Conversations with Sam Elliott

[Applause] hi good evening everyone my name is janelle riley i'm so so thrilled to be here today with actor and american treasure sam elliott um this is someone who over the last five decades has played a wide variety of roles and really some of the best movies ever made from the big lebowski to tombstone to his current movie a star is born uh yeah you should really yeah okay you should really check it out i think it's going to be big um so please join me in welcoming sam elliott you wow thank you so much for being here does that happen every time you walk into a room i imagine you just went yeah everyone's like look who's here what happens when i walk downstairs in the morning that and they just they just ask you to talk they're like we just want to hear your voice for the next half hour or not to talk sometimes they'll ask me um i do want to start out this is an audience of sag actors everybody here is a sag after a member i just want to tell you how proud i am to be amongst you guys since i think 1967 or eight i joined sag and i was also a member of after before the union do you remember the job that brought you your sag card yeah it was an episode of felony squad it was while i was a contract player at 20th century fox and it was a not very good detective show story starring howard duff and dennis cole wow yeah at first i thought you said howard the duck and i was like that's a totally different show i've yet to work with howard today so i want to start at the beginning because i believe you were born in sacramento but when you were a teen you moved to portland oregon which is where i'm from so um you will always be claimed as an oregonian whether you were born there or not only because yeah we're okay at what point did you start to think about a career in acting when i was in sacramento it's true i used to go to this local theater called the sequoia theater it was like you know in my neighborhood about a mile from the house and either my mom had dropped me off there my younger years or i'd ride my bike over there and watch the saturday matinees and i remember like i don't know nine years old having a pretty clear vision of as much as a nine-year-old can have any kind of a clear vision of thinking wow that looks like fun i'd like to try that and it was always about acting in film it wasn't about being a real actor did you ever do that no you theater theater in school all the way through school and i did some civic theater up in portland before i came down here they have a pretty good theater scene there actually they do it's gotten much better since i left is that coincidence or are you saying they're related no i don't think there's any relationship um i know you attended clark college did you study acting there was there a specific method or yeah they know they had a nice film or acting school there i it started really in high school i had a woman named ramona reynolds that was my drama coach in high school and she was i think was the best and the greatest mentor that i have and there was a guy named corey blodgett who was the choral teacher and the ensemble teacher and i was always singing vocal ensembles and choirs and my mom drugged me to a singing a cherub choir in sacramento when i was like four years old really that's where it started when you were four years old did you have this voice already i'm trying to imagine at any time that's a scary thought i'm really trying to imagine what you ever sounded like other than this if you go back and look at frogs or some of those you can hear kind of a different timber in my voice so interesting so you really it was you were concentrating on film that was the career that you envisioned for yourself yeah well and not film necessarily i've never been a snob about making movies and thinking it was above doing tv tv was great to me in the early days i worked on episodic tv and did a couple of television short-lived television series and then i got involved in some great long-form television stuff that this was the best when they were doing that stuff back in their rich man poor man days oh yeah old enough to remember that but i did a couple right there that it wasn't in rich man poor man but i did a couple of that ilk during that time you mentioned being a contract player and i don't i guess we don't really have that anymore but it was it was pretty popular back then did you sort of like that system where you were talking about studio a guy that just got into town a couple of years ago from portland oregon yeah i was in the business you know i was getting 85 a week and i was paying 85 a month for a little bachelor apartment right out the back dead at 20th century fox oh my god wow in hog heaven so to speak did you ever have to take like a survival job or anything like that or did you instantly sort of get into that i came down here i came down to work i went to uruguay oregon as well you did i went there well i told you something you didn't know right totally hard to imagine i am surprised because usually anyone who went there they constantly claim them well my career was short-lived at the u of m that's when i ended up at clark college after that which i graduated and i went back to oregon but i was in a fraternity there and i had this guy that i was really close to and i went to california and his dad had a buddy that was in the construction business and so i got a job as a day laborer i was literally a member of the labor reunion the laborers union and that was my fallback or that was my money source during the early days and it was good it was you know i went during that time i started going to a workshop at columbia pictures called it was on not at columbia pictures it was on that lot down on gower called the film industry workshop this friend that i was living with that i spoke of had a girlfriend that was an aspiring actor her dad i think was a producer at screen gyms and she'd asked me to assist her doing her audition scene and she didn't get in but they called me and asked me if i wanted it wow that's amazing that wasn't amazing i don't think it ever lived it down with her i think i actually started coming around after that i think she broke up with that i guy that's true i feel like i heard and please correct me if i'm wrong because you shouldn't trust anything you read on the internet but was it a construction job that led to you being cast in butch cassidy no no okay there you go we'll cut that out later no i was under contract to fox really where they made the film wow and what was that experience like it was incredible yeah you're working with tell you a funny story about that it was this is how eager and how naive i was at that period of time the the the contract program at program at fox was not to be taken very seriously it was mostly built upon nepotism and boyfriends and girlfriends and i say that very seriously and with a smile in my heart they were all wonderful kids i however being the boy off the bus from portland was like this major studio and it was like all going on