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- [00:01]
Debbie Millman
TED Audio Collective.
- [00:08]
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- [00:30]
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- [01:45]
Josh Brolin
It comes back to this very simple thing of what makes people tick. I am forever fascinated and thrown by what makes people do what they do and also amazed.
- [02:02]
TED Audio Collective
From the Tet Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, Josh Brolin talks about the ups and downs of his life and his career.
- [02:24]
Josh Brolin
I just think I was a guy in their minds that should have hit and didn't. So I was like, you know, I was rotting fruit.
- [02:36]
Debbie Millman
Josh Brolin has led a wild life and I'm not just referring to his acting career. In his just released memoir, from under the Truck, we learned that he started stealing cigarettes at 9, got stabbed in the belly button in Costa Rica and and had a stint in prison. From under the Rock is a book about Josh Brolin's trajectory as an artist and an actor, but it's also about what it was like to grow up on a ranch with a mercurial mother, hit it big in a movie as a teenager, become a day trader in his 20s, and be nominated for an Academy Award at 40. Josh Brolin, welcome to Design Matters.
- [03:18]
Josh Brolin
Thank you Debbie. Thank you so Much for having me on.
- [03:21]
Debbie Millman
Josh, I understand you do a wildly impressive Richard Burton impersonation.
- [03:28]
Josh Brolin
From who? Who said that?
- [03:31]
Debbie Millman
I read that somewhere in my research.
- [03:33]
Josh Brolin
You know, I don't know. I love, you know, who does the greatest Richard Burton impression, Who's from the same area as Tony Hopkins. There's nobody that does a better Richard Burton impression than Tony Hopkins, but mine's a. Oh, okay. I'll throw it in there somewhere along the line, but I feel moved.
- [03:52]
Debbie Millman
Well, congratulations on the publication of your memoir, from under the Truck. Thank you. You've said that writing the book was perhaps the most humbling experience of your life and definitely the hardest you've ever worked on anything. And I'm wondering, why so humbling and why so hard?
- [04:12]
Josh Brolin
I don't know. I don't know if that's true, if it's the hardest I've ever worked on anything, because the work ethic aspect of my life, I think set and has always been set. I remember when my dad said at one point, I remember when you went to war. And I don't know when that was. I think it was sometime in my 20s. It was, you know, meant as a. As a positive, as an affirmation, you know, that I finally said, I'm not going to play with this. I'm not going to just kind of dip my finger in this. I'm going to give myself entirely to it. And it was the same thing with the book, you know, I've always written. And I think when I. When I finally decided to stop writing books and putting them in a dark corner to start disintegrating and tell nobody about it, I said, you know, put it out there. There's something that happens in your 50s, you know, where you just kind of say, the fear is a different type. My relationship with fear has changed. I don't care as much anymore. Or even if I do, I care about slightly different things, and there's going to be negative connotations to everything that I do. Maybe that's being in this acting business for 40 years. So, you know, my version of fuck it finally came to fruition, and I just wrote it. But I cared. So I care about sentence structure and I care about writing a literarily viable book. It's not just about, hey, guys, look at my life. I was four years old and they knew I was going to be a performer. They knew it from the start. Then I met famous people and life just got great. You know, I'm not interested in that tradition.
- [05:48]
Debbie Millman
If only it were that easy.
- [05:50]
Josh Brolin
If only it were that easy.
- [05:53]
Debbie Millman
Now I understand it was your dad who first encouraged you to write down or draw what you were thinking on a piece of paper as a little boy. And I believe you have. I read that you have something like 90 journals.
- [06:06]
Josh Brolin
I do, yeah. I don't know if it was my dad. You know, interviews are great because you guys end up finding out things that I don't even know or I haven't thought about in 40 years or 50 years. I don't. Maybe he did. There's a book that he used to read called Cyber Cybernetics and say it was going to change your life. He still mentions it. He's 84 years old and he's still talking about the same book. But I think that there's something in that book and the Art of Dramatic Writing. Leho. God, I haven't thought of that book forever. I think it's Lejos Egri or something like that. And he mentioned that book to me at a very young age. I think I was in my teens. And I read it for some reason. For me, the expression of writing was the one place I could be completely honest.
- [06:58]
Debbie Millman
Why do you think that is?
- [07:00]
Josh Brolin
I don't know. And when I look back at those journals, you know, some are very angry, some are very contracted, some are, you know, and then there's things that are very poetical about them and in the way I was looking at things that I didn't feel like I could express to my little ruffian buddies, you know. Cause I thought I would get slammed for it. So it was the one place of solace and liberation I could. I found myself was in journals.
