03Bill Maher?

  And then one of the strippers drove him back to where we left his car in Malibu.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  That's hilarious.

• 30:11Bill Maher?

  But um, are most of your friends show people?

• 30:14Speaker 04

  I have a good amount of people who are friends in some version of show business or the other, either producers, writers, or actors, etc.

• 30:28Bill Maher?

  Because that's who we get to know.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  That's who we get to know, that's who we work with.

• 30:34Speaker 04

  Most, most of them are that, and then I have friends who are not that. I just still have friends from childhood.

• 30:43Bill Maher?

  Me too. And there are many people, you know, show business, look, I rag on it all the time here, but the truth is that it's like any other industry, there are saints and there are sinners. And there's a lot, you know, if you think it's all shit, it's not all shit, it's mostly shit. It's mostly shit, but the stuff that's good is good. We're like, you know, we are very entertained, but we do the best we can and we can take solace for almost everybody in show business. That what we obsess on, that we could have done better, they're not noticing anyway. No.

• 31:25Bill Maher?

  They just, I never once saw you perform, perform and thought, oh, man, I would have really liked to seen an alternate version of that scene because he really could have, it's like, no. He's killing it as he always is, you know. And I'm so glad to find this out about you, your attitude, it's rare really among icons like that. You're right, the Brando and those guys, they did have a, George C. Scott kind of got cranky at the end. I mean, poor Gene Hackman got eaten by rats. How mad do you have to be in show business to let that happen to you?

• 32:02Bill Maher?

  You know. Oh, yeah, yeah. But. Yeah. No, but you have such a great attitude and it makes me think, oh, then he must be very proud, as I hope he is, of like the coners, the, in the line of fires, because like, those were like, just for the guy like me who is like, I am not a culture vulture, you know, I like culture. I think I'm pretty more cultured compared to where society has gone than the average bear, but I'm not into opera or ballet, you know, I don't, you know. But I, I just like a good movie that's all, it's entertaining and it's about something. And those were movies that fit that. I mean, I think in the line of fire.

• 32:45Bill Maher?

  It could be in my top ten of all movies of all time. Like the things I can watch over and over, can't seem to resist it. It sort of has a perfect script.

• 32:56Bill Maher?

  I don't know if you won awards for it, you probably should have. If you didn't, they got it wrong. And then Clint Eastwood actually could have and should have won a, I thought, a leading man actor for that.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  I love Clint.

• 33:09Bill Maher?

  But that performance.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was great.

• 33:11Bill Maher?

  He does some great work in that.

• 33:13Speaker 04

  I love him, and he was terrific. And I have a great Conner story, I think you'd like. I was a...

• 33:23Speaker 04

  We had a house in France, and I was living there. And I was there working on a screenplay of a film I later directed with a writer called Nicholas Shakespeare, who'd written the novel. And Nicholas had never written a screenplay. So three, including on the set of Conner later. We were working on the script in the afternoon. We'd come in for lunch, we were still there having a coffee. And then a package came, and it was a DHL. And it was a script, which is how you used to get, you know, before internet, in prehistory. You, that's how you got a script.

• 34:05Speaker 04

  And so I open up this package, I look at it, I see the title. I open the first page, I see the characters listed. You know, and I look at that, I kind of look at the first three lines or something.

• 34:23Bill Maher?

  Of your character or of the whole thing?

• 34:24Speaker 04

  No, of the whole thing. Just the title, the list of characters and stuff, which I noted, seemed to all have the last names of Romantic era poets. And...

• 34:38Bill Maher?

  Kind of an Easter egg for...

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, and so I kind of thought, okay. And I threw the script like this. We have a long kitchen in France, it's kind of sixteen meters. And I just chugged it like that. And Nicholas and I went on talking, et cetera.

• 34:56Speaker 04

  And... Then we went out and I pick weeds. We went on working as we did kind of all day long, et cetera, et cetera. And then at the end of the night, after a bunch of wine,

• 35:10Speaker 04

  Nicholas said to me, you know, John, I've never read a screenplay. Would you mind terribly if I took this screenplay that you received today and read it? And I said, oh, of course, be my guest, Nicholas. Of course, he went up to bed. Next morning he came down. He was just so upset and he said, I've read this thing. It's just the biggest piece of crap. It's just the worst thing I've ever read. Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada. Went on for kind of three minutes. Very, very English, public school boy. Very elegant language and, you know, very passionate. And he has a kind of sweetness about him, Nicholas. And he went on and on and on.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  And then he said, I'm just so glad I, I'm working with someone with such integrity that they would never consider a thing like this. And I was like, Nicholas, whoa, whoa. Nicholas, stop. Sorry, I'm doing it.

• 36:09Bill Maher?

