Letting Them Talk with Will Harris

This time I'm letting Alex Cox talk. Alex is a filmmaker whose work has had a profound impact on me over the years. Actually, even though I’ve enjoyed virtually all of his work over the years, I’ll be specific here: his 1986 film Sid & Nancy was directly responsible for introducing me to the Sex Pistols, for scaring me away from ever doing heroin, and – given that it was the first time I ever went to see a movie at our local art house theater, the Naro Expanded Cinema – one could also argue that it led me to discover a whole other world of film that might otherwise have taken me many more years to stumble upon. So, yeah, it was pretty awesome to finally have the opportunity to interview Mr. Cox. Cox hasn’t worked within the major studio system in quite some time, instead following his own muse and finding financing for his films wherever he can. The reason we were able to chat for “Letting Them Talk” was because his latest effort, Dead Souls, recently hit home video and streaming services. It’s a western, and as is to be expected from a Cox film, it’s a flick filled with drama, dark humor, and even a brief musical interlude that you definitely won’t see coming. It also stars Cox, and while it’s not the first time he’s appeared in front of the camera in one of his own films – he, along with Miguel Sandoval and Robert Wisdom, were the titular characters in 1998’s Three Businessmen – I believe it’s the first time that he’s been the sole lead. In addition to discussing Dead Souls, we also have a lengthy conversation about Sid & Nancy, as you probably suspected, including the rumors about how close Courtney Love came to getting the role of Nancy and why he kinda sorta agrees with John Lydon’s take that the film glorifies heroin, but we also spend a fair amount of time talking about Repo Man and how he surreptitiously turned Michael Nesmith onto punk rock, working with the Pogues and Elvis Costello on Straight to Hell, and the connection between Roger Ebert and Walker. Beyond that, we also chatted about his collaboration with Stan Lee on an unmade Doctor Strange script, his Godzilla film that never came to pass, his depressing meeting with Hunter S. Thompson when he was in talks to make Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and – perhaps most importantly – the fact that he now has a Kickstarter campaign for Repo Man 2: The Wages of Beer. It’s live as when I’m recording this intro, and it closes on January 4, 2027, so if you’ve ever wanted to know what happened to Otto after the first film ended, well, now’s your chance. Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Alex Cox talk.

This time I'm letting Jackie Hoffman talk. But first, I want to thank you, the listeners, for your continued interest in this podcast, because “Letting Them Talk” is now officially a year old. When I started this podcast, I was convinced that it was never going to be a big moneymaker for me, and let me just say that, by God, I was right on the money with that prediction. But having said that, I also didn’t imagine that I’d have the emotional fortitude to keep going with it for the number of episodes that I’ve rolled out thus far. This is the 64th episode of the podcast to date, and perhaps the most surprising thing about the people I’ve interviewed thus far is that a significant number of them aren’t people I’d already interviewed. That’s not to say that I haven’t gone out of my way to invite people who I already knew and hoped would say “yes,” but people like Dennis Quaid, John C. McGinley, Captain Sensible, Tommy Stinson… These are people who’ve been a part of my pop culture landscape for multiple decades, and it’s been awesome to actually have a chance to chat with them. And that’s because of you folks continuing to download and listen, so thank you for that. I really appreciate it. And if you ever find yourself with a free five bucks a month to contribute to the “Letting Them Talk” cause, I’d appreciate that, too. But mostly I’m just glad you’re continue to listen and – I can only presume – enjoy. And now, back to Jackie Hoffman. Jackie is an actress who can often get a laugh just by entering a scene, but if that doesn’t do the trick, she’s got such a distinctive comedic delivery that you can count on her cracking you up within moments of her opening her mouth. When I got the advance screeners for the new CBS drama CUPERTINO, which is my favorite new series of this TV season, I spotted Jackie playing a judge in one of the episodes, and I instantly thought, “Oh, yeah, this is a perfect excuse to pitch her team on having her appear on the podcast.” And lo and behold, they – and she – were agreeable to the idea. I’ve seen Jackie in a number of projects over the years, from Curb Your Enthusiasm and Difficult People to Only Murders in the Building and Feud: Betty and Joan. If you’re a New Yorker who’s also a theatergoer, you might also have seen her on Broadway – she’s been in Hairspray, Xanadu, The Addams Family, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, among other shows – but she’s also prone to doing her own one-woman shows at Joe’s Pub and other venues around NYC. I know I’ve already used the word “distinctive” as an adjective earlier, but “unpredictable” is a good one as well. I mean, she’s smacked around Dave Bautista, voiced Ben Grimm’s Aunt Petunia in an episode of Spidey and His Amazing Friends, and she even appeared in an all-Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof, for heaven’s sake. Mind you, we didn’t talk about all of those things – I forgot about Aunt Petunia until just now, unfortunately - but even so, it gives you an idea of just how diverse her career is. Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Jackie Hoffman talk.

