Get Used to It: Ep. 85, "Voices of Our Lives: Thomas Schumacher"

oh [Applause] [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila kuhl your host and today we have another in our wonderful series of voices of our lives today we're going to be talking with tom schumacher who is the president of actually three divisions at the walt disney studios film animation tv animation and theatrical and since i just saw aida last night i'm very excited to be talking to him but that's not the only reason we're talking to tom he's had a long and interesting career not just in the industry but uh with our community and we're very proud to have you here tom welcome it's exciting to be here it's kind of a fancy studio all things considered what do you mean all things considered not the amazing no i didn't know that this you know this beautiful room that just wraps around us all the way around it's a little gayer than disney too do you think just in its decor well i'm not sure your office may look like this you know it's the gertrude steins shot the isherwood drawing bacardi's issue wood piece yeah it has a kind of a whimsy is that what you meant by that yes a little whimsical right anyway i'm very very glad to have you here and one of the things we like to do i mean you've done extraordinary work but i don't want to just talk about your work it's kind of about you as well and you know how your life has flowed along or not you don't bring people out and there's a book and then like my third grade teacher comes up that doesn't happen does it uh no you mean like this was your life no you're much too young to have thank you thank you very much that's freedom to say on all friends well of course well let's start at the beginning more or less um where did you grow up i actually i was born i'm a fourth generation california native which makes me very rare and i was born in glendale in beautiful glendale very near where we are now and very near where the nazi headquarters was for the american nazi party startling and there were also um there were race laws about after sunset in the 50s i mean you know the jim crow stuff stayed forever in glendale it's startling really i was born at the tallest building in glendale at the hospital building which is only matched by the sears tower which was three stories in glendale and i was born there in 1957 um and uh when i was 10 years old my family moved to the bay area and i grew so i really grew up with a with a northern california sensibility i lived in san mateo just outside of san francisco and what did you folks do my mother before i was born was an educator with a teacher and had quit teaching when she had a family then went back to work later and my father ran a trade organization um uh the california trucking association and so he worked in in your sort of hometown sacramento and uh we really my time growing up my father was a lobbyist so the whole legislative process and stuff always i mean in my family you had to know how a bill becomes a law you were quizzed we actually knew you had to pick sides in every election huh yeah all that so kind of a union family i mean a lot of just the opposite side interestingly because my father was management so when there was a teamster strike my father was representing the trucking owners i see so we were not a labor house huh it was in fact that was it was a real interesting perspective to have um because the the idea we were really i mean at 10 years old you know i knew what what teamsters were they were those thugs who wanted too much and now they drive you yes they're my best friends yes absolutely siblings yes i have two older sisters i'm the baby of the family uh-huh yeah one of them lives up in northern california and one who lives in santa monica huh and what was your growing up like i had a i lived in a we were an upper middle class family i went to fantastic schools to live in california and to grow up in the 60s and the 70s was so fantastic because we you know every arts program was fully funded and so as a kid who loved the arts you know i lived in a great neighborhood i lived in i had a school that had everything so we had a theater department and a band and a choir and sports teams which i wasn't interested in just but they were there thank heavens that kept them all busy while i was in play practice uh at that time there was so much that was just it was all made available to us the whole idea of cutbacks and no one ever thought of it so my schools were fantastic um and and i really adored that that stuff and all that and i lived in a family that was you know just like every movie family from the 70s you know dad coming home with the martini shaker and mom being the you know the at-home mom and all that stuff and then it was all torn asunder like every family that i knew i was at a party in the 70s i was probably a junior in high school and out of 30 people in my house two people had a set of parents two parents at home out of 30 people so we're yeah in my case it was divorced my father moved out when i was 15 years old and and to to to marry someone with him he's been married longer than he was married to my mother must be hard for you unbelievably difficult um but it was still you know it was still the 70s and it was still uh whenever your life is torn apart that's painful and to have it happen when you have teenage children who are not remotely compassionate about it because they're all wrapped up in their own stuff that was traumatic and yet and perhaps it's because i'm just optimistic about everything or upbeat about it if you were a gay kid growing up in the 70s just outside of san francisco there's a fantastic thing about having nobody at home paying attention to you didn't know exactly where you were going didn't know exactly nobody knew when you were going when you were coming home where you took the car did you come home did you so in fairness although i could you know i could try to paint some picture of some miserable thing i had fantastically smart friends and an enormous amount of freedom and then because also i was the youngest fantastic freedom i had jobs and went i i was fantastic but it's interesting you know um you wouldn't necessarily think that for a gay young man in the 60s and 70s that they would say it was fantastic that my you know my youth was fantastic because there there must have been some concern on your part i mean to to begin to suspect for instance that you might be gay just yourself the very beginnings of those thoughts are often kind of scary even in that time don't you think well even when i say it was fantastic of course it's terrifying you know