Matt Damon & Casey Affleck Have an Epic Conversation
The Instigators co-stars Matt Damon (Rory) and Casey Affleck (Cobby) have an epic conversation over a cup of java at The Langham. Growing up in Massachusetts, Matt and Casey naturally grew close alongside fellow Affleck, Ben. From first impressions to early gigs, the pair chat through their meteoric rise to coming full circle in their joint venture with The Instigators.
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00:00I remember you when going and meeting Ben for the first time
00:04and you were running around.
00:05You were like five and I was like 10.
00:07I clearly didn't make much of an impression
00:10until I boasted about my street fighting techniques
00:13a few years later.
00:14Yeah.
00:15♫
00:24I'll tee you up for the first question
00:26because it's a good story.
00:27What's your earliest memory of me?
00:31My first memory of you
00:34was when we took the same bus to school.
00:37I was five years younger than you
00:39and but we lived so close together
00:42that we took the same bus, same bus stop
00:46and you were going out with a girl named Cuffee.
00:50Cuffee Harrington.
00:51Cuffee Harrington.
00:52And I was seven, you were maybe 12.
00:54I wasn't doing too bad.
00:55I was going out with her sister named Kamala.
00:58Kamala, you were going out with Kamala?
00:59Yeah.
01:00I didn't know that.
01:00I didn't remember that.
01:01Everyone knew it.
01:02And I was also at the time taking karate
01:06at Fred Valari's studio of self-defense
01:08and I had graduated to yellow belt.
01:11I was proud of it.
01:11I was wearing my gi to school.
01:13Let's just stop and think about that for a second.
01:15Yeah.
01:16You wore your gi to school.
01:16I take pride in what I do.
01:18That was an accomplishment.
01:20I was full gi, the big fold over white thing
01:23with the yellow belt, boom.
01:25And because Cuffee and Kamala were sisters,
01:29she was allowed to sit in the back of the bus
01:31that was mostly older kids,
01:33where you were the cooler and older kids.
01:35I was her beloved.
01:36I was also, I got to go sit with her.
01:39So there I was sitting in the back of the bus with you.
01:43And I had my gi, my yellow belt, my girlfriend.
01:48I was doing well.
01:49And then you said, so you take karate?
01:52I said, yeah.
01:53And you're like, you're a yellow belt, huh?
01:55Yeah, I'm a yellow belt.
01:57And you said, well, I'm a black belt in street fighting.
01:59You know, you were probably like four or five,
02:01four foot, five inches tall at the time.
02:04But I bought it.
02:06And for a long time in my head,
02:08you were just a vicious,
02:10not to be fucked with street fighter.
02:12Street fighter.
02:13Probably a few months into the school year,
02:15I figured out otherwise,
02:16but that's my earliest memory of you.
02:18What school were we at, Tobin?
02:19Yeah, but we were, remember the,
02:21it was CAPS, it was the Cambridge Alternative Public School.
02:25They renovated it.
02:26They renovated it.
02:27They turned to Graham Parks,
02:29named after Sondra Graham,
02:30who was a local city council member in Rosa Parks.
02:33That was why I actually met Rosa Parks.
02:35I remember when she came to the school,
02:36when they officially changed the name,
02:38she came to the school and I met her
02:40and then met her again when we won the Oscar.
02:44She was, for some reason, at the Academy Awards.
02:47And I shook her hand and she said, nice to meet you.
02:50And I said, actually, I had the opportunity
02:53to meet you once.
02:54At that point, it had been, I guess, 15 years or something.
02:57That's so funny because one of my earliest memories
03:01of acting was performing for Rosa Parks.
03:04Oh, really?
03:05When she came to the school.
03:06When she came that day, yeah.
03:07Every class did something.
03:09My bit was to run, I had a lion's mask,
03:12and run up to the front of the stage and go, rawr.
03:14And I ran up and my mask fell off
03:16and whatever was happening beforehand,
03:18and I thought, do I still roar?