This time, I’m letting Grey DeLisle talk. Grey is a voice actress who’s also a singer. The first time I talked to her, her career was sitting squarely in the former category, but over the years she;s expanded her music career considerably, to the point that it was her new album, Don’t Turn Around, that spurred our conversation this time. To give you an idea of how long it’s been since that initial conversation between Grey and I, it was before I’d started at the AV Club, and it had never occurred to me that I might someday write for the AV Club, so I decided to put my own spin on my favorite AVC feature – you guessed it: Random Roles – and do a recurring feature at Popdose.com called “You’re the Voice,” where I interviewed voice actors about their various credits…including, on occasion, a few live-action gigs. Grey and I got along swimmingly, so I was thrilled when almost a decade later I was invited to moderate a panel for The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy at the Richmond GalaxyCon in 2020. Now, at last, we’re back together again, and it’s a delightful conversation. And, yes, I know I often use the word “delightful” to describe my conversations for the podcast, but you listen to this episode and tell me afterwards that it isn’t accurate…because if you make such a claim, I will sincerely doubt that you actually listened. And I only say this for one reason: I’m not even sure it’s possible to have a conversation with Grey DeLisle that isn’t delightful. We spend a great deal of time talking about her music career, of course, since that’s what brought us together, but we do also chat about her work as a voice actress, including our mutual love of Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated, which – as I say during the interview and I will say again right here – is the best Scooby-Doo series since Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! On the topic of voice acting, however, I have to say that I wish I wasn’t posting this on the heels of learning that one of Grey’s peers, Eric Bauza, who voiced a number of the Warner Brothers character in the recent – and awesome – Coyote vs. Acme. My Facebook and Instagram feeds are currently filled with people mourning Eric’s death, and I’m one of them, because even though I didn’t know him, I certainly knew his work, and God knows he was fantastic at his work. So allow me to offer my condolences to any of his colleagues and other fans who may be listening to this, and here’s hoping this conversation helps raise your spirits somewhat in this moment of loss. Grey is a sweetheart, a sweet talker, and she even sings a little bit during the course of the episode. How can that not put a smile on your face? Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Grey DeLisle talk.

This time I’m letting Marshall Crenshaw talk. I’ve been enjoying Marshall’s music ever since I picked up a cassette copy of his album Downtown in a cutout bin at a Roses department store. I don’t know why I decided to buy it, since I didn’t know anything about it at the time, but after hearing the song “Blues is King,” I instantly became a Marshall Crenshaw fan, and I’ve remained one ever since. Marshall found his first success with the 1982 single “Someday, Someway,” and he’s maintained a relatively steady pace of releasing records from then onward, and while they’ve haven’t necessarily always set the charts afire, his way with a pop hook has maintained steady throughout his career. In addition to writing for his own albums, he’s also worked on songs with other folks over the years, including Kirsty MacColl, the Gin Blossoms, and a collaboration that’s particularly near and dear to my heart, “The Best Thing About Me is You,” done with Bill Lloyd and the late, great Jeffrey Foskett. You might also have heard Marshall’s work in films. In the case of La Bamba, you also got to see him, since he played Buddy Holly in that particular motion picture, but he also wrote the title track for the John C. Reilly comedy Walk Hard, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination. Marshall’s latest release, “The Bootleg Sounds of Marshall Crenshaw,” finds him delving into his archives and coming up with some particularly interesting material, including a mixture of originals and cover songs. We talk about the record in some detail, as you might expect, but we talk about plenty of other things as well. Among the topics: playing with Bruce Springsteen and almost playing with Bob Dylan, collaborating with Was (Not Was) on a song that almost brings together the lead singer of the Knack and a one-time member of KISS, appearing on Pete & Pete, his connection to the MC5, and much, much more. Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Marshall Crenshaw talk.

