Olivia Wilde

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Olivia Wilde joins Dax Shepard on Armchair Expert to discuss her new film 'The Invite,' her directorial journey, personal memories, and playful banter about identity, family, and celebrity culture.

Key takeaways

Directing 'The Invite' was deeply personal, inspired by Mike Nichols' 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'
Wilde uses film's visual language—mirrors, glass, architecture—to create emotional tension in a single-location film.
Childhood memories are often shaped by photos and stories, not just facts.

Transcript preview

Welcome welcome to armchair expert I'm Dax Shepard I'm joined by Lily Padman and today we have Olivia Wild. Oh Olivia Wild. I'm such a fan. I've talked about her a lot on here. I think she's such a gangster director She directed Don't Worry Darlene. The name alludes you a few times in this episode. I never get right in the interview. Book smart. She also directed it was incredible. And then as an actor Tron, Cowboys and Aliens House. And she's a new movie out, her third movie that she's directed, called The Invite, which you and I saw. We fucking love it so much. And we're doing a little The Invite Week. So this is guest one of The Invite Week. Please enjoy Olivia Wild. This is an interesting thing. best. She was so adorable. She had never done the Met Gala and then she came with me. I was like this is the whole reason I'm here and you looked incredible. It was all Barb and she was like really giddy and... I bet it's a huge deal. She's a hair stylist. Hair stylist. She's very good. She got into your mermaid. She's gotten in there many times. Do you know Monica was the herbal essence mermaid in a commercial? With the orgasmicic... Did you have to have to have like an orgasm? I did not... in the commercial. Oh you actually were I did have to swim and I don't really know how to swim so that was bad. We don't know if I can swim. You don't love it or you don't know how? It's somewhere in between. Olivia I've observed her swimming not to not believe women but she has swam in front of me several times. Okay. You're not confident. I'm not confident and I do think if I jumped in I would drown. Right. You need to be. I can like get across the pool right right but the jumping in I don't want to do that so you never swim for fun it's not like I'm gonna go swimming never wow but I do like a pool I like to like be by the pool yeah yeah pool culture yeah this is like how I like skiing I don't like to ski I like to a pray ski you like apre pool that's right what's apre ski is like drinking culture basically you can you just like go to the lodge Yeah, yeah. And it's all the stuff except the actual sport. You know now that you're saying it you're reminding my my father who was a drunk but did get sober when I was in ninth grade. He got into skiing for a minute because he had a wife who was in a skiing. Oh really? Yeah, he just loved it. Yeah, because he would get all of his gear and then go straight to the bar and sit there and we just visit him coming off the slopes. Yeah, it's like golf. I think people golf so they can drink. Yeah, yeah, the 19th. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, That's the golf culture I understand. All right, I need to start by saying I'm like beyond thrilled that you responded to my Instagram message. I was so flattered that you were splendid. Split right into those d'ams. I sent Monica a screen grab immediately and I was like you are not gonna believe it. You know what's so funny is I took a screenshot of it too which I showed Kristen. Because I thought it was so authentic it was so sweet. People assume that someone in your position doesn't do any of that that someone, there's a whole team. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's. No, that's. No, that's, that's. No, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that very flattered. Oh, me. I thought you were referring to yourself. No, no, no. But yeah, I'm making assumptions. I'm like you're like a bona fide a tour now and you don't need to do press and there's no reason you're gonna say yes but I'm just gonna tell you that I have been for whatever reason really cheering from afar from book smart from book smart. Speaking of our other mutual friend Katie. Katie, Katie. Katie. Katie. Katie. Katie. And she's just the best and she's now basically running Netflix. I know. She's like the in-house writer, producer, extraordinary and she's a genius. She's a genius. She's a genius. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I saw that Don't Worry Darlene. And Monica and I both. We had a field day with that movie. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We were so into that movie and there was so much accomplished in it. Visually story-wise acting all of it. All of it. All of it, the swing, the swing, the swing, the swing, the swing, the swing, I was like this bitch can fucking direct. And then we saw the invite. We got to see it. And then I went ballistic. I don't know if Edward shared with you my feedback from it. He just said that you enjoyed it which made me so happy. I immediately was like this is a Mike Nichols movie. This woman made a Mike Nichols movie. Wow. That's so kind of you. That's my actual dream review. I immediately was like, this is a Mike Nichols movie. This woman made a Mike Nichols movie. Wow. Wow. That's my actual dream review review. made. It's so good. I'm so proud of it. It proves everything we've all been taught from the beginning which is like the more personal something is the better specificity making something personal authenticity, making something, all of the ingredients to a great experience that I had known but only now do I fully understand why that's so valuable. This is a challenge. This is a play and how will this play be riveting on screen and why aren't I watching it in theater? Exactly. That's always a question I think when something is an adaptation which this was originally a play I think the question is always why adapt why make it a movie or if it's a book like why not just leave this as a great book and I think it has to be that the medium you are adapting it into it has to be taken advantage of so like what can you show in a film that you can't show on stage and then you better take advantage of that you're to sit and watch a great play. Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf was the kind of North Star for me in terms of inspiration because Mike Nichols took this play written by Edward Albee that had been done to great success on Broadway. Everyone loved this play. Probably isn't the one to fuck with. No, yeah. Tariest right out of the gates. Exactly. And he decided to shoot it in a way that made it so visceral, so kind of emotionally vivid and really bold choices really made it really bold choices, really made it really made it, really bold choices, really made it, really made it, really made it, really made it, really made it, really made it, really made it, really, really, really, really, really, really made it, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really made it, making you feel like you were getting, in their case, like drunker with the characters. The cinematography really kind of took you on this journey, which you know, sounds so hokey, but it is a real challenge when you're never leaving one set, which of course that movie is also in one house. And we were so inspired by that. So the whole crew, we took a lot of cues from Mike Nichols in every way. It was a reminder that we could be just as ambitious with a single set, single location film. an action movie. So we had this extraordinary cinematographer Adam Newport Barra who also shoots the studio and that's where I met him. He's crushing it there and shot Club Kid which is Jordan Firstman's movie that just got bought a can. Adam is just incredible and then we had this extraordinary production designer Jade Healy she's just one of the best she had done marriage story she had done lots of films that showed that she could turn a space into a character. I put our heads together and we were like, okay, how the fuck do we make a movie that takes place in one room, not boring, and it became about using architecture to become a barrier in between people, using mirrors a lot, using glass, and creating a very designed approach so that then when I brought the cast in there I could say like, go nuts, just have fun. Right, we have figured out how to do all this, you be free. Yeah. Oh, it's so good, but we'll get into even more detail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're a little tiny baby. You're brought home from a hospital to York City, but you're quickly whisked away to DC to Georgetown? Pretty quickly. When I was five, we moved to DC, yeah. Where did you live in Manhattan up till five? Upper West Side. Okay. Ninety-third in Central Park West. Do you have any memories? I can't tell if I've made them up. I like to pretend that I remember one thing just to traumatize my mom because when I was three, we were walking around Central Park and a flasher. Wonderful. And I definitely don't remember it, but I like to just say to her like, I don't know, I guess ever since that day, I haven't really gotten over it. Set you on a trajectory, really. Yeah. Yeah. So you would protect me. But no, my memories are probably all informed by photographs and stories. My sister and I like to also like steal each other's memories. You know, you do that with siblings? Yep, yep, yep, yep. I'm so curious about how our kids who have photos of every moment of every moment of their lives. have clearer memories or worse memories of their childhoods. Well I think objectively they'll be more proof one way or another right. I'm more proof but does that stop us from having to remember anything? Or still creating the story that you want to have? Right, but you will be able to like check the tapes. Exactly I think about this with my kids I'm like okay well let's just start with the fact that they're going to resent something I have to. They can't be on planet Earth and not reflect on something I could have done better. Yeah. And I'm always like what's the thing. I'm always like what's the thing. I'm always like what's the thing. I'm like what's the thing they're going to already defensive, like whatever thing they think they're gonna launch on me. But I will