Josh Brolin
Appearances
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And I've learned that through people's reaction, because people's reaction is either really negative because of the form, because of how it's laid out or super fucking personal and emotional.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
There is an indictment. And Howard Stern brought this up. I think you two the most took it very personally. And he took it very personally because he had a parallel thing with his mom. And he was like, this is not fucking OK. I want to hear you admit that it's not OK. And you go, yes, of course, there's an indictment.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I can see it clearly, especially now and how I parent my kids, how I've always parent my kids, albeit messily. But how I feel about that time is it was a trauma or a tragedy or whatever it is because of this narcissistic vortex that I was living in. Are you unable to celebrate the child?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
If your child does a drawing for you on a post-it, are you going to put it on your chest and wear it around so the child can go, oh my God, that guy loves my drawing. Or I don't understand what this is. Well, can you make it more like this and more like this? Or can you dress more like this?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So when a picture is taken with me and the child, it makes me look like, you know, that's all narcissistic bullshit. And it goes back to one image and that one image that my dad would say, my dad was very open about this. I don't know if he found it funny or if he just found it informational and just didn't care how it was perceived.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But my dad used to say, I remember when your mom was in the driver's seat You were in the passenger seat and you guys were arguing and my dad was in the back with his hands over his ears. And you go, that's a family tree. And you go, who's the husband? The kid. Yeah. The eight-year-old kid who's going, man, just fucking drive. Like, why do you got to stop the car and argue? Just drive, whatever.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And then the dad's in the back with his hands over his ears and you go, okay, so that was how that whole thing was set up. And by the way, where's my brother? He's not even part of that diagram because he was a guy that didn't have the fight that you have, that I have. He just got lost in it. He didn't have the fight. So he lives his life in a very, very simple way now.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I found out more and more now people have come out to the woodwork out of the woodworks. And maybe I shouldn't even say sexual, but she engaged men nonstop. The sexuality was just as much psychic as it was everything. It was a mental game. It was a sexual game. It was a physical game. It was a spiritual game. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So unpredictable. But you don't know why, because it's all you know.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I remember my mom being drunk and there was a church called Joshua's and Joshua's was turned into a bar. And I remember a bar in Paso Robles, Joshua's. What a rebrand. I know, what a rebrand. And I remember my mom pulling somebody, or it was James Lee Barrett, the writer. And he was a writer way back in the day. And I remember her pulling him across the table to give him a kiss, right?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So my mom, who was tiny, had that superhuman drunk strength that you know and I know. But it was always a display. She couldn't just get up and go to the other side. She had to pull them across the table. And I told somebody else this the other day and talk about fear. Not that I forgot about this. Just there were so many things to write about. It's like, what do you land on?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And the book starts to dictate itself. And then what do you cut? I had at one point 450 pages or something and then knocked it down. But if you flipped my mom off on the freeway, you were done. She would actively run you off the road.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
80 miles an hour or on the CB, she would call a bunch of truckers and you would see that car that had been identified now get boxed in and literally get run off the road by several truckers. But she would freak the fuck out. And when you're an eight year old in a car, it was wild and how ironic that she died hitting a tree with a car chasing a dude.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
That's exactly right. But the whole point, I think, ultimately, it's like, do you feel that this was cathartic in some way? And I go, no. But now I can say, yes, it's starting to become cathartic because of people's reactions to it. To me, what's the point of me writing the book? other than just loving writing. That's my first and foremost.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
You know, I'm going to go to Skylight after this because I used to be on the floor of Skylight reading Russian novels and reading Tolstoy and Turgenev and Gogol and Flaubert and fucking Guy de Maupassant and all that kind of shit when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. And now I'm going to go there and I'm going to see my book on the shelf.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But ultimately, how do you accept the chaos of what was and not live the rest of your life as a victim of it? That's the biggest thing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
That's what I was going to say. Do you have a choice? No. Somebody leaves and you go, wait a second. If they leave, you can leave. That means you can leave, you can leave, you can leave, you can leave. Once you get outside of the family, then are you reacting to the potential of anybody leaving?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But you just said it, performing. Then you're performing. Then you're going, how do I assure that I'm not down to zero?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
You become less reactionary. And the thing with my mom, which didn't work in life, was my mom loved the high octane volley. So you had to be up here. I still deal with that because I like the high octane volley. That's why I like Italy. Because everybody's it's culturally like what you said about Georgia. It's culturally at that place all the time.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
No one's getting their feelings hurt. Whereas here, I may do something and people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
What's the problem? And then if I'm feeling surly or whatever, I go, why does everybody want to be fucking monotone all the time? Everybody wants to be in yawn mode. And I go, it's okay. Let's wake up. And interestingly enough, and this is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. I have my 36 year old Trevor, my 31 year old Eden, my six year old Westland and my three year old Chapel.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And I see it in my older kids. My son is a little more docile. than what we're talking about. My 31 year old is the only person on this earth, probably who scares me. All she has to do is give me a look. And I'm just like, you said she was born with your menacing look. She just has that Brolin brow. I call it that kind of Neanderthal brow ridge.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
My youngest daughter has it more pronounced than anybody. So you have the six year old, but I was listening to him this morning. I was trying to say something. And this is often because we're around our kids all the time. I'm a very present parent. So I go, hey, man, don't talk for 30 seconds. I need to say something to your mom. And they literally go, OK, Papa, go ahead. And I go, OK.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And they go, one, two, three, four. But I listen to their volley back and forth and their volley is phenomenal to me. It's always on this level. And my wife is always trying to bring it down. And I'm always laughing because I go, that's pretty cool. You guys are on a different. So I'm still a proponent of that thing, just not destructively.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
If somebody says I didn't learn anything about him. They're saying something very specific. And they're saying, I didn't get spoon-fed the People Magazine shit that I was expecting. Some hot gossip. Which is okay. Like I said, I don't have a judgment of that. That's not what this book is. And there is no juggling of it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Well, first of all, if you're writing, then you're one of 0.0001% people who are actually writing their own memoirs or writing their own book. When I found out how many people don't write their own memoirs, I go, but that's a biography. Yeah. that you got paid for. And the writer didn't. So that's a cheat.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Wait, the last time I saw you. That's true. You pulled into the driveway because you did Ted's podcast. That's right. It was after that when I thought I was having marital problems, but I wasn't. Oh, did you? Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And I understand I had a great back and forth with Sharon Graham Norton and I absolutely fucking adored her. She's kind of mom-esque. Mischievous, but super honest, fearless, but vulnerable, said something during and then was looking for me afterwards to say, I didn't mean to suggest this. So conscientious, 77, 78 years old. I was like, that fucking broad is great. Yeah, no, she's a gangster.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But her book, Legendary Icons. So I do want to know what happened in those nine days that she was married to Greg Allman. Like what the fuck happened? Why was it only nine days? Take your time. I want to hear about every day. Every day. Every hour. Absolutely.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
With this, I was in Austin, Texas and people paid for a book signing and then a picture and all that. And some guy came up to me and like of all the things he could have said, he said, you're too young to write a memoir. Yeah. And then he left. I was like, who the fuck was that dude? How old was he? He was like 40 or something, 45. But he's right.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
It's like if I were to write a tell-all, I would at the end of my life. My life in Hollywood. But going back to what you said, writing a good book. That's well-written, meant everything to me. But it can be daunting. It can be incredibly daunting if you care about the writing style and you care about somebody who's written thousands and thousands and thousands of pages.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Me, I probably have 91 full journals now. I've written several books. I've written several books of poetry. I've written a novella and I just put it in a corner. Way too long screenplays. Never wrote a screenplay. Wait, I thought the submarine in the lake next to Fargo. That was a joke. That was always to break the silence and to create a discomfort that made me really happy.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Are you shared? I always share. because I'm one of these guys kind of like a book where you have to manifest it in order to get it out of you because you know the you that it's happening in is not perceiving it correctly.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And Nora takes you and it says, well, is it this or is it that? If you spent all your time watching a Nora going, is it a comedy or is it a satire or did this really happen? Is this based in truth? And you're looking at your phone, just fucking follow it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Just lend yourself to the craziness and the messiness that life always seems to hand out. The thing is, is that we're always trying to get away from it. What if we just sit in it for a while? It can be super funny.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I can admit out loud. I would sit with them and they don't talk. There's no small talk. I mean, now there is maybe because we're close and all that. But we would sit around and nobody would be saying anything. And what's the one thing that you don't say on set as an actor?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Them, Tarantino. We could list the three worst things. So we would literally sit there saying nothing. And I'd be like, I'm so fucking bored right now. And I'd go, hey, listen, I don't want to be inappropriate here. I have an amazing script. I didn't want to bring it up, but I think now is the right time. And then you'd hear like one clearing result.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And then I would go off literally until we shot.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
No, it was Wapentin. Which is actually, I had to look up. I was like, what's next to Fargo? Okay, but it's not Fargo, but it's the town next to Fargo. So dumb. It's like, how can you waste somebody's time? Torturously waste somebody's time.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And that has nothing to do with a program thing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Wait, but I do want to say this, that going back, there is a point in writing, had I just started writing, I think that it would have been affected by my need to be perceived like somebody else. And I wasn't because there was some point in the trajectory of my writing that I found my voice and I know it's my voice. I gave this book while I was writing it to only two people.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
They're both in New York. They're both Jewish. They're both neurotic. Uh-huh. Zev Boro and Ethan Cohen. And they both were super fucking honest with me. And Zev said, if for nothing else, this book is a hundred percent you.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
It's not me trying to be this. And somebody goes, oh, Bukowski or so. Oh, Hunter S. Thompson. There were so many influences and people I tried to copy for years. And you go, no, that's me. That's how I write.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But that wasn't necessarily the case with me. The greatest exercise of this book was clarifying. There's a great story about Raymond Carver and Raymond Carver wrote, I think, Cathedral that he won the Pulitzer for and short stories. And he was a sober guy. He's my all time favorite. Just the best.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And the most clear, you know, you think of Hemingway short stories, same thing, very, very clear, but a hundred percent them. And when his editor, he was writing and they were like, look, you know, you have sentences that are roughly 16 word sentences. Let's try to bring it down to 12. It was like, why the fuck are you trying to change my sentence? That's what I want to write.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And he was like, yeah, but if we can just economize it and get it down to 12. And then in that volley, he finally said, get out of here. I don't want you as my editor anymore. And a new editor came in and he said, okay, so look, roughly these sentences are 12 word sentences. Let's see if we can get it down to nine. Oh my God. And they were right.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Because when you start slashing and when you start taking all the vividity of it and the colorizing and all that kind of shit, and you go, what am I trying to convey here? And try to do it in the clearest way possible. There's a story toward the beginning of Where it's a little four-year-old kid and all this chaos is going around.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Mother's throwing cups through the window at the father and all that. But it's written like a Dr. Seuss story.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Oh, my God. And then took off back to China for 20 years, 25 years doing fight coordinating and all this.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Saw Crazy Rich Asians and said, well, maybe I should go back and try it again. Oh,
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Like literally his family would be on the side, you know. Trying to understand what the fuck was going on in this country.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Well, you're not checking it enough because I don't remember hearing any of your crazy ideas. We've already filed. No, who do I go to? There's a couple of people. You have one person that you go to.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Okay, so basically they kept us away from it. A practically built ship on the biggest stage in all of Hollywood, which was on Warner Bros., filled with water, 110 foot high, long ship. And they blindfolded us and they finally let us, and we tried to see it and there was no way. And there was security outside and they backed us in. And then they said, look, we're going to put you underwater.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
We have speakers underwater, which didn't exist. It was like some high-tech thing. And then we went under and they said, we're going to say three, two, one. We want you guys to come up, turn around and see the ship. And we want that organic reaction. And finally we went under and we go three, two, one. And we all came up and turned around and I saw it and I went, fuck.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
