Talk Easy with Sam FragosoIt’s been a year. And while we’re not quite done with it (3:15), we wanted to take a moment to celebrate some of our favorite episodes and guests from 2024.
On the front half, we revisit passages from actor-turned-director Dev Patel (5:45), the legendary Francis Ford Coppola on Jacques Tati and failure (11:45), filmmaker Ava DuVernay on the state of Hollywood (17:47), and Dr. Seema Jilani on her work in Gaza (26:36).
On the back end, Abbi Jacobson’s interview with Sam (35:05), NYT reporter Astead Herndon on why the 2024 election was not inevitable (42:47), and national treasure Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Wiser than Me”) on perseverance and posterity (49:55). Plus, a Joker ending (1:08:00).
What was your favorite from the past twelve months? Write us below or say hello at sf@talkeasypod.com.
Pushkin.
This is Talk Easy.
I'm standing forgo so welcome to the show. Hey everyone, Today on the show, we're highlighting some of my favorite moments from the past year on the program. But before we do that, I have a little bit of housekeeping to do first. Yes, I'm a little bit under the weather. That's why I sound like this if you're thinking, but you kind of always sound like this point taken. In the coming weeks, we will be announcing some big news about the future of Talk Easy. It's good news, don't worry. We'll also be releasing a couple new conversations before the end of the year, one next Sunday and then another on Sunday, the twenty second. There may even be a midweek bonus episode in there, so stay tuned for that. Also, if you'd like to keep up with everything happening on the show, you can sign up for our newsletter at talk easypod dot com. Let's scroll down the homepage and you'll see a place to sign up. If you don't want to do that and you just want to email me, you can sign up by dropping me a line at SF at talk easypod dot com. That's SF at talk easypod dot com. For today, though, in the spirit of Spotify Wrapped and all those annual year end best of lists, we've curated a mixtape of moments that have really stayed with me this year. We've released just about an episode a week for the past fifty two weeks, so this is in no way an exhaustive overview of all that we've done, so I'd love to hear what episodes or moments meant something to you in twenty twenty four. Again, you can reach me at SF at talk easypond dot com. The emails we have received from people this year about particular moments or particular guests are just an absolute joy to read, and it also lets us know what kind of conversations you want to hear on the show. To start, I want to offer two stories about two very different filmmakers of varying ages, who both laid everything on the line to get their respective passion projects made. First up is Dev Patel and his directorial debut Monkey Man, which he fought tooth and nail with the guidance of Jordan Peele to bring to life into theaters, and in this section he talks about the process of making the movie and a response that he received from an audience member that I think reminded him why he got in this business in the first place. Here is actor turned director Dev Padel. You said once, ambition is beautiful, but you have to remember what you're doing it for. And at the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about that ambition, your desire to make this movie, the links you and your crew were willing to go to to make this movie. Now that you've made it, do you have a better idea of who or what you were doing it for.
I think I was doing it for little Dev, young Dev who you know, yeah, Acne Dev. I was thinking if Agne Dev bigged fresh Prince of bele a haircut Dev I really I My gateway into cinema was watching Bruce Lee, you know, a guy that had similar skin.
Cutter to me in Dark Hair and The Dragon. Yeah.
Enter the Dragon Man changed my life and I wanted to be expressed in the genre. I wanted to exist in the genre. I want people like me to exist. After south By, you know this, This Indian man came up to me and he goes, I'm I'm jealous of my fourteen year old son, and I was like, it's a really weird thing to open a conversation with. And he was holding my hand and shaking HI wouldn't let it go, And I go, what do you mean? And he's like, it's the first time he's got someone on screen in a film like this that looks like him to look up to. And he goes, I'm so proud of you and keep it up, and I again was like, I don't know. Maybe it was my hormones that day, but it was. I'm not the best with compliments, but that one, that one caught me off guard and it meant the world because that was the objective of it.
Making this film was hard.
Hm.
The pre production was hard, The production was hard. The post production, Yeah, sounds like it was hard. Yeah, I want to know when you're struggling in post production, what did Jordan Peel see that others could not.
We got on. Our first conversation was almost three hours long, and he understood what I was going for, which is to use genre as a trojan horse to talk about more stuff. I didn't want to just do a film that I just had a barrage of punches and kicks that kind of wash over you like a video game. I wanted the emotional punches, the political punches, the kicks to mean something too, and kind of wrap it in this kind of film that will act. You know, people will access if you want to talk about, you know, violence against women, you know about the cast system against you know, religion. Basically, it's a revenge about faith. He got all of those things as a guy you know who does that incredibly well, you know, with his films. I think he saw that and at the same time, you know, he saw he's someone that's kind of was able to step out of a kind of box that he was put in and reinvent himself, you know. And there's a line in the in Monkey Man, this character Alpha tells me, he goes, you know, you need to destroy in order to grow, to create space for new life. I was reading about, you know, the Aboriginals in Australia and controlled burnings in order to nourish the soil to create new life, and I just thought, what an incredible philosophy is that, you know, I had to destroy myself, my old avatar of myself, destroy everything, and I wanted to destroy the image the audience had of me or all of those even the guys that we'd hired that we fired because they overlooked me as just this you know, Oh, he's just this silly actor. He's this is going to crumble. We were in Indonesia and they're not helping. I wanted to prove them all wrong. I wanted to destroy that perception.