say, the thing that's been sweet, if you had this with your kids where you're looking at old videos, you go to find one picture, and then all of a sudden you're in the wormhole of watching Delta say insane stuff, our littlest one always was saying the craziest up. And what is nice, I've benefited from this, the girls will watch it and like, it's hard to find a video of us where I'm not dancing with them when their little baby. Like I'm little baby, like I just held them, I just held them, So I do think that's helped me in that they do go like oh wow yeah you were clearly always doing the thing which I like because that would be my whole that they think and they will feel like they remember that even if they don't really have memories of being like one strapped to your chest they would think they do which is so nice yeah they see that they were laughing and giggling as a little baby and I'm dancing around my parents took pictures as though it was like the 18th century every photo looks like it was taken underwater with like I don't know why they really did not document enough and so we have a few pictures and that all my memories are really based around those photos and then I feel like I started remembering things I guess around like four or five but oh my kids love looking at old videos themselves and it's funny because Otis who's 12 his sister is 9 and everything she doesn't noise him now but he has this interesting like love for the baby videos of her He just will sit and watch videos of her and smile. And I'm like, huh, so you do love her. You love her. Yeah. And I have to like I have a whole file already. So when he's like, mom, I hate her, I hate I can be like, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, yeah. First steps. You remember? Yeah, she was like, she was like, she was cute. And she could have, she could have pronounced, kids. Okay. I have to work this. I have to work. It's identical. It's always got to be a good friend. And if the person that's always getting the bad moments if they remember their childhood worse than the person who's always getting the good moments. Because when we were little, it was only just like happy pictures of birthdays. Yeah, only the... Yeah, random happy moments. Yeah, we can definitely get someone like falling down. And we have proof of them being shitty. So another great thing is like, is like, is like, Oh wow I was a handful. Right. Oh yeah, we loved it, but my God you are a handful. That's good. It's good that they can do that. Otis likes to do something where he frowns, even if he's having a great time. The second he senses the camera, he'll do a sad face because he thinks it's really funny that the record of his childhood will look like he was like horrible. He's already an artist. Yeah, he can snap into a frown so quickly. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, Andrew and Leslie are gangsters the Cockburns they're both journalists I'll tell you something and there's no way you would know this it's pronounced Coburn which I want you to imagine being a kid well that of course I'm curious what it's like to be a young girl at the last thing it's spelled Cockburn you're claiming it's a Scottish name okay and it is very much like boy name Sue you know me like a character building I'll give our kids devastating middle names just so that you can grow up with like something to be totally bullied for. Were people burning you for that last name? But I think it was an early important lesson in laughing along not in a way that was like giving into the bullies in a way. I don't know I thought it was funny too. I was like oh I get it. That's a funny name. That's funny. Yeah yeah yeah. It's not just caught I mean there's a verb. It's a painful verb. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're rug burn but it could be a pan. Yeah it really could. It was never a disc exactly. I hear it is like a disc a burn. Oh okay yeah there's that too. And it's up for grabs on who is it worse if you're a girl or boy like to by brother get it worse. He's nine years younger than you. And so life was nicer nine years later a little bit right? We've gotten marginally better every? I don't know. Have we? every version of themselves in the elementary school my kids go do and they're not getting destroyed over it. That's true. They're going to happen in Detroit in the late 70s I promise. Yeah. So that seems better to me but then again I don't know just because we're in LA and I'm not in Detroit anymore. But no my buddy's kids they're nicer boys. I think having the last name it looks like Cockburn in any city in any decade. It's too easy. Yeah, it's going to in fact it's kind of comforting too. It's like no matter. It's kind of comforting too. It's like no matter. Your last name is Cockburn. You're always going to learn the laugh early. But no I was so proud to be a part of my family because I come from multiple generations of journalists and so I grew up with my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncles, my dad's, my dad's, everybody was a journalist on my dad's side and my mom has this really interesting family too. They're shipping people. Yes. From Hillsboro. Yes. Very