October 15, 2024 • 49 mins
Meet DJ Qualls, actor known for his memorable roles in films like "Road Trip “ and "The New Guy,” as well as popular TV series including "Supernatural," "The Man in the High Castle,” and "Z Nation." With a career spanning over two decades, Qualls has established himself as a talented character actor with a unique presence on both big and small screens. He also co-hosts a new podcast called “Locked and Probably Loaded with DJ and Kelly”. EnJOY!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
(00:21):
I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour. They're available
at the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour or
at your local outlet in your region. My name is
(00:45):
Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is joy. I
talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
When I was doing late night television, one of my
favorite guests was a gentleman that he was a kid
at the time. His name is DJ Qualls. His name
is still DJ Qualls. He's not a kid anymore. He's
(01:07):
growing up to be one of the most impressive, lovely
men I've talked to in a while.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Please enjoy this. Hello, Hello, Hey dude, how are you?
I am so happy to see you. I can't tell
you I'm to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
This is great. It's very happy for me. I haven't
talked you know. I was just trying to figure out
I haven't talked to you properly. I think in about
ten years.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
It's been ten years since I saw you.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Oh my god, you were lovely when I came out
in two twenty twenty. Messaged me and we chatted. But
I haven't seen you in forever. Yeah, I remember that.
It was funny.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I remember because you were like you were taking a
little hate for becoming for coming out. This is like,
I'm like, what is this nineteen six? Because these are
something in this correct, That's the thing.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
The thing is, it's not surprising though, because I you know,
I'm from the South, I understand, I understand the world.
But it also was a point in my life where nothing,
none of that felt like anything. It just after a
while you're like, it doesn't matter to me, none of
this really matters, And and a lot of that spilled
over into how I feel about my career, my relationship
(02:24):
to Hollywood, Like it really was this time of my life,
and I'm like, I think a lot of this is
the source of my unhappiness, and I don't want to
do this anymore.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I did the same thing, same for me. Yeah, dude, I.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Thought about you during this. You were like, what's the
goal of this?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
To come and be miserable like a lot of people
in this industry are, And I'm like.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
But the thing is, I'm not good with transitions, like
and change is hard for me, Like I still have
a Hotmail account and so like I it's very hard
for me, Like I now have I replaced my twenty
two year old car this last week because it was dying.
And but and now I have a car that I'm
afraid of, Like it's there are no buttons on it,
it's all computer screen.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
But it's really it's not. It's the change of things.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Like I get really nostalgic and overly connected to things.
And I think what I was really dragging behind me
was this childhood idea of what Hollywood would be like
and people loving me, And you get addicted to that
until one day I realized I was like the people
making these choices whether or not to validate me or
fulfill my dreams or really provide me with. What I
(03:30):
was attaching myself worth to was we're nbas from Harvard,
like these people think they're creatives. And then I really
started seeing things. And here's the thing. It's not that
I'm never going to do this again. I'm still doing it,
but I don't have the same emotional connection to it.
I show up every day like it's my opus and
I'm still doing it. But I don't care if you
(03:52):
don't want me to do your project, and I'm not
going to jump through a thousand hoops for you because
I've proven myself.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Right, I go. I was talking to Tom Lennon about
this really recently because I got asked to do a
chemistry read on some kind of thing that Hulu were making,
and I'm like, no, what do you mean? No? Is
that it's not a chemistry read? You want to audition me?
It's a purpley. I'm not doing that's right and uh
And they said, well if you don't, if you don't
(04:20):
do the chemistry read, they're not going to offer you
the part, and I'm like, okay, that's okay, you don't
have to offer me the part. I'll be all right,
you'll be all right, you should be great. I'm just
not I'm not going to do that for you. I'm
not going to create a power dynamic which allows you
to treat me like that. It's not it's not gonna happen. No,
And I get that sometimes you have to do that.
(04:42):
And there's a lot of people would do a chemistry
read but Tom in facts and good for them. Yeah, fine,
but you have to do was write for you? I
really do.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I mean I I feel that as well.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I remember talking to you back in the day and
we've talked backstage a little bit too, and we didn't
talk anything about you coming out. I don't remember having
any conversations about you worrying about coming out. We talked
about unhappiness and about it squirming in Hollywood and not
quite knowing how to make it because look, I don't
(05:13):
come from show business people either. I don't come from
that world. And I had an idea about it too,
that when you see behind the curtain, it's a little different.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
It is, and then you realize that their aspects. Here's
the thing.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
It's given me so much like my love home, but
it's been over the world. And being famous is fucking awesome.
I love it because people are happy that you're there.
What a great gift to you, and so so many
beautiful things. But the thing is, after you play it
for a while, the person who doesn't get absorbed by
it or into it. For me, knows when to get
(05:50):
the hell out and not doing this anymore and getting
myself worth caught up minute, and that was a big
thing to me. And so by the time I worked
around coming out like I'd worked so easily for twenty
for almost twenty years, and then it got hard. All
of a sudden, things that I would be offered I
was asking to read for and I'm like, well, I'm
(06:11):
not doing that because I've already done that. But then
it it's And then I looked around and realized that
I was not in a relationship. I don't know many
people because I just moved back from Canada. I've been shooting.
I was on a man in the high Castle there
and la is so transient and this is where I lived.
I was like, I don't know anybody, and I'm like,
so I've given away all of that, and yes, I've
(06:34):
gotten so much from it, but the fundamentals, like going
to they're not going to be here. I'm clearly not
going to be here when I need them. Or it's
so easy for the system to turn its back on you.
And so I was like, well, I want to build
something for myself. And I started when I started thinking
like that, it the shock of not being chosen were
off pretty quick. Yeah, But then I started saying little
(06:56):
insidious things like I was up for a job.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Girl.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Mordatorio did this Netflix thing, this cabinet of curiosities, and
he told them to offer it to me and they
asked me to read for it, and I said no,
But they did it to get me cheaper, to make
me think.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
There was a bunch of other people in the mix.
That is so gross. Yeah, but you know a lot
of stuff now is difficult. Look, things change. I don't
know if it's better or worse. But there was a time,
I think in Hollywood where no, these executives have always
been there. There's always been the soulless money people executive,
(07:33):
but smattered amongst them were executives who really cared who
really people that really gave a shit about it and
really wanted to be involved and wanted to make good
stuff and really gave They would never use the word
product about what they were making. They would and and
I think they probably still exist, but there's a lot
less of them in the mix now, and I think
(07:55):
it shows on what work is around and what and
what is getting made as well. I mean even just
as a consumer of entertainment, I'm like, we got I
got five hundred channels of fuck you, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
I mean, people can feel it, People can really feel
it because I am a fan first and foremost, Like
I love the magic of this and I don't find
a lot of magic anymore. And I don't think it's
because I'm so jaded, because I worked very hard to
still have clear eyes about things.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
I think I was worked with a cinematographer called Join
the Boorman. He's a great cinematographer, and we were taking
a shot on a film that we were doing, and
we got this show. It was like, it's a bit
of a kind of like running into the ocean thing,
and it was okay. It was an okay shot, and
it was getting the late in the day and everyone
was a bit worried about time. And I said, did
(08:48):
we get it?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
John?
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And he said, yeah, we got it. It's okay. And
I went, what are you saying? And he went, it's okay.
I said, he said, but is okay? I said, well
anybody notice? He said, well we don't. No, it's only
we could have done better, and and he fail. And
I feel this too that if you don't do your
(09:09):
I mean, you can get away with it. You can
make fucking Emily in Paris and everybody will be fine.
But it's awful.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It's it's awful.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's soulless, and you should make find a way to
you don't have to make pride and prejudice again. But
somebody can write something.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
But what makes it worse is when you beat your
brains out begging people for the right to make okay.
And that's when I was like, what am I doing?
Like I was in hustle, and followed I've gotten to
do so many amazing things and they came easily because
I was trusted and I was trusted by other artists,
and so then I started, I mean, it was this
(09:46):
took two years. It took two years of grieving sort
of like not knowing I was grieving because my life
was changing.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
How I identified was not there anymore.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Did you ever think you were straight? No? No, no,
no no, no, I know that right, so you weren't really,
I mean you knew you were, right, I mean, it
wasn't like you were.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
No. Here's but here's I knew that I was gay
since I was nineteen years old. And they're only related
in the fact that when I realized that I'd been
given my life to something that couldn't love me back,
when I really realized that in the sort of tangible terms,
that's when I realized, well, I've also sold this away,
this part, this part of myself away or I mean,
(10:27):
I don't think I necessarily misled anybody. But here's the thing.
At my very first press junket, the executive producer who
was a massive director from the eighties, told another actor
he almost didn't hire him because he thought he was
a faggot. And those and that taught me in the
year two thousand, everything I needed to know about Hollywood
and if I wanted this, shut my mouth. And that
(10:48):
is the truth, and that that existed until a few
years ago.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
This is New Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean I've fared. I've heared slurs like that used
around as well. But it the idea that you would
say I wouldn't hire someone because I mean, that's but
it's the old school boys boys club, right, You're so
used to being able to do whatever the hell you want,
and he was such a huge guy entertainment.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
But it really just taught me that if I want this,
if this dream that I had since I was a child,
I wanted to go after I had to. There's certain
things that I just couldn't do, Like I couldn't take
my boyfriend to the premiere the New Guy, Like it
just wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And then you get used to that. And I don't think.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
I don't think that I have any sort of damage
from it, other than the fact that those were the
choices that I made. I made them willingly. I stay
behind every choice I've ever made because I made them.
But the system was fucked. It was very odd. I
made a movie in nineteen ninety nine. I love this movie.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
It totally flopped, but it was a movie called The
Big Teas and the Big Te's. It was about competitive
hairdressing and it was about a hairdresser from Scotland that
came to La seeking this fame and for it basically
and hijinks and SIU And I'm very proud of the movie.
It's a very affectionate movie. It's a very sweet movie.
And it got rated R because the lead character I
(12:12):
played a gay man. Now, there were no gay sex
scenes in it. There were no sex scenes in it.
