Put down the sugar– we have the wonderful Peter Berg. A rash, a seething ball of confusion and rage, and a love for the game. Happy New Year, Listener. It’s an all-new SmartLess. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of SmartLess ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of today's episode?
For resources and to support those affected by the California wildfires, go to smartlist.com slash wildfires. Hey guys, I just want to say welcome to all our fans overseas. I don't think there are any. Hang on a second. I don't think we've ever done a welcome to our overseas fans. Wherever you are, I know we get a lot of listeners. This is not a bed. We get a lot of listeners in Iran.
Chapter 2: How do international listeners engage with the show?
Yeah.
And I will say, we do have a huge listenership there. We have some listeners in Germany. We have some French listeners. Bonjour, ça va? UK. UK, for sure. Well, Canada's not over any sea, but look at a map. Okay, sorry. A couple of lakes. Certainly the people, our friends down in Australia, Down Under. We have a lot of fans down there. How are you?
A lot of fans in Brazil, the home of the Brazilian. And so just to all of our fans, welcome to Smart List.
Yeah, God, that was... Yeah, he's barely with us. Stupid Sean didn't know we had a record today. What did we interrupt, Sean? Were you in the middle of toasting Pop-Tart?
No, I went. I still have my things and my trays in.
Is that Invisalign?
Or is it just a bite? Is it like a bite stick? No, I have one more tray to go.
And then what? What are you working towards? Perfect teeth for when they lay you in the coffin? Is that what it is? Why did you choose to do it in the last third of your life?
They were pretty jacked. They were getting real jacked.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do actors face in managing their careers?
No, they really weren't. You're just running out of shit to fuck with.
Well, this is true. This is true. No, I panicked. I had a whole other thing and then I just got the text. I was like, oh my, there's no words. It's like getting a text saying- It's like you were sleeping through your alarm clock. Absolutely. Or getting a text that says, where are you at? You're on your way?
I was like, oh my God. What do you guys do? How do you guys not miss appointments on a day? I usually don't. But why? Why do you not miss them? Is it because you look at your calendar app the night before or morning of?
Night before. Night before, yeah.
Night before. Night before, and I do a, I get an email the night before as well from people I work with that say, here's what you got coming up tomorrow.
I do a week. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're getting an email from people you work with.
Yeah, yeah.
That they send, so this is from your executive assistants. From sweet Liz. And they send me. Hey boss, boss man, here's what's coming up for you tomorrow.
I don't make her talk to me like that. I'm not like you. She sends me an email Sunday night. I get weak at a glance. Oh, nice. And she does. Like it's a TV show. Yeah. I get weak at a glance and she sort of says, this is what's coming up in the next week. And sometimes even if it's a busy month, she'll be like, this is what's coming up.
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Chapter 4: How did Peter Berg transition from acting to directing?
because we were coming in second and that was horrible but in looking back on it obviously it wasn't but I was getting kind of famous as as this doctor Dr. Billy Cronk on Chicago Hope and you know thank you and you know when you back then in particular got TV famous you were pretty famous so wherever I went people were like hey Billy how you doing Billy how's Diane and
My wife on the show went, hey, Billy, how's the... And I'm like, okay, I'm not fucking Billy. My name's Pete. And at a certain point, I started sensing that if I wasn't careful, my legacy was going to be Dr. Billy Cronk, the TV doctor. And I was on a plane flying from LA to JFK, and I was sitting in my seat, and people were walking by me, and a man stopped, and he said, hey, Billy...
And I said, my name's not Billy. He goes, hey, Billy, my wife has this rash. What do you think? Show them the rash. And she pulled up her shirt and stuck her elbow, which had a really bad rash on it, in my face. And I'm just sitting there. staring at this rash, and they're smiling at me. And other people on the plane are all kind of like, hey, Billy, what do you think the rash is?
And I'm like, that's it. I'm not doing this anymore. And I started writing, and I wrote a movie, Very Bad Things, which was my first film. And that was something that once I got a taste of that and figured out that I could do it, I never really looked back. And I do love acting, but I was not going to be Billy Cronk for the rest of my career.
