David Dastmalchian | Ep. 37

From comic books to the big screen, David Dastmalchian joins us this week to talk about his creative process, his career highlights, and the power of fandom.

Each week, we explore and celebrate the lives that the Star Trek universe has forever changed. From former and future cast and crew members to celebrities, scientists, and astronauts whose personal and professional journeys have been affected by the franchise, we sit down and dive deep with a new friend, laughing and learning from their stories. Sit back, grab a drink, and join our hosts, Dominic Keating and Connor Trinneer, as we get geeky in The D-Con Chamber.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The show has been gunned with cameo. It's the d
conch Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, trekkers and trekkers.
Welcome back to another episode of the Decon Chamber. I'm
your co host, mister dominic Keating joined us always with

(00:20):
my bestie mister Connationneer, my video host. Science fiction isn't
just about spaceships and distant planets. It's about what makes
us human when everything else around us feels quite frankly alien.
A few actors capture that tension better than our guests today.

(00:40):
He's built a career spanning multiple cinematic universes including Marvel,
DC and June. You've seen him in The Dark Night
Blade Runner twenty forty nine, The Suicide Squad. Ant Man
and Oppenheimer had to do that, and somehow time he
finds the soul of the outsider. He's an actor, a screenwriter,

(01:04):
a creator, writing comics like Count Crowley, a love letter
to vintage horror, and creating films like Animals that explore
what it means to be human in all its messy,
meaningful complexity. This is an actor who's worked with Chris Nolan,
James Gunn and Danis Villeneuve, yet still feels like the
kind of person you want to have a long late

(01:25):
night conversation with about movies, monsters and the meaning of life.
We'll see. Please welcome to the show, mister David Desmalchune,
General Max David, thank you coming on. Beautiful introduction. I think, oh,
thank you, may I'd like to record that and then
play it before I entered the rooms for my children.

(01:47):
Have some here? How old are your kids? How old
are they?

Speaker 2 (01:53):
A seven year old daughter, she's turning thirty six in
a month, and then my son is just and eleven.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
God bless. I mean, that's spirit, that's a brave move.
I mean, your career started in the mid to two
thousands in in in was that? Am I rise to
saying that? So my first so two thousands, you know,
I was.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I was a theater actors training very seriously in Chicago
in the nineties, and then I I lost my uh,
you know, tether on reality you could say, connection to anything.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
That could have been like a.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Proper journey through the stage, because my addiction to narcotics
got so out of hand that I basically lost what
was to be a promising theater career that was really
starting to to to bud in min you managing to
be a functioning actor that's twenties or yeah, early twenties,
midteris I was.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
I was.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I was highly functioning junkie who just believed I would
be able to do it for the rest of my life.
And then, of course I didn't have unlimited resources or
the luck maybe of some of the people my literary
and rock and roll heroes who had the I guess
benefit of knowing that you don't have to always pay
the rent on time. So I ended up living in

(03:11):
a car, leaving acting god clean, didn't know I'd ever
act again. By the grace of good friends theater directors
who pulled me back up on stage, including a friend
who did a really wonderful production of Oscar wildt Solome,
I got back on stage. That led to casting directors
taking note of the fact that I was not in
fact dead as many people believed. And then I got

(03:35):
to audition for you know, commercials, started doing TV commercials
with some top tier directors. You don't realize often I
don't know if it's the same. The commercial landscapes changed
a lot, but back then in the late aughts. It's
like two thousand and seven, eight nine, some of the
really fine independent filmmakers were shooting commercials for you know,

(03:55):
Burger King or whatever. Yeah, yeah, and to work with
some of the best, one of the best my opinion,
who really helped me on my path. And then I got,
you know this, mythologically lucky out of one in a
million chants to be in Chris Nolan's The Dark Night,

(04:15):
which came out in two thousand and eight, and I
had a small but really special role. That it was
like all of my dreams come true. Getting to be
in legion with my favorite comic book character, getting to
work with one of my favorite directors, my first time
being in a feature film, and that launched what became
my moment of saying, I'm doing this now, this is

(04:36):
going to be my job, come hell or high water.
I'll collect all unemployment live on Ramen noodles. And I
did that from two thousand and nine until about twenty fourteen,
so five years I was just eking by, eching by,
but I didn't care anymore because I was clean, so
I knew that even if I couldn't pay the rent

(04:57):
on time, I was trustworthy enough that.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
I would get it together, and how hard was it
for you to get straight? It's not I mean, you know,
here's one of the ticky ones.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
A couple of years of relapse and rotation like this
revolving door of I'm ready. I'm ready, but maybe a
bottle of wine.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Is it gonna hurt? Oh, buy a bag of weed.
It's not gonna hurt.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
And I'm one of those addicts who's so deep in
the depths of the disease that like, you give me
a one puff and I go, I can do this
within an hour. My brain is like, no, you just
wasted it. Then I'm driving eight hours to score you
know some like near in Croatia, China, White Heroin in
the you know Chicago, there's madness. It's a Jekyl and

(05:42):
Hyde truly, and he lives will always live with me,
my mister Hyde. And he could come out in other ways,
not just as an addict, but he's you learn to
live with him, and I was learning how to live
with him. It took me about five years when I
finally got straight, to really feel comfortable and rack up
a lot of good clean time to feel like, Okay,

(06:04):
now I'm ready to really do this thing. And once
then I felt and by the way, I will say,
interesting thing about monsters and the genre spaces, et cetera.
It's like, oftentimes for the simplicity of narrative, and this
goes all the way back to the Greeks and Biblical
and beyond. It's like the monstrous. The monster is one thing,

(06:29):
and that thing is going to be that thing forever.
And I always believed that like the acting spirit that
haunted me, this this desire to perform that lived in me.
It was in its own kind of beautiful addiction I
would never be able to fulfill without the benefit of

(06:54):
opiates or heroin or some thing. And then when I
finally did get on stage and the work was better
than I'd ever done before, I was a much better actor.
I was much more able to navigate all the tricky
nuance of really delivering say a wild or Shakespeare or
Tennessee Williams or the stuff that in the past I
would have tried to go full method and you know,

(07:14):
just bowl my way through it. I started to find
the joy and the and the pleasure in the craft
and the artistry of it, and then the technique of it. Yeah,
and two twenty fourteen finds me in Los Angeles, living
in you know, a one bedroom apartment in Koreatown, having
made some really wonderful independent films and a couple of
roles in very cool movies, but nothing that was like,

(07:38):
nothing that was like really as they say, you know,
it was was buying, was buying the farm. It was
all like enough to get you through to the next.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
So single white, single white male living.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Just just make it it buy enough ramen.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
And it was the spring of two thousand fourteen, bringing
home my first child, my son, from the hospital to
the apartment, knowing that I had two hundred dollars in
the checking account.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Was he a planned not here two personal?

