Joy, a Podcast. Hosted by Craig Ferguson - Illeana Douglas

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Illeana Douglas is an American actress, filmmaker, and writer. Listen to Craig and Illeana chat about movies, her life in Connecticut and LA, and bunch more. Her new book called Connecticut In The Movies is out now and available here for purchase: http://tinyurl.com/3ep2ejw5, EnJOY! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We were all facing 20 years and all that good stuff. The lead singer tried to pull off an English accent and they went on the road as the zombies. These guys are not going to get away with it. The zombies are too popular. Show you everyone. It's that time. away with it. The zombies are too popular. Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

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The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Ileana Douglas is a movie star. She's Hollywood royalty, and she's hilarious, and she has low self-esteem, as you're about to find out. She's also written an amazing book, a really interesting book, called Connecticut in the Movies. Have a listen to this.

I'm going to put the headphones on because I like them on. I'm swallowing. You can swallow. It's okay. I told you I needed to ask permission. Why is your self-esteem so low? There's no reason for your self-esteem to be so low. But I think that comes from when you were a kid, right?

Probably. But it's funny. In my first book, Marlon Brando pointed that out. He said that to me. Why should you be so insecure? And if Marlon Brando says to you, why are you insecure? Then you should probably think about it.

At a certain point, can you change it? Yeah, I think you can. The only time I went to, I'm not big on doctors. Yeah. And I remember going to this doctor and he said, you should really try not to be so self-deprecating. Right. Because it signals to people that you have low self-esteem.

It gives them permission, I think, to, you know, to join in. I don't know if that's true. But, I don't know. I mean, I get it. Look,

anyone. What is the opposite? To be like a blowhard? Yeah. I mean, we've all known. I am so awesome. Look at me.

Right. And I don't, I don't like the humble brag. That is sicker than the, I hate the, it's like, I'm honored to. Yeah. I'm so humbled. I'm sicker than the, I hate the, it's like, I'm honored to. Yeah, I'm so humbled.

I'm so humbled that my series is finished. I'm humbled to win this Oscar. No, you're fucking not. If you were humbled to win an Oscar, you wouldn't even put your name forward to be in contention for an Oscar. Shut up. By the way, I have to totally interrupt. I didn't bring the picture,

but you know, I have a picture of you and I in my office of us when I was on your show. Right. We were talking. I think I was trying to learn how to play the guitar or something. I don't know. But anyway, you're miming playing the guitar. You were doing some bit, and my head is thrown back with laughter. And it's one of my favorite images that I always have in my office.

I think. You know, that sense of joy. It is a sense of joy. You were asking me about podcasts before we turned the machine on. And you were talking about podcasting and did I like it. And I do like it because there's no money in it, so that's good. It keeps you clean. Yeah, it keeps you humble.

So should I win an Oscar for nothing I've done, then it'll keep me centered. But also, there is no pressure for me to talk to anybody I don't want to talk to. That's what's great about it. That's what you're paying for. And I wanted to talk to you because I started to notice on your social media, when I was still on the social media, I don't do it at all now. Because I pay these guys and they do it.

I'm like, now social media is over. Because now you don't have to do it. Although, like everything else, it's self-cannibalizing and it's ruining itself. Of course. I mean, it's nuts. It's like Cinerama. Talk to me about Cinerama. What do you mean?

Cinerama, the cinema chain? Or Cinerama the... I guess I meant it as a metaphor that, you know, like everything that's created with, you know, to be something good and snappy and fun and entertaining and then it gets ruined by, you know... Gags. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they tried to turn gets ruined by, you know. Gags. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And they tried to turn every movie into, you know, as opposed to certain movies that some movies didn't need to be in cine-ramic form. That's what I meant. You know what? Every reference I make is from. From movies. 50 years old.

I think of you as like movie royalty though. You're like, you're like, you're like a movie star, movie star. No matter what you do in your life from now until the end of your life, you'll always be a movie star. You get that, right? That's your thing. Can I get a title for that? Somebody in a man or Dame?

Lady? Lady or Dame? No. Well, in my case, it would be Lady. Lady. Lady. Lady Douglas. That'd be fine. Okay, I accept.

Yeah. I accept. But I think that, because we were talking about movies before we turned the machine on as well. Yes. And talking about, like, the movies, a lot of movies that you're in that I love, and the movies that I love, that you love, are movies where not a lot of movies that you're in that I love and the movies that I love that you love are movies where not a lot of stuff happens. You know, some people, they do a thing,

they have something to eat, they talk to each other. Yes. Maybe make some decisions. And then go to a place. Yeah, like the Alexander Payne films. Oh, fantastic. You know that movie he did, was it Reese Witherspoon?

Election? That's a great movie. Isn't that a great movie? Everything he does is great. Yeah, I know. He's a pretty talented guy. Did you do a movie with him? I was almost in that movie, actually, but I was doing something else.

I was supposed to play, I think, the wife of Matthew Broderick. I mean, I don't want to say I was supposed to. That's not true, but I was offered. Yeah. It was funny because Matthew Broderick washing his ass in that movie is one of the greatest screen performances I've ever... He's great.

He really washes his ass properly in that shower scene. And I said to Sarah Jessica that I loved that. See, I don't know Matthew Broderick, but I was working with her and I said, you Jessica that I loved that. See, I don't know Matthew Broderick, but I was working with her, and I said, you know, when your husband washes his ass in that movie, Alex, and that's one of the greatest performances I've ever seen.

And she said, he's so proud of that shot. I'm like, that's so great, because I spotted it. I'm like, that's really good. Whatever he's doing there, that's really good. That's funny. Well, actors love that when you pick up on some little piece of business. Well, some little thing. Well, let me talk to you then about the ice skating movie.

Like when you ice skate in that movie. Yes. Oh my. Did you know how to ice skate? Because you, like, did you grow up in Connecticut? Yes. Was that a thing? I grew up there and so I knew how to skate.

I didn't know how to trick skate. So I, once I got the part, which was. To die for. We should say know how to trick skate. So I once I got the part, which was... To die for. We should say the name of the movie. To die for. Once I went in and auditioned, you know, I pretty much walked around the room in second position. Like I sort of had, you know, like actresses. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course, I've been skating all my life. You know, doing all the... Yeah. Once I got the part, I quickly went to New York right down the street, down on, I think it's 12th Avenue, and there's a skating rink there. And you went through an intense skating? Yes, I did. And which most of which, unfortunately, ended up on the cutting room floor

because Gus Van Zandt said it was too jarring and it looked like we were on a boat. I think he's probably right. I mean, he's a pretty clever guy. I was disappointed. Yeah, but here's the thing, though. When you do that little spin at the end of the movie, I'm like, oh, my God, that's – it's as good as Matthew Broderick washing his ass in a lecture.

Right. It's like, oh, my God, that's fantastic. And I also got to throw in some – I think that's the first time I really, really got to ad lib. And they, you know, to me, because I wasn't sophisticated enough, that was just me kidding around. And then when I saw the movie, I was like, oh, my God. Oh, wow, really?

Yeah, the, you know, four letters begins with C. Yeah. That was, yeah, I threw in. You did that? Yeah, I threw in. That threw in great i threw in things here and there see now you create something like that i'm going to talk to you about your book in a minute because it's quite kind of quite interesting to me because i know that you started as a stand-up yes like right at the beginning yes and i always think of your energy. There's a, you know the actress Uta Lemper, right?