  That's great.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  I read what I had to read. Con air, convicts on an airplane named after romantic area poets. That's 500 million. Jerry Bruckheimer producing.

• 36:21Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  Sorry, done. Don't really need to read it. I'm not a, a kind of snob about that.

• 36:31Bill Maher?

  No, you're not.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  I love funny things.

• 36:35Bill Maher?

  I like you more.

• 36:36Speaker 04

  I love childish things.

• 36:37Bill Maher?

  I like you a lot and I like you more now. It's great. Because like, I have to tell you, I was starting to say this like 20 minutes ago and then was stoned and forgot, but I'm gonna say it now. Like, I do spend a lot of time here, cause politics comes up and show business, talking about actors and I'm afraid it's not often very complimentary. I believe this about people in show business. The talent is overflowing. The talent is so awesome sometimes. I mean, just in music, acting, all this, all the arts, you know? It's just so, they are so talented, but not that bright with. And whenever I say this, I always say, with notable exceptions. And I just wanted to say to you, cause I really, I don't do any preparation, obviously.

• 37:21Bill Maher?

  But this is the one thing that I said, oh, he's here, I have to tell him this. When I say with notable exceptions, I think you are exactly who I'm talking about. And I mean just you. But I mean like, see, you said I was sitting in a house in France. This is how I picture you. Sitting in a house in France, surrounded by beatniks and poets and, you know, brilliant people. And then I thought, you're just like, okay, I've got to go to work for the next month and make 12 million dollars so we can live here in France. That's how I thought you were. So it's nice to know that you're enjoying the work. And actually, you want to get out of the house.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, well.

• 37:58Bill Maher?

  You're like every other guy.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Sorry, I did this for three days. Yeah. No, I'm not even so eager to get out of the house. But the fact is, that's where the work is. You know, in the year, when this series finishes, which brings me here, I'll have tours all over South America, North America, Europe. I'll direct a play in Japan.

• 38:25Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  I'll, your life is on the road. And I wouldn't do it if I didn't like it.

• 38:33Bill Maher?

  I couldn't anymore. This is where we part.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:36Bill Maher?

  You're a better man than I, Gung Gudin. I am so happy not having to be

• 38:41Speaker 04

  On the road.

• 38:42Bill Maher?

  Just away from the house, you know.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:44Bill Maher?

  But some people live more home bodies and some people were born in a trunk and that's how they feel comfortable.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:50Bill Maher?

  I mean, W.C. Fields couldn't get to sleep unless it was raining.

• 39:25Speaker 02

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• 39:55Speaker 03

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• 40:25Speaker 04

  How much did you tour? Like, how?

• 40:29Bill Maher?

  Every other weekend, I was on the road. But just two cities. A very pampered way of doing it. And it was still, it just got to be... First of all...

• 40:39Speaker 04

  It's a lot.

• 40:40Bill Maher?

  And also, I hate to put it this way, and of course, people will be upset, but people are just, like, at hotels and stuff, they just can't do shit anymore. I mean, I don't know whether they're stoned or disaffected, or both.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Both.

• 40:54Bill Maher?

  Or, you know, just whatever it is.

• 40:56Speaker 04

  But there's also...

• 40:57Bill Maher?

  It's just like, I just, and I'm not asking for the world. I just want a comfortable experience in a hotel. Don't fuck with the heat and the TV and what... Don't make it like I have to think about the fucking room for the all of 18 hours I'm here.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, they can't do that.

• 41:17Bill Maher?

  And why I'm screaming?

• 41:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, no. I scream about it, too.

• 41:22Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  See, something happened. One could say it was during COVID, but I think it's actually predated COVID.

• 41:32Speaker 04

  Now, you're supposed to do that job. So in other words, you no longer can go, say, to a travel agent and say, I would like to go from here to there, blah, blah, blah. You have to do it yourself. You have to notice that whenever you book an airplane ticket, that whatever you say, one bag, uh, no, uh, uh, Tulsa, not Tulsa, no Oklahoma City, know this, that, the date changes. Um, after you go through all this misery to book an airplane ticket,

• 42:13Speaker 04

  um, then they wanna know how they did. And so you have to do that job.

• 42:20Bill Maher?

  So needy.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  And it's, it's too needy.

• 42:24Bill Maher?

  To be corp, to be corporately needy. It's one thing to be personally, but as a corporation.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  How were we at car rental?

• 42:33Bill Maher?

  Do you like me?

• 42:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:34Bill Maher?

  Do you like what?

• 42:35Speaker 04

  I kind of go, listen, the, I, I said, I picked up a, a car, just a car, um, when I got back on the twentieth. Uh, I won't say what company, the woman is perfectly pleasant, um.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  And she started re-asking me all the questions where it says, do you want insurance? Um, okay, do you want, uh, thousands of dollars of third-party insurance?

