Tom Hanks: #1 Theory Tom Uses in Order to Live a Balanced and Fulfilled Life

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sometimes life passes in the wink of an eye and
it's like, wow, are we here already? But there's other
times in that same week of an eye, you comprehend
it all. One of the greatest and most iconic actors
of all time.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
He's started dozens of movies over his forty year career.
You know, I'm you.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Loving if you're just looking at the pass and saying, man,
that was when it was great. I wish we could
go back. No, you never want to go back. You
always have to understand that our best days are still
ahead of it.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, as you keep saying, more will be revealed.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
As well, this too shall pass and more shall be revealed.
The number one health and Well in the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Jay Sheetty, Jay Shettyely j Shetty, Tom Hanks, Welcome to
On Purpose. It's truly an honor and a gift to
being your presence to have you here, and even the
first few moments that we've just exchanged a few thoughts,
ideas and stories, I'm already enjoying your company so much,

(01:00):
and I'm so grateful that you took it time to
do that.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Kind of likewise, or.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
And I watched here, which is out on November first.
I have so much that I want to talk about
it through and through your lens. And I was watching
it to me, the theme of home, obviously is so
strong and apparent, and I wanted to ask you where
do you feel most at home apart from home?

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Okay, all right, man, all right, let's throw deep right
off the bat. Because I was so many things lined
up with me at my age. I was the third
of four. Uh. My parents were very preoccupied with all
certain you know, like the positives and miseries of their lives.
I like to joke that they pioneered the marriage dissolution

(01:43):
laws for the state of California, you know, back they
got divorces when only like Jean Jacabor you know, or
you know, Nicky Hilton got divorces. My home environment was
fluid in that we moved a lot, and we were
suddenly living with a whole different set of people because
people be on. My parents got remarried and whatnot, so

(02:05):
that by the time I was seven, I had lived
in eight different homes. By the time I was ten,
I lived in ten different homes. And it's always been
like that, So I am not intimidated by it, and
I don't think I'm damaged by it at all. As
a matter of fact, my brother, who I did not

(02:26):
live with, he lived in the same town and in
one of three houses all his life. And I consider
myself the lucky one, you know, just just by the
nature of so much stuff that I've seen, and so
much stuff that I've been able to experience and be

(02:47):
comfortable with. Now. Look, you know, I'm sixty eight, so
I went through I've witnessed everything, you know, whatever drug
thing that you want to go. I wasn't a participant
int awful lot of that because I was so I
was kind of like entertained by the new rules of
whatever we were. And here's a new school, and here's
a new apartment complex, and now we're living in a

(03:08):
bona fide neighborhood. And I was not intimidated by all
of that stuff. And I was also comfortable, perhaps in
a way that's not healthy in some ways, of being
a new guy in a new circumstance, sizing up a room,
sizing up a school, figuring out, all right, what's the

(03:28):
easiest way to get comfortable here. Part of it is
being open, you know, kind of like taking over, cracking
a few jokes, not getting in trouble, and that's different
from I would say, like my older brother who was
very shy, and we were connected at the hip through
all of this stuff, and it was not great for
the other members of my family, but there was just

(03:49):
something about that, the roll of the dice, number three
of four right there when the parents are too busy
with all this other kind of stuff. And my siblings
were not much older than I was, but older than I,
but they were social beings long before I was. I
didn't become a social being until I was like seven
years old or what. And by that time I had

(04:11):
lived in very many places. So your long winded conversation,
where where where do I feel it? Why I feel
at home most, I'm going to say, now, at the
age of sixty eight, with some collection of my immediate family,
wherever we are, provided we are and I don't mean

(04:32):
to be good laughing, you know, provided we are laughing
at perhaps the absurdity of it, or dealing with the
cruelty of it, or sometimes just there's surreal, soilistic aspect
of can somebody tell me how we ended up here? Exactly?
Can someone? Can someone do that? Right now? So I Uh, now,
that's not necessarily a strength because along with that came Dude,

(04:56):
I travel light, and I can travel light. Emotionally, I'm done.
There's stuff that I cannot control. I have left many
wonderful atmosphere or a loving atmosphere or a friendly atmosphere.
And like Ernie Banks, you know, the ballplayer for the

(05:17):
Chicago Cubs, without ever looking back, without thinking, oh, things
were really wonderful back then, I wish I was back there, Jay,
I don't think I've ever thought that now. Is that great?
Is it facile? Or is it so mercurial that maybe
maybe you shouldn't trust me?

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Does it feel like it feels like it sounds like
a healthy detachment?

Speaker 1 (05:42):
There is a type Okay, let's talk about that, because
there is a version of detachment that means that you
can navigate, say like, can I say assholes? So you
can navigate assholes? And you know, I think my experience
is about ninety percent of the people that you come

(06:02):
across pretty decent folks, five percent are assholes, and I'll
say five percent are sociopaths, you know, and you cannot
avoid that other ten percent those two five percent and
the ability to detach from those circumstances, without a doubt
a good thing, but the habit. Then I think of

(06:27):
choosing isolation from the other ninety percent, because what can
I rely on at the end of the day. I
can only rely on what I can fit in either
my emotional suitcase, an actual suitcase, or the back of
my car, and that lingers for a very long time.
So I think the healthy aspect of it has been
a great aid to me, as well as the tendency

(06:52):
to want to be isolated, to not need anybody. Put
it that way, to not want anybody, because that's just
what I learned. Life is easy year if you don't
need anybody, and it can be a lot easier if
you want nothing more than what's in the back of
the car. But that can be a solitary life, and

(07:14):
a lot of times being solitary can be confused with
being lonely, and lonely can being lonely can lead to
anger and resentments and stuff that you got to work through.
And Okay, at the sixty eight, you know a lot
of those years have been dealt with dealing with the
latter and enjoying the former at the same time.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well, I think what you've rightly said, is that there's
this binary feeling of if you're detached, you're lonely or disconnected,
or you might be at the other end codependent and
attached and not have the ability to operate in a
solitary state. So how have you danced almost so beautifully

(07:54):
between the two of being able to confidently say you've
been detached in the right ways, and then at the
same time you have this beautiful relationship with your wife,
you have long term friendships with people in the industry,
Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, you have you. So how does
that dance work? Because I do think that the magic
is in the dance, not in the choice.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
I'm going to say that I got very, very, very
lucky being in the right place at the right time
and recognizing something that was just for me. All right,
you go back to let's just go back to school.
You know, people say show businesses like high school with money.

(08:35):
High school is like show business without money. You know,
it truly was. And when I was, when I was, look,
I just went to school. And my joke was we
moved around so much that whenever, you know, at the
end of the school year, my dad would stand me
out on the driveway and say, son, your school is
somewhere in that direction. Just walk that way, and when

(08:57):
you see kids your own age, just follow them and
they will lead you to whatever school you are supposed
to go to. The school was a social kind of
like place for me, and every now and again there
might be a moment that landed in my intellectual pursuit,
if that makes sense. I can't say I really loved
going to school, but I certainly loved the hang of

(09:19):
going to school. That's a different thing. Subject matters, that
was a role of history was great. Sometimes some reading
was great. But I was no artist. I was no
you know, I was no mathematician. You know. I kind
of like geography because you could visualize a map and
know where like Sri Lanka was, or you know, the
difference between Cambodia and Thailand. But when I was in

(09:41):
high school and had no idea what I was supposed
to do with my time other than you know, maybe
go to young life, you know, hang out, you know,
hang out with you know, some sort of psych theological
you know, brothers. But other than that, sign up for
claud maybe do your homework on the bus on the

(10:02):
way to school and what run track. I don't know
what he is supposed to do. But there was a
theater teacher. There was a theater department at this high school.
And actually this guy I had known since sixth grade
was playing Dracula in the high school play. And I said,

(10:23):
what really? And so you know, we went. We went
up to school at night to see him. And I'd
never been at my high school at night. Looks different
at night. Right. Then I sat there and there was
you know, a bunch of people in the auditorium, and
then they came out and did this play, and I thought,
this is school. You can do this at school. School.

(10:44):
Isn't this thing just to survive? This isn't this thing
just to fill up your time to leave as soon
as you can and get there at the lake. Oh no.
I did never cut class, and it didn't do that
because in some ways the hang of school was too
much fun. But when I saw that there was this
kind of discipline that I had already been thinking of

(11:06):
in my head, that just changed everything. That just would
you suddenly have a reason to go and do something,
and the reason is in a pursuit of something that
you cannot find anywhere else. Right that I got to
say my junior and senior years of high school, I
have been living that same exact life and excitement ever since.

(11:28):
I'm not kidding the idea of auditioning for the first
Like our great instructor, our teacher, he wanted to do
real plays because he loved to do the scenic design
for it. So we did Knight of the Iguana by
Tennessee Williams. How about that sixteen year old seventeen year

(11:50):
old kids playing Night of the Iguana that we did Shakespeare.
They did musicals as well, those were always popular. But
suddenly having this tantalizing thing that's like, if you have
an imagination and if you're not afraid of getting up
in front of people, which I was not. Some people
can't get up, and it was a bunt for me.