And did you.
I mean the last song in the movie is called Grow by Fa Sol and that's me hopefully growing and showing you know, this is a new chapter I have.
Your father is fond of quoting a philosopher to go.
Yeah.
Yeah, my dad doesn't quote a lot, by the way, he doesn't talk a lot at all. So when he dropped those lyrics, I was like, Dad.
The lyric was I've spent many days stringing and unstringing my instrument. Well, the song I came to sing remains unsung. Yeah what does that mean to you? Now?
I couldn't let it go because of the film. Yeah, I mean I had. I'd actually walked off it when our financier went bankrupt and they kind of took the film over and we're doing a bad job with all the sound and the color and the v effects. So I'd left it because I couldn't endorse it, and then you know, we had such a short time with Universal to kind of make it mine again and undo all of the kind of stuff that you know, some random third party had done to the movie. But you know, there was many times when I was writing this long text on my phone to apologize to my cast and crew for letting them down, and I never sent it, thank god. But you know, at one point I told my dad, I can't endorse this. I can't be like in this movie. He's a performing monkey for a crowd. I don't want to be that performing monkey for something I've worked so hard on if it's not going to be what I want it to be. And he goes, he told me this quote, and he goes, I'm with you, son, but remember this, And I was like, fuck, I got I gotta sing this song because, like I said, young dev, you know he would want to see it. People like me will want to see this and feel it.
So, yeah, there's a line in the movie I think the pain will leave you once it's finished teaching you. Yeah, what has it taught and has it left?
The pain hasn't left, But what it taught me is to never take no for an answer. I really found this next level, possessed level of belief in this thing, and I've never had that before. And you know, that's what it's taught me, is to believe in myself a bit more.
Next up a story about another filmmaker who bet the farm, determined to make his dream project a reality. This is the one and only Francis Ford Coppola. You know the thing I want to talk about when I mentioned The Apocalypse Megalopolis, how they're linked. One of the ways these two films are lenked is that one you own them, and two you own them because you struggled to find support from them.
Own them because nobody wanted.
To them exactly. But I'm curious this rejection for people who don't remember of Apocalypse Now came after having made The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part two, Like there's almost no run in the history of cinema, that.
Is, and still they wouldn't let me make Apocalypse styles.
They wouldn't let you do that. And I wonder both then and now, do you think that resistance comes back to what your father, who's a great musician, who you hired on both of the Godfather films. The thing he always told you growing up, which is that, like kids resisting a new kind of food, it's always tough to get people to try something new.
I don't remember him saying that, but I'm sure he did. But yes, that's that's oh yeah, yeah, no, no, it just struck a little thing. That's exactly true. I mean, like, you know, who is the filmmaker who really did the closest to what I've done in my career. Jakh Tati. Shahtati had this wonderful career. He made these wonderful myn uncles. He had wonderful and he made a lot of money with the success, and he took everything he had and he wanted to make a film no one wanted him to make, and he took everything he had and invested it in this one dream project that he had and made it. And it was a big flop. And he lived in poverty and sort of hung out in the houses of people who loved him because he was jack. But he had everything and died. And that film was Playtime, which is a magnificent masterpiece. I mean, how do you not get on your knees and say to Jacques Tati, thanks for making us so happy. For anyone who's not seen Playtime, see it and you'll laugh, You laugh yourself silly in a profound way.
You know.
His comment on modern life is so great. So we wouldn't have had it if he hadn't made that sacrifice. Or Bize wrote Carmen, and they booted, and he had a bad heart, and he died of a heart attack at fifty and never knew that Carmen, the opera that is the favorite of people who go to see operas, was made by a guy who thought it was the giant flop. So the history is full of this stuff.
And did you think of the historical context as you yourself were bumping up against that?
I don't know ever. You know, I lucked out with Apocalypse, But when Apocalypse came out, it was the interest in those days, and I was borrowing. The money was twenty I thought it was more, but they say it's twenty one percent during that period. I mean, that's a lot of interest, you know, And it opened So so you know, the wonderful Dustin Hoppin movie, what was the one that won everything with Meryl Streep and the Divorce versus, Yeah, that was one of all the oscars Apocalypse Now, you know, and it got bad reviews from some very important Frank Rich said it was the biggest disaster of Hollywood had ever, you.
Know, so I was pretty if we still believe that.
Well, you know, I don't know. I didn't even know. I think he is alive. But a lot of people, I mean people, there are people who even said bad things about Apocalypse Now that I mean Godfather that I remember. I remember someone which particularly annoyed me, saying, well, Godfather has great actors and great photography and great art direction and great music, but the direction. And my answer was, well, I chose all those people who did all those great things. But I don't know. I'm an old man now. I mean, I've lived, I've seen some wonderful things in my life. I have most wonderful children you can have. I have a great grandson. I'm okay, and I've had this. What is to me the greatest reward of all when a filmmaker that I admire comes to me and said he became a filmmaker because he saw Apocalypse Now or a rumblefish or so. You know, it's always tough to make a film and have people say what the hell is that Yeah, I feel it says what it's trying to say pretty clearly at the end, but I realize it's an experience that it's not like anything particularly You can say, oh, you look at it and you say wow, what's that? And then I want to see it again. Usually is the reaction I get.