There was no there was no there was no violence
or there was no hard language, there was nothing. It
was just that the main character was unequivocally a gay
man who was in a relationship with another man and
they talked to each other and they had a sweet relationship,
(12:33):
and there was It wasn't really part of the story.
It was just who he was and they it was
an R. If you look at this thing, it wouldn't
even make PG. Thirteen today. And that's what he That's
twenty five years ago. And that is not that hung ago,
I know.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
And the thing is, I'm fully cognizant of like how
things are so much easier now, but Craig after like
in twenty twenty one, everything I was being offered was
a who falls apart because he left his moisturizer at
home and.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I'm like, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 5 (13:04):
I'm not going to do that, and so that's so
fucking lame.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
That's great.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
But here's the But also I completely like I also realized,
like I knew something told me when I first got here,
Like I was in young Hollywood. Young Hollywood was very small.
It was you know, we got jobs from going out.
It was one bar one night. My friend got a
gap campaign with Joni Mitchell from going to hide one night.
That's what you did. But I saw people blowing through money,
(13:35):
and I was like, this cannot sustain itself.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
This won't sustain itself.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
So I started putting like during during note like after
nine to eleven, I spent three months chainsmoking on Ebaye
buying gold bullion between two fifty and three fifty an ounce.
We are from a very similar place. I know I
spoke anymore, but I still have the gold.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I'm honestly, I'm a survivalist. I bought an airstream trailer
on Facebook Marketplace. It's in my house and I'm like like,
so it's at my house and I have it and
I'm ready, and I'm like stalking it with things my
wife's like, what are we stalking this form? Like you know,
you never know, you never know.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
I think part of it also is that I don't
be caught out, you know what I mean. And also,
once you've been poor and you've been in a situation
where you're no longer poor, you would think that you
would feel relief, but you feel fear this is going
to go wait for me and be taken for me.
And then I saw so many of my peers lose
it all by doing crazy stuff because there's no governance,
(14:40):
there's no mentoring.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Right well, when you get given you know, large sums
of money and success and privilege when you're very young.
Now that it honestly didn't really happen to me like that.
It was kind of a slow burn. And but the
but I saw it. I saw it a lot in Hollywood.
(15:03):
I saw it with euro Peers. I saw it when
there would be people that would come through when it's
what I was doing late night, there'd be people coming
through and you would go, oh, man, you've got to
try and get better people around you. This is going
to go bad fast, and yeah, you saw it all. Yeah,
and some of them dead and some of them didn't
you know. And some of them made it, some of
them are dead. I mean, it's crazy. It's unsupervised in
(15:26):
any way. There's no real structure to it. But at
the same time I wonder because the you know, I
look at the kind of freedom and the openness about
certain areas of life now, and there are other parts
of it where I kind of go, is this good?
Like the amount of bit Middler said a thing years
(15:48):
ago that I always kind of hung on to, which
was she said, the saddest thing about success is finding
out that not everyone is happy for you. And when
that happens, and you find out when the and when
social media came along, you find all of the people
that are not happy for you are right the click. Yeah,
(16:08):
they're there and they're there to let you know. And
I kind of I understand that. I feel shot in freud. Sometimes.
I sometimes see people that I don't like do well
and I'm like, oh, come on, I feel that. Do
you soon feel it?
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Occasionally?
Speaker 4 (16:24):
But I fight it though, because me too, Yeah, because
the difference is now, like I understand where it comes from,
and I really do fight it, but of course I
feel it. I said something the other day on my
podcast that after I said it, I was like, that's
not who you are at all.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
But I was caught up in this.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Thing and there was a little thing still in my
memory from another time ago, and I was like, oh man,
and is disappointing when I do it. But also the
thing is I realize that I am I'm not who
I'm going to be, but I'm better than who I was,
and so I do give myself. But also I'm an
easy apologie. It's really easy you apologize, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
I think. I think once you start doing it agains easier.
I go into a bed during late night. I have
to apologize for stuff every night, and then I was like,
you know what, Okay, I find I'm sorry, And at
first I meant it and then it didn't mean it
at all.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And then I can't apologize for stuff I don't mean.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I apologize for stuff. I do mean stuff I don't mean.
I could run for I could run for office. I
could apologize for ending. I can say, I can say, no,
it wasn't me I was I wasn't me at all.
I wasn't there. But the truth is that when I
it's kind of like that thing when I really apologize.
I know, and you know, and you can tell what
(17:39):
I mean it and it's it's uh. But saying something
that is kind of awkward or weird, it's just a
human thing. It's not like, of course, you know, to
be judged on one thing you say is a little
it's a pretty odd standard to hold anyone to.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Late night is a scary world because you can say
something and like I remember early like you were the
first ever late night hosts who didn't pre interview me.
You did it once and we had such a good
chat and we went so far off the scripted cards
or whatever. You were like, we don't have to do
this anymore. And then you go on and you feel
(18:18):
safe and you feel like if you get into something,
you'll be guided out of. As opposed to this thing
you have to get back to these stories and you're like,
oh my god, I'm so far away from IM supposed
to be, so you're never truly yourself.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, and that's what I loved.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
But I couldn't imagine if I was on every night,
the kind of stuff that would just randomly come out
of my mouth.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
I'd probably be held responsible for.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, I mean I took a few hits, no doubt
about it. But the truth is, though, I think the
atmosphere of them was a little less frantic because it
wasn't about filling the space. You know, you didn't have
to fill every website. You didn't have to post every
ten seconds about some kind of outrage. So you know,
(19:01):
if I say the wrong thing about something in twenty ten,
there wasn't enough of a social media appetite for someone
to go looking for it. But if it's no I mean, look,
we could say this the wrong thing. You can say
the wrong thing on a podcast right now and it's
like be tabloid bang and then. But it's also gone
like that, but then it's always available to be found digitally.
(19:25):
No one has to go through and find the microfiche
from you know. All they have to do just put
your name out and then put it by date and
it all comes up.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
But I do feel though, like on social media when
people say things like I feel lucky that we came
up in a time when somebody said something bad about us.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
It was in the New York Times.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Yeah, that really hurt because that was official the New
York Times.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
One said about me human bookmark. DJ Quall shines.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I go, you know what, when I go on when
I first start The New York Post said, when I
first started Late Night, he said, he's awful and it.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Looks like he's wearing a wig.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And I'm like, there's one thing I know about me,
the only thing I know about me. I've got great
fucking hair. That's the only thing I know about me.
It looks like he's read. It's funny the things you go.
I that really got to be like, fuck you. Yeah.
I think when The New York Times says something bad
about you, it's like when your parents go, I'm not angry,
(20:29):
I'm disappointed. That's why he's like, ah.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Yes, but really, I mean, can you after you've been
dragged through the mainstream press when it was in print,
can the Internet really hurt that that unless they're coming
for your belongings or your family or your your reputation.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
I always felt like Hollywood and the Internet were very
could be treated in the same way. Then Late Night
told me that, I said, demystified me for me the
following way. It's only dangerous if you take it. See,
if you don't take it seriously, it's not really there,
and it's kind of like it's that Nietzschean thing. If
(21:06):
you look into the void, fine, but remember the void
looks into you. But if you don't look into the void,
you can avoid it. And that's kind of how I
feel about it. I refuse to participate in any interaction
with media beyond what I think is acceptable for me.
(21:29):
Like you were saying, like right at the beginning when
you were talking about no, I still do it. I
still love it. When I show up, I'll give you
my best. But I'm not showing up unless I'm going
to do that right. And I think it's it's funny
now because I feel like that's part of the growing
(21:50):
up process. And like even talking to you now, because
when I met you, you're a young man. You were
like in your in your mid twenties, you really were.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
You were a kid, and and it's like to see
someone it's appropriate for someone to go from their mid
twenties to the mid forties and to change their mind,
you know, and go No.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
I feel differently about that now. I don't. I'm not
a kid anymore. I'm not gonna And what I think
happens is, especially if you get success when you're young,
is that some people perhaps who are not as emotionally
gifted as you, are emotionally diligent as you. They get stuck.
You get stuck in what worked for you at that time,
(22:32):
and you try and keep in that time, do you know,
I mean, try and stay in the same place. But
you can't. It's against the law of nature. You can't
stay in the.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Same Change is coming, and it's coming for you.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, all the time changes the law of God's mind,
and the resistance to it is the source of all pain.
I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
That's awesome. I'm going to remember that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, I like it too. So so let me ask
you this, Was there any kind of because I've always
thought of you as someone who has quite a kind
of searching personality. You're quite a seeker. You're you look
for reasons, you look for that you analyze both yourself
and the situation around you. Right, I think that, I
(23:14):
mean that's my impression of you. Was there some kind
of spiritual or emotional switch that flipped when I'm not
talking necessarily about coming out, but I'm talking about the
change of attitude that you that you're talking about. I think.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
I think something happened to me where my my grandfather
always told me this, when you don't know what to do,
don't do anything until that doesn't work for you anymore,
and you will know. And all of a sudden, just
my heart how I felt about things, how I felt
about myself. Also during the same time, I have problems
looking in the mirror, and like some days I would
have to, you know, brush my teeth with the medicine
(23:56):
cabinet open. Just I had some days where I just
couldn't with myself, and then it stopped happening, and just
there were these gradual changes and where you released the care.
And I had this really pivotal moment in the shower
where I know where I do all my thinking in there.
And so I got asked to grand marshall the Christmas
(24:18):
preade in my little town where I was horrifically bullied,
and this was not that long ago, and I had this,
I played this little drama out in my head where
I was like, you know what, I'll tell them the
fuck off and this, this and this, and then I
was like, what are you doing. You're holding sixteen year
olds responsible for their behavior. You are a grown up.
(24:40):
You've been carrying this your whole life and I'm pretty
sure it's dictated a lot of your choices and behavior and.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
What that happened.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
You know, every and every sort of every thought, every
mistake has been made before you by other people who
are older than you, are on a different path. But
you can never really in turn anything until it applies
directly to you. And in that moment, I was like,
this is I don't want to do this. And I
released it, and I'd never released anything before, and I
(25:11):
remember exactly how I felt. I felt so light, I
could float out of that shower. And I don't feel
it anymore. It's so crazy.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It's great though, it's freedom. I always think the best
revenge is no longer want revenge. That's the best revenge.