It was like, holy shit. Whatever I said, it was the most organic reaction. Think about the amount of work it took to get that first reaction.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Because you don't know. You don't know. I mean, one of the things that I look back at, like Keith Ledger was supposed to do No Country and then dropped out at some point. And then they looked and looked and everybody wanted it. And they said, no, we have a very specific guy. And then I auditioned for it and I sent the video in and they said, who lit it? And all that kind of shit.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And it wasn't until I got, who was it, Matt? Matt was supposed to do Milk. He was. And then he had a scheduling conflict. And then Sean Penn, who I had just spent time with in Canada, said, what about Josh? Wow. So it's always I was supposed to do Birdman. I pulled out of Birdman because I needed to go see my son who was living in Thailand at the time. And then that ended up being Edward Norton.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
At Jurassic Park, Chris Pratt. I just talked to Pratt the other day. Walk me.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
It wasn't, I was going to be him. It was going to be me. He was going to play Chris Pratt. He didn't know, but it was going to be me. And Chris told me when we did Avengers together, we were sitting there talking to each other about whatever kids. And he goes, yeah, when I showed up, It was your face on all the drawings. Wow.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Which happened to me for Deadpool 2, which was supposed to be Brad Pitt at some point. Whoa. And I remember going and seeing all the drawings for Deadpool 2 and seeing all Brad's face. And I was like... Sorry. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Tom, it didn't actually end up happening, but you and I spoke about this is that Tom kind of coerced me into his thing. We had a great conversation. We talked about surfing. We had everything in common that there was to have. And apparently, which I never really saw, that we look like each other.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
who's been really wonderful. And he didn't suggest a lot during the writing. I thought there was going to be this whole, you need to change this and flip this into this. And there wasn't. But one suggestion he did make, because I wrote the story about how I had gotten into a thing with my wife at the time.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And I was going down Columbus Avenue with just pants on, no shoes, no shirt, kind of out of my mind. And I looked over and there was this guy sitting at this cafe and it turned out to be Nick Nolte, who I recognized. He had no reason to recognize me. Like Monica, he hadn't seen Goonies. Yeah, exactly. It was like Nick and Monica.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But I remember a slight smile on his face and it was almost like, get ready, kid. Wow. Like it gets way gnarlier than this.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I saw my future and he saw his past or whatever. Whatever it was. So my editor said, is there a follow-up to that? And I go, there's actually several follow-ups to that. And then I chose the Nightwatch story where I'm cutting off my thumb. Part of the reason that I chose that, it was because this guy,
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
who hadn't gone anywhere for a long time, had these moments during that 22 years, Nightwatch or Flirting with Disaster, where it could have been a big hit and then it wasn't necessarily. Flirting with Disaster was a really revered and is still a revered movie.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
but not a lot of people have seen it. Have you ever seen flirting?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Alan Alda, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Patty Arquette, Patricia Arquette, Ben Stiller, Taya Leone, Richard Jenkins. Richard Jenkins kind of steals it. He's your lover in the movie. He's my lover. He's my lover in the movie. And that was a moment, you know, it was like, I'm fucking acting with Nick Nolte.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And when you're looking in somebody's eyes and you don't see them. And that's whether it be the book, whether it be acting, even though I didn't grow up in Hollywood, my dad was an actor. There was a celebrity thing in it because he went from total unknown to Marcus Welby, MD, which was basically like the friends of its time. So there was all this attention and how he dealt with that attention.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
There was a lot of irritability and a lot of confusion. And, you know, you have to go do this and you have to be this and you have to present your wife. It was not great. Didn't come natural to him. So there was nothing about it in that way that was attractive to me.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So why he's not my lawyer doesn't make any sense other than Cliff Gilbert Laurie, who brought me in, which is how business works. And you learn that later. They bring you in as a top dog and they go, you're amazing. We want to represent you. And we've been trying to represent you since before you were born.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But behaviorally, and I think if you go back into this book, you go, oh, it was so behaviorally chaotic for me as a kid or my brother as a kid that, of course, I would be obsessed with why people do what they do. And what a great way to explore that in acting. That was the toehold for you. That was it. Yeah, yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
That's exactly what it is. It's like, would you become a psychologist just to be around people who are constantly talking about this thing that is endlessly interesting to me or experientially be inside of it? And then you're with Nick Nolte and you're like, this is fucking crazy. Nick ended up saving my life later. There was a whole relationship. You ping ponged, yeah?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Almost impossible to believe stories about him. I mean, literally walk into his house and you go, Nick, are you there? And he'd go. And you go, I guess he's here, you know, and then you go in the back room. Is he like an armchair chemist? He's like growing things. No, that's what I mean.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So you'd go in the back room or whatever past the living room and he'd be sitting there looking into a microscope and studying his blood. He liked six band-aids on his arm. And you go, hey man. And by the way, not on drugs. Not. No. Sober. OK, but he has also partaken in drugs.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
scheme is well there was the pyramid scheme of the 70s what was that and it was the beginning it was the first one and what you do is if you have the ability to kind of whether you'd say manipulate but she was so good at cold calling people and saying hey if you give five thousand dollars to this pyramid scheme so if you have eight people on the bottom that works itself to six people four people two people one person and then once you get more people on the bottom you get
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
whatever money has been accumulated in that pyramid. And then you start a new pyramid. She would have 20 pyramids going at once. She could call 100, 200 people a day and get people involved. So she was getting that money one bag after another. Dumping bags of money on the table. She would come in with literally grocery bags full of money and then she'd dump it. I can see it right now.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
It was right on the side of her bed and she'd dump it and she'd say, count. So I counted, I count 50 grand. And then at some point she was put on a hit list. Ultimately, she found out she was the third person on the list. And the first two people had not been killed, but had been severely beaten.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And you go and they flatter the shit out of you. Then you get in there and then you never see that person again.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And those are the people who didn't get their money back.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And so I knew it was around there somewhere. And when you're a 13 year old kid, you're not even 13, 12 year old kid who has this penchant for addictions that you don't even know about yet. And then you're taking each piece of furniture saying there's got to be a hollow spot in the floor or whatever. And then finally hearing that chunk or a piece of wood goes and falls out. And you're like, yes.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And I paid her back. After I did Goonies, I gave her a check for six grand and she didn't know what it was for. She didn't know it was gone because she had money coming in and out all the time.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
They don't even know. She was a drug dealer. Yes. She was a kingpin. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Oh, my God. Mike Herbert, who's still one of my closest friends, he looked older. So he would go to the drum shop or he had a mustache, a mustache, a herb estate, the herb estate. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
It is the most beautiful part, accountability. It's just so counterintuitive. To some, most people, not all.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
It's hard after you do it and you put it out there and somebody says, this is the worst book I've ever read in my life. And you go, huh. But ultimately, it's even better because then you start to realize the thing that you've learned early on in the program is that has everything to do with them and not about me. They're like, I don't want you to reveal shit, man. That means I have to reveal shit.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Yeah. Yeah. What are you doing? Hey, why are you changing? We have been focusing. Do you know how much time we've put into you? I go, you don't even know my name, bro. You had to. So look it up. I have to say this to finish that thought. Yeah. Is the hand-me-downs that I've always gotten have been better than what could have been had I gone with the top dog. Oh, yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Power of example within massive discomfort. I love the idea of anybody, even with acting, you know, you're like, hey, you got a scene coming up where you have to cry. So I think about my dead grandmother. Never made me cry. So crisis mode puts me in a different place. Now, if I think of a mother lifting a car off her kid, like even when I say it, forget it. Same, same, same. That's it. I'm done.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
If I think of people who go beyond this design of themselves that they feel that they have to adhere to, the betterment of humanity, I lose it. Powerful. Me too. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
That's it. My daughter had, you know, whatever fears. She did it last night. We went to the ice cream shop. I said, go ask for another spoon. She dropped her spoon and she was looking back and I could see building up the whole, oh my God, I'm going to have to go in there. What if it doesn't come out right? And I said, don't think, just go.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And then finally she went and she did it and she came back with a smile on her face, dude. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I was 19 years old when Debbie got pregnant and we were living at 2020 Beachwood Villa, just the worst apartment down here on Beachwood Canyon. And then by the way, when I got off the freeway at Vine, then we moved from 2020 Villa, once we found out we were gonna have Trevor, went to Hollywood towers. And then we went over to Kenwood in Los Feliz. You know, we just didn't have any money.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And that was a really shitty part of town, just like gunshots all the time and all that stuff. But I was looking at 14 years in prison. And I'd fought six cops. So six felonies, basically thought I was Bruce Lee. And they taught me a big, I told you that story. It's just the dumbest story, literally most embarrassing story ever, but great.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Because those hand-me-downs turned into the top dogs.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So again, you're in the habit, you get sober and then you're like, okay, it's okay. And then you're responsible. And then you go back and go, God, this sobriety feels like a ball and chain. I want to have fun my life. I'm 23 years old. I should be having fun. You convince yourself in all those ways. And then you go back out and it doesn't get worse. It just gets gnarly. It was always gnarly.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But I will have been a parent from 20 years old. And my youngest right now will graduate when I'm 70.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So I will have been a parent my entire adult life. So I don't know life without kids.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
They give a shit. There's something very personal still. Wendy Kirk is my lawyer and she is with JSSK. And what she has done, they even offered her a partnership when she changed. And she said, no, I don't like what it does to me. Wow. Wow. And they forced her to be a partner. So she's a partner. She works with Obama.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So whether it's me going off and whatever this messy trajectory is of a human being, which we're all messy and you just have to accept these moments, not that they're okay. It's like people saying they needed to relapse in order to find out. I don't agree necessarily. I relapsed and did I learn anything else? No, but I chose to do it and I take full accountability for it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
There's stuff that I haven't written in the book that my family and I talk about everything. So it's all open and it's all out there. But there's things that I've done that really put my family in jeopardy. And I always tried to keep it separate. I tried to live this life and then I tried to live that life. You have that goal, but obviously the thing is more powerful than you.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
When it would cross over and bleed over and things would happen, you just go, this is awful. But no matter what I did, whether it was involving addiction, because it wasn't always... There's a story in the book where I go to Portland, Oregon to be discovered. Oh my God, this is from my own private Idaho. My own private Idaho. I stayed in a flop house. I mean, I stayed in a true whorehouse.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
There were like hookers going in and out. And I'm reading Rambo at the time, trying to be that guy.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I can't get an audition for this thing. Okay, I have enough money to fly to Portland, Oregon, and I'm going to walk around Boys Town in Portland, Oregon, and Gus Van Sant obviously hangs out in Boys Town. He's probably scouting for the real deals. He's probably scouting for the movie. This is your camping trip. And he's going to see me, and he's going to go... Holy shit.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And I go, I have actually. I'm doing a movie right now. No way. I'm totally available. And by the way, I have to provide for a wife and child right now.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
We've all done that. I ended up. Yeah, but not like this. We end up in the adult booths and you got glory holes. Big dicks come through the wall. I went full into it, freaking out and then also thinking, what am I doing?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And by the way, that's not the first time I did. I did it with Oliver Stone for The Doors. Then I heard Val Kilmer got it. But I was walking around looking like Jim Morrison in Tucson, Arizona. I thought somehow it would get it. It's so sad that the irony is.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And I think what the book suggests is you never know, man, if you keep putting yourself out there, you don't know what your life has in store. You just have to keep doing that. You keep having to lift the car off the child.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
You have to keep being brave. You have to be willing to go through the meat grinder and get ground and ground and ground and ground and ground because you don't know what's going to be sculpted out of it. So the only time I get nominated so far, Gus Van Sant. Wow. I ended up doing W with Oliver Stone. Yeah. How fucking crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
No, he doesn't. And I loved working with him and I love him. And I don't say that just to say it, but great working relationship. I think he was slightly afraid of me, which was probably a good thing. Yeah, it takes a lot to scare him. It takes a lot to scare him. And he's usually this guy that's creating chaos. Talk about creating a vortex that he controls.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
