In Search Of Excellence

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

• Randall Kaplan / Greg Kinnear • Season 1

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Greg Kinnear is an academy award winning actor whose career spans decades, earning him acclaim across film and television for his ability to bring depth and nuance to a wide range of roles. From his Academy Award-nominated performance in As Good as It Gets to memorable roles in films like Little Miss Sunshine and You've Got Mail, Greg has demonstrated a rare talent for combining charm, wit, and emotional complexity. As one of Hollywood’s most reliable leading men, he has skillfully navigated the industry's shifting landscape, balancing critically acclaimed dramas with lighthearted comedies. Movies which Greg starred in have cumulatively sold over $2 billion in ticket sales.

Timestamps

  • 00:00 – Introduction
  • 12:30 – From Indiana to Lebanon: Early Childhood and Family Influence
  • 27:15 – First Big Break (MTV to TV)
  • 41:45 – Talk Soup: How Greg Turned a Simple Concept into a Cult Hit
  • 56:20 – Leaving Talk Soup and Walking Away from Fame and Big Money
  • 1:11:00 – Lessons on Rejection and Staying Relevant
  • 1:26:30 – Transition to Movies and Earning an Oscar Nomination
  • 1:43:50 – Balancing Career and FamilyPurpose
  • 2:01:10 – Advice on Resilience, Risk-Taking, and Staying True to Yourself


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Greg Kinnear:

Do you think you're a movie star? No, I don't think of that for sure. They'll 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 the 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.

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, oh boy, including Sabrina, Nurse Betty, You've Got Mail, Little Miss Sunshine, anchor man 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 Craig, thanks for being here. Welcome to a church for excellence. I

Greg Kinnear:

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

Randall Kaplan:

the mic. Thank

Greg Kinnear:

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. Right? Well, we're filming a studio, place, my favorite place to record, very professional shout out to Michelle and Andy and of course, my producer, Matt Hickerson, well, we're on the west side 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? Can you 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 they're goodbye, and they're running a little late for the airport and say goodbye. 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 got to 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 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 I and I go, this is my 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 gonna stop the bullshit. I'm just gonna 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. Well, 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 to her, and that is what led me to this moment. So you have a lot of heroes in your life, and now I'm one of them. Yeah, I think, 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. So what's so interesting? And there's actually a couple of lessons in this story. I'm so bad I like read your background of. And everything you've done, all the accomplishments I told you, you're way of your huge over achiever, which makes me nervous. 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. Well, I'm sure a lot of people have had the experience with some stranger approaches you. You don't know, right, with something in their hand. And again, you hear stories, and I know someone in LA who's someone similar story. This guy was on math, 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. Oh, my God. And so I as I saw you approaching, yeah, you know, I had like, several milliseconds to figure out what was happening, yeah. And as I, as you came up to me, my first reaction is, this guy's a freak. And here we go, and I gotta back up. That all the time. 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, it 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, 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. 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. 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 think Randall every time she puts on that jacket. Here's a stranger. Here's a stranger in Britta, not about me. It's never about me. It's about the, yeah, the person who got the product to him. How have spur of the moment introductions influenced your career? What impact is it having? Can you give some example spur of the moment introductions? I, you know, I feel like they do. They they happen periodically, for sure. And I feel like I should be, like, equipped with, with, like, so many examples of of surprise meetings 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 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 guy,

Randall Kaplan:

used to date Bobby Anderson, Yes, Bobby

Greg Kinnear:

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 and MTV, MT, she's, she's actually, it was family ties, she was auditioning, and she's, she's actually doing MTV Spring Break weekend, and meets a guy named Joe de vola, 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 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. It was 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 is 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 were, hey, look, we're on TV. It is. It's changed so much, and there's such a proliferation of 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 me, and that was a hell of a meeting early on, you stole

Randall Kaplan:

the order of the chronology of my podcast, but I'm glad we talked about Justine, who I who I know a little. That because she married my friend, Mark fluent. So okay, 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. Oh, boy. She was very, very responsive, meaning she ghosted me. So it didn't, 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. Let's go to the beginning. And I want to talk about, you're born in the massive town of Logan sport, 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. Well, he worked hard. Him and his father had these had vending business. That pretty big, thriving vending business. There was a clothing business and, and he was, my dad was a, it's funny, before I came here, I was talking to a director about a, you know, a project, and, and, and the character was kind of reminding me of my dad a little bit. So we were discussing him, and I 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, 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. 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

Randall Kaplan:

a gun to a point where Alzheimer's took over, and that's not smart, yeah, 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, that's 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. A lot of us, 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 or a lawyer, investment banker, working a tech company, whatever the case may be. Your parents, you said didn't really want that. They said their primary job was to keep you out of jail. What were they What were they talking about?

Greg Kinnear:

No, no. I think I was just, I think I was trying to fill time on a on another podcast. When I said that I there was no sense that my parents thought I was going to jail. Little did 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, you know, cross the line and end up in any sort of trouble, but I definitely didn't have a real clear path. You know, years ago, I did a talk show at NBC, literally at 130 in the morning, usually

Randall Kaplan:

you replace Bob Costas, that's right. And

Greg Kinnear:

Bob Costas took over from Tom Snyder, who said, At that hour you you know, you get your smokers and your tokers. But I remember Bob carrying in his telling his story. Used to carry in his wallet like this Mickey, famous story. Now he carried a Mickey. Channel baseball card in his little wallet when he was a kid. It's like his kid, 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, you know, he wanted to be caught. And so he still has, I think famously, I think he showed me at dinner that he does still have it one time. But I I 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, you know, pathway to where they were headed or what they were going to do. I didn't, and I certainly didn't see the path that I, you know, ended up falling into. But, but I it's, 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, the 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 closed 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, yeah. And I also coach and mentor a lot of professionals, from people starting the workforce to CEOs, startup founders, actors, actors, one in particular to that. 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 gonna work out?

Greg Kinnear:

Gosh, it's so terrible, because I, you know, I really don't know how the world, you know, 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, you know in the moment on your phone, being able to see the success or what party or what 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, but

Randall Kaplan:

I can't argue with her that. No, I can't argue with her. Nor

Greg Kinnear:

do I want to argue right? I'm like, Honey, you win. I get it. And I do think that you know, 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 just kind of hold on to your innocence and just kind of hold on to, 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 these, you know, schools across the country, and certainly these, a lot of these private schools and has been written about, and right in the we're in the, you know, zone of it right here,

Randall Kaplan:

and you know what we're talking about here, just, you know, to make it clear to people through suicides at a very well known, prestigious West Side school, six. Six suicides, yeah, teachers having sex with students when the administration knew about it, yep. Yeah.

