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- [00:00]
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The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler.
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Welcome back to the Honeydew, y'.
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All.
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We're over here doing it in the Night Pants studios. I am Ryan Sickler. I want to thank you guys as always. Thank you for supporting this show. Thank you for supporting anything I do. I, um. If you gotta have more, then you gotta check out the Patreon. It's called the Honeydew with y', all, and it is this show with y'.
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All.
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And y' all have the craziest stories on the Internet. All right? If you or someone you know has a story that has to be heard, please submit it to honeydewpodcastmail.com. we'd love to do your story. All right, that's the biz. You know what we do? We highlight the low lights here. I always say that these are the stories behind the storytellers. I am very excited to have this guest here with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, first time here, please welcome Joe Montana. Welcome to the Honeydew.
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A
Thank you, Ryan.
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B
I'm stoked to have you here, buddy.
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A
Thanks, brother.
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B
Before we get into your story here, please promote anything you would like.
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A
Well. Well, look, I've been doing Criminal Minds for. This was here for me. Year 17, is it. And season 19 for. For the show. That show's been on 19 years. This is our 19th year as the show, and it was still going strong, doing very, very well. And I love it. I enjoy it, love the people. So that we're still doing that. I've been doing a show called Gun Stories on the Outdoor Channel, which sounds ominous, but it's really just the. We trace historical firearms. We knew that for about 15 years. I'm producing my. My assistant who runs my company with. Been with me for 24 years now. Dan Ram wrote this novel called Long Branch. He's a wonderful writer, and we're getting a lot of play on this, turning this into possibly in series.
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B
And quickly tell us what it's about. What is this about?
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A
It's. You know, it's in a nutshell. It's. It's about him being working for me for that long certainly has put him in the. The guy started as a roofer starting a roofing business, has a roofing company, and he put a roof on a couple of houses that I own.
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B
Is that right?
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A
Yeah, really did. But turned out this guy was so sharp, and I could tell he was. And he wanted to move on, to try to do something else in his life. And. And he had this. You could just tell he was a Jack of all trades in many ways, had a lot of talents, and writing being one of them. Because he had a pot. He had a. He had a thing going about for the Rat Pack. I thought a young guy like that was like in his 30s at the time. I thought, this guy's into the Rat Pack. You know, he likes the music. I like. This is pretty cool, you know. So anyway, he started working for us, for my wife and I, you know, working on some of the houses. But it turns out he had this, you know, this writing ability. And so working in the business with me as long as he has now for, you know, 20 plus years, he has the scenario for the novel of. This guy is a former actor who had, like a drama show, a western kind of type show back in the day. He's older now, not getting a lot of work because that show is, you know, think of maybe the old, you know, Maverick show or Sugar Food or whatever it may be now. The guys just kind of don't have a lot of money, thinking, well, maybe I'll go sell my. My. My house I built for my late mother in the town where I grew up in. Go back there, fix it up, sell it. I can, you know, don't worry about show business. Well, turns out he goes back there and of course, in that small town, he's meeting all his old high school buddies, this Daniel, and he's still that guy, that TV sheriff that he was, and whatever it may be back in the day. And all of a sudden you find out there's this whole intrigue that happens because you find out that the girl who had stood him up kind of for the prom kind of a thing had been murdered, which he never knew about. Always wondered what happened to her. So this turns into this whole whole.
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B
So TV cops going real life detective.
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A
Yeah. All of a sudden becomes these things merge, and all of a sudden they. They. They meet no friends. It's pretty interesting. I mean, it's one of those books, when you start reading it, you go, wow, you want to see what's going to happen? And then, you know, and I wound up doing the audio version for.
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B
Okay.
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A
Which, you know, I've done audiobooks for many.
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B
So it's available right now?
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A
Yeah, it's available right now. You go to, I think, check it out, I guess everything on Amazon. You go look for it. It's called Long Branch. And where you get the audio version. Or you can just also buy the. The actual Hardwell soft cover of it. I see they got my quote on the front of it. But anyway, it's really, really a good book. And I, and I'm not just saying it because the guy works for me. I hear you.
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B
But also congrats and kudos to you because a lot of people don't see that in someone and they miss, saw a guy on a roof and saw, hey, this guy has possibilities without question.
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A
Yeah. And everybody else is.
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B
A lot of people miss that. No, no, you're absolutely those people in your life.
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A
So no, but this is a guy, I mean, once I knew his backstory and this guy had been kind of making his own way since he was 15 years old, working for a living and really doing different. He's a chimney sweep. He was this, that it was the self made guy, you know, then running his own business as a young man. I thought, no, this is the kind of guy you want working for you. And so he's been a real value to my family, to all of it. So anyway, I, I, this has culminated for, at least for him for now, this book and he's already writing a sequel for it because we're getting so much good play. He just won an award for best novel through this one organization. I'm so bad with these names of the different things, but it just won this award is the best novel for this one organization and I understand it. I'm not surprised.
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B
That's great.
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A
So that's, that's, that's a current, that's pretty current. Like I said, my day jobs, Criminal Minds for now, you know, started on that show, so. But it's all good. Life's good. I can't complain.
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B
Let's go back to the beginning for you. Where originally you from? Tell me about mom, dad, siblings.
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A
Well, I grew up in Chicago. You know, it was.
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B
Which real quick I said to you on the way in Tay. Chicago.
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A
Yeah. Well, my wife, great restaurant. I've always said, you know, I know I'm the front man in the family in the sense of, yeah, who's the actor? People recognize me, I get that and all that. But in real life I'm, I'm Ricky to my wife's Lucy. I mean I'm the guy out there playing rock is going, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm the show business guy. But my wife really stirs the drink and she's, she's got, always has a million schemes going, this, that and the other and really handles, you know, we've been together. We're gonna celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.
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B
Wow.
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A
So I know in Hollywood that's that's that's an achievement.
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B
Yeah. Anywhere.
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A
So we've been through a lot together. So, I mean, so there's that. So, so the whole thing in growing up in Chicago, she, she, she from Chicago as well, of course, and had the idea she always wanted to open a restaurant. So of course, once when, especially when my career started to kind of, you know, take off, but it took a while. I mean, it took about 15 years of me being an actor before things got into the positive category, you know, financially. But I said, you know what, that's your dream. I'm pretty much fulfilling mine. Let's go for it. So she always wanted to have a Chicago themed restaurant. We, we did it. We opened it up in Burbank. We had it for 16 years and it was great. The memories were great. I know you were a customer and all the time.
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B
Yeah, I said I would just go get my jardiniere from there.
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A
Oh, yeah, it's hard to get that stuff otherwise, where are you going to get your hot jardiner fix?
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B
That's right.