Uh-huh. She said something that I think is the trick of stand-up is the way I understand it, which is this. And she was talking about acting. And she said, the trick of acting is to create the illusion of spontaneity. And I'm like, that's what stand-up is to me. Because you do 50 shows over a period of a tour, like show 48, you're telling the same joke,

but the audience has to feel like, I'm just here. I just thought of this. So when you started doing stand-up, did you write it down like an actor? Did you write it and learn it? Yes. It was total desperation. It was simply because I had no money and I couldn't get any acting jobs.

And I saw a sign at Stand Up New York that if you won this contest, you got 50 bucks. So 50 bucks seemed like... That's still a big payday for a lot of stand-ups. It seemed like a lot. That's what you get for a podcast, by the way. You should think about it. Not per episode, but throughout the year, you'll get 50 bucks. So, yeah, I did.

And so I threw together stuff. I used to do my jokes for my roommate, and he would always say, that's not funny. That's not funny. He would critique everything I did. Right. And then he also said something to me, which I never understood, but I always took as a compliment. He goes, it's not funny, but I find myself laughing. That's great. So I thought that was interesting. So I had no idea. It was very crude. I didn't know what I was doing. I just

would throw together enough for 20 minutes. You know, they told me that for the first time I went up, they said, you only need 10 minutes. I'm like, oh, 10 minutes. Yeah, it suddenly turns into a lot of time when you're starting, don't it? Yeah. So the good and bad was writing the jokes was really easy. I did not like, I know it sounds stupid,

but I didn't like the lifestyle. I found it to be, to walk over to stand up New York at 10 o'clock at night. Yeah. You know, you like to be in bed all by myself and I was very scared. So I'd have, you know, 10 Coca-Colas, you know, and then you can't sleep all night and then you can't sleep and then you have to drink to bring yourself down. And then, as as i said like there was there was people that were doing stand-up that were you know professional people like kevin neal and jay moore i saw actually david david chappelle right people like that and then they'd all

say okay now we're going down to the comedy cellar and i was i want to go to bed like i have to do this again so i had no no, so it was this yin and yang where people were saying it. You know, I immediately had people who wanted to work with me and set me up. Well, you have that quality. See, there's that ineffable quality

that you have, which is interesting because I think probably you're, see, I'm analyzing you now, right? Thank you. But see this, did you ever get therapy? Did you ever have therapy? No, I never. I now, right? Thank you. But see this. Did you ever get therapy? Did you ever have therapy?

No, I never. I almost called my first book. I had a therapist. I went to a therapist because I was getting out of this, you know, bad situation. And so I finally was like, well, maybe I'll go to therapy. And I was telling him some things about, you know, my life. And he leaned in and he said, now I have to ask you, Ileana, are you making these things up? And I said, no. Why would I make it up? I mean,

well, I guess because it seemed... Well, your life is... Well, let's talk a little bit about your life. Because my life is like a Russian novel and. Your grandfather was a movie star, right? Yes, Melvin Douglas. Melvin Douglas is a big movie star. And your mom was, your mom wasn't in the movies? Your mom an artist? No, my parents grew up, my father was a teacher, my mom was a librarian. And they had left New Yorkork city actually to you know to

we grew up in connecticut right which is we will get onto the yearbook connecticut in the movies because it's fascinating and huge and much bigger a subject than i thought it was like a like an independent movie where yes i think not a lot's happening exactly and then you go wow actually i know all right your mom and dad, they moved to Connecticut. Yes. And we had a very kind of bohemian upbringing, hippies, which did not really jar with, you know, preppy Connecticut. Right.

So that was always a challenge. So I couldn't wait to get out of Connecticut to go to New York. But I spent just an unbelievable amount of time with my Italian grandparents in Queens, who I was with them when I was a child, and then I would spend the summers there. So I'd split the summers

between Queens. Queens and Connecticut. No, and then my grandfather, Melvin Douglas, on the Upper West Side. It was like uptown, downtown. This is where I made actually a fascinating, I made a revelation about entertainment business. Poor people go to the movies. Rich people go to the theater.

I don't know what that means, but it is true. That is probably true. Yeah. When I'm in New York, I went to the opera last week. I don't go to the opera. I'm not a guy that goes to the opera. I went to the opera and there were people there. I was like, yeah, you're no much better than me.

Yeah. You are a little bit better than me. But that was very heady, both in being around all the New Yorkers. Yeah. Suited me well later on for films like Goodfellas because I knew that world completely. Right. That's the Queens thing, right? Completely.

Right. And, you know, go to the back of the car and open the trunk and pick out whatever you want. Yeah. And this fell off the truck. And, you know, that was very colorful and fun. And then at my grandfather's, it was, you know, playwrights like Robert Anderson, and he was friends with Myrna Loy, and so it was very intellectual. That's very kind of heady atmosphere.

Very, very heady. Is that what made you, do you think that's why you fell in love with movies? Totally. Yeah? Totally, because it was, and then I would have to go back to Connecticut and being a poor hippie. And then I was like, okay, I don't, first of all, the food was always. Yeah, happy food never was great.

No, the food, it was always, and my grandfather's, well, that was where I first discovered, you know, Haagen-Dazs ice cream and ordering food. Yeah, yeah. And I, when I grew up, you know, wherever we would go out to a restaurant, people would make a big fuss about him. We would always, he would wherever we would go out to a restaurant, people would make a big fuss about him. We would always,

we would go to these restaurants like Sardi's and I remember the portions were enormous. And then later on, when I was doing movies and I'd go to these places, the portions were very small. And I realized, oh, it's because he's Melvin Douglas. He's Melvin Douglas. And also, people go into cocaine. And when you

get into cocaine, you don't need as much food. So when you get into like the big portions at Sardi's, and then if you're going to restaurants, I'm guessing like when you're older, we're talking about late 80s, mid 90s, that kind of thing. Everybody's high. You're not getting it. I know. I never understood that.

I was like, boy, that guy's got a crazy temper. He is talking a lot. Why does he talk so fast? Did you ever get drawn into that world at all? No. Because I think of you as a very kind of... No, it wasn't. You know, again, it's not...

My thing is really movies. I remember being excited, though, the first time when I went to L.A., and this is when I was dating Martin Scorsese, and I went to a party, and Richard Perry, the record producer, he came up to me, and he was chatting me up. And for me, of course, it was immediately drawn to my childhood. Oh, my God, he's the name on the back of the Nilsson album.

That's how I knew him. It was, Richard Perry, Nilsson. And he said, there's a party later on at Jack's house, and this person's going to be there. And I laughed because, again, when you say drawn into this world, I'd read about this world in magazines and stuff. Right. Never dreaming, of course, I'd be a part of it. But I wasn't ever like, yeah, that's what I want to do is go do Blow with Jack. Yeah.

I always put them on and I had read about these people in magazines, therefore how could they possibly, how could I interact with them? I had the exact same feeling when I went to Hollywood and actually you were part of my

kind of like, I can't believe. I remember the first time, maybe we were on the Drew Carey show, or at Kathy Kinney's house in the hills, or something like that, and we were and I was talking to you, and I was like, I can't believe. It's so weird.

I was a fan of yours. I was a fan of yours as well. But that's the weird thing that when you, because that happened to me quite a lot, particularly doing Late Night. Yeah. Because if you do a show like that,

you meet everybody. Right. And some of them are great, and some of them are douchebags, and you don't really know what you're going to get. Some people became friends, and other people, you're like, oh God, I can't believe that guy's such an asshole.