This time I’m letting Parker Young talk. Parker basically got his big break as an actor when he secured a role in the hilarious ABC sitcom Suburgatory, and although he’s been working steadily ever since, he’s had to endure being a part of too many short-lived series, which is particularly disappointing when those series invariably tend to be pretty great. As such, I for one am rooting for his luck to change, because his new series, CBS’s vampire comedy Eternally Yours, is already starting out very solidly. I interviewed Parker late last year when I did a piece for Vulture that took a look back at Suburgatory, which at the time had just found its way back to streaming services after having been MIA pretty much since it was canceled. The interview was via Zoom, and it was with Parker, his co-stars Jane Levy and Carly Chakin, and series creator Emily Kapnek, and after we finished our conversation, I got an email from Parker, thanking me for a great reunion, and since I’d also been a fan of his short-lived Fox sitcom Enlisted, I pitched him on being a guest on the podcast. He said he’d love to do it, but he asked if we could wait until he had something else to promote…and now he does, so here we are! Mind you, we had to get past a tiny technical issue when Zoom asked him for an access code that I neither sent him nor asked to have on there, but once we did, things went swimmingly. During the course of our conversation, we of course talked about all three of the series I’ve already mentioned, so expect solid sections on Eternally Yours, Suburgatory, and Enlisted. We also talked about Imposters, a series which you have to buy outright to watch nowadays because it’s not streaming anywhere, the underrated Chuck Lorre sitcom The United States of Al, and his one-off appearance in season one of Fox’s Best Medicine which finds him emerging from the woods, baring his chest. It’s decidedly memorable. In addition, we talk about the experience of doing an episode of Mad Men, and – because I couldn’t resist the title – I even asked him about being in the film Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust. This is another one of those conversations where you’d think we’d known each other for ages when, in fact, this is only the second conversation we’d ever had. But Parker’s just a nice, earnest, hardworking guy who does whatever he can to provide for his family while delivering solid comedic and dramatic performances on the regular. And if you aren’t a full-on Parker Young fan by the time you reach his reaction to my question about a failed pilot, then you’re clearly made of stone. All right, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Parker Young talk.

This time I’m letting Mike Viola talk. I’ve enjoyed Mike’s music even before I knew he was the one doing it. It all started with an amazing little movie called That Thing You Do! It was – and remains – one of my favorite movies of all time, about the brief life and times of a ‘60s one-hit wonder band called the Oneders, a.k.a. The Wonders. Big thanks go out to Tom Hanks, of course, since he wrote and directed the film, but when you’re doing a film about a one-hit wonder, you’ve got to have a song that can be played over and over and over again without anyone growing tired of it. That’s what the late, great Adam Schlesinger gave us…and Mike took it, sang it, and hit it out of the park. Long story short, I’ve been a Mike Viola fan ever since, but it wasn’t until a few years later that I stumbled upon his band, the Candy Butchers, on the soundtrack to the 1998 film Zero Effect. By the next year, the Candy Butchers had put out their full-length debut album, 1999’s Falling into Place, and they were off and running. By the time you’re listening to this, Mike will have released a book, Superkid, about the earliest years of his music career, and on October 30th he’s releasing his latest album, Chum. Just to clarify, these days Mike is releasing his music under his own name, but if you aren’t familiar with his band catalog, let me assure you that there are several great Candy Butchers albums out there that you should familiarize yourself with first, after which it’s time to bask in the full Mike Viola catalog. But it’s all great stuff, I can assure you. Mike and I ended up having a wide and ranging conversation that lasted longer than most episodes – you guys, I really have been trying to start wrapping things up by the hour mark, just to keep it easily digestible – but it’s a really enjoyable chat in which we discuss his additional soundtrack work on Walk Hard and Get Him to the Greek, his stint as an A&R guy for Verve Records that led him to sign a particularly wicked artist, teaming up with Adam Schlesinger to record an Andy Partridge song for the Monkees, writing for Panic at the Disco, working with Mandy Moore, covering a plethora of Paul McCartney songs, and much more. Oh, yes, and in addition to reading him a note that my 21-year-old daughter wrote for him about the importance of his music in her daily life, I reveal how his music was part of the soundtrack for my wife and I as we worked through the in vitro process and got our daughter into the world in the first place. Okay, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Mike Viola talk.

