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Fun
Transcript
00:00 (typewriter ding)
00:03 - Planet of the Apes, this was the Tim Burton
00:05 Planet of the Apes.
00:06 I loved your character, Limbo, the orangutan.
00:10 - I remember my agents were like,
00:11 maybe, don't you wanna play one of the humans in it
00:14 so we can see your face?
00:15 And I was like, if you tell them I wanna play a human,
00:17 I'm gonna kill every one of you.
00:19 I was disappointed 'cause I couldn't play a gorilla.
00:22 'Cause my face didn't quite fit the gorilla makeup.
00:24 So they were like, you're gonna be an orangutan.
00:26 And I was like, okay.
00:27 (upbeat music)
00:29 (whistling)
00:32 - I can tell by your faces that many of you
00:52 are shocked at the outcome.
00:55 I, on the other hand, am not,
00:57 because I have had the misfortune of teaching you
00:59 this semester, and even with my ocular limitations,
01:03 I witnessed firsthand your glazed,
01:06 uncomprehending expressions.
01:08 - Sir, I don't understand.
01:11 - That's glaringly apparent.
01:13 - No, it's, I can't fail this class.
01:17 - Oh, don't sell yourself short, Mr. Coates.
01:18 I truly believe that you can.
01:20 - I'm supposed to go to Cornell.
01:23 - Unlikely.
01:24 - Welcome to the actor's side today.
01:26 You've seen him in so many.
01:28 Oh my God, you work all the time.
01:31 Currently in the holdovers, playing Paul,
01:37 that's easy for you to remember,
01:39 and a terrific film,
01:40 reuniting him with Alexander Payne,
01:43 and of course, Sidewaves, and so many others.
01:47 This is Paul Giamatti, welcome.
01:49 - Thank you, sir.
01:50 - Yeah, back with Alexander Payne.
01:52 It's only taken 20 years.
01:54 - Yeah.
01:55 - Yeah.
01:56 - Almost exactly 20 years.
01:57 - It is.
01:58 - It's weird, the timing is really funny.
01:59 - Yeah, he was here, and he said he tried before,
02:03 I think, downsizing at one time.
02:05 - That's right, that's right.
02:06 At one point, downsizing, that didn't work out.
02:09 We've talked about trying to do a private detective thing,
02:12 which never went anywhere.
02:13 I don't know what we were thinking,
02:15 but we always talked about that.
02:16 And then we tried to do this a bunch of times,
02:18 and the scheduling never worked out.
02:20 - Is that right?
02:21 Wow.
02:22 - Yeah, four times or something, three times,
02:24 we tried, and it never worked out.
02:25 - As fate would have it, though,
02:27 now is the right time for this movie, I think.
02:30 - In a lot of ways, yeah.
02:31 - In a lot of ways, right?
02:32 - Yeah, I mean, yeah, as fate would have it.
02:35 I mean, you were just saying,
02:36 I mean, it's landed in a nice spot
02:38 at which some of the big movies got moved.
02:40 - That's right.
02:41 - So these little movies are getting seen,
02:43 and it feels like a nice movie
02:44 about sort of empathy and compassion in the world,
02:47 which is not a bad thing to be putting out in the world.
02:49 - Right.
02:50 - But also, we timed it.
02:51 When we shot it, I think we got a really,
02:54 really good winter in Boston.
02:57 - Yeah.
02:58 - Because we needed it to be winter,
03:00 and it snowed a lot.
03:01 - So that's not fake snow.
03:03 - It's not, which never happens.
03:04 - Yeah. (laughs)
03:05 - Yeah, so every time you see it snowing in that movie,
03:07 it's actually snow.
03:08 - You're right, and what's it like acting in the snow?
03:10 - Great.
03:11 - You like it?
03:12 - Better than the fake stuff,
03:13 'cause you can hear the (imitates snow crunching)
03:14 - Yeah. (laughs)
03:15 - Generating this like soap suds that fall on you.
03:18 And you're walking in this weird stuff
03:20 that's crunching in a weird way,
03:21 'cause it's not real snow.
03:23 So it's actually cold.
03:25 It's all that feeling of real snow.
03:27 It's like, it's fantastic.
