"RE-RELEASE: Tom Hanks"

i'm gonna do this so today is oh sorry today yeah go ahead today we're going to have a nice sean no well i was it's just the last time you started the last one i was going to start this one okay we're just doing an intro so it doesn't matter who starts so i'll just go okay so today oh i thought oh let me just do it let me just do it listener here is smart Listen, I think it's been three weeks since we've done this, since I've seen you, since I've talked to you. And I have to say I've had some long drives in the last three weeks, so I've gone ahead and done some quality control listening to our podcast. I'm not great at it because I'm listening to them after they've already reached the public. Are you picking up some long hauler miles, some deliveries? What's going on? I am. I've got some five-hour energy cases I'm trying to get through. Okay, sure. So it's really been nice listening to you fellas. You're both very talented and very funny on the podcast. I'd really like to be more of a part of it. So I was very excited to see you guys today. But then this morning, a real dark cloud floated over our family here at Smartless. Jason, is it possible for a dark cloud to then give you a gut punch? Is that possible? Sure. What happened? Will, why don't you take it from here? Well, Jason read something that I read. We all read it. Oh, God. I read it after you sent it to me. Here we go. No, actually. You know what? Sean sent it. That's exactly it. I sent it before I read it. Uh-huh. I don't think so. Sean sent an article to Jason and me in the thread that we're in. With some feigned exclamation points. Like, hey, yeehaw. This is great for us. And by the way, I'm going to put it out there. If anybody thinks they're worthy of being in the text thread, let us know. We'll add you. Yeah, we'll add you to the thread. And Sean says, congrats for us. Yay, for us. And it's a click to Hollywood Reporter. Smartless nominated. Great. Smartless nominated for a bunch of. Podcast awards or whatever. Which is kind of neat, because this is, you know, this is an embarrassment. It's a mom and pop operation, yeah. We apologize. Yeah. The fact that we're getting any traction whatsoever, let alone nominations, just thank you to all the folks out there. Yeah, it's pretty great. Thank you, and also it's embarrassing. Jason's right. It is kind of embarrassing. So then, if you read further down in the story, they're nominated Best Podcast, blah, blah, blah. And Sean Hayes nominated for Best Host. Which is the worst, which is the kiss of death, because now everybody's like, well, he's not really that great. Well, no, you're. I don't think they're saying it out of the side of their mouth, either. I think it comes straight out the center. Straight out. And here's my thing. Today, I can't wait to see you host. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see what you got. The best host. This is going to be the worst experience for me. Well, the voters are now listening, right? Because the nominations are out. Now they really have to decide. Pay attention to his hosting. My questions are still going to be like, hey, where are you from? Yeah. No, don't worry. We know that. That obviously resonates with the jury over there. The iHeartMedia people have made a bunch of mistakes here. When Sean said, what's your favorite color? I mean, how do you come up with these? Let's nominate that jackass. Yeah, here we go. Geez, I'm not going to be able to come up for air for a while. We're thrilled for you, Sean. Yeah, we really are. I'm thrilled for everybody. I said to Sean, by the way, I did say, congrats, man. And he's like, oh, thank you. And I responded, I didn't mean it. What are you doing? How dare you say thank you? I responded with, I didn't read it. I truly didn't. No, I didn't read the article. I just read the headline. Like most people. Sure. It is true. I think Sean might be the kindest man I've ever met. Not possible. No one deserves it more. Not around you two. All right, zip it up. We've got an interesting guest today. He's known primarily in New Zealand and South Africa due to his success in rugby. Okay. Florida then came to love him when he pivoted his talents towards highline. And dog racing. And then when he was in California, he was attempting to be the first to successfully mend the San Andreas Fault. He tried his hand at acting. And while fame and fortune there has been scarce, at best, some call it a wipeout, the critics have given him a few hugs. So he has received a couple of Academy Awards and seven Emmy Awards. What? He's gotten himself a Tony nomination. What? He's an AFI player who has Academy Awards? Yeah, he was turned in. He's been around. He got a Lifetime Achievement Award from AFI. BAFTA gave him something. Who is this guy? The Golden Globes gave him the Cecil B. DeMille Award. The Kennedy Center honored this highlight player. And Barack Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wait a second. So I say chin up. I say chin up to this fella. I have no idea. This is the most highly decorated guest we've ever had. I would say so. Yet he's famous and fortunate in our book. Okay? Please welcome. The forever struggling, but always diligent, America's own and Hollywood's best, Mr. Tom Lamar Hanks. No. Yeah. Had I known that Sean was the host of this podcast, I would have bailed. I said, guys, I'd like to, but you know, I don't like to work from home. Apparently you're working with one of the brightest hosts in the business. Yeah. Is there a name for this award? Is it, is it named after somebody? Is it? It's called the Aorta because it's from iHeartMedia. Oh, I, oh, okay. That's not true, but that's, that's my pitch. Um, one of my hard hitting, uh, nominee questions is where are you right now? I don't recognize that room. I'm a, I'm in a tiny little, uh, cubby hole that is here in my vast compound. Somewhere in the tri-state area. I'm telling you, dog racing really pays guys. You got to look into it. It's within a single day's drive from Lakewood, Ohio, uh, home of the Great Lake Shakespeare Festival. Wait, you didn't. Is it true? No, no. Are we already at a, are we already plugging a festival? I mean, this is quick. No, well, it's a long time to go. A long time to go. Wait, did you really, um, do dog racing? No, you dumbass. This is why you're not going to win. You're the worst host. Jason was demonstrating his, quote, comedy chops. Yeah, boy. Guys, can I write or what? Huh? Well, hang on. I think Tom's onto something. Let's get into Jason's comedy chops real quick. You know, um, I told, I told some friends last night. Uh, that I was doing this podcast and first of all, I had to re-explain, uh, your name. Who we were. Yeah, sure. They said, Sean, who? Jason, what? Will, huh? What is the name of it? Yeah. Uh, I kept calling it, uh, helpless based on the Neil Young song. So, but now I realize, no, no, no, it's, it's smartless, smartless. We really are helpless. And, uh, the question came up about you, Will. Uh-oh. Um, which is, which was this question is, has he started using a different voice professionally? Mm-hmm. Huh. That in your early days, you were kind of like Squeaky. You sort of sounded like Jay North in those old Dennis the Menace reruns. And you were hilarious. But then you went off and voiced Batman. And it's as though you're walking around with your own self-imposed EQ on your voice now all the time. True or false, Will? Here, I, listen, like