SmartLess - "Jeff Daniels"

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

This wonderful week brings us thespian-extraordinaire Jeff Daniels. We deep-dive on craft, hear about collaborators from Sorkin to Cagney to Forman, and the essential power of flop sweat. But at the end of the day, it’s all about whatever gets us on the 10/405 interchange quickest. When life gives you Monday, dip it in glitter and make it sparkle all week.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dairy 2021, the days are getting shorter, am I losing my mind, or are they losing their minds, or are we all losing our... Oh my god, I was supposed to do the... Hey, welcome to SmartLess! SmartLess! SmartLess! SmartLess! SmartLess!

SmartLess! SmartLess! SmartLess! SmartLess! Listener, Sean's got a walking boot on. He's got a booty. He's got a booty. Now I got a foot boot. Oh, Sean, you've been saying for a while you wanted to get some booty, and that is just great.

I got a foot boot on because... What happened? You know, I don't have to wear it, but the doctor said if you want to heal faster, you should wear it. I have a tiny, tiny, tiny torn thing in my third toe on my right foot. I think what we're really looking for is how did we hurt the toe? I don't know. Hang on, wait a second. Let's pause for one fucking second.

That entire boot that goes halfway up your leg is because you have a tiny torn thing in your third toe. For one little piggy. Why is that the one that didn't go to market? What happened? It refused to go to market? Yeah, what happened, Sean? What happened to the toe? You know, when you walk and your front party or the ball of your foot turns up, I was doing it too much. I guess I would walk too much.

Oh, so you've got an exercise injury. Is that what it is? From walking. If anyone would have an exercise injury, it's the tight silhouette of Will Arnett. Yeah, look at that. You know, when Jason was... You both were out at the house recently when we were all on the East Coast, and Jason got to see you firsthand. I don't think he believed me that I worked that hard because he's kind of the guy who runs six miles every day.

And we know that he's the guy who puts the roadwork in. And then he got to see firsthand that I'm actually doing it, right, Jay? Yeah, well, here's what it is. Okay, there's a basement. I'm trying to fucking cue you up to compliment me. No, I'm done with it. Now we're going to switch it. We're going to balance it right now.

Listener, there's a basement room in Will Arnett's fabulous second summer home because of your kind listening. It's my first summer home, but it's my second home. Your kind listening has given him the means to provide. I've had it before. That's true. All right, so now you're working on a third, right? Let's let them know how rich you are, Will. They love that.

God, shut up. I'm trying to be relatable. So he's got a basement slash gym in the bottom of the house, and it's all white. I have some wood panel walls, but it's white. First of all, that's not true. The floor is leather. That's true. Let me get to the white part.

The white part is the standing punching bag, okay? It's real, real white. It's hot white, and the biggest violation are the white boxing gloves and the white tennis shoes that are down there just for the boxing sessions. So he's getting skinny while doing it in Miami style, I suppose. It's pretty good. Jason, when I was there, Will showed me that too, and he actually demonstrated. So I had to stand there and watch him box for a little bit, but it was impressive. Thank you.

But then this is what I like. Jason FaceTimed me from that same gym, running on the treadmill. Running on the treadmill. That's true. Jason, when I got down there, like I said, the floor is leather. I don't want to get into the whole thing, oh, you've got an Italian leather floor. But the point is, when I came down. Is it really leather?

Sure. Every time I come down there, I would come down there and Jason would be running. It would be a spray, like somebody had just put pressure on the end of a garden hose and just sprayed the amount of sweat that was surrounding. Yeah. You sweat a lot. Yeah. Well, and then what did I do? I take my towel.

You did what? I mop it all up, I wipe down the machine, like a guy who's spent some time in a public gym. You know, just courteous. Hey, listen, mystery guests, you can't participate yet. God damn it. Okay, let's get to it because he's laughing. I'm still on the thing that everything is white. No, wait, wait, wait.

Let's guess. Don't redo yourself. Right there, off to that. Oh, God. He's an actor. He's an actor's actor. He's from Michigan. He yelled.

He yelled. He's comedic. Wait, he's from Michigan. He still lives there. He made his film debut in Ragtime and instead of listing his credits because it's one of my favorite movies, you're going to guess who it is. Let's ask him about his credits. It's incredibly gifted and talented. One of my personal all-time favorite actors of all time.

One of the good guys, it's Jeff Daniels. Hello, how are you? Jeff Daniels. Fantastic. Wow. Wow. That's a booking, everybody. Jeff Daniels.

Let me ask you about the punching bag. Yeah. It's a good workout, but psychologically, emotionally, are we dealing with some shit when we're dealing with that? Oh, yeah. First of all, yes. Yeah. Yes, I have a lot of issues that I'm trying to work out right now. Sure.

Jeff Daniels, thank you for being on today. I really am such a gigantic fan, as I'm sure I can speak for all of us. Same here. Gigantic fan. Yeah, same. That's nice. Thank you. Now, you live in Michigan.

