David Marchese

Do you think the work suffered during the period?

Do Nicholson delivering it, though?

When you were sort of coming up in the 80s, you became friends with people like Nicholson, Brando, Charles Bukowski.

You were friendly with the novelist Harry Cruise, the great actor Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper.

All kind of these figures who had an aura of rebelliousness.

And it seems like those were folks that you sought out, and they were all quite a bit older than you.

What were you looking for from your relationships with people like that?

You feel 77?

Paging Dr. Freud.

Nothing wrong with green juice.

There's a quote I saw that your mom, the actress Eileen Ryan, gave.

I think she gave it to Woody Allen, where, you know, you were working with Woody on Sweet and Lowdown.

And Woody said something to the effect of, you know, he didn't quite get you or understand how to connect with you.

And your mom, in her telling, said to Woody, you know, it's like, the thing you need to understand about Sean is that he's just embarrassed at having had a happy childhood.

It's a different age for everyone, though.

That question followed the subject of your friendships with those guys I mentioned, because I wondered if something in you thought that guys like Dennis Hopper or Bukowski represented what an artist was supposed to be.

And we thought like the atmosphere of your youth was not conducive to the kind of artist you wanted to be.

But, you know, the sort of the way you put it was, you know, you went through some fires and you,

In reading about you, primarily from the book, Sean Penn, His Life and Times, which probably was published about 20 years ago or so, by Richard Kelly, was basically an authorized biography of you done in oral history fashion.

And there are a few references in there from people you worked with.