What In The Winkler?!Max Winkler returns to the podcast and he and Zoe have a sibling rivalry going! Who's the favorite and how has it shifted back and forth over the years? Zoe opens up about her misdiagnosis of ADD and how it's affected her, while Max shares how getting into trouble resulted in a special relationship that he still carries with him every day.
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Hi, welcome back to another episode of What in the Winkler. We have a repeat guest.
Today because he hasn't been on yet with Mommy, So Max Winkler, welcome to the pod.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan.
Thank you so much for being here. How's your day so far?
So far, so good.
Okay, well Max just got back. He was shooting in Chicago, so he was gone for three months.
A little less than that, okay, a little less.
Than three months, and so he hasn't really been available to do the pod.
Let's talk about how it feels to not be the favorite child.
I feel like I lived that, but now I feel like I am the favorite.
Actually, well, you were an incredible, credible resource when mother was down and out. I would say a.
Favor about mother being down and out and things because mother is here with you today, sitting upright miraculous.
And let me tell you, because of that fact, I have no bad days. Every day is a good day because you're with us.
That's so nice.
Yeah. I feel very grateful for your survivor. I was, I was prepared for your death, I was easier.
Okay, you're giving me a hard attack. Do you feel like you come to me and mom for advice now that you have kids?
Yes? Often, I trust you both when it comes to.
That is silent? What's tea? And often?
Often?
Yes?
Often, No, it's not, it's often. No, it's often, but it's okay, I don't think it is.
But anyway, fine, Yeah, I think it's I think it's really a tomato tomato type situation.
Okay, then often, But now let's get into your career.
Great.
Have you known your entire life that you wanted to be a director and her producer? Yes?
Yes, we've actually talked about this prior. I think in your like last whatever it was. You've worked on TV shows from Brooklyn nine to nine to New Girl to American.
Who don't want to talk about any of those shows? Scratch them. Those are not the shows I want to be remembered. What shows would you like to like to be remembered? For the movies I've made that no one's seen.
I think all your movies have been great. Actually I thought Flower was amazing.
I did too. I didn't see Jungle Land. I mean I tried to watch it, But you mean you didn't see jungle lands.
My mother used to, at a very young age, do two things that I found very strange. She thought I was very muscular, and she wanted me to show my take my shirt off and show her friends how buff I was.
That never happens.
It No, it didn't, it never did, and don't do it and just talk about this sakai.
And she also told the story. And she also wanted me to do impressions for her.
Here's the deal and space.
I don't perform on committee.
And he looked exactly like David Letterman when he was a little boy. Max said to me, stop asking me to perform.
I'm not I don't like compliments because I was over complimented as a child.
Oh yes. One of Max's doctors said, a brilliant, brilliant therapist was this said that the biggest problem for Max was that he was loved too much.
Mother's Days this weekend, what are we going to do? Spoil our queen? So I so what I thought is I thought we would get you a bath bomb.
I guess his birthday party actually, which is also going to be held at your house, We're doing make your own bath bomb.
And we're going to do a nasty little spa day for you, you bad bitch.
I I really I am in an altered universe. I feel as.
Though, and we're gonna get you a build your owne. We're gonna get you to know that's already happened and you've slipped it yourself. We're gonna get you to build your own boba bar for the house. You're gonna to make Boba's exactly how you want it, the way you know.
That bobas grow in your stomach.
That's the truth.
I don't, but yes, because think about.
Remember zen Zuti that we be loved getting boba right down the street at the Country mar But now I'm actually gonna surprise Jewles and for his birthday we're getting a boba.
I thought Max knew that.
Yeah, so so far you've covered Gus's birthday and now and now Jewles's birthday. But I wrote to all of the siblings and their spouses yes, that we wanted to get you something really special this year, and Max suggested a body chain.
I have one just with my initial line, are you talking about a gold chain that you wear around your wraps?
Around?
Like?
How do you have forbidden because.
An old boyfriend, Terry Inch, gave me.
Was he the scientologist?
No, he's very handsome Terry and the person who hid in the bushes on my first day with Daddy. But he bought me a very beautiful gold chain. You saved it all these years. You should give it to Jes, give it to Max's wife. She would love a body chain. It doesn't it's just a chain that you wear, but it was bought to wear around a little lower than my waist.
Does Dad still have his nipples piers.
Yes, he does, but he had the other he he's got a third piercing. He did that for his fifty eighth birthday.
I think it was how do you feel about mom and what we've all been.
Through with her?
It was such a terrifying time. It was the scariest time I've ever been through, and I'm just so grateful that she's okay.
So what is the family dynamic? Oh, I'll tell you, gird. Yeah, I'm actually family dynamic? Is this so? And let's be serious?
Yeah? Very, I'm very curious to see if we see it the same way.
So the family dynamic is that.