03:28 - Wow.
03:29 Now you play Paul Hunnam,
03:30 who's a professor at a prep school there.
03:33 - He's not a professor.
03:34 He doesn't have a PhD, he has no degree.
03:36 - Oh, that's what we say.
03:37 - Yeah, yeah, so that's his big problem.
03:39 - He's a teacher specializing in ancient Roman.
03:43 - Kind of ancient civilization.
03:45 - Civilization.
03:46 - Sort of Greek and Roman stuff.
03:47 - Which is so perfect.
03:48 - Yeah.
03:49 - Because it lends itself to such amusing dialogue
03:52 and, you know, that you get to do.
03:53 - And he lives in another age entirely.
03:55 (laughs)
03:56 - He doesn't live in the present era at all.
03:59 And he lives in this crazy fantasy world
04:01 of kind of classical Roman, you know,
04:04 all this ridiculous sort of stuff.
04:06 - What is it about academics sideways?
04:08 You were an English teacher.
04:10 - Yeah, yeah.
04:10 - Loved wine too.
04:11 I mean, there was something.
04:13 (laughs)
04:13 - Yeah, no, Alexander's, yeah, both of those characters
04:16 are these sort of intellectual guys
04:18 who have these particular fascinations and obsessions,
04:22 wine and then sort of Roman stuff.
04:25 These kind of obsessives who are not really kind of aware
04:28 of the world around them and trying to sort of change
04:30 the world to fit them and that they don't fit into,
04:33 all that kind of stuff.
04:34 Yeah, it's interesting.
04:36 - He wrote this with you.
04:37 Well, he didn't write it actually,
04:39 David Hemmingsen, you know, is the screenwriter,
04:42 but it's his idea.
04:43 He came up with this and the whole thing with you in mind.
04:47 That's gotta be a big compliment for an actor.
04:49 - It is, it's a huge compliment.
04:51 I mean, and it's a big gift, the part.
04:53 And I think because we got to know each other pretty well,
04:57 I think he knew it was something
04:59 that would spark my imagination
05:01 and I would have a lot to draw on from my own past.
05:04 - Yeah, 'cause you come from, I mean,
05:06 your father was president of Yale.
05:09 - He was a professor for a long time.
05:10 - Yeah, and then actually commissioner of the MLB,
05:13 a major league baseball, pretty amazing.
05:15 - Very random.
05:16 - You went to Yale.
05:17 - I did.
05:18 - Drama school.
05:19 - I went to a prep school too.
05:20 - And you went to a prep school.
05:21 - I didn't board there, but I was a day student.
05:23 So I didn't quite have the same experience,
05:24 but I went to one of those places.
05:25 - Wow, so you really, you know,
05:27 sort of come from this world to understand.
05:29 - Yeah, and it was weird because I didn't,
05:32 sometimes I felt like I wasn't working hard enough
05:35 for this movie.
05:36 I was like, I should be doing more backstory stuff,
05:38 but I didn't have to.
05:40 And when I saw the movie, I thought,
05:42 oh, I see so many people that I knew
05:46 in this character growing up.
05:48 - That you sort of brought into it.
05:49 - Unconsciously too.
05:51 - Really, is that right?
05:52 - Yeah, some of it.
05:53 I feel like I said, oh, I remind myself of this professor,
05:56 friend of my father's in that moment.
05:58 I think I just was drawing in a lot of stuff
06:00 from these guys.
06:01 - It's so fun to watch you play it
06:03 because there's such great dialogue that you get to do.
06:06 You're a real curmudgeon and, you know,
06:09 just like you seem like you don't like the students,
06:12 but you know what?
06:13 - He does.
06:14 - What comes through, I was just gonna say,
06:16 what comes through is below the surface,
06:20 this guy, there's so much more to him.
06:22 - He cares about teaching.
06:23 - Yeah.
06:24 - I think he genuinely cares about teaching
06:26 and teaching these kids, these boys, the right values.
06:30 He goes too far.
06:31 (laughing)
06:32 He pushes it too much and it's become a shtick too.
06:36 You know what I mean?
06:37 It's become his shtick and you watch him
06:40 kind of lose his shtick a little bit through the movie.
