November 10, 2025 • 43 mins
Welcome back to the studio. This is My Day of Play, where you’re taken into the real events and actions of how it happens long before the process of editing or cleaning up. The original purpose of these episodes was to give my broadcasting students something to edit, to practice with and to call their own. Then I realized that you are just as important. Share the reality of how it really went. We begin things with legendary podcaster Dani Shapiro who will not hide behind a stone when it comes to family secrets. In her words, “We all have them. And there’s more to discover.” Then we’ll wrap things up with Shea Whigham, one of the most most gifted actors of our present times. Shea’s most recent work includes Mission Impossible and the thriller Lake George. This is My Day of Play. Completely unedited in the way of meeting the wizard behind the curtain.
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Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I guess it's just a radio thing. One thought per break.
Why have only one podcast when there are fifty thousand
things moving around us all at one time? Why are
you shoving that into a potato bag aro? Dot net
A r E dot net, seventeen unbelievable podcasts are waiting
for you. Welcome back to the studio. This is My
day of Play, where you're taking into the really vincent
(00:22):
actions of how it goes down before the process of
editing or cleaning up. The original purpose of these episodes
was to give my broadcasting students something to edit, to
practice with, and to call their own. And then I realized,
wait a second, you're just as important as they are.
Share the reality of how things really take place. We
begin things with legendary podcaster Danny Shapiro, who will not
(00:45):
hide behind any stone when it comes to family secrets.
In her words, we all have them, and there's more
to discover. Then we're going to wrap things up with
actor Shay Wigham, one of the most gifted actors of
our present day. Shay's most recent work includes Mission Impossible
and the thriller Lake George. This is My Day of Play,
(01:06):
completely unedited in the way of meeting the wizard behind
the curtain.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Here is Arrow.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Good morning Arrow. Hey, Happy Friday day, everybody.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Oh happy Friday.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Hey, Hey, how are you doing today? Danny?
Speaker 4 (01:21):
I'm doing well. How are you doing it?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Doing?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Absolutely fantastic. It's always a pleasure to share a conversation
with you because I love your openness and I just
wish there were more people like you that could sit
down and say, hey, I know you've been through some stuff,
but you know, let's just talk about it.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Yeah, I mean, what else is there to do? I
don't know, I don't get the point of not doing that.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
You do something this season that really blows me away,
and I'm so proud of you for doing it. You
created a workshop.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
The stories we carry? Is that the one you're referring to? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No.
I've been you know, all the different things in my
in my writing life and like in my in my
you know, my life is a creator, they all kind
of go together. I mean I've been I've thought of
(02:12):
writing for many years for myself and also as a
teacher of writing as a way of getting at you know,
what's really in there, like what you know, what a
tool to use to really like sort of come to
understand what, you know, what we think and what we feel,
and what we know that maybe we don't even know
(02:32):
we know yet. So it's a natural outgrowth of you know,
I've been one way or another writing about family secrets
all my life in fiction and in memoirs, and then
creating this podcast and also leading, you know, leading these
workshops and retreats that allow other people to do their
own deep dives in a in a in a safe space,
(02:53):
in a in a in a way that can actually
be really useful and helpful to people.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And the positive ad of that, Danny is the fact
that when people start to write, they can visibly be
seen by a passer by. In other words, it's so
interesting to see somebody who's not weighed down by those
family secrets or one that is building and they don't
know how to handle it.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah, no, that's totally true. I mean the workshop that
you're referring to, it's called the Stories We Carry. And
you know, the thing about I mean that that choice
of words is very deliberate, because, you know, secrets become
something that we literally carry with us, and they can
(03:36):
feel like burdens, they can feel like weights we use
that language a lot when we're describing, you know, the
heaviness of carrying a secret, you know, the weight of
a secret, and when we sit down with pen and paper,
and you know, I'll often say to my students, no
one is going to see this unless you want them to.
Sure this is not going to leap from the page
(03:58):
onto the shelves of local bookstore. I promise you can
burn it when you're done. You can, you can rip
it up into little pieces of confetti. But what you're
doing is discovering. By the pen moving across the page,
you are discovering something about what it is that you know.
I mean, one of my favorite writers is the late
(04:21):
great Joan Didion, and she once wrote that if she
had even the remotest access to her unconscious mind, she
never would have become a writer, and that she writes
in order to discover what it is that she knows
and deals and understands. And I really relate to that.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
See, that's the very reason why I've been a daily
writer for thirty years, is that there's something in there
that I know I'm supposed to find, and each day
I come across a bread crumb.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
But it's not that big thing yet exactly.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
I mean, that's that's been the story of my entire
life as a writer, eleven books. I mean, I was
writing about like my theme in book after book. I
could have told you this was in some way like
the corrosive power of secrets in families. I knew that
I was writing about that. I kind of couldn't miss it.
(05:10):
I did. What I didn't know was why. And you know,
our as writers, our you know our themes, like theme
is just a fancy word that they teach you in school.
It just means obsession, you know, like what is it that,
what is it that obsesses us and that we can't
let go of? And I didn't. I knew that I
was obsessed with secrets and what they do to us,
(05:30):
but I didn't know why. And then, you know, bread
crumb after bread crumb. Then one day I just like
ran smack into the entire I'm going to just go
with this metaphor, like ran smack into the entire like
pound cake of it, and found out that I had
been my own family secret, and that my dad had
not been my biological father, and that that was a
(05:51):
huge secret that had been kept from me all my life,
and on some level, deep down I knew it. I
just couldn't access it.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
It was I knew it, but I could I never
once ever entertained the thought.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Wow, I can still relate with that because I tried
to get my mother to answer a lot of questions
about my journey, and because I'm there were just so
many odd ball things about the middle child that didn't
go with the other brothers and sisters. And I accused
her many times. I said, you had a love affair
with a man. You just won't tell me that. And
so everybody nowadays says, well, do the genealogy, Just go
ahead and do it. And it's like, you know, I
(06:26):
don't know if I want to find out now. I
mean back then, yes, but today I don't. I don't
want to, you know, injure my memories of my mother, Mmm, no, I.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Totally hear that. And yet at the same time, you're
walking around with a kind of suspicion or you know
a sense of something yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, yeah, But when you get that close to someone's
family secret, I mean that that's going to sharpen your
skills of self awareness as well, because when you're going
through life on your own path. You're gonna go oh
woh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I learned this from this
person over here. I'm going to hold back. We're not
going to put this in that compartment.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Hmmm. You know what's interesting about like the people who
come on my show, they've all already to some degree
made peace right with their family secret, because otherwise they
wouldn't come on my show because the show is it's
not a gotcha kind of show. You know, I'm not like,
I'm not after like, I'm not trying a great big
(07:31):
revelation out of someone. What I'm what I'm doing is
trying to go as deeply as we can into the story.
And really it's less about the what than about the why.
You know, it's I mean, it's it's about it's about like,
it's about what happened, and it's definitely there are sort
of sit on the edge of your seat kind of stories,
(07:53):
but ultimately it's really about like sort of coming to
understand the way that some of these secrets like live
inside of us and form our lives. I mean, Carl Jung,
the great psychoanalyst, once once said, you know, you what
was it exactly. If you bury a secret, you bury
(08:15):
it alive. But also know that the quote was until
we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our lives,
and we will call it fate.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I can relate with that because I'm one of those
people that was guilty of trying to keep his own
family secret and blew it. Not even a year and
a half later, everybody knew it was like how because
I think.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
We wear it. I think we wear it.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Yes, Yeah, something does not something does not add up.
People don't even necessarily know what it is. But you know,
when I before I found out about my dad, and
I had written a lot about my family and a
lot about my dad. I adored my dad and he
died when I was twenty three, and you know, we
never really knew each other as adults, and I thought
(09:02):
I had written a whole book about my spiritual question
and my relationship with my father. And I was on Oprah,
and I was sitting with Oprah. She was interviewing me,
and I looked over at her at one point, and
I swear if she had had a soft bubble over
her head, it would have been something's not adding up. Yeah,
something's not here, And I knew it. I knew I mean,
(09:25):
you know, Oprah's you know, just brilliant at reading people,
and I knew she was reading something about me that
I did not know about myself, and that that really
came back to me years later. It was just a
couple of years later that I made the discovery and
I just thought, oh something, there was a slight disconnect
(09:45):
between how I walked through the world and what, you know,
the truth of me really was.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Don't you think it's also in our vocal tones, because
I can hear somebody talking with me and.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Then I'm going whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not
feeling something here, Yes.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean when I when I record family secrets,
you know, in the same way that you and I
are speaking right now, I'm not looking at the person. Yeah,
I'm ear to ear.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
You know, we are listening to each other. And it
is amazing what you can learn with no visual cues.
