Greg Kinnear: Talk Soup, Academy Awards, and The Power of Showing Up | E146

Summary

In Search Of Excellence: Greg Kinnear - Talk Soup, Academy Awards, and The Power of Showing Up | E146

Introduction

In episode 146 of In Search Of Excellence, host Randall Kaplan interviews acclaimed actor Greg Kinnear. The conversation delves into Greg's journey in the entertainment industry, the challenges he faced, lessons learned, and his perspectives on success and resilience. Throughout the episode, Greg shares personal anecdotes, career insights, and reflections that provide listeners with an in-depth understanding of what it takes to achieve excellence both professionally and personally.

How Greg Kinnear Joined the Podcast

Greg recounts the serendipitous circumstances that led him to appear on Kaplan's podcast. During a hectic morning preparing his daughter for college in England, Greg found himself in a frantic search for her forgotten coat near a busy Los Angeles airport (02:08). Without his phone, he approached several strangers to no avail until he met Randall Kaplan, who kindly lent him his phone. As Greg explains:

"And I am very grateful to work with a lot of great people. And that is one of the coolest things about... building this little family experience together." (00:01)

This chance encounter not only ensured his daughter's timely departure but also resulted in Greg joining In Search Of Excellence, highlighting the theme of unexpected opportunities.

Early Life and Upbringing

Greg delves into his childhood in Logansport, Indiana, where his father ran a successful vending machine business. He shares vivid memories of his father's dedication, including instances where his father armed himself to protect the family business during robberies (10:56). This upbringing instilled in Greg a strong work ethic and resilience, traits that would later aid his career in acting.

Moving to Washington, D.C., at the age of nine due to his father's job with the Department of Commerce, Greg experienced the Lebanon Civil War firsthand. At twelve, his family was evacuated from Beirut amidst escalating conflict, an experience that profoundly impacted him:

"And we were just leaving Logan Sport to Beirut in the course of 36 months." (22:55)

Greg reflects on the chaos and the lessons learned about divisions within societies and the importance of maintaining unity and understanding.

Career Beginnings

Greg's entry into the entertainment industry was marked by various early roles and projects. He shares his initial attempts to break into television by auditioning for MTV as a VJ, influenced by his connection with Justine Bateman (07:59). Although he didn't secure the MTV position, the experience led him to co-found Movie Time, an early cable channel that paved the way for his eventual hosting duties on Talk Soup.

"And you book Jimmy Kimmel... It opened a lot of doors." (06:32)

Greg emphasizes the importance of persistence and leveraging every opportunity, even those that don't initially seem successful.

Talk Soup and Transition to Acting

Talk Soup began as a sincere critique of daytime talk shows but organically evolved into a popular comedic series. Greg discusses how the show morphed into a "stream of consciousness" format, allowing for creative freedom and spontaneity (65:51). Hosting Talk Soup not only honed his on-screen presence but also expanded his network within the industry.

When faced with a lucrative offer to remain as the highest-paid host of Talk Soup, Greg decided to move on, recognizing that his future lay in acting rather than hosting:

"It opened a lot of doors. Do it." (72:17)

This decision underscores the significance of following one's passion and being willing to take risks for long-term fulfillment.

Experiences with Rejection and Resilience

Greg candidly addresses the challenges of rejection in the acting world. From being told only a small percentage of actors find success to facing unreciprocated auditions, Greg emphasizes the necessity of resilience:

"Rejection, you know, I think same. I figure it's kind of in the same basket." (141:45)

He advises aspiring actors to embrace rejection as a learning experience and to maintain perseverance despite setbacks.

The Role of Agents in an Actor’s Career

Discussing the critical role of agents, Greg highlights how effective representation can bridge the gap between talent and opportunity:

"Having great confidence in the people I get to work with over at CAA... they're really good at just being there." (75:39)

He acknowledges the evolving nature of the industry and the importance of building strong relationships with agents who are genuinely invested in an actor's success.

Personal Insights and Reflections

Throughout the episode, Greg shares personal philosophies that contribute to his success. He touches on imposter syndrome, the importance of authenticity, and the accidental nature of many career-defining moments.

"There's an accidental quality to some of the stuff." (126:33)

He reflects on his interactions with industry legends like Steve Jobs and Jack Nicholson, illustrating how chance encounters and genuine connections can shape one's career trajectory.

Preparation and Memorization in Acting

Greg discusses his natural aptitude for memorization, an essential skill for any actor. Unlike many peers who rely on acting coaches, Greg manages his preparation through personal methods:

"I can read it like this and start like it would start literally reading it like this at my desk." (134:17)

He emphasizes the importance of memorizing lines efficiently to focus on the emotional and behavioral aspects of his characters.

Wrap-up and Life Lessons

In the final segments, Greg and Randall engage in a game called "Fill in the Blank to Excellence," sharing personal fears, regrets, and proud moments. Greg’s honest responses provide listeners with a deeper understanding of his character and values. He concludes with reflections on the unpredictability of the acting industry and the importance of adaptability and continuous learning.

Notable Quotes

• Greg Kinnear on Building Families in Projects:

  "I've built a lot of families out here over the years." (00:01)

• Randall Kaplan on Seizing Opportunities:

  "You have to strike when the iron is hot, when the opportunity presents itself." (06:23)

• Greg Kinnear on Resilience:

  "Rejection is a great motivator and it's also a learning process." (141:45)

• Greg Kinnear on Authenticity:

  "The ability to tell the truth... is part of the job." (136:13)

Conclusion

Episode 146 of In Search Of Excellence offers an engaging and comprehensive look into Greg Kinnear’s life and career. From his early beginnings and formative experiences in Lebanon to his rise in the entertainment industry and personal philosophies on success, Greg provides valuable insights for anyone striving for excellence. The candid conversation underscores the importance of resilience, seizing opportunities, and maintaining authenticity in the face of challenges.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "But I’ve been very grateful to work with a lot of great people." — Greg Kinnear (00:01)
• "You have to strike when the iron is hot, when the opportunity presents itself." — Randall Kaplan (06:23)
• "Rejection is a great motivator and it's also a learning process." — Greg Kinnear (141:45)
• "The ability to tell the truth... is part of the job." — Greg Kinnear (136:13)

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions, stories, and insights shared by Greg Kinnear during his conversation with Randall Kaplan, offering a rich and engaging overview for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

[Randall Kaplan]

Do you think you're a movie star?

[Greg Kinnear]

No, I don't think of that for sure. I don't feel that way. But I've been, you know, fortunate and lucky enough to kind of, you know, stay in the game. And I've been very grateful to work with a lot of great people. And that is one of the coolest things about, you know, building, whether it's a series or whether it's television or movie, you know, the idea of you build this little family experience together. You know, I've built a lot of families out here over the years. Foreign.

[Randall Kaplan]

Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is Greg Kinnear. Greg is an actor and former talk show host who's been in over 50 movies.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, boy.

[Randall Kaplan]

Including Sabrina, Nurse Betty, you've Got Mail, Little Miss Sunshine, Anchorman, and As Good As It Gets, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. He's also been in over 25 TV shows and has won two Emmys, one for Outstanding Lead Actor in a miniseries or a movie for his leading role in the Kennedys, and one for Outstanding Guest Actor in a comedy series for the hit TV show Modern Family. In total, the movies he's acted in have grossed more than $2 billion. Greg, thanks for being here. Welcome to Unsearch for Excellence.

[Greg Kinnear]

I had no idea. I think we should just wrap it up on that note. I mean, it'll be all downhill from here.

[Randall Kaplan]

Drop the mic.

[Greg Kinnear]

Thank you. Good night, everybody. Thank you. It's very good to be here. And this is a very cool setting that you have. I was just hearing about your amazing missing tape of a previous interview you've done. So we are hopeful that at the conclusion of this podcast, the tape will get back to you.

[Randall Kaplan]

Right. Well, we're filming a studio place, my favorite place to record. Very professional shout out to Michelle on Andy. And of course, my producer, Matt Hickerson.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, we're on the west side of Los Angeles where our whole journey. And I think we should tell the audience because God knows they're going, what the hell is Greg Kinnear doing on your show? Is. My daughter attends school in England, and she was headed off recently to college in the month of September, and she had Gotten a coat because the year before she was like, dad, I'm freezing and I'm a neglectful father. So we got her a nice warm coat and she's leaving with her mom to go to England and to kind of get situated and their goodbye and they're running a little late for the airport and da, da, da, say goodbye and. And moments later my phone rings and my daughter says, dad, I left the coat in the house and I'm in like sweats and like barefoot and I throw in some flip flops and I tear like hell out of the house with the warm coat. And she gives me a general area of where they are waiting for me. And again, the clock is ticking. They gotta get to the airport. So I'm driving like a bat out of hell and I come down right around this area and I park my car and I'm looking around, I don't see their car. It could be anywhere. It's a busy area. And I realize I don't have my phone. So I'm like, oh my God. So I get out of the car with her coat and I run up to the first person I see and I go, this is my daughter's coat. And the guy just kind of freezes and turns and runs away like anybody would do in Los Angeles because I'm a freak. And then the next person comes and I try to. I show up with them and I'm like, hey, how you doing? My name's Greg. And I. They're leaving. They're gone too. Now I look across the street and I see a handsome man who I've never met before walking across. He's on his phone. He looks like a respectable guy. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to stop the bullshit. I'm just going to tell him what the story is. I go, I am so sorry to bother you. This is my daughter's coat. She's somewhere in the vicinity, I don't know where. I need to call her. Can I borrow your cell phone? And you were like, boom. You hand it right to me. So I make the call. And then as I'm making the call, you're like, are you Greg? And I'm like, yeah. And then we start talking about podcasts and I do get the phone doer. And that is what led me to this moment.

[Randall Kaplan]

So you have a lot of heroes in your life, and now I'm one of them.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I think if you're the fact that you're not wearing a cape when I show up here, for the podcast. Today is stunning.

[Randall Kaplan]

So what's so interesting. And there's actually a couple of lessons in this story.

[Greg Kinnear]

I'm so bad. I, like, read your background of everything you've done, all the accomplishments. I told you, you're way of a. You're a huge overachiever, which makes me nerv. I don't ever quite understand lessons in stories. So I am ecstatic to hear, other than always keep your tennis shoes on when your daughter leaves for the airport. I'm ecstatic to hear what the lessons are because I'm sure you're right.

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, I'm sure a lot of people have had the experience with some stranger approaches you, you don't know with something in their hand, and again, you hear stories. And I know someone in LA who. Someone similar story that this guy was on meth and he went to give him something, and the guy was stabbed 18 times. He lived, by the way, but this is a friend of the family.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, my God.

[Randall Kaplan]

And so as I saw you approaching, I had, like, several milliseconds to figure out what was happening. And as you came up to me, my first reaction is, this guy's a freak. And here we go. And I gotta back up.

[Greg Kinnear]

Get that all the time.

[Randall Kaplan]

I gotta back up. So I took a half step back and I said, greg. And you said, yeah. Like maybe you didn't know who I was. And we knew each other. That clearly wasn't the case. He said, yeah. I said, kinnear. I said, yes, because I recognized you from all of your incredible acting days. I watched so many of your movies, and I'm a huge fan. So, you know, one of the stories for me is you have to strike when the iron is hot, when the opportunity presents itself.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah. Exactly. How this guy closes an appearance on a talk show faster than anybody on the planet. It's unbelievable. You should book Jimmy Kimmel.

[Randall Kaplan]

I want Jimmy on my show. And I'm sure you know him. And so I may ask you after the show if I've done a good job to make some intros. All right. All right.

[Greg Kinnear]

Very good. But that was a very. I did thank you at the time. I will thank you again. And my daughter, who just got home, I told her where I was headed, and she said, well, I've stayed so warm. You think you thank Randall for every.

[Randall Kaplan]

Time she puts on that jacket. Here's a stranger. Here's a stranger in Brentwood.

[Greg Kinnear]

It's not about me. It's never about me. It's about the. Yeah. The person who got the product to them.

[Randall Kaplan]

How have spur of the moment introductions influenced your career? What impact does it have? Can you give some examples?

[Greg Kinnear]

Spur of the moment introductions? You know, I feel like they do. They happen periodically, for sure. And I feel like I should be, like, equipped with, like, so many people. Examples of, of surprise meetings or, or, or just. I mean, obviously I've met a lot of people in my life, in my career, and, and sometimes you, you meet somebody at an event or a place, and then you have an opportunity to work with them down the road. And your roads, you know, you're, you're, you find a way to connect and. But I mean, I, I mean, there's been, I've had a lot of, I guess, moments that happen. I'll give you one. A buddy of mine who's a sound.

[Randall Kaplan]

Guy used to date Bobby Anderson.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yes, Bobby Anderson used to date Justine Bateman. And Bobby was an old friend of mine who I knew through friends that I went to high school in Greece with. And Bobby's dating this girl. And I became friends with Bobby. He's dating Justine. She's on this big show, which is mtv. Mtv. She's actually. It was Family Ties was the show.

[Randall Kaplan]

And she was auditioning for mtv, and.

[Greg Kinnear]

She'S actually doing MTV Spring break weekend and meets a guy named Joe Devola who's casting mtv. And I go. Because of her, I end up going and auditioning for MTV to sit on the goofy steps and, you know, try and become a VJ back in the, you, you know, 17th century. And I don't get the job, but I get a nice tape out of it, says MTV audition looks very official. And that ends up leading to another crazy startup channel called Movie Time. And Movie Time, before it was Movie Time, before E was E, it was called Movie Time. And that was my early broadcast kind of world, right? And now it's so weird because, you know, at that time, yeah, it was kind of a very off the, you know, Movie Time was a very kind of random cable channel, but at least it was cable now. You have podcasts, you have these shows. I walked in there, I thought we were just. We had two microphones. Suddenly we're, hey, look, we're on tv. It's changed so much, and there's such a proliferation of so many forms of broadcasting now. But back at that time, it was kind of an unusual thing to get on tv and it was an unusual break for. And that was a hell of a meeting.

[Randall Kaplan]

Early on, you stole the order of the chronology of my podcast, but I'm glad we talked about Justine, who I. Who I know a little bit because she married my friend Mark Fluent. And by the way, just so you know, I like to do a lot of research. So I texted Mark, can I talk to Justine, who I haven't talked to in 15 years, because I want to find some tidbits about Greg that nobody knows.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, boy.

[Randall Kaplan]

She was very, very responsive, meaning she ghosted me. So I didn't really get any on that.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, she was being shy, obviously. What she wanted to tell you is he's an incredibly generous fellow. He's kind, he's warm. You'll get all this later, I'm sure, in the memo.

[Randall Kaplan]

Let's go to the beginning. And I want to talk about. You're born in the massive town of Logansport, Indiana. Your mom, Susie was a homemaker. Your dad, Ed, owned vending machine business, tobacco, candy. Tell us about all the vices. All the vices. Tell us about him getting called out in the middle of the night and bringing a shotgun with him some of the nights and how his work ethic influenced your future career.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, he worked hard. Him and his father had these, had vending business. They had a pretty big thriving vending business. There was a clothing business and he was, my dad was a. It's funny, before I came here, I was talking to a director about a project and the character was kind of reminding me of my dad a little bit. So we were discussing him and he was, you know, he's pretty. He had a great sense of humor, you know, Scotch Irish, great sense of humor. But he grew up in kind of depression era and you know, like my mom was very, you know, don't think they had an abundance of anything and, you know, always had a sense of urgency and always a great work ethic and always took. Took his work very, very seriously. So, yeah, periodically when you have a business like that, it gets robbed. Apparently back in, you know, today they definitely get robbed. But I think this robbing of businesses was going on for a long time. And I do remember my dad, yeah, having. Leaving the dinner table a couple of times and grabbing, having to grab. Like at one time he grabbed a shotgun and said there's a robbery going on at the office and left the house. And I was like at the, you know, with a, you know, some like beef stew in my mouth, staring at this moment where he was out the door in order to go take care of business. And I don't, you know, nothing ever happened with it. And it wasn't like it ended in Any sort of issue. But I just remember thinking, holy shit. This is a guy who has to not only sell stuff, but has to make sure that people don't take stuff from him.

