- Hello. My name is Brian W. Foster,
and on tonight's episode, I sit down for a blonde
Manhattan with Taliesin Jaffe, the most interesting man in the world, discussing everything from
surviving child acting, to growing up goth, to
creating interesting and compelling characters. All that and more on this
episode of Between the Sheets. (upbeat jazz music) What are we drinking today? - We are drinking a blonde Manhattan. - Ooh, cheers. - [Taliesin] Cheers to that. - Citrusy goodness. - Mmm. - Why'd you choose this drink? It's delicious. - I was at a friend's house
who has a very complicated bar setup, and I really
wanted a Manhattan, and the ingredients for
a Manhattan didn't exist, and so he kind of bullshitted
the whole thing together with, what's the base of this again? It's moonshine.
- Moonshine. Yeah, yeah.
- A little moonshine. And I didn't find out till months later, it was like somebody's got
to have done this before, since it's such a good fix for a problem, and it was so tasty. - It's a fix for a lot of problems. - Yeah, it was just
kind of a happy accident that we ran into. - Yeah, it's citrusy, it's strong. - Yes. It's very strong. - We should take our time,
we have a lot to talk about. (laughing) (upbeat jazz music) so where'd you grow up? - Here, born and raised LA. - It's so rare you meet
someone who's from here, right? - It does not happen often. I was born in Venice Beach. - Wow. - Like off the canal. (laughing) - Someone was juggling fire
sticks on roller blades passing by as you were being
brought into the world? - Well, it was hundreds of years ago, so it was just sticks on fire, but-- - That's true. It was actually the day
the wheel was invented. (laughs) - It was an auspicious day. - You come from a pretty big family, a pretty interesting family. What was that like growing up here with-- - Thankfully I'm the oldest
of my generation in my family, so I didn't have to deal
with any of them growing up, they all had to live up to
me, which was much easier. - Yeah.
(laughs) Yeah. - It gives me a nice head
start on a lot of things. Yeah, my family though is eclectic. (laughing) - Yeah, to say the least. In the best ways I would say, though. - I was gonna say, have you
met much of my family yet? Or have you not-- - I've met a brother.
- Okay. - I've met a mother.
- Okay. - Maybe another brother? - Might've been another brother. - Maybe I've met two brothers. Yeah, because how many of you are there? - Well, I mean, oh god, it's complicated. There's my two brothers and my sister and then I've got some
cousins that get interesting and then uncles and aunts,
and the family is extensive, my dad and that side of the family, which is a different kind of strange, but also equally strange. - Yeah. And your grandfather was George Axelrod, famous writer, director, producer. - Definitely writer and director and a little bit of producer, although it's one of those things where he was occasionally very unsuccessful at it. - Yeah, yeah, if that's
gonna make the old CV. - It goes even further, but his parents, it was on the other side,
on the Carpenter side of the family, I have great-grandparents who were in the industry as
well, like it actually goes-- - Really? - Goes way back. My great-grandmother was an actress, Betty Carpenter was a silent film actress. - [Brian] Yeah. - A couple of her films still
exist, they're hard to find. - [Brian] Really? - Yeah. - [Brian] That's pretty crazy. - Like two. And then she married a
producer, like you do. - Yeah. - And retired. (laughing) - That's what I plan to do. - Yeah, well, it's living the LA dream. Oh yeah, my grandfather was
a playwright and a director, he wrote, it's so strange
to talk about this. - I'm glad.
- I know. - I'm glad you're talking about it. - It's one of those things that we don't normally do in this business. - [Brian] I know. - Yeah, he wrote the Seven Year
Itch, the play and the film, he also wrote the film adaptation for The Manchurian Candidate. - Yeah. Did he work on My Fair Lady or something? - Not My Fair, oh no-- - No no no, it was-- - Paris When it Sizzles. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - He did Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe. Oh god, there's few others. - Were you guys close?
- Breakfast at Tiffany's. - Oh, Breakfast at
Tiffany's, that's what I was thinking about, not My Fair Lady, yeah. - Very. We were very very close. Growing up was at least once
a week, if not more, yeah. - Was that your first taste
of sort of show business was being around him? - Well, it was weird, I mean like, the whole family's kind
of in the business, save one uncle who decided
that becoming a lawyer was probably a better
(laughs) direction to go. - Well, with your family,
you guys probably needed one. (laughs) Needed one in the family. - He's done some work on occasion. (laughs) He's in Australia, he's deep down there. - Yeah, lawyer in Australia, sure, sure. (laughing) He's got a gator necklace
on at this very moment and a leather tan. - In my wildest dreams. - [Brian] Yeah, yeah. (laughing) - So, it wasn't weird 'cause it was life, if that makes sense, and I was working, I mean, I had a sign card
at like seven months old, I was a working kid. - [Brian] Gerber baby. - My mother was a working
actress at the time, my father was writing
scripts and producing stuff, and my grandfather, my other grandfather, not George, at the time
was producing films and I think he was head of
the DGA for a little while. - Wow. - And my other uncle was
producing for I wanna say, was it CBS? He'll kill me for not remembering. He was one of the big executives at one of the television networks. - Let's hope he doesn't watch it. - Oh god, I hope not, no. - There's a great story
I remember you telling me about your grandfather,
about George Axelrod, about-- - There's so many. - When he was having a heart attack. What his final words would've been. - Oh my god. Oh, so I got very, okay,
I have to set this up because this is a good story.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - This is a very him story. I got really into Japanese
animation when I was a teenager. It was like I became
very obsessed with it, at a time when it had not quite caught on, boy had it not quite caught
on to the level it is today, this would be the '90s. And I got obsessed with dubbing. I thought dubbing was really fascinating because I felt at the
time, and I feel confident in this opinion, that a lot
of dubbing was very very bad. And I was fascinated as to
why, especially growing up. - The American dubbing. - The American dubbing in anime
was just all over the place and kind of a mess. Some of it was very
good, some of it was not, a lot of it was not, and
I was fascinated as to why and what was going wrong, and just from growing up around theater
people and film people, I was like there's gotta
be, what's missing, what are they doing wrong,
what is this process and why is it not easy? And became obsessed with it. I started a club in my
high school at the time that was an anime club,
but we were also doing our own home dubbing.
- Wow. - Trying to like, and so bad. - How would you do the home dubbing? - We had, we would use
the AV club equipment and oh god, so this process-- - Did you sneak it out
of the school at night? - Oh, they were totally into it, no. - Really? Oh, you had permission. - Well I had permission, then
once I was out of high school it was like I've got
this big, I saw this show called Evongelion which
changed my fucking life, like this is the greatest thing
I've ever seen in my life. I was like I'm gonna dub this shit. And I got a bunch of my friends together, and we literally, one of my friends' dad worked for Dole pineapple, so we got a grant from Dole pineapple,
and we used the money to rent some tape decks,
took them to the valley, to a sound studio in the valley and like-- - You're carrying it out and
your friend Ricky's like, where did we get the money for that? Dole!
- Big pineapple, man. - Don't worry about it.
- Big pineapple. - [Brian] Yeah, I know
people in big pineapple. - But like we got, I mean, I called up random fucking people, I
got ahold of random people, I found a voice actress from
The Max through a friend who was like, I was a big fan of The Max, I thought the VO work was great. I got Roddy McDowall, who
was an old family friend, to be in this thing.
- Really? - Oh yeah, he came out and did the whole-- - He came and did dubbing? - He did dubbing for me in the valley. - Wow! (laughing) - This is just setting
up, so I got George-- - Oh, George, yeah, we forget,
yeah, your grandfather-- - So I wanted him to do a
part just because he has, I mean you can find videos
of him on the internet. - Yeah yeah, his voice was--
- He has a great voice. It's just heavy and great
and wonderful timing. And it's sweltering, it's 100
fucking degrees in the studio, and very hot and we're taking takes, and it's going at speed. He's getting a little sweaty, and at one point, we're like
halfway through a session, and he looks a little
pale and he stands up, out of nowhere, takes
two steps to the bathroom and collapses on the
ground, and unconscious, and we panic.