03:21Will she know that I'm a lion?
03:23Will everyone know?
03:23Do I have to put the mask on?
03:25But the mask wouldn't go back on.
03:27So I went through with it anyway.
03:29I roared, I got on stage, I'd committed to the performance.
03:33And then after, I'll never forget,
03:35because she came and she said, she came by everybody,
03:37but she was like, good job.
03:39And I was like, that's what you do.
03:40You got to see it through.
03:41So she taught you what it was to be an actor.
03:44That's awesome.
03:45At six years old, you learned everything you needed
03:47to know from Rosa Parks.
03:48That's amazing.
03:50When we did Good Will Hunting to Winnie the Instigators,
03:54how many years was in between that?
03:5526 years.
03:5797, we shot Good Will Hunting.
03:5897.
03:59Boston's changed a lot and our experience,
04:01our relationship to Boston has probably
04:02changed a lot too, right?
04:03Yeah, for sure.
04:04I mean, a totally different city.
04:05Good Will Hunting, I remember, like,
04:07Ethan and, like, some of our friends showed up
04:10and we had that place in South Boston
04:12and you and Ben and Cole and I were living there together
04:16as we were shooting.
04:17We, remember, it was at Brownstone?
04:19We all stayed there and our friends from high school
04:22showed up with, like, a case of beer,
04:24like, on a Tuesday night.
04:26Because they associated movies with, like,
04:30the only time they were around movies
04:32is if we had, like, a local premiere
04:34and then it was a time to have, like, a big party.
04:36Right, right.
04:37So they showed up and were like, no, guys,
04:38we're making the movie, like, you got to get out of here.
04:41Like, we got to sleep.
04:42We're getting up at five in the morning.
04:44Also, we were shooting in bars a bit
04:46and so we were shooting in some bars
04:48that we used to hang out in.
04:49Yeah.
04:50And then it was just because we were shooting there,
04:51suddenly, I remember staying up.
04:54They just kept the bar open at the...
04:56At the Bow and Arrow?
04:57The Bow and Arrow, yeah.
04:58It was a couple of long nights.
05:00So it did have a party atmosphere.
05:01It's not really like that quite the same
05:03because there aren't as many people there.
05:05There aren't as many people of our people there, for sure.
05:07And, yeah, the Instigators was the first time I went back
05:11and my brothers moved out.
05:12My mom wasn't in town.
05:14My dad's gone.
05:16It was just you and me and we were in a hotel.
05:18It was like I was shooting in an unfamiliar city, almost.
05:22But it's beautiful.
05:23I mean, the city's...
05:24It's a great place to work.
05:25Yeah, it's a great place to work.
05:27But it was interesting going back
05:30and feeling a different relationship to it.
05:31Even our hometown is so different now.
05:33I was back a few years ago
05:35and went on a bike ride with my brother.
05:37In Cambridge?
05:37Yeah, in Cambridge.
05:38We just biked all over, just past the old places.
05:40But even Dana Park,
05:42like, which they used to call Dog Shit Park,
05:45where we played basketball.
05:46I mean, it's all built up and landscaped.
05:48And you're like, wow, this place is really nice.
05:51When I was graduating high school,
05:53or just before, they finally abolished rent control.
05:59That was the gooch.
06:00That was Chris Gallucci.
06:01He was in school with my brother
06:04and he became the gooch, became the mayor.
06:07It was bad.
06:08It wasn't his fault.
06:09It was just because they had...
06:10The people that wanted rent control abandoned,
06:13mostly MIT and other real estate owners, property owners.
06:18They gerrymandered finally
06:20and the state voted to get rid of it statewide.
06:22And all of our parents were talking about that as an issue.
06:25And I didn't see any change for 10 years.
06:28And then suddenly they got all the tenants out
06:32that had been there for four or five generations.
06:34There were also all the people in East Cambridge,
06:36the families who had had triple-deckers in their family
06:40for a long time.
06:41And those guys made out well.
06:42So they wanted it too.