Speaker 2 (08:07):
But was that a No, he wasn't. But uh, we
were certainly excited when it like when the when the
reality came crashing down. It was like, this is happening
and it's gonna be great and we'll figure it out.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
And as your partner in the business, that does she
know she was.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
She is a very talented muralist painter. She does some
costume work, but not necessarily for film.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
And TV, more of a real pesson, but she does. Yeah,
she's a real person.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
No, she's a she's also she's one of us in
the sense that she's an artist at heart, but she's
not you know, film and TV. She's helped on things
like she's certainly come and shown up. And she art
directed my film Animals because we couldn't afford anyone else,
and she came and did a phenomenal job, and was it.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
A great job.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
But with the baby, I go, oh, Man, I need
a miracle, because I believe I got a great miracle
in getting clean, great miracle that I didn't die. He
was asking, I said, God, is there another miracle out there?

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Possible?

Speaker 2 (09:13):
And it was that same moment bringing the kid home
that I got my first Marvel contract. At the time,
Edgar Wright was directing the ant Man film and he
had cast me in the movie. He apparently liked my
work and stuff he'd seen before. I auditioned for him
several times. We hit it off and he cast me,

(09:35):
and I was very excited because suddenly I was like,
oh my gosh, I'm gonna make you know, eighty thousand
dollars something.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Wow, that first big check is You'll never forget it,
do you didn't Heath Ledger gave you some advice about
fatherhood and family.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
He did.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
I was not with my partner at the time, but
I was.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
I was. I was, you know, I was.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
I was on the down the streets of downtown Chicago, standing,
you know, right near the alley where sometimes I had slept,
and I had memories of like trying to sleep in
my car in this alley next to right where we're
shooting this huge, monolithic film, just like two blocks away
from my favorite comic bookstore, three blocks away from where
I had been working as a telemarketer at a job

(10:28):
that I did not like, but with people who I
loved and they kept me, you know, they were I.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
Went out of the really good telemarketers.

Speaker 2 (10:34):
Most people at the telemarket they were like family to me, time,
life forever. They were like, Dave, you're going to be
an actor again, but just do your best here and
keep showing up and we'll make sure your lights are on.
And I love them for that. They were so supportive.
But but I was talking to him, and he said,

(10:55):
you know what happened. It was an odd moment, this
background actor, he and I, he he Heath and I
were having just this kind of a soft conversation about music.
And maybe life and having a coffee and this actor
who you could feel the energy. This was a big
moment to him to talk to to Heath and he

(11:16):
kind of blew his uh wad for lack of a
better term, because he walked up in his energy was
so intense and he just immediately started uh kind of
inundating him with with uh energy and and was like,
you know, there's like a boundary and some people just
don't understand the boundary and this uh, this actor was

(11:40):
like referring to Heath's like partner at the time and
child by like their first name, which I always find
a little unsettling if someone comes up to me and
is like Michelle, say.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah, how how's how's he how's Harlow?

Speaker 2 (11:53):
How's the d And he's like, uh fine, like I
don't know you at he okay, I guess, And he's
talking talk, just kind of talking at us. You could
tell he'd like built up the courage to come and
now he's just and we're both going, man, you this
isn't the way to do it. This isn't poundrous. But
lord knows, I've been that guy before too, So trying

(12:14):
to have a little bit of grace and just he's
so sweet, very really, we're gonna tip his hat that
this guy is annoying him.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
He's being kind and he's smiling. God bless and the
guy to me. And the guy turns me and goes, well,
what about you? You know, do you have do you
have kids?

Speaker 2 (12:29):
And I said, oh, gosh, I don't think I'll ever
be ready for that. And this complete stranger says to me, well,
you bet you should do it because you're getting older
and you're not gonna be able to do it for
much longer.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
And I turned it ledger and he laughed so hard,
and then the guy finally like wandered off, and he
just like, can you imagine saying that to a complete
streak as that sounds a bit a bit spect for me,
I'm gonna get reproduction because you're not gonna have it,
And so.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
That actually envision I can see your lads, they're no good.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
And I did say something to the effect of like, yeah,
I don't I don't think i'd ever be ready for that,
and he said, you'll never be ready for it. It
will happen, and when it happens, you know you'll be
ready and you'll be prepared for the moment when it arrives.
And then when the moment arrived, I met the moment.
I wasn't a perfect father by any means. I'm still
not a perfect father. God forbid. I don't know if

(13:25):
there's such a thing exists, but I certainly love it,
and it's a role I never imagine loving as much
as I do love. It's like it just ekes out
being on set with amazing artists and making incredible art.
Like I hate to say it, but the time that
I'm just chilling with the kids working on like our
pottery projects, are reading a book, is like, it's really

(13:49):
nice and I'm grateful for them.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
And yeah, we started that Marvel film, you know.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Edgar eventually left the picture, but luckily I was able
to stay on the film. And then Peyton Reid became
the director, and he liked me and he kept me hired,
which is a gift because he could have easily just
dismissed the previous team iteration of it. Yeah, but he

(14:16):
and then and then from that point forward, it wasn't
smooth sailing by any means, but the the way that
the bubble started to expand, I kept working really hard
to create and tell my own stories while trying to
do my best every time I got an opportunity to
show up to work with the director, if it wasn't
you know Peyton Read or Rob Savage or Denny Villeneuve

(14:37):
or any of the incredible artists who've let me come
play in their sandboxes, it just you got you got
two things. If you're coming from Kansas and a kid
like me with no connections in Hollywood, You've got your
reputation and relationships. And I felt like I want to
be that actor that shows up time and time again.
He's got his lines memorized. He's knows how to help,

(15:02):
you know, propel the energy of the director's vision. He
knows how to I know, I work hard to know
how to find the Usually the hero in the story
is someone that I'm interacting with in some way or
another and getting to like really push them or obstruct
them to give them stuff to work off of.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
And that's great. I just there's a piece of Samain
Kingsley just was making a comments on Instagram. I don't
seen it before, but you know, there's a fashion in
drama clauses, particularly in LA I think to win the
scene and he's like, no, you want to make the
other guy or the other girl in the scene look