Not that Michigan is an awesome, one of my best friends live there. Well, you know, right? No, she lives in Lakeside, Michigan. What do you know? It's unusual for actors to live there, right? You hear this all the time. Why Michigan? And why didn't you ever want to leave?

I did leave. Left for about 10 years. New York City. Great research, Sean. And Kathleen, my wife is from there. We're from the same town. Oh, that's nice. We were in New York City for 10 years.

We had a two-year-old boy. I had about three or four movies at that point, but had no faith that the career would last. Whatsoever. They don't, right? No. So, I didn't want to be somewhere where I'd get the phone call that you're over. Right. And I had heard that.

My agent had said that once. I said, you know, somebody is going to be in the... Do you think so-and-so is a good actor? He goes, no, no, he's over. So... I've been told more than once by one of my reps that, you know, let's start thinking about something else. I've seen people tell you that after a take.

That's true. And I've whispered it to myself in the mirror a few times. Sure. Jeff, sorry. Continue. No, and that's so, you know, being fatalistic, I went back to Michigan. We built a house for a lot less money than LA or New York and had another kid and kind of used the Detroit airport to commute, which was unusual, but I didn't know how to raise

my kids in LA or in Hollywood specifically. You know, the joke is I just didn't want them to grow up going to Sly Stallone's house for an Easter egg hunt. Yeah. Why not? I didn't know how to, you know, pull them out of that. So I said, why don't we just go home? And so when the career is over, I can go, oh, okay, and I'll hang up and I'll already

be home. Yeah. That was the long-term plan. I've told the kids they're fucking the Easter bunnies fucking late today. The worst one. You know, there's this thing that I heard a long time ago. I might not be getting this right, but somebody told me this, that this is an actor's career summed up.

You may have heard this. I'll use my name for example. Who is Sean Hayes? Get me Sean Hayes. Get me a Sean Hayes type. Who is Sean Hayes? Yeah. That's the trajectory of an actor's career.

Is there a young Sean Hayes in there too? Because that happens. Sure, yeah. That happens too. But Jeff, you have always been a couple of steps ahead in your choices, in your perception of things. I mean, you're just, you've been a pro for so long. And I wonder if not sort of being able to step back to go and work and then be able to

not live in this, I also didn't want my kids to grow up in Hollywood, which is why I moved to Beverly Hills. The point is, I think that maybe was there, but do you get to have that kind of… Hamptons for the summer though. Hamptons for the summer. Yeah, I'm not an animal, Jason, but do you get to have that kind of race? We had a Formula One driver, Daniel Ricardo on, and he talked about needing to take that step back and get that perspective.

And do you feel like staying, being in Michigan, you get to have more perspective and that helps you do what you do? Does that kind of recharge your batteries a little bit? Couple things. Yeah, the recharge happens. The movie or the TV show ends and you're still in that town. And other people are working, just not you. That would have been harder.

When I did have time off back in Michigan and then I would get a job and you're going to shoot at Warner Brothers, you'd walk on Warner Brothers. And it's exciting and that enthusiasm that you had as a kid for not making a film, but for making a movie, I'm making movies. And it kept that kind of wonderment of when I first got into the business of, you know, you go to soundstage, whatever, and there's a plaque that says streetcar named Desire was shot in this one. I get off on stuff like that.

So it brought all that back. It also made me different. Jack Lemmon, I saw, you know, we ran into him and I asked him about acting and he goes, you got to be different, kid. You got to be different than the other 25 guys sitting outside that door, right? Michigan made me different. That's cool. And where does it all sit for you today as far as your passion and your investment in,

you know, emotional investment into the future? Because you've done it. I mean, you've got the gold medal for longevity. You've got the gold medal for quality. You've got the gold medal for providing, et cetera, et cetera. So do you find yourself in a place of sort of that thing that Will's tired of hearing me say, that sort of that sexy indifference that allows for you to be really hireable because they can smell this kind of, well, he doesn't need it.

He's done it. How does it all sit for you now? What do you want to do? That's the question and that's, you know, I've often, you know, and you guys, when do you know you've made it? Is it money? Is it roles? Is it an Oscar?

What is it? And I've never been able to answer that. And one of those things was that question. When my agent, you know, I said, well, I'm, you know, I got, what's next year? I'm looking at next year. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's some things, but what do you want to do? And I've never been in a position to do that. Not until newsroom and then stringing them out.

I mean, newsroom bought me 10 years. You were so amazing at that show. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, not even Dumb and Dumber. Dumb and Dumber didn't give you that, because I would have thought that you've always been in that position because you seem like, maybe this is a testament to what a great actor you are. You seem like you sort of, the roles that you play and the stuff that you do is kind of feels like it feels like it's by design.

