Re-Release: Michael Douglas: Taking Off the Makeup
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Welcome back to Literally. It's me, Rob Lowe here. So as many of you know, we've wrapped in, I think, an amazing season of this podcast. Just extraordinary people, extraordinary laughs, just great stories.

could not be happier with our season. And maybe you thought you'd have to wait months to hear new episodes. Well, you thought wrong. I am thrilled to say that we are coming back with all new episodes next week, and I couldn't be more excited for you to hear these conversations. But for this week, I wanted to go back to the vault of

And I want to revisit one of my all-time best episodes, I think. When I meet people and they say, guys, you've had so many interesting people. Which one should I listen to first? I got to tell you, I think this is the one. If I had to pick one, I think it's this Michael Douglas interview. And the reason I say that, not to name drop, but one of the smartest people in my industry is Ted Sarandos. Maybe the most powerful man in show business today. He's a huge movie fan. He enjoys this podcast. He listens to everyone.

And he is obsessed with this Michael Douglas episode. So with the blessings of the great Ted Sarandos here for your own listening purposes is what I think is our classic, our talk with Michael Douglas, which, by the way, I could have talked to him for five hours. Hope you like it. Tell me what television was like in the 70s when you were doing Streets of San Francisco. What was that like?

Well, Streets of San Francisco, first of all, was shot in San Francisco. Which is a rarity then, right? Unheard of? It was a rarity. It was a rarity for a couple of reasons. When you shoot on location, it's a six-day week. Those days you shoot, you work Saturday, too. So we moved up there.

But what it did, Rob, is it basically trained me. It was the first year of Streets of San Francisco training.

was the result of a lawsuit that Quinn Martin, the producer... Quinn Martin had all these shows back then. FBI, Barnaby Jones... Canon, Quincy... All of those shows that he had. And so this was a lawsuit that he won from ABC. And we started in 71, 72. And I know this is hard for a lot of your listeners to realize...

ABC was just the beginning of the third network on television. There was CBS, NBC, and ABC had just begun. Anyway, so this was the result of a lawsuit, which was 26-hour episodes in a year plus a two-hour movie intro. Oh, my God. My beginning in television was 26-hour episodes at six-day weeks per

straight through, plus a two-hour movie. So it was eight, eight and a half months straight. And what it did to me, and then that was followed by three more years. I did the show for four years. So what it did for me is it made me the toughest mother you would know. So in the rest of my career...

Both from a producing point of view and from an acting point of view, what I learned about scripts and I had the greatest mentor of my life, Carl Malden. I could not have asked for better, man.

And so what would happen, and he had a work ethic that was incredible. So we would guarantee that when we were doing an hour show, we would have the next hour show script already done. Right. So whenever we had a break between scenes or shots, we would rehearse the next week's script.

So as a result, the writers hated us because the scripts had to be approximately seven to eight pages longer simply because we picked up our cues. Oh, wow. Because we knew the dialogue so well and everything else. And when you were the regulars on a show, you're doing the plot stuff and all that, not the character you're carrying. And we just boom, boom, boom. We go through the stuff. So it was a phenomenal, phenomenal experience for me. The hardest job that I've ever had.

in my life or anybody would have. And then set me up for the rest of my career that when I started producing and actors started complaining, I said, let me tell you a little story. Well, and then obviously Cuckoo's Nest, which by the way, I just need to say, and we're friends and I know you'll be like, oh, stop, stop. But whenever I have people on like you, Michael, I need to just tell you how much you've meant to me. And a career like yours is,

is what I should only be so lucky as to aspire to. I mean this. Thank you, Rob. And I'll tell you another thing. Without Cuckoo's Nest, I don't know if I'm even an actor because I smuggled my cassette tape recorder

into the theater to record Cuckoo's Nest so I could have it. I've seen Cuckoo's Nest 70, 80 times. I know it was your dad's property. Right. He gifts it to you. Well, he didn't. I would like it if he gifts it. But he had originally bought the book by Ken Kesey

in what we call galley forms, which means before the book is actually published, he bought the rights to it. And he went back and he had it adapted. This is like 1950 and 1960. And he had it adapted into a play by Dale Wasserman. Wait, he had it adapted into a play? Yeah, Kirk did. I didn't realize that. Yeah, and he went back...

