Greg Kinnear: Talk Soup, Academy Awards, and The Power of Showing Up | E146 - In Search Of Excellence

Episode Transcript
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Greg Kinnear (00:00):
Do you think you're a movie star? No, I don't

(00:03):
think of that for sure. They'llfeel that way. But I've been,
you know, fortunate and luckyenough to kind of, you know,
stay in the game, and I've beenvery grateful to work with a lot
of great people. And that is oneof the coolest things about, you
know, building whether it's aseries or whether it's the
television or movie, you know,the idea of you build this

(00:23):
little family experiencetogether. You know, I've built a
lot of families out here overthe years.

Randall Kaplan (00:35):
Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we
meet entrepreneurs, CEOs,entertainers, athletes,
motivational speakers andtrailblazers of excellence with
incredible stories from allwalks of life. My name is
Randall Kaplan. I'm a serialentrepreneur, venture capitalist
and the host of In Search ofExcellence, which I started to
motivate and inspire us toachieve excellence in all areas
of our lives. My guest today isGreg Kinnear. Greg is an actor

(00:58):
and former talk show host who'sbeen in over 50 movies, oh boy,
including Sabrina, Nurse Betty,You've Got Mail, Little Miss
Sunshine, anchor man and as goodas it gets, for which he was
nominated for an Academy Award,he's also been in over 25 TV
shows, and has won two Emmys,one for Outstanding Lead Actor
in a Miniseries or a Movie, forhis leading role in the
Kennedys, and one forOutstanding Guest Actor in a

(01:21):
Comedy Series for the hit TVshow Modern Family. In total,
the movies he's acted in havegrossed more than $2 billion
Craig, thanks for being here.
Welcome to a church forexcellence. I

had no idea. See.
I think we should just wrap itup on that note. I mean, it'd be
all downhill from here. Shot

the mic. Thank

you. Good night, everybody.
Thank you. It's very good to behere, and
this is a very cool setting thatyou have. I was just hearing
about your amazing missing tapeof a previous interview you've
done. So we are hopeful that atthe conclusion of this podcast,
the tape will get back to you.
Right? Well, we're filming astudio, place, my favorite place

(02:00):
to record, very professionalshout out to Michelle and Andy
and of course, my producer, MattHickerson, well, we're on the
west side Los Angeles, where ourwhole journey, and I think we
should tell the audience,because God knows they're going,
what the hell is Greg? Can youdoing on your show? Is my
daughter attends school inEngland, and she was headed off

(02:23):
recently to college in the monthof September, and she had gotten
a coat because the year before,she was like, Dad, I'm freezing,
and I'm a neglectful father, sowe got her a nice warm coat, and
she's leaving with her mom to goto England and to kind of get
situated. And they're goodbye,and they're running a little

(02:46):
late for the airport and saygoodbye. And moments later, my
phone rings, and my daughtersays, Dad, I left the coat in
the house, and I'm in like,sweats and like, barefoot, and I
throw in some flip flops, and Itear like hell out of the house
with the warm coat. And shegives me a general area of where

(03:07):
they are waiting for me. Andagain, the clock is ticking.
They got to get to the airport,so I'm driving like a bat out of
hell, and I come down rightaround this area, and I park my
car, and I'm looking around. Idon't see their car. It could be
anywhere. It's a busy area, andI realize I don't have my phone.

(03:28):
So I I'm like, Oh my god. So Iget out of the car with her
coat, and I run up to the firstperson I see I and I go, this is
my my daughter's coat, and theguy just kind of freezes and
turns and runs away like anybodywould do in Los Angeles, because
I'm a freak. And then the nextperson comes, and I try to I

(03:51):
show up with them, and I'm like,Hey, how you doing? My name's
Greg, and i They're leaving.
They're gone too. Now I lookacross the street and I see a
handsome man who I've never metbefore walking across. He's on
his phone. He looks like arespectable guy. And I'm like,
All right, I'm gonna stop thebullshit. I'm just gonna tell

(04:13):
him what the story is. I go. Iam so sorry to bother you. This
is my daughter's coat. She'ssomewhere in the vicinity. I
don't know where I need to callher. Can I borrow your cell
phone? And you were like, boom,you hand it right to me. Well, I
make the call, and then as I'mmaking the call, you're like,

(04:33):
are you Greg? And I'm like,yeah. And then we start talking
about podcasts, and I do get thephone to her, and that is what
led me to this moment. So youhave a lot of heroes in your
life, and now I'm one of them.
Yeah, I think, I think if you'rethe fact that you're not wearing
a cape when I show up here forthe podcast today is stunning.
So what's so interesting? Andthere's actually a couple of

(04:54):
lessons in this story. I'm sobad I like read your background
of.
And everything you've done, allthe accomplishments I told you,
you're way of your huge overachiever, which makes me
nervous. I don't ever quiteunderstand lessons in stories.
So I am ecstatic to hear, otherthan always keep your tennis

(05:15):
shoes on when your daughterleaves for the airport. I'm
ecstatic to hear what thelessons are, because I'm sure
you're right. Well, I'm sure alot of people have had the
experience with some strangerapproaches you. You don't know,
right, with something in theirhand. And again, you hear
stories, and I know someone inLA who's someone similar story.
This guy was on math, and hewent to give him something, and

(05:36):
the guy was stabbed 18 times. Helived, by the way, but this is a
friend of the family. Oh, myGod. And so I as I saw you
approaching, yeah, you know, Ihad like, several milliseconds
to figure out what washappening, yeah. And as I, as
you came up to me, my firstreaction is, this guy's a freak.
And here we go, and I gotta backup. That all the time. I gotta
back up. So I took a half stepback, and I said, Greg. And you

(05:59):
said, yeah. Like, maybe youdidn't know who I was and we
knew each other. That clearlywasn't the case. He said, Yeah.
I said, Kinnear, it said, Yes,because I recognized you from
all of your incredible actingdays. I watched so many of your
movies, and I'm a huge fan. Soyou know, one of the stories for
me is you have to strike whenthe iron is hot, when the

(06:21):
opportunity presents itself,yeah, exactly how this guy
closes an appearance on a talkshow faster than anybody on the
planet. It's unbelievable. Youshould book Jimmy Kimmel. I want
Jimmy on my show, and I'm sureyou know him. And so I may ask
you after the show, if I've donea good job to make some intros.
All right, all right. Very good.
But that was a very I did. Thankyou at the time I will thank you

(06:43):
again. And my daughter, who justgot home, I told her where I was
headed, and she said, Well, I'vestayed so warm. You think. You
think Randall every time sheputs on that jacket. Here's a
stranger. Here's a stranger inBritta, not about me. It's never
about me. It's about the, yeah,the person who got the product
to him. How have spur of themoment introductions influenced

(07:04):
your career? What impact is ithaving? Can you give some
example spur of the momentintroductions? I, you know, I
feel like they do. They theyhappen
periodically, for sure. And Ifeel like I should be, like,
equipped with, with, like, somany examples of of surprise

(07:25):
meetings or, or just, I mean,obviously, I've met a lot of
people in my life, in my careerand, and sometimes you, you meet
somebody at an event or a place,and then you have an opportunity
to work with them down the Road.
And your roads, you know, youfind a way to connect and but I
mean, I, I mean, there's been,I've had a lot of, I guess,

(07:48):
moments that happen. I'll giveyou one. A buddy of mine, who's
a sound guy,

used to date Bobby Anderson, Yes, Bobby

Anderson used to date Justine Bateman. And Bobby
was an old friend of mine who Iknew through friends that I went
to high school in Greece with,and Bobby's dating this girl,
and I became friends with Bobby.
He's dating Justine. She's onthis big show and MTV, MT,
she's, she's actually, it wasfamily ties, she was

(08:21):
auditioning, and she's, she'sactually doing MTV Spring Break
weekend, and meets a guy namedJoe de vola, who's casting MTV.
And I go because of her, I endup going and auditioning for MTV
to sit on the goofy steps and,you know, try and become a VJ

(08:44):
back in the, you know, 17thcentury. And I don't get the
job, but I get a nice tape outof it says, MTV audition looks
very official, and that ends upleading to another crazy startup
channel called movie time. Andmovie time before it was movie

(09:06):
time. It was before E was E, itwas called movie time. And that
was my early broadcast kind ofworld, right? And now it's so
weird because, you know, at thattime, yeah, it was kind of a
very off the you know, movietime is a very kind of random
cable channel, but at least itwas cable. Now, you have
podcasts, you have these shows.

(09:30):
I walked in there, I thought wewere just, we had two
microphones. Suddenly were, hey,look, we're on TV. It is. It's
changed so much, and there'ssuch a proliferation of of so
many forms of broadcasting now,but back at that time, it was
kind of an unusual thing to geton TV, and it was an unusual
break for me, and that was ahell of a meeting early on, you

(09:53):
stole

the order of the chronology of my podcast, but
I'm glad we talked aboutJustine, who I who I know a
little.
That because she married myfriend, Mark fluent. So okay,
and by the way, just so, youknow, I like to do a lot of
research, so I texted Mark, canI talk to Justine, who I haven't
talked to in 15 years, because Iwant to find some tidbits about
Greg that nobody knows. Oh, boy.
She was very, very responsive,meaning she ghosted me. So it

(10:15):
didn't, didn't really get any onthat.

Well, she was being shy. Obviously, what she
wanted to tell you is, he's anincredibly generous fellow, he's
kind, He's warm. You'll get allthis later, I'm sure in the
memo. Let's go to the beginning.
And I want to talk about, you'reborn in the massive town of
Logan sport, Indiana. Your mom,Susie, was a homemaker. Your
dad, Ed owned vending machinebusiness, tobacco candy. Tell us

(10:41):
about all the vices. All thevices. Tell us about him getting
called out in the middle of thenight and bringing a shotgun
with him some of the nights, andhow his work ethic influenced
your future career. Well, heworked hard. Him and his father
had these had vending business.
That pretty big, thrivingvending business. There was a

(11:03):
clothing business and, and hewas, my dad was a,
it's funny, before I came here,I was talking to a director
about a, you know, a project,and, and, and the character was
kind of reminding me of my dad alittle bit. So we were
discussing him, and I he was,you know, he's pretty he had a

(11:24):
great sense of humor, you know,Scotch Irish, great sense of
humor. But he grew up in kind ofdepression era. And, you know,
like my mom was very, you know,don't think they had an
abundance of anything. And, youknow, always had a sense of
urgency and always a great workethic, and always took, took his

(11:47):
work very, very seriously. Soyeah, periodically, when you
have a business like that, itgets robbed. Apparently, back
in, you know, today, theydefinitely get robbed. But I
think this robbing of businesseswas going on for a long time.
And I do remember my dad, yeah,having leaving the dinner table
a couple of times and grabbing,having to grab, like, one time

(12:11):
he grabbed a shotgun and said,there's a robbery going on at
the office and left the house.
And I was like, at the, youknow, with a, you know, some
like beef stew in my mouth,staring at this moment where he
was out the door in order to gotake care of business. And I
don't, you know, nothing everhappened with it, and it wasn't
like it ended in any sort ofissue, but I just remember

(12:35):
thinking, holy shit. This is aguy who has to not only sell
stuff, but has to make sure thatpeople don't take stuff from
him. My grandfather was ajeweler, and he carried a gun
with him, because at some pointhe was tied up in the back room
and bound and gagged and, youknow, armed robbery. And from
that point on, he carried

a gun to a point where Alzheimer's took over, and
that's not smart, yeah,Alzheimer's. That's probably not
a good idea, but it's, but yeah,a real reminder of, I guess,
when you're, yeah, when you runa small business, you know,
that's your livelihood, that'syour ability to feed your family
and take care of the people thatyou love. And so you know, you

(13:20):
kind of have everything, youknow, counting on that. And
there's not really a safety net.
So, you know, people, I think,and also I think generationally,
there was a little bit of a, youknow, even less of a safety net,
so that people just managed shitthat they needed to manage. A
lot of us, a lot of us, a lot ofmy friends, a lot of your

(13:41):
friends, want their kids to gointo what I call normal
professions, being a doctor or alawyer, investment banker,
working a tech company, whateverthe case may be. Your parents,
you said didn't really wantthat. They said their primary
job was to keep you out of jail.
What were they What were theytalking about?

No, no. I think I was just, I think I was trying
to fill time on a on anotherpodcast. When I said that I
there was no sense that myparents thought I was going to
jail. Little did they know? No,I don't think that I wasn't a,
yeah, I was way too much of acoward for them to actually fear

(14:22):
that I was going to, you know,cross the line and end up in any
sort of trouble, but Idefinitely didn't have a real
clear path.
You know, years ago, I did atalk show at NBC, literally at
130 in the morning, usually

you replace Bob Costas, that's right. And

Bob Costas took over from Tom Snyder, who said,
At that hour you you know, youget your smokers and your
tokers. But I remember Bobcarrying in his telling his
story. Used to carry in hiswallet like this Mickey, famous
story. Now he carried a Mickey.
Channel baseball card in hislittle wallet when he was a kid.
It's like his kid, like when hewas a kid, he was carrying this

(15:06):
around because he wanted to be atalk show host. And then when he
got older, you know, he wantedto be caught. And so he still
has, I think famously, I thinkhe showed me at dinner that he
does still have it one time. ButI I I thought that was amazing,
because it's so much not the wayI grew up. I didn't have, as
some people do, like, a realclear, you know, pathway to

(15:28):
where they were headed or whatthey were going to do. I didn't,
and I certainly didn't see thepath that I, you know, ended up
falling into. But, but I it's, Idon't, I don't consider it a I
can be very self critical, andyet I don't consider that
necessarily, you know, ashortcoming. And I certainly

(15:50):
don't feel that way about my ownchildren. You know, you know,
leaving your, leaving your youknow, the your the ideas open of
what you might do or what youmight not do, and letting that
come to you with time is hasbenefits. It does yield
something. If you're if you'reif you're like, look, I'm doing

(16:11):
this, this and this. I do thinkit closed off certain
opportunities. At least that wasmy experience that that kind of
came by, my openness to maybecertain parts of the universe.

I do a lot of mentoring. I have a summer
intern program. We have 32 kids.
I have five kids of my own,yeah. And I also coach and
mentor a lot of professionals,from people starting the
workforce to CEOs, startupfounders, actors, actors, one in
particular to that. Okay, sowhat's your advice to everybody

(16:46):
out there, whether they're anactor or anything else that
they're doing where they dosuffer from constant anxiety? I
have this job. I don't know whatI want to do. Is it all gonna
work out?

Gosh, it's so terrible, because I, you know, I
really don't know how the world,you know, finds itself in this
place for children. I don't, Idon't understand the I shouldn't
say I don't understand it. Iguess I do understand it. I
think social media has been aterrible villain in all of this

(17:23):
awareness, global awareness,everything happening at the you
know, you know in the moment onyour phone, being able to see
the success or what party orwhat event every other person in
your social circle is doing atany given time, cannot be
healthy. And my wife is avoracious reader, is constantly

(17:46):
saying, Did you read this book?
Have you read this book? Haveyou read and I'm like, No, but

I can't argue with her that. No, I can't argue
with her. Nor

do I want to argue right? I'm like, Honey, you win.
I get it. And I do think thatyou know, in this environment
that we're in, in this kind ofworld we find ourselves in, that
it's very, very difficult to bea kid and just kind of hold on
to your innocence and just kindof hold on to, hey, let's see
what happens. Let's see. Let'sfigure this out as we go. I mean

(18:17):
people, you know, I mean we'reraising kids like young CEOs
now, and, you know, the eventhese, you know, schools across
the country, and certainlythese, a lot of these private
schools and has been writtenabout, and right in the we're in
the, you know, zone of it righthere,

and you know what we're talking about here,
just, you know, to make it clearto people through suicides at a
very well known, prestigiousWest Side school, six. Six
suicides, yeah, teachers havingsex with students when the
administration knew about it,yep. Yeah.