06:43They wanted to sell.
06:44Because they could sell and then get out
06:46and go buy something bigger somewhere else.
06:48But it's a shame.
06:48I mean, that happens.
06:50It's everywhere.
06:50It's just nothing's the same.
06:52But it did very quickly change the whole face of the city.
06:55I think it's influenced our work in the sense
06:57that that city, because we're from there,
07:00it makes the most sense to base stuff that we write there.
07:04And it's kind of our whole foundation as people.
07:08So it seems like the right place to return to work
07:12because we kind of understand it
07:14and understand the people there
07:15and the sense of humor and just the sense of life itself,
07:19the culture, the real, the kind of attitude
07:21that you just feel when you're there.
07:24Yeah, and if you want to be an actor or a director
07:27or a writer, you want to be able to relate,
07:30to understand lots of different kinds of people.
07:33That was a really diverse, not every city was like that.
07:36There were people from all around the world.
07:38We would go to our public grammar school
07:40and it had like two different language programs
07:44for people, English wasn't their first language.
07:46Like, I feel like growing up,
07:48we got exposed to different cultures a lot.
07:52And I don't know, the city sort of imparted values
07:56to us that we took forward.
07:59That when you run into people now,
08:00you know from Cambridge at that time where we grew up
08:03and there's a shared sensibility
08:06that I carry all of that stuff with me into work,
08:09into the way I think about the world
08:11and performances that we do
08:13and just the movies that you choose.
08:14You're conscious of things.
08:16You know, like it was a very conscientious place,
08:18I would say, you know, thoughtful about sort of the work
08:22that was being made and its place in the world.
08:24And your mom was really well-traveled and an educator
08:28and the whole city was such an academic city
08:31that like you have a lot of the level of discourse
08:34just around you as a kid is pretty high.
08:37And it shaped us, didn't it?
08:39For sure, yeah, yeah.
08:40No, that was well put.
08:42Man, well, there are so many, so many memories
08:45because we've done a lot of stuff together
08:46that we hadn't worked together in a long time
08:48leading up to this one.
08:49But I mean, Manchester, yeah,
08:51but I wasn't on set as an actor.
08:54Like we haven't.
08:55Oppenheimer, yeah, we didn't.
08:57Yeah, Oppenheimer, we didn't have any scenes together.
09:00But I would probably say,
09:01like of the memorable experiences we've had,
09:05making the movie Jerry,
09:06like even the Three Oceans movies,
09:08all that, the play that we did together in London,
09:10like living in Soho and doing eight shows a week with you,
09:15like doing Jerry and moving from,
09:17shooting in Argentina and we wrote that movie
09:21with Gus, with the director,
09:22the three of us every night sitting around having dinner,
09:25Gus just picking away at his guitar
09:27and just sitting there talking about,
09:28all right, what are we going to do tomorrow?
09:30That, but then when we moved to Death Valley in July,
09:34which is the hottest place on earth.
09:36And we decided we were going to walk to set one day.
09:38And we were like, the park ranger was like,
09:43you cannot do that.
09:44And we were like, no, no, it's cool.
09:45Cause we're going to hydrate before we walk.
09:47And it's like four miles
09:49and the crew vans are going back and forth
09:52and we're only staying on the main road.
09:54And they were like,
09:55we were getting in character to be dehydrated.
09:57Dehydrated and be tired by the time we got to set.
09:59That was where I learned to put my shirt around my head,
10:01which kept my moisture in.
10:04That's the fall of just dehydration.
10:06Cause they said that out there,
10:07a healthy human being who's fully hydrated in July
10:11in Death Valley has four hours of life.
10:13And I was smoking and drinking a cup of coffee.
10:16You don't get shelter and hydration.
10:18You have four hours to live.
10:19And we walked and you just, you just tipped over.
10:23And it was the craziest thing where we thought that
10:27we had a walkie-talkie.
10:28We said, hey, they said, we're going to shoot.
10:30And we said, okay, come pick us up.
