The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Barry Sonnenfeld

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld talks with Andy Richter about being the best French horn player in the NYC school system, shooting nine feature-length pornos (in nine days), and jumpstarting his cinematography and directing career with Blood Simple. Plus, Barry shares stories from the development of his new book “Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother”.

yeah but the thing about back pain is if it comes and goes yeah that implies it's not a physiological problem you know yeah because some days it's bad some days it's not bad. And you go, why did I have no pain yesterday? Well, that's because I wasn't talking to the studio this morning and their stupid idea. And suddenly I have back pain. And on Men in Black 3, my back pain was so bad. And over Christmas vacation, I needed to hire a new writer. The producers wouldn't let me. It was just a mess. And I was on this conference

call and I just screamed at them. And you know what Dr. Sarno says is the reason you have this back pain is your unconscious mind gives you the pain because you fear that if you express your anger, you may really hurt someone that you love or, you know, lose your job. I screamed at them, hung up the phone, and I was Dr. Strangelove at the end of Dr. Strangelove. I stood up out of my chair with no pain, and I basically said, I can walk. And I literally, all my pain went away. And all I needed to do was scream at Sony Pictures and the producers. And that's all it took until the next big problem. Well, that's the intro to my talk with Barry Sonnenfeld, with the esteemed director and producer and cinematographer, bon vivant and raconteur.

I worked on a movie, you hired me for a movie called Big Trouble, which was a lot of fun to make. A lot of night shoots down in Miami. And, and again, and also playing golf with Patrick Warburton, hearing funny stories about him getting waxed. Cause he needed to eat. There's a stripper scene at the end of that and he needed to get waxed. And I'll leave that for him to tell. It involves an erection. let's just say that um but I uh I've working with you was you're one of the most fun

directors I've ever worked with very you're just a really funny guy and I saw that you have a book coming out and I thought well here's a good excuse to get you on here and to talk about this and and the name of the book is Barry Sonnenfeld Call Your Mother yes and that and I knew exactly what that was from because I was on set and it was late it's like three o'clock in the morning and I was telling a story about my mom and just kind of, and I said, like, you know, you know, for comedic effect, I said something, you know, like, oh, that bitch or something. And somebody was like, you can't talk that way about your mother. And you said, no, no, let him say whatever he wants. And then you told the story about where the title comes

from, which go ahead and let them hear that. Well, the title of the book, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, is because on April, as April 28th was becoming April 29th, I'm sorry, January 28th becoming January 29th at 2.20 in the morning. And that's very important. Over the PA. Which year is this? This is 1970. I was 17 years old. I was a senior at Music and Art High School. I was with my

girlfriend. We were at the Madison Square Garden Peace Concert with Harry Belafonte and Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Jimi Hendrix, of all people. And he had left the stage earlier because he wasn't feeling the vibe. Now he's back. It's 220 in the morning. He's tuning up his guitar. He's like whispering to various members of his band. And as he gets ready to play his first chord over the PA system, comes the announcement, Barry Sonnenfeld, call your mother. So, A, how amazing is it that my mother, I say she had strength through weakness, was able to get someone to answer the phone. Yes. Then get someone to say, I'll connect you with the PA guy. Then someone to say, okay, we'll make the announcement.

All that meant, yeah. Incredible. In order to do that, one can only imagine the lawyering that went on in that conversation. The weeping. Yes. The lawyering, the weeping. Weeping. Yes.

The lawyering, the weeping. So, of course, I know that the only reason this could ever happen is that my father was dead, right? So, A, I stand up announcing to the garden that I am Barry Sonnenfeld. So it starts in the cheap blue seats because we were in the upper deck. But, you know, it starts at Cascade. Yes. The orange and yellow seats is the chant, as only the garden can do. Barry, Barry. So that's not good.

No. I don't think it reached Jimmy, but it's not good. I'm weeping. I get to a pay phone. This is obviously before cell phones or anything like that, or even Motorola pagers. And I'm weeping. I call my mother at home. I say, who's dead? She says, what are you talking about? I said, is dad dead? She goes, no, Sonny, he's sleeping, of course. I go, who died? She says, well,

I thought you did. I said, what are you talking about? Well, you said you'd be home at two. It's 2.20. So I said, didn't they tell you the concert was still going on? And she said, oh, I knew it was still going going on but they couldn't prove you were there oh and i and i bet i bet you totally got laid that night too you know ironically uh i convinced my mother that since it was so late i I couldn't take Susan back to Laurelton, Queens on the E or F train. Yeah. So Susan got to sleep in our living room on our living room couch. And the next morning when my parents went to work, I did discover Susan had beautiful satin magenta panties. Susan had beautiful satin magenta panties, but I didn't get laid.

It's like your memories are so photographic. It's, you know, you got into the right business. Yeah, yeah. Well, tell me, I mean, you're from, are you from New York City or are you from Queens? I'm from Washington Heights. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I'm at Manhattan. Yeah, Manhattan, Upper Washington Heights. Yeah. And has has your have your people been there a long time or. Well, my people, both Jewish parents lived in Washington Heights, although their parents came from Europe or something. Right. The Heights, when I grew up there, it went from German Jew, then Cuban, then Puerto Rican, then Dominican. So over the 20 years that I was stuck in Washington Heights, it went through literally four iterations. But your folks were stalwarts. They didn't want to go anywhere.

Well, they didn't want to give up the crack. go anywhere. Well, they didn't want to give up the crack, which, you know, I eventually bought them an apartment on the Upper West Side because it was getting kind of dangerous. Yeah. And then eventually my mother died. And then when my father moved, eventually moved in with his girlfriend and I sold this apartment. My father claimed he should get the profit because I never would have bought this apartment if they didn't need an apartment. And I explained to him it didn't work. He was a salesman. Yeah, it doesn't work that way, Dad. No. Although he has a new girlfriend now.

He's probably got a whole new reason to spend money. So, well, now they're now dad's dead, too. But dad died in his late 90s. And yeah, yeah. And my mother died in her 80s. But neither of them were good parents. They were kind of horrible. And were you were you aware of that early on?

I mean, as a youngster, we were. And we're first of all, are you the only kid? Yes, of course. Oh boy. That's even worse. They could, they could aim that Sauron's eye of bad parenting just on you alone. No, they really could. But it's, you know, listen, it allowed me to become a director because there's an only child you want to be in charge of everything. And that's kind of what directing did. So it does. So it worked, but no, no, I was an only child and mom was very, they were both total narcissists, you know, mom through depression and all that. And it all had to be about her. And dad was a narcissist and had endless affairs. But literally, when I was five years old, my father woke me up and said, come on, you have to talk to your mother. She wants to kill herself and you have to convince her not to.

I'm five. Yeah, yeah. I'm five. Yeah, yeah. So I brought my piggy bank and said I'd pay her my money if she wouldn't kill herself. And she was weeping and saying, I don't want to live anymore. So eventually, I guess I convinced her not to kill herself. But those were the kind of parents I had. I mean, I really should not have been dragged into that discussion.