You and Dad are very loving and warm, but you did not like at the time, I think you didn't like like feeling like like I was very needy and that was like not attractive to you, So you didn't really like that. So I like kind of gravitated towards Dad because Dad is also a bit needy.
And then no, the man hiding in the corner like a fern, No, certainly not. You must not be seeing him correctly.
Okay, So then I just actually, this is actually actually serious. I just recently yesterday met with a new psychopharmacologist because I was diagnosed with ADD when.
I was twelve.
Who cares, I'll getting to the point.
But I actually never had ADD. I actually have OCD. My god, we got our letters wrong.
So I just bet I answer her that I actually have OCD and I've not been like medicated properly for that.
So let's get started, let's get IV.
So I.
So I certainly seemed to have the traits.
So I met with a doctor yesterday, and I now and now it's like I liked him a lot, and so I think that like I was just misunderstood because I had a lot of big feelings.
You've been talking about your bladder infection for the last seven weeks.
I had an anxiety attack over a bladder infection. That's true, and I don't like to be shamed about it.
No good for you.
Ye stand upon you got this girl, Mama, You can do anything.
So then I think that I was like very deeply feeling and so I would have like really big emotions and really big sort of like and I think it was very difficult and it wasn't fun to be around.
And Max is just a lot simpler and simple boy, this simple son, the simple son. So I think he's just really like he just.
He had like other crazy things that we can gladly go into if you want to dig deep.
Max had his own demons, and yeah, I'll have our own, we sure do.
And so and so I really felt like you guys favored him, which you did, and the rules were not the same.
And you don't think I'm still favored, No, not anymore. Well, I guess we do see this.
I don't think you're still favored, although you can just do anything you want at anytime, and that would know, because I guess, and you love it.
It's only what It's the only truth, I know. Baby, You define you know, do you understand.
He could be holding out He's holding out chum for you to have. He's baiting you think it's chumpy chum. I'm the fisherman jump jump is a different thing altogether. Okay, well what I was doing that too, But the Saint chump change. Yeah.
But and and Jet is so much older. He was nine years older, so he was in college when I was nine.
So and he was always so like just the cooler older brother. So it still is. So the family dynamic. That's a very interesting thing because you know the expression, the story that every time your family can grow and have kids, you can have grandkids, great grandkids. But at Thanksgiving dinner, everybody reverted to you they are as children. And the difference. It seems that I tried to explain to you once and it was like.
You were not I was seven, so yeah, I might have not been able to it was it was.
It was. It wasn't really, but it was. It was that you and I are so much alike. Those were not your words. Go ahead, no that, but I'm saying to you that we're very alike. Anybody knows what we're feeling at any time. Yes, the eye rolls, the sighing the whatever it is, and that you were as a child, You were exactly like I was. The point is that you were like a born negotiator. And I think that Max, as a third child simple, who was the simple son complicated, was an observer and he saw I feel like I'm with Arman Now.
It's funny, because that's why I'm a filmmaker, you know, That's how I got in the industry. I was. I'm just kidding, but.
I feel like that when the youngest child observes and sees how they can, if they're smart, they learn to mind the system. And I think that that is what Max did. Like I would say time for bed, Max, and he'd say, okay.
The only problem is I was going to sleep in your room until I was twenty five.
You know, sneaking out the window and taking the car.
I got into a lot of trouble in high.
School and Max was in high school. The doorbell rang one day and I opened the door and it was the adult man age was Gary Shandling, who said it is Max there. Nice said, yes, Max, Gary Shandling is here to see you. And Max said, have him come up.
I have his ashes in my backpack a small part of his ashes. Gary Shandling. I got into a lot of trouble in high school, and you guys needed to find some after school programs once I'd committed all the hours for my community service in Panorama City, so I started working. I got drunk gets school and throw up an art class in first week of yes school, and I told the headmaster that I wasn't drunk, I just I smelled of alcohol because I had French kissed a girl who was an alcoholic. Didn't work, sadly, but Tom Nolan took a chance on a young boy from the wrong side of the tracks and let me stay at Crossroads because Crossroads has always been on the right side of history. So I needed an after school program and we couldn't figure out where to put me, And you guys found a boxing gym that was actually owned by Bob Dylan underneath a shool. No, it was underneath the shool in Santa Monica. So I started hanging out there after school so all my hours could be accounted for. And I had been grounded for months and months with no access to his cell phone. I was writing all my friend's longhand letters as if I had been in jail, and I started boxing, and I started to meet all these incredible men who worked out there as well, a guy named Scott Silver, who I'm still very very close with, Peter Berg who broke my rib unfortunately, a bunch of really really cool people. But Gary Shandling was the most important to me. And from the time I was in ninth grade till the time of his death, I was just very very close with this guy who helped me, and so my favorite memories were hanging out with him. And now I have his ashes and his boxing shoes.
