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From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend.
I'm Tanya Mosley.
Today we hear from Will Arnett.
He stars in the new film.
Is This Thing On about a man going through a divorce who finds himself on stage doing stand-up?
Tell a joke.
I think I'm getting a divorce.
Also, director Craig Brewer talks about his new film, Song Sung Blue.
It's based on the true story of a Milwaukee couple who became local legends performing as a Neil Diamond tribute band.
When Brewer started telling people about this project, there was one question he kept getting.
Are you going to do Sweet Caroline?
I was like, yes, yes.
We're also going to do Forever in Blue Jeans.
And I'm a believer.
And Play Me and Cherry Cherry.
I started bringing up all the, you know, he's got other songs.
Plus, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new novel by Ben Markovits.
Netflix's Stranger Things has reached its end and we're unpacking the biggest moments in the final season.
We'll talk about what we thought of the finale, what happened to our heroes when they set out to battle the forces of evil one last time and, of course, the terrible wigs.
Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Have you ever thought about leaving the U.S., starting over somewhere new?
Well, I have.
And according to one poll, 40 of young women said they'd move to another country permanently if they had the chance.
But why?
Where to start?
Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
On NPR's Wildcard podcast, heavyweight host Jonathan Goldstein talks about his early years as a writer.
I was writing and no one was buying what I was selling.
I just couldn't get anywhere.
And I just kept doing it because I felt compelled to do it like a spider spinning a web.
Listen to that Wildcard conversation on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Fresh Air Weekend.
I'm Tanya Mosley.
My guest today is filmmaker Craig Brewer.
He built a career telling stories about people chasing dignity and purpose through music.
He first broke out with Hustle & Flow, that was back in 2005, about a Memphis pimp trying to make it as a rapper.
Since then, his work has moved across genres from Black Snake Moan to Footloose, to Dolomite Is My Name and Coming to America.
His new film is called Song Sung Blue and it's based on the true story of Mike and Claire Sardina, a couple from Milwaukee who met in the late 80s and built a life around their Neil Diamond tribute band, Lightning and Thunder.
They played bars, small venues, and over time became local celebrities.
Eddie Vedder even invited them to open for Pearl Jam.
In the film, they're played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
In this scene, we find them on their very first date just getting to know each other.
Jackman's character starts to open up about his sobriety, what he's learned along the way and his long-held desire to perform.
I'm always going to be an alcoholic, but I've been sober 20 years.
And the other day, it was what they call it a sober birthday.
Happy belated sober birthday.
Here's the thing.
With sobriety, you've got to face up to certain truths.
Way to go.
Lightning, 20 years.
All right, I'm not a songwriter.
I'm not a sex symbol.
But I just want to entertain people.
And I want to make a living.
I know, me too.
I don't want to be a hairdresser.
I want to sing.
I want to dance.
I want a house.
I want a garden.
I want a cat.
So here's what I'm thinking.
I need a hook.
I need something big.
I need something new.
And as you put it, nostalgia pays well.
It's been over two decades since Brewer made Hustle & Flow, the film that changed his life.
The late director John Singleton believed in the project so deeply that he put down his own house as collateral to finance it.
Hustle & Flow went on to win several awards, including an Academy Award for Best Original Song for It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp.
Brewer still lives in Memphis, and he's described Song Sung Blue as a little bit of a brother to Hustle & Flow.
Craig Brewer, welcome back to Fresh Air.
It's great to be here.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for being here.
This story, Song Song Blue, and Mike and Claire's story, who are real people.
It took hold of you some time ago.
You saw a documentary about them back in 2009.
And I actually want to play a clip where Mike and Claire played by Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
They've narrowed in on this idea of being a tribute band for Neil Diamond.
And they're practicing in this clip. in Claire's home.
They're kind of really getting it started.
And she shares a home with her mother.
So you'll also hear her mother in this clip.
Let's listen.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Tell your mama, girl, we can't stay long.
We got things we gotta catch up on.
You know, you know what I was Excuse me.
Much too late for anyone to be singing that loud.
Ma, this is the man I was telling you about, Mike Sardina.
This is Lightning.
How you doing tonight?
Not good.
Sing softer.
That's where we get to hear Hugh Jackman's pipes.
I mean, I think we've kind of known if you follow him in theater that he can really sing.
He can.
He loves it.
It takes everything to just pull him off that stage if he's in the mode of entertaining.
He loves it.
He really does.
