Eric & Eliza Roberts - Actors in Love!

Eric & Eliza Roberts
Take a walk with me down Fascination Street, as I get to know Eric & Eliza Roberts. You know Eric from over 800 acting projects: including The Pope Of Greenwich Village, Runaway Train, The Specialist, The Righteous Gemstones, Star 80, King of the Gypsies, and several hundred more. You know his wife Eliza from many, many projects like: The Howdy Doody Show, Animal House, Lois & Clark, and Dr. Who; as well as casting and producing in a myriad of other film and television projects. In this episode, we get to know where and how each of them grew up, and what got them into the industry. We also get to hear their love story. I love finding out how couples met, and this is a great story! Next, we launch into everything from movies and TV shows, and their experiences on those sets. Eliza shares stories of trying to help spouses & girlfriends of actors feel more comfortable with their partners doing love scenes. Eric shares behind the scenes stories on the sets of The Specialist (with Sylvester Stallone), and The Expendables. Eric then gets Eliza to share stories of helping get George Clooney cast in E.R, and even helping to convince John Travolta to accept his role in Quinton Tarantino's Pulp Fiction! We discuss Eliza's kids (Eric's step kids); one has Pi Bakeshop in Los Angeles, and the other is a VERY accomplished musician. Naturally, we discuss Eric's experiences on the most recent season of Dancing With The Stars, and Eliza explains how KISS's Gene Simmons helped shorten Eric's time in the competition. Lastly, we talk about the book! 'Runaway Train: Or, The Story Of My Life So Far' is Eric Robert's memoir (with Sam Kashner). We chat about why he decided to write the book, and how much help Eliza was in getting him to do it, and actually getting it made. This is a real Hollywood POWER COUPLE! They share the workload, and the credit. It was super sweet getting to see them pass the credit to each other. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Eric Roberts and this is my wife, Eliza Roberts,
and you're listening to Fascination Street podcasts, the best one
on the planet besides ours of course.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yes, yes, the AMP Audio Visual down the most interests
street in the world with my voice Dee, Fascination Street.
You already know, let's get it when you went for
the fastest street.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Welcome back, Street Walkers. This episode is with the lovely
and talented Eric Roberts and his gorgeous, equally lovely and
equally talented wife, Eliza Roberts. In this episode, we get
to know both of them, including where they were born
and raised, what they wanted to be when they grew up,
how they got into their actual lines of business, and

(00:50):
how they met and fell in love. Like silly, silly
children's we go all over the place. In this episode,
we talked about some of the phenoms that Eliza has
had a hand in making household names. We talk about
some of Eric's projects and some of his experiences on
those sets. We talk about some of the things that
Eliza has done as an actress. Of course, we talk

(01:13):
about Eric's recent stint on Dancing with the Stars. They
also share some personal stories about friends who they have
helped in very special and sobering ways. We touch a
little bit on some of their children. One has a
big shot which sounds amazing. Another one is a musician.
I mean, we go all over the place. Of course,

(01:33):
we talk about the new book Runaway Train or the
Story of My Life so Far, which stemmed from a
Vanity Fair interview by Sam Kashner, and it is a
book about the story of Eric Roberts. Eliza has so
much to do with this book and putting it together
that it's basically their book. Again, the name of the
book is Runaway Train or the Story of My Life

(01:56):
so Far. It's everywhere where they sell books. And also
a little birdie told me that the audiobook might even
be a better, more truer version of the story. Hopefully
we'll have these guys on again and we talk about
it towards the end, and we will see what happens.
But for now, this is my conversation with lovebirds Eric

(02:19):
and Eliza Roberts.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Forgreda be facinating, forgret to be fascinating, Forgreda be facinating.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Hey dude, Hey, what's going on? Man?

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Rassination Street podcast. Cool?

Speaker 4 (02:38):
Everything cool on your end?

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yes, ma'am?

Speaker 4 (02:41):
What okay? If you guys need me, I'm right over here.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Okay, thank you, Eliza.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
You're welcome, Eliza.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
I do want to have you on because your story
by itself. I don't want this dude to outshine you.
You're amazing. I want to have you on too.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
Okay, so I'll just come and sit next to them.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
All righty, we think so too.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Thank you?

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Absolutely? How are you doing, my man?

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I'm great? Thanks for asking, man. Absolutely, I got to
like I'm the lucky.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Hey. I know it's been a while, but how's your thumb?

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Well? I got them both back. Everything's good.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
That's good. My wife and I were watching that movie
again last.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Week's such a good movie, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
It is a good movie. And what really blew me
away was think Geraldine Page. She only had like two scenes,
but like I paused and I said to my wife,
I go, oh my god, this lady is killing it.
And then I looked her up and she was nominated
eight times for an Academy I was like, holy shit,
and she won one the next year.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
That movie she was nominated. Isn't that cool?

Speaker 3 (03:38):
It's amazing? I was like, how come I've never heard
of this woman's name and she's so awesome.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
Oh wow, you know so much good stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
I'm gonna have to go back and check out her
stuff because she knocked out of the park. That was amazing.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
And also her husband, ripped torn I spent a lot
of time at her Brown cent in Midtown Manhattan where
he grew pot back in the days when it was
so against so oh my god, on his route. You know,
rippt one was the coolest cat on the planet.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
You got some stories in you, my friend. I've been like,
if only you would write a book. Wait a minute, Okay,
so are you guys ready?

Speaker 4 (04:16):
We're ready?

Speaker 3 (04:16):
All right, Well, welcome to Fascination Street Podcast. Eric and
Eliza Roberts. How y'all doing today?

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Great?

Speaker 4 (04:22):
Thanks for ask doing great. Good to see you.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
It is good to see you both. The way I
like to start the show is I'd like to start
from the beginning. It helps us understand where where the
guests came from and how they got to where they are.
So you know, each of you, where were you born
and raised? Where'd you grow up?

Speaker 1 (04:37):
New York, Atlanta, New Orleans.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
I guess I should point this out. This is going
to be released audio only, so pointing at each other
is probably not going to do it well.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
I was raised in New Orleans and Atlanta, but it
came of age in New York, and my wife is
from New York, from Manhattan.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
What did you want to be when you grew up, Eliza?

Speaker 5 (04:59):
I always wanted to be an actress, but I wouldn't.
I refuse to admit it until it happened. So I
said that I wanted to be a doctor, and there
was nothing in me except for kind of caregiving. But
there was no science or anything else going on, or
ability to poke someone with the needle that contributed to that.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Nice And you eventually got into casting, right, You're in
the Hollywood biz. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
I always was acting.

Speaker 5 (05:25):
Then when I was in Animal House and I was
pregnant with Keaton, I fell into a casting job, and
then I ended up doing both for the whole time.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Including now.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
They called Keaton the youngest cast member of Animal House.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
I love that they call my sister the youngest attendee
at my parents' wedding.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
Oh that's really good.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
You know Stephen first, obviously, I'm sure we knew well.
His son Griff he was on my show a couple
of years ago. He's a super cool kid kid, I
say kid, one of my I don't. He's I'm the
grown ass adult.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
God their kid.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
We love Graf.