In terms of what films say, you have this quote. Every movie has a theme, and that the style of that film ought to be something that comes out of this theme. For The Godfather, not unlike Megalopolis, the theme was succession, right right.
I always have one word. I learned that from Kazan One word. One word. You have to be able to say one word, because the director makes a million decisions that day. Most of them you just make them fast. But if you if you say, oh, well, I don't know the answer, check that word, and that word will help you.
That was director Francis Ford Coppola. He put roughly one hundred and twenty million dollars of his own money into Megalopolis. However, the film was met with mixed responses and pretty underwhelming performance at the box office. No matter, Coppola is set to go into production on his next film, A thirties style musical. This coming spring, he'll be eighty five years old doing what he's done best for the last half century, making movies. But the nature of doing that job, of being a filmmaker has changed a whole lot in the past, and there are a few people as invested in its future as director Ava DuVernay. Her latest film, Origin, opened in theaters in early twenty twenty four. In the passage You're about to hear, we talk about the contraction in the film industry post strikes and how she plans to pivot in the next chapter of her career. Let's take a listen. We're sitting here at the top of twenty twenty four where you very intentionally three years ago knew you wanted to be sitting with this film, and we're sitting post this historic double labor strike where we've already seen a contraction in budgets, development deals, diversity initiative programs designed for young filmmakers looking for mentors like yourself. That's already happened, and it's already been contracting since the strike was resolved in the fall. There was a recent report from usc that found one hundred and sixteen directors attached to one hundred top grossing films in twenty twenty three, fourteen of them were women, four of them were women of color. That the gains and representation, as per usual, have been overstated to say the least. And yet I have here quote after quote from film executives in this industry in the New York Times, in the Paper of Record saying things like, for three years, we hired nothing but women and people of color. Indeed, there was an over correction. I can go on and say they're all anonymous.
Someone put their name to that.
No one put their name to it. But I'm voicing it here because I know you've had conversations with people in your life, maybe some friends of ours, where there is a fear of backsliding, where there's a fear broadly in this country reverting to a kind of conservatism. How do you make sense of this moment?
You know, I'll have to say, I'm probably not doing it in the way that's that is the most I don't know. I'm not sure about the way that I how to define how I'm doing it now. All I know is that I feel like I'm tapping out. I've tried to work within the system for the last ten years I've sat on the boards of Sun Dance. I am DJA board, I am I am a governor of the Academy. In my second term, I really wanted to learn. I wanted to understand how these institutions worked. And there's some great people there and beautiful legacy, but ultimately, the shifts in the cumulative effect of this, like how the overall industry works are so insignificant in their velocity, in their scope, in their real impact, that I feel like, you know, what I've done what I could because.
It was a lot.
It's a lot of extra time, a lot of extra effort, a lot of calls, a lot of meetings, a lot of thinking, a lot of trying, and it's time to pack the baton to someone else who has a fresh energy and who wants to take and and I've achieved some things within those organizations that I'm proud of, but for me, it's just not it's not moving at a pace that feels worth my time and effort. And I'm going to put my time and effort into what I've continued to do, but it needs to have all my time and effort, which is building array, building independent systems, building disruptive, disruptive systems and to put my focus on a garden that will actually grow and blossom. I feel like I'm tilling ground. That I'm like an old pioneer on a bad plot. It's like I've got my little house on the prairie and I'm trying to move this thing forward. I'm going to build another house. I'm going to go overto the house that I've built on my own and focus on that. That's where I am today, Like I did it all and I'm I'm good. I'm just gonna go over here make my movies. You know what I mean. That's how I feel right now. Okay, do you think I'm going to do it? Look like you don't believe me.
I make it a habit to believe people who come on this show. Okay, I certainly would make it a habit to believe you do. I think you're tapping out. I think you'd have to define tapping out for me, because what you just described, make more movies, run a company. Something about cardening I was trying to follow, doesn't sound like tapping out.
Tapping out of the Hollywood industrial.
Complex, Okay, And that's more specific. That's what I want to understand. Yeah, I've never heard you say I'm tapping out.
Not so of the way in which I've been working, which is really trying to be kind of a you know, push forward a certain new framework for the way in which certain institutions that you know, embody our industry work.
You said it didn't move fast enough. Yeah, it didn't accomplish the things you wanted. What did it not that you thought it would do anything anything? You think you've done nothing to help.
I think I've done things to help. But those are isolated incidents that are not anomalies.
Yes, complete aberrations. Yes, the system itself, yes irretrievable. Can't be fixed.
Sure it can, but it needs cooperation. It needs people to want to do it, and this town does not want to do it.
Here's my fear is that if you couldn't do it.
But I'm just one person and needed more people. That's right, Okay, there's a lot of there's a lot of people. I know that, but there's not enough.
