John Turturro Breaks Down His Career, from "The Big Lebowski" to "The Night Of"

Overall I've been really blessed and fortunate.

I try not to take that for granted.

I try to work hard and not lose my love,

but not everything works,

but it's the attempt that counts,

and once in a while, everything comes together.

[smooth music]

I'm John Turturro and this is a timeline of my career.

Thanks for the seats.

Hey, what's up?

Mikey.

Fuckin' greaseballs downstairs, they drive me crazy.

Oh fun, how you doin'?

Raging Bull is the first time I was ever on screen.

I auditioned for the movie with my good friend,

Michael Badalucco.

I brought pastries to my interview,

'cause I thought to be polite.

They didn't have a script, and we had adapted a scene

from the book of Raging Bull, 'cause I had read it

when I was a kid, my father was a amateur prize fighter,

and so we had worked on it, and Martin Scorsese

was very nervous about 'cause well there's no script,

and Robert De Niro said, let them do it,

and we moved the furniture around,

and my friend Michael Badalucco and I,

we did this scene which we had adapted ourselves.

I think they were sort of taken by our naivety

or audacity, I mean really, they were giant heroes

and they're still people who have inspired me

and my good friend Michael for a long time.

Let me explain myself.

They're not really black.

They black, but they're not really black,

they're more than black,

it's different. It's different?

Yeah, to me, it's different.

You know deep down inside that you wish you were black.

Get the fuck outta here.

Laugh if you want to, you know your hair

is kinkier than mine, what does that mean?

Do The Right Thing, which was in 1988, we shot it,

and that came out in 89, and to a lot

of heated events, press.

When the movie was about to come out,

I was thinking wow, I wonder what the reaction

is gonna be to me on the subways.

Joe Kline wrote in New York Magazine that he thought

there were gonna be riots in the movie theaters,

and a few other critics did too,

that it was kind of out of control.

None of that ever happened.

None of it was ever retracted.

I've only been embraced by the black community

for that film and other films too.

This lady was in craft service, she would give me water,

she told me on the set, she said, 'cause she had seen

on a big screen at LIU me saying all this, not one time.

I remember her saying to me, I hate you,

I hate you so much, and I was like...

Do The Right Thing came out of, 'cause I did a film,

Five Corners, with John Patrick Shanley,

which was before that, and then Spike saw me in that,

and then he sent me Do The Right Thing

in a leather bound script from studio duplicating.

'Cause he would write the script,

and then they'd type it up for you.

Beautiful paper and really great typesetting.

I remember I was doing a film with Dennis Hopper

in Venice Beach, and I remember I received the script,

and I read it, and I liked it, I came back and we met.

Spike and I born three weeks apart, same year.

I grew up in a black neighborhood,

he grew up in an Italian neighborhood.

We were sort of fated.

And he asked me what part I wanted to play,

and I said I'd like to play the racist guy

'cause I thought that was what it was about.

I've done some really big roles,

done a bunch of cameos for him,

'cause he likes me to, good luck charm or something.

It's nice to have some continuity

'cause there are many people I worked with over the years

which I would have loved to have had a return engagement,

but with Spike's movies, I've played

kind of a racist guy, on Jungle Fever,

I played the complete opposite,

the guy was really open-minded, very sweet.

I played a cop doin' Clockers, I played club owner

with my brother Nicholas in the Mo Better Blues.

Sometimes I like playing really quiet characters.

I played in The Truce when I played Primo Levi,

and sometimes I played explosive characters,

but I love characters that are complex,

and even in a dramatic thing, role,

that there's irony, and there's humor.

I don't like when something is just one thing.

I'm not interested because no one,

none of us, are one thing.

Plateaued.

What kind of word is that?

What, plateaued? Plateaued.

Plateaued, it's well, it's like a...

You mean people don't like me anymore?

No, no, no, it's not you per se,

it's just. Maybe I should get

my teeth capped. No, it's the nature

of the show, they've already seen you win,

and they want something new.

Well Quiz Show, it was based on real people,

so I had all the kinescope of Herb.

I also met Herb Stemple, I watched him a lot,

I had a lot of time to prepare, talked to Robert Redford.

The way he talked, and his voice,

everything I based on Herb.

I used to warm my voice up, get a very, very high voice.

He talked in a very specific way, I can't really do it

right now, but he had a very, very specific way of talking.

So I was fascinated when I first heard him talk.

I was like, wow, I never heard any, say anybody like him.

Probably one of my most unattractive roles,

I was fat, I had my teeth discolored, my hair thinned,

the glasses, and people would come on the set,

and they would sometimes talk to Robert, and they'd say,

wow, John's gotten a little heavy.

They never thought I did it on purpose.

I've won some awards and things and been nominated.

It's nice to be invited to the party,

but I think overall, what you do is

how the film lives on, and how it reaches people

because a lot of films that have reached people

in a deep way that have won no awards at all

and were never acknowledged, some of it has to do

with timing, and as Marlon Brando said,

sometimes the best acting is the least appreciated.

Let me tell you something, bandejo.

You pull any crazy shit with us, you flash a peace out

on the lanes, I'll take it away from you

and stick it up your ass and pull the fuckin' trigger

'til it goes click.

Jesus.

You said it, man.

Nobody fucks with the Jesus.

Jesus Madonna from The Big Lebowski is inspired

by a character I did in a play 10 years before.

It's inspired, and it's kind of based on one guy

and a little bit of another guy.

When you really like people, you wanna surprise them,

and they're your friends, but you also want to,

you want to bring something that they haven't thought of,

so I looked at everything, and I showed Joel and Ethan

certain things that I once I had

that outfit on that I could do.