and part of that the the view back is is a bit rosy i guess but it you know when i think about i'm still in touch with my first boyfriend in high school um he lives in new mexico he's a wonderful guy and and we email back and forth and uh and talk and when i think back to some specific events they're really wonderful and i think back to other stuff and i think you know it's a cruel ugly hard thing whether you did in the 70s or whether you're whether you're doing it now but i had and which i know i'm always aware of i had so many advantages that other people don't have i had advantages of fantastic friends who as they found out some knew when i was in high school some didn't know until afterwards but everybody knew you know i was the boy that if you said mom you know if you were a girl and said mom can i go out on friday night and stay out until two in the morning she'd say no then she'd say but mom it's with tom schumacher oh that's fine you know of course i was that boy you know so i when i look at it i think you know i people were really nice to me and and because i was a theater kid you know i wanted to do theater from from just from the get-go you know fourth grade i wanted to be in this little school plays you know the pied piper of hamlin or what have you so when i was in high school i got very involved in a community theater that was in my city that meant you know kids played kids and adult played adults and you know it wasn't like high school plays where you you know drew four lines on your forehead to represent adulthood this was actually you played a kid you know so i did every big musical you can name with adults in the adult roles and we rehearsed at night and on weekends and then would do these shows well because of that my circle of friends were other kids who liked theater kids who were theater tech kids you know and adults who ran the theater and adults who were in the shows and one of them in particular was the drama teacher at the a local high school but not mine and he ran the program and had been a professional actor and really mentored me all through high school and because of that i had an outlet i had people that were supporting me and watching out after me and encouraging me so when i look at kids today i always think who's doing that for them when i think of organizations i want to help it's organizations that are going to do that what was it that drew you to the theater or to you know performing or whatever and believe me i i probably know the answer to this in a way there's something that it's almost like that cannot be denied but still your own story well i i have a theory that everybody who gets into theater no matter where they end up in theater get in because they could read well out loud it's just a theory of mine but it you know there's like 12 kids in the class who can read well out loud and then the teacher wants you to do the play i was not actually a very good actor um but i was better than everybody else and so i got into plays because of that i guess there's there's the hammy factor and there's the kind of i like to be part of a group or a family factor i like the bonding thing you know i never played chess in my whole life the idea of just sitting at a chess board and playing up but all of us together learning some song or learning dance steps was really appealing to me and it sounds so corny and it sounds so cliche in a way but there's a family aspect to being in the theater that i just find lovely i just find lovely um because no matter who you're all working together on something there's an outcast quality to so many people in theater even the most fantastic people that you meet always have inside them some sense of wanting to belong because they weren't allowed before some sense of not being worthy in a sense and by coming together they create a greater worthiness than their individual sense of themselves i love that i loved rehearsing i still like rehearsing more than you know i have tonight in the theatrical division of disney that i oversee there are seven 16 productions running around the world tonight the aida you saw here in los angeles last night it's also in in plain and holland it's playing on broadway lion king is in six cities it's in japan it's in tokyo it's in fukuoka it's in hamburg it's in london it's all these things my favorite memories of these shows we're rehearsing them the design process working with the designers working with i've the most fantastic directors bob falls who did aida julie taymor who did lion king i love that i love being in the rehearsal room last night while you were watching i was backstage so hanging out with the cast who you know they're sitting there goofing with you and they go oh i'm on and then they'd run off and they'd run on stage then they'd come back and you'd talk some more and then they'd go back out on st i i love that it didn't show tom at all but i was just totally in focus they were totally concentrating really a wonderful wonderful cast i love that i love that that thing i love the disparate nature of it i love that that when you're on a show there'll be someone who's you know older and very experienced and someone who's doing it for the first time and and the kind of tending and mentoring i just love the whole mentoring taking care of people learning and then sharing and showing i love all of that i love that did you stay with theater through college did you yeah i i was living in the bay area and i i went to ucla actually thinking i would leave the theater behind i thought i would um do something serious with you yeah i would be important now so i actually thought i was going to be um a clinical social worker and that i would actually use drama do drama therapy and and i thought that was my calling and i went to ucla and after about six months of life in my dorm everybody on my floor who was a theater major kept asking me to be in their scenes that they had to direct or do or and i said oh sure so by the end of my freshman year i was a theater major and and then and and ucla for me was fantastic because it was a huge program and it gave me a chance to act in a lot of shows it gave me a chance to study parts of theater i had no knowledge of like puppetry that i later got very involved with um and ironically for example it's the irony of going to a big school i went to ucla i took a class in puppetry just because i was kind of curious and i was hoping it'd be you know an easy class and um had this most fantastic professor named mel helstein who was a real world authority on on puppets he taught me all about world theater and puppets he taught me so much stuff