Episode 1604 - Ron Livingston
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All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. If I sound a little vocally compromised, it's because I got a cold. That was the big payoff of this horrendous Christmas week. Yeah, it was all going not so great. A sequence of events, man. It's just a sequence of events. I wasn't putting a lot of weight on it.

On the holidays, you know, I do know it quiets down and that's nice generally. But it was kind of surprisingly anxiety ridden and crisis ridden a bit. Again, I'm alive. Everything worked out. But it was...

Not great. I guess it was mixed. I guess it was mixed. And I'm not a holiday guy, not a religious guy. I don't practice the rituals, really. You know, as I get older, I wonder how am I an adult and I can't even muster it up to send out some Christmas cards or maybe buy a couple of presents. I like to say that, like, well, it's just not my thing. But really, it's just selfish behavior.

on some level. What does it take? You know, what does it take? How are you guys doing? So today I talked to Ron Livingston. You know him from Office Space, Swingers, Adaptation, Band of Brothers, Sex and the City, and a lot of other stuff. He's married to Rosemarie DeWitt, who was just on the show, and we asked him to come on too. I always liked that guy.

Felt like I knew him, and now I got to know him a little bit, and now you will too. My 2025 continuation tour of my 2024 tour kicks off in less than two weeks. It gets started in Sacramento, California at the Crest Theater on Friday, January 10th.

Then I'm in Napa, California at the Uptown Theater on Saturday, January 11th. Fort Collins, Colorado at Lincoln Center Performance Hall, Friday the 17th of January. Then Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theater on Saturday, January 18th. I'll be in Santa Barbara, California at the Lobero Theater on Thursday, January 30th. San Luis Obispo, California at the Fremont Center on Friday, January 31st. And Monterey, California at the Golden State Theater on Saturday, February 1st.

Yeah, then I'm coming to Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Illinois, and Michigan. Heading into the special taping, which I'll give you details on as they unfold. Go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all of my dates and links to tickets. I go to New Mexico, Christmas Eve, you know, to hang out, see the old man, see where he's at with the losing of the mind thing.

And I go to a dinner party at his wife's family's house, a small one, see him hang out, have some tamales. Next day is the big party with his wife's family. And he seemed OK, a little detached, but OK, still present. And then after that, I'm going to go to the movie. So I'm going to go see, you know, a complete unknown by myself. I'm out there by myself.

And I go to the movie and, you know, I start getting calls from my dad's wife and she's like, he's having a meltdown or there's a problem and I got to leave the movie and call. And she's like, he's just yelling. You know, my son and grandkids came over to open presents and your father just lost his mind, started telling everyone to fuck off and get the fuck out of the house and, you know, fucking, you know, made a big scene and got very scary. And I said, well, put him on the fucking phone, you know.

And I was like, what are you doing? What are you doing? He's like, I don't know. And I'm like, well, what did you do? What are you mad about? Why did you lose it? Why did you go into a rage? I didn't go into a rage. I'm like, what are you fucking mad about? I don't know. I just, you know, I don't know. I just, you know, no one was talking to me. And I was like, what? He's like, I just knew no one was talking to me. And I'm like, so you scare everybody? You start yelling and screaming and kicking around presents and stuff? What is that?

He's like, I don't know. I'm sorry, Mark. I, you know, I'm wrong. I'm like, yeah, I mean, yeah. He goes, I don't do that though. I'm like, you do. And then it was weird because I got choked up, you know, I got choked up because he did that before he got brain addled. He was a rager and he was, it was, it was erratic and inconsistent and, and, and scary. And I told him, I said, you know, it gets pretty scary when you do that. He's like, I don't do that. And I'm like, you did. I'm choking up. And it's just weird.

Like, you know, I see this happening and I imagine this is the same with a lot of people who experience this, the breakdown of their parent with this thing is that, you know, what's left, like, he's still got a lot of memories. He knows who I am and all that stuff. But, you know, the behavior that's left, you realize like, oh, this was, this was my childhood. And it like, it was kind of breaking my heart in that moment that like, I think he was really unaware of the impact of

of rage when we were younger. And I, you know, I had to reckon with that in myself. I was a rager and I had to reel that shit in because you, it's, it's childish and it's, it's scary. Yeah. So that's sort of what's left that emotional engine of, of anger and rage and self-centeredness is what's left. I mean, I, you know, I guess all bets are off that my dad, as he went through this would become docile and, uh,

And more detached. Nope, it seems like the fuck you is going to stay till the end. And I don't know, man. It just makes me worry about me and sad about him. But this is what's going on. This is what's up. And then, you know, the next day I start getting calls from the woman who's watching my house that Charlie is...

Got diarrhea and he's diarrhea-ing everywhere in the house, like all over the house. He just has uncontrollable diarrhea. And I'm like, what the fuck is happening? Then I take my dad to lunch the next day and he gets sick and I'm like, holy shit. But it's not happening to me, really. It's happening to Charlie. It's happening to my dad. Everyone's vomiting and has diarrhea. And I'm just...

You know, with Charlie, I'm like, what are we going to do? And that went on for two days. So I had Kit bring him to the vet and the vets thinks it's like stress induced colitis. Cause I, when I leave and then I realized, holy shit, every time I leave, he either gets pukey or he doesn't eat or he shits all over everything. And I'm like, all right, well, at least we know that, you know, that's something to, to, to know. It's weird. This sort of being triggered with the memories of a raging fire.

dad and then you know having this emotional connection to this animal and he starts shitting everywhere when he doesn't get the love he needs and then like the next day friday morning kit comes by the house and she says the ceiling in the kitchen is leaking and i'm like what the fuck is happening there's shit all over the place and now the ceiling's leaking water and i'm like god damn it what is that and i'm thinking like a pipe blue they're gonna rip my ceiling out

You don't have to deal with that. No water. All I'm thinking is like, oh, my God, what about mold? What about an open ceiling? What about like where the cats can eat? Where am I going to shower? What the fuck am I going to do? How are we going to fix this? And I get her to turn off the water main, which was sort of not easy. I had one of these how to put one of these flow things on there.

that you can turn it off from an app, but it was offline, so we had to turn off the main. I had to call a plumber, and I got to fly home early. I got to wrangle a team. I called a contractor. He brought his plumber, and I don't know. Thank God. You never know. People showed up for me. This guy showed up for me. He's a guy I know outside of just being a contractor. I got home six at night. The water was off. There was a hole in the ceiling, just in the paint, though, a bubble running down from underneath the

main bathroom upstairs in the bedroom, master bedroom. And so I'm like, all right, well, let's find this thing and maybe we make a plan to get in the wall and start ripping this place down. Turns out it was just these bolts on the back of the toilet tank and they were leaking and I guess it picked up and it was going right into the floorboard and down the ceiling of the kitchen and bubbled the paint and dump water and made a hole in the paint. But I guess I dodged a bullet

That's just a paint problem. That's not a rip a hole in the ceiling problem. And then I woke up this morning with a cold. That's been the arc of my Christmas. That's been what's happening. And Charlie shit all over that. I mean, there was shit all over the house. I'm like, I feel like I'm going to be finding dried diarrhea all over my house for as long as I have this house. Not to mention the ratchet in the basement. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

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He didn't really come over to plug anything. We just invited him to come because I talked to his wife, Rosemary, and I wanted to talk to him. He knew Lynn. I like his acting. He seems like an interesting guy. And so this is me talking to Ron Livingston. ♪

This is remnants from the old studio. The old studio is a very cluttered thing, so this all kind of just blended in with the rest of it. Now it's just kind of reminders of the origins. Yeah. I have the same thing. You can't, you can't. It would be, there'd be so much emotional energy. I could spend four hours trying to figure out

Which of these things I can get rid of and I'd have to relive like all... Where it came from? Yeah, where it came from and what it's holding and all of that shit. And then at the end of the day, I would have just... I wouldn't get rid of any of it. I would have just like maybe grouped it differently. Sure, yeah. Made a pile. Yeah. This is the stuff that's going to go. And then...

And then you sneak it back into maybe a different shelf or like, yeah. I just went through my whole closet because I had, you know, a good 50 shirts that I got when I did my series Marin. The wardrobe had figured out how I dress. Yeah. And I don't like to shop. Yeah. So I had all these shirts and I've moved out of my plaid shirt period. So now I...

