Talk Easy with Sam FragosoAs we approach the series finale of Barry, we return to our talk with actor and director Bill Hader. We discuss the thematic evolution of his hit HBO series (7:02), and how it draws from films like Taxi Driver and Goodfellas (10:36). Then, Bill reflects on growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma (13:16), the influence of his late grandfather (17:04), his path from community college to his early PA jobs in Hollywood (18:25), landing on Saturday Night Live (21:36), the weekly pressure of the show (26:07), and how he made it through by collaborating with John Mulaney (29:51).
On the back-half, Bill shares a piece of advice from Jeff Bridges (35:14), how Barry came to be (37:27), the personal connection he has with the show (40:07), the enduring power of movies (47:52), and how, after some detours, he’s finally where he’s supposed to be (49:57).
Pushkin. This is talk Easy. I'm standing frigo soo. Welcome to the show. Today we return to our conversation with writer, director, and actor Bill Hayter. He joined us back in twenty twenty two around the release of Barry Season three. The HBO hit is now in its fourth season, and we'll be coming to a close this Sunday, May twenty eight at ten pm Eastern Time. The one two Sunday punch of succession in Barry has been pretty remarkable these last two months, and with these upcoming finales, it really feels like the end of an era. I think that feeling is probably exacerbated by a host of issues you've probably been reading about. The ongoing writers strike, the IP driven ten poll obsession we've seen played out at every local movie theater across the country, the internet's morbid fascination with how AI will change Hollywood. All these subjects are something we'll get into this summer, especially as we do episodes around the strike and AI in particular. But for today, before we say goodbye to these great shows, I just want to take a moment to celebrate what Bill Hader has done with Barry. The show really to the very end here has been inventive, funny, and willing to take real chances with bending genres and story structure. And so at the top we discussed plot points from episode one and two of Barry season three, but we quickly move into all the things that have made this latest season of the show possible. His upbringing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the influence of his late grandfather, his early years in Los Angeles, making it on SNL at twenty seven, and how eventually, after a few pit stops he found his way to Barry. This is undoubtedly one of my favorite episodes from last year, so I hope you enjoy it, whether you've heard it before or are hearing it again today. I thank you for being here. If you have not heard our latest episode with succession actor Alan Ruck, that's available wherever you do your listening. We'll also be back this Sunday with a new episode featuring director Nicole holl of Center discussing her latest film, You Heard My Feelings. That film is coming out in theaters this weekend May twenty six from A twenty four, But for today, here's my conversation with the one and only Bill Hayter. Bill Hayterer. Nice to meet you.
Hi.
You're in the process of finishing Barry as we speak.
Right, Yeah, yeah, we have to mix episodes seven and eight.
When you watch the first cut of any episode, you've said that you have a full on mental breakdown.
Yeah, that's true.
Did that happen again put in together this season?
Yes, it's I could set my watch to it. I go in with the editor, I sit, they start it, and then I have to see myself. I have to hear my voice and then all the cool things I wanted to do are not really there.
How quickly do you make that realization.
It's like just you feel it. It's instinctual. The minute it starts, you're just like, this is wrong. This whole thing is wrong. I don't know what I was thinking. And then it's just this long process of getting it back to what you initially hoped it would be. And it gets there, and in some ways it changes, things change in a way that help it.
It's sort of a gradual acceptance of your own Yeah.
Yeah, that you're mediocre and you have a weird sounding voice, and I look more and more like my dad with each season, you know, And is that a problem yes, no offense.
Dad, you share the same name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a junior. So I just don't want people to like think that my dad got a show.
Because it would just inflate as ego to me.
Yeah, even more than it actually is. I mean, he'll be going now, my dad's very sweet.
So eventually you've come to terms with this new season. Are you feeling marginally better now?
Yeah, now that it's coming out and I'm getting like nice responses from people, but mostly, you know, you do it to make the thing. So it's like in the making of the thing is where it's at. So for me, it's when we sit in the mixing stage, which is the kind of last stage in the whole process, and you sit back and watch it and go, you know what, this came out all right.
When it comes to the actual show itself, it picks up I think six months after season.
Two, that's right.
Yeah, you've said that Season one was about hope against an obstacle, Barry trying to get in touch with his emotions. Season two is about whether we can change our nature. Barry is a violent person, but can you leave that rage behind him? How would you describe the crux of season three.
There's a lot of different things kind of happening in season three, but one is this idea of forgiveness and redemption and forgiveness being earned. It has to be earned, as Noah Hank says in the first episode. But then this idea, is it actually like a thing? Like is that possible? And can you forgive yourself?
Do you think it is?
I don't know. That's why we write the show. We ask ourselves these questions. And then the kind of cycle of things that I find really interesting, Like there are things as we were writing it, everyone's stories start to kind of parallel each other in an interesting way. But I would say forgiveness being earned ellipses if it is indeed a thing.
