Talk Easy with Sam FragosoSince the turn of the century, actor Josh Brolin has had quite a run. From No Country for Old Men and Hail, Caesar! from the Coen Brothers, to Inherent Vice from Paul Thomas Anderson, to Sicario and the Dune films from Denis Villeneuve.
His new memoir, From Under the Truck, contains stories about the life in between. We discuss his upbringing bouncing from Paso Robles to Santa Barbara (8:49), the influence of his mother (10:05), and his entry to writing (19:40). Then, Brolin reflects on his vivid early adulthood in the 80s (26:14), the power of a story (32:30), and what actor Anthony Hopkins illuminated about sobriety (34:35).
On the back-half, we get into his collaborations with the Coen Brothers (38:48), his challenging relationship to drinking (50:50), and why finally, after three decades of playing characters on screen, it was time to fill in some of the backstory (1:07:13).
This conversation was recorded at Spotify Studios. Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at sf@talkeasypod.com.
Pushkin. This is talk Easy. I'm student Forgoso. Welcome to the show today. I'm joined by actor and author Josh Brolin. Since the turn of the century, Brolin has been on quite a run. You have No Country for Old Men and Hail Caesar from the Coen Brothers, and Hare and Bis from Paul Thomas Anderson Milk from Gus Van sant Sacario, and the Dune films from Denive and the Neuve. That's not even including his work in the Deadpool pictures and the rest of the Marvel cinematic universe. But what is it about Brolin that keeps us coming back? The Guardian had a pretty good description and a profile of the actor, where they wrote, if you're looking for the classic outsider on the inside, a study in friction, then Josh Brolin's your man. He's the child of privilege who trails a rough and tumble history, a twenty first century movie star who's out of joint with his time. And It's true, there's always been something about Brolin that feels of a bygone era. Maybe it's the long shadow that his actor father casts, the Great James Brolin, or perhaps it's his spirit which reads on screen as searching and battled, but it's the battles themselves that make up a majority of his new book, From Under the Truck, a celebrity memoir that's almost anti celebrity in nature. Instead, Brolin offers an unflinching look at addiction and recovery, diving headfirst into a tumultuous childhood, the son of a larger than life mother whose alcoholism he inherited, either by nature or nurture. The book is guided more by feeling than chronology, a series of vignettes bound by an emotional logic, which is also how we try to structure today's episode. And so we begin with the early years of Josh Brolin, bouncing from Passerobliss to Santa Barbara, where the role he was best known for, outside of course of his turn in the Goonies, was that of a juvenile delinquent prone to outbursts and barbrals. That fact one of his story. From there we get into his collaborations with the Coen Brothers, his challenging relationship to drinking, and my Finally, after three decades of playing characters on screen, it was time to fill in some of the backs. This is Josh Brolin, Josh Brolin, nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
How you doing.
I'm good man. I was actually really looking forward to meeting you. A lot of podcasts that I do and have done over a forty year career. Not that there's been podcasts over forty years, but you just kind of show I like the idea of just showing up and not knowing, but with you. For some reason, I listened to part of your Joaquin, who's you know, my good buddy, and it's always fun with him. It always makes me laugh, and it always actually makes me feel about anything that can happen, and it's just how it is. And then Willem Dafoe, I told you I listened to it, and then I saw that Marina is somebody who you've interviewed and her till this went. Are the two kind of heroes, am I. But it's this unpretentious kind of we're just experimenting, man, We're just looking for the vivid, truer you know, access, which I loved.
You're going to find. This whole podcast is one act of experimentation. Good, So will we try to do it together?
Yes, let's do it.
Your agent, Kimberly Witherspoon. Yeah, she received the first fifty pages of the book and she quote corrected hidden agendas I hadn't told anyone about. I still don't understand how you knew, and you always somehow found my hand through the phone when I needed something true. So what were the hidden agendas then that you didn't know at the time?
The book kind of organically wrote itself. I mean there were there. There was some moments in the process of the book where she said, you know, you don't have any of this at all, and I said, oh, no, I definitely do. And you know I I just talked to her this morning. You know, there's very few people that I'll call and I'll say, like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't like and I said, I'm spinning. I said it this morning. I said, I'm spinning about what this is how I described it. I said, when you do a movie, people think that you're on this perpetual red carpet just waving at people your entire career, right, and I go the truth of the matter, and you can't even tell them. You can't go in a podcast or go on an interview and you go listen, you have no idea. How scrappy it is on set, and how vulnerable you are, and you're trading ideas and you don't really know which is the right idea, and you're trying to design a scene within the scheme of the bigger story and all this kind of stuff, and it may work out and it may suck, you know what I mean. Ultimately, you know, people see the movie. You work your ass off, and the people see the movie they go, yeah, it's all right. You know, when they go up and octave, you know you've just blown it. I said. Writing this book and promoting this book so far not always has been like being on set all the time. But in the public you know that that dream that you have where you wake up in the playground, it's school naked. That's what it feels like. And I asked for it. Nobody did it to me, and I can't go, oh, the director said this, or the other actor did this, or this was the setting, or this was this is so I was in the middle of doing the audible and I was like, why the fuck would I do this to myself? Why would you do this?
We're just gonna have to dive in. Okay, eight years old on a ranch pass a robe blest. Is that how I say it? Five point thirty in the morning, you're feeding fifty eight horses mowing acres of grass for a dollar a week. In one interview, you were asked what's one word to describe your childhood, and you used the word fairal, What did that look like?
Bruised? That's what it looked like. It looked purple and bluish and a little yellow. It's all in hindsight that it's romantic enough to be able to ride about, But during it it's just I mean, everybody I grew up around it was that. So it's normal. It's normal life. It's a normal living. It's what you're expected to do. Back in past robals at that time when our address was Route one, box seventy one A, it wasn't even a real address. It was bucolic enough where you would take your kids out of school for two or three weeks if they had to, if you had farming to do, you know what I mean. It was back in that mentality, like dust bowl mentality of like you have kids to help you work. That wasn't necessarily the case with my family. My family were raising horses. They were racing horses, they were breeding horses. We had a very famous horse named Stud Spider, who was a famous stud and all that, But waking up at five point thirty in the morning, especially with a mother that you know ran a wildlife way station, it was it was, it was. It was a pain in the ass, and it was feral, and it was bloody.
You said once that she was better with animals than she was with people.
For sure, anybody would tell you that. Anybody who knew her would say that exact thing.
Did you understand that as a kid, No, what did you think?
There's two reactions, and my brother and I I can't I think represent both reactions. One is why aren't you paying attention to me? And the other is you will pay attention to me?
Which one were you?
You will pay attention to me, I'll become an animal for you, and therefore you will see an animal and not a child and be able to relate.
So you weren't just tending to the animals, You were also becoming.
Becoming an animal. It was like what did they call it, lecanthropy? That was the thing, like become more like her, which she definitely was. Animalistic, become more like her, more reactionary, less thoughtful, and therefore be able to share sensibilities. Thing like that.