Crazy stuff that that, you know is, is part of,
you know, listen, part of thatmight be an environment of being
in the, you know, a big,sprawling metropolitan city, but
I think the problem of thesekids, and the pressure that's
being put on these kids is iskind of a it's a national

(19:14):
problem, and I think it'saffecting people in just as much
in Logan sport as it is Probablyin Los Angeles, and it's, it's a
problem. So

let's talk about some of the good thing that
parents do as well, in terms ofGreat Moments with your kids,
and things that we should do asdads. Yeah, when you're nine
years old, you're the Sonycassette recorder. Tell us about
that moment and what your dadasked you, and how important is
it to check in with your kids.
Oh, well,

that's that is, yeah, that was a the Sony tape
recorder that, yeah, my dad gaveme that allowed me to record
things. It was the first time Iever heard my voice on a
cassette. And, yeah, I was nineyears old and, and I didn't even
really know how to work. Work athim the first the way that I got

(20:01):
introduced to it was my dadsaid, Let me interview you. And
he hit play and record. And wesat there, and he said, Greg,
hello to you. And I was likemine. And thus began a like, 30
minute, unbelievable interview,one of the great interviews of
all time, my father interviewingme at nine years old. That was

(20:25):
so funny and so kind ofwhimsical and unexpected. And
years later, I said to my mom,he said, Where is the interview?
Because it says on it, Dadinterviewing Greg, and somehow
I'm off, God knows where collegeor whatever I'm like, where's
the interview with Dadinterviewing Greg? I gotta hear

(20:49):
that again, so I go and I listento it. And my father has
accidentally recorded GarrisonKeillor's Lake Wobegon days, the
whole broadcast over ourinterview, and it's completely
gone. And I'm destroyed by this.
And my dad has this cockamamieidea where he's like, Well, I

(21:10):
think because it was onlyrecorded once you can go back,
you can erase the the the lakewill be gone, and your interview
will somewhere be in there. AndI researched that, and that is
not true. So, so at any rate,that was my first interview
experience. And being a fatheris, yes, I think being you know,
it's important to be checkingwith your kids. It's important

(21:35):
to be focused on them. And Ivery, very good parents, I
really did, and I felt verygrateful for that. And my mom,
you know, was very, very loving.
You know, great mom, and who'scoming into town tomorrow,
anything

special? So I have to say that,

no, well, yes, we have a lot planned. She's She
just turned 90, which was justback in Arizona for her
birthday. So that was exciting,but I great parents, and I think
that, you know, I was luckyenough, and it really is luck of
the draw these days, when youlook statistically at things of
having parents that are stilltogether, and having parents

(22:17):
that you know loved you and weresupportive of you when you you
know, as you go, as you're beingraised, and that's something
that is, you know, is one of theproblems, when we are talking
about the difficulty, I think,of what's going on with that
generation. You know, is part ofit is that many

people have to move a lot in their life because
of jobs that their parents had.
Let's take each move one at atime. When you're nine years old
and an uncle living inWashington, DC, tell us about
the move and your dad's job andwhat what that entailed while
you were still living in theUnited States before the move,
which we'll talk about next. So

my dad ended up becoming, he was an advanced
man. Got in a job being anadvanced man for Richard Nixon,
is coming through the Midwest inthe 70s and early 70s, and his
brother worked in Washington. Somy dad ended up getting, and I,
you know, he ended up getting anopportunity to work for the

(23:16):
Department of Commerce inWashington, DC. So we leave
Indiana when I'm nine, and we goto Washington, DC. We're just
outside. I recently had the metTerry McAuliffe, actually, who
who lives just not too far fromwhere I grew up. And we were, I

(23:39):
was, you know, talking about myfond memories of Reston,
Virginia and being there andnear Lake, and for those of you
in the tri state area, and so,yeah, I went to school there. I
was an okay student three yearsand just when I started to get

(24:00):
settled. We he sat us all downand said, Listen, I got a an
assignment to another place. AndI was like, oh, what city is
that? And he's like, Beirut,Lebanon. So we went from DC to
Beirut. So I think the headlinethere is, we went from Logan
sport to Beirut in the course of36 months. So

you get to Beirut, yeah, and father of your
friend, friend of your fathergets kidnapped. The US
ambassador and two bodyguardsget assassinated. Acting
ambassador, acting ambassador.
The the bakery that used tovisit or visit a couple very
close to where you live blew up.

(24:41):
That's right, tell us about thelessons you learned watching the
Lebanon Civil War and the impactit had on you at 12 years old.

Well, we I warned you about lessons. Greg does not
learn lessons history. Now we'regonna pull them out of you
today. God, I don't know. Imean, I. Yeah, all of that is
true. And, you know, our arrivalthere was other worldly. I
remember the call of Meccahappening as we're driving

(25:11):
through the sun. You know, thelast vestiges of the sun setting
in Beirut, and just the soundsand smells very you know, odd
experience that we ended upthere. I, you know, in a very
short period of time, the CivilWar kind of crept up. And again,

(25:33):
I'm 12 years old. It's not likeI'm tracking any of this with
any sort of, you know, politicalawareness or really asking any
of the big questions. But I wasaware that on on certain days of
the week, in the evenings, theyyou started to hear gunfire and

(25:57):
and I was aware that my parentswere starting to get a little
bit more, you know, seriousabout what was going on they
were than the moment we gotthere. But, you know, I had a, I
think going to school, westarted to have periodic
lockdowns, the fighting, whichyou started initially in the

(26:18):
evening hours, started to moveto more random times, the
bombing of the little bakerynear our place, which we loved,
and we love the owner of theplace, that was a crazy moment
where you know you heard it, youfelt it. We were close enough
for where it rocked the hell outof us and and it definitely was.

(26:44):
It was pretty, pretty spooky.
And we, you know, it, it justgot progressively worse, and
deep, pretty deep into thissituation. We were my brother
and I, you know, my parents wereheading to an event they had to
go to, and we had decided in thelate afternoon to go investigate
the local pinball palace.

(27:08):
Pinball was big in Beirut in the70s, as you know, and so we big
here, yeah, sure. But not likethis, not like Beirut. There you
go into these halls, and theywould have 1000 pinball
machines. It was crazy. At anyrate, we went to go check one
out. And, you know, it costslike a piaster to play a pinball

(27:30):
game, which is about a half apenny. So we were, you know,
nobody paid a lot of attentionto the clock, and suddenly my
brother goes, we got to get outof here. By the time we got back
to the house, my parents hadreturned hours ago from the
event, and they they showed upat the house, and we weren't

(27:53):
there. And so when we finallymade our way back to the house
at like, 10 o'clock at night orsomething, there were, you know,
like, like, 15 black carssurrounding our place, and just
I could see lights and somepolice cars. My brother looked
at me, and he said, we got lost.
And I was like, got it, got it.

(28:17):
Yes, I will act the shit out ofthis. We got lost and we went in
there. And of course, there was,we had caused quite a quite a
stir for the few hours that we'dbeen out. But, you know, there
were a lot incidents like that,and it ultimately cultivated in
listening every night to the BBCfor how bad. You know, I

(28:39):
remember waking up periodicallyand just coming out in the
living room. My parents would beup listening to BBC and, you
know, kind of following andtracking what was going on. And
eventually, my dad got the callthat was for him to stay. But my
mom and my, you know, brothersand I did head out. And so we
took the car, took us down tothe St George Hotel, where we

(29:04):
were met with all the other kindof dependents in the American
Embassy there. So there werequite a few people, and we're
just hanging out. And you know,Tom Brokaw is over there saying,
and the war continues in BeirutLebanon with it. A pen is
leaving. That's my Tom Brokawimpersonation. I know you were
going to ask me about

it 100% I was.
So there's, by the way,

so get ready. He's over there. I mean, it's like a
big thing, right? And they loadus up onto busses, and we head
out past the PLO camps. Can'tget to Beirut international
airport without going past thePLO camps. Busses stopped. Guys
get on the bus with loadedrifles to check passports. My
mom is white as a ghost. And I'mlike, you know you're, you're,

(29:51):
it's like that John Bormanmovie, hope and glory. You know
you're not really thinking aboutyour mortality at that age. So
I'm just kind of like, it's kindof cool. But. It. It was, it was

pretty, pretty hairy. But you're evacuated.
We're evacuated at 12 years old.
Yeah, scared shitless.

I, you know, I really wasn't as I say, I was, I
was, I don't ever reallyremember being scared. I never
felt like I'm gonna die here. Inever felt that way, by the way,
now I'd be terrified, but justat that age, it was just kind of
all this crazy adventure. And I,I, I don't want to say it was

(30:31):
all it was all great, becausethere were a lot of days where
the school was closed at the endand I was bored and all that.
But I mean, like, I never feltthreatened. And the big and the
Lebanese people are lovelypeople. One of my closest
friends to this day is, youknow, comes from this big
Lebanese family. So, you know,I, you know, they were wonderful
and warm and but I, you do lookaround and in a moment like

(30:54):
that, I think I do still carrywith me this sense of of what a
division within a country can doand how it can split people
apart and and to know how badthis God and people you know,
families killing families, andpeople friends breaking up, and

(31:17):
people who who spent their livestogether, care deeply about each
other, people who looked afterpeople are suddenly turning
their back on them and saying,you're on the other team, and
feeling like at a young age,that was what I struggled with.
It wasn't the fear, was just thetotally not understanding how
this very beautiful country witha real sense of just warmth and

(31:45):
love, there would be, you know,broken apart that quickly.

So many of us have interesting jobs in high
school, I want to talk about afew of yours. I bagged
groceries, I waited tables andcollege, I stuffed envelopes.
How are you waiting tables? Howwas I waiting tables? Yeah,

because I feel like you and I we I waited
tables, and I feel like you werethe kind of guy that, unlike me,
didn't get fired a lot. Well,

I want to talk about some of your firings, but
I worked at the Chi Chi's OliveGarden. So were you a waiter?
You're busting a waiter? No, Igot

and how were you when you showed up to the table,

I was nervous. I mean, I stuttered too. I was
bullied as a kid, so that was itwas a challenge for me to do
that. So

but you did you ever get fired? I did

not get fired.
No, but, but, no, but. But themost embarrassing moment was, I
don't drink wine. I never openeda bottle of wine, so I they
brought the thing out. I figuredI could figure out and crash the
cork. Went and sorted the bottleof wine, red wine, on a family
table, all over the woman that'sred obviously saying I'm beside

(32:56):
myself to this day talking, Ithink, I think I'm going to get,
well now you just get the thing.
I don't drink wine anyway,probably from that moment, but I
do like IPA beer, that's mything, and and margaritas,
that's probably one of thereasons I don't drink but I
didn't get fired, and I stillgot a tip. You know, I think

(33:18):
they've I know they felt sorryfor me. They could see I was in
horror.

I definitely got good tips too well, I think we
share that right. People feel,feel like these guys, I got it.
We got to take care of theseguys.

One of the crazy things about my waiting
experience, and I'm not going totell you which restaurant this
was, because I don't want tohave the CEO calling me and
yelling at me. But as you know,in the kitchen, there are these
rubber mats. Right? Rubber matshave holes in them. It's about a
half inch thick. That's right,and that's where all the shit
goes. That's where all the allthe stuff from the place line

(33:53):
sits. Slime is disgusting. Youwould never want to touch it
with your finger withoutscrubbing your finger, and
unless you're trying to quicklylose weight. Okay, well, well,
there you go, or get some E colibacteria in your stomach. So the
this, I won't even tell you thedish, it was because then you
could identify the restaurant,but this dish fell on the rubber

(34:15):
mat, and again, it was covered.
It's wet, it's disgusting, andit was another waiter, so I
looked at it, and he looksaround, and he says, without
saying anything, he picked it upoff the mat, put it back on the
plate, kind of molded it like itwas clay, took a napkin around
to get rid of the sauce, therefuse, and he went back and he

(34:36):
served it,

yeah, yep, did we work at the same restaurant?

So, so you, you, did you

ever? Did you?
Ever, would you? Would you ever,periodically, my wife always
likes it. Did you ever, did youever, at any time till for any
food? Of course, I did. Okay,yeah, that's nothing. Big tell.
That's why I told my wife. I waslike, yeah, man, I was in
college of starving. Yeah, guyleaves a hell of a steak. Oh,
yeah.

You mean, I mean, okay, only if it was
lightly, you know, someone getssomething, they don't want it,
and we're not getting out of it,yeah? You could cut off, yeah?

You know, like, Well, yeah, of course, you cut
it off. I'm saying you usecertain, you know, there's
tricks, yeah. So you, you werefly. This conversation is really
going so you were fired for

impersonating somebody at the restaurant. So
who are you impersonating? AndWhat? What? Yeah,

that was the manager. That was manager of the
restaurant that I was in. So

what was the impersonation? Why do you get
pissed? And then can you do it's

like, no, I can't.
And it wasn't even actually agreat impersonation, but I it
was a good lesson. Hey, wait, Iguess I do learn lessons,
because my guy who had gotten methe job one day were back there,
and you would appreciate this asa former waiter, right? Who
scares the shit out of you. It'sthe GM, it's the man you know,
the head manager. Guys like, youknow that, that guy, he makes

(36:03):
everybody either live or die andand suddenly we're, we're back
there. And I've been working atthis place not that long, and it
was a really very good gig toget because the tips were great,
because it was kind of all I gotpeople spent money at this place
in Tucson, and so I, I, I'm alittle weary of him, and I can

(36:24):
tell he doesn't like me to beginwith. And my buddy who helped me
get the job, says, Hey, can heredo do that impersonation for for
Bob and all the waiters justkind of look and everybody's
like, all eyes on me. And I'mlike, I don't do impersonation.
He's like, Yeah, you do. Comeon, do it. So I do my kind of
gum chewing, kind of Joe Pesci,kind of, like, kind of slightly

(36:48):
assholic behavior that thismanager had. And I remember him
looking at me and going, that'sreally good. That's really good.
I say 72 hours, I was, I wasunemployed. So at any rate,
people, you know, they're alwayslike, I don't know how I mean,

(37:09):
Dana Carvey must just have,like, a wake of people that
he's, you know, deeply offended.
But I think he does it, and it'slike a badge of honor. But if I
was doing it, they're they'renotably pissed.

But today they're not pissed when you do
in person. No, it's very coolnow.