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A
But we had it for 16 years. And then it was really one of those things where she, she realized, okay, you know what, my dream has been satisfied. But now it's, now it's, it's really work. And the restaurant business is tough. How bad it came to where she said, you know what? I think I'm done. Because I really got. Because we have other issues personal in our lives. We've got our two daughters especially we have one daughter with autism. So it's type of thing that, you know what? If you're satisfied, I'm satisfied. We had a good run. Let's, let's. So it was, it was just, it was not much as business decision. Decision as a personal decision is like, let's just wrap it up. And we had a big, you know, we announced it. We're going to, you know, we're going to close it in a few months. Come get your last Italian beefs and hot dogs and beef beef pizza, whatever. And it was great and got tons and tons of memories of the 16 years we were there. No regrets.
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B
I was saying, you know, we look at stuff on the Internet and who knows what's real, but you suffered an illness when you were a child, is that right?
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A
Well, yeah. Well, what would happen is when I was eight years old, I had a really bad sore throat as kids get. But of course the family doctor checks it out and goes, you know, he's got a strep throat. You maybe you want to check further into this. Well, it turns out I had rheumatic fever, which was somewhat prevalent back then. We're talking this is the 50s, this is like 1956 maybe. So having that.
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B
What is it? What is it?
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A
Actually, it's, it's. That's a good question. I mean, it's called rheumatic fever because it is. Is a thing that can. Affects partly. It could be your lungs, your heart.
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B
Is it like a permanent pneumonia or.
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A
You know, to tell you the truth, we'll look. Being eight years old, I never. All I know is I got past it. But the thing is it was one of those things that's infectious and it's prevalent enough that they even had a hospital just for it. And it still exists today. Now it's branched out to more of a regular children's hospital. It's called Larabita Rheumatic Fever Sanitarium, which was in Jackson park on the south side of Chicago. Fortunate for me being grown up in Chicago, so at least it was not. Wasn't close to where we live, but at least maybe within an hour's drive. So I was admitted into that hospital as an eight year old and I was there for five months. Because the thing about rheumatic fever, they didn't really have a cure for it at the time. All they knew was you needed a bed rest. So for the first three of the five months you stayed in bed because they were worried it could turn into a lot of things that accompanied the strep throat would be. You get a heart murmur and it could affect your heart. And there were instances. I remember as one kid that used to wear. Always used to work. And since it was a children's hospital, you get away with stuff.
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B
But do you remember, was it an open room? Are you in there with other kids?
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A
You'd have two or three in a room, you know, but they're different rooms. But I remember one kid that came in and he wrote and he wanted to keep his cowboy boots on even when he sleep in it, like his pajamas. And they let him do it. And I remember, I'll never forget that one day, you know, we of course leave the room for different tests and things. And I remember one day I come back and I see he's not there because his boots are gone. And I go, where's, you know, naked. Oh, well, he, he, you know, he went home and all but didn't want to tell us, but he had passed away, which, which because they don't want to necessarily freak you out. You freak out kids that yo by the way, this thing could kill you. But I got lucky. I mean, I did my. My five months there, and I improved to her. And I didn't. I didn't acquire a heart murmur and get any heart damage. But what I did have to do is that you had to take a sulfur pill, which that was the only thing that they felt kind of maybe could prevent a recurrence of this or whatever it may be. So it's this pill. It was probably as big as a dime. And I would have to take that pill every day until I was 21 years old.
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B
2013.
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A
Yeah, 13 years. I took that pill every day. And it was even in high school. People, they. They knew about it because they knew I'd take that little baggie out of my pocket and take that pill at lunch every day.
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B
Now, are they telling you to take it to 21 because that's like the age, or were you getting tested? And they're like, hey, well, you were always getting tested.
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A
I'd go in about every six months and get a blood test. Yeah, they'd always take. But, you know, to this day, I mean, you can stick a needle in me, I could care less because I was so used to it as a kid. But no, I think they figured if. They figured if it hasn't reoccurred or hasn't undamaged by the time you're 21, you probably free and clear.
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B
And you've been free and clear.
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A
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's never been an issue since, which. Which I feel very blessed because, like I said, it was fatal for some kids. But I tell you, one of the things with benefits of it was because it was a children's hospital, they'd have that be. The Thursday night would be like movie night. So there would be this one guy, usually with some guy, had maybe he had a little money, he'd come bring it back. Then it was bringing an actual projector. And you'd all sit in the lobby of the hospital or in the hallway, and on a little screen, they would show cartoons or whatever. Then there'd be this other. They call him Uncle Roland and his wife. And they were this rich couple from Chicago who. Their job was to. Not their job, but what they would do is on the holidays, I was there, I remember for Easter. I think that was the only major holiday I was in for it at that. Five months, they come in and give gifts to every kid in the hospital. Really nice gifts, because that was their way of, you know, helping out. So. So, I mean, I Think of it in my past of like, wow. Yeah, I guess that's what happened to me. But look, I got out clean, so I got no. I got no regrets, no complaints. I mean, everybody's. I live by the motto, everybody's got a story and nobody gets a free ride, so I don't care who you are, so I'll take the cards I've been dealt. You know, that's.
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B
They say all the time, if everybody stood in a circle and we all throw our problems in the middle, you'd grab yours, right?
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A
Yeah, yeah. I fight for mine, but I think a lot of other people would fight for. Oh, yeah.
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B
It's a perspective you really don't want.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people would take my life. I. I get it. Yeah.
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B
And your dad, he had early health struggles as well.
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A
Yeah, my dad was sick all his life. I shouldn't.
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B
Now, is that any. Is that the room, the fever? Is any.
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A
No, no, no, none of that. No. My dad. No. My dad grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. His. His. His farm. His father and mother came over from Sicily back in early 1900s. And my grandfather worked in the coal mines in Sicily or in Oklahoma in order to buy land from the Native Americans, which he did. Bought a 50 acre farm. And everybody did that back then. So my dad was born and his siblings, he had like three brothers, a couple sisters, grew up on this farm in Oklahoma. But what had happened is my dad was the third oldest and he and the two older brothers all got tuberculosis. They attributed it to something, maybe I don't have something to do with the livestock or something or whatever, but whatever. By the time my dad was. His father died when he was about 15. My grandmother had to give up the farm. They moved. That's the word of Chicago thing happened. She had to move with the whole family to Chicago because she had family there. She held onto the farm, stayed in our family up until actually two years ago. So she moves to Chicago. My dad's two brothers moved to Baltimore and they. They became ice men. They were. They deliver ice.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And my dad went and worked at them a couple times, and I have a lot of family in Baltimore.
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B
Oh, you do?
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A
Okay. I do. Cockiesville. And. And Towson.
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B
Towson Ammonium. Cockies.
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A
Yeah. I got family there. But anyway, my dad, he contracted then tuberculosis. Right. Right when World War II started. So they sent him to a Senate. So this is before I was born. My brother had been born. My brother was born in 1940. My dad gets tuberculosis, killed his two older brothers, they sent him to a sanitarium in New York, and they take out one of his lungs and they take out part of his other lungs.
