Actors on Actors: Bryan Cranston and Jason Segel – Full Video

Bryan Cranston Jason Segel good to see ya - uh it's fun to talk to you yeah you too yeah so I saw Trumbo and I loved it very much and so what made you want to do that movie which drew you to the part yeah you know for us whenever we read something that really resonates that really leaves an impression on you it's the same as when when you read a great novel that you can't wait to get back to chapter by chapter and I read this story about Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood ten blacklisted screenwriters during the 40s and 50s and 60s and it was a dark dark period and not just Hollywood history but American history and the story was just so big and so great that the the jeopardy of losing your First Amendment rights under the under the pressure and penalty of imprisonment for no crime committed and these men went to prison for a year and it was just so compelling to me that I had to do it John McNamara's script then backed up that story with such nuance and such beautiful language and crafting that it was terrific and then then I looked at the character itself and Dalton Trumbo is such a flamboyant dramatic yeah man you know there's a meaty part and they didn't do anything illegal no it was just their beliefs that got them locked up you know these were men and women who were very creative the writers the storytellers of the time and then they can craft a beautiful story and a joke and and I think when when times are tough human beings need to laugh they need to release some of that pressure so that's why you know Trumbo is a serious subject but we we handle it in a very entertaining way yeah for people who don't know Dalton Trumbo is a great writer he wrote Roman Holiday write Spartacus his two Oscars he won under different names yeah Roman holiday and the brave one he was not allowed to put his name on those yeah I had the same thing with Braveheart is arezzo absolutely yeah I had to write that under David you did a totally different name I know yeah but there's a connection yeah and had you ever worked with Jay Roach before I had not doing Trumbo was the first time I since I've worked with Jay on a project I did a play in New York called all the way about Lyndon Johnson's first year in office oh yeah yeah that's right that's right and that was fantastic I didn't get to see it yeah thanks a lot for showing up I know I know you were in New York often and you still hadn't come yeah like it was waiting for you I know you know it's at Segal right there all you had to do was walk up to the box office but though you know what a lot of people want me to come to their shows but you don't go ah you know it's bad when you go to a show and it's terrible oh it's so uncomfortable you sit there going oh my god what are we gonna say yeah let's not go back stay in yeah backstage you know you say you did it again you did it again yeah okay look you were having fun that's the worst or else just one word Wow Wow the worst is a press junket for a movie that you're not proud of and all you can talk about is how fun it was making it hunch people must have caught on binary we had a ball but tell me about the movie oh it's so much fun yeah what's up blast yeah okay you could make me look like a real dick if you print this mMmmm no no I'm not going to but if you come speak into the mic yes you're performing muscular movements with your hand as you're jerking off but what you're really doing I think is you're you're running a movie in your head you having a fantasy relationship with somebody who is not real strictly to stimulate a neurological response so look as the internet grows in the next 10 15 years and virtual reality pornography becomes a reality hmm we're gonna have to develop some real machinery inside our guts to turn off pure unalloyed pleasure or I don't know about you I'm gonna have to leave the planet what because the technology is just going to get better and better and it's going to get easier and easier and more and more convenient and more and more pleasurable to sit alone let's talk about the end of the tour sure how did that come to you how did you first become aware well I got really lucky um you know you may have had a similar experience coming from comedy at the beginning of your career but I'm pretty self-aware I know that when the David Foster Wallace script comes across someone's desk they don't think get Jason Segel on the phone and this script arrived for me from James ponsoldt our director who said I think that you can do this ever he said every time I've seen you do comedy there's something sad behind your eyes which is a really uncomfortable thing to hear from a stranger and can you think you hide that pretty well and not just comedy I see it right now yeah oh no no there's no totally wound as soon as they say cut yeah tears and so I read the script and it's sort of like you said you're looking for things as an artist that are reflective of how you feel at the moment and there was a line in that script where David Foster Wallace said I have to face the reality that I'm 34 years old alone in a room with a piece of paper and I thought that's exactly how I feel right now and our career is where you're sort of freelance every job when it ends you're unemployed again but I just thought yeah I have something to say about that and honestly I feel really lucky because it's a rare thing in this industry to have somebody want you to do something they haven't seen you