November 12, 2025 • 58 mins
On this episode of The Seano Show, Seano sits down with acclaimed actor, director, and producer James Keach for a candid conversation about his remarkable life and career. James shares powerful stories of resilience, family, and the lessons learned from Hollywood and beyond. From his work on films like "Walk the Line" and the Glen Campbell documentary to personal reflections on trauma, recovery, and legacy, this episode is a heartfelt exploration of truth and creativity.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have a critic that lives out here. I know
you do you know? And the critic talks to me,
and finally I have to say, hey, fuck you man, right,
you know, thanks for sharing. Kevin Klein and that we
were carrying. We had to carry a king, a very
large actor whose name I'm not going to mention. He
was so large that the king's throne that we were
(00:20):
carrying broke on the stage. Kevin and I had to
improvise the whole scene around it.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Today on The Sino Show, we sit down with the
man who has lived a dozen lives in one lifetime.
He's an actor or director, a producer, a storyteller with
the heart that beats for truth. James Keach has spent
his career walking the line, from writing with his brother
in The Long Riders, which as far as I'm concerned,
is one of the best westerns ever producing the Oscar
(00:52):
winning walk the Line and capturing raw humanity, and Glenn
Campbell's I'll Be Me, which is to me one of
the most honest portrayals of love, loss and resilience ever
put the film.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I can't wait to talk about that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
What I love about James is the why he doesn't
just make movies. He makes mirrors, stories that help us
see ourselves more clearly. So today we're diving into craft, purpose, legacy,
and what it means to stay true in industry built
on illusion. This is my brother James Keach, living out loud,
straight from the heart on the SINO Show. Welcome brother, Hello,
(01:29):
I'm welcome. Thanks oh man, I love you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
You too, brother. Yeah, yeah, I love you too. I
know you do. Man. My whole family. Yeah, so there's
your whole family. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So should we just start? Where were you born, young man?
What where were you born? I don't know, you know,
I was born in New York. You're born or now?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah? Queens, Queens. In my first ten years in Texas
with my grandmother, and so my feeling is like I
come from a small town and my dad was in
show business. My brother was in show business. So we
lived out in California, but they Parkednew there because he
was doing a show called Tales of the Texas Rangers.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's in the blood, it's in the blood. Yeah, Mom, Dad.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Mom, Dad. My dad and mom met at Northwestern. My
dad was an actor. At one time he had thirty
forty national commercials on the air. Wow, he was Clarence
for he was a sweetheart. My dad, you know, childhood,
the depression. His dad died when he was nine, his
mom when he was eighteen. My mom came from Texas
oil money. So it was totally the opposite. And tell
(02:35):
us about young James Keach, Young James Keach, Well, my
childhood was interesting, you know, it was as you know,
you know my childhood. Yeah, there was some tough patches. Yeah. Yeah,
it wasn't because of my parents. It was because of
your parents were nothing but kind and yeah, but they
couldn't deal with it. It was the time when the
(02:57):
me too movement wasn't in effect for your friend's mothers. Yeah,
and little boys. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
So that's the most tactful way I can put this,
and tactful it is. And that obviously had a massive
imprint on your life.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, sure did. And all the relationships I've had
with women.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
If you don't mind, what do you think has been
the greatest impact from.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
That in the ultimate sense of working, I mean the
effect that it had on my life. I think whatever
happened had happened before. Look, I'll just be honest. I
was molested when I was a kid, So, yeah, it
happened before I was molested by a female. Yeah, by
a female, which you know, so often people think, well,
(03:42):
this is not something that's it's cool young young boys.
Well I was twelve, thirteen years old, so I wasn't
eighteen years old like in the reader or nineteen, ye
know they you know, Yeah, I was a little young
for this, and I didn't really know how to deal
with it. But I think it also came from the
fact that my mom, who I loved very much much,
came from South Texas and did she her parents divorced
(04:05):
when she was very little, and she wore the scarlet letter.
I don't know if you know that story, the scarlet letter.
They put an adulter on her dad, Yeah, and she
ran off with he ran off with somebody. And so anyway,
she was very, very very hard for her to deal
with her feelings, and so she masked all her feelings.
(04:27):
So when this happened to me, she did not want
the world to know about it, and my dad didn't either.
Today it would have been a big deal, you know,
But then my dad was in the business and this
other person husband was definitely in the business. In a
big way. So so hide all your feelings, don't let
(04:49):
the world know what's going on, and just eat it,
eat it. That had a big effect on me, and
so secrets and hiding was something that I was taught
by my parents. Right, it's a little confusing, you know.
So you go through your life and when you get
into a relationship, it's very difficult two for me anyway,
(05:17):
to be straight up about it when you have a problem.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
And I think it's important to say that it wasn't
a one off. It was to continue.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah three years, three years, so right, it's funny, you know.
And during my lifetime I've seen this happening. Prosecutions take
place and people go to jail, women go to jail
for doing something like this. I've never been able to
really process it. I always felt bad for her. She
was alcoholic, she had an abusive husband. But for a
(05:51):
twelve year old to think they're saving somebody is yeah,
there's a false loyalty. Yeah. Yeah, it's very confusing, you know,
but that's it's it's what happened. I've never talked about
this publicly.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I know you haven't and I wasn't. And I think
he might help.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Some people though maybe maybe well, you know, there's a
saying that you were only as sick as our secrets,
and yeah, this happened. That's not who it's not who
I am now, No, you know it's but it did
have a profound effect on me throughout my life.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
James, when did you know that you were good as
an actor? When did that?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Were you performing? Young? Well, when I was in high school,
I was a football player. I was an athlete more
than anything, you know. And my brother Stacy, who pretty
he's a great guy. I just saw him in a
movie with George Clooney and we saw it last night.
It's called Joe Kelly. It's really good Joe Kelly. Yeah,
(06:48):
he plays Yeah, he plays Clooney's dad. And George is
such a good guy. And Stacey's a great actor anyway,
So it was my brother who said, you're the actor,
You're you should be the one. My brother was born
of the cleft pallett. So and my dad was an
actor and so and uh he he absolutely uh doted
(07:11):
on my brother. He had he had five or six
operations on his cleft palette and so, and he taught
him Shakespeare in order to speak properly, because you know
people withal that a little bit. And and my mom
and dad always said, well, he was born perfectly, there's
nothing wrong with him.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
They taught him Shakespeare. Amazing, you had dad had the
kind of wisdom.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, my dad was very cool, incredible, and that's that.
And and so my brother, we both were shakespeare and actors.
You know, both you drama school guys, but he Stacey
was extraordinarily good at Shakespeare and has played every major
part you can play, you know. Wow. So yeah, So
would you study acting at Northwestern? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
And then you got into Yale?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah? And what was that like? Oh? It was it
was interesting. It was good. I remember I was at
Yale and Martin Luther King was killed and the riots
and it was very interesting. During those times, Yale was
a hotbed reverend. Yeah, what was your first big break? Oh?
(08:18):
I was. I was at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
I was carrying spears literally, it was next to Kevin
kleinb Oh. Yeah, it was a it was called The
War of the Roses. And I had an agent. I
auditioned for a movie called Corky and uh uh and
it was an MGM movie and Bruce Geller, who created
(08:39):
Mission Impossible, was the producer, and they flew me out
to California literally was carrying Spears and uh, I got
the part in the movie. And Joe Papp, who when
the New York Shakespeare Festival was really was not happy
that I would take a part in the movie and
not Carrie Spears. Wow, huh, I mean, I tell your
(09:02):
that's a funny story of Kevin Klein and that we
were carrying. We had to carry a king, a very
Laura Jacker whose name I'm not going to mention, but
he was so large that the king's throne that we
were carrying broke on the stage. Kevin and I had
to improvise the whole thing around it. So I came
(09:24):
to California and let's offer this part, and was offered
a lot of money. And then about two weeks later,
after I've let the left the Shakespeare Festival, my agent
called at the time and said, James, they've changed the
head of the studio and they no longer want you
to play the part because you don't have a name.
You know, they wanted to give it to somebody who's
(09:45):
got a bigger name than you do. And I didn't
know what to say, but they have to pay you,
but they got to pay you. I said, oh, well, okay,
Well what should I do? She said, well, I don't know,
that's up to you. And I said, they offered you
the second lead. I said, after reading it, okay, okay,
(10:07):
I mean I had I was carrying spears, you know,
and they still had to pay me. I just wanted
to act, you know. And about two weeks later then
I drove to California. Think I'm getting ready to go
to Batham. As I got here, I was with an
agency at that time called CMA, which later became my CM.
And she said, oh, I've got bad news for you.
(10:30):
They don't want you to play a second party. They
want you to play the third the third lead. They'll
offer you the third lead, but they still have to
pay you. And I said, well what should I do?
And she said, well, what kind of a man are you? So?
What does that mean? She said? What are you going
to let him walk over you like that? I said, no,
if you think I should do it, I won't do it.
(10:51):
They still have to pay me, right, Yeah. I never
heard from her again. I got the money. She never
sent me out another thing. Wow, So that was my
first Hollywood break. Welcome to Hollywood. Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
So were you partying then?
Speaker 1 (11:11):
No? Wh I smoked now but wait here and there straight,
I was smoking grass. But yeah, none of the bad
stuff that came later.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
That well you'll tell me where to interject that.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, that came later. But what walk me? So old?
Are you now?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So you're in twenty five twenty six?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah about that one. No, I was a little younger
than that, twenty twenty four, twenty five?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And are you like?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Fuck? Am I going to make it as an actor? Like?
I never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
What were you thinking then? What was going through your head?
Were you happy?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
What was Yeah? I I've always been a little no
believe them. I always knew that I was good at acting.
I mean, I've always been very self deprecating. You know.
It's like I don't know other people telling me I've
done a good job, but I don't ever I never
really I just do it, you know. And it's like
(12:05):
I said, doing this, I have a critic that lives
out here, you know, and the critic talks to me,
and finally I have to say, hey, fuck you man,
you know, thanks for sharing, you know, I think that's
what I always tell it. When I direct actors, and
you know I've dot a lot of that, I always
tell him to talk to the critic and tell him
to be quiet, to fuck off. My brother, however, taught
(12:28):
me something very interesting when I first started acting, because
when the camera was pointed to me for the first time.
I mean, it's one thing to be on the stage.
You know, you're with you. You get rehearsals and rehearsals
and rehearsals, so you're ready for it. When you're a
movie acting, that's not the case most of the time.
But my brother, I said, how do you get over
that camera being there? And he showed me a trick
(12:48):
that he used. He said, I think good morning. Those days,
the cameras were all Mitchell's, and you say, good morning, Mitch.
How are you today? How are you feeling? We're gonna
have a good day, you and me. I love that. Wow?
Did it work? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
When did you get after that? You got paid? And
then what happens next? You landed something right?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah? I went back to I went back to New
York and I started my brother. The next thing happened
is I did a movie with my brother It was
called The Right Brothers Orville and Wilbur's considered one of
the cop movies on PBS. So could they called it
one of the PBS classics that Nancy and I my wife,
current wife, just out of curiosity. She tuned into it.
(13:30):
And I was really young and embraced in anyway, and
there's I played Orville and my brother played Wilver. And
it was at that time I started thinking about playing
Jesse James. And I go from the Right brothers to
the wrong brothers, you know, so so or and or
Wilver couldn't have been more opposite than Jesse James James.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
It was so you started thinking, like, this would be
a great character. I want to play him.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, I'd always thought this story was great, you know.