about it i actually eventually went on to work for with this guy named tony urbano this fantastic puppeteer who had a tv show called dusty's treehouse and i worked for tony and i learned a lot about commercial puppetry and that stuff but always in my head was this sort of arty world theater puppet view and of course time all this time passes you know and i'll come back to the story but you go jump way ahead and i'm asked to figure out how to do the lion king on broadway and i say you know there's this brilliant woman named julie taymor and then when julie and i hooked up and talked about it we shared this huge vocabulary about puppets in world theater which all came out of my ucla experience well i don't think anything is ever lost i mean i it's interesting i think you and i are very similar in the way we sort of tell our life stories as though this all these wonderful things kind of happened to us and then the next wonderful thing happened to me and in many ways it's it's not necessarily such an unbroken fabulous line but interestingly enough you never know what you need you know you go into experiences you tuck them away i didn't even know that i would have to for instance fundraise way later in my life when i started just working for the university religious conference and we did a little you know mailers when i was right out of college and i learned how to act though what happens is that you have that knowledge then when it comes up again you're able to do it it seems fluid and i do think it builds isn't the theater in a way though almost a hiding place too or was it oh sure you know there's a great thing about the theater and that you get to there's so many levels of hiding and i have so many friends in different parts of the theater designers and and you know actors get to hide behind the character people get to hide behind the curtain people get to hide behind the light board it's a place where the lights go out and we become or create someone else and it's a place of illusion and in as kids as a kid and i think most kids i loved magic i loved magic i loved makeup i loved illusion i loved transformation how did that happen how did toppo jijo actually talk to ed sullivan how did that happen how does the guy pull all that stuff out i was drawn to that i was fascinated by it and would read that and i think theater does that you get to hide inside that but you're also hiding if you will in a world of other people like you and what at first i thought theater is kind of a gay place and then i realized no theater's just a place for it it sounds horrible that kind of the reject place you know that that no matter who you were the theater group would take you in because we needed everything but there's sort of a relationship too i think in that um going back to high school especially where conformity is such an important thing but even even at ucla where i also was an undergraduate years before you and a theater major it's also a rejection by the larger society of people who are involved in the arts uh you know the attacks on the arts in the past 20 years by especially by the right wing but not only when you talk about the privileges we had in school of having these certain kinds of things that we don't have anymore seems to me there's something in the arts that people consider dangerous as well and people who engage in them now disney is not necessarily thought of in this way thought of perhaps erroneously as simpler or more candy-coated but some many of the animated films that i i know you've overseen have been involved in are in their own way stories about the light in the dark the you know the the tragedy and the uh there is an image that if you have particularly things that are made for families or for children that simplicity somehow suggests simple-minded and animation is it's a short form and it is paired away but it's like a haiku in a sense the way animation works we use very simple straightforward imagery stacked in a certain way to give you something very profound um and if you look at light and dark those movies are scary you know everyone tells me you know i i hear oftentimes oh you know those disney films those little children's movies and then everyone tells you how they felt it when they saw bambi well that's not unusual when we made the lion king we were convinced we had a problem because simba's father mufasa dies tragically in this stampede of wildebeest and we thought that would terrify children and then literally his corpse is laying there and the boy runs up and tries to wake his father and can't and everyone thought this imagery was going to be too difficult and yet in the the whole of the movie it takes you to this dark place and then there is a healing i will never forget a letter we got right after the movie came out about from a father who whose um whose wife had died and he didn't know how to explain what had happened and so as he sat with his children watching the lion king they came to understand this idea that gets talked about you know we're we're where mufasa is talking about the circle of life and again they sound like cliches but these are their profound realities they're fundamental truths and they're not always the same and again i don't know whether your audience would actually know these movies but there's two of my favorite quotes of the lion king for any number of reasons and a film called mulan oh i'll bet you a lot of my audience know this film yeah and especially the women in my audience mulan is a powerful story it's based on a chinese legend of this young woman named pham mulan and she um in medieval china um a family received a draft notice not an individual and the oldest male would go and if the father would go and the father had a son the son would go in this case her father is ailing had been a war hero but he was alien and she knew if he went he would die and so she takes it upon herself to cut her hair disguise herself as a boy and take his armor and go off and join the army she does it not to defy convention but she's saying that she won't accept convention if it means that her father will die you know it's interesting that a man who is part of a community that for the greatest part of our existence have been kind of denied family denied recognition of family that not only are you deeply involved in and leading um a part of the industry that is geared toward families but most of the product is about the issue of family and just as you said in mulan where she really leaves home to save her family and of course the lion king is about family it's all about family but they're always about families that that that one