No, I'll have a good Randall Kaplan by the time
we're done. Will you? Can yougive us

your top three impersonations of kind of what
you think? Well,

I always thought I was, I always thought I had a
pretty good mine. Many of mineare dead, deceased or retired,
like my Ted Koppel was alwayspretty good. Good evening,
everybody. I'm Ted Koppel. Thisis Nightline tonight. And
forgive me for sounding overjealous on this one particular
point. Greg Kinnear sits downwith Kaplan and shits the bed or

(37:59):
what have you. And then, sothere's that. And then there's I
already gave you a little Broca,who else I don't know. I did. I
did the I did the last season ofHouse of Cards, and the guy who
I thought I was going to beworking with had been let go

(38:22):
shortly before. And this isn'treally a Kevin Spacey, but he
does take these pauses. And Irealize that, if you think about
it, the other guy who also takesthe same pauses is the guy we've
all known for years, and hetakes those pauses the same way

(38:45):
Kevin Spacey takes his pause. Sonow Christopher Walken, Kevin
Spacey, that was what washappening. We're gonna

talk about Kevin a little later in the show. Oh
we are, oh yeah, Kevin andHarvey and wow. Bill, wow. I'm
trying

to think of a No, I don't really have any
contemporary I don't know. Youdid

both Clinton at some point too. You did a Bill
Clinton at some point. No, no,

I never did about very hard to do Bill Clinton.
Can't do Trump. That's a toughone. Have you ever seen the
Trump ones on TV, like you seesomebody like doing a Trump,
like, on social media orsomething. I mean, some of the
it's like people, what's amazingabout social media now is, like,
you double its the hands. Butwhat's amazing is social media

(39:31):
is, you know, you used to havelike, you know, who's a guy who
used to, instead of it being avery small select people who
succeed in show business andsuddenly are doing their
impersonations. Social mediaallow it's like everybody in the
planet now can do theirimpersonation. And so the level

(39:52):
of good impersonations has risento an insane level where you
can't nobody can compete withyou. Go find. And, you know,
there's a guy in Des Moines,Iowa, who does a, you know, you
know, a George Foreman that'lljust knock your socks off, you
know. And it's just, I just findit amazing when you look around

(40:13):
for impersonations now on socialmedia, it's remarkable. You
probably do that too. I'm

not a good impersonator. My son, Charlie
is, you know, does some, somefunny ones, he can do Trump. And
he's, can he do Trump? Yeah, hecan do Trump. I haven't seen him
with the hands, but he's, he cando, he can do, you know, these
politicians too. What's withthis? You know, did you ever
notice like Bill Clinton didthis? It's the thumb over the

(40:38):
index fighting out a little ofthat. Kamala did this to see
that and all the you know, wheredid this come from? I wondered
about that, American

American people, American American people. I had
played Bill Clinton and an HBOshow with Kerry Washington and
and I was always like, I wasalways like the American
American people, Americanpeople. You get American people.
That was always the the touchtone to kind of get into his

(41:08):
voice a little bit. But that wasimpersonating Joe when he was
during the Clarence Thomashearings. And obviously it was a
big shift towards the end there,which I don't really do. I've no
but I loved the Dana carbystuff's amazing on that.

I dug ditches for the world Weight Watchers
world headquarters. You dug,yeah, and does a summer job
before my freshman year ofcollege at Michigan. Yeah, I get
out of the skinny kid. And allthese construction workers were
there, and I remember taking myshirt off. I mean, I probably
weighed 150 pounds, andthinking, I'm cool. I think I

(41:46):
wore a bandana on some of thedays. Sure you did. You were,
you were doing some hot moppingin high school. So I think tell
us about the the value ofmanual, tough labor sitting
there, I'm sure was boiling outthere.

Yeah, I was in that was in Greece. In we
evacuated Lebanon to Greece, andwe were there for the next six
years, which, you know, weresome of the high points of my
life. It was really, reallygreat. I had made great friends
there and love Greece and thepeople and but, yeah, one One

(42:21):
summer I was Lockheed, had a hada base, big building and kind of
a practice runway, I guess, insome part of Athens, northern
Athens. So my buddy called meand said, Listen, they'll pay
us, you know, 1000 drachma aday. Think about that, 1000
drachma a day. Sure, you don'thave any drachma doesn't exist

(42:43):
anymore, but it was big money atthe time. And if they're paying
you 1000 anything, right? Andyou're a kid, that's

a lot so, but I were talking 50 bucks a day or
100 bucks a day, yeah, I thinkwas like, I think

it was like, like, I think that was like $3 No, I'm
kidding. I think it was like 50,yeah, I think 5040, or 50 a day,
which was a lot at that time.
And and the job was, they wereroofing. So they were building,
you know, hangers. And they hada lot of roofing to do. And so

(43:14):
you had hot mopping, and you hada tar and you and I don't know
what it taught me, other than itwas very, very, you know, very
long and tedious hours. But Icertainly appreciated, you know,
you thought twice about how youspent the money. Yeah, you know,
if you, if you stole the moneyout of, you know, from someone,

(43:36):
it's, you know, or you found1000 drachma. You thought about
that 1000 drachma different thanthe 1000 drachma you had spent,
you know, nine hours in theblazing sun, hot mopping. Never
wore a bandana, by the way.
That's not a cool way to do yourmanual labor, as you probably

(43:56):
learned. But

don't forget, Steven sa Gall was really big
back then, so I did try to growa little, you know, the tail. So
I'm not sure that bandana wassomewhat cool. Yeah, half the
workers wore one, yeah,

yeah, you and Seagull, you and Segal, yeah.

I mean, he was huge for a few years. Michael,
which is former trainer, that'show he got that job. That's
right, that's right. So there'sa lesson I learned from that, as
I sure should, don't want to dothat when I'm older.

Yeah, yes, I learned that lesson too. See,
you record the lessons in yourhead, though, and you're able to
record them and remind you hangon to them. So yeah, that's why
you have gone on and overachieved. But me, I Mine's more
instinctual, like I'm out theresweating, and I don't think I'm
recording that lesson, but I dobelieve there is a quarter that

(44:47):
has dropped, and somewhere I'mlike, I gotta make sure this I'm
not here again in 20 years.

We all have important teachers in our life
that make a big impact duringour life. I. On Corwin economics
class for your of high school. Ijust lit it up in that class.
And I want to be a CEO. I werereading all these profiles.
There was no YouTube, nothinglike that. Back in the day, I
took my daughter who was goingto college in New York to Billy

(45:15):
Joel. Madison Square Garden soldout, and Billy Joel calls out
his music teacher who inspiredhim and said, You got some real
talent. You should try that. Andhe's saying 20,000 people saying
happy birthday to his 90 yearold music teacher who couldn't
be there because of medicalproblems, but he they recorded
and sent it to him, which is,you know, great, great moments.

(45:36):
Tell us about Miss panopolis andMiss Gibbs, Oh, yeah. Influence
they had on your future.

Well, Miss Gibbs, are you out there? Miss Gibbs,

we'll track her down for you. Deborah Gibbs, I

have had guys. I'm not, I don't I have a social
media footprint of zero, so Idon't really, you know, know how
to dig deep and find thesethings out. But I have friends
who are good at it, and nobodyright

there. He's on it right there. Yeah, really,
yeah. We're gonna get, if she'sliving, we're gonna get, I'm
looking

off camera. I'm like, this is the dude who can
track her down, if there'sanybody on the planet who can do
it, all right, good luck. Butshe was a lovely woman who was,
you know, addition to Missmonopolis, where we have talked
about Miss Gibbs was a, was awonderful teacher, very warm,
very, you know, great instincts.
And I she put on a lot of showsI remember over there and in

(46:33):
Athens in our little theaterdepartment. And she, she, you
know, punched way above ourweight as a theater department.
And she was smart, had greatinstincts, and if you could be
incredibly subtle. And Iremember her being, oh, no,
that's good, you know, whereas,you know, I think the
interacting tends to be a littlebroader, and, and, and I not a,

(46:56):
I'm not abroad. I don't thinkI'm a broad actor. And so she
was encouraging. She was funnyand unexpected, and had us do
some bizarre stuff. So I oftendo think about her. I haven't
ever been able to track herdown. Have you tried? Until you

(47:17):
try to track just throughfriends, just through, hey, does
anybody know? Because obviouslythere's a little network of
people who went to ACS in thetime I went. And they ACS is
American Community Schools ofAthens, and they

have them all over the place, by the way, not
just That's right, but

ACS, Athens is one of the better ones. I mean, if
you were to really research,really do your work. Randall,
you would know that maybe I'mbeing biased, but there's few
schools better than ACS, Athens,

10th grade happens, and you have an
opportunity to have your owntalk show, tell us about that,
and then talk to us about howimportant Punctuality is in our
success. I

guess Punctuality is important. I was punctual for
this podcast. Was I not?

You started one you walked in at 1259, it's
pretty great. Yeah, thank you.
By the way, you're welcome. Ireally nervous.

You didn't think I was going to

show up for this no, because I confirmed a couple
of times. I wouldn't

say you confirmed a couple of times. You're like,
Rain Man, you're definitely,you're coming, definitely doing
the podcast. And, like, I got alot of a lot of hits, and I had
a sense, what

was your reaction, by the way, when, when
I kept sending these? Because my

sense was, Wow, this is a guy who takes this
seriously and and obviously,then I did listen to your
podcast, which I thought wasvery good, and I thank you. And
I was like, wow, you take itseriously, and you want the
person who has said they'regoing to show up not to kind of
give you an LA, yeah, man, weshould do that sometime. You
want to set a time, and you wantto make sure that that time is

(48:58):
agreed upon and that thecontract will be executed
completely. And so I felt thatthat was a you made the
obligation clear, and I meanthat in the best way.

Yeah, thank you.
I mean, the backstory on this istoo I did something nice for
you, and I just do somethingnice, and then I put you on the
spot. And so as I go, I mean, I

didn't have any choice. I mean, it's

like, what were you gonna say? I gave you the
phone, I saved the day hostagesituation, and I hit you up for
my show, like, right, right. Asecond. So I sent you a note as
well.

Production people have all left too, but we're
literally losing audience duringthis podcast, by the way. I

did put you on the spot, and then I sent you a
note. You know, hey, I know. Iput you on the spot. You don't
have to do it. I still love youto be on my show, so I was a
little nervous about it, andthen I could

write you back and say, No, I'm not going to do
which would have been fine. Imean, I would have been
disappointed.

I would have been told you I was gonna do, I
know, but I'll tell you I've hadthree people cancel on me the
day of the show. We have astudio. We pay for the studio. I
do a shit ton of research.

You did use the word studio is booked a number
of times. Well, I did, should Ibook the studio? I did? And I
Yeah. And then you were like,the studio, we booked the
studio. And then I think youfollowed that up by telling me
that, once again, the studio isbooked.

Well, we all learn. So a lesson for me and
having people cancel on that isyou always want to maximize the
highest probability forsuccessful outcome. And so for
me, when you tell people thatyou book the studio, that means
you've now spent money. And I'llsay it's non refundable if you

Unknown (50:36):
didn't use the word non I have before, it was certainly
implied. Okay, all right. I waslike, He's not getting his money

back, his job. I it worked. But, and if I'm being
honest,

I did wake up this morning and I did think to
myself, shit. I got a lot goingon. Do you think? Do I? Do I
have to go? And then I thought,wonder how much that studio is
that I'd have three person forturns out, not that much, I
guess. But no, I woulddefinitely, wouldn't, wouldn't
have done that. That's just,that's not amazing. I appreciate

(51:12):
it. But

talk to us about punctuality, and then your talk
show, what happened there due todue to lack of punctuality? Are

you talking about, like, when I was in Greece,

yeah, when you were Greece, you had

a radio show. I had a radio show every week
called school days with GregKinnear. And I went in and I
spun records and talk shit aboutthe principal and stuff and and
i Yes, the show started afterAmerican top 40 with Casey
Kasem. So as soon as they countdown, as I was on the bus riding
from Northern Athens to down tothe Air Force Base in glafada.

(51:46):
I'd be listening to and thenumber three song, an American
top 40, and I'd be like, ohshit, I still got another 20
minutes to get so I tended tocut it a little close. And I
know that sounds like a lack ofprofessionalism, but I did. I
found that I when I started talksoup, I found the same type of
thing, which was, I like to getto to the show. I'd like to come

(52:12):
in here. Like to do it, youknow, I I don't like a lot of
build up and time and and I feellike it kind of lets air out of
the balloon. So I do feel likecreatively, in a lot of the work
that I've done, if I can addmake it a little tight, I tend
to add a little chaos to it.
Yeah, and for some reason thathelps me creatively. It's it's

(52:33):
not a smart thing to do. I don'trecommend it to people. I don't
recommend it to my kids. But ifI'm being honest, I think
there's a little bit of that atplay different to that. Does
that let me off the hook? No,but I do think there's a little
bit of that in everything I do.
You were fired for being late byuh, I don't like this. I don't

(52:53):
like this reoccurring theme thatyou're building into

the lesson. A lot. These are lessons

like, yeah, I guess being accurate then yes,
there might be a lesson in that.
Yes, you're

early, you're on time, you're on time, you're
late. That was well said by manypeople. Cliff Kingsbury, the
football coach, was my thirdguest. He said on the show, his
dad was served in the armedforces, and he taught him that
at a young age. I I believethat. I also believe in getting
somewhere. What was that saying?
Early, you're on time. If you'reon time, you're late. Never got

that. I didn't get that from my dad. So that is a
good thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonnabring that home. I'm gonna put
it, put it up on the big board

chalkboard and footnote from me on your side.
No, I will, I will credit you onthat. And I got the coat, and
then I got the and then I havethis too. But again, I

also find like, you know, if you go to the
airport, and you know, for me,the perfect catching of a flight
situation is my foots comingonto that plane, and they are
closing that door right behindme. That is, that is actually
just used to be, for me,absolute joy that has changed as

(54:08):
I've gotten later in life. I dofind myself not liking the chaos
as much anymore, and I do liketo be I was actually here before
1259, I was right down thestreet, so I was actually
hovering 10 or 15 minutes early.
So I think I have found thatultimately, that mechanism that

(54:28):
was in me as a young kid andwhen I was starting out and
bringing chaos was somethingthat I used. It fueled me, but I
don't like it as much anymore.
This has turned into moretherapy than it has a podcast.
Yeah,

right, yeah. I'm enjoying the therapy, right?
Okay, so you go to you go tocollege, university of Arizona,
yeah, and you thought you weregonna be a drama major, and then
second day of class. Whathappened and how much influence
can somebody negative have onour confidence and our career?

