Jeff Goldblum

0:05Speaker 1:Hey, everyone, thanks for grabbing a bye with me on Table for two. We're back at the Tower Bar, and I'm so excited about our lunch today. This time around, we're sitting down with a man who's one of a kind. He's stylish, charming, and his work spands multiple generations.

0:23Speaker 2:He's been in huge movies, from.

0:24Speaker 1:The Fly to Jurassic Park to his work with Wes Anderson. He also happens to be an amazing jazz musician.

0:32Speaker 3:If you throw yourself on the mercy of the server, they might be helpful. I'll take it a cucumber gimlet with fresh line club soda muddled cucumber. Wait a minute, come on, I love poetry, menu poetry.

0:45Speaker 1:That's right, we're having lunch with mister Jeff Goboom. This is my first time meeting him, and I know it's going to be a blast. So pull up a chair, ground a glass of rose, and I hope you enjoy.

1:00Speaker 2:You're saying secret fries, secret fries. I heard secret, secret, secret five.

1:05Speaker 4:That's what you're saying. Yeah, well, this is the second time I'm a color me gobsmacked.

1:13Speaker 1:I'm Bruce Bozzi and this is my podcast Table for two.

1:26Speaker 2:If you pulled up a chair.

1:27Speaker 5:Today we are here at the Tower Bar with the incomparable, the amazing Jeff Goldblum.

1:33Speaker 2:Hello, sir, Hello sir.

1:35Speaker 5:So like you got to New York from Pittsburgh in the early seventies, what was the line that took you to New York?

1:42Speaker 2:I know you studied at the Neighborhood Playoffs.

1:44Speaker 5:Which I did a summer program there in nineteen eighty five.

1:47Speaker 4:I didn't you know.

1:48Speaker 5:That Gary was the dance guy who Gary and called him Showtime Gary. They did like they would just do like a two month program. You guys did the two year program.

1:58Speaker 2:Did you do the two year program?

2:00Speaker 4:I'll tell you all about it.

2:01Speaker 3:Yes, we But I left after a little bit into the second year. You had to get invited back into the second year. I graduated high school in seventy I went right there, and but in between the first and second year it was Sandy Meisner still teaching before his lay injectomy. Also, wow, that's a big deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. He was great. And between the two years, I fell into a production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, the.

2:27Speaker 4:Musical version, and that's what happened.

2:29Speaker 3:And then I went back to the second years, invited back and then left in order to do Joe Mapp invited me to do the Broadway show.

2:35Speaker 5:Yeah, and this is like kind of a huge deal. So you're like a young guy, you want to be an actor, you come to New York. Within the second year of your hitting Broadway.

2:45Speaker 2:It's one of Tony, not.

2:47Speaker 4:Me, But yes, the show Tony.

2:49Speaker 3:It was the biggest tip at the Shakes New York Shakespeare Festival.

2:52Speaker 2:Whatever in nineteen seventy four.

2:54Speaker 4:In nineteen seventy four was the Tony winning was.

2:57Speaker 2:The show on nineteen seventy three.

3:00Speaker 3:I'll bet it was earlier than that, because I let me see, it was so seventy one.

3:04Speaker 4:I must have joined the cast.

3:05Speaker 3:At the Della Courte that's where we did it originally, and it was with Rabul and Julia, you know, and some other great people, and then it went to the Saint James Theater that next year. It must have been seventy two ish, I think, And so probably up that year for Tony. So I'm guessing seventy two seventy three or something wherever it fell. But yeah, it was miraculous the way I seemed to encounter show.

3:28Speaker 4:The show Business early on, Yeah, you know, I'd.

3:30Speaker 3:Never I didn't audition for that show like the one person who never even sang or danced, and I wound up in the chorus. And then it was in a year on Broadway and understated one of the bigger parts and went on once. And then the first I never the first movie I ever auditioned for right around that time.

3:51Speaker 4:Was Oh no, I know what happened. If you're interested the right I left.

3:57Speaker 3:The show after a year hanging on every ward, I was like, oh yeah, I left. I left the Neighborhood Playhouse early in the second year. I went, I need to finish that program because it's the two year Meisner program. Is the is the program which I felt deprived of. Thank you very much, well, dear listener, we've just been thank you so much, so much that that that clink is because summer's police plastic going on there.

4:21Speaker 2:What it's just I guess because of all the ice you hear that.

4:24Speaker 4:But it's not a bad class. But they're very festive looking and the color coordinated. Mine is a little bit.

4:30Speaker 5:Light greenish, like the mind's a little.

4:34Speaker 4:Like like the Wizard of Oz might.

4:37Speaker 2:Going to be talking about Thank.