creates one is born into a family and one builds a family around them you know that if you look at the last tableau of the lion king sure simba and nala have had a baby but timon and pumbaa are there right he made a family he made this family thing i love that in in in mulan you know the the theme is so totally different that the lion king says you have your place in the circle of life and you must accept it you must take you're born to this you must accept it and in mulan she says my destiny is not written for me but by me these are two opposing themes i sat with a group of third graders and i because i do these discussion things at disney world bring kids in to watch the movies and i sat with these kids and i i asked them to talk about that and they totally get it that they're totally different ideas and they could argue about which one they they thought who was right who was more right who and they come to realize that both of them were the right thing they can't they could oppose they could hold those two opposing ideas in their head they're not simple they're they're very real and also you know our films tell you to believe believe the darkness exists believe that strangers will help you believe in yourself those are truths and the darkness never goes away it's always there so is this an experience of your life as well that you make certain the work that you do gets imbued with or is this something that all stories contain and really may or may not have a relationship to your life when i went to animation when i was asked by by uh my different peter schneider to come out and work for disney we'd been friends we worked in the olympic arts festival together when i was asked to come to disney i had not direct i'd not been directly involved in film in any way i had not worked in animation anyway i knew nothing about it and i thought it's a gig and i'll try it because you know people who know how to run stuff know how to run stuff and i went out to produce a movie and i found that i fell in love with the process and i found that animation was very much like theater rehearsing and workshopping to play was like um mounting the storyboards and getting a movie animated movie app it wasn't like a film set where you just set up shoot set up shoot set up shoot we we workshop in a sense i love that community of people who all came together and put their ideas in and then i realized that these movies actually said something i believed in and then which i've been challenged on any number of things particularly early on in the gay community when i was first at disney was was the idea of working for disney and i said you know disney values are the values that of my life it's the discussion of ideas it's the what's fundamentally in the the modern movies i cannot speak to you know snow white's plight i i wasn't involved but these current movies i believe in what they say i actually believe it i believe in what our company stands for and i know that sounds nutty to people because i thought i'd be the last person in the world that would be hired at disney and i'd discovered a company that embraced me i was never in the closet at disney i met a company that was one of the early companies to give domestic partner benefits and a company i would argue that was at the greatest risk of any company in america and no one was at greater risk for giving these benefits in the walt disney company i my partner matthew matthew white and i we celebrate our 20th anniversary um in february of this year um and never once have i felt marginalized at our company um he comes to if if it's a spouse event that's there and at every level at the most senior level of company the most embraced i might add it it's the complete inverse of what i think everyone would have expected but you couldn't have gone without um some problem there either from the outside or inside from well i don't know i mean people must have do they know that there's a gay man running these divisions in that outside sort of right-wing world you know the early on um like right after when the lion king came out i've been there for about 14 years now and that was probably in the first five years um the advocate did a pretty extensive profile on me and it was four or five pages long and pictures and all that stuff and i got an enormous amount of hate mail ugly hate mail ugly stuff and you realize that that's there and i i felt somewhat protected from it because i thought that happened to people who do what you do people who are social activists people who are in the political arena and i didn't had not originally realized i know it was my own personal politics i was always out you know from the time i you know when i was like 18 i was then out and uh and i i knew what that was and i you know i you know i got slugged um actually at a market near beverly hills um during the when we were the the no on six the briggs initiative um uh you got slug just for being in the market or you had a activist i was out front leafleting and after a rally um i thought i think i saw you at um it's possible yeah and uh uh i got slugged and i thought oh wow that's what happens but i never saw it as a big surprise thing to do i said you do that you know in my house again growing up in a house with political activism even if it was really mainstream legitimate stuff and my grandfather was really believed in stuff you know and so i got that it wasn't until i started getting this hate mail and i realized i was putting not only myself my family at risk and matthew at risk and people who were you know really despising the fact that i did what i did what i found startling was that the company the walt disney company particularly my the people i worked for directly did not even blink did not even blink there was a huge letter writing campaign that i should be fired there were like three or four of us targeted that should be fired because we were gay people working at disney and you know those campaigns can you've seen them i mean those sure they're ugly yeah and well like they have a newsletter and they'll have like a blank sheet and you know like you fill it out and they tell you you fax it in and these huge stacks come right i hate blank fill in the link right and um there was no one blinked no one flinched no one flinched and they never have i you know i i i once i recognized that that existed and that i would face that then i just accommodated that in my life um i a friend who works in the media who gave me tips on how to just rearrange some personal visibility issues and then i just went right back out and did it went right back out and did it and i actually