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B
It's just crazy to hear the words sanitary.
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A
Yeah, sanitary.
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B
They take one and a half lungs.
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A
One and a half lungs out. And ironically, I wound up narrating a documentary about those sanitariums, not just maybe five, six years ago, about the history of tuberculosis sanitariums in this country. It was called Mount McGregor in New York. So here's my mother, still in Chicago with her parents, with a baby. My dad, my brother. I'm not born yet. My dad's in the sanitarium at Mount McGregor, New York. Because back then what they did is they took. You got tb, they took out the lung. They took out part of his ribs, even on one side. Because back then they didn't spread the ribs. They just said, let's get rid of this so we can get the lung easier. He was there for about three years.
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B
Whoa.
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A
Yeah. Because you got. Because they were. The way to recoup was they put you on your bed and wheel you out was on is up. They put you up in altitude. You were plucking on this mountainous kind of area because they thought that the mountaineer and all that was easier. Well, I don't know what the logic was. Who knows? But he didn't even see my. My. My brother until my brother was almost three years old. Because you didn't travel that easily back in those days. You know, it was during the war. So my dad winds up having, you know, part of a lung. I'm. I'm get born. But yet he was an incredible smoker, a chain smoker. Smoked. Oh, yeah.
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B
With half a lung.
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A
With half a lung. Was a drinker. Developed an alcohol problem that finally we cleared up when I was about 15. We had to kind of institutionalize him and. But he beat it. He gave up the booze and never drank again.
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B
Did he give up smoking?
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A
No. And I think the reason he drank so much is because he felt compromised physically. Because. Because I had another uncle, his baby brother, who's. Who. Who was younger than him and didn't get the burglars, was a, you know, strapping guy. Had sons who were big guys and healthy and stuff. Here's my dad who would, you know, just walking up his flight of stairs, he'd catch his breath and plus he's got a cigarette in his mouth.
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B
With half a lung in his.
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A
Yes. So finally caught up with him at 57, he finally. That part of a Lung said, you know, we're done.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And, you know, so he didn't really die of any disease by the fact that he just couldn't. Just couldn't. That. That lung just couldn't handle it anymore. And he wouldn't give up the smoking. He just. I happened to be on tour. My first professional job was to play Hair. And I'm on the. I'm on tour with the play hair. I was. And I was in Pittsburgh when it happened. And then my brother calls because they had to put my dad in the hospital again. He'd have to go in, in and out, different times because of the breathing problem.
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B
And I'm sure at this point he's at least aware, like, do doctors or someone's telling him, hey, you should probably quit smoking.
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A
Probably. But. But. But he was gonna happen. He'd been smoking since he was a kid. In fact, they'd smoke corn silk. He told me on the farm, they'd roll up silk from the corn.
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B
Is that right?
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A
Yeah, they'd smoke that. So my brother told me, even on his deathbed, he was there laying there. They had a air tube in his neck. And my brother said when the doctor would leave the room, my. My dad give him the high sign with the eyes. And my brother would put the cigarette in the tube. Yeah. Oh, yeah. In the hospital, because he figured, why not? The guy, he really wanted it, and he wasn't. Go. Yeah, well, you know, let's. Let's have him go out with a smile.
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B
Smoke.
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A
Yeah. So he went out with a smoke. So that was it. So. So he died young. But like I said. But the flip side of that is my mother lived to be 101. So after my dad died, my mother lived almost another 50 years.
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B
Another lifetime.
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A
Another lifetime.
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B
Wow.
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A
And she was tough as nails.
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B
Did she ever remarry?
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A
No. No. Italian ladies, they don't.
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B
Yeah. I was gonna say my grandmother didn't either. She had a friend down the street named Mr. Fred. They go on a vacation every now and then.
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A
Exactly. No companion. Exactly. But no, my mother was great, though. And she. She. And she didn't die sick. She just died. She just even told us when she was about 99, they said, look, nothing wrong with your mother. She don't even take any medication. They said, but some days, something's going to give and she's going to stop. And that's kind of what happened. She just kind of. Something stopped and she. One night, she just did. One morning, she just didn't get up.
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B
And then. What age do you become a father.
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A
I became a father fairly old. I was 40.
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B
Me, too. I was 40.
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A
Yeah, I was 40. And it's because my wife and I, we've been together for a long time. I said, I'm going to be celebrating my 50th wedding anniversary this year. So. But we. I think I knew enough that being an actor, a struggling actor, that this is not necessarily the best scenario to raise a family and worry about, you know, security for them. So my wife and I, we put it this way. We said, we. We. We got married in 1975, but we didn't have our first child till 1987. So during those 12 years, we kept saying, you know, yeah, maybe when things get better, maybe we'll talk about having a family. And then it got to the point where things actually started to improve and my career started taking off. Things are going well. So it was one of those decisions, and it was one of those things, like, we weren't always driven, like, oh, man, we gotta have kids. If we don't have kids.
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B
That's what I wanted to ask you. Would you both have been comfortable if you never did?
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A
No. We were realistic in the sense of it was meant to be. It's meant to be. So what we decided together was, let's not do what people do to prevent having a kid and see what happens. Let's see how the chips fall. Because we knew friends that were, like, trying like mad to have kids and couldn't, you know, and so we thought, if it's meant to be, it's meant to be, and if it ain't, it ain't. We'll take it from there. Well, of course, as soon as we made that decision, like, 30 seconds later, she got pregnant, I think, and it was like, oh, okay. But the flip side of that was my daughter, my first daughter was born at 1 pound, 13 ounces.
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B
Oh, wow.
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A
She was very, very premature. It was all due to a freaky thing. There was an. It turned out my wife had an INF that happened on her on the umbilical cord while she was carrying her.
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B
And how many months premature are we talking she was?
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A
Well, she was due to be born in the end of August, and she was born the 5th of June.
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B
Okay.
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A
So she was two and a half months, I think, was born at 18 weeks or somewhat of tiny stage. She was one of the smallest babies born in California that year, under £2. And are you. So we're. Of course, we're freaking out because we get. Because once she goes to the doctor for a checkup because she. She saw it, felt it coming, baby wasn't moving. She got. But she got a little nervous about it. And she had been a couple days prior, but something told her, something's wrong. I'm going to go. And she called. It was a Friday. I'll never forget it was a Friday night. She calls the doctor's office, and they said, well, you know, if you come right now, fine, but you probably should wait till Monday because we just saw you. But I know you're going to be nervous all weekend, so why don't you just come in and ease your mind. So we had an electrician over, and I'm thinking, I'll stay with the electrician. You call me and I'll pick you up. Well, I get the phone call like an hour later. You better come down here. Because when they checked her out, they saw all the ambiotic fluid was gone, that the baby was in distress. And the doctor said, we have to take it out right now. So all of a sudden, it's June 5th, and I'm expecting to be a dad. We haven't even started Lamaze class. Now I'm going to become a father that night.