Well, I had a teacher who pointed out that
less than you know, 2% of youare ever going to make a living
being actors. And I thought,okay, that's not good. And I,
like I said, I didn't reallyhave a, you know, game board of
where I was going, but I didn'tlike those numbers. And I and I

(55:29):
also didn't, and I guess it wasnegative, but I also think it
was there was a factual elementto what he was saying and and by
the way, I don't know if it was2% or 4% but it was a it was a
reminder from him, for better,for worse, that this was just a
fact, the number of people thatwere, you know, pursuing that

(55:53):
particular, you know, careerpath we're only going to find,
You know, this number was whatwas going to find success, and
the other ones were going tohave to find alternative, you
know, means of employment. And Ijust thought that whether it was
negative or whether it was meantas a kick in the ass, I don't

(56:16):
know. Maybe the guy was justsour grapes, but I remember
thinking, wow, I'm, I'm glad Iknew that. And it did, it made
me think twice about, you know,because I, at that point, I was
kind of interested in acting,but I wasn't really sure if that
was the career I ended upswitching to broadcast
journalism there and and I wasglad I did. And I don't know

(56:39):
that it, you know, I don't notsure what that was leading to,
either, but I ended up likingthe classes that I took in that
area a lot more anyway. So

you switched to broadcast journalism. Obviously,
you're very easy with people.
You seem like a goodconversationalist. And at some
point, was it your dream to sellcopper and PVC piping, and tell
us about that fun experience.
Yeah, no,

it wasn't that was just that was my first job. Like
everybody out of college, I Iended up up in the Bay Area,
just with a buddy of minesbrother at a development
company. And I was, yes, tryingto, trying to fill the, fill the
hours, and I was a purchasingagent for a development company,

(57:24):
and I would buy PVC and copperwire and light bulbs. And I was
a I was a purchasing agent, andI did not get fired from that
job, you'd be happy to know, butI did, finally, after six
months, feel like this wasn't myfuture, and I left and came back
to LA and in that time, fullcircle is where I ended up, you

(57:48):
know, having a, having anaudition for, for, you know,
early e days. And that was kindof, you know, my transitional
point

in today's day and age. A lot of parents tell
their kids you're not happy inyour job, you should leave. You
know, if it's really thatmiserable, you know it's it's
time to leave. Yeah, Mark Cubawas on my show. He said, If you
can't be successful with adifficult boss, you're not going
to make it in the real world.
You got to learn to deal withdifficult people. You were
yelled at in that jobconstantly. And my question to

(58:20):
you on this is, is being yelledat and being able to succeed in
environment like that necessaryingredient to our success? Yeah,

I agree with Mark Cuban on that. I think that your
ability to be able to manageadversity and kind of deal with
unexpected, you know, behaviorand difficult situations is
something that is, you know, nothope for. It's, it's mandatory,

(58:56):
you have to be able to kind ofdeal with that. And I do think
that, you know, there, there isa, you know, in the environment
today, is it's a little softerapproach, you know, I think it
comes up very different today.
Everybody has to win an awardkind of mentality. And I'm not a
kind of dad or parent or guy whothinks, hey, you know, you need
to get back in there and pullyour bootstraps up. I but I do

(59:18):
think that it's the pendulumswung so far from over to a side
of nurturing and caring, and,you know, puppies and unicorns,
that we are not benefiting fromallowing a child to or a kid or
a young man or young woman tobuild up some sort of callous,

(59:42):
some sort of resilience, youknow, you have to kind of fight
your way through some difficultyand adversity, and you have to
kind of deal with a lot of shitand a lot of different expected
things, and I unexpected things,and a lot of negative. People
and negative behavior ordifficult people. That's part of
the job. And, you know, it'slike going to a doctor's office

(01:00:07):
and getting a shot. It's no fun.
But after you've done it, youget better at it. You know, the
next one's a little easier. AndI do think that there's, you
know, you just have to write itout. Obviously, there is, you
know, is a point where that nolonger is, you know,
sustainable. I would supportsomebody saying, Listen, I tried
this for six months, and the sonof a bitch is still throwing,

(01:00:31):
you know, paper weights at me.
Might be time to look foranother job opportunity, but I
do think you have to as best youcan try to try to ride out the
storm of of early employment.
And it is, it can be very messyand very disappointing, I think,

(01:00:51):
as a young person, becausethere's a lot of people, older
people, who are like negativeideas, or they're kind of, you
know, they have, I don't knowbehavior qualities that may
surprise you, and you are goingto face that. And unfortunately,
you're just going to have todeal with it. Your

Randall Kaplan (01:01:11):
first, I guess, real job in LA, you were for
Empire pictures, which and youanswered phones and got coffee.
So can you tell us about and Ithink they're, this was a they
made B movies. You know, RogerCorbin, the king of B movies.
And their hit was theReanimator. That was our that
was our Titanic, that was yourTitanic, which grossed $50,000

(01:01:34):
how much did that grow? Way morelike 100,000 Okay, 100,000

Greg Kinnear (01:01:39):
No, I don't know.
I don't know really dollar fordollar, what the what the
comparison would be by today'smarket value, but I, I would
suspect it would have been likea by today's marketplaces. It
might have made 15 or $20million which, which is not
nothing. So you've

talked a little bit about movie time, but tell
us about what you the tape youmade, you in you met Justine,
yeah, so you're at Empirepictures. You meet Justine, your
sound producer. They're dating.
Yeah, you make this tape forMTV. Yep, you don't get the job
correct, and then you're stillat Empire pictures. But walk us

(01:02:18):
through kind of that, and howyou got to your next job at
talks, who? But what I reallywant you to focus on, too, is
you tell the story about thedisappointment and rejection you
had when you didn't get the MTVjob. Yeah,

I mean, I kind of went there. I think I had a
slightly protective device earlyon, which was, I'm Scotch Irish.
So little bit like this probablywon't work out. This will never
happen anyway. It, you know, ifyou keep low expectations, it
can be quite it can be quiteempowering. Did Mark Cuban say

(01:02:59):
that he said, or did he phraseit a different

way? He phrased it a

little bit whatever, whatever mark. Anyway,
that's column now, it's true,though, I'm being honest. You
know, I went in there with lowexpectations. I did not go in
there with the I'm gonna go getthe MTV job, VJ, man, job, I did
not go in there with it. I wentin there with the idea of, like,

(01:03:26):
wow, this would be incredible,and I'll do the best that I can,
and we'll see what happens. Andand I didn't get it, and I knew
that pretty early on, but as Isay, I had a nice tape out of
it. This other channel wasstarting up, and I knew a person
who was working there who said,You should drop that tape off.

(01:03:49):
So there wasn't really a greatstory. I dropped the tape off,
and I went in, and I sat down,and, you know, they called me
back for I actually had to do anaudition. So I went in and
basically auditioned to be a tobe a host, and I was called back
to do it again. And I felt likethat went well too. And each of

(01:04:13):
these times they were there wasalways done on my lunch break,
because then I had to speed backup to the former gold with the
gold's gym, I think, is what itis now, on the corner of like La
Brea between sunset and Vinelandor something. Anyway, that
building there for you locals,that was Empire pictures, and

(01:04:34):
you said, I got coffee and Ianswered phones. I also placed
ads. The the idea of this lowbudget film company was, it was
back in the video days, and ifyou could get a movie into a
theater like Reanimator or spacelet's in the slammer, or the
imp, or whatever you wereselling, if you could get it to
play first in the theater, it'svideo value. Charlie band, the

(01:04:57):
CEO would tell you, was of much.
Greater value. So I actuallyworked in the department where
they would try and place an adin the Des Moines Register that
Reanimator was going to beplaying on Friday night in the,
you know, Wembley theater, andat seven o'clock and 10 o'clock.
And so that had to all be donethrough a phone. There was no

(01:05:21):
cell phones at the time, so thatwas kind of how you set it up.
And that was my job, in additionto getting coffee and getting
yelled at and, you know, thattype, picking up Danish pure and
here and there.

Lots of times in our career, we think we're doing
something, it turns intosomething else. I want to talk
about, talk soup and how it wassupposed to be something it
turned into something else. Iwant you to talk about Lulu and
Topsy, curvy, the man who wasraped by an alien, and Coco,

oh, right, right.
Well, those were, yeah, those.
That was best of the worst. Thatwas a show I created with my
friend Mark, and we, we actuallysold that to Peter Chernin. Was
at Fox actually at the time, andwe took it in there, and and,

(01:06:14):
and I ended up, I was just goingin there to sell it as a show.
And they ended up saying, hey,why don't you host it? So I
ended up hosting the show to itwas called best of the worst.
And we would look at the worstjobs of all time, the worst
inventions of all time, theworst shows of all time, of
which ours was one. But it wasa, it was a fun little, you

(01:06:34):
know, I think 11 episodes orsomething, and it was early
reality television. And so,yeah, we had, you know, we had
this, you know, we I would goand interview, you know, Dr
Delgado, or somebody who,through hypnosis, could make a
woman's breasts enlarge and andthis, these were the kinds of

(01:06:55):
stories that I would have totravel around and and cover for
our prestigious best of theworst program. And it didn't
really turn in, I guess it didturn into something. It morphed
into just kind of a, sort of areality show that was looking at

(01:07:20):
the worst of everything. And iteventually, we brought an
audience in. And it did changein its form a little bit, talk
soup. Same thing when I startedtalk soup, it was going to be a
very sort of sober look attoday's talk shows featuring
Sally, Jesse, Raphael, Geraldo,Rivera, Richard Bay, and it

(01:07:42):
eventually, we were looking atthese clips of these daytime
shows, and we realized this,this shit has is insane. It's
just insane. And eventually theshow turned into a real kind of
comedy show that was very, veryloose in format, and we'd come
up with gags, and weoccasionally did it with a live

(01:08:03):
audience, and it just reallymorphed into a sort of stream of
consciousness, early, you knowit, I guess it was ahead of,
like, the way you look at yourInstagram feed and just kind of
flip through a bunch of clips ofthings. This was early clips of

(01:08:24):
what people had been talkingabout that day on television and
the stuff that was happening. Idon't think most people living
their lives out working jobs andstuff, were aware that this was
happening on the hours of 9am tothree o'clock in the afternoon,
that these shows were justabsolutely morphing into

(01:08:46):
insanity. And so we were justtaking clip after clip of every
imaginable topic you can thinkof, and we put nine or 10 of
them together, and I'd makesmart ass comments about it. And
wasn't supposed to be a comedyshow. It wasn't supposed to be a
comedy show. It's supposed to belike, I say, a very sober
series. You know, look at theseshows. And, in fact, I don't

(01:09:07):
think even the first of all,nobody knew we were on the the
people at E didn't even know theshow was on the air for about a
year and a half. And then weactually started to get a
rating, and then we started toget an audience, and then we
started to get mail, and itreally did turn into something.
But, you know, I'm convincedthat it was the fact that we

(01:09:29):
were left alone to just kind oflet it, because it was just kind
of this loose organism just leftto kind of, you know, cut up and
make fun in the in the roomevery day, and all of us busting
up who are making it. It justkind of took on its own organic
chemistry, and that led to areally successful run of the

(01:09:53):
show and to a real big audiencefor for a place called E. You
did

it for three.
Years, three years, and thenyour contract was up. They
offered to pay you a shit ton ofmoney, at least back then. Yeah,
you're gonna be the highest paidperson on the show. You said no
and you didn't have a backupplan. So what is the lesson?
Would you advise your own kidsto quit their job get when
they're offered a lot of moneyand out of a backup plan? I
remember

my dad being like, Are you sure you want to leave
this talk soup thing, man, it'sreally

funny. It's funny. You're getting paid well,
you're becoming famous and wellknown. Yeah. So

that really landed with me. I was like, Really, but
no, I felt like I had done itfor three years, and I felt like
it was I just didn't, I couldn'timagine that, that, you know,
the future of Jerry Springer wasbright. I just had, I believe,

(01:10:48):
that I had witnessed, I come inthere at a time where this was
happening, I was as stunned as Ithink the audience we were
showing these clips to everynight were it was fun to riff
on. And and I think after threeyears, I just thought to myself,
I don't see this as as reallythe the future, and for me

(01:11:11):
anyway, and, and it wasn'treally a, it wasn't really a act
of bravery, as much as it wasjust an act of, you know,
feeling confident that I haddone it and it was time to to
move on. And also at that time,at the end of that year, that

(01:11:33):
broadcast year, I didn't havethe offer yet, but I had met
with the director, SydneyPollack, a couple of times, who
had talked to me about playingHarrison's Ford's brother in
this movie called Sabrina. Andthat was in the back of my mind.
I guess I was thinking, what ifJerry sees me? Sidney sees me on

(01:11:58):
the show. Is he seriously goingto offer me this role in this
movie. So maybe that was playingaround in the back of my head,
but the truth is, Sydney hadactually seen me on talk soup,
and that was how I probably evergot the audition to begin with.
So it listen, it opened as manydoors. It opened a lot of doors
too.

We'll come back to Sydney and Sabrina in a
minute, but I want to talk aboutin as an actor, it's a catch 22
you need an agent to book amovie, but you need to get a
role to get an agent. So can youtalk about what's your advice to
all the actors here on how toget an agent who don't have a
big role or aren't gettingparts? Is that possible? I

(01:12:40):
honestly,

you know, I am asked about that periodically,
and I don't really know how toanswer it, because the
environments just change somuch. I mean, I think getting
noticed is very difficult. Ithink the environment for, you
know, young people starting outprobably in the certainly, if
their pursuit is to be an actor,it's a great vocation, but it is

(01:13:05):
harder than ever, at least inthe mainstream, to find a maybe
a job or an opportunity. But Ithink, by the same token, as we
sit here talking in this space,and you know, you think of the
internet and the opportunitiesthat that is opening up for
people. I mean that by today'sstandards, you know, I

(01:13:26):
definitely would have started onYouTube or something. I was on
a, it was a, technically, a reallife cable television channel,
but comparatively, by today'sstandards, I probably started on
like, a YouTube type, you know,operation, and there is no end
to what that can do for a persontrying to get noticed and get

(01:13:48):
started. And I know, you know, Ithere's plenty of success
stories out there from peopleusing it. So that area seems to
me like a good one to getstarted. But in terms of then
parlaying that into anopportunity with an agent, I
just don't know how that works.
Yeah, that's for your nextepisode, talking to my agent

(01:14:10):
right speaking of age, out here,right now, Rick, come on in
here. No. Sorry. Rick

Kurtzman, great.
Kurtzman at CAA. Yeah. So mydaughter works at CAA. She just
graduated college. What we'llcall it. CAA is the best agency,
talent agency in the world.
Shout out to Bianca. Shout outto CAA. How important are agents
to actors success?

I don't I it's, it's always hard to, it's hard
to qualify anything, obviously,in this business, this, you
know, because you don't knowwhen you meet somebody, how did
that, you know? How did thataffect your opportunity? And you
know, so it's always difficult.
But I would say that, you know,I have found that. But you know,
I work with, you know, oh, Benjiand dar shout out to those guys.

(01:15:05):
I work with a great team overthere, and you know, they're
excellent. And the you know,difference between working with
agents who really know, careabout you and effectively are on
it versus, you know, ones who,who aren't, as probably a pretty
big, you know, that's a prettybig chasm I, I, but I don't know

(01:15:28):
exactly how to qualify, otherthan for me, it's a great I have
great confidence in the people Iget to work with over at CAA,
and I have great confidence inthat they are professional. They
they know how to execute. I knowif I have a question about
something, I know if I want totalk about something, I mean,

(01:15:49):
hell, you probably have to behalf a shrink, you know, to to
deal with, you know, talent inin this world, and they're all
really good at that. They'rereally good at at at just being
there. So

the only reason I know how this works is because
I live in LA. I have friends inthe business at all in this
business, I Well, she's brandnew, so she's been at CAA for
two months. She's in thetraining program branding group,
so she doesn't want to be in.
Oh, branding, yeah, right. Soshe works on a lot of corporate
clients. She's not even allowedto tell me what she's doing.
They're very strict onconfidentiality, okay, but one

(01:16:28):
of what if

I want to start the Greg Kinnear golf clubs and
create the Greg Kinnear golfbrand, I need to call your
daughter. So

explain to people. Oh, get out of here,
man. You just took another youjust took another nugget out of
the you just took another rabbitout of

the hat. What was something else are we gonna do
this later on? A lotta, lotta.
So tell me a little bit aboutthe importance of hair. Would
you believe? Do you think let meturn the tables on you. Randall,
okay, how important you thinkhair is

in my profession? Yes, as an
entrepreneur, yes. And now, so Ihave a venture capital
investment

firm. Oh, I know.
I have, we'll be, we'll begetting into that. Pretty soon,
I got a movie that needs alittle support, if you know what
I mean.

I've got a small real estate company. I have my
main job, money maker. I hopenext billion dollar opportunity.
Now I'm listening comedy, comedycalled Sandy, s, a, n, d, e, and

we're building, this is beaches. This is the
study of beaches all over theglobe? Well, we've

created the world's largest beach resource
for the $5 trillion beachtourism business. That doesn't
even include the local tourismbusiness. So there's 10s of
billions of beach visits aroundthe world. There's no definitive
resource. We've cataloged over100 categories of data for more
than 100,000 beaches, 140,000beaches now in 212 countries. So

am I going to see?
How do you film them? How do youcapture the is that what I'm
going to see is I'm going to,you're going to get to know all
the information about them, butI'll also get to see the beach,
I'm assuming, right?