Oh, no, of course not. And it's the kind of parents I had. I mean, I really should not have been dragged into that discussion. Oh, no, of course not. And it's the kind of thing, I mean, I never had anything that extreme, but I do think that I was a victim of oversharing. I'll just put it that way. And I can't be as frank as you because everyone's still alive. I wouldn't have cared. I wish they would read how mean I am to them in the book. It would, it would have brought me great joy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did. Um, but yeah, no, I was, but I, all it takes is having a child and you, so many things that you take for granted, like, oh, well, that's just the way that person is and oh you know things where you know i would go to dinner and and friends or you know girlfriends would be like what's what's with your mom i mean is something did something happen like what are you talking about all right like no she just seems like there's a she was was at a funeral. Like, yeah, that's that. Why, why, why even think about it? Just, you know, don't even concern yourself with that. Just sort of navigate around that. And then,

you know, you have a kid and you're like, oh yeah, right. That's not fair. Now, how many kids do you have? I have two. I have a 19 year old son and a 14 year old daughter. And how did you do? I think I did pretty well. I actually just got divorced. So we were married for 25 years. And I think of the whole thing as being actually really successful. I mean, it didn't last forever, but there was a lot of really wonderful times, and my kids are great, and I think that they're, I think they've been very well-parented, I do think, I mean, I don't, not to,

you know, throw my back out patting myself, but I do think I learned a lot from the mistakes of my parents, you know, or from what I think was just kind of, you know, if you want to be generous, you can just say sort of the naivete of that age, you know, because it's, and there's a lot of that, like people didn't know any better, which sometimes, you know, that only works up to a certain point i mean you ought to instinctively know that to get a five-year-old to not tell his you know to try and talk his mother out of suicide is not a healthy thing to do no it's not but you know what i find interesting about being a parent but you seem to have avoided this is you you think you've learned all these lessons as a child and that you're not going to be that parent.

Yeah. And I think I horribly, in too many ways, I became, in spite of hating myself for it, I became my parents. And in some ways, my daughter is becoming me. Oh, really? I think it's really, yeah, yeah. You know, she's pushy and she also gets to the airport, you know, five, six hours early. And, you know, she started to see a psychologist. And the psychologist said, you know, I can help you with that getting to the airport too out a way too

early thing and chloe said i don't want help with that i love that i don't want to change that yeah but but i did become my mother and that i'm over i was overprotective if my daughter flies to asia i follow on flight aware i follow her plane the whole I'll say, I'll wake sweetie up and go, why would the plane go from 36,000 feet to 35,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific? What's going on here? You know? And I become my dad and that I'm a, you know, happy guy that slaps guys on the back and says, come on, cheer up. And yeah, fuck you.

I don't want to be cheered up or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So but you don't think you became your parents, which is pretty good. I did. No, I try. I tried very hard not to. And I do. And I think and my to be frank, my ex-wife was a big help with that in

that she made me kind of see a lot of, and it was a very thankless job for her. And one that I, you know, wish I had caught on to earlier where she kind of made me see like, Hey, this is, this is not a healthy, a healthy environment, or this is not a healthy a healthy environment or this is not a healthy dynamic that's going on and it you know and at first and after years literally years of me going like no what are you talking about come on it's no that's just it's just how it is and going oh yeah you're you're right and um but i just kind of i think in i did kind of and also lots and lots of therapy has helped me to, um, a get anger issue. You know, like I'm not, I used to have a bad temper. I don't, I'd kind of, I try to one of my, you know, I'm not a big, you know, saying kind of guy, but, uh, one of my,

one of my sort of axioms is work for peace. Like you just, you got to work for peace. So when you, you know, in a household, whatever you do should be working for peace as opposed, like, cause, cause what do you, cause what, to me, the bottom line is always like, what, what is there in winning when you're talking about in your own family dynamic and with the people that you love and you live with like i'm gonna win like right who who what the fuck are you talking about there's no winning you know there's just there's just everybody is happier and more peaceful or not you know um and i i made a point, to like one thing that I noticed early on that I had an

instinct to do. And I'm happy that I did is to really respect my kids, like to, even as, as individuals, cause I just think a lot of people, they just, they, their kids are like, I don't know, like, like little versions of them. And so that they decide like, no no what i want is what you are going to do and i right we never really did that very much we kind of and you know and i wasn't afraid to apologize when i fucked up and i would write up you know i just a couple years ago told my son you're the first kid everything we do is the first time like we've never had a kid as old as you so every step of

your development is going to be our first time dealing with it that's right we're going to fuck up and you know you know kind of trust that we know what we're doing but but also know like yeah this is the first time we've ever had you know a kid go to college or a kid start smoking weed or what, you know, all of that stuff, you know? Yeah, that's really true. I was lucky. My wife had two daughters when we got married. So I had two training daughters before. So they were already broken in some other way.

Well, they were broken in some other way. And because I was not their father, I called myself their best friend. So I was never the disciplinarian. And actually, I was often on their side. And I was able to be because they were my... And I didn't want to call them my stepdaughters because I didn't think that was fair to their father. So I called them... I was their best friend. So I had these two training daughters and that

was really helpful. But I do want to say about peace in the family, I have this hat company. Whenever I come up with a good idea for a hat thing, I'll buy 20 copies. Yeah. I just put in an order for a hat that says, think it, don't say it. Uh-huh. And if my wife never said, just thought, Barry, that was a stupid thing to say. Right. But don't say, Barry, that was stupid.

I know it was stupid. Yeah. We're past it. So I want everyone in my household to have this app so we can look at each other and go, that's right. Think it, don't say it. And boy, would we all be happier. That's one of the, I feel like, biggest lessons of being a grownup. because especially I found after, after a childhood of, of, you know, taking what I was given and trying to be a good soldier and stuff,

and then reaching kind of a young adulthood where I was like, no, wait, fuck this. I, you know, I need to say what's on my mind and then get being married for you know a number of years and then realizing oh no no i don't need to say everything like i there's important things i need to say but but yeah they're like the real sort of fine tuning of maturity is like oh no no no there's actually the wise choice a lot of the time and also the selfish choice this and i mean selfish in the best possible way what's best for me is to just shut the fuck up. Shut up and don't say it. Think it, don't say it.

Yeah, yeah. Now, where did you grow up? I grew up in Illinois. I grew up in the Midwest. I was born in Michigan. My dad was a college professor. They divorced when I was young because my dad came out of the closet when I was four. And we moved back in with my grandparents in Illinois.

And then I grew up in kind of rural Illinois. It was 70 miles from Chicago, but at that time it might as well have been 150. Now it's kind of more all a suburban sprawl. But in those days, it was a pretty small town. So yeah, but it was, it was, you know, it was, uh, I think there were a lot of, I think there were a lot of, um, adult children in my childhood and, you know, and I think that a lot of people that weren't necessarily given the things that they needed. And then they kind of just kept that paradigm rolling, you know, like, well, this is what we know. Let's keep this up, you know?

But well, and, and you growing up then, I mean, when did you, did you have any sort of like solace in like, were there other relatives that you could kind of find some peace with or was it kind of find some peace with? Or was it kind of always? It was just the opposite, because another character in my book is called CM the CM, which is Cousin Mike the Child Molester. Oh, boy. And for several years, he lived on my, in the same couch in the living room where I discovered years later that Susan had sat in magenta panties. So that was an issue. I mean, he was a child molester. He molested relatives, friends in the apartment building, myself. And when my dad was in his mid-90s,

one of the people that had been molested is a journalist, became a journalist, but lived in my building. And he wrote this article about being molested as a child. And I emailed him and I said, emailed him and I said, hey, was that CM the CM that you're writing about? And he said, yes. And we went to breakfast together. I hadn't seen him in 50 years. Yeah. I heard horror stories. And I went up to my father's apartment. I said, Dad, can I see you? And I because I had never confronted him about it and what they knew, what they didn't know. You assume they know something, but you're not sure how much. And I said, Dad, did you hate Kelly was my mother, his wife. Her maiden name was Kelly Kellerman.