You're you're hearing the tone of somebody's voice, the cadence,
the way they're pausing, the way you know they're there
are tells.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
You.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You share a quote here that I really truly believe
it needs to be on a T shirt or it
needs to be on a poster somewhere. Everybody is fighting
to breathe, to live a little longer. I love that
because it speaks volumes in truth.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Mm yeah, now more than ever maybe, I mean, it's
it really, you know, we live in you know, such
an intense time and in such an intense, noisy world,
and everybody's just trying to get by, no matter how
much they have or how little they have, or what's
(11:03):
hidden from them or what they know or what they
present or what it looks like, or how famous they
are or how obscure, it's all. I mean. When I
really came to understand that deep down, we are all
the same. We are all trying to do the same
thing in this life, you know, whether whether we realize
(11:24):
that or not. It was very liberating for me because
I thought, I mean it maybe less maybe les's afraid
walking through the world, and made me less afraid of
public speaking, of getting up in front of people just
trying to say, trying to say what's true because we
all we all feel it, and we all know it
when we hear it.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, there's one of the things that I live the
life by and that is is that I believe that
living in my past is nothing but rewriting a story,
just so I can, you know, take some stress off
my back. I'm always trying to push people live in
the presence of now. You can learn from your past,
but you can't live in it.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Same way as you can't live in the future. That's
exactly right. It's you know, in in in yoga. I
practice a lot of yoga, and you know, when you're
when you're leaning literally when you're leaning back, it's like
you're leaning back into the past, and when you're leaning forward,
it's like you're you're, you're getting over your skis, You're
like you're you know, you're you're you're tripping into the future.
(12:21):
And both of them don't exist. They literally don't exist.
And you know, they they they the past did exist.
But it's anything that we think about the past from
the present is just interpretation and and memory. And I mean,
I I love some of my memories, but I don't
(12:41):
trust them, you know. I mean, if there's one thing
that I learned about, you know, from from finding out
that I had been laboring under a complete misconception about
who my dad was my whole life I had. I like,
I spend some time reorienting, you know, my past, like
looking at photographs and thinking what was really going on there?
Or you know what, what did what? What did the
(13:02):
little girl understand or not understand? But at a certain point,
you know, you wake up and you know and it's
a it's a new day and all we have is
is right now and thinking anything else is just a delusion.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
There's there's a move in yoga that that it really
does mess with my mind, and I wish I could
remember what the name of it is right now, but
it's the one where you arch your back up and
then you then you then you curve your back down.
And what happens is is that every single time I
go into that yoga move, I'm go, I'm reaching into
the future. I'm letting my past go future, letting my
past go.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Yeah, you're talking about bridge post.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
That's it. That's exactly it.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Yep, yep, yeah yeah, And that's beautiful because that's exactly right.
And and it's such a difficult pose in a way,
and that you can it forces you into the present.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Your feet might be in the past and your you know,
your hands might be in the future, but you are
right there, you know, working working for that pose.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
One of the things that I really love about listening
to your podcast and iHeartRadio is also the visual part
of it, because I love going in there on the
transcripts because when I hear something and I didn't digest
it properly, I can go directly to those transcripts and
really get it. And I love that relationship that iHeart
has with you on this.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
I do too, I feel, you know, I just feel
so blessed to be able to continue to do this show.
You know that Family Secrets is the longest running seasonal
show on iHeart with eleven seasons, and I'm really proud
of that. It just means we're doing something that is
(14:40):
reaching people. And you know, when people come up to me,
it's really interesting. I wonder whether you have this like
you know, when people know you because of your voice, yep,
you know, or you know they they have an intimate
relationship with you because they listen to you. And and
you know radio podcast, we're often alone when we're in
(15:03):
our cars. You know, we're taking a walk or taking
a hike or working out, but we're alone. It's a
very intimate experience, and I just feel, you know, just
really really lucky to be able to reach people in
this way, with the you know, just with the landscapes
that iHeart offers just so many ears, so many listeners.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I had to break that habit of being alone in
this studio back in twenty twenty because I was I
came into this it was a face to face reality.
I needed to be with people. I was starving for people.
So I went and got a job at a grocery
store because I believe it's all people there. There's no
judgment against anybody, and I'm going to meet people that
I whoa, I mean, the rich, poor, weak, people that
(15:46):
are very happy. I mean, it's just it's amazing to
be a people watcher. And you seem to be that
kind of a person as well. You love watching people.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
I do love watching people. I mean, I think somebody
asked me the other day whether I'm an introvert or
an extrovert, and I actually think I'm more of an
introvert with extroverted ability. But you know, what's what you're
describing about, like people watching? It's very Yeah, it's it's
I think, as a writer, something that I've always done,
(16:16):
and then you know, made up you know, made up
stories in my head about you know, what they're all about,
or what their relationships might be with each other, and
and and just the sheer you know, I live in
the country now, so I don't I don't see a
lot of people on a daily basis. And when I
go back into New York City, where I spent most
of my adulthood, it's the just the sheer humanity of it,
(16:39):
the the you know, the different you know, the different
people and the different you know, shapes and sizes, and
you know ethnicities and life experience and you know ages,
and you know, just everybody is in there. Everybody's in
their lives just you know, doing doing what they can.
(16:59):
And you're describing about being in a grocery store. That
would have been during the pandemic, right, so that would
be more like so every everything was so intense, everything
was so heightened. Was it going to make us kinder?
Was it going to make us angry or her? Or
was it going to make us you know, crawl into
bed and never get out. Was it going to make
us go help other people? You know? It just you know,
(17:20):
who who do we become when life presents us with.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Something like what it's sure a big lesson and don't
judge a book by its cover because you know what,
what what I'm assuming is always wrong, And it's like, man,
you dude, you've got You've got to accept all things.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Right, right, like judging judging people's insides by judging their outsides,
it's never a good idea.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, yeah, and you know, and it's like, oh my god,
and you feel but I write about it. It gives me
something to write about and say, Okay, what did you
learn from this? How can we teach this to other people?
How can we be more open about this?
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah? Absolutely, I mean that's to me, that's at the
heart of being able to It's like cultivating empathy in
a way, you know, so that when I'm when I'm teaching,
or when i'm when I'm when i'm teaching writing, or
when i'm or when i'm writing myself, that is the
place that I'm coming from, is even when I'm writing.
(18:14):
In my last novel, there was one character that reader's
readers really found difficult because he was difficult. He was
and it made them Some readers were, you know, like,
why did you have to make him so difficult. And
I was thinking about writing this ARCT. He's one of
seven characters, main characters in this book, and I thought,
you know, every time I was writing a scene with him,
(18:35):
his name was Shankman. Every time I was writing a
scene with Shankman as the writer, I was sitting back
and going, Oh, Shankman, don't do that, don't do that, Like, oh,
you can do better. You know, you could be a
better dad, really, could, you know, give your kid a break. Meanwhile,
I'm the one who's creating Shankman, even as there's a
part of me that's going, oh, don't do that, because
(18:58):
he's completely real to me as I'm writing him, and
I loved him even though he is incredibly flawed. And
that to me is you know, like cultivating, cultivating love
for our characters on the page, for the people that
we you know, and by love I mean compassion. That's
(19:22):
you know, a very you know, it's a wonderful practice
to be able to attempt.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
That, and it's courage and a man when you can
meet somebody who's got the courage to be able to
do that, I mean, it's just mind blowing.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
I love that you just said, courage because one of
the things I think a lot about and I talk
about with my students is the difference between courage and
confidence because people often think that they're the same. And
when it comes to writing or when it comes to
creating anything, I think confidence is useless. I mean, it's
(19:58):
more than useless. It's a negative. You know. We live
in a culture where you know, you think that's what
you want. You want to kind of like walk out
your door like a winner and kind of, you know,
get out there and present this really confident front. But
courage is about being afraid, feeling your fear and doing
(20:18):
it anyway, risking failure, risking making a mistake, risking taking
a chance by telling somebody the truth of what you feel,
risking it, being afraid, having you know, your heart pounding
or butterflies in your stomach, and doing it anyway. And
(20:38):
you know, on the other side of that there are
just the most enormous gifts, because those are the gifts
of connection.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Man, you got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. I love having these conversations with you.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Me too, Me too.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well, you'd be brilliant today, okay.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Okay, you too, And really really great to talk.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
To you a little bit. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
You enjoy Please do not move up. Next it is
actor Shae Wigham. Hey, thanks for coming back to my
day of play. Let's get into that conversation with actor
Shae Wigham.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Oh, we're that way, and then the rest of quicker
shorter hits. Let's bring Arrow in.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Hey, Arrow, Hey, what's going on? Michael? Thank you for
coming in early.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
You'll have till just before fifty.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Okay with Shae Wigham.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Good morning, how are you? How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Shay, Hey man, I'm doing good. You're in Charlotte.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
I am I am man.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
I've got a great uncle of mine, met Morgan, that
I would like to say hello to out there.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
I love your area of the country.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
I love the rolling hills.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I came down here from Montana and so I mean,
I fell so in love with the hills, which is
the reason why we planted seventeen hundred trees on the
land here and we've turned it into a little forest.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
Man.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
I love hearing that Arrow. I love it.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
You know, I know we're going to be talking about
Lake George, but I mean I'm speaking of Montoa. You
you going to be playing Jim Bridger. Are we talking
about the Jim Bridger from Montana?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
That is?
