-Take the love, a standing O for Edward Norton.
Come on, bud. Welcome back. I missed having you on the show.
-I know. It's great, great to be back.
I feel like we're back alive again.
-Yeah, it feels right. Everyone, we got crowds.
We have audiences in the building.
[ Cheers and applause ]
We just had puppies predict March Madness.
And I thought since, staying with the basketball theme,
I was going to talk to you a little bit about basketball.
And then I was doing -- I remembered
that you dunked famously in the movies,
in "American History X."
This is you. This is you dunking the ball.
You. Not many people can say they dunked on film before,
but you have.
Do you remember getting air on this?
-There's a lot to say about this.
[ Laughter ]
I was very pumped up on, you know, for that film.
-You were jacked. -And everybody thought
that equated to vertical jumping capability, right?
So we get out there to shoot it.
They're going to do these special shots
to get the dunk. -Where are you filming it?
-In the Venice basketball courts. Right?
So there's a lot of real players all around
and everything like that.
And they say, "Where do you want us to set the rim?"
And I said, "I don't know. You know, nine feet.
Nine feet. That should be good, right?"
-Yeah, that's my dude! That's Edward Norton.
-No, it didn't go well. It didn't go well.
[ Laughter ]
Look, I was prison body on top
and like legs of a of a Kenyan marathon runner on the bottom.
They put me in sweatpants to hide the differential
between up here and down here. So I missed.
So I'm like -- I'm banging the ball up against the underside
at nine feet. -You're dunking up.
-So then the worst possible thing,
which is they have to lower it in front of everybody, right?
So I'm already catching [bleep]
They lower it and it's still not enough.
And I'm getting more and more tired. At the end of the day,
basically, I put my hand as high as I could reach.
They put the rim at my wrist...
[ Laughter ]
And basically my --
-This is like a Nerf hoop on the back of a closet somewhere
in a bedroom.
-I'm standing on the ground in that shot.
[ Laughter ]
That is the honest -- -Movie magic.
-And actually I'm getting embarrassed
at the memory of the catcalls.
-Sorry. Sorry. -So can we go to something...
-Yes, of course we can. Yes, we can go right to the next.
-...I did well in a film? -Let's talk about "Glass Onion,"
by the way, because that was gigantic.
You were great. You were fantastic in that.
When we first meet your character, Miles,
Miles Bron, you're playing guitar,
and I know you play some guitar,
but you were playing "Blackbird" pretty well.
I was like, "Is that really you?"
Or did you lower the rim on this one?
[ Laughter ] -No. So that --
Like you, I'm an amateur guitar player.
I can play "Blackbird."
And I think maybe that's why I got the part,
because he was supposed to be playing
"Blackbird" specifically at that point.
And Rian Johnson, the director, said,
"Can you play it?" I said, "Actually, I can."
So I -- So yes, I was playing it in that.
The thing is, though,
I don't -- You sit in sometimes, right?
Like, you -- I remember you
at the "Saturday Night Live" 40th party.
You were sitting in. But I think if you play guitar
a little, you know, I have these dreams
like where Springsteen has called me on stage
and I'm failing. Do you have guitar-fail dreams?
-Oh, my gosh. I have just nothing but fail dreams.
[ Laughter ]
Made a career out of it.
That's why I'm a comedian.
-But the funny thing -- and the funny thing on that one
was because there's this --
Enough people have seen the movie.
I don't think it ruins it that my character
is kind of revealed to be a pretentious idiot.
-Yeah. -Right?
But we -- I had this --
You're a Beatles aficionado. I really wanted that --
She comes up and she says, "You're playing my song."
And he says, yeah, on the guitar he wrote it on.
And it's supposed to be like he actually bought things.
And I said to Rian, "What if -- Can I say, like, on the guitar
John wrote it on" because McCartney wrote it,
and this would be good because like --
-Inside. -Yeah, inside baseball
but another level on which he's an idiot, right?
I thought it'd be great.
And basically Rian was like,
"I'm not getting into the McCartney-Lennon
authorship wars." He's like, "No."
And I said, "Paul will get it. Paul is cool."
-Yeah. He's like, "No."
By the way, the fact that Paul said yes to even letting
"Glass Onion" be used, I'm like,
dude, that was just -- it was masterful.
That's hilarious. You tried to get nerdy.
-I thought it would be a good joke to attribute
"Blackbird" to John Lennon.
-I found a photo that I wanted to show you
that I think this is actually -- you set it up
perfectly without even knowing I'm going to show you this,
but this is a photo of you from I think this was 2001.
Here's Paul McCartney playing guitar,
Eric Clapton behind him. And in between, a very...
[ Laughter ]
Are you having a nightmare?
[ Laughter ]
That's two of the greatest guitarists.
-Where do you even find that? -Dude, do you remember?
-Well, it's an incredibly weird picture
because it looks like I'm trying to tune
Clapton's guitar while he's playing it.
[ Laughter ]
It's like, "You're a little flat. You're a little flat."
-"Mr. Eric, come here. I'll help you with that."
-But also, I'm sitting here thinking, like,
did I have such a hit movie that I felt I belonged on this stage?
-Yes, you do! -With Clapton and things.
Like, what is going on?
-I've seen you play with Eddie Vedder.
Was that -- I saw you somewhere.
-I sat in once with Eddie Vedder.
-So you know what you're talking about.
