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Today, yeah, go ahead.

Today, we're going to have a nice...

Sean, no, sorry. Well, it's just the last time you started the last one, I was going to start this one.

Okay. We're just doing an intro. It really doesn't matter who starts. So I'll just go. So today, oh, I thought, oh, you wanted this one. Let me just do it. Let me just do it. Listener, here is Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.

Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.

Smart.

Smart. Smart. Smart. Smart.

Uh, listen, um, I think it's been, uh, three weeks since we've, we've done this since I've seen you, since I've talked to you. And I have to say, I've had some long drives in the last three weeks. So I've gone ahead and done some quality control, uh, looking, listening to our podcast. I'm not great at it cause I'm listening to them after they've already reached the public.

So are you picking up some long hauler miles, uh, some deliveries? What's going on? I am.

I've got some five hour energy cases I'm trying to get through. Um, so it's really been nice uh listening to you fellas you're both very talented and very funny on the podcast i'd really like to be more of a part of it um but so i was very excited to part of it i was very excited to see you guys today but then this morning this morning this morning a real dark cloud floated over our family here at smart listen can i just interrupt is it possible to say like

is it possible for a dark cloud to then give you a gut punch is that possible sure what happened Yeah. Will, why don't you take it from here? Well, Jason read something that I read. We all read it. Oh, God. I read it after you sent it to me.

Here we go. No, actually, you know what? Sean sent it. Sean. I sent it before I read it. Uh-huh. I don't think so.

Sean sent an article to Jason and me in the thread that we're in. With some feigned exclamation points. Like, hey, yee-haw. This is great for us. And by the way, I'm going to put it out there. If anybody thinks they're worthy of being in the text thread, let us know. We'll add you. We're putting you on the, yeah, we'll add you to the thread. And Sean says, congrats for us. Yay, for us. And it's a click to Hollywood Reporter. Smart list nominated. Great. Nominated for a bunch of podcast awards or whatever. Which is kind of neat because this is, you know, this is an embarrassment.

It's a mom and pop operation, yeah. We apologize. Yeah. The fact that we're getting any traction whatsoever, let alone nominations, just thank you to all the folks out there. Yeah, it's pretty great.

Thank you. And also it's embarrassing. Jason's read it. It is kind of embarrassing. So then, if you read further down in the story, they're nominated Best Podcast, blah, blah, blah, and Sean Hayes nominated for Best Host.

Which is the worst, which is the kiss of death, because now everybody's like... like, well, he's not really that great. I don't think they're saying it out of the side of their mouth either. I think it comes straight out the center. Straight out.

And here's my thing. Today, I can't wait to see you host. Yeah. Let's see what you got. The best host.

This is going to be the worst experience for me.

Well, the voters are now listening, right? Because the nominations are out. Now they really have to decide. Pay attention to his hosting.

My questions are still going to be like, hey, where are you from? Yeah. No, don't worry. We know that.

That obviously resonates with the jury over there. The iHeartMedia people have made a bunch of mistakes here. When Sean said, what's your favorite color? I mean, how do you deal with these?

Let's nominate that jackass.

Yeah, here we go. Geez, I'm not going to be able to come up for air for a while. We're thrilled for you, Sean. Yeah, we really are.

I'm thrilled for everybody. I said to Sean, by the way, I did say congrats, man. And he was like, oh, thank you. And I responded, I didn't mean it. What are you doing? How dare you say thank you.

I responded with, I didn't read it. I truly didn't know. I didn't read the article. I just read the headline. Like most people. Sure.

It is true. I think Sean might be the kindest man I've ever met. Not possible. No one deserves it more.

Not around you two.

All right, zip it up. We've got an interesting guest today. Uh-oh. He's known primarily in New Zealand and South Africa due to his success in rugby. Okay. Florida then came to love him when he pivoted his talents towards Hi-Li and dog racing. And then when he was in California, he was attempting to be the first to successfully mend the San Andreas Fault. He tried his hand at acting. And while fame and fortune there has been scarce at best, some call it a wipeout. Sure. The critics have given him a few hugs. So he has received a couple of Academy Awards and seven Emmy Awards. He's gotten himself. a Tony nomination, even an AFI life. What? Highlight player who has Academy Awards? Yeah, he turned it around. He got a Lifetime Achievement Award from AFI. BAFTA gave him something. Who is this guy? The Golden Globes gave him the Cecil B. DeMille Award. The Kennedy Center honored this highlight player. And Barack Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wait a second. So I say chin up. I say chin up to this fella. I have no idea.

This is the most highly decorated guest we've ever had.

I would say so. Yet he's famous and fortunate in our book, okay? Please welcome the forever struggling but always diligent, America's own and Hollywood's best, Mr. Tom Lamar Hanks.

No! Had I known that Sean was the host of this podcast, I would have bailed. I said, guys, I'd like to, but, you know, I don't like to work from home.

Apparently you're working with one of the brightest hosts in the business.

Is there a name for this award? Is it named after somebody?

It's called the Aorta because it's from iHeartMedia. Oh, okay. That's not true, but that's my pitch.

One of my hard-hitting nominee questions is where are you right now? I don't recognize that room.

I'm in a tiny little cubby hole that is here in my vast compound somewhere in the tri-state area.

I'm telling you, dog racing really pays, guys. You got to look into it.

It's within a single day's drive from Lakewood, Ohio, home of the Great Lakeshakespeare Festival. Wait, you didn't? Is it true? No, no.

Are we already plugging a festival? I mean, this is quick. Well, it was a long time ago.

A long time ago. Wait, did you really do dog racing? No, you dumbass.

This is why you're not going to win.

You're the worst host. Jason was demonstrating his, quote, comedy chops. Yeah, boy. Guys, can I write or what? Huh?

Well, hang on. I think Tom's on to something. Let's get into Jason's comedy child real quick.

You know, I told some friends last night that I was doing this podcast, and first of all, I had to re-explain your names. We were, yeah. They said, Sean who? Jason what? Will, huh? What is the name of it? I kept calling it Helpless based on the Neil Young song, but now I realize, no, no, no, it's smartless, smartless. We really are helpless. And the question came up about you, Will, which was this question. Has he started using a different voice professionally? That in your early days, you were kind of like squeaky. You sort of sounded like Jay North in those old Dennis the Ministry runs. And you were hilarious. But then you went off and voiced Batman. And it's as though you're walking around with your own self-imposed EQ on your voice now all the time. True or false, Will?