- Yeah. - And run in, open the doors,
and like start dialing 911 and trying to wake him up,
and his eye at one point, me and my friend are like,
on top of him basically trying to wake him up or
see if he can see anything, and his eyes just burst open,
he just grabs our collars, and "don't let me die in the valley! "Oh god," and then passes back out. (laughing) - That's right, that's what it was. - And it took several minutes
for us to actually call 911 because we were laughing so hard. - Oh, I bet. - Yeah, it really interrupted... (laughing) - Thankfully--
- Get to the hospital. - Yeah. Thankfully he survived that,
bit if those would've been his last words, it probably
would've been very him. - It would've been very brilliant, yeah. - It's interesting to
me because every story I've heard about him it's like Taliesin makes more and more sense. - [Taliesin] Oh yeah. - And then when you meet
someone from your family, it's sort of the same
way, because you guys are all very personable and very-- - Dark. (laughing) - Dark, yeah.
- A little a lot. - Everybody has their own eccentricities, which I think is really interesting. - And we're snarky people. - Yeah. - I mean, but not like hatefully. - Yeah, it doesn't come across like bitter or like when I do it. Coming from that kind of a family, and it doesn't sound like, when there's that many sort of
talented people in the family a lot of times there's competition, it doesn't really sound like
that's how it works for you. - No, I mean, and we all kind
of had our little fiefdoms. And there was no real competition. We would compete with other people, but amongst ourselves, we would just demean and belittle each
other out of good fun. (laughing)
- Yeah, yeah. - It was practice and
fun and then we would be truly cruel to people
outside of the family. - Yeah. That's how a family stays together. - And everyone did well. I mean, we were all one
form or another successful in what we were pointing out to do, whether it would be emotional
success or financial, and both were given pretty decent weight by
everybody in the family, so. (upbeat jazz music) - You seem to surround yourself
with a lot of different types of people, you know. A lot of people you can
look at their friend group and the closest people to them, and everybody sort of resembles each other in some way personality-wise. You have such a diverse
group of people in your life. - I've collected a menagerie, yeah. (laughs) - [Brian] You have an army
of the dead following you all the time, yeah. - Yeah, I mean it was a
bunch of different things. Child acting is weird,
and makes you a little, it's a weird thing to
have happen to a person. And my experience as a child
actor was weirder than most. - Why? - My parents were not gung-ho about it, so there are aspects of the business I just didn't have to deal
with, because they were not pushing for it, they
were very trepidatious about everything I did,
there were a lot of good gigs I turned down. - What's one you turned down? That maybe I would know about. - Here's a fun one. Apparently I was offered Alf. Not the alien, but the kid in Alf. - Really? - We were one of the
people offered that part, or at least at some point it was floated, you know, these things. I think Darrell was
another one, if I recall, I'm sure it's been so long it
doesn't matter anymore, but. - That would've been interesting
had you ended up on Alf. - I'm really glad I didn't, but yeah. (laughs) At the time I was very upset and going, this is a bad choice. - I heard it was kind of
a contentious environment. - Everything my parents ever said no to ended up probably being for the best. My mom had a good spider
sense about these things. - Now that's interesting
because a lot of times when you run into people
that end up child actors, there's a lot of--
- Parents are very pushy. - Parents are very pushy,
they're show biz parents, or they're trying to take
all of their kid's money, and you know. - My mom had been an actress,
so she kinda had a sense of it and was aware that it
was kind of, you know, she was aware of the pitfalls
of it and also had grown up also in this environment,
with my grandparents, so was not enthusiastic. - Yeah. - And also, just due to the
nature of the way I grew up and spending time away from school. I didn't actually like know any... The thing that happens I
think to a lot of child actors is that they're bouncing
back and forth between like an attempt to maintain
a normal social life with normal children, and
then this work environment, and then back to a normal social life, which I think can be very dissonant. - Yeah. - I didn't bother with any other kids. It just wasn't really a thing
that happened very often. I knew a few, but it
was, there were very few. - Was it hard to relate to
kids that you would be around that weren't in the business
because it was such-- - I was never around any of them. - So yeah, that's easy,
just avoid them altogether. - I didn't really, yeah, I knew a few, but they were very rare. - By the time you started
to really figure out, okay, this acting thing is working for me, did your parents kind of come around? 'Cause you said they were a
little reluctant at first. - I had agent, god, I had a heart attack, I was watching The Disaster Artist. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's right! - I was watching The Disaster Artist and there's a part where
he goes to the agent and she's like this
old woman with the hair and is just smoking, she says turn around, he's like all right, you know, she books, I'm like yeah, I feel that. And then they're like, I
signed with Iris Burton, I'm like oh, too real. - That was your agent.
- That was my agent. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I just stopped the move
right there, that's too much. - I remember you telling me
that when the movie came out, it's like oh, that makes sense. - Yeah, and oh, she was a great agent. Bless her. But yeah, it didn't occur
to me to do anything else. Also I was enjoying it. I kinda knew it wasn't gonna last forever. I wasn't as emotionally invested
as some other people were. - What do you mean? - Well I mean, a lot of
those kids, it really becomes part of their identity, it
becomes this big success push, where it's like this is what I'm doing. I don't even really think they
necessarily think it through. You can't think it through really quickly when you're that age, unless you're weird. - [Brian] Right. - And I knew some other
people who were a little more, some of the kids that I met were a little more conscious of it and kind of understanding this was a small piece of the larger mosaic that is life. - Yeah. - And I also knew a lot of older actors, and I was spending enough
time with my grandparents that like, most of the people
I knew when I was 10 years old were in their 50s or 60s, so
that was the kind of advice and kind of emotional energy I was getting was from people who had
kinda already been there, and I was a very relaxed, you know, human being on that level as well. - Yeah, I would say so. - I enjoy the company of older people. - Considering how you turned out, do you think that being around
those types of influences and having those kind
of voices in your life are what helped you avoid the pitfalls that a lot of child actors
end up falling into? - I will say reintegration
into reality was rough, to put it mildly. When I did finally quit, very consciously, attempting to relate to people my own age proved very difficult.
- Hmm. - Very difficult, and if I had succumbed, especially if I had
succumbed to the desire to be more like them and be accepted, which could've happened very easily, I could've gone down some very dark paths, I could've definitely gotten, I mean like, I went down
a couple dark paths, but like not the traditional-- - Right, exactly. Not necessarily the self-destructive kind. You were more of experimenting, right? - No, attempting to be liked and popular by creatures you don't understand, and I didn't understand how
real children acted at all. They were like alien creatures to me, and I had never experienced
anything like them, and I was not good at reading social cues or figuring out what was happening, so. - Is that how you think you ended up really ultimately not
caring about fitting in? Was after that experience and going I can't relate to any of
these people my age anymore because you know, my life has looked so different up until this point. At what point did you just say fuck it, I'm just gonna be me and-- - That's easy. I was at a boarding school
freshman year of high school, and-- - Did you go to boarding
school for all of high school? - Just one year, oh, oh. It was bad. It was definitely a lot
of bullying, a lot of-- - Suspenders? - So many suspenders. It was a rough year,
and in the midst of it, I kinda had, I had what I would call a classical nervous breakdown. - Oh yeah. - This school was in Colorado, so it was this mildy isolated reality, and I had just had the
worst goddamn night, and I kinda snapped in the middle of it, and I dragged one of the
chairs out in the snow and I just had this big breakthrough, and put a little side table next to it and put a radio up and
started playing some music and opened up a soda and
sat and watched the sunrise and was like I'm gonna stop
trying to make this work. - Wow. - I just kinda had this moment of like, I think my problem is that
I'm trying to make this work, and I'm just gonna stop
trying to make myself fit. - [Brian] Yeah. - And I'm just instead going to be, and let the chips fall where they may, 'cause this is exhausting and
I'm tired and I'm bleeding and I'm just, I think I've had enough. - [Brian] Yeah. - And if this is gonna continue, I'd rather it continue with
me doing much less work. - Yeah. - To make these people
like me and to be something that they like, and
I'm instead just gonna, if I'm gonna be awful and
not liked by these people, I'm gonna be not liked for good reasons, and I'm just gonna stand by it, and honestly, I never had
another problem again. The kids woke up in the morning and I was sitting in a chair
in my boxers in the snow. - Yeah. - Watching the sun rise, drinking. - How often do you think about that night? - A lot. I mean, that year was the worst year I've ever had in my entire life, and it's the measure, it's the Die Hard of my,
everyone should have Die Hard of like, this is the worst
thing that's ever happened to me so that when terrible