• 43:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 43:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  Do you want this? Does your butt hurt? Does this blah, blah, yada, yada, and fucking on and on and on. And so you fill out all that. And I, I take the flight at dawn from Boston. I get to LA, I go to the, uh, rental car in Studio City. And she starts the same questions over. And I kind of say, excuse me, miss. See, when you, when you fill out this form, um, you answer all those questions with, with your reward allegedly being shorter time at the checkout.

• 43:57Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  And now you're re-asking me all these things in the hopes of getting me to pay twenty-seven dollars for or this radio station or blah, blah, blah. All of which I already answered. I already did all that. And that's in everything now. If they ship you something, how was it? Well, I paid you, you shipped it, I have it. If I don't have it, you'll hear from me. But otherwise, it's fine. And now you just do everyone's job. Everyone.

• 44:34Bill Maher?

  See, this is another reason why I didn't have kids. You just have more money when you have no kids.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 44:41Bill Maher?

  I haven't faced any of this.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:44Bill Maher?

  This century. I flew on a private plane, got picked up. I never dealt with a fucking agent, the rental cars. You shouldn't either. But because you have kids, which take all your money.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 44:57Bill Maher?

  That.

• 44:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:59Bill Maher?

  I'm just saying.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, which you don't get to leave them.

• 45:03Bill Maher?

  No. No, and I'm sure the reward is much greater than having to deal with that agent. But after hearing that story, it's.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  But sure, but it's, it's just, that's what I find now. Everybody wants you to do their job.

• 45:20Bill Maher?

  But you, and yet you put up with this because obviously it's worth it to get there, to the gig.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:27Bill Maher?

  It still, it still is.

• 45:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:29Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 45:30Speaker 04

  For me.

• 45:30Bill Maher?

  That must, that's powerful. That's a powerful love.

• 45:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:34Bill Maher?

  That you have for the job.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  If I go, um, one, one of the pieces I tour uh, is a, a piece called The Infamous Ramirez Hoffman. This is a, a, I simply read a story. I don't act. There is no acting in it. I read a story. It's a story by Roberto Bologna from his book Nazi Literature in the Americas, which is, uh.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  A book, a small novel of Bolaños, who he wrote two massive masterpieces. One called Savage Detectives and one called Two Six Six Six.

• 46:17Bill Maher?

  I took them both to the beach.

• 46:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, brilliant, okay, well, brilliant writer. He wrote a kind of very childish, quite funny book and and quite, I mean, in a very dark way, quite a mordant way, but also quite a sad book. This book Nazi Literature in the Americas, which is essentially forty fake obituaries of fake Nazis who never existed, all of whom have idiotic literary obsessions. So I.

• 46:49Bill Maher?

  Fake Nazis.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  Who never existed.

• 46:51Bill Maher?

  So somebody who they're claiming, for example, was spirited out of Germany after the war. Wound up in Brazil, say, or Paraguay.

• 47:00Speaker 04

  Boys from Brazil, Paraguay.

• 47:02Bill Maher?

  Because that did happen.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course, a lot.

• 47:05Bill Maher?

  Eichmann and.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  Sure, a lot.

• 47:06Bill Maher?

  The Boys from Brazil movie.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  Of course, yeah.

• 47:09Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 47:09Speaker 04

  There's a new remake.

• 47:10Bill Maher?

  But these are fake ones.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, these are fake ones.

• 47:13Bill Maher?

  These are AI Nazis.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  AI, exactly. I hope they'll be more likely looking than the AI Nazis were. But because I don't remember a lot of African.

• 47:26Bill Maher?

  No, I remember that. I saw the picture.

• 47:30Speaker 04

  That's.

• 47:30Bill Maher?

  Right, if you think AI might be, well.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  But this, I got asked by a pianist, a very gifted Russian pianist, what would I do if, what could I come up with her, if she wanted to do a tango program? And I immediately thought of this book because South America, Boys from Brazil, very, very

• 47:56Speaker 04

  kind of American movie culture thinking about it, Eichmann.

• 48:00Bill Maher?

  What is the point of view of the book?

• 48:04Speaker 04

  It's quite, uh, some of it's very funny, very mordant, quite dark humor. That particular piece is, uh, actually terrifically sad. Which is about a character in Chile. Who is called the infamous Ramirez Hoffman. Who starts out as a kind of artsy, fartsy, pot-smoking poet.

• 48:36Bill Maher?

  Hey, I'm sitting right here.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, and ends up as a serial killer. And, uh, the representative of the Pinochet's regime. Interest in avant-garde art. And I said, I wanna take this short story. And I wanna make a musical piece out of it. So it's kind of eighty-two minutes. I do nothing but read this story. It has a brilliant pianist, a brilliant violinist.