(15:45):
better than you, that my scene partner wins the scene.
I win. Yeah, I have no illusion. I heard that.
I read this.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
Actually I saw probably on Instagram that early on in
Tom Hanks' career, you know, he was told listen, know
your lines, show up on time, and have an idea.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Have an idea. He would like, I could do that. Yeah,
I do that.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
I have, and I have lots of ideas. Luckily, it's
something that comes to me instinctually as an actor. Like
you give me a piece of text, ideas start to flow.
Unless it's one of those real puzzle pieces that I
need someone to really lay it out for me, which
tends to be usually in like the O'Neill Shakespeare that.
But even so, I still feel like the ideas start

(16:36):
to really germinate in me, and I bring them and
I bring them and I know that five seconds into
the day's work, the stunning realization could come to me
that I need to take that idea in.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Let me go.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
But if I come in with it with with a
strong feeling and an instinct about something, often it will
find its way into the director's vision and then they
they like that. They really they love it when you
can come in not attempting to dictate or take control,
because real creativity, even from the director's you know a place,

(17:12):
is not about control. It's about guidance. And I and
I always have believed that because of my background in theater,
I'm there to serve the writer and the director ultimately,
and so I want it's lunny.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
How at some point, and I realized this literally two
days ago. Where I'm a big fan of the Iceman
cometh Tonio's player, I.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Had to get to the hockey. Actually, I wouldn't be
a good Hickey. I'd be a Oh there's so many
good roles in that's so many great roles. The drunk
who only creeps up about every twelve hours because that
plays seventy seven hours long.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yees. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:53):
But we were actually talking to Walter Kinegg and I
read his book in preparation for this, and he lived
in New York just at the time when the Iceman
actual Iceman would come and you know, deliver Ice and
then there was a change in the you know, technology
of all that kind of stuff. And then realizing how
vital the Iceman was in O's world.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Yeah, so I would.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
I found myself a little perplexed by the Iceman come
with always because it's such a it's such a huge
piece that and when you can narrow it down to
something and go ah, I can play that, all right,
I can play that, you know the reality.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
It's the gift.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
I'd love to put Iceman on stage at something. Obviously
they did it a few years ago to a great
acclaim with Brian Denahey and nay Ye Lane. They did
it when I was in college with with with Kevin Spacey.
But I would love to do There's a great classic
legendary play called peer Ghint which I would look at

(19:00):
some point if I could get the horses they have
it put up on stage with like imagine it done
the way that they do, like because I really love
the Cursed Child. Have you seen Curse Child on stage
the Harry Potter Musical.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
It's phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
But the technology mixed with stage magic that they employ
in these kinds of shows these days, I mean, big
theater is still mind boggling, right, wicked you name it,
so imagine purgent. I know it's not a commercial play.
That's anybody's going to want to invest millions of dollars
in like that kind of stage. But what if I
could like become so successful that I like somehow get

(19:37):
the money people to like go, Okay, we'll take a chance.
We'll do like the crazy Fandras or there's a notion,
there's a nocean. I mean, big, get the money, John
have a tempest? I think they just I heard that
the design on the Tempest that's been running in London
was like supposed to be incredible.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
So you know, where did you find the money to
make a film like animals? Which do you write mammals?

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Chris Smith was the director who was directing me in
the TV commercials, and he read the script and he said,
this is phenomenal. I think you should make this. And
with his blessing and name attached as a producer, I
got Mary pat Bintel, who is a phenomenal independent film producer,
and she and I and our director and a couple

(20:22):
of other people put together. Basically I had been spending
so I was making all these short films. I was
doing all this work to try and show people that
I could do something cool, even if it was low
budget or no budget. So put together a presentation that
we took to dozens and dozens maybe one hundred, one
hundred and fifty people, you know, like it's like, hey, dom,

(20:43):
do you buy any chance to have like a rich
uncle who's a dentist or you know, Connor, do you
do you know anybody that like maybe won the lottery?
Ends you ask all your friends and they go, you know,
I've got this uncle who's this, Or I've got this
friend who's this. Or I know a person who's this.
So people that you know have some cash and you
go to them and you this thing, kind of the
way the Coen Brothers talk about how they were able
to go out and put together a movie like Blood Simple, where.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
You say, this is our vision.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
To me, this is a very important story to tell
because it's about the dependency that people have on one
another as much as they do on addiction and drugs.
And it's a complicated story that needs to be done
in the independent space. Because I'm not interested in preaching
or telling people the answers. I would like to ask
some questions and then let the audience draw their own answers.
You will most likely not receive any profit by investing

(21:35):
in this film. But what we could promise you is
your name will be a part of a film that
is meaningful and significant and that could potentially touch people's lives.
We guarantee you can come to cool film festivals and
if you're and some people have different reasons for why
they do this. There's tax incentives to invest in art
in the States, you can you know invest, Yeah, And

(21:55):
so we would create these tiers of like you want
to be an associate producers five thousand dollars and a
co producer's ten thousand dollars and producer was fifteen and
EP was like fifty, And just slowly but surely, over
the course of about a year and a half, we
were able to start building the relationships. And I have
a couple friends out of Chicago who know people. And

(22:18):
our composer had a family member who ended up being
an angel investor for us, who like really came through.
So like that's how you do it. You just you
don't take no for an answer, and you go, we're
going to make this thing kamel or higher.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
You're hustled.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
I mean, you brought it an eighty we budgeted it
five hundred thousand dollars, and that was low end. I
was only able to raise one hundred and eighty five
thousand dollars and we still made the freakin' movie.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
I see you made it, And was it in Vancouver?
It looks no Chicago. Well she caught that. Yeah, good
for you, thinks I'm impressed. There were so many little
moments in that film that you know, I knew, spoke
from the truth of your own personal experience. Particularly I
mean when you both school the first time and you

(23:01):
go to the diner and then you just go to
your own restrooms, like it's like you're on your own,
And I knew so well.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Any lovers or party, yes I may have had in
my using days, we had so many.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
I mean your creatures of habbit.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
You are animals of all are I'm still an animal
of habit the way I wake up in the morning
and the routines that I go through. But when he
Ye sucks it up to and I'll say this to
bring it, you know, kind of full circle to our
conversation today, because I know where your passions lie, at
least in some of the stuff that you guys like

(23:39):
to talk about. I've always believed that whether it's you know,
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, or it's Sam Shepherd's Very Child,
or it's Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, or it's Christopher Nolan's The
Dark Night, or if it's Denny Villeneuve's Prisoners, or if