[Randall Kaplan]

My grandfather was a jeweler, and he carried a gun with him because at some point he was tied up in the back room and bound and gagged and, you know, armed robbery. And from that point on, he carried a gun until the point where Alzheimer's took over. And that's not smart. If you have a gun and you.

[Greg Kinnear]

Have Alzheimer's, that's probably not a good idea. But it's. But, yeah, a real reminder of, I guess when you're. Yeah, when you run a small business, you know, that's your livelihood, your ability to feed your family and take care of the people that you love. And so, you know, you kind of have everything, you know, counting on that. And there's not really a safety net. So, you know, people, I think, and also, I think generationally, there was a little bit of a, you know, even less of a safety net, so that people just managed shit that they needed to manage.

[Randall Kaplan]

A lot of us, a lot of my friends. A lot of your friends, want their kids to go into what I call normal professions, being a doctor, a lawyer, investment banker, working a tech company, whatever the case may be. Your parents, you've said, didn't really want that. They said their primary job was to keep you out of jail. What were they talking about?

[Greg Kinnear]

No, no, I think I was trying to fill time on another podcast when I said that there was no sense that my parents thought I was going to jail. Little they know. No, I don't think that. I wasn't a. Yeah, I was way too much of a coward for them to actually fear that I was going to cross the line and end up in any sort of trouble. But I definitely didn't have a real clear path. Years ago, I did a Talk show at NBC, literally at 1:30 in the morning.

[Randall Kaplan]

Used to be telling that you replace Bob Costas.

[Greg Kinnear]

That's right. And Bob Costas took over from Tom Snyder, who said at that hour, you get your smokers and your tokers. But I remember Bob carrying in his. Telling me his story, used to carry in his wallet like this Mickey, a famous story. Now, he carried a Mickey Mantle baseball card in his little wallet when he was a kid. It's like when he was a kid, he was carrying this around because he wanted to be a talk show host. And then when he got older, he wanted to be kind. So he still has, I think, famously I think he showed me at dinner that he does still have it one time. But I thought that was amazing because it's so much not the way I grew up. I didn't have, as some people do, like a real clear pathway to where they were headed or what they were going to do. And I certainly didn't see the path that I ended up falling into. But it's, it's. I, I don't, I don't consider it a, I can be very self critical and yet I don't consider that necessarily, you know, a shortcoming. And I certainly don't feel that way about my own children. You know, you know, leaving your, leaving your, you know, your, the ideas open of what you might do or what you might not do and letting that come to you with time is, has benefits, it does yield something. If you're, if you're, if you're like, look, I'm doing this, this and this. I do think it closes off certain opportunities, at least that was my experience, that that kind of came by my openness to maybe certain parts of the universe.

[Randall Kaplan]

I do a lot of mentoring. I have a summer intern program. We have 32 kids. I have five kids of my own.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I also coach and mentor a lot of professionals, from people starting the workforce to CEOs, startup founders, actors, actors, one in particular.

[Greg Kinnear]

We'll get to that.

[Randall Kaplan]

Okay, so what's your advice to everybody out there, whether they're an actor or anything else that they're doing, where they do suffer from constant anxiety. I have this job. I don't know what I want to do. Is it all going to work out?

[Greg Kinnear]

Gosh, it's so terrible because I really know how the world finds itself in this place for children. I don't, I don't understand the. I shouldn't say I don't understand it. I guess I do understand it. I think social media has been a terrible villain in all of this. Awareness, global awareness. Everything happening at the, you know, in the moment on your phone. Being able to see the success or what party or event every other person in your social circle is doing at any given time cannot be healthy. And my wife is a voracious reader, is constantly saying, did you read this book? Have you read this book? Have you read? And I'm like, no.

[Randall Kaplan]

But I can't argue with her then.

[Greg Kinnear]

No, I can't argue with her. Nor do I want to argue with her. I'm like, honey, you win. I get it. And I do think that in this environment that we're in in this kind of world we find ourselves in that it's very, very difficult to be a kid and, and just kind of hold on to your innocence and just kind of hold on to a. Hey, let's see what happens. Let's see. Let's figure this out as we go. I mean, people, you know, I mean, we're raising kids like young CEOs now. And, you know, the. Even the. These, you know, schools across the country, and certainly a lot of these private schools, I mean, have been written about and right when the. Born the, you know, zone of it right here, plenty of what we're talking.

[Randall Kaplan]

About here, just, you know, to make it clear to people. Three suicides at a very well known, prestigious west side school.

[Greg Kinnear]

Six.

[Randall Kaplan]

Six suicides. Yeah. Teachers having sex with students when the administration knew about it.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yep. Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Craziness.

[Greg Kinnear]

Crazy stuff that, that, you know, is. Is part of, you know, listen, part of that might be an environment of being in, you know, a big, sprawling metropolitan city, but I think the problem of these kids and the pressure that's being put on these kids is kind of a. It's a national problem. And I think it's affecting people just as much in Logan's part as it is probably in Los Angeles. And it's a problem.

[Randall Kaplan]

So let's talk about some of the good thing that parents do as well in terms of great moments with your kids and things that we should do as dads.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

When you're nine years old, you had a Sony cassette recorder. Tell us about that moment and what your dad asked you and how important is it to check in with your kids.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, well, that's. That is, yeah, that. That was the Sony tape recorder that, yeah. My dad gave me that allowed me to record things. It was the first time I ever heard my voice on a cassette. And yeah, I was nine years old and. And I didn't even really know how to work it. The way that I got introduced to it was my dad said, let me interview you. And he hit play and record. And we sat there and he said, greg, how old are you? And I was like nine. And thus began a like 30 minute, unbelievable interview. One of the great interviews of all time. My father interviewing me at 9 years old. That was so funny and so kind of whimsical and unexpected. Did. And years later, I said to my mom, he said, where is the interview? Because it says on it, dad interviewing Greg. And somehow I'm off God knows where, college or whatever. I'm like, where's the interview with dad interviewing Greg? I got to hear that again. So I go and I listen to it, and my father has accidentally recorded Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon days. The whole broadcast over our interview, and it's completely gone. And I'm destroyed by this. And my dad has this cockamamie idea where he's like, well, I think because it was only recorded once, you can go back, you can erase the, oh, Lake Wobegon, and your interview will somewhere be in there. And I researched that, and that is not true. So at any rate, that was my first interview experience. And being a father is. Yes, I think being, you know, know, it's important to be check in with your kids. It's important to be focused on them. And I very. I had very good parents. I really did. And I felt very grateful for that. And my mom, you know, was very, very loving, you know, great mom. And who's coming into town tomorrow.

[Randall Kaplan]

You have anything special?

[Greg Kinnear]

So I have to say that. No. Well, yes, we have a lot planned. She's. She just turned 90. We was just back in Arizona for her birthday. So that was exciting. But I had great par. And I think that, you know, I was lucky enough. And it really is luck of the draw these days when you look statistically at things of having parents that are still together and having parents that, you know, loved you and were supportive of you when you, you know, as you go, as you're being raised. And that's something that is, you know, is. Is one of the problems when we are talking about the difficulty, I think, of. Of what's going on with that generation. You know, is part of it is.

[Randall Kaplan]

That many people have to move a lot in their life because of jobs that their parents had. Let's take each move one at a time. When you're nine years old and an uncle living in Washington, D.C. tell us about the move and your dad's job and what that entailed while you were still living in the United States before the move, which we'll talk about next.

[Greg Kinnear]

So my dad ended up becoming. He was an advanced man, got in a job being an advanced man for Richard Nixon, who's coming through the Midwest in the 70s, early 70s, and his brother worked in Washington. So my dad ended up getting. And I, you know, he ended up getting an opportunity to work for the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. so we leave Indiana when I'm nine and we go to Washington, D.C. we're just outside. I recently met Terry McAuliffe, actually, who lives just not too far from where I grew Up. And we were. I was, you know, talking about my fond memories of rest in Virginia and being there and near Lake Ann for those of you in the Tri State area. And so, yeah, I went to school there. I was an okay student three years. And just when I started to get settled, we. He sat us all down and said, listen, I got a. An assignment to another place. And I was like, oh, what city's that? And he's like, beirut, Lebanon. So we went from D.C. to Beirut. So I think the headline there is we went from Logan Sport to Beirut in the course of 36 months.

[Randall Kaplan]

So you get to Beirut.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

And father of your friend of your father gets kidnapped. The US Ambassador and two bodyguards get assassinated.

[Greg Kinnear]

Acting ambassador.

[Randall Kaplan]

Acting ambassador. The bakery that used to visit or visit a couple very close to where you live blew up.

[Greg Kinnear]

That's right.

[Randall Kaplan]

Tell us about the lessons you learned watching the Lebanon civil war and the impact it had on you at 12 years old.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, I warned you about lessons. Greg does not learn lessons, as you know.

[Randall Kaplan]

We're gonna pull him out of you today.

[Greg Kinnear]

God, I don't know. I mean, yeah, all of that is true. And, you know, our arrival there was otherworldly. I remember the call of Mecca happening as we're driving through the sun. You know, the last vestiges of the sun setting in Beirut and just the sounds and smells. Very odd experience that we ended up there. I. You know, in a very short period of time, the civil war kind of crept up. And again, I'm 12 years old. It's not like I'm tracking any of this with any sort of, you know, political awareness or really asking any of the big questions. But I was aware that on certain days of the week, in the evenings, they. They. You started to hear gunfire. And. And I was aware that my parents were starting to get a little bit more, you know, serious about what was going on. They were, from the moment we got there. But, you know, I. I had a. I think going to school. We started to have periodic lockdowns. The fighting, which you started initially in the evening hours, started to move to more RA times. The bombing of the little bakery near our place, which we loved, and we love the owner of the place. That was a crazy moment where, you know, you heard it, you felt it. We were close enough for where it rocked the hell out of us. And, and it. It definitely was. It was pretty. Pretty spooky. And we, you know, it, It. It just got progressively worse and deep, pretty deep into this situation. We were, my brother and I, you know, My parents were heading to an event they had to go to and we had decided in the late afternoon to go investigate the local pinball palace. Pinball was big in Beirut in the 70s, as you know. And so we. It was big here, yeah, sure, but not like this, not like Beirut. You'd go into these halls and they would have a thousand pinball machines. It was crazy. At any rate, we went to go check one out and, you know, it cost like a piaster to play a pinball game, which is about a half a penny. So we were, you know, nobody paid a lot of attention to the clock. And suddenly my brother goes, we got to get out of here. By the time we got back to the house, my parents had returned hours ago from and they, they showed up at the house and we weren't there. And so when we finally made our way back to the house at like 10 o'clock at night or something, there were, you know, like, like 15 black cars surrounding our place. And just, I could see lights and some police cars. My brother looked at me and he said, we got lost. And I was like, got it, got it. Yes. I will act the shit out of this. We got lost and we went in there. And of course there was. We had caused quite a stir for the few hours that we had been out, but there were a lot of incidents like that. And it ultimately cultivated in listening every night to the BBC for how bad. I remember waking up periodically and just coming out in the living room. My parents would be up listening to BBC and, you know, kind of following and tracking what was going on. And eventually my dad got the call that was for him to stay, but my mom and my, you know, brothers and I to head out. And so we took the, the car took us down to the St. George Hotel where we were met with all the other kind of dependents in the American Embassy there. So there were quite a few people and we're just hanging out and you Tom Brokaw is over there saying, and the war continues in Beirut, Lebanon, with the dependents leaving. And that's my Tom Brokaw impersonation. I know you were going to ask.

[Randall Kaplan]

Me about it 100%. I was, by the way, so get ready.

[Greg Kinnear]

So he, he's over there brought. I mean, it's like a big thing, right? And they load us up onto buses and we head out past the PLO camps. Can't get to Beirut International Airport without going past the PLO camps. Buses stopped. Guys get on the bus with loaded rifles to check passports. My mom Is white as a ghost. And I'm like, you know, you're, you're, it's like that John Boorman movie, Hope and Glory, you know, you're not really thinking about your mortality at that age. So I'm just kind of like, it's kind of cool. But it was, it was pretty, pretty hairy.

[Randall Kaplan]

But you're evacuated.

[Greg Kinnear]

We were evacuated.

[Randall Kaplan]

At 12 years old?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Scared shitless.

[Greg Kinnear]

I, you know, I really wasn't, as I say, I was, I was. I don't ever really remember being scared. I never felt like I'm gonna die here. I never felt that way, by the way. Now I'd be terrified. But just at that age, it was just kind of all this crazy adventure. And I, I, I don't want to say it was all, it was all great because there were a lot of days where the school was closed at the end and I was bored and all of that, but, I mean, like, I never felt, Felt threatened. And the Lebanese people are lovely people. One of my closest friends to this day is, you know, comes from this big Lebanese family. So, you know, I, you know, they were wonderful and warm and. But I, you do look around, and in a moment like that, I think I do still carry with me this sense of what a division within a country can do and how it can split people apart and to know how bad this got. Families killing families and people friends breaking up and people who spent their lives together, cared deeply about each other. People who looked after people are suddenly turning their back on them and saying, you're on the other team. And feeling like at a young age, that was what I struggled with. It wasn't the fear, it was just the totally not understanding how this very beautiful country with real sense of just warmth and love there would be broken apart that quickly.

[Randall Kaplan]

So many of us have interesting jobs in high school. I want to talk about a few of yours. I bag groceries, I waited tables. In college, I stuffed envelopes.

[Greg Kinnear]

How were you waiting tables?

[Randall Kaplan]

How was I waiting tables?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, because I feel like you and I waited tables, and I feel like you were the kind of guy that, unlike me, didn't get fired a lot.

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, I, I want to talk about some of your firings, but I worked at the Chi Chi Olive Garden, so, you know.

[Greg Kinnear]

Were you a waiter or a bus?

[Randall Kaplan]

No, I was a waiter. No, I got, I got.

[Greg Kinnear]

And, and how were you when you showed up to the table?

[Randall Kaplan]

I was nervous. I mean, I stuttered too. I, I was bullied as a kid. So that was, it was a challenge for Me to do that, so.

[Greg Kinnear]

But you. Did you ever get fired?

[Randall Kaplan]

I did not get fired, no. But. But, no, but the most embarrassing moment was I don't drink wine, and I never opened a bottle of wine, so they brought the thing out. I figured I could figure out and crash. The cork went. And so did the bottle of wine. Red wine on a family table all over the woman. It's red. Obviously staying beside myself.

[Greg Kinnear]

PTSD to this day.

[Randall Kaplan]

I think I'm going to get. Well, now you just get the. The thing you just put in. I. I don't drink wine anyway, probably from that moment. But I do like IPA beer. That's my thing. And. And margaritas. That's probably one of the reasons I don't drink. But I didn't get fired, and I still got a tip. You know, I think they've. I know they felt sorry for me. They could see I was in horror.

[Greg Kinnear]

I definitely got good tips, too. Well, I think we. We share that, right? People feel. Feel like these guys. I got it. We got to take care of these guys.

[Randall Kaplan]

One of the crazy things about my waiting experience, and I'm not going to tell you which restaurant this was because I don't want to have the CEO calling me and yelling at me, but as you know, in the kitchen, there are these rubber mats, right? And the rubber mats have holes in them. It's about a half inch thick.

[Greg Kinnear]

That's right.

[Randall Kaplan]

And that's where all the shit goes. That's where all the. All the stuff from the plate. It's slime. It's disgusting. You would never want to touch it with your finger without scrubbing your finger.

[Greg Kinnear]

And unless you're trying to quickly lose weight.

[Randall Kaplan]

Okay, well. Well, there you go. Or get some E. Coli bacteria in your stomach. So this. I won't even tell you the dish it was because then you can identify the restaurant. But this dish fell on the rubber mat, and again, it was covered. It's wet. It's disgusting. And it was another waiter. So I looked at it, and he looks around and he says, without saying anything, he picked it up off the mat, put it back on the plate, kind of molded it like it was clay. Took a napkin around to get rid of the sauce, the refuse, and he went back and he served it.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah. Yep. Did we work at the same restaurant?

[Randall Kaplan]

I don't know. I don't know. So. So you. You. Did you ever.

[Greg Kinnear]

Did you ever. Would you. Would you ever, period periodically? My wife always likes it. Did you ever, period. Did you ever, at any time, pilfer Any food?