• 49:10Bill Maher?

  But what it, what is it saying that made you wanna do this? Of all the things you could do. I mean, you say, you say fake Nazis. Is that some comment on how it's easy to put one over on people? I mean, that we can always be fooled into or, or.

• 49:25Speaker 04

  Well, we can certainly be, as we know, including me. But I, no, I don't think it's that. It's about the cost of things. The cost of being human. The cost of what you do to others. Uh, the cost of violence and death and the reverberations.

• 49:48Bill Maher?

  Well, that's a deep thought.

• 49:50Speaker 04

  All, but all told.

• 49:52Bill Maher?

  No, I mean it.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  It is. And that's, that's why I do.

• 49:57Bill Maher?

  I mean, it just because I remember Woody Allen was here recently. And, you know, I was kind of pressing him on this idea that, you know, he said at a certain point. Uh, you know, he never made a great movie and, you know. Which I would debate.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  Oh, Broadway Danny Rose is certainly.

• 50:15Bill Maher?

  I love a lot of his movies.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  And he made some some stinkers. Yeah, sure.

• 50:20Bill Maher?

  But, you know, that because he's a true artist, you know, he's willing to fail.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  And we make stinkers.

• 50:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and we make stinkers, absolutely. Maybe we're making one now.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  It's possible.

• 50:29Bill Maher?

  No, we're definitely not. I'm enjoying the fuck out of it, but.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I.

• 50:35Bill Maher?

  But, yeah, go ahead.

• 50:36Speaker 04

  He's a smart man. I agree with him about that. It it happens.

• 50:43Speaker 04

  But at any rate. So that's why I do it, that. That connection with people who understand

• 50:58Speaker 04

  what this writer is saying and what the music is saying.

• 51:04Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 51:04Speaker 04

  And are touched by it irregardless of the fact that it's not in their language. Yeah, it has a running translation.

• 51:12Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  Irregardless of the fact that they don't like classical music as far as they know. But because they don't know, in fact, they do like it, they just haven't heard it.

• 51:22Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  Oh, and they haven't heard it in a way that

• 51:30Speaker 04

  they they can see and most importantly feel what it does to them when channeled in a certain way. And that's why the form interests me.

• 51:44Bill Maher?

  I I must say, when I hear things like this, it's it's another one of those where it's fascinating to me because it's not me. Because and I'm torn because part of me says, I'm a little jealous that I'm not on this intellectual level.

• 51:59Speaker 04

  I don't think it's a high level at all.

• 52:01Bill Maher?

  I do. I mean, I.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  I really don't.

• 52:03Bill Maher?

  You said people who haven't heard classical music, I have heard it, and it's not my, it's not for me.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:08Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, I grew up on fucking, you know, the Rolling Stones and.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  Me too.

• 52:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I know.

• 52:14Speaker 04

  But me too.

• 52:15Bill Maher?

  But some and some people can make that bridge. I'm just saying. Part of me like wishes I could and knows that there's a place to get to that's like, like maybe would tickle my brain even more. And part of me is like, eh, I'm smart enough.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  You're a very smart man.

• 52:31Bill Maher?

  Thank you. I mean, I have a very good common sense and a balance.

• 52:35Speaker 04

  Yes, and I, I think it's just, and this is where this form first appealed to me.

• 52:45Speaker 04

  I think it's just how one is or isn't exposed to something. And how that thing impacts you. I, I remember seeing, I, I directed a play in London a few years ago called The Good Canary. And I, that was the third production I had done of it. In, in, done in two other countries before. And a young kid at intermission came over. It was a good production. It's a very nice play by an American writer called Zach Helm. And it was a good production with, with an excellent cast.

• 53:27Speaker 04

  And a kid came over to me, young kid, probably twenty or very early twenties. Very good looking kid, English boy, you know, I was standing there. I still, I think I still smoked then. I think, maybe I didn't, but went out for intermission. And the kid came over to me, he was kind of shaking. And he said to me, and this was just a kid. And he said to me, excuse me, are, are plays always like this? I've never been to a play. And I said, no, they're not. Usually it's a misery.

• 54:10Speaker 04

  And I've been in a lot of those. This one is not one of those. So.

• 54:19Speaker 04

  They can always, they can also be very, very special and

• 54:27Speaker 04

  make you, in the best way, reflect profoundly on life and the human experience. What do you think is it that makes it a misery, though, when it's a misery? Well. Like, what were you referring to? Uh, many plays I've direct, for instance, I directed a very famous production of a play called The Savages by the great English writer Christopher Hampton, which was widely chosen as the worst production in the history of Chicago theater. Really? This had thirty-five naked alleged savages Oh. who were meant to be the Sintas largas Indians in Where are they from?