any good politician, I can't just give you a straight true or false. I will say that I constantly have a monitor in my ear and I'm, and I'm adjusting my levels, my input levels. Right. Uh, and so then I can, I can mod it. No, you know what? It's funny. I recently, you know, I often watch a lot of my old stuff, uh, because I like to be entertained. And he has trouble sleeping. Yeah. No, but I, my voice has gotten, it has. But if you listen to Howard Stern. It's just because of abuse, I guess. Are you, do you still smoke? Well, who's listening? Um, I'm, I'm just learning. I'm just learning. We had Sean Penn on the podcast. He, he's, he went through a, a, a full pack of darts, didn't he? He did go through a pack of darts. Darts? That's colloquial for cigarette. Yeah, it's Canadian. As opposed to say coffin. Nail. Or, um. Or a nail. A nail. Or a bullet. Actually, Tom, this brings me to an actual question, uh, about the nail. I noticed recently, I was reading the 10th book in the, uh, in the, uh, Gunter, uh, What's His Name series by Philip Kerr, and I noticed your name on the back of it. Oh, oh, the, uh. And I was, you, you gave a little, uh, a blurb for the back of, uh, for the jacket of Prussian Blue, which I'm almost finished with. Oh, that's a great one. It's a great one, right? Gunther, help me out here. Bernard Gunther. Bernard Gunther. Bernard, Bernie Gunther. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In that series, he plays a non, okay. Yeah, you explain it. Go, go, go. Be merciful on me on this, okay? He plays a non-Nazi private investigator from 1928 Berlin through, well, after the war. Yeah, that's right. It's a fabulous series by Philip Kerr. Philip Kerr. The late Philip Kerr. He passed away. Yeah, I know. Too early, yeah. And I read them all, and just, well, I'm not a big, I'm not a big, I'm not a big fan of like detective genre fiction writer. Me neither. But this had that added bonus of very accurate sort of historical detail to it that I really loved. It's a tremendous historical fiction, and you're absolutely right, and I'm with you, Tom, and I read mostly non-fiction, and somebody recommended, they said, you love all this European history. I think you'd like this. I'm fully, like I said, I just started at the beginning of the summer, and I'm on book 10, Prussian Blue. Oh, yeah, right. And, but he always refers to cigarettes as nails, and he gets beaten up by these Nazis and then they look down and he's spitting out blood and they say, what do you want? And he looks up and he says, can I get a nail? Yeah. And you know what? When he smokes one, he looks really cool. He looks really, really cool. He looks really cool. like about those books is it fills in the blanks of his war years because some of them take place well before world war ii some of them take place after world war ii and in the course of it you see what he what he went through thanks guys for firing us out of the gate here at the start of the uh interview and our listeners love literature uh go sean you're the host let's do it yeah host come on by the way sean i have my hand on my buzzer hand is right on my buzzer okay correct answer good i want to know what your fascination with the with war is because your name is so synonymous i've never asked you this in my entire life why are you so passionate yeah you're the war guy the history of he loves a good fight it started the highlight i think right that dog racing you know uh first of all i we do a lot of them because none of the projects have to have cell phones or laptops sure so that alone you makes the writing of them so much easier and there's much less special effects of having to put in those screens um but it i have i get this question uh asked of me quite often and the answer always comes down to when in those formative years of say seven through you know when you're a little kid you know every single caregiver every single adult in my life would make references to the six two words three letters each the war and they talked about it as as this great dividing line in their lives there was before the war there was during the war and there was just after the war and they talked about it as though it's almost like well that was when the black plague was walking among us you know for for a big chunk of their lives they had no idea where they were going to be in another six months they had no idea how long the war was going to last that's that's one big aspect of it the other part of it too is is that the bad guys lost yeah at the end of the day we just yeah we were able to somehow unfortunately necessarily kick the stuffing out of them and when bad guys lose something it's that uh what is that power of myth of uh is it uh bill moyers you know the world was on a quest to defeat people that were undeniably evil uh the governments of those places and many of the many of the people that were in the government of those places were evil many of the many of the people that were in the government of those places were evil and many of and many of the populace so i i keep getting drawn back to that and again i will say that from a storytelling perspective our present day is just so um uh there is no shame left anymore truth seems to be a um a malleable viscous kind of like uh it's a distant memory truth it seems like and actually you know what tom uh sean actually within the last six months i don't know if you remember we were talking about all the movies you've done at the war movies and tom said do you think he'll ever make a movie about tick-tock and you know because something that he thinks about it for sean and scotty there's before tick-tock and then after tick-tock well you know if i did it would only be about 45 seconds long how long how long is your average tick-tock and then i won't be and then i won't be able to wait for the sequel tom i i know that i know that you would you'd never compare your experience shooting save a private private ryan to those who actually fought uh uh you know in all of that but was there ever a moment i'm sure i i bet there was a few moments while you were shooting that where you got close to the feeling maybe of what it might have been like i mean certainly the product the result of that film took me there or as close as i i i think i could get um but uh i would imagine there were a few moments there where it just based on the quality of the production they managed to create some environments for you there and your own process of trying to get into the character and the realism of it where you you were kind of struck a bit by what these guys must have gone through well yeah but at the same it was all fake you know sure but i mean you got to take that into account but when we were on the beach there in county wexford in ireland which is where we shot the uh omaha beach sequences oh so it wasn't wasn't right there uh well it was actually it was one of the places where they rehearsed some of it so that's one aspect how far was bays camp from the beach oh it was way well i was gonna i was gonna incorporate that into the into this anecdote so shut up just light up another nail will and take that pause um we're there with 500 members of the irish actual members of the irish army there is uh landing craft everywhere and we're all storming storming the beaches and uh the special effects crew had laid out these tiny little flags on the beach where they could get in and out of the water they could get in and out of