things happen to you, you can be like it's not as bad-- - Yeah, as that moment. - It's not as bad as
freshman year in high school. Freshman year of high
school was really shitty. - [Brian] Yeah. - And occasionally,
like oh, that's so close to freshman year of high
school, that's really bad, but I lived through that,
so that's a good sign. Occasionally really shitty shit happens, but you should have a Die Hard to be like, that's the best action movie,
that's the action movie by which we judge all other action films. - Do you agree that
it's a Christmas movie? - It is a Christmas movie, of
course it's a Christmas movie, it's about family and love and friendship. - That makes me feel better. (upbeat jazz music) You referenced a minute
ago "before you quit." - Mm. - Is that the Baywatch story? - That's a Baywatch story. - Tell the Baywatch story. - See this is sorta,
you already know all my, I gotta figure out which
stories I haven't told you. - We take a lot of flights together. - [Taliesin] We do. - And I want all the stories. - I try and five years of good
stories banked up with people so I can keep interesting
for a series of time. - [Brian] Yeah. - Yeah, I was 13 I wanna say? I was 13 years old, and I-- - [Brian] 12 years ago. - Yeah, well, lord. Way more than-- - 1200. - It was in the '90s. - 1790s. - And I got sent an audition
for a character in Baywatch. And the thing you have
to do as a child actor is a lot of you have
to leave school early, you go on auditions usually
two, three times a week, you leave school 15 minutes
early, 20 minutes early, drive to this thing, do this thing, then you go home, you know,
after you've sucked two hours out of your reality doing that, you do the rest of your
schoolwork and otherwise. - Yeah. - It's a lot. - Sounds exhausting. - It's fucking awful. This script was so, it
was a Baywatch character and it was like, there are
people who write children so poorly, and this was awful. I mean, it was just, sappy, saccharine, there was a whole weird thing
about showering, it was awful. It was awful, and it was comedically bad. I know, you're like,
like yeah, it was weird. - A Baywatch script, you're telling me a Baywatch script that's comedically bad? - It was comedically bad. And like, it was supposed to
be this very like intense, emotional moment, and it was just so bad, and I kept giggling, I couldn't
get through without giggling because it was so dumb to say. - [Brian] When you're sitting
there reading the script? - I'm reading with my dad and
I'm trying to get through, it's like, you know, when
you taught me to jump up, I can't get through it, I
can't, it's just so, oh my. His response to this was, well, if you can't take this seriously, then maybe you shouldn't be doing this. And he said, it was at that intensity, it wasn't meant to be
an aggressive intensity, but he's just a very intense guy. - [Brian] Yeah. - He's very sure of things. And I was like oh my god, you're right. That is such a good point. Call my agent, I'm done, I quit. - That was your epiphany,
that was your moment. - There are gonna be kids in
that room who give a fuck. Oh, this is insulting to
them that I'm sitting here giggling through this shit
that could actually like, pay for life. No, I shouldn't be, I don't
deserve to be in that room. - Yeah. - I wanna grow my hair and do weird shit, and yeah, I'm done, I'm done. - That ws it. - Yeah, I'm out. (laughs) - Have you ever regretted that decision? - No. - Yeah, it doesn't seem like it. You seem too happy to have a regret that would be that heavy. - God, I don't even know if
I have any regrets, do I? I have a few regrets. Regrets are always about
saying no to something, they're never about, it's always like-- - So your regrets are I
wish I would've said no to this or that. - I wish I would've said yes. It's always things where
like, I don't know if I'm the best person for that gig
or I don't know if I feel like I have enough experience with this thing, and then I watch the
person that does take it just make a shit show of it and I'm like, oh, for fuck's sake. - I have a feeling, I've
always nourished a suspicion that regrets are, you know,
like poison living inside of us. The only thing that, the
regrets that I'll dwell on are if I've treated someone poorly and I regret that behavior. - Oh yeah, well that's fair. And I definitely, I mean
like, anybody who has any basic level of-- - Human decency. - Oh, I was gonna say mental illness, but one or the other works pretty well. - [Brian] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, it definitely has
that midnight thought of like, oh god, that poor pizza guy
that I really treated poorly back in 1994. I remember every moment
of that conversation. Why was I such an asshole? - [Brian] Yep. - If that pizza guy is alive
and watching, I am so sorry. (laughing) - He is. He knows who he is. - He knows who he is. - He'll never forget because
someone put a ball gag on him when he went to their house (laughing) to deliver a pizza. He's like that was the guy! Mohawk man. - Oh, I was like nine, are you kidding? It was Bowie hair at the time. - I wanna know what you
did to that pizza man. - I was just, I cut in line
and was kinda rude about it and was very demanding
and then he kinda gave me a talking to, which I deserved, and that stuck with me. I was like (screeches). - I was someone who could
not handle talking-tos from adults that weren't my
parents when I was a kid. - [Taliesin] No, it did not go well. - Don't come to me with
anything, I'll eat you alive. - I just, I froze, until post-freakout in freshman year of high
school, and then I went like full Heathers and
was like fuck it, whoa! (upbeat jazz music) - At what point though, in this youth, did you become the lord of the underworld, and start getting into
the goth scene in LA? - It kinda started in junior high and then it crystallized after
freshman year of high school. - Was it because of people
that you were around, was it because of stuff that
you were reading, what really-- - I was aware of the goth
kids in junior high school. I went to a performing
arts school that was very, I mean, it's comically LA. It's called The Crossroads
School for Performing Arts. I mean, everyone-- - It sounds very-- - If you're from LA you know it, and it's where the most
obnoxious children come from, and I am definitely part of that crowd. - [Brian] Yeah. - And it's got a really
good theater department. It's one of those schools
where the theater department is given a lot more love and attention than the sports department. - Oh yeah, that's rare. - Yeah, there's thing like if you're in a current theater production,
you get to pick a test to just blow. You're like, oh, that Spanish
test, I ain't taking it. Boom. - Are you serious?
- Yeah. - How many of those do you get a year? - One.
- Oh. - One, but it's, well
no, one per performance, so technically you can get three a year. - Wow. - Boom. - For each of the plays or whatever? - Yes. If you book all three, which
the competition was heavy. - How long were you at that school? - Two years. - Okay, so that's where you
met some of the people that-- - It was the goth kids who were going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the time, I was a little young for that reality, I kinda just got in at freshman year and was like, this is amazing,
and then Jim Henson died, and I wore black to school. - Oh yeah. - [Taliesin] And I never stopped. (laughing) - I love that that's one of
the big points of connection for that-- - [Taliesin] It really hit me. - Yeah, because for you it's
not a phase, it's a lifestyle. - Well I mean, and it made so much sense. If you look at the way that
his funeral was handled, it's such a testament to a certain idea of life. And you couldn't wear
black at the funeral. - Yeah, I read that, yeah. - It was a bit of a party atmosphere, and like, this is starting to make a little more sense to me, and oh god, I'm gonna end one day,
this is gonna be over, and there are no guarantees
about what the rest of this is going to be, if anything at all, so let's just go with the assumption that you have this
allotted amount of time, let's keep some things in mind and move forward with that assumption. I'm amazed that anyone can
not have that realization and not immediately delve into deep levels of compassion and pity
for the rest of mankind, 'cause this is a shit deal. - No, I agree, yeah. - And if this is it,
god, be nice to people, and just, that's all there is, it's the only thing that
would actually go away if we were all wiped out, is just people being nice to each other. It's the only actual thing
that human beings accomplish. - Yeah. - And the rest is just shit. - [Brian] Yeah. - I mean, everything else just goes away, and again, my parents
were hippies as well, which I think inevitably
leads to a bit of this, 'cause there's a bit of
death denial in that culture. It's not strong, but
like there's definitely, every now and then, we
have a running gag of we meet Crystal from Ojai, who is our, a typical California hippie. It's Crystal from Ojai. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's a running gag. There really was a Crystal
from Ojai, but she became everybody from Ojai. - [Brian] Oh, yeah. - And this very passive notion of nature and this very passive,
very vegan and healthy and nature is so beautiful, and I'm like, nature is beautiful and it
is wonderful, and it is also, and this is a thing that I'm actually playing with in my character right now is the natural state of
life is that most things on planet Earth live a live
of starvation and terror and hunger and die violently. - [Brian] Yeah. - That's nature. - Yeah, many species spend their whole day trying not to get eaten
by another species. - Almost everything on planet Earth. - [Brian] Exactly. - Or is so hungry, it
is desperately trying to hunt enough food to
make it through the day. That is, and then if they do find it, great for one more day,
and if not they get caught by something else that's
trying to eat them and then it's just over painfully. - [Brian] Yep. - That's just, that's-- - [Brian] And we have it pretty good. - There's a grimness to
this, but there's also, if anything I think it definitely
is something that can be, this is what human
beings bring to the world is that we've kind of
started to get rid of that. - [Brian] Yeah. - If there's one thing
civilization has managed it's that we're no longer,
at least some of us have broken the cycle,
and we hopefully can get everybody else out of the cycle. - Yeah.
