Jack Black
speaker
270 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Jack Black’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I was a child actor, I guess you could say, which is a little embarrassing always.
Well, because there's a stigma to child actors. You know, like it's not good for kids to be out there in the industry.
It is if they love it, you know, and I loved it. So it was good for me. But, yeah, you know, if you get the sense that there's a stage mom or stage dad that's pushing it and the kid doesn't actually want to be there, that's when I can imagine some psychological damage. It's like child labor. It's like, leave him alone.
The Actors Gang, I was 16 years old.
So the Actors Gang was like the radical, political, commedia dell'arte, almost like a theater group that got going and popular in the 80s. And it was Tim Robbins and a group of other actors from UCLA who started this company. And if you were a young actor in the 80s and you were checking out the theater scene, they were the red hot chili peppers. They were just like the green berets.
They were so rad. And I would go to their shows. their plays. They had a play called carnage of comedy. That was all about televangelism. And they had another show called freaks. And it was about a circus, uh, workers and, and performers. And I was like, just hanging out.
Yeah.
I was the young teen. And I just wanted to be part of that world so much. And, uh, and they, uh, cast me. I got a little part in a show called, uh, uh, the big show down in Santa Monica. And it was all about the South American Sandinista, like all of the politics surrounding that and American, you know, globalism, a bunch of shit. And then I didn't really get it, but it was super fun.
And I brought some songs and I brought some music and they, they let me put some songs into the play.
Yeah. Well, just little jingles. The director said, hey, we need some little songs here because it was like a game show. And so I did a little of that. And that's where I met Kyle. And it started off as a little bit of like a rivalry because he was the music guy in the company. And I was coming in with my songs and everything.
You weren't playing guitar until... I wasn't playing guitar. I was just recording songs on my four-track.
A Tascam four-track machine.
But that's how I got in the actor's gang, and then we ended up going to the Edinburgh Theatre Festival in 89. Oh. And then we took that show over to Joe Papp's Public Theater in New York.
Yeah.
And got the worst review I'd ever read. But I thought it was so mean that it turned funny to me. Like, I actually kind of liked reading it. I was like, oh, I was just laughing at how mean it was. The slam.
I wonder if he listened or if he just read. Because I listened and loved. Thanks, dude. Love your book.
You know what I was specifically interested in was your time at, what was the theater company where you learned the improv from the guru of improv?
And because I've only heard whispers of this mythical creature named Del Close.
Kind of, but there was some dumb ridiculousness happening over there too.
No, I never did Groundlings, but I did go and enjoy and watch Maya jam out over there. Maya Rudolph, we went to high school together. Nice. A lot of people don't know.
Showing 81–100 of 270 · page 5 of 14
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