That's so nice. Do you wear them?
I don't have all of his ashes. I part part of them were dropped off at a Buddhist cemetery. Part of them are in Hawaii. A couple of other people have little things with his ashes. And I have his boxing shoes upstairs. I want to wear them, right.
I love too.
Yeah, they look good on you.
Actually, he was very impactful and also very.
Supportive, incredible. I was very very up when they died. Yeah, David Comaney worked out there too, who I love and who I still talk to.
Tell us more famous people that worked at the books. No, No, wait a second, I was there one day, and this is how I knew. I saw someone with like head mask and all sorts of things, you know, like looking like a real boxer in training. But he was quite a bit older than the kids who were running around. And I said to Max, I swear to God, that man looks like Bob Dylan. And that's how I found out that Bob Dylan owns.
We used to go there and you would you would like compete in matches? Yeah, that was the teacher.
Was he now?
Dave Paul Train's out of Pasadena now, I think, and his son, Junebug, was a professional fighter.
That's so cool.
I totally remember that. That was such a big part of your life.
I'm so destabilized by the fact we're just like having a normal conversation right now.
What I mean, that's nice.
No, I just loved that it was brought up. It was a great question by that one.
Very good thing for a young kid to do.
I loved it. It saved my life in a lot of way. Yes, I were good at it. I love it, and it was a huge part of I think why I was able to graduate high school.
And then you ended up speaking as the one of the speakers at your host valand's.
Funny how it works out that way. Winning personality just never stops. Favorite in childhood, favorite in high school. I was actually written about that speech was written about Ian the Santa Monica local newspaper, actually, and people because it was so good, and people still stop me and talk about it.
Would you like to do you remember it? Would you like to read it from?
No? It was about redemption. Really, it was about being able to not be remembered by your worst stay. And you know I spoke about getting drunk at school and being a little bit of a misfit and how I got a second chance and how I didn't I didn't let that. No. I wrote my college a relationship I had when I was a bag boy for sending foods before being fired because I kept on having female callers come to visit me. I had a relationship with Wendell, who was the poet.
I remember him and used to stand.
Out found me as quite a mark. And I used to buy him a sandwich every single day, and if he didn't like the kind of sandwich I bought him, he would send me back to get him the correct one. He liked broiled ham and I will never forget it, and eventually asked me to buy him diamond earrings and not the Cubic Sarconian ones. I didn't, but it was about my relationship with him, and I wrote it with this incredible woman because I was very dyslexic, and this incredible woman named Pam Felcher helped me write the essay, who was like a very very important teacher to me, as well as this woman named Meg Plattis who gave me a book when I graduated, which was Franny and Zooey, which became the most important. That's right, who gave me the book and wrote me a letter basically saying like I had written you off as a little and you ended up becoming still my favorites. Yes, but that Yeah, I'm really grateful for my teachers, and I include both of you and you as them one of my teachers, not you just kidding. You're all my teachers. Let's keep having a real conversation. I'm into this.
What do you think about leaving La? Moving out of La?
Which I would love it. It's so hard. La is so comfortable. I'm very connected to you all, as you know, and so you know Jess and I have lived in a bunch of different places. We lived in London, we've lived in New York, and have loved both of them so much, especially having kids in those places where you're walking places and not having to get in the cars walk. And I was just looking at pictures of Jess and I and Frankie in New York and feeling a tremendous pull to go back. But my favorite place we've ever been was London when Jess was filming there and it was just me and Frankie and Jess and.
And Justice whole family.
No, they're actually in the North. Oh okay, yeah, so that that that doesn't apply.
But I just mean that they were also there. You got to like see them and yes, okay, go on.
Ahead.
And I just had the best time there, and I love it, and I think LA, I'm genuinely afraid of raising my two girls in LA. Do I put my children's mental health at stake?
I don't think that it's just that we're in right now.
I don't really think it's about where like totally possible.
I uh I really uh am confused about it.
But when I went to a visit emerately, speaking though, you guys.
When you guys were young for a period of time, Daddy was really really really it was crazy. Our life was it's like a fish bowl.
I missed that part, but you grew up.
Our household, as much as you say, as much as you joke about, was relatively normal. When we had.
Juss on the podcast, she said, her first impression of you is pretty bad. Do you wear a different persona when you're in work mode?
Other let's just say it's not this persona or it wouldn't be work.
My first impression with Jess was I saw Jess in a movie. This is what happened. I saw Jess in a movie. I was in film school. She was fifteen years old in the movie. And there was nothing about my feelings for her that were sexual romantic. But I saw her and I said, this person is like phillipsy Moore Hoffman. This is a genius actress.
Okay, that's true.