06:42 - Yeah, but it's so great.
06:43 And it's the first period film for Alexander Payne.
06:47 He's never done one before.
06:49 And he picked 1971, which is perfect.
06:52 It reminds me of the movies that were made then
06:57 that aren't made anymore.
06:59 We don't see Hal Ashby's movies and those kind of things.
07:02 Those wonderful human comedy dramas, it's got everything.
07:07 - Totally, all those things.
07:08 Yeah, and I love those movies.
07:10 I mean, he's a little older than me,
07:12 but we share a love for that period of film
07:15 and a nostalgia for it.
07:17 But I don't feel like the movie's an exercise
07:19 in nostalgia in some way.
07:20 I don't know quite what it is.
07:21 You know what I mean?
07:23 It's not really an homage.
07:24 It's not a nostalgia trip.
07:26 It's a funny movie.
07:28 It's odd, actually.
07:29 - Well, it is, but I mean, the film grain, the logos.
07:34 I thought the music score by Mark Orton reminded me
07:38 of one of those scores from then.
07:41 - Yeah, totally.
07:42 No, it's an interesting thing he did,
07:45 but it doesn't feel like, like I said, a nostalgia trip.
07:48 It's not all about the bell bottoms,
07:50 my crazy bell bottoms, you know what I mean?
07:52 It's not all like '70s fetishizing.
07:55 It just is the thing.
07:57 - And it plays, as we can tell, people are going.
08:01 It plays so beautifully now
08:02 because it's about human beings, imagine that,
08:05 and the three of you, each lonely in your own way,
08:10 connected, finding more about yourselves
08:14 over that brief period during Christmas.
08:18 - Yeah, it's like a makeshift family thing.
08:20 I keep referencing, thinking of this movie, "Shoplifters."
08:24 - Oh yeah, sure, I love that.
08:26 Japanese film, that was so great.
08:29 - There's a line in that movie
08:30 about maybe your real family isn't the family
08:32 you really should be a part of.
08:33 - Yeah, they pick up different people along the way
08:35 and that becomes the family.
08:37 - Yeah, and this is this weird makeshift thing
08:38 that's gonna go away, but they all manage
08:41 to help each other take some kind of step forward.
08:44 It's not necessarily clear where it's gonna go.
08:46 - Yeah, it must be great to do a film
08:49 with people like Dave Eyne, Joy Randolph,
08:53 and then have a young actor playing the student.
08:56 No one's letting him go home for Christmas,
08:59 so it's the three of you.
09:01 Dominic Sessa had never acted in front of a camera before.
09:04 What's that like as an actor,
09:06 a scene partner with somebody that new?
09:08 - He was great.
09:09 I mean, you never would have known he'd never done it before
09:12 and his sort of, the kind of freshness he brought to it
09:16 and the curiosity about it was actually really inspiring.
09:20 It was great.
09:21 It reminded me, it made me feel sort of like,
09:23 oh yeah, right, this is fun.
09:25 This should be, he was fantastic.
09:27 He's really good.
09:28 I thought it was great to put a kid nobody knew too.
09:30 That felt very '70s.
09:32 - Yeah.
09:32 - You know what I mean?
09:33 You kind of go with the risky choice,
09:34 the kid nobody's ever seen.
09:35 It felt very '70s.
09:36 - Right.
09:37 - Yeah.
09:38 - 'Cause for all of you actors,
09:39 there is a moment where that you are them,
09:42 where you are never seen, where you're, you know.
09:44 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
09:46 Everybody's gotta start somewhere.
09:48 It's an amazing thing for him to start with.
09:50 (laughing)
09:51 But he was very, he's very level-headed.
09:52 He's very grounded.
09:54 He's a really, really smart guy and he's a sweet guy
09:58 and he was there to learn and he was great.
10:01 - Yeah, well you started out on stage, obviously,
10:04 at Yale Drama and doing a lot of stuff and then Broadway
10:07 and kind of a lot of, I noticed your smaller roles
10:11 when you were starting out were in bigger movies.
10:14 You were in a lot of big movies.
10:16 - I was, in small roles.
10:18 - Yeah, like Saving Private Ryan with Spielberg
10:20 and all these kinds of directors and things.