Did you hate Kelly so much that you let cousin Mike live with us just so that Kelly would have someone to drive her to the Paramus Park Mall and to antique stores because dad was never home. Yeah, yeah. And so I said, what's up with this dad? And dad said, well, look, there are three things you should know. No. One, child molestation didn't have the same stigma back then that it has now. So that makes you go tilt a little bit, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then he says, don't forget your mother was so upset and depressed because of all the affairs I was having that, you know, I thought having Mike around would cheer her up. That's also a tilt because he's, and then here's where you have to turn the game off and throw your hands up and say, I lose. He said, and here's the thing. I never thought Mike was molesting you, I only thought he was playing with your penis.

Wow. So at that point you go, you know, game tilt, game set match. And I said to that, you know, well, thanks for the information because you hope against hope. They didn't really know. Yeah. Basically what he's saying is, oh yeah, I knew, but I knew it didn't really know yeah yeah basically what he's saying is oh yeah i knew yeah but yeah i knew it didn't matter enough it didn't matter enough i also like that when you confront him with this he very quickly has three reasons why he's blameless it isn't like he says like well i'm blameless because this and then it occurs to him later like i don't know there's three reasons like you know i got a threefold reason of how this is not my fault. Right. And so that's got to, you know, that's got to like color just everything in terms of, especially like your

adolescence and your own sort of, you know, maturity. Well, you know, the truth is it did and it didn't and i don't want to make light of it but i am a totally uh well good functioning adult i make a living i tell people what to do and i really at some point want to talk to you about how brilliant you are in big trouble oh thank you very much really brilliant and oh thank you your partner was jake kasdan i know his son yeah who's uh but boy you two are great but i swear andy we got the raw deal with that movie because we were going to come out a couple weeks right after 9-11 yeah yeah and our movie was about someone who steals a nuclear bomb and blows it and uses it by accident. So it was the wrong time to come out. But

so anyway, my point is, and we'll get back to you and how brilliant. All right. All right. I can. It affected me, but it didn't make me unavailable as a dad or a person or a film director or a cinematographer or whatever. So I don't want to say it addled me, but I also don't want to say, oh, it was all fun. And in the book, I deal with it, but, and sometimes it's uncomfortable and sometimes it's funny, just like life. Yeah, yeah. Now you, you know, you mentioned that you went to an arts high school. Were you a creative kid? I mean, was it something, at least, did your parents at least kind of foster that in you? Yeah. And I think we might get into this when we talk about the three questions. Well, we're already talking about it.

Are we? This is the where you come from part. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, the great thing about my parents, and they were artistic in their own ways. My mother was the stage manager of the stage door canteen during world war two, according to her. So yeah, yeah. That, that may or may not be true. Um, cause she was a pathological liar.

But one of the great things about my parents is they never said you should be a doctor, a lawyer, uh, doctor, a lawyer, anything like that. My mother said, you should go into the arts. She was an art teacher in my elementary school, and she said, you should be some sort of artist. And my father, God love him, said, figure out what you want to do in life that will bring you pleasure, and somehow you'll figure out how to want to do in life that will bring you pleasure. And somehow you'll figure out how to make a living doing it. Don't take a job. And he was a freelancer, a salesman all his life. I've always been a freelancer. I've never, you know, punched a clock or anything. I was a

French horn player. I went to music and art high school in Manhattan and was the best high school French horn player in New York City. Oh, wow. Which means New York State. Yeah, no, I, but here's the reason why. I wanted to play the trumpet. This is in 1960, so I'm seven years old. No, maybe it's 63. I'm 10. I wanted to play the trumpet. And my mother says, there are a million trumpet players. But if you play the French horn, and in eight years, this Vietnam thing becomes a real serious war, and you're a good French horn player, and you're a good French horn player, you'll be in the army band and not in the infantry. Wow.

So she was really very protective, but kind of ahead of the game. That's kind of like in terms of paranoia, that's like paranoia as like a beneficial organism, like a beneficial germ. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. No, so her fear was always her strength. Her weakness was her strength. Yeah. And she literally said to a 10-year-old, if you're drafted in eight years and this little skirmish becomes a war, you will have an out and it will be that you'll be in the army band right and she said and then you can become a trumpet player later because it's the same mouthpiece it isn't the same mouthpiece you can't change instruments if in in the brass section like that right but i ended up being the best french horn player in New York City high school system. So I went to music and art high school instead of George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan, where I would have been mugged and killed.

It was a dangerous place. So mom knew. Yeah, yeah. Now, did you take your French horn playing past high school, or was that kind of... No, you know, I knew I wasn't going to make a living as a horn player, nor did I want to. I wanted to do something different. And truthfully, I didn't want to go to Juilliard or anything like that. And I didn't see myself doing that for a living. So I did take it.

I spent my senior year in college at Hampshire College. And I took it up there because I thought the girls would be impressed by seeing this French horn sitting in my room. Yeah. I was very proud of Hampshire because over the year, I had sex with a lot of women and many of them became lesbians after having sex with me which i took as wow i could be wrong but i took it as a compliment because i assumed after me no other man could satisfy them you're you were the pinnacle of the mountain of of maleness and uh you know once you've been to the pinnacle, what are you going to go? You're going to climb down? No. Yeah. You're going to just jump to a different mountain altogether. There you go. Precisely it. Well, was it tough to get away from your folks? Like when

you went away to college? Well, my mother, when I was graduating high school, my mother said, if I went to sleep away school, others call it college, she would commit suicide. Yeah. She pulled out the suicide card again. So I spent three years, the first three years I went to NYU, they had a campus in the Bronx. I would drive there Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday and only take political science classes because it met between nine and two and I could get 30 credits a year and only go to college three days a week. It was like day camp. It had no dorms or anything like that. And it got you out of the house. Not really, because I was living at home. Oh, I see.

Yeah, because mom said she'd commit suicide. So I was living at home in Washington Heights. And then they sold their campus. And they said, you have to go downtown for your senior year. I said, I don't want to. That wasn't the deal I made. And they said, all right, go to any college you want. Transfer the credits back to NYU. And it'll be like your senior year abroad, but at any college

you want. And I thought I get to go away to college and mom commits suicide, two birds, one stone. This is fantastic. So I went to hand. It's not your fault. In her eulogy, you could say, thanks, NYU. Like your real estate deal just killed my mother. Or I could say I gave mom what she wanted, because let's face it, she was not happy as a living person. So I went to Hampshire College for my senior year in Amherst, Massachusetts, but mom reneged and she remained alive for decades longer. Now, how does that transfer to filmmaking? At what point do you start to think, I'm going to be a filmmaker?

It was totally accidental. Yeah. I do think that whatever I did, I would be good at it. And like if I had to become a plumber, you would be saying, well, let's get Barry. He really, the last time he was, he's great. Yeah. Or if I was a DJ or if I was a long distance truck driver, I think I would, I would be responsible enough to be good at it. What do you, what do you attribute that to? Because I have a similar thing. Like if I do something, I'm going to do it well. And I think somehow it is like this self-sufficiency that was

instilled in me by kind of being expected to be an adult too young. Yeah. I think it was A, being an only child. Yeah. So I had to sort of create my own world. B, my father sort of being a salesman and often starting businesses and going into chapter 11. I just, he was always working seven days a week. And, and I think that, I mean, I think the best thing I could ever do is be a FedEx driver. I would be the best FedEx guy. I would find you, or I would say, Andy, listen, I heard you're going on vacation. Do you want to leave me your keys so I can drop this stuff and no one will see it? I would be the best at that. But to answer your question, I thought I wanted to be a still photographer but um and my idol was this uh

photo journalist named Elliot Erwitt uh and I eventually went to work for him by accident and I'm now married to the woman who was married to him when I met him but that's a different story than I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, baby. And, but I didn't think I'd be really admired that guy. Man, that is really taking hero worship one extra step, but seriously, the weird thing is when I got out of high school, college and graduate film school, the first call I made was to Elliot Erwitt to see if he needed an assistant. Each time he said, my stable is full. Each time. High school, college, graduate school. And then years later, I was shooting industrials with my 16 millimeter camera. And the scapher said, there's this guy who needs an assistant. He just bought all the

60 millimeter equipment. I think you'd be great for him. He doesn't, he wants to get into the film business bubble. And it was Elliot Erwin. Oh, wow. in 2020. And it was fantastic. And then Elliot and Susan, I became Susan's best girlfriend. Yeah. I would read Self Magazine and say to her, have you and Elliot tried the Today Sponge? It's a new kind of contraceptive. And they split up and it was not an easy split up. And Elliot said to everyone, you're either my friend or hers. And I said, I pick her. Yeah. So then we were friends for several years.