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B
Yeah, because she's just. I mean, two months early. She's just started the third. Yeah.
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A
So it was an emergency C section. They had to go in. But she's born. So a lot of things.
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B
So tiny.
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A
So tiny.
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B
You saw my dog, our dog was £3 when we got. Oh, yeah, she was half of that.
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A
She's about as big as a squirrel. Like a little squirrel. Yeah. And so that's how we started parenthood. Now we've got a. I go and they take me to the neonatal intensive care unit, and there's my daughter hooked up with all kinds of tubes and stuff. And my daughter. My wife couldn't even see her yet because she's. She's. She's recuperating from this fairly major operation almost, because that's unexpected to do a C section that early. It's really an operation to take the baby out. And I'm looking at this little. Little tiny. That even look human. This little tiny baby in this incubator. But God bless her, she was a tough kid. And, you know, a lot of things could have happened. Babies that small, they get. They get lung problems. They can't because their lungs aren't developed. They could Hard problem all kinds of things. But she. She fought through all of those things and got through the one thing that happened. And it happened at a. We realized that when she was about 2 years old, is that we could just tell the symptoms. Something was off here. She wasn't behaving like a lot of the other kids that age. And then we realized that she was on the autism spectrum and definitely was that diagnosed with autism. And.
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B
Can I ask you a question?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Is your dad alive at this time when your daughter's born or he's gone?
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A
Oh, no, my dad has long been gone at this time.
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B
So you don't have anyone to even talk to your mom.
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A
But my mom is a ro.
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B
They've never gone. Nobody was born in a one and a half pounds.
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A
No, no. It was really.
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B
You're on your own, both of you.
- [22:51]
A
No, we were on our own. Yeah. This is uncharted territory. But yet you go on a neonative intensive care unit, you're going to see a lot of incubators and you're going to see that a lot of people are going through this. So it is. And, and you, you learn too, from the doctors. They tell you, you got to understand, 20% of births, something's off, there's going to be some abnormality that's not always major like this. It could be just the littlest thing, why the baby has to stay an extra day or two in the hospital because of that, or da, da, da.
- [23:19]
B
What are you noticing? And your daughter early enough that makes you guys both raise an eyebrow?
- [23:24]
A
Well, there was these things like, you know, her eye contact, you could see was kind of all over the place. She would do little repetitive kinds of things. She'd be around other two year olds and you could see she was just not kind of engaging. So, you know, you know, something this, you gotta remember, this is 19. This was.
- [23:41]
B
That's the other thing.
- [23:42]
A
Yeah, this was 1990.
- [23:43]
B
Yeah.
- [23:44]
A
So was. This was, you know, 35 years ago. No, it is. So you know what I mean? So it wasn't. It wasn't as bad as prevalent in the sense of people weren't as hip to kind of what it was, was a little more obscure as to exactly what autism was and how, what had the severity of it, different aspects of it. So we took her to a psychologist. Whatever it was. At the time. We were in New York at the time, I was actually filming the movie Godfather 3 and plus a Woody Allen picture called Alice at the same time, at this very same time, when we realized something was kind of, something's going on with Mia, our daughter. So we take her to the doctor, they examine her, and that's when we get the news. They Go, well, here it is. There's maybe 10 things, indications that we have of what we would diagnose as autism. Your daughter has about eight of them.
- [24:30]
B
And had you ever even heard of this at that time?
- [24:31]
A
You'd heard the name, you heard the word, you know, you knew this is something out there that other people's kids get. That's what you thought. So, of course, what happens is your heart drops into your chest and your stomach and goes back up and you go, oh, my God, my daughter has autism, whatever that is. Okay? But like I said, I'm Ricky married to Lucy. So Lucy's first reaction is, okay, now what do we do? What. What do we do about this? As opposed to, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa is us, you know, okay. And from that moment on to this day, that's, you know, that's part of who we are, that's part of our family. It's like when people will ask me, what's it like to have a daughter with autism? I go, I don't know what it's like not to have a daughter with autism.
- [25:13]
B
Great answer.
- [25:13]
A
I say, it is what it is. It's. That's, that's the makeup of my family.
- [25:17]
B
Do you just have one child?
- [25:18]
A
No. And then we have another. Then. Then like about three years later, we have our daughter Gia. Now, of course, we had some nervousness of like, is this going to be. Because it happens sometimes it runs that a family can have a couple kids with the same. And the doctor said, no, you know what? There's no reason for that. The reason she probably. The autism may probably was caused because of the distress of her being. Because there's a higher incidence of preemies. And that said, there's no genetic reason why this should happen again. But you worry, you know, of course, but, of course, but no. We have a second daughter, Gia, who's wonderful. She's, you know, she's now 35. Mia, her older sister, is 38, but Gia is in that unique position of being the younger sister, but has to be, in the essence, the big sister to the older sister. Because While Mia is 38 and is brilliant in many ways, she's savant in some abilities in terms of her memory, in terms of. And she's socially the way she engages with people. She's an incredible human being. She's such a sweetest, innocent kind of person you want to meet. But yet, on the other hand, she's a lot of. There's a lot of 8 year old in her. All she would love to do is Spend every day at Disneyland and meet the princesses. You know what I mean? Which is that in a way, you kind of wish everybody felt that way. If we all just said, every morning, gee, I wish I go to Disneyland and play Meet the princesses again, you know, but that's that.
- [26:35]
B
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- [28:09]
A
Well, we just, we learn everything we can. So while we were in New York, we found out that there was an organization at the time there. It was called nar National Science National, national alliance for Autism Research. We looked into them, contacted them and said, hey, look, we just found out our daughter's been diagnosis or anything we could. And they were helpful and we were, you know, but they were, they were like a fairly new organization.
- [28:30]
B
And please forgive my ignorant comparison here in the way that there are different cancers.
- [28:36]
A
Right.
- [28:36]
B
Autism is not.
- [28:38]
A
It's a broad one thing.
- [28:39]
B
So you learn about this.
- [28:41]
A
Exactly.
- [28:42]
B
Specifically, yeah.
- [28:43]
A
It's a whole spectrum and it could be as Mild a thing as well. Elon Musk admits that he's on the spectrum, you know, and it makes sense. He. Because the brilliant side of him is that stuff that allows him to design cars and do those kinds of things. And then there's the autistic side that makes him be maybe a little eccentric and do some of the weird shit that he does, but you find it. And also, as you have a child, as you know, I said, My daughter's 38 years old now, I could see it in other people. And I'm sure Einstein was on the spectrum because he had, he was quirky and about certain things, you know, I'm sure Bill Gates might be a little bit. Have that, because any I see, I'll see that little quirkiness. But so in other words, they've been able to kind of reap the beneficial aspects of being on a spectrum of that. It's causing that part of their brain to almost work overtime. They can have special skills, intellect, and maybe have a little quirkiness, or it could go the opposite way where it's all quirky, it's all kind of. Not necessarily negative, but, but, but it's almost like it is a handicap in a way. And at the end, yet there are elements of the other thing. So you have extremes. Luckily, our daughter falls in that somewhere, somewhere in between. There are things she can never be like by herself alone in the sense of, hey, you want, you want to go to Disneyland? Here's, here's, here's, here's bus fare. Go do it. She could, she couldn't do that. She's an innocent. Somebody might just walk up to her and say, hey, you want to come with us? And.