4:39Speaker 4:You so much. Okay, I'm gonna you've tasted yours.

4:42Speaker 2:I tasted.

4:42Speaker 4:Do you want to taste mine?

4:44Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you could taste mine. Do you do drink well?

4:47Speaker 4:Like a very like?

4:48Speaker 2:I mean very?

4:49Speaker 4:I love mine. If you come to the sun, it's very refreshing.

4:54Speaker 2:It's great.

4:55Speaker 4:Now, you know what I mean.

4:56Speaker 3:That's like water, but much more entertaining than one it is. It's not too sugary.

5:01Speaker 4:I think.

5:01Speaker 3:Now here's the now you know it's it's what do you say?

5:05Speaker 4:It's what?

5:06Speaker 2:It's? You know?

5:07Speaker 3:It's adorned with a cucumber slice. Oh and they're the muddled ones inside.

5:12Speaker 2:And yeah, yeah you can see them all smash here bottom.

5:15Speaker 3:I must tell you not that you're interested in this either A cucumber. I like all vegetables, but cucumber. If I had to have a raw cucumber, not so interested. And sometimes I order a salad and say leave the cucumbers. Really yeah, but a pickle, a pickled cucumber, I love it.

5:33Speaker 2:All right. We were talking about I'll tell you anything.

5:35Speaker 4:I'm an open face.

5:37Speaker 2:About New York. You got the Broadway show.

5:43Speaker 4:Yeah, I just fell into things. I fell in your first movement oh, that's right. But well, then I but no, no, no, here, here's what I was gonna.

5:49Speaker 3:So I went back to study after that year at the same chame I just finished, which I think was fortuitous, because I see, I was a little more mature, you know, to encounter this training really, And so finished up a second year of work with Bill Esper. William Esper, you may have heard of Sam Rockwell, studied with him and and then and then said, hey, I guess and finished that program.

6:11Speaker 4:Finished two year program you did, and then said to myself, geez, I guess I have to now.

6:17Speaker 3:No, I better look for a job. I guess I'm although the two year program in the Meisner way is meant to be the first foundational step, launching you ideally upon a twenty year study after which you can and only after which you can call yourself an actor in twenty years. So it's really a twenty year program, the first two with which he sends you off and goes here, here's a foundation of two years. That's the idea. And so I went, hey, I guess I better embark on this thing now. And the first thing I auditioned for was a play called El Grande to Coca Cola and I got it and.

6:57Speaker 4:That was it.

6:58Speaker 3:And then and then the first movie I ever auditioned for was Death Wish in nineteen seventy three. Went and kind of showed my stuff and improvised and was bad, bad, and got that part around such a scary movie.

7:14Speaker 5:Charles saw you saw that, Oh yeah, young, Yeah, It's like one of those where you're.

7:18Speaker 2:Like, oh, well, you know that was your first movie. You went out for it and you got it. That was a big movie, one of these.

7:24Speaker 4:Three bad guys. And then that same week.

7:28Speaker 3:Robert Altman, of whom we spoke, had seen me in Elgrinde de Coca Cola and liked me and said, here, come on out to California. I want you to do this two scene part in California Split.

7:41Speaker 4:And I did. I did More Wish and then next.

7:44Speaker 3:Week went to do California's but never been to Los Angeles before.

7:47Speaker 4:Right flew me out did California Split.

7:50Speaker 3:Met Elliott Gould and George Siegel who were in that movie, and Gwen Wells who's no longer with us, but she was the female She was the female leader in that movie. I later did Between the Lines and.

8:05Speaker 4:Nashville with her.

8:06Speaker 2:I mean, Nashville is like a cult classic. It just goes down as one of that movie that's cool, is great?

8:13Speaker 4:Yeah, I believe, Yeah, I like it.

8:15Speaker 2:It's so interesting. So you have Altman, you have very specific relationship with directors.

8:20Speaker 5:I think that you connect with viscerally because you've done different work with different movies with.

8:25Speaker 2:The same director.

8:26Speaker 4:Futa.

8:27Speaker 2:Yes, what is it that sort of you connect with with these.

8:31Speaker 5:Guys, like what is there something like Altman or Wes Anderson?

8:37Speaker 2:You know, is there a well?

8:40Speaker 3:I love those you know, it's probably just you know, I'm so lucky to get to work with people of that caliber anyway, and those particular guys. But Robert Allman, Yeah, I mean I was crazy about him, and there was something about him that's about me that I guess interested him.

8:56Speaker 4:So we wound up doing just that little thing in.

8:59Speaker 3:California's but Nashville, and then I went while he was in Europe living in Paris.

9:03Speaker 4:I did Beyond Therapy.