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Amazon Basin of Brazil, who were being exterminated.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  The play started on press night. I had said to two of the savages, people playing savages, but these are kids from the North Shore of Chicago, whatever suburbs. Okay. In seats quite low in the theater. So you either had a vagina. Wow. A butthole or a set of balls directly in your face. Wow. So. Really? Here's how the play started, started with my friend Tom Irwin, terrific actor, reciting a poem about these Sintas largas Indians.

• 55:59Speaker 04

  I had said, five minutes before the play started, I had said, hey, hey, listen to me. If the torch goes out to these two actors who were playing savages, two of the savages, if his torch goes out or your torch goes out with the sternum in the torch, don't try and attempt to light the other idiot's torch with your

• 56:29Speaker 04

  defunct torch, okay? Am I clear? What? Okay, again, don't try to light. So. Uh, the poem starts thirty flat naked Indians have walked out doing what is what the Peruvians referred to as a piss dance.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  Everybody's kind of like this, they're this far away from the actors. Um, they're like, fuck, wait, what? And one torch goes out, the guy goes to light up the guy's torch.

• 57:06Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 57:06Speaker 04

  Whole, whole stage, wooden stage on fire.

• 57:10Bill Maher?

  Oh, no.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  Opening press night.

• 57:12Bill Maher?

  Did, since it was opening night, did they think that was what was supposed to happen in the play?

• 57:16Speaker 04

  They always think that.

• 57:18Bill Maher?

  Right, so if it catches on fire, they think.

• 57:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, and if they catch on fire, well, I guess it's just meant to be.

• 57:25Bill Maher?

  We're talking about.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  Direction.

• 57:26Bill Maher?

  Hey, hey, there's no bad publicity, am I wrong?

• 57:28Speaker 04

  That's right, so.

• 57:30Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  We had a girl who during the scenes of the terrorist, uh, kind of Carlos the jagged figure you may have remember.

• 57:40Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 57:40Speaker 04

  Uh, and the, the kidnapped English diplomat up on the top of our set, which had, which had three strips which looked like giant sizzling members, sizzling the kind of fake bacon. For some reason, which I never understood and never asked, because you know, it wasn't the set designer. I wonder what that sizzling is for, but as the savage band would be playing their little homemade instruments underneath this very serious set, there was a girl who was just, uh, had a gas issue. Who would just.

• 58:22Bill Maher?

  Not with that fire. Oh my god, talk about a recipe for disaster.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  Talking about the audience, the furthest person is like where that sofa is. So there's an, there's. Olfactory, there's smell. And on a certain level, isn't there taste?

• 58:40Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 58:41Speaker 04

  I mean, and you had people who were supposedly have never heard English spoken, let and have never even heard Portuguese spoken, let alone English. And the guy is supposed to be the chief of the tribe. And then during the ritual, he gets handed the bowl of fruit. And what does he say? Usually just puts in his mouth and he says, he says nothing. He goes, mm, berries. Okay, so it's like.

• 59:08Bill Maher?

  You mean he ad libbed that?

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's an ad lib. And you kind of go, okay. And it was just, oh, my friend Bob Foles. A terrific director from a different theater in Chicago. He came to it a couple of weeks into the run. And I asked him to come and say, listen, would you mind coming? I it's it's not good at all. But I'm hoping maybe you'll be able to say something that I can do, you know, blah, blah, blah. And Bob's very tall. He's like six, four. At the end of the play, he kind of stood up, stretched his legs. And I'm just still sitting down and he kind of bent over me. And I said, well, Bob, what like, what do you? What do you think I should do? And he go, close it. And that's exactly.

• 59:54Bill Maher?

  Can I ask this question? What did you or the you and or the people who put on this play? What point were you think you were making? That that was enhanced by the balls and the pussy and the asshole? And this other, what point did you think you were making? You must have thought you were making a point. Because when we're young, we want to make a point.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  No, I don't think it was about that that point. They were just meant to represent these naked savages.

• 1:00:27Bill Maher?

  Okay, but what is the play about? What is it?

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  It is about the extermination of this. Tribe of Indians as told through the eyes of this British diplomat. And.

• 1:00:40Bill Maher?

  Just saying that's bad.

• 1:00:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:00:43Speaker 04

  And it's just was a miserable production and failed on every level.

• 1:00:47Bill Maher?

  It should because it's not a deep idea. Like evil evil is bad. Yes, it is. Now let's say something interesting about it. I was gonna say before I when Woody Allen was here, we were having this little debate. About, you know, he never made a great movie. I said, I think you did. And that's why so many of your idols when you were, you know, making movies like Aliyah Kazan were all your biggest fans. They wouldn't be your fans if he didn't make a great movie. He said, I never had a lofty thought. I said lofty thoughts. First of all, there's only one. And then I know you're a Eugene O'Neill fan. He once said, and this is what I was saying to Woody Allen. The only lofty thought to me is that in Eugene O'Neill's words.