[Randall Kaplan]

Of course I did.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay. Yeah, that's. That's a big tell. That's why I told my wife. I was like, yeah, man, I was in college. I was starving. Yeah, a guy leaves a half a steak.

[Randall Kaplan]

Oh, yeah. You mean, take some of the leftovers? I mean, okay. Only if it was lightly eaten. You know, someone gets something, they don't want it, and we're not proud of it. You know, you could cut off. Yeah, you could cut it off, like.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, yeah, of course you cut it off. I'm saying you use certain. You know, there's tricks.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah. So you. You were fired.

[Greg Kinnear]

This conversation has really gone south.

[Randall Kaplan]

You were fired for impersonating somebody at the restaurant. So who are you impersonating? And what? What?

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, that was the. Yeah, that was the manager. That was the manager of the restaurant that I was in.

[Randall Kaplan]

So what was the impersonation? Why did he get pissed? And then. Can you do it for us?

[Greg Kinnear]

You know, it's like, no, I can't. And it wasn't even actually a great impersonation, but. But it was a good lesson. Hey, wait. I guess I do learn lessons because my guy who had gotten me the job, one day, we're back there. And you would appreciate this as a former waiter, right, who scares the shit out of you. It's the gm. It's the man, the head manager guy. That guy makes everybody either live or die. And suddenly we're back there. And I've been working at this place not that long, and it was a really very good gig to get because the tips were great, because it was kind of like people spent money at this place in Tucson. And so I'm a little weary of him. And I can tell he doesn't like me to begin with. And my buddy who helped me get the job says, hey, Kinnear, do that impersonation for Bob. And all the waiters just kind of look, and everybody's like, all eyes on me. And I'm like, I don't have no impersonation. He's like, yeah, you do. Come on, do it. So I do my kind of gum chewing, kind of Joe Pesci kind of. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, kind of slightly assholic behavior that this manager had. And I remember him looking at me and going, that's really good. That's really good. I say 72 hours. I was. I was unemployed. So at any rate, people, you know, they're always like, I don't know how. I mean, Dana Carvey must just have, like, a wake of people that he's, you know, deeply offended. But I think he does it and it's like a badge of honor. But if I was doing it, they're. They're notably pissed.

[Randall Kaplan]

But today they're not pissed. When you do impersonation, it's very cool.

[Greg Kinnear]

Now, no, I'll have a good Randall Kaplan by the time we're done here.

[Randall Kaplan]

Will you. Can you give us your top three impersonations of kind of what you think you're.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, I always thought I was. I always thought I had a pretty good mine. Many of mine are. Are dead, deceased or retired. Like my Ted Koppel was always pretty good. Good evening, everybody. I'm Ted Koppel. This is Nightline tonight. And forgive me for sounding over jealous on this one particular point. Greg Kinnear sits down with Kaplan and shits the bed or what have you. And then so there's that and then there's. I already gave you a little brokaw. Who else? I don't know. I did the last season of House of Cards, and the guy who I thought I was going to be working with had been let go shortly before. And this isn't really a Kevin Spacey, but he does take these pauses. And I realized that if you think about it, the other guy who also takes the same pauses is the guy we've all known for years. And he takes those pauses the same way Kevin Spacey takes his pause. So Christopher Walken, Kevin Spacey. That was what was happening there.

[Randall Kaplan]

We're gonna talk about Kevin a little later in the show.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, we are?

[Randall Kaplan]

Oh, yeah. We're gonna talk about Kevin and Harvey and Bill. Wow. And kind of craziness.

[Greg Kinnear]

I don't really have. I'm trying to think of a. No, I don't really have any contemporary. I don't know.

[Randall Kaplan]

He did both Clinton at some point, too. Did you. You did a Bill Clinton at some point?

[Greg Kinnear]

No, no, I never did a book. No. Very hard to do. Bill Clinton can't do Trump. That's a tough one. Have you ever seen the Trump ones on tv? Like, you see somebody like doing a. A Trump like on social media or something. I mean, some of the. It's like people. What's amazing about social media now is like, you don't. Well, it's the hands. But what's amazing social media is, you know, you used to have like, you know, who's the guy who used to. Instead of it being a very small, select people who succeed in show business and suddenly are doing their impersonations, social media allow. It's like, everybody in the planet now can do their impersonation. And so the level of good impersonations has risen to an insane level. Level where you can't. Nobody can compete with, you know, you go find, you know, there's a guy in Des Moines, Iowa, who does a, you know. You know, a George Foreman that'll just knock your socks off, you know, and it's just. I just find it amazing when you look around for impersonations now on social media, it's remarkable. You probably do that, too.

[Randall Kaplan]

I'm not a good impersonator. My son Charlie is, you know, does some. Some funny ones. He can do Trump and he's.

[Greg Kinnear]

Can he do Trump?

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, he can do Trump. I haven't seen him with the hands, but he's. He can do. He can do, you know, these politicians, too. What. What's with this? You know, Did. Did you ever notice, like, Bill Clinton did this, it's the thumb over the index.

[Greg Kinnear]

Fighting a little of that.

[Randall Kaplan]

Kamala did this, too. Did you guys ever see that? And all the. You know, where. Where did this come from? I had wondered about that.

[Greg Kinnear]

American. American. American people. I had played Bill Clinton in an HBO show with Kerry Washington, and I was always like, the American people. American people. American people. That was always the touch. Tone to kind of get into his voice a little bit. But that was impersonating Joe when he was during the Clarence Thomas hearings. And obviously it was a big, big shift towards the end there, which I don't really do. I know. But I love the Dana Carvey stuff's amazing on that.

[Randall Kaplan]

I dug ditches for the World Weight Watchers World headquarters. Yeah. And it was a summer job before my freshman year of college at Michigan. Yeah, I get. I was a skinny kid, and all these construction workers were there. And I remember taking my shirt off. I mean, I probably weighed 150 pounds and thinking, I'm cool. I think I wore a bandana on some of the days.

[Greg Kinnear]

Sure you did.

[Randall Kaplan]

You were doing some hot mopping in high school, so I think. Tell us about the value of manual tough labor sitting there. I'm sure it was boiling out there.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, that was in Greece. We evacuated Lebanon to Greece, and we were there for the next six years, which, you know, were some of the high points of my life. It was really, really great. I had made great friends there and love Greece and the people. But. Yeah, one summer I was. Lockheed had a base, a big building, and kind of a practice Runway, I guess, in some part of Athens, Northern Athens. So my buddy called me and said, listen, they'll pass a thousand drachma a day. Think about that. A thousand drachma a day. Sure, you don't have any drachma doesn't exist anymore. But it was big money at the time. And if they're paying you a thousand, anything, right, and you're a kid, that's a lot. So.

[Randall Kaplan]

But are we talking 50 bucks a day or 100 bucks a day?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I think it was like. I think it was like. Like. I think that was like $3. No, I'm kidding. I think it was like 50. Yeah, I think 50, 40 or 50 a day, which was a lot at that time. And the job was they were roofing, so they were building hangars, and they had a lot of roofing to do. And so you had hot mopping and you had a tar. And I don't know what it taught me other than it was very, very. You know, it was very long and tedious hours. But I certainly appreciated, you know, you thought twice about how you spent the money. You know, if you stole the money out of, you know, from someone you know, or you found a thousand drachma, you thought about that thousand drachma different than the thousand drachma. You had spent, you know, nine hours in the blazing sun. Hot mopping. Never wore a bandana, by the way. That is not a cool way to do your manual labor, as you probably learned.

[Randall Kaplan]

But, well, don't forget, Steven Seagal was really big back then. So I did try to grow little, you know, the tail. So I'm not sure the bandana was somewhat cool, because half the workers wore one.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, yeah. You and Seal, you and Seagal.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah. I mean, he. He was huge. For a few years. Mike Ovitz's former trainer. That's how he got that job.

[Greg Kinnear]

That's right. That's right.

[Randall Kaplan]

So, you know, the lesson I learned from that is, I sure don't want to do that when I'm older.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah. Yes, I learned that lesson, too. See, you record the lessons in your head, though, and you're able to record them and hang on to them. So that's why you have gone on and overachieved. But me, mine's more instinctual. Like, I'm out there sweating, and I don't think I'm recording that lesson. But I do believe there is a quarter that has dropped, and somewhere I'm like, I gotta make sure this. I'm not here again in 20 years.

[Randall Kaplan]

We all have important teachers in our lives that make a big impact in our life. I had Don Corwin, economics class, sophomore year of high school. I just lit it up in that closet. I want to be a CEO. I reading all these profiles. There's no YouTube, nothing like that. Back in the day, I took my daughter who was going to college in New York, to Billy Joel. Madison Square Garden sold out. And Billy Joel calls out his music teacher who inspired him and said, you got some real talent, you should try that. And he's saying 20,000 people saying happy birthday to his 90 year old music teacher who couldn't be there because of medical problems, but he recorded it and sent it to him, which is, you know, great, great moments. Tell us about Ms. Panopoulos and Ms. Gibbs and influence they had on your future.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, Ms. Gibbs, are you out there?

[Randall Kaplan]

Ms. Gibbs, we'll track her down for you.

[Greg Kinnear]

Deborah Gibbs. I have had guys, I'm not. I don't. I have a social media footprint of zero. So I don't really, you know, know how to dig deep and find these things out. But I have friends who are good at it.

[Randall Kaplan]

And nobody has Matt Hickerson right there.

[Greg Kinnear]

He's on it right there.

[Randall Kaplan]

Oh, yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

Really?

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah. We're gonna get. If she's living, we're gonna get.

[Greg Kinnear]

I'm looking off camera, I'm like, this is the dude who can track her down. If there's anybody on the planet who can do it. All right, good luck. But she was a lovely woman who was, you know, addition to Ms. Monopoulos, who we have talked about. Ms. Gibbs was a, was a wonderful teacher, very warm, very, you know, great instincts. And she put on a lot of shows. I remember over there in, in Athens in our little theater department and she, she, you know, punched way above our weight as a theater department. And she was smart, had great inst. And if you could be incredibly subtle. And I remember her being, oh, no, that's good, you know, Whereas, you know, I think theater acting tends to be a little broader. And I'm not a broad, I don't think I'm a broad actor. And so she was encouraging. She was funny and unexpected and had us do some bizarre stuff. So I often do think about her. I haven't ever been able to track her down.

[Randall Kaplan]

Have you tried?

[Greg Kinnear]

Until you, have you tried to track her down? Just through friends, just through, hey, does anybody know? Because obviously there's a little network of people who went to ACS in the time I went. And ACS is American Community Schools of Athens.

[Randall Kaplan]

They have them all over the place, by the way. Not just.

[Greg Kinnear]

That's Right. But ACS Athens is one of the better ones. I mean, if you were to really research, really do your work, Randall, you would know that. And maybe I'm being biased, but there's few schools better than ACS Athens.

[Randall Kaplan]

10Th grade happens. And you have an opportunity to have your own talk show. Tell us about that, and then talk to us about how important punctuality is in our success.

[Greg Kinnear]

I guess punctuality is important. I was punctual for this podcast, was I not?

[Randall Kaplan]

We started one. You walked in at 12:59. It's pretty great.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Thank you, by the way. You're welcome.

[Greg Kinnear]

And you were nervous. You didn't think I was going to show up for this?

[Randall Kaplan]

No, because I confirmed a couple of times.

[Greg Kinnear]

I wouldn't say you confirmed a couple of times. I would say you're like, Rain man, you're coming. Definitely doing the podcast. You mean, like, I got a lot of. A lot of hits, and I had a sense.

[Randall Kaplan]

What was your reaction, by the way, when I kept sending these?

[Greg Kinnear]

My sense was, wow, this is a guy who takes this seriously. And obviously then I did listen to your podcast, which I thought was very good.

[Randall Kaplan]

Thank you.

[Greg Kinnear]

And I was like, wow, you take it seriously. And you want the person who has said they're going to show up not to kind of give you an la? Yeah, man. We should do that sometime. You want to set a time, and you want to make sure that that time is agreed upon and that the contract will be executed completely. And so I felt that that was a.

[Randall Kaplan]

You.

[Greg Kinnear]

You made the obligation clear. And I mean that in the best way.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, the backstory on this is too. I. I did something nice for you, and I just do something nice, and then I put you on the spot. And so it's like, oh, I didn't.

[Greg Kinnear]

Have any choice but to be here.

[Randall Kaplan]

I mean, it's like, what were you gonna say? I gave you the phone. I saved the day. I'm like, it's like a hostage situation. I'm an instantane hero. And I hit you up for my show, like, right, right. In a second. So I sent you a note as well.

[Greg Kinnear]

Production people have all left, too, but we're literally losing audience during this podcast, by the way.

[Randall Kaplan]

All right, I did put you on the spot, and then I sent you a note. You know, hey, I know I put you on the spot. You don't have to do it. I still love you to be on my show. So I was a little nervous about.

[Greg Kinnear]

It, and then I could write you Back and say, no, I'm not going to do it.

[Randall Kaplan]

Which would have been fine. I mean, I would have been disappointed. I would have been disappointed.

[Greg Kinnear]

I told you I was going to do it.

[Randall Kaplan]

No, I know, but I'll tell you, I think had three people cancel on me the day of the show. We have a studio. We pay for the studio. I do a shit ton of research.

[Greg Kinnear]

You did use the word studio is booked a number of times.

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, I. I did.

[Greg Kinnear]

Should I book the studio?

[Randall Kaplan]

I did.

[Greg Kinnear]

And I kind of was like, yeah. And then you were like, the studio. We booked the studio. And then I think you followed that up by telling me that once again, the studio is booked.

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, we all learned. So a lesson for me and having people cancel on that is, is you always want to maximize the highest probability for successful outcome. And so for me, when you tell people that you booked the studio, that means you've now spent money. And I'll say it's non refundable.

[Greg Kinnear]

You didn't use the word non refundable.

[Randall Kaplan]

I do it before, by the way.

[Greg Kinnear]

It was certainly implied.

[Randall Kaplan]

Okay, all right.

[Greg Kinnear]

I was like, he's not getting his money back.

[Randall Kaplan]

Job. It worked. But.

[Greg Kinnear]

And if I'm being honest, I did wake up this morning and I did think to myself, shit, I got a lot going on. Do you think, Do I. I do. I have to go. And then I thought, wonder how much that studio is that I'd have to reimburse him for. Turns out, not that much, I guess, but. But no, I. I would definitely wouldn't. Wouldn't have done that. That just. That's not in my view.

[Randall Kaplan]

I appreciate it, but talk to us about punctuality and then your. Your talk show, what happened there due to. Due to lack of punctuality?

[Greg Kinnear]

Are you talking about, like, when I was in Greece?

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, when you were in Greece, you.

[Greg Kinnear]

You had a. I had a radio show. I had a RA Called School Days with Greg Kinnear. And I went in and I spun records and talked shit about the principal and stuff. And yes, the show started after American Top 40 with Casey Kasem. So as soon as the countdown, as I was on the bus riding from northern Athens to down to the air force base in Glada, I'd be listening to the number three song on American Top 40, and I'd be like, oh, shit, I still got another 20 minutes to get. So I tended to cut it a little close. And I know that sounds like lack of professionalism, but I did. I found that when I started Talk Soup I found the same type of thing, which was I like to get to the show. I'd like to come in here, like to do it. You know, I don't like a lot of buildup and time, and I feel like it kind of lets air out of the balloon. So I do feel like creatively, in a lot of the work that I've done, if I can make it a little tight, I tend to add a little chaos to it.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

And for some reason that helps me creatively. It's. It's not a smart thing to do. I don't recommend it to people. I don't recommend it to my kids. But if I'm being honest, I think there's a little bit of that at play to. For. So that. Does that let me off the hook? No, but I do think there's a little bit of that in everything I do.

[Randall Kaplan]

You were fired for being late by.

[Greg Kinnear]

A. I don't like this. I don't like this reoccurring theme that you're building into the podcast lot.

[Randall Kaplan]

These are lessons.

[Greg Kinnear]

But yes, being accurate, then, yes, there might be a lesson in that. Yes, it's true.

[Randall Kaplan]

You're early, you're on time. You're on time, you're late. That was well said by many people. Cliff Kingsbury, the football coach, was my third guest. He said on the show his dad was served in the armed forces and he taught him that at a young age. I believe that. I also believe in getting somewhere. What was the early. You're on time. If you're on time, you're late.

