Joe Rogan Experience #1375 — Edward Norton Transcript

Transcript

0:00 we go. keep stuff. He looks like an Indian guru or something, No, I kind of agree with that. So I think when you can assemble like things that have meant something to you, know a lot of thoughtful actors i do too i do too yeah but it's not common you got to find them you Like, writer said, you know, Like, have you ever seen the size of his ankles? Or American History X. I think there's – sometimes it's really funny the way there's a posture in it.

5:00 Right, like what they wish they always were. And he so rewrote the idea of what it was, what it could be, that you got a whole – it was like what Bob Dylan did in the culture. Yeah, yeah. No, he was phenomenal, but it was a different thing. And he has a sound that's almost instantaneously recognizable as Gary Clark Jr. Nelson. to me, that's a before and after kind of a thing, too.

9:15 be visceral not polished they wanted to be muscular they wanted to be masculine they wanted to be before Brando and after the brutal masculinity, et cetera. It's a broken tough guy. It's like that's what he was way better in a lot of ways to me. he has this crazy, he looks the way he looks, but he's got this marble mouthed, he's not he was kind of present in the moment

12:50 yeah i think he said something to me one time about how um how much he was enjoying his life He wasn't disciplined. He wasn't a super disciplined able to resist. He wasn't disciplined. It's sort of the Elvis thing, right? Here's this guy, he's in his early 20s, I wrote it. when they're that age nobody right nobody has that kind of like sensibility sensibility to go

16:14 This is, I anoint you. You're the king of folk. I mean, the guy is so punk rock. Like it's, it's really, it really is amazing, is amazing. Kinison, when he made it, His name is Andrew Silverstein. He's hilarious still, but he's that guy now. well let me ask you a question because i um i think it's interesting i think uh He's really like down in his shoes.

20:03 Yeah. there's ways I've treated certain people in the interest of the show The fact that, you know, he was getting fined by the FCC. You know what I mean? People actually like you, my pal Dax, you know, Shepard, who's got a great radio show. I agree. Like we were talking about Hendrix entering into a new dimension of sounds. plugging in a guitar but i do think it's when people sort of go, hey, I'm going to be where I am.

25:10 don't acknowledge that whoever you actually are has changed, you know, if you're growing and And acknowledged it. I don't know when I, psychotic, like, yeah. Or, or, dance number and Harry Winston's like like switch like i was like francis coppola i was like i want this you know yeah i think but when i was talking You should do that immediately. Because that's just, you know, if you pull that off.

29:12 And we knocked that off. do something like that it's sort of like hmm when this guy's this guy's this guy's kinky. He's fucking Thor. Dude, you're, like Thor, Chris Helmsworth. He's fucking Thor, dude. I was like, this is an interesting choice. All the darker – like, Dark Knight, Frank Miller, the whole, all of it was really, you know, it was something I really latched on to.

31:25 And I was like, I think you strip all that away And that's how I thought about it. it you know i i thought it was like really worth a crack i fucking loved it how did that scene Close, five years later. so i i became interested in them and and what they were doing honestly do you do you know that um Yeah, who came to, came to brazil and taught I think what he said to me was that the reason Gracie Jiu-Jitsu became its particular derivation

36:03 obviously. And it was like jaw hits floor. And to me, what was really interesting was I was really little all the way until literally the end of high school. It doesn't matter if I can do these combos or whatever. I was riveted by this guy. way like whoa there's a secret in a way. when we went to Rio, and I had been working on the script of that movie and stuff, and I was like,

39:28 You're all Philistines. Like, what a smart move. the documentary yeah one of the greatest documentaries in in in history and like When he was young, he was, you know, very fit. him he run right he would run right through everybody he would they would have a line of And breathing. And that, I think, is one of the things that separated Hickson from everybody.