And then eventually it just and we were friends because we were such good friends. We didn't want to screw that up. Yeah. And eventually, years later, we became lovers. And then we got married. We've been married for 31 years. So in other words, you screwed it up. I screwed it up.

I screwed up our friendship. Yeah, we were trying so hard to not screw it up. And you screwed it up. I screwed it up. But now with this new hat that says, think it, don't say it. I think we're good for another 30 years, I swear. So literally for lack of anything better to do and realizing I didn't want to be a still photographer, my mother said to me a year after I graduated at Hampshire and was working

at Frenchies Color Lab making Seba Chrome prints. My mother said, why don't you go to film school? You like writing, you like still photography. Film is just a lot of still frames put together, which it isn't. And she said, and dad and I will pay for your graduate school, which of course they didn't. And so I went to NYU and over those three years of graduate graduate school, which of course they didn't. And so I went to NYU and over those three years of graduate film school, I discovered I had an ability to be a cameraman. And that, you know, that it was really new lenses and knew a lot of the technical end from my years of wanting to be a still photographer. And this is way before video.

You know, this is 16 millimeter. When I got out of film school, I bought a used 16 millimeter camera because A, I felt if I owned a camera, I could call myself a cameraman without feeling like a dilettante. Yes. And B, my father had said,

figure out what you want to do in life and somehow you'll figure out how to make a living doing it yeah yeah and the other thing i learned from my dad and i recommend this to every young person who asked me how to move up in the film business declare what you are and you will be that person. I never worked my way up as a camera assistant and a camera operator. I said, I am a cameraman and I only shot. I never worked my way up. And I didn't pull focus or never pull mags or anything like that. And I had no respect for the camera crew.

When I became a cinematographer, I always thought they were the whiners. I always went to drink with the grips and the electricians and the manly you and I have, I mean, don't you feel you declared yourself to a certain extent? Or do you feel you worked your way up to hard knocks? Well, I mean, hard knocks. I mean, hard knocks is, I mean, anyone that calls improv class and doing improv shows hard knocks is right. Has had it pretty soft. Cause it's not, you know, it's not like I was, you know, at the front of, you know, in, in, in Laos or something, you know what I mean? I, but I, I, I did take a lot of solace and direction.

And this is one thing. This is the thing that, like, I think there's kind of a common thought that, well, you just have to believe in yourself. And I just kind of feel like, no, it's kind of good to take the notes of others. I just kind of feel like, no, it's kind of good to take the notes of others. Like, you know, like if people if if everyone around you doesn't seem to think you're good at something, odds are you're not that good at. Right. Whereas if you're surrounded by people who tell you, hey, you're really pretty good at this. And it manifests itself in different ways. Like I remember I was part of an improv theater. It's still there in Chicago called the annoyance theater. And, uh, it was actually the idea of Jill Soloway who, uh, uh, you know,

the writer producer, Jill Soloway, who was in that, in that group at the time, she had an idea that we would have our own new year's Eve party, sort of like award ceremony. And, uh, the, you know, like the 99 cent store and they had all these duck candles, like little white duck candles. And so they decided, they bought a bunch of them, called them the duckies.

And I won two duckies that night, which totally, yeah, I won like supporting actor and best male improviser. And I was, you know, out of the whole theater. And that was really, that really was a turning point for me to feel like, oh, wow, if everybody thinks this high, I mean, I knew I was good at it, but I didn't, I didn't know that like, I was that highly thought of by my peers. So, you know, I definitely, I needed some kind of input from other people. But I also, too, one thing I noticed, because I went to film school, I went to Columbia College in Chicago, because I couldn't, I couldn't, there was still still this I couldn't commit to being a performer because it just seemed too too precious and too right to up your own ass and everything

but I thought I do like working in movies and there was a lot of movies being shot in Chicago which made it seem more accessible to me that like I can work in the film industry in Chicago. But I started to notice when I got out and started working mainly on commercials and industrials, all the none of the directors started out getting coffee. You know what I mean? They were either they were either film professors that made some short films or they were editors. Maybe they got coffee for editors, but nobody there had started out as a PA on sets and then became a director. And we're just talking about commercials too. And there's a lot of ad agency people. And that to me was it, because I still, I have directed some commercials

and I like directing. And it's like, for me, it's like a fun problem solving game because it is just it's a series. It's like a linear series of decisions. And you just you just every you don't have to know everything. You just have to have a good answer for every question that you're asked. And I kind of had that sense that I'm never going to become a director this way. And that was one of the things that was floating around in my mind. So I thought I might as well just be a performer now because, A, it's fun. And then when I started doing it, I realized that that was my tribe anyway. That was my people.

Right. But you graduated college. Well, sort of. I mean, I didn't get a diploma, but I went there for four years. Right. Okay. And when I got out, I realized, too too that, you know, for film school, a diploma doesn't really,

doesn't really matter. Yeah. So I figured my fallback, even if the film business fell through, was writing ad copy. And I can, you don't need a degree for that either. So.

And there are a lot of big ad agencies in chicago or the war back then still are yeah it's funny what you're saying about directing because i tell people that all directing is is having opinions about everything yeah and that no prop guy when the prop guy says you want the green one or the red one they don't want you to say, Oh, I don't care. You choose. You just have to say the green one, even if you don't care, even if you're wrong, they just want answers. And then Thursday night, you've run out of answers for the week and you get home and your wife says, what do you want for dinner? And you say, you know what you,

I don't want to answer another because I still have Friday ahead of me yeah yeah I'll take a book now I what was some of your earliest where I I saw something in the book that you actually directed some porno now I shot I shot I shot nine feature-length pornos in nine, which I'm very proud of because. Wow. Yeah. Feature length. You mean an hour and a half?

Yeah. An hour and a half. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? I figured out a way to do it because I had gone to film school. So I was the guy who brought block shooting into pornos.

Into porn. Wow. So. Explain block shooting into porno. Into porn. Wow. So explain block shooting just for people. Block shooting is, let's say you and I'm directing you and you're in six episodes of nine. We shoot out all your stuff in each episode. So we'll shoot scene three in episode one, shoot seven in episode two. So once we have you, we'll shoot all the scenes with you. Well, on the porno, what I did is I once we lit a set because all the sets were in a loft on 17th Street and Fifth.

We'd shoot the bathroom or the bedroom or the kitchen. So it'd be scene one from movie two, scene seven from movie six, but any scene that took place in the bedroom, we would shoot and bring actors in and out for the nine days. And in fact, when the producer director, Dick of Mr. Mustard Productions, put them all together, he discovered that one entire movie every sex scene took place on a desk because he wasn't paying any attention to but listen people fuck on a desk let them fuck on a desk it's easy exactly and we're lit uh no it was truly horrible you You know, if you...