Speaker 6 (22:07):
That's right Wyoming, Uh uh from Bridgers Fort. It's American
Prime Evil. The the the.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Trailer just dropped yesterday.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
It's on Netflix, and it is it's one of the
great roles I've had a chance to, you know, to
take on as Jim Bridger.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, because I mean in Montana, that's that's part of
the vocabulary.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It's like Lewis and Clark. You have to know about
every one of those guys if you want to consider
yourself to be a true Montana.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, that's true.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
Yeah, I mean, I mean Bridger born in Virginia and
he followed the fur trade out out there, and uh,
you know he was on the heels of Lewis and
Clark and you know, bought his fur trading company from
Jetted Ddiah Smith.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
It's got history all over it, you know.
Speaker 6 (22:50):
So and it's it's this thing, like I said, it's
American Prime Evil. If you go and look up the trailer,
it's it's it's it's written by Mark L. Smith who
actually Mark lives in outside of Asheville.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And he wrote the Revenant. He wrote The Revenant for DiCaprio.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Oh my god, you got me having a fun time
with all these writers and directors right now, because it
seems like at the plain field these wide open and
people are in the mood to explore.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah, I think we're getting back to some of that. Man,
I'm with you. I'm really lucky right now. I try
to latch.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
Onto great writers and directors. And you know, I did
that swark circling back to Lake George right now.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I got a chance to work with.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Kerry Cooney here. I did Fark up with a great peace.
And Jeffrey Reiner, who was he did, you know? Friday
Night Lights?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
And he did The Affair And this.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
Is his first first feature in a while. And man,
he knocked it out of the park with Lake George.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Don't you mean It's almost like the one thing I
talked with my wife about it. It's like that Jeffrey
Reimer is a visionary and everybody taps into it to
make that vision now become a reality.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah. Yeah, Er Reiner is.
Speaker 6 (24:08):
He is deceptively good man. He's a humble guy, but
he's written this thing. It was a very personal film,
but it plays off of genres. I mean, it's wickedly funny,
but and it goes you think you're It's the thing
about the film is it surprises you.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I think it's easy for me to.
Speaker 6 (24:26):
Talk about because I love it and I don't get
a chance to play the leads. Carrie and I don't
get we don't get to play the leads very often.
So you know when you're so you're traveling down with
this piece and it's it's it's like The Late Show,
the throwback to the great movie Art Carney, The Late
Show and Lily Tomlin and then all of a sudden
it veers into a Cohen Brothers area, you know area,
and it gets wild and it's got a ton of heart. Man,
(24:49):
it has a ton of heart. So I hope you
know if you're sitting around on a Friday or Saturday
night and you can rent it starting today.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's one of those movies that has several different levels.
But to me, it's it's pushed the story forward. It's
keeping you connected to the story and and you really,
I mean, it just draws you in.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, I mean, look, these things work.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
It's not it's no secret, it's not plot plot play,
it's character character character, and when you get a chance
to work off someone like Carrier, Glenn Fleschler, Max Casella,
who he's Fleschler's henchman, Arman's henchman in it, you know,
if you're going to be drawn in because of the
characters and thus the storytelling.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You know, one of the relatable scenes is that you know,
you're pulled into to do this job and then you can't.
And I just thought, I thought, man, there are so
many people that are in that situation. They want to
do what they want to do and then it doesn't happen.
Speaker 6 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah, you know, don This character that I played
just to set the set the world done is he's
he's not a killer, He's a he's an insurance guy.
You know, he's you know, he's just he does he
he gets caught up in this world. But all he
wants is peace. You know, he just wants peace and quiet.
He wants some normalcy. And that's easy to play because
(26:08):
in in that ensues the.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Hilarity and the wildness of the film.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
You know, was there a sight of you that sat
there and thought, man, we could have turned this into
a ten part binge watch.
Speaker 6 (26:22):
Well, yeah, I mean, I I think it has legs
when you know, this thing does have legs.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
When you when you when you when you.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Get great storytelling and you have again carry Carrie Koon
is one of our one of our top five three actresses.
You know what I mean that I that I've worked with,
So yeah, I think when you have that that chemistry, yes,
I think you can continue.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You know on does it get easier each time that
you work with Carrie? Because I mean, like you said,
you know you were we were together with Fargo and
it's like here you are again. It's like did everything
just play out even more smoother because you started you
know each other's body language?
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah? You do.
Speaker 6 (27:03):
You when you have that trust in each other, you
can go to places that say if you don't know them,
you know, you don't know your act you're actress or
actor very well.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So yeah, it really helped in this. I think it.
I think it.
Speaker 6 (27:20):
You can tell me you've seen it, but I've seen
it four times. But not to speak to my own behalf,
but I love the film and I love the chemistry.
I think that's what really propels the film. You know,
I mean, it's it's funny I'm going to see it
again tonight and tomorrow we're showing it out here in
Los Angeles, and I'm looking just as forward to scene.
And I don't say this lightly. I want to see
(27:41):
it again tonight. This will be the fourth or fifth time.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
So I like that kind of stuff because you know,
when I go see a movie once, it's basically to
have the experience. Then I go in and I study
everything behind the scenes. And this is one of those
movies where you guys, let that set become one of
the stars as well.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I think you're right, that's right on man to me.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
I told Jeffrey, I think this is a love letter
to southern cal We start, if you know southern Cow.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
We start over, you know, just.
Speaker 6 (28:09):
To the the east, you know, uh, and and move
all the way through the valley and up into Santa
Barbara and where we have the the you know, the
forest of Santa Barbara and the cliffs, and then into
Loan Pine, which is if you know California, you're going
(28:29):
up into Mammoth and Long Pine is about an hour
outside of there. And then we stayed in the hotel
where John Wayne stayed there and all all this western
so it had a lot of history. When you see,
we use the Alabama Hills to you know, just to
the west, and and so it had a lot of
a lot.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Of things going for it.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
So putting California back on the map. I mean, that's
the one thing that I love about Hollywood is that,
you know, they still believe in in you know, being
in that moment and bringing that background forward.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (29:01):
Yeah, you know, I hadn't you know American Primeval, which
you brought up with Bridger.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
It was a Western, and I wanted I wanted to
do a Western.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
This has a little bit of uh you know, uh,
you know.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
How a Coen Brothers do Westerns.
Speaker 6 (29:19):
This has that at the end of this film, and
I that was that was that was exciting to me,
to be able to go up into those Alabama hills
and use those you know, and just the history there.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I love. That's why I'm in. I love the movies.
I'm a centophile.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
I love cinema, you know, so I you know, I
get excited about that stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
So then you've got to get excited about these independent
houses that are starting to pop up everywhere, and they're
really giving the underdogs that opportunity to be seen.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, man, I am we we we love them.
Speaker 6 (29:51):
We love you know the Lemley's which we're going to
show at tonight with the you know, the truly Love
film and give us the opportunity to sit in theater
amongst people that you don't know and experience a film.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
There's nothing like it.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
You know, you're feeling it, you're all taking it in
and having an experience and experiential So we're very thankful
to these small art houses.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Do you see things when in the movie each time
that you go and then there was like, oh god,
I didn't even catch that the first time I saw
the movie.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, I cringe. I missed at that moment. I missed that. Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
I think a film like this, I mean, like you know,
like Lake George, because it's personal to Jeffrey and it's
it has so many things going for it. It lends
itself to seeing it. I mean, it's like I said,
The Late Show was one of the stories that he
(30:51):
worked off of old old films. Don is a throwback character,
you know what I mean. You don't see many characters
like him that slow burn and then get caught up
into you know, uh, the hilarity that ensues.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
You know, it's interesting that you say that because I
watch a lot of WE TV and Me TV and
stuff where it has all those old shows.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
So you talking about Don.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Like that, I'm going, Oh my god, maybe that's the
reason why I'm connected to that character because I'm sitting
here watching these old shows.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, I think so that was Jefferies.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
When Jeffrey and I were talking about building Don, That's
what he had in mind, you know, like I said,
the the the r Carnies of the world and these
these these these throwback quiet I told Jeffrey, they don't
say a lot, but they have a lot to say,
you know, and that if you'll, if you'll give it
a little bit of patience, you know, the first time,
(31:45):
once this thing man goes off the rails, it it
just flies.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
But you also get to know Don and you get
you know, you're in there with him. So yeah, I do.
I think you're right.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Doesn't Facial acting also play a very big part in
this because you have to be able to deliver that
line and give me that facial expression that I'm gonna
hold on to.
Speaker 6 (32:04):
Well, I mean, I don't know, you don't you don't
go into it with with like I'm gonna do like
I'm not a planner.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
I'm not Oh, I'm gonna do this or I'm going
to do that. You work off of the other actors,
and once you find Don what Don wants and what
he needs. You know, Don doesn't he doesn't get what
he wants at the end of this film, but he
gets what he needs. He needs closure, he needs to
(32:34):
you know, it's about guilt. This thing's really I think
anybody who watches it, it's about guilt and trying to,
you know, rectify the situation that he's put everyone in.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I'm always fascinated with comedy in a movie in the
way that comedians will tell you that, man, I was
crafting that joke for two and a half years. But
yet when you go and you watch and you laugh
really out loud at a movie, I don't see two
and a half years in that, but but it makes
you laugh so hard.