Speaker 5 (06:03):
Yeah, because Steven's wife was pregnant at the same time
when we're doing Animal House, and so was our dp's wife,
Charlie Carle, and I was handing out all kinds of
literature to everybody and driving them all crazy.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
But it was it was like a birthing room.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Till you're handing out that's a good lesson.

Speaker 5 (06:18):
It was a book called The Immaculate Deception, and it
was about all of the medical intervention and back in
those days like unnecessary cesareans, and in the ensuing years
it's just gotten much worse.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
So there you go.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Nice, that's exciting stuff. I can't believe that they were
giving you a grief about handing out that literature.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
Oh, they're just teasing me.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
One of my favorite stories is love stories. Can you
guys tell me how y'all met word?

Speaker 4 (06:47):
Do you want to tell it?

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Well? I was on a plane I just run in
from Rome. I landed a JFK where they hand me
a script at the airport. You have to read this
running way to Lax because when you land in Los
Angeles you have to give them an answer that hour.
They have to know so they have the financing or
they won't, all depending on your acceptance or non acceptance.
So I get on a plane. Is the MGM grand

(07:09):
is the private airline? You're very show busy. Hello, desk,
hellow chair and then walks her red head with a script.
She sits down and cross from me, so we smile
and nod, and then we read our scripts. A little
plane takes off. It's about an hour hour and a
half into the flight, a little five hour flight, and
we close our scripts at the same time. So we
kind of have to talk. Hi, what are you reading?
What do you reading? Who wrote that? Who wrote this?
She says to me, who's favorite screenwriter? I said, one guy,

(07:31):
David Rayfield. He wrote a few days or condo out
of Africa? Whoever we were the firm, blah blah blah
blah blah. She says, Oh, I know he's my father.
And I said, Wow, that is so cool. Can I
have your phone number? And she says, I'm in a relationship.
I said, I didn't ask to sleep with the ask
for her phone number. She gave it to me. I
land in LA, I go to work. I only work

(07:52):
about three hours. I'm off at light eleven o'clock at night.
So I called this girl that I met on a plane,
and a man answered the phone with a very voice. Hello,
Oh no, may you speak to Troliza and Me's some calling.
This is Eric. Just a minute of police. He's gone
for like five full minutes, A long time to wait
on the phone, but I can hear stuff going on,
so I know I'm still connected. Anyway. He goes to

(08:14):
Eliza and he goes telephone call. She goes, who is it?
It's Eric. I don't know one Eric. It sounds like
Eric Roberts. Oh, I met him on the plane. She
takes the call. If Jeffreydine Morgan hadn't recognized my voice
and said so, I would not have called back because
I would have figured I got blown off, and I
haven't blown off plenty of times. But he recognized my voice,

(08:35):
and because of him, I have a thirty two year
marriage to someone I admire, adore and idolize and just
I'm crazy about. I'm so lucky. Thank you, Jeffrey Dean.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Now listeners, Jeffrey Dean was not at her house because
they were dating. Why was he at your house?

Speaker 1 (08:52):
He was a babysitter for her kids. Her daughter so
loved Jeffrey Dean as she rode in the back of
his motorcycle with him. All kinds are crazy stuff that
I would not allow these days, but they were allowing
those days, and he was a member of the family
pretty much. Yeah, Jeffrey Dean.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
I love it, Eliza. When did you start acting?

Speaker 5 (09:10):
I really started as a child, you know, little stuff
the Howdy Duty Show and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
You were on the Howdy Duty Show.

Speaker 5 (09:18):
Yeah, I was a toddler whoa And then just you know,
school plays and all that. And so by the time
I turned sixteen, I graduated from high school.

Speaker 4 (09:27):
We'd moved to la I graduated from high school and
moved to England.

Speaker 5 (09:30):
And gotten into all the schools there, and then that's
where John Landis found me, so I could do Schlock,
his first movie, when I was seventeen. So it's been
always I never wanted to have that desperation of the
actor who did nothing else. So I was always really
busy with a lot of other things. So that I
could kind of put it in the meh whatever list,
which it never really was.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
I need to point something out. My wife is very OCD,
so she's never not doing nothing. She's always doing much
of something. She's dedicated to doing well.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
I think that Eric, your work issue for the last
lot of years will testify to that she is. And
you busy, bro.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
You know what happened was they took film and they
gave it digital, so everybody who owned a camera became
a studio virtually, so they started calling direct And the
end of the nineteen nineties or maybe the mid nineteen
nineties whenever it was, my wife comes to me and says,
we're getting thirty to fifty offers every day from all
over the world. Do you want to pursue this? I said, well, sure,

(10:31):
thinking it would last a year, two years maybe if
I'm lucky. But it's last year, thirty years they're still
calling me direct and I'm still saying yes. So it's
just fun. I have the best job on the planet,
and I know it.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
You do have the best job on the planet. How
many days a year do you think you're working like
on set?

Speaker 1 (10:50):
On set? Probably an average of maybe two hundred plus, yeah,
it's a lot more than that.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Well, Elizah, Yeah, I was going to say, let's get
that average up.

Speaker 4 (10:57):
Come on now, I would say probably.

Speaker 5 (11:00):
Eric has a total of forty days off a year
at the most, and there's some days he does three
movies in one day.

Speaker 4 (11:08):
I mean, it's pretty nuts, but it's doable.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
I love how into his job he is and you are.
I love how much you love your job.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Eric.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
It shows in everything I've seen you in and I
think it's really cool. You know, like you said, you
have the best job ever. A lot of people can't
stand their job and it shows when they can't. But
I love that you love your job. Eliza, your dad
wrote the screenplay for Three Days of the Condor. Were
you on set at all for any of that movie?

Speaker 4 (11:37):
And not for that movie?

Speaker 5 (11:38):
But I was very close with his whole group, with
Sidney Pollock, and I knew Redford and Hoffman and that
you know, they were a company, Wildwood Productions. When I
was working at Warner Brothers, their offices were there, so
I was there a lot. They all shared this apartment
on Old Malibu Road, and when they were in LA
that's kind of where they were or at Sydney's house,
so I was around. I was around for a lot

(11:59):
of the editor of Out of Africa. I wasn't on
the Condor set, though, but I remain close with Barbara also,
And you know, just I watched them all come up
through the ranks. I knew them all when they were
not yet successful, and then the same thing with my
other parents, and the same thing with our generation and
then my kids generation.

Speaker 4 (12:20):
It's fascinating because it never is different.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
It never is different. I love that the bad guy
in Three Days of the Condor was Hank Garrett. Yeah, yeah,
previous guests of my show, Hank Garrett. That guy's amazing.
We love He also has a book out and it
is a fantastic read. Eliza, are there any plans for
you to write a book, because you got some stories.

Speaker 5 (12:43):
I'm going to get Hank's book. We always see him
at autograph conventions. He is the sweetest guy and he
was so scaring that movie. There is talk about me
writing a book. I've been encouraged for a very long time.
I mean a really long time since before we ever met,
and now with Sam Kashner working with us on Eric's book,
He's pretty determined to see it happen. You don't realize
that your stories would be interesting to someone until you're

(13:05):
interested in other people's stories and you're like, oh.