Like her was a five foot three, one hundred and ten pound woman who often smoked out of the corner of her mouth. Cool kings. Yeah, you said, does she raised you to be a drunk?
And I don't say that as a victim.
How did you understand that as a kid?
Yeah, I mean when you go to when you hang out in cafes and when you're on CB radio's basically half your life, if not more. Because we were on the road fifty sixty thousand miles a year. She was driving because she didn't fly, so we were always in the car with her. I was always in the car with her. You know, my dad even tells his stories. He says, I remember you being in the passenger seat, her driving, and me in the back with my hands over my ears. So what does that mean that he was the child and I was the surrogate husband or whatever that was. So it was like I was the partner.
Is that how you took it?
When I look back on it, you're trying to define it. You go, what is what is the what's the Freudian you know definition of that, which I totally accept. It's not even a look at and I go, oh, that's horrible or what a horrible mother. I don't think in those terms. That was the movie that was playing, and it was Apocalypse Now and I was three, and she was Kurts, and she was all the other characters too. She was the one dancing for the guys, and that was flown in, and she was the one dropping from the helicopter, and she was at all. So for somebody who appreciates, you know, a vivid experience, she was vivid in every which way. What I think was lacking was an emotional caress, do you know what I mean? So when you wake up in the middle of the night and she's had a blackout, but she was drinking Clypso coffees, so she had to wake up because the alcohol wears off and then now the coffee's starting.
To is that what is it, rum.
Rum tia maria coffee with a little whipped cream on top.
Unbelievad.
I mean, it's a speedball. It's a speedball. So she'd wake up and she'd wake me up, my brother, and she'd say, you know what happened? What did I do? So all that lends itself to your future in some way. You either defy it or you accept it.
The way your dad described you in the front seat of the car as a kind of surrogate partner reminds me of a section early in the book, I think around page thirty five, which is you in the early seventies. Your dad has just come home, I'm assuming from a late night of shooting on a set or whatever else one does one does working late at night set.
Yeah, right, the coffee mugs that mother had bought in Mexico the summer before. We're just missing the father's head. As he walked down the brick walkway of the home where the family lived. The glass of the windows where little Johnny was looking at the moon and the moon was looking back at him were no longer there. The windows were now in sharp pieces, all over the carpet that looked like curly brown dog hair, and all over the grass that had just been mowed earlier the day before. The mother screamed and told the father to leave, even though the father had just gotten there. The mother was mad at the father that the father had just been gone and now the mother was mad that he was there in the home where the family lived. Little Johnny watched and thought, how he learned about numbers in school, how he knew that when you have one and one that it makes two. But there was one of the mother and one of the father, and one of him, and he didn't know what that made. And there was a bunch of numbers on the ground now, and he felt bad for those numbers. All those numbers on the ground didn't make more. Little Johnny thought to himself, he liked the window when it was one, and he liked the moon when it was one, And he thought of himself as being, and he liked himself that way. The father got back to his truck, and the red lights came back on, and then slowly disappeared down the driveway. The dogs barked. The mother wiped her nose and opened the cupboards to make pancakes. Little Johnny fed the mother of the mice and the plastic container in his room and put a check on his blue chort chart. The phone rang while Little Johnny ate his pancakes, and the mother crushed across the broken numbers on the ground to pick it up. There was talking and there was smiling, and there was laughter, and the sun rose in the sky, and the dogs stopped barking and lay down in the dirt, resting their long chins on their crossed over paws. And through the broken windows, little Johnny saw in the distance the moon as she slowly walked down the driveway, disappearing quietly like the red lights had done just moments before. Yeah, I like that story because it's an innocent child, you know what I mean. And it's written and I know I wrote that story initially straightforward, and then I liked the idea, the cadence of it. I liked the idea of it being a little sing songy, almost a little Doctor Seuss, and I loved the idea of seeing it through a child's eyes. I used to have these dreams, and I only had it like three times, and I guess they were called They were like night tears of sorts, where something would break in half. And it makes sense to me because the family was kind of breaking in half or broken in half. So I would see a ship break in half, or I would see a rolodex spin and then stop halfway, and then I'd wake up in a terror.
The fact that you were more used to seeing her screaming than crying. Oh yeah, and that moment of consoling her on her feet on the bed, did you understand why she was crying?
No? I didn't, And it was like you just said, I mean, you pointed out very astutely that it's very rare, very rare for her tears, you know, And then you see yourself later on myself of like, you start to mirror that, and then you realize you get into life, into public life, you realize this is not necessarily how people do things. So it's kind of hard to fit in, meaning that the way my mother demanded that I speak to her is not normal. My mother liked to be put in her place because nobody would put her in.
Her place, and your father wouldn't, no.
So she cultivated this relationship. So when I would see her cry, it was confusing. And you want to be a caretaker. I mean even at four years old, who was at Morgan Stapleton. Chris Stapleton's wife read the book and said, I want to give that little boy a hug, you know, And it's one of those things that I take sweetly as opposed to oh you poor thing, now, we have to take care of you. Like, look, I've taken care of it. I've definitely confronted all this stuff in a big way. As traumatic as it was, it was, you know, there was it was very normal. It was all the time. So if it was if it was a fight in the house, or it was a five you know, three hundred pound, five hundred pound lion biting somebody's thigh, it was it was relentless. It never let up. It was always something heightened.
But she could tame the lion. Oh yeah, she couldn't tame you.
Though. Maybe that's why I lasted as long as I did, is that she couldn't. She couldn't figure me out because I was more like her than any of those animals. But I think that she instilled that in me, keep fighting, fight beyond me, right, And it's so interesting. I'm literally just thinking of this for the first time. My dad said to me at some point, it was after my mom died. He said, I remember when you went to war, and I go, what does that mean? And he was like, with your career, but I think my career it's always it's a personal thing. He was like, I remember when you just you wouldn't take no for an answer, was like, oh, you should go do this, and I go, yeah, I don't want to do that. I want to be you know, I want to do more character stuff. I want to do more theater. And you just fucking went for it, just saturated yourself with it.
I want to talk about that period. Yeah, but I think one of the earliest instances of you going to war. To bring it back to writing for a second, is a formative piece of poetry that you wrote, I think around the age of eight or nine, and it was a poem about death, written in the shape of a circle.
Pretty good.
I don't think it's in the book. And I wondered, one, why is it not in the book? And two when you showed your mom that piece, what did she say?
I didn't show it to her. She found it okay, and then she confronted me and she said, what is this? I don't understand it? Why are you thinking like this? And it was but it wasn't a It was a death piece, but I don't It wasn't like, oh I'm I'm feeling black and I want to die. It wasn't like this.
It was more abstract.
It was more abstract. It was definitely more abstract in a circle. In a circle. It was circular, and I don't really remember what it was, but I do remember that she confronted me about it. More curious than anything. There was never like a you shouldn't behave like this, I think later when I started going to jail. But even then I told you it'd be like a smile on her face. But then I remember I was in Tucson, Arizona, and then I started really writing a lot more poetry and a lot more pros. And she was sitting on the floor in my little office and she was reading through stuff and she looked at me and she said, I don't understand you. And I go, no, you don't.