you know being out once you're out it's just not a big shock to everybody that i don't care whether other people like it or dislike it i don't care they have to respect me that's all give me the same dignity that someone else gets give me the same benefits someone else gets we haven't had an art when our matt and i have not had a a um a union ceremony other people everyone makes their own choice on that i won't do it i will not do it until i can get married so that's my and and mostly because i want to tell people everywhere i go and they say oh you guys have one of the no we don't we're not allowed you know i i do that well it's interesting you never paint yourself as an activist and yet you let drop a little line about well i was leafleting during uh you know no on six um this this this time between college and disney uh must have been a an interesting or maybe in some ways difficult time because i get the sense you're building professionally you don't necessarily you probably have to be out because you're out and you can't go back in it's hard to beat but you don't have to be out leafleting how did these things come together i when you are advantaged to not take take advantage of that is a sin i mean i i do believe in sin on some level with you know what i mean it's just wrong you know here i am uh i'm i i'm able uh and every i've always been able to pay my rent and you know whether i'm paying you know tiny rent in my cockroach-infested apartment on you know just just um east of normandy or whether i'm you know living in a nice house i always want to cover my head and so always and my family was always you know you you know i was making i was working at the north campus facility the former gypsy wagon at ucla and uh you know i still wrote my twenty-five dollar check a year to kcet people who don't know about the gym it's a restaurant sandwich uh cart kind of place um and uh you know i've i've always been able to do that and so to be able and and not take advantage of that not be you know i'm advantaged i i and to not share that and not to be out there i don't i when i look at people who are really out there doing stuff and dedicating their life i don't do that you know i i i make my movies and i work on broadway shows and before that i was i i did this thing called the los angeles festival which brought cirque du soleil to america the first time and all that and you know all these things that i've done that i've been really excited about doing that and i believe in it i believe that there's something wonderful about bringing people together and entertaining and enlightening and charming them and giving them hope and optimism and i believe that i i don't i don't discount my contribution but my contribution is not out there on the front line doing what people like you do and i it's wrong to pretend that i do that because i just don't i support people who do what you do um but i don't do that well and i'm not trying to make more of it than it is but to me it's first of all it's interesting that simply by being out people consider you to be an activist especially isn't that curious like that you're out it's like they use the word flaunt just because you admit it uh or they will be hostile as they have been as you said about your work at disney and i'm sure very threatening to them because all their kids go and buy every tape you know of every disney animated movie and they're afraid there's going to be some subliminal you know gay message in there but that is a level of activism not necessarily intended it's an act of courage sure we do that you know when i love this flaunting thing i get so pissed off about this if you can see some guy greet his wife at the airport and is unbelievably intimate with her it when in the 70s you know if you hugged someone in the 80s you were rubbing people's faces in it right holding hands holding hands how dare they they're probably making out in the restaurant because they touch each other's hand they sit on the same side of the table so we've just defied that always we've just always defied that but made it so much a part of our lives that no one even thinks about it now it just doesn't come up and i suspect you get the same thing i get that you get the it's not you it's it's just the agenda of those people but it's not you i'm bothered by well what agenda isn't mine what agenda are we talking about just the basic right to exist on the planet and do all the same stuff you do and i've had a few opportunities to use either my visibility or my my position and i believe in that because people just need to see you they need to see that i love the same things they do and that i'm worried about the same things they are and that the safety and protection of children on the planet is is of such fundamental importance to us and and and that's so precious and that that you know that that women who have been marginalized and have no access to any help get supported and all of a sudden you go gee i guess those gay people are just like us and you know it's that is my act of that we're all in this thing together well it's also interesting that you've been in such a long-term relationship because of course uh all the messages about our community is are are just the opposite well lord knows the right wing has done everything it can to prevent us from having long-term relationships you know if if they could throw a barrier in front of us it is it is so absurd it is rather like saying i'm going to blindfold you i'm going to put you in a dark room and throw everything i can in front of you and if you trip you're going to be a social outcry or then i'm going to accuse you of not being able to see yes exactly i mean really yeah why can't you all stick together but how dare you defy the sanctity of marriage when 50 of people get married divorce or whatever i mean it's so absurd so how did you meet matthew what was he doing what does he do he seduced me okay oh please he drugged me into his spell no we didn't i was um i took a gig working for the uh the los angeles ballet which was a company in l.a for almost a decade and now we can't see you dancing no i wasn't i was the assistant general manager of the company which meant i oversaw payroll business a lot of stuff i had no knowledge of but nobody else would take the job i have a long history of taking jobs nobody else would take um and i've never gotten a job i asked for which is a curious thing i they always just come to me so i said well sure you know they called me and they knew someone who knew someone would you come do this so i go to work at the ballet company and when i was being interviewed a