9:05Speaker 3:Okay, not his successful whole endeavor for him, but an interesting thing. And you know, oftentimes I see things and I wish I could go back and do them again.

9:16Speaker 2:I think that's what.

9:17Speaker 4:Comes with trying to get better and go back? Oh, I know a little bit more now.

9:21Speaker 3:We did that, and then I had a little part in the Player and this and that, and then I did you know, his protege was Alan Rudolph early on, if you know him.

9:29Speaker 4:He was an independent filmmaker.

9:31Speaker 3:He was the ad I think on Nashville, but then did movies like Welcome to La And we did a movie called Remember My Name, Alfrey Woods first movie, and Geraldine Chaplin was in it, and Tony Parkins.

9:45Speaker 4:Really was in it. Okay, believe it or not, you know Tony. Yeah, of course he was married to Barry Barons. Yeah, sister of Marissa, which takes us to Barry Lyndon.

10:00Speaker 3:So these directors you asked about, so, yes, So Alton was fantastic.

10:04Speaker 4:I don't know, it's just lucky.

10:06Speaker 3:I short, you know, admired him and yeah, I revered him, and I guess he was interested in me for a little bit.

10:14Speaker 4:But with those things.

10:16Speaker 3:And then likewise, Philip Kaufman, you didn't mention I did.

10:19Speaker 4:Two movies with him.

10:21Speaker 3:I did in nineteen seventy eight, now still early Hnish Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

10:27Speaker 2:Crazy great movie. I mean, yeah, I thought so too.

10:31Speaker 5:Razy Sutherland and that last scene of Donald Sutherland screaming when he points his finger in his mouth and like then you're.

10:37Speaker 2:Like, yes, chills, Yeah, I thought so too.

10:42Speaker 3:And San Francisco and you know where we shot and Michael Chapman was the cinematographer who had shot Raging Bull. Okay, very interesting a guy and an artist. And then I did a little part in the Right Stuff with RL Kaufman. So those are two movies with him, and then yeah, Wes Anderson and then yeah, yeah yeah, and then west Amston I've done now four things with and he's.

11:03Speaker 2:Just you know, fantastic secret fries.

11:07Speaker 3:Thanks to those fries, by the way your mind, I see, yes, the obligatory thing.

11:12Speaker 4:And of course we call this air it just would you prefer any other? No? No, no, not mad? But what do they usually call.

11:20Speaker 3:It is when you make the mayo a little bit fancier lemon or some you know, Paprika. I wish that that should have been my name. I chipped into a hotel, right, yeah, Prika, So.

11:45Speaker 2:You did, Annie Hall. You had a small part, which I mean I've seen the movie. One of my favorites. You're very when she.

11:50Speaker 5:Comes out to California, that guy. I mean, so you were just you were like nailing it. It was very clear. Each step took you to the mat. Just Yef's in the right place right.

12:03Speaker 4:Well, I don't know how.

12:04Speaker 3:I mean, like I say, I look at things now and go, boy, I'm lucky.

12:07Speaker 4:I kept getting chances after that.

12:09Speaker 3:I would do that a lot differently now and she or sometimes like, oh that's that's pretty good. But but it was no, it was lucky to come across. You know, people can serious people and seriously talented people and accomplished people can never encounter terrific directors and doing doing the great and doing the terrific movie. That's really lucky. That's really lucky. And so I was not particularly strategic. I was just I'm throwing caution to the wind. And this isn't this is an adventure of the heart of some kind of crazy.

12:47Speaker 4:You know. I was from Pittsburgh and I didn't know anybody, but I went down.

12:50Speaker 2:That's what I must do. And that's great. You didn't know anybody. I mean, one of the things that's such magical.

12:56Speaker 5:About you is you sort of you do spend an interesting amount of times, and you're.

13:02Speaker 4:It's a nice way of saying, I think what you're saying.

13:04Speaker 5:I know, but you're so now you're contemporary, You're still very much of the moment. You do something that's very unique that a lot of people can't do, which is you stay relevant generationally. There are people my age, are people twenty years younger than me that all know you and love you.

13:26Speaker 2:What do you think it is about you?

13:29Speaker 4:Well, again, it's luck. Luck.

13:32Speaker 3:You know a lot of luck, and you know, unaccountable mystery. But but like I say from the beginning, I do have But this is lucky too for any of us.

13:47Speaker 4:Of course you're lucky if you listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson.

13:50Speaker 3:And Carl Sagan, you know, just to be here we won the Big prize, just to have survived and be you know at this point.

14:02Speaker 4:So that's all wild wild luck.

14:04Speaker 3:And then yes, and then this sort of life.

14:09Speaker 4:Force that we all have.