There was a great, can I tell you this quick story?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Okay, during W, there was a thing and Richard Dreyfuss, and I don't know what Richard was going through. I don't know if he was sober or not sober. I think he was sober, but we had a seven page scene and we chose to eat sandwiches. We chose along the lines of doing this movie. We thought, I think he uses his hands a lot.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So he's eating potato chips or eating sandwiches or always popping a candy or whatever. We had a scene between me and Dreyfuss And it was just seven pages of going back and forth informationally. And I'm eating a sandwich during the time. And I say my first line, I go, you know, so vice, what's today hold? And he goes, and I go, this is literally the first line. And he goes, what?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I go, it's your line, man. And he goes, what do you mean? What do you mean? And dude, it was just that over and over. Every time we did the take, he would stare at me. And then Oliver comes in, he goes, what's the problem? I go, I don't fucking know. I don't know what's happening. He's studying my ass off of the scene. I don't know what's happening.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And the driver was still sitting there and he goes, what? And I go, what do you mean, what, dude? I don't understand what. We have a dialogue. It's not a monologue. There's a dialogue. I'll hold this shit up so you can read it. He was like, why would you do that? I go, so you can speak. And I didn't know.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I thought it was like one of those Alan Font things where I was like, I'm definitely being pumped. Yeah. I wouldn't know if he was trying to get control over me. I don't know. Did he not know his lines? And you never know with actors because that goes on all the time. I got mad. And then Oliver was like, no, I can't have you getting mad. I can't. You're getting emotional. You can't get emotional.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Go over there. And then they're yelling at each other.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I still, to this day, I don't know what's happening. It's either Dreyfuss is a genius or something was going on. Sure.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Yeah. The cover was Joey Feldman, who's a sober buddy of mine. OK. Dang. All right. This is great because you didn't know you were going to do this. No. And by the way, I never wrote down the story. And I did take my younger kids to this very place where this happened. We revisit it at the Kerrang. Let's see if I can pronounce this stuff right.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
My girlfriend was getting minor surgery. I had my 11-year-old and my 7-year-old with me. We were visiting her in England. She kept pushing that we should travel, so we eventually came up with Scotland. I've always had a thing for Ireland, but Scotland never really came up before then. The Isle of Skye is a paradise.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I would learn later that most of our ancestry comes from the highlands of the Isle of Skye. Clan Ross and Clan Reed. Maybe that would explain the feeling we had when we were there. The kids and I had a banter. Where are we going to sleep tonight? I'd yell to wish they'd reply in equal decibels. We don't care. We didn't care. We were carefree and happy. We were Clan Brolin. We were a unit.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
One day, about five days into a very nomadic vacation, we came across the Kerrang, a landslip on the northernmost part of Trotternish, Isle of Skye, Scotland. There was no car park at that time, but for a little soggy dirt lot along the edge of the road, everything was new to us there. Everything was a discovery. Clan Brolin just rolling along with whatever came along.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
A trail was barely visible in the distance, and from it overlooked a stunning portrait of the valley below. We decided to trek and make use of our whimsy. No water bottle, no idea how long it was, we took off, Eden, my seven-year-old, holding my hand and Trevor bringing up the rear. The walk was precarious at times. Right from the trail's edge shot down hundreds of feet, it seemed, in moments.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I questioned myself and my abilities as a parent. What am I doing up here? Why do I do this with little kids? What about a typical playground? Why don't you do what is already set up for children? The trail would even out with the pitch of landscape and we'd be back freely being our lively selves. Sheep are in high population in Scotland. They are everywhere. And here was no exception.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But even in the rooms, it's not anonymous. I never understood it. Somebody goes, do you want to share? And you go, yeah. So today and they go, hey, what's your name? That's a big no-no.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Blue dots on white riddled parts of the mountainside, red dots on others. I surmised the colors sprayed onto their thick wool represented ownership. Farmer blue and farmer red. Fine. I like sheep. So do my kids. We've had sheep. They are funny. Cartoon funny. Bah! I suddenly ran toward a flock of them, my arms flailing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I thought it'd make my kids chuckle watching them run down a hill, then up another. The sheep were scared, but no harm, no foul. My children laughed more at me than at them. Our papa's crazy, and I loved living up to the legend I imagined myself to be in their minds. We love crazy papa. As I stopped running and waving my hands and just started to turn around toward my kids, I heard a snap.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I didn't know what it was. Then as I refocused on the herd beyond, now running up a hillside, there was one whose legs were dragging behind it, the front paws desperately scooting the body forward in fits and starts. Poppy, what happened to that one? I jogged down to where the flock had been and the lamb was still there, struggling frenetically.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
The closer I got, the more it tried to scamper away, but it couldn't. Something wasn't working in its body. I hoped it was in shock because of the sudden change in pitch. I hoped that maybe the sheep's body had temporarily spasmed and frozen. I put one hand on the back of its neck to try to calm it, and the other I slowly pulled down the length of its spine. Vertebra, vertebra, vertebra, vertebra.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And you go, why do I have to say my name? Because back in the day, the first hundred that the book is based on, you never had to say your name. You just had to say, I'm an alcoholic. That makes a little more sense. So it doesn't make any sense. The hypocrisy of, hello.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
The sheep let out a yell. It was a screech of pain. We were two miles away from the car. That part of its back had collapsed. It moved. Something is broken. I've been raised with wild animals my whole life. Bobcats bit my cheek until it bled, and I've cleaned the cages of wolves, mountain lions, and bobcats since I can remember. I know how to deal with crisis. I would have been a good soldier.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I'm calm under copious amounts of stress. I looked over my shoulder to my kids. They were staring at me, waiting for a sign of how to react. Stay there, I told them. Please stay there. I don't know what to do. I was kidding. I was making a joke. This goddamn sheep's back broke. How the fuck did that happen? It was only meant as a joke. What do I do? but I kept a face on.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I looked around for anyone else on the trail. Nobody. I looked up to the peaks of the Kerrang, how the fog was just caressing the tips of them, and I suddenly felt the cold front of death enter my body. The sheep scooted slightly farther forward and bleated. I grabbed its body and attempted to swing it onto my shoulders. I couldn't. It was too heavy.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I wanted to be that parent who could lift cars to save their child. But no matter how hard I tried to hoist it, it failed. I look back to my kids who looked sad and anxious, but stoic. They had in them that ranch kid grit that didn't allow for an instant reaction. They knew it was going to get worse and to react now would be premature. Turn your heads. They did.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I could break its neck, I thought to myself. One startling snap, and it would be out of its misery and pain. What if I weighed it? Would it be better? Where is everyone? I avoided it as long as I could. The sun was getting lower in the sky and all I knew was that I was gonna have to kill this innocent animal.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I grabbed its muzzle with my left hand and then brought my right hand over the left side of its head, leveraging my left. I'm gonna pull as hard and as fast as I can and it'll go out like a light. One, two, turn your heads, cover your ears. They did. One, two, three. I pulled as every organ in my body fell into this hell of my own making. The screaming, the sheep kept screaming.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Its back legs were splayed out and it just screamed and screamed as it kept reaching forward away from me. It knew, it knew I was here to murder it. There was no sign of physical trauma, none. Can we look? My son yelled over his shoulder. Not yet. I didn't know what to do. My kids were watching me. This was a seminal moment. There was no pride in trying to kill the sheep.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
There was nothing but shame and inadequacy. I didn't know what I was doing. I should know. I was 31 years old. I grew up on a ranch. I grew up around wild animals. I had to assist in the deaths of animals all the time in our house. Cancer, age, trauma. I wrapped my hand around the nape of its neck. I told it I was sorry. I was sorry. I didn't know what to do.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Yeah, totally. And I'm usually the guy that says, shut the fuck up. It's an anonymous program.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I had killed wounded animals before, a stork on a beach with a broken neck, birds flying into windows who could never fly away again. I put my dog down when he was riddled with cancer. I should know how to do this. We were 50 feet from the edge of the cliff. I could throw it off, but what if it survived? I don't know what's down there. What if there's hay or a soft bog?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I looked up and the other sheep were watching me from afar. My daughter was crying by now. It was a soft cry, a silent cry, just tears. My son put his arm around her, ranch kids consoling each other through each of nature's traumas. But this was because of me. Do they think if I kill this sheep that I would kill them? Not now, but at any point in their lives?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
If I do this, will it always be living somewhere under their skin, itching at them? I dragged the sheep up the hill while it continued to bleat and try and hold its ground with its front hooves. There was a loose rock. It was an old rock with a layer of mica and a slight fur of moss covering it. I picked it up, and there were two sharp edges visible. I ran my hand over them.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
They were as sharp as they looked. I imagined the sheep telling me to put it out of its misery, but I knew that wasn't the case. It had no say in the matter. It was all in my head. The truth is, we were all dying on that landslip, but soon one of us would be dead. My aim had to be right on. "'Turn your heads, cover your ears.'
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
My daughter wiped away the tears on her face with the backside of her hand, then put the palms of her hands over her ears. My son followed suit. I lifted the rock above my head. One eye stared up at me from near my feet. The grass along the trail was a deep green. I imagined blood on it. I tried to prepare myself. I am a killer. I kill innocent beings. I'm not funny.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
There is nothing funny about me.' Don't think. Aim. Save this animal from the pain I caused it. Aim. Please, God, please let me get it right. I stand tall, the rock suspended above me. Thunk.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I am cold. The world is cold. I feel my children inside me. I see their pain through me. I feel for the pulse of the animal. Silence, except for the winds. None of us move. I am looking down. My children are looking away. The sheep is dead. We stand for a long, long time. We stand there to this day.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
We talked it in the beginning. It's like when you said when one parent leaves and then you're sitting there and you're having to perform. And then there's always this performative sense of self. Like you're the funny guy. You're the crazy guy. You know, especially while drinking. I went out with a guy once. He was from Canada, but we were in L.A.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And we had a certain relationship where I was in my craziest phase. And he brought somebody from Canada and flew her down and said, hey, I'm going to take you out with Josh. And you'll see. Buckle up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for some reason, I wasn't drinking at that moment. I had a day, maybe three days before. And I was like, OK, I'm going to stay off this sauce for a while.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And we went to one of the few times I've been there to the Viper Room. And he said, what do you have to drink? And I go, I'm just going to have water. And he goes, what do you mean? And I go, I'm not going to drink tonight. And he said, dude, I brought my friend down from Canada. It's time for the Josh. And I was like, holy shit, I'm your clown.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I'm the jester. And I think that's what my mom was. And it was only toward the end of her life that she started to come to terms. She had thought of a really great story for a series. And she wasn't involved in Hollywood at all, but it had to do with chimps and people. And ironically, the series is out now called Chimps. I called you the first skull. Literally.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And she had thought of that story and somebody said, I love that idea. Let's develop it. And I remember my mom in the kitchen really profusely crying, which she never did. And I said, what's up? And she said, I've never been taken seriously in my life.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
So you have the bleed over of that, which is me, some masculine form of that, who's doing that same song and dance, who realizes on his own terms, luckily younger and says, you know what? I don't want to be this jester all the time. I don't want to be the one that people are happy to escape, but they're happy that exists because they're living life, some version of chaos through
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
No. And I don't think so. I've gotten the same thing from, I understood people who are obese and you go, hey, we can do this or we can do gastro surgery. We can do this. We do that. And they go, no. And there's this reticence to work out and all this. And then I got it because I paralleled it with the drinking. Oh, without your extra weight, you don't exist.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
It's the thing that people are always talking about. At least it's something.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Yeah, because that's your experience. My experience is purely on a professional capacity.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Maybe you're invisible. And I always felt that about drinking. Whereas I'd go out and it was like, you know what you did last night? I go, no, tell me. And they go. You were nuts. It was so much fun. But then you did this thing and we climbed this building and then you jumped and you thought you had a parachute on, but you didn't. And I lived off that for years. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
You're just another person. That's it. And can you find something? It's just terrifying. You get to that place eventually where you can say, I'm okay just with what I have around me, my family, the few friends. I don't have to charm everybody. Not everybody has to like me. It's okay. I'm going to go write a fucking book.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Something happened to her. I used to talk to her about it because my mom was in Camarillo State Hospital. She wasn't there for very long, but her sister was in and out of Bellevue for 30 years. Severely alcoholic, really crazy. And I got to know her sister later. But I would ask her and she said, my parents were amazing. She was down in Texas, Corpus Christi. Corpus Christi, Texas.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And she said, I'd sneak out my window and my parents would come back. They'd be so worried about me. I would yell at them for waiting up for me. She said, I was the chaos. And she very readily admitted that. Do I believe it? A thousand percent? Right. Maybe not.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
You constantly see this person come up and you know it has its moments where it's like this person will show up for this two months.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And you know what you did, which is what I did, is you forwarded them to other people. You were like, oh, my God, look at this lead that he did. By the way, I have nothing against Feldman. No, how could you? What I questioned the whole time was, does he know? And I think that's what drew everybody in. When you sit there and you're just going like this. Do you know anything about this?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But you're a Goonies fan, right? I remember that from before. No, you're not a Goonies fan.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