board member said to me um wonderful lady she said the only rule is if we hire you you're not allowed to date any of the women in the company and i said well that is not okay that'll be fine and they i thought they were like kidding and and then very soon um you know we met and then one thing led to another and matthew was a he was a dancer in the company yeah from amarillo texas had gone to new york city at the school of american ballet got recruited for the la ballet from there and uh yeah that was uh 20 years ago ah so i bet he's probably not still dancing with the company though no now he's a very fancy pants interior designer he does big fancy homes in new york apartments and gets written about an architectural digest and now he's he's terribly fancy now i'm glad i met him when he was available and you know a humble dancer well you're pretty fancy yourself right now actually i mean certainly people feel that you are very influential and probably more than many people know what you've said about animation for instance and the participation in the development of a theme or uh you know of a of a direction that uh that a film will take uh i don't think many people know about that well you know there's so many different ways that you can you know when someone says what does a broadway producer do or what does that what does a film producer do or what does a student executive do and everyone does it differently um the process that that i'm in is that i'm part of it so that i'm part of the original what is the idea how we're going to put that together who's going to be a player on it and then stay with it and and partner with the team my job is not to direct the movie or direct the play i don't do that um i also don't just provide the money and come on opening night um i'm very much in the mix of it and because i'm managing a portfolio of projects i get to push forward the ones that i think are interesting and i work for really wonderful people you know i work for michael eisner and roy disney who allow me both great freedom and are very committed to the process they actually love the stuff roy loves to be in the room and work on animation i had lunch with it right before i came over here he's in the middle of it every day all the time michael eisner loves the films and completely adores the theater stuff so in tech rehearsals he's there in his baseball hat and his sweatshirt watching us put the show together and giving us notes they're in the mix of it so i'm blessed that way i don't know what it's like someplace else you know i've been to disney 14 years i was at the festival before that i was at the taper before that and then i was in school you know um i i haven't floated around and seen everybody's stuff i've probably worked more places more consistently than a lot of people but and made more things but i kind of have our way of doing it and what does that sort of a life in the theater sort of what does it give you i mean i can see that you love it and you enjoy it but sort of what's the point and maybe it's because i'm so much older and i keep thinking what's the point i mean i think that i've made some but what's the point we exist to connect i think it's the only exist reason that any of us exist now some people connect with what they write and they're all alone in a room and we know them through their words my my life was changed by j.d salinger and i'm probably one of a million people who would say that my life was totally changed by christopher isherwood both in through his writing and actually meeting him on a few occasions they make connections with us you connect people because you make connection people through first your work as an actress and then your work as a legislator and you transported them in both cases i connect with people by helping to make things that they see that i think put forward good values and entertain they're not intended as didactic they're entertainments that i believe in what's inside them that's the only reason we exist and everybody you meet that moves you when you meet someone who makes you cry um right a guy who uh i ran all saints um uh episcopal church in in uh pasadena i named george regas who i've come to know a little bit this year and to know george you when you talk to him you tear up a man of faith a man of fantastic politics and yeah i think of him as the second the ultimate of this of someone who gives he connects he shares and the better someone is at it the more they move you and the more they inspire well i find him to be essentially fearless too i mean one of the interesting things about people who can we many people call it tolerance but it goes way beyond that people who can include a multiplicity of ideas sort of in their world view who are not afraid that somebody else is going to have an idea or somebody else is going to want to make a point who would read anything and not be afraid that it was going to you know harm them in some way but of course that's not you know that's not the case with everyone no but don't you find that and i do it with everything now maybe it's a part of being older also took a great class at ucla and the philosophy of contemporary moral issues that demanded that you look at the other side of everything you believed in and it it was a fantastic class for me because i do it all the time now when i find it there's an interesting thing that we do in our own community we are furious if somebody boycotts something we believe in and yet we're the first people to boycott everything what's up with that what is up with that i um i often defend charlton heston um and people are outraged now when i was a boy working the theater at the taper i knew him briefly he would never even know who i was but i admire him for his passion not for his position but i admire him for his passion i understand where it comes from and everyone who is furious with him for exerting his fundamental american right to say stuff that i don't believe in is the same people who think their right should they should be protected i never understood that i never understood well some people are afraid of the competition of those ideas i mean and also you don't want to just do the the sort of kind of philosophy that says well you know no ideas are better than any other ideas it's all my ideas are better don't get me wrong exactly i'm right but i can't i'm not laughing i'm right but it doesn't help to say the other guy doesn't have a point well we were talking the other night and i you mentioned this to me actually and it's something that i only thought of when we were having this conversation a number of young people