The Advice That Made Edward Norton Do American History X | Joe Rogan

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Edward Norton

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Edward Norton is an actor, writer, producer, director, and filmmaker. His new film "Motherless Brooklyn" opens in theaters on November 1.

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Yeah. That's also, is it hard as an actor too if you get an iconic role and then you are sort of always remembered for being that guy in that thing? Like how much of a, is it a hard transition to go from an iconic role to going into your next role? Would people still want to talk about the big movie that you were in just a year or two ago? It's never, that hasn't been a big thing for me. I think, I tend to take a bit of time between things and also, I don't know, when I, you know, like the first thing I did kind of popped off pretty hot and then everyone's like sending me like, you know, psychotic, psychotic, interesting characters and I was like, well, I think I'll do a musical with Woody Allen, you know what I mean? And wear a plaid jacket and do a dance number in Harry Winston's like... Switch it up. Yeah. And then what's really weird is I did that first, I did, I played this lawyer, I played a young lawyer in the Larry Flint film, right? And off of that, I got this distinct vibe of like, hey, the next John Grisham movie is like the way you were talking in court in that movie, you would kill in this John Grisham thing as the young lawyer or whatever. And I remember I met, Francis Coppola was going to direct the Rainmaker, this Grisham thing and I was up for it. I didn't get it. Matt Damon got it. And I didn't do some ballsy thing and like say, that's not for me. I was like, I was like Francis Coppola. I was like, I want this, you know, thing. But when I was talking to him about it and thinking to myself a little bit like, this seems a little square, but it's like Francis Coppola, you know what I mean? And he, when I was talking to him about it, he was like, well, what are you interested in? What are you interested in? I was telling him about my friend David who had written this American History X and that we were working on that. I was kind of telling him what we were trying to do with it and how we wanted to make it is this kind of like gorilla, you know, thing. And he was like, you should do that. You should do that immediately. And I was like, well, I want to I was like, don't don't I was like, don't cancel. Don't don't, you know, I still want to do this with you. He's like, no, no, I think you should do like the way you're talking about that. And he said, if you do that now, they'll never they'll never know what to do with you. Like they'll never they'll never be able to put you in a box kind of because that's just, you know, if you pull that off. And I kind of was like, you know, it I did have an agent at the time. It was really old school, really funny. And he was kind of like, he didn't understand that. He was like, he was like, find something big. Let's find something big. Director big film, big franchise, whatever. And I remember thinking like, no, I think I'm going to do this. And, and we knocked that off. And the funny thing is, you say, well, is that become a trap? That wasn't a trap. That was like a liberation. It's almost like doing that part. It was like a permanent hand grenade on it was like, it was like, well, we never know what to expect now. Right. So it becomes like liberation on us at a certain point. Because like I weigh 150, you know, like I'm not big. So like once you do something like that, it's sort of like, hmm, this guy's this guy's this guy's kinky. What the hell are we going to do with him? You know what I mean? Right. And then it's just sort of like you get to decide for yourself in a way.