 Robert, what led you to take on the story of Linda Johnson? Well, this is a story I've wanted to tell for a long time. Having grown up here in Austin, my father was a professor here at the university and created the first public television and radio station here in Austin, indeed in the Southwest. And the very first job he had was to go to then Senator Johnson and get his permission to do so because these new radio and television stations would have been in direct conflict with the stations owned by Senator Johnson. I should say in the name of Lady Bird Johnson. But you'll notice that he didn't go to Lady Bird to ask for permission. He went to Senator Johnson. And I'm pleased to say that he did of course give his permission and not only that but would go on in his presidential career to sign into law the bill that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. So I have this kind of family connection. I don't remember President Johnson personally, but I asked one of my older brothers if he did. And he said, well, yes, I remember a visit. And he said, I don't actually remember Senator Johnson so much. What I remember is how respectful our father was around this man. And I always thought that was quite telling. So I have this family connection. And then the Johnson Humphrey victory in 1964 is the very first political campaign that I remember that I was invested in emotionally, followed it closely and cheered as loudly as anybody else at that landslide victory. And then of course only two years later with Vietnam ramping up and an older brother nearing draft age, I had a very different feeling about President Johnson. And then 20 years later as an artist in this country trying to make a living and finding myself increasingly dependent upon social programs that in fact I realized had been put in place by President Johnson, I had yet a different feeling about him. And now having spent four or five years researching this, I have such respect for the complexity of this individual and for the tremendous achievements of his presidency and of course for the tragedies that are part of that. So it was always a story that I was drawn to and that I thought needed to be told. And I think particularly needed to be told now. Why now? Well, you know, we are approaching the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act which of course was just gutted by the Supreme Court a month ago and already we're seeing a plethora of states not just in the south but in the Midwest beginning to change the standards by which one can vote. This was a battle that Lyndon Johnson fought fiercely in 1965. And here we are again seemingly fighting the same battle. Obamacare, Medicare started under President Johnson. Here we are fighting again. And if you go back and you look at the rhetoric at the time that was used to attack Medicare for example is shockingly similar to what you're hearing today. We are ostensibly a post-racial society because Barack Obama is president. Of course I don't believe that for a second. I doubt anybody in this room does. In fact race matters as much as it ever has. And Lyndon Johnson was the very first president to really confront that issue in a big way with the passage of the 64-65 Civil Rights Acts. So, and I think also we are, you know, we have a Congress that's gridlocked partisan politics being fought at the most bitter levels and people look at Congress and they look at Washington and they say why can't they get anything done and we look back then at Lyndon Johnson and what he got done in his term and it's astounding and people look at that and think how did he do that? Why can't we do that? So I think it's a, it's, the time is right because of the issues that we continue to deal with. The time is right to, for reevaluation of President Johnson. Brian, you would just come off the triumph of playing Walter White in Breaking Bad. It could have been a, I'm going to Disney World moment and instead you chose to take on this role. Why, why this one? Partly because it frightened me, the enormity of it. It was a tremendous challenge. And I always knew in my early years as an actor in a variety of different acting classes that if I was a little bit frightened of something it was a good sign, it was a good sign. And actors generally have to have that ability to, despite fear or anxiety, they dive into something. You have to have that kind of, I don't know if it's ego or guts or stupidity or whatever it is but you have to be able to want to take those opportunities and chances to risk falling on your face. Only then do you have the greatness. And I remember during the, we did a run in Boston and for the month that we rehearsed I was doggedly tired and fiercely devoted to getting this whole idea and it wasn't just learning the lines, it was taking in the spirit of this man and his sensibility and really understanding who he is and why he made these decisions and why he felt compelled to behave in such a manner that was not always kind or considerate. And I looked over at our other actors, 16 other actors in the company and they were talking about how much fun they had last night at the bar or something and they're doing crossword puzzles or they're reading books or they're listening to music and I was just, I had none of that. It was all in, but backstage when you're ready to start the play and go I was going, oh I'm so glad I have this role. You know, it's like, yes! And so the payoff comes, it's delayed gratification for sure but there's definitely a payoff to it because it's a bigger than life character and to jump into Lyndon Johnson's shoes was a chance that couldn't pass up. So what were your impressions of LBJ before you took the role, not knowing that you would eventually play LBJ? You were seven years old when you took office. So you probably have recollections as a child but what were your impressions of people doing this job? You know, it's noted, but perhaps many people don't know this part of it but Lyndon Johnson had a public persona when he spoke to the press that he put on and he felt it was more presidential if he had a more serious tone to it but he