And uh so I created a country Western musical. You know.
So it was a musical when I started, so I
was really into music and playing music and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Wait, wait, how I didn't know that part about that?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
It was called a bandit Kings, and uh so we
did it off Broadway at Barry Lane Theater.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And then how the fuck did you make that movie
with all the brothers I was?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I then got a part I came back to California
and I got a part in Hurricane with Maya Ferrell
and uh, which is just kind of a cool story
in and of itself. This is this is the opposite
of losing your job the way I did the first
time I auditioned for this part in the Hurricane. H
(14:45):
Jan Troll worked with Ingarden, Burgan Spinn. Nick Fist was
Inkbarkin Bergman's camera man. He was the cinematographer. Dino Dela
Reentis was producing it. I came into the office and
I remember Mike McLain was the casting record who nobody's
going to remember, but he was a cool guy. And
Dino is sitting at this really huge desk. Dina was
(15:09):
not a big guy. And he's sitting there and he's counting.
He's got a roll of money and he's counting one
hundred dollars bills and he looks up and he goes,
he's a perfect make him a deal. I went, that's it.
He's just as Mike mclin'son, shut up and get out
of here. Wow. I was on my way to Bora Bora.
(15:34):
It was in Bora Bora. The producer of that movie
was a guy named Tim Zenneman. And he says, so,
what are you working on right now? I said, we're
writing a screenplay for this thing called you know, it
was either Jesse James or the Bandit Kings. And he said,
and my brother and I got the Carroting brothers and
(15:55):
maybe the Bridges brothers. I mean, we're all kind of
tight with each other. We kind of grew up with
the Herodians her dads knew each other. Wow, quits to you.
I didn't know then know them. No, But Dennis and
I actually are still best friends all the time. I
see him all the time, Tim, So that sounds really cool.
He said, can I read it? I said yeah, And
(16:16):
he said, I'm gonna give it to a friend of mine.
Oh yeah, who's that? He said? Walter Hill? Yeah? What
at that time? What did Walter Hill do? He had
just done The Warriors.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
The Warriors, that's right, Wrior right.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Wow, he's a great guy, a great film director. Wow.
And he nailed it. He nailed it, he nailed it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Why is that such a spectacular film? I mean, it
really well, A lot of.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It has to do with Walter, But there is something
unspoken when you have two guys that have known each
other their whole life, like my brother and I obviously's
seven years older than I have. You don't have to
say things. We look at each other and it's there.
The chemistry is and and all the all of us
there was. It was a familial thing. So this whole
(17:04):
idea of a band of brothers, well, we definitely were that.
When somebody knows you that intimately, you know and you
say the words I love you to the guy, it's real.
There's something was very real about that that whole experience
with all of us, and we were we're very close
to this day, except for Randy and Dennis, which I
feel bad about.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
That's another I don't think you could ever make a
movie like that ever again, can you? I don't think
that happens again. Brothers like that. I just don't see
that ever happening. You really capture something magical that Yeah, Wow,
what's the last time you saw it?
Speaker 1 (17:38):
It's been a while a while. Yeah, I have other
people that see it's on TV quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah.
And then and Dennis still calls me Jesse. He jokingly
says I helped make his career. Said, how's that mean?
So he broke my nose. We we had a fight
scene on the on the river, you know, and I
still say he slipped. He said, you he reached out
(18:01):
too far and I broke his nose.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Acting wise, what are you most proud of?
Speaker 1 (18:07):
That's a good question. I don't know. Yeah, you know,
I did a lot of comedies too, back in the day.
I was with a young film director today and he
was saying he had all the films that I'd done
on Blu Ray and he was talking, you know, he
was reminding me of scenes that I had forgotten about,
whether it's wildcats or moving violations or vacation. And I
(18:29):
think vacation is one of those scenes that's it says
it all in one scene, you know, seeing I do
with Chevy about the dog, you know, and it's it's
considered one of the classic scenes in comedy. And it's
just it was really weird that day because I remember
I got off the plane. It was in the Four
(18:49):
Corners and Harold Raymonds, who I oh, here he was.
He was directing it and he and I had been
working on a movie that was one of the writers
on called Been Dangerous. It was a richial idea about
security guards, John Candy, John Candy. So he said, hey, James,
come on down do this part for me. And I said, okay,
(19:12):
now he said, just do me, just do me a favor.
You know. I got a lot of work from that part. Anyway,
I got off the plane in Durango and I remember
people were just freaked out. When I got to the
set and I said, what's going on? He said, Vic
(19:32):
Morrow had just died and it was the night the
night before and this little Vietnamese boy was killed, and
John Lanison told the helicopter. Anyway, I just remember that
day very well. And part of that relief from that
day was playing in this comedy scene for both Chevy
(19:52):
and I, you know, and we had to just channel
something else because everybody was so freaked out because we
were doing the film Warner Brothers the same studio.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
When did you make the leap into directing?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And I did a movie called It was one of
the first USA movies USA television, and it was called
The Forgotten and it won a lot of awards. It
was about Vietnam guys, and it was about you know.
At that time, there was some speculation that we had
(20:26):
basically tipped off Vietnamese that some of our guys were
coming in. There were the Paris Peaks hosts were going on,
and we had guys going in undercover to do some stuff,
and there was a whole collusion that they thought was
going on, and it was about The movie was about
our guys finding out that our government had betrayed them
(20:52):
and they were going in on an operation and they
were sacrificing our own guys to show good faith. It
won all sorts of awards, and I did it with
my brother and Keith Carrodine and Steve rails Back and
had pretty good actors at the time. Wo that's the story.
(21:13):
I told you. It won this the Veteran's Award or something.
It was. It was really hardy. It was a really
good film. You're proud of that movie. I'm very proud
of that film. Yeah. But even more so, I got
one of the great lessons of my life when I
went to the VA.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Hospital or you were screening the films.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Right I screened the film. They said please go down
to Houston and screen the film. And it was my
lesson and acceptance. I had gone through my coke period.
I was done with it by this point. You know,
the coke period didn't last long, but boy, it was
an intense you know, you know, it was for all
of us. You know, at that time, Hollywood, the drivers
(21:53):
were giving you coke. So it was like, hey man,
you know, I'm done with this stuff. And I was
very sober, and I walked into this guy's room. I
think I've told you.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
The story, yeah, but I want Yeah, this is a
great story.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Though, it's the story. Well, so you know, I walked
into the room and there's a man sitting on his bed,
and Fay was turned away. He was facing the ball
over there. And I looked up on the wall behind
him and I said, but he was facing and there
was a serenity prayer, and I said, hey, man, that's
(22:27):
my favorite prayer. I didn't know what to say. I
wanted to create a conversation, and so God grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom
to know the difference. So, yeah, I love that prayer.
He says, without turning around, Well, sir, what's the most
important word? Well, I thought, he's a soldier, guy in combat,
(22:52):
it's got to be courage. He turned around, No, sir,
he had half face off acceptance. Acceptance. So that was
a huge level out of that film. Forget the film
for a second. That moment changed my life. Why did
(23:19):
it change your life? Well, because so many things in
my life, and it has over and over and over.
Every time I tell the story, I relive the idea
that we are all the same. That guy probably feels
the same way I do. He has. But I when
I get so self involved, when I think it's all
(23:39):
about me and poor me, or you know, I didn't
get that part, or I didn't you know whatever, and
I think of him and I go, no, sir, acceptance
it's an important thing. I mean, that is a key,
I think to having a good life and self forgiveness.
And this is so many, so many things, you know,
(24:01):
on a spiritual level, that that that that he taught me.
You know, show business didn't teach you that. No, it
doesn't doesn't know. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I mean, listen,
don't get me wrong. Show business has been good to
me and in a lot of ways, but it's taken
something too from me. It just for everybody pays a
(24:22):
price for fame, you know, everybody pays a little bit
of a price. It takes a little bit of your soul.
You just have to be aware of it. You have
to be aware of other people and what they feel.
And so often, I mean my father the one big
lesson I remember so well what he said to me.
We we just he wanted it was just had seen
the original Mash and we were walking on it, and
(24:45):
we saw the sin ramodome years ago and we walked
outside and we'd seen Mash. And then I didn't know
what my mom and dad would think of it, because
all we were smoking dope and Sally Callerron was you know,
it was really a great movie, great movie Robert Altman,
who's a friend who I did a movie with. But
(25:07):
my dad said, you know, the one thing you must
never do. I don't know why he said this that day,
because there was nothing to provoke it. He said, you
must not be indifferent and apathetic to the plight of others.
I think he was seeing some people walking down the
street who had less than other people, and he and
(25:27):
that's something that I felt. Can say that again, I
was so beautiful. Do not be indifferent. The one thing
he abhorred where people who were indifferent and apathetic to
the plight of others. My dad was the kind of
guy who he went to hospitals and read to people
(25:48):
who nobody went to visit on Sundays. And I didn't
find out about this till he was I think dying.
My mom told me, you know, they all saying do
something for somebody adult any money, good, yes, and don't
let something that you did. He did that. So I
think I've carried that forward in terms of my work,
especially in the documentary work that I do. Part of
(26:10):
the thing I look for and it's not negative what
I'm going to say or dark, but I do look
for the early childhood trauma. I guess it's because I
have it in myself, and so I looked to identify
the commonality that I have with the people that I'm
making films about, even if they're women. Yeah. Well I
(26:32):
did Linda Ronstad, which we're working on right now with Mirramax.
So it's just you know, she was a young Mexican
girl who wasn't allowed to speak Spanish none, slapping her
hand right, you know. Shame, shame, shame, shame, and nobody
(26:52):
knows the shame business like you, brother, Well, I think
it would be the opposites. You know, I think nobody
knows the shame business like you. You know, you're in
the business of helping people with shame. But I mean,
for for example, the Glenn Campbell no shame in the
game Johnny Cash when we make Walk the Line, he
was a dear friend. He had shame and his father
(27:13):
put the shame on him. But you know, his brother
was supposed to be the preacher and he was he
had to sing a song. Yeah, he did have to
sing songs and and you know, but it's it's like
his dad. He always felt his father didn't think the
right person die. You know, I want to add to this.
(27:37):
I want to stay with this thing.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
But I was talking to a friend, was asking who
my guest was, and I told me, so, I'm not
familiar with James's work. And I told them some of
the things you did, including the documentaries, and he's like, what, like,
how how did he all? He didn't He's a savvy guy.
And I said, well, do you have people Johnny Cash,
(28:02):
Lynn Campbell, Lennon Rods. I can go on and on,
and we're going to talk about it. They trust you Yeah,
they trust you man. Yeah, because you're trustworthy and you know,
you speak the language and somehow you've taken I mean
it's really powerful. Like how did how did you meet
Johnny Cash? Let's talk about that. Let's just start there.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I was directing Doctor Quinn Medicine woman. Right, This is
a cool story about John, my brother. He was doing
a show called Meestreus's Daughter. It was a mini series.
So Cash was driving down Laurel Canyon and my dad
had a middle production company and it was at Stacy
(28:44):
Keach Productions, and apparently John pulled his and we'd already
made the long writers, right, and so John pulls the car.