To be determined?
Yeah, yeah, we're still figuring it out.
Well.
You know, George Sanders, who we were talking about before, likes to say that your job as a writer is to present the question.
Not yeah that check off thing is like you present the problem, not the answer. That's true, and I'm a big proponent of that. You know, It's there's something in episode two that kind of there was a scene where Barry wants Sally, his girlfriend, to put kusno on her show, and she's like, I can't. You know, he's an asshole, like no one wants to work with him, you know.
Has a horrible reputation.
He has a terrible reputation. And Barry his back's really against the wall and it was only a matter of time before his rage issues come out, and he flips out on his girlfriend, puts her backs up against the wall, gets in her face and screams at her and then leaves. Now what we shot initially was that that happens. And then you see Sally on the side of her show, and then she is texting and she has kind of like another not necessarily a fight, but she's texting Barry and saying, are you okay? Was it? Were you sad? Or you know what? And then and then he's kind of re triggered this kind of thing for her that she was an abusive relationship and she's gone back into kind of regressed into this kind of playcating thing. And Elsie Fisher, plays her co star, sees the texts. We wrote that and then showed it some people and everybody in the you know, said, well, something would happen because I mean he really flips out her and people are seeing it like, no one would say anything, you know, and so I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, some would say something one needs to happen to him. Is he needs to be reprimanded, she needs a file report against him, and blah blah blah. And then someone else said, but he doesn't you know, these are the writers, these aren't I'm not at Chick fil A, just talking. And then another writer was like, but he doesn't touch her, he doesn't throw anything, he doesn't really threaten her. He just gets angry.
No crime has been.
No crime has been committed. And then someone was like, well, they can't really call HRX, he doesn't work there. And then as that was happening, I realized, oh, this is the scene, this is the scene we need. It wrote itself, yes, And it was that thing where you just kind of say like, oh, this is it. You pose it and go, well what would actually happen and just show the problem, And so we went back and reshot.
It throughout this season, but especially in these first two episodes, there is a thematic and aesthetic connection to Goodfellas in a way, in part because we're seeing Barry lash out at people that he loves, which of course reminds me of an hour and a half into Goodfellas.
I mean, it wasn't like consciously was like, oh, let's do good Fellas. But you know, you watch something twenty times over thirty years or something, it becomes ingrained in you. You know. It wasn't until I was mixing the last episode of season two that I was like, oh my god, this is Taxi Driver. You know, we're just we're doing Taxi Driver. This is embarrassing.
Was that a good realization?
Yeah? I mean, I mean everybody has those things. Like I've said that to other filmmakers and they're like, well, everything is that, you know, like Scorsese's doing Godaar and Vassbender and you know what I mean, and all these other things. But no, it wasn't conscious. But I think the Kopa Wonder and Goodfellas is a great example of a woner that actually tells a story. Some wonners that you see they don't need to be a wonner. You go, why does this all need to be one shot? And so that one I was like, oh, well, the one in episode one it's Sally's character entering her the set of her show and everything that's expected of her. And it was very kind of autobiographical because it's how I feel on the set of Barry and I just thought, well, how can I do this emotionally? When I come on a set, I always feel very small. The actual stage is massive, and then the sets are tall, and so I was like, oh, why don't we I want to start very wide, and so she looks very small coming onto the set, and then we slowly start to move in on her, we're dilling with her, and then you you end in a very tight profile of her. So going from this very objective point of view to this kind of subjective thing, and that I know not consciously is like, oh, it's a copa shot. But then when I watched it, I was like, oh, that's very much me watching Goodfellas all the time since whenever it came out. I was twelve when that movie came out, and being like, that tells a story.
You know, when you're ten, you watched Taxi Driver with your father? Right?
I watched it at a kid's sleepover.
At a kid's sleepover, Yeah, older.
Brother try to blow the younger kid's mind. A sixteen year old brother came in and was like, all right, dude, here's what y'all are gonna watch. You know, I grew up in Oklahoma. All right, guys, shut up. Here we go. Tax Driver and Clockworkorn same night, double feature, double feature.
Is it true that you haven't slept actually from that day on?
No? Yeah, then aple going you have anxiety. But it was like a double mind blower kind of thing you said.
At that time, at age ten, you were sporting a disgusting rat tail of a haircut.
Yes, I think I probably thought I had long hair. I think in my head I looked like Jimmy Page or something, but I didn't. I looked like a disgusting child.
Seems a little harsh on yourself.
Now you haven't seen the pictures. I mean it's very heavy metal parking lot. You know, it's just it's not good. And it's a baseball picture. There's one where I'm like my baseball little League picture. If you saw it, you were like, well, that was taken in nineteen eighty seven or whatever it was eighty eight.
But that version of you, that ten year old self watching taxi driver, wasn't it there that you made some sort of connection that someone is directing this movie.