really wasn't that way at all. He was a storyteller and a jokester and he was fun to be with and then you could turn it and be very serious and very intent and in your face and in your personal space. I didn't know any of that. When I was a boy and the assassination happened it had an impact on me, a tremendous impact on me. Not personally because I was only seven so I didn't quite understand why this happened or what it meant but I could see it reflected in my parents and all of the neighbors who huddled together as many people did and embraced each other and wept and consoled each other and so I knew something was very important here and I needed to pay attention and so the president then was Lyndon Johnson and listening to him and watching him I always thought my impression of him was that he was a very soft-spoken, laconic, measured man and that's what he wanted me to think and feel but so it was a big surprise to learn little tidbits of it as I grew up and he really wasn't that way and all the stories about him and then when I really started the research I was on a roller coaster ride finding out about everything about Lyndon Johnson Was there a great revelation in that discovery process? Was there one big revelation in that discovery process? Well the first thing that I thought of after I read Robert's script and fell in love with the mastery of it and just the wonderful construction of the script itself to support the story of this man and I believe I asked him at the time I said do you think that he was such a champion for the civil rights movement because he truly believed it or did he think that this was the political move to make and it would set his legacy and we discussed that and when I found out more when I started my research found out that he was in Cthulhu, Texas teaching at a very, very poor school and these kids who literally dirt poor my good farm worker kids and didn't speak the English and made the terrible mistake of being born poor and the treatment that they received from the white people in the town and it resonated with Lyndon so deeply the injustice of that because he knew them, he knew these kids and they were eager to learn and they obeyed and they wanted to be taught and to have them being derided and ridiculed and demeaned by people who didn't know them it had a tremendous impact and I think without that experience he might not have been the absolute champion that he was for civil rights across the board Robert there are clear Shakespearean overtones in this play and Shakespeare of course borrowed from Tudor history for some of his historical tragedies but I wonder is a dramatist taking on a chapter in history how do you tread the balance between making a compelling story a compelling drama and being faithful to history? Well that's the big challenge of course first off I have to be very clear that my job is very different from that of the historian the historian presumably is looking at the entirety of the event and all the individuals involved and all the factors involved trying to arrive at some greater understanding of the entire sweep and scope of this event I say some objective but of course that's not entirely the case every historian has their bent but as a dramatist as a dramatist I am interested in history as source material for what it allows me to talk about or the thematic concerns it allows me to explore and I should say this is not a this is not a new even well beyond Shakespeare Escalus in 472 BC writes the very first history play the Persians about an event an Athenian military victory that happens eight years previously and you would think well okay so it's going to be a little glorification of the Athenian state and actually what he does is very interesting and it's what you can do with history he takes this event that everybody knows everybody knows this event everybody takes pride in but his point of view on it is well let's look at this for what it might say about Athenian society today what it might say when looking at Xerxes the king of Persia his global ambitions what it might say about our ambitions as a democracy that's the wonderful thing that you can do with history sometimes is that you can have a conversation in the present about present day concerns that you might not be able to have so boldly but by using the past it permits you and an audience to enter into a discussion a conversation about things that are happening right now about issues that are important right now and that was certainly the opportunity here I was interested in power politics and morality and LBJ November 1963 to 1964 boy this is where everything changes in this country everything changes in this country and and you see because we forget this we forget this we remember selectively you see what it takes to get things done really good things what it costs and it's important that we remember that you know we are so we demand so much of our presidents we expect so much we are so easily and so quickly disappointed it is a tough job it is a tough job it is to our benefit to remind ourselves of what it takes to get things done what the cost is and that's what this story offered me the opportunity to explore and so grateful for it there are clear parallels between this play and King Lear do you see LBJ as a tragic figure I do ultimately yes I do not in this play in all the way November 1963 November 1964 the accidental presidency what we watch is LBJ who has spent his entire political career wanting plotting doing everything he could wanting to be president so much and suddenly he is president not of course in any way he would have wanted to become president and that's a big issue for him he's an accidental president he's not really the president that got elected and and the question is now that he's there now that he has the power to convince it that LBJ really wants and it turns out that what he really wants is civil rights and in the course of this year we see him fight for that bill and get that bill passed and fight for his own election which will give him the legitimacy he so desperately wants it's a drama the sequel if you will which I am