His bus has a bust to ever pull over and
he goes in and he says, I'm looking for Stacy Keach,
he said, and my dad said, well that's me. My
dad was just there with his secretary. He said, well,
(29:05):
I won't see your boys. He said, well, they're not here.
He said, well, mister Keats, could I talk to you
for a few minutes. He and my dad sat down
and talked for an hour, hour and a half. This
kind of guy John was, and to the day he died,
John would say, mister he called my mom when my
dad was sick. He called my mom. Yeah. I kind
(29:26):
of knew him before. And then by that point when
he started to do this Doctor Quinn show, he knew
that I was directing and I've been directing other things.
And he said, I'll do the show if James directs. Wow. Wow, right,
And he knew I was with Jane at the time. Yeah,
you know, and then we became really good friends. He said, Godfather,
(29:50):
he and Junior the Godfather are kids. Johnny my son
who you know names the little Man in Black. But
he asked me to make a walk, asked me to
do a story. And because he said to me, you know,
I've been asked to do this before. And he said,
I don't trust anybody in Hollywood. He said, they're not
(30:12):
going to They don't get me. Because he was a
very deep believer in God, but he wasn't He wasn't
a proselytizing type of man. He in fact, he had
one of those big churches down the street from where
he lived in Hendersonville, and he couldn't stand it. He
just thought they were exploiting people. But he would sit
down and when I would visit him, he'd read the
(30:34):
Bible with me. He'd say, well, look at this passage,
and he was. He taught me about different things in
the Bible. Yeah, you were great pals. I remember. And
then how long after his passing did the movie come out?
We thought John would die before June. John had been
suffering from Scheiderger. It's a very weird ailments. And I
(30:58):
mean I knew John so well that his skin literally
because he'd taken so many drugs, his skin was literally
peeling off his hand and he would ask me to
put it back on. Wow, that's how tight we were. Wow.
He was one of my teachers. And June couldn't have
been as sweet as she could be. But we thought
that John would pass first. And it was June, right,
(31:21):
And just a few weeks before he passed, John said
to me. He called and he said, I'm going to
see June soon. I think I said it at the
Golden Gloves we won the Golden Globe. June he said
to me, James, I'm worried. Why June she'd read the script.
She said, Vivian has a bigger part than I do.
I said, June, you're the protagonist. John is supposed to
(31:45):
the antagonist and the protagonist, but you're the true protagonist.
And when Reese want the Academy Award, I went see
June and we won the Golden Globe. I looked up
at this guy and I said, see, Jane, I told
you you're the one. Wow. And she's great. They're great people.
You must be very proud of that film. I am.
(32:06):
I'm very proud of I'm very I feel incredibly fortunate
that I got to work with all on all these
films because these people have influenced so many people's lives.
And you know, it's not and I know that in
a little part by carrying who they were and looking
at who they truly were, not the facade, not the
(32:29):
thing that they want you to see. It's when they
allow the curtain to go back. And you're right. They
trusted me. And I remember sitting in a hotel room
with John, you know, and he had told me some
stories about his uncle who was the sheriff in Arkansas
(32:49):
and the way they treated certain people and it was
not good. John his hands with his he was kind
of like a Parkinson's thing. He said, I can't put that,
he can't do that. I can't tell that, so I'm
not going to do that. I don't need to do that.
So we don't need to say that about your family.
(33:12):
You said it in the way you did tell dealt
with other people. You said it by the way you
lived your life. M You've made up for it. Did
you know what Keine was the guy? Yeah? I knew
he was the guy when I saw him do it.
When I first met him, I didn't know what to think.
I just knew the incredibly talented guy, really very interesting personality.
(33:39):
He did he did he didn't know it. Yeah, he
had the darkness of John exactly, and then Dan Reese
had the goodness of June.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
That's my favorite thing that you ever did. And I was,
you know, I was blessed to be with you when
you were making that.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah. Well we're working on the narrative film right now
and it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
It's going to be How did Ian Campbell come in
your consciousness?
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I as you know about we don walked the Line
and Julian Raymond, who's nominated for Academy Award for writing
a song I'm not going to miss you. He was
producing for Warner Brothers and I'd met a manager at
a party and my son, Johnny, who is a really
great musician. This guy was a music manager. I wanted
(34:24):
them to hear songs because I was just just curious
see what they thought, and they liked them. They thought, yeah,
this guy can really write songs, and so they sent
over this guy, Julian Raymond. By the way, we've done
five movies together now. At this point, he and I
became very close to Julian. He said, Hey, I'm producing
Glenn Campbell. Would you be interested in doing Glenn Campbell's story?
(34:49):
Said I don't think I want to do another biopic
at this point. In other ways, he says, no, I'm
not talking about that. He's doing a concert tour and
maybe just do a few shows. He's got alzheimer. So
I went what he's got what? Yeah, I was very
resistant to it. I took him six months to convince
(35:10):
me to do it, until finally one day he said,
Glenn is coming over to your house with his wife Kim,
and they want to meet you. You just meet him.
And he came in the house, Glenn and Kim, both
of them, and Johnny, my son, I think he was
fourteenth at the time, was walking across the living room.
(35:32):
He's got a guitar in his hand, and Glenn says, hey,
I played guitar. You want me to show you something,
And Johnny goes, wow, sure, and Glenn picks it up
and just shreds it, doing all these scales up and
there you know, and he says, my uncle Boo taught
me that you do that and you'll be really good. Now,
Glenn Kim was one of the greatest guitar players that
(35:54):
ever loved. Okay, So Johnny takes the guitar and he
goes back into his bedroom. It's interested and Kim goes, so, James,
we're here. We want to talk about you doing this
with us. And Glenn's got Alzheimer's. I don't got no Alzheimer's.
I got part timers. Immediately, I'm laughing like you. I'm like,
(36:19):
this guy's got a great sense of humor, which he did.
And unbelievable you are, and she says. And then Glenn
turns to Kim and he goes, when a man findeth
a good woman, he find it a good thing. Wow,
I found me a good thing, Kim. Glenn, James didn't
want to hear about you talking about me. And at
(36:39):
that point, Johnny comes walking out of the bedroom again.
He's got his guitar, and Glenn says, hey, I play guitar.
You want me to show you something? Oh wow. So
at that moment I got to see how much he
loved his wife, a great sense of humor, and he's
got Alzheimer's, and I went, I have to do this.
(37:00):
That was the moment when you realize that was really
we thought we were going to do five shows, turned
into one hundred and seventy one. Right, It changed my life.
And that show, that's what I meant, Nancy, you know all.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
That James Walk anybody, I mean, this is a absolute
must see. The scenes where Glenn is forgetting the lyrics
to his.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Songs and the audience finishes the lyrics and the.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Audience, I mean, that is to me one of the
most touching things I've ever seen. Yeah, tell the audience
we walked walked to the film and him and there
was some tough moments obviously.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, well Glenn. You know, Glenn didn't have a perfect
life by any means. By the time he was doing
this show, he was playing casinos and you know, I
mean Indian, you know Indian. It was funky what was
going on. But he was still Glenn Campbell and he
(38:02):
still had I could sing like a bird and play.
But critics were writing about him because when he would
forget his lyrics, they say he was drunk, because Glenn
had some problems with alcohol. For them, it was alcoholic.
And as soon as the audience realized no shame, and
he came out and said, I'll tell everybody what I have,
(38:24):
he said, he said, and I would always say there's
no shame in his game, the vibe in the audience
completely changed. So all of a sudden, he became human.
He was no longer Glenn Campbell star right. He was
Glenn Campbell, human being who's just like you and me. Right,
And that's the whole thing. Like I saw talking about
(38:46):
making films about these people, that's what we get to.
We get to they're just like you and me. And
so if I can tell the ad show the audience
their humanity and touch them, then I've done my job.
But ultimately I am the beneficiary of what they've taught me,
and so I guess that's what I look for. It
(39:08):
keeps thinking, well, what are they teaching me? Is I'm
doing this?
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Did I get this right, But he's going to get
a Lifetime Achievement awarded the Grammys. And on the way
he didn't know where it was at.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Glenn. Yeah, no, he didn't know where he was going.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
You're in with him, right, Yeah, you're going down to
the stables. We're going to the stables. Star He says,
where am I going? He said, we're going to go
get the lifetime achievement. I am I got a lifetime
in chievement works. Yeah, Glenn, he said, oh, that's nice.
Where am I going?
Speaker 1 (39:39):
The great story is, well, there's a lot of great stories.
But then how I got the name of the movie.
All right? Yeah, We're out at Trevor's house, who was
my partner on the film, Trevor Albert Trevor lived in Malibu.
His house burned down, just like mine. So that's why
I lived past tense. Anyway, He's sitting out on this
(40:01):
balcony's looking out in the ocean. You see the little
twinkles out there, little boats. Glenn goes, Hey, what's that?
Those are boats, Glenn, They're they're out there in the harbor. Oh, oh,
what have you been up to? I've been making a
movie about you. Glenn. Oh, what's that? Those are boats, Glenn?
(40:24):
They're out there, you know, they're they're they're anchored out there.
Oh well, this went on for What have you been
up to? I've been making a movie about you, Glenn?
This is about five ten minutes. Was just sitting there
and he was playing a little bit of his guitar.
What's that out there? Boats? Glenn? What have you been
(40:48):
up to? I'm making a movie about you. Well, I'll
be me. Wow, I went fuck fantastic, Well I'll be me,
And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Many audience, please watch this brilliant film, catching the spirit
of Glenn Campbell and bringing his family.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
It's just it's Greg Almond. That's good. Premiering in Austin
next week. Yeah, yeah I might. And Ronstadt that's one
of my favorites too. What do you want to talk about? Greg?
And Linda? What they want talk about about? I just
love Linda. Linda's story is incredible, and so is Greg's,
and and so's David Crosby, and so's Augie and some
(41:35):
of these other folks. Yeah, there's too many. I mean,
what do you do?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Which one you want to talk about? Well, we'll talk
about one more.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
I think Greg, I think Greg, especially to the community
that you, I think he's following you. I mean, I
think I sent it to you for a very specific reason. Yeah,
because I think that the movie really hopefully will help
everybody who struggles with addiction and give them a little
bit of hope. He says what he says in his
(42:01):
closing words, which I if you know, if I could
save one person from the hell I've been through, this
will all have been worth it. And drugs and alcohol.
That's all a lie, man, that's all a lie. Yeah.
It's a movie about obviously one of the greatest singers
of all time, one of the greatest bands of all time,
(42:21):
but it's also about early childhood trauma. You know. I
related when they asked me to make the movie, and
I said, so, I just you know, his brother died
when he was twenty one, twenty four. His brother was
twenty four and one of the greatest guitarists of all times,
of all time, right, Yeah, and they just blew up.
They're the biggest band in America. I mean, they were huge.
(42:45):
Seven marriages, fifteen rehounds, and he made it out, you know,
made it out. He made it out and those were
his words. It's like we got to see the journey
and he had a lot of issues, you know, with
his family and being a really shy guy, right, very shy.
He was very very similar personality young in a lot
(43:06):
of ways, see I. And obviously with the relationship with
his brother. So for me making the movie, I'm constantly
thinking about my own brother. And you know, it's that
thing you asked me about the Long writers, you know
that of the Wright brothers. You know, it's like I've
done movies about brothers infredible, you know. And he was
a little brother and his older brother was a big star,
(43:29):
and you know before Greg joined the band. But Greg,
I think is one of the greatest blues singers of
all time. And he was the other thing that I
loved about him, which you know, I was taught to
walk by a black woman, and my whole family was.