Yeah, because, because like, to Will's point, terms of endurance, something wild, purple rows of Cairo, you know, newsroom, Gettysburg, like all these things that you've done, which are just mind blowing. And then you have Dumb and Dumber, which to me was one of the smartest moves you could ever make because it showed immediately. That's what you did there, Sean, with the title and everything. That's a fucking classic. Actually, you know what, Sean, you just mentioned the one.

So, I mean, Jeff, we met, I don't know if you remember a few years ago, we both, I was on there for a couple of weeks. RV. Yeah. With Robin and that whole gang and our buddy Barry Sonnenfeld, and I remember I kept thinking like, I don't want to, don't talk to Jeff Daniels too much. Don't tell him how much you love something wild because for me, that movie. And you didn't.

I didn't. I didn't. And I just pretended, I had, because Jason just kept saying, sexy and different, sexy and different. So, I was posing a lot and I was percing my lip like I didn't care. But I will say, I want to get to something wild. Something wild was the first movie I ever owned. And I'll tell you why.

I rented it and I forgot to give it back to the video story. This is a true story. These are the way the compliments come from Will, Joe. This is an absolutely true story. And I've watched that movie, not only have I watched it dozens and dozens of times, there's something, I reference it all the time because I love that character you played. And I've seen versions of it before, but this guy who's got this secret and you take it throughout the whole film and you're really funny and you seem like you're really hapless

and whatever. And then it turns out there's like this whole other twist to it. And this guy's got this burning, he's got this thing burning in him. And I've always used that as a touchstone of a character who's got something else going on. I just, there's something about it that I love, just love. I don't mean to embarrass you, Jeff, but I just love that film so much. Is that a big experience for you making that movie?

It was great because of Jonathan Demi. I mean, you guys do improv brilliantly. I've never taken an improv class in my life. And Jonathan used the script as an outline. And that was the first movie where, yeah, don't worry what they wrote. Here's what you're, you know, say this, say that, try that, go. And that was a new territory for me. So you got the freedom, as you know, from improv to kind of go, but I never, the secret

thing is that sometimes actors will hide it a little bit, maybe a lot, but not completely. And I think I, if I remember right, I just completely ignored the fact that there's this secret that I'm going to get to later because I went into that movie going, the two guys I had grown up with idolizing or at least got me interested in acting were Dick Van Dyke and Jack Lemon. They were two of them, but they were the guys who could do comedy. Alan Arkin was another one. Alan is so, you know, understated and all that, but these guys, you know, like in-laws

with Peter Faulk, those guys, they could go big comedically and not get caught. And so that's, Jack Lemon and Dick Van Dyke had a baby and its name was Charlie Driggs in something while that was, I'm going to do what they would do. And then I just rolled that into that secret. But you had that, there's a scene in the, if you remember, there's a scene in the coffee shop at the motel where Ray Liotta, Ray Liotta at his menacingly best. First movie. First, first movie.

So there you go. First movie. He was so scary. He was scary even just doing the scenes with, he was so good. But you, you have this scene where you kind of, there's a cop in the diner there and you know that he can't do anything because the cops there. So you've got like the freedom and there's something again about the way you played that scene.

I was like, this is the way you do a scene. Like I thought, like if I taught a film class ago, this is how you do a scene and that dynamic and that chemistry and that thing that those instincts that you had for me, again, not to embarrass you, I've just always taken with me. It's a strange thing, but it's true. You don't, you don't teach? Well, I should.

This is a good point. Yeah. It's a really good point, Sean. And I'm going to, I'm going to put my number up in the chat after, if anybody wants to. You could use it, Sean. That is a, that's a movie that one of, one of my heroes, Paul Thomas Anderson talks a lot about and I've, I've scolded myself for having never seen it yet. But after this talk, I've got even more impetus to see it.

So Jonathan Demme would, would, if you gave him 10 grand to make a movie or a hundred million, he'd have the same enthusiasm at six in the morning, same thing. And he never met an idea that he wouldn't give it a shot. Yeah. Try it. Go. Wow. Anything.

And he was so encouraging. Others have been so, but no one more so than Jonathan Demme was. He was a pleasure to work with. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. One of my favorite movies, like top five is Ragtime. I, I, I tell, tell me, tell me about that. Tell me about working with Milos Forman.

Ragtime was the first movie it was, my agent had been an agent at ICM for about a week. He inherited a client list of which I was on it, one of the people on it. He recently was the casting director for Ragtime. So Paul Martino was, he knew Milos and he said, Milos, you know, yeah, I've started a job and I got an actor I want you to see, put him in the movie. And so Milos, it was perfunctory. I mean, went over and met Milos. She goes, yeah, okay.

And said hello and looked at me and said, okay, right, you can play this part, get out of here. That was it. And I got it because of Paul, the thrill of Ragtime was Cagney working with Jimmy Cagney. That was his last film, wasn't it? It was and the story, he didn't want to do it. He was living upstate New York. He was 81 going on 101.