When she said that, how did you feel?
I can't say. I was devastated, because, as I just told you before, I think there was something in her, there was something silent in her that couldn't help express and want me to be more than what she was cultivating.
And what was she cultivating just.
A cowboy fighting drunk. That guy being a man was all encompassing. It was. It was very specific and it was very like truck driver and cowboy and CBS and you know. It was like every fucking old school country western song you hear, yeah, you know with a beer. Yeah. And then you have this poetry that came out of nowhere? Like, where is that? Is that innate? Is that something that I just kind of came out of me? Was I the first person to ever create a poem? Because it was like I didn't have books of poetry in the house.
You know why I'm asking about this because she says, I don't understand you. The two of you, as you've said, are so we're so similar. And so when she saw you at twenty, I'm like, did she not see what you were going through your you know, newfound fatherhood and you drinking? Did she not relate to that?
Like?
Did she not I don't know, empathize with where you were at?
I think, tell me if I'm wrong. But it's one of those like emotionally you don't understand me. It wasn't that it was I'm surpassing you. There was nothing that she offered. There was nothing that I felt like I wasn't getting from my mother until later, like when I got sober and when I was looking at many years in prison and my mother came you know those family things, right, And my mother fought against it tooth and nail, And she looked at me one day and she said, you're doing this to me. You're gonna give me cancer again. When was I was like nineteen before I had my kid. My significant other, Debbie was pregnant at the time. That was one of those moments like I go, there's no support in what you're telling. You're saying that I'm hurting you by taking care of myself, whereas the other one is I don't understand you, And I'm like, yes, because something in me wanted to graduate out of my family. Something in me wanted to be more substantial, more well rounded, more worldly than what my family represented.
Was there a party that also wanted to leave behind you and Santa Barbara in the Cito Rats Bottle Shop parking lot on Coastal Village Road, hanging out with you guys, you know, doing all the things that happened in the eighties.
All of every part of me, in every milestone that you're mentioning, always wanted to graduate. There was a part of me that always wanted to graduate out of it. The only thing I've never wanted to graduate out of are my children. And I think I can confidently say my marriage. It wasn't always the case, Yes, but I think and I would be honest, that's all right. It's all right because it is what it is. I never understood the longevity of one thing.
Reading the book. The reason I think it's cathartic is because there always seems to be two people warring with each other. And the challenge of that, to me, is wrapped up in you dropping out of high school. And it's my understanding that your dad said to you, well, it's fine, you wouldn't have made it anyway. This is from the earliest interview you've ever done, from like nineteen eighty eight.
I was probably lying, I'm curious you have the interview. No shit, I'm already really enjoying you. Yeah. Dad wasn't pleased when the young rider dropped out, so he used reverse psychology. You wouldn't have made it anyway. You don't have it, he told his son. It worked. I went back and graduated with honors in school. He became interested in theater and in writing. His father gave him some stern advice. It wasn't that he forced me. He was just very persistent yeah, that's whatever reverse psychology that he used. It worked. It was it was along the same lines as when I became an actor or wanted to become an actor and was pursuing becoming an actor and people would say you should find a new profession. That just worked. That was that was along the Jane Brolin line of defiance. You go into war, me going to war, a version of me going to war, going to real war didn't happen later because the real war was with myself.
When you think of that now, that wrapped in drinking and drugs and all that.
Absolutely, absolutely, man. I mean like, who, like, how many people you know that are sober now? And it's like, oh, jerk off, you're a sober You're another sober guy, you know. But I think in.
My case, I don't really think like that.
Well I think some people do though. I think some people like, oh, that's cool, you're sober. But then I also know that there are things that are trying. It's like, hey, I'm sober and I'm doing pilates. It's like, oh, pilates is like a new thing, and it's like, what's that. You're doing ice baths? Of course you are nil I've been doing ice bas for twenty years. It's just been a thing that's always been in my life for a very long time. I find massive benefit in it and all that. So, you know, the sobriety thing before was kind of maybe I'm just I'm expressing it in a way that I thought about it before. Okay, it was a ball and it was a ball and chain. Sobriety was a ball and chain. It was keeping me from doing the thing that came natural to me, which was to act out. So if you're sober, that means you can't be yourself. That's your old belief in that.
That's how you thought about it in the nineties. In the nineties, So when you're bouncing between New York and California, Yeah, and you're wrapped up in drugs and all that shit, you thought without it you wouldn't be Josh.
Yeah, you're not letting me be me. Like. I didn't like the effect and how I was acting and who I was hurting and how I was hurting myself when I would act out on drugs and alcohol. But it came down to the last time I went out, when I finally went from sober for the second time to going out for twelve years before I finally got sober this time.
And when was that?
I think I went out when I let's say I was twenty nine when I got sober. Five years later, I went out and I stayed out for twelve years. So and I went out for those twelve years. I said, I will never get sober again. It was almost like one of those leaving Las Vegas moments where I was like, this is how I will die. I'm not I don't want to die soon, but this is I will die with this stigma on my back.
When you're in New York and you're like picking up between eleventh and twelfth Street, Avenue A.
And B, how do you know that? Did you were you there too? Did I see you there when you were a little kid on a stoop?
Not sure I was sure?
Mother a dealer born?
Yet? Yes she was?
She?
Actually I don't know if I don't want to tell you this, Josh, but this whole thing is about me collective.
You owe me.
There's back pay on on drugs you bought.
From avenue between A and B, or between B and C, between A and B on like tenth Street.
Can I ask you what what do you like about heroin?
I didn't. I never like I had God, I haven't talked about this very much, but I was. I had junkie friends, like severely you know, junked out friends, true true, true, like strung out addicts. And they were like, what is the matter with you, man? Because I was when I was into that. For the short time that I was into that, I was always sick. I was either sick getting on it or I was sick getting off it. So they were like, just be a junkie. I was like, A can't. I don't want to.
You always had a foot in and what.
I did, that's exactly what it was, right because I didn't want to be just that. I didn't want to be defined as that thing. So something alcohol was different. Alcohol was a total through line for me, whereas drugs I was in and out of all over the place, and.
It was any part of it pleasurable. Like what kept the foot in? I guess probably the idea of it, the romantic idea it.
The romantic idea of it, and also that I came from a culture that did a lot of it.
When you were a kid, when you first started all this, you're in Santa Barbara teenager. You do some acid in the beginning, and that turns into heroin and that.
Stuff way later, way later, for me, for.
You, yes, for your friend. Most of whom it should be noted and should be on the record, are not here now, no, and their lives are in some ways embedded in the stories of this book.
For sure.
You said about that group, they were the impenetrable group that you always hope for, romanticized wish for when you were a kid. But the dysfunction was on a massive scale.