Listen, like any good politician, I can't just give you a straight true or false. I will say that I constantly have a monitor in my ear and I'm adjusting my levels, my input levels. Right. And so then I can monitor. No, you know what? It's funny. I recently...

You know, I often watch a lot of my old stuff because I like to be entertained. And he has trouble sleeping. Yeah. No, but my voice has gotten, it has. But if you listen to Howard Stern. It's just because of abuse, I guess. Are you, do you still smoke? Who's listening? I'm just learning. I'm just learning.

We had Sean Penn on the podcast. He went through a full pack of darts, didn't he? He did go through a pack of darts. Darts?

That's colloquial for cigarette. Yeah, it's Canadian. As opposed to, say, coffin nail.

Or a nail. A nail. Or a bullet. Actually, Tom, this brings me to an actual question about the nail. I noticed recently I was reading the 10th book in the Gunther, what's-his-name series, by Philip Kerr, and I noticed your name on the back of it.

Oh, the...

You gave a little blurb for the jacket of Prussian blue, which I'm almost finished with.

Oh, that's a great one.

It's a great one, right?

Gunther, help me. Bernard Gunther, Bernard Gunther. Bernard, Bernie Gunther series, he plays a non, okay. Yeah, you explain it. Be merciful on me on this, okay? He plays a non-Nazi private investigator from 1928 Berlin through well after the war.

Yes, right.

It's a fabulous series by Philip Kerr. Philip Kerr. The late Philip Kerr, he passed away.

Yeah, I know, too early, yeah.

And I read them all, and just, well, I'm not a big, I'm not a big, like, detective genre fiction writer. Me neither. But this had that added bonus of very accurate sort of historical detail to it that I really loved.

It's a tremendous historical fiction, and you're absolutely right. And I'm with you, Tom, and I read mostly nonfiction. And somebody recommended, they said, you love all this European history, I think you'd like this. I'm fully, like I said, I just started at the beginning of the summer, and I'm on book 10, Prussian glue. Oh, yeah, right. But he always refers to cigarettes as nails. And he gets beaten up by these Nazis, and then they look down, and he's spitting out blood, and they say, what do you want? And he looks up, and he says, can I get a nail? Yeah.

And you know what? When he smokes one, he looks really cool.

He looks really, really cool.

He looks really good. What I like about those books is it fills in the blanks of his war years because some of them take place well before World War II. Some of them take place after World War II. And in the course of it, you see what he went through.

Thanks, guys, for firing us out of the gate here at the start of the interview, and our listeners love literature. Go, Sean. You're the host. Let's do it.

Thank you so much. Come on. By the way, Sean, I have my hand on my buzzer. Hand is right on my buzzer. I'm ready to buzz in with the

correct answer. Good. I want to know what your fascination with war is, because your name is so synonymous. I've never asked you this in my entire life. Why are you so passionate about the history of war? He loves a good fight.

It started with Hi-Li, I think, right? The dog racing, you know, first of all, we do a lot of them because none of the projects have to have cell phones or laptops. So that alone makes the writing of them so much easier, and there's much less special effects of having to put in those screens. But I get this question asked of me quite often, and the answer always comes down to when, in those formative years, Of, say, seven through, you know, when you're a little kid, every single caregiver, every single adult in my life would make references to the six, two words, three letters each, the war. And they talked about it as this great dividing line in their lives. There was before the war, there was during the war, and there was just after the war. And they talked about it as though it's almost like, well, that was when the Black Plague was walking among us, you know. For a big chunk of their lives, they had no idea where they were going to be in another six months. They had no idea how long the war was going to last. That's one big aspect of it. The other part of it, too, is that the bad guys lost. At the end of the day, we were able to somehow, unfortunately necessarily kick the stuffing out of them and when bad guys lose something it's that what is that power of myth of uh is it uh bill moyers you know you know the world was on a quest to defeat people that were undeniably evil uh the governments of those places and many of the many of the populace so i i keep getting drawn back to that and again i will say that from a storytelling perspective our present day is just so um uh there is no shame left anymore no truth seems to be a a malleable viscous kind of like it's a distant memory truth it seems like and actually you know

what times uh sean actually within the last six months i don't know if you remember we were talking talking about all the movies you've done, the war movies, and Tom said, do you think he'll ever make a movie about TikTok? And, you know, because something that he thinks is important. How about I take it right now? For Sean and Scotty, there's before TikTok and then after TikTok.

Well, you know, if I did, it would only be about 45 seconds long. How long is your average TikTok?

And then I won't be able to wait for the sequel.

Tom, I know that you'd never compare your experience shooting Save a Private Ryan And to those who actually fought, you know, in all of that and during all that. But was there ever a moment, I'm sure, I bet there was a few moments while you were shooting that where you got close to the feeling maybe of what it might have been like. I mean, certainly the product, the result of that film took me there or as close as I think I could get. But I would imagine there were a few moments there where it just, based on the quality of the production, they managed to create some environments for you there and your own process of trying to get into the character and the realism of it where you were kind of struck a bit by what these guys must have gone through.

Well, yeah, but at the same, it was all fake, you know. Sure, but I mean. You got to take that into account. But when we were on the beach there in County Wexford in Ireland, which is where we shot the Omaha Beach sequences. Oh, so it wasn't right there. Well, it was actually one of the places where they rehearsed some of it. So that's one aspect of it.

How far was Bays Camp from the beach?

Oh, it was way... Well, I was going to incorporate that into this anecdote.

Sorry, sorry.

So shut.

Just light up another nail, Will, and take that pause. um we're there with 500 members of the irish actual members of the irish army there is uh landing craft everywhere and we're all storming storming the beaches and uh the special effects crew had laid out these tiny little flags on the beach where they had set up air mortars and squibs uh little explosive devices things to avoid yeah and they actually said you know i be carefully right because you know this is going to become this is like a projectile it'll come out of the ground very fast so if you can try to avoid where the flags are i said you know i think i got that then they removed all the flags and we couldn't see anything oh my god of where so we were just stumbling all wandering blind so there's all of that and it's dressed the way it is and when you there were always four or five cameras going and once the shot began and you're wet and you're cold and you're coming up and uh at a corner of one eye you see a guy catch on fire and at a corner of the other eye you see a guy blown 40 feet into the air and he loses a leg in the process literally we had you know amputee stunt people oh my god then

They were amputated before you shot. They were amputated before. Thank God, just to clarify.