this is like the time that hello dolly was about to get rolling it was a great time to be at 20th century fox and i befriended a lot of people there and knew what was going on i knew that the legal department got the scripts before anybody for episodic tv and there were a couple of girls in there that said come on in anytime you want and read the scripts and i did and then i'd go to the casting people and i said hey there's just one line and so and so episodes such and such and that's how i got my jobs in the beginning really yeah but the butch cassidy thing i went and met george roy hill and i actually read for the part of the saloon owner a guy named macon that was played by donnelly rhodes god rest his soul and i went to wardrobe which is where i had another friend i literally got a costume to wear for my meeting with church roy really yeah how'd that go and i think what a dumb but you didn't hire me for that part but i think that he took pity on me because he he hired me for the part of card player number two and i was in the card game in the beginning where redfer's playing cards and newman comes in and talks to him and i was literally a shadow on the wall i had one line and it was i'll take two but it was off camera and no i didn't meet my wife there that's right she was in the movie as well she was seriously and she's the only woman in the movie you know how were you at auditioning during this time you know i think it's it's a bold choice to sort of auditions are always the hardest thing in the world i think i'd be better right now at auditioning than i ever was i always got super nervous i still get nervous going to work i mean i get nervous particularly on the first day of any job i'm like really get nervous and then after a little while it settles down but auditioning is tough i tested once i only tested one so it tested for us what was that movie now it doesn't matter did you get it no harrison ford got the part oh it was raiders and they wanted tom selleck to play the part and tom was committed to magnum thank you at the time and he couldn't get out of that commitment it's funny it was the same studio and they still wouldn't let him out of it really i didn't know you tested for raiders tested with sean young wow yeah that's three things i've learned today stick around there'll be more so somewhere is there footage of you in the hat with the whip and everything no we didn't unlock the thing no full costume this time i didn't wear a costume though i remember getting smacked by sean young and going to the floor so to speak so you were both auditioning you were both auditioning you were like paired together oh okay yeah wow that's so interesting we were talking about how you did a lot of tv early on and i i think actually one of your first jobs was the western lancer it was at that same time when i did felony squad that was one of the reasons that i got into the academy as well oh wow um and obviously you went on to do so much more in this genre um why do you think you're so well suited for westerns i think it was in my blood in some ways my family is all from the southwest mostly el paso texas for a couple of generations and my family settled in the north part of texas like in the 1820s i had a great great grandfather that was at the battle of sanchi sinto with sam houston wow really it runs deep did you ever worry about um i don't want to i mean maybe typecasting i've always been told that there was a time yeah there was a time they spoke to me and i got into the business really when they were not going on the way out but where there was you know western films were not being made when i got into the business but cassie was one of the last ones at that time i was very fortunate to do the ones that i did you know i got to work with ben johnson and slim pickens and glenn ford and some of those people that i just so admired for so many years so i was lucky to get in there and then i produced one called connector that my wife and i started in for tnt and then there were several louis lamour westerns that i did and when it just seemed like whenever a western was going to get made it came my way yeah and i was always thankful for it obviously and then later on it transferred into other work the golden compass you remember chris white says what am i playing this guy how do you see me being this aeronaut well you're the guy you're the iconic guy the western guy okay i remember one time i was down in location doing a another western called the ref riders for tnt and i got a call off my agent they're telling me that i'm gonna get a script from the cohen brothers and john millius was the director on this thing and he'd worked with the cohen brothers before i remember the script got delivered to me out at the set and i was so excited i was thinking the coen brothers being i'm finally gonna get to get out of this western it's true so i go and i go back to the room and i read this thing and it's talking about a voice right the voice over and in the backgrounds tumbling tumbleweeds as planned no i just i just had a feeling and then it said in this script i a southern voice or a southwest voice or it said but literally it said sounding not unlike sam elliott so i knew something was up and then i read further and where the guy shows up at the bowling alley and here's the stranger looking like not unlike wow and i kind of put that whole western thing to rest then really yeah you were like i'll do this i'm good with it i'm good with it it's served me well and you know i've been very very fortunate in my career if i've got to be known as the guy with the hat and i'm good with it i mean in some ways it's not the same thing but in thank you for smoking you kind of flipped it on its head because you played a guy who's yeah yeah except he was dying of lung cancer yeah he had hair down to his shoulders that's right so that was really interesting because it's like you know almost not parodying in a comedic way but parodying you know the role that you're known for or showing showing the dark side of it yeah it did have kind of a dark side that character did i remember after not long after doing the big lebowski i got a call about this film rod lurie was doing i just heard an hour ago that rod luery lost his son yeah this year that breaks my heart i hadn't heard that before anyway boy sorry to pass that out there um i got a call about doing a movie called the contender with jeff and rod had sent me the script and it was again and i talked to rod i said jesus christ man you're talking about the president of the united states and joan allen and this and i said i don't know how i fit into this picture he said i was just watching a big lebowski the other night man and i would just want to see more of you and the dude really i swear to god that's what rob wow so it gave me an opportunity i shaved off my stash and cut my hair to about that length and wore a three-piece suit and we got in there i said so you want me to try to get rid of this south and a mouth as a director named dan petrie told