Episode 1613 - Noah Wyle
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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? How's it going? What's going on? Where are we at today? How are you managing? How are you managing? How's your brain? Are you holding it together? It's going to be day to day with this shit. Thanks for coming by. I appreciate you being here. It's interesting because today I talked to Noah Wiley.

I think most people know him. Certainly people of a certain age from ER. He was on almost all the seasons of ER. And he's got this new medical drama that's called The Pit. And I was surprised. You know, I don't I don't know what regular TV exists. And this is on HBO, I believe it's on Max TV.

But it is another kind of emergency trauma show, emergency-based. Noah plays a doctor. And I don't remember ever really watching ER, but I did watch all the available episodes of this thing. And it kind of did, it struck some nerves with me. I mean, it definitely got me in some sort of zone of,

around mostly mortality, certainly around healthcare, but more so in that area of when you're in trouble, when people are in trouble, when people need to go to the emergency room. I imagine most of you at some point have found yourself in an emergency room for some reason or another, and it's a harrowing show. Each episode is an hour of the same day in this emergency room, in this trauma ward,

where, you know, they have to, you know, make decisions, triage decisions where they have to sort of manage intake because of issues with the hospital, availability of beds, availability of people who work there, the sort of issues of hospital administration and health care in general. And it was it was interesting.

It was heavy, man. I mean, and Noah Wiley is great, and the whole cast is great, but it did kind of bring me back to a place. You know, I spent time in hospitals when I was a kid, not because I was sick, but because my dad was a doctor. And because he was also kind of a workaholic, you know, spending time with dad sometimes meant, you know, making rounds with him or going to the hospital and dealing with that smell and dealing with, you know, just the kind of...

of illness of all kinds on my young brain. And, you know, I remember my dad when he decided that motorcycles were not a good thing to play on, took me to see a patient of his in traction. You know, I remember just the, I just have this very kind of early recall of being in hospitals. And then as you get older, you know, you realize that healthcare is

It's obviously very important. Having a relationship with a doctor is very important. And what insurance companies and hospital administrators and managing the type of treatment you can get, what it all means to you getting the proper attention that you need. And then also the realization that

That, you know, being a doctor is just a job. You know, some are better than others. Some, you know, obviously want to do a good job. But, you know, it's a numbers game, man. And sort of seeing, you know, this kind of unfold on this show, just the fragility of life and the sort of weight of being a doctor in that situation and having to do your job, but also maintain your own mental and emotional stability. And just... It just...

The mortality thing was just really kind of heavy to me that that it's so fragile and that, you know, these doctors have to be facing that down in the best way they can. That, you know, life comes and goes and it definitely goes. So I I was surprised and and happy that.

that I connected with the show in order to talk to Noah. And oddly, the guy who I play music with, my drummer, Ned Brower, he's a pediatric nurse, and I believe an emergency room pediatric nurse, and he has a small part on this show. And just talking to him about emergency medicine, it's just, you know, it's another one of those things. Like I talked about with...

with fires, you know, that, you know, you got to just sort of be grateful that there are people that want to do that and, and, and want to do it for a life and want to do it because it's their calling. And,

And it becomes very frightening where you have so many people in the medical profession, especially nurses, who just don't want the gig anymore for a number of reasons. Certainly one of the reasons being for how they were treated during COVID and just staffing issues. I mean, these people are on the front lines in life and death situations, and we rely on them. And if the system continues to break down or the wrong people are in leadership positions that...

create guidelines for these systems, it's like, it's fucking terrifying. It's a lot to manage just what's going on in general. But when you really think about this, this life or death situation and the fact that we're all going to come to a point where we're going to need medical attention, we're going to need to stay on top of our health in a way that's different than when we were younger, that it becomes, you know, fucking terrifying. Yeah.

And there's something about the humanity of this show and also the graphic nature of it because it's on Max. You do get a lot of very graphic procedural stuff around broken bones, rashes, heart attacks, you know, other, you know, problems that occur from accidents and all that stuff. But there's a really an interesting focus on.

on, you know, each patient and the never ending stream of patients coming in. I imagine that's how ER was. You do get a sort of the hang of the personalities of the doctor, but it's a very empathetic. And I think, you know, you're mostly realistic, uh,

kind of exploration of the fragility of life, the fragility of the healthcare system and the incredible burden that's on the shoulders of doctors and nurses. It kind of spoke to me. It kind of puts it in your face that

And I think people may watch this differently than I did. You know, you may just see it as this, you know, exciting, you know, kind of well-balanced human drama, a medical show. But I don't watch these kind of shows. So for me, it was just sort of like, oh, my God, you know, do you even know your doctor? I feel like there was a time where you had a doctor. Am I making that up? I mean, I have a doctor, but he's at the place where I go where the doctors are. And, you know, and I've had three there. And the older you get, you're like, you know, who's my doctor? Right.

And then when you're dealing with the healthcare system, it's like, what doctor can I see? I don't know that guy. And then you realize that the system is at a breaking point and you don't even know what kind of care you're going to get or if you're going to get any at all. And I feel that way about the country right now too. It's at a breaking point and it's a lot. That layer of mental anguish and despair just combined with the basic fear

You know, awareness of mortality is sort of a lot to handle, but it shows like these. And look, I, you know, look, I think Noah Wiley does a great job as this doctor where, you know, you've, you're kind of, you know, you're in the life of a guy that has to balance this with a certain amount of humanity. I don't know. Maybe that was kind of a downer of an opening situation, but yeah.

Yeah, I've just been thinking about things. So I have a few new tour dates to announce. I'm coming to Toronto at the Winter Garden on Saturday, May 3rd. The presale is going on today with the password ALLIN, A-L-L-I-N. It's in caps where I'm reading it, so maybe that's it.

All in one word. General tickets are on sale tomorrow. I'll be in Burlington, Vermont at the Vermont Comedy Club on Monday and Tuesday, May 5th and 6th. Tickets are well, that's actually sold out. So I have to make a decision about whether I'm going to add shows there. I'll be in Portsmouth, Virginia.

New Hampshire at the Music Hall on Wednesday, May 7th. Presale today with Password All In. General on sale tomorrow. Tonight I'll be in Santa Barbara, California at the Lobero Theater. Then tomorrow I'm in San Luis Obispo, California at the Fremont Center. And Saturday, Monterey, California at the Golden State Theater. Then I'm coming to Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, Illinois, Michigan. Yeah.

Go to WTFpod.com slash tour for all of my dates, including the new ones and links to the tickets. Okay? Do that. Oh, my God. I don't mean to be morose or dark. You know, my heart's a little stressed emotionally. My brain's a little taxed emotionally and fearing. But look, you know, I'm going to plug on. I'm going to keep plugging away.

Until I crumble or decide to stop. I had kind of a sobering, humbling couple hours yesterday. This guy, well, he's not a guy. He's a director, Steve Fine Arts. He directed a documentary about Eddie Pepitone years ago called Bitter Buddha. He also directed...

My last comedy special from Bleak to Dark. And but but for the past few years, he's been making a documentary about me. Now, I didn't know what the point of that would be, but, you know, he was passionate about it. And he's been kind of, you know, following me around with a camera for years on and off.

I think the original arc of it was to sort of capture, you know, my beginning to do comedy after COVID and Lynn's passing, you know, and that arc would end at my HBO special. But over the years, it's become a much bigger thing. And there's a lot in it and a lot of me. And I guess the reason why it was humbling is that, you know, you've been following him or you forget that there's a camera on you sometimes. But I guess...