Speaker 7 (33:00):
Yeah, I mean when we I mean, without giving too
much away, when we get to go Leada, which is
the Santa Barbara House and we need to try to
get this money, it gets I think it's funny and
that that took all day to.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
Try to get that scene to, you know, to make
it hum the way it does.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
It takes a full day and you.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
Got to go there, man, And that's why you need
people like Carrie Koon, who will who will dive in
with me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So yeah, yeah, it's funny. I think it's funny.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You know, you're talking about going to see these inside
real feeders, and you're talking about also the being on
the digital platforms.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Don't you think it is a movie that.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Needs to be experienced on the big screen because of
everything that's going on, So you can you know, experience it, well.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yes, I think it's twofold.
Speaker 6 (33:51):
I think if you can, yes, But also if you're
sitting there on a Friday or Saturday night tonight, you can.
It's you can rent it, you know, and I I
do think you you know, you can experience with people.
It's it's one of those films that you can sit
at home and watch. And in other words, like when
I do Mission Impossible, I think you have to see
the missions on.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
The big screen.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
I mean, for me, this though is intimate and small,
and I think you can still get you know, I mean,
I think you can still sit at home and watch
this and watch it, you know multiple I've seen it.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Multiple times, so watch it multiple times. So yeah, in.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
A way, isn't it a rom com because we're laughing,
there's romance. I mean, there's you know, there's there's something
going on.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, you know maybe if look. Here's the thing that
I love about this.
Speaker 6 (34:42):
It surprises you when you get to the end of
this film. And I've I've done some talks on the film.
People get something different out of what happens to Don.
And you'll know what I mean when you see it.
It's experiential and you get you get the varying both
ends the spectrum and what happens to Don. So I
(35:02):
think that's what the film surprises you, you know what
I mean, Like it may be where you are in
your life and there's no wrong there's no wrong with
that I mean. And like I said, you'll see I
don't want to give anything away, but you'll know what
I mean when you get to the end of this.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
As an actor, did you have to go through any
type of method of you know, there there you are
on the big screen, such as Mission Impossible. But then
now when you get into because people are watching movies
now on their smartphones. Did you have to change anything
to think about that person that's on that smartphone watching?
Speaker 6 (35:32):
No, no, no, I never think about anything like that.
It's always, you know what, this is the simplistic. It's
always what's the truth of the scene, what's happening in
the scene. Nothing is played, nothing is performative. It's all
you know. That's there's a saying, you know, er like,
(35:54):
you can't play a funny character funny, you can't play
a sad character.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Sad you can't.
Speaker 6 (35:58):
You have to you have to almost I play opposites
a lot.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
I play against it, you know.
Speaker 6 (36:05):
And that's that's one of the ways that I approached
the work.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
What did you learn on this project?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Uh?
Speaker 6 (36:14):
I learned that carry Goon is a very very funny,
funny woman. I don't know, you know, I I got
to we you know, we shot it, like I said
a love letter to to.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
I think it's beautiful. It's a beautiful film. And I
didn't know.
Speaker 6 (36:33):
I was surprised by, you know, and I was surprised
at how much I found. You don't see it all
the time on the page, how funny thing or how
how emotional things are going to be when you're just
reading it. And now that really surprised me at the
end when I you know, when I saw it, when
I saw it completed.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah, yeah, what is that like for you? Because I mean,
you guys don't do it in chronological order. It's always
in pieces parts.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Well usually that's that's the case with this one.
Speaker 6 (36:59):
Oddly enough, we we tried to shoot it chronologically. See yeah,
because you know, when you shoot something for on a
smaller scale.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
You have to you have to really you're doing things
on the fly.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
And like the houses, the car that I drive is
Jeffrey Reiner's car, the houses that we use in the piece,
or Jeffrey Reiners or his sisters or his sister in.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Law's you know. Uh so a lot.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
Of it is you're you're having to be creative and
we and it just worked out that as we passed through,
you know, these areas of shooting it, we we we
tried to keep it that way.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
How did you get the texture of the film going?
And that might be the director's question, but there's such
a texture about it that it makes it uniquely its own.
Were there are a lot of smaller cameras that were
moving with.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
You, No there were not. No, I'm trying to think sorry,
I'm trying to think. No.
Speaker 6 (37:58):
Todd Campbell who this He also shot Homecoming from Me
that I did the limited series, and he shot Friday
Night Lights and this we we tried to keep it
very intimate. We tried to you know, keep it really
(38:20):
really real, you know. But that's all set with Jeffrey Reyner.
That's set with Jeffrey and Todd. Those are things that
I don't, you know, carry and I don't worry about.
And Glenn Fleshler and Max Casella.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
How did you guys build the characters? Was it way
before you got there? Because I mean, you know, even
though it's looked upon as being an independent, it doesn't
act like an independent film at all. I mean, this movie,
this movie is a movie.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah. I mean it's funny. When Jeffrey had written it.
Speaker 6 (38:48):
For me two years ago, wow, and we couldn't find
the money. And we were trying to find the money,
and I said, listen when it you know, and I
went off to shoot Mission Impossible and he said.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Listen, we have the money.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
And then I'm so to celebrate we go in honor
of the Armenian Glenn Fleschler. We go to an Armenian
cafe and we're sitting there and I said, we need
a we need a baller actress, We need a great
actress for this. I have this this woman in mind.
What do you think of Carrie Kon? And he goes,
oh my god, I love Carrie. I've actually written her
(39:22):
a letter to say that I want to work with her.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
And I said, okay.
Speaker 6 (39:25):
So I called her from there and she read it
within an hour and said, I want to do this
because Carrie and I don't get to play these leads off,
you know. And so she said, yes, she got our
house in orders. He's got a couple of little kids,
you know, and her husband. And she came out man
and delivered.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Are you all out actor? Or do you get to
write as well? And what about directing? Because I mean,
you're getting all of this experience.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
I don't.
Speaker 6 (39:51):
I don't write. I wish I could write. I have
a real reverence. I love my writers, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
I do all right.
Speaker 6 (40:00):
I was gonna direct on Boardwalk Empire that I did.
At one point I shadowed Tim Van Patten, the great
director of the Sopranos and Game of Thrones, and he's
one of my closest friends.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
But I haven't directed yet.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
No, be awesome to sit there behind the scenes and
watch what your eye sees, because I mean, you've got
to be seen. I mean, when you bring a character
to life, you envision it. Now you've got a whole
team of people you've got to help envision.
Speaker 6 (40:26):
Yeah, I would like the challenge, you know, I'd like
to challenge, but it would have to be very specific.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
I'd have to want to tell the story.
Speaker 6 (40:37):
I guess I wanted to go into the mission impossible world.
I wanted to take on Don as scary as it was,
because he's quiet in Lake George or Eli, and I have.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
To have a want. I don't just you know, I
don't I find myself not just choosing to go do
it for the money or you know, you know, when
I take something on.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
How do you transact? How do you transition back to yourself?
Speaker 6 (41:02):
In Shay, that's a yeah, that's a hard one. Sometimes
it's a hard one to let go at times. You know,
like we're showing just give you an example with this film.
We're showing this film and it's I'm going to see
(41:22):
it tonight and tomorrow night, and it's coming to an
end of being able to talk about it, and then we.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Kind of it's like you birth this baby out into
the world. You hope people rent it. You hope people
go see it or find it, you know, out there.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Can't imagine it because I mean it's like you're relinquishing
it to the world. It no longer really belongs to you,
guys at all. It belongs to us and then you
and here's this character that's still inside your heart.
Speaker 6 (41:49):
Yeah, and you know, man, without getting too crazy, it's
it's you're vulnerable, you know, you put this performance together,
and of course human nature is you. You hope that
people like Don and Phyllis, these two, You hope that
people make it. But you never know, man, you know,
you know, I mean my stuff, Maybe you never know.
Speaker 5 (42:08):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
It reminded me so much many times of a moonlighting
with Bruce Willis. I mean, that kind of relationship between
you and Phyllis. I mean it was like saying, oh
my god, this this right here is something we could
fall in love with.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
That's a great that's a great compliment. Man. I didn't I've.
Speaker 6 (42:23):
Yet to think of that, But that's true. I used
to watch that as a kid, and that's true. Yeah,
it's you know, these people really dig each other.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
They need each other to exist in life.
Speaker 6 (42:35):
Don and Phyllis and the same with the the same
with you know, Bruce and Sybil.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
I think you're right, man, Where can people go to
find out more about everything you're doing? Because, like you
said before, you mean, you're you're really busy right now
and people need to know about everything that you're doing.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Oh man, I you know, I am sure.
Speaker 6 (42:51):
I don't know where you can go for all of
my stuff, but I know for Lake George. You know,
like I said, if you're sitting around, you can go.
You can find it on Amazon Prime, you can find
it on Dish and Direct TV.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
You can you can. You can rent this starting.
Speaker 6 (43:05):
Right now, and we hope people do, man, and we're
very appreciative that you're getting it out there.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Well, it's it's a conversation piece because people are the
word of mouth is going to be going.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Do you see this movie yet? No, you got to
see this movie. You're you're going to have a great time.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, it really is, like.
Speaker 6 (43:23):
I said, it surprises you. You know, you're just you're
sitting there, and I mean Carrie. I think she'll be
up for She'll be on people the tip of people's tongues,
you know, with awards and these two characters. You know
you haven't seen something like I don't think you've seen
something like this in a while.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
So wow, Well, please come back to this show anytime
in the future. Shade. The door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Thank you for this. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Will you'd be brilliant?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
All right, man, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Thank you.