So people want to see what the beach looks like
before they go. Everybody hashad a bad experience on a on a
vacation, and this is not, thisis valuable. Cherish time. These
are expensive days for you,right? People get a week
vacation. Two weeks they planthe average vacations, four
days, four and a half daysyou're going to a beach, and
it's the wrong beach. So

drones, drones, you and your company are
responsible for the drones onNew Jersey shoreline, driving
the country safe crazy,

exactly. Yeah, those are not our nighttime
drones. And those are thosedrones are about this big. Our
drones are DJI. You know, I flya Mavic, two Pro. Yeah, it folds
up into a neat case. But now wealways have pain points in
building companies. One of ourpain points is finding photos
for 140,000 beaches throughoutthe world. It's a very difficult

(01:18:56):
process because we have to abideby strict copyright laws, right?
We don't steal copyrights and sobig mistake. I mean, we would
never do that, right? I'm a techguy. I mean, it's wrong, but we
have to find all these photos,and they have to have the proper
commercial use licenses, sothat's a huge task. But the
answer your question is, yes, wehave about 50,000 60,000 how

(01:19:20):
many photos do we have now inthe database photos?

Unknown (01:19:23):
Yeah, 180,000

180,000 photos.
Now for 140,000 beaches, well,we don't have one per beach. I
mean, some beaches we have 10 or15 photos.

One beach you've got 120,000 photos of. And it's
well done. They're

all great, by the way, we've, we've added
those, but, but explain how itworks. I mean, you're an actor,
and you're very established.
You're very successful. Now youhave one of the top agents at
CA, Rick is very well known, ishe? So walk us through how it
works. An agent will get ascript, and we'll say, Hey, this
is great for Greg. I. Right?

(01:20:00):
He's going to, there's someonein the mail room, by the way,
who's reading that script first,right? Yeah. They may or may not
know what they're doing, right?
That that script will get sentto the agent, you know, Junior
agent, then the Senior Agent totake it, goes through various
reads, and then Rick will callyou up and say, Hey, Greg, I
really want you to look at this.
And then you read it. I mean, isthat the process just, just walk

(01:20:20):
us through how it worked at thebeginning of your career and how
it works now, hasn't really

changed that much.
I By the way, Benji and dar whoalso work with me, you know, I
can get a call from many ofthem, some work in film, some
work in television. Is theperson who handles, like
podcasts, you know. So there's agroup, always a team and and
they'll call and say, you know,maybe give a call about a script

(01:20:51):
that they have read and is beingproduced, so and so, place
whatever details are relevant toit, in terms of what, who's
attached, and kind of, you know,the director is, and who the
writer is, I might get kind of abrief overview, and then
eventually you get it sent, andthen it's, it's the process of,

(01:21:14):
you know, reading it And andusually in, you know, that's
something I like, you know, orsomething that seems like it's
coming together in a good way,you know, it might involve a
meeting or with a director,yeah, sure, sure. I mean, the
director ultimately is, is thekey to anything, you know. I

(01:21:37):
mean, it's a little different intelevision, because the show
runner is also, is, you know,probably more the person that
you're talking to, but, but witha film, yeah, it's, it's the
director and and it's just aconversation, and that
conversation at that point, it'sthe the, you know, the ropes

(01:21:57):
been cut, and you're On a boatwith somebody else now, and
you're talking about creatively,well, how would this happen? And
when, when? What is this?
What's, what's it about? Andwhat am I, what's, what are you
asking me to do? What am I beingWhy am I being a part of this?
And what can I bring, or, ormaybe me advocating a little
strongly about what I can bringif I really like it, and then,

(01:22:23):
and then either the thing setssail or it doesn't. And that's
kind of the the process, but,but I you know, so it's not
particularly complicated.
That's, that's pretty much it.

I never answer your question about my hair. No,
I'm not a politician, but theanswer is, now that I am on
camera for the first time, it isa little awkward. We've done a
lot of these. This isn't yourfirst time, no, but it's still
what I what I notice is that. Imean, obviously I want to look
good, yeah, right. So my hairdoes matter. You always want to
put your best foot forward,yeah. I mean, as part of the

(01:23:01):
preparation, I'm writing a bookon preparation called extreme
preparation. And one of thethings that we talk about, it's
that I write about and I coachabout. It's amazing how many
people show up at an interviewor meeting without taking a look
in the mirror and seeing thattheir hair is put together. I've
seen people just all over theplace. If you can't look in the

(01:23:23):
mirror and know how you look,it's and you can take two
minutes to fix your hair.

Have you? Have you ever like, come across anyone
like so unprofessional that theywould just show up to one of
your podcasts in like a hat andthink that a podcast was just
like two microphones, andwouldn't even think to ask you,
Hey, are we going to be in frontof a giant camera so that I can
actually not look like I'mfalling out of the Rocky Horror

(01:23:51):
Picture Show? Or have you foundthat most actors would actually
ask they would have learnedlessons, and they would know to
call you ahead of time and say,am I going to be on camera? And
that you could prep them. That'sprobably more your experience,
right?

Well, except for the actors making $30 million a
movie, those people right showup with with,

yeah, clean, clean, scrubbed, groomed, ready
to go. Interesting.

So let's talk about Sydney. What do you think
about

the drones back in New Jersey as a drone flyer?
What is your take on thatsituation? Number one,

the laws are, what they are, you can fly your
drone. Oh, I know within 400feet. Yeah, totally. The crazy
thing is, you have to be in eyecontact with your drone at all
times. Are

You Led flight at night. Well, you are okay, no
restriction, but, well, there

are in some and you can't fly in there and
airport, each location isdifferent. You can't fly it
within five miles of an airport.
You need a commercial license,if it's for commercial
production. And to get thatlicense, it's basically pilots
by. Since you got to study,there's a test, FAA certificate.
So that's, that's a real that'sa real thing. But sound like New

York is, here's my question, What the hell is going
on in these? I

have no idea.
You really are. Apologies. Arethese? Are? These are big
drones. So this is not RandyKaplan. First of all, my drones
won't work. These are big

drones. How big?
That doesn't seem like that big

of my drone is this big, right? A hobbyist, you
wouldn't

want to have to give

that up. Did you on the broadcast? Don't come
arrest me now. These are, theseare my drones. I'm filming
infrared the value of thebeaches. I'm taking nighttime
images of every airport.

I know you're shooting these beaches with a
pack of cigarettes for God'ssakes. I was impressed. All
right, so you have littleminiature drones. These are
bigger drones. They're very big,but they're not military size.

No. Well, some military drones are that size as
well. Now they're buildingmilitary drones of that size in
Ukraine, where a drone that sizecan actually shoot a missile. So
you think it's just people up,hey, I'll take like, you.

You like, you're a drone enthusiast. You think
people are just like, hey, I'mgonna go fly my drone. There's a
little bit of talk about

it. I think there a lot of these drone
sightings are really aircraft,helicopters. You can't see far
enough. And I do think a lot ofthem are drones. I don't
understand and don't believethat the government, either
local or the US government,knows nothing about these you
can't fly a drone over amilitary installation, which is

(01:26:28):
happening in different parts ofthe country, without knowing
what's there. What's scary aboutit is drones are often not
picked up by the radar. So youcan fly beneath the radar. You
can fly into a military basethese days, unless you put drone
jamming equipment, technology,

yeah, which is out there as well, right? Which
would prohibit a drone frombeing able to fly? Yeah, there's

basically a wall. Well, why don't they go
put up a Why don't we

put one of those up in this area where everybody
is obsessed? I don't

know the answer to that question, but it may
have something to do that it mayinterfere with an aircraft,
although I'm not sure if that'sthe case, but if I fly my drone
from a fly zone to a no flyzone, it's like it hits a wall,
right? Like you could fly yourdrone at 20 miles per hour drop.
It's like it won't drop, it willnot drop, but it will hit the
fence and it won't go anymore.
Oh, I so, oh, I said there aresome technology that can drop a

(01:27:19):
drone, but, you know, a normalno fly zone won't, won't do
that, and there's air maps, etc,etc, yeah. So it's there are
technological answers here. Whyare you a drone

enthusiast? What makes you a drone enthusiast?
So,

beaches are my happy place, okay? And I love
photography. I'm the guy thattakes 500 photos on the family,
family, and, you know, the kidsbitch and moan on it, right? And
then later they're so happy thathave all these photos. And so
someone introduced me to a droneyears ago. Jason Spielman,
meeting with you next week,can't wait to hear what we're

(01:27:57):
talking about. And I said, Okay,well, this is great. I saw the
picture, and I had seen dronepictures. You know, before.
They're beautiful images. Youcan see everything. I thought. I
think I have a good eye for it.
And I started taking dronephotos of beaches. I like how
they look. People like them. Andwhen I go on a beach vacation, I
travel with two drones, and Ihave a coffee table book, and I

(01:28:19):
blown the surprise, but I amgiving it to you as a thank you
for doing my show. It's calledbliss. It sold 10,000 copies, so
I don't pay for it, right? No,it's free. It's free. It doesn't
matter.

I

saved you 2995 by the way, if you could post
all your followers and tell allthe directors and a list actors
and the famous people. You knowthat this makes a phenomenal
gift to go to somebody's housebetter than a bottle of wine. Is
unique, very appreciated. You're

trying to make money off of your gift. To me,
you

know, overachiever, I do it. I do
because, because, you know, it'sa labor of love, by the way,
that's cool. And I actually love

drones. And I've never flown one. And I, well, I
mean, I have, I used to have,like, a one, little crappy one I
had with the kids one time, butI'll get it. Yeah, it

actually, it's hard, you know, I probably, I
probably have 1000 flight hours,probably more than that, two or
3000 flight hours, yeah, butit's hard. I

see it. We use, you know, we in a movie or tell
anything now is like you they'realways pulling drones out in
order to get a shot ofsomething. And when those guys
come in, they're so organized,they're and the stuff they have
is fantastic, yeah, and it'sjust, you can ask anything you
want, and they're give you everykind of answer, but the their

(01:29:42):
ability to give you a smoothaerial shot of almost anything
is they're amazing. So

Sydney Pollack from Lafayette, Indiana, close,
yeah, close to you. Yeah. Youget invited to audition for
Sabrina. With Harrison Ford, whothen was probably the biggest
movie star in the world. Yep,Julia Ormond. I remember seeing
the movie and thinking, oh mygosh, legends of all, one of the

(01:30:11):
most beautiful women I've everseen. Yeah, I thought, oh my
gosh, that's gonna say God, oneday I'd love to meet a beautiful
movie star like that. And sureenough, here we are walking out
of Starbucks one day. There'sJulia, you know, I met her at
school. Our kids were friends.
Oh yeah, she was married to aguy, and I was married to my ex
wife, and we're talking, andit's like, hey, hey, what are

(01:30:33):
you up to? Hey, divorce. Oh, I'mDoris, too. So I had a chance to
get to know her a little bit.
And, you know, I never told herthis, by the way, so I'm, I'm
gonna tell her that we're doingthe show. I'm sure she'll,
she'll watch

it, but think so again, she watches everything I
do. I

was I was, I was, and maybe I said this to
you, Julia, I'm not 100% sure. Idon't remember this, but I was
infatuated with her. I thoughtthis is incredible, but Sabrina,
back to the movie. Sabrina wasan incredible movie, yeah, a
remake of a movie. And you saidthat this was really your first

(01:31:14):
big break, but you said youweren't that nervous, even
though you should have beennervous, yeah?

I mean, I think so. I think I should have been
I, I was a lot. Was way morenervous, like going to lunch in
New York with Harrison, youknow, the first time I was still
I was going to go meet him atsome restaurant, grab a bite to
eat, and, you know, and we andjust kind of going and kind of

(01:31:41):
meeting him, because he I was afan like anybody, and I had seen
from Star Wars The, you know,all of it was kind of
overwhelmed to finally sit downwith him. But nice guy and, you
know, really funny and cool, andthat was, you know, made me very

(01:32:03):
comfortable, and didn't feel bythe time I got to day one of
shooting, I didn't I justremember not feeling overwhelmed
at the level I should have been,but I was conscious that, holy
shit. This is Harrison Ford, andI'm getting out of a car to go
talk to him right now on a movieset the

US Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023 said
the average actor makes $20.50per hour. Two thirds of people
coming to LA or want to be aprofessional actor leave after
the first year. You were 31years old when you got your that

(01:32:43):
big break. Yeah, is 31 years oldtoo late today to become an
actor. And what's your advice topeople who are trying to make it
at what age is it? Hey, I thinkyou should probably not do this.
It's not going to

work out well.
Well, first of all, I would saythat the business has changed
drastically, right? The industryhas changed drastically. I mean,
like, you know, you think ofHarrison, like, you know, I
think he's on two TV shows. Now,if you would said that to me
back at that time, you know, I'dbeen like, what? And he should
be, because there's a greataudience. He's on, you know,

(01:33:20):
he's great in that showshrinking. And there he is on
Apple TV. The audience is therefor him. And, you know, but it
used to be, you know, that youwere kind of dedicated, you were
in television, or you were infilm, or maybe you were made
documentaries. And now it's kindof, everybody does everything
and and, you know, I it reallyhas changed drastically, you

(01:33:46):
know, since that time. And I dothink that, you know, you can
show up here, and you probablycan do a lot of different. Hell,
I did. You've, good God, you'vegone through the whole list. I
did a lot of stuff before I wasever on that set at 31 years
old, you know, there was a lotof stuff, and some of it was,
you know, hosting, and some ofit was television, but there

(01:34:11):
were plenty of other jobs andoddball things that I would was
doing, you Know, before I evergot there. So I guess coming out
and trying to get an opportunityto find yourself and maybe
lowering expectations of howquick it's going to happen. Are

(01:34:31):
you going to die of chokingthere? You continue. I don't
know what happened here. Ladiesand gentlemen. Greg Kinnear,
today,

I'd rather have CPR from Michelle than that. No
offense. Mustache is not mything.

Mouth to mouth.
Have you ever had mouth tomouth?

No, okay, no, but if I did have it, I hope
it's my wife or someone wholooks like my wife, I
understand.

I. Understand. I played a doctor in a number of
shows. I think, I think you'regonna be fine. How are you now?
Okay, I feel good.

Okay, yeah, any who if we could just bring it
thinking about Mad mustache. I'mjust like mad. Just never gonna
cough again. Never gonna coughagain. I

just played the head of a fire department in
Dennis lanes. Next show, we dida show called black bird, and
then we followed it up withanother true crime story, and it
takes place in the world ofarson, and did it with Taryn
Edgerton, a lot of the samepeople. And I have a mustache,
and it's pretty good mustache.
That's a very good muscle. Wehave so

much material to cover today, and I had cut out
the Dennis Lehane part of this,yeah, one of my favorite, I love
fiction, yeah, one of the, oneof, one of the, one of my goals
on my bucket list is to have abest selling fiction book.