It's terrible. When you were dating Marty, though, you were kind of in a world which is, like, that's right in the center of it. And particularly around directors, I've noticed that people behave very strangely around film directors. Like, film directors behave strangely anyway

because they're all fucking megalomaniacs and they think they're sunshine. Like, all of them. Even the nice guys. They're all assholes. Even the nice ones are assholes and they would admit to it i think they're self-aware but and if they're not i don't care but but people in hollywood and i think i've even been going i know i've been going on this like around a director you're always kind of like he might put me in the movie well you see it's funny you say that because, see, I, again, I always, I always had this

pull. My grandfather always wanted me to be a writer. Right. I'd write him these letters. Again, I was out of my mind. You're a writer. Now you got that. I was reading about, you know, the Algonquin Circle and pretending in my mind, you know,

I was like Dorothy Parker and stuff. So when I went to New York and I was working for this film publicist named Peggy Siegel, one of the prerequisites for the job is you didn't tell anybody you were an actor because they would never hire you. Right. You just lie and say, oh, I just got out of Wesleyan. Right. I really want to be a publicist assistant. That's what I've always dreamed of. Exactly.

And in the office, this was like the first trick I learned, everybody always wanted to be with the actors. Like they, if we were doing junkets, they wanted to be with Kevin Costner. They wanted to be with, you know, De Niro or Cary Elwes or whoever. I always wanted to be with the director. Now, I don't know why I did, but I just knew sort of that's where the action was going to be. And yes, in the back of my mind, I was like, one of these people is going to discover how great I am. Yeah, of course.

I think that's okay. I think that's fairly kind of sweet almost, particularly in someone. I mean, that's also why bad people prey on the ambitions of young people that want to get in movies. Because they're like, oh, so you want to be in a movie? I mean, we all know about that shit as well. But I tell you something interesting. When, after working, you know, Brian De Palma, we didn't work with Marty.

He was down the hall. I met him later. But I worked with Brian De Palma, Norman Jewison, Rob Reiner, Barry Levinson. Wow, this is like royalty, though. I mean, these people are great. It was unbelievable. Yeah. And I would get on the phone, you know, and part of my job was to invite people to the premiere.

So I would always look for people that basically I just wanted to meet, like Joseph Mankiewicz. You know, Betty Cobb did an Adolph Green. That's great. But isn't that successful, that would have made it successful. Yes, because a part of me never dreamed I'd be in show business, but I thought, well, I at least want to meet these people that I idolize. But later on, when I finally cracked through, and this is sort of in the book too,

Frank Perry, the director who we shared offices with, was the one who put me in a movie. And people were shocked and almost disappointed that I was going to be an actor because they thought I had so much,

which I thought was an interesting stigma. Like, well, you had so much, we had higher ambitions for you than to simply be an actor. Than be an actor.

The Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascal Stand-Up Tour continues throughout the United States in 2024. For a full list of dates and tickets, go to thecraigfergusonshow.com slash tour. See you out there. I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world we go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations

about real life death, love and everything in between this life right here just finding myself just relaxation just not feeling stressed just not feeling pressed

this is what I'm most proud of I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things. That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly. Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone.

You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Want to know how to leverage culture to build a successful business? Then Butternomics is the podcast for you. I'm your host, Brandon Butler,

founder and CEO of Butter ATL. Over my career, I've built and helped run multiple seven-figure businesses that leverage culture and build successful brands. Now I want to share what I've learned with you.

And on Butternomics, we go deep with today's most influential entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders to peel back the layers on how they use culture as a driving force in their business. On every episode, we get the inside scoop on how these leaders tap into culture to build something amazing. From exclusive interviews to business breakdowns, we'll explore the journey of turning passion for culture into business. Whether you're just getting started or an established business owner, Butternomics will give you what you need to take your game to the next level. This is Butternomics. Listen to Butternomics on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Back in 1969, this was the hottest song around. So hot that some guys from Michigan tried to steal it. My name is Daniel Ralston. For ten years, I've been obsessed with one of the most bizarre and audacious cons in rock and roll history. A group would have a hit record, and quickly they would hire a bunch of guys to go out and be the group. People were being cheated on several levels. After years of searching,

we bring you the true story of the fake zombies. I was like blown away. These guys are not going to get away with it. Listen to the true story of the fake zombies on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're in movies, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hollywood elite or there's a kind of conspiracy in Hollywood. I'm thinking, you know, nothing about Hollywood.

First of all, everybody in Hollywood doesn't, you know, there's no conspiracy. They don't trust each other. That's crazy. It's not, they're not going to get together and, and make a plan. They can hardly get together and make a fucking movie. And then the idea of the Hollywood elite, you go, well, you know, that changes very quickly. You can be Hollywood elite on Thursday and be a fucking bum on Monday of the following week, depending on how the box office returns go.

I saw it firsthand. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I mean, there were so many stories in my first book I couldn't get to. So when I have another, you know, thing that I'm working on with stories. And when we, again, when we were working with Brian De Palma, he was doing The Untouchables. This was sort of, again, more of a low point in his career.

And they were very concerned that Untouchables was not going to be a success. That's crazy. It's crazy to think of that. So again, that's why I love being with directors, because you were in the thick of things and talking to reviewers and trying to find out how everything was going to be. And I remember then how nervous he was, and he almost wasn't even going to come to the premiere,

and there was all this drama associated, because he thought it was going to be a huge failure, and then cut to the opening, and it was just like a gigantic excess. It was a huge hit. And over, and the doors opened, and we never got to see the movies, by the way. Yeah, you'd be outside. We'd always be outside, like comforting someone.

But anyway, the doors burst open. It was a huge hit, and he was back on top. It's very exciting. Or you'd see the opposite, which I saw with Frank Perry. I saw the little movie he put me in, which was Hello Again. Right. At the premiere, he actually made an announcement that he was not going to be staying for the movie,

so if anybody had anything negative to say, it was dire, like literally right before the movie. Oh, my God. He said, I will not be staying, so you won't have to worry about being polite or anything like that. And he literally walked up the aisle and out the door. But do you think that sets you up a little bit if you do that? It's like low self-esteem, you know what I mean?

It's like people giving the audience permission to... Well, because again, I didn't, see, we didn't have internet then and I didn't understand. See,

even for me, and I write a little bit about this, you know, Frank Perry, in my mind, I only knew him from, he did a movie

with us, Compromising Positions and then he had done Mommy Dearest and then now he's doing Hello Again. Right. So, I thought he was done Mommy Dearest, and then now he's doing Hello Again. Right. So I thought he was like middle of the road, you know, Hollywood director.

Right. I had no idea of, until we became friends, and he gave me these movies from the 60s, you know, The Swimmer, Diary of a Mouth Housewife. Is that the name of The Swimmer? David and Lisa, yeah. Oh my God, I had no idea about that. Then it made sense to me that he had made, he had come on the scene, you know, like a Paul Mazursky.

Right. Doing all these artistic, he was like the next, you know, and then now he was, you know, doing Shelley Long comedy vehicles. Yeah. I think, though, that, I mean, it's, I had a conversation with Quentin Tarantino about this because I directed one movie and I hated it. I hated the experience. The movie was shit. I wrote the movie. I'm in the movie.