Now I have like 50 shirts, pulled them all out in a pile. And then the tea, everything I made, I got rid of all the clothes. I put them in a pile. That's been there for three weeks. Yeah. And I'm just looking at that pile, waiting for one of them to say something to me. Right. And I don't know if it's going to happen. No, I have, my closet is full of...

suits that I was gifted when I was playing Jack Berger on Sex and the City. Right. And so that was a period of time... From fashion designers. From fashion designers. Good shit. Yeah, like, you know, I mean, it's 20 years old, but I haven't bought a suit in 20 years because...

When do you wear them? And I can't afford anything as nice as this stuff was 20 years ago. But if you wear this stuff. You know, I can, but I can't spend that money on that. I buy one suit for one thing and I wear it for the one thing. And then a couple of years later, I'm like, oh, I got that suit. I could put that on. And then you think it's great. But then if people take pictures, they're like, well, Ron's got a suit from 20 years ago. Which I actually don't care. Yeah. I mean, hey, I don't care.

I don't really, I don't, I've given up caring and I'm at the age where I don't think anyone else cares either. So, but you're also like, it's not like there are these people in the business, in the racket that we're in that their whole life is being taken pictures of. Yeah. So they've got people that are constantly supplying them with shit. Yeah. For that day.

And they look great. And then that's it. They don't even own it. That's a hard job. I don't want that job. Did you ever feel like you were on the precipice of having that job? I felt like I was on the precipice of if I wanted to...

If I wanted to like do the next level of the stardom thing, I would have to learn how to do this because it went along with it. Right. But I never. Yeah. And I hated it then. I thought it was dumb then. And I ultimately couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. But you were at a place. That's interesting because, I mean, you're very familiar to me just from you're just one of those guys. I see you. I just like I see you and I'm like, I know that guy.

But there must have been a point where your people sat you down and said, this is it. So we're going to get you publicist. We're going to, this is it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, it happened, yeah, it happened like around 2000. Which movie? It was for Band of Brothers. Oh, yeah, right. It was like going into Band of Brothers and it was like awards season. Yeah. You know, you're stalking all that. Yeah.

And it was just one of those things. Well, you got to have this. Yeah. And you got to have this and you got to have this. And and it's great. Actually, it's it's kind of amazing because it's a person who is just dealing with a lot of shit that I would never, ever, ever, ever want to have to deal with. Yeah, sure. And, you know, and then when you do have to deal with it yourself, you realize, oh, this was yeah, this was worth every penny. You know, I'm answering 90 emails.

Yeah. But, and a lot of it was, you know, a lot of it was me, uh, just having some idea in my head of like, well, you know, you got to send to the ranks of the such and such, you know? Um, yeah.

And I couldn't do it. Yeah. I just couldn't do it. The thing I could kind of couldn't get over was at some point you got to do that Tiger Beat photo where you have your hand up on the locker and you're sort of leaning. Yeah. You know what I mean? And maybe you're probably shirtless for it. It's not Tiger Beat, but that's a reference. Or people, you know, you have that like kind of you push your eyebrows forward and you do that swoony look and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

I just couldn't do it without laughing. I couldn't do it. I couldn't be it. Thank God. I couldn't be it. Yeah. I couldn't. I tried to. And I really like, you know, I kind of like beat myself up because it's like if you weren't that, then you, I don't know, then what were you? Sure. Yeah. Like, who are you? What do you do? What justifies your life? Yeah. If you're not one of those guys. And it was ridiculous because there was a period where I think I was passing on parts that weren't that. Yeah.

But then when the parts that came along that were that, I would pass on those too because I was like, I can't fucking do that. You know? I'm 57. Right. Was you going to ask me that? No, but that's good. I just turned 61. You know, we're over the hump of some kind. We're over a couple of humps. A couple of humps, heading for a new hump. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully we make it up this one.

But how many times do you really think when you say no to something because of that sense of like, ah, fuck, it's not, that you were right? Oh, we'll never know. I mean, I... I say no to everything. Yeah. But I'm not in the same position you are. But my initial instinct is like, where do I gotta, how long? Well, I'm not in that position anymore.

Yeah, you're all right. I think there's the ones that where you say no to it and then it goes on to be wildly successful for someone else. Yeah, yeah.

But then I'm like, okay, good. Yeah. Like, I kind of made the right decision. Yeah. Because look how well my decision turned out. Yeah. For somebody else. Yeah. And that guy, do you ever do the, like... And I might have ruined it. That guy did a better job than I. Yeah. Like... I wouldn't have done what he did. Most of the time. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I couldn't even... Like, I didn't want to. Yeah. So, I guess, what are you going to do? Do you, like... Do you...

And I'm just asking this for my own personal reasons. Do you enjoy acting? Yeah. Okay. I do. Yeah. I do. I love it. Yeah. And do you like because you find it like it took me a while to get over the waiting to do the thing.

And then you do the thing for a few minutes and then you wait. Yeah. And then you do it again for a few minutes. I love the waiting. You do? What do you... I'm back-footed and, you know, maybe bordering on, like, non-ambitious. So it's like if... Oh, great. I'll take a nap. I'll, you know... Go look at the food again. Or I'll study, you know, like I'll do the... Sure, you do the lines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not just the lines, but like...

Yeah, like I'll inhabit the thing. Yeah, that's good if you've got a lot of scenes to do because you're locked in. Even if I don't, it's like the rabbit hole. I like going down the rabbit hole on stuff. I did kind of finally realize that when you are on set, that if you're on set for long enough, it's just its own world. And when you come out of it, it's kind of jarring and depressing. Yeah.

Because, like, you know exactly what you need to do there. Yeah. There's a call sheet. Yeah. And it's at the place. Even if you're waiting around, everything else is just sort of like, I can't. I can't do that. No. I'm not doing that. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I love that part where I don't have to come up with the call sheet. I love the part where it's all laid out on, okay, we're doing this then and this, and then we're moving on to this. Yeah. But then isn't there the question of, like, why do I got to wake up at that time? I mean, it's...

You know, I'm fine with it. I'm fine with it. I don't tend to spend four hours in makeup. Yeah. I'm okay with it. Especially, you know, like if I'm on location, if you call me in at 5 a.m. and 12 hours later we didn't get to my scene and then they go, oh, I'm sorry, Ron, we're going to send you home. We just didn't get to it.

you know, part of me is like, all right, well, I would have just sat in the hotel anyway. Sure. You know, we have Wi-Fi here, we have Wi-Fi there. Yeah. What was I going to do that was that much more? That was the magic moment for me is the Samsung TV in the trailer where I could hook up the Criterion channel and all my Netflix and stuff. Oh,

That changed. That's a big show. Changed everything. That's a big show. Yeah. I mean like. Oh, you use your own wifi. You just, yeah. 95% of the time I found that those things don't work. None of them work. Yeah. They're hooked up to like a satellite dish that's pointed down. That's right. Or, you know. It's a fucking nightmare. And you're just in there and you're like, why? None of this works. Why is there a cassette player in here? Well,

Yeah. It's been there because, yeah, they put it in there in like 1987. What does this machine even do? Right. None of them turn on. No. Well, if there was someone a lot bigger than you or me in there, they would figure out a way to make it work. Sure, yeah. I mean, I did the Aretha Franklin movie, and they put me in Forrest Whitaker's trailer one day. It's like a house. Yeah.

It's like, oh. When I did the Joker, De Niro has his own bunker trailer. Yeah. It's crazy, but like, why not? That's a hard racket. I think they kind of cracked down on that for a while. That was the thing is...

Not only would they get their own trailer, but then they would rent it to the production and like charge them the money for it Oh, there's a racket to it. They're making yeah, it was a great. Yeah, that was a thing I never got to them the movie star rental trailer racket. Yeah, are you getting money to park your own vehicle? Yeah at the play your own? Ridiculously huge expensive thing. That's tailored just how you like it. Yeah, that's a that's all agents work. Yeah Yeah, I don't know. What do you request?

I don't care about any of that stuff, honestly. I don't like when food's wasted, so I have a hard time with that. I kind of say if I have any of those bargaining chips, I always save it for things that I think are going to make the movie better. Yeah. Like, I don't want to fight about...