But that'd be great. I get I get it. I'm with

you right there, and he's absolutely phenomenal
writer. Have you ever written achapter? I wrote a book, so All
right, we're gonna digress righthere. I've never shared this
story, either, but for years Iworked on a fiction book called
Election Day, and it's about athird year law student who finds

(01:36:23):
himself involved in andmotivated to solve a series of
murders. And there was a guynamed Larry Kirschbaum, I don't
know if you know that name, whoran Warner books for 40 years.
He was the Richard Lovett of thebook business, right? He was
there forever. He had everybody,James Patterson and we were on a

(01:36:44):
board at the University ofMichigan together, and I said,
Hey Larry. And we becamefriendly. I said, Hey Larry. You
know, I'm writing this book, andit took a lot of years. I would
come into work every day fromseven to one, no email, no
phone. My assistant wasn'tallowed to talk to me. The only
thing I did was I sat at thedesk. When I had to go to the

(01:37:05):
bathroom, I'd sit back. And whenmy kids were younger, they would
say, Daddy happy writing. Thatwould be what they said in the
morning when I left. And so Ifinally sent some pages to
Larry, he said, When I wasready. And you know, you're so
nervous, right? You got oneshot. If you suck, he's not
going to read the rest of thebook. Would you send him the
first pages of the book? Yeah, Isent him the first 10 pages of

(01:37:26):
the book, okay? And he said, Ireally like it. Send the whole
thing. So I sent him the wholething. And during this process,
he left Warner books to becomean agent. Oh boy. And I'm like,
oh shit, I waited too late. Iblew my chance. You missed your
moment. But then I thought,Okay, well, I need a book agent
anyway. It would have beenbetter if he was still CEO of
Warner books, but so he read,and he said, I love it. You're a

(01:37:49):
great writer. I want you to bemy client. So I was Larry
kirschbaum's first non publishedauthor client. He gave me some
notes, and I was so excited. Hegave me and then he had someone
that worked with him at theagency. They sent me their notes
together, and they said, Okay,here's what you got to do. And

(01:38:12):
they sent me. So I did arewrite. It took three months
now. I was working from likeseven to four every day. I mean,
there's only so much you cantake mentally to stay sharp. So
I did this for three months, andI wrote it, and, you know, like
I was so happy, my wife and Icelebrated, you know, she got me
a nice dinner. I think she had aprivate chef come to the house.

(01:38:33):
You know, this was, like, areally big moment, yeah, and so
I was waiting, waiting, andLarry calls me. He said, You
know, this has gone downhill alot. He said, the changes are
not good, and you need to thinkabout this book. And at that
point, I thought, you know, Icould have hired a ghost writer

(01:38:54):
to help me with, you know, mybook, James Patterson, has a lot
of ghost writers. Chapter Yeah,fix it.

So that's what I need, some ghost writers. So

Larry, I said, and I didn't want to hire
someone. It's like, I've gotmoney, and that wasn't the right
way to do it. I wasn't going touse my money and have someone
else help me write my book. Iwant to make it on my own. I was
stubborn about it. And Larrysaid, you need someone to help
you with a book editor. So Isaid, Can you recommend
somebody? Said, Well, you get,you know, you can call this guy,
Dick Merrick. I said, Will youintroduce me for whatever

(01:39:29):
reason? He said, No. I said,Okay, so, but he gave me his
contact information. DickMerrick was older, wasn't taking
new clients. Was very gruff onthe phone, hey, I have this
book, etc, etc, you know where,you know, weird. I'm not taking
new clients on the bookbusiness. Where'd you get my

(01:39:50):
name? Larry kurzbaum. Larrykurshbaum told you to call me. I
Yes, he did. He said, Send me.
Send me the first 10 pages. So.
On the first 10 pages. He said,You're an excellent writer. Send
me 100 pages. I want to chargeyou $5,000 to read that page.
I'm like, Oh, fuck. I got tospend 100,000 ways you charge
you $5,000 to read the 100pages. Yeah, to read the 100

(01:40:13):
pages and give me comments onthat's fair. I mean, whatever.
But I do it for 2000 okay, ifyou ever in that so I sent him.
It's like, okay, send me thewhole book. So I did. I was
excited to get his commentsback, and the comments were
exactly the same as Larry's. Andby the way, this he had written
two of James Patterson's booksas the ghost writer. James

(01:40:36):
Patterson now puts the writer onthe book with it with him. Dave
Ellis, a classmate of mine fromNorthwestern Law School. Shout
out to Dave is now a bestselling because he writes with
Jim Patterson. James Patterson,who's the most successful
fiction writer of all time. Hemakes like $70 million a year.
I'm uncomfortable

with all the success, but go ahead, it's
yeah. So

so I have that book, and I need to get back to
my book. But I got extremelybusy. I got divorced, right? I
was taking care of three kids,part, you know, part time, my
career, just theresponsibilities. But I will go
back to that book. My book,extreme preparation, is going to
come out in 2025 that's a how.

So you're telling me that you wish you wrote, but
you do right? Yeah, fictionalbook, but you did a fiction.

I have it. It needs a lot of work, and I'm
going to, you want to, you wantto finish it. I am going to
finish, yeah, do you

know what for the primary? What was the primary?
Note that you look back at yousay, okay, so their big problem,
stumbling, rock. Can you? Canyou just describe it in a
sentence? Yeah, one

sentence. The character wasn't likable. Oh,
that's easy. Easy to fix. Youdidn't You didn't we didn't feel
sympathy for the character. Thisis, I don't want to give too
much. I think

it's an easy I think that that in the world of
structure and all that that thatis much more difficult than I
would think something like that,although,

yeah, I haven't written any. I mean, yeah, I
mean, we could go into the book.
I want to go back to you, and Iwant to go back to the podcast.
But, okay, this has turned intothe Greg Kinnear Podcast. I'm
glad to be a guest. Thanks forhaving me. I'm really good

at this. All

right, go ahead.
So Jack Nicholson, at one point,was the biggest movie star in
the world, right? He was the guyeveryone wanted to work with. I
guess people today may say, youknow the pre Leonardo DiCaprio.
Maybe, I'm not sure if that'sright comparison or not. Tell us
about the audition you had athis house for what has been
known as your biggest, bestmovie role, and tell us about

(01:42:39):
how spaghetti was such animportant part of that
interview. Well,

yeah, it's it's a it's true. It's true. My first
meeting with Jack took place upat his house, and Mulholland,
famous house up there, and JimBrooks and I went up there to
meet him. I hadn't met him. Iwas going to play Simon. He's
playing Melvin. Jim thought itwas a good idea to have us
together. I think we maybe readthrough a few scenes too. And I

(01:43:10):
didn't, I don't think I had thejob at this point. And he was
very nice. We read through acouple of things together, and I
was like, assuming it was timefor me to get out of the house.
And he said, Do you likespaghetti and meatballs? So I
said, Yes, I do. And so we satdown, had a little bite to eat,

(01:43:30):
and I don't think that it theparticular thing on the menu
played a any sort of significantrole in the events of the night.
But, you know, it was very nice.
We sat and had a nice bite toeat and just talked and got to
know each other. And I always, Ilisten, I there's few people I
can think in the world who hold,you know, quite the place in

(01:43:55):
cinema that he does, that arethat are still around. And he's,
he's a remarkable, remarkableactor with a just a incredible
body of work. And so that was athrill to get to work with him.
And, you know, something that hedidn't let me down the his work
was fantastic on it. He took itseriously, but it was fun to

(01:44:18):
work with and total pro and justeverything you you would want, I

would ask you to do an impersonation of Jack. I
said, Are you once forgettingmeatballs? No, no, but, but,
but, but I like you to do. Didyou order the code red? Oh,

did you order the did you order the Code Red? Is
that what he says he

was asked by Cuba Gooden Jr, I think it was
Cuba. Did you you want

me on that wall?
Right? Yeah, you

need me on that wall. Hey, look

at that. Look at us. We should take this show on
the road. You're goddamn

right. I did so

when you fly a drone, are you looking like? Get
a monitor or something, or, Hey,Rick, I

Rick, I have had some acting experience, and I
like to, I like to maybe try outfor another role. Rick,

it's not true.
Stay away from this man.
Whatever you do. He has noacting skills, as I can see. I'm
kidding you. Everyone's anactor. You know that you
probably go into these meetings,like, when you do your, your
fancy, get rich schemes and andyou, to some degree, you have to
everyone's acting right aroundthe table. When, when, when

(01:45:33):
people are doing their, I thinkin these, you know, in finance
world, which I know nothingabout. I and, you know, there's,
you know, a lot of money on theline, and people go in there is
acting going on all around thetable. I always say to my kids,
you're not, none of them haveany interest in being an actor.

(01:45:55):
I say, trust me, you're going tobe acting, whether you know it
or not. That's,

that's part of a lot of the coaching I do is it's
all about sales, right? Andsales, you know, you're acting,
everything you do is aboutsales, right? I wanted you to
like me, yep, when I met you,yeah. I think I am generally
choice. I think I am generallylikable. But I want, I you know,
you need people to like you, towant to work with you. You need

(01:46:20):
people to like you if you wantto build a team and be a leader,
and all that is about sales.
Yeah. Now, my friend is a verysuccessful investment banker,
and I remember he said to me,you know, he makes probably
these days, $20 million a year.
And he said, I'm in sales.
Michael Govan, who runs LACMA.

(01:46:41):
It was my brother in law. Oh,wow. And I remember him coming
over, sitting on the couch. Ihave a friend there for
Thanksgiving dinner, and shedoesn't know who he is, right?
She's not in the art world. Andsays, you know, what do you do?
And she says, I worked at amuseum, and it was back and
forth. He didn't say he wasdirector of acquaint he said,

(01:47:06):
I'm in sales for the museum. Andit was very interesting. I said,
Well, what's your primary job? Isaid, I'm a fundraiser. And it
was very interesting even tohear that from someone who works
in a museum, running a museum,they're in sales, right? And
it's something, it's something alot of people don't understand.
Back to Rick Kurtzman, by theway, our Pickleball coach, we

(01:47:30):
have a similar pickleball coach,Michael, I know he plays at your
house. I know you're interestedto play at my house, so I love
to invite you to play at myhouse, but I want to get Matthew
McConaughey on my show, So Rick,you and I can talk about that as
well. I'm

sitting right here. Okay, anyway, folks, we're
gonna wrap this up. This hasbeen great, Randall. We want you
back on the show anytime. And Iapologize, it's two year, two
hours. I had no idea the Timegoes fast when you're speaking
with somebody as dynamic asmyself, go ahead, the

movie is as good as it gets, and you play a gay
man. And my question is, is astraight man? Is it difficult to
play a gay man? What's involvedin the research and is it more
difficult than a regular role?

No, it was very well written. Jim Brooks was the
director, and he's an incrediblewriter, and it was all there on
the page. And there was a realperson there who had great, you
know, dignity, who I had greatcompassion for. He gets horribly
maimed during the show. He loveshis dog and is trying to, you

(01:48:44):
know, operate his life as besthe can. And there's a horribly
abusive, homophobic guy livingacross the hall from him, and he
is just dealing with a bit of alife crisis all at once. And no,
I didn't, it wasn't difficultplaying him as gay, you know, I

(01:49:04):
felt like it was a, you know,lovely person and beautiful
role. One of

my favorite movies of all time, by the way,
which one as good as it gets? Itwas a, it was a fantastic movie.
Thank you. 1998 Academy Awardsthe year. Titanic was all their
age. They won 11 Oscars thatyear. You're up for Best
Supporting Actor against RobinWilliams, Detroit, Country Day

(01:49:33):
Man, graduate high school. Iwent to the same high school. I
have an interesting RobinWilliams. Sorry, I'll share with
you in a minute what I've youdidn't win, and what I'm always
congratulations on thenomination, by the way. I mean,
that's huge. Why didn't I win?
Is that your question? No, thatisn't the question. The question
is, you know, you're alwayssitting there watching this,
right? It's a great show. AndI'm always wondering, when you

(01:49:54):
don't win, everyone justimmediately starts clapping for
are you sitting? Are saying toyourself, fuck, I didn't win.
And I really the cameras on methat I really got really happy.
Yeah, you kind

of do. Because before the before they announce
it, of course, somebody comesdown and gets down on a knee
right in front of you with acamera about a foot away from
you. So when you see, you knowthe actors kind of, you know the
camera is set right in front ofthem. So it's, it is you're very
conscious that you're they'reabout to tell you whether you

(01:50:28):
you win or not at any of thoseaward shows. And it's

because I watched it, by the way,
yesterday. Watch what that youyour reaction? Robin, yes, I
did. There's a YouTube video,wow.

And time do you have on your hands between the
drone business and

I wanted to see because I manage it, by the way,
it wasn't even a millisecond byYou look happy. You know, it's
like, if I'm not happy, I kindof would think, like, that's the
acting. No, I would kind ofthink like, you know, you get
hit in the gut, but you'reprobably knowing that. You know
you got to be a good sport andyou got to be likable, yeah,

I guess. But there's also a fairly good
chance that you know before youever, before I did that, that
show, before I had ever gottento that place, you there has
been Golden Globes and otherthings. And you know, so I, you
know, you don't go in with anyexpectation. So I don't think
anybody ever goes in with a hugeexpectation, one way or the
other. And no one's stupidenough to go, you know, when

(01:51:36):
they lose because, again,there's a camera sitting there,
so that might internally behappening for people. And there
are some funny ones wherepeople, I feel like, have, like,
Miss baby, like, not handled aswell as they should have, or
told a little too much of theirinternal story outside, even
though they had a camera rightthere. But yeah, I mean, like,

(01:51:56):
also, was a great night for me.
I had my wife and I had my momand dad came. It was, it was a
great evening for us. Yeah, allwin. And by the way, Robin
Williams won that year, and hewas absolutely magnificent. Were
you in the same years? No

High School? No, I wasn't. You're older than him.
I'm much younger. Thank you.
Okay, sorry, no, I went to apublic high school, and then I
want to go to go to a privatehigh school. Very good. I was
doing well in school, and gradeswere my thing. And I visited a
school called Detroit CountryDay. And Robin Williams had gone
there, and Morgan Mindy was thenumber one show on TV. He was a
biggest TV star in the day, andhe came back that day to visit.

(01:52:36):
And then the lunch lunch time,everyone's in there, there's,
you know, all came in. You musthave been came in for 30
minutes. Just monolog hadeveryone on the floor laughing.
Yeah, this was kind of cool.
Yeah, I think I'm gonna comehere. Yeah. So I and
interesting. I always wanted tomeet him, yeah, and I saw him

(01:53:01):
one day at Barneys. And he wasleaving Barneys, I was walking
in, I said, You know what, Ikind of want to go over there.
And if it were today, then Iwould in a heartbeat, yeah. And
I never had the chance.
Obviously, yeah, of course, youknow, unfortunately, it didn't
do it. I did not do it.

What are the lessons did we learn that day?
Well,

you already know when you accosted me that day, I
had learned my lesson Exactly.