Yeah? Yeah, The first shot was a Travis Pickle shot him on the phone.
This scene gives me creat anxiety.
Yeah, he takes Sybil Shepherd to a porn movie, just talking about it's making me nervous. And then she leaves and it's really embarrassing and you could see it as like he's purposely doing it to sabotage a date or whatever he's doing. And then he calls her. He's sent her flowers and she hasn't called him back, so he calls her to be like, hey, do you get my flowers? And he's on a pay phone, and as he's talking to her, it's so hard to watch the camera. Then just Dolly's off of him. Dolly's down the wall and lines up like on a hallway, And I thought, oh, the movie doesn't want to watch this. You can do that. You can have kind of a subjective emotional camera. That movie does it. I mean, you know, when Travis Bickle shoots Harvey Kaitel in the doorway, that's another scene because the way it's framed is from the point of view of someone's sitting on a stoop across the street, So we the audience are just sitting on a stoop across the street and we're watching two guys argue and one guy shoots the other guy, and then Scorsese just stays there and you just watch Travis Bickle and then he sits down, so now it's just us and Travis Bickall. And in the background, it's brilliant. There's a TV on, like you're seeing an apartment behind him, and there's a TV on in the background. So you just get this sense that life is being led around you and this violence is taking place while everybody else is just going about their day. And yeah, it just affected me in a massive, massive way.
Throughout your teenage years, you become increasingly obsessed with movies. You spend time in a place called sound Warehouse in the video section, I think, endlessly nagging clerks about eight and a half and when it's going to be there. You weren't an especially gifted student. Your French teacher described you in such a way. Do you remember what she said?
She said, Guillolme is very is that you? Yeah, that's me, William Gillolme. I think I'm saying it right, but I'm terrible at French. But it is very funny. One day, maybe he'll be on Saturday Night Live. He has a forty three in this class.
He will not be speaking French.
He will not be speaking French on a Stay Night Live. So I was like a fuck up. But it wasn't like, you know, I think everybody thought I was probably on drugs, but I was actually the opposite. I wasn't drinking or doing drugs. I was just weird.
So you didn't even have an excuse.
I ain't have an excuse. I remember like the cool English teacher, like the guy who was like Donald Sutherland and the Animal House, you know that kind of guy. And I remember he was talking to some stoner kids and I heard him. He goes, what no way, and he yelled across the classroom, hater, you don't smoke the dubage.
That didn't inspire you to try.
It just makes me tired. I just get like tired anything. Even drinking, I just get like, I just get kind of smiley. I just smile a lot, and I'm like, oh, that's fun. I look like I'm fun when I'm drunk, but I'm not.
At seventeen, you are, I think, like in the throes of loving movies and spending most of your time watching them, instead of doing anything. Yeah, it's around that time that I believe your grandfather passes away.
That's right.
Yeah, his name was Jack Patton, Jack Patten. He lived down the street from you. He passed away of pancreatic cancer. You said when he died. That was a massive turning point in my life. It was my first traumatic realization that this all ends. And it instilled in me some impulse to push past my fears and inhibitions and tried to go to be a filmmaker.
Yeah, that's true. Again, on this like subconscious level. It wasn't the thing that you you know, see in the movies where it's.
Like the light bulb happens.
Yeah, it's me looking at the ocean because there was no ocean in Oklahoma, so I'd be looking at like, you know, a pond. But it was this kind of weird feeling of finite. Everything's going to end at some point, ephemeral. That's what I meant to say, And yeah, there's nothing you can do about that. He actually got it the way that you would hope to, which was he was surrounded by you know, all those loved ones, and it's the way you we all hope to go you know, and so that was just something that lack of a better word of confidence kind of kicked in of Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to figure out how to do this. And so then I was like, I'm going to Arizona again. I'm not smart. I just went I'm going to go to Arizona. And then headline from this podcast Bill Hayder not smart, not bright. No, I went to Arizona. As Jimmy Kimmel went, wait, you went out of state to go to community college. I was like, yeah, yes, I did well. One was Art Institute of Phoenix. It was like a trade school. And then a kid there said Scottsdale Community College. They actually have an airybl and I went, oh wow. And they have a couple of arises, and they had like film cameras and they had avids and this is in nineteen ninety seven. So I just thought, holy shit, I got to get my hands on that because digital wasn't what it is today. And so I went there, enrolled, immediately, made spent like three thousand dollars on a short film that I never finished.
Was that the one Jinovic?
Oh no, he's wand by Nick Jasenovic. I acted in He's the One, Nick Jason. Do you know Nick?
We played basketball every Sunday?
Oh yeah, Nick, He's the one that's mixed movie. It was a movie that was just bad. And then I moved to Los Angeles. Nick was there, a guy named Justin Carlton, a guy named John Humber, and we just started paying.
So you're paying across a bunch of different kinds of film sets, some big, some small. I think you find a lot of this work on the back page of the Hollywood Reporter.