You know, I don't want to fight about dumb shit about whether my trailer is closer to the set than someone, you know, like I can't do it. Who cares? I don't care. I don't like it. I don't know at what point your ego shifts to that.

I mean, you have those moments where you're like, why the fuck do I have that? And then you realize, oh, because you're you and that's that. Some people feed on it. I think some people are better if they're, I think some people like get fired up by being in conflict all day. Yeah. And so those are things to be in conflict about. Right. Sort of keep that edge up. Yeah, sure. That's exhausting. I want to, you know, like if I want to go in and say, hey, can we look at these four lines because I think we can do better than this. Yeah.

I want that to be the thing where they're like, well, shit, Ron never complains about anything. Yeah, let's listen to him. He feels really strongly about this. So let's, you know, let's think about it. As opposed to here comes this asshole. Right, exactly. Now what does he want now? You know? Right. It's an interesting process, though, when you do have problems with lines, isn't it?

Because it's sort of like, I mean, as an acting person, you know what comes out of your mouth and what's relative to the character. Yeah. And if there's something that's just like a turd and you're sort of like, I don't know, how can you say that? I mean, I figure it's a lot like...

It's like a designer suit. Yeah. I'm not saying that Hugo Boss didn't... I'm not saying I'm a better suit designer than Hugo Boss. Yeah. I'm saying this sleeve is about three inches too long on me. Can we take it up a little bit? Yeah. Like, just to fit me. Make the adjustment. Right. I'm the guy that's wearing it. And then if they have an answer for, like, no, this sleeve is supposed to be three inches long because that's the fashion now. Right.

Then I'll know that. And I'll be like, oh, okay. Oh, okay. I got it. I'll go with that. Okay, fine. But I do want to know that because then I can move on to the next thing. And I would like the opportunity to try to always be making it better. I thought that when I talked to your wife, Rosemary, she's great. She's made of magic. Yeah, right? Yeah.

Did you guys, and I couldn't remember, I was talking to her, did you guys meet on Lynn's movie? No, we met, we were already together. We met on a procedural show for Fox back in 2006. Right. Where we were like hostage negotiators in love. Yeah. Because how can that not work? And it worked out. And yeah, it was great. And I didn't never, I would have never pulled her if,

She wasn't. She didn't actually have to. Like, she couldn't leave. I had most of a year where... To work it? Yeah, where we were together, like, 12. Yeah, yeah. I just wore her down. Yeah, yeah. Just beat her down. Isn't that good? It was amazing. I needed it. I needed every minute of it. Yeah. But I was talking to her about that, the portrayal of that agent in Adaptation. That is one of the best roles I've ever seen. Thank you. It's...

It's because I don't. Marty Bowen. Marty, what was his name? Marty Bowen. Marty Bowen. Who's a real agent, by the way. Yeah. Who was, I think it was. Kaufman. Kaufman's agent, I think. Or it was Spike's. But no, I think it was Kaufman's. You met the guy? Yeah. I have a, you know, he sent me like a framed picture of the two of us. Like, yeah. But were you doing him? No, I don't.

I didn't really know him that... Like, I hadn't met him before. I didn't do that. But I think Spike had a very... I don't know. I mean, so much of it is on the page. Yeah. And then... That's really funny. Because I went... That was like a two and a half hour audition. Really? Yeah. Where I sort of went... I went in with like, okay, it's an agent and people are dumb, so I'm going to go do the stereotypical agent thing.

And Spike spent like maybe an hour with me getting me away from that. Yeah. Just kind of giving me permission to like, no, you don't have to do that. Yeah. Do some. Well, what would that have been? Because like to me, it is so specific in the sense that like, look, you and I have known agents and med agents are our entire professional life. And, you know, obviously, I don't want to, you know, get myself in any sort of trouble here.

But there is a component, a human component that an agent is missing. Yeah. And I guess it's necessary for their job. Oh, sure. But it's a very specific thing that you – the detachment of it that you got that, like, was very specific and right on the money. You know –

It's something that I think I understand from being an actor. Yeah. And you deal with scripts your whole life. Right. You see scripts your whole life. Yeah. And as an actor, you're like, oh, this scene sucks. We got to fix this scene. This is shit. Yeah. Let's just fix it. Yeah. Right. And it's not until you then try to write something yourself that you realize, oh, my God, this is such a hard thing to do. I've been... What disrespect I've had for the thing that is, you know, that...

And I think that's it with agents. They're used to brilliant people coming in and producing brilliant things. Right. And you just assume that it's commonplace and that people can just make it happen or that they actually know how to do it too. You're the writer. But just the drifting off into looking at the women in the office was just too much. Yeah, that piece, I think I didn't actually know that that was an actual piece of a thing. Yeah.

But it was fun to, you know, it was fun to play. It was on the page, so it's like, oh, I'm going to play that. And it was just seamlessly, yeah. And was Kaufman there all the time? He wasn't there for the audition. But during the shooting? I don't remember him being there for the shoot. No, he might have been. If he was, he was sitting at the monitor and, you know.

Yeah. That was a... And it's like I had that audition and I thought, this is... Oh, I have to get this because why would you spend an hour and a half on a person that you're not going to hire? Right. And then I didn't hear anything about it for...

six months. Really? Yeah. I, I think they either must've cast somebody else who fell out or they forgot to cast this role. Uh, and so like three days before it shot on a, on a Friday at six 30 or something, I was supposed to be on a plane. I was going to like, uh,

You know, I was going to France for, I think, Band of Brothers opening or something like that. And thank God, you know, my manager's assistant was staying late and caught it and took it upon herself to, like, track me down and say, hey, there's this part on Monday. Let's change your plans. Do you want to do it? What was it, like a two-day shoot? An afternoon. I was there for an afternoon. Half an afternoon. That's so funny. That movie is so fucking good. Yeah. That's one of the...

Not only the movie, like that script, I feel like that's maybe the best script ever written. It's crazy. I just rewatched it like not too long ago to just see how it held up. And it's unbelievable. And yeah, and then I read The Orchid Thief. And it's like, oh my God, this is so, it so perfectly captures that story and the story about adapting a movie. And like it's just, it's transcendent. Yeah. And Nicolas Cage is a trip.

Yeah. He I mean, again, I thought for like half an afternoon and yeah. So I don't I don't feel I don't even really feel like I met him. I met him in the character. Yeah. And then he was giving someone an award. So he had he was like wearing a tuxedo by the time we got to my coverage. And then he like had to go. Yeah. But, you know, I've just been a fan of his work.

But you were... He was there when you were doing it. Yeah, he was there. And... Yeah. Because, like, he's, like... I think he's relatively underrated. I don't know that he's under... Because I think people think he's great. Mm-hmm. Like, I think... But they're like, what's he doing? I think it's just... He's one of those guys that he makes... He chooses things... Like...

He chooses the things that he wants to do because they, I mean, again, I'm projecting and I'm speaking, but like if I were Nick Cage and I were, you know, I think that's the thing that I respect so much about him is that he,

Oh, that... He just does... Whatever the fuck he wants. He just does whatever the fuck he wants to do. And when people are like, wait, you're doing this? It's like, yes, I am. Yeah. And he's also... Like, you strike me as a guy, like, and I'm the same way. We're practical people. Uh-huh. And there's people that somehow have these egos that serve them, but, like, you know, they're just... They'll buy dinosaur bones. Yeah. And you're just sort of like, okay. Yeah.

I would never think to do it. No. No. I can't even buy a new car. Do you need a new car? Not really. Okay. But sometimes you're like, maybe I should get one of the electric ones. Yeah. I don't know. Do you have an electric one? I have a Prius, so it's half electric. It's electric some of the time. Yeah. You're halfway helping. Yeah. I would...

I think maybe my next car will be electric, but I don't know. I think one of these cars would have to die or be totaled. If you buy a Toyota, it's not going to die. So far, this one has lasted for—we're doing a Toyota spot now. That's all right. Yeah, it's lasted for a long time. I had one. It was a Prius. I had it. It got totaled. I got another one. Yeah. And they just keep going. Do you buy them or lease them?