[Greg Kinnear]

Never got that. I didn't get that from my dad. So that is a good thing. I'm gonna. I'm gonna bring that home. I'm gonna put it. Put it up on the big board.

[Randall Kaplan]

Chalkboard and footnote for me on your.

[Greg Kinnear]

I will. I will credit you on that.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I got the coat and then I got the. And then I have this, too.

[Greg Kinnear]

But again, I. I also find, like, you know, if you go to the airport and, you know, for me, the perfect, perfect catching of a flight situation is my foot's coming onto that plane and they are closing that door right behind me. That is actually just used to be, for me, absolute joy. That has changed as I've gotten later in life, I do find myself not liking the chaos as much anymore. And I do like to be. I was actually here before 1259. I was right down the street. So I was actually recovering 10 or 15 minutes early. So I think I have found that ultimately that mechanism that was in me as a young kid. And when I was starting out and bringing chaos was something that I used, it fueled me. But I don't like it as much anymore. This has turned into more therapy than it has a podcast, right?

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, I'm enjoying the therapy. Right.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay. Okay.

[Randall Kaplan]

So you go, you go to college, University of Arizona.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

And you thought you were going to be a drama major. And then second day of class, what happened? And how much influence can somebody negative have on our confidence and our career?

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, I had a teacher who pointed out that less than 2% of you are ever going to make a living being actors. And I think thought, okay, that's not good. And I, like I said, I didn't really have a, you know, game board of where I was going, but I didn't like those numbers. And I, and I also didn't. And I guess it was negative, but I also think it was. There was a factual element to what he was saying. And, and by the way, I don't know if it was 2% or 4%, but it was a, it was a, a reminder from him, for better or for worse, that this was just a fact. The number of people that were pursuing that particular career path were only going to find this number was what was going to find success, and the other ones were going to have to find alternative means of employment. And I just thought that whether it was negative or whether it was meant as a kick in the ass, I don't know, maybe the guy was just sour grapes. But I remember thinking, wow, I'm glad I knew that. And it did. It made me think twice about, you know, because I, at that point I was kind of interested in acting, but I wasn't really sure if that was the career. I ended up switching to broadcast journalism there and, and I was glad I did. And I don't know that it, you know, I don't. Not sure what that was leading to either. But I ended up liking the classes that I took in that area a lot more anyway.

[Randall Kaplan]

So you switched to broadcast journalism. Obviously, you're very easy with people. You seem like a good conversationalist. And at some point, was it your dream to sell copper and PVC piping and tell us about that fun experience?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, no, it wasn't, that was just. That was my first job. Like everybody out of college, I, I ended up up in the Bay Area just with a buddy of mine's brother at a development company. And I was, yes, trying to, trying to fill the, fill the hours. And I was a purchasing agent for a development company, and I would buy PVC and copper wire and light bulbs. And I was a, a, I was a purchasing agent. And I did not get fired from that job, you'd be happy to know. But I did finally, after six months, feel like this wasn't my future, and I left and came back to la. And in that time, full circle is where I ended up, you know, having a, Having an audition for, for, you know, early E days. And, and that was kind of, you know, my transitional point.

[Randall Kaplan]

In today's day and age. A lot of parents tell their kids, you're not happy in your job, you should leave. You know, if it's really that miserable, you know, it's. It's time to leave.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Mark Cuban was on my show. He said, if you can't be successful with a difficult boss, you're not going to make it in the real world. You got to learn to deal with difficult people. You were yelled at in that job constantly. And my question to you on this is, is being yelled at and being able to succeed in an environment like that necessary ingredient to our success?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I agree with Mark Cuban on that. I think that your ability to be able to manage adversity and kind of deal with unexpected behavior in difficult situations is something that is, you know, not hope for. It's. It's mandatory. You have to be able to kind of deal with that. And I do think that, you know, there, there is a, you know, in the environment today is. It's a little softer approach. You know, I think it comes out very different today. Everybody has to win an award kind of mentality. And I'm not a kind of dad or parent or guy who thinks, hey, you know, you need to get back in there and pull your bootstraps up. But I do think that it's good that pendulum swun so far from over to a side of nurturing and caring and, you know, puppies and unicorns that we, we are not benefiting from allowing a child to. Or a kid or a young man or young woman to build up some sort of callous, some sort of resilience. You know, you have to kind of fight your way through some difficulty and adversity, and you have to kind of deal with a lot of. And a lot of different expected things and I. Unexpected things and a lot of negative people and negative behavior or difficult people. That's part of the job. And, and, you know, it's like going to a doctor's office and getting a shot. It's no fun. But after you've done it, you get better at it. You know, the next one's a little easier. And I do think that there's, you know, you just have to write it out. Obviously, there's, There is, you know, is a point where that no longer is, you know, sustainable. I would support somebody saying, listen, I tried this for six months and the son of a bitch is still throwing, you know, paperweights at me. Might be time to look for another job opportunity. But I do think you have to, as best you can, try to try to ride out the storm of early employment. And it can be very messy and very disappointing. I think, as a young person, because there's a lot of people, older people who are like, negative ideas or they're kind of, you know, they have, I don't know, behavior qualities that may surprise you and you are going to face that. And unfortunately, you're just going to have to deal with it.

[Randall Kaplan]

Your first, I guess, real job in la, you work for Empire Pictures, which. And you answered phones and got coffee. So can you tell us about. And I think they're. This was a. They made B movies, you know, Roger Corbin, the king of B movies. And their hit was the Reanimator.

[Greg Kinnear]

That was our, that was our Titanic.

[Randall Kaplan]

That was your titanic, which grossed $50,000. How much did that gross?

[Greg Kinnear]

Way more like a hundred thousand.

[Randall Kaplan]

Okay, 100,000.

[Greg Kinnear]

No, I don't know. I don't know really dollar for dollar or what the, what the comparison would be by today's market value. But I, I would suspect it would have been like a. By today's marketplaces, it might have made 15 or $20 million, which, which is not nothing.

[Randall Kaplan]

So. So you've talked a little bit about movie time, but tell us about what you, the, the, the tape you made. You in. You met Justine.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

So you're at Empire Page. You meet Justine, your sound producer. They're dating.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

You make this tape for mtv. You don't get the job.

[Greg Kinnear]

Correct.

[Randall Kaplan]

And then you're still at Empire Pictures. But walk us through kind of that and how you got to your next job at talks. Who. But what I really want you to focus on too is you tell the story about the disappointment and rejection you had when you didn't get the MTV job.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I mean, I kind of went there. I think I had a slightly protective device early on, which was, I'm Scotch Irish, so a little bit like, nah, this probably won't work out. This will never happen anyway. You know, if you keep low expectations, it can be quite it can be quite empowering. Did Mark Cuban say that he said. Or did he phrase it a different way?

[Randall Kaplan]

He phrased it a little bit. Whatever.

[Greg Kinnear]

Whatever, Mark. But anyway, that's, let's call him now and we'll put him on.

[Randall Kaplan]

Put him on speaker.

[Greg Kinnear]

It's true though, I'm being honest. I, you know, I, I went in there with low expectations. I, I did not go in there with the. I'm gonna go get the MTV job, BJ man job. I did not go in there with it. I went in there with the idea of like, wow, this would be incredible and I'll do the best that I can and we'll see what happens. And. And I didn't get it. And I knew that pretty early on. But as I say, I had a nice tape out of it. This other channel was starting up and I knew a person who was working there who said, you should drop that tape off. So there wasn't really a great story. I dropped the tape off and I went in and I sat down and they called me back for, actually, I had to do an audition. So I went in and basically auditioned to be, be a host. And I was called back to do it again. And I felt like that went well too. And each of these times it was always done on my lunch break because then I had to speed back up to the former Gold's Gym, I think is what it is now, on the corner of like La Brea between Sunset and Vineland or something. Anyway, that building there, for you locals, that was Empire Pictures. And you said, I got coffee and I answered phones. I also placed ads. The idea of this low budget film company was, it was back in the video days and if you could get a movie into a theater like Reanimator or Space Lutz and the Slammer or the Imp or whatever you were selling, if you could get it to play first in the theater, it's video value, Charlie Band, the CEO, would tell you, was of much greater value. So I actually worked in the department where they would try and place an ad in the Des Moines Register that Reanimator was going to be playing on Friday night in the Wembley theater and at 7:00 and 10:00. And so that had to all be done through a phone. There was no cell phones at the time. So that was kind of how you set it up. And that was my job. In addition to getting coffee and getting yelled at and you know that type, picking up Danish here and there.

[Randall Kaplan]

Lots of times in our career we think we're doing something, it turns into something else. I want to talk about Talk Soup and how it was supposed to be something, it turned into something else. I want you to talk about Lulu and Topsy Curvy, the man who was raped by an alien in Coco.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, right, right. Well, those were. Yeah, those. That was Best of the Worst. That was a show I created with my friend Mark. And we actually sold that to Peter Chernin was at Fox actually at the time, and we took it in there and I ended up. I was just going in there to sell it as a show and they ended up saying, hey, why don't you. You host it? So I ended up hosting the show too. It was called Best of the Worst. And we would look at the worst jobs of all time, the worst inventions of all time, the worst shows of all time, of which ours was one. But it was a fun little, I think 11 episodes or something. And it was early reality television. And so, yeah, we had this. I would go and interview Dr. Delgado or somebody who, through hypnosis could make a woman. Woman's breasts enlarge. And these were the kinds of stories that I would have to travel around and cover for our prestigious Best of the Worst program. And it didn't really turn into. I guess it did turn into something. It morphed into just kind of a sort of a reality show that was looking at the worst of everything. And it. Eventually we brought an audience in and it did change in its form a little bit. Talk Soup, same thing. When I started Talk Soup, it was going to be a very sort of sober look at today's talk shows featuring Sally Jesse Raphael, Geraldo Rivera, Richard Bey. And eventually we were looking at these clips of these daytime shows and we realized, realized this, this has. Is insane. It's just insane. And eventually the show turned into a real kind of comedy show that was very, very loose in format. And we'd come up with gags and we occasionally did it with a live audience. And it just really morphed into a sort of stream of consciousness early. I guess it was ahead of the way you look at your Instagram feed and just kind of flip through a bunch of clips of things. This was early clips of what people had been talking about that day on television and the stuff that was happening. I don't think most people living their lives out working jobs and stuff were aware that this was happening on the hours of, you know, 9:00am to 3:00 in the afternoon, that these shows were just absolutely morphing into insanity. And so we were just taking clip after clip of every imaginable topic you can think of and we'd put nine or ten of them together and I'd make smart ass comments about it and.

[Randall Kaplan]

Wasn't supposed to be a comedy show.

[Greg Kinnear]

It wasn't supposed to be a comedy show. It's supposed to be, like I say, a very sober series. You know, look at these, these shows. And in fact, I don't think even the first of all, nobody knew we were on the. The people at E didn't even know the show was on the air for about a year and a half and then we actually started to get a rating and then we started to get an audience and then we started to get mail and it really did turn into something. But you know, I'm, I'm convinced that it was the fact that we were left alone to just kind of let it because it was just kind of this loose organism just left to kind of cut up and make fun in the room every day and all of us busting up who were making it. It just kind of took on its own organic chemistry and that led to a really successful run of the show and to a real big audience for a place called E. You did it for three years. Three years.

[Randall Kaplan]

And then your contract was up. They offered to pay you a ton of money. At least back then. Yeah, you're going to be the highest paid person on the show. You said no and you didn't have a backup plan. So what is the lesson? Would you advise your own kids to quit their job get when they're offered a lot of money and out of a backup plan?

[Greg Kinnear]

I remember my dad being like, are you sure you want to leave this talk soup thing, man. It's really fun. Funny.

[Randall Kaplan]

It's funny. You're getting paid well. You're becoming famous and well known.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah. So that really landed with me. I was like, really? You know. But no, I felt like I had done it for three years and I felt like it was, I just didn't, I couldn't imagine that, that, you know, the, the future of Jerry Springer was bright. I just had to, I believed that I had witnessed. I come in there at a time where this was happening. I was as stunned as I think the audience we were showing these clips to every night were. It was fun to riff on. And I think after three years I just thought to myself, I don't see this as really the future for me anyway. And it wasn't really an act of bravery as much as it was just an act of you know, feeling confident that I had done it and it was time to move on. And also at that time, at the end of that year, that broadcast year, I didn't have the offer yet, but I had met with the director, Sidney Pollock a couple of times who had talked to me about playing Harrison Ford's brother in this movie called Sabrina. And that was in the back of my mind, I guess I was thinking, what if Jerry sees me, if Sidney sees me on the show, is he seriously gonna offer me this role in this movie? So maybe that was playing around in the back of my head. But the truth is, Sidney had actually seen me on Talk Soup, and that was how I probably ever got the audition to begin with. So, listen, it opened as many doors. It opened a lot of doors. Do it.

[Randall Kaplan]

We'll come back to Sydney and Sabrina in a minute. But I want to talk about as an actor, It's a catch 22. You need an agent to book a movie, but you need to get a role to get an agent. So can you talk about, what's your advice to all the actors here on how to get an agent who don't have a big role or aren't getting parts? Is that possible?

[Greg Kinnear]

I honestly, I am asked about that periodically and I don't really know how to answer it because the environments just change so much. I mean, I think getting noticed is very difficult. I think the environment for young people starting out probably, certainly if their pursuit is to be an actor, it's a great vocation. But it is harder than ever, at least in the mainstream, to find maybe a job or an opportunity. But I think by the same token, as we sit here talking in this space and, you know, you think of the Internet and the opportunities that that is opening up for people. I mean that by today's standards, you know, I definitely would have started on YouTube or something. I was on a. It was a technically a real life cable television channel, but comparatively, by today's standards, I probably started on like a YouTube channel type operation. And there is no end to what that can do for a person trying to get noticed and get started. And I know there's plenty of success stories out there from people using it. So that area seems to me like a good one to get started. But in terms of then parlaying that into an opportunity with an agent, I just don't know how that works. That's for your next episode, talking to my agent.

[Randall Kaplan]

Right.

[Greg Kinnear]

Speaking of agents, he's out here right now. Rick, come on in here. No, sorry. Rick Kurtzman.

[Randall Kaplan]

Rick Kurtzman at caa. Yeah, so my daughter works at caa. She just graduated college, we'll call it. CAA is the best agency, talent agency in the world. Shout out to Bianca. Shout out to caa. How important are agents to actors success?

[Greg Kinnear]

I don't, it's always hard to, it's hard to qualify anything obviously, in this business, you know, because you don't know when you meet somebody, how did that, you know, how did that affect your opportunity? And, you know, so it's always difficult. But I would say that, you know, I have found that, you know, I work with, you know, oh, Benji and Dar, shout out to those guys. I work with a great team over there and, you know, they're excellent. And the, you know, difference between working with agents who really know, care about you and effectively are on it versus, you know, ones who aren't is probably a pretty big, big, you know, that's a pretty big chasm. I, I, But I don't know exactly how to qualify other than for me, it's a great, I have great confidence in the people I get to work with over at caa and I have great confidence in what they are professional, they, they know how to execute. I know if I have a question about something, I know if I want to talk about something, I mean, hell, you probably have to be half a shrink, you know, to, to deal with, you know, talent in, in this world. And, and they're all really good at that. They're really good at, at, at just being there.

[Randall Kaplan]

So the only reason I know how this works is because I live in la, I have friends in the business at all, all that business. I, well, she's brand new, so she's been at CAA for two months.

[Greg Kinnear]

She's in, Is she in the training program?

[Randall Kaplan]

Branding group. So she doesn't want to be in.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, branding, yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Right. So she works on a lot of corporate clients. She's not even allowed to tell me what she's doing. They're very strict on confidentiality. Okay, but one of.

[Greg Kinnear]

If I want to start the, the Greg Kinnear golf clubs and create the Greg Kinnear golf brand, I need to.

[Randall Kaplan]

Call your daughter, so explain to people. Get out of here, man. You just took another, you just took another note nugget out of the, you just took another rabbit out of the hat.

[Greg Kinnear]

What with something else. Were we going to do this later on?