10:22 - Yeah, John Woo and stuff like that.
10:24 - I know.
10:25 - Yeah, I was in a lot of things like that
10:27 with kind of weird little parts, which was great.
10:30 I mean, there was no pressure on me
10:31 and I got to be around these amazing people like that.
10:34 - Right.
10:35 - I did a lot of stuff like that.
10:35 - Yeah.
10:36 - Yeah.
10:37 - You didn't have to do that, did you?
10:38 - No.
10:39 - You just got to go.
10:40 - Those are the parts I got.
10:40 I was, I don't think I ever imagined
10:43 I'd do a lot of movies or TV.
10:45 I was just, I thought of myself as a stage actor
10:48 and I thought that's what I'd do.
10:49 - Yeah.
10:50 - And so the other stuff was just kind of like,
10:51 okay, I'm getting this stuff.
10:53 It certainly made my life financially easier.
10:56 - Yeah.
10:56 - I wasn't making any money doing theater.
10:58 So, and I thought, okay, this is what it will be.
11:00 - Yeah.
11:01 - I'll do stage stuff and then, I mean,
11:04 I did a lot of stuff that wasn't Spielberg, too.
11:07 I did tons of stuff that was not great, you know,
11:10 and it was little bitty parts.
11:12 I just thought that's what kind of my career was gonna be.
11:15 - So was the Howard Stern movie a big break for you?
11:20 It seemed like it was.
11:22 - Yeah, it was not just a big break.
11:24 It was a sort of really important thing.
11:27 I'd come out of school, I felt very confined by the training.
11:31 It was great training.
11:32 And I did a lot of those bitty things like that.
11:35 And I was doing good theater stuff,
11:37 but then I got that thing, which was like,
11:40 oh, a movie can be really fun and crazy like this.
11:44 And that movie was really crazy.
11:47 And I was allowed to get really crazy.
11:50 I felt very unconfined by it on film.
11:52 And I thought, if this is what this is,
11:54 it can be, I was deceived into thinking
11:56 movies were gonna be like that,
11:57 'cause the director was so great.
11:59 And we rehearsed and we had all kinds of fun.
12:01 Things weren't like that, actually, as it went on.
12:04 But it definitely got more work from it.
12:05 But I think, more importantly, it was very freeing.
12:08 - Yeah, and it was such a good movie.
12:10 - Yeah, it's a great movie.
12:12 - I was so surprised by it.
12:13 - He didn't need to make a good movie.
12:14 He could have made any piece of junk
12:16 and it would have been fine.
12:17 But he chose to make a good movie.
12:18 - He made a good movie.
12:19 - He made a really good movie.
12:20 - And very well cast, all of you in it.
12:23 - Great director, Betty Thomas was a great director.
12:25 - Yeah, she's great.
12:26 - Great, yeah.
12:27 - And there was a line they said, in the audition,
12:32 I think Philip Seymour Hoffman was up for the role, too.
12:34 - He was, yeah.
12:36 - And they said, "At your audition,
12:37 "you were so out of character, weird, and interesting.
12:40 "It got you the role."
12:41 - I guess so.
12:42 - What did you do?
12:43 - I have no idea.
12:44 (laughing)
12:45 I wonder sometimes if it was the accent that I did, maybe.
12:48 I don't know, 'cause I did this goofy Southern accent.
12:51 And when the time came, I got the part, I said,
12:53 "Well, I'll work on a real Southern accent."
12:55 And she said, "No, no, no, no, no.
12:56 "You're gonna do that ridiculous,
12:58 "like Kentucky fried chicken accent you're doing.
13:01 "You're not gonna do some hard work
13:03 "and make a real South Carolina accent.
13:05 "You're gonna do whatever the hell that thing is
13:06 "you were doing, that cartoony accent."
13:08 So I think it was the accent.
13:09 - Wow, see?
13:10 That's so funny.
13:13 I loved his name, Kenny Pig Vomit Rushden.
13:16 - Yeah.
13:17 (laughing)
13:18 He was a real guy.
13:19 - Was he?
13:20 Wow.
13:20 - Evidently, it was based on a real guy.
13:22 - Yeah, a programming guy at WNBC.