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 the, 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 is kind of a it's a national problem, and I think it's affecting people in just as much in Logan sport as it is Probably in Los Angeles, and it's, it's a problem. So

Randall Kaplan:

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. Yeah, when you're nine years old, you're the 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. Oh, well,

Greg Kinnear:

that's that is, yeah, that was a 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. Work at him the first 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, hello to you. And I was like mine. And thus began a like, 30 minute, unbelievable interview, one of the great interviews of all time, my father interviewing me at nine years old. That was so funny and so kind of whimsical and unexpected. 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 gotta 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 the the lake will be gone, and your interview will somewhere be in there. And I researched that, and that is not true. So, so at any rate, that was my first interview experience. And being a father is, yes, I think being you know, it's important to be checking with your kids. It's important to be focused on them. And I very, 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, anything

Randall Kaplan:

special? So I have to say that,

Greg Kinnear:

no, well, yes, we have a lot planned. She's She just turned 90, which was just back in Arizona for her birthday. So that was exciting, but I great parents, 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 one of the problems, when we are talking about the difficulty, I think, of what's going on with that generation. You know, is part of it is that many

Randall Kaplan:

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, DC, tell us about the move and your dad's job and what what that entailed while you were still living in the United States before the move, which we'll talk about next. So

Greg Kinnear:

my dad ended up becoming, he was an advanced man. Got in a job being an advanced man for Richard Nixon, is coming through the Midwest in the 70s and 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, DC. So we leave Indiana when I'm nine, and we go to Washington, DC. We're just outside. I recently had the met Terry McAuliffe, actually, who who lives just not too far from where I grew up. And we were, I was, you know, talking about my fond memories of Reston, Virginia and being there and near Lake, and 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 is that? And he's like, Beirut, Lebanon. So we went from DC to Beirut. So I think the headline there is, we went from Logan sport to Beirut in the course of 36 months. So

Randall Kaplan:

you get to Beirut, yeah, and father of your friend, friend of your father gets kidnapped. The US ambassador and two bodyguards get assassinated. Acting ambassador, acting ambassador. The the bakery that used to visit or visit a couple very close to where you live blew up. That's right, 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, we I warned you about lessons. Greg does not learn lessons history. Now we're gonna pull them out of you today. God, I don't know. I mean, I. Yeah, all of that is true. And, you know, our arrival there was other worldly. 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 you know, 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 on certain days of the week, in the evenings, 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 than the moment we got there. But, you know, 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 random 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 definitely was. It was pretty, pretty spooky. And we, you know, 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 big here, yeah, sure. But not like this, not like Beirut. There you go into these halls, and they would have 1000 pinball machines. It was crazy. At any rate, we went to go check one out. And, you know, it costs 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 the event, 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 quite a stir for the few hours that we'd been out. But, you know, there were a lot incidents like that, and it ultimately cultivated in listening every night to the BBC for how bad. You know, 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 did head out. And so we took 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 know, Tom Brokaw is over there saying, and the war continues in Beirut Lebanon with it. A pen is leaving. That's my Tom Brokaw impersonation. I know you were going to ask me about

Randall Kaplan:

it 100% I was. So there's, by the way,

Greg Kinnear:

so get ready. He's over there. I mean, it's like a big thing, right? And they load us up onto busses, and we head out past the PLO camps. Can't get to Beirut international airport without going past the PLO camps. Busses 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 Borman 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. It was, it was

Randall Kaplan:

pretty, pretty hairy. But you're evacuated. We're evacuated at 12 years old. Yeah, 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 that. But I mean, like, I never felt threatened. And the big 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 of what a division within a country can do and how it can split people apart and and to know how bad this God and people you know, families killing families, and people friends breaking up, and people who who spent their lives together, care 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, was just the totally not understanding how this very beautiful country with a real sense of just warmth and love, there would be, you know, 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 bagged groceries, I waited tables and college, I stuffed envelopes. How are you waiting tables? How was I waiting tables? Yeah,

Greg Kinnear:

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

Randall Kaplan:

I want to talk about some of your firings, but I worked at the Chi Chi's Olive Garden. So were you a waiter? You're busting a waiter? No, I got

Greg Kinnear:

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

Randall Kaplan:

I was nervous. I mean, I stuttered too. 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? I did

Randall Kaplan:

not get fired. No, but, but, no, but. But the most embarrassing moment was, I don't drink wine. I never opened a bottle of wine, so I they brought the thing out. I figured I could figure out and crash the cork. Went and sorted the bottle of wine, red wine, on a family table, all over the woman that's red obviously saying I'm beside myself to this day talking, I think, I think I'm going to get, well now you just get the thing. 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 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? Rubber mats have holes in them. It's about a half inch thick. That's right, and that's where all the shit goes. That's where all the all the stuff from the place line sits. Slime is disgusting. You would never want to touch it with your finger without scrubbing your finger, and unless you're trying to quickly lose weight. Okay, well, well, there you go, or get some E coli bacteria in your stomach. So the this, I won't even tell you the dish, it was because then you could 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:

So, so you, you, did you

Greg Kinnear:

ever? Did you? Ever, would you? Would you ever, periodically, my wife always likes it. Did you ever, did you ever, at any time till for any food? Of course, I did. Okay, yeah, that's nothing. Big tell. That's why I told my wife. I was like, yeah, man, I was in college of starving. Yeah, guy leaves a hell of a steak. Oh, yeah.

Randall Kaplan:

You mean, I mean, okay, only if it was lightly, you know, someone gets something, they don't want it, and we're not getting out of it, yeah? You could cut off, yeah?

Greg Kinnear:

You know, like, Well, yeah, of course, you cut it off. I'm saying you use certain, you know, there's tricks, yeah. So you, you were fly. This conversation is really going so you were fired for

Randall Kaplan:

impersonating somebody at the restaurant. So who are you impersonating? And What? What? Yeah,

Greg Kinnear:

that was the manager. That was manager of the restaurant that I was in. So

Randall Kaplan:

what was the impersonation? Why do you get pissed? And then can you do it's

Greg Kinnear:

like, no, I can't. And it wasn't even actually a great impersonation, but I it was a good lesson. Hey, wait, I guess I do learn lessons, because my guy who had gotten me the job one day were 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 you know, the head manager. Guys like, you know that, that guy, he makes everybody either live or die and and suddenly we're, 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 all I got people spent money at this place in Tucson, and so I, I, 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, can here do do that impersonation for 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 do 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, 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 in person. No, it's very cool now.

Greg Kinnear:

No, I'll have a good Randall Kaplan by the time we're done. Will you? Can you give us

Randall Kaplan:

your top three impersonations of kind of what you think? Well,

Greg Kinnear:

I always thought I was, I always thought I had a pretty good mine. Many of mine 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 Broca, who else I don't know. I did. I did the 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 realize 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 now Christopher Walken, Kevin Spacey, that was what was happening. We're gonna

Randall Kaplan:

talk about Kevin a little later in the show. Oh we are, oh yeah, Kevin and Harvey and wow. Bill, wow. I'm trying

Greg Kinnear:

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

Randall Kaplan:

both Clinton at some point too. You did a Bill Clinton at some point. No, no,

Greg Kinnear:

I never did about 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 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 double its the hands. But what's amazing is social media is, you know, you used to have like, you know, who's a 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 where you can't nobody can compete with you. Go find. And, 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. I'm

Randall Kaplan:

not a good impersonator. My son, Charlie is, you know, does some, some funny ones, he can do Trump. And he's, can he do Trump? 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's with this? You know, did you ever notice like Bill Clinton did this? It's the thumb over the index fighting out a little of that. Kamala did this to see that and all the you know, where did this come from? I wondered about that, American

Greg Kinnear:

American people, American American people. I had played Bill Clinton and an HBO show with Kerry Washington and and I was always like, I was always like the American American people, American people. You get American people. That was always the 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 shift towards the end there, which I don't really do. I've no but I loved the Dana carby stuff's amazing on that.

Randall Kaplan:

I dug ditches for the world Weight Watchers world headquarters. You dug, yeah, and does a summer job before my freshman year of college at Michigan. Yeah, I get out of the 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. Sure you did. You were, you were doing some hot mopping in high school. So I think tell us about the the value of manual, tough labor sitting there, I'm sure was boiling out there.