That was a look of absolute, almost disgust. It was panic.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
No, but I kind of liked the idea of I only have seen it, meaning I didn't react like everybody else. I just saw it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Which he's been doing for a very long time. It's just recently he went on a tour. He was opening for Fred Durst and Fred Durst brilliantly created this whole thing called like the worst tour in the world. Oh, I can't remember. It's not called that, but it's something like that. So it's intentional from Fred Durst point of view.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But I think he took, which was genius, Corey Feldman and said, you open for me and then we're going to come out and do our bullshit. And Fred has a huge white beard now and comes out with basically what he wore back in the day. And it's just fucking funny.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
But when you see Corey doing his thing, which is what he's always done, there's no difference in what he was doing during the Goonies back in that day and what he's doing now. There's just a seriousness to it. So
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
I love when people are honest. Like I did Rogan and I go, so where's the book? And he goes, I don't know. Where is the book? And I was like, fuck you mean, where is the book? We sent you the book. He was like, yeah, where is it? I'm like, so you didn't read the book.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
Well, wait, let me interrupt you for a second. First of all, the fears in writing a book, I didn't have a fear. I've told this story before, but there was only one moment where I kind of said, you need to be just a little bit more inspiring in order to be attractive to a wider audience. And I wrote probably 40,000 words with that in the back of my head, having told nobody.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And then my lit agent, she read the first chapter and she said, first chapter is really good. You've smoothed it out. It's great. What the fuck happened with chapter two? And that was the one you were going to protect yourself with? Not even protect myself, but just give it a little more positive oomph. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
First of all, I fell in love with her at that moment because I was like, you see me, which I think that's the biggest thing you see behind the tough and the thing and the guy. And she said, you need to go back and rewrite it. I said, the whole thing?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
And she goes, what part go back and be you if you cheat or if there's an affectation or if you're trying to write for somebody else, it's never going to work. The other thing is the fear didn't come until I was two days into the audible. I speak well. I speak in front of an audience well. I can read other people's books well.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
There was something about reading through my own book where I was tripping through every sentence. I started to shame spiral. And then within that shame spiral, I started to say, I wish that I could burn any evidence that this thing ever existed, even as an idea. I've done the dumbest thing I should have just wrote when I did the Goonies. Me and Corey Feldman used to go to lunch together and
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
it was so fun. He was so smart and he was playing music then too. And there's some people that have reacted to it. Like this is the fucking worst book I've ever read because wasn't he married for nine years? Where's that spoon fetus, the shit, which I understand. There's a certain amount of that when you call it a memoir that you want. This is really more about children and parents.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Josh Brolin Returns
That's what it is. To me, it's like surviving nurture to get to nature, trying to get rid of the habits that you acquired during nurture and then confronting those and hopefully thriving within that nature, figuring out a way to thrive within that nature. So then children come in and all that kind of stuff.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Yeah, but that's the whole thing. And that's the thing that, you know, either people are really interested in or they're not interested in. To me, I know that I've fought the idea of celebrity my whole life, even though I didn't grow up in LA. Everybody thinks I grew up in Malibu. I didn't grow up in Malibu.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And then you imagine what happens on a set and you think it's this perpetual red carpet and you're just waving literally your entire life. Do you know what I mean? There is a perception of, I was just on the, on the phone with my lit agent, um, Kimberly Witherspoon this morning. And I was like, I'm spinning. I'm spinning.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Like you saw me, I felt it get uncomfortable when you said those nice things about the book. I got teary. This means the world to me because it's me being naked about the realities of reality. the life that I've lived and the life of a lot of other celebrities that I know. And it's not that it's looking for compassion, it's not. But there's no compassion in that.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
There's no just like, oh, you guys have the same problems. No, you don't. You live in a bubble. You all live under the same apartment complex. And you just go, what are you thinking? Right, right. What are you thinking? What about the life of...
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
This kind of unconventional life of this guy who was germinated, unbeknownst to anybody that it was going to be this, into an artist who just found creativity as an outlet, got attached to it. The self-destructive part of him grew and grew and grew with it. And then somehow through having kids and all that found his way out of the self-destructive.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Honestly, it's like if you did a Freud quote, if you did some other quote, you'd be like, wow. Yeah. But because it's the Goonies, it has this reference of like cute.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
No, no, no, no, dude. For like three generations. I don't know how many, how old are you? Are you my age? I am 98 years old. Yeah, I know. So you are. We're the same age. I fought in World War II.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
You do have great cheekbones. And you would look amazing with bigger lips.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
You know what I should do? I don't think it's a bad thing. I know there can be reactions, but even you, because you have no lips, if it reacted poorly, it would still look good.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I remember voice control. I remember Steve Anton said, what was it? What was Carrie's name? Andy? Yes. Andy. Like it's the worst voice control of any actor until I did my next movie, which was thrashing that when I was in the premiere and I saw that movie, a movie that I don't talk shit about anymore, but I did for years when I saw it.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And I, my, my name was Chrissy that I yelled out and she walked out of my trailer and I go, Chrissy. And I was like, Oh my God, you suck so bad. You're actually hurting people. Yeah. Acting is supposed to bring joy, and you're bringing shit.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
By the way, have you heard that story? Give me all you got. And he was like, you know, we had planned that he was on cocaine.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Except that. That was wrong. That was wrong. That was a perfect movie.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
He's one of the great, I mean, Dog Day Afternoon to me is like one of the greatest films of all time that I've probably seen 30 times. And it's just, I mean, truly one of the greatest. When I heard him back, I was on a plane and I heard him back there. Whatever it was, it was like Tom Waits version of this. And I couldn't, it's one of the few people I couldn't come up to. I was so in awe.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And he came up to me and he said, I'm a big fan. And I was like, wow, that's a moment I'll never forget.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Can we just revisit this really quick before you move on? And I know I say this every time I see you, but I used to see you on the street in New York. You know this. Upper West Side. Upper West Side, but not in the park. In the Upper West Side, I would see you on the street, and you would always avoid me. And that's the truth. Yeah. You would always avoid me. I did, yeah. You'd always look at me.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
You'd have your dogs. Yeah. Dogs. I was totally— One dog. One dog? Yeah. Oh. I imagined many dogs. Well, I had a papier-mâché dog.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
But I do—I always remember seeing you, recognizing you, and then you would look up, and then basically it was your version of stay away from me. Yeah. Yeah.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
You just thought I was some weird street urchin that needed cocaine and you looked like a dealer.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
That's probably what I thought then. Hey, man, you holding?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
With an underwater speaker that was saying, we'll tell you when to come up.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I came up. They said, go. And I heard everybody else coming up. So I was late. So I wasn't thinking. I came up. I looked at it. I turned around. I looked at it. And I went, fuck! And Donner goes, what? ! I go, sorry, sorry.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
No, that's what I'm saying. Go back under. I ruined the whole thing. And again, like when we go back and talking about this book is that, you know, you go, oh, we're hiring Jim Brolin's son or whatever. Right. He auditioned six times and I was, I was right for that part. I look at it objectively and I go, I was right. I look like a jock. I look like the Sean Astin.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
But the truth of the matter is, is they were hiring a Cito rat. They were hiring a guy who was already doing, had done a lot. I'd already been to jail two times. So, you know, when I go up and say, fuck, it's organic.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Anyway, I was going to show you. I keep reaching for this and I'm going to show you. Keep talking and I'll show you.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
What am I supposed to do? This is I don't know. This is a picture of me. It's my mother. JB is a kid. It's me in my crib with a mountain lion.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
holy shit there you go let me see oh my god that is and it's not a cub it is an adolescent mountain line and that's that's that your mom putting it in that's my mom taking the picture look at the camera i'm like i'm not i'm not taking my eyes off the mountain line i'm not looking at the camera this is like You and Melanie Griffith didn't hurt Tippi Hedren. They knew each other.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And if you look at the face, it will tell you everything. Not that I was beaten. That's what it is growing up with wild animals.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
That's it. You're getting mauled. But also- Blood bites, my mom called it. What's interesting about this- Blood bites. Anyway-
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Like I'm in this thing right now. It's like, I don't mean to be mean. There's like people that I like Colbert, you, you know, where I get along with really well. And then I know I do that thing. And I don't mean to. It's just what I grew up with. We all kind of poke each other.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
That's trust. That's family. To me, that's family. Not everybody gets that. That's why when I go to Italy, everybody's like that. And I was like, oh, wow. I was just born in the wrong country. Yeah. Like everybody, even the grandmother is like, what the fuck are you looking at? And I'm like, what?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Because there's connective tissue there somewhere and it's not linear because what is linear? It's, you know, I was saying, I'm saying this this morning, I was saying the whole point of the book is that it's, it's this kind of, it's a collective, like, I love the idea of groups of people being able to lean on each other.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And, and, and if it's, if, you know, you don't have the same beliefs, it's a messy fucking life, man. It's all over the place. It's all made up of moments, this whole idea of trajectory. And like, I did the Goonies and then I did thrashing and then I worked with, you know, then I did highway to heaven with, you know, it's like, yeah, okay. But what were you thinking? What were you this?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
What was the messiness? How did you become who you are at this point? And then, you know what I mean? It's way more interesting to me to get into the non-linear kind of reactions off. You have De Niro in front of you and you look at him like, I don't, I'm sure it was the wine, but I was like, look at your face, man. And he goes, what? And I was like, you just got a fucking face. Look at your face.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Has anybody ever told you you should... Like, have you ever thought about, I know you run a motel or a hotel or whatever it is, but you thought about acting? Now, did he laugh? No. And then I hear Sean go, dude, shut the fuck up. No, he didn't laugh, but he was like, what? You talking to me? Yeah, yeah.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And I was like, your face, the way you're sitting in that chair, it's just so kind of celebrity. But why not? We're in this life once. No, but you said it before, and it's like, and I don't mean to make it morbid or anything, but you said death wish. It was never a death wish. I never had a death wish. It was a vivid wish.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I just wanted things. Maybe it was the LSD I took at 13. I don't know. But it was like, I just wanted, my mom was that. She just wanted it heightened.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Yeah, but she wasn't, you know, she wasn't, and I would say this if she was, she wasn't particularly sexual. Again, it was more about whatever the event was. Like if we went into a restaurant, it was very rare my mom didn't end up in the kitchen. Yes.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
You know, and my mom cooked every day, whether there was somebody on the ranch or not, she cooked every day and then she'd put it on somebody's fence post. So she cooked all the time. And I have all those recipes. I have a whole wall full of recipes that she, they're all handwritten and all that. So it's very cool. But the truth of the matter is, is that she was a big drinker.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
She would go out, she was loud. She was masculine. You know, if she wanted to kiss you, There's nothing that would stop her from doing that. She would grab you, she would pull you across the table, and then she'd give you a kiss. And then something else would come up, you know? Right. Somebody would bark, and then she'd look over and, you know what I mean?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
It was like a high-pitched whistle dog thing. She just wanted to be in the nucleus of everything of what was most heightened and most interesting. Without knowing why. And she was always like that. She would tell me that her parents were super sweet parents, teachers, really smart, Corpus Christi, Texas, and that she was always sneaking out of the house. She was always causing trouble.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
She always had animals in her garage that she was hiding. She was just that in an organic way. And I don't have it in the book. She ended up... She ran away from home when she was 19. The first people she met were Clint and Maggie Eastwood, right? So that's before Clint did Rawhide or any of that. They kind of took her under their wing. She hung out in Hollywood. She grew up Baptist, very strict.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
She started sleeping with all these guys, married men and all that. She kind of went crazy, took a bunch of pills, got in a car, started hitting a bunch of parked cars, ended up in Camarillo State Hospital. Three and a half weeks, they assessed her. Three and a half weeks later, they said, look, she's not crazy. She just had a moment.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
They go to Camarillo State Hospital to pick her up and she doesn't want to leave. She goes, I like it here. It's fun. And she had become friends with a lady. I mean, again, this is super morbid, but a lady who had hacked up her whole family and hadn't talked for 12 years. And I can see it right now, probably sat next to her and said... I don't understand why you're not talking.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Do you not talk at all? Do you have a voice or do you have this? And the girl finally said candy. And it was like a whole breakthrough.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