(12:12):
I did. I did it without even thinking that that
gave That gave a purpose and a pursuit that was
much much bigger than anything else that had been in
my life. Now, I have a friend of mine from
the same era, James is his name. I met him
in fifth grade and he said to me he was
going to be a draftsman. He was going to he

(12:34):
was going to be an engineer. He's going to design buildings,
and he did. That's what he's been doing all this life.
I knew. I knew people that at the same age.
They said, well, I really love to cook, and they
have written cookbooks and they've run their own catering companies.
That is what That's the same sort of thing that
I that I landed upon without really knowing it. Because

(12:55):
my parents were divorced. I spent a lot of time
I'm traveling to and from, you know, where my mom
lived in this small town where my dad lived in
Oakland in the Bay Area, and those hours on a
Greyhound bus, starting when I was seven, seven or eight
years old, five hours of just daydreaming, five hours of

(13:17):
looking out the window, five hours of looking at people
passing cars, air trains, going buy farms and whatnot. Buildings
are the natural preponderance. I had to sit there quietly
and imagine what was going on. Was that fueled me
into realizing that there's this thing, that there's actually a
discipline and a trade and an art and a what's

(13:40):
the word I'm looking for and I'll just say it again,
a pursuit that is, let's put on a show. Let's
tell a story that came along and banged. That was it,
and I'm telling you it's the same exact now as
it was then.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Did you write on those journeys or was it mainly.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
I wanted to write specific glee, but I did not literally,
I did not have the I did not have the
scholastic example. I did not learn the tools because I
just wanted to fake it, you know, at the last moment. Now,
I started writing about about twenty years ago by just

(14:19):
incorporating the work that an actor does that is not
told to anybody, that is not spoken. That actually was
a form of writing that came about, and I was
sort of like instructed on how that come how that
comes along, but without putting it down on paper. I
had malleable, cohesive narratives in my head for all of

(14:43):
this stuff, and I just thought, well, isn't that what
everybody does. That's the way you do this, right, Because
it's not just showing up on time and you know,
learning your words and doing what you're told. There is
something beyond that. And the beyond that was always fifteen
times greater than the actual physical showing up. I can't

(15:05):
I can't discount enough the power of the hang. You
want to hear a story, Here's here's a show. Okay,
here's story. Darlene Love. You know who. Darlene Love is,
legendary singer, you know, singer, A fantastic, fantastic uh motown artist,
among other things we were. I was on the Christmas

(15:28):
show of the old David Letterman Show, and every year
he brought her along to sing It's Christmas, this fabulous
rendition with a big orchestra and male choruses. I saw
her there and I said, oh, oh my. I'd seen
her on the David Letterman Show for like six or
seven years, and I said, I met her and I said, I, mislove,
I cannot believe that I am on the show with you.

(15:49):
You are you. You have been belting out, you know,
so so many moments of the soundtrack of my life
that I'm just I'm just thrilled that you're here, and
I'm here glad that you're still doing it. And she
looked at me said Tom, I'm just here for the hang.
And I got I completely, I completely got that because

(16:09):
the hang, the interaction with everybody dealing with the attractiveness
of those ninety percent avoiding or learning how to negotiate
around those other five percent, you know, the jerks and
the evil people. Ain't that just living? You know? Ain't
that better than being alone in a room when you
don't have a thought in your head?

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Well? That, yeah, absolutely, I was wondering. You talked about
luck a lot. There can we all become a bit
more lucky.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
The fellow who ran the Great Lake Shakespeare festal Vincent Dowling,
I worked for him for three years, and he's the
number of people that loved that man and worked with
that man. He touched a great many people's lives. He said,
it's the most unfair business in the world. That's one
aspect of it, because so much of it requires being

(16:58):
in the right place at the right time, by choice
and by sacrifice, you know, and that's not easy to do.
I feel that I was fortunate that from as we
spoke about, from that upg bringing, I had no qualms about, Hey,
let's go. I got enough money for gas. I drove

(17:20):
across the country with four other people one time, and
then the next year I drove across the country by myself.
Did not bat deny. And there are people that listen,
They just can't do that. You know, there is a
degree of security and fear and intimidation that can go
along with what putting yourself in the right place at

(17:41):
the right time, and along with that will come all
it's a fifty to fifty. Okay, it's a fifty to fifty.
Have you heard this great thing? I'm no mathematician, but
when I heard this, I thought, that's actually a principle
for living. Jay. If I had a quarter and I
flipped it and came up heads five times in the row,

(18:03):
what are the odds that it's going to come up
heads a seven times, six times, six time in a row?

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Is it still fifty to fifty?

Speaker 1 (18:10):
It's absolute fifty to fifty. Just because something has happened
doesn't mean it's going to Just because you're in a
place doesn't mean that's where you should be. So along
with luck, shouldn't the shouldn't the other requirement be faith
or some degree of disconnected to it. To whatever the

(18:30):
end result is going to be, you're going to have
to be I was. I was talking to a friend
of mine and he said he read somebody I don't
know who it was, but someone someone wrote down you
have to be all right with what's going to happen,
and I just well, okay, yeah, yeah, all right, let's

(18:51):
let's try to do that. So you have to be
all right with what's going to happen, right or wrong, disaster, disease,
you know, whatever you have to be. You have to
be all right with what is going to happen with
some degree of faith and luck that what happens after
that is the best thing that could possibly be.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
What's helped you get closer to that. That sounds hard,
it is, it sounds impossible.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to say that age in all
honesty experience, you know, that thing of what has not
destroyed me only makes me stronger. And look, let's not
discount the power of getting your ass kicked, you know.
And I'm not just you know, suddenly, not professionally as well.
All sorts of you know, all sorts of personal things

(19:40):
go along that give you a bloody nose and bust
your teeth, and you have to go through those metaphysically,
perhaps physically. I made this movie where I wrote a
Scooter Vespa, and so because of that, I wrote a
Vespa for about two years until I realized that I
had been so close to kill myself on this thing,

(20:01):
making a stupid missy thing that I'm going to give
up this vestival. This was a smart This was a
smart thing to do that only came about because I learned,
you know that, you know, sometimes a hair's breadth between
you know, cracking up or falling down, or needing that
crash helmet or not. So it is a degree of
that experience and also being I think open to some

(20:28):
of the most basic I don't want to say philosophical truths,
but I have been to the Holy Land. I have
seen the sights that are precious, divine. I was. I
was actually working this long time ago. This was before

(20:50):
the great many of the great problems that were going there.
And I was driving back, being driven to Jerusalem. I
was with a guy and I said, hey, so, so
Moche tells me, tell me tell me about where we are.
He says, okay, I will tell you.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
This is.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
We are bound by a key boots. This is a
very old key boots, you know key boots.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yes, this is a very old one. It's been there
a very long time, very popular. And uh now we
are coming up of a most shop. You know what
is Moshop is not like a Koboots. It's different, more
more socialists, less comfortable. But this is also much like that.
And people live there and they work in their farm.
And this is where David killed Goliath.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
And coming up here, I said, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa whoa packed the car just a little packed this side.
Did you just say this is where David killed Goliath. Yes,
he says. There's a little sign there it said in
English and Hebrew and Arabic. This is well, tell me

(21:54):
about that. Okay, Well, okay, there you see the valley, yes, okay.
And on one side was the Philistines. Philistic they were
they were there, okay.

Speaker 4 (22:05):
And David and the Israelites were here, and they sent
down to the middle. There the the the guillant, the
the giant.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yes yes, the golight yes. And the David says, I
will fight this man.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
And he puts the stones and he kills him, and
and I said this is the place.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
He said, yeah, I'm not going to argue with that.
Absolutely not going to argue with that. So move it on.
And I you know, you visit great cathedrals and whatnot
have been all place around around the world, some of
the great face. And we were in we were in Japan,
the family and I. We had this fabulous guy that

(22:48):
was driving us around and he took us to some
Buddhist places, some Shinto shrines, and there was a big
tree at one of them, uh at one of the
one of the temples the shrines, and people would write
down prayers on these on wooden wooden signs and they
would hang them up like ornaments. So this treees is

(23:09):
covered with a million prayers, beautiful kind of like sensibility.
And he wrote down something and he hung it up
and I said, you know, oh, she what did you write?
This is? Oh? I wrote here, I'll show you. And
it was in Japanese, you know the language. And he says, this, this,
this means I will never know all I need to know.

(23:30):
That's all we talked about, you know, later on, you
know what, So the ongoing education of we're never going
to know what we need to know more is always
going to be revealed. And this too shall pass, That
governs absolutely everything. If you are having the greatest time

(23:53):
in your work, this too shall pass. If you are successful,
that this too shall pass. If you are sick, if
you are experienced, and great tragedy and great drama, great difficulty,
this too shall pass. Now, I don't know if I'm
still answering the question you ask. This was educated to
me over the course of my twenties and thirties and

(24:14):
forties or fifties, at a time when you think that, no,
what you have to do is have a master plan.
You got to stick to the plan. You got to
lay your head down, you got to fight for it,
you got to compete. Yeah, Okay, there's times when you
know you got to do that other kind of stuff,
and other times you just kind of like got to
roll over and say, I surrender, you know, just I
will never know all I need to know and I'll

(24:34):
never be able to do all that I should do. Yeah,
that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
It does make sense. It does make sense. And I
appreciate you saying that it comes with wisdom and age
and experience, because I used to have a mentor you
sadly passed away during the pandemic, but he would always
replace He would always repeat to me, there's no substitute
for maturity, and it.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Was no shortcut to it.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yeah, Yeah, the maturity was just.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
And yet didn't you know somebody when you were young
who was the same age as you that had it?

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Oh, I came across all sorts of people like that. Yeah,
And I just said, first of all, what makes you
so special? And what makes you so smart? What makes
you so calm? You know? What was it?

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Did you have a figure out?

Speaker 1 (25:20):
I have the vegus idea, you know, some combination I
would probably say, of connection, you know, a connection to
a family, connection to you know, uh, perhaps a heritage
that goes along with that that you know, some friend
of mine we were we went to their sons bomb mitzvah.

(25:40):
And I'm not Jewish, but I said, you got by Messid.
Oh yeah, of course I got bob Mitzvah, he said.
And he said, let me tell you something about the
bom Mitzvah. This is what's great about it. Because my
thirteen year old son when he's getting bod Mitzvah, and
I told him, I said, after this, my son, your
sins are your own. He's thirteen. But this is the
you know, and there's studies of you know, there's examples

(26:03):
of that all through all sorts of cultures, uh, and
all sorts of histories that said, there is a time
when you and you alone are responsible for everything that
goes on goes on in your life. I have a
I have a friend who is studying with a Buddhist monk.