(24:02):
it's Dinny Villanuves June, or if it's Aunt Man, or
if it's The Boogieman. And this is something I love
about Vincent Price, and I believe many other artists who
I admire, like Lon Cheney, his son Boris, artists like

(24:25):
Peter Lorie and and then and then in the more
present era, I think artists like John Traturo, Christopher walk In,
Charlie's There On, Meryl Streep, people who, no matter the
freaking genre, We're gonna make a science fiction film. Look
at Sigourney Weaver's performances as written.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Never once is there a hint of.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
I'm making a genre picture. Like to me, it's the
ultimate dream. If I could bring what I was able
to like concoct for Tom Wingfield, let's say, because that
was one of my favorite theater experiences into you know,
a cosmic horror story. I love cosmic horror or let's

(25:14):
say I got lucky enough to be a part of
some bursioning Star Trek franchise.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Or whatever. I just think you take you take the
work with the exact same approach and style. Yeah, excited
for the guys to see murder Bot, which is coming
out soon on Apple. You've got that coming out, I
mean fair Apple, right, and and and it's you know,
people could go, what is It's about.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
A sentient AI like a robot?

Speaker 1 (25:45):
Is it? You're on a planet lasers? And I'm like.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Oh, you have no idea, we get you. You can
go so deep into the existential experience of mankind through
the power of genre and science fiction and horror that
in a way I almost think you can't achieve in
other things because people are so aware of theme. With
with Sayen drama and with genre. Sometimes the awareness of theme,

(26:13):
they are so distracted by the power of the imaginative storytelling.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Like in a great James Gunn film. You know, you
get so.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Carried away with the Mizon scene of Guardians or Suicide
Squad or Slither, or let's say the upcoming Superman, you
get you get transported. You don't even notice how these very.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Important themes are touching your heart break, you know, breaking
your heart. You mentioned that they are they are universal,
and it's taken my fiance, who's much into this genre,
to sort of educate me as to this is not
for kids. It's actually it's got an adult backdrop to

(26:58):
it all. And as you say that these are you know,
grand universal themes about human condition.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
Yeah, well you mentioned David uh Greig Herbert's Dune, and
in an interview you were talking about how, like you know,
that's not just one or two layers, there's like four
or five layers of of how these characters are responding
to their universe. And that's the that's I think that's
the gift of science fiction. The great wonder of science

(27:26):
fiction to me is that because we were telling these
stories that are human in an environment that is pardoned
hun alien, that there's almost no rules. The only rule
is is connection and story and truth.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Read anyone who's watching this, and I'm sure did you
read Dune? By the way, what is that? Did you read? June?

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I had read it twice before, didn't I? Or in
the years past? And I was going to say to me,
Dune is is is just great literature. It's it's not
just great science fiction, it's great literature. And and when
you read the works of you know, our Herbert or.

Speaker 1 (28:10):
An Asmov or you know, you.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
Name it, the Bradley I think too about about dimensional
storytelling and character. These these artists tell stories in like
five dimensions, which is, you know, I think what you're saying,
I had been quoted for and before when you want when.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
You read.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
When you read Dune, and you're given you know, all
of these different characters, perspectives and points of view. There's
so many layers of of nuance and complexity, and that
is what a gift as an actor to go back
and having, you know, we had some familiarity with this stuff.

Speaker 5 (29:03):
You know, you were a little what's the I mean,
we were slightly let down by the fact that pytha
devise in Denise's version of the story was curtailed as
opposed to brad drf in the Lynchian movie.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
I mean, the story that Lynch was telling in his
film required for its essence that version of Pider in
that magnitude. I think I take a lot of peace
and solace and gratitude in the knowledge that for what

(29:41):
the world Denis was creating, which is a completely different
vision Mertz novel, I mean, completely different version. Neither are wrong,
by the way, neither are right. They're just completely different
visions from visionary artists, just like Joe Arowski's would have
been a completely different vision all right.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
In Denise's vision.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
The world of the Mentat, and that's through Fur and
Piter really served an important purpose for I think the
audience to understand the mechanics of the strategem that these
different factions were utilizing. But you immediately got a sense
of the Harcone in a in a way through Denise Dune.

(30:24):
That was quite because of the style in which I
think David's world took place and the way those harconein operated,
you needed more. And that's not a good or a
bad thing. You just it with me. It's like, I
feel like we got exactly what the purpose in furthering

(30:45):
the story was, which is why my most integrated scene,
even though I barely have any dialogue, is the moment
when we finally got to Duke, you know, manhandled and
he's naked there at the at the banquet hall. It's
it's that's that is that's the Baron scene. But for
me as pider, I felt like I was singing in

(31:08):
that scene. It was such a beautiful scene. And and
and and and I will say Denise is such a
dear friend and an incredible collaborator. The thing that that
really was a bit sad, but I I understood it
was there was he had written this beautiful speech that
I gave and we filmed it. It's when we've we've

(31:31):
we've taken Aracus and I have Pier, I mean I
have few fur cuffed surrounded by Sarto car He's just
beat to hell and he looks pathetic. And Stephen, by
the way, the actor who portrayed through for what a
phenomenal artist. And he's sitting there on the precipice of

(31:54):
this balcony looking at his beautiful this this thing that
they've invested so much time and energy and as it's
just burned a hell and I got to stand there
and take my stappo, take it in and I give
this long, slow, didactic kind of like presentation on playing

(32:15):
the essence of it's like it's a bit of a
bit of a chess like this is now checkmate.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
And if you watch the Blu ray or DVD, features.
You could see this sets.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
And Deny met with me in Budapest like a year
after we'd filmed, because he was doing pickup shots and
scenes reshoots, as you always do in these films, and
he sat down with me and he said, I'm so sorry.
I'm cutting the film and it just it doesn't it

(32:48):
doesn't fit, it doesn't work, you know. It's it's it's
this big, massive, bombastic, explosive battles happening, and all of
a sudden, we're gonna just stop and have this robot
man deliver a like an eloquent monologue, you know.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
And I diet it. I really get it.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
And and that's props to Denny because many times that
happens to actors where you've given your heart and soul
for maybe a scene or a performance. I've had friends,
this is a true story, who went to the premiere,
were invited to the premiere of the feature film and
sat there watched the future film. They'd been entirely cut out. Yeah,
and they never got the call.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
I didn't. I was almost in almost well. I had
a good three scenes with Kay Oddson and almost famous
that bit when she's at the Plaza Hotel and he
comes back and finds her all the scenes that the
film that he shot. She'd met this British band and
I was I was a heroin Addict and we were
shooting up in the bathroom. We had two or three

(33:49):
scenes in the suite, and she then passes out and
we leave and then he comes back and I got
I went to the premiere with a girlfriend. And that's John.
I'm coming on. Our wonderful executive producer, mister Dave Tabb
is in the house today. God bless him. Thank you, Dave,

(34:11):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
Hey everyone, Connor here, We just want to take a
moment to thank you so very much for tuning in
and being a part of the Decon Chamber family. Your
support keeps us going and we couldn't do this without you.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
And if you love what we do and want to
help us even more, please consider joining us on Patreon.
You'll get exclusive perks, behind the scenes content, and even
opportunities to chat with us directly.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
And don't forget to check out are awesome mergh because
who doesn't want to wrap their favorite podcast in style?