What do you do when you're you were accosted? I
was the perfect thing. Youcouldn't even it wasn't about
you trying to the moment youdidn't talk to an actor. It was
like, literally, the actorrunning up to you and accosting
you. It was the reverse Apple

had invested in our technology company. Really
my technology Steve Jobs wasCEO. He had sent someone out
when we attend, people to try tobuy the company. You ever meet
Steve Jobs? So I'm going to tellyou the lesson learned story.
Sorry,

I like to cut to the money shot. So

they made a lot of money on the investment. They
invested $25 million at a 250dollars with a $250 million
valuation. At some point whenyou could sell your stock, I
think our company had a $25billion market value. So they
made a lot of money on thestock. Wow. And I saw them. I
was in Kona at the Four Seasons,and there was a property next
door. They called them Konavillage, where there's no phone,

(01:54:21):
no nothing, right, no TV orwhatever. And he had come over
to the four seasons for lunchone day, and he was sitting far
away from everybody, and mywife, Laura, at the time, said,
Steve Johnson over there. Andsaid, Oh yeah, you know, you
want to go talk to him. Whatyear is this? This was, let's
see our company went public in99 it would have been after his

(01:54:43):
graduation speech at Stanford,which is 2006 2007 Okay, so
somewhere in in that range,right around the iPhone time, it
was before the iPhone time, Ithink it was before the iPhone
time, right? Yeah, it, for sure,was before the iPhone time, I
think, certainly given thespeech, certainly

before I took my company. Any public too, yeah.
So I'm trying to think time yourthird

public, yeah, your third public on so he, you
know, my wife said to me, you'regonna go talk to him. I said,
No, he's with his family overthere. Clearly, I'm there was no
one within 100 feet of them. Andshe said to me, the old Randy
would have, I was already out ofmy seat before she said, of
Yeah. And I go over to thetable, and no one looks at me.
You know, it's his wife, twokids. Yeah, I'm literally

(01:55:23):
standing right here. I'm notexistent at all. Yeah, and I
felt horrible and embarrassed. Isaid I heard he could always be.
He could be a pretty tough guy.
It was very rough. So I say,Excuse me, Mr. Jobs, I'm Randy
Kaplan,

is he looking at you? Now? Co founder, is he
still not looking at he

wasn't looking.
And then he finally went likethis, yeah, Akamai was the name
of the company, and when Imentioned it, he looked up, and
the first thing he said to mewas, you must have made a ton of
money. Hmm, you know,interesting. What do I say that?
I said, Yeah, we you know, I wasvery grateful and lucky, you
know, and that is how I feel,yeah. And I said, I know you

(01:56:03):
made a lot of money as well.
Apple did. They made hundreds ofmillions of dollars at a time
where they needed it, right?
Apple had a 1% PC market shareat the time, you know, Business
Week, and all these coversmagazines Forbes said that they
were going to go bankrupt, andthis was before they got the
windows settlement withMicrosoft for two $40 million so

(01:56:26):
these things all propel thecompany and help them
materially, financially. And Isaid to Steve, I said, I really
enjoyed your graduation speechat Stanford, and he looked at
me, and he said, Thank you. Lookdown. It was over, and I walked
back to the table doing this,and that was that. So I did meet

(01:56:52):
Steve Jobs. That was a story.
Oh, man, and at least I have astory to tell. I'm glad I did
it. It's

least you tell the story honestly. Do you know how
many people would twist thatinto so I tell Steve, and then
Steve says to me, I mean, that'swhat everybody does. I gotta
school. You a little doctor

that story.
Steve did say, and I want to bevery humble about his art, but
he did say I was probably thesmartest person he'd ever met.

Oh, he did say that. Yeah, okay, I left that
out. Okay, now I'munderstanding. You should leave
that in the story. If he saidthat, I think you should leave I
know you like to admit it, andyou're the modesty thing and all
that, but I think you shouldleave that fact into your in the
story. I think you should leadwith

it. Yeah. Well, no one would ever say that about
me, but I do want to talk about,

with all this money, do you pay people to come
on these podcasts? Or how doesthis

work? Ever we had, what you ever thought
about? So the only person I everconsidered this? Yeah, I was in
Vegas shooting Dana White. AndDana White, UFC is a huge deal,
right? And I studio, I rent onethere, and they shoot all kinds
of very interesting people. Soeveryone knows Dana's coming in.

(01:58:07):
Yeah, right. So everyone iswaiting, you know, their podcast
finishing, and whatever, PeteRose is there. He's a guest on
the show, and Pete's hanging outto meet Dana. And so Pete hangs
out, you know, Dana's there.
Dana says, I've got 60 minutes.
He went two hours and 40minutes, by the way, because the
system's blowing up my phone,which obviously I had on my

(01:58:28):
phone with me, right? You'resupposed to be at some police
League Two hours ago. But I metPete. He said he would do my
show, and he had a guy who said,you know, Pete charges $1,500 a
podcast. This is how he makesmoney. I mean, he didn't make
money, yeah. And I thought, youknow, a lot of my viewers and

(01:58:49):
listeners are not going to knowwho Pete Rose is, right, right?
He's too old. Pete Rose is oneof the greatest baseball players
to ever play the game. For sure,he gambled on the sport, and
that was the end of that band.
No Hall of Fame, no, nothing.
Little unfair on that Hall ofFame business. Yes, very, very.
I mean, you have all these guysjack on steroids or in, you
know, the whole, I mean, some,you know, we don't need to go

(01:59:11):
into the names. But so I blewoff. I'm back to Vegas to see
Pete, and I've been to Vegaswith my wife for a show or two,
or whatever, and I didn't filmPete. So when Pete, I was going
to pay Pete, I blew it off. Hedied. And I regret not paying
Pete. And I really regret notdoing that, because as a huge
kid, Pete Rose was my idol, oneof them, right? So that was a

(01:59:35):
bummer for me, but he was theonly one I had to consider
paying, and the only reason wasbecause he needed it. I

think he would have been offended. I think he
would have been offended to whatif you had paid him?

No, he wanted to get paid. It was a requirement
for him to do my show.

So in that way, my theory doesn't work. No, it
doesn't work. But

one, one thing interesting about your career,
that's. Different from peoplelike the rock Margot Robbie is
you never had an acting coach?

No. How

is that possible?

I didn't hire one.
But

99.9999% of actors, professional actors,
especially every actor. I mean,I Googled this before we got
here, right? And, I mean,everybody has acting coaches.

Yeah, I don't have a therapist either. I'm short of
all of the needed things toactually exist in this business.
I don't think that number istrue. I think it's probably,
you'd be surprised. I thinkthere are a lot more people than
you realize who haven't sought,you know, Coach or whatever. And

(02:00:50):
I, by the way, I've seen it workso well with many people I've
worked with to the point whereI'm like, I think I'm
intimidated. You know, it'slike, my god, it's worked so
well for people, certain peopleI've worked with, I'd be like,
Wow, that that's amazing. Thatis amazing technique. And I I'm

(02:01:12):
afraid that I would fail out ofthe class. Maybe it's the
University of Arizona baggagecarrying me, or I carry with me,
but I'm afraid I'd end upfailing out of the acting class,
but, but I just never have hadone, and I respect it so much
when people choose to do it. Ijust I haven't had one, and I,
and I guess the only thing Iwould say is the experience of,

(02:01:38):
you know, working with, youknow, directors and other actors
and even people peripherallywithin the crew, I feel like I
have learned. I learned in amore enormous amount from on
every project. So I don't I feellike I've been in school for
many, many, many, many years,and I have been in classes many,

(02:02:01):
many, many times, and toughglasses, some very, very tough
glasses. But you know thetechnical term acting class? No,
I haven't had that experience.
You've

had a ton of success. And you said also the
imposter syndrome, yeah. I

mean, for anybody I, well, just three, I think
anybody who feels like, youknow, it's a very, it's a very
fickle business, and to, youknow, find success in it, there
is, you know, it's, of course,great appreciation for it. And I

(02:02:40):
I take, you know, I don't takeany of it for granted, but I
definitely think some there aremoments where you're like,
Jesus, wow. What? What? Lookingback on my career, there's so
many accidental things thathappened to kind of, you know,
helped me fortify my career thatfeel very much like accidents

(02:03:01):
and incidents that were kind of,maybe outside of, you know, the
control, the way you might inthe finance world say, Okay,
we're going to build a deck,we're going to go in, we're
going to go sell the product,then we're going to go try and
meet Steve Jobs. Okay, maybethat won't work, but we're gonna

(02:03:21):
do all the other you know what?
I mean, you build out a morestep by step process. And I
don't think this businessnecessarily lends itself to
that. There is an accidentalquality to some of the stuff.

Do you think you're a movie star? And what is
a movie star? Yeah, I

don't know. No, I don't think of that for sure. I
don't feel that way. And, andthere are, you know, a plethora
of big stars all being featurednext week on the show join us.
But I have, I've been, you know,fortunate and lucky enough to
kind of, you know, stay in thegame and and I'm, I'm been very

(02:04:04):
grateful to work with a lot ofgreat people. And that is one of
the coolest things about, youknow, building, whether it's a
series or whether it'stelevision or movie, you know,
the idea of you build thislittle family experience
together, it does eventuallybreak down. It is a weird thing
where you get to the end andeverybody shakes hands and walks

(02:04:25):
away, but, but, you know, I'vebuilt a lot of families out here
over the years in

the venture capital business, which everyone
thinks is so sexy. It's not sexywhen you lose eight out of 10
deals go to zero, right? No one.
No one bats 100 the venturecapital business. Wasn't gonna
say it was sexy, but those areyour words. Well, I mean, oh, I
want to go on a venture capital.
I mean, all the interns, I wantto go into venture capital, of
course. And it is a highly riskybusiness, and you strike out

(02:04:54):
seven to eight or 10 times as anactor. A lot of films also bomb
you. Yeah, What plan are you on?
Mystery Men, do you know whenyou're filming a movie that it's
going to bomb?

No, I know. I I can feel, I think I feel, you
feel success more when it maybe, when it's happening, and
when you can be disappointed bythat too, where it can just be
okay. But I think you know, whenyou say, you know, really a

(02:05:26):
movie that isn't going toconnect with a with an audience,
you know, there's usually asense, I think, when, maybe,
when you're doing it, thatsomehow it's, it's, it's not,
doesn't have a certain amount ofbuoyancy happening within the
cast or the crew, or weirdthings. It just, it's like a

(02:05:48):
tune that's a little off, and Ihave sensed that. But listen,
I've been surprised on bothsides of that equation of
failure and success. And youknow, failure is, you know, just
as you, God knows, your lessonon failure. I can't imagine,

feels terrible, by the way, terrible failures.
No fun, no, but it's a greatmotivator.

It is a great motivator. And it's also, yeah,
that really is a learningprocess. There is a learning
process in in failure, and it ithurts and isn't fun, but it's
necessary. And you know, there'sno alternative. Do you learn? I

(02:06:32):
guess there is an alternative.
But do

you learn things from movies that bomb where you
say, Okay, here's what didn't gowell, I should do this better,
or I learned a lesson, or is itmore of a team thing that causes
it to fail?

Yeah, because I don't think the equation ever
changes. Of, you know, the theprocess for, for for picking or
choosing, or ending up doingwhatever you're doing is is
always, at least for me, and Ithink for most people, they all,
everybody kind of has their owncode. And, you know, you pick
based the best you can, basedupon a bunch of criteria that

(02:07:08):
you don't know. Well, I don'tknow what the environment is
going to be in the place we'regoing to shoot, and I don't know
what the real, what thedirectors behavior in the stress
of actually shooting is going tobe like, and I don't know what
the different actors are goingto, you know, how we're going to
all integrate once we getstarted? I mean, generally, more
often than not I I mean, that'spart of the job. You know, part

(02:07:31):
of it is, you know, Nora Ephron,and I did, You've Got Mail years
ago. I mean, she was like, thiswonderful woman that was
incredibly talented, you know,writer and director, and she
was, it was almost like she wasgreat at hosting a cocktail
party. You know, she would makesure that everything was set

(02:07:51):
when we started, and each dayfelt like a little joy. I mean,
it was, it was really nice.

We have cool moments as parents. You know,
one of my coolest moment was Itake my kids away on a trip
every year, one on one trip. Ihave twins, taking them away
every year, and I took them toCabo San Lucas. And I was
sitting in front of an agent whowas I was sitting in front of
someone who behind said, KelvinHarris is playing opening this

(02:08:23):
hotel. And I was fortunateenough, my wife Madison, her
best friend, was dating Kelvinfor some period of time, and I
knew his manager, Mark, shoutout to Mark. And Mark Gillespie
shout out, and we ended up inthe DJ booth with Calvin, with

(02:08:44):
416 year old girls. Theybrought, they brought their
friends. You had a CalvinHarris, Rihanna incident with
with your kids. I think Rihannacalled your lawyer. Your lawyer
called her, and there was a theywanted to use a movie, a song
that you did a movie to ask yourpermission. Can you tell us

about the song cockiness, and I don't know if
you remember the lyrics on thatsong, and if you don't, I like
to tell you what the lyrics ofthat of that song are. I don't
really what are the lyrics.
Okay, the lyrics are. This is asong that I had recorded, a song
in a movie called stuck on you.
Stuck on your movie I did withMatt Damon during the period
where Hollywood was making a lotof the conjoined twins movie. We

(02:09:29):
were, we were doing one ofthose, and the film was by the
fairly brothers. It was reallyfun to do, but, but any rate
that, at the end of it, I had tosing a song. And that song, I
got a call from my my lawyerssaid that one day said, Hey, did
you record a song in a movie onetime? And I was like, yeah. And

(02:09:50):
he said, Well, Rihanna wants tosample a piece of that song. And
I said, Rihanna, huh, wow. And Isaid. Said, that's possible. How
much would she pay me? And hesaid, nothing. And I said, All
right, let's do it. And so Ithink they actually did give me

(02:10:13):
some sort of they had to givesome sort of stipend. But
anyway, I thought it'd be great,great leap. I could modify this,
you know, with my kids, and tellthem, Dad's gonna do a song with
Rihanna. And so they, sureenough, were little little
girls, and I told them, Daddy'sgonna do a song with Rihanna.
And they were very excited. Andone day, I was driving them home

(02:10:35):
from the little parochialschool. We took them to and and
he sent me the song, and said,Hey, I just emailed you the song
that you recorded with, withRihanna. It's called cockiness.
And go ahead and listen to it.
And I was like, girls, guesswhat? Eddie's got the new
Rihanna song. And then I hitplay, and it opens with, suck my
cockiness, lick my persuasion.

(02:10:58):
And then I don't really know therest of the lyrics. It sounds
like you have them, right? Idon't, but I didn't you know
that, though, yeah, mycockiness, lick my persuasion.
It's a hit. Oh, it's a hit. It'sa hit, but it's a very filthy,
filthy song. And my daughterswere like, huh, Danny, what's I
mean, never mind, any rate it'sthat was, we never went on tour

(02:11:22):
together. Greg Rowe, very short.
Row, gray, I don't know, grayrow, I don't know. It was a very
short run, love story betweenthe two of us. We'll see if
anything else comes of it. Butit's a great, it's a great,
great way to wrap up thepodcast. And I'm glad you asked

(02:11:43):
about we,

there's a lot of bad actors in any profession in
Hollywood. We've got Phil Cosby,who everyone loved until all
that came out. You've got KevinSpacey, which we've talked
about, yeah, Harvey Weinstein.
Everybody in Hollywood, at leastthat I know, and it's probably
less than 1% of the people thatyou know kind of knew what was

(02:12:07):
happening with him, that he wasbasically just a complete and
total pig. Did you know? And didyour friends know? And was
everybody afraid of Harvey?

I don't know.
Honestly, I never worked. Inever worked directly with him.
He financed a movie, you know, Ithink a movie I did. I met him
at a party or two over thecourse of many years, but I
didn't know him well. I wasn'tin his circle, and I didn't

(02:12:38):
really know this side of them. Ididn't know that he was, you
know that that was all revealedwhen I saw the story come out,
and heard all the women who cameforward and obviously is
horrible, I guess unsurprising,looking back, you know, in our

(02:12:59):
business that there were badactors, and probably plenty
more, and plenty since then, whohave, you know, been sort of
outed. So, you know, it's, it'swas a long time coming, but
that, that is the end of that,

one of the hallmarks of my career that's
led to my success is thepreparation I do. I'm writing a
book called extreme preparation.
We've talked about it a littlebit. How much preparation goes
into a role are you memorizing?
I mean, I watch these activists.
I've got, how are theymemorizing all this stuff? I
mean, there's, there's no cuecards. I mean, on TV shows, I
know, when Will Smith got going?