(26:24):
You know, a guy whose name he's literally got his
name venerable in his first name. How about that? When
I was talking to the venerable you know whatever it is,
and I said, look, I know squat about Buddhism outside
of you know what I you know, see on TV shows,
So what's the deal? And he said, Well, one of
the smartest things I heard from a guy who precious

(26:47):
Buddhism is my life used to be nothing but chopping
wood and carrying water, and now that I have received
some enlightenment, I find that all that is necessary for
or need to live is to chop wood and carry water. Okay,
all right, man, that's some high country. And I don't

(27:08):
know if you hear that. Well, I don't know. If
I had heard that at the age of twenty two,
I would have had the slightest an idea of what
are But at the age of sixty eight, you know,
I think I can get a little bit closer to.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
That definitely to that. Yeah, I think there's two things
you brought to mind for me. I think one of
them's been when I've noticed some of the wiser people
that I've met along the way or at a younger age.
As you were mentioning, it's always been people who were
exposed to more generations and so people who were in
their twenties, but new people who are seventy and spent
quality time with them, or people who are in their

(27:42):
fifties and spent time with someone who is eighteen or
twenty one, and that kind of juxtaposition of being surrounded
by people that weren't just all your age in the
same space. There was a sense of you being able
to learn and grow and take and receive. I was
spending time with couple that my wife and I have
become very close friends with, and they're both seventy, and

(28:05):
my wife and I are in our in our mid thirties,
and we were we spent a weekend with them, and
it was brilliant because I got destroyed at pickleball by this.
For me, Yeah, he's playing pickleball and tennis for four
hours a day and I can barely play. For a
couple and so big inspiration, but just the life experience

(28:25):
and the engagement you get from that. And I think
so much of our going back to what we were
seeing about community and even your mention of church there
or the Holy Land. I was researching something recently. I'm
writing my third book, and something that I came across
and I've been playing around with is this idea called
the third space theory. And what the third space theory

(28:46):
lays out is that back in the day, we would
have home, we would have work, and we would have church.
And church was a place you could look back on
working home and reconcile and reflect and think.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
About you can pond why bad things happen to good
people and vice versa. Yeah, a place literally meant for that.
This is why you come here exactly.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
And now what's happened is let alone three spaces. We
don't eat, We just have one, so we work from home,
we live at home, and then our third space or
the closest thing to it is a television. Probably there
is there isn't a separate space, and so it's arguing
the fact that there isn't that space almost to have
those thoughts, conversations, ideas, insights, that may arise.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
The generational thing I think is wickedly important, whether or
not you look, they don't. You know. Sometimes it's just
the old person that's sitting in the corner, you know.
But other times it's like, you know, a big there
is some aspect of the big family that is not
for everybody, you know, because God knows, not everybody once
to come to thanksgivings sometimes because they don't want to
have that same fight again.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
I had.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
I had a friend who he had his His grandmother
was like and already had an like she was ninety
three or something like that, and she was always just there,
you know, just there. And at one point he was
he was arguing with his parents about not wanting to
do so I can't remember what it was, didn't matter.

(30:14):
But everybody say, why are you doing it? Why do
you what's that about? How can you do? How can
you da da da dah blah blah blah. And my
friend said, wow, we hey man, because life's too short.
And this ninety year old grandmother is just sitting there
and she said, no, life's not short. Life is long,
which I interpreted as being life is long. So if

(30:36):
you're doing something stupid you know you're spending a lot
of time relishing, you know, living inside inside that that stupidity. Yes,
and my kids are my my old my youngest kids
essentially were raised along by us, as well as a

(30:57):
couple of people that have you know, been employee like
families for members of him, but also their grandparents, their
yai and popoo, as they say in Greek, people who
were never not engaged with them when they were babysitting.
We never had to have babysitters, We never had to
have a nanny, We didn't have anything like that. What
we had instead was two generations removed of people speaking

(31:21):
Greek to them, asking them questions what are you doing
from the moment they are toddlers until they're fourteen years old.
What they got from that is so different from from
what I got from mine. There is a joke in
my family about how bad I am with tools. I mean,
as soon as I pick up a screwdriver or a hammer,

(31:42):
I start getting cold sweats. Because my dad had no
patience with me about He never said, let me show
you how to use it, let me show you how
to scrape that off. It was always I'll come on you,
not head don't you know how to stand a board?
Don't you know the difference between a standard socket wrench
and metric? And I never did because nobody said, let

(32:04):
me show you how you do this. You got to
learn so that you're talking about something there that is
it's almost it's like water on a stone, you know,
it just has an effect over time. And uh, you
know for in many cultures you have to look at
that and say, the more, the more generations around that

(32:26):
table with regularity, you know, not just for you know,
three holidays, three holidays a year. There, the richer the
lesson is going to be, you know, the deeper, because
you're going to pick up some stuff just by like
a like an old story from you know, from the
old country. My uh my, uh, my father in law, dad,

(32:49):
he was he was Greek, but grew up in Bulgaria
and had to escape the communists at whatnot, which is
a fascinating story unto itself, but but what what he
told the story about being told by his dad to
take the donkey up to this, you know, up to
the mountains and get something and bring it back knowing

(33:10):
that there was the meanest dog on the planet Earth
up there that was going to try to try to
bite him. He came back there. Oh, I think of
what it was is he said, take the donkey up there,
and he didn't want to wrestle with the donkey. He
just wanted to go up there and get it back
really fast. And on the way there, this dog, you know,
nearly mauled scared the living daylights out of him. So

(33:31):
when he came back down, his dad said, I told
you to take the donkey because the donkey would scare
off the dog. You know like that, So you know
you don't That's the kind of stuff you got to
pick up over time. But did you did you have
multiple multiple generations in the home as you were growing up?

Speaker 2 (33:49):
I felt that for me. My my monk teachers became
that for me because they were older and so sure.
I had had among teachers in his probably sixties when
I met him, at an who was in his thirties
when I first met him, and so they became that.
I wasn't so close to my grandparents and so I
didn't really have that same interaction as you wasn't mentioning

(34:10):
your children, did I didn't really have that with them.
So I had my parents, I had my uncles and aunts.
But then I think it was really later on when
I met those two generations in the monastery that that
really expanded my breadth of you know, human experience.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
The guice worked across the board. But sometimes you know,
grandpas are drunk and you know, and and grandma does
not have to but smoke cigarettes and you know, and
watch Wheel of Fortune. So maybe it's not.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Always gave me. It gave me. Was there You were
talking about your experience with your father and you know,
with the tools, And it's so funny because my dad
was the opposite. He was he was useless at di
y and so I'm useless, and so I.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Have that my dad was great. My dad could fix everything.
There was a there was a story I was talking
to my older brother that he and my dad. My
dad was a why in the word was spend a
lot of money for crying out loud? We could get it.
We could get electronics, get and make our own amplifier.
We don't have to go off and pay all this
much money. But I'll get up to a turntable and
a speakers. There we have stereo systems. So they got

(35:10):
a kit and I saw them working on it together,
and I was kind of jealous, and I'm honestly forty
years later I said to say, you know that when
you made the amplifier with Dad, I was really jealous,
being like, oh man, I wish I would have done
anything to trade shape places with you. My dad was
so miserable as we're doing it always or you not head,
don't you know? Don't you know? Why? To Solder, it's like, oh,

(35:31):
oh yeah, there's a perspective of everything.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Yeah, definitely, did you try to? Did you try to
pair in differently? Like? Did you?

Speaker 1 (35:38):
You know? You try to? But I made every mistake.
You know, you scar the kids somehow in the same
exact way, and as they get older, you know, you
come back around and said, hey, can I talk about
what a nodthead I was with you for all those
years and said, yeah, sure, Dad, Yeah, I've been kind
of waiting for this. Why don't what did you? What

(35:59):
are your unloads? So no, but I would say at
the same time, I think there was you know, does
it come up to be fifty to fifty? Maybe the
attitude and the you know, the life that we led,
the laughs. You know that stuff's worth its weight and
you know, gem encrusted gold.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
So what's something that they've taught you, what's something that
they've said?

Speaker 1 (36:20):
How different they all are? You know, they are not
the same type of human being. Ever, my youngest at
one point said something that was definitely true for him,
and I thought, is in fact true for all of
my kids, which makes me feel good, And that was

(36:41):
he was younger, he was like seven or eight. I said, oh,
you know, at one point, let's let's go down we
were New York. Said let's go down the park and
we'll take our gloves, we'll throw it around, we'll bat
the balls. Let's just find a place of grass. He said, okay,
do that, and it got away from me. Didn't happen?
This called that something happened and I realized that, oh,
the sun's going down. I said, oh my god, oh

(37:01):
my god. Hey, I'm sorry. I said we were going
to go down in the and throw the ball around.
It got away from me. Forgive me, and he said, no,
it's okay to and he sounded disappointed. That's okay. I said, well,
you know, I feel bad. I just I just I
don't I don't want you to be bored. And he
looked at me with a look on his face and said, Dad,
I'm never bored. And that is that's curiosity. That speaks

(37:25):
to curiosity and drive and also the comfort of where
one is in order to feel free in order to
explore whatever world that is. And I can I think
I could say that maybe in varied degrees, for all
the kids, their ability to pursue their own interests without

(37:49):
being prodded, without being forced to, I've learned from that
because look, there was that isolation that I'm that I
was talking about. There was a time when I was
so comfortable doing absolutely nothing or you know, pursuing some
brand of you know, disconnection that wasn't good for me.

(38:11):
And uh I you know they everybody has it in
some some some degrees, but it could be of a
with all that you were, with all you kids, with
all your advantages, I do not want to hear that
you're bored. And they have never they have never said
that they're bored. They've they have always had some action

(38:31):
thing that was going on, whether I understood their passion
for it or not.