And then Kate is the big surprise to, I'm sure, a lot of people who are seeing the movie that she's just got an incredible voice.
Right.
And their voices together work in harmony so well.
Is it true that you pre-recorded all of the music in Memphis before you started shooting?
I did.
I did.
I had the same music collaborator and composer and producer.
His name is Scott Bomar, and he did all the score and recording for Hustle & Flow, for all the blues music and Black Snake Moan.
But yeah, we know all the old Stax musicians and people that recorded with Willie Mitchell and Al Green.
And there's just a real wealth of talent here in Memphis.
I just kind of feel very comfortable working here.
In the studios here.
And I would say that I probably learned the most about directing actors by watching really good producers and reading about Memphis producers working with talent.
It's kind of just the just my groove, you know.
Well, that's so interesting because you've said that in the studio is where you actually saw Jackman and Hudson figure out their characters.
So it's not necessarily in the rehearsals on a set, but in the recording studio singing together.
And I was just curious, what did you see happening between them in those sessions?
Yeah, it's interesting.
I still believe that really good music producing is trying to find the spark of the moment.
Like there's just, you're not trying to get too technical to tell somebody to hit a note here or there.
You kind of want to just capture something really real and provide an environment where they can be that real.
And so we were keeping like Hugh in one isolation booth and Kate and another isolation booth.
And it just really wasn't working.
So Scott and I, we put a couch out and we just put two microphones in front of the couch and we just sat them right next to each other on the couch.
And it's so funny because it's so perfect, because sometimes people have asked me like hey, if I'm having like relationship trouble, what should I do?
And I go, I know this sounds odd, but go out to dinner, but just sit at the bar.
I go, there's something about facing each other. that is this confrontational act to some extent.
But if you're side by side, you know, you can kind of just Two people kind of dealing with their own things.
But there's a closeness that happens that is different than facing each other at dinner.
And I think the same thing happened with you and Kate.
We didn't do any rehearsals.
We had one read-through.
And then we sat them down and threw them right into the mix of having to figure out their harmonies and when they're going to come in.
And, by the end of the day – and you got to remember, these are two actors that really didn't know each other and met on this day.
Oh, they had never met in person or at all before this.
We had done some phone calls and a Zoom call at one point, but no, no.
How did you know that they'd have chemistry?
Was that a fear at all?
Oh, it's a fear.
It doesn't matter how charismatic your actors are.
There's still that alchemy that happens of like two people coming together and how are they going to respond to each other.
But my fears went away at the end of that day recording, because they started really just they, they felt married suddenly.
I mean, it was kind of like you know she'd be like no, you didn't really get that note you could do, we could do that one more time craig, one more, you know, and it's just like Suddenly she was being protective of you and vice versa.
And then suddenly they're connected.
And then the next day we did a camera test.
And they were dressed up in their outfits.
And we threw on the song that you just heard, like Cherry Cherry, and they started singing along to it and i turned around and i could just see the whole crew just stop what they were doing and this grin on all their face and just watching them on the monitors and they're like oh, there they are.
It's like there's the couple i didn't know i needed to see and it, and to me it just kind of it was kind of cool because it, you know, you have hugh jackman and kate hudson, who both kind of popped in the 90s, you know, more than 20 years ago, and it, and now we're seeing them and they're older and yet they still have the spark and and it just felt real, it felt grounded and lovely the crew's response.
It makes me think about something else.
I've heard you say that um, men on your crew were actually getting emotional watching hugh telling you he reminded them of their fathers or themselves when he was performing like the anthems of the things that they couldn't say.
What were you seeing in those moments?
Yeah, I mean it was definitely in the music, but definitely in more of the moments where he had to be a dad.
And I found it so fascinating because I would actually go around to some of my crew members.
I mean these are like tough grips and electricians and everything, but they would get emotional watching them.
And I was like, what's going on here?
Like, what's happening?
And we started having conversations about like, well, what are the movies that men cry in?
I'm being general here.
I cry every movie I see.
But why is it that Field of Dreams just unashamedly makes men cry?
It's like, okay, you're dealing with father themes.
You're dealing with themes of am I able to like honor my family?
Like am I able to take care of my family and do they –
Does anybody know perhaps even though I'm kind of quiet that I am suffering with it?
And I think that there's been a lot of –
Probably justifiably and understandably, there has been a lot of criticism towards masculinity.
And I think that the interesting thing that I've heard in some of the test audiences is some women saying it's nice to see positive masculinity, an era of men that like if something's not exactly – the way everybody would want it, they're still making it work.