You know, a lot of actors at some points in their careers go back to Broadway or theater. Dad went back right after Spartacus. Oh, my God. He was at the height of his acting career. And he went back and he did the play, One Flew the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Dale Wasserman. Gene Wilder was in the cast. What? Yeah, Gene Wilder was in the cast, Billy Daniels. And so I think Gene played Billy Bippet.

I bet he did. I bet he was brilliant. And the idea, like a lot of other actors who did that, was the idea was, okay, it'd be a Broadway, it'd be success, and then we'll develop it into a film. Well, it didn't succeed. I mean, a lot of it was, I think it was really kind of ahead of its time and everything. So it didn't really work out.

And as a result, when Dad had finished the run of the show and he tried for a number of years, two, three years to try to get it made into a movie, he couldn't do it. So he's putting it up for sale for his company. He was going to sell the rights to it.

Meanwhile, I'm at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and I'm taking a class in 20th century American literature. And part of the class is this new novel called One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Unbelievable. And this is the height. This is 63, 64, 65 centimeters.

A lot of good stuff was going on in California back then. So the whole vein of this book, which talked about the big chief and this kind of hallucination cloud that he was in and how he saw things and everything appealed to a whole generation.

And so I remember just loving this book. And I finished college. I'd begun my career. And then I find out that dad has the rights to it. I knew that, but I didn't think about it. And it's selling them. So I said, well, dad, let me try to run with this. Let me try to get this set up. And I'll guarantee you, you know, half. You know, you'll have the credit of your company. Obviously, try to get you because I know how much you want to play the part. And you'll have half of whatever I can get.

And he said, okay, that's a deal. You can run with it. So I ran for it. I developed a screenplay with a local friend. And then I tried to get it going. And I worked about three, three and a half years. And one of the things I had done was taking my father's file and seeing who had shown interest in the project.

And one of the people that showed interest was a man named Saul Zantz, who owned a company called Fantasy Records up in Berkeley, California.

mainly they had milestone prestige jazz labels, but they had just recently signed this group. I know who they are. He was a guest on the show recently. Oh, there you go. John Fogerty. Yeah, it is. It was Creedence Clearwater Revival. That's right. And if you mention Saul's name to John... He wrote a song. Zantz can't dance, but he'll steal your money. Right. Well, it was all rest in peace, and I was a lovely man, I'm sure...

It was two sides. But in any event, I reached out to Saul and said, what happened with all of this? And he said, well, there was a misunderstanding between

And anyway, I got together with Saul, and Saul was based in Berkeley, California, across the bridge from San Francisco. So while I was doing the TV show, we were developing Cuckoo's Nest, and it just so happened that both things were up in the Bay Area. And all your time off, and you're six days a week. All my time off, or when I had a break, I'd go over there. And then eventually, that's how the picture, so I left the series, and

And I've always been grateful to both Carl Mulder and to the producer, Quinn Martin, because you'll appreciate this, Rob. I had a five-year contract. And after four years, I said, I'd like to leave. I want to go. Well, you try that today. And they tell you what they said. And both Carl and Quinn said, you know, I know how much this project means to you. And I talked about it so much. And they said, good luck. Go. And they let me out of my contract.

And then we went off and made Cuckoo's Nest. I have so many thoughts, but one of them is that those were the days when a mensch could do something in our business and wasn't answering to a vertical corporation. That would never happen today. What you just said is the key major, well, a couple of big differences, but that was the major difference between

The studios, you talk to a studio head, he was the head. Yes. The studio was not some part of this vertically integrated media corporation that had a fixed budget for that year and they had to do it.