There was nothing romantic about it. And I'm not saying it was morbid or anything. It was super There were so many great times, but it was you know, somebody said the other day, they were like, well, you know, tell me about this Sherat gang. And I was like, there was no gang. It was a group of people that became known and are still known as the Seat the Rest and Seat the Rest don't exist anymore. Some people will say they do. They're not. They're us old school. Most are dead, some are still around, you know. I mean, it's like there's a fluctuation of the people who have survived. The romantic side is I'm into story, I love story. Again. We keep saying it, the vivid nature of a story, whether it be I love the idea of hybriding emotional content and heavy, heavy visual. You know, I don't want it just to be technically brilliant. I don't want it to just be me going, you know. I want there to be something that's driving it forward, like the thing that I feel. But that's the thing about that group of guys is that it was always driving forward and we could always lean on each other. And it's something that I've now noticed my self recreate again and again.
That driving, that desire to drive forward together into some great unknown. It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that there was a period of time where you thought, in order to be a great, dynamic, interesting and interested actor you had to experience everything totally. Is that what you thought the job required in your twenties, And that's.
What I wanted it to require because I didn't want to be a personality. I didn't feel like even had enough of a personality to be a personality and to have my profession rely on a personality I wanted to be. I was somebody who was not interested in acting as a celebrity as a conduit to celebrityism. I was interested in behavior because it was curious to me, because I grew up round a fucking bunch of crazy people that I couldn't figure out, and then I had my guy, and even then, behaviorally they were all over the place. There's still be stories being talked about about Cito rats or about my mother. People are still God, I miss your mother so much because they missed that story in their life, because it made their life bigger than how it is, than what it was, and acting to me, was absolutely fucking useless if we didn't get into inside the behavior of what people do and why they do it, and how curious and how chaotic and how nutty it is, which I think is the manifestation of this book. If there's anything to me to identify with, it's the fact that instead of a self help book that used to be as big as the poetry section, about a foot wide and about six feet high, is now seventy five percent of the bookstore. And it's fine, But why do they all? Why are there so many? Because they don't work. Most of them don't work, so you go buy another one, and you go buy another one because they say, find the solution and then just live in the solution and breathe and you go. Life is way more chaotic and messy than that. Do you really exercise the demons in you? Or do you get to a point where you actually just accept them and you learn to direct them? As Anthony Hopkins told me, it was one of the greatest things I ever heard in sobriety.
He was like, how great is it that we're like this? And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? And he was like that we're alcoholic, and we're edgy, and we're driven, we're angry. And I was like, why is that a good thing? And he was like, because, left to its own devices can be the most destructive, hurtful personality. Behavior ever directed.
In the right way can have such a profound and positive impact, And it's just that it's learning and acquiring tools to be able to direct it in a way that engine that engine in a way that is show room ready. And I'm kidding, because I will never be showroom ready, but you know what I mean in the most positive sense. And I was like, oh, so I don't have to be somebody else in order to be good or in order to be productive in order to have a positive impact. And I'm not even looking to have a positive impact, but I'm looking to be able to find things in myself that shine a little bit, that might be sparkle a bit.
After the break, why don't we talk about what that engine is and what it produced. Okay, and that's the work itself. Yeah, okay, we'll be right back with Josh Brolin. We're going to the bathroom.
I just for the audience. We just urinated together, separate urinos. I didn't look I had the lower one. I didn't look either. You're taller than I am, I think so if anybody looked, it was Youwards.
Coming back from the bathroom break here. When you're a young actor, in all the years leading up to No Country for Old Men, you would go on all kinds of auditions and uh, there's one woman who used to work a Mirror Maax named Meryl Poster, and she said, you and Benisio del Toro were the worst auditioners we ever experienced in all the thousands we saw, by far, the two of you were the worst by far, by far. Why add that, I don't know.
Why not just say you were bad auditions? What we call insult injury, insult Andrew for sure.
And yet, yeah, did you think you were that bad?
Yes, Benny, I don't think did I think Benny thought he was being pretty fucking good because he's a great actor. But I hated auditioning. I hated auditioning. Man. You're behind a couch and you're in the black forest in Germany, and you know, and you have a gun and everybody's sitting in their chairs, and you come up from behind the couch and you go, don't fucking move, you know. I mean, it's super humiliating. It's just fucking awful. You're sitting there and you're like, they're like, do the thing, and you're like, what thing? You know, dud be a good actor?
How And you seem pretty reluctant about the whole thing in the first place.
Reluctant about acting kinda It makes me want to cry when you say that, because it makes me so It makes me so happy when you're sitting there telling the truth. It's a rarity. That's what was a great thing with alcohol is that you know, if you needed information, just alcohol is somebody up and you probably would find out a lot more shit than they were presenting. But I do think that we all have that kind of contrasted thing, and that's supervit. Yeah, I think that I have a love hate relationship with it. I just did something with Ryan Johnson, It's Knives Out three. There was a pleasure that I found in doing that movie with him that I have not experienced for quite a while. I've found pleasure for other reasons doing movies. Denis is a really close friend of mine and that, but from an acting standpoint and scaring myself and living up to something that was something that I that I just experience for that and that keeps me going. It's like hitting the golf ball well once in a great while, and you go, I guess I'll just keep playing fucking golf.
The first time you hit the golf ball, well, yeah, was flirting with disaster.
It's funny. I was going to say, right, yeah.
You opposite Richard Jenkins, genius actor. The second time, I think is no country for old man. When you think of this period now and you describe yourself once as a guy who was always on the verge of making.
It, that was other people's perception, right.
You didn't think that? No, tell me about the distance between those two, how you saw yourself and how they saw you.
There was a process in me just admitting that I was a working actor. You know. So if Alan Mindel called and said, hey, can you put on pantyhose and play it? You know, I'm like, sure, we just need you Milwaukee for two days.
Great, it was a paycheck.
It was just what you do? You act? You know, you choice, yep, what you were going to act. I had two kids at the time. Sometimes I wouldn't work for twelve sixteen months, and it was nuts, man, and that in hindsight, looking back on that, I got to spend so much time with my kids and I had this amazing time during my kid's childhood, which I was I'm so pleased with now. But the frustration, Like I went into my I won't say who the agent was, and he's my good friend now still, but I went in and I was like, is my head too big? Are my arms too short? Like, like, just tell me. I could just be honest with me and then we'll go from there. Like I don't understand how I'm not getting so much work.
What did he say?
He put in a tape and he had played both parts from the big scene in Heat between Denier and Paccino at the diner. He played at the diner, and he played me the version of him playing both parts. So his response was showing me how well he acts. He's an agent, he's no longer an agent. It was amazing to me. And we tell I tell that story because it was such a fallsy move. Wow, it's such an insult, and I know he didn't mean it like that in the least. I've seriously and I go, God, man, my fucking agent is showing me a tape of how good he is acting. He's so pleased with the tape. I'm fucked.
I did find it weird when you walked in here and gave me a tape of the podcast you're gonna host next.
That's what I mean. It's basically the same thing, the same thing. It's like, hey man, by the way, like, I can't wait to do this. I'm so psyched. But I have a podcast too.
Is it long form and minds where you get into trauma of your past?