- [30:07]
B
Right.
- [30:07]
A
Okay. You know, that kind of thing. Yet on the other hand, she, she, you know, if she met you right now, she'd come up to you say, ryan, when's your birthday? You would tell her your birthday. And the next year on your birthday, she'll walk up to me and say, today's Ryan's birthday. And of course I'd say, ryan who? And then she'd say, ryan Sickler. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, Today's his birthday. Yeah. And then she, then she'd run down maybe what that day was that I told her.
- [30:35]
B
And, and she can tell you about what she remembers everything that day.
- [30:38]
A
Oh, yeah. She'll tell me maybe where we had lunch that day.
- [30:41]
B
I mean, how have you helped her use that to her advantage as well? I mean, I think we used to.
- [30:47]
A
Say we use it to our advantage. It's like she's, she's our computer. She's our like Mia, what was that restaurant we went to like 15 years ago? And she, that we were in Baltimore or wherever it was and she'll say that was that, you know, But I mean, for her, whatever, that's part of who she is and that's part of her, you know, what makes her up. And it's great. So, but of course we will provide her whatever is helpful to her, you know, so she's always had, you know, she's had different therapies, she's had different, you know, she's always, you know, we're always looking for things that will improve her quality of life. But luckily we're, we're pretty blessed. We're in a position that I can do that, you know, and that's why I'm very active in, you know, foundations and groups. I mean, we have a foundation. Yeah, tell me about Montana Family Foundation. Like we have this thing coming up. We do this, this is our third annual Andy Garcia and I would throw this cigar dinner at the Lakeside Golf Club here in California. And, and part of the benefits of the Montana Family foundation, where I give out grants to all these different kind of organizations, most of them smaller local kind of things that do all this great work for, you know, special needs children. And then we do that in conjunction with the Fuentes family, which is great. One of the biggest cigar companies in the world out of the Dominican Republic. And they have, they take care of a bunch of, you know, needy children in the Dominican Republic. So this is our third annual thing. Andy Garcia's orchestra plays a 15 piece or Cuban orchestra. We have Arturo Sandoval, the world famous trumpet player shows up and a lot of celebrities come. It's great. And it's, it's so in a way, it's our way of giving back.
- [32:19]
B
Sure.
- [32:20]
A
Of like, you know, hey, we generate money for these charities, we help them out because a lot of them are just going from Ed Asner, for example, like his son Matt, they have a group because Ed, who I'd worked with a couple times, a couple of his grandchildren have autism. But it's not just autism. Could be any sort of, especially mostly geared toward, you know, children's kind of, you know, charitable organizations. And why not if you're in a position to do it, everybody's having a good time. If you can do something that generates something for them, it's, it's a win win for everybody.
- [32:54]
B
What are you learning about yourself as a father and a man as you're growing and learning about autism with your daughter.
- [33:04]
A
Well, I think. I think as I might have said this. Off, off, Mike. When. As I said, I said, I live by the theory of, you know, everybody has a story and nobody gets a free ride. So, you know, that's part of my story. And part of not my free ride is like, yeah, no, in the best of all worlds, would I have said to myself, if I could pick the perfect family, I think I kid with autism. I would like kids. You know, nobody asks for those things, but when they happen, it's what you do not know. Now what do you do? How do you deal with it? You know what I mean?
- [33:33]
B
Do you dial back the work a little bit or. Well, as a term now you got.
- [33:38]
A
It's not so much dialing back to work as. As making it inclusive with them of the work. So what we decided to do was early on was, look, yes, my career was really starting to get going to high gear. In fact, right when Mia was born, like I said, I was shooting Godfather 3, which was now putting me into a category of, you know, doing major films. But we realized, you know what, what's important is that we stay together as a family unit. So I would get these jobs. Like, I got a movie that was shot in Moscow for just a week. We shot most of it in Canada, but for one week we had to shoot it in Moscow. Now, of course, the movie company's fine with, oh, you're going to have the family with you up in Canada. Great. Of course we go to Moscow. There's no need for them to come. I said, oh, no, there is a need for them to come. They're coming. But we're only there for four days. Yeah, but they're coming because I'm not going for the four days. Yeah, without them. I said, no, it's not even about the money. If you want to. Want to cut the salary a bit, we'll do that. But they're all coming. And plus the nanny's got to come too, because we have to have an aide to help my daughter. I said that, you know, that way or the highway for me. And you find out that when you. When. When you make that part of the deal, they get it. You know what I mean? Because I wasn't asking for too much. I just said, but this is if you want meat. That's how it works. And the benefit of that is the family structure was always the same. So we'd go to whatever we were in Canada, whether we're in Moscow, Whether we was. I've been. We've been in. I've been in Australia, been all over Europe doing projects. We always went together. So there's always my wife, the two kids. Sometimes we'd have like a nanny. They changed over the years. Usually these young college girls that would come along just to help my wife, you know, because there would be, you know, it's. It's a little bit more of a burden, you know, with that kind of a family situation. But by doing that, I think it helped the kids too, because for Mia especially, we found out other countries had different ways of.
- [35:29]
B
I was about to say, like addressing children with special needs and how worldly she's. The education she's getting. I don't have that.
- [35:37]
A
Like, in Canada, we learned something early on. We. We go. Because here very often you. You go to. When the kids in grammar school and they have special needs, they put them instantly in a special class. Like, I remember when I was in high school, there was. There was that class.
- [35:49]
B
Yeah.
- [35:49]
A
That had all the kids that were like, had firm.
- [35:52]
B
And it was all of them that together too. If you were different, you were just here. A lot of them shouldn't have been. Exactly.
- [35:59]
A
So in Canada, we found out we want, you know, I was going to be there long enough time. Hey, could we put our daughter into like, one of your classes here? We know she has autism and she. We have a. Like a companion. The college girl will come and be with her. They said, well, no, we don't have a special class. We don't do that here. What we do is we'll put her in a regular class. But if she needs something to function within that regular class, we'll give her that accommodation.
- [36:22]
B
Okay.
- [36:23]
A
And we. Once we experienced that and especially realized that once we got to. We went back to our hometown, Chicago, and we tried to. There was this one school that was located near where we were staying, that. This one teacher, there was a regular school. But she said she had had a. Like a sibling with autism. Said, no, we'll handle this. It was. It was for first grade class. She takes our daughter in front of the first great class and says, this is Mia. She has autism. She may start talking to herself. She may walk up to the blackboard and draw. She may say things. We're going to help her out because we all, you know, and first time we realized that's what it took.