They're just patching themselves up and in silence moving forward.
It was a nice way to see that or celebrate that in a character.
There is something happening there.
I'm going to spoil one thing from the film to tell everyone that you make us wait for Sweet Caroline.
How did you think about withholding the thing that everyone expects?
I know it sounds like such a horrible thing that I've done, but I get it.
What was happening to me is that I was writing, I was getting ready to work on the movie.
And so people go, what are you making right now?
And I'd be like well, I want to make this movie about this Neil Diamond tribute band.
And they would say Oh, are you going to do, sweet Caroline?
I said, yes, we're going to do sweet Caroline.
Every single person I talked to, that was the first thing out of their mouth.
Are they going to sing sweet Caroline?
And I was like, yes, yes.
We're also going to do forever in blue jeans.
And I'm a believer and play me and cherry cherry.
Like I started bringing up all the.
You know he's got other songs.
You know, I'm even, I'm even mad that I'm not going to be able to do all the songs I want to do.
I
So I put that element in the movie, knowing full well that everyone, even people who don't know Neil Diamond, are like.
I know one Neil Diamond song and it's because I've been drunk at a bar and someone started singing Sweet Caroline and I knew you come in on bomb bomb, bomb and so good, so good, so good.
And so it was this thing that I always knew.
Like man, when that song hits you, better really land it.
Like it's got to be good, but you have to like lay some seed for it.
You need to like tease your audience.
And so I don't keep it from him for a long time.
I mean, it's probably what, maybe like 30 minutes into the movie, maybe right around there.
That I a little bit before then.
It's a great moment when it happens, but there's so many other amazing music moments.
We're listening to my conversation with filmmaker Craig Brewer, director of Song Sung Blue.
We'll hear more of our conversation after a short break.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
Where it began, I can't begin to know when.
But then I know it's growing strong.
It was in the spring, and spring became the summer.
Who'd have believed you'd come?
NPR's podcast Trump's Terms is your source for same day updates on big news about the Trump administration.
Short, focused episodes, one topic at a time, about five minutes or so.
We carry out reporting from across all of NPR's coverage.
So you are always getting the biggest, most urgent stories.
Listen to Trump's Terms on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Let's get back to my interview with Craig Brewer, director of the new movie Song Sung Blue, featuring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
It's based on the true story of Mike and Claire Sardina, a couple from Milwaukee who built a life around their Neil Diamond tribute act, Lightning and Thunder.
Claire, she's still alive.
She's still performing, actually under the name Thunder After Lightning, because Mike died in 2006.
Yes.
I was thinking about also knowing what would happen that he spent his entire adult life devoted to Neil Diamond's music, but he never got to meet him.
And there's something almost unbearable about that.
How did you sit with that when you first learned it?
Well, it's tricky because there's a part of me that goes, oh, that's so sad.
And then there's another part of me that goes, oh, it's so perfect.
It really is.
I really love my father.
He was in shipping, but he loved movies and going to plays.
And that was probably the way that we threw the ball around in our own way was going to see movies together.
And when I wrote my first movie I sent it off to my dad and he read it and he gave me like such a great final thing to say to me, where he was like, don't be afraid.
Like film this movie with no money and like a digital video camera and don't apologize for it.
And it was the last thing he said to me, because later on he died of a sudden heart attack and he was a healthy guy.
And my mother gave me like 20 grand of inheritance that I got from his passing and I made my first film with it.
And I sometimes think about how My father has never met my children.
My father has never seen any of my films.
But he's completely responsible for it all.
His driving force and the final things that he said to me, and just everything kind of like, filled me with this desire to do the best.
And so I just remember when I saw the documentary and I was like this guy – poured everything he could into the love of neil diamond and claimed that the music of neil diamond saved him and kept him sober and helped him deal with the visions of vietnam that he had experienced as a tunnel rat and and yet uh, did not get to meet him.
You know, even when neil diamond was coming into town, he he passed before that could happen.
I mean later, of course, claire got to meet him.
There's a wonderful picture of the two of them in the documentary where neil diamond's holding on to claire sardina and you know he always had a standing ticket at all the shows for her, and so it's bittersweet because it's the thing.
That's sad, but it but i remember seeing it and and this weird part of me inside was going like that's kind of perfect for story.
You know it's a people are gonna, they're gonna be mad that he never got to meet Craig.