the water they could get in and out of the water they could get in and out of the beach where they had set up air mortars and squibs uh little explosive devices things to avoid yeah and they actually said you know i be carefully right because you know this is going to become this is like a projectile it'll come out of the ground very fast so if you can try to avoid where the flags are i said you know i think i got that then they removed all the flags and we couldn't see anything oh my god of where so we were just stumbling all wandering so there's all of that and it's dressed the way it is and when you there were always four or five cameras going and once the shot began and you're wet and you're cold and you're coming up and uh at a corner of one eye you see a guy catch on fire and at a corner of the other eye you see a guy blown 40 feet into the air and he loses a leg in the process literally we had you know amputee stunt people oh my god then they were amputated before you they were amputated thank god just to clarify and even though there's harnesses and there's wires or whatnot machine guns are going off all around you and explosions are happening like crazy and it goes on for the better part of you know two or three or four minutes and um there was a there was a degree of sort of like odd uh fake and yet at the same time terror that was going on yeah so we were shooting down there all morning long i'm going to say about on the maybe the second day of shooting because the first day of shooting was spent in the boats themselves wow and uh i climbed up the steps to the bluff they had put in these wooden steps so we could get up to the base camp will sure that's for catering and uh craft services not far as the crow flies but it was awfully high it was probably about six seven hundred feet up the bluffs and i went back and i found the other guys and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die guys in the unit uh who i would be meeting when we got up to the shale which was a you know the the defilade that was at the top of the beach that's where i would come across barry pepper and uh eddie burns and vin diesel and the other guys and they were still hanging around you know outside the trailers the way actors do sure and uh i was wet and i was sandy and i was near death from the amount of noise that had gone on and i i i told the guys i said you guys better hold on to your hats because it's really wild down there you are not going i mean when you see a guy catch on fire out here out of the corner of your eyes you're kind of and no one said you know right now he's prepped you no one has said there's going to be a guy caught on fire on this side and it's it all all you were it was it was an interesting kind of kind of panic you know what's interesting and this is kind of folding back to what you were saying earlier one of the reasons that um what i love about that movie and i love that movie so much and i'm not embarrassed to say i love it so much and i've seen it a lot of times and one of the things i really love about and you kind of touched on this whole idea of can't wait for the musical version no 97 by the way 1997 which is insane that's when it came out wow it seems like two years ago but you had that moment where your character is a uh school teacher i think is that right or uh yeah yeah but the idea that it doesn't matter what he is he's just a regular this is what the thing of this particularly this war there was the great war which they referred to world war one as but then there was the war this world war ii and he was a guy who was called to do something extraordinary he wasn't a guy who was born to be a military officer he wasn't a guy who was born to be a killer he was a guy who had to go because that's what he had to do and people came in in this moment when the entire world was at war and did extraordinary things and i always loved that about it and i think that for me it really captured what it is that that sort of makes me have such i it's weird to have say have reverence for the war but you have reverence for the bravery and what people did that were extraordinary things yeah you actually want to make an anti-war movie at the same time right that you're making a war movie right um let me tell you a story i was i was 19 18 years old i think and i was a bellman at the royal hotel in oakland california and uh we had a uh a guy who read his own uh dry cleaning service would come and collect the clothes um and take them away and then deliver the clean clothes and he was always coming with you know dozens and dozens of shirts and pants that had been dry cleaned and i was working there one summer and uh he was gone for two weeks i'm going to say his name was mike i can't remember what his name was but mike was gone for two weeks and somebody else came in every day and then then after two weeks it was in june after two weeks he came back from his vacation i said oh hey mike uh where were these last two oh no i i take a vacation every uh the uh every uh every june i said oh oh um do you you go camping no no no i uh i get together with uh with some of my old buddies oh oh where did you where did you go well this uh this year we uh we went back to this place at one we had visited back when we were kids. I said, oh, oh, where was that? He said, it's in the north of France. He was a paratrooper. He was in the 82nd Airborne. Wow. This guy is now, this is 1974. So go back 40 years. So he's in his 50s. And what he's telling me is that when he was in his 20s, he jumped into Normandy on D-Day, and he was a paratrooper. And now he's a guy delivering his dry cleaning for the hotel. I felt stupid and small. But also, he was an example of that adult, that caregiver, that was part of daily life. He didn't know if he was going to make it back. And he went, oh, he said, and we go back. He said this. He said, we go back to visit the buddies that didn't make it home. So they're visiting the hotel. They're visiting the cemeteries that are in. So look, that's a generation. It was a time that was loaded with all sorts of problems that, of course, we're still dealing with right now. But you can't take away the fact that these were young guys who were asked to go off and liberate the world from really, really bad people, and they did it. Yeah. My grandfather, I'll leave it at this. My grandfather, who passed almost 12 years ago, who I was really close with, and my grandfather, who passed almost 12 years ago, who I loved dearly, I remember him telling me he worked with, he was in the Canadian Army, but he was attached to the Royal Air Force, and he planned bombing sorties. And they were stationed at various airfields as they would move across after June 44. And he said, one morning, we wake up, and there was constantly planes taking off and landing and stuff. And he said, one morning, the guy we shared a tent with woke up, came out of the tent, and walked into a propeller of a plane in the dark. And I said, and he told me, he didn't tell me this until I was about 18, of course. And I said, well, what did you do? And he said, and he wasn't joking. He said, well, I got a new tent mate. And I was like, wow. And he was just like, that's the way it went. We had to keep going. There was, what can you do? I don't want to go into a place I was, that's too much of a bummer of a story. Sad story, true story. It's a very sad, anyway. I think a perfect segue would be happy days, right? Sure, let's go. Let's talk about, you know. Let's go to happy days. Let's go to some happy days. In order to make Saving Private Ryan happen, or any of the other incredible movies that you have been in. You IMDB reading sons of bitches. No, no, no, no. How dare you? This is pure Wikipedia. How dare you come at me with this? It's just Wikipedia. So, so had you not booked that episode on happy days. Hey. Would you have not met Ron Howard and things, we would not have been gifted the highlight player. I did not meet Ron Howard on happy days. Ron had left the series by then. What I, the guys I met were Lowell Gans and Babalu Mandel, who were the staff writers on happy days, who wrote the, um, the part, uh, who wrote Splash, the screenplay of Splash. And Ron was directing and they said, Hey, you may want to, Hey, take a look at that guy who got fired from bosom buddies. You know, bosom buddies was canceled. Something that Sean is going to experience one of these days. Don't worry. Sean's canceled two programs I've been on. So keep going. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Tom, would you agree that the, this, the, the routine of a sitcom actor is the best job in show business? Do you miss it still to this day? Well, it is, it is kind of a skate. It's a great hang. I'll tell you that because look, if you, you either shoot, you rehearse Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, camera block, Thursday, shoot Friday, right? Or you rehearse Thursday, Friday, Monday, camera block, Tuesday, shoot Wednesday. Isn't it, is that kind of like the second one shoots Tuesday? Yes. You'd start on Wednesday. What you're saying is five days of the week. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're working with Jimmy Burrows and then you can take the first day off of rehearsal and really becomes a four day work week and it's only three weeks a month. So it's 12 working days a month. These are really top secret things, man. You should never let the civilians. What are you doing? Where are you blowing off? And it's six hours a day. Everybody's going to want to be in showbiz. Oh, wait, there's, there's, there's craft service. Climate control. You get a lot of breaks, you know, it is, it is an awfully, awfully fun thing. When we did bosom buddies, Peter Scolari and I, my dear old pal. One of the great shows. We actually shot that show on video, not on the film cameras, film cameras. In those days, that was pretty much a bunt camera. Camera blocking day was just kind of like your stand and did it. But we had four video cameras and we had to do the entire camera blocking day ourselves on camera because they did a line cut, you know, camera three and tighten up on four and four let's come back. Let's coming back to two and two. You had to be there for that. So you did, you worked a long day and you did every line of the, that week's script over and over again. And he and I just started goofing around so much that that's, that's where we first got, we got yelled at a couple of times, you know, the, the, uh, the director up in the booth, you know, he'd come in over that top voice of God. Hey guys, listen, we're, we're working really hard at here. We try to skip to the lines. Otherwise we can't get the line cut in. We're trying to check the tally lights on camera three, Tom, would that comes on that? You know, you speak and we didn't care. We were just goofing around so much. How excited were you when you got, when you got that show? What was that moment? So young Tom Hanks and you get bosom buddies, you booked it. It's your job. What was that? Yeah. Well, I couldn't believe it. Yeah. I was going to be on TV, you know, and I was going to be up to that point as a Shakespearean actor. I'd made a. I made less than 10, $10,000 in a year for an entire year. And I was married and I had a kid and, uh, geez, I, I made almost, I made that in two weeks on, uh, on bosom buddies. So the financial reprieve was huge. When was the last time you did Shakespeare? I did Shakespeare, uh, two years ago here in Los Angeles. I played false staff, uh, with the Shakespeare center, Los Angeles, Tom, tell that story. It was a, it was a video that I saw of you doing it. I can't remember. It was so funny. You pulled some guy out of the audience or something. What was that? No, what happened was we had an, we had a medical emergency. A guy, um, a gentleman had a, a heart thing happened to him. And all of a sudden, um, the paramedics had to be called. We were doing it at the VA center and, uh, the Japanese garden amongst the eucalyptus trees here in West Los Angeles. And you know, a guy had some sort of seizure and we had to call the EMTs and then we had to take a break and the house, not the house lights. The lights all came up and, uh, it was going into, it ended up being about a 30 minute hold while they took care of the, this gentleman and we were all backstage saying, uh, should we do something? And then when I saw that people were leaving, it's like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, it was gonna, it was a long, it was about close to three hour show anyway. But when I saw people, I saw a lady pick up her purse and move toward the exit and I thought, I'm gonna get out of here. I'm gonna get out of here. - Sean. - And so we had opened up opened up hamlet and we all had a rehearsal the next day for uh taming of the shrew which i played i played groomio in taming of the shrew and um all of the equity company the professionals were hungover exhausted because they had all been out partying the night before because they just opened hamlet so everybody was like somnambulistic and showing up at 10 o'clock and no one really knew their lines yet and everybody was kind of like shuffling around and dan sullivan yelled at everybody he yelled at everybody he said hey hey hey hey hey we've got three weeks to get this show up on its feet and you people are not even trying for crying out loud i can't do my job if you guys don't do your jobs you guys have got to show up on time you got to know your lines and you've got to have an idea i can't provide everything here so let's take a break mainline some coffee chew it if you have to right out of the jar but come back here with some friggin energy fuck i would cast you in the dan sullivan movie right now by the way sorry just just for what it's worth that wasn't good i remember okay so you you look we're all we're all like 19 18 20 i was 20 years old then and that lesson really super stuck to me if if professional actors who have 20 years in the biz as they often said 20 years in the biz i've never been yelled at like that uh that was that was an important lesson so all through all of these gigs that i had the hits thank you the misses let's forget those uh i always i that was always the thing that i thought the most important thing to do was show up on time know your lines and have an idea in your pocket for sure bring it that's that's all i did through all of those i didn't know anything so tom when you went when you were doing all the strings at the string of comedies uh back then and you do you remember what it felt like or do you remember that pivot moment when all of a sudden maybe you got offered a script or you had a kind of dialogue with your agent or what happened where you switched over to more uh let's say important films or more dramatic films what a way to what a question is so great thank you were you oh i can't that was the era