13:24 - Yeah.
13:25 - Yeah, it's interesting.
13:26 Let me ask you about some of the others,
13:27 'cause you have made so many interesting movies and roles.
13:31 - Okay.
13:32 - Bob Zemuda, also Tony Clifton
13:35 in Andy Kaufman's "Man in the Moon."
13:38 - I played Tony Clifton sometimes in that.
13:41 - Right, when they're on screen together.
13:43 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:43 The little bitty things where I did that.
13:45 That was a crazy experience.
13:48 - Yeah.
13:48 - Yeah.
13:49 I mean, it was a, I mean, everybody,
13:51 I mean, people know that Jim did a whole
13:53 sort of like deep method thing in that,
13:55 where he was always in character.
13:57 - Oh, really?
13:58 - Oh yeah, yeah.
13:59 He never broke character.
14:00 And when he was Tony Clifton,
14:01 he didn't break character either.
14:03 So he was Tony Clifton all day,
14:04 if he had to be Tony Clifton.
14:05 - Wow.
14:06 Is that weird to work in that environment
14:08 with an actor who's just--
14:10 - Yeah, I mean, I'd been around people
14:12 who'd done stuff like that before.
14:14 It was particularly crazy
14:16 because he was playing two crazy people.
14:18 - Yeah.
14:19 - So he was in character for two crazy people all day.
14:22 So it was intense.
14:23 Milo Shvorman, his hands full with dealing with it.
14:25 - That was amazing.
14:26 - Yeah.
14:27 - I actually heard Daniel Day Lewis requested
14:29 that people call him President Lincoln
14:31 when he did Lincoln.
14:32 - Yeah, I know people who worked on that,
14:33 and that's true.
14:34 - Yeah, never--
14:35 - I think whatever his character is,
14:36 you have to call him.
14:37 - You have to call him.
14:38 - I think, you know, it's less crazy when he does it
14:41 than when Jim did it, I think.
14:43 - Yeah.
14:43 - I know people who did that though,
14:44 who said it helped them
14:47 'cause you'd step in the room with him,
14:48 and it was real.
14:50 It was happening.
14:50 - Wow.
14:51 - He was Lincoln.
14:52 And you were just like,
14:53 so I said it was this incredible thing
14:54 that just drew them right in.
14:56 - Do you have a process as an actor
14:58 that you go through to get in,
14:59 you know, anything?
15:01 - Nothing's that strict.
15:02 I mean, it changes all the time, I guess,
15:05 depending on what seems right.
15:06 I do just tend to, it's boring,
15:08 but I tend to just read the script
15:10 over and over and over and over and over again.
15:12 - Oh, really?
15:13 - Yeah, to just get the words to where I'm not thinking,
15:15 if I can do it, if I have the time,
15:17 or I'm not thinking about them,
15:18 and it gives me more.
15:20 Every time I read it,
15:21 it just makes me start to do different things.
15:23 - When you did John Adams,
15:24 for which you won all kinds of awards,
15:26 Emmys, everything, Golden Globes,
15:28 it's still the biggest Emmy-winning miniseries of all time.
15:33 Do you look at every episode in advance?
15:35 Do you know where it's going?
15:38 'Cause that's a lot of material.
15:39 - There was a script all written.
15:42 It was like a phone book,
15:43 and it was like several phone books.
15:45 And that was all laid out.
15:47 And as we started shooting it,
15:50 it started to change,
15:53 which meant it was gonna change down here, too.
15:56 Something changed in episode two,
15:57 and you realized it was all gonna have to change
15:59 in episode seven.
16:00 So it started out with a set script,
16:03 and then that went out the window.
16:04 And that was harrowing.
16:06 I'm not gonna lie to you.
16:08 It was a hard enough job already,
16:09 but then it kind of,
16:11 the script was in constant flux.
16:14 So I never shut up in that thing.
16:16 - I know. - All day long.
16:17 - And you could be, I mean,
16:18 John Adams could be very irritating.
16:21 - He was a very irritating guy.
16:22 (laughing)
16:23 Yeah, he was a very irritating guy.
16:24 - So it's a long time to be irritating.
16:25 - It was a long time to be irritating.