You mentioned your father, who loomed large in your life.
Every time I hear you talk about him.
I just have so many questions I want to ask you about your relationship.
You mentioned that he read your first film, which is The Poor and the Hungry.
And he told you, he gave you some advice on how to move forward with that, because it was a really kind of a tough time for you.
You had been working to try to fulfill this dream of being a filmmaker.
You had already made that decision, but you were kind of striking out.
You were in debt.
You were just trying to figure out how you're going to do this thing.
And he told you to keep it simple.
What stayed with you most about that conversation that you had with him?
Because he died soon after, like very soon after, almost like the next day or later that day.
Yeah, later that day.
Yeah, I think I've been thinking about it a little bit more now, because I'm now exactly five years older than my father ever was.
And it is a strange thing I'm sure for anybody out there that's had that happen when you kind of lap your parent uh, especially when they died unexpectedly early because you you've looked at all these pictures and everything and you think, oh yeah, he's just so much older than i, was so much more of an of a grown-up.
But now i'm looking at pictures and i'm doing the math and i'm like, wait a minute, i think he was 43 in this picture, you know.
And then i think back on my own 43 year old like, oh wow, was he kind of dealing with that?
And so i I think what I think of it more is just as now I'm a parent with a 24-year-old son and a 17-year-old daughter, and am I saying the right things to them?
Am I trying to give them some encouragement?
It's such a tough time when you're a young adult and you want to be something so badly.
You want to be anything.
Maybe you're even searching for it.
And there's so many moments where you can feel like a failure.
And I think he just – as I tell people, as a dad, he stuck the landing.
I mean like the last thing he told me was –
Just look at what you have and try not to apologize for it.
And try to move the dream to your reality and don't try to do it the other way.
And I think that's ultimately what helped me find perhaps my voice a little bit more was to think about like well, what are the real – basic rudiments of this story.
Do I have the danger of getting in the way of it by just trying to make it larger than it should be, when it should probably be simple or even more effective that way?
And I think that maybe it was just because he was very much into kind of like corporate planning that he just – it's like well, what do we have and what can we do, and what do we want and what's the ultimate goal?
And I think I just couldn't see the forest for the trees a little bit.
The Poor and the Hungry.
You took that 20000 inheritance that your dad left for you and you made this film.
It's a love story between a car thief and a cellist whose car he stole.
But really it's about people living on the margins and trying to find Something honorable or clean in the middle of the hustle.
There is a rawness and a richness to it.
And I want to make a point to say this is the year 2000.
And what ways did your dad's voice direct you through the making?
Well, I think that, because the thing that had really depressed me is that I tried to make a film before this, that I tried to shoot on film.
And I didn't quite know what I was doing, but I was hearing from everybody that this is what was going to get me into Sundance or get me into the industries, that it had to be shot on film.
And he really – on that phone call he was like it sounds to me like you're trying to get in and you're not trying to get good.
And, yeah, it kind of stings, doesn't it?
Right.
And it's so true.
And I have to say even today, when I'm talking to young filmmakers, you want to be careful, because sometimes they'll come up to me and they're like look, I got this whole idea for a franchise.
It's kind of this superhero movie and blah, blah, blah.
And they start going into it.
And I want them to stay focused, inspired and to and to keep talking.
But there's another part of me that wants to just say, like here's what my dad would probably say is that you're, you're.
You don't have the tools to produce this, so you need to maybe redirect some of your thoughts and your, your passion, to wanting to make something, towards your own life and trust that your own life might actually be more interesting than explosions on another planet.
And And I think that that's really the big lesson with it all you know, just to try to, just to the best of my ability.
We produced plays of mine right after I graduated high school.
And, you know, I did a lot in high school as well.
But after high school the two of us formed a company that was just called – I mean, we didn't form a company.
It was like we had an account and the account was for two brewers.
And so the account abbreviation was BR2, which later, when my father passed away, that was the name of my company.
And it's now still a family company.
My daughter made a short film just recently.
It was a big teary moment when she said, I'd like to restart BR2 again.
So that was the account number that my dad and I had when we would produce these small plays that I wrote and I directed.
And he would be counting the people in the audience to see if we had a break even for that night, and I would be thinking about the play.
But he still was a big believer in trying to keep costs down and doing things that didn't have like sets.
It could be done on a black box stage.
And that kind of translated into film for me.
And oddly enough, like I still think about it.
I still think is there a better, more emotional way to do this scene instead of like what I initially wrote?
