Actor Josh Brolin feels so Don Cheadle about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Josh sits down with Conan to discuss stories of his parents out of his new memoir From Under the Truck, bucking the notion of celebrity, the lasting impact of The Goonies, and receiving his first motorcycle at three years old. Later, the team asks: are Conan and the Chums the perfect Dick, Dork, & Dear? For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (669) 587-2847. Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan.
Chapter 1: Why does Josh Brolin feel 'so Don Cheadle' about being Conan's friend?
Hi, my name is Josh Brolin, and I feel so Don Cheadle about being one of Brian's friends. I don't even know what that means. What does it mean? Who knows? Badass. Horny. You feel horny? Nice.
I can tell that we are gonna be friends. Yes, I can tell that we are gonna be friends.
Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. And we have a wonderful podcast today, joined as always by Sona Movsesian and Matt Gourley, I believe. I'm not even sure myself. And Sona, this has got to be a big day for you.
It is.
Because, and we rarely do this, we rarely talk about the guest, but this guest is one of the stars of a movie which has become, over time, the Citizen Kane of your generation.
It defined a generation.
Don't scream. I'm sorry. We're all in the same room. Jesus Christ.
Blaze not here. I'm compensating. Yeah. When you say like the Citizen Kane, I don't know.
You don't even know what I'm talking about. Citizen Kane was a movie with Orson Welles.
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Chapter 2: What are the lasting impacts of The Goonies?
Yeah.
And Greg and I were sitting there and we're like, OK, well, I guess that's a fun movie for kids. I remember being very annoyed that all the kids talk over each other. I know. And I'm sorry. They also the kids call gold rich stuff. And kids know the word gold. They just do.
Your criticisms of this movie are so tiny, teeny, tiny.
I've never known a movie to have more of a dividing line on whether you love it or hate it. And it's all due to age.
It is. It's all age.
You just don't get it.
So I didn't get it. I didn't get it. I'll be honest with you. I didn't get it. So flash forward all these years and you start working with me and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at one point, I remember we're working at Warner Brothers studio together and someone mentioned, oh, Goonies was shot in this studio where we make our TBS show. Yeah.
You were like a nun that had seen the holy tomb of Christ. Yeah. You exploded. I mean, bats flew out of you. There was an explosion. Light came down. I heard Armenian songs that haven't been heard for thousands of years. And... You went nuts and you were like, where's the spot? Where's the spot where they stood? Do you think that he stood here? Do you think? And I didn't understand.
And so our guest today, Josh Brolin, of course, one of the stars of that film.
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Chapter 3: What does Josh Brolin reveal about his childhood and parents?
He's Thanos. What? Thanos. That's who he's become. And Sicario. Oh, Sicario. Sicario's big. I don't know.
Don't you have a movie that you think about from your childhood that you watch it and you're like, Yes, this always makes me happy. That's the Goonies for me. You have to have something that, like, some emotion for something. Yeah, Heidi.
What? You know, she has super strength and she, right? You're thinking of Pippi Longstocking.
Oh, Pippi Longstocking.
Oh, fuck, let's do it again.
Heidi. Oh, no.
Oh, it's too good. Fuck, I got the wrong one. Oh, man. I was thinking Pippi Longstocking. I remembered seeing an ad. There was a terrible Pippi Longstocking movie that came out like in the mid 70s. I'm staying at my grandparents' house. Take it easy. Okay. I'm staying at my, I mean, it was made in, where was it made? Sweden. Okay. And this is getting dicey.
And all I remember is my grandparents had this crappy little black and white TV that got no reception. And we're down in Misquamica, Rhode Island, staying at my grandparents' little cottage. And my brothers and I are crowded around and they kept playing over and over again this ad for, come see the new movie, Pippi Longstocking.
And it looked weird and you could tell the voices were dubbed badly, right? Yeah, they're very bad. And there's a part where this awkward looking girl with pigtails who looked a lot like me at the time, Like lifts a horse over her head?
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Chapter 4: How did Josh Brolin's unconventional upbringing shape his career?
Pippi, are you crazy? Yeah.
So that whole summer of 1974 on Crandall Avenue in Miss Kwamecut, Rhode Island, I would walk around looking not unlike Pippi and going, Pippi, are you crazy? Until I was beaten by my brothers.
Yes. And rightfully so.
I would have beaten you. God, what a terrible looking movie. Anyway, we got off track, but it was the Goonies of its day. That was the Goonies before the Goonies. You think so? No, I don't. I'm just being a dick.
I was a big Goonies fan as well, and I'll give you one guess to which my favorite Goonie was. The one that had all the secret inventions?
Data. Yeah, exactly.
So much so that when I was in junior high, I took a little travel soap dish that could open and close and made a belt buckle out of it and put a little motor with a clock cog in it that would pop out like a saw blade. I have one question.
How much did I get laid? No, I just need a number. Okay. No, mine is how many times were you stabbed in school? Well, none because I was defended by a belt buckle. So you were, you made a, so you, Data, he's the guy that has like these weird devices that come out of his raincoat.
And plays the James Bond music when he enters the movie. I mean, come on. And he's played by Short Round.
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Chapter 5: What stories does Josh Brolin share from his new memoir?
And then I went to junior high, popped open my plastic soap dish.
Oh, my God.
I'll tell you what, though. I'm not even joking. Normally, I would self-deprecate. I was cock of the walk that day. Let me tell you something. Every kid was lining up to see that soap dish saw blade. And I walked out of there with my head held high.
I was cock of the walk. I love that. That hasn't been said. I'm getting it. I'm getting it right now. Oh, here it is. Hasn't been said since 1934. Franklin Roosevelt, after a fireside chat, turned to Eleanor and said, I'm cock of the walk now.