impressive. So she grew money. She did, yes, my mom grew up and couldn't be more different from my dad's childhood who my dad grew up in Ireland had polio as a kid along with his two brothers. They lived a completely, I mean the two childhoods of my parents. When I have done like deep therapy on this, it's been so interesting to think like what did they find in common? Well it seems like this ferocious appetite for the world and documenting it and investigating it. Yeah. Speaking truth to power. I think they both have both have a very strong sense of questioning authority and telling stories and justice. Yeah, justice and going to places nobody else wants to go. Yeah. And just living outside the box and they both do it. I mean my parents when I was little were work correspondence working in the most dangerous places in the world and they'd both go to Baghdad on either the same job or on separate jobs and they'd go in separate planes and then like stay in separate hotels and then like stay in separate hotels and meet in the middle of the night. Ronde Bue. Oh fun! Go playing the little bag. Just sexy, yeah. And then like put on their bulletproof vests and go out to work. They lived a very cool life, which now I sometimes think about, you know when you come back from shooting a movie? And at first you get home and it's a little bit of like shell shock because you're like, whoa, you come from a set environment and then you come home and there's always a day of adjustment of like remembering this world. And I think about how crazy It must have been for my parents that I come back from like Afghanistan to me being like where are my ballet shoes they must have been like wow this is a big change I've seen a lot of your mom's work because she's both a producer on 60 minutes and frontline I've seen many of her frontlines yeah I love frontline yeah me too she did extraordinary things and my mom was the first Western journalist to interview Saddam Hussein's sons basically her thing was that she could get an interview with people who would not would not talk to Western journalists. Do you think because they were underestimating her? Yes, absolutely. Like leveraging that. Yeah, she would also go to places that were more dangerous than other people and she would sneak a camera under a burka to go into a place. She was incredibly bold and she had a lot of respect for the people she was interviewing. I mean, there were some questionable people she was interviewing that she wouldn't agree with, but she had respect for the process and was incredibly well researched and just very, very. curious and I think that kind of curiosity they both have and we grew up in this household where it was all about asking questions. And I think that had a really great effect on us. She probably had on a platter she could have had a kind of comfortable life in San Francisco with rich parents. I think so though you know we kind of admire that. We live in a patriarchal society and I think as a woman born in the 50s, she felt that yeah there's probably a life she could have chosen that was way different and maybe comfortable but not at all taking advantage of her intelligence yeah yeah and her skills and so she left she was one of the first women at Yale second class ever and she went and then she studied anthropology and she graduated early went and lived in Kenya for a year then went to grad school in London herself. Yeah, she was the youngest of three kids and my grandfather was a wonderful guy but very old-fashioned and it wasn't like she was going to take over the company that wasn't something that a woman was going to be given the opportunity to do so I think she was proving that she could forge her own path and that she was capable of much more than just being a wife. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She then ironically got married really young which is funny because I think she was like I'm not, not going to be a wife and then I married my dad at like 24. But in a way that was really rebellious because he was not the guy my grandparents had envisioned at all. I mean he was basically the opposite. He was Irish, he came from no money, came from this socialist family of journalists who were just very, very, very bold. And yet the families came together beautifully and ended up really blending and loving each other. Oh, really. How was it decided whether they would live in Ireland or live in the US? thought they'd lived there. Because you spent summers in Ireland, right? Oh yeah, we spent like every time we weren't in school we were there which was great. And I actually as a kid felt just as Irish as American. And you have dual citizenship? I have dual, yeah. I actually have triple, I have British Irish. Well don't brag name. You know what? Yeah. Was just cap it at Irish. Were you in Northern or Southern Ireland? Southern Ireland? So it's a republic of Ireland. It must have been so annoying. And I feel like my sister still does it and she'll kill me. She comes back. She lives in London now, but anytime she comes back from Ireland, I'm like, oh no, don't. We're not doing this. But my parents did a great job of making us feel culturally very connected to our Irish