I bought them. I bought them like cash outright because why not? Yeah, buy the car. Yeah, I don't know why people lease cars because it just feels like you've rented a car. And then when you bring it back, it's always going to be like, well, you know, there's a problem with the thing. I think it makes sense if you're a person who's going to buy a new car every year. Yeah, absolutely.

Every couple of years. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to drive the damn thing into the ground. Yeah, you get committed to your car. Either you grow up like that or you don't. Yeah. Like, yeah, you drive a car and you're impressed when you've, even if it's falling apart, when it crosses a certain threshold of miles, you're like, oh, this is a good car. You duct tape. Yeah, sure. You patch that shit back together. Yeah, yeah. You just say, you personalize it. Where'd you grow up? I grew up in Marion, Iowa, which is eastern Iowa.

It's sort of lovingly referred, I call it the greater Cedar Rapids metropolitan area. Sort of half ironic, well, mostly ironically. Midwest. Midwest. Yeah, I have no sense of that. Yeah. Where are you from? I grew up in Albuquerque. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. My judge grew up in Albuquerque. He did, yeah. That's... He went to the other high school, though. There's a lot of high schools. He went to Albuquerque High with my buddy, Devin. I think he's maybe a year older than me. Is it all funny people in Albuquerque, or just... No, he's the only one. Two of you. Yeah, yeah. He's the only one that came out of there. I think, what's his name? Michael, the Doogie Howser guy. Neil Patrick Harris? Neil Patrick Harris. Yes. I think he's Albuquerque. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, he's a talented guy. That's pretty good for Albuquerque. Yeah, that's three, if I include myself in it. And I think, you know who used to live in Albuquerque?

Do you remember the actor, I think it's Bill Daly, was it the guy from My Dream of Jeannie? The guy who played the... Oh, the neighbor? Yeah. He was brilliant. Yeah, he was there for years. He ran the Albuquerque Little Theater. Major Healy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was fantastic. Yeah, he's great. Yeah, he was there forever. So that's another great Albuquerquean. Wow. Who comes from where you live? Me, Ashton Kutcher. Oh, I know there's a couple more.

So would you call it a suburb of Cedar Rapids? It's like you start a fight that way. You start like a passive-aggressive, nice Midwestern argument over that because it used to be a larger town than Cedar Rapids, and then the railroad came, and Cedar Rapids became bigger, and they grew together, but we—

Yeah, you would never call it a suburb of Cedar Rapids. It's its own thing. It's just a very small town right next to it, and a lot of people live there and work in Cedar Rapids. And your folks just come from there? They just came, yeah. Yeah? They lived there. They went to the same high school. My grandparents lived two blocks apart. Yeah, small town. Where do they originate from? Scandinavian? Like German, English, Irish, German.

You know, we lost it. We lost the thread. My mom's grandfather was first generation from Prussia at the turn of the century. Were they a farmer? He was a farmer. So he was one of those-

They got some sort of break. They wanted people to figure out how to farm in that region. Yeah. And they brought in, like, Russian people and I guess Prussian people. They're just sort of like, you know how to do it. Yeah. And I think there was a constant... Like, Prussia was one of those places where there was constant war and a mandatory draft. So, like, I think... He got out? Yeah, he got out of there. Yeah? Did you know your grandparents? I did. That's good. I knew them well, yeah. They were around? They were around. My parents were young. My parents were...

well, technically my mom was 17 when I was born. She turned 18 the day after I was born. Technically. So she was 17 for a day and then she was 18. And you. And me. That's young. Yes. Were they married? Uh,

Uh, they got married maybe five or six months before I was born. Yeah. Um, you know, they were high school sweethearts. Yeah. And, uh. That's, that's because my mom was 22. So like, it's weird. That's young. Yeah. Yeah. But it's weird when you get to the age where you are and where I'm at and they're still around and that age difference does not seem parental. No. Uh-uh. You're just sort of like, oh, you're just a few years. Yeah. Older than me. Mm-hmm.

It's kind of creepy. I have a younger brother who's like the same age difference that I was roughly from my mom.

What? Yeah, I have a younger brother who's 17 years younger. How many siblings are there? There's four of us. And that's the youngest? That's the youngest. That's crazy. Yeah. But you guys, you know him? Yeah, I know him. Love him. He's great. But like by the time you were about to leave, he was just being born? I kind of, I knew him. Yeah, I saw him be born. Oh, wow. My mom, yeah, I think she just, she was like, this was her fourth time giving birth and it felt like,

I don't know if it was she just wanted us to see it. I don't know how much of it was like because you're almost there. Yeah. Or I want you fuckers to know what I went through for you.

Wow, that's a life-changing moment. It really was. And we had a couple of... There were a couple of kids staying with us. Yeah. At the time, my buddy Darren, because his parents had moved out of town, he was there, and we had like... They just left him at your house? No, they came. They were in the room. But I mean, Darren's parents were just sort of like, I'm going to leave you. Yeah, I mean, we talked about it. He knew. He knew they were, you know... His dad passed away, and his mom...

Just you know needed to move somewhere else and Darren didn't want to go do senior year at a brand new high school So he states yeah, we're like alright stay with us and it was the other guy that was it was a girl that was It was her name was Michelle. We called her Fred for You know reasons and did her parents we were at your house, too Yeah, kind of I think her mom single mom moved to moved to Vegas and

And Michelle, yeah, she wanted to stay. And, yeah, it was just one of those things. We were that house. We were kind of that house that was like, yeah, come on. We got room. We got room. We got room. Yeah. But did you have foster brothers and sisters too? No. No? No, it was just, I mean, yeah, these were sort of like kids that were friends of ours. Okay. And...

I mean, Michelle's got some funny stories because, of course, we don't have a room for her. So she's sleeping in a bed with my, you know, my sister, who I think was nine or ten. Yeah. And she was in her teens? She was in her teens, but I don't know. But everybody got to go to the same school. Yeah. All right. So what, like, how, and are your siblings are in show business? No, not anymore. They all went through it. Well, my sister, Jennifer, was a...

TV journalist. She did TV news in Iowa, in Wisconsin. She in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Yeah. She was an anchor. Yeah. News anchor years and years and years and and changed careers maybe two years ago. And now she works for Mayo Clinic.

Got out of the news racket. I think she did it for quite a long time, and the business was starting to change, and there was a change in ownership of the station. I think it was like a conservative. There was a... They wanted the political content to sort of change a little bit, and they...

Oh, they got on the Talking Points dispatch network of the right-wing thing? Kind of. Or at least there's some stuff we don't want you to talk about, and we want you to take a pay cut while you're not talking about it, and they were sort of like...

Well, she was like, you can't really riff as an anchor too much. Not really, but it's, you know, I, I don't know. There's journalistic integrity thing. She went to school for journalism. She did. Yeah. And the other brother, uh, John, uh, John was an actor. Uh,

We came out here at about the same time. And... This is the youngest one or the one... This is the one who's like three and a half years younger than I am. So it's you, him, then her, then the youngest one. Yeah, and then Nick. Nick's the baby. And Nick came out and was like an actor for about a minute and was actually... It was starting to kick off and then he was like, this is dumb. I'm going back to school. And...

He does video. He's a video game designer now for Sony. They make video games. And my brother John works with him. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, I have respect for people who say it's dumb. I do, too. I do, too. I was sort of taken aback a little bit, but I didn't have an argument. I was kind of like, it's not not dumb. Right.

But like you could see like if you don't have a passion for it, just the notion of like the only thing I want to be an actor. And then you do it a couple of times. Right. What is this? Yeah. Yeah. How is this a life? Yeah. He I think he and we were, you know, he might have had to do there. It might have been like a mini strike that happened or something. So there was five months of waiting and there was a there's a lot of waiting anyway. Yeah. It's just like, fuck it. What am I waiting for? This is dumb.

Yeah, you're waiting for someone else to give you an identity for a few months. I think he just didn't, he just, it didn't, you know, you got to love it. Did he train? He was doing some, he was doing like some improv stuff. Yeah. But he was good. He had a natural, he just had kind of a natural thing. I think that's half of it, if not more than half of it.

It's a big kickstart. I think in the beginning, especially, you have to be a little delusional about...

your gifts and what you have to offer. Yeah. Did you go to school for it? I studied it. I studied it undergrad. So it was like half and half. Where was that? I was at Yale undergrad. New Haven? New Haven, Connecticut, but not a conservatory program. It wasn't in the School of Drama. It wasn't the fancy Yale. It wasn't the fancy one. It was plenty fancy, but it was, you know, it was...