You know, say revenge is a Dutch chef cold to know.
The best revenge is no revenge at all. It's like,
I don't want to revenge. I forgive you, you said
up a bench, goodbye.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
But it also makes it intellectually makes no sense because
I know for a fact that when you get successful,
the people in your past misremember your dynamic.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah and so, and I know this, and I know.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
This at the same time when I'm thinking all of
these things about being put upon.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And that's very true. Then it just.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Changed for me and it was all these things just
started occurring to me, like and the cool thing about
it was one of it was angry. None of it
was like I've been used and whatever. Like, No, all
the decisions were mine. I've done all these things, and
I've certainly profited and had a great life from it.
But I don't want to do this anymore in this way.
And that's the thing. I know that I can do
(26:15):
what I want to do, but just in the way
that I want to do it, and if I don't,
if I can't, then I won't.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
It's really that simple.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
It's really funny, is I had a thing happened to
be in a similar nature right before my mom died.
She was in a care home. She's very ill for
a while and she was in this care home in Scotland,
and when I got there, I was talking to her.
She was cognitively she was fine, but she was physically,
you know, falling to pieces and needed round the cloud care.
And I was in this went to visitor in the
(26:41):
care home and she said, let's change her name. Actually
I'll edit this out. See missus lady who was mean
to me when I was a kid is in here.
And the lady the teacher who had beat me horrifically
when I was a child, and that I like a
lot of you know, stuff i'd come out of. It
was in the care home and she was and she
(27:06):
was suffering from Alzheimer's and she had very bad Alzheimer's.
And my mom said, you should go in and see her, like,
I don't think so, man. I think I think whatever
that was, it's gone, and I don't want to go
in and lord it over this poor woman.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Who is you get it from that pushed it down
the stairs?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yea, the very definition of it, as well as Look,
I don't I'm not a doctor. I don't know a
law about Alzheimer's, but I know if I won't get there,
she's going to have no fucking clue I have. So
it's like, what the hell? But it's funny. My mom
was like, no, you you you should go and give
it a piece of your mind. I'm like, I don't
think so, man, I think it's all right. It's an
(27:50):
odd thing. It's the idea of holding on resentments. I
used to think it was a kind of a Pollyanna
thing to try and free yourself from that. But it's no,
it's mental health, it really is. It's like, no, I'm
not gonna hold on it to make you feel more comfortable,
or because I was mad ten years ago. I'm not
mad now. I mean, I can get to it, but
(28:12):
I can release it, let it go.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
But we also do it from behavioral modeling too, because
it's what people that came before us do, and we're
told to always get the last word in get your
own back. We're taught that, and it takes I think
maybe if I didn't leave my community, then maybe I'm
from a small town and I feel like being exposed
(28:34):
to the rest of the world without sort of the
net that reinforced that kind of behavior. Yeah, I think
that helped me sort of get to where I am
or where I'm going.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Do we ever tempted to move back? Never?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
What's so great about not belonging is that you leave and.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
You don't have to go back because there was nothing
there for me. My high school farms into the casket
factory and the pajamas factory, and pajamas closed down.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
In a fucking country song, crack so fucking bleak. It's fantastic.
I love yeah, but it's great. It's such a gothic picture.
It's fabulous.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I think that. I think also the freedom that comes
from it's really it feels to me very therapeutic to
laugh at at stuff like that as well. It kind
of it doesn't I think. I'm sure that's why I
ended up getting into working mostly in humor, because it's
such a fabulous weapon to free yourself. Like you know,
(29:39):
it's why I'm sure you know, whenever like the Hitler's
or the Stalons or the demagogues come along, they always
go after the humorists first. It's always you can't make
jokes about that? And you go, well why not? You know, it's, uh,
you can't. You can make jokes about that, and when
(29:59):
when you But if you make jokes about things, you
kind of emasculate it a little bit. You make it
a figure of derision, do you know, a figure of fun.
And you can do that. I think you can do
it with your own history. When you laugh at your
own history, it becomes less threatening somehow, do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 4 (30:14):
I mean, that was my I think that was my
security blanket or my armor when I moved out here
and started doing work.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
He's an actor.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
It's like, I'm going to say all the things before
you say them. You don't think I know what the
merchandise I'm trying to move looks like you don't think
I don't know myself. And I did it, and I
did it, but I did it at a defense and
now I'm able to do it with it. We're like, Yep,
this is exactly what happened. This is what's going on.
Like it seems different. The motives are different, right, because
(30:42):
it's not scorn of pain?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Do you do you feel that you know, like the
movies that you were doing early in your career is
hilarious movies, funny performances, and in these like kind of
they're not slapstick movies, were quite broad humor movies, and
people who people who love those movies sometimes, I think,
not necessarily for you, but just for anyone. If you
(31:06):
do a joke and somebody likes it and then they
find out later that you're not like the joke you did,
they feel a little betrayed by it.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
It is so crazy that you're saying that, because that's
what I got as I've gone forward in my life.
People meet me in public way before coming out, and
people meet me and find out that I'm not that,
and I try to explain to them, no, no, no, no no.
I made you think that on purpose because it's funny
and it's for the movie. But I was I was
(31:34):
the reason why you thought that was funny. But it's
not who I am. And so many times people are like,
after Hustle and Flow, everybody thought that I could make music.
And it's kind of a little bit flattering that people
think that I am the person that I play. But
here's what I wanted to say to people. I played
a virgin like twenty seven times. I've been famous like
(31:54):
for like seven years at this point. You don't think
I'm one person would have sex with me. I'm on television. Yeah,
it's a.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Very It's a very odd thing, though, because I think
that people do get attached to it in a way.
With John, I always thought, Look, the example is fairly recently,
was what happened to Ellen DeGeneres that you know it's like, oh,
she's not very nice. I don't know Ellen DeGeneres at all.
I was on a show once or twice, I think,
But you don't know someone because that you're on their show,
you know that you're going to show you league. And
(32:28):
she was perfectly nice. And then it turns out apparently
she wasn't as nice backstage as she was on the show.
And I'm like, uh, yeah, it's because she's doing her job. Yeah,
you know, she's pretended to be nice.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Yeah, like everybody else in the Hollywood, you have to
be also her job.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
You can't.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
You can't go on a daytime talk show and bitch
or talk about things that are going wrong.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
People don't want to see that.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
And and the thing is they also don't like I
knew when I did Road Trip, my first movie, Todd Phillips,
you know, he went on to direct The Hangover and
The Joker.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
It was his first movie too.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
I realized that if I allowed myself to be the
butt of the joke, my whole career was over. There's
a kid from American Pie who was the butt of
the joke and didn't work much beyond that. I knew,
and also knew that we lost the movie. So I
was like, there's a way to do this where I'm
not being shot upon, that I'm being celebrated. And I
still get to do all these things that you want
me to do. I was really really aware of this,
(33:31):
and as I as my career came along, I started
to see, like, there's a role I could take that's enough,
like that it's going to pay me this big amount
of money so that I can go away and do
something else. So I was a I think part of
I think I've sort of benefited a lot from insecurity
and from being sort of made fun of and all
(33:51):
these things that were going on in my head because
it allowed me to to first of all, insulate myself
from my career, but also to be a good storyteller.
I'm like, going for the joke and making fun of
myself is first of all, not good for me in
the long term, but also that's not what we're doing.
We're telling we're telling hero stories and redemption stories, and it's.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Not that, and it's too easy to go for that.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
And so I I think that I made some wise
choices and knew one to take the money. The only
time I didn't, I got offered Scary Movie two for
two million dollars. I've never made that before or since,
it's never been offered that. But my character had to
suck his own dick. And my manager says, you're not
the kind of guy that could do that and walk
away from it. And he was right, I am not
the vessel that can tell that story and recover from it,
(34:36):
all right.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
That look just as go to say can you can
you do that?
Speaker 4 (34:40):
Because nobody I tried, without try, every every man alive
has tried.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
It blew my mind the offer though, and and but
then it was explained to me there are certain things
that you have.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
You haven't set that up for yourself.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
You've not You've said you've gone the opposite route in
like not being being the butt of it, and you're
not the physical shell or the personality that you created
that can endure that. And he was right, and so yeah,
he yes, Brian Doggins, he's my manager. So when I
first came out here, everybody tried to like Brad Gray.
(35:15):
I met with him when he was at burl Stein
Gray and they were like, we'll get you the young
Hollywood cover of Vanity Fair and I'm like, how could
you promise me that? And Brian he now runs artists. First,
he had a handful of clients, him and Paul Young,
and he was like I don't know.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
I can't get you that, but I think you're going
to work.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
And I believed him because he wasn't lying to me,
and he's been my only manager in my whole career.
And so instead I did hustle and flow, which is
a career highlight, and I'm.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
So happy that I did that.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
But I couldn't see around it because the money was
my redneck mine was blown. I didn't realize that agent, manager,
business manager, publicist, accountant, everybody. I didn't realize, you know,
the half of it I didn't think about. That didn't
occur to me because the number was so huge. And
but and then something interesting happened as a result of that.
My father found out and called me lazy, and we
(36:07):
got into a massive fact.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
My father was the welder.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
It was a welder in that casket factory for forty
years he was.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
And so you found this out.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
But look, if you're a welder in a casket factory,
your kid gets off for two million dollars to suck
on deck, and you know he's tried to do it anyway,
kind of like, why what are you doing? Why would
you do that?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
You're crazy?
Speaker 1 (36:40):
So given that you have I mean very clearly, you know,
matured and and I'm very happy for you. You seem
so much more inside your own skin as when we
first met. Is that what what are you looking for?
And I what what kind of like sails your boat?
I love I love making things. I form a production company.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
I've we've finished production on our first movie, and we've
done it ethically. We've hired people that we had no
business getting crew members, like our production designer did La
La Land, and everybody worked for three hundred dollars a day.