Speaker 4 (13:07):
Hold on.

Speaker 5 (13:08):
I think growing up with parents who were writers, because
my mom was a TV writer, watching that pressure.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Her mom was the only woman in the writer's room
for like thirty years. She was She was really unusual.
She kind of opened all the doors for all the
women to follow.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
Who's your mom, Lila Garrett?

Speaker 5 (13:25):
If you look at it in the funny Hank Garrett,
no relations like your baies two rs too tease look
her up. But the pressure and then the thing is
occasionally both my parents would write something that was just
incredible and then trying to sell it, trying to get
somebody to do something with it.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
It's very painful to have.

Speaker 5 (13:45):
A work of art that just sits there for six years,
sixteen years, whatever. And so I do write a lot,
but I've always tried to have it not be something
that I need to get out there.

Speaker 4 (13:56):
But now I think it may be very close to times.
So you're definitely hitting something good.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
I don't let those stories get away. Okay, so so
much to talk about. We're not going to have all
of the time in the world. But real quick I
got to ask, Eric, are you still mad at Donamiti.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
I was never mad at Donami, ever mad at Donamiti,
but I was very disappointed. You don't realize how much
you want to win up to you lose. I was
very proud of my work and Runaway Train, and I
felt bad losing.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about DONAMICI beat Eric Roberts
for the Academy Award. Boo was done. That was for Cocoon?
Is that right?

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Okay, Eric, how come you didn't quit acting when you
fell off the stage at your first play? Like why
didn't you just be like, you know what, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
It'specially awarding thing in the world to be a child
and to do something, and then after it's over you
come out and bound everybody collapse. It's like, wow, this
is a cool living. So they really it was the
adoration that I really liked. It was also fun to
be at somebody else. It was just fun. I was
also very opinionated very early about what was good, and

(15:12):
so I always aimed to be the most believable possible,
even as a little bitty boy. It was just fun
for me to understand that it was a trick to
make people think you were somebody else. And I had
great time learning that and a great time being that,
even for a little boy. I did my first play
at four, I did my first TV series at eight.

(15:34):
All I ever really loved besides animals, was acting. So
I was either going to be a VET or an actor.
And to be a vet you have to study medicine.
We'll forget about that. So I became an actor.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
You get to play Britain for your whole life.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Is this a true story? This sounds insane. Did Martin
Luther King cut your tenth birthday cake?

Speaker 1 (15:55):
He did? It was at Stone Mountain Park. We're doing
production of the Uncle Rimas Stories. I was playing in
a small fox Dexie King was playing one of the alligators,
Marty King the Third was playing Red Bear, and Yuki
was playing Sis alligator. I think anyway, we're all very close.

(16:17):
Its my birthday. They threw me a party. All the
parents came. Martin Junior cut my cake and said happy birthday.
It was just a really nice day. All the kids,
all their parents troll celebrating my tenth birthday in nineteen
sixty six. It was really neat. We all loved each other.
We all grew up together, we went to school together.
It was like a family affair, but a big family.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
That is fantastic. Eliza, who cut your tenth birthday cake?

Speaker 4 (16:42):
Somebody family probably wasn't allowed to have cake.

Speaker 5 (16:44):
My mom was had a thing about sweets. But I'm
sure it was an amazingly innovative party because you also
came up with great themes. There was one birthday party
in New York she had which was gambling. I mean,
we're little kids. We had like a roulette wheel.

Speaker 4 (16:57):
I wasn't that hilarious.

Speaker 5 (17:00):
And she taught us all to play poker and blackjacket.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
She was really serious about it.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
She was a good card player.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
She was a really good card bearer. But like we were,
you know, seven or whatever, it was insane. It was
a casino. So when the parents came to pick up
the kids and they're like, mom, I won three thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
It was everything that's hilarious.

Speaker 6 (17:26):
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(18:37):
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Speaker 9 (18:51):
Let's get back into it.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
We're going to bounce all over the place. But real quick,
can you guys tell me about your friend Brent Fraser
and why you cared enough to help him get sober?

Speaker 4 (19:04):
Oh yeah, you want me to talk about it?

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Sure, you can you tell that about it. We loved
Rent with all our heart. Go ahead.

Speaker 5 (19:10):
So I was working for a company called MCG that
was Jonathan Crane's management company. He had John Travolta and
Howie Mandel and Mike Figgas, bunch of amazing people. I
became VP of Talent and Packaging. It was acting for
them first, and then I ended up doing everything. We
were casting in a movie called Chains of Gold, which
ended up with Benjamin Bratt, you know, and John Travolta

(19:30):
and some other people, Britney Casey, who was amazing. We
auditioned this young guy from Seattle named Brent Fraser, and immediately,
I mean as a casting director who's also an actress.
You know, you spot talent and then star quality pretty instantaneously,
and it's rare, which is why it's called what it's called.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
He just walked in and was just it.

Speaker 5 (19:49):
I mean, to this day, he can do a turn
on material like nobody else does nobody. I mean, I'm
saying that right in front of Eric and myself and
his best friend, Redan Morgan. So Brent was amazing, and
Kathy Henderson was kind of managing him, and you know,
people kind of had their eye on him, but we
sort of fostered him and his talent. And of course,

(20:10):
you know, there are so many gifted people who I
don't think of them as being self destructive as much
as I think of them as wanting to be in
control of their own demise.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
So they kind of take the wheel and drive right
into the wall.

Speaker 5 (20:22):
And you know, Brent was one of those, very, very
worth saving. So it was so painful to watch him
get only part of what was due him and kind
of trash the rest while trashing himself. So we just
wanted to do everything we possibly could to make him
the best that he could be personally, so that they

(20:44):
could we could clear the path, you know, love and respect.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Tell me about Encounters with Eric and Eliza, TV radio
V A.

Speaker 4 (20:53):
Guy named Mike Zenna, We love him.

Speaker 5 (20:55):
We were guests on like Andy Dick's show or something,
and it was such a great setup. It was, you know,
very early before real podcasts and stuff. It was TV
and radio and every time, and then we kept guesting
on everybody's shows.

Speaker 4 (21:07):
There and they said, you guys want to do a.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
Show, And we had so much to say to talk about,
and so many people wanted to talk to.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
And so we started it.

Speaker 5 (21:15):
We just went with the e which is how it
became Encounters, and Keaton did the music and it was
so much fun.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
There was a lot of multitasking that was going on.

Speaker 5 (21:23):
Anytime somebody wanted to get together with us and we
just couldn't make the time.

Speaker 4 (21:27):
We just make them come.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
On the show. Yeah, we'd have as a guest on
the CHEW.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
That's funny.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
So yeah.

Speaker 5 (21:32):
So it was really fun and unfortunately a lot of
the episodes are hard to find. We had Millie Bobby
Brown on with actress Katie Silverman.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
They're the same age.

