Episode 156 - Tracy Letts

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Lemonada Media

Society & Culture, Film Interviews, Tv & Film

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2019

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Before a string of successful plays (August: Osage County, Bug) and brilliant performances on screen (Homeland, Lady Bird, Ford v Ferrari), Tracy Letts was acting on-stage, with his father, in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. As his twenties approached, he pursued love and theatre in Chicago, pivoted to editing textbooks in Florida, and then returned to the stage with the authorship of his first play, Killer Joe. From there, Tracy oscillated between Los Angeles and Chicago, navigating traumatic loss and feelings of “not making it.” In the years ahead, he embraced steady success at the Steppenwolf Theatre and developed his pivotal play, August: Osage County. His father's deteriorating health during this period echoed the marriage of good and horrendous occurrences in his life. Then, finally, Tracy reflects on the qualities he inherited from his family— his father’s honest presence, in life and on stage, and his mother’s curiosity and cleverly-disguised emotional reserve. Visit www.talkeasypod.com for more our show-notes.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin.
0:07.0	The fact that I'm working in this business in the way in which I'm working and that I have some choice about what I do, that I get to pick and choose, that I make money. I don't have a lot of regrets.
0:25.5	There wasn't a lot of bitterness about that stuff beforehand because I wouldn't have chosen
0:30.3	a different profession. I like the profession. I like the experiences I've had in it. I like the people I've met, the travel, all that stuff. And you talk about that marriage of like bad things in my life happening that seem to almost kind of twin with good things.
0:48.0	I've almost been a little superstitious about that with some of the good things that have happened the last few years. It's like,
0:53.0	wow, when's the bad thing coming, you know? That was Tracy Letts. I'm San Francisco and this is talk easy.
1:07.0	Welcome to the show. Oh, Hey everyone. Welcome to the show. This is Talk Easy. I'm San Francisco and today on the podcast is the one and only Tracy Letts.
1:45.6	I think he is one of the strongest actors both on stage and on screen that we
1:52.0	currently have. He's in two new films coming out. The first
1:56.9	is called Little Women. It's directed by Greta Gerwig. It's her follow-up to
2:02.0	Lady Bird which he was also brilliant in. That movie comes out
2:06.4	December 25th, but if you want to see Tracy sooner, and of course you do, you're
2:11.0	listening to this podcast. He's in a new film called Ford v Ferrari and it's directed
2:16.4	by James Mangold. It stars Christian Bale, Matt Damon. In the film, Tracy plays Henry Ford II. I was about to explain the plot of the
2:26.7	movie and then I realized we can just play the trailer.
2:37.0	You're going to build a car to beat Ferrari with a Ford. Correct. And how long did you tell you tell you that you needed two, three hundred years?
2:48.0	90 days. This isn't the first time Ford Motors gone to war. We know how to do more than push paper.
3:02.0	Go ahead, Carol.
3:03.0	Go to war.
3:05.0	Thank you, sir. Do you think you can beat for wrong?
3:15.0	Do you think you can beat for wrong?
3:18.0	We're lighter, we're faster.
	...

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