- [36:59]
B
You had to like, she built little community.
- [37:01]
A
Build the community. Include the kids. Let them know this kid's a little different. Different. This is. That's her difference. And once you, once you do that, then you realize that's the way it's got to be from that point on. So all through school here in California, we always insisted our daughter when, you know, every once in a while there'd be moments, you know, maybe it's good she just, for a day or two, just kind of goes into a smaller class with a few kids and a couple extra teachers to kind of work with her on something. But the most part, she was always included all through high school. And it was fantastic because she benefited from it. It. And all those kids benefited from it because they came to the realization not everybody's the same. And as long as we all kind of, you know, work together and help each other, you know, everybody and the teachers benefited because some of them had never been in a situation where they had a child in their class and they left saying, wow, that was a real wonderful experience. And of course, my daughter, to this day, she'll talk about those teachers, how much I love Mr. So and so.
- [37:57]
B
Remember their birthdays and stuff?
- [37:59]
A
Hell yes, she remembers her birthday. She sends them birthday cards every year. Does she? Oh, yeah.
- [38:02]
B
That's so nice.
- [38:03]
A
Every day she'll hand me a couple cards that are, you know, and handwritten, handwritten. And my job is to address them and mail them. And I know that they're birthday cards for these people in her life. Every day there's at least one. Some days, three, some days, five, some days, you know, because every day is going to be somebody's birthday when you're that old, almost.
- [38:25]
B
So can I ask you this? At the time now you're a celebrity, what point do you say or do you have a family discussion or even do you have a one on one with your daughter, you and your wife, about like, hey, we're going to make this public. And how, what are your feelings on that? And because I said to you out there, like I say things on this podcast where I tell my daughter, well, I told him about this fear you had. And she's like, why would you do that? And I'm like, oh, right, I get it.
- [38:54]
A
Well, my daughter, that she wouldn't pick up on that because she, her, her autism is such on the spectrum where if I said that she would probably, you know, she would just take that with a grain of salt. Wouldn't, wouldn't register that I was saying anything. She did. Because if in fact, you asked, you, you can ask me, say, Mia, what, What is it? What do you have? What do you have? I Have autism. But I'm not sure she really knows what that is, but she knows that that's what that is. But where I first became kind of somewhat public about it was like I said, I was shooting the movie Godfather 3 at the time. So now we make the movie. Now we are. Now the movies get being edited like six months later after the movie. Now we're really learning what it's like to have a child with autism and realizing, okay, let's watch what's. What groups are there. Where can we get help? What should we be doing? I get a course that I want us to start doing major press for the movie. It's going to come out at Christmas time. This was 19.
- [39:43]
B
I remember there was a. Yeah. Shootout in the Baltimore theater. There really was.
- [39:47]
A
Yeah. So this is Christmas 1990. So one of the things they wanted me to do was to do an interview. I think it was for People magazine. It was either People magazine or Time magazine. I can't remember. They said, can we have one of the journalists call you to do the interview over the phone? I said, absolutely. So. So the journalist calls me. Now, we hadn't made common. It's not like I took out an ad and said, oh, by the way, we had a child and she has autism type of thing. Because our second child had just been born as well, the same time the first one was diagnosed. Second child, child had been born while we were in New York. She was actually born in New York. So I get this call from this woman for the. I think, like I said, I think it might have been People magazine. So she says, so what was like working a godfather, Al Pacino, Coppola, what's it like? You know, the normal stuff. Then they go, listen, it's come to our attention that is it true that you have a child with autism? Now, of course, all it would take have been one person somewhere in. And somewhere had said, oh, yeah, I think we saw him going there. Or who knows? Didn't matter. And all of a sudden I realized when they asked and she. So she said to me, and they said she was going to write the story. It wasn't. Wasn't like a live thing, like, no. So she said to me, no, would you mind. If you do have a child with autism, would you mind discussing that? Any aspect that. And if not, that's okay. She was giving me the option. And in that split second, I had to think about that. And I thought to myself, okay, if I say no, that I don't want to talk about it, I'm negating my daughter's existence in a way. I'm basically saying, no, I don't want to talk about it. That's like, that's my pride. As if that's going to be our private secret in life. You know, I'll be walking down the street and somebody might say, who's that? None of your business. You know, almost like that. To me it would be like almost in a way saying that because there's going to come a time, God willing, me is not going anywhere. She's only going to go from this point on. So is what's going to be our scenario? Are we always going to be like, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about. And I thought to myself, no, I'm going to talk about it. So I said, no, I don't mind talking about it. So we didn't talk about it long. But what she asked me, I remember she said something like, well, what. How has it manifested itself? I said, well. I said, or she says, has it been. Has it. Is there a difficulty? I said, well, one difficulty is you could be in a group grocery store. You'd be walking with my wife and my. We've got a little baby. And plus we've got Mia who's like at this time, around 3 years old, she'll start maybe hearing a weird sound in the. And that she has. She had a sound sensitivity. Just start going and holding her ears and getting loud and all of a sudden you'll get looks from the other people in the grocery store and their look is basically looking. Why don't you discipline your kid? Why are you letting your kid do that? And I says, and all you want to do is scream in their face, my child has autism. This is not, you know, we're not. This is not. This is not beyond our control right now, Please. You know, that's what you want to do, but of course you can't. So you almost have to accept that. So I said, that's tough.
- [42:42]
B
Also, you're in a public eye.
- [42:43]
A
Of course you're in a public eye.
- [42:45]
B
And I'm thinking regular Joe would even.
- [42:47]
A
Well, maybe. So like my. My point being is I got to kind of suck it up and say, okay, this is. This is what it's going to be like. And try not to hopefully be in a lot of situations where it's going to be, you know, cause attention where my daughter's going to do something that's going to bring, you know, and of course, eventually she works her way out of this stuff. But at this point, you worry about it. Well, what really then. And I even thought about after I'd finished, and then the article came out and she. And she. She did it. Well, she didn't like, exploit it, but she says, and Joe and his wife, they found out their daughter had autism. It's been a factor. And while they were making the movie Godfather, they. This is a big, you know, discovery of theirs. Well, plus giving birth to their second child. I get a letter through. Must have got through my agency at the time from some woman. And in the letter I was basically what she says is, Dear Mr. Montaigne, I just want to tell you, when we read that article in People magazine or Time, whatever it was, it was so comforting to realize that this happens to people like you as well. And it made us feel a little more comfortable about. Because of course, we were going through the same thing. And you almost want to. You don't want to have to apologize for your child's behavior, but you want to scream to the mountaintops, this is a thing here. And you just don't get it, you know? And so she was. So. It was such a beautiful letter. And I thought to myself, well, that's it. That seals the deal. I will never turn my back on that part of who my daughter is and what she has. Yet, on the other hand, it's not going to, you know, carry a sign, hey, guess what? I got a kid with autism, and, you know, hooray for me, I mean, or something. Or feel. Feel bad for me or what, you know, I mean, it's like, no, but it's just like that's. That's. As I said, that's my story. That's the cards I've been dealt in life, and I'm happy to play them.