roots. Also, when you're a kid, I think your personality is forged in the summer. Yes, absolutely. Like that's who you are. There is an Irish rascallyness. Yes, I'm. Yes. but in a prideful wonderful way. Oh, absolutely. I mean when you are a country who were the victims of such unbelievable oppression for hundreds of years and really they tried to wipe out the Irish they were treated horrifically and I think that will never leave the Irish spirit there is a survivor you see it in like the Australians too that's why they're such badasses they have this. Chip on the shoulder, like, you can't really mess with us, like we will survive anything. And I think the Irish have that. And it's a great attitude you see in all Irish artists too. Like I ended up going to acting school there in Dublin when I was older. And I loved that the attitude towards acting in Dublin was so humble. Like you go see a play in Dublin and then you'd go have a drink with whoever was the play afterwards. You're like a tradesman. It's a tradesman. You're a craftsman. You're a crafts tradesman. You're not. You're not a tradesman. You're not a tradesman. You're not a. You're not a. You're not a. You're not a. to even think about it that way and I think there's a respect for things much bigger than yourself for instance like we come from this little fishing village and for a long time in that village the fishermen didn't learn to swim you'd love it oh my god I couldn't be so bad and the idea behind it was that if the ocean wanted you it would take you and now you know it's different times people learn to swim and luckily are fewer people are drowning from this but I always thought there's this respect for things more things than yourself, this understanding that like the ocean and nature and then there's just a humility to people there that I really deeply respect. Okay now, so the upside of your parents is like, oh I'd love to have parents that interesting that engaged, always bringing home topics, but also these are very involved in their own lives parents. Yes. So like when you said the pictures like, I'm not shocked there's not a ton of pictures. What's the tradeoff? They're pretty self-consumed I'd imagine to have those careers? They were but they did something that I tried to learn from where they were very social people and they brought a lot of that to our house so it felt like this kind of salon all the time you know there were all these interesting people around and they brought us into that sit down and have a conversation or listen to this conversation or be a part of this so we felt connected to their work and their lives because they took us seriously as little people that bridge the gap between these very full careers that did take them away a lot being at home that they incorporated their lives into the home life in a way that I have to remember to do all the time. Sometimes I think people think you have kids and so that means that when you're with your kids like you don't go out and you just hang out with your kids. But I read this interesting thing about how your kids learn to socialize from you. So observing your social life is an important thing and so you have to like bring them to things and kind of like bring the party home. We just had an expert last week I was talking about, I was talking about, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that this, that this, that this, that this the last 40 years where it's like most kids had to go with their parents to the hardware store they had to go with their parents to work on a day and sit there bored yes like the amount of times you had and then just comparing that with hunting and gathering societies who are almost always you're not joining the kids world the kids joining your world yeah and they're learning so much I see my 13 year all the time just eavesdropping on me and me and my friends and I love it and I don't care but I can see how interested she is and what's going on it's from the way you interact, I used to crawl under the dining room table and like lay down under the dining room table during their dinner parties and just listen to the hum and like listen to their conversations and think that they didn't know I was there although of course they did I wasn't very good at like crawling quietly. But I think it's true and every time I see how close my kids are to their friends I feel so proud that we have modeled for them this idea of your tribe, your friendship community is being super important Now with all that said did you ever long for did you have a friend whose mom was always at home when you got home from school and she had made shit totally I also used to watch like sitcoms and almost fetishize the suburban environment because we lived in the city the whole idea of what felt like the nuclear family at home and parents home every night eating dinner with your parents it was so foreign to us right and so I used to just watch hours of sitcoms and so I used to just watch hours of think like, well I want that. And I did have a friend whose house I spent a ton of time at whose family was really sweet to me and it was the opposite dynamic is mine. But of course all my friends wanted my