16:27 I said to them when they hired me,
16:28 I said, "I'm gonna play him as irritating
16:31 "as everybody says he was,
16:32 "and as he appears to be in this."
16:34 And they were like, "Okay."
16:35 I was like, "It's gonna be like nine hours
16:37 "of a very irritating guy."
16:38 But they were like, "Okay."
16:39 I was like, "Okay, then I'll do it."
16:42 'Cause I thought, this'll be interesting,
16:44 'cause you think of those guys
16:45 as these kind of heroic marble bust guys on postage stamps.
16:48 And they were real people,
16:50 and I think it did a good job of capturing real people.
16:52 - Oh, no, it was great,
16:53 and a great adaptation.
16:55 Actually, a friend of mine wrote a Kirk Ellis--
16:56 - He's great.
16:57 - Isn't he?
16:58 - And the fact that he kept up with keeping that language
17:01 in a script he was constantly having to rewrite
17:04 is incredible, actually.
17:05 I mean, that was an amazing feat that he pulled off.
17:07 - Yeah, he's really good at the historical.
17:09 He just did another one in France.
17:10 - He's really good.
17:11 - Yeah, yeah.
17:12 And that was a tough book to adapt.
17:15 - Really good, and all of that,
17:16 most of that dialogue is taken from diaries
17:18 and letters and real things.
17:20 - Wow.
17:20 - Amazing, he was amazing.
17:22 - That's so cool.
17:22 Now, of course, "Billions," sadly, has ended.
17:27 Although, maybe there'll be a movie
17:29 down the road or something.
17:30 - Oh, I don't know about that.
17:32 They're gonna do a "Billions" universe.
17:34 - Yeah, I heard they were spinning off and doing--
17:36 - A bunch of shows, thankfully.
17:37 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:38 That character is really intriguing.
17:41 I really like that character.
17:42 - Oh, good, I'm glad.
17:43 - Oh, yeah, no, he was--
17:44 - He's a strange character.
17:45 - He's very strange, and he goes,
17:47 you know, and he does all this stuff.
17:48 But based on, I heard, pre--
17:51 - Yeah, loosely based on "Creeper."
17:53 - A little bit, okay.
17:53 - Yeah, a little bit.
17:54 - Elliot Spitzer, a little bit.
17:56 - Yes, both, all those kinds of guys.
17:58 - The kinkier part of the--
18:00 - Yeah, the kinkier part of the,
18:01 all those kinds of guys, yeah.
18:03 But he was way more dastardly than most of those guys are.
18:07 - When you signed on to do that,
18:08 did you know you were gonna do seven seasons?
18:10 - No, I don't think anybody expected,
18:13 I don't think the guys who wrote it
18:14 expected it to go that long.
18:16 I can remember them being like,
18:17 wow, we got two, we got three.
18:19 They were like, they were a little bit like,
18:20 holy cow, did people really like this?
18:23 I don't think anybody thought it was gonna go on that long.
18:25 - That's, well, you know, it had,
18:27 it definitely had a following, there's no question.
18:28 - For sure, yeah.
18:29 - I thought it was interesting the way it ended,
18:32 the finale of it,
18:33 because it was so out of character for the show.
18:36 It was almost like the Holdovers, a feel-good--
18:39 (laughing)
18:40 - You're right, no, you're totally right.
18:42 - It was unexpected.
18:43 - It was unexpected, and I remember,
18:44 it was unexpected to us.
18:46 That, we did not know it was coming up.
18:47 They didn't wanna tell us,
18:49 they kinda kept us surprised.
18:51 And I think we all thought it was gonna be
18:52 a bloodbath at the end.
18:54 And we got this kind of gentle thing,
18:56 and I thought, that's so smart,
18:58 'cause the show was all about twists
19:00 and thwarting expectation.
19:02 I thought, that's the biggest twist they could do
19:04 at the end of the show is end it nicely.
19:06 (laughing)
19:06 You know what I mean?
19:08 The biggest out-of-the-blue twist
19:10 is that it ends peacefully, sort of.
19:12 - Yeah.
19:13 - Yeah.
19:14 - That whole world of, you know,
19:15 that, and you did Ben Bernanke,
19:17 you played, you know.
