"Dustin Hoffman"

We’re in the moment with Dustin Hoffman. Questions on answers— what we used to call a “tape recorder,” memory, quitting, running lines with Sir Laurence, and of course: who’s got dogs? “What’s in you where you do that thing that that guy is doing?” … on an all-new SmartLess.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:55Speaker 00

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• 2:38Speaker 01

  Ah, good morning! Good morning, everybody! This is your cold open, let's get started. Welcome to Smartless!

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Can I ask you guys a question? Can I ask you?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  I was thinking about this the other day. How do you feel about brushing your teeth in the shower? I'm not down with that.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I used to love that.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  I don't know anybody who does that.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I know a lot of people who do that.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and people shave too in the shower.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Shave, I kind of get, it's already happening. You got a mirror suction to the wall or whatever.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Oh, do you, really? Hang on, do you?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  But, uh, but...

• 3:33Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  But brushing your teeth, to me, it's like buying groceries at the pharmacy. Like, no, I don't want to buy milk.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  And it's a bit of a waste of water, right? It takes a while there.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  It's a lot of water.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Do you turn off the faucet when you brush your teeth in the sink?

• 3:48Speaker 01

  Great question.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Thanks, man.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Great question.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  I have an interview show on the computer.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Have you been nominated for interviewing?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Has anybody you work with been nominated for interviewing?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, a guy that I did, I actually did a show where there were three of us. And then one guy was singled out. And he ended up being the weakest link. We ended up firing him years later.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  But anyway, we'll be back with 2030 after these messages.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  What about?

• 4:18Speaker 01

  I do, I do...

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Wait, do you pee in the shower at all?

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, pee in the shower, sure, fine, totally fine.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  You don't pee in the pool anymore, do you?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Because you guys used to pee in the pool, right? You guys get like a couple of pool peers.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  I've peed in your pool.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Have you? No, you've never been in my pool.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  I have, once.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Really? Shaun, you've never been in my pool.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  I've never been in it.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  I've been in yours, I think.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Uh, maybe.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  I've been in yours. Remember Shaun, when I was living above your garage for a while?

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Wait, why?

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Shaun, that was almost 20 years ago.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then, and I'd come home...

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Why have you lived in my house and you've lived in Shaun's house? What's the matter with you?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Free, are you noticing a trend here?

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's so true.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  I know.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  I'd come home and be like, where's Will? Look out, he's like splashing around in the pool in the back.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Well, I was living in New York and so I'm out there and I'm like, "Look at these, people got a pool out here in California. It's a beautiful day, I want to try to make..." And when you were a kid and you knew somebody who had a pool and you'd be like, "Oh my God."

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was huge. Or pool table, right? Like a billiards table.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, or pool table, yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  And you'd never, I never understood why my friends never played on their pool table all day long, every day.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, where somebody would have like a pinball machine. You're like, "Can we just play that now?" And they're like, "I guess."

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  I know. I think pool is kind of like poker where like if a 10-year-old can do it, it's not that hard. Like a 10-year-old can play poker.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  You know, once you learn Texas Hold'em. Like you can play pool too, right?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  I guess, Shaun, let's think this one through.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  He got nominated.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  We should include that he did not win. And if we went into the numbers, it was probably a distant fifth in that range.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  But I do want to say, wait, sidebar before...

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, let's go sidebar.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  So Willie gave me a book a while ago called The Silent Patient. I'm almost done.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  The Silent Patient. And it was started because I was like envious of Will. Like he reads all the time. I was like, I kind of want to be a person that reads. Look at all these books, I don't read them.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't either.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  So now I want to, I want to start reading.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  I wonder if our surprise guest reads.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Well, you know what? Now that we're there, our surprise guest, A, I pretty much guarantee that he does read. And B, he's just written a book himself.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, which, to add, which is insane considering to add to everything that he's ever done. His credits are almost without compare. He is, he is a two-time Academy Award winner. He has starred in some of the greatest movies that I've ever seen. And you know, once I start listening, you're going to know. But I'm going to go in no particular order just because I'm going to try to confuse you, but I won't. I'm going to go All the President's Men, Marathon Men, The Graduate, Kramer vs. Kramer, Rain Men. You guys, it is one of the great, all-time great actors. And somebody I'm completely thrilled to meet, you guys, it's Dustin Hoffman.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  The best, the best.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  Wow. How's that, is that better? Okay. Anyways, hello, gentlemen.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Now Dustin, how come you're not my guest? What happened here?

• 7:31Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't even know how this happened, period. Well, oh, I do. My daughter, Ally, told me about this show. Because I don't, I, I literally hate all this mechanized stuff. I can't even work on iPhone. And you guys know how to do this. And I can tell by the way you enjoy each other that you're making a lot of money together.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  And I asked, I asked before the show started, how much you're making. And I could not get an amount from your producer. Human beings are like that. They'd rather admit their infidelities than tell you how much money they get for something.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Sure, that is true. Dustin, how are things? It's great to see you, my friend.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  It's wonderful to see you. I mean, really wonderful. I'll just say, I think we met when we were doing Magorium, right?

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  And I remember we had a scene together. And I thought, oh, this guy's a new guy around the block. Let me see if I can help him. And I said, he knows what he's doing. I had no idea you were a child actor.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it started early and I haven't been able to shake it. I hope I'm around and doing it as well as you're doing it and be as relevant as you are. I mean, it's just like the career, Dustin. Do you, do you, do you take a moment ever to pat yourself on the back privately? And you, and you're just talking to us, no one's listening. You can admit it. If like, do you allow yourself to be proud of what you've done and the talent that you've shared with all of us?

• 9:11Speaker 03

  You want the truth, right?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Please.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  It's close to it.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  I think, well, you guys are successful yourselves. So you can ask yourself the same question. Because with me...

• 9:23Speaker 03

  The truth is, I always, it's like another person. I say, who is that guy?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  You don't, don't you do that yourself?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and the media is somewhat responsible for that. They have a job to do, so they, they create a bit of a, of a profile too, that they, that they perpetuate, or mold, or adjust, or, or destroy, or build up and all. But yeah, you go home and you just got you, all day, every day, wherever you are. And, and so, yeah, there are two different things. But, you know, the, the, the product that, that you participate in, that you help to create, and do you, do you, are you able to get some separate? Well, you know, like, well, I'm just saying, well, let me finish. Like, you know, as a consumer, right, as an audience member, you end up watching, or participate, or, or, or buying that product. Like, you watch the movies that you make, yes?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Um, and are you able to appreciate, as a, as a, as a viewer, as an audience member? Like, I like that stuff. I, I, he's got my taste. I, I like what he does. You enjoy watching yourself, you know?