- [44:34]
B
And you have a foundation now.
- [44:35]
A
We do have to maintain your family.
- [44:37]
B
When did you get that?
- [44:38]
A
Just recently, actually. Only because we just started when, like I said, when Andy Garcia and I got together and started talking about. Because we. I'd always been kind of hosting this. This kind of like a charity cigar dinner for this Fuente's family for quite a few years prior. And, and their. Their foundation benefited from it because they do such great work with these underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic. After Covid that kind of went away, they stopped doing these. These functions. And then all of a sudden, Andy and I both realized, gee, we're members of this club here in la, and, and we would get together sometimes at events where there Was a wedding or an event there. We'd be out there over on one of the fairways smoking a cigar, thinking, hey, we should bring back the cigar dinner and bring it back and help, you know, Fuente's charity. I've certainly got all these organizations that I support with autism. It'd be a way of just. We'd all have everybody have a good time and somebody would benefit from. From it. So it's only been about, I say, around three, four years now. So I decided, you know, prior what I would do is I would play like in a golf tournament or somebody would offer me. They offer you a certain amount of money to do like an appearance somewhere. Like, oh, we'll give you a thousand dollars to do this. And I just say, we'll make the checkout to such and such charity or to this charity or to that charity. This way. We figured, well, this way, you know, it's all going to happen. It's going to get funneled through this one thing. And it can actually, wow. We can maybe delineate it to somebody, like groups that really need it. Like. Like I said when I. When we started with this group out of New York called nar, there was another group in West Coast. We came back to the west coast after I finished film, filmed those movies in New York. There was a group called Can Cure Autism now that was started by a director and his wife with their child. So I was part of that group. Then after a while, Bob Wright, who was head of NBC at the time, turned out one of his grandsons was diagnosed with autism. He had the wherewithal and the ability being the head of a network to take those. He says, look, I work on the East Coast, I work on the West Coast. There shouldn't be two organizations. Let's join them. And that's how NAR and CAN came together and became, you know, one big, you know, autism organization. So these kinds of things happen. So my feeling is, what I try to do is I look more toward the. With our foundation. I'm not a big. Our foundation is not huge like these giant organizations the corporations run. But it's enough that these smaller, especially in this locale in Southern California, there are these organizations that are doing the work every day, are doing the, you know, working with these children, working with these young people that could use, you know, a grant of, you know, $5,000 is a lot to that them as opposed to the $5 million some other worldwide group might get. So that's what it is. So it's almost like why not? It's a way of, you know, like I said, if we can just kind of.
- [47:34]
B
What would you say to new parents who just find out that their child has autism? Well, just this now, with the education you have and everything in 2025, is there anything that you wish you. You know what I mean? You knew about back then that you.
- [47:50]
A
Found out a lot of it was, you know, look, back then the incidence was so much that they were. They would say like one in maybe 1500 births was. Now it's like one. And sometimes they say less than 100. So, I mean, it's a whole different ball game. But because of that, there's a whole different. More awareness of it and there's more kinds of things out there. And, you know, early intervention is the main thing. Port. Become aware of it. Don't ignore it. Don't. Don't pretend like, okay, well, maybe they'll grow out of it. You know, sometimes that is all it is. You just got to be also be aware that it might be. Just be something that's a delayed thing. Oh, my kids are not reading yet, or my kid's not speaking yet. Sometimes it is a delay, but if it becomes apparent that no something is off here, then you just got to go. And they're out there. Those organizations are out there like now.
- [48:34]
B
There any kind of camps you would send your daughter to growing up, where they actually tailor to these kids.
- [48:42]
A
They have groups like that. Yeah, there are scripts like that. I mean, for. For our daughter was more like, it depends what their. What their interests were too. Our daughter was so much into, you know, the Disney movies and those kinds of things. So the point of being able to go to Disneyland or places like that or reading these books to her and things like that, or watching certain TV shows, you know, that was a. That. That there's no way of predicting what it's exactly it's going to be, but you find that out, you know what I mean? And so every. Every child is going to be different. Like I said, there's no blanket thing like, say, oh, you do this and this is the right way and this is the wrong thing. You just. Everybody's situation is different. Everybody, depending where they live, it's gonna be different. Like, you know, we're in Los Angeles, we're in a pretty big metropolitan area. Some people are gonna be living in, you know, Podunk, Arkansas or something, and they're gonna have to deal with what's available for them. So as long as you have an awareness of it and say, okay, this is the deal. What can we do to make the quality of all our lives better? Your child and your family. And the family.
- [49:48]
B
And does your daughter live with you?
- [49:50]
A
Oh, yeah. Hey, I'm Italian. That's a big part of it, too. Yeah.
- [49:53]
B
Good boy.
- [49:55]
A
I used to say, hey, if they want to go to college, I'll build one upstairs. But, yeah, she still lives with us. But. But look, we're realistic, too. I mean, I'm not the youngest guy in the building, and so my. Think my. My goal is to, of course, my wife and I both, that we want to make sure things are in place. And also, I don't want to have it that were my. My younger daughter has to be like, hey, it's on you now. It's 100% on you.
- [50:21]
B
We got to think of that.
- [50:22]
A
We got to do what we got to do to make sure that things are in place, that there will be places for me to be and live and. And thrive and function and, you know, and that the help will be there because she's gonna need it. And.
- [50:34]
B
Are you a grandpa?
- [50:36]
A
I'm not.
- [50:36]
B
Not yet.
- [50:37]
A
I'm not. No, not yet.
- [50:38]
B
I'm just curious.
- [50:39]
A
Yeah.
- [50:39]
B
What type of aunt you think your daughter would be?
- [50:43]
A
Oh, she'd be. Sure she'd be.
- [50:44]
B
Would she love kids?
- [50:45]
A
Oh, she'd love kids. She loves kids. She loves animals. I mean, whatever. Animals sense it. I think they sense that's it. A child on the spectrum. Because we've had dogs, we've had cats. We still do down to one cat. Now, we've been through dogs, cats, as. As people do in their lives, but I swear, the animals in this voice can sense. They almost. They sense. Especially the cats, I think.
- [51:05]
B
What do you notice?
