Jeff Bridges

Jeff Bridges is an Academy Award-winning actor, musician, and photographer. Born into a family of performers, he began acting as a child and has built one of the most enduring careers in American film. His work includes acclaimed performances in The Last Picture Show, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Big Lebowski, and Crazy Heart, earning him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beyond filmmaking, Bridges is a lifelong musician, photographer, and songwriter who continues to perform with his band, The Abiders. Most recently, he co-founded the WideluxX project, an effort to revive the legendary Widelux panoramic film camera for contemporary photographers. Films: Halls of Anger Tron The Big Lebowski Fat City Winter Kills Thunderbolt and Lightfoot Crazy Heart White Squall Music: Sleeping Tapes Emergent Behavior Photography: WideluxX Photo Gallery ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

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

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Unlike a lot of entertainers, my dad encouraged all his kids to go into showbiz.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  And so when I was about eight years old, he'd say, "Hey, come on. You're gonna come to work with Dad. You get to get out of school, make some bucks, you know, buy some toys or whatever you want. Come on." I said, "Oh, okay." And so I looked at it as basically pretend. Remember being a kid and pretending? And so, you know, it's always, you know, nowadays, it's like advanced pretend, basically. You know, you get into play with all the cool kids. You get the cool gear. You know, that's basically what it is. And something else that hasn't changed is my anxiety about it all. You know, I'm always quite anxious, you know.

• 1:14Rick Rubin?

  What do you attribute that to?

• 1:16Speaker 00

  Just the unknown. You don't know what's gonna happen, you know.

• 1:19Rick Rubin?

  But we never know.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  We never know, man. And, you know, but we have this imagination that we can jam, man. We can ruminate our asses off, man. And so, and that's what, you know, acting is all about that. A story just popped into my head. We go string of consciousness and this kind of thing.

• 1:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, always.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  So I'm about 16 years old. And I go with a bunch of my dear friends. And we go to my parents' beach house down here. And now it's time to leave. I'm turning out the lights, right, to leave lockup. And that little feeling of fear of the dark. Remember that feeling, the fear of the dark?

• 2:08Speaker 00

  I said, "What happens if I invite that in and let it engulf me?"

• 2:15Speaker 00

  And boom, it drove me to my knees. I went fetal, man. I just was shaking like this.

• 2:21Rick Rubin?

  When was this?

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Just like, what, 16? You know, so what, how many years? I don't know, you know. I'm 76 now, you know, so I don't know what year it was. And my friends came in. I said, "What's wrong? What's wrong? You okay?" He goes, "Yeah, man. Something amazing just happened." I said, "What?" I said, "I can be afraid of anything I want to be afraid of."

• 2:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  It was really quite remarkable. And so that, you carry that into the acting too. But, you know, remember pretending, you know, when you were a kid. You're, "Oh, yeah, the better you can, you know, the more real you can take the shot, or the more real you can do anything, the better." You know, there's a lot of different approaches to acting, but that's kind of my approach.

• 3:07Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your dad.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Well, like I said, my dad loved acting, man. You know, his father didn't want him to be in acting at all. You know, wanted to study law or something like that. But my dad wanted to act. He became the head of the drama department in UCLA. This is, you know, I know in the 20s or early 30s. That's where he met my mom. And he just, you know, loved acting and struggled. His ass off, went to New York, you know. Here's an interesting little tidbit. So this is like, I don't know what year, maybe 60.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Meredith Wilson wanted my dad to be the music man because my dad sings.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  And I, one of my earliest memories is Meredith Wilson and Reenie Wilson, his wife, coming over to our house and playing the whole score, the music. What a score.

• 4:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, amazing.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  And one of my earliest memories is Meredith Wilson coming up to me as a kid and say, "You got trouble right here in River City." And you're doing that whole song to me as a kid.

• 4:23Rick Rubin?

  Wow, so cool.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  And then Teague DeCosta, the director, wanted Robert Preston, who just kicked ass in that role. I mean, he was remarkable. And my dad got Sea Hunt that same year. So it worked out well for him. And then my acting career kind of, you know, took off. I was doing stuff in high school, you know, different things. I had an agent and all of that. But I resisted acting quite a bit.

• 4:52Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Because I had other things I wanted to do. Music, painting, art, I had a bunch of other stuff. And I didn't want to compete with my brother, who was all, Bo, who was also an actor, and my dad. And I didn't like that whole, what's the word?

• 5:09Rick Rubin?

  Nepotism.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Nepotism, thanks, man. You know, that whole thing. So I said, "Dad, you know, I don't know." He said, "Jeff, don't be ridiculous. That's the wonderful thing about acting, is that you're gonna be called upon to do all of these things that you're interested in." You know, look at Crazy Heart, you know, win that award. That came out of, listening to my dad, and the music, you know, came around, you know.

• 5:35Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  So that gives a hit of my dad. Then when I were doing Sea Hunt, he would teach me all the basics, you know. I remember sitting on his bed and running lines. Says, "You know, learn your line so you're not thinking about it, thinking about what you're gonna say. But also, listen to what the other guy is saying. You don't just say your line when that guy stops talking. You gotta let what he said inform what you're saying." So that kind of basic. He's now, "Go out of the room, come back in, and I'll do it completely different. I don't care how you do it, just do it completely different."

• 6:10Rick Rubin?

  Great advice.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:11Rick Rubin?

  And do it different each time.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:13Rick Rubin?

  Just try new ways.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, new ways and mess around like that. So he taught me all the basics.

• 6:20Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing, though. As a little kid, though.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  As a little kid.

• 6:23Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  But the main thing, doing Sea Hunt. Now, I'm about eight years old. And I remember the time this kind of embarrassed me. But looking back, I say, "Oh, I'm so proud of my dad." That's another thing I love about making movies. There's all kinds of people, different points of view, philosophies, politics, all of that, you know. So you're working with all different kinds of people. And there's some directors, they have many different approaches, and a lot of them work, but a lot of different ways. One way that my dad did not abide by was cruelty or meanness. And there was some director that was being sharp with the P.A. and embarrassing this young woman.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  And my dad, who was the star of the show in Sea Hunt, he said, "Excuse me, I'm gonna be in my trailer. And after you've apologized to the crew in front of, you know, what you did to this woman, you can come and get me. But until that time, I'm just gonna be in my trailer. So let me know." You know, as a kid, I said, "Oh, this, you know." But looking back, you know, I said, "Yeah, that's, that's the kind of guy he was."

• 7:36Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  And then another example of what he was like was probably the most important thing I ever learned from him, although it wasn't in the form of words. It was just his behavior, was the joy in which he approached the work. You know, they call it a play. You know, it's play. It's like, "This is cool what we're doing. We're playing, man." And he would come in with this attitude, and that would go through the whole cast and crew. This sense of joy. And of course, when you're joyful, you get relaxed, right? And out of that relaxation comes the good shit, right? Or that's what I find.

• 8:16Rick Rubin?

  No, for sure.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  And so as, then as an adult, I got to work with him twice. First time was in Tucker with Francis Coppola. And talk about pretending and, you know, like, he's got a great child quality to him, as well as being a, you know, an incredible artist on many levels. And one of the things Francis would do is that he storyboarded quite heavily. And then he would shoot with the film camera, his storyboard. And then we had a two-week rehearsal. First week was just hanging out, getting to know each other. And the second week, he got the cast and crew together. And he said, "All right, guys.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Now, this week, we are gonna shoot the entire movie. Vittorio Storaro here. He's gonna use this little new fancy digital camera and that wheelchair, that's gonna be his dolly. And you wardrobe people, look at these curtains. These wouldn't make good wedding dress. And you actors, get off book if you can because we're only gonna do each scene one time. And we're gonna do it in order." It was like Little Rascals. You know, "Come on, let's make a movie. You know, we're having fun, you know." And he shot the entire thing, filmed it like this. And then what we didn't know was to and fro from work.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  He sat in the back of his black Citroen and edited this thing. At the end of that week, he gave each of us the movie. He said, "Look, here, you just gotta polish it up."

• 9:56Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  And then what he would do, he had that storyboard. As he completed those scenes, he replaced the storyboard with those scenes. And then as we shot the movie, he replaced it. He replaced that. So the movie was always in existence.

• 10:13Rick Rubin?

  That's unbelievable.

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Isn't that a wild technique?

• 10:15Rick Rubin?

  I've never heard of anything like that.

• 10:16Speaker 00

  No, no, it's so incredible. And then for an actor, because you shoot out a sequence, to have the whole story there was really...

• 10:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you can understand the emotional arc in a way that you never could.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that brings to mind Sidney Lumet, who my dad worked with in Tragedy and Temporary Tale. I worked with him in a movie called The Morning After with Jane Fonda. And Sidney, who was an actor...

• 10:48Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know he was an actor.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah. He knew about rehearsing and what that's all about. And so we rehearsed our ass off in that movie. I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, but we would run the whole movie twice. He taped out a gym, like a play, basically. Taped out a gymnasium, all the right size of the sets that had been chosen. And his main direction is, "I don't want any indication here when we do this. Every time you do the scene, I want full-blown performance level shit. And get off the book as soon as you can." But it's interesting, all these different approaches. You know, some directors say, no, we don't want to rehearse. You're going to leave it.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  But acting, you're going to do take after take. And you know, this thing. I didn't read all the books that my dad read. So I got a lot of it from just him talking to me and my mom. He said, when you're working on a scene, work on it in three different ways. One way is how you would do it. It was happening to you. So really look into yourself, you know, and use how you would be if you were the character. And then do it from the character's point of view and work on the scene in that way. And in other words, if the guy's got a limp or an accent or, you know, a twitch or whatever, start to work on it that way.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  And then the third way, and I remember him saying, probably the most important way is architecturally in a way, like think of each scene as a building blocks. You're building a building, you know, this story that you're telling. And each scene has a purpose in this story, you know? And you can do it very many ways. You can hold baggage. How does that story look? How does that brick in that building look? That's why it was so helpful to bathe in the story that way, you know? Get familiar with what do we tell it? What are we saying here, you know? Some of the actors that I admire, I was just watching Philip Seymour Hoffman in a Sidney Lamet movie. Wow.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  What is it? Before the devil knows you're dead. Have you seen that? Oh, God. Do you get the Criterion Channel?