[Randall Kaplan]

A lot of. A lot of.

[Greg Kinnear]

So tell me a little bit about the importance of hair, would you believe, do you think? Let me turn the tables. On you, Randall.

[Randall Kaplan]

Okay.

[Greg Kinnear]

How important do you think hair is.

[Randall Kaplan]

In my profession?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yes.

[Randall Kaplan]

As an entrepreneur.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yes.

[Randall Kaplan]

And now. So I have a venture capital investment firm.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, I know I have. We'll be getting into that pretty soon. I got a movie that needs a little support, if you know what I mean.

[Randall Kaplan]

I got a small real estate company. I have my main job. Moneymaker, I hope. Next billion dollar opportunity.

[Greg Kinnear]

Now I'm listening.

[Randall Kaplan]

Company called Sandy S A N D E E. And we're building.

[Greg Kinnear]

This is beaches. This is the study of beaches all over the globe.

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, we've created the world's largest beach resource for the 5 trillion dollar beach tourism business that doesn't even include the local tourism business. So there's tens of billions of beach visits around the world. There's no definitive resource. We've cataloged over 100 categories of data for more than 100,000 beaches. 140,000 beaches now in 212 countries.

[Greg Kinnear]

So am I going to see. How do you film them? How do you capture the. Is that. What I'm going to see is I'm going to. I'll get to know all the information about them, but I'll also get to see the beach, I'm assuming.

[Randall Kaplan]

Right. So people want to see what the beach looks like before they go. Everybody has had a bad experience on a. On a vac. And this is not. This is valuable, cherished time. These are expensive days for you. Right? People get a week vacation, two weeks. They plan. The average vacation is four days, four and a half days. You're going to a beach and it's the wrong beach.

[Greg Kinnear]

So drones. Drones. You and your company are responsible for the drones on New Jersey shoreline. That's driving the country crazy.

[Randall Kaplan]

Exactly. Yeah. Those are not our nighttime drones. And those are. Those drones are about this big. Our drones, our DJI, you know, I, I fly a Mavic 2 Pro. Yeah, it folds up into a neat case. But no, we always have pain points in building companies. One of our pain points is finding photos for 140,000 beaches throughout the world. It's a very difficult process because we have to abide by strict copyright laws. Right. We don't steal copyrights. And so big mistake. I mean, we, we would never do that. Right. I'm a tech guy. I mean, it's, it's, it's wrong. Wrong. But we have to find all these photos and they have to have the proper commercial use licenses. So that's a huge task. But the answer to your question is yes, we have about 50,000, 60,000. How many photos do we have now in the database? Photos? Yeah. 180,000 photos now for 140,000 beaches. Well, we don't have one per beach. I mean, some beaches we have 10 or 15 photos.

[Greg Kinnear]

For one beach, you've got 120,000 photos of. And it's well documented.

[Randall Kaplan]

They're all great. They're all great, by the way. We've added those. But explain how it works. I mean, you're an actor and you're very established, you're very successful now. You have one of the top agents at ca. Rick is very well known. So walk us through how it works. An agent will get a script, will say, hey, this is great for Craig, right? He's going to. There's someone in the mail room, by the way, who's reading that script first, right?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

They may or may not know where they're doing right. That that script will get sent to the agent, you know, junior agent, then the senior agent. It take. It goes through various reads, and then Rick will call you up and say, hey, Greg, I really want you to look at this. And then you read it. I mean, is that the process? Just. Just walk us through how it worked at the beginning of your career and.

[Greg Kinnear]

How it works now hasn't really changed that much. I, by the way, Benji and Dar, who also work with me, you know, I can get a call from many of them. Some work in film, Some television is a person who handles, like, podcasts. So there's a group, always a team, and they'll call and say, maybe give a call about a script that they have read and is being produced at so and so place, whatever details are relevant to it in terms of who's attached and kind of the director is and who the writer is. I might get kind of a brief overview, and then eventually you get it sent and then it's. It's the process of, you know, reading it. And usually in, you know, something I like, you know, or something that seems like it's coming together in a good way, you know, it might involve a meeting or with a director. Yeah, sure, sure. I mean, the director ultimately is the key to anything. You know, I mean, it's a little different in television because the showrunner is also is, you know, probably more the person that you're talking to. But with a film, yeah, it's the director. And it's just a conversation and that converse at that point. It's the, you know, the rope's been cut and you're on a boat with somebody else now, and you're talking about creatively. Well, how would this happen? And what is this? What's. What's it about? And what am. What's. What are you asking me to do? What am I being. Why am I being a part of this? And what can I bring? Or. Or maybe me advocating a little strongly about what I can bring if I really like it. And then. And then either the thing sets sail or it doesn't. And, and that's kind of the. The process. But. But I, I, you know, so it's not particularly complicated. That's. That's pretty much it.

[Randall Kaplan]

I never answered your question about my hair.

[Greg Kinnear]

No, you didn't.

[Randall Kaplan]

I'm not a politician, but the answer is, now that I am on camera for the first time, it is a little awkward.

[Greg Kinnear]

We've done a lot of these. This isn't your first time.

[Randall Kaplan]

No, but it's still. What, What I, What I noticed is that, I mean, obviously I want to look good.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Right. So my hair does matter. You always want to put your best foot forward.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

I mean, as part of the preparation, I'm writing a book on preparation called Extreme Preparation. And one of the things that we talk about, it's. That I write about and I coach about. It's amazing how many people show up at an interview or a meeting without taking a look in the mirror and seeing that their hair is put together. I've seen people just all over the place. If you can't look in the mirror and know how you look, and you can take two minutes to fix your hair. Hair.

[Greg Kinnear]

Have you. Have you ever, like, come across anyone, like, a. So unprofessional, they would just show up to one of your podcasts in, like, a hat and think that a podcast was just, like, two microphones and wouldn't even think to ask you, hey, are we going to be in front of a giant camera so that I can actually not look like I'm falling out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Or have you found that most actors would actually asked. They would have learned lessons, and they would know to call you ahead of time and say, am I going to be on camera? And that you could prep them? That's probably more your experience, right?

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, except for the actors making $30 million a movie, those people show up.

[Greg Kinnear]

With clean, clean, scrubbed, groomed, ready to go. Interesting.

[Randall Kaplan]

So let's talk about Sidney Pollard.

[Greg Kinnear]

What do you think about the drones back in New Jersey? As a drone flyer? What is your take on that situation?

[Randall Kaplan]

Situation number one, the. The laws are what they are. You can fly Your drone.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, I know.

[Randall Kaplan]

Within 400ft.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, totally.

[Randall Kaplan]

But the crazy thing is you have to be in eye contact of your drone at all times.

[Greg Kinnear]

Are you allowed to fly it at night?

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, you are. Okay.

[Greg Kinnear]

There's no restriction on it, but.

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, there aren't some. And you can't fly in there. And airport. Each location is different. You can't fly within five miles of an airport. You need a commercial license if it's for commercial production. And to get that license, it's basically a pilot's license. You got to study. There's a test FAA certificate. So that's. That's a real. That's a real thing, but.

[Greg Kinnear]

Sound like mayorkas. Here's my question. What the hell's going on in the East Coast?

[Randall Kaplan]

I, I, I have no idea.

[Greg Kinnear]

You really are apologizing.

[Randall Kaplan]

These are. These are. These are big drones. So this is not Randy Kaplan. First of all, my drones won't work.

[Greg Kinnear]

These are big drones. How big? That doesn't seem like that big of a.

[Randall Kaplan]

My drone is this big. Oh, okay, right. A hobbyist.

[Greg Kinnear]

You didn't want to have to give that up, did you? On the broadcast.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, these are my drones.

[Greg Kinnear]

Disappointing.

[Randall Kaplan]

Don't come arrest me now. These are. These are my drones. I'm filming infrared.

[Greg Kinnear]

The value of the beaches thing just.

[Randall Kaplan]

I'm taking nighttime images of every airport I know.

[Greg Kinnear]

You were shooting these beaches with a pack of cigarettes, for God's sakes. I was impressed. Best. All right, so you have little miniature drones. These are bigger drones. They're very big, but they're not military size.

[Randall Kaplan]

No. Well, some military drones are that size as well. Now they're building military drones of that size in Ukraine, where a drone that size can actually shoot a missile.

[Greg Kinnear]

So you think it's just people up. Hey, I'll take, like, you, You. You're a drone enthusiast. You think people are just like, hey, I'm gonna go fly my drone. There's a little bit of talk about it.

[Randall Kaplan]

I, I think they're. A lot of these drone sightings are really aircraft. Aircraft, helicopters, you know, you can't see far enough. And I do think a lot of them are drones. I don't understand and don't believe that the government, either local or the US Government, knows nothing about these. You can't fly a drone over a military installation, which is happening in different parts of the country, without knowing what's there. What's scary about it is drones are often not picked up by the radar. So you can fly beneath the radar. You can fly into A military base these days. Unless you put drone jam, jamming equipment technology.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Which is out there as well.

[Greg Kinnear]

Right. Which would prohibit a drone from being able to fly.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah. There's basically a wall.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, why don't they go put up a. Why don't we put one of those up in this area where everybody is obsessing?

[Randall Kaplan]

I don't know the answer to that question, but it may have something to do that. It may interfere with an aircraft, Although I'm not sure if that's the case. But if I fly my drone from a fly zone to a no fly zone, it's like it hits a wall.

[Greg Kinnear]

Right.

[Randall Kaplan]

Like you could fly your drone at 20 miles per hour. It won't drop. It will not drop, but it will hit the fence and it won't go anymore.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, I see. Oh, I see.

[Randall Kaplan]

There are some technology that can drop a drone, but, you know, a normal no fly zone won't do that. And there's air maps, et cetera, et cetera.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

So it's. There are technological answers here.

[Greg Kinnear]

Why are you a drone enthusiast? What makes you a drone? Enthusiastic enthusiast.

[Randall Kaplan]

So beaches are my happy place.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I love photography. I'm the guy that takes 500 photos on a family. Family. And, you know, the kids bitch and moan on it. Right. And then later, they're so happy that pictures. They love us. Have all these photos. And so someone introduced me to a drone years ago. Jason Spielman, meeting with you next week. Can't wait to hear what we're talking about. And I said, okay, well, this is great. I saw the picture. And I had seen drone pictures, you know, before. They're beautiful images. You can see everything. Thing I thought, I think I have a good eye for it. And I started taking drone photos of beaches. I like how they look. People like them. And when I go on a beach vacation, I travel with two drones and I have a coffee table book. And I've blown the surprise. But I am giving it to you as a thank you for doing my show. It's called bliss. It sold 10,000 copies.

[Greg Kinnear]

I don't pay for it, right?

[Randall Kaplan]

No, it's free. It's free.

[Greg Kinnear]

It doesn't matter.

[Randall Kaplan]

I saved you 29.95, by the way. If you could post all your followers and tell all the directors and a list actors and the famous people, you know, that this makes a phenomenal gift to go to somebody's house. Better than a bottle of wine. It's unique. That'd be very appreciated.

[Greg Kinnear]

You're trying to make money off of.

[Randall Kaplan]

Your gift to me, you know, Overachiever. I, I, I do it, I do it because, because, you know, it. It's a labor of love, by the way. That's cool.

[Greg Kinnear]

I actually love drones, and I've never flown one. And I, Well, I mean, I have, I used to have like a one little crappy one I had with the kids one time, but I'll take a fight, get it.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, it actually, it's hard. You know, I probably, I probably have a thousand flight hours. Probably more than that. Two or three thousand flight hours.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

But it's hard.

[Greg Kinnear]

I see it. We use it. You know, we. In a movie or tell anything now is like you. They're always pulling drone drones out in order to get a shot of something. And when those guys come in, they're so organized and the stuff they have is fantastic.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

And it's just. You can ask anything you want, and they'll give you every kind of answer. But the, Their ability to give you a smooth aerial shot of almost anything is. They're amazing.

[Randall Kaplan]

So Sydney Pollux from Lafayette, Indiana, close to you.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

You get invited to audition for Sabrina with Harrison Ford, who then. Then was probably the biggest movie star in the world.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yep.

[Randall Kaplan]

Julia Ormond. I remember seeing the movie and thinking, oh, my gosh, Legends of the Fall. One of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

I thought, oh, my gosh, that's great. I said, God, I one day I'd love to meet a beautiful movie star like that. And sure enough, here we are walking out of Starbucks one day. There's Julia. You know, I met her at school. Our kids were. Were friends.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

She was married to a guy, and I was married to my ex wife. And we're talking and was like, hey, hey, what are you up to? Hey, Divorce. Oh, I'm divorced too. So I had a chance to get to know her a little bit. And, you know, I never told her this, by the way, so I'm gonna tell her that we're doing the show. I'm sure she'll watch it, but I think so.

[Greg Kinnear]

She watches everything I do.

[Randall Kaplan]

I was. And maybe I said this. You, Julie. I'm not 100% sure. I don't remember this, but I was infatuated with her. I thought, this is incredible. But Sabrina, back to the movie. Sabrina was an incredible movie.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

A remake of a movie. And you said that this was really your first big break, but you said you weren't that nervous, even though you should have been nervous.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah. I mean, I Think so. I think I should have been. I. I was a lot. I was way more nervous, like going to lunch in New York with Harrison, you know, the first time I was. I was going to go meet him at some restaurant and grab a bite to eat and, you know, and we, and just kind of going and kind of meet, meeting him. Because I was a fan like anybody and I had seen from Star wars to, you know, all of it. Was kind of overwhelmed to finally sit down with him, but nice guy and, you know, really funny and cool and, and that was, you know, made me very comfortable. Didn't. Didn't feel. By the time I got to day one of shooting, I, I didn't. I just remember not feeling overwhelmed at the level I should have been. But I was conscious that, holy shit, this is Harrison Ford and I'm getting out of a car to go talk to him right now on a movie set.

[Randall Kaplan]

The U.S. bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023 said the average actor makes $20.50 per hour.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay.

[Randall Kaplan]

Two thirds of people coming to LA or want to be a professional actor leave after the first year. You were 31 years old when you got your that big break.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Is 31 years old too late today to become an actor? And what's your advice to people who are trying to make it? At what age is it, hey, I think you should probably not do this. It's not going to work out well.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, first of all, I would say that the business has changed drastically. Right? The industry has changed drastically. I mean, like, you know, you think of Harrison like, you know, I think he's on two TV shows now. If you had said that to me back at that time, you know, I'd have been like, what? And he should be, because there's a great audience. He's on, you know, he's great in that show shrinking. And there he is on Apple tv. The audience is there for him. And you know, but it used to be, you know, that you were kind of dedicated. You were in television or you were in film or maybe you were made documentaries. And now, now it's kind of. Everybody does everything. And it really has changed drastically since that time. And I do think that you can show up here and you probably can do a lot of different things. Hell, I did. Good God, you've gone through the whole list. I did a lot of stuff before I was ever on that set. At 31 years old, there was a lot of stuff and some of it was, know, hosting and some of it was television, but there were plenty of other jobs and oddball things that I was doing, you know, before I ever got there. So I guess coming out and trying to get an opportunity to find yourself and maybe lowering expectations of how quick it's going to happen. Are you going to die of choking there? I can see.

[Randall Kaplan]

I don't know what happened Here, here.

[Greg Kinnear]

Ladies, gentlemen, Greg Kinnear killed CPR today.

[Randall Kaplan]

Actually, I'd rather have CPR from Michelle than that. No offense. Mustache is not my thing.

[Greg Kinnear]

Mouth to mouth. Have you ever had mouth to mouth?

[Randall Kaplan]

No.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay.

[Randall Kaplan]

No. But if I did have it, I hope it's my wife or someone who looks like my wife.

[Greg Kinnear]

I understand, I understand. I've played a doctor in a number of shows. I think you're going to be fine. Fine. How are you now? Okay.

[Randall Kaplan]

I feel good.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

Any who. If we could just bring it.

[Randall Kaplan]

Thinking about Matt's mustache and I'm just like, just never going to cough again. Never going to cough again.

[Greg Kinnear]

I just played the head of a fire department in Dennis Lehane's next show. We did a show called Blackbird and then we followed it up with another true crime story. And it takes place in the world of Art Larson and did it with Taron Edgerton. A lot of the same people. And I have a mustache and it's pretty good mustache. That's a very good mustache.