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(40:00):
on purpose. We attracted that isolation and disconnection at that
moment in time. What was it that was so appealing
to them?

Speaker 1 (40:07):
I think I just had to get used to it
because I was number three. People ran out of time,
you know, they didn't have the wherewithal of the interests
because I was so young. But my parents split up
and there were so many other factors that had to
go into Man, there's logistics and legal thing and time
and distance and stuff like that that I took care

(40:28):
of myself, and you know, was satisfied. I think it
was reprieve for them. So I just got used to
occupying myself by being alone. Yeah, and that's really great
and it can be really detrimental.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, I can relate to so much of that as well.
I felt I was the eldest, just one of two,
and my parents You've used this word previously in other
interviews of having your parents had a fractured relationship and
so did mine, and so there was definitely a sense
of I had to build independent and accountability and responsibility
very early on because I had to take care of things.

(41:07):
And I also look back at that as such a
strength and I'm so grateful for it in a kind
of weird way because I feel like it made me
grow up earlier, not in a way that I felt
a lost to childhood or I didn't have amazing experiences,
but I'm really happy now when I look back that
it gave me strength and courage much earlier.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
But as the older one did, they have some expectations
of responsibility put on you, like where are you going
and you have to be back by now? Where there
are rules placed.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
No rules, no rules for me, more expectations educationally and
what was strange which is so much link to what
I do today, And I've drawn that line fairly often
for myself is I was emotionally dependent on by both
of them. Okay, so I became the therapist.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, no, wonder you went off for three years to
sleep on the floor exactly on the ground. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah. So I'm grateful for it now though, because I
think it gave me the ability to listen closely, be empathetic,
understand both sides, care for both of the like. He
gave me that ability to recognize how it takes two
to ten going.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
I think this is a viable study about where you
are in that pecking order every now. And I agreed
about it because because I was last and last by
like five years, I had no rules, I had no
expedit they had. They had spent so much time trying
to establish that with the older you know, my older siblings.
They didn't want to bother with it anymore. So if
I was gone for you know, like two weeks, I

(42:34):
just didn't come home for two weeks. In high school,
they knew I was sleeping at somebody's house and doing
my homework and getting to school on my own. They
were thrilled that they didn't have to, you know, they
didn't have to discipline me or punish me. They didn't
have even have to think about me. I just came
and went by myself. So but I was not the oldest,
you know, I did not have somebody that was establishing

(42:55):
the rules and you know, the structure of the family.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
That was Yeah, that was different for me too. I
had expectations ed academically, which is normal in an Indian family,
but there weren't any rules from me as well. So
if I was out and about and doing whatever it was,
it didn't matter.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
And so so I'm gonna it's a stereotype of the
Indian family. Are there? Are you all brilliant students? Do
you all work really hard?

Speaker 2 (43:19):
You're finish? You're forced to? Yeah, you're forced to. You're
forced to prioritize homework. Education is all that matters. Your
social skills, life relationships don't matter. It's all about how
well you've golad.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
I'm not an Indian and there's no way I could
have been.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah, it's all about how well you perform academically. Your
whole life revolves around that.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Were your parents like high academic and June? Well?

Speaker 2 (43:41):
I think they did. I would say they did very
well for what they had. So my dad became a
chartered accountant. He qualified in England, but he grew up
he was raised in India, and my mom never did
any more than what you'd study up until age sixteen,
and then after that also became an entrepreneur and became
a financial advisor. So they both struggled and worked hard.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
I love it. It was going it was going right
where I thought it was. You said, and then became
an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, yeah, which I realized growing up that she was
an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
Well, that comes from somewhere of that structure of education
and homework done, no matter the gender.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Exactly, exactly, exactly, definitely. But I was thinking about as
we're talking about your life, I can't help but think
about the movie here that I'm so grateful I got
to watch a couple of days ago, a couple of weeks, no,
a week ago now, and I really just felt that
it was a work of art. That's kind of what
I took away from it. It was a work of
art because really as a film more recently had me

(44:43):
so fixated on. First of all, the way it's produced
and created is beautiful, and the way it's a.

Speaker 1 (44:50):
Pretty deep throaw.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
It's so deep, and it's perfect for this conversation that
we're having. And even as you're reflecting on all of
these scenes in your life, to me, I can't help.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Both project oh dear, oh, but you because because it
was the four of us, you know, Bob, Bob Zamachus
and Eric Roth and Robin and I and everybody everybody
else in it, you know, Paul and every actor did
we The scenes are very very specific of a moment
in a family's life. Yes, and everybody was armed for bear.

(45:21):
Everybody had a thing that had happened to them that
was like that. Not necessarily example, but the sensory experience,
the emotional connection to every single moment in this thing
was really quite resident for us all. And I had
to when I people say, what are you working on?
I'm making a movie called here? I say not h

(45:43):
E A R it's h E R E. I said, well,
what's it about? I've said it is about how important
things are when they happen here, you know, because you
cannot control them, and they are the film. I mean

(46:04):
all of the permutations it goes. You know, we say
the camera stands still in space, but it moves in time.
You know. Everybody, every character in it is going through
that profound thing that happens in a specific moment in
their life. And where does it happen. It happens right here.
So we were always talking about presence, you know, some

(46:26):
big aspect of it, and also that we do not
know that we're living in a moment of history. We
don't know. They don't know that the first tribes you know,
the Native Americans, they don't know that they're Native Americans.
They're just living in the moment. They don't know they're living,
you know, six hundred years ago. Nor do the people

(46:47):
that build the house that takes place, and they don't
know that they're living in nineteen eleven. They think that
they're just living in the right now of it. And
that's a type of thing that really is so examinable
examine the ball in a very specific type of cinema.
That is the point of what the whole movie is.

(47:08):
That you know that Bob and Eric fleshed out long
before Robin and I came along, and along with that
comes together the four of us have a history that
we can go back to. I mean, Robin's worked with
Bob a couple of times. I've worked with Bob a
number of times. Eric is one for in mine. We

(47:29):
worked on stuff all the time, and every time we've
done it, we have a pinpoint of the difference between
here at the moment that had happened and now at
this moment where we're talking about establishing a whole new
other place in time.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah, I mean, when I was watching it, I couldn't
help but think of every place that has been monumental
in my life, and then think about how many other
events must have taken place in that room, in that
space that I'm not even aware of, and I might
even take for granted and not recognize the value of

(48:05):
both in my life and previously, and of course the
future as well well.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
I had to wrap my head around this thing that
I had never experienced. We lived here. I've never lived
any place. You know. You know now now I've now
we Now I've had I've lived had in the same
literally home as in three dimensional structure and time and space.
I've had that now for you know, a couple of
decades here. But this idea of someone putting so much

(48:34):
I don't want to say importance, but having so much
emotional centeredness in literally this place, in a room by
these stairs, through this door. The TV used to be there,
and there it was there. Here's where mom and Dad
did this, Here's where I did that. I don't have that.

(48:55):
Oh I got it, you know, like we got married,
and you know, finally I did. But I didn't get
it until I was thirty five years old. And my
kids have it, and sometimes I have to ask them
about their perspectives. I moved around so much as a kid.
I look forward to it. When we moved out of
the house that my kids had been born in and

(49:17):
lived in for the better part, you know, lived in
for like fourteen years a piece, they were sort of
undone by it, and I didn't understand it. I literally,
in the back of my head, if not verbally, said,
what's a big deal? You know, how's that for a perspective?
It is a huge deal if you're actually there and Richard,

(49:38):
you know, Robin and I are characters. You know, I'm
born in the house, I grow up in the house,
my kids are born in the house, or entire marriage
and family is spent in that house. And is it
a solace or is it a boundary that you're never
able to get through that. Experiencing that and examining that was,

(50:01):
oh my lord, I can't tell you how many how
much conversation. This whole movie was just one big ass
conversation about what it means, and not so much about
what the words are, how we move around. That's the
technical stuff that goes along. But every moment that we
were off by ourselves, it seemed to me we were
trying to weigh this very specific thing of what we

(50:22):
have always, what we have all been through in our odd,
you know, celebrated goofy stupid individual lives, and what it
meant to this the h E R E aspect of
this story that we were trying to tell. And Bob particularly,
I mean Bob's, and we all I think, incorporated our

(50:44):
own approach to our art form and commercial life to it.
Bob is a filmmaker, is not about to do a
shot that anybody could do, you know. And he's not
about to tell a story cinematically in ways that have
been done before. He's just built that way. Wow, hell,
anybody could do that, you know. He says stuff like that.
And Eric, as a screenwriter, he's constantly landing on this

(51:08):
place where only his words on paper can translate this
thought process. And Robin and I, you know, I'll appall everybody, everybody,
And the thing is like, I know, the lines turn
me loose, Let's go, let's go what are you going
to do? You're gonna try that, Let's try that where
a you're going to go? Just take it? You know,
this ongoing game of improvisational emotional football in which you're

(51:31):
just and I mean football is the international sense, Yes, Premiership,
the Championships league. It is a ball, that is, it's
a matter of engines, it's a matter of a curve.
It's a matter of being in the right place at
the right time in order to receive what's given to
you and then pass on to somebody else.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
Yeah, it was. I know the film uses digital anti
aging technology and you have to see yourself many years younger.
Was there any special feeling that, No, it.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Was kind of great. Yeah, I mean because it's a
great tool because it's been you know, people are aged
and younged up in movies, you know, since the since
Edison stole George Melier's film process back in the early
nineteen hundreds. It was fascinating to watch because it ended
up being the tools were so much better that it
was a different completeness to it.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
You know, we all had you know, you always have
hair and makeup. We went through extensive everything, you know,
they did. They at one point, I'm sitting there and
Jennifer are fabulous makeup artists. She's just looking at me.
She just grabbed both of my ears and then lifted
them up and shoved them to the into the top

(52:45):
of my head and I said, what are you doing?
He said, oh, Tom, we're working on you being seventeen
and as you age, your ears grow and lower on
your head, and so I'm trying to see if I'll
be able to glue them up on the side. I said,
have at it, girl. Uh. So that all of the

(53:07):
tool aspect of it is standard. What was new is
that we could see it in real time. We didn't
have to send it off and wait for a long
post production thing because that was the deep fake technology
that uses some form of AI just to make it
much much faster and immediate. And listen, what what. One

(53:29):
of the things that it shows is just how old
I a. Because you know, you got to have posture
and energy if you're if everything else about you looks
like you're twenty two years old, you're going to have
to embody a twenty two year old. I'm going to
tell you right now, it's very hard to leap off
a couch and enthusiasm as a as a as a

(53:51):
sixty seven year old guy.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
At the time that we did it, I didn't even
think of that.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Hey, you know what, had a lot of TEA, had
a lot of protein for us now got a lot rest,
got a lot of stretching, you know, in order in
order to make that happen.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
You mentioned presence there, and that was a theme that
definitely struck me. What do you find helps you be
the most present today as you're living?