And because they like what we're doing and we are
we are not we're doing first dollar splits like we
want to be ethical and make things that we want
to make the way that we want to make them,
(37:23):
so that feels good. The podcast. I have a podcast
that's getting a footing. We've never done a dollar of advertising, nobody,
I mean, but the word of mouth.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
We're going twenty percent month over month.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
And it's just my space to say exactly how I
feel and what I want. And it's not formatted. We
don't have guests yet, it's just me and my friend Guess.
Guess is a terrible idea, I.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Know, I fuck, it's their whole world right now, you
know what to say, you'll be soon.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Well, the thing is about guests is that it's great
when you get them. But everybody, and look, I remember
this from Late Night and everybody I've talked to the
do show is about guests. So it was like, you
get a guest, and then you have to get another guest,
and you have to get another guest, and it's always
like people want to do the show, but you know,
they got things to do. And I think if I
(38:10):
was doing a podcast again and that might after this,
I wouldn't have any guests.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
It's freeing because first of all, it's well, it's on
our own schedule and you can have the other things
going on in the world and still find time to
do this. But also just the therapy aspect of it,
where you just get to talk about how you feel
about stuff you know, and somebody will will bring up
something that will reminds you of the story from twenty
years ago.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
So it's part in the nostalgia.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
It's about my life path and where I'm going, and
her life path and where she's gone. She was the
Coast of Jim Jefferies' podcast for five years and her
and I split off and do and it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
What is our name? Forgive me?
Speaker 4 (38:52):
Her name is Kelly Blackheart right. Our podcast is called
locked In probably loaded with DJ and Kelly and it's
just fun.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
It sounds great. So wait, Jeffries. I know Jim Jeffries,
I've I've told him before a couple of times. News. Yeah,
he's good news that guy.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
I was a show with him called The Jit for
two years and it was the best job I've ever
had as an actor. I just loved it.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, he's a he's a great guy. He he uh.
He's a pretty uh, pretty impressive standout comedian as well.
He's amazing.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yeah, he's great. Did you ever think about doing that?
I did, I really did, and I have since.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
But I gotta tell you a part of it, I
a part of me doesn't want to make dramatic me really,
I'm not joking for me, and I know he wouldn't.
But it's his realm and I'm the actor, and I
just wait a minute, fuck him, mister has realm.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I working that of guys that work in that realm, well,
Jim Jefferies is a nice guy and a good stand
I can own it. That's like saying, oh, yeah, Eric Clapton,
I don't want to play the guitar because Eric craft
and plays the guitars. Again, a lot of other people
could play the guitar. Thank you. I love it. I
(40:14):
think you would love doing stand up. I've been thinking
about it.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
It's funny that you bring that up because I've mentioned
it to several people recently that I've been thinking about
it for a couple of years now.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It's relating. It's time. I think what you should do
is you should do stand up and in the background
you should have these two ladies that you've got behind
you right now, standing right there cracking. Yeah. I know
they're great. Somebody did okay are you? Are you a
(40:45):
big Tamy art collector? I love it.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
So that is so on days when I have had
on like not good times on sets, so things aren't
going right in my career, I have at I have
divided my salary by the second and every minute I'm like,
I just made this much toward a painting. So it's
become my my It's the it's the love of my life.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
A creation kind of painting. Do you collect?
Speaker 4 (41:10):
So I started out collecting French paintings from like eighteen
seventy to like nineteen forty. Okay, so, and because before
the eighteen seventies pigments were not able to be synthetically produced,
so like red was ground up corondam ruby and blue
was ground up you know lapis I mean vice versa
and so, and all of a sudden they made these
(41:33):
lead based paints. And that's why people like the early
the Impressionists and the post Impressionists they painted like a
purple tree and you know, it's all these things because
before that pigments were so expensive. You had to paint
for the church or wealthy people because you couldn't afford
to do otherwise you could just paint whatever the hell
you wanted.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
So it was really the birth of you could do it.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Are you familiar with Are you familiar with the paint
called Joe michell Raphaeli the Italian and he was he
was in the first Impressionist exhibition and then he had
a big fight with money. And I didn't like him
because he would he would draw or he would paint
in things that weren't at adyllic, you know, like he'd
you know, the painting in the Loure of the absentthe drinkers.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
You know that sounds familiar to me.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
It's a beautiful paint.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
I'll look it up.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Well, RAPHAELI painted that. He painted imperfect images during the
Impressionist fashion, and he got he got in a little trouble,
but he patented a new form of paint as well.
They made all the Impressionists angry. You got in a
real trouble. The guy liked him, and money didn't like
him at all. He's a fascinating character, an Italian Jewish
(42:40):
painter who was in the first exhibition of the French Impressionists.
And I think he probably ran into a bit of
anti Semitism as well. He's a fascinating character. I urge
you to check him out. He's very well and I've
got a couple of his paintings. He's he's very interesting.
I like very I like very painterly paintings. I like
Barbizon and Eli Impressionists. But then so I just am
(43:02):
learning about Barbizon right now.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
That's great stuff. Yeah, yeah, so that's what I do.
So I use an object that I see at auction.
That's so I started learning. I would get some of
these Christie's Bottoms auction catalogs and then just start looking
at and then I could identify painters by brushstroke, and
then I started you know, so I got interested there.
But then I realized that you pay a huge premium
for buying through them, and you can find things on
(43:24):
there are web there auction healsies all over the world,
and let me tell you, I mean, I can get fooled,
but I think it's harder art Net I love.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
I love Artnett.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
I also invaluable dot com and Live auctioneers dot com.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
But you know what you're looking.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
At Facebook marketplace for rich people. I get it.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
It's really that's great, but I love it and I
really I feel like I haven't released a painting yet,
like I've I've never bought anything for sale, and I
feel like now when I when I go to like
I went to a little auction, I mean to an
art gallery in Dunedin, New Zealand, and they have this beautiful,
(44:02):
beautifully curated collection, but they don't have a Louis VLTA
and they're gonna get mine when I die.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
So it's it's it's cool because this will go on
after me.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
And I'm the guardian of these things, and it just
but also it's a sickness a little bit.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I understand that I have more paintings than I care
to admit. I I go into it. I don't know
if you ever met Megan, my wife, but she was
an art dealer before we met, still as an art dealer,
and and so she can get deals on stuff.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Oh god, but I'll be bankrupt.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Well you know, but here's the thing. You get these
amazing paintings, like amazing, there's amazing things that I'd heard of.
I come from a very similar background to you economically.
I come from very blue collar, kind of poor background.
And I'd heard about some of the paintings, paintings that
(44:59):
I own. I heard of, I'd heard of the artist,
I'd heard of the I read about it in school,
and I was like, oh, that's, you know, a world
that's beyond imagining.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
And now I own a couple of these paints and
I kind of love cool and all my favorites.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
But I like the kind of I guess it's kind
of the avoristic nature of having it.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
It's amazing, it's a great feeling.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
I fully I think my collection is I have names,
But like you said, my favorite things are definitely not names.
There's an artist named Bernard U Tavia Monvaal. He had
when he dialt like it wasn't I think when his
heir died and like twenty sixteen, Sethby's had this big auction,
and like he was a massively famous painter, like around
(45:45):
the turn of the century into the forties, like portraits,
but his early work were post Impressionist works and nobody
really wanted them. But I didn't know a lot about him.
And a painting went I think for like ten thousand
pounds and I didn't buy it, but then I couldn't
stop thinking about it, so I chased it. I looked
for I said an alert. I looked for this painting
(46:06):
for years. Last year it came up at Dorotheam in Vienna.
I was willing to pay whatever the hell it costs.
I would have sold things. I had to have it.
And it's two guys dragging a boat of the Seine
like at sundown.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
But it's so mind blowingly beautiful. I had to have.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
It, and so I stayed up all night. I was
ready to go. I was calling everybody bitches and hoes.
In my mind, I'm not going to take this painting
for me.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
I was in it.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
I got it for eight thousand euros.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It was one of the best days of my life.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
I never part with it. Yeah, I have, I have.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
There's one paint and I have in my life that
I love above all others. And it was actually my
wife and kids got it for me as a present
and they knew I loved it, and they kind of, well,
you know, we used family money to get it, but
they But it's a painting. It's not by a very
famous wit as a gentleman by the name of Empire,
(47:06):
and it's called at the End of the Day, and
it's just a guy standing in the side of a
canal bank waving to his friend on a boat who's
just sailing up the route, like it's the end of
the day's work. But it's a fucking masterpiece. And when
I look at it, I go into a world that
I don't know where else in the world in the
universe that that world is, but it's in there and
(47:29):
I can fall into it and then it's hard to
explain and it sounds fanciful, but it's so riveting. Is
a thing to sit next to. I fucking love it.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
And that's how I feel.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, and I'm I'm delighted.
First of all, I'm delighted to find this out about
you because I really knew I liked you, but now
I really really like you because because of your appreciation
of great art, and it's kind of my secret thing
that I loved. I don't really talk about that much,
(48:01):
but I spend money on it and I love it.
Speaker 4 (48:05):
Same people's eyes get dupe when I try to tell
them too much. I'm cognizitive that. Yeah, and here's the thing.
It's okay that it's just for me. Yeah, yeah, it's fine.
It's fine. You can sit by the paint. You don't
need to talk to anyone about it. It's like, oh, amazing,
it's great.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Listen, my friend, I'm very I really think we should
try and talk to each other before another ten years
ago past.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
I would love that.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
And in fact, the next time in la Or if
you're going to a if you're going to an art
auction in Vienna, I'm in. I'll definitely come with you.
It's just a world which fascinates me. You're such a
lovely mind. I'm so happy for you that you're growing
up really cool, even cooler than you were when you
(48:50):
were a kid, and you were a pretty cool kid.
I know you were tough on yourself, but you were
pretty cool and you're even cooler now, so that's great.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
Thanks Craig, I love you.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
I love you too, man. I am so happy to
see you well and yourself. It's great.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Thanks buddy, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Oh, thanks for being on. It's great to see you.
Thanks Pam,
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now.
It's a new show, it's new material, but I'm afraid
it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing
on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me,
buy tickets, bring your loved ones, or don't come and
see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones.
(00:21):
I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but
you should at least know what's happening, and it is.