- So. - What age were you when you
were having these realizations? - 15.
- 15. - The Jim Henson started
at 13 and it was about 15 when I was like oh no, I'm
not doing this anymore, I'm just gonna lean into who I am and let the chips fall where they may. - Did you find other people that, 'cause that's a young age, in my opinion, to be having a lot of those realizations. - It was very young. - Were you thinking about
a lot of those things? Because when I was that age, I was like where am I gonna get a dime bag and new wheels for my skateboard. - I was already doing it. I mean like, and I grew
up with a bunch of people in their 50s and 60s,
I was already starting to go to funerals, I was watching people who were huge influences
on my life as a child die, I mean like, I've been
to a lot of funerals, and almost everybody who knew me before the age of 13 is dead now. - Wow. - Most of my experiential friends, and not all of them, but
enormous number of them, are just, they were old. - Yeah. - And they're gone. They partied hard. - Yeah. They lived full lives, really. But growing up with those kind
of influences in your life, I can tell from knowing you, you can see the benefit of that, I think it also helped
you like we talked about avoid a lot of those pitfalls
that child actors end up-- - It was nice knowing happy
people in their 60s, yeah. It was good to see like, okay, whatever the fuck you did
seemed to work out okay. - [Brian] Yeah. - And a lot of that was
have money, but. (laughs) - Yeah, right, exactly. - Working on, some days
are better than others. - Yeah, true. So you found people immediately that were sort of at that same place
as you were around that age. - I went to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was very helpful at that time, and most of my experiences
there were positive. Obviously everybody has
some negative experiences in that kind of environment, but I met a reasonable amount of
like-minded reasonable people who were looking to do something a little off the beaten
path, whatever that was, and that was very helpful,
and some of those people I'm still friends with today. I mean, it's been 25
years and we're still, I still know where they are,
they still know where I am, and we still do things together. - [Brian] Yeah. - I don't know if it's
still such a good place to find people like that,
but definitely at the time, it was a revelation. - Yeah. - And that's where a lot of the goth kids coming out of LA and
the valley came through, and we definitely, kinda met the people
and I started moving out and like living not quite on my own, but with roommates in Los Angeles, 'cause I don't know how anyone
lives on their own in LA, it's so expensive. - Yeah, it's expensive and it's hard, it's a hard city to live in alone. Yeah. - And some of my best
friends came out of that. - You're somebody that always has a strong sense of community. - Mm. - So I'm listening to--
- That's helping. - I'm listening to you talk about your family situation was a community. A fucking crazy awesome
one, but still a community. - But very crazy, and amazing
people who were always, I got to meet amazing people
and I got to spend time and have conversations with just strikingly intelligent, brilliant people who have done good work. I got to meet Terry Southern,
I got to meet fucking, I mean like, so many. - [Brian] Yeah, I mean the
fact that Roddy McDowall came and did-- - Oh yeah, Roddy was around a lot. - [Brian] Dubbing for you is crazy. - Tuesday Weld was around a lot, I got to spend time with
Elizabeth Taylor and Gregory Peck, and I'll also say, my
grandparents took me to New York for a few weeks at one
point, and they were like we're going to, they were very specific, they were like we're gonna
give you an experience out here because we want you to imprint this, 'cause this is the goal. - Hmm. - This is the life we want
you to have available to you, and so you're going to
spend several weeks, and what I would do is during the day I would go out with them and like, we met George Plimpton,
and like we'd go to museums and meet the Gershwins, for god's sake, I mean we'd go to these
lavish, interesting parties, and then at night I would
go out and goth club. (laughs)
- Wow, best of both worlds. - And get wasted in
Manhattan and Brooklyn. Yeah, and it was very much,
they were like this is, I just want to imprint
this for you as the goal. - [Brian] Yeah. - And this is the community
you want to build, this is the life you want to have. - [Brian] Yeah. - They were very good about that. - Yeah, you went from family community to you had this also
community of older people, in and out of the business,
that were you know, speaking to your life, and
then you had found at a time of real transition in your life
the community of goth kids. - Well, yeah, and my grandparents
had lifelong friends. Like my grandmother was still friends with her friends from
high school and college, my grandfather a little less so, but he had his work friends,
and his work friends, the people he had worked
with and partied with when he was a big partier at the time, were good lifelong people
and took care of each other. So it was a good model. - You had that example set for you, yeah. - Like that's where I wanna be in my 60s. - Yeah, same. Yeah, you'll be fine. You know everybody, and
everybody loves you. I just need to get the Malibu beach house and everything is-- - Yeah, well-- - The colony, gotta get
a place in the colony. (laughing) - I would offer to help you with that, but I've been busted for credit
card fraud so many times, I don't know how much money
I'll be able to pull together. - Colony is amazing. That is the one time I've
been in an unbelievably swank rich neighborhood and been like, I would live here, this is really nice. Every other one I'm like,
this is a little pretentious and bullshit, and then I went
there and I'm like (gasping). - The neighbors would see you moving in and call the cops immediately. - Oh man, I got to take some
of my unscrupulous friends to the colony a couple times and like stay in a beach house for the weekend, it was the best shit, it
was the best shit, oh. - I can't imagine the amount of SPF 9000 you must have to put on to
lay out at a beach house. Because you sleep in
coffin every night, right? - Well I mean like, I've
got several spread out across the city, you gotta... But you know, when you're from Venice, you can just move that, that's dirt that's easy to get ahold of. - That's true. - And like, just for
people who don't know, the colony is a set of 200 houses in a private gated community.
- Yeah, community. - And those houses are almost all rentals and they usually are
rented to people who are disturbingly rich.
- Yeah, Beyonce rich. - Yeah, I saw Sting down there once, it's very much that kinda place. - Really?
- Yeah. - [Brian] Sounds like a kind of a place Sam Riegel would hang out. - Eww. Yeah, that's why we don't go there. - That's why we don't go. - I'm trying to, who were
we visting that time? I'm trying to, oh, it was-- - Gary Busey. - No, oh, I wish. Once, but no, no. - I met Gary Busey once. - I met Gary Busey once too. It was weird-- - Enough it was, yeah it was enough. (laughing) - Also in Malibu. - Oh, really? Yeah, he's over there. - No, it was Walter Mathau's house. - [Brian] Oh, really? - Walter and Carol Mathau. - [Brian] Was he still alive at the time? - Oh yes, yes. - [Brian] You got to hang out with him? - I knew him pretty well. - And Gregory Peck? - Oh yeah, I knew a lot of people. - [Brian] That's crazy. - I know, it was phenom,
it was a great reality that makes no goddamn sense anymore. - No, it doesn't. And I feel like there's
so many legends back then, I do wonder about, you know,
who are the legends of our time that we'll talk about that way? - Oh, I know. - Oh, I was at Matthew
McConaughey's house when I was 16. (laughing) Tt was a back yard wrestling tournament that day at his house. (upbeat jazz music) - So you decide to quit
after Baywatch happens. (laughing) - So fucking true. - Although I'm upset that
I can't go into YouTube and search Taliesin Jaffe Baywatch. - I can remember that moment so well. I remember everything
in that moment of like, nope, no, I'm out. That's right. - That's a good one to end on. - I can say I'm done, I'm done. - Yeah. But what did you do between quitting that and then deciding, okay,
I still want to act, but I wanna do voiceover's
attractive to me. - Well, I didn't want to be in voiceover. I had a friend at the time, Nick Dubar, he was really into anime and
we would watch it together, and we had a few other friends
who were kind of in our little anime nerd club. I still talk to a couple
of them at Ricky Simon's, a few of them went into the business and make comic books now.