• 1:01:27Bill Maher?

  A life with illusions is unpardonable and a life without illusions is unbearable. I feel like.

• 1:01:34Speaker 04

  A nonlivable.

• 1:01:35Bill Maher?

  Everything is a variation on saying that in an entertaining way.

• 1:01:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would agree.

• 1:01:41Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  I would agree. Yeah. And there is also.

• 1:01:45Bill Maher?

  Damn.

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  There's also a question. No, I think you're right. But there is also a question, I think, that should exist, should be innate. In good, serious work, which is how do we live? That that question, not in a pretentious way.

• 1:02:05Bill Maher?

  Very much so. Right.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  And does this tell me anything? And in that case, probably the play, at least my production of it, didn't tell me anything. And I think really affecting things and effective things make you reflect on how to live.

• 1:02:26Bill Maher?

  There's such a cognitive dissonance in this age because of what is going on in Washington. And what is going on in the country, which. You know, is so different than anything if you're a young person. You just don't have that experience that we have that we remember normal. So we can't quite communicate to you how abnormal things really are. And yet our lives go on the same way.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  Totally fine.

• 1:02:56Bill Maher?

  So it's almost like we're in a glass bottom boat. You know, we're looking at the sharks. But we're in the glass bottom boat. We're not in the water.

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:03:05Bill Maher?

  Though we might be in the water. Because of the.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  Well, of course, anything could happen, but.

• 1:03:12Bill Maher?

  But you know what I mean about.

• 1:03:13Speaker 04

  I totally agree. I don't see myself as a political person.

• 1:03:19Bill Maher?

  Good, let's know.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  But I, I think about it like this. I would never let.

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  And if it came to that.

• 1:03:34Speaker 04

  Then I'd have to rethink it, obviously. But I'm seventy one, I'll be seventy two in December. I don't decide my day by who's president and who isn't.

• 1:03:47Bill Maher?

  And you shouldn't.

• 1:03:48Speaker 04

  I live my life.

• 1:03:50Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  I try to.

• 1:03:52Bill Maher?

  Be the best person you can be.

• 1:03:53Speaker 04

  Be a decent person. I try to be a good colleague. I tried to be a decent human being. I tried to learn something. I understand I don't have many questions. Many answers to many questions.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  And that's, that's all I can do.

• 1:04:19Bill Maher?

  Well, and you're also lucky like I am is that you not just learn, you transmit. You're in the job of transmitting what you learn. So am I, as best I can.

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:04:29Bill Maher?

  I'm trying to tell people what I really think and will be helpful and so forth. And but you do the same thing in your art form. You know, you're, you're, you're putting ideas in the water.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you, you, you're much more daring than I am. But in, in a way, that's your job.

• 1:04:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it's my job.

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  It's your job. And, and you're.

• 1:04:54Bill Maher?

  I love my job.

• 1:04:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's a great job.

• 1:04:57Bill Maher?

  With all the shit that goes with it. There's a lot of shit from both sides.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:05:02Bill Maher?

  And it's so, and it's so worth it. It's so, it's so much, it's so, as the old ad used to go, priceless. It's so priceless to be able to say what you really think always.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:05:13Bill Maher?

  And not worry about where the chips fall. And, you know, they fall on lots of people on both sides and.

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  Of course, and, and they've fallen on you also.

• 1:05:23Bill Maher?

  And they fall on me, sure. That's fine.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  You know.

• 1:05:26Bill Maher?

  You know, we're so lucky.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:05:29Bill Maher?

  We're just basically lucky. We were born in the right country at the right time. Don't you think we, being our age, were kind of born at a blessed time? Because it's before the AI and environment goes really off the rails time, which is coming. The robots taking over. And it's, you know, but it's also after we had toilets and antibiotics. And, you know, I feel like we were in a very favorable time.

• 1:05:58Speaker 04

  Most favorable time I would say I could think of in human history. And I know I benefited completely from that. I had very solid parents.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  I had siblings that I loved. Most of them gone now sadly. I grew up in a nice little town. I had great friends.

• 1:06:31Bill Maher?

  Sounds like we could have switched.

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  I mean, and.

• 1:06:34Bill Maher?

  I didn't have a lot of friends.

• 1:06:35Speaker 04

  I'm, I had, I had a lot of friends and I still have quite a few. But I, that's why.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  When, when I mentioned luck, see, you don't get any luckier than that.

• 1:06:49Bill Maher?

  Right. It's lucky to be making or living in the arts. You realize that the arts is not under the category with humans of necessities.

• 1:07:00Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 1:07:00Bill Maher?

  That would be like defense and getting food and, and shit like that.

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:06Bill Maher?