The tour kicks off late September and goes through the
end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at
the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour. They're available
at the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour or
at your local outlet in your region. My name is
(00:45):
Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is joy. I
talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness.
When I was doing late night television, one of my
favorite guests was a gentleman that he was a kid
at the time. His name is DJ Qualls. His name
is still DJ Qualls. He's not a kid anymore. He's
(01:07):
growing up to be one of the most impressive, lovely
men I've talked to in a while.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Please enjoy this. Hello, Hello, Hey dude, how are you?
I am so happy to see you. I can't tell
you I'm to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
This is great. It's very happy for me. I haven't
talked you know. I was just trying to figure out
I haven't talked to you properly. I think in about
ten years.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
It's been ten years since I saw you.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Oh my god, you were lovely when I came out
in two twenty twenty. Messaged me and we chatted. But
I haven't seen you in forever. Yeah, I remember that.
It was funny.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
I remember because you were like you were taking a
little hate for becoming for coming out. This is like,
I'm like, what is this nineteen six? Because these are
something in this correct, That's the thing.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
The thing is, it's not surprising though, because I you know,
I'm from the South, I understand, I understand the world.
But it also was a point in my life where nothing,
none of that felt like anything. It just after a
while you're like, it doesn't matter to me, none of
this really matters, And and a lot of that spilled
over into how I feel about my career, my relationship
(02:24):
to Hollywood, Like it really was this time of my life,
and I'm like, I think a lot of this is
the source of my unhappiness, and I don't want to
do this anymore.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
I did the same thing, same for me. Yeah, dude, I.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Thought about you during this. You were like, what's the
goal of this?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
To come and be miserable like a lot of people
in this industry are, And I'm like.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
But the thing is, I'm not good with transitions, like
and change is hard for me, Like I still have
a Hotmail account and so like I it's very hard
for me, Like I now have I replaced my twenty
two year old car this last week because it was dying.
And but and now I have a car that I'm
afraid of, Like it's there are no buttons on it,
it's all computer screen.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
But it's really it's not. It's the change of things.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Like I get really nostalgic and overly connected to things.
And I think what I was really dragging behind me
was this childhood idea of what Hollywood would be like
and people loving me, And you get addicted to that
until one day I realized I was like the people
making these choices whether or not to validate me or
fulfill my dreams or really provide me with. What I
(03:30):
was attaching myself worth to was we're nbas from Harvard,
like these people think they're creatives. And then I really
started seeing things. And here's the thing. It's not that
I'm never going to do this again. I'm still doing it,
but I don't have the same emotional connection to it.
I show up every day like it's my opus and
I'm still doing it. But I don't care if you
(03:52):
don't want me to do your project, and I'm not
going to jump through a thousand hoops for you because
I've proven myself.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Right, I go. I was talking to Tom Lennon about
this really recently because I got asked to do a
chemistry read on some kind of thing that Hulu were making,
and I'm like, no, what do you mean? No? Is
that it's not a chemistry read? You want to audition me?
It's a purpley. I'm not doing that's right and uh
And they said, well if you don't, if you don't
(04:20):
do the chemistry read, they're not going to offer you
the part, and I'm like, okay, that's okay, you don't
have to offer me the part. I'll be all right,
you'll be all right, you should be great. I'm just
not I'm not going to do that for you. I'm
not going to create a power dynamic which allows you
to treat me like that. It's not it's not gonna happen. No,
And I get that sometimes you have to do that.
(04:42):
And there's a lot of people would do a chemistry
read but Tom in facts and good for them. Yeah, fine,
but you have to do was write for you? I
really do.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I mean I I feel that as well.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I remember talking to you back in the day and
we've talked backstage a little bit too, and we didn't
talk anything about you coming out. I don't remember having
any conversations about you worrying about coming out. We talked
about unhappiness and about it squirming in Hollywood and not
quite knowing how to make it because look, I don't
(05:13):
come from show business people either. I don't come from
that world. And I had an idea about it too,
that when you see behind the curtain, it's a little different.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
It is, and then you realize that their aspects. Here's
the thing.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
It's given me so much like my love home, but
it's been over the world. And being famous is fucking awesome.
I love it because people are happy that you're there.
What a great gift to you, and so so many
beautiful things. But the thing is, after you play it
for a while, the person who doesn't get absorbed by
it or into it. For me, knows when to get
(05:50):
the hell out and not doing this anymore and getting
myself worth caught up minute, and that was a big
thing to me. And so by the time I worked
around coming out like I'd worked so easily for twenty
for almost twenty years, and then it got hard. All
of a sudden, things that I would be offered I
was asking to read for and I'm like, well, I'm
(06:11):
not doing that because I've already done that. But then
it it's And then I looked around and realized that
I was not in a relationship. I don't know many
people because I just moved back from Canada. I've been shooting.
I was on a man in the high Castle there
and la is so transient and this is where I lived.
I was like, I don't know anybody, and I'm like,
so I've given away all of that, and yes, I've
(06:34):
gotten so much from it, but the fundamentals, like going
to they're not going to be here. I'm clearly not
going to be here when I need them. Or it's
so easy for the system to turn its back on you.
And so I was like, well, I want to build
something for myself. And I started when I started thinking
like that, it the shock of not being chosen were
off pretty quick. Yeah, But then I started saying little
(06:56):
insidious things like I was up for a job.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Girl.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
Mordatorio did this Netflix thing, this cabinet of curiosities, and
he told them to offer it to me and they
asked me to read for it, and I said no,
But they did it to get me cheaper, to make
me think.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
There was a bunch of other people in the mix.
That is so gross. Yeah, but you know a lot
of stuff now is difficult. Look, things change. I don't
know if it's better or worse. But there was a time,
I think in Hollywood where no, these executives have always
been there. There's always been the soulless money people executive,
(07:33):
but smattered amongst them were executives who really cared who
really people that really gave a shit about it and
really wanted to be involved and wanted to make good
stuff and really gave They would never use the word
product about what they were making. They would and and
I think they probably still exist, but there's a lot
less of them in the mix now, and I think
(07:55):
it shows on what work is around and what and
what is getting made as well. I mean even just
as a consumer of entertainment, I'm like, we got I
got five hundred channels of fuck you, you know.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
I mean, people can feel it, People can really feel
it because I am a fan first and foremost, Like
I love the magic of this and I don't find
a lot of magic anymore. And I don't think it's
because I'm so jaded, because I worked very hard to
still have clear eyes about things.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
I think I was worked with a cinematographer called Join
the Boorman. He's a great cinematographer, and we were taking
a shot on a film that we were doing, and
we got this show. It was like, it's a bit
of a kind of like running into the ocean thing,
and it was okay. It was an okay shot, and
it was getting the late in the day and everyone
was a bit worried about time. And I said, did
(08:48):
we get it?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
John?
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And he said, yeah, we got it. It's okay. And
I went, what are you saying? And he went, it's okay.
I said, he said, but is okay? I said, well
anybody notice? He said, well we don't. No, it's only
we could have done better, and and he fail. And
I feel this too that if you don't do your
(09:09):
I mean, you can get away with it. You can
make fucking Emily in Paris and everybody will be fine.
But it's awful.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It's it's awful.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It's soulless, and you should make find a way to
you don't have to make pride and prejudice again. But
somebody can write something.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
But what makes it worse is when you beat your
brains out begging people for the right to make okay.
And that's when I was like, what am I doing?
Like I was in hustle, and followed I've gotten to
do so many amazing things and they came easily because
I was trusted and I was trusted by other artists,
and so then I started, I mean, it was this
(09:46):
took two years. It took two years of grieving sort
of like not knowing I was grieving because my life
was changing.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
How I identified was not there anymore.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Did you ever think you were straight? No? No, no,
no no, no, I know that right, so you weren't really,
I mean you knew you were, right, I mean, it
wasn't like you were.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
No. Here's but here's I knew that I was gay
since I was nineteen years old. And they're only related
in the fact that when I realized that I'd been
given my life to something that couldn't love me back,
when I really realized that in the sort of tangible terms,
that's when I realized, well, I've also sold this away,
this part, this part of myself away or I mean,
(10:27):
I don't think I necessarily misled anybody. But here's the thing.
At my very first press junket, the executive producer who
was a massive director from the eighties, told another actor
he almost didn't hire him because he thought he was
a faggot. And those and that taught me in the
year two thousand, everything I needed to know about Hollywood
and if I wanted this, shut my mouth. And that
(10:48):
is the truth, and that that existed until a few
years ago.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
This is New Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean I've fared. I've heared slurs like that used
around as well. But it the idea that you would
say I wouldn't hire someone because I mean, that's but
it's the old school boys boys club, right, You're so
used to being able to do whatever the hell you want,
and he was such a huge guy entertainment.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
But it really just taught me that if I want this,
if this dream that I had since I was a child,
I wanted to go after I had to. There's certain
things that I just couldn't do, Like I couldn't take
my boyfriend to the premiere the New Guy, Like it
just wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
And then you get used to that. And I don't think.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
I don't think that I have any sort of damage
from it, other than the fact that those were the
choices that I made. I made them willingly. I stay
behind every choice I've ever made because I made them.
But the system was fucked. It was very odd. I
made a movie in nineteen ninety nine. I love this movie.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
It totally flopped, but it was a movie called The
Big Teas and the Big Te's. It was about competitive
hairdressing and it was about a hairdresser from Scotland that
came to La seeking this fame and for it basically
and hijinks and SIU And I'm very proud of the movie.
It's a very affectionate movie. It's a very sweet movie.
And it got rated R because the lead character I
(12:12):
played a gay man. Now, there were no gay sex
scenes in it. There were no sex scenes in it.
There was no there was no there was no violence
or there was no hard language, there was nothing. It
was just that the main character was unequivocally a gay
man who was in a relationship with another man and
they talked to each other and they had a sweet relationship,
(12:33):
and there was It wasn't really part of the story.