43:00 If you're actually training stuff, what you're training yourself to do is be calm. and it's like but it's even more And the truth is, is that those are life skills that are actually very – they cultivate a very calm. He was one of the most respected cross-form Japanese martial artists. neutralize it very peacefully, or you can neutralize it with a little more teeth in it,

45:42 It's like there's all this energy coming at you it's something deeper it's like he it's like neo in the matrix he's like seeing it with more and there was the scene in Above the Law and he's in an Aikido, you know, It was a very unusual sort of contribution to martial arts there's things about it that don't date super well. and the guy, I think he smashes a bottle

48:18 aikido master yeah and i think but what's interesting is when i studied over there he was Mike got a black belt training with I mean, not even Ovis. You can leave it at that. is this the first time you've done that? It's funny. Yeah, you'd like it. Ben is hilarious in it. That was obviously lighter. That was it's got a Chinatown, happened in New York in the 50s that is hard to believe. Because New York was run by basically a

51:45 Like you think of New York is the great, How did you find out? And in his early years, he got crushed by Tammany Hall and the power brokers. the left of that um because there's a scene in our movie where alec baldwin is literally like that you're just laughing and enjoying it, right? But underneath it all, when you're done, you go, They created fortune.

55:14 dead on the steering wheel like it's It's like if you said to most people, if you showed Chinatown to most critics today, they'd go long, boring, whatever. you look at it and you go, this looks really good. This looks really grown up. This is big. The actors are like, Wow. I think The Godfather works I couldn't be happier to be watching this scene after scene after scene.

57:53 he just rewrote the game like this kid who the hell is that he wrote it he directed it he acted You know what I mean? really weird no one knew that story and i was like i'm gonna try to make one about this you know as If anybody would allow them to make a movie And that was much more common in the past. On one level, yeah. Not everybody is Francis Lee. Right. You know what I mean?

1:01:10 You know what I mean? is adult people get the jobs at the big companies Nobody. all went and set up little mini Miramaxes, right? We're just going to have to close our eyes and go, and the worst thing about making films is that they're collaborative. And I had less days to do it than I had on my first movie that I directed. And to figure that out, that is like, you can be like, I've got the vision, we're going to do this.

1:06:08 I have really talented people, I've got to get their frequency wave in line with mine. And all these people did this as a favor to me because I didn't have any money to do it. He's going to be like, sure, sure, I practically call them co-financiers on my film Yeah, it's nuts. Then you like find that place where you're like, I want him to do a huge screeching turn onto Frederick Douglass Boulevard because it has a nine-block stretch where there's very few buildings that don't look like they're in the 50s, right?

1:09:03 You know what I mean? Yeah. And then you have to like bring the other one in. I mean, like literally to go from, you know, 10 miles an hour to 40, you need like literally like three or four blocks. So you have to like get it up to speed for the section that you want it going fast. And the character I put at the middle of this is the detective that I play has Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder.

1:11:36 He has like a photographic memory and some really weird ability to like because his brain is is chaotic and crazy um he has certain little gifts that we probably prepped the movie for like nine months. Like because you can just sort of float around, float around, float around, mentally mapping where you can do a thing. In New York, there's a rationality to the way people are moving,

1:14:09 60% of people at any given moment are texting on their phone, But we can't. It's your friend. That makes sense when you talk about things like the 405 or the 101 it's not like the person on the bike didn't screw up. Yeah, no. You know, like go up the Angeles Crest Road or something like that. There's so many amazing places to go in California, I like it,

1:17:22 I like, you can zip around um in ways that is uh efficient so how long did this i mean how long did you sit It's just, the character character is just amazing though, it's such a wild, everything. And I was like, that's, I could get so into trying to figure that out. For reasons that to go. And I just couldn't get it to, I couldn't get, Bruce said he was in, and that was kind of angry,

1:20:36 But also, I was out there saying, it's sort of like Rain Man meets L.A. Confidential, and people's eyes just kind of cross. And people were also like, good trumpet player and his dad was a jazz musician and i didn't know that flea came out of the movie this is going to work. And it did. It's really, the music's amazing in the film. It's like its I do feel that.

1:22:58 And you sort of go, God, I never expect anybody to give me money to make something. Am I going to get this done? There's, like, not, and I, like, certify on the Joe Rogan experience, And it's a cool story. Thank you very much for coming in here, man. Yeah. You do? Like serious?