The point of the whole thing is it's a rare thing that you actually get to see yourself as others see you. Almost nobody really gets that. You're kind of locked in your own vessel here and you can make assumptions about other people in terms of what they may think, what you think they think. Sometimes they tell you what they think. But I got a chance to, you know, just watch myself.

For an hour and a half or so, just, you know, my behavior in all these situations, you know, in these interviews, in these moments in comedy, backstage, in my house, and it was a little rough. And there's all this footage that, I mean, it's good, I guess, but for me, having not really seen it put together, you know, I...

For some reason, I don't see myself quite as a kind of sad, cranky guy who's set in certain ways. And I think that a lot of times when I'm in front of a camera, I act a certain way. But it was sobering because I think it's an interesting kind of opportunity to really assess myself like that. And I think it had an impact.

At this age I'm at. And also, you know, it's over a lot of different years. But man, seeing me doing stand-up in my early 20s, it was cringy for me. You know, seeing me, you know, on video, these videos I did maybe after my first year of college and, you know, on a VHS at home and then some comedy stuff. It was like...

You know, because you really think that, you know, when you're younger that you've kind of got a handle on things. But it was all posturing. It was all this sort of fake swagger. And I don't know what compelled me to just enter the life I entered. And also, you know, I was doing things. I was two years into comedy. Yeah.

Maybe when I started working as a comic and like, I don't ever consider that. Like when I talk to comics, I'm like, oh, you got to pay your dues. But you know what that looked like for me, you know, was really starting to work as a comic in difficult situations when I was two years in, you know, and it was like, I was 24 years old or something. And I don't know, man, I guess there, there is a way that I can, you know, have some,

love for that guy, but oh God, it's really hard. And then just to see who I've become in terms of, you know, how I live my life, what's happened in my life and me and my cats. And, and, and I'm like, oh my God, I'm like,

you know, I'm a couple years away from just becoming this eccentric old man that, you know, has this weird place in people's minds and hearts and in my community and my business of like, oh yeah, yeah, angry old Marin. Yeah, he's out there. He's still out there doing his thing. I think he's still got the cats. But I hope it plays well. I guess it's gotten into a

South by Southwest and I think Tribeca and, you know, they talked to some of my peers, but like, and there's a lot of stuff in it about the podcast, about me and Lynn, about, you know, when I was younger and it's like, it's, it's a lot. And I guess there's some part of people that, you know, documentaries can be sort of scary, but for me, it was just sort of like, Oh no, no,

you know, that's who I am. Not in a bad way, but dude, you gotta, you gotta start, you know, trying some to find some things, even in the climate we're in. And even in this sort of period of, of fear and despair and seeming hopelessness to, to kind of open your heart and, and let some people in or enjoy some life or something, right.

But it's a very engaging hour and a half. But for me to watch it, it was like, wow, I got to maybe just start letting go of some stuff and opening my heart a little more in my day-to-day life. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, but it was a humbler. It was definitely a humbler, but reasonable.

And I'm glad I saw it. And I hope you will, too. I'll let you know if it if it ever gets out there. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You sign up for something, forget about it after the trial period ends, and then you're charged month after month after month. The subscriptions are there, but you're not using them. In fact, I just learned that 85 percent of people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month.

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All right, so I already talked a bit about this show and its effect on me. And again, like I'm getting to an age where, you know, everything has kind of an effect on me. But I do believe that there's a lot of humanity in this show. And there's, you know, it doesn't pull its punches about the health care system. It's called The Pit. It's now streaming on Max with new episodes every Thursday. Episode five dropped today. And this is me talking to Noah Wiley.

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So you have all this stuff. This is something we share. But you tell me, you're telling me there's a story behind everything? Yeah, pretty much.

I have a lot of stuff, but I don't know if there are really stories behind it other than having the thing. And there's so many things I don't even... Where's this from? Someone made that for me. That's my old cat. Well, that's very special. That's your actual cat that a fan... That's my actual cat. Like the old house, I took you up to the office there. That used to be what the garage looked like. It was just like my world of stuff. And this is sort of stuff that sort of happened...

You know, this is stuff that was in there. I just put it in here. This room doesn't have a tremendous amount of personality, but these are just bits and pieces. This is a classic thing that I would keep. I know. Well, I would keep this because even if I found it, I would keep it. Right. Even if it was not even my grandfather's hammer or had no sentimental value. I'm holding in my hand a broken hammer. Yeah. The wood is sort of shorn off in half, but there's a lovely aesthetic to it. Yeah.

Yeah, well, that's why I kept it. I don't think I have, I don't know what the story behind that was. And like that little thing there, that little orange, you know, mush thing, that's a record before it's pressed. Oh, come on. That's great.

Well, yeah, you and I got the same problem. But I think I'm trying to recover from my problem. You know what I want now is I've been seeing these things about, they called them bone vinyl, you know, that the Soviets would press onto x-rays in the 80s when they couldn't press vinyl. They would actually take plastic x-rays from hospitals. Yeah.

and they could imprint an album on them, and they were black market Russian albums. Are you a record guy? Eh, you know. But you want one of those? Yeah, I want one of those. I'm sort of like, I get on a Jag, and I do a deep dive, and then I need to touch it and have it. Yeah, right. But you're not a vinyl guy. You don't collect. No, I have every album I've ever owned. I've carried them with me through every apartment, every house. They're...

And now I have all my father-in-law's albums. He was a huge jazz fanatic. Oh, really? All of his old stuff. All the old Blue Nut stuff? Everything. And what kind of system are you using? Well, it's... Yeah. Yeah. Basically.

Basically, I have a Patrola. Yeah. Two Patrolas, actually. How old are you? 53. 53. So I'm 61. And I don't know. I've got most of the records I had in high school. It wasn't that many. Like 150 or so. Yeah. But then from there, now I've got like 3,000 records.

And that was over the last decade or so. If you go up aspirationally wanting things that you can't afford, as soon as you start making money, you go off the deep end. And now you can have all the things you never were able to get. And then the invention of the internet, suddenly you can get these things shipped to you. And I had to come through that and realize that it's the hunt and the search and the discovery that really is most meaningful to me. If it just comes through the mail, I get no dopamine hit on that at all. Right. Well, I mean, that...

That whole world, that whole process is kind of gone because people who have shit, they know they have shit. Yeah. So they put it on the internet and they're like, well, I could really get a lot for this. And yet there's still the grandmother's attic. There's still a few. They're out there. I feel like this amp.

That thing came, I don't know where the hell that thing came from, but it's like a 1961 Fender Deluxe big box. Oh, my God. It's mint condition. It showed up in Portland. I didn't get it from Grandma's attic, but I got it from the guy who got it from that. So I paid money for it.

But I don't know if that's part of the thrill of finding it for like, you know, and kind of conning somebody out of what they have because they don't know what they have. I think those days are kind of gone. I was never good enough at taking advantage of somebody's innocence. I can't do it. I would always want to pay something fair for it, even if it was way undermarked. And you realize very quickly that value is arbitrary. And really, it's only when someone's willing to pay you on the day you need to sell it. That's what it's worth. And I think when you get to a certain point –

what you want to do is just sell all of it. Like how much for this wall of shit? Everything in this room. Right. How much? Just put a price tag on it. Like storage wars. You got 30 seconds to take a peek and then make me a bid. Exactly. Just have an auction, right? And have a curtain. Like, what are you going to give me for this room? But what are the main things you collect?

Oh, it's so varied. You know, one point I got into collecting things like old walking canes that doubled as other things or swords or pipes or flasks or all that stuff. And then so I got, you know, 30 of those. You got them? They're just in the doorway? Yeah. And then I collect everything. Books, albums, pens, watches, old suitcases, you know. What do you think it is?