It was just who he was and they it was
an R. If you look at this thing, it wouldn't
even make PG. Thirteen today. And that's what he That's
twenty five years ago. And that is not that hung ago,
I know.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
And the thing is, I'm fully cognizant of like how
things are so much easier now, but Craig after like
in twenty twenty one, everything I was being offered was
a who falls apart because he left his moisturizer at
home and.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
I'm like, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 5 (13:04):
I'm not going to do that, and so that's so
fucking lame.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
That's great.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
But here's the But also I completely like I also realized,
like I knew something told me when I first got here,
Like I was in young Hollywood. Young Hollywood was very small.
It was you know, we got jobs from going out.
It was one bar one night. My friend got a
gap campaign with Joni Mitchell from going to hide one night.
That's what you did. But I saw people blowing through money,
(13:35):
and I was like, this cannot sustain itself.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
This won't sustain itself.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
So I started putting like during during note like after
nine to eleven, I spent three months chainsmoking on Ebaye
buying gold bullion between two fifty and three fifty an ounce.
We are from a very similar place. I know I
spoke anymore, but I still have the gold.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I'm honestly, I'm a survivalist. I bought an airstream trailer
on Facebook Marketplace. It's in my house and I'm like like,
so it's at my house and I have it and
I'm ready, and I'm like stalking it with things my
wife's like, what are we stalking this form? Like you know,
you never know, you never know.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
I think part of it also is that I don't
be caught out, you know what I mean. And also,
once you've been poor and you've been in a situation
where you're no longer poor, you would think that you
would feel relief, but you feel fear this is going
to go wait for me and be taken for me.
And then I saw so many of my peers lose
it all by doing crazy stuff because there's no governance,
(14:40):
there's no mentoring.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Right well, when you get given you know, large sums
of money and success and privilege when you're very young.
Now that it honestly didn't really happen to me like that.
It was kind of a slow burn. And but the
but I saw it. I saw it a lot in Hollywood.
(15:03):
I saw it with euro Peers. I saw it when
there would be people that would come through when it's
what I was doing late night, there'd be people coming
through and you would go, oh, man, you've got to
try and get better people around you. This is going
to go bad fast, and yeah, you saw it all. Yeah,
and some of them dead and some of them didn't
you know. And some of them made it, some of
them are dead. I mean, it's crazy. It's unsupervised in
(15:26):
any way. There's no real structure to it. But at
the same time I wonder because the you know, I
look at the kind of freedom and the openness about
certain areas of life now, and there are other parts
of it where I kind of go, is this good?
Like the amount of bit Middler said a thing years
(15:48):
ago that I always kind of hung on to, which
was she said, the saddest thing about success is finding
out that not everyone is happy for you. And when
that happens, and you find out when the and when
social media came along, you find all of the people
that are not happy for you are right the click. Yeah,
(16:08):
they're there and they're there to let you know. And
I kind of I understand that. I feel shot in freud. Sometimes.
I sometimes see people that I don't like do well
and I'm like, oh, come on, I feel that. Do
you soon feel it?
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Occasionally?
Speaker 4 (16:24):
But I fight it though, because me too, Yeah, because
the difference is now, like I understand where it comes from,
and I really do fight it, but of course I
feel it. I said something the other day on my
podcast that after I said it, I was like, that's
not who you are at all.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
But I was caught up in this.
Speaker 4 (16:40):
Thing and there was a little thing still in my
memory from another time ago, and I was like, oh man,
and is disappointing when I do it. But also the
thing is I realize that I am I'm not who
I'm going to be, but I'm better than who I was,
and so I do give myself. But also I'm an
easy apologie. It's really easy you apologize, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
I think. I think once you start doing it agains easier.
I go into a bed during late night. I have
to apologize for stuff every night, and then I was like,
you know what, Okay, I find I'm sorry, And at
first I meant it and then it didn't mean it
at all.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And then I can't apologize for stuff I don't mean.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I apologize for stuff. I do mean stuff I don't mean.
I could run for I could run for office. I
could apologize for ending. I can say, I can say, no,
it wasn't me I was I wasn't me at all.
I wasn't there. But the truth is that when I
it's kind of like that thing when I really apologize.
I know, and you know, and you can tell what
(17:39):
I mean it and it's it's uh. But saying something
that is kind of awkward or weird, it's just a
human thing. It's not like, of course, you know, to
be judged on one thing you say is a little
it's a pretty odd standard to hold anyone to.
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Late night is a scary world because you can say
something and like I remember early like you were the
first ever late night hosts who didn't pre interview me.
You did it once and we had such a good
chat and we went so far off the scripted cards
or whatever. You were like, we don't have to do
this anymore. And then you go on and you feel
(18:18):
safe and you feel like if you get into something,
you'll be guided out of. As opposed to this thing
you have to get back to these stories and you're like,
oh my god, I'm so far away from IM supposed
to be, so you're never truly yourself.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Yeah, and that's what I loved.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
But I couldn't imagine if I was on every night,
the kind of stuff that would just randomly come out
of my mouth.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
I'd probably be held responsible for.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Yeah, I mean I took a few hits, no doubt
about it. But the truth is, though, I think the
atmosphere of them was a little less frantic because it
wasn't about filling the space. You know, you didn't have
to fill every website. You didn't have to post every
ten seconds about some kind of outrage. So you know,
(19:01):
if I say the wrong thing about something in twenty ten,
there wasn't enough of a social media appetite for someone
to go looking for it. But if it's no I mean, look,
we could say this the wrong thing. You can say
the wrong thing on a podcast right now and it's
like be tabloid bang and then. But it's also gone
like that, but then it's always available to be found digitally.
(19:25):
No one has to go through and find the microfiche
from you know. All they have to do just put
your name out and then put it by date and
it all comes up.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
But I do feel though, like on social media when
people say things like I feel lucky that we came
up in a time when somebody said something bad about us.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
It was in the New York Times.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Yeah, that really hurt because that was official the New
York Times.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
One said about me human bookmark. DJ Quall shines.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I go, you know what, when I go on when
I first start The New York Post said, when I
first started Late Night, he said, he's awful and it.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Looks like he's wearing a wig.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
And I'm like, there's one thing I know about me,
the only thing I know about me. I've got great
fucking hair. That's the only thing I know about me.
It looks like he's read. It's funny the things you go.
I that really got to be like, fuck you. Yeah.
I think when The New York Times says something bad
about you, it's like when your parents go, I'm not angry,
(20:29):
I'm disappointed. That's why he's like, ah.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Yes, but really, I mean, can you after you've been
dragged through the mainstream press when it was in print,
can the Internet really hurt that that unless they're coming
for your belongings or your family or your your reputation.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
I always felt like Hollywood and the Internet were very
could be treated in the same way. Then Late Night
told me that, I said, demystified me for me the
following way. It's only dangerous if you take it. See,
if you don't take it seriously, it's not really there,
and it's kind of like it's that Nietzschean thing. If
(21:06):
you look into the void, fine, but remember the void
looks into you. But if you don't look into the void,
you can avoid it. And that's kind of how I
feel about it. I refuse to participate in any interaction
with media beyond what I think is acceptable for me.
(21:29):
Like you were saying, like right at the beginning when
you were talking about no, I still do it. I
still love it. When I show up, I'll give you
my best. But I'm not showing up unless I'm going
to do that right. And I think it's it's funny
now because I feel like that's part of the growing
(21:50):
up process. And like even talking to you now, because
when I met you, you're a young man. You were
like in your in your mid twenties, you really were.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
You were a kid, and and it's like to see
someone it's appropriate for someone to go from their mid
twenties to the mid forties and to change their mind,
you know, and go No.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
I feel differently about that now. I don't. I'm not
a kid anymore. I'm not gonna And what I think
happens is, especially if you get success when you're young,
is that some people perhaps who are not as emotionally
gifted as you, are emotionally diligent as you. They get stuck.
You get stuck in what worked for you at that time,
(22:32):
and you try and keep in that time, do you know,
I mean, try and stay in the same place. But
you can't. It's against the law of nature. You can't
stay in the.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Same Change is coming, and it's coming for you.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, all the time changes the law of God's mind,
and the resistance to it is the source of all pain.
I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
That's awesome. I'm going to remember that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, I like it too. So so let me ask
you this, Was there any kind of because I've always
thought of you as someone who has quite a kind
of searching personality. You're quite a seeker. You're you look
for reasons, you look for that you analyze both yourself
and the situation around you. Right, I think that, I
(23:14):
mean that's my impression of you. Was there some kind
of spiritual or emotional switch that flipped when I'm not
talking necessarily about coming out, but I'm talking about the
change of attitude that you that you're talking about. I think.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
I think something happened to me where my my grandfather
always told me this, when you don't know what to do,
don't do anything until that doesn't work for you anymore,
and you will know. And all of a sudden, just
my heart how I felt about things, how I felt
about myself. Also during the same time, I have problems
looking in the mirror, and like some days I would
have to, you know, brush my teeth with the medicine
(23:56):
cabinet open. Just I had some days where I just
couldn't with myself, and then it stopped happening, and just
there were these gradual changes and where you released the care.
And I had this really pivotal moment in the shower
where I know where I do all my thinking in there.
And so I got asked to grand marshall the Christmas
(24:18):
preade in my little town where I was horrifically bullied,
and this was not that long ago, and I had this,
I played this little drama out in my head where
I was like, you know what, I'll tell them the
fuck off and this, this and this, and then I
was like, what are you doing. You're holding sixteen year
olds responsible for their behavior. You are a grown up.
(24:40):
You've been carrying this your whole life and I'm pretty
sure it's dictated a lot of your choices and behavior and.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
What that happened.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
You know, every and every sort of every thought, every
mistake has been made before you by other people who
are older than you, are on a different path. But
you can never really in turn anything until it applies
directly to you. And in that moment, I was like,
this is I don't want to do this. And I
released it, and I'd never released anything before, and I
(25:11):
remember exactly how I felt. I felt so light, I
could float out of that shower. And I don't feel
it anymore. It's so crazy.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It's great though, it's freedom. I always think the best
revenge is no longer want revenge. That's the best revenge.
You know, say revenge is a Dutch chef cold to know.