You know, in those days, quarterly statements, quarterly earnings was not the most important thing in the world. You try to watch your budget, but it was much more talent-friendly. Studios, whether they had a feeling or whatever, tended to go more with talent until they got totally screwed. You know, those pictures went way over budget than they do now. And the guy that was head of the studio was the head, not some...

low-lying rung in all the other executives that now sit in these vertically integrated companies. I mean, what you get today is, I'd love to help you, but I got to send it up the flagpole. Exactly. Exactly. I'm going back. I remember we had two weeks of rehearsal

for Jack. We had all the actors up at this state mental hospital that we were using and it was an active hospital. And the president or the head, the doctor of the hospital had really coordinated everything for us and identified all of the actors and what their characteristics were and gave them certain patients that

to sort of watch and keep a part of. And they would let the actors go into these group therapy sessions and all of that. Anyway, so they've been doing this for about two weeks. Some of them were actually sleeping on the set in the ward. Jack finally gets up after finishing his picture. And he's doing the first morning of working with all these actors. Is he coming off five easy pieces? No, he's coming off the last detail. The last detail. Okay. Coming off the last detail.

And finally, we break at lunch in there, and I see him looking around and everything. I want to make my stars comfortable. And finally, I see him slide his tray away, walk outside like he's going to get some air. I say, Jack, hey, you okay, Jack? You all right? He says, yeah, who are these guys? Don't they even break character at lunchtime? I mean, it's just, who are these guys? And everybody was so much into character the whole time, they didn't have any idea what was going on. Well, the other thing is...

For those of you, you know, a lot of people ask, what does a producer do? That's what I just heard from you right now is probably the best example. You said just as if it were nothing, you worked for three years. Oh, yeah. No minimum. Well, producing is really fighting the material in most cases, first of all, or maybe somebody brings it to you. But you start with a piece of material. Either you develop it.

screenplay from an idea or you find a book that you really like and you option the book and you develop that into a screenplay and then hopefully you get that piece of material in a good enough material in a good enough shape to attract other people like a director or a good director and you produce China syndrome though - yeah one of my favorite movies and one of the most what did you think when the when it finally gets released and

And 13 days later, Three Mile Island happens. I thought it was an epiphany for me. It was a religious experience. I got involved with the project not because I was an anti-nuke. I thought it was a great horror movie about this man versus the machines. And then as we got involved in the process and we knew we needed some expertise and we hired these two GE engineers

quality assurance nuclear guys who basically had lost faith in the system and now were working on the other side. They came together with us and we worked out the whole finale with the meltdown. They worked out a whole sequence of events. And so we worked out a sequence of 150 computer events just would give us the action in the end. And Rob, when the accident at Three Mile Island happened...

And when they expressed, explained what all the steps were that went on, and Aaron Latham wrote an article, actually, I remember, for Esquire. Of the 150 steps in our movie, 90% of them were exactly the same as the Three Mile Island accident. Wow. So I had this epiphany, and I said, well, this is really something. Jack Lemmon.

How great is he in that movie? He was so great, you know, and I was 32, I guess. Jesus. And I go to, I remember going to Jack, I said, you know, we're talking, reading through, I said, Jack, you know,

you're playing an ex-nuclear submarine commander. You know, you're an ex-nuclear... So we can't do it... We can't do it... You know, the double takes, the triple threes. It's got to be, you know, you've got to really kind of clean. But he just looked at me and he said...

you know, there's one thing about Douglass, you know, he hits you with a thousand powder puffs. He said, he makes it, you know, gets his point across kind of gently and everything, but he did such a wonderful job. He was great.

And Jane, there was no part for Jane in that movie. Richard Dreyfuss was supposed to play the role, and then he backed out. And Jane had been developing the Karen Silkwood story over at the same studio, was having trouble. They said, look, why don't you guys get together? And so I co-produced it with Jane and her company.

I think back at all those times and talk about somebody. She was basically, she gave all her money to her, to her husbands in terms of Tom Hayden at the time. She donated almost all her money to his political campaigns and she would leave work at night and

And she'd run off and she was exercising and doing this weird thing called an exercise video. We didn't even know. And Jane was like, because video had just started. Video was just the first thing that had come out. And so she started these exercise videos and we know where that went. I remember getting a phone call from Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden as a young actor. Right. And I didn't know Jane. She would cold, she and Tom would cold call.

every kind of up and coming young actor and asked them to come over for a sort of salon at their house. And we would talk here with their talk to, yeah, and hear what they're up to and talk about politics. And that was a big part of my life for a really, really long time. Um, and, uh, I do remember towards the end and she and Tom had divorced. I'll never forget when she goes, you know, called me and wants to date me, Ted Turner. What am I going to do with Ted Turner? And I was like, you should go out on a date with Ted Turner.