Yeah.
One of the first jobs you have is on a film called Final Payback.
Yes, was Richard Grico.
What was your job on that movie?
So there's a guy named John Saxon. You know he is no Okay? So John Saxon, he's the sheriff in Nightmare and El Street. He was in Enter the Dragon. He's in a great, very bad movie called Mitchell. I was a big John Saxon fan and I got to run lines with him. So I got to sit there as a PA and I thought I had made it because I was just being like, sir, your wife is dead, and he was like, what do you mean she's thed? What you're saying, you know, And I was like, sir, I don't know what to tell you. And I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. And I think it was a scene where he pulls up in a really nice car and hops out and they go, so your your wife's been murdered and he's like, no, you know, and and so I got to run lines with him, and then I had to back the car up. It's like a super nice ROLLD choice that the producer around and I went okay, and I had to back it up. He drives up like a super windy driveway. So I just would sit and just very slowly back this thing up. I would just start to hit something and then it would be like I know, I'd just hear in John Saxon go no.
It went unlike this for a few years, doing all these kinds of yes jobs.
Yes I did that. I was on. Me and Nick Jessenovic worked on a kid's movie called Two Little Heroes. There was a stunt coordinator on there named Solly Marx that Nick and I were just obsessed with, and we would talk to him a lot. I think he was from Russia and he like smoked a pipe and he was a stunt coordinator, but he looked like like an academic.
Kind of these experiences, at some point you reached the end of the road and you don't want to PA anymore. You start working as an assistant editor at places and then doing all this work. Eventually you start performing at Second City, Los Angeles. From there, Megan Malali comes to watch Matt Offerman loves your performance, says I'm going to call Lauren Michaels when you get the call to go audition. Do you remember that day?
So I was in a edit bay. It was a company called Triage, and I was working on Iron Chef America and a editor had come in frustrated because I had put his project together wrong. As the assistant editor, you stay up all night and you're kind of prepping what that editor has to do the next day. And as he was talking to me, I saw a phone call a number from him I didn't recognize as Megan Malally, and she said, Hey, it's Megan, and she said I told Laura Michaels about you, and he'd like to meet you. I hope that's okay, And I don't really know what she said after that. I kind of just will and then there was a line on someone beating in on the other line, and I was like hello, and it was like, Hi, my names Lindsay Shookus. I work at the Town Department SNL, and Laura Michaels would like to meet you. Who do I call? Like, who's your manager? And I was like, I don't have a manager. She's like, well, he'd like to meet you. Can you fly out next week? And it was a whirlwind.
The night of your audition happens I think a few weeks later at the UCB on twenty sixth Street in New York.
Yeah. Well we had done a show in La first.
Right, but you had packed up with all your friends.
Yeah, and he was like, this is all your friends. Jess Novic was at that show. Actually he was cheering really loud, and then it was like the bit. Yeah, it was like he was like, oh, these are all his friends. So now you got to come to New York and do it for a New York crowd. And the front row was seth Meyers, Tina fey Hammy Poehler, my shoemaker, Lauren Michaels, Marcy Klein terrifying. But you know what, at the time though, I had nothing to lose, and my sister flew out from Oklahoma, so I just remember like hanging with her and like the guys in the sketch group I was in, Matt Offerman and Mel Callen and Eric Hilkowski and what's gonna happen? Like, well, this this is something I'll tell my grandkids, you know.
Lauren said that one of the impressions that pushed you over the edge was of Peter Falk.
What the heck was the bit he does do a thing where he says, uh, this is a Jowa now lays and I'll be and look at me. What what gonna do?
Yeah?
I was gonna play a Jawa. He's from the sand that that doing? Okay? I mean that kind of showed kind of like where I was at at that time. It was real nerd humor stuff. Now that would drive me crazy where I'm like, oh, stop it with the Star Wars.
Refs, you know, well your taste change.
Yeah, you become like a withering snob that you describe myself now, Yeah, yeah, that's my license withering snob.
They put that all on.
There, Yeah, they put it all on there. I have two license plates actually, just stuck them together.
On SNL once you're on the show. In two thousand and five, you said that there's this thing with funny people where you think that if you're not good at this, you're not good at anything. So with SNL, I was like, if this doesn't work, I'm fucked because I'm bad at everything else.
That is kind of true. It was like the only two things I growing up that I had confidence in was I'm funny and I really think I can make a movie. I really think I could be a good director.
You send that to your father after a basketball.
Yes, after a basketball game, I said, Dad, I think the only two things I'm good at of this And it was in reference to I suck at basketball. So it's like, I can make a movie and I'm funny. That's it. Everything else like don't count on me. And then the funny thing is it never really changed. You know when you get to SNL and your whole worse do you know what I mean is being funny? Get there and then you're doing stuff and it's not funny, and then you can get in your head and then go, oh my god, maybe I'm not good at this stuff. I'm not funny, you know.