[Randall Kaplan]

We have so much material to cover today. And I had cut out the Dennis Lehane part of this.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

One of my favorite. I love fiction.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

One of the. One of my goals on my bucket list is to have a best selling fiction fiction book.

[Greg Kinnear]

But wouldn't that be great? I, I get, I get it. I'm with you right there.

[Randall Kaplan]

And he's absolutely phenomenal writer.

[Greg Kinnear]

Have you ever written a chapter?

[Randall Kaplan]

I wrote a book. So. All right, we're gonna digress right here. I'm never sure this story either. But for years I worked on a fiction book called Election Day. And it's about a third year law student who finds himself involved in and motivated to solve a series of murders. And there was a guy named Larry Kirschbaum, I don't know if you know that name, who ran Warner Books for 40 years. He was the Richard Lovett of the book business. Right. He was there forever. He had everybody James Patterson. And we were on a board at the University of Michigan together. And I said, hey, Larry. And we became friendly. I said, hey, Larry, I'm writing this book. And it took a lot of years. I would come into work every day from 7 to 1. No email, no phone. My assistant wasn't allowed to talk to me. The only thing I did was I sat at the desk. When I had to go to the bathroom, I'd sit back. And when my kids were younger, they would say, daddy happy writing. That would be what they said in the morning when I left. And so I finally sent some pages to Larry. He said, send it when I was ready. And you know you're so nervous, right? You got one shot. If you suck, he's not going to read the rest of the book.

[Greg Kinnear]

Would you send him the first pages of the book?

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, I sent him the first pages of the book.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay.

[Randall Kaplan]

And he said, I really like it. Send the whole thing. So I sent him the whole thing. And during this process, he left Warner Books to become an agent.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, boy.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I'm like, oh, I waited too late. I blew my chance.

[Greg Kinnear]

You missed your moment.

[Randall Kaplan]

But then I thought, okay, well, I need a book agent anyway. It would have been better if he was still CEO of Warner Books, but so he read and he said, I love it. You're a great writer. I want you to be my client. So I was Larry, Gary Kirschbaum's first non published author client. He gave me some notes and I was so excited. He gave me. And then he had someone that worked with him at the agency. They sent me their notes together and they said, okay, here's what you got to do. And they send me. So I did a rewrite. It took three months. Now I was working from like seven to four every day. I mean, there's only so much you can take mentally to stay sharp. So I did this for three months and I wrote it. And, you know, like, I was so happy, my wife and I celebrated. You know, she got me a nice dinner. I think she had a private chef come to the house. You know, this was like a really big moment. Yeah. And so I was waiting, waiting, and Larry calls me and he said, you know, this has gone downhill a lot. He said, the changes are not good and you need to think about this book. And at that point I thought, you know, I could have hired a ghostwriter to help me with, you know, my book. James Patterson has a lot of ghostwriters coming out of his books.

[Greg Kinnear]

This chapter just things.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, fix it.

[Greg Kinnear]

So that's what I need, some ghostwriters.

[Randall Kaplan]

So, Larry, I said, and I didn't want to hire someone. It's like, I've got money. And that wasn't the right way to do it. I wasn't going to use my money. And have someone else help me write my book. I want to make it on my own. I was stubborn about it. It. And Larry said, you need someone to help you with the book editor. So I said, can you recommend somebody? He said, well, you get, you know, you can call this guy, Dick Merrick. I said, will you introduce me for whatever reason? He said, no. I said, okay, so. But he. He gave me his contact information. Dick Merrick was older, wasn't taking new clients, was very gruff on the phone. Hey, I have this book, et cetera, et cetera. You know where. You know where. I'm not taking new clients. I'm on the book business. Where'd you get my name? Larry Kirschbaum. Larry Kirschbaum told you to call me? Yes, he did. He said, send me. Send me the first 10 pages. Send the first 10 pages. He said, you're an excellent writer. Send me 100 pages. I want to charge you $5,000 to read that page. I'm like, oh, fuck, I got to spend 100,000.

[Greg Kinnear]

Wait, he's going to charge you $5,000 to read the 100 pages?

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, to read the 100 pages and give me comments on it. That's fair. I mean, whatever.

[Greg Kinnear]

But I. I'll do it for 2000.

[Randall Kaplan]

Okay.

[Greg Kinnear]

If you're ever in that situation.

[Randall Kaplan]

So. So I sent him. It's like, okay, send me the whole book. So I did. I was excited to get his comments back. And the comments were exactly the same as Larry's. And by the way, this. He had written two of James Patterson's books as the ghostwriter. James Patterson now puts the writer on the book with it, with him. Dave Ellis, a class mind of mine from Northwestern Law School, Shout out to Dave, is now a best selling because he writes with Jim Patterson. James Patterson, who's the most successful fiction writer of all time. He makes like $70 million a year.

[Greg Kinnear]

I'm uncomfortable with all this success, but go ahead.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, so I have that book, and I need to get back to my book. But I got extremely busy. I got divorced. Divorced, right. I was taking care of three kids part, you know, part time, my career, just the responsibilities. But I will go back to that book. My book, Extreme Preparation is going to come out in 2025. That's a how to.

[Greg Kinnear]

So you're telling me that you. You wish you wrote, but you do write?

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, I wish you had done a.

[Greg Kinnear]

Fictional book, but you did a fiction.

[Randall Kaplan]

I. I have it. It needs a lot of work, and I'm going to.

[Greg Kinnear]

You want to. You Want to finish it?

[Randall Kaplan]

I, I, I am going to finish it.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

And do you know what the primary, what was the primary? Note that you look back and you say, okay, so their big problem, Stumbling rock. Can you, can you just describe it in a sentence?

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, one sentence. The character wasn't likable.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, that's easy. Easy to fix.

[Randall Kaplan]

You didn't, you didn't, we didn't feel sympathy for the character. This is, I, I don't want to give too much. I'm not kidding.

[Greg Kinnear]

I think it's an easy, I think that that in the world of structure and all that, that, that is much more difficult than I would think. Something like that. Although I haven't written any.

[Randall Kaplan]

I mean, yeah, I mean, we could go into the book. I want to go back to you and I want to go back to the podcast.

[Greg Kinnear]

Let's keep it on you.

[Randall Kaplan]

But okay. This has turned into the Greg Kinnear podcast. I'm glad to be a guest. Thanks for having me.

[Greg Kinnear]

I'm really good at this.

[Randall Kaplan]

All right, go ahead. So Jack Nicholson at one point was the biggest movie star in the world, Right? He was the guy everyone wanted to work with. I guess people today may say, you know, the pre Leonardo DiCaprio maybe. I'm not sure if that's the right comparison or not. Tell us about the audition you had at his house for what has been known as your biggest, best movie role. And tell us about how spaghetti was such an important part of that interview.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, yeah, it's true, it's true. My first meeting with Jack took place up at his house in Mulholland, Famous house up there. And Jim Brooks and I went up there to meet him. I hadn't met him. I was going to play Simon. He's playing Melvin. Jim thought it was a good idea to have us together. I think we maybe read through a few scenes too. And I didn't, I don't think I had the job at this point. And he was very nice. We, we read through a couple of things together and I was like assuming it was time for me to get out of the house. And he said, do you like spaghetti and meatballs? So I said, yes, I do. And so we sat down, had a little bite to eat. And I don't think that it, the particular thing on the menu played a, any sort of significant role in the events of the night, but, you know, it was very nice. We sat and had a nice bite to eat and just talked and got to know each other. And I always, I listen, there's Few, few people I can think in the world who hold quite the place in cinema that he does that are still around. And he's a remarkable actor with just an incredible body of work. And so that was a thrill to get to work with him and something that he didn't let me down. His work was fantastic on it. He took it seriously. But he was fun to work with and total pro and just everything you, you, you would want.

[Randall Kaplan]

I would ask you to do an impersonation of Jack.

[Greg Kinnear]

I said, you want spaghetti meatballs. She heard it.

[Randall Kaplan]

No, no. But, but, but, but I like you to do. Did you order the Code Red?

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, did you order the, did you order the Code Red? Is that what he says?

[Randall Kaplan]

He was asked by Cuba Gooden Jr. I think it was Cuba.

[Greg Kinnear]

Did you, you want me on that wall, right?

[Randall Kaplan]

You need me on that wal.

[Greg Kinnear]

Hey, look at that. Look at us. We should take this show on the road.

[Randall Kaplan]

You're goddamn right I did.

[Greg Kinnear]

So when you fly a drone, are you looking like at a monitor or something or. Hey, Rick.

[Randall Kaplan]

Rick. I have had some acting experience and I'd like to maybe try out for another role.

[Greg Kinnear]

Rick, it's not true. Stay away from this man, whatever you do. He has no acting skills at all. I can see. I'm kidding. Everyone's an actor. You know that. You probably go into these meetings like when you do your, your fancy get rich schemes and, and you to some degree, you have to. Everyone's acting right around the table when, when, when people are doing their, I think in these, you know, in, in finance world, which I know nothing about. I, I, and you know, there's, you know, a lot of money on the line and people go in there is acting going on all around the table. I'm, I always say to my kids, you're not, none of them have any interest in being an actor. I say, trust me, you're going to be acting whether you know it or not.

[Randall Kaplan]

That's, that's part of a lot of the coaching I do is it's all about sales. Right. And sales, you know, you're acting. Everything you do is about sales.

[Greg Kinnear]

Right.

[Randall Kaplan]

I wanted you to like me. Yep. When I met you.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yep.

[Randall Kaplan]

I think I am generally choice. I think I am generally likable. But I want, I, you know, you need people to like you, to want to work with you. You need people to like you if you want to build a team and be a leader. And all that is about sales.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

You know, my friend is a very successful investment banker and I remember He. He said to me, you know, he makes probably these days $20 million a year. And he said, I'm in sales. Michael Govan, who runs lacma, is my brother in law.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, wow.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I remember him coming over, sitting on the couch. I have a friend there for Thanksgiving dinner. And she doesn't know who he is. Right. She's not in the art world. And she says, what do you do? And he says, I work at a museum. And there was back and forth. He didn't say he was director of Back Money, said, I'm in sales for the museum. And it was very interesting. And he said, well, what's your primary job? He said, I'm a fundraiser. And it was very interesting even to hear that from someone who works in a museum, running a museum. They're in sales. And it's something a lot of people don't understand. Back to Rick Kurtzman, by the way, our pickleball coach. We have a similar pickle ball coach. Michael. I know he plays at your house. I know you're interested in playing at my house, so I'd love to invite you to play at my house, but I want you to get Matthew McConaughey on my show. So Rick, you and I can talk about that as well.

[Greg Kinnear]

I'm sitting right here.

[Randall Kaplan]

All right.

[Greg Kinnear]

Anyway, folks, we're going to wrap this up. This has been great. Randall, we want you back on the show anytime. Time, and I apologize. It's two years, two hours. I had no idea. The time goes fast when you're speaking with somebody as dynamic as myself. Go ahead.

[Randall Kaplan]

The movie is as good as it gets. And you play a gay man. And my question is, is a straight man. Is it difficult to play a gay man? What's involved in the research? And is it more difficult than a regular.

[Greg Kinnear]

No, it was very well written. Jim Brooks was the director and he's an incredible writer. And it was all there on the page. And there was a real person there who had great, you know, dignity I had great compassion for. He gets horribly maimed during the show. He loves his dog and is trying to, you know, operate his life as best he can. And there's a horribly abusive, homophobic guy living across the hall from him, and he is just dealing with a bit of a life crisis all at once. And no, I. I didn't. It wasn't difficult playing him as gay. You know, I felt like it was a, you know, lovely person and a beautiful role.

[Randall Kaplan]

One of my favorite movies of all time, by the way.

[Greg Kinnear]

Which one?

[Randall Kaplan]

As good as it Gets. It was a. It was a fantastic movie.

[Greg Kinnear]

Thank you.

[Randall Kaplan]

1998 Academy Awards. The year Titanic was all the rage. They won 11 Oscars that year. You're up for best supporting actor against Robin Williams. Detroit Country Day man graduate high school. I went to the same high school. I have an interesting Robin Williams story I'll share with you in a minute, but I've. You. You didn't win. And what. I'm always. Congratulations on the nomination, by the way. I mean, that's huge.

[Greg Kinnear]

Why didn't I win? Is that your question?

[Randall Kaplan]

No, that isn't the question question. The question is, you know, you're always sitting there watching this, right? It's a great show.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I'm always wondering, when you don't win, everyone just immediately starts clapping for. Are you sitting there saying to yourself, I didn't win, and I really. The camera's on me, that I really gotta be happy?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, you kind of do. Because before the. Before they announce it, of course, somebody comes down and gets down on a knee right in front of you with a camera about a foot away from you. So when you see, you know, the actors kind of, you know, the camera is set right in front of them, so you're very conscious that they're about to tell you whether you win or not at any of those award shows. And it's because I watched it, by the way, yesterday. Watch what?

[Randall Kaplan]

That you. Your reaction, Robin? Yes, I did. There's a YouTube video.

[Greg Kinnear]

Wow. How much time do you have on your hands between the drone business and.

[Randall Kaplan]

I wanted to see. Because I. How did I manage it, by the way? It wasn't even a millisecond by.

[Greg Kinnear]

You look so fast.

[Randall Kaplan]

You look happy. You know, it's like, if you're not happy, I kind of would think, like, that's the acting. No, I would kind of think, like, you know, you get hit in the gut, but you're probably knowing that, you know, you got to be a good sport and you got to be likable.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I guess. But there's also a fairly good chance that, you know, before you ever. Before I did that show, before I had ever gotten to that place, you. There has been Golden Globes and other things. And, you know, so I, you know, you don't go in with any expectations. So I don't think anybody ever goes in with a huge expectation one way or the other. And no one's stupid enough to go, you know, when they lose, because, again, there's a camera sitting there. So that might internally be happening for People. And there are some funny ones where people I feel like, have, like, miss, maybe like not handled as well as they should have or told a little too much of their internal story outside, even though they had a camera right there. But yeah, I mean, like, also it was a great night for me. I had my wife and I had my mom and dad came. It was a. It was a great evening for us.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

All win. And by the way, Robin Williams won that year and he was absolutely magnificent. Were you in the same years in high school?

[Randall Kaplan]

No, I wasn't.

[Greg Kinnear]

You're older than him or younger?

[Randall Kaplan]

I'm much younger, thank you.

[Greg Kinnear]

You're much younger.

[Randall Kaplan]

Okay. Sorry. No, I went to a public high school school. And then I want to go to a private high school. Very good. I was doing well in school and grades were my thing. And I visited a school called Detroit Country Day. And Robin Williams had gone there and Mori was the number one show on tv. He was a biggest TV star in the day. And he came back that day to visit. And then the lunch. Lunchtime. Everyone's in there. There's, you know, all came in.

[Greg Kinnear]

You must have been free.

[Randall Kaplan]

He came in and for 30 minutes just monologue had everyone on the floor laughing. I thought, you know, this school's kind of cool. Yeah, I think I'm gonna come here.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

So I. And interesting. I always wanted to meet him.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I saw him one day at Barney's and he was leaving Barney's. I was walking in. I said, you know what? I kind of want to go over there. And if it were today, then I would in a heartbeat. And I never had the chance. Obviously, of course, didn't do it. I did not do it.

[Greg Kinnear]

What are the lessons did we learn that day?

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, you already know. When you accosted me that day, I. I had learned my lesson.

[Greg Kinnear]

Exactly. What do you do when you're. Yeah. You were accosted. I was the perfect thing. You couldn't even. It wasn't about you trying to. The moment you didn't talk to an actor, it was like literally the actor running up to you and accosting you. It was the reverse.

[Randall Kaplan]

Apple had invested in our technology company.

[Greg Kinnear]

Really?

[Randall Kaplan]

My technology. Steve Jobs was the CEO. He had sent someone out when we attend people to try to buy the company.

[Greg Kinnear]

Did you ever meet Steve Jobs?

[Randall Kaplan]

So I'm going to tell you the lesson learned story.

[Greg Kinnear]

Sorry, I like to cut to the money shot.