But what was that thing that made you... Were you scared to be like, I can't believe I'm going to try to do this?
Like, how did you get over the fear of... Because you had a real career as an actor. So you've got to make a leap a little bit and go like...
All right, I'm going to do this. So I was flying to New York to act when the rash was- And the same guy was on the plane and said, I have a different rash. And the reason I was on that plane where I was presented with the rash was I was flying to New York to be in a movie called Copland. I was going to act in it. Oh, yes. And that was Stallone and De Niro.
And Stallone had put weight on and was going to try and win an Oscar. And this was Harvey Weinstein producing it in the height of his power. And Ray Liotta and Harvey Keitel and all these big stars were in the film. What a fucking cast. And I had a small part in it. Stallone directed that too, right? No, James Mangold. directed it, wrote and directed it.
I was one of the cops, and most of my scenes were in this bar, and I would just sit around waiting for my one line. So Stallone would talk, and De Niro would talk, and then finally it would be my line, and I'd be like, yeah, for sure. Sounds like me in Kingdom. No, you had a great, you were phenomenal in Kingdom.
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Chapter 5: What inspired Peter Berg to write his first film?
I love Dobby. Scared out of my mind.
But I was on the set of Copland just watching everything happen, and there was this young director, James Mangold, and I was watching him, and he was arguing with Stallone, and... getting into all this creative stuff with De Niro and Ray Lio. And it was just like he was alive. He had this energy coming out of him. And I was sitting there waiting for my line.
And I'm like, and I finally at lunch, I walked up to him. I didn't really know him. I said, hey, man, can I ask you a question? He said, yeah, what's up? He said, I said, how do I get your job? How do I get your job? You want to work 60 minutes an hour, not just 10. And he said, you got to write. And I said, okay, well, how do you do that? He goes, well, do you know how to write? I go, yeah.
He goes, well, do you have an idea? I said, kind of. He said, well, what I do is I use note cards. And I outline. And so then when I get all my cards, then I start writing the scenes. And so I went back to my hotel, and I was staying in the Essex House in New York. You know that hotel? Sure. It has the big beautiful park views, right?
Yeah.
I had the shittiest room in the hotel. I had the back, tiny little room in the back of the hotel that looked out over an alley. And I went home, and I went to the drugstore. I got note cards. I got pen. And I started writing the note cards and outlining the script. But I had a really small room. And I had the note cards kind of all over the room.
And I'd go to work and come back and more note cards. And I had this whole crazy system. And one day I came back and the note cards had all been moved and cleaned up. And I'm like, who did this? And they told me it was Manuela, the housekeeper. So I found Manuela. Manuela, you can't do this. I'm writing a movie. And she's like, what?
And I told her it's about these guys who go to Vegas and accidentally kill a hooker and then have to chop her up. And she's like, oh my God, then what happens? And Manuela helped me write the script because I would bounce it all off of her. That's so good. And I had the script up all throughout the room. It was on all the walls. So I was like living in it.
One day I came back and I went to go in the room and the key didn't work. And I went down and they said, Mr. Berg, we have a problem. We had to move your room. And I'm like, holy shit. They took me up to the top floor. I went to turn to where the shitty rooms were. They go, no, you're this way, to where the good rooms were. Walked me down into the park suite.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of Gary Shandling in the entertainment industry?
And that really comes from the research. So then you're looking for a level of authenticity that then just naturally lends itself to, let's say, a handheld camera, desaturated color, blah, blah, blah. So all of these things, you're engineering it from a very organic place. You're not kind of going backwards into an aesthetic.
Correct.
You're just going, yeah. Yeah.
And when I was acting on Chicago Hope back in those days, I learned so much because we were doing 28 episodes a season and we would have 28 different directors coming in. And I learned so much. And a lot of these directors were, they tried to have feature careers and they were a bit older and they were angry. And they were trying to prove that they were Tarantino or Scorsese.