The best revenge is no revenge at all. It's like,
I don't want to revenge. I forgive you, you said
up a bench, goodbye.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
But it also makes it intellectually makes no sense because
I know for a fact that when you get successful,
the people in your past misremember your dynamic.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Yeah and so, and I know this, and I know.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
This at the same time when I'm thinking all of
these things about being put upon.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And that's very true. Then it just.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
Changed for me and it was all these things just
started occurring to me, like and the cool thing about
it was one of it was angry. None of it
was like I've been used and whatever. Like, No, all
the decisions were mine. I've done all these things, and
I've certainly profited and had a great life from it.
But I don't want to do this anymore in this way.
And that's the thing. I know that I can do
(26:15):
what I want to do, but just in the way
that I want to do it, and if I don't,
if I can't, then I won't.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
It's really that simple.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
It's really funny, is I had a thing happened to
be in a similar nature right before my mom died.
She was in a care home. She's very ill for
a while and she was in this care home in Scotland,
and when I got there, I was talking to her.
She was cognitively she was fine, but she was physically,
you know, falling to pieces and needed round the cloud care.
And I was in this went to visitor in the
(26:41):
care home and she said, let's change her name. Actually
I'll edit this out. See missus lady who was mean
to me when I was a kid is in here.
And the lady the teacher who had beat me horrifically
when I was a child, and that I like a
lot of you know, stuff i'd come out of. It
was in the care home and she was and she
(27:06):
was suffering from Alzheimer's and she had very bad Alzheimer's.
And my mom said, you should go in and see her, like,
I don't think so, man. I think I think whatever
that was, it's gone, and I don't want to go
in and lord it over this poor woman.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Who is you get it from that pushed it down
the stairs?
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Yea, the very definition of it, as well as Look,
I don't I'm not a doctor. I don't know a
law about Alzheimer's, but I know if I won't get there,
she's going to have no fucking clue I have. So
it's like, what the hell? But it's funny. My mom
was like, no, you you you should go and give
it a piece of your mind. I'm like, I don't
think so, man, I think it's all right. It's an
(27:50):
odd thing. It's the idea of holding on resentments. I
used to think it was a kind of a Pollyanna
thing to try and free yourself from that. But it's no,
it's mental health, it really is. It's like, no, I'm
not gonna hold on it to make you feel more comfortable,
or because I was mad ten years ago. I'm not
mad now. I mean, I can get to it, but
(28:12):
I can release it, let it go.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
But we also do it from behavioral modeling too, because
it's what people that came before us do, and we're
told to always get the last word in get your
own back. We're taught that, and it takes I think
maybe if I didn't leave my community, then maybe I'm
from a small town and I feel like being exposed
(28:34):
to the rest of the world without sort of the
net that reinforced that kind of behavior. Yeah, I think
that helped me sort of get to where I am
or where I'm going.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Do we ever tempted to move back? Never?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
What's so great about not belonging is that you leave and.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
You don't have to go back because there was nothing
there for me. My high school farms into the casket
factory and the pajamas factory, and pajamas closed down.
Speaker 5 (29:02):
In a fucking country song, crack so fucking bleak. It's fantastic.
I love yeah, but it's great. It's such a gothic picture.
It's fabulous.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
I think that. I think also the freedom that comes
from it's really it feels to me very therapeutic to
laugh at at stuff like that as well. It kind
of it doesn't I think. I'm sure that's why I
ended up getting into working mostly in humor, because it's
such a fabulous weapon to free yourself. Like you know,
(29:39):
it's why I'm sure you know, whenever like the Hitler's
or the Stalons or the demagogues come along, they always
go after the humorists first. It's always you can't make
jokes about that? And you go, well why not? You know, it's, uh,
you can't. You can make jokes about that, and when
(29:59):
when you But if you make jokes about things, you
kind of emasculate it a little bit. You make it
a figure of derision, do you know, a figure of fun.
And you can do that. I think you can do
it with your own history. When you laugh at your
own history, it becomes less threatening somehow, do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 4 (30:14):
I mean, that was my I think that was my
security blanket or my armor when I moved out here
and started doing work.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
He's an actor.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
It's like, I'm going to say all the things before
you say them. You don't think I know what the
merchandise I'm trying to move looks like you don't think
I don't know myself. And I did it, and I
did it, but I did it at a defense and
now I'm able to do it with it. We're like, Yep,
this is exactly what happened. This is what's going on.
Like it seems different. The motives are different, right, because
(30:42):
it's not scorn of pain?
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Do you do you feel that you know, like the
movies that you were doing early in your career is
hilarious movies, funny performances, and in these like kind of
they're not slapstick movies, were quite broad humor movies, and
people who people who love those movies sometimes, I think,
not necessarily for you, but just for anyone. If you
(31:06):
do a joke and somebody likes it and then they
find out later that you're not like the joke you did,
they feel a little betrayed by it.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
It is so crazy that you're saying that, because that's
what I got as I've gone forward in my life.
People meet me in public way before coming out, and
people meet me and find out that I'm not that,
and I try to explain to them, no, no, no, no no.
I made you think that on purpose because it's funny
and it's for the movie. But I was I was
(31:34):
the reason why you thought that was funny. But it's
not who I am. And so many times people are like,
after Hustle and Flow, everybody thought that I could make music.
And it's kind of a little bit flattering that people
think that I am the person that I play. But
here's what I wanted to say to people. I played
a virgin like twenty seven times. I've been famous like
(31:54):
for like seven years at this point. You don't think
I'm one person would have sex with me. I'm on television. Yeah,
it's a.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Very It's a very odd thing, though, because I think
that people do get attached to it in a way.
With John, I always thought, Look, the example is fairly recently,
was what happened to Ellen DeGeneres that you know it's like, oh,
she's not very nice. I don't know Ellen DeGeneres at all.
I was on a show once or twice, I think,
But you don't know someone because that you're on their show,
you know that you're going to show you league. And
(32:28):
she was perfectly nice. And then it turns out apparently
she wasn't as nice backstage as she was on the show.
And I'm like, uh, yeah, it's because she's doing her job. Yeah,
you know, she's pretended to be nice.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Yeah, like everybody else in the Hollywood, you have to
be also her job.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
You can't.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
You can't go on a daytime talk show and bitch
or talk about things that are going wrong.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
People don't want to see that.
Speaker 4 (32:57):
And and the thing is they also don't like I
knew when I did Road Trip, my first movie, Todd Phillips,
you know, he went on to direct The Hangover and
The Joker.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
It was his first movie too.
Speaker 4 (33:08):
I realized that if I allowed myself to be the
butt of the joke, my whole career was over. There's
a kid from American Pie who was the butt of
the joke and didn't work much beyond that. I knew,
and also knew that we lost the movie. So I
was like, there's a way to do this where I'm
not being shot upon, that I'm being celebrated. And I
still get to do all these things that you want
me to do. I was really really aware of this,
(33:31):
and as I as my career came along, I started
to see, like, there's a role I could take that's enough,
like that it's going to pay me this big amount
of money so that I can go away and do
something else. So I was a I think part of
I think I've sort of benefited a lot from insecurity
and from being sort of made fun of and all
(33:51):
these things that were going on in my head because
it allowed me to to first of all, insulate myself
from my career, but also to be a good storyteller.
I'm like, going for the joke and making fun of
myself is first of all, not good for me in
the long term, but also that's not what we're doing.
We're telling we're telling hero stories and redemption stories, and it's.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Not that, and it's too easy to go for that.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
And so I I think that I made some wise
choices and knew one to take the money. The only
time I didn't, I got offered Scary Movie two for
two million dollars. I've never made that before or since,
it's never been offered that. But my character had to
suck his own dick. And my manager says, you're not
the kind of guy that could do that and walk
away from it. And he was right, I am not
the vessel that can tell that story and recover from it,
(34:36):
all right.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
That look just as go to say can you can
you do that?
Speaker 4 (34:40):
Because nobody I tried, without try, every every man alive
has tried.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
It blew my mind the offer though, and and but
then it was explained to me there are certain things
that you have.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
You haven't set that up for yourself.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
You've not You've said you've gone the opposite route in
like not being being the butt of it, and you're
not the physical shell or the personality that you created
that can endure that. And he was right, and so yeah,
he yes, Brian Doggins, he's my manager. So when I
first came out here, everybody tried to like Brad Gray.
(35:15):
I met with him when he was at burl Stein
Gray and they were like, we'll get you the young
Hollywood cover of Vanity Fair and I'm like, how could
you promise me that? And Brian he now runs artists. First,
he had a handful of clients, him and Paul Young,
and he was like I don't know.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
I can't get you that, but I think you're going
to work.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
And I believed him because he wasn't lying to me,
and he's been my only manager in my whole career.
And so instead I did hustle and flow, which is
a career highlight, and I'm.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
So happy that I did that.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
But I couldn't see around it because the money was
my redneck mine was blown. I didn't realize that agent, manager,
business manager, publicist, accountant, everybody. I didn't realize, you know,
the half of it I didn't think about. That didn't
occur to me because the number was so huge. And
but and then something interesting happened as a result of that.
My father found out and called me lazy, and we
(36:07):
got into a massive fact.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
My father was the welder.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
It was a welder in that casket factory for forty
years he was.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
And so you found this out.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
But look, if you're a welder in a casket factory,
your kid gets off for two million dollars to suck
on deck, and you know he's tried to do it anyway,
kind of like, why what are you doing? Why would
you do that?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
You're crazy?
Speaker 1 (36:40):
So given that you have I mean very clearly, you know,
matured and and I'm very happy for you. You seem
so much more inside your own skin as when we
first met. Is that what what are you looking for?
And I what what kind of like sails your boat?
I love I love making things. I form a production company.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
I've we've finished production on our first movie, and we've
done it ethically. We've hired people that we had no
business getting crew members, like our production designer did La
La Land, and everybody worked for three hundred dollars a day.
And because they like what we're doing and we are
we are not we're doing first dollar splits like we
want to be ethical and make things that we want
to make the way that we want to make them,
(37:23):
so that feels good. The podcast. I have a podcast
that's getting a footing. We've never done a dollar of advertising, nobody,
I mean, but the word of mouth.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
We're going twenty percent month over month.
