-You know our first guest tonight from his work
in "Parks and Recreation"
and blockbuster franchises like "Jurassic World"
and Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy."
He stars in the "Super Mario Bros. Movie,"
which is in theaters and IMAX now.
Let's take a look.
-Just pop in this pipe, and we're on our way.
-Oh. -It's the only way to fly, man.
[ Warp pipe noise ] [ Laughing ]
Whoo!
-Oh, wow. Love these pipe--
Aaah!!
Yaaaah! Unh!
Ugh! Unh!
Ohh!
-Whoo! -Unh!
[ Warp pipe noise ]
[ Groans ]
-Here we are -- palace doors. Bing bang boom.
♪♪
Come on! Whoo!
-Please welcome back to the show
our good friend Chris Pratt, everybody!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Welcome back, old friend. -Whoo!
It's good to be here.
-You brought a box. -I brought a very special box
directly from the Mushroom Kingdom to you.
-Oh, my God. This is beautiful.
Look at this -- says, "Super Mario Bros."
-Courtesy of -- -There you go.
-It's the "Super Mario Bros. Movie."
It's an official collectible. They're very rare.
-Ooh! -Coin.
-Wow! Look at that. -Yes, yes.
-That's a super... [ Cheers and applause ]
-I bashed my skull against numerous bricks in the city
finding that. [ Laughter ]
So I hope you appreciate it. -I do appreciate it.
You know what I bet you appreciate.
Since I last saw you, you have had two baby girls.
-Man, I have, yeah. -Congratulations.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Between you and I, we're gonna repopulate.
-We are gonna repop-- I added -- I added a girl
since I last saw you, as well. -Amazing.
-Here we go. How is it? How's being a girl dad?
-I love it, man. It's really -- It's really great.
Obviously, you know, I do have a 10-year-old son,
so this is my first time having daughters.
And, man, it's just -- It's fantastic.
They really -- you know, you hear that maybe
the experience is different. And it really is.
And in my experience, I mean, my my daughter Lyla is so girly.
She picks out all -- I picked her up yesterday.
She goes, "Oh, daddy, that's a cute outfit.
Look, you have little cute pockets."
[ Laughter ] That's not something
Jack ever said to me. [ Laughter ]
-Yeah, my boys have not mentioned my pockets once.
-No, no. Yeah. -And I put a lot of work
into my pockets. -Yeah, I know you!
It's nice to have a little appreciation
for the pocket game. [ Laughter ]
-Now, I am also --
You have a father-in-law... -Yes.
-...of note. Your father-in-law
is Arnold Schwarzenegger. -Correct. Yes, yes.
-Now, that is -- that's got to be surreal,
because I'm assuming we're kind of from the same generation.
He's a huge deal. He's an inspiration.
-Yeah, it is pretty surreal.
I mean, I've gotten to obviously know him now
as just a regular guy and all of that.
He's a great grandfather,
a great dad, a good father-in-law,
and he's got a wealth of experience, oddly,
in the world of promoting blockbuster action movies.
It's like, who else are you gonna talk to
about that kind of stuff? So that's pretty cool.
But, yeah. -My father-in-law would never
be able to help me out with that.
-"Let me ask you something. What do you think?
What should I say?"
But it's been -- it's been very nice.
He's a great dude. We play chess a lot.
And he loves his grandchildren.
-Who's better at chess? -He -- I've never beat him.
-Okay. -He's incredible.
He's really good.
-I've spent a very little amount of time with him,
but the most fun thing about spending time
with Arnold Schwarzenegger is he sounds
exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
-Yeah, right? [ Laughter ]
Yeah. You're like, "That's a really good Arnold you do.
That's -- Wow, that's good." [ Laughter ]
-Now, was this -- was "Super Mario Bros.",
was that a game you were playing as a kid?
-Man, I -- yes.
Honestly, if I had to count up the hours,
and this is no hyperbole,
I think it's close to 25,000,000 hours...
[ Laughter ]
...that I played "Super Mario Bros."
I saw the movie, and the movie's fantastic,
and there's all these great Easter eggs,
and the -- and the sound, the soundtrack,
it lifts from the soundtrack of the games.
And I just had this Pavlovian response to like,
the coin and -- and landing on a turtle
and breaking a brick and getting the star.
I was like, "Br-br-br!" I just like --
[ Laughter ] I've been -- 30 years
I've been preparing for this movie.
And as an audience, you really kind of --
you realize just how hypnotizing that music has been.
So I don't think people are quite ready
for what's coming to them, but it's very promising for us.
I mean, I think there's going to be a lot of these movies
coming out because it is so good.
-And, Jack, your son, he also dabbles in this game, right?
He knows it? -He's a "Smash Bros" guy.
-Okay, gotcha. -You know, he plays "Smash"
on his -- on his Switch.
So he hasn't played -- I don't think we've played
the original Nintendo Entertainment System
"Super Mario Bros." game,
the game that I played so much as a kid.
But he plays like "Mario Kart" and "Smash Bros."
-Were you also -- were you the generation
that would actually go to the arcade
and play coin-operated games? -I was.