• 10:25Speaker 03

  You still want an honest answer?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Please.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  I don't know about you guys, well, I don't know if you guys do something where you can look at it right after you've done it.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  On, I guess, these podcasts you can listen to.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  But originally, when I do a movie, I would always see the rushes first, right? And then, uh, I would complain about, you know, to myself, I did that wrong, I did that wrong. I wanna do another one. And then you see the completed movie, and it's a drag, actually. Because, for a very real reason, you try to do your best work when you're making a movie.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  And you're not in the cutting room.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  And someone else decides which take is your best take, which is far from the truth.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  And it's painful to say, why did they use that take when you first see it? Why did you, and then I just never look at it again.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  But, but, but also, but also there's that thing, it's, it may not be your best take, but also, at that point, you've kinda, you have to give yourself up to the idea that it, for, for whatever, for better or for worse, that whoever's the director and the editor, they're putting together, and they're like, this serves the story better, or this serves the great, the movie better, not necessarily. This might not be your best take, but this helps us in this way. And, and sometimes I get what you're saying, is it's sometimes a hard pill to swallow.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  You're just like my, you're just like my wife, you're defending the other side.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  No, I know, of course. But don't you know, you know, there's an expression, my friend tells me that, which is that experts come from out of town, which is, you know, you, you can tell somebody something, and then somebody else will say, and they'll go, hey, so, so and so said, and you're like, I've been saying that forever, and it's, yeah, experts come from out of town. You know, Dustin, I'm reminding, we're kind of all over the place here, but I, it just occurred to me, hearing you say that, and talking about looking at your work, or, or looking at the, the rushes and saying, I could've done that better. I remember hearing your story, and confirm if it's true, I, I remember somebody telling me, back when you were making Rain Man, which I thought was, you know, obviously, like, everybody else, was incredible performance. And, and as a, as a young guy, wanted to be an actor, and looked, and, and watching

• 12:37Speaker 01

  that performance, thinking like, wow, like, you can, somebody doing this in this way, like, it was just mesmerizing, transforming, really. Did, and, and I, somebody told me that you would come home every night and think, Jesus, what the hell am I doing, and, and I don't like what I'm doing? Was there any truth to that? Cause that really affected me as a young actor, hearing, hearing that story. Was there any truth to that?

• 12:58Speaker 03

  You still want the truth, right?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Just till the 30 minute mark, then the last half is lying.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  I like, and see, your rhythm of talking is very good, cause you're very, very good. I'll try to equal that.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Okay, you could try.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  The first, I mean, I researched this part for probably almost two years, because Tom Cruise kept getting movies that he had to make, and then we'd say, okay, we'll start after he makes that movie. And they were bad movies that made a huge amount of money, because he was in them, like Cocktail, and he was good.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  So, I had all this time, and I loved doing research. And I, I actually met two guys who were brothers. One was very handsome, like Tom, and he was a great football player. Uh, he was 19, and his brother, Kevin, was a, a role model, uh, in terms of the part I played. I had two guys I found, out of all the ones I met. And I said to Barry Levinson, who was brilliant, I thought, I said, which one? And he picked the one that he thought would be best, and so, I went with him. Uh, and, uh, so the first, the first day of shooting, uh, we were shooting, uh, I think, outside an elevator or something, I can't even, oh, car.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  We're outside and, we're looking at a car. And I am, I look at the rushes, I am so bad. I literally said to my wife, who was there, I'm quitting. And this was on the day, this was on the day shooting, it was before the rushes, cause there was monitor. I said, I don't know what I'm doing. And I didn't. I said, half of it sounds like Midnight Cowboy, another sounds like Papillon. I literally didn't know. After all this research, I could not do anything that I felt had any, and Barry was brilliant, actually. He said, well, why don't you do this? He says, let's go see the rushes, the dailies, and see if there's anything that you like.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  And I went, and we looked at it, and there was like, one moment, I said, there. You just have a feeling, I said, there's the guy. He says, so do that. I says, I can't.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  So here I am, in a car, with Tom Cruise, who was extraordinarily generous and helpful. He's a really decent, uh, human being, uh, despite his good looks. Uh, and, uh, and we're in the convertible, I guess, I think it's, and we're driving, and I cannot do, uh, the scene. Because Barry Levinson said, do the scene, but it's 10 minute, uh, what is it? Things of film, you know, roles of film, or using film. And he says, and when we run out of film, just improvise. There's a hidden camera there, cause there was no room for the director. So it's just Tom and I and a hidden camera, and we're, and we're acting away.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Then we run out, and we, and he says, okay, just improvise. Cause he's watching on a monitor, and he'll, maybe he can use some of it. And, as I said, there's a camera coming up this way, there's a camera that way, camera, so he's got a lot of positions to choose from, without anybody operating them. And Tom starts doing all this wonderful improvisation, asking me questions. I don't have a clue how to be so-called the character, so I don't know how to answer.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  And I went, go back afterwards, and I said, I said, Barry, I'm out of here. I cannot play this guy. I don't know, he says, come here, come here, come here, I think you found him. I said, what? He says, come here, look at the monitor. And he played it. And what I did, without knowing it, and it wound up being in the movies, every time he said something, I kept saying, yeah, yeah. Yeah, cause I didn't know what to say. He says, that's the guy.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  That's really cool. Wow, wow, wow. That's amazing. And is that the moment you realized also, when you figured, oh, if I don't look at him, that's also another characteristic of this guy? Because through the whole movie, you barely made eye contact.

• 16:55Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I, I decided to do that before the movie, cause I had my role models. Right. And, but what you do, I think what you should do as an actor, is that you notice things, and then you try to ape it, and then you try to find what's in you, where you do that thing that that guy is doing. And I, there was a couple things. And one is, I realized, not just me, but we human beings don't make eye contact, because it's too intimate, if we're talking to people that we don't know. Like on an elevator, you don't even look at people. And if you, or if you do, it's, it's briefly, and then you look away. There's an intimacy, I think, in eye contact.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Jason, stop staring at me, by the way. It should be, do you know, do you know, you know, Sean, I was gonna say about that, this is just a quick sidebar.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Am I talking fast enough?

• 17:43Speaker 01

  No, no, it's amazing. It's, it's, this is, this is a dream come true.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  What if I wanna do this for three hours?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no problem.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  We got plenty of film.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  We, whatever, we got plenty of film. I had to do one of these, you know, I started this new gig, and I had to do, for the company, won't say who, they had to do, you know, cause they're all owned by corporations, now you have to do a sensitivity training video.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  You have to do a what?