Greg Kinnear:

Yeah, I was in that was in Greece. In 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 and but, yeah, one One summer I was Lockheed, had a had a base, 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 pay us, you know, 1000 drachma a day. Think about that, 1000 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 1000 anything, right? And you're a kid, that's

Randall Kaplan:

a lot so, but I were talking 50 bucks a day or 100 bucks a day, yeah, I think was like, I think

Greg Kinnear:

it was like, like, I think that was like $3 No, I'm kidding. I think it was like 50, yeah, I think 5040, or 50 a day, which was a lot at that time. And and the job was, they were roofing. So they were building, you know, hangers. And they had a lot of roofing to do. And so you had hot mopping, and you had a tar and you and I don't know what it taught me, other than it was very, very, you know, very long and tedious hours. But I certainly appreciated, you know, you thought twice about how you spent the money. Yeah, you know, if you, if you stole the money out of, you know, from someone, it's, you know, or you found 1000 drachma. You thought about that 1000 drachma different than the 1000 drachma you had spent, you know, nine hours in the blazing sun, hot mopping. Never wore a bandana, by the way. That's not a cool way to do your manual labor, as you probably learned. But

Randall Kaplan:

don't forget, Steven sa Gall was really big back then, so I did try to grow a little, you know, the tail. So I'm not sure that bandana was somewhat cool. Yeah, half the workers wore one, yeah,

Greg Kinnear:

yeah, you and Seagull, you and Segal, yeah.

Randall Kaplan:

I mean, he was huge for a few years. Michael, which is former trainer, that's how he got that job. That's right, that's right. So there's a lesson I learned from that, as I sure should, 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 remind you hang on to them. So yeah, that's why you have gone on and over achieved. But me, I 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 life that make a big impact during our life. I. On Corwin economics class for your of high school. I just lit it up in that class. And I want to be a CEO. I were reading all these profiles. There was 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 they recorded and sent it to him, which is, you know, great, great moments. Tell us about Miss panopolis and Miss Gibbs, Oh, yeah. Influence they had on your future.

Greg Kinnear:

Well, Miss Gibbs, are you out there? Miss Gibbs,

Randall Kaplan:

we'll track her down for you. Deborah Gibbs, I

Greg Kinnear:

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, and nobody right

Randall Kaplan:

there. He's on it right there. Yeah, really, yeah. We're gonna get, if she's living, we're gonna get, I'm looking

Greg Kinnear:

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 Miss monopolis, where we have talked about Miss Gibbs was a, was a wonderful teacher, very warm, very, you know, great instincts. And I she put on a lot of shows I remember over there and 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 instincts, and if you could be incredibly subtle. And I remember her being, oh, no, that's good, you know, whereas, you know, I think the interacting tends to be a little broader, and, and, and I not a, I'm not abroad. 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. Have you tried? Until you try to track 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 they ACS is American Community Schools of Athens, and they

Randall Kaplan:

have them all over the place, by the way, not just That's right, but

Greg Kinnear:

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 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. I

Greg Kinnear:

guess Punctuality is important. I was punctual for this podcast. Was I not?

Randall Kaplan:

You started one you walked in at 1259, it's pretty great. Yeah, thank you. By the way, you're welcome. I really nervous.

Greg Kinnear:

You didn't think I was going to

Randall Kaplan:

show up for this no, because I confirmed a couple of times. I wouldn't

Greg Kinnear:

say you confirmed a couple of times. You're like, Rain Man, you're definitely, you're coming, definitely doing the podcast. And, like, I got a lot of a lot of hits, and I had a sense, what

Randall Kaplan:

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

Greg Kinnear:

sense was, Wow, this is a guy who takes this seriously and and obviously, then I did listen to your podcast, which I thought was very good, and I thank you. 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 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 did something nice for you, and I just do something nice, and then I put you on the spot. And so as I go, I mean, I

Greg Kinnear:

didn't have any choice. I mean, it's

Randall Kaplan:

like, what were you gonna say? I gave you the phone, I saved the day hostage situation, and I hit you up for my show, like, right, right. 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. I

Randall Kaplan:

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 it, and then I could

Greg Kinnear:

write you back and say, No, I'm not going to do which would have been fine. I mean, I would have been disappointed.

Randall Kaplan:

I would have been told you I was gonna do, I know, but I'll tell you I've 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. Well, I did, should I book the studio? I did? And I 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 learn. So a lesson for me and having people cancel on that is you always want to maximize the highest probability for successful outcome. And so for me, when you tell people that you book the studio, that means you've now spent money. And I'll say it's non refundable if you

Unknown:

didn't use the word non I have before, it was certainly implied. Okay, all right. I was like, He's not getting his money

Randall Kaplan:

back, his job. I it worked. But, and if I'm being honest,

Greg Kinnear:

I did wake up this morning and I did think to myself, shit. I got a lot going on. Do you think? Do I? Do I have to go? And then I thought, wonder how much that studio is that I'd have three person for turns out, not that much, I guess. But no, I would definitely, wouldn't, wouldn't have done that. That's just, that's not amazing. I appreciate it. But

Randall Kaplan:

talk to us about punctuality, and then your talk show, what happened there due to due to lack of punctuality? Are

Greg Kinnear:

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

Randall Kaplan:

yeah, when you were Greece, you had

Greg Kinnear:

a radio show. I had a radio show every week called school days with Greg Kinnear. And I went in and I spun records and talk shit about the principal and stuff and and i Yes, the show started after American top 40 with Casey Kasem. So as soon as they count down, as I was on the bus riding from Northern Athens to down to the Air Force Base in glafada. I'd be listening to and the number three song, an 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 a lack of professionalism, but I did. I found that I when I started talk soup, I found the same type of thing, which was, I like to get to to the show. I'd like to come in here. Like to do it, you know, I I don't like a lot of build up and time and 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 add make it a little tight, I tend to add a little chaos to it. Yeah, 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 different to that. Does that let me off the hook? No, but I do think there's a little bit of that in everything I do. You were fired for being late by uh, I don't like this. I don't like this reoccurring theme that you're building into

Randall Kaplan:

the lesson. A lot. These are lessons

Greg Kinnear:

like, yeah, I guess being accurate then yes, there might be a lesson in that. Yes, you're

Randall Kaplan:

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 I believe that. I also believe in getting somewhere. What was that saying? Early, you're on time. If you're on time, you're late. Never got

Greg Kinnear:

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 from me on your side. No, I will, I will credit you on that. And I got the coat, and then I got the and then I have this too. But again, I

Greg Kinnear:

also find like, you know, if you go to the airport, and you know, for me, the perfect catching of a flight situation is my foots coming onto that plane, and they are closing that door right behind me. That is, 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 hovering 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. Yeah,

Randall Kaplan:

right, yeah. I'm enjoying the therapy, right? Okay, so you go to you go to college, university of Arizona, yeah, and you thought you were gonna 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 you know, 2% of you are ever going to make a living being actors. And I 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 reminder from him, for better, for worse, that this was just a fact, the number of people that were, you know, pursuing that particular, you know, career path we're only going to find, You know, this number was what was going to find success, and the other ones were going to have to find alternative, you know, 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, 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. So

Randall Kaplan:

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. Yeah, no,

Greg Kinnear:

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 mines 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 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 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. Yeah, Mark Cuba 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 environment like that necessary ingredient to our success? Yeah,

Greg Kinnear:

I agree with Mark Cuban on that. I think that your ability to be able to manage adversity and kind of deal with unexpected, you know, behavior and 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 up 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. I but I do think that it's the pendulum swung so far from over to a side of nurturing and caring, and, you know, puppies and unicorns, that 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 shit 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, 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 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, paper weights 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 of early employment. And it is, 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. Your

Randall Kaplan:

first, I guess, real job in LA, you were 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. That was our that was our Titanic, that was your Titanic, which grossed $50,000 how much did that grow? Way more like 100,000 Okay, 100,000

Greg Kinnear:

No, I don't know. I don't know really dollar for dollar, 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. So you've