in the process of writing which will open next year of its world premiere in the Argan Shakespeare Festival in July 2014 have you no shame none whatsoever in fact they're selling tickets in the back and you can sign up self-aggrandizement and that's one of the lessons from LBJ don't be modest that takes us of course from the high water mark of that landslide victory and the tremendous success in the domestic agenda with the passage of bill after bill after bill in the great society programs major bills, landmark bills including of course the voting rights bill of 1965 and then into the morass of Vietnam and the tragedy of that and finally his if you will stepping away from the throne in March 1968 when he announces that he will not run I do think it's tragic I do, I do tragedy requires consciousness it requires awareness there is that moment where the tragic hero has awareness of where they are and what they have done and what they have created and I think he had that I think that's why he made the choice it is I mean this is something that historians will debate from here to the end of time why did he resign my choice and it's my play so it gets I get to decide my choice is that he recognized that the situation that he had created was untenable and that the country was so riven that perhaps if he stepped aside it might be possible for someone else to come in and make the peace that he so desperately wanted and so could not make and so I in fact I see it as a noble gesture actually Brian how do you create a character based on a real life figure versus a Walter White where you create it based on words on a script or meetings with writers what's the difference between those two processes the goal is ultimately the same and that's to develop a sense of honesty so that you live in a plausible world that when people watch your behavior they believe it's possible they believe it's true and in order to get the audience there you have to get there yourself so in this case when it's a national international figure there's a lot of history to it there's still a lot of debate about who the man was and what his motives were and things and those are answers that can be useful and sometimes they can't be useful so my job as an actor developing a character is to be like a huge whale and just open the mouth and everything shove everything in and find the process it's a little crude the way I'm saying but basically it's to be open to it to receive it and the more you take in you let it sit there and sometimes you get overload so you have to take out the trash and things that you go I don't know if that really helps me I need to make more space in my head so you let it go and you keep assembling and sometimes you go wait a minute and take that back and it's mixing and matching and it's formulating an idea all I can say it's based a lot on your instincts and your instincts then are determined by what your influences are so if you're going to the right source material and we had a terrific dramaturg Tom Bryant on the play create a lot of opportunities your book was very helpful and Doris Kearn's Goodwin's book Mark Up The Grove very very helpful book Mark Up The Grove I'll say it all now I heard good things about self aggrandizing a couple of minutes and so you just take it all in and then formulate and get a sensibility of the character I didn't want to do an impression of that but I wanted to really understand the man and what he feared and what he loved and what he wanted and what he disdained and once you do those broad strokes then you can be a little more subtle in what you're taking in as well and then you start to form it and basically it when you're creating a character it's outside of you because you haven't really been introduced yet and your goal is to get the sense that that character now is embodied in you so that when something happens or when someone says something or I read a script I'm breaking bad it filters through Walter's head and his sensibility when I read rewrites on the play it's now hopefully filtering through my sensibility and it has to pass a test a rigorous test so during the rehearsal process there's tremendous discussion with the playwright, fortunately he was with us the whole way and our director and the dramaturgs and the other actors and a lot of the time you're dealing with subjective material so you just have to take a stab at something like Robert said, he was writing pieces of material that conveyed the intention but he wasn't privy in the motel rooms with Martin Luther King and what was discussed actually but he had to imagine what that was like so in the aspect we had the same job his instincts told him what to write, my instincts tell me how I present him in a way, vocally and emotionally we have the same job and the same challenges which is that we have two hours and 40 minutes to tell our tale we're not Bob Carrow we're not producing a thousand two thousand page book every eight, nine years to exhaustively detail this happened, this happened, this happened we don't have that I don't want you to put this play down in the audience, I want to keep you riveted so just from the very beginning there's only so much you can tell and already by the process of selectivity forced on you by circumstances you are not saying other things you are not telling other things so you're making choices all the time all the time and making decisions about what you're going to include, what you're not going to include and how you are going to tell this story and the the challenge, I think, because of course it is a work of fiction I play Fast and Loose with Chronology I write scenes that didn't necessarily happen or didn't happen this way I put people in rooms that weren't there and I write dialogue that wasn't said you're a phony how dare you but skillful I believed you the important thing, I think, is that you don't cross a line with the inherent truth of these people and I do think there is a line I do think there is a line as much of a fan I am of someone like Oliver Stone who I think is an immensely talented film director and some of his biographical picks I think