Dr. Peter Weller
speaker
668 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Dr. Peter Weller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
Get up and play your Bach. Get up and play your Bach. So there's very few people. And David Roche is a great actor, one of the great unsung funny actors ever. He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Reminds me of my dad. He would say, get up and take your shoes out of the den. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I got. So very few people are Mozart, right? Most people are struggling along.
And then you find your jam, and then you go do your thing. And when I realized I wasn't going to be Miles Davis, I was talking about this with Mark yesterday. I'm on a bandstand, just like Whiplash. Somebody's yelling at me. I'm not cutting this thing. There's a tune called Cloudburst, a great Basie tune. I'm not cutting a solo, man. I'm not cutting a sad thing. I'm not going to be Miles Davis.
I'm not going to play on a bandstand the rest of my life for $49 a change. I got to find something to say out of Vietnam, but I thank God I go back to jazz. But at that time, I'm a jazz guy who's going, I can't do it, man. I'm not going to be the greats I went to school with, Bones Malone, Lou Mariniard, Dean Parks, or all these, these are savants, by the way, who played in every record you hear.
Bruce Fowler, these are guys, names you don't know, but Lou Marini was on the SNL forever and ever.
But those are the guys who are like the top when I'm going to school, and I'm not going to be there. So I'm that guy who's figuring out what to do. I'm not multifaceted passionate. I'm looking for something to keep me out of Vietnam. Because my dad's back in Vietnam, my brother's back in Vietnam, and they're looking for my ass to go. Like, no, thank you. What am I going to do?
Okay, the only thing I know how to do, I've done it for fun, is act. I've done it for fun. A great guy named Bob Yanni, who was the boy genius of Walt Disney, one of the guys who started the Mouseketeers and started Orlando and started Disneyland. Robert Yanni, like a P.T. Barnum for Disney, was drafted on a stage. He heard me sing once and put me on a stage. But I was doing it for kicks, man.
I didn't know. I wasn't going to sing. I wasn't going to act. But now I need something because I'm not going to Da Nang. I'm sorry. As a matter of fact, my brother and my father are over there. I'm against this war. This war is a nonsense, man. So what do I do? Okay, I'm going to act. So I changed my major to theater and English. So I'm finding my way along.
And then I'm acting for kicks, but I don't know what I'm going to do. And then I'll never forget, I was watching my professor, Dr. Stanley Hamilton, a couple guys on stage. talking about what acting is. And then I said, you know what? That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go to New York. I'm going to act. This is all I got. This is all I got.
And I hitched a ride down to visit my dad, who's now in law school. And this cat picked me up and said, what are you doing? I said, I'm an actor.
I said, I couldn't believe it came out of my mouth. And then I got applied for a scholarship to an acting school, which was totally denigrated by my mom, who I thought, because she's the artistic artistic quotient. She's the artistic weirdo in the family, right? My dad is a straight ahead, like played by the book guy. She says, no, you're not going to New York. You'll never survive in New York.
New York will kill you. I know New York. New York will eat you alive. You're going back to school, man. Your dad will never support you in New York. You're never going to make it in New York. New York is like a gladiator fight. And so... So I go to my dad. My dad's in his chambers. And I'm going to go to New York, man. I don't care if I have to. Take a loan. I'm going.
I got accepted to this acting school. So I knock on the door with my dad. Never forget this. I just told this yesterday, so it's fresh in my mind. But I tell my dad, he goes, I know why you're here. I said, what? Your mother called. I said, you want to go to New York? I said, I'm going to New York. She said, good. I said, good. She said, yeah, just, you know, that's what you want to do.
Do it, you know. Fail on your own time. I go, so you support? He says, what do you need from me? I said, I need about 600 bucks a month.
uh to live on he said how long i said two years when you're gonna pay back give me two years after i finished the school he said okay done oh my god wow that easy i said really done he says listen that's what you want to do that's all i ever did i wanted to fly i didn't want to fly i wanted to be in law i didn't want to be like that's what you wanted to do it i'll give you some cheap advice stay out of bars okay adios shook my hand give me a hug and off i was
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, from the guy I thought was going, no, you ain't doing it, to sure done. From the mom who I thought was like the total artistic. She's a piano player. She's a jazzer. She's the person who can turn me on to art. She's the person who encouraged me about all this stuff, man. But that's the mom with the kid, man.
Yeah.
The 21-year-old kid's going to go to New York, really?
And die? Yeah. By the way, this is in New York. She's right. This is in New York where you have a white kid.
Forget about race. You know, a white junkie walk up to you on Fifth Avenue.
Anytime during the day. This is not the New York of sublime, no interference, you can't smoke at Central Park.
Showing 161–180 of 668 · page 9 of 34
← Previous
Next →