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Sensitivity training video. Like a, a court, like a half hour thing that you have to show up for on Zoom. Right, for, uh, for this thing that I'm doing. And, uh, and they said, one of the things you can't do is you can't maintain eye contact longer than three seconds is considered, uh, can be considered too much. I'm not kidding.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Really?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Too much in terms of what?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  In, in, it's too intimate. It's too intimate, longer than three seconds.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  So whether you're looking at a guy or a girl, more than three seconds being up?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, HR's gonna call you.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Is there a little bit of missing, uh, in our future?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm making, I'm making this limited series down, and, and this, and the showrunner, she came up to me the other day, she had a note, she starts going, she goes, you know, well, I think in this scene, and blah, blah, blah, I go, one, two, three. I'm sorry, your time's up. This is getting too intimate.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  That's really funny. I took, I took some classes at Second City in Chicago, you know, the improv place.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 00

  And, and the first day was that, was that you had to pick up somebody in the class that you didn't know, and you had to stare at each other for like two or three minutes, which is a really long time in silence. And I was, it was the most uncomfortable thing I've ever done in my life. I'm like, hello, sir, nice to meet you. And then we stand up staring at each other right in the eyes.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  It was crazy.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  I studied with Strasberg, and he had his own version of that, because I know what you're talking about. And with Strasberg, because you stand up in front of whatever, 50, 60 students, and you had to sing a song, and you had to make contact with one or more of the students in front of you, but you had to elongate. My country. And you literally saw people start crying that were doing this, because there was something unmasked in them. And it was, oh, and the teacher would get up sometimes, and you had to be totally relaxed, and they'd pull your arms up, and they'd drop down. Some guys were so tense, or people, they didn't realize it.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  They kept going, ah, they said they didn't realize that that ever happened to you, Jason.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Wow. No, I was just sort of imagining like that.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  The song exercise, that's what it was all about.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  I did it, I did it. I studied at Strasberg. I did, I, I remember doing that, Dustin.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  I didn't.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  It's pretty crazy. Speaking, speaking of studying at Strasberg, so, so, one of, one of my favorite sort of things that I've learned about you over the years, because I've looked you up often, embarrassingly, amount of times, is that when you were starting out and you were young, and my roommates and I used to always talk about this, when we were living in New York, studying at Strasberg in the early 90s, that you were roommates with Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman back in the day.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  No way.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  And that, yeah, and, and that, because we looked up to you guys, and we were like, these guys, these guys all live together. They were doing it, and, and in some way, it allowed us to dream.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  We also, we were friends, and we hung out together, and we were unemployed for almost 10 years.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, same. So, and, and for us, we were like, not that we thought that we could be you guys, but it gave us hope, because you were guys that we looked up to, and we thought, these guys are really doing it. And how, how much, when you guys were back in those days, did you ever allow yourselves to think that you'd have the careers that you would? Did you talk about it?

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Never.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  No?

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Never, never, never. Well, because in our day, there was, there were actors that had a different look. They didn't look like members of the audience. When we came about, suddenly, the taste changed. It wasn't Rod Hudson, or Tab Hunter, or these good-looking, leading men. Suddenly, there was this explosion that happened, you know, Jack Kerouac, living in the moment of the 60s, and suddenly, the public wants, at least with men, I don't think it was true with, true with women, women always had to be beautiful, but the men wanted the stars, or so-called, to look like them. The guys in the audience wanted to see people on the screen that looked like them.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  So, we never thought about that. What we, so, and we argued, we fought bitterly over whose teacher was better. Mine was Strasberg. Duvall was a great teacher, Sandy Meisner, and George Morrison was, you know, Gene Hackman's. And, and, I mean, there were violent fights. I mean, Duvall was standing there, you're fucking bullshit. Sense memory, it's all bullshit. Meisner, it's improvisation, it's all improvisation. We were like angry.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Right, right, right.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  And, and, and we, and we didn't expect anything. What we wanted, oh, the one thing we agreed on was, who was bad? Who was not doing a good, having a good performance? The opposite of what critics would say. In those days, if you were British, you automatically got a good review. Every critic said, oh, that's a great actor. But the truth is, what we agreed on is what was bad, and that, that was a unanimous feeling that we had. We were very critical of, of, oh, that's a good moment, that's a good moment, you know, in our own work or with them. I feel like I'm getting boring, so I'll shut up.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, but, but, but at that time, at that time, when you got, and you guys were kind of like this, this next generation of, of actors, and you came in, you studied with Strasberg, and, and you were saying, and, and Duvall studied with Sandy Meisner, who, at that time, when you were looking at movies, who were the guys that you did look at and go?

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Brando, Brando, Brando, Brando, Brando, Brando.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  That's it. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  That was our hero, that was our god.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  And what, if, if, if a gun was to your head, and you had to give a description of what it is that sort of defined the quality, the high level of his, of his talent, what, what, what, what would it be? Can, can you define what it is to be a good actor, or what it looks like?

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Good question, yes. I don't think it's different from you guys. Can I do it in a way, a scene, or a moment, or the movie, or the character? Can I do it in a way that's never been done before? Can I do it in a fresh way? Can I be what we all call in the moment? Literally in the moment, in the present, as you're doing it? Kazan wrote a book, and he talks about Brando, and, and, and on the waterfront, and apparently there's a, Rod Steiger is his brother, I know.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  It's a brilliant, brilliant scene. There's so many good actors today that never heard of it. Oh, yeah. Is he the guy that was in The Godfather? No, he was in On the Waterfront.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  There's no sense of history. And he's in the backseat with Rod Steiger, and Rod Steiger pulls a gun on him. It's written that, oh, you know what I'm talking about, and he, and he can't do the scene. And he goes up to Kazan, and he says, I can't do the scene, he's my brother. I know he's got, and Kazan says, do it the way you feel it. And here is this brilliant, brilliant scene then, and if you guys aren't familiar with it, please watch it. He's in the car in the backseat, Rod Steiger pulls the gun on him, because he's ratted. That's what it's about. Brando has, has ratted on somebody, which is another story, and he says, Charlie, Charlie, and he puts the gun, he just moves it lovingly, almost away, and he said, Charlie, you're my brother.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  I can't imitate him, but there was such love in it. There was such, it's one of the most extraordinary things. And as Kazan said, only Brando would have done it that way. His, I know what he said. He says, his pauses were more powerful than anybody's acting. His pauses, the amount of, the depth of information, that is emotional information that was, that was in him.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  That's cool.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  And we will be right back.

• 26:09Speaker 00

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• 30:29Speaker 00

  And now, back to the show.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Do you feel like that, you know, like, I don't know, the pauses come as a result of, of what? Like, what is, what is generating that kind of originality and subtlety and honesty? Is it, is it, is it, would you recommend that an actor really key off of what's going on internally as opposed to trying to focus on what you are showing externally? I mean, I guess, I don't know, I guess I'm not, I'm not looking for the definition of what good acting is, I suppose, even though I asked for it, but, because it's such a hard thing to say, but...

• 31:07Speaker 03

  You're not looking for it, or what?

• 31:09Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, I mean, you can't, you can't really define what is good acting. I guess you kind of know it when you see it, but for you, when you find that you're in a great place and that it's feeling good and honest to you, and even when you watch the rushes and yes, I'm hitting, what do you feel like you're doing really well? Are you, are you staying internal? Are you doing it for you? Are you conscious of the camera? Do you know? Like, when does it feel right? What is it that you, that you feel you're tapped into when you're doing it right?

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Well, my first thought is I've been doing it for over 50 years and these questions, the answers to these questions have changed over the years. I mean, for the first few years, I was so frightened of the camera. And that's, you know, actors always say, you know, when you're off-camera, you're helping the other actor sometimes if the camera's just on the other actor. And you say, God, why couldn't I have done that when I was on-camera?