• 13:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's on that. Ethan Hawke, who's another one. And those guys cooked, man. Tommy Lee Jones is another guy like, so there's an opaqueness. You're not, he's not showing you. He's just, it's not indicating.

• 13:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And it also lets you get more involved as a viewer because it's like there's more to discover.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 13:30Rick Rubin?

  They're not telling you what to think.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  It's like musically it'd be violins, you know, that's like

• 13:35Rick Rubin?

  It's open to interpretation.

• 13:37Speaker 00

  Yes, right.

• 13:38Rick Rubin?

  And all of that stuff is open to interpretation.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, and think of radio. What radio is like? My dad, I remember he did radio before TV.

• 13:44Rick Rubin?

  Really? I didn't know that.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  Oh, and I think that might be coming back. And T-Bone and I are doing, I guess they're called podcasts now.

• 13:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, great.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  We're doing something, you know, a movie like that.

• 13:55Rick Rubin?

  Like a recorded story.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, because then the audience supplies, all of the special effects, all of the sets, everything. And there's a technique on how you draw that out, just the right amount, you know? Both my mom and my dad, my mom is probably the best actor of the whole family. And I could tell you stories about her. You know, she would have this thing that she did with all her kids called time. And that was every day, each kid would get an hour with mom, doing whatever that kid wanted to do. Could be, I want to go, I'm going to your makeup. I want to make you up like a clown and I want to, you know, make me up like a clown.

• 14:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  You know, okay, now this is the spaceship. You get under there, you're the astronaut and I'm going to be a Martian coming after you, like that. The phone would ring. No, I'm having my time with Jeff. I'll call Betty back.

• 14:54Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 14:55Speaker 00

  You know, an hour a day. And there was no sense of duty. It was, she was getting off. I mean, she was playing with her kid that she just loved. So now we cut 30 years later. I'd call her up and say, Ma, need some time. What are you doing for dinner? You know, it'd be great, you know? Now she's about, you know, 90 years old or something. Do you ever eat at a restaurant called The Palomino in Westwood? It's a nice restaurant. And we'd finish our dinner and now we'd be walking back to get our car. The valet would be there. And my mom would say, be mean to me.

• 15:37Rick Rubin?

  He means it.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Be mean to me. And I said, and I knew, and I didn't have to, I didn't have to ask her, what are you doing? I just knew exactly what she was doing. And I say, you get to the car and I say, get in the fucking car. And she goes, she looks at me, she goes, why are you so? I said, don't talk back to me, bitch. Get in the car. This is, you know, fourth of July. And we never, you know, and we just never broke character. And we just enjoyed the guy's face, you know?

• 16:05Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  And that was her sense of humor and she would just love to do that kind of thing.

• 16:12Rick Rubin?

  It's so funny.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  I just thought of another, something my mother, talk about my mother. And this is such a deep mantra really that she gave me as a young kid, you know, acting, you'd be in, you know, in high school, going off to a gig. And my mom could tell me, oh, yeah, he's anxious, you know? And she would say, Jeff, Jeff, come here, come here. Remember, have fun and don't take it too seriously.

• 16:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Fuck.

• 16:46Rick Rubin?

  Great advice.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  And now my wife, when I, because I, you would think you would learn that lesson. No, I never learned it, man. My wife

• 16:52Rick Rubin?

  How did your mom know it?

• 16:54Speaker 00

  Well, she's married to my dad, man. I mean, the actor and she, you know, she knows it herself. She was an actress, is an actress. She knows the anxiety, performance anxiety, man. That's a tough thing, you know? So a few years ago, three years ago now, it goes fast, but I was at death's door. I had terrible health problems.

• 17:15Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 17:16Speaker 00

  I had cancer, had a tumor in my body.

• 17:20Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Nine by 12 inches in my stomach. I had no idea it was there. And, you know, I was doing some sit-ups and I talked to Sue, my wife, I said, something feels funny there. It just feels like it's a bone where a bone shouldn't be. I said, feel it. Yeah, you ought to see a doctor. I said, no, no, it doesn't hurt. And we're going to Montana, you know? So I went to Montana for two or three months and I had a great time. My shins itched and I had night sweats, but I think it's summer, you know? Those are all symptoms of lymphoma, man.

• 17:57Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  So I had this giant thing in my stomach. And I was just about to go back to do the second season of The Old Man, this TV show. And I said, I better get it checked out. So I go there and, yeah, you, you have lymphoma. It's a giant lymphoma there. So they put me in the hospital and they did all these tests and stuff. And it was an unusual form of lymphoma. They finally found the right cocktail for it. Now I'm in chemo, doing the chemo sessions. And it seemed to be working. I said, oh, that's great. And then I get a letter from the chemo place.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  You may have been exposed to COVID. And that proved to be true. And the COVID made the cancer look like nothing, man, because I had no immune system. You know, the chemo stripped my immune system and the COVID just kicked my ass, man. So I was on death's door, you know? And what I found, sitting at the doorstep there, where you pull out all your tricks, man, all your spiritual, philosophic, you know, tools that you can. And the one that gave me the most succor was, remember, have fun and don't take it too seriously.

• 19:22Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  I just said, that's right. Everybody's dying. This is me doing that. Feel all the love that's coming from all those nurses, from your family, all your friends, how much love you feel coursing through your body.

• 19:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. That attitude probably had as much to do with you being well now as anything other doctors did.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  Maybe so.

• 19:43Rick Rubin?

  That sounds like healing medicine.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Oh, God. Isn't that wild? So my mom, I mean, I could go on and on, but both my parents, they were quite remarkable.

• 19:54Rick Rubin?

  Did going through that health trauma, change anything in your life after it?

• 20:00Speaker 00

  When you go through something like that, it's a big hit, like a hit of, you know, some kind of drug. It takes you to a certain place.

• 20:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  And that lasts for a while and then it starts to dissipate and you kind of get back to so-called normal, you know?

• 20:15Rick Rubin?

  And you feel like yourself now.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Now, you say that, of course not, you know? It's like, yeah, it's like taking, I'm developing this camera with my wife now. And I take these wide-lux pictures and, you know, photography was a big thing for me growing up. That's the thing about photography, you know, this miracle, taking pictures, capturing light and shadows.

• 20:43Rick Rubin?

  Like a magic trick.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, like a magic trick. It's funny, making movies, I always thought there's magic tricks and then there's real magic, or I guess you could call them miracles. Then when you look around a miracle, that's kind of a normal thing, man. I mean, this is all miraculous.

• 21:01Rick Rubin?

  Every day.

• 21:02Speaker 00

  Every day. And photography, whether it's through the lens or just realizing that each moment, these little ordinary moments are extraordinary.

• 21:22Speaker 02

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• 23:35Rick Rubin?

  Tell me how the camera came to be.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Well, I first came in contact with the wide-lux. Maybe you had this experience too in high school. There was a rumor going around that the guy who was gonna take the class picture had this camera that panned. And if you ran around real quick, you could be in the picture twice. Do you remember anything like that?

• 23:57Rick Rubin?

  No, I don't remember this at all.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  And that rumor proved to be true.

• 24:01Rick Rubin?

  It's a still camera?

• 24:03Speaker 00

  It's a still camera.

• 24:04Rick Rubin?

  That pans?

• 24:04Speaker 00

  That pans, so it's like...

• 24:06Rick Rubin?

  Inside?

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, inside.

• 24:07Rick Rubin?

  It doesn't move?

• 24:08Speaker 00

  The shutter is a slit that pans across and exposes the film.

• 24:15Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  And then when I got married in 77, this guy, Mark Hanauer, came to our wedding. You're here just in the Malibu Hills up here of Los Flores and Rambo Pacifica, you know. And he took these pictures with this wide-lux camera. I saw those pictures, and I said, "Oh, my God. What is this? This is remarkable." And then my wife gave me one. And that's the only camera I've used from then on.

• 24:47Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  And, you know, back in high school, I had a darkroom, you know. Turned my bathroom, you know, then put tinfoil and got the red light and the tunes, you know. You'd listen, you know, all the Beatles and Dylan and all, and Bach and all the Miles, all the great jazz. You know, music was a big part of the darkroom experience. You'd be in there, what you thought was an hour, but it turned out to be six hours because you're so deep, you know, so focused. My wife became a professional photographer, and we had built a darkroom up in Malibu, really into it. And then I started making these little books for the cast and crew. Karen Allen, it was her ID when we were doing Starman.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  And she said, "Let's make it book." So Charlie Martin Smith and Karen and I made this book for the cast and crew with my photographs and also Sid Baldwin, who was the still photographer on the show. And everybody seemed to like it. And I loved it because I was talking about that miracle. You know, I look at these pictures and I'm transported right back to those times, you know. So as much as it was a gift to them, it was a gift to myself. And I started making these books. I think I made about 30 of these books now.

• 26:07Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  I just had a, did an exhibit of my photographs up in Santa Barbara, the Tamsin Gallery. And my daughter Jessie was the host.

• 26:17Rick Rubin?

  Really?