Speaker 1 (54:12):
There are times that I think you have to be oblivious.
You have to sort of like enforce it. You have
to not think of things. It's crazy, but one of
the most basic things I think that I learned probably
in junior college when I actually for the Chabau Community College,
when he truly did begin to study this kind of stuff,

(54:35):
is that the words what you are saying has to
be so familiar to you that you don't think about it.
And that is a degree of being oblivious to the
specifics of what you're doing, because if you're trying to
get through it, that means self consciousness. That means you
are not getting out of yourself, and self consciousness is

(54:56):
the death of performance. Ask any actor this thing. It said,
if you have a scene, well, you have to go
to a deep emotional place and the only way to
do it is to go there. Chances are you have
had the most wonderful day of your life. Prior to that,
or that it is so much fun to come to

(55:16):
work that day, all right, So that's one thing that
you have to do. And the other side of it
is if you have to be charming and convivial and
funny on paper on stage a day, chances are you're
going through some personal health you know, off you know
off camera that you just have to be oblivious to somehow.
And along with that, there's a I can't discount enough

(55:39):
the joy of the hang I think what I do
for a living joy does does it promotes it? And
joy not necessarily being we're all having a great time,
we're all, you know, singing campfire songs, but the joy
of allying yourself with great collaborators and trusting that they
are going to get better stuff out of you that

(56:00):
you could possibly bring yourself, and being open to just
knowing it so well. Everybody say, well, what do you
mean by what what do you mean by learning the lines?
I mean learning the lines like you know of the
lyrics to the best song you ever heard in your life. Yesterday,
Oh my trouble seems so far away now. I need
a place that's here to say, Oh, I believe you've

(56:22):
got to be able to rattle it off that fast,
that easily. It's got to be so much a part
of you that you don't have to think about it.
If I actually sang the right words to you.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And I
feel there's this it's amazing to see your enthusiasm, excitement, joy,
you know, continuing your career when you're even what you
just said now of working with people who can get
even more out of me, and that belief that there's
more in you always. You've talked about imposter syndrome in
the past, which obviously I'm sure everyone when they look

(56:55):
at you find it hard to believe. But I recognize
when you've shared I've heard you talk about it before.
It's very real. It's very genuine, this feeling of like, oh, well,
you know, walk us through that. How you've been able
to constantly believe there's more in you, to give more,
to do more, to find.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Somebody wanted me to do a movie, all right, and
it was great and I should have done it. It
was going to be for a lot of money or pain.
You'll go somewhere cool, you get a good per diem,
you know, all that kind of stuff. There was no
reason not to do the movie except there was something

(57:34):
that I just said, this is not the match for
me because number one, I don't have any curiosity about
the subject. Now that's not the only reason to do it,
but in order to translate the theme of the movie
through a performance, there has to be some sort of

(57:55):
challenge and curiosity to it, and I had none. That
was one thing. But the other part of the two
I was searching. I was I was having a one
on one uh talk with the director and I was
just I said, look, I said, I don't I don't
have the I don't have the I don't have the countenance.
And the drinker said countenance. The hell does that means?

(58:17):
There is a thing that we all carry with us.
We have a countenance that comes from everything we've said,
all the work that we've done, all the all the
times that we've either succeeded or failed. Because they both
go together, you failure teaches you a lot more than
success does. I'm talking about commercial success, but that idea

(58:37):
that you walk away from a job and you think
that we went to a new place in order to
in order to examine this theme that only we could
have done unless we all got together and challenge each
other and made it happen, and without that type of
stretching of one's countenance that you come into. Uh, that's

(58:57):
that to me is the That's that, to me is
the the big mcgilla. I still find myself uh, completely
at the mercy of that instinctive moment of oh my god,
that's what that's what I think, you know, and the
next thing you know, you want to do it, and
you're talking talking about it continuously, and there is nothing

(59:18):
that anybody says that detracts from that initial initial experience
because you know other other you know that there's there's
plenty of the things that you can do, uh, because
they're fun. I mean, my my, my beginnings. The first

(59:39):
time I was a professional actor, we were in repertory
theater uh at uh with my Vincent Dowling at a
place called the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival in Cleveland, Ohio.
And because we were in a rep we did everything
we did. We did Hamlet and King John at Othello
at the same time we were doing fabulous Rip Warren
comedies that everybody, everybody doug. The countenance then is exchanged

(01:00:06):
between them between the two. And that's something that it's
not a burden at all, but it is a it
is a prism through which a decision has to be made.
Going back again to this idea of this, I believe
that Mike, my countenance, look it up, staff, look up

(01:00:26):
countenance for me. My countenance is not going to aid
the examination of this theme. And movies work when the
theme is worthy of being examined by that movie. And
so in that case, you just have to say, uh no,
there's a you need somebody that's going to come in

(01:00:47):
there like a you know, like like a like a
mad dog and devour that bone. And I just my
countenance doesn't match up to that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Yeah, it sounds like you've never compromised that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
Oh I've compromised you time, okay, making mistakes. You know,
there was a period of time. Look look at my IMDb.
It might be up in triple digits by now, you know.
And it was a time where I just said, they
are asking me to be in a movie. You don't
say no to that. And that's young. That's the stuff
that you do in your twenties and in your thirties,
and then sometime in there you start thinking about no, no, no, no,

(01:01:17):
Wait a bit and wait a minute, lait a minute.
The greatest decision, by the way, I don't think I've
ever said no yet except by schedule. But now it
turns out to me that's where you start shaping what
your your art and the body of work you have
to start the power is saying no. And that's really
that was really hard to do when you know everybody

(01:01:39):
thinks you're great, you show up and everybody wants you
to do it, and everybody says fabulous things. But I
didn't know I was compromising because I didn't know any better.
But there's a moment I guess when you say, like, ah,
you know, I don't. I don't want to. I don't
want to. I think I'd be compromising somewhere here. And
so the first time I said no to something, it

(01:02:03):
was a very it was it was on one hand,
liberating inter course, I might have thought I made the
biggest mistake of my life. You know, I tell you,
if you take any great take, any great magnificent take.
Let's just pull from to take Faye done Away and
Lawrence Olivier, they have very specific countenances. There is a
thing that you will say, oh my god, the countenance

(01:02:23):
of Lawrence Olivier really really Ozzie Davis, Well, you know
any grade that Wow, that countenance matches. Yes, and that's
I guess that's what I'm Yes, there is there is
like a you know, some sort of cosmic weight that
they carry along with it that makes sense for what
they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Yeah, for sure, there's a listening to you speak about.
I mean, it's so relieving to hear that you've compromised sometimes,
like because it's a relief again.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Come by my house, right if I might have compromised.
You know, how about that? You want to do that,
We'll bring the it, We'll bring the DVDs and say
this is the DVD of compromise.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
I mean, that'd be amazing. No, I think because I
think we're so good, we forget that. You're used to
celebrating and counting someone's wins and hits when they've had
so many, and you look over the compromises or whatever
it may have been. And so it's a relief hearing that.
Because your values of how you pick a project, of
how you work on a project seem so strong and

(01:03:23):
defined now, and that's obviously come with time. As you
were making here, was there a particular scene that reminded
you of a time in your life that you want
to revisit, relive, rethink.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Eugene O'Neil wrote Our Wilderness. He wrote that play as
the life he would have, he wanted to have, he
wished he had had, the family that he had wished
he had. And I always read that Eugene only is
a big reason why I became an actor, because I
saw great productions of his stuff back in nineteen seventy

(01:03:58):
five seventy six, And when I finally saw All Wilderness,
I was knocked out because it was as delightful a
play as it was. And I'd always heard that he
wrote that as you know, the family that he wished
he had. I thought about that when when I was
doing Here, because there are moments, for example, when we're

(01:04:18):
just sitting watching TV and you know, Robin is there,
the kids are little, and we're just there and we
ended up talking about what would be on the TV,
you know, and I went right back to you know,
I don't know it was a Dean Martin show or
an episode of something, even down to some of the
commercials that we wanted to and those moments were transporting

(01:04:41):
for me, but not in a home the way we
were picturing it. I remember seeing those in an apartment
that we lived in for two and a half years,
when I was walking to school by myself, or the
first years. You know, somebody was married to a spouse
that was not the most benevolent human being in the

(01:05:04):
planet Earth. Right, Sometimes I remembered sometimes just that that
gathering around like mindedly getting the same thing out of
a TV show, like an electric fireplace. But it was solace.
It was a togetherness that belied what was really going
on in the house. And there's a couple of those,

(01:05:26):
particularly when the kids are little and Robin and I
are in the early early years of our marriages, that
were sublime right then and there because we're laughing, it's there,
the kids are being goofy. There's a moment that there's
a moment that comes along and what I don't think

(01:05:47):
there's a better example of a true sense of family
and home and connection in moments that are not Thanksgiving
or Christmas morning, or a wedding or a kid They
are when you're just sitting around on a Thursday night,
you know, content and happy and nothing is happening, except
the sense of presence that's there. There's a couple of them.