I guess it's just a radio thing. One thought per break.
Why have only one podcast when there are fifty thousand
things moving around us all at one time? Why are
you shoving that into a potato bag aro? Dot net
A r E dot net, seventeen unbelievable podcasts are waiting
for you. Welcome back to the studio. This is My
day of Play, where you're taking into the really vincent
(00:22):
actions of how it goes down before the process of
editing or cleaning up. The original purpose of these episodes
was to give my broadcasting students something to edit, to
practice with, and to call their own. And then I realized,
wait a second, you're just as important as they are.
Share the reality of how things really take place. We
begin things with legendary podcaster Danny Shapiro, who will not
(00:45):
hide behind any stone when it comes to family secrets.
In her words, we all have them, and there's more
to discover. Then we're going to wrap things up with
actor Shay Wigham, one of the most gifted actors of
our present day. Shay's most recent work includes Mission Impossible
and the thriller Lake George. This is My Day of Play,
(01:06):
completely unedited in the way of meeting the wizard behind
the curtain.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Here is Arrow.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Good morning Arrow. Hey, Happy Friday day, everybody.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Oh happy Friday.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Hey, Hey, how are you doing today? Danny?
Speaker 4 (01:21):
I'm doing well. How are you doing it?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Doing?
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Absolutely fantastic. It's always a pleasure to share a conversation
with you because I love your openness and I just
wish there were more people like you that could sit
down and say, hey, I know you've been through some stuff,
but you know, let's just talk about it.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Yeah, I mean, what else is there to do? I
don't know, I don't get the point of not doing that.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
You do something this season that really blows me away,
and I'm so proud of you for doing it. You
created a workshop.
Speaker 4 (01:51):
The stories we carry? Is that the one you're referring to? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No.
I've been you know, all the different things in my
in my writing life and like in my in my
you know, my life is a creator, they all kind
of go together. I mean I've been I've thought of
(02:12):
writing for many years for myself and also as a
teacher of writing as a way of getting at you know,
what's really in there, like what you know, what a
tool to use to really like sort of come to
understand what, you know, what we think and what we feel,
and what we know that maybe we don't even know
(02:32):
we know yet. So it's a natural outgrowth of you know,
I've been one way or another writing about family secrets
all my life in fiction and in memoirs, and then
creating this podcast and also leading, you know, leading these
workshops and retreats that allow other people to do their
own deep dives in a in a in a safe space,
(02:53):
in a in a in a way that can actually
be really useful and helpful to people.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And the positive ad of that, Danny is the fact
that when people start to write, they can visibly be
seen by a passer by. In other words, it's so
interesting to see somebody who's not weighed down by those
family secrets or one that is building and they don't
know how to handle it.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah, no, that's totally true. I mean the workshop that
you're referring to, it's called the Stories We Carry. And
you know, the thing about I mean that that choice
of words is very deliberate, because, you know, secrets become
something that we literally carry with us, and they can
(03:36):
feel like burdens, they can feel like weights we use
that language a lot when we're describing, you know, the
heaviness of carrying a secret, you know, the weight of
a secret, and when we sit down with pen and paper,
and you know, I'll often say to my students, no
one is going to see this unless you want them to.
Sure this is not going to leap from the page
(03:58):
onto the shelves of local bookstore. I promise you can
burn it when you're done. You can, you can rip
it up into little pieces of confetti. But what you're
doing is discovering. By the pen moving across the page,
you are discovering something about what it is that you know.
I mean, one of my favorite writers is the late
(04:21):
great Joan Didion, and she once wrote that if she
had even the remotest access to her unconscious mind, she
never would have become a writer, and that she writes
in order to discover what it is that she knows
and deals and understands. And I really relate to that.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
See, that's the very reason why I've been a daily
writer for thirty years, is that there's something in there
that I know I'm supposed to find, and each day
I come across a bread crumb.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
But it's not that big thing yet exactly.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
I mean, that's that's been the story of my entire
life as a writer, eleven books. I mean, I was
writing about like my theme in book after book. I
could have told you this was in some way like
the corrosive power of secrets in families. I knew that
I was writing about that. I kind of couldn't miss it.
(05:10):
I did. What I didn't know was why. And you know,
our as writers, our you know our themes, like theme
is just a fancy word that they teach you in school.
It just means obsession, you know, like what is it that,
what is it that obsesses us and that we can't
let go of? And I didn't. I knew that I
was obsessed with secrets and what they do to us,
(05:30):
but I didn't know why. And then, you know, bread
crumb after bread crumb. Then one day I just like
ran smack into the entire I'm going to just go
with this metaphor, like ran smack into the entire like
pound cake of it, and found out that I had
been my own family secret, and that my dad had
not been my biological father, and that that was a
(05:51):
huge secret that had been kept from me all my life,
and on some level, deep down I knew it. I
just couldn't access it.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
It was I knew it, but I could I never
once ever entertained the thought.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Wow, I can still relate with that because I tried
to get my mother to answer a lot of questions
about my journey, and because I'm there were just so
many odd ball things about the middle child that didn't
go with the other brothers and sisters. And I accused
her many times. I said, you had a love affair
with a man. You just won't tell me that. And
so everybody nowadays says, well, do the genealogy, Just go
ahead and do it. And it's like, you know, I
(06:26):
don't know if I want to find out now. I
mean back then, yes, but today I don't. I don't
want to, you know, injure my memories of my mother, Mmm, no, I.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
Totally hear that. And yet at the same time, you're
walking around with a kind of suspicion or you know
a sense of something yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, yeah, But when you get that close to someone's
family secret, I mean that that's going to sharpen your
skills of self awareness as well, because when you're going
through life on your own path. You're gonna go oh
woh whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I learned this from this
person over here. I'm going to hold back. We're not
going to put this in that compartment.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Hmmm. You know what's interesting about like the people who
come on my show, they've all already to some degree
made peace right with their family secret, because otherwise they
wouldn't come on my show because the show is it's
not a gotcha kind of show. You know, I'm not like,
I'm not after like, I'm not trying a great big
(07:31):
revelation out of someone. What I'm what I'm doing is
trying to go as deeply as we can into the story.
And really it's less about the what than about the why.
You know, it's I mean, it's it's about it's about like,
it's about what happened, and it's definitely there are sort
of sit on the edge of your seat kind of stories,
(07:53):
but ultimately it's really about like sort of coming to
understand the way that some of these secrets like live
inside of us and form our lives. I mean, Carl Jung,
the great psychoanalyst, once once said, you know, you what
was it exactly. If you bury a secret, you bury
(08:15):
it alive. But also know that the quote was until
we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our lives,
and we will call it fate.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I can relate with that because I'm one of those
people that was guilty of trying to keep his own
family secret and blew it. Not even a year and
a half later, everybody knew it was like how because
I think.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
We wear it. I think we wear it.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Yes, Yeah, something does not something does not add up.
People don't even necessarily know what it is. But you know,
when I before I found out about my dad, and
I had written a lot about my family and a
lot about my dad. I adored my dad and he
died when I was twenty three, and you know, we
never really knew each other as adults, and I thought
(09:02):
I had written a whole book about my spiritual question
and my relationship with my father. And I was on Oprah,
and I was sitting with Oprah. She was interviewing me,
and I looked over at her at one point, and
I swear if she had had a soft bubble over
her head, it would have been something's not adding up. Yeah,
something's not here, And I knew it. I knew I mean,
(09:25):
you know, Oprah's you know, just brilliant at reading people,
and I knew she was reading something about me that
I did not know about myself, and that that really
came back to me years later. It was just a
couple of years later that I made the discovery and
I just thought, oh something, there was a slight disconnect
(09:45):
between how I walked through the world and what, you know,
the truth of me really was.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Don't you think it's also in our vocal tones, because
I can hear somebody talking with me and.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Then I'm going whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not
feeling something here, Yes.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean when I when I record family secrets,
you know, in the same way that you and I
are speaking right now, I'm not looking at the person. Yeah,
I'm ear to ear.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
You know, we are listening to each other. And it
is amazing what you can learn with no visual cues.
You're you're hearing the tone of somebody's voice, the cadence,
the way they're pausing, the way you know they're there
are tells.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
You.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
You share a quote here that I really truly believe
it needs to be on a T shirt or it
needs to be on a poster somewhere. Everybody is fighting
to breathe, to live a little longer. I love that
because it speaks volumes in truth.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Mm yeah, now more than ever maybe, I mean, it's
it really, you know, we live in you know, such
an intense time and in such an intense, noisy world,
and everybody's just trying to get by, no matter how
much they have or how little they have, or what's
(11:03):
hidden from them or what they know or what they
present or what it looks like, or how famous they
are or how obscure, it's all. I mean. When I
really came to understand that deep down, we are all
the same. We are all trying to do the same
thing in this life, you know, whether whether we realize
(11:24):
that or not. It was very liberating for me because
I thought, I mean it maybe less maybe les's afraid
walking through the world, and made me less afraid of
public speaking, of getting up in front of people just
trying to say, trying to say what's true because we
all we all feel it, and we all know it
when we hear it.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, there's one of the things that I live the
life by and that is is that I believe that
living in my past is nothing but rewriting a story,
just so I can, you know, take some stress off
my back. I'm always trying to push people live in
the presence of now. You can learn from your past,
but you can't live in it.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Same way as you can't live in the future. That's
exactly right. It's you know, in in in yoga. I
practice a lot of yoga, and you know, when you're
when you're leaning literally when you're leaning back, it's like
you're leaning back into the past, and when you're leaning forward,
it's like you're you're, you're getting over your skis, You're
like you're you know, you're you're you're tripping into the future.