he crosses a line what is that truth, though, Robert in the research that you do how do you draw that line obviously it is something that is subjective it is subjective the question I ask myself can I genuinely believe that the character I have created is acting in a way or saying something that I can imagine was actually said or done by this individual I appreciate that by my research by the people I have talked to I mean there have been so many individuals here that you have put me in touch with for example who had the pleasure of working with LBJ and to talk to them and listen to their stories the wealth of material that is available both in terms of biographical or in raw material just the pure stacks and stacks of material that is here I mean you could spend a lifetime but it is trying to take the best of that, the most compelling the thing that rings true to your sensibility that has that sense that yes that feels right to me and yes that is of course entirely subjective his job basically he knew where it goes his history tells us those markers are set when he took office when this legislation was passed and so Robert's job is to entertainingly write the map he actually has to create a map of how these things connect and the connective tissues to each one of these things and there is guideposts along the way but it is blank basically there are some speeches that are public record that you could draw from and if that is helpful but you still have to be able to draw and the other thing I would say is that our first responsibility truly is to entertain not to make any bones about it it is to entertain we don't want and we don't have in all the way for sure no one leaves the theater disappointed we are very proud of that but we would not be able to be absolutely true but boring is hell it just doesn't work so we have an obligation to entertain and yet I think a responsibility as well to absorb the sensibility of the characters and the true nature of that and that was part of the discussion deep and heavy for example we actually have the tape recordings of many of these phone conversations that LBJ had we have tape recordings of the conversations he had with the governor of Mississippi after the three civil rights workers go missing during freedom summer we have that and it goes on for quite some time it is somewhat rambling but if you listen carefully there is some really very precise and sharp maneuvering so my job as the writer is to reduce that dialogue and to hand it to an actor as talented as Brian here who really finds the way to perform that for the audience so they get it they see how LBJ is working this individual in this moment this very complicated political and personal tragic moment how he is working this individual and how he feels about this individual how he shifts his tactics midway in terms of how he deals with him and it is so this is the thing that theater can do that a history book can't do for you suddenly he becomes alive in that moment in politics the sausage making of it the blood and the gristle of it comes alive and you see how it is that personal connection how it is the use of language how it is the skillful interjection the question poised literally to provoke the response that you want that's what theater can do that history book can't do for you I think also you think back of the best teachers you ever had and there was probably a healthy dose of theatricality to them they brought it to life they made a subject that you may have thought previously to be dull and all of a sudden you go home and say I like history why because that teacher they're the first actors they're the ones who really have to put on a performance to draw that audience and get that audience of theirs interested in that subject they need to tell a compelling story so you said something today that I thought was very instructive you talked about the importance of finding the emotional core of the characters that you play and you talked about how to talk a little bit about that and how you found how's emotional core so to speak how well it goes back to an actor's job and for me personally the more I know about a character the more I discover about him the more comfortable I feel about portraying him so Hal and Malcolm in the middle I didn't know what to do the character only had three or four lines in the pilot episode and so I made one distinction that he was not disinterested in his family he loved his family but he can be distracted he had to take little mental vacations away from all the energy of the boys but his basic emotional core was fear he was afraid of everything he was afraid of being a bad husband he was afraid of losing his job he was afraid of heights he was afraid of spiders and from there you could see where a comedic growth can go and I was having the same thing where you go to Breaking Bad I had a very difficult time finding his emotional core until I realized that Walter White was numb he didn't know what he felt he had no feeling he was so calloused over and though I thought oh and that led me to depression and I realized oh that's where he is and what I was looking into depression can manifest broadly either externally or internally you see the people who are depressed and they're lashing out that son of a bitch if it wasn't for him I would have been so much better off of my life from my ex wife to this and they get angry and they send that energy out or they implode and that's what happened to Walt he imploded he became invisible to himself and to others and that's why I wanted him to have no color in his skin we took the color out of my hair I grew a mustache I wanted to grow a mustache that I wanted to reflect as impotence so if you want to know how to grow an impotent mustache because I know there's a lot of men out there going yes I was just thinking about that the other day I want to grow an impotent mustache but and I gained weight so that I had fat going over my underwear and I stayed with tidy whitey underwear because it seemed like a boy and he gave up Walt gave up he didn't advance he didn't care anymore and so by the visual impact of