Can I ask you then maybe this is more specific? Then what does it say about the industry and your trajectory in it and all the experiences you're talking about and not talking about what does it say about the industry that you went through it and where you've landed with this new film? Is philanthropy?
Well, you say philanthropy like it's a dirty word.
I'm not saying it's a dirty word. I'm saying as a model to be replicated, why not, don't I don't know. Does Melinda Gates and Jobs and another woman collectively they're worth north of twenty four billion dollars. Do I think they're going to keep financing movies? I guess I'm wondering where you how you stand on all that, How you make sense of this?
I think that.
I mean, I agree this sounds great. I would love ten more origins. I mean it's not possible.
But I'm not the first independent filmmaker, and I'm certainly not the first filmmaker that's made of a big film that's decided I'm going to make films a different way. Yes, I'm going to make smaller films. Are going to take my best money and have more flexibility. Man, look at Soderbergh. I mean he's just like, I'm out, thank you, I'm going to do it over here this way.
So you're out like Soderberg.
I don't know.
He's still around. He's doing this thing, but he's doing it his way and he doesn't care about that other stuff. I respect it, you know, I have to care about it a lot less, you know. I think on origin one of my challenges is that I'm caring way too much for a lot of things that just don't care back, and I need to care about building systems and structures that lend itself to the kinds of things I want to do. You can't make Chinese food in the Italian restaurant hemtizes like, I know what you're getting out, but that's a bad analogy. I'm going to say.
I was like, you don't have the right you don't have the right ingredients.
What actually you do?
I was going to say, I think cheesecake factory disagrees with you.
That's good.
That's good, that's good.
You know what I mean?
Like, if you want to do a certain thing, You're in a place, and I think that I started and I was like, oh, this place can change, likeete, there are people here, this is a little time, like it'll change, and that there have been some beautiful things that happened. But my success is not change. What does that mean my success is not changed? Nia Dacosta's success. Gina Prince Bythwood suggests, when you can name us all on two hands, and when you read a stat like the one you just read, that's not change. That's a few lovely things that happened to a few people, And for me, that's not worth it. I would rather just try to build something sustainable and beautiful and smaller and lovely in my own likeness with people who think like me. In some ways, I think ey's that small minded? Is that just closing ranks? But at some point it just becomes what's healthy.
I don't think it's small minded.
I'm glad. I don't want to feel like I'm giving up on something. I don't. I feel like I'm reaching for something new.
That was director Ava DuVernay. Her latest film, Origin, is now available to stream on Hulu. That conversation was recorded back in January. It was around that time that I came across the work of doctor Sima Jelani, a pediatrician and aid worker who's provided humanitarian assistant in Libya, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and most recently Palestine. We spoke with her upon her return to the States after spending two weeks at the Alaxa Hospital in central Gaza, a job she would later describe to me as quote the most nightmarish thing I've seen in my career. Here she is. In recent press you have said that after working in Gaza, every single factor of the tapestry of society has been affected community, schools, hospitals, food, and shelter. He said, every factor of the tapestry in real time as you're leaving, What did that look like? How did that manifest?
I give the example of a child that I saw around seven years old. Was not a life threatening injury, was a deep lacerations to his legs and required stitching. It's something I, as a pediatrician, would use ketamine for. Ketymine is an excellent drug and pediatrics we use it for procedures. It provides pain management, but it also allows the patient to not remember the procedure. So amnesiac and pain management we didn't have any, So I tried to distract the seven year old with whatever pediatric tools I have that we are taught in training. Some of them are bubbles or white flashers. I didn't have my bubbles with me. That day, but I had something that typically would have worked didn't work for him. He was still screaming in agony. And then I started to do what a distraction technique that we've been taught. Children are very easily distractable and actually can withstand some degree of pain from with distraction. But every single question I might ask this kid was a total landmine. If I asked him the things that I would ask a kid in the US. What's your favorite subject at school? He hasn't been in school in three months. Are he closer to her mom or dad? He was bought in by an aunt or uncle, so his parents are likely dead. What's your favorite food? He I don't know the last time that this child would have seen or eaten food. And it showed me exactly what you said is that every single facet of their society has been impacted or dismantled from the ground up. And to get back to the targeting of hospitals, because you're right to hold space for that, it should offend every ounce of civility in all of us that hospitals would ever be targeted. And it's deeply appalling because it ties my hands to be able to save lives it ties Palestinian doctors' hands and humanitarians from providing critical aid. I just always have thought that I would be safe in a hospital. It's never occurred to me that that I would feel more in danger.
That's wild.
How does it feel that you're wrong about that?
And that's why I'm speaking to you to try and change some of that. That's why I'm speaking to media and trying to do advocacy because it's all I can do, because the heart of this is not a humanitarian solution. It's a political solution, and we're playing this sort of mental gymnastics around trying to get around how can we provide aid? How many trucks and how? And it's quite easy to stop the war. It's not that hard.
That was doctor Sima Jelauni from February this year. She currently works as assistant professor for Texas Children's Hospital, the largest children's hospital in the world. After a short break, I hand over the car keys to one of my favorite people, actor writer and comedian Abby Jacobsen, stay.