me one time shining a little south on the mouse sam do it again and rod said no he said you know i should just sound like you sound you know there's politicians from the south yeah of course oddly enough a lot of them are on a run tonight yo she's going to say are they still i actually love that movie i think every performance in the contender is perfect your your is yeah because i know it's a funny thing i was thinking about this you know it's called i've never done anything that was called referred to as a retrospective before but i think i can save completely honestly that there's a thread that connects everything i've done to the next thing it's just it's an amazing journey the blessed journey i've just been so fortunate so fortunate i feel so silly it didn't even occur to me that you and jeff did two movies together back to back because they're such totally different characters well should we occur to you why didn't it again i'm learning new things every five minutes um we have a question and i again i apologize in advance if i butcher anyone's name um sue ellen enright right there uh you place such strong confident characters are you ever nervous as an actor and if so what do you do to handle those nerves well come prepared that's the thing that i take greatest solid and is coming to work know that i'm ready to go and the times when i've been the most nervous i think there were times when i didn't feel completely ready to get there and do it whether i looked that way or not you know it is all you know what you see is not necessarily what's real i don't know what's going on inside not always i should say this thing that i'm in broil in right now the stars born we got to the truth in that one we got right down to the truth in that one oh we have a question from brandon sort of piggybacking on that uh sorry brandon i thought i saw a hand back there oh there he is back there wants to know if you have any advice for a fellow actor who often plays strong and silent types because you're one of the best to ever do it thanks brandon i don't find those parts or a lot of them out there anymore to be honest with you it's a different world not a necessarily a bad world or a worse world or it's just a shifting world it's different that's you know it's dynamic it's alive but i think if you find something that you you believe in doing and you know you want to pursue then keep your nose to the stone this isn't an easy game then there's a long line behind every one of us waiting to do a better job or just to get a job i feel that every time out you know with me it's been a war of attrition you know i've outlived a bunch of them i just think there's nothing that replaces hard work and believing in yourself as difficult as that is in this town you're almost they almost dare you to keep at it we're competing now with people that you know i mean they fabricate actors today you know just pick them off the street not that they didn't do that in the old days too it's just a different world today and sometimes it comes down to things like how many instagram followers you have i mean is that i don't do social media i wouldn't have a clue at all no i don't email i don't do that wait you don't have email no how do you talk to people on a telephone or in person you mean texting you text i do i know that because um nick offerman said you use emojis i do for nick that's right i remember now yeah he was bragging that he gets text from you big red heart uh we have a question from estelle ray oh also in the front um what do you feel was your big break opportunity oh man big break in terms of having a career yeah under my being under contract of fox because that led to all else i went from being a contract player to fox to doing the last year of mission impossible to doing my first movie for television called assault on the wane and then just kept going first big break movie wise was lifeguard in 1974. oh wow and i probably blew up opportunity there that really changed my game and just turned it into another job in some ways went to war with the studio about the ad campaign so to speak that was the war literally but had an attitude about it and spoke to it about it in the press and the press agreed with me which is not a good thing i think a huge turning point actually in your film career might have been mask um which i think was yeah 1985 or share that was an interesting come about too i was doing a one of the series one of the two series that i do was a show called the yellow rose that ran for one season it was kind of a modern day western setting down in texas we shot at del rio texas civil shepherd and eddie albert jr is now gone david's soul you know a couple of older guys pidge berry and ken curtis anyway when i was in there doing a makeup one day and sibyl came in and sat down looking in the mirror looking all beautiful i talked to peter last night she was going with peter bogdanovich at the time he told me he's looking for a gary cooper on a motorcycle he said i i suggested you i suggested your name whatever wow anyway i went and had a meeting with peter on that came my way everything really is interconnected one job always seems to lead to another it's all connected oh another big one was 1993 you did tombstone which yep everybody loves this movie has become such a classic um i don't know if you felt that at the time because i would you call it this would qualify as a western yeah yeah you think you think i don't know i'm trying to trying to imagine the uh the lineup of you guys on the movie poster yeah that was definitely a remake of a western that had been made three times i think oh wow that was the third time third telling of it and that's what i knew going in was that it was a brilliant script that kevin jarred written and he hand-picked the cavs pretty much and after watching val and michael bean do that scene at the end of the film where doc killed him i just thought this thing is going to be around for a long time yeah it was an interesting thing that happened there kevin jarrer mom whose mom was a ballerina as i recall which is totally doesn't matter and his dad was in a music business and and at fox when i was a contract player so i had some sort of a bizarre connection to kevin but he hand-picked that cast he took he had all those meetings up at a place called mirabelle up on the strip which is long gone anyway we got to set and as always if we're going on location on anything i like to get there early i like to get there at least a week early just to get a sense of it all and get comfortable and i went out and visited the set and they were it was some riding stuff and not a lot of dialogue but big stuff with horses and kevin was there directing and he always had a white shirt on buttoned at the neck and had a pair of black pants on and a black flat brim hat like one wyatt was wearing did a real nice looking kid big tall skinny lanky kid and then there was bill fraker there behind the camera and bill fraker is a brilliant cameraman and his in his a great director in his own right