But, you know, I don't tell that story because there's no need to tell that story because it has that in the fabric of each story. And you can see that for me in my life. It's hard to tell those stories when you're promoting a book because who the fuck wants to read about that? But at the same time, you go, that's normal, man. That's normal for us.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Whatever that means. And then you go, why would I be an actor? I had no interest in being an actor. Like my dad's profession is, didn't interest me in the least. There was nothing that kind of drew me toward like, what do you do? And wow, you do the thing. And it was nothing. And I took a theater class because there was like underwater basket weaving in theater.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And I was like, well, I'll do the theater. And this woman had me get up on stage. It was the first one she chose. Get up on stage, create a character, any character you want. How does he look? How does he feel? Where is he from? How does he do this? Now, as the house, we're going to ask you questions and you answer as the character.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And as I was, I was like a balding middle-aged guy from Brooklyn or something. I don't know, whatever I came up with in my head. And as I was answering in humor, once people started laughing at my answers, it just clicked. I was like, this is it. This is heightened. This is... Me able to resort to my imagination, which is far more interesting than my reality.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
36 out of 50. And there's, by the way, still people that when I talk about it, they go, hey, tell Brolin I'm not fucking dead, man. You know what I mean?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
It was the punk rock. It was punk rock. It was the heroin epidemic. It was all that. A lot of people died.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Okay. Three and a half and you get a motorcycle? Three and a half. Why are you still here? Indian 20. Indian 20. I was three and a half and then two weeks later I had him take off the training wheels. As you see in my face in all those pictures.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
My dad. My dad. My dad, who doesn't ride motorcycles anymore and was never very good. He fell at one point and really fucked up his ankle. And, yeah. But I rode my whole life. I raced. dirt bikes. I got my eighties and I got, and that that's where I was spoiled. My dad always got me a motorcycle. So I had probably five different motorcycles.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Well, then when I was 19, then I got into the kind of Harley thing. And then, and then from 19 on. So however many of that years, that is 19 to 56. I ride with a group of guys now and we go 1200 mile poles and We go to chopper shows and stuff like that. I have a 1937 knucklehead, 1968 shovelhead, 1956 panhead, 1947 knucklehead.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
We're breaking down because we're vintage motorcycles. Yes. So you have to ride with people who can fix them. I'm not good. Like admittedly not good. I wish I was better, but I ride Steven, you know, there's several people that we ride with that, you know, you'll see a transmission on a sidewalk.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
When you see Hells Angels or Mongols now, and they're all on nice bikes. They're all on new bikes. I mean, there's guys, true motorcyclists that I know, That have super nice bikes that look at us and say, I could never do what you do because it's too exposing. It's too, it's just, yeah. I mean, you break down, there's no front brake. There's sometimes not a back brake.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
But that's why I think even now, and my older kids can attest to this, I have a 36-year-old, a 31-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 3-year-old. And my older kids, my son's a great artist, and there's a lot of electrical towers. And you go, oh, I know that's because he was in the back of the car looking out the window. We stayed in motels. We stayed in that. And I do the same thing now.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I make it as uncomfortable— As I can, we don't, this, I have an absolute like fear of living in nothing but comfort. Sorry for them, but it's just how it is. Yeah. There's something, like I said, there's something substantial about the vintage Harley Davidson's where it's, I, I wrote about it in the book. They said, write about motorcycles. So impossible to write about motorcycles.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I kept crossing shit out. And finally I said, I can't do it. And the minute I said, I can't do it, I started riding. And then there was some connection with my mother and being in the back of the car with my mother and then riding motorcycles. Now in those connections and riding through a swarm of bees and all that, you go, that's the deal.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
If you have some resilience, I have a massive worry about a lack of resilience, even with my kids. But I look at my three-year-old. My three-year-old's literally the toughest person I know, my girl. She's just, you can see it in her face. You're like, oh, you're 100% Brolin. You're going to be okay. We just got to keep you from going crazy. But there's this, again, it's character.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
It's all the stuff that's colorful and lively that I embrace.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
No, I just saw you playing footsies underneath the table, and I thought there's something going on. They often just trade shoes underneath the table. So you each have three-year-olds. Yeah.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Even the irritation is great. I mean, there's a thing right now where they're both going through like a... Like, when you get mad, it would be great if you lived in a different house. And I'm not even getting mad. I'm just like, please don't do that. And they're like, can you live in a different house? And I'm like, fuck you, man.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I looked at my three-year-old at one point and I said, is there nothing about me that intimidates you? And they just stared. You know what I mean? But there's something.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I kind of do. No, but I'm saying she's saying that in her mind when she looks at me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're old now. We're the next generation, motherfucker.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I'm not afraid of many people in this lifetime, but my kids, definitely. My 31-year-old daughter who's on tour, she just got off tour, music. She was headlining all over the country. And she's one girl who I'm absolutely, utterly in love with. but who scares the shit out of me. She's the, yeah. She's the first person in this life that actually scared me.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
For sure. In the best way though, you know, my mom was spinning, man. And my mom, what I don't write about in the book too, they go, God, your mom sounds horrible. No, no, no.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Hi, my name is Josh Brolin, and I feel so Don Cheadle about being one of Brian's friends. I don't even know what that means. What does it mean? Who knows? Badass. Horny. You feel horny? Nice.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Yeah. There was a moment toward the end of her life and I found like, was it in an Al-Anon book? And I still have it. And it had her name in the front that she wrote, hand wrote. And I know that there was a thing at the end she had thought of. What's that show on right now? Chimps or something like that? Chimp Crazy. Chimp Crazy.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And she had thought of a show 30 years ago about like a sitcom of chimps and people and doing it like animatronically or something like that. because she was into the wildlife thing. And somebody took her seriously and said, I want you to develop that show. And she wasn't in the business or anything. It was just somebody that she knew and said, I want you to develop that show in a serious way.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And I remember my mother crying. And I said, what's the matter? And she said, I've never been taken seriously in my life. So she was a freak show. And then you start living up to that freak show. And then interestingly, there's a guy, I remember who it was. There was a guy who said, hey, my friend's coming. He was Canadian. And he said, my friend's coming into town. Do you want to go out?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And I said, sure. And I went out and I had done something a couple of days before. So I like stopped drinking for a few days and we went out and he said, what can I get you? And I said, water's fine. And he goes, what do you mean? And I go, I just take a water. I'm not drinking tonight. And he goes, I brought my friend down from Canada. You know, I told her about you. And I go, what do you mean?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And he said, you know, it's like you're going to have a night. I told her that you're crazy. And I was like, oh, I'm like your fucking clown, man. I'm like your thing. I'm like you pay the $2, I have the two heads, or I have the thing, and you're going to experience a Brolin moment, a Brolin night. He's going to go to jail, and you're going to go home and go, how crazy is that guy, right?
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And then you're going to go on with your life. That was when I started to go, uh-oh. You know, because my mom lived a life of that. And I saw right at the end when she was taken seriously at 55 and I'm 56. And strangely enough, this book was never intended to be this book. This book happened organically. I just started writing.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I'd look at my journals and I'd go, oh, that's, I remember that moment. And I start writing about it and poorly. And then this thing formulated into this, all these stories about my mom. And you go, maybe that's, and it happened at 55. What a strange thing.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
You said I'm a great, very great writer, which grammatically is so fucked up. It's the worst writing possible.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I am excited. I'm really excited. The first time I went on your show was for flirting with disaster. Yep. And I think, you know, which I'm much less nervous now. I still get nervous, but not really. I don't care as much now.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
But back then I told a story about how my dad's so good looking that I told him I wanted to have sex with him or something like that. And nobody got it. I still think it's funny. It is funny. It is funny because it's your dad. And like, of course, you don't want to have sex with your dad. And somebody that's that good looking, even the son would want to have sex with him.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
Every angle I look at it from, it's still funny. And literally you and I were like, you went, and I looked out and everybody was like, like nothing. You know, it was a different time. It was a different time.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
I think I say it in one of the chapters, if you will, which we decided toward the tail end of this to put in chapters to make it followable or just stories that you could kind of note and go back to. But there's one that said I was – I can't remember exactly what it says, but it says something like I was – created in her kind of likeness to be a drinker. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
So it was like, it was kind of like a surrogate husband, so to speak. My dad was, you know, extremely, they got married in 12 days. After seven days, I think after five, no, it was seven days, they sat down, they had a scorpion drink, one of those massive cups between them. My dad was reeling from a recent breakup, and my mom with her voice, that Texan voice,
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
They were, you know, drinking it up and she looked up and she goes, well, and my dad's like, yeah. And he, she goes, are we, we going to do it or what? And he was like, do what? And she said, get married. Are we going to just, are we going to do it or what? And he got so kind of, you know, perplexed and confused and nervous that he just said, yeah, I guess. And she said, okay.
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Josh Brolin
And she started planning it at that moment. Wow. And five days later they were married.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2232 - Josh Brolin
Taco salad. Dungeon rings. Carrot cake. Ain't fritter. Cocaine. Start snorting cocaine seriously. Drops acid. 11 p.m. I don't know what that is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2232 - Josh Brolin
Oh, there's bummer, too. Yeah, the bummer ones, that sucks.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2232 - Josh Brolin
So he had like 10 minutes about, grab him by the pussy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2232 - Josh Brolin
How are you, man? Do you know anything about these things?
The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast
The Jon Hamm Episode
Okay, guys, sorry to keep you waiting. The train was late. Listen, before we begin, can I please just take a moment to talk about the fall foliage? All the crimsons and golds and browns and golds and buttery golds and buttery browns. The buttery browns.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
When I was young and then I did dip when I was doing that series.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Isn't there something though in your throwback, you know, you're a sober guy, I'm a sober guy, but you're actually throwing back and there's something exciting about the, hey man, it's Mark. Can you get me some shit? And you're like, alright, mellow out, dude. Du bist jetzt verdammt alt und traurig.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Habe Kinder. Ich meine, habe junge Kinder. Du kannst sie nirgendwo haben. Und meine Frau hört das mitten in der Nacht. Ich weiß nicht, was ich tue. Ich schlafe. Ich habe eine Schnauze in meinem Lippen und ich lüge nicht. 24 Stunden am Tag. 24 Stunden am Tag. Und dann habe ich sie rausgeholt und sie auf den Tisch gesetzt.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und dann würde mein Kind es an zwei Jahren holen, was wirklich... Vielleicht gibt es keine Nikotin, vielleicht gibt es keine Gefahr. Aber wenn sie es in den Mund setzt, wird sie krank. Und anstatt zu stoppen... I try and teach them. Don't do that. Stay away from daddy's drugs.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Me neither, kinda. Kinda. I think you have that predilection where you kind of like look for the negative where I looked at, I do. I just sensed that. It's I feel good today, but there's probably for no good fucking reason. I can spend the day worrying. The world is going to shit. Well, that's clear. Nein, Mann.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich weiß, dass es schlecht ist, aber wenn du rauchst, ist es nicht eines der Dinge, mit dem du deinen Haar rauskriegst. Aber du gehst zurück zu diesem Ding, wo du sagst, es ist ein Tomaten-basierter Gauß, der die Nikotin-Maschine umbringt. Es ist alles so voller Scheiße.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
You know what they don't have, though? If you look at cigarettes, especially in Europe, or cigars, it's like, you will lose your child in pregnancy. You will lose all your teeth. You will die if you do this. I don't see that anywhere here.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
They also may not have the additives and all the shit, the carcinogens.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Also schwimmst du auf die 6er? Nein, ich schwimme nicht. Nicht mehr? Aber wenn ich eine Doppel 6er mache. Oh, komm schon. Es sind 12er. Was ist das längste, das du je gegangen bist? Und dann werden wir über das übergehen. Was ist das längste, das du je gegangen bist, ohne einen Zen in deiner Mund? Jetzt? Ja. Diese Tage? Ja. Not long. Not long. An hour? I don't sleep with them, though.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Do you exercise? Yes. And do you do it when you exercise? It's usually on the tail end of it. Okay, if you do it while you exercise. I can move up to the six? No, no. It's not a positive. It's like, no, you will get sick. You will? Yeah, because it will shoot through your bloodstream. Oh, okay.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich habe nicht. Nein, du hast mich gewonnen. Du hast mich gewonnen. Ich habe das nie verstanden, Alter. Ich war unter dem Bett auf Blow. Ja, ich habe mich über die... Ja, ich habe mich über die Peephole für acht Stunden geschaut. Ich weiß nicht, warum ich... Du warst derjenige? Ich war absolut tausend Prozent derjenige.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
No, I wasn't that guy, but I was looking through the peephole. I actually, this is a true story. I was in New York, I was living on 86th Street, and I was looking through the peephole for quite a few hours. I was positive I saw somebody's shoulder, a black shoulder, a black shirt. Just a shoulder? No, no, no, no, a black shirt, which was probably a cop.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und ich habe eine gute fünf Stunden durch die P-Pole geschaut. Mein Auge war super schmerzhaft. Und dann hast du dich von der P-Pole gelassen, weil du weißt, dass das wegen der Drogen ist, die du machst. Lass dich einfach weg und versuche, eine gute Zeit zu haben. Und wenn du in vier Inchen von der P-Pole weggekommen bist und du sagst, ja, aber was, wenn...