• 32:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  You do your best work when you're off-camera because you're relaxed. You're in the moment. And you're, you know, all that self-consciousness is, is taken away from you. The other part of it is you don't know. And it takes so long. In fact, just recently, I was in a movie and I said, oh, I know what I'm gonna do. Because you're, you could, it's endless in terms of thinking of new ways to do it. I'm just gonna, I have no idea what this movie is about. I have no idea what this character is about. It was a great director, Coppola, and it was Megalopolis, and I didn't want to be in it. I said, I don't know who the fuck this guy is. I said, I said, but, he says, no, but he needed me in it. He wanted, so, okay, I'll, I'll do it. I've had a few days.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  And I had no idea, and I said, I know what I'll do. I'll just walk out during the scene, and he had multiple cameras, and, and I'll just, as you said, you know, just be in the moment and not care.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Not care about anything and just be, oh, look at that, look at that cameraman. Look at, you know, they're always saying, you know, you're in my eye line. Actors always say to another actor who's, you know, if the actor's on camera and he's looking at someone and he doesn't want to see him, you're in my eye line. They want him to move or the camera, they say, I, I said, stay there, don't move. I want you in my eye line.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  It's real.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's real.

• 33:30Speaker 03

  Who's gonna know that I'm talking to you, that you're just standing out there?

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  You know, there's...

• 33:35Speaker 01

  What, what did you take, what, your first, it's actually your second movie, The Graduate, right? The Graduate is your second because you'd, you'd made, was it The Tiger Makes Out was your first film?

• 33:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and...

• 33:52Speaker 03

  I'm crossing the street. I'm crossing, I did it because my friend Murray Shiskel, who was a co-writer with me on Tootsie, we've been friends for years and years and years and years. He was my mentor. I never knew about art before. I came to New York and met him. He took me to, to, you know, modern art, building all this art. He said, that's so-and-so, it's a, can you tell me who that painter is? You learn who the painter is just by looking at the painting. He told me what literature to read. I mean, he was, my God, he, he was everything to me. And what he's, tell me the question again. I've got a good answer.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Well, no, The Tiger Makes Out was your first...

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Oh, so I, so I do The Tiger Makes Out because he had, he had, he, he had written it for the theater first. It was, they were one-act plays. The Typists was one play, the other play was called, and The Tiger, The Typist and The Tiger. By the way, he was a phenomenon because he had written Love on Broadway, spelled L-U-V. And it was with Alan Arkin and, and, God, I should remember the actress's name, I'm ashamed of myself, and directed by Mike Nichols, and it broke the barriers. It suddenly introduced an avant-garde into commercial theater that, that was terrific.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  Anyway, so I do it, I'm, I'm crossing the street and, and I'm supposed to be saying, Rosie Krieger or something, goodbye, Rosie, we, we've broken up or something. Goodbye, Rosie Krieger. Goodbye, Rosie Krieger. And the camera's on my back, the camera's not even close, and I cross the street and that's it. And my parents see it and they say, you were great in that scene in the park. I said, I wasn't in the scene in the park. They actually thought they, I was in another scene where the camera was...

• 35:40Speaker 01

  No way. No way.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  And then you give them The Graduate. What I wanted to say was, it's interesting, we're talking about all the acting and, and like Jason said, was what makes a good actor and all that. And all I've thought about this whole time was, and I'm, forgive me, because I'm sure you get asked about it every day of your life, is you actually played an acting teacher in Tootsie. And I just think it's ironic that we're talking about all of our insecurities as actors and finding characters, and there you are on-screen teaching acting to, to this class in Tootsie, which is one of the greatest movies of all time and one of the greatest performances of all time.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Well, how do I answer this? Murray Shiskel and I wrote this movie and we couldn't get it right. There was a part of it that we somehow didn't, the third act, we couldn't make work, the culmination of it. And what we wanted to do, this was not about playing a woman. This was about the intention that, what started the whole movie is how most actors don't work.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  I mean, that's, you know, years and years and years go by and you can't even get your first job.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, you could be in some community theater, but a, a job, you know, a real job, you don't get for years and years. In fact, in my day, that was a signal of that you were a good actor, the better actor that you were, the, the more unemployment there was. The ones that got work again were these actors who gave what we call result performances. They were predictable.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  And, and so I wanted to show how hard it was to get a job. So we created an artifice, Teri Gar, brilliant actress.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  I loved her deeply, and then she departed too soon.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  You know, it came about that, you know, she can't do auditions. We somehow made that work. Oh, well, then I'll play your part and maybe I'll get a job. And somehow it just escalated from that point.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Columbia Pictures, who I worked with before, and I I said to them, I do not want to do this unless I can be believable in makeup, hair as a woman. I do not want to walk down the street and have people turning in real life and say, who's that guy in drag?

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:11Speaker 03

  And and it was very hard to get the makeup right. I can give you a long answer to this. You can edit it. We have a beard. I I would shave as close as I could. And it was still, you could see the beard line because the follicles are underneath your skin and you can never get rid of it.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  And the makeup always looked fake. And then I thought, well, what about those people in Japan? And this is over two years. Columbia agreed, okay, I don't have to make the movie until I'm believable. And there was these, what do they call them in Japan, the men that play women that have a certain kind of makeup? And I tried using that makeup and it didn't work. Anyway, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. We finally, with assortment of things, find a way. And it's also the lighting, what kind of lighting I would need. And suddenly they say, okay, you're believable. And I have the, you know, took a long time to get the right kind of outfit because I have a sixteen and a half inch neck and that looked very masculine. So that dictated that I had to have an open blouse and so et cetera, et cetera.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  I wanted to test it. My daughter Jenna, who's, I think, fifty two now or something. She was like in the eighth grade and she had a, she was at school, I think the UN school downtown. And I said, I know, I know when they're all out, you know, in the back, I'm gonna go there and test it out. And I went there in costume and I started talking. I went up to one of her teachers and started doing, you know, this, that's that good. And I got away with it. She was furious. She came up to me, she says, get out of here, Dad. How can you do this?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Wait, so she, so she recognized you? Your daughter recognized you?

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Yes. She was furious. And, oh, The Voice, I can tell you very quickly about The Voice. The Voice was hard. And, you know, as an actor, you don't want to do what's been done. And what was brilliant was something like it hot. They were brilliant. It was a brilliant film. But they were doing a very, it was a farce. So they were allowed to be a little less unbelievable because it's a style of farce. And they're they're doing falsetto. And I said, I don't want to do a falsetto voice. It sounds like those guys. And to me, this is very interesting. UCLA is near where I live and I was able to go talk to voice experts that worked at UCLA, whether they helped people out of stammer or whatever, but they exist.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  And this one person said to me, you know, one thing is that when women, in those days particularly, this is in terms of the women's movement, this will be interesting. In those days, when women say something, it's almost as if they're asking for permission to talk. So they tend to end up, well, do you want to know something very interesting? Do you want to know? And and they're up, men are always declaring, and this is the way it goes, and this is what I mean. And the woman will say, well, this is maybe what I'm, and I'm thinking, and I said, well, how am I gonna? They say, well, he says, people in the South tend to do that. Well, you know, it's all, it's so interesting because what they do is they wind up up.