do before yeah you know and for him to say I know that this is a big adjustment in perception but you're the guy I want for this I mean he changed my life and now I myself opinion so he felt that did you feel that this was right for you when you first read this did it did it resonate within you yeah absolutely I think the other moment that I had was so I think as an actor you spend a lot of time feeling somewhat maybe like resentful that you're not getting the opportunities that you want and you say like if only I was doing that kind of material and then when the opportunity arrives I at least was faced with this scary realization of oh I might find out I'm wrong if I try this I might find out I'm not as good as I think I am yeah so I was really excited to walk into being scared yeah because you start doing stuff that you know how to do and you don't feel scared anymore and being scared is a really good motivator I find it the same thing I find it that if I'm a little apprehensive or nervous or fearful about something it's usually a good indicator yeah because you're gonna walk in someplace and find out your limits I think that's really exciting and you know by the end of that movie to to feel like I didn't butt up against the wall of what I'm capable of it really liked it made me feel capable yeah let me feel really good right yeah it was a it was a it's a beautiful film by the way and it's a sweet revealing expose about this man who there was loneliness to him there was there was a sense of the desperation but almost like a lost boy at times I felt I felt so so empathetic toward him you know yeah well I think that it's a very human thing you may be less neurotic than I am or maybe we're all missing for life okay yeah that's what I gathered but it deals with this interesting moment of what happens when everybody loves what you do you get everything that you have dreamed of and you realize that you still feel the same that it didn't affect the thing that you always thought that it would affect I really related to that idea so so with with David it was that he wrote this this beautiful book there was worldly renowned aspected thousand-plus Borges yeah yeah it's huge tremendous that's it and but he felt that the attention that came along with writing something that was your expression of artistic you know creativity that the attention that came to him was uncomfortable that he didn't want that I think so I think it's this other thing of you you get something so massive out of you you know it's like seven years of writing a thousand plus pages you produce it and you can hold it and you put it out into the world and it didn't affect the thing in him that he was hoping it would affect it was what may be a feeling of everything's okay like I can I can relax now I got that out I got it out now maybe I'll sit and you know you do a movie in the question you're asked on the press junket is what's next yeah so if you write a thousand plus page book that is everything then the question is what's on it that's pretty terrifying it's really interesting how how the public focuses on that everybody does they'll ask a couple who just had a baby yeah you're gonna have another one it's like yeah did you see how young this one is you know that's Rob it's interesting what do you think that is I don't know I short attention span I don't know as if as if they they are so forward in their thinking like what's the future hold as opposed to being in the moment you know it be being there and and and recognizing the greatness of what you're experiencing with a new child right and you know what maybe it is is that you as the experiencer it's very visceral you're feeling all the things and other people are trying they're trying to use empathy but they don't they don't feel what you feel so they're kind of like they're engaged though I don't want to be an experiencer yeah right yeah that's totally the experience I the decider it's tricky though I danced I danced down Hollywood Boulevard with the Muppets yeah you do that theoretically should do it you know yeah that's that ought to do it is the cartoonishly best moment of your life yeah and it lasted a couple weeks like you feel Glee and then you're thinking like alright what's next what's my next project it should be that way I think you know these moments are ephemeral and they shouldn't be you shouldn't try to hold on to it or try to recreate it I remember Woody Allen in doing Annie Hall with Diane Keaton and and they have this spontaneous moment with the with the lobster and it's out and it's like oh my god and it it creates this wonderful expression and and this wonderful moment in their relationship and then in order to try to recapture that he tries to set that up with a new date yeah he's like what are you doing don't you just get the edits and and that's such a great reminder like we have to be in the moment and experience this and then be smart enough and to let it go right to let it just find its way and and then look for other experiences that we can enjoy yeah that's some advanced level Buddha type stuff no I don't think so yeah I hope I get that really you know yeah I'm getting there I'm much better than I was maybe 10 years ago when you're doing your show yeah what which I was able to yes two guests are others yes sir we're on How I Met Your Mother together yes and now here we are now here we yeah this is what how I Met Your Mother was kind of like it was kind of like this yeah two chairs yeah talking were you