And they would just spend so much time setting up shots and doing all this stuff. And we as actors would sit around waiting for all this equipment. And I'm like, what the fuck are we doing here? Like, I want to act. I want to feel free to not be beholden to the... And you guys have all seen it, the machinery of filmmaking where... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cranes and dollies and lighting and hair and makeup. It seems like it impacts everything other than the actual acting.
All right.
And so Pete's stylists have multiple cameras, handheld cameras going at the same time. And when they run out, shooting on film, when they'd run out of film, the AC would just put the camera on the ground, reload it, put another magazine of film on top of the camera while the other two are still rolling and while we're resetting back to the top of the scene.
No fucking way.
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Chapter 7: How does Peter Berg conduct research for his films?
And Brian was always nice and he was pretty honest saying, you know, maybe we'll get to you. And two directors, one fell out and one Brian got annoyed with and fired. And he called me and he said, okay, dude, it's yours. And that was an incredible experience.
And, you know, when I was doing Friday Night Lights, I went and I was, I think I was 41 at the time, flew down to Texas and moved into a high school, this school, Austin Westlake. And I stayed with a football player's family, let me live in his house. And I lived on a futon in Koyani, Texas. who was a wide receiver for us. He was like an 18-year-old. He was probably either 17 or 18 at the time.
And I went to high school with him every day. And I went to football practice and lived with this team. And it was really an amazing experience.
That's really cool. And that's why it feels so real and authentic. And just the way in which he just shot the... the sport as well. What was your, did you play a lot of football growing up?
I played high school football, but I tried to, I wanted to be a quarterback. My ego was like, yeah, I'm gonna be a quarterback. And I was horrible. So for three years, I tried to play quarterback. very unsuccessfully. And my senior year in high school, my coach moved me to defensive end.
And I really realized I should have done that all along because I liked hitting people and I didn't have the pressure. I would get too anxious and couldn't remember the plays and just had some horrible disasters as quarterback. When I finally moved to defense, you know, I developed a real love for the game. But, you know, the book is about so much more than football.
And I think that's why the show has worked so well. It's really just, you know, you're a huge sports fan, Jason. I know how much baseball means to you, right?
I remember when I was a kid, I played football when I was really young. And I remember my mom telling me to go to this guy's house to get fitted for the equipment. And so I did, and he gave me the mouth guard to fit my mouth. And the only good thing from the whole experience was that it tasted like mint. It was like minty flavored.
And I was like, oh, maybe I could do this because it tastes so good. That was just the extent of my happiness.
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Chapter 8: What experiences shaped Peter Berg's filmmaking style?
I was like, oh, maybe there's a silver lining here.
Part of it's funny, and then part of it's just a nothing story. It is a nothing story. And disturbing. Pete. I'm sure that all your films have, and you mentioned a few of them, have a place in your heart or in your life where you look back and they represented a thing, and I'm sure you learned a lot from them. Was there one of your films that really, for you, transported you and kind of...
Not like, hey, I figured it out, but more like... And again, not even necessarily your favorite, but something you learned a lot from that was like a turning point film for you.
I mean, there was a moment when I was... Sometimes I answer that question, and I mean it by saying... You never set out to make a shitty movie. No filmmaker does. And we all understand how hard it is to make a good film. And sometimes they're good and sometimes they absolutely suck.
It's so hard to just make a movie that doesn't suck. Not a good one. Just one that doesn't suck. It's so hard.
Exactly. I don't think people appreciate that, actually, to be honest.
It's a magic trick. It's not their responsibility to appreciate it. It's on us. I've had people just say, God, your movies, that movie sucked. And I'm like, okay, fair enough. I mean, literally, people would do that. Appreciate that. That wasn't my goal, I assure you.
That's usually in the Boston area, by the way, that you get that. Fuck you, dude. That fucking sucked, huh?
For real. For real. But yeah, Boston's very direct. But I do love everything I've done, and I find that these are things that I try as hard as I can, and hopefully the result is good. So I do have connections to every film I've done. There was a moment when I was making Friday Night Lights, the movie...
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