Because that's not a story. I obviously was a hobo in another life who ate a lot of tinned beans and dreamt of having all the suitcases in the world. Because I...

You collect suitcases? Old ones. Just... And you have that... And I've... Well, here's how... Your wife must be going nuts. I collect all these books and I'm panicked about if my house ever burned down, what would I do? So I have all the suitcases above the bookshelves in case I need to get out fast. Put the books... Everything goes in the suitcases and then we go. But like, I don't...

See, I guess I'm trying to figure this stuff out. She'd rather take the dog. Yeah. I'm going after it. I didn't bring anything. I evacuated from one night and I brought like, you know, two pairs of underwear, a fleece and my cats and some cash. Like as if the entire world had ended. I could just drive into Hollywood and use a fucking bank machine. That's the truth though. When push comes to shove, you get paralyzed by what is valuable, what you would really take and you end up taking nothing. Nothing. I didn't even take, you know, I had to go find my birth certificate.

But did you get affected? I did not. I'm up in Los Feliz, but, you know. Oh, you're right here. My mom lives right next to Runyon Canyon, so I had to get her out rather quickly as the hill behind her house was on fire. I saw that because I had evacuated to Hollywood for the night, and I stayed at that Hampton Inn down on Vine in Santa Monica.

And I'm safe. And I'm standing there on the fourth floor looking out over the hill. I saw that fire explode, dude. We were supposed to have the premiere for our TV show that night. We canceled it in good taste and out of safety. And so I was going to have dinner with my mother. And I drove up her hill and looked up and saw the hill on fire and called her. And she had no idea. I said, Mom, you got no time. I'm coming. Get out. Get out now. Get out. Yeah. And how long does she have to stay out?

They went back the next morning. They stayed at our place that night. Then we watched on TV a helicopter do a water drop right on that hill and put it out. Like, miraculous what those guys did that night. But when I saw that thing start, it exploded, dude. It wasn't like, oh, it looks like something's burning. It looked like a bomb hit it. No, that was arson for sure. You think so? Totally.

I don't want to speculate about that stuff, but sometimes it seems pretty crazy. That one that was up in Griffith Park just a couple days ago, that was arson and they caught the guy. They did? Yeah. But do they have, we're not news guys, but do they have an agenda or are they just fire freaks? No idea. Okay. Couldn't speculate. All right, so let's go back to the collecting things. I want to figure this out. So with books, like yesterday, I pull out a book yesterday.

You know, this guy, Wilhelm Reich. You know who that guy is? That kind of renegade Freudian who kind of, you know, kind of decided that orgone and orgasm energy was... He was like really cool and then he wasn't cool. Like he had a lot of great stuff to say and then he went... Well, he just went a little nuts. A little nuts. Like he, you know, he... I think he was one of the sort of intellectual founders of the sexual revolution. But before that, he was like a straight up...

And there's this book that I've had for years, and I think it's even still in print, but it's The Mass Psychology of Fascism. But I have an old copy of it. But I didn't read that whole book. But I have the book. And like yesterday, because of the situation we're in now, I'm like, oh, I'm just going to pop into that book, see if I can get a quick answer. But how many of the books, because I'm comforted by books, but I don't read them. I don't read them all. Do you? I would say...

I aspirationally intend to read them all. I read a little bit of all of them at one point or another. Otherwise, I wouldn't have them. But there are many that I haven't read. The ones I just have for comfort, the ones I have for reference, the ones that I intend to get to. Right. But the weird thing is we don't need that stuff for reference anymore, really. There's something comforting about the things that we read.

I'm a tactile guy. I just like holding it in my hand. I also, I mean, when it comes to books, if I like it, I'll buy it in triplicate. I'll buy one that I can dog ear and mark up, one that I can loan out because you'll never get it back, and one that I have pristine that I can keep on the shelf. Really? Yeah. What was the last book you did that with?

Let's see. Well, the first one that comes to mind was that book Shantaram. I really liked that book. David Gregory Roberts' book. It's a novel? Yeah, a big, thick novel. Good? Yeah, great. Autobiographical, somewhat autobiographical. Great story. Bought three of them? I bought three of them. I bought several for other people, but I bought three for myself. I do that with records. There are certain records, if I find them, I'll just buy them over and over again. Like Dylan's Planet Waves, which nobody really knows that record. I don't know that record. It's a great record. What's on that?

Going, Going Gone. Well, the reason that I buy it is because it's relatively, it's not unknown, but it's not a big Dylan record. But it's the only real record that he did with the band, that and Basement Tape. So it's really a band record. Wow. And it's a great record. But people just don't know it. So I give it to people all the time. I'm going to pick it up. Yeah.

I'll show it to you. So, what, did you, you grew up here, though? Third generation Angeleno. Isn't that weird? To be a third generation Angeleno? It doesn't exist much. We're like unicorns, yeah. Yeah, and you, like your grandparents were here? My grandmother was born here. My grandmother founded the Crafts and Folk Art Museum on Wilshire Boulevard across from the La Brea Tar Pits, which is now the California Contemporary Craft Museum, I think. And what's in that place?

Well, she founded it in 1965, believing that there was something unrecognized about indigenous art, about folk art. And so she became the earliest pioneer to really turn it into a recognized art form. So like Native art and American art. Textiles, things that are done with found objects. She called it the most democratic form of art because it didn't require any actual training in it.

Coming from the spirit of the artist and, you know. So her house must have been pretty cluttered. It was very eclectic. No, I come by my pathology honestly. We found the source. Yeah. Grandma's got cool stuff. Yeah. And then grandpa collected all the little things, the pocket knives and the key chains and the gadgets. That was her husband? Yeah.

No, one of my mother's fathers. Oh, your mother's father. So I got it on both sides. Really? Just going, as a kid, going to houses and being like, cool stuff. And going to swap meets and going to garage sales. With your grandfather. With my mother, with my partner. That was our family outing. We'd go hit the garage sales. Oh, well, now it's all explained. Yes. You have to accumulate stuff. Yes. Other people's stuff. Yes. Well, swap meets or flea markets, I think there you can still find some cool shit. Definitely. Definitely.

Yeah, there's still stuff around. Where I grew up in Albuquerque, now all the old retail big businesses are kind of gone.

And some of those big store spaces are now flea market spaces where you get like 50 or 40 or 50 people that rent space and they just bring their stuff there. It's like an all around the clock flea market. That's how young people, you talked about barter earlier. I feel like this younger generation has sort of rediscovered that and they're all borrowing and trading stuff with each other. Yeah. It's funny. I used to go to, you know, thrift stores to get clothing and I used to love. Yeah.

Now I go into those stores and I can't stand the smell. I've gotten old enough that it just smells like- It's a little dirty. Dirty. But now my kids are totally into thrifting. They do? Yeah, it's the next generation. I just brought a bunch of clothes, shirts, Western shirts and stuff that I just don't wear anymore. But it was a lot that I was keeping around because they made me feel like, I don't know, the same shit.

And I didn't know what to do with them. And, you know, I thought like, well, I could probably someone want these if I get someone to sell them on eBay. Some of them are collectors. I'm like, you know what? Go put it into the ecosystem of the thrift. So somebody will find it and be excited about it. Let it go. Free the fish.

I'm not there yet. I, you know, hoarding has an emotional component to it that I think comes from this feeling of lack or scarcity. It's really hard for me to let go of stuff. Unless I'm giving it to somebody who I think is going to appreciate it. It's really hard for me to let go. But did you come from scarcity? No. So it's probably more just like it feels it's comforting to have the stuff.