- [07:27]
Debbie Millman
Yeah, you described from under the Truck as unconventional nonfiction. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
- [07:38]
Josh Brolin
I would probably describe me as non conventional and nonfiction or a bit fictional. You know, Jennifer, a mutual friend, Pasteloff, she sent me something this morning. Somebody had asked a child about writing in their journal. Have you written your journal yet? And the child responded, no, the words are still stuck in the pencil. And I said, I want to think on that plane all the time. Like you just. Just hit the nail on the head of. And whether it's absurd, whether it's considered absurd or not. There's something about that leap of the imagination that I want to live in all the time. And I don't think it's wrong to live in that all the time. It doesn't negate the practicalities of life, you know. So I think that when I was. I think I was around, I Was in ninth grade, in high school, and there was a guy named Mr. Visser. And I was writing. It was an English class. It was a lit class. And he came by and he was reading my stuff. And he said, technically, you're all over the place. He didn't. He didn't say that. He used other words, the F word. But he said, all you need to do is write. Just keep writing. So there was something about my writing that he felt was going to flourish at some time, you know, so there was always some focus on it from the outside of people who took the time to. And I say this emotionally. See me, you know, I had my outer layers, you know, surfer, tough, fighting, drinking and all that stuff. And then there was this softer, more imaginative person that didn't feel like he had the space to live that outwardly. So journals were that for me early on.
- [09:27]
Debbie Millman
In the book, you state that you have made your life harder than it needed to be.
- [09:32]
Josh Brolin
For sure, I learned from the best.
- [09:37]
Debbie Millman
Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about your upbringing. You grew up on a 230 acre ranch in California. You were primarily raised by your mother, who in many ways is the centerpiece of this book. And you describe her in the book in this way, and I'm gonna quote you. She was armored with a character so unique and memorable that to die would be an insult to her mythology. She'd be leaving behind an easy breeze, a cloudless sky, no music on the radio. She was the zap in every electrical current we had felt. She was the alcohol in a mixed drink. She was the wildness in a sunset just after a horrible storm had passed. It's a really vivid, vivid description. I'm wondering if you would describe her as happy.
- [10:31]
Josh Brolin
Be no. But I too, don't think that's the goal. There's something that I mention in my book, and not to insult my father and all at all, but I think that there was this idea, this status quo idea of, you know, waking up in the morning and saying, good morning. Are you happy? And I'm like, why is that the goal all the time? You know? So I think that my mother and what I got from my mother is maybe a little too much. You embrace whatever's going on. You know, life is a potpourri. And sometimes you're angry and sometimes you're sad, and sometimes you can't explain it, and sometimes you're ashamed for no particular reason that maybe you can pull from your past. And it's this kind of therapeutic idea that if you just Go to the right therapy, you can exercise that thing that will finally set you free. And what I've learned in doing a lot of therapy and just curious, from a very, very early age, 13 years old, I was paying for my own therapy.
- [11:36]
Debbie Millman
Really?
- [11:37]
Josh Brolin
Yeah. There was a guy who used to go to sleep on me. That was therapeutic, literally. But that's what I mean by making it tough. I wanted to experience everything I wanted to know. I was curious, you know, coming from. And I don't say this in a. From a victimized place. I was coming from the chaos that I came from. I became insatiably curious about why do people do what they do? Why are they reacting like they're reacting? But I found later on in life that it's my relationship with it that makes the difference. Tony Hopkins had said something to me once. He said, sober. He said, how, you know, how great is it that we're like this? And I was like, what? What does that mean, like what? And he said, we're just angry, we're edgy. I go, why is that a good thing? Is that a good thing? Is that, you know. And he's been sober 40 something years, and one of the greatest human beings I know. And he said, yeah, because alcoholics, given this thing, that this engine that seems to live in us, that never quite idols properly left to its own devices, can be the most hurtful, destructive thing imaginable, but directed in. In the right way, given the right tools, can be the most productive, enlivening thing imaginable. So that was a moment in my life where I was like, oh, it's my relationship with it, as opposed to having to change and be somebody else and get rid of something that is innate in me.
- [13:14]
Debbie Millman
You became sober at 29, two years after your mother died. What provoked you to try and stop living with the anger in such a destructive way?
- [13:29]
Josh Brolin
I think there was another level of drinking and using. I think I went to. To try and get closer to my mother, you know, it was almost like I was writing a true crime novel, you know, And I was at the epicenter of it the night my mother died. She had pulled a 22 on her boyfriend that she. That was saying, I'm out of here. And he was trying to leave. And she said, you're not going anywhere. And then she was chasing him in the car, and she ended up turning a corner that I know very well because we still have that ranch. And. And then hit the tree at 70 miles an hour or whatever, and everything was heightened. So I think I Just heightened what was already stratospheric. And it scared me. And I didn't, I didn't choose, you know, I. There was an intervention with some friends. I always liked sober people because they were more honest and I could count on them. And people said, I think it's time. And. And I tried it and I stayed sober for a while, but I didn't stay sober forever. I never wanted to stay sober because I felt like sober was invisible.