That was my biggest mistake, was putting me in the movie. But, and I don't like the movie. And I my biggest mistake, was putting me in the movie. And I don't like the movie. And I said to him, how can that happen? And he said to me, did you have an idea in your head what the movie, did you know how it was going to look? And I was like, no. And he said, well, I don't know how you could make a movie without knowing that. But he also said that, and he's been very public about this,

he'll make 10 movies and he won't make any more, right? And I think that movies are not really like books or like anything else. I think you can make a finite amount of movies and then like even Kubrick at the end, Eyes Wide Shut, come on. Yeah, you start being repetitive.

Yeah, and you're kind of like, have you got anything really to say? Do you really love it, or do you just love being around? Because you know how addictive it is being on a movie set, and the feeling of it, and the good movies, bad movies,

you don't know. Nobody knows when you're making it. If you're doing the reverse angle on you talking to Nicole Kidman, you don't know if the movie's going to be good or not, right? You don't know. I mean, you hope be good or not, right? You don't know. I mean, you hope. You hope.

There's only been a couple times where, yes, and when you say, I'm seeing it in my mind, and oftentimes I come to the set and I have a preconceived idea of grandeur in my head, and then they go, I'm really going to try to get this before lunch. Yeah. Yeah.

And you got like, like all of your thoughts. It's like, we don't have time for that. Yeah. We're just putting it, we're just going to put this bench down and, you know,

and it just, that's pretty much the worst thing that, you know, when you, you do your best and you're a pro, but that's when your heart sinks a little bit. Well, here's,

I want to lead you into the book a little bit because after that movie that i'm talking about yes that i went i i can't make it i don't want to ever make another movie i don't even want to be around movies i hate movies now and i thought the only antidote for this is to write a book so i wrote a novel after that because it was i didn't have to talk to anyone then And all the grandeur ideas I could have, I would just put them down and there they were. And I set out to write a book that was unfilmable. That was the only task I set myself, was unfilmable. Now, you, we were talking about, because this book, Connecticut and the Movies, is all about movies and movies shot in Connecticut and the history movies in Connecticut and about romantic sex comedies in Connecticut and how house design is influenced by movies in Connecticut and

like this massive subject but was it with a disillusion about movies that you went to it was it the same kind of thing no I mean I always love movies even bad movies that's why I wanted to do an entire chapter on sex comedies. Right. Because nobody's ever taken them seriously. You know, they just say, oh, they're out of date, and you can't look at them, and they're sexist, and everybody's taking Benzedrine and drinking.

Well, maybe they should be seriously examined. I think we could all use a little more Benzedrine and alcohol, quite frankly. All these pills that don't exist anymore. Yeah, I know. all these pills that don't exist yeah no but it was it was a way to make a statement which i always like to do i always like to shine a light on movies where you know blue velvet is a movie about dark suburbia right right but you wouldn't have blue Velvet without the swimmer. And in my opinion, it all comes from a lot of these ideas were set in Connecticut. And writers, greatest writers of the 20th century, Eugene O'Neill, wrote in Connecticut. Arthur Miller, Lillian Hillman, Scott Fitzgerald, you know, on and on and on.

Many actors, Meryl Streep, Paul Newman, you know, Catherine Hepburn, they chose a lifestyle to live in Connecticut. And so I felt my thesis was how much that Connecticut had influenced the culture of movies, and yet there was absolutely no credit or no tie to that. And so I thought, well, if I do this massive book. Yeah, and it is. I mean, it's very comprehensive and it's a much bigger subject than I would first think. Because I remember coming across it and like on your Instagram or Twitter or something and going, I don't know how you can do a whole book on that.

And now I'm looking at the book. I'm like, oh, my God, I had no idea. Yes. It's, you know, just to give you a tiny little example, somebody like Katharine Hepburn. Right. Who's from Connecticut. And she basically is the representative brand of Connecticut.

And whenever you see a rich heiress in a movie, they're playing Katharine Hepburn. Pretty much, yeah. Did you know women like that growing up? Yes. They were all over the place. They're still there. Look at me and my LLB.

I got to say, you got a whiff of it yourself. Ready to garden? Yeah. No, but they're free spirited. They wear pants. They can garden. They go swim in the ice water. But on the other hand, they're very intelligent.

And so I wanted to identify Connecticut with all of these qualities and both light and dark, you know, because Connecticut is a place in the 30s and 40s of transformation like Christmas in Connecticut. Right. You get out of the rat race, you go to Connecticut and discover who you are. Is it still that, or is it more suburban New York now? Well, now, it still is that, but it's been bastardized in a series of Hallmark movies. Right. Right, where it's gone completely over the top. Right.

But what happened, which is what I chronicle, is that by the 1950s, you start to get movies. So with Mr. Blanding's Build a Stream House, we created this myth of suburbia. Of, it's not only suburban living, it's the right kind of suburban living. It's getting out of New York, but it's living in the right neighborhood in New York

and how important that is to America. But what's interesting about these films is that once they get there, you get a series of movies like Gentleman's Agreement, Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, which are now all about the deconstruction of suburbia. And they start to get darker and darker and darker. Getting to the swimmer with existential angst.

And it's like, what does it all mean? Right, the values. So everything we were promoting, and we got everybody there, now it starts to get deconstructed. You have these really weird sex comedies now where women are left alone while their husbands are commuting and having affairs and all this dark.

And then it culminates with The Stepford Wives. I was going to say, that's what it gets to, right? The Stepford Wives is a very dark film. It's unbelievably dark. And from that moment on, which was my thesis of what I was thinking about, literally from the Stepford Wives on, now you signal to an audience, if you want to show something really bad is going to happen to a couple,

they go to Connecticut. It's, you know, now the house and the white picket fence, there's something very bad. You know, there's something evil in that house. That's kind of weird. I wonder why that happened. Well, I try to explain that in the book. It's an interesting thing.

Did you come up with any conclusions, do you think? I think that it becomes a convenient scapegoat again and again and again because you don't, you can't, just as we have the stereotype about the Midwest. Right. It's like good American values. California is too, like fruits and nuts. Right.

But it's somehow believable to make it Connecticut. I'll give you a little short example. In the movie Rope and Alfred Hitchcock, which is based on Leopold and Loeb murder case. Right. And they were two college students from Yale. So Alfred Hitchcock decides to place the movie not in Chicago, but in a fictional town called Medford, which was actually Danbury, Connecticut. Right. And so he changes the location and somehow makes that more sinister if they're from Connecticut, you know?

I think it's maybe the, I mean, Stepford Wives did it as well. It's that air of respectability. Like everything's respectable, everything's fine, but yet underneath it, you know, the benzadrine and alcohol. Right, it can't be this.