• 41:19Speaker 03

  And that was how The Voice, which I, wow, you know, never really perfected it. But you do the best you can.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  I think you did.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  You know, that's what made her southern, was to, is to wind up up instead of down.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  I I think, I think, I think you perfected it pretty well. And that movie was, I mean, I echo Sean. One of the, one of the great, one of the great performances in and directed by the great, the late, great Sidney Pollack. I I love your scenes with Sidney Pollack, who acted in it and played your agent in it.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Hilarious.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Your scenes with him, when you come in and reveal yourself, is one of my favorite scenes when you, and he's like, what are you doing? Have you lost, I forget.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  The Russian Tea Room.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  In the Russian Tea Room. That scene between you two guys is one of the great, you talk about in the moment. Real, in the moment, scenes between two guys and a guy who who know each other well, who's saying, what the, have you lost your fucking mind? And the other guy's like, hey.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  That's improvised. That's improvised because he hated that I was improvising. He, he, you know, by the way, the unspoken person who really saved this movie was none other than Elaine May. And Bert, I didn't have an agent. I hated agents because whenever I wanted an agent, needed an agent, there was never anybody. So suddenly when you're established, everybody wants to, fuck you. You know, so I didn't have an agent. And I had a personal friend and an attorney, the late Bert Fields, wonderful man. And he said, I mean, we're trying for a year and a half. We have some of the best writers having tried this besides Murray and me. Larry Galbardo, no one can, for my money, can solve it.

• 43:02Speaker 03

  And he says, have you tried a woman? And I was embarrassed to say, I can't believe we never tried a woman. He says, well, I have a client, Elaine May. He says, why don't you try her? She comes in, I'll say very quickly, she's a brilliant, brilliant human being and still alive. But she's brilliant in one way, but she doesn't know that, you know, she's wearing pants that her fly is unzipped or that she doesn't have a coffee. I mean, she has her own, her own, you know.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Universe.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  And she said, I'll tell you, she read it within twenty four hours and she said, I'll tell you right now, the Jessica Lange character is the one you're in love with. She should be a drunk. She should have a terrible boyfriend. She should have a place in the country. This is after twenty four hours read. And she should have a father who falls in love with you in the country and that's how you get out.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  It's amazing.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  It's never happened, but she just had it and knew it. And I still forgot the question. But but she made that, she made that happen.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  That's amazing. That's so good.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  She was brilliant.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  We were talking about the Sidney Pollack scenes and and improvisation, but yeah, go ahead.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  No, so the Sidney Pollack, he and I fought every single day.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  I saw the behind the scenes, yeah, of that.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, we hated each other. We loved each other and completely got along when we were shooting. We hated each other when we were working on the script. He hated Maria Shiskel. I would come in with Maria Shiskel's version for the day we're gonna talk about. He had his own writer or, you know, more than one who were working. Everybody was trying to get the script right. And that's when we fought. Once we agreed, he was brilliant. And and he did improvise ultimately and he didn't want to. And what he's, and it's, that's not, not only this Russian Tea Room, do I think he was quite wonderful.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  In his office.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  Office, his office.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Incredible scene.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  It's all, all it's improvised.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  And when you change from, you know, Dorothy Michaels, you know, it's me, Michael Dorsey. And it is George. It's really me. He just kept changing between Michael and Dorothy. It was great. Amazing.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  And and he's brilliant. And I said to him, he never acted before. I think he started out as an actor, but he he didn't believe in himself as an actor. And I said, we couldn't cast that part, at least to my satisfaction. And I said, Sidney, why don't you, we're trying, week after, I mean, we spent a lot of time rewriting, spent a lot of time trying to cast, get the look right. It's like a year and a half. Columbia said, take as much time as you want. It was Frank Price, thank God. And who was the head of Columbia and who started out as a waiter at Columbia? Very interesting. Anyway, so take as much time as you want. Now I'm forgetting where I was.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  You're talking about Sidney Pollack.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  You're looking for the character.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Sidney Pollack, so he's acting brilliantly on the money and he was absolutely brilliant as the agent. And I said to him, when we couldn't cast it, Sidney, you should play the part. Our arguing in life is exactly what these guys are doing on the screen. He said, no, no, no, I won't. And he lived in New York and I lived in LA. And I literally sent him roses every few days, saying, please be my agent, love Dorothy. And he kept saying no, one after the other, one after the, and he finally said yes. And he was.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  It was great.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  Oh, the irony here is he got all the work he could get afterwards, all the parts that would have come to me first, suddenly came to him first.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Well, Dustin, speaking of casting, how did you land on Bill Murray? Was that, was that somebody's idea? Was it the studio? Was it, well, I. Yeah, because that was early on in his career, right? Well, but he he had been somewhat.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  He was a comedic actor. He was known as a, as a, just like as a sort of a comedy guy in even on SNL.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Second City, I can't remember.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, Second City and SNL and so he.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Oh, SNL, right.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  But like, was that a piece of casting that the studio wanted you to to to think about? Or was it, or did it come from Sidney or the casting director or you? Was somebody a fan?

• 47:08Speaker 03

  I'm trying to remember.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  Oh, I know what it was. I didn't know him.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  And there was a birthday party for Frank Price.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:17Speaker 03

  The guy who was the head of Columbia.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  And we all went to the birthday party. I think it was in New York.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  And, uh, and we go there and, you know, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. And then Lisa and I, we, we come outside and outside is, you know, I don't want to be inside anymore. Is this guy Bill Murray.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  And we just, and I think he brought his Volkswagen. He's waiting for his car. And we just got to talking and I, and I had said to Lisa, cause we'd been working on Tootsie. You need a roommate. Elaine May says, you need a roommate. I says, I don't, how can I have a roommate? Someone my age in the movie is not going to have a roommate.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  And he's going to be living with a girl. It'd be, I mean, who has a roommate? You know, it's just, it didn't make sense to be that age. I mean, you'd live in a, in a, in a less expensive apartment in a hovel so that you wouldn't, so you could be alone. And then we got home and the next morning I said to Lisa, that guy that I met last night, he could be my roommate.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  I believe him.

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:19Speaker 03

  We just got on right away. We just had a sense. And, uh, and so, yes, he got, and, and Sidney, of course, didn't want him. He wanted someone else for the part. He had to be talked into it. And he says, Bill Murray, he's not an actor. He's a comedian. He's, he's just done SNL or whatever. He's not a real actor. Back, back, back. So we finally agree and sit, and Bill Murray gets the part. And we have a building where we're shooting, I think on 22nd Street, a real apartment. And we wanted to have the roommate's bedroom on one side and my bedroom on the other side. So there was a distance between us.