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And then you go right back to the people. That, I graduated to under the bed. And then all of a sudden, and this is a true story, it's not in the book. All of a sudden, I heard the lock in the door. And then the door... und ich dachte, holy shit, meine Beziehung mit Kokain war verdammt für den Rest meines Lebens, weil man immer denkt, jemand kommt, aber niemand kommt tatsächlich, aber jemand kam.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und dann? Und es war meine Ex-Wife, die Mutter meiner älteren Kinder, die beschlossen hat, dieses wundervolle Ding zu tun und mir mein Wohnzimmer auszulegen, nur um es zu verletzen. Aus der Gnade ihres Herzens. Ich habe 45 Minuten unter dem Bett gesessen, die Moppe zu sehen. watching a moving mop. And that's a true story. Panic in your eyes. And I've never told that story. Panic in your eyes.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Oh my, abject panic. And also, when are you going to leave so I can keep doing this? I went right to a psychosis.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
There's something, you know... I'm going to put another one in now. I feel like I've got to keep up. That's okay. I'm right with you right now. I'm starting to sweat. You know, an honest answer to your question is I feel... I was in the middle of doing the Audible for this book. That's fun, right?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
They're directing you. I know how this is meant to be read. And yet you're vulnerable to somebody else actually having some kind of objectivity. So you welcome that. And then on top of it, being a decent reader, being somebody who's pretty comfortable reading in public, I was stuttering through my shit left and right. I couldn't get through two sentences without fucking up a word.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
So I started spying. No, it took me four days. It was fine. They were doing that thing like, this is so good. This is great. And I'm like, you're lying to me. You think I'm that type of a person or actor or whatever that is surrounded by a bunch of yes people that just needs a little stroke. Ein kleiner Penisrub und dann ist alles okay. Für eine Stunde.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Aber du bist nicht dieser Typ. Wahrscheinlich bin ich nicht dieser Typ. Ich verstehe mich nicht als dieser Typ. Also würde ich draußen gehen und ich würde literally spiralieren. Und ich würde sagen, was zur Hölle habe ich gemacht? Was für eine Intention ich hatte, was ein Memoir ist, was würdest du tun?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Okay, du tust etwas über die Goonies, du tust etwas über Thrashing, du tust etwas über Michael Landon, du tust etwas über...
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
It's not like, you know, when I was born, you know. No, and then I, you know, I used to do little plays in front of my family when I was four and they go, we knew he was going to be an actor and I knew it. How about the filmmaker? Like, well, I had a Super 8 camera. Here we go. Dirt. Fucking...
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich kann nicht, es ist so, wenn ich Pacino lese, übrigens, ich war überrascht, wie viele Leute Memoiren haben, die keinen Platz hatten, um ihre Memoiren zu schreiben, also jemand anderes hat ihre Memoiren geschrieben. Sie haben mit einem Mann gesprochen. Aber ich wusste das nicht. Ich wusste nicht, dass das möglich war. Du hättest das nicht gemacht. How can you do that?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
If you have your own vernacular and you have your own perspective.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And you're like, fuck. Deswegen braucht es einen Schriftler, um deine Memoiren zu schreiben, weil du keine Geschichten erzählen kannst. Ich verstehe es. Es ist wahrscheinlich ein Positiv, aber gleichzeitig willst du es beweisen. Du bist so, guck, ich kenne diese Geschichte oder es gibt etwas oder was ist das, was ist das Ding in dem Buch, das dir am liebsten gefällt?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Was war ein Meilenstein, der dir am liebsten gefällt? Und du merkst, ich weiß nicht, ich habe den Buch nicht geschrieben. Ich bin nur, ich bin nur die Bücher promoten.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
But you just said it, me trying to understand who I am. So if it's based on journals, when I put this, okay, two stories. One is the piece that you're talking about is about somebody specific that was written straightforwardly. Und es ist ein... Warst du mit dem Schriftler gesprochen?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Okay. Das war es im Grunde. Es ist lustig, weil du viel von Sam Shepard gelesen hast. Ich habe viele von Sam Shepard gelesen. Ich kannte Sam sehr gut. Ich bin sicher, dass es einen Überfluss gibt. Es gibt definitiv eine Einfluss. Eine Einfluss. Ich glaube nicht, dass es einen Überfluss gibt. Ich glaube, dass es viele Einflüsse gibt.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Always. And to deny that is a joke. Totally. I mean, it's one of the connections and one of the reasons I was excited to come back here, because I remember when we were doing our thing, you had books in the background.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Es ist wie ein Kommentar auf diesen Büchern. Sie sind jetzt alle auf der Straße.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und da ist Lou Reed und da ist Bukowski und da ist das. Und ich denke, es war mir. Also zwei Dinge. Einer, es war mir endlich, als du 50 hattest und du sagst, weißt du was, all diese Rede über Scheiße, es ist wie, ich habe es gehabt. Ja. Ich habe es gehabt. Ja. Ja. Ja, gut Editor. Mhm. We don't need it. I'm in love with it. We don't need it.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I have 15 words in that sentence and I know 9 is better. And I know 6 is even better. What was the main reason for not needing it? Redundancy? Redundancy, add-on, icing. All this kind of shit that you don't need and you realize.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And especially if you have any kind of poetic predilections, you want to kind of flower it up. Oh, totally.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
So if you're doing that in a journal, it's all good. So you can masturbate. Aber wenn du es für den öffentlichen Konsum machst, sagst du, es gibt eine tolle Geschichte von Raymond Carver. Raymond Carver hatte einen Editor. Und sie sagten, er hatte etwa 12 oder 15 Wörter in einem Satz. Und dieser Editor sagte immer, schnapp es runter zu 12, schnapp es runter zu 11.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And then finally he got so incensed that he fired the editor and he got a new editor and the editor saw the new sentence that was down till 11 or 12 and said, now if we can just knock it down to 8 or 9, we'll be there. And he's like, fuck you. And he got a Pulitzer for it.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Super. Super Lean, er hat natürlich gehört, selbst wenn er kämpfte, er hat zu seinen Editoren gehört. Und ich weiß nicht, wie es ist, wenn ich über Stockhandel spreche. Es ist nicht so interessant für eine Menge Leute, die darüber schreiben. Aber ich denke, dass es einen Sinn gibt, wie ein Schauspieler.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
generate your skills, germinate what you have. So me reading whoever I read, you're the first person, by the way, to bring up Sam, which I appreciate, because there's the Influencer, there's the Kerouac Influencer, there's the Mailer Influencer, there's the Joan Didion Influencer, there's whatever. And then you finally, which I think this book has, you finally find your own voice.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
You knew how to be on set, but you had already acted in several different roles. I mean, many different roles.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Genau. So that was like intense. You got a bad actor to play a good actor about shitty scenarios, shitty situations.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
It's too bad. It's too bad we decided yes on this movie.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und... Du kannst, aber ich denke, es ist, es ist die... In having done this for 40 years, it's to me the relaxation. Be open to it. Be open to it. Be open to anything. So there's the pre kind of... eine bestimmte Idee, dass die Schauspieler das tun, um sich zu schreien. Warum schreien die Leute? Weil sie sich über etwas traurig fühlen. Echt? Immer?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich würde also in einem Korner sein, mich zu schlagen, wenn ich 17 Jahre alt wäre. Ich wäre nicht bereit, mit jemandem zu sprechen. Wahrscheinlich, weil ich eine Geschichte über Pacino oder Denzel gehört habe. Und es ist wie in diesem Buch, an welchem Punkt wirst du dein eigener Typ werden? An welchem Punkt fängst du an zu sagen, fuck it, egal wie viel Angst du fühlst?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Weil ich bin immer von Angst saturiert. Ich war so saturiert von Angst, als ich den ersten, äh, ich habe zwei Episoden von Highway to Heaven mit Michael Landon gemacht. Das war der dritte Job, den ich je hatte. Und alles, was ich an dem Job erinnere, ist, dass meine Beine gerade genug strahlend waren, dass ich beinahe meine Beine rückwärts brechen konnte, weil meine Beine so schlecht schwebten,
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich wusste, dass alle sehen würden und alle mich ausruhen würden. Es kam ein Zeitpunkt, als ich weinte, was für mich eine große Sache war, weil ich nicht weinte, wenn Dinge traurig waren. Ich bin der Typ des Mannes, der, wenn Dinge sehr schwer werden, sehr ruhig wird, weil es so ist, dass ich der Mann bin, den du da eigentlich willst. Ich bin der militärische Art und Weise.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
der eigentlich helfen wird, weil er klar sehen kann, was gemacht werden muss. Und dann später habe ich, was auch immer PTSD du hast. Für mich, wenn ich eine Mutter sehe, die ein Auto holt, um ihren Sohn zu retten. Wenn ich einen heroischen Akt erlebe, und wenn ich das in meinem Kopf denke, werde ich fucking blubbern. Aber ich wusste das seit 20 Jahren.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
That's true. That's my job. Making other people cry.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
But the whole thing is you go in there wanting to win. You want to go in there. You're saturated in abject fear. You want people to tell you good. And you forget everything that it's about. You forget about listening. You forget about connection. You forget about the fact that all people just want to fucking connect. They want to be seen. They want to be accepted.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Literally, that's what art comes down to. Yeah. I've never called myself an artist. I've always found it very difficult to say, well, you know, as an artist. And I go, like, what does that mean? What is it? But I do believe that through the process of this book, and I'm not just bringing it back to the book, just like, that's what it was, is I go...
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
When I was doing the Audible, I go, what the fuck did I do? Because like you with Sharon, I just got to a place where I just said, this is me. This is me exploring. This is me coming from a place that I think was...