It can't be that good. There's got to be something wrong. There's got to be something horrible here. Yeah, and some of it has to do with a lot of the New Yorkers that were doing plays on Broadway and moving to Connecticut may have been satirizing the very culture that they were living in. Maybe. I had an impulse once that I think is very similar. I've been sober for a very long time. And when I first started working in Hollywood in the early to mid-90s,

I was doing a show at Disney. And I had a meeting at Disney on the Disney lot in the valley and I got there and the meeting was at some office on the other side of the lot and it was Disney family day, right? So all the Disney employees, all the people who worked in the offices and the crews and all that stuff, there was a little kind of like fun fair set up and everyone was found this beautiful suburban, the sun was shining, all the little kids all in their little outfits and a little bouncy castle and it was all sweet and stuff. And I had to walk through all of that before I had my own kids. I had to walk through all of that to get to the office on the other side where I was having lunch with some Disney executive about some saccharine project. Disney executive about some saccharine project. Halfway through the fun fair, I so much wanted to have black tar heroin that I've never, I was like, I gotta have something bad. This is driving

me crazy. Now, I think that probably says a little bit about me, but also the sweetness and the lightness of it made me, almost like I wanted something to balance it. I wonder if that's the same thing with Connecticut. It was idealized and then, you know, it was like, no. Well, there's roots in real Puritanism. And remember, they were burning witches in Connecticut before Boston. Yeah. That's another thing. We don't get enough credit. We started it. in Connecticut before Boston. Yeah. That's another thing.

We don't get enough credit. We started it. We were the ones. And so what the Stepford Wives, you know, and I read the book, he says it's about conformity, which is true in Connecticut. There's a great sense of, you know, conformity. That's not what the Stepford Wives ended up being. It's like, again, it's sort of being down on everybody. It's down on housewives, down on suburbia. But there is what I thought was interesting in Connecticut, and which I've

thought all my life, is this fierce need to be independent, but also this fierce need to conform. You know, and you, if you speak up, people say, well, you know, stop your meddling. Right. You know, and it's still there. It's still there a little bit, you know, that they don't like, you know, people to speak up so much. They, they have a quiet, you know, old money doesn't talk about their money. Right. You know, so all of these roots have found their way into some of these movies. But then there's example after example of things that are really important

that nobody knows about, like Thurgood Marshall tried a case with the NAACP in the 1940s and won the case, and it sort of put him on the map. Well, that happened in Connecticut. Right. So there's always that, as I said, that light and dark that I think is interesting about the state. And you were drawn back there after living for a long time in L.A., right? Yes, I was living in L.A.

And again, just being in show business, you know, you just, you really couldn't, at that time, pre-COVID, if you wanted to be in the movies, you know, in TV, you had to live in L.A. And there was a lot of things I was working on. But then when COVID happened, and it was a lot of things I was working on. But then when COVID happened and it was like

dominoes and I saw myself not being employed for a year, maybe, you know, even more, that's when I started to think, well, I started writing the book and it was an organic process of, the more I was reading about actor after actor after, like, well, if it was good enough for Eugene O'Neill, I mean, he wrote here. And, oh, look at this, Richard Widmark. He left Hollywood and became a gentleman farmer. Did he really? Yeah, you couldn't get him off of his farm.

So I started to be seduced. Just to digress, just a second. I'm trying to figure out, what is the movie he dives off the pirate boat with a knife in his teeth? Do you remember that movie? I can't remember. Richard Widmark, he's got a knife in his teeth and he dives off the boat. And I'm like, see, that's the way to live.

So he left Hollywood and moved back to Connecticut. Yes, I visited his grave. Yeah, and was a gentleman farmer and lived with his wife, who was a writer, and got involved with the, you know, it all tracks. Did Paul Newman do the same thing? Paul Newman went back and he was like... Yeah, right after they did, I'm telling you, time and again.

You know, it was something I thought, but then as I was writing, I was like, yeah, Paul Newman. They did Rally Around the Flag Boys, and then they moved to Connecticut. And Ilya Kazan did a movie here, and then he moved to Connecticut. You know, people who worked here, there was something about, there was a pull for them to move there, and it happened again and again and again. moved there and happened again and again and again. But yeah, Richard Widmark had a big, big farm and it was very hard apparently for him to leave the farm. And his neighbor was Arthur Miller and William Styron, the writer. And they got involved later on, there's a chapter on true

crime, and they got involved helping exonerate a boy who had been accused of killing his mother. It was a very, very famous murder case in Connecticut. Wow. The Peter Riley case. Did you know that the wood chipper in Fargo, of course, well, that is based on a murder that happened in Connecticut. That is so grim. See, we're getting credit.

But you started burning witches. You started using wood chipper murders. Right. All the innovation in grizzly murder comes from Connecticut. So then I guess maybe that might explain the idea of when it became this suburban ideal. Yes. But underneath the suburban ideal is that this is where they burned the witches. is that this is where they burned the witches.

This is where these Puritans came from England, landed here because the restrictive practices of religion weren't restrictive enough for Puritans. Right, right. They wanted to go to a place where it was more restrictive. They could be more restrictive than the easygoing England of the Middle Ages. I mean, it's crazy, though. I mean, and it's fast when you think about it. It's only a couple of hundred years.

Yeah. And it also probably has something to do, again, with the landscape. Yeah. You know, it's not easy. You know, it's cold. Yeah, it's cold. And it was before, you know, modern convenience would be really hard living there. Yeah.

Well, first they had to get, and I go into some detail on that too. One of the most fun chapters for me is this movie called Parish from 1961. Right. It's a Warner Brothers movie by a director I love, Delmer Daves. He did 310 to Yuma.

Oh, that's a great movie. Yeah, yeah, I know that movie. Yeah, yeah. He was primarily known for Westerns, but he developed heart problems, and then he went into romance movies, which is really strange. So he did a summer place. He used Troy Donahue again and again. Wow.

So he did this movie called Parish, which was based on a novel, sort of like Dynasty in the tobacco fields of Connecticut. Right. That's another thing. Connecticut was very famous. Tobacco? Believe it or not.

Wow. Shade tobacco. It was considered the finest tobacco leaves for cigars. Wow. So, which they, I go into detail. So, this movie is, this is what's so broad about this subject. So he comes to Connecticut to work on the script. He gets fully involved, immersed in the tobacco, like learning everything.

About tobacco. About tobacco and the farm, making them work on the farm. And I talked with this actress, Connie Stevens, about, you know, they were. Of course, yeah. They were immersed in, you know, Connecticut and living here and going to all these. So the movie is a travelogue of Connecticut. Right. But in writing about the film, I had to go all the way back to the Native Americans

who were, you know, harvesting tobacco and stupidly told the English people about it. Of course, they pushed them all out. But it has, so the movie is, so that one film for me, it's about the collapse of the studio system because it was the end of Warner Brothers. It was the end of the era and people like Troy Donahue

and their career was ending. It's the last film of Claudette Colbert. Wow. Who was driven to the set every day in a limousine from New York. These young rebels, you know, Connie Steely, they're running around Connecticut and going out drinking. And they were friends with all the extra, you know, because they hired all these local high school students. Right, yeah.

There was some boys' school and a girls' school, Loomis Chafee in Windsor. It's part of the mythology that I would meet people. I was an extra in parish. Oh, right, of course, because they'd still be there, high school kids at the time, yeah. Because they were working on the tobacco fields. And then it's also about the end of the glamour of Connecticut because it's about the end of this dynasty,

of this tobacco dynasty. But at the same time, it was the end of, there was a place that they shot at called Terramar in Old Sabre. And when I delivered the book, they actually thought I had made an error because I called it a bo-tel. They corrected it to be a hotel. A bo-tel? And I said, no, it was a bo-tel.

Yachts would pull up. Oh, a bo-tel. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. I never even heard of such a thing. I Yachts would pull up. Oh, a boatel. Yeah. Oh, my God. I never even heard of such a thing. Me neither. Yeah. Yachts would pull up from the Long Island Sound.