- [14:41]
Debbie Millman
What does that mean?
- [14:42]
Josh Brolin
It means that I didn't feel like I had a personality on my own. I felt what drinking did for me and it absolutely did do it for me for a while. It gave me a personality, it gave me a voice. You know, I didn't have the fear filter, the massive fear filter, that everything had to be pushed through. I'm scared, I got. I'm sober, I go talk to a girl, she's not interested in me. I'm polite, I'm this, I'm drunk. I put out my hand, a girl grabs it and we're together for the next three months or three years. I don't know why that works that way. I don't like that it works that way. I don't know if it has to do with confidence or false confidence or whatever it is, but it seemed that when I drank it all went more smoothly until it didn't. Until it bit me in the ass. And it always eventually bit me in the ass. And now sober, I think, you know, to cut to years and decades later, there is a form of sobriety that I feel that I've found that deals with the fear as well as, and much less self destructively or destructively than alcohol did. But alcohol was a great friend for a while.
- [15:58]
Debbie Millman
Well, you said that your childhood, and this is a quote from the book, your childhood was on a leash of the whims of your mother. And your world revolved around country Western outlaw 18 Wheeler culture. Great line. Now this included drugs, a lot of drinking, performing in a punk band, surfing with a group named the Cleo Rats, several arents this stint in juvenile detention and prison. Now you said that if you weren't in prison at the time that you were, you'd have been dead. Why is that?
- [16:31]
Josh Brolin
Well, it was the CT cito.
- [16:34]
Debbie Millman
Oh, sorry about that.
- [16:35]
Josh Brolin
No, no, no, that's okay. It's. It's because I'll have a couple of guys call me for sure. Why would I be dead? Because a lot of us died, a ton of us, not a few, 36. So there were a lot Of a lot of guys that I grew up with because there was the heroin epidemic, there was punk rock, There was just normal self destruct, destruction. Everything that we're talking about that was heightened in more vivid living from my mother was also a culture that I was. I was in the nucleus of in Santa Barbara. And you can't even tell that story because it's freaking Montecito. So you mentioned Montecito and self destruction. And people go, you know, oh, silver spoon self destruction. I get it. You know what I mean? And back then, it wasn't like that. It was a very. I've never seen anything before it or since. It was all kind of instigated by this Sid Vicious mentality, Sex Pistols mentality, and it doesn't exist anymore. I'm in Santa Barbara again. It's lovely here. I'm more geriatric and I've found a flow. But we moved back to Santa Barbara fairly recently, and I contracted a mild case of Bell's palsy. I was so scared of moving back. I'm like. I was telling my wife, like, you don't understand. Like, you're not supposed to understand, but if we move there, our little girls are going to end up in prison. Like, do you understand? This place is paradise in disguise. There is an underbelly, and it's not. It was, but it's not. There was something about that time and place and that group of kids and how parents were in the 80s. That all lent itself to a lot of destroying. A lot of really brilliant people who I miss dearly.
- [18:30]
Debbie Millman
Joshi, talk about your brother in your memoir. And I want to read a line that was one of the most moving and really sad. Your mother hired a woman named Ramona to help her. And you describe her in the book as your mother for seven years, but she left to raise her own children. And you include the date. You remember the date. September 4, 1981. You were 13 years old. And you describe your brother in the following way. Jess was nine and that was the last I saw him for. It was at that moment when he drove his personality inside the garage of his brain and closed the door. Did he ever come out?
- [19:19]
Josh Brolin
No. Yes. He came out in his own way, in a way that he could control, in a way that made him comfortable, just like I did. I think how he dealt with his surroundings was very different because he's a different person, I think.
- [19:36]
Debbie Millman
And younger.
- [19:37]
Josh Brolin
Yeah, and younger. But I think he got. He. The irritation toward my brother was more than what I got. I got the normal, severe, albeit Severe impatience. But my brother didn't have fight in him. He had violence in him, but he didn't have fight. He didn't have wherewithal. I just think he was more sensitive. He was more affected. You know, I protected him as much as I could. And then I kind of went off and did my own thing once that sito rap deal started to happen. But I think my dad describes it now. He said, you were very protective. You were always kind of shaming us for the bad parents that we were toward Jess. You know, I talk to my brother all the time now, so he's. He's doing very well. I mean, I called him about writing that stuff, and I said, are you okay with this? I wanted to check. Are you okay? You know, and there's some things that I read to my brother, and he's like, yeah, I don't think that's how it went. Which is always going to be the case.
- [20:47]
Debbie Millman
Yeah.
- [20:47]
Josh Brolin
Because his perception and my perception of it. But I think we're a pretty open family now, and we kind of look at it through the lens of absurdity, and I think pleased that we survived it. There's a lot of humor in my family. There's a lot of compensatory humor in my family. So we exist on that plane most of the time.