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
such extreme behavior that you can if you from certain perspectives you could call it trauma and you go and somebody who found their way into being able to manifest creativity in a way that became a professional right professionally viable yeah and then was still stuck in that habit of self destruction and then found his way out of that too because he was more into this idea of
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
nicht einen Sharon-Stone-Moment zu haben. Ja, richtig. Weißt du, was ich meine? Ich bin nicht interessiert, in der fucking Leben zu leben, wo du sagst, hey Mann, du hast den Golf gespielt, aber du hättest einen fucking 6-Iron-Dude benutzt. Und ich bin nicht interessiert. Ich bin nicht interessiert.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
If you're interested in that. I guess. And if you're not.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
No, I know you're going to get golfers. Just fuck Brolin. I love golfing. I love going out there. It's the personal challenge and it's the willing to be able to say, look, do I want to experience life as if I'm on LSD? That's my thing. I just can't take LSD anymore. I want a vivid experience.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
If that's meaningful to you. But it should be meaningful. But it should be meaningful to everybody. But it's not necessarily. Even that I don't believe. Even the people that we demonize. And you go, they don't give a fuck. Like there are evil people out there for sure. But I've experienced, you know, I mean, what's a good example? It's something that I do. I did with my dad.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
My dad is more of an introverted, kind of tightly wound guy. And he smiles and he goes, hey, how are you? How are you doing? Are you happy today? And you go, I'm not necessarily happy and I don't really care as much. Whatever is going on today is going on today. Something about me when I was younger used to love to grab him and kiss him on the cheek. Just to jar him.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
But I don't know if it was to jar him or me saying, this is the direction that I want to go.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I'm not going to follow the status quo idea of what you guys deem appropriate. I want to go a little bit further. I don't know. I think I got that from my mother. Why not challenge? Just because it's presented this way isn't necessarily the way it needs to be. It doesn't need to settle into this.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ja, und das ist der Grund, warum du jetzt Kinder errichtest, weil ich einen 36-Jährigen, einen 31-Jährigen, einen 6-Jährigen und einen 3-Jährigen habe. Du hattest zwei mit dem ersten? Ich habe.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I look back on my childhood. There's a story that's not even in there. My mother came from Texas. She ran away from Texas when she was, I think, 17 years old or 19 years old. She had a couple hundred bucks in her pocket. She was a pretty staunch Baptist. And then she started fucking all these married men. She got to Hollywood and kind of got in that whole thing. And she was never an actress.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
She was actor adjacent. They're kind of essential. That's exactly right. Seriously, which is even worse. And then you go... So, where do I put this now? I put it back in my Zen pack? No, you can throw it in that garbage right there. Oh, I can't? Oh, perfect. So anyway, she went a little nuts one day and then she took a bunch of pills and she got in the car and she hit a bunch of parked cars.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
So the guys in the white coats, you know, came to get her and they put her in the paddy wagon, literally. And they took her to Camarillo State Hospital and she spent three and a half weeks in Camarillo State Hospital. And when she was there and she, there was a girl there who had hacked up her entire family and she hadn't spoken a word. In 12 Jahren. Und meine Mutter saß neben mir.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und ich bin sicher, ich weiß nicht, wie es ging, aber meine Mutter war so laut und hat nicht gesagt, dass sie wahrscheinlich neben mir saß und sagte, ich verstehe nicht, warum du nicht sprichst. Sprichst du nie? Sprichst du nie? Sprichst du in deinem Schlaf? Do you talk when nobody's around? And probably fucking annoyed the shit out of her so much that the girl finally said candy.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And it was a huge thing in the hospital. Like, wow, this woman hasn't spoken. You've gotten her to speak. And then the people, she was put in there, she was assessed, and then her friends came to get her, and she's like, no, I'm fine. Because she liked it. She liked it in there. And when you grow up around that kind of... Alchemy. You're like, yes, it's traumatizing.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
You know, you said it earlier, you go, I don't know if I've gotten everything out of my heart. I don't know if you're supposed to, first of all. I don't know if there's a therapy that like once you've kind of exercised all the bad shit that you just live in the good shit. Or if you just learn to kind of be malleable within the chaos of the circus. Sure.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ja. Und dann hast du deinen massiven Trauma. Du hast deinen Trauma von, weißt du, echter PTSD und militärischer Trauma und all dieser Art von Sachen. Ja. Aber wie du darauf reagierst, und ich bringe etwas hin, und das ist nicht gemeint, ein politisches Ding zu sein, aber ich habe tatsächlich etwas auf den Weg hierher gedreht und du hast mit dieser Mädchen gesprochen. Ja.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Diese letzte, was war ihr Name? Ich war? Ja. Du warst. Oh, Robbie Hoffman? Robbie. Und bevor das war, ging man ab und es war, sagen wir mal, am Morgen nach.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Also am Morgen nach und du sprachst über Annihilation und all diese Sachen. Also es ist so etwas passiert und es geht zurück zu dem, was wir gesprochen haben. In the beginning where I said I was doing the Audible for this book and I started spiraling. And I'm not a spiraling kind of guy. I don't victimize myself. I don't see myself as a victim. But I just undeniably fucking spiraled.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And I went down this whirlpool of shame and what did I do and who do I think I am and all this stuff. And nobody cares about this shit anyway. And why did I write this? Which I hear is very common for writers. I do that two, three times a week.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
It's true actually. There's something that happened the morning after for me. And I think it's how I've dealt... I think it's in the nucleus of this book. I think it's how I've dealt with my life for better or worse through and through. And I go, we have a Republican Senate, we have a Republican House, we have controlled Supreme Court judges, and we have a Republican President now. And I felt...
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Das ist richtig. Das ist richtig. Es gibt etwas Exzellentes darüber. Nein, ich fühle es auch, weil es alles auf der Tafel ist. Es ist alles auf der Tafel, man. Es ist nichts versteckt. Und es war während dieses ganzen Prozesses, dass ich war wie, ich mag das nicht. Ich hasse Politiker. Sie sind alle Lügen. Sie versuchen alle zu werden ausgewählt. Ja.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und dann, wenn du diese Art von Aufmerksamkeit hast, gibt es keinen Weg, dass diese Art von Aufmerksamkeit und Macht dich nicht beeinflusst.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And then, after it's all done, you go, okay, so this is what's left. Yeah, this is where we're at. This is exactly where we're at.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Are we really friends or are we not? But that's not the point. The point is now, how do you get back to which I feel, you know, when Biden and Trump came out and didn't shake hands, my thought was, fuck you. Fuck you guys. This is the same fucking country. This is the same umbrella. And now it's kind of on us as Democrats. Yeah. that I have a lot of Republican friends.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I know a lot of Republican people. I was raised in the country. I'm surrounded by Republican people who I love, who I can rely on, who I could drop my kids off with, who I trust and all this kind of stuff. But there's this extreme version of absolutely zero trust that I go, okay, so now we're in a place where we have to confront each other and it's on me. Uh-huh.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Du hast gewonnen, egal was das für dich bedeutet. Du hast gewonnen. Ich habe es eigentlich gehört. Jemand hat gesagt, ich bin heute aufgewacht und es war wie Weihnachtsmorgen. Und ich war ein fucking Psycho. Was auch immer. Aber ich sage, okay. Und ich gebe es dir. Und das ist, was passiert. Und das ist, was ist. Und jetzt ist es mir egal, wo ich stand. Wer bin ich spezifisch? Unapologetically.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
There you go. Totally, man. And I am. I'm exhilarated. I'm exhilarated to move forward. I don't want to move away.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I wrestle with that only because things seem more attractive to me, not because there's a negative that I'm running from, but a positive that I'm running towards.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
But I like the decibel. You know what I mean? It's like, can I enjoy that please? I'm done with that.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ernsthaft. Die südlichsten Menschen auf der Erde.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Nein, und du hast es vorher gesagt, es ist wie dieses Hollywood-Ding, und ich weiß nicht, wo ich mit dem gehen soll, aber wir leben alle im gleichen Apartment-Komplex. Ja. Du hast vorhin etwas gesagt, was ich immer über dich gefreut habe, und du hast gesagt, vielleicht war es vermutlich falsch bezeichnet, aber du sprichst von Scorsese, du arbeitest mit Scorsese, oder? Nein, nein. Nein?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich habe mal eine Szene mit De Niro gemacht. Vielleicht war das es. Vielleicht war das es, weil wir uns immer mit De Niro und Scorsese verabschieden. Aber es gibt etwas darüber, dass du dich immer so bezeichnest, und wir sind in diesem Sinne sehr ähnlich,
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich weiß nicht, ob es Marvel oder Dune gibt, es gab einige wirklich tolle Filmmacher, aber es gab eine Komfortzone in diesem Film-Echelon, wo ich gesagt habe, okay, ich mag das, aber ich vermisse die Angst. Ich vermisse die Gefahr. Ich vermisse nicht zu wissen, ob ich es entfernen kann. Ich vermisse... Really, truly freaking out because I don't know if I can live up to something that's great.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Aber das ist ein tolles Platz. Es ist das Beste. Es ist das beste Platz.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
But to come back to this base place is the most... You and I say it in the same way. We say, I don't give a fuck, but you do give a fuck, but you're not pandering anymore. It's not about, do you accept me? Am I likable? Am I this? Am I doing the... It becomes about something else. It becomes much more emotional. It becomes of spirit. It becomes all that stuff. It's very base.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Nur wissen, naja, ich weiß nicht, ob das wahr ist oder nicht. Nur wirst du das wissen, oder du fühlst das. Es gibt Zeiten, wo du fühlst, als hättest du es nicht geschafft. Oder du bist da gekommen, und dann findest du heraus, dass du so viel kompensiert hast, dass du es übernimmst, und das ist der Grund. Und wenn du es einfach simplifizierst, das ist ein Profi. Einfach eine Szene zu machen.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich habe dieses Ding mit Rian Johnson gemacht, und das war das Ding, dass es gefährlich war. Ich musste einen Rollen machen. Es war Knives Out 3. Ist das raus? Nein. Okay. Das kommt in einem Jahr raus. Und das war einer der gefährlichen Rollen, der aufgehört hat und gesagt hat, willst du das machen? Und ich habe es gelesen und gesagt, das ist so fucking gut geschrieben.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich weiß nicht, ob ich genug gut genug bin, um das zu machen. Und ich war so, okay. Und du kommst raus und es gibt große Reden und ich mache es vor Glenn Close.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
All these actors that I respect and I love. And I'm shitting my pants, man. And they're all super excited. Josh is so funny. He's so good on the set. He's great. You're going to love him. And then they get there and I'm like shut down in fear and all that. And then, okay, now these scenes come up. How are you going to play this scene? And they're all watching me.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Not only the hundred members of the crew. But it's an ensemble thing.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