They would dine and dance and listen to a musical act, whatever, get back on the boat. See, I feel like life would be better. And it's all in that one movie. Isn't that better? Wouldn't that be more cool? Is that how you live now? You'd take your boat to the boatel. My boatel.

And you wear fancy outfits and listen to a band? Well, that's what I love about the movie because it captures, that's what I say, this last gasp of glamour. So it's not like that now? Because you live there now. What's your life like now then? Is it rural?

Do you have chickens and stuff? A lot of gardening. Yeah? No, it's... Well, as I wrote in the book, I'm Mrs. Blanding. So I'm supervising a restoration of an 1810 farmhouse, which was kind of let go for a very long time. So I'm on phase three. So a lot of it is just...

How many phases are there? I'm hoping... Three? I'm hoping four is the ending but and then I'll probably collapse I don't

you know after that but no it was a ground up like from the you know fixing the so this was

like a movement out of LA pre-COVID during COVID during COVID right I'm done yeah just I found the house

and my real estate just said you know oh it just needs a little love. And, you know, and then I moved in. And, of course, it was so much worse. But I'm committed. That's the one good thing about, you know, being an actor. When things were really bad, I used to just walk outside and say, you can do this. You're directing a movie and you've got all these people and you have to tell them what to do.

But I mean, I learned firsthand, again, just dealing with all the different contractors. Personalities. I was like, wow, there's still a lot of this old Connecticut. Every cliche that is in Blandings is really still true about people, you know, yep, nope. Yeah. It's funny that I see a lot of parallels with Scotland for me.

It was obviously where I'm from, but the whole idea of like in the movies, it's portrayed a certain way and you go, well, it's not really like that. And then you go there and I'm like, kind of is kind of like that, you know, and like, and all the different colors of it from train spot into local hero, you know, it's like, you know, the awfulness of some of the urban life and the drug problems in the cities and then the beauty and the quiet of the countryside and the people are quirky and funny. It's kind of true.

Yeah. And there's a lot of, well, there's a lot of cheapness. People in Connecticut are very, you know, thrifty, as they call it. And there is a class system of very... Now, that's got to be imported from the UK, surely. That's got to be brought in. That's an old money thing, class system. I'm better than you, which is there's the working class. Right. And then there's the upper class. But the upper class, what everybody agrees on is everybody hates the bourgeoisie. That's what everybody hates. Right. And that is what the 60s comedies were all about, the bourgeoisie.

So the bourgeoisie are the cheese in the sandwich. Exactly. They're the people in the middle, right. So the bourgeoisie are the cheese in the sandwich. They're the people in the middle, right? The people that moved in that were the parking lot czars and not the old money and academia. You know, it's another area of Connecticut that's always fascinating. It's academia, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

Yale. Yale and... Wesleyan. Yeah. Trinity College. I was always fascinated by... I remember doing a stand-up gig in Yale and the first thing I thought, this is going to be great. It's like going to Hogwarts. Trinity College. I was always fascinated by, I remember doing a stand-up gig in Yale,

and the first thing I thought, this is going to be great. It's like going to Hogwarts. And it is like going to Hogwarts, but it's like if Hogwarts was in the middle of downtown Detroit. I mean, it's like, Jesus Christ, what the? It's like beautiful campus, and then pew, pew. I mean, like, oh my God.

Well, that's always kind of fascinating. It's fascinating to me, and yet what you only see in the movie is Yale. Right. You don't see the train station and the outskirts and the Italian. And, you know, another thing about Connecticut, that there's a lot of famously going back to the 20s and 30s corruption, political corruption specifically. Yeah, I think that's everywhere.

I can't believe you're telling me that. I don't think Connecticut is going to... Look, I know you guys started witch burning and I know you started putting people in woodchippers. And the hamburgers. And the hamburgers from Connecticut? Yeah. Stop it. Yes, it is. Although people fight and people... Yeah. They're having fights about that. Stop it. Yes, it is. Although people fight.

People. Yeah. They're having fights about that. I heard. They say New Haven. I heard that Haggis was from Connecticut. Haggis? No.

It cannot be. I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just this relaxation, this not feeling stressed, this not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things. That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die

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No, I will never go back. It's interesting, I've never returned to a place because I was in New York and then I went to LA. I never went back to New York and then now I'm in Connecticut. So I don't

see myself, first of all, I think a human being only has a few moves in them. Right. Remember when we used to be bi-coastal? I was talking to a friend. Yeah. You know, like back when we started our careers, it was very easy. On the airplane all the time. Yeah. We could travel and we had a little place in New York, a little crappy. Yeah. Yeah. That's all gone gone now. I think it's harder for younger people to make the kind of money that supports that. Yeah. And then they don't have to because a lot of it can be done online. But I have a theory about New York, which is this.

Why? Because I came to New York the first time when I was... We're in New York City right now. Yes. You and I are both in New York City. I lived in L.A. for 23 years. I don't know how long you were there. 14. 14 lived in L.A. for 23 years. I don't know how long you were there. 14.

14. All right. See, I first came here when I was 13 years old, 1975 with my dad. And I think for certain people, once you come to New York, no matter where you fucking go, you're going to be New Yorker.

You're New Yorker. I think that's true. And you can be in Connecticut as much as you like and write big books about Connecticut, but you've kind of got a whiff of New York about you You're in New York. I think that's true. And you can be in Connecticut as much as you like and write big books about Connecticut, but you've kind of got a whiff of New York about you all the time. And I hope I have the same myself. It's like, yeah, I know I was in LA for a long time. Like, even when I was doing the late night show, people would go, oh, man, you, so in

New York. I'm like, no, the backdrop. The backdrop is New York. I am in fucking West Hollywood. Yeah. People would say that to me when I was in L.A. They're like, how long are you here for? And I go, I live here. Nobody believed that I lived there.

I think it's a certain thing that if you connect to New York City, you'll never uncouple from it. It's kind of in you. Well, do you think especially when you come here when you're younger and you're really and, I mean, none of that ever goes away. You saw how I devoured my muffin. Well, you know, it's like, you know, you're allowed to have a muffin.

It's all right. Don't beat yourself up for having a muffin. It's breakfast time. But I think that, I mean, I've skimmed through the book and I haven't read it, but I'm very happy for you and I am going to read it because I still read books, even though they're longer than tweets. I'm happy for you that you've done this, though. Are you happier now, you think? Yeah?

I'm very happy. I have obviously a few more books. I love writing books for the same reason that you said. Control. Yeah, it's my vision. Yeah. Nobody's really interfering interfering i got to choose the pictures i had a vision of a coffee table book you know i knew i wanted it to be there

were certain things about my first book that i was not you know i didn't have any creative control over it and so this book is i you know i always feel like well good or bad and it's been doing really well and people love it. Yeah, it's fascinating. It's a fascinating thing. Because I thought, at first when I thought this is for people who know and love and think about Connecticut. This is for Connecticut people. But it's not.

It's about movies. Yes. But it's also about change. A personal change, I think, that you've gone through as well. Right. Because, I mean, I wouldn't have been able to write about it without, it started when I wrote about the swimmer, and again, my own complicated relationship with Connecticut,

because as you said, people used to always say, you have a New York accent, I think, again, just because I spent so much time with my grandparents, and I couldn't wait to go to New York. So I felt always like a New Yorker living in Connecticut. Right. I certainly was never accepted by any teachers, students, et cetera, growing up. Like, you're not from here.