♪

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All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I'll never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel.

Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton Honors membership required for 15% discount. Terms and conditions apply. I see Bob Z all the time up here, by the way. This is Bob Zemeckis, who really turned you into the leading man movie star you were meant to be with Romancing the Stone. Well, he was great. I mean, again, that was Romancing the Stone was one of those projects that

I was, again, producing. I didn't really have the intention of doing anything. It was a romance that was written first time by a woman named Diane Thomas, who is working as a waitress at Alice's Restaurant on the pier, Malibu Pier, isn't it? Yeah, it was, yeah, sure. It was Alice's Restaurant back there on the Malibu Pier, and this was her first script, and it was great.

And I had a studio relationship that time at Columbia and Sherry Lansing, who I had met as an executive, I had met doing China Syndrome was there and ended up buying the script for a substantial amount of money and was criticized supposedly for why would you pay that much money for a first term writer?

And my take on material is first time, 10th time, if it's good, why should somebody be punished, you know, if it's good? So I was really happy. It was a great piece. And then I was trying to figure out

who the right director was to do it. And Bob, bless his soul, had gone to USC, the film school, and had done a couple of movies. One was called Used Cars. Yep. And the other one was like, Want to Hold Your Hand? And he had Steven Spielberg as his sort of mentor and also executive producer. And those two pictures didn't work out very well. So poor Bob had sort of fallen in with Bob Gale, his writing partner, and

And just sort of a writing thing. And he was all about 25, 26 years old. He was a has-been at 25. He was a has-been at 25. Yeah. And I loved Hughes Carrs in particular. I thought he had a great sense of humor and the right kind of tone. And so I went after Bob. And also, you know, they're really good writers and all of that. Yep. And then we went...

Yeah. You got time for this? All right. All right. You just asked me how long we're going to talk. This is why. Okay. I got a couple here. Yeah. So we, um, we go down to, uh, uh, Mexico to do a pre pre-production thing to figure out how to do this thing.

And like the classic story in the script where it says two words, Rome burns. Yes. Which means about a month of shooting, production, all that. Takes you a month to shoot one sentence in the script. Right. And so in Diane's script, we had this thing called the mudslide. Oh, yes. We remember it well. We remember it well. And anyway, we got down to the realities of what we were going to do down there, you know, in terms of, wow, this is really tough.

And on the way back, we stopped by to see Amy Irving, who was the studio's... No, sorry, I'm getting it all right. Deborah Winger. It was Deborah Winger. Because she was the studio's first choice. And she was in... We were in Mexico. She was in Texas doing Terms of Endearment. And she normally doesn't deal with actors or anything else while she's doing a film, which I understand. But she said, I'll hear what they have to say. And we talked.

And so Bob and I, we didn't go to the set. She was actually, she was spending her time in the hospital because she plays terminally ill in the picture. So she was doing method work, I guess, or staying and living in the hospital. She comes out for us to have a dinner one night. We all have dinner together and we're talking and knocking back some tequilas and this and that.

And we walk out, and just as you would kind of go, oh, you, and give somebody a little punch in the arm, you know, oh, like joking around, she goes, oh, you, and she reaches over and she bites me on my arm. Ah! Ah! Bites me like, but he bites me. So I go, and she's like joking. I'm looking at her. I go, whew, I don't know, man. I'm thinking this could be rough. And she seems interested. And I go back and it's broken the skin and all that. No way.

So I go back, we get back, Bob and I go back to, we go back to Hollywood and we go down and meet, see the studio to talk to them about our scout and our location scout and what happened and what we're doing and about Deborah Winger and all that. And we're taking the whole thing and then we come to Deborah Winger and I break down in tears and said, I can't go to the jungle with her and she missed me.

She bit me in the arm. I said, I can't do it. Now, Michael, calm down. It's just not worth it. It's just too hard. It makes a picture to do. So they said, okay, all right. And fortunately, one of the executives at that time was living in a condo. This actress came up to me the other day actually asking, I think it was for sugar. It was what? Knocked on my door.