14:11Speaker 3:But I have some kind of particular I do enjoy early on, even when I was a kid, I did you kind of enjoyed myself?

14:19Speaker 4:Yeah, yep, yep, this is not me. And I hate to toot my own horn.

14:23Speaker 3:But miss Veblin in fourth grade sent home my report card and said he's a joy. Really right, she said, And then missus D from across the street, Bob my best friend's mother, Bobby D said to my mother Shirley, you know, I really enjoy being around Jeffrey. He comes over and plays, you know, and there's just something something calm about him or I don't know what she said, but anyway, I.

14:46Speaker 5:Think you probably they do not, jeff they do not. You have a very do you have a way about you Like there's like think you know yourself in a certain way that you present yourself that's so comfortable and you just say who you know, you just are who you are, which is very unique.

15:03Speaker 4:Well, thank you, thank you.

15:04Speaker 3:And then however, it got to me, I did have this passion for.

15:11Speaker 4:Wanting this thing. I had this appetite and interest.

15:14Speaker 5:Is there an influence, an early influence from a movie or television that you were like in Pittsburgh going I want to do that?

15:21Speaker 3:Well, my parents, you know, both had flirted with, you know, being in My dad said he either wanted to be an actor or a doctor. Okay, and then he stuck his head in the back of an acting class, as legend has it, at the time it was Carnegie Tech, before it was even Carnegie Mill when he was you know, seventeen or eighteen around the time, and and he said to himself, Oh, that's out of my league. I don't know what he meant by that, but you know, I guess I do. And so he was a he became a doctor, a good doctor. And my mom was a sort of a vivacious, you know, performer of one kind.

15:58Speaker 3:And the story about a scout coming from New York and seeing her in high school play saying, oh, it's talking to her mother. She's got you got to send her to New York, which the mother refused to do, et cetera. So I think they were a little titillated with that idea, and they and they are in there in their lives Pittsburgh lives, would go to New York City and see Broadway shows and bring back cast albums of musicals and plays and playbills and stuff like that.

16:29Speaker 4:And and then they.

16:30Speaker 3:Were cinema lovers of some kind. And in Pittsburgh there were a couple of art house theaters. Not only would we see, would they send my sister and I to a kind of a jewel box theater near near us in the suburbs, and we'd see everything but first run movies of you know, Bridge on the River Quai and very interesting things.

16:48Speaker 4:But we'd go on vacation to.

16:50Speaker 3:Atlantic City and I remember when we saw the first run of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and other art house movies at the time, you know, Morgan and Elvira. I am curious, yellow and interesting movies. I've recently made a list of all the movies I remember seeing, and really, yeah, theaters when I was a kid.

17:08Speaker 2:That's very cool.

17:08Speaker 4:So they exposed us to that. And then children's theater.

17:11Speaker 3:But I remember the day that they took us to see my you know, early on at the Pittsburgh Playhouse would have children's theater and it was kind of the standard thing. A clown would come out and say be quiet, don't be yelling during the thing because we were little kids. And then they put on Beauty and the Beast or something, and I remember being very jazzed up seeing it, going what.

17:30Speaker 4:Are they doing?

17:30Speaker 2:Back?

17:31Speaker 4:Who aren't who is that? And what are they doing? How do they do that? Et cetera et cetera, like a lot of kids are, I guess. But anyway, that's how I got kind of you.

17:39Speaker 3:And then by the time I went to Carnegie Mellon University for these summer sessions like you did at the playhouse, I was baying at the moon and going, that's I must really, yes, make this happen somehow, I must be an actor. And then I would, as I've told story many times, I would write on the shower door, steamy, the last shower door every morning, you know, when I was taking a shower before school.

18:04Speaker 4:Please God let me be an actor.

18:06Speaker 2:Really.

18:07Speaker 4:And then it was a secret.

18:08Speaker 3:I didn't tell my parents, and I'd wipe it off before I left, right so nobody would know.

18:13Speaker 4:It was like secret Fries. It was like my secret fries.

18:17Speaker 2:That is very cool.

18:19Speaker 3:Yeah, And so I have to think that this sort of life force or interest or whatever you call it, passion had something to do maybe with ascending out some vibrational feelers.

18:31Speaker 4:I've attracted the luck that was to happen.

18:34Speaker 5:Yeah, and you put it in the universe. It's like that added you put it in the universe, it will come. Yeah, build it and it will come.

18:41Speaker 3:Something like that, And I was a hard worker, even though I didn't know how to work in some many ways that I now understand better. My dad was a work ethic guy, and I knew to apply myself. I knew that I needed to try hard. But it could have gone in a million ways anyway.

19:01Speaker 4:It was like.