They wanted it to be an academic degree. And then, of course, the people that were running the department realized that it's ridiculous. You can't have a theater degree and not teach people how to do theater. Right. So it did incorporate some training aspect. But I feel like they always were trying to sneak that part in. Right. So it was really like, what was the degree that you were doing? We called it English in Theater Studies.

Uh, I think any other place would have called it an English major and a theater minor. Right. And, but the, and the, the theater minor being studying theater, not necessarily doing theater. Uh, right. That was all extracurricular. Right. And did you, uh, did you feel the, uh, were you in the same, uh, performance spaces as the big shots? No. Oh. Not really. Were there any big shots there when you were there? Unless we were ushering. Yeah. We got to use their library. Um. Who was there when you were there? Anybody? Uh.

I don't necessarily remember. But what was your first stage experience? What were you doing? I did Three Penny Opera. Yeah. With Deidre Matt. I did like a Henry IV performance.

Part one. Yeah. And I did a lot of, you know, scene study. I think I got there having done lots of high school plays and junior high plays and community theater plays. Oh, so you were already like way in. I was way in. Yeah. I was way in by the time I got there. Doing musicals? Yeah. Only because that's half of what was being put on. So if you're not going to sit it out, you're going to do that. Yeah.

So you knew pretty early that you were going to do it. I think so. Yeah, I think I did. I think I did. Yeah. And so Yale, you stayed there the full run? I was there, yep. And your parents were like, that's fine, an English degree from Yale. They were, you know what, it's, I think part of the reason that I went there is that it checked off,

the box that I had to check off. And once I checked off that box, I didn't... They were like, we don't even know now what to require of you because...

You checked off the biggest box we could think of. You finished college. Yeah, you finished college at a good college, and so, okay. Yeah. But what did they do? My dad was an engineer. Yeah. And I remember they had a kid at like 18, 17 and 18. You. Me. So my mom was forced to drop out of high school because, of course, the scandal, you know, you couldn't have that. Yeah. Yeah.

And my dad, we as a family went to Iowa State. My dad studied engineering and was an aerospace engineer and transitioned to an electrical engineer, had a career at that. He, yeah, that was the only, the only constraint he said was you can be anything you want except an engineer. Yeah.

Because he thought it was horrible? I think he just, you know, it was the thing that he was good at math. And so the guidance counselor said, you should be an engineer. And he was like, okay. And then he became an engineer. And then I think all those years later, he was sort of like, I don't actually like this. Do you even understand what it is he does? It's like lots of math problems to...

you know, make sure shit doesn't break basically. Like, you know, I never, that's a good way to put it. And he, he kind of had a career where I think he just didn't enjoy it right until he got to the age where he could retire. Yeah. Uh,

And at that point, he kind of blossomed because he realized, like, he just didn't have to take shit from anyone anymore. He could always say, fuck off, I retire. And then once he had that, he was like, oh, this is actually kind of fun. And he enjoyed it. And your mom worked or she didn't? My mom worked. My mom did, like...

You know, the things that, like, women were sort of allowed to do. My mom did, like, in-home daycare for a while. My mom sold Mary... Sounds like she did it the whole time. Yeah. Well, kind of. For teenagers, too. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. She sold Mary Kay, and then...

She worked at a feedlot doing order for fulfillment. She actually worked, she did like some soldering at Rockwell Collins on the assembly line. And then maybe four years, right around the time my sister was graduating, so I guess I'd been out of school for maybe, I'd been out of college for four years. She went and got ordained and became a Lutheran pastor.

which was kind of her calling all along, but it took that many years for women to really be allowed to be a Lutheran pastor. Lutheran's a pretty liberal one, right? It's pretty liberal, but, you know, not in the 70s quite so much. It's a Midwestern thing, the Lutherans. Yeah, it's like there's a Scandinavian, German, Northern German church,

part of that. So she had a congregation? She had a congregation. Wow. Yeah. What is the Lutheran angle? Lutheran angle was the, uh,

It's basically, I think, the origin of it. First of all, it's the very first piece of the Protestant Revolution, which I kind of... It's Catholicism unplugged. Yeah. Right? So the idea is we don't need all this fancy shit. Yeah. Let's just have some wooden pews. Yeah. We don't need... We're going to dispense with all the decorative stuff. Get back to basics. All the ceremony, the pomp. Yeah. And we're going to...

And it's ridiculous that the Bible's in Latin. We're going to translate it into all the languages that people actually speak. And we're not going to have the priest be the only guy that knows how to read the thing now. Everybody can read it themselves and make their own decisions as to what they think it means. But am I mistaken in that it's a pretty inclusive, forgiving trip? I think you're thinking like Unitarians and Episcopalians. It's...

Yeah, it's inclusive in whatever. There was a lot. I think historically there was a big anti-Semitism piece involved with it. Oh, yeah, with Luther. Yeah. The main guy. So it's, you know, they didn't solve all the problems with it. Did you grow up believing? I did. Yeah. That's good. I did. And I still do on a certain, it's just the, I think,

What's evolved is my idea of what believing means. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Like how so? Like, I think, you know, it used to be you either believe this or you don't. Yeah. This is either true or it's false. Right. And now, I don't... I think...

You know, people, I think even people with faith will tell you, they'll say, you know, you struggle, you have moments where you struggle with your faith, which kind of is basically saying, you know, there's some days when you believe it and there's some days when you don't. Yeah. And you go back and forth on that shit. And I kind of take it a step further where it's like they go, you know, like, do you believe in Spider-Man? Yeah. No. You don't believe in Spider-Man, but...

We can sort of talk about Spider-Man. Like, we know a lot about Spider-Man. If you talk about Spider-Man enough and Spider-Man starts to take on, like, people are like, well, he lives in here. And they're like, no, he doesn't. There's a cannon on him. Yeah. You know, and people will argue about, you know. So I think there's a little bit of that. I don't really have to decide whether it's real or not. But faith keeps you, you know, level sometimes. I think so. That's good. Yeah. Yeah.

And you got kids now. I got kids. And are you going to church? No. No. I mean, no. We're not going to something that I think someone else would call a church. There's pockets of communities. You know, again, it's like, well, it's a church. Yeah. Sure. Well, it's about, I think, about community ultimately, right? I think so.

I guess it's nice to have some place to go where you see the people like, hey, how you doing? Right. We're all here together. Yeah. Subscribing to a thing. Yeah. And it's nice to see everybody. Yeah. I'll see you next week. See you next week. You know, have some cookies on the way out. Exactly. Yeah. And that's that. Right. So when do you come out here? I was 25. Yeah. Yeah.

Twenty five. It was after Yale. You go back to Iowa. I went back to Iowa. I had a this was a really hard moment. I I did a really weird thing that nobody ever does. You know, when you take a semester off in school. Yeah. I took off the second semester of my senior year. So you're really testing whether or not you'd go back.

Yeah. It was, I had joined, my senior year I was like in, at Yale there's like acapella music. And this is back before Pitch Perfect and before it became cool. You were doing the acapella thing? I was doing the acapella thing. And you owned that publicly. And I, you know what? Yeah. I'm old enough. Who cares now? Could you walk back into it if someone said, hey, come on up? Uh.

I'd have to... Yeah, I'd have to rehearse. I'd probably have to rehearse this. I would try. So you're in an a cappella group. I'm in an a cappella group. And... But I'm this theater major. And I really wanted to direct a play as part of the big senior requirement. And I couldn't do both. Right. So I took the semester off so that I would come back in the fall and direct an adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, which I did, which was...

I loved it. It was great. But what also happened is that that sucked up everything in the fall for me. So then after the play was done, I had about two or three weeks when I was supposed to do all the coursework from the other three classes that I needed to graduate. And I left campus in January with two papers that I hadn't written. Wow.