(12:21):
And both of them don't exist. They literally don't exist.
And you know, they they they the past did exist.
But it's anything that we think about the past from
the present is just interpretation and and memory. And I mean,
I I love some of my memories, but I don't
(12:41):
trust them, you know. I mean, if there's one thing
that I learned about, you know, from from finding out
that I had been laboring under a complete misconception about
who my dad was my whole life I had. I like,
I spend some time reorienting, you know, my past, like
looking at photographs and thinking what was really going on there?
Or you know what, what did what? What did the
(13:02):
little girl understand or not understand? But at a certain point,
you know, you wake up and you know and it's
a it's a new day and all we have is
is right now and thinking anything else is just a delusion.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
There's there's a move in yoga that that it really
does mess with my mind, and I wish I could
remember what the name of it is right now, but
it's the one where you arch your back up and
then you then you then you curve your back down.
And what happens is is that every single time I
go into that yoga move, I'm go, I'm reaching into
the future. I'm letting my past go future, letting my
past go.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Yeah, you're talking about bridge post.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
That's it. That's exactly it.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Yep, yep, yeah yeah, And that's beautiful because that's exactly right.
And and it's such a difficult pose in a way,
and that you can it forces you into the present.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Your feet might be in the past and your you know,
your hands might be in the future, but you are
right there, you know, working working for that pose.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
One of the things that I really love about listening
to your podcast and iHeartRadio is also the visual part
of it, because I love going in there on the
transcripts because when I hear something and I didn't digest
it properly, I can go directly to those transcripts and
really get it. And I love that relationship that iHeart
has with you on this.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
I do too, I feel, you know, I just feel
so blessed to be able to continue to do this show.
You know that Family Secrets is the longest running seasonal
show on iHeart with eleven seasons, and I'm really proud
of that. It just means we're doing something that is
(14:40):
reaching people. And you know, when people come up to me,
it's really interesting. I wonder whether you have this like
you know, when people know you because of your voice, yep,
you know, or you know they they have an intimate
relationship with you because they listen to you. And and
you know radio podcast, we're often alone when we're in
(15:03):
our cars. You know, we're taking a walk or taking
a hike or working out, but we're alone. It's a
very intimate experience, and I just feel, you know, just
really really lucky to be able to reach people in
this way, with the you know, just with the landscapes
that iHeart offers just so many ears, so many listeners.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I had to break that habit of being alone in
this studio back in twenty twenty because I was I
came into this it was a face to face reality.
I needed to be with people. I was starving for people.
So I went and got a job at a grocery
store because I believe it's all people there. There's no
judgment against anybody, and I'm going to meet people that
I whoa, I mean, the rich, poor, weak, people that
(15:46):
are very happy. I mean, it's just it's amazing to
be a people watcher. And you seem to be that
kind of a person as well. You love watching people.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
I do love watching people. I mean, I think somebody
asked me the other day whether I'm an introvert or
an extrovert, and I actually think I'm more of an
introvert with extroverted ability. But you know, what's what you're
describing about, like people watching? It's very Yeah, it's it's
I think, as a writer, something that I've always done,
(16:16):
and then you know, made up you know, made up
stories in my head about you know, what they're all about,
or what their relationships might be with each other, and
and and just the sheer you know, I live in
the country now, so I don't I don't see a
lot of people on a daily basis. And when I
go back into New York City, where I spent most
of my adulthood, it's the just the sheer humanity of it,
(16:39):
the the you know, the different you know, the different
people and the different you know, shapes and sizes, and
you know ethnicities and life experience and you know ages,
and you know, just everybody is in there. Everybody's in
their lives just you know, doing doing what they can.
(16:59):
And you're describing about being in a grocery store. That
would have been during the pandemic, right, so that would
be more like so every everything was so intense, everything
was so heightened. Was it going to make us kinder?
Was it going to make us angry or her? Or
was it going to make us you know, crawl into
bed and never get out. Was it going to make
us go help other people? You know? It just you know,
(17:20):
who who do we become when life presents us with.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Something like what it's sure a big lesson and don't
judge a book by its cover because you know what,
what what I'm assuming is always wrong, And it's like, man,
you dude, you've got You've got to accept all things.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Right, right, like judging judging people's insides by judging their outsides,
it's never a good idea.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, yeah, and you know, and it's like, oh my god,
and you feel but I write about it. It gives me
something to write about and say, Okay, what did you
learn from this? How can we teach this to other people?
How can we be more open about this?
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah? Absolutely, I mean that's to me, that's at the
heart of being able to It's like cultivating empathy in
a way, you know, so that when I'm when I'm teaching,
or when i'm when I'm when i'm teaching writing, or
when i'm or when i'm writing myself, that is the
place that I'm coming from, is even when I'm writing.
(18:14):
In my last novel, there was one character that reader's
readers really found difficult because he was difficult. He was
and it made them Some readers were, you know, like,
why did you have to make him so difficult. And
I was thinking about writing this ARCT. He's one of
seven characters, main characters in this book, and I thought,
you know, every time I was writing a scene with him,
(18:35):
his name was Shankman. Every time I was writing a
scene with Shankman as the writer, I was sitting back
and going, Oh, Shankman, don't do that, don't do that, Like, oh,
you can do better. You know, you could be a
better dad, really, could, you know, give your kid a break. Meanwhile,
I'm the one who's creating Shankman, even as there's a
part of me that's going, oh, don't do that, because
(18:58):
he's completely real to me as I'm writing him, and
I loved him even though he is incredibly flawed. And
that to me is you know, like cultivating, cultivating love
for our characters on the page, for the people that
we you know, and by love I mean compassion. That's
(19:22):
you know, a very you know, it's a wonderful practice
to be able to attempt.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
That, and it's courage and a man when you can
meet somebody who's got the courage to be able to
do that, I mean, it's just mind blowing.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
I love that you just said, courage because one of
the things I think a lot about and I talk
about with my students is the difference between courage and
confidence because people often think that they're the same. And
when it comes to writing or when it comes to
creating anything, I think confidence is useless. I mean, it's
(19:58):
more than useless. It's a negative. You know. We live
in a culture where you know, you think that's what
you want. You want to kind of like walk out
your door like a winner and kind of, you know,
get out there and present this really confident front. But
courage is about being afraid, feeling your fear and doing
(20:18):
it anyway, risking failure, risking making a mistake, risking taking
a chance by telling somebody the truth of what you feel,
risking it, being afraid, having you know, your heart pounding
or butterflies in your stomach, and doing it anyway. And
(20:38):
you know, on the other side of that there are
just the most enormous gifts, because those are the gifts
of connection.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Man, you got to come back to this show anytime
in the future. I love having these conversations with you.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Me too, Me too.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Well, you'd be brilliant today, okay.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Okay, you too, And really really great to talk.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
To you a little bit. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
You enjoy Please do not move up. Next it is
actor Shae Wigham. Hey, thanks for coming back to my
day of play. Let's get into that conversation with actor
Shae Wigham.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Oh, we're that way, and then the rest of quicker
shorter hits. Let's bring Arrow in.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Hey, Arrow, Hey, what's going on? Michael? Thank you for
coming in early.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
You'll have till just before fifty.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Okay with Shae Wigham.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Good morning, how are you? How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Shay, Hey man, I'm doing good. You're in Charlotte.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
I am I am man.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
I've got a great uncle of mine, met Morgan, that
I would like to say hello to out there.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
I love your area of the country.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
I love the rolling hills.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I came down here from Montana and so I mean,
I fell so in love with the hills, which is
the reason why we planted seventeen hundred trees on the
land here and we've turned it into a little forest.
Speaker 6 (21:53):
Man.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
I love hearing that Arrow. I love it.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
You know, I know we're going to be talking about
Lake George, but I mean I'm speaking of Montoa. You
you going to be playing Jim Bridger. Are we talking
about the Jim Bridger from Montana?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
That is?
Speaker 6 (22:07):
That's right Wyoming, Uh uh from Bridgers Fort. It's American
Prime Evil. The the the.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Trailer just dropped yesterday.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
It's on Netflix, and it is it's one of the
great roles I've had a chance to, you know, to
take on as Jim Bridger.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, because I mean in Montana, that's that's part of
the vocabulary.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It's like Lewis and Clark. You have to know about
every one of those guys if you want to consider
yourself to be a true Montana.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, that's true.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
Yeah, I mean, I mean Bridger born in Virginia and
he followed the fur trade out out there, and uh,
you know he was on the heels of Lewis and
Clark and you know, bought his fur trading company from
Jetted Ddiah Smith.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
It's got history all over it, you know.