parents. Yes, exactly. My girlfriends would just sit with my mom and she would take them seriously and take their dreams seriously and that was kind of the superpower she had. For me when I was young and I was like I want to be an actress. It wasn't like okay sweetie, to then watch these great movies with these great actors like took us seriously what's the game plan yeah and just in a way that just reflected a kind of respect and a different way of thinking that I think a lot of my friends weren't finding in their homes they'd come over just to feel that vibe yeah do you think maybe though you could have been adult too young were you like precocious and do you think you maybe missed out on some oh I thought at like 12 I was like hanging out with all these like children. I need my own apartment. Do you like older dudes? Oh yeah. Like how bad? Oh I mean I grew up basically on the Georgetown campus which is a terrible thing if you... Oh and I would just walk around and try to make up different majors that I could say that I don't even think I looked older I just in my head I was like obviously very mature but I remember when I had braces when I was 13 I told the orthodontist he had to take them off because it made me look young. I was like you're 13. You're young yeah but I know I was like getting tattoos at 13 I was a terror they sent me to boarding school because I was a terror okay I was gonna ask about boarding school because again it's hard on to get judgmental here I have a friend who just told me he sent his kid to boarding school and I'm like I can't comprehend it like I'm already annexed that they're leaving in five years I know what are you talking about send them out now so I just can't relate and I recognize it was a totally different time but anyways but anyways but anyways but anyways but anyways boarding school. It's just so funny because like I went to boarding school and I would never send my kids to boarding school. Yeah there you go. Which is no disrespect to the people doing it and like my sister's setting her kids I think they love it. I mean her one son is there the daughter will probably go and they love it. I had a hard time my sister went my brother went, my brother went after me. She's five years older than she's five years older. He's nine years younger. Yeah. My mom had kids in her 20's 30s and 40s and 40s. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. My mom had motherhood in different decades. You guys all had such different childhoods probably. Completely different. Yeah, because I'm sure your mom, after 14 years of experience, you're your brother. Totally different. But I think, okay, boarding school, here's my take on it. What did you do that had landed you there? What kind of naughtiness were you up to? The way my mom describes, I think she said I would have torn the wallpaper from the walls. I was just so completely uncontrolled. I mean, I don't want to say uncontrollable because I wasn't, there are far worse cases than mine. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking your gas gauge before hitting the road. You genuinely thought you could make it. You were wrong. That's a very long stretch of highway where you learned exactly how far fumes can take you. And it's not far enough. Yeah, checking first is an excellent plan. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundred. And for fast, reliable help when you need it, add an All-State roadside plan today. You're in good hands with All-State. Potential savings vary. Insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Insurance provided by All-State North American Insurance Company, North Brook, Illinois. Roadside Assistance plans provided by All-State Motor Club, Incorporated an All-State affiliate. I was Kaging and I couldn't I mean there was no curfew that I would take seriously were you partying was it boys was it shoplifting it was partying but not in the like drugs and alcohol way it was like I couldn't understand that if there was a concert like so DC was a big music town and so there was the 930 club which was an iconic music venue and the idea that I wouldn't be allowed to like go see any show I wanted and stay out and go and hang out fathom that kind of boundary. Yeah. And I like to think that it was me just like wanting to plug into everything a little too early, but really as a parent they must have just been like she's gonna get herself in trouble. Yeah, she's gonna end up pregnant or in jail. Yeah, I'm really happy that I went away because I think I just would have grown up way way way way way too fast. Although DC it was a fun town but for a 12-13 year old who thought she was 24 probably not the safest place. I will I remember Kristen and I went to like the correspondence dinner I don't know what it was eight years ago ten years ago whatever it was but I had not been there since I was in high school and went to the 930 club and then on an earlier trip with my mom where we stayed at this like fucking gunshot motel across the street from a greasy people like it was a shihl Marion Berry was looking crack on TV and he's the mayor yeah we had the highest crime rate in the country yeah so I think when people go there now it's that