It's the worst. So those were kind of hanging over my head, and I went back to Iowa, back at my parents' house, and I banged out the first one, and then I had the second one.

and I just couldn't fucking do it. I couldn't do it. I couldn't, it was like, uh, just the thought of writing a paper right now. Yeah. And I think it was both in that, like I didn't, I hadn't attended the, it was, you know, I didn't have anything really to say. Uh, and then I'm sure there was this kind of blockage piece where I realized that once I finished this, I was going to have to now move on to the next chapter and be ready to do that. Yeah. Um,

Yeah, so that was like there was this kind of four or five months of dread. Like an incomplete hanging over you? Like an incomplete that if I don't get this in...

This is what happened. Yeah. Okay. There's a deadline. There's very gracious with the deadlines, but there is a deadline whereby if you don't finish it by here, it's the incomplete. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to out myself. I had a buddy who had like a postage meter and he was like, you know, you know, you can do is you can backdate it.

And so that'll work within reason. So you can have the, you know, and I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to send it. But instead of like UPSing it or whatever the department, I'm going to send it.

Campus Mail. So now it's going to go to the whatever. Yeah. And Campus Mail was notoriously like that adds a couple of weeks. Yeah. For things to get places. And so that'll explain why the postage thing was like whatever. Yeah. Like I'll get away with this. This will be brilliant. And then Campus Mail lost it. The paper. The last paper. They lost it. They lost the last paper. The only copy. It never turned. And...

Yeah. And so I kind of waited. I waited to hear back. I waited to hear back. I waited to hear back. I waited to hear back. Now we're way, we're like a month or two past the deadline. Maybe three. Yeah. And I finally kind of sheepishly and I, oh, I think I got the grade transcript and there it is. There's the incomplete. And now I don't graduate. I don't have the credit. Right. Yeah.

And I was like, fuck, now I have to get on the phone and talk to somebody. You know? Yeah. Now I have to call the professor. With an unbelievable tail. With a ridiculous tail. Yeah. Like, I can't. Now I'm like, whatever. And the professor was sort of like, I'm kind of in the middle of grading the next semester. So I think I reprinted it and I resent it. And it was the kind of thing where...

He was going to have to go back and change the, you know, he was going to have to do an extra administrative step. Yeah. That he was not in any hurry to do. Right. Um,

But that ultimately, yes, got finished. I did graduate. I did have nightmares about that for a while. I had like school nightmares about that for a long time afterwards. The worst. I had an incomplete for a year after college. And it was like a fucking nightmare. Yeah. Because you move on in your mind. You move on with your life. And you're like, how am I going to write about Blake? Right. Now. Yeah. Barely understood it then.

Yeah. Yeah. This was, think a class or two where like it was recommended but not required that you like be able to read in Italian. Oh my God. And I had no Italian, but I took the class because it was like Tuesday at two o'clock and that fit in with the other shit I was doing. Sure, your sleep schedule? Yeah. Yeah. So I went to- But you got it. I got it. I got it done. And then you came out here. Chicago first? Yeah, Chicago. Three years in Chicago. Doing what? Theater? Theater.

Theater. I was doing theater. I was going to be... Good town, right? Yeah, it was great. I love it. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, it's funny. I went to do all the stuff that you don't go to Chicago to do. I was there like trying to do Ibsen. Yeah. Not to yell? Yeah. You know what I mean? Not to do angry new plays at Steppenwolf? Yeah. Well, I tried to do that. Yeah. But they had people to do that at that point. Yeah. Yeah.

And my roommates were all doing like ImprovOlympic and the Second City Program and all of that stuff that you actually do go to Chicago to do. And I wasn't doing any of that, but I was around it a lot because I would... But you didn't do any improv? No, but I'd sit in the audience and be the one, you know, that would show up for all the student shows. Sure, yeah, because you had friends? Yeah, you had friends, and you're the only one there, so you make all the suggestions. Yeah, yeah, because you know the game. Yeah. And did any of those guys go on to SNL or anything? Um...

Your pals? None of the ones that I, like a lot of the people that I knew sort of through that. Yeah. Like Horatio Sanz. Yeah. John Favreau was at I.O. That's how I met him. Really? Yeah. He was doing the ImprovOlympic. Yeah. In Chicago. Yeah. So when you came to L.A., you knew him. Yeah. I knew him. Did you come out at the same time? We did. We came out. He had been out here. He did Rudy, which is where he met Vince. Okay.

Rudy, yeah. And he broke up with a girl when he left Chicago. Yeah. Or I don't know if he broke up or they, I don't know, they broke up. Yeah. And I broke up with a girl and we were both out here and we kind of, he didn't really know too many people and I didn't know too many people. So then we got to know each other through that. And then you end up in Swingers. I ended up at Swingers. So how would, what were the first, so how'd you come out here and just start working? I didn't.

I didn't. I had three things going for me. I had a friend who said he had a car he could lend me. Yeah. I had a family friend who lived up in Northridge and said I could, you know, sleep in the room behind the garage. Yeah. And I had another friend who was doing like running a...

a little, you know, shoebox theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. And so like, okay. Where all those other shoebox theaters are? Exactly. It was like one of those. It's a strange thing, that thing. There's like four or five little theaters there and I don't know what goes on. I think maybe it's a zoning thing or cheap rent or. Yeah. I remember there was a comedy show at one of them, but there's like four of them down there. And then there's that Hudson theater, which is a little bigger. That's where I was. I was on the offshoot side of the Hudson theater. Oh, okay. Yeah. Um,

And, you know, when I came out, the car was a lemon that he didn't lend me. He actually sold it to me. And then it didn't run. Yeah.

So it took a while. I had an agent. My agents in Chicago were like, don't do it. You're not ready. Right. And I was like, I'm going. Yeah. They were right. I wasn't ready. It's such a weird, isolated, lonely feeling to be out here without any way in. Because you know it's here. Yeah. But there's just no way in. But that's the delusional piece that I think is really good to have because I...

Like, I somehow believed that I was destined for greatness without having to figure out how it worked or really do all the legwork that it took. Well, you're lucky. I mean, a lot of people come out in that situation and they spend, you know, decades out here before they kind of wake up wherever they wake up and realize, fuck. Yeah.

It did not happen. Yeah. Because it's almost like a childish dream. Like, I'm going to be a movie star. Yeah. And it didn't just come out here. When does it happen? It doesn't ever. I don't think it ever happens. But every once in a while, it happens. You get work. Yeah. So you got a new agent and then you started to work?

Um, no, I got the guy that sold me the car. Yeah. Felt bad. Yeah. He was, he was, I'd done it. I knew him cause he'd done a, I did a student film at school. Yeah. Um, he threw me an audition for like a one line bartender part. Yeah.

And you can't audition with a one-line bartender part, so they had me audition with a bigger character. Yeah. And I got that part, and then that was kind of a start. Which movie was that? It was called The Low Life. Yeah. With starring Rory Cochran. Okay. That guy's great. Isn't he amazing? Oh, my God. He's freaking amazing. And he's like...

He was like the coolest guy. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, you know, like I was kind of this, hi. Yeah. You know, and he's the guy with like, you know, the souped up Mustang and the, he just had all the cool shit. I interviewed him once and it was like intense. Yeah. Yeah. He's so smart, so bright, really, you know. Yeah.

Yeah, but he's just one of those guys, like, you know, he's very intense and he's focused and there's definitely things he doesn't want to talk about. Yeah. And he keeps a lot, you know, he keeps the mystique going. But he always, like, whenever he acts, it's like, holy shit. Yeah. The fuck is that guy? He's like a real deal. He's a real deal guy. Yeah. So you knew him when he was a kid, like before. We were kids. Dazed and confused, like, you know, he was in that. This might have been right after that. Yeah. Yeah.

I think this might have been just after that. And then Swingers happens. Swingers happens. And that puts you on the map? That puts me next to the map. Okay. That puts me close enough to the map that when they spill a cup of coffee on the map and they reach for something to wipe the map up with... Yeah, you're there. I'm there. They're wiping the map up with me. Yeah. But, like, when you did...

So you do that, and then you get this movie, Office Space, which is like, I think it's probably one of the biggest cult movies around in its own way, right? Yeah. I mean, and you had no idea going into that. How did Judge find you? I came in and auditioned. Yeah. It's, you know, it's a classic thing where...

Fox didn't want to... They were doing him... He was making them a bazillion dollars. With Beavis? With King of the Hill at that point. Okay. So this was like... I think they looked at it like this is his vanity project. It'll keep him happy. Right. But, you know, and they assumed that he's going to cast like a movie star and do the thing. And he had no interest in doing that. So by the time...