With us.
Coming back back. In September, I turned thirty years old, which, as you may know as a longtime listener, is not something I was excited about and moreover birthdays. I just it's a hard for me. But to make it tolerable to dare I say, even celebrate it, I invited friend and past guests of the show, Abby Jacobson, to ask me some questions about how we make Talk Easy each and every Sunday. So here's a little bit from that.
One thing I've noticed as a listener talk Easy, and I don't think that this was there from the beginning, and it's something I think really separates you and Talk Easy from other similar podcasts. Is the cure that you show to your audience. Okay, So episode one thirty seven, which is May twelfth, twenty nineteen, the episode is you interviewing Werner Herzog, who I would imagine is a hero of yours. And the episode starts, as they all do, with an introduction. But this isn't an intro about Verner Herzog. This is about what happened that week in the US about George's.
Governor Brian Kemp signing into law a.
Fetal heartbeat bill that's to outlaw abortion.
After about five to six.
Weeks, you knew that your listeners would have been grappling with this devastating piece of news that week, and you chose to talk about this in the introduction and it had nothing to do with rennerhrs Off, but it has a lot to do I think with the DNA of Talkie.
Do you feel bad for her talking though?
No, the interview is great and it's separate from the introduction, but other podcasts don't do that. Yeah, And I do think that holding of space for the community that you've created and that acknowledgment of what's happening in the world is really important. And that wasn't from the beginning, and I'm really curious, like when that happened.
I think what happened was in twenty nineteen, the show became more consistent. I started taking the podcast a lot more seriously. It just became more week to week, and anything that's week to week has to try to reflect what it's like to live in this country week to week. It's funny you're bring that I could do you remember, I guess it felt like the loudest story in the room. And there was no way in a Hertzog episode that I was going to be like Werner, No, yeah, Bryan Kemp, you know. But but I can in an interest say this is insane, and it, you know, should be said by someone who looks like me, and it should be out there. It should be there on the record. I don't always do that, in part because the world keeps making new bad and it just keeps getting worse, it seems. So we try to just actually make episodes about some of those issues. But back then in twenty nineteen, we didn't do that many episodes with people that weren't in film or TV. And that really changed in March April of twenty twenty, and then the focus of the show changed, and the guests that we brought on and asked to come on changed a lot because it no longer felt appropriate to make a podcast about movies and television. In March or twenty twenty, it felt kind of silly, and I thought, well, then, like, why are we making a show for We're not going to have on doctor John or no M Chomsky or any of those people. I don't really know what the point is of, like really working hard to make a podcast and a pandemic.
When that shift happened, how did you feel about interviewing Noam Chomsky, Like that's a different person to interview.
I had interviewed him once before, you had in print, before I made a podcast, And then I realized, why did I ever limit the show to the degree that I did? And I didn't even do so consciously. The moment it happened, it was just like a door opened, and I was like, that door has been there the whole time, why didn't I ever open it? And the moment we did, I felt recharged and excited again about the future of the show in a way that I didn't prior to that moment.
It was like talk easy two point zero.
Kinda yeah, while also dealing with how horrible it was for all of us. Yeah, and that year.
We're already talking about this.
But do you feel that you're sort of in the business of vulnerability, Like is there a moment in every interview or in somewhere you're like, Okay, that's as far as they're going, Or you're like, I'm gonna push and see and test and like try to see if I can really get to know this person in a different way, or.
Yes, I'll definitely push. I think a lot of people do interviews and they lead with attitude, and it's like I'm the tough interviewer. Yeah, and it's like cool, but you're not tough about facts. You're not tough about quotes, you're not tough about research. You're not actually laying out a case. And I feel like the best way for someone to be vulnerable is to show that you understand the facts of their life. You're respectful enough of their story and respectful enough of them that you've put in the time to show up for them. And then I think you lay it out in ways that are generous and fair. And so when someone doesn't want to go there, I won't keep pestering them. Yeah, but I'll try to figure out, well, why do they not want to go there, and maybe talk about something adjacent to that, or talk about the thing that they want to talk about, and then maybe circle my way back to the thing I wanted to ask. I actually think sometimes people are more willing to be vulnerable with me than they are with people in their life. Like the thing I hear a lot from friends who know people who come on the show is I've been friends with ex guests for ten years. I have never heard them talk about that Wow, that happens all the time. You've probably had some people like that that have come on the show, that you know going like, Hi, I haven't heard them talk about that.
Yeah, I definitely have. And I think that that's because what you just said about all the research and all the prep that you've done. Everyone wants to be seen and heard and like known, and you're sort of creating a space where, like, I think they're often surprised by how seen and heard and known they feel.
I just want them to lay it out as clearly and honestly as possible. That's all I'm after. I don't want to make anyone look stupid. I don't want them to feel stupid. I don't want them to feel bad about having done the show. I always tell guests, like right before we tape, if you start saying something and you don't like how you're saying it, go ahead and start over. We'll use the thing you like. Yeah, this is not a gotcha program. I want them to feel proud of having made this thing together. Yeah, And that's really the aim I have. And it doesn't mean I won't ask hard questions. I just think a lot of people are doing this work. It is the presentation of toughness as opposed to just actually doing the amount of homework required to get someone to answer something honestly well.