I think it's trauma-based. Really? Yeah, I think I've always liked nesting environments, bookstores, junk shops, places that, to me, the ideal environment was Fred Sanford's house on Sanford and Son. I used to watch that show, not so much for the comedy, but for the decor. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember that. That just seemed like a great place. I feel the same way, but I think it's comforting, but it's also like you feel a sense of history and different people and intelligence and wisdom. It seemed to me that all the people that had those kind of places were wizards of some kind. Agreed. And sometimes you can believe that an object holds a little bit of energy from the people that have touched it. So historical artifacts, things that were at that place when that happened, I actually feel that they have some kind of...

A little mystical juice. So three generations of Angelenos. So this, like, in terms of living here your whole life, because we were talking about this with other people, about the sort of inevitability of fire. That's been around your whole childhood, I imagine. Wasn't that part of your psyche the whole time?

Yeah, I grew up in the Hollywood Hills, up in those canyons, and it was always part of our reality. Well, fires, the mudslides, you know, it's all... And what is it with people, you know, I mean, I love L.A., but I mean, there is, we always put that risk at the back of our head, like you just, you kind of throw in the dice sometimes.

You know, living in Hollywood, I used to always look at the people that lived in Malibu and think, you're crazy. You're crazy. There's one road in, one road out. It's either on fire or getting mud slitted out. Like, why would you ever live there? Yeah. And then I lived there. And I loved it. I loved it. I loved the isolation. I loved the beauty. I loved the community. You're not there anymore, though. No, no. Well, it was too isolated. You have a meeting at 10 and one at 3, and you'd be just driving around in circles. Yeah.

But I understand why people want to live out there. Yeah. Even with the risks. Yeah. You choose where you're happiest, I guess. What did your folks do? My mom worked at a hospital in Hollywood called Kaiser for years, orthopedic nurse. My dad was an orthopedic. OR nurse as well. My dad has done a million different things, a lot of different businesses, computer business, medicine.

biomed science, all sorts of things. They around? Yes, all four. Stepfather's in our movie business. He's produced movies and worked in studios and my stepmom is an educator, teacher. So they both, you're divorced and they both have... Divorced, remarried. I had breakfast with my father and stepmother and I'm going to have dinner with my mother and stepfather today. Yeah, I'm knocking them all out today. So you did have one person in the movie business. How old were you when they split up? Young, second grade. Oh, really? Yeah. But,

But everyone's cool? Super cool. Now. You know. Are we all so adult and grown up now? Well, things start to fade, I think, a little.

You would hope. I, you know, you go back and I would change nothing. I would change nothing. And I'm an advocate of two happy houses are better than one unhappy house. Yeah. And I have been greatly influenced by my step parents. Yeah. And the more the merrier. You have kids? I have three. Three? How old are they? 22-year-old son, 19-year-old daughter, 9-year-old daughter. Wow. Whole second time around, huh? Second act. Second act.

With a little wisdom and maturity. This one's going to work. No, they're all wonderful. I love them all. And my son is a huge admirer of yours and really psyched him on your show. Oh, really? Is he in show business? He's in college. He's at Boston University. That's where I went. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

Well on his way. What's he studying? What's he want to do? He's in communication school. He's going to end up doing something under our umbrella, I'm sure. You think so? I tell him all the time it's a big umbrella. We've got truck drivers and lawyers. Sure, you can do anything. Yeah. Wow, BU. Yeah, I did liberal arts. I had friends in communications, but I did liberal arts because I wanted to have the books. I wanted to know about the books. I wanted to know about films. I wanted to do that stuff. Yeah.

Well, that's good. You got good kids and it's all working out. You know, you're only as happy as your least happy kid. And today I'm feeling pretty good. Yeah.

Well, you're a stronger man than me. I don't have any, and I don't know where that leaves me. It's a very weird thing to be childless at 61, because you're sort of like, what am I going to do with all this shit? Who's going to come get me? I think you have many, many children out there. Not real ones, I hope. You are daddy to a lot of people. I know, but most of them are almost my age. Yeah.

So when does this like, so with the stepdad in show business, were you into show business? Totally. You know, you don't grow up in Hollywood and not be aware of it. I went to Gardner Street Elementary, which is on Sunset Boulevard, and I used to walk Hollywood Boulevard, and I used to put my foot over Noah Beery Jr.'s name.

Over the beery part and fantasize. I always was enamored by this business. It was kind of cool back, I mean, when you were kids, I mean, it wasn't as dirty and broken down. In the late 70s, early 80s, it was worse. It was way worse. Yeah. Hollywood was, you know, just rampant with runaways and prostitutes, and it was a pretty scuzzy time. It was really the 1984 Olympics that kind of cleaned up the city. Yeah. Prior to that, it was more like Times Square in New York. Yeah.

On Hollywood Boulevard. And then they did what they did at Times Square. They brought in all these big hotels and cleaned everything up. It's still kind of intense, though. It's still pretty intense down there. But you wanted to be an actor always? I think I did. My stepdad worked at Universal when I was a kid. So you went to the lot and stuff? Went to the lot and got to go to screenings and got to be around people that were working in it. And it was that...

When you get to go to the circus, you can enjoy it or you can get to peek backstage and see how the guys that are in the circus are hanging out. Yeah. I loved watching the guys hang out. Backstage. Oh, man. Yeah, behind the scenes. That's always the best part of show business is before you go on. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of wild when you do like a talk show and stuff. To be in on the joke and to be, you know, on the backside of the Hollywood side. Yeah, I remember I was doing, I don't know, maybe it was Conan O'Brien or something, but they had a large animal walking through the halls. And I'm like, yeah, this is show business. It's back here. This is where this is happening.

I'm working on Warner Brothers again after all these years, and it's still my favorite thing in the world to drive onto that lot and go past all those sound stages. Talk about history. Yeah. In those big warehouses. How about those prop warehouses? Phenomenal.

Every once in a while, they'll have a sale, and I go crazy. Did you go to the last big one? Didn't Sony Universal have a big sale? When I tell you about the things I've missed out on. Really? The gun that Rod Steiger pulls on Marlon Brando in the back of the car on the waterfront, that came up for auction once.

And they wanted nothing for it. And I just missed the auction by a day. I think about that all the time. Like how much? They wanted like $300 for it. Come on. Yeah. And the stories behind that particular gun about how they had agreed that it wasn't going to be part of the scene. So when Steiger pulls it, the look of disappointment on Brando's face is him going, come on, I thought we cut that shit. Yeah. And, you know, the fact that Steiger had to do his close-up to the script supervisor because Brando left early. Like, I know all about that scene. I wanted that gun so fucking much.

Who got it? I have no idea. If you've got it, I'll pay you handsomely for it. I don't go to those auctions and stuff. I get overwhelmed too easily, exhausted. You know, it's exciting when I get there, and then I'm like, oh my God, so much shit here. It's too much stuff. Have you bought anything, any artifacts from movie history? Oh God, I've got so much. That's why, I mean, I've got stuff I really shouldn't have because it should go to a museum or a library somewhere where they'll take care of it. Like what?

Oh, I once bought a series of letters back and forth between Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando. Oh, my God. Tennessee writes to Brando asking him to star in Rose Tattoo with Anna Magnani. And Brando writes back about why he won't. And then Tennessee writes him back about why he's a coward. A coward? Oh, the language is unbelievable. And you have those? I do. Yeah. And what else? You name it, I've got it. I've got...

So much stuff. When ER ended, I was like, I'll take that door and cut up those floors for me, please. And I'll take that CPR dummy and I'll take the exit sign. I took fucking everything. It's all in my house.

You don't even have a special storage space for it? It's just out? It's just out. It's the door to the library. It's your door. Really? Yeah. You're going to need to get like a... I remember the first time I went to Graceland to see Elvis' house. He has a whole separate structure just for awards. You're going to have to build your own museum.