of uh you could make a movie for about 15 million dollars and if you just said it was a comedy it seemed to do some brand of business whether it was actually funny or not it didn't matter yeah that was the time it was all you know anybody who had said action and cut was trusted to direct a comedy movie whether they were funny or not and i'm i made a i made a ton of those um in which everybody came back oh the dailies were fantastic i think the audience is going to be standing on their feet at the end of this so tracy dailies are are the thing you watch um as you're filming the movie they get yes the russians you know the day before stuff and it doesn't matter if the movie was called monkeys make the sun go down um everybody would say this is this is the funniest of all the movies the cows of tumble town this is going to be a magnificent comedy because the good comedies that were made you know at the time they all had they were all with former second city people you know and saturday night live people and but there was this this you could take a setting this movie takes place in a setting that's on a ski slope this movie takes place on a school bus this movie takes place at a bachelor party and it will be a comedy um and i made a i made a billion of those like that because we're just kind of like doing imitations of other people's funny movies yeah but here's the thing and i've said this about it there are a few people out there who have this and you are one of them which is it doesn't matter what the movie was you are always good you're always even even doing i joked about doing the dan sullivan no matter what it is you're committed and and that always kind of shines through so i i know that you talk about those those misses i mean look if it wasn't for bad movies i wouldn't make any at all you wouldn't be sitting in your dad's library yeah i wouldn't be my dad's living back at my folks house in toronto but but uh but you know but it's true and you always you always deliver in that way because i always get the impression watching you that like you don't care what the thing is you're just doing your i mean you're part of it and you're in the thing and who gives a shit what you know i i don't want to i don't want to discount some of the great stuff i met great people and we did we made we actually did some really funny stuff that that that really did work and it was always yes it was always always fun also known as classics it was well you know it's funny you know they i don't know i don't think i we ever had a movie splash was well reviewed and i don't think i had another decent review for about i don't know six or seven films but now you read about them and they're they're they're cult classics you know what they're a cult classic no right right right didn't happen back in the day but once philadelphia happened i would imagine um some of the scripts that were coming to you uh started to confuse things for you and your team well i got older you know that that's the other thing too i you know there's there's a type of movie you can make in your late 20s i turned here's a story i turned 27 the day of we wrapped the motion picture splash it was the last day of shooting we were in the bahamas we had a cake that was actually for the wrap hey let's celebrate the last day of shooting with a cake and someone i think with a tube of toothpaste added in icing on the cake happy birthday tom because they found out it was my birthday so that was you know there's a movie that you make when you're 27 and in your early 30s and what happened you know i i made i made a number of them and which but you have to get older you know you can't uh yeah uh and i was able to age into gary marshall gave me a great role with jackie gleason in a movie called nothing in common and then david seltzer wrote and directed uh with sally field uh punchline and then big came along that's great yeah but you get older and so and you start singing i i will tell you i look i'm not big on this kind of stuff but there was one time i was sitting around with my crack showbiz expert who works for um caa um and he said to me what do you want to do and i and i said you know sounds exactly like richard that's a great impersonation beautiful what do you want to do and i said i said i want to play grown-ups i i'm going to play grown-ups and i'm going to play i want to i want to play people who've been through bitter compromise because that was i was in my mid-30s by that point compromise jason is a thing that people do yeah when you hear the other person's side and then you go okay i'm willing to shift my position a little bit and whatever we'll talk about it later when it's gone sorry tom wait time you know what i always wanted to ask you and this is going to be the dumbest question in the world but um guaranteed but but it is the host latest that's right in cast away right yeah you um the the volleyball is named wilson now you're married to the wonderful rita wilson who i love i adore we all do is is was that by design because it could have been called spalding jesus could have been uh it was written by bill broils um and that man that movie took about six years to figure out bill broils and i started talking about it and we didn't we weren't shooting it until six years later and he came up uh with the idea of a of a volleyball and he named it wilson in honor of my beautiful bride we've been married it will be 34 years in next hold for applause hold for applause yeah good for you so no it could have been and i think we added the there you go thank you thank you will jesus christ that is a whole new level i'm like wow i'm like fred on this is um now you know uh but that brings me to finch finch seems like it's got some qualities it's i mean if i was a hack studio executive i'd say it's it's cast away meets martian all movies are like that now all movies are like that now yeah aren't they all since you let you take a it's this is on the waterfront meets pal joey by uh by way of uh paw patrol their own movies are all on pop yeah but what you need is a is a relatable every man that is uh empathetic sympathetic uh can alpha and beta uh inside a page um i mean you you are the man that could service all things i came up through that of which every genre movie was about somebody who could not be killed or defeated you know the cop that could not be filled i'm with you the fighter who could who never lost the uh and so i would you know a geeky guy with a big butt a big nose and a squeaky voice uh i i took all the jobs away from will uh because i know by the way i do have a big i have what's called a pro dumper yeah well you have heard it wait i just have a really quick castaway story that we might cut out of this but um and tom i think i told you this but i was working on will and grace with with somebody who worked on this show and we went after uh to his house after a taping one night and we got super super super stoned and will knows this won't be cut yeah we had super super super stoned and he he said look i got a copy of castaway i got the dvd let's fast forward it to the plane crash because the effects are so crazy let's get totally high on it let's get totally high on it and watch like how do they do that right and so we um so he just moved in this house it was this brand new equipment and we're and i'm sitting in the back of his screening room and he's up front he just moved into this crazy house it's gorgeous and he had no