(02:13:43):
You know, he's looking at thecue cards. I think that's well
known. But, I mean, you're notdoing that in a movie,
obviously. So right, play orplay, right? Yeah. So how much
preparation goes into memorizingall those lines and what? What's
the methodology that you gothrough?

Honestly, I It's one of my, my few gifts I can
memorize really, really well.
And if you gave me a page rightnow, I could probably, yeah,
now, certainly in the course ofthis podcast, whoever again
toward the end, I promisecertainly be as long as it was
under 300 pages, I would be ableto nail it for you pretty

(02:14:23):
quickly. I don't say thatlightly, it is a of course, it's
it isn't the most meaningfulthing. I don't think most actors
would tell you the ability tomemorize is is the key to
success, but, but it's valuable.

(02:14:46):
Oh, I'm serious, I could veryquickly learn whatever you

gave me, yeah, but you practice in front of a
mirror. Do you role play withyour wife or No, I

can. I'll read it like this and start like it
would start literally reading itlike this. It might. Desk, and I
can very and then drivingaround. And then I'll put I take
a I have screenshots of thepages on my phone, and can, once
in a while, as I'm taking ahike, and, you know, process it,
and it just keeps getting moreand more solidified. And, you

(02:15:16):
know, at the end of the day,it's valuable to have that
element out of the way. Itreally is, because I think there
are people who struggle with thewords and having the ability to
kind of compartmentalize thatand then focus more on the
specifics of what the characteris doing, or what you are trying
to convey in terms of thebehavior, or what the intention

(02:15:39):
is of whatever you're doing orseeing, you know, all of that is
ultimately, I think, far moreimportant than the ability to to
know what the character has tosay. But that said, you know,
obviously that's important too.
It's just, if you know, for me,that's, that's a pretty good.
That's always been pretty easy.

(02:16:03):
What

are the three?
And I don't know why. What arethe three most important
elements to be successful as anactor, and is it different for
non actors? Yeah,

I mean the ability to tell the truth. You know, the
ability to, you know, I guess,find the truth, the ability to,

(02:16:34):
I don't know, these are thethings I didn't go to school for
God's sakes. I told you, for me,it's a, this isn't like, this
sounds like an acting classthing, and I don't really know
how to answer that. I mean,there's probably a lot of
things, and I don't know whetheror not they correlate. I mean,
having having manners andshowing up and being respectful
to the people you work with,and, and, you know, and and

(02:16:57):
being on time, and, you know,working hard and being there
when they need you, and tryingto be as good as you can and
give the job 110% sure thoseapply to every job, right? But I
feel like you're trying to getme into the specifics of acting,
and I don't really know when Itake on a job, what, what the

(02:17:24):
most important thing is? I don'thave a list. I don't know what
it is, honestly, and it's, youknow, it's when it's done. I
kind of know whether or not I itdelivered on all the things I
wanted it to deliver on, but,but that's the job, folks.

Sharon Stone was on my show, and she one of the
things that she does that peoplereally love, is she writes Thank
you. Knows to every singleperson who's on the scent. She
knows everybody's name, from thelowest person, you know,
they're, you know, the grips to,obviously, all of her co actors,
Director, I I think that'samazing. It is amazing. I think
it's really important.

I'm terrible with names, too, by the way, Sharon
gets to be the person who notonly can memorize dialog, but
also can remember everybody'snames. And I walk in and I meet
10 people, and honestly, if youput me in a lineup, I'll, you
know, I can't do it. And it'slike a, it's a weird thing,
because it feels like it shouldbe, I should be a, I very likely

(02:18:26):
could run into you at arestaurant and be like, you
know, in two

guys did a podcast with

that guy, and it would be of no reflection of
you. I like you very much. AndI, I, I have this, and my wife
knows I have it, and it's aweird thing, and I can't, you
know, tell you anything otherthan it just doesn't it. I did
read the New York Times had aninteresting article about some

(02:18:53):
sort of thing condition wherethe brain kind of has a hard
time putting, you know, the namewith the actual, it's the it's
the ability to recognize afacial structure and be able to
have the recall of that thing.
It, and I forget what it'scalled, but it was a hell of an

(02:19:14):
article. You track that down forme too, and you're looking for
Deborah

Gibbs, we're going to track that down. You
know, very interesting. I thinksure if it's,

is it Deb Gibbs, I think it was Deborah Gibbs,
yeah. So,

as part of a tech trip, I was invited to
Israel back in 2000 our companyhad gone public, and this group
had organized a group of techleaders to go on this trip, and
beforehand, the leader of thattrip asked me if I wanted to
host a dinner for Prime MinisterNetanyahu at my house. So the
first thing I asked is, How muchis that going to cost me? They
said, nothing, but you have tobring in a coach or kitchen. I'm

(02:19:50):
like, Okay, well, yes, I wouldlike to. And I love my dog, and
our dog at the time was PuahBritney mountain dog, and I
wanted a picture of. Uh, PrimeMinister and my dog and his
wife, Sarah thought that wasvery disrespectful. I didn't
mean any disrespect, but Ithought it'd be a cool picture

(02:20:10):
to have the three of us.
Netanyahu, his wife thought itwas disrespect. Sarah did not
like that very that you weregonna get a picture with you,
your dog and and Prime Minister,Bebe, yeah, and baby, she was
not happy about that. Sononetheless, we took the photo.
How do you know she wasn'thappy? She told me. She said,
that's very disrespectful. Shekind of do it cute though. No,
there was no she didn't try tomask it with a smile. There's

(02:20:33):
but So between this

and Steve Jobs, there's a thing happening with
you? He

said again, I never really put it together. I
think I'm gonna have to ask mytherapist about this when I see
her next. But I it was veryinteresting to podcasts with
these coming over. No, it wasinteresting because my
dog's name was Pua, means flowerin Hawaiian. Our company had a
Hawaiian name, Akamai meanscool, clever, intelligent,

(02:21:05):
smart. So I thought that was avery cool name. So we took the
photo, and then we go to Israel.
I think six months later,there's, I don't know, 500
people there. And, you know, wegot to talk to him again, and he
said to me, Randy, how's Pua?
Oh, my God, I was It's likesomeone hit me with a battering
ram. Oh, my God. I mean, howmany people had he met in

(02:21:28):
between? I mean, I've

heard Bill Clinton, very similar, yeah. And
there are people who have thisMary Lou Henner, have that
ability. Oh, sures are dates.
You can tell her any she came onmy show once. Do you know this
story she was on 60 minutesabout

this well, but it's one of the stories about
you that I don't know. Yeah,she, she, she can

tell you. You can give her a date, and you can
say, Where were you on November12, 1991 Yeah. And she'll say,
Oh, I went to and she'll walkyou through the whole day. And
for me, it's the most terrifyingthing I've ever seen in my life,
this ability I can't imagine.
Thank God. I you know that thiskind of recall ability and what

(02:22:09):
she's capable of is it'sastounding

that show they ran through four or five
different people, autisticpeople, that's right, who didn't
have the ability to communicateand have a normal conversation.
But they did, in fact, and theylearned, some of them learned
they could record anything fromthree years old. It was a
remarkable thing. Talking aboutsuccess. One of the things
that's important to our successis getting over rejection. Mark

(02:22:36):
Ruffalo auditioned 800 timesbefore he got his first job. How
important is overcomingrejection to our success?

Yeah, I think, I think it's, you get better at
it, you know, I do think, youknow, it's, it's like a skit,
it's like a muscle youstrengthen, and it's, it's
again, and we were talking aboutearlier, you know, just failure
is no fun, but you do get betterat it rejection, you know? I

(02:23:04):
think same. I figure it's kindof in the same basket. I don't
know anybody who got rejectedand didn't feel the sense of
failure, you know. So I guessthey're kind of in the same
basket alone. You still

have to read for roles. I mean, you're so
established now you are a star.
I would, I

don't. I mean, I haven't, but, I mean, I if there
was something I really wanted, Ilike to think I'd still, you
know, I, you know, I'm sure I'dgo for it.

You play golf? I do? You hit a hole in one I did?
You play pickleball? I do. Areyou good pickleball player?

I was told by my friend who's a good pickleball
player, that I'm that I shouldplay more because I'm pretty I
could be good. I think I'm allright, but I don't know how to
qualify. You know, you have ahandicap in golf and yeah,
pickleball, you have like, athree, two number, yeah, they
have, like, tennis, like a five,oh and four, oh yeah, yeah. It's

the same you've been. Are you a pickleball
player? I am. We have a quarterat our house. I'm gonna buy you
over to play. I'm gonna come. Wehave some really fun games. All
right, great, very, very, greatpeople. Gonna continue

the podcast. We can continue the podcast. You
know, it's very interesting.
I've had the

number one female pickleball player. I
interviewed her two weeks ago. Ihad Ben Johns, number one men's.
Yeah, the goat. They're both thegoat Annalee waters has been.
She's been number one since shewas 14 years old. Really, she
just won her, I don't know, 10thTriple Crown last weekend. Did
she play singles or doubles?
Singles, doubles next,everything, everything. So the
difference between singles anddoubles is crazy. We talked

(02:24:34):
about it, yeah. We talked aboutso, yeah. As a thank you, I'm
giving and we may even do it forthis show, their their paddle
sponsors, their paddle sponsors,free sponsorship on this show,
and which is just a nice thingto do for them and their
sponsors. You know, their paddlecompanies like it, and hula just
sent me, like a shit ton of freestuff, like Ben's. Ben. In this

(02:24:58):
latest rackets, you know, I'vegot the bag and they want to
shoot at my house. And I said,you know, sometimes I become
friends with a lot of guests onmy show. And I mean this
sincerely, you know, I love toget to know you better. And, you
know, meet your family. And theyI said, you know, we have some
really cool people, you know,normal people, and I've had

(02:25:19):
rappers at my house and theysaid, Yeah, you know, we like to
come shoot some footage. Or Isaid, Yeah, you know, totally
open to it. So, so I haven'tshot a show there, but it's
coming. I It's hard to shoot ashow there, right? It's like,
you know, you're playing, you'rehuffing and puffing, yeah, yeah.
We're, we're at the end of theshow, I always finish it with a

(02:25:41):
game called fill in the blank toexcellence. Are you ready to
play? Yes. The biggest lessonI've learned in my life is be
open. My number one professionalgoal is to be a good father. My
biggest regret in life is, howpeople? How

fast are people at answering these questions? You
know what

Annalie Waters was, I think the fastest we've
ever had. And she's 17 yearsold. I got

asked to be the grand marshal at New Orleans.
What do they call that? The bigMardi Gras. Mardi Gras, yeah, I
didn't do it. Huge, hugedisappointment. I gotta live
with that every day in my life.
Go ahead. My big

My biggest fear is, I

thought you were gonna finish that. Oh, this is
for me too. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
What is your biggest fear? My

biggest fear is not living long enough to enjoy
my kids and have grandkids. Oh,yeah, followed by a close second
being eaten by sharks.

My biggest fear is, if we're playing like the
fear factor version, ie, sharkswould be drowning, so we're both
in the water world, my number

three, yeah, and, wow, yeah. What's two

sharks? What's one

not living long enough to see my kids? What's
four? Four would be good God.
He's got a four being buriedalive somewhere.

I know you're just making it up.

Now, generally, those people who were in that
cave, and I forgot what country,and, oh, yeah, down there for
Thailand, yeah, somewhere likethat, and I just, I would have
died of a heart attack theminute that I got down there.
Yeah, the proudest moment in mycareer

is I rarely feel proud. It's not like I have, you
know, great. I mean, I theproudest moment is, every time I
finish a project, I have somepride in that. But I don't know
that there's a specific momentwhere I, you know, I'm holding
up the trophy over my head.

The craziest thing that's happened in my
career is, what's Craziest thingthat's happened in your career,
man, there have been,

there have been a lot. See, that's my answer.
Yeah. You

know, it's funny. I I've had tons of shows,
and I often thought about, howwould I answer these questions
if someone asks me, and I don'thave the answers to a lot of
them, yeah, I understand,because they're difficult
questions. Yeah, they are. Whichis, which is meant to elicit all
kinds of things in people,because you learn a lot about

(02:28:22):
people, and I think it's

mostly deflection, is what you'll learn from me.
Yeah, I've

noticed a lot of deflection in this. The funniest
thing that's happened to me mycareer is, oh

my gosh. I feel like you gotta be prepped for
these man. I really do you go ona I know you're looking to have
camel on. I mean, like beforeyou go out there, they tell you,
we're going to talk about thefunniest thing that's happened
in your career, so that you havea little prep time, so that you
don't, you know, end up I don't.
I'm deeply,

Unknown (02:28:55):
uh,

resistant to filling in blanks unless I feel
confident that that's the rightanswer. I had too much of my
schooling experience where I wasfilling in whatever came to
mind. I don't really have ananswer for that.

So 10 years from now, I'm going to be doing I

don't know if I'd if I'd be retired at that point.
I don't know how really,somebody's asking me recently,
would you retire? I don't reallyknow how to retire, because I
would do this. I love doingthis, and I love, you know,
still enjoy the process greatlyand performing, and so I don't

(02:29:37):
know. You know, retirementalways sounds like a word that
has a certain attraction to it,but I don't look at that and
think, oh, that's what I that'swhat I'm pursuing. And so
perhaps it's, it's more of thesame, you know, still working
on, you know, finding, you know,interesting projects, probably

(02:29:59):
recording. Another album withRihanna. If

you go back and give your 21 year old cell
phone, piece of advice, whatwould it be? No fear. The most
important thing that'scontributed to my success is no
fear. If you were PresidentTrump, the first thing you would
do when you stepped foot in thatoffice and sat down at that desk

(02:30:22):
would be

build a pickleball court in the White House
outside, right on the lawn.
Yeah, the

one male actor that I wanted to work with, but
have it is

Al Pacino. All of Al, the one

female actor I wanted to work with, but have it
is oh,

Charlize Theron is fantastic. We had a project we
were talking about at one point,and she's great, but haven't
worked with her. If you couldmeet one person in the world,
who would it be? I don't know. Ireally don't know who that
person is. The one

question you wish I had asked you but didn't,
is, are

you ready to wrap this up? No, yeah, you, I think
you pretty much covered it thethere's no question. This is the
longest podcast or any sittingperiod, as long as I've ever sat
in my life. How long we've beenhere? It's like two hours and
two and a half hours, wow, butI've enjoyed it, and seriously

(02:31:24):
enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
It was great. I

appreciate you, and I appreciate you being
willing to come on the show andnot not bailing, yeah, and
following through it. It reallydoes say a lot, but I have been
a fan for a long time. I'm sohappy to meet you. Thank you.
Congratulations on yourtremendous success. And if you
want to give one plug for yournext movie coming out, I think

(02:31:47):
it's called shiver. I did a

movie, yeah, I did a movie with Josh Dumas called
off the grid. And movie calledshiver. And show that I did with
lahaine for apples called smokecome out next year, and oh, and
a movie I did with Adam Scottand Daniel deadweiler called the

(02:32:12):
saviors, which is really fun,awesome.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank
you, awesome. Thank you. You

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Greg Kinnear: Talk Soup, Academy Awards, and The Power of Showing Up | E146

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Greg Kinnear: Talk Soup, Academy Awards, and The Power of Showing Up | E146