Speaker 1 (34:47):
Baby? Every little bit helps, I promise you, and we're
really very very grateful for all of you who make
this show possible. So thanks for being there, and please
enjoy this episode of the Decon Chamber.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Whenever I go make my own movies like Animals or
all Creatures here below, I'm getting ready to make a
couple of indies that.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
I'm so proud of.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Whenever I'm working on my own stuff, I did. I
helped produce and write on the Boulet Brothers Halfway to
Halloween special. We're now working out us so if I
always end up bringing friends and family into it, right,
But I had like one of my early mentors from
from Community Theater in Kansas play a role in one
of my films and then it didn't work.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
It's just a scene. We didn't need it. It didn't work.
It cut.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
So I called her and I said, I'm so sorry.
But yeah, I think there are myriads of raisings like
I feel obligated to let folks know if they've been
locked up.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
Well, yeah, obviously I could have some producer at least
make the call, you know, right, the bigger.

Speaker 4 (35:48):
Budget you know, I mean, I mean if you think
of a novel, it's the same thing, and like you know,
you finish the novel you've got a good editor, and
then you know the medium that we work in. It's
really Peter is the actors medium, and film and television
is the director and editors medium. And you know you're you're,
You're there to tell the story and serve the story.

(36:09):
And if in your vision of that story it doesn't work,
as hard as that may be, you've got to cut it.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, what sort of point, David do you have to
stop auditioning? And and you're just work is known and
your your know it's offer is only now are you?
Are you there?

Speaker 2 (36:28):
I have reached that place. I've reached that place mostly
when something comes up that I hear it out and
I say, I want to be a part of it.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
I will use I used to use just myself. You
know I didn't.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
I was without formal representation except for my attorney and
my publicist from twenty sixteen till about twenty twenty one.
That's what's that. That's quite a brave step to take.
I mean, yeah, I share my.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Mind in it dress on IMDb pro.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
I put my email address Oxeyen, and I said, I'm
tired of feeling like I'm doing all the work and
still handing away money, and I got to figure out
how to make this relationship fit into my business model.
So thankfully I've found really good partners with my management
team that I work with, not atlas artists and and
so I'll call, you know, one of the people that

(37:31):
works with me and my manager and say, do you
know anybody working on this? But in the past I
would cold call an office, I call a casting director,
I'd say, And that happened to me with Last Voyage
of the Demeter or Demeter as some of us say,
and I heard it was being made.

Speaker 1 (37:49):
It was a story I used to say, Demeter.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
I used to dream of writing a film based on
that chapter from drac I thought it would be Alien
on a Boat in the eighteen hundreds. So it turns
out my attorney also as a relationship with Andrea Overdoll
the directors. So I sent a letter. Andrea was very
gracious and said, I'm a fan of your work. I
don't think there's a role in this one for you,

(38:12):
but in the future, I'll keep you in mind. And
then he came back a few weeks later it said,
there's actually this role of this Polish sailor. You'd need
to bulk up and it's you know, kind of different
than anything you've done. But I feel like you could,
you know, do something really interesting with it. Would you
be willing to tape an audition so we could. I
could show it to the producers and the and the

(38:32):
casting director and I set.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Up a hole. It was so fun.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
I set up the backdrop and I and I got
I did a whole I did like three long scenes.
This was during the pandemic, and and I got that part.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
I auditioned for a role in I didn't get in
very cool show Fallout Boy. Yeah, I don't know, it's
not you don't think it's come out yet. Oh the
second way, I'm just watching it ron at them. Yeah,
it's a it's a cool show to cool. I was like, oh,

(39:13):
I want to be on follow. So they were like, okay,
throw a tape on for this character was a very
cool character. He was really weird. And I did it.

Speaker 6 (39:20):
And then were you a volfer or were you an
upstairs guy? Do you remember he wins and upstairs like
an upstairs right?

Speaker 1 (39:31):
Good? So nos messing whatever? But I am.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
I don't you know, I've been very very very very
very very very very very lucky that in recent years
a lot of, if not almost all of the work
is in coming.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
And then.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
Then you just try to be respectful and gracious of
people's times and read as fast as you possibly can.
And then you have to make a decision. You go,
is it is it a money job that I can
at least know that the people I'm gonna work with,
because one, the one no on my list is not
like if I don't love the material, but I love
the people, rape all right, as long as the material

(40:12):
is something I know I can offer something, all right,
I'll consider and get interested.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
But it's the people.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
If anybody, if there's a reputation that somebody's cruel or
disagreeable or difficult to work with, that's the only thing
anymore that I'm like, I just don't have the tolerance
or time.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
That's become a it's not a new clause. But when
I first arrived in la and it's that's you know
a few years back now, But the new clause was,
you know, life's too short and I'm not gonna spend
I'm not spending seven weeks with.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Do it, even if it's a promise of like you
might get a big a work for this. This could
be a big break for you.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
It's like there are enough wonderful, loving support. Yeah, it's
an awful when you're on set and you just can't
wait to get in the car and drive away and
get the hell away from that and think.

Speaker 7 (40:59):
About I've gotten to work with the top tier directors
and you really have the capacity to create a space
that is safe, that is Can you tell me.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
I mean someone like Chris Nolan, I mean, what is
it about this chat lives. He lives around the corner
fromt me. I could throw a bag of weed with
a stone in it and hit his roof from where
I live. I see him walking up in the canyon
a lot. Tell me something about Chris that you go, Yeah,
this guy's eye has just got that singularity of vision
that is so powerful and clear that he has no

(41:33):
difficulty community.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Directors are communicators. Great directors are great communicators. They're great
visionaries who can communicate the vision. And I can watch
him in the midst of a wild storm of movie
stars and great camera equipment, incredible cinematographers and all of
artists at the top of their field with giant crews

(41:57):
on wild schedules, with crazy, you know, moving pieces, and
he's got a calm now piece if that's the right
word about him, a focus that's like the great general
standing in the midst of the battlefield, who can look
at his.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Vision and that there there.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
We need that division the I hate you as an artist,
go oh babe, take me.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
I'll go wherever you need me to go.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
If nothing more terrifying than being in the battlefield and
then look strust or in there, like, what do you
think we should do?