And even though there's harnesses and there's wires and whatnot, machine guns are going off all around you and explosions are happening like crazy. And it goes on for the better part of, you know, two or three or four minutes. And there was a degree of sort of like odd, fake, and yet at the same time terror that was going on. So we were shooting down there all morning long, I'm going to say about on the, maybe the second day of shooting, because the first day of shooting was spent in the boats themselves. Wow. And I climbed up the steps to the bluff. They had put in these wooden steps so we could get up to the base camp, Will.

Sure. That's where catering and craft services.

Not far as the crow flies, but it was awfully high. It was probably about 600, 700 feet up the bluffs. And I went back and I found the other guys in the unit who I would be meeting when we got up to the shale, which was, you know, the defilade that was at the top of the beach. That's where I would come across Barry Pepper and Eddie Burns and Vin Diesel and the other guys. And they were still hanging around, you know, outside the trailers the way actors do. Sure. And I was wet and I was sandy and I was near death from the amount of noise that had gone on. and i i i told the guys i said you guys better hold on to your hats because it's really wild down there you are not going i mean when you see a guy catch on fire out sure out of the corner of your eyes you're kind of and no one said you know right no one's prepped you no one has said there's going to be a guy caught on fire on this side and it's all you were it was it was an interesting

kind of kind of panic you know what's interesting and this is kind of folding back to what you were saying earlier one of the reasons that um what i love about that movie and i love that movie so much i'm not embarrassed to say i love it so much and i've seen it a lot of times and

one of the things I really love about it, and you kind of touched on this whole idea of...

Can't wait for the musical version?

No.

97, by the way. 1997. Which is insane.

That's when it came out, wow. It seems like two years ago. But you had that moment where your character is a schoolteacher, I think, is that right? Yeah, yeah, we decided on that at some point. But the idea that it doesn't matter what he is, he's just a regular, this is what the thing of this, particularly this war, there was the Great War, which they referred to World War I as, but then there was the war, this war, World War II. And he was a guy who was called to do something extraordinary. He wasn't a guy who was born to be a military officer. He wasn't a guy who was born to be a killer. He was a guy who had to go because that's what he had to do. And people came in in this moment when the entire world was at war and did extraordinary things. And I always loved that about it. And I think that, for me, it really captured what it is that sort of makes me have such, it's weird to say have reverence for the war, but you have reverence for the bravery and what people did that were extraordinary things.

Yeah, you actually want to make an anti-war movie at the same time that you're making a war movie. Right. Let me tell you a story. I was 18 years old, I think, and I was a bellman at the Royal Hotel in Oakland, California. And we had a guy who read his own dry cleaning service would come and collect the clothes and take them away and then deliver the clean clothes. And he was always coming with dozens and dozens of shirts and pants that had been dry cleaned. And I was working there one summer, and he was gone for two weeks. I'm going to say his name was Mike. I can't remember what his name was. But Mike was gone for two weeks, and somebody else came in every day. And then after two weeks, it was in June, after two weeks he came back from his vacation. I said, oh, hey, Mike, where were these last two? Oh, no, I take a vacation every June. I said, oh, oh, do you go camping? He said, no, no, no, I get together with some of my old buddies. I said, oh, oh, where did you go? Well, this year we went back to this place that we had visited back when we were kids. I said, oh, oh, where was that? He said, it's in the north of France. He was a paratrooper. He was in the 82nd Airborne. Wow. This guy is now, this 1974, so go back 40 years, so he's in his 50s, and what he's telling me is that when he was in his 20s, he jumped into Normandy on D-Day, and he was a paratrooper. Wow. And now he's a guy delivering his- Dry cleaning. The dry cleaning for the hotel. Yeah, yeah. I felt, I felt stupid and small, but also that was, he was an example of that adult, that caregiver that was part of daily life that, you know, that, he didn't know if he was going to make it back. And he went, oh, he said, and we go back, he said this, he said, we go back to, to visit the buddies that didn't make it home. So they're visiting the, they're visiting the, the cemeteries that are in. So, look, that's a generation. It was a time that was loaded with all sorts of problems that, of course, we're still dealing with right now. But you can't take away the fact that these were young guys who were asked to go off and liberate the world from really, really bad people, and they did it.

Yeah. My grandfather, I'll leave it at this. My grandfather, who passed almost 12 years ago, who I was really close with and loved dearly, I remember him telling me he worked with, he was in the Canadian Army, but he was attached to the Royal Air Force, and he planned bombing sorties. And they were stationed at various airfields as they would move across as they, you know, after June 44. And he said, one morning we wake up, and there was constantly planes taking off and landing and stuff, and they were right. And he said, one morning his tent, the guy we shared a tent with, woke up, came out of the tent, and walked into a propeller of a plane in the dark. and I said and he told me he didn't tell me this until I was about 18 of course and I said well what did you do and he said uh and he wasn't joking he said well I got a new tent mate and I was like wow and he was just like that's the way it went we had to keep going there was

what can you do I don't want to go in a place I was that's too much of a bummer of a story sad story true story anyway I think a perfect segue would be happy days right sure let's go let's talk about let's go to happy days let's go in order to make saving private ryan uh happen or any of the other incredible movies that you have you imdb reading sons of bitches how dare you this is pure wikipedia dare you come just wikipedia so um so had you not booked that episode on happy days hey would you

I have not met Ron Howard and things – we would not have been gifted the High Live player.

I did not meet Ron Howard on Happy Days. Ron had left the series by then. The guys I met were Lowell Gans and Babalu Mandel, who were the staff writers on Happy Days, who wrote the part – who wrote Splash, the screenplay of Splash. and Ron was directing and they said, hey, take a look at that guy who got fired from Bosom Buddies. You know, Bosom Buddies was canceled. Something that Sean is going to experience one of these days.

Don't worry, Sean's canceled two programs I've been on. So keep going.