And that presentation is counterintuitive because you're not going to get what you want from that.
No, I don't think.
What you'll get is oh, that person was evasive. Yeah, well were they evasive because you didn't actually show up for them in any meaningful human way. And by the way, we've had guests where I've done all the research in the world, I have been as decent and sympathetic and empathetic as possible, and the person still says I'm.
Good on this, And that obviously is Brian and Palma.
Really, yeah, I know.
I really wasn't trying to make you say it.
I've said it before in other interview. Happily in this tape can be forwarded to him. I have no promise saying it.
Well, I guess it's like that kind of like has to happen.
It has to happen.
It guidelights everything else or something.
There's nothing against, Like I can still watch Brian to paulm movies. He just wasn't psyched about doing yet. Yeah, And it didn't matter that I had showed up or done so much research. He was just like okay, okay, okay, let's and by the way, the episode came out and it's still a really good episode. Yeah, I'm sure it is, but like in the moment, that's the one that comes to mind. It's like, sometimes it ain't gonna happen. Brian to Palmer if you're listening now too, or at the shock. Much love again to Abby Jacobsen for sitting down and doing all that prep. She actually made talking about myself for an hour tolerable. So much respect to her as always. Next up, on the subject of asking difficult questions, reporter A stud Herndon of The New York Times. We sat just days after this election, where he offered us a sobering account of how exactly we got here.
I was one time with these Biden aids, and I was trying to tell them, you know, like hey, like this is what the run up's doing for this year, Like we're looking, you know, maybe there's some places we can collab whatever, whatever, and ever.
Did you pitch it nice like that?
I did actually remember saying we wanted to do an episode about a place that's better often now than it was four years ago. They're like classic reelection question and I'm like, give us a place and we will say. The Biden campaign said go here, and I thought that was like an easy pitch for them to do. They never gave us a place, but I'm there explaining that type of stuff and I'm like and I'm like, hey, but just so you know, his age comes up a ton and so we are gonna you know, we have we we that will be a thing you know that we talked about. We're thinking about kind of liability stuff and the and the people I was, the people I was meeting with push the like push the table, like you know, sit up from the table, like this is what we're talking about, Like this is the media creating these type of narratives. And I was like what I was confused? And they were like democracy is on the line, and you're asking us about Biden's age. And I'm like, yeah, that's exactly why.
Democracy is on the line. And I'm asking you about Biden.
Did they tell you and you're running an eighty one year old So I'm saying, like that was the tenor, and that was the tone in which they came to this stuff.
With that that question with a different intonation that they couldn't hear that.
They could hear, they would not hear, they refuse to hear.
I know I'm making jokes, but his bone chilling this week.
Yeah, No, I'm saying there are real impacts to that refusal. And the part that you know, I was on the Daily all mad on election night, and that's the part that gets me is that the people who make these choices are largely not the people who experience those impacts, right, and the certainty that they had that led us to this place, I just find so discussed, Like so nausey eight.
We spend a lot of time in this episode talking about the left. We're going to do future episodes on this show about a second Trump term.
Yep, you got tired twenty twenty.
Five, and we will hold all that in due time.
Yeah, you got tired.
But as we go, whatever the Democrats decide to do, or the independence or whatever comes out of this moment, the backdrop of that activity is going to be unsettling. And your colleague Jamel Bowie wrote something that feels fitting to hold. I think that the people interested in recriminations and score settling right now aren't seriously grappling with the magnitude of what happened and the implication for the rest of our lives. Most of us will probably die living in the police order that will emerge out of the selection.
Yeah, I agree. This is why I say doesn't matter or no, this is why I do politics stuff Like people will be like, oh, you do horse race and al and I do. I do it because of the reasons he's laying out. And one thing that I am proud of myself and our squad for it wasn't Monday morning quarterbacking. We did it in real time, and we did it in real time because it mattered in real time. Like I wasn't just asking because I wanted another story. I knew that this moment was going to shape the options that people had before people tuned in. And I just feel the Democrats robbed a bunch of Americans of a real choice, and they woke up to that so extraordinarily late that to now call this a Trump win, to me is not fully true. It's really it is foremost, in my opinion, a democratic laws, and the impact of that, in the Democrats' own words, is the type of fundamental reshaping of the country that we will live with forever. And so I don't think that's hyperbole. That's two Supreme Court justices, that's vast deportations, that's all of that type of stuff. That's much less like legal system, bureaucracy everything. And I'm just like, I wish we weren't alone. I wish we were I wish I wish more folks were asking that. You know, Like, it's been funny because in the last day or two it's been this like deluge of interest in our work and appreciation for our work, and people talking about vindication for me from being like for being like maligned by Democratic Twitter. I do not care about Democratic Twitter. I cared that millions of people were unhurt. I wish we were less alone at that time for the purposes of more people getting voice that whatever comes in the future from that. It's kind of pales to me to just how just how avoidable this all was. My biggest motivation is I do not want anyone to think this was always going to happen, or this had to happen, or this was inevitably going to happen. It did not have to be like this.