- Yeah. - And I just got really, again, my brain was really into the idea of how do you break this down,
how do you make this work, got obsessed with figuring
out how to do this. And so I made a demo, I made
that demo with Roddy McDowall, of this VO dub, and after shopping that
around for a while, someone took pity on me
and let me direct a few really low--
- Obscure. - Deeply obscure anime, and I made dubs
for Pioneer Entertainment, and I slowly kind of built a
reputation as the weird guy who does the weird shit, so,
'cause my stuff definitely sounded different than everybody else's because I was approaching it
from a very different place. - Because, you think that was influenced by how big of a fan you were of anime? - It was influenced because
I was coming at it from a technical acting standpoint of like, why are these performances not landing, what is it that feels off about this? Things that people are complaining, oftentimes when you see people complain about something in a film,
what they're complaining about is not what they think
they're complaining about, if that makes sense. - Yeah, yeah. - Like if they're saying this performance, the beat's here really weird, you're not complaining about the acting, you're complaining about the editing. - So when I say that I absolutely hate Ben Affleck in Batman Versus Superman-- - You're an asshole is what I'm saying. - Oh, okay. (laughing) We knew that going in. - No matter, you can fix that. (laughing) I feel bad. - So then you're directing,
so then how do you end up getting on the other side of the mic? - Honestly just occasionally
because I hire somebody who can't quite do it-- - You'd have to step in. - I start stepping in,
and then at some point I start doing it in other shows, and it just is sort of a slow roll. And you direct long
enough, you should pick up how this works. - Right, yeah. - And I do eventually. And I was an actor and I
was trained, and you know, I've done theater and I was still doing a little bit of theater on the side, and it was like okay, I don't
know if I can make a living doing this, but this is fun and I like it, and it's low-key and
I can fuck up my hair, and I don't have to do,
there's a whole bunch of stuff that you normally have to
do for on-camera acting that I don't have to do here,
so it's the stuff I like about acting, and part
of it with the acting was also I knew I was never really going to be the guy on
a horse in full armor doing like dumb shit. - Probably not. Yeah. - It was like, I'm aware of the kinda
parts I'm gonna play, I don't wanna play those parts. - [Brian] Yeah. - I'm kinda done. But I get to be the guy in
the armor on the horse now. - Exactly. Did part of you miss the actual acting that you did as a child? Was it like you enjoyed that, you enjoyed the performance art aspect of it, you didn't care for celebrity
and a lot of the stuff that people get hung
up on as a child actor, but did you miss playing characters and really embodying somebody else? - Yeah. I missed making interesting decisions and having, I mean, but I loved writing, and I got a lot out of that, although very little of anything
I wrote ever got produced. - Yeah. Well, that's how it works, right? - It's just a pile of good D&D characters. - Some of them could still come out. - Oh yeah, they do. (laughing) and directing is really, oh god, if there's anything I miss right now, I really miss directing.
- Really? - I love, I mean like-- - Do you like the
collaborative aspect of it with working with other people? Do you like shaping something
from page to screen? - I love actors. Actors are the fucking best. - You're the anti-George Lucas. - Yeah. No, I mean, and poor George is, but like, a lot of
directors I meet these days don't have the slightest
fucking clue how actors work or what to do, they're just like and act. And like, say it like this! And then you're like oh lord. - Give you line reads versus, yeah. - And being able, and like
I've had so many actors, like I've been in a booth with people and we've been workshopping
something and getting it work, and I've had so many actors
just have that moment of what the fuck is that? Oh my god, that's so
interesting, can we do that? I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it. And found so much, it's such
a thrill finding something with somebody in that way,
and finding something new, and oh god, this is so craft, this is so behind the voice acting. - [Brian] Tell me now. - So one of the things I
love is script readings, and I would somethings
write something and then, poor Laura and Travis,
was it Laura and Travis? Got to go to my script reading ages ago for some pilot I wrote
that I was very proud of. Never got made. - Is it on tape? - No. Actually maybe. I took 'em to this weird
house in Malibu, it was great. - You keep taking people
to weird houses in Malibu. - It's what I do. - Yet they all keep coming
out alive, it's so weird, but I wonder how transformed
they are in the process. - I'm getting better. One day I'll lose one. But yeah, I had this script that I wrote and I had this character
and I had an actor come in, and sat down and read what I wrote, and found something in
it that I hadn't seen. - [Brian] Mm. - And I've never had, and
like, watching an actor take a script, read it,
and then as a writer going, well, I have to go rewrite everything now, 'cause you just changed, I don't even know if you're gonna be the person who plays this part, but you just fucking changed everything. - [Brian] Yeah. - 'Cause whatever it is that
you brought is so interesting, and it was here that I missed. - Yeah. - It's that collaboration,
it's finding things in people, it's bringing people
on emotional journeys, god, I just love watching
people sculpt these, especially people who
are really good at it, and I love watching
young actors get better, I love watching people get
better at things, it's just-- - Yeah, it's fulfilling. (upbeat jazz music) What's your favorite voiceover
performance you've done? - I'm a nerd, I got to play
the Flash in Justice 2, that's, I will play a
superhero any fucking time, I love superheroes. - I play so many games
where a villain comes up and I think to myself they
should've got Taliesin. - I love playing villains. I love playing villains so much. - Yeah, because I feel like the way you approach characters is-- - I love writing villains. - Yeah, and the way you
approach a character is okay, here's the sort of usual tropes or here's what people
would expect from someone who is this, looks like this,
sounds like this, et cetera, I'm gonna remove all those
pieces and then add in a lot of unexpected things. - Oh yeah, I love, and like,
I get obsessed with it. There's definitely some
auditions I've turned in that have definitely been like,
I'm never gonna get hired, but man I'm proud of what I just did. - But you wanted to make a choice. - It was so fucking, yeah, it was like I made some choices, motherfucker. - [Brian] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You asked for choices, you got 'em. (laughs) - They're probably at home
listening going what is this? - What the fuck is this shit? I'm like (shouts)! I know this character
better than you know. (laughing) - Speaking of, how does that, so the voiceover
community is also another, so you're jumping from
community, community, community-- - Oh yeah.
- Throughout your life. The voiceover community is a
very small, tight-knit group in Los Angeles. Everybody pretty much knows each other-- - [Taliesin] We take care of each other. - Yeah, you know, we see
a lot of the same people, a lot of the same stuff that we go to. And definitely a group that
looks out for each other. And then that's how you end up meeting some of the people that end
up on Critical Role with you, and starting in that home game. - I'd like to think I
have an eye for talent, one of the other things I used to do was I was a casting director. My mother was a casting director, I was casting assistant for a while. - And your mother was an acting coach too. - She was an acting coach, manager, casting director,
actress, she worked a lot. Last things was a high
school theater teacher. - [Brian] Wow. - In her retirement. - She had a lot of
eccentric clothing choices from her kids she had to support. - Well, you know, we had needs, all of us. (laughs) But I've been in voiceover
longer than just about everybody, longer than anybody in Critical
Role, so I got to watch Matt Mercer happen, I got to
watch Laura and Travis happen, I got to watch Sam and Liam happen. I less got to watch Ashley happen 'cause she was happening
in a different corner of my reality. - Were you working in
Dallas around the same time that Travis and Laura were
starting up over there? 'Cause I know you had met them-- - So they had kind of already, they were both already kind of conquering, I ended up in Dallas for a year, I'm very good friends
with a director out there who's now out here named
Chris Bevens, who is kind of one of the more experimental
directors out of Funimation, and I was kind of in a
weird place in my life at that moment, I didn't
really know what I was doing, and he was like, you wanna, we picked up this show called Beck. I'm like I know Beck, Beck's a great show, I pity the poor fucker
that has to dub that, that thing's a nightmare. - [Brian] Yeah. - He's like you wanna come do it? - I'm like, okay. And so I packed my life into
my car, drove to Dallas, and lived on Clarion
Hart's couch for a year. - Wow. - Dubbing, one of the most
pleasant dubbing experiences in my life was dubbing Beck by Chop Squad, and that's where I met
Laura and Travis, and Troy, and just, Sabrina Plant, just
a huge talent pool out there, really talented people. - [Brian] Yeah. - And then when Laura
and Travis, on that show, I met them both while I was out there, but when they made the move to LA, I cast them, or pushed to have them cast in the Street Fighter games. - Oh yeah. - So that was kind of a, like,
oh god, we have these people? Yes, yes, yes.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Sam's been around,
Liam's been around-- - Sam and Liam, well,
I got Liam's demo tape, it was a VHS demo tape, when he was first moving out here. - Do you still have it? - Oh, somewhere, yeah. - Let's find it. - It's amazing, it's cuts of an anime called Boogie Pop Phantom, which is-- - [Brian] Whoa. - He's very good in, he's very good. - [Brian] I can imagine,
he's good in everything. - They both were very talented. - Yeah. - I think Crispin Freedman
gave me their demos, and then I hired them
both to be in a cartoon that I'm very proud of called ROD the TV. - Oh yeah. - Where they played brothers. They were unnamed brothers
in the first two episodes, and we just in the script called them Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so. - Yeah, of course. - But they were both phenomenal. And I was a very big fan of
Liam's Boogie Pop Phantom, I thought he was horrifically
talented at the time. (upbeat jazz music) - Then you get invited to this home game that is now this sort of, you
know, nerd culture phenomenon, who would've ever thought? - Well I mean, I had already
been playing for a couple years with Matt, 'cause he had
a different home game. - Different game with a few other show bizzy types and friends. - Yeah, it was a slightly less
VO and more eclectic group, and it was a good game,
it was a lot of fun. Different kinda game. He also was co-DMing,
which was an interesting, I really enjoyed it, but like, it meant that NPCs could
have long conversations with each other.