This time I’m letting Neil Flynn talk. Neil always surprises me when he actually agrees to talk, even though he’s done several interviews with me at this point. In my defense, though, he’s made a career out of playing characters who tend to be men of few words. Take Mike Heck on The Middle, for example: the guy spent virtually the entire run of the series actively trying to avoid conversation, and when he was invariably forced into having to talk, he generally only spoke as much as was absolutely necessary to get the conversation over and done with. The first time I interviewed Neil, it was in the bar of the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, and although it lasted for 45 minutes, it concluded with him being surprised that we’d talked so long. In fact, he made note of having read my Random Roles with Lily Tomlin for the AV Club and said, “That thing went on forever! I was, like, ‘I’m never gonna have that much to say!” But it turns out that Neil Flynn is actually a pretty great interview if you can get him talking about things that he actually enjoys talking about, which is to say things that he actually cares about. I’ve also discovered that it helps if you can keep him guessing a little bit with what you’re going to ask him about. And it certainly doesn’t hurt if you let him take whatever tangents he decides he wants to take, because wherever he ends up going, you can count on it eventually being pretty funny. I’d been wanting to invite Neil onto the podcast ever since I started it, but when I reached out to him after hearing that he was going to be in the first season of the Scrubs revival, he downplayed how much he was going to be in it…and rightfully so, since he only ended up being in a single episode. For season two, however, I ‘d heard he was going to be in more than one, so I reached out to him early,  and that’s why you’re getting the interview this week: because if you’re downloading this on the day of its release, then you’ll be able to see him in tonight’s episode. So of course we talk about Scrubs and we talk about The Middle. This is the first time I’ve interviewed him since he made his debut on Shrinking, so we talked about the fact that this is the third time he’s worked with Harrison Ford, and he reveals how memorable those previous occasions were to Mr. Ford. We talk about his early acting career, which started in Chicago, led him to Los Angeles, then back to Chicago, and then back to Los Angeles, where he remains to this day. He’s got stories about popping up briefly in the unsuccessful pilot for Kung Fu: The Next Generation, kinda sorta making out with Laurie Metcalf, being unable to tell if Norm Macdonald was kidding or not, working with Amy Sedaris in Girls5Eva, and having someone question whether or not he’d really been part of Second City and the UCB. For the record, the conversation starts with Neil not being able to figure out how to get his audio to connect, and by the end of the proceedings, he literally admits to being the living embodiment of Old Man Yells at Cloud. But that’s just who he is, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Well, that’s almost certainly more than enough of an intro. It’s time to let Neil Flynn talk.

This time I’m letting Brittany Ishibashi talk. Brittany absolutely qualifies for the descriptor “that gal who was in that thing,” because when you look at her filmography, you quickly notice that she’s been in an episode of just about every hourlong drama of note that’s been on the air in the last decade or two. Here’s just a brief list of shows on which she’s appeared over the course of her on-camera career, which started in 1999: Felicity, Charmed, Angel, 24, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI, The Office, Veronica Mars, Nip/Tuck, Supernatural, Desperate Housewives, House, The Mentalist, Bones, Castle, Major Crimes, Parenthood, This Is Us, and Scrubs. This is in no way a complete list, but it gives you an idea of how busy she’s been and how high profile that busyness tends to be. Currently, Brittany is working with two of the most high-profile actors in the business: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. She plays Woody’s wife on the Apple TV+ series Brothers, and we talk about how they’re everything you’d ever want them to be, and more. But, of course, that’s not all we talk about. We discuss several of the series I cited in that laundry list of past credits, and we talk about some that I didn’t mention in there, like her recurring role on Grace & Frankie, working with Dennis Hopper on the NBC series E-Ring and Sigourney Weaver on the USA series Political Animals, the opportunity to be part of the MCU via the Hulu series Runaways, and the fun of doing a Hallmark movie. I also enjoyed the opportunity to blow her mind a couple of times during the course of the conversation by asking her about some obscurities from her back catalog, but I regret nothing. In fact, this was just an absolutely delightful conversation from start to finish. Being as she is indeed a “gal who was in that thing,” you might not know Brittany’s name, but once you’ve listened to this episode, not only do I think you’ll remember it, but you’ll probably want to actively seek out her work, as well you should. Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Brittany Ishibashi talk.