idea how his own equipment worked and so he's sitting in the back seat and he can't get the dvd to play and i said uh oh no that's is that a sony totally high out of my mind i go is that a sony he goes yeah i go oh they're voice activated those are the new ones you don't even know what you have you have to speak the name of the movie into the machine after you put it in because what are you talking about i go just listen to me you have to say the name of the movie as you put it into the dvd player he's like are you serious i go 100 i just read about these so he turns back to the machine with his back to me and he goes cast away and it didn't play and he waited to be and he did it again he goes cast away and i he turned behind me i was i couldn't breathe i was laughing bob zemeckis on that he he he never cuts to the outside of the plane that's one of the reasons why that uh that plane crashes is good it's just from it's so cool just from the perspective of the plane no yeah really good kind of stuff there that's bob now tom with all of your incredible set experience was that what drew you was it part of what drew you to the director's chair to just just just the the effort to sort of streamline things because you knew probably more than a lot of the directors you may have been working with no i think directing in that becomes sort of a bit of an ego thing because um you you become convinced that you know more than you actually do but jason seriously yeah but then you try it and you're like oh my god this is hard i believe every actor should direct i think every director should have to act i think we should all be writing and producing because you find out how hard it is to do that other job for sure um from an actor's perspective it's like you know you got somebody saying uh that was pretty good try it again and you want to say to him do you realize i'm on a horse weeping because my dog died and and i'm trying to remember six pages of dialogue at the same you do you realize it's a little harder than it is man let's try it again that along with the same thing of an actress saying hey we're gonna shoot this or what are we shooting or what right you have to realize everybody has nine million things going on inside their head and and and also well look we're all storytellers at some point we we can have a sense of what might fit into our mouths a little bit better and maybe some options it goes back to the thing dan sullivan always said which have an idea in your pocket you know have something that you can come out and say this isn't on the page but let me let me show you something else so since you have directed when you do come to the set as an actor with an idea in your pocket are you sensitive to that there might actually be a a plan in place that that director and that crew has been working on for weeks and that your idea might might might disassemble the house of cards that might not be room for it so then you try it once and they say don't do that and so and then you don't do it right no it's pretty pretty relatively easy stuff is is that desire to direct still uh still still burning in you or uh i can't say that i have the instinctive uh powers of being a director as an actor i think i know what i want to do uh read it and i think oh i know what direction i'll go to directing is a uh directing requires a fidelity and a patience and an ability to communicate uh after i've done it um for the i've directed two feature films um i've directed a number of episodes of the mini series uh that we've done and i like those because i i wrote them more i wrote on them at the same time but i i think uh i think directors uh more so than than than myself as an actor they're they're born into it you know you have to think it's the greatest job in the world yeah and oftentimes it's not yeah do you enjoy the producing part of it all with with what what you guys don't really produce well but you guys churn out it's really you shouldn't slough over it's the alliances that i make with other people that really do all the work but the amount of uh you're you're incredibly prolific as as a producer you and gary a great play tonya i mean it's it's you've employed an incredible amount of people you've put a lot of product out there that's not easy and uh that's it's incredibly admirable uh well uh i'm very lucky because we have extremely good people and we we do this you know we have a kind of like a clubhouse office where we lean in each other's doorway and say you know is this really a feature film guys i'm not so sure it's a feature film shouldn't it be like a 12-part mini series instead so we can really examine the theme and then then you make nothing but a ton of alliances but here's i'm not a producer because this is what producers do every day they get on the phone and they try to convince somebody to do something that they don't want to do and they don't want to do it and they don't they do not want to do right or they tell somebody on the phone that there's no way that they are going to do what that person on the phone really wants that's pretty much it's that it's that dichotomy i always just say sure uh no matter no matter what they're saying right we'll be right back and now back to the show let me ask you how how what what's your feeling about this uh this transition that we're all in into uh a bit more of a streaming element uh married with uh you know box office you know theatrical you know going to the theater paying and paying some money for a ticket versus having it at home do you um what is your opinion on that as somebody uh in the business and then also as somebody who is a who is a viewer is it do you like the fact that there is less pressure now maybe with not having to open on the weekend because it's streaming um do you think well that's that's a pressure that doesn't come upon the actor movies are always binary they're either double zero or zero one they either work or they do not work and if they don't work there's no amount of marketing or interviews that you can do right on podcasts in order to uh in order to uh change the zeitgeist the the pressure remains absolute the pressure is the speed of light in order to make a great story the audience i think uh if i can pontificate just a little bit here please doesn't care where they see it the business does the marketing the producers and the studios and the the grand entertainment industrial complex you know um they would you know they would like things to be exactly as they were but we have a business that is forever changing you know back in 1980 when you guys were still in junior high school uh and uh the concept of home video was just beginning here's a story that goes back a long way when we were the the first year that peter and i were in bosom buddies a vhs tape machine a player at home cost about four thousand dollars yeah wow and the only people that had them were incredibly wealthy rich people three quarter inch or two well wasn't that by that time vhs was just beginning and in an in in a neighborhood maybe a guy named doug would open up doug's video rental shop s-h-o-p-p-e old-timey old-timey video and on one side of one side of the rental space would be vhs tapes and on the other side would be a smaller collection of beta sony betamax and eventually beta went away and it was all just vhs and by the time i think the next year uh vhs machines were only like eighteen hundred dollars and then everybody was renting