same chasm between New York it's Disneyland. You feel like you're in Europe, it's so clean and beautiful, every storefront's nice. But yeah, DC used to be a shithole. Now it's so nice when we were there for that correspondence thing, I'm like, this place is Eden. It's so nice, despite what Trump likes to say, it is incredibly nice now and I think that it was also a time where it was impossible to like track your kids. It was like checking in from the payphone, which by the idea. how often we were just like snuggling up against the phone. You could smell it too. You could smell it. You first got on it, the receiver's smell. Yeah, it's gross. And then 10 minutes later. You're like holding it up against your cheek. You've forgotten everything. Checking your pager. Swugging a cigarette, it's touching the thing. Exactly. Page your bravo too. Oh, the pager. Yeah, I loved it. But I went to me was extremely exciting. school. It's a great school. The theater was like in a gym. They did their best but and over where I went to high school had a main stage theater, several blackbox theaters, studio theaters. They had a student theater producer program so you could learn to produce plays. I produced like 12 plays in a year. Oh my God. It was like college. I was so lucky. And it's in Massachusetts, is it like beautiful. It's beautiful like Jeffersonian architecture in the suburbs. You can imagine it. right? Yes. It's like a very fancy private. It's very fancy. Did you have crazy classmates? I did have crazy classmates. I mean it was a lot of people who've all gone on to do very impressive things and I would say most of the people there they were very focused on like going to ivies and becoming like Titans of industry. I found my home kind of with the theater kids. Did you covet any of that wealth? Clearly people are taking like private jets to aspen for spring break. Well the cool thing about boarding school is it does equalize that so even though you'd hear someone they had crazy opulent lifestyles but in boarding school we were all in shitty dorm rooms and it was like this really puts us all in the same same it was co-ed so you could have lovers oh yeah it was all about like making out in the stacks which now I'm like do they even have libraries anymore what do you do where do you make out they're also designing all these places to be safer against sexual abuse which is a good really hampers how much. Yeah, where do you make out? Yeah, we just have an expert on about. Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, like bookstocks that are low. All doors have a window so you can be caught and be observed from a hallway. It's all great stuff. But again, where on earth is one? Go up there. I'm sure for the first time. Exactly. You can't do it at home. But it's amazing how kids will find a way. But, it's. and sign people in but everyone was escaping in the middle of the night and running across campus and it was all that. So you liked it then you got accepted to Bard yes but you delayed the delay to delay delay. Oh yeah I deferred for like three years I met someone later in life who had been there when I was there who said that I was the most requested roommate because they knew that I was never gonna show up. Oh my god that's funny. So it was like oh you're gonna get a two room single. Yeah so you were kind of a legend and you're gonna get a now I'd love to go what sounds better than college now read books then talk about them in groups debate in class so it's so I would pay a lot of money I have fantasies of going in retirement back what would you study probably physics oh cool what did you study when you were there anthropology oh very cool yeah that was really fun I have a fantasy of just picking up degrees as I'm an old man I tell myself I would study neuroscience but I think that would involve such a foundation science that would take maybe like 18 years of college to get me a degree. Well that would be the beauty of it like you could just take classes you could skip organic chemistry you be like fuck that I don't care I'm not gonna practice. You can take like everything online all those classes are online now which is amazing. Yeah but yeah it's all about being in that classroom yeah. I love any opportunity to sit with people and debate things and talk like any kind of book club movie club. I have this fantasy about starting a debate. I have this fantasy about starting a debate club. I have a debate club. I have club dinners because I think we've lost the skill of disagreement yes and like discourse and and my favorite thing was debate in school because you had to learn to argue that's right other person you're assigned the position you take which is such a great skill so don't think be fun if you came to debate club dinner and under your plate was your position that you had to argue and it is probably something that you don't believe at all but you now have to argue that I am committing fully to this dinner party because my hobby is forcing myself to mount a really solid argument for something I don't agree with I love it I go okay I feel this way now I have to sincerely imagine I feel the other way yes and most of time if I take the time to to