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And now, back to the show. Tom, would you agree that the routine of a sitcom actor is the best job in show business? Do you miss it still to this day?

Well, it is kind of a skate. It's a great hang, I'll tell you that. Because look, you either shoot, you rehearse Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, camera block Thursday, shoot Friday. Right. Or you rehearse Thursday, Friday, Monday, camera block Tuesday, shoot Wednesday. Isn't that kind of like the...

Yeah, that second one shoots Tuesday, yes. You start on Wednesday, yes.

What you're saying is five days of the week, yeah.

Unless you're working with Jimmy Burroughs, and then you can take the first day off of rehearsal, and it really becomes a four-day work week, and it's only three weeks a month, so it's 12 working days a month.

These are really top-secret things, man. You should never let the civilians hear.

What are you doing? Why are you blowing up?

And it's six hours a day.

Now everybody's going to want to be in showbiz.

There's food, there's craft service, you get a lot of breaks, you know. It is an awfully, awfully fun day. When we did Bosom Buddies, Peter Scolari and I, my dear old pal.

One of the great shows.

We actually shot that show on video, not on the film cameras. Film cameras in those days, that was pretty much a bunt. Camera blocking day was just kind of like your stand and did it. But we had four video cameras and we had to do the entire camera blocking day ourselves on camera because they did a line cut, you know, camera three and tighten up on four and four. Let's come back. Let's coming back to two and two. You had to be there for that. So you did. You worked a long day and you did every line of the that week's script over and over again. And he and I just started goofing around so much that that's that's where we first got we got yelled at a couple of times. you know the the uh the director up in the booth you know he'd come in over that topic hey guys listen we're we're working really hard up here can you guys just kind of skip to the lines otherwise we can't get the line cut in we're trying check the tally lights on camera three tom when that comes on that you know you speak and we didn't care we were just goofing around so much

how excited were you when you got when you got that show what was that moment so young tom hanks and you get bosom buddies you booked it it's your job what was that well i couldn't believe it yeah

i was going to be on tv you know right and i was going to be up to that point as a shakespearean actor i'd made uh i made less than ten ten thousand dollars in a year for an entire year and i was married and i had a kid and uh geez i i made almost i made that in two weeks on uh on bosom buddy so the financial reprieve was huge when was the last time you did shakespeare i did shakespeare uh two

years ago here in los angeles i played falstaff yes with the shakespeare center los angeles tom

tell that story it was it was a video that i saw of you doing it i can't remember it was so funny you pulled some guy out of the audience or something what was that no what happened was

we had an we had a medical emergency a guy um a gentleman had a a heart thing happen to him and all of a sudden um the paramedics had to be called we were doing it at the va center in a the japanese garden amongst the eucalyptus trees here in west los angeles and you know a guy had some sort of seizure and we had to call the amts and then we had to take a break in the house not the house lights the lights all came up and uh it was going into it ended up being about a 30 minute hold while they took care of the this right and uh we were all backstage saying uh should we do something and then when i saw that people were leaving it's like oh no no no no no no i mean it was gonna it was a long it was about close to three hour show anyway but when i saw people i saw a lady pick up her purse and move toward the exit and i came running out trying to scream and get back here take take thee thy seat or something yeah it was so funny but what was

amazing was you were improvising in shakespearean talk that was that's what blew my mind and it was

super funny god it was so great it ended up it ended up being worthwhile and got enough people to stay and i think i ridiculed enough people that made some lady cry you know but uh out of laughter

tears of joy what was the you know a splash by the way for your birthday years and years ago I sent you a poster and I superimposed my face over Daryl Hannah's and I said the note said you and I would have made a bigger splash but um Tom doesn't remember that you had we only been the trailblazers but but you know what was that like what was that feeling because as a kid I was like oh my god every actor wanted to be Tom Hanks everybody every actor wanted to be you yeah because you were in all of the string of these massive comedy hits right and big and splash and just, I don't know what I was doing.

They asked me to be in a movie, so I said, yeah.

But did you know when you started doing all those other movies, you did big and you did all these things and they were just getting, did you know where you were going?

No, no, we have no idea. They just said. You had no plan? But you were playing the lead and you were incredibly charismatic and you were compelling on screen. Like you were carrying things right out of the gate. Had you always had the confidence and the sort of the leadership qualities growing up? I was just trying to remember the words.

I was trying to speak loud enough to be heard.

But Tom, you are such a relief.

I'll tell you the biggest lesson that I learned. This was when I was at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, just a day's drive from where I am right now in Lakewood, Ohio. In which Dan Sullivan, who directed the Henry V, excuse me, Henry IV that I did as Falstaff, he directed that. In 1977, we were in rotating rep and I was carrying a spear and I was doing everything that I was told to do. And we had done, we had just opened a production of Hamlet the night before. It was in Rotating Rep, so you open the shows about every two weeks and then you ran a different show every night. That's what repertory means.

Sean.

And so we had opened up Hamlet and we all had a rehearsal the next day for Taming of the Shrew, which I played Grumio in Taming of the Shrew. And all of the equity company, the professionals, were hungover, exhausted, because they had all been out partying the night before because they had just opened Hamlet. So everybody was like synambulistic and showing up at 10 o'clock. And no one really knew their lines yet. And everybody was kind of like shuffling around. And Dan Sullivan yelled at everybody. He yelled at everybody. He said, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. We've got three weeks to get this show up on its feet. And you people are not even trying for crying out loud. I can't do my job if you guys don't do your jobs. You guys have got to show up on time. You got to know your lines. And you've got to have an idea. I can't provide everything here. So let's take a break, mainline some coffee, chew it if you have to, right out of the jar,

but come back here with some frigging energy. Fuck, I would cast you in the Dan Sullivan movie right now, by the way. Sorry, just for what it's worth. That was incredible.