- [21:14]
Debbie Millman
You got your first movie role, a starring part in the 1985 Steven Spielberg story The Goonies. You were 17 years old. I just rewatched it, by the way. It still holds up. Still holds up. You stated that to prepare for the part, you were reading Stanislavski, and you asked Steven Spielberg if the tunnel in the film was a metaphor for your mother's womb.
- [21:40]
Josh Brolin
I can remember it like it was yesterday. I remember his face being very patient and nodding while I was talking. And then he looked down, and then he looked up and he said, you know what? Why don't you just say the words that are on the page? And I was like, okay, that's what I'll do. I want it to be good. I want it to be. I want it to be good. I was reading Stanislavski. I was reading Grous, Reading, you know, Anton in Artaud. I was reading about the theater of Cruelty. I was. I was in it. I was in it. I just wanted to be better.
- [22:15]
Debbie Millman
I think that's probably one of the themes of your whole life, if you want an outsider's perspective, now that I've read your memoir. Your next two movies were Thrashin in 1986 and Finish Line in 1989. And you didn't make another movie for another five years. And you said, the problem back then was that you were a C minus actor, had no nuance, no depth, and no innate natural skill. You began to supplement your income as a landscape artist and then day trading. What made you decide to play the stock market?
- [22:52]
Josh Brolin
I. You know, I had met a friend, Brett Morkinson, who's still a close friend, and. And I had met him. I did something called into the West. It was like a. A miniseries. It was a western miniseries. And I had done an episode of that. And they flew us to New York to promote it, and they were flying us back. And it was a friend of a friend, Skeet Ulrich, who introduced me to Brett Markinson. And we just laughed for six hours on the plane back. And I asked him what he did, and he said, he trades stocks. And I said, I was always a math guy. I was always very good at math. I was always the guy who was actually looking for extra credit from the math teacher because I just enjoyed doing that. And he said, yeah, well, it's all about reading graphs. And then I just started asking question after question after question. And. And I liked him. And he liked talking, he liked teaching. So I wasn't making a lot of money. I was working once every 12 months, 14 months or something like that. I never was in a position for two decades to know while I was doing a job what the next job was going to be. You know, I always went this long span of time auditioning and seeing the normal people in the hallways and, you know, thank you for coming in, Josh. That was wonderful. Lie. And knowing that I wouldn't hear from them again, popping up from behind the couch and pretending like I have a gun with my thing and I'm in the Black Forest in Germany, whatever it is, you know what I mean? It's all so ridiculous and just shame spiraling my way through this career. And when I would finally get a job, it was great. But trading just brought, I don't know, it allowed me to utilize a part of my brain and find my way through this labyrinth of discipline that I really enjoyed. Because he said, any instinct that you have in trading is meaningless. I have a feeling this is going to happen. Should not exist in your vocabulary. Look at the graph. It's all practical. And once you really learn how to start reading the graphs, all you'll see is fear and greed. And you're playing off that. You're playing off momentum stocks. You're playing off the foundation of a company you're not looking for the big win. You're just looking for little breaths on an upward trajectory. And I did, and I got it, and I made a lot of money. And I would never do that today because I don't have the time. You know, when I have a bunch of young kids, I remember when I was trading, my older kids were. They'd be like, we have to go to school. Please, God, get in the car. And it'd be like, one more. I'll be right there. I'll be right there. I'll be right there.
- [25:29]
Debbie Millman
Yo.
- [25:30]
Josh Brolin
You know, and it wasn't. It's not gambling. It was really a design, and I had a lot of fun doing it, you know, so I won more than I lost, and that was the point. And I was able to survive a little bit longer and still call myself.
- [25:44]
Debbie Millman
An actor at that time. You described it being one when no one wanted to hire you. You were then cast as. And this is actually one of my favorite roles of yours, as the bisexual ATF agent in David O. Russell's brillian 1996 film Flirting with Disaster, which co starred Ben Stiller, Lily Tomlin. Oh, she's amazing in that film.
- [26:10]
Josh Brolin
Amazing.
- [26:11]
Debbie Millman
Patricia Arquette. Now, I read that you actually improvised the scene where you lick Patricia Arquette's armpit. Yeah, true.
- [26:20]
Josh Brolin
Yeah. That was just supposed to be a kiss. We filmed it. It was supposed to be a peck. And David O. Russell very smartly said, this is boring. It's not working. I said, what about, like, I don't know, what if I suck on her toe? Or what about something like that? And we're thinking about it. I'm sucking her toe. I don't know. And then Patricia said, what about licking the armpit? And she had grown out her hair for that role. You know, it was more like a hippie mom. And I was like, nah, I don't know about that idea. That's not a. And David goes, oh, that's great. So we did. It would have wet wipes on the side to wipe off my tongue. And then David says, I know the armpit hair is really getting in the way for me. So then we did it a third time with no armpit hair. And that was the one.