Speaker 6 (22:50):
So and it's it's this thing, like I said, it's
American Prime Evil. If you go and look up the trailer,
it's it's it's it's written by Mark L. Smith who
actually Mark lives in outside of Asheville.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And he wrote the Revenant. He wrote The Revenant for DiCaprio.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Oh my god, you got me having a fun time
with all these writers and directors right now, because it
seems like at the plain field these wide open and
people are in the mood to explore.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Yeah, I think we're getting back to some of that. Man,
I'm with you. I'm really lucky right now. I try
to latch.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
Onto great writers and directors. And you know, I did
that swark circling back to Lake George right now.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I got a chance to work with.
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Kerry Cooney here. I did Fark up with a great peace.
And Jeffrey Reiner, who was he did, you know? Friday
Night Lights?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
And he did The Affair And this.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
Is his first first feature in a while. And man,
he knocked it out of the park with Lake George.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Don't you mean It's almost like the one thing I
talked with my wife about it. It's like that Jeffrey
Reimer is a visionary and everybody taps into it to
make that vision now become a reality.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah. Yeah, Er Reiner is.
Speaker 6 (24:08):
He is deceptively good man. He's a humble guy, but
he's written this thing. It was a very personal film,
but it plays off of genres. I mean, it's wickedly funny,
but and it goes you think you're It's the thing
about the film is it surprises you.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I think it's easy for me to.
Speaker 6 (24:26):
Talk about because I love it and I don't get
a chance to play the leads. Carrie and I don't
get we don't get to play the leads very often.
So you know when you're so you're traveling down with
this piece and it's it's it's like The Late Show,
the throwback to the great movie Art Carney, The Late
Show and Lily Tomlin and then all of a sudden
it veers into a Cohen Brothers area, you know area,
and it gets wild and it's got a ton of heart. Man,
(24:49):
it has a ton of heart. So I hope you
know if you're sitting around on a Friday or Saturday
night and you can rent it starting today.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
It's one of those movies that has several different levels.
But to me, it's it's pushed the story forward. It's
keeping you connected to the story and and you really,
I mean, it just draws you in.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, I mean, look, these things work.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
It's not it's no secret, it's not plot plot play,
it's character character character, and when you get a chance
to work off someone like Carrier, Glenn Fleschler, Max Casella,
who he's Fleschler's henchman, Arman's henchman in it, you know,
if you're going to be drawn in because of the
characters and thus the storytelling.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
You know, one of the relatable scenes is that you know,
you're pulled into to do this job and then you can't.
And I just thought, I thought, man, there are so
many people that are in that situation. They want to
do what they want to do and then it doesn't happen.
Speaker 6 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah, you know, don This character that I played
just to set the set the world done is he's
he's not a killer, He's a he's an insurance guy.
You know, he's you know, he's just he does he
he gets caught up in this world. But all he
wants is peace. You know, he just wants peace and quiet.
He wants some normalcy. And that's easy to play because
(26:08):
in in that ensues the.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Hilarity and the wildness of the film.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
You know, was there a sight of you that sat
there and thought, man, we could have turned this into
a ten part binge watch.
Speaker 6 (26:22):
Well, yeah, I mean, I I think it has legs
when you know, this thing does have legs.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
When you when you when you when you.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Get great storytelling and you have again carry Carrie Koon
is one of our one of our top five three actresses.
You know what I mean that I that I've worked with,
So yeah, I think when you have that that chemistry, yes,
I think you can continue.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You know on does it get easier each time that
you work with Carrie? Because I mean, like you said,
you know you were we were together with Fargo and
it's like here you are again. It's like did everything
just play out even more smoother because you started you
know each other's body language?
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah? You do.
Speaker 6 (27:03):
You when you have that trust in each other, you
can go to places that say if you don't know them,
you know, you don't know your act you're actress or
actor very well.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
So yeah, it really helped in this. I think it.
I think it.
Speaker 6 (27:20):
You can tell me you've seen it, but I've seen
it four times. But not to speak to my own behalf,
but I love the film and I love the chemistry.
I think that's what really propels the film. You know,
I mean, it's it's funny I'm going to see it
again tonight and tomorrow we're showing it out here in
Los Angeles, and I'm looking just as forward to scene.
And I don't say this lightly. I want to see
(27:41):
it again tonight. This will be the fourth or fifth time.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
So I like that kind of stuff because you know,
when I go see a movie once, it's basically to
have the experience. Then I go in and I study
everything behind the scenes. And this is one of those
movies where you guys, let that set become one of
the stars as well.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
I think you're right, that's right on man to me.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
I told Jeffrey, I think this is a love letter
to southern cal We start, if you know southern Cow.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
We start over, you know, just.
Speaker 6 (28:09):
To the the east, you know, uh, and and move
all the way through the valley and up into Santa
Barbara and where we have the the you know, the
forest of Santa Barbara and the cliffs, and then into
Loan Pine, which is if you know California, you're going
(28:29):
up into Mammoth and Long Pine is about an hour
outside of there. And then we stayed in the hotel
where John Wayne stayed there and all all this western
so it had a lot of history. When you see,
we use the Alabama Hills to you know, just to
the west, and and so it had a lot of
a lot.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Of things going for it.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
So putting California back on the map. I mean, that's
the one thing that I love about Hollywood is that,
you know, they still believe in in you know, being
in that moment and bringing that background forward.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (29:01):
Yeah, you know, I hadn't you know American Primeval, which
you brought up with Bridger.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
It was a Western, and I wanted I wanted to
do a Western.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
This has a little bit of uh you know, uh,
you know.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
How a Coen Brothers do Westerns.
Speaker 6 (29:19):
This has that at the end of this film, and
I that was that was that was exciting to me,
to be able to go up into those Alabama hills
and use those you know, and just the history there.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I love. That's why I'm in. I love the movies.
I'm a centophile.
Speaker 6 (29:35):
I love cinema, you know, so I you know, I
get excited about that stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
So then you've got to get excited about these independent
houses that are starting to pop up everywhere, and they're
really giving the underdogs that opportunity to be seen.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, man, I am we we we love them.
Speaker 6 (29:51):
We love you know the Lemley's which we're going to
show at tonight with the you know, the truly Love
film and give us the opportunity to sit in theater
amongst people that you don't know and experience a film.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
There's nothing like it.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
You know, you're feeling it, you're all taking it in
and having an experience and experiential So we're very thankful
to these small art houses.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Do you see things when in the movie each time
that you go and then there was like, oh god,
I didn't even catch that the first time I saw
the movie.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, I cringe. I missed at that moment. I missed that. Yeah,
I do.
Speaker 6 (30:30):
I think a film like this, I mean, like you know,
like Lake George, because it's personal to Jeffrey and it's
it has so many things going for it. It lends
itself to seeing it. I mean, it's like I said,
The Late Show was one of the stories that he
(30:51):
worked off of old old films. Don is a throwback character,
you know what I mean. You don't see many characters
like him that slow burn and then get caught up
into you know, uh, the hilarity that ensues.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
You know, it's interesting that you say that because I
watch a lot of WE TV and Me TV and
stuff where it has all those old shows.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
So you talking about Don.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Like that, I'm going, Oh my god, maybe that's the
reason why I'm connected to that character because I'm sitting
here watching these old shows.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, I think so that was Jefferies.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
When Jeffrey and I were talking about building Don, That's
what he had in mind, you know, like I said,
the the the r Carnies of the world and these
these these these throwback quiet I told Jeffrey, they don't
say a lot, but they have a lot to say,
you know, and that if you'll, if you'll give it
a little bit of patience, you know, the first time,
(31:45):
once this thing man goes off the rails, it it
just flies.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
But you also get to know Don and you get
you know, you're in there with him. So yeah, I do.
I think you're right.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Doesn't Facial acting also play a very big part in
this because you have to be able to deliver that
line and give me that facial expression that I'm gonna
hold on to.
Speaker 6 (32:04):
Well, I mean, I don't know, you don't you don't
go into it with with like I'm gonna do like
I'm not a planner.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
I'm not Oh, I'm gonna do this or I'm going
to do that. You work off of the other actors,
and once you find Don what Don wants and what
he needs. You know, Don doesn't he doesn't get what
he wants at the end of this film, but he
gets what he needs. He needs closure, he needs to
(32:34):
you know, it's about guilt. This thing's really I think
anybody who watches it, it's about guilt and trying to,
you know, rectify the situation that he's put everyone in.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I'm always fascinated with comedy in a movie in the
way that comedians will tell you that, man, I was
crafting that joke for two and a half years. But
yet when you go and you watch and you laugh
really out loud at a movie, I don't see two
and a half years in that, but but it makes
you laugh so hard.
Speaker 7 (33:00):
Yeah, I mean when we I mean, without giving too
much away, when we get to go Leada, which is
the Santa Barbara House and we need to try to
get this money, it gets I think it's funny and
that that took all day to.
Speaker 6 (33:16):
Try to get that scene to, you know, to make
it hum the way it does.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
It takes a full day and you.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
Got to go there, man, And that's why you need
people like Carrie Koon, who will who will dive in
with me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So yeah, yeah, it's funny. I think it's funny.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You know, you're talking about going to see these inside
real feeders, and you're talking about also the being on
the digital platforms.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Don't you think it is a movie that.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Needs to be experienced on the big screen because of
everything that's going on, So you can you know, experience it, well.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yes, I think it's twofold.