  We're definitely in the, well, you won't die without it category.

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:07:11Bill Maher?

  You're not gonna die without Netflix.

• 1:07:13Speaker 04

  No, you may read a book without it.

• 1:07:15Bill Maher?

  Even books, you wouldn't die.

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  No, even books, you wouldn't die.

• 1:07:19Bill Maher?

  Air, water, food.

• 1:07:20Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:07:21Bill Maher?

  Barbarians attacking you.

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  Warmth, maybe.

• 1:07:24Bill Maher?

  Warmth, absolutely, yes.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  Arrows, whatever, clubs.

• 1:07:28Bill Maher?

  Absolutely. Lots of stuff could kill you.

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're not in that field and.

• 1:07:33Bill Maher?

  Certainly not in this room.

• 1:07:34Speaker 04

  I wouldn't wanna be.

• 1:07:35Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:07:36Speaker 04

  And I'm glad I'm not, but I'm also hopefully appreciative I'm not.

• 1:07:41Bill Maher?

  Also, wouldn't wanna have been born even a hundred years ago. Where, you know, I mean, I don't think people realize how much this country has changed in a hundred years. A hundred, a hundred years ago, I would say, I'm, I'm pulling this out of my ass. But it's apropos because I'm gonna talk about toilets. Like, a, a fairly goodly percentage of the country did not have like flow toilets. Like on the farm there, there was a hundred years ago.

• 1:08:08Speaker 04

  Oh, God, even when I was a kid.

• 1:08:10Bill Maher?

  What?

• 1:08:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, out in the country.

• 1:08:13Bill Maher?

  Oh, out in the country, yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  Our, uh, uh, Ms. Burkhart, who, who my grandfather referred to as Bubbles Burkhart.

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  Used to, when the bus would, uh, let the kids from the countryside in. She would throw up the windows even with the dead of winter to kind of emphasize their stink. You know?

• 1:08:39Bill Maher?

  Come on.

• 1:08:40Speaker 04

  You know, you don't really want that in a grade school teacher, but okay.

• 1:08:47Speaker 04

  So, no, they, they couldn't even imagine, but that's the problem. It's really hard to imagine. This, this is something I, I find.

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  Often fairly objectionable in some youth. I don't in any way say all youth because I've had great experiences working with with people who are much, much younger than me and kids and I've met and work with some super smart ones. A little bit dangerous to judge people now who lived a hundred years ago. I've done tons of shit on that. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of. Hey, listen, you you're not. I don't believe you're better. No. I don't believe, I mean, you might be smarter. You just came later. You just came later. That's right.

• 1:09:46Speaker 04

  And lots of things of great beauty or importance or bravery or humor or kindness. At least that I can say um I met wonderful people in my life, older than me, who knew more, who went to their grave knowing more, who did more important things for more important. Well, now you're that guy. Now you're the older guy. I'm the older guy, I but I'm not. You're running out of people who are older than us. Yeah, well, I'm almost completely out. But. I mean. But what I mean is, you know, uh. But you're not a.

• 1:10:31Speaker 04

  I'll never be my father. There's no way. You mean as good? Yeah, no way. Well, how is he better than you? Um, he was environmentalist in the 50s when people thought he was insane. He was eighty second airborne. He was a. Oh, yeah. A lot of things. He didn't give a flying shit about money. There was nothing corrupt about him. I would say the same with my father. So I go, sorry, I I, you know, I. Had I, if I detested myself, I would have killed myself.

• 1:11:04Bill Maher?

  They used to say about us boomers when we were kids. That we were what we say now about like the millennials and the Gen Z spoiled. Like just entitled, bratty, like soft, really soft.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:11:16Bill Maher?

  Because compared to our fathers, we are soft.

• 1:11:19Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:11:19Bill Maher?

  It's just they got so much more soft. We're fucking Marines compared to them.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:11:24Bill Maher?

  Which is so ridiculous because we're not Marines.

• 1:11:26Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:11:26Bill Maher?

  They were Marines.

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:11:27Bill Maher?

  They literally were Marines or army people or whatever.

• 1:11:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Bill Maher?

  They went to war, depression, the whole nine.

• 1:11:34Speaker 04

  Everything.

• 1:11:34Bill Maher?

  All the things. And the blacks fighting for like, you know, against fire hoses and dogs and like.

• 1:11:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Bill Maher?

  Like it just was a different.

• 1:11:42Speaker 04

  Attacked by, by German shepherds for being alive.

• 1:11:45Bill Maher?

  Different level.

• 1:11:46Speaker 04

  Or wanting to go to school.

• 1:11:47Bill Maher?

  But they said that about baby boomers and, and it's just, it never like. There was never any, uh, you know, backlash. It was just more lash.

• 1:11:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Bill Maher?