Was that your camera? Was that why you got this gig? Because it was your camera? Yes. And the reason I took the job is because it literally paid... We paid... My buddy and I paid five grand for the camera. We rented it for 400 a day for nine days. That's 3,600 bucks.

We paid for more than half of the camera right out of film store wow so but it was horrible truly the smells are disgusting i always say that if they release pornos with smell-o-vision it would destroy the and then i realized it wouldn't destroy the business because just like they loop the dialogue they would have like looped vanilla and cherry smells yes yes in the theater everyone would like teenagers would think that fucking smells like cookies baking yeah that's right yeah and it doesn't it does not no so are you in you're in new york this whole time is that kind of when you start to graduate to cinematography for beyond industrials and beyond sort of the smaller projects? Yes. I was living both in Upper Manhattan and also I lived for many years in East Village.

And then someone got killed on my block and a friend got me to move to the Upper West Side. And then I bought a starter house in East Hampton. My theory being if people thought I lived in East Hampton, they would hire me as a cinematographer. You'll seem classy. Yeah. Wow. This guy's good. He's owns that. So, so yeah. And then one night, again, due to buying this camera, Again, due to buying this camera, I was at a party where the daughter who was throwing the party, her father actually was the CEO, president, and one other thing of Young and Rubicam, Connecticut wasps. And there are two Jews at this party, me at this end of the room, and a guy that looks like Howard Stern at the other end of the room. And that's Joel Cohen. So Joel and I smell each other. We smell the Jewish vibe. And we start to talk. And he had recently graduated undergraduate film school. And he and his brother, Ethan, had written this script called Blood Simple.

Oh, wow. And they were going to shoot a trailer. Joel was the assistant editor. The only job he had before he became the director that he became for Sam Raimi on Evil Dead. And Sam said to Joel, shoot a trailer, because Evil Dead was a low budget thing that Sam had done. Shoot a trailer for Blood Simple like it's a finished movie. Because you can't go to dentists and doctors and say, read this script and give me $15,000 for a point. But if you shoot a trailer, you can show the dentist investment group and the

doctor's investing group a trailer. And A, they go, this looks like a real movie. I'll invest. And B, they go, it looks like you know what you're doing. Because so Joel said- And I imagine too, on a very basic human level you those dentists and doctors want to know what happens they're caught up in the trailer yeah i want to see that story i want to see this movie yeah yeah so joel says so ethan and i you know next month are going to shoot this trailer and i said well i own a camera and he said okay you're hired. So Joe hires me to shoot again, just because I own the 16 millimeter use CP 16 reflex camera. So we shoot the trailer. We don't even use my camera. I convinced them to shoot it on 35 millimeter because I thought it would look

better. But had you shot on 35 at that point? Never. Oh, that's great. What a good scam. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guys, you really should shoot on 35. You should shoot on 35. In my experience.

And we went to Furco and rented it over President's weekend. So we rented the camera. We picked up the camera Thursday night for Friday rental. So we had the camera Thursday night, Friday, Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, Sunday, Sunday night, Monday, Monday night, because it was president's weekend and Monday was a holiday. So we got a free day. So we got a free day. So for a one day rental, we had the camera for five days, five nights and four days, shot this amazing looking trailer. It took us a year, but we raised the money to make Blood Simple from dentists and doctors and inventors and stuff.

And literally the first day on the set of Blood Simple, which then eventually gets shown at the, you know, New York Film Festival and all that, was the first day that Joel, Ethan, and I had ever been on a movie set. And that's why I say, declare what you want to be. Ethan had never produced. Joel had never directed outside of film school. I had never seen, except for that one day rental, a 35 millimeter camera. I had never been on a feature movie set and we made blood simple now is there do you have more experienced crew to help you like a more experienced like an ad or somebody to help you with the scheduling and the shot list or anything or is that just is that just you're just winging it no we weren't winging it the ad actually was my ex-girlfriend, Debbie Reinish, who would every day look at the sets we picked and go, I don't want to rain on your parade, but you can't shoot here.

There's not enough room. And we don't know there is. Well, I'm going to rain on your parade because there's not enough room. So there was that. But we did have a professional grip. Yeah. And that really helped me because we moved the camera a great deal and the grips are the guys that build things and move the camera and responsible for laying dolly

track and all that and he was a real grip a real la grip with a handlebar mustache and a cowboy hat and his wife's astrologist. Already a good story. His wife's astrologist said, LA is about to have an earthquake. You've got to get out. Tom and his wife moved to Austin, Texas. Tom starts a sheet rock business that's not going well. And the Jewish kids come from New York City and want to make Blood Simple in Austin, Texas and hire him as a key grip. And he gets to work in the movie business at his home. So we had a great key grip. In fact, he built this rig. There's a shot where Fran McDormand and the camera are locked together. She was the lead in Blood Simple. And we pivot both of them 90 degrees through space. So it looks like since the camera and her are locked together,

it looks like she's not moving at all, but the world is flipping around her. It's a great shot. And Tom designed all this rig with EMT and couples and rigging equipment. And I asked Tom, how did you come up with the idea for the for the rig? And he said, well, I saw something very similar to it in Hustler magazine as a sex device. In fact, if you boys don't mind, I'd love to hold on to this at the end of the show oh my god i can't even imagine how the the technology would apply to both medium

well uh you know uh we gave it to him at the end of the show yeah sure there you go buddy there you go buddy well that's i mean that's an amazing movie and that as as a film student that was a very sort of that was one of those movies that made you feel like wow this is coming from nowhere i didn't know anything about you guys but just like wow what a striking poised uh kind of created or fully realized world from nowhere and kind of you know totally from nowhere and because we were from nowhere we hadn't done anything before and i think because we hadn't done it before we felt very free to do all this very unusual stuff. You know, one of the things that Joel and Ethan and I sort of agreed on right away is that the camera could

be a character in the movie. Yeah. That it's not just a recording device. It's actually can tell a story. So we did shots like there's a shot where the camera tracks along the top of a bar, but there's a drunk asleep on the bar and the camera just booms up over the drunk. And it's so self-conscious. It's so, but you know, our investors hated the movie. They saw it one night. We rented a cinema on 57th street called the Bombay Cinema in Manhattan. Two-thirds walked out.

They didn't realize it was a comedy. They didn't get the sort of self-conscious nature of the storytelling. And we were devastated. We finished the movie. It got accepted to the New York Film Festival somehow. We had never had a decent screening. And I said to Joel and Ethan, and this is in the book, I talk about Blood Simple for a couple of chapters. I said, hey, I think that the critics are watching Blood Simple right now. We're across the street. Let's go over lincoln center and and and see what the reaction

is and joe and ethan said oh please don't back don't make us do it please not again we don't want to see that movie ever ah come on we as we're going into the theater we're hearing laughter yeah and literally ethan says it's the wrong theater and we continue to and then we get closer and we hear more laughter and joel says it must be the wrong time and we open the back door and we see that there's a beautiful print of blood simple and the critics are loving it and that night the new y York Times, Janet Maslin wrote the review in the New York Times. And she went on and on about the movie said Joe and Ethan are going to become famous film directors. And that Barry Sonnenfeld, who had never shot