especially in our community have said you know the worst thing that people are the worst word that people use now in high school in junior high school is the word gay when they want to say something is really bad they just say well that's really gay don't they understand that they're really using this in a way that's discriminatory and they're harming our community and i said well you know when i was a kid we would say if an idea was really bad that's really lame but we never thought about people with disabilities and yet it was exactly the same kind of insult why choose that word out of a dictionary of a million words to say that something is bad it is a choice and a way of putting down a community well when you said this i wasn't thinking about it but when you said it the other night i that that simple thing has made me question when you brought that up i've told so many people about it because it made me see everything differently all of a sudden all of a sudden they go oh my gosh i'm that i do that the examination of the other guy's point of view is so valuable i'm convinced why it's you're successful in in sacramento it's too easy just to shout they are idiots first off you're never going to transport anybody by doing that and it's too it's just too easy now again i think i'm right i think you're right i you know that's why we all have our position i'm not sure that everybody who thinks they think they're right is i'm pretty sure that but dr king said that there was a sort of an art i can't even think of what the real quote is and i'll apologize to all the people who know it but uh something about an arc toward justice that it's sort of inexorable and i feel there is a winning thing in the world which is part of my positive philosophy too i mean i'm an optimist but my definition of an optimist is a person who knows how terrible the world can be and therefore is never disappointed so maybe that's i keep saying to people what'd you expect you know just keep up the fight of course they're going to say that but i do believe there is a kind of an arc toward justice and that the ideas of equality the ideas of inclusion and all those words that we're using now in the oughts or whatever they're calling this decade are the right ideas that they're they're like saving the environment they're good for the world and that it's worth the fight and i think you're also engaged in whether you you probably don't see it so much as a battle of ideas at work and yet everything that's thrown out there i mean i was very struck i'm not an opera buff and therefore did not know the story of aiden and there and came to it completely fresh i just had no idea what the plot was and the notion that you were talking about earlier of the kind of responsibility of having to be who you are because other people need you to be that and yet wanting to make your own choices is really you know the element of so many stories including that one and that one and it's at the root of it and but that's a struggle that we all have you i'm sure you faced this because of your fantastic success that you are super lesbian you must feel that way matt and i were profiled on this show in the life and somebody asked me you know it must be so great i said you know frankly at times you feel like you have to be super homo you know what i am as fallible and as miserable and as challenged as everybody else um and at the same time it is my responsibility to try to rise up and fulfill that because i have had advantage i have been i got lucky you know i i'm a real believer in luck talent is how you manipulate luck well of course most people think that there's lots of gay people in the industry and imagine that you go into a meeting of a a big room full of gay people it just isn't happening no no and i i do find it fascinating that people think that it just doesn't happen i think people just you know that whole ridiculous notion of california like it's just this liberal place with all the nuts and this what are they talking about we're the state that brought you ronald reagan you know and i don't know why they all think that and in most places you go in in entertainment it's a room full of white men most places you go and the majority of them are straight and that's just the nature of it i i i'm always surprised by how people think it's so gay aware um because it certainly isn't and and it is more free now as more open now as the culture has been but geez look at the 40s and 50s and even 60s with you know just all of the secretive it still is that way among the you know that the whole closity thing among the performer world and i understand that i you know i have no business having an opinion about it because i i'm too busy tending to my own nest before i start well it is easier in some professions to be out than or some parts of a profession than others and again it's the same thing you were talking about yeah i mean then you meet people like ian mckellen who were so compelling and you know and after you're spending an hour with him you know you're you going and go for it i know and it doesn't seem to have hurt his career since he seems to be in the sort of the major movie and he's the biggest hit of the year yeah absolutely yeah so what about your if you can say and i this may not actually be something that happened but was there experience unique to being a gay man especially out as early as you were in your life and therefore all through it that you bring to your work being constantly misunderstood and thought to be something else i think makes you strive to make sure other people feel understood and i do think my colleagues may disagree i do think i have a skill at facilitating to getting people to be able to do their best and to create an environment by which other people can do that i think that comes from the experience of having to struggle so much with that the other the flip side of that is gay people and particularly i can't speak to to for women i know for boys you become fantastic liars really early on because you have to to survive to keep from getting beat up to keep from disappointing to keep from telling the truth you lie and from that you develop a fantastic facility to manipulate and once you learn how to corral that and get it use that skill to manipulate to anticipate to see because lying is all about preparation you know it's like a good lie is like a good paint job it's all about the preparation and that the once you realize how to command that to good it works i also grew up in a house because my father who was uh who i'm very fond of and i love and i talk to all the time we had a rough real rough