They finally, he finally wore them down and they were like, fuck it. We don't care anymore. Just take your, you know, take your stupid little vanity. Yeah. And do whatever you want with it. Uh, I think I was the only one left that hadn't auditioned for it yet. And I happened to audition for it on that day. Um, and I understood it. I, I, like I, I understood his, you know, it was a good fit. It was a good fit. I, I, his sense of humor, um, lined up with mine. Yeah. Um,

You know, I mean, his is better than mine, but it's like it was... I could see it. Yeah. And then it's just like the rest is history. And some of it, it's like they're so... It's so dumb. Like, I had done Swingers. That was kind of one of my only credits. I'd done Swingers, and I'd done, like, this independent movie that hadn't come out yet. Yeah. That basically, I think...

wouldn't really come out but nobody knew that yet that was the the low life yeah uh it was something it was after it was called the two two ninas okay yeah um it never came out maybe it went to video I think maybe it did like a day at the angelica or something you know it was like one of those yeah um

But we didn't know, you know, he don't know that there. So it's like, that's a credit. You're playing a lead. Yeah. And it's, I remember meeting him after I'd been cast and he was like, yeah, Swingers, that was a good movie. And I was like, yeah, thank you. Yeah. He's like, I love that scene. Like where you, you know, you pull out the gun in the parking lot.

And I'm thinking, oh, that's not me. That's the wrong guy. That's the wrong guy. He's got the wrong guy. And I just said, yeah. You know, I'm not saying shit at that point. But you had no sense by doing Office Space. How long did it take for that to pick up steam? Like, was it right away? No, it was forever. You know what happened was...

DVD and cable, like movies wall-to-wall on Comedy Central was not a thing. Right. So if your movie tanked in the box office, that's it. It was done. Right. And Office Space was one of the first movies where they all of a sudden had this other revenue stream for it, which was Comedy Central and home video. Right. And it really kind of caught fire and came alive later.

Yeah. Which surprised everybody, you know? Yeah. Because that hadn't existed before. Was it years later? Yeah. Oh, it took years. It took years. It was like a slow... It was just a slow ramp up where I was like, huh. Yeah. Somebody wrote an article about how people are having work parties and watching this movie. Yeah. And it just kept getting kind of...

Bigger and bigger. That's crazy. Bigger and more. And that's probably like that's the most you're probably recognized for that more than anything. Easily. Because the whole generation of people now. Yeah. Yeah. And it speaks to something. It's like it's weird. It went viral pre-internet. Yeah. And it's like, you know, I've never worked in that situation, but it feels like it was the beginning of the modern workplace comedy, really. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think without office space, you don't get, you know, the office, you don't get. Oh, sure. Like just all that stuff. No. I had precursors like Jack Lemmon in the apartment, I remember was something that I watched, you know, like there, it, it existed kind of. That's such a heartbreaking movie. Yeah.

Hey, can I get the keys? Oh, my God. Yeah, it had that, like, despair, the despondency piece to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I think, you know, it connected. I didn't realize this until years later. I think a lot of Office Space, it's a movie about depression. Yeah, it kind of is, right? You know, there's a piece of it that's like, how do you climb out of depression? Yeah.

And I think that that, I think that just people related to that. To the existential despair of just having to work. Of what am I doing? Yeah. Just like, what is, you know, what is my life? Yeah. Is this all there is? Were you feeling that at the time? I've always had a, you know, at the time I'd just been cast in a studio movie, so I was kind of high flying. But yeah, it's like, I'm not a guy that verges on the manic.

Yeah. I'm not a guy that verges on the anxious. Yeah. I'm a guy that verges on the depressed. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, so I know that piece. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't, I find that with me, I'm definitely the anxious guy.

Like when depression happens, it's not going to stick. Yeah. Because I'll find an anxious way out of it. I could, I mean, I knew that in the very beginning because you're like, you were saying, I'm sitting in the trailer and I'm going, what's going on? Where are we doing? What's taking so long? Yeah, yeah. You know, that's not me. I just lay down and take a nap. Just lay there. You know? And watch the day go by. I just, you know. And then you get that like, they're on the scene before you. Great. Can you give me like a seven minute pause?

When you're seven away, come and get me. So I have time to piss and, you know. Yeah. So, but that, that, the office space got everything going. Yeah, sort of. I mean, it's such a, yeah, you know, it's like they're huge jumps, but you need so many of the fucking things. But you're, I mean, it's fortunate for you that you can do, like you can do comedy. Yeah.

Yes. You know, and it's like it's second nature to you, but you can also do all the serious shit. Yeah. That's a rare thing. I don't know that I do either of them incredibly well, but I always kind of wanted to do both of them. I've been told at different parts of my career. Yeah.

that I couldn't do one or the other, like early on, because I went to Yale and I was doing Ibsen in Chicago. Yeah. I was auditioning for all those under five lines on sitcoms. Yeah. Oh, my God. And they were like, you know, and I get the note, like, he can't do comedy. He doesn't know comedy. And then after Office Space and a couple of sitcoms, they were like, well, he's not a, you know, he's a half hour guy. Yeah. There's an agent saying this.

It's like casting people to my agent and then my agent feeling somehow that that's something that should be related to me. But it's interesting because you are like, I mean, I think I feel like you're a singular kind of guy. And but there's a lot of actors that just kind of float around and do acting jobs that you don't remember. But you're memorable. But they didn't know what to do with you, really.

Yeah. Or I, you know, I didn't know what to do with me either. I had this, they did know what to do with me. And I said no to a lot of it. Yeah. Because I kind of had this idea that once you did something, you weren't supposed to go do it again. You know, go do something completely different now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's not.

That's not where the opportunities generally lie. They generally want you to go do something. Here's an opportunity to do something bigger of the thing that you just did. Yeah. And I didn't ever want to do that. Yeah. But you keep working. Yeah, I keep working. Yeah. Even now. Even now. Yeah. I mean, maybe. We'll see. How did Loudermilk do? That was funny. That's another one. It's funny. It's like Loudermilk.

Had a huge January this year on Netflix. We stopped shooting Loudermilk before the pandemic. Yeah. So that we did three seasons of that in sort of isolation for AT&T.

And it aired on a channel, you know, deep in the 200s on DirecTV that you had to have the dish. You know. They asked me when you get, like, yeah, there's those TV stations where when you're doing junkets, they're like, we do this interview on whatever. And you're like, what is that?

Yeah. You can't find it. You can't find it. No. So it was lost. It's lost. Yeah. And, and, and it's the, my dad, uh, my mom had to go watch those episodes at a neighbor's cause my dad was like, we're not paying for that. Right. So like it was, it was hard to find. I wouldn't pay for it either. And then Netflix picked it up. Netflix picked it up, uh, aired it in January. Everybody discovered it.

it was, it had an amazing moment. Uh, there's a, you know, there's that moment where you're like, let's get the band back together and make more. Yeah. I don't know if that's going to happen. It's probably not going to happen, but we'll, I'd love it if it did, but yeah. And that, that deals with a guy who's like a sober guy. Yeah. Yeah. We're guy it's, uh, it's,

Yeah, it's kind of set around... Cranky Sober Guy. Cranky Sober Guy. It's basically a recovery group. Well, he's a recovery guy, but he's a dry drunk. Dry drunk. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Now, when you do a part, what's your research component? Are you one of those guys just sort of like, I get it? A little of both. I mean, there's the...

There's kind of the part that first hits me that's sort of like, I think, you know, I just imagine and I go, this is a part Walter Matthau would play. Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now I'm like, okay, I've got Walter Matthau in my head a little bit. Okay, that's a good start. Yeah. I did go, I went to a couple of meetings. Yeah. The first meeting I went to was in Vancouver. I thought it was going to be... Did you shoot up there? Yeah, we shot it up there. Yeah.

And I thought it was going to be one of those meetings where it's like 50 people in a room and there's coffee at the back. And I'd sit in the back row and like listen to some stuff. Went to a little one. I got there and it's like seven people sitting around a table. Yeah. So I kind of, I had to talk, you know, and like people are, and it's people are laying their shit out there.