Randall Kaplan:

talked a little bit about movie time, but tell us about what you the tape you made, you in you met Justine, yeah, so you're at Empire pictures. You meet Justine, your sound producer. They're dating. Yeah, you make this tape for MTV. Yep, you don't get the job correct, 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. Yeah,

Greg Kinnear:

I mean, I kind of went there. I think I had a slightly protective device early on, which was, I'm Scotch Irish. So little bit like this probably won't work out. This will never happen anyway. It, 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

Randall Kaplan:

way? He phrased it a

Greg Kinnear:

little bit whatever, whatever mark. Anyway, that's column now, it's true, though, I'm being honest. You know, I went in there with low expectations. I did not go in there with the I'm gonna go get the MTV job, VJ, 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, you know, they called me back for I actually had to do an audition. So I went in and basically auditioned to be a to 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 they were there was always done on my lunch break, because then I had to speed back up to the former gold with the 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 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 let's in 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, you know, Wembley theater, and at seven o'clock and 10 o'clock. 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 pure and 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, and 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, we actually sold that to Peter Chernin. Was at Fox actually at the time, and we took it in there, and and, 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 host it? So I ended up hosting the show to 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, it was a fun little, you know, I think 11 episodes or something, and it was early reality television. And so, yeah, we had, you know, we had this, you know, we I would go and interview, you know, Dr Delgado, or somebody who, through hypnosis, could make a woman's breasts enlarge and and this, these were the kinds of stories that I would have to travel around and and cover for our prestigious best of the worst program. And it didn't really turn in, 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 Bay, and it eventually, we were looking at these clips of these daytime shows, and we realized this, this shit 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, you know it, I guess it was ahead of, like, 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 9am to three o'clock 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 put nine or 10 of them together, and I'd make smart ass comments about it. And wasn't supposed to be a comedy show. 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 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 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, you know, cut up and make fun in the in the room every day, and all of us busting up who are 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 for a place called E. You did

Randall Kaplan:

it for three. Years, three years, and then your contract was up. They offered to pay you a shit ton of money, at least back then. Yeah, you're gonna 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? I remember

Greg Kinnear:

my dad being like, Are you sure you want to leave this talk soup thing, man, it's really

Randall Kaplan:

funny. It's funny. You're getting paid well, you're becoming famous and well known. Yeah. So

Greg Kinnear:

that really landed with me. I was like, Really, 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 future of Jerry Springer was bright. I just had, I believe, 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 and I think after three years, I just thought to myself, I don't see this as as really the the future, and for me anyway, and, and it wasn't really a, it wasn't really a 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 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, Sydney Pollack, a couple of times, who had talked to me about playing Harrison's 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? Sidney sees me on the show. Is he seriously going to offer me this role in this movie. So maybe that was playing around in the back of my head, but the truth is, Sydney had actually seen me on talk soup, and that was how I probably ever got the audition to begin with. So it listen, it opened as many doors. It opened a lot of doors too.

Randall Kaplan:

We'll come back to Sydney and Sabrina in a minute, but I want to talk about in 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? I honestly,

Greg Kinnear:

you know, 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, you know, young people starting out probably in the 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 a 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 type, you know, operation, and there is no end to what that can do for a person trying to get noticed and get started. And I know, you know, I 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. Yeah, that's for your next episode, talking to my agent right speaking of age, out here, right now, Rick, come on in here. No. Sorry. Rick

Randall Kaplan:

Kurtzman, great. Kurtzman at CAA. Yeah. So my daughter works at CAA. She just graduated college. What 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 I it's, it's always hard to, it's hard to qualify anything, obviously, in this business, this, 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. But 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, who aren't, as probably a pretty 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 that 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 they're all really good at that. They're really good at at at just being there. So

Randall Kaplan:

the only reason I know how this works is because I live in LA. I have friends in the business at all in this business, I Well, she's brand new, so she's been at CAA for two months. She's in the training program branding group, so she doesn't want to be in. Oh, branding, yeah, 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 what if

Greg Kinnear:

I want to start the Greg Kinnear golf clubs and create the Greg Kinnear golf brand, I need to call your daughter. So

Randall Kaplan:

explain to people. Oh, get out of here, man. You just took another you just took another nugget out of the you just took another rabbit out of

Greg Kinnear:

the hat. What was something else are we gonna do this later on? A lotta, lotta. 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, okay, how important you think hair is

Randall Kaplan:

in my profession? Yes, as an entrepreneur, yes. And now, so I have a venture capital investment

Greg Kinnear:

firm. Oh, I know. I have, we'll be, 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've got a small real estate company. I have my main job, money maker. I hope next billion dollar opportunity. Now I'm listening comedy, comedy called Sandy, s, a, n, d, e, and

Greg Kinnear:

we're building, this is beaches. This is the study of beaches all over the globe? Well, we've

Randall Kaplan:

created the world's largest beach resource for the $5 trillion beach tourism business. That doesn't even include the local tourism business. So there's 10s 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. So

Greg Kinnear:

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, you're going to get to know all the information about them, but I'll also get to see the beach, I'm assuming, right?

Randall Kaplan:

So people want to see what the beach looks like before they go. Everybody has had a bad experience on a on a vacation, and this is not, this is valuable. Cherish time. These are expensive days for you, right? People get a week vacation. Two weeks they plan the average vacations, four days, four and a half days you're going to a beach, and it's the wrong beach. So

Greg Kinnear:

drones, drones, you and your company are responsible for the drones on New Jersey shoreline, driving the country safe crazy,

Randall Kaplan:

exactly. Yeah, those are not our nighttime drones. And those are those drones are about this big. Our drones are DJI. You know, I fly a Mavic, two Pro. Yeah, it folds up into a neat case. But now 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 would never do that, right? I'm a tech guy. I mean, it's 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 your question is, yes, we have about 50,000 60,000 how many photos do we have now in the database photos?

Unknown:

Yeah, 180,000

Randall Kaplan:

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:

One beach you've got 120,000 photos of. And it's well done. They're

Randall Kaplan:

all great, by the way, we've, we've added those, but, 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, is he? So walk us through how it works. An agent will get a script, and we'll say, Hey, this is great for Greg. I. Right? He's going to, there's someone in the mail room, by the way, who's reading that script first, right? Yeah. They may or may not know what they're doing, right? That that script will get sent to the agent, you know, Junior agent, then the Senior Agent to 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 how it works now, hasn't really

Greg Kinnear:

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 work in television. Is the person who handles, like podcasts, you know. So there's a group, always a team and and they'll call and say, you know, maybe give a call about a script that they have read and is being produced, so and so, place whatever details are relevant to it, in terms of what, who's attached, and kind of, you know, 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 and usually in, you know, that's 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, is the key to anything, you know. I mean, it's a little different in television, because the show runner is also, is, you know, probably more the person that you're talking to, but, but with a film, yeah, it's, it's the director and and it's just a conversation, and that conversation at that point, it's the the, you know, the ropes been cut, and you're On a boat with somebody else now, and you're talking about creatively, well, how would this happen? And when, when? What is this? What's, what's it about? And what am I, 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 that's kind of the the process, but, but I you know, so it's not particularly complicated. That's, that's pretty much it.

Randall Kaplan:

I never answer your question about my hair. No, I'm not a politician, but the answer is, now that I am on camera for the first time, it is a little awkward. We've done a lot of these. This isn't your first time, no, but it's still what I what I notice is that. I mean, obviously I want to look good, yeah, right. So my hair does matter. You always want to put your best foot forward, yeah. 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 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, it's and you can take two minutes to fix your hair.