(01:06:09):
That's funny that they usually ask that because I realized
now that the amount of the amount of suggestions we
all had for how we would sit there, what would
be on the TV, what we had done just before
was coming right out of right out of our individual lives,
from Bob, from Eric, certainly from from Robin and myself.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Yeah, it felt so real. It feels so real. Every scene,
every conversation, every event feels so real.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
One of the things that we learned because it's shot
in this very specific you know aspect ratio, you know,
camera position, is that everything works. Everything. If you're in
the scene, even if you're not talking, you are registering
in a way that warrants attention the stuff that is

(01:06:58):
on the walls. I can't say enough about the TV.
Here's something goofy. I walked onto the set one day
and it was from a period from you know, early
nineteen sixties or something like that, and the TV was
an old General Electric TV that was the same model
we had when Apollo eight flew around the moon. We had.

(01:07:22):
This was the TV. We had, this old black and
white thig with General Electric had this big channel changing
knob on the side. It was like that, and it
was the same maple cabinet. It wasn't big. It was
just not much, you know. It was on legs and
it had the cloth speaker said General Electric and anything
like that. And I immediately took a picture of it
and I sent it to my siblings and I said,

(01:07:43):
you recognize this and they all said, ah, that's a
TV from the Johnson House. You know. It was like that.
So it had these kind of like talismans that came
along with it that. Oddly enough, they were both great
to see and bittersweet to remember. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
Yeah, sure, yes, I know you're fascinated by space. Do
you have any desire to go to the moon?

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Oh? You know, if they were going to do a
thing where you know, regular blokes could just go up
and go around it, I mean I take that, that's it.
Oh yeah, just just to do it. But oh yeah,
I think, well, I'm sure love to take Oh I'm
not going with him, but he's not going there anyway.
They're just going up. But I've met I've talked to
the I've talked to the crews, that are in line

(01:08:27):
to make the next orbit around the Moon that could
happen as early as twenty five, twenty six. And man,
oh man, I just say, hey, if you need someone
just to clean up and crack jokes, you got room
in there, give me, give me a call. I'll dead
down to whatever weight requirements are necessary, because I wouldn't
pass it up. But I said, but only if all

(01:08:49):
of the windows are are clear, because a lot of
times those they have gone up and the windows get
kind of like messed up because of zero gravity and
the vacuum out side in the building material.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
Right, was that fascination only from movies? Is that where
it came from?

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
No? No, that came from Uh. I was right, smack
dab and I was that. I was that educatable generation
for which it was. Space travel was the embodiment of
every discipline that we were studying, current events, politics, physics, art, engineering, math,
It was all all wrapped up, all into one. It

(01:09:25):
was on TV TV regularly. I was. I was just
I was that the Uh, of course, now you're going
to think about this, but the idea of being alone
in space in a space suit, it was kind of
mirroring my life when I was like seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven years old.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
Woa. Yeah, I mean it's I don't know if you
saw that movie fly Me to the Moon recently.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
No, I did not, but it's you know, it's streaming
in the new movie economy, so I know it'll be
there for a thousand years.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
Yea. I just want to catch fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
It's a little bit of the conspiracy theory really didn't
happen yet. Normally I hate that kind of stuff, but
that's good quality people.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Yeah, tru exactly. I'd love to get your thoughts on
it when you see it. Yeah, And your other fascination
is world wars.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Well, this is another thing that goes back to the
study of it. Let me put it. Let me put
it to you this way. I was born in nineteen
fifty six, that's eleven years after the war has done.
So essentially everybody who is an adult in my life
had memories of those years, whether they went to war

(01:10:30):
or not. They had memories of the what I like
to call the emotional stasis of the early nineteen forties,
in which go back again, they did not know the
war was going to end in nineteen forty three. They
had no idea how long the war was, Who's going

(01:10:51):
to live, who's going to die, who's going to win,
who's going to not, who's not, who's going to come
back nineteen forty three? If you're alive. They're not saying, hey,
don't worry about it. The war's going to be over
in just another eighteen months. They don't know that. And
that was a palpable thing that was passed on to
me because when it came around time to get to
know the life stories of a teacher, a friend of

(01:11:15):
my dad's, you know, parents of my pals, they would
talk about those years their youth in three distinctive parts,
three acts of their lives, you know, which might have
been picking up on because you know, some sort of
story since when they were kids. It was before the war,

(01:11:36):
when my dad was in high school. It was before
the war, when he was working on a farm, listening
to the radio and worried about, you know, not being
able to afford the dentist. It was before the war.
Then there was well that was during the war. It's
a whole different storytelling process, the whole different guidelines of

(01:11:57):
the narrative. Well, you have to understand that was during
the war that was forty two. Was during the war,
and their daily life was completely different than what it
had been. There was less of things. There was this
fear of this unseen enemy, possible attack. There were blackouts.
They couldn't get clean peaches, they didn't have birthday cakes

(01:12:17):
as much. They that it was during the war. And
also I said, well where were you, Oh, well that
was during the war. Well where were you, Well, I
was in a battalion. I was. You know, my dad
was in the South Pacific. He was a machinist and
he would never have been in the South Pacific as
a machinery were not for the war. Then the rest
of their lives when we show up, you know, and

(01:12:40):
this next generation shows up, where their kids show up,
all this stuff happened, And again the narrative has completely changed.
We have to understand that was after the war. So
on one hand there was something to celebrate, but on
the other hand, there was guess what. Life became one
damn thing after another in a different way that it
had been before the war. During and you know the

(01:13:02):
people that the people who did it, well, you know,
these storytellers, the teachers, or even the friends of my
dads when we're sitting around and everybody's relaxed on a
Thursday night, and they're drinking beers, you know, and they're
talking about when they're getting to know each other. These
the stories from any one of those acts I thought

(01:13:23):
were fascinating. We were ponderable because as a seven year old,
I'm hearing my dad and my mom and other people
talk about when they were seven years old with the
magnifying glass and the division of well, that was before
the war. We did not know what was coming down

(01:13:43):
the pipe. Then everything else that goes along with it.
I still can't quite get past the fact that in
nineteen sixty four the Beatles are on the Ed Sullivan Show,
and my dad is of the generation of just years
prior the war was not yet over and they had

(01:14:03):
no idea when they were ever going to come home.
And now these four kids are up on there saying
and yeah, yeah, yeah, and playing guitars and stuff like that,
and everybody everybody's making a big deal about it. Part
of it is never saw this coming, never would have never,
And in a lot of ways now us younger generation

(01:14:24):
did not have the same attention span for what they had,
what they had been through I mean until the you know,
you could talk about Elvis Presley all you want, rightly,
so he was. He was a massive generational force, changed
the world a lot of ways. But still vis a
v a World War two generation, the Beatles come along

(01:14:45):
at nineteen sixty four, and it's almost as though the
last vessage of that generation carries import you know, has
has weight that we can pay attention to, even though
I've you know, I've never stopped studying of it, because
at the end of the day, it's just great storytelling.
You want to talk about great protagonists, antagonists, you want
to talk about the irony, you want to talk about

(01:15:06):
the schizophrenia of what can happen in good and bad.
World War two is about as good as you're going
to get. And also, here's this other thing that's ridiculously
satisfying about it. It ended. There was a time when
it was all done. And wars now go on for generations,

(01:15:31):
and they go on for decades, and there are no
there are no moments when you know, the swords are
pounded into plowshares, not that that happened in you know
one nineteen forty five.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
Yeah, it seems it seems as though like, not that
it's any comparison with the events that took place, but
our language of this generation has become pre pandemic. During
the pandemic, A yeah, you.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
Could, you could probably look at it. There was a moment,
certainly the AIDS crisis came up and the pandemic of
the of AIDS that certainly altered all of society in
the same way. You can talk about it. You can
talk to an awful lot of guys who will say, well,
you know what I'm saying, that was before AIDS, you
know that means and yeah, you would say the same
thing about certainly the COVID pandemic. We went through something

(01:16:18):
that I mean, my look, I got grandkids who are
now talking about their lives. Well, that was during COVID. Yeah,
and so they didn't go to school, and they didn't
see their friends, they were trying to do things online.
It was really different. And now COVID has let go
and guess what now they're just getting on with the
rest of the tasks of growing up with their lives.
So they too, you know, it might be a little

(01:16:40):
young to remember, you know, before COVID, but they do.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
Yeah, so what's going to be next. Do you think
what's going to be that next three acts structure to
our collective history?

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
Well, as you keep saying, more will be revealed as
well as.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
This, Yes, this too shall pass, and more shall be revealed,
and we will never all know of everything that we
need to know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
Yeah, and you've been seen as the or even in
a poll, voted the most trusted man in America.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
That's something. There's an anomaly in the vote taking process.
After all the times I've lied to everybody. Oh no,
this is a great movie. Yeah, by all means, come
see this movie?