I remember, okay, so you look, we're all like 19, 18, 20. I was 20 years old then, and that lesson really...

super stuck to me if if professional actors who have 20 years in the biz as they often said 20 years in the biz i've never been yelled at like that uh that was that was an important lesson so all through all of these gigs that i had the hits thank you the misses let's forget those uh i always i that was always the thing that i thought the most important thing to do was show up on time know your lines and have an idea in your pocket for sure for sure that's that's all

i did through all of those i didn't know anything so tom when you went when you were doing all those strings at the string of comedies uh back then and you do you remember what it felt like or do you remember that pivot moment when all of a sudden maybe you got offered a script or you had that kind of dialogue with your agent or what happened where you switched over to more uh let's say important films or more dramatic films what a way to what a question it's so great thank you

That was the era of you could make a movie for about $15 million, and if you just said it was a comedy, it seemed to do some brand of business. Whether it was actually funny or not, it didn't matter. Yeah, that was the time. Anybody who had said action and cut was trusted to direct a comedy movie, whether they were funny or not. And I made a ton of those in which everybody came back. oh, the dailies were fantastic. I think the audience is going to be standing on their feet at the end of this.

So, Tracy, dailies are the thing you watch as you're filming the movie. They get little clips.

Yes, the rushes, the day before stuff. And it doesn't matter if the movie was called Monkeys Make the Sun Go Down. Everybody would say this is the funniest of all the movies. The Cows of Tumble Town. This is going to be a magnificent comedy. Because the good comedies that were made, you know, at the time, they all had, they were all with former Second City people, you know, and Saturday Night Live people. But there was this, you could take a setting. This movie takes place on a ski slope. This movie takes place on a school bus. This movie takes place at a bachelor party. And it will be a comedy. And I made a billion of those like that because we're just kind of like doing imitations of other people's funny movies.

Yeah, but here's the thing, and I've said this about it. There are a few people out there who have this, and you are one of them, which is it doesn't matter what the movie was. You are always good. You're always, even doing, I joked about doing the Dan Sullivan. No matter what it is, you're committed. And that always kind of shines through. So I know that you talk about those misses. I mean, look, if it wasn't for bad movies, I wouldn't make any at all.

You wouldn't be sitting in your dad's library right now.

Yeah, I wouldn't be in my dad's living back at my folks' house in Toronto. But, you know, but it's true, and you always deliver in that way because I always get the impression watching you that, like, you don't care what the thing is. You're just doing your, I mean, you're part of it, and you're in the thing, and who gives a shit?

You know, I don't want to discount some of the great stuff. I met great people, and we actually did some really funny stuff that really did work. Yes, yes. It was always fun to do.

Also known as classics.

It was, well, you know, it's funny, you know, I don't think we ever had a movie. Splash was well-reviewed, and I don't think I had another decent review for about, I don't know, six or seven films. but now you read about them, and they're cult classics, you know. What? They're a cult classic? No? Right, right, right, right.

Didn't happen back in the day. Well, once Philadelphia happened, I would imagine some of the scripts that were coming to you started to confuse things for you and your team a bit.

Well, I got older. You know, that's the other thing, too. You know, there's a type of movie you can make in your late 20s. i turned here's a story i turned 27 the day of we wrapped the motion picture splash it was the last day of shooting we were in the bahamas we had a cake that was actually for the wrap hey let's celebrate the last day of shooting with a cake and someone i think with a tube of toothpaste added in icing on the cake happy birthday tom because they found out it was my birthday But so that was, you know, there's a movie that you make when you're 27 and in your early 30s and whatnot. And, you know, I made I made a number of them in which. But you have to get older, you know, you can't.

Yeah.

And I was able to age into Gary Marshall gave me a great role with Jackie Gleason in a movie called Nothing in Common. And then David Seltzer wrote and directed with Sally Field, Punchline, and then Big came along. That's great. But you get old.

And so, and you start singing, I will tell you, look, I'm not big on this kind of stuff, but there was one time I was sitting around with my crack showbiz expert who works for CAA. And he said to me, what do you want to do? And I said, you know, I...

Sounds exactly like Richard. That's a great impersonation. Richard Lovett. There you go.

Beautiful impersonation. What do you want to do? And I said, I said, I want to play grownups. I want to play people who have been through bitter compromise because I was in my mid-30s by that point.

Compromise, Jason, is a thing that people do when you hear the other person's side and then you go, okay, I'm willing to shift my position a little bit. And whatever, we'll talk about it later when Tom's gone. Sorry, Tom.

Wait, Tom, you know what I always wanted to ask you, and this is going to be the dumbest question in the world? Guaranteed. He is the host, ladies and gentlemen. That's right. In Castaway, right? Yeah. You, the volleyball is named Wilson. Now, you're married to the wonderful Rita Wilson, who I love, I adore, we all do. Was that by design? Because it could have been called Spaulding. Jesus.

Could have been. It was written by Bill Broyles. And that, man, that movie took about six years to figure out. Bill Broyles and I started talking about it. And we didn't, we weren't shooting it until six years later. and he came up with the idea of a volleyball and he named it Wilson in honor of my beautiful bride. We've been married, it'll be 34 years in the next day.

Hold for applause.

Hold for applause.

Yeah, good for you.

So, no, it could have been, and I think we added the,

there you go, thank you, thank you, Will. Will, Jesus Christ, that is a whole new level.

I'm like Fred on Stern.

This is, now, you know, but it brings me to Finch. Finch seems like it's got some qualities. I mean, if I was a hack studio executive, I'd say, it's Castaway meets Martian.

All movies are like that now. All movies are like that now. Yeah. Aren't they all? Since you let you take a— I suppose, yes. This is On the Waterfront meets Pal Joey by way of Paw Patrol. Movies are all kind of like that.

But what you need is a relatable, every man that is empathetic, sympathetic, uh can alpha and beta uh inside a page um i mean you you are the man that could service

all things i came up through that era of which every genre movie was about somebody who could not be killed or defeated you know the cop that could not be filled i'm with i'm with you the fighter who could knew who never lost the uh and so i would you know a geeky guy with a big butt a big nose and a squeaky voice. I took all the jobs away from Will.

By the way, I do have what's called a pro-dumper.