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  So there was a sense of, you know, not living, you know, as quote roommates.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  And they had fashioned his room or styled it. And he went in with Sidney and Sidney, on purpose, didn't have him shoot his scenes until the last three weeks of shooting, cause he didn't want to take a chance. He was having such a rough time with me. He didn't want to have another guy that he was going to have a rough time with. And we, and we're on the street first day and we're walking down the street and like rehearsing the 5th Avenue scene and, and he sees a costume truck, which is our costume. Yeah, we're supposed to shoot. And he goes in there and the costumer had, you know how they do, they have their big truck at one of the hardest jobs in movies.

• 49:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  I think there's no harder job than, they had millions of choices. And he walks in, he just grabs this, that, the other, and he puts it on and the costume guy, no, but what? And he walks out and he just fashioned himself in the most ludicrous way. You know, whatever it was, orange pants. And he says, this is my costume. And Sidney is not about to argue with this guy, you know, uh, and so that was it.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Wow, wow, wow.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  So everything had to go through, had to go through me because he, you know, he didn't fuck around, Bill. And, uh, oh, by the way, I have to tell you one thing is that we became friends. What a wonderful man he is. But we went to see, he really is. And we went to see a, in those days, I think we went to see a, a fight together or something. The Masque Garden, I can't remember. And we're coming out and, uh, we're in the lobby before we get out and this guy keeps coming after me for a, for a, for an autograph and a video or whatever it was. And I'm in the middle of a conversation with Bill and I said, well, I can't because I'm in the, you know, I always

• 50:49Speaker 03

  say yes because it's, you get rid of people quicker if you just sign the autograph. And, uh, and, and he keeps, and out of nowhere, Bill grabs him by the lapels and throws him against the wall. I mean, whoa. And he gets right in his face and this is not the Bill Murray that we know.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  And he says, you say one more fucking word. And you thought, I mean, like that. And I said to him as we walked away, I says, Bill, where'd that come from? He says, you know, I'm Irish. I got five brothers and I'm from Chicago. You know, what can I say? That's, I mean, that's the way it was.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  That's so good. My God, my God. There's so much we want to get. I, I, I want to get to, oh God, I, I want to ask you something more. By the way, it's so brilliant. Yeah, just as a, it's so brilliant to have the roommate. Of course you needed to have the roommate to give you that context of where he's, where Michael Dorsey's coming from, right?

• 51:44Speaker 03

  And I don't, yes. In other words, I'm sorry. Elaine says, are you going to have a voiceover? I says, no, I don't, we don't want a voiceover. Well, someone has to know what your thoughts are.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  That's why he's there.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, brilliant. It's brilliant.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  So you can express, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know what, you know.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. We'll be right back.

• 52:06Speaker 00

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• 52:46Speaker 00

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• 53:27Speaker 00

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• 54:11Speaker 00

  And back to the show.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  I mentioned at the very top in the intro that, that you've written this book and which I'm really excited about. And, and talk a little bit about, about that. Your book, Look at Me, uh, which is available, uh, according to, uh, when this episode airs. It's, it's available tomorrow, uh, November 10th. Yeah, November 10th.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  What, you've, you've written this book, Look at Me. Tell us, walk us through a little bit about that process of, of writing this book and, and, and what it was like kind of going back and, and going through all these things in this. As Jason pointed out, just this incredible, incredible career in life that you've had.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  Well, you know, you guys are asking basically brief questions. I'm giving long answers.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  No, we love it.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  You're supposed to. This is your hour.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  I have notebooks, you know, regular kind of notebooks that you buy in a store, you know, just regular notebooks, you know, you can get thin lines or wider lines. And I have maybe 30 notebooks over the years where I said, this is the notebook where I'm going to write my, my, my. I had to know the difference between an autobiography and a memoir. Autobiography just means, you know, from, oh, I was born in this, it and this, this day. And a memoir, it has to do more with memories, your memories.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  Doesn't even have to be chronological order. And so I always would say my name and I would say another thing. And I was given this name for this reason, two sentences, that's it. I can't do anymore. And I always thought it was a notebook. So I buy a new notebook, a different kind of notebook. I'm looking for the right notebook. And here's all these notebooks piled up with two sentences on them. Then some, there's other memoirs being written and I'm an old motherfucker, fart person.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  And, uh, if I don't do it now, it, you know, cause I barely remember anything now. Uh, there is such a thing as short-term memory. And I always like to say things where other people, you know, it's like any of us say, did I, did I eat breakfast this morning? You know, we all have that happen. And when you're older, it's worse. Did I take a crap this morning? You literally can't remember. And I have notes now where, you know, I have a note in the kitchen saying, had my coffee at such and such a time. In the bathroom, there's a little note there saying, you know, took a crap at such a. I have to go see where the notes are to know, you know.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Well, then what was it, what was, what was the process like then, writing the memoir? Did you have somebody that would help you sort of jog these memories?

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Thank you. Yes. And, well, first of all, the brain is an interesting instrument. I think it's the, you know, the largest organ in the body. And we know the least amount about it before, very recently. I think AI is solving stuff like that more quickly. However.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  We were told, I remember, we only understand ten percent

• 57:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  of how the brain works. What about the other ninety percent?

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 57:21Speaker 03

  And there's also what happened with me, and it's happened to others, is with this lack of, I mean, with this short-term memory problem, whoa, the brain opens up and suddenly you remember something that's fifty years ago.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 57:36Speaker 03

  You remember the name of some, and somehow, Simon and Schuster somehow had, I don't know if they got a hold of me, or I got a hold, but, you know, Luke Janklow or something, they wanted a memoir, and they suggested, and I said, I have not been able to do it. And they suggested this, this woman, and she was my savior. And she and I co-wrote it, and what she did, which no one else, first of all, she put everything on a, on a, what we used to call a tape recorder, but everything was there. She'd ask me questions, she'd go home with hours and hours and hours, you can see how long I can talk, and she would have it all transcribed to, to, to written, and then

• 58:21Speaker 03

  she would edit it, and then she'd come back, and she did something I thought was quite extraordinary. We'd talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, she asked questions, wonderful questions, and then after some of the questions, I'd give her an answer, and she would ask me questions about my answers.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  And that was brilliant, and that's what opened up this world, because we were oppressed a lot.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  A lot of stuff we don't want to remember.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  I'm sure, I'm sure you would say a lot to this, as an answer to this question, but, um, what surprised you about the things that you remembered? Uh, was, was, was there, was there a memory that came back to you that was particularly more welcome than any other? Something that you were surprised that you remembered?

• 59:14Speaker 03

  A lot of them. I, I, well, look at me, I'll tell you why it's called that.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  Is that okay?