- Oh yeah. - Which was always, all the
players would just be going. - [Brian] I guess we'll go
to the bathroom right now. - Yep, this is happening. - [Brian] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - As the NPCs argue. That was a very fun
game that hopped around for quite a long while, and then, yeah, this game, I was literally, I mean I knew everybody involved, I was literally called in like we need somebody to be a ringer. I was very much the, you know the rules, you can make sure that
no one does anything. It's not that worried that
anyone would do anything stupid, it's just to remind
everybody that they can, how the game is played. - Yeah, another person
there to encourage people in the right direction. - Yeah, yeah. 'Cause the only two people
who really knew how to play were me and Marisha, so
we were kind of the-- - Yeah.
(squeaks) Yeah. - Push in the right direction. - You were only, really
would consider yourself close to sort of just Matt and
Marisha at the time, right? - Matt and Marisha I was
very close with at the time. I was very friendly with everybody else, but we weren't, I mean like,
were just sort of different-- - Not a real family like everyone is now. - No, no. Matt and I were very very close and had been friends for quite a while, and then when Marisha got
brought into the group, she is the fucking best, so it
was very easy to be like, ah, new best friend. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - We like you.
- Yeah. - We were a little him at
first, and then it was. I miss having a room to
bring everybody into, like I miss people being
brought into a private room, and like, oh my god, what's happening? - [Brian] For the whispers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Or like that one time
Travis got transported into the Feywild and we're
like, we still don't know what the fuck happened, he was
like out in the living room. - Yeah, for 20 minutes, you
guys just ate artichoke dip. - Yeah, in the previous game
I had gotten pulled in one, me and our friend Chloe
had been pulled into like, the realm of Azmodius,
and we're fighting demons where like the rest of the
group were eating Doritos and doing fuck all.
(laughing) - Everyone's checking Twitter, yeah. - Ah!
- Yeah. - This shit is insane! - Do you miss the home game vibe? Where it's a little bit
more, there's less pressure, because you know, you
don't, when you go home from a home game you don't have-- - I don't know if people
notice this online, I do my best to kind of ignore
(laughs) the outside world. I don't tweet a ton, I'm
not on Twitter a lot, I don't want to say I ignore the cameras, 'cause I don't, they're there, but I definitely treat
the cameras as like, a friend sitting in the room.
- Hmm. - And I don't, you know, every
now and then I will like, acknowledge that they're
there and be like, this shit, it's crazy.
- Yeah. - But like I'm not really
interacting with it. I miss some of the food, the food was-- - Buffalo chicken dip
that Laura would make? - Ah, the cream cheese, it
was cranberry cream cheese, with toast, it's like breakfast. I miss the all day games. - Yeah, the marathon brunch games? Yeah. - Yeah, and I miss being
brought into the other room. Otherwise, I feel like we've held on-- - [Brian] Maintained, yeah. - Like it's maintained
pretty fucking well. - That actually leads into
what I was wondering about. The success of the show has seemed to only make everyone closer. It's like everyone went, we
have no idea what's happening, we didn't plan on this,
we don't really know how to navigate these waters. Whatever we do, we have to make sure this thing stays as pure and
as close to the original, yeah. - Any good D&D game
will bring people closer if you're doing it this way, so. - Yeah, it's an analog adventure, sort of, in a digital world. - I'm always, I mean,
I know a lot of people, and I know a lot of people pretty well, and my theory is, I
call the orbital theory, which is that you're only really capable just through the sheer amount of there's only so many
hours in the goddamn week that you can be super super
close to only so many people. It's maybe like five or
six people you can be really really close to. - [Brian] Yeah. - Just there's not enough
time to be that close to more people.
- Right. - And then you can be pretty
close to like another 10. - [Brian] Mm. - And then you can be okay
friends with like another 10, and then there's a
bunch of people you know who you're very fond acquaintances of, and that's just how it's gonna be, and you have to be okay with that, and then every now and then
somebody in that close orbit is going to zoom to the
outer orbit or otherwise for reasons that are beyond our control, and suddenly there's a vacuum and then somebody from the outer
orbit, and so I have a lot of, I mean, I've always
through my life had people in the outer orbit I'm like one day, one day we're gonna spend some time, it's gonna be fucking great.
- Yeah. - We're gonna have like
two years where we're really fucking close and
I'm looking forward to it. - [Brian] Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I don't know when that day's gonna be, but like, and there's
tons of people who like, you're just waiting for the right moment that I'm gonna be seeing you twice a week, it's gonna be amazing.
- Yeah. And with you guys, it's interesting, because we all spend
so much time together, and it's funny because people will ask when you get back from a convention and when you get back from,
you know, a trip or something, and it's like are you guys
all sick of each other yet? And I always tell 'em no,
I feel like we get closer every time we go somewhere, because-- - [Taliesin] Yeah. - We're all sort of figuring
out how to navigate this thing one step at a time, we're
all figuring it out together, but there's such a, like with
you, you have these pillars, you have these core things about you that will never change, thankfully. - No, they're very solid. - And I feel like with the
show and with the group, I haven't seen anyone budge
on any of those things, and that's why I think
everyone has remained so close. - And most of us have
experienced some modicum of fame, before the game even started,
and so we kind of knew what were in for. I did the fame thing
when I was a teenager, and with Mr. Mom and 2010 and the acting, and I got all illusions
of that out of the way. - Yeah. - [Taliesin] And got a sense
of like, oh no, this is the bad part of the work.
- Right. - Well, not bad, but this is
not the good part of the work, I suppose would be the better answer. This is not the thing that's fulfilling, this is a thing that's exhausting. And here are the ways that
you can make it delightful and here are the ways that
you can make it positive, but this is not the reward. The reward lies elsewhere. If you think this is the
reward, you're gonna get, it's like eating the
packaging on the food. It's really pretty, someone
worked very hard on it, but you're not supposed
to consume the damn shit. - Yeah, the reward's in
the relationship, really. - The reward's in the work and the people you're doing the work
with, and the reward is in the best work and again, the
people directly in there, and then anything else is,
you can make the best of it, and it's phenomenal knowing that everyone is enjoying this and is touched by this and there's good that
can come out of this, but it should never be the point. - Yeah, the focus. - And you should never,
you can't think about it, you can't make that the point,
because then you get weird. And I've watched people get weird, I mean like, it's a thing that happens. I've got plenty of friends who cracked. - Yeah. - And if you can do it
right, it's very grounding and very positive, but a lot
of people don't understand what the cost of it is.
- Yeah, yeah. - It's a fair cost, but it is a cost. - But it is a cost, yeah. (upbeat jazz music) I have seen everyone grow-- - Oh yeah. - Since the show started. - This has been so good for my work. - Yeah, what have you
learned about role playing, abut improv, and about sort
of acting and when to-- - I learned that improv is
actually useful for something. - Yeah, yeah. - Which is something I did not believe. - Right, right, yeah.
(laughing) Unless you're going to a improv
sports dinner theater, yeah. - It is the flypaper of acting. It's like ah, this is fun,
I can do this forever, and like, oh god, I'm still
at the improv 20 years later, what happened to my life?