People have said that before.
Oh yeah, that cock of the walk is a, oh, that was a big thing.
Cock like the rooster cock or cock like dick cock?
No, no, no, not, Jesus. Why do you always have to drag everything out of the gutter?
It's my, me, I don't always do that. I'm just saying, you say cock of the walk. When I hear cock, it's the first thing I think of is a penis.
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Chapter 6: What is the significance of 'the Goonies' in pop culture?
Let's get into it.
Do you think you're on? The rest is history. In the dirt.
My guest today is an actor who has starred in movies like, oh, I love it. In his credits, it doesn't say the one movie that Sona loves. My guest today is an actor who has starred in movies like No Country for Old Men and Avengers Endgame. And the Goonies. Doesn't say that. Thrashing.
Well, you don't have to read what it says. You could say The Goonies, too.
Nope, doesn't say it here. He now has a new memoir titled, and guess what? I've read this book, and it is beautiful and is very powerful. I can't say enough good about this book. I'm being very sincere. It's a lovely testament this gentleman has written about his very unusual life. It's very cool. It's titled From Under the Truck. I'm thrilled he's here today. I'm thrilled he's here today.
Goonies.
Josh Brolin, welcome. I think you're excited to see me.
I am excited. I'm really excited. The first time I went on your show was for flirting with disaster. Yep. And I think, you know, which I'm much less nervous now. I still get nervous, but not really. I don't care as much now.
Yep.
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Chapter 7: How does Josh Brolin reflect on his celebrity status?
This, what I never realized is that your character, Llewellyn, is much closer to... you and the way you grew up than I ever knew, which is fascinating.
In what way? What did you mean?
Well, you grow up, I mean- Oh, you mean ranch and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. First of all, your life, and there's so many passages in this book where you're taking care of animals, you're living on a ranch, you're living in this incredibly rural environment. You've got this life that was much manlier than anything I've ever experienced. I'm sorry.
I had a butterfly neck.
Occasionally I'd go outside with my butterfly neck. And then my mother would say, get back inside, the sun's out.
So...
But your mom, let's talk about your mom because she's runs through this book and she died very tragically. I believe 1995 is when you lost your mom, but she jumps off the page and it's very unconventional. She's not a conventional mom in any way. You guys are drinking buddies pretty much at an early age.
I think I say it in one of the chapters, if you will, which we decided toward the tail end of this to put in chapters to make it followable or just stories that you could kind of note and go back to. But there's one that said I was – I can't remember exactly what it says, but it says something like I was – created in her kind of likeness to be a drinker. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was like, it was kind of like a surrogate husband, so to speak. My dad was, you know, extremely, they got married in 12 days. After seven days, I think after five, no, it was seven days, they sat down, they had a scorpion drink, one of those massive cups between them. My dad was reeling from a recent breakup, and my mom with her voice, that Texan voice,
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Chapter 8: What humorous anecdotes does Josh Brolin share about his time in Hollywood?
And then you imagine what happens on a set and you think it's this perpetual red carpet and you're just waving literally your entire life. Do you know what I mean? There is a perception of, I was just on the, on the phone with my lit agent, um, Kimberly Witherspoon this morning. And I was like, I'm spinning. I'm spinning.
Like you saw me, I felt it get uncomfortable when you said those nice things about the book. I got teary. This means the world to me because it's me being naked about the realities of reality. the life that I've lived and the life of a lot of other celebrities that I know. And it's not that it's looking for compassion, it's not. But there's no compassion in that.
There's no just like, oh, you guys have the same problems. No, you don't. You live in a bubble. You all live under the same apartment complex. And you just go, what are you thinking? Right, right. What are you thinking? What about the life of...
This kind of unconventional life of this guy who was germinated, unbeknownst to anybody that it was going to be this, into an artist who just found creativity as an outlet, got attached to it. The self-destructive part of him grew and grew and grew with it. And then somehow through having kids and all that found his way out of the self-destructive.
Well, I read this book and I thought it's kind of a miracle you're alive because there's so many parts of this book where your drinking is out of control and it feels like you have a death wish at times. Same thing with your mom. For sure. And you read these accounts, which again are so beautifully written. And then you intersperse that by jumping around with you show up on the set
to shoot the Goonies. And so there's this crazy world that you're living in where you feel like, oh, he's a ranch hand. He's not even a ranch hand. He's someone who has to work his way up to being a ranch hand. That's how it feels sometimes. And then suddenly you time travel, you're on the set of the Goonies and you feel like this is weird.
I don't know what this is, this make believe world that I'm in. This seems kind of fun, but- But not even close to as surreal as my world. Yes. Yes. Your world is much more surreal than showing up and making the Goonies with Steven Spielberg and Richard Donner. And by the way, I have to step outside this conversation for one second and tell you that Sonoma Sessian's Citizen Kane is the Goonies.
And I witnessed this firsthand because this is true for an entire generation. I shoot this travel show and I was not long ago in New Zealand and I'm in New Zealand and I see a kind of a familiar face way across the way in this strange hotel we're in. And she starts coming closer to me and she goes, Conan, hi. And I go, hi, I can't see quite who it is.
And she gets closer and I realize, oh, it's Martha Plimpton. Martha Plimpton's in New Zealand. She's there to shoot something. She sits at our table, holds court, is lovely, fantastic, really funny. My crew is all women, three women, two cameras and sound. They are shaking, shaking. And I'm- Because she's in the- And the thing is, I kept thinking, yeah, Martha Plimpton, she's great, but shaking?
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