able to then say okay I truly enjoy this moment these people were inexorably tied and and that's great and now it's over time to move on we able to leave it and and move on and and say okay what's next for me it's a very interesting question I got how I Met Your Mother when I was 24 and for 25 years old so these are like pretty formative years and I think that you spend your 20s trying to get somewhere like I'm I'm on the road to there and then I think in my early 30s especially as the show was coming to an end David Foster Wallace deals with this a bit and Infinite Jest and in the movie you you have this realization that there is no there right it's imaginary there it just keeps moving equidistant away from you yeah so what I realized at some point maybe three four years ago was oh I need to find a model that is sustainable where I'm not constantly feeling like I haven't arrived yet or I'm in a state of waiting for this thing to happen like you're in it right now and it's like you said being present for each moment I think it is and it's not with an anticipation of any result right you can have an idea of where you want to go or experiences you'd like to have you make a decision to get on a roller coaster right and you you think this roller coaster is going to bring thrills and excitement and it is just a ride it's right and then you go through it but you're going to end up at the station again and you have to get off right and I think that's that's that's life in a nutshell yeah life is a roller coaster let me ask you this yeah what we're both playing real-life riders yeah Dalton Trumbo and David Foster Wallace was there any anticipation like god what if I in my research if I start reading about this guy what if I don't like his work a mic stand in judgment of that that's a really really good question okay so I hadn't read Infinite Jest yeah the massive tome right I had read sort of his short form stuff a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again is a great one consider the lobster but when I dug into Infinite Jest I thought to myself yeah if I don't like this I'm in real trouble and it's a hard read they're their 20 page and notes on tennis when you want to throw the book against the wall but the funny thing is by the time you finish it you feel really capable and you feel smart and I think that was one of his goals as to remind you that you're capable it was right at the age of like television entertainment becoming really easy to binge watch and I think he was he was a television addict and he was aware of that I think that I walked away with this sense of oh this is like when I read Catcher in the Rye in high school this is a guy who has a vocabulary to express this miasma that I feel you know when you're in high school you read Catcher in the Rye what you're capable of is like get out of my room and then you read this book you know ah that's it that's what I was trying to say yeah when I read Infinite Jest I felt the same way this feeling of confusion of why I don't feel satisfied is is expressed so beautifully in that book how about you same you know going into Dalton's vault of screenplays and pamphlets he wrote the quintessential anti-war novel Johnny got his gun in the late 30s 38 39 and pacifists by by Nature however he was so combative that when this this house on American Activities Committee came to him he was ready for that fight but he was he was as many very astute adroit writers he was he was eager to have a fully realized career just like an actor doesn't want to do one role for the rest of his life I want to do a variety thing he wrote some very heroic movies like like 30 seconds over Tokyo very very Pro America and that sort of thing and then he writes a beautiful romantic tale in in Roman Holiday he writes during the blacklist he wrote a thing called gun-crazy under a different different name which actually is kind of a cult story which was you know the gun culture and what that means that the sense of power with that so there's a lot of symbolism you know yeah it's he was really all over the map so it was it was a great experience for me just to just not only to revisit those movies but you know read his he wrote everything pamphlets and speeches and and you know all kinds of little little documents and just an amazing prolific guy and it's funny it's breezy and romantic who wrote it hmm you did old boy you stick your name on my labour hand it into your studio and world business look it is just unlock that I wasn't subpoenaed and blacklisted myself the hearings are going to start up again soon I'm going to be cold can more than quick lab let's sell this little beauty and split the take 5050 ridiculous I'll take 10% you will take 20 no 30 and that's my final offer you're the worst businessman ever hmm I hate the title me too there are a lot of different personality types of an artist right but underneath there is a common thread which is that which is especially true for a writer that you think what you have to express is worth people giving their undivided attention to that's true and so if you're writing Infinite Jest over seven years or something you're laboring alone every night under this belief that what you're doing is going to make sense is that people are going to care about it yeah that they're going to want to sit down for three months and read a thousand plus page novel yeah that's a personality type and the people who are wrong it's a delusion you know we know those people you know I was I