did a movie a western himself called monty walsh that's another movie i auditioned for this one that i didn't get a part in who'd it go to i don't remember it wasn't that big of a part anyway i'll watch these guys and i'd been around i think nobody had done as many westerns on that film as i've done clearly and i was just watching and listening to fraquer and this kid talk and i just thought man there's something not right here it was clear from the beginning and we go back to the go back to the hollywood inn at night and this kid was watching on vhs tapes episodes of gunsmoke which is it may be like gunsmoke man i did a gunsmoke but it was clear that this guy didn't know how to direct he was a genius of a writer he wrote a brilliant script and cast it incredibly but he couldn't direct the movie and he didn't know how to ally himself with a dp that probably could have pulled him out of it and taught him and shepherded him along the way kevin's closest friend on the project was a man named jim jacks who's passed away since i think everybody i work with is dead now don't tell lady gaga that there's always an exception jim jack's stuck by this kid for a month he said i'm not going to fire him and kurt was there and kurt was like the lead man on to in terms of the actors and being pretty involved in the production into it i think as well i really don't know for sure but i've sensed that anyway they stuck with him and stuck with him and everybody really started getting nervous and we had meetings all the actors sit down in the holiday and have a drink or two and while we were working on that show kosner was down in new mexico doing a wide earp so kirk got really started getting nervous we all were wondering what it was all going to be and then they hired george cosmados the mad greek who was a very brash rude to women loudmouth not fun to be around kind of a sloven but i loved him i forgave him for some of it not all of it and he also had his wife with him who dearly loved him cosmaros was a you know he went to the school of sergio and leo and i remember we were doing that thing we were walking down the street at the to the gunfight and all of a sudden there's a building on fire behind it i didn't say anything about that my script george says doesn't matter the outlaws lit it get on start walking i remember the first day cosmonauts came out to the set i was always visiting the set when they weren't when i wasn't called to work and um god who was it was working that day charlton heston wow played a small part in it and heston was working so i went out to work and i'd met him when my wife was working with him on a colby's years before george had a pair of dark glasses on it was the first time he was on set he was a pretty good sized guy and he he just walked right up to me i mean he was like that far away from me i feel his belly touching me and he just kind of looked down over his glasses and i'm gonna am i gonna have trouble with you i don't know why he said that to me i said i don't know or am i gonna have trouble with you he said no i'll get along good patted me on the shoulder and we got along really well i love that he was the filmmaker that he was and he died not long after the movie was made that's right another one tried to get me to come do a commercial one time after that and do a parody of kind of like tombstone really involved a chase with a stagecoach or something and i just said no thanks man i take my westerns too seriously it's so interesting because it's very i mean it's very rare that a director gets replaced in a movie um although i think we can all relate to being fired off of a job have you ever been let go from an acting gig no all right was a job one time i had to quit on when i got sick and they hired jim brolin to do the part i lost a couple of parts to brolin there was a time he was under a contract to universal when i was under contract to fox there was a time i lost everything it seemed like jim brolin because we were the same type you know and back those days types mattered do you think anything matters anymore where are you gonna act that's what matters today yeah um with tombstone i'm still thinking about replacing the director uh you know that one obviously worked out but is it tough when you're in a project do you know always what the end result is going to be or have there been times when you've been pleasantly surprised how something turned out or times where you know you were sort of disappointed in the end product oh there's always going to be times nobody sets out to make a bad movie you know but there's just there's so many variables involved and it starts at the top clearly again star is born is what it is because of bradley cooper and would never be what it is without him i mean it's just a fact i've worked on films where i had a rub with the director and i knew you know we just knew that this thing was never going to come to what it could be because of a director's attitude or lack of ability to direct or both i want to talk about some of the directors you've worked with more than once because i mentioned jason reitman earlier with thank you anybody ever hired me a second time really for up in the air you just showed up that's going to be a good feeling though when they ask you back yeah well jason may be the only one no brett haley oh yes because you were in um i'll see you in my dreams and then didn't he write the hero for you yeah okay so if anyone yeah nope go ahead so if anyone hasn't seen this first of all shame on you um secondly uh you play an aging um actor yeah who's you know sort of right trying to resolve some issues in his life um what is it like to have someone you know hand you a script like that it's a lead role um and say i wrote this for you it was a trip i'll tell you how that came to be if you want to listen to it i've done uh i'll show you my dreams with black dinner and played her boyfriend and i think i worked two weeks on it and then died but it was the first time i ever got to do like an out-and-out leading man kind of character in a while well it's not the first time but a contemporary leading man and then we went on the road with the film which and that's a grueling part of making movies when you're part of the advertising end of it that's a long slog sometimes but i traveled with brett because blyth was not interested in the long slog yeah so i went with brett and traveled coast to coast with him and down to florida and up to canada through the course of that brett saw something that he didn't realize and it was my connection to a fan base [Music] and he said when we got back he said i'm going to write you write something for you you and mark me and mark are going to write something for you mark and i that's mark bash is his writing partner national chairman sir and you know several months later here came this thing you know and i read it and i thought oh molly it was close you know and through the course of the travels together and he not only saw something we've got you know i mean i already knew him well