Well, you can't drive a spike with a tack hammer, as I have heard. I just have a

really quick castaway story that we might cut out of this. And Tom, I think I told you this, but I was working on Will and Grace with somebody who worked on this show and we went to his house after a taping one night and we got super, super, super stoned and Will knows this right. This won't be cut. Yeah, we got super, super, super stoned and he said, look, I got a copy of Castaway. I got the DVD. Let's fast forward it to the plane crash because the effects are so crazy. Let's get totally high and watch. Like, how do they do that, right? And so he just moved in this house. It was this brand new equipment and I'm sitting in the back of his screening room and he's up front. He just moved into this crazy house. It's gorgeous. and he had no idea how his own equipment worked. And so he's sitting in the backseat and he can't get the DVD to play. And I said, oh no, is that a Sony? Totally high out of my mind. I go, is that a Sony? He goes, yeah. I go, oh, they're voice activated. Those are the new ones. You don't even know what you have. You have to speak the name of the movie into the machine after you put it in. And he goes, what are you talking about? I go, just listen to me. You have to say the name of the movie as you put it into the DVD player. He's like, are you serious? I go, 100%. I just read about these. So he turns back to the machine with his back to me, and he goes, cast away. And it didn't play, and he waited to be, and then he did it again. He goes, cast away. And he turned behind me. I couldn't breathe. I was laughing so hard.

Cruel.

It's one of my –

Bob Zemeckis on that, he never cuts to the outside of the plane. That's one of the reasons why that plane crashes is good. It's so cool. Just from the perspective of inside the plane, no eye of God kind of stuff.

That's Bob. Now, Tom, with all of your incredible set experience, was that what drew you? Was it part of what drew you to the director's chair? Just the effort to sort of streamline things because you knew probably more than a lot of the directors you may have been working with? with no i think directing in that becomes sort of a bit of an ego thing because um you become convinced that you know more than you actually do but jason seriously yeah but then you try it and you're like oh my god this is hard i believe every actor should direct i think every director should have to act i think we should all be writing and producing because you find out how hard it is to do that other job for sure um from an actor's perspective it's like you know you got somebody saying uh that was pretty good try it again and you want to say to him do you realize i'm on a horse weeping because my dog died and and i'm trying to remember six pages of dialogue at the same do you do you realize it's a little harder than it is man let's try it again that Along with the same thing of an actor saying, hey, are we going to shoot this or what? Are we shooting or what? Right. You have to realize that everybody has nine million things going on inside their head. And also, look, we're all storytellers. At some point, we can have a sense of what might fit into our mouths a little bit better and maybe some options. It goes back to the thing Dan Sullivan always said, which have an idea in your pocket. You know, have something that you can come out and say, this isn't on the page, but let me show you something.

else here so since you have directed when you do come to the set as an actor with an idea in your pocket are you sensitive to that there might actually be a a plan in place that that director and that crew has been working on for weeks and that your idea might might might disassemble the

house of cards there might not be room for it so then you try it once and they say don't do that and so and then you don't do it right you know it's pretty pretty relatively easy stuff is is

that desire to direct still burning in you? I can't say that I have the instinctive powers

of being a director. As an actor, I think I know what I want to do. I read it and I say, no, I know what direction I'll go to. Directing requires a fidelity and a patience and an ability to communicate. After I've done it, I've directed two feature films. I've directed a number of episodes of the miniseries that we've done. And I like those because I wrote them more. I wrote on them at the same time. But I think directors more so than myself as an actor, they're born into it. You know, you have to think it's the greatest job in the world.

Yeah.

And oftentimes it's not.

Yeah. Do you enjoy the producing part of it all with what you guys have done? I don't really produce. Well, but you guys churn out. It's really, you shouldn't slough over it.

It's the alliances that I make with other people that really do all the work.

But the amount of – you're incredibly prolific as a producer, you and Gary. We have a great team of people. I mean, you've employed an incredible amount of people. You've put a lot of product out there. That's not easy, and it's incredibly admirable.

Well, I'm very lucky because we have extremely good people, and we do this – we have kind of like a clubhouse office where we lean in each other's doorway and say, you know, is this really a feature film, guys? I'm not so sure it's a feature film. Shouldn't it be like a 12-part miniseries instead so we can really examine the theme? And then you make nothing but a ton of alliances. But here's, I'm not a producer because this is what producers do every day. They get on the phone and they try to convince somebody to do something they do not want to do. Right. or they tell somebody on the phone that there's no way that they are going to do what that person on the phone really wants to do. That's pretty much it. It's that dichotomy. I always just say, sure, no matter what they're saying.

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Let me ask you, what's your feeling about this transition that we're all in into a bit more of a streaming element married with, you know, box office, you know, theatrical, you know, going to the theater, paying some money for a ticket versus having it at home. So do you – what is your opinion on that as somebody in the business and then also as somebody who is a viewer? Do you like the fact that there is less pressure now maybe with not having to open on the weekend because it's streaming? Do you think about that?

Well, that's a pressure that doesn't come upon the actor because, look, the movies are always binary. They're either double zero or zero one. They either work or they do not work. And if they don't work, there's no amount of marketing or interviews that you can do on podcasts in order to change the zeitgeist. The pressure remains absolute. The pressure is the speed of light in order to make a great story. The audience, I think, if I can pontificate just a little bit here, doesn't care where they see it. the business does the marketing the producers and the studios and the the grand entertainment industrial complex you know um they would you know they would like things to be exactly as they were but we have a business that is forever changing you know back in 1980 when you guys were still in junior high school uh and uh the concept of home video was just beginning here's a story that goes back a long way when we were the the first year that peter and i were in bosom buddies a vhs tape machine a player at home cost about four thousand dollars yeah wow and the only people that had them were incredibly wealthy rich people three-quarter inch or two well wasn't by that time vhs was just beginning and in an in in a neighborhood maybe a guy named Doug would open up Doug's Video Rental Shop S-H-O-P-P-E old timey old timey video shopping and on one side of the rental space would be VHS tapes and on the other side would be a smaller collection of Beta Sony Beta Max and eventually Beta went away and it was all just VHS and by the time I think the next year VHS machines were only like $1,800 dollars and then everybody was renting and the concept that you could it was great of course to be able to record shows uh after you went through this arcane kind of like process of on off recording timing but the bigger thing was is that if you had kids and you had a vhs of dumbo you know they would get up in the morning on their own and put in put in dumbo and you didn't have to get up This was huge. And here we are in 2021, and the industry is going through something akin to that change because guess what? As Gary Getsman, my partner at Playton, said, you know, sitting at home and watching something on your TV is not that bad.