When I was a little boy, I lived in a
part of Texas where it was very segregated and I
(43:51):
didn't understand it, and I didn't like it. I would
ask my dad. I said, well, I can't salve and clean,
it makes dinner. Why can't she have dinner with us?
And so for the rest of my life. I've made
movies about out integrating about that trauma. It was passed on.
It's passed on to generations. You know, Racism is taught.
I'm not born with that shit, you know. So Greg,
(44:12):
he didn't see it race. His best friend was Chank
and he was talked to sing by all the black
singers and his mother. You know. In one of the scenes,
she comes home, Hank More is there and they met
him at they've been hearing him sing down the club
and they said, Hank, you want to come over to
the house. And and and they're sitting in the living room,
(44:33):
you know, they set up all this stuff, and the
mom comes in and she's freaked, what's the black guy
doing in the house? And she could come, come in
the kitchen. I want to talk to you. What's that
guy doing out there? She said, Hey, Mom, that's that's
like boor he thought black. He is a musician. Wow,
he was really colorblind.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah, deep in the South, deep deep in the South.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
It really resonated with me. So his he he was
just a deep deep and he wrote incredible songs. You
really get down into those lyrics that are pretty special.
But that I thought was for me as a filmmaker,
and something to look at his character. You know, all
of these people have that in common. Linda and uh
(45:19):
and Cash they were colored black. Do you know what else?
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I find a theme with you that I personally and
and these these great people, there's a real loyalty to
people that have been kind to them. They don't forget
that's true, no matter who it is in their lives. Yeah,
you are kind to everybody, people that have worked for you,
you know you. I mean, can we talk about your gardens?
We just go off topic a little bit of things.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
I mean, garden's kind to me. Yeah, I love gardening
my dad. When I was a kid, little boy, when
I would get punished, which was frequently, h I was,
you know, I was acting out a lot because of
what had happened to me as a kid. I was,
you know, so I got in trouble at school, got
(46:06):
in fights and stuff like that. I get punished by
pulling weeds in the garden. Little did my father know that.
As I was pulling the weeds, I go, this is
all the life that's going on here. And I was
fascinated with what was going on in the garden. Whether
I was, you know, dead heading roses or whatever. So
(46:31):
and I always found that the plants, you know, they
they loved being loved, and they gave love back to
you when you nurture tom m I remember seeing a
plaque once he says, you know, to be a gardener
is to be in heaven, you know. Okay. I always
found my church is the garden. You know. I like
studying religions, and I like I would often tell my children,
(46:55):
you know, what do you think of Catholicis things? I said,
I think they're all the same in some way or another.
I said, I said, what's the best language? I would
always use this, I said, do you like English? Do
you like French? So? What are they all for? To communicate?
And that's the same thing to me about religions. They're
trying to communicate with a higher power. I find my
higher power sometimes I can be in a church. When
(47:19):
we were working on this movie about Valdosta, which is
about it's a very black community. You love this little
film that we did, and I was with a guy
who a reverend who roaded with Martin Luther King. They
were both reverenced. He was a young reverend at the
time this guy so filled with God, you know, and
(47:40):
it was just beautiful. And you know, it was like
I find that in guard I find that in the garden.
I find what he was feeling. I find that and
especially like I'll see Nancy picking blueberries all these things
that And after the fire, you know, our house completely
burned down, but the garden some of a lot of
(48:01):
the trees the tops up and burned, and all the stairs,
the wooden stairs, but a lot of it survived. And
now I mean, I've rebuilt it. But the ashes made
the fruiting so powerful. There was so much fruit. It
was like there was God just saying, hey man, I'm
(48:23):
here and life will go on. We would literally rise
out of the ashes. Wow. And that was the message
to me. So, you know, so I go. So, I
don't know if I'm going to rebuild yet. I don't
know if I'm going to have time. You know, I
don't know if i'll have the when I say I
have time. I don't know if I'll be able to
(48:44):
wait out the five years it's going to think, but
my garden will certainly be incredible, more incredible than it's now.
And it's pretty incredible. It's really special.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
I think probably some of my favorite moments that we've
have as you walk me through your garden, tell me
about each thing that you're growing. You're so like childlike. Yeah,
and you know so much about it. You really know
about you.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
I could buy people, I go plant their gardens for them. Yeah,
I get off on it. It's like making a movie
to me. But it's like it's the gifts that it is.
It's the gift that keeps on giving. I see these
little right now, you know, the avocato freees, say, all
the tops of them burned. I thought, oh they're done.
They're pushing so much fruit right now. Wow, man, a little
(49:28):
tiny baby. You can see the little tiny seed, and
then all of a sudden there's a little avocado. And
then I said, oh my god. You know, and you
can see plants grow overnight. It's really weird sometimes when
you get into the solstice, you know, all of a
sudden that the sun and the moon and all the
stars they change and all of a sudden mm hmmm,
(49:49):
mm hmmm. And I think we are all human plants, okay,
And so if we nurture ourselves right, we take care
of ourselves correctly. Yeah, I think it helps. I talked
to the plants. My hero was Luthier Burbank was a
horital culture us and he actually created a spine. This
(50:12):
is a movie I really want to make. He created
a spineless cactus. It's a true story. Yeah, Yo, call
them a saint among the roses. And if you look
at the autobiography of Yogi se right there right, it's
dedicated to lose for Burbank, is it really? Yes?
Speaker 2 (50:30):
It is among the roses.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
He created a spineless cactus and part of it was
talking to this cactus to get it to He also
created eight hundred plants and vegetables. He and the church
shut him down because no God, nobody but God can
create plants and vegetables. And Burbank would say, well, what
if God's working through me? Wow? You know the hypocrisy
of certain religions and their their doctrines, it's not the
(50:56):
it's not the principles, it's the personalities truly in that
that that sense. And I would say that's probably true
for the Muslims and the you know, the Christian instead
of go crazy, you know, hissiatic Jews, they're so right
when it's when they carry they make it about their
personality instead of about what it's supposed to be about,
which is love. Right, So he talked to the it
(51:22):
was you know, the cactuses were the big fronds, so
he literally would rub his face against him, and there's
stories of him with the hundreds of thousands of needles
in his face, and eventually the cactus he would say,
drop your thorns, you can trust me. And eventually he
created a spinallest cactus. His dream was to end world
hunger by planting this and these deserts because the cactus
(51:46):
holds water, so then the cattle could forage and it
was spineless. They could eat the cacus and have water
and have nourishment. So I discovered this one of my
girlfri in high school. This boy said to me, you
should do Autuba and lose her bear bank. She says,
you should go. I was having a place in Mendocino
(52:08):
when I was really young, still in my twenties. I
discovered this guy and I went to his gardens in
Santa Rosa and there was this huge cactus plan and
on the outside you had grown up stornspa. It's where
people had carved in it. I think kids had come
(52:30):
in there and put their initials like graffa, oh wow,
and you go to the middle of it and you
touch it. It's like a touching a baby's ass, really smooth. Yeah,
so I love that. Man. It's a trippy story. But
it's a movie i'd like to make. I don't know
if there'll ever be an audience for it, But I
don't know if you can do the imitation game and
(52:51):
make it a success. I think you could do that.
I think you could do something there.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Listen, you've been in recovery for forty years, right, Yeah,
what's a great takeaway for the audience what you've learned?
I mean, you're such a student, you're I mean, what
are some great takeaways?
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Well, the first one is it's not was it is
and you can't take anything for granted, you know, no
matter how it's not about success and it's not about
and it's not about failure when you when you fall down.
We're human. We're human, and that's what you have to remember.
(53:31):
And you have to be able to forgive yourself for
whatever has happened, you know, whatever, Even if you're sitting
in jail and you've killed somebody, there is redemption of
the soul m M. But you've got to do the work.
You have to do the work on yourself, and you
have to carry the message the twelve step program. I'm
(53:53):
often reminded, you know, all right, it wasn't originally for alcoholics.
It was for everybody, those twelve steps, for everybody to
carry this message and all who suffer. Right, it's an
orderly way to live your life. And so taking inventory
upon yourself it's you know, it's not beating yourself up.
(54:15):
It's not shaming yourself. It's just looking at the truth,
you know, and as best you can. And then to
say you're sorry to somebody, to make amends. It heals you,
except when you hurt somebody or else. You don't want
to do that either. There's so many people who do
that shit, and they're doing it for themselves. No, you're
doing that to help the other guy. You're helping yourself,
(54:37):
you know. And then to carry the message, and to
carry the message by the way you live, by the
efforts that you make, not by the accomplishments that you have,
because that's a fucking trap. That accomplishment game is a
fucking traffic use my language, but it really is and
it can really mess you up.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah, okay, that's good man. Can we do some rapid fire.
I'll let you go home to Nancy.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Yeah I'm good man.
Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah you get yeah right. First film that made you
fall in love with movies?
Speaker 1 (55:12):
John Wayne and Searchers, Oh, Searchers, I'd say, Stanley Kubrick,
Doctor Strangelow.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Okay, the best advice you ever got from your brother, Stacy?
Speaker 1 (55:23):
The best advice I ever got from Stacy. Yes, I
now remember. I remember we were making The Right Brothers
and I was out there and the director was being
I guess I would Maybe I didn't do the lines
the way he wanted me to, and he was not
very kind to me. It's possible I didn't. I fucked
him up, and he said Stacy looked at me because
I was ready to lose my temper, because I have
(55:45):
a very bad temper sometimes. He said, hey man, Grace
under pressure. Oh wow, Grace under pressure. Keep it behind
your teeth.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Gray Center, or as we also know as A was
an agitator.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
It was an agitator. There it is Dodgers, What about them? Dodgers?
Greatest baseball game ever played was two nights ago.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Favorite line you've ever delivered on camera, poor little pooch.
What's the most inspiring person you've ever worked with?
Speaker 1 (56:21):
I would say the most inspiring person I didn't get
to work with is Colin Powell. Wow. The that I
met when I had time to timeless.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
One word that describes Hollywood today a mess, the secret
ingredient of a great film.
Speaker 1 (56:36):
Truth.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
If you've got dinner with any filmmaker living and gone.
Speaker 1 (56:40):
Who would it be? I would say cocked tall.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Favorite moment on a set you'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
Again. I think it was the vacation that scene, it
was just.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
Nothing about it. The most underrated actor you've ever worked with, Say.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
Reese, wows for this man. I think she can do
a lot more than she's doing. I think she's incredibly talented.
The thing that scares you the most me I mean
my my dear friend Ken Midlocke, who's a professional baseball guy.
He said, my mind is like a bad neighborhood. I
(57:21):
don't want to go in there by myself. You know,
it's like the voices that never stopped. You know.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
What's one word of advice she got to a young
artist today, don't give up? What's your personal definition of success.
Follow your heart a habit or ritual that keeps you grounded.
Claire mhmm. You go to film when you need inspiration,
(57:51):
The Godfather. Finish this sentence. Life's too short not to.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
Live out loud.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
Amen, brother, thank you, James. This is really special. I
really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
I enjoyed it. Time went by fast, Time went by fast.