[Randall Kaplan]

So they made a lot of money on the investment. They invested $25 million at a $250 million valuation at some point when you could sell your stock. I think our company had a $25 billion market value, so they made a lot of money on the stock.

[Greg Kinnear]

Wow.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I saw him, I was in Kona at the Four Seasons, and there was a property next door to it called Kona Village, where there's no phone, no nothing. Right. No TV or whatever. And he had come over to the Four Seasons for lunch one day and he was sitting far away from everybody. And my wife Laura at the time said, steve Jobs over there said, oh yeah, you know, you want to go talk to him?

[Greg Kinnear]

What year is this?

[Randall Kaplan]

This was, let's see, our company went public in 99. It would have been after his graduation speech at Stanford, which was 2006, 2007. Okay, so somewhere in that range, right.

[Greg Kinnear]

Around the iPhone time, it was before the iPhone time.

[Randall Kaplan]

I think it was before the iPhone town, right? Yeah, it for sure was before the iPhone time. I think he had given the speech.

[Greg Kinnear]

Certainly before I took my company public too. So I'm trying to think time.

[Randall Kaplan]

Your third public. Yeah, your third public. So he, you know, my wife said to me, you're gonna go talk to him? I said, no, he's with his family over there. Cleared out. I mean, there was no one within 100ft of him. And she said to me, the old Randy would have. I was already out of my seat before she said of. And I go over to the table and no one looks at me. You know, it's his wife, two kids. Yeah, I'm literally standing right here. I'm non existent at all. And I felt horrible and embarrassed. And I said, I heard he could always be.

[Greg Kinnear]

He could be a pretty tough guy.

[Randall Kaplan]

It was very rough. So I say, excuse me, Mr. Jobs, I'm ready to cast Kaplan.

[Greg Kinnear]

Is he looking at you now, co.

[Randall Kaplan]

Founder, or is he still not looking at you? He wasn't looking. And then he finally went like this. Yeah, Akamai was the name of the company. And when I mentioned it, he looked up and the first thing he said to me was, you must have made a ton of money. You know, interesting. What do I say to that? I said, yeah, we, you know, I was very grateful and lucky, you know, and that is how I feel. And I said, I know you made a lot of money as well. Apple did. They made hundreds of millions of dollars at a time where they needed it. Right. Apple had a 1% PC market share at the time. Businessweek and all these covers, magazines, Forbes said that they were going to go bankrupt. And this was before they got the Windows settlement with Microsoft for $240 million. So these things all propel the company and help them materially, financially. And I said to Steve, I said, I really enjoyed your graduation speech at Stanford. And he looked at me and he said, thank you. Look down. It was over. And I walked back to the table, you know, doing this, and that was that. So I did meet Steve Jobs. That was a story.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, man.

[Randall Kaplan]

And at least I have a story. Story to tell. I'm glad I did it.

[Greg Kinnear]

It's. At least you tell the story honestly. Do you know how many people would twist that into. So I tell Steve, and then Steve says to me, I mean, that's what everybody does. I gotta school you a little. We gotta doctor that story.

[Randall Kaplan]

Steve did say, and I. I want to be very humble about his art, but he did say I was probably the smartest person he'd ever met.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, he did say that.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah. Okay.

[Randall Kaplan]

I left that out.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay. Now I'm understand you should leave that in the story. If he said that, I think you should leave. I know you like to admit it, and you're the modesty thing and all that, but I think you should leave that fact into your. In the story. I think you should lead with it.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, well, no one would ever say that about me, but I. I do want to talk about.

[Greg Kinnear]

With all this money, do you pay people to come on these podcasts or how's this work?

[Randall Kaplan]

I've never do. No. Ever. We've had an. What's that?

[Greg Kinnear]

You ever thought about it?

[Randall Kaplan]

So the only person I ever considered considered this. Yeah. I was in Vegas shooting Dana White. And Dana White, UFC is a huge deal.

[Greg Kinnear]

Right.

[Randall Kaplan]

And so I'm in a studio, I rent one there, and they shoot all kinds of very interesting people. So everyone knows Dana's coming in?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yep.

[Randall Kaplan]

Right. So everyone is waiting, you know, their podcast finishing and whatever. Pete Rose is there, he's a guest on the show. And Pete's hanging out to meet Dana. And so Pete hangs out. You know, Dana's there. Dana says, I've got 60 minutes. He went 2 hours and 40 minutes. By the way, his assistant's blowing up my phone, which obviously I don't have my phone with me. He was supposed to be at some police league two hours ago, but I met Pete. He said he would do my show. And he had a guy who said, you know, Pete charges fifteen hundred dollars a podcast. This is how he makes money. I mean, he didn't make money.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

And I thought, you know, a lot of my viewers and. And listeners are not going to know who Pete Rose is.

[Greg Kinnear]

Right.

[Randall Kaplan]

Right. He's too old. Pete Rose is one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game.

[Greg Kinnear]

For sure.

[Randall Kaplan]

He gambled on the sport, and that was the end of that band. No hall of Fame, no nothing.

[Greg Kinnear]

Little unfair on that hall of Fame business, if you ask me.

[Randall Kaplan]

Very, very. I mean, you have all these guys, Jack on steroids, who are in, you know, the hall of Fame. I mean, some, you know, we don't need to go into the names, but. So I blew off. I'm back to Vegas to see Pete. And I've been to Vegas with my wife for a show or two or. And I didn't film Pete. So when Pete. I was going to pay Pete, I blew it off. He died. And I regret not paying Pete, and I really regret not doing that because as a huge kid, Pete Rose was my idol. One of them, at least.

[Greg Kinnear]

Right.

[Randall Kaplan]

So that was a bummer for me. But he was the only one I had considered paying, and the only reason was because he needed it.

[Greg Kinnear]

I think he would have been offended.

[Randall Kaplan]

Huh?

[Greg Kinnear]

I think he would have been offended to what? If you had paid him or offered to pay him.

[Randall Kaplan]

No, he wanted to get paid. It was a requirement for him to do. Do my show.

[Greg Kinnear]

So in that way, my theory doesn't work.

[Randall Kaplan]

No, it doesn't work. One, One thing interesting about your career that's different from people like the. The Rock, Margot Robbie is you never had an acting coach.

[Greg Kinnear]

No.

[Randall Kaplan]

How is that possible? I didn't hire One, but 99.9999% of actors, professional actors, especially every act. I mean, I googled this before we got here. Right. And I mean, everybody has acting coaches.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah. I don't have a therapist either. I'm short of all of the needed things to actually exist in this business. I don't think that number's true. I think it's probably. You'd be surprised. I think there are a lot more people than you realize who haven't sought, you know, coach or whatever. And I, by the way, I've seen it work so well with many people I've worked with, to the point where I'm like, I think I'm intimidated. You know, it's like, my God, it's worked so well for people. Certain people I've worked with, I'd be like, wow, that's amazing. That is amazing technique. And I'm afraid that I would fail out of the class. Maybe it's the University of Arizona baggage carrying me I carry with me, but I'm afraid I'd end up failing out of the acting class. But, but I just never have had one and I respect it so much when people choose to do it. I just, I haven't had one. And I. And I guess the only thing I would say is the experience of, you know, working with, you know, directors and other actors and even people peripherally within the crew. I feel like I have learned. I learned an enormous amount from. On every project. So I don't. I feel like I've been in school for many, many, many, many years and I have been in classes many, many, many times and tough classes, some very, very tough glasses. But, you know, the, the technical term, acting glass? No, I have. You haven't had that experience.

[Randall Kaplan]

You've had a ton of success. And you said also that you have imposter syndrome.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I mean, like, for anybody. Well, just for, I think anybody who feels like, you know, it's, it's a very, it's a very fickle business and to, you know, find success in it, there is, you know, it's, of course, great appreciation for it. And I take, you know, I don't take any of it for granted, but I definitely think some. There are moments where you're like, geez, wow. Looking back on my career, there's so many accidental things that happened to kind of, you know, helped me fortify my career that feel very much like accidents and incidents that were kind of maybe outside of, you know, know, the control. The way you might in the finance world say, okay, we're going to build a deck, we're going to go in, we're going to go sell the product, then we're going to go try and meet Steve Jobs. Okay, maybe that won't work, but we're going to do all the other. You know what I mean? You build out a more step by step process. And I don't think this business necessarily lends itself to that. There is an accidental quality to some of the stuff.

[Randall Kaplan]

Do you think you're a movie star? And what is a movie star?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I don't know. No, I don't think of that for sure. I don't feel that way. And there are a plethora of big stars all being featured next week on the show. Join us. But I've been fortunate and lucky enough to, you know, stay in the game and I've been very grateful to work with a lot of great people. And that is one of the coolest things about, you know, building. Whether it's a Series or whether it's the television or movie. You know, the idea of you build this little family experience together. It does eventually break down. It is a weird thing where you get to the end and everybody shakes hands and walks away. But. But I've built a lot of families out here over the years in the.

[Randall Kaplan]

Venture capital business, which everyone thinks is so sexy. It's not sexy when you lose. Eight out of ten deals go to zero. Right. No one bats a hundred. The venture capital business.

[Greg Kinnear]

I wasn't going to say it was sexy, but those are your words.

[Randall Kaplan]

Well, I mean, I want to go into venture capital. I mean, all the interns. I want to go into venture capital, of course. And it is a highly risky business. And you strike out seven to eight or 10 times as an actor. A lot of films also bomb. You had, what planet are you on? Mystery Men. Do you know when you're filming a movie that it's going to bomb?

[Greg Kinnear]

No, I know. I can feel. I think. I feel. You feel success more when it may be when it's happening and when you can be disappointed by that too, where it can just be okay. But I think, you know, when you say, you know, really a movie that isn't going to connect with a. With an audience, you know, there's usually a sense, I think, when maybe when you're doing it, that somehow it's. It's. It's not. Doesn't have a certain amount of buoyancy happening within the cast or the crew or weird things. It just. It's like a tune that's a little off. And I have sensed that. But listen, I've been surprised on both sides of that equation of failure and success. And failure is just as you. God knows. Your lesson on failure, I can't imagine.

[Randall Kaplan]

Feels terrible, by the way. Terrible.

[Greg Kinnear]

Failure is no fun.

[Randall Kaplan]

No, but it's a great motivator.

[Greg Kinnear]

It is a great motivator and it's also. Yeah, that really is a learning process. There is a learning process in failure. And it hurts and isn't fun, but it's necessary and there's no alternative.

[Randall Kaplan]

Do you learn?

[Greg Kinnear]

I guess there is an alternative.

[Randall Kaplan]

But do you learn things from movies that bomb where you say, okay, here's what didn't go well, I should do this better, or I learned a lesson, or is it more of a team thing that causes it to fail?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, because I don't think the equation ever changes of the process for picking or choosing or ending up doing whatever you're doing is always, at least for me. And I Think for most people, everybody kind of has their own code and you pick the best you can based upon a bunch of criteria that you don't know. Well, I don't know what the environment is going to be in the place we're going to shoot and I don't know what the real, what the director's behavior in the stress of actually shooting is going to be like. And I don't know what the different actors are going to, you know, how we're going to all integrate once we get started. I mean, generally, more often than not, I, I mean that's part of the job. You know, part of it is, you know, Nora Ephron and I did, you know, you've got mail years ago. I mean, she was like this wonderful woman that was incredibly talented, talented writer and director and it was almost like she was great at hosting a cocktail party. She would make sure that everything was set when we started and each day felt like a little joy. I mean it was really nice.

[Randall Kaplan]

We have cool moments as parents. One of my coolest moment was I take my kids, kids away on a trip every year. One on one trip. I have twins taking them away every year. And I took them to Cabo San Lucas. And I was sitting in front of an agent who was, I was sitting in front of someone who behind said Kelvin Harris is playing opening this hotel. And I was fortunate enough. My wife Madison, her best friend was dating Kelvin for some period of time and I knew his manager Mark. Shout out to Mark and Mark Gillespie Shout out. And we ended up in the DJ booth with Calvin with four 16 year old girls. They brought, they brought their friends. You had a Calvin Harris, Rihanna incident with, with your kids. I think Rihanna called your lawyer, your lawyer called her and there was a, they wanted to use a movie, a song that you did in a movie to ask your professional permission. Can you tell us about the song Cockiness? And I don't know if you remember the lyrics on that song and if you don't, I'd like to tell you what the lyrics of that, of that song are.

[Greg Kinnear]

I don't really. What are the lyrics?

[Randall Kaplan]

Okay, the lyrics are.

[Greg Kinnear]

This is a song that I, I had recorded a song in a movie.

[Randall Kaplan]

Called Stuck on youn.

[Greg Kinnear]

Stuck on youn. A movie I did with Matt Damon. During the period where Hollywood was making a lot of the Conjoined Twins movie. We were, we were doing one of those and, and the film was by the Farrelly brothers. It was really fun to do. But any rate, at the end of it I Had to sing a song. And that song, I got a call from my lawyers one day, said, hey, did you record a song in a movie one time? And I was like, yeah. And he said, well, Rihanna wants to sample a piece of that song. And I said, rihanna, huh? Wow. And I said, that's possible. How. How. How much would she pay me? And he said, nothing. And I said, all right, let's do it. And so I. No, I think they actually did give me some sort of. They had to give some sort of stipend. But anyway, I thought it'd be great greatly. I could modify this, you know, with my kids and tell them, dad's going to do a song with Rihanna. And so they sure enough were little, little, little girls. And I told them, daddy's going to do a song with Rihanna. And they were very excited. And one day I was driving them home from the little parochial school we took them to, and. And he sent me the song and said, hey, I just emailed you the song that you recorded with. With Rihanna. It's called Cockiness, and go ahead and listen to it. And I was like, girls, guess what? Daddy's got the new Rihanna song. And then I hit play, and it opens with Suck My Cockiness, Lick My Persuasion. And then. I don't really know the rest of the lyrics. It sounds like you have them, right?

[Randall Kaplan]

I don't, but I didn't know that. Yeah, I knew that.

[Greg Kinnear]

Suck My Cockiness, Lick My Persuasion.

[Randall Kaplan]

It's a hit.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, it's a hit. It's a hit. But it's a very filthy, filthy song. And my daughters were like, huh, Daddy, what's. I mean. And never mind. Anyway, it's. That was. We never went on tour together. Together. Greg Rowe, Very short row. Gre. I don't know. Grey Row. I don't know. It was a very short run. Love story between the two of us. We'll see if anything else comes of it, but it's a great. It's a great, great way to wrap up the podcast. And I'm glad you asked about it.

[Randall Kaplan]

There's a lot of bad actors in any profession in Hollywood. We've got Bill Cosby, who everyone loved until all that came out. You've got Kevin Spacey, which we've talked about. Harvey Weinstein, everybody in Hollywood, at least that I know, and that's probably less than 1% of the people that, you know, kind of knew what was happening with him, that he was basically just a complete and total pig. Did you know and did your friends know and was Everybody a afraid of Harvey.

[Greg Kinnear]

I don't know. Honestly, I never worked directly with him. He financed a movie, I think a movie I did. I met him at a party or two over the course of many years, but I didn't know him well. I wasn't in his circle, and I didn't really know this side of him. I didn't know that he was. That was all revealed when I saw the story come out and hurt all of the women who came forward. And obviously it was horrible. I guess unsurprising, looking back in our business, that there were bad actors and probably plenty more and plenty since then who have been sort of outed. So, you know, it was a long time coming, but that is the end of that.

[Randall Kaplan]

One of the hallmarks of my career that's led to my success is the preparation. I do. I'm writing a book called Extreme Preparation. We've talked about it a little bit. How much preparation goes into a role? Are you memorizing? I mean, I watch these actors. I said, God, how are they memorizing all this stuff? I mean, there's. There's no cue cards. I mean, on TV shows, I know when Will Smith got going, you know, he was looking at the cue cards. I think that's well known. But I mean, you're not doing that in a movie, obviously, so.

[Greg Kinnear]

Right. Or play.

[Randall Kaplan]

Or play. Right. So how much preparation goes into memorizing all those lines? And what. What's the methodology that you go through?

[Greg Kinnear]

Honestly, I. It's one of my. My few gifts. I can memorize really, really well. And if you gave me a page right now, I could probably, probably, you know, certainly in the course of this podcast, be able to.

[Randall Kaplan]

We're getting toward the end, I promise.