He wanted a screen test and to prove to himself that he could do it. Wow. Milos really wanted him. So this is 81. They rented a studio at Channel 13 in New York City and WNET and we went down there and he got a bunch of the other actors that were in this one scene with the police commissioner, which was Cagney. They got Kenny McMillan, who's passed away.

He was amazing. He was a bulldozer, fireplug of an angry actor that could just go. I mean, he was just an open vein. The racist fire chief. Yeah. Yeah. And then he added, I think Howard Rollins was there and then three or four of us, other cops who were just to fill out the room and I don't know why, but we didn't say anything.

But I got to go. So you're sitting in there and there's not, there's like one camera and a black and white monitor up on a wall. That's where you could see what the camera saw. No video village, just that black and white in comes Cagney drove down. Here he comes. A nurse is helping him in on a walker, on a walker, puts the walker down, sits in the chair.

It's a three page scene. He can't do it. He can't remember the next line. He can't. He turns the page. It's 10 seconds. It's bad. Again, well.

He goes, all right. All right. All right. Let's do, let's do the one page. Let's do the one. And he puts the one page down. There are three lines. Can't do it.

Let's do the one. The one line. You do the one line. You read that line. Cagney went over it, went over it, went over it and then he looked up and he looked at Kenny McMillan and you could see it on the black and white TV monitor. There it was, that thing that only guys like Cagney have. The only other guys I've seen that have it that I've been on a set with were Clint and

Jack Nicholson. That thing where the camera goes and they become that thing and then they come out of it. They make eye contact and the presence is there and yeah. Yeah. Or just you can see all the movies he's ever done are right there again. He's just old. And that he, we cut after that one line and Milo said, perfect, you got it.

We're going to be any shot at line to line. Just for Tracy Milo Shformin, he directed One Floor of the Cuckoo's Nest, Ragtime, Amadeus, Man on the Moon, all these huge movies. Yeah. He's a great director. Beautiful director. I'm so jealous you got to work with him. Amadeus is my favorite movie.

Can we go to newsroom? Can you? Sure. Now, I think everyone except Tracy has probably heard the stories about Aaron Sorkin and his incredible writing, but in sometimes his intransigence when it comes to actors making the lines of their own. Can you speak to any of that without risking any sort of career suicide? No, not at all.

It's very clear. It is very clear what the rules are, which is don't change your word. I've heard you can't change um to uh. Correct. Huh. How did you like that? Uh, it's um. It's actually um.

I had come out of the theater. So in New York where it was, that's the way it was in the theater. It was, whether it was Lanford Wilson in my case off Broadway, you go ask if you want to change one of the words and so that was just the rule. And so your job was to make the writing work. And if they didn't, they didn't work, they'd rewrite it or they'd redo you or something. But that was the deal. But in the interest of trying to make lines sound like they are coming out of thought,

one sometimes, you know, like I'm doing right now, you sort of, you, you, you break them up, you mess them up. Oh, you're acting right now? No, but you know what I mean? Like there's like, there's things that sound natural that a writer might not write because it is a lot of ellipses and a lot of words, exactly. And I'm sure his defense would be like, I know that's what makes me good at what I do is that I understand that and, and there's the also the sort of underlying that is that

I understand better than you. Well, but there's the separation between what is writing and what is acting. And I guess my question is how much is he tolerant of the merging of those two things? You have to marry yourself to the rhythm of the writing, the melody of Sorkin. There is a melody and it's, I call it like writing secretariat, you get on it and you write it. Right. Like a mammoth or even a Shakespeare.

Like there's just, or Neil Simon was the same way. Yeah. Don't change it. Don't change it. And you guys know from comedy, you take one word out. It's not funny. Yeah. I did promises, promises on Broadway, this musical and Neil would come to rehearsals

and rewrite with me on the spot. It was crazy. Wow. And I was like, oh my God, Neil Simon's writing words. I've never worried about the fact that I get what Jason's saying completely. And I'm not advocating for one way or the other. I'm just curious about how, what the process was. No, I know, I know.

But here's the deal. Like Patty Chayevski in network, for example, when William Holden and Faye Dunaway are going at each other in that room, there are three people in that room and one of them is Patty Chayevski. And you know it and you can feel it and you can hear his voice and that's where Sorkin's coming from. He is in every scene. And so my job is to make it sound as thoughtful and as falling out of my head for the first

time as possible. But at the end of the day, if it also feels written, we like that. Right. There's someone driving the bus. And so you marry yourself to that as an actor and you do your best job to make it as real as possible. Got it. But you know, Jason, we talk about this sometimes, there's that kind of look at the end of the

day also, and maybe this is more prevalent now, it is much more a collaborative experience on set. I think that, I don't know if all you guys can attest to that, but certainly, you know, there are moments where, for instance, you know, Jimmy Burroughs, the great TV director who Sean and I had the, you know, honor to work with, Jason's known forever and ever and ever. And Jason, did you guys ever do it? Do you and Jimmy ever?