You're a good man, Charlie Brown.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
The Sino Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People and twenty
eighth av Our. Lead producer is Keith Carnlick. Our executive
producer is Lindsay Hoffman. The marketing lead is Ashley Weaver.
Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week.
I have a critic that lives out here. I know
you do you know? And the critic talks to me,
and finally I have to say, hey, fuck you man, right,
you know, thanks for sharing. Kevin Klein and that we
were carrying. We had to carry a king, a very
large actor whose name I'm not going to mention. He
was so large that the king's throne that we were
(00:20):
carrying broke on the stage. Kevin and I had to
improvise the whole scene around it.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Today on The Sino Show, we sit down with the
man who has lived a dozen lives in one lifetime.
He's an actor or director, a producer, a storyteller with
the heart that beats for truth. James Keach has spent
his career walking the line, from writing with his brother
in The Long Riders, which as far as I'm concerned,
is one of the best westerns ever producing the Oscar
(00:52):
winning walk the Line and capturing raw humanity, and Glenn
Campbell's I'll Be Me, which is to me one of
the most honest portrayals of love, loss and resilience ever
put the film.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
I can't wait to talk about that.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
What I love about James is the why he doesn't
just make movies. He makes mirrors, stories that help us
see ourselves more clearly. So today we're diving into craft, purpose, legacy,
and what it means to stay true in industry built
on illusion. This is my brother James Keach, living out loud,
straight from the heart on the SINO Show. Welcome brother, Hello,
(01:29):
I'm welcome. Thanks oh man, I love you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
You too, brother. Yeah, yeah, I love you too. I
know you do. Man. My whole family. Yeah, so there's
your whole family. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
So should we just start? Where were you born, young man?
What where were you born? I don't know, you know,
I was born in New York. You're born or now?
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah? Queens, Queens. In my first ten years in Texas
with my grandmother, and so my feeling is like I
come from a small town and my dad was in
show business. My brother was in show business. So we
lived out in California, but they Parkednew there because he
was doing a show called Tales of the Texas Rangers.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's in the blood, it's in the blood. Yeah, Mom, Dad.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Mom, Dad. My dad and mom met at Northwestern. My
dad was an actor. At one time he had thirty
forty national commercials on the air. Wow, he was Clarence
for he was a sweetheart. My dad, you know, childhood,
the depression. His dad died when he was nine, his
mom when he was eighteen. My mom came from Texas
oil money. So it was totally the opposite. And tell
(02:35):
us about young James Keach, Young James Keach, Well, my
childhood was interesting, you know, it was as you know,
you know my childhood. Yeah, there was some tough patches. Yeah. Yeah,
it wasn't because of my parents. It was because of
your parents were nothing but kind and yeah, but they
couldn't deal with it. It was the time when the
(02:57):
me too movement wasn't in effect for your friend's mothers. Yeah,
and little boys. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
So that's the most tactful way I can put this,
and tactful it is. And that obviously had a massive
imprint on your life.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, sure did. And all the relationships I've had
with women.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
If you don't mind, what do you think has been
the greatest impact from.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
That in the ultimate sense of working, I mean the
effect that it had on my life. I think whatever
happened had happened before. Look, I'll just be honest. I
was molested when I was a kid, So, yeah, it
happened before I was molested by a female. Yeah, by
a female, which you know, so often people think, well,
(03:42):
this is not something that's it's cool young young boys.
Well I was twelve, thirteen years old, so I wasn't
eighteen years old like in the reader or nineteen, ye
know they you know, Yeah, I was a little young
for this, and I didn't really know how to deal
with it. But I think it also came from the
fact that my mom, who I loved very much much,
came from South Texas and did she her parents divorced
(04:05):
when she was very little, and she wore the scarlet letter.
I don't know if you know that story, the scarlet letter.
They put an adulter on her dad, Yeah, and she
ran off with he ran off with somebody. And so anyway,
she was very, very very hard for her to deal
with her feelings, and so she masked all her feelings.
(04:27):
So when this happened to me, she did not want
the world to know about it, and my dad didn't either.
Today it would have been a big deal, you know,
But then my dad was in the business and this
other person husband was definitely in the business. In a
big way. So so hide all your feelings, don't let
(04:49):
the world know what's going on, and just eat it,
eat it. That had a big effect on me, and
so secrets and hiding was something that I was taught
by my parents. Right, it's a little confusing, you know.
So you go through your life and when you get
into a relationship, it's very difficult two for me anyway,
(05:17):
to be straight up about it when you have a problem.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
And I think it's important to say that it wasn't
a one off. It was to continue.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Yeah three years, three years, so right, it's funny, you know.
And during my lifetime I've seen this happening. Prosecutions take
place and people go to jail, women go to jail
for doing something like this. I've never been able to
really process it. I always felt bad for her. She
was alcoholic, she had an abusive husband. But for a
(05:51):
twelve year old to think they're saving somebody is yeah,
there's a false loyalty. Yeah. Yeah, it's very confusing, you know,
but that's it's it's what happened. I've never talked about
this publicly.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I know you haven't and I wasn't. And I think
he might help.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Some people though maybe maybe well, you know, there's a
saying that you were only as sick as our secrets,
and yeah, this happened. That's not who it's not who
I am now, No, you know it's but it did
have a profound effect on me throughout my life.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
James, when did you know that you were good as
an actor? When did that?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Were you performing? Young? Well, when I was in high school,
I was a football player. I was an athlete more
than anything, you know. And my brother Stacy, who pretty
he's a great guy. I just saw him in a
movie with George Clooney and we saw it last night.
It's called Joe Kelly. It's really good Joe Kelly. Yeah,
(06:48):
he plays Yeah, he plays Clooney's dad. And George is
such a good guy. And Stacey's a great actor anyway,
So it was my brother who said, you're the actor,
You're you should be the one. My brother was born
of the cleft pallett. So and my dad was an
actor and so and uh he he absolutely uh doted
(07:11):
on my brother. He had he had five or six
operations on his cleft palette and so, and he taught
him Shakespeare in order to speak properly, because you know
people withal that a little bit. And and my mom
and dad always said, well, he was born perfectly, there's
nothing wrong with him.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
They taught him Shakespeare. Amazing, you had dad had the
kind of wisdom.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, my dad was very cool, incredible, and that's that.
And and so my brother, we both were shakespeare and actors.
You know, both you drama school guys, but he Stacey
was extraordinarily good at Shakespeare and has played every major
part you can play, you know. Wow. So yeah, So
would you study acting at Northwestern? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
And then you got into Yale?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah? And what was that like? Oh? It was it
was interesting. It was good. I remember I was at
Yale and Martin Luther King was killed and the riots
and it was very interesting. During those times, Yale was
a hotbed reverend. Yeah, what was your first big break? Oh?
(08:18):
I was. I was at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
I was carrying spears literally, it was next to Kevin
kleinb Oh. Yeah, it was a it was called The
War of the Roses. And I had an agent. I
auditioned for a movie called Corky and uh uh and
it was an MGM movie and Bruce Geller, who created
(08:39):
Mission Impossible, was the producer, and they flew me out
to California literally was carrying Spears and uh, I got
the part in the movie. And Joe Papp, who when
the New York Shakespeare Festival was really was not happy
that I would take a part in the movie and
not Carrie Spears. Wow, huh, I mean, I tell your
(09:02):
that's a funny story of Kevin Klein and that we
were carrying. We had to carry a king, a very
Laura Jacker whose name I'm not going to mention, but
he was so large that the king's throne that we
were carrying broke on the stage. Kevin and I had
to improvise the whole thing around it. So I came
(09:24):
to California and let's offer this part, and was offered
a lot of money. And then about two weeks later,
after I've let the left the Shakespeare Festival, my agent
called at the time and said, James, they've changed the
head of the studio and they no longer want you
to play the part because you don't have a name.
You know, they wanted to give it to somebody who's
(09:45):
got a bigger name than you do. And I didn't
know what to say, but they have to pay you,
but they got to pay you. I said, oh, well, okay,
Well what should I do? She said, well, I don't know,
that's up to you. And I said, they offered you
the second lead. I said, after reading it, okay, okay,
(10:07):
I mean I had I was carrying spears, you know,
and they still had to pay me. I just wanted
to act, you know. And about two weeks later then
I drove to California. Think I'm getting ready to go
to Batham. As I got here, I was with an
agency at that time called CMA, which later became my CM.
And she said, oh, I've got bad news for you.
(10:30):
They don't want you to play a second party. They
want you to play the third the third lead. They'll
offer you the third lead, but they still have to
pay you. And I said, well what should I do?
And she said, well, what kind of a man are you? So?
What does that mean? She said? What are you going
to let him walk over you like that? I said, no,
if you think I should do it, I won't do it.
(10:51):
They still have to pay me, right, Yeah. I never
heard from her again. I got the money. She never
sent me out another thing. Wow, So that was my
first Hollywood break. Welcome to Hollywood. Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
So were you partying then?
Speaker 1 (11:11):
No? Wh I smoked now but wait here and there straight,
I was smoking grass. But yeah, none of the bad
stuff that came later.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
That well you'll tell me where to interject that.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, that came later. But what walk me? So old?
Are you now?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
So you're in twenty five twenty six?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah about that one. No, I was a little younger
than that, twenty twenty four, twenty five?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
And are you like?
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Fuck? Am I going to make it as an actor? Like?
I never thought about that.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
What were you thinking then? What was going through your head?
Were you happy?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
What was Yeah? I I've always been a little no
believe them. I always knew that I was good at acting.
I mean, I've always been very self deprecating. You know.
It's like I don't know other people telling me I've
done a good job, but I don't ever I never
really I just do it, you know. And it's like
(12:05):
I said, doing this, I have a critic that lives
out here, you know, and the critic talks to me,
and finally I have to say, hey, fuck you man,
you know, thanks for sharing, you know, I think that's
what I always tell it. When I direct actors, and
you know I've dot a lot of that, I always
tell him to talk to the critic and tell him
to be quiet, to fuck off. My brother, however, taught
(12:28):
me something very interesting when I first started acting, because
when the camera was pointed to me for the first time.
I mean, it's one thing to be on the stage.
You know, you're with you. You get rehearsals and rehearsals
and rehearsals, so you're ready for it. When you're a
movie acting, that's not the case most of the time.
But my brother, I said, how do you get over
that camera being there? And he showed me a trick
(12:48):
that he used. He said, I think good morning. Those days,
the cameras were all Mitchell's, and you say, good morning, Mitch.
How are you today? How are you feeling? We're gonna
have a good day, you and me. I love that. Wow?
Did it work? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:02):
When did you get after that? You got paid? And
then what happens next? You landed something right?
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah? I went back to I went back to New
York and I started my brother. The next thing happened
is I did a movie with my brother It was
called The Right Brothers Orville and Wilbur's considered one of
the cop movies on PBS. So could they called it
one of the PBS classics that Nancy and I my wife,
current wife, just out of curiosity. She tuned into it.
(13:30):
And I was really young and embraced in anyway, and
there's I played Orville and my brother played Wilver. And
it was at that time I started thinking about playing
Jesse James. And I go from the Right brothers to
the wrong brothers, you know, so so or and or
Wilver couldn't have been more opposite than Jesse James James.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
It was so you started thinking, like, this would be
a great character. I want to play him.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah, I'd always thought this story was great, you know.
And uh so I created a country Western musical. You know.