• 26:18Speaker 00

  So we jammed on that. And one of her questions, she says, "Yeah, Dad, and there's a guy who shows up in every book." I said, "It's not me." I would take some selfies with him. It's a great camera for selfies because, well, you know, I like to take selfies where I'm not looking at the camera. So, you know, I mean, we took one here. It'd be positioned so you can't even see my arm, you know, like that. This is before selfies kind of became a thing. She says, "It's not you, Dad. Who is it?" And of course, I know who it is. It's Lloyd Catlett.

• 26:49Rick Rubin?

  Who's that?

• 26:50Speaker 00

  Lloyd Catlett is this guy. We've made over 70 films together. I met him in 1969. He was this young 16-year-old kid who was in The Last Picture Show. And he was hired as an actor, you know, a good part in the movie, but also to teach us California kids how to be Texas, you know, how to be Texans. And he fell in love with the circus, you know. When we left town, he was right on our heels.

• 27:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  And then he became my stand-in and acted in movies with me and stand-in. But I have this thread through all of the movies. All, can you imagine?

• 27:33Rick Rubin?

  So cool.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  And, you know, like we were talking about our memory, how shitty our memory is. He's got a much better memory than I have. So he can, I said, "What's that guy's name?" Boom, he's got it, you know. I say, "Remember that?" "Yeah, yeah." We laugh, you know, together. So that has been just a real gift.

• 27:50Rick Rubin?

  Do you photograph out in the world as well?

• 27:53Speaker 00

  I've got quite a few photographs, you know, that aren't on movie sets. But I, that's kind of my specialty, you know. And one of the things I think is valuable about my photographs is that I'm in a unique position, right in the center of making movies.

• 28:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  The latter part of the 20th century, early part of the 21st century, with this weird camera, this unique camera. So that's kind of makes the, and there's a historical aspect to it because everything is changing so fast, man, with all this AI.

• 28:26Rick Rubin?

  Walk me through from the beginning to now all of the changes that you saw happen in making films.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Oh, man, well. So my first movie is a movie called Halls of Anger. It might have been Rob Reiner's first movie too. He was in it, actor.

• 28:47Rick Rubin?

  How old were you at the time?

• 28:50Speaker 00

  Maybe 19. And it was all about busing white kids into a black school, which was a pretty interesting subject, you know. So white people could kind of feel what prejudice feels like. That was the idea. And I played the white kid who was trying to integrate, and the black kids kept beating the shit out of me. And there was this scene where I've been trying to do it, and the kids keep beating me up. And then the boys' vice principal, who was played by Calvin Lockhart, he says, "You've got to go back, you know. You've got to keep going on this." And I, it was a very emotional scene, you know, for me. I had just ended a love affair.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Do you remember your first, what that feels like, your heart breaking? It was a terrible feeling. It lasted for years. And I was able to do some thespian judo with that feeling.

• 29:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  And take it for this thing. And I, I kicked ass in the sea. I remember they shot everyone else's. But then they got to my thing. And it made me think, I told you about talking to my dad, saying, "I'm not sure if I'm cut out for this." And I said, funny, I said, "Shit, I think I could do this, man. This is pretty wild." And I got very emotional and cried and all this stuff. Getting an applaud from the crew.

• 30:12Rick Rubin?

  The crew, yeah.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  That's always hot. And now, I'm saying, now we're the premier of the show in Watts, I think. My dad's on my right, Bo's on my left. And I'm sitting back, I said, "Okay, now wait and you see this fucking scene."

• 30:30Speaker 00

  And here it comes. And the way they cut it, they cut to my face and I'm like, you know, some.

• 30:40Rick Rubin?

  You didn't see the buildup.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  There was no, the audience burst out laughing. I think I mother shit a little bit, you know, I just, you know, it laid a little, I was so, you know, it was just so terrible.

• 30:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  And that was a interesting lesson and that was like, so what do you do about that?

• 30:59Rick Rubin?

  What do you do?

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Do you protect yourself? Do you give it up? You know, what do you do? And my choice was, no, you gotta give it up and you gotta, you can't be worried about it. That's one of the elements of making movies. It's a collage and the collage ended up to you. It's up to who's ever cut in the film. Hopefully it's the director. And every once in a while, you had high expectations going in and now it's even better what they do, you know? That happens and sometimes it don't, man. And so you can't, but you can't protect yourself, you know, you can't.

• 31:34Rick Rubin?

  So how do you control?

• 31:35Speaker 00

  You can control it in certain ways, but it, it's self defeating because it dampens the whole energy of creativity, you know? So that was a big thing for me, that really about editing, you know? Now I'm getting off track a little bit more, but I'm gonna go with the editing aspect. Bo's first movie was with Hal Ashby.

• 31:58Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  Hal's last movie was my movie.

• 32:01Rick Rubin?

  Incredible.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Eight Million Ways to Die. Hal was an editor. Think of his films, Being There, Coming Home, Last Detail, man, these masterpieces. And he worked through improvisation. It's interesting where the directors come from, you know, some are actors like Sidney Lumet.

• 32:20Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  Some are, you know, writers, some are editors. So Hal said, just bring it up, you know, give me all your shit, you know, and, and.

• 32:29Rick Rubin?

  And then he'd figure out how to make it into something.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  He would make it into something.

• 32:33Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  I remember asking him, I said, are we gonna have to do much looping, you know, much ADR stuff? And he goes, no. I said, what do you mean? He says, I'm an editor, Jim. I said, what do you mean? He says, man, I get in there with a little razor blade and I can, I'm the, this is on the old school shit, you know? And he, you know, he was.

• 32:51Rick Rubin?

  Physical.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was a master at this stuff. I remember him saying, the key to editing is just bathing in the film. He would sleep in the editing room, you know, and just look at it over and over and over again. But you think of like that monologue that John Voight gives in Coming Home, you know, that's improv, man. That's, that's, and I think I have a feeling that you might work the same way. T-Bone does as well. Creating the space, it's hard for people to understand what that is, but that's my favorite kind of directors. And you guys are directors too.

• 33:29Rick Rubin?

  We have no idea when we're going in, what it's gonna be, no clue. And there's a lot of different versions of good, you know?

• 33:36Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:37Rick Rubin?

  And you don't know until you're discovering it.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  It's a funny talent when you have a visitor coming in and watch you at work. They say, but he's not doing anything. What is he doing? It's space creation, you know, it's just safety, vibe, playfulness, joy, humor, love, and let it do us.

• 33:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, watch it unfold.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's a great feeling. It's a miracle, man.

• 33:59Rick Rubin?

  It is.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  I mean, isn't, you know, my task as a creative person is getting out of the way, right? How do you practice doing that? How do you get in that spot? You know, that's a, an interesting, you know, practice to, to mess with. But Hal, so Bo did his first movie, Landlord. I did his second, Eight Million Ways to Die. I think it was Andy Garcia's first film. We had a ball working together. There was a guy, Mark Damon was the producer. And Hal had a bad rep right around that time, you know, doing coke. And it was, you know, I think he had done that Stone documentary or something. It was, he just, you know, had a bad reputation.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  And so the script was just a basic outline. We would never shoot the script. We would just jam on the, the essence of the scene. And this guy had no faith in Hal's process. I mean, look at the pudding that's coming out of Hal's oven, you know, these are masterpieces. So he bitched and bitched. I can understand how it would frustrate the financiers to say, that's not, that's not the script, man, you know? Where are you gonna go with this thing, you know? So he comes in, we got, you know, about two weeks to go, shoot. He comes in and he says, we're pulling the plug today. This is your last day. Hal says, what are you talking about? We've got major stuff.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Hal went into his trailer, burned a dope, I think, came out and said, all right, I've got, he just thought we're gonna, we're gonna do a phone call. Andy, you're gonna have this big, long phone call. You know, he didn't let it crush him, you know? I mean, you know, he didn't say, oh, you know.

• 35:40Rick Rubin?

  He solved the problem.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  He just, yeah, cause that's basically what movies, it's all about, these little, you know, trying to figure out how we navigate these challenges, you know? So there is a challenge. So he came up with this long monologue and he created the kind of space of such safety and inclusion that I saw Andy doing the scene and I had an idea about what would make it better for Andy. And I went up to him, I said, Hal, what if Andy, you know, did this instead of that? And he goes, that, that's a really good idea, but let Andy cross the bridge.

• 36:14Rick Rubin?

  Do his thing first.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Let him find that out. My idea came from the idea, we're, we're gonna time crunch here, we got a lot of stuff. And he said, we got all the time in the world, you know? God, the vibe he created. So we actually shot the movie with all that hindrance. We shot the movie Hal and mine. Then the guy fired Hal, didn't let him edit the film, man. And just cut it against the grain.

• 36:42Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  And then Hal died. I mean, it broke his heart, man. God.

• 36:50Rick Rubin?

  Crazy story.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  I remember your, your question was how is, how has it changed over the years? That kind of has remained the same, these stories that, you know, it's a communal art form, you know? You're working with other guys that can shut you down. So it's up for grabs, you know, how it's gonna turn out. I love this thing. This is what keeps me coming back is that when it transcends your high expectations and it does that every once in a while.

• 37:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's the best feeling.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  Isn't it a great feeling? I was going with, and God, look what happened. That is so amazing. So that kind of stuff, those first editing stories, that still happens and the good and the bad of that. But when, when you ask me what's changed, a great example of that is Tron. I've had great luck with first time directors, just wonderful. You know, some of my best movies have been first time guys. But this was Steven Lisberger, who came up with this idea of Tron, you know?