Yeah. Yeah. Bunch of stuff actually. Oh yeah. You did it. Yeah. I remember one time Sean and I were doing a show with Jimmy, and I remember I can't, I got to walk in and deliver a line and then I like take a drink or something.

So I come in and I say the line, and then I take the drink and as we're walking way to the next set to go rehearse on the next set, he says, Willie, say you have to line, take the drink and then say the other thing on the other side. And I was like, okay, and I try it and it was like 24% funnier. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? And I kind of was like, huh, I just walked away, he was like, he was so fucking right, you know.

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. The good one, Jim Brooks is another guy like that. I mean, they just know. Yep. They just know. But they got to see it.

They got to see you do it. And so that's kind of what I go, you want to see the words you wrote? Here they are. Boom. Yeah. And that's kind of how I go into it. With all your experience, all your set exposure, set experience, understanding of the process, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.

Has it ever drawn you towards wanting to utilize all that by jumping in the director chair? You have. Right, Jason? Yeah. You love it. I can't stand it. Oh, really? God, I cannot get enough of it.

Really? I can't stand it. Why? Because the questions, the constant questions, the coming up and going, is it the red sweater or the blue sweater? I don't care. I just don't care. And so I, I mean, I completely get the, having the vision, but having the, I don't have the

patience for it. But having the vision of the overall, of the overall piece, I completely get that that's the chair you got to sit in. Right. What about when you're on the set with a director that isn't as comfortable on a set as you are, and as a result, the process, you know, the, the 10 hours of work you guys might have to do that day is going to take 14. And does that ever just start to eat at you and you're like, well, if I would just utilize

all that I've absorbed, we might, we might treat ourselves to a, to a more efficient day. Jason got into directing so that he could do scenes like whatever would get him back on the 10 quickest. Yeah. Exactly. You know, everybody just stand in a line. I'm going to shoot that.

Is this setup going to put me on the 405? Because if it's not, it's another one or listen, you also, you underestimate Jason's appetite for discussing minutiae and arguing about fucking just details and stuff that's meaningless. Oh my God. He can fucking talk about shit that you're like, we already got it a half hour ago, idiot. And he's like, but listen, why would they, you know, shut the fuck, but you know, if you think about it, it's unreal, it's unreal.

No interest whatsoever. Here's the other problem of being a director or that I did. I actually wrote, directed and acted in two independent films. Yeah. So I did it. I got it. I, I've been in the editing room. I completely get how there's, that's where you write your final draft.

I can, all of that. But you wrap principal photography, I'm done. Yeah. I'm an actor. I'm done. You are one third of the way through this thing. And I just, I'm, I'm over it. I, I that, that I learned that I'm going, oh my God, now I got to go promote it.

Yeah. Well, that speaks to something interesting, Jeff. Do you like that? But obviously you just said you kind of like that, that you're wrapped. But do you, you have such a huge, you know, resume. You've done so many films and television programs, et cetera. Do you love constantly kind of jumping into new things and going a completely different direction?

Like your stuff, the breadth of your work is crazy. Yeah. Comedy, drama, indie, huge movies. Like theater. What is that about? I, I, I, it's keeping me interested, to be honest. The pandemic happened and I, I was 65 when the pandemic happened. So it really was like forced retirement without the gold watch.

You're just done. And this is what, oh, this is what retirement is like. I got it. Okay. And then I, I came out of, well, in March, almost out of the pandemic, we hope I went down to Pittsburgh and we've just finished five months of shooting this showtime series called American Rust. And I was curious as to whether I'd still be in love with acting or wanted to do it.

I was getting used to semi-retired and all that. And I missed it. I missed between action and cut. I miss, I missed even going back to Mockingbird, you know, on Broadway. I miss what Atticus Finch is going to be able to do to this post George Floyd crowd. Acting is a kind of thing, if just for me, if I just stay focused on acting, I can take 43 years of doing it and be better than I've ever been because it's cumulative, right? We're not athletes.

Our bodies don't deteriorate. Or if they do, play your age, which is also what I'm doing. I'm still playing 20 to 25. Yeah. Thank God for Sean. Well, that's your, that's your choice. Sean's deteriorating one toe at a time. The market thing was funny.

But I just, I'm still interested and I got to be challenged. I got to risk failure. I got to like, they're writing it for me, but I've never done this guy before. So I'm going to go all in on that and see if I can pull it off. And I, and if I do, I do affect and then I keep, whatever process I got is working and it comes from newsroom. How do you know if you've pulled it off? Do you, do you defer to the critics?

I bet no. Is it for yourself? Like in other words, do you watch what you do? And when you see the final product or the dailies or playback or whatever, are you the barometer? Are you the one that decides whether you've gone outside your skill set? If it's, if you're doing too much acting, if you're staying within yourself, how do you know if you're pulling off a character?