10:31And we stood by the side of the road
10:33and you started to talk.
10:38I was hallucinating.
10:39You were hallucinating.
10:40And you were saying, and I was like,
10:41you got to get the van up here really quick.
10:43I thought you were trying to kill me.
10:45Did you?
10:46I thought that you had pretended to call the van.
10:49Come on.
10:50Yeah, and that I was dying and you wanted me to die,
10:52and you had pretended to call the van.
10:53I was like, there's no van coming.
10:54I bet he didn't actually push the button.
10:56He's not calling the van.
10:57Oh my God.
10:58And the world was going like, getting smaller.
11:01You know what I mean?
11:02Closing in.
11:03That was like a city block.
11:04Yeah, having a totally normal conversation.
11:07And then you started, and I could tell,
11:09I didn't know like what you were seeing or hallucinating,
11:11but I didn't know that you thought I was going to kill you.
11:14You just were, your sentences were incoherent.
11:17Like you weren't speaking, you were speaking English words,
11:19but not in the right order.
11:21And so I was like, this dude is fucked up.
11:24We need help.
11:25And then they came and that medic we had,
11:27he was like, I'm just going to put a line in your arm,
11:29and you really didn't want to get an IV.
11:31That guy put an IV in me when we went to the hotel.
11:34And the bag, and then he was like, you look, you seem good.
11:37And he bounced and left me in the hotel room like,
11:39and then the IV fell back behind the bed.
11:43So I saw my blood start going out.
11:45My blood is leaving me down into the bag.
11:48And I was like, Hank, you're never, you know what I mean?
11:52Finally came back in, I got my blood and my hydration.
11:55That's a good memory.
11:56That's a good memory.
11:57Do you remember when Morgan Freeman is being,
11:59he's talking to the panel in Shawshank,
12:02and he's trying to, they say like,
12:05what would you say to that young kid now?
12:08And he's like, what do I tell him?
12:11We're not going to do better than that.
12:13I would give a lot of advice to my younger self,
12:15but I'm going to keep that between me and my younger self.
12:20But they, what would they think of us?
12:23Yeah, what would they think of us?
12:25They might be proud, I don't know.
12:26They'd be like, yeah, you got old and ugly.
12:28That's probably what they would say to us.
12:29You guys got fucking old.
12:31But I remember going, I remember doing Field of Dreams
12:34with your brother as an extra.
12:37And Kevin Costner coming out in between setups.
12:40There were like 3,000 of us in Fenway Park
12:42playing the crowd.
12:44And he came out and hung out with everybody.
12:46And I remember how much I fucking idolized that guy.
12:49I had an Untouchables poster on my wall.
12:51De Niro had come back to play Al Capone,
12:53and it was like, he was like the lead
12:56in all these big Hollywood movies.
12:57Go see him.
12:59And he just came out and chilled with everybody
13:01and talked to everybody.
13:02And he was so nice.
13:03And I remember Ben and I just sitting there
13:05talking to him, just thinking, man, what a career.
13:08Can you imagine?
13:09What if we could have that career?
13:11And so yeah, that kid would probably be really excited
13:14to know that we're still here and working in a business,
13:18especially growing up with really good people.
13:21I mean, he used to babysit for David Mamet.
13:23You know what I mean?
13:23It's like you would hear these stories,
13:25not babysit David Mamet himself, but his children.
13:30But you would hear stories from like Jan Eagleson
13:33and like people who, you know, David Wheeler
13:34and people who were really kind of luminaries
13:37in the business and how hard it was and brutal.
13:42And we knew what we were signing up for.
13:44And I don't think we ever thought we would have careers
13:47that went for 30 years.
13:50They would be pleasantly surprised to know
13:52that like they got to keep working into the future.
13:55But I think that what's interesting about that
13:57is that what I would want to say in return
14:00is like, it ain't all about that.
14:02You know what I mean?
14:03Like when you're younger, you're like, I just want to work.
14:05I hope I get to be in that movie.