I was with maxim Space. Why would I do that? I was in Matt Spicer. I was seeing Hannah at the Arc Light and I said, I hope I work with this person. I then Jess's story was that I then asked her to audition for a movie I made. That's not true. I said, can you just She's like, yeah, I don't really have time to like do a tape right now, like sorry. And I was like, okay, you it seems like you want to do the part though. She said yeah, I do. I just like I can't do an audition. I was like, well, can you do an American accent? She's like, I've done it a bunch of times before. You're just gonna have to trust me. That was the.
Story, that was the way she was too.
Yes. Then Jess and I made Jungle Land together and we were in the middle of nowhere. We were in fall River, Massachusetts, which Charlie and Jack both stayed outside of the city. Jess and I were too scared. I tried to see Charlie Hunham and Jack O'Connell. He's now in Centners. He's incredible, and I just finished a show with Charlie Hunham. He's a dear friend and a collaborator. It's a series about ed Gan. You don't need to worry about it.
I thought, you just made a movie about ed Gan.
I did. That's what I'm talking about. Jack O'Connell's and Sinners, and it's incredible.
So Sinners isn't out yet.
Sinners is out ed, Dean's not out yet?
Oh okay. Yeah.
So Jess and I were staying in this hotel that was so deeply up. I would literally come home to the hotel and my door would be open, and my charger would be in a different outlet, and I would just be like, and Jess was staying below me, and everyone else was staying away. I tried staying in the house, like the common house where everyone stayed in, but it was in the middle of nowhere. In the first night, everyone says that they just heard like lights out and then just a suitcase go down each step. And I drove to the hotel and Jess and I just were friends, and we would drive to Providence because Providence has great restaurants.
Just so you know, I'm going to Providence.
I have It's my favorite restaurant town in the world of obsessed. Well, you can go to Providence for lunch. Are you playing on the Newport Folk Fest?
Yeah, I am. I'm going in July.
Great with the kids. Let's talk about it closer to the date. So I went. We would go to Alfoorno and we would have great dinners. That's we were just friends and I would drive her around because she had never licensed, and then the story happened. Then a year and a half later we ended up dating.
Great love that for you, that was one of the best decisions you ever made, was marrying Jess.
I agree, agree she and and by the way, I feel like she's very comfortable in our family because she's just as looney as weird.
I remember Jess as strange, looney, looney.
Yes, I think she's like cut from the same class.
She certainly is.
When I had a birthday, I remember our friends like Hollie and Annie and Sam, everybody who's been friends with you since high school and me since high school said she.
Totally fits in with the crazies, like this one's a keeper, like she calls you on your like this is the one, like this one's different.
All right, Well, thank you so much for joining.
What was the first film you ever directed, and tell us how that inspiration came to be.
It was called Ceremony. I was madly in love with a married woman, and I wrote a movie about it, and it came out and nobody gave me.
Okay, great, Thank you so much, Thank.
You so much. One more question, one more question. I actually rewatched the movie recently, and I was so hard on it because I put this is serious. Is this the camera I should be looking at? Yeah, okay. I put so much value into what other people thought and what the New York Times. The New York Times referred to it as a callo movie by a callo person and cruel, cruel, and I cried. And it was important for me to feel that rejection at the time because I'd never felt it before, and it certainly was a rejection. Whoa yep, But I dismissed the movie that all these incredible people worked on and I was so proud of when I made it, and it was such a mistake because I rewatched it recently, thank you, I think incredible. And then to dismiss it about that and like to put the value of it on what someone else thinks was so stupid because the making of it was so important to me, and I rewatched it recently. I never watched things that I do like, I'm so self critical, believe it or not, believe it or not, I'm just like everyone else.
And uh, I was just gonna say, God, go on, man, and I watch it.
I was like, this is good. Like there's a couple of things that I would have done differently, but like it's such a good It's like exactly where I was at twenty five, which is great.
It was amazing that you made a movie at twenty five.
I know, and I did it all by my self. Neo baby, who the greatest thing ever would happen? Is like I remember recently I went to a premiere of a of a of something that I did and and I thought I looked really good. Simone helped me get styled. Bless her, she is a keeper. Simone and I got Lifers Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Lifers, and I went and I remember I saw this great picture and I was like, oh my god, I'm so glad I paid for this publicist. It's like totally worth it. Like my hair looks thick, follicles look in place, and my outfit is great. And I just read the headline and said Nepo Baby crashes premiere and I was like, there really is, Like there's nothing else.
You can do here, wasn't it didn't you work on the show.
It was my show, but I, you know, did with with with the pilot and executive produced all of it with some very talented people. Let me tell you, where was this New York City with the best picture And it's literally like NEPO baby like crashes premiere and I was just like, there's nothing I can do here. I'm just like, I'm just going to continue to love mommy.
Okay, all right, we love you, mom. Happy Mother's Day. Thank you come here. I'm really.
Thank you so much for joining us on another episode. We can't wait to