Did you feel like that in the early days where you didn't think you were funny?
Yes, And a lot of that was just getting confidence and kind of realizing like, oh, everybody has ups and downs, and it was kind of helpful for me to see people that I did find funny, like Fred Armison or Will Forte bomb, you know. Or you would see Steve Martin come back and host and do a thing that didn't work and go h and I would. So I got to study that and go, Okay, this is just part of the process is failing. And then it became a little easier. I think I just got to a place where I go, well, how do I alleviate my anxiety here? And I was like, oh, you know what, like I could just make it where what are the things I can control? What I can control are bring two good pieces to the table, read every Wednesday, and I'm good in everybody else's sketches, and that's it. And then it was just kind of like whatever people me in, I would just do the best job I could.
This anxiety you've mentioned a few times, it's, as you've said, pervasive in those SNL years. And then I have to say there's such a stunning disconnect between the joy you're bringing people on home versus the kind of pain it seemed to be causing you.
You know, a lot of it's like the anticipation of it, the anticipation of going out, the anticipation of five minutes to air. I just would go to the place where I like, I'm going to pass out. But the whole week that clock starts, So starting Monday, when I walk in, I would always have this feeling like, Okay, the clock started, and getting you to that point where you're on air on Saturday. And it was just the first four seasons especially, it was just crippling. It was really hard. I can see it in some of my performances where I put my hand in front of my face or I will grab onto things. I just it's like I'm literally trying to hide or steady myself. Vanessa Bear and I just were talking and we talked about it a time where we were in a sketch and I grab onto her arm midway through the sketch and she kind of was like, Oh, why are you doing this? And then she kind of looked at me and saw in my eyes that I was going through it, yeah, going through it, and just like we just went through the thing. And then after at Good Nights, when you know we're all waving goodbye and stuff, we hugged she said he here, are you okay? And I was like, oh no, sorry about that. You know, I just had a moment. I think as the season, as the show went on and everything, I got a little bit better with it. But Julian Assange Cold Open, I mean, if you watch that, I can tell I'm trying to hide myself into this wineglass that they gave me because that Cold Open was given to me like that day and Seth Myers, it was the thing. You would show up and Seth Myers go, hey, you're Juliana sannge in the Cold Open and I would just full on spin out. The thing that would come me down is just read it over and over and over again to the point where I really get it and I would know what I was supposed to do and I would get the rhythms right and everything, and then between dress and air they change it all. So yeah, I just would have a panic attack.
They were torturing you.
Yeah, But you know what I think to everybody else is that they just saw me being dramatic or you know, Colin jos if you had to make changes to a sketch before air, I would be following them around being like, okay, just give them to me the minute they get out of the copier and he'd be like, we please relax.
You know you said, I'd wake up Saturday morning crying, hitting my head against the shower, saying I don't want to go. I don't want to go. That does sound like a kid who doesn't want to go to school?
Yeah, yeah, it's that feeling. Yeah, and I had that. You know, I remember being a kid and just being very the social anxiety of walking into school and it being very big, and especially when I got into like sixth grade and you're around like freshman in high school and people like that, you know, walking around. It was all very intimidating. So it was like, oh, this would be so much better if I didn't have to go, and yeah, yeah, I would get it really worked up, and Maggie Carey would come down and was married to its time, would come down and calm me down, and it was, you know, very lovely of her, and you know, she would do like reading that she had learned and like Lama's type breathing stuff, you know, to try to calm my nerves down. And it was very sweet. But yeah, man, it was it was rough. It was rough.
Go it seemed like one person that made it a little bit easier. In addition to Maggie was John Mulaney coming on the show.
Oh yeah.
Now, usually in interviews people want to replay and talk about all these sketches and characters you've done. The truth is SNL is extremely litigious and there's no chance we're gonna be able to get that clip. So there is one sketch that I'd like to have on record because it's so good and it never made the air. It's a samurai film directed by James L.
Brooks and John and I wrote it.
The title was called but What If You're Wrong?
Yeah, but what if You're wrong? It's like a samurai film and uh, you see them fighting and it's like oor, you know, uh family, blah blah blah. They're fighting. It's like dating after forty and then it was me and fred Is two guys, and it was like, uh, gave her the keys to my house. Now I have a Netflix subscription. I'm trying. Then like really violent fighting, and then that song Walking on Sunshine kicks in and then it was us as Samurais. But it was all like, uh, look in the Book of Life, I just want to be in the acknowledgments. Yeah. I think Abby Elliott and they seem Padrad were two Geisha's, but speed walking in Central Park and then one of them like runs into a light pole and goes like whoa and falls down.
When you pitched this to Lauren Michaels, do you remember what he said? No, he said, samurais James L. Brooks. I don't understand.
Well, we always liked James old Brooks, and I think in a Stephan we put in a Club was written and directed by James Oldbrooks.