19:21Speaker 1:Welcome back to table for two. Jeff's time on the silver screen spans generations, and yet his acting always feels new and exciting. I'm curious what has changed for him throughout the decades and what keeps his work feeling so fresh.

19:37Speaker 5:So looking at your work, you have the seventies, have the eight let's just say seventies, eighties, nineties, It's so interesting to.

19:43Speaker 2:Me how movies and everything changed.

19:45Speaker 5:So like, you know, you have your major the nineties, Jurassic Park. You go into the eighties, your films like Big Chill, you have films like The Fly, very like I can remember where I was when I saw The Big Chill nineteen eighty three, Second Avenue between sixty sixth and sixty seventh Street theater.

20:02Speaker 2:I was about fifteen or sixteen.

20:03Speaker 5:Ye where second efty second Avenue, There's a big building and there was theaters downstairs.

20:08Speaker 4:Well, I used to go.

20:09Speaker 3:You know, I lived on the Upper east Side, you know where I lived when I was going to the neighborhood playhouse. They moved, my parents helped me move, and then I was on my own financially too. Once I kind of hit it into this show. But they moved me into an apartment near there on fifty seventh Sutton Place, you know between first and second where you know greta guard, you know, I say, all the people lived. I had a little apartment cost two hundred and fifty dollars a month, but I walked to the neighborhood place.

20:35Speaker 4:Anyway.

20:35Speaker 3:I was on the Upper east Side, and my theater of choice when I went out was the Sutton Theater of course on fifty seventh I think in like second or so. But then I would go walk the one more block to the Core and net right, yeah, and go to you know near Bloomingdale's there, walk up a couple of blocks.

20:52Speaker 5:Too, you know, you know they were all there, all those like independent little theaters. Films changed, and you sort of have fortunate enough in my mind to sort of be in the genre of like the Annie Hall movies, these Body Snatcher.

21:05Speaker 2:Really then you go into the eighties, which is about relationships. Is there a decade of.

21:11Speaker 5:Movies that you in your career that you go, yeah, this is like how do you define the decades?

21:17Speaker 3:First of all, off the top of my head, just like national borders decades, the boundaries between decades sometimes are seem artificial, of course, you know, because they're you know, case by case basis, like many interesting movies and different kinds of movies across the decades. But it's a fun It is a fun way to play the car, you know, movie character continuum game, and you know the seventies. Of course one says, ooh that was an I And if I'm scrolling around, I find myself going.

21:48Speaker 4:Movies are the seventies if there's anything that.

21:49Speaker 3:I've missed or want to see again, because I will want to and find myself attracted that.

22:05Speaker 5:So do you have a big posse of actors that you are friends with that you or is it you know you've worked with everybody, you are with a lot of people. Do you keep in touch with all these people like, I mean each It's like when you're making a movie, it's such it seems like it's such a closed experience, like a family.

22:25Speaker 3:You know, yes, an intimate and intense and sometimes yeah.

22:29Speaker 4:And do you delicious right?

22:31Speaker 2:Do you keep that going or does it sort of? And then that's.

22:35Speaker 4:An interesting question. You know, I don't have a lot.

22:40Speaker 3:Of close, close, daily contact pals with whom I've worked in the past, which is normal, that's not abnormal. As a matter of fact, my life now is so and this if there's any kind of key to or element to that contributes to my you know, still getting chances here and there, it's the fact that I'm still, like early on, kind of interested in life in some way. And I have these kids now, and this fantastic wife and this interesting life, nourishing life that keeps me.

23:22Speaker 2:Did you want to have children?

23:24Speaker 5:Was it like when you were because you know, Charley and Rivers, so you said eight.

23:28Speaker 4:And eight and six turned seventh, eight seventh.

23:31Speaker 5:So we have a sixteen year old and sixteen year yes, yes, and we have a and then we have I have a stepdaughter, Billy, who has two small children.

23:41Speaker 2:So it's like there's grandchildren involved.

23:43Speaker 5:Did you when you were like in the you know, all those fun decades, Yes, were you thinking family children or were you just like and then all of a sudden.

23:53Speaker 3:I had wonderful I had wonderful relationships and marriages, a couple of marriages, and there was talk of children. But I get but it didn't happen. I guess I wasn't. Not that I never ever tried, I ever tried with anybody, but I think perhaps, and it's probably true that I wasn't so called ready. And then Emily and I got together, and here's what happened. Not to be too intimate, but let me see, here's what happened. We were together for a couple of years, and.

24:32Speaker 4:Then one day at home, she was saying, boy.