I don't see that in my future, but maybe for some more canes. Maybe let your son know he's got a task ahead of him. Build the annex. So when did you start doing the acting? I credit sophomore year of high school. I auditioned for a play kind of on a lark with a guy and got the part by default. And it was just...

The first time I'd ever tried anything like that and felt kind of good at anything other than, you know, sports. Hanging out? Or hanging out, yeah. What sport? Basketball. Yeah. And did you go to school with any Hollywood kids? I went to—one of my best friends in elementary school was Henry Winkler's stepson, so I knew Henry really well when I was a kid. Sweet guy. I actually watched Happy Days at the Fonz's house a few times.

Amazing guy. So great. He wrote my college recommendation letter. He did? Yeah. I didn't get in, but he wrote it. He's a sweet guy, man. Yeah. Do you remember when he was Fonzie for years and then he did that war movie, the Heroes? Heroes, yeah. And it was like this big departure and everybody was like, is the Fonz going to be able to pull this off? Harrison Ford, Sally Field. Big movie, right? Yeah.

And so in high school, that was where you got the bug? I got bit by the bug. I had the crush on the girl, and I wanted to be good at something, and it was fun. What play was it? The first one was odd high school fare. It was Joe Orton's Lute.

Kind of a ribald piece for high school. Kind of hip piece, yeah. Hip piece. Yeah, and that was... And you nailed it? You felt like... I played, you know, 65-year-old British man with a pillow in my shirt and a bad Peter Oltun impression, you know, and loved it. And then you... When did you start to take it seriously? I did a summer program that Northwestern University sponsors for high school juniors. Yeah. They call it the Cherub Program. Yeah. That was sort of like...

Kids from all over the country that were theater kids. And being inspired by those kids and holding my own with those kids really kind of solidified my decision to pursue it. And then, you know, I didn't go to college. I started right out of high school. But did you train? Yeah, I was fortunate enough to start with a teacher named Larry Moss who came out. I heard of that guy. Yeah, Larry's famous now. He was basically Stella Adler's prize student and took over her class in New York. And then when he came out to L.A.,

He had a very small class in Santa Monica. There were about eight women and me, and I was 18. It was amazing. I studied with Larry for five years. So it was Meisner? That was the angle? No, it was more like, there was a little Meisner to it, but Adler was script analysis, know how to break down your script into transitions and beats and understand arcs for your character. And then a lot of emotional accessibility work to make sure that you could...

hit anything you needed to. But not so much method-y, not using your own life, more building your imagination to get you from the script, using the circumstances from the script to get you to a place of emotionality. And that works for you?

I am now a hodgepodge. I've got a technique that, you know, after 35 years, I'm proud to say I can literally put it in a backpack, take it anywhere in the world, do it in the middle of the night, middle of the rain. But it is a series of steps in your mind? Yeah, yeah. I get, you know, sometimes music or sometimes it's a lot of breath work. Yeah? And the breathing is the quickest way to get there for me. Really? Yeah. How exactly? Well, I got fixated on relaxation being the sort of

to being able to build everything up. When you first get on set and they call rolling, everything tenses in you and you immediately stop breathing. And then you start acting. And so the idea that there isn't any differentiation between who you are before they call rolling and after, that you're at a place of...

But the relaxation matches the character's relaxation. Breath matches the character's breath, the heart rate, so forth. So if I can get there, then the emotionality and everything else comes effortlessly. Wow. And it's just a, it's sort of, you know, doesn't take me long now. That's great. This thing I'm doing now is so, it all takes place in real time. Every hour of the show is one hour. I know, I watched it. I watched all the ones available. I didn't get all of them.

But I've watched the four, like everybody else. Every hour, I'm adding a little bit more tension, a little bit more fatigue, a little bit more anxiety, a little bit more, you know, less of a filter. So I have a sort of checklist I go through to not only do what I've already done, but to get to add to it so that it will progress over the course of the show. That seems to be the hardest part for me, to know where you came from.

And, you know, what you did before. And, you know, if you're shooting at a sequence, where were we? That becomes tricky. Some people don't care. You know, David Mamet says there's no such thing as a moment before. Yeah, but don't listen to that guy.

I think moment befores are very important. I think you carry where you were into where you are, and half of where you are is thinking about where you're going. No, no, but that's what I mean. That's challenging. Like, I have to be, like, I can't, if I have a good director, and obviously I don't have the experience, the best director for me is someone who goes, all right, this is what happened. You know, we're at a sequence here. So just to remind you. Totally. You know, so you can at least lock into something, right? Yep.

I didn't know you were saying, like, Mamet seemed to think for me, and I like David Mamet, he's a character, but his approach seemed to be that anybody can do this. It's on the page. I disagree. That's right. I disagree, too.

Well, Stella Adler had a great expression. It's not the lines, it's the life. And I'm a firm believer in that, that we often don't say what we mean. In fact, we often say just the opposite of what we mean, but you can convey what you're thinking underneath what you're saying and communicate on two levels or more. And that's what... Do you think about that scene for scene?

I try to think about whether my character's... In this particular show, this character has a secret. Yeah, the pit. My character's going through a nervous breakdown that's getting triggered every hour by hour until eventually he hits rock bottom. So it's a day that he knows is...

probably coming, but he doesn't want it to be today. And it's the day you can no longer compartmentalize. Right. And he had been off work for a while. Been off work, but this is the anniversary of the passing of his mentor who, during the height of COVID, he took off life support to give a better chance of survival to another patient. And then everybody died. And he's not dealt with that grief or that guilt anymore.

He's just sort of marshaled on, and today it just gets triggered all day long. Well, I thought, like, having not really been—I didn't watch ER. I don't remember what year it came out.

94. I was probably more self-involved than television at that point. But it was a huge show. Huge. And you were there from the beginning till the end. I took a little time off when my son was born, but I did the first 11 seasons, a little bit of 12, and came back and did the 15th. But before that, had you done roles? Big roles? Little roles in movies. Yeah. You know? And when you, like...

Then this is when you're, what, 20? I was 22 when we shot the pilot. So you were just running around L.A. auditioning like everybody else? Yes, sir. Out of acting class, you got an agent. Yep. I got the agent before the acting class. My agent actually got me into the acting class, and she paid for my first two months. That's how great of an agent she was. Are you still with her? Of course not. Of course not. I rewarded that loyalty with betrayal. What?

Is she still around? And I've made amends, yes. She's around, and I called her actually last year and said, hey, I think I owe you a long overdue apology and a big thank you. Oh, really? And how'd she receive it? To her credit, she beat me up a little bit before she forgave me and let me know that it did sting, and I respected her for that. Well, that's touching.

But with the experience with ER, because it's interesting, you know, you do ER and everyone knows you from ER and then you do some other series, some kind of, there was one that I told my girlfriend about. It was The Librarian. It was sort of a fantasy trip. Yep. Yeah.

But ER was the big thing. And then, you know, here you come full circle and you end up in another medical show. But this one, like, from my experience, because I don't watch, you know, anything with that much regularity that often. But when I, you know, I wanted to talk to you and know what I was doing. Because my buddy, the guy who plays drums with me, Ned, you know, he was, you know, he kind of was like, you know, no one wants to do it. So I watched his show. And he's a nurse. Like, he's a real guy. Yeah.

But what I found interesting about this show, and again, I don't know exactly how ER worked, and I don't know where this show is going ultimately if there's a second season, is that, you know, this isn't, you know, this isn't about the kind of, you know, lives of the practitioners. It seems to be, you know, very focused on the immediacy of the work itself.