You probably sounded different than I just did.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, uh I like this, but why now? But yeah, that was one we wrote. We also wrote one that was like, we did a Mister Belvidere sketch because there's like a velvet, you know, there's like the thing the guy played mister Belvidere at a table read sat on his balls and had to go to the hospital. So we did that scene. It was me playing mister Belvidere and I was standing up, and then I was like, I just want to say before I sit down, how much I love all of you and being on the show is just one of the greatest delights of my life. And I want you all to know that I just love you. And then I start to sit down and write. Before I sit down, I go another thing real quick. I just want you to know that these scripts are some of the most fantastic scripts I've ever seen in my life.
It's almost a little Allen all the leg Yeah.
Yeah. And then like the thing was that it was Urban Legend Theater and it was Mick Jagger playing himself hosting Urban Legend Theater. So it's like and then he says, it's called so when you sit on your balls, it's called pulling in Belvedere. And then Will Forte gave us our final line because we were like, yeah, we don't know to end this sketch. He goes, oh, you should have him sit down and not scream or anything, just sit down and stare for a bit, and then go, I just myself to myself. Yeah, those did that didn't make it on either. It was just kind of like, guys come on. It was like, come on, that's hilarious.
You know, it didn't make it on us and l but it made it here.
It made it on here. And I think John, I'll be happy that guy it's out there than mister Belvedere.
Joe, I'll be happy it's on Talk Easy Talk Easy.
Now he knows mister Belvidere's sketch which no one found funny.
Look, I liked it.
I liked it. We'll be right back after a quick break.
You know, we were talking about that Julian Assange cold hoping. We are clearly having a panic attack. And I'll say I rewatched it. There's something happening.
Yeah.
If I didn't know to look for it, I wouldn't have known. But that night, I think it's December tenth of twenty ten, Jeff Bridges is hosting. Yeah, Jeff Bridges gives you some advice that night that seems like you listen to and carry with you.
Yeah. It was huge. Yeah, And I got a chance to tell him this on the red carpet at the Golden Globes. I saw him and went over and said, hey, man, you said this to me, And he was like, I said, what you know? And I said, you said, He said, you know, I worked with Robert Ryan, and Robert Ryan before every take would start sweating. And I said, wow, after all these years, you still get afraid. And he said, oh, I'd be really afraid if I wasn't afraid. And he's like that fear, like, that's your buddy, that's your friend. Like, you take that with you and don't push it away. When you push it, it makes it worse, you know. And that really hit me and it was very gracious, and I just that was huge.
I can hear jeff Bridges saying, it's your buddy.
Yeah, it's your buddy. Man. Could you imagine that's what you would say on it?
You take that advice eventually leaving SNL after eight years in twenty thirteen. You take that nervousness and channel it into your work moving forward. You're great in this film called Skeleton Twins. Immediately after that, there's another film called train Wick.
Don't right, hey, man, that's all right, Jeffrey, buddy, you can do it. It's okay, it's train wreck, but.
You call it whatever you want.
Man.
I think I said twain wack twin wack because I'm a little boy, because I'm a scared little boy. It's twain Wig, I'm terrible. This is twalk easy all right?
Anything else?
No, no, no, that was fun. I've done it.
I was like, I'm so glad you finally messed up.
Oh thank god, he screwed up. Now I have the upper hand. Who is all the status in here? Now?
I was throwing a perfect game?
Yeah?
Uh, you know, you make these films. Eventually, you and Alec Berg talk about making a show for HBO. Do you remember those early conversations you had about making Berry.
Well, initially we were talking about making another show.
About Tulsa, Oklahoma, about.
Tulsa, Oklahoma and a guy I grew up with, and I was going to play that guy. And then it just you know, we had the first episode lined out, and then after that, I was like, this really doesn't go anywhere. And I'll admit, Breaking Bad had just ended, and I don't watch a lot of television. I tend to just watch a lot of movies. And I read which you'd never guessed from hearing me speak. But but you know, was your license plate again withering babies? No? Wait, what was it? Withering dumbass? What I think snob, withering snob. Hello, we're withering snob. We're from Sacramento and it's called withering Snob. Yeah. So I liked Breaking Bad and I was talking to Alec. I was like, you know, it'd be good to have something that has like stakes to it and that moves and has like a narrative propulsion to it. And I also read like comic books, but not like not necessarily, you know, like these DC Vertigo books and there's stuff would have like some depth to it, but also it moved, like what you know, I want to do something like that. And we were at SMW Diner in Culver City and I said, what if I was a Hitman? And he said I hate hitman, like the skinny tie too, blocks in their hand. I just that's lame. I don't want to do that. And I was like, no, it'll be me, just me, and then we start talking and I still to this date don't know how we said what if he takes an acting class? But I do remember Alex saying Hitman taking an acting class is kind of cool. He's like, that's a show. And I think the reason was was it was like, oh, those the duct specific juxtaposition are the two things living in the shadows versus living in the spotlight. I was like, oh, this is really helpful, and so we just started talking it out and then, you know, our first drafts of it were like the acting world was great, but the Hitman world we tried to it was more inspired by movies. You know. It was like the Hitman We're all at a barbecue together and like all this stuff. And then Amy Gravit and Casey boys at HBO read it and their note was like, the acting world seems great. Hitman world like, I don't know what this is, and they were right. And then that was when I was like, what if he's a marine? And then suddenly that just brought it all into place.