And I just saw this movie she did called Body Heat. And it's called Kathleen Turner that you should really maybe we should think about her. And that was how Kathleen came about. And then I went through two or three guys, you know, tried to get Jack to do the part. Talked to Burt Reynolds, I think, at one time and this and that. And finally, that didn't work out. And so I found a studio there.

that would let me do the part. Because one of the interesting things early in my career with having won the Oscar for Wall Street for Best Film and was an Academy Award winning producer was

I couldn't get hired as an actor because I was still a television actor. And those are the days, if you remember how separate the rails were between a television actor and being in movies. And one of the great things that's happening these days is streaming. Because streaming has made this bridge between bringing in feature film talent, writers, actors, directors, as well as television talent. It's...

That, again, by the way, this is now officially my favorite episode of the podcast. Period. Full stop. He says that to everybody. No, no, no. I do not. This is it. I mean, first of all, Deborah Winger, there's no one, I mean, Officer and a Gentleman, Urban Cowboy, Terms of Endearment. Very, very talented. But she was a biter, as it turns out. She was a character. Bless your soul. She was a character. Yeah.

in the Comiskey method, you play an acting coach. Right, right. So what is your, look, you know all there is to know about acting and you played in acting. Comiskey is a great, where are you on the method? Because I have thoughts and I'd love to know yours. Well, you know, acting was very painful for me. Acting was, I was, I don't know if it was a direct method, but somebody very early on said to me,

you know, the camera can tell when you're lying. Yes. She said, the camera can tell when you're lying. I went, oh my gosh. And so I became consumed with some type of reality and terrified that if I was acting, because the camera would know. And it wasn't as late until actually as late as Fatal Attraction.

And I was getting ready for my character. He's a lawyer in New York, huh? Yeah. Well, I could be a lawyer. He said he's, you know, he's had an extramarital affair. I said, well, that's possible. You know, I could imagine that. And so there's a point where I said, well, wait a minute. I, Michael, I can play this part.

And then I realized I lie every day. I tell a white lie every day, pretty much, you know, sometimes bigger lies to whoever. I get away with it. Acting is about lying. And it's such a silly thing to say, Rob, but this is the thing that totally freed me up and started laughing hysterically. You can do anything. It's all about lying. So,

I guess I'm trying to say that as to the separation of what the method is. Certainly you draw on memory, recall, and all of that. But a lot of it is your ability to make people believe, however you're going to emotionally, what you're doing, whether you feel it or not. And unfortunately, the really good actors...

I'm thinking about Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, even Sean Penn too a little bit, have such a disdain for acting. Yes. Because they have such a disdain because it's so effortless for them because they have learned a long time ago the sense of just that I'll bring the camera to me. I'm not going to have to. I don't do anything. I'm bringing the camera and the attention to me and...

And I'm going to do what I want. And they realize, and the more they have that confidence, the more they realize I can do anything I want. While your schmucks are out there trying to, you know, act or make it believe. So I remember my acting teacher in New York who was a benevolent teacher and not critical and supportive and tried to be a nice person. But just to say, Michael, you're...

you do like to hide behind characters. I mean, you do sometimes a lot of the stuff involves just one's own persona, you know? So I do think there is character acting,

And it's not. I mean, we shared something called Behind the Candelabra. That was some character work on both of our parts. Which, you know, to this day, Rob, you know, both Matt and David and I, we saw you the first time. I fell to my knees. I never laughed so hard in my life. And you knew it. You knew you had so much fun.

in that role and were so good. And that's the fun of character stuff. Character allows you to act like a clown. So I think there is a truth to two types of acting. One is painting your face. One is making the character and it allows you other things. And the other one is taking a Kleenex with stuff and wiping the makeup off you and trying to find the truth. Trying to find the truth and then hope the writing is good enough

that the writing is good enough dramatically and everything else that the truth will hold up. I couldn't agree with you more. I was talking to Kurt Russell about it. Yeah. It was another fantastic actor. Yeah. Just fantastic. And he's like a...

a truth architect. And, and, and that is what it is. It's, it's peeling away the artifice, but it is freeing when, when I got to put those dentures in. Oh, you were so funny.