And their relationships in the workspace. But also, it just seems to be, after watching it, and the choice to let HBO do it in the graphic way that they did it, it's really kind of a menacing examination of mortality. Yeah.

Right. And and and also like, you know, in my life, there was a point where I realized that, you know, being a doctor is a job. And at a certain level, if you're the type of doctor that deals with, you know, life threatening things all the time, that your connection to it, you know, has to be a little detached in order just to do the job.

And that, like, you know, you want to believe when you see a doctor, like, they care about you. But they care about you to the extent that the job enables them to without sacrificing their own mental well-being if it's possible. Perfectly put. And I think that what you don't see generally in these kind of medical shows, you know, and in that, and I think probably in ER to a degree, although I'm speaking out of my ass because I don't know it, is this really focuses on the trauma of all kinds. Yeah.

ER was a very patient-centric show. You know, the cases came in, we treated the patients, and then we got a little bit into the personal lives of the doctors. But it was...

not to the degree that this is a practitioner-centric show. This is really about looking at the people that are first responders and you're embedded with them for a shift the way you'd be embedded with an army unit in a war or doing a cop ride-along. Yeah, right. And because of the focus on getting the graphic nature of physical trauma, the impact is different.

Because there's obviously a lot of attention paid to the injuries, to the disease, to what is really happening in the moment of emergency. And there's no way not to watch that and think like, oh, this could end at any second for any of us. Yes. Yes. A little character secret. My character's got two tattoos that you probably will never see. One of them is memento mori and the other one is amor fati. Remember that you're going to die and love your fate. Yes.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think you do a great job with that guy. Thank you. Now, what was the process of getting the show off the ground? How did that come together? Well, it sort of started in 2020 during the pandemic. Were you part of the creative process? Yeah. I was on the writing staff. I wrote two of the scripts. Yeah. I was getting all this mail from first responders saying, thank you for inspiring me to go into a career in emergency medicine or thanking...

Me for continually keeping them inspired. From ER? From ER, but it was also they were very confessional. They were really letting me know how hard it was and how... Why were you in touch with them? They just wanted to reach out because of what Dr. Carter had meant to them either in their medical training or in their careers. I was a touchstone character, and they wanted to let me know what was going on out there. Yeah. And it was really heavy to get all that mail. So I...

kind of pivoted the compliments to John Wells, our executive producer, and said, you know, I know you don't want to redo the show. I don't want to redo the show. But there's a show to be talked about here about what's happening in healthcare. And if you ever want to do it again or some version of it, I would sign up. And that's where it all began. So that's the fundamental difference in

in the two shows is that there is a social conscience to this around the conditions. My intentionality came from wanting to put a spotlight back on this community that for the first time since ER came on the air, they weren't matching all the candidates at all the places that they needed them. So we have a nursing shortage.

And we have a great, great need for these people to be in their jobs, especially if we, God forbid, have another pandemic. Right. So ER was great at inspiring a generation of people to go into this discipline. And then the pandemic...

kind of made that discipline seem really unappealing. For a lot of reasons. For a lot of legitimate reasons. Yeah, and for political reasons, that if you don't have the support. Those people have been in those jobs now for five years without a break, and it's taken a toll. It's taken a toll on their morale. It's taken a toll on our system. And the ripple effect is...

You know, you get to spend less time with your patients. You have to spend more time on their chart. You have to spend more time making sure you don't get sued. And patients are waiting longer. They're getting angrier. And, you know, the system is really fragile. Fragile? Why Pittsburgh?

Because it's not New York. It's not San Francisco. I love Pittsburgh. I do too. I love it. It's not an overshot city. I wanted to sort of show a part of America that hadn't really been seen, although a lot of stuff is shooting there now. In Pittsburgh? Yeah, believe it or not. Really? Yeah.

Are there tax incentives in Pennsylvania? Yeah, they're not bad. It's a major metropolitan city. It's got a good cross-section of ethnicity. It's beautiful. Big socioeconomic swing, and it's surrounded by ag lands, so you get a cross-section of urbanization.

urban and rural cases. Yeah. And it's remade itself over into a kind of a medical center in the last 10, 15 years. Really? Because like I've gone to work there a few times and every time I'm there, I'm like, this place is great. It's great. It's beautiful. Yeah. And like, I love that there's a history to it. Several eras of history. Some of it goes way back. Yeah. I mean, to like 1700 stuff. Oh yeah. And medically, you know, that's where Dr. Safer who invented CPR trained and that's,

You know, we get into it later in the season, but the Freedom House Ambulance Service is an amazing story that somebody should tell. It's the very first ambulance service, and they were all young black drivers who were basically trained by hospital staff and life-saving techniques so that they could go into the underserviced neighborhoods and pick up people that the cops wouldn't pick up because that's, in the old days, if you had to go to the hospital, you called the police. So the very first ambulance service was all these young guys, and they changed the face of the

of ambulatory care. And it's a great and tragic story. It's like the Tuskegee Airmen of ambulances. Totally, yeah. Oh, that's an interesting thing. And also like the whole, you know, dead steel business. Yeah. Like I'm obsessed with that, that, what's the big steel company?

There's a, is it American steel? Like there's a building. U.S. Steel. U.S. Steel. The U.S. Steel Tower, that's not the U.S. Steel Tower anymore in Pittsburgh. It's just made out of raw girders. Yeah. And now it's all kind of rusted. Like I thought it was genius. Yeah.

to do this modernist building out of raw steel because it would eventually turn brown. And I'm obsessed with that building. It's a great art scene. That's where Warhol's Museum is there. And the Mattress Factory Museum. Those are really cool. But your character, I think that to speak to

Just the cultural PTSD of everyone because of the pandemic and also all these different levels of what you're talking about, the health care system. I mean, it feels kind of vital.

The entire feeling of the show, like, you know, everybody's kind of, you know, at different points chipper, but, you know, you can't, there's no sense of panic in the show, you know, and the dialogue is good because it's character driven. But the menace of the never ending parade of people injured, hurt, freaking out, whatever, it's just like, it's overwhelming. But when I watch it,

All I think about is how fragile we all are and how fragile everything is in that life. There's a scene where you're like trying to talk. And also the device of making it a teaching hospital is kind of great.

Right. Because then you got all these kids. Yeah. But just the idea that one of them makes a mistake and it could have cost the guy his life. But you kind of go like, hey, welcome to the crew, you know, kind of thing. It's like it's a it's a little disturbing. Yeah.

Yes, it is disturbing. And yet I look at those people and think, you know, they're rock stars. These are high-performance athletes. These are people who are, you know, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, fourth quarter, you're down by several. They want the ball. They live for these high-pressure moments. And they get adrenalized by things that would terrify the rest of us. So I'm just incredibly in awe of them.

their skills and I'm grateful for them being there and I'm shocked that we've called into question their expertise as much as we have these last couple of years. Yeah. What do you think that's driven by?

Politics. Greed. Yeah, all of it. All of it. Like why trust anybody? Why not sue? All of those relationships that used to be sort of sacred, either that between you and your doctor, that between you and your priest, that between you and, you know, they've all been called into question these last few years so that it's a general seeding of distrust that's very worrisome. But also like what you said about the ability for a doctor to,

to do his job thoroughly, being limited by insurance requirements or hospital requirements is a fundamental problem that even my father, towards the end of his practice, was up against. Is that if you're working in a system, no matter how good a doctor you are, if they limit the type of care that you can give, then what are you?

You don't want to live in a society where when somebody is on the ground having chest pains, you're afraid to jump in and help them because of the litigious aspect of what if you did. And right now, I think we're very close to being a culture where people don't want to get involved. Like it's almost not worth the risk. I've heard doctors talk about that. Doctors and probably just regular people. Sure.