Speaker 5 (21:40):
Both were great. Katie was amazing. We knew that Millie
was going to do well and then.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
Look at it now, you know, it's just there's a
lot of history created there.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Love it. Eric. You were born at an air Force base,
but you grew up in New Orleans. Was that a
true story as well?

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yeah, my parents were both in the Air Force. That's
where I was born, in Kusure Air Force Base in Bleuxi, Mississippi.
But I was only there for just a very short
time and then they were out of the service and
then onto New Orleans.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
You grew up on a boat because your dad was
a gun runner.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Well supposedly. Yeah. My father told me this story, and
when I went public with it, he was already dead
and my mother denied it. So I have no idea
if mom was either embarrassed or she thought it was
into illegal or whether it wasn't true at all. I
don't know. But my father told me he ran guns
to Cuba, and my earliest memory is on a dock

(22:29):
in Cuba. Could have been anywhere, but in my mind
it was Cuba and this little girl was selling shells
with her mother. So I went to my dad. I said,
I need money. I have to buy my way in
this girl's heart. So gave me money. I went over
to the girl and her mother and I told the
girl I thought she's a beautiful girl. I ever signed
my life and she looked at me like I was stupid.
I paved the shell to my dad, said Dad, I
told her she was beautiful and she didn't care. And

(22:51):
Dad said, no, she didn't understand you. She'd's be english.
I went, oh, so you saved my dignity. And that's
my earliest memory I have of anything. I was probably
just over three, maybe four, but it was just early cognizance,
so I don't know quite how old I was, but
that's my first memory. I think I love that.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
What's your first memory, Eliza.

Speaker 5 (23:15):
Probably around the age of three, and I think it's
just walking on Central Park West with a little coat
and a hat and gloves, because that's what you do
in winter in New York, pushing my baby doll on
my baby carriage and thinking I'm ready. I need to
have a baby right now. This is it's time. I
need a real baby to appear in this baby carriage.

(23:36):
I'll be the mom and that will be my life.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Well, thank you for waiting, both of you. How hard
is it to retain a sense of humor and kindness
in your industry. Those who aren't in the industry, we
hear a lot of good stories, a lot of bad stories,
a lot of nightmares. How hard is it for you,
guys to keep your sense of humor and the kindness.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Well, answer for me, it's great because I have her.
She does pick up all my slack and understanding and
my disappointment in my gratitude. She's my mirror, so I
bounce everything off her, and that makes me happiest and
most confident. I just like her. I'm in love with
my wife, but I like the person a lot, and

(24:17):
I depend on the person. It sounds so corny and
so under overstated. At the same time, she's my rock
and I just love her for it because it's real.
At my worst, I can turn to her and get help.
At my best, I can turn to her and get redirected.
I just love my wife, and we talk honestly all
day every day, So we have a few what every

(24:39):
now and then. But you know, I just love the wife,
and the wife is smarter than I am, so it's handy.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
I don't think it's hard to keep kindness and humor
in our business anymore than it is in any other business.
I know, we have a reputation, and yeah, of course
it's brutal what we were referred to before. You can
have really something to offer and really not be guaranteed
that it's ever going to be recognized or you're ever
going to be taken up on it. But I think

(25:08):
that's true with everything, you know, And of course there's
crummy things that happen. I mean, we you know, there's
situations like someone promising something and you kind of can't
tell if they mean it, and then you find out
they definitely never did mean it, and that's always, you know,
somewhat traumatic. But I mean, I don't think it's exclusive
to us. It's just that sometimes it can have a

(25:29):
really big impact. Like for instance, Eric did Dancing with
the Stars, as you know, and one of the themes
they were going to do that season was something personal
to you, and we were allowed to use an original
song for that, and so of course everybody wanted, we
wanted and everybody want us to do a Keaton song
and they were going to use the one that got
very famous from Suits called When I Go, and that

(25:50):
was in episode five, and Eric got through episode four
and they already start making the plan, so you're already
living it. Keaton doesn't really He thinks the dancing on
the show is amazing. He doesn't really know the show,
so he doesn't really realize the impact it would have had.
So Eric was sent home just before that, and then
the producers came and said, well, in the finale, we
might be able to use a little bit of it,

(26:11):
and I know they meant it, but as they were planning,
if this thing happened and that thing happened, you know,
it became impossible because the other things they had to
put on there. Eric came so close to getting to
that fifth dance. Gene Simmons from Kiss, when he came
on as a guest judge, he wasn't prepped and he
didn't realize we were still just giving kind of fours
and fives and working our way up.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
In the season.

Speaker 5 (26:33):
And so the second he saw Pretty Girl he gave
her a ten. It threw off the whole board everything
that was kind of in the works. That nothing's fixed
on that show, but everything they know the trajectory.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
They've been doing it for a long time. So Eric
was definitely going to still be there for the fifth
which is why they put so much prep into using
Keaton's song. So stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (26:52):
In our industry, things that are missteps or you know,
things that don't work out can have such a gigantic impact.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
That's what makes it different. And things that do work
out can have a gigantic impact. Just these little accidental whatevers,
And that might be more common in our industry than
in other industries. I mean, like, but I think we.

Speaker 5 (27:13):
Find more kindness and more humor as years go by,
because you need it more and more and you get
used to stuff.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, I think it probably helps that you realize it's
not life or death.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
Yes, it's not.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
For the most part, it's playing. It's pretending for a living.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
So Eric, while we're talking about Dancing with the Stars,
you are the fourth guests that I've had that was
on Dancing with the Stars. Oh, mutual friend Adam Carolla
had him on. He was episode number one hundred, and
then also I had on Carol Baskin, who is amazing.
Her and I were born in the same hospital, which
is kind of weird.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
That is weird.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Her dad was in the Air Force and she was
born at an Air Force base here in San Antonio,
as was I. And then the other one is I'm
sure you know this guy cool. So Eric, tell me
about how you decided to finally do Dancing with the Stars.
Didn't you like it didn't work out for like the
first season or something, right, it didn't work out.

Speaker 1 (28:14):
I was in China making a movie and I got
offered Dancing with the Stars, and there was one day
overlap of the schedules, and the Chinese movie wouldn't let
me out and I ended up not even working on
the day that overlapped the Dancing with the Stars day,
so I could have actually done it. The only reason
we were interested in doing it is my wife and
I had just seen Mad Hot Ballroom and we talked

(28:37):
about ballroom dancing just on our own. We should learn
to do that. I say, that'd be fun. Yeah. We
did a great time, and then I get this offer. Wow,
and it didn't happen. We started watching the show Dancing
with the Stars, and then she loves the show. Oh
my god, she's a groupie for the show. So I
tell my well, if we ever offered again, I'll do
it for you. And in the years past, I'm on

(28:58):
location again, I'm offering the show, so we revamped the
whole schedule so I could do it. I did it
for the wifey because I am not a dancer from
the get go. I have two left feet and my
rhythm is very poor. But I did it for the
wifey and hopefully to showcation Keaton's music. That was the plan,
and I failed.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
I wouldn't say failed. How dare you, Eric? You've declined
over thirty offers to direct?