• 37:52Speaker 00

  We shot it in black and white, 70 millimeter, black and white, all hand titted by these Korean women. All our costumes were in black and white. We would go into this black and white box, you know, this soundstage, the special effect, everything was black duvet team with white adhesive tape. That was our, that was our special effects, you know? Then they did it all in post, you know, coloring stuff and made it glow and shit. And then you'd go outside after being that black and white and color, oh my gosh. Color would be hitting you like a ton of bricks. So now we down the second one.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  I'm scanned, you know, they, they do a scan so I can, they can jack with me, you know, digitally. And they did that. And so I was, that's basically what the first movie was all about, getting scanned into a computer. Now it's happening in real time. And so I could be a, play a younger version of myself, but it was kind of primitive. I thought I looked more like Bill Maher than I did myself, you know? It was just, it didn't matter that my, now the whole AI stuff is so much more advanced. You meet in the sequel to Tron, we had all these dots on our faces and now they don't do any of that. Now it's, so just that, it's leaps and bounds, you know, what that AI does.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  And it's amazing how just the whole AI idea, because in movies, you know, I remember seeing Jurassic Park for the first time. You see, look what they can do or, or see in the Hobbit movies, you know, look at all the people. And then finally it loses its.

• 39:34Rick Rubin?

  Humanity, yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, cause it's just, you know, and you say, oh, still it's an interesting tool that, you know, you can use, but it loses something. You know, I mean, pretty soon I'll be out of gig, man. I mean, you know what? I'll probably lease my image, you know, say we wanna combo De Niro, Bridges and let's put some Andy Garcia in there, see what happens, you know? A little more Garcia, a little more, you know? You know, I mean, that's, you know, not too far off. I mean, they can do it already, you know?

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• 41:42Rick Rubin?

  How did you meet Bernie Glassman?

• 41:47Speaker 00

  I'm at Ram Dass's birthday party. I make these little ceramic heads, you know? And I do this thing where, you know, I'll make a pot or a vase or something, and I'll have a hunk of clay left over. And I'll let my hands make a head out of it. And they're like aspects of myself. This is something I do, and I've got, you know, hundreds of these fuckers. So I went up to Ram Dass and I said, "I've always wanted to give you a little head."

• 42:20Speaker 00

  "Happy birthday, you like it a little." And then we sit down there, and there's this kind of tubby Jewish guy on the left. He doesn't look like, I said, "What is he doing here in this spirit?" And he turns out to be the real thing. This guy's a zen master, big time.

• 42:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  And he says, "Hey, I really dig Lebowski, man." And Lebowski is just chock full of all these modern day koans. I said, "What are you talking about?" He says, "Well, look who wrote and directed Lebowski, the Koan Brothers."

• 42:57Speaker 00

  I said, "Okay, good, very good, okay." He says, "The dude abides." That's very Buddhistic right there. I say, "Yeah."

• 43:08Speaker 00

  He says, "My favorite koan in Big Lebowski is, 'Well, that's just like your opinion, man.'" I said, "Oh, I'm getting it now, you know?" "Well, you know what a koan is, and what's the sound of one hand clapping, these questions that really don't have traditional answers to them." I said, "Give me another one." He says, "Well, shut the fuck up, Donnie, there's another koan." So he starts to list these things, and he says, "Hey, let's write a book." I say, "What do you mean?" He says, "Yeah, let's write a book about Lebowski and how it, you know, might have some of these ideas, these Buddhist ideas." And I'm, you know, kind of Buddhistly bent myself, you know, I'm a big fan of Alan Watts, you know, you must be. Yeah, he is probably the best.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Isn't he so great? I mean, God, you know, he's my wife's favorite too because he's got a sense of humor about the whole thing. He says, "Yeah, let's do this." I said, "Well, I've got a ranch up in Montana, let's go up there for a couple of weeks and just hang, you know?" You know how you hit it off with somebody very quickly and you say, "Wow." And so I hit it off with him just immediately. So we went up there and we just had two weeks of conversation. And then his wife, Eve Marco, edited it. And Bernie was, you know, my dear friend and teacher and, God, what a guy, man, I mean.

• 44:37Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember when you first read the script for Lebowski? Tell me what you remember.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember bumping into the Koan Brothers. Maybe it was at a party or something, I can't remember. And they say, "Oh, we've written something for you." I said, "Oh, you're kidding, great." No, I was a big fan.

• 44:55Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know they wrote it for you.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was a big fan of Blood Simple.

• 44:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  And then I read the script and I said, "Wow, this is not like anything I've ever done before. Why didn't you think of me?" You know, it was like something from my past, kind of weird vibe.

• 45:10Rick Rubin?

  Did you laugh out loud when you read the script?

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I mean, I thought it was, I was amazed that when it first came out, it didn't do anything, you know? It was not successful when it came out. It had to get, you know, came back from Europe and, you know, was successful over there and then splashed back here.

• 45:30Rick Rubin?

  How much of what you read in the script is what the movie is and how much did it evolve through making it?

• 45:38Speaker 00

  Well, they write so well that it feels like improvisation, but it's not. And Walter John Goodman and I, you know, we were very precise, you know, about where each fuck was, each man was. I love pot, I'm a, you know, was a pot head, I'm not doing it these days, but I didn't smoke any pot on that movie. I really wanted to be as clear and not, you know, you know, what are they, what's the acting term, sense memory? I had done a lot of pot, I knew what that, you know, I could get there without, you know, having to smoke it.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Now, we would do improvisation, John and I remember doing this, to feel the vibe of the scene, and then we would always go back and the script, it was almost like mu, you know, like music. You know, you want the right melody, you want the notes, and each man was there for

• 46:36Rick Rubin?

  But you would jam to better get into the script?

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Yes, right, right. And, oh, man, it was, oh, man. I want to, you know, I was talking about my photography and I made a book for Lebowski, you know, and I looked through that book and I get, boom, I get right back to each of those scenes, you know? The day Turturro comes, you know, he's gonna do this one little scene kissing the ball, you know? And, oh, God, he was just so incredible.

• 47:07Rick Rubin?

  When you were young, in addition to working with your dad, you got to work with a lot of the great actors. Do you remember any things that they directly told you that were helpful going forward?

• 47:21Speaker 00

  Well, don't you love it when you've got these heroes of yours, you know, and you put them on a pedestal? And when you meet them, they let you know, "I'm just one of you guys."

• 47:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, they're people.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Don't you love that? I just love that, man. So my second film was a movie called The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go, written by Burgess Meredith.

• 47:44Rick Rubin?

  Had he ever directed or written before?

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Oh, he was, you know, people are most familiar with him playing the Penguin in the original Batman TV series.

• 47:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  But he was a classical, you know, I just watched.

• 47:56Rick Rubin?

  And then in Rocky as well.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  And Rocky, that's another, yeah. But, yeah, he was a wonderful actor and James Mason was also in that film. And he was, you know, so down to earth and, you know, Lolita, you know, I just remember, you know, all his great movies. And another story with James just popped into my mind, working with John Huston. And I worked with him as an actor and as a director. I was in a movie that he directed called Fat City. My big brother Bo did some agenting for me. He went up for the part and he was a little too old, he's eight years older than me. He says, "But you ought to check out my brother." So I went in to, you know, see the casting guy and they liked me.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  And then they got a call from my agent that John Huston wanted to meet me. "Oh, great, where?" "Madrid."

• 48:54Speaker 00

  "Madrid, yeah." So I get on a plane and where he wants, where the meeting was to be is at the Prado.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  So I get there and I'm, again, I'm about, you know, early twenties. And I'm checking into the hotel. And there's this beautiful girl there. We start to talk and she says, "Take you out to dinner, we'll just go out, beautiful food, fish." So I guess I, well, I gotta get home fairly early because I got this interview. So I go out with this beautiful girl and have a wonderful meal. I get home, get into bed, and I wake up with food poisoning. Man, it's just puking and shitting and just the worst. And I've got to meet John Huston at the Prado.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  So there I were, looking at the Goyas and the, you know, all of these great painters, Velazquez and stuff, trying my best not to puke on the paintings, man. I mean, I'm literally puking in my mouth and swallowing my.

• 49:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's the worst feeling.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  And John doesn't talk about the movie at all, he's just pointing out art to me. And I'm saying, "Well, I've lost that part, oh, God, help me, I hope I don't die." I was just feeling just terrible.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  And I'm in bed and I don't speak Spanish and I can't talk on the phone to the desk and everything. I said, "What am I gonna do?" And I get a knock on the door. And I crawl, my hands are knee to the door and open the door, and who's standing there? James Mason. "What are you doing in the floor, David?"

• 50:39Speaker 00

  And he said, "My life." He, you know, he got me, you know, a doctor, got the right shot and stuff.

• 50:45Rick Rubin?

  He still cast you for the movie after the food poisoning?

• 50:48Speaker 00

  "I got the part, yeah, I got the part, man."

• 50:55Speaker 00

  And it was with Stacy Keats, a wonderful actor.