Alex said, part of what I was interested in with Barry was this idea of having a gift that you hated. Bill was like that on SNL. So suddenly the story was personal.
Yes, not that I hated it, but it was also like this gift to be able to be funny, like I told my dad in the car, you know, and do voices and stuff, but then having to go on stid out live on live television, which was like really physically hurting me. You know, I have like autoimmune problems. I have all types of stuff that I have to kind of deal with. And when I talk to people like, were you ever under a lot of stress, It's like, yes, I was. Again, I did it and I got through it. And I'd never want anybody to think I'm blaming the show or something. It's it was just my chemical the way I'm made up. It's just who I am. So it was like, oh, what if it's like a guy who's really good at killing people, that's like his gift, and then he just wants to make a better life for himself. There was that personal Yeah, yeah, well you got to be able to That's why I learned is writing forever. I would write so much just I'd write full screenplays, and then you back up and you're like, oh, this is just about other movies or this is like movie logic, not like it's like completely ripping off a thing, but it's like, oh, I got really inspired and I wrote this thing and it's got cool sequences in it, but the emotion wasn't anything personal. But I could really blatch onto and write from. So that's what Barry was the first thing I really started to do that with.
Well, it completely comes through because at the end of the pilot there's a scene between you and Henry Winkler. He's in his escalade and you walk up to him and ask, should I be in this class? Do you think I'm good enough to be in this class?
Ye?
But the point of the scene. While watching it at home, your sister Kara saw it. She said, I couldn't believe that Bill was finally showing himself, finally being vulnerable to being denied and having his heart broken. I was almost broken hearted watching it. Why don't we take a look at that scene for a second. This is from the pilot episode of Barry. What you did was dog shit.
I mean really really awful FLM acting, I call it. Do you know why? Because acting is truth and I saw no truth.
So here's my advice to you.
You go back to whatever nook of the world you call home, and you do whatever it is you're good at, because this is not it.
You wanna know what I'm good at, I'm good at killing people.
Yeah.
When I got back from Afghanistan, I uh was really depressed. You know, I could leave my house for months and uh, this friend of my Dad's he's uh, he's like uncle to me. He uh. He helped me out and he gave me a purpose. He told me that what I was good at over there could be useful here, and uh it's a job, you know. I the money is good and uh these people I take out like they're they're bad people, you know, like they're pieces of shit. Well, lately, you know, I've like I'm not sleeping and uh that depressed feelings back, you know, like like I know there's more to me than that. Maybe I don't know, maybe it is not it is all I'm good at.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think my sister called me after that and she was like, wow, that's like, yeah, it's very personal. That's kind of your you know that like kind of anxiety wanting to be kind of accepted. The way he's at in that scene. Look, if you had showed it to my high school, you'd be like, oh, he seems fine. You know, it's kind of what you're saying at SNL. But I'm an actor. You know, You're you're good at hiding stuff and being like everything's fine, everything's great, but underneath is just a lot of turmoil and getting to kind of write about it and play it in that way was great. The interesting thing, on a side note about that scene is that Henry Winkler had to leave when we shot that. So I'm doing that hole monologue to like a mark on a sandbag that's on a c stand because Henry left. He had to leave. It's not it's not his fault. But I did that to that and I was like, all right. We did four takes of it, and I was like, all right, well, I guess everybody go home now.
Once you do that saying did you feel better?
Yeah, well you It happened a little bit in Skeleton Twins. But it is nice where you feel like this is like an artistic endeavor in the same way writing and directing is where you're you are having some personal expression in it, even though you're playing a killer, or in Skeleton Twins it's a suicidal person feels like he's a failure. It doesn't matter, you know, it's it's a there's something that you there's a ven diagram there between who the characters and you are, and you want to play that. You know. What the big thing was too was being able to have the confidence to go I'm a good writer, and I think I could can direct, And that was always thinking I had zero comp and it's even sane out loud, but it was nice being able to have a table read and go, this stuff is working. And again it's not just me, it's Alec Berg, Duffy, Boudreau, lisarn Off.
Takes a village.
It takes a village, a lot of people. But getting that confidence was very new. That was helpful, just being able to say that, yeah, just being able to say without mumbling it to myself, like I'm a writer director, you know. I wasn't even comfortable saying I was an actor until I was doing press for Skills and Twins. I was like, oh, I you know, I do sketch comedy. So it's not some false modesty thing or whatever. I mean. I do think sometimes I do think it's an Oklahoma thing. I do think like where I grew up saying I want this, you know, it's not attractive.