Speaker 6 (33:51):
I think if you can, yes, But also if you're
sitting there on a Friday or Saturday night tonight, you can.
It's you can rent it, you know, and I I
do think you you know, you can experience with people.
It's it's one of those films that you can sit
at home and watch. And in other words, like when
I do Mission Impossible, I think you have to see
the missions on.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
The big screen.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
I mean, for me, this though is intimate and small,
and I think you can still get you know, I mean,
I think you can still sit at home and watch
this and watch it, you know multiple I've seen it.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Multiple times, so watch it multiple times. So yeah, in.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
A way, isn't it a rom com because we're laughing,
there's romance. I mean, there's you know, there's there's something
going on.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, you know maybe if look. Here's the thing that
I love about this.
Speaker 6 (34:42):
It surprises you when you get to the end of
this film. And I've I've done some talks on the film.
People get something different out of what happens to Don.
And you'll know what I mean when you see it.
It's experiential and you get you get the varying both
ends the spectrum and what happens to Don. So I
(35:02):
think that's what the film surprises you, you know what
I mean, Like it may be where you are in
your life and there's no wrong there's no wrong with
that I mean. And like I said, you'll see I
don't want to give anything away, but you'll know what
I mean when you get to the end of this.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
As an actor, did you have to go through any
type of method of you know, there there you are
on the big screen, such as Mission Impossible. But then
now when you get into because people are watching movies
now on their smartphones. Did you have to change anything
to think about that person that's on that smartphone watching?
Speaker 6 (35:32):
No, no, no, I never think about anything like that.
It's always, you know what, this is the simplistic. It's
always what's the truth of the scene, what's happening in
the scene. Nothing is played, nothing is performative. It's all
you know. That's there's a saying, you know, er like,
(35:54):
you can't play a funny character funny, you can't play
a sad character.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Sad you can't.
Speaker 6 (35:58):
You have to you have to almost I play opposites
a lot.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
I play against it, you know.
Speaker 6 (36:05):
And that's that's one of the ways that I approached
the work.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
What did you learn on this project?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Uh?
Speaker 6 (36:14):
I learned that carry Goon is a very very funny,
funny woman. I don't know, you know, I I got
to we you know, we shot it, like I said
a love letter to to.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
I think it's beautiful. It's a beautiful film. And I
didn't know.
Speaker 6 (36:33):
I was surprised by, you know, and I was surprised
at how much I found. You don't see it all
the time on the page, how funny thing or how
how emotional things are going to be when you're just
reading it. And now that really surprised me at the
end when I you know, when I saw it, when
I saw it completed.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah, yeah, what is that like for you? Because I mean,
you guys don't do it in chronological order. It's always
in pieces parts.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Well usually that's that's the case with this one.
Speaker 6 (36:59):
Oddly enough, we we tried to shoot it chronologically. See yeah,
because you know, when you shoot something for on a
smaller scale.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
You have to you have to really you're doing things
on the fly.
Speaker 6 (37:15):
And like the houses, the car that I drive is
Jeffrey Reiner's car, the houses that we use in the piece,
or Jeffrey Reiners or his sisters or his sister in.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Law's you know. Uh so a lot.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
Of it is you're you're having to be creative and
we and it just worked out that as we passed through,
you know, these areas of shooting it, we we we
tried to keep it that way.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
How did you get the texture of the film going?
And that might be the director's question, but there's such
a texture about it that it makes it uniquely its own.
Were there are a lot of smaller cameras that were
moving with.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
You, No there were not. No, I'm trying to think sorry,
I'm trying to think. No.
Speaker 6 (37:58):
Todd Campbell who this He also shot Homecoming from Me
that I did the limited series, and he shot Friday
Night Lights and this we we tried to keep it
very intimate. We tried to you know, keep it really
(38:20):
really real, you know. But that's all set with Jeffrey Reyner.
That's set with Jeffrey and Todd. Those are things that
I don't, you know, carry and I don't worry about.
And Glenn Fleshler and Max Casella.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
How did you guys build the characters? Was it way
before you got there? Because I mean, you know, even
though it's looked upon as being an independent, it doesn't
act like an independent film at all. I mean, this movie,
this movie is a movie.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah. I mean it's funny. When Jeffrey had written it.
Speaker 6 (38:48):
For me two years ago, wow, and we couldn't find
the money. And we were trying to find the money,
and I said, listen when it you know, and I
went off to shoot Mission Impossible and he said.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Listen, we have the money.
Speaker 6 (39:00):
And then I'm so to celebrate we go in honor
of the Armenian Glenn Fleschler. We go to an Armenian
cafe and we're sitting there and I said, we need
a we need a baller actress, We need a great
actress for this. I have this this woman in mind.
What do you think of Carrie Kon? And he goes,
oh my god, I love Carrie. I've actually written her
(39:22):
a letter to say that I want to work with her.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
And I said, okay.
Speaker 6 (39:25):
So I called her from there and she read it
within an hour and said, I want to do this
because Carrie and I don't get to play these leads off,
you know. And so she said, yes, she got our
house in orders. He's got a couple of little kids,
you know, and her husband. And she came out man
and delivered.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Are you all out actor? Or do you get to
write as well? And what about directing? Because I mean,
you're getting all of this experience.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
I don't.
Speaker 6 (39:51):
I don't write. I wish I could write. I have
a real reverence. I love my writers, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
I do all right.
Speaker 6 (40:00):
I was gonna direct on Boardwalk Empire that I did.
At one point I shadowed Tim Van Patten, the great
director of the Sopranos and Game of Thrones, and he's
one of my closest friends.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
But I haven't directed yet.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
No, be awesome to sit there behind the scenes and
watch what your eye sees, because I mean, you've got
to be seen. I mean, when you bring a character
to life, you envision it. Now you've got a whole
team of people you've got to help envision.
Speaker 6 (40:26):
Yeah, I would like the challenge, you know, I'd like
to challenge, but it would have to be very specific.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
I'd have to want to tell the story.
Speaker 6 (40:37):
I guess I wanted to go into the mission impossible world.
I wanted to take on Don as scary as it was,
because he's quiet in Lake George or Eli, and I have.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
To have a want. I don't just you know, I
don't I find myself not just choosing to go do
it for the money or you know, you know, when
I take something on.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
How do you transact? How do you transition back to yourself?
Speaker 6 (41:02):
In Shay, that's a yeah, that's a hard one. Sometimes
it's a hard one to let go at times. You know,
like we're showing just give you an example with this film.
We're showing this film and it's I'm going to see
(41:22):
it tonight and tomorrow night, and it's coming to an
end of being able to talk about it, and then we.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Kind of it's like you birth this baby out into
the world. You hope people rent it. You hope people
go see it or find it, you know, out there.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Can't imagine it because I mean it's like you're relinquishing
it to the world. It no longer really belongs to you,
guys at all. It belongs to us and then you
and here's this character that's still inside your heart.
Speaker 6 (41:49):
Yeah, and you know, man, without getting too crazy, it's
it's you're vulnerable, you know, you put this performance together,
and of course human nature is you. You hope that
people like Don and Phyllis, these two, You hope that
people make it. But you never know, man, you know,
you know, I mean my stuff, Maybe you never know.
Speaker 5 (42:08):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
It reminded me so much many times of a moonlighting
with Bruce Willis. I mean, that kind of relationship between
you and Phyllis. I mean it was like saying, oh
my god, this this right here is something we could
fall in love with.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
That's a great that's a great compliment. Man. I didn't I've.
Speaker 6 (42:23):
Yet to think of that, But that's true. I used
to watch that as a kid, and that's true. Yeah,
it's you know, these people really dig each other.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
They need each other to exist in life.
Speaker 6 (42:35):
Don and Phyllis and the same with the the same
with you know, Bruce and Sybil.
Speaker 1 (42:39):
I think you're right, man, Where can people go to
find out more about everything you're doing? Because, like you
said before, you mean, you're you're really busy right now
and people need to know about everything that you're doing.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Oh man, I you know, I am sure.
Speaker 6 (42:51):
I don't know where you can go for all of
my stuff, but I know for Lake George. You know,
like I said, if you're sitting around, you can go.
You can find it on Amazon Prime, you can find
it on Dish and Direct TV.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
You can you can. You can rent this starting.
Speaker 6 (43:05):
Right now, and we hope people do, man, and we're
very appreciative that you're getting it out there.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Well, it's it's a conversation piece because people are the
word of mouth is going to be going.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Do you see this movie yet? No, you got to
see this movie. You're you're going to have a great time.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, it really is, like.
Speaker 6 (43:23):
I said, it surprises you. You know, you're just you're
sitting there, and I mean Carrie. I think she'll be
up for She'll be on people the tip of people's tongues,
you know, with awards and these two characters. You know
you haven't seen something like I don't think you've seen
something like this in a while.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
So wow, Well, please come back to this show anytime
in the future. Shade. The door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Thank you for this. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Will you'd be brilliant?
Speaker 2 (43:51):
All right, man, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Thank you.
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