seeing him that way I think the audience went oh this man is lost somewhere and walking through life knowing that he's doing it and yet you could still love and you could still have dreams and desires and then when this awful thing of this cancer diagnosis came to him he made a huge leap to be this drug dealer a mistake big big mistake big mistake however but he at least in the last two years of his life he was alive and that was the thing so you get to Lyndon Johnson well now it's just massive and you have the responsibility of a living people say well no no he didn't look like that he looked like here's how he looked so you don't have control in shaping everything certainly physically and I wish I was taller I'm six I'm six and I wear lifts when I play him don't tell anybody that gets me up to six two but I wish I had your height to begin with that would be good when you're trying to find that core is it an epiphany or does it come through a longer process as you're getting to know the character it could be either and you're open to anything so you don't know when something is going to resonate within you we had a dinner not too long ago with Harry Middleton and Larry Temple and just in casual conversation Larry said something that really resonated with me as did Harry but it was interesting because it was off-handed about how every day except Sunday is it all right to tell this Larry? okay he would dress up as a woman and go no? okay apparently put on an impotent mustache take on a high voice not that one no I won't tell that one no Larry was the president's council in the last year and a half or so of his administration and he would go to the White House every day except Sunday 7.30 in the morning and go to the president's bedroom where the president was already up usually drinking this milky white tea and reading copiously all the papers he could get hold of and he was talking about that as just a general nature of who the man was and it struck me and I thought well you're his council and I said was there legal issues to be dealt with every single morning at 7.30 in the morning and Larry said there was a trust factor and there was also a sense that he conveyed that Lyndon Johnson liked the company and liked to have familiar faces and trustworthy people around him and that was one thing that led me to the next thing which I found is that he hated being alone I started then from that little bit I started to now I want to find out more and from Doris Kern's Goodwin that oh he hated being alone and often would say can you wait outside the room while I sleep and it's like wow all these interesting things you know can you do your work I'll set up a desk here can you do your work just outside the door and it's like interesting how this man of great power and great ambition and yet hated the fact of being alone and that could be traced back now I'm going back his mother Rebecca I wanted to go back to find out what she was like and where this came from where this feeling came from of not wanting to be alone and you never know if it's going to be useful information but you're on a track like a detective and you start uncovering things and reading things and it's a fascinating part of my work that I get to do is to a new case every time so the next character I play I have to launch into another person to find out who that guy is it's almost like being a member of CSI you know it's always like the crime scene you got to find out retrace the steps to find out who they really were what impression do you want to leave audiences with when they when they leave all the way well you know I'd like them to be to have learned something of course about the time and these events but more than anything I like them to come away with a lot of questions I don't believe in a player giving a lot of answers what I believe is posing a lot of questions the kind that wake you up in the middle of the night a couple of days later thinking why would he do that or what would I do in that situation you know does that make him a good man or a bad man the issues are so complex LBJ as you hear complicated individuals such a such a mix of conflicting qualities and traits and values and what I want is the audience to think about power and morality I want them to think about what it takes to get things done and where the line is where should we draw that line can something be so good and it's ultimate value that it's permissible to do anything to bring that into being does the end justify the means or not and how should we evaluate those situations because they matter they matter keenly they continue to resonate today and everything we do we get very frustrated with Washington we get very frustrated with the capital here but those decisions those decisions that are being made every day affect people in profound ways it matters and we need to pay attention I want to entertain them but I want to provoke them I want to send them off thinking about this arguing about it moved to reflect on what it should mean to them and how they should respond to that that I think is what we're really trying to do I think the key thing that he's saying is that it's not up to us to put that emotion to you we are tremendously respectful of an audience and whatever you truly feel after you see this play is right, is how you feel there's no denying that and all we care about is that it triggers an emotion and I was mentioning this a couple hours ago I said the only failure that we have as a creative team is if we bore you if you have no emotional response whatsoever we've lost it because we haven't connected with you and so any other emotion is really fair you could leave this play and be angry you could leave it and go wow that was fantastic or I'm confused or anything is alright really just not that other one say it again Robert what can we expect with all the way sequel to Great Society which you're writing right now well as I say we'll pick up where all the way leaves off in November 1964 and sort of the it will be in three acts and the first act is largely about the voting rights passage of the voting rights bill so it's Selma