There definitely was that vibe. That's kind of what's fun about being in New York. Nobody really cares where you're from. Yeah, where you're from. But in Connecticut, what road you live on, you live on the right side of the tracks, the wrong side of the tracks. And these play out in film after film, even if it's a film like Mystic Pizza, you know, where they call them townies. And so I think it's for people that love movies, obviously, because it's 100 movies,

and it's going back to the silent era and seeing that D.W. Griffiths was making movies in Connecticut. You know, we know about New Jersey. So some of it was, again, this blueprint to say, hey, we're here. We need some cinematic recognition. But then it was also to talk about the culture. Nobody's ever done a book about these movies about dark suburbia.

And I feel like it's important because it reflects the culture of all of America, yet it all played out in Connecticut. It played out in this little state on the East Coast. And also, again, you're talking about the great artists of our century, and why did they all choose to live and work and write in Connecticut? I find that fascinating. And getting out of Hollywood. Getting out of the rat race. Well, it's more than the rat race Hollywood, because I found it, I don't know about you, I found it quite hard to

leave. It's impossible, I don't know about you, I found it quite hard to leave. It's impossible. I didn't tell anybody. Yeah, you can't. And then when you, if you go to LA to do some work or something and people are like, you left. Like I had someone say, I won't say who it was, but someone who's very famous who said to me, don't you get a, you still got a Scotland? And I went, yeah. And she said, don't you get kind of bored?

What do you mean bored? Yeah. Like, well, you know what? What do you do? You see, I found LA boring. Yeah, pretty boring. Because it's a constant, what are you up to? What are you, you know, you're talking about low self-esteem.

You know, it's just that meter is going all the time of like, oh, there's that producer who didn going all the time of like, oh, there's that producer who didn't hire me and that's what went on. The stalk that goes up and down. I remember talking to a friend of mine and we'd made a film together

and he broke up with his wife. And I remember saying, when did you know, because he'd made another film and he said, when did you know that it was going south

and things were bad? And he went, kind of when I saw the box office return Saturday morning for the last film. Oh, God. Like, oh, fuck. Like, that bad? He went, yeah, it was bad. Yeah, there's a certain, I mean, and I think that COVID was definitely

for so many people a reset button. But I had a sense, maybe as an actor, you know, I always think, you know, we're like the caribou looking for the moss, like, okay, this area. I just had an epiphany that L.A. was going to be done as a city, you know, for now. And cities always, like I was in New York in the 80s, and it was the greatest. I know, I remember. You know, in and out, but I was here.

But it was wild and fun. Yeah, it was wild, yeah. You know, you knew you were like, oh, I'm in the thick of things here. And then when I moved to L.A. in the early 90s, mid-90s, L.A. was like, whoa, there was so many things going on in L.A. And then New York sort of had a dip. But I felt, even before COVID, that LA was flatlining. That more and more of the production was being out in Gardenia. You know, that I was driving two hours to go.

Yeah, or you're going to Canada to make a movie. Or to go to Canada, yeah. Or Atlanta, or wherever you're going to make films. Yeah, I remember all that as well. Production was getting moved out of town. One of the reasons I took the job in Late Night, I was working on an independent movie in Winnipeg, Canada when I got the call to go and do Late Night.

I was like, I had a young son. I'd just been divorced and I had a little boy and I couldn't, I had to look after him. I couldn't leave town all the time. I couldn't keep bringing him. He was about getting ready to start elementary school and I had to be there. And this was one of the few jobs,

doing late night was a job that allowed me to be in town all the time. And that's really kind of why I went, yeah, okay, I'll give it a shot. I'm not fucking interested in being a lady. I don't give a fuck. You know, I didn't go to fucking, what's that school?

They all go to Boston and stuff. I didn't do all that. Did you miss doing the Drew Carey show? Because I look back, I never, I don't, I can't, sometimes I'll see something. Yeah. It's hard to look at anything because I, you know, it brings back because some memories are fun. But I had such

fond memories of being on the Drew Carey show because it just was wild and fun and improvisational. And that's one of my favorite memories. I remember it was maybe 3 o'clock in the morning and Drew threw out the script. And they came over with lines on a napkin. Yeah, all the time. It like throughout the script and somebody they came over with like lines on a napkin all the time it happened all the time and it was bruce helford who ran that show bruce and drew carrie they created that environment which was i don't even know if you would get away with that now that i don't you don't know yeah cut to and i won't talk about comedy series where

oh they really want you on this, and then, you know, tried to say some, yeah, Ileana, if you could just stand here. And that's what L.A. was sort of feeling like. Yeah, go very corporate. And that's very tough when you've had those sort of experiences. And

I don't think, did you ever go to Largo? I used to see Drew. Yeah, yeah, I did a couple times go, I went to Largo? I used to see Drew. Yeah, yeah, I did a couple of times. I went to Largo. It was kind of fun. Yeah. That theater kind of place. My generation of the comedians and music and fun. And you began to feel like an elder statesman,

even though you were young. Like, you know, well, in my time, we would have fun. Well, it's that kind of thing, though. They have places now where you can go and learn to be a stand-up comedian. I'm like, why the fuck, A, would you want to be a stand-up comedian? Stand-up comedian is a job that you do out of desperation because you can't do anything else. But kids are like, oh, I want to work on my comedy. I'm like, I don't understand you.

And look, maybe it's good. Maybe it's better for them. But, you know, they have like, they talk about their careers. Like I was in New York in the 80s. Yeah. Like anyone who said career was probably in sports. Right. I guess or worked on Wall Street.

Yeah. You didn't talk about a career. It was like, yeah, we're going to do this fucking wild thing, and everyone's going to paint themselves blue, and we all run around and shout, you know, that's the play, or that's the show. And it's kind of,

they'll not make any money, but we don't care. In fact, the idea of making money just never came up. And maybe that was dumb. No. But it was a lot of fucking fun. Oh, no.

We were all, yeah, we were all, and that, so that's really hard if people, if you have a whole background and a career for, you know, we started out talking about today for, where you were literally hired based on the fact that your input was wanted. Yeah. You know, and when it was too much, they'd say, no, no, no.

Right, bring it back a little bit. Bring it down. But so then to go all the way from that to somebody hires you and they go, oh, we're such huge fans of yours. And then you're on the set and you feel like, no, don't. Don't be you. Please don't. Yeah. Just stand there. And I had a couple experiences like that where I just had some very long, lonely walks to my trailer.

I started to feel the same way towards the end of Late Night. Because when Dave was going, because Dave owned my time slot, so if Larryman owned your time, nobody paid any attention to me. I didn't fucking care. Right. But I knew that Dave was going time slot. So if Letterman owned your time, nobody paid any attention to me. I didn't fucking care. Right. But I knew that Dave was going to go.

And I started to get more and more help from executives and advertising crossover stuff. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? Yeah. I think it's time to go. The party's getting a little fucking sloppy. There's a lot of people turning up that aren't cool. Yeah.

Letterman is fucking cool, you know. I mean, he can be an asshole sometimes, Dave, and he'd be the first to admit it, but he's fucking cool. Well. And it was cool to work like that, you know. Plus, it used to be okay. You could be an asshole. Yeah, yeah.