- [51:06]
A
I noticed that they sent. They sense a certain thing about Mia that. That she almost like a camaraderie that, you know, cats have that little thing of their own kind of, hey, look. But my best definition of it is like, you know, I was lucky enough to play Dean Martin in this movie, the Rat Pack. So I did a lot of research on that, and I remember. And one of the things I came away with, with all my research is that, okay, they were called a Rat Pack, but if you think of it more as a dog pack, Frank Sinatra was the lead dog, and Sammy Davis and Peter Lawford and all the other guys were all, like, the dogs yipping behind Frank. Like, you know, but Frank was the lead dog. Dean Martin was the cat because he was the guy that he ran with the dogs. But whenever they would Say, hey, let's all go over here. He was the one who went, you know what? I'll be over here. Yeah, And I'll meet you guys later. Yeah, that kind of thing. And that was the thing about the cat. The cats are like, you know. Yeah, I'm okay. I'll let you know when I want to be petted. I'll let you know when I want to run with you. But in the meantime, I'm cool. And I think there's that aspect of, you know, you get that even in. In people. And then with pets. And so with me, it's that same kind of thing. I think that the cat, in a way, senses in Mia that she's a little unique and she's a sweet, gentle soul, but she's not going to be the same kind of personalities as perhaps a lot of the other people are. Like, you know, she's going to be very social and very loving and all, but just going to be a little. Her own. Her own person.
- [52:29]
B
That's great.
- [52:30]
A
Yeah.
- [52:30]
B
I. I want to get you out of here. I love talking to you. I want to respect your time.
- [52:36]
A
No, well, thank you, Brian. Well, this is, you know, like I said, I don't know, Ryan.
- [52:40]
B
I'm saying Brian because, listen, you have many comedians. I know personally and don't know my name.
- [52:44]
A
I can't even believe you. No, no, no, no. But for some reason, the name Brian was in my head, but I thought. But I'm thinking. But no, sometimes, look, if anybody could even benefit from this time. We've talked about this kind of stuff. Like I said, the same reason I talked. I mentioned that to that woman back 35 years ago in that interview. To make them realize, you know, you're not alone out there.
- [53:07]
B
Yeah.
- [53:07]
A
And that it's. And it's just part of life, you know, I mean, and then I look around and see, hey, we're blessed. Because then I see some of the burdens other people have to carry. So much more intense, so much more to deal with, and yet not even being in a position to deal with it. So I got nothing to complain about. You know, like I said, my wife and I both feel very blessed. These are cards were dealt, and I'm not. I have no regrets. And no. No takeaways. No. Like, oh, I wish. I wish that had been different. It's okay. It's all good. God. Been very, very good to me.
- [53:39]
B
Yeah. Bro. Brother.
- [53:39]
A
Yeah.
- [53:40]
B
I like hearing you say that. And I. I've genuinely appreciated sitting across from you and having this conversation. With you. Before I let you get out of here, how about advice you'd give to 16 year old Joe?
- [53:50]
A
16 year old Joe? Yeah. Wow. You know, I don't know if I probably just. Well, I would say this. Follow your dream because that's kind of what. What I did. I didn't. Me becoming an actor, I might have well said I was going to become a man in the moon or a Martian. I mean, where I grew up, there was no actors in my family. Show business was not on the radar. I mean, where I grew up in the west side of Chicago, you either became a cop or you became the guy they chased. Those were like your alternatives, it seemed like. But I remember when I auditioned for my first play just on a, on a dare, basically a musical. And I thought, oh, that might be fun because I'd seen. It was a movie, west side Story. I'd seen the movie and then now they're doing a play. Oh, I tried out for it. It. I didn't get cast was one. And there's a whole story behind that because I was. My parents changed my birth certificate so they can put me in school earlier so I could. My mother could go back to work.
- [54:44]
B
Is that right?
- [54:45]
A
So I was always a grade lower than I should have been. So here I was. Here I was a sophomore trying out for a play that, you know, I was too small to. To whatever. I wasn't right. But at that audition, at 16, when I finished the audition, I realized, I want to do this. I really want to do this. And I've never looked back.
- [55:03]
B
I love hearing that you still wanted to go forward after not oh yeah, hell yeah.
- [55:09]
A
Because just the experience of doing it. And I got a smattering of applause when I finished the song I record I'd done. And it was like nobody'd ever applauded anything I'd done before. It was like, wow. And I remember they. And I got some positive reinforcement where they came up to me, said, look, I want to tell you something. You did a really great audition. You come back next year when, you know, when you're a little bigger, you know, might be something we could use you for. And of course. And I. And I remember that thinking, I will, I'll pursue that. And I did. And I. And from that day to today, that many years later, it hasn't changed that moment. I try to equate it to. I bet it was a thing like maybe Michael Jordan threw a basketball when he's six years old and saw it go in and said to himself, I'm going to do this. I'm going to keep doing this, and you do it. And the enjoyment for me right now, doing it at the level I do it, there's no better than the joy I had that day. 16 years old and singing that song and hearing that applause, man, I love hearing.
- [56:05]
B
Oh, you gave me chills.
- [56:06]
A
No, but it's true. Go for you. And I tell that to young people. I say, if you can say that to yourself, then you. Then you're in the right business. I says, even when I've been disappointed when I didn't, I can say, you.
- [56:14]
B
Have every right to be bitter about this.
- [56:17]
A
Sure. I mean, it took me a long time. I mean, you know, but I remember when I won the Tony Award, you know, back or 1984, somebody had asked me afterwards what was it like to win a Tony war. And I'd been working as like a struggling actor for 15 years. I said, I said, it's like winning the lottery, but I've been buying 15 years worth of tickets, you know, so you kind of. You work your way up to the. Hopefully where it pays off. But if, even if it didn't, the point is, like I said, I'm not enjoying it. It's not like it's not proportional. Like, hey, man, I'm real successful now, so I'm that much happier than I was when I was only making. You know, we're splitting a box office at this theater company I worked with in Chicago. We're making 20 bucks a week. No, I enjoyed it just as much then as I do now. It's just that, you know, the environment has changed.
- [57:03]
B
Yeah.
- [57:04]
A
But the enjoyment is exactly the same. And I. And I would think a lot of athletes would probably tell you the same thing that they tell you. Hey, hitting the home runs in Little League is no less exciting than it was when I won the World Series. And if you can say that, then you're in the right. Rack it.
- [57:18]
B
This has been awesome. Thank you so much.
- [57:20]
A
Thank you. Ryan.
- [57:21]
B
Before I let you out of here, please promote everything. Long Branch.
- [57:24]
A
Get the novel Long Branch by Dan Ram. Check it out, and it'll probably be. My guess is you're going to be watching it on a screen sometime before too long as well. And then there's audio version that I do as well if you're, you know, especially if you. If you like, listen to audiobooks as opposed to reading it. But it's a great read. I mean, it's. And I'm not just plugging it because the guy works for me. I mean, I. Honest to God, it's a. It's, it's. It's worth it.
- [57:46]
B
Thank you, Joe.
- [57:46]
A
You're welcome. Thank you, man.
- [57:48]
B
You got it. As always, Ryan Sickler, on all your social media. We'll talk to you all next week.
- [58:15]
A
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