19:20 You seemed to be involved in those kinds of things a lot.
19:23 - Yeah, for a little bit I was, yeah.
19:25 Yeah, for a little while there,
19:26 I was involved in like financial crime things.
19:28 I don't know why.
19:29 - What did you--
19:30 - But things go through funny phases like that.
19:31 - It does.
19:32 - There was a period of time on stage
19:33 where I played priests all the time.
19:35 (laughing)
19:36 I played like five priests in a row,
19:37 I don't know why.
19:38 - Really?
19:38 - Yeah, things happen.
19:39 You play doctors all of a sudden all the time,
19:40 then it stops.
19:41 You play lawyers all of a sudden.
19:43 Sorry, what were you asking?
19:44 - No, I was just saying,
19:45 you were in the high finance world,
19:47 and all of those scandals and things with that,
19:50 which is--
19:51 - Yeah, I didn't, I mean,
19:52 I didn't retain much knowledge about those things.
19:54 The Too Big to Fail movie was interesting to do.
19:57 I got to meet him, Bernanke.
19:59 - You did, yeah.
20:00 - I had lunch with him, yeah.
20:01 - Wow.
20:01 - Everybody managed to meet,
20:03 a lot of people managed to meet their actual counterpart
20:06 that they were playing,
20:07 which was interesting.
20:08 - That's interesting, you know,
20:09 'cause when you play,
20:09 you've obviously played a few real people and things.
20:12 There's a certain responsibility that actors have.
20:14 - Especially if they're alive.
20:16 - Yeah.
20:17 - If they're, if they're some way recognizable,
20:19 that puts a lot of pressure on you.
20:21 - Yeah.
20:22 - And him, I thought, he's so enigmatic.
20:24 I'd like to meet him and see what he's actually like.
20:27 - Yeah.
20:28 - And he's pretty enigmatic.
20:29 (laughing)
20:29 It was still hard to read him.
20:31 - Really?
20:32 - He was a very hard person to read.
20:33 - Yeah.
20:34 - Yeah.
20:34 - Those guys that run the Federal Reserve,
20:35 you know, they're--
20:36 - Gotta have the game face on all the time.
20:37 - Yeah.
20:38 (laughing)
20:39 It's interesting, I love the,
20:40 I just love your choice.
20:41 I'm gonna keep going.
20:43 Planet of the Apes,
20:44 this was the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes.
20:46 I loved your character.
20:47 Look, he's not one of the big main things there.
20:50 Limbo.
20:51 - Yeah.
20:52 - The orangutan.
20:53 - Yeah.
20:53 - Who is just sort of like trying to survive
20:55 the whole thing.
20:56 - Yeah, that's right.
20:57 He's a comic.
20:57 He's kind of the comic relief in it.
20:59 That was a huge wish fulfillment thing.
21:02 'Cause I was obsessed with those movies when I was a child.
21:04 - Oh, yes.
21:05 - Obsessed with them.
21:07 So the idea that I could be in one of those blew my mind.
21:10 - Wow.
21:11 - I remember, I just got offered that,
21:13 which was unusual at the time.
21:14 - I mean, when you're playing an orangutan like that,
21:17 do you have somebody in mind?
21:19 - There were real orangutans that I went and watched.
21:21 But what developed, I put those teeth in
21:24 and I really wanted to learn how to talk with those teeth.
21:26 There was a little bit of like WC Felix in that thing.
21:28 - Oh, yeah, yeah.
21:29 (laughing)
21:30 - You know what I mean?
21:30 There was a little bit of that in that thing.
21:31 And there was actually a guy that I knew growing up
21:33 who was a friend of my father's,
21:35 who actually ended up being quite a bit,
21:37 'cause I thought I looked like this guy.
21:40 And so there's a lot of that guy in it too.
21:42 - I loved it.
21:43 - Yeah.
21:43 - I loved doing that movie.
21:44 I loved doing that.
21:45 - Yeah, it's so great.
21:47 And you could probably, they're doing more now.
21:49 - Yeah, but it's CGI.
21:50 - Oh, yeah.
21:51 - There's not as much fun, I don't think.
21:53 I wouldn't think that's as much fun.
21:55 - No, no.