Speaker 1 (42:33):
I was gonna say that.

Speaker 4 (42:34):
You know, as actors who've had some success, we're all
given some we're given gifts. And what you do when
you open that gift. You've seemed to have been able
to open that gift, see what it is, and then
navigate that to other bigger, better things. Is that a
conscious act for you or what is that for you?

(42:58):
Because you've you've been given, You've been added some gifts
in your life, many gifts, many. I'm incredibly grateful for
the opportunities that I've been given.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
And it's a.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
There's like a principle of multiplicity and magic and alchemy
in storytelling that you try to look at everything as
a springboard, even the tough knocks or the pains.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
You look at the nose like fuel.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
If you can look at the nose like kindling on
the fire, if you can look at the if you
can look at the obstructions, the failures. Although that's a
real tricky word for me because I always feel like
everything is a purpose and leads to something, So failure
is so fascinating for me. When you fall down the
skinned knees of our artist egos, the infections and the pain,

(43:56):
the winding up in the cutting room floor, not getting
the role that you did for you know, subsequent auditions
for in thirteen callbacks and then they still.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Didn't pink you, and you go, you go. I have
no control.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
What I have control of is when the yes is come,
when the opportunities come, I can step in and have
and do enough work on myself as a human that
I pray that my ego doesn't start to get tricked
into believing I'm somehow entitled to this stuff. So therefore
I can continue to try to create work at the

(44:36):
highest level so that the people I do have the
honor and privilege of being on set with go, let's
do more with that guy, and then with all the
pain and the heartbreak, not doing enough work on my
ego to not take it personally. It's so tempting to
take it very difficult. I recently lost a job, a

(45:00):
massive role in a massive like franchise picture that I love.
I'm a huge fan of the first one of these,
and they're going to make another one. And it was
an opportunity for me to come in and just go
to town. And there ended up being a scheduling conflict
one day, just one day, and one day scheduling confidence.

(45:24):
They couldn't figure it out cost me the whole job,
and I was and I spent a day just kind
of stumbling around New York City feeling the feelings of
you know, oh damn it that hurts.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
I was.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
I had spent months kind of gearing up and getting
excited and building the character I was getting ready to
go start. And and you can take that stuff and
you can internalize it, and you can think about yourself
as the center of the universe and get and take
it personally, or you can recognize that for some cosmic

(46:02):
reason that I'll never understand, for powers greater than myself,
that I have no capacity to comprehend. It just happened.
It just happened that way. And some point I wouldn't
be sitting here with you guys, talking to you guys,
and maybe something I'm saying like, I wouldn't have been
able to do anything this month. I would have been
shooting around the clock. And maybe you can't say, well,

(46:25):
this was I take it at the moment. Now someday
I will.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
But are there a couple of actors in your gene
pool that you know, if they don't get you, they
get him. Will I think about that?

Speaker 2 (46:38):
I go because I know many actors that always say
this to make oh so and so always gets my roles,
And I think I don't know. I think I fit
in my own little weird David dismalchin box. But I
wiill say that maybe I was meant to sit here.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
With you guys today.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Well, and some of the I said I said had
some value to someone who's gonna watch this.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
And uh.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
And if you are watching this and you are struggling
with addiction or you feel like the world's out to
get you, or you're feeling like you know you want
to give up, look at this weird oh character actor
sitting here in front of his fake fireplace, sober now
almost twenty three years, living life on life's terms, still

(47:20):
feeling depressed most mornings when he wakes up, still feeling
anxious most afternoons when he goes into record podcasts or
goes to meet you know, someone for a coffee, and
yet still able to do it without harming myself or others.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
So I concur David, where do you think that comes from?
The miracle?

Speaker 2 (47:40):
The gratitude of I nearly died, I nearly lost my life.
I've I've made huge mistakes. I've caused great, you know
pain to myself and others.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
And and I.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Have a an awe and a a.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Regard for.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Like there's there's there is, there's so much beauty in
this life. And I know it's hard to see it sometimes.
I know it is, trust me, there is a lot
of big It's really fare and it and it can
be just for me. For for many years, it's not
all been Hollywood and and and premieres and awards shows
and being on cool sets. There was about five years

(48:25):
there where it was going to a therapist, going to
you know, support group meetings, taking a train to a
job that I didn't like, making it home at the
end of the day and having enough money to get
a couple of comic books and be able to rent
because at this point I was still renting DVDs at
my corner video or DVD shop in Chicago and rent
Event Horizon for the thousandth time, or rent you know,

(48:48):
Maniac cop or rent whatever was going to give me
that like having that thing to look forward to, which
was a Totinos oven pizza and a rented DVD almost
every night.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yeah, that.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
When that is enough, When you come to the realization
and understanding that.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
That's it, it's ah, well, when you take into consideration
half the world doesn't get to eat before they go
to bed, if they go to bed, and how.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Many people at this moment are under threat of violence
suppression to waste, they can't get water.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
There's many people on this earth.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
I can go and just turn the sink on and
let it run and gets all that would kill for
fresh water.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
That helps, Yeah, it certainly helps. But and it also
gives us the time to be in our head when
you don't have to worry about you know, filling the
fridge with food or you know, getting water. And for
some of us, myself look, dude, this can be a
bad neighborhood and you've still got a meetings. Do you

(49:54):
still work up bread around twice a day? God do
good for you, man.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
I mean I do most of it all by zoom
these days thanks to the pandemic. But I have a
home group. I have a home group, and then I
have several splinter groups, and like tonight, I'll be doing
a big book study group. And it's important for me.
It's the community of it is. Really, I've been working
of the steps, you know. I yeah, for anyone who's familiar.

(50:19):
Step ten two is like a daily You're just doing
spot check, inventories and checking in on myself. And one
of the most valuable tools that comes out of sobriety
and twelve step living is anytime I face a circumstance
regarding a situation or another person that makes me uncomfortable, angry, agitated, resentful,
and it happens a lot in my life, it takes

(50:42):
this great gift and gives it to you called the
holy pause.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Where I stop and I breathe. It's a practice. It's
just like doing yours.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
A practice, like it's a discipline that I stun and
I breathe, and then I do this spot check inventory
where I go, what's the person another thing that they
what did they do? What does it affect in me?
And then the most important part of that, what's my part?