Right, right, right. You know, Tom, you said to me years ago, you said, you know what, Sean, the business is always changing, and you have to adapt and change with it. not as an actor or the craft of of creating things just you have to keep an open mind and go with the flow of it otherwise why and if you fight it you're just dead why didn't you take that advice

why didn't you do it yeah what happened there sean because now you're reducing

to hosting the Heartless podcast. Is it Heartless?

It's Heartless. Or Smartless? You're known as Dumbo, the host of Heartless.

We were very lucky. We were very lucky at Playtone because one of our first deals was at HBO, and this was old school HBO. You know, no commercials. You could say anything you wanted to. There was no language. There was no, and at that point, HBO doing a series or a movie or a miniseries on HBO, that was the gold standard. You had, It seemed as though you had all the freedom in the world. And now you have even more of that, all the freedom in the world. But it still comes down to this very basic requirement. You've got to be putting out an awfully good product. Otherwise, it will disappear into the mist, like many of my early films. Thanks, guys.

No, no, no, no. But how have you not – I'm surprised because it seems like they've tried to gobble up everybody. How have you not – when did Marvel call you and say, Tom, we need you to play, you know, Doctor Universe and, you know, we need you to do 12 films and you have to play Doctor Universe. Did that ever happen? Here's the problem.

First of all, they've never called me once. I can't believe that. No, no, never. And I think that if one of these days they will, and they'll say, is there any way you would consider playing the Secretary of Defense?

Yeah, right.

A guy who comes and says, please, help us all for men. We can't survive. I'll be one of those guys. I don't get to play the punk on food stuff.

But God bless you, because you still make the kinds of films. You have continued in an era where most features are, you know, the feature film market is dominated by these huge...

Some of those are great.

No, I'm saying they're great and I have a lot of friends who do them.

Well, they're not all great, but some of them are really good.

I said some, but some of them are good and we all have friends who we adore and who are super talented who make those. I'm not saying that. But there is, it seems like a shrinking market for films that stand on their own because it's a great story and has a great cast. And you seem to be one of those people. you're in a very unique position that you're still making those films which i think is awesome we we chastised we chastised uh jj abrams we're like go and make some comedies jj you know we were giving him shit he wants to but you know it's because tom because because

tom you are us and you have maintained being us you as for as famous and as successful of you as you have become for as long as you have been um you have still stayed very grounded it seems and normal and i would imagine that that is just something you're stuck with from when you were a little kid and you probably got a couple of parents to thank for that i would imagine uh my parents divorced when i was five years old guys way to go jason way to fucking go this is why i'm not getting the nominations this is where sean really does his research he he would know

that. Tom, I don't know this. What are you, what did your, what did your folks think about you

getting into, uh, the biz industry as I call it? You know, um, I started doing it for fun in high school because I can't, couldn't believe that you could go and do plays in high school and get credit for it. You know, this is school. That's, I remember specifically thinking that in the first time I walked into a drama class and I did it because some friends of mine from junior high had been in the plays. And I just said, what? I can come to school and do this? Well, this is screwing around, man. This is goofing off in class. I felt the exact same way. I was like, oh, my God. Everybody's just laughing. This is great. And both my dad and eventually my mom, because we lived in different places, when my mom came and saw me and stuff, they just thought, well, this is just wonderful. You know, this is, look what Tommy found.

Sean, you've talked about that. You did, you just said it. You had that same thing, right? Where you were like, this is amazing. This is so much fun. And I can't believe I get to do this in five, six, seven, eight. And then you.

Yeah, then hit it, Sean. Hey, now, Sean, when you did, you did Promises, Promises on Rob.

Thank you, everybody. He's never brought it up. That's weird. He's never mentioned it.

And it was a big hit. And you said something to me, because Sean and I see each other. off, you know, off camera.

Not just on this podcast.

So after you had done Promises, Promises, and it was huge because you played the piano on stage and you did all this stuff. It was a big Broadway hit, right? A few, a number of years ago. And I said, are you going to do it again? Do you have the desire to get up and do another Broadway show? And you said something that was, I swear to, I swear to God, the only person I heard make the same sort of reference, are you ready for this? I read it as.

a quote from lawrence olivier okay you said i'm not sure i have the fire in the belly yes in order to get up and do eight performances or something that i remember when uh lawrence olivier was um older and he was always asked well will you ever get up on at the national again what having he says no because it requires a stronger heart and he wasn't talking about medically he was talking about all the effort that goes in the fire in the belly.

Well, Sean, you would do eight shows a week. I remember you talked, we've talked a lot about Promises, Promises, but you said some of the same, you were like, I do it, you did it for nine months or a year? How long did you do it for? A year. A year. A year. I remember you saying, similar thing that you said to Tom, you said the same thing. I said, would you do it again? And you said, I don't know if I have it in me. Yeah. Five, six, seven, eight. And then you just went.

No, no, it's true, Tom. You know, and I relayed that to you about the constant work ethic you have to jump from movie to movie to movie to movie over these decades. And they're all great. And your work, like Jason said, it's always, always fantastic. You're always committed. You're always in it. I agree. You're very kind. And I switched that question back to you about filmmaking. is do you still have the fire in the belly to travel and get up at five and stay in this hotel and that hotel? And you said, yeah, because it's what I love to do.

Yeah, I do. There's no other way of putting it. Look, it's more fun than fun. That was something that I learned a long time ago before I got my job at the Great Lakes Shakespeare. Work in the theater is more fun than fun. And I thought, well, yeah, this is a great way to spend your day. It's not just a lifestyle or, you know, life's work. It's a life.

I love that. And now listen, out of all of the, your entire repertoire, all of your credits, is there one movie?

He's going to ask you, what is your favorite movie?

Jesus Christ. No, no, no. Is there one movie or experience that was extra special to you that will always stick in your brain?

You know, I will say, look, yes, they all are in so many ways. Look, I've never had a rotten time making a movie. I've always come away from a movie saying, I can't believe they pay me to do this. That was fantastic. Despite the discomforts in the 5 in the morning, a little harder at the age of 65, I guess. But the experience of making the movie That Thing You Do, I cast it with a bunch of friends. We had a great time. It was the beginning of the company that I formed.

So great. I love that movie.

