Tim Robbins

And he wants to meet me on this show called Shortcuts.

And I had this incredible lunch with him.

And he said, the reason I wanted to meet you is because of the theater you do.

Because he'd been doing a lot of theater, because he'd been kind of persona non grata in Hollywood for a long time.

And he needed to keep creating, and so he did theater.

And it was his interest in the actor's gang that got me in the room.

And then, shortcuts didn't happen, but he remembered, and he remembered me, and he said, I'm doing this new movie called The Player.

And I want you to do the lead in it."

And I was absolutely in.

I had to turn down a million dollars in order to do it.

And I had to then wait while the financing came through.

And it took a while.

And what I found out later was that Robert Altman was offered his budget with a different actor

And he said, nope, I promised this kid and I'm staying with him.

And because of that loyalty, I was able to be in a creative relationship with one of my heroes.

And I'm sitting there in the office observing during pre-production, observing Bob talking to department heads.

And they come in and they say, Bob, what do you think about this?

And Bob would always answer with, I don't know.

What do you think?

And they would say what they thought, and then they'd leave.