• 50:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, great.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Susan Terrell and Candy Clark, who I fell in love with and we became, you know, we lived together for many years. And John, you know, he was kind of, you know, not feeling well. Actually, he was, you know, would have these, you know, on oxygen all the time. There was a scene, it was my favorite scene in the movie where I'm having a dream and I wake up in the middle of the dream, having dreamt that my wife Candy was holding the hand of my best friend. And so I said, don't touch me, you know, I'm pissed off and I'm still in the dream, but I'm awake. And there was a certain comedic element to this whole thing.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  And my approach was the more serious I could play it, the funnier it would be. And John had some other ideas and I was trying to do it with him. And saw dailies the next day. And Ray Stark, who the producer is in there. And after the dailies, he walked with me, he said, what did you think? And I said, no, I didn't really like it. He goes, yeah, I know. He says, but don't worry, when we shoot shooting, I'm gonna have you and Candy take acting lessons and then we'll come back and reshoot this thing. And that kind of hit me weird because I had already been nominated for an Academy Award. But I said, okay.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  So that's what happened and we, Jeff Corey was an acting teacher, pretty tough acting teacher, you know, having to, you know, really get the emotion out of you. I was living with Candy at the time and we would go like twice a week to this acting teacher. And Candy would say, you know, she had to cry and she said, I don't wanna go, Joe, I don't, I don't wanna cry. I said, come on, Candy, you know, this is what acting is all about. You gotta do the hard. So we would go and he'd make her cry every time, you know? And now, now we're gonna come back to reshoot the thing.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  We were instructed by Ray, don't tell anything to John about taking any lessons or anything. Candy goes to John and says, I'm not supposed to say this, but we've been taking these acting lessons and I don't know how to play the part. I don't know how to do it. John said, just do it the way you did it before. Just do it the way you did it before. Great. Knowing full well that would never be in the movie anyway.

• 53:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  And we shot this scene and it was, you know, never in the movie. But now years later, I'm doing a movie called Winter Kills and John Huston's playing my father. Directed, again, I mentioned having great luck with first time directors. This was Bill Richard, the cast of this movie. John Huston, Elizabeth Taylor, Tishiro Mafuni, Sterling Hayden, Richard Boone. It's amazing. And he, and he just, he got this cast together just through his, his sheer charisma. He was a wonderful guy, you know? John Huston was playing my father.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  And John, when we were doing Fat City, you know, I was always jealous of Stacy because John and Stacy were playing Backgammon and so forth. And I kind of felt left out. I think, you know, that was where he wanted to direct me, keep me on my heels, you know?

• 54:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  And then doing this Winter Kills, he not only was very open and gregarious with me, but he was also, through this first time director, he was like showing how an actor should behave to a director. He would say, how was it, Bill? How was it for you? Should I, any ideas? We're like, you know, like, maybe do differently.

• 54:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  You know?

• 54:56Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that was, you know, great experience.

• 54:59Rick Rubin?

  Wasn't Winter Kills banned or something? Something happened with Winter Kills.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  Oh, God. Oh, another actor that was in it was, was, who played in Psycho, you know, Anthony Perkins?

• 55:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Speaker 00

  He was in it. He played the bad guy in it. And this is such a weird, weird story. So Bo had done a movie with Anthony Perkins, a Larry McMurtry story called Love and Molly, directed by Sidney Lumet. Tony did acid every day. You know? And one of his acting techniques was what drug would be appropriate for this thing? So we're doing this scene, the climax of a movie where he kidnapped my girlfriend and I take his arm, I have a blackjack in my hand, I break his arm, I say, tell me

• 55:54Speaker 00

  where she is, I'm gonna break your other arm, tell me where she is. So he says, for this scene, I think amyl nitrate. So the director goes out and gets a box of amys and, you know? Roll it first time, you know, are you ready? Okay, action. Yeah. And he's got this long two-page monologue and he hits it and he does it beautifully.

• 56:22Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Just does the whole thing. Now it gets to my side and I said, no, I think I'll do an amy. And I hit that poor guy so fucking hard with that fake blackjack.

• 56:37Rick Rubin?

  Oh.

• 56:38Speaker 00

  That, you know, shut down the day's work, you know?

• 56:41Rick Rubin?

  That's crazy.

• 56:42Speaker 00

  It was terrible. And I don't know if it was the same day or maybe it was the reshoot of that thing. The stage doors, these big doors opened to the soundstage and in come the union guys and shut us down because all the cast and crew wasn't being paid their union dues. And they were all just there because of the love of this guy, Bill Richard had.

• 57:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  And so they shut us down.

• 57:10Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 57:10Speaker 00

  And we had major scenes to shoot and, you know, kind of again, broke all our hearts. And a few weeks later, I get a call from Bill. It's like, I got this idea, man. I said, what? He says, what we're gonna do, I've written this script, it's a great script and you'll be just so perfect in it. We're gonna shoot it in Germany, I've got the money. And then we're gonna, that's gonna come out and then we'll get the money to finish Winter Kills. And it's a great scene with Sterling Hayden that you're gonna. And I said, okay. And off we go to Germany, shoot this other movie. And his prophecy proved true. We came in, finished Winter Kills.

• 57:55Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  I mean, just all these adventures, you know, crazy.

• 57:58Rick Rubin?

  So when Anthony Perkins does the amyl nitrate, you didn't think, this is crazy. You think, good idea, I'll do it too.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Oh, well, this is back in the day, man, you know, much younger and the things like that, you know? I thought of another, I thought of another drug story I might as well tell you. Doing Thunderbolt and Lightfoot with Clint Eastwood. This is again, another great example of first time directors. This was Mike Chaminos, first time directing. This is the guy who directed The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate and so forth. And Clint is famous for only wanting one or two takes.

• 58:39Rick Rubin?

  Really? I didn't know that.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I was the young punk kid who said, you know, I'd go up to Mike, I'd say, I got an I can, Mike. And he said, well, you gotta ask the boss, you know? And he would go over there and talk to Clint and Clint would say, yeah, give the cat a shot. So I really appreciate that, what Clint did. And then we're doing the scene, you ever see that movie?

• 59:05Rick Rubin?

  Not in a long time.

• 59:06Speaker 00

  But you've seen it at some point, the end of the movie, I get kicked in the head by George Kennedy and I having a stroke and I die, basically, it's a death scene. I had this idea, I said, if did a dentist get some Novocain, I'm shooting Novocain in my mouth and I'm just, you know, go like that, you know, I'll be a great effect, you know? And he said, okay. So we did it, worked great, lost the film. We had to do it all over again and did the same thing again.

• 59:38Rick Rubin?

  Lost the film?

• 59:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, lost.

• 59:39Rick Rubin?

  Physically lost the film?

• 59:41Speaker 00

  You know, like, I can't remember, it was either lost or it was no good. We just had to reshoot it again. Now, years later, we're doing Heaven's Gate. He had just won the Academy Award for Deer Hunter. He was the darling of Hollywood. They said, do whatever you want, Mike. He said, well, I've got this epic Western I wanna do. But he said, but I don't want any of the suits or any press to come because I, it's gonna be a challenging thing to do it. And everybody who was in it, I can't remember, I think it was maybe six months shooting. That's where I met T-Bone on here. T-Bone played my maid in the thing.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  And Willem Dafoe, it was his first movie, he played my two, my, those were my housekeeping guys. Willem, I think, got fired for laughing inappropriately in a scene in one, you're just hanging out when Mike was directing. And it was a very interesting experience because unlike what it was with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, it was, you know, one or two takes, Mike would do 60 takes.

• 1:00:49Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  I mean, it was like, let's show up, we'll be in costume, if we get it, we get it. If we don't, we'll just come back and we'll do it again. So they never knew when it counted. And I guess from his point of view, he's looking for that happy accident, you know, that one little thing. But from the acting thing, it was kind of tough because you don't know, when does it count?

• 1:01:10Rick Rubin?

  And it's hard to make it count 60 times.

• 1:01:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And everybody gonna do it together and, you know, it was, you know, challenging that way. Now we're doing this battle scene and I'm supposed to get shot. And then I give a big speech and I go up to Mike and I say, Mike, you know, I'm being shot here and there's a medic there, you know? What if the medic shoots me up with some morphine? And then I give my speech? And he goes, yeah, yeah. And I said, but I, I know he's got some morphine, but I want, before we do it on film, I wanna see if I can do that. So how do you feel about him shooting me up with the morphine and then I'll try to do the scene?

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  And he said, you just wanna get high on the morphine. I say, yeah, but I think, no, I really think it might be effective, you know, for the movie as well.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  And so I get the, you know, I get the real doctor there and he shoots me up with morphine and I do this thing and I say, oh, this is great, you know, I can do this. It's a good effect.

• 1:02:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Now we're gonna shoot it on film. And now we're doing it with the actor and he's got the, you know, he's talked to the medic and he's gonna do it. And we practiced it and shit and he does it. And it's just terrible, man. It's not morphine, it's some other shit, some like methadone, I don't know what he was shooting. This is back in the days when we experimented with drugs, you know?

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

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• 1:04:20Rick Rubin?

  I remember reading a story you told about if it's in church, you're not in the service.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:28Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 1:04:31Speaker 00

  Nineteen years old, you're really ripe for Vietnam. And I followed my brother's footsteps. He enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve. And in the Coast Guard Reserve, you go to, you know, regular old boot camp. Boot camp is 10 weeks. Wow. I can remember going there in your civilian clothes on a bus arriving there.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  And I'll get lined up and the guy who is in charge of us, he's walking up and down the lines, questioning us, you know, what's your name? He goes up to one kid and saying, what's your name? My name is Joe Samuel, sir. Quit moving your fucking head. Why are you moving your head like that? I don't know, sir. Don't fucking move your head. Yes, sir. Now there's a guy in the line behind him who starts to laugh, you know, like this. And the drill guy goes over to that guy and says, you like laughing asshole? I want you to continue to laugh until I tell you to stop.

• 1:05:41Speaker 00

  You understand, asshole? Yes, sir. Start laughing.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Now we're, this is now hours later and we're up in our racks, you know, two o'clock in the morning.

• 1:05:57Rick Rubin?

  Still?

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  Still, you know?