Speaker 1 (29:27):
How come I'm not a boss? We all like think
of ourselves as these great, individual, unique people. I'm not
a leader. I am a follower to a great degree.
I'm also not mature enough to be the boss. I'm
rather immature, and I love my job so much as
I love my wife. I love her all day every day.
I love my job all day every day. I just

(29:49):
love acting, and I've gotten to play roles I would
never be offered because of digital and because of all
the offers I get all kinds of great part offers
now that are just wonderfully weird and fun to play,
and I just feel I'm very lucky to have that.
So why junk it out being a boss?

Speaker 5 (30:04):
However, because now we're doing a lot of coaching and
I am a director, so together the next one that
gets offered, we're going to accept and we'll do it together.
You know, so many actors segue into directing, and actors
make the best directors.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
I'm sorry, but they really do.

Speaker 5 (30:19):
That's something that we really want to do in the future,
but we'll together.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
To clarify it. I would direct something now if I
could have her husband directing partner, because you know, my
wife is together and I'm an actor. We're kind of
known to be not together, so it would work well.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Will you Wranguler, Yeah, she would be Yeah. Tell me
about Pie Bake Shop.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Oh, pie bag Shot is one of our daughter's company.
It's called Pie Bake Shot with the pie sign. She
makes everything savey pie, sweet pie is everything you can
think of. She can make it. I live pretty much
off pie.

Speaker 5 (31:00):
I Bakeshop, Pi Bake Shop, no E. The thing about
Morgan is I can't cook and I'm vegan. She's just talented.
She has it in other genes. A really brilliant chef
and went to culinary school and baker. But I mean
she's been doing it professionally, like all over the world
since she was like seven years old.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
We arrived at location in nineteen ninety one in South Africa.
We arrived at this big resort. Within half a day,
we lost Morgan. Where she go, which I think she's
in the main place. Went over there. She was already cooking,
already had a bunch of friends there and she was
making soup. What And that's just what she does. Which

(31:40):
and at the time, I think she was eleven ten,
She was a kid, and yet that's what she did.
She wanted to do, so every place we went, she
was in the kitchen. And it's just kind of cool
because she's a really cool chick.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
I love this.

Speaker 4 (31:57):
Eric.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
You're not going to believe this or care, but we
have so much in common. I'm madly in love with
my wife. She's the best thing that's ever happened to me.
My son went to culinary school. Oh wow, my mom's
birthday is April eighteenth. I also have an amazing sister.
I don't look anything like you, but other than that,

(32:18):
we have so much in common.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
You born on an air Force base also.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
I was yeah, that's correct. See we're twins.

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Speaker 9 (34:35):
Let's get back into it.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
One thing I didn't do that you did, And I
would love for you to tell me about the time
that you put a knife to Sylvester Stallone's eye. What's
wrong with you?

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Well, that's a good story about that scene. My wife
and I had many days off shooting of The Specialists,
that's what the movie is called The Specialist. One night
we had off and they were doing night shoots and
my wife said, let's go watch. I said, cool. So
we're in the crowd. We're kind of hiding as us.
We're in this crowd of people, this crowd of fans

(35:11):
and slies working and they call cut and so then
nowhere he knew I was there, and he goes, hey, Eric,
I said, what's up, Like, Hey, what are you doing?
I'm watching Okay, Hey, live's up? You know, Eric, I'm
thinking about it. We don't have a scene in this
movie together. So I said, in front of all these people,
I said, so right one, I'll write it tonight. We
shooting tomorrow. Now, I thought he was showing off for

(35:33):
the crowd, you know. I just thought, you know, he shies,
he can do what he wants. So I just took
it with a grain of salt. And the next day
I shot up on his set and there's a new
scene and it's that scene. It's that scene where I
put the knife in his eye, and he said, how
do you like it? I said, I love it. Okay,
we're shooting it today. Okay. So he shot it. It's
in a movie. So he became a friend of mine

(35:53):
overnight with that action, because I said, what a cool guy.
Because he said, I don't want to sing with you,
blah blah blah. So we did that scene and we
became friends. Really, I just liked the guy. And the
next time we worked together, he was the director. He
was not the director of the specialist, but he was
director of Expendables. I just fell in love with him
as a boss, as a guy, as an actor, as

(36:14):
a co actor. I love Sly Salon. He's just a
cool cat nice. I understand he's having heart problems for
these days. So my love goes out to you, Sly.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
Oh, Sly, buddy, get well. Oh my gosh. Back to
the specialists. I heard that you guys shot a sex
scene for that movie, but they cut it out because
you were in better shape than Sharon Stone.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
You can say I love Sharon Stone. Don't no one
tell this story because Sly Salon would always call her
flat ass, and I didn't like that. You'd say it
on the set and it would bother her and I
I could see it would bother her, and it made
me feel bad. But Sharon Stone's character slept with everybody
in the movie, and when they watch the movie, they

(36:56):
watch all the love scenes. I think there are three
or four love scenes with her. One of the producers said,
she can't eff everybody. We have to cut one of
these love scenes out, and they cut mine out because
it was the most graphic. I guess, so they cut
my love scene out. I was very disappointed because sy
s lungs in the movie, so you have the American
body in film, you know, body physique. I worked so

(37:20):
hard to get in shape where I wouldn't embarrass myself
around him. I look pretty good. I was very proud
of it, but nobody saw it but us.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Eliza, how does it feel to watch your husband have
a sex scene?

Speaker 4 (37:31):
So funny because it doesn't feel like anything and it
does not bother her. Yeah, it really doesn't bother me.

Speaker 5 (37:36):
And now lately I've had a couple of actors come
to me who have, you know, very serious relationships. And
in one case it's Beyonce. In another case it's a girlfriend.
Where these women are not having it. They're not in
our business and they're talking to their girlfriends. They are
also not in the business, and they're like, you can't
put up with that. You got to tell him.

Speaker 4 (37:53):
They'll do the movie, but cut everything. And so then
they send these.

Speaker 5 (37:57):
Women to me, And it's hard to convince someone to
feel something different, right, And usually what happens is I
immediately bond with these women. I love them, and I
can't really change a thing. They probably they try to
change me a little, but doesn't work. You know, it's
very funny you kind of compartmentalize. I mean, it's all
the stuff you hear, you're on set, the cameras are there,

(38:20):
blah blah. It isn't even that, it's that you get
into this story and you're just you know, when I
see Eric in a movie, a lot of the times
I'm watching Eric.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
Roberts, I'm not watching Eric. My sister came over.

Speaker 5 (38:30):
The other day and she and I watched Final Analysis
because she's never seen it before, A.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Really good maybe Kim Basthroy Richard Yere and.

Speaker 5 (38:36):
We were both watching this movie in Eric's character, and
then he came in for a little while. We were
sitting on this same ottoman with him, both of us,
and we didn't really put together. You don't really feel
like the person who's sitting next to is the person
on screen.

Speaker 4 (38:49):
When we did.