- [27:07]
Debbie Millman
Your role in that movie. I don't know. I feel like that's the movie where you became an actor. You were so good in that movie. You were unrecognizable in that movie.
- [27:19]
Josh Brolin
Thank you.
- [27:19]
Debbie Millman
In so many ways.
- [27:21]
Josh Brolin
You know, I had done a lot of theater before that with Anthony Zerbe And I felt like I had done roles like that in the past. I had just never. I was still stuck, I think, in people's minds in a certain way. You know, I was a. It was a jock or they didn't know what to do with me or that, you know. So Miramax did not want me to do that film. They actively tried to get David to get somebody else to do this.
- [27:46]
Debbie Millman
Why?
- [27:47]
Josh Brolin
Because I think at that point, what was I, 27? My mom had just passed during the rehearsals of that film. And I just think I was a guy in their minds that should have hit and didn't. So I was like damaged goods. I was rotting fruit. I think that role was like Mark Wong or something. I wasn't even right for the role the way it was written. Wong was not me. But I came in and I auditioned. They let me audition. I kind of improvised through some things. And he really liked me, so he forced me down their throats. And then I ended up being like a Miramax guy. After that, they used me for several roles until I turned down a role. And then I was blacklisted for 10 years.
- [28:31]
Debbie Millman
At that point, did you feel like your acting had improved? Because I forgot that you were in that movie. I forgot that it was you in that movie. It was such a departure from all of your previous roles. When I was looking at your filmography, I'm like, oh, my God, he's in one of my favorite movies. And I didn't even realize it.
- [28:48]
Josh Brolin
I really love. I love that movie. I love that experience. And I was such a fish out of water because I had, like I said I had done roles like that in. On stage, and I was a Harley guy and I was riding my Harley to work. And, you know, so there was some rebellious thing that I was playing out some idea of that. And then you see Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, Richard Jenkins, Mary Tyler Moore, George Siegel, and I'm like, you've got to be kidding. I so don't belong here. I don't blame Miramax for not wanting me. Why am I here? And we developed that character. He was just, you know, a bisexual ATF agent. And we did the tattoos, we did the armpit licking thing. We did the. We did the scene in the back of the car where we're talking about proper blowjobs and all that kind of stuff. And. And it was really fun because I felt like, was I a better actor? No, but I felt like it was more along the lines of my sensibilities. It was character. It was what interested me? What are people about? What's behind the cosmetic presentation? It's like when I researched Wall street, too. You know, we take a bunch of billionaires out, they're going to present a certain type, get them drunk, and then you get to find out some real stuff. And I found out some real stuff.
- [30:14]
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- [32:04]
Debbie Millman
O.Com Two movies figure prominently in your memoir Goonies and the 2007 film no country for Old Men, which was the first movie you made with the Coen brothers. What made you decide to focus on these specific films?
- [32:23]
Josh Brolin
There's something about my like even saying I enjoy being an actor was tough for me for a very long time. There was something kind of emasculating emotionally emasculating about the idea of saying, yes, I'm an actor. That's what I do.
- [32:41]
Debbie Millman
Why is that?
- [32:42]
Josh Brolin
I don't know. I don't know if it's the celebrity that I experienced my dad kind of endure. There was never a celebration in it. There was always a massive discomfort in it. And I think this idea that, you know, this confusion of, are you an actor or are you a celebrity? Do you know what I mean? And I've always said that, like, with any kind of success in this industry, people immediately resort to this idea that you are walking through a life on a red carpet, just waving at people, and you go, and this is part of the memoirs. In reaction to that, you go, listen, it's all dirty. It's all messy. We're all trying to find our way through the muck and the molasses and find our value and what that means and that changes and all that. And that's, to me, what becomes kind of this celebrated communal experience is when we all go, oh, we're all going through different versions of the same thing. How great. Cool. Let's lean on each other. Let's share with each other. So I think if there's any intention, it's that. So I kind of lean away from this idea of, like. And then I was nominated, and there was Michael Shannon and there was Robert Downey, and we're looking at each other and we're going, I hope it's me. I hope it's me. Of course it's going to be Heath, because Heath had just died, and it would just. Would have been horrible had it not been Heath. And he deserved it anyway. But who really deserves it? And what is the Academy anyway? I mean, I could go through all that, but it's super boring to me.
- [34:21]
Debbie Millman
Well, during the filming of no country for Old Men, you met the writer Cormac McCarthy and you became friendly with him. And you write about. You write in the memoir about a conversation you had with him about your careers and the realization that there is the work. I'm gonna quote you. There is the work. Then there are those who respond to the work. That's it. You're a genius. And you're a disaster of an artist. Are close cousins.
- [34:46]
Josh Brolin
Yes, yes. I don't know who wrote that, but that's cool.