but when you're trapped in an airplane sitting next to somebody going cross-country several times in a roundabout and eating dinner and going to the bar with somebody and just get to know each other and he went and wrote that script a lot of it's right on and some of it's a total fabrication really are you comfortable i'm the closest i could possibly be with my daughter cleo and then the thing i was on the outs with my daughter kristen played and i'm also still married to my wife and i was actually divorced from my wife in that movie that's right she plays your ex-wife that was weird and that reunited you with nick offerman as well who i guess you had worked with before on parks and recreation yeah they did i love nick from the get-go we connected from the get-go he's kind of the same kind of guy i think at the heart of him although he's much brighter than i am and i said that very honestly he's a brilliant writer nick and he's a brilliant woodworker and he's he's just a he's a great guy and a super talented guy they brought you on to sort of play his characters doppelganger you know this guy who lives in the other town and they're like so much alike were you familiar with parks and rec before they watched a couple episodes but i don't oddly enough i don't avidly watch anything it's it's like not being on social media it's just and that's a choice so it's not like that but i don't find i have a lot of time to sit around watching i don't see as many movies as i should see i'm going to be seeing more right now than you know for obvious reasons because they come to you and you got to vote and if you if you're gonna vote you gotta see if you gotta you gotta see who's running you know it's like today as painful that was getting through that magazine jesus someone else you've worked with a couple of times you did grandma with lily tomlin such a fantastic movie um and then you joined grayson frankie although you played jane fonda's love interest all connected and jane fonda said like she was so excited because she had a crush on you for years somebody told me something about something jane said something on hbo which i didn't see so i think she said crush for decades i don't know that that's true i've known jane for a long time but we've never you know i knew her when she was married at ted oh wow catherine and i spent some time up for her place in montana you know wonderful woman love jane there's another thing that came out of nowhere that you know it started off with i can't maybe somebody yeah god i can't remember any of you even watched it i did this thing for the adult swim channel then we probably all saw it whatever and i can't remember the title of it oh was it robot chicken yeah yeah thank you i don't know how i could forget a name like that anyway i did this thing and i got nominated for an emmy and i went to the award show took my daughter cleo with me and sat behind lily tomlin who was nominated in the same category for a voiceover she did about african elements elephant african elements those elements for the big ears for the discovery channel i think anyway she won they won the award i congratulate her and gave her a big hug and you know we talked for a minute and i don't know about a month later i got a call from chris wyatts who was a director the guy that did the golden compass and my brother paul's doing this movie with lily tomlin he wants you to read a script that's where it came from i remember that year the voice over uh emmys she actually beat morgan freeman too she beat everybody that's crazy everybody in the category speaking of netflix uh you're currently on the ranch with ashton kutcher how did that come to you that's an experience yeah i don't know it just came i got a call to go in and have a meeting with them it was kutcher and the producers on the show don rio and jim patterson and i think it was just the four of us they pitched me this idea that they had that was going to be daniel and ashton doing what they loved to do what they'd done before and wanted me to be the dad and you know my wife calls that the ranchless the ritualist yeah you never get off the sound stage there's not a horse in sight once in a while we'll have a scene where we're doctoring a cow or something or we're at a cow auction and then literally for these beef cattle they'll bring in a milk a whole steam the first two years it really drove me wild because it was about as inauthentic as it could be in some ways but they go they make great strides today particularly jim patterson i'm very well connected jim i love jim dearly and he's a collaborator they try to keep it as honest as possible but boy in the beginning it was a battle it was like ah truck what have i gotten myself into it's also a one and a half to a two hour drive to work oh you're just kidding to go to a sound stage that's a bear on the 101. yeah we're shooting down on hollywood and you know rhett and gower right in gower gulch where they used to make westerns in the old days that's so funny uh well so that brings us obviously to a star is boring um bret the shirt and um bradley cooper has been very open about the fact that he was flat-out copying your voice before he even met you or approached you for a role in this movie when he did i mean did was he straight up with you and said like i've been listening to tapes i've been working on yeah when i went and met bradley the first night i met him i'd never crossed paths with bradley and when i went and spoke to him i went to his home and spent two hours with him and we talked about family and talked about our moms had a nice meal talked about what he his vision for star wars born was and this relationship that he was introduced into bringing his brother character in while i was there he played a tape for me so this is going to sound a little weird to you but probably sure it did but it was it was very close even at that point so the good thing was i figured if he committed to my voice that i had a good chance of getting the part and he'd been working on it i think at that point for four months yeah he invested a lot of time he's a he's a genius i i just can't say enough about that man i love him and he's a nice man but beyond that he's he's a brilliant mind he's a genius filmmaker he's got a long road ahead of him it's so shocking to see that this is his featured directorial debut because it is so accomplished and it's it's so layered and multifaceted did you know even before you started shooting you were in good like the performance it doesn't surprise me he got good performances out of people but the look of the film and his weapons surprised me yeah nothing i mean i just knew after spending those hours with the guy the last thing bradley told me or when i was walking out the door he said hey man do me a favor just trust me just trust me you'll be glad you did you'd be glad you did it and that that couldn't be more the truth you know he just he just he's been working it might be his first his directorial debut but he's been going that way for a long time it's just