That section, but really, that whole conversation with the stead it still haunts me. Hearing it now, like I'm upset just as I was when we sat down over a month ago. Maybe I'm even more upset hearing it today. So I don't know what do we do? What do we do with that pain, with that heartache. I think sometimes we believe the hurdles we face in our personal lives are somehow not applicable to our political problems, that our response to personal adversity is somehow insulated, too narrow to be translated to these global issues. But I don't think that's right. Resilience is always required in resistance, whether that's towards this incoming administration or toward a personal battle you're in the midst of fighting. As they say, the only way out is through, And so to close, I want to turn to Juliet Louis Dreyfuss, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in twenty seventeen. We spoke in front of a live audience at this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, and it's this kind of exchange, this kind of vulnerability that not only makes me want to continue making the show, which it does, but also even in this moment, which is a bleaque one, it actually gives me a little bit of hope. So with that, I want to close out the show with the one and only Julia Louis Dreyfus. Can we go to September Sunday, September seventeenth, twenty seventeen. You make history that night when you win the sixth Emmy for playing Selena Meyer, which I think is the most anyone's one for playing one character. The next morning, it's Monday, you get a call from your doctor. When you replay that call on your head, what does it look and sound like?
Well, the call was for my doctor saying that I had breast cancer. So it was like a cartoon, you know, just when you thought you'd made it, you know, you get you got crushed. I got crushed in that moment. I actually started laughing. Believe it or not, but that actually makes sense. It was hilarious to get that news on the heels of the night before, and then of course I started to weep, and then I just got into you know, let's go mode, you know, after that, I mean pretty quickly, what did that look like? Meeting, you know, finding out what kind of cancer it is, Meeting multiple doctors, interviewing doctors, talking to people that I knew that it had rest cancer. I mean, the list goes on the crash course in breath cancer and finding the right doctor for you.
I said, in the past, you didn't allow yourself to think about the bad outcome. Yeah, how did you do that?
With a sort of blinder like focus. I'd liken it to a long long time ago. I was with my husband and we were in the in the Bahamas, actually on a scientific boat, and we were doing some stuff and I was swimming in the water and I was far away from the boat, and my husband came to the bow and he said, Jules, I don't want you to panic, but there's a shark in the water. And it was, in fact, like a twelve or thirteen foot bull shark, so it was a significant animal. And he said that, and I saw the ladder on the boat, and I just swam towards the ladder and I just kept my eyes on the ladder that I was getting to the ladder. And that's exactly what I did with this diagnosis. I did not I could not allow any other thing to come into my head.
You focus on the ladder.
I focus on the ladder. Yeah, and it got me through.
David Mandel was a showrunner en Veep. You worked with them back in your Seinfeld days. Yes, and also just the best.
Yeah.
And he gave a quote to The New Yorker because he was asked about that time, that period when you were sick and the changes in schedule the show and all that, and also what it did to him. Yeah, and he said something that I have to tell you has just stayed with me. Sorry all week. So I was going to read the quote and see you from the lands. We keep touching the foot. I'm sorry about that.
Oh, it's fine, though I didn't notice it. These are wedges, so it's.
Probably not a problem. Fine, it's okay. This is me putting off the emotional quote.
Okay.
I had the sense of the walls closing in on me, and I was racked with guilt and other weird jewishness and I was a goddamn wreck. She seemed great. Then we watched her go through chemo, and you can see its effects on her. She got thinner and thinner, and we couldn't hug her because we were afraid to get her sick. It was the first time that all of a sudden she looked her age and seemed human and vulnerable. Did you feel those things too in that time? Which things human?
Oh?
Vulnerable in ways that he makes it seem like he had never seen from you before.
Well, it's a very dear thing that he says. And I love Dave Mandow with my heart. You know, it's funny because he did something and actually hearing that, it's sort of I'm thinking about this in a new way, speaking of pentimento. Originally, when I first diagnosed, I had this idea that I was going to still shoot the show a veep in between chemo treatments. I had this, Oh, yes, I can keep working. It's going to be fine. You know, I'll I'll squeeze it in. Yeah, squeeze it in, and you know, we may have to slow the schedule down, but I can do it.
Well.
Obviously that was and he was like sure, sure, sure, And then that.
Was not possible.
But what was possible was I had chemo treatments every three weeks, and in that third week before the next treatment, I would start to feel better. And so what we would do is we would all gather and have a table read of the next script. And I realize now that they were sort of it was a kindness, you know, and because we would all gather and we would read these scripts and I would give notes on the scripts and stuff. But it was it was a real gesture of love for them, and it kept me, It kept me looking at for that latter too, you know what I mean.
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it was really dear. It's odd how kindness can move like that.
I know.
Right at the time, I thought I was helping them because I was working on the show with him. We were working for real, you know, coming in this doesn't work, we need to retool this, you know, giving all.
These But I think it was the other way around.
Yeah, yeah, I hadn't even considered that until this moment.