[Greg Kinnear]

Certainly as long as it was under 300 pages, I would be able to nail it for you pretty quickly. And I don't say that lightly. It is, of course, it isn't the most meaningful thing. I don't think most actors would tell you the ability to memorize is the key to success. But. But it's valuable because. Give us a sense of the hours. Oh, I'm serious. I could very quickly learn whatever you gave me.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, but do you practice in front of a mirror? Do you role play with your wife or someone?

[Greg Kinnear]

No, I can read it like this and start like it would start literally reading it like this at my desk. And I can very. And then driving around and then I'll put. I take a. I have screenshots of the pages on my phone and can once in A while as I'm taking out hike and you know, process it and it just keeps getting more and more solidified. And you know, at the end of the day, it's valuable to have that element out of the way. It really is. Because I think there are people who struggle with the words and having the ability to kind of compartmentalize that and then focus more on the specifics of what the character is doing or what you are trying to convey in terms of the behavior or what the intention is of whatever you're doing or seen. You know, all of that is ultimately, I think, far more important than the ability to know what the character has to say. But that said, you know, obviously that's important too. It's just, you know, for me, that's a pretty good. That's always been pretty easy.

[Randall Kaplan]

What are the three, and I don't know why. What are the three most important elements to be successful as an actor and is it different for non actors?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I mean, the ability to tell the truth, you know, the, the, the ability to, you know, I guess find the truth. The ability to. I don't know. These are the things I didn't go to school, for God's sakes. I told you. For me it's. This isn't like. This sounds like an acting class thing and I don't really know how to answer that. I mean, there's probably a lot of things and I don't know whether or not they correlate. I mean, having manners and showing up and being respectful to the people you work with and, you know, and, and being on time and working hard and being there when they need you and trying to be as good as you can and give the job 110%. Sure. Those apply to every job. Right? But I feel like you're kind of get me into the specifics of acting and I don't really know when I take on a job what the most important thing is. I don't have a list. I don't know what it is, honestly. And it's, you know, when it's done, I kind of know whether or not it delivered on all the things I wanted it to deliver on. But that's the job, folks.

[Randall Kaplan]

Sharon Stone was on my show and she. One of the things that she does that people really love is she writes thank you notes to every single person who's on the set. She knows everybody's name from the lowest person, you know, there, you know, the grips, to obviously Oliver co actors director. I, I think that's amazing.

[Greg Kinnear]

It is amazing.

[Randall Kaplan]

I think it's, it's really important.

[Greg Kinnear]

I, I'm terrible with names too, by the way. Sharon gets to be the person who not only can memorize dialogue, but also can remember everybody's names. And I walk in and I meet 10 people. And honestly, if I, you put me in a lineup, I, I, I'll, you know, I can't do it. And, and it's like a, it's a weird thing because it feels like it should be. I should be a. I very likely could run into you in a restaurant and be like, you know, in two.

[Randall Kaplan]

Weeks, I did a podcast with that guy.

[Greg Kinnear]

I think I did a podcast with that guy. And it would be of no reflection of you. I like you very much. And I, I, I have this, and my wife knows I have it. And it's a weird thing. And I can't, you know, tell you anything other than it just doesn't it. I did read in the New York Times at an interesting article about some sort of thing condition where the brain kind of has a hard time putting, you know, the name with the actual. It's the, it's the ability to recognize a facial structure and be able to have the recall of that thing. It, and I forget what it's called, but it was a hell of an article. Track that down for me, too. When you're looking for Deborah Gibbs, we're.

[Randall Kaplan]

Going to track that down, you know, Very interesting, I think.

[Greg Kinnear]

Sure. If it's. Is it Deb Gibbs? I think it was Deborah Gibbs. Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

So as part of a tech trip, I was invited to Israel back in 2000. Our company had gone public, and this group had organized a group of tech leaders to go on this trip. And before beforehand, the leader of that trip asked me if I wanted to host a dinner for Prime Minister Netanyahu at my house. So the first thing I asked is, how much is that going to cost me? They said, nothing, but you have to bring in a Kocher kitchen. I'm like, okay, well, yes, I would like to. And I love my dog. And our dog at the time was Pua, Brittany's mountain dog. And I wanted a picture of Prime Minister and my dog. And his wife Sarah thought that was very disrespectful. I didn't mean any disrespect, but I thought it'd be a cool picture to have the three of us.

[Greg Kinnear]

Netanyahu's wife thought it was disrespectful.

[Randall Kaplan]

Sarah did not like that very much.

[Greg Kinnear]

That you were gonna get a picture with you Your dog and Prime Minister Bibi.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, And Bibi, she was not happy about that. So nonetheless, we took the photo.

[Greg Kinnear]

How do you know she wasn't happy about it?

[Randall Kaplan]

She told me. She said, that's very disrespectful.

[Greg Kinnear]

She kind of do it cute, though.

[Randall Kaplan]

No, there was no. She didn't try to mask it with a smile. There was, but.

[Greg Kinnear]

So between this and Steve Jobs, like he said, there's a thing happening with you.

[Randall Kaplan]

He said, again, I never really put it together. I think I'm going to have to ask my therapist about this when I see her next. But it was very interesting.

[Greg Kinnear]

I did the podcast with. He's coming over. No, I'm kidding.

[Randall Kaplan]

It was interesting because my dog's name was Pua, means flower in Hawaiian. Our clothes company had a Hawaiian name. Akamai means cool, clever, intelligent, smart. So I thought that was a very cool name. So we took the photo and then we go to Israel, I think six months later, there's, I don't know, 500 people there. And we got to talk to him again. And he said to me, randy, how's Pua?

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, my gosh.

[Randall Kaplan]

I was. It's like someone hit me with a battering ram.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oh, my gosh.

[Randall Kaplan]

I mean, how many people had he met in between? Between.

[Greg Kinnear]

I mean, I've heard Bill Clinton very similar. And there are people who have this. Didn't Mary Lou Henner have that ability? Oh, sure. Hers are dates. You can tell her any. She came on my show once. Do you know this story? She was in 60 Minutes about this.

[Randall Kaplan]

But it's one of the stories about you that I don't know.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, she, she, she. She can tell you. You can give her a date and you can say, where were you on November 12th? I saw that at 91. Yeah. And she'll say, oh, I went to. And she'll walk you through the whole day. And for me, it's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen in my life. This ability. I can't imagine. Thank God. I. You know, that this kind of recall ability and what she's capable of is. It's astounding.

[Randall Kaplan]

That show, they ran through four or five different people, autistic people.

[Greg Kinnear]

That's right.

[Randall Kaplan]

Who didn't have the ability to communicate and have a normal conversation. But they did, in fact, have.

[Greg Kinnear]

And they learned. Some of them learned they could record.

[Randall Kaplan]

Anything from three years old. It was a remarkable thing. Talking about success, one of the things that's important to our success is getting over rejection. Mark Ruffalo auditioned 800 times before he got his first job. How important is overcoming rejection to our success?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I think it's. You get better at it, you know, I do think, you know, it's, it's, it's like a skill. It's like a muscle you strengthen. And it's. Again, and we were talking about earlier, you know, just, failure is no fun. But you, you do get better at it. Rejection, you know, I think same. I figure it's kind of in the same basket. I don't know anybody who got rejected and didn't feel the sense of failure, you know, so I guess they're kind of in the same basket a little.

[Randall Kaplan]

Do you still have to read for roles? I mean, you're so, so established now. You are a star.

[Greg Kinnear]

I would, I don't. I mean, I haven't. But I mean, I, I, if there was something I really wanted, I like to think I'd still, you know, I, I, you know, sure, I'd go for it.

[Randall Kaplan]

You play golf?

[Greg Kinnear]

I do.

[Randall Kaplan]

You hit a hole in one?

[Greg Kinnear]

I did.

[Randall Kaplan]

You play pickleball?

[Greg Kinnear]

I do.

[Randall Kaplan]

Are you a good pickleball player?

[Greg Kinnear]

I was told by my friend who's a good pickleball player, that I'm, that I should play more because I'm, I'm pretty. I could be good. I think I'm all right, but I don't know how to qualify. You know, you have a handicap in golf and.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, pickleball, you have a, like a 3, 2 number.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, they have like tennis, like a 50 and 4 0.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, yeah, it's the same.

[Greg Kinnear]

You've been. Are you a pickleball player?

[Randall Kaplan]

I am. We have a court at our house. I'm going to invite you over to play.

[Greg Kinnear]

I'm going to come.

[Randall Kaplan]

We have some really fun games.

[Greg Kinnear]

All right, great.

[Randall Kaplan]

Very, very great people.

[Greg Kinnear]

Can we continue the podcast? We can continue the podcast.

[Randall Kaplan]

You know, it's very interesting. I've had the number one female pickleball player. I interviewed her two weeks ago. I had Ben Johns number one. Men's, you know, the Go. They're both the goat. Annalee Waters has been the. She's been number one since she was 14 years old.

[Greg Kinnear]

Really?

[Randall Kaplan]

She just won her, I don't know, 10th Triple Crown last weekend.

[Greg Kinnear]

Did she play singles or doubles?

[Randall Kaplan]

Singles, doubles.

[Greg Kinnear]

Mixed everything.

[Randall Kaplan]

Everything.

[Greg Kinnear]

Well, the difference between singles and doubles is crazy.

[Randall Kaplan]

We talked about it. Yeah, we talked about. So, yeah, as a thank you, I'm giving. And we may even do it for this show. Their. Their paddle sponsors. Their paddle sponsors. Free sponsorship on this show and. Which is just a nice thing to do for them and their sponsors, you know, their paddle companies like it. And Hula just sent me, like, a ton of free stuff like Ben's. Ben's latest rackets. You know, I've got the bag and they want to shoot at my house. And I said, you know, sometimes I become friends with. With a lot of guests on my show. And I mean this sincerely. You know, I love to get to know you better and, you know, meet your family. And I said, you know, we have some really cool people, you know, normal people, and I've had rappers at my house. And they said, yeah, you know, we'd like to come shoot some footage there. I said, yeah, you know, I'm totally open to it. So. So I haven't shot a show there, but, you know, it's coming. I. It's hard to shoot a show there. Right? It's like, you know, you're playing. You're huffing and puffing.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

We're. We're. At the end of the show, I always finish it with a game called fill in the blank to excellence. Are you ready to play?

[Greg Kinnear]

Yes.

[Randall Kaplan]

The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is be open. My number one professional goal is to.

[Greg Kinnear]

Be a good father.

[Randall Kaplan]

My biggest regret in life is how people.

[Greg Kinnear]

How fast are people at answering these questions.

[Randall Kaplan]

You know what? Annalee Waters was, I think, the fastest we've ever had, and she's 17 years old.

[Greg Kinnear]

I got asked to be the grand marshal at New Orleans.

[Randall Kaplan]

What do they call that, the big Mardi Gras parade?

[Greg Kinnear]

Mardi Gras.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

I didn't do it. Huge, huge disappointment. I gotta live with that every day of my life. Go ahead.

[Randall Kaplan]

My. My biggest fear is.

[Greg Kinnear]

I thought you were going to finish that. Oh, this is for me, too.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Greg Kinnear]

Okay. What is your biggest fear?

[Randall Kaplan]

My biggest fear is not living long enough to enjoy my kids and have grandkids.

[Greg Kinnear]

Oof. Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

Followed by a close second being eaten by sharks.

[Greg Kinnear]

My biggest fear is if we're playing, like, the Fear Factor version, I. E. Sharks would be drowning. So we're both in the water world.

[Randall Kaplan]

My number three.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah. And wow.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah. What's two sharks?

[Greg Kinnear]

What's one?

[Randall Kaplan]

Not living long enough to see my kids.

[Greg Kinnear]

What's four?

[Randall Kaplan]

Four would be good. God, he's got a four Being buried alive somewhere.

[Greg Kinnear]

I know you're just making it up.

[Randall Kaplan]

No. Do you know those people who were in that cave? And I forget what country, and they were down there forever.

[Greg Kinnear]

It's like Thailand Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

So somewhere like that, and I just. I would have died of a heart attack the minute that I got down there.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

The proudest moment of my career is.

[Greg Kinnear]

I rarely feel proud. It's not like I have a, you know, great. I mean, I. My proudest moment is every time I finish a project. I have some pride in that, but I don't know that there's a specific moment where I, you know, I'm holding up the trophy over my head.

[Randall Kaplan]

The craziest thing that's happened in my career. Career is.

[Greg Kinnear]

What's the craziest thing that's happened in your career?

[Randall Kaplan]

Man, there have been. There have been a lot.

[Greg Kinnear]

See, that's my answer.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I've had tons of shows, and I often thought about how would I answer these questions if someone asked me, and I don't have the answers to a lot of them.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, I understand.

[Randall Kaplan]

Because they're difficult questions.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah, they are.

[Randall Kaplan]

Which is. Which is meant to elicit all kinds of things in people because you learn a lot about. About people, and I think it's mostly.

[Greg Kinnear]

Deflection is what you'll learn from me.

[Randall Kaplan]

Yeah, I've noticed a lot of deflection in this. The funniest thing that's happened to me in my career is, oh, my gosh.

[Greg Kinnear]

I feel like you got to be prepped for these, man. I really do. You go on. I know you're looking to have Kimmel on. I mean, like, before you go out there, they. They tell you, we're going to talk about the funniest thing that's happened in your career so that you have a little prep time so that. That you don't, you know, end up. I don't. I'm deeply resistant to filling in blanks unless I feel confident that that's the right answer. I had too much of my schooling experience where I was filling in whatever came to mind. I don't really have an answer for that.

[Randall Kaplan]

So 10 years from now, I'm going to be doing.

[Greg Kinnear]

I don't know if I'd. If I'd be retired at that point. Point. I don't know how, really. I. You know, somebody's asking me recently, would you retire? I don't really know how to retire because it's. I would do this. I love doing this, and I. I love, you know, still enjoy the process greatly, and. And performing. And so I. I don't know. You know, retirement always sounds like a word that has certain attraction to it, but I don't look at that and think, oh, that's what I. That's what I'm pursuing. And so perhaps it's. It's more of the same. You know, still working on, you know, finding, you know, interesting projects, probably recording another album with Rihanna.

[Randall Kaplan]

If you go back and give your 21 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be?

[Greg Kinnear]

No fear.

[Randall Kaplan]

The most important thing that's contributed to my success is no fear. If you were President Trump, the first thing you would do when you step foot in that office and sat down at that desk would be build a pickleball court in the White House. Outside, right on the lawn.

[Greg Kinnear]

Yeah.

[Randall Kaplan]

The one male actor that I wanted to work with but have it is Al Path.

[Greg Kinnear]

Pacino, Lavelle.

[Randall Kaplan]

The one female actor I wanted to.

[Greg Kinnear]

Work with but haven't is, oh, Charlize Theron's fantastic. We had a project we were talking about at one point and she's great, but haven't worked with her.

[Randall Kaplan]

If you could meet one person in the world, who would it be?

[Greg Kinnear]

I don't know. I really don't know who that person is.

[Randall Kaplan]

The one question you wish I had asked you but didn't is, are you.

[Greg Kinnear]

Ready to wrap this up? No, I think you pretty much covered it. There's no question. This is the longest podcast or any sitting period. This is the longest I've ever sat in my life. How long have we been here? It's like two hours and two and a half hours. Wow. But I've enjoyed it and seriously enjoyed it. Thank you very much. It was great.

[Randall Kaplan]

I appreciate you and I appreciate you being willing to come on the show and not bailing and following through it. It really does say a lot. But I have been a fan for a long time. I'm so happy to meet you.

[Greg Kinnear]

Thank you.

[Randall Kaplan]

Congratulations on your tremendous success. And if you want to give one plug for your next movie coming out, I think it's called Shiver.

[Greg Kinnear]

I did a movie, Yeah. I did a movie with Josh Dumal called Off the Grid and a movie called Shiver. And the show that I did with Lehane for Apple is called Smoke, Come out next year. And, oh, and a movie I did with Adam Scott and Daniel Deadweiler called the Saviors, which is really fun.

[Randall Kaplan]

Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

[Greg Kinnear]

Thank you.

[Randall Kaplan]

Awesome.

[Greg Kinnear]

Thank you.