a matter of time before he got there he was always in an editing room he was always talking to directors when he was doing alias he was going to the editing room i mean he's just he's a filmmaker i'm trying to think have you ever been in a situation before where you were being directed by your co-star that's kind of an unusual thing yeah i mean i loved it yeah i loved it you know we got in deep because of it there's one interesting moment in particular it kind of shows you the the director actor thing that he was doing i'd rapped on the show and he called me back to do that last scene with gaga on the couch which is probably my favorite day of shooting only because i got to work with stephanie who i'm just totally in love with for all the right reasons and prior to that the day before we shut this scene in the driveway in which he tells me you're the one that wasn't dead it was you and it was a really powerful moment that came out of it but bradley was standing there and i knew one of the things i'm sorry i'm jumping all around i'm no actually it's pretty linear one of the things about bradley is know the work when you get to the set like i was saying earlier know that script and then throw it out when you get there it's the story you're telling it's the truth you're telling it isn't necessarily every word verbatim which is like on the ranch but we drove down in there we did two takes on it and i think the second take is the one that they used so we drove down in there i knew what bradley was going to say it was in the script but what he said wasn't necessarily what was in the script but i knew the gist of it so that took me where i went and then bradley stepped out of the truck he actually opened the door stepped out of the truck turned around and delivered the line and then shut the door as soon as he shut the door i was still watching him and some guy off camera handed him up one of those little portable monitors and he walked around the front of the truck and all of a sudden he was a director astounding astounding and all i could do was turn around and back out of there that's all done in one take too i think yeah we had a camera mounted behind us and one mounted on the truck and there was one in the garage i think in the front of the truck and it was a pretty long driving shot not too long there'd been longer versions of it shot but we got down right to the meat of it and that's all you needed um bobby and jackson we don't even learn that they're brothers until like maybe half an hour into the movie yeah i think um although there's obviously hints there um and so it doesn't have to be like a super close brother-brother relationship but you guys really do as i was watching i was like i can't believe nobody has cast them as siblings before and it sounds like you probably really got to know him even before you started shooting it's just you know i think when you get to trust someone and you get to tell the truth with them whether you're acting it or doing it for real odds are they bleed together that you're going to come away and you're going to be close you know and yeah i felt close to bradley i still feel close to him you know he's uh he's a complex man as is gaga a complex woman but they've tapped into that complexity and they certainly discovered what to do with it i don't think that it's an easy world for either one of them were you very familiar with lady gaga before she was cast in this burden were you very familiar with her work yeah i got a daughter that's sure of course that's great i've been listening to her for the last 10 years that's fantastic i got a copy of a there's a rolling stone magazine with her and a cover with two big cones on either breasts and it's just she's like going like this it's an amazing cover she's just an amazing woman her folks were there a lot oh you're kidding no it's such a great ensemble from top to bottom i love andrew dice playing his ensembles yeah i've worked with for a long time was there a part of you that was like a little bummed you didn't get a scene with dave chappelle or no i got enough of dave chappelle at the q and a's in the premiere in toronto i say that in jest i'd love to chapel how about him he was incredible huh he was a mate everybody like them even though anthony ramos oh my god leonard sidekick oh yeah jesus i saw him in hamilton he's amazing um even the woman who like plays the cashier that takes his photo at the very beginning like every single role is so perfectly cast um the guy that worked that gaga worked for that she quit like big stocky guy it was like a you know it was a sniper was a he was a he was a technical adviser or something on american sniper you're kidding oh that's so funny it was the real deal have you obviously this movie has had such an amazing response you know both at the box office critically people just really passionately love it did you predict that response i mean i'm sure you hoped for it but it's really been it's something that we don't see that often i don't think there's any predicting it i think that the odds are in something's favor when you pull together when you have a script like this for starters and when you have lady gaga i mean and you have bradley cooper and the supporting players the odds are it's gonna be okay but you know they they made this thing for like 40 some million dollars yeah i mean that's an astounding figure for you know that might be i might be wrong it might be in the 50s but still still just those concert scenes studio movie and it's huge and they got every dollar out of it all day they get a lot for their money's worth uh we have a question from peggy you wants to know how has your criteria for what projects you do change throughout your career what was my criteria for what how has it changed yeah or has it changed you know what draws you to a role what makes you say early felony squad and lancer [Laughter] daniel boone i think if good fortune comes one's way as an actor then you can afford to be selective and i discovered very early on in my career because i wanted it for so long i think as a kid that the way to have longevity it was i needed to be selective and how i exposed myself on film and i try to do that i still try to do that today i never worked for money i never was had to take a job for money because i had a work ethic because i was smart with money i did have i managed my apartment i worked as a gardener in the apartment i lived in west l.a for 12 years 15 years while i was working you know then i got that from my folks you know work ethic solid work ethic knew the value of a dollar then you know now today i just i just like to do good work if i can find it i find it hard to come by nobody's banging on my door with scripts that i've dying to do once in a while i want to come along i did a little independent movie two years ago two summers ago right on the hills of stars born called the man who killed hitler and then the bigfoot it's going to come out in february and it may get buried under the the stars born thing but it's coming and