It's okay. Yeah, and sometimes people are assholes, yeah. This whole thing now where, you know, you're trying to make, it's impossible. It whole thing now where you know you're trying to make it's impossible it's high stress you know sometimes people

are a little fucking picky I once this is when I got off this is not for me this is how long ago it was somebody posted in a chat room

like they got in an elevator with me in Vegas and I was very rude and I'm like I'm never rude how the fuck am I rude yeah what I did was apparently is I kept my the brim of my hat pulled down and I didn't say a

word you fucking tell me what's rude about that in an elevator but I don't I guess I was meant to do fucking 10 minutes and ask her where she was from I mean it's crazy listen I you know my boss would you know they we'd get things thrown at us and yell at us and all sorts of it. And we didn't take any of it personally. We were thrilled. I know that sounds ridiculous. We were thrilled to be around all these people. It's different values now.

Maybe it is better. I'm sorry, it's not. It's impossible. You can't. I mean, this whole thing about he's very unlikable and toxic work environment. I know. That's impossible.

It's like the number one thing people ask. Tomás and I were talking about this. The number one thing people ask about, is he a nice person? When you meet someone, you go, how does that fucking... Somebody will say to you, I don't know this gentleman, but say somebody says, Ozzy Osbourne, is he a nice guy? I'm like, does it fucking matter if he's a nice guy?

He's Ozzy Osbourne. I mean, I suppose it matters to the people who are interacting with him. I would say in 30 years of show business, I have only worked with two people that are unlikable and then 500 people that are eccentric. A lot of people are eccentric. Or have a lot of fear. Yeah.

Or maybe going through something. You know, there was a very famous movie star who I worked with, and he had been a really big star, and now we were doing this very low-budget movie. That's the way it goes. You know, and he was a little tense. Yeah. You know, and he snapped at me because I offered some help.

I said, oh, maybe I can help you out. Yeah. Shut up. We aren't even talking to you. And, you know, I mean, like, you know, can we have a little compassion for people? And two hours later, he said, I'm sorry I did that. I was nervous, and it's my first day. And I said, no problem.

So, I mean, I find it very challenging to always be keeping my personality in check. It's fake. It's fucking fake is what it is. That's the whole thing about it. There's this whole fucking, do you know what it is? It's fucking Connecticut, suburbia. It's this whole fucking idea that everyone is cool,

and then underneath there's this fucking dark resentment of fucking because humans have emotions yeah and so to walk around and and pretend that you don't have an emotion and you don't you know have prejudices and you don't have to challenge yourself for what you think it's all all fucking bullshit. But I don't see any way out. I mean, again, that's one of the reasons I love doing, and I'm a student of show business. I always tell my friends that feel like they aren't working, and I said, you only need to look at show business.

And I said, you know, we may be in the part of our careers where we're like Betty Davis, and we're going around the country reading from Carl Sandburg with like a cello in the background I use Sean Connery's the same example he's going you know everyone has to do their Zardoz years everyone's got to get on the Mancini at some point nothing yeah when I was moving to Connecticut and like you said that fear of because there wasn't a single person that was I stopped telling people that I was going to Connecticut yeah we're like you said, that fear of, because there wasn't a single person that was, I stopped telling people that I was going to Connecticut. Yeah.

Because they were like, you'll never work again. Yeah. And, you know, but I looked and I said, yeah, at the end of my, when my grandfather's contract in 1950, he was with MGM and they let everybody go in 1950. He moved to New York. He started to do theater and he started a whole secondary career as a, you know, supporting, as a character actor. You know, won his first Oscar when he was 70. Yeah. Won his second Oscar when he was 81.

Yeah. So, I always tell people, you have to look at show business and realize nothing is, you know, really, everything is really kind of the same. Poor Cary Grant, you know, he died on the road. Yeah. Davenport, Iowa. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's probably what's going to happen to you, Craig. Yeah, I would think so. No, I'm kidding. I think we're done here. Are you going to, I remember when I moved in to Connecticut, somebody, my neighbor came over and said, what are you going to do about plowing? I was like, what? Oh, yeah.

And he's like, I said, oh, my God, that's right. You've got to plow. No, you've got to get the plow guy. When I went to Scotland, when I moved back to Scotland, a guy came over and he said, what are you going to do with this? I had some fields in front of my house. And he said, are you going to put some sheep in there? I went, no, I don't like sheep.

He said, you don't like sheep? I went, no, I don't like sheep. He said, you don't like sheep? I went, no, I don't fucking like them. They're big square yellow teeth and they can't really see your eyes. I don't like them. And he said, you've got to have sheep. What are you going to do with the field? I'm like, nothing. I said, you can put your sheep in there for a little while.

And he said, can I? I went, no, don't be stupid. And then we went away and about two or three weeks later, I saw some fucking sheep in my field. Oh, my God. So I called him up and went, are these your sheep? And he went, yeah, you said I could put them there. I went, I fucking never said you could put them there. He said, well, I'll just keep them in there for a while.

It'll help keep your grass down. And I said to him, okay, I'm an American now, so I'm going to tell you what I'm going to happen. Starting on Wednesday of this week, I'm going to shoot one a day'm going to happen starting on Wednesday of this week I'm going to shoot one a day until you get them out and he went alright alright alright

and he got them out on Tuesday but they have this law in Scotland that if someone keeps a sheep in your field for over a year then they have

grazing rights in that field so if you let someone graze the sheep in the field they have to take them off for a day, they call it a stalk off. They have to take the sheep out so that they don't have grazing rights for your field. I love that. It fucking drives me crazy. I think that's hysterical. So did he win?

No, he didn't win. I told him, no, get your fucking sheep off my field. And I don't have any sheep in the field. And it drives them all crazy because like, well, what are you doing with that field? I'm like, nothing. The whole idea of the field is it's a field. Nothing happens. I let the grass grow and then it gets old and it falls down. Why? Well, you don't make any money from that field. I went, that's right.

I don't. That's because I'm in fucking Davenport, Iowa doing standout to pay for that fucking field. That sounds like anti-Scottish somehow. A little bit. There's nobody more anti-Scottish than Scottish people. Now, one thing I've noticed, which is sort of cornball, one of my favorite things about living in Connecticut is coming home. You know, I didn't have any joy landing in LAX and coming home.

I used to. I didn't. I used to quite like landing in LAX, I thought. That mall and, you know. Fucking big mess. I loved it for ages London and LAX. That mall. You know. Fucking big mess. I loved it for ages. No more books. You know, my whole culture.

But there is a sense of fun of, you know, like, oh, boy, the hokiness and my neighbors. And I know all my neighbors. Yeah, it is kind of nice. I have a book show on Wednesday at the Kate in Old Saybrook. And, you know, my mason's going to be there and my carpenter and my electrician. They're all coming. Well, they're all very proud. Well, they all made it in the acknowledgments.

You know, we burned witches first. We got to go. Get out of here. Great. I can finish my muffin I'm Angie Martinez and on my podcast I like to talk to everyone from Hall of Fame athletes to iconic musicians

about getting real on some of the complications and challenges of real life some of the complications and challenges of real life. I had the best dad and I had the best memories and the greatest experience. And that's all I want for my kids as long as they can have that. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money. And then, of course, can you game a dog show? So what you're saying is everyone should be listening. Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

For 10 years, I've been obsessed with one of the most bizarre and audacious cons in rock and roll history. We were all facing 20 years and all that good stuff. The lead singer tried to pull off an English accent and they went on the road as the zombies. These guys are not going to get away with it.

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