So it was a musical when I started, so I
was really into music and playing music and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Wait, wait, how I didn't know that part about that?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
It was called a bandit Kings, and uh so we
did it off Broadway at Barry Lane Theater.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And then how the fuck did you make that movie
with all the brothers I was?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I then got a part I came back to California
and I got a part in Hurricane with Maya Ferrell
and uh, which is just kind of a cool story
in and of itself. This is this is the opposite
of losing your job the way I did the first
time I auditioned for this part in the Hurricane. H
(14:45):
Jan Troll worked with Ingarden, Burgan Spinn. Nick Fist was
Inkbarkin Bergman's camera man. He was the cinematographer. Dino Dela
Reentis was producing it. I came into the office and
I remember Mike McLain was the casting record who nobody's
going to remember, but he was a cool guy. And
Dino is sitting at this really huge desk. Dina was
(15:09):
not a big guy. And he's sitting there and he's counting.
He's got a roll of money and he's counting one
hundred dollars bills and he looks up and he goes,
he's a perfect make him a deal. I went, that's it.
He's just as Mike mclin'son, shut up and get out
of here. Wow. I was on my way to Bora Bora.
(15:34):
It was in Bora Bora. The producer of that movie
was a guy named Tim Zenneman. And he says, so,
what are you working on right now? I said, we're
writing a screenplay for this thing called you know, it
was either Jesse James or the Bandit Kings. And he said,
and my brother and I got the Carroting brothers and
(15:55):
maybe the Bridges brothers. I mean, we're all kind of
tight with each other. We kind of grew up with
the Herodians her dads knew each other. Wow, quits to you.
I didn't know then know them. No, But Dennis and
I actually are still best friends all the time. I
see him all the time, Tim, So that sounds really cool.
He said, can I read it? I said yeah, And
(16:16):
he said, I'm gonna give it to a friend of mine.
Oh yeah, who's that? He said? Walter Hill? Yeah? What
at that time? What did Walter Hill do? He had
just done The Warriors.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
The Warriors, that's right, Wrior right.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Wow, he's a great guy, a great film director. Wow.
And he nailed it. He nailed it, he nailed it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Why is that such a spectacular film? I mean, it
really well, A lot of.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
It has to do with Walter, But there is something
unspoken when you have two guys that have known each
other their whole life, like my brother and I obviously's
seven years older than I have. You don't have to
say things. We look at each other and it's there.
The chemistry is and and all the all of us
there was. It was a familial thing. So this whole
(17:04):
idea of a band of brothers, well, we definitely were that.
When somebody knows you that intimately, you know and you
say the words I love you to the guy, it's real.
There's something was very real about that that whole experience
with all of us, and we were we're very close
to this day, except for Randy and Dennis, which I
feel bad about.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
That's another I don't think you could ever make a
movie like that ever again, can you? I don't think
that happens again. Brothers like that. I just don't see
that ever happening. You really capture something magical that Yeah, Wow,
what's the last time you saw it?
Speaker 1 (17:38):
It's been a while a while. Yeah, I have other
people that see it's on TV quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah.
And then and Dennis still calls me Jesse. He jokingly
says I helped make his career. Said, how's that mean?
So he broke my nose. We we had a fight
scene on the on the river, you know, and I
still say he slipped. He said, you he reached out
(18:01):
too far and I broke his nose.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Acting wise, what are you most proud of?
Speaker 1 (18:07):
That's a good question. I don't know. Yeah, you know,
I did a lot of comedies too, back in the day.
I was with a young film director today and he
was saying he had all the films that I'd done
on Blu Ray and he was talking, you know, he
was reminding me of scenes that I had forgotten about,
whether it's wildcats or moving violations or vacation. And I
(18:29):
think vacation is one of those scenes that's it says
it all in one scene, you know, seeing I do
with Chevy about the dog, you know, and it's it's
considered one of the classic scenes in comedy. And it's
just it was really weird that day because I remember
I got off the plane. It was in the Four
(18:49):
Corners and Harold Raymonds, who I oh, here he was.
He was directing it and he and I had been
working on a movie that was one of the writers
on called Been Dangerous. It was a richial idea about
security guards, John Candy, John Candy. So he said, hey, James,
come on down do this part for me. And I said, okay,
(19:12):
now he said, just do me, just do me a favor.
You know. I got a lot of work from that part. Anyway,
I got off the plane in Durango and I remember
people were just freaked out. When I got to the
set and I said, what's going on? He said, Vic
(19:32):
Morrow had just died and it was the night the
night before and this little Vietnamese boy was killed, and
John Lanison told the helicopter. Anyway, I just remember that
day very well. And part of that relief from that
day was playing in this comedy scene for both Chevy
(19:52):
and I, you know, and we had to just channel
something else because everybody was so freaked out because we
were doing the film Warner Brothers the same studio.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
When did you make the leap into directing?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
And I did a movie called It was one of
the first USA movies USA television, and it was called
The Forgotten and it won a lot of awards. It
was about Vietnam guys, and it was about you know.
At that time, there was some speculation that we had
(20:26):
basically tipped off Vietnamese that some of our guys were
coming in. There were the Paris Peaks hosts were going on,
and we had guys going in undercover to do some stuff,
and there was a whole collusion that they thought was
going on, and it was about The movie was about
our guys finding out that our government had betrayed them
(20:52):
and they were going in on an operation and they
were sacrificing our own guys to show good faith. It
won all sorts of awards, and I did it with
my brother and Keith Carrodine and Steve rails Back and
had pretty good actors at the time. Wo that's the story.
(21:13):
I told you. It won this the Veteran's Award or something.
It was. It was really hardy. It was a really
good film. You're proud of that movie. I'm very proud
of that film. Yeah. But even more so, I got
one of the great lessons of my life when I
went to the VA.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Hospital or you were screening the films.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Right I screened the film. They said please go down
to Houston and screen the film. And it was my
lesson and acceptance. I had gone through my coke period.
I was done with it by this point. You know,
the coke period didn't last long, but boy, it was
an intense you know, you know, it was for all
of us. You know, at that time, Hollywood, the drivers
(21:53):
were giving you coke. So it was like, hey man,
you know, I'm done with this stuff. And I was
very sober, and I walked into this guy's room. I
think I've told you.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
The story, yeah, but I want Yeah, this is a
great story.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Though, it's the story. Well, so you know, I walked
into the room and there's a man sitting on his bed,
and Fay was turned away. He was facing the ball
over there. And I looked up on the wall behind
him and I said, but he was facing and there
was a serenity prayer, and I said, hey, man, that's
(22:27):
my favorite prayer. I didn't know what to say. I
wanted to create a conversation, and so God grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom
to know the difference. So, yeah, I love that prayer.
He says, without turning around, Well, sir, what's the most
important word? Well, I thought, he's a soldier, guy in combat,
(22:52):
it's got to be courage. He turned around, No, sir,
he had half face off acceptance. Acceptance. So that was
a huge level out of that film. Forget the film
for a second. That moment changed my life. Why did
(23:19):
it change your life? Well, because so many things in
my life, and it has over and over and over.
Every time I tell the story, I relive the idea
that we are all the same. That guy probably feels
the same way I do. He has. But I when
I get so self involved, when I think it's all
(23:39):
about me and poor me, or you know, I didn't
get that part, or I didn't you know whatever, and
I think of him and I go, no, sir, acceptance
it's an important thing. I mean, that is a key,
I think to having a good life and self forgiveness.
And this is so many, so many things, you know,
(24:01):
on a spiritual level, that that that that he taught me.
You know, show business didn't teach you that. No, it
doesn't doesn't know. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I mean, listen,
don't get me wrong. Show business has been good to
me and in a lot of ways, but it's taken
something too from me. It just for everybody pays a
(24:22):
price for fame, you know, everybody pays a little bit
of a price. It takes a little bit of your soul.
You just have to be aware of it. You have
to be aware of other people and what they feel.
And so often, I mean my father the one big
lesson I remember so well what he said to me.
We we just he wanted it was just had seen
the original Mash and we were walking on it, and
(24:45):
we saw the sin ramodome years ago and we walked
outside and we'd seen Mash. And then I didn't know
what my mom and dad would think of it, because
all we were smoking dope and Sally Callerron was you know,
it was really a great movie, great movie Robert Altman,
who's a friend who I did a movie with. But
(25:07):
my dad said, you know, the one thing you must
never do. I don't know why he said this that day,
because there was nothing to provoke it. He said, you
must not be indifferent and apathetic to the plight of others.
I think he was seeing some people walking down the
street who had less than other people, and he and
(25:27):
that's something that I felt. Can say that again, I
was so beautiful. Do not be indifferent. The one thing
he abhorred where people who were indifferent and apathetic to
the plight of others. My dad was the kind of
guy who he went to hospitals and read to people
(25:48):
who nobody went to visit on Sundays. And I didn't
find out about this till he was I think dying.
My mom told me, you know, they all saying do
something for somebody adult any money, good, yes, and don't
let something that you did. He did that. So I
think I've carried that forward in terms of my work,
especially in the documentary work that I do. Part of
(26:10):
the thing I look for and it's not negative what
I'm going to say or dark, but I do look
for the early childhood trauma. I guess it's because I
have it in myself, and so I looked to identify
the commonality that I have with the people that I'm
making films about, even if they're women. Yeah. Well I
(26:32):
did Linda Ronstad, which we're working on right now with Mirramax.
So it's just you know, she was a young Mexican
girl who wasn't allowed to speak Spanish none, slapping her
hand right, you know. Shame, shame, shame, shame, and nobody
(26:52):
knows the shame business like you, brother, Well, I think
it would be the opposites. You know, I think nobody
knows the shame business like you. You know, you're in
the business of helping people with shame. But I mean,
for for example, the Glenn Campbell no shame in the
game Johnny Cash when we make Walk the Line, he
was a dear friend. He had shame and his father
(27:13):
put the shame on him. But you know, his brother
was supposed to be the preacher and he was he
had to sing a song. Yeah, he did have to
sing songs and and you know, but it's it's like
his dad. He always felt his father didn't think the
right person die. You know, I want to add to this.
(27:37):
I want to stay with this thing.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
But I was talking to a friend, was asking who
my guest was, and I told me, so, I'm not
familiar with James's work. And I told them some of
the things you did, including the documentaries, and he's like, what, like,
how how did he all? He didn't He's a savvy guy.
And I said, well, do you have people Johnny Cash,
(28:02):
Lynn Campbell, Lennon Rods. I can go on and on,
and we're going to talk about it. They trust you Yeah,
they trust you man. Yeah, because you're trustworthy and you know,
you speak the language and somehow you've taken I mean
it's really powerful. Like how did how did you meet
Johnny Cash? Let's talk about that. Let's just start there.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I was directing Doctor Quinn Medicine woman. Right, This is
a cool story about John, my brother. He was doing
a show called Meestreus's Daughter. It was a mini series.
So Cash was driving down Laurel Canyon and my dad
had a middle production company and it was at Stacy
(28:44):
Keach Productions, and apparently John pulled his and we'd already
made the long writers, right, and so John pulls the car.
His bus has a bust to ever pull over and
he goes in and he says, I'm looking for Stacy Keach,
he said, and my dad said, well that's me. My
dad was just there with his secretary. He said, well,
(29:05):
I won't see your boys. He said, well, they're not here.