Greg Kinnear:

Have you? Have you ever like, come across anyone like so unprofessional that 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 ask 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 right show up with with,

Greg Kinnear:

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

Randall Kaplan:

So let's talk about Sydney. What do you think about

Greg Kinnear:

the drones back in New Jersey as a drone flyer? What is your take on that situation? Number one,

Randall Kaplan:

the laws are, what they are, you can fly your drone. Oh, I know within 400 feet. Yeah, totally. The crazy thing is, you have to be in eye contact with your drone at all times. Are

Greg Kinnear:

You Led flight at night. Well, you are okay, no restriction, but, well, there

Randall Kaplan:

are in some and you can't fly in there and airport, each location is different. You can't fly it 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 pilots by. Since you got to study, there's a test, FAA certificate. So that's, that's a real that's a real thing. But sound like New

Greg Kinnear:

York is, here's my question, What the hell is going on in these? I

Randall Kaplan:

have no idea. You really are. Apologies. Are these? Are? These are big drones. So this is not Randy Kaplan. First of all, my drones won't work. These are big

Greg Kinnear:

drones. How big? That doesn't seem like that big

Randall Kaplan:

of my drone is this big, right? A hobbyist, you wouldn't

Greg Kinnear:

want to have to give

Randall Kaplan:

that up. Did you on the broadcast? Don't come arrest me now. These are, these are my drones. I'm filming infrared the value of the beaches. I'm taking nighttime images of every airport.

Greg Kinnear:

I know you're shooting these beaches with a pack of cigarettes for God's sakes. I was impressed. 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. So you think it's just people up, hey, I'll take like, you.

Greg Kinnear:

You like, 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

Randall Kaplan:

it. I think there a lot of these drone sightings are really aircraft, helicopters. 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 jamming equipment, technology,

Greg Kinnear:

yeah, which is out there as well, right? Which would prohibit a drone from being able to fly? Yeah, there's

Randall Kaplan:

basically a wall. Well, why don't they go put up a Why don't we

Greg Kinnear:

put one of those up in this area where everybody is obsessed? I don't

Randall Kaplan:

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, right? Like you could fly your drone at 20 miles per hour drop. It's like it won't drop, it will not drop, but it will hit the fence and it won't go anymore. Oh, I so, oh, I said there are some technology that can drop a drone, but, you know, a normal no fly zone won't, won't do that, and there's air maps, etc, etc, yeah. So it's there are technological answers here. Why are you a drone

Greg Kinnear:

enthusiast? What makes you a drone enthusiast? So,

Randall Kaplan:

beaches are my happy place, okay? And I love photography. I'm the guy that takes 500 photos on the family, family, and, you know, the kids bitch and moan on it, right? And then later they're so happy that 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. 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 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, so I don't pay for it, right? No, it's free. It's free. It doesn't matter.

Greg Kinnear:

I

Randall Kaplan:

saved you 2995 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. Is unique, very appreciated. You're

Greg Kinnear:

trying to make money off of your gift. To me, you

Randall Kaplan:

know, overachiever, I do it. I do because, because, you know, it's a labor of love, by the way, that's cool. And I actually love

Greg Kinnear:

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 get it. Yeah, it

Randall Kaplan:

actually, it's hard, you know, I probably, I probably have 1000 flight hours, probably more than that, two or 3000 flight hours, yeah, but it's hard. I

Greg Kinnear:

see it. We use, you know, we in a movie or tell anything now is like you they're always pulling drones out in order to get a shot of something. And when those guys come in, they're so organized, they're and the stuff they have is fantastic, yeah, and it's just, you can ask anything you want, and they're give you every kind of answer, but the their ability to give you a smooth aerial shot of almost anything is they're amazing. So

Randall Kaplan:

Sydney Pollack from Lafayette, Indiana, close, yeah, close to you. Yeah. You get invited to audition for Sabrina. With Harrison Ford, who then was probably the biggest movie star in the world. Yep, Julia Ormond. I remember seeing the movie and thinking, oh my gosh, legends of all, one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. Yeah, I thought, oh my gosh, that's gonna say God, 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 friends. Oh yeah, she was married to a guy, and I was married to my ex wife, and we're talking, and it's like, hey, hey, what are you up to? Hey, divorce. Oh, I'm Doris, 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, I'm gonna tell her that we're doing the show. I'm sure she'll, she'll watch

Greg Kinnear:

it, but think so again, she watches everything I do. I

Randall Kaplan:

was I was, I was, and maybe I said this to you, Julia, 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, yeah, 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, yeah?

Greg Kinnear:

I mean, I think so. I think I should have been I, I was a lot. Was way more nervous, like going to lunch in New York with Harrison, you know, the first time I was still I was going to go meet him at some restaurant, grab a bite to eat, and, you know, and we and just kind of going and kind of meeting him, because he I was a fan like anybody, and I had seen from Star Wars The, 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 that was, you know, made me very comfortable, and didn't feel by the time I got to day one of shooting, 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 the

Randall Kaplan:

US Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2023 said the average actor makes $20.50 per hour. 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. Yeah, 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

Greg Kinnear:

work out well. 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 would said that to me back at that time, you know, I'd 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 it's kind of, everybody does everything and and, you know, I it really has changed drastically, you know, since that time. And I do think that, you know, you can show up here, and you probably can do a lot of different. Hell, I did. You've, 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, you know, there was a lot of stuff, and some of it was, you know, hosting, and some of it was television, but there were plenty of other jobs and oddball things that I would 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? You continue. I don't know what happened here. Ladies and gentlemen. Greg Kinnear, today,

Randall Kaplan:

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, okay, no, but if I did have it, I hope it's my wife or someone who looks like my wife, I understand.

Greg Kinnear:

I. Understand. I played a doctor in a number of shows. I think, I think you're gonna be fine. How are you now? Okay, I feel good.

Randall Kaplan:

Okay, yeah, any who if we could just bring it thinking about Mad mustache. I'm just like mad. Just never gonna cough again. Never gonna cough again. I

Greg Kinnear:

just played the head of a fire department in Dennis lanes. Next show, we did a show called black bird, and then we followed it up with another true crime story, and it takes place in the world of arson, and did it with Taryn Edgerton, a lot of the same people. And I have a mustache, and it's pretty good mustache. That's a very good muscle. We have so

Randall Kaplan:

much material to cover today, and I had cut out the Dennis Lehane part of this, yeah, one of my favorite, I love fiction, yeah, one of the, one of, one of the, one of my goals on my bucket list is to have a best selling fiction book.

Greg Kinnear:

But that'd be great. I get I get it. I'm with

Randall Kaplan:

you right there, and he's absolutely phenomenal writer. Have you ever written a chapter? I wrote a book, so All right, we're gonna digress right here. I've never shared 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. You know, I'm writing this book, and it took a lot of years. I would come into work every day from seven to one, 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, 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. Would you send him the first pages of the book? Yeah, I sent him the first 10 pages of the book, okay? 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. Oh boy. And I'm like, oh shit, I waited too late. I blew my chance. You missed your moment. 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 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 sent 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. 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 ghost writer to help me with, you know, my book, James Patterson, has a lot of ghost writers. Chapter Yeah, fix it.

Greg Kinnear:

So that's what I need, some ghost writers. So

Randall Kaplan:

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. And Larry said, you need someone to help you with a book editor. So I said, Can you recommend somebody? 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 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, etc, etc, you know where, you know, weird. I'm not taking new clients on the book business. Where'd you get my name? Larry kurzbaum. Larry kurshbaum told you to call me. I Yes, he did. He said, Send me. Send me the first 10 pages. So. On 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 ways you charge you $5,000 to read the 100 pages. Yeah, to read the 100 pages and give me comments on that's fair. I mean, whatever. But I do it for 2000 okay, if you ever in that 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 ghost writer. James Patterson now puts the writer on the book with it with him. Dave Ellis, a classmate 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. I'm uncomfortable

Greg Kinnear:

with all the success, but go ahead, it's yeah. So

Randall Kaplan:

so I have that book, and I need to get back to my book. But I got extremely busy. I got 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.