• 1:05:58Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  I mean, it was torture, basically. They strip you of your, they give you a number, strip you from your identity, you know? I guess that's effective for fighting battles and shit, you know, working for the team, you know? Get rid of your individuality. And now where it's about the second week and we're all, you know, stripped out, we're kind of been bashed around. And the guy says to us, all right assholes, today's Sunday, you have a choice to make. You can go to church or you can hypoit rifles on the grounder. How many people want to go to church? So we often go to church. And the guy in there, Don Harris, was the chaplain.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  And he said, I want to start today by telling you guys that when you're in here, you're not in the military, you're in the house of the Lord. Praise God. How a fucking Luger, you know? All his sermons were all about dealing with tough times and, you know, and love and all these things. He had me play my guitar and sing to the troops and he would have discussions with all the guys and everything. Remarkable guy. Turned me on to an incredible book. Are you into Kozinzakis? And oh, do you know who he is? His most famous book is Zorba the Greek.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  But he also wrote The Last Temptation of Christ. He would write, rewrite like the New Testament, you know, his version, you know, why not? Why, why can't I be tapped in like that? Remarkable stories. The Last Temptation of Christ, it's a big thick book. The last half of it is a dream that Jesus has on the cross.

• 1:07:47Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  Of being a normal person, have the two wives, all these kids. And then he wakes up. Yeah, I mean, it's a great book. Marty Scorsese made a movie about. And he turned me on to a wonderful book that I can't recommend high enough called The Saviors of God. That if anybody's gonna save anybody, we've got to save God. And it's quite an amazing book. And during that time, I got into a Christian phase in my spiritual journey. And so I really appreciated all of that.

• 1:08:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  Especially, you know, when you're in tough times, you pull out all your, all your tricks, what am I, what's gonna help me, man?

• 1:08:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  And that's, you know, what helped me, that kind of stuff. So I really appreciated that. Then we got honor company about in the ninth week we were there. Elder companies get it at some point. We got honor company and that means we could, we're on leave and we could go into San Francisco. And he said, I'm gonna break the rules, Jeff. I said, what? He says, I want to take you somewhere. I say, where? He says, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna break the rules, I'm gonna give you some civvies so you won't pop out. And he gave me these civilian clothes and he took me to the Carousel Ballroom to see Jefferson Airplay.

• 1:09:12Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  And Big Brother.

• 1:09:13Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:09:15Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  And I just, you know, that was all fresh, that was all fresh music at the time. I just went, holy shit. And then he ended up, you know, many, many years later, ended up marrying me and Sue. So Don Harris, wonderful, wonderful guy.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  My wife, you know, I've been, I'm going on 50 years, man. And the love thing just gets stronger and stronger and we've been doing these movies together for so long. So she knows what it takes and how to.

• 1:09:50Rick Rubin?

  How'd you guys meet?

• 1:09:52Speaker 00

  We met on a movie. We met on a movie called Rancho Deluxe up in Montana. I'm doing a scene in this dude ranch called Chico Hot Springs. I'm in this big hot tub, a natural hot spring. Sam Waterston on one side, Harry Dean Stanton on the other, and we're doing a scene. And I look over and I see this girl, I cannot take my eyes off her. She is so gorgeous. And she's got two black eyes and a broken nose. So this beauty juxtaposed to this disfigurement, man, it was just so amazing, you know? And I finally get the nerve to ask her out.

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  And I don't know about you, but asking girls out, man, that was always tough.

• 1:10:39Rick Rubin?

  Terrifying.

• 1:10:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, it's, yeah. So I was so attracted, I couldn't help it. And I said, you know, after we were shooting that, I said, would you like to go out with me? She says, no. It's a small town, maybe I'll see you around. I say, okay. And then her prophecy proved true and we had the rap party and she was there and we danced and felt, boom, that was it. Got married, you know, had a bunch of kids. Now we cut 30 years later and I'm going through my mail and I get a letter from the makeup man on that show.

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  And he says, I was going through my files and I found a picture of you asking a local girl out. It's two pictures, a close-up and a two-shot of the first words we ever spoke.

• 1:11:32Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  Me asking her out and her saying no. Click.

• 1:11:37Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:11:38Speaker 00

  Isn't that wild, man?

• 1:11:39Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  And so that's my prized possession. After this thing, I can show you that picture.

• 1:11:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I want to see. Have you ever done theater?

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Rick Rubin?

  What's that like?

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  With my dad.

• 1:11:51Rick Rubin?

  Oh, really?

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  We did summer stock. He did Guys and Dolls, that was one of, you know, thing he would do around, he'd do a lot. Remember, I was on stage with this other woman. My dad's entering the stage and I see him walking down the aisle and he's fucking with his zipper, you know? He comes on and I see his zipper is just totally off the track and it's just open like this, you know? And the people start laughing and shit. And my dad, you know, breaks the fourth wall, says, okay, okay, okay, I'm gonna go up and change my pants. Jeff entertained the people. And so I'm up there, you know, all alone.

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  And I said, well, I took some tap lessons, I'm gonna do a little tap routine for you now, you know? You know, I mean, it was just, it gets, you know, just so bizarre sometimes.

• 1:12:45Rick Rubin?

  It's an unbelievable story.

• 1:12:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Rick Rubin?

  Do you think your dad felt like you can handle this?

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I don't, yeah, I don't, I mean, I just had to, you know?

• 1:12:56Rick Rubin?

  Is it like the show must go on?

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's exactly it, the show must go on. Yeah. Working with him on these two movies as an adult, was blown away. I got to work with him, it was quite a big part. We had so much fun pretending, you know, with your dad on that level.

• 1:13:16Rick Rubin?

  Did it tap into things from childhood? Did you feel like you were reliving your childhood doing that with him?

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  Huh. It's sort of like an extension. It's not because it wasn't even reliving. It was just like an extension because uh, I'm thinking of a couple of things, you know, coming from a showbiz family. You know, we were encouraged as kids to perform, do, you know, shows and plays and stuff. I remember I just saw this recently. It's a while. I did a movie called The Giver, based on this book. And I tried to get it made for, oh, easy 20 years. And I just saw this, a home movie where I cast my dad as the giver. I ended up playing the part 20 years later. But I cast my dad as the giver. Bo's kid was playing the, the lead in it.

• 1:14:07Speaker 00

  And it was shot in our house. Bud Court was narrating, reading the book, the whole book. And we did the whole book and Casey, Bo's son, you know, shot it. Then another example is my folks had a place in Bear Valley up in central northern California. Ski place. And we were up there and my dad was, you know, pretty old, you know, in his eighties. He didn't like getting old, man. It pissed him off. He was such a vital guy and to have his body breaking down like that, really annoying.

• 1:14:45Speaker 00

  And uh, he's locked himself in his room and we're saying, Dad, come on, you okay? He says, leave me alone. I'm in here, I'm working. What are you working on? Leave me alone. Now, hours passed and he finally comes out and he says, Bo's son Dylan gathered us all around a table. And I have wide looks shots of this whole story I'm going to tell you.

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  He says, Dylan has asked me to write a script based on Robin Hood. I've called the story The Robin of Bear since we were in Bear Valley. I want you all to participate in it. I've cast it in certain ways. I'm going to direct this and I, I want you to do this in a very professional way.

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  He was very serious about it. Casey, I want you to shoot it. And so we have this document with special effects of this Robin Hood. You know, he was like pulled behind a snow machine, just, you know, I mean, it's, you know, fake fights, very elaborate and funny. And oh, we had such a great time. My wife Sue got so pissed off at my dad because he had my daughters. They were playing peasants out in the snow, you know? And they didn't have proper clothes on and Sue would say, can't you put jackets? No, this is a period piece, you know? No, no, just, you know, and she, and so

• 1:16:12Rick Rubin?

  I love it.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  So real fights, you know, happened, real family fights. I'm trying to do something, you know?

• 1:16:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Speaker 00

  And then Bo and I, you know, would come in there and have ideas and, you know, try to direct. So it was just hysterical. The combination of, uh, you know, humor and seriousness and

• 1:16:31Rick Rubin?

  I love the fact that your dad took it serious.

• 1:16:34Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:35Rick Rubin?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:16:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. But he was also, I mean, this is the guy who did Airplane. You've seen the movie Airplane, you know, so he's an incredible. I mentioned the movie Blown Away, talking to the producers about the casting. And I said, you know, who could play my uncle in this thing? He's a great actor and he looks a bit like me, you know, in a way. Is Lloyd Bridges, do you know Lloyd Bridges? And the guy says, oh, your dad, that's funny, but he's really more of a comedic actor. What the fuck are you talking about?

• 1:17:08Rick Rubin?

  He saw Airplane.

• 1:17:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was, then this was coming out.

• 1:17:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  I say, my dad is a, is an actor, man. That was an act.

• 1:17:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. That's really funny.

• 1:17:19Speaker 00

  So I said, would you want him to come in and read? Oh, would he do that? Oh, shit, okay. So my dad came in, of course.

• 1:17:26Rick Rubin?

  Blew away.

• 1:17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, blew him away.

• 1:17:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  That's something I learned from my dad too, is uh, these personas that you can develop, you know, like he had, he did Seehan. He was so good in Seehan, playing this

• 1:17:40Rick Rubin?

  You think that's him?

• 1:17:41Speaker 00

  You think that's him? And he got

• 1:17:42Rick Rubin?

  Hype casting.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  Hype casting and he got those kinds of parts over and over. And so I thought, when I started my acting career, I said, I'm going to really go about trying to shake up my characters and not

• 1:17:57Speaker 00

  duplicate it.

• 1:17:57Rick Rubin?

  Cause you didn't want to just do one thing.

• 1:17:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And that served, that served me well.

• 1:18:02Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:08Speaker 05

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• 1:18:35Speaker 05

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• 1:19:05Speaker 05

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• 1:19:18Speaker 05

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• 1:19:39Speaker 05

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• 1:20:01Speaker 05

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• 1:20:23Rick Rubin?

