Josh Brolin | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #690

This Past Weekend #690 - Josh Brolin brings the acting stories, and Theo makes sure none of them turn into a normal press interview. 1. Cito Rats is about carrying a community forward. Josh describes the people he grew up with and uses survived and updated for the version he wants to celebrate now. He explicitly says it was not a gang. The idea is to keep the character while changing the destructive parts. 2. Penultimate becomes a whole event. Josh uses it for the show before the last show, Theo asks him to just say that, and suddenly they are talking about a year-end vocabulary session. Josh eventually gets the satisfaction of seeing the definition confirm he used it perfectly. 3. Josh says nerves came out as uncontrollable laughter on his first Goonies shooting day. His recollection is that Spielberg came over, told him to take a breath, and tried to get them through the scene. A huge break did not mean he arrived knowing how to handle it. 4. There was another career between acting jobs. Josh says he traded stocks full time for almost five years. Theo pictures him on the floor with the tickets; Josh describes working at home with screens instead. It is his account of a different skill he developed, rather than an investment recommendation or audited earnings report. 5. Theo remembers a Jeff Bridges visit that included another participant: Gary, the AI companion. He says Jeff had him talking to the computer and had it make a song about them hanging out. A drawing Jeff later mailed him, plus an invitation for soup, completes a very particular friendship story. 6. Josh says he initially failed to recognize Neil deGrasse Tyson. The clue was the shirt: planets and shooting stars finally made it click. This follows Theo imagining Tyson as Father Times son, which is quite a route into discussing an interest in physics. 7. Thrashin gets a kinder reassessment. Josh says he used to dismiss his own performance, until a fan described finding skateboarding through the film. His point is that his opinion of the job does not cancel what the movie meant to someone else. 8. Being recognized changes where the surprise comes from. Theo remembers enjoying the moment when somebody who did not know he was a comedian discovered he was funny. Josh sees the loss of that surprise as a reason to redesign the work and keep creating. 9. Theo says the first hundred podcast episodes were just him talking. Yet a recent solo recording could still feel intimidating. His way back into it was to remember why he started and try to have some fun, rather than keep building the imaginary cage around himself. The hundred-episode history is his recollection here, not a newly audited catalogue total. 10. The photo commentary deserves an honorable mention. Josh distinguishes looking as though he is in the 1920s from looking as though he is in his twenties; Theo lands on an aggressive relative of a successful spice trader. Naturally, the market ends up coriandered. Conversation timestamps 00:56 - Josh Brolin introduction 04:03 - The Cito Rats hat and survived and updated 16:03 - The old photo and the coriander joke 26:33 - Joe Walsh, John Walsh and the old house 28:18 - Penultimate gets a vocabulary lesson 39:03 - Theos Shirley Temple audition 42:58 - The Goonies and nervous laughter 46:09 - Full-time trading, away from the trading floor 47:41 - The audition tape with his son 50:26 - Jeff Bridges and Gary 57:37 - Recognizing the planets on Neil deGrasse Tysons shirt 1:11:13 - Changing how he talks about Thrashin 1:19:06 - Fame and losing the element of surprise 1:22:31 - Keeping room to become something else 1:33:00 - Solo episodes and remembering to have fun 1:34:57 - The meaning he gives his tattoos 1:37:02 - Closing thanks Which story would you have kept going: Goonies, Gary, or the completely unexpected trading career?