i'm proud of it the first another first time director we wrote the script and it was a venture of 12 years for this kid shot in western massachusetts it's a good tale we have a question from um i think it's michael gregory yeah um wants to know if you had to redo it if you had a redo in your career what would you change oh i don't know how you could change it mm-hmm i don't know how you could change it you know just i just feel like you know the fact that i'm still at it after almost 50 years and i'm not even sure it might be 50 years right now i just i just don't 51. yeah but who's counting right it's been a long haul and i've been very very lucky i've tried to be a good person along the way so i know that i don't have some hanging over me you know and i'm proud of that but i don't think i'd change anything what i'd wish for was that all of the people that had something to do with the fact that i'm sitting here we're alive today to see it because there's a shitload of them and most of them are gone uh who is that back there holy i came when i came down to l.a to pursue my career let my mom crying in the driveway but wishing me well she was my greatest mentor i left almost a day to the year after my dad died at 54 i was 18. not a good time oh man that thought just my mom crushed that thought um wow next question actually was your mom able to see some of your success burden was your mom able to see your success yeah my mom reveled in it yeah she'd hate the ranch i got a letter i was swore to god i was gonna bring this letter i got a piece of fan mail last night from a gal in new mexico who had followed my career for a long time an older woman probably my age and she and some of her friends had gone to see star wars born and hated it because of the f-bomb bad wrapped me and told me how how could you do that after all these years why don't you do some of the stuff that you did on um i don't know what it was that channel that does all those corny movies that we don't like the whole world i've that put everything in perspective come a long way i know what it was back in portland there was a guy next door or a family next door whose son-in-law was an assistant director this is the beginning of the line and then i'm going to shut up about the thread or the connection maybe there's a guy next door his son-in-law was a director he'd just come up to portland and he just finished a film called the professionals that richard brooks directed a western and i'm sure that he heard from his in-laws there's a kid next door that thinks he wants to go to hollywood would you spend a minute with him and so he gave me an audience and i went and talked to him anyway at the end of it he said he ever get down there give me a call little did he know i was going to do that so i called this guy parslow and i ended up going over to his house and i was working construction in those days i painted his house i poured some cement on a hill that he had he lived in sherman oaks in the hills over there and he had this kind of a trough where water was drained and then his property drawn onto his back of his property because i was in the cement business i poured some cement for him and one day i was up on a ladder i did this for quite a while i paid real penance to this guy i was up on a ladder painting the ceiling and this guy that came in the door looked like mr magoo little short guy handsome guy really handsome guy those dark horn rim glasses on and a coat and tie it was a guy named bob thompson who was a casting man at universal and he befriended me and i spent almost daily i went to his office after i got off work in a construction business i go home take a shower and zip over to burbank or to studio city before it was probably studio city in those days the 101 was easy to commute on and bob thompson sent me to my first agent a guy at gac he got him dick bassman who sent me on my first interview to meet a woman named lillian gallo who took me to the head of casting this is at fox a guy named jack bauer and i didn't i auditioned for the three of them including dick zaneck all of them are gone but that was the beginning i mean there's a there's a direct line yeah it's it's amazing i guess anybody can direct can draw a direct line through their work if they have the honor to have worked enough you know maybe but there's a lot of one job led to another which i think is actually a testament to people must enjoy working with you there were long breaks a question from tracy chapel oh hey wants to know um what's been your favorite role uh that's an often asked question and i'm always stumped for an answer it's always kind of the immediate one comes to mind which sounds kind of ridiculous but i can't imagine an experience of working on a film ever being more enriching than this one was it just i just it was a love fest and boy i've been on a lot where it wasn't that i think i think i'd have to say the hero probably in some ways only because it was so close to me you know and i loved working with everybody that was in it sorry question from richie greer hey um wants to know what's your all-time favorite line from one of your movies i'll take two i've been very lucky it's one of the things that comes from ending up being more of a character actor than a leading man if you get the good stuff i find you know oh god opinion it's like it's it's a hard one if i if i had to make a list if i knew i was going to be asked that question i'd have made a list because there's been a bunch of them the dude abides sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes while the bar eats you it's just it's a real gift when you get to work with good writers it's a just you know we're all as good as our words we've got to say unless we're working in the silent movies it's all a gift i have so many questions about roadhouse i don't know like how to pick just one but again that's a movie that like to this day people are like obsessed with i wonder actually well guys are i don't know actually there was one from a woman yeah there was one from a woman who wanted to know if you really rode motorcycles i did i've ridden motorcycles enjoyed riding motorcycles in films only never owned one that was from a man who was in rogue house oh it wasn't from a man sorry um we have a question from kellen i think it is with a k yes right hey i ever was given in the movie was in mask riding in through that that that was shot over malibu canyon riding through that park over that nasty whole bumpy ridden ground pretending i knew how to ride uh so kellen says your voice has great clarity um clarity clarity i've never been accused of clarity uh notes he notes that he's theater trained and he has to work on his voice every day do you work on your voice regularly no really this is just your voice my voice i [Music] i lay off whatever i have in my voice number one is genetics and then to the fact that my mom drugged me to sing in a cherub choir when i was a kid and then i was forever involved with vocal ensembles and singing in choral groups and singing in