21:55 But they're gonna do a whole other,
21:58 I thought the last one was the end of it.
21:59 - I've enjoyed the new ones, yeah.
22:01 - Yeah, but you know, there's,
22:03 you were also very good in "Love and Mercy," by the way,
22:05 as Eugene Landy, talk about playing another person
22:08 who's very, very--
22:09 - Very strange person, yeah.
22:11 - And that was weird 'cause there's not much about him
22:14 that isn't just completely negative.
22:16 So that was a tricky part.
22:18 But I had to be really evil in that.
22:21 The only way that part of the storyline was gonna work
22:23 is if I was just really awful.
22:24 - Yeah, because he led Brian Wilson
22:26 with the Beach Boys--
22:27 - Although Brian Wilson,
22:28 but Brian Wilson says he wouldn't be alive
22:29 if it wasn't for him.
22:31 As bad as he was, he probably wouldn't be alive.
22:33 That guy was really a strange character.
22:36 - So interesting.
22:38 Well, once again, there's all kinds of awards buzz.
22:40 You're getting all kinds of attention in that way.
22:43 I mean, look, you've been nominated for six Golden Globes.
22:47 You won a couple.
22:48 Seven SAG awards you've won.
22:50 One Oscar nomination should have been at least two.
22:53 I'll get to that.
22:54 And four Emmy nominations and you won that.
22:56 - Wow, that's more than I know.
22:57 - Does that, you know, when people start talking awards--
23:01 - It's lovely.
23:02 It's nice to have people, it's great.
23:03 I mean, you know, it's not something
23:05 I ever anticipated happening in my life,
23:07 but it's great, sure.
23:08 It's, of course, you know, I'm an actor.
23:11 I have a huge ego.
23:12 I don't mean to say I hide it well, but it's,
23:14 but of course I do.
23:15 So it's, of course it's flattering.
23:17 - Yeah. - Yeah.
23:18 - I think sometimes when you don't get a nomination,
23:22 when everybody says you are,
23:23 when you've gotten all the precursors like sideways,
23:26 and then you don't get it,
23:28 I think for your entire career since then,
23:30 people go, "You should have been nominated.
23:33 "I cannot remember who won or who was nominated that year,
23:37 "but I remember that you won."
23:38 (laughing)
23:40 - There is a weird effect like that, that happens.
23:43 There's actually people who thought I won.
23:45 There's lots of people who think I won,
23:47 and I'm like, "I didn't even."
23:48 So it is odd.
23:49 It does have that effect,
23:50 because it's such a meaningful thing to people
23:52 that whatever happens there, it has some sort of effect.
23:55 - Yeah.
23:55 - Well, you should have.
23:56 - Well, I appreciate that.
23:57 - You know, it's a great character,
23:58 and you know, I think you and Alexander Payne
24:02 make magic together.
24:03 - I agree, and he's an amazing director.
24:05 - No question, and "The Holdovers"
24:07 is another really wonderful achievement,
24:10 and a human movie, and just a great,
24:13 old-fashioned good time at the movies.
24:15 - Yeah.
24:16 (laughing)
24:17 Awesome, man.
24:18 - And I'm so glad that you can now talk about it,
24:19 'cause that strike was, you know,
24:21 we missed you at Telluride.
24:23 - Yeah, we all were disappointed not to be able to be there.
24:26 I mean, we needed the strike and everything,
24:28 but we were all kind of frustrated.
24:31 We wanted to talk about this movie.
24:32 - Right, and the minute it settled,
24:34 you suddenly are--
24:35 - Tsunami of stuff to do.
24:37 - Right, it just happened like, boom.
24:39 - Boom.
24:40 (laughing)
24:41 Boom, my phone exploded the second I called off.
24:44 I was like, oh my God.
24:45 - Yeah.
24:46 - So yeah, but it's a movie everybody, we all love,
24:48 so it's easy to talk about.
24:50 - Yeah, so good.
24:51 Well, Paul Giamatti, thanks so much
24:53 for joining us on the actor side.
24:55 - Thanks, man.
24:55 - Best of luck going forward.
24:57 - Thank you.
24:58 - All right.
24:58 - Okay.
24:59 (laughing)
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