anything was what she didn't say. I'm just editorializing it, will become a famous cinematographer and went on for the last two paragraphs about the way it was shot. And suddenly that night, Joel and Ethan and I had careers. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Now does LA pull you in after that? Does LA drag you away from New York or? We've never. Sweetie and I have rented 11 houses in L.A. But never. Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing about L.A. I don't want to put it down. I really like working in L.A. The stages are great. The crews are good. You can get cranes at 11 o'clock Friday night because you suddenly, you know, it's where

they make movies. And I really like working there, but I never, ever want to be there if I don't have a job. I don't want someone coming up to me at Toscana and going, how many years ago did you retire? I didn't retire. I'm still not retired. No, I get that. I get that. I live in Burbank. So you see how much I want to, you know, I mean, sometimes I do wonder, or I do worry, like, I feel like, am I a little too curmudgeonly for my own good? I do have to retire at some point. So maybe I should not be so curmudgeonly about all these fucking phony assholes. Uh, so, um, then you're, now you're a DP and you're working at some point you go, okay, and now I'm going to direct. Nope. No, I had, uh, I know in,

in the same way I had no interest in the film business until I got in the film business. I was very happy being a cinematographer. I was really good at it. I designed all the shots for all the movies I shot. I mean, I worked with the Coen brothers and worked with Danny. You know, I shot Blood Simple Raising Arizona and Miller's Crossing. I shot Throw Mama from the Train in Big. I shot When Harry Met Sally and Misery. And I shot another movie that my credit on it is called Lighting Consultant, which is three o'clock high.

But that's Phil Giuano directed because I wasn't in the union and the union wouldn't give me a cinematography credit i was very happy as a cameraman i worked with manly men who were you know grips and electricians and i could point and say let's put a light on that rooftop and they would yeah yeah you know that's pretty great it's pretty great. It's pretty great. Yeah. And I felt totally in control of my craft. You know, things looked exactly the way I wanted them to. I, I use the camera, as I said, as a storytelling device, which was my way of being an actor in a movie without having to act, you know, you know, on on Raising Arizona there's all that camera going

over fountains and cars and up ladders and it's a character in the movie you know and then do you know Scott Rudin at all have you worked with Scott I don't know him but I know of him obviously but yeah so he even then he was considered one of the best producers with immaculate taste. And like my mother was a certain amount of pathological liar. He screamed a lot and he he sent me the script when I was finishing Misery. I was in L.A. living at the time at the Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny. Yeah. And they said, Scott Rund dropped off the script. He wants you to read it in two hours and meet him at Hugo's, which is some restaurant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a health food restaurant.

Yeah. Scrambled egg and pasta. Yeah. Yeah. And so i read the script and i had grown up with the new yorker magazine you know if you're jewish and you live on the upper west side or washington heights uh you read the new yorker and or your parents did so i was very aware of charles adams's cartoons and i love them because they were incredibly visual. And you had to find where the joke was. You would sometimes look at the cartoon and go, I don't get it. And then go, oh, wait, he's got a pair of scissors. Oh, that's really funny.

Yeah. So I told Rudin that I wasn't looking to direct. And I was happy being a cinematographer. And I said, and besides why me? And he said, well, I went to Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. They both passed. And I said, well, since all the good ones passed, maybe I'd hire you. I said, thanks. So he said, look, if I can get you the job, will you do it? And I said, I'll do it, but we got to rewrite the script. And he said, Paul Rudnick, I got the guy. So I said, yeah, sure. And he convinced

Orion, which at the time was known as the director friendly studio. You know, they did a lot of great movies, you know, that were all very director driven. So Orion hired me and I became a director. And I think the reason I was successful was one is I like to answer questions and like to tell people what to do. And it was used to that as a cameraman. But also the brilliant thing I did, if I must say so myself, was I always believe hire people that are better than you because you're going to get all the credit anyway. I never understand why directors like hire like bad A.D.'s and bet. No higher people. So good. You'll get the credit. So I hired a really good cameraman at Owen Roizen, who had shot all the French Connection movies and Tootsie. And because I wanted someone so good that he would force me away from the camera and force me to work with actors. other cameramen who became directors none of them were successful because they just moved their camera operator up to dp which meant they didn't want to give up being the dp right so so by hiring

owen roysman i was forced to hang out with actors who and i thought i wouldn't know how to talk to them and then I realized oh it's like being a dad yeah yeah she needs that he needs this she but really at the end of the day all you ever have to say to an actor is can we do one twice as fast yeah suddenly it's so much better it is hilarious how that is that there's so much you know because you know, what I've been doing the last eight or nine, 10 years is the Conan show. And we do, you know, we do little bits. I, I'm not, I haven't done anything long and narrative in a I do animation voices. I always just think, come on, you know, like, I feel like such an old, old hand. I'm just like, come on, come on, just hurry. Just go say it faster, faster, faster. Because it's the way people talk. Yeah. B if actors talk fast enough,

it takes away their ability to act. Yes. And all you want is to not see acting. Yes. You want to be B. You want to. And literally, my wife is required. We're in our screening room. If we ever go to a movie theater, she has to sit on my right with her hand on my arm. Oh, we just lost the camera. With my hand on my arm so I can't make the international faster symbol. Because, listen, I loved Breaking Bad. Yeah.

But I claim I could have done those five years in one year. Do you have any regrets about becoming a director as opposed to just a cameraman? Do you, you know? I have no regrets. I really now, which I didn't as a cinematographer, I now love actors. Yeah. I just love being around them. I love what they do. I so appreciate what they do. I made the mistake, you know, for three years, I was a showrunner on a series of unfortunate events. And I put myself in every episode as a painting. Yeah. You know, and I thought that was a great idea until there was a flashback scene. And I was a painting of Alfre Woodard's husband.

Yeah. And now there's a flashback with her and Ike. So I actually had to act in this scene because I never thought when I was a painting that years later we would write her into him into the scene and I was so bad and I and it's so weird because I know what I want from actors talk fast and don't hit the joke and just be the situation so and and Alfre is saying don't worry about it honey don't worry just it, honey. Don't worry. Just say the lines. And my wife, my daughter and the video assist guy were behind the wall. And whenever I got the line out properly, they'd go like, yes.

But I was but my point is now I love actors. Yeah, yeah. I love being a director. I love being a television showrunner because then you're even more in charge of everything. Sure, sure. So, and you know, I always tell my daughter, she should be a director because she's highly opinionated and knows what she wants. But she said, you know what, dad, I watched you for the last 26 years on sets and it seems too stressful and i'm not interested but yeah yeah i i love directing uh yeah and i didn't

think i would is there how what would you say from that first from from that first adams family movie to now like how have you evolved as a director? Like what's the biggest change between that Barry and the Barry that directs today? Well, Barry, in many ways, I'm the same director. But I'll tell you what I learned on Adam's Family. I learned from two people. One is from Scott Rudin. And what Scott taught me is that everyone's afraid. Every studio is afraid that everyone's afraid. Every studio is afraid.

Everyone's afraid. And if you're not afraid and just say, I want this, you'll get it because everyone's too afraid. So Scott would always say, if I can't get Maggie Smith, I'm not doing this movie. And any normal person would say, really, Scott, you're really not going to do the movie if you can have Maggie Smith in this one scene where she's a receptionist for one day of shooting? Yeah. Fuck you, Scott. But instead they go, okay, okay, you can have Maggie Smith. And the other thing I learned was from the editor, Dee Dee Allen, who cut not only Adam's family, but, you know, all the Arthur.

not only Adam's family, but, you know, all the Arthur, uh, he, she cut, um, uh, Serpico and, uh, what's the one with Attica, you know, with, uh, uh, dog day afternoon, dog day afternoon and Bonnie and Clyde and reds, which is that sometimes when your third act is not working, third act is not working, don't touch the third act, touch the second act. And I really learned how fluid film is and how you can manipulate it. And I remember saying to Didi, I said, should we lose this scene? This is about five months into cutting. And Didi said, yeah. And I said, well, how many months have you known that? And she said, oh, about three. I said, why didn't you say anything? She said, just like a good psychiatrist. She said, you needed to discover when you didn't need the scene. Wow. And so I learned that if a scene can be taken out of the movie and the movie still works, it shouldn't be in the movie oh yeah it's so brutal it's such a brutal truth and it's such you don't want to because it's the same thing i mean on a smaller level like when we

do comedy bits a writer thinks of it a writer writes it produces it gets props makes props and costumes makes costumes and then it just kind of doesn't it's not great and you just kind of it seems so brutal to go no no but it you know it's the the life of the entire organism that really matters you know yeah totally agree yeah yeah now what made you want to write the book at this point and part of was jerry seinfeld oh really uh? Jerry is our neighbor here in Telluride, and he and his wife and his kids come up about two weeks a year, you know, over Christmas, New Year's. And he, this is years ago, and he had heard all my, you know,

they come up to watch Academy Screeners, and I have a great screening room, you know, it's really great subwoofers. And so he heard all my horror stories about directing Men in Black 3 and how we didn't have scripts and the producers weren't supporting me and the studio wasn't supporting me. And he came up on Christmas Day and said, you know what, you should become a stand up. And I said, really? And he said, you would love stand up because you're totally in charge. You fail or succeed based on your own work. Your audience tells you what's working, what's not. You try it again. You rewrite it. But there's no outside force saying, put in the scene where Will Smith is in drag in Wild Wild West or anything like that he said you would love it and I said aren't I like way too old to start my career and stand up and he

said oh yeah you're way too old it will never happen you won't make any money I'm just saying you would like doing it yeah you should do it yeah go to some open mics here and tell your wife. Yeah, there are a lot of those. But it made me think that it might be enjoyable to do something where I indeed wasn't being told what to do, where I was in charge of everything. And so I had written the porno chapter 20 years ago for something to do. I had just one weekend written it. So I asked Sweetie to read the porn chapter. And for me, there's nothing that makes me happier than seeing my wife laugh at something I've said or done. It's joyful.

Same with your children. She was shaking the bed with laughter. So I said, okay, I can write. So I had Jerry telling me, do stand up. Sweetie read the script. And then a guy named David Granger, who is the editor-in-chief of Esquire magazine, left Esquire. And for 10 years, I wrote a column in Esquire every month called The Digital Man, where I reviewed iPhones and GPS navs. And I really enjoyed that.

And Granger said, do you have a book in you? And I said, you know, I might. And I gave him the porn chapter. And he said, write me two more chapters and we can sell it. So I wrote a chapter called Fear of Flying about my plane crash at Van Nuys Airport in 1999. And also wrote Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, the chapter where I'm page at Madison Square Garden and the title of the book. We went out with those three chapters to six New York publishing houses. And I had never written anything, didn't think I was a writer. And all six said, we want to buy the book. All six said, only if you write it and there's no ghostwriter, because I have a very specific voice. Yes, yes.

And a certain ironic twist. And so we picked Hachette. And I wrote this book and it got an amazingly great review in both the New York times and the wall street journal. Wow. And like, I'm so thrilled and, you know, a lot of Yiddish papers have been calling me because there's certain Jewish things in it. But now I'm a writer and I could go to the typewriter and you're a writer. And I could write 40 pages a day. In fact, the book was twice as long. And just like I think that movie shouldn't be longer than 90 minutes, I cut out half

the chapters. Chapters I love. That's a second book. The second book. Yeah, yeah. Wow. That wasn't the intention, but I believe that if something can, if the book can work without the chapter, get rid of it. Just like a movie. Yeah. So what's next for you? What's, I mean, what, what do you, where do you want to go from here? What are you not doing that you want to do? I was waiting for you to pretend you were Toscana

and you were going to ask me if I was retired. No, no, I know you're not. I know you're not. I can see the, I can see the saddle rascal in the back. That's not of a retired man vehicle there. Saddle Rascal. That's not of a retired man vehicle there. Yeah. I love that phrase. Saddle Rascal is genius, by the way. I'm going to get a nameplate for it, in fact.

Well, first of all, I'm friends with Rob Reiner. I shot both Misery and When Harry Met Sally. And Rob and Warner Brothers Television are in negotiation with me to option my book. Oh, wow. Because I think there's a version of the book where there are several Barry's, you know, there's young Barry, there's middle-aged Barry, there's older Barry, and how you learn why older Barry wears two watches and has three phones and gets to the airport six hours too early because you cut to young Barry and he has no electricity and his father stole his silver dollar collection to pay Con Edison, you know? So anyway, so there's that. And I have several.

I love being a showrunner. And if you ever have a chance to work for Netflix, that's where you want to be. Yeah. They are the best. They really are. So I have several other, you know, you always have projects and they never come to fruition.

And I've got someone writing this and some this and I've optioned this. But until it happens. But I will say that I'm really excited because of the three years Sweetie and I were in Vancouver, we got to become permanent residents of Canada. Oh, wow. And we love Vancouver. And I always try to get any show I'm working on to Vancouver so we can, A, live someplace that isn't America at the moment and B, someplace that's kind of beautiful and we love. So. So it's a great town. I've always. Yeah. I've always loved whenever I've had to work up there. And that's been, that is like, you know, I've had a steady gig for eight or nine years now, which is a blessing. I mean, I'm not a religious person. I don't know a better word than a blessing, but, but yeah, that is one thing that I miss is having that opportunity to go just as, you know, like a little field trip, go work up there for a few you know and and and

you get to have the fantasy of i live here even though you're right yeah no no exactly and do you do stand-up ever do you no i never was i never was a stand-up i i came from improv i don't like i don't particularly like being on stage by myself got it i tried stand-up for a while because it just seemed like it's there. And I know a lot of people, like I know a lot of friends of mine that were improvisers and actors who at this point in their life, they can go out and make some money. They come up with a half hour stand-up and they can go make some money. I thought maybe I should do that. And it was actually in the middle of hosting at a sketch comedy festival in San Francisco. I was on stage hosting a night of Conan writers and standups that had appeared on Conan. And so hosting a night of standups and in the middle of my like 10,

15 minute opening, I realized, yeah, I don't like this. I just stopped. I was like, I don't like doing this. I don't like saying the same thing over and over. Like that's one of the big things. I don't like saying the same thing over and over. I, I like to surprise myself and I like to surprise other people with, you know, the stuff that just occurs. Um, that makes total sense yeah i i know i'm not i'll even like as an actor i don't like to give people warning that i'm gonna do something you know when it's that that little spot where you're supposed to improvise something or come up with a new joke yeah i don't want i want to i want to get you know even if they break i break, I think it's better. It's better for them to see it, to get them to see it firsthand. And I agree that specialness of like everybody hearing it for the first time, you know, so.

Now, do you act do acting gigs when you're down from Conan? Yes. Yeah, I just I can do guest spots, but it's kind of hard just cause I can't, you know, it's hard to go do something for two months, you know, it's just, and especially now it's hard to do anything. Uh, now that we're all stuck in our homes, but yeah, no, I, I still do. And I mean, and that's what, you know, that's, that's my retirement plan is, uh, is just being old and fat on camera. You know, somewhere, somebody will hire me to be that. Well, listen, you are, for anyone who's a fan of yours who hasn't seen Big Trouble, you're so good in it.

Thank you. And I got to play twins. I had my first time playing multiples of myself, which I arrested development. They ended up having me play quintuplets. So I've done it before. Really? Yeah, yeah. And they would shoot everyone else out. And it would be Friday night at like three in the morning. And they go, oh, wait, we forgot David's coverage. And he's been waiting in blue for 11 hours. And they say, all right, just put him up against the wall.

Shine a light over here. Ready? Good. Action. And it would never be used. That show, yeah, that show, because I guessed it on that show a couple of times. I mean, when it was still on the air. And there would be, you know, it's 22 minutes, and they would have 40 page scripts, and just for people, for people to know,

it's about a minute a page, if not, like, if you're lazy, it's a minute a page, if you're a good director who says, do it faster, it's 45 seconds a page, yeah, yeah, but still, faster it's 45 seconds a page yeah yeah but still but it's not 40 40 page scripts means there's a lot of people from set painters to actors working and working and knowing like there's a really good chance this is not going to make the light of day and it's you know it's rough so mitch was around when you were doing that yeah oh yeah he was yeah yeah no i mean it was all good stuff it was just there was too much of it yeah yeah no i mean it was all good stuff it was just there was too much of it it was yeah i think it was just too hard you know some people have a hard time killing their babies you know they you know it's like every scene is too good

and they go well let's just shoot it anyway and i you know i'm from the other school i'm from your school which is like no don't make people work more than they have to because they're going to end up resenting it. So that's right. Well, what's the you know, the third question, because we've covered the the first two is the what have you learned? I mean, is there I mean, I imagine you get like you said, you get asked a lot of kind of what's your advice kind of stuff. And it doesn't even necessarily the ones I like best are the ones that don't have anything to do with work. You know? Well, then I'll give you one. Okay. As I don't know that I learned this or it's just comes with age, but I become less angry. yeah and I uh uh maybe it's the hat uh but you know Joan Joan Cusack was in Adam's Family Values and I hadn't seen her for decades and then I hired her in the first season of a series of

unfortunate events so we're talking like 40 years or so oh wow and I, I don't know why I said this, but I said to Joan, isn't it so much better being older? Which is a strange way to reintroduce yourself to an actress, you know? Yes, yes. would appreciate it. Yeah. And Joan said, oh my God, it's fantastic. I'm not jealous anymore. I'm not angry anymore. I don't read the trades anymore. I don't wonder why she got the role. And I said, I know I feel the same way. And I think that over the years, and actually the book only even helps this more because it's a new career for me in some ways, but I realized I'm happy with who I am enough. Yes, I'm Jewish. Yes, I'm neurotic. That's, that's redundant. But in any case, I feel so much more relaxed about my career and failures or hits or whatever, than I, than I used to. And, and, and so for me, I think what I learned is, is you just can't compare yourself to anyone else.

Because I used to say, I'll tell you this one last story. I helped create Forrest Gump. When I was directing Adam's Family, the head of the studio at that time, Gary Lucchese, gave me the book. He said, we have eight scripts. None of them are any good. I want you to read the book. And the book is like Confederacy of Dunces. The lead character is sort of a big guy who's strong. He's like a a football player and he's Forrest Gump. And I said, you know what, Gary, I, I think he, let's make him fast instead of strong and skinny. And I'll give it to Tom Hanks because I did a big with Tom and we became friends and this seems up his alley.

Yeah. So I sent it to Tom and said, you probably don't want to do it because it's another man child thing. And Tom said, I love it. I'm in. We hired Eric Roth. So I, I really developed that, that movie in many ways. Then Paramount wanted to make Adam's Family Values and I had to choose between Adam's Family Values and Forrest Gump. And the producer wouldn't let me do both. Wendy Feinerman wouldn't let me do both. So Adam's Family was my baby, my child. So I gave up Forrest Gump. I probably should have gotten a producing credit, but I didn't. Forrest Gump comes out, wins the Academy Award. I've never seen it. And I'm devastated. Right. And I can't sleep at night and I'm angry and this and that. And I run into Marty Breast,

who is a director. Yeah, I know. Yeah. At Danny DeVito's Christmas party. And Marty had had a similar thing where he was involved in several movies. And at the last minute, he got taken off of them or didn't do them. And they became successful. And they said, Marty, you're the perfect guy to tell me how I should get over this. Because, and I told him the whole story, you know, he had been on War Games and several other movies that, and Marty, who looks like a rabbi, in a very rabbinical way, Marty said, have you seen the movie? Have you seen Forrest Gump? And I said, no, Marty, I can't. He said, see it, only then can the healing begin. And I went and I saw it and I realized I would have made it a different movie. Yeah. It might have been better. It might have been worse, but it wouldn't have been that.

It would have been an hour shorter for one thing. And my wife had always been saying to me, you can't think about if only I had directed Gump or this or that, because if you had, we never would have adopted Chloe. And I said, right, but maybe we would have adopted Chloe anyway and found a treasure chest with $50 billion to be really rich. My point is, the other thing I have learned and embrace strongly now, and this may be an age thing too, is never look back, never say I should have done this because of, if you know anything about quantum mechanics, if you had done anything differently, everything else changes.

Yeah. You could have been hit by a bus six months ago. Yeah. Or you could have found a treasure chest with $50 billion. But my point is, along with not being angry anymore, I've become very sanguine with accepting that everything that exists right now is because of the trillions upon trillions of little decisions that have brought me here talking to you right now. And what could be better than this at this moment in time. Yeah. Yeah. That theory where it works if you're, if you're happy with where you are, you know, if you're a miserable bastard, then it's kind of like, well, maybe I should have made a few different choices. Oh shit. Now, now you got me thinking. Well, that's what I'm here for.

Thanks Andy. Well, Barry, thank you so much for doing this. When I saw the book, and it was such a great excuse to talk to you again, and I really appreciate you taking the time. Well, I love this, and I love talking to you, and I truly loved working with you. In fact, it was only two months ago that Sweetie and I had friends over. And they said, let's see something we haven't seen of yours. And I showed them Big Trouble. Yeah. And you made me laugh so fucking much.

Oh, thank you. Have you been drinking? No. Crash. Yes. That was that one thing I will always remember in that movie, aside from working with Ben Foster and Zooey Deschanel as right. Was that I had to run and fire a gun. Right. And then and then sort of fall flat out. That's right.

It was the first time I had ever experienced wrestling mat painted to look just like a driveway which was like i still am giddy about that shit like oh my god you can fall on this pavement it looks like pavement right um but the sound guy after the second take after i was firing i fired like maybe four shots yeah the sound guy came up to me and very discreetly said you're going every time you squeeze the trigger that's right okay all right thank you thank you well this is uh that sound guy is named peter curland he has done every single coen brothers movie and he also worked on the men in black movies and tommy lee jones because we had space guns yeah yeah right would go and after every take i'd have to go and it's one thing saying

it to you it's another thing saying it to tommy lee just yeah tommy don't make the gun sounds we're gonna add them later And I remember Carlin telling me that you were going pew, pew, pew, pew. That's right. That is the toughest sound a gun can make. Oh, yeah. Well, your character would have made that sound. I know, I know. It actually wasn't

that bad. Yeah, right. All right. Well, Barry, thank you so much. Pleasure. And thank you all for listening to another edition of The Three Questions. And we will be here for you next time. I've got a big, big love for you. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Earwolf production. It's produced by me, Kevin Bartelt,

executive produced by Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Chris Bannon and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, associate produced by Jen Samples and Galit Zahayek, and engineered by Will Becton. And if you haven't already, make sure to rate and review The Three Questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.

This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.