and the concept that you could it was great of course to be able to record shows uh after you went through this arcane kind of like process of on off recording timing but the bigger thing was is that if you had kids and you had a vhs of dumbo you know they would get up in the morning on their own and put in put in dumbo and you didn't have to get up this this was huge and the here we are in 2021 and the industry is going through something akin to that change because guess what as gary getzman my partner playton said you know sitting at home and watching something on your tv is not that bad right right right right you know tom you said to me years ago uh you said you know what sean the business is always changing and you have to adapt and change with it not as an actor or the craft of of creating things just you have to keep an open mind and go with the flow of it otherwise why and if you fight it you're just dead why didn't you take that advice why didn't you do it yeah what happened there sean because now you're reduced to hosting what did you decide this podcast is it heartless it's heartless you're known as dumbo the host of we got we were very lucky we were very lucky at playtone because one our one of our first deals was at hbo and this was old school hbo you know no commercials you could say anything you wanted to there was no language there was no there was no um and at that point hbo doing so doing a series or a movie or a miniseries on hbo that was the gold standard yeah you had seemed as though you had all the freedom in the world and now you have even more of that all the freedom in the world but it still comes down to this very basic requirement you've got to be putting out a an awfully good product otherwise it will disappear into the mist like many of my early films thanks guys no no no but how have you not i'm surprised because it seems like they've tried to gobble up everybody how have you not uh as when did marvel call you and say tom we need to do something about this I need you to play, you know, Dr. Universe. And, you know, we need you to do 12 films and you have to play Dr. Universe. Did that ever happen? Here's the problem. First of all, they've never called me once. I can't believe that. No, no, never. And I think that if one of these days they will, and they'll say, is there any way you would consider playing the Secretary of Defense? Yeah. A guy who comes and says, please, help us all for man. We can't survive. I'll be one of those guys. I don't get to play the punk kung fu. But God bless you because you still make the kinds of films. You have continued in an era where most features are, you know, the feature film market is dominated by these huge. Some of those are great. Some of those are a blast. No, I'm saying they're great and I have a lot of friends who do them. Well, they're not all great, but some of them are really good. I said some, but some of them are good. And we all have friends who we adore and who are super talented. Who make those. I'm not saying that. But there is, it seems like a shrinking market for films that stand on their own because it's a great story and has a great cast and you seem to be one of those people. You're in a very unique position that you're still making those films, which I think is awesome. We chastised JJ Abrams. We were like, go and make some comedies, JJ. You know, we were giving him shit. Because he wants to. But, you know, it's because, Tom, because, Tom, you are us and you have maintained being us. You, as far as famous and as successful as you have become for as long as you have been, you have still stayed very grounded, it seems, and normal. And I would imagine that that is just something you're stuck with from when you were a little kid and you probably got a couple of parents to thank for that, I would imagine. My parents divorced when I was five years old, guys. Way to go, Jason. Way to fucking go. This is why I'm not getting the nominations. This is where Sean really does his research. He would know that. Tom, I don't know this. What did your folks think about you getting into the biz-distry, as I call it? You know, I started doing it for fun in high school because I couldn't believe that you could go and do plays in high school and get credit for it. You know, this is school. I remember specifically thinking that the first time I walked into a drama class. And I did it because some friends of mine from junior high, had been in the plays, and I just said, "What? I can come to school and do this?" Well, this is screwing around, man. This is goofing off in class. I felt the exact same way. I was like, "Oh, my God, everybody's just laughing." This is great. Both my dad, and eventually my mom, because we lived in different places. When my mom came and saw me and stuff, they just thought, "Well, this is just wonderful." You know. They were like, "Listen, look what Tommy found." Sean, you've talked about that, you did, you just said, you had that same thing, right? Where you were like, "This is amazing, this is so much fun, and I can't believe I get to do this in five, six, seven, eight." And then you. Da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, Ben. Hit it, Sean. Hey, now, Sean, when you did, you did "Promises, Promises" on Raw. Thank you, everybody. He's never brought it up, that's weird. He's never mentioned it. And it was a big hit, and you said something to me, 'cause Sean and I see each other. Oh. Socially. You know, off camera. Not just on this podcast. So after you had done "Promises, Promises," and it was huge, 'cause you played the piano on stage and you did all this stuff. It was a big Broadway hit, right? A few, a number of years ago. And I said, "Are you going to do it again? Do you have the desire to get up and do another Broadway show?" And you said something that was, I swear to, I swear to God, the only person I heard make the same sort of reference. Are you ready for this? I read it as a quote from Laurence Olivier. Okay. You said, "I'm not sure I have the fire in the belly." Yes, that's true. In order to get up and do eight performances or something like that. I remember when Laurence Olivier was older, and he was always asked, "Well, will you ever get up at the National again, what have you?" And he says, "No, because it requires a stronger heart." And he wasn't talking about medically, he was talking about all the effort that goes into it. The fire in the belly. Well, Sean, you would do eight shows a week. I remember we've talked a lot about "Promises, Promises," but you said something the same. You were like, "I do it." You did it for nine months or a year? How long did you do it for? A year. A year. A year. I remember you saying a similar thing that you said to Tom. You said the same thing. I said, "Would you do it again?" And you said, "I don't know if I have it in me." Yeah. Five, six, seven, eight. And then you just went with it. No, no, it's true, Tom. You know what? Because, and I relayed that to you about the constant work ethic you have to jump from movie to movie to movie to movie over these decades. And they're all great. And your work, like Jason said, it's always, always fantastic. You always committed. You're always in it. I agree. I agree. Well, you're very kind. And I switched that question back to you about filmmaking is, do you still have the fire in the belly to travel? Yeah. Well, yeah. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's harder at the age of 65, I guess. But the experience of making the movie, That Thing You Do, I cast it with a bunch of friends. We had a great time. It was the beginning of the company that I formed. So great. I love that movie. With Gary Getzman and everybody else down at Playtone. I could do that again and again and again. That was really it. Was that the first film you directed? That was the first. Not the first directing gig I had, but it was the first feature film. Yeah. And it had music in it, and it was very personal because it was set in 1964. But, you know, every gig is magnificent. The ones that maybe disappoint a little bit are the ones where you don't get to spend enough time doing it. I just did two weeks with Wes Anderson in Spain with the Wes Anderson Repertory Company, and that was fantastic. And I was bummed out. I said, oh, we've got to leave. We've shot out my role. I've got to go now. I'd like to linger for a little bit. I just got to do a couple of days with our buddy Taika Waititi, and it was just the greatest experience. And then it was just, we did a show for HBO, and then I just did his movie, and I was like, these were the, it was like the greatest, most fun month. And then I'm like, oh, and it's over. Yeah. And that was, I just want to go and play with that gang. Can't, don't we get to have that 90-day experience here off somewhere, you know, pounding something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure. month and then I'm like oh and it's over yeah and that was I just want to go and play with that gang can't don't we don't we get to have that 90 day experience here off somewhere you know pounding something out and getting up and laughing well you've given us uh not 90 days but a solid hour of your very very valuable time yes thank you so much thank you on behalf of uh of of these two uh fellow smartless folks uh as well as everyone in America and the world for providing us uh all these little worlds that you have created that we all get to live in and they've all been fantastic is there a podcast award for second bananas or third bananas that you Jason and Will might be up for Will and I are gonna battle for that one you have to ask questions like what's your favorite movie yeah no you've got a you've got a monopoly on that you got it all I would say that in Canada in Canada this is known as Will Arnett's smartless that's true it's true wait what number one podcast in Canada I think I just got voted Canada's favorite son I'm not sure but I'm putting it out there in case anybody wants to latch on to that and start making that a thing I'm happy to well it's a delight talking to you guys you too Tom thank you for saying yes Tom I just words don't express how I feel I'm such a very kind very kind guys and uh you listen good luck on the uh is name for this award yet? It's the iHeartRadio Award. The iHeartRadio Award. It might be called the Aorta. Who are you up against? That would be a big question there. Oh, that's a great question. Hardcore history, maybe? You up against hardcore history? Sure. Fingers crossed. It's so great to see you. Thanks, Tom, very much. Thanks so much. Good to see you guys. Hope that we'll hang at all those places that people like us end up at. Yeah, for sure. All right, take care, guys. Bye, thank you, Tom. All right, buddy. Lots of love to you. Bye-bye. Bye, Tom. I think he's gonna make it. That guy's got some charisma. Jason, let me just say this. You've been complaining for a couple of years. You've been saying, man, great guys, you guys. And then you just decided you pulled out one of these, what I now refer to as, because I don't use this word, as the topper card. I'm gonna now call it the topper card. He's that. He's a blue chip, that one right there. Man, what a delight. I mean, he's just like. He does have that thing and i kept trying to figure out a way to ask him this without him deflecting as he does so well so humbly um and i just kind of bailed on it because i knew he would just wouldn't uh like he's just got that he's he is us he is completely personable and authentic he is he's every bit a leader that you'd want him to be but he doesn't seem like he's too arrogant or cocky to like i don't know how does he you mean us as a as an audience not us three yes like he's just like he's the guy you want to follow and are never annoyed you know watching him or i don't know it's it's been so consistent yeah i don't see myself as an everyman oh yeah no no no i see myself i'm special yeah well yeah um i'm like the boss of the everyman you know so when i'm there when i see tom come in i'm like you it's great spending time with one of my employees i hope he keeps uh staying as prolific as he is i mean what he's doing like what at least a film a year same same here that's what i meant about the movies he makes i love that he keeps making movies that are like it just seems like not a lot of other people are making and yeah his new movie which we talked on what is the uh the finch yeah no no not the finch just finch finch the bird yeah finch it's on apple and it's basically when is it on apple when is it it's not on now first week in november november 5th first week november 5th november 5th yeah so yeah so he's doing this movie finch um the sequel is going to be the finch i heard yeah no it's called fincher it's called fincher and david fincher is directing it yeah are you kidding dude this is show business incredible i know it's it's everything is aligned um but it's about it's him and a dog and a robot and this is not the start of a joke but like could anybody pull off a high wire act like that but they do walk into a bar there is one bar walk into a bar be fair in fairness they walk but i saw the trailer too with my almost 13 year old and we watched it and looked at each other we're like yeah absolutely yeah and don't you feel like he's kind of like our ambassador not just for absolutely this and not just for hollywood not just for los angeles but like america too like he's like quintessentially american and like he's one of the few people we can all both sides if you will can agree on yeah yeah what do you mean wait what's the other side i just meant like both like never mind everybody in america can agree oh those most yeah like leshawn we are not political sorry please what are you trying to do you're trying to lose your award you're trying to wade me into deep water and then you're going to take me down like a crocodile and keep me under bye bye god damn it you can't bail out like that you can't throw yourself out yeah you can't be saved by your own bell we've used every word that you could do with bye no not at all no but also you were just trying to bail yourself out of a sinking ship and you can't you can't use bye as as a as some kind of you know instrument to bail out your sinking ship why not i just did it yeah i guess you can sorry there is no rule on that you're right you can um but do you think that when he first moved oh boy oh no sorry let's hear it come on go ahead one of the questions i did get to here was uh when he was 1979 he uh made a move to new york city um and he was trying to be an actor full-time so i wonder if he was just trying to take a bite out of the apple in 1979 a bite a bite i'm not confident with this the least it's the worst but i'm gonna i'm gonna allow it i'm just gonna go ahead and tell you what i'm gonna do and i'm just gonna go ahead and tell you what i'm gonna do Thank you.