Well, that's and I think the show kind of deals with that because right at the beginning in the first episode, you're dealing with the hospital administrator and it's about numbers and it's about employment. I mean, I've been talking about this with firefighters where you think to yourself, thank God there are people that want to do that. That's what they want to do. It's not one of these jobs where you're you're kind of like, I'm thinking about being a firefighter. You know, you either want it or.

And if you ask those guys, well, is there any other job you want? No. This is it. Yeah. Yeah. If that starts to diminish, and I think that's what you're talking about in relation to the health care, for whatever reason, then what do you have? It's a very unsafe situation. I think that people will stay in those jobs with –

And a little bit of acknowledgement and a little bit of validation that what they do is difficult. A little bit of compassion. Yeah. It goes a long way. How much time did you spend like in studying this stuff? I mean, did you go to trauma units? Yeah, we spent a lot of time down at – we were – we have a lot of relationships in the community, obviously. And they allowed us access here at county down at SC especially, which is –

treats a population that nobody else will treat. It's right on the edge of Skid Row. People that are down there working are doing heroic duty day in, day out. We spent a lot of time with medical personnel. We had them come into our writing room. We spent a lot of time going to them. To get things right?

Basically to say we want to do it right and more than that, what isn't being told on TV from your perspective that should be? What is it that you're up against that you really want people to know about? And what were some of those answers? Oh, it varied depending on who we were talking to. There was a woman doctor in Pittsburgh, black woman doctor, wonderful woman, who just talked about the experience of being a black woman doctor in Pittsburgh. Because there aren't a lot of black women doctors in Pittsburgh. In fact...

For all of Pittsburgh's pluses, statistically, it's like the worst place to grow up if you're a black girl, you know, for lots and lots of reasons. And she clued us in to what those reasons were and then informed the way we wrote certain characters in certain situations. One of the main characters is a black woman doctor. Yes, indeed. And I don't know what's going on with YouTube. I guess we find out. We have some history. Yeah. I'm only on the fourth episode. Yeah.

Oh, good. That's the one I wrote. It is. It was good. And in terms of performing this thing, I mean, it's like because of the minimal amount of acting I've done, the foundation of your character wrestling with his own PTSD that's driving him to kind of break down. It's limited acting, but I'll give you, you're always so grounded in your work. I love your work. I've watched every episode of GLOW. I've watched everything you've done. I can't wait to see...

In memoriam? Yeah. I read the script. You did? Yeah. How'd you get that thing? My daughter auditioned for it. Oh, really? Yeah. Funny, right? It's great. It's great. And you talk about Meisner technique. That scene killed me. It killed me, man. Can't wait. Well, that was one of the interesting things about what you're saying. And if you've listened to the show, I talked about that scene I did with Sharon Stone and sort of accessing the emotions that would enable me to cry and

which I had no confidence or experience in really, and how I got there with her. But then in other scenes, doing the Meisner, which I've never done, I knew about it, but there's elements of that movie. This character is a student of Meisner's.

but that if the script is good, the emotions will come if you're open, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the whole trip. And that was kind of an amazing revelation to me, that it really comes down to the honesty of the writing. And the...

cleansing of your own ego in the service of accomplishing that. There's a great quotation, supposedly Michelangelo, before he began any work of art, would turn his eyes to the heavens and say, Lord, rid me of myself so that I may please Thee.

And I use that little incantation before takes where right before they say rolling, I say, Lord, bring me in myself so that I may please thee. Just get me out of my own fucking head and let me just play this moment. And I just roll from that point forward. You go into your little fugue state and whatever comes up, comes up. Yeah, but the character you're playing, it's like every five minutes, it's a life and death situation. So you had to put some sort of foundation into yourself that could accommodate that

the constant tragedy with enough empathy to service the moment. Imagine a character where when he's able to concentrate on somebody else's problem, he's at his happiest. And when he doesn't have somebody else's problem to concentrate on, all he's left is with his own. So that's the most uncomfortable is when he's not busy and not in service of distraction. Yeah.

So, well, that's another interesting thing about doctors is that it's not so much a lot of them. It's just about the work and being, you know, I mean, I grew up with that. You know, my dad did his residency at like Metropolitan in New York in probably the 60s. And that was crazy. I remember when we saw the movie Hospital and he was like, you know, he was like, yeah, that was where I did it. And I'm like, oh, my God. But he's a guy who...

needs to be engaged all the time or else it's just going to be sadness. It's a tough thing to attend everybody's worst day all day long, right? It's the worst moment in your life when you go to the emergency room. You're at your worst or you're almost scared and you extrapolate that times four an hour all day long for these people. So this guy is having a breakdown.

It's being triggered as the day goes on. Yeah. One thing after another is sort of, it's a, the whole show is a pressure cooker that keeps adding ingredients and temperature until eventually it hits a boiling point, which will come. It will come. And, but it is really pandemic specific. Yeah.

It colors everything. Yeah, it's what broke them. And the pit is sort of a proverbial metaphor for what we've all been in for the last several years trying to figure out how to climb our way out. Yeah.

And Dr. Robbie is, you know, and every man who's going down to the bottom of his isn't going to have to find his way out. Wow. And who came up with the, I thought that the Mr. Rogers B story was kind of good. Pittsburgh. Yeah. You're looking for things that are intrinsically Pittsburgh and...

some fucking good acting on that show dude oh man Rebecca who played the daughter oh my god she just killed it what is like I'm getting choked up thinking about now that was crazy where she went with that thing yeah and

And the guy I just worked with in the Apple show. McKenzie. Yeah. Yeah, he's terrific too. What a range because he plays a dick in the show that I was in. You remember him on Facts of Life? He's been doing this since he was five. He's Sean Astin's little brother. Oh, really? Yeah, Patty Duke and John Astin's son. He's Hollywood royalty. Yeah, it was good to see him because I worked with him on the show.

golf show that I do with Owen Wilson and he plays a real dick. And in this one, he's really soft and he's like, you know. He was great. It's amazing that I think a show like this also gives opportunity to all these actors that are around.

I mean, it's like constant casting. Oh, well, first and foremost, it's an L.A. job. There are no L.A. jobs right now. It's the first time I've worked in Los Angeles in 15 years. Really? Sleeping in my own bed and having dinner with my family. First time in 15 years since the year I ended. I've worked in Louisiana and Atlanta. For years at a time? Yeah. Five years in Vancouver. Five years in Chicago.

In Oregon, Portland. What did you do? Which one did you do in Vancouver? Falling Skies. Killed aliens for five years up there. Yeah. That was five years enough of that? Yeah. That was plenty. That was ample. But how do you live your, because this is one of the issues I have with acting in general, how do you live your life? Like when you're up in Vancouver for what, three months, four months at a time? Yeah.

And how did you handle that? The family came up? I had to bring my kids to me when I could and always have accommodations that would allow them to come and arrange it with their teachers to get schoolwork and tutors if I needed it. My wife, who I've been with now for 14 years, she's great about setting up home in a hotel room. So when kids are small, they're pretty portable. Yeah. Yeah.

We homeschooled our youngest for a while, which made that easy. But it's life on the road. And that's just part of the gig. I get anxious. So coming back, this is an L.A. job. 250 crew members, lots of background, hundreds of actors. This is a big economic boon to the city to be able to employ this many people in this city after a 192-day labor strike and after a pandemic.