  So tell me about your relationship to music from your earliest memory of music.

• 1:20:29Speaker 00

  So Bo, he's eight years older than I am. Coming out of his bedroom was Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, The Platters, you know, all the bird groups. I mean, that's what I was hearing. The Everly Brothers, I'm thinking, that was probably the first record that I ever was, you know, wake up little Susie, wake. God, they were so great, weren't they?

• 1:20:55Rick Rubin?

  Incredible.

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  The tone of those guys. And the guitar sound like Claudette, that guitar.

• 1:21:03Speaker 00

  God, so good. And then he had a Dan Electro, a white Dan Electro that I kind of adopted and started to write tunes on. And then in high school, I was never in a band, but I had these friends that were in bands and were all good musicians. And the senior year of high school, my friend Steve Bain, who's a drummer, started to have these jams over at his house. No songs allowed, but singing was encouraged and writing on the spot was encouraged.

• 1:21:36Rick Rubin?

  So all improv.

• 1:21:37Speaker 00

  It was a jam, all improv.

• 1:21:38Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  And he recorded every session. And that's the only music he listened to.

• 1:21:46Speaker 00

  And we did that for maybe 20 years, meeting over at his house with these jam sessions. And they were, you know, parties and they were turned, you know, they're, each one had its own flavor, but he recorded everything.

• 1:22:00Speaker 00

  You know, talking about my dad and acting and that sometimes I thought, I'm not sure if I want to do this acting thing, maybe the music thing, you know, that kind of thing. And then I thought, oh, you know, as I started the acting started to take over, I said, oh, well, maybe I can combine the two. Wouldn't it be wonderful to play a musician and to play music? Yeah, that would be great. And I'd think about it. And sure enough, the universe supplied this script by this young guy, Scott Cooper, first time director, first time screenwriter called Crazy Heart. And I read the script. It was good. I said, oh, that's good. But there's no music in it. If there's music is

• 1:22:45Rick Rubin?

  It's about a musician, but it's there's no music in it.

• 1:22:47Speaker 00

  Music. And I said, oh, I said, well, that, you know, so I turned it down. And he would keep coming at me. Years, I'm talking two or three years. Bob Duvall was his champion. So I'm walking down the street one day, and I bump into my old buddy, T-Bone, who's walking down the street. He says, What do you think about this script Crazy Heart? I say, Well, there's no music to it, man. And he says, Oh, that's the easy part. Don't worry about that. I say, easy part? What are you talking? He said, Oh, yeah, we can figure that out. And then he made a beautiful direction. He said, You know, it's like, you know, you're one of the outlaws, you know, like Johnny Cash,

• 1:23:30Speaker 00

  Willie and Chris and Waylon, you know, but you don't have to copy those guys. We're making a movie about an ulterior universe. Isn't that a beautiful thought? You know, it's like, it's not this planet. It's like, looks like here, but it's somewhere else. I said, Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:23:49Speaker 00

  And then my heart started to beat. I said, Oh, shit. This could actually happen. And then I got in touch with the safety dreams have. And when you bring your dream into real life, you can fail. Dreams, you can't fail. It's dream. I said, How can I pull this off? I was panicky. But the universe dealt me cards. I say, Here's my dear friend who's gonna, you know, who's so talented. He says, It's easy. How can I turn this down? And you say, Yeah, but you're afraid. Yeah, but

• 1:24:28Speaker 00

  fuck. What else is there to do? How can I live with myself? And so I went in with that spirit. And I got my dear friend, John Goodwin, who is, we go back to the fourth grade, making music and painting and doing all kinds of art together. And I said, Can I bring John on? And T-Bone said, Yeah, sure. You know, so he came on. He ended up writing Hold On You, which was the opening song for that movie. And then T-Bone brought Steven Bruton. Did you ever meet Steven or know about him

• 1:25:05Speaker 00

  at all? Who was T-Bone's best friend? They go back as teenagers. And Steven was my guide through the whole thing. Every day, he went to to work with us the whole time. T-Bone wasn't on the set so much, but Steven was there teaching me, you know, more advanced guitar, what it was like being a traveling musician. You know, that opening scene where I pull into the bowling lane to play a gig. Steven said, Now, when I'm traveling around like this, I don't pull off to the side of the road to piss. I carry a Sparkless bottle. I just be in the Sparkless bottle. So why don't

• 1:25:49Speaker 00

  you do that? And then, you know, so he was kept the authenticity. He was our touch base.

• 1:25:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  We rewrite scenes, all kinds of things to get it

• 1:25:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Speaker 00

  real as possible. You know, it's interesting that there are many different kinds of directors, but two major schools are hot directors and cool directors. Both are very effective. Scott is a hot director in that he's very passionate and excited and enthusiastic. Great, man. Oh, you know, you nailed it, man. You want one more? You want to do it again? Okay, let's see what you can do. Come on, come on. You know, it's like that. Example of the cooler directions would be the Coen Brothers, which is no big deal, you know. Oh, yeah, that would, you made me laugh. Yeah,

• 1:26:40Speaker 00

  that's good. Okay, now let me go over here and be, you know, no big deal, which is another powerful statement, you know.

• 1:26:47Rick Rubin?

  Takes all the pressure off.

• 1:26:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's just no, no big deal. And both of them are very, very effective. So Crazy Heart was great. And it was one of those examples where you have highest expectations going in, and then they get transcended. And Scott just did such an incredible job putting that film together.

• 1:27:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:09Speaker 00

  And Bobby Duvall, you know, being that young guy's champion, you know.

• 1:27:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:15Speaker 00

  That's so important. You know, you think about, you know, people say, What do executive producers really do? You know, what do they? And there's all different kinds, you know. But to have a real producer behind you, creating the space and the support, you know, Mark Rosenberg, who championed Steve Clovis in The Fabulous Baker Boys. Steve wrote that script, I think, when he was 24, 25. You know, it's a very, very good script. A lot of the major directors at the time wanted to direct that. And Mark Rosenberg said, No, this is for the kids, you know. And he was

• 1:27:59Speaker 00

  there just doing that, you know. And I said to Steve, I said, Neil, let's, let's jam a bit so you can get your directing chops and I'll get my acting chops. So we met at my house, oh, for about a month, where we would meet with my brother, Bo, who's playing my brother, which was so, God, what a dream. You know, if it was another actor, you'd figure out, how do we create this illusion?

• 1:28:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Speaker 00

  No, that's handled, man. You didn't have to do any of that, you know. So to jam with my brother, oh, God, what a, what a blessing it was. And so much fun. So we'd meet over at my house, and Steve would get to, you know, direct us, you know, and he would come up with different improvs. And I remember one improv that was, he said, Oh, this guy, he's good. He said, Okay, here's the deal. Here's our improv. Jeff, it's four, no, three o'clock in the morning, you've climbed out of your bedroom window, you've gone to see Bill Evans, who's playing at this club.

• 1:29:08Speaker 00

  I'll play Bill Evans. I come out of the bathroom here. I've just shot up in the bathroom. I'm gonna come to the bar, and I'm gonna bum a cigarette off you. And Bo, when I put my hand through my hair like this, you're the big brother, you're gonna come and get Jeff out.

• 1:29:30Speaker 00

  And we did that improv for long, you know, 15, 20 minutes. And Steve was so good, you know, committing to what the assignment was, you know. I said, Oh, he gets the whole thing, you know, what this advanced pretend is all about. And he did such a great job, man. And Michelle, you know, I'm disappointed that my favorite song of Michelle's, which was More Than You Know, do you know that song? It wasn't on the soundtrack album. I don't know why, but she sang her ass off in that movie. So great. So just finishing the music saga, you know. So then after Crazy

• 1:30:13Speaker 00

  Heart, I was fired up on the music thing. And I called up T-Bone, I said, Hey, man, I got some tunes. You want to go in and make an album? You know, and he said, Sure, man, come on, you know. So we went into a, into a studio in the village there. And we made an album with a lot of John Goodwin's songs, some of my songs. Had a great time. And then a few years later, I got a call from Squarespace, website design company, and they wanted me to do a commercial for Super Bowl. And they didn't want to hide Jeff Bridges for Squarespace. They wanted me to come up with a

• 1:30:57Speaker 00

  bizarre product with the idea that no product was too weird to not make a website out. And they gave me a list of things. And one of the things on that list was sleeping tapes. He said, What are sleeping tapes? You know, this tapes, that's such an archaic word. And they said, We don't know, it can be whatever you want. Whatever I want? Yeah. Huh. And then also, we're gonna make this product, we're gonna release it, and all the proceeds can go to share our strength in their No Kid Hungry campaign, which is something I've been very involved with for, you know, 30 years.

• 1:31:37Speaker 00

  So that was the clinch. I said, Okay, I'm in. How do we do this? However you want it to, you know, it was like, oh, so I said, Okay, I'm gonna go into a studio with Keithus, and we're just gonna jam, see what happens. So we go in there for a week, I think, I don't know, it was more than a week. And we just start to come up with ideas. And we have no idea what this album, but I figure sleep, that implies being awake, that implies dreams. So it's very broad of subject.

• 1:32:16Speaker 00

  And during that time, Kiefer says, why don't you bring all of your, you know, any other old songs that we might work with? So Kiefer and I did this album called Sleeping Tapes. It went to number two in the ambient music charts, raised a quarter of a million bucks.

• 1:32:34Rick Rubin?

  Love it.

• 1:32:35Speaker 00

  And it was just so wonderful. Then Kiefer and I would go into the studio from time to time and just jam and do things.