Like, oh, it's going to be on this big bridge.
It'll be at night in the rain.
And it's like now I'm thinking of all the problems that are going to happen with it as opposed to maybe there's something that's more attainable and more meaningful.
And that's really what I got from Dad.
That's so interesting what you got from your father and what you share with these young filmmakers because I'm also thinking about Hustle & Flow, which you – I think I've heard you say that it's sort of a reflection of you and your wife making The Poor and the Hungry, that scrappiness and that resourcefulness, kind of the same journey as the characters in Hustle & Flow, DJ and Suge.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I mean –
Yeah.
I mean without like apples to apples comparison.
Like I am – Yeah, you're not a pimp trying to be a musician.
I'm not a pimp.
I'm not a – yeah.
But I really – when I was making that first film, my wife was pregnant with our first child.
We were living in a small house in Memphis.
I couldn't edit the movie and have air conditioning through our window unit at the same time, so i'd have to get like my room really, really cool and cold in august and then i'd turn it off and then i could turn on my computer because the the you know, the circuit breaker would blow.
Um, you know uh, that scrappiness you see in hustle and flow is really about us making my first film and uh, And the struggles to try to make it.
And also that to be a director sometimes is to be a manipulator.
And you're kind of trying to get everybody around you to share your vision and try to.
In a weird way, sometimes you angle it where you think it's best for them.
But they're ultimately there to help you.
This has been such a pleasure.
Thank you so much for taking the time and thank you for your work.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
I really appreciate that.
Craig Brewer's new film is Song Sung Blue.
Ben Markovits' novel The Rest of Our Lives was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize and has just been published in the US.
Our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, says it's the perfect little literary novel to curl up with, especially if winter weather has you feeling cooped up.
Here's her review.
Tom Layward, the narrator and main character of Ben Markovits' new novel The Rest of Our Lives, introduces himself in a curious way.
On the very first page of the book he talks matter-of-factly about the affair his wife Amy had 12 years ago when their two kids were young.
Amy, who's Jewish, got involved at a local synagogue in Westchester.
Tom, who was raised Catholic and clearly not a joiner, remained on the sidelines.
At the synagogue Amy met Zach Zersky, who Tom describes as the kind of guy who danced with all the old ladies and little pigtailed girls at a bar mitzvah, so he could also put his arm around the pretty mothers and nobody would complain.
After the affair came out, Tom and Amy decided to stay together for the kids, a boy named Michael and his younger sister Miriam.
But Tom tells us, I also made a deal with myself.
When Miriam goes to college, you can leave too.
The deal Tom says helped me get through the first few months when we had to pretend that everything was fine.
Twelve years have since passed, and the marriage has settled back into a state of okayness.
Miriam, now 18, is starting college in Pittsburgh and because Amy is having a tough time with Miriam's departure, Tom alone drives her to campus.
And once Tom drops Miriam off...
He just keeps driving westward without explanation to us or to himself, as though he's a passenger in a driverless car that has decided to carry him across the mighty Allegheny and keep on going.
The three-page scene here where Tom passively melds into the transcontinental traffic flow constitutes a master class on how to write about a character who is opaque to himself.
You don't feel anything about anything, Amy says early on to Tom, an accusation that's pretty much echoed by Tom's old college girlfriend Jill, whom he spontaneously drops in on at her home in Las Vegas after being out of touch for roughly 30 years.
But if Tom is distanced from his own feelings and vague about the issue he had with a couple of students that forced him to take a leave from teaching in law school, he's a sharp diagnostician of other people's behavior.
What fuels this road trip is Tom's voice.
By turns wry, mournful, and oh so casually astute.
There's a strain of Richard Ford and John Updike in Tom's tone, which I mean as a high compliment.
Take, for instance, how Tom chats to us readers about a married couple who are old friends of his and Amy's.
Chrissy was maybe one of those women who derived secret energy from the troubles of her friends.
Her husband Dick was a perfectly good guy, about 6'2", fat and healthy.
He worked for an online tech platform.
I really don't know what he did.
So might most of us be summed up for posterity.
As Tom racks up miles taking detours to visit other folks out of his past, like his semi-estranged brother, his meandering road trip accrues in suspense.
There's something else he's subconsciously speeding away from here besides his marriage.
Tom tells us at the outset that he's suffering from symptoms his doctors ascribe to long COVID— dizziness and morning face swelling so severe that daughter Miriam jokingly calls him Puff Daddy.