Pettus Bridge, Bloody Sunday and throw down between Governor Wallace and LBJ which is a marvelous scene in and of itself and the passage of the voting rights bill and then on top of which he's also passing Medicare and the massive education bill and clean air clean water and just one after another major progressive legislation while simultaneously the American public and the Congress are being misled about what is happening in Vietnam and the terrible juggling act that the president faces knowing because he knows and he knows early on that Vietnam will eat up and he says this he said this to several people at different times that Vietnam will eat up everything I'm trying to do domestically but he can't see a way out and so he keeps doubling down hoping that he'll get lucky and maybe there'll be a settlement and then he can get to the things that really matter so we watch this begin to percolate we see the civil rights movement move north and suddenly from the high water mark of the voting rights act of 1965 suddenly in Chicago civil rights reaches the stone wall and what that is and it's a terrible thing to say but it's not in my backyard essentially northern liberals who are very very happy to see the south change their egregious policies of Jim Crow are suddenly talking out of the other side of their mouth when it comes to integrating their neighborhoods and integrating their schools and you have this tremendous pushback suddenly which the Republican party is beginning to capitalize on this is the emergence of the southern strategy there's a terrible midterm where much of what Lyndon has gained in the 64 election is suddenly lost now we're approaching the presidential election the question is always on the back of his mind is Bobby gonna run, is Bobby gonna run is Bobby gonna run the casualties in Vietnam are mounting up daily TET which shocks the country that we are just about to win and then clearly we are not just about to win all of this tremendous pressure unbelievable pressure coming to bear as we see everything he has built domestically now being stripped away from him as the party in opposition begins to find his weakness as the economy begins is the club with which you use to beat the great society to death and finally this culminating in this moment where he makes he comes to some kind of awareness about this in my point of view and makes this decision to step away and let somebody else come in and try to resolve the issue that he can't resolve it's a believe me it's a great ride it's a very powerful very passionate and I think ultimately very moving in the evening of the theater so I'm looking forward to it I'm looking forward to Mr. Cranston perhaps and we'll talk we'll talk I had the great luck of seeing all the way when it was in Cambridge in its last run and I can tell you that it's worth your while seeing when it comes to New York or goes to New York but Brian's performance is truly a tour de force it's also a feat of endurance you're on stage for 2 hours and 40 minutes in an extraordinarily demanding role how do you prepare physically for that uh meth right crystal meth and pedamine how we all laugh about drug taking well it was something I was very concerned about because it is um a mammoth role and it requires all of my attention and focus and I realized early on that in order to do that I had to have my body support me so I went on a strict diet and um you know very took out the carbs and I was I just I didn't eat spicy foods very much and I was you know I cut out everything I was no fun for a month um and just spicy foods because you don't want to be on stage and go I wow oh oh that or else get an attack the other way go I'll be right back talk to the people while I'm gone they're nice folks folks there's practical applications you want to be pragmatic in your choices and also tomato base is not good for the system just like creams you don't want to drink milks and cheeses and things like that that congest in your sinuses and you know prevent you from having clear passage because I'm breathing like a bull on stage and I'm sweating and I every I change my t-shirt underneath each time twice did I say twice twice yeah twice it's the math um so it was it was just I felt it needed the stamina and even though um president johnson uh battled his weight I feel I felt that this is something that I need to do in order to sustain and that was just a month now we're going into a new york run that I will be performing before an audience eight shows a week for five months and uh and and I don't know how I'm gonna do it but you know so I was starting to lose my voice at the end of the first day and robert gave me a great tip and I did that I went through the script and I marked I highlighted that I remember during the performance where I elevated my voice and got into it and started yelling and screaming and so I highlighted all those to see physically see where that is and see if there was an alternative way to keep the same intention and intensity but bring it down so that I don't strain the voice so much or as singers know a way to open the voice sometimes to where I can open it um and and still sound natural so it's a challenge and I'm gonna start uh working with a vocal coach uh right away and and just strengthen the voice and open it and again get my body ready for this battle it's it's gonna be it's gonna be tough we've all the entire company design and the acting company you know we're gearing up for for this this final leg here on Broadway and um you've heard what the kind of physical regimen that Brian is gonna be putting himself through to prepare for this um the design elements will change uh I've I have rewritten uh the last 15 pages of the play this I've been working on this play for four years now it's been it's had two major productions and I and I have rewritten the end and maybe gotten it right this time you know I mean um we all want to bring our best to the table here but that's an interesting point you bring up because as an artist not dissimilar from a painter or a sculptor when is the work done when do you know that this is it and you know