14:07Just give me one, one shot of being in a big movie,
14:09a good script, a good thing.
14:11And you want it so badly.
14:13And then you get older, you have kids and stuff,
14:15and you kind of want to say to the younger self,
14:18like there's so many other things to do in a life
14:21and to care about.
14:22And it's just not only about chasing that one thing.
14:26Certainly not chasing a result,
14:29but the process of working hard on something that you love
14:33is something that even if it takes me away
14:35from my kids in small stretches,
14:37like I don't mind them seeing that,
14:38like a purpose-filled life, right?
14:40And that that's, whatever it is that they pursue,
14:44I hope they get as much joy out of it
14:46as we get out of this.
14:49You the Marine?
14:51Yeah.
14:51You the ex-con?
14:53Yeah, I did time,
14:54but you only got to cast aspersions at me, guys.
14:56I'm trying!
14:57Good, good, stop talking.
14:58No alcohol detected.
14:59What drove us to The Instigators?
15:01I can start by saying it was your script,
15:03so you should take it from here.
15:04I really wanted to do a comedy.
15:07I wanted to do something that was like lighthearted
15:09and fun and commercial.
15:11I'd done a lot of movies that no one liked
15:13and no one had seen.
15:14And I thought, let me see if I can apply myself here.
15:16And you know, people aren't like knocking on my door
15:19with a hangover or whatever.
15:21I went and found a writer who I really like,
15:24who I know.
15:26And I said, can I read some of your scripts?
15:28Do you have a, you know, I'm looking to do like a heist.
15:29Do you have any heists?
15:30And he had one that was very similar,
15:32but I wanted to do it with someone else.
15:34I want, you know, there are things about it
15:36that we had to change.
15:37So I started to work on it and then brought it to Matt.
15:41I was hoping Matt would direct or act and direct
15:44or whatever, and you didn't want to do it,
15:47but you wanted to act in it.
15:48And then we had Doug and then Doug pulled in all these,
15:53great, a great cast.
15:54Jack came prepared.
15:56Jack was, he was such a baller.
15:58He's great in the movie,
16:00but it didn't need a lot of help.
16:02When he showed up, he was really prepared.
16:04He'd worked with a great coach, Lee Kilton Smith.
16:06And he was, he just takes it really seriously.
16:08I was shocked at how centered he was,
16:10not only as a person, but as an actor,
16:12like that thing and as an artist.
16:14And so it translates through all of the work that he does.
16:17He's so present in a way that you can't teach.
16:20An actor I can think of who was like that
16:23when they were young was Cole.
16:25Cole Hauser was like that.
16:26I worked with him when he was like 16 on School Ties.
16:29And I remember Ben was in the movie too.
16:30And we drove away one night and we were like,
16:33that guy is, you know, he's got that thing,
16:37whatever it is.
16:38And Jack is like that.
16:39Like you go, man, it's up to him.
16:40It makes you want to watch.
16:41Yeah, you cannot take your eyes off it.
16:44It's just incredibly, it's like a genuine,
16:47like a profound kind of presence.
16:49Pissed me off.
16:50Yeah, well.
16:51He's upstaging.
16:52But he's, it'll be interesting to see what he does
16:53because it's like, he can kind of do whatever he wants,
16:56whether he puts that energy into music or acting.
16:58It's like he can kind of go wherever he decides to go.
17:04And then we had just, I mean,
17:07we had the list of actors in this movie.
17:09I mean, Tom.
17:10Toby Jones.
17:11Toby Jones, Ving.
17:12Ving Rhames, Ron Perlman.
17:14I was saying that every one of them
17:15is in one movie that I had loved.
17:18You know what I mean?
17:19Paul Alterhauser.
17:19Paul Alterhauser, Blackbird.
17:20I had just seen him in Blackbird.
17:21I was like, he's amazing.
17:23A Serious Man?
17:24A Serious Man.
17:25A Serious Man.
17:25A Serious Man.