-No, no. It was the most nerve-wracking performance
experience of my life because he said,
"Why don't you just sit in for one song?" So I said,
Let's play 'Guaranteed.'" This was at the Beacon.
This was at our hometown theater here, right?
-Yeah. New York.
-I'm like, "Let's play 'Guaranteed.'"
I know "Guaranteed" pretty well, right?
Right before we go out and do it --
and his fans are intense, man --
You don't mess with like the Eddie --
I was like, "I could get booed."
-Oh, yeah. -I go out, right?
I'm like, "Okay, I can play
'Guaranteed' well enough that this will go fine."
And then he's like -- right before he goes,
"Take a verse, take a verse."
I'm like, "I'm not singing with you."
-No! I'm barely doing this.
-He's like, "Take a verse. Take a verse."
And Eddie's voice sounds like it's rising
from the mantle of the Earth.
You know, it's like this huge thing.
And I opened my mouth and it's like Bob Dylan
and Ellie Goulding have had a had a baby, right?
It's just a disaster. It's like you don't want to
sing next to Eddie Vedder.
-You just want to tune his guitar.
That's all you want to do. -Exactly.
So it's just like you got to be very careful
about sitting in with the pros.
-"Extrapolations."
We have to talk about your show "Extrapolations."
The cast, by the way, is -- Yeah, the show is --
[ Cheers and applause ]
It's on Apple TV+. The cast.
I'm just going to run through some names here.
No order. Sienna Miller. Kit Harington.
David Schwimmer. Daveed Diggs. Tobey Maguire. Forest Whitaker.
Murray Bartlett. Meryl Streep.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Marion Cotillard. -Marion Cotillard.
-Yeah. They said Meryl Streep, Marion Cotillard.
I was like, "I don't care what it's about."
-"I'm in." -Right.
And then I didn't get to work with either of them.
[ Laughter ] -Yeah. You were saying this.
-It's like an all star --
I think a way to look at this is,
is it's sort of like the -- if you like "Black Mirror,"
you know, the way that "Black Mirror" comments on technology,
which I was obsessed with that show.
This is very much like a "Black Mirror"
for future environmental kind of consequence
and catastrophe. It's really, really creative.
It's rooted in science, but it's -- Some of them are funny.
Some of them are really dramatic
and kind of terrifying and dystopian.
And it just -- I think that it's entertaining as hell,
But it's a really great provocation
to get us to think about what might actually
be coming on an environmental level,
not just a technological level. -Since I've known you,
you've always been active in the environment,
saving the environment and, you know,
watching out for climate change and all this stuff.
-Yeah, honestly, it's nice when the thing you do --
when you have the opportunity to wrestle
with some of those complicated questions and challenges
that we're facing within the work.
I mean, I think -- -It's still entertaining.
-Yeah, it is entertaining.
It's very entertaining, but it's not preachy.
It really basically deals with how difficult
this is going to be to make these complicated decisions.
-And how life is going to be in the future.
It starts in when, 2037?
-Yeah. And it advances through time as the episodes go.
But I think, you know, look, we live in a very --
we live in an age of distraction and of a lot --
There's a lot of challenges to life.
And I think the most it asks of people
is really that, you know, this is --
this is going to be the challenge of our era.
I think we will be remembered mostly
for how we deal with this issue of ecological sustainability
and whether we set things in motion
that future generations are dealing with.
And I think all this really asks you to do is --
is not be complacent, you know, to at least meditate
on the consequences of these decisions
that we're making right now and think a little bit about
what it's actually going to look like if we don't act.
[ Applause ]
-What would you say for someone
who wants to get get involved or --
-You know, again, it's hard to -- I mean, in the old days,
like, I think we liked hearing things that,
you know, changing light bulbs and this and that.
But we know that that's not -- those things
aren't really what it's about.
It's about policy. It's about governments.
And that's why a lot of people feel
that it's beyond their capability.
I think we've got to vote.
We've got to bring in a generation of leaders
who put this -- who believe that this is a priority
and make it a priority.
But also, I just think, you know,
I think of -- There's a line of Hemingway's
that's cited in the episode
I'm in that the world is a fine place
and worth fighting for.
And I think that we've got to push against complacency.
I think we can afford as a generation and our kids,
we can't be complacent about this.
It's too consequential. -Yeah. Good for you.
[ Cheers and applause ] Well said.
I want to show everyone a clip.
Here's Edward Norton in "Extrapolations."
Take a look at this.
-The real reckless experiment
is the one civilization has been running.
-Nobody was trying to change the climate.
We didn't even think that we had that capacity.
We didn't know better. But we do now.
-And yet human behavior doesn't change.
The sky is easier to re-engineer than the human brain, John.
-Exactly.
And if you tell that greedy monkey brain,
it's cooled off and everything's okay,
it's going to say, "Give me a little bit more.
Just let me burn a little bit more.
Just let me -- Just let me mortgage a little more
of the children's future so that I can make sure
I can choose this quarterly balance sheet.
I just need that one." It's -- It's -- It's --
Gita, Gita.
Even if you got all of the chemical interactions right,
if you got the dispersal pattern right,
the problem here is bigger than the heat of the sun, Gita.
It's the way we see the world.
-Edward Norton, everybody! "Extrapolations"
is streaming now on Apple TV+.
We'll be right back with Ego Nwodim.
Stick around, everybody.