I mean does I think that the the famous statement about that is that plays are never finished they're just abandoned and and there's some truth to that because you can you know you can keep working and working and working it's sort of like Zeno's arrow you know you'll never quite get to the mark but with this company with Brian and we had it was surrounded with an extraordinary company of actors we're very fortunate many of whom will be coming with us to New York you know when you're in a room with with people that talented and that smart you know when they're working and seeing questions are going to come up why this I don't understand this how how does this seems contradictory confusing I have to be on my toes the entire time I have to be thinking and and to be pushed in that way is a very good thing it's a very good thing it results in me rethinking sometimes sometimes I I can't explain oh this is what I'm this is what I'm after sometimes they're right sometimes there's something wrong in the text and I need to it's my job to attend to that so throughout the rehearsal process in Boston I I made constant revisions during rehearsal you know a line here a line there because these were smart actors these were good actors and when they constantly hit a place and have a problem that means I need to pay attention that means it's probably on me and I need to pay attention so it's been a really exciting process a very deeply deeply pleasurable one and and I think we're all really really looking forward to taking this to to the final step here on to Broadway you talk for a moment about your extraordinary careers Brian you achieved a super stardom in your early fifties and I wonder did achieving that level of fame require an adjustment on your part yeah there you you never I never thought of becoming a star and and it was never a desire of mine I loved acting I still do I love what it how it empowers me affecting an audience by what you say and so that was my goal and I achieved that when I was 25 years old became a working actor and never had another job from that point on at some point I was always resisting the sensibility of the word star and what it meant to me and I was actually taking on what it meant to others and I realized well that's foolish because I don't have to do that and so I was spending a lot of energy trying to push the boulder back up the hill as opposed to letting it go wherever it's supposed to go I mean that's the actor's life anyway we really don't know where our careers are going to go we hope that we have opportunity and that's that's what ultimately the word star became synonymous with me is opportunity it is open doors and and so I don't resist it anymore when someone says here's the star or you're a star it's like okay hey but I know what it means to me it doesn't mean that I'm going to change my lifestyle or want to ditch anything that helped me achieve who I am in a foundational sense happily married 25 years next year and and five years with my girlfriend too so there's longevity there and that's hard for me to keep straight but it's it's been a fun ride and that's what it means to me it means opportunity and so I'm picking and choosing projects now that are challenging and interesting and at the core they have well written material you and I've spoken about your parents your parents were both actors and you saw their careers sort of wax and weighing and you decided not to get into acting until much later in fact you wanted to be a policeman you thought about being a cop what drove you into acting girls I'm not kidding girls is the reason that I became an actor I was going to college studying police science I thought that was my path and in an elective course I took acting and stage craft and the girls in theater arts were far prettier than the ones in police science I'm 19 years old so I was like now what do I do and it really spun me around and it made me reflect on well why if something as apparently trivial as a pretty girl can change my mind was I that intent on becoming a policeman in the first place I think not I think maybe better to play a policeman on television and get the pretty girls so that's kind of what I did it's the truth I'm not really proud of that but that's what that's the decision making of a 19 year old boy sounds about right Robert what did winning the Pulitzer Prize do for you well it was a tremendous validation for the work that I was doing as a writer I was I had not trained normally as a writer I had always written and but had found myself increasingly moving away from a career as an actor because Brian had taken all the girls and so towards that of a writer and with the Kentucky cycle for the first time I had quit my day job essentially which was acting and I had a wife my daughter who's here with us tonight and I actually quit my job to focus on this big enormous play that everybody was sort of shaking their heads over about well how are you going to get that produced and it was really a kind of blind leap of faith and the success of the play first and foremost in terms of what it did with an audience in terms of the audience response to the piece of theater that I had created which was so deeply and profoundly satisfying but then to have it recognized in this way by my peers was tremendously gratifying and of course it also puts a target on your back but does it allow you to take more chances as an artist to get validation like that you know actually I didn't write another play for a couple of years it took me a couple of years to find my way to that Were you intimidated by the sense of winning this enormous well it was not so much the prize itself but my experience in New York was very ambivalent it was this tremendous success and yet not so much critically in New York it was a very confusing time and it took me a while to sort of find my way back to that and it's interesting to me that now at this stage in my career instead I went and wrote a lot of television a lot of film where I could indeed support my family which I could never do as a playwright I don't know any playwright who can support his family in this