Speaker 5 (38:50):
Love as a Gun, it was Eric and me and
Kelly Preston, and we both have love scenes in the movie.
The director, who was a guy and who was very
very close with Eric, he was so worried about my
love scene. He was so worried about Eric being upset.
They talked for like four days about whether Eric should
be on set or not. Eric didn't even know about
these conversations. He wasn't working that day. They went and

(39:11):
picked him up at the house and brought him to
set so he could be there just in case that
he would. There was the thing he wanted to change,
and Eric, after like a few minutes, was like, can
I just go home?

Speaker 4 (39:20):
I was having a nice day at home, and I
don't really understand.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
I had a day off. Your issue.

Speaker 4 (39:25):
You guys are like freaking out here for no reason.
I don't really get it, so I don't think it
does bother you at all. I don't think it bothers
either of us really. Maybe we're weird.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
But it's also because my wife and doesn't act like
anything but an actor at work. That's what she's doing,
and she does it well where it's totally believable, but
she's not that. She's my wife, and I know that
I don't have any issues.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
It probably helped if you're on set and see how
unromantic that scene is.

Speaker 4 (39:53):
Right, Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 5 (39:55):
I mean there have been times I've been asked to
be on set to make the actress comfortable, and then
times that they're like, be there, but don't be right
on set.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
You know, everybody handles it differently.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
I've asked her all these variations. Beyond set, be closed,
beyond tepidelia. You usually want because of the other girl.

Speaker 5 (40:12):
Yeah, but sometimes yeah or guy, Like remember when Jeff,
when Greg Gray Harrison was like, nobody could be in
here for my kissing scene with Eric, and then everyone,
the entire crew and all the rest of the cast
was crowded around the monitored video village giggling. He didn't
realize that we're all watching anyway. But and Kelly had
just had her baby, Jet, and so she was feeling

(40:34):
a little She wanted to have certain angles and stuff,
which I get it.

Speaker 4 (40:38):
She just had a baby.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
She's got a great insight story for you, speaking babies.
John came to set one day with Jet. Jet was
an infant pretty much. And John says to me, Analyza,
Now she's his ex manager, so they talk all kinds
of serious stuff all the time. And he says to her,
God on top of this movie, and I can't do it.
It's a good script, but I can't do it. It's
too bad. It's called pulp fiction. And she just don't

(41:02):
know pulp fiction. With Tarantino and he goes, yeah, you
have to do it. He's going to rule the world, John,
you have to do borrow Quentin Tarantino. And John goes,
but it's so violent, and I objet you as it
doesn't matter. It's Quentin Tarantino. You have to do the movie.
And I was there when she told John to do
the movie, and he was saying he wasn't going to
do it. So she talked him into pulp fiction.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
And that literally revived his career. I mean, he had
done Look Who's Talking or whatever, but nothing impacted that
dude's career like pulp fiction.

Speaker 5 (41:31):
Love as a Gun was made by the same people
who made Look Who's Talking and Luco's Talking definitely helped,
and then absolutely pulp fiction.

Speaker 4 (41:39):
I do not take soul credit for yes. I said
that to John.

Speaker 5 (41:42):
I understood so well as a parent, he had very
paternal instincts going on.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
It was all nurturing.

Speaker 5 (41:48):
He didn't want to do something that his child couldn't see.
I was very sensitive to that, and he knew my kids,
so we talked about it. And also I was part
of the company that managed him. I wouldn't call myself
as manager, but I wasn't.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
Am his friend.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (42:02):
I think he probably heard from several people you will
never speak to you again if you know.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
Gone, and he figured out how to do all that.
So there you go.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Now, Eliza, a little birdie told me that you are
also responsible for George Clooney being on er.

Speaker 5 (42:17):
You know, George was out there as an actor with
a bunch of other actors in the world. My adopted dad,
who I consider my dad, Don Garrett, was his publicist,
and so you know, he was like, he's really frustrated.

Speaker 4 (42:29):
He keeps auditioning and almost getting parts.

Speaker 5 (42:31):
You know, can you kind of take him under your
wing as a casting director, I read him for everything.
This is before people would self tape, or even before
you even taped auditions. There's an after school special called
The Gambler about a teenage gambling addict, and it was
just supposed to be his best buddy. Bob Singer and
Joe Stern were producing and directing. I probably brought George
in eleven or fifteen times as the best friend and like, yeah,

(42:53):
we like him, we don't see it, you know, whatever,
to a point where one day we had an emergency
weekend casting session at my dad's office and George came
in with blackened teeth and a trench coat, which had
nothing whatsoever to do with the character or the piece,
and Bob Singer walked through the waiting.

Speaker 4 (43:11):
Room and came to me. He said, you got to
talk to your buddy George, because I don't know what
the hell he's doing. But he's like, all dressed up
for something else. And I went in and I was like, so,
what what are you doing? And he's like, I don't
know what they want. I keep coming in.

Speaker 5 (43:22):
I'm not getting this part, and I just wanted to
do something different, and I said to them, you have
to cast him, you just can't.

Speaker 4 (43:28):
And they didn't.

Speaker 5 (43:29):
They didn't cast a Brad Pitt for that thing either,
And George had even done another pilot called Er, which
was a sitcom. I mean, if you get to the
point where you've done so many failed things that they
start to repeat titles, you've really been struggling for a while.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
And he was always wonderful.

Speaker 5 (43:43):
I was then at Laura mar casting less Moondez was
going to make a development deal with either Sinbad or
George Clooney, and I said, you have this new show Er,
if you put George on a development deal less and
you give him a romantic like Julianna Margolies, who has
signed a romantic storyline. You are going to make a

(44:07):
start you know, will cut sindbad in things, I promise,
but come on, you gotta see the light here. I
don't know whatever. But he did it, and they made
sure to do that pairing, and we knew that was
going to be the tipping point and it was. So
there you go. So I guess I might have had.
George would probably say I was somewhat instrumental in that.
Also he was going to do well anyway, But there

(44:29):
you go.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
I love it. That failed show er that you talked about. Yeah,
I think Jason Alexander was in that before he became
Seinfeld Gay.

Speaker 4 (44:38):
He all did a lot of stuff before.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
Tons of stuff. Okay, we're going to talk about a book.
There's this book now. I know, Eliza, you've been talking
about writing a book for forever. But Eric actually did
finally write some stories down with some help. Runaway Train
or the Story of my life so far. It's stemmed
from a Vanity Fair interview.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Say more, well, I did a Vanity Fair interview.

Speaker 5 (45:05):
Okay, here, let me explain There is a guy named
Sam Kashner who is brilliant.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
He did the Obama cover interview.

Speaker 4 (45:13):
He's just brilliant.

Speaker 5 (45:14):
He worked for Graydon Carter for many many years, still
does because now he's at Airmail, but he was a
Vanity Fair before Graydon sold Vanity Fair. So Sam is
fascinated with my father. David Rayfield really wanted to get
him into the whatever, that archive of whatever.

Speaker 4 (45:28):
He just really loves that writing. It's similar to his
writing style.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
And he loves Eric and he just immediately thought these
two guys are related, and they're both there's so many
similarities in terms of the genius and also the kind
of obscurity and fame at the same time, and you know,
just not mainstream but internationally known. So he wanted to
connect the dots, and he approached us to write this

(45:53):
article for the Hollywood issue, the Oscar issue, deliberately for
that issue.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Cool huh, very cool.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
He started that long thing that you do with journalists.