Shortly after he reaches the Pacific, Tom also lands in the hospital.
Getting out of the hospital, Tom dryly comments, is like escaping a casino.
They don't make it easy for you.
The canon of road trip stories in American literature is vast, even more so if you count other modes of transportation besides cars, like say rafts.
But the most memorable road trips like the rest of our lives.
Notice the easy-to-miss signposts marking life forks in the road and looming mortality that make the journey itself everything.
Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University.
Coming up, we hear from Will Arnett.
He stars in the new film, Is This Thing On?
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
Here's Terry with our next interview.
My guest is Will Arnett.
He co-wrote and stars in the new movie Is This Thing On?.
He also co-hosts the podcast Smartless with his longtime friends Jason Bateman, who also starred in Arrested Development, and Sean Hayes, who has a small part in Arnett's new film.
Another longtime friend of Arnett's, Bradley Cooper, directed the new film and plays Arnett's self-absorbed best friend.
The story is adapted from the true story of the British comic John Bishop.
The film's title, Is This Thing On?, has a double meaning.
It's what a lot of people say when they first get to a microphone.
It also refers to whether Will Arnett's character's marriage is on or off.
The movie is a hybrid of comedy and drama focused on the anger and resentments that can undermine a marriage and how your sense of identity can change if you're lucky enough to discover work that is meaningful to you.
Arnett plays a middle-aged father of two whose marriage has fallen apart.
He and his wife, played by Laura Dern, are separated, and he's feeling lonely and miserable.
One evening, while aimlessly walking down a Manhattan street, he sees a restaurant with a comedy club downstairs.
Admission requires a $15 cover charge, but if you sign up to perform, the cover charge is waived.
So he signs up because he doesn't have the cash.
When his name is called and he gets on stage, he has no clue what to do.
He freezes for a while and then starts talking about the current state of his life.
I think I'm getting a divorce.
What tipped me off was that I'm living in an apartment on my own.
Yeah.
And my wife and kids don't live there.
That was probably the biggest clue.
Will Arnett, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you for coming today.
And that scene is so good.
It's so much fun to watch you feel so uncomfortable.
And you're actually very funny, even though you're totally insecure and unprepared to be doing stand-up at that point in your story.
So I know in preparation you went to comedy club open mic nights.
Did you stay in the audience or perform?
No, I performed.
I went to the Comedy Cellar almost every night for about six weeks and performed under the name of Alex Novak, kind of in an attempt to understand what it was like A to do stand-up because I'm not a stand-up and I'd never done it before and B to see what it was like to do it through the eyes of somebody who's never performed in any capacity.
Really,
So that was kind of, that was the assignment for me.
Why didn't people recognize you?
Well, I think some did, Terry.
Some people recognized me and were confused as to what I was doing, because I would.
They'd introduce me as Alex Novak and I'd sort of reinforce that, say hi, I'm Alex Novak, and people would laugh nervously.
The people who did recognize me.
The people who didn't recognize me, I guess, was just because they're not fans of my films or TV shows.
Certainly people were.
You know a lot of my set, especially that first set that you played in the clip where I'm talking about getting divorced.
I think it did confuse people and people would be Googling me in real time trying to figure out what was going on.
Thinking like, oh, wait, I didn't know this guy got married again.
Yeah.
So did you try to be good or try to be stumbly?
Well, I tried to be sensitive to the material.
So I was using sets that we had written for the film.
So I go out and I do the first set.
And then during the day, I'd be at home, a couple blocks away in New York, rewriting the sets and trying to figure out, really trying to get it to a place that worked for the context that we were looking for, which is this guy who's never done it before.
So I'd go and I'd rework it and rework it.
And then you know, one night I might go out and go around the corner to the underground, all part of the comedy cellar, and do the third set.
And then go around the corner downstairs, the underground, and do the first set again.
And just keep working on these various sets.
But always try to track, you know, his development as a stand-up um, and so that all of those pieces work and and not just his development as a stand-up those, because those sets are also affected by uh, where alex is in our story and where he is in in, you know, with his relationship with his uh, with his estranged wife and all these things and they all, they all affect how he performs and how he is on stage.
You know the kind of story this is about two people who are dissatisfied with their lives at the moment and are looking for a new sense of identity which they feel they're lacking.
Why did you want to tell the story from a more middle-aged point of view?
And I know it's based on a real comic and you know a British comic who I think is well known in England but not here.
John Bishop is his name.
