This is really a love letter to mom and dad.
It really is.
I'm such a spoiler when I get excited about things
and I ripped through them so fast.
But I mean, the,
the love story that you share with everyone
that predated either of your births, you know,
is just so rich and the whole book reads like a film.
What was the process like for you guys?
Because it's written in such an interesting way.
It is a page turner because Ron will write a couple pages,
then Clint will write a couple pages.
And they're parallel in that.
They're about the same time,
but they're in such different voices.
Well, we are five years apart.
Yeah You know,
and so our perspectives were different
and I was always encouraged to pitch in
and give my 2 cents in the family and everything.
And it really, this is really a love letter to mom and dad.
It really is.
But the back and forth was always been easy for us.
And look, I'm the older brother.
From the moment Clint was born,
when he arrived from the hospital, he,
he was always a jokester.
He had one eyebrow raised, a little smirk on his face.
He has always been funny. He had me!
I'm going to tell him one.
He had me at pee-pee and he-he.
(audience laughs)
So he comes out one day and pees on Ron.
This is one of Ron's stories.
Let's be clear. He was, oh, he was, he was 16 months old.
He was a baby! (audience laughs)
No, not as a grown person. (audience laughs)
So Ron is like," Dad, go spank him."
And he's like, "We can't spank him.
He doesn't know what he's doing. He's a kid."
And he starts giggling and he goes off to get cleaned up
and he comes back and you start giggling again.
And I'm like, yes.
(audience claps)
From then on, through that moment, I,
I called him the he-he man,
but he's always had that sense of humor
and it's there in the right--
(audience claps) And the he-he is still there
and Clint had me at that.
I'm like, that's my boy. That's my, baby.
I mean, it's just such a pleasure. And I love the story.
Just to give you an idea of why this,
this family is so idyllic to me.
When your dad is in a touring company,
you do this bit and you were three,
right? Right.
Where you could run lines with him
from the play that you had been watching daddy do, right?
Right, right.
So this gets him noticed
because they do this little bit father-son together,
but it doesn't mean that he can,
you know, act doing anything, Right.
So their family- mom and dad,
they make a boom out of his sand pail from the sandbox.
And his mom makes a camera out of the cereal box,
because they wanted, like teach him not to be upset
on the, on, on the set.
And they teach him method acting at three!
Where's your character coming from?
Where's he going to now?
I was like, ahhh.
Look. (audience claps) Thank you.
Look, the remarkable thing about it all is that they,
they weren't trying to get us into the business
and be our managers. They serve that purpose.
You know, it was their dream to be, to act.
And that's what they, that's what they continued to pursue.
But I think Dad recognized from that very first time,
and when I started picking up on dialogue,
that I did have an aptitude and,
and Clint showed that very early as well.
And that, this was an opportunity for us to learn something,
to learn how to excel at something,
and that he wanted us to have the fundamentals.
He didn't want us to be a little performing cutie pies--
And Clint speaks so well today,
in the book that about the difference of child actors and,
and the groups and you weren't going to be in this group,
you were going to be in this group.
Well, you know, and we were really lucky
because we started so young.
Yeah.
We just, we learned the process sort of by osmosis,
like the being rattled on the set or,
you know, being distracted by the boom mic.
Those were things that dad instinctively knew
that we had to tackle.
It wasn't just learning lines.
And in fact, it was never about learning lines.
It was preparing the emotions for the day's work.
And the preparation is the key.
You'll totally, understand this of course,
but preparation is, is everything.
That's the gift he gave us was to understand that.
And, and, and then we kind of made it look easy.
[Audience applause]