This time I’m letting Renny Harlin talk. This man’s films have been part of the pop culture fabric of my life dating back to the late 1980s. I’m not going to lie and pretend that I saw his first two films – 1986’s Born American and 1987’s Prison – when they were initially released, but I did rent A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master on VHS, and I most definitely saw both Die Hard 2 and The Adventures of Ford Fairlane in the theater, so…I guess you’ve gotten the idea by now that I’m very much a Renny Harlin fan, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to him, even if it was only for a little over 30 minutes. Harlin’s latest film is his fourth collaboration with Samuel L. Jackson, but it’s decidedly unlike any of the films they’ve previously done together. It’s called The Beast, and if you’re any sort of presidential historian, then you’ll recognize that the film shares its title with the highly-fortified state car that serves as the vehicle of the President of the United States. Well, in this case, our man Sam is the Commander-in-Chief, he’s inside the Beast, and he’s under attack from virtually the moment the film starts, so…buckle up. By the time this episode is release, the film should be in a theater near you, and if you’re listening to this a little bit down the line, then hopefully it’s available for purchase for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home. Of course, there was no way that I was going to have a conversation with Renny Harlin without asking him about some of the films that I mentioned earlier, so we chat about the budget battle of Nightmare on Elm Street 4, the rock and roll adventure of making Ford Fairlane, and how little he’s bothered by the aviation inaccuracies of Die Hard 2. We also discuss his shift to directing episodic television a few years ago, the time he had dinner with Billy Wilder, and the experience of working with Burt Reynolds on Driven, which was…definitely an experience. No, I didn’t get to ask him about everything I would’ve liked to ask him about, but at the very end, I managed to make a closing comment that led him to tease me with a story that I sincerely hope will result in us doing a sequel sometime down the line, hopefully sooner than later. After all, he’s got a podcast now, too – Harlin House, which he does with his wife, Johanna – so it’s got cross-promotional opportunity written all over it! Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Renny Harlin talk.

This time I’m letting Mykelti Williamson talk. I’ll just go ahead and admit it: this is someone whose name I had somehow never actually heard spoken aloud before until mere moments before starting my conversation with him. As such, I discovered that I’d been mispronouncing his name wrong in my head for the entirety of the time I’ve been watching his work…and I’ve literally been watching this guy for decades now. Mind you, if I’d seen some of his earliest credits, when he was actually listed as “Michael T. Williamson,” I would’ve known better, but for years I just figured it was pronounced “M’Kell-tee,” and I was very, very wrong. But better we should focus less on how you pronounce his name – even though that’s important – and focus more on his work, because Williamson’s current series, FX’s The Drop: A Snowfall Saga, is a fantastic piece of work, a spin-off from Snowfall that’s set in 1990 and blends a family drama with a fictionalized-but-familiar look at the rise of the west coast rap scene. Williamson plays a character called Big Daddy, the patriarch of the Kinsey family, and it’s a multifaceted role that gives Williamson the opportunity to play a number of different emotional beats. We recorded this episode with an eye toward releasing it after the fifth episode, so if you haven’t started watching the series yet or you’re not up to episode five, then you may want to hang tight and play catch-up before you listen to the interview. That said, and I’m not saying you should just suck it up and suffer through the spoilers, but after we finish talking about The Drop, we start delving into other items in Williamson’s filmography,  and there are definitely some good stories awaiting you on the other side. Yes, we talk about some of the more obvious points of interest – reciting shrimp recipes in Forrest Gump, sitting next to Nic Cage on Con-Air, and playing alongside Pacino in Heat, just to name a few – but beyond that, he offers up a no-holds-barred explanation about his departure from The New WKRP in Cincinnati, details an awkward moment with Ed Asner on The Bronx Zoo, and reveals the remarkable amount of support he received from George C. Scott after working with him on the Showtime remake of 12 Angry Men. And along the way, we make brief stops on Soul Train, Streets of Fire, Bay City Blues, and… Hell, this man even has a Joey Travolta story! Well, that’s probably enough of an intro. It’s time to let Mykelti Williamson talk.