Greg Kinnear:

So you're telling me that you wish you wrote, but you do right? Yeah, fictional book, but you did a fiction.

Randall Kaplan:

I have it. It needs a lot of work, and I'm going to, you want to, you want to finish it. I am going to finish, yeah, do you

Greg Kinnear:

know what for the primary? What was the primary? Note that you look back at you say, okay, so their big problem, stumbling, rock. Can you? Can you just describe it in a sentence? Yeah, one

Randall Kaplan:

sentence. The character wasn't likable. Oh, that's easy. Easy to fix. You didn't You didn't we didn't feel sympathy for the character. This is, I don't want to give too much. I think

Greg Kinnear:

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,

Randall Kaplan:

yeah, I haven't written any. 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. But, okay, this has turned into the Greg Kinnear Podcast. I'm glad to be a guest. Thanks for having me. I'm really good

Greg Kinnear:

at this. All

Randall Kaplan:

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 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. Well,

Greg Kinnear:

yeah, it's it's a it's true. It's true. My first meeting with Jack took place up at his house, and 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 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, I there's few people I can think in the world who hold, you know, quite the place in cinema that he does, that are that are still around. And he's, he's a remarkable, remarkable actor with a just a incredible body of work. And so that was a thrill to get to work with him. And, you know, something that he didn't let me down the his work was fantastic on it. He took it seriously, but it was fun to work with and total pro and just everything you you would want, I

Randall Kaplan:

would ask you to do an impersonation of Jack. I said, Are you once forgetting meatballs? No, no, but, but, but, but I like you to do. Did you order the code red? Oh,

Greg Kinnear:

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

Randall Kaplan:

was asked by Cuba Gooden Jr, I think it was Cuba. Did you you want

Greg Kinnear:

me on that wall? Right? Yeah, you

Randall Kaplan:

need me on that wall. Hey, look

Greg Kinnear:

at that. Look at us. We should take this show on the road. You're goddamn

Randall Kaplan:

right. I did so

Greg Kinnear:

when you fly a drone, are you looking like? Get a monitor or something, or, Hey, Rick, I

Randall Kaplan:

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

Greg Kinnear:

it's not true. Stay away from this man. Whatever you do. He has no acting skills, as I can see. I'm kidding you. 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 finance world, which I know nothing about. 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 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. That's,

Randall Kaplan:

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, right? I wanted you to like me, yep, when I met you, yeah. 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. Yeah. Now, my friend is a very successful investment banker, and I remember 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. It was my brother in law. Oh, wow. 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 says, you know, what do you do? And she says, I worked at a museum, and it was back and forth. He didn't say he was director of acquaint he said, I'm in sales for the museum. And it was very interesting. I said, Well, what's your primary job? I 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, right? And it's something, it's something a lot of people don't understand. Back to Rick Kurtzman, by the way, our Pickleball coach, we have a similar pickleball coach, Michael, I know he plays at your house. I know you're interested to play at my house, so I love to invite you to play at my house, but I want to get Matthew McConaughey on my show, So Rick, you and I can talk about that as well. I'm

Greg Kinnear:

sitting right here. Okay, anyway, folks, we're gonna wrap this up. This has been great, Randall. We want you back on the show anytime. And I apologize, it's two year, two hours. I had no idea the Time goes fast when you're speaking with somebody as dynamic as myself, go ahead, the

Randall Kaplan:

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 role?

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, who 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 didn't, it wasn't difficult playing him as gay, you know, I felt like it was a, you know, lovely person and beautiful role. One of

Randall Kaplan:

my favorite movies of all time, by the way, which one as good as it gets? It was a, it was a fantastic movie. Thank you. 1998 Academy Awards the year. Titanic was all their age. 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. Sorry, I'll share with you in a minute what I've you didn't win, and what I'm always congratulations on the nomination, by the way. I mean, that's huge. Why didn't I win? Is that your question? No, that isn't the question. The question is, you know, you're always sitting there watching this, right? It's a great show. And I'm always wondering, when you don't win, everyone just immediately starts clapping for are you sitting? Are saying to yourself, fuck, I didn't win. And I really the cameras on me that I really got really happy. Yeah, you kind

Greg Kinnear:

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 it's, it is you're very conscious that you're they're about to tell you whether you you win or not at any of those award shows. And it's

Randall Kaplan:

because I watched it, by the way, yesterday. Watch what that you your reaction? Robin, yes, I did. There's a YouTube video, wow.

Greg Kinnear:

And time do you have on your hands between the drone business and

Randall Kaplan:

I wanted to see because I manage it, by the way, it wasn't even a millisecond by You look happy. You know, it's like, if I'm 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, yeah,

Greg Kinnear:

I guess. But there's also a fairly good chance that you know before you ever, before I did that, 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 expectation. 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 baby, 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, was a great night for me. I had my wife and I had my mom and dad came. It was, it was a great evening for us. Yeah, all win. And by the way, Robin Williams won that year, and he was absolutely magnificent. Were you in the same years? No

Randall Kaplan:

High School? No, I wasn't. You're older than him. I'm much younger. Thank you. Okay, sorry, no, I went to a public high school, and then I want to go 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 Morgan Mindy 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 lunch time, everyone's in there, there's, you know, all came in. You must have been came in for 30 minutes. Just monolog had everyone on the floor laughing. Yeah, this was kind of cool. Yeah, I think I'm gonna come here. Yeah. So I and interesting. I always wanted to meet him, yeah, and I saw him one day at Barneys. And he was leaving Barneys, 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, yeah. And I never had the chance. Obviously, yeah, of course, you know, unfortunately, it didn't do it. I did not do it.

Greg Kinnear:

What are the lessons did we learn that day? Well,

Randall Kaplan:

you already know when you accosted me that day, I had learned my lesson Exactly.

Greg Kinnear:

What do you do when you're 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 Apple

Randall Kaplan:

had invested in our technology company. Really my technology Steve Jobs was CEO. He had sent someone out when we attend, people to try to buy the company. You ever meet Steve Jobs? So I'm going to tell you the lesson learned story. Sorry,

Greg Kinnear:

I like to cut to the money shot. So

Randall Kaplan:

they made a lot of money on the investment. They invested $25 million at a 250 dollars with 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. Wow. And I saw them. I was in Kona at the Four Seasons, and there was a property next door. They called them 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 Johnson over there. And said, Oh yeah, you know, you want to go talk to him. What year is this? This was, let's see our company went public in 99 it would have been after his graduation speech at Stanford, which is 2006 2007 Okay, so somewhere in in that range, right around the iPhone time, it was before the iPhone time, I think it was before the iPhone time, right? Yeah, it, for sure, was before the iPhone time, I think, certainly given the speech, certainly

Greg Kinnear:

before I took my company. Any public too, yeah. So I'm trying to think time your third

Randall Kaplan:

public, yeah, your third public on 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. Clearly, I'm there was no one within 100 feet of them. And she said to me, the old Randy would have, I was already out of my seat before she said, of Yeah. 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 not existent at all. Yeah, and I felt horrible and embarrassed. I said I heard he could always be. He could be a pretty tough guy. It was very rough. So I say, Excuse me, Mr. Jobs, I'm Randy Kaplan,

Greg Kinnear:

is he looking at you? Now? Co founder, is he still not looking at he

Randall Kaplan:

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. Hmm, you know, interesting. What do I say that? I said, Yeah, we you know, I was very grateful and lucky, you know, and that is how I feel, yeah. 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, you know, Business Week, 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 two $40 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 doing this, and that was that. So I did meet Steve Jobs. That was a story. Oh, man, and at least I have a story to tell. I'm glad I did it. It's

Greg Kinnear:

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 doctor

Randall Kaplan:

that story. Steve did say, and 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. Yeah, okay, I left that out. Okay, now I'm understanding. 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

Randall Kaplan:

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

Greg Kinnear:

with all this money, do you pay people to come on these podcasts? Or how does this

Randall Kaplan:

work? Ever we had, what you ever thought about? So the only person I ever considered this? Yeah, I was in Vegas shooting Dana White. And Dana White, UFC is a huge deal, right? And I studio, I rent one there, and they shoot all kinds of very interesting people. So everyone knows Dana's coming in. Yeah, 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 two hours and 40 minutes, by the way, because the system's blowing up my phone, which obviously I had on my phone with me, right? You're 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 $1,500 a podcast. This is how he makes money. I mean, he didn't make money, yeah. And I thought, you know, a lot of my viewers and listeners are not going to know who Pete Rose is, right, right? He's too old. Pete Rose is one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game. For sure, he gambled on the sport, and that was the end of that band. No Hall of Fame, no, nothing. Little unfair on that Hall of Fame business. Yes, very, very. I mean, you have all these guys jack on steroids or in, you know, the whole, 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 whatever, 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, right? So that was a bummer for me, but he was the only one I had to consider paying, and the only reason was because he needed it. I

Greg Kinnear:

think he would have been offended. I think he would have been offended to what if you had paid him?

Randall Kaplan:

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

Greg Kinnear:

So in that way, my theory doesn't work. No, it doesn't work. But

Randall Kaplan:

one, one thing interesting about your career, that's. Different from people like the rock Margot Robbie is you never had an acting coach?

Greg Kinnear:

No. How

Randall Kaplan:

is that possible?

Greg Kinnear:

I didn't hire one. But

Randall Kaplan:

99.9999% of actors, professional actors, especially every actor. 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 is 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 that's amazing. That is amazing technique. And I I'm afraid that I would fail out of the class. Maybe it's the University of Arizona baggage carrying me, or 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 in a more 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 glasses, some very, very tough glasses. But you know the technical term acting class? No, I haven't had that experience. You've

Randall Kaplan:

had a ton of success. And you said also the imposter syndrome, yeah. I

Greg Kinnear:

mean, for anybody I, well, just three, I think anybody who feels like, you know, 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 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, Jesus, wow. What? What? 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, 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 gonna 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? Yeah, I

Greg Kinnear:

don't know. No, I don't think of that for sure. I don't feel that way. And, and there are, you know, a plethora of big stars all being featured next week on the show join us. But I have, I've been, you know, fortunate and lucky enough to kind of, you know, stay in the game and and I'm, I'm 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, 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, you know, I've built a lot of families out here over the years in

Randall Kaplan:

the venture capital business, which everyone thinks is so sexy. It's not sexy when you lose eight out of 10 deals go to zero, right? No one. No one bats 100 the venture capital business. Wasn't gonna say it was sexy, but those are your words. Well, I mean, oh, I want to go on a 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. Yeah, What plan 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 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 you know, failure is, you know, just as you, God knows, your lesson on failure. I can't imagine,

Randall Kaplan:

feels terrible, by the way, terrible failures. No fun, 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 in failure, and it it hurts and isn't fun, but it's necessary. And you know, there's no alternative. Do you learn? I guess there is an alternative. But do

Randall Kaplan:

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, you know, the the process for, for for picking or choosing, or ending up doing whatever you're doing is is always, at least for me, and I think for most people, they all, everybody kind of has their own code. And, you know, you pick based 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 directors 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've Got Mail years ago. I mean, she was like, this wonderful woman that was incredibly talented, you know, writer and director, and she was, it was almost like she was great at hosting a cocktail party. You know, she would make sure that everything was set when we started, and each day felt like a little joy. I mean, it was, it was really nice.

Randall Kaplan:

We have cool moments as parents. You know, one of my coolest moment was I take my 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 416 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 a movie to ask your permission. Can you tell us

Greg Kinnear:

about the song cockiness, and I don't know if you remember the lyrics on that song, and if you don't, I like to tell you what the lyrics of that of that song are. I don't really what are the lyrics. Okay, the lyrics are. This is a song that I had recorded, a song in a movie called stuck on you. Stuck on your 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 the film was by the fairly brothers. It was really fun to do, but, but any rate that, at the end of it, I had to sing a song. And that song, I got a call from my my lawyers said that 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. Said, that's possible. How much would she pay me? And he said, nothing. And I said, All right, let's do it. And so 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, great leap. I could modify this, you know, with my kids, and tell them, Dad's gonna do a song with Rihanna. And so they, sure enough, were little little girls, and I told them, Daddy's gonna 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? Eddie'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? I don't, but I didn't you know that, though, yeah, my cockiness, lick my persuasion. It's a hit. Oh, it's a hit. It's a hit, but it's a very filthy, filthy song. And my daughters were like, huh, Danny, what's I mean, never mind, any rate it's that was, we never went on tour together. Greg Rowe, very short. Row, gray, I don't know, gray 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 we,

Randall Kaplan:

there's a lot of bad actors in any profession in Hollywood. We've got Phil Cosby, who everyone loved until all that came out. You've got Kevin Spacey, which we've talked about, yeah, Harvey Weinstein. Everybody in Hollywood, at least that I know, and it'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 afraid of Harvey?

Greg Kinnear:

I don't know. Honestly, I never worked. I never worked directly with him. He financed a movie, you know, 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 them. I didn't know that he was, you know that that was all revealed when I saw the story come out, and heard all the women who came forward and obviously is horrible, I guess unsurprising, looking back, you know, in our business that there were bad actors, and probably plenty more, and plenty since then, who have, you know, been sort of outed. So, you know, it's, it's was a long time coming, but that, 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 activists. I've got, 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's looking at the cue cards. I think that's well known. But, I mean, you're not doing that in a movie, obviously. So right, play or play, right? Yeah. 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, yeah, now, certainly in the course of this podcast, whoever again toward the end, I promise certainly be as long as it was under 300 pages, I would be able to nail it for you pretty quickly. I don't say that lightly, it is a of course, it's it isn't the most meaningful thing. I don't think most actors would tell you the ability to memorize is is the key to success, but, but it's valuable. Oh, I'm serious, I could very quickly learn whatever you

Randall Kaplan:

gave me, yeah, but you practice in front of a mirror. Do you role play with your wife or No, I

Greg Kinnear:

can. I'll read it like this and start like it would start literally reading it like this. It might. 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 a 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 seeing, you know, all of that is ultimately, I think, far more important than the ability to to know what the character has to say. But that said, you know, obviously that's important too. It's just, if you know, for me, that's, that's a pretty good. That's always been pretty easy. What

Randall Kaplan:

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? Yeah,

Greg Kinnear:

I mean the ability to tell the truth. You know, 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 a, 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 having manners and showing up and being respectful to the people you work with, and, and, you know, and and being on time, and, you know, 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 trying to get me into the specifics of acting, and I don't really know when I take on a job, what, 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, it's when it's done. I kind of know whether or not I it delivered on all the things I wanted it to deliver on, but, 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. Knows to every single person who's on the scent. She knows everybody's name, from the lowest person, you know, they're, you know, the grips to, obviously, all of her co actors, Director, I I think that's amazing. It is amazing. I think it's really important.