So everyone's there. Am I too serious? They hire too serious. I heard they were going for Kevin Costner first. Oh, you heard that. Which then I heard wasn't true. And then it doesn't matter. The thing is, I prepped so hard for it. It was like I was doing my first role. Ich saß im Hotel und sie riefen mich von unten, um 2 Uhr morgens zu sagen, Herr, bitte halten Sie das.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Die Leute versuchen zu schlafen. Und ich war total besessen. Und es war gut. Ich habe gehört, es war okay. I heard it was okay.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I'm not saying it was good, but I'm saying I heard it was good.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Totally, totally. The adolescent comes out and you're like, okay.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Because it works. It works. I know my whole team just told you to say this to me. But thank you. Mark, you're doing such a good job. Really? Okay. Am I? For real? Thank you, man.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Nein, das ist so lustig, Mann. Ich mache das gleiche auch. Weil wenn Direktoren zu mir kommen, und gute Direktoren wissen das. Schlechte Direktoren werden immer noch reden, weil sie fühlen, dass sie einen Einfluss auf das, was sie tun, brauchen. Gute Direktoren werden dich allein lassen, wenn sie wissen, dass sie es bekommen, oder sie kommen und machen einen kleinen Tweak.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Der gute Ding über Rian Johnson ist, er ist ein kleiner Typ. Ja, ich habe mit ihm gesprochen. Er ist ein guter Typ, ja. Super smart, super good guy. I wanted to please him. He had such command over his set. And he just would give me a look like, you're not being good enough. And I'd be like, fuck. I'll be better. I promise you, Daddy. I will be better. Und sprich über Bass. Ja.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und es war nur zwischen ihm und mir. Ja, ja. Du konntest es nicht zeigen. Du konntest es nicht zeigen. Und es war großartig. Aber ich will in dem leben, Mann. Ich will in dem leben. Und so furchtbar es ist, es ist interessant, dass wenn du dieses Ding siehst, abhängig davon, wie es zusammengefasst wird, du es siehst. Und wenn du jemanden siehst, reagierst du darauf, was du willst.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Du willst jemandem nicht sagen, wenn kein Land rauskommt, zu sagen, Gott, ich habe kein Land gesehen, du warst großartig. Ja. Sie sagen, What a fucking movie. Wow. And I go, wow, I'm a part of something amazing. And I didn't fuck it up. What a movie. They should have gotten Ethan Hall. And you go, well, why? What did I do?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Oh, dude, I'd get that. All the time. Matt Damon was supposed to do milk. He couldn't do milk because of a scheduling conflict. So I ended up doing that. That was the best.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Wow. I feel someone's eyes on me, someone watching us. Don't slow down. Why are you slowing down? I smell gasoline. I smell oil. I smell my mother's face, all that makeup she puts on in the morning. It's a powdery smell, stale. It smells old. And I see her hands, the skin draped over her thin bone. Untertitelung. BR 2018 Why isn't anybody talking?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
My brother's asleep next to me in the back, all curled up like after an accident. He looks like something you'd see in a newspaper. He never looks well. He's always struggling in some way. I stare at him for a moment, watch his lips curl into his mouth when he inhales, then flap forward as he lets it out. His is a labored life. I want to save him.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I want to put him on the back of my bicycle and ride down the street away from here.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich weiß, richtig? Ja. Ich war, erinnerst du dich, wo du geboren bist? Albuquerque. Albuquerque. Oh, fuck. My son's in Albuquerque. Is he? What's he doing? Yeah, he's managing a multibar over there. A multibar? Yeah, it's called Revel. Really? Yeah, Revel. And he manages, he lives there full time. He's with his girl. I love Albuquerque. I do too. Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Mexico, all of it.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
What were you going to say? What was I going to say?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Oh yeah, no, Café Lalo, back in the 90s, and I was writing, and Anthony Zerbi was a really close friend of mine, and he and Roscoe Lee Brown used to do this poetry reading, and I can't think of anything worse and more boring than poetry readings.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Especially actors doing poetry readings, and there was a time in the 90s where actors were publishing their work, and they'd go to Café Lalo, and somebody said, you should go to Café Lalo, you should meet us there, and I brought a bunch of poems, and people would get up, like Stephen Baldwin, and he'd be like, my balls, and everybody would go, yes! Ja, ja, ja. There was no reaction.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Half of my life has been like, why did I do that? And then I go right back and do it again. So what I was saying before is, you doing that movie, wait till you get another one. Und dann gibt es noch einen, weil du dich da draußen setzt. Und ich respektiere jeden, egal ob du alt oder nicht bist, oder zendert oder nicht, schmerzhaft und bereit, eine Scheiße zu nehmen.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Du setzt dich da draußen und ich respektiere dich dafür, Mann.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ja, 90... Ich glaube, es war 1988. Letztens waren es 91 volle Journalisten. So, because a lot of this is very immediate and it didn't feel like you were just recall. No, there's stuff that probably half the book is no more than that. Everything is rewritten. Right. No, I know. I didn't take everything from a journal. So I would look at a journal writing. But it got you back there.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And it would get me back there. It would spark a memory and then I would riff on the memory. So everything's written. Aber ich würde sagen, dass mindestens die Hälfte der Geschichten nur Geschichten sind, die zu mir kamen. Oder wie die Sam-Shepard-Geschichte. Ich mag das nicht, wie das klingt. Es klingt, als ob ich einen Namen verliere. Ich werde mich also auf den Namen verliere.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und was wäre die Satire-Version eines Namenverlierers? Ein Mann, der versucht, etwas zu beeindrucken. Es geht um das oder das. Es geht um das oder das. Und es geht um das oder das. Und es geht um das oder das. Yeah, thank God you didn't spend another hour.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
We would have had 10 kids. But seriously, man, you go back to the... And it's fun playing with story and narrative like that.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Because to me, that exploits the title of the book. What's the title of the book? There's a double entendre in the title of the book. You're either fixing something or you're getting run over. Es ist eine Wahl.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ja, sehr gut. Es gibt den Jungen unter dem Fahrrad, der wahrscheinlich daraus kam. Aber so sehe ich die Geschichte. Also, für mich ist es so, schau, wo bist du, wenn du dein Leben zerstörst und wo bist du, wenn du tatsächlich mehr wertvoller wirst und mit dem Chaos des Zirkus arbeitest und nicht gegen es.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Is it great? You know what? I got away from it because we moved. We actually moved up north. We moved out of L.A. We still have our Venice place that we rent. Wir sind aus L.A. geflogen. Wir reden immer darüber, wo wir hinführen wollen. Sollten wir nach Osten gehen? Sollten wir nach Europa gehen? Jetzt sind wir in einem Ort, wo ich mich noch nie so entspannt fühle, wie ich es jetzt mache.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Es ist super, super wunderschön. Es ist super wunderschön und immer noch schmutzig. Ich dachte, du hättest ein Eisbad da oben. Nein, also ich hatte das Eisbad. Und ich habe 20 Jahre Eisbathen gemacht. Ja, ich bin mit Laird unterwegs und mache das. Es ist mehr ein Exploited-Eisbathen, damit die Leute mehr darüber wissen. Aber ich habe es immer gemacht.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und dann habe ich nicht ein Eisbathen, aber der Schauer, den ich habe, ist so kalt. Und ich bin davon weggegangen. Also habe ich es zwei Wochen ago wieder gemacht. Und ich sage es dir absolut unerlässlich, dass das der Grund ist, warum mich etwas aufgelöst hat. Ich mache das jeden Morgen für drei bis vier Minuten. Es ist kalt. Ich habe es heute Morgen gemacht und es hat sich gut gefühlt.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Ich weiß von Leuten mit Depressionen, die gesagt haben, sie sollen das machen. Sie haben gesagt, sie fühlen sich wirklich anders.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Du musst es machen. Ja, du hast es auf SNL gemacht. Ich habe es auf SNL gemacht. Und Lauren, übrigens, war so, du kannst es nicht machen, es ist nicht lustig. Ich sagte, ich bin nicht versuchen, lustig zu sein. Du willst Menschen helfen. Nein, es ist nicht so, dass ich versuchen, Menschen zu helfen. Es ist nur so, ich spreche mich selbst in der Weise, wie ich mich zu sein kenne.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und das ist, was Leute antworten. Ja. Oh, Brolin ist ein bisschen verrückt. Er macht einfach, was er will. Lass uns einfach folgen.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Wir können es lustig machen. Ja. Oder wir können sagen, gut für dich, für das, was du willst. Und dann hat er endlich gesagt, okay. Und er kam zu mir später. Er sagt, es hat funktioniert. Es hat funktioniert. Ich sage, danke. Danke für das. Das geht zurück zum Direktor. Er sagt, du bist wundervoll. Ich denke, du bist großartig.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Wartest du, ob... Nein, ich war nicht. Die Poesie war ich. Die Poesie, die ich gemacht habe, weil wir versucht haben, die Sache, die ich mit Greg Fraser gemacht habe, der großartigen DP, er und ich haben ein Buch namens Exposures gemacht, mein Schreiben und seine Fotos. Und es wurde ein Bestseller. Es ging wirklich gut.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und so war ich auf etwas, was sie sagten, wie, weißt du, schreiben über Timothée Chalamet in einer Weise, die super schrecklich klingt. Ja. Also bin ich so, okay, lass uns es in alle Füße werfen. Ja. Warum nicht?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Yeah, I think that's probably what it is. I think that's what it is. I hate the idea of hiding. I hate the idea of, I want you to perceive me one way, but I'm really something else.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And then how am I going to live up to that, or how am I going to live down to that?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I remember when I was drinking, there was a guy... Ich erinnere mich an seinen Namen, aber ich sage es nicht. Es war ein Mann. Und dann hat er gesagt, hey, willst du hier hin? Meine Freunde sind in der Stadt. Willst du mich an dieser Bar treffen?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und ich hatte vielleicht ein paar Tage vorher etwas gemacht, also habe ich gesagt, okay, ich werde nicht für ein paar Tage trinken. Ja. Und ich bin da gekommen und er hat gesagt, hey, was kann ich dir holen? Und ich habe gesagt, nein, ich bin nicht Wasser. Ich werde einfach nicht trinken. Und er sagt, was meinst du? Und ich sage, was meinst du, was meine ich?
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
I told her about you. And I was like, oh, I'm your fucking clown. I'm your fucking, I'm your drunk clown. Wait till you see Brolin lit up.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
We're probably going to jail tonight, but I know when to run away. But he'll go. And I go. And that's that thing. It's like, I don't want to pretend to be this thing. I don't want to be, I don't want to be your puppet master. Yeah. Let's just resort. Let's let the old men resort back to who they are and actually what moves them. And we'll exploit that and play with that a little bit. Right.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Because that's what we do. We express ourselves. You do a podcast. You act. I write. You write. I mean, it's what we find ways. Paint, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's just in us.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Hm. Aber ich habe auch etwas erlebt, was Cummings gesagt hat über Sicherheit. Er sagte, dass Sicherheit ein Verbrechen ist, es existiert nicht.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Was du denkst, wenn du sagst, hey, ich habe dieses Ding, und ich gehe hier, und dann gehe ich zur Arbeit, und dann gehe ich in den Kaffeeshop, und ich mache das Barista lachen, und dann gehe ich meinen Sandwich essen, und dann gehe ich nach Hause, und es ist alles sicher. Und dann passiert Scheiße, was unvermeidbar ist.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und sie sagen, ich weiß nicht, was passiert ist, ich habe nur mein Ding gemacht, Mann. Ja. Also es ist so, Scheiße passiert immer. Ja, ja. Und meine Version davon ist, einfach in der Scheiße bleiben. Ja. Just have a relationship with the shit.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Nein, du hast es in deiner Hand. Ich habe es in meiner Hand. So this is the story that I was going to tell you. I was in the Middle East and I was working. And I started to run out. And somebody had given me 110. It's a true panic.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Besonders jetzt, wo Leute sagen, wie Laird Hamilton. Und das ist wahr. Sie sagten, wenn du 1-3 Milligramm pro Tag machst, ist es eigentlich gut für dich. Was ist mit 20? Was ist mit 90? Was ist mit fucking 90, Alter? Also bin ich im Mittleren Osten und starte raus. Und da kommt ein Hungarianer, der zu mir kommt. Und wir sind in Budapest oder in Jordan. Nein, wir sind in Jordan.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und er kommt zu mir und sagt, ich habe einige. Und es hat einen Skull und Krossböden am Top. Ich weiß nicht, was es ist. Und es sind 40 Milligramm Packungen. Und ich sagte, ich kann das nicht machen. Ich kann das nicht machen. Und dann habe ich einen Tag angefangen, rauszukommen. Und ich habe nicht ganz rausgekommen. Ich habe wahrscheinlich vier oder fünf mehr Tins übrig.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und ich habe sein Ding in meinem Koffer. Und ich bin in den Gym gegangen. Und ich gehe zurück aus dem Gym. Und ich sage, fuck, Mann, ich kann das nicht. Ich muss meinen Koffer behalten. Also werde ich den Fentanyl benutzen und die Heroin retten. Richtig. Richtig. And then I stick the thing in my mouth for no more, and I swear to God on my kids, for no more than 20 seconds.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
And I had to cancel dinner that night. I literally was shitting my brains out. It was fucking crazy. So, now I'm in Abu Dhabi. Now we've run out. I got at Black Market. There was a guy that we found, a really pumped up Schwarzenegger type, but he was Middle Eastern. And he showed up and it cost me 300 bucks to get How many? I don't know, like six tens or something.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
No, just for the week to make sure I had it. I know. I have them all over the house. By the way, my wife and I used to do this. Oh, oh, you know, remember the mini, the mini, oh fuck, lozenges? Oh yeah, mini lozenges. They were kind of curved. It looked like a penis with a... Mit Peronis-Krankheit. Es hatte eine Kurve. Es war nicht die rechte. Es war nicht Nicorette. Oh ja, die Kurve-Bottle.
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Episode 1591 - Josh Brolin
Und sie gehen in zwei Sekunden weg, aber sie riechen wie Gasoline und sie haben einen Punch. Ja. Aber ich habe sie immer zwischen meinem Gumm und meiner Zähne gehalten. Ja. Ich habe sieben Kavette bekommen. Von dem? Deshalb habe ich das gewechselt. Weil, ist da Zucker in denen? Es gibt viel Zucker und es gibt kein Zucker in denen.