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
That was a lie? Sometimes? How does how do you?
How do you deal with that kind of movie? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
I you know, I don't know. There's there's a yeah, yeah, okay,
you know, I get it. That's good. I guess that
comes around to perhaps the thing that I was talking
about countenance wise. You know, if you were going to
take somebody who is who's an artist and say who's

(01:17:45):
the scariest person alive? You know, the you'll you'll come
off with, you know, I don't know, you know, Vincent Price,
you know whatever. I'm an artist, I'm a storyteller, and
I think I'll take that as as a testament to
I guess the veracity that I brought to my craft,
my my choice. I'd like to think that, you know,

(01:18:07):
you go all in on a story on and say, hey,
sit down, I want you might be interested in hearing
this is that you're you're this an onyx exchange between
myself and the audience. And if it's an honest exchange,
then you could come to trust them. You know, that's
not a bad thing. That's not a bad.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
Thing, absolutely, and it's it's quite magical actually, I mean
trust in that way. Of course, you know Hollywood success.
You've spoken about it so many times, which is why
we haven't dived into it. And then you know, a happy,
healthy marriage, And how did you know Rita was the one?
Like that's you know, how did you know?

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
Uh? Divine providence? Uh you know, uh maybe it's kind
of like the same thing that happened when I was
in school and in high school, and I said, this
can be school.

Speaker 5 (01:18:58):
There was a thing with with with reader or I
just thought, wait, it could be like this. It could
be like just sitting around that's it could be like
a care free union. I didn't know that how about
that I had honestly, I had not truly experienced that somehow,
and when it's there, you just kind of go, oh, I,

(01:19:22):
you know, I you know, i'd like to say and
then you know, and then we met and I said,
and you know, and that was that. Okay, Yeah, that's
pretty much it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:31):
Then you get on with it, and you know, years later,
no small amount of no small amount of me saying
things like, oh, let me get this straight. You know,
there's a lot of plenty of plenty of examples of
that going on, you know, with so much so that oh,
here goes dad, Oh here goes dad, with a let
me get this straight? Why would it work for me? Argument?

(01:19:53):
I pull it out. I pull it out all the time.
And you know we we do. She does too. And
that's the exchange. Yes, and it's it remains glorious and
and you're and you can't create it anywhere else, can't
fake that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
Yeah, there's that beautiful acceptance speech that you have in
twenty twenty when you talk about how a man is
blessed with this beautiful family, Oh tears, and.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
That you know you can't Number one, I am a sap.
Number two. You don't expect you think you're going to
be able to get up and you know, get away
with it. Some evening on I'm going to get it.
There'll be some straight shooting. I'll see some great stuff.
But then I just you look down and you know,
there's my wife, and there's you know, there's you know
a combination of all my kids sometimes four or five,

(01:20:40):
you know, they're all just there. And what do you see?
I see little babies, you know, and I you know,
I you know, I see U. I see this uh,
this woman that has put up with so much stuff,
and he just life flashes before your eyes a little bit,
and there's that there's that moment of surrealism where it's like,
can somebody explain to me how this happened? I'm not

(01:21:02):
I'm not quite sure.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):
And here does the same thing the movie here ah
t I E. Yeah, there's a sense of your watching
your life flash.

Speaker 1 (01:21:12):
Back what I really loved. Okay, this, I guess we
have to be careful about spoiler alone, so we don't try.

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
I'm trying.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
We don't want to go there. But I think that
it ends up examining this truth that sometimes life passes
in the wink of an eye, and it's like, wow,
are we here already? But there's other times in that
same week of an eye you comprehend it all, And
I think that's what the that's what the movie works towards,

(01:21:46):
if I can be so bold, And in many ways,
that was the theme that we were all working towards.
And even in the perfectness of just the word it
happened here, this is where that happened. Have you been
Have you been in like a really super historic place. Yes,
a few times where something went down. Now, maybe it's

(01:22:09):
something from thousands of years ago, or maybe it's something
that you witnessed on TV yourself. You go to like
you go to like Washington, DC and stood on the
you know, look, I made a movie in front of
the Lincoln Memorial. I couldn't believe that was happening. And
then years later I'm going back and there is a
plaque at the top of the steps of the Lincoln

(01:22:29):
Memorial which is where Martin Luther King stood, And I
have since gone back and read about that extraordinary day
that did not happen by accident. In fact, it was
originally going to be a protest, It was going to
be a sit in, and the powers that be all
got together. It said, rather than make it a protest
of a sit in, make it a march. And suddenly,

(01:22:53):
also things happened, like there were plenty of bathrooms lined up,
there were sandwiches that was made for people, there were
social services, there were cops, there were army men standing
by ready in case it was going to be a riot.
And in nineteen sixty four or sixty three, a riot

(01:23:14):
was definitely a possibility. It would have been a massive
amount of civilic unrest, and instead it was all of
these speakers. Marlon Brando was there for Charlton Heston was
there along with everybody else, and Martin Luther King was
everybody who could only speak for seven minutes because they
did not want it to run over become unruly. So
every everybody who spoke spoke for seven minutes, and that

(01:23:36):
includes the Reverend doctor Martin Luther King. And there's a
reason that plaque is that that plaque is there in
order to in order to place it and to be
there and say that, then just envision every powerful place, powerful, powerful, spiritual.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
Yeah, are there other places you've been to like that
We've revisited multiple times to decode and discover and.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you. I'll tell you one who
cares what I said on other podcasts when we when
we were doing I Believe or Not. When we were
in Philadelphia, because I was making Philadelphia, kids were you know,
I uh only had three kids there and some of
them were with us, and we were it was a
freezing cold day. We had a day off, so we
went and saw the sites, including Independence Hall, Liberty Bell,

(01:24:24):
you know, a whole bit. What are you going to
do in Philadelphia? You're going to go do that. You're
gonna see the Liberty Bell, You're going to go with it.
And Independence Hall being a famous place, and it's still
in the same joint and it still holds the same
you know, dimensional structure to it. You know, maybe a
lot of everything it might have been, you know, recreated,
but nonetheless there it is. And we were up in
the Senate building and the Senate Room, you know, because

(01:24:46):
it had Congress, the Supreme Court and the Senate right there.
And uh, we were there and the the it's a
national park and the ranger said, if you look at
all of this stuff as reproductions except that chair, you know,
which is the original chair. It said, Wow, it looked
the same. It looked like a chair to me. So
said that chair, that's an original chair, and looked exactly

(01:25:08):
like the same. Is that all this other stuff had
been recreated to the best of its authenticity. And it's
a riser there. And he said, that spot in front
of in front of that the dais John Adams was
sworn in as the second President of the United States,
taking the place of George Washington. Was the first time

(01:25:31):
in recorded history when the rule of a sovereign nation
was passed to another without bloodshed, and him not being
a relation, said something like that, and the head I said,
we are in holy ground. Nobody died. The king is dead,

(01:25:51):
long lived the king. No one was murdered, butchered. The
hordes didn't come in and take away. No one was
passing it on to his son in order to go on.
There was no relation between John Adams and George Washington.
The only thing that happened was this modicum of a
thing they called democracy, which wasn't really democracy. I mean,
women couldn't vote. If you were a slave, you were

(01:26:11):
only three fifths of the human being. The only people
that actually voted were a bunch of white men property
owners who originally didn't want to pay their taxes to
the to the crown. But look what look what, Look
what happened there? I mean I I you know, I've
been you know, plenty of cool joints in it, but
they're they're this idea, not unlike the place where Martin

(01:26:32):
Luther King's the idea that was communicated right there was
tantamount to being in you know, some version of the holies,
a holy so you know, a precious shrine, a place
of great faith and hope.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
I mean, speaking to that impact. You received honorary Greek citizenship.
Oh yeah, for I got a passport for your amazing work.

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):
Then well yeah yeah, look we just love you know,
we love Grason. You know, it is the home country
to my wife's family, and well you can do this
is something that we do that are do in Greece.
You know, you go off to some other island, you're
swimming somewhere, you're on a boat, and you can kind

(01:27:17):
of like pivot and all you see is land, sea
and sky. There's no sign of humanity. And this is
exactly what it's looked like for one hundred and ten
thousand years. You know, this is exactly what this island

(01:27:39):
was here in this exact same fort. And by the way,
there's a port right there which was, you know, a
place of antiquity of that. But to be able to
look at something that is on scarred exactly as it was,
it's like looking at primordial force, like going back in
time and you see this aspect of the sky and
the wind and the aridness of it, but the power
of you know, a ship in order to get there.

(01:28:00):
I've done that. You know any number of places, you know,
great historical places like that, and it ends up it
makes you feel really really teeny tiny. Sometimes it's like
who are we? But you know, specs in the course
of all of this is like standing under you know,
a big, massive sky and finally seeing on a really
super dark night, the you know, our galaxy or the

(01:28:23):
Milky Way, our solar system, and they're like, wow, I
haven't been out of town for a while. I forgot
how big that sky is and that that's a part
of this. It's important to.

Speaker 2 (01:28:34):
Go through that, so important, so important.

Speaker 1 (01:28:36):
Have you ever seen a solar eclipse?

Speaker 2 (01:28:38):
I'm sure I've kind of, but not I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
Not the last one, but the one prior to it.
We made sure that we were in the path of
totality and we saw it and oh my god, it
you I cannot talk. No special effect in any movie
has ever had the same impact or effect on anybody

(01:29:04):
who takes a look at what that is. You feel
as though you are witnessing got the you know, the
clockworks of God, and it's they can predict it, they
know what it's going to be, and every step of
it is you cannot fathom what you were seeing. And
it made me feel on one hand, it made us
all feel one hand, really super tiny, but at the

(01:29:25):
other hand magnificent because we're a race that knew when
it was coming and could predict it, could make sure
where there was. She was really marvel was that when
you read it, there was like these paths. You know,
you can look at it on a map, but we
just made sure that we were up in the panhandle
of Idaho in order to take a look at People
were just parking their cars willy nilly everywhere in order
to be They were driving from you know, hundreds of

(01:29:48):
miles on either side of it in order to get
to this very specific path of totality. And it is
man it is. It is a totally immersive experience. Don't
miss it if you can.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
Okay, next one, Tom, it has been such a choice
spending time with you today. I feel so grateful to
have been able to hear stories, be taken on adventures,
and learn life's lessons.