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 03

  Okay. I worked, I was doing a, a, I knew Bob Evans, who was at that time had a Paramount, and he was brilliant, even if he had, you know, a, a, an ice cube full of cocaine halfway out of his nose, you know? He was, he was a brilliant producer, I mean, Love Story, Godfather, I mean, he had a string, he, he knew, he knew about which films should be done. And I, he approached me, because I, Marathon Man, I think, was being done by Paramount, and he approached me, you know, that I should do it, and I said certain things, and he

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  said, and I know who should be the, the, the Nazi character, Zell, it should be Sir Laurence Olivier. I mean, how could he have come up with that? He went to London, and he asked Olivier to do it, Olivier said, no, we didn't want to do it. He, he, the poor man was ill, he had gout, he had different forms, I think, of cancer, he was on a lot of medication, and he knew he was ultimately terminal. I never understand what that means, because we're all ultimately terminal. But anyway, he wanted money, he had no money, he'd spend a lifetime, you know, doing a

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  lot of stage work, and here, this guy is saying, I'll give you a million dollars. And he decides to do it, and he, I know, I know he had, one of the sons was at UCLA, he used to come visit him every day, and so here he is, and parenthetically, this guy would do, I mean, in his day, you know, they did repertory theater there, so in one week he would do Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, you know, knew all three of them word by word, you know, tremendous, you know, a, a, a kind of equipment you have to have to have been that, you know, a repertory actor.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  And here he is, and he comes to work the first day, and we are shooting, and he can't remember two sentences together

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  because of the meds, and he's in pain because of the gout, it's this, you know, much bigger.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  And he never complains, and Schlesinger, brilliant director, John Schlesinger is there, and then, and, you know, he figures, okay, we have wide shots, you know, and we get closer and closer, and then finally they get right on, on him, and I would, you know, try to coach him off camera, and then he started, he would start, he would do takes where, because he was a stage actor.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 03

  So one of the, one of the things about having a craft as an actor, to be a stage actor, a good one, you have to be real for that, for the people in the first row, and you have to be as real for them as you are for the people in the last row of the balcony.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  That's called craft.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  I wasn't great at it, but, you know, that's what the, the great actors, stage actors could do. And here he is now on a close-up, and he's like talking to the rafters, and he's acting big, quote, not good, but quote, big, and I start to walk up to Schlesinger, so he's British, and he just goes, I know, I know, I know, I know what you're going to say. I'm not going to tell the greatest actor in the world that he's over the top. If you want to tell him, you tell.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  Bad actor. So we have a break, we're outside, and we go behind a, a tree, and I say to, I, I couldn't call him, I didn't want to call him sir, I didn't want to call him Sir Laurence, I didn't want to call him Larry, which a lot of people call him, so I, then there's a name, I called him Lordage, and he liked that.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Lordage.

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  And, and, oh, by the way, he, his performance, and I told him, I says, your performance in The Entertainer is one of the great performances I've ever seen on screen. Have you guys ever seen it?

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  No, I haven't. I want to see that.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  Oh, it's brilliant. And he plays a guy with a certain kind of Cockney accent, and he's, and he's like a song and dance man from outside of London, almost, you know, campy, fey, and I said to him, when I started working with him, I said, that performance you gave in The Entertainer is one of the most brilliant, and he said to me, that's me. That's where I'm from. That's what I started out doing.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  Tap dancing, trying to get a job. He says, Sir Laurence, the Shakespearean actor, that's the act.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  Wow. That's interesting.

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  That's not, but this is, this is me. So I say to him, I said, why don't we just run the lines a little bit? You know how we run the lines, we just try to get the lines back, you know, before, whether we're on a break? And we start to do that, and then I say, you know what, Lordage, when we go back now and do your close-up, why don't you just do one where you're, you know, it's like when we just run the lines, just do it like that, like you're just, you know, reading the lines, you know, aloud.

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  And he gives me a long look.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 1:04:31Speaker 03

  And he's, you know, that close, long look, and he says, are you saying to me that I'm over the top? That's what they say, which means like ham acting.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  And I'm like, Woody Allen, oh, no, no, I, and there's a pause, long pause, one of the greatest moments of my life, he looks at me, and he says, thank you.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  Uh-huh.

• 1:04:56Speaker 03

  And we were very close friends from that moment on.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:05:02Speaker 03

  And I asked him about parts he, he had done, you know, we, we just became great friends, and one of the things I said to him was, let me ask you something, I always say this, you know, I probably said it to you guys, one of the things, you know, how did you know you wanted to be what you are?

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  You know, how, I say to actors, you know, or anybody, when did you know you wanted to be an actor? How old were you? How did that happen? And, you know, I said that to him, and I said, you hear actors say things like, oh, I knew I had a gift, I was born with a talent, or I wanted to share my, all this, and every time I'd say something, he'd say bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, which is a British term, instead of saying bullshit, they say bollocks, which is a combination of balls and cock. It literally, it's bollocks, that's their way of saying bullshit, bollocks, bollocks. And I said, then what's the real reason? And he comes up to me, and he looks me nose to nose, he says, the real reason we act? I says, yes. Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, and I got chills.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  That's what it is.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  And that's why the name of the book is Look at Me.

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  Yes, and that's what it is, and that's all of us.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  Whether we're writers, or painters, or whatever, it's a way of saying, I'm here, I'm alive, I exist, look at me.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  See me.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  Even if it's not literally.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Wow. That incredible. This is, this will be a hacky, a hacky segue, but we have certainly seen you a whole bunch, and, and we're all the better for it for so, so long, Dustin, I mean, as I said at the beginning, the, the amount of work that you've done, and you've never been terrible.

• 1:06:46Speaker 03

  Oh, no, don't say that.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  No, well, you've hit this.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  No, no, that's just not true. I mean, I, I've not acted as much as other people, Gene Hackman, I mean, he didn't like his home life, so he probably did five movies a year, everything, you know, they say, yeah, I'll do it, but I barely did one a year. I was so particular, more particular than I should have been, because after The Graduate hit, you know, suddenly I'm getting all these scripts, and most of them are, are not good. And, in fact, I would say to Lisa, my wife, I would say, you know, this script doesn't work, and she says, you know what, it took her years to say this, it was so smart, she says, don't take a part because of the script.

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  Forget about the script. The script changes. The minute you say you're doing it, you and the director, other people, you work on it, it becomes a different animal. When you start shooting, it's a different animal, usually. I said, then what should determine whether, she says, the director. The director. I had already turned down Fellini. I had already turned down Ingmar Bergman. This is what a schmuck I was. Because I, because the material, I thought had problems. She says, work with a director.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Right, I agree.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  Anyway.

• 1:08:02Speaker 00

  Well, Dustin, you know, you're.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  You chose well.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and thank, thank God you've, whatever you've done, thank God you've done it because, I mean, I'm sure I speak for Will and Sean, but I will, I will definitely just speak for me.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  It is because of you I do what I do.

• 1:08:19Speaker 03

  No, don't say that.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  No, no, no, it is, it is a thousand percent true. When I, when I started acting, I was, I was 10, so this was 1979, so you can remember what, whatever you were doing then was a time.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  What year was it when you were 10?