17:26They're all like, there's at least one thing
17:28you point to and be like, wow, that was incredible.
17:29Yeah, it was incredible, yeah.
17:30And we were like, and I think that's Doug again
17:32because his movies are so good that actors,
17:35they could see the world that you'd kind of built out
17:37and they were like, all right, these roles are small
17:39but they're really kind of colorful.
17:41Like there's real, like this is going to be fun.
17:43And everybody came and did that
17:45and it's a really fun movie because of it
17:47and really kind of dense and rich
17:49with like some really good performances.
17:51Doug came in because we were talking about
17:53who would be the right person to direct it
17:55and I just kind of went through my mental Rolodex
17:58and he was just the obvious choice for something like this.
18:01Like his movies are so fun and so funny
18:04and tonally just always on point
18:07and the tone is always really unique
18:09and like I just showed my kids Go recently,
18:11showed them Swingers recently.
18:13They really hold up.
18:15He was the dream.
18:16He was the first person that we asked
18:18and he didn't say yeah right away.
18:20The script needed work, like as he said to you
18:22which was disheartening,
18:23it needs an entirely new third act.
18:25He's always juggling 10 things.
18:26He's finishing Roadhouse.
18:28So it's kind of a miracle how quickly he got into it
18:30because we were making this movie
18:32while he was still finishing Roadhouse.
18:33Posting Roadhouse, yeah.
18:35Yeah, if he likes the idea, if it lights a fire in him,
18:38he's all over it and so it was a whole process too
18:43of getting, because I've worked with him before
18:45and Doug likes to take the engine all the way apart
18:48and put it back together again.
18:49So we just wanted to make sure to do that
18:50before we got on set and we had all that time.
18:53So we took three or four months
18:55and it was like you were coming in with Chuck
18:57and we were all just sitting in a room
18:59and trying to put together exactly what we were going to do
19:03so that we could shoot,
19:04we could go to work with like a game plan
19:06but also deviate from it and have fun
19:08and leave ourselves open to whatever was going to happen.
19:11Also be efficient because it's artists' equity
19:13and we're responsible for all the overages
19:15and Doug and I, we put our salaries up
19:17to be responsible also for the overages.
19:20So we wanted to make sure we were thinking about everything
19:23before we started lighting money on fire.
19:25But that said, the hardest part is that first draft.
19:29Getting the first draft and Chuck did a bang.
19:32He's a very good writer and he has got good ideas.
19:36And he was really helpful when we were
19:38in that last stage before shooting
19:42where we were reworking scenes and moving scenes around
19:44and trying to figure stuff out.
19:47He came in for weeks and we sat in a room together
19:50and figured it out.
19:52Nobody multitasks like Doug.
19:55I was thinking like what makes him so good
19:56is that he's really smart and really decisive
19:58and really flexible and I decided those are the three things
20:00but like multitasking, being able to do all,
20:03it's part of the reason I'll never fly with him
20:05because I don't think I can handle it
20:07if he was like flying and doing something else.
20:07He told me 20 years ago that he,
20:09because I said that to him 20 years ago,
20:11he's a pilot, I was like I wouldn't fly with you
20:13and he goes no, my personality totally changes
20:15when I'm, he goes it's checklists, it's it.
20:18I want to see proof.
20:19Well I mean he flies all over the place
20:20and he's still here so that's the proof.
20:23That multitasking part of directing,
20:25Steven Soderbergh once described it as directing
20:28which I thought was such a cool way to describe it
20:30as making a mural, a mosaic that's a block and a half long
20:34from an inch and a half away.
20:36And everything, you have to keep this entire picture
20:39in your head but you have to care about every tiny detail
20:43on every little piece of the mosaic that you're making
20:45while you're making it but not get lost
20:47in one of those details and not serve the big thing.
20:51It's thought a really good way to describe it
20:52and Doug does it really well.
20:55Did you ever get any advice when you were younger
20:59that in retrospect was really helpful for you?
21:03Oh man, I definitely have.