It's the work ethic. I had to work so hard on the first season of newsroom harder than I've ever had to work. You have to memorize mountains of dialogue and then you got to spit it out at a hundred miles an hour. That means you have to learn it so that you can do that the Sunday night before the entire week. You can't learn it in the makeup chair. You just can't.

I've seen day players come in on newsroom and they're trying to learn three pages of sorkin in the makeup chair and the flop sweat hits them. I mean, it's, it's, it's really, I've never seen it anywhere else. They, they, and we all go through it. I went through it on episode five. I got in and I just couldn't keep a word of it in my head anymore. The computers overloaded and I literally took a knee in the middle of the newsroom and said, give me the line again.

Give me the line again. And she gave it to me three times. Couldn't say it. They sent me home. Wow. Oh my God. We called it getting sorkinized. You just hit the wall and, and, and everybody, everybody did it.

I mean, I can go around the cash and go that day. Yeah. I remember when Allison, I remember when Tommy did all of us. So I knew the amount of work that I had to put in to pull off Will McAvoy every fucking day. I'd love to see Jason do that. Because Jason's memorization is, is, is the best of all, I think I'm good, but Jason's is the best of all time.

But you know what though? I think that would be my kryptonite though. I wonder if I'd be any good at that to, to memorize things. Word perfect. That's not the way I, I do it. That's not the way I've memorized it. Many don't. And that's perfectly wonderful and fine.

You know, it's just, this was, I had to do that. So I knew the amount of work I had to do to pull off season one of newsroom. I took that work ethic. Are we going to, are we going to sag in, in, I mean, I won the Emmy for that, that first season. And only because I had that Northwestern speech. No, I don't think that's the only reason I think you're, I think you're amazing. You're incredible.

That was the episode that they submitted. And, and literally I'm, we're going to the Emmys and, and HBO was saying, look, just enjoy the meal. And you're not going to win, Gandalfini never won the first two seasons. So just, just, just enjoy the night. Okay. All right. You're up against Spacey in House of Cards and Damien Lewis and Homeland and John Hamm

and, and Mad Men, Brian in, in Breaking Bad. I mean, there was no way. It was that speech. That Northwestern speech. I can't believe that Aaron wrote your speech for you too. Your acceptance speech. That's so crazy that you had to do that perfectly as well. That was over the top.

Is that true? You had to pay him a hundred thousand for that. We'll be right back. All right. Back to the show. So Jeff, I want to go back to, to kill a mockingbird with Aaron Sorkin and Broadway. It broke some box office record or something like that, right? The top sales of all time or something.

That's incredible. We have the top, top 10 weekly grosses. We hold the top nine. Wow. Isn't that unbelievable? That's crazy. And, and do you guys, I don't know if I'm, this is a question to everybody, you know, because I come from theater, you come from theater.

That's where it all starts, right? So do you remember when Bravo used to air operas and plays and things like PBS used to air some great theater stuff and people watched them all the time as a kid. I used to watch them. Did they really? They, operas? They used to put them down? They used to do all that stuff.

Do you remember that, Jeff? Did you ever watch that? No, not specifically Bravo, but I did. I remember CBS Playhouse or not that I, you know, I'm old but not that old, but I remember seeing like Paul Newman as a young actor walking on to that, a show of CBS Playhouse directed by Sidney LaMette, you know, oh God, Ernest Borgnein as Marty, you know, they would do stuff like that. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'll only use the Mockingbird experience is that it's different than watching the movie or reading the book and it's that you feel the play for a year, eight shows a week, proudly went Cal Ripken Jr. and didn't miss a show for a year. That's great. I was on a mission. That's great. That's great.

I remember doing God of Carnage with Gandalfini, Hope Davis, Margie Gehardt and we were doing I don't know, seven months and across the street was, they were doing West Side Story, I think, and Arthur Lawrence, 92 years old, they had to bring Arthur in because the 20 somethings were getting drunk on Tuesday night and skipping the Wednesday matinee. The actors. Yeah. Yeah. And Arthur came in and read him the riot act and there's just a thing and Henry Fonda

did Mr. Roberts for how many thousand performances, never missed, I'm going, that's, I'm aiming at that. I'm just going to go old school on that just to see if I could do it. The other thing too was to see if in the 10th and 11th and yes, 12th month of this show, does it die? Yeah. Do creatively, do you hit the wall and I can't repeat it and I can't do it anymore and phoning it in.

And I was happy to say that that did not happen. We were performing surgery at a hundred miles an hour. That was the time to see that show. It was at its best because we knew it cold. Yeah. And we just kept it alive, which is the thing is, it's this listening and reacting, which is a form of improv. It's just against the script and that's what we did.