And I was really grateful for it because as I was going around, I was like, okay, I kind of can't lie. I'm going to cop to the fact of like I'm doing a TV show and I'm doing some research and that's why I'm here. And the hilarious thing is they're like, sure you are. You know, like I left there with the sponsor anyway and the literature, they're like, uh-huh, TV show. Yeah, sure you are. Keep coming back. Yeah, exactly. It works if you work it. Yeah. And...

But I think the thing that I took away from it was as it was going around, I was like, oh, this is sacred. You know? Right. Like, this is important. Right. We can't make fun of this. Like, we can make fun of this with love. Right. But I have, I, this is people's lives. Saving people's lives. At stake here. Yeah, right. And so I got to, I'm going to treat it, I got to treat it like that. Yeah.

You know, and that's like I would, for the time that we, I would be sober while we shot that, like for the three months that. Oh, really? Yeah. And was it the kind of thing that you felt? I think it was just the kind of thing where I felt like I owe that. But do you drink enough to miss alcohol? You know, oddly enough, is I used to drink a lot more and then that, doing that,

uh, I, I, I wouldn't say that I don't drink. Yeah. I do, but it just changed my relationship to it. I was like, oh, I don't actually need this and I feel healthier without it. Right. And, uh,

Yeah. And I, like, don't need it. It does work. It works, you know. And then I still have it, you know, I'll still have a drink, but, like, I'll have one. Yeah. You know, or on a big night, I'll have two. You've done so, like, so many of these movies. Like, the movie you did with Lynn. Yeah. And your wife. Like, I felt like you two were surrogates for her and her husband a bit. I know she talked to you about this. I listened to it. Yeah.

Yeah, that movie, you know, I was up there to be with her. They had this part. They hadn't cast it. She asked me if I would do it just because it was sort of like intimate. Yeah. And she was like, I kind of, I don't want to, if I don't have to do this with like a complete stranger or day player. Yeah. That they bring in here, would you mind doing this with me? Touchy Feely is the movie. Touchy Feely. And I said, yeah, sure. I don't.

I don't, I think Lynn was so cryptic in describing what it was. Yeah. That I kind of went off of my own idea with what it was. Yeah. And I don't think it matched at all what it was or supposed to be. Right. So there is something that's kind of mysterious and cryptic about it. Yeah. That I still don't necessarily entirely know that I understand it. Yeah. But I picked up.

I did pick up that it was deeply personal to her. Yeah. And that it was big and that it was important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. So I guess, like, we did that. Yeah. Do you direct? I don't. You never wanted to again? I thought I wanted to until I realized that it was...

mostly the part, all the parts that, like, I thought it was just like, well, it's like being an actor except you have more power. And then it's like, no, it's like all the other shit that I don't want to do. But it's so interesting when you, like, because when I work with directors or I'm on set because I kind of feel like I should direct a movie. Uh-huh. But the sensitivity you have to have to make a decision about a scene that you just shot. I mean, like, I don't know if I have the patience to be that, you know,

intuitive about when something is right. What take? Yeah. But she had a real kind of desire for some authentic moments. Yeah. And I think that was like a real gift. I mean, she's a real actress person. There's a, it's a real, it's not very often that you have somebody who,

has the vision to know what they're looking for. Right, right, right. And have the sort of force of personality to steer it, to keep it moving towards that. Yes. But not be overbearing. There's a little bit of, because if what you want is a really intimate thing to really happen, you also have to kind of have the humanity and have a safe enough container to

And people have to trust you enough to go there. To realize it, yeah. And she had that. Yeah. She was Jay Roach. I worked with Jay Roach, and I was picking his brain, and he said something. He says, I always try to just, I'm the priest of the story. And Lynn was like,

She was a consummate priestess of the story, except even more so because of the way she worked. I think she didn't necessarily know what the story was. The story was being born. Right. So it's real collaboration. Yeah. And that doesn't happen often. No. And she didn't want to just collaborate with your talent. Yeah. She wanted her soul to collaborate with your soul. Yes. Yeah. I miss her.

But you've worked on bigger, like the Band of Brothers. That must have been fucking nuts. It was crazy. I can't imagine the scope. I talked to Adrian Brody the other day about doing Thin Red Line. Is it Thin Red Line? Yeah. That he got cut out of. But he really said the experience was like being in combat in a way. Because you're with these guys and they're shooting it for real. Yeah. And you've got to live in it.

Yeah. It was pretty good? It was, yeah, it was immersive. Yeah. I remember saying to Damien at one point, like, when I was a kid and I imagined being an actor, this is what I thought it was going to be like. Yeah. I thought I was going to, like, become something and there's going to be 360 degrees of reality all around me. Yeah. And then you get, you become, you know, you get a job as an actor and you realize, oh,

Oh, no. I'm standing on a cheap, flimsy set that's like maybe six feet. It goes two feet out of frame. You're surrounded by people. Yeah, and you have to kind of pretend all that shit's there. The Ander Brothers was one where you didn't have to pretend anything was there because everything was there except the bullets. That must have been pretty thrilling. Yeah, it was amazing. So what's going on now? What are you doing? I don't even know. Okay. Honestly, I don't know.

Ro and I wrote a pilot for a show. For the two of you? It's for her. We wrote it for her. I would, I think, you know, I would stay on as a producer-writer. But we're like baby writers. Yeah. Have you taken it out there? Not yet. It's kind of gone to, like, friends and family first. Yeah. Because I think...

you know, we have, we have that kind of, uh, courtesy. We can, we can get some courtesy reads that. And you want them to be people you trust and, you know, a little love there with a little love. You can take the note. Yeah. And people you respect and you don't have to, and not, you know, um, and then, uh, like we're figuring out kind of what we're going to try. Not even like, uh,

who knows? Yeah. I don't even know how the business works anymore. I don't think anybody does. And I, uh, and I know a lot of people are despondent about that. Like we don't know how it works. Uh, I kind of feel like, Oh, awesome. So you don't know either. Yeah. That's amazing. Cause I just got here. I don't know anything. And, uh, and all you, you know, everyone has been doing it for 30 years and you're saying you don't know either. So great. Yeah. We're all here together. Well,

Well, it was great talking to you, man. Thank you, brother. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming. I just said thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Yeah, anytime. There you go. Solid guy. I enjoyed that. You can hear Rosemary DeWitt's episode if you missed it. That's episode 1593 from last month. Hang out for a minute.

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Find your push. Find your power with Peloton at onepeloton.com. Folks, if listening to Ron has you thinking about office space, you can go listen to my episode with office space director Mike Judge right now. Like I imagine that doing, you know, King of the Hill and conceiving of King of the Hill and having these, you know, characters with emotional depth.

was sort of the next evolution of you as a guy who moving towards film and moving towards, you know, sort of exploring, you know, like responsible adult themes and that kind of stuff. I remember thinking, well, it was very daunting, but then I thought, you know what, I'm just going to pitch a show that I want to do. If it's not what they want to do, they'll say no, and that's that. And I sort of kept thinking they were going to,

say no it's like just these like the first drawing i had was four guys with their beers and then the family and kind of based on the neighborhood i lived in outside of dallas and um but it just kept uh and actually in albuquerque too i lived in a i had four different fort worth people from fort worth living in my neighborhood and i had a paper route for that was uh texans are their own thing yeah they they seem to find each other in albuquerque too and my neighborhood was a

They were all around us. I mean, the last neighborhood. We lived all over the place there. So it was uniquely Texan in that way. It was really based on Texans. I think it's sort of the way, you know, you'll hear Canadian comedy people, a lot of them will say, you know, you're right next to the United States. You can kind of observe it as an outsider. Right. I kind of feel that way being in New Mexico, growing up there. And Texans, you know, they flood our campgrounds every three-day weekend. Yes. Ski swopes. My dad would just, he...

You know, he grew up in Montana and Wyoming, just wide open spaces. And he just hated crowds. And when there was these, you know, big three-day weekends and just Texas licensed place, he would just like be muttering, just God damn Texans everywhere.

That's episode 568, and it's available for free on all podcast platforms. If you want to get every episode of WTF ad-free, go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. On Thursday, we've got a special Ask Mark Anything episode for everyone to hear. This is a special feature of the Full Marin feed, but we'll give you a solid collection of your questions and my answers for the first episode of the new year.

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