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A few decades ago, he was cast on the critically acclaimed HBO dramaBand of Brothers.
He ended up losing the part.
Later, he would be told Hanks thought he had dead eyes.
He found himself with the choice of flying back to New York or heading to his parents place nearby.
Why am I trying to fly to the center of a pandemic?
Im not a hero.
The podcast has a fairly untraditional structure and feel to it.
So the podcast is not a parody.
Its a nonfiction personal investigation series.
These are lots of great podcasts out there investigating very serious issues, where the stakes are very high.
Because as stupid as this story was, its about something.
I was trying to be an actor.
I spent two years where I spent most of my time being rejected.
At the time, it really felt like I was failing at this.
And when I gotBand of Brothers, I thought this was the tide turning.
One of my heroes looked at my audition tape and thought, Nope, this wont do.
The aspect that really stuck in my brain was being told that I had dead eyes.
Theres that rule, you know, when it comes to camera work, you oughta see the eyes.
Thats the most important part of the face, acting wise.
It could be kind of interesting to explore show business from this very specific angle.
It could be fun to go out and have a go at get answers to these questions.
And they were kinda funny, you know?
There were these little surreal moments that flesh out the story and expand it in ways that are interesting.
Before we started the podcast, I thought, Whats the worst that could happen?
Its just show business.
Its just acting, and acting jobs.
Its what I do.
So thats what I mean about low stakes.
Are there ways we can hire people to work together without infecting each other?
Thats a high-stakes show-business question.
To me, it was no joke.
I read them as, Oh, theyre not going to be okay.
It wiped me out.
Who cares about my stupid podcast?
Its not even worth thinking about it.
And I have to say: I find all of this very hard to process.
We have all this free time right now.
But Ive been finding everything really hard to absorb.
Not to overstate things, but his monologue was almost … presidential.
People are crying out for leadership right now.
It was really meaningful.
Everything is a little bit topsy-turvy.
Were all in a little bit of a weird place mentally.
So were trying to be careful and figure out what makes the most sense as the next step.
Look, if youre looking for content about the coronavirus, you might find it.
We dont want to ignore whats going on.
I genuinely dont know.
My hope is that we keep making progress on the central investigation while making more discoveries along the way.
I dont know whether thats something we can really do over Zoom or something.