Exactly? Interesting? Yeah. All the things that we're going to talk about I've already talked about on my podcast. It's good.
We're getting laughs in here because it's been no serious I know, but back and forth. It's beautiful.
It's the it's the oscillation, it's the fluctuation that makes it makes for a good life.
I'm trying to think of which part I want to talk about with the movie, what matters most to you and telling the story of you getting it and doing it.
It was such a light set. We had a lot of fun. Me Woody. Javier was depressed off on the side, but we'd always pull him out and drinks and he ended up doing karaoke. And Joel and Ethan I got very close with, you know, especially Ethan. I mean I got close with both of them, but Ethan, I you know, that was a friendship that you know continues.
On the set. Did you notice Ethan's quiet torture?
Oh? Yeah, yeah, I would make fun of him all the time. Well I still do.
What would that look like?
First of all, he hums all the time, I mean he would. I mean that's a form of insanity, and it's not an affectation. That's what's so great about Ethan Angel but especially Ethan, is that he's he doesn't even understand affectation. He couldn't do He couldn't think of a romantic version of how you wanted to how he wanted to be perceived by you. He just can't help but be organically dumbly himself. Like it or not, he probably likes it the least.
There was one project you wanted him to maybe work on with you, and you said something like, would you want to revisit that? And he said to you, yeah, I'd love to revisit it when it's done.
It's what was that Quasimoto? What's that? Hunch fat? Something like that. Yeah, I'd love to revisit it when it's done, and I see it in the theater.
I mean, these are the kinds of people that, after having worked with you on several projects before casting you in Hale Caesar called around and ask people if they thought you could handle that.
That's the truth, man, that's literally the truth. I know. I go, why would you do that? Like I confronted them, I go, why would you do that?
Asking them? They were asking people if you could handle that dialogue?
What a fucking what an asshole thing do? But they're practical. That's what I appreciate about them, is they're practical.
When you're making no country two thousand and six. There's a page in this book, and I tell you it's the page that has stayed with me since I first read it. Okay, and it's you on set, and I thought maybe you could read this page.
Okay, let's see two thousand and six the El Camino Hotel. I don't remember what the room number is, but they're all the same. Room eight looks like Room twelve looks like Room six. A queen bed, pulsing plastic alarm clock, beige carpet, paper, thin sheet rock, a sliding aluminum and glass door to the shower bath. Small knobs on a small sink on either side of a small spigot. My hat sits on a cheap wooden chair, and my blue jeans seem foreign against the dirty flooral print of the beds duvet. My boots stand alone next to the door, with socks draped over the tops of them, as if they belong to somebody else. A film script sits open on the small from mica table to a scene where I hitch a ride from a stranger and he gets shot by the bad guy. The minute I climb in and close the truck's door with a metal crunching slam. I don't work until it's dark tonight. Outside it's hot, it's summer. I hear high heels against concrete, and I pull back the curtain and there she is standing in front of me, at the other side of the window. I unlocked the door, let her in. She doesn't even look at me, just walks right past, wafting in a scent of plain food. She puts her bag down, walks into the bathroom, and closes the bathroom door behind her. I hear the shower turn on. My stomach cringes, contracts. I feel the heat of the day behind me and the heat of what's to come. I wish it were nighttime already. I wish my kids were here. I wish there were some things I just didn't have to do. That's hard for me to read, dude, Yeah, the context is being at the El Camino Motel where I stayed with the prop master and somebody else, and somebody was coming to visit me.
I wish there were some things I just didn't have to do. What is that?
It's the life that feeds. It's the life that feeds all that kind of stuff. It's like, what makes the you know, is it the fact that I broke my clavicle, you know, two weeks before I did No Country and he gets shot in the right shoulder and that's the only way I was able to do the film. And did that create a pain? And did that have an impact on the movie? And do you know what I mean? My character and all that? So I think that my in my past, and I'll get back to that. But in my past, everything had to be earned. It was like everything had not a torture. You know. You brought up Beniso del Toro before, and I remember him. I did a series a long time ago when I was nineteen called Private Eye and it didn't go anywhere, and it was the guy's from Hill Street Blues and sant Elsewhere and Miami Vies and it was Tony Yerkovich and this whole thing. And and Benny did a two part episode called Barrio Knights, and I remember him. I think they kept it in like he fucked up a line or something, and then he just started slamming that, you know, And I knew it was from that. He was so hard on himself. He expected so much of himself, being a student of Stella Adler and all that kind of stuff and we were all that was our group. You know. It was like not that we were hanging out, but me Benny Ruffalo, it was you studied with her too, and I studied with her too. And it's one of those things that it's like it was back in the old days where it's kind of like it meant everything you had to go through the shit you had to like get at least that's how we felt. And it was fairly cosmetic. But we're you know, we're like, we're an actor.
We want to be brand owned, we want to be James Dean, and we want to be all these people.
And your life outside of the frame also needed to be full of material.
Yeah, material like writeable material. Everything was a story. Everything was a story. And I say that about alcohol, by the way, you know, I go if I speak at a meeting or something, I go listen without with alcohol, I had a personality. I had it. I was I was identified.
Who were you drinking? Because the identity and personality you and I just met today, there's a personality.
There's enough of a personality.
I didn't say there was enough. I said it'sity and I like it.
I appreciate that. Thank you. I like yours. By the way, I think my perception of it was it was I have a different relationship with it. Now. I was racked with fear. I was racked with how I was perceived. Not that I wanted to be perceived as cool, but I wanted to be perceived as something substantial. So I was racked with this heady thing that would make me trip over my words, that would make me shake, that would make me do all these things. And alcohol disintegrated.
That and turned you into what it just.
It didn't turn me into a monster. I was super fun sometimes, you know. It just it's like I think, I write it in the book what t Roll said. He said, shark eyes, I would literally blink and become somebody else, you know, which is fairly well known in the sober community. It's like doctor Jekyl, mister.
Hyde, he wrote. I was nice until I wasn't. Shark guys, my buddy Troll called it. And the snap of a millisecond, you went from charming to dark. The next morning, I'd lie there, crawling through the black molasses of my memory and desperately searching for any evidence of what I'd done. The night before.
Yeah, that's pretty bright one, I know. And then it became which is an absolute parallel with my mother, which I know right before she died, which I'll get to. But there was a guy who took me out and a friend of his was visiting him and he said, do you want to go out tonight? I said, yeah, sure. I had gotten in some trouble or drank too much a few days before, so I was deciding not to drink. And when I decided not to drink, he was like, you know, what can I get you? We went to bar or something and he said what can I get you? And I said, he it's water. I'm fine with water. He was like what do you mean? And I go, I'm just going to drink water tonight. I don't think I'm gonna drink and he was like, but I have my friend here, and I was like, what do you mean? You have your friend here? What I told her about you? And I was like, what fuck does that mean? It was like I told her how you know? And I realized it's like, oh no, no, I want you to. I want you to song and dance for her. I was like, oh, I'm a freak to you. I'm a side show to you.