Speaker 5 (46:03):
We had done it with Fred Schrewers prior, where they
just move in with you basically and you hang out.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
Together for a couple of years.

Speaker 5 (46:11):
He always intended to nudge it into a book. He
just didn't say so, and then he did say so,
and COVID intervened and this happened, and that happened, but
it happened right well.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Everybody kept saying when are you going to write a book?
And I had no intention of ever writing a book
because I read bios and they pissed me off, or
they bore me, or they disappoint me, or they're just
not well written. And I didn't want to be in
that category. And if it would be, I'm not a writer,
and so you know, no, I'm not going to write
a book. But then the pressure got so happy from
the publishers I wasn't even with to people I didn't know.

(46:45):
To her, everybody's saying you got to write the book.
So I'm like, but you don't understand them. If I
write a book, it's going to suck. And they're like, no, no, no,
Now you just have to write a book. And then
I realized, how do I keep from sucking? Oh? So
I turned to her and I go, if you'll edit
every page from me, I'll go to work on it.
And she said, well, Sam Cash, I want to write

(47:06):
it with you, so I don't think you need me.
I said no, no, no, I need you for my voice,
because you have you understand my voice. And so the
three of us wrote this book and I wrote it first.
It took two years. It was kind of overwordy and honest,
but not dynamic, and then she fixed it. That's kind

(47:26):
of what happened. Sam, of course, was the guy with
all the facts. He did all the homework and we
wrote a book. There's always a formula for biogracies and
it bores me. You can really anticipate it and it's
not very inspiring and it's very repetitive. I didn't want
to be one of those guys. So I tried to
be different with the honesty, with the real and nothing

(47:48):
nasty will honestly, oh my god, did that really happened,
But just the honesty of a life where you have
to make money, you have to eat, you have to travel,
you have to sleep, you have to do stuff that
we all have to do in order to carry on.
And so I wanted it to be that kind of
understanding of what I do. And so that's what I
aim for, and that's what I told Sam and the

(48:08):
wife I was after, and they helped and they kept
me lined up. I would bring you in pages as
she say, you're embellishing this a little bit, Honey, what
do you mean should no? No, but that happened but
not like that. Well but it sounds good, Yes it does,
but you have to go fix her. And she sent
me back to pick stuff all the time. And I'm
really glad because in the end, it's all the same voice,

(48:31):
it's all the same understanding as I understood what happened,
and so I'm very proud of it. And it is
a story of my life so far. I've had so
much good shit happen between the book and today that
in three or four years I'm going to have another
book because so much good shit's been happening for us.
I love our lives, I really do.

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(49:20):
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Speaker 9 (49:32):
Let's get back into it.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
Again. The book is called Runaway Train or the Story
of My Life so Far. Before the book, I know
you said a lot of stuff happen between the book
and now, but up to the point of where the
book ends, what did you leave out of the book?

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Well, I left my regret and my anger pretty much
out of the book. I have regret, and I left
it out of the book because I didn't want people
to think that I felt I was entitled to more,
or I miss some or I should get other whatever
it is. I don't want them to think that because
I don't think that, and so I left out I

(50:13):
guess any nastiness that I feel, because I do feel
a little nasty towards certain issues, and I realized that
about myself, and I've read other books. I read everybody
Iraph You're pretty much ever written a show business people,
and I don't like when they have nasty regret or
nasty opinions or nasty feelings about certain issues in their life.
It always made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to go there.

(50:36):
So that's what I guess I left out. If anything,
is there anything that you know that we discussed I
left out?

Speaker 5 (50:41):
I think to be more specific about what Eric's saying,
He's very sensitive. So if for instance, he does a
kick ass job on an arc on a show, let's say,
and they give him more episodes than they even expected
to and whatever, and they love him, if there's another
season or something and his character just doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
In it at all and he's not invited back.

Speaker 5 (51:04):
Therefore, I know, because I'm in touch with them, how
they feel about him. But he will go to a
place where he's like, well, I guess they didn't like
me that much, or I guess they didn't recognize what
I was trying to do, and you can't get him
off it. I think the reason he didn't write about
it is because somewhere he knows.

Speaker 4 (51:18):
That it's paranoia, it's not fact.

Speaker 5 (51:21):
He's incorrect, and their hearts would break if they thought
that he felt that way, because it's so not representative
of the reasons that all that happens that had to
do with really huge, overriding things that have nothing to
do with Eric. So I think that that's what And like,
when we listen to one of Alec Baldwin's books, it's really.

Speaker 4 (51:37):
Fun, but he just comes right out and says the
people he hates.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Oh it's hard, you.

Speaker 4 (51:41):
Know, he just like, wow, and is it. Joel's Wicker
Ed one of those Wicks, also a great book.

Speaker 5 (51:47):
Basically it's a warning. You know, several chapters are warning,
don't interact with this person.

Speaker 4 (51:52):
They're a horrible person. Of course, it's tempting.

Speaker 5 (51:55):
Everybody wants to know who everybody hates, but it's a
really bad idea. You cannot do it. The main reason
is sometimes you then have another encounter with that person
and they turn out to be wonderful.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
When you meet people out of there working space, they
aren't the same peeps, they're different peeps. Yeah, and you
have to bear that in mind in your understanding. It's
also true of me too. I mean, I'm not the
same peep. Opposite, I am on a set because I'm
in the work and it's a whole different headspace.

Speaker 4 (52:23):
Yeah, I mean, you know, because of what you do,
you must run into it.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
We have a very good friend who has a podcast
and it's it's kind of a well known person and
at first his podcast company was insisting on people with
X number of followers. I mean, they had to be
kind of high profile. I know, it's a pain in
the ass, just like casting. Same thing.

Speaker 4 (52:41):
They said, after a couple of years, you can just
going to put whoever you want on.

Speaker 5 (52:44):
But in the meantime, so you've got this wish list
and you know a lot of times the people you're
not even interested in, but okay, you know. And the
person he was really on the fence about doing, just
thinking should I, I might not and he had reasons
and stuff ended up being his favorite inner view of
all the interviews he did, and a fantastic interview, and
he was so glad not to get stuck on that

(53:05):
negative space.

Speaker 4 (53:07):
So that's a good reason. And when you're writing a book,
it's kind of hypnotic.

Speaker 5 (53:11):
You feel like just stream of consciousness and just spill
it all out there.

Speaker 4 (53:14):
And then you realize, wow, where is this landing?

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Though?

Speaker 5 (53:17):
You know it's a responsibility, you know, but you want
it to be interesting, and like, for instance, some of
them start so far back generationally, there's like eighteen chapters
on the great great great grandleother who maybe isn't even
the great great, you.

Speaker 4 (53:30):
Know, and you're like one of my why.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
But the only thing that I left out of the
book by accident that I wish I hadn't was in
my first movie, King of the Gypsies. My standing was
a guy I went to school with at the American
Academy named Randall Caldwell, and he and I prepped my
next stage work every night, you know, before the next day.
We'd spend two three hours after work and we prepped
the next day. And he was my mirror, he was

(53:55):
my coach. He was my pal, Rando Caldwell, and I
never mentioned and I always regret that they didn't put
him in the book because without him, my first performance
on film would not have been as good. He really helped.