was curious about you know his emotional state when when you went into that and of course the suicide do you think that he was that if Infinite Jest was not a success that it would have propelled him into that kind of frame of mine sooner or a sooner or was he just was he destined for that for that well I think that there is something that I'm probably not the person to speak to but I think that there is something chemical that is separate from any success or failure you know that is a really it's a real serious thing and can sort of be be dismissed too easily not taken serious that it's a real thing you know people say they want you to feel your way out of it mm-hmm he writes really beautifully about depression you talked about somebody jumping out a burning building and he says what could be so terrifying that jumping out of a burning building feels I can escape from it and I think that that's true of suicide and depression like you you cannot take for granted that the thing you're trying to escape is worse than death for those people he has another thing in Infinite Jest where a woman goes into the hospital after a failed suicide attempt and the doctor says why did you want to hurt yourself and she laughs at him and says you'll never be able to help me if you think I was trying to hurt myself I was trying to stop the pain so that's a that's a relationship to emotion that um you know it's it's scary you know I think that there's a great speech called this's water that he gave to the Kenyan commencement class of 2005 where you feel him dealing with how do I confront these issues and he proposes that it's about where we place our value that if you take it off of success or money or power and focus on being a part of this life in this community it's a lot like what you were saying about just being present and in it that that's the only solution and I think that's true but he was a really complicated guy really sad was he working on something else at the time of his death yeah he he left he left a partially finished novel mmm but he wrote a few things after that and I mean he's just a just a brilliant sensitive human writer so making these movies you always discover new things there anything you took away from this movie in particular many things of course I think that there was something that I've found out about my research into the into the blacklist and at the time and it was very disappointing to me I found out that in our community our unions the Screen Actors Guild the Directors Guild the Writers Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences all turn against their membership anybody who is suspected of being a communist or knowing a communist was shut out there were no nominations for anybody who was suspected of being Cummings or definitely on the blacklist or even the gray list and the unions did not support their members the one their main responsibility was to support the membership and they didn't they turned against them and that was incredibly disappointing it was a but it was a frightening period Lee grant a beautiful actress and director she was blacklisted from the time she was 24 years old to 36 years old the prime of her her acting life yeah and the reason she was blacklisted was that a friend of hers who was blacklisted writer had died and she gave a eulogy at his funeral and mentioned how the blacklist put so much pressure and anxiety on him and perhaps exacerbated or hastened his death and that was it from that point on she was on the blacklist so the the fear permeated not just the community and that's that's what was so sad about it and realizing that the destructive nature of fear-mongering is is what really popped out to me right and how how dangerous words can truly be hmm the irony is that that's how Dalton Trumbo and the other writers got out from under that is by using their words yeah undercutting the structure of the blacklist doing your research for David was there anything that that really surprised you or or disappointed you or shocked you in a way well the movie is very quiet we were talking about it before yeah it's not a movie with a lot of plot movements it's about a guy dealing with a very particular moment what I took away most from the experience was sort of his conclusion about how to handle any of these complicated moments is that you do the best you can you be a good guy and you have to let yourself off the hook after that and that's a complicated thing I heard in my research I had access to David Lipsky the reporter played by Jesse Eisenberg whose amazing terrific job yeah I had access to his tapes of the interview and one of the things that I think about all the time was David Foster Wallace said we have this other us that we live with our entire lives it's that other voice at night that either tells you you've done a good job or tells you that you're nothing and he said my job is to make friends with that voice and I think about that all the time thanks for watching actors on actors click to the left to watch our conversation with the nice EO del Toro and Will Smith click to the right to watch our full conversation with Steve Carell and Rooney Mara and don't forget to subscribe to varieties Channel you

Channel: Variety

Views: 384,834

Rating: 4.9700823 out of 5

Keywords: Variety, Variety Studio, Bryan Cranston (TV Producer), Jason Segel (Celebrity), The End of the Tour, Spotlight Film

Id: ro9Vq2bnxJc

Length: 25min 24sec (1524 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2015