24:37Speaker 3:This is so it's getting so this has been so fun and it's so kind of great, and wouldn't it be interesting and maybe fun to have a baby. And I wasn't choked up like I'm getting now a little bit, but I was like something about the way about you and about us right now, and about the way you just said that it's never been so to me before, like just like that, And I immediately thought she we should go together to see my therapist, Lewanda Katzman, and kind of talk have a serious talk about what you just said, which we did over the course of the next year. Uh, and talked about marriage and and things and about all my you know, because I let's be you know, let's really explore it. If we're going to do this, this isn't something serious business.

25:31Speaker 4:And we and we did. She was great, lou Katzman, and after I think about a year, she was.

25:36Speaker 3:Like, Jesus's Emily is very particularly wonderful in my if you want my opinion, and you know, and maybe this idea of having kids, so we so we we It became clear it revealed itself to be a good idea.

25:50Speaker 4:And then we got married at the Chateau Marmont, I'll be darned.

25:54Speaker 3:And Lewanda Catzman was she she got registered, she got whatever it's called, and she was our she she she officiated, Yeah, officiated, that's what it was called.

26:03Speaker 4:She officiated.

26:03Speaker 3:And so it was really sweet. So it wasn't just like, oh, I don't know whoever these guys are. They say, we had one meeting and they they're right for each other, so go go ahead.

26:12Speaker 4:No.

26:12Speaker 3:No, she was like, yes, I know, Jeff, because I'd been seeing her for not as needed, sort of once a year, but early on more often, but knew her for over a decade or so, and and she was, yes, these these, these two, and Kaganga.

26:25Speaker 2:Was a lovely sorry.

26:26Speaker 5:And I have to say, I think Charlie River are very lucky. Do you have a lot of fun with them? I mean that's crazy great.

26:33Speaker 4:Yeah, she's a great, great mother.

26:35Speaker 3:Yeah, she's amazing in many many ways as a mother, she's just great. We have a spectacular amount of fun. But also, as you know, the whole.

26:49Speaker 4:Palette of experience this morning, oh my gosh.

26:55Speaker 3:There was I woke up, I had a good night's sleep, but sometimes after a good night's sleep, your body is like, you know, still recovery, still, you know, now, I know now I'm feeling kind of bushy tailed, but it's but early on I was like, oh, I felt ludgend and sensitive and not ready for I had to launch into breakfast.

27:18Speaker 4:And the whole.

27:19Speaker 3:Schedule today was chock full of many things. And I have an obligation to get my homework done. I have a piano homework, an hour's study that I have to do, and I work out and and other things to do, so you know it's gonna be and she's choc bowl. Every day needs to be productive. But the kids, yes, they well, they had a good they had a good time today, but early on so but they're studying piano, for instance. So we get breakfast and there's breakfast happening, and Charlie makes my coffee sometimes.

27:52Speaker 4:Nice, isn't that something?

27:54Speaker 2:Yeah?

27:54Speaker 3:I love the little coffee that he makes for which he did this morning.

27:58Speaker 4:And they liked task, and they're good. But they were they were at each other this morning. Oh that's right. I still is feeling very tender. And Emily.

28:09Speaker 3:Was already attending to get one one breakfast of some kind. And we heard them screaming and fighting, and she said, chef, cheff, go go, go see what's uh? And when she gives me a task, I'm you go. I comply, Yes, yes I go, even though it was painful, I knew what it might entail, and so I launched him there.

28:33Speaker 4:And sure enough I saw them in their room and what was going on at this stuff?

28:39Speaker 3:They were having some It seemed like some kind of half game that Charlie was playing. Is bigger two, almost two years older than River. With River wanted some clothes that he wanted to put on. They were naked, half naked, and he wanted to put on some clothes from the hamper. They were already in the hamper, and I don't know if they were Charlie's clothes or his clothes or but he was Charlie was, you know, opposing him right, and he had these big kind of yoga pillows, hard kind of pillows that he was bashing at him, and so they were having a major joust and I kind of, oh.

29:14Speaker 4:My gosh, and so there was screaming.

29:16Speaker 3:It wasn't exactly screaming Greek tragedy yet level, but it was getting there, half fun and half.

29:25Speaker 4:You know, so I kind of had to intervene a little bit. I got but ow dow, Charlie, you got me on my et cetera, et cetera. And then I, after some time, I kind of, you know, gave up.

29:41Speaker 3:I did some wrestling, and then they were running into the other room and thankfully engaging mamal et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, that cycle passed. So there's all that to say that there's cilarity and amazement, but also the whole range.

29:56Speaker 2:Of you got.

30:19Speaker 1:In addition to being an amazing actor, Jeff Goldblum is also a very talented pianist. He released his first album in twenty eighteen, and it's obvious that his love of jazz runs deep. What inspired him to pursue a career in music?