I was right in that sweet spot.
So, it was late '80s
when I first was introduced to the "Super Mario Bros."
or "Mario Bros." arcade-style game.
I grew up in a very small town, and there wasn't anything to do.
And so I'd come home from school,
and I would walk across the street
to this little coin-operated laundromat,
Fowlds Laundry, still in Lake Stevens, Washington.
And there was an arcade game there.
I never had a quarter, but I would just stare at the game.
I'd hit the buttons. I was like,
"Maybe one day I'll be able to play this."
And then I found out that Alfy's Pizza,
also still in Lake Stevens,
had a jukebox that was tucked into the corner,
and the coin return was on the back side.
So people would put their money in --
"Eh, this piece of crap ate my coins."
But I knew they were in the back.
And my -- my little 9-year-old arm
would reach back in, dislocate my shoulder pulling --
I checked -- That was my routine.
Every day after school,
go to Alfy's, check the coin return.
If there were coins, go to Fowlds.
[ Laughter ]
-So you were just walking back and forth?
-Yeah. I beat a pa-- I beat a triangular path
between Alfy's and Fowlds.
-Was there something about somebody would give you money
if you got in the dryer?
-Yes. Yeah.
If I -- if coin fishing didn't work out at Alfy's,
I'd talk to Jason, who was the teenager
who seemed like an adult at the time,
but he was the teenager who operated the --
or, you know, ran the desk.
-At the laundromat. -At the laundromat.
And he would give me a quarter.
In exchange, I'd have to get in the tumble dryer.
[ Laughter ] And he'd hit tumble dry.
This is kind of win-win for me as a kid.
-I would say! -It's pretty great.
-As a kid, what are you complaining about?
-Giant tumble dryer? I'm like, "Pa-tunk, pa-tunk,
pa-tunk!" "I can't believe it!
I'm living the dream!" [ Laughter ]
And then I get the quarter. It was amazing.
-I mean, I guess all my questions for this
are really probably for Jason. -Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-And also we have some members of --
some -- some gentlemen in uniform
that'd like to talk to Jason, too, about...
-Putting a --throwing a kid in a tumble dryer.
-Yeah, I loved it, though. I mean, I was --
I always wanted to be a stuntman growing up,
so I was always -- my brother and I
were always throwing ourselves down the stairs.
-Yeah, so tumble dryer was nothing.
-Tumble dryer's nothing. -Yeah, come on.
-Yeah, it's easy quarter.
-It was the easiest quarter I ever made.
-Best five minutes of my life for that quarter.
[ Laughter ]
I come out a little smaller.
-You know, last week, we had your old
"Parks and Rec" colleague Adam Scott on the show.
-Yeah!
And, you know, I'm wondering, do you guys still keep in touch?
I mean, it was a really close group of people.
You were here in 2015, I guess, was it
where we all -- we had a cast show where you were
all out here for the season finale.
-Yeah, I remember that. I think, like --
Wasn't Aubrey making out with Jim O'Heir?
-Yeah, here. -And Nick was playing guitar.
And -- Oh, those were the good old days, man.
[ Laughter ]
Yeah, yeah. We still -- we still keep in touch.
We have a text thread that goes, and, you know,
people's birthdays and celebrations.
And obviously so many of the cast members
are doing such amazing things.
-It's really nice time for all of you.
-Checking in and supporting each other.
Yeah, for sure. We still have that text thread going.
-And you're gonna have to start another one
because your time with "Guardians"
is coming to a close, as well,
which has been an incredible journey
with another special group of people.
-Thanks, guys. Thank you. Yeah. [ Cheers and applause ]
-I think people forget that, you know,
"Guardians" wasn't a property people knew as well.
And it was -- I don't think people had the same anticipation
or thought it was gonna do as well as it ended up doing.
-No, they really didn't. I mean, I remember --
In fact, on our last day of shooting on "Volume 3,"
we knew this was the end,
and -- and it was a little bit like,
you know, the last day of your senior year.
It's like you're excited for summer,
but are you ever gonna see your friends again?
It's like that -- that trepidation.
You don't really want to walk away.
And I was just -- I addressed the cast
and the crew and the director,
and I said -- and I pulled up from my phone
like about 10 headlines from the press
when the movie was being released,
all of which completely predicted this massive bomb.
They're like, "Are you ready?" I remember the press.
"Are you ready to be Marvel's first big bomb?"
"Why Is anyone gonna watch this movie?"
"No one gives a crap about the Guardians of the Galaxy."
"Wait. It's a raccoon and a tree?"
"There's no A-list stars in this thing."
"So this is going to suck." And I'm like, "Oh, my God."
At the time, you know, I was like,
"It probably is gonna suck, and this is it for me!
At least I got to try." And then, you know, it came out,
and by the grace of God, it did very well.
And we're still working, so... -Yeah.
[ Cheers and applause ] Well, it's really exciting.
Man, what a delight to have you back here.
-Dude, it's -- -It's really always so special
to see you. Thank you so much.
You guys, that's Chris Pratt. "Super Mario Bros.",
theaters and IMAX now.
We'll be right back with more "Late Night."