21:06Not all the bad advice we gave you.
21:08Some really helpful advice.
21:11A lot, being on the spot, I know later I'm going to remember
21:14and go wow, that was the thing that really meant the most
21:17to me but right now the stuff that's coming to mind,
21:20two things, I used to say, ask my kids when I couldn't decide
21:25if I was going to take a movie and to me the decision
21:28to whether you're going to be a part of something
21:30obviously is kind of the most important
21:32because you want to be able to completely trust
21:35that situation and be totally reckless
21:38to know that it's a good environment
21:40where you can make mistakes, you can make choices
21:43that are way too big or too small.
21:45You want to take big, big swings and know
21:47that the script is sound, the director has a good eye,
21:51that it's going to work.
21:52You want to be risky, take chances in your performance.
21:56And so I would ask my kids sometimes if I would say
22:00like, do you think I should do this?
22:02And they almost always gave me really clear advice
22:08and they would just distill it to, usually distill it
22:11to like, well, what are you going to do?
22:14Sometimes those sorts of questions would be like,
22:16bring me back to, am I excited about the performance?
22:19I'm not thinking about the director, the script,
22:21all the other things.
22:22Am I excited about the job that I have in front of me?
22:25Are there choices?
22:26Like does this character, something when I think about
22:29what am I going to be doing in that performance,
22:30the ideas start to come to mind.
22:33The simplicity of their thought process
22:34which just brought me back to the re-anchor.
22:36The elemental questions.
22:37The other was that one time Don Cheadle just gave advice
22:41that was, she'll remember when he said,
22:44these movies are so big.
22:46I'll never forget that.
22:47There's so much, so many people and so expensive
22:50and everything moves so slowly and people will say,
22:53they'll move on.
22:54You've done a scene and they'll go, okay, we're moving on.
22:57And you see 200 people start to move and you see,
23:00you know every second cost a fortune.
23:02But to have the courage to say to him,
23:04he was calling it a set a dinosaur,
23:06this huge, slow moving, heavy thing.
23:09And he would say, just say dinosaur, stop.
23:12To stop it and to have the courage to say,
23:15we have to do something different
23:16or we can do something better.
23:18And when you're young, it's just too intimidating to do that
23:20to turn to some great director and go, no, no, no, wait.
23:23But I wanted to be able to do that.
23:25And I would try and I usually found that people would,
23:28they would be receptive.
23:29People would go, oh, I'm sorry, what do you want?
23:30Is there something else you want to do?
23:31Because everybody actually wants to make the movie
23:34as good as it can be.
23:36And if there's a good idea, they're going to respond to it.
23:39What was the best advice that you ever got?
23:40Well, it always, it goes back to Jerry Speka,
23:43to our high school teacher.
23:45He never forgets five words.
23:47He said, just do your work, kid.
23:49And the meaning that that's taken on for me,
23:52like the older I get, you know,
23:54it's actually very kind of stoic to just say,
23:57you can't control anything else but the work that you do.
24:02Like, do your work.
24:03Don't get caught up in anything else.
24:05Like, that has got to be your focus.
24:07He's the Bill Belichick of high school acting teachers.
24:10Yeah, if you think of who came out of that program,
24:12you, Ben, me, Max Casella, Matty Mayer,
24:16like, I mean, it's just, it's incredible how many people,
24:19and it's how many kids who didn't become actors.
24:23Sean Hader.
24:24Sean Hader came out of that.
24:26And who didn't become actors,
24:28but like took so much out of that program.
24:30It was just like life advice.
24:31A great teacher.
24:32Yeah.
24:33By the way, I did try to make the dinosaur stop
24:35the first time I worked with Clint Eastwood.
24:37I asked him, I did one take,
24:39and he was like, all right, check the gate.
24:41And I was like, wait,
24:42you don't think we should do one more?
24:43And he goes, why?
24:44You want to waste everyone's time?
24:46Keep going, dinosaur.
24:48Dinosaur, keep going.
24:50It's cool.