It was why stay home and watch a show on.
The couch when you can experience one out the bar in real life. And its name is Josh Brolin. Its name is Josh Brolin.
Not even with the side card.
I don't even know what, doesn't even need a sad card. And all you got to do is buy it a few drinks and it will dance for you, and it might even go to jail, and we'll go home and talk about how crazy that was. That guy's crazy him him him, him him, And that's what my mother was her. It's easy to point the finger at those people are allowed and do that song and dance and all that, and then you get caught up into being everybody's freak show, and that becomes its own kind of you know, Hamster Wheel.
The book is so much about you and your mother and the relationship you had and the one that got cut short. It's tough because on one end you're talking about how she was this larger than live figure in a positive way, like people loved her, and then on the other end, she was this larger than life figure they rendered her a drunk cartoon essentially, and thinking about her now, like, how do you hold those two how people perceived her versus who she was.
I don't think that she knew who she was period. I remember this one moment where she was crying at the end of her life and she had been taken seriously about this idea that she had thought of. And I remember her crying and I said, what are you crying about? And she said, I've never been taken seriously before. That was a moment that I'm so glad that I had before her death, because it was a reveal of you're not happy in this place. You do feel like a freak show, you feel like this side show, this dog and pony thing. And so when I felt that, I went the opposite direction. I said, I don't I don't want to. I don't want to see what happens. I can either have that life or I can see what this other life is going to be like. And that's sober life. I didn't have to self destruct completely. I tried, I'm not supposed to be dead, you know whatever, for whatever reason, and I did a lot of things.
This all to me comes to a head. Yeah, we do keep kind of oscillating back and forth between the past and present, and the structure of the book is such that you go from nineteen seventy three to two thousand and three without much explanation, and that in some ways, the reason I'm structuring our conversation like this is because I like the idea of holding these moments and the way they sit next to each other in and of itself is telling a story. So the personal and the professional seemed to dovetail. In twenty thirteen, in the summer of that year, you're making Inherent Vice and you're playing this detective Bigfoot who's a hard nosed detective on one end and a desperate, aspiring actor on another end. I wonder when you think about that performance and that time in your life, because it's the year that you decide to get sober. Making that movie, did it feel like an inflection point?
No, the trajectory of my alcoholic life, let's call it, was not a you know, it's like, oh, it started fun and then it just got worse, and when it gets bad, it never gets good again. And then it just gets worse. And then it turned into this fiery, you know, hell hole, and it's not it was bad. At fifteen. There were things that I was doing at fifteen, which totally you know, earned my seat, as they say.
Right, but was it also fun at forty four, forty five.
Super fun, super fun, and then super not, which was always the case.
Right, So you're making this movie and your hot.
So I'm making this movie and I would I don't think I've ever said this. I would write text to Paul that literally are totally nonsensical, Like I have them on my phone, and it looks like I'm trying it looks like a recipe for goulash, you know, for an infection together. Just like while I'm doing the movie, say I have a couple of days off and I miss Paul, So I'm like, you know, obviously Josh is out having a good time but unable to communicate, which is why I would wake up in the sidewalk, because I would I wouldn't know how to get the key in the door to open the door so I could sleep inside. That's not didn't happen once or twice that many, many, many, many, many many many times. I just went brain dead. So I'm doing this amazing movie that I care so much about, given that I was just stabbed before I started, and Costa Rica. Ten days later, I'm beating joaquinap in some scene where he's walking out. It's literally the first scene that we have, and I think my stomach's going to rip open. And that's my life, Man's that's the whole point. It's like, and I'm not sitting here and praising it. I'm not celebrating it. I'm saying that that is. That was the moment where the normalcy of that thing, where you'd see other people go holy shit, dude, oh my god. Joaquin came up to me, it was like, dude, you know, and I'm like, yeah, it's a Tuesday. The chaos was at a point where anything could happen at any time, and it did often, and it didn't phase me.
And watching the film, if you feel that anything could happen at any time, and none of it phased me, right, it all amazed me, especially knowing your story. Are you watching it last night?
Really?
Yes?
That's funny. You know it's improvising. And even Paul to this day wouldn't show me. There's so much stuff that we did for that film that you don't know, that you haven't seen, that I haven't seen. And I would ask Paul once in a while, I'd say, you want to Tom and Jerry this one? I remember can't getting mad. At some point he was like, you guys talk more like within This was like the first week of filming. He goes, you guys talk more than Paul and I have ever spoken. Because we'd go back and forth, we'd have this bantern. I go, do you want to Tom and Jerry this? He goes, yeah, let's do it, and we just heighten everything, just you know, do crazy shit. And maybe it was just too over the top, maybe it took away from the story or whatever it was. But I had a great time doing that film. I have brilliant memories of doing that film. I absolutely and have always been in love with Joaquin and I know this is not what you're asking, but working with him felt so right because it was like it played into that whole thing, especially at that time of not knowing what's going to happen at any moment, that it was all very dangerous and with a perpetual smile.
When I play a clip film and hair and Vice.
After a long and busy day of civil rights violations, I found myself in the neighborhood and compelled to drop in just to check and see the current state of affairs my old stomping grounds, seeing as your effort to keep lines of communication had been limited to say the least. Oh, I've and busy trying to figure out which side of the zigzag paper is the sticky sign. Give it to me. Listen, I'm sorry about last night you why should give me? Sorry? Weird? Mhm uh Are you okay? Brother? I'm not your brother?
How about you?
Could he use a keeper?
That was unbelievable, unbelievable?
He goes, Oh, man, it's so genious.
You just ate all of the weed, which is a pothead's worst nightmare. When you're done with that movie and on your two days off you're doing god knows and you're coming back and having to do this job, which is an unbelievable job. You find yourself in Halloween twenty thirteen. What happens that night?
My wife now and I uh put on onesies and then get on the bicycles and go down the boardwalk at Venice Beach and go look for you know, other people with iridescent onesies. But there was nobody out, and I remember the sunset took forever and it was this long, gorgeous sunset. We were riding back and I looked over at the Venice Alehouse, which we'd been to many times, and I knew everybody down the boardwalk. I knew all the homeless, the homeless community there. We were all close. It's all changed now, it's all gone totally berserk, but back then it was still intimate. And I've been in Venice since I was sixteen. So we saw the Venice Alehouse and I go very innocently, should we have a beer? And she was like, yeah, let's try. Yeah, I mean, let's do it. And my grandmother was in the hospital. Her grandfather had just had a stroke in Georgia, so she was flying to him that night and I was supposed to drive her. So we stopped for a beer, which turned into five beers, and five beers always turns into O'Brien's, which is no longer open, which is on Main Street, which was a scrappy hard bar, and I had been eighty six out of every other bar on Main Street except for O'Brien's, because O'Brien's doesn't eighty six to anybody. You can do anything at O'Brien's so I never got to take her and we went home. We rode bicycles home, might have crashed time or two on the bicycles. And then she took an uber and she said, don't leave home, don't leave here. And I said okay. And then she said when you respond, why does it sound echoey? I said, I don't know. I think it's my phone. I was already in the car going to a bar back. I mean, there was no way I was going to What was I going to do? Stay home and go to sleep. The gas had been ignited, and the engine took me back to O'Brien's. I think anyway, there was a lot of things. There was like some fairly innocent hit and run at Del Taco. There was a fight at O'Brien's. And then I woke up on the sidewalk, and then I was supposed to be at my grandmother's. I was two hours late.