30:35Speaker 2:Jazz is such a love of yours.

30:36Speaker 5:And you have an orchestra and you've played at the Carlisle, Like, how did music? And we're at the tower board where there's a piano which no one's allowed to touch except played you've played.

30:46Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, because we've stayed here, we've had a little staycation right right or twice and they've allowed me to do it.

30:51Speaker 5:The music in your life and your love of jazz and you played the piano and you're an incredible pianist. How did that enter was there? Was music always part of your life growing up?

31:02Speaker 2:Did you?

31:03Speaker 5:I mean you just seem to, like, from my perspective, you want to do something, you do it and you're successful at it, like you you know you want your musical, your artistic You're.

31:16Speaker 2:Tell you know you just like this. You're the renaissance man. So how did music get into Well, I'll tell you.

31:21Speaker 4:I'll tell you. You know, they gave us like parents might have. But you know, with four kids in Pittsburgh. They gave it. They exposed us all this is delicious.

31:31Speaker 3:By the way, I just had that chicken, which is good, nice, and I like this whole thing, and I.

31:36Speaker 4:Like it chopped. I like things chopped. I like that chop sound. Is there cucumber in here? By the way, I don't think, yes, yes, a little bit, but I've had it.

31:46Speaker 2:You're great, there is.

31:47Speaker 3:I like it and mozzarella and chickpeas, and I've had many times.

31:51Speaker 4:I like it. The here's what happened. So they gave us music lessons. I had some facility for it, but like a little like ARLEYN. River was like, oh, I don't want to.

32:02Speaker 3:Probably didn't know the joys of discipline yet or homework and would be unprepared for the weekly lesson.

32:07Speaker 4:And it was a miserable thing. But then he gave me jazz.

32:11Speaker 3:He gave me a couple of jazz arrangements, and that really turned me on, and I sat and played until I could play those things. That's when I started to get a little better. And then I got these fake books now they call them real books, you know of jazz heads, lead sheets that you could play and learn how to improvise from and I fashioned my you know, I thought, well, I want to play piano, and I want to go to a cocktail lounge and play piano.

32:37Speaker 4:But my parents loved loved jazz and loved music.

32:40Speaker 3:And only would they would they come back and with cast albums and Broadway musicals. But Errol Garner his record Who's from Pittsburgh in sixty whatever, it was misty. You know, Garder plays misty. He would be on the High File all the time. So I fell for jazz this way. And I was just kind of in me a little bit syncopation and that kind of stuff.

33:01Speaker 4:And I started to play. And then I.

33:06Speaker 3:One day I went, I'm going to get a job, job, I'm going to look I took the Yellow Pages secretly also, you know, with this secret Life of Men and on the Secret Fries and not only my acting aspiration, but my this. I went into the study and kind of closed the door and looked through this thing and got on the telephone when I was when I was, I forget how old, you know, it must have been twelve or thirteen, and started and started to cold call places, starting with A and say, hey, I hear you, you're looking for a piano player there. Yeah, And most of them would say, well, I don't know where you got that.

33:46Speaker 3:We don't even have a piano. But but some would say, well, who's this what? Yeah, we do have a piano, no where he plays it, but maybe you should come around and play it.

33:53Speaker 4:We'll see. I did a couple of things and I got a couple of.

33:57Speaker 2:Jobs out of here.

33:58Speaker 3:So it was not only yes, I had this. I had this part of me that was like, hey I can. Yeah, I'm not really qualified, but I'm going to try it kind of thing for no reason and a little bit of a I think I need a job, which is pretty important now that I'm raising kids. Yeah, I'm no you know, conventionalist, but I know the system that we're in, and I think sooner than later.

34:26Speaker 2:But I don't.

34:26Speaker 3:I don't want to scare them. They should figure out. I mean, I love the creative life. It saved my life. But also this idea that hey, you know, you got to row your own boat.

34:38Speaker 4:So I'm gonna.

34:39Speaker 2:Among to teach kids.

34:40Speaker 3:Most people don't, right right, I mean, I'm not going to do it for you, and you're not gonna want me to do it for you. You gotta figure out how to find out what's wanted and needed and where that intersects with your love and passion and what you can do, and even if it doesn't, you might have to do that anyway.

34:58Speaker 4:Yeah, all of that, you know, conversation.

35:02Speaker 3:So I think I had that luckily in me a little bit, like I better. Hey, I remember the day my parents were saying, yes, you've got to at some point, what are you going to do or what you got to have a job? And I was a little bit shocked, and I think maybe a little sobered or frightened or something, and I went, oh, okay, I got it. And I think I took it on board and took it seriously, and maybe that got me even at that moment, Hey, I need to because I'm going to make a little cash doing this too.

