OK.
So you decided to go to the desert to write this.
You wanted to be alone.
Let's take a look at this place that you went to.
And why does your friend have this?
And is he OK?
He is actually a she, and she's better than OK.
This is out on her ranch.
And just the first 12 days I spent writing the book
was there.
I wanted to go away to a place that didn't have--
not only didn't have options of something else to entertain
myself.
Something where those options were not even
remotely available.
So no electricity, no cell service, no email, no phone,
no nothing.
So I took my journals.
And when those days would get long or I'd get bored,
I had one thing to go for my entertainment.
My journals, myself over the last 50 years.
So I basically, literally went to be trapped with me
and myself for the last 50 years, to see what I had.
You write about, you took a huge risk.
You stopped doing all these romantic comedies.
And you were doing so well with those,
and you turned down a whole lot of money
to just change direction of your career.
Why did you decide to do that?
Well this was a time when I had done--
I was on quite a good run of a very successful
romantic comedies, of which I thoroughly enjoyed making.
And they paid me well.
But it was a time where I was starting,
when I received the romantic comedy
script I could look at it tonight and feel like,
oh, I could do that tomorrow morning.
And there was nothing wrong with that.
But I was looking to find work that
made me sweat in my boots, challenged me.
Made me go, oh, I don't know what I'm going to do with this.
It was also a time where this public persona
was me as a rom-com guy, plus shirtless on a beach.
Of which I have always said and will continue to say,
you damn right that was me shirtless on the beach.
Because those rom-coms actually paid the rent at the places
that I lived on the beach that I ran shirtless on.
Yes, guilty fact.
But in that rom-coms and shirtless guy on the beach,
that really became the only thing
that the industry would offer me.
And the other shows I wanted to do, other films, dramas, even
though I wanted to do them, even for a major pay cut, no.
They were not being offered to me.
So because I couldn't do what I wanted to do,
I decided, well let me stop doing what I've been doing.
And I didn't know how long that would last,
how long I would go without work.
I ended up going without work for 20 months.
But luckily, Camille and I had just had Levi.
So having a newborn son really helped
keep me grounded during that time.
Because it was a wobbly time and I
wasn't sure if I was ever going to go back and work
in Hollywood again.
Yeah.
Well that really is tough.
Because that really was what you were known for.
And I loved working with you at EDtv
and you were fantastic in that.
And you're fantastic in everything you do.
But it was such a complete different direction.
And you were brilliant in the movies that you chose to do.
So I'm glad you did.
You won an Oscar for "Dallas Buyers Club."
You also played a stripper in "Magic Mike".
When you said you want to sweat in your boots,
was the dancing scene in "Magic Mike" one of those things
that scared you?
I sweated a little bit and a little bit more
than just my boots on that.
There was a dance scene here that, me,
the character, Dallas, does.
And it was somewhat choreographed.
But I knew I wanted to head out to the end of the runway.
A very vulnerable situation.
You've got this small thong, in a rattlesnake print to boot,
covering what God gave you down there.
And I remember doing some sort of pelvic thrust.
And there were some hands on me.
You know?
And that's fine, that's fine, that's fine.
Then all of a sudden, the hands kind of moved.
And this one hand, I felt--
I could feel it in her hand that it had great confidence in it
and where it was going.
And as it moved, I was like, oh no.
That hand's not stopping.
That hand's going in for the kill.
And I remember having to roll out of that
and go, watch that thong there.
Keep on dancing, don't act like it happened, but get out
of this.
And then just strutted back to the back the stage.
But I was a couple of seconds away from that film being more
than NC 17.
Yeah.
Well that was one extra that was going to take
advantage of that situation.