He said, well, mister Keats, could I talk to you
for a few minutes. He and my dad sat down
and talked for an hour, hour and a half. This
kind of guy John was, and to the day he died,
John would say, mister he called my mom when my
dad was sick. He called my mom. Yeah. I kind
(29:26):
of knew him before. And then by that point when
he started to do this Doctor Quinn show, he knew
that I was directing and I've been directing other things.
And he said, I'll do the show if James directs. Wow. Wow, right,
And he knew I was with Jane at the time. Yeah,
you know, and then we became really good friends. He said, Godfather,
(29:50):
he and Junior the Godfather are kids. Johnny my son
who you know names the little Man in Black. But
he asked me to make a walk, asked me to
do a story. And because he said to me, you know,
I've been asked to do this before. And he said,
I don't trust anybody in Hollywood. He said, they're not
(30:12):
going to They don't get me. Because he was a
very deep believer in God, but he wasn't He wasn't
a proselytizing type of man. He in fact, he had
one of those big churches down the street from where
he lived in Hendersonville, and he couldn't stand it. He
just thought they were exploiting people. But he would sit
down and when I would visit him, he'd read the
(30:34):
Bible with me. He'd say, well, look at this passage,
and he was. He taught me about different things in
the Bible. Yeah, you were great pals. I remember. And
then how long after his passing did the movie come out?
We thought John would die before June. John had been
suffering from Scheiderger. It's a very weird ailments. And I
(30:58):
mean I knew John so well that his skin literally
because he'd taken so many drugs, his skin was literally
peeling off his hand and he would ask me to
put it back on. Wow, that's how tight we were. Wow.
He was one of my teachers. And June couldn't have
been as sweet as she could be. But we thought
that John would pass first. And it was June, right,
(31:21):
And just a few weeks before he passed, John said
to me. He called and he said, I'm going to
see June soon. I think I said it at the
Golden Gloves we won the Golden Globe. June he said
to me, James, I'm worried. Why June she'd read the script.
She said, Vivian has a bigger part than I do.
I said, June, you're the protagonist. John is supposed to
(31:45):
the antagonist and the protagonist, but you're the true protagonist.
And when Reese want the Academy Award, I went see
June and we won the Golden Globe. I looked up
at this guy and I said, see, Jane, I told
you you're the one. Wow. And she's great. They're great people.
You must be very proud of that film. I am.
(32:06):
I'm very proud of I'm very I feel incredibly fortunate
that I got to work with all on all these
films because these people have influenced so many people's lives.
And you know, it's not and I know that in
a little part by carrying who they were and looking
at who they truly were, not the facade, not the
(32:29):
thing that they want you to see. It's when they
allow the curtain to go back. And you're right. They
trusted me. And I remember sitting in a hotel room
with John, you know, and he had told me some
stories about his uncle who was the sheriff in Arkansas
(32:49):
and the way they treated certain people and it was
not good. John his hands with his he was kind
of like a Parkinson's thing. He said, I can't put that,
he can't do that. I can't tell that, so I'm
not going to do that. I don't need to do that.
So we don't need to say that about your family.
(33:12):
You said it in the way you did tell dealt
with other people. You said it by the way you
lived your life. M You've made up for it. Did
you know what Keine was the guy? Yeah? I knew
he was the guy when I saw him do it.
When I first met him, I didn't know what to think.
I just knew the incredibly talented guy, really very interesting personality.
(33:39):
He did he did he didn't know it. Yeah, he
had the darkness of John exactly, and then Dan Reese
had the goodness of June.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
That's my favorite thing that you ever did. And I was,
you know, I was blessed to be with you when
you were making that.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah. Well we're working on the narrative film right now
and it's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
It's going to be How did Ian Campbell come in
your consciousness?
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I as you know about we don walked the Line
and Julian Raymond, who's nominated for Academy Award for writing
a song I'm not going to miss you. He was
producing for Warner Brothers and I'd met a manager at
a party and my son, Johnny, who is a really
great musician. This guy was a music manager. I wanted
(34:24):
them to hear songs because I was just just curious
see what they thought, and they liked them. They thought, yeah,
this guy can really write songs, and so they sent
over this guy, Julian Raymond. By the way, we've done
five movies together now. At this point, he and I
became very close to Julian. He said, Hey, I'm producing
Glenn Campbell. Would you be interested in doing Glenn Campbell's story?
(34:49):
Said I don't think I want to do another biopic
at this point. In other ways, he says, no, I'm
not talking about that. He's doing a concert tour and
maybe just do a few shows. He's got alzheimer. So
I went what he's got what? Yeah, I was very
resistant to it. I took him six months to convince
(35:10):
me to do it, until finally one day he said,
Glenn is coming over to your house with his wife Kim,
and they want to meet you. You just meet him.
And he came in the house, Glenn and Kim, both
of them, and Johnny, my son, I think he was
fourteenth at the time, was walking across the living room.
(35:32):
He's got a guitar in his hand, and Glenn says, hey,
I played guitar. You want me to show you something,
And Johnny goes, wow, sure, and Glenn picks it up
and just shreds it, doing all these scales up and
there you know, and he says, my uncle Boo taught
me that you do that and you'll be really good. Now,
Glenn Kim was one of the greatest guitar players that
(35:54):
ever loved. Okay, So Johnny takes the guitar and he
goes back into his bedroom. It's interested and Kim goes, so, James,
we're here. We want to talk about you doing this
with us. And Glenn's got Alzheimer's. I don't got no Alzheimer's.
I got part timers. Immediately, I'm laughing like you. I'm like,
(36:19):
this guy's got a great sense of humor, which he did.
And unbelievable you are, and she says. And then Glenn
turns to Kim and he goes, when a man findeth
a good woman, he find it a good thing. Wow,
I found me a good thing, Kim. Glenn, James didn't
want to hear about you talking about me. And at
(36:39):
that point, Johnny comes walking out of the bedroom again.
He's got his guitar, and Glenn says, hey, I play guitar.
You want me to show you something? Oh wow. So
at that moment I got to see how much he
loved his wife, a great sense of humor, and he's
got Alzheimer's, and I went, I have to do this.
(37:00):
That was the moment when you realize that was really
we thought we were going to do five shows, turned
into one hundred and seventy one. Right, It changed my life.
And that show, that's what I meant, Nancy, you know all.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
That James Walk anybody, I mean, this is a absolute
must see. The scenes where Glenn is forgetting the lyrics
to his.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Songs and the audience finishes the lyrics and the.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Audience, I mean, that is to me one of the
most touching things I've ever seen. Yeah, tell the audience
we walked walked to the film and him and there
was some tough moments obviously.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, well Glenn. You know, Glenn didn't have a perfect
life by any means. By the time he was doing
this show, he was playing casinos and you know, I
mean Indian, you know Indian. It was funky what was
going on. But he was still Glenn Campbell and he
(38:02):
still had I could sing like a bird and play.
But critics were writing about him because when he would
forget his lyrics, they say he was drunk, because Glenn
had some problems with alcohol. For them, it was alcoholic.
And as soon as the audience realized no shame, and
he came out and said, I'll tell everybody what I have,
(38:24):
he said, he said, and I would always say there's
no shame in his game, the vibe in the audience
completely changed. So all of a sudden, he became human.
He was no longer Glenn Campbell star right. He was
Glenn Campbell, human being who's just like you and me. Right,
And that's the whole thing. Like I saw talking about
(38:46):
making films about these people, that's what we get to.
We get to they're just like you and me. And
so if I can tell the ad show the audience
their humanity and touch them, then I've done my job.
But ultimately I am the beneficiary of what they've taught me,
and so I guess that's what I look for. It
(39:08):
keeps thinking, well, what are they teaching me? Is I'm
doing this?
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Did I get this right, But he's going to get
a Lifetime Achievement awarded the Grammys. And on the way
he didn't know where it was at.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Glenn. Yeah, no, he didn't know where he was going.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
You're in with him, right, Yeah, you're going down to
the stables. We're going to the stables. Star He says,
where am I going? He said, we're going to go
get the lifetime achievement. I am I got a lifetime
in chievement works. Yeah, Glenn, he said, oh, that's nice.
Where am I going?
Speaker 1 (39:39):
The great story is, well, there's a lot of great stories.
But then how I got the name of the movie.
All right? Yeah, We're out at Trevor's house, who was
my partner on the film, Trevor Albert Trevor lived in Malibu.
His house burned down, just like mine. So that's why
I lived past tense. Anyway, He's sitting out on this
(40:01):
balcony's looking out in the ocean. You see the little
twinkles out there, little boats. Glenn goes, Hey, what's that?
Those are boats, Glenn, They're they're out there in the harbor. Oh, oh,
what have you been up to? I've been making a
movie about you. Glenn. Oh, what's that? Those are boats, Glenn?
(40:24):
They're out there, you know, they're they're they're anchored out there.
Oh well, this went on for What have you been
up to? I've been making a movie about you, Glenn?
This is about five ten minutes. Was just sitting there
and he was playing a little bit of his guitar.
What's that out there? Boats? Glenn? What have you been
(40:48):
up to? I'm making a movie about you. Well, I'll
be me. Wow, I went fuck fantastic, Well I'll be me,
And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Many audience, please watch this brilliant film, catching the spirit
of Glenn Campbell and bringing his family.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
It's just it's Greg Almond. That's good. Premiering in Austin
next week. Yeah, yeah I might. And Ronstadt that's one
of my favorites too. What do you want to talk about? Greg?
And Linda? What they want talk about about? I just
love Linda. Linda's story is incredible, and so is Greg's,
and and so's David Crosby, and so's Augie and some
(41:35):
of these other folks. Yeah, there's too many. I mean,
what do you do?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Which one you want to talk about? Well, we'll talk
about one more.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
I think Greg, I think Greg, especially to the community
that you, I think he's following you. I mean, I
think I sent it to you for a very specific reason. Yeah,
because I think that the movie really hopefully will help
everybody who struggles with addiction and give them a little
bit of hope. He says what he says in his
(42:01):
closing words, which I if you know, if I could
save one person from the hell I've been through, this
will all have been worth it. And drugs and alcohol.
That's all a lie, man, that's all a lie. Yeah.
It's a movie about obviously one of the greatest singers
of all time, one of the greatest bands of all time,
(42:21):
but it's also about early childhood trauma. You know. I
related when they asked me to make the movie, and
I said, so, I just you know, his brother died
when he was twenty one, twenty four. His brother was
twenty four and one of the greatest guitarists of all times,
of all time, right, Yeah, and they just blew up.
They're the biggest band in America. I mean, they were huge.
(42:45):
Seven marriages, fifteen rehounds, and he made it out, you know,
made it out. He made it out and those were
his words. It's like we got to see the journey
and he had a lot of issues, you know, with
his family and being a really shy guy, right, very shy.
He was very very similar personality young in a lot
(43:06):
of ways, see I. And obviously with the relationship with
his brother. So for me making the movie, I'm constantly
thinking about my own brother. And you know, it's that
thing you asked me about the Long writers, you know
that of the Wright brothers. You know, it's like I've
done movies about brothers infredible, you know. And he was
a little brother and his older brother was a big star,
(43:29):
and you know before Greg joined the band. But Greg,
I think is one of the greatest blues singers of
all time. And he was the other thing that I
loved about him, which you know, I was taught to
walk by a black woman, and my whole family was.