You were so good. When I come to your house and you show the portrait as Liberace, Matt never looked at me. He literally could not look at me. We had a lot of fun. That's the joy. Richard de Gravenaise, a great screenwriter, a great script. Steven Soderbergh, a great director. Really cast well. You have so many great moments in it. I mean, one of my... I always like to find the...

the moments that other people might miss. Right. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And you have a moment early in the movie, I think, this is the best, just even saying, I think you're in the hot tub with Matt. Right. And you're asking him about his life. Right. And you're mildly interested at best. Right. In what the actual answers are. Right, right. And he talks about...

He's come from a farm and he loves animals and one day he really wants a farm. And you say something like, well, yes, of course, because the animals. Right? Well, yeah. Yeah, right. Yes, the animals.

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All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I'll never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel. ♪

Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply. Okay, here's my bold hot take. I put Liberace up there with Gordon Gekko. Right.

For sure. Yeah. That was one of those unique situations. Remember, we made it for HBO. That's right. And it was shown as a feature film in Europe. Yep. As a feature film. And we took it to Cannes. And it's hard for me to talk about it per se, but there's a lot of discussion about it.

my role being up for a Best Actor nomination. And at that time, Steven Spielberg was president of the jury, and we dismissed it because it could not be shown, it would not be treated as a film anymore.

And there was some beef at the time, which, you know, at the time, it was shown as a feature film. Well, I got one worse for you. I'm the only person that didn't win every award on that show. And do you know why? Because my screen time

Right. Did not be once there was somebody who famously won an award for one scene. Right. But people were irate and they said, we have to change this. You can't just waltz into a thing. And because you're famous and people like you win an award for one scene for supporting an actual clock.

And Soderbergh told me this. I was 90 seconds of screen time away from qualifying. Oh, no. That's right. I never knew why. Is that the reason why? That is why. Because I remember we all were like, couldn't believe it. That's right. That's exactly why. And it's the first time I realized. I didn't know that. And all those rules are so important because you would have won. You did win. You won every award that there was. Yeah. And sure.

should have and should have been. I mean, those are the situations where you got a good part and I don't know if you remember also what happened. I was just coming off of cancer. I had stage four tongue cancer and had a serious sequence of chemo and radiation and thought my career was over and this and that and this script came in and I thought, I couldn't believe it was so good.

We got together and then Steven said to me, you know, Soderbergh, the director, Michael, I got this conflict so I'm going to have to do this other movie so we'll probably have to wait for this until next year.

And Matt also said, you know, yeah, we can do this next year. And I was devastated. I thought this is never going to happen. And just they're putting the whole thing off. The reality was that they both had taken one look at me. And, you know, I was just happy to be alive. Forgotten the fact that I lost 30 pounds and looked like I'd been at Auschwitz. And said, look, give me a year till it gets back. And I was so grateful for.

for their compassion and their thoughtfulness, you know, to take it on themselves and not to blame me. They're great guys, both of them. Yeah. But my point is that you savor those situations that you have when you got a good script, good director, and a good cast, you know, and you want everybody to be. Your phone's talking to you. Siri. Not now, Siri. Siri. Working on that. No, you work on shit.

Please keep that in the podcast. It's so good. Am I crazy that I remember the time when you were doing Wall Street and I was doing this other movie, Masquerade. We were in and out of New York, passing each other, swapping locations. That was the height of the 80s craziness on sets, right? At least it wasn't my set. I remember Charlie was for sure crazy.