And now after these fires, this city's hurting and could use the work here. So there's actually a petition going around now that a lot of people are signing to try and...

and put a little pressure on the governor, a little pressure on studio heads to make more of a commitment to bring work back here. Well, I think then they shift the incentives a little bit. They doubled the incentive from last year, but it's still paltry, and it's kind of a lottery-based system to apply for it. I made them do that little movie here because I had just gotten back from Vancouver, and I didn't want to go out. If you do it under a certain level, you can still do it, but, you know, it's...

It's not as easy and as accessible as it used to be. But I'm just so happy to see that there are so many actors ready to go. They're so hungry. And it's like so many of them are just like, you can tell they're just putting everything into it. I sent out a little letter to our...

with our tour casting agent, Kathy Sandrich, that went out with all the breakdowns that was basically kind of a mission statement about what we're trying to do. And I made it analogous to an Altman movie, said this is more like Nashville or MASH where it's a tapestry piece. There's things happening in the deep background, the foreground, and the other background. And sometimes the camera's going to be on, sometimes it's not, but you're going to be alive in your storyline all the time. So we're looking for dynamic performers, people that have got

theater background, but mostly we're looking for people that want to buy in to kind of an immersive type of working that is not like your normal TV show. It's more like camp or rap. Yeah. And so bring your creativity and your enthusiasm and leave your ego and come out as a fan. Well, yeah, because you might just be the guy on the chair in the room. Yeah.

If you go back and rewatch, which you don't have to, but if you do, you'll see that the patient we treated in episode four is in the waiting room in episode one and two and three. And they're just background actors until they get called back. But they're there like they would be in a real emergency room waiting. And so we've got people that are on the show that stay in that waiting room for eight hours before they get treated. And, well, you mentioned Altman. I mean, how is there...

Is there any improvisation? None. Yeah. None. None. These scripts have got to be so tight in order to... Just to get the shot. Moments can be improvised, you know, little bits of dialogue here and there, but this thing is so airtight out of necessity that there's not a lot of room for it. Because every shot is loaded. Loaded. It has to take you... It's a link in a chain, you know? Yeah. And if you deviate, then there's course correction that has to be done later downfield, so you've got to keep it pretty strict. Did you direct any? No.

Not this season. I'd like to next year. Yeah? Would that be a challenge? No, I've directed shows that I've worked on before and I've directed myself before. This particular show I think lends itself to being like a

Russell player coach. You know, you're on the floor making play calls and you're also, you know, strategizing before. Because the show doesn't leave this environment, you know, the prep work, there's no location scouting. It's all there, so. It's just on the lot. You're in a studio. Stage 22. Isn't that nice where you don't have to worry about lighting or planes? Oh my God, I love it. And lighting, there's,

There's no dollies, there's no dolly track, there's no C stands, there's no flags. All the lighting is in the ceiling. So we come in, we rehearse, we shoot, we rehearse, we shoot, we rehearse, we shoot. A lot of guys running around with steady cams?

Just two operators. One woman does everything handheld and a guy who's got kind of a Steadicam rig called a ZG rig. It's same like a Steadicam, a little bit more maneuverable. Just two cameras? That's it. We carried the three cameras for two episodes for some stuff that happens later in the season, but it's mostly just two. And what about these, you're involved with the local theater?

For years, I ran a company here in L.A. called the Blank Theater Company. Yeah? And what is that? What do you make of the... You don't make any money, I'll tell you that. No, but what is the theater scene here, and how does it feed the bigger business in your mind? It's a fragmented theater scene, you know? L.A. is so sprawling that it doesn't really have a theater district. It doesn't have an East End. It doesn't have a Broadway. It doesn't have a loop. Right.

But there are more theaters in Los Angeles than in most other cities. You just have to kind of seek it out. But there's all those ones on Santa Monica. That's where MySpace was. Across from the Hudson? We had the nicest little shitbox on that street. Yeah. And what was your intent?

Our mission statement was either West Coast premieres or original works. And we were the blank because we didn't want to have a fixed company or a fixed space. We wanted to kind of reinvent ourselves wherever we wanted to be. That changed when we got the lease on the second stage on Santa Monica Boulevard. But predominantly, we were known for two programs. We did a Monday night reading series of new works called

That was a stage reading series. And then we did a playwrights festival for young playwrights, 18 years old or younger. Yeah. And we did that for 20 some odd years and produced several hundred plays by teenage writers, one of whom...

Went on to be a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Tony for Best Play. Who's that? Stephen Karam. He won for The Humans. I know that guy. Yeah. I saw The Humans. I interviewed that guy. He wrote a play called Sons of the Prophet that was nominated for the Pulitzer, and he won Tony for The Humans. Yeah, I saw The Humans, and I interviewed him. I had no idea that. I wonder if we talked about you. He was the three-time winner. He won when he was like 12, 14, and 16. 12 years old? Yeah. Oh, we had winners that were like nine. It was really cool. Yeah.

We'd fly the kids out if they were from out of state. We'd cast the plays professionally and put them up at the Stella Adler Theater up on Hollywood Boulevard. And these kids would get to see their words performed by professionals. And it was life-changing for them. Whether they went on to a career in the arts or not, it was a seminal experience in all of their lives. What do you think ultimately, you know, because I think about this often that especially in the political climate we're in and how culture is changing. Yeah.

You know, I try not to despair around thinking about the futility of, you know, art in some ways.

And, you know, what it ultimately is is impact. But when you talk like you're talking now that, you know, whether or not anyone knows anything's happening, the type of change you can facilitate in an individual and their approach to life and their creativity is really the goal. I think it's going to have greater impact and need going forward. I think the...

The more that AI gets invested in and technology and movies become sort of more technologically based, the more there's going to be a need for a temporal human experience

live experience. You would hope that there's something in the human spirit that craves that and it doesn't get diminished. I think there's something in the human spirit that craves expression and the need to work in contrast to the technological advances that we're seeing. I think you're going to, on a parallel track, make theater, grassroots theater, small theater, propaganda theater, political theater more important again. You think? Yeah.

And are you still involved with this stuff? No. No, it's done. No, I was a long, long, long chapter in my life. And I think about getting back into it, but it'll take a minute. It ended up being just a lot of fundraising, which is not a lot of fun. Yeah, and do you yourself crave stage acting?

Only in the way that I think about going to the gym where I feel like I need it. I don't really want it, but I need it because it is where you kick off the rust and sort of get back to it. Yeah. But I imagine like doing this show, you're- It's almost like doing theater. It's really strong. I mean, there's similarities. So many people, yeah. And it's so physical. Yeah, I love it. I think this, I'd be very happy to do this for a couple more years. Well, it was good talking to you, man. This was my pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for doing it. Truly.

There you go. Nice guy. Good actor. The Pit is streaming on Max. Check it out. Hang out for a minute, folks.

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So, you guys, I did a bonus episode this week just to give Full Marin listeners an update on what's going on out here in L.A. and in my head with seemingly everything on fire these days in both the literal and figurative sense. And it was right after Don Johnson was here, so I talked about that, too. You know, he's like a Buddhist guy. Not a Nam-myoho guy, but like, you know, a longtime sober and, you know, kind of really is into the teachings of Buddha. So he's kind of moving through that.

And it was sort of a life lesson-y kind of thing. You know, it didn't get too dark. You know, he's got everything pretty, pretty well kind of processed and, you know, but it wasn't without depth and, you know, yeah, there was definitely some life stuff in it. And, um,

A little of this and that. But it turned out to be a pretty, you know, spiritual or, you know, self-aware conversation. He's fucking Don Johnson. You can listen to that episode and other bonus episodes twice a week on the full Marin. To subscribe, go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.

Here's some guitar. I didn't spend a lot of time with it, but it's here. Boomer lives. Monkey and La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere.