WWE Legend Brock Lesner (SAS CLASSIC)

Transcript

Hey, this is the moment. I'm Brian Koppelman, thanks for listening. My guest today is David Duchovny, who is one of our great showmen really and artists. I mean, this is somebody who everyone listening David knows you. You know, they know your work as an actor and or they read your books or listen to your records. Your new album, Jester Land came out this week just a couple of days ago, and I'm really glad to get the opportunity to talk to you today, man. I'm happy to get to talk to you as well. I felt like I've been knowing you just tangentially for for a number of years now, and I'm happy to sit that even though our first substantive conversation will be recorded and consumed. It's still a step in the right direction. It's true what we had some substantive tax combos. Well, this one, I was going to say, man, it's been fascinating to me because although you and I are not friends, you're good friends with my wife, Amy Koppelman, who's great filmmaker and writer. And so for a long time, as I'm sure you've heard stuff about me, I've heard stuff about you and feel like in certain ways I know you. And then in certain ways, I'm really curious. So yeah, I'm glad we're going to get to do this and like. And it was so fun texting with you about books this week and sort of in exactly the way Abby said, you and I would get along with one another, so that was really fun. And we'll get to talking about books, but in sitting here and thinking about you and about the way you present to the public, reading some articles about you and the knowledge baked in from all the conversations I sort of have here walking through the kitchen when I was talking to you, I was thinking about this weird Willy Wonka quote, you know, at the end of the movie, when Wonka says to Charlie, You know what they say about the boy? You get everything you wanted. He lived happily ever after. And like, I don't know about that because there's this kabbalistic parable that speaks to just the opposite and and presents that if you're in a situation with nothing pushing against you, it turns out you're in a hell lot heaven. And and it seems to me that you've wrestled with this idea. So you just talk a little bit about about how you see that that question of arriving at a place where the only obstacles are the ones you have to generate in order to feel some kind of progress. Oh, yeah. Well, I think, oh, that's such a good question. I want to answer it in as many ways as that. I can take as much time as you want. Yeah, but my first response is. You know, and I'm sure you can relate to this as a as a writer, as a director and as an artist is, you know that the idea of ever getting what you want is it's foreign to me. Like every time I have an idea, every time I take a job, every time I do anything creative, it's never that first spark, you know? Oh my god, it could be this. It could be that it could be everything, and it could still come out well, but it's never going to be that thing. But you bet you that, divine. That's the yeah, that's the Kirkegaard quote at the beginning of sound, you write that you, as the moment you start the pen, does something in your pocket. Right? So but when you go to place the pen with anything that I do, so so the idea that I have to create any kind of friction to me doesn't. That's not true. I mean, the friction is always just like this game that I'm playing between, you know, trying to. It's like the cliches the old man and the sea writing, like, I have this idea of this great shark that I caught or created. And then depending on the business that I'm taking that shark to, you know, people are going to nibble at it. And there were never happen. Like, I bring it on the carcass or I just don't have what it takes to bring that guy in right now. So it's it's all that s**t. And then I think also my aesthetic is is my personal aesthetic is like, don't show the work. So I'm always trying. I'm always trying to come off like, I'm not working, you know, I mean that to me, that's what I don't want to see you working hard. I mean, I understand, I know everybody's working hard. I want to see it, though in my art, I want to see the artwork I want. I want to see the ease. I want to see the naturalness. And I guess that's. Maybe that's like a pose that I do, but I think probably alienates people like, Oh, that's easy for you. No, but it's really not, but I'm glad that you think so because that's what I'm going for sure. Yeah, I mean, and I can look at various aspects of your work and eat and then all of our work and see all that often out, right? But but I want to draw some distinctions because in the Hemingway story separate from in Moby Dick, in the Hemingway story, that dude needs to go out there and fish and fish haven't really been right. It's been a lean time, and he has to go out and make this one more try, and he doesn't need to go, try to grab something that big. It's true, but that's just what he happens to hook into. And so he allows himself to dream, right, that he can transcend his situation. But, but but there is something in the restlessness of of you as an artist because because it in the terms in which we normally talk about this stuff, you know, you've been number one on the call sheet of more things that have been successful than most people ever. You add to television series that are Zeit guys kind of shows your books, unlike the typical actors thing. Your books are taken seriously, and it does seem that you have a heart to me anyway, that you have a hard time enjoying that or accepting it or settling for it, and that there's still a restlessness afoot. And so that's, you know, well, here's the because here's what I did this morning because I'm not really I want to have an idea that I'm working on. I have a few things that are at a different level of completion, but I really want that focus of the one thing because I really enjoy that and I can. Be focused on one job, whether it's as an actor or a musician or whatever, and I just was OK, I got up early and I was going to get coffee in my kitchen and I just said, Be hungry, be hungry, be hungry, just get hungry, get f**king hungry again. Because I was like, I wasn't feeling hungry for something, you know? And I was like, Yeah, it's all. It's always about, like being hungry for something. Where are you? Where's that? Yes, that's right. I mean, you're right on it, right? But where do you any idea of of the location that like where? Where does that? Where where's that come from? I think, you know, maybe it's just that I've never found that God. You know, I've never found. Yeah. You know, the place where I go, this is this is this is the place. Here's the place. And even even with successes or were stuff that was extremely exciting or stuff that was well received or or whatever. Never have felt like. All right. All right. I I can rest in some way or I'm here or I'm here and never felt that way. I haven't felt that way. I mean, for more than an afternoon, it's so f**king American and so New York, isn't it? It is. Isn't it just so f**king kind of just like baked in somehow in a way that is, it frustrates me for myself, too, that I would wear that sort of need to have a drive comes from as especially as I get. You know, you're a little older than I think you're like one basketball generation older than me. So we never played against each other, like you played against guys that I went, who I watched play were older than me at my high school. Um, but uh, you know, as I get, I'm fifty five and I there's a there's a a way to look at all of this where it's like, Whoa, why keep pushing so hard? But like you, I wake up and I have to. There's a few. There's a few, I think answers because I was just talking to. I don't think she'll be upset if I mention her name, Amanda Peet, because she has the chair, Shoshana tastic, by the way, it's fantastic. And I said to her to say, What is wrong with me? I'm 50 years old. Why do I need to? Why, why do I need this? Why do I need approval, the approval or whatever? And I said, you look at it that way. I mean, that's one way to or the other way to look at it. It's wow, you're 50 years old. You still want to play, you still want the ball and you still want. Yes. You know, that's that's a life lesson. That's a beautiful thing. And it's like for me, I just I like the game, not the game of show business, but the game of making stuff a game of like, you're sitting there doing something in your head. You wrote it down when you got this guy and this guy, and now you're going to make it, you're going to do it in eight days. It's f**king funny. Yes. Yeah, that's it's totally f**king fun. And but it's also, though, involves turning yourself inside out and taking certain risks. And you got more comfortable with taking the risks or were you always comfortable with taking the risks? I think I was comfortable with taking risks in a certain way because I was I was I was in graduate school for English literature, so I was I was on a path that was fairly well, not not set in stone, but, you know, I could have had a career. And as a professor, I think that would have been comfortable. So I was heading that way and I didn't start out until I was like twenty five, six seven, which is kind of late to start something that you're going to try to make a career out of. So I think there's a certain kind of either ignorance or stupidity or bravery in that. And then. I think some, you know, you know, some of my choices have been hamstrung by concerns with money. I mean, because I didn't come from money and I liked making it, it was like it felt secure. Sure. So I think there are certain things that I've done that weren't great choices that were motivated by a fear of, you know, no, that's not that's not what I'm asking you, but because you're past that now. Yes, even in our business, even in our business, even wealthy people are are worried about money like, I understand that. But but you know, it's not the same. You're not going to be forced to make a movie because you want one more million dollars than you could get by doing some other movie. You know, that's not really going to drive right decisions, right? Part of I'm trying to understand with you that and it's the thing that's so impressive about you, but that I also know you must be one of my son's friends, speak 17 languages and like really bad. And but, you know, and at a certain point, it at a certain point it was like something he really leaned in to everybody knowing. And then another point it became like, You know, I'm a lot more than the fact that I speak 17 languages. And so for for you, the whole polymath thing which you are at or true polymath. And I'm fascinated by it, and I'm also fascinated by your ability to focus in the way you describe because I'm someone with really substantial ADHD. And for me, it's so hard to everything that I've accomplished, like the sort of the ways in which I have to turn myself inside out to get work done are mind boggling to me. It's so hard. Well, I feel like you have this opportunity to say it again. How do you do that? I have to. I can only work on s**t that I really want to work on. That's one way to do it. Like so that's part of why I had to choose this for my life, because school books that I didn't want to deal with David were like radioactive. Like I could read a 900 page novel in a nine and a half because I loved it. But a 30 page dry history article. It was like it was radioactive. So that's one, too. I have to find exactly the right music. I have to get the right music going. I have to have exercised. I have to know and I have to give myself the space and time. And then I can just like, blast off for a period of time and I lose the world and then I come out of it and I'm totally f**ked up and distracted again. But it's torture all the time. But it seems to me with you, you're able to hyperfocus widely. Like you said, you can pick a mission and do it. And was that always the case for you when you were a kid? Did you notice it about yourself? I don't know if when I was a kid, certainly as a student, and I'll draw a distinction between us and I'm I'm envious of you in this, in this particular instance, because what I think I learned how to do is. I can throw myself into my assignment regardless of whether I like it or not, I can't. And I don't want to do that. I don't think that's a positive. No, no, I really don't. I don't know. I'm so jealous of my whole life. I've been jealous of it. I want some of what you got, which is like, You know what? I've got to say, no, because I'm not feeling it, whereas I'll go. I'm going to say yes, because I'm going to feel my way and I'm going to I'm going to figure out. I'm going to figure out why I'm saying yes before I say, you know, I already said yes. Now I got to figure out why. And that's not necessarily a great thing for me. But how do you feel? Why? In what way do you mean working on projects that you didn't necessarily have that spark even as an actor? Right? Where where you just you knew that your core competency would allow you to do it even if you weren't turned on by it? Yeah. Yeah. Because somebody said, Oh, this is a good idea to do or I'll give it a give it a more lenient interpretation, which is I'm trusting my spirit or whatever, like it's saying yes to this thing. Therefore, there's going to be something there down the line that I'm going to find out why I did it and what it be the case to that. It's just like a an inchoate feeling of, Yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm not sure why, but I just feel like doing it. And usually, if I'm lucky, it'll bear out. But yeah, there was a reason I just didn't know it. Yeah, inco. It's one of my favorite words. I'm so glad that people look it up. If you don't know it, it's a really good word. It's usually used with anger next to it. David, use it in a great way. Yeah, you know what I started to realize because, you know, as you get deeper into all this stuff, you have a level of craft. And so, yeah, you can find your way in. But I realized in any of these artistic endeavors, and that's another reason I'm fascinated because I can tell it in the stuff of yours with which I'm engaged. That's yours. Books, music, stuff. You're really Californication, X-Files. But when you're when I'm if I'm working on something that's not reflective of my point of view, my my enthusiasm with which leads to me having a point of view. I'm only then using my craft and my intellect. And then I'm really not different than any other f**king smart guy. I'm not. I am not being engaged as an artist because that has to for me. I need the point of view piece. I need the piece that makes it. Oh, that's why this one's going to work. Because I'm I'm not merely a crafts person who's smart enough to find a way to use professionalism to muscle through in the end. I hate the things that I've done that have that aspect, and I don't I haven't for a long time f**ked with it, but that's all left do. That's a lesson most of us, like most of us, learn that and then have to then make it that once we learn it, we have to then make a decision about how we're going to follow through on that knowledge. Right, right. I I completely get that. I mean, it's like I'm looking at something right now to do, which isn't like a big it's not like an onerous response. There's a couple of weeks on something it's not going to. Sure. But I like the people and I'm looking at the part and I'm thinking, you know, and I think in so many people could do this part, and I don't know what I'm going to bring to it. Like, I wouldn't cast me, I wouldn't cast it because I don't know. I mean, that doesn't mean I can't do it. It doesn't mean I won't do it. Because like I'm saying, like, maybe, maybe there's something there that I'm to learn. Well, yeah, it just because you can't see why they would cast you. But if you can find your way? That's fascinating. So how do you think through that? Because I can. I just had this combo with someone on the show I'm doing on super pumped up billions. I was talking to an actor who's, you know, I'm pretty friendly with. And I said, I only do this thing if you're going to show up excited to do it, I want you to do it and I hope you want to come hang and the hang will be great and it's great people. And you know, it's fun. And you know, the thing is fun. But if you can't, I said it. I said, if you can't find a way to make this alive for you so that you're going to be happy coming through the gates. I don't want the favor. Don't do it. And I fully f**king meant it. So what? I find their way in. Actually, there were two, because this thing is intense. A true example. Like, there are three kind of huge parts, and then it's really an ensemble. So I set it to two different friends and one came and did it. And when one didn't do it, and it's perfect, actually the one who did it, I'm I know better. But but it was a legit thing. We're both. I can steal both. We're going to do it to work with Dave and me, to be in our right, our company. You know what I mean? Not our not our friendship company, but we need to be in our company. But I was like, No, no, you have to be alive to it. So how do you think it through? Can you find your way to be alive to it, right? I would have to I mean, if even if I didn't find that way, when I said yes, I know when I showed up on set, I cannot be the guy who doesn't want to be there. I've seen those guys and I've hated them. And when I work with them, nobody wants to work with the guy who doesn't want to be there. So I'm never going to be that guy, even if I really don't want to be there. I'm going to try to get there, find out the challenge of it. Obviously, I'm challenged by what I'm saying. I don't know what I can do with this. That's probably a challenge. I agree. So I'm going to get there and I'm going to. If I do it, I'm going to like, Well, there's some for me here to figure out, even if it's just like the f**king I'm going to be a workman, you know, because I'm a man of my word. And I told my friend I was going to be here and I was going to do my best to f**king do my best. And there's nothing wrong with that. I can go home at night. I put my head on the pillow. Oh, that's a total way. Yeah, that's a total way in. If if a friend of mine who I'm creatively who who I think is great. Wants me to do something to help them out. I can. I will find my way in for the same reason you're saying in a real way because it's like, Oh, well, the magic then going to happen is we're working together. We'll create this third thing. I mean, the thing on and then I'll go like off to the angle of that, which is, you know, I'm even just thinking here now the character, a little like that. He's like, he's a go along to get along. You know, that's great. Yeah. So, you know, maybe that's my way. And maybe, maybe that's what this is all about is what I mean. It's like, I don't really make like I make decisions, but my decision making is really wacky and it's a lot of the unconscious stuff, and it takes me a long time to figure out, Oh, OK, I think I know why I did that. Now, though, sometimes when I watch you like, I remember the first the Soderbergh movie you did with the massage table thing, right? I remember when you showed up in that movie. And there was a joy that was palpable to me that was so different from the image of who you were, I didn't know you, that enemy didn't know it was very long. It's a long time ago. Yeah, I remember sitting in a theater. Steven showed me that movie like right before I think it. I remember sitting in the movie theater and thinking, God, that guy is so much better than I thought he was because there was so much light. Now I felt that shift made a huge shift in and I guess maybe the Shandling thing was before that. But the two things showed me, and I think a lot of people like, Oh man, this guy, when he's into a thing and when it's challenging in a certain way, he comes alive on screen and there was a kind of presence you had that. I just remember being so attracted to it as an artist like, well, f**king awesome. You know, I could say, you know, like with Steven. I mean, I one of my first auditions ever was for sex lies and videotape. I didn't know that. Yeah. And obviously I didn't get the role. But I the first movie I did the first time I ever was on screen was in a movie called New Year's Day. Henry Jaglom song. Oh yeah. And Steven is friendly with Henry, I guess. And Steven, wrote Henry a letter after seeing the film saying, You know, I auditioned David for. And I really liked him on the set, and I was so happy about that. And then I was always like, I wish I were seen and I was over with Steven. And then finally, he called one day out of the blue and it's like, Oh, I got a movie for us. It's like, you're like the center of the movie. And I was like, Oh, finally, we're going to do it. And then it turns out like, Yeah, I'm a sinner. I'm like, the center kills himself, you know, like, I'm a big chill. But the thing about that is it's exactly what happened to me like in terms of. I mean, I don't want to like slag my own performance forever, but I think there's a certain kind of. And you may run into this with, you know, you don't want to name names either, but. There is a. Duty that comes into like I'm doing 25 episodes a year of X-Files at some point, you know, and yeah, I think that spark is lower and there's nothing to do with, of course, with the material has to do with, of course, the humanity of it. So I think, you know, there were there were times when I was Typekit where I didn't find I didn't find a way to spark myself. And I guess that is my job was one thing. You know, like, I always say this about John Travolta. It's like, Yeah, I think he can be a great actor sometimes. Yeah. But I always like watching. And that's why I don't always like watching them. Because he's always having a good time, no matter what that f**king movie is, he he just seems to love to be there. And that's really attractive to watch. And it's even attractive, by the way, at a master like in Philip Seymour Hoffman, maybe the best actor of our generation, right? That you could always tell no matter because like John is not. Maybe a great. Maybe John's craft isn't. But like Phil was, you can't find a better technical actor than Phil. And yet I always got the sense I didn't know him, but I always got the sense that he was so alive and want me to do it. Obviously, you were f**king brilliant an X-Files, but it was such a tightly because of what it was and because of what it required, right? It required. Sometimes it's implacable. They required a thing. And then seeing you with Shandling and seeing you and Stephen's movie, you got to be this whole different. Yeah, really different modality. You got to come into play and it was fantastic. Yeah, I mean, you know, you had Tarantino on recently, but he's the directorial equivalent of Travolta for me. Yes, because. No, you know, I like some of his movies more than I like others, but I always have a good time. And I think it's because. Somehow, as a director, every frame. His joy is evident by his joy in movie. I don't know how that happens, but when you're watching his movie, I feel like this guy will stomach. Well, this is really interesting because. Like you and I both cared a lot about the Knicks and a certain time. But I always wore number 15 and you were always a number 10 guy, right? So to me, Pearl is everything you're talking about. Pearl was and that's why he's my favorite basketball player of all time, because, well, because he sacrificed himself right to fight for the good of the team in a way that no one under my age knows about it. Whatever. But because of what he was willing to sacrifice. But I would go watch that guy, and Clyde was so cool. And I understand how you patterned yourself after that is. But Clyde didn't events a great amount of joy in what he was a businessman out there, whereas Pearl was having the time of his life. Right? Yeah, yeah. So what do you do, Clyde wise, Clyde? Well, I was Clyde. Your guy more than than Pearl was your guy? Well, mostly because Pearl came later. Pearl wasn't, you know, he was a 69. Right, right. You know, he's in Baltimore. Yeah, he was in Baltimore. That, of course he was. He was the enemy. Yeah. Pearl was like pearls like obey to me, and I was torn between, you know, I was. You know, it was kind of given to me as a kid and as kids, it's like, maybe it's fun to watch and s**t, but it's not real basketball. You know, it's like it's it's it's carnival stuff. And the NBA is like, that's the real game. And so I think I had a little of that, even though I love Dr. J. You know, and I love the girl. I was like, No, we're going to beat them with our players. We're going to beat them. We're going to drop our X's and O's, and we're going to we're going to hit the open man and we're going to be the the damned butcher open man. Bill Bradley, Dick Barnett, New York Knicks and. And you when you play college basketball, the three point line was not. Did it come in your last year? Did it not come in at all? Oh, then one year and I didn't have three point one in high school out of it. No, I knew that it wasn't there when you played in high school. So when you went to Princeton, did you go thinking you were going to play ball all four years? I wanted to. I mean, that was my going to college, probably because, you know, I was getting an education. But second was I really wanted a place where both basketball and baseball for four years didn't work out at Princeton. And I was just talking about this today because I went when I was a senior in high school. My coach set up a tryout with Princeton. For me to go play with them in the middle of the season are just talking about this today because this guy, John Rogers, who is he's known on the internet as the guy who beats Jordan one on one. You know, he's a he's a businessman in Chicago, a very successful guy. But anyway, he was he was on the Princeton team when I went to go work out and Coach Carroll put him on me. I wasn't a point guard, but he made me bring up the ball my whole practice, and he had Rodgers on me the whole time. So a buddy of mine was just talking about talking with John Rogers, and I said, Thomas Bach, I'm sorry, he doesn't know that it was me, but oh, he doesn't know what Dave, the company. That's so funny, really? Yeah. So. What happened, though, so you go up there, your senior year of high school, this guy guards you and you do OK because you make I do OK. I mean, like I remember Caryl saying, I couldn't get the ball from me, you know? Right? But I'm not even a point guard, so I don't know what I was doing, but I was anyway. So I decided that I could play there. And when I got there, I didn't play that. I mean, I didn't. I didn't make I didn't get far enough to really to really have a decent shot at it. So that was really disappointing. And then baseball was equally disappointing and it was real heartbreak. I mean, for me, that was really my identity, you know, as a as a young man was really as an athlete, you know, and I had to kind of change that around when I was at Princeton. So you didn't play. You played freshman basketball. Is that what you played or what did you play? That's what I played J.B. and I probably suited up a couple of hours ago to get a run, you know? Yeah, well, I always think people don't understand how good Steve Mills was, but you're in a position. I understand how good he was. Steve Mills was my rival in high school, right? So he was the guy I would watch his practice. He was at my high school older. I went to friends at Long Island, so I would go watch Steve, play all friends. Yeah, Steve was like a hero to me when I was, boy, you know, we beat him. We beat you guys. I'm sure you did your collegiate. I'm sure you did beat us. Yeah, there's a guy named Marner, too. I remember. Yeah, I remember the whole team. Pete Plotnick was another guy on it. I remember the all that whole team. Those guys really mattered to me because I was a basketball fanatic. I mean, I played on that varsity team. But six years later, five years later, yeah. And I wasn't as good as you. I hardly played, but I made the team. I mean, I was a part of a basketball player, but not a good one. But it was it was really good and I thought. You know, because I mean, I thought that I could compete at that level with Steve. But when we got the cards, he grew a little more than me. He was a little faster than me. No bigger than me. And you know, he played. He started for four years. Yeah, it was just that much better than me. Well, he just made the leap. I mean, he made the leap. You know, that's the thing that happens like it happened to you and your and your chosen profession. It happened in his chosen profession where he was able to make it. But I was thinking about this today. I was thinking about how there's this received wisdom, David, that the lessons we learned. On sports teams. Are these bedrock valuable lessons, then that are going to shape us in in mostly good ways? And I've lately been wondering about it, like whether as I see how. How we organize in teams in ways and about things that we shouldn't do all the time, and we have these kind of like team values and like, you know, I played varsity basketball, varsity tennis, I'm still like really, really serious tennis player. Yes. But I've been questioning like whether playing, for instance. Play in pain. We learned to play in pain. Mm-Hmm. Does it, sir? I'm asking you this. Have you found that that serves you in the end? Does it serve us or not? What do you think? Well, first of all, I don't think tennis is a team sport, but it was in high school, it wasn't high school, but I know you're on a team, but it's like, Yes, you're playing individually. Yes, that's true. Yeah, that's true. So I think it's it may be different there. But yeah, I had a real like macho self-definition of, yeah, I was going to play in pain. I was going to. I. I've told the story, I mean, I did like this meditative podcast that was very interesting six months ago. Anyway, they wanted me to tell a story. I told the story about my senior year in high school. And I fainted in school and I hit the side of the elevator and my face, and then I hit the ground, so I knocked out teeth. And I woke up alone in an elevator, in a pool of blood and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, scaring me. I was scared because I had to go. What happened? Well, I knocked out teeth, but they put me in intensive care for like two or three days because they didn't know if I had a heart attack or something in my brain. And this is the middle of basketball season, my senior year. We were in the middle of a twenty seven and one year, right? So being beaten your longest family, friends and all that. So we I'm in, I'm in the hospital and. This Latin teacher showed up and he was a guy, was not like a big fan of mine, like, you know, I had I had supporters at school because I was a popular kid and I was doing really well on a scholarship and like, I was a good story. And he was always really hard on me and his only teacher, the cannabis in me. It was very odd to me. I was sitting there in that hospital bed and I left the swan like this huge all over my face. And he sat down by my bed and he just said, you know, you don't have to come back. And I like. Well, it's like, you know, everybody is going to want you to come back, you know, you don't have to come back. Take your time super cold and I just didn't know what he meant. You know, I couldn't. I couldn't. You couldn't even process it. Yeah, of course. I was like, and I was I was on the court like five days later with a mouth guard and, you know, trying to play. But it took me years to figure it out. And by the time I wanted to thank him, I really do. He was dead. He died of AIDS. And. It's really one of the. Most profound moments of my life, because I realize that you don't get, you know, you don't get it in the moment so many times, and by the time you get at the moment, it's passed. And what he saw was, you know, he saw a kid who was. You know, his parents are divorced four years earlier. He was overachieving. He was working too hard. He was f**king himself. Yeah. You know what the f**k he was doing? They run fast. And this guy said, Slow. f**k down, buddy. Think about it. And I said. What? No, no, no, no. I'm never slowing down until I finally had to again and have to look at myself and go. You've been running since then and now it's time to listen to that. Yeah, but man, do you do you think you've really taken off taking the lesson on fully? And when I look at the way you live your life now, I don't think you've taken the lesson on necessarily. No, no, no. But at least I know it. Sure, it's not. No. I mean, it's so funny because. I've never told this on the podcast, but you're really bringing this out to me, I'm just to say it really quick because I want you to talk, but I pitched a game. I pitched a game when I was 11 12. I pitched like six, no hit innings. And, you know, they were seven in the game and I pitched like six innings and no hit innings. And it was a pinch hitter and won this game and then went out to hit to practice the next day with a friend who had a baseball at me. With my back turned, I turned around my nose, shattered the guy to carry me home. It was broken in three places, but my mother wouldn't let me play and I I never really pitched again and kill me, like for a long time. So the other choice is terrible. Also, like the either way screwed when the sport thing becomes your because I was a flinch and I'll tell you what else, I'm a very, very solid third baseman, but it's so hard for me to keep my head down because of the fear of my face getting severe. And this is why I started to think about sports are so important to me too, and whether these lessons of like sucking it up and pushing it down. Serve us oh, well, like dance, like your initial question was like these values that we teach. Personally, I put I put value on it. I put value on self-sacrifice for a team, for a team vision. Yes. I know it's tribalism, I know it. I know I can get into, you know, where places, but oh man, I feel good when I sacrifice for my teammates. I feel. I fell in love, you know, that's like a close feeling to about the most love I can feel for someone who's not family. Well, if you haven't found God as you say which to them, then then it's a really worthy substitute in a way. It's the communal goal that is, I mean, to me, that is God. And as I understand it, you got it. But that's why choosing team, then when you have to, you know, you got to choose carefully. And that's going from project to project. You know, you get I can get into these. I can find a good team again. It's like, I think that's what I look for is like. So I want I want, I want to be in business with people who I want to sacrifice for, you know, and then to the other side of that that I think is so great about what we do and I think it's something. Because we all joined the circus and planned these teams, it's something people outside of it probably just don't know exactly, which is. When you've really worked with somebody closely in this kind of thing that we do. You can not see them for seven years, and when you see them again, you have family. Yeah, like I got a text yesterday from a guy made a movie with 17 years ago because something happened in the world that he knew he and I would both care about. I see this guy every five years with it. But he wrote me and we got on the phone, and it was like no time had passed because this intensity of this connection that we form, right? Well, also, I mean, especially and what you've been doing recently and what I do primarily in my career is this long running television, you know, that's really like, you know, X-Files 11 years and it's confirmation seven years. That's that's a generation that's a significant amount of time to spend with people, the same people. Dave and I were supposed to direct an episode of Californication and either last season. Yeah, Tom and Tom wanted us to do it. We were going to do it because we loved the show and and then somehow it became suddenly like the last season and then he just brought everybody back and like, it's not going to happen. But I was really excited before I knew you were in. Yeah, I really had been a blast to do and do. Yeah, it would have great. It would have been so fun. And I did love the show. Here's some I want to ask you about that show with the first time you played a scene with Evan because I kind of want to know about whether when this magical stuff and it's one thing people are as interested in the chemistry in romantic things. Hmm. But and it's one of the things this podcast was started on was this question I always had about R.E.M., which was the first time they played in the church. I really wondered whether those four guys who've been in other bands and everything, if the first moment they looked at each other and knew, holy s**t, this is totally different. I've got to ask two of the four of them when they say, Yeah, Mills new, you know, buck is very. Have you met Peter Fox? Very analytical. And so you knew these elements were kind of together. But yeah. Mills said he looked around and he was kind of like, Oh, holy s**t, this is, yeah, this is special because he that, you know, he went and got Bill Barrett. And it was like, we should do this thing with these two guys. Oh, right. Like he said that there was something about Peter in my and Michael. But when you and Evan first played a scene together, did you have like, Oh, f**k moment at all? It was actually an auditioning because, you know, I got to audition. But everybody else who was cast and Evan came in and he he just, you know, and I could give a f**k about line readings, but he just he he did a line in a way that I just I never which this great. Really? Yeah. And and in the script, you know, he's my age and I'm not working. I have no money. And he says to threaten, I have an offer for you. And then we have the scene or whatever, and he goes, I have an offer for you or something like the most Jewish, you know, New York Jewish. And I was just I just I started laughing and we finished. Evan left, and Tom and I both looked at each other and we were like that line and we still for 20 years. I don't know how many years later it is will still go that line. He just it. If you if you say to an actor, you don't want to put too much pressure on it, but then you say, here's an example of a guy who got himself a seven year job with one f**king library. Yeah, but it's true. Sometimes somebody comes in and they just wreck you and you're just like, Well, that's that. It's like, Well, it's because in the end, it's not a line waiting. In the end, it was like it. That was the character. In a nutshell. It was like, that was the whole. He just got the character, put it in that line and we saw it, and it was like, You never let go of that. I love watching all sorts of friendships on screen. It's just something I'm always drawn to and like that particular dynamic of the two of you, which isn't like a traditional friendship, but that dynamic of the two of you was something that really mattered to me on that on that show. Very good. I always love working with him, and I'm not sure I can say why. I mean, I don't say that to try to be funny or anything. It's. Evan, he's very brave, I mean, in his own, it's own his own way. I mean, he was he was always willing to. Tell the truth, I thought, you know, he was always willing to tell the truth that I really love that about him. There's no vanity and there's he. He may have vanity, but there is. There is no vanity in the way he plays those scenes now. And it's so appealing, right? Because there isn't that even though he's a theater actor, I've spent time with him a little bit. I could see he's fully aware of what he sacrificed to do. Yes. And yet he's willing to sacrifice it. Yes. Which goes back to the team thing. But here's another thing I want to ask you because you did get to live one thing I think that I've I've I got to spend one day in my life with Harold Bloom. I was really incredible to get to spend. I spent like three hours with him at his. I was trying to write an article about Quentin. About being a filmmaker in the shadow of Quentin after Pulp Fiction and about and I called it the anxiety of Tarantino, and I really wanted to understand the anxiety of influence. And so I read the anxiety of influence and I read the other s**t. And as you know, it's still f**king hard to understand that because he changes his terminology all the time. And and you know, his whole, the whole idea of misreading is, like, totally mind boggling. So I wrote him a letter and I was like, Professor, here's what I am. Here's what I'm trying to do. And he's like, You come to my house. So I went to the the house on on a Washington Square park, and we had that one on Washington Square Park. And I went over there and spent three hours and we had a young grad assistant with the whole deal. And he sat back, he reclined and he talked with my dear, my dear. Oh my God. The whole thing was just, it was, you know, we'll see if Tarantino himself is canonical down the road. The whole thing, it was just fantastic. I came away understanding this much more. And so what did you get out of interacting with that guy and how did it shape the way you looked at reading and and writing and making art? Because to get to your album? You know, I think it's funny. I was listening today and I was hearing these influences and really digging it, and I heard everything from obviously like the Stones influences. But also I was hearing like Dean Wareham in there and stuff Luda. I was hearing all this s**t that you and I would have got to listen to. And I was thinking about influence and then it got back to bloom. So what did you get from from him? OK. Like a lasting impact? Yeah. Well, I can answer that in two ways. First, one is very utilitarian because it was in Bloom's class that he said. No, it wasn't a class, it was in a book later after I was out of school, but I was always interested in gloom because I I'd watch them and once you met him, I mean, he's really a singular intellect, right? I mean, it just. I just his his brain just ate at all his literature. I mean, all of it. I really do. I don't think there was anything he hadn't read. I don't think so. And he had a photographic memory too, supposedly so he not only read stuff, but it was in there, was in there. And he wrote a book called The American Religion, in which he called Joseph Smith a religious genius. Right? And I was like, Wow, genius, really just Mormonism. And so that really sent me off into the area that became truly like Raymond. So that's just one very obvious way that boom. Yes. Not meaning to influence me, but but because I respected his vision so thoroughly to perk up and go, Oh, what is it about? And we were talking about Emerson, and there's something very much. There were Sony and Joseph Smith in this American religion in this kind of. You know, we're all God's, this is a God making project we're all in in a way that our Huck's tourism intersects with Emerson, perhaps perhaps from person, as is probably huckster too. You know, he's just a really good one and is is he's a better huckster in the sense that if you listen to him and you buy what he's selling, you actually have a chance at a good life to you're not just going to get a s**tty bill of goods, you know? Yes. So but the anxiety of influence, and I would bring it back to your Tarantino stuff, which I mean to me when I I think Tarantino is like the he's the equivalent of like a bloom in the I believe Tarantino has seen every scene at all. He's seen it all. And I believe that he suffers himself from an anxiety of influence. We just don't know it because we don't know the movies that he's trying to write himself out from under as well as he does. So I would say he's not sui generis, and this is not to slag him at all for best. But I would say that he is a person who is a he's a mis reader, a film is a brilliant reader of films that came before him. So, yeah, well, that's a question of, you know, how how. How original were surfaces in these? Mediums, and it's why I like rock and roll in particular is so challenging because I was with some kids and they were recently my son and daughter have this really smart, eclectic group grid and I'm in some chat groups with some of them. And something came up and they were like, Well, that. Totally rips off Brian Wilson's stuff, the Beach Boys, and I literally said so in this chat group, raise your hand if you've actually go back and listen to Chuck Berry and they nobody had really. It's not. I understand why, by the way, six years ago at this point, you know, 70 years ago or whatever. I said, Well, you got to go listen to Sweet Little 16 because the entire Beach Boys thing came from Sweet Little 16. And there you have to go to there to start to unpack what all this is. But this is one of the challenges of trying to create stuff. Now, isn't it like picking up a guitar? I mean, how do you not feel all that when you pick up a guitar and make the decision, you're not only doing it for yourself. And you know, my guitar is right right here, so I understand all this. But but how do you how do you pick up the guitar with it without knowing? These chords and these ideas. Are. Almost no matter what. Not going to be fully a risk. Yeah. Doesn't bother me with music. I never had the ambition to to be an original. In that way, I was untutored enough. I didn't start playing for like 10 years ago so that I had zero ambition to be a great player or to even write a song. So I walked into it completely. Zen mind. Beginner's mind. Awesome. I had no anxiety of influence because I didn't think I was doing anything, you know that anybody could ever hear. So it was it was not like that at all was actually the opposite of anything else I'd ever done. It was the influence that I had was in my ear. I didn't know how to recreate it on the guitar. You know, I didn't know how to do it on my guitar. And by the time I started writing, I was beyond that. I was. It was all new to me. I didn't. I mean, I could. I look back now and you could play me stuff and I'll go, Whoa, that's that chord progressions from there. And that's from there. And I go, I probably I've heard that. Yeah, I probably. Yeah, I didn't really know it's all me. I mean, honestly, there's almost no. I mean, it's very, very difficult for anybody. I mean, even Lorde puts out an album in there trying to who's one of the more original artists of our day and everyone's trying to pick apart the influences on her third record. So it's but, but I do it. It is often challenging. So, so what is the impetus for you to release? Oh yeah, you're very. You're clearly, you know, I can't believe you always doing this 10 years, like, you're clearly excellent at it. But what is it that makes you want to share the music? What's the part of you that needs that final piece of it? Do you think? Yeah, I don't. I don't know about the need. I think it was. It's it's always been for me. It's been a game of like expression in which. How am I going to get that out? Whatever it is, whatever it is inside me, I don't know. It doesn't have a word on it, but it's gut feelings, whatever. But it's like there's acting jobs that I can that I can use good press through that and then I can I can write I. That's probably my my my most fundamental mode of expression because I've been doing it forever. I've been writing forever and I went to school for its course, but I didn't start really doing that until more recently. And then, like music was actually it's very it's it's interesting that we're here now because because it was really it was really a place where there was no anxiety of influence, like for for actors like, look, we're all coming out of Marlon Brando, period. Yeah, period. Like, it's like a guitarist Hendrix period, period after Chuck Berry or a period. And I didn't do I don't deal with Hendrix because I didn't I wasn't going to battle with him. I never I never felt like I was going to stand on a mountaintop and make a deal with the devil and you know, all that s**t. So maybe as a writer, as I did, maybe as an actor, I dreamt of being, you know, very famous writer. I dreamt of being better than Philip Roth, but as a musician now, none of that it was just like. It was just that it's pure, so that's very pure a sort of way to go at it. Actually, it was very little ego. There was no egos, what I'm saying. So yeah. And then it's hard when you when you start to want it up, it changes changes. One of the other things I've always wondered about with you and try not to be too self-effacing in his answer, but is like it does seem there's this dichotomy and I've picked this up also from Amy in talking to you. But like on the one hand, you know, it seems to me you you understand that there were certain gifts that you were just born with your capacity for reasoning, synthesizing information, analyzing shed and and. But it's and it seems like you're somewhere that there are times. And then on top of that, you decided to work incredibly hard to become successful. But it does seem to me that you sometimes wrestle with both sides of it. The guilt that there's some guilt associated with this tremendous capacity to do things and be good at them and being as smart as smart as you are. But also, I need to prove to yourself that you haven't wasted it and that you maximized it. Is that fair? Yeah, I think so. I never. I don't think I ever really knew what I had. I mean, I don't know. You know, I never like on the inside. I never felt like I was on top or, you know, stuff was easy for me. I actually had, you know, my baseball coach in high school. I used to. It was often like I had. I couldn't play well enough because he really thought that I was so good and I kept on trying to tell him that I wasn't, that I wasn't like falling short all the time because that's what it felt like. Yeah. And. I I don't know it, just it really it comes back to the same old thing about. Just, you know, there are these sweet moments in life where you. Where you do get to create something that feels new. You know, it doesn't have to in the final analysis, it may not pa*s. It may not be economical, you know? But it sure feels that way. On that Tuesday, yeah. And I live, I live for that moment. Are you a Murakami fan or not of our economy? I'm not, but I'm going to read that book that you suggested, and I wanted to bring up one more author that I'm sure you are as William Blake. I don't know if you're right. I've read a bunch of William Blake, but not for a long time. But yes, I'm totally. I am a fan of William Blake's, and he's I have some books that I've been meaning to read again. But so if you read none, no, have you never read what I talk about when I talk about running by me? It's it's very, oh great. You're going to lose your mind, dude. It's like the most ready for you book. Yeah, it's not. It's he's written a couple of non-fiction things, but this is like his running memoir, but it's really his memoir of being an artist, and he's my favorite living writer. What I talk about is about running for your next plane ride. You read it in an hour and a half, but it'll it'll hit you very hard. I just a couple more things. We're going to be done. One. What does it feel like for you when you feel like you have to deal with rejection in the business, like a show doesn't get picked up or whatever drives me at this point, I even I'm like, and I haven't had, you know, I've had obviously an incredibly lucky, fortunate career compared to one hundred percent I would try. But if I have a script or I have a project that I can see where it'll be. And the gatekeepers don't get it. It drives me f**king insane because I'm like, Haven't I proved it now. Twenty five years later that in fact, if I'm sure of it, you should just give me the money to make the thing. I'm not trying to not try to get you to pay me in advance. That's good. I just give me the money to go, make the thing, and you're going to be happy. I just knew that. Yeah, but for you, you've shown it in such a huge level. How do you deal with it, actually? How do you process it and how do you react to them? Two ways. The darker way is I sit back and I go, You know that right? I suck. I would, you know, I really don't have it. The other problem right now is it's all smoke and mirrors anyway. So so there's a little of that. And the other and the other part is really just sadness. I don't get angry because I feel like I've had so much success and so much ease that I like. I wish I could get angry because I really do have that. I have that intensity of belief. I do agree with you when I have that feeling, it's like I'm a hundred percent sure that this was going to be great. I don't have any doubts. This is going to be fantastic. And you're not doing it, and you've given me a couple of reasons that I know don't come into play. Yeah, they're specious. Yeah, but they do to you, but they do to you. And I guess I wish I was that righteous guy that was like, I wish I was home. If I was hungry, I'd probably get angry if I if I had, if I didn't have a penny and I was just starting out and I had this thing that I knew was great because, you know, you promised 10 great ideas. You get one. You're lucky. Yeah, man. Three, You're you're you're amazing, whatever. So if I was twenty five and I had this thing and I was like, OK, you know, I don't know what I do. I I don't know, I don't know what I do that I take that. No, I don't know how it takes. I don't know. I don't know, answer that. But now I'm a little I get sad, I feel a little defeated and then I just go, Well, I'm just going to keep on pushing that particular thing. Somebody else is going to do it. Somebody else. And yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it's all different ways. I try not to get angry too. I try to just. But part of me still goes like, Oh, you'll say, I need to go, have a little of that you'll see in me, I think where it's just like nothing wrong with the little, you know, you'll say, what? What, OK, what books have you been? Because you're such a great reader and I'll get recommendations through, you know, you're such a great reader. Like for instead, too. Two related questions What books you've been wrong about and which do you wish you'd loved more like? I wish that I loved a fan's note and a Confederate, a confederacy of dunces more like, I love those books. I want to love them. Everyone I like loves them. Like, what do you wish you loved more along those lines? I say, like David Foster, Wallace is novels. I feel like one of the great writers, but I actually prefer his essays to understand that. And then was I wrong about? Yeah. Is there ever a book you read? And then you came back to it years later and you were like? Oh, that was great. Oh, it's great. You know what I mean? Maybe not. There's a couple. There's a couple of books. Well, I think Moby Dick. Not only did my answer. Yes, that's my answer. That's my answer. Yeah. Yeah, I think Moby Dick. Yeah, dude. I couldn't f**king read it in college and over pandemic. I read it and I was just like, This is the best book there is. And it's not a lie. It's not a hype thing. Like, if you're at the right place because it's actually known as the best book there is. Yes, but it's not. Yes, put like, you know, most people don't, you know, nobody's read that. I mean, nobody reads that. Nobody's read the book. Well, it turns them off, you know? Yeah, but it's so great. The writing is so f**king amazing. All right. People, if you listen to this, here's what you got on this. Go listen to David the his album Gesture. What's it got Lesterland gestural? Go listen to Jester Land and and read Moby Dick. I know it sounds. Listen, I know that it sounds like a terrible assignment, but like 30 pages and you're going to be laughing and smiling and totally swept away, right? It's also. It's contemporary. I mean, it's all about tomorrow, it's about race, it's about it's about America, it's about it's about class social structure, it's about all that stuff. And also even though Hemingway, some people think he's put on a favor. There's a reason that when David said all to say, I know exactly what he was talking about, and even though it's a parable in a simple parable, it's also worth reading. David Akademie, thanks for doing this, man. This is really fun. Well, Brian, this is the first of our conversations. The last one that will be taped and I hope that we will pursue our friendship. Who will? Well, you've been Amy's been Amy. Amy has been promising that we would love this conversation as much as we have. So all right, then I'll talk to you. Well, thank you. Thanks.