What appealed to you about the idea of a middle-aged couple looking to like find new identities and find some satisfaction in their work?
First of all, when I met John Bishop and he told me this story of how he became a stand-up and you know it, He is a very successful stand-up in the UK.
He's a really funny guy.
He's a really funny stand-up.
I was drawn less to the idea of him kind of becoming successful nowhere.
And more it's the idea of he found a thing that allowed him to kind of reconnect to himself and his wife.
He'd gotten so far down the road in his life and that he and his partner, his wife Mel he described that there was no big event, that there was nothing that they had just simply you know, you can say whatever you want grew, grew apart or whatever, but they weren't communicating and they were frustrated in their lives and they were frustrated with their lot, but they didn't have the language to even talk to each other anymore.
And that was the thing that really got me.
So we ended up.
You know we we, we focused less on in our story.
Alex does not become a famous uh standup.
Um, John told me recently uh, that for him you know that becoming a successful stand-up was really the icing on the cake uh, of which, which was uh reconnecting with his wife with mill, and so that that stuck with me.
I don't think it's uncommon, i think it's a real reflection of what a lot of people who are middle-aged, i guess, do go through And you get.
I think that sometimes you get resigned to the idea that this is your lot and this is what it's gonna be.
And sometimes it's really a matter of you need to find the language or to start to really connect with who you are.
There's a scene and I don't think I'm giving too much away here when they're trying to stay together or get back together, where your character asks his wife.
He said, like I know this about couple therapy that, like one of the standard questions is tell me something about myself that you hate about me.
Hmm.
And I think that's the kind of thing that could really go bad.
I can imagine that becoming a real nightmare.
I can also see a bit of self-reflection being the result of that and self-knowledge that you weren't aware of before.
I'm wondering if you've ever tried that approach and how did it go?
I think that there is, from my own life...
At this stage, I'm much more willing to be honest about where I am.
And certainly Bradley and I, it's something that we talk about, which it's really important.
Something that maybe you sort of avoid when you're younger, I think.
And as you get older, you just kind of you get to the point where you're like you might as well just say something.
And be honest.
And you have to allow people to have their own reaction to what you say.
And sometimes you so to instigate that you have to say like, all right, tell me, tell me the thing.
Like just what is the thing that I do that drives you crazy?
Just say it.
And I, at the risk of blowing it all apart.
And I think that's really important.
I think I'm much more willing to get in the deep water now myself than I was when I was a younger man, for sure.
Your voice, I don't think it's just me, the way I hear it.
Your voice has gotten deeper over the years.
Am I right about that?
Yeah, probably.
Has yours?
Oh, my voice has completely changed.
Yeah.
I mean, I used to talk more.
I'm like an octave higher, I think.
Really?
You think it's gotten higher?
No, no.
In the past it was when I started.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Because I noticed it with Howard Stern, who I've known for a long time, and I listened to some old clips.
Yeah, I think that that's what happens.
But certainly, yeah, I think it has gone deeper.
Were you a smoker?
Well, I mean, no comment.
Who do you work for, Terry?
The tobacco industry.
So is how you're cast differently with the lower voice?
Well, you know, when I was – I think I always had a kind of a gravelly, or whatever you want to call it sandpapery.
Some people might call it annoying voice.
I don't know, Terry.
I would not.
There are people.
And so when I was younger, when I first moved to New York, I looked much younger than my age.
I had sort of a baby face.
And weirdly enough, I knew back then that it didn't quite match.
And it was maybe going to affect me.
At least that's what I would tell myself if I didn't get a role because of my voice.
So it took a while to kind of grow, I think, grow into it a little bit.
I think your voice probably helped you get all the voiceover work.
That was basically the way you made a living for several years.
Yes.
Yeah.
And so you were so funny with Conan O'Brien on his TBS show.
And you're both so funny.
So I want to play a clip from that show.
And that goes back a few years to 2021.
And you were talking about your voiceover work.
And then you demonstrated some of your voices.
So, okay.
And we'll hear Andy Richter, Conan's sidekick on that show, say a few words during the clip.
So here's you and Conan Bryan in 2021.
You've got the best pipes in the business.
His voice is so incredible.
Yeah.
I try to get voiceover work and I'm like, buy this product.
Yeah.
That's the response I get.
Well, they also like the ads to be more specific.
Yeah, I know, that's true.
That was a little vague.
But that's obviously for Granny Smith apples, right?
Granny Smith apples are real good!