Speaker 1 (01:30:13):
Just a delightful conversation. I've learned. I've loved hearing about
your history. You know how you got for the oldest
boy of a of a what is it? A fractured
marriage between Indian Indian mom and dad? You've I think
you've done well in your in your pursuit.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
Thank you. I'm very grateful. We end every on Purpose
episode with a final five. These have to be answered
in one word to one sentence maximum.

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
One word to one sentence back, yeah, which I will
probably be.

Speaker 2 (01:30:42):
I will probably break the rules, so don't worry if
you do. Okay, But Tom Hanks, these are your final five.
The first question is what is the best advice you've
ever heard or received? Throw date baby and why?

Speaker 1 (01:30:57):
If you're going to do it, if you have the chance,
do it. Don't pause the instinct. Man, if you got
an instinct, go at it, throw deep.

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):
I love that second question, what is the worst life
advice you ever heard or received.

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):
Do fantasy island. I didn't take it, but there's no
reason to do fantasy island.

Speaker 2 (01:31:26):
That's great. Question number three, how would you define your
current purpose?

Speaker 1 (01:31:32):
To be present wherever one is, whoever is one around,
be present, be right there, show up, be present, because
that will teach you. Then, I think how the difference
between telling the truth to the best of your understanding

(01:31:54):
and being all right with what happens next. If you
can't do that, your life is going to be a
wasted opportunity, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
Question number four.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
Are you making these up as you go alonger is no, no.

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
No, no, okay, every single question of us today? What's
something you believe you're learning and evolving into right now
or something that you're tinkering with right now?

Speaker 1 (01:32:24):
Personally, there is an addictive quality to examining the past
that can be counterproductive if you're only doing it in
order to wallow in a nostalgia of how easy things
were back then. I fancy myself a lay historian. I

(01:32:47):
vanity of vanity. All is vanity. There's nothing new under
the sun. Okay, so this stuff has been going on forever.
If you are not looking if I am not looking
for examples of the frailties of the human condition, if
I am only looking at the past in a version
of there was an antagonist and there was a protagonist,
and the protagonist one missing the point of how miraculous

(01:33:13):
the human condition is. If you're going to I went
to Egypt, and I saw all the stuff that touristsy
when they see Egypt, right, And if you're going to
Egypt in order to come up with some oh, this
is the home of great spirituality? Is there is a
cosmic power here and this is where Okay, fine, go ahead.

(01:33:36):
I'm not going to tell you that's not what's going on.
But if you're not also seeing this ongoing friggin mystery
of what humankind has figured out on its own, you're
missing out. You know, there is, Yes, they call them
the Great Pyramids. They weren't necessarily built for great reasons.
Sometimes they've just built in order to maintain the status

(01:33:59):
quo of the halves and the have nots. When I
heard a guy say the Sphinx, you know, the Great Sphinx,
You could have been alive two thousand years after the
Great Sphinx was built and you're still in Pharaoic Egypt.

(01:34:22):
It's still before the Common Era begin. And guess what,
you and nobody else has any idea who built the sphinx?
That's how old it is, and that it's bailed as
well as it And if you don't take that and understand,
like man, there's mystery there. Who did it, How they
did it? That stuff's always interesting, but why they did

(01:34:42):
it that's interesting too. But also that incredible impact of
that the Sphinx will never be explained. If you're just
there for the Nostalgian union, I don't want to ride
the camel, get your picture. You can do all that stuff,
and that's a blast, but there's some there's something to
the past that if you allow yourself just to be

(01:35:05):
soothed by it, you're missing out in a great life,
lesson something of that as important as physics.

Speaker 2 (01:35:12):
Or poetry so powerful. Why do you think we do that?

Speaker 1 (01:35:15):
I think because we're looking for a We want to
feel good about going to sleep at night, you know,
we want to feel as though that there is this,
that there is this purpose that outside. I think it'side
the color of the cosmic understanding that hey, you know

(01:35:35):
what you know, the universe is indifferent, but the human
condition is not. That's what separates us from you know,
you know, the chaos theory. We don't have to live
in chaos if we choose not to. And if we're
only looking at the past in order for some degree
of oh, we're so much easier back then, No, it's

(01:35:57):
never been easier. As I said before, you know, no
one read, No one knows that they're living in the
fourteen hundreds. They were just live back then. And it
might be high falutin, but what it says is, oh,
I'll tell you this. What it says is our best
days are yet to come. We are going to progress
from here. And if you're just looking at the pass

(01:36:18):
and saying, man, that was when it was great, I
wish we could go back, No, you never want to
go back. You always have to understand that our best
days are still ahead of us. Otherwise, what's that say
of us? If we don't move forward? It says we
gave up or got lazy, or ended up putting too

(01:36:38):
much power in maintaining a status quo that ends up
being a division between the halves and the half dots.

Speaker 2 (01:36:46):
Absolutely well said fifth and final question. We asked this
to every guest who's ever been on the show. If
you could create one law that everyone in the world
had to follow, what would it be?

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):
Man, you spring this on me? You really, I'm looking
at a wall of shame of people that your polaroids,
of people that have been they all came up with
something for that. They did one law that everybody had
to follow, a law meaning you could be punished if

(01:37:18):
you don't obey this law. Well, it can't be like
a philosophical thing like be kind, you know, being kind
as in the eye of the both the kinder and
the kind e. I would pass a law that says,
no one is allowed to infringe your prom the right

(01:37:44):
in regards to what somebody else reads. That is, no
matter how disagreement, whatever that disagreement is. To be free
is to think, and the most physical manifestation of thought

(01:38:05):
is in the choosing of what you read. So I
would say that no one is allowed to infringe upon
their right to determine up figure out what the legal
No one is allowed to infringe upon the right of
an individual to read what they choose to read. That

(01:38:26):
would be mine. That would be the law. Now take
a look at all the societies, you know, I'm fascinated
by I'm fascinated by communism, man, because those guys were idiots,
you know, they truly were. And the idea that in
East Berlin you cannot read, you cannot read to kill

(01:38:47):
a mockingbird or or you know any or doctor Shivago
for crying out loud, the idea that you can maintain
order in society by preventing somebody from reading what they
want to read. This is madness, This is tyrantcy, and
it's about this is this is this is draconian. What's
the word I'm looking that. That's despotism. And it's absolute

(01:39:08):
height that you can do that. And I think on
the opposite that absolute freedom to read what you want
to read, and along would that create what you want
to create as well? That should be the default position
of the human condition. And is it an amazing that
it's not so?

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
That would be the law I would path powerful, unique
and completely original answers worth waiting.

Speaker 1 (01:39:30):
For well as an author, you know, as a guy
who writes, I'll bow to that.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
Thank you so much, Yes, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:39:40):
No, Oh, it's great.

Speaker 2 (01:39:41):
That's a pleasure that I can't wait for everyone to
go and watch here on November.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
All right, yeah, we'll pay that. Oh yes, god. And now,
by the way, you can only see it in the theater.
We okay, here's the thing, this is why, this is
why I crack staffed is so petrified. There is no
streaming deal for this movie. You know, you you you're
not going to be able to you know, log on,
enter your past code, you know, share it with your
friends and are they the only way you're going to

(01:40:04):
You're gonna have to drive to a place and buy
a ticket at a certain time and sit in a
room with a bunch of strangers. I love it, and
watch this movie. It's almost unheard of. And of course
everybody is petrified that that's going to be the requirements
of seeing a movie. But that's the way it's going
to be.

Speaker 2 (01:40:19):
I love it. This is still one of my favorite experiences.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
Oh yeah, it's the you know, uh not to continue
along with. But this this is thing that we talk
about all the time right now, and I actually believe
that podcasts can be an example of it. It is
the experienial economy, meaning that it is one thing. Look,
everything is a one on one you listen to a record,
you see a man. But the experience of being with

(01:40:43):
others as opposed to be in your house or being
on your headphones or being like that, being with others
has a value to it that in some cases is
worth money. Okay, that's commerce, but on other cases is
to be sought at. My wife and I went to
see a play in New York. It was a revival
of Into the Woods. And it was more or less

(01:41:07):
right after the pandemic. Theaters were back opening again. People
were people were essentially living their lives again. There had
been enough, you know, everybody gotten enough vaccines and what
have you, and COVID wasn't killing as many people as
it had. And so we went to the theater because
we had we knew some people in it. And it
was here's this thing happened. You know, it's a theater,

(01:41:31):
mumbled everybody blah blah blah, sold out, big hit and mumble, mumble, mumble.
And when the house lights went to half for the
first act, there was a standing ovation. People stood up
before a word, before a note had been sung. Nothing
had happened on the What was happening was the show

(01:41:54):
is about to start, and it was a standing ovation,
and I literally said, that's that's the experience. People are
reacting to the experience of being with strangers or a
handful of friends with strangers in a room and nothing
what is going to happen in this room will never
be repeated. The only people that will participate in this

(01:42:15):
is the folks that are here right now. And movies
oftentimes can have that same experience because I can remember
going to see two thousand and one or Jaws or
Close Encounters of or Aliens or you know, or Full
Metal Jacket. I can remember the specifics of all those things,
and it's the same experiential experience. And maybe it's maybe
it's part of the economy, or maybe it's just part

(01:42:38):
of the great human purchase that we all want to
we want to participate in.

Speaker 2 (01:42:42):
For sure. Thank you, Tom, thank you, thank you pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:42:45):
I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
If you love this episode, you love my interview with
Will Smith on owning your truth and unlocking the power
of manifestation. Anybody who hasn't spoken to their parents or
their brother, call them right now. Don't think you're gonna
have a chance to call them tomorrow or next week.

Speaker 1 (01:43:05):
That opportunity with my father changed every relationship in my life.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Tom Hanks: #1 Theory Tom Uses in Order to Live a Balanced and Fulfilled Life