With Gary Getzman and everybody else down at Playtown. I could do that again and again and again. Was that the first film you directed? That was the first. Not the first directing gig I had, but it was the first feature film. And it had music in it, and it was very personal because it was set in 1964. But, you know, every gig is magnificent. The ones that don't, that maybe disappoint a little bit, are the ones where you don't get to spend enough time doing it. Like I was just, I just did two weeks with Wes Anderson in Spain with the Wes Anderson repertory company, and that was fantastic. And I was bummed out. I said, oh, we got to leave. We've shot out my role. I got to go now. I'd like to linger for a little bit.

I just got to do a couple days with our buddy Taika Waititi, and it was just the greatest experience. And then it was just, we did a show for HBO, and then I just did his movie, and I was like, these were the, it was like the greatest, most fun month. And then I'm like, oh, and it's over.

Yeah.

And that was, I just want to go and play with that gang.

Don't we get to have that 90-day experience here off somewhere, you know, pounding something out and getting up and loving it?

Well, you've given us not 90 days, but a solid hour of your very, very valuable time. Yes, thank you so much, Tommy. Thank you on behalf of these two fellow SmartLess folks, as well as everyone in America and the world for providing us all these little worlds that you have created that we all get to live in and they've all been fantastic.

Is there a podcast award for second bananas or third bananas that you, Jason, and Will might be up for?

Will and I are going to battle for that one.

You have to ask questions like,

what's your favorite movie?

Yeah. You've got a monopoly on that. You've got it all buttoned up.

I would say that in Canada, This is known as Will Arnett's Smartless. That's true, it's true. Wait, what? The number one podcast in Canada.

I think I just got voted Canada's favorite son. I'm not sure, but I'm putting it out there in case anybody wants to latch onto that and start making that a thing. I'm happy to.

Well, it's a delight talking to you guys. You too, Tom. Thank you for saying yes to this. The delight is ours, Tom. I just, words don't express how I feel. I'm such a...

You're very kind. You're very kind, guys. And listen, good luck on the... Is there a name for this award yet? It's the iHeartRadio Award. The iHeartRadio Award. It might be called the Aorta. Who are you up against? That would be a big question there.

Oh, that's a great question.

Hardcore history, maybe? You're up against hardcore history? Sure. Fingers crossed. It's so great to see you. Thanks, Tom, very much. Good to see you guys. Hope that we'll hang at all those places that people like us end up at. Yeah, for sure. All right, take care, guys. Bye, thank you, Tom. All right, buddy. Lots of love to you. Bye-bye.

Bye, Tom. I think he's going to make it. That guy's got some charisma.

Jason, let me just say this. You've been complaining for a couple of years. You've been saying, man, great guest. And then you just decided you pulled out one of these, what I now refer to as, because I don't use this word, as the topper card. I'm going to now call it the topper card. He's that.

He's a blue chip, that one right there. Oh, man, what a delight. I mean, he's just like... He does have that thing, and I kept trying to figure out a way to ask him this without him deflecting as he does so well, so humbly. And I just kind of bailed on it because I knew he just wouldn't. Like, he's just got that... He is us. He is completely personable and authentic. He is every bit a leader that you'd want him to be, but he doesn't seem like he's too arrogant or cocky. I don't know. How does he...

You mean us as an audience, not us three.

Yes, like he's just like he's the guy you want to follow and are never annoyed, you know, watching him or I don't know. It's been so consistent.

Yeah, I don't see myself as an everyman. Oh, no, you definitely don't.

No, definitely not.

I see myself. I'm special. Yeah. Well. Yeah. I'm like the boss of the everyman you know so when I'm there when I see Tom come in I'm like it's great spending time with one of my employees

I hope he keeps staying as prolific as he is I mean he's doing like what at least a film a year

same here that's what I meant about the movies he makes I love that he keeps making movies that are like it just seems like not a lot of other people are making his new movie which we talked on what is it The Finch

yeah Finch

no no not The Finch Just Finch.

Finch.

The bird.

Yeah, Finch. It's on Apple, and it's basically...

When is it on Apple? When is it... It's not on now.

First week of November. November 5th. First week... November 5th.

November 5th. Yeah. So, yeah, so he's doing this movie, Finch, and the sequel is going to be The Finch, I heard. Yeah, no. No, it's called Fincher. It's called Fincher.

Oh, it's called Fincher. And David Fincher's directing it. Yeah, David Fincher's directing it.

Are you kidding? Dude, this is... Showbiz is incredible.

I know. It's... Everything is aligned. But it's about... It's him and a dog and a robot. I know. And this is not the start of a joke. But, like, could anybody pull off a high wire act like that?

But they do walk into a bar. There is one bar. They do walk into a bar. Be fair. In fairness, they walk. But I saw the trailer, too, with my almost 13-year-old. And we watched it and looked at each other. We're like, yeah, we'll watch it.

Yeah. And don't you feel like he's kind of, like, our ambassador? Not just for the business. And not just for Hollywood. Not just for Los Angeles. But, like, America, too? Yes, absolutely. He's like quintessentially American and like, you know.

He's one of the few people we can both sides, if you will, can agree on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What do you mean? Wait, what's the other side? I just meant like both. Like, never mind. Everybody in America can agree. Oh, those both sides. Yeah, LaShawn, we are not political. Sorry.

Please. What are you trying to do? You're trying to lose your award? You're trying to wade me into deep water and then you're going to take me down like a crocodile and keep me under? Bye! you can't fucking bail out like that you can't bail yourself out yeah you can't be saved by your

own bell we've used every word that you could do with buy no not at all no but also you were just

trying to bail yourself out of a sinking ship and you can't you can't use buy as a as a as some kind of you know instrument to bail out your sinking ship why not i just did it yeah i guess you can

Sorry, there is no rule in that. You're right. You're kidding. But do you think that when he first moved...

Oh, boy.

Oh, no, sorry.

Let's hear it. Come on. Go ahead.

One of the questions I did get to here was he was 1979. He made a move to New York City. Right. And he was trying to be an actor full-time. So I wonder if he was just trying to take a bite out of the apple. In 1979? A bite? A bite? I'm not confident with this.

A bite. That's the least. It's the worst. It's the worst. We were here, but I'm going to allow it. It's a bite. A bite. That'll be a bite.

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