Greg Kinnear:

I'm terrible with names, too, by the way, Sharon gets to be the person who not only can memorize dialog, but also can remember everybody's names. And I walk in and I meet 10 people, and honestly, if you put me in a lineup, I'll, you know, I can't do it. 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 at a restaurant and be like, you know, in two

Randall Kaplan:

guys did a podcast with

Greg Kinnear:

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 the New York Times had 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. You track that down for me too, and you're looking for Deborah

Randall Kaplan:

Gibbs, we're going to track that down. You know, very interesting. I think sure if it's,

Greg Kinnear:

is it Deb Gibbs, I think it was Deborah Gibbs, yeah. So,

Randall Kaplan:

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 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 coach or kitchen. I'm like, Okay, well, yes, I would like to. And I love my dog, and our dog at the time was Puah Britney mountain dog, and I wanted a picture of. Uh, 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. Netanyahu, his wife thought it was disrespect. Sarah did not like that very that you were gonna get a picture with you, your dog and and Prime Minister, Bebe, yeah, and baby, she was not happy about that. So nonetheless, we took the photo. How do you know she wasn't happy? She told me. She said, that's very disrespectful. She kind of do it cute though. No, there was no she didn't try to mask it with a smile. There's but So between this

Greg Kinnear:

and Steve Jobs, there's a thing happening with you? He

Randall Kaplan:

said again, I never really put it together. I think I'm gonna have to ask my therapist about this when I see her next. But I it was very interesting to podcasts with these coming over. No, it was interesting because my dog's name was Pua, means flower in Hawaiian. Our 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, you know, we got to talk to him again, and he said to me, Randy, how's Pua? Oh, my God, I was It's like someone hit me with a battering ram. Oh, my God. I mean, how many people had he met in between? I mean, I've

Greg Kinnear:

heard Bill Clinton, very similar, yeah. And there are people who have this Mary Lou Henner, have that ability. Oh, sures are dates. You can tell her any she came on my show once. Do you know this story she was on 60 minutes about

Randall Kaplan:

this well, but it's one of the stories about you that I don't know. Yeah, she, she, she can

Greg Kinnear:

tell you. You can give her a date, and you can say, Where were you on November 12, 1991 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, that's right, who didn't have the ability to communicate and have a normal conversation. But they did, in fact, and they learned, some of them learned they could record 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, I think it's, you get better at it, you know, I do think, you know, it's, it's like a skit, it's like a muscle you strengthen, and it's, it's again, and we were talking about earlier, you know, just failure is no fun, but 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 alone. You still

Randall Kaplan:

have to read for roles. I mean, you're so established now you are a star. I would, I

Greg Kinnear:

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

Randall Kaplan:

You play golf? I do? You hit a hole in one I did? You play pickleball? I do. Are you 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 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 yeah, pickleball, you have like, a three, two number, yeah, they have, like, tennis, like a five, oh and four, oh yeah, yeah. It's

Randall Kaplan:

the same you've been. Are you a pickleball player? I am. We have a quarter at our house. I'm gonna buy you over to play. I'm gonna come. We have some really fun games. All right, great, very, very, great people. Gonna continue

Greg Kinnear:

the podcast. We can continue the podcast. You know, it's very interesting. I've had the

Randall Kaplan:

number one female pickleball player. I interviewed her two weeks ago. I had Ben Johns, number one men's. Yeah, the goat. They're both the goat Annalee waters has been. She's been number one since she was 14 years old. Really, she just won her, I don't know, 10th Triple Crown last weekend. Did she play singles or doubles? Singles, doubles next, everything, everything. So the difference between singles and doubles is crazy. 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 shit ton of free stuff, like Ben's. Ben. In this 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 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 they 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 like to come shoot some footage. Or I said, Yeah, you know, totally open to it. So, so I haven't shot a show there, but 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, yeah, yeah. 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? Yes. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is be open. My number one professional goal is to be a good father. My biggest regret in life is, how people? How

Greg Kinnear:

fast are people at answering these questions? You know what

Randall Kaplan:

Annalie Waters was, I think the fastest we've ever had. And she's 17 years old. I got

Greg Kinnear:

asked to be the grand marshal at New Orleans. What do they call that? The big Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras, yeah, I didn't do it. Huge, huge disappointment. I gotta live with that every day in my life. Go ahead. My big

Randall Kaplan:

My biggest fear is, I

Greg Kinnear:

thought you were gonna finish that. Oh, this is for me too. Yeah, yeah. Okay. What is your biggest fear? My

Randall Kaplan:

biggest fear is not living long enough to enjoy my kids and have grandkids. Oh, yeah, followed by a close second being eaten by sharks.

Greg Kinnear:

My biggest fear is, if we're playing like the fear factor version, ie, sharks would be drowning, so we're both in the water world, my number

Randall Kaplan:

three, yeah, and, wow, yeah. What's two

Greg Kinnear:

sharks? What's one

Randall Kaplan:

not living long enough to see my kids? What's four? 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:

Now, generally, those people who were in that cave, and I forgot what country, and, oh, yeah, down there for Thailand, yeah, somewhere like that, and I just, I would have died of a heart attack the minute that I got down there. Yeah, the proudest moment in my career

Greg Kinnear:

is I rarely feel proud. It's not like I have, you know, great. I mean, I the 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 is, what's Craziest thing that's happened in your career, man, there have been,

Greg Kinnear:

there have been a lot. See, that's my answer. Yeah. You

Randall Kaplan:

know, it's funny. I I've had tons of shows, and I often thought about, how would I answer these questions if someone asks me, and I don't have the answers to a lot of them, yeah, I understand, because they're difficult questions. Yeah, they are. Which is, which is meant to elicit all kinds of things in people, because you learn a lot about people, and I think it's

Greg Kinnear:

mostly deflection, is what you'll learn from me. Yeah, I've

Randall Kaplan:

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

Greg Kinnear:

my gosh. I feel like you gotta be prepped for these man. I really do you go on a I know you're looking to have camel on. I mean, like before you go out there, 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 you don't, you know, end up I don't. I'm deeply,

Unknown:

uh,

Greg Kinnear:

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 I

Greg Kinnear:

don't know if I'd if I'd be retired at that point. I don't know how really, somebody's asking me recently, would you retire? I don't really know how to retire, because I would do this. I love doing this, and I love, you know, still enjoy the process greatly and performing, and so I don't know. You know, retirement always sounds like a word that has a 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. If

Randall Kaplan:

you go back and give your 21 year old cell phone, piece of advice, what would it be? No fear. 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 stepped foot in that office and sat down at that desk would be

Greg Kinnear:

build a pickleball court in the White House outside, right on the lawn. Yeah, the

Randall Kaplan:

one male actor that I wanted to work with, but have it is

Greg Kinnear:

Al Pacino. All of Al, the one

Randall Kaplan:

female actor I wanted to work with, but have it is oh,

Greg Kinnear:

Charlize Theron is fantastic. We had a project we were talking about at one point, and she's great, but haven't worked with her. If you could meet one person in the world, who would it be? I don't know. I really don't know who that person is. The one

Randall Kaplan:

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

Greg Kinnear:

you ready to wrap this up? No, yeah, you, I think you pretty much covered it the there's no question. This is the longest podcast or any sitting period, as long as I've ever sat in my life. How long we've 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. I

Randall Kaplan:

appreciate you, and I appreciate you being willing to come on the show and not not bailing, yeah, 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. Thank you. 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. I did a

Greg Kinnear:

movie, yeah, I did a movie with Josh Dumas called off the grid. And movie called shiver. And show that I did with lahaine for apples 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, awesome.

Randall Kaplan:

Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you, awesome. Thank you. You

People on this episode

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Randall Kaplan

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Greg Kinnear

Guest