  We're just gonna go worse and worse and worse and worse.

• 1:12:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:01Bill Maher?

  Until now, they're just so fragile.

• 1:12:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:04Bill Maher?

  It's just.

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

  It's something I tried to discourage, but it exists. And I don't know why, like, like I've often had people, you know, when I do interviews or something. My, my family's was fairly prone to violence. And my father, who as I mentioned was eighty to second airborne. He would say a very simple thing and you knew, you knew what the end result was going to be. Uh, as surely as the sun came up in the east. He would say, Johnny, when you pull the chain, the toilet flushes.

• 1:12:49Speaker 04

  Okay. I pulled the chain all the time and the toilet flushed. So there's no point in saying I got wet. Okay.

• 1:12:58Bill Maher?

  Oh, what?

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  There's no point. So I don't have any of that.

• 1:13:03Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:13:03Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 1:13:05Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  Oh, I was beaten. You're fucking right, I was beaten. And I should, I, I should have had four more for every one I got. And I didn't get a tiny amount. I got. Numerous ones.

• 1:13:21Bill Maher?

  Well, I can't endorse that, and I'm always.

• 1:13:23Speaker 04

  No, I'm not saying I endorse it.

• 1:13:25Bill Maher?

  Oh, OK.

• 1:13:25Speaker 04

  I'm just saying, it doesn't make me a victim.

• 1:13:28Bill Maher?

  I am someone who believes in spanking as a sort of nuclear option. That, I was just talking to somebody who had a very similar experience. He said, you know, I didn't get spanked a lot, a few times. And I said, me too, me too, like a few times. Like when they, you really commit that kind of foul? That they have to let you know, not a beating, not a beating, a spanking. But the fact that we, we got to this place where that was just completely verboten. That was unthinkable, and it should not be unthinkable.

• 1:14:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I kind of agree. I don't think it should be unthinkable because what I've witnessed, this is just my personal opinion. What I've witnessed is a lot of kind of

• 1:14:16Speaker 04

  emotional blowback, both to parents and in children who can, that can never be expressed. Which then, I think, ends up creating a lot of resentment. You know, for me, when I was a kid, I knew if I crossed that line.

• 1:14:36Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:36Speaker 04

  I was fucked, that's it, you're fucked. And that was boom, boom, boom, it's over. I didn't really think about it.

• 1:14:45Bill Maher?

  But you know, you, you actors who have your instrument.

• 1:14:49Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:50Bill Maher?

  Did this help you have your instrument? Or was this like, no, I'm just gonna read the lines?

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  You know, that's a great question, but I don't think it's one I can answer in that.

• 1:15:05Speaker 04

  It's like Popeye, you know,

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  we am what we am, and that's all we am. So I can't say what I would have been like as an actor if I didn't have my childhood.

• 1:15:20Bill Maher?

  But when you are that spitting, frothing assassin in the line of fire, it does make me think now that we're having this conversation that it would be so easy just to be like, you know, you had that sort of attitude in you for a long time, probably about your father. Because, I mean, even when the few times my father smacked me, I definitely hated him.

• 1:15:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:15:44Bill Maher?

  Of course, who's not gonna hate somebody who's hitting you?

• 1:15:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:15:48Bill Maher?

  And it sounds like you got a lot more than I did.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I got a decent amount.

• 1:15:54Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54Speaker 04

  I think I hated my father at times.

• 1:16:00Speaker 04

  But mostly, I loved him and I never... I'll tell you what I think was the important takeaway.

• 1:16:09Speaker 04

  He... Anything I did that was good, that was expected. It wasn't praised, it was... That was a minimum.

• 1:16:20Bill Maher?

  My father was the same way. That was that generation. That was how they were.

• 1:16:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you get this many strikeouts, I was a pitcher. You get this many tackles, I was a football player. You do this play or that play, you do whatever it is you do.

• 1:16:37Bill Maher?

  I once had a report card with all As and one B. And he said about that subject, he said, "Oh, I guess you had some hard tests in biology, huh?" You know, just sort of passive aggressive, like, really? Nothing about the five As?

• 1:16:52Speaker 04

  That's right. No, no, that... Run and peek.

• 1:16:55Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:57Speaker 04

  Well, but that... See, to me, that's what I think is wrong, kind of generationally. It seems to me, and I've been in fault of it too, that you always say, "That was superb, that was fantastic, you're beautiful, you're funny, that's great, that... What a beautiful drawing," yada, yada. I don't know if that's good for kids.

• 1:17:20Bill Maher?

  It's not.

• 1:17:24Speaker 04

  It's locked.

• 1:17:25Bill Maher?

  No, no, no, it's not locked.

• 1:17:26Speaker 04

  It is?

• 1:17:28Bill Maher?

  Oh, it is? So hard to get good help.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

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