Speaker 5 (54:08):
So there he's saying that now you always have some
of those. By the way, Randall Coldwell became an author
and screenwriter and did a lot of writing on Amy
Brennman's show Judging Amy, who he.

Speaker 4 (54:17):
Landed on his feet and is doing fine. Yeah, you
want to put those positive messages out there, Yeah, you do.
And also our book.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
His book, our book. I like that.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
Everything I do go through her, So it's our book.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
It's not just that the printed version is different from
the audio.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Oh yeah, this is a funny story because once we.

Speaker 5 (54:35):
Got in there, we were told you can't change a thing.
You can't change the thing. There's something about words sink
ers or something whatever, and so we were like, oh,
because there was a few things that were already making
us both cringe.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
On one of the first couple of pages that says
my dad played semi pro ball, my dad was as
coordinated as a broken stick. My maternal grandfather played semi
pro ball for a minute. So they got a little
fact strong like that to describe people that were not
those people. I made all the corrections, send them back
to them. They were about twenty of those kind of

(55:06):
just you'll miss facts, and I sent the correction. They
didn't fix it, and they published it. I felt kind
of bad about that. So then when we did the
audio book, I fixed all the corrections and I made
it totally accurate. So it's all the facts as they happen.

Speaker 4 (55:21):
Yeah, they fixed some of them. They couldn't.

Speaker 5 (55:23):
I mean there's a lot of reasons. It's you know,
page space. I mean there, it was already just about
to be published.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
She's making me huge. But also they didn't fix a thing.

Speaker 5 (55:30):
When we found out we could change a couple of
things because our wonderful director Dennis Cowe said, it's your book. Sure,
I mean I just had John Stamilson here.

Speaker 4 (55:38):
He changed it.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
We're like, really, she'll We changed all the corrections in
the audiobook for all the stuff they got on.

Speaker 4 (55:45):
We made a million other changes. Eric, God, now you're
going to be all righteweight about it. We rewrote the
entire book with the audio, and we did.

Speaker 5 (55:52):
But we and then they came up with the idea
of using Keaton's music, which is incredibly emotional and really
works in the audio.

Speaker 4 (55:58):
So we always tell people get.

Speaker 5 (56:00):
The audio version, get whatever version you want, but if
you're going to get the book version, get the audio
version two and you can do your own on comparison.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
I help publishers are not listening to the notes really late.
You have to stop it.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
I love that, ladies and gentlemen. We've said Keaton a
bunch of times, but I don't know if we've said
his full name. His name is Keaton Simons. He is
the musician and the Sun and just an amazing fellow
which street walkers. We will get to know him a
little bit better in a few weeks. But oh my goodness,
you guys are killing it. I love you guys so much.

(56:34):
I love you as a couple. I love your love story.
I love love, and I love seeing love, and I
can see it clearly right now on my computer screen.
You guys are stupid for each other, and I love
that again. Everybody the new book Runaway Train or the
Story of My Life so Far, it is Eric and
Eliza Roberts book. I don't care how much she tries

(56:57):
to pretend it's not. Eric already told me she walked
the way for a minute, and Eric was like, no,
this is just as much her book as it is mine.
So take it easy with the denials there, lady, Eric Eliza.
Tell everybody where they can find you on social media.

Speaker 5 (57:13):
Okay, we are on Facebook and Twitter, which we refuse
to call X and Instagram and read it and TikTok.
We're not great at it, so it's for me at
mom Eliza Roberts On some of those, I'm not even
there because I'm so busy doing Eric's with him that
I'm just like, it's just his and then for him

(57:33):
it's at Eric Roberts or at Eric Roberts Actor, but
I can't remember which is which.

Speaker 4 (57:38):
You'll know. I mean, there's a million fakes. Let's put
it this way.

Speaker 5 (57:42):
If anyone starts to DM you or ask you for money,
it's not us.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
They asked your for all for money. It's definitely made
You're right.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
But we do try to be active on social media.
We love it.

Speaker 5 (57:57):
I mean it's unifying. During Dancing with the Stars, Britt
taught us how to do it and that was amazing,
So we became shining masters.

Speaker 4 (58:06):
Of that for a few weeks.

Speaker 5 (58:08):
It's since faded a little bit, but that's where we
find us fantastic.

Speaker 3 (58:12):
What is the name of your podcast?

Speaker 5 (58:14):
Well, we don't have one, but I was just going
to say to you, we should interview you because I
want to hear all about you and your wife and stuff.
We have to do a reverse one, yea, we want
to talk, they do a reverse one through yours. It'll
be the first time you did that.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Or maybe not.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
I think that would be the first time we did that.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Oh, let's do that. Let's set it up.

Speaker 4 (58:32):
It'd be really fun.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
All right, cool, I'll reach out and we'll get that
set up. That sounds like a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 (58:37):
That would be really fun, really fun. We'd love to
so that we can learn about you.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
You're so sweet.

Speaker 4 (58:42):
All right, this was great. You're so fun to talk to.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
Likewise, you guys are a blast, Eliza Eric, thank you
so much for taking the time out of your busines
day and you're hectic leading the most extraordinarily in love
lives ever to hang out and let us get to
know you a little bit better on Fascination Street. I
really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
That's so nice. Thank you, didn't I do well?

Speaker 4 (59:02):
Yes? And we love the title fascination Street. It's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
Oh thank you. It stems from my wife used to
do a lot of traveling. She's a massive prepared psychiatric nurse,
but she used to travel all over the country opening
psychiatric hospitals.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Ah wow a babe, wow.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
Yeah. And she's a smoke show too. I'm just saying
so invariably, you know, she'd be opening a hospital in
some other state or whatever, and I would get on
a plane and just go visit her for a little
while while she was doing what she was doing. And
I would meet people on the plane and I would
just start talking to them, and they would always have
just like fascinating stories, and I'm like, why doesn't everybody

(59:38):
know these stories? And so that's why I started the show,
was I say it in the intro, but I think
that everybody has a fascinating story. But people don't think
it's fascinating because it's just their story, it's just their
homo drum life or whatever. But everybody has something fascinating
to stay and that's why I started the show.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
I love it, and you and I totally agree philosophically.
That's so cool.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
I love it. Thank you guys, Let's see how lead
you guys, have a great rest of your week.

Speaker 4 (01:00:03):
Thank you YouTube right sweet.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
Opening music is the song fsp theme, written, performed, and
provided by Ambush Vin. Closing music is from the song
say My Name off the twenty twenty one album Underdog Anthems,
used with permission from Jack's Hollow. If you like the show,

(01:00:37):
tell a friend, subscribe, and rate and review the show
on iTunes. And wherever else you download podcasts, don't forget
to subscribe to my YouTube channel. All the episodes are
available there as well. Check me out on vero at
Fascination Street Pod and TikTok at Fascination Street Pod. And

(01:00:58):
again thanks for listening.