Do you remember waking up on the sidewalk that morning? I do, what did it feel like?
Normal? Like? You have your shame? What I do you know? And then I and I think Deacons because Deacons lived fairly close by Roger, and he would run in the morning. He would run. It's so wrong, dude, it's so wrong. He would run past in the morning. He would never look at me, and he always put up his hand. There you go. And I would always see him and I'd be like, he was not looking at me, because it's shameful. It's like, it's not like waking up with a pillow and a blanket. It's like waking up and dirty and you know, scratched up and all that.
Early nineties, you get into a fight with your first wife. You walk down New York, you're in New York, down the street, you have no shirt on. You walk further down and you spot Philip Seymour Hoffman. He knew talking to you, definitely high or drunk or whatever. Did he mention anything about you not wearing a shirt?
No? I did know him. I knew him. He had done a movie with my wife in Poland, his first but he had just started taking off. He was like, he started doing a lot of independent films and was getting a lot of praise. And I said that, I say in the book, He's got his feet always makes me laugh, like Charlie Chaplin feet. It's like the one that has to deal and the one where the one wants to go, and he just he didn't want to have anything to do with me. And I don't blame him, because I had seen him a lot. I'd see him on the street in New York and sometimes he was super nice to me. But at that point, it was like he was getting some real traction around his career, and I just represented something that he was getting away from. He was sober, he was really focusing on doing the best work he could do, and I was this guy who was auditioning a lot, not getting a lot of things, and then taking it out in ways that were not helpful. My life was an absolute chaos. Even though I was a dad and I was a good dad. I was always a good dad. I did things like there were drunk episodes in my kid's life that my older kids would talk about now that are super unfortunate and that I've apologized for and that I hate knowing exist. But the truth of the matter is is I was pretty present for my kids, and then these things would happen, you know. And that's the thing. It's like, when you watch a movie, it's really interesting to watch somebody who is, you know, fairal and chaotic and all that kind of stuff, and there was never an attempt at me trying to emulate that kind of thing. It just existed in my life and it was really a tractive in film like you do a movie like Inherent Vice, and that's how it reads.
We fold this into such a this is like the way we're putting this together.
It seems chaotic and abstract, but it's not.
It's design. Yes, Philip Seymour hoffins if he pointed the other direction, but there was also some part of him that was letting you be you in the same way that Deacons that morning on the thirty first is running past you. This is a man who's worked with you many times at this point, who respects you as an artist, who's your friend, and is doing his morning run, which of course Roger Deacons does a morning run, and he waves that to me is significant. There is an acknowledgment, but he doesn't want to pry, and he's giving you the space to do whatever you were doing. I don't know. Waking up in front of the door, I think there is something to this.
There's an acknowledgement of that part of me that they respect, and I don't know if that's right. Or not. And then there's the other part that they don't want to have anything to do with that. They realized that it comes in one package, you know, I did. I did a speech for Bradley Cooper at one point. There was one point where people were kind of they like how I wrote. So I became this go to guy to write people's.
Speeches, the ghost speeches.
It's unbelievable, dude, like talk about add insult to injury, like I'm not really working as an actor, or.
Josh, we know you'd like to maybe be in these movies and then some of these awards.
But we you write one of those amazing speeches for me or whatever. And but I gave this speech to Bradley Cooper, and I had just gotten out of jail, and I had seen a couple of actors backstage and they were all like, again, it was the freak show. They're all it was like that guy with the Canadian girl that they were like, yeah, you no way, you're crazy, you know. And then they'd go back and do their work, and Leo was going back to do Wolfe of Wall Street and you know whatever. It was. So I was living these parts that they were playing. But Phil. There was always a respect because there was a lot of history there. And then when Phil went up, and you know, I've had a lot of people in my life pass and die. And when I was in the hills of Italy and Michael Kelly came out with a glass of wine, I'll never forget and I walked in and the mountains, walked into this little chalet and he came out and he said, did you hear about Phil? And I go, what? And he goes, you didn't hear He's dead? That It's the only time I've ever believed, which I thought was a lame description of when your knees buckle. I could not believe Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the great actors of the stage and screen, somebody who had beat the odds, every odd there was to beat, was dead from a drug overdose. Impossible. And I think that was the end. That was the beginning of the end for me. I think I probably would have stayed sober for a couple more years and probably gone back out and justified it somehow, and you know, I would have found my I'm really good at like deluding myself. And that was like that hit me so hard, and I was like, yeah, no thanks, no thanks. The chaos train ends, and I'm not interested in an ending. I want to try and string this thing out as long as I can, as long as I can.
So tell me about November one, twenty thirteen.
So November one, I woke up and I went and I saw my grandma because I was late picking up my brother and I she was in the hospital and the whole family was around, and I had been in charge of the whole family and kind of who can be there at what time and when, and I had been pretty dry. And I went in there and my fan all their heads went straight down immediately, like they because I'm sure I smelled bad. I hadn't taken a shower, was scratched up. And then my grandmother lifted her head. She turned her head toward me, ninety nine years old, and she smiled just the most, the biggest. She was so happy that I was there, just this huge smile, and it just that was it went off in my head. So that's what I'm done. How dare me a woman who had lived ninety nine years on life's terms and I have everything it might beck and call for the most part, like I have my health, I have my wit, I have my intelligence, I have my kids, I have my this, and I'm throwing it all away in the name of the Freak Show, carrying on the legacy of the Freak Show. Done, and I was done.
I'm curious, you know, because you've talked so much about sobriety. You had had periods, like you said, where you were sober for a while. What about now with your two new kids? What about now? Says no? This is it no?
Because of what I said Tony Hopkins had mentioned. You know, this is the rebel way. This is the defiant way, the most defiant. This is the most defiant way. What if you get to live two lives in one life pretty severely. This is respecting my mother and saying you won. You won the war. The war is is that you don't adhere to other people's expectations. There's a singer for a fairly famous rock band and he said, surprise everybody with a happy ending. And it affected me when he said that. I still think about it because what that means is nobody expects a happy ending. And then when you get sober for a little while, I've been sober for a little while. I mean literally within the first couple of years, and then people would come around like, oh my god, this isn't just a thing he's going through that it's actually like he's taking this seriously. And then people would reveal how they really, you know, what they what they thought was going to happen, or what they were expecting in the fact that it was pretty bad sometimes and they were pretty certain I wasn't going to make it. So I had gotten to a point where it became kind of a through line that now we're at the end and this is and it's going to look bad. And I like the idea that I was given the opportunity to say nah, because I do. I don't think there was ever a death wish of my mother's, of mine, of my dast that. I think it was just needing to live life on a very vivid plane, which I still am. I just do it in a different way now.