- [34:51]
Debbie Millman
Well, you quoted it, and I think. No, I think that was you, Josh. I think that was you. I don't think that was Cormac.
- [34:57]
Josh Brolin
I was proud of that. No, it wasn't Cormac. And the Funny thing. And why I think Cormac liked me and why I loved him was there was me trying to find out, you know, what writers inspired him. And. And, you know, that moment in the memoir where I tried to get him to sign a typewriter and he just would have none of it. He just wasn't interested. He was interested in talking about the Santa Fe Institute and the scientists around him. And he was much more interested in the alchemy of things than he was in the status of things. So, you know, he did give me that one moment where he was like, hemingway's short stories were pretty damn good. I was like, thank you. But. But I'm sure it's like Brando talking about acting. There is just an innate talent. I mean, Cormac said it to me. He says, I don't know what I do. I just sit down and it comes. And I think that was probably the most astute, honest thing that I had ever heard anybody say professionally, where some people just have a talent and a gift and whatever they're working out and setting structure in their head, they refuse to take anything less than what they know is the best of what they can do. But it's all a very quiet, silent process.
- [36:21]
Debbie Millman
But it's also about sitting down and doing it, like, every day.
- [36:24]
Josh Brolin
And he did it every day. I mean, I was with Cormac the night before he died. It was me, his ex wife, and his son. And that's it. Helping him drink little sips of Diet Coke. And he was starting to go, and yet he was telling amazing stories about him drinking wine in Paris with Andre the Giant and these crazy stories that were so fun that he was telling that night, but he still had on a little tiny piece of wood, that typewriter that he'd written 25 years of books on that was right at the foot of his bed, said right up until the moment he died. So he did. He just did. And I like the idea of doing and going back to what you were saying just quickly about the most humbling process of my life, because the most inspiring people, men or woman, to me in my lifetime, has been writers. That is what has inspired my life more than anything. It's what freed me from my family. When I read Ray Bradbury for the first time, when I read Martian Chronicles, I was like, I had no idea you could go to these places. And then suddenly I got turned on to all these writers. And then I got turned on to, you know, George Saunders just wrote this book that I just read for the second time. And that's how I met Jen. And. And now I've been talking with him and. And I was like, dude, when I was 18 years, no, 20 years, 19, 20 and 21, reading Gogol, reading Tolstoy, reading Turgenev, to reading on the floors of these bookstores in Los Feliz, I mean, my whole life opened up. I mean, it was fanfare.
- [38:13]
Debbie Millman
What was it about the Russian literature that compelled you so much? Was it that sort of Slavic sense of doom?
- [38:20]
Josh Brolin
It was Slavic sense of doom. But there was always a sense of humor in it. There was always a sense of almost making fun of the weight of their cloud, their storm, which I loved that contrast because I felt the same way. I mean, obviously I identified with it. It was like if you write Diary of a Madman or you write Notes from the Underground Dostoevsky, you're like, oh, my God. But even in the story about, you know, little Johnny, who obviously is me, and told in a kind of Dr. Seussian cadence, when he's looking around and he's, you know, the mother's screaming and she's throwing these massive, you know, mugs through the window at the father who's coming home late because, you know he's been somewhere where he shouldn't have been and you know, he's not. It's also. It's also black cloud. It's so full of black cloud. But at the same time, and why I wanted to have that Dr. Seussian cadence is because it is. It's ridiculous. It is surreal. It is absurd. What the fuck are we doing to each other? It's amazing what us little weak humans do to each other.
- [39:40]
Uncommon Goods Ad
Yeah.
- [39:41]
Debbie Millman
Especially now.
- [39:42]
Josh Brolin
Especially now. And I go, what is that idea? Even with my neighbor, who is a, you know, far right wing belief system and all that. And I go, listen, we don't have the same beliefs, but in that very primitive, primal, country way, I know that my kids are safe with him and his kids are safe with me. And when it all comes down to it, I want to know those people still exist. Even if I hate your belief system, I want to know you have my back on a very, very human level.
- [40:20]
Debbie Millman
Well, I think it's fine to have different points of view and disagree, as long as it doesn't come to fisticuffs and killing.
- [40:27]
Josh Brolin
That's what I mean, killing. And you're like, why would you. Oh, you don't you believe that? Well, I don't believe that you're bad. I'm good. Bam. I just did something good, you know, What I mean, and we can go off on a whole tangent, but it's. Again, it comes back to this very simple thing of what makes people tick. I am forever fascinated and thrown by what makes people do what they do, and also amazed.
- [40:55]
Debbie Millman
Yeah, that's. That's sort of why I do the show. I'm so. I'm endlessly fascinated by how people become who they are and how they do what they do. But speaking of violence.
- [41:04]
Josh Brolin
Yes.