Right outside of ordering something on the menu.
Exactly outside of yes, buying a car, it's really disturbing. So I've always kind of not been that way, and then it's been helpful in this endeavor.
It's funny, as you were saying that finally recognizing that, oh I can direct I can be the thing that seventeen year old you on the heels of your grandfather passing, that you are that thing that you wanted to become as a teenager.
Yeah, it's really nice. I mean it is a thing where something that's very important to me to not lose track of that what I learned or got from his life and his death.
That time is precious.
Yeah. Yeah, that's like something I go back to a lot, but.
That realization that time is short. Yeah, it seems like that story Dell Close used to always tell you a Second City staple.
Yeah, he didn't tell me that I read it, but it is a thing that really stuck with me of the skydiver who jumps out of plane and dances in the sky and pulls parachute and goes to the ground. And this one sky dancer was doing their sky dance pull the parachute and it malfunctioned. So this guy dancer knew that they were going to die, and this guy dancer continued to dance all the way to the ground. And it's kind of like, well, that's what we're doing, you know, we're all headed towards the ground, you know, And it's just kind of depends on what you choose to do.
It seems like what you've chosen to do is basically try to recapture that feeling that you saw your mother have in your childhood watching The Hunchback.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent where she saw Charles Lattin swing down save Reno Sullivan and she went, oh like that, And I was like, oh wow, yeah, it gave it gave me chills because she just was so shocked by that, you know, or just so moved by it. That's the stuff that, Yeah, you live for it. It's my favorite thing. It's like, I love watching movies with people who are a motive. I'm dear, dear friend is Darcy Cardon, and she's like that, you know, She'll watch the episodes of this show and her reactions are just like, oh my god, and yeah, my mother. You knows that way, you know.
Do movies still produce the same in you?
Yeah? Yeah, that's the best feeling ever. And now that I have children, it's like watching it with them and us whether it's good or bad, having those feelings. But I was watching Knights of Cabiria and the ending of that movie just knocks me out, man, And it tricks me every time too. I don't want to give it away for people, but I just was so moved and just completely. There's also a scene in it where she goes to a hypnotist and she's the thing and the hypnotize her and it's just beautiful, I mean, and just what it says. And again, George Saunders, you know we've talked about this too. You can get really you know, theoretical about it or whatever. At the end of it's all just emotion and it's all intuitive. And there's just something that I can't even describe it to you of why the end of Knights Kabiria lays me out, but it does. Why the end of a Kireu or Coen brother serious man, Why the end of that movie just floors me. And I remember the lights came up and I just I just sat there, you know, I mean, it was just amazing.
Well, that feeling you're describing, it's one I've had many times watching Barry Oh, thank you. And I'm just glad that seventeen year old who really thought it was a good idea to go out of state for community college.
Ah oh, Bill, I'm glad you made it around. Thanks val I really appreciate it.
Man, Bill Hayterer. Lovely to meet you.
Lovely to meet you, val I was really great interview we did.
It was that Okay, you can.
And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, and if you've listened this far, I have to imagine you enjoyed at least some of it, be sure to leave us a review on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. I know it's silly and kind of arbitrary, but even in twenty twenty three, it is still the best way for new listeners to find the podcast. I want to give a special thanks to Matt Lebov, HBO and of course Bill Hater. The series finale of Barry premierees this Sunday, May twenty eighth, on HBO or Max or HBO Max or whatever they have decided to call their company in the dog days of television. We'll include the link to watch in our show notes, along with more of Bill's work at talk easypod dot com. For more conversations this one, check out Norman Lear, Alan Ruck, Natasha Leone, Bob Odenkirk, Carol Bennette, Larry Wilmore, Judd Apatow, Abby Jacobson, Nick Offerman, and George Saunders. If you'd like to purchase one of our Talk Easy mugs, they come and Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record with the inimitable fran Lebowitz, you can do so at talk easypod dot com, slash shop. That's talk easypod dot com slash shop and finally, as always, Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janick sa Bravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Our research and production assistant is Paulina Suarez. Today's Talk was edited by Clarice Gavara and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our assistant editor is c Jane Mitchell. Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations by Christia Chenoy. Photographs today are by Jenna Jones. Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzac, Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca. Special thanks to Kaitlin Ung, who recently graduated from Chapman University. We wish her well. I'd also look at thank our team at Pushkin Industries. Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Snars, Kerrie Brody, David Glover, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Jorna McMillan, Isabella Navarres, Maya Canning, Carly Mgliori, Jason Gambrell, Justine Lang, Malcolm Gladwell, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fracoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here this Sunday with a new episode featuring director Nicole Hall of Center. Until then, stay safe and soar