'Cause when you only have five minutes,

you've gotta put everything in.

I wanted the nail, I think they had the outfit.

I played athletics, but I changed,

I've done a lot of dancing.

The whole dance that I do is a Muhammad Ali dance.

I didn't know what song they were gonna use,

they were gonna do the slow motion,

but I just kept tryin' to come up with things

to make them laugh.

My mom was a dressmaker, and so you wear a suit,

you move differently, you wear a dress,

you move differently, you wear a tight pantsuit like that,

and then they wanted me to do be specially well-endowed.

That was their idea, that wasn't mine, and I was like,

oh god, it was a little embarrassing,

but then you had to get into it.

And I was very thin because I had done this movie

where I played Primo Levi when I had lost all this weight,

and people thought I was dying and stuff,

and I couldn't put it back on,

so I was very, very, very thin.

So I just wanted to make it as memorable,

and I didn't think they were gonna use all of that,

and then when they showed me the cut of it,

I was embarrassed.

I was embarrassed the first time I saw it.

I was laughing, but I was embarrassed.

I was like, oh god, I can't believe I did all those things.

Talkin' to Julianne Moore about this that sometimes

I think the more normal people are,

or the more grounded, the crazier you can be in your work.

I also was with great company with Jeff and John and Steve.

Let's face it, you talk about awards,

Jeff's done a lot of great performances.

You know how many awards Jeff Bridges won

for The Big Lebowski?

Zero.

And that is a character that we talk about

as if he's our friend or our therapist or a philosopher.

Let's be honest here, that's a great,

great, great performance, and John is great,

and Steve is great, but Jeff's performance is,

there is something yoga-like about it, or zen-like

'cause Jeff has something really beautiful about him

as a performer, he's very selfless.

There's the Oscars, and there should be the Dudes,

The Dude Awards, the Dudesters.

I would rather get a Dude, you get a Dude, a Dude Award.

I love the character, it's a great character.

There's no matter through Jesus, that's fine bro,

it don't matter to him, he's the greatest.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Rush to judgment anyway.

Rushed.

There's two other guys.

There's Dwayne Reed, you can't deny that.

That's right.

[scratching] [exhaling]

God.

[scratching]

God.

Fuck. [scratching]

God.

Oh no, I need this like a...

The Night Of, we shot that in 2016.

Feels like we shot it for three years.

I think those mini series things,

I've done Billy Martin for The Bronx is Burning,

those are long, great experiences

because you can do different things

that you can do in a film because there's more scenes.

Sometimes it can be a repetitive scene,

that can be the problem when it's eight hours.

You try to find as much variation,

but you get to explore sometimes elements

that maybe you wouldn't do in a two or three hour,

two a and a half hour movie.

I saw the pilot, it was very long.

Jimmy Gandolfini was my friend, he did one day on it.

I didn't want to watch it, so I had read

the first couple episodes, I thought they were really good.

I watched it with my eyes closed, and then Jimmy didn't do

that much, so I was like okay,

I don't have to kind of erase that from my mind.

By then, they had written everything

'cause originally when they did the pilot,

I think they just had added maybe one other episode

they were working on.

So I read the whole thing.

I could see how well written it was.

A man who was completely full of flaws,

and you just see a lot of humanity,

and a person probably with great potential

but didn't have the stomach to be ambitious.

I had a lot of time, go to court, talk to lawyers,

and study the script, but my days were very long.

But I loved doing it.

With Riz, it was a natural, we just liked each other,

and so he would come to me and talk to me and ask me,

and sometimes I was able to help him as much as I could.

A lot of people helped me, and I took parts

from all different people.

It's a character I would love to revisit.

Because it was such a long shoot, I got lost in it.

That's what you hope for.

I really need you to listen to me.

I do.

How could you be so rude, Arnold?

For what?

I was introducing you to my family,

I brought you to my son's birthday party,

and you had the nerve to just disappear?

It wasn't an easy situation. Really?

I searched for your eyes again and again.

I didn't exist.

We were in love. Oh please.

We were in love.

He was wrong.

It made me sick.

I threw up.

I don't know how you could do something like that to me.

Gloria Bell, 2018, with Julianne Moore,

and directed by Sebastian Lelio.

He's a very cute guy, I have to say.

I mean, I'm not in the market for a guy,

but he's such a cute guy.

He's hard not to have a crush on when you work with him

'cause he's such a, I don't know, maybe because he's Latin

or something 'cause he has such an inviting manner.

I'd love to work with him again.

Love stories are complicated.

So she has her flaws too, but she's really trying more

than probably Arnold is, but when you're a certain age,

and then you meet all the first wife or husband,

they say we were in love, we loved you,

and all these things, and you're the outsider,

and there's parts of you that are not developed.

I thought it was a lovely story, and I was resistant

because the guy keeps disappearing, but Sebastian said

to me, he said the thing he loves about the character

was that he keeps trying, and I guess there are lots

of men and maybe some women too who don't have

the fortitude or the courage or the confidence to get out

of a terrible relationship, a dysfunctional relationship

and maybe out of guilt or whatever instead embrace

a great opportunity that they have.

I know this is something that I think occurred

to Sebastian's mom so he was able

to understand it form her point of view.

So I thought I will follow along,

and he was very helpful that way,

and she's great to work with.

I think at the end you realize you have to fail,

but you have to keep failing better,

you have to keep trying.

Failure is part of it, and I think he's grappling with that.

My motivation is to keep doing things

that I haven't done before and challenging myself.

And it's also who I'm doing it with.

It's not just if it's successful,

it's the experience of who you do it with that counts,

and I value that more and more.

[smooth music]