I love that Jane Fonda. I want to bring it all the way back be where we start a little bit. I'm thinking about how she talks about life in three acts. Yeah, you know, it's like zero to thirty, thirty to sixty, sixty to ninety, and she's lived so many lives in that. But it also makes me think about her work as an actor, and like your more dramatic work in the past decade, the vulnerability of films like Enough said you hurt my feelings Tuesday. And I know in the beginning you said twenty years ago they would have never offered me that. But now that you have, do you think like the work It doesn't just come on the heels of the past few decades, but it's a result of them all the journey we've talked about. Yeah, in some way, I don't know. Do you imbew those performances with that experience, with that lived experience?
Oh?
Without question?
I mean well, I mean I couldn't have played Selena Meyer when I was thirty eight because I didn't have the life experience that I could inject into that woman. I had a better understanding of who she was given the life experience I'd had up to that point. And for example, in this movie Tuesday, I'm a mother of two grown children. I have lost people very dear to me in my own life. I have experienced both parenthood and deep and profound loss. I can bring all of that to bear in the film. So that's not I could have tried to find a way into it if I hadn't had those experiences. But having had them, I can bring them to bear.
Oh, sure, you bring all of that.
Yeah.
The parrot or the Macaw as a death doula. You mentioned all the loss you've endured, and I haven't spent that much time talking about your father. But he wrote a book of poems. He did that, he finished I think two or three days before he passed. Yes, it's called Letters Written and Not Sent. And it's so so good. Oh, thank you. I just think it's fantastic. I thought before we go, if you would be open to reading a piece from that book.
Oh my god, I'd love to.
That's so nice.
This is incredible.
Oh.
Yes, this is a poem that my father wrote. It's called explanation. God must mean for us to reason that the flower first in bloom, taut and shining, is not altered even in its dying season. God's the present, ever missing till we meet it when we die. Life's the ambush of tomorrow and the sorrow of goodbye that gives me, gives funs.
Yeah, that's good.
Did you and your family put that on his tombstone?
Yes, put that on his tombstone. Yeah, Life's the ambush of tomorrow and the sorrow of goodbye. I mean, I think that applies to everyone.
That quote is so linked to this new movie. Yeah, to Tuesday. Yeah, And there's a line in it where the macaw and again you have to see it to believe it. But then the macau says to your character, a mom that's in denial, a mom that doesn't want to say goodbye, that how you live, it is how she lives. And I'm thinking, like in the Fonda three CT Structure of life, Yeah, you just to your sixties, how do you want to live it?
Oh?
My god fully openly with arms outstretched. It's funny, you know, I feel youthful.
In that way, you know.
I want to try new things. I want to keep fighting the good fight. I want to look for good art. I want to fully live my life and be hopefully a good person doing so. I love that so basic, but I think everybody feels that way, right.
What's kind of amazing is your first two acts you've lived so fully, so to imagine the next one is kind of impossible.
Got to blow your mind.
It's going to.
Blow my mind. And obviously we're gonna have to come back to asking to talk about it.
No fucking way, we're not going to.
But truly, U, I so love all that you have have brought into this world. Thank you in Act one and Act two and whatever happens next in Act three. I'm so looking forward to it, and I thank you profoundly for the time tonight, truly.
Oh that's so nice of you. Thank you. This has been really fun.
Julia Louis Drivers, everyone.
Thank you, thank you.
And that's our show. If you enjoyed this special mixtape episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. If you want to go above and beyond, you can share the program with the friend, share it online. All of it really does help us continue making Talk Easy each and every Sunday. To hear each of the full episodes we featured today, be sure to visit our site at talk easypod dot com as always to hear those and more Pushkin podcasts. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk easypod for the holiday season. If you want to purchase one of our mugs Come and Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record with writer fran Leebowitz, visit our website at talk easypod dot com slash shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jenni Sa Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Joshua Siegel and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris A. Shanoy. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Kerry Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Tournament Millan, Amy Hagadorn, Sarah Bruguer, Owen Miller, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm SANM Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with a brand new episode. Until then, stay safe and so long. I really appreciate you coming in and doing this. I know, I know you're not gonna be able to hear this, but I really do care about so much that you've put into this world. It has meant a lot to me, and it means a lot that you've showed up for this show and talked for as long as you have, and I appreciate you for that. Thank you.
I can't end on a good note, and I just wanted to tell you, I'm gonna go home and just feel awful. I'm gonna replay this in my mind, and it was so insecure me to hate myself. The amount of verbiage, it just repfiicables. It is because we're in this fucking cocoon with this goddamn burgundy, and it just fucking does this number on you, Like I don't like myself. I'm gonna go out into the fucking light and the real son, the real world, and the voices are just gonna be screaming at me, and I'm not gonna have your soothing voice in my head as be back to my inner voice. My inner voice is gonna be mean. So I'm leaving here and i want to say thank you, but now I'm feeling like fuck you. So that's how I'm ending this. Okay, you can end with whatever sincere gesture you want. That is a perfect example of not running to.
The rest of you.
Would love you. You do have my number, I will I'm going to immediately delete it and don't follow me out. Thank you Sam so much awesome. Really, I'm sure that was like a lot to endure.
My bye.
That was walking phoenix, you know, you've seen his movies, you heard the show, always, forever, one of one,