Speaker 4 (51:12):
Right?

Speaker 2 (51:13):
What did Where am I in this? And not as
victim or self pity or justify? Literally, what's my part?
How did I contribute to us getting to this spot?
And if I do that ninety six percent of the
time it ends there because then I realize, hmm, I
don't really need to take any further than that.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
And I love a just change, your change, your reaction
to it, you know, that's the stand change. Does this
need to be said? Does this need to be said now?
And does this need to be said by me as
a storyteller? Also really good questions, And I mean, if
you're telling a really great like I like to write

(51:57):
in the genre space, and I'm writing something science fiction
or horror, I think, does this line need to be written?

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Does it need to be written right now? Or is
it just because I'm thinking of some cool it? Wouldn't
it be cool if an eyeball slowly like grew out
of their mouth somethings all wake up from a dream
the oh, the eyeball is going to come out of
their mouth and it's going to grow and grow and grow.
And then I go, okay, does that need to happen
right now?

Speaker 1 (52:19):
What?

Speaker 2 (52:20):
What?

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Why? He was spending too much tell me Brian Fuller
talking about.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
And too much of time with Brian Fuller. He is
a hero to me.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
He is much ordinary. Let's talk about dust Bunnies that
we all went to see recently, had a little private screening.
You're terrific in it. This is Brian's first directorial debut.
It's How We Met You. That's How We Met You,
and it's starring you and Sigourney Weaver and Mad's Michelson.
It's a terrific I hones see visually it's a terrific film.

(52:51):
I mean I was blown away by it. And you're
particularly You got a lovely I don't want to call
it a term because it's that's of just you know,
slightly denigrace it. But it's a great part and you
play it very well. I hope this film just blows
up for you. I think it's got a chance to.
Brian is so talented.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
He writes in the in the in the space that
I love he creates character characters and narratives and worlds
that are so dynamic and powerful. I just love him.
He's also an important friend. It's been a very hard
the last year of my life. It's interesting. On the surface,
you go, oh my god. This guy was part of

(53:32):
the ensemble that won a sag Award for a film.
Like Oppenheimer, he got to be there to celebrate this
incredible achievement in cinema. He reunited with his favorite director
who gave him his first break. He went on to
make a movie called Late Night with the Devil, which
was a micro budget indie that Blew Island.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Love talking about.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Wait nice, just saying that I've written cal Crowley, Knights
Versus Samurai, the Creature Commandos, The Headless Horseman, DC Horror Presents.
My new Venom book just came out this week so people,
and then went and shot a show for Apple that's
called murder Bot, which I'm so proud up. I got
to work on the Netflix live action adaptation of One

(54:11):
Piece in South Africa with my kids presence. All of
this stuff. Everybody through the lens of Instagram and elsewhere goes,
oh my god, David, it's your having your cake and
you're eating it too, genuinely. Twenty twenty four could not
have been more painful, difficult or hard personally internally for me,

(54:33):
with some of the stuff that I was going through
psychologically and personally. And I just say that not to
get anyone's pity or anything like that, or because I'm
so grateful. And I didn't relapse, and I didn't harm myself,
and I didn't harm you know, others.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
But Brian Fuller.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Like took me in his magical wings as a friend
and just held me as did others through a lot
of it. And and and I'm very grateful for him
as an arts and that's why his stories are so powerful.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
You know, he's got a deep humanity that is it
sure does. How did you? How do you know each other?

Speaker 2 (55:12):
We met at the premiere for Blade Runner twenty forty nine.
He was there just as a fan, as a and
he was friends with some people. And that's what I
love about him. He first and foremost he's a fan.
Oh Diehard fan. Yeah, I'm Byhard fan.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
Yeah. We met.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
I was a big fan of his work. Our friends
Emily Gordon and Camil Nan Johnny mutual friends said, oh,
you two would like each other. My friend Aaron Abrams,
who was on Hannibal, had always said to me, you've
got to meet Fuller. You two are just going to
hit it off. And everyone was right. They just knew
that we would become a little set together.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Yeah, yeah, I'm very, very very him. Let's talk about
Late Night with the Devil. What a what a peace mate,
and what a performance. Fantastic You made it in Australia.
I think it was just all those other actions are Australian.
I was amazed it was filmed in Melbourne and it was.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
So Roy Lee and Steven Schneider have a company called
Spooky Pictures. They were brought the film by this Australian
team of filmmakers and it was just such a joy,
such a joy when I read the script and I said, yes,
let's go do this. And we shot almost the entire
film on a stage in Melbourne at the Docklands Studios.

(56:30):
Oh yeah, and Colling and Cameron Karn's the writer director brothers.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
They had such an incredible vision. They had such a
great team around them. I mean, what kind of money
was it made for? Because it defensive, but I can't
think that it was. No, it's yeah, I'm a million dollars,
I was.

Speaker 8 (56:47):
That's what Colin and I we were like, it was
either one point five to two. Yeah, exactly, there's a
lot of there's a lot of screen on there for
that money, I have to say. And yeah, it was
engaged and engrossing and you're terrific in it.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
And dare I say, I mean, how do you feel?
It's a it's a it's a real human character. It's
that you're not you're you know, you're not wearing polka dots.
You're not wearing was I'd never gotten to play a
role like Jack Delroy before. He is, you know, sings
to a tune that I'd never gotten to try before.

(57:25):
He dances in a way I'd never gotten to choreo before.
I was so fun. What a what a gift as
an actor to him? It was a great you really
hit them, hit the beats, mate, and just do a
lot of studying. When you get a role like that,
you go and did you look at Lenno? I saw
a lot of Leno in there.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
You watch Leno, You watch Carson, you watch Cabot, you
watch don Lane, you watch Letterman, you watch Conan, all
of those you know, and and then you.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Just do your best to to to It was exciting
to me too, his like I was just telling you
on the outside twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
Four, people were like, wow, David Fast, best year of
your life. On the inside, you're experiencing something quite different,
and it doesn't benefit anybody for me to be on
you know, Instagram being like, I'm excited about this movie
coming out. I can't get out of bed right now
because I'm feeling so morose. But I do want to
be honest and authentic with people. So there's a juxtaposition

(58:26):
of paradox that goes, I don't want to be some
border that's out here going.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Life is great.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
I am making movies and making money, and oh my god,
that means happiness because that's a capitalist ideal anyway that
we all know is one of the biggest reasons I
think so many people are so sad and singing this world.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
They find the things they think are supposed to make
them happy, and they get the cheese, and then the
mouse trap just slams them even harder. And I.