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  1979.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Oh, 79.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  And so, all through the eighties.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Kramer versus Kramer.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  That's Kramer.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  I mean, but, but all, you, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, you were it. And thank God that you guys had, you know, what you were talking about earlier, with you and Duval and Hackman talking about, you know, the guys weren't just getting the roles because all the leading men were taking all the big roles. And then you guys, the character actors, became the leading men. And you changed what the definition of good acting was. It was no longer this sort of performative, posing, sort of, you know, eye candy, leading men. It was, the new bar was, well, you've got to, you've got to act. You've got to bring character acting level of performance to the leading man part. And so, all those movies

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  that I was watching, that you guys were doing, you know, you mentioned, you know, Papillon before, and, and, you know, it's just, thank you for doing what you did. Thank you for changing what we define as good acting. And you are the gold standard, and you continue to be. And the fact that I got a chance to work with you blew my mind. The chance that you're on our, say, the little, little podcast here blows my mind, too. And I, I love your friendship. I love hearing the things you say. And just thank you from the bottom of my heart.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  Can I, can I disagree with you, or is that to sign off?

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  No, you can't. No, you can't. No, you can't disagree.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't take it.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Jason's right.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  I do disagree. I do, because we didn't invent it. There's, always was good acting. It wasn't called method acting, and every actor has a different interpretation of what method acting is, and it's wrong, because I studied with Strasser, who started it. There was Spencer Tracy, brilliant actor.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Kim Stanley, a brilliant actress, was just brilliant. I mean, there was, there's always been great acting.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  But for, but for us, but for us, you know, you, you, you, you were it, and you are it. And I, I just, I can't thank you enough for working as hard as you've worked, and for being as, as talented as, as you are.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  And I will, and I will say, and I will say, Dustin, to echo Jason, what Jason said, not just, you know, obviously for us, the three of us, you've been an incredible inspiration. But, but I can tell you, like I said, that my roommates and I, in the, in the, in the 90s, when we were starting out, and we were not alone, you were such an inspiration for so many, like Jason, or like Sean, or like me, but so many others who don't have this platform to be able to say it, and, and to tell you that, that what an inspiration you were, and what you did, it, it, it was fuel for us, to see what you guys were doing, to see what you, you were doing was, was, you were the gold standard, and are the gold standard.

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  I was one of them. I was one of them. There's Pacino, and, you know, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, there's De Niro.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  De Niro, yeah, but that was it.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  I mean, three. That's, that's it. And so, thank you.

• 1:11:34Speaker 03

  Oh, come here, let me show them. This is, okay, this way I can end it. Who's got dogs?

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  I do.

• 1:11:41Speaker 00

  We all do.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Speaker 03

  Who else?

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  I have had, oh.

• 1:11:44Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. What kind of doggy is that?

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

  That's a mutt. A rescue dog that Ally found downtown when he was a teeny little puppy, and he was under a car, and it was raining, and it was at night, and he had no ID on him. And, and she gave him to us, and we've had him now for 10 years. And we had to name him, and we couldn't figure out a name. And, and Lisa, suddenly, we were looking at, and we saw a book that our, the great rabbi friend of ours, Leonard, had written. And she says, how about Leonard? And his name is Leonard.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  I love you.

• 1:12:21Speaker 03

  Leonard, Leonard Beerman was his name.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  Give Mr. Beerman a kiss for us, and say hi to your beautiful kids, and your beautiful wife, Lisa, please.

• 1:12:29Speaker 03

  Thank you. I hope I get to see you guys in real life.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  Likewise, Dustin.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Thank you for your time. I mean, it's just been wonderful. What a thrill. Thank you so much, Dustin.

• 1:12:37Speaker 03

  Thanks, guys.

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  Thanks, Dustin.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you, buddy.

• 1:12:40Speaker 03

  Wow, wow.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it made me a little emotional, you know, you, you, you think about, I don't know, we say it all the time.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  JB, you got to work with him.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  But, yeah, but we're just, we're so lucky that, that we get to talk to people that affect us so, so deeply. Like, you know, I mean, I don't think any one of us are, are jaded. We certainly appreciate these, we have heroes. We've got these people that we look up to. We're, we're, the three of us are huge fans of so many different, different people, and some of those people end up on this frickin' show.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  I know, it's crazy.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  And we get to ask them questions on a peer level. And he goes beyond hero for me. As I said, you know, he was part of the reason I do what I do. And it just, it gets me a little weepy to be able to speak to him. And, and as you said, Will, have the opportu, we have an opportunity to say to them directly.

• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  How much they mean to us. And it is such a gift. So anybody listening out there that, that might feel the same way, we, we do it for you as well. It's just such a, such a, a privilege to be able to spend this time with these people.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I totally agree.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Me, too. And I, and I, and I meant that, like, it's so true. We, we did, I know there's like, the fourth time I've said it, but it's, because it's hitting me, because it is important. Like, how many times we, as a young actor, was like, fucking Dustin Hoffman.

• 1:14:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally, all the time.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  And how much we talked about his performances and moments. You know, you talk about, hey, did you see that thing he did? And that moment he had, you know, we talked about the Tootsie, that his scene with Sidney Pollack, and the, I mean, that whole movie is full of incredible moments. But like, we got to talk to him about the Russian tea room scene.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  We got to, we got to talk to Dustin Hoffman about the tea room scene in Tootsie, man.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  I know. We didn't even talk about Kramer versus Kramer.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Kramer, I know.

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  I maybe cried harder in that film than any other film I've ever seen.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  And just based on his looks, just the way that he looked at her, the heartbreak he had with her in the courtroom scenes.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  That movie.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  And the tenderness with his, with his boy. And, you know, it's all performance, you know? I mean, yes, the script obviously was beautifully written, and the film was well-directed, obviously, and, I mean, I think it was best pictured, didn't it? But like, just his ability to, to, to be a human for all of us, you know, as a proxy, sitting in the audience, you know, just kind of living through these moments that, that he, that he does is, is just such a talent.

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's few, there's, there's many performances, I think we can all point to, that made us want to do this. And Kramer versus Kramer was one of them. Rain Man was another. And I remember seeing Rain Man going, if I can just, if I could be even a fraction of that good, like, I'd kill to play something like that. Like, all the, like, there's so many parts, even in Hook. I was like, he played Captain Hook. I was like, that's so cool, you know? Like, he's completely transformed, and the way he talked, and the way he moved, and, I don't know, it's just, he's incredible. Anyway.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:46Speaker 00

  You know, what else is new?

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Such a sweet man, and so funny, and, and Lisa, his partner of so, so many years,

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  such a wonderful person, and his kids are fantastic, and talented in their own right as well. So that was awesome. Thank you, Will.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, thank you. And, and I'm gonna say, in honor of the great Dustin Hoffman, I'm gonna just say a really simple. Bye.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  Oh, a tasteful bye.

• 1:16:12Speaker 00

  Oh, a very introverted reel, Will.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  Hey, everybody out there in the audience. Bye.

• 1:16:18Speaker 00

  Bye.

• 1:16:19Speaker 02

  Bye, you guys.

• 1:16:20Speaker 00

  Bye, baby.

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• 1:17:31Speaker 04

  Get The Daily Show's ongoing coverage in Decision 2026 daily. This ain't your grandma's coverage. This coverage has full hit mobility. It's the most trusted fake news in America. Comedy Central's The Daily Show, new, weeknights at 11.