Speaker 4 (37:33):
And it's just my space to say exactly how I
feel and what I want. And it's not formatted. We
don't have guests yet, it's just me and my friend Guess.
Guess is a terrible idea, I.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Know, I fuck, it's their whole world right now, you
know what to say, you'll be soon.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Well, the thing is about guests is that it's great
when you get them. But everybody, and look, I remember
this from Late Night and everybody I've talked to the
do show is about guests. So it was like, you
get a guest, and then you have to get another guest,
and you have to get another guest, and it's always
like people want to do the show, but you know,
they got things to do. And I think if I
(38:10):
was doing a podcast again and that might after this,
I wouldn't have any guests.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
It's freeing because first of all, it's well, it's on
our own schedule and you can have the other things
going on in the world and still find time to
do this. But also just the therapy aspect of it,
where you just get to talk about how you feel
about stuff you know, and somebody will will bring up
something that will reminds you of the story from twenty
years ago.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
So it's part in the nostalgia.
Speaker 4 (38:38):
It's about my life path and where I'm going, and
her life path and where she's gone. She was the
Coast of Jim Jefferies' podcast for five years and her
and I split off and do and it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
What is our name? Forgive me?
Speaker 4 (38:52):
Her name is Kelly Blackheart right. Our podcast is called
locked In probably loaded with DJ and Kelly and it's
just fun.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
It sounds great. So wait, Jeffries. I know Jim Jeffries,
I've I've told him before a couple of times. News. Yeah,
he's good news that guy.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
I was a show with him called The Jit for
two years and it was the best job I've ever
had as an actor. I just loved it.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Yeah, he's a he's a great guy. He he uh.
He's a pretty uh, pretty impressive standout comedian as well.
He's amazing.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Yeah, he's great. Did you ever think about doing that?
I did, I really did, and I have since.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
But I gotta tell you a part of it, I
a part of me doesn't want to make dramatic me really,
I'm not joking for me, and I know he wouldn't.
But it's his realm and I'm the actor, and I
just wait a minute, fuck him, mister has realm.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I working that of guys that work in that realm, well,
Jim Jefferies is a nice guy and a good stand
I can own it. That's like saying, oh, yeah, Eric Clapton,
I don't want to play the guitar because Eric craft
and plays the guitars. Again, a lot of other people
could play the guitar. Thank you. I love it. I
(40:14):
think you would love doing stand up. I've been thinking
about it.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
It's funny that you bring that up because I've mentioned
it to several people recently that I've been thinking about
it for a couple of years now.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
It's relating. It's time. I think what you should do
is you should do stand up and in the background
you should have these two ladies that you've got behind
you right now, standing right there cracking. Yeah. I know
they're great. Somebody did okay are you? Are you a
(40:45):
big Tamy art collector? I love it.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
So that is so on days when I have had
on like not good times on sets, so things aren't
going right in my career, I have at I have
divided my salary by the second and every minute I'm like,
I just made this much toward a painting. So it's
become my my It's the it's the love of my life.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
A creation kind of painting. Do you collect?
Speaker 4 (41:10):
So I started out collecting French paintings from like eighteen
seventy to like nineteen forty. Okay, so, and because before
the eighteen seventies pigments were not able to be synthetically produced,
so like red was ground up corondam ruby and blue
was ground up you know lapis I mean vice versa
and so, and all of a sudden they made these
(41:33):
lead based paints. And that's why people like the early
the Impressionists and the post Impressionists they painted like a
purple tree and you know, it's all these things because
before that pigments were so expensive. You had to paint
for the church or wealthy people because you couldn't afford
to do otherwise you could just paint whatever the hell
you wanted.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
So it was really the birth of you could do it.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
Are you familiar with Are you familiar with the paint
called Joe michell Raphaeli the Italian and he was he
was in the first Impressionist exhibition and then he had
a big fight with money. And I didn't like him
because he would he would draw or he would paint
in things that weren't at adyllic, you know, like he'd
you know, the painting in the Loure of the absentthe drinkers.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
You know that sounds familiar to me.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
It's a beautiful paint.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
I'll look it up.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Well, RAPHAELI painted that. He painted imperfect images during the
Impressionist fashion, and he got he got in a little trouble,
but he patented a new form of paint as well.
They made all the Impressionists angry. You got in a
real trouble. The guy liked him, and money didn't like
him at all. He's a fascinating character, an Italian Jewish
(42:40):
painter who was in the first exhibition of the French Impressionists.
And I think he probably ran into a bit of
anti Semitism as well. He's a fascinating character. I urge
you to check him out. He's very well and I've
got a couple of his paintings. He's he's very interesting.
I like very I like very painterly paintings. I like
Barbizon and Eli Impressionists. But then so I just am
(43:02):
learning about Barbizon right now.
Speaker 4 (43:04):
That's great stuff. Yeah, yeah, so that's what I do.
So I use an object that I see at auction.
That's so I started learning. I would get some of
these Christie's Bottoms auction catalogs and then just start looking
at and then I could identify painters by brushstroke, and
then I started you know, so I got interested there.
But then I realized that you pay a huge premium
for buying through them, and you can find things on
(43:24):
there are web there auction healsies all over the world,
and let me tell you, I mean, I can get fooled,
but I think it's harder art Net I love.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
I love Artnett.
Speaker 4 (43:33):
I also invaluable dot com and Live auctioneers dot com.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
But you know what you're looking.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
At Facebook marketplace for rich people. I get it.
Speaker 4 (43:41):
It's really that's great, but I love it and I
really I feel like I haven't released a painting yet,
like I've I've never bought anything for sale, and I
feel like now when I when I go to like
I went to a little auction, I mean to an
art gallery in Dunedin, New Zealand, and they have this beautiful,
(44:02):
beautifully curated collection, but they don't have a Louis VLTA
and they're gonna get mine when I die.
Speaker 3 (44:09):
So it's it's it's cool because this will go on
after me.
Speaker 4 (44:11):
And I'm the guardian of these things, and it just
but also it's a sickness a little bit.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I understand that I have more paintings than I care
to admit. I I go into it. I don't know
if you ever met Megan, my wife, but she was
an art dealer before we met, still as an art dealer,
and and so she can get deals on stuff.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Oh god, but I'll be bankrupt.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Well you know, but here's the thing. You get these
amazing paintings, like amazing, there's amazing things that I'd heard of.
I come from a very similar background to you economically.
I come from very blue collar, kind of poor background.
And I'd heard about some of the paintings, paintings that
(44:59):
I own. I heard of, I'd heard of the artist,
I'd heard of the I read about it in school,
and I was like, oh, that's, you know, a world
that's beyond imagining.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
And now I own a couple of these paints and
I kind of love cool and all my favorites.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
But I like the kind of I guess it's kind
of the avoristic nature of having it.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
It's amazing, it's a great feeling.
Speaker 4 (45:22):
I fully I think my collection is I have names,
But like you said, my favorite things are definitely not names.
There's an artist named Bernard U Tavia Monvaal. He had
when he dialt like it wasn't I think when his
heir died and like twenty sixteen, Sethby's had this big auction,
and like he was a massively famous painter, like around
(45:45):
the turn of the century into the forties, like portraits,
but his early work were post Impressionist works and nobody
really wanted them. But I didn't know a lot about him.
And a painting went I think for like ten thousand
pounds and I didn't buy it, but then I couldn't
stop thinking about it, so I chased it. I looked
for I said an alert. I looked for this painting
(46:06):
for years. Last year it came up at Dorotheam in Vienna.
I was willing to pay whatever the hell it costs.
I would have sold things. I had to have it.
And it's two guys dragging a boat of the Seine
like at sundown.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
But it's so mind blowingly beautiful. I had to have.
Speaker 4 (46:26):
It, and so I stayed up all night. I was
ready to go. I was calling everybody bitches and hoes.
In my mind, I'm not going to take this painting
for me.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
I was in it.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
I got it for eight thousand euros.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It was one of the best days of my life.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
I never part with it. Yeah, I have, I have.
Speaker 1 (46:45):
There's one paint and I have in my life that
I love above all others. And it was actually my
wife and kids got it for me as a present
and they knew I loved it, and they kind of, well,
you know, we used family money to get it, but
they But it's a painting. It's not by a very
famous wit as a gentleman by the name of Empire,
(47:06):
and it's called at the End of the Day, and
it's just a guy standing in the side of a
canal bank waving to his friend on a boat who's
just sailing up the route, like it's the end of
the day's work. But it's a fucking masterpiece. And when
I look at it, I go into a world that
I don't know where else in the world in the
universe that that world is, but it's in there and
(47:29):
I can fall into it and then it's hard to
explain and it sounds fanciful, but it's so riveting. Is
a thing to sit next to. I fucking love it.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
And that's how I feel.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, and I'm I'm delighted.
First of all, I'm delighted to find this out about
you because I really knew I liked you, but now
I really really like you because because of your appreciation
of great art, and it's kind of my secret thing
that I loved. I don't really talk about that much,
(48:01):
but I spend money on it and I love it.
Speaker 4 (48:05):
Same people's eyes get dupe when I try to tell
them too much. I'm cognizitive that. Yeah, and here's the thing.
It's okay that it's just for me. Yeah, yeah, it's fine.
It's fine. You can sit by the paint. You don't
need to talk to anyone about it. It's like, oh, amazing,
it's great.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Listen, my friend, I'm very I really think we should
try and talk to each other before another ten years
ago past.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
I would love that.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
And in fact, the next time in la Or if
you're going to a if you're going to an art
auction in Vienna, I'm in. I'll definitely come with you.
It's just a world which fascinates me. You're such a
lovely mind. I'm so happy for you that you're growing
up really cool, even cooler than you were when you
(48:50):
were a kid, and you were a pretty cool kid.
I know you were tough on yourself, but you were
pretty cool and you're even cooler now, so that's great.
Speaker 3 (48:58):
Thanks Craig, I love you.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
I love you too, man. I am so happy to
see you well and yourself. It's great.
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Thanks buddy, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Oh, thanks for being on. It's great to see you.
Thanks Pam,
Host
Craig Ferguson
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