Speaker 2 (58:51):
Was like, Jack Delroy is in front of that TV
screen every night on American Tip televisions, just charming, witty,
and he spun and as soon as the camera's off,
Here's a guy who is yet to mourn the loss
of the love of his life.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
He's yet to mourn any of the deep pain that
he's feeling and and obsessed with the fame and successive this.
You know, dare I say, bull Joe, I mean, no
disrespect to night Els. I mean it's all, but it's
not saving the world. Yeah, crazy, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
And so then then I got the chance to portray
a character who is two faces, and that's yeah, y'all
are his actors?

Speaker 1 (59:33):
I mean or many faces?

Speaker 2 (59:35):
You know, I mean I have a thousand faces, but
I want to you'd try to be as authentic as
you can, while at the same time, you're my job
is often to present and to perform, and so and.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
The cast around you were just superlative, I mean local, incredible, incredible.
I mean they must speak they must speak American dialect
in Australian schools, now, I mean incredible.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Some of their you know, New York and Chicago dialects
were better than mine and I lived in both of
those cities.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Amazing, girl, Ingrid to Relly Lily was just Wow, he's
gonna do some stuff that girl. Yeah, I read It's interesting.
I read that. You know it was like.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
Rosemary's Baby meets Network. Yes, which I agreed with to
an extent, but I kind of find myself objecting to
those things because it is its own thing, it's its
own film.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
It is I like that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
What helped us with it was Kevin Smith who said
that because he saw the film early, he went on
his you know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Social media and said, I just saw this movie. It's
so great. You have to see it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
It's like Rosemary's Baby meets Network. And then all you
know what you got to do when you make a movie,
and especially if you don't have like a big marketing budget.
And we had the best marketing team with IFC. I
swear they went bananas with this. They were so creative
and thoughtful. But it's like you have to start the
story just in how you entice people to come in.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
I liked that start. I thought, you know, the the
the what is it? That was a yeah. I liked
the Blankel Ironside doing the v Yeah. I know Michael,
I've worked with him. He's a character, but he and
it was a great. I know, didnim He just went
into a booth and recorded that for us. It was
he killed it. Yeah, he did. Yeah, And and it

(01:01:27):
really drew you in. I mean, by the time that
the backdrop was set, it was like, okay, now I'm
I'm interested in this and I liked the fact you
said it in the seventies that was did they come
to you? And this was like, yeah, we want David
or did you? Yeah? The Roy.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Roy and I've been trying to figure out something to
work on for a long time, and so he sent
me the script and said, you know, your name came
up in a meeting. I told everybody that I know
you take a look. We would bring on Good Feet Films,
which is my company as a coin producer, on this
because we're small and we need as many hands on

(01:02:05):
deck as possible. And so it was the first feature
film that my company helped produce and that I got to,
you know, uh have a hand in, you know, as
far as with other people's material, because I loved the
script and I loved their vision, and I had scant notes,

(01:02:27):
but I think they were really helpful in beneficiency of
the ultimate product.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
How long did you have to shoot that was it
three weeks and a half weeks, not kidding. So there's
a lot of there's a lot of filming. There were
long days and yeah, but very rewarding, I'm sure. And
everyone seemed to be just on their game, you know
it was it was impressed, mate, They're very very good stuff.

(01:02:51):
I do have to say, I wanted to say this
this entire time. You have been told this. I'm sure
the resemblance you have, Christopher Lee. Have you ever considered
writing or the computer down? And that's the end of it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
I will say I have asked my management to reach out.
Let's say, you know, there's characters he portrayed that if
the younger version got to be integrated into maybe a
galaxy far far away or something else, I'd be like,
I would really like a chance to take a swing

(01:03:31):
at embodying one of the characters that he manifested in
a younger iteration, or even.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
In the Tolkien space. You know, yeah, it could be.
Which was fascinating prequels, but his life was absolutely fascinating.
His obsession and his experience with both the military, his
relationship with his family, his interaction with genre pictures, and
his tenure at Hammer. He's a big hero of mine.
I've always admired, loved and respected him in.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
All of his films I own, uh, you know on
four K if I can get them, steal books and
Blu rays, and I love to watch them work. He
brought some which depth to even his very you know,
small amount of dialogue, Dracula performances, and something that's all
done with face and eyes. That's what I grew up with,
was the Hammer, Him and Hammer films.

Speaker 1 (01:04:23):
Yeah. Yeah, Mom and Dad would go out for a
steak dinner on a Friday night and I you know,
I'd be about eleven and be in bed byke nine thirty. Yes, Mom, Well,
from from me to you, that's a high compliment. Thank you, Yeah,
thank you. Yeah. Well, uh, it's just been a joy.

(01:04:43):
I don't want to we don't want to keep you
any longer. Mate, it's a so much I want to
say really quick to you both into your audience, like
please come May sixteenth. Take a look at murder Bot
on Apple Plus.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
It's inspired by the novel series by Martha Well, which
is an incredibly beautiful, complex series of stories about this
fascinating character who Alexander Scarsgard brings to life. I get
to play Garraffin who is an augmented human, which means
I have access to data portals that really inform my

(01:05:19):
relationship to Alex's character, the murder bot himself.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
And I'm really proud of it. And it's it's it's
it's an experience that I had as an actor, like
I said, going through a very difficult time, you know,
mentally struggling with insomnia and other things. And I am
I'm really proud of what we made. I think I
think you're going to really have a very couldn't be

(01:05:44):
more timely. I mean, I was watching sixty Minutes last
night that British scientist Demis Abebis it won the Nobel Prize.
I mean, this AI thing is, we have no idea
where this isn't going to be In three years time,
he said, people are going to be marrying AI. Yeah,
wonder It's going to be amazing and he he look,

(01:06:06):
he's talking about, you know, the end of disease, which yeah,
at my age, I'm like, okay, I'm freaking.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
But thank you, thank you guys for wanting to chat
with me, and you have a wonderful rapport and great
show and thank you.

Speaker 9 (01:06:23):
Matt's sometime tell you well when murder comes out and
uh maybe uh dust Bunny, maybe you and h and
Mads will come on and we.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Can have it to do it again. I love it.
It's been really lovely getting to know you're you're you're
class a act mate. Yeah, it's amos.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
It's almost

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Amos, it's almost