• 1:32:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Speaker 00

  And then during the COVID thing, I thought, God, I've got all of these half-done songs, songs that aren't polished. I'm 76 years old, man. I don't know if I got the poop to go into a studio and polish all these things. I'm just gonna put these things out now. This is what I got, you know? And I'm gonna put a visual thing to them. So I, you know, shot stuff on my iPhone and looked at the internet and just built that. And I started to release these, I called it emergent behavior, these volumes. I think I made five volumes with about, you know, three or four songs on each one.

• 1:33:28Speaker 00

  I enjoyed the shit out of that, you know?

• 1:33:31Rick Rubin?

  It's so much fun to make stuff and share it. It's the best feeling.

• 1:33:35Speaker 00

  You know, and rather than be tight about it. And then also after Crazy Heart, I've always tried to have some kind of little studio, wherever I, wherever house I'm at. So when I moved up to Santa Barbara, you know, 35 years ago, whatever, I wanted to build a studio and I looked around for a guy who could help me with that. And this guy, Chris Polonis, he, you know, he's an acoustician, you know, builds studios and stuff. And I broke out my tunes and we played a little bit. And he said, oh, this is great. You've got some good tunes here, man. Do you know Michael McDonald? I said, are you kidding me? Sure. He says, well, I'm friends with Michael. I'd like to play him some of your songs.

• 1:34:18Speaker 00

  So Michael listens to him, starts to dig these songs. And the next thing I know, we're in the studio making an album. And I've got a band called The Abiders, you know, based on.

• 1:34:30Rick Rubin?

  Oh, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:32Speaker 00

  And we start to tour. The music dream, you know, the Beatle music dream is being realized at, you know, 65 years old or something. You know, play the Lebowski Fest, you know, have my Beatle moment, you know, you can imagine, ah, you can look, play into a sea of dudes, man. Come on.

• 1:34:50Rick Rubin?

  It's so funny.

• 1:34:51Speaker 00

  You know, it was really wild.

• 1:34:54Rick Rubin?

  You said something earlier about dreams are safe.

• 1:34:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Rick Rubin?

  It makes me question, do you tend towards projects that are not dream projects? Because whatever happens is okay, whereas the dream projects are too dangerous to try because they could fail.

• 1:35:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, but they've, but they, that's got the most juice, man. It's wild. I just bowed out of a movie that I went quite far down in development of it. And I just said, God, I don't have the, the acting juice to do it, man. I'm having other desires are being built into me that I want to do.

• 1:35:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you're listening to what's going on in you.

• 1:35:39Speaker 00

  I started to listen to that and it's so different than my persona or how I'm conceived, not only from the outside, but how I conceive myself. But it was like, it made me think of, you know, Richard Dreyfuss with, what is the, what's the movie where he's building the big, Close Encounters? Where he's building that thing, I don't know why. You know, it's, it's kind of has me like that.

• 1:36:04Rick Rubin?

  You're driven towards something.

• 1:36:05Speaker 00

  And I don't know what it is. And so I'm following that and I'm getting off.

• 1:36:10Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 1:36:11Speaker 00

  I mean, it's wild.

• 1:36:13Rick Rubin?

  In acting, when you're playing against another character, does the other character's performance influence what you do?

• 1:36:22Speaker 00

  Of course, yeah, big time.

• 1:36:24Rick Rubin?

  Is it like a dance?

• 1:36:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a very good way to put it. I'll give you an example, just popped into my head. Every once in a while, you'll get a real guy on the set. Either a guy who has actually lived the story you're telling, or a person who knows what that story is about, you know? So I made this movie called White Squall with Ridley Scott. And it was about this wonderful floating university that this guy had in this ship, you know, a sailing ship, where he would take a bunch of students out and.

• 1:37:02Rick Rubin?

  Sounds amazing.

• 1:37:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, you saw, did you see?

• 1:37:04Rick Rubin?

  No, the idea is amazing. True story?

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  True story.

• 1:37:08Rick Rubin?

  Amazing story.

• 1:37:10Speaker 00

  And in the middle of this, a white squall happened. And I got to talk to the, the real guy who was, who I was playing, the skipper of the ship. And he said, it's not like the movies. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, it wasn't a storm. It wasn't like that. I said, well, what was it like? He says, it was calm. And it was like God's hand came down, took the main mat and just put it underwater. You know what I mean? You know, like a bunch of kids died, his wife died, you know, it was a terrible tragedy. He went around and spent time with each of the families after the incident. But no one connected with each other after that.

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  They didn't want to relive that terrible incident. So they just avoided each other for many, many years, 25, 30 years. I can't remember exactly what. Now we're making the movie and in the end of our movie, there's a courtroom drama kind of because it's like, you know, they're gonna take my license away kind of thing. But in real life, that didn't happen. There was an international waters, there's no threat of that. But we're shooting this scene and we had two real guys who were on that ship. One of them was actually at the helm. The ship wasn't moving, but he was, you know, had real duty there.

• 1:38:39Speaker 00

  We're doing the courtroom scene and this fella, he comes up to me when we're shooting the courtroom scene, weeping. And he says, champ, I got something terrible to ask you. I say, what? He says, I'm gonna do something. I said, what do you want to do? He says, I want to hug myself. You want to hug yourself? What do you mean? Yeah, he says, I'm playing my father and my father always blamed me for the ship going down. He says, no wonder the ship went down, you were at the wheel. He says, can I hug myself? I said, well, go ask Ridley, you know? Yes, Ridley said, sure, yeah.

• 1:39:21Speaker 00

  So you're at the effect of not someone you're playing with, but just in the space, in the vibe, in the room, to have that going on.

• 1:39:30Rick Rubin?

  The reality.

• 1:39:31Speaker 00

  The reality of that. Another one comes to mind, a movie called Fearless, Peter Weir directed. This story was loosely based on, I think it was in Iowa, plane crashing in a cornfield. And Ridley invited a couple who actually went through, the guy was on the plane and his wife was down, you know? And Ridley invited them to talk to us about it. They came and they talked and it was as if it happened yesterday. It was so fresh and it might have been happened 10 years before. And they were up there for 45 minutes, knowing they were gonna crash, you know, can you

• 1:40:15Speaker 00

  imagine? And he said, you, you would think there was panic. He says, not at all. He said, love just was in that fuselage. Everybody was together. We're in this, we're one here.

• 1:40:31Rick Rubin?

  That's wild.

• 1:40:32Speaker 00

  He says, I looked across the aisle and there was a woman, an old woman there who was frightened and I, this is what the guy said, he said, I looked over at her, he said, that, that woman, that could be my mother, you know? And then he said, no, that is my mother. Held her hand.

• 1:40:50Rick Rubin?

  Wow, beautiful.

• 1:40:52Speaker 00

  They crashed and you'd think everybody panicking, no panic. It was all just everyone working as one body, what they had to do to get out of there alive. Isn't that wild?

• 1:41:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:05Speaker 00

  Love, that love having its way with us. God, you know, we all affect each other and then, and then with the actor you're working with, wow, of course.

• 1:41:17Rick Rubin?

  You ever so in a scene that you forget it's a movie?

• 1:41:26Speaker 00

  I'm thinking of a shot. This is, you know, it's a movie about the race cars. I'm playing a guy named Junior Jackson, who's based on Junior Johnson, who's a famous stock car racer. We're doing this scene on the racetrack and we rehearsed it, you know, going, you know, five miles an hour and sped up. We're finally going about ninety miles an hour, something like that, just under a hundred.

• 1:41:53Speaker 00

  And the scene was me in the back of the pack. I work my way up through the pack and I get up to the lead guy and I actually get, you know, metal to metal with him and I go, and I come and go ahead like that. And we rehearsed it for a long ti- you know, weeks. And towards the end of the rehearsal period, I realized that there's gonna be a camera right fucking in my li- right there, right in my line of sight of life. So I've gotta not only do this thing, but I gotta act like there's not a camera there, that I'm not going, you know, look at, kinda look around something. So off we go, action, going again, dice through

• 1:42:35Speaker 00

  the thing. Now I'm up against the car like this and I get off the gas just a little bit and the thing goes crazy, you know, and the three sixty after three sixty, you know, all these cars are coming, coming at behind it, you know, just crazy. All the wives are coming down, you know, a giant crash.

• 1:42:58Speaker 00

  The director comes up to me at the end and he says, "You okay?"

• 1:43:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:03Speaker 00

  "Can we do just one more? We're losing, we're losing the light. Can you, are you, can you do another one?" I say, "Yo, yo, okay, okay." He says, "Do it again."

• 1:43:15Speaker 00

  And now I'm wanting to see what that close up looked like, you know, because that was, that was a moment when I was totally, like you say, I wasn't acting, I was just into this thing there, you know, beyond that. I didn't know where the fuck where I was. And, you know, if you were to act that, you know, you would go, oh, you know, what you would, I don't know what you would do. But here's what I did was just, you know, crash. Just nothing. Everything just, just my eyes going, I guess, in the background.

• 1:43:45Rick Rubin?

  Wow. That's wild.

• 1:43:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's so funny.

• 1:43:50Rick Rubin?

  So you got to experience a lot of things through making movies.

• 1:43:52Speaker 00

  Oh, God, all the time. Oh, it's so wild. And these books, these photographs, I can relive those times, each one by just.

• 1:44:02Rick Rubin?

  Have you had to learn any particular things like sword fighting or horseback riding or anything like that?

• 1:44:07Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I had cockfighting camp. I learned how to cockfight, how to speak Yugoslav, how to roller skate, how to ride horses, how to shoot.

• 1:44:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:17Speaker 00

  All of those things. Fight, you know, but this is all, it gets back to, you know, I keep thinking of being a kid, you know, this is great stuff to get to play.

• 1:44:51Speaker 06

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