No, I do.
Voice over is a great thing, and I do a lot.
Actually, to be honest, coming here today, I'm kind of behind on a couple of jobs.
Would you mind while I'm here, because you guys are mic'd up and stuff.
Would you mind if I just did a couple?
You want to do some voice over recordings now?
Yeah, if that's okay.
Don't worry about it.
I don't think it's appropriate to actually.
You guys have lots of equipment here and I brought my setup with me.
Okay, that's ridiculous.
I brought my setup.
I can't believe I didn't see that back there.
Just a little.
So you're going to just do a voiceover or two.
I'm just going to do a couple things and just stay with it.
Three, two, one.
Innovative, creative, and tough as nails.
That's the American spirit.
And that's the all-new GMC Sierra 1500 pickup truck.
Yeah.
Okay.
We're just going to keep rolling here because we're rolling.
We're rolling.
Here we go.
Hey, girl, I love your smile.
Crest white strips.
Yeah.
That's good.
We're banging them out.
We're banging them out.
Oh, we're not done here.
Hang on.
We're still rolling here.
Here we go.
Three, two, one.
Fleneman's racist butter.
Spread it all around.
That couldn't be a product.
Is that butter for racist people or is the butter itself racist?
I don't know.
I do not know and I don't care as long as the check clears.
Okay, so let's do...
That's so great.
And like the first one we heard was for GMC trucks.
And you've done a lot or you did a lot of voiceovers for them.
And you know it's done in the style of like a rugged man who likes driving over tough terrain and wants a vehicle that can handle it.
So you have the voice for that.
But do you ever feel like that kind of a man?
Great question, Terry.
It's not necessarily how I see myself but yeah, I still work with – I still do the – I'm the voice of GMC Trucks and it's something I'm really proud of.
It's been a long time.
I've been doing the ads for GMC since 1998.
That long?
Yeah.
I've been the voice of GMC Trucks since – actually, this is the anniversary month, December of 1998 –
I never realized that was you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, because my voice changed.
Changed from doing those commercials.
Maybe.
But I do.
It is something that, yeah, there's something that I like.
First of all, I love working with the brand.
And they are great trucks.
I mean, look, Terry, they're professional grade.
You have to advertise them.
They are professional grade.
Yeah.
Does it hurt your throat to do that?
No.
The only time that it really gets straight, got strained, was uh in that way where it didn't hurt but I had to kind of be careful was when I was doing uh, the the Lego animated films, and we did two Lego films and a Lego Batman film standalone film, and doing the voice of Lego Batman for extended periods of time was stressful.
So I would book a, I'd do a session and then I'd have to make sure that I had nothing to do for the rest of the day and basically wouldn't talk because it was, you know, it was hours in there going through the script and doing stuff and as this as Batman.
Can you look back to your first audition?
How nervous were you?
What was the part?
What was your confidence level?
How did you present yourself?
Even if it was a kind of front you were putting on, did you present yourself as confident?
Did you dress for the role?
Did you sleep the night before?
I can think back on a lot of those early auditions, like first sort of paying gigs for like a sitcom and being very nervous and almost like out of body, like feeling not being present and just because I'm so nervous.
But I also think that, like in the last year you know doing this movie has reminded me a lot, brought me back to that place.
I feel much closer to that kid I was when I was 20 when I first moved to New York.
And you know, doing something like this, where all the standup stuff aside, which was its own kind of thing, but doing all these scenes that were really vulnerable and revealing and felt very scary,
And you know it's funny.
Nervous and excitement, those two senses, they're really close to each other.
And so I was excited, but I also didn't know.
And I've realized now as I'm older that I don't have all the answers.
And I'm not sure if I knew how to do it.
And I was scared.
I was intimidated at 54.
And I've been doing this a long time.
And I was unsure if I could do it or if I could be available in that way, be vulnerable in that way in these scenes.
I can remember being a younger man and being a younger actor and feeling nervous.
And I kind of am back to that now, which is, I think I've shed a lot of that stuff and hopefully a lot of the ego stuff over the last year, especially doing this movie where it's good to feel nervous.
Well, Arnett, it's been a pleasure to talk with you.
Thank you so much.
Congratulations on the new film.
Thank you so much, Terry.
I really appreciate it.
Will Arnett co-wrote and stars in the new film, Is This Thing On?
He spoke with Terry Gross.
Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.
Fresh Air's executive producers are Danny Miller and Sam Brigger.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.