When I was a little boy, I lived in a
part of Texas where it was very segregated and I
(43:51):
didn't understand it, and I didn't like it. I would
ask my dad. I said, well, I can't salve and clean,
it makes dinner. Why can't she have dinner with us?
And so for the rest of my life. I've made
movies about out integrating about that trauma. It was passed on.
It's passed on to generations. You know, Racism is taught.
I'm not born with that shit, you know. So Greg,
(44:12):
he didn't see it race. His best friend was Chank
and he was talked to sing by all the black
singers and his mother. You know. In one of the scenes,
she comes home, Hank More is there and they met
him at they've been hearing him sing down the club
and they said, Hank, you want to come over to
the house. And and and they're sitting in the living room,
(44:33):
you know, they set up all this stuff, and the
mom comes in and she's freaked, what's the black guy
doing in the house? And she could come, come in
the kitchen. I want to talk to you. What's that
guy doing out there? She said, Hey, Mom, that's that's
like boor he thought black. He is a musician. Wow,
he was really colorblind.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah, deep in the South, deep deep in the South.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
It really resonated with me. So his he he was
just a deep deep and he wrote incredible songs. You
really get down into those lyrics that are pretty special.
But that I thought was for me as a filmmaker,
and something to look at his character. You know, all
of these people have that in common. Linda and uh
(45:19):
and Cash they were colored black. Do you know what else?
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I find a theme with you that I personally and
and these these great people, there's a real loyalty to
people that have been kind to them. They don't forget
that's true, no matter who it is in their lives. Yeah,
you are kind to everybody, people that have worked for you,
you know you. I mean, can we talk about your gardens?
We just go off topic a little bit of things.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
I mean, garden's kind to me. Yeah, I love gardening
my dad. When I was a kid, little boy, when
I would get punished, which was frequently, h I was,
you know, I was acting out a lot because of
what had happened to me as a kid. I was,
you know, so I got in trouble at school, got
(46:06):
in fights and stuff like that. I get punished by
pulling weeds in the garden. Little did my father know that.
As I was pulling the weeds, I go, this is
all the life that's going on here. And I was
fascinated with what was going on in the garden. Whether
I was, you know, dead heading roses or whatever. So
(46:31):
and I always found that the plants, you know, they
they loved being loved, and they gave love back to
you when you nurture tom m I remember seeing a
plaque once he says, you know, to be a gardener
is to be in heaven, you know. Okay. I always
found my church is the garden. You know. I like
studying religions, and I like I would often tell my children,
(46:55):
you know, what do you think of Catholicis things? I said,
I think they're all the same in some way or another.
I said, I said, what's the best language? I would
always use this, I said, do you like English? Do
you like French? So? What are they all for? To communicate?
And that's the same thing to me about religions. They're
trying to communicate with a higher power. I find my
higher power sometimes I can be in a church. When
(47:19):
we were working on this movie about Valdosta, which is
about it's a very black community. You love this little
film that we did, and I was with a guy
who a reverend who roaded with Martin Luther King. They
were both reverenced. He was a young reverend at the
time this guy so filled with God, you know, and
(47:40):
it was just beautiful. And you know, it was like
I find that in guard I find that in the garden.
I find what he was feeling. I find that and
especially like I'll see Nancy picking blueberries all these things
that And after the fire, you know, our house completely
burned down, but the garden some of a lot of
(48:01):
the trees the tops up and burned, and all the stairs,
the wooden stairs, but a lot of it survived. And
now I mean, I've rebuilt it. But the ashes made
the fruiting so powerful. There was so much fruit. It
was like there was God just saying, hey man, I'm
(48:23):
here and life will go on. We would literally rise
out of the ashes. Wow. And that was the message
to me. So, you know, so I go. So, I
don't know if I'm going to rebuild yet. I don't
know if I'm going to have time. You know, I
don't know if i'll have the when I say I
have time. I don't know if I'll be able to
(48:44):
wait out the five years it's going to think, but
my garden will certainly be incredible, more incredible than it's now.
And it's pretty incredible. It's really special.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
I think probably some of my favorite moments that we've
have as you walk me through your garden, tell me
about each thing that you're growing. You're so like childlike. Yeah,
and you know so much about it. You really know
about you.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
I could buy people, I go plant their gardens for them. Yeah,
I get off on it. It's like making a movie
to me. But it's like it's the gifts that it is.
It's the gift that keeps on giving. I see these
little right now, you know, the avocato freees, say, all
the tops of them burned. I thought, oh they're done.
They're pushing so much fruit right now. Wow, man, a little
(49:28):
tiny baby. You can see the little tiny seed, and
then all of a sudden there's a little avocado. And
then I said, oh my god. You know, and you
can see plants grow overnight. It's really weird sometimes when
you get into the solstice, you know, all of a
sudden that the sun and the moon and all the
stars they change and all of a sudden mm hmmm,
(49:49):
mm hmmm. And I think we are all human plants, okay,
And so if we nurture ourselves right, we take care
of ourselves correctly. Yeah, I think it helps. I talked
to the plants. My hero was Luthier Burbank was a
horital culture us and he actually created a spine. This
(50:12):
is a movie I really want to make. He created
a spineless cactus. It's a true story. Yeah, Yo, call
them a saint among the roses. And if you look
at the autobiography of Yogi se right there right, it's
dedicated to lose for Burbank, is it really? Yes?
Speaker 2 (50:30):
It is among the roses.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
He created a spineless cactus and part of it was
talking to this cactus to get it to He also
created eight hundred plants and vegetables. He and the church
shut him down because no God, nobody but God can
create plants and vegetables. And Burbank would say, well, what
if God's working through me? Wow? You know the hypocrisy
of certain religions and their their doctrines, it's not the
(50:56):
it's not the principles, it's the personalities truly in that
that that sense. And I would say that's probably true
for the Muslims and the you know, the Christian instead
of go crazy, you know, hissiatic Jews, they're so right
when it's when they carry they make it about their
personality instead of about what it's supposed to be about,
which is love. Right, So he talked to the it
(51:22):
was you know, the cactuses were the big fronds, so
he literally would rub his face against him, and there's
stories of him with the hundreds of thousands of needles
in his face, and eventually the cactus he would say,
drop your thorns, you can trust me. And eventually he
created a spinallest cactus. His dream was to end world
hunger by planting this and these deserts because the cactus
(51:46):
holds water, so then the cattle could forage and it
was spineless. They could eat the cacus and have water
and have nourishment. So I discovered this one of my
girlfri in high school. This boy said to me, you
should do Autuba and lose her bear bank. She says,
you should go. I was having a place in Mendocino
(52:08):
when I was really young, still in my twenties. I
discovered this guy and I went to his gardens in
Santa Rosa and there was this huge cactus plan and
on the outside you had grown up stornspa. It's where
people had carved in it. I think kids had come
(52:30):
in there and put their initials like graffa, oh wow,
and you go to the middle of it and you
touch it. It's like a touching a baby's ass, really smooth. Yeah,
so I love that. Man. It's a trippy story. But
it's a movie i'd like to make. I don't know
if there'll ever be an audience for it, But I
don't know if you can do the imitation game and
(52:51):
make it a success. I think you could do that.
I think you could do something there.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Listen, you've been in recovery for forty years, right, Yeah,
what's a great takeaway for the audience what you've learned?
I mean, you're such a student, you're I mean, what
are some great takeaways?
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Well, the first one is it's not was it is
and you can't take anything for granted, you know, no
matter how it's not about success and it's not about
and it's not about failure when you when you fall down.
We're human. We're human, and that's what you have to remember.
(53:31):
And you have to be able to forgive yourself for
whatever has happened, you know, whatever, Even if you're sitting
in jail and you've killed somebody, there is redemption of
the soul m M. But you've got to do the work.
You have to do the work on yourself, and you
have to carry the message the twelve step program. I'm
(53:53):
often reminded, you know, all right, it wasn't originally for alcoholics.
It was for everybody, those twelve steps, for everybody to
carry this message and all who suffer. Right, it's an
orderly way to live your life. And so taking inventory
upon yourself it's you know, it's not beating yourself up.
(54:15):
It's not shaming yourself. It's just looking at the truth,
you know, and as best you can. And then to
say you're sorry to somebody, to make amends. It heals you,
except when you hurt somebody or else. You don't want
to do that either. There's so many people who do
that shit, and they're doing it for themselves. No, you're
doing that to help the other guy. You're helping yourself,
(54:37):
you know. And then to carry the message, and to
carry the message by the way you live, by the
efforts that you make, not by the accomplishments that you have,
because that's a fucking trap. That accomplishment game is a
fucking traffic use my language, but it really is and
it can really mess you up.
Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah, okay, that's good man. Can we do some rapid fire.
I'll let you go home to Nancy.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Yeah I'm good man.
Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah you get yeah right. First film that made you
fall in love with movies?
Speaker 1 (55:12):
John Wayne and Searchers, Oh, Searchers, I'd say, Stanley Kubrick,
Doctor Strangelow.
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Okay, the best advice you ever got from your brother, Stacy?
Speaker 1 (55:23):
The best advice I ever got from Stacy. Yes, I
now remember. I remember we were making The Right Brothers
and I was out there and the director was being
I guess I would Maybe I didn't do the lines
the way he wanted me to, and he was not
very kind to me. It's possible I didn't. I fucked
him up, and he said Stacy looked at me because
I was ready to lose my temper, because I have
(55:45):
a very bad temper sometimes. He said, hey man, Grace
under pressure. Oh wow, Grace under pressure. Keep it behind
your teeth.
Speaker 2 (55:57):
Gray Center, or as we also know as A was
an agitator.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
It was an agitator. There it is Dodgers, What about them? Dodgers?
Greatest baseball game ever played was two nights ago.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Favorite line you've ever delivered on camera, poor little pooch.
What's the most inspiring person you've ever worked with?
Speaker 1 (56:21):
I would say the most inspiring person I didn't get
to work with is Colin Powell. Wow. The that I
met when I had time to timeless.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
One word that describes Hollywood today a mess, the secret
ingredient of a great film.
Speaker 1 (56:36):
Truth.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
If you've got dinner with any filmmaker living and gone.
Speaker 1 (56:40):
Who would it be? I would say cocked tall.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Favorite moment on a set you'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (56:49):
Again. I think it was the vacation that scene, it
was just.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
Nothing about it. The most underrated actor you've ever worked with, Say.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
Reese, wows for this man. I think she can do
a lot more than she's doing. I think she's incredibly talented.
The thing that scares you the most me I mean
my my dear friend Ken Midlocke, who's a professional baseball guy.
He said, my mind is like a bad neighborhood. I
(57:21):
don't want to go in there by myself. You know,
it's like the voices that never stopped. You know.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
What's one word of advice she got to a young
artist today, don't give up? What's your personal definition of success.
Follow your heart a habit or ritual that keeps you grounded.
Claire mhmm. You go to film when you need inspiration,
(57:51):
The Godfather. Finish this sentence. Life's too short not to.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
Live out loud.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
Amen, brother, thank you, James. This is really special. I
really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
I enjoyed it. Time went by fast, Time went by fast.
You're a good man, Charlie Brown.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
The Sino Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People and twenty
eighth av Our. Lead producer is Keith Carnlick. Our executive
producer is Lindsay Hoffman. The marketing lead is Ashley Weaver.
Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week.
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