The expectations people had for you, Yeah, there was no bigger expectation than the man that your mom set you up to become that guy we're talking about, the cowboy who drinks and has a story not with a happy ending. I wanted to read from the page seward at the end of the book, which I think talks about where you are now and where she is now, and you.
Oh, she was funny, she was unique, She was all the things most have become so deathly afraid of becoming today different not as an affectation, but as a mineral. I see her and my children the way they accentuate a point or discover awe on what would otherwise seem mundane, but in ways a little less destructive, a little more at peace. My mother at peace. Imagine. Just recently there were several Super eight reels revealed with her running around as a little girl. To see my mother as a little girl confused me in my mind. She had always been an electric child. And as I watched those scratchy, faded colors with her smiling she ran about, I looked to my left and right, and there were my little girls doing the same, with similar smiles and similar glints of mischief in their eyes. I like it. It moves me, knowing that they have inside them what freedom she demanded. It was her lack of grace in that freedom that drove her insane, or at least right to the edge of insanity. I don't see that. In my case, there's so much to write about, there's so many stories to tell. I guess I'm looking for a deeper sense to it all. That world was huge and the world is now more literal. I haven't decided which I like better. The only thing I don't like about that last line is because it involves my kids, and my kids are always the preferred.
What do you not like about the line?
You know? I don't know which I prefer better? Which is obviously you know about that big of a life where things were that dangerous and that unpredictable, You know what I mean. I miss that. I miss that level of unpredictability, but less now than I did. I think the longer I stay sober, I find my moments of unpredictability and how to be able to live within that and it not be threatening to my sobriety.
For a time, yeah, for a long time, the unpredictability was in drinking, It was in Heroin for a moment, your flinch when I said that.
I just don't talk about it often. I hate it.
What would you like me to do?
No, I'm not asking you to do anything differently. I just don't like it. I don't like that I was subservient to that drug for any amount of time, even if I was the shortest of all my buddies. Yeah, I just don't like it. It's like such a to me. It's such a checkout. But then again, so is alcohol, you know, in some way. But keep going, you were dismounting.
Do you feel like now the work itself, whether it's on screen or in this book, or in the play that you've recently written, you're directing that episode of your show out of Range, whatever it is, do you feel like the unpredictability is most interesting you in the art that you're making.
Barna, for sure. It is the thing that I have found that I think I had a real hate for in the beginning, that I had a big curiosity about because of how I found my way in it, that has now become a great solace and something that I respect highly. And if this book is anything, it's a human being finding a great release in creativity in the manifestations of those creativities. I see it in my kids, I see it in my friends. And I never had a respect around the idea of the art because I couldn't see it beyond the idea of celebrity, and now it's hard for me to find the celebrity, and if I do see the celebrity, I try and snuff it out pretty quick, even though it does maybe get me work that I need and want.
You know what it is, You and I have never had a drink together, you and I will. I don't think I ever have a drink together. Probably not the guy that you were, that your friend wanted you to be.
Well.
I brought you here to watch Josh Give Me Season eight of Josh Broland, here at the bar at O'Brien's. Whatever that person was, what I imagine him to be, is what I have seen growing up watching your work, especially in the last decade, like every part feels like some extension of whatever that person was with a few drinks in the unpredictability, how alive and vulnerable and raw and uncomfortable your performances can be all of those things you thought you needed alcohol to be in public. I have seen, as someone who's never met you and never saw a drink. I've seen in the work. I've felt it in the work.
I literally can't think of a better compliment, at least professionally and personally that I have broken that chain, you know what I mean, with the help of many other people, I have broken the chain that thinks that he exists only in the chaos that he creates in the Freak Show. And if whatever anomalies creative anomalies exist in me can come out in more pure form, then I beat the system. You know. Again, nature nurture, you know, and the nature would suggest otherwise, And because of what I was surrounded by. But I think through the nurturing of a community that I was lucky enough. I'm not just saying the sober community, but really really interesting, good, empathetic, inspired people, Ethan Tilda, a lot of people.
My last question, yes, the first thing you said when you walked in today, you and your agent who you talked to this morning, and you said you're going through a disaster. I think it was or what did you what did you call it?
Spinning?
So you were spinning. Now that we're at the end of this, how you feel.
I feel strangely good. I don't know how to feel about that yet. I think that there's something about this process that means a lot to me, and that's being able to, like you pointed out, manifest things not distilled, but a clean water with all the minerals in it. That it's productive, that it's healthy in some sense, but it reads as chaotic and dirty and messy and all that stuff that we all are.
Why does that make you emotional?
M Because that's the showing up that I respect, you know, it's the showing up that I you know, you put yourself on the fucking firing line, you know, And this scared the shit out of me, to use my own crude language. It's scared. It scared me. And that's why I didn't want to talk about being a writer, talk about writing in journals anymore, talk about the books that I've written and put in a dark corner and just do it, man, do it. And I can't blame anybody else here. I can't blame a director, I can't blame setting, I can't blame Timeline, I can't This is all me. This is one hundred percent me, for better or worse. And for somebody who was close to Cormac who didn't want to talk about any writing ever. You know, there's there's a small part of me that's like almost embarrassed to celebrate the attempt. But even then I'm like, I'm more okay with the fact that that means something to me. Is okay with me.
I appreciate the attempt.
Thanks.
I think you have been more than generous today, going through some uncomfortable pockets. What I said about the work, I hadn't written that.
In my notes I got that was from you in the moment.
That was from me in the moment. Josh Bolin, appreciate the time.
Dude. You will go down as being maybe the most organic, funny, unpredictable person that I've done an interview with.
That's that's the aim for real.
What a pleasure, what a true pleasure.
And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. If you want to go above and beyond, share the program on social media, tag us at Talk Easypod. All of this really does help us continue making the program each and every Sunday. I want to give a special thanks this week to the teams at Relevant PR, Rachel Alinsky at HarperCollins, iHeart, and of course our guest today, Josh Brolin. His memoir from Under the Truck comes out this week on November nineteenth, will include the link to order a copy in our show notes at talk easypod dot com. For more episodes like this one, I'd recommend our talks with John Burnhaal, Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe, Marina Abramovich and Well, since you mentioned it, Joaquin to hear those and more. Pushkin Podcast listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. If you want to purchase one of our monks they come in cream or Navy, you can do so at talkasypod dot com, slash shop. Talk easy is produced by Carolyn Reebok. Our executive producer is Jenick sa Bravo. Today's talk was edited by Lindsay Ellis and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Chris Shanoy. Photographs today are by Maria Alvarez, with assistants from Ethan Newmeyer. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, justin Richmond, Kerry Brody, Jacob Smith, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Joinna McMillan, Amy Hagadorn, Sarah Bruguer, Owen Miller, Sarah Nix Malcolm Gladwell, Greta Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm san fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. We'll be back next Sunday with another episode. Until then, stay safe and so long things as the SA