country on what you might earn in the theater but eventually I came back to it as a result of the intervention of friends basically I said I'll commission you I'd love to see what have you got and I had this play and they put it on and I'm back and so now at this age to be back in theater to be back in theater like this and feeling so passionate about this material and so excited about what's happening there are three times you get to feel great when you write a play one is in your office in the privacy of this world in your head where you create this entire thing this entire thing is there and then the second time is in the rehearsal room where you begin this collaborative process which is wonderful and terrifying and intimidating all in one thing there's all these amazing artists come in and they've all got their things that they're bringing to it and they're asking you questions and demanding answers they're real and very high and you really you're being pushed and challenged and you really want to see this thing and it's beginning to take shape in the room and it's a wonderful give and take and it's deeply, deeply satisfying and then the last is when you are finally in front of an audience of strangers a group of people have assembled who've never seen this work before it's new to them and you stand in the back and the lights go down you're standing in the back of this auditorium and you see all these lights all this technical equipment and behind all the technical equipment are all these people that the audience of course never sees that are running this and then you know they're the actors here they're preparing and they're coming on stage and then this story happens this story happens that was just in your head in your room and now it's happening in real time and real space in front of an audience and there is something that happens between the people on stage the storytellers and the people in the audience it's a communal event and for this one amazing moment we are all reliving this story as though it was just happening for the first time and there is nothing as good as that there is nothing as good as that nicely put for me it's for the girls all that highfalutin stuff our audience is comprised of roughly half half of them are students and I wonder is there advice that you impart to them if they are contemplating a career as a screenwriter or as a playwright it's a marathon not a sprint that's really it one other piece of advice I give but the idea that you're in it and it's a long this can take as long as it takes and if you put the pressure on yourself immediately or to achieve immediately you're going to be very disappointed and very broken ultimately so it's a marathon not a script not a sprint and then the the best advice I ever got as an actor which I think is the best advice I ever got period was here at the University of Texas in the Department of Drama by Yagye and Kozic who was a marvelous Polish acting instructor a contemporary of Czeslak and Malak who somehow had a great good fortune to wind up here in Austin, Texas and as an actor I was very intense I could probably because I was more a writer I could so see what the moment needed to be I so knew what it should look like and how it should sound and how it should smell and I would work so hard and she would tear her hair Yagye she would say Robert Robert you must leave something for God and she was right of course I was trying to control it too much I was trying to I was squeezing the magic out of it I was squeezing the life out of it and as soon as I understood what that meant and accepted it I was so much better off so that's my advice my two bits of advice Brian would you offer those considering a career in acting? I would say that if there's other things in life pursue that and I mean that because as Robert said so in the sister form of storytelling acting it's not about an achievement of some plateau or level or something because that I can tell you that constantly moves and changes so when you think you oh I finally what happened to it not what you thought it was so you can't fixate on a point except when you're doing your waiter's job which I had many loading trucks I had so many things I was a video date interviewer a dating service I did everything now I'm forever marked always the girls no I gave that up weeks ago but but I knew that what got me through is the desire to become a working actor that was the only plateau that I ever really reached for that I could say this is what I do for a living I act for a living and that was a huge achievement for me and from there I just was loose like Robert said leave it be fateful let it move you actors rely on instinct so do writers and so allow that to happen but you have to commit to this this is not something I laugh at people who say well I'm going to give it a year I'll give it a year I should buy a year I should get my own show or a Broadway show or a year those are fools stay away from those people too because they'll just trip you up you have to love it then you have to try it you have to try but there's a couple things that you'll need you'll need talent don't forget that when you go to New York or California bring that with you you have to be persistent and you have to have patience and the X factor you have to get lucky there is no career that was ever made without luck you talk to anyone who has had a successful career or is having a successful career and if they think about it oh you know what, that's true I was on the open door and I was able to at luck preparation meets opportunity we've heard that before and it's true keep working on your craft keep working on your artistry and when you get that break you're ready for it and good luck ladies and gentlemen you heard Larry Temple earlier this evening talk about what a distinguished lectureship this is we've had some remarkable people on this stage under the auspices of the lecture I mentioned that it was the best lecture of its kind in the United States if you didn't believe that before I know you'll believe it now Robert, Brian, thank you for a very memorable evening thank you so much