You don't know what he's going to say next. So wait to hear what he or she says and then use that. Half your performance is in the other actor. If you do all that stuff, you can keep it alive enough that you don't hit a wall with it. That's, that's that old thing that they say, like acting is, acting is reacting or as Jason always says, acting is acting like you're reacting. But Sean, aren't you, Sean, aren't you planning, aren't you doing Iceman cometh on TikTok?

Are you, are you planning to do that? And one minute, one minute bites. Oh, it's going to be so good. One more, one more question in the weeds about that. Just while you just said, you know, listening and then reacting, isn't that at odds with the sort of mandate to do the style of the fast talking, don't take any gaps, pick up your cues, order of the sort of Sorkinian or mammoth type of rhythm. I mean, isn't that at odds with hearing what the person just said, doing the proper acting

of having that information process, formulate an opinion, construct an answer, then spit it out. All of that timing certainly you need for comedy, but definitely in drama as well, that you're being asked to eliminate in the interest of just doing a speedy, this is the rhythm I as the writer want you to have. So it says, don't worry about your acting, service the rhythm of this writing. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, a mammoth wrote a book about that, which would piss me off because it was, you know,

don't act, just say my words, well, okay. But here's what Barnard Hughes was a great actor when I was coming up in the 70s and 80s. And he was in a show called Da, I wanted Tony for it. I think he was in midnight, he was, he was in midnight cowboy is that guy that ends up with John Voight somewhere. Anyway, but I asked Barney told me, and she goes, say a, think B, then say C. That's one way to do it.

If you want to move, say a, and as you're thinking B, say C. And so that, that, that's how you beat it. And, and you know, when she, you're not here, the queue isn't the last two words of what he or she says, it's what they said in the middle. But sometimes it is sometimes you don't get the necessary information you need that lives in your response until the end of their last line. You know, like they don't, you know, so it's, I mean, I, you know, we're, we're in the weeds. Yeah.

And then here's, no, no, no, no, and then here's what happens, Jason. That's how Aaron goes in because he doesn't want you bringing in all your things. He wants you to do it the way he wrote it. Okay, great. Now you're doing episodes. Now you're into the first season, maybe you're into the second and he trusts you. Now that pause that he wrote in there, you pitch. I'm not doing that.

I'm going right straight through, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. He sees everything. He hears everything. And now you're doing not only what Aaron did and you're sticking to his words. That's the rule. But you're putting your own thing on it, which changes the way he does it. Because Aaron writes in front of a mirror, he, he writes out loud. He plays every part, which that's why you kind of, there's a sameness to it sometimes.

But you, you, you're able to beat that by having me and Emily Mortar and Tom Sadosky and whomever else, you know, and, and they're doing it. It's different voices from the same voice. So it's, you know, that it's, it's, it's tricky. But eventually they, somebody like Sorkin will, will trust you to let you go. I mean, he never, he never came to me and, and gave me line readings or anything like that. Anything.

The line through, the rehearsal was a line through at 6 30 in the morning, sitting in the newsroom. He'd have all eight of us sitting around there and I'd be off book. There's 13 pages of Sorkin and I'm standing there at 6 30 in the morning and the first day everybody's got their pages and they're looking at their pages and I'm just going around the room and I know all 13 of them. You guys are fucked. And then, and then the next day, everybody, nobody had any pages.

Yeah. It's just survival on Sorkin. It's survival. So, I mean, this is, that's so intense and what an intense experience and it takes up so much of your life. Did you ever have times, especially then for, do you follow sports a lot? I see that you've got a lot of music behind, like instruments behind you. Like what do you do to kind of, you know, unwind?

Yeah. For the listener, he's, Jeff, you got like 75 guitars. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. I know. I have a home recording studio that I really enjoy. I've always played guitar and played it since the seventies.

I never played out in a club or anywhere. I started playing in the seventies. I played out maybe the first time in 2002 and I just played on the porch. I was hanging around playwrights off Broadway in the seventies and I had never seen a living, breathing playwright before. I'm 21, I'm 22, I'm in New York, I'm at this theater company and every single one of these playwrights like Lanford Wilson are rewriting a second act. It was a living, breathing thing, the writing.

I had, you know, in college, you just get a published script and the guy's either dead or I don't know, but that thrilled me. And so the writing thing interested me, directing, like it's, no, but the writing interested me, but I'm never going to get a play written and done on Broadway. So I'm going to pick up the guitar, get better at that. Oh, look, here's Doc Watson, here's Steve Goodman. Here's Arlo Guthrie. Now you're into the blues.

Jonathan Edwards, Shani, funny, Christine Lavin writes funny, plays well. They stand there with an acoustic guitar on a stage for 100 minutes and they hold them. That's hard to do. And coming from musicals and high school and college, it was like, I knew how to do that where suddenly you break into song. I would just write and write and write and throw them in a notebook and just get better at the guitar and finger picking. And then eventually I had this theater company and we needed to raise money.