- [41:05]
Debbie Millman
You know, you played a character. You played a villain, one of the great. Actually. Thanos has been voted the greatest villain of all time, even besting Darth Vader, Crazy. In the Avengers film franchise. And Endgame is the highest grossing film of all time. You've said that you were eventually able to find Thanos within you, but you had to go looking first. What did you have to find?
- [41:37]
Josh Brolin
The humanity in him. It's the same. It's the same thing that I did with Dan White. Dan White, as a human being, disgusted me. You know, big fish in a small pond, went into a big pond, realized he was a small fish, was being bested by a gay man. I mean, the ego just. Just dying on the vine. And there's something that I find, even though it hurts, very enlivening about my ego being lacerated, because I know a great lesson is around the corner, and I think that that's come with age and that's come with tools and all that kind of stuff. But Dan White, I did the same thing where I was like, I. I don't have to like this guy. I just have to know. I did the same thing with w. You. It's like, yeah, we can watch CNN and find out how much we hate George Bush, you know, and. And. But what is the trajectory? Why did he stop drinking? He was the black sheep of his family. He wasn't the golden child. How did this happen? How did you know? That's interesting to me. So when I was doing it, when, you know, here comes the Richard Burton, when I showed up with the Russos, and I was like, you know, I had had this, you know, in my craft or selling art, exercised in the still night when only the moon rages and the lovers lie bed with all the great. You know, I had this kind of presentation of this kind of Shakespearean presentation, and they were like, yeah, I don't think so. You know, and they started referencing movies that I loved, like Apocalypse now, and they're like, it's okay if you scratch your nose, if you have an itch, if you want to fix Your hair, if you want to, feel your muscle if you want to, whatever it is. And we just humanized him, and we played and played and played and improvised and improvised and improvised. And I think that's what people responded to. You know, I was very proud of that, strangely enough. I never thought I would be proud of a mocap character, but I. But I really am.
- [43:37]
Debbie Millman
There's a scene when you are annihilating Gamora's planet, and you take her, you adopt her, and you hold her hand, her tiny, tiny, tiny little hand in that giant hand of yours. The characters that for me, felt like the character had a heart. You write about in your memoir how at one point you were positive that something in you was broken and that it is the brokenness in a character that you're most drawn to. Is that still the case?
- [44:16]
Josh Brolin
No, I don't think so. I don't think I'm broken. I think I'm cracked. But it's like I remember reading the Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo and this idea of getting rid of what's no longer needed, you know, that the sculpture already exists inside. Kind of like what we said about the child and the pencil and the words living inside the pencil, they just haven't come out yet. And I think that I've adopted this idea that I'm just continuing to let go of things that I thought were necessary that don't feel to be as necessary anymore. So, as opposed to what am I made of? Foundationally, I think I'm made of some pretty good stuff. I think whatever God put together and what I was intended to be and was when I was first born, I'm slowly tapping into now. It's just taken me 56 years.
- [45:14]
Debbie Millman
In the Avengers movies, Endgame, and in Infinity War, you talk about your behavior and motivation being inevitable.
- [45:25]
Josh Brolin
Yeah.
- [45:26]
Debbie Millman
You use that word again in your most recent appearance hosting Saturday Night Live, and you use the word three times in the book. Is that your word, or was it the writer's word in the script that you fell in love with?
- [45:42]
Josh Brolin
There's something so weighted about the word inevitable, you know, And I like the idea of playing with maybe. I mean, I'm. I'm just thinking about it now, this idea that you can't change something. And I go, yeah, but why not? Yeah, why not? Again, it's another status quo word that I. Instead of discarding it immediately, I choose to have a massive relationship with it, and then I'll discard it at some point. But, yeah, I do like the word. In all honesty, It's a good word. It is a good word. It is a good word. And it's a challenging word. You know, Destiny is another challenging word. You know, what does that mean? It's. It's all predetermined. Do I have any control over it? What do I feel about control? What do I feel about all that stuff? But I do like the lessons. I do very much like the lessons. They hurt, but I do like them.
- [46:48]
Debbie Millman
Josh, you're also starring in the Dune franchise. The second installment was recently released to great reviews, great box office. And while on the set, you began writing verse about the experience, which was recently made into a book titled Exposures, which features your words alongside photographs taken by Greg Frazier. Can you talk a little bit about how that book came about?
- [47:13]
Josh Brolin
That was really Tanya Lapointe, who is Denis Villeneuve's partner and producing partner. Partner in life and producing partner, set. She had read some things that I had posted and that she knew because I've known them for a long time. And she said, you know, you and Greg was taking pictures on the set, just here and there. Film, pictures, all film. And she said, why don't you guys try and put something together? It'd be fun to have something for the movie afterwards. And we put together an initial book that cost way too much money, and we used paper that was too good. And we did, you know, whatever it was, and nobody bought it. And then we did for the second movie. We used stuff that we had written and photographed from the first movie and the second movie, put it together, and it became a bestseller. But it was nice. I felt good and I felt able in the memoir. I took out a lot of poems in the memoir. I mean, I took out probably 20 poems. And at this suggestion.