35:33Speaker 4:Maybe there was that.

35:35Speaker 3:And then, like I say, I got real lucky with acting, not like anybody else I've ever heard of. I just fell into a job right away. I'm kind of an income right away a little bit. So there's that. So who knows what I could have been capable of or had I not been so lucky, But maybe I have that a little bit.

36:00Speaker 1:I've had so much fun spending time with mister Goldblum. He's constantly working on new projects. So before we leave, let's find out what he has coming up.

36:12Speaker 5:You have Wicked and Wicked two twenty four, twenty five is Wicked too?

36:16Speaker 2:You have Chaos?

36:18Speaker 4:Yes?

36:18Speaker 2:Do you know anything about that?

36:19Speaker 4:No?

36:20Speaker 3:Chaos comes out in August Wow for Netflix, eight episodes of an updated version of the Greek Yeah character as I play Zeus and Janet McTeer, the Great Jedi Tier plays my wife.

36:31Speaker 4:Here David Thulis plays my brother Hades.

36:35Speaker 2:Yeh, it's I loved mythology.

36:38Speaker 4:Something well great, I might dig this.

36:41Speaker 2:And you know, Wicked is this huge phenomenon.

36:44Speaker 5:Like when they played that commercial during the super Bowl and you're you also had an epic commercial turning the super Bowl. It was like everyone stopped in the room. Do you feel the energy around this?

36:56Speaker 4:Well?

36:56Speaker 2:I have project of you.

36:58Speaker 3:Yes. I've become aware of the fan base, you know, because I am part of part of it.

37:03Speaker 4:I saw Christian Chadwick and.

37:06Speaker 3:Originally before I knew anything about it, I was like, no, I don't know that there's a book.

37:11Speaker 2:And who knew of the prequel, didn't even ow.

37:13Speaker 4:Yeah.

37:14Speaker 3:I went into that theater, you know, and they had drawn picture, they had painted the lobby, and I went, oh, no, this is about that.

37:22Speaker 4:Oh I'm a goner. It really got a sucker for that because The Wizard was.

37:27Speaker 3:I love that movie, and sure enough, at the end of that thing, I was crying my eyes out. I mean and since then and then when this came up. You know, hey, you don't play the Wizard.

37:39Speaker 4:Yes.

37:40Speaker 5:I couldn't think of a better person to cast than you and that movie and this is going to be like next level.

37:47Speaker 4:Well, thank you. I I hope everybody's happy with it.

37:50Speaker 3:Wait till you see Ariana Grande and Cynthia Revo.

37:57Speaker 4:You know, are you a fan of that show?

37:59Speaker 2:Yes? Well, and they both.

38:00Speaker 3:Do yeah great, And you know, and John Chu is the perfect person. I directed that. Wait till you hear them do that music and Michelle Oh, of course, Jonathan Bailey.

38:11Speaker 4:But wait till you hear them do that.

38:13Speaker 2:It is show. Yeah, my buddy Joe Mantello, he directed it.

38:18Speaker 4:It's your buddy.

38:19Speaker 3:Oh. I've heard all the legendary stories about how it was birthed in San Francisco and the development of it and I mean drama.

38:30Speaker 2:Very crazy.

38:31Speaker 5:As we sort of conclude our lunch, first of all, this has been beyond joyful.

38:36Speaker 2:Thank you for coming years.

38:38Speaker 4:Thank you so so much, like thank.

38:40Speaker 2:You lupping it down to the tower.

38:42Speaker 4:And we're going to be closer than when you were.

38:46Speaker 2:Thank you for coming, Emily, Brian. We have to have That's what I was going to say.

38:49Speaker 3:Let's stay in constant touch, let's exchange all, exchange everything.

38:53Speaker 4:And have many many eventually.

38:57Speaker 5:And if you've pulled up a chure, like I said, we hit a wild ride today with you, sir.

39:02Speaker 2:Thank you very much, thank you very very much.

39:04Speaker 4:I appreciate it.

39:13Speaker 1:Table for two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio seven three seven Park and Airmail. Our executive producers are Bruce Bosi and Nathan King. Our supervising producer and editor is Dylan Fagan. Table for two is researched and written by Jack Sullivan. Our sound engineers are Meil B. Klein, Jess Krainich, Evan Taylor, and Jesse Funk. Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our talent booking is done by Jane Sark. Table for two's social media manager is Gracie Wiener Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Scherer, Kevin Yuvane, Bobby Bauer, Alison Kanter Graber, Barbara Jen Jeff Klein, and the staff at the Tower Bar in the world famous Sunset Tower Hotel in Hollywood. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.