period my father was the classic you know 60s dad with the you know the drinking and the yelling and the caring and a huge a huge man and a huge personality and he was unrelentingly hard on me as a kid which meant that you i you had to have an answer and you had to have a response or you broke now either he made me strong enough to do this or i was strong enough therefore i survived i'm not sure which is true but either way i come out of it a better person than i might have been and you can you know i don't mean to be the corny half glass half empty or half full but you know those people that go through the day and something crummy happens to them and that's all they can harp on at the end of the day and then there's those of us who say isn't it great that only one bad thing happened today right that's me isn't it great that only one crappy thing happened because the other stuff is so fantastic i i should say to my shrink and she hated this i'd say you know i'm not dead and someone said wow how's it feel that you're getting older i said a lot better than guys who died exactly well my guardian angel gave me this lesson just about a week before my 60th birthday because i couldn't even believe i was turning 60. i mean it was like wasn't i just 40. you know i mean this is way too quick and i thought oh no it's all going to fall apart now and i was very agitated and i knew this time it was about my birthday so i was in the capitol and i thought i've got to get out of here i've just got to get out of here i can't sit still i'm so agitated i don't know what to do but i'm an angelino when i'm agitated i drive so i went down to the garage in the capitol got in my state car and started driving through sacramento which i don't know very well but you know all the streets are numbers this way and letters this way you can't get lost and i'm driving out in an area in the 40s that where the houses are very nice and i'm looking the trees are pretty and the houses are pretty and i thought this is what i need i'll just drive down this street and then this street and look at the pretty houses and just kind of calm down and so i went up the street and down this street up the street and when i went down this street i drove into a cemetery who knew there was a cemetery in the middle of sacramento of course that people have to be buried somewhere and it was one of those cemeteries with a one-way street so you drive in it looked like i was just going in another little street drove in and i'm in a cemetery and i had to continue through the whole cemetery because it's a one-way street so when i got out to the other gate and drove back out again i said okay i get it i mean this is like here's the lesson you're worried about your birthday here's the alternative now maybe that's not a story that means that i don't know i i think it does i we we're given gifts and we're all given extraordinary challenges you know and people ask me all the time because i just you know i travel and i i'm always on an airplane and i'm always flying and i don't have time for all these things i want to do and because i have three different jobs and they always say oh you must work so hard and i think please i said i can introduce you to any number of single mothers in south central los angeles trying to raise two boys in a very difficult world she's got two jobs you know she's cleaning houses and she's a night nurse in a in a couple convolution hospital and her mom takes care of the kids when she's out at night and she's struggling to keep it all together and you're gonna tell me that my job is hard it just isn't we we can let ourselves go a little bit and just acknowledge that what a treat it is to be making stuff and doing stuff we should watch out for other people we you know and and whether we are gay or straight i don't care i care if you can reach out to people if you can connect with them if you can touch them if you can help them and if you get in my way i will crush you well you have to have that point of view if you try to stop me from what i believe in i will crush you but we tell where we we think of where we're going and especially i think in certainly in the industry in terms of stories we tell stories to each other right here tom to to make our point i mean storytelling is what you do and what you're engaged in what story is yet untold what will you do i don't mean somebody else's next project what is the story you'd still like to tell for me the story that we don't yet understand is the true story of inclusion and that that's not a cliche that's a reality the other night i introduced michael eisner to my friends richie jackson and b.d wong many people know bd wong because he's a a well-known actor um and they have a son jackson fu wong this beautiful little boy and where that little boy came from and his life is a story that i told to michael and he was fascinated by and i realized that this is the story that the world doesn't yet know that when you think of family and you think of who we are and and and how we nurture and raise a generation that for all time there have been so many versions of that for all time people raised by grandparents aunts uncles neighbors that that story has yet to really be told and until that story is as cliche as the fantastic stories told by hugh beaumont and barbara billingsley on leave it to beaver the story hasn't been told of what a family is that story that hugh belmont told was fantastic he was a smart wonderful man and until the story of these created families is told and becomes as cliche as that the story hasn't been told yet of what family is well i love that you were comparing sort of in the lion king the way this family ends up as that kind of chosen and biological family and not a fairy tale really in any way i think no i it's legit it's who we are well i know you're not going to believe this but we've been talking for an hour and now won't i ever shut no i don't i could go for two more hours and probably even after we're done with the show we'll continue to talk i'm so glad you were with us today well treat to be here no one ever asks me these questions i know well i wish i could have hyped a movie i'm really good at that we'll send you the tape and you don't actually probably need to hype your movie since everybody is buying at least three copies of the videos and giving two away um and i hope that you've enjoyed this uh as as much as we have because uh there are lots of stories that tom schumacher's been involved in telling and i hope you're busy telling your own stories and i hope you get used to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you