- [48:14]
Debbie Millman
Why? Why? Why? I mean, you played with format so beautifully in the memoir. Why did you get it?
- [48:19]
Josh Brolin
Because I didn't want to saturate it with that. And it's really, truly my first love. I mean, I. I said recently, I said, did I write the first poem? Because I don't remember reading a poem, but I do remember writing a poem when I was 8 years old and showed my mother this circular kind of poem about death or. And she's like, what is this? She found it. What is this? What does it mean? Should I be worried? I don't ever remember reading a poem. So obviously that was something in me needed to express in that way. Maybe I just. Maybe because it was mathematical, I needed to pattern things mathematically in order to feel closer to it. I don't know, I don't know. But my relationship with poetry has always been very intimate. And I. I think I got a little scared. I think I got. You know, doing a Dune book is one thing. It's celebrating something together that we did that is. Is the focus is on the movie. It's not necessarily on the book. It's celebrating something that we have already accomplished and, and praised and all that. Whereas a memoir is just. I didn't realize, you know, I've. I've talked about it in this way. Like, nobody understands when you're actually doing a scene how naked it feels, because you're all just kind of juggling ideas and emotions and vulnerabilities and all this. Nobody actually knows what's going to turn out well ever. You know, they go, how did it feel during no Country? I go, like any other time. I mean, we were laughing, we were worried, we were. We weren't sure if things were going to work. When you hire Javier to play Chigurh and, you know, he has a Spanish accent, is that going to be seen as ridiculous? Is it going to be seen. You know, so it's all. It's all a big question. And. And when you're writing a memoir, I now have realized you're in that all the time. It's the dream where you're naked in the playground all the time. Which, you know, I know now. I've never. I'm not one to spiral. I've been spiraling because I go, and I created it. You know, you want to be honest, you want to be naked, you want to put it out there. You care about this. You care about, you know, putting out an unconventional memoir because you're into prose or poetry or whatever it is, and okay, then do it and suffer the consequences, pal. And I don't mean that in a negative way.
- [50:55]
Debbie Millman
Oh, yeah.
- [50:55]
Josh Brolin
I mean in the most enlivening way, potentially enlivening.
- [51:00]
Debbie Millman
Well, if you are afraid of it, you won't be able to do it. You just have to, as you said in the intro, your monologue on Saturday Night Live, you just have to take the cold plunge.
- [51:11]
Josh Brolin
You just gotta do it. And I remember even when I was doing that, you know, Lauren was like, yeah, it's not funny. And I go, I'm not trying to be funny. I'm just trying to be me. I think that there's something that will be accepted during that monologue if they realize I'm not trying to be SNL funny. I'm just trying to say, hey, I'm Here doing this thing. They've asked me to do it, and.
- [51:34]
Debbie Millman
Here I am half naked, taking the cold plunge.
- [51:38]
Josh Brolin
Taking the cold plunge. Why not?
- [51:42]
Debbie Millman
I have one last question for you, Josh.
- [51:44]
Josh Brolin
Yes.
- [51:45]
Debbie Millman
At the very end of from under the Truck, you state, I am right where I'm supposed to be fully aware and shame no longer follows me like a reticent dog being belly dragged on a leash. For anyone that's still being belly dragged around on a leash, what is the first thing you'd suggest that they do to break free?
- [52:06]
Josh Brolin
Oh, don't believe the lie that fear is helping you survive. I think survival mechanisms are absolutely like alcohol was for me and a lot of other things were absolutely necessary. So that's why I don't shame myself for it, even though I don't. I feel bad. And I've confronted the idea of hurting people and hurting myself even in. But it was needed. I don't know if I would have survived without it, and I don't know that I would have survived without that fear that kept me in check. But I love my relationship with fear now. I love it. I love my relationship with challenge. And I don't think I'm trying to turn myself into mincemeat now. I think that I'm trying to grow, whatever that means. I don't love that word. How about germinate? Germinate into ultimate innocence.
- [53:08]
Debbie Millman
Josh Brolin, thank you so much for making so much work that matters. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
- [53:16]
Josh Brolin
Thank you. I was so excited to do this today. Thank you very much for this morning.
- [53:20]
Debbie Millman
Thank you.
- [53:21]
Josh Brolin
Okay.
- [53:22]
Debbie Millman
Josh Brolin's just released memoir is titled from under the Truck. You can also see him on the big screen in Dune, too. I'd like to thank everyone for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference. Or we can do both. I'm Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
- [53:43]
TED Audio Collective
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Master's in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The editor in chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Wilent.