musicals in high school blah blah blah what musicals were you in oh guys involved i was going to say that was the first one that sprang to mind were you nathan detroit no i was big julie would you do a musical now i'm a little disappointed you didn't get to sing the right thing yeah the right thing came along i'd love to do one somebody asked me about regrets somebody asked me about it there's a few about that yeah if you what would you do differently it's something i would have done differently it just occurred to me because it involves music i had an opportunity not to do the play but to go to new york and audition for a guy named tommy tune tommy tune was at fox doing hello dolly as an actor dancer actor when i was under contract there and i knew tommy i did a show called buffalo girls years later reba mcintyre was in the reba was getting ready to do and he gets your gun and i got a call to go to new york to audition for that part and i've regretted it ever since that i didn't go because it was right up my ass yeah right up my alley that's not too late but i had a daughter that was a young kid and she didn't want to leave town and i didn't want to drag her to new york thinking it was going to be a long haul and i also didn't want to leave home and go back there and have a long-distance relationship with my wife and so but now i wish i'd have taken cleo because cleo has aspirations for this game really i'd like to have taken her with me and stuck her in a school back there in new york and let her get a taste of that would have been good for her how did you feel when she told you that she wanted to be an actor well i'm going to wait and see when she gets really serious about it and you know i mean it's like when you get a kid or you have a kid you you can't you can guide them but you can't live their life for them you know if that's what cleo wants to do catherine and i totally support it she did her first little film last year a little short film so she's all excited about and we're all excited about four oh how cool they haven't seen it yet but i have no doubt it's going to be good and she starred in it so she got a taste uh we have a question from wednesday wants to know if you did not go down the path of acting what do you think you would have done with your life there was no other path yeah yeah at one time probably would have been a landscaper something like that because i'm a farmer at heart i know which end of the shovel is the right end to put in the ground i've got a letter from my mom i've got a lot of letters i say for my mom and one of her particulars she was encouraging maybe you ought to think about landscaping it was one of those long periods of which there were a few earlier on you mentioned she loved seeing your work she reveled in it um what was her favorite role of yours oh god i don't know i don't know i think she was a big fan of lifeguards she my dad met at a place called washington park in el paso where they were both lifeguards really oh wow one of the one of the eight by tens i went out on a press tour for want to hear that whole story lifeguard i went on a press tour for lifeguard and back in those days you traveled with a box of 8x10 photos and these press kits that were like this in and out one town after another one night one town and i did that for six weeks with that film and in that press kit there was a shot of my mom and dad on the outside and a picture of me between them anyway i took a i took a fence to the the one sheet that the paramount came up for it dan petrie directed that movie and a guy named ron coswell wrote it and it was really a it was a coming-of-age story for a young girl but it was also a it was about a guy that was doing what he wanted to do and was going to do it in face of all outside pressure saying he wanted to grow up and get off the beach and he was a lifeguard and i take that game very seriously i've got friends that are lifeguards and always have and it's a profession it's an admirable profession it's not some guy hanging onto the beach with girls and the one sheet was a big busted girl on each arm and moved me in a pair of speedos and it said every girl's summer dream and i and i so i go on the road and every ten time invariably not every time of course but invariably i get into these meetings with the interviewer or a press person the next morning and they'd seen them film the night before and it started off with this movie isn't anything like i thought it was and that's all i needed to hear and i'd say yeah and that truth and you know all that got printed i never worked paramount again really yeah we did a show for him called we were soldiers and that wasn't that long ago and that was the first time i worked there right since wow that's amazing yeah so be careful with you um so can you tell us what you're working on next you mentioned you have this movie in february i'm not working on anything next except the ranch and it's waiting for me tomorrow that hour and a half long drive yeah i love that job it's fun it's creative like i said this guy jim patterson is a special cat i love it working with ashton and getting to work with kathy baker right now she's my wife and we just got married just last week and she's just a dream to work with it's it's it's a good bunch all around lucky to have the gig but i'm looking forward to the end we're finishing up in april and that's the end of it i'm i'm looking forward to that i'm looking for some time at home when people read a script i don't know when people like see you on the street or stop you what is it they want to talk about most what's the one project boy right now it seems to be started that doesn't surprise me oh man that's something i never banked on is that loss of anonymity that's a that's a weird animal really all these years you you haven't had trouble with it it's not like now sure part of it's because of the ranch that a lot of us because of this film and i understand that as part of it you know nobody gets in this business not to be recognized but if that's not what motivates you fame which is not what motivates me then it's something to reckon with you know which is interesting that's kind of a theme in star is born um well i hope it's all good things because i know people love the movie and people love you i want to thank you so much for being here i want to thank you guys for being a great audience you

Channel: SAG-AFTRA Foundation

Views: 185,708

Keywords: SAG Foundation, SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Acting, A Star is Born, Conversations, Sam Elliott, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot, The Hero, I’ll See You in My Dreams, Mask, Fatal Beauty, Road House, Rush, Gettysburg, Tombstone, Big Lebowski, Hi-Lo Country, The Contender, We Were Soldiers, Off the Map, Hulk, Thank You for Smoking, Barnyard, The Golden Compass, Up in the Air, The Company You Keep, Draft Day, Q&A, Interview, Career, Retrospective

Id: 2_8yc5OB6mg

Length: 78min 15sec (4695 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 21 2018