And Oliver. I would go out with Oliver on the weekends. Well, you guys, I didn't, I was totally blind to Charlie. Charlie was, you know, was one of those, whatever his issues were, it was... On the set, he was a set. He was right there. He was right there on the set. Always was, yeah. Yeah. You know, I've been sober now 30 some years and part of my thing was

If I can show up and perform, then I- You don't have a problem. Thank you. Exactly. And then when you do work, then your job is the last thing to go. I got it, right? It's the last. Then when the job's gone, then everything else is already the relationship. Any relationship you had is, okay, you've done it now. You took care of it. Now the job's gone. That's right. Now what are you going to do? That's so true. God, I remember one time we were in some-

loft in downtown New York. And I think everybody was taking dropped acid or something. And, and Charlie started getting dressed. So where are you going? He goes, I'm getting picked up for wall street in 10 minutes. Yeah, no, he had, none of that happens in the business now. I mean, it was when I, I don't know about you, but I mean, this is your producer. Maybe, maybe it didn't rise to your level, but there was a time where

someone was selling drugs on the set. Oh, your prop man. Your prop man didn't have to sell it. The prop man was part of his whole thing. Good, okay. For me, it was already passed by. For me, it was the 70s. It was the 70s and the early 80s. But yeah, certainly into...

Wall Street was 84, 85. Yeah, up until probably the 90s. Well, you know what it is? It's the other part of the vertical integration. Well, that's it. That killed it. Yeah, the days of the prop men dealing out of the back. When I did Outsiders, the drinking age was 21. Right. I was 17. The earliest drinking age in the country was 18. I was 17 and I would get in the van. It was a Warner Brothers movie.

I would get in the van with C. Thomas Howell, who was playing Ponyboy. He was the lead in the movie. He was 15. And they would have an open cooler of beers for us. Well. I mean, that's what the business used to be. How old were you on your first job? My very first job was with an actress named Eileen Brennan. I knew Eileen Brennan, sure. And Jane Eisner producing it. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was called A New Kind of Family, and it was on ABC, and that was 1979. Wow. So I was 15. Yeah. Right? Well, you've aged very well, Rob. Well, thank you. In other words, my character would say, thank you very much. Thank you. Do you remember the commercials, The Big Bang?

you'd moved away from LSU, you might not, the men's warehouse commercials, the guy would go, you're going to like the way you look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back east. I stole that voice for, that's the voice I'm using behind the candelabra. Because I was like, I know,

how Liberace speaks. Right, right. And I know Matt is playing super fae as well. Right, right. I gotta do something on the other side of it. Right, right. So I went for the most like gravelly kind of like. It was, it was perfect. You, it was just perfect. And I just savored to watch how much fun you were having too. Right? Oh, you just love, because I don't know, how long, how long that makeup take?

The makeup took two hours. Two hours. I know. So you better like what you're doing. Well, the other thing was every... You know how as an actor, towards the end of takes, you will...

sort of milk it or just keep going and they can use it or not use it. Yeah. Steven used every frame of everything I did. Oh yeah. And I was like, like why drink? He wanted to write more. He wanted to try to find more to do. It was so good. It was so fun. It's, it's such a, it's one of my favorite things I've ever done. And to work with you after all, I mean, listen, I remember going to see running in the theaters. I loved running. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I loved running. I loved running. I was, I never, I ran marathons back then too. It was like, uh, it was a movie for your, your listeners. It was a movie where I played a runner and ultimately made the Olympic team and the marathon team. Um, and,

Yeah, that was, well, that was fun. I enjoyed Canada. I'll tell you that much. That was the time when they're making a lot of pictures up in Canada. Oh, yeah. And it was a wonderful world up there. Oh, yes. Was it Montreal by chance? Montreal. Did I not know or did I? Come on, baby. You can't kid a kidder. Anybody know that Montreal is a wonderful town? Yeah. Just really, really.

Great town. Well, this is good. Now I'm going to get your number and we're going to play golf. Yeah, let's do it, man. This absolutely must be. This was great. My pleasure. Love to catch up. I loved having you. This was so fun. Told you you'd like that one. I mean, Streets of San Francisco, Cuckoo's Nest, Deborah Winger biting him. By the way, the Deborah Winger face bite story is the best story I've ever gotten out of a guest that involves the most famous person

people that I'd never heard before, for sure. Hands down. That's the one. Anyway, see you next week and we will be back with all new episodes. I cannot wait. See you then.

You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Nick Liao, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar, research by Alyssa Graw. The podcast is executive produced by Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross and myself at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd, music by Devin Bryant. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally with Rob Lowe.

This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.

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