- Yeah, that's true, yeah. - Improv is one of those skills that like, it's good develop, and it's very useful, but a lot people decide that
that's everything that there is and then never leave, which
is weird little lotus flower. - [Brian] Yeah. - Oh my god, yeah, I've
become a better actor. - Hmm. - I've gotten faster on my
feet, it's sharpened my skills, it's made me think about character. I already thought about character, now I think about character
much more strongly. It's helped with my writing. - Yeah, in what way? - Watching the natural
flow of events that happens when you have creative people
just moving that story forward has given me a better sense of how
to move story forward and how to let people be people, and also just watching
very very different minds be clever and be funny and
be interesting is always-- - And make mistakes. - Oh yeah, mistakes are, I mean-- - Some of the funniest-- - That's all that good
fiction is is mistakes. No one wants to read the
story of somebody who did everything right all the time. - Yeah. - That's dull. - No, that's boring. You create memorable characters, and I'm thinking about,
just in the D&D world alone, we've talked so much about Percy, we've talked so much about Molly, and now Caduceus is on the scene. - Yeah. - How important is it for you, you know, we talked before about how Molly really resonated
with a lot of people, and I said that that was a testament to your heart and personality
that put into characters. How important is it for you to go, I want this person to
have some of my qualities, or, you know, if I'm playing a character, I want it to be a completely
isolated and separate person? - I don't believe in
isolated and separate people. So, Percy definitely
has a lot of me in him. - Meaning anything that you will play or that you will create will inevitably have something of you in it. - We're complicated
mechanisms, human beings, and a lot of Percy came
from questions about myself and a lot of Percy came from, I mean, Percy was originally a script. - Yeah, I remember you saying that. - It was a question I
kinda asked metaphorically that kind of turned into a character that kind of grew from there, but-- - What questions about
yourself did he come from? - What is the person and the bargain that I can love and relate to that when offered, I can give you this thing to satisfy a very base feeling in you, and in return, 10,000
people you'll never meet are going to die. And it was very much like,
I want to find a person I can love who can say yes to
that, and it was very much, he was kind of the beginning of a person, and the original story that
I wrote was very much the I'm consigning the future to this inevitable negativity in return for my own personal satisfaction. - Wow. - Much more flowy at the time, and then for Percy, it became
how do I make this a person, how do I find a positive
resolution for this character? My belief for a long time
was that there is none. It's like, once you have
somebody who makes this decision, very much in the same way like
Nobel being a good example of like somebody who did
something fucking terrible. - [Brian] Mm-hmm. - And the repercussions of
which we are still living with, and sure anybody could've done it, and anybody would, but like-- - But not unredeemable. - I mean, well that's the
question, is he unredeemable, is a person like this, at what point, what is redemption and
where does that come from and where does peace
come from once you know that you have fucked up that badly, and when you know that you're
a person who, in that moment, will make the wrong call. It was really interesting,
and I couldn't believe that I found a resolution for it. - [Brian] Yeah. - But then with like Molly,
Molly was never gonna change. That was not a character
looking for anything, that was a character who, Percy was Iron Man.
- Mm-hmm. - He was like, I'm a
fuck up, I need to find some resolution to myself. Molly was Captain America, which was that the world is going to have
to resolve itself around me. - [Brian] Right, right. - Because I am never going to change. This is not what Captain America does. Captain America forces the
world to contort around him until it breaks.
- Yeah. - This is how a person acts!
- Yeah. - And so very much in the
Priscilla Queen of the Desert vein, it was going to be this, no! No no no no no! No! Every goddamn moment, and I
was looking forward to seeing how many situations I could
get to and just go like no! No, fuck off!
- Yeah. - And Caduceus is very similar
where it's going to be, although since I was rushed.
- Yeah, right. - Lord. I'm still trying to figure him out, but he's a lot of the same questions and just from the opposite direction. So I think he's got shit
kind of figured out, and so it's going to be
him forcing the world to contort to him.
- Interesting. - In a similar way.
- Yeah. - Yeah, not a character
looking for anything, but a character instead
who's just going to work the world around him as opposed to be warped by the world. - What do you start with? Do you start with ideas? Do you start with bonds? Do you start, and I'm not
talking in the traditional sense, but as--
- Percy started with a script, Molly started with a friend of mine, a friend of mine named Burning Dan, who is a fascinating cat,
you can read about online, who's sadly passed on as well. But was a friend of mine who
kind of, at a certain age, he was an IT guy, and then
at a certain age he was like, this is bullshit, and
just threw it all way and started over and became imaginary in this very complicated way.
- Yeah. - And it was fun and fascinating to watch, and it was really interesting
watching this person sort of become a minor
deity in his own reality. (laughs) - And he was a big influence on Molly. - He was a huge influence, I
mean there were several people who were a huge influence on Molly, he was definitely one of them. He was the brightest of them. There were a few other
darker friends of mine who were very creative people,
who were very passionate and very, that's my polite way of saying they slept around a lot, appropriately. - Yeah, passionate. - But who were tortured by
that and definitely not, didn't do as well emotionally from that, and then a few of my friends
who were also going through similar awakenings of emotional self. A lot of him came from
that nervous breakdown in high school, very much
the just fucking do it, and it'll be fine, and there
are things about that character I still can't talk
about, because they may-- - Yeah, I know. That's interesting. It's funny to me because
I remember talking to you about Percy and some of
the people in your life too that influenced that character, and a lot of people will
approach a character they create and they'll draw from, if you ask them some of the influences or some
of the people or characters that they thought about
when creating the character, they'll reference other
fictional characters in examples. For you, it's always people
that have been in your life that have passed through at some point. - Always real people. - [Brian] Or that still
have a part of your life. - I'm not as interested
in fictional people. Yeah, people are far more interesting and far more complicated, and someone hasn't sat and
deciphered them already, they're a little more mysterious
than fictional people. - [Brian] Right, a lot more unpredictable. - Yeah, and you can start
to get these kind of, you can learn a lot from it, I don't know. I definitely, I learned a lot from Percy. (laughs) (upbeat jazz music) - What makes you comfortable in saying I'm ready to start playing this character? What attributes do they need to have? - This is so actor wanky. - Give it to me. Wank it all over me. - This is gonna be so
wank, all over the bar. I like--
- We have towels. - Do we, do we?
- And Max. - We have straps of leather, and Max. - We have straps of leather and Max. - There's little chunks
of leather back there. - It sounds like it's
gonna be a good afternoon. - It's gonna be a party. I like having a fundamental question of like, what is this person looking for, what has this person lost,
or how is this person broken, or what do I want to,
I mean like I remember when my grandfather died, I was very lost, and the phrase that
popped up several times is I don't know who
I'm impressing anymore, and I didn't know what to do. I was very, very depressed. - Was it important for you
to have someone to impress? - Well, I didn't know it. I mean, I didn't know. The human mind is mysterious
and filled with pitfalls, and thankfully, I've had
many opportunities in my life to be reminded that I
do not know my own mind. - Well so many of our
actions are subconscious. - They are, and it's
one thing to know that and it's another thing to
have it proved to yourself. - [Brian] Yeah. - And I've had several
wonderful opportunities to be proven like, you do not
know the depths of whatever's, there's an ocean and there's
shit happening down there, and there's some fucking
Loch Ness monster shit, and you just gotta be prepared, you know. What's that Johnny Cash
song, The Beast in Me? It was like shit's gonna go down sometimes and you're not gonna be ready for it. - Hmm. - And you're not gonna
know where it came from, but I assure you, it's in you. - Hmm. - Yeah, and definitely,
I mean I've dealt with a lot of death, and I don't want to say I'm used to the process, but
I know what it feels like, I know how to cope with it, pretty successfully, and I
definitely was not prepared for this apathy.
- Wow. - Intense, intense, like what's
the fucking point anymore, I've gotta figure out what the point is, 'cause I was apparently
trying to show off, and I didn't know that, but
apparently I was, you know. - [Brian] Yeah, yeah. - Now there's nothing to--
- There's a void there. - Yeah, there's no audience. What's the fucking point? - So how did you end up finding a way to overcome or combat that
feeling and that sentiment of needing to impress? I feel like it comes with an understanding of accepting who you are.
- It's all internal. - And that you need to. - Yeah, it's that moment of, it's a mix of a couple things, it's one, and this is so trite,
but it's irritatingly true, which is you have to
internalize all these processes, you have to get really good
at being your own audience. - [Brian] Hmm. - And you have to be really
good at being your own judge of what's interesting
and what's worthwhile, and the less emotional
work that you can farm out to things outside of yourself,
the less likely they are to be interfered with by
things that you cannot control. - Yeah, that's good advice. - So yeah, Harry Potter did it well, what's it called, the
things that Voldemort had, the little-- - I'm only on the third book. - Whack. It's literature, read it. No, but like-- - I'm working on it, I'm busy. - I love that metaphor,
because he's a character who has put aspects of
himself out externally, which means that there's these things that are giving him a
whole bunch of energy that are outside of
himself, but it also means they're all really fucking vulnerable to a bunch of kids come
over and going fuck you. (squishes)
- Yeah. - And that's true. That is such a good metaphor of like, if he had just absorbed all that shit, there would've been
nothing anybody could do, but he had externalized all of his shit. - You can only do that so much before you're spread too thin. - Well, and it just makes you vulnerable. Like if you're that concerned
with what people think of you, the stranger can come up to you and just say something to
you, and that can ruin you? I mean that's so-- - Your skin's not thick enough. - You're so vulnerable,
you're so vulnerable. - Yeah, yeah. - I don't want any stranger to be able to fuck with my feeling
of self-esteem, god no. - No, you've worked too hard. - No, this is hard. There's been a lot of shopping involved. (laughs) - Yeah, that's true. - Yeah, I wanna be okay when someone inevitably says something shitty to me, I wanna be able to like,
well fuck you too, Jesus. - Yeah, and bounce it off. - God, a mother raised you, Jesus Christ. (laughing) Give her a slap. (upbeat jazz music) - What type of stories get to you? What type of stories move you? - I was raised on '60s pop, so
I like weird, introspective, I have a terrible-- - We've talked about Wrist Cutters. - Oh man, I fuckin' love
Wrist Cutters so much. - I know, I know. - It's so good. - [Brian] Not a lot people know about it, but they should find out. - So my fuckin' jam.
- Yeah. - God, did you ever see O Lucky Man? - Yes. - That was a big movie for me growing up. The Man in the $1000 Suit. I love weird, I mean
the '60s are really my, I was raised by pop '60s
kids, it was really, I love anything sad, I love something sad, like Brazil, any good Terry Gilliam. - Brazil.
- Tragedy. - Yeah. - That was a good one. - Why sad? - Oh god, what's the Doctor Who, sad is happy for deep people,
that's such a shitty-- - Sad is happy for deep people? - It's such a shitty line,
but I love it so much. - That's a bumper sticker
for someone who drives a car that lives in the colony in Malibu. - Yeah, I feel that despair
is an intensely important feeling, I like artificially
inducing it in myself so that I can be better
prepared for it later. - How do you artificially
induce despair into your-- - Brazil. (laughing) - By watching something
that brings that out in you. It's interesting. - Angels with Dirty Faces, Chinatown, yeah, there's a series of-- - I have a list of films like that, Things We Lost in the
Fire, Requiem for a Dream. - Oh, I can't watch that
anymore, that wrecked me. I saw that with my roommate, Hannah, and-- - [Brian] Really? - And oh yeah, we were like,
well, that happened, oh god. (laughing) - I watched it with a few friends of mine that I grew up with and lived
sort of a similar lifestyle to and when we got done-- - That movie sobered a lot of people up. And it also sent a lot of
people right back into drugs. - Yeah, exactly, it was
very, yeah, catapults went in both directions when
it came to that movie. - I need to get high right now, oh god. (laughing) - Yeah, that was a dumbed down version of my teenage years. - I genuinely, Short Bus is mine that's a dumbed down version,
Perks of Being a Wallflower. I genuinely, I used to judge
people for owning a copy of Requiem for a Dream. - Really?
- Yeah. If I saw it on your shelf, I
would literally turn to and go why do you own that?
- Really? - Would you come home after work like boy, it's been a long
day, I'm gonna sit down, open up a beer, put on Requiem for a Dream and just chill out for the weekend. Like what? I understand seeing it
once, but why twice? Why do you want to feel that way twice? - Yeah.
- Good god. - It's interesting to--
(laughing) It's so funny though,
because for some people it probably pulls out the same things that Brazil does for you.
- Oh yeah. - But it is hard to understand because it's such an extreme example. - It's such an extreme film. It's a brilliant film. Of the Aronofsky ones, I'll
say The Fountain is my Brazil. - I only recently saw
The Fountain, and I-- - It went over a lot people's heads, but I find a lot of good
lessons in it about-- - Oh, it's beautiful,
and it does that thing that like really, there's a
type of art that's kind of, what was it, static art? It's static art, where
I like, watching it, I can actually feel that
tingling sensation of like I am receiving information
from a higher place, whatever that may be. - Right, I don't quite understand
it yet, but I'm learning. - Every time I see it,
there's something new. and I'm feeling something new, and I'm making some new insight into it, and there's a lot here,
and I'm only capable of taking so much of it.
- Yeah. (upbeat jazz music) You've had an incredibly
full and interesting and affecting life so far. - Thank you, it's a little
disturbing on occasion. - What's, I mean, what
could possibly be left on the list of stuff that
you haven't experienced yet that you can't wait to? - I asked that four years ago,
and now I'm doing a D&D show. (laughing) - Oh yeah, that's true, right? - What the fuck do I do now? It's like well, I'm doing this now. - [Brian] I know, who could've expected? - Yeah, I mean like A Lucky Man
is such a good film in that. Actually, I feel like A Lucky Man is, it's not my favorite film by
any stretch of the imagination, it's also way too long.
- Yeah. - Nor is it Harold and
Maude, which is also-- - Harold and Maude's the best. - Just came to my mind.
- Yeah. - [Taliesin] That movie made me-- - Beautifully disturbing in so many ways. - Ruth Gordon, I'll watch
Ruth Gordon do anything. - Yeah, exactly. - So hot. (laughing) Ruth Gordon's hot! I'm just putting it out there. - Hot take, Ruth Gordon,
give me a calendar of Ruth Gordon any day of the week. - Ruth Gordon is who I want
to be dating in my 60s, man. - Yeah. - Life is long and strange, and
I keep saying yes to things. I don't know, it's-- - But you seem happy with those choices. - They're choices.
- Yeah. - Choices are way better
than not choosing. Not choosing just means that you're at the whims of circumstance,
and sometimes you are and it's inevitable, and
I've had some shitty times, I've had plenty of shitty times. - Yeah. - I've got weird chemical
imbalances that send me skyrocketing. I had a depressive episode a week ago, it was thankfully short
and I'm medicated and I'm-- - I mean, dude, my wiring has been all fucked up for ages,
so I know exactly-- - I'll sit there and
think I'm shit for a week. That happens all the time.
- Yeah. - But-- - You're the only person sitting there thinking that Taliesin
Jaffe is shit though. - Thankfully no,
thankfully there are people out in the world who
think I'm shitty and have legitimate reasons for thinking so, I just know them all personally, anybody who doesn't know
me who thinks I'm shit is full of shit.
- Yeah, exactly. - No, there's a couple
people who genuinely like, he did this and this, and
I'm like yeah, that's fair. (laughs)
- Yeah. - Apology owed.
(laughs) - Yeah, exactly, but
that's a sign of, you know, someone who's in touch
with their own shittiness. - I don't trust anyone
who's never apologized. - [Brian] No, definitely not. - No, that's a shit person to be. - [Brian] Yeah. - Yeah, no, I've been an
asshole to people, Jesus. - Teenage asshole? - I've been a big teenage asshole. Just the biggest teenage asshole. (laughing) - You look fantastic, by the way. - [Taliesin] Thank you. I don't even-- - You know, I'm not bisexual,
but there's really no denying the amount of sexual energy. - Always a good time to start. - In the room where both
of us are at the same time. (laughing) Life's short, do something to a bagel. - Life's short, do something to a bagel. I gotta say, like, man, life can be very good. (laughing) - Yeah, right? That's where I'm ending it. (laughing) Thank you for joining me. - Thank you for the drink,
this is fucking me up. - Look, we made it all the
way down to the bottom. - We're all the way down to the Bronx. - Ah. Thanks, dude. - Absolute fucking pleasure. - You're awesome. - Oh god, it's so nice to know you. - It's so nice to know you. - Now we never have to speak again. (laughing) - This is it. This is it for the next 2000
years, until we meet again. - See you 2019. (laughs) 2119. - That's 100 years. (laughing) (upbeat jazz music) Wanna drink like the most
interesting man in the world? Here's how you make a blonde Manhattan. For this drink, you'll need
a standard cocktail glass and a shaker. Take the shaker, toss in
two ounces of moonshine. This also works for removing makeup at the end of a long night out. One ounce of sweet vermouth. Half an ounce of orange liqueur. This stuff's tasty to
just drink by itself, too. I heard someone say that once. And three dashes of orange bitters. Get yourself a nice long
beautiful cocktail spoon and stir. (clinking) Once that's nice and mixed up, strain over whiskey stones or an ice ball, you got yourself a
delicious blonde Manhattan. You too can drink like an
immortal renaissance man. (upbeat jazz music)