So why don't we put you on stage with your guitar and we can sell tickets? And that's a whole other deal. I had flop sweat. And it took, it's like the first time you do Carson or Letterman or Leno or Steve or any of the guys fall in, you know, it's seven minutes and you got a score. And flop sweat happens, you know, when you're out there for the first time or two on that. So it was the same thing. But once I learned how to do it, creatively I controlled everything.

There was nobody else telling me what to do, what to sing, what to say, what jokes were completely my own thing. And that was an escape. And so I just kept collecting the guitars and, you know, I've got too many, but you know, better than cocaine. Is your life as idyllic as it sounds right now? Can you get perspective on that? I mean, or does it just feel like yours?

I mean, do you treat yourself to take a step back and think, I'm happy, I'm healthy. I've had a long career in an incredibly fickle, you know, profession. And I've got this family and I'm living on a lake in Michigan. Yeah. At the beginning you said, I love when you said, how do you know you've made it? Is it awards? Is it acclaims? Is it money?

It just feels like you've made it. You've made it. Yeah. We're here to tell you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Well, it's very nice. We let people know if they should be happier or not.

You know what? You check out of the Ambition Hotel, you check out of the, where's that next thing? And I got to make more. And I got to do, I got to get, I got to get an, how do I get nominated for that? I just, it's sexy and different. But if you get to a certain point and you go, you know what? Pretty good. Yeah.

Pretty good. I can live with that. And if nothing else happened, and it really happened after Atticus on Broadway, that's where I felt that if it ended, I'm good. Yeah. I'm good. Yeah. Jeff, thank you so much for coming.

I really truly meant what I said at the top. You are one of my all time favorites. I just revere you. I think you're incredible. Thank you. I appreciate that, guys. I appreciate that, guys. Very nice of you to say yes to this, Jeff.

You're a treasure. Thank you for coming. Thank you, guys. Yeah. Thank you, everybody. Bye. See you, Jeff. See ya.

Nice going, Sean. Yeah. Really good, Sean. Really, really good. God, I love that guy. I love him. I think he's great. You know, the thing that really stuck with me, that's why I brought it up at the end,

which was how do you know? When he said, how do you know you've made it? Is it a family? Is it the work? Is it the money? Is it what is it? Is it the car you've always wanted? Is it, you know, it's really?

Chicks. It's chicks. It's chicks. Sorry. It's chicks. Yeah. It's, I do, not to take this down into a dark hole, but, you know, being past 50, it's like, well, if I want to live to be 100, then I've got to admit that I'm on the second

half and you start to think about, how am I doing with the years I've been given? Am I using them well? Because eventually you're going to be inside that last year or last 10 years or whatever, and you're going to start to think back. And at that point, it's going to be too late to change what you've done with the time you've been given, and it's all of those things, right? I always, yeah, I think all the, first of all, two things. One is, I remember one time, this is years ago, thinking about this, there's a guy that

I used to really look up to as a sort of comedic actor, and he was amazing, and I'm not going to name his name, but, and I remember thinking like, he, you could tell that he thought that he had made it. And now that he thought he was funny, and I thought, I always think about this, the moment that you think that you've got it is the moment that you've lost it. Yeah. And so you always have to stay, you always have to sort of stay humble, and I know it's people are going to be like, yeah, nice try, asshole actor as they're driving or walking

or whatever. It's true, you always have, and you never have to, never think about yourself in the third person, never, also I remember hearing somebody say, never use the words, my and career next to each other, like, don't talk about, and I try not to think about myself in that way. I tried to, my only responsibility, and I'll go even further down this road is, I always feel like my only responsibility every day is to be happy and look for joy wherever I can and focus on the things that work.

And if I do that, if I look for that kind of stuff in everyday life, you know, we all have things that don't work in our lives, but if 95% of the stuff is working, why focus on the 5% that's not? And for me, that's what I try to do on a daily basis, again, not to get too, you know, I just wish you'd stop looking at donuts to make you happy, and you know what, so good, it's fried dough. Sean thinks that that's wonderful, Sean thinks that that's a wonderful, third person, sentiment and Sean's ready to wrap this up.

Yeah, you know, Sean's thinking of a way to braid in the word by, aren't you? You're trying to back into it. And all you think about when, as soon as the guest goes away, you just try to win the by contest. Yeah. Yeah. You're not listening to what we're saying. You're like Googling things, Ryan's with by.

But I have to go by, by, I have to go pee pee by, by. Oh, I have to make a potty. I mean, that was like, I mean, you can't go, you can't go until we come up with a worthwhile by. What a fucking surrender that was. That was like the worst. I have to pee so bad. Listen, if there was any show that you could do on Broadway, Sean, because you know, all

this talk about Broadway, would it be baby birdie? That'll do smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.

Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